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399: Off the Pouch Lifestyle

 

00:00:00   I've had a terrible week for technology.

00:00:02   - Oh, tell me more.

00:00:04   - A few episodes ago, I described my choice

00:00:07   to not get another Synology for the beach,

00:00:11   but instead, just get a couple of large SSDs

00:00:15   in an external USB enclosure,

00:00:17   and just use them as local disks,

00:00:19   and host Time Machine for that and everything.

00:00:21   - I gotta interrupt you, are you in a mental place

00:00:23   where I'm allowed to laugh at you for your misfortune,

00:00:26   or are you in need of me to be sympathetic

00:00:29   and understanding?

00:00:31   - I have almost ordered a Synology

00:00:33   to fix the problem that I'm having.

00:00:35   - Well, you're really trying me.

00:00:36   - I'm not quite there yet.

00:00:37   - You're really trying me here.

00:00:38   Okay, I'm gonna try to be good.

00:00:40   - To answer your question, you are totally allowed

00:00:42   to gloat about how right now, my solution

00:00:46   is not working well.

00:00:48   - All right, so all kidding aside, what's going on?

00:00:50   - So, I got these big SSDs in.

00:00:54   I had some weirdness where sometimes

00:00:57   they would unmount themselves,

00:01:00   or sometimes, after the first Time Machine backup,

00:01:04   it took a while, and after the first Time Machine backup,

00:01:07   I started getting errors that they couldn't complete

00:01:10   another backup, and the errors would report

00:01:13   some kind of weird file system problem,

00:01:16   and so I would run the disk repair healing thing,

00:01:19   and it would fail.

00:01:20   Like, okay, well that's good.

00:01:22   So I tried blowing away the partition,

00:01:25   start over, erase the whole disk, start over,

00:01:29   start Time Machine again, and it couldn't even complete

00:01:33   a whole backup.

00:01:34   It would just stall for a while and eventually fail.

00:01:37   Or there's this weird step of Time Machine

00:01:39   where after you do, it seems like after you do

00:01:41   a first Time Machine backup, it then tries to encrypt

00:01:45   the whole disk for some reason.

00:01:47   This is all still on Catalina, by the way.

00:01:49   It wouldn't get through that process.

00:01:51   It would just stall, and so I eventually concluded,

00:01:54   okay, it's very possible that these SSDs are already bad,

00:01:58   or at least one of them is.

00:01:59   Which, I know there are these Micron 7.68 terabyte SSDs.

00:02:04   They're a very low price for that capacity,

00:02:08   but it's still not a low price, in absolute terms.

00:02:12   So this is a decent amount of money at stake,

00:02:15   and for SSDs that are just outside of the Amazon

00:02:19   return window, so I'd have to deal with Micron directly,

00:02:22   which I don't wanna have to do that.

00:02:24   - What kind of case are they in, though?

00:02:26   That's the thing that I would suspect,

00:02:27   'cause you have the two separate sticks,

00:02:29   but they're being joined by a hardware RAID 0 thing?

00:02:33   - It joined in this kind of Cable Matters box

00:02:36   that Cable Matters doesn't appear to make,

00:02:38   'cause a few other sellers on Amazon sell

00:02:39   the exact same box, and they're their brand names

00:02:41   for the same price.

00:02:42   And it has a hardware RAID thing on it,

00:02:45   but I have the RAID disabled, so they just appear

00:02:47   as two separate disks.

00:02:49   But I also thought, maybe it's the enclosure.

00:02:52   That's certainly where my mind went first.

00:02:56   - Wait, but you're using them as two separate disks,

00:02:58   but which one of the two are you targeting

00:03:00   with Time Machine?

00:03:01   - Only one of them.

00:03:02   The other one was my big archive drive.

00:03:05   But fortunately, I haven't put anything on it yet.

00:03:07   - Did you try the other one with Time Machine?

00:03:09   - I probably should have attempted that.

00:03:11   No is the answer, I didn't.

00:03:12   - Anyway, what did Micron say?

00:03:15   - Well, I didn't go to them yet,

00:03:16   'cause first I figured, well, let me order

00:03:19   a couple of cheap enclosures that are just single disk,

00:03:21   regular enclosures, just so I can rule out,

00:03:23   is the enclosure being buggy?

00:03:25   As I'm working on that, as I have no Time Machine,

00:03:29   Tiff's laptop dies.

00:03:31   - Oh, I heard about that.

00:03:33   That was the overheating thing, right?

00:03:35   - I don't know if it was overheating.

00:03:37   However, as part of the, so the symptom is,

00:03:40   just would not power on, no matter what you did.

00:03:43   No matter what kind of crazy key commands,

00:03:45   what kind of crazy SMC resets and PM whatever resets

00:03:49   and all the, like, reset the T to,

00:03:51   every possible thing that we could think of to do,

00:03:54   none of it would make this computer turn on.

00:03:57   Followed every single possible thing.

00:03:58   And after a while of doing some of these things,

00:04:03   Tiff's like, oh my god, I smell burning plastic.

00:04:06   - Oh no.

00:04:07   - And sure enough, out of the right side vent,

00:04:12   it was the distinct smell of burnt electronics.

00:04:14   You know, like, I don't know if it's like a burnt capacitor

00:04:16   or what, but it's like, it's the smell

00:04:17   of a dead power supply.

00:04:18   - Don't smell that.

00:04:19   - Yeah, oh yeah, we didn't take a big long sniff.

00:04:22   Yeah, it's the distinctive smell of a dead power supply

00:04:27   or something, coming from inside the laptop.

00:04:29   We're like, oh, okay.

00:04:30   - I would have worried that it was a battery fire situation.

00:04:32   - We did, and in fact, we brought it outside,

00:04:35   holding it over a pit of sand while I continued

00:04:39   to try to get it to power on,

00:04:40   just in case it would catch additional fire.

00:04:42   - Wait, is that a butterfly keyboard?

00:04:44   - It sure is.

00:04:46   - Because sand is its mortal enemy.

00:04:47   - Yes, I thought of that as well.

00:04:50   - What a fitting end.

00:04:51   - Of course it's the butterfly keyboard.

00:04:53   This freaking keyboard.

00:04:55   So anyway, so Tiff's laptop is totally dead.

00:05:00   This laptop is only like 15 months old.

00:05:03   It's the 2019 15 inch, the very last butterfly keyboard,

00:05:08   15 inch.

00:05:09   - It just couldn't bear to go on.

00:05:13   - Yeah, exactly.

00:05:14   So that, and guess what?

00:05:16   We bought it last year, and my standard policy

00:05:20   is I don't buy AppleCare on most things.

00:05:24   This is the very first time it's ever really bitten me hard.

00:05:28   - Well, did it bite you?

00:05:29   'Cause now you get to get one with a good keyboard.

00:05:31   - So we look at this and we're like, okay,

00:05:32   well, this computer is a $2,300-ish a year ago computer

00:05:41   that we don't want it to be worth nothing now.

00:05:44   - I don't think people usually don't buy them

00:05:46   on the used market once the magic smoke has escaped.

00:05:48   - Yes, exactly.

00:05:50   And we figured it would probably not cost $2,300

00:05:53   to repair it out of warranty, and sure enough, it didn't.

00:05:57   Apple repaired it for something like $750.

00:06:00   It's on its way back to us now.

00:06:01   We'll see if it's actually repaired.

00:06:02   God, I hope so.

00:06:03   - Mm-hmm, did they tell you what they thought

00:06:06   was wrong with it?

00:06:07   - No, it's funny, actually.

00:06:09   Again, I've never actually seen an Apple paid repair process

00:06:14   for a computer.

00:06:15   I don't think I've ever actually done a paid repair.

00:06:18   - They'll give you a parts and labor kind of breakdown

00:06:20   at the end of it.

00:06:21   - Anyway, so that also happened.

00:06:25   Thank God for Backblaze, 'cause we didn't have

00:06:29   Time Machine during this. (laughs)

00:06:32   So we had no Time Machine, 'cause my Time Machine disk died.

00:06:36   TIFF's laptop then died.

00:06:39   And then my laptop, it worked in the sense

00:06:44   that it was running the Big Sur beta, and it functioned.

00:06:49   But now my laptop has to then take over

00:06:52   and be two people's laptop.

00:06:55   And we had been using TIFFs for a few things

00:06:57   because none of my audio apps work yet on Big Sur.

00:07:01   And so we had to keep a Catalina laptop

00:07:06   operating in the house, so we still needed that.

00:07:09   So it's like, okay, well we still kinda need

00:07:10   a Catalina laptop.

00:07:12   I'm not gonna go buy a new one now,

00:07:15   like right before the ARM transition,

00:07:17   since it's a terrible time. (laughs)

00:07:19   So I'm not gonna buy something now.

00:07:22   There is no way I can rationalize it.

00:07:23   Like, oh, well if I buy some new thing I want,

00:07:25   then we can sell TIFFs when it gets back.

00:07:27   Like, there's no way to rationalize that right now.

00:07:29   This is a terrible time.

00:07:31   So I'm like, all right, well let me,

00:07:34   I think the most pragmatic thing to do,

00:07:37   I was having a lot of problems with my laptop's

00:07:39   installation of Mac OS anyway.

00:07:42   And this is not necessarily Big Sur's fault.

00:07:44   I was having issues under Catalina.

00:07:46   Severe performance problems.

00:07:49   To the point where you kinda can't tell at first,

00:07:52   like is this like a hardware problem?

00:07:55   It's things like every keystroke I would type in mail

00:08:00   would bog down the system.

00:08:02   Or like changing the selection between things

00:08:05   in mail and other apps.

00:08:06   It was just slow.

00:08:08   It would take a while to load every new thing it was doing.

00:08:10   And it was just so much better, it was just slow.

00:08:13   And I would see, sometimes I would see problems

00:08:15   like what people have reported with,

00:08:16   I think it's accounts D.

00:08:18   This is a common issue coming up recently for a lot of people

00:08:20   where like some background demon in Catalina

00:08:23   would just use, and Big Sur,

00:08:25   would just use massive amounts of CPU power

00:08:27   for no apparent reason.

00:08:28   Whether it's like FS events D, or accounts D,

00:08:31   or other various things.

00:08:33   Certainly the, what's the privacy one?

00:08:35   TCC, something like that?

00:08:37   Whatever the privacy one is, that one too.

00:08:39   There were so many weird problems with installations.

00:08:42   I'm like, you know what, I've wanted for a while

00:08:44   to do a clean install on this laptop.

00:08:47   Now that we suddenly are in need of a laptop

00:08:50   that is not running this beta OS,

00:08:53   why don't I just revert it and do a clean install?

00:08:56   So I tackled that during this time,

00:08:59   because we really needed a laptop that was usable

00:09:02   so that Tiff could use it while hers was out for repair,

00:09:04   and that I could have my audio needs satisfied better

00:09:07   and get rid of this massive performance problem.

00:09:10   So going through all that now,

00:09:13   reinstalling all that stuff, and then,

00:09:15   oh, by the way, during this process,

00:09:17   the entire family got a virus.

00:09:20   Not the virus, but a virus.

00:09:22   A real life one, a like, you know,

00:09:23   kind of medium grade cold.

00:09:26   Not only was this not a good time

00:09:28   to lose time machine,

00:09:29   and not only was this not a good time

00:09:33   to need possibly another laptop,

00:09:37   this was especially not a good time to get a cold.

00:09:40   - Oh my word. - This is not

00:09:42   at all a time that you want to have a cold.

00:09:46   So in the middle of all this, we also have to,

00:09:50   like, first of all, freak out about whether this is a virus

00:09:53   or the virus, and then, to get our kid

00:09:56   to be able to go back to school,

00:09:58   we had to all get COVID tests.

00:10:00   So that was fun too. (laughs)

00:10:03   So it's been, negative, by the way,

00:10:06   but it's, whew, it's been a week.

00:10:10   - I have to congratulate you.

00:10:12   I don't know if that's what I'm looking for,

00:10:13   but I admire that you didn't somehow,

00:10:17   like Marco of just a year or two ago,

00:10:19   turn this, or end this story with,

00:10:21   and then I bought a Mac Pro.

00:10:23   Because some way, somehow, Marco of a year or two ago

00:10:25   would have ended this story with,

00:10:27   and then I bought a Mac Pro.

00:10:28   Would it have made sense?

00:10:29   No, but that was the Marco way.

00:10:31   And you didn't do that this time, so I'm very proud of you.

00:10:33   - I mean, I almost bought, like,

00:10:34   seven new laptops in the process.

00:10:36   - Yeah, I've got the pressure for,

00:10:38   we'll talk about this later when we talk about the Apple app,

00:10:40   but the pressure for a new laptop in this house is building,

00:10:42   and I keep fending them off, I'm like, just, no,

00:10:44   you said it would be the next Apple event.

00:10:45   It's like, no, maybe not this one,

00:10:46   but just, we're not buying another Intel laptop.

00:10:49   - Yeah, exactly, yeah, like,

00:10:51   if you really, really, really, really have to find,

00:10:53   and I was telling Titchfield, I'm like,

00:10:55   this is not a great time to need a replacement big laptop,

00:11:00   because the big ones might not be the first ones.

00:11:03   Like, it's my theory, maybe we'll get to this later,

00:11:05   but it's my theory that the Macs that need discrete GPUs

00:11:10   to be competitive in their category might be coming later.

00:11:14   Like, I don't think we're getting the discrete GPU category

00:11:18   of Macs going ARM first.

00:11:21   I think it's way more likely that the things

00:11:23   that go ARM first are Macs that historically

00:11:26   had only integrated GPUs.

00:11:27   So basically, the small laptops,

00:11:29   the cheapest iMac, and the Mac Mini.

00:11:31   But who knows?

00:11:33   - I'm sorry, that's no fun.

00:11:35   Although, I am more than a little bit amused

00:11:39   that the end of the story might involve

00:11:41   you buying a new Synology.

00:11:42   We have some follow-up.

00:11:45   We, largely me, but we, totally missed

00:11:52   on the Facebook versus Apple thing from last week.

00:11:55   So this was-- - Disagree.

00:11:57   - Okay, listeners, all of your angry email,

00:12:01   do not direct to me this time.

00:12:03   John is the one who's saying that we handled it okay.

00:12:05   So what we didn't have in our notes

00:12:09   and what I didn't talk about,

00:12:11   and what I think we should have talked about,

00:12:12   was the fact that the Apple takes 30% of this purchase

00:12:17   that was shown under a button on Facebook.

00:12:19   That was a button where you were paying an individual

00:12:24   or like a small company.

00:12:26   So like, I wanna go take an online fitness course

00:12:29   and so I can purchase access for $9.99

00:12:32   and then Apple takes 30% of this purchase, learn more.

00:12:34   Well, I had thought, reading our show notes

00:12:37   and not having spent enough time reading the article,

00:12:39   apparently, that Facebook was the one losing out on 30%.

00:12:43   And that was not correct.

00:12:46   What was actually happening was the local business

00:12:49   was the one losing out on the 30%

00:12:51   and Facebook was just trying to let you know,

00:12:52   hey, Apple's being a little greedy here.

00:12:55   They're taking 30% of this.

00:12:57   We're not taking anything, they're taking 30%.

00:13:00   And I grossly misunderstood that.

00:13:03   And furthermore, after a bunch of complaining and moaning

00:13:06   from a bunch of people about this very issue,

00:13:08   we missed last week, because this had happened

00:13:11   before we spoke about it,

00:13:12   Apple decided not to take that 30% cut after all,

00:13:14   at least for now.

00:13:16   So we did miss some important context there

00:13:20   and I, for one, am sorry about that.

00:13:22   John, explain why we're not wrong, apparently.

00:13:25   - I mean, you did complain about Facebook

00:13:28   in a few ways that were not fair, but here's the thing.

00:13:30   This is interesting that, remember this issue

00:13:32   where Apple replied about the 30% thing

00:13:34   and their reason was like, it goes against this guideline

00:13:38   that says you can't present the customers

00:13:39   with irrelevant information, right?

00:13:41   I feel like the whole situation

00:13:43   with how much money Facebook were taking

00:13:45   is mostly irrelevant information

00:13:47   in the context of how this item was presented.

00:13:49   Maybe not in the context of you guys are going on

00:13:52   and complaining about how mean Facebook was after that.

00:13:55   But anyway, this item from last week,

00:13:58   this was the point of the item.

00:14:00   Apple is telling Facebook not to tell the truth

00:14:03   about what Apple does, and that's a crappy thing

00:14:06   for Apple to do.

00:14:07   That was the item.

00:14:08   It was, hey, Apple doing something crappy.

00:14:10   Like, why shouldn't Facebook be able to tell the truth?

00:14:12   It's kind of shady, it's kind of crappy, right?

00:14:14   They should be able to stand

00:14:15   behind their business arrangement, it's bad, blah, blah, blah.

00:14:18   That was the story.

00:14:20   You would have thought from the feedback

00:14:22   that the story was Facebook is evil.

00:14:24   It was, no, Apple is the bad guy in the story, unequivocally.

00:14:27   The entire point of the thing was

00:14:29   Apple wouldn't let a developer say that they take 30%,

00:14:32   which was the truth at the time, right?

00:14:34   And isn't that crappy of Apple?

00:14:36   But the Facebook people came out of the woodworks

00:14:38   and say, how dare you be so mean to Facebook?

00:14:40   I'm like, and for the longest time, I'm like, wait, what?

00:14:42   Mean to Facebook?

00:14:44   No, we were telling you that Apple

00:14:45   was the bad guy in this story.

00:14:46   Then I listened back to the show and I heard

00:14:48   that some mean things were said about Facebook later,

00:14:50   which was unfair and we should have clarified

00:14:53   that this was just, that they were,

00:14:58   what Facebook was calling out Apple for was like,

00:15:01   don't blame us, but this is Apple doing this thing,

00:15:03   which is the point we kind of made is like,

00:15:05   look, Facebook's trying to turn sentiment against Apple

00:15:08   to say, look, it's not Facebook doing this mean thing.

00:15:11   Let me tell you exactly in print right underneath the button,

00:15:14   if you're worried that not all this money's

00:15:15   going to this thing, it's Apple's fault,

00:15:17   and which we agreed with, it was Apple's fault,

00:15:19   like that was their requirement or whatever, right?

00:15:21   And so that part of the story was also true,

00:15:23   but it seems like all anyone heard in the story

00:15:25   was Facebook is mean, which I don't understand at all, so.

00:15:28   - Well, anyway, in all fairness,

00:15:30   we were missing some critical context,

00:15:34   but also Facebook is a horrible company.

00:15:36   Both things can be true.

00:15:38   - We can't have another barrage

00:15:41   of that feedback, Marco.

00:15:42   Stop saying mean things about Facebook.

00:15:43   They're innocent.

00:15:44   Yeah, no, I feel like it is irrelevant information.

00:15:46   Like, yes, this was about a live event,

00:15:48   and Facebook wasn't taking any money and giving it all,

00:15:50   and aren't they nice and magnanimous,

00:15:52   and Apple was the meanie,

00:15:53   which lends itself to the point of the story,

00:15:55   which was Apple was being stupid and/or mean, right?

00:15:57   That was the point.

00:15:58   It wasn't, you know, that, hey, Apple's taking this money

00:16:02   and not even letting Facebook explain what's happening, so.

00:16:06   There we go, and yeah, Apple did back down,

00:16:08   although Apple backed down temporarily.

00:16:10   We'll put a link in the show notes to a story about this.

00:16:12   It seems like Apple has not committed

00:16:13   to forever allow this to happen.

00:16:15   Apple is just saying, oh, for now, we won't take the 30%,

00:16:19   but it seems like they reserve the right to later to say,

00:16:21   you know what, we want that 30% again.

00:16:23   - I gotta tell you,

00:16:25   we get a preposterous amount of feedback for the show,

00:16:29   which usually is very good,

00:16:31   and that means people are listening,

00:16:32   people care, and that's wonderful.

00:16:34   But when you read a pile of feedback

00:16:37   and it's defending Facebook.

00:16:40   - No, no, you're digging yourself into gig case.

00:16:43   You remember, everyone's all friendly to Facebook.

00:16:45   They're banning QAnon, they're stopping political ads

00:16:47   after the election, which makes very little sense.

00:16:49   But no, we're only saying nice things about Facebook.

00:16:51   - Speak for yourself.

00:16:52   I agree to nothing.

00:16:54   Facebook is terrible.

00:16:55   - Sorry, sorry, Facebook fans, I tried.

00:16:57   - I didn't.

00:16:58   - All I'm saying is that it was an uncomfortable position

00:16:59   to be in.

00:17:00   I'm not saying I was right, I'm just saying my word.

00:17:02   When everyone's coming to the defense of Facebook,

00:17:05   it makes you wonder what on earth did you do wrong?

00:17:07   - Yeah, no, I was wondering about it,

00:17:09   because like I said, it was baffling to me.

00:17:11   It was like, when did we say something mean about Facebook

00:17:13   other than the normal sort of baseline level

00:17:15   of our joint hatred of Facebook,

00:17:17   which were, you know, it's unspoken most of the time.

00:17:19   By the way, incidentally, in the last episode,

00:17:21   I recorded a rec diffs.

00:17:22   I also complained about Facebook a lot.

00:17:23   So if you'd love to hear me say mean things about Facebook,

00:17:25   that's another podcast you can listen to.

00:17:28   Anyway, in the context of the story

00:17:30   about how Apple is mean and dumb

00:17:31   for not letting people tell the truth about their cut,

00:17:34   the information about how Facebook was being magnanimous

00:17:37   and letting all the proceeds of this thing

00:17:38   go to the live event thing is irrelevant information,

00:17:40   but it is true, so now we have said it on the program.

00:17:44   And Apple can't stop us.

00:17:45   - Wow.

00:17:46   Jordan Ryan Moore writes to tell us

00:17:48   that merchants have been allowed to add surcharges

00:17:50   for credit card transactions since January of 2013.

00:17:54   - Yeah, this was my fault. - I don't need all

00:17:55   the details in this, but I heard two things

00:17:57   about this from the feedback.

00:17:58   One was this bit about how there was a lawsuit

00:18:00   and people wanted to be able to charge different amounts

00:18:03   and, you know, all that stuff.

