00:00:03 ◼ ► And so I've had a slight cold for about a week and a half, and I've been managing so far, but I'm worried like, I'm starting to sound worse, slowly.
00:00:15 ◼ ► I don't think it was, I was sitting bowling for soup in the car today. I think it's actually the cold catching up with me, but we'll see what happens. Sorry.
00:00:22 ◼ ► I feel like you are constantly lightly sick. Well, he's got a kid, a young kid, and so do you, so you should also be constantly lightly sick.
00:00:30 ◼ ► No, I'm healthy as a mule or something. I'm not sick all summer. All summer, I'm great. It's one of the reasons why I love summer and why I don't like the rest of the year.
00:00:39 ◼ ► It's one of the big ones, because the rest of the year, I'm pretty much always either getting sick, sick, or was just sick. Delightful.
00:00:47 ◼ ► We'll see once Adam gets old enough not to be entirely covered with the boogers of the other people in school if this stops.
00:00:53 ◼ ► Then we'll know whether it's you or the kid, because I remember getting sick way more when my kids were younger too, but I do less now.
00:00:59 ◼ ► Yeah, I think it matters a lot. Like right now, not only is he just only in second grade, but even if his age group starts developing basic hygiene skills,
00:01:11 ◼ ► they all still have a lot of younger siblings who are still in preschool or kindergarten, so they're all in the same house together.
00:01:27 ◼ ► Surprisingly not. We've dodged that one so far. They do get lice here and there in this area. It just hasn't hit us yet.
00:01:34 ◼ ► It amazed me. We used to do lice checks at school all the time in elementary school, and I never got it.
00:01:41 ◼ ► I figured lice is the thing they check for, and they have to check for it, and when anybody gets into school, they've got to check the whole school,
00:02:01 ◼ ► Anyway, we should start with some follow-up, and we should remind you that the ATP Holiday Store is open for business ladies and gentlemen.
00:02:15 ◼ ► You can get your old-school ATP logo shirt, your hoodie, your hat, your pins. It's all there for the taking.
00:02:21 ◼ ► So please, don't be that person that listens to me and says, "Oh, yeah, I'll remember. I'll do it later. I'll do it later."
00:02:27 ◼ ► Don't be that person. Every single time, at least one, usually a handful of people, says, "I forgot."
00:03:02 ◼ ► Oh, God. I'm so sorry. I know we talked about it last week, but now that you're a week and change on, are you still enjoying them?
00:03:09 ◼ ► Is this kind of like the Apple Watch, where you flirt with it and then put it away for a year? What's going on?
00:03:14 ◼ ► As of last episode, I think I had spent only a couple of hours with them so far, just walking around my house, basically.
00:03:19 ◼ ► Since then, I've done a number of dog walks with them. I have not taken a plane, but I have taken two ferry rides with them.
00:03:26 ◼ ► And the dog walks also have tested the noise cancellation because it is leaf-blowing and lawn-mowing season.
00:03:35 ◼ ► It is, as we record this, early November, and this is one of the few times of year where people in my town are allowed to use leaf blowers.
00:03:46 ◼ ► And so, normally, it's the kind of situation where I'm walking my dog, I have some kind of small portable headphones on,
00:03:52 ◼ ► and they never isolate that well, and many times I actually don't want them to. I often wear aftershocks for that purpose.
00:03:57 ◼ ► And so, normally, if I'm walking by something very loud like a lawnmower or a leaf blower, I just have to pause the podcast as I walk by,
00:04:07 ◼ ► With the AirPods Pro, I use the long hold gesture on the stick to enable noise cancellation as I walk by something loud like that.
00:04:15 ◼ ► And it works, and I'm able to keep the podcast playing. Now, I don't even need to turn it up.
00:04:21 ◼ ► I can leave it exactly at the regular, normal volume I had it, add the noise cancellation, and it works very, very well.
00:04:33 ◼ ► The noise cancellation, I think I underrated last episode, because I had it brought into a super loud environment.
00:04:49 ◼ ► They still do sound good, but I am missing a lot of that treble detail, and so I still stand by my statement that they sound better than anything Bose has ever made,
00:04:59 ◼ ► better than any earbuds I've ever tried, and better than many regular headphones I've tried.
00:05:03 ◼ ► They are still, they are great for earbuds, they are good for headphones, but they are not great for headphones.
00:05:10 ◼ ► But still, considering their size, and their portability, and their features, and frankly their price,
00:05:17 ◼ ► good in-ear monitors, which these aren't even in-ear monitors physically, but good in-ear monitors that can sound better than this,
00:05:29 ◼ ► This has all the wireless stuff and everything, and it's Apple, and it has all the features, so for what these are,
00:05:35 ◼ ► for the value they provide, for the quality they provide, the balance they provide, the sound quality really is remarkable.
00:05:55 ◼ ► Sony has it, Bose has it, all the other headphone makers have added EQs in their apps in recent years.
00:06:01 ◼ ► I just hope Apple gets around to that. I know it's against their style to offer control over things,
00:06:07 ◼ ► but maybe this would be something that would be worth it, I think, because I want the same thing for the HomePod.
00:06:13 ◼ ► The HomePod, I now have, I don't know, 15 of them, whatever I have in my house, I have a lot of HomePods,
00:06:19 ◼ ► they're in lots of rooms now, and I would like to have a treble and bass slider on those.
00:06:25 ◼ ► Mostly the bass slider, actually, I turned it down in the bathroom, but a small amount of control would go a long way here.
00:06:32 ◼ ► But otherwise, though, again, the sound is very good for what they are, it's great for what they are, it's very good in absolute terms.
00:06:41 ◼ ► And so I would say the noise cancellation is significantly better than I thought it was.
00:06:47 ◼ ► I haven't had a chance to take them on a plane yet, but I've already decided that the next time I fly anywhere,
00:06:53 ◼ ► I'm going to take only the AirPods Pro and see how it is, and actually try it, and not take my big Sony-junk-my-boses.
00:06:59 ◼ ► How do you do with comfort? Because if I recall correctly, and feel free to correct me,
00:07:04 ◼ ► you can wear the traditional non-pro AirPods for, I don't know, like half an hour, an hour, I think you said,
00:07:10 ◼ ► before they get deeply uncomfortable, and now with the AirPods Pro, have you done any extended listening with them?
00:07:18 ◼ ► As long as I can go without discomfort on regular AirPods, it's about 20 minutes. With the Pros, I have gone an hour straight so far,
00:07:28 ◼ ► Oh, wow, okay, so that's a pretty big improvement. And what size tips are you wearing, just out of curiosity?
00:07:33 ◼ ► The default ones, the mediums that come on them. And I haven't even tried the other ones, because the mediums,
00:07:39 ◼ ► they pass the ear fit test, they feel good to me, they sound good to me, so I'm like, "Alright, I'm not going to mess with it."
00:07:45 ◼ ► So far, I have not worn them for long enough to reach a point of discomfort, and I've worn them for about an hour
00:07:52 ◼ ► numerous times, so I know it isn't just like a little fluke thing. I've also worn them in numerous different temperatures,
00:07:58 ◼ ► like I've worn them when I was hot and when I was cold, and they fit differently in each condition.
00:08:03 ◼ ► Like when I'm cold, they fit a little bit looser, they feel like they might slide out, although they haven't yet,
00:08:09 ◼ ► I haven't budged, so I don't know. But anyway, yeah, so far so good. I continue to be extremely pleased with them.
00:08:16 ◼ ► The controls are fine, I still do miss having a volume control, like any other headphone I've ever tried,
00:08:23 ◼ ► there's a volume control on the headphone, I know this is not new to AirPods people, but not having volume on there
00:08:28 ◼ ► is really annoying. I understand why it's not there, like I think it would be difficult to wedge it in there somewhere,
00:08:33 ◼ ► but regardless, it is not there. And they did make the sticks smaller compared to the original AirPods,
00:08:40 ◼ ► to the point where like I can put on or take off a sweatshirt and not knock them out of my ears.
00:08:48 ◼ ► - Yeah, and so like I recognize that part of why I don't have volume control is that they're so small,
00:08:53 ◼ ► and it is nice being so small. I will say I don't give a crap what they look like, and to a large degree,
00:08:59 ◼ ► I don't know what they look like, because I never see them. If I'm using them, I can't see them.
