ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'll go with the zipper one just because I feel like I have a mnemonic for remembering.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Yes! Three major zippers, four apple heydays. That's my mnemonic.

00:00:07 ◼   ► That's how you're gonna make this work? Jesus.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Whatever you need, Josh. That could be the title. Three major zippers,

00:00:14 ◼   ► four apple heydays. Too long.

00:00:17 ◼   ► So, I don't know where to begin here because in our show notes it reads, "Follow up. Casey was

00:00:26 ◼   ► was right about something. I don't know if I should be really excited and really

00:00:31 ◼   ► smug about this or really fearful about this. So I have steeled myself, I am bracing myself.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Marco, what was I right about?

00:00:41 ◼   ► - As you know, we are going to the beach with increasing frequency.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - Okay, uh-huh.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - Sometimes we go there for long spans, and electric cars are not ideal to leave at the

00:00:54 ◼   ► the ferry because of gradual self-discharge basically.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - Margo bought a Jeep Wrangler.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - Oh my God, that would be amazing.

00:01:02 ◼   ► - Now there's no charging available there,

00:01:05 ◼   ► so it's, you know, electric is not great.

00:01:07 ◼   ► We kinda decided we need to maintain a gas car.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Also, normally the only way to get all the way

00:01:13 ◼   ► to the beach town that we go to is via ferry.

00:01:17 ◼   ► And the ferry's fine, but you know, it's slow,

00:01:19 ◼   ► you know, it's not impervious to weather,

00:01:21 ◼   ► it runs very infrequently in the off-season.

00:01:24 ◼   ► - Marco bought a boat?

00:01:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:27 ◼   ► - Now you can save a lot of time

00:01:28 ◼   ► and you could be able to go there a lot more easily

00:01:30 ◼   ► in the off season by driving all the way there,

00:01:34 ◼   ► which requires you to drive across the island itself,

00:01:37 ◼   ► which requires a permit for driving on the sand.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:01:41 ◼   ► - Now there are very, very few of these permits.

00:01:43 ◼   ► They're tightly controlled by the National Park Service,

00:01:45 ◼   ► they're very hard to get.

00:01:47 ◼   ► Now there was an opportunity to get one,

00:01:49 ◼   ► but we had to act quickly if we wanted it.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Now the only downside is that it requires

00:01:56 ◼   ► a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

00:01:57 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:01:58 ◼   ► - All-wheel-drive is not good enough.

00:01:59 ◼   ► It needs true four-wheel-drive,

00:02:01 ◼   ► and it needs at least 10 inches of ground clearance.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:02:04 ◼   ► - But it also has to be reasonably compact

00:02:06 ◼   ► to actually fit in the beach town once you get there.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Now this didn't have to be a very nice, high-end vehicle,

00:02:14 ◼   ► just something usable.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And of course, if it's gonna be a gas car,

00:02:19 ◼   ► I wanted it to be a transmission I could tolerate.

00:02:22 ◼   ► So I wanted it to be a manual transmission if possible,

00:02:26 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think, I couldn't find anything

00:02:28 ◼   ► with a, you know, DSG or whatever.

00:02:31 ◼   ► - You guys, I'm so happy right now.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Carry on.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Now as you know, there are not a lot of options

00:02:36 ◼   ► that fit this description.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And because we wanted it used and we wanted it quickly,

00:02:42 ◼   ► we also didn't have a lot of choices

00:02:44 ◼   ► on things like what color it was.

00:02:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God!

00:02:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God, oh my God, tell me you,

00:02:52 ◼   ► tell me a white Wrangler happened to you.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Now certain colors, despite not being my favorites,

00:02:59 ◼   ► are more popular than others.

00:03:01 ◼   ► - Oh my God, I'm gonna be so sad

00:03:02 ◼   ► if that's not where this ends up.

00:03:03 ◼   ► - And sometimes these lighter colors

00:03:07 ◼   ► happen to be what you find on used listings.

00:03:11 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:03:12 ◼   ► - So, I have some news.

00:03:14 ◼   ► - Tell me about your new car.

00:03:17 ◼   ► - Never gonna let me hear the end of.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - Tell me about your new car, Marco.

00:03:21 ◼   ► ♫ Never gonna give you up

00:03:23 ◼   ► ♫ Never gonna let you down

00:03:25 ◼   ► - God dammit.

00:03:27 ◼   ► You're the worst.

00:03:28 ◼   ► All of this to Rick Roll Me, are you serious?

00:03:30 ◼   ► - Is it too late for an April Fool's joke?

00:03:32 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:03:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:34 ◼   ► - It's like a Friday the 13th joke, I guess.

00:03:35 ◼   ► - Oh, God, I was so happy.

00:03:37 ◼   ► - There was one thing,

00:03:39 ◼   ► there was one thing that I was not lying about.

00:03:41 ◼   ► You were right about something.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - Oh, here we go, all right.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - It was Tom Bihn.

00:03:45 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:03:46 ◼   ► - Tom Bihn backpack and it's really nice.

00:03:48 ◼   ► - Who knew?

00:03:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:51 ◼   ► - Damn it, Marco.

00:03:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, you were right.

00:03:53 ◼   ► You were right about something big.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Tom Bihn is actually really good.

00:03:56 ◼   ► - At some point I was trying to square the idea

00:03:58 ◼   ► of you getting a Wrangler.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Like, there's no way in hell I got a Wrangler.

00:04:01 ◼   ► Even if all that other stuff was true,

00:04:03 ◼   ► like, oh, I got a chance to get one of those things

00:04:05 ◼   ► and we're gonna drive across the thing

00:04:06 ◼   ► instead of taking the ferry and so on and so forth,

00:04:08 ◼   ► there's just no way.

00:04:09 ◼   ► - No, the truth is almost everything I said

00:04:12 ◼   ► would have been a sound thinking process,

00:04:13 ◼   ► but there is no way we're ever gonna get

00:04:15 ◼   ► one of those sand permits.

00:04:15 ◼   ► and we would never have any reason to drive there.

00:04:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you would have gotten a Land Rover.

00:04:19 ◼   ► That's what you would have ended up with.

00:04:20 ◼   ► - That's probably--

00:04:21 ◼   ► - There'd be nowhere to park it.

00:04:22 ◼   ► No, honestly, if I ever would get a sand permit,

00:04:24 ◼   ► a Wrangler would probably be what I get.

00:04:27 ◼   ► Because you do want some things to be small, inexpensive.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you would have to drive it from home,

00:04:33 ◼   ► and you do that once, you'd be like,

00:04:34 ◼   ► there's no way I'm getting into that

00:04:36 ◼   ► rickety shopping cart again,

00:04:38 ◼   ► driving across the belt park wherever you're going.