00:18:04   And the other thing was that there was actually a law passed

00:18:06   to make it so that credit card companies

00:18:08   weren't allowed to require this,

00:18:09   and I'm not sure if they're both true

00:18:11   or if they both combined or they both did the same thing,

00:18:13   but it seems like that old rule

00:18:17   about not being allowed to charge two different prices

00:18:21   and basically making the vendor eat the cost

00:18:24   of the credit card transaction,

00:18:25   they can't sort of pass it on to their customer,

00:18:27   is no longer in effect.

00:18:28   And the thing I forgot to mention on the last show

00:18:29   about this was that Apple used to do the same thing

00:18:32   back in the day.

00:18:33   I also don't remember the details of this,

00:18:34   but remember a time when Apple said,

00:18:36   oh, you can sell a thing on the web

00:18:38   and also an in-app purchase,

00:18:39   but they have to be the same price?

00:18:41   - That was a very short-lived thing

00:18:43   that everyone talks about,

00:18:45   as though it was a much longer-lived thing.

00:18:47   - Yeah, like they stopped doing it,

00:18:49   probably for the same reason,

00:18:50   that like, you know, people said, well, come on, right?

00:18:53   But we remember it so much because it was so audacious.

00:18:56   It's like, you're gonna charge 30% and then say,

00:19:00   you know, you can't pass that on to the customer

00:19:02   'cause it puts us at a disadvantage?

00:19:03   Again, it's kind of like telling the truth.

00:19:05   Like, look, Apple is taking a bite out of this.

00:19:07   If you buy it from the web, you can get it cheaper

00:19:09   because Apple's bite isn't there, right?

00:19:11   And that was something that Apple didn't want conveyed.

00:19:14   In the same way, the credit card makers didn't want people,

00:19:16   it's like, oh, if I pay for a credit card, it's 1% more?

00:19:19   Well, I'm gonna pay with cash then, right?

00:19:21   I think the credit card thing lasted a lot longer

00:19:23   than the App Store thing,

00:19:24   but the instinct is the same to try to hide the fact

00:19:28   that you are taking a bite out of somebody's,

00:19:31   you know, income, real-time follow-up

00:19:34   'cause I don't wanna get email about this.

00:19:35   According to this article that we will link in the show notes

00:19:37   which may be a bit old, 10 states have laws

00:19:39   restricting any type of surcharge fees,

00:19:41   California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Maine,

00:19:44   Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas.

00:19:46   So as with anything in these United States,

00:19:49   things tend to vary from state to state,

00:19:52   even things that you might not expect,

00:19:53   like rules about how much you can charge

00:19:55   when someone uses a credit card.

00:19:58   And furthermore, I would love to hear an update

00:20:01   on Adam's watch battery, please.

00:20:03   - Oh, yeah, so I said last week

00:20:05   that after the very first day of school

00:20:07   with Adam's family set up independent watch,

00:20:10   that he only had like 33% battery left.

00:20:14   Second day was way better.

00:20:16   The main difference is on the second day,

00:20:19   so not only is it just like not the first full day of use

00:20:23   so that any kind of like background process

00:20:26   that the system is doing with a new OS install,

00:20:29   like that had time to complete

00:20:30   if that was ever a thing on watchOS,

00:20:32   but also on day two, I changed the watch

00:20:35   from raise to wake to tap to wake only.

00:20:39   So this is like, you know,

00:20:40   so it doesn't just respond to wrist turning

00:20:43   and turn the screen on,

00:20:44   you have to tap the screen to turn it on.

00:20:46   And as a result of that change

00:20:48   and whatever time has passed,

00:20:51   now the typical school day ends around 60 to 70% battery

00:20:55   instead of 30% battery.

00:20:57   And so battery life right now

00:20:59   seems to no longer be a concern.

00:21:02   So, so far, so good.

00:21:04   And we remain very happy with the functionality

00:21:07   of the family set up Apple Watch.

00:21:10   - Moving on, Nathaniel writes

00:21:11   with regard to cell tower trees,

00:21:13   I work in finance for a very large cell phone tower company.

00:21:16   The fake trees are almost always a local zoning rule.

00:21:18   The local government thinks they look better

00:21:20   than past rules mandating their use for any tower.

00:21:23   Those fake branches do break off in the wind,

00:21:25   which requires maintenance.

00:21:26   The fake pine trees are just the tip

00:21:28   of the quote unquote stealth structures.

00:21:30   I've seen palm trees, cacti, flag poles, church steeples,

00:21:32   faux water tanks, street lights, repurposed smoke stacks,

00:21:36   faux modern art installations, et cetera.

00:21:38   You're also correct that the more rich the area,

00:21:42   general speaking--

00:21:42   - Oh, just do it, come on.

00:21:44   - No, I will not.

00:21:46   - You can do it, I believe in you.

00:21:47   You can take multiple runs at it

00:21:49   and Marco will put the right one in during the other.

00:21:50   - No, no, I'm not even gonna do it.

00:21:53   - The less receptive the town is to having cell towers.

00:21:55   The most likely place in those instances

00:21:57   where a town might have a tower is on the DPW's

00:22:00   Department for Public Works, is that right?

00:22:01   - Department of Public Works, yeah.

00:22:02   - Or Police Station Property,

00:22:04   and then the tower company provides space

00:22:05   to the municipal service for their radios.

00:22:08   - Yeah, I love the idea of making fake trees

00:22:10   and then having to pay as the limbs break off

00:22:13   because, you know, first of all,

00:22:14   limbs fall off real trees all the time,

00:22:16   and second of all, real trees are surprisingly sturdy

00:22:19   as compared to manmade ones and surprisingly resilient

00:22:22   when it comes to wind, so it's kind of inevitable

00:22:25   that all these sort of useless cosmetic only things,

00:22:28   like you're basically making a bunch of things

00:22:29   to catch the wind that serve no functional purpose

00:22:32   but absolutely will bend and break off in the wind,

00:22:35   and now you have something else that you need to do,

00:22:36   maintain your hideously ugly tree.

00:22:39   We got a lot, one batch of good feedback we got

00:22:41   from last show was tons of people sending us pictures

00:22:44   of hilarious cell phone trees,

00:22:46   and I did see a couple of cacti in there

00:22:49   and weird palm trees and pine trees

00:22:52   and just you name it, cell towers are everywhere

00:22:55   except near rich people.

00:22:57   - And I'm sorry, if you didn't wanna say rich,

00:23:00   what else could you say?

00:23:01   - Affluent.

00:23:02   - I was just thinking about it,

00:23:03   and I was gonna go the other direction,

00:23:05   so I'm glad I didn't say anything.

00:23:06   - I know, you just need to get that pathway,

00:23:11   you know, it's like an e-fuse.

00:23:13   I've been reading too much about consoles.

00:23:15   You know what an e-fuse is?

00:23:16   - No.

00:23:17   - This kind of blows my mind.

00:23:18   Electronic fuses inside CPUs, right?

00:23:22   It's like a fuse, just like a regular fuse,

00:23:24   but it's inside the CPU and you can blow it at any time

00:23:27   with software essentially,

00:23:28   and then once it's blown, it's blown, right?

00:23:29   - What? - What?

00:23:30   - And when-- - Wait, what?

00:23:32   - I forget which of the Xboxes,

00:23:34   maybe it was the 360, maybe it was the most recent one,

00:23:36   but anyway, they used e-fuses to,

00:23:39   they would blow e-fuses with updates

00:23:41   to prevent you from being able to revert

00:23:43   to a previous version.

00:23:44   - Oh, wow. - What?

00:23:46   - So how many e-fuses are there?

00:23:48   - I don't know how many, but it's like,

00:23:50   that's the pulling out the big guns to try.

00:23:52   And of course, it never actually stops piracy.

00:23:54   Like the pirates are incredibly clever

00:23:56   and they find a way around it, but it just makes it harder.

00:23:58   Sony did not do this apparently, but Microsoft did.

00:24:00   I'm like, man, can you imagine the pressure

00:24:02   of like accidentally bricking or screwing something up

00:24:05   when you know you're literally blowing tiny hardware fuses

00:24:08   inside people's consoles when they update?

00:24:10   It's terrifying.

00:24:11   - I'm also told a real-time follow-up from Jelly

00:24:13   that the Switch also has e-fuses apparently.

00:24:15   - Yeah, try not to think about this type of stuff.

00:24:19   - Man, that's weird.

00:24:20   All right, moving on.

00:24:22   With regard to an Ask ATP question from last week

00:24:25   and baby monitors, I had recommended the Infant Optics DVR

00:24:30   something, something, I forget exactly what it was.

00:24:31   It's in the show notes from last week.

00:24:33   We had a handful of people write in,

00:24:35   including a friend of the show,

00:24:36   Dan Provost from Studio Neat,

00:24:38   recommending the Wirecutter pick,

00:24:40   which is the, I guess, Eufy Space View.

00:24:43   And Dan writes, "I had the same Infant Optics monitor

00:24:45   "as Casey for our first baby,

00:24:46   "but we decided to treat ourselves to a new one

00:24:49   "for our new baby.

00:24:50   "We went with the Wirecutter pick, the Eufy,

00:24:51   "and it is significantly better in every way

00:24:53   "except the kickstand, just in case you are directing

00:24:55   "your parents to a baby monitor.

00:24:57   "They definitely want the Eufy and not the Infant Optics,

00:24:59   "which had a good run but is outdated.

00:25:01   "Also, I fully agree with Marco.

00:25:02   "I would never want an S-style solution,

00:25:04   "even if the quality and latency were flawless,

00:25:06   "just too annoying to be constantly opening an app

00:25:08   "versus having a constant monitor."

00:25:11   So yeah, the Eufy, from what I understand,

00:25:13   is somebody who gave a crap designed a baby monitor.

00:25:16   It is not flawless.

00:25:18   The kickstand, I guess, sucks.

00:25:19   It looks like the Nintendo Switch kickstand,

00:25:20   which definitely sucks.

00:25:22   There's also no lights.

00:25:24   Like, the Infant Optics has a series of LEDs

00:25:26   that will light up, so you can have the monitor screen off.

00:25:29   You can have the volume off.

00:25:30   You can still get a level of how much volume

00:25:33   there is in the room.

00:25:34   The Eufy doesn't have that.

00:25:36   But apparently, in every other way, it's actually modern,

00:25:40   whereas the Infant Optics one is clearly out of the mid-2010s.

00:25:45   And coincidentally, the Eufy Space View came out

00:25:48   like six months after Michaela was born.

00:25:51   And so that's why I was not at all aware of it.

00:25:53   But if you haven't yet bought a monitor,

00:25:55   I've heard and would recommend the Eufy Space View,

00:26:00   because apparently it is very good.

00:26:02   - I feel like these are all tongue twisters.

00:26:03   - Yeah, they really are.

00:26:04   - What Casey was saying was infant, as in a baby infant,

00:26:07   infant optics, right?

00:26:10   So that's the first one, infant optics.

00:26:11   That's infant space optics.

00:26:13   And then Eufy is E-U-F-Y,

00:26:16   which apparently is the smart home sub-brand of Anchor,

00:26:20   someone in the chat room says.

00:26:21   - Oh, I didn't know that.

00:26:22   - Oh, yeah.

00:26:23   - E-U-F-Y, there you go.

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00:28:11   Make a name for yourself with Hover.

00:28:13   - Is this the time, and I'm asking not sarcastically,

00:28:20   is this the time that we do the report card

00:28:21   year in review thing that Marco came up with

00:28:23   a few years ago, or am I crazy?

00:28:24   - Exit interview, he used to call it.

00:28:26   - That's what it was.

00:28:27   Thank you.

00:28:28   I knew report card wasn't right.

00:28:28   I couldn't think of what the name of it was.

00:28:30   Thank you.

00:28:31   Exit interview.

00:28:31   We're obviously referring to,

00:28:33   there's gonna be an Apple event on this coming Tuesday.

00:28:36   I don't know what day, what is that?

00:28:37   The 13th, lucky number 13.

00:28:39   There'll be an Apple event.

00:28:40   And so this is the last week before our iPhones,

00:28:45   our current iPhones are pieces of utter garbage.

00:28:47   And so now is the time to do the iPhone 11 Pro report card.

00:28:52   John, what--

00:28:54   - Exit interview.

00:28:55   - Sorry, exit interview.

00:28:56   See, we gotta change in the show notes.

00:28:57   I'm like Ron Burgundy, for goodness sakes.

00:29:00   So anyways, so John, what are you on?

00:29:03   Are you on a 10 or an 11 Pro?

00:29:06   - 10S.

00:29:07   My wife has the 11 Pro.

00:29:09   - Okay.

00:29:10   So I am on the 11 Pro.

00:29:12   Marco, you're on an 11 Pro as well, right?

00:29:14   - I sure am.

00:29:15   - Okay.

00:29:16   So I still love this darn phone.

00:29:20   The one major complaint I have about it

00:29:24   is that I feel like,

00:29:26   I think I talked about this on the show,

00:29:27   I feel like this screen has been scratched to smithereens.

00:29:32   And it is probably my fault.

00:29:36   I'm not saying it's not my fault.

00:29:37   But it is scratched so badly in so many places,

00:29:41   so much worse than any other phone I've ever had.

00:29:44   And I treat it the same way I've treated every iPhone

00:29:47   since the 3GS, which was my first.

00:29:50   It is scratched to death.

00:29:53   Marco, do you find the same thing on your phone?

00:29:55   - I actually haven't had that problem on the 11.

00:29:57   I did have that problem on,

00:29:59   I forget whether it was the 10 or the 10S.

00:30:01   One of them was the same problem for me,

00:30:04   where I didn't abuse it anymore or less than any other phone

00:30:07   but it just got scratched to hell for some reason,

00:30:08   like on the screen.

00:30:10   'Cause it's hard when you're designing the screen materials.

00:30:13   There's a lot of tension between various

00:30:16   physical characteristics to optimize for.

00:30:18   You know, if you optimize for scratch resistance,

00:30:21   that usually it makes it harder and more brittle

00:30:23   and more prone to cracks when people drop it.

00:30:26   And if you're being pragmatic about

00:30:29   how you're designing a phone,

00:30:31   I think you probably want to protect against

00:30:34   shattering when it's dropped

00:30:36   more than you want to protect against

00:30:38   minor scratchability from just the surface

00:30:41   being a little bit soft.

00:30:42   And even though that's worse for people like us

00:30:45   who don't drop our phones, it's much worse for us.

00:30:48   But if you're optimizing for the whole population,

00:30:50   I can see why you would make that decision.

00:30:52   - Sure, yeah.

00:30:53   And otherwise, I really, really love this phone.

00:30:57   I love the camera system.

00:30:59   I still think it looks a little quirky

00:31:02   having the three big lenses back there,

00:31:04   but as with the Notch, like within a couple of weeks,

00:31:07   I mostly have been able to ignore it.

00:31:10   The Notch also, I don't mind it at all.

00:31:13   And in fact, I remember when we were

00:31:16   all about to get our iPhone 10s that I thought,

00:31:18   oh, this is gonna bother me for a long time.

00:31:20   And it didn't.

00:31:20   So the Notch really doesn't bother me.

00:31:22   I do think it would be neat to have

00:31:25   one of the more circular pinhole style setups

00:31:27   like the Android phones have,

00:31:29   but I'm not going to complain if the iPhone 12

00:31:32   or whatever's coming next has a Notch as well.

00:31:34   I don't think it's a big deal.

00:31:36   But the camera system's great.

00:31:38   The phone is still fast.

00:31:40   I don't even know what size mine is,

00:31:42   but I'm not running out of space.

00:31:44   I love this thing with the exception of the

00:31:49   screen getting scratched to smithereens.

00:31:51   And I am really hopeful that the next one,

00:31:56   by the way, mine is a 256 gig model.

00:31:58   I'm really hoping that the next one

00:32:00   does indeed have the square sides like the rumors say,

00:32:03   because I don't mind the curved sides,

00:32:06   and it's not the most slippery phone

00:32:08   I've ever used in my life, but it is slippery.

00:32:11   And I feel like having those solid or straight sides,

00:32:15   flat sides would be extremely nice.

00:32:19   But I'm getting ahead of myself, I suppose.

00:32:21   I really, really love this phone,

00:32:24   and I am definitely getting a new one

00:32:27   because I'm a sucker, but I am not actively looking

00:32:32   to get rid of this one as much as I am actively looking

00:32:35   to get a new screen or a new glass on the screen,

00:32:38   which I could do to this,

00:32:39   but I would be without a phone for a little while.

00:32:41   Marco, other thoughts on the 11 Pro?

00:32:43   - Yeah, I think I agree with much

00:32:45   of what you've said about it.

00:32:49   One regression of the 11 Pro compared to the 10S,

00:32:52   in my opinion, is they changed the texturing on the back.

00:32:56   Like, the back of these phones have alternated

00:32:58   between almost like a sandblaster kind of textured finish

00:33:02   and a flat polished glass finish.

00:33:05   And on the 11, I believe, this is when they switched it,

00:33:08   used to be that the whole back of it was glossy,

00:33:10   and then the area around the camera cutout was matte.

00:33:14   And with the 11 series, the entire back was matte,

00:33:18   and the camera area was glossy.

00:33:19   What that did for me was make the phone impossible

00:33:23   to use without a case.

00:33:24   Like, the 10 and the 10S, I would occasionally,

00:33:27   like if I was wearing tight jeans, you know,

00:33:30   like my skinny pants, then I wouldn't want the bulk

00:33:35   of a giant case, or any giant phone really,

00:33:38   in my pocket and sort of minimize the bulk,

00:33:40   I would take the phone out of the case for a few days

00:33:43   and use it like that.

00:33:44   And with the 11, I cannot do that.

00:33:46   Like the 11 Pro, excuse me, I think the 11 actually,

00:33:50   the non-Pro I think actually flips it around

00:33:52   and actually fixes this.

00:33:53   Anyway, the Pro, I can't do that.

00:33:55   It's so slippery, I can't use this phone without a case.

00:33:59   And it's the first phone in a long time

00:34:01   that I can say that about.

00:34:03   Like usually, like ever since the 6 series,

00:34:07   I've been using cases just because the stupid,

00:34:08   you know, bar of soap sides design

00:34:11   made case use nearly inevitable.

00:34:14   But I could get by it with previous phones.

00:34:17   This one, I can't.

00:34:18   It's just, it's way too slippery.

00:34:20   So much more slippery than even the XS was.

00:34:23   So besides that, I am overall very satisfied with it,

00:34:28   but I really do wish for a lighter weight

00:34:33   and slightly smaller phone.

00:34:35   I'm very curious about the rumored,

00:34:37   like slightly smaller one, the five point something inch one.

00:34:41   Unless that phone has some kind of major,

00:34:43   like feature cut downsides,

00:34:46   I'll probably go for that this year.

00:34:48   Because this phone is just a little bit big

00:34:51   and a little bit heavy.

00:34:52   That being said, you know, the screen is great.

00:34:55   I love the screen when I'm using it,

00:34:57   you know, when I'm not just carrying it,

00:34:58   when I'm not trying to wedge it into a pocket

00:35:00   or move it around so it's not like all sticking out

00:35:03   weird as I walk.

00:35:04   But I just, I don't like how this phone feels in my pocket.

00:35:09   It's too big still.

00:35:11   It's not like super massive, like the Max,

00:35:14   but it's bigger than I would like.

00:35:16   So I'm really hoping for the smaller one.

00:35:19   I'm also hoping that if a smaller one comes,

00:35:22   that it doesn't sacrifice too much on battery life.

00:35:25   'Cause historically, part of the trade off

00:35:27   of bigger versus smaller phones,

00:35:30   is that the bigger phones get bigger batteries,

00:35:32   which does make them heavier, you know, admittedly.

00:35:35   But that's usually a pretty good feature of the big ones.

00:35:39   The 11 has such great battery life,

00:35:42   the 11 Pro rather, has such great battery life,

00:35:44   that if the smaller one that comes out allegedly next week

00:35:48   has significantly less battery life in practice,

00:35:51   that's gonna be disappointing.

00:35:52   But I think I'm still gonna probably go for the smaller one

00:35:54   unless like, if the camera's not anywhere near as good.

00:35:59   Now if I just lose the 2X lens,

00:36:01   but I still have like the regular and the wide,

00:36:04   I think I'd probably still take that trade off

00:36:05   and take the small one.

00:36:07   - Really?

00:36:07   - Yeah, I wouldn't have thought this a year ago,

00:36:11   but I actually have been using the wide

00:36:13   more than I've expected to,

00:36:16   and I've been using the 2X less than I expect to.

00:36:19   Maybe if I suddenly lost it,

00:36:21   I would realize I miss it more than I thought.

00:36:24   But I'm looking forward to a smaller phone,

00:36:27   and if it takes the loss of a 2X camera to get that,

00:36:32   and nothing else about it is really significantly worse,

00:36:35   then I will probably take that trade off.

00:36:38   Finally, again I know this is a long shot,

00:36:41   I really still want USB-C.

00:36:43   - Cosine.

00:36:44   - I am so tired of lightning,

00:36:47   because my house is full of wires and they're all different.

00:36:51   And I have to have different chargers and different wires,

00:36:54   and I gotta always know which cable,

00:36:55   just the entire world has moved to USB-C already.

00:36:59   Everything, like every accessory,

00:37:02   like everything is USB-C except the iPhone.

00:37:05   And I know there are reasons,

00:37:10   I will assert that those reasons are overruled

00:37:13   by the incredible benefit we would have

00:37:16   if the iPhone charged with USB-C.

00:37:19   So I really, really hope Apple will eventually do this.

00:37:23   I don't know if it's gonna happen this year,

00:37:27   or next year, or never,

00:37:29   but every single year I'm going to hope for it.

00:37:33   - Now I completely agree with you,

00:37:35   I would love to just simplify my life and go all USB-C.

00:37:39   I also agree with you,

00:37:41   I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon if at all.

00:37:43   I think we are way more likely to get a touch ID sensor

00:37:47   on the sleep/wake button or lock button,

00:37:49   whatever it's called, than we are USB-C.

00:37:51   And I'm not particularly confident

00:37:52   about either of those things to be honest,

00:37:54   but I am way more confident about touch ID than I am USB-C.

00:37:58   But I don't know, we'll see what happens.