00:09:04 ◼ ► If I'm not using them, they're in the case. And they're in my fingers for such a brief time on the transition,
00:09:10 ◼ ► either way, if you asked me to draw them, I wouldn't be able to. I don't know what they look like.
00:09:18 ◼ ► - So speaking of Tiff, did she get a pair? And I don't recall what her perspective on regular AirPods were.
00:09:26 ◼ ► - Not yet, only merely because we've been busy and she has no problems with the regular ones,
00:09:38 ◼ ► - No, there's been some interest perhaps for the holidays, but I'm still just taking a wait and see attitude.
00:09:46 ◼ ► - Everyone I've spoken to says they're the AirPods, but better, and I friggin' love my AirPods.
00:09:51 ◼ ► So this sounds like it has Casey written all over it, but I just bought AirPods when the Qi ones came out,
00:10:01 ◼ ► And I mean, obviously, as we discussed yesterday, or not yesterday, I'm sorry, last week,
00:10:10 ◼ ► - I don't know, it just seems so wasteful to get rid of or stop using my perfectly good non-Pro AirPods,
00:11:03 ◼ ► But I don't know, I mean, this is like the first worldiest, first world problem, right?
00:11:07 ◼ ► "Oh, I really want the new AirPods and my current ones don't suck, what am I gonna do?"
00:11:29 ◼ ► Like, they don't go super into your ears, they're not in ear, but that's a pretty big difference.
00:11:37 ◼ ► "These are just like my old AirPods, but just they sound better and have notes canceling,"
00:11:45 ◼ ► Now, if you've used AirPods like that before, earbuds, whatever the hell the generic term is,
00:11:58 ◼ ► like you do have to figure out whether you're okay with anything going in your ear canal.
00:12:02 ◼ ► And then you have to find out, are you okay with this specific thing going in your ear canal?
00:12:42 ◼ ► Like, at its mark upon an ally's week, you don't have the option to do the tapping anymore.
00:12:47 ◼ ► Yeah. All right, speaking of the AirPods Pro, there's some interesting news with regard to the battery,
00:13:06 ◼ ► but the kind of watch that I would use for the Apple Watch, it's just kind of like a watch battery,
00:13:14 ◼ ► It's watch battery shaped, but it is still a lithium battery and a different voltage and everything.
00:13:37 ◼ ► Yeah, like what's interesting to me about this is that the interior layout of the AirPods Pro
00:13:46 ◼ ► Like it isn't just like a simple evolution of the same design. Like it's a total internal rearrangement.
00:13:56 ◼ ► This is something I've noticed with my Qi-enabled AirPods, I guess it kind of AirPods 2, whatever you want to call them,
00:14:02 ◼ ► that when you sit it on the mat, on the Qi charging mat, it'll light up on the exterior,
00:14:34 ◼ ► But whatever it is, that's probably the hardware mechanism that allows the case to know when you tap it.
00:14:57 ◼ ► If you're wondering how much charge is left in it and it's sitting there, you can tap it.
00:15:00 ◼ ► And then I guess, I don't know, lights will shine through laser-etched holes in the aluminum that are invisible otherwise. I don't know.
00:15:07 ◼ ► One thing that's disappointing, though, is that this doesn't work when you're charging it through a cable.
00:15:13 ◼ ► When you're charging through a cable, you have to open the lid slightly and then close it to get it to show whether the light's green or orange.
00:15:19 ◼ ► Which is weird because the sensor for sensing tapping, that doesn't care whether it's on a mat or not.
00:15:30 ◼ ► And then John's favorite subject, the case jiggle click. Does it exist in the AirPods Pro, John?
00:15:44 ◼ ► With the revised AirPods, whatever we call them, the AirPods Series 2, not the Pros but the ones that I have in that case he has,
00:15:53 ◼ ► that's the one where I first noticed the side-to-side thing, but some people got those AirPods and their case doesn't do that.
00:16:00 ◼ ► So it's like a manufacturing variability thing. So they don't all do it on the old one.
00:16:05 ◼ ► So I have heard from at least one or two people who say their AirPods Pro case goes side-to-side, and it sounds like Marco yours does as well.
00:16:18 ◼ ► I still feel like it is much more prevalent on the second generation AirPods than it was on the first.
00:16:24 ◼ ► I don't know how prevalent it is on the Pros, but so far I haven't heard from anybody with Pros whose case doesn't do that.
00:16:35 ◼ ► Instead of long squeezing then squeezing once to pause and enable transparency when someone talks to you,
00:16:40 ◼ ► just create a shortcut named 'be quiet'. So then 'Hey Dingus, be quiet' will allow you to hear."
00:16:47 ◼ ► That is very clever, but I can't imagine somebody walking up to me and saying, "Hey Dingus, be quiet."
00:16:52 ◼ ► It's like when I was talking about the ear tapping. When I tap the things on my ear and people think I was pointing to them going,
00:17:05 ◼ ► They're going to think they walked up to talk to you and you just turned to them immediately and said, "Be quiet."
00:17:22 ◼ ► I'd rather you take my phone out because you'll say, "Hey thing, volume up" or whatever and wait, wait, delay, and then it goes up.
00:17:35 ◼ ► It's the same thing with the fast forward and rewind and stuff. It's the same thing. It's just so painful.
00:17:42 ◼ ► Yeah. I don't like using Siri for anything that requires quick interactiveness like media control, frankly.
00:17:51 ◼ ► If I want to ask it a question or have it send a message or something, fine. I'm glad it's there.
00:17:58 ◼ ► Yeah. And as we pointed out last time this came up, the most expedient and safest way to deal with this is to reach up and pull the thing out of your ear,
00:18:05 ◼ ► which will pause the music or whatever you're listening to and also is the least likely to be interpreted by the person trying to talk to you as something rude.
00:18:14 ◼ ► And as I noted on Twitter the other day, a neat little touch is that if you're in noise canceling mode but you pull one ear bud out,
00:18:25 ◼ ► So you can hear the people around you more easily when you pull it out and then you put it back in. It puts noise canceling back on.
00:18:31 ◼ ► Super nice. And actually if you want to have like one ear noise canceling, there's an accessibility option to disable that behavior basically
00:18:40 ◼ ► and allow it to have like split noise canceling in just one ear. But by default, it transparency-izes the other ear, which is really nice.
00:18:50 ◼ ► That's very cool. Last week we talked on the show about hearing aids and things of that nature and apparently the FDA has cleared the way for over-the-counter hearing aids,
00:19:02 ◼ ► which I think Jon is going to make you very excited, not because you need them but because this is something you've been thinking about a lot lately.
00:19:07 ◼ ► Yeah, this seems like some deregulation of the hearing aid market where previously to get one you had to consult with a doctor and they were expensive.
00:19:17 ◼ ► The thing that came to mind for whatever reason probably because I have school-aged kids is like the TI-84 calculators or whatever. Do you remember those when you were in school?
00:19:27 ◼ ► They still sell those and they still cost like $100 and something and they must cost like 50 cents to make because the stuff that's in them has not changed since we were kids and they're still like $100 and something.
00:19:37 ◼ ► It's a pretty big disconnection. The price is held aloft by schools asking the students to buy it and you induce demand from saying you have to get this for your kid.
00:19:47 ◼ ► Anyway, it's slightly different in the hearing aid market. But this is a nice timing coincidence for Apple to potentially get into the market because Apple would probably not want to deal with all the regulatory stuff
00:20:00 ◼ ► and they're not going to sell a lot of anything that you have to go to talk to your doctor about first. I think there have always been over-the-counter things that you can get but like real proper hearing aids that serious people buy when they actually need it
00:20:13 ◼ ► are going to get in the coming year in the US much easier to buy without having to consult with medical professionals. This according to AARP magazine and they should know.
00:20:24 ◼ ► So just for anyone who's not American, FDA Food and Drug Administration which regulates this sort of thing and AARP American Associated of Retired Persons. I think this is often called pensioners in the UK if I'm not mistaken.
00:20:36 ◼ ► Basically someone who is done with work and usually like in the 60s to 70 year old range.
