ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm trying to avoid getting my heart broken again.

00:00:03 ◼   ► So in various ways with the iOS beta situation

00:00:07 ◼   ► and everything, I mentioned that I had ordered myself

00:00:10 ◼   ► an iPhone 13 mini.

00:00:12 ◼   ► I had the 12 mini last year as my only phone,

00:00:15 ◼   ► and I loved it.

00:00:16 ◼   ► And the 13 Pro came out and won me back to the midsize,

00:00:20 ◼   ► which is really quite a large size,

00:00:22 ◼   ► with the big camera system and the big battery

00:00:24 ◼   ► and everything, 'cause the mini's battery life sucked.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Well then it turned out the 13 mini,

00:00:29 ◼   ► while it didn't have any of the fancy camera stuff,

00:00:31 ◼   ► it did improve the battery life a bit,

00:00:33 ◼   ► and I was a little envious, but I thought,

00:00:35 ◼   ► I don't need it, I already have my pro phone,

00:00:38 ◼   ► I'll stick with the pro, I'll enjoy the camera, et cetera.

00:00:41 ◼   ► And I have for most of the year,

00:00:43 ◼   ► and it's this big heavy brick in my pocket

00:00:45 ◼   ► every time I carry it anywhere.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And as the summer has been kicking into high gear

00:00:49 ◼   ► and I start wearing shorts as the default--

00:00:52 ◼   ► - Oh, here we go again.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - The default leg covering, I was even feeling like,

00:00:56 ◼   ► you know, maybe I should buy a 13 mini

00:00:59 ◼   ► just for the summer, you know, and then I don't know,

00:01:01 ◼   ► just sell it then or whatever, I don't know.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Even though I can have 17 different computers

00:01:05 ◼   ► and that feels okay, for some reason having two iPhones

00:01:07 ◼   ► feels ridiculous, like that feels like such an extravagance,

00:01:10 ◼   ► like such a waste.

00:01:12 ◼   ► So for I've never really--

00:01:12 ◼   ► - You need a pants phone and a shorts phone.

00:01:14 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

00:01:17 ◼   ► So for whatever reason, like that always felt like

00:01:19 ◼   ► that was off limits.

00:01:21 ◼   ► There's probably no good excuse why,

00:01:22 ◼   ► it's like well if I can have a laptop and a desktop,

00:01:24 ◼   ► like why can't I have two phones?

00:01:26 ◼   ► But you know, it just felt wasteful.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Anyway, as I mentioned, I think two episodes ago,

00:01:30 ◼   ► I gave away my Mini for a family member who needed a phone.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And so I had only one phone left total that could run iOS 16.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And I really, for my various testing figures,

00:01:41 ◼   ► I really need two.

00:01:43 ◼   ► And so my Mini was that before.

00:01:45 ◼   ► And I lost it.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So I ordered a new like, refurb, refurb, renewed, refurb,

00:01:51 ◼   ► iPhone 13 Mini to be my test phone.

00:01:53 ◼   ► And I thought, well, now that I have this, now that it's here,

00:01:57 ◼   ► I'll put 15 on it and I'll put 16 on my carry phone.

00:02:01 ◼   ► So that's what I've done.

00:02:03 ◼   ► And I realized like well,

00:02:07 ◼   ► maybe I should just take this out.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Just take this for a night.

00:02:10 ◼   ► I'll pop my SIM card into it and just see.

00:02:12 ◼   ► - Here we go. - Maybe I can talk about it

00:02:14 ◼   ► on the show, you know, just that famous excuse, right?

00:02:17 ◼   ► That's how every podcaster excuses buying gear

00:02:19 ◼   ► they don't need.

00:02:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I needed it for the show.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - I needed to be able to talk about it.

00:02:24 ◼   ► So, but I legitimately need this device

00:02:26 ◼   ► as a test device, I just don't need to be using it

00:02:29 ◼   ► as my carry phone.

00:02:30 ◼   ► So anyway, so for a few days, I'd say maybe three,

00:02:34 ◼   ► four or five days, I use it as my main carry phone again.

00:02:38 ◼   ► And it was glorious.

00:02:41 ◼   ► It feels so good and frankly, so I got the blue one.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Frankly, I think it looks really good too.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Like the back, eh, the back I could care less about.

00:02:51 ◼   ► The blue aluminum on the sides though looks really nice

00:02:54 ◼   ► in all different lighting conditions.

00:02:56 ◼   ► it is way nicer looking than the Pro Phone.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And I have that baby blue version of the Pro Phone.

00:03:01 ◼   ► - Same.

00:03:02 ◼   ► - It's so much nicer looking.

00:03:03 ◼   ► And I don't think the Pro Phone looks bad,

00:03:05 ◼   ► but that's just how good the non-Pro aluminum looks,

00:03:08 ◼   ► like this wonderful blue color.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's so nice.

00:03:12 ◼   ► But I kept telling myself, I can't stick with this,

00:03:15 ◼   ► I can't, because this is about to die.

00:03:18 ◼   ► This whole product line's about to die,

00:03:20 ◼   ► and I even thought, do I really need the 14

00:03:23 ◼   ► when it comes out?

00:03:24 ◼   ► But the answer is I probably need to have one

00:03:28 ◼   ► because it's gonna have that low brightness widget mode

00:03:30 ◼   ► on the home screen that I'm going to have to test with.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So like I'm going to get on the train again

00:03:35 ◼   ► and in the fall for the mid-sized phone.

00:03:36 ◼   ► So I'm like I just, I don't wanna get my heart broken again.

00:03:39 ◼   ► And so yesterday I switched back to the giant phone

00:03:42 ◼   ► just 'cause I didn't wanna get too used to the mini.

00:03:45 ◼   ► And it's so big, oh my God.

00:03:48 ◼   ► It's so, it's just, it's so big and heavy.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like, ah.

00:03:52 ◼   ► And when you look at the specs,

00:03:54 ◼   ► like the mini versus the mid-size non-pro

00:03:58 ◼   ► versus the mid-size pro,

00:04:00 ◼   ► it's like 140 grams, 175 and 200.

00:04:04 ◼   ► So the mini is, it's more than half the weight

00:04:08 ◼   ► of the big one, but that's still,

00:04:11 ◼   ► it just feels both the weight difference

00:04:13 ◼   ► and the footprint size difference in your hand.

00:04:16 ◼   ► It just feels so big.

00:04:17 ◼   ► I still wish there was something between these two sizes.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Now maybe the answer is I just get like, you know,

00:04:25 ◼   ► the big non-pro phone, but that's, I mean,

00:04:28 ◼   ► that's not gonna solve my development needs

00:04:29 ◼   ► for this fall with the Always On Screen and everything.

00:04:31 ◼   ► Anyway, I just, I miss having the small light phone so much.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I'm so torn, I am so fortunate that I have a job

00:04:40 ◼   ► and the means that I can actually own both of these phones

00:04:42 ◼   ► and have to actually test on both of them

00:04:44 ◼   ► and have a good reason to buy them, et cetera.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Yes, I know.

00:04:46 ◼   ► However, God, I wish they would make

00:04:49 ◼   ► better small phones again.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And it kind of crushes me that,

00:04:54 ◼   ► according to every rumor that at this point,

00:04:56 ◼   ► usually iPhone size rumors are pretty well nailed in

00:04:59 ◼   ► by a year before it launches, let alone a few months.

00:05:02 ◼   ► But at this point, it's pretty clear,

00:05:04 ◼   ► the mini is going away.

00:05:06 ◼   ► And I miss the days, it feels so good in the pocket.

00:05:10 ◼   ► It doesn't look ridiculous in pockets.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I'm still a front pocket kind of person.

00:05:16 ◼   ► And it doesn't look stupid with this giant lunch tray

00:05:20 ◼   ► in my pocket the way that the big phone does.

00:05:22 ◼   ► The difference between the Mini and the Pro

00:05:26 ◼   ► is way bigger than the difference

00:05:28 ◼   ► between the Pro and the Max.

00:05:29 ◼   ► So they really just made the Max and the Maxer right now.

00:05:32 ◼   ► That's how it feels.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Here we are, we have the normal sized phone,

00:05:36 ◼   ► which is the Mini, and then we have the Max and the Maxer.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And oh, it's so sad to me that this is going away

00:05:43 ◼   ► and it'll probably never come back.

00:05:46 ◼   ► We're never gonna have a 3.5 inch phone again,

00:05:48 ◼   ► and that's probably for good reasons,

00:05:49 ◼   ► but it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger

00:05:53 ◼   ► and heavier.

00:05:55 ◼   ► And I hope in the future, I hope maybe Apple does

00:05:59 ◼   ► more advances with materials maybe,

00:06:00 ◼   ► maybe not using steel, maybe reducing the use of glass

00:06:03 ◼   ► on the back, 'cause steel and glass are very heavy.

00:06:07 ◼   ► So I don't know what they could do.

00:06:09 ◼   ► I just hope they do it.

00:06:11 ◼   ► - Now the periscope cameras will, I hope,

00:06:13 ◼   ► make it feel not quite as onerous in the pocket.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Those were rumored to be coming for the iPhone 14,

00:06:19 ◼   ► but turns out not, we talked about that on a past show.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Maybe for the 15 or 16, imagine if it was a phone

00:06:25 ◼   ► the size of the plain old 13, but a little bit thinner,

00:06:28 ◼   ► a little bit lighter, and totally flat back,

00:06:30 ◼   ► that would feel less oppressive in your pocket,

00:06:32 ◼   ► I feel like.

00:06:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that would be nice.

00:06:35 ◼   ► And I still, again, I still think that if they can,

00:06:38 ◼   ► if they can find it in their hearts

00:06:40 ◼   ► to make a pro-quality phone without steel around the outside

00:06:45 ◼   ► like use the aluminum, it's lighter,

00:06:48 ◼   ► It looks better and it feels better.

00:06:50 ◼   ► - I think the steel looks better and feels better.

00:06:52 ◼   ► It's not lighter but I think it looks better and feels better.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I would use a case so who cares

00:06:55 ◼   ► but I think it definitely looks better and feels better.

00:06:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, disagree.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I will say though, besides the size,

00:07:05 ◼   ► I was thinking like, well if I just switch this to the summer

00:07:07 ◼   ► like what am I gonna miss from the Pro phone?

00:07:09 ◼   ► You know what I missed?

00:07:10 ◼   ► Shockingly, I would never have guessed this, ProMotion.

00:07:15 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I thought there was something wrong with my mini,

00:07:18 ◼   ► that everything was so jaggy,

00:07:20 ◼   ► like all the animations seemed like very low frame rate.

00:07:23 ◼   ► I never would have noticed this before

00:07:24 ◼   ► using promotion for a year now,

00:07:26 ◼   ► but now, and I still use a 60 hertz monitor all the time,

00:07:30 ◼   ► but for some reason I noticed that instantly,

00:07:33 ◼   ► and I thought, oh, maybe it's just 'cause this is

00:07:34 ◼   ► like a fresh boot, maybe it's indexing crap

00:07:36 ◼   ► in the background and everything,

00:07:37 ◼   ► but no, it never went away.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It always felt like low frame rate animation,

00:07:43 ◼   ► and I would never have guessed that.

00:07:45 ◼   ► - By the time they do the Mini again,

00:07:47 ◼   ► it'll be 120 hertz, don't worry.

00:07:49 ◼   ► - Three years.

00:07:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, three, that's optimistic.

00:07:51 ◼   ► - No, it won't be, it'll be the next SE probably,

00:07:53 ◼   ► and it'll have all the lowest end components.

00:07:55 ◼   ► - No, I mean, I feel like the smaller phone thing

00:07:57 ◼   ► comes in cycles, they, you know, people ask for it,

00:08:00 ◼   ► they make one, they're disappointed in the sales,

00:08:02 ◼   ► they forget about it for a while,

00:08:03 ◼   ► then people ask for one, they make it,

00:08:05 ◼   ► they're disappointed in the sales, it'll come around,

00:08:07 ◼   ► I give it five years.

00:08:08 ◼   ► - I don't think it will, 'cause the thing is like,

00:08:10 ◼   ► you know, the rumors were like nobody's really buying it,

00:08:12 ◼   ► and so my anecdotal experience,

00:08:14 ◼   ► How many iPhone minis have you seen in the wild

00:08:16 ◼   ► that weren't in the hands of an Apple nerd?

00:08:19 ◼   ► I can tell you my number, it's one.

00:08:20 ◼   ► - I feel like the next mini,

00:08:22 ◼   ► when the next mini comes around in five years or so,

00:08:24 ◼   ► it's not gonna be that small.

00:08:25 ◼   ► It's gonna be smaller than the current 13,

00:08:28 ◼   ► but not as small as that little dinky thing.

00:08:31 ◼   ► - I don't know, as I've said many times in the past,

00:08:34 ◼   ► I would probably at least try for a year

00:08:38 ◼   ► having a 13, or well, a 14 in this case, mini,

00:08:41 ◼   ► if it had the same camera system as the big guys,

00:08:43 ◼   ► but I will not, like that is my do or die.

00:08:46 ◼   ► I will not compromise the camera system.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Well, that's not entirely true, I suppose,

00:08:51 ◼   ► 'cause when the max phones had a better camera,

00:08:54 ◼   ► I wouldn't go that big.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Like I guess my first tier is no max phones

00:08:58 ◼   ► because I am not a genetic misfit,

00:09:01 ◼   ► I have normal size hands.

00:09:02 ◼   ► But my second tier is I will not compromise

00:09:05 ◼   ► the camera system.

00:09:06 ◼   ► And I actually do use all three cameras

00:09:09 ◼   ► or all three lenses frequently.

00:09:10 ◼   ► So for me, I don't wanna give it up.

00:09:13 ◼   ► If the 13 or 14 or 15 or 17 Mini had the same camera system,

00:09:17 ◼   ► I'd probably get one.

00:09:18 ◼   ► But while it doesn't, it's a no-fly zone for me.

00:09:21 ◼   ► - So for whatever it's worth,

00:09:22 ◼   ► I know we're a little earlier

00:09:23 ◼   ► for our exit interview for the phone,

00:09:25 ◼   ► but I don't like the 3X perspective

00:09:29 ◼   ► as the only thing you have between 1X and zoomed in.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Like almost every time that I want something zoomed in,

00:09:36 ◼   ► 3X is actually a little bit too much,

00:09:37 ◼   ► or it's way too little,

00:09:38 ◼   ► in which case nothing would solve the problem.

00:09:40 ◼   ► But like 2X, I often used 2X when that was a thing.

00:09:45 ◼   ► The 3X is oftentimes too much zoomed in

00:09:49 ◼   ► so that I have to then zoom back out,

00:09:50 ◼   ► in which case it's the thing that's gonna use the 1X lens,

00:09:53 ◼   ► in which case I don't even need the 3X lens.

00:09:55 ◼   ► And there is still that noticeable quality de-grating,

00:09:58 ◼   ► de-grating, degradation, there we go, that's the word.