00:38:00   So John, this is an on year for you, right?

00:38:04   So I presume you're looking to upgrade

00:38:06   to some sort of iPhone 12?

00:38:08   - Yeah, and since my wife has the 11 Pro,

00:38:09   I asked her to come down and bring me her phone

00:38:13   so I can look at it, check the screen for scratches

00:38:15   and stuff to verify Casey's situation.

00:38:18   And because she loves me and cares so much about this show,

00:38:20   she said, "How long do you need it?"

00:38:22   (laughing)

00:38:24   And I promised her it would only be a short amount of time.

00:38:26   Pokemon Go is a terrible thing, people.

00:38:28   Don't get addicted.

00:38:29   (laughing)

00:38:30   So I looked at her phone and there are definitely

00:38:32   more scratches than there are in my XS,

00:38:34   but she does not treat her phone like I treat mine.

00:38:37   She just throws it into her purse next to her keys.

00:38:40   She doesn't care, like just, it is,

00:38:43   she does things with her phone.

00:38:44   I don't understand how it's still in one piece, right?

00:38:46   - I mean, to be fair, nobody should treat their phone

00:38:49   the way you treat yours.

00:38:51   - I mean, that's another thing I want to get to.

00:38:53   So you mentioned people who don't drop our phones.

00:38:55   Like I've never broken an iPhone,

00:38:57   which maybe I'm getting lucky

00:38:58   or maybe I just take care of it,

00:39:00   but this phone and many of my other phones

00:39:02   have fallen from a height.

00:39:03   So for example, this phone, within its lifetime,

00:39:06   got knocked off of the mantle over my fireplace

00:39:09   because I was dusting and it was on the mantle, right?

00:39:12   So it's from a mantle, a pretty high fireplace mantle height

00:39:16   onto a hardwood floor, right?

00:39:18   And this is the XS, right?

00:39:19   And it didn't shatter, right?

00:39:20   And it's been knocked off my nightstand

00:39:22   who knows how many times when I'm groggy in the morning

00:39:24   reaching for it and knock it up,

00:39:25   but then it's just falling into carpet,

00:39:26   so it's not a big deal.

00:39:27   Although sometimes it falls into hardwood

00:39:29   depending on which side it falls off.

00:39:31   But the point is this thing has hit the ground.

00:39:32   It's just got the Apple leather case on it.

00:39:34   It's hit the ground from reasonable heights many times

00:39:36   as I either grew up for it or don't notice it's there

00:39:38   and accidentally knock it over, right?

00:39:40   And it hasn't shattered.

00:39:41   And this is the XS, right?

00:39:42   So this is the one with the ostensibly harder,

00:39:46   easier to shatter, but harder to scratch screen.

00:39:49   But anyway, I agree with Marco that I think

00:39:52   the trade-off of not shattering

00:39:53   is the right way to go with this.

00:39:55   So the 11 Pro, my wife does not take good care of it,

00:40:00   but I had to actually clean the screen

00:40:02   to really assess how many scratches there were

00:40:04   without me cleaning the screen off.

00:40:06   It's really hard to tell.

00:40:07   None of my scratches are so big

00:40:08   that I would even have noticed them

00:40:10   if I hadn't been looking for them.

00:40:11   So I don't think that's that big of a deal.

00:40:13   But yeah, this is my year for the phone,

00:40:15   and I haven't been keeping up with the rumors,

00:40:18   mostly because I figure, well, I don't know,

00:40:20   I figured everything would be fine.

00:40:22   I know all the rumors about the different sizes

00:40:24   and all that other stuff,

00:40:25   but the thing I had been wondering,

00:40:27   and I saw the supposed leaked flat-sided case

00:40:31   and everything I asked, but the thing I had been wondering

00:40:32   and I could never keep track of,

00:40:33   which is like, so if the two sizes,

00:40:36   I know there's supposed to be a smaller one,

00:40:38   but not as small as the SE, and then a bigger one,

00:40:41   but my question was always, okay,

00:40:43   but are any of them going to be the same size as my XS,

00:40:48   or what is going to be the one

00:40:50   that is closest in size to my XS, right?

00:40:53   And the reason I asked that is because I felt

00:40:55   like the SE was the right size.

00:40:57   I felt like the X was a little bit too big,

00:41:00   but now that I've had the X size for a while,

00:41:02   I'm like, okay, well, I appreciate the bigger screen,

00:41:05   and the size isn't so big that it really,

00:41:08   that it is too big for me.

00:41:10   So when I buy a new phone next time,

00:41:13   I don't think I want the small one,

00:41:15   because I kind of like having the screen as big as it is.

00:41:17   If it went back to the SE, that might be okay,

00:41:19   but then somebody, I'm assuming Casey,

00:41:21   has put a bunch of the rumored sizes in here,

00:41:23   and it seems like my only choice is

00:41:26   if I want to get the top-of-the-line phone

00:41:28   after the event next week is a phone

00:41:31   that is 3/10 of an inch bigger than my current phone.

00:41:35   - Right, and that's not a small difference.

00:41:37   Like, that puts it, I believe, at the same size

00:41:40   as like the XR line, right, the XR on base 11?

00:41:44   - I think that's right.

00:41:45   I didn't verify that, but I think you're right.

00:41:47   - Yeah, and so, like, and that's,

00:41:49   and I've handled that.

00:41:50   I've never used one, like, for more than a second in a store,

00:41:52   but like, you know, when I've handled them in the store,

00:41:54   I've had the same feeling of, like, you know, like,

00:41:56   again, like, when I use my 10/10S/11 Pro sized phone,

00:42:01   the 5.8 inch screen with the notch,

00:42:05   I've always thought, like, I can use this,

00:42:08   but I wish it were a little bit smaller.

00:42:11   And so now, the fact that they're going to make it

00:42:13   a little bit bigger, that's what's making me really

00:42:17   hope that that smaller phone is a real thing,

00:42:19   and that it's compelling in all other ways,

00:42:21   because I just am not excited about this phone

00:42:25   that is already a bit big for me getting a bit bigger.

00:42:28   - Yeah.

00:42:29   - Oh, and I have an update related to something

00:42:30   just mentioned in the chat room, pouch update.

00:42:33   (laughing)

00:42:34   You know about my phone pouch, right?

00:42:35   Well, so here, this is a side effect of COVID, right?

00:42:39   So COVID comes and everyone's in the house all the time,

00:42:41   and I'm never going anywhere, especially in the beginning,

00:42:42   like, really just never leaving the house, right?

00:42:45   And my sort of pattern of placement of stuff of, like,

00:42:49   here's where I keep all my things,

00:42:51   I have, like, my stuff that I go to work with,

00:42:52   and just everything arranged in a particular place,

00:42:54   the stuff that I go to work with eventually

00:42:56   just got put away, because I realized, well,

00:42:57   I'm not going into work anytime soon,

00:42:59   so I'm just gonna put that stuff away.

00:43:01   So the pouch got put away, too, which is fine,

00:43:03   because the pouch, as we know, is only a thing

00:43:05   for when I go out of the house, but if I'm never

00:43:07   going out of the house, I'm never gonna use the pouch.

00:43:09   But eventually, the pouch got put so far away

00:43:12   that when I did go out of the house,

00:43:13   I'd go without the pouch.

00:43:14   I mean, just going on a dog walk or whatever.

00:43:18   - Oh, no.

00:43:19   - But I basically trained myself out of using the pouch

00:43:21   in the external world.

00:43:22   Part of it was because I'm like, well,

00:43:24   I'm gonna be getting rid of this phone soon anyway,

00:43:25   so what do I care, you know what I mean?

00:43:27   Like, although now that I've just examined the screen

00:43:29   after cleaning it, I realize there are still zero scratches

00:43:31   on my XS, so I still think I'm babying it.

00:43:34   Like, I would never put it next to a set of keys,

00:43:36   for example, but I may, we'll see how this goes.

00:43:39   I may be off the pouch lifestyle with my,

00:43:42   with this and my future phones.

00:43:43   It's hard to tell because we're still in COVID times

00:43:45   and I'm still technically not really going anywhere ever.

00:43:48   Right, so we'll see, but I think I may be out of the,

00:43:52   I still have the pouch and it still fits this phone,

00:43:55   but maybe I won't buy a new pouch for my new phone

00:43:57   and may be able to see how that goes.

00:43:58   - Wow. - You know,

00:43:59   since this is a safe space, I can admit to you that after,

00:44:04   I think I noticed a scratch or two

00:44:07   after one of the beach trips that I took with this phone,

00:44:11   and subsequent to that, there was a second beach trip

00:44:14   that I took and I actually employed a pouch

00:44:17   for the purposes of letting it rest in a beach bag

00:44:20   or in a tent or whatever, because I felt like,

00:44:23   I don't, I don't know if I would go so far as to say

00:44:25   I'd baby my phone, but I don't think,

00:44:28   with the exception of having dropped my first 11 Pro

00:44:31   on a cement driveway the day I got it,

00:44:33   after that, after that, I feel like I didn't do too badly

00:44:36   with it and I'm guessing that it was during storage

00:44:40   in a beach bag or something like that

00:44:41   that it ended up getting scratched up,

00:44:43   and so I did employ, just for the purpose of the beach bag,

00:44:47   I did employ a pouch and I don't think it made

00:44:49   any darn difference because I think the damage

00:44:51   had already been done, but here we are.

00:44:53   I was living the pouch lifestyle.

00:44:56   - The pouch was transferred from me to Casey.

00:44:58   - Yeah. (laughing)

00:45:00   I don't know which of you has won there.

00:45:02   - Yeah, well, me neither.

00:45:03   - Well, one of us has a scratch-free phone, so.

00:45:05   - Aw.

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00:46:38   (upbeat music)

00:46:41   - Real-time follow-up, the iPhone 11 is 6.1 inches.

00:46:46   The iPhone 11 Pro is either 5.8 inches,

00:46:50   which is what Marco and I are talking about,

00:46:52   or the big one is 6.5 inches.

00:46:55   So it's 5.8 for the 11 Pro, 6.1 for the 11,

00:46:59   6.5 for the other 11 Pro.

00:47:02   The 12 is rumored, the non-Pro 12 is rumored

00:47:05   to be 5.4 inches, so that's 4/10 smaller

00:47:09   than Marco's phone and my phone.

00:47:11   And the big one is rumored to be 6.1 inches,

00:47:15   which is 3/10 larger than Marco's and my phone.

00:47:19   And then the 12 Pro is going to start at 6.1 inches,

00:47:24   again, 3/10 larger, and go as high as 6.7 inches,

00:47:29   which I already think that the big phones

00:47:32   at 6.5 inches are preposterously large.

00:47:35   So I can't imagine a 6.7 inch phone.

00:47:38   For me, I think I mostly agree with you, Marco.

00:47:43   I would rather go a hint smaller if I could,

00:47:47   but I know myself well enough to know

00:47:49   that I will almost certainly be completely

00:47:52   and utterly unwilling to give up anything.

00:47:54   So like if the non-Pro 12 has only two cameras,

00:47:59   as you were describing, which I think is

00:48:00   a very fair conjecture to make,

00:48:02   I don't think I would do it.

00:48:03   I think I would just suck it up and get a 6.1 inch phone,

00:48:06   which I would really rather not do,

00:48:09   but knowing myself well enough,

00:48:10   I think I would end up doing exactly that.

00:48:12   - I mean, it's not a 6.1 inch phone.

00:48:13   Like, those are diagonal screen measurements,

00:48:15   and the flat sides should shave a lot off, right?

00:48:18   So like, well, what we're really gonna be looking for

00:48:20   once we announce these is go to the Apple site

00:48:22   and find the thing that gives you the outside dimensions,

00:48:24   you know, in millimeters, and then we'll see

00:48:26   how much bigger it actually is than an 11 or a 10S

00:48:29   or whatever.

00:48:30   - Yeah, also a couple other things.

00:48:31   Yeah, like, first of all, that's one of the reasons

00:48:33   why I'm hoping for a like case shape rethinking,

00:48:37   like with the straight sides and everything.

00:48:39   If I can use it without a case,

00:48:42   then that makes it effectively smaller for me.

00:48:45   And so maybe I would then stick with the medium size

00:48:47   if it's something that I could use without a case.

00:48:49   But also, if you're interested in what the smaller size

00:48:51   looks like, a couple of months ago,

00:48:53   MacRumors published images of the rumored sizes

00:48:57   such that you could, like, whatever phone you have,

00:49:02   they have separate downloads, and so you could see,

00:49:04   like, all right, show me what the small phone would look like

00:49:08   if I'm holding a 10S or an 11 or whatever.

00:49:10   And then you can view that image, like at 1X

00:49:13   in your camera roll at full screen,

00:49:15   and it shows you exactly what size that phone would be

00:49:18   on your existing phone.

00:49:20   It's actually a really nice estimation tool,

00:49:22   and so I've actually had that tab open

00:49:24   in my mobile Safari browser for like two months

00:49:27   just so I could occasionally look over and edit

00:49:28   and be like, hmm, I think I do want the smaller size phone.

00:49:31   Like, it is noticeably narrower,

00:49:35   which I think would be the limiting factor.

00:49:37   Like, it is obviously shorter as well.

00:49:40   From top to bottom, it's shorter,

00:49:41   but I don't really care so much about that.

00:49:44   Like, ever since the notch era, the phones are so tall

00:49:48   that I don't necessarily need all that height.

00:49:51   Like, I could spare that pretty easily.

00:49:53   So it would mainly just be giving up width,

00:49:55   which would indeed make it significantly more holdable

00:49:58   and would give you a lot more like touch range,

00:50:01   you know, holding it and touching it.

00:50:03   But my concern with giving up the width would be

00:50:06   when you squeeze the keyboard down,

00:50:09   it's going to be a transition period for keyboard accuracy.

00:50:13   And possibly not a good one. (laughs)

00:50:16   - Well, but let's be honest,

00:50:17   keyboard accuracy hasn't really existed

00:50:19   since ML took over AutoCorrect.

00:50:21   So, I mean, it can only go up.

00:50:23   - They should just do what they do with the laptop keyboards

00:50:26   and just make it so there's one size keyboard

00:50:28   and it's the one that fits on their smallest phone

00:50:29   and use that software keyboard on all the phones.

00:50:32   And they just put dots on the left and the right.

00:50:34   - Oh, god, earlier today I typed in Thursdays

00:50:37   and it put an apostrophe on it.

00:50:39   Thursday apostrophe S.

00:50:41   - Thursday's child is full of woe?

00:50:44   Come on, chat room, what is Thursday's child full of?

00:50:46   - John, why'd he do this?

00:50:47   - I got nothing on that one.

00:50:48   - These two don't know what I'm talking about.

00:50:49   I am relying on a title in the chat room.

00:50:51   We'll have some real time follow up soon

00:50:52   if someone finds the answer.

00:50:54   - Yeah, it's like, who puts apostrophes?

00:50:57   I don't want my correct grammar

00:51:00   to be AutoCorrected to be incorrect.

00:51:02   - You know, the thing of it is, it just occurred to me,

00:51:03   I don't know why I just thought of this,

00:51:04   but I know that I can turn off AutoCorrect,

00:51:08   but it is correct enough,

00:51:11   and my fingers are incorrect enough,

00:51:14   that I do want AutoCorrect on,

00:51:16   but oh my word, if there was a way

00:51:19   to turn off the machine learning portions of AutoCorrect,

00:51:23   and maybe I'm misattributing this,

00:51:24   maybe it's not machine learning at all,

00:51:25   maybe something changed in the algorithm,

00:51:27   maybe something is different,

00:51:28   but my feeling, my recollection,

00:51:31   is that AutoCorrect up until two or three years ago

00:51:33   was really, really good,

00:51:35   and then suddenly, two or three years ago,

00:51:37   and everyone assumed it was ML, including me,

00:51:39   maybe we're wrong,

00:51:40   but suddenly something happened where it got real, real bad,

00:51:45   and if I had a switch to just turn off

00:51:47   the ML portions of AutoCorrect,

00:51:49   I would flick the crap out of that switch,

00:51:52   I would turn that on, or I guess off, so fast,

00:51:55   because I really feel like it's the ML that's doing it,

00:51:57   like it's a bunch of idiots typing T-H-U-R-D,

00:52:01   Thursday apostrophe S, I got myself,

00:52:04   see I'm the idiot now, right?

00:52:05   Anyway, the point is,

00:52:06   it's a bunch of idiots typing Thursday apostrophe S

00:52:08   instead of Thursday S,

00:52:09   and then the ML engine picks that up,

00:52:11   and then all of a sudden now we're getting it.

00:52:13   - Right, it's like no,

00:52:14   and I understand,

00:52:16   I am probably benefiting from much of what that ML engine

00:52:20   is adding to the dictionary,

00:52:22   but when it gets it wrong,

00:52:24   it's just like I'm being failed,

00:52:26   like many other things,

00:52:27   I'm being failed by the collective idiocy

00:52:30   of the rest of humanity here,

00:52:31   like I am right, they are wrong,

00:52:34   and they're making my life worse as a result.

00:52:37   - Related, please vote.

00:52:38   - Yeah, please, for the love of God.

00:52:40   - Real time problem on what children are filled with,

00:52:42   Monday's child is fair of face,

00:52:44   Tuesday's child is full of grace,

00:52:46   Wednesday's child is full of woe,

00:52:48   but Thursday's child has far to go.

00:52:51   - What in the crap are you talking about?

00:52:53   - Is this a Destiny thing?

00:52:54   - Yeah, seriously,

00:52:55   is it either Destiny, Church, or some obscure song?

00:52:57   - It is not Destiny or Church.

00:52:59   - I think it's sports.

00:53:00   - No, it's not sports.

00:53:01   - Interesting guesses.

00:53:02   I'll put a screenshot, by the way,

00:53:04   for you two in the Slack.

00:53:06   So like in our,

00:53:07   I don't understand this,

00:53:09   is this a GPU problem,

00:53:11   is this, in our show notes,

00:53:13   we have the picture from the invitation for the Apple event,

00:53:15   which I swear we'll get to in a second or two,

00:53:17   like the invitation that says high comma speed, right,

00:53:21   that one, right?

00:53:22   That's in our Google Doc,

00:53:23   pasted as an image in the Google Doc, right?

00:53:26   So I opened another browser window

00:53:28   to search for the Thursday's child answer,

00:53:30   and I found it,

00:53:31   and would you two please look at the screenshot,

00:53:34   which contains, in the background is my Google Doc window,

00:53:36   and in the foreground is my browser window,

00:53:38   what in the hell is that?

00:53:40   - So in the Google AdSense boxes,

00:53:43   on this unrelated page--

00:53:45   - The two Google AdSense boxes.

00:53:47   - Yeah, on two Google AdSense medium rectangle units,

00:53:49   on the right sidebar of this page,

00:53:52   it's showing the high comma speed Apple invitation image,

00:53:57   with a little Google Ad choices X and forward arrow

00:54:00   on the upper right corner.

00:54:02   I guess instead of an ad, or--

00:54:04   - I know.

00:54:04   - Is this an ad, what happened to you?

00:54:05   - Is it because I opened the email,

00:54:07   and there was a tiny one pixel image tracker that Apple,

00:54:10   'cause I didn't go to the Apple's website.

00:54:12   Yes, I did copy and paste the image out of Gmail,

00:54:14   but now when I go to a random webpage,

00:54:16   I see two copies of the high speed Apple event ad.

00:54:20   - What happens if you click on it?

00:54:22   Does it go to that ad, or does it go to something else?

00:54:24   - All right, so I'll click on it.

00:54:26   It goes to apple.com/appleevents,

00:54:29   question mark, gigantic tracking crap.

00:54:32   - Oh yeah, so it's not a GPU bug,

00:54:35   it's just incredibly creepy ad tracking,

00:54:37   and your Google owned browser

00:54:38   with your Google owned spreadsheet thing.

00:54:40   - Oh, if I scroll down more,

00:54:42   if I scroll down farther,

00:54:43   there's a third Google ad containing, you guessed it.

00:54:46   Same exact question.

00:54:48   It's unbelievable.

00:54:51   - I wanna know what code it is

00:54:52   you're writing in the background there, sir.

00:54:54   - What code?

00:54:55   That's not code, what is that?

00:54:56   That is, this is using dispatch work item

00:55:00   to delay or cancel tasks.

00:55:02   An article by Nathan Rolick,

00:55:05   which will now be in the show notes.

00:55:07   Thank you, thank you Casey, for spying on my computer.

00:55:11   - You're welcome.

00:55:12   - Thank you.

00:55:13   - All right, so let's move on to the event.

00:55:15   It's going to be this upcoming Tuesday.

00:55:18   Obviously, and we are expecting iPhones,

00:55:22   before we talk anymore about a potential iPhone 12,

00:55:25   are we expecting anything else?

00:55:27   I know both of you are begging for laptops,

00:55:29   but well actually I guess now might be a good time for Jon

00:55:33   for you to explore why it is

00:55:34   you want a laptop so desperately.

00:55:36   - Oh yeah, that's just simple.

00:55:37   Like we need another one for the kids,

00:55:38   they're all doing like remote schooling stuff.

00:55:41   And we just have one laptop

00:55:43   and then we have one desktop computer

00:55:45   and I like to work in the room with the desktop computer,

00:55:47   but the kids don't like me to be in the room

00:55:48   when they're working,

00:55:49   plus I have to be on calls all day too.

00:55:50   So anyway, as soon as we get a laptop,

00:55:53   I can kick the kids back out of my room

00:55:55   and then they can be in their individual rooms

00:55:56   with their individual laptops

00:55:57   and I can get to be in front of my computer again.

00:56:00   I mean, I'm working on my laptop too,

00:56:02   but I also like to be at my computer desk

00:56:03   with my real computer there.

00:56:05   Anyway, so that's why I needed a laptop.

00:56:07   It seems like, I haven't been really keeping up

00:56:09   with the rumors here

00:56:10   because there are many other things going on in the world

00:56:12   that are distracting me and every other sane person,

00:56:15   but it seems like we're not getting Macs in this event.

00:56:18   And every time, like I said, every time an event comes

00:56:21   and my house goes, "Can we get a laptop now?"

00:56:24   I'm like, "Oh, seems like maybe not this time."