00:04:41 ◼   ► - I was waiting for you to say in your terrible joke

00:04:43 ◼   ► that somehow the permit was associated with the car.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Like, you had a friend at the beach

00:04:49 ◼   ► that was unloading a Wrangler,

00:04:51 ◼   ► and the permit is associated with the car.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, which I understand would have been

00:04:55 ◼   ► like a nutso scenario, but that was the only way

00:04:58 ◼   ► I could fathom that you would actually end up

00:05:00 ◼   ► with a Wrangler.

00:05:01 ◼   ► It turns out you're just a big jerk.

00:05:03 ◼   ► - Sorry, I knew we were low on topics this week,

00:05:05 ◼   ► so I figured I'd start with that.

00:05:07 ◼   ► - So starting by trolling me is your new amusement,

00:05:10 ◼   ► and I see how it is.

00:05:10 ◼   ► - I mean, it's better than just like whining about

00:05:12 ◼   ► like, you know, the Mac Pro or Destiny or something, right?

00:05:15 ◼   ► - Debatable.

00:05:15 ◼   ► - Who would whine about Destiny?

00:05:16 ◼   ► Who would do that?

00:05:18 ◼   ► Besides, you already kicked that question

00:05:19 ◼   ► out of this episode.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, true. - Thank goodness.

00:05:21 ◼   ► You're welcome, everybody.

00:05:22 ◼   ► - Next week, watch out.

00:05:23 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Okay, so HomePod sales, not looking too good.

00:05:28 ◼   ► According to Bloomberg--

00:05:29 ◼   ► - You're right, this is better.

00:05:31 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:05:31 ◼   ► - During the HomePod's first 10 weeks of sales,

00:05:33 ◼   ► it eked out 10% of the smart speaker market,

00:05:36 ◼   ► compared with 73% for Amazon's Echo devices

00:05:39 ◼   ► 14% for the Google Home, according to Slice Intelligence.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Three weeks after launch, weekly HomePod sales slipped to about 4% of the smart speaker category.

00:05:50 ◼   ► On average, the market research firm says.

00:05:53 ◼   ► I'd also seen, maybe it was in this article, that Apple retail employees are saying that

00:05:57 ◼   ► they'll sell like a couple each day, which I guess maybe shouldn't seem that dramatic

00:06:04 ◼   ► to me, but it seemed pretty dramatic to me.

00:06:06 ◼   ► So who knew when you have a speaker

00:06:10 ◼   ► that is completely reliant on good software

00:06:14 ◼   ► and that good software is Siri,

00:06:17 ◼   ► well guess what, the software ain't so good

00:06:18 ◼   ► and thus the speaker is kind of useless, who knew?

00:06:21 ◼   ► - Well it's also about price and features too.

00:06:24 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:06:25 ◼   ► - There's a lot they can do in the short term

00:06:28 ◼   ► that a lot of people are not buying the HomePod

00:06:30 ◼   ► because of its price versus its competitors.

00:06:33 ◼   ► A lot of people are not buying the HomePod

00:06:35 ◼   ► because it lacks features people want,

00:06:38 ◼   ► like the stereo pairing or the multi-room audio

00:06:40 ◼   ► or whatever else.

00:06:41 ◼   ► So I can see over the next year,

00:06:44 ◼   ► as Apple presumably improves the features of it

00:06:48 ◼   ► via software and maybe drops the price

00:06:50 ◼   ► during the holiday season or something like that,

00:06:52 ◼   ► I can see it getting a small boost.

00:06:54 ◼   ► But ultimately, I do think that the biggest problem it has

00:06:59 ◼   ► is still Siri and that's,

00:07:01 ◼   ► if Siri ever gets really meaningfully better,

00:07:05 ◼   ► It's going to be a long-term thing.

00:07:07 ◼   ► It's not going to happen quickly.

00:07:09 ◼   ► So I don't know if I buy the premise of this article.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Because, well, first of all, Apple's

00:07:13 ◼   ► not telling people what its HomePod sales are.

00:07:14 ◼   ► So it's all these market research firms

00:07:16 ◼   ► trying to come up with things and interviewing Apple Store

00:07:18 ◼   ► employees.

00:07:19 ◼   ► So it's not concrete numbers.

00:07:21 ◼   ► And second of all, because Apple's not

00:07:23 ◼   ► giving you numbers, you don't know what Apple expected.

00:07:26 ◼   ► It's just kind of saying, from the outside,

00:07:27 ◼   ► as far as we can tell, it doesn't

00:07:29 ◼   ► look like they're selling a lot of them.

00:07:30 ◼   ► And presumably, Apple wanted to sell a lot of them.

00:07:32 ◼   ► it's selling less than they want it to. We talked about the product and how it

00:07:37 ◼   ► stacks up, right? But given how it stacks up, and I know it's the launch and so it

00:07:42 ◼   ► should be bigger numbers, but 10% compared to Google Home's 14%? That's not

00:07:47 ◼   ► bad considering how much worse HomePod is than Google Home's product at this point, right? I don't, and I think about the slow start that lots of Apple

00:07:54 ◼   ► products have had, you know, from the iPod all the way to obviously the Apple TV's

00:07:58 ◼   ► other obvious example. Is Apple super disappointed in this? I mean we hope

00:08:05 ◼   ► they're a little disappointed that they couldn't get all their planned features

00:08:08 ◼   ► out the door, but in the grand scheme of things if they are really dedicated to

00:08:12 ◼   ► this market this is you know I think that this is kind of what they would

00:08:17 ◼   ► have expected. Like I don't I don't think you could have put out the HomePod

00:08:20 ◼   ► missing some of your announced features knowing that your competitors are on

00:08:23 ◼   ► multiple generations ahead of you and not expect to, you know, start off in third place.

00:08:30 ◼   ► So I, you know, I'm not too upset about this.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Now maybe Apple's upset about it, maybe they had grand visions of, you know, suddenly becoming

00:08:38 ◼   ► the market leader.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And I think despite how vague market research can be, I think we'd be able to tell if suddenly

00:08:47 ◼   ► the HomePod was the dominant smart home cylinder thing that you talk to.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And it's not, and I hope Apple expected that,

00:08:55 ◼   ► because I certainly did.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, no argument here.

00:08:59 ◼   ► All right, so Cloudflare is on ARM servers.

00:09:04 ◼   ► So Cloudflare, that's sort of like Linode

00:09:07 ◼   ► or something along those lines, is that right?