00:10:01 ◼   ► - There it is, I couldn't fabricate it myself.

00:10:04 ◼   ► No, I think I agree with you actually.

00:10:06 ◼   ► A year ago-- - Downgrade, sorry.

00:10:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:11 ◼   ► - A year ago, I think I would have been a 3X apologist,

00:10:14 ◼   ► 'cause early on I did like it,

00:10:16 ◼   ► but the more I've used it, and I do use it,

00:10:19 ◼   ► but I concur with what you said,

00:10:20 ◼   ► either I want like a 20X or something like that,

00:10:24 ◼   ► or like I'm just a little bit too far,

00:10:27 ◼   ► like I don't know, I'm across a big table

00:10:29 ◼   ► or something like that from a kid or Aaron

00:10:31 ◼   ► or something like that, and I don't need 3X,

00:10:35 ◼   ► but I need more than 1X,

00:10:37 ◼   ► And if only there was something between one and three

00:10:39 ◼   ► that would potentially work in this scenario.

00:10:42 ◼   ► So yeah, I think I agree with you.

00:10:43 ◼   ► - I think I got enough pixels in there,

00:10:44 ◼   ► you can just digital zoom out to two.

00:10:47 ◼   ► I don't have a 3X cameras, I haven't experienced this,

00:10:49 ◼   ► but one of the main places I use 2X

00:10:52 ◼   ► is when I'm trying to take a picture of either a document

00:10:56 ◼   ► or a piece of paper or something.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And yeah, 1X will work, but very often with 1X,

00:11:00 ◼   ► like the phone casts a shadow on the thing

00:11:03 ◼   ► 'cause the phone is too close to it.

00:11:04 ◼   ► or 1x is a little more kind of fish-eyed

00:11:07 ◼   ► so the edges get a little bit wavy,

00:11:09 ◼   ► the lens compensation doesn't quite

00:11:11 ◼   ► straighten everything out.

00:11:12 ◼   ► And if I just want the document to be straight,

00:11:14 ◼   ► switch to 2x, move the phone up higher,

00:11:17 ◼   ► shadow goes off the item,

00:11:19 ◼   ► edges are a little bit straighter, there you go.

00:11:21 ◼   ► But I can imagine maybe if that was 3x,

00:11:23 ◼   ► I would have to hold the phone uncomfortably high

00:11:24 ◼   ► and I wouldn't be able to see what it was doing.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Really, I should just use the document scanning feature

00:11:27 ◼   ► and Notes where it just fixes all that for you,

00:11:29 ◼   ► but I kind of wish that was a part of the phone app

00:11:32 ◼   ► 'cause I don't want it to go into Notes,

00:11:33 ◼   ► I want it to be in my photos,

00:11:35 ◼   ► but I want it to be square edge piece of paper.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Anyway, my next phone will have a 3X camera, I assume,

00:11:40 ◼   ► so I'll try it out.

00:11:41 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:11:43 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some follow-up.

00:11:44 ◼   ► And we should talk about something we talked about,

00:11:47 ◼   ► what, 250 episodes ago, something like that,

00:11:50 ◼   ► which is Bitcode.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And I can take a stab at what Bitcode is all about,

00:11:56 ◼   ► but perhaps, Jon, you would be better suited to do this.

00:11:58 ◼   ► So can you explain what Bitcode is

00:11:59 ◼   ► and we'll talk about why we're talking about it?

00:12:01 ◼   ► It's the thing where when you upload your application

00:12:04 ◼   ► to Apple, instead of sending Apple executable code,

00:12:06 ◼   ► you instead send them this bit code, which

00:12:08 ◼   ► is slightly more abstracted.

00:12:11 ◼   ► But it tells you what your program is going to do,

00:12:13 ◼   ► but it isn't made for any specific piece of hardware.

00:12:17 ◼   ► And then what Apple does is at the time

00:12:19 ◼   ► they distribute your application to someone

00:12:21 ◼   ► who is downloading it, they decide what architecture

00:12:24 ◼   ► is the person downloading it on, what kind of iPhone

00:12:26 ◼   ► do they have, whatever iPad, what processor does it have,

00:12:29 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And then they will take the bitcode and convert it to--

00:12:33 ◼   ► I mean, they probably do this ahead of time.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But anyway, convert it to the machine code

00:12:36 ◼   ► that will run on your device.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So even though what you upload is

00:12:40 ◼   ► bitcode that will run on any device, what you download

00:12:42 ◼   ► is a thing that's made specifically

00:12:44 ◼   ► for your architecture.

00:12:46 ◼   ► It's a way to give people slightly smaller downloads.

00:12:48 ◼   ► It's a way to be able to take that thing that was uploaded

00:12:53 ◼   ► and target hardware that might not have even been released

00:12:55 ◼   ► at the time you built that bitcode, right?

00:12:58 ◼   ► Because you're uploading the bitcode,

00:12:59 ◼   ► And maybe later that year, Apple releases a new piece

00:13:02 ◼   ► of hardware that has a new instruction that, you know,

00:13:05 ◼   ► you don't have to upload a new app.

00:13:06 ◼   ► They can just convert the bit code that you uploaded

00:13:09 ◼   ► to use that new instruction if it'll make some piece

00:13:11 ◼   ► of your code faster while still keeping

00:13:13 ◼   ► the functionality the same.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Like that's the idea behind bit code.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And I believe bit code was mandatory for watch apps.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Marco, do you remember the details on this?

00:13:21 ◼   ► - It was always mandatory for watch apps

00:13:23 ◼   ► and it was optional for iOS apps.

00:13:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, that's bit code.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And the story is Bitcode is deprecated now.

00:13:30 ◼   ► So when Bitcode came out when,

00:13:32 ◼   ► I gotta click on this link to see how old this episode was.

00:13:34 ◼   ► ATP episode 205 when we interviewed Chris Latner, 2017.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So it's been around for a while.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And I think Chris talked about it in our interview,

00:13:42 ◼   ► like why it exists, what the advantages are.

00:13:45 ◼   ► But now it's not going to be a thing anymore.

00:13:48 ◼   ► So starting with Xcode 14,

00:13:50 ◼   ► Bitcode is no longer required

00:13:51 ◼   ► for watchOS and TBRs applications.

00:13:53 ◼   ► And the App Store no longer accepts

00:13:55 ◼   ► bitcode submissions from Xcode 14.

00:13:57 ◼   ► So if you got bitcode up there, it'll keep working,

00:14:00 ◼   ► but it's no longer required,

00:14:02 ◼   ► and you can't even send it from Xcode 14.

00:14:04 ◼   ► So bitcode is done, and they're just sort of phasing it out.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And they suggest that you update your projects

00:14:08 ◼   ► and change the build settings to disable bitcode,

00:14:11 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And the compatibility to build with bitcode

00:14:15 ◼   ► will be removed from a future Xcode release, Apple says.

00:14:17 ◼   ► IPAs that contain bitcode will have their bitcode stripped

00:14:19 ◼   ► before being submitted to the App Store,

00:14:21 ◼   ► or debug symbols for past bitcode submissions

00:14:22 ◼   ► or made available for download, right?

00:14:25 ◼   ► So this is interesting just because

00:14:27 ◼   ► bitcode I think was interesting.

00:14:28 ◼   ► It's an interesting idea and when I saw this,

00:14:31 ◼   ► that it was being deprecated,

00:14:33 ◼   ► obviously we don't know what goes on inside Apple,

00:14:35 ◼   ► even on things that have a semi-public face

00:14:37 ◼   ► like we see like Swift language evolution

00:14:39 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:14:40 ◼   ► But this smells to me entirely like a feature that,

00:14:45 ◼   ► a feature whose champions have left, right?

00:14:48 ◼   ► That someone had this idea for bitcode

00:14:50 ◼   ► or some group of people had this idea for bitcode

00:14:52 ◼   ► And they pitched and they said,

00:14:53 ◼   ► here's what we're gonna do,

00:14:54 ◼   ► here's what the advantages are.

00:14:55 ◼   ► It's got advantages to our users,

00:14:57 ◼   ► it's got advantages to us, it's a good idea.

00:14:59 ◼   ► In fact, it's such a good idea,

00:15:00 ◼   ► let's make it mandatory on the watch.

00:15:02 ◼   ► And either the things that it promised to fulfill,

00:15:05 ◼   ► like the, oh, you know, we could release new hardware

00:15:07 ◼   ► with, you know, that we can retarget existing bit code

00:15:11 ◼   ► to that new hardware and developers don't have to submit

00:15:13 ◼   ► a new app, right, and smaller downloads

00:15:16 ◼   ► and all that type of stuff,

00:15:17 ◼   ► that either those games were not realized,

00:15:19 ◼   ► like they never actually did that,

00:15:21 ◼   ► Or they were realized, but the benefits that they got from them

00:15:24 ◼   ► did not match the downsides of having

00:15:27 ◼   ► to deal with bit code and all the machinery

00:15:29 ◼   ► to churn out the right versions or whatever.

00:15:32 ◼   ► But in general, someone had this idea at Apple

00:15:34 ◼   ► and championed it and released it and promoted it.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And it seems like one of the ways projects like this happen

00:15:41 ◼   ► in big companies is the people who

00:15:42 ◼   ► are super enthusiastic about it and who

00:15:44 ◼   ► are promoting all those benefits left the company

00:15:47 ◼   ► or moved on to do other things.

00:15:48 ◼   ► Or they're on Project Titan now or whatever.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And the remaining people, after a few years

00:15:53 ◼   ► of shepherding Bitcode and babysitting it

00:15:56 ◼   ► and looking at it, the same questions would get asked,

00:15:58 ◼   ► why are we doing Bitcode again?

00:15:59 ◼   ► What is this giving us?

00:16:01 ◼   ► Especially if, say, it caused a problem once or twice,

00:16:03 ◼   ► or it seems like running the whole Bitcode thing

00:16:06 ◼   ► was a problem, like what are these theoretical benefits?

00:16:08 ◼   ► And the champions were no longer there to say,

00:16:09 ◼   ► no, we have to do Bitcode, here's why,

00:16:11 ◼   ► 'cause it's gonna be awesome for this and that other thing.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And instead it was just the people

00:16:14 ◼   ► who were sort of shepherding it saying,

00:16:16 ◼   ► yeah, I mean, I guess it's okay,

00:16:17 ◼   ► but eventually someone has the guts to say,

00:16:20 ◼   ► should we just stop doing this?

00:16:22 ◼   ► And then it goes away.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Now I'm weaving this whole big story

00:16:24 ◼   ► of what could be happening inside Apple.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I have no information on this whatsoever.

00:16:28 ◼   ► But that's what this smells like.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And I think that's a natural thing to happen,

00:16:32 ◼   ► especially in big companies.

00:16:33 ◼   ► To get any idea from someone's head

00:16:38 ◼   ► to become an actual project that goes out to the public,

00:16:40 ◼   ► especially in a company like Apple,

00:16:41 ◼   ► is so difficult and requires so many skills

00:16:45 ◼   ► beyond doing the thing,

00:16:46 ◼   ► having to do with promoting the thing,

00:16:48 ◼   ► explaining why it's a good idea,

00:16:50 ◼   ► getting support from all the people who need to

00:16:53 ◼   ► give you a thumbs up for this to go through.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And a lot of that is predicated on promises.

00:16:58 ◼   ► I think this will do X, Y, and Z for us.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And sometimes those things just don't turn out.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Or sometimes they turn out,

00:17:05 ◼   ► but the time where they had a big benefit has passed

00:17:08 ◼   ► and now it's not, maybe during the 32 to 64 transition

00:17:11 ◼   ► or whatever was a big deal, but now it's not that big a deal.

00:17:13 ◼   ► But the costs remain, and so I think it is actually

00:17:16 ◼   ► a good thing that, assuming this is the right call,

00:17:19 ◼   ► again, I don't know inside Apple,

00:17:20 ◼   ► but assuming this is the right call,

00:17:21 ◼   ► it is an important thing for companies to do

00:17:24 ◼   ► to decide when a thing they decided to do many years ago

00:17:27 ◼   ► has either not worked out or its time has passed

00:17:31 ◼   ► and it's time to sort of put it to bed.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And I think this will mostly not impact developers

00:17:35 ◼   ► too harshly, there's gonna be a long transition period

00:17:37 ◼   ► and this was, you know, the benefits to developers

00:17:41 ◼   ► probably were minimal, like do you know of a case

00:17:43 ◼   ► where Bitcode made your app run slightly faster

00:17:46 ◼   ► than it would have without you submitting a new app.

00:17:48 ◼   ► If that happened, developers probably

00:17:49 ◼   ► wouldn't even know about it.

00:17:50 ◼   ► - Chris talked about it in the interview

00:17:52 ◼   ► 'cause I re-listened to that session

00:17:54 ◼   ► in the interview to remind me.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And this was actually one of my favorite things

00:17:57 ◼   ► that he spoke about on that interview,

00:17:58 ◼   ► or at least one of the few things I remember

00:18:00 ◼   ► all these years later, which is,

00:18:02 ◼   ► and he had a specific example,

00:18:04 ◼   ► and I'm gonna butcher the details,

00:18:05 ◼   ► but the idea was there was a processor,

00:18:07 ◼   ► I think the comically named Swift processor,

00:18:10 ◼   ► I forget which one it was, it was like iPhone 5

00:18:12 ◼   ► or something like that, and it had,

00:18:14 ◼   ► as a hardware instruction, integer, either multiplication or division or something like that.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And so what you could do, or what Apple could do, is say, "Hey, you know, I built, let's say,

00:18:25 ◼   ► Masquerade for the prior processor that does not have the special opcode for integer, division,

00:18:31 ◼   ► or whatever it was. But because I'm submitting to them bit code, they can do the appropriate

00:18:37 ◼   ► conversion such that the version of my app that's downloaded does use this new hardware instruction.

00:18:43 ◼   ► So I get the benefits of this really fancy fancy hardware instruction without having even known it existed when I compiled my code

00:18:51 ◼   ► Which is pretty neat.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Right, but do you notice that benefit as a developer? Like do you even know that it happens?

00:18:56 ◼   ► As a developer, no.

00:18:57 ◼   ► Right, so in theory it's benefiting you because your app runs faster or something.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:19:02 ◼   ► But like is that a benefit that you would notice and care about if they took it away?

00:19:07 ◼   ► Yeah, probably not. And how much faster would it make your app?

00:19:09 ◼   ► And then the flip side of that is, OK, that's

00:19:12 ◼   ► how it's supposed to go.

00:19:13 ◼   ► But what if there's a problem?

00:19:14 ◼   ► What if we're supposed to do it in such a way

00:19:16 ◼   ► that it is functionally identical

00:19:18 ◼   ► to the previous version?

00:19:19 ◼   ► So when the new instruction comes out,

00:19:20 ◼   ► we can just use the bit code to produce that thing.