00:56:26   But there's gonna be another Apple event

00:56:27   before the end of the year

00:56:28   and then they'll announce the first ARM Mac,

00:56:30   which will probably be a laptop, but we're not sure.

00:56:32   But anyway, probably like before the end of the year.

00:56:35   So that is the, I don't even care about the new phone.

00:56:39   I don't care.

00:56:39   I do want a new phone,

00:56:41   but the thing that I want before the end of this year

00:56:44   is an ARM Mac that is a laptop.

00:56:47   And it seems like, according to the rumors,

00:56:49   that's not gonna happen at this event.

00:56:50   Obviously there will be iPhones.

00:56:52   The other rumor that I vaguely believe

00:56:54   is about the headphone situation,

00:56:56   because as we'll link in the show note,

00:56:57   apparently Apple has stopped selling speakers

00:57:02   and earphones ahead of the event, like a third-party one.

00:57:06   So anything that's not by Apple or Beats, right?

00:57:09   Not being sold in Apple stores anymore.

00:57:11   Does that mean an Apple over-ear headphone is coming?

00:57:14   Does that mean there's gonna be a new, cheaper HomePod?

00:57:16   Does that have anything to do with this event?

00:57:18   I don't know, maybe, but it seems like, again,

00:57:20   if the vague rumors that I've looked at are to be believed,

00:57:23   both of those things are more likely than an ARM Mac,

00:57:27   and that's really all I care about.

00:57:29   - During this iPhone discussion,

00:57:32   I pulled my phone out of its case,

00:57:34   to look at it and everything,

00:57:36   and it's been sitting here since then,

00:57:38   like just out of its case,

00:57:39   and it looks like, you ever had a hermit crab growing?

00:57:43   - I'm aware of what they are, but I've never had one.

00:57:44   - It looks like when your hermit crab is changing shells,

00:57:47   and it leaves its first shell,

00:57:49   and it just walks around naked for a second

00:57:51   until it finds the second shell it's gonna go into,

00:57:54   and when you see your hermit crab naked,

00:57:56   it's the weirdest thing ever,

00:57:57   'cause you're really not supposed to see it that way.

00:57:59   That's how it feels looking at an iPhone

00:58:01   without a case right now.

00:58:02   Like, I see my iPhone 11 Pro sitting there without a case,

00:58:06   and it's like, ew, where's the rest of you?

00:58:07   Put some clothes on.

00:58:09   Wow.

00:58:10   Anyway, so.

00:58:11   (laughing)

00:58:13   I think you're probably right, Jon.

00:58:16   It does feel like we haven't heard enough rumors

00:58:20   about our Macs being imminent

00:58:23   for them to be at this event in all likelihood,

00:58:25   but I kinda hope they are anyway.

00:58:28   Like, Apple has been significantly better at secrecy

00:58:33   in the last couple years than they were before,

00:58:35   so they actually might have all this stuff ready,

00:58:38   and we just don't know about it yet.

00:58:39   - When I first saw this ad, like the event invitation,

00:58:42   before I'd read anything about it,

00:58:44   when I just saw it in my email box,

00:58:45   which usually this doesn't happen.

00:58:47   Usually I see about it on Twitter before I get the email,

00:58:48   but this time I actually got the email

00:58:49   before I had read anything about it,

00:58:50   and I was excited because it said hi, comma, speed, right?

00:58:53   I'm like, yeah, this makes perfect sense, Apple,

00:58:56   because now you're finally gonna reveal

00:58:58   all the specs of the A14,

00:58:59   which you kinda tried to hide at the, you know,

00:59:01   with the iPad, the previous iPad event,

00:59:04   and of course you're gonna have the R Max,

00:59:06   and they're gonna be super fast,

00:59:07   and then I read the rumors,

00:59:08   and it was like, no, don't get your hopes up for Max.

00:59:10   I'm like, but it's perfect, high speed,

00:59:11   it's all the fast things,

00:59:12   and yes, the phones will be faster,

00:59:14   and yes, this will be the A14's real coming out

00:59:16   in terms of performance,

00:59:17   but honestly, the real demonstration of high speed things

00:59:21   is gonna be the R Max, right?

00:59:23   Because they're gonna be so much faster

00:59:24   than the Intel chips.

00:59:25   Isn't that what the speed is about?

00:59:26   It just seems like such a waste of a speed-related tease

00:59:30   to only be talking about phones,

00:59:32   which I feel like phones in general

00:59:34   are a place where, you know,

00:59:35   we love that iPhones are fast and everything,

00:59:38   but we're at the point now

00:59:40   where I don't think people are like,

00:59:41   oh my God, my phone is so slow,

00:59:43   if you have any kind of recent iPhone.

00:59:45   I'm not saying there's no point in more speed,

00:59:46   there absolutely is,

00:59:47   but phones have always been, Apple's phones,

00:59:51   Apple's top of the line phones have always been fast.

00:59:53   We are spoiled by fast phones, we expect it,

00:59:55   and so if you're gonna brag about speed,

00:59:57   brag about it on the platform

00:59:58   that has had some speed challenges, let's say,

01:00:01   over the last several years due to Intel.

01:00:04   - But all the rumors say no, right?

01:00:07   - Well, but the rumors could also be,

01:00:09   I mean, first of all, they could just be wrong.

01:00:11   We've heard many rumors about this fall

01:00:13   that have been wrong so far.

01:00:16   - I mean, AirTags have been rumored for every event

01:00:18   for like two years now.

01:00:19   - Exactly.

01:00:20   - Do we already have,

01:00:21   sometimes I forget if we already have AirTags.

01:00:23   Do we already have, oh, they didn't actually ship them,

01:00:25   they didn't actually even announce them.

01:00:26   It's just a thing that everyone knows that exists

01:00:28   and just has never released.

01:00:30   - Right, exactly.

01:00:32   So yeah, who knows what, you know,

01:00:34   when the rumors say this thing is not coming yet,

01:00:37   it's really hard to put a lot of faith into that.

01:00:40   That being said, the rumors could also be hearing things

01:00:45   about supply and delivery timelines

01:00:48   that might be different from announcement timelines.

01:00:51   Apple could announce our max, you know,

01:00:54   at this event next week,

01:00:55   and maybe not ship them until November.

01:00:57   They could totally say, here's the first two or three max

01:01:01   that use Apple Silicon, whatever you're gonna call it,

01:01:04   they can show them off, they can get us all excited,

01:01:06   and then they can say, shipping next month.

01:01:09   That's totally a thing they could do if they want to.

01:01:11   - Yeah, to be clear, that's all I need.

01:01:13   That's all I need to get the pressure off me

01:01:14   in this household to say, this is, they announced it,

01:01:17   and ideally we can place an order for it.

01:01:19   And if it doesn't ship until next year,

01:01:21   say like, well, we already ordered it,

01:01:23   it's on its way in December, but you know,

01:01:25   I just need it to exist so I can point to it and say,

01:01:27   we're getting that, that'll be fine.

01:01:30   - Exactly, so they could do our max at this event,

01:01:34   and just not have them shipping yet.

01:01:37   You know, there is some question about like,

01:01:40   how many events are they going to do in one fall?

01:01:42   Historically, I believe that's been capped at about two.

01:01:46   This would be the second one.

01:01:48   Are they really gonna have a third one in another month?

01:01:52   Maybe, they could, you know,

01:01:54   these are just like online streams,

01:01:57   so they're kind of like fancier press release

01:02:00   product releases, so in a way,

01:02:03   they could do as many of these as they want to.

01:02:05   There's some value in like,

01:02:08   conserving or diluting press attention in certain ways,

01:02:12   so they wouldn't want to do tons of them,

01:02:15   or only one for the entire season.

01:02:17   - They should do the Netflix approach,

01:02:19   where they dump the whole season at once.

01:02:20   (laughing)

01:02:21   They prerecorded all these in June,

01:02:23   and they're just sitting there,

01:02:24   and they're releasing them one by one.

01:02:25   It's like, oh, just dump the whole season at once.

01:02:27   - Just a little binge, right?

01:02:28   Here's all the announcements for the rest of the year,

01:02:30   and we're going on vacation.

01:02:31   - Yeah, exactly.

01:02:32   So, you know, we'll see what it actually is,

01:02:36   but I'm thinking, I wouldn't rule out

01:02:39   the other products besides iPhones,

01:02:40   like, 'cause otherwise, you know,

01:02:42   look at like what's expected, what's left.

01:02:44   It's basically iPhones and our Macs as like,

01:02:50   the definite things that we know

01:02:51   are gonna happen this fall,

01:02:52   'cause they've told us, basically,

01:02:55   and then the likely maybe column

01:02:59   includes things like the audio products,

01:03:02   which again, I think that story

01:03:04   about them being dropped out of Apple's retail stores,

01:03:07   that's a pretty strong indicator

01:03:09   that more Apple audio products are likely to arrive

01:03:13   in the very short term, so like,

01:03:15   that's probably a real thing.

01:03:18   So very likely in the near future,

01:03:20   we're gonna have, you know, the Apple over-ear headphones,

01:03:25   the second HomePod, the HomePod mini,

01:03:26   whatever that's gonna be.

01:03:28   It is, by the way, it's interesting

01:03:30   that they've dropped all that stuff out of their stores,

01:03:32   because the amount of the real estate of Apple stores

01:03:36   taken up by those like 300 to $500, you know,

01:03:41   Bang & Olufsen speakers and all the weird like,

01:03:44   300-ish dollar, you know, Master and Dynamic,

01:03:48   hipster-styled, super expensive headphones,

01:03:51   those have historically been

01:03:52   a pretty significant part of the store,

01:03:55   with lots of the real estate,

01:03:57   lots of people usually at them

01:03:58   using all the broken iPod touches

01:04:00   to try to get music to come out of them.

01:04:02   Like, so to eliminate those is actually pretty significant,

01:04:05   and Apple won't for a while, if ever,

01:04:09   have enough audio products themselves

01:04:13   to fill up that, the space that that was usually given

01:04:16   in the stores, so it's actually interesting to think like,

01:04:19   is there anything more to that?

01:04:20   Like maybe people just stopped buying them

01:04:23   because AirPods killed so much of that business,

01:04:26   like it's possible like, maybe people just weren't buying,

01:04:29   I mean, you know, the move from wired to Bluetooth

01:04:32   was a pretty big damaging factor

01:04:34   for a lot of those headphones,

01:04:35   but you know, they switched to Bluetooth models

01:04:37   and everything, but still like,

01:04:37   a lot of those headphones probably aren't being bought anymore

01:04:42   because AirPods are so good,

01:04:43   so I wonder if that has something to do with it as well,

01:04:46   and maybe Apple is having to downsize that entire category

01:04:50   because like, maybe no one's buying

01:04:53   a lot of premium headphones anymore,

01:04:55   and on the speaker side, I think a lot of that market,

01:05:01   a lot of the like, you know, nice home speaker

01:05:03   for your phone to play music to market,

01:05:07   I think a lot of that's been lost to voice cylinders,

01:05:09   and if people aren't buying the HomePod,

01:05:12   they're probably buying Echos and stuff,

01:05:14   and that probably takes away a lot of the market

01:05:17   for the like, high-end, you know, leather wrapped,

01:05:20   B&O, $500 blimp thing, you know, but anyway.

01:05:25   So, I think the high-speed thing on the invitation,

01:05:30   the speculation that it's probably about 5G iPhones,

01:05:35   it's plausible, I don't give a crap about 5G,

01:05:40   and I don't think Apple would push it that hard,

01:05:45   like as a thing, 'cause I don't think it's that good yet, but--

01:05:48   - Yeah, it's a benefit that they aren't in control of.

01:05:51   Like yes, they will have 5G, and yes, 5G can be much,

01:05:54   much faster, but if they sell the phone based

01:05:56   on that benefit, and you get the phone,

01:05:58   and you be like, it doesn't seem any faster than me,

01:06:00   it's like, oh well, probably because 5G is not either

01:06:03   penetrated in your area, or the fast version of 5G

01:06:07   isn't near you, or you don't realize to get

01:06:09   the super high speeds you really need to be really close

01:06:11   to one of those millimeter wave things,

01:06:12   like, it seems like a weird benefit to sell.

01:06:15   Now, to compare, we can say, well, how did Apple sell LTE?

01:06:18   Like when their phones went LTE?

01:06:20   I think they did make kind of a big deal about that,

01:06:23   but they were so late to that, and LTE had much

01:06:26   better penetration than 5G, so I mean, right or wrong,

01:06:29   when I saw high speed, like I said, I thought of ARM Max,

01:06:32   but I also saw the A14, which is very fast,

01:06:35   and was introduced already on the iPad,

01:06:37   but in a very vague kind of way, so I can imagine,

01:06:40   like the reason I thought this would be a combination event,

01:06:43   and one thing we didn't mention is like a revamped Apple TV

01:06:45   with an A14 in it, is that if you release ARM Max,

01:06:49   the new phones, and an Apple TV, and they all have some variant

01:06:53   of the new A14 cores, if not the specific A14 chips

01:06:57   inside them, that's a great place for you to just bask

01:07:00   in benchmarks and be like, look at all this fast stuff

01:07:03   we're giving you.

01:07:03   Apple TV is way faster than it was,

01:07:05   it's faster than a PlayStation 4, and the new ARM Mac

01:07:08   is amazing, and it's super duper fast,

01:07:10   and our phones, of course, are fast too,

01:07:11   and it's all based on Apple Silicon, and blah, blah, blah,

01:07:14   but it just seems like that's not the event

01:07:16   that they're planning according to the rumors.

01:07:18   - Well, it also seems like the A14 is not that much faster

01:07:21   than the A13, the initial benchmarks from the iPad Air

01:07:24   that are kind of slowly trickling out,

01:07:27   they show that it's fast, it's great in absolute terms,

01:07:31   but as a year over year upgrade to the A13,

01:07:34   it's not that crazy of an upgrade.

01:07:36   - I think it's just because we're spoiled

01:07:38   by the previous ones, wasn't it like 20% or something faster?

01:07:41   - Yeah. - Like single core performance,

01:07:43   like Intel is likely to eke out a couple of percentage

01:07:46   every few years. - That's true.

01:07:47   - And like we're gonna say, oh, it's only like 15 or 20%

01:07:51   faster in single core, like the A14,

01:07:53   if those leaked benchmarks are to be leaked, is a beast.

01:07:56   Like it is faster in single core performance

01:07:57   than any Mac Apple sells currently, right?

01:08:00   If those benchmarks, and that's their phone thing.

01:08:02   - But by Apple's standards for the A chips,

01:08:05   like the year over year upgrade from the A13 to the A14,

01:08:09   is, it's nice, it's welcome, but it's not something

01:08:13   you'd base an event around, right?

01:08:14   So that's why I think there must be something more to it.

01:08:17   - Yeah, how can you brag about speed, again, on phones,

01:08:20   because the phones are already so fast.

01:08:21   - Exactly. - Like, I mean, I guess,

01:08:24   what I just said is a thing that Apple could say,

01:08:26   but I think they won't.

01:08:27   Like, at various times Apple could have said,

01:08:30   you know the single core performance of our phones

01:08:33   is better than X amount of our Macs.

01:08:34   Now they can say it's better than all of our Macs,

01:08:37   but you really don't wanna slam your Macs by saying that.

01:08:41   Like, the real thing that they could brag about speed,

01:08:44   though, is GPU stuff, right?

01:08:45   Because GPUs are easy to make faster

01:08:47   by just adding more area.

01:08:48   And once you're putting an Apple Silicon chip

01:08:51   in a thing with a fan, suddenly you have the capacity

01:08:55   to just shove those GPU cores in there

01:08:58   and to get a chip that is just a monster,

01:09:00   that again is like PlayStation 4 caliber power

01:09:05   in a thing with a quote-unquote integrated GPU, right?

01:09:10   You know, the benchmarks were showing that essentially the,

01:09:14   I think this was just the A14 that's in the iPad,

01:09:17   which is a fanless enclosure, right?

01:09:19   With very strict temperature

01:09:21   and battery life constraints, right?

01:09:24   That chip, apparently, its GPU power is about equivalent

01:09:27   to the base discrete GPU in a MacBook Pro.

01:09:30   So imagine you take that chip and you give it a fan

01:09:35   and put it in a case with a fan,

01:09:36   your integrated GPU could be fast enough to compete

01:09:41   with many of the discrete GPUs

01:09:43   that are offered in Macs today, right?

01:09:44   So I am very bullish, is that the right word?

01:09:47   I was getting confused.

01:09:48   I am very bullish on the performance of ARM-based Macs.

01:09:53   But for the phones and the iPads, like you said,

01:09:55   it's like, well, they've always been fast

01:09:56   and then now they get faster again, fine,

01:09:58   but like, I just, we're reading too much

01:10:02   into the high-speed thing.

01:10:03   Like, they're gonna introduce things that are faster

01:10:04   and that is all the excuses they need.

01:10:06   I just, I have stars in my eyes

01:10:09   about the potential of ARM-based Macs

01:10:11   and even the potential of a really fast ARM-based Apple TV

01:10:15   to be, if not a good platform for games

01:10:17   due to software mismanagement and so on and so forth,

01:10:20   at least be extremely capable hardware

01:10:23   attached to my television that could potentially

01:10:25   play really good games were they ever to be released.

01:10:28   - Yeah, but I just, I can't see them having an invitation

01:10:32   that says high-speed at an event where

01:10:37   the most likely headliner is the phone.

01:10:40   I don't know how they would, like,

01:10:43   unless they're believing in 5G way more than we are.

01:10:46   - I mean, that's all it takes, is 5G is faster.

01:10:50   There you go.

01:10:51   Like, again, I think we're reading too much into the title.

01:10:54   - Agreed, but like, but the title matters a little bit

01:10:56   and like, you know, I don't know why they would call it this

01:11:00   if it was anything about the iPhone

01:11:01   because the iPhone, yeah, it's gonna get faster,

01:11:03   but it's gonna get faster mostly in ways nobody cares about

01:11:06   and not like, massively so.

01:11:09   Whereas the transition to ARM Max

01:11:12   will probably make Max way faster.

01:11:15   And so to have this event named high-speed

01:11:18   in the fall of 2020 when they've said

01:11:20   this is when the first ARM Max will come out,

01:11:23   how can this event not contain the first ARM Max?

01:11:26   Of course it's gonna contain them.

01:11:27   - They said before the end of the year.

01:11:30   - Agreed, yes.

01:11:30   Anyway, Apple, we've decided you have to ship ARM Max.

01:11:33   (laughing)

01:11:35   - I gotta tell you, I would love to see a new Apple TV.

01:11:37   And I think I've mentioned this a couple times recently,

01:11:40   but you know, we have this almost a year old

01:11:42   4K LG TV downstairs,

01:11:44   and I'm still running a 1080 Apple TV on it

01:11:47   because when we bought this a year ago, I thought,

01:11:50   oh, surely there's gonna be a new Apple TV in 2019.

01:11:53   Why wouldn't there be?

01:11:55   And obviously there wasn't.

01:11:56   And so surely there'll be a new Apple TV in 2020.

01:11:59   Why wouldn't there be?

01:12:00   I am ready to get a new Apple TV,

01:12:03   and I would really rather not,

01:12:06   I mean, at this point I'm just gonna continue to wait

01:12:08   until they, I guess they cancel it, airport style.

01:12:11   But I would love to get a new Apple TV

01:12:13   that's 4K to put on my TV downstairs.

01:12:16   So I hope I see one.

01:12:17   - AirPower, and there were rumors about that coming back.

01:12:20   Have you seen the rumors about AirPower coming back?

01:12:22   - I saw a couple, yeah.

01:12:23   - Like they just started over and they're gonna make

01:12:25   another product that does the same thing,

01:12:27   but like start over from scratch and make one that works.

01:12:29   We'll see if that ever happens.

01:12:31   If that, boy, if that beats AirTags out,

01:12:34   I don't know what's going on with AirTags.

01:12:35   I don't know what the holdup is.

01:12:37   - It's just not the right time, John.

01:12:39   It's just not the right time.

01:12:41   - They keep catching on fire.

01:12:42   (laughing)

01:12:43   - That might have something to do with it.

01:12:45   Oh, yi yi.

01:12:46   I'm really looking forward to it.

01:12:48   I'm excited.

01:12:49   I'm not excited about the potential choice

01:12:52   I'm gonna have to make with regards to size

01:12:54   as we've already covered,

01:12:55   because I feel like I'm going to be forced to go bigger

01:12:59   and I really don't want to,

01:13:00   but one way or another, I'm excited to see what's on offer.

01:13:04   Okay, so do you guys--

01:13:05   - I love the idea that you're forced.

01:13:07   I'm gonna be forced to buy a new iPhone

01:13:11   to replace my one-year-old iPhone,

01:13:12   and that will be forced,

01:13:14   I'll be forced to get the nice model that's big.

01:13:16   - No, you're right to call me out on that.

01:13:18   That's a fair point.

01:13:19   But no, I am curious, do the two of you guys

01:13:23   think we're going to see iPad style a touch ID thing

01:13:28   in the side button?

01:13:29   Let's start with Marco.

01:13:30   - I would say it's possible.

01:13:31   I would hope to see it,

01:13:33   but it might be a little ambitious,

01:13:35   because to get that, well, now that I think about it,

01:13:38   'cause I think one of the biggest challenges for that

01:13:41   would be the thickness of the case.

01:13:42   Obviously, you want that button to be as thick as possible

01:13:45   to give you the most surface area possible

01:13:47   to see as much of the fingerprint as possible,

01:13:49   and phones are not that thick,

01:13:52   but they do tend to be thicker than iPads.

01:13:56   Are they still?

01:13:58   I haven't checked.

01:13:59   Are they current phones?

01:14:00   - No, I'm pretty sure they're thicker than iPads, though.

01:14:02   - Yeah, so if it can fit on an iPad,

01:14:05   it might be able to fit on a phone, too.

01:14:07   So yeah, maybe.

01:14:08   I would love to see that,

01:14:09   and I would love to see a hybrid model

01:14:12   where it's face ID and touch ID.

01:14:15   That would be awesome,

01:14:17   and especially if you could pick,

01:14:19   tell it, oh, just whatever recognizes me first,

01:14:22   let me in, so you don't need both to match,

01:14:24   or you don't always need face ID.