00:20:41 ◼ ► And it's what makes you start feeling really old when you start getting the solicitations by mail from AARP and you're like, "Oh no."
00:20:49 ◼ ► Also, Ryan Budish wrote to us or to you John the following, "I wear hearing aids and I think you gave them short shrift on ATP. High-end aids have multiple microphones, do lots of specialized processing, have modes for all kinds of challenging situations and can cost over 10 times more than the AirPods Pro. Any retort, John?"
00:21:07 ◼ ► Yeah, so that cost thing is kind of what we're getting at with the calculator. They are very expensive both because the most advanced ones probably contain much more expensive technology than AirPods but also because their prices are officially inflated by the weird supply demand medical establishment stuff that goes into them.
00:21:26 ◼ ► I did hear from a lot of other people who said that they use hearing aids and thought that Apple could definitely do some great things here but from all the feedback I've been getting, I feel like, and I kind of felt like this last week as well, that the place where Apple can innovate in this space is kind of where they usually do.
00:21:42 ◼ ► We think of them as being the high-end brand or the fancy brand but there's high-end brands and then there's Pagani. There's a separate tier for the real high-end or probably in watches, Marco could give better examples.
00:22:01 ◼ ► So BMW is a high-end thing but it's not the same as Ferrari and it's also not the same as one of those boutique brands. What's the? Konaseg? Anyway, so I feel like there's that same hierarchy here.
00:22:14 ◼ ► And so where I would expect Apple to make an impact is by fielding a good hearing aid type device over the counter that sells into basically the low end of the market because as high as it would be priced, it would still be priced way less than the TI-84 of hearing aids, right?
00:22:33 ◼ ► Because they would sell it at Apple prices which are still better than totally lopsided market caused by your need to see a doctor and a limited number of devices that are approved, yada yada, right?
00:22:46 ◼ ► So I think even though they'd be selling things for more than the AirPods, I don't think Apple would ever come out with a $5,000 hearing aid. They would come out with a $500 one and that would still be a rupture to the market because that $500 one might have most or all of the features of the $5,000 ones that are there today.
00:23:02 ◼ ► So I'm still not sure Apple wants to get into this market but I feel like they are right on the doorstep and it's there and it has a good synergy with their watch and health strategy.
00:23:12 ◼ ► And with the over-the-counter FDA clearances and everything, they don't need to commit too much to it. They can basically say, "Look, here's a device that we sell and it has a bunch of functions that everybody can use and also it can function as a pretty decent hearing aid."
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00:25:14 ◼ ► Alright, moving on from AirPods Corner to MacBook Pro Corner. Is there more space between the keys in the new MacBook Pro?
00:25:33 ◼ ► And I'm looking at the picture. Then I'm looking at my desk. And I'm looking at the picture.
00:25:36 ◼ ► And I'm like, "I can't." That's what I was doing last week. You hear me on that thing. I'm like, "They look about the same."
00:25:41 ◼ ► But someone did what I should have done, which is take two images of the supposed image of the 16-inch and then the image of the 15-inch,
00:25:49 ◼ ► put them on top of each other, and then make an animated GIF that switches from 15 to 16 and 15 to 16.
00:25:59 ◼ ► And I have to say, I think the space between the keys is slightly bigger on the 16-inch.
00:26:09 ◼ ► But once you see this GIF looping them back and forth, I think it is slightly increased spacing, which, again, I welcome, because I think it needs that for accuracy.
00:26:29 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, like the same way we discovered that the bottom row of keys shrunk when the butterfly keyboard came out.
00:26:53 ◼ ► This is back to that sort of iconic image that we talked about, where they have a picture that shows you your model of computer that they use as sort of a big icon in various parts in the UI.
00:27:05 ◼ ► And now there's like a zoomed-in sort of Zapruder version of this thing saying, look, if you compare the left lower edge of the keyboard on this icon to the right lower edge, it's clear that they're trying to indicate that that key that's in the right lower corner is not as wide as the left lower corner, which implies an inverted-T.
00:27:35 ◼ ► Yeah, it's there. We also saw the picture. I think Marco poo-pooed this on Twitter. Someone actually posted a top view picture showing the inverted-T clearly, but it didn't seem like it.
00:27:46 ◼ ► It's inauthentic. But this, I feel like—and I have to say that I didn't actually confirm this, but it's the type of thing—we have that image from Catalina that we could all go to our own Catalina machines and extract ourselves to confirm that, yeah, this really is an image from Catalina.
00:28:00 ◼ ► And I'm assuming if you zoom in on it, you'll see exactly what they show in this picture.
00:28:13 ◼ ► This image is not so convincing that I want to get my hopes up about it. I really, really want there to be inverted-T again.
00:28:23 ◼ ► Between that and the key switch going back to scissor and the slightly smaller key widths, I think that would be amazing, but I just don't want to get my hopes up.
00:28:35 ◼ ► We've been burned so many times by hoping for these laptops to get better, and then every year they just don't, that I really am afraid.
00:28:50 ◼ ► This is stupid. I had a dream last night about these laptops, and I know people's dreams are stupid, but like—
00:29:18 ◼ ► This is how much I have tension about these laptops coming out and being even worse or disappointing in some way.
00:29:37 ◼ ► They wouldn't put these resources in Catalina.1 if these machines weren't coming out until next year.
00:29:46 ◼ ► I just want it to come out so we can finally see it and finally end this tension and get back to our usual expertise of complaining about whatever they didn't do.
00:29:55 ◼ ► You know, it's funny to me. I think it was David Hanemeyer Hansen had something go around the internets over the last week or two where he had tried a Windows machine, like a Surface something or other, for a week and decided he couldn't do it.
00:30:08 ◼ ► And on the one side, I think it's really kind of preposterous that people are that upset about the keyboards that they're turning to an entirely different platform because they think that's better.
00:30:19 ◼ ► But on the flip side of that, I think the reason people are so upset is because they are having considerably worse experiences than I am.
00:30:26 ◼ ► Because I have definitely had to blow out the keyboard on my MacBook over the last two or three years, whatever it's been.
00:30:35 ◼ ► In fact, Jon, I believe you have now gotten to the point of catastrophic failure on yours.
00:30:39 ◼ ► And it's just weird to me because my gut reaction is, "Oh my God, people, relax. It's not that bad."
00:30:49 ◼ ► Yeah, as soon as it happens to you and you can't type on your keyboard anymore, it changes your perspective a little bit.
00:30:54 ◼ ► Again, we talked about this a million times. None of us know what the actual percentages are.
00:31:01 ◼ ► It's the whole reason I still have this on my laptop. Why don't you just bring it to work? It's not even yours. They'll fix it for you.
00:31:05 ◼ ► But I don't want to be without my laptop. I don't want to have a loaner. I'm in the middle of a bunch of stuff.
00:31:14 ◼ ► And so I'm just dealing with the hassle. And it's stupid, but DHH is doing it because, "Well, whatever. What else does he have to do with his time?"
00:31:23 ◼ ► And so he decided, "It's a good experiment to do. You've got the disposable income and the time. Why not try Windows? See what else is out there?"
00:31:29 ◼ ► And didn't expect it to stick and he didn't and he ended up returning the thing. But it wasn't because of the keyboard that he returned it.
00:31:35 ◼ ► Well, it's funny. In a way, Casey, you started that by saying that he was so fed up that he switched platforms.
00:31:41 ◼ ► I've kind of done that too. I hate using my laptop so much, and it's almost entirely because of that keyboard,
00:31:48 ◼ ► that I do almost all of my portable work now on my iPad instead. And I save things that I need a Mac for when I'm home.
00:32:02 ◼ ► I really don't like using it. And again, it's almost entirely because I just hate the keyboard feel.
00:32:11 ◼ ► So in a way, I have kind of switched platforms except for my portable needs just to avoid using that stupid laptop.
00:32:18 ◼ ► And so that's not a small thing. There's a real collection of issues here that affect people in pretty substantial ways.
00:32:25 ◼ ► So I just hope our long national nightmare will be over soon. I feel like we're so close. We're so close.
00:32:39 ◼ ► Like even if the port situation stays the same, we have no more ports but the keyboard got better.