00:19:22 ◼   ► But maybe some part of this application

00:19:25 ◼   ► relied on some unintended side effect

00:19:28 ◼   ► of the previous instruction that it was using.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And now all of a sudden, this person's app

00:19:31 ◼   ► behaves differently or has a bug or something like that,

00:19:33 ◼   ► and they lose time on that.

00:19:35 ◼   ► Or like I said, just the cost to maintain the infrastructure

00:19:37 ◼   ► that processes the bitcode for all the different architectures.

00:19:41 ◼   ► And there's definitely costs involved in this.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And the benefits of them--

00:19:46 ◼   ► I think the reason we haven't talked about bitcode very much

00:19:49 ◼   ► is it's not something that developers are like,

00:19:51 ◼   ► oh, bitcode is a lifesaver.

00:19:53 ◼   ► I'm so glad Apple did that.

00:19:54 ◼   ► It makes my life as a developer so much better,

00:19:56 ◼   ► and it makes my apps better for my users.

00:19:58 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it does a little bit, but not so much that--

00:20:02 ◼   ► I haven't seen anyone kick up a fuss about this deprecation.

00:20:04 ◼   ► No one is saying, no, don't take away bitcode.

00:20:06 ◼   ► It's like, huh?

00:20:07 ◼   ► All right, I guess it's time has passed.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Obviously, I would love to know what the real story is.

00:20:11 ◼   ► And obviously, one person who did leave Apple

00:20:13 ◼   ► is Chris Latner, who seemed to love Bitcode,

00:20:15 ◼   ► but I don't think it's the type of thing,

00:20:16 ◼   ► well, once Chris Latner left, it was just, you know,

00:20:19 ◼   ► a few short years before they decided

00:20:21 ◼   ► to deprecate it and turn it off.

00:20:22 ◼   ► It's obviously a lot more complicated than that.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - All right, so apparently,

00:20:26 ◼   ► Marco got a belated birthday present

00:20:28 ◼   ► because there is a new big HomePod rumor, Marco.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Did we read this by chance?

00:20:34 ◼   ► - This literally could not have been better timed.

00:20:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:37 ◼   ► I spent the first 10 minutes of last week's show

00:20:40 ◼   ► basically begging, please, why aren't there HomePod rumors?

00:20:44 ◼   ► Please, Apple, make a new big HomePod.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I hope they still make HomePods.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And sure enough, I mean, it must have been two hours

00:20:51 ◼   ► after we released that show.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Mark Gurman in his newsletter for Bloomberg

00:20:56 ◼   ► has, you know, one of these various, like, you know,

00:21:00 ◼   ► Gurman dumps of like, here's 17 new products

00:21:02 ◼   ► we expect in the next year.

00:21:03 ◼   ► And also one of them happens to be a new larger HomePod.

00:21:08 ◼   ► It's a German rumor.

00:21:10 ◼   ► You know, usually he gets most of the hardware things right.

00:21:15 ◼   ► The timing isn't always right.

00:21:16 ◼   ► The marketing isn't always right.

00:21:18 ◼   ► But he gets most of the existence

00:21:20 ◼   ► of hardware products right.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And so I'm inclined to believe

00:21:24 ◼   ► that this is likely to happen.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I don't know when it'll happen.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I don't know what exactly it'll be.

00:21:31 ◼   ► but what he says is the upcoming HomePod

00:21:34 ◼   ► will run an S8 chip, which is the same one

00:21:36 ◼   ► that's gonna be in the watches this fall.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And I looked it up, the HomePod Mini is, I think, an S4,

00:21:42 ◼   ► and so it's also a watch chip, but it's a few years older.

00:21:46 ◼   ► The previous large HomePod ran the A8 chip

00:21:50 ◼   ► from iPhones from a billion years ago.

00:21:53 ◼   ► One of my complaints with the big HomePod,

00:21:55 ◼   ► besides the fact that it dies and is unreliable,

00:21:57 ◼   ► is that it's extremely slow to do anything.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And that is something that, you know,

00:22:02 ◼   ► when you use a big HomePod and then you use a HomePod Mini,

00:22:04 ◼   ► the difference is night and day.

00:22:05 ◼   ► The HomePod Mini is way more responsive, way faster.

00:22:09 ◼   ► It's still not fast, mind you, in absolute terms,

00:22:13 ◼   ► but it is way faster than the big HomePod

00:22:16 ◼   ► with its crappy A8 chip.

00:22:17 ◼   ► So, for this to be a few generations ahead

00:22:22 ◼   ► of where the HomePod Mini is in the processor

00:22:25 ◼   ► is probably a very good thing.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And Germin also says that it'll be quote,

00:22:30 ◼   ► "Closer to the original HomePod in terms of size

00:22:32 ◼   ► "and audio performance rather than a new HomePod Mini."

00:22:36 ◼   ► And it will apparently allegedly have an updated display

00:22:38 ◼   ► on top, possibly with multi-touch.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So that's all interesting.

00:22:44 ◼   ► That all sounds like it solves problems

00:22:46 ◼   ► that the HomePod had.

00:22:47 ◼   ► If it's gonna have much more responsive performance,

00:22:50 ◼   ► that's great.

00:22:51 ◼   ► If it's gonna have better audio capabilities

00:22:54 ◼   ► in the Mini, that's great because we need that

00:22:57 ◼   ► in the market, and the display and touch interface

00:23:01 ◼   ► to it also sucked, and so to have that be possibly improved

00:23:06 ◼   ► or expanded upon, that's also great.

00:23:09 ◼   ► So this sounds awesome, I really, really hope this is true

00:23:13 ◼   ► and I hope it pans out this way, and if so,

00:23:16 ◼   ► it can't get here fast enough.

00:23:18 ◼   ► He said I believe it's gonna be like 2023 sometime,

00:23:20 ◼   ► so not soon, but I'm just, I'm happy to hear

00:23:24 ◼   ► that this product line is most likely not dead,

00:23:27 ◼   ► and that the HomePod Mini is most likely

00:23:30 ◼   ► not intended to be the only thing in it.

00:23:33 ◼   ► - I kind of fear that based on this extremely vague rumor

00:23:36 ◼   ► that the thing I'm picturing in my head,

00:23:37 ◼   ► I mean I guess you would take it Marco,

00:23:39 ◼   ► 'cause you know, beggars can't be choosers,

00:23:40 ◼   ► but I'm picturing a HomePod Mini that's bigger

00:23:44 ◼   ► that still just has one speaker in it,

00:23:46 ◼   ► as opposed to the UMTINE speakers

00:23:47 ◼   ► that are inside the big HomePod,

00:23:49 ◼   ► like basically just a larger speaker,

00:23:51 ◼   ► a larger speaker cone, but still just one.

00:23:53 ◼   ► So yeah, that will be better than the Mini,

00:23:56 ◼   ► but I don't think, based on their past experience

00:23:59 ◼   ► and this rumor, it doesn't seem like it's going

00:24:01 ◼   ► to be something that is going to match the audio quality

00:24:03 ◼   ► of your current big home phones.

00:24:05 ◼   ► - Well, there's a lot of room between those.

00:24:06 ◼   ► So when you only have one driver,

00:24:09 ◼   ► like in a speaker usually, in very tiny speakers,

00:24:13 ◼   ► you have one cone, like one speaker cone.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And when you get larger speakers,

00:24:16 ◼   ► you typically have multiple speaker cones,

00:24:18 ◼   ► they're called drivers, and they are different sizes

00:24:20 ◼   ► to cover different frequency ranges.

00:24:22 ◼   ► The bigger the cone is, the more it covers the bass.

00:24:25 ◼   ► The smaller the cone is, the more it covers the treble.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Or you get these little tiny tweeter things

00:24:28 ◼   ► that aren't even cones anymore because they're so small.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Anyway, the more you can separate out the rolls,

00:24:34 ◼   ► you get different benefits there.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And also, the larger the driver is,

00:24:39 ◼   ► the harder it is to serve the full range of sound.

00:24:42 ◼   ► So what I hope is happening here is,

00:24:45 ◼   ► there's a lot of room between the one driver

00:24:49 ◼   ► and the, quote, passive radiators

00:24:53 ◼   ► that the HomePod Mini has, and the, I believe,

00:24:56 ◼   ► nine drivers or something like that,

00:24:59 ◼   ► that the big HomePod had.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I think it had seven mid-range and tweeters up in the ring,

00:25:04 ◼   ► or down in the ring, and then it had one woofer,

00:25:07 ◼   ► or was it, were there two woofers

00:25:08 ◼   ► in force-canceling configuration?

00:25:09 ◼   ► I don't know, I forget.

00:25:10 ◼   ► Anyway, there's a lot of room between those two.

00:25:14 ◼   ► It wouldn't really make a lot of sense, I don't think,

00:25:16 ◼   ► audio engineering-wise or mechanically or quality-wise,

00:25:19 ◼   ► to have a significantly larger speaker

00:25:22 ◼   ► than the HomePod Mini that only has one driver in it.

00:25:24 ◼   ► That doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:25:26 ◼   ► It's probably going to split out the woofer

00:25:28 ◼   ► and the mid-range/tweeter into at least two drivers.

00:25:32 ◼   ► And that is great.

00:25:33 ◼   ► That alone is, in many cases, enough.

00:25:37 ◼   ► And one thing that was very impressive,

00:25:39 ◼   ► what they did with the full-size HomePod,

00:25:41 ◼   ► they were able to get surprisingly good bass

00:25:43 ◼   ► in a surprisingly small space

00:25:45 ◼   ► with the type of woofer they used.

00:25:48 ◼   ► you don't need a ton of these things.

00:25:50 ◼   ► You just need a little bit more than one.

00:25:53 ◼   ► And the original HomePod, it had the seven

00:25:57 ◼   ► mid-range drivers all in a circle,

00:25:59 ◼   ► so it could fire in 360 degrees of sound.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Most people don't need that in most spaces.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Most people need sound to come out, at most,

00:26:10 ◼   ► 180 degrees in front of it.

00:26:11 ◼   ► And that's great, if it can be a wide soundstage

00:26:14 ◼   ► that's still only 180 degrees instead of 360,

00:26:17 ◼   ► That's still awesome.

00:26:19 ◼   ► That's still better than most passive non-smart speakers

00:26:22 ◼   ► that only have a couple of drivers facing forward.

00:26:24 ◼   ► That's nowhere near 180 degrees of coverage.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So it's still better than that.

00:26:28 ◼   ► I think they can really get away with maybe four drivers.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Like I'd say one woofer and three mid-range slash tweeters.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Forward, left, and right on the tweeters.

00:26:37 ◼   ► That's probably enough.

00:26:39 ◼   ► So that's a huge component reduction

00:26:41 ◼   ► from what they have now.

00:26:42 ◼   ► - You're gonna have to fight the designers,

00:26:44 ◼   ► Nap, as they're gonna say, "Wait a second,

00:26:46 ◼   ► "what you're describing is a product

00:26:47 ◼   ► that is directional, so we can't make it symmetrical.

00:26:50 ◼   ► Like if it fires in a circle,

00:26:51 ◼   ► there's no front to the HomePod, right?

00:26:53 ◼   ► Whichever way you put it, like it adapts to whatever,

00:26:55 ◼   ► but if you actually have something that,

00:26:56 ◼   ► even if you have something that has a forward-facing driver

00:26:58 ◼   ► and a backwards-facing driver,

00:27:00 ◼   ► you have to know where forward and back is.

00:27:01 ◼   ► They have to put like an arrow on it or something,

00:27:03 ◼   ► like so you know how to face the 180 degrees into the room.

00:27:06 ◼   ► - No, but you already know that though,

00:27:07 ◼   ► because you know where the cord goes in the back,

00:27:10 ◼   ► and you know where the buttons are aligned on top.

00:27:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, the cord could probably do it.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Although I feel like, I mean,

00:27:15 ◼   ► not that this is what Apple will do,

00:27:16 ◼   ► But like good product design would make that way more obvious than you just having to know that the cord goes to the sound

00:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks like it's a perfect cylinder

00:27:23 ◼   ► But keep in mind that the sound comes out

00:27:25 ◼   ► Opposite of the way the cord goes and if you don't realize that and like put it sideways, you know

00:27:29 ◼   ► Why is this sound so bad and you don't know this your symmetrical?

00:27:32 ◼   ► You know cylinder is firing into the wall to the side of you instead of into the room

00:27:36 ◼   ► I know this is probably a pipe dream that I don't think they will do this

00:27:40 ◼   ► I would love for them to do this

00:27:42 ◼   ► it would be great if the HomePod had a line-in jack

00:27:46 ◼   ► on the back, and so--

00:27:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:27:48 ◼   ► - If they're going to do anything like that,

00:27:50 ◼   ► or even if, God forbid, they would make the cable

00:27:53 ◼   ► removable and replaceable.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Maybe you could replace it with a shorter one.

00:27:55 ◼   ► That would be amazing.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Suppose they were going to add a port to it.

00:28:00 ◼   ► I know that's a lot to ask.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Then there would probably be a little flattened area

00:28:05 ◼   ► on the back where the cables come in.

00:28:07 ◼   ► So that would be another thing to fix that symmetry problem.

00:28:10 ◼   ► But also, I don't even think necessarily that they need to do a ton of cost cutting here

00:28:16 ◼   ► because they now have the HomePod Mini, which is the value product.

00:28:22 ◼   ► You know, when they launched the first HomePod, they were entering a market where everyone

00:28:26 ◼   ► buys things for $50 to $100 from Amazon or Google or whatever.

00:28:30 ◼   ► They came in with something that was $350 as their only entry to the market.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Of course we all made fun of the price because it was ridiculously over-specced for that

00:28:38 ◼   ► market and that's not what people wanted out of a smart speaker most of the time.

00:28:42 ◼   ► But now they have the value segment covered.

00:28:45 ◼   ► So even if they come out with this next HomePod and it's $350 again, in that price range,

00:28:53 ◼   ► for what it offers, it actually is, as I mentioned before, pretty competitive.

00:28:58 ◼   ► It's just a much smaller market.

00:29:00 ◼   ► So I hope they actually try to bridge the gap a little bit.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I hope they go a little bit down market, get them something they could sell for $200 to

00:29:07 ◼   ► That I think they would do a decent amount of volume

00:29:11 ◼   ► and nobody would say, oh my god, that's way too expensive

00:29:15 ◼   ► if it's significantly improved from the HomePod mini

00:29:18 ◼   ► in terms of size and sound detail.

00:29:21 ◼   ► - I don't know, I'm curious to see what comes of this

00:29:23 ◼   ► because I feel like I'm starting to sniff about

00:29:27 ◼   ► in the HomePod space.

00:29:29 ◼   ► The Alexa's that we have are getting obscenely chatty

00:29:32 ◼   ► and constantly wanting to sell us stuff and tell us stuff,

00:29:35 ◼   ► which granted, this is not terribly surprising,

00:29:38 ◼   ► but when we first got them,

00:29:40 ◼   ► or yeah, got a couple of them a few years back,

00:29:43 ◼   ► they were extremely quiet

00:29:45 ◼   ► unless they were being spoken to,

00:29:46 ◼   ► and now they're constantly needing attention.