01:14:25   You can just like, whatever recognizes me.

01:14:26   That would be awesome.

01:14:28   I would love that,

01:14:30   but I don't know if they're quite ready for that yet

01:14:32   on the phone.

01:14:33   I might need one more year.

01:14:34   - Jon?

01:14:35   - It seems like something that we would know already

01:14:37   through the rumor mills and the leaked cases

01:14:38   and stuff like that,

01:14:39   and the fact that I haven't heard anything about it

01:14:41   makes me think that it's not gonna have it.

01:14:42   Like, mostly because, you know,

01:14:43   it's like the touch ID on the iPad,

01:14:46   what is the iPad, the new iPad Air?

01:14:48   - Yep.

01:14:49   - Like, that's not a reaction to COVID.

01:14:50   That was planned way ahead of time,

01:14:51   and even though I don't personally understand

01:14:53   the cost trade-off between face ID and that,

01:14:55   it seems clear to me that that's why it has touch ID,

01:14:58   because they didn't put face ID in,

01:15:00   because it's the cheaper model,

01:15:01   and once you don't have face ID,

01:15:02   but you still wanna have the full screen gesture,

01:15:04   blah, blah, blah thing, you need something,

01:15:06   and there's where touch ID is.

01:15:06   Whereas on the phone,

01:15:08   it's not the thickness that I worry about,

01:15:10   because again, the phones have been thicker than iPads

01:15:11   for a little while now.

01:15:12   It's like how much space is there inside the phone

01:15:14   for you to put crap, right?

01:15:16   And putting the touch ID sensor,

01:15:17   it's not big, like, it's not huge,

01:15:19   but it's bigger than a power button, right?

01:15:21   And so it makes me think that,

01:15:24   like, because there's no reason to do it on the phone,

01:15:26   that they've been perfectly happy with this design of like,

01:15:29   you know, just face ID and it being fine,

01:15:31   and because this phone wasn't made in reaction to COVID,

01:15:34   'cause it was planned way before this happened,

01:15:36   that regardless of what Apple wants to do or plans to do,

01:15:38   and certainly regardless of what we all want it to do,

01:15:40   because I agree with Marco,

01:15:41   I'd love it with a phone with both,

01:15:43   seems to me that this phone is not gonna have it,

01:15:45   and which is understandable and fine,

01:15:47   but for the next phone, hopefully COVID didn't come too late

01:15:50   to influence the design of the next one,

01:15:51   because now I can imagine making different trade-offs

01:15:53   and saying, well, we don't know how long

01:15:55   we're gonna be wearing these masks.

01:15:56   If you can, let's get touch ID

01:15:59   into the iPhone 13 or whatever.

01:16:02   - To be fair, the demand for touch ID on a phone

01:16:06   existed strongly before COVID also.

01:16:08   There's a lot of people who still don't like face ID

01:16:12   and are still holding onto the older style phones,

01:16:14   and that's one of the reasons I think why the new SE

01:16:16   is the older style, because there's a lot of people

01:16:19   who just don't want face ID for whatever reason,

01:16:21   or it doesn't work well for them,

01:16:23   and so touch ID still has quite a fan base,

01:16:27   and I think until Apple can offer touch ID

01:16:31   on the high-end phones in some form,

01:16:33   whether it's like an under-screen thing

01:16:35   or a power button thing, whatever it is,

01:16:37   some form of touch ID, I think they need to do it

01:16:39   in order to capture the rest of that market again

01:16:42   and to get them to be upgrading to nice iPhones again.

01:16:45   - Who do you know who face ID doesn't work well for?

01:16:47   Because I know old people say touch ID doesn't work

01:16:49   'cause their fingerprints are all old

01:16:50   and ever-changing, apparently, but who has a face

01:16:53   that's a problem with face ID?

01:16:55   - Well, people who wear face coverings on a regular basis,

01:16:58   that's a big one, and that was a big one before this,

01:17:00   and it's just a bigger one now, but that's a big one.

01:17:04   - Yeah, I mean, I totally agree.

01:17:05   They should do both of them.

01:17:06   It's just a question of was this the year

01:17:08   where they felt like the trade-off in internal space

01:17:11   and cost, I suppose, was worth it to get it wedged

01:17:14   in there, and given the one device we've seen

01:17:17   where they've done this, it's not the high end.

01:17:19   It's a trade-off feature, but my finger's a cross for it

01:17:23   'cause obviously we all wish it was there.

01:17:25   I just feel like I would have seen confirmed rumors of it.

01:17:30   This is, again, I'm casually paying attention,

01:17:33   but I think casually paying attention to the rumors

01:17:35   is a good way to note when exciting things are happening

01:17:38   because if it's, maybe the rest of the world isn't excited,

01:17:41   isn't as excited about touch ID as the power button

01:17:43   as we all are, but that they should be.

01:17:45   - Yeah, I would love to see it.

01:17:47   I strongly suspect that it won't have made the cut

01:17:51   in terms of timing, but I would love to see it,

01:17:53   and again, to go back to what we were talking about earlier,

01:17:56   I'd love this thing to be USB-C.

01:17:58   Do you think, well, Jon, did you weigh in on that earlier?

01:18:00   Do you think that it'll be a USB-C phone?

01:18:02   - Again, based on the fact that I haven't heard the rumors

01:18:04   and the fact that the only rumor I have heard

01:18:06   is lightning forever until there's no more wires at all,

01:18:09   which could be as early as next year,

01:18:12   I'm not holding my breath for it.

01:18:13   Although on all of these issues, touch ID and USB-C,

01:18:16   I keep eyeing the Giganto phone, whatever it is,

01:18:19   the Pro Max whatever, like the 6.5 inches, or 6.7.

01:18:24   If you have a 6.7 inch phone, you don't really have issues

01:18:30   about internal space for the touch ID sensor, right?

01:18:33   And so maybe that makes it a potential candidate for that,

01:18:35   and also USB-C, again, I know it's not a thickness issue,

01:18:38   but if you're thinking of a phone that's starting to edge

01:18:42   into iPad territory and all the iPads have USB-C,

01:18:45   you could make an argument that you could just convert

01:18:47   the Monster phone to USB-C, but that would be ridiculous

01:18:49   that they would just do it in one phone.

01:18:50   But I think I would like it to be coming.

01:18:54   I don't want them to go from lightning to nothing.

01:18:56   I want them to go to lightning, to USB-C,

01:18:58   and then maybe to nothing when it actually is good.

01:19:00   So I'm a little bit terrified of them

01:19:02   just holding the line of lightning for as long as they can

01:19:05   and then switching to a pure wireless,

01:19:07   because even though I have a phone

01:19:09   that supports wireless charging

01:19:10   and we have wireless chargers in the house,

01:19:12   I don't use it, I'm an old fuddy-duddy,

01:19:13   I plug it into a cable.

01:19:15   - Yeah, wireless charging is very polarizing,

01:19:18   and it's not a clear win for everybody

01:19:20   or for all circumstances.

01:19:22   Like, I use a mix of both.

01:19:23   I use wired in the car, I use wired when I'm traveling.

01:19:28   I'm not gonna bring a weird wireless charger with me

01:19:30   if I don't need to, and I also use wired

01:19:32   when I need a fast charge, when I need just a faster charge

01:19:36   or if I'm using some kind of USB battery pack

01:19:38   or something like that, it's very common.

01:19:39   And then Tiff, she doesn't like wireless at all.

01:19:42   She never uses it.

01:19:43   I use it on my nightstand at night.

01:19:46   People have different preferences and different needs,

01:19:49   and wireless charging is not the same as a cable,

01:19:52   and it's not universally better.

01:19:54   It's better in a few ways.

01:19:55   It's worse in a few significant ways.

01:19:58   Like, one of the biggest ways it's worse is efficiency.

01:20:00   It's terrible for efficiency,

01:20:03   and you just end up wasting a whole bunch more

01:20:05   of that electricity as heat.

01:20:06   So not only do you charge more slowly, which is a problem,

01:20:10   but you also waste a ton of power.

01:20:13   If you think about if every iPhone in the world

01:20:16   could only charge wirelessly,

01:20:18   imagine the global power waste.

01:20:22   Compare that to whatever gains that you get

01:20:24   by not including the power brick in the box.

01:20:27   It's laughable.

01:20:28   - That's an interesting point.

01:20:29   I use a wireless charger on my nightstand, and I love it.

01:20:33   I don't particularly wanna go back

01:20:35   to having to plug in at night.

01:20:37   I mean, that's the first worldiest, first world problem,

01:20:39   right?

01:20:40   Well, no, the first worldiest, first world problem is,

01:20:41   oh my gosh, I don't want a bigger phone.

01:20:42   I have to get one.

01:20:44   But the second most first worldy--

01:20:45   - You already hit that record.

01:20:47   - So I'm going for a trifecta, and I'm on number two now,

01:20:50   which is I don't particularly want to have to fumble

01:20:54   with a plug at night.

01:20:54   It's not that big a deal, no.

01:20:55   It's not like an infomercial where I'm stabbing myself

01:20:58   with a lightning cable, you know?

01:21:00   But it would be nice.

01:21:01   I prefer not dealing with it,

01:21:03   and it's funny because I think with the exception

01:21:08   of when I'm doing development,

01:21:11   I don't think I would have a problem

01:21:13   with a completely wireless phone, you know,

01:21:16   that has no lightning port, no USB-C, no nothing.

01:21:19   I could make everything else work.

01:21:21   Now, I agree with almost everything you said, Marco.

01:21:24   Like, when I travel, I use a cable.

01:21:26   When I'm in the car, I use a cable.

01:21:27   But with the exception of a couple of things,

01:21:31   like CarPlay, come to think of it,

01:21:33   but with the exception, I should say,

01:21:35   with the primary exception of doing development,

01:21:38   I don't think I would really mind

01:21:39   having a completely wireless phone.

01:21:41   And the last time I tried doing Wi-Fi builds

01:21:44   and debug and whatnot in Xcode,

01:21:47   it worked, but it was not fun,

01:21:50   and it was not consistent because,

01:21:53   as with all things at Apple,

01:21:54   if Apple engineers don't use it all the time,

01:21:57   then it's not gonna be great.

01:21:58   And from the looks of it,

01:22:00   they are not using wireless debugging very often at all.

01:22:03   And so, in that sense, like, in a hypothetical world

01:22:07   where you could option a port on your phone,

01:22:11   so they have the 12 with the port and 12 with no port,

01:22:16   I would absolutely option the port,

01:22:18   even if it costs a little more money.

01:22:20   - Yeah, I forgot about the development angle,

01:22:22   but you're right, like, wireless debugging is terrible.

01:22:26   It would significantly slow down on device development.

01:22:30   Like, and it's, I mean, if you can imagine, like,

01:22:33   how things work with the Apple Watch today,

01:22:36   'cause that's all wireless,

01:22:37   and trying to build and run onto the Apple Watch

01:22:40   and trying to debug stuff is just painful in so many ways.

01:22:45   And I have noticed, too, is like,

01:22:47   I occasionally do need to use wireless debugging

01:22:50   on the phone as well whenever I'm testing CarPlay,

01:22:52   'cause my CarPlay rig is wired,

01:22:54   so that has to be plugged into the phone

01:22:56   as the lightning port,

01:22:58   so then I have to use Xcode wirelessly to the phone,

01:23:01   and it is noticeably slower, significantly slower,

01:23:05   than just doing a straight USB build,

01:23:08   and it's less reliable.

01:23:10   And that would be a huge step backwards for iOS developers.

01:23:15   - But if Apple made them wireless,

01:23:17   wouldn't Apple, all of Apple's iOS developers,

01:23:18   also now be forced to use this wireless thing

01:23:21   all the time, too, and then maybe it'll get better?

01:23:23   - Well, no, not necessarily.

01:23:24   A lot of Apple development happens

01:23:26   on development hardware rigs,

01:23:28   where they're not just running

01:23:29   on a production phone, necessarily.

01:23:32   - The app development?

01:23:33   - Yeah, a lot of it's running on development boards

01:23:36   or development kits or modified hardware.

01:23:39   - I mean, maybe when they're doing the phone app

01:23:41   or something, the camera app or something

01:23:44   that has to take advantage of the new hardware,

01:23:45   but the iOS mail team, I don't imagine

01:23:47   they need to work on dev hardware.

01:23:50   - You'd be surprised.

01:23:51   So my limited understanding about this

01:23:53   is that a lot of Apple engineers,

01:23:55   now I am not sure, to your point, John,

01:23:56   if it's like the Apple engineers that work on mail

01:23:59   or the Apple engineers that work on UI kit,

01:24:01   but I know that a lot of Apple engineers have,

01:24:04   what do they call it?

01:24:05   I think they call it DevFused or something like that.

01:24:07   They have these special kind of phones

01:24:09   where they allow SSH access

01:24:10   and all this other crazy stuff that we don't get to do.

01:24:13   And I think that that's the phones

01:24:16   that Apple will issue for their engineers.

01:24:18   And it would not at all surprise me

01:24:21   if a DevFused or whatever it's called phone in the future

01:24:24   when Marco and me and you

01:24:26   are all buying completely wireless phones.

01:24:28   It would not surprise me not one bit

01:24:29   if a DevFused phone also had a port.

01:24:32   - It should have that little port that the Apple Watch has,

01:24:35   you know, inside the band.

01:24:36   (laughing)

01:24:38   - Right, I don't know.

01:24:39   But it's funny because we're not for development in CarPlay.

01:24:44   I think I would be all in on a completely wireless phone,

01:24:47   like, because presumably it would be way more waterproof

01:24:49   or be able to stay underwater longer or what have you,

01:24:52   which is not a problem I can say I've run into often,

01:24:54   but it'd still be nice.

01:24:56   - Would it?

01:24:58   - I don't think I would have a problem with it

01:24:59   with the exception, the big exceptions,

01:25:02   of CarPlay and in development.

01:25:05   And because of those two things,

01:25:06   I would absolutely option a port if I needed to.

01:25:09   - I don't see what problems I have

01:25:13   that would be solved by a portless iPhone.

01:25:15   Like, I don't understand what, like,

01:25:18   I can see problems that would be created by such a thing.

01:25:21   I don't see what problems are being solved

01:25:23   that make that worth it.

01:25:24   - That's fair, and I think you're right.

01:25:26   - Because you can already achieve amazing water resistance

01:25:30   with ports if they're properly designed,

01:25:32   as we see with both the current iPhones

01:25:35   and with phones from other manufacturers

01:25:36   that use USB-C and headphone jacks that are waterproof.

01:25:39   Like, this can be done.

01:25:41   It's not, the port,

01:25:42   I just don't see good reasons to go portless.

01:25:47   To go portless on a phone,

01:25:49   because wireless charging is not good enough,

01:25:51   communication is not good enough,

01:25:53   it shuts down so many options,

01:25:54   it cuts off all peripherals.

01:25:55   Like, it's a weird thing to do as the only option

01:25:58   because it seems to have almost no upside,

01:26:02   but pretty substantial downsides.

01:26:04   - It's a problem that Apple has,

01:26:06   because Apple has the problems

01:26:08   of all of its customers in aggregate.

01:26:10   Us as individual customers might not have

01:26:12   this particular problem,

01:26:13   but what I'm thinking of is crap getting in the port, right?

01:26:15   How many Apple Store visits are people picking lint

01:26:19   out of their ports?

01:26:20   And now you may say,

01:26:21   "Well, you don't need to pick lint out of the port

01:26:22   "because you can always do everything wireless."

01:26:24   But because the port exists,

01:26:26   and people want to use it rightfully,

01:26:27   because it's a feature of their phone,

01:26:30   when it stops working,

01:26:31   they think their phone is broken, and it is in a way,

01:26:34   and so needs to come in and get it cleaned out.

01:26:36   Now, only Apple knows what are those numbers like.

01:26:38   Is this really an epidemic of like,

01:26:40   50% of the visits to the Apple Store

01:26:42   are belly button lint picking from ports, right?

01:26:44   Anecdotally, I know plenty of people

01:26:46   whose ports get filled with gunk,

01:26:47   and then they stop charging,

01:26:49   both on iPads and on iPhones, and so on and so forth.

01:26:51   Now, I've never had that problem individually,

01:26:53   and it sounds like you two haven't either,

01:26:54   but Apple writ large may have that problem.

01:26:57   And when I say Apple has the problem,

01:26:58   it's not, you know, the problem Apple has is like,

01:27:00   "Oh, I don't want to pay to manufacture a little port,

01:27:03   "like some sort of cost things."

01:27:04   But in this case, it's a problem

01:27:06   that may be prevalent in Apple's customer base,

01:27:09   and give people lower satisfaction on the phone,

01:27:11   and take time in Apple Stores, and so on and so forth.

01:27:12   That's the only thing I can think of

01:27:14   in terms of, you know, other than the basic simplification,

01:27:17   we have to drill one less hole,

01:27:18   we have slightly more room inside the case now.

01:27:21   Like, those are all very tiny,

01:27:23   although real gains for Apple alone.

01:27:25   But the potential gain for customers is,

01:27:27   don't worry about getting lint

01:27:28   in your little phone belly button anymore,

01:27:30   'cause there ain't no belly button.

01:27:31   - I was gonna say, to your point, John,

01:27:34   that when Marco was saying, "What is this solving?"

01:27:37   that's when all of the Apple geniuses

01:27:38   that listen to us start writing in saying,

01:27:40   "You don't even know how often this is a problem."

01:27:43   But--

01:27:44   - So what if it's a problem?

01:27:45   People drop their phones and shatter the screens all the time

01:27:47   so the next phone out of a screen?

01:27:49   - I mean, but they're trying to work on that too,

01:27:50   by making it, you know, I don't know how big of a problem

01:27:52   it is, but like, that is the benefit I can think of

01:27:55   of not having a port.

01:27:56   Now, the question is, okay, but there are also drawbacks.

01:27:59   Your phone charges slower, it gets hotter,

01:28:01   reduces the battery life because the heat damages the battery,

01:28:04   yada yada, are the trade-offs worth it?

01:28:06   I don't think that's clear at all,

01:28:07   but I can think of at least one benefit in that column,

01:28:10   to balance against all the other bad things

01:28:12   that we just described.

01:28:14   - Oh, sure, yeah, like, there's totally like a, you know,

01:28:16   Apple saves money in various ways angle to that, no question.

01:28:21   - Excuse me, excuse me, it's not Apple saving money,

01:28:23   it's Apple doing good for the environment,

01:28:24   thank you very much.

01:28:25   - Yeah, with their sealed up, unrepairable device.

01:28:28   - Honestly, I don't think that Apple saving that much,

01:28:31   I don't think Apple is actually saving that much money there

01:28:33   but like, it's, you know, it's the simplification

01:28:36   is one fewer thing that can break,

01:28:38   and when things break, it's the customers that suffer

01:28:41   when their port stops working or their phone stops charging

01:28:43   reliably or whatever because lint got in there, right?

01:28:45   So I think the main benefit of no ports

01:28:48   is a customer benefit.

01:28:49   There are ancillary Apple manufacturing pricing,

01:28:52   blah, blah, blah benefits, but those are much smaller

01:28:55   in the benefit column than the benefit of not having

01:28:58   to worry about the port getting gunked up.

01:29:00   - So can you imagine, so something I hadn't considered

01:29:03   because I have a couple of Qi chargers around the house

01:29:05   is that it is unlikely in my mind that Apple would include

01:29:10   a Qi charger in this fantasy completely wireless phone.

01:29:13   So now, not only have they taken away the charger,

01:29:16   which would tick everyone off something fierce,

01:29:18   just on principle, but now you need to go buy a 10 to 20

01:29:22   to 50 to 100 or whatever, I don't even know,

01:29:24   that looks like they're like 10-ish to $15.

01:29:26   - I think they would include it.

01:29:27   - You think they would include a Qi charger?

01:29:28   - Just like they do on the watch.

01:29:29   Like they wouldn't have the brick,

01:29:31   but it would have the little, you know, thing, something,

01:29:34   because they have to give you something

01:29:35   to charge it with, right?

01:29:36   They're not gonna like, as in a physical thing

01:29:40   that you can buy that you plug into something

01:29:42   that has power, right?

01:29:43   And to be clear, if everyone's listening to this,

01:29:45   none of us think this is happening in the Apple event.

01:29:46   For whatever reason, we're now speculating

01:29:48   off into the future about things.

01:29:49   I think it's because we were talking about USB-C,

01:29:51   which we also don't think is happening, right?

01:29:53   But this is for future phones, don't worry about

01:29:55   the iPhone event, they're gonna have wires, it'll be fine.

01:29:58   They won't have power bricks, but they're gonna have wires.

01:30:00   But I think they would ship it with some kind of solution,

01:30:04   and maybe it's an Apple, hell, maybe it's an Apple

01:30:06   proprietary solution, that yes, they would still

01:30:07   do Qi charging, but there'd be this other Apple

01:30:10   manta ray suction cup BS whatever thing

01:30:13   that you slap onto the phone in a slightly different way,

01:30:16   and maybe it attaches with magnets,

01:30:17   so it always goes onto the right spot,

01:30:19   and maybe it's really small, you know what I mean?

01:30:21   But there's still no actual port there,

01:30:22   and it charges faster and doesn't produce as much heat

01:30:24   as Qi charging, but there's still no linty belly button.

01:30:27   That would totally be an Apple move.

01:30:29   Hell, bring back MagSafe.

01:30:30   I mean, that had my problems too.

01:30:31   But anyway, my mind is open to potential quote-unquote

01:30:36   wireless solutions that are essentially a magnetically

01:30:39   attached little wire thing that clings to the surface

01:30:42   somewhere on the phone and charges it.

01:30:44   And having the phone still have Qi charging for the,

01:30:47   oh, I stick it in my car and it charges the whole thing,

01:30:49   right, because there's room for both of those inside there.

01:30:52   - By the way, for the record, if Apple does go to a

01:30:54   portless phone at some point in the future,

01:30:56   there is no way they include the cable in the box.

01:31:01   Whatever your wireless charging solution,

01:31:03   there is no way. - That's what I was saying.

01:31:05   - That's what I was saying. - No way.

01:31:06   - I mean, they do it with the watch.