00:32:44 ◼ ► Is that enough for Marco? Are you going to finally stop complaining and moaning, or are you going to still whine about the ports?
00:32:50 ◼ ► The ports are inconvenient. The ports make me have to carry dongles. But if I have to carry dongles and the rest of it's fine, then I'll be happy with that.
00:33:08 ◼ ► Well, and like the ports, that problem can be solved with some dongles. The keyboard can't. You can't avoid the keyboard.
00:33:21 ◼ ► If you can get away with having one or two dongles or buying a few new cables and that's it, then yeah, that sucks.
00:33:29 ◼ ► And you're out a bit of money, but then the problem's solved. So I'd rather have that problem than have a keyboard that I just hate no matter what.
00:33:37 ◼ ► What will happen if we get 16 inch or whatever MacBook Pros? Let's not go completely hog wild. Let's not say they have any USB-A ports, but they have at least as many if not more USB-C ports and they bring back your SD card reader.
00:33:57 ◼ ► I'd be on cloud nine. I'm not expecting USB-A. I would love it because there are so many people on so many occasions where it's like, "Hey, you don't just give me one USB-A port. I need it right this second. I don't have a dongle."
00:34:10 ◼ ► That would be very helpful. I don't see them doing it for lots of reasons, whether it's physical, thickness reasons, or ideological reasons and not going backwards or whatever. That's fine.
00:34:30 ◼ ► And yeah, fewer people use standalone cameras, but a lot of people who buy Pros still do.
00:34:37 ◼ ► A lot of the marketing images where Apple shows the ideal customer to buy these computers are people who use SD cards still.
00:34:46 ◼ ► So I would say that the need for that is still very much there. Now if we're carrying dongles anyway, most of the multi-dongle things have SD card readers built into them.
00:34:59 ◼ ► So it's less of a need than it was because we all have given up and given it to the dongle world anyway.
00:35:07 ◼ ► So ultimately, I would love an SD card slot, but I would classify it the same way I classify USB-A as just being pretty unlikely.
00:35:21 ◼ ► Again, I'm not, honestly I think the ports are going to be exactly the same. I think we're going to have four USB-C ports on the thing.
00:35:30 ◼ ► But I'm not expecting any other changes to that because ultimately I see Apple standing by that for lots of different technical and ideological reasons.
00:35:42 ◼ ► Which is unfortunate because we still, these computers can still connect to fewer things than their predecessors could because we still end up wasting one port for power.
00:35:53 ◼ ► Because if you use your laptop the way that, again, people in Apple's marketing for these laptops use them, you can't run on battery for very long.
00:36:03 ◼ ► You can run on battery for maybe 90 minutes if you're doing what people are doing in the Apple commercials with these laptops.
00:36:14 ◼ ► And it's just like, these are basically three port laptops in practice. Or if you get the lower end models, one or zero port laptops.
00:36:27 ◼ ► And all the arguments for how great Thunderbolt 3 ports are seem so wasted when one of them is being used just for power most of the time.
00:36:42 ◼ ► It's like, yeah, that's great, but I'm just plugging this in with this port. All it's doing is taking power. I don't need all that.
00:36:48 ◼ ► So there's a weird engineering tradeoff mismatch going on here. And so the more ports there are, the less bothersome that becomes.
00:37:05 ◼ ► Just the more the better. And the lower end models, the 13 inches, they should all have at least four.
00:37:17 ◼ ► I don't remember what the SD card slot was on the 2015, like what standard it supported or whatever.
00:37:25 ◼ ► But there is actually an opportunity if Apple ever decided that they wanted to look back at SD cards to support whatever the giant alphabet soup standard is for the fastest of the fastest SD card standard.
00:37:39 ◼ ► Yeah, I think we're still on XC. Yeah, there's the UHS series. We're on SDXC for the capacity standards.
00:37:50 ◼ ► I know. But yeah, so there's the faster generation of SD card slots that have the second row of pins on the back, but those are optional for readers.
00:38:00 ◼ ► Readers can read from both sets of pins at once and do a big parallel high bandwidth read, but they don't have to. So it's backwards compatible with everything.
00:38:09 ◼ ► So I believe the only computer that has that port so far on Apple's lineup is the iMac Pro.
00:38:17 ◼ ► Yeah, so the iMac Pro does have the super fast SD reader in it. And it's wonderful. I use it all the time. Whenever I don't miss and hit the vent instead.
00:38:26 ◼ ► Yeah, if you've got those big, you know, 41 or 62 megapixel or whatever they are images in the big Sony cameras and you're filling up these giant SD cards, it takes forever.
00:38:35 ◼ ► You're not going to do them over like Wi-Fi. And I guess suppose they work on USB-C, but then you're dealing with cables and that stupid flappy door that you open up to plug the cable into.
00:38:43 ◼ ► SD card, take the card out, shove it in. Like it's more convenient. And if it's faster, all the better.
00:38:51 ◼ ► So what happens then if in the next couple of weeks, we/Marco get the SD card equipped cellular enabled 16 inch laptop.
00:39:04 ◼ ► And then right after that, I just shush. And then right after that we get the Mac Pro and suddenly Marco just wants to talk about the 16 inch laptop. Doesn't really care about the Mac Pro anymore.
00:39:16 ◼ ► And John just wants to talk about his Mac Pro. And then what do I get to decide what we talk about? Is that how this works?
00:39:21 ◼ ► Marco is going to mostly use his iMac. So even though he'll be excited if he got his fantasy laptop, then he'll just put it away, wait for his next trip and continue to sit in front of his iMac all day. So don't worry about it.
00:39:31 ◼ ► Well, I think this problem will solve itself because if they come out anywhere near the same time, the answer is I get to talk about the laptop first because John will waffle on.
00:39:41 ◼ ► Yeah, John will waffle on his purchase. He'll be afraid to pull the trigger on a 15 grand purchase and will waffle over it for at least a couple of weeks.
00:39:49 ◼ ► And my computer will take forever to ship anyway because it's not like they're going to be, you know, and then it'll take a while to sort of install because unlike a laptop where you just open it up and just plop it on a table, like I have a lot of stuff to move and transfer data from. So don't worry.
00:40:04 ◼ ► Yeah, John's going to have to like rebuild his entire office from scratch to fit this computer into it somehow. So yeah, don't worry. It'll be a process.
00:40:11 ◼ ► I mean, it's the same size as my other one, but I do have to like, once you're, you know, I thought about this when I was looking at, what was I looking at? Something on television or whatever showing someone set up and looking at their cables.
00:40:23 ◼ ► I always do think about and I think about in my house where all my cables are. If you have a desktop computer that's been there for a long time and has a lot of peripherals, you kind of forget how many cables there are because I'm cleverly hidden them and routed them or whatever.
00:40:37 ◼ ► Once you start pulling things out, then you just you just end up with this giant wad. Wow, I couldn't believe how much of this stuff was back there. Exactly how many wires have to connect for all this stuff to work together when it comes time to move it, especially if you're transferring data.
00:40:49 ◼ ► I have to have them both connected for some period of time to transfer stuff or I have to get hard drives from it or whatever. Oh, forget it. Then I have to get everything out.
00:40:56 ◼ ► Then you got to vacuum behind there because of all the dust and the gross stuff. And I got to install the new UPS and maybe get some new networking cables. Like, you know, once once the walls are open, you know. Right. Exactly.
00:41:07 ◼ ► You're going to take a sabbatical just so you can do your new computer upgrade. It's not as bad as my TV. My TV is worse. I should take some pictures from behind my TV. It is not a neatly arranged set of cables. The stuff you can see is neat, but if you look behind there, I mean, I have like five game consoles connected to my television plus a receiver and what else is there?
00:41:27 ◼ ► The TiVo and it's just, yeah, there's too much stuff. And then all the wires going out to all the speakers. It's terrifying back there. Plus all the power bricks. Oh my God, the power bricks. It's bad.
00:41:39 ◼ ► You know, it's not Steven Hackett's way to be mean or nasty, but if he ever is mean or nasty, just send him that picture and he'll have nightmares for weeks.
00:41:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I'll send him the picture of the neat part where you can see where I have like the 17 HDMI cables snaking down from my plasma television that used to have all those ports. I have all the optical cables, like everything that you can plug into my things and my television are plugged in. I have ethernet cables and everything.