00:29:48 ◼   ► They're ridiculous.

00:29:50 ◼   ► They're like toddlers now, but.

00:29:51 ◼   ► - No, as far as I'm concerned,

00:29:53 ◼   ► Amazon had the lead in this area and threw it away.

00:29:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, agreed.

00:29:58 ◼   ► - Amazon could not have fumbled this worse than they have.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I don't know a lot of people who have Amazon Echoes

00:30:04 ◼   ► or their family of products who are super happy

00:30:07 ◼   ► with them right now.

00:30:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I completely agree.

00:30:09 ◼   ► - And whereas a few years ago, they were the leaders,

00:30:11 ◼   ► they were the king of the world in this space

00:30:13 ◼   ► and they just got more and more annoying and needy

00:30:17 ◼   ► and pushy and people reacted very poorly to that.

00:30:20 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Lockit,

00:30:24 ◼   ► a thoughtfully designed, simple and elegant iOS app

00:30:27 ◼   ► and they're looking to hire their next iOS engineers.

00:30:30 ◼   ► This is a pretty good opportunity I think.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So with Locket, you see updates from your favorite people

00:30:36 ◼   ► on your phone right there on your home screen

00:30:39 ◼   ► through widgets.

00:30:40 ◼   ► So the way it works is you follow whatever small group

00:30:43 ◼   ► you want.

00:30:44 ◼   ► This is not like a public platform.

00:30:45 ◼   ► This is a private platform for either maybe just you

00:30:48 ◼   ► and your partner or maybe you and your close family,

00:30:51 ◼   ► close friends, however you wanna do it.

00:30:53 ◼   ► It's a small private group.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And when you open your phone,

00:30:56 ◼   ► you know, you look at your phone all day,

00:30:57 ◼   ► when you see that widget,

00:30:58 ◼   ► you will see the most recent pictures

00:31:01 ◼   ► that this small group has sent.

00:31:02 ◼   ► They can send them very easily throughout the day.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And then you can tap right there and take a picture

00:31:06 ◼   ► and show it to them on all their widgets.

00:31:07 ◼   ► So it's a way for you to really keep in touch

00:31:10 ◼   ► with a very small group of people privately

00:31:12 ◼   ► without all the baggage that comes with a big social network

00:31:16 ◼   ► but still being social with your friends and family

00:31:18 ◼   ► or with your partner.

00:31:19 ◼   ► So it's a really cool concept.

00:31:21 ◼   ► And a lot of people have gotten into this.

00:31:23 ◼   ► So since just this year,

00:31:25 ◼   ► over 500 million lockets have been sent.

00:31:27 ◼   ► They've had more than 20 million downloads.

00:31:29 ◼   ► The app's been in the top 10 in the social networking chart

00:31:32 ◼   ► in the App Store since launch,

00:31:33 ◼   ► but even though they're operating now at quite a scale,

00:31:36 ◼   ► their team is still only three people.

00:31:38 ◼   ► So this means their next iOS hire

00:31:40 ◼   ► will get to play a central role

00:31:42 ◼   ► in building and defining the app.

00:31:44 ◼   ► This app that ships to millions,

00:31:45 ◼   ► you can be right there, you can be making a big impact

00:31:48 ◼   ► by being part of this very small staff.

00:31:51 ◼   ► This is a very nice, thoughtfully designed iOS app.

00:31:53 ◼   ► They really care about getting the details right.

00:31:56 ◼   ► And by working with Lockit,

00:31:58 ◼   ► you're really going to be building a new social network

00:32:00 ◼   ► on a new frontier, the home screen,

00:32:02 ◼   ► through the use of widgets.

00:32:03 ◼   ► And this can really make your phone

00:32:05 ◼   ► feel fun and personal again.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And you can feel proud to make your friends

00:32:09 ◼   ► the center of your phone.

00:32:10 ◼   ► So if you're an iOS engineer, get in touch.

00:32:12 ◼   ► You can reach out to them at locket.camera/jobs.

00:32:16 ◼   ► That's locket.camera/jobs.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Or reach out to their founder, Matt Moss, on Twitter directly.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Locket for sponsoring our show.

00:32:24 ◼   ► ♪♪

00:32:28 ◼   ► -John, tell me about passkey syncing.

00:32:31 ◼   ► What's the story here?

00:32:32 ◼   ► -So, a tweet from Ricky.

00:32:34 ◼   ► A tweet from Ricky. And it says...

00:32:36 ◼   ► -There's both. -...in iOS 16

00:32:38 ◼   ► and Mac OS Ventura, there isn't any UI

00:32:40 ◼   ► to disable syncing of credentials made via WebAuthn.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Those are the passkey things. Passkeys are a replacement

00:32:45 ◼   ► for passwords, sync across devices,

00:32:47 ◼   ► and are backed up with iCloud keychain.

00:32:48 ◼   ► So this is just a statement of fact.

00:32:50 ◼   ► We talked before about how you can airdrop passkeys

00:32:53 ◼   ► keys to somebody or whatever, but just when you're using pass keys yourself, they will sync via iCloud

00:32:58 ◼   ► keychain to all your devices. That is not an option because some people are asking, "Hey, what if I want

00:33:02 ◼   ► to have a pass key and it's like only on my phone or something? Can I do that?" The answer is no, they

00:33:06 ◼   ► sync everywhere. And it's, you know, it's obviously everyone makes different trade-offs between security

00:33:12 ◼   ► and convenience. In this first iteration, the choice Apple is making is that they balance

00:33:20 ◼   ► between security and convenience that is well suited for most people. Because for most people,

00:33:26 ◼   ► if you allowed them or if it didn't sync everywhere by default or if you allowed them to turn it off,

00:33:30 ◼   ► they can end up in a situation where they have a passkey that gets into some account at some point

00:33:35 ◼   ► in the future where people start using these things and it's only on their phone and the phone's

00:33:39 ◼   ► not backed up because that is a thing that you can do. "Oh, I ran out of iCloud space. I didn't want

00:33:42 ◼   ► to pay for it. Who pays for iCloud space?" And they dropped their phone to the ocean and that was the

00:33:47 ◼   ► only place the passkey was to log into their account.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And they try to log into their account and they can't and they're angry about it, right?

00:33:54 ◼   ► Syncing everywhere is the thing that makes passkeys a viable replacement for passwords

00:33:59 ◼   ► because then if you lose any one of your devices or even all your devices because iCloud Keychain

00:34:04 ◼   ► is an iCloud, if you lose your devices or they break or your house burned down or whatever,

00:34:08 ◼   ► you don't lose your ability to log into all your accounts.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Kind of like in theory you wouldn't lose it with passwords because if you knew your passwords,

00:34:15 ◼   ► which probably you don't, but let's say you knew your passwords, which probably means

00:34:18 ◼   ► they're bad passwords.

00:34:19 ◼   ► "Oh, my house burned down, but I have memorized these 97 high-quality passwords."

00:34:23 ◼   ► Probably not true, but in theory it could be done.

00:34:26 ◼   ► But with the pass keys, you never know what they are.

00:34:27 ◼   ► They're just on your devices, so it has to sync, because that is what will protect most

00:34:31 ◼   ► people from themselves.

00:34:33 ◼   ► But for people who want to have a different trade-off between security and convenience,

00:34:38 ◼   ► iOS 16 and macOS Ventura do not give that option, at least in the UI.

00:34:42 ◼   ► This is a very specific tweet that says there isn't any UI to disable the syncing of credentials.

00:34:46 ◼   ► Is there a command line way to do it?

00:34:48 ◼   ► Is there some secret key?

00:34:49 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:34:51 ◼   ► But I think this is the right call because if you made this optional or made people have

00:34:55 ◼   ► to turn it on, people could really get themselves into trouble.

00:34:59 ◼   ► Again, this all requires pass keys to become a thing because if you don't log in anywhere

00:35:03 ◼   ► with pass keys, who cares what it does?

00:35:04 ◼   ► But I think this is the right call.

00:35:06 ◼   ► But for people who are very security conscious and want to have a thing where, like you do

00:35:11 ◼   ► with hardware YubiKeys or whatever where you know this is the one and only place where

00:35:14 ◼   ► this thing is, that's not something Paskey's going to do at least in this first iteration.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Indeed. We have incredibly important follow-up to cover. This is with regard to Cafe Max and the

00:35:28 ◼   ► meals there. And we got some feedback, and I will read it now, Pacific Rim, Pangea, etc., are the

00:35:34 ◼   ► different kitchens and not the name nor type of dishes that they're offering. We were theorizing

00:35:40 ◼   ► that oh this the Pacific Rim entry for the WWDC meals that means it's a you know meal

00:35:46 ◼   ► from the Pacific Rim no no no apparently that's the kitchen and Pangaea is a kitchen

00:35:50 ◼   ► etc so anyway going back to the feedback employees use an app to order everything for all the

00:35:55 ◼   ► restaurants they do a daily special and have a couple of staples available every day this

00:35:59 ◼   ► person writes I worked at Infinite Loop but the kitchens are all the same at Apple Park

00:36:03 ◼   ► in all the other cafe max in Cupertino I worked there for a few months and ate everything

00:36:06 ◼   ► Everything's pretty good with the exception of the grill.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Think Cruise Food Kitchen,

00:36:10 ◼   ► basic American stuff with no frills.

00:36:13 ◼   ► - Little bit of real-time feedback on the Paskey thing.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Some people in the chat room were asking about this.

00:36:17 ◼   ► One question was, "Hey, wait a second.

00:36:18 ◼   ► I thought Paskeys weren't supposed to leave your device."

00:36:21 ◼   ► There's a thing that Apple has done

00:36:22 ◼   ► in a lot of their literature about Paskeys

00:36:24 ◼   ► and their presentations that's easy to miss,

00:36:27 ◼   ► but if you're thinking about it, you're like,

00:36:29 ◼   ► "What are you talking about Paskeys

00:36:30 ◼   ► syncing with iCloud Keychain?

00:36:31 ◼   ► 'Cause, you know, it's supposed to stay on my device

00:36:33 ◼   ► and never leave my device, right?

00:36:35 ◼   ► But how does it sync if it doesn't leave my device?

00:36:37 ◼   ► Doesn't make sense.

00:36:39 ◼   ► What they always say in their presentations

00:36:41 ◼   ► and documentation is, your passkey does not

00:36:44 ◼   ► leave your device when you log into something.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Like, oh, I'm signing into my thing.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Unlike your password, which you send over the internet

00:36:51 ◼   ► to the website that you're logging into,

00:36:53 ◼   ► your passkey does not leave your device when you log in.

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's your data.

00:36:58 ◼   ► You keep it in your secure enclave.

00:37:00 ◼   ► It is yours to sync with as you want using

00:37:02 ◼   ► the end-to-end encrypted iCloud keychain

00:37:05 ◼   ► that even Apple can't get access to or whatever.

00:37:07 ◼   ► So yes, it does leave your device

00:37:08 ◼   ► when it syncs to your other devices,

00:37:10 ◼   ► and it leaves your device

00:37:11 ◼   ► when you airdrop it to somebody else.

00:37:13 ◼   ► But when you log in on a daily basis,

00:37:14 ◼   ► log into the service, log into that service,

00:37:16 ◼   ► it does not leave your device then,

00:37:18 ◼   ► which means A, it doesn't leave your device

00:37:20 ◼   ► most of the time when you're using it,

00:37:21 ◼   ► and B, the things you're logging into never see it.

00:37:24 ◼   ► You don't send it to them, they don't have to store it,

00:37:25 ◼   ► they don't have to store a hash of it,

00:37:27 ◼   ► they don't have any piece of it.

00:37:28 ◼   ► They have your public key, which is totally public

00:37:29 ◼   ► and anybody can have and it's fine.

00:37:32 ◼   ► They don't get your private key when you log in.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So there's that distinction.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And then somebody asks, what if you only have one Apple device?

00:37:37 ◼   ► Why would you still want syncing?

00:37:39 ◼   ► That's because if you drop your one Apple device in a lake,

00:37:40 ◼   ► you better hope someone's got a copy of that pass key.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And who has a copy of it?

00:37:43 ◼   ► It's in your iCloud key chain, which

00:37:44 ◼   ► is on Apple's server somewhere.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But they can't decrypt it because it's

00:37:47 ◼   ► end-to-end encrypted.

00:37:48 ◼   ► All right, let's briefly talk about Buy Now Pay Later.

00:37:51 ◼   ► This is becoming more relevant in my world

00:37:53 ◼   ► because Apple has announced that they're

00:37:55 ◼   ► going to do a Buy Now Pay Later thing via Apple Pay.

00:37:58 ◼   ► And we got a bunch of feedback about this.

00:38:00 ◼   ► And honestly, this could go on for hours.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And so I just thought I'd cover a couple of quick things.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I didn't really know how this worked

00:38:07 ◼   ► and who made money and how.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And the summary that I will offer up to you, the listener,

00:38:13 ◼   ► is that apparently the way this works

00:38:15 ◼   ► is when you go to buy something, you pay in four--

00:38:19 ◼   ► generally speaking, you pay in four installments.

00:38:21 ◼   ► You pay the first one immediately,

00:38:22 ◼   ► and then three more installments in two, four,

00:38:24 ◼   ► and six weeks later.

00:38:26 ◼   ► What happens is the merchant pays a little bit more money

00:38:30 ◼   ► to a little bit higher percentage than they would for a straight up credit card transaction.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And the people that are doing buy now pay later, like a firm or one of the many other

00:38:40 ◼   ► companies after pay, they basically make their money by taking a little bit more fee than

00:38:46 ◼   ► a credit card.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Now, why would the merchant be interested in this?

00:38:49 ◼   ► They do this because they're told and people believe that the conversion is way higher.

00:38:54 ◼   ► So it is much more likely that the thing that was in your shopping cart actually gets purchased

00:38:58 ◼   ► you can do it in four installments instead of just one big lump sum.

00:39:02 ◼   ► There was a pretty good episode of Planet Money about this that's only like 20-25 minutes.

00:39:07 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:39:09 ◼   ► But what's interesting about this is we don't know a whole lot about how Apple specifically

00:39:12 ◼   ► is going to conquer this.

00:39:14 ◼   ► From what we've gathered, or from what people have dug up, it sounds like Apple is going

00:39:19 ◼   ► to be the one providing the financing.

00:39:21 ◼   ► So if you're buying a $100 item and you're doing that in four $25 installments, then

00:39:28 ◼   ► Apple's floating you 75 bucks, right? Because you're paying 25 immediately and then 25 in

00:39:32 ◼   ► two weeks, 25 in four weeks, 25 in six weeks. Where will Apple get all that money from?