00:09:09 ◼   ► - No, it's like a really big CDN,

00:09:11 ◼   ► and they provide advanced services

00:09:14 ◼   ► that are related to being a CDN,

00:09:15 ◼   ► so like DDoS protection and stuff like that.

00:09:18 ◼   ► - That's right, I feel so--

00:09:19 ◼   ► - We talked about them from the DNS thing

00:09:20 ◼   ► other episode, right?

00:09:21 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Yes, yes, yes.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Sorry, I got my wires crossed.

00:09:24 ◼   ► So apparently they're using ARM.

00:09:26 ◼   ► I didn't get a chance to read this article before we recorded tonight, so I apologize.

00:09:30 ◼   ► I am slacking on my chief summarizer and chief duties.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Can one of you give me kind of a quick summary, if you don't mind?

00:09:35 ◼   ► I put in the handy quotes.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Cloudflare has servers, right?

00:09:40 ◼   ► That's how they do all of this CDN and DDoS.

00:09:44 ◼   ► They have things out there on the network that serve content and that route traffic

00:09:48 ◼   ► and do all sorts of other things, a lot of them, right?

00:09:51 ◼   ► And so this is from the Matthew Prince, the Cloudflare COO.

00:09:55 ◼   ► He said, "I'd give better than even odds

00:09:57 ◼   ► that by Q4 this year, we will no longer spend any money

00:10:00 ◼   ► on Intel."

00:10:01 ◼   ► He's talking about is they want to buy ARM for all

00:10:04 ◼   ► of their servers from now on.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And he's talking about the performance for Watt

00:10:07 ◼   ► and everything.

00:10:08 ◼   ► And he says, "We think we're now at the point

00:10:11 ◼   ► where we can go 100% ARM.

00:10:12 ◼   ► In our analysis, we found that even if Intel gave us

00:10:14 ◼   ► the chips for free, it would still make sense

00:10:16 ◼   ► to switch to ARM because the power efficiency is so much better.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Now obviously Cloudflare is perhaps a special case because exactly what they're doing with

00:10:24 ◼   ► their servers is very narrow and it's the type of like they're not running applications

00:10:30 ◼   ► that you know they're not running a bunch of software that they need x86 compatibility

00:10:34 ◼   ► for.

00:10:35 ◼   ► And to them what's the most important as they say in this other quote is how many cores

00:10:40 ◼   ► per watt can we possibly get because in a CDN or DDoS type of environment or whatever

00:10:44 ◼   ► You want lots and lots of hardware out there, and you want them to be as small and as efficient

00:10:52 ◼   ► as possible because part of their money—I mean, the reason they say, you know, if Intel

00:10:55 ◼   ► gave us chips for free, it would still make sense to switch.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Electricity costs money.

00:10:59 ◼   ► It costs a surprising amount of money when you've got tons and tons and tons of servers,

00:11:03 ◼   ► and space and data centers cost a lot of money, and so on and so forth.

00:11:07 ◼   ► So perhaps they are the ideal case, but this is an example, a very timely example given

00:11:12 ◼   ► we just talked about Apple potentially switching to ARM, of ARM on the server still trying

00:11:18 ◼   ► to get a foothold. It's been a thing for many years now, the push for ARM on the server,

00:11:23 ◼   ► mostly from people selling ARM chips. But maybe it's finally getting a little bit of

00:11:28 ◼   ► traction. We'll see. But if it's going to start somewhere, starting someplace like this

00:11:32 ◼   ► seems like a safe bet.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Yeah. I had no idea that this was a thing. So that's pretty cool. Oh, real-time follow-up.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Which backpack did you end up getting, Marco?

00:11:43 ◼   ► I was so grumpy about your troll

00:11:45 ◼   ► that I didn't actually ask you which backpack it was.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - Oh, I feel bad.

00:11:48 ◼   ► - It's called the Wrangler.

00:11:50 ◼   ► - Yes, it's white and it's, yeah.

00:11:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:53 ◼   ► - Whatever.

00:11:54 ◼   ► - Anyway, I got the Synapse 25.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - That's what I figured.

00:11:58 ◼   ► - I can talk about it a little bit if you want.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:12:00 ◼   ► - The only thing is I haven't traveled with it yet.

00:12:02 ◼   ► 'Cause it just arrived yesterday,

00:12:03 ◼   ► I've been playing with it, packing it,

00:12:04 ◼   ► configuring it, stuff like that.

00:12:06 ◼   ► But I haven't actually traveled with it.

00:12:08 ◼   ► So far, what I like about,

00:12:10 ◼   ► so in my great backpack odyssey of spring 2018,

00:12:15 ◼   ► I have tried a few different ones.

00:12:18 ◼   ► The one that I've been using for the last couple of months

00:12:21 ◼   ► is the Peak Design Everyday 20 liter.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And the Peak Design is a really, really nice backpack

00:12:28 ◼   ► in a number of ways.

00:12:29 ◼   ► It is far better looking.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It is like a much more like fashionable backpack.

00:12:34 ◼   ► If you want to like look cool every day

00:12:36 ◼   ► with the way you're going,

00:12:37 ◼   ► you want to travel in style,

00:12:39 ◼   ► the Peak Design is by far the better choice.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It also has a few nice advantages,

00:12:44 ◼   ► like the Peak Design can stand up on its own.

00:12:47 ◼   ► The Tom Bin, I guess maybe you could load it

00:12:50 ◼   ► in a way that it would do that, but I haven't yet.

00:12:52 ◼   ► So it's just, you set it down and it flops over.

00:12:55 ◼   ► But the Peak Design can stand up, it's really nice,

00:12:56 ◼   ► it has really good handles, it has handles on the sides.

00:12:59 ◼   ► So you can carry it sideways if you need to do that

00:13:02 ◼   ► for some reason, I found that kind of useful.

00:13:05 ◼   ► So the Peak Design is good in a number of ways.

00:13:07 ◼   ► What I didn't like about the Peak design

00:13:09 ◼   ► and what made me ultimately start looking around again

00:13:13 ◼   ► is the, first of all, there really is not very much space.

00:13:17 ◼   ► And all the reviews said the 30 liter version

00:13:19 ◼   ► was really bulky and big looking.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And so good reviews, like our friend Chase Reeves

00:13:25 ◼   ► does really great bag reviews on YouTube.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And he said, and I saw a number of other things

00:13:31 ◼   ► and some photos that said basically nobody

00:13:33 ◼   ► should get the Peak 30 liter

00:13:34 ◼   ► 'cause it's just too big visually,

00:13:37 ◼   ► and just looks weird on people.

00:13:39 ◼   ► So that's kinda what scared me away from it,

00:13:41 ◼   ► but the 20 liter really does not hold very much.