00:42:04 ◼ ► And there's like an eight port switch behind there as well with its own power brick. There's a lot going on behind my TV.
00:42:10 ◼ ► I will admit something embarrassing. I actually, when I upgraded my switch in my house, I upgraded to a power ethernet switch that can send power ethernet over any of its ports. And I actually upgraded the sub switch that I keep in my TV entertainment center solely for the reason that I upgraded it to one that could be powered by power over ethernet to save one power brick under my TV.
00:42:35 ◼ ► Yeah, nice. I mean, because I have like the big, you know, I don't have UPS behind my TV. I probably should, but I have like a couple of big power strips connected to different outlets from each other. And I buy like the biggest ones, like the 12 outlet ones that are really far spread out because you need room for the stupid bricks to not butt up against each other.
00:42:53 ◼ ► I'm basically at capacity. All this is to say is when I replace my television, it's going to be worse because that's moving furniture and big heavy things and I'm going to have to pare down on the consoles. Like my television supports component input, which is what my sort of analog era consoles are connected to because it's the best connection. Like I think my GameCube is connected to component.
00:43:14 ◼ ► And all those parts are gone from modern TVs, so I just won't have those connected. I know I can buy adapters, but I'll probably get to retire them. And so I'll pare things down substantially and hopefully get some space back.
00:43:41 ◼ ► Well the Wii is actually my substitute GameCube, right? So because I have a Wii with GameCube compatibility, so if I want to play a GameCube game, I'm probably going to play it on the Wii, but occasionally I'll want to play it on the GameCube or it'll already be in-
00:43:58 ◼ ► Yeah, well also they're just taking up space in my entertainment center at this point because I so rarely use them, right? But they like, they take up space that's important for them to be there because they hide the wires that are behind them, you know what I mean? They look nice, right?
00:44:12 ◼ ► If I were to remove them, you'd be able to see through, because my entertainment center thing is just like this metal frame with glass shelves, like it's not enclosed, which is good for airflow and everything, but bad if you're trying to hide a terrifying rat's nest of cables.
00:44:29 ◼ ► No, it does have composite input, I think, though, which is crazy for an HDTV. It's got component input for sure, because I have things plugged into that, it might have composite, I don't know.
00:44:38 ◼ ► Alright, my final question, Jon, I'm looking at automobiles.honda.com. A 2020 Accord LX CVT, which I think is the cheapest Accord you can buy, the MSRP is $23,870. What is the likelihood in your mind that your computer will be more or less expensive than, let's say, what is the likelihood it will be more expensive than this?
00:45:09 ◼ ► I do. I think so, too. He can't make himself spend more than that. I'm guessing the display, you're going to spend the seven grand on the good one, and I'm guessing the Mac Pro itself is going to be between seven and ten. That's why I'm thinking between $14,000 and $17,000.
00:45:34 ◼ ► Yeah, well, I mean, like cars, no one ever pays the full price. Anyway, considering the most expensive car I've ever purchased has been less than $25,000, the odds of me getting a computer to cost more than that is not that high.
00:46:02 ◼ ► Oh, but you're missing my point. My point is simply that for the price of your Mac Pro, I think you will be able to get a...
00:46:15 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, you can always get like, you know, you can still find cars for $15,000 or whatever, just not Honda.
00:46:20 ◼ ► No, no, no, no, my point is like looking at Honda, which is your kind of your jam, what Honda could you buy new for the amounts of money you're going to spend on your Mac Pro?
00:46:35 ◼ ► And I don't think you're going to get to $20,000 on your Mac Pro, but I think you're going to get uncomfortably close.
00:46:40 ◼ ► But even if I did, that's $2,000 a year. So that's like Marco buying a new computer every year, which he does. It's nothing.
00:47:07 ◼ ► For $20 off a suitcase, visit awaytravel.com/atp20 and use promo code ATP20 during checkout.
00:47:23 ◼ ► They considered all types of travelers and really put a lot of thought into their design.
00:47:31 ◼ ► This is what made them famous, this battery thing where you can have a battery that's built into your carry-on bag.
00:47:40 ◼ ► you can be charging your phone or any other USB device so you never run out of battery power.
00:48:03 ◼ ► And it's super easy to maneuver through airports because they have four 360-degree spinner wheels
00:48:17 ◼ ► They have their signature polycarbonate, a really strong, durable, lightweight material.
00:49:37 ◼ ► I bet a surprising number of people are going to start using SSDs for backups when available.
00:49:49 ◼ ► I don't think that's the reason why they haven't done it, like I said on the last show.
00:50:05 ◼ ► And the great thing about SSDs is they're all bus-powered in a nice, handy little case.
00:51:50 ◼ ► So they haven't added that feature, but one of the people from Letterboxd's site told me,
00:53:06 ◼ ► All I needed to do to reassure myself, and so I was sure that I didn't have to read documentation,
00:53:47 ◼ ► "Just because you mark something as watched doesn't mean you watched it at that moment,"
00:54:50 ◼ ► Like, the main reason I didn't do it before is because I didn't realize until the first year
00:56:13 ◼ ► I have seen episode one of Morning Show, and I have seen episode one of For All Mankind.
00:56:51 ◼ ► I like that Upgrade covers the whole streaming and TV side of all these businesses very well,
01:13:52 ◼ ► by someone who's disgruntled about creative direction in a particular show or whatever.
01:15:41 ◼ ► The ratings that this got from critics, I think it was like 38% on Rotten Tomatoes for the critics rating,
01:15:58 ◼ ► because you should see the garbage shows on Netflix that I've watched about the end of the world.
01:16:14 ◼ ► because if you hear about what the show is about and you're like, "Oh, that sounds kind of cool,"
01:16:24 ◼ ► Again, I go back to that TV critic saying you can't expect when they field four or five shows
01:16:39 ◼ ► You saw the morning show and didn't think it was awful, and that actually got some okay good reviews.
01:16:51 ◼ ► None of them are the best show ever, but it is really important for Apple to come out of the gate,
01:16:54 ◼ ► especially in this free, where it's free to everyone who bought an iPhone for a year or whatever,
01:17:16 ◼ ► Maybe by the end of the first season, people will be like, "You know what? I really enjoyed that.
01:17:39 ◼ ► so I'm mostly impressed for a first-time TV maker to come out with a bunch of shows that are okay good.
01:17:46 ◼ ► I agree with you. Granted, I've watched a sum total of like 2 hours and 15 minutes of Apple TV+,
01:18:13 ◼ ► but I would assume for those of us like you guys that have fancier TVs and fancier Apple TVs and so on and so forth,
01:18:22 ◼ ► This is FlatpanelsHD, which is a website, and this is the editor-in-chief writing in their forums.
01:18:40 ◼ ► The highest bitrate they've seen so far is 29 megabits per second average with a 41 megabit per second peak."
01:18:46 ◼ ► I've also seen reports saying, "Oh, I watched a bunch of Apple TV content in HDR on my TV,
01:18:54 ◼ ► So it seems like the answer to the streaming quality is that Apple has the capacity to and will send you many more bits than other services will,
01:19:06 ◼ ► but if your connection is slow or inconsistent or has any problems, they will, of course, throttle down and you will see compression artifacts.
01:19:14 ◼ ► So the advantage of getting something from iTunes or watching it on a Blu-ray disc is you've got all the bits there,
01:19:21 ◼ ► Doing anything over streaming, if there's any hiccup in your connection or you actually have a bad connection or you have flaky Wi-Fi in the room you're in or whatever,
01:19:30 ◼ ► But it's good to know that Apple is leaning on this one potential technical advantage they have,
01:19:35 ◼ ► is they're willing to send you more bits because they have fewer subscribers and, in general, they've always cared about video quality.
01:19:42 ◼ ► But you're not going to see nice, pristine video if you can't sustain 29 megabit per second average to your television.
01:19:50 ◼ ► It doesn't mean like, "Well, my internet connection is 150 megabits or 300 megabits. I should get that."
01:20:00 ◼ ► And then, of course, there's server issues and CDN issues and all sorts of other technical things that are outside your control.