00:39:36 ◼   ► Geez, I don't know. Since they're so cash strapped, it's going to be real hard.

00:39:41 ◼   ► I like that they have like, people saying, oh, Apple's not using a bank for this. They're

00:39:43 ◼   ► going to be their own bank. I assume Apple probably has more money than most banks.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. Well put. So anyway, so Apple will float it. But what is interesting is apparently

00:39:54 ◼   ► they're, and I'm a little fuzzy on the details here, but apparently they're using Goldman Sachs

00:39:58 ◼   ► to vend, for lack of a better word,

00:40:00 ◼   ► and that's probably technically incorrect,

00:40:02 ◼   ► a MasterCard such that it's a, I guess like a,

00:40:06 ◼   ► again, I'm way out of my comfort zone here,

00:40:08 ◼   ► but I guess it's like a phantom MasterCard

00:40:10 ◼   ► that the transaction is run up, rung up against,

00:40:13 ◼   ► and that they're using Goldman Sachs for,

00:40:15 ◼   ► but the floating of this hypothetical $75 is Apple's money,

00:40:20 ◼   ► and they will hopefully make their money back

00:40:23 ◼   ► by taking slightly higher fees.

00:40:25 ◼   ► And so- - That's unlikely,

00:40:26 ◼   ► - To use a software pattern, it's like the adapter pattern.

00:40:28 ◼   ► Like the entire payment system doesn't know

00:40:30 ◼   ► about these things, so it has to masquerade

00:40:32 ◼   ► as if you paid with a slightly higher fee credit card,

00:40:35 ◼   ► because from the merchant's perspective,

00:40:37 ◼   ► they get all the money at once.

00:40:37 ◼   ► It doesn't look like buy now, pay later to them.

00:40:39 ◼   ► It just looks like, oh, this is like a really high fee

00:40:42 ◼   ► for this credit card or whatever.

00:40:44 ◼   ► And like Casey said, the reason they're willing

00:40:45 ◼   ► to pay the higher fee is, I'm assuming

00:40:47 ◼   ► it's not just think, I'm sure it is actually true,

00:40:50 ◼   ► that people buy more stuff when you get all the money,

00:40:54 ◼   ► but they're only paying part of that money.

00:40:55 ◼   ► So they're more likely to purchase things.

00:40:57 ◼   ► So they're willing, the vendors, the merchants,

00:40:59 ◼   ► oh, there's too many stupid terms.

00:41:01 ◼   ► The stores where you buy stuff,

00:41:02 ◼   ► the store is willing to pay a higher fee

00:41:04 ◼   ► to get that customer to buy the thing.

00:41:08 ◼   ► And to them, it just looks like a high fee credit card.

00:41:11 ◼   ► - There are a bunch of catches and caveats with this.

00:41:13 ◼   ► We're not gonna go into all of them,

00:41:14 ◼   ► but the short, short version is

00:41:16 ◼   ► there's not a lot of protections around this

00:41:17 ◼   ► because governments haven't really caught up

00:41:20 ◼   ► to this being a thing yet.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Additionally, there's not a lot of protections

00:41:24 ◼   ► to make sure that there's no predatory lending,

00:41:26 ◼   ► although this tends to be not as predatory a practice

00:41:29 ◼   ► to begin with, which is good.

00:41:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's like, it's much shorter term

00:41:32 ◼   ► than credit cards.

00:41:33 ◼   ► - Right, and it has an endpoint,

00:41:35 ◼   ► like it has a defined end rather than,

00:41:37 ◼   ► oh, I'll just keep paying my $25 minimums

00:41:39 ◼   ► until the end of time.

00:41:41 ◼   ► - Right, and a lot of the things

00:41:43 ◼   ► don't actually even charge any interest.

00:41:44 ◼   ► It's just like, look, you have to pay this off,

00:41:46 ◼   ► and this is the amount you have to pay,

00:41:48 ◼   ► and here's the schedule you have to pay it,

00:41:49 ◼   ► and if you fail to pay on that schedule,

00:41:51 ◼   ► you just can't use that buy now pay later service anymore.

00:41:54 ◼   ► - Well, and we'll send it to collections.

00:41:56 ◼   ► So it can--

00:41:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, they'll get your money somehow,

00:41:59 ◼   ► but the whole point is they're not willing

00:42:01 ◼   ► to do what credit cards do, which is like,

00:42:02 ◼   ► just make them an payment for the rest of your life.

00:42:05 ◼   ► That's not an option.

00:42:06 ◼   ► They're not trying to make money from you that way.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Yes, they need you to pay back the money,

00:42:10 ◼   ► and they will get it from you if they can,

00:42:12 ◼   ► but the stop gap is, unlike a credit card,

00:42:14 ◼   ► where you can just keep paying the minimum

00:42:15 ◼   ► and keep using that card,

00:42:17 ◼   ► you can't use your buy now pay later thing anymore

00:42:20 ◼   ► if you have not made the payments on your existing thing.

00:42:23 ◼   ► So it sort of kills your payment method until you pay it off.

00:42:26 ◼   ► - Yep, and then the other interesting thing is

00:42:28 ◼   ► what happens if you, like, I don't know,

00:42:31 ◼   ► buy something and it turns out

00:42:32 ◼   ► you're getting totally ripped off.

00:42:33 ◼   ► Well, there's no idea of like a chargeback

00:42:35 ◼   ► or anything like that because you're not really doing,

00:42:38 ◼   ► you're not really purchasing this

00:42:39 ◼   ► through a credit card company

00:42:40 ◼   ► that supports that sort of thing.

00:42:42 ◼   ► You're purchasing it through Apple or Afterpay

00:42:44 ◼   ► or what have you.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And so there's a lot of ways that it's not as safe

00:42:49 ◼   ► for a consumer, but the advantage is,

00:42:51 ◼   ► especially for naive consumers,

00:42:53 ◼   ► and I don't mean that dismissively,

00:42:54 ◼   ► or inexperienced perhaps is a better word for it,

00:42:57 ◼   ► is that you're not looking at a 20% credit card fee

00:43:02 ◼   ► that could follow you like you guys were saying

00:43:05 ◼   ► until the end of time.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Like this has a defined stop date

00:43:08 ◼   ► and that's six weeks from whenever you purchase.

00:43:10 ◼   ► So I find this very interesting.

00:43:13 ◼   ► As someone who has basically treated his credit card

00:43:15 ◼   ► like a debit card for his entire life,

00:43:17 ◼   ► I don't think this is necessarily for me,

00:43:19 ◼   ► But it is a very interesting approach.

00:43:21 ◼   ► And I am very, I'm very curious to see

00:43:25 ◼   ► what Apple does with this and how this works out for Apple.

00:43:28 ◼   ► - I feel like there is ample room

00:43:30 ◼   ► for what they call innovation in the finance space

00:43:32 ◼   ► to figure out, okay, but what if we did charge people

00:43:35 ◼   ► fees and interest, right?

00:43:36 ◼   ► You know, like, it's very,

00:43:39 ◼   ► the way the banking industry finds a way

00:43:40 ◼   ► to make money off things that don't seem like they were,

00:43:42 ◼   ► like that most banks essentially make money off fees now.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Like, they don't, you know, the old model of like,

00:43:47 ◼   ► go the bank takes your money and they hold it for you

00:43:49 ◼   ► and they use it to give people loans,

00:43:50 ◼   ► they charge you just those loans,

00:43:52 ◼   ► like no, they just charge you fees

00:43:53 ◼   ► and that's how they make all their money, right?

00:43:55 ◼   ► And so there's so many places in the system

00:43:57 ◼   ► where you can add a little fee,

00:43:58 ◼   ► in fact someone in the chat room is saying like,

00:43:59 ◼   ► oh if you miss a payment,

00:44:00 ◼   ► they charge you a $10 penalty or something like,

00:44:02 ◼   ► just little fees like,

00:44:03 ◼   ► oh it's not interest but yeah if you miss a payment,

00:44:05 ◼   ► it's this fee or whatever,

00:44:06 ◼   ► but we'll let you use your card,

00:44:07 ◼   ► it's kind of like, you know,

00:44:08 ◼   ► think of everything used to gamify the casino games

00:44:10 ◼   ► for children on the App Store, right?

00:44:12 ◼   ► Oh, you missed a payment,

00:44:14 ◼   ► so A, you get a $10 penalty,

00:44:15 ◼   ► but B, do you still wanna use this payment method?

00:44:17 ◼   ► 'Cause normally we would stop you,

00:44:18 ◼   ► but if you pay $20 now,

00:44:19 ◼   ► we'll let you use it for another purchase.

00:44:21 ◼   ► - Pay $30 for a boost in a loot box.

00:44:23 ◼   ► - Exactly right, it's like,

00:44:25 ◼   ► do you wanna use it for an extra 24 hours?

00:44:26 ◼   ► You can have an extra week on this,

00:44:28 ◼   ► we'll let you use it even though you haven't paid that off,

00:44:29 ◼   ► but it's just a $50 fee, or it's just like,

00:44:32 ◼   ► and okay, so it's not interest,

00:44:34 ◼   ► but it's a way to make small amounts of money,

00:44:37 ◼   ► knowing that people will miss a payment

00:44:38 ◼   ► or buy something that's a little bit more

00:44:40 ◼   ► than they can afford and have to wait

00:44:41 ◼   ► for the next paycheck to pay it off.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Like the industry of finding a way to make people feel good about buying something, like,

00:44:49 ◼   ► "Oh, this is great.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I don't have to pay it all at once.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I'll pay it now.

00:44:52 ◼   ► It's real easy," and not realize that future them is going to miss that payment and then

00:44:56 ◼   ► they're going to have to pay a fee and then just like multiply that over millions of people.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It's in the industry's nature to exploit human weakness to make small amounts of money that

00:45:06 ◼   ► people don't notice.

00:45:08 ◼   ► And now Apple's in all these businesses.

00:45:10 ◼   ► Great.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:12 ◼   ► kind of like they did with Apple Card,

00:45:13 ◼   ► Apple will try to do the slightly better version of that.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Because like I said before,

00:45:17 ◼   ► I think the upside for Apple for doing this is,

00:45:20 ◼   ► let's make more people use Apple Pay,

00:45:22 ◼   ► more transactions going through Apple payment methods.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Apple wants to drive more people to use its payment systems.

00:45:29 ◼   ► So that's the benefit it gets.

00:45:31 ◼   ► But kind of like services, where it's like,

00:45:34 ◼   ► okay, well Apple's business,

00:45:35 ◼   ► they make all their money from selling phones,

00:45:36 ◼   ► but they want to give services

00:45:37 ◼   ► to make their phones more valuable.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Eventually, if something is successful,

00:45:40 ◼   ► somebody wakes up and notices, you know what?

00:45:43 ◼   ► Services actually make a lot of money too.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And unlike phones now, it's growing.

00:45:46 ◼   ► So that should become a profit center for us

00:45:48 ◼   ► instead of just a way to make our phones more valuable.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And that can easily happen with payment methods

00:45:52 ◼   ► if they ever get to that point.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Because it may right now be a way to just drive more people

00:45:55 ◼   ► to buy things on their phones and so on and so forth.

00:45:58 ◼   ► But, and you know, we don't charge late fees

00:46:00 ◼   ► and we don't do this, we don't have any interest,

00:46:02 ◼   ► but five years from now, someone,

00:46:04 ◼   ► Bean Counter runs the numbers and says, you know what?

00:46:07 ◼   ► Services have stopped growing,

00:46:08 ◼   ► but this payment method stuff,

00:46:10 ◼   ► This is a gold mine.

00:46:11 ◼   ► If we add a 1% fee for missed,

00:46:14 ◼   ► increase our fee for missed payments by one cent per year,

00:46:16 ◼   ► we make an extra billion dollars.

00:46:17 ◼   ► And then we're looking at the Apple payments graph

00:46:20 ◼   ► go up and up in our old age.

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00:48:20 ◼   ► All right, so apparently in the infinitely long list of reasons why the 13-inch MacBook Pro with them too is a piece of

00:48:30 ◼   ► is because the

00:48:33 ◼   ► SSDs is apparently way slower, which is cool.

00:48:38 ◼   ► - This is kind of disappointing for this computer

00:48:39 ◼   ► 'cause honestly I don't think it's really,

00:48:41 ◼   ► like of all the things that are wrong with this computer,

00:48:45 ◼   ► this one of them is a thing that could have happened

00:48:46 ◼   ► to any computer, right?

00:48:48 ◼   ► It could have happened to the nicest computer.

00:48:49 ◼   ► It didn't, it happened to this cruddy computer.

00:48:51 ◼   ► - It happens to every computer sometime.

00:48:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, it's true.

00:48:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:55 ◼   ► So the thing that happens is,

00:48:58 ◼   ► when you put storage in a computer,

00:49:00 ◼   ► whether it's RAM or SSDs or whatever,

00:49:02 ◼   ► You can buy the little chips that make up the RAM

00:49:06 ◼   ► or the flash storage or whatever in various sizes.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And sometimes the biggest size you can get

00:49:12 ◼   ► is not big enough to do the thing that you want.

00:49:14 ◼   ► So like say you wanted to have, in this case,

00:49:16 ◼   ► a 256 gigabyte SSD.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Can I get a 256 gigabyte single chip?

00:49:21 ◼   ► No, you gotta buy two of them.

00:49:22 ◼   ► You gotta buy 128 and 128.

00:49:24 ◼   ► So all right, fine.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Because there's no 256s available,

00:49:26 ◼   ► or they are available,

00:49:27 ◼   ► but they're exorbitantly expensive, right?

00:49:28 ◼   ► And this is not our top end computer, right?

00:49:30 ◼   ► So we're gonna buy two of those chips

00:49:33 ◼   ► and that'll make, you know, two 128s will make 256.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Years go by, the new model of this machine comes out,

00:49:38 ◼   ► it's like, oh, actually we can get

00:49:39 ◼   ► single chip 256 gigabyte flash storage now.

00:49:43 ◼   ► So in the new computer, we won't have to buy a 128 and 128,

00:49:45 ◼   ► we'll just buy one 256, 'cause it's not more expensive

00:49:48 ◼   ► and it'll use less power and it'll take up less space

00:49:49 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And you know, and in the case of the M2 MacBook Pro,

00:49:54 ◼   ► like, we're not gonna redesign the motherboard,

00:49:56 ◼   ► like, we're just gonna put one chip there.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Like, there used to be a place for two chips,

00:49:59 ◼   ► But now we'll just buy one of them off of the base model,

00:50:01 ◼   ► 'cause the base model has 256 gig SSD.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Before we had to buy 128 and 128,

00:50:05 ◼   ► now we can just buy a single 256.

00:50:07 ◼   ► March of progress, fine, right?

00:50:09 ◼   ► The problem is, the way SSDs work in that Mac

00:50:11 ◼   ► and in many Macs, is if you put two chips there,

00:50:15 ◼   ► the little controller that reads the solid state storage

00:50:20 ◼   ► can read from and write to both of those chips

00:50:22 ◼   ► at the same time.