01:31:08   Like I said, the reason they do it with the watch

01:31:10   is because the watch thing is proprietary, right?

01:31:13   - Yes. - I mean, you can actually

01:31:14   kind of charge it on Qi chargers and scrap like that,

01:31:16   'cause whatever, inductance doesn't care.

01:31:18   But-- - I've never gotten that

01:31:19   to work, I've tried it a few times.

01:31:20   - I think it depends on the particular thing.

01:31:22   But if it is a proprietary Apple faster,

01:31:26   more localized heat generation charging thing or whatever,

01:31:30   they would absolutely include it in the box

01:31:32   for exactly the same reason they include it for the watch,

01:31:34   'cause where else are you gonna get

01:31:35   your first one of those cables,

01:31:36   'cause they don't exist when you buy your first thing?

01:31:38   - I don't know, I'm with Marco,

01:31:39   I think they would just say, well, it's Qi charging,

01:31:41   go get one. - Or you can buy

01:31:42   the Apple fast charger for $29.

01:31:44   - Exactly. - And actually,

01:31:46   like as I said last show,

01:31:48   about the whatever it was about the power bricks,

01:31:50   if they wanna make the pricing of these phones a la carte

01:31:53   and just subtract the price of all the accessories

01:31:54   from the phone price, that's good.

01:31:56   That's fine for everybody, no one objects to that.

01:32:01   But it's not the way things go.

01:32:04   So they keep the price the same,

01:32:06   but remove stuff from the box.

01:32:07   - Yeah, exactly.

01:32:08   Record profits again somehow this year.

01:32:11   - And even less e-waste.

01:32:14   - Actually, I'm curious, do you think,

01:32:16   so in the last year or two,

01:32:20   there's been a noticeable push on Apple's end

01:32:25   for much more aggressive sales.

01:32:29   And you see this in a lot of different ways.

01:32:30   Like if you're on an email list that they have,

01:32:34   they've been pushing increasingly aggressively

01:32:36   for you to upgrade constantly to every new product.

01:32:39   They especially push on iPhones.

01:32:41   If you know any business reps in any of the retail stores,

01:32:46   they've been pushing way more heavily through them

01:32:49   over the last year or two.

01:32:50   Ever since the Apple card last fall,

01:32:55   they've been pushing a ton of like,

01:32:59   buy through this card thing,

01:33:01   they've been pushing through the upgrade program,

01:33:02   buy through this.

01:33:03   They changed every price of everything on the website

01:33:07   recently to put the new per month lease price first

01:33:12   instead of the actual cash buying price

01:33:14   of everything they sell basically,

01:33:16   which I think is, honestly,

01:33:17   I think that's kind of sleazy and gross.

01:33:19   But they've been pushing so hard

01:33:22   on the more aggressive sales angle recently.

01:33:27   Do you think they're gonna do anything differently

01:33:29   this year in that area?

01:33:30   Do you think, is there gonna be any more of a push

01:33:34   this year given that we're in such a weird time

01:33:37   and maybe sales might be suppressed

01:33:38   because of the global conditions?

01:33:41   Is anything gonna be different this year, you think,

01:33:42   on the sales or business side?

01:33:46   - Well, you just mentioned all the stuff

01:33:47   they're already doing.

01:33:48   So I think they will continue to do that.

01:33:51   But I can't, I'm not, you know,

01:33:53   they already have the up-to-date thing,

01:33:54   they already show you all the prices per month.

01:33:57   That stuff already exists.

01:33:58   They will absolutely do that for the new phones.

01:33:59   So what is one step beyond that?

01:34:01   Like, what's the next step up in,

01:34:04   what's it gonna take to get you into this new phone today?

01:34:06   I don't know what the next step is.

01:34:08   I feel like they've already done all those things,

01:34:11   already done all the obvious straightforward things

01:34:13   to make the phone seem more affordable to people.

01:34:17   - Do you think they would ever tie in

01:34:18   with the Apple One bundle of something like,

01:34:21   you know, you pay, kind of like what the new Xbox has.

01:34:24   Like, you pay whatever this price is,

01:34:27   and you're basically buying a services

01:34:30   and iPhone bundle together.

01:34:32   - I mean, there's no reason they can't do that,

01:34:34   but historically what they've done is the opposite,

01:34:36   which is you buy a new Apple thing

01:34:37   that we really want you to buy,

01:34:38   and you get a free year of whatever service

01:34:40   we're currently pushing.

01:34:41   - Right, yeah.

01:34:43   - So, I mean, yeah, I think that kind of deal

01:34:45   makes perfect sense, although at a certain point

01:34:47   when you start bundling things together,

01:34:49   there's a point of diminishing returns where you're like,

01:34:52   which of the seven things do I want,

01:34:54   and can I get them at a bundle?

01:34:55   Apple One is already kind of complicated enough,

01:34:57   so like, it seems to me that they'd much rather

01:35:00   have you subscribe to one of their services,

01:35:02   and that's why, you know, buy a free Apple thing

01:35:05   and get a year of Apple TV+,

01:35:07   like it's the obvious biggest example.

01:35:09   That's the lever they've been using here,

01:35:11   not in the opposite direction.

01:35:12   I feel like the iPhone doesn't need anything

01:35:14   to pull it along.

01:35:15   Obviously COVID times may change that,

01:35:17   but who knows?

01:35:18   Like, there are lots of interesting things you can do

01:35:21   in terms of marketing and advertising,

01:35:22   but I really feel like they have most of the big bases

01:35:26   already covered, and I think they're fine

01:35:31   with the current crop of come-ons, but who knows?

01:35:34   - I mostly agree with that.

01:35:35   I wouldn't be surprised if there is eventually

01:35:37   a merging of the Apple One and iPhone upgrade program,

01:35:42   but we'll see what happens.

01:35:44   One final question I have for you guys,

01:35:47   then we should try to squeeze in some Ask ATP.

01:35:49   Do you think that this will be for, say,

01:35:52   the iPhone upgrade program,

01:35:54   or for people who are upgrading every year,

01:35:56   do you think that this will be the shortest amount of time

01:36:00   that we will have a phone?

01:36:02   Because this is going on in mid-October,

01:36:04   presumably won't ship until next,

01:36:07   maybe next week at the earliest,

01:36:09   but probably the week after that,

01:36:10   or maybe even the end of October, early November.

01:36:12   Is this going to be the shortest amount of time

01:36:15   that annual iPhone upgraders will have a particular phone?

01:36:19   Do you think next year we'll be back

01:36:20   on the September schedule?

01:36:22   - I think that it may just shift everything,

01:36:24   because it's not like the conditions

01:36:25   that cause this delay go away,

01:36:27   or we suddenly get a time to catch up, right?

01:36:30   And I think that the main, the sort of target,

01:36:34   the sort of unavoidable target for the phone

01:36:37   around this time of year is you really can't

01:36:39   miss the holidays, right?

01:36:40   So September is like, "I didn't miss the holidays, I'm fine."

01:36:43   October, you still kind of haven't missed the holidays,

01:36:45   and if this pushed this thing out to October,

01:36:48   that might've also pushed the next phone out to October,

01:36:50   so October could become the new September,

01:36:52   until they can slowly shift it back.

01:36:53   That seems like a reasonable assumption to me,

01:36:56   because October, you still got the holidays, right?

01:36:58   I still feel like that is fine,

01:37:00   and if the schedule has to be shifted for a year or two,

01:37:03   and they could slowly ratchet it back to get to September,

01:37:06   if they really care about that,

01:37:07   I think that's a more likely outcome than,

01:37:11   like, I don't know, I know what you're saying,

01:37:13   like, "Oh, you get this phone in November,

01:37:14   "and the next phone comes out in September,

01:37:16   "and it didn't have a long life at the top of the heap."

01:37:18   But that really depends on stuff in the world

01:37:21   that we can't really predict at this point,

01:37:23   how the planet recovers from its current situation.

01:37:27   - What about you, Marco?

01:37:28   - I think they're gonna get back to September

01:37:30   as quickly as they can, so if it's not this one,

01:37:33   it'll be slowly over the next few phones,

01:37:36   they'll shift their way back,

01:37:36   but I have a feeling it'll be this one.

01:37:38   I have a feeling, like, next fall,

01:37:40   they're gonna be back on schedule,

01:37:41   'cause, like, they don't care when they release the last one.

01:37:44   Most people don't buy phones every year, only us idiots,

01:37:47   so most people wouldn't care

01:37:49   how soon they release the next one, really,

01:37:51   and if it's 11 months away instead of 12 months away,

01:37:55   like, most people aren't even gonna remember the difference.

01:37:58   So it's more a question of whether they can do it,

01:38:01   and I bet they can.

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01:40:04   - All right, Jon, we have three minutes

01:40:11   for you to cover the House Judiciary Committee

01:40:13   antitrust report on Amazon,

01:40:15   and Facebook, and Apple, and Google.

01:40:17   The clock is ticking, go.

01:40:18   - I gotta be in more than three minutes, but not too long.

01:40:21   So we talked about this when the people,

01:40:23   when all the tech CEOs were in front of Congress

01:40:26   and answering their questions,

01:40:27   and how bad some of their questions were,

01:40:28   and so on and so forth.

01:40:29   So now they released this 450-page report,

01:40:32   PDF link in the show notes.

01:40:33   Interestingly, the old PDF link 404'd today,

01:40:35   and I had to find it elsewhere, but it's up still there.

01:40:39   The result of this report,

01:40:41   the summary would be basically that

01:40:44   the people who wrote this report think

01:40:45   these big tech companies have a lot of power,

01:40:48   probably too much power, and they sometimes abuse it

01:40:51   to make things worse for people.

01:40:52   Like, that's the summary.

01:40:54   Does this mean that there are going to be

01:40:58   a bunch of new laws in the United States

01:40:59   that constrain these companies?

01:41:01   If the people who wrote this report have their way, it will,

01:41:04   but the people who wrote this report currently

01:41:06   do not have their way in anything, right?

01:41:08   So that is the executive summary,

01:41:10   that in general, this is mostly bad news

01:41:13   for the big tech companies, because it means that

01:41:16   a lot of people, at least one party

01:41:18   in our crappy two-party system,

01:41:21   think these companies have too much power.

01:41:24   I encourage people to look at it,

01:41:25   because you can read the first page or two

01:41:27   and kind of get the gist of it.

01:41:28   One little part that I took out

01:41:30   that I thought was interesting was,

01:41:32   all right, so there's two aspects of this.

01:41:34   One is, like, we need some new laws to address these issues,

01:41:39   because obviously our current laws don't address it at all.

01:41:40   A lot of these things that people are doing are legal,

01:41:42   but they're bad for the economy and bad for customers

01:41:45   and bad for everything, so we should make some new laws,

01:41:47   which fine, that makes sense.

01:41:48   They're the legislature, that's what they do, right?

01:41:51   But the other aspect was relevant to the discussion

01:41:53   we had earlier about, like, well, current antitrust law,

01:41:58   who is a monopoly, and Apple's argument

01:42:00   that it does not have majority market share

01:42:02   in any markets that it competes in

01:42:03   or doesn't have dominant market share.

01:42:05   One section of this document says,

01:42:06   I'll read from the thing here,

01:42:09   "The subcommittee should examine the creation

01:42:11   "of a statutory presumption that a market share of 30%

01:42:14   "or more constitutes a rebuttable presumption

01:42:16   "of dominance by a seller."

01:42:18   My translation of this is basically saying,

01:42:19   look, right now, with the Sherman antitrust law,

01:42:23   if we try to use the Sherman Act on, say, Apple,

01:42:26   Apple's gonna say, pfft, we have, like, 40% market share.

01:42:29   According to the Sherman Act,

01:42:30   we're not a dominant monopoly, so you can't say anything.

01:42:33   And what they're saying is, we should consider changing

01:42:37   the existing Sherman Antitrust Act to say,

01:42:40   even if you have a smaller market share,

01:42:42   that doesn't mean you're automatically not subject

01:42:47   to the constraints of our existing antitrust laws.

01:42:49   That is my interpretation of this paragraph.

01:42:51   It is written in a complicated way,

01:42:52   and I'm not sure if I'm reading it right,

01:42:54   but I feel like that two-pronged approach of,

01:42:56   one, we need new laws, 'cause there are new companies

01:42:58   doing new things that were totally unforeseen at the time.

01:43:01   The Sherman Antitrust Act was written long ago.

01:43:03   And two, maybe we should also consider revisiting

01:43:06   the constraints that I kind of outlined,

01:43:08   like sort of the stuff that was forged in the fire

01:43:11   of the Microsoft antitrust file that's saying,

01:43:13   do you have a monopoly?

01:43:14   It's like, well, Microsoft just owns the entire PC industry.

01:43:17   It was an easy, slam-dunk case.

01:43:18   Like, yes, of course they have a monopoly,

01:43:20   but Apple's big defense is, we're not like Microsoft.

01:43:23   And now Congress is saying, even with our existing laws,

01:43:25   even when we pass no new laws,

01:43:27   maybe we should examine the creation

01:43:30   of a statutory presumption.

01:43:32   Like, we should look at that.

01:43:33   Do you really need to have, like, 95% market share

01:43:36   to be considered a monopoly,

01:43:37   according to current antitrust laws?

01:43:38   Maybe not.

01:43:39   So this shows me that a large number of Democrats

01:43:44   in Congress really, really think that these companies

01:43:47   need to be taken down a notch.

01:43:49   Will they be successful?

01:43:51   Will this happen?

01:43:52   In general, making any new laws or, you know,

01:43:56   that constrain the richest companies in the world

01:43:59   usually requires many, many more people to die.

01:44:01   I mean, look how long it took to get laws

01:44:04   to constrain, like, tobacco companies, right?

01:44:07   It's just, it is not easy, not easy to get,

01:44:11   in our current system of government,

01:44:13   to get new laws constraining the richest,

01:44:15   most powerful companies in the world,

01:44:16   because there's so much working against it

01:44:18   in our terrible broken system of government, right?

01:44:20   But this report was an entirely one-sided declaration

01:44:25   that, boy, if a bunch of people have their way,

01:44:30   tech companies, you will be newly constrained

01:44:33   in some potentially minor way in the future.

01:44:36   That's it, that's my summary.

01:44:38   - That actually wasn't bad.

01:44:40   All right, Ask ATP, Andy writes,

01:44:42   "What's the deal with disk images?

01:44:44   "Why were they introduced, and more importantly,

01:44:46   "why do they still exist?

01:44:47   "I know people who've gotten Macs

01:44:48   "and just booted apps like Steam

01:44:50   "directly from their disk image

01:44:51   "until they asked me to help them out.

01:44:52   "What's going on with that, John?"

01:44:55   - So disk images originally existed

01:44:57   because Mac file system could support more kinds of,

01:45:02   you know, metadata, resource forks, stuff like that,

01:45:05   than could exist on other systems.

01:45:07   So if you wanted to take a bunch of Mac stuff,

01:45:10   say an application that itself has, you know,

01:45:13   finder attributes and resource forks

01:45:15   and type and creator codes and all sorts of crap like that,

01:45:18   and you wanted to transport that safely

01:45:19   across any other system, you would have to package it up

01:45:23   in a way to essentially flatten it, right?

01:45:25   And one of the ways that you can do that

01:45:27   is if you have a disk image system,

01:45:29   which is basically a little file on disk

01:45:30   that you can open and will be mounted

01:45:32   as if it is a Mac volume,

01:45:34   that disk image can be a flat file,

01:45:37   but within it, once it mounts it as a disk image in the OS,

01:45:40   the OS sees the entire rich file system, right?

01:45:43   I don't think that's why disk images were created,

01:45:45   but that's one of the reasons they still hang around, right?

01:45:47   Second thing is, disk images are just plain cool.

01:45:50   You can take a file and use it as a disk.

01:45:52   You can make an image of an existing disk

01:45:54   and save it as a file, and you're like,

01:45:55   it's a cool thing to be able to do.

01:45:58   I remember showing people disk images back in the DOS days,

01:46:00   and it would blow their little minds,

01:46:01   'cause it is just--

01:46:03   - Why the little minds, John?

01:46:04   Come on. - Very little minds.

01:46:05   Their drives were named single letters, right?

01:46:07   Okay, and still are.

01:46:08   Anyway. (laughs)

01:46:10   Right, I can name my hard drive whatever I want with spaces.

01:46:12   Look, it's got a cute cartoon icon.

01:46:14   Anyway. (laughs)

01:46:16   So yeah, so disk images are a useful thing to have

01:46:19   just because it's useful sometimes

01:46:20   to be able to make a fake little volume out of a file.

01:46:23   I do it sometimes even today,

01:46:25   like if I need a case-sensitive file system somewhere

01:46:28   to do something, for example, at work

01:46:29   where we have files that differ only in case,

01:46:31   and it drives me nuts.

01:46:32   If I wanna do that on my Mac,

01:46:34   I need to make a case-sensitive volume,

01:46:35   but I'm not gonna partition my thing or,

01:46:38   yeah, I guess with APFS it's much easier,

01:46:39   but back in the pre-APFS days,

01:46:42   you'd make a little disk image,

01:46:43   and you could make it any size you want,

01:46:45   and it can be sparse, so it doesn't take up

01:46:46   all that space and yada yada.

01:46:47   Disk images are just a cool thing to have.

01:46:49   Now, as for why they still exist today

01:46:51   in a world where our Mac applications

01:46:53   shouldn't have any crap that can't live on the internet,

01:46:56   why don't we just use zip files?

01:46:57   Well, a lot of applications do just use zip files,

01:46:59   but there are still things that disk images can do

01:47:02   that say a zip file can't.

01:47:03   For example, mount as a volume,

01:47:05   open a window that has the stupid little arrow

01:47:07   in the background that says drag this application

01:47:09   over to this alias, or symlink usually,

01:47:11   to your application folder.

01:47:13   How many apps have you gotten that do that, right?

01:47:15   If you just unzip it, it sits there in your downloads folder

01:47:18   and then everyone just runs it out of the downloads folder,

01:47:20   then everyone's gotta write custom code that says,

01:47:21   hey, it looks like you're running this application

01:47:23   out of your downloads folder.

01:47:24   Do you want me to move it into applications?

01:47:26   None of these are a perfect system.

01:47:27   The Mac App Store is better where you just hit the button

01:47:29   and you get the app and it goes in the right place.

01:47:32   But both of them fulfill a role.

01:47:34   And so that Disk Image Convention today,

01:47:37   yes, it technically does preserve all Mac-specific

01:47:39   data, yada, yada, yada,

01:47:40   but you probably don't need to do that anymore.

01:47:42   But it does let you do the little thing

01:47:44   where you can instruct people to drag the icon

01:47:46   into the application folder, which I grant,

01:47:48   most people don't even understand what's happening there

01:47:50   and it's confusing and you're still left

01:47:51   with the disk image that you have to unmap.

01:47:53   It's a bad system, we all know it is.

01:47:55   But I think that's one of the reasons

01:47:56   they still hang around, right?

01:47:57   So to sum up, disk images are cool and should always exist.

01:48:01   People needed to use them for software distribution

01:48:03   back in the day.

01:48:04   People don't need to use them now,

01:48:06   but they still have some features that people like.

01:48:08   - Is a zip file or a tarball a disk image?

01:48:11   - No, not at all, because when you sort of unpack it,

01:48:14   you get files out of it.

01:48:15   When you open a disk image, it mounts a volume.

01:48:18   Your computer thinks it has a new volume attached to it,

01:48:21   just like any other volume and all the other tools

01:48:23   you can use for volumes, including ejecting them

01:48:25   and running file system check on them.

01:48:27   And the volumes can have different file systems

01:48:29   than the file system on your Mac, totally unrelated,

01:48:32   not even remotely close.

01:48:34   - What about a WAD file?

01:48:34   Do you know what that is, Jon?

01:48:35   Because there aren't very many games on,

01:48:37   there aren't many games on Macs.

01:48:38   - I know what a WAD file is.

01:48:39   I don't know, aren't WAD files just zip files, though?

01:48:42   - I don't think they're literally zip files,

01:48:44   but they're effectively the same as far as I'm aware.

01:48:45   - I think they actually might have predated zip files,

01:48:48   'cause that was what Doom used for its resources, right?

01:48:50   - Mm-hmm. - Yep.

01:48:51   I don't know if they're predated zip,

01:48:53   but I think they are effectively the same.

01:48:54   It didn't predate zip, but there are a lot of file formats

01:48:57   that are really just either zip or tar under the covers.

01:49:00   What the hell is a XIP, though?

01:49:02   I would love to know what that format is.

01:49:04   Is that really a totally made-up Apple thing?

01:49:06   - Oh, yeah, the Xcode zip?

01:49:07   - Yeah, I thought that that was like

01:49:08   a cryptographically secure zip file or something like that.

01:49:12   I probably have that wrong for the record,

01:49:14   but that was my impression, was that it's effectively

01:49:16   a zip file that's got some certs and cryptographic magic

01:49:21   that I don't understand sprinkled on top of it.

01:49:23   All we know is that it takes forever to decompress.

01:49:26   - Yep. - Yes. (laughs)

01:49:27   - The chat room is saying it's a signed zip,

01:49:28   which is, I think, a better summary

01:49:30   of what I was trying and fumbling to say.

01:49:31   - Although I imagine that it takes forever to zip,

01:49:33   not just because of the format,

01:49:34   but also because Xcode itself contains a hodgillion files.

01:49:37   - And also because you probably have Dropbox running,

01:49:39   which is using 100% of your CPU while it's unzipping.

01:49:41   - No, oh, come on, rookie mistake.

01:49:44   (laughing)

01:49:45   Never try to expand on one of those Xcode XIP zip files

01:49:50   with Dropbox running, silly.

01:49:52   - Small brain after all.

01:49:53   - That should be the real benchmark

01:49:55   of any new pro Mac hardware, is like,

01:49:56   okay, this is all well and good.

01:49:58   You can have five 8K streams of video,

01:50:00   but how long does it take to decompress Xcode?

01:50:02   (laughing)

01:50:05   - All right, Ian Oimatiau writes,

01:50:07   as users are starting to make their phones

01:50:10   last three to four years between upgrades,

01:50:11   do you think it's possible or reasonable

01:50:13   for the useful lifespan of a phone to reach 10 years?