01:20:05 ◼ ► But I watch most of these shows on my iPad. I watch a surprising amount of TV on my iPad.
01:20:10 ◼ ► It's making me more and more wish for an OLED iPad, actually, just because I end up watching a show before I go to bed,
01:20:17 ◼ ► and the lights are all out and I've got my AirPods in. This is my right-before-bed TV-watching experience.
01:20:24 ◼ ► And I like watching TV like that. I haven't noticed any terrible compression artifacts, so I guess that's thumbs up.
01:20:34 ◼ ► Again, kind of like the shows. I didn't see anything bad. I also haven't noticed their quality being particularly great either.
01:20:45 ◼ ► and a lot of the shows I watch are actually streaming from my TiVo in the other room, and so there's no streaming issues there.
01:20:51 ◼ ► Or I'm watching stuff off my Plex where I know I'm getting all the bits because I do it in original quality because I have good network in my house.
01:20:57 ◼ ► So I think the audio/video is fine, but of course for any streaming service, you never know what you're going to get.
01:21:07 ◼ ► I know I said I didn't want to harp on the application issues and the quality of the shows is the dominant factor. That's true, but I really do hope they get this stuff sorted out.
01:21:16 ◼ ► For all the world, it felt like they were having weird server issues. A couple people thought that maybe it was also the background process termination stuff.
01:21:25 ◼ ► Like maybe their app was getting killed before I could send an API request to mark my position in the show.
01:21:31 ◼ ► But honestly, I don't want to repeat the rant that I went into on Rectus. This is table stakes for the app.
01:21:38 ◼ ► You can either innovate and say we have a great idea of how to present an interface to television, but if you don't have any great ideas, just do what Netflix does.
01:21:46 ◼ ► When I launch the app, you absolutely have to show me in a gigantic box that I just paw it with my monkey paws and just say, "Look, just continue showing me the thing that I was watching.
01:21:55 ◼ ► If I was watching a show and I finished episodes, show me the next episode. If I'm in the middle of an episode, pick up where I left off."
01:22:03 ◼ ► They also could do with a concept like Netflix's My List or some other way to say, "These are the shows that I intend to be watching right now."
01:22:12 ◼ ► Every streaming app has some way for you to do that. They're all different, which kind of sucks.
01:22:17 ◼ ► Obviously, once you start watching a show, you expect the app to understand that you're watching it, but also you could say, "Oh, I would have liked to have gone in and say,
01:22:25 ◼ ► 'Okay, I plan to watch For All Mankind, See, and Dickinson,' and then I'll think about the morning show."
01:22:32 ◼ ► I should have had some page somewhere that shows all three of those shows, and I should be able to go into them and see all the episodes and see how far along I am in them.
01:22:38 ◼ ► Then when I get to the end of an episode, it should go to the next one or prompt me to go to the next one.
01:22:42 ◼ ► It should just do all the things, and it kind of boggles my mind that they dropped the ball on that.
01:22:54 ◼ ► I'm not saying they have to do what Netflix and Hulu and everybody else does, but if they don't, they've got to do something better.
01:22:59 ◼ ► Right now, they're doing neither. They're doing something worse, or they're trying to do the same thing but doing it with bugs.
01:23:04 ◼ ► It's not that big a deal because I eventually figure out how to get the show to play, but it just seems like it's not a high bar.
01:23:19 ◼ ► If I was just watching a show, I'm probably going to want to continue watching it, so that should be the biggest, perhaps the only thing on the screen when I launch the app.
01:23:31 ◼ ► It was surprising to me that there was no obvious "here's the Apple TV+ stuff," or at least not on the Apple TV app anyway.
01:23:42 ◼ ► On the device called Apple TV, I was in the TV app, and there was no obvious place for Apple TV+ content.
01:23:51 ◼ ► I was able to find it pretty quickly. It wasn't an egregious amount of effort to go find it.
01:23:56 ◼ ► That was the one time when it would have been nice for them to highlight, "This is the Apple TV+ stuff right here. Look here. Over here. Hey, hey, hey, over here."
01:24:03 ◼ ► It's on launch day. You would think it would be so in your face that you wouldn't be able to avoid it.
01:24:07 ◼ ► You end up looking for it. How am I hunting for this? How is this not a giant banner in my face that I can't even avoid?
01:24:13 ◼ ► On the flip side of the coin, though, I do respect that they're trying to, or it appears anyway, that they're trying to make a level playing field for all of the content in that app.
01:24:30 ◼ ► Well, you never know. I'm trying to get the benefit of the doubt. But all in all, again, I'm quite pleased.
01:24:46 ◼ ► The thing that says "Netflix" or the HBO bong and hilariously compression-defeating static, right?
01:24:52 ◼ ► It's the thing that shows you what service you're watching. I was actually curious of what Apple was going to do here, if they were going to do anything like that.
01:25:01 ◼ ► They do a twofer, right? So they've got a Netflix-style splash screen that says "Apple TV Plus."
01:25:08 ◼ ► And then they also have, before the shows, it says like, I think maybe Netflix does this too, but it says "an Apple original" or "an Apple original film" or something like that.
01:25:17 ◼ ► And both of those things are also surprising for Apple. The first one, the sort of Apple TV Plus splash thing, is very what I would expect a company that's not Apple to do.
01:25:29 ◼ ► It looks like every other sort of production logo thing, where it's shiny and backlit and the Plus is glowy and there's a little THX-type cord bong.
01:25:38 ◼ ► It's a little bit like the startup chime for a Mac, but it's a little bit different. It's all the things that you would expect that to be.
01:25:45 ◼ ► And that, I feel like, is a missed opportunity to do what only Apple could do, which is have no writing on the screen and just have an Apple logo.
01:25:52 ◼ ► If Steve Jobs were still alive, you know, we love doing those things, that would have been just an Apple logo.
01:25:57 ◼ ► Like, probably not even any sound or maybe some sound, but like, they're the only company, one of the few companies in the world that can literally put no text on the screen,
01:26:05 ◼ ► put one simple outline logo in a single color and everybody knows what they're in for. But they didn't. They went with the whole Apple TV Plus glowy Plus blah blah blah.
01:26:12 ◼ ► And then, the "an Apple original" thing, the text and the font they used, it looks like it would fit in an Apple marketing material, it does not look like it fits in in the front of a television program.
01:26:25 ◼ ► So I feel like both of those things, I was surprised by the aesthetic choices. The aesthetic choices in the case of the logo seem very conventional and in the case of the "an Apple original" seem kind of "meh".
01:26:38 ◼ ► So they have time to change it. Netflix, like I said, just changed their logo. I think it used to be like their regular logo, now it's this weird animation with a bunch of colored lines and stuff that I think is worse.
01:26:49 ◼ ► HBO is stubbornly sticking to their static despite how horrific it looks on streaming services.
01:26:54 ◼ ► So, you know, maybe in year three, someone will have an epiphany and say, "You know what? We should just show the Apple logo. Stick with the startup bong, that's fine, it's kind of cute and everything, but just show the Apple logo."
01:27:06 ◼ ► So you don't need to say "Apple TV Plus". It's not a great name, it's not a great logo, it doesn't need to glow.
01:27:17 ◼ ► Now home WiFi, you would think it would be really easy, but until recently it really hasn't been.
01:27:23 ◼ ► You know, you could always get WiFi coverage in most of the house most of the time, but there are always dead zones or slow spots or like that one bedroom that you just couldn't really get WiFi in at night.
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01:27:41 ◼ ► It blankets your entire home with fast, reliable WiFi, eliminating poor coverage zones, dead spots, slow buffering of videos.
01:27:51 ◼ ► You just have a consistently strong WiFi signal wherever you need it in your entire house.
01:27:57 ◼ ► And Eero sets up super easily in just a couple of minutes. You plug it right into your modem or your modem router box and you manage it from there.
01:28:04 ◼ ► Super easy to use, nicely designed app. The app lets you do all sorts of things from the setup to wonderful features like you can pause the WiFi for dinner.
01:28:12 ◼ ► You can get alerts if new devices join your network. And it's just super easy to use and you get amazing coverage.
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01:29:10 ◼ ► Alright, let's move on to SKTP and we begin with Josh Hattersley who writes, "You often mention that Apple's mobile system on chip are faster than Mac components using Geek."