00:50:23 ◼   ► - Two chips at the same time.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:50:26 ◼   ► It's, you know, again, it's not like RAID or anything,

00:50:29 ◼   ► it's all invisible to the operating system,

00:50:31 ◼   ► it's like a single volume, but practically speaking,

00:50:33 ◼   ► there's enough bandwidth and the controller knows

00:50:36 ◼   ► how to talk to both of them at the same time.

00:50:38 ◼   ► So when they went from two 128 chips to a single 256 chip,

00:50:42 ◼   ► it cut the disk speed in half.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Because previously, it could do both at once,

00:50:47 ◼   ► and it's just straight up parallel,

00:50:49 ◼   ► like oh, you're writing stuff, I'll write some here

00:50:50 ◼   ► and some there, and I'll do it both at the same time.

00:50:52 ◼   ► And with just one chip, the speed gets cut in half.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And that's not great.

00:50:56 ◼   ► So if you bought a base model M1 MacBook Pro,

00:50:59 ◼   ► the Touch Bar M1 MacBook Pro with a 256 gig SSD

00:51:02 ◼   ► and it came with two 128 gig flash things,

00:51:07 ◼   ► that thing's SSD.

00:51:08 ◼   ► - Flash things, that's what they're called.

00:51:10 ◼   ► - Twice as fast as the new M2 one.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Only if you get the base model.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Now if you get the M2, if you get an M2 with a bigger SSD,

00:51:18 ◼   ► then they have to do two chips again

00:51:19 ◼   ► 'cause they can't get them big enough, right?

00:51:21 ◼   ► So I don't know what the size of that.

00:51:21 ◼   ► I think if you just get a 512,

00:51:23 ◼   ► to give you two 256 chips,

00:51:25 ◼   ► and then you get your speed back.

00:51:28 ◼   ► But this is one of those weird things

00:51:30 ◼   ► that you'd have to be a nerd to know about,

00:51:32 ◼   ► that some person's gonna go in

00:51:33 ◼   ► and they're gonna get this machine,

00:51:35 ◼   ► and in addition to all the other things

00:51:36 ◼   ► that are bad about this machine

00:51:37 ◼   ► that we talked about before,

00:51:38 ◼   ► they're gonna get the base model

00:51:39 ◼   ► 'cause it's the cheapest and not realize

00:51:41 ◼   ► they're getting a slower SSD

00:51:43 ◼   ► than if they had bought the M1 version of this.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And that's a bummer, especially at the low end.

00:51:47 ◼   ► So now you have to have a nerdy friend

00:51:48 ◼   ► who tells you don't buy the 256 gig

00:51:50 ◼   ► if you care about SSD speed.

00:51:51 ◼   ► If you don't care about SSD speed,

00:51:52 ◼   ► people don't notice is like browsing the web

00:51:54 ◼   ► and using Microsoft Word or whatever,

00:51:56 ◼   ► but it just makes this machine more of a bummer

00:51:58 ◼   ► with yet more reasons to be wary of it.

00:52:01 ◼   ► - As much as this sucks to be a regression,

00:52:04 ◼   ► you know, because this was not true of the M1 version,

00:52:07 ◼   ► like the M1 base model did not have this problem,

00:52:10 ◼   ► just 'cause of different chip configurations, as John said,

00:52:12 ◼   ► but it just, it sucks that like this is yet another reason

00:52:15 ◼   ► why people are getting a subpar experience

00:52:20 ◼   ► with this machine by a lack of information.

00:52:24 ◼   ► They're gonna go into an Apple store,

00:52:26 ◼   ► they're gonna see, oh, here's something that says Pro

00:52:28 ◼   ► and is inexpensive relative to the other Pros.

00:52:30 ◼   ► I must get this over the Air.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And by the way, I fully expect the Air

00:52:35 ◼   ► to have this exact same problem.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Like, this probably just this generation

00:52:39 ◼   ► of these storage chips with this M2 generation

00:52:42 ◼   ► of architecture or whatever, like,

00:52:43 ◼   ► this generation of these chips is gonna have this problem.

00:52:45 ◼   ► So I expect all of the M2 products

00:52:48 ◼   ► in the 256 configuration,

00:52:51 ◼   ► I expect them all to have this exact same problem

00:52:54 ◼   ► this time around.

00:52:55 ◼   ► And it just sucks, there's just more asterisks

00:52:57 ◼   ► where you have to, as John said,

00:52:59 ◼   ► consult your nerd friend, and be like,

00:53:01 ◼   ► "What's the right one to buy?"

00:53:02 ◼   ► And now it's more complicated.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And the reality is, SSD speed,

00:53:07 ◼   ► it's really fast either way,

00:53:09 ◼   ► it's just much faster this other way,

00:53:11 ◼   ► and sustained transfer rates from SSDs

00:53:13 ◼   ► aren't that important of a performance characteristic

00:53:16 ◼   ► of modern computers.

00:53:17 ◼   ► What sucks more about this is that it's a regression

00:53:20 ◼   ► and a significant one in a certain metric.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Not necessarily that it's going to result

00:53:24 ◼   ► in a very noticeably slow computer in most operations.

00:53:27 ◼   ► It won't.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And I would also argue like, if you're buying,

00:53:31 ◼   ► A, this computer at all, and B, the base model storage,

00:53:36 ◼   ► performance might not be very important to you.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Like there's a much higher chance than usual

00:53:40 ◼   ► if you're buying the base SSD

00:53:43 ◼   ► that you're not really in it for the disk performance.

00:53:47 ◼   ► It's kind of a shame that it's on the model with Pro suffix,

00:53:49 ◼   ► though, because maybe you would think it's going to be faster.

00:53:52 ◼   ► I'm kind of afraid that when the M2 MacBook Air comes out,

00:53:54 ◼   ► it won't have this problem, because it

00:53:56 ◼   ► will have a redesigned motherboard,

00:53:57 ◼   ► or the base model will use two chips, or something like that.

00:54:00 ◼   ► And so the base model Air will have a faster SSD.

00:54:02 ◼   ► But this whole issue has made all the people

00:54:05 ◼   ► who have been testing this look around a little bit more,

00:54:08 ◼   ► as they occasionally do, and say, you know,

00:54:10 ◼   ► Apple's SSDs used to be super fast in their Macs,

00:54:13 ◼   ► but they haven't really kept up.

00:54:15 ◼   ► If you look at the SSDs that are coming in a lot of PC laptops in similar classes, you

00:54:20 ◼   ► can get much faster SSDs in a similar price range.

00:54:23 ◼   ► They would look at like, "Oh, let's look at a Microsoft laptop or a Dell laptop in a similar

00:54:28 ◼   ► price range and do tests on its SSDs."

00:54:31 ◼   ► Because there are faster SSDs coming out all the time and Apple hasn't really kept up in

00:54:36 ◼   ► this area.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Again, not that they're slow and on the Air, who cares?

00:54:40 ◼   ► If the Air has this problem, if you're buying a base model Air with 256 gigs, your main problem

00:54:44 ◼   ► is probably going to be that you bought a laptop with 256 gigs in it, which is going

00:54:47 ◼   ► to feel really tight to you, I think.

00:54:50 ◼   ► And your secondary problem is the performance.

00:54:51 ◼   ► But it's Apple's cheapest laptop.

00:54:53 ◼   ► It's the base model of Apple's cheapest laptop.

00:54:55 ◼   ► So what do you expect?

00:54:56 ◼   ► But the one that has the pro in the name, the whole point is, oh, you're stepping up

00:54:58 ◼   ► to something that's a little bit better.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And it would be really disappointing to step up to something that has a quarter of the

00:55:02 ◼   ► performance of a similarly priced SSD in a PC laptop.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Again, not that it's a spec race or whatever.

00:55:07 ◼   ► Just feel like Apple has to do some minimum amount to keep up here.

00:55:11 ◼   ► Apple's SSDs are really fast, and I think they're just a little bit behind in this generation.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Maybe it's because the PCIe 4 stuff is coming out on the PC side and Apple hasn't revved

00:55:21 ◼   ► to that.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Maybe they'll catch up with the M3s and everything.

00:55:24 ◼   ► But for most people, this doesn't matter because you're not running benchmarks all day.

00:55:27 ◼   ► You're just browsing the web.

00:55:28 ◼   ► It's perfectly fine.

00:55:29 ◼   ► And what more people care about are things like reliability and maybe Apple's, the ones

00:55:35 ◼   ► they're choosing to do better in that area, who knows.

00:55:37 ◼   ► But Apple does have to keep up here.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And it's kind of like the camera.

00:55:41 ◼   ► like once this starts catching on and people start poking into it, it just becomes a thing

00:55:45 ◼   ► and hopefully now if Apple is paying attention they will feel, I don't think it's going to

00:55:53 ◼   ► be like the camera, the camera they're going to feel the need to do better with the camera

00:55:55 ◼   ► because it was such a big story everywhere.

00:55:58 ◼   ► But with the SSDs they'll probably be like, "Eh, a few people complain but no one really

00:56:01 ◼   ► cares."

00:56:02 ◼   ► But I do hope they keep up because it is something that does impact your day to day experience

00:56:06 ◼   ► whether you know it or not.

00:56:07 ◼   ► You might not notice from one computer to the next,

00:56:09 ◼   ► but if you skip like three computers and you're like,

00:56:12 ◼   ► "Oh, they both have an SSD,"

00:56:13 ◼   ► but the SSDs are so much faster than they were

00:56:15 ◼   ► like five, 10 years ago,

00:56:17 ◼   ► and that needs to continue to be the case.

00:56:19 ◼   ► - Additionally, and unrelatedly,

00:56:22 ◼   ► there's apparently going to be a 15-inch MacBook thing,

00:56:26 ◼   ► according to Ming-Chi Kuo.

00:56:28 ◼   ► 15-inch MacBook could feature M2 and M2 Pro options

00:56:31 ◼   ► without the Air brand.

00:56:34 ◼   ► And there's been a lot of debates

00:56:36 ◼   ► whether or not my beloved 12 inch would come back or not.

00:56:40 ◼   ► Nobody seems to agree at this time.

00:56:41 ◼   ► But apparently there may be a 15 inch

00:56:43 ◼   ► that is not a Pro, which is interesting.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And not an Air either, just a 15 inch MacBook Studio?

00:56:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:56:51 ◼   ► I don't know what this would end up being.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - It's possible.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I don't think Studio would be the name

00:56:55 ◼   ► because Studio is effectively like Pro Plus

00:56:59 ◼   ► in their - That's fair point.

00:57:01 ◼   ► - In their nomenclature so far.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Or maybe, I don't know, it's like mid-range Pro.

00:57:05 ◼   ► But this, so take with a grain of salt

00:57:07 ◼   ► anything from the rumor mill that's about pricing,

00:57:11 ◼   ► naming, or marketing.

00:57:13 ◼   ► The Apple marketing team basically does not leak.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Like the only times we've really gotten credible leaks

00:57:20 ◼   ► from like for things like product names

00:57:22 ◼   ► usually is when we have like accidental inclusion

00:57:25 ◼   ► in Apple's own software releases of references

00:57:28 ◼   ► to a certain name or something like that.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Like Apple leaks it.

00:57:31 ◼   ► - Had a MacStudio leak, remember on MacStudio leak

00:57:33 ◼   ► like a few days before, I don't remember where they came from.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - Oh, that's true. - Oh, that's true.

00:57:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was one of those Twitter people.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Anyway, it's very unlikely that this product

00:57:42 ◼   ► that is scheduled to come out not exactly soon,

00:57:45 ◼   ► that the name of it would leak.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So I wouldn't get too bogged down in the name.

00:57:48 ◼   ► What does seem likely incredible here is that

00:57:53 ◼   ► some kind of 15-inch non-pro MacBook is coming out.

00:57:58 ◼   ► I think there's a big potential market for this.

00:58:02 ◼   ► If you look at what Apple's doing with the iPhone,

00:58:05 ◼   ► there is a similar rumor with the iPhone this fall.

00:58:09 ◼   ► - That's not a rumor, that's basically guaranteed.

00:58:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, at this point, yeah.

00:58:11 ◼   ► - 'Cause the phone stuff does leak.

00:58:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, the phone stuff leaks like crazy.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And so this fall, if this is correct,

00:58:17 ◼   ► the non-pro phone is going to come in two sizes.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Previously, it has not been possible to get a large,

00:58:25 ◼   ► to get the largest size class of phone in a non-pro line.

00:58:31 ◼   ► But this fall they are changing that

00:58:32 ◼   ► because turns out there's a big market for big phones,

00:58:36 ◼   ► even if that market doesn't necessarily include everybody

00:58:39 ◼   ► who's willing to spend like 1200 bucks on a phone.

00:58:41 ◼   ► So that makes sense for them to cover that market.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Well, the same thing applies to laptops.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Size of the screen does not need to correlate

00:58:50 ◼   ► with all of the pro components inside.

00:58:54 ◼   ► Many people want larger screen laptops.

00:58:57 ◼   ► And Apple has covered the 13 inch range extremely well

00:59:00 ◼   ► for years, and I'm pretty sure that is the number one range

00:59:03 ◼   ► in terms of what volume sells across the whole industry.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I think 13 inch is probably the most common one,

00:59:09 ◼   ► but I would imagine second place is 15 inch.

00:59:14 ◼   ► For years Apple covered that very, very well.

00:59:16 ◼   ► I think what's interesting though is that when you look

00:59:17 ◼   ► at the recent products, and this applies across many

00:59:21 ◼   ► Apple product lines, possibly all Apple product lines,

00:59:24 ◼   ► the word pro used to just mean the bigger ones.

00:59:30 ◼   ► But in recent years, Pro has actually been pushed

00:59:33 ◼   ► further up market.

00:59:34 ◼   ► In some ways, that's just Apple wanting to

00:59:36 ◼   ► keep their extremely healthy profit margins

00:59:38 ◼   ► and hey, that's how they got where they are, good for them.

00:59:41 ◼   ► But in other ways, it allows them to use actually fancier

00:59:45 ◼   ► and more expensive components and materials

00:59:47 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And so, what I think we're seeing is the bifurcation

00:59:52 ◼   ► of more and more Apple product lines

00:59:53 ◼   ► into much more distinguished Pro versus non-Pro

00:59:57 ◼   ► than we used to have.

00:59:58 ◼   ► You know, if you look at the MacBook Pro,

00:59:59 ◼   ► Mapbook Pro now has these much larger,

01:00:03 ◼   ► higher core count chips.

01:00:04 ◼   ► We have things like the ProMotion displays, HDR,

01:00:08 ◼   ► like being built on display, stuff like that.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Those are much higher end components and needs

01:00:14 ◼   ► most people don't care about.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Look at the phones.

01:00:16 ◼   ► You have the three camera system,

01:00:17 ◼   ► all like the Pro, raw stuff.