00:13:45 ◼   ► It's very hard to put things in it,

00:13:47 ◼   ► and one of the big problems with the Peak 20 liter,

00:13:49 ◼   ► well, with the Peak in general,

00:13:51 ◼   ► all of the compartments in it

00:13:54 ◼   ► intrude into the space of the main compartment.

00:13:58 ◼   ► So even like the laptop thing on the back,

00:14:00 ◼   ► like when you put a laptop in it,

00:14:02 ◼   ► it pushes into the main compartment,

00:14:05 ◼   ► which has a number of problems.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Number one, you lose space in the main compartment,

00:14:07 ◼   ► but number two, if the main compartment is full,

00:14:10 ◼   ► it's really hard to put a laptop in,

00:14:12 ◼   ► or it's really hard to have those side pockets close,

00:14:15 ◼   ► things like that.

00:14:15 ◼   ► So you're constantly intruding into that center space,

00:14:18 ◼   ► which is already not really big enough.

00:14:20 ◼   ► And then the side pocket, basically the Peak Design

00:14:24 ◼   ► has very little exterior organization.

00:14:27 ◼   ► It has all the organization interior.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So there's three major zippers to it,

00:14:31 ◼   ► and everything else is inside sub-pockets of those

00:14:35 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:14:36 ◼   ► So it's all these sub-areas.

00:14:38 ◼   ► So to get to the side pockets,

00:14:40 ◼   ► you have to actually open two different zippers.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Like first to open the main flap

00:14:43 ◼   ► and then second to actually get into the side pocket.

00:14:46 ◼   ► The side pockets I did not find very useful

00:14:48 ◼   ► because they're very skinny.

00:14:50 ◼   ► All the little pen slots and wire slots and stuff

00:14:53 ◼   ► are super tall and skinny or super tiny

00:14:57 ◼   ► and it's very hard to actually use that space.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And then when you close it up,

00:15:02 ◼   ► like you can't close those very well if the center is full.

00:15:06 ◼   ► And if you open it and the center is full,

00:15:07 ◼   ► your center stuff can fall out

00:15:08 ◼   ► when you're just trying to get to stuff in the side pocket.

00:15:10 ◼   ► So the Peak has a lot of great things going for it.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Ultimately, it is not very good when it's filled up a lot.

00:15:16 ◼   ► And like if you're carrying around a small amount of stuff,

00:15:18 ◼   ► it's great for, you know, they call it the everyday,

00:15:21 ◼   ► and I think that's a really good summary of it.

00:15:23 ◼   ► It's really good for like taking to work or something.

00:15:26 ◼   ► I would not say it's amazing for travel

00:15:29 ◼   ► because it just doesn't hold enough

00:15:31 ◼   ► and a lot of the organization inside is really clumsy.

00:15:35 ◼   ► It's also just heavy.

00:15:37 ◼   ► I weighed them with a little luggage weighing thing.

00:15:40 ◼   ► The peak empty is four pounds.

00:15:43 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:15:44 ◼   ► - And by comparison, the Tom Bihn Synapse 25 is 2.2 pounds

00:15:48 ◼   ► including the 15 inch MacBook Pro cash pocket inside.

00:15:52 ◼   ► So 2.2 versus four.

00:15:55 ◼   ► that's almost an entire MacBook One difference.

00:15:59 ◼   ► So that's, the Peak, it's made of this very thick,

00:16:03 ◼   ► heavy-duty material, it's really made to be

00:16:04 ◼   ► like a camera and gear bag.

00:16:07 ◼   ► - Which one, the Peak?

00:16:08 ◼   ► - The Peak, yeah.

00:16:08 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:16:09 ◼   ► - So all surfaces are padded.

00:16:11 ◼   ► You know how certain bags, they have padding

00:16:13 ◼   ► around the laptop compartment, but then if you

00:16:16 ◼   ► put the laptop in a different compartment

00:16:18 ◼   ► and there's no padding, you usually slide it in

00:16:19 ◼   ► and it could hit the ground really hard,

00:16:21 ◼   ► so you don't want that.

00:16:22 ◼   ► So the Peak, the whole bag is padded,

00:16:24 ◼   ► and I think that's one of the reasons

00:16:24 ◼   ► it's so much heavier, but the Tom Bihn,

00:16:27 ◼   ► the bag is just like thin fabric,

00:16:29 ◼   ► it's strong but it's thin,

00:16:31 ◼   ► and if you want something padded,

00:16:33 ◼   ► you have to buy some kind of insert

00:16:35 ◼   ► like the 50 nukes laptop cache that I got with it.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Anyway, instead of, in the peak,

00:16:39 ◼   ► all the organization is internal,

00:16:42 ◼   ► with the Tom Bihn, all of the organization is external.

00:16:46 ◼   ► You have many different pockets accessible from the outside.

00:16:49 ◼   ► You don't have to unzip one thing

00:16:52 ◼   ► and then go into another pocket on the inside.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Now you can, if you want to, have all these sub-bags

00:16:58 ◼   ► that you put into their pockets,

00:17:00 ◼   ► and they have this whole system for how you can attach them,

00:17:02 ◼   ► these O-rings and everything.

00:17:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure I'm gonna get into that, I don't know yet.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But what I like about the Tom Bihn is that

00:17:10 ◼   ► it seems you can more easily access stuff.

00:17:14 ◼   ► There's fewer steps, there's fewer pockets and sub-pockets.

00:17:19 ◼   ► it's more easily accessed to all your stuff.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And it's also just way lighter and it holds way more.

00:17:28 ◼   ► I cannot believe how much more it holds.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I can't say much more than that

00:17:33 ◼   ► until I actually travel with the Tom Bihn.

00:17:34 ◼   ► I did travel with the Peak a couple times

00:17:36 ◼   ► so I kinda knew what wasn't so good about it.

00:17:39 ◼   ► But the Tom Bihn so far, I think I'm going to like it.

00:17:42 ◼   ► It does seem like, it would I think be overkill

00:17:45 ◼   ► for an everyday carry to work bag,

00:17:49 ◼   ► But for travel, especially if you wanna do traveling light

00:17:54 ◼   ► and maybe just taking the backpack as your only bag

00:17:56 ◼   ► or as one of only two small bags,

00:18:00 ◼   ► then it's pretty, I think it's gonna be a lot more useful.

00:18:02 ◼   ► So ask me again after a few more trips this summer

00:18:05 ◼   ► and then I'll give a final verdict on it.

00:18:07 ◼   ► But so far, it does seem really nice.

00:18:09 ◼   ► It's also a lot cheaper, if that matters.