01:50:16   It feels like official software support

01:50:18   is artificially holding older phones back.

01:50:21   I don't know, I think I take a little bit of issue

01:50:23   with artificially holding older phones back.

01:50:25   I don't think that's particularly fair.

01:50:28   I think 10 years is aggressive,

01:50:30   but on an infinite time scale, you never know.

01:50:32   But I do think that it seems as though

01:50:38   iPhones anyway are lasting longer.

01:50:41   And look at the Apple Watch, the Series 3.

01:50:44   Bless its heart, it's still going.

01:50:48   So I do think that things are definitely getting,

01:50:51   or having increased longevity.

01:50:53   10 years I don't think we'll see for a while,

01:50:55   but I mean the point is still,

01:50:57   other than the artificial thing,

01:50:58   I think the point is still fair.

01:50:59   Marco, what do you think?

01:51:01   - I also, I don't think any vendor

01:51:03   is artificially slowing old phones down.

01:51:06   I think the software moves forward,

01:51:08   and the OS's move forward because they're able

01:51:11   to assume things about how modern phones

01:51:14   have more processing power and more RAM and stuff like that.

01:51:17   So the OS's will always move forward

01:51:19   and will always be slower on really old hardware.

01:51:22   But the fact that the OS has run at all

01:51:25   on the old hardware, I think that letting that happen

01:51:29   for a certain period back in your hardware lineup

01:51:32   is the only obligation the platform makers have

01:51:35   to old hardware.

01:51:37   And that being said, you could think about,

01:51:40   could a phone last 10 years?

01:51:42   And I think to get to that point,

01:51:44   you would need two things to happen.

01:51:45   Number one, you would need a dramatic slowdown

01:51:48   in the advancement of phone hardware.

01:51:50   Now we see on the PC side, Mac side,

01:51:53   that has happened over the last decade or two.

01:51:56   And a 10 year old Mac, as John knows,

01:52:00   can still be usable.

01:52:02   It's not, it might not be the best modern performer

01:52:06   by the time it gets there, but it is possible

01:52:08   because phones will get to a point

01:52:11   where they are advancing much more slowly

01:52:14   as they have been for these last 12 years.

01:52:18   I don't think we're quite there yet,

01:52:19   but you can see the shape of the curve,

01:52:23   it is flattening, it is getting less steep.

01:52:26   Phones are accelerating in performance

01:52:29   more slowly than they used to be.

01:52:30   So that I think has to happen to make this even possible.

01:52:34   And the second thing, from a practical standpoint,

01:52:37   is that the batteries have to be much more easily replaceable

01:52:41   or they have to last much longer on their own.

01:52:43   Because the main problem we have that limits phone

01:52:46   and watch and laptop lifespan these days

01:52:50   is the chemical useful lifespan of lithium ion batteries.

01:52:53   They degrade over time.

01:52:55   No matter how much or little you use them,

01:52:57   there's a certain inevitable amount of degradation

01:53:00   that happens just chemically to them that they lose capacity.

01:53:03   And if you actually are using them,

01:53:05   if you're like discharging and recharging them every day,

01:53:08   like you do with phones and watches at least,

01:53:10   maybe not all laptops, depending on whether you use it

01:53:13   to plug them most of the time, but like phones and watches,

01:53:15   you're discharging to some degree,

01:53:17   to some significant degree, and then recharging every day.

01:53:20   No battery can stand up to that for more than a few years

01:53:23   without having pretty significant capacity loss,

01:53:25   eventually to the point where the device is no longer useful.

01:53:28   And to reach 10 years, you would have to

01:53:32   either have dramatically better and longer lasting batteries,

01:53:36   which I don't think we really know how to make yet

01:53:37   in this category, and/or you'd have to the batteries

01:53:42   be easily replaceable outside of warranty

01:53:45   by any repair shop or end user,

01:53:48   not just having Apple do it for whatever price they want.

01:53:51   And that, I don't think, is very likely either.

01:53:55   - Yeah, battery, I feel like, is the main constraint.

01:53:56   The only thing I would add is that you mentioned

01:53:59   I don't think manufacturers are slowing down

01:54:01   old phones intentionally.

01:54:02   The one instance where Apple was slowing down

01:54:03   old phones intentionally was because of, ta-da, the battery.

01:54:07   As in, they had to, you know, it would overload the battery

01:54:11   and the phone would switch off,

01:54:12   so the choice was to run at a slower speed

01:54:14   and draw less power, right?

01:54:16   The battery is the real constraint here,

01:54:18   both the changing of it and the technology.

01:54:20   The good news is that there is a potential

01:54:22   for new, longer lasting battery technology.

01:54:25   The bad news is that the time horizon

01:54:28   is not particularly good.

01:54:29   It always has, you know, five to 10 years in the future.

01:54:33   You know, it'll probably come to, like, you know,

01:54:35   the solid metal batteries or whatever,

01:54:36   probably come to vehicles before it comes to phones.

01:54:39   But who knows, but that's what you really need.

01:54:42   And as for the phones, you know, Apple support for OSs,

01:54:46   I saw a chart, I wish I could remember it,

01:54:47   I couldn't find the link.

01:54:48   I saw a chart recently showing OS support

01:54:50   versus phone hardware age on Android,

01:54:53   and it is dismal compared to the iPhone.

01:54:55   Apple supports hardware so much farther back in time

01:54:58   with its most recent OS than Android tends to.

01:55:02   So I think Apple's doing about as well as you can expect,

01:55:06   given the fact that all their batteries are internal,

01:55:08   are not particularly easy to replace, and are lithium ion.

01:55:12   - Finally, Luke Schulman writes,

01:55:13   "We are expecting our first child in January, 2021.

01:55:16   We don't currently have a quote unquote real camera.

01:55:19   With the newest capabilities of phone cameras,

01:55:20   would you recommend buying a quote unquote real camera?

01:55:23   What attributes would you prioritize?"

01:55:25   You know, I was just thinking today

01:55:27   that I haven't used my Micro Four Thirds camera,

01:55:30   which is a small quote unquote real camera.

01:55:33   I haven't used that in a little while,

01:55:35   and I kind of miss it.

01:55:36   I kind of miss, in the same way that,

01:55:39   what did you guys call it, a tea ceremony playing vinyl?

01:55:43   I feel like to some degree,

01:55:45   there's a little bit of a tea ceremony now for my Olympus,

01:55:49   my Micro Four Thirds camera.

01:55:50   Up until the iPhone 11 Pro,

01:55:55   I don't personally feel like any of my iPhones

01:55:59   took good enough pictures to be comparable to that phone.

01:56:03   And I still don't get the really good bokeh

01:56:05   off of the iPhone, even with portrait mode.

01:56:08   Like it's oftentimes, it feels synthetic even to me,

01:56:11   and I don't have the world's most discerning eye.

01:56:13   But there's things about,

01:56:16   and I'm comparing only one data point, which is my Olympus.

01:56:19   And so this math may be different for other cameras.

01:56:23   But like the iPhone's HDR mode,

01:56:25   so you can capture a very bright sky at the same time

01:56:29   you're capturing a normally exposed person.

01:56:34   That works much better on my iPhone

01:56:37   than it does on my Olympus.

01:56:39   And video is much better on my iPhone

01:56:42   than it is on my Olympus.

01:56:43   And my iPhone is always on me.

01:56:46   So in a lot of ways, I would say,

01:56:48   no, you shouldn't buy a real camera.

01:56:51   But I will tell you, even with my Micro Four Thirds camera,

01:56:54   which is way less fancy than the cameras

01:56:56   that the two of you gentlemen have,

01:56:58   when I get a good shot, it is a good, good shot.

01:57:02   And I don't feel like there's been many pictures

01:57:07   on my iPhone, even the 11 Pro that I love so much.

01:57:10   There haven't been that many that have been like,

01:57:12   wow, that was a great shot.

01:57:14   I've gotten a zillion shots that are very good,

01:57:17   but not to the same level.

01:57:20   But the thing of it is, is that the real camera's bigger,

01:57:25   it's slower, it's heavier, it's got its own battery,

01:57:28   I need to worry about charging.

01:57:29   It doesn't automatically geotag all the pictures.

01:57:32   There are many disadvantages to it,

01:57:34   but I personally still think it is worth it.

01:57:38   And whenever we're doing something

01:57:40   that's even remotely unusual,

01:57:42   which for the last seven months has been never,

01:57:45   but when we're going to my parents' house,

01:57:48   when we're going on a vacation,

01:57:50   I will still bring the big camera out a lot.

01:57:53   And I am always glad that I did,

01:57:55   because I will always find at least a handful of shots

01:57:58   that I think to myself, this may have been taken differently

01:58:01   with the iPhone, maybe the sky wouldn't be blown out

01:58:05   on the iPhone, but I've zoomed three times further

01:58:08   than my iPhone can zoom, or the background blur

01:58:11   that bokeh in the background is so much cleaner

01:58:14   and crisper than it is, or I guess not crisp,

01:58:15   but you know what I mean, it's so much less synthetic

01:58:18   than it would have been on the iPhone.

01:58:19   And so that is many words to say

01:58:22   that I still think it is worth it,

01:58:24   but it is a much, much tougher call now

01:58:28   than I think it has ever been before.

01:58:30   And even one phone ago, I didn't have a XS,

01:58:35   but I did have a X, with my X, I would have been like,

01:58:37   "Absolutely get a real camera."

01:58:39   Now, eh, I'm not so sure.

01:58:41   Jon, let's start with you, 'cause I think

01:58:43   even though you are extremely opinionated,

01:58:44   I think you might have actually softer opinions about this,

01:58:47   and let's have Marco round us out.

01:58:48   - Oh, easy answer.

01:58:49   I mean, this is another one of our perennial questions

01:58:51   that we get all the time.

01:58:52   Absolutely get a real camera.

01:58:53   Like, your kids are not gonna be this age,

01:58:55   they're only gonna be this age one time.

01:58:56   You will never regret spending more money

01:58:58   to get even a tiny bit better pictures.

01:59:00   I regret getting-- - That is well-done.

01:59:03   - I had a real camera, because camera phones

01:59:05   weren't much of a thing for my kids.

01:59:06   I regret not getting a better camera,

01:59:08   because they were just two and a half, inexpensive.

01:59:09   We got a good camera, but not the best.

01:59:12   I look back at those pictures now, and I say,

01:59:13   "You should have spent $3,000 to get

01:59:16   "whatever the best SLR camera you could have gotten was,

01:59:19   "but you didn't."

01:59:21   I feel like, for memories like that,

01:59:23   especially your young child, where this will be the time

01:59:25   you have the absolute most motivation to deal with

01:59:28   all the dad-sized case you said,

01:59:29   "Oh, it's big, it's bulky, it's expensive."

01:59:31   When it's your first child coming,

01:59:32   you will find yourself, find the motivation

01:59:35   to carry around the big, heavy camera.

01:59:37   If possible, you will find the ability

01:59:39   to dig out that much money from your savings

01:59:41   to pay for the thing, just like you're paying

01:59:42   for all the other baby stuff

01:59:43   when the new baby's coming, right?

01:59:45   And then, in later years, you will never regret

01:59:48   having a even slightly better than phone camera camera

01:59:52   for, it doesn't mean you're not gonna take pictures

01:59:54   with your phone, 'cause you totally will,

01:59:56   but I think there is no question,

01:59:58   the sort of the, this is the loss aversion model, right?

02:00:01   What will you regret more, lugging around a big camera

02:00:04   and not using it as much as you, quote unquote,

02:00:06   thought you would, or having phone quality only pictures

02:00:10   of your baby?

02:00:11   - Yeah, yeah, I know I need to give you a chance, Marco,

02:00:14   but one thing that I used to convince myself

02:00:16   to get my first Olympus camera was that I thought of it

02:00:20   kind of like an insurance policy, insofar as

02:00:24   I don't wanna regret not having had the best camera,

02:00:29   or maybe not the best, but a really good camera

02:00:32   for this time, like you said, John,

02:00:33   that you can never get back.

02:00:35   And so I think that's a really good point

02:00:36   that I didn't consider, and it's something

02:00:38   that should be considered, you know,

02:00:40   that there's no way to go back in time

02:00:43   and get better photos, so you might as well

02:00:45   get a good camera now.

02:00:46   Marco, I apologize, it's your turn.

02:00:49   - I think for the first time ever,

02:00:52   I might take the other side of this.

02:00:54   - What?

02:00:55   - Says somebody who has pictures of his child

02:00:56   with a Canon 5D, which look amazing

02:00:59   and would not be possible with current phones,

02:01:01   let alone phones that were back when Adam was a baby.

02:01:04   - So it's a tough call because it's so much

02:01:09   more complicated now.

02:01:10   Every year that goes by, this decision gets more complicated

02:01:14   because phones get better, and they keep getting better

02:01:18   and better at more and more things.

02:01:20   The iceberg that SLRs or mirrorless,

02:01:25   other cameras basically, they're standing on this iceberg

02:01:28   and it just keeps shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.

02:01:31   And full size or other cameras are still better

02:01:36   than phone cameras and will always be better

02:01:40   than phone cameras in certain ways.

02:01:43   And those ways are significant.

02:01:47   They're always gonna have way more resolution,

02:01:50   way better optics, way better low light noise performance.

02:01:55   Big cameras are always going to be able

02:01:58   to capture better pictures in ideal circumstances

02:02:03   when you have them with you, when you have good light,

02:02:06   when you have good glass, when you have the settings right.

02:02:10   When everything is right, the big cameras

02:02:13   will always be able to capture amazing shots

02:02:16   that phone optics simply can't do

02:02:18   'cause they're so much smaller and cheaper.

02:02:20   There is a lot of value to the pictures

02:02:23   that big cameras can capture that you are just not

02:02:26   going to get out of a phone camera no matter what.

02:02:29   But you will take so many more pictures with your phone,

02:02:34   so many more, and you'll take video with your phone,

02:02:37   and you'll be largely looking at many of these pictures

02:02:42   on phones where the difference in quality is not that big,

02:02:47   or not that noticeable. (laughs)

02:02:49   You start seeing these differences

02:02:50   when you're talking about large-scale viewing,

02:02:53   viewing on computer monitors or printing.

02:02:56   That's when you start noticing

02:02:56   quality differences much more.

02:02:58   But viewing the phone sizes, even the quality advantages

02:03:01   of big camera photos are getting less and less noticeable

02:03:05   compared to well-done phone photos.

02:03:07   And the phone can now succeed so much better

02:03:11   in areas where the big cameras struggle

02:03:14   or where the big cameras can work if you're a pro,

02:03:18   but you have a high chance of making an error.

02:03:20   So like what Casey was saying about exposure problems

02:03:23   of when you have a bright area,

02:03:25   you can capture high dynamic range

02:03:28   general imaging with big cameras.

02:03:31   It's just harder, and you're more likely to do it wrong,

02:03:34   and it might require post-processing

02:03:35   that you will probably never do.

02:03:37   So there's that whole issue. (laughs)

02:03:40   There's the ways in which the big cameras

02:03:42   are so much worse.

02:03:43   The workflow is such a big one.

02:03:46   As Casey mentioned, the big camera photos

02:03:49   are not gonna be automatically geotagged.

02:03:51   You gotta remember to set the clock right on the camera,

02:03:53   otherwise they're gonna even have the wrong timestamps.

02:03:55   You have to somehow import them from the camera

02:03:58   to whatever your photo collection is,

02:04:00   whether it's the Apple photo roll

02:04:02   or whatever else you might do.

02:04:04   That process is gonna be heavy and clunky and error-prone.

02:04:09   It's so much harder to work with them,

02:04:11   even beyond the physical side, which is itself not trivial,

02:04:15   because no matter how small of a camera you get,

02:04:19   it's not gonna be pocketable,

02:04:21   and you're not gonna have it with you most of the time.

02:04:24   So you have all these, there's so many issues

02:04:26   that make standalone cameras so much harder

02:04:30   to use in practice, and you just get such amazing output

02:04:35   from modern phones.

02:04:38   It's just increasingly hard to justify a standalone camera.

02:04:43   So what I would say is,

02:04:45   if you're the kind of person who loves gear,

02:04:50   and you just want a reason to buy some cool gear,

02:04:53   and you're gonna actually therefore be motivated

02:04:55   to use it when you get it, by all means, get a cool camera.

02:04:59   Having your kid is a great time to scratch that itch

02:05:04   of I want good camera gear.

02:05:06   If you're into it for the gear's sake, go for it.

02:05:10   But if you just are thinking like I should have this

02:05:14   because I quote should, I think phones are just

02:05:19   at about the threshold now where they are good enough

02:05:24   at the things that the big cameras are really good at,

02:05:27   and they're better than the big cameras

02:05:30   in many common situations.

02:05:32   Casey mentioned video, I agree.

02:05:35   Even though my big cameras are capable

02:05:37   of shooting better video in professional hands,

02:05:41   in professional settings, I don't have professional hands,

02:05:45   and I'm usually not in professional settings.

02:05:47   And so in the settings I'm usually in,

02:05:49   with the hands I have, I grab the phone in my pocket

02:05:52   and I shoot video and it looks incredible,

02:05:54   and it looks better than what I could have done

02:05:57   in those same situations with my big Sony camera.

02:06:00   That dynamic of the phone actually doing better

02:06:04   in the situation I'm actually in

02:06:06   than the big camera could do, that keeps broadening

02:06:09   to accommodate more and more use cases.

02:06:12   One of the biggest ones now is in low light.

02:06:15   That if you want a photo in low light,

02:06:17   if you have a giant full frame sensor

02:06:20   on a nice big Sony sensor, full frame sensor,

02:06:24   a nice big wide open lens, you can do really well

02:06:27   in low light and get an amazing amount of detail

02:06:30   with not nearly as much noise as you think you would get.

02:06:33   But if you go a step below that and you need to

02:06:36   shoot a picture in a dark restaurant of your family,

02:06:39   an iPhone 11 will do a better job of that

02:06:41   than almost any big camera because it's combining

02:06:44   its crappy optics with amazing software

02:06:47   that the big cameras never will have,

02:06:48   or at least they seem to have shown no interest

02:06:51   in ever adding.

02:06:52   Even an area like that where the area of low light,

02:06:55   you would think this would be an area

02:06:57   where the big cameras would outshine them

02:06:59   just 'cause they have just simple physics

02:07:01   tremendously in their favor with the amount of light

02:07:03   they can capture.

02:07:05   And it turns out, in a lot of cases,

02:07:06   no, the iPhone does better in practice

02:07:08   because of its software.

02:07:09   In another example, the, oh god,

02:07:12   what's the super resolution, the sweater mode called?

02:07:15   Deep learning or something like that?

02:07:16   - Oh, yeah, I completely forgot 'cause I think

02:07:18   I have that off, but I know what you're thinking of.

02:07:20   - Oh, you have it off?

02:07:20   Turn it on, it's great.

02:07:21   - No, but I thought it took away something else.

02:07:23   - It takes away the thing where it would capture

02:07:25   the outside of a frame using the wide angle camera

02:07:29   when you weren't using wide angle

02:07:30   and then you could like crop out.

02:07:31   - But I used that-- - Deep Fusion!

02:07:33   - Thank you, Ash Kosh in the chat.

02:07:35   Deep Fusion is a real thing.

02:07:38   I wasn't sure it would be much of a gain

02:07:41   when they announced it.

02:07:42   Again, another area that big cameras usually excel

02:07:45   is just sheer resolution.

02:07:47   Like if you wanna zoom in and start pixel peeping

02:07:49   and you can see that you're capturing way more detail

02:07:53   usually with a big camera than you are with a phone camera.

02:07:57   Until Deep Fusion.

02:08:00   And Deep Fusion closed that gap significantly.

02:08:03   The gap is still there.

02:08:04   Big cameras will still capture way more detail

02:08:07   in ideal circumstances than an iPhone,

02:08:10   but the gap is a lot smaller.

02:08:13   And so at some point, as these gaps get smaller or go away,

02:08:17   every time that happens, you have to ask yourself

02:08:20   like is the big camera still worth it?

02:08:22   And I have never used a big camera less

02:08:27   than in the last two years.

02:08:30   It's to the point now where I've mentally decided

02:08:32   I'm just not gonna buy any more of these.

02:08:35   Because our phones are just so good,

02:08:38   we're just never using the big cameras.

02:08:40   All of their downsides, how incredibly clunky they are

02:08:43   at certain things, don't make the upsides

02:08:47   worth it to us anymore.

02:08:49   So Jon's argument is--

02:08:51   - The correct one.

02:08:52   - It's totally worth considering like the kind of

02:08:56   you only have one shot at this kind of angle.

02:08:58   No pun intended.

02:08:59   Where like you only have a certain amount of time

02:09:01   where your kid's gonna be super young

02:09:02   and you're gonna wanna capture as much of that

02:09:04   as you possibly can.

02:09:05   And so if you want the camera for that purpose, go for it.

02:09:08   But if you're looking at it like a little more pragmatically

02:09:12   and analytically, if you're not super excited

02:09:15   to have a big camera and to use it as its own thing,

02:09:19   as a gear thing or if you aren't like

02:09:23   super photographically inclined,

02:09:25   I don't think it's worth it anymore.

02:09:28   And it's really weird to finally admit that,

02:09:30   but I think I'm at that point now.

02:09:32   - I think you have two factors working here.

02:09:33   One, your kid is getting older and when kids get older,

02:09:35   you take fewer pictures of them, that's a real thing.

02:09:37   And two, I think it's a false dichotomy

02:09:39   'cause of course Luke is gonna have a phone too.

02:09:41   Like it's not an either or.

02:09:43   We're saying, do you want a big camera in addition,

02:09:45   of course, to the smartphone that you already have?

02:09:48   You're still gonna have a smartphone for all the things

02:09:50   that it's better at and for all the times

02:09:51   when you don't have the big phone.

02:09:52   We're just saying on top of that, like Casey's scenario,

02:09:55   in the situations where you want the big camera,

02:09:57   the day of the child's birth, first birthday,

02:10:00   vacation, stuff like that, in context where you will

02:10:04   be motivated to have a better camera,

02:10:06   would you recommend buying a real camera?

02:10:08   Absolutely, I would recommend it because you don't lose out

02:10:11   on any of the things Marco said.