01:00:20 ◼   ► You have the fancy materials that I hate,

01:00:22 ◼   ► the ProMotion display again there too,

01:00:23 ◼   ► like this is a more expensive thing.

01:00:25 ◼   ► So I think what they're doing is breaking

01:00:28 ◼   ► this long-held notion, in a much larger way,

01:00:30 ◼   ► breaking this long-held notion that pro just meant

01:00:33 ◼   ► the biggest ones, and offering non-pro big options

01:00:38 ◼   ► in their product lines, because there's demand for that,

01:00:41 ◼   ► and letting pro actually mean the higher end of components,

01:00:46 ◼   ► most of which happen to be on the bigger scale,

01:00:49 ◼   ► but not just the biggest ones.

01:00:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think this is long overdue,

01:00:53 ◼   ► especially since, I mean, whether they call it an aeronaut,

01:00:55 ◼   ► a 15 inch MacBook Air-ish type computer

01:00:58 ◼   ► with MacBook Air internals is such a great machine

01:01:02 ◼   ► for people who want a bigger screen

01:01:03 ◼   ► because remember, it's still got the Air internals.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It doesn't have Pro internals, no super hot anything.

01:01:07 ◼   ► It's just like the same little power sipping thing

01:01:10 ◼   ► that's in 13 inch, but so much more room for battery.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And yes, you have a bigger screen to power too,

01:01:15 ◼   ► but that screen's not gonna be a 1600 HDR,

01:01:17 ◼   ► like whatever, it's a bigger screen,

01:01:20 ◼   ► but I feel like the battery increase

01:01:21 ◼   ► will more than make up for the screen increase.

01:01:23 ◼   ► So what you get for the people who want it

01:01:25 ◼   ► is a thing with a bigger screen,

01:01:26 ◼   ► which people really want, either for the real estate

01:01:28 ◼   ► or so they can do a scale resolution

01:01:30 ◼   ► to make everything bigger on their screen, right?

01:01:32 ◼   ► And you get better battery life.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And it's only a little bit bigger

01:01:35 ◼   ► and only a little bit heavier,

01:01:37 ◼   ► and that's a trade-off that tons of people are willing

01:01:39 ◼   ► to make, like, you know, we're so used to it,

01:01:41 ◼   ► but like, it must be so weird if you're shopping

01:01:43 ◼   ► for a laptop in the traditional Apple world

01:01:45 ◼   ► of the past decade or so and saying,

01:01:47 ◼   ► you know, I want a laptop, oh, this screen's a little big,

01:01:49 ◼   ► can you show me something with a bigger screen?

01:01:50 ◼   ► And you're like, it costs how much?

01:01:52 ◼   ► You were just looking at the $999 MacBook Air

01:01:56 ◼   ► with the 13-inch screen.

01:01:57 ◼   ► You just saw something with a little bit bigger screen.

01:01:59 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, that'll be, you know,

01:02:00 ◼   ► add $2,500 to the price of your thing.

01:02:03 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to the consumer.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Like, but the screen is only a little bit bigger.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And they're like, yeah, it's got this and that

01:02:07 ◼   ► and the other thing in it.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And they're like, but I don't know what any of that is.

01:02:10 ◼   ► And I don't care about it.

01:02:10 ◼   ► I just need a laptop that I can browse the web on

01:02:12 ◼   ► and write things in Microsoft Word.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I just want a little bit bigger screen.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And you're telling me my only option is this monstrosity

01:02:18 ◼   ► that I don't understand?

01:02:20 ◼   ► This thing needs to be here.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Now Apple could be scared of doing it,

01:02:23 ◼   ► like oh no, it's gonna cannibalize our 16-inch sales,

01:02:25 ◼   ► but honestly, no one is cross-shopping.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Like I was looking at the bottom-of-the-line MacBook Air,

01:02:30 ◼   ► but to get that bigger screen,

01:02:31 ◼   ► I decided to pay a few thousand more dollars.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Like I don't think that's something

01:02:34 ◼   ► that happens very often, right?

01:02:36 ◼   ► So this machine has to exist,

01:02:37 ◼   ► and that's what they're doing with the phones too.

01:02:40 ◼   ► It's just so much more pleasing and symmetrical

01:02:43 ◼   ► and makes so much more sense for market segmentation,

01:02:46 ◼   ► and it allows you to make this machine,

01:02:47 ◼   ► which will have slightly different trade-offs

01:02:49 ◼   ► than the base Air or than any of the larger Pros.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And most of those trade-offs are going to be in favor

01:02:55 ◼   ► of things that people want.

01:02:56 ◼   ► More battery life, bigger things on the screen

01:02:58 ◼   ► or room for more stuff for not much bigger size.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And that's why I really hope that this thing,

01:03:03 ◼   ► like I'm rooting for basically a 15-inch MacBook Air.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Again, whether they call it that or not,

01:03:07 ◼   ► I'm rooting for it to stick to the lowest power components

01:03:11 ◼   ► that Apple ships 'cause the M1 is plenty good,

01:03:13 ◼   ► the M2 is gonna be plenty good.

01:03:14 ◼   ► That's all people need.

01:03:15 ◼   ► Don't try to put a Pro in there.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I mean, I guess you could offer it if you wanted to,

01:03:19 ◼   ► but I feel like the best version of this machine

01:03:22 ◼   ► is MacBook Air guts, 15-inch screen, bigger battery.

01:03:25 ◼   ► That is the machine that really hits the sweet spot

01:03:28 ◼   ► of people who don't care about Pro stuff,

01:03:30 ◼   ► and they'll love that thing,

01:03:31 ◼   ► 'cause the Airs get such great battery life as it is.

01:03:34 ◼   ► Can you imagine an Air with even more battery life

01:03:37 ◼   ► and a bigger screen?

01:03:37 ◼   ► That's a crowd pleaser.

01:03:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely, and I think this would sell a lot.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I strongly agree.

01:03:43 ◼   ► Although I do think that there is potentially an appetite

01:03:46 ◼   ► for an in-betweener between,

01:03:49 ◼   ► or I guess this would be bigger than the big Pro.

01:03:51 ◼   ► No, no, no, we've got 14 and 16 inch Pros now, gosh.

01:03:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's the Pros be like,

01:03:55 ◼   ► well, it's not 15, it's 16.

01:03:57 ◼   ► That little bit of differentiation,

01:04:00 ◼   ► oh, and by the way, it's also ProMotion 1600,

01:04:03 ◼   ► like the gap between Apple's Pro laptop screens

01:04:05 ◼   ► and its non-Pro laptop screens has never been bigger.

01:04:07 ◼   ► Like those Pro laptop screens are amazing.

01:04:10 ◼   ► And the MacBook Air screen is fine,

01:04:11 ◼   ► but it's not even in the same league

01:04:14 ◼   ► in terms of the features that it's missing

01:04:15 ◼   ► things it can't do. I don't know, I still, even though I don't think it has a place in my life

01:04:19 ◼   ► anymore, I still feel like I want a 12-inch MacBook with Apple silicon internals. Because again, I

01:04:28 ◼   ► loved that machine, but it was a, it was kind of a piece of trash when it was brand new. It was slow.

01:04:35 ◼   ► It was, shush, it was, it was delightful and it was also terrible. The, what people loved about it, the

01:04:41 ◼   ► physical side of it is so achievable with Apple silicon today

01:04:46 ◼   ► Exactly. That's exactly what I was driving at is that it would presumably in the same way that my my 14-inch MacBook Pro

01:04:53 ◼   ► feels like I mean, it's not literally but it feels like my

01:04:57 ◼   ► My iMac Pro yet portable. Well the phantom 12-inch, you know, like m1 or m2

01:05:05 ◼   ► MacBook could be a

01:05:09 ◼   ► Intel 12-inch MacBook, but not crappy.

01:05:11 ◼   ► You know, like, I'm a little concerned about the keyboard

01:05:14 ◼   ► in terms of, you know, could they make a scissor switch

01:05:16 ◼   ► keyboard that's super thin, but, or maybe they just make it

01:05:20 ◼   ► a little thicker than the old one was,

01:05:21 ◼   ► but it's spiritually a successor.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I don't know. I just, I love that machine so much.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And I really think it could be a really, really great seller

01:05:31 ◼   ► for someone who wants like a very small,

01:05:34 ◼   ► very portable thing that isn't an iPad.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And granted, you know, iPadOS is allegedly

01:05:39 ◼   ► getting much better and is allegedly going to have more pro apps coming soon, but I don't know when I bought the

01:05:46 ◼   ► The MacBook I wanted an iPad that wasn't an iPad basically and in a lot of ways

01:05:52 ◼   ► That's what I got except it was slow and couldn't do anything

01:05:55 ◼   ► So I guess now he was like an iPad. Hey, oh

01:05:58 ◼   ► But I don't know I I miss that machine and and I kind of wish it would come back even though I don't know that

01:06:04 ◼   ► I would buy one. It's the same team that makes the mint the iPhone mini, right?

01:06:08 ◼   ► - They're the smallest device in the line

01:06:12 ◼   ► that has people who really want it,

01:06:13 ◼   ► but doesn't really sell that well,

01:06:15 ◼   ► and for people who want it small,

01:06:16 ◼   ► don't have any alternatives.

01:06:17 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, I think they should just make it

01:06:20 ◼   ► straight up, like I think it would be a perfectly fine,

01:06:22 ◼   ► straightforward computer, and yeah,

01:06:23 ◼   ► it would sell fewer than the other models,

01:06:24 ◼   ► but I think that's fine.

01:06:25 ◼   ► I think Apple can absorb that, right?

01:06:27 ◼   ► But if they don't wanna do that,

01:06:28 ◼   ► if I had to motivate Apple to say,

01:06:30 ◼   ► "Oh, you should really offer this product,"

01:06:31 ◼   ► and I say, "Yeah, we're not into the just

01:06:32 ◼   ► "plain old 12-inch laptop, even if we can make it

01:06:34 ◼   ► "really thin, we did that and we weren't into it,"

01:06:36 ◼   ► I would say, this is a perfect opportunity

01:06:38 ◼   ► to get over your reticence to make a touchscreen Mac.

01:06:40 ◼   ► 'Cause make it a convertible thing,

01:06:42 ◼   ► it already runs iPad apps, for crying out loud.

01:06:44 ◼   ► Make it something that you can fold over backwards

01:06:45 ◼   ► and turn into basically a 12 inch iPad

01:06:48 ◼   ► when you need it to be an iPad,

01:06:49 ◼   ► and a touchscreen Mac when you need it to be a Mac.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And it's running Mac OS the whole time,

01:06:52 ◼   ► and you can just run iPad apps on it.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I know Apple doesn't wanna make this machine,

01:06:55 ◼   ► but the 12 inch form factor is a perfect opportunity

01:06:58 ◼   ► to do that, because you wouldn't want to turn

01:07:00 ◼   ► a 16 inch MacBook Pro into an iPad

01:07:02 ◼   ► that's a pretty heavy iPad.

01:07:03 ◼   ► But the 12 inch one, that's already in,

01:07:06 ◼   ► we already make iPads that size.

01:07:07 ◼   ► You can make it a similar thickness,

01:07:09 ◼   ► tons of other people in the industry are doing this.

01:07:11 ◼   ► I know they don't wanna make a Mac OS touchscreen

01:07:13 ◼   ► or whatever, but I feel like Apple can't,

01:07:17 ◼   ► can't stay away from this forever.

01:07:19 ◼   ► And the 12 inch size is the perfect place

01:07:21 ◼   ► for them to dip their toe in.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I don't, I'm not predicting this.

01:07:23 ◼   ► There are no rumors of this.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I just, that's the way I would pitch it as,

01:07:26 ◼   ► aren't you more interested in this product now

01:07:28 ◼   ► if you weren't interested in a plain old 12 inch laptop?

01:07:30 ◼   ► But according to the rumors,

01:07:31 ◼   ► it seemed like they might just make a,

01:07:33 ◼   ► potentially a 12 inch laptop, which would be fine as well.

01:07:35 ◼   ► But I just feel like it's a less exciting machine

01:07:37 ◼   ► in a convertible.

01:07:38 ◼   ► - Frankly, I think people would love that thing,

01:07:41 ◼   ► convertible or not.

01:07:42 ◼   ► I think, you said it's a less exciting machine,

01:07:44 ◼   ► and that's true in the sense of what we talk about

01:07:46 ◼   ► on podcasts, but in actual day-to-day use,

01:07:50 ◼   ► that machine, just a modern 11 or 12 inch MacBook Air

01:07:55 ◼   ► with the Apple architecture and the good current keyboard

01:07:58 ◼   ► that we have, that would be an incredibly fun,

01:08:02 ◼   ► awesome computer that I think a ton of people would love.

01:08:05 ◼   ► And yeah, granted, you know, the reason why,

01:08:07 ◼   ► my speculation on the reason why the 12 inch

01:08:11 ◼   ► didn't really sell that well

01:08:13 ◼   ► once the 13 inch Air came out is simply that

01:08:15 ◼   ► if you're looking for something for your only computer,

01:08:20 ◼   ► you generally don't wanna get the tiniest screen you can get.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Usually you want something mid-sized.

01:08:25 ◼   ► That's why 13 inch and 15 inch laptops sell so well.

01:08:27 ◼   ► 'Cause if you're only gonna have one computer

01:08:29 ◼   ► and one screen, a 13 inch or 15 inch laptop

01:08:32 ◼   ► is probably what you want most of the time.

01:08:34 ◼   ► So, I get that.

01:08:36 ◼   ► But this, to have this computer as an option in the lineup,

01:08:40 ◼   ► what you capture with that is people who maybe

01:08:43 ◼   ► have a desktop as their main computer

01:08:45 ◼   ► and want something as small and light as possible

01:08:48 ◼   ► for when they travel.

01:08:49 ◼   ► Maybe people who fly a lot,

01:08:50 ◼   ► because using anything bigger on an airline tray table

01:08:52 ◼   ► is, you know, cumbersome at best, if it's even possible.

01:08:57 ◼   ► You know, once that person leans their chair back

01:08:59 ◼   ► like a jerk, you can't do anything on any computer

01:09:01 ◼   ► except something this size.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Like, this is your only option.

01:09:04 ◼   ► But all the people who absolutely loved

01:09:09 ◼   ► the old 11-inch MacBook Air,

01:09:11 ◼   ► and then who tolerated the 12-inch when it came out,

01:09:14 ◼   ► that is a market, that is a market worth serving.

01:09:17 ◼   ► I would speculate that market is probably even bigger

01:09:20 ◼   ► than the market for many of the Macs

01:09:22 ◼   ► they do happily sell in the lineup.

01:09:24 ◼   ► I'm guessing, for instance, that market is probably bigger

01:09:26 ◼   ► than the market for, say, the Mac Studio.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Maybe even the Mac Pro, probably.