00:18:11 ◼   ► It's like $100 cheaper.

00:18:12 ◼   ► But it just seems really nice so far.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - Feels like you're creeping up

00:18:16 ◼   ► on my big ugly yellow bean backpack

00:18:18 ◼   ► because the previous one, the Peak Design one,

00:18:20 ◼   ► is very sleek and very stylish, trying to be understated.

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, the Peak is like a work of art.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It really is very stylish, very nice.

00:18:28 ◼   ► And parts of it, even the zipper pulls are,

00:18:32 ◼   ► the entire zipper pull is fabric,

00:18:34 ◼   ► and it's kind of like this rubberized, tough fabric.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Just using the Peak feels really nice.

00:18:40 ◼   ► It's a very nicely constructed bag.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Everything has a great look and feel and style,

00:18:47 ◼   ► but it just really, parts of it are very clumsy.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Oh, also one big thing to mention with the Peak.

00:18:52 ◼   ► The 15 inch Retina Map Approve in 2015

00:18:55 ◼   ► barely fits in the laptop compartment.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And I absolutely cannot recommend this bag

00:19:01 ◼   ► if you carry anything else

00:19:04 ◼   ► that would go in a laptop compartment besides a laptop.

00:19:06 ◼   ► So for instance, an iPad.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It technically has two different segments

00:19:10 ◼   ► of the laptop compartment, but it's so tight

00:19:13 ◼   ► that even getting an iPad in and out is really hard,

00:19:17 ◼   ► especially if you have one of these silicone covers on it.

00:19:20 ◼   ► It's really, really hard.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So I cannot recommend the Peak

00:19:25 ◼   ► if you carry a laptop and an iPad.

00:19:27 ◼   ► But otherwise, I really do like it.

00:19:30 ◼   ► I like a lot about it,

00:19:32 ◼   ► but I think for my actual needs,

00:19:35 ◼   ► where it's mostly a travel bag,

00:19:37 ◼   ► and I do need to hold a lot when I do travel,

00:19:39 ◼   ► I think the TomBin's gonna work out better.

00:19:41 ◼   ► - So if you're able to tolerate this backpack,

00:19:44 ◼   ► you are very close to tolerating the LOB1,

00:19:46 ◼   ► 'cause this has a lot of pockets,

00:19:48 ◼   ► a lot of zippers, a lot of straps.

00:19:50 ◼   ► It is not particularly sleek.

00:19:51 ◼   ► So, and the LOB1, just to be clear,

00:19:54 ◼   ► holds way more than this

00:19:55 ◼   ► and has like 10 times as many pockets.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And it's 80 bucks.

00:19:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, the other thing is,

00:19:59 ◼   ► I don't want it to be too massive

00:20:02 ◼   ► because I also usually want this to fit

00:20:05 ◼   ► under the seat in an airplane.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, mine fits under the seat.

00:20:08 ◼   ► - Okay, well, yeah.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So the peak, the 20 liter peak does fit very well.

00:20:14 ◼   ► I don't think the 30 would, or at least it would be,

00:20:17 ◼   ► maybe not on the planes, it'd have the big computer box

00:20:20 ◼   ► under the seat, you know.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, the box under the seat, that's terrible.

00:20:24 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You can always get

00:20:25 ◼   ► a different seat.

00:20:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:28 ◼   ► - I use a Tom Bihn Cadet, which is similar,

00:20:32 ◼   ► except it's a messenger bag, which is terrible

00:20:35 ◼   ► if you're going to, it's terrible if you're going

00:20:38 ◼   ► carrying it for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, then I would use something

00:20:41 ◼   ► like a Synapse. But I only have it on my body for, you know, a half an hour at a time at

00:20:47 ◼   ► most, generally speaking, and I tend to prefer messenger bags for those sorts of uses, and

00:20:53 ◼   ► I love my Cadet. I've had it for like three years now. It looks brand new. It fits my—I

00:20:59 ◼   ► mean, my everyday carry for work is my 15-inch MacBook Pro that I use begrudgingly and use

00:21:05 ◼   ► sought out. It has my MacBook One in it, both in their own individual caches. I used to carry my

00:21:13 ◼   ► iPad with me when I still used iPads and then, you know, other miscellaneous cables and goodies

00:21:18 ◼   ► and things of that nature. So I love my cadet. I cannot say enough good things about it. I'll link

00:21:22 ◼   ► my review in the show notes. Tom Bihn's stuff is great. The people there are super nice. I adore

00:21:29 ◼   ► their stuff. And even if, you know, if you prefer a backpack, get the Synapse. If you prefer a

00:21:33 ◼   ► get your messenger bag, get the cadet or something else.

00:21:35 ◼   ► You can't go wrong with Tom Bennett's great stuff.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - And definitely I would strongly recommend anybody

00:21:39 ◼   ► who's looking at these kind of things,

00:21:41 ◼   ► check out Chase Reeves' video reviews on YouTube.

00:21:43 ◼   ► He is incredibly well versed.

00:21:46 ◼   ► He travels a lot, first of all, and he has tons of bags.

00:21:50 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean, at this point,

00:21:52 ◼   ► like if I was a bag manufacturer,

00:21:53 ◼   ► I would be sending him the bags to review.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I don't know if that's the situation,

00:21:55 ◼   ► but he has tons of great bag reviews,

00:21:58 ◼   ► mostly of backpacks, and he really takes the whole

00:22:02 ◼   ► out of everything and I think has a really good point of view on them. So definitely

00:22:06 ◼   ► check out Chase Reeves on YouTube.

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00:24:23 ◼   ► our show.

00:24:27 ◼   ► You have a Facebook group's problem, apparently. Can you tell me about this?

00:24:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I tweeted about this a couple weeks ago. The gist is, you know, I've never been

00:24:37 ◼   ► a fan of Facebook. We discussed a couple weeks ago how I really don't like Facebook, but

00:24:43 ◼   ► but I really do like Instagram,

00:24:45 ◼   ► and it's owned by Facebook, and so it's kind of awkward.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Anyway, I would love to delete my Facebook account entirely.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I've never actively used it.

00:24:55 ◼   ► It's only a source of spam and stuff I don't care about

00:25:00 ◼   ► and drama for me, so I just wanna escape Facebook.

00:25:05 ◼   ► The only thing keeping me there

00:25:07 ◼   ► is these two private groups,

00:25:09 ◼   ► one for the local parents of our school,

00:25:12 ◼   ► And then the second one is the beach town

00:25:15 ◼   ► has a local community group.