01:29:28 ◼ ► I did. That is 1000% an accurate description of what just happened. Now you're going to leave it in the show though because that was funny.
01:29:39 ◼ ► "You often mention Apple's mobile SOCs being faster than Mac parts in Geekbench, but is there much evidence that it's a good metric when comparing across architectures? For example ARM vs. x86.
01:29:50 ◼ ► It's difficult to find concrete info here, but in theory it isn't apples to apples, is it?"
01:29:55 ◼ ► I'm kind of sad that today's geek children didn't get to experience what was a staple of my early adult geek life, which was geeks arguing with each other over benchmarks.
01:30:11 ◼ ► Back in the times when it was 68K vs. PowerPC, x86 vs. 68K vs. PowerPC, RISC vs. CISC, Altivec vs. MMX. This is a whole subculture of comparing platforms and arguing about which CPUs are better than what.
01:30:29 ◼ ► And of course when it came time to argue about that, it was like everyone would pull out the benchmarks. And then it just became a meta-argument about, well, that benchmark is not realistic, it's not representative, that benchmark unfairly favors this particular architecture, and no real application does that.
01:30:43 ◼ ► It went on forever, arguing about the quality of benchmarks and how representative they were, and if it's artificial, and trying real-world applications. It never ended. But it meant that everyone was well-versed in the pluses and minuses of benchmarks.
01:31:01 ◼ ► And in this more modern post-iPhone era, people threw out Geekbench numbers, and no one ever argues about how applicable Geekbench or Spec or any of these other things are. No one ever says, "Oh, that doesn't count because that whole benchmark fits in the cache." No one ever talks about this stuff anymore. It's just not an issue.
01:31:17 ◼ ► So I'm going to say, this is why I give all this reflexive hemming and hawing every time we mention Geekbench, and no one seems to care about my hemming and hawing, and I never get any comments about it. I'm hemming and hawing because all benchmarks inherently are synthetic and non-representative in one way or another.
01:31:35 ◼ ► But all that said, from all the years you're arguing about how fair or unfair a particular benchmark is to a particular PowerBC or a particular Pentium or whatever, the upshot is that in general, benchmarks that are not made by someone who makes a CPU chip, like Intel didn't make the benchmark, AMD didn't make the benchmark, right?
01:31:54 ◼ ► These benchmarks are trying to be fair, and chips come and go, and the benchmarks more or less stay the same, so it's not like the benchmark even can be or is tweaked to be particularly favorable to one CPU or another.
01:32:07 ◼ ► It doesn't mean they're not vulnerable to edge cases where, "Oh, we've been running this benchmark for years, and CPU cache sizes kept getting bigger, and all of a sudden we crossed some threshold, and now this particular entire benchmark fits in the cache and it goes 10 times faster, and that's not representative of real-world stuff." So it's up to the Geekbench people to keep track of that.
01:32:24 ◼ ► But in general, all those caveats aside, I'm going to say the Geekbench, though it is not representative of any particular real-world application or your particular application, I'm not aware of any ARM versus x86 biases that would explain the massive performance differences we see between, like, let's say, Apple's phone and all of the Macs that they have ever sold in their entire lives.
01:32:46 ◼ ► So, yeah, you can quibble over the details, but I don't think that the benchmark is so unfairly biased that you should discount it. In general, you should give yourself some 5% margin one way or the other, so if they look at it close to each other, it's probably about a wash.
01:33:10 ◼ ► Moving on, Glyn07 writes, "Can Marco give an update on the state of podcast market share? Is the equilibrium holding or is Spotify taking over the world?"
01:33:19 ◼ ► So it's hard to have an idea of, like, how do you measure podcast market share? Whose data do you use? Whose data is valid?
01:33:27 ◼ ► The best data that I know of that is publicly shared is Libsyn's numbers. I've mentioned this before, they do a show called The Feed that's kind of about podcasting and, like, helping people podcast and question everything, and every couple episodes of The Feed, they will do a stats breakdown of Libsyn's global stats for all shows hosted by Libsyn for a certain month.
01:33:49 ◼ ► And, you know, they'll do geography breakdowns, like which countries had the most downloads, they'll also do, like, type of device breakdowns and app breakdowns.
01:33:58 ◼ ► It isn't, like, the most perfect measure in the world because there's a whole lot of, like, really big shows that aren't hosted on Libsyn, so it's not, like, a perfect representative sample, but it's such a huge podcast host in general that I think it's the best data we have that's publicly shared.
01:34:17 ◼ ► So anyway, based on what they have reported, things are, we're kind of in equilibrium for the most part. Spotify is taking significant market share, I think they're up to something like 13% in the latest numbers, but it's mostly additive.
01:34:34 ◼ ► It has been mostly people who were not taken away from other apps, like people aren't leaving Apple Podcasts and Overcast, etc. in droves to go to Spotify to listen to podcasts. Instead, Spotify's existing audience is starting to listen to podcasts for the first time, adding to the market rather than taking away from other apps.
01:34:55 ◼ ► They are big, but they're also, because they aren't really taking away from the rest of us, it's not as much of an issue, and also, from what I understand, their market share is not, like, an average slice. It is not, like, an even slice out of the rest of the market or in addition to the rest of the market.
01:35:16 ◼ ► Certain demographics are very strong there, and certain ones are totally missing. In the worlds that I tend to play in, in nerds and tech podcasts, Spotify is basically nothing. Almost no one listens to shows like ours on Spotify, and almost none of the users of my app would be at risk of turning them to Spotify users instead.
01:35:37 ◼ ► So it doesn't really affect our corner of the internet here, but it still is a good deal of market share.
01:35:44 ◼ ► What about things like Luminary or whatever, those various pay services for podcasts? Those wouldn't show up on Libsyn stats or whatever, but...
01:35:52 ◼ ► Oh, they do! Luminary shows up as Libsyn stats of having something on the lines of 0.2% market share. So I'm not so worried about it. To be, as a point of comparison, Overcast hovers around 3%.
01:36:09 ◼ ► There's Stitcher Premium and a couple others. Audible has some originals, but I don't know how they do. Stitcher does okay in general. I don't know how Stitcher Premium specifically does. But Stitcher is somewhere in the 2% range most of the time, I think.
01:36:26 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, it seems like things are pretty stable. Spotify is growing, that is significant, but we're fine. We're not really being touched by that in our corner of the internet over here. And so I think things are mostly holding pretty well.
01:36:45 ◼ ► And the Premium services sounds like they haven't... No Premium services even gotten the traction that Spotify has gotten.
01:36:51 ◼ ► Not even close, no. I mean, you could argue maybe Spotify is a Premium service in some ways, but they own Gimlet now. They do have a paid tier. They do have exclusive content. So in some ways, they are a Premium service, but not in the way that most people would discuss Premium podcasting services.
01:37:11 ◼ ► And that wouldn't show up. You can't pull that out of the 13% because you have no idea what percentage of that is their Premium stuff versus just people listening to regular podcasts and Spotify.
01:37:19 ◼ ► Right, all we know from this 13% is that is like among Libsyn hosted podcasts, which are public podcasts, among Libsyn hosted podcasts, Spotify has about 30% of their downloads.
01:37:31 ◼ ► Finally, Paul Donahue writes, "I do some very basic database and Excel work for a living, but I've been thinking about learning how to develop apps on the side for supplemental income. Since I want to force myself to be at my desk, I've been thinking about getting a Mac Mini, but it hasn't been updated since last year. Do you think I should wait until it gets refreshed, or would I be fine purchasing it now?"
01:37:47 ◼ ► You know, this is such a difficult question because up until there's a lot of smoke about something like, oh, I don't know, a 16-inch MacBook Pro, it seems like just about any time is a perfectly fine time to upgrade.
01:38:01 ◼ ► But when you wait as long as the Mac Mini has been, because it's been about a year, right, since it's been upgraded, like Paul said.
01:38:11 ◼ ► Yeah, so then I get to be a little nervous about recommending an upgrade. I would say, especially if you don't have a Mac already, just pull the trigger. It'll be fine. Maybe get it refurbished so you feel less bad if a new one comes out tomorrow.