01:09:32 ◼   ► - The Mac Mini, any Mac that doesn't have a screen on it,

01:09:34 ◼   ► All laptops sell more than that, I'm sure.

01:09:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably, yeah.

01:09:37 ◼   ► I think there is very much a market for this,

01:09:39 ◼   ► and yeah, it's not gonna replace the volume

01:09:42 ◼   ► that the 13-inch Air does.

01:09:43 ◼   ► It doesn't need to.

01:09:44 ◼   ► It's a different computer for a different purpose

01:09:45 ◼   ► for different people.

01:09:46 ◼   ► But I really hope that someday they do find a way

01:09:50 ◼   ► to offer that because I think that would be

01:09:52 ◼   ► very well received by more people than you might expect,

01:09:57 ◼   ► unless they totally fumbled again

01:09:59 ◼   ► and make something crappy again.

01:10:00 ◼   ► But I don't think they would.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I think they've shown their current direction is good,

01:10:04 ◼   ► their current team making product decisions is good.

01:10:06 ◼   ► They really haven't had a lot of fumbles recently,

01:10:09 ◼   ► except maybe like the studio display camera

01:10:12 ◼   ► and the MacStudio fan.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Other than that, like, oh, and this new M2 MacBook Pro.

01:10:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:10:20 ◼   ► That's its own flat, thin box of worms,

01:10:23 ◼   ► but I would trust them to do a really good job

01:10:25 ◼   ► with making a new, modern 12 or 11 inch MacBook Air

01:10:30 ◼   ► with their current sensibilities

01:10:32 ◼   ► and current hardware abilities.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I think they would do a really nice job,

01:10:35 ◼   ► and I hope they do.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - I got another way to make this more exciting.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Again, not that the regular 12 inch is boring or anything,

01:10:40 ◼   ► but if someone was balking out of decision making

01:10:43 ◼   ► and saying, "Ah, that doesn't seem like it."

01:10:45 ◼   ► Another way to make it exciting,

01:10:46 ◼   ► if you don't want to do it in convertible,

01:10:47 ◼   ► this machine is also the perfect opportunity

01:10:50 ◼   ► to finally explore materials other than aluminum.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Aluminum's been great, served us well.

01:10:55 ◼   ► It has lots of strengths, it also has some weaknesses.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Many, many years there have been rumors

01:10:59 ◼   ► about Apple experimenting with different materials

01:11:01 ◼   ► to make their laptops out of,

01:11:02 ◼   ► and obviously those different materials

01:11:03 ◼   ► have their own sets of trade-offs,

01:11:05 ◼   ► but I think a 12 inch would be a great place

01:11:08 ◼   ► to experiment with a material that shores up

01:11:11 ◼   ► aluminum's two weaknesses.

01:11:12 ◼   ► One, weight, but obviously aluminum is really lightweight,

01:11:15 ◼   ► but there are things that are lighter.

01:11:17 ◼   ► And two, aluminum bends and dents,

01:11:19 ◼   ► and things like plastics and carbon fiber

01:11:21 ◼   ► are more resistant to permanently bending or denting

01:11:25 ◼   ► than aluminum is.

01:11:26 ◼   ► So, if one of those materials,

01:11:29 ◼   ► if there are various many, many years of experimenting

01:11:31 ◼   ► with different materials to make laptops out of it,

01:11:32 ◼   ► If there's a top contender, it would be great to do it on a 12 inch because not only would

01:11:37 ◼   ► it be so much smaller than everything else, it would be so incredibly light and so incredibly

01:11:41 ◼   ► durable.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Even if it's just a plain old straight up laptop with no convertibles and no touchscreen

01:11:46 ◼   ► or anything like that, but it's a laptop that's lighter than you could ever imagine.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Look how durable it is.

01:11:51 ◼   ► You can put it in your backpack without a case and drop your backpack on the ground

01:11:54 ◼   ► like my kids do all the time and it will just bend and flex and bounce back instead of denting

01:11:59 ◼   ► or chipping or shattering.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I'm always on the lookout for the next leap

01:12:03 ◼   ► in laptop technology, 'cause glass and aluminum is great.

01:12:06 ◼   ► It's the best laptops I've ever been,

01:12:08 ◼   ► but there is a next step somewhere out there,

01:12:09 ◼   ► and I hope Apple finds it.

01:12:11 ◼   ► - Also, this would be a great opportunity

01:12:14 ◼   ► to launch cellular Macs.

01:12:16 ◼   ► - Oh, don't, can you imagine--

01:12:18 ◼   ► - They can do that at any time, they don't need to.

01:12:20 ◼   ► - I know, I know.

01:12:20 ◼   ► - That's not something that's like,

01:12:22 ◼   ► at any time now, it's in iPads, same stupid chip, all right.

01:12:26 ◼   ► - Can you imagine how much I would lose my mind

01:12:29 ◼   ► if they came out with what is effectively

01:12:31 ◼   ► a not-crappy 12-inch MacBook that actually had cellular,

01:12:35 ◼   ► I would, I would, I'm already having

01:12:38 ◼   ► very inappropriate thoughts about this computer.

01:12:40 ◼   ► - You have to wait for Apple's cell chips

01:12:42 ◼   ► to come out to do that, right?

01:12:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's probably true.

01:12:44 ◼   ► - That's the current rumor, it's like,

01:12:45 ◼   ► oh, the reason they're not doing it

01:12:46 ◼   ► is 'cause they're waiting to do it

01:12:47 ◼   ► with their own cell chips, which they are making,

01:12:49 ◼   ► but they're making them for the phones, but like--

01:12:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's like, why can't you,

01:12:52 ◼   ► the iPads have had them since day one,

01:12:54 ◼   ► that's 12 years ago, they've had them for 12 years!

01:12:56 ◼   ► - They don't wanna play Qualcomm, they don't wanna play,

01:12:59 ◼   ► They all, whatever the excuses are,

01:13:00 ◼   ► there's not a big enough market, nobody cares about it.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I don't know what they're thinking, but yeah,

01:13:04 ◼   ► we want cellular in our laptops.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Apple get on that eventually.

01:13:07 ◼   ► - Can you imagine, like that would be like Casey,

01:13:09 ◼   ► it would be like when the Mac Pro came out

01:13:11 ◼   ► and it was John Christmas,

01:13:12 ◼   ► like this would be like Casey Christmas, like.

01:13:13 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - A black carbon fiber, 12 inch with cellular.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - Oh, stop, oh, stop.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Oh God, oh, if it was black too,

01:13:20 ◼   ► oh, this is like, oh, my dreams come true.

01:13:22 ◼   ► How many episodes of ATP did we have to go on

01:13:25 ◼   ► about the stupid Mac Pro, like 50?

01:13:26 ◼   ► - But the Mac Pro is a real computer.

01:13:27 ◼   ► We're just, you know, these are things that are probably going to happen.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Excuse me! You went on about the Mac Pro for 30 episodes before it was even real.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Don't even start. You owe me at least 30.

01:13:35 ◼   ► It was real. They pre-announced it in like April of 2014 or whatever the hell it was.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Whatever.

01:13:40 ◼   ► And even now, they even pre-announced the new one.

01:13:43 ◼   ► They're like, "Uh, the Mac Pro, we'll talk about that later."

01:13:45 ◼   ► And so now, yeah, we're just seeing this.

01:13:47 ◼   ► You owe me easily 30 episodes.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Apple has not pre-announced the black 12-inch laptop.

01:13:50 ◼   ► No, but you probably owe me 10 just on the theory.

01:13:53 ◼   ► on the theory, or not even theory,

01:13:55 ◼   ► on the hope that such a thing would ever exist.

01:13:58 ◼   ► - Why don't you just draw some fan art,

01:14:00 ◼   ► maybe that'll make Apple make it.

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01:16:00 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:16:05 ◼   ► And Elijah Yup writes, "I was fortunate to attend WWDC 22

01:16:10 ◼   ► "as a Swift student challenger

01:16:12 ◼   ► "and I just listened to your WWDC show.

01:16:15 ◼   ► "John quipped that for non-press folks,

01:16:17 ◼   ► what happened was not WWDC, but Apple Park tourism.

01:16:20 ◼   ► I'm curious what he felt had changed.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I had heard WWDC meant meeting the developer community

01:16:25 ◼   ► and having direct conversations with Apple engineers,

01:16:27 ◼   ► and I'm glad to say that both were abundant this year.

01:16:29 ◼   ► So what the heck, Jon?

01:16:31 ◼   ► -So what actually happens at WWDC in the old style

01:16:34 ◼   ► is you go to sessions and you sit in a room,

01:16:38 ◼   ► and someone gets up on stage and does a live performance

01:16:41 ◼   ► of kind of like those things you're seeing on video,

01:16:44 ◼   ► and during that, you're sitting in an audience

01:16:46 ◼   ► next to other developers, some of which you may know, some of which you may not, so that

01:16:49 ◼   ► there's an interaction you can have there with your neighbors, talking about things

01:16:52 ◼   ► that you're seeing.

01:16:54 ◼   ► When the thing is over, it is possible in many cases to go up and talk to the person

01:16:57 ◼   ► who just gave that presentation to ask them a question or two, and then you go out into

01:17:02 ◼   ► the hall where other people who went to see other sessions are milling about and talk

01:17:05 ◼   ► to them about what they saw as you're on your way to your other session.

01:17:09 ◼   ► All that experience isn't there when you're sitting around watching a video with somebody.

01:17:13 ◼   ► You can't talk to the people in the video about it.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Everyone's watching the same thing,

01:17:17 ◼   ► there's not multiple tracks, right?

01:17:18 ◼   ► You're not interacting, you're not forced,

01:17:20 ◼   ► but you're not constantly bumping into other developers

01:17:23 ◼   ► and talking to them about stuff and forming social groups

01:17:25 ◼   ► and going to lunch with them and talking about the sessions.

01:17:28 ◼   ► What sessions did you do?

01:17:29 ◼   ► What sessions did you go to?

01:17:30 ◼   ► Again, I'm not saying that's the reason

01:17:31 ◼   ► the current thing is bad, it's just different, right?

01:17:34 ◼   ► And so when I say what you got is,

01:17:36 ◼   ► you go there in person, you kind of apple park tourism,

01:17:38 ◼   ► you're just physically not doing the same things

01:17:40 ◼   ► that you do at normal WWDC.

01:17:42 ◼   ► You're not going from session to session,

01:17:44 ◼   ► watching things, talking to people, you know,

01:17:46 ◼   ► it's just different, right?

01:17:47 ◼   ► Now you do get to interact with Apple people,

01:17:49 ◼   ► there was no Slack in the old ones,

01:17:50 ◼   ► you couldn't ask questions, how many people could,

01:17:52 ◼   ► you know, who are you actually sitting next to,

01:17:54 ◼   ► how many people actually went to the front of the room,

01:17:55 ◼   ► like there's obviously limited bandwidth,

01:17:57 ◼   ► the reason the new approach is better overall,

01:18:00 ◼   ► but it is different.

01:18:01 ◼   ► So when I say what happened wasn't WWC,

01:18:04 ◼   ► I mean what happened wasn't what used to happen

01:18:06 ◼   ► at the old in-person WWC, it was very different,

01:18:08 ◼   ► that like, you know, one day or whatever it is,

01:18:11 ◼   ► one or two days of touring the fitness center

01:18:13 ◼   ► and seeing a big video on the screen with everybody,

01:18:15 ◼   ► it's much more like going to the keynote,

01:18:17 ◼   ► but less like going to a normal day of WWDC

01:18:19 ◼   ► where you're picking which sessions you're gonna go to

01:18:21 ◼   ► and sitting next to people and talking with your friends

01:18:23 ◼   ► who went to different sessions.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - And don't even forget all the community events,

01:18:26 ◼   ► like when we recorded live and the talk show live,

01:18:28 ◼   ► which I guess happened to a degree this year.

01:18:31 ◼   ► - If you're one of the lucky 180 people

01:18:33 ◼   ► that fit in that room.

01:18:34 ◼   ► - Well, still, I mean, it's still a thing.

01:18:36 ◼   ► And then there was like Layers that was across the street

01:18:38 ◼   ► and Alt Conf that was often nearby.

01:18:40 ◼   ► - I mean, and the new thing, the theater,

01:18:41 ◼   ► Gruber had to talk to 180 people as opposed to like 2000 or whatever the

01:18:46 ◼   ► whole theater held. You know what I mean?

01:18:47 ◼   ► But that's my point, right? Is that, you know, talk show is different, but,

01:18:50 ◼   ► you know, you didn't see us per- I almost said performing, which I guess is true,

01:18:53 ◼   ► but recording live and you didn't see, you know, any of the relay shows recording live.

01:18:58 ◼   ► You know, you typically would see Connected having a live episode. And so there's so much

01:19:02 ◼   ► community stuff that happened around WWDC. So even if you weren't going to WWDC proper,

01:19:08 ◼   ► it was still a fairly enjoyable time to just go and hang out with everyone,

01:19:12 ◼   ► especially in San Jose because there were like two decent places to hang out.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Now there's one.

01:19:17 ◼   ► It wasn't hard. Yeah. Now there's just one. But anyways, no, that,

01:19:21 ◼   ► that is very helpful. Thank you, John. Wade Trageskas writes,

01:19:25 ◼   ► I just listened to episode 50 of the Real AFM crossover podcast,

01:19:28 ◼   ► the iMac Pro with Marco Arment and Jason Snell,

01:19:30 ◼   ► and was startled to hear Marco describe the then situation as quote,

01:19:33 ◼   ► an embarrassment of riches quote,

01:19:35 ◼   ► in light of the release of the iMac Pro and the promise of a real new second coming Mac Pro.

01:19:40 ◼   ► It also reminded me that it's been over five years since Apple's little "public come to Jesus" moment

01:19:44 ◼   ► with the trash can and the Mac Pros. I'm curious how Marco feels about all that in hindsight. Are

01:19:49 ◼   ► we now living in a gilded age for Macintosh professionals, or was it more of a case of a

01:19:53 ◼   ► reality distortion than reality? I suppose the timing is perfectly imperfect. Next week is WWDC

01:20:00 ◼   ► week, as Wade wrote this, and it marks the climax of Apple's about two years promise for the ARM

01:20:04 ◼   ► transition will we see a new Mac Pro will it be everything we hope for will

01:20:07 ◼   ► we achieve the coveted three out of three HP hosts own it award please make

01:20:11 ◼   ► your prediction so I guess that's all unnecessary so you can cut that Marco

01:20:14 ◼   ► hey buddy I left that in there purpose was the this is an older question or

01:20:17 ◼   ► whatever but this is what people were thinking before WWDC obviously no Mac

01:20:21 ◼   ► Pro at WWDC so the question still stands yeah so I predict at WWDC that we will

01:20:26 ◼   ► get the reveal of the Mac Pro they will definitely tell us what it is they'll

01:20:30 ◼   ► It'll detail it and it'll be available

01:20:31 ◼   ► to order later this year.