00:25:18 ◼   ► And they're both private, you gotta apply to get in,

00:25:20 ◼   ► so no kind of public scraping of them,

00:25:23 ◼   ► whatever actually work, at least in a simplistic way.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Maybe I could scrape something together

00:25:28 ◼   ► with using my login cookie or whatever, who knows.

00:25:30 ◼   ► But I wanna just delete my account

00:25:31 ◼   ► and just be done with Facebook entirely.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And so my question was, first of all,

00:25:37 ◼   ► do I need to retain membership in these groups?

00:25:41 ◼   ► And then second of all, could I attempt,

00:25:45 ◼   ► you know, the local parents one is very unimportant to me.

00:25:49 ◼   ► The beach one is actually pretty important

00:25:51 ◼   ► because it's a small community there

00:25:54 ◼   ► and it's a lot of old people

00:25:56 ◼   ► who live there year round at least

00:25:58 ◼   ► and so I like to keep up with what's going on in the town

00:26:00 ◼   ► and they can check on everyone's houses

00:26:02 ◼   ► to make sure it's not flooded and everything else

00:26:04 ◼   ► and it's just a nice little community.

00:26:06 ◼   ► So I was wondering, could I plausibly start

00:26:10 ◼   ► another community to replace it and maybe get some

00:26:13 ◼   ► or many of those people to move to it.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And what I came to, so I asked Twitter this,

00:26:20 ◼   ► like you know, basically I asked like,

00:26:21 ◼   ► have you ever, has anybody tried to move a community

00:26:24 ◼   ► like this off of Facebook or to start another one

00:26:26 ◼   ► somewhere else?

00:26:27 ◼   ► If so, like how did it go and where do you,

00:26:29 ◼   ► where are you supposed to do that?

00:26:31 ◼   ► - That was the plot of The Secret of NIMH, wasn't it?

00:26:33 ◼   ► - I think so, yeah.

00:26:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:36 ◼   ► - Didn't go well, spoiler alert.

00:26:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, anyways, so I, you know, my first thought

00:26:43 ◼   ► was maybe a Slack group, but I don't know how older people

00:26:47 ◼   ► appreciate or don't appreciate or understand Slack.

00:26:50 ◼   ► And I don't know how regular average people,

00:26:53 ◼   ► like who aren't like nerds, I don't know how popular

00:26:56 ◼   ► Slack is or how amenable people would be to it.

00:26:59 ◼   ► I didn't wanna just go to some other like, you know,

00:27:03 ◼   ► crappy social network.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Like a bunch of people recommended things like Nextdoor,

00:27:08 ◼   ► which I, what I hear from Merlin about Nextdoor

00:27:12 ◼   ► makes me not want to attempt that.

00:27:14 ◼   ► - Well, that's my first question for you on this topic is,

00:27:18 ◼   ► how much, speaking of Nextdoor,

00:27:20 ◼   ► how much like Nextdoor is the Facebook group?

00:27:22 ◼   ► Is the Facebook group, as it exists now,

00:27:24 ◼   ► just like, forget about moving it,

00:27:25 ◼   ► but just like as it exists now,

00:27:26 ◼   ► if you had to characterize it, what is it most like?

00:27:28 ◼   ► Because yeah, there's the mechanism,

00:27:30 ◼   ► yeah, people type words into boxes in Facebook,

00:27:32 ◼   ► but what does it seem like?

00:27:33 ◼   ► What do people talk about?

00:27:34 ◼   ► Does it seem like a next door community?

00:27:36 ◼   ► Does it seem like a Slack channel?

00:27:37 ◼   ► Does it seem like a web bulletin board?

00:27:39 ◼   ► What's the best analogy?

00:27:41 ◼   ► - It's pretty low traffic, first of all.

00:27:44 ◼   ► There's only one or two posts a day.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And it's usually people posting photos

00:27:50 ◼   ► of what's going on in town,

00:27:52 ◼   ► which I think is interesting, 'cause over the winter,

00:27:54 ◼   ► a lot of construction happens, and I like to watch,

00:27:56 ◼   ► like, oh, look, there's a new store, we're getting built,

00:27:57 ◼   ► or oh, they tore down that thing, stuff like that.

00:28:00 ◼   ► So that's kind of fun.

00:28:01 ◼   ► and it's also like local political summaries of like,

00:28:05 ◼   ► oh, there was a board meeting of the village or whatever,

00:28:09 ◼   ► and here's the notes from the meeting,

00:28:11 ◼   ► or here's this issue people are talking about,

00:28:12 ◼   ► requesting public comment, stuff like that.

00:28:15 ◼   ► It's not, you know, if I'm honest, it isn't that important,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but I kinda like it, and I also feel like it'll be useful

00:28:23 ◼   ► to be a part of some kind of community like this

00:28:25 ◼   ► as we spend more time there, because, you know,

00:28:27 ◼   ► one thing you can do in the summertime, it's like,

00:28:29 ◼   ► oh, I have to get rid of this old fridge.

00:28:31 ◼   ► want it, come pick it up for free, stuff like that.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Or like, anybody have any recommendations for where

00:28:35 ◼   ► to get prescriptions when we're out here?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Stuff like that, I feel like being a part of a community

00:28:40 ◼   ► like that is useful in ways like that, especially when it's

00:28:43 ◼   ► a fairly small and hard to access community, I guess.

00:28:47 ◼   ► It helps to have connections to people like this.

00:28:50 ◼   ► So I went through basically all people's replies,

00:28:54 ◼   ► looking at all the services people were recommending,

00:28:57 ◼   ► and I just, it just was, it was totally unproductive.

00:29:02 ◼   ► There was basically no consensus

00:29:04 ◼   ► except either using Nextdoor,

00:29:07 ◼   ► but nobody even had done it.

00:29:09 ◼   ► Like everyone was saying like, "Oh, just use that."

00:29:10 ◼   ► But the people who had said they'd actually tried to do it,

00:29:14 ◼   ► almost all of them said it just didn't work,

00:29:17 ◼   ► like that nobody moved over,

00:29:18 ◼   ► or they couldn't get it to work,

00:29:20 ◼   ► or everyone moved back, or the people complained,

00:29:22 ◼   ► they couldn't understand it, whatever else.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Even, you know, and that was for everything people tried,

00:29:26 ◼   ► for things like Slack, for things like,

00:29:27 ◼   ► I think Discord can be used in this way,

00:29:29 ◼   ► but I don't understand Discord yet, so I don't even know.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Or like, you know, somebody starts

00:29:34 ◼   ► setting up a forum somewhere.

00:29:37 ◼   ► I don't know, so there were a bunch of options.