02:10:13   It's just a question of how much you're gonna use

02:10:14   the big camera and I think, A, because Luke is writing us

02:10:17   to ask this question and B, because when people have babies,

02:10:20   they were all very highly motivated to take lots

02:10:22   of pictures of them, that is the prime time

02:10:25   when no matter how little you care about real photography

02:10:28   and big cameras, you will be the most motivated

02:10:31   to lug the big camera more than you would.

02:10:33   I imagine it fading just like Marco's scenario

02:10:36   where now the kids get older, you don't take

02:10:37   as many pictures of them.

02:10:38   That continues to happen the whole time

02:10:39   and then the trade-offs become like, well,

02:10:41   I don't really need the big camera but I would say,

02:10:43   even today, even though Marco, you are not using

02:10:45   your big camera that much, Tiff still uses

02:10:47   to take pictures of birds, right?

02:10:49   So, you know, it's still good.

02:10:52   She just did an Instagram like three times this week.

02:10:55   - That's true but that was a very rare thing.

02:10:58   - I'm saying is it worth it to have a real camera?

02:11:01   Yes, you should have a real camera in your house,

02:11:04   certainly when you're having a baby but even just

02:11:07   for the rest of your life with the camera,

02:11:09   it's good to have one around.

02:11:10   You're not gonna use it as much as you did

02:11:12   when the baby was an infant, certainly.

02:11:14   You're not gonna use it as much as when you go on vacation

02:11:16   but it is definitely a thing worth having.

02:11:18   The second part is what attributes would you prioritize?

02:11:21   Given the trade-offs that you just described,

02:11:23   the attributes I would prioritize, the one attribute

02:11:26   I would prioritize is essentially sensor size.

02:11:29   All other things being equal, the one thing

02:11:31   that a big camera's gonna have up on the iPhone

02:11:35   is it's not gonna be video, right?

02:11:38   It probably still is low light performance just in general

02:11:40   but like sensor size, 'cause everything else

02:11:43   flows from that, right?

02:11:44   Obviously, you don't get a camera that's too big

02:11:45   that you're not gonna use it, right?

02:11:47   And don't buy one that's super duper expensive

02:11:48   but if you have to pick one thing to prioritize, pick that.

02:11:50   Pick the biggest sensor size that comes in a form factor

02:11:53   that you think appeals to you and get that camera

02:11:56   because that's what the big phone has,

02:11:59   the big cameras have.

02:12:00   They can gather more light through better lenses,

02:12:03   they go to a bigger sensor.

02:12:04   If you get an expensive camera with a relatively tiny sensor

02:12:09   that might not actually be better than your phone camera

02:12:12   in many scenarios.

02:12:14   Whereas in lots of scenarios where the phone excels,

02:12:16   it's thanks to software, so on and so forth

02:12:18   but there's nothing that phone can do

02:12:20   to get real depth of field whereas the camera

02:12:22   with a big sensor and a wide open lens will get you that.

02:12:25   Now I still think in low light performance,

02:12:27   the phones can do amazing things

02:12:29   but what they're basically doing is hiding incredible amounts

02:12:32   of sensor noise that will not be as noisy on your camera

02:12:36   with a big sensor but if you get a little pocketable,

02:12:40   sort of integrated, quote unquote, big camera,

02:12:43   it's not a phone but it also is not an interchangeable lens

02:12:45   camera with a tiny sensor, that will literally have worse

02:12:48   low light performance than your phone,

02:12:49   even ignoring any software processing.

02:12:51   So if you're gonna get a big camera,

02:12:53   which you totally should, prioritize sensor size.

02:12:56   - Yeah, I will say, to answer the second half

02:12:58   of this question of what attributes would I prioritize,

02:13:01   I agree with Jon that if you're gonna go through

02:13:04   all the downsides of something not being your phone camera,

02:13:08   you want it to be amazing.

02:13:09   There's no room for anything in between.

02:13:13   I would say you can skip anything smaller

02:13:15   than micro four thirds or APS-C.

02:13:18   I would even say if you're asking this question

02:13:20   and you're a listener of our show,

02:13:21   you should strongly consider full frame.

02:13:24   There are many good full frame options these days

02:13:27   that didn't exist back when we were buying cameras.

02:13:30   - Including a new one that's not much bigger

02:13:33   than my APS-C camera but is full frame, which is--

02:13:36   - Yeah, a new Sony-- - The Sony A7C.

02:13:39   - A7C, I think, yeah.

02:13:40   Yeah, and I have not been paying attention

02:13:44   to this market at all but that even made splashes that I saw

02:13:48   'cause it was so small and compelling.

02:13:50   - Because it's not, yeah, it's not that big.

02:13:53   The mirrorless is really, and if you want

02:13:55   specific model recommendations, the current line

02:13:57   of the A6600, that's an amazing compromise

02:14:00   between image quality and amazingly good autofocus,

02:14:03   way better than an iPhone in terms of tracking people

02:14:05   and keeping them in focus, which is important

02:14:07   once your kid starts running around a little bit.

02:14:09   That's a great sort of compromise but if you can afford

02:14:12   to go up to the full frame version, either the A7C

02:14:14   or the big, real A7R and all that stuff,

02:14:18   all those are great cameras.

02:14:19   But all those sensor sizes are bigger than Micro Four Thirds

02:14:22   and I would agree with Margo, just forget about anything

02:14:25   with the sensor size that's not hilariously bigger

02:14:28   than your phone.

02:14:28   - Yeah, exactly.

02:14:30   Yeah, so if you're gonna do this at all, really do it.

02:14:33   Go all out.

02:14:34   But there are certainly a lot of reasons

02:14:36   why you might not wanna do it.

02:14:37   - And also, one quick final note, lensrentals.com,

02:14:41   not a sponsor but I've used them several times in the past.

02:14:44   You can not only rent lenses but entire cameras from them.

02:14:48   And so before Declan was born, I thought I wanted

02:14:51   the Olympus camera that I ended up getting,

02:14:53   it's in the show notes, but I wasn't sure.

02:14:55   I wanted to try it and so I rented the camera body

02:14:59   that I thought I wanted and the lens I thought I wanted

02:15:02   and I used them together for about a week,

02:15:05   like a month or two before Declan was born

02:15:06   and I spent some time with it and thought,

02:15:08   yeah, okay, I like this, this is gonna work for me.

02:15:10   And then I bought the camera and lens that I had tried.

02:15:14   Well, not literally the same ones, although you could,

02:15:17   but I went to Amazon or B&H or wherever

02:15:19   and then I got that same setup.

02:15:21   And I was, even though it cost me like 100 or $150 more

02:15:24   to rent for a week, I was so glad I did it

02:15:28   because that convinced me that it was something

02:15:30   I was going to want to use and that it wasn't

02:15:32   some really clunky user interface or something like that

02:15:35   that would just drive me nuts for the next several years.

02:15:37   - Yeah, I too have used lens rentals

02:15:38   and they've been wonderful.

02:15:40   Anyway, thanks to our actual sponsors this week.

02:15:43   Hover, Linode and Mint Mobile.

02:15:46   And thank you to our members who support us directly.

02:15:48   You can join yourself and get all the cool member benefits

02:15:51   at atp.fm/join.

02:15:53   Thanks everybody and we will talk to you next week.

02:15:56   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

02:16:01   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

02:16:03   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

02:16:06   ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

02:16:09   ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

02:16:11   ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

02:16:14   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

02:16:16   ♪ Accidental ♪

02:16:17   ♪ It was accidental ♪

02:16:18   ♪ Accidental ♪

02:16:19   ♪ And you can find the show notes at atp.fm ♪

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02:16:56   ♪ So long ♪

02:16:58   - I'm finding links to Sony cameras.

02:17:01   (laughs)

02:17:02   - Now you got John shopping for cameras again.

02:17:04   - Yep. - No, I just--

02:17:05   - John, just a second.

02:17:06   It's fine, John, stop.

02:17:07   - We can talk about the A7C actually.

02:17:10   - So yeah, so what is the deal with the A7C?

02:17:12   Like what is--

02:17:13   - So, Sony has been frustrating me lately in that they,

02:17:18   for all these new cameras they come out with,

02:17:19   there's always some annoying caveat,

02:17:21   and you're like, that caveat didn't have to be there

02:17:25   on these phones, and it's kind of annoying.

02:17:28   Cameras.

02:17:29   I'm gonna bring up the 7C again.

02:17:31   So the 7C body looks a lot like the body

02:17:34   on the 6100, 6400, 6600, like my model of camera, right?

02:17:39   That's more or less the same size and shape body,

02:17:42   which is fairly small and compact,

02:17:43   but it's interchangeable lens camera.

02:17:45   And the 7C, when you first look at it,

02:17:47   it's like, wow, they fit a full-frame sensor

02:17:49   in that same package, but it's not the same package.

02:17:52   It is actually, it's a little bit beefier.

02:17:54   It's a little bit thicker, it's a little bit wider,

02:17:57   it's just, it's a little bit bigger, right?

02:18:00   And it uses the full-frame lenses,

02:18:02   so that makes it feel bigger too.

02:18:04   The annoying compromises is like,

02:18:06   they can't seem to get the software situation

02:18:08   sorted out across their line.

02:18:10   So like, they have a new interface

02:18:11   that's not as terrible as the old,

02:18:13   like two-dimensional menu interface.

02:18:15   Like they have a new touchscreen-based interface,

02:18:16   but it's not evenly spread across their line.

02:18:18   I forget which models have it and which don't.

02:18:20   But that's annoying,

02:18:21   like you just wish they had it on everything.

02:18:23   And those type of compromises are, you know,

02:18:26   every one of the cameras has one of those little things.

02:18:30   So no one of these current crop of Sony cameras

02:18:32   will look at it and say, "That's the one."

02:18:34   It's got all the features, it's got all the newest stuff,

02:18:36   it's got all the newest ports, it's USB-C,

02:18:37   it has the touchscreen, it has the joystick on the back.

02:18:40   You know, it has amazing battery life, it doesn't overheat.

02:18:43   You know, none of them have all of that,

02:18:45   which is frustrating.

02:18:46   But the 7C is super duper close, right?

02:18:49   The 7C has almost everything I could hope for.

02:18:51   My only reservation for it is,

02:18:54   it's kind of like the iPhone 10.

02:18:55   It's like, can I handle one that's just a little bit bigger?

02:18:59   And am I gonna die with these full-frame lenses,

02:19:02   like they're so much bigger than my current ones?

02:19:05   Or is that what I just need to step up to?

02:19:07   Because I've been, I really wanted the 6600 for a long time,

02:19:10   assuming we actually went on vacation this year to the ocean

02:19:14   and I had to take pictures of kids in the surf again.

02:19:16   I lust after Sony's sort of best in the industry,

02:19:20   like software autofocus and object tracking,

02:19:23   which for whatever reason,

02:19:25   hasn't been something that Apple has really either touted

02:19:27   or jumped on top of.

02:19:28   But if you're trying to catch action of things moving around

02:19:33   and keep them in focus, Sony's got the best system.

02:19:36   It's the fastest, it understands how to do pet eye tracking

02:19:39   now in addition to human eye tracking.

02:19:41   It's really phenomenal.

02:19:42   It combined with the ability to take many, many pictures.

02:19:45   So the 6600, which is just my camera

02:19:48   with essentially improved software and in-body stabilization,

02:19:51   that may be my next purchase instead of the 7C thing.

02:19:56   'Cause I feel like the 7C,

02:19:58   I'm not sure if I'm ready to graduate to that size,

02:20:02   essentially, and sort of,

02:20:04   I think it invalidates all of my lenses too,

02:20:06   because none of my lenses are full frame lenses.

02:20:08   So I don't know, I can't really decide,

02:20:11   but I'm glad Sony's making progress

02:20:13   and I'm glad that this camera existed,

02:20:15   but I was like 900% more excited about it

02:20:18   than I was after I watched all the reviews.

02:20:20   - Wait, I'm sorry, this does or does not have the new UI.

02:20:23   So let me rephrase, other than size,

02:20:27   what are the drawbacks?

02:20:29   - I forget which the, other than size,

02:20:31   which this had, I think it might not have the new software.

02:20:34   I think it might lack the joystick on the back.

02:20:36   I don't remember the detail, so I don't want to commit to it

02:20:38   'cause I just saw a bunch of preliminary reviews,

02:20:40   but mainly the thing that battery that's keeping me

02:20:42   is like, I would deal with those things

02:20:43   that I've described, even if they're all true,

02:20:45   is I'm worried about the size.

02:20:47   The good thing is that one of the things

02:20:48   that doesn't screw up is in its battery life.

02:20:49   Like apparently the battery life is phenomenal.

02:20:52   And most of Sony's recent cameras,

02:20:53   they've really repented from the bad battery life.

02:20:56   Now they just put massive batteries in everything.

02:20:58   So the number of shots is insane.

02:21:00   So yeah, it's really just the size keeping.

02:21:03   Oh, I know the other one.

02:21:04   This sounds stupid, but it came,

02:21:06   I noted it before I watched any review.

02:21:08   And then I watched all the reviews

02:21:09   and everybody complained about it.

02:21:10   So I'm like, good, it's not just me.

02:21:12   The little eyepiece thingy,

02:21:13   where you stick your eyeball on the back of it.

02:21:16   All of these cameras, all the 66XX series

02:21:21   have like a rubber hood that's over the little place

02:21:23   where you put your eye and the 7C doesn't.

02:21:26   Nor does it have a place for you to attach one.

02:21:28   It's just this little stump

02:21:30   that you just shove your eye up against.

02:21:32   It's like, what happened to the hood?

02:21:33   The hood is awesome.

02:21:34   Why would you get rid of that?

02:21:35   And maybe they did it to make it feel smaller.

02:21:38   Like the hood is actually removable.

02:21:39   You can take it off if you don't want it, right?

02:21:41   Why would they not just put it there?

02:21:42   And if you don't want it, just take it off.

02:21:45   That annoys me, that and the size

02:21:47   are probably the two biggest physical barriers

02:21:49   to me getting this phone.

02:21:50   It's like, how about I want the little eyepiece hood?

02:21:52   'Cause it's rubbery and comfortable

02:21:53   and I shove it up against my glasses basically.

02:21:56   'Cause they've got the, what is it called Marco?

02:21:58   The name of the thing where you adjust it

02:21:59   so if you have a vision you can, yeah, whatever.

02:22:02   The diopter dial.

02:22:04   I shove this thing up against either my bare eyeball

02:22:07   or against my glasses.

02:22:08   And I don't wanna do either one of those things

02:22:10   with a hard piece of plastic.

02:22:11   I wanna do it with a soft piece of rubber.

02:22:13   So, I mean, this is the first version of this camera

02:22:16   and they'll have complaints or whatever,

02:22:17   but they fixed so many other things.

02:22:18   So like they fixed like the card slot,

02:22:20   they fixed the little floppy doors on them.

02:22:21   It's USB-C, like everything about it

02:22:23   is like they updated all the things,

02:22:25   but they made a couple of sort of unforced errors

02:22:28   in the design.

02:22:29   And the handle is a little bit more shallow,

02:22:31   and it's a bigger camera.

02:22:32   So it's like shallower handle and a bigger camera

02:22:35   and it's heavier.

02:22:36   I say this now, we'll see how long I hold out

02:22:41   against full frame because that is obviously

02:22:43   the next step I need to jump to, but we'll see.

02:22:45   It does have all the cool tracking and sensing.

02:22:48   The sensor is exactly the same resolution

02:22:51   in terms of megapixels as my current camera,

02:22:53   but obviously physically bigger.

02:22:55   So the low light performance, I haven't seen

02:22:58   the final reviews of the actual photos taken up,

02:23:00   but the low light performance has gotta be good

02:23:01   because it's the same number of pixels,

02:23:03   but a way bigger physical sensor than my camera.

02:23:06   - Yeah, and it's just Sony's sensor progress

02:23:08   over the years is just remarkable.

02:23:11   Their sensors are world leading in low light performance

02:23:14   and every year they get better,

02:23:16   or every generation they get better.

02:23:17   So that is non-trivial and it is probably better

02:23:21   than low light.

02:23:22   My concern for you with going full frame

02:23:25   is your love of long range zoom lenses.

02:23:29   That is just an area that is just either non-existent

02:23:33   or garbage on full frame.

02:23:36   You have to either--

02:23:37   - Or it weighs a thousand pounds.

02:23:39   - Right, and costs $2,000.

02:23:40   To get a good full frame zoom lens, it's very large

02:23:47   and doesn't have that much reach usually.

02:23:51   Usually has less overall reach than what you're getting

02:23:53   out of a consumer grade or even prosumer, I guess,

02:23:58   super zoom lens for a crop sensor camera.

02:24:03   But the full frame--

02:24:04   - Yeah, that's one of the things that annoys me about this

02:24:06   is that the megapixels are, it's only 24 megapixels.

02:24:08   So the reason you can get away with a zoom

02:24:11   that doesn't have much reach if you have 41 megapixels

02:24:13   is to just crop it yourself.

02:24:15   But if it doesn't and it's just 24 megapixels

02:24:18   and I can't get a long zoom, I can't even crop into it

02:24:20   'cause I just don't have the resolution.

02:24:22   - Again, megapixels are all about how you use them.

02:24:25   But it would be hard for me to justify buying a new

02:24:29   standalone camera today that was only 24 megapixels.

02:24:31   Just because the sensors go so much higher.

02:24:34   You can get easily up to like in the 40s

02:24:38   with full frame sensors that aren't even that crazy

02:24:41   up the market, at least in the 30s.

02:24:44   I know there's trade-offs there and everything too.

02:24:48   One advantage to 24 is that the photos will be smaller

02:24:52   for your post-processing workflow.

02:24:55   And there's also to consider things like the actual

02:25:00   resolvable resolution of the lenses

02:25:03   that you're gonna be using might not be 24 megapixels.

02:25:07   It might be lower depending on what lens you're using.

02:25:10   The path to full frame happiness is primes.

02:25:16   Like prime lenses, not zooms.

02:25:19   Zooms exist for full frame, but they're so big

02:25:22   and so heavy and so expensive that really the path

02:25:25   to happiness is to get some small, fast primes.

02:25:30   My favorite by far, my favorite lens in the Sony lineup

02:25:34   is that 35 millimeter F2.8 prime with a little inward

02:25:37   facing hood thing 'cause it's so small and so good.

02:25:41   And they have tons of great primes in the Sony FE line.

02:25:45   I love the 55 1.8 as well.

02:25:47   They've added even more since I've been really looking.

02:25:50   But that 35 millimeter 2.8 is so good

02:25:54   because it's just so tiny.

02:25:55   Overall, I love a camera that has a small prime lens on it

02:26:00   because it's just so much easier to handle

02:26:02   and so much easier to get in and out of a bag

02:26:05   and it's so much smaller and lighter

02:26:07   that you end up using it way more.

02:26:08   And if you can get shockingly good optical performance

02:26:12   out of that at the same time, even better.

02:26:15   That's why one of my favorite types of camera to use

02:26:18   is the small, boutique-y, fixed lens

02:26:23   but still full frame, roughly 28 to 35 millimeter lens

02:26:27   camera and that would be things like the Sony RX1 series

02:26:32   or the Leica Q series.

02:26:34   But yeah, ultimately though, I can't recommend

02:26:37   specific models 'cause I just haven't been

02:26:39   paying attention at all.

02:26:40   I know Canon's new mirrorless thing

02:26:41   is getting a lot of rave reviews.

02:26:43   Nikon has one now, this is all much more recent

02:26:47   than when I stopped paying attention.

02:26:50   - Yeah, the one I'm still waiting for,

02:26:51   you know how Sony's very confusing naming.

02:26:53   So the A7R is the one, maybe the R is for resolution

02:26:57   but it always has the most megapixels, right?

02:26:59   And then they have the A7S, which I think

02:27:02   is the video focused one.

02:27:04   - Yeah, usually, yeah.

02:27:05   - And then they just have the plain old A7

02:27:08   with a Roman numeral after it.

02:27:10   And that's usually, it's like the same body as the R

02:27:14   but the sensor doesn't have as many megapixels

02:27:16   but it's still full frame in the big body.

02:27:18   And anyway, I may be screwing up these names

02:27:21   but the bottom line is that that model that I just described

02:27:24   that basically what used to be the A7 III or whatever,

02:27:27   the new one of those is the last one that hasn't come out.

02:27:29   The 7C is out of left field 'cause this is a model

02:27:31   they had never had before but they did the new,

02:27:34   they've got the 6600 which is the tiny little one,

02:27:37   they did the A7R, they did the A7S,

02:27:40   there's Roman numerals there that I'm dropping

02:27:42   but the plain old 7 one which is the body of the R

02:27:45   and the S but not video focused but not as many pixels

02:27:48   as the other one, they haven't released that camera yet

02:27:50   as far as I know.

02:27:51   So that's the last shoe to drop to say,

02:27:53   okay, what number of megapixels do they choose for that?

02:27:57   'Cause it is the bigger bulkier body

02:27:59   but the thing about the 41 megapixel is

02:28:02   like your hard drive spaces, you're just gonna be weeping

02:28:04   from the size of those photos, right?

02:28:06   And so I feel like 24 isn't exciting to me

02:28:09   because I already have something close to that resolution,

02:28:11   if not exactly, I forget if my thing is 21 or whatever.

02:28:16   But 41 is probably too much, so somewhere in the middle

02:28:18   may be the sweet spot for a full frame thing

02:28:20   but then do I want the big case?

02:28:22   And I have looked at the other ones as well,

02:28:23   the new canons and the icons but I'm pretty firmly

02:28:26   in the Sony campus, they have so many models

02:28:29   that are sort of orbiting around the sweet spot for me

02:28:32   in terms of size and resolution and features,

02:28:34   it's just, I haven't wanted to choose one.

02:28:37   I would have bought a new camera this year

02:28:40   if it wasn't for COVID, I would have probably bought

02:28:42   the 6600, right, and taken it and used it

02:28:44   but COVID kind of squashed those plans.

02:28:46   So I've got a year reprieve next year,

02:28:48   if the world goes back to normal

02:28:49   and I can go on my normal vacation,

02:28:50   I will probably buy a new camera,

02:28:52   it's just a question of which one it will be.

02:28:54   (beeping)