01:38:29 ◼ ► Normally I would say an Apple product that is a year old, you should probably wait. It's going to be updated soon. Not with the Mac Mini. I think it would be a miracle if the Mac Mini were updated after only one year.
01:38:45 ◼ ► It has never, even if it could ever be said to have had a Prime, which I don't think it ever did, but even in its Prime if it ever existed, it was never updated that frequently. So for the Mac Mini, only being a year old is actually kind of young still.
01:39:01 ◼ ► It's still a Spring Chicken or something. It's very, very new still for the Mac Mini. So I would say if you're going to get a Mac Mini, go ahead and get it now. You have a very low risk of it being updated anytime soon.
01:39:15 ◼ ► That being said, there is the question of whether a Mac Mini is really the best choice here.
01:39:23 ◼ ► And that's a more complicated question about what Paul's needs are, what any potential other priorities might be. Things like price or having certain equipment around. Paul says, "I want to force myself to be at my desk."
01:39:40 ◼ ► But I would say a decently specced Mac Mini is not that differently priced than an iMac. And an iMac is kind of a better computer in a lot of ways. So I would urge Paul to consider an iMac. Otherwise, a Mac Mini is fine and it's not at risk of being updated.
01:40:00 ◼ ► Well, you're with Marco. Don't wait around for a Mac Mini. Just buy it if you want to buy it, but consider an iMac.
01:40:15 ◼ ► Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
01:40:25 ◼ ► John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. It was accidental.
01:40:36 ◼ ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
01:40:50 ◼ ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A. It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental.
01:41:16 ◼ ► Did I tell you guys I blew my first tire? Yeah, we saw the pictures. We saw the tire of shame. Tell the tire of shame story. That's the best part.
01:41:24 ◼ ► This is pretty good. Oh, the wheel of shame. Sorry. Yeah, so I was taking a left turn onto a road with a median.
01:41:32 ◼ ► I took it slightly too tight and hit my rear left tire on the median on the inside. And instantly heard a big loud poof.
01:41:41 ◼ ► And then, and I was like, uh oh. And I was like, I was waiting for it, waiting for it. And then I see on the dashboard chime.
01:41:49 ◼ ► And low pressure warning, zero PSI. I'm like, oh no. And yeah, so I pulled into the parking lot.
01:41:59 ◼ ► And yeah, sure enough, completely flat tire and a huge gash in the side walls. I'm like, yeah, this is not going to be easily fixed.
01:42:08 ◼ ► So I didn't really know what to do. I've never had a flat tire before in my, geez, almost 20 years of driving. Actually, no, 21 years of driving.
01:42:18 ◼ ► I've never had a flat tire. I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles. Never had a tire. So I was like, alright, now what do I do?
01:42:26 ◼ ► So Tesla's, like many new cars, don't come with spare tires. There's nowhere to put it in the car. It just isn't there.
01:42:33 ◼ ► So I don't know what the regulations are, like if you have to have some kind of way to fix this.
01:42:40 ◼ ► But clearly you don't. Because you don't. What most cars do is when they don't come with a spare, they come with run flats.
01:42:49 ◼ ► That's not always true. My Golf R has neither a spare nor run flats. It has a fix-a-flat kit that it came with that sits in the back.
01:42:57 ◼ ► Yeah, the little can. That's the hierarchy. But in general, unless there's a particular reason, I assume the reason your car is both to save weight and to save space that it doesn't come with.
01:43:08 ◼ ► Run flats tend to have worse performance and ride characteristics. So if it's a performance car, they don't want to have run flats on it. Corvette being accepted because America.
01:43:16 ◼ ► It's obviously not a law because you can do that, but I'm actually surprised that the, well, I don't know, kind of surprised that the Teslas don't have run flats. I guess I never thought about it before.
01:43:28 ◼ ► I know that a lot of the Teslas have harder tires for better mileage, right? But the performance models maybe less so. But you don't even have fix-a-flat anywhere that you're aware of. Casey, check his manual for him.
01:43:39 ◼ ► No, I don't. Unless it was in the front which was stuck shut, which is a different story. But anyway.
01:43:46 ◼ ► Oh, God. Oh, no, no, no. Now we're going to have to tell that story either now or later, but carry on.
01:43:50 ◼ ► We'll get there. So yeah, but what they do come with is roadside assistance that apparently is free. It was kind of cool actually. So I open up the app on my phone and you tap roadside assistance and you answer a couple of questions like, "What is it?"
01:44:04 ◼ ► Tires? Something else. And you hit tires. How many tires? One. Okay. And then it's like you submit the request and it's like, "We'll get back to you in a couple of minutes."
01:44:14 ◼ ► And sure enough, a couple of minutes after I submitted the request, I got this giant long text message series of like, "All right, vehicle is being dispatched from this company. It'll be there within 60 minutes and it'll have a loaner tire and wheel.
01:44:27 ◼ ► They will swap it on. They will bring your broken tire and wheel to the so-and-so service center, the nearest Tesla service center." It was great. And so sure enough, they said within 60 minutes, 20 minutes later, a guy shows up in a van with a wheel and a tire.
01:44:44 ◼ ► And he attaches it to my car. 25 minutes after I requested it, he's gone, he's done. I'm on the road again. It was kind of amazing. And the deal was the loaner that he gave me, it's the same. It's a Tesla wheel. It had a regular Tesla tire on it. Not a snow tire, okay, but a regular Tesla tire on it.
01:45:02 ◼ ► And it was, the rim of it was spray painted. It's like graffitied. I'll put the picture as the chapter right here. It was like graffitied with like red Tesla logos, like smeary Tesla drippy spray paint logos. It said Tesla Mount Kisco on the side. That's the dealership.
01:45:21 ◼ ► And the guy was saying that they actually just started doing this because people would just never return the loaner wheels. Because the deal is, they give you the loaner wheel and then you're supposed to schedule a service appointment at whatever dealership they brought your rim to and go buy a new tire.
01:45:39 ◼ ► Well, there's nothing really forcing you to do that, I guess. Like you sign a thing on the roadside assistance thing, but like, it doesn't seem that they enforce it. So like he said people just never return them. Because like why would you? It's going to cost you a couple hundred dollars to buy a new tire.
01:45:54 ◼ ► So like, you would just keep the loaner forever. So they spray painted it now to show, like to kind of remind you that it's the loaner wheel of shame. Like it looks horrendous. Like some guy on Twitter said it looked like I ran over a trick or treater. Which is fair.
01:46:11 ◼ ► Yeah, like again, go look at your podcast player which hopefully supports chapter art. If you're envisioning a tire that's like spray painted red and it looks like a regular wheel but it's a red wheel, it's not a red wheel. It is literally a Tesla silver wheel that someone has haphazardly taken like a can of Krylon and just randomly put crap all over it. It looks so bad.
01:46:33 ◼ ► Like it is not, they didn't try to make anything. The point of it is to look bad, I suppose. It kind of amazes me that this is like an actual real large company's solution to this problem. Can we just make them ugly? Yeah, sure. I can go down to the store and get a can of, I'll be there once or two.
01:46:52 ◼ ► Are they different colors? Is it color matched to his car because it is red and he's got a red car. It's just fascinating. Yeah, why wouldn't people, who's going to want to go and pay all that money? They just gave you a free tire and a wheel and people aren't thinking like, oh, well the tread wear is different and in your case it's not even a snow tire. They'll just keep driving it.
01:47:11 ◼ ► That said, I'm not sure the incredible spray paint will deter people because those same people who don't care that they have a mismatched tire with different tread wear might not also care that it's all spray painted red and they're meaning to go to it but they never get around to it.
01:47:24 ◼ ► Especially if, like say they have wheel damage, like say you had damaged your wheel on that median, the wheel is like $600 probably and the tire is like $300 on top of that or you could drive around with an ugly wheel.
01:47:42 ◼ ► Yeah, and that's like when you have a spare tire, it's not the same wheel, it's a smaller thing and it looks ridiculous and still I see people driving around on their donuts. It's especially hilarious in this day and age when cars like every car, like the economy car for like $13,000 comes with 20 inch wheels or something ridiculous. Wheels have gotten so huge but the spares haven't kept up.