00:29:39 ◼   ► None of them were very good.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And so here I am basically back at square one,

00:29:45 ◼   ► which was the situation that most of the responders were in

00:29:47 ◼   ► who had tried it.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Basically like, yeah, you know what,

00:29:51 ◼   ► I tried and nobody wanted to move.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And so my current theory is I wanna find out

00:29:57 ◼   ► how much I actually need to be a part of these communities.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I think the right answer's ultimately gonna be

00:30:05 ◼   ► I just don't need these.

00:30:06 ◼   ► You know, 'cause one thing is I found,

00:30:09 ◼   ► the other day I found basically the Instagram community

00:30:13 ◼   ► for this place, and I thought,

00:30:15 ◼   ► "Well, that's actually much more pleasant.

00:30:16 ◼   ► "There's way more photos."

00:30:18 ◼   ► And I can see kinda what's going on,

00:30:20 ◼   ► and there's nobody complaining to the mayor

00:30:22 ◼   ► about stupid stuff that doesn't matter.

00:30:24 ◼   ► So I kinda felt like maybe Instagram was enough.

00:30:28 ◼   ► It's certainly nicer, and I'm there anyway,

00:30:31 ◼   ► so I might as well enjoy this part of Instagram

00:30:33 ◼   ► instead of just dogs and watches.

00:30:35 ◼   ► So I guess maybe I could just have Instagram satisfy

00:30:40 ◼   ► like the photo fix and just stop the community interaction,

00:30:45 ◼   ► or I could, this summer, stick a bunch of papers

00:30:49 ◼   ► on the telephone poles and try to start my own Slack group.

00:30:52 ◼   ► and I don't know how that would be received

00:30:54 ◼   ► if anybody would actually join it,

00:30:56 ◼   ► if that would matter, I have no idea.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I think the conclusion I'm coming to is that

00:31:01 ◼   ► the Facebook groups are probably not able

00:31:04 ◼   ► to be easily moved, but are also either low value

00:31:08 ◼   ► or low traffic enough that I might just go without them

00:31:12 ◼   ► and that might just be fine.

00:31:14 ◼   ► - I think you have a pretty reasonable

00:31:17 ◼   ► long-term solution here.

00:31:18 ◼   ► I think you're right that you're not gonna be able

00:31:20 ◼   ► to move these people, right?

00:31:21 ◼   ► I also think you should not go to Nextdoor because I think that is all, from what I've

00:31:26 ◼   ► heard, it's all of the worst things about the Facebook group and it involves moving

00:31:30 ◼   ► people.

00:31:31 ◼   ► But what you can do, I think eventually pretty successfully, is start a new community.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Don't try to move anybody.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Start a new community, wait for the old people to die, aggregate the young people so that

00:31:45 ◼   ► eventually the Facebook community just dwindles.

00:31:49 ◼   ► You're not going to convince them to come over.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Don't stick anything on any polls.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Just get two or three people who are similarly inclined

00:31:57 ◼   ► to go on whatever you wanna use

00:31:59 ◼   ► with those two or three people, right?

00:32:01 ◼   ► And those two or three people probably will still be

00:32:03 ◼   ► on the Facebook group, but just slowly over the years,

00:32:06 ◼   ► many, many years, start moving the traffic there.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Start to build a critical mass

00:32:09 ◼   ► until people on the Facebook group start hearing

00:32:11 ◼   ► about things that were discussed on the Slack

00:32:13 ◼   ► or on the whatever else other thing you have.

00:32:15 ◼   ► That's the way you win in the end.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And in the meantime, you can do what we do in our households,

00:32:22 ◼   ► which is have one designated person in the pair

00:32:26 ◼   ► be the person who uses Facebook.

00:32:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:28 ◼   ► And so you have to use it, but Tiff could use it.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So I don't use Facebook, but my wife uses it

00:32:33 ◼   ► to look at things, and sometimes she tells me

00:32:34 ◼   ► what's happening there.

00:32:35 ◼   ► - Well, the sad part is, I used to be in that situation,

00:32:39 ◼   ► then Tiff got fed up with Facebook

00:32:40 ◼   ► and deleted her account like three or four years ago.

00:32:42 ◼   ► - Ah, yeah.

00:32:43 ◼   ► - And so now I'm that person.

00:32:45 ◼   ► - So you're that person, yep.

00:32:46 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:32:47 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, like I said, start the parallel thing.

00:32:50 ◼   ► It's the advantage you have of coming into a neighborhood

00:32:54 ◼   ► as the new person in the neighborhood.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Hopefully you're younger than a lot of the people

00:32:58 ◼   ► that are there and there will be turnover.

00:33:00 ◼   ► And so you can, if you start a new community

00:33:03 ◼   ► and start it small, you can build it up over the years.

00:33:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's probably the right answer.

00:33:09 ◼   ► But, and the reason I wanted to bring this up on the show

00:33:12 ◼   ► is because A, it's relevant 'cause Facebook is horrible,

00:33:14 ◼   ► and B, I think a lot of people are in situations like this.

00:33:17 ◼   ► I think a lot of people are in a situation of like,

00:33:21 ◼   ► I want to stop using slash delete my account on Facebook,

00:33:24 ◼   ► but I quote, "have to be there for something that's there."

00:33:29 ◼   ► Whether it's like my grandparents,

00:33:32 ◼   ► 'cause that's the only place they post,

00:33:33 ◼   ► or some group they have to be a part of

00:33:35 ◼   ► for family or work or something.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I heard from so many people who this was the case for.

00:33:42 ◼   ► And so I feel like maybe I could come up

00:33:44 ◼   ► with some kind of solution or set a good example

00:33:47 ◼   ► that could maybe help more people than just me on this,

00:33:49 ◼   ► but I do think you're probably right that

00:33:52 ◼   ► I think the best solution, not only for me,

00:33:53 ◼   ► but probably for a lot of people who find themselves

00:33:55 ◼   ► in this situation is to just abandon those Facebook groups

00:33:58 ◼   ► and just take the hit of whatever you're missing.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Because honestly, I'm probably not gonna be missing

00:34:02 ◼   ► that much, honestly.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I wasn't a part of these groups six months ago

00:34:06 ◼   ► and I was fine, so maybe it isn't that bad, I don't know.

00:34:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, the big advantage you have is that it's not like

00:34:12 ◼   ► This is the only place where you can talk to your grandparents.

00:34:14 ◼   ► These aren't your families, aren't you know, you don't have any reason, like you're not

00:34:18 ◼   ► abandoning anybody, right?

00:34:20 ◼   ► So you are just going off and doing your own thing.

00:34:21 ◼   ► It's much more difficult when like this is the only thing my whole family knows how to

00:34:25 ◼   ► use.

00:34:26 ◼   ► So if I want to know what's going on in their life at all, I have to go to Facebook to find

00:34:30 ◼   ► out.

00:34:31 ◼   ► They're never going to move.

00:34:32 ◼   ► I'm never even going to ask them to move.

00:34:33 ◼   ► That's just not how this is ever going to work.

00:34:34 ◼   ► But I can't abandon them and go, "See you, grandma.

00:34:37 ◼   ► We're starting our own group over here.

00:34:39 ◼   ► Join us when you can."

00:34:40 ◼   ► she will never join, you'll just never hear about your grandmother again. So take advantage

00:34:44 ◼   ► of the fact that you don't have those kind of ties to the group and just start your own

00:34:47 ◼   ► much better, cooler group.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And then you'll take to the streets, snapping at each other in groups.

00:34:54 ◼   ► Mark hasn't seen that movie.

00:34:56 ◼   ► But Tiff has.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Probably true.

00:35:00 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast. Subscribe in your podcast

00:35:05 ◼   ► app right now to Tech Meme Ride Home. Before you forget, before you go home for work today,

00:35:09 ◼   ► 'cause that's kind of what it's for.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Before your ride home, go subscribe to Tech Meme Ride Home.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So techmeme.com has been around forever.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I've been reading the site for probably

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00:35:19 ◼   ► It's great for kind of collecting important stories

00:35:23 ◼   ► that are happening around our world in tech,

00:35:25 ◼   ► in Apple, and kind of related fields.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Mostly the tech and Apple area.

00:35:29 ◼   ► And so if you listen to this show,

00:35:31 ◼   ► you're probably gonna like Tech Meme Ride Home as well

00:35:33 ◼   ► 'cause it talks about many of the similar kinds of areas.

00:35:36 ◼   ► And Techmeme has been doing this on the web for years.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And what they're doing is they're taking it

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00:35:43 ◼   ► So they take the same headlines from techmeme.com,

00:35:46 ◼   ► the same context, the conversation,

00:35:48 ◼   ► and thoughtfulness, and the curation,

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00:36:02 ◼   ► These are top stories, the top posts about those stories,

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00:36:52 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:36:55 ◼   ► - So this topic has been in the show notes

00:36:57 ◼   ► for I feel like a couple of months.

00:36:59 ◼   ► John's Mongoose Californian?

00:37:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, actually it's been a couple of years.

00:37:02 ◼   ► - Didn't I talk about that?

00:37:03 ◼   ► - We did eventually.

00:37:03 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:37:04 ◼   ► - But that did take--

00:37:05 ◼   ► - We got to that one eventually.

00:37:06 ◼   ► - Even I remember that and it took a couple of years.

00:37:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:09 ◼   ► This showed up a couple of months ago

00:37:11 ◼   ► and pretty much every episode for probably the last

00:37:15 ◼   ► eight to 15 episodes has had us on the verge

00:37:20 ◼   ► of doing this topic and then we just run out of time.

00:37:23 ◼   ► So tonight's the night.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And Kyle Geeter writes in to say,

00:37:27 ◼   ► "When I hear you guys,

00:37:28 ◼   ► along with some of my other favorite podcasters, Jason Snell, Mike Hurley, Stephen Hackett,

00:37:31 ◼   ► Federico Faticci, talk about your many experiences over several years using Apple's various devices

00:37:36 ◼   ► and OS's.

00:37:37 ◼   ► It makes me feel like I missed out on the time when Apple was on the cutting edge, a

00:37:41 ◼   ► time when their products are pretty much universally regarded as being new and full of innovation,

00:37:45 ◼   ► something they seem to be lacking lately.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Don't get me wrong, I love Apple's ecosystem in its current state and perfections and all,

00:37:51 ◼   ► but I find myself agreeing with you when you're discussing everything that is currently lacking.

00:37:55 ◼   ► That's not to say that all their products are stale, but you get what I mean.

00:37:59 ◼   ► My question, or ask, rather, is if you guys, Jon specifically, can explain what that time

00:38:05 ◼   ► was like.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I'd love to hear a firsthand account of what using a new Apple product was like when it

00:38:09 ◼   ► genuinely had new features that no other product had.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I've watched some Steve Jobs documentaries and ended up watching the dramatic movies

00:38:15 ◼   ► Jobs and Steve Jobs pretty frequently because I find the idea of old Apple, or Steve Jobs'

00:38:21 ◼   ► Apple, very fascinating.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I wish I had migrated to it earlier so I could have been a part of it."

00:38:28 ◼   ► I don't have a clear answer for this, and I bet you Jon will, but he's going to be disgusted

00:38:36 ◼   ► by what Marco and I have to say, so we're going to start and then Jon will clean up

00:38:39 ◼   ► our mess.

00:38:40 ◼   ► And since I have the floor, I'll go ahead and start.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And I was thinking about this earlier as I was washing dishes, and I have two answers,

00:38:48 ◼   ► and I'm not sure which I prefer.

00:38:52 ◼   ► The answer that speaks to me the most is, a few years after the Intel transition, I

00:38:58 ◼   ► want to say probably the late aughts or early 2010s, which actually was quite a few years

00:39:04 ◼   ► after the Intel transition if I remember correctly, when the laptops were getting really frickin'

00:39:11 ◼   ► good.

00:39:12 ◼   ► And when you started to see regular people understanding the fact that if you want a

00:39:17 ◼   ► good laptop, you're buying a Mac. They're reliable, they're reasonably rugged, and they

00:39:24 ◼   ► pretty much just work. And at that point in time, they really did just work. And we've

00:39:32 ◼   ► talked a lot on this show about whether we're just getting old and curmudgeonly, which we

00:39:35 ◼   ► are, whether things are actually worse with software on Apple platforms, which it is,

00:39:41 ◼   ► or a combination of the both, which it is. But nonetheless, I remember, and maybe it's

00:39:46 ◼   ► rose-colored glasses, but I remember a time when my computer always just worked. I never

00:39:52 ◼   ► had to take compressed air to it, which by the way, don't tell Marco, but I need to take

00:39:55 ◼   ► compressed air to my MacBook One again.

00:39:57 ◼   ► I'm shocked.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I've never had—I know you are—I've never had to worry about things just randomly breaking

00:40:02 ◼   ► or not working anymore. It was just—it was great. And as a PC—well, PC as in, like,

00:40:09 ◼   ► personal computer user, it was awesome. And this was, again, probably—if I were to try

00:40:14 ◼   ► to pin it down even more, right around the time that SSDs were starting to be affordable.

00:40:19 ◼   ► So most computers did not have them, but those who were willing to part with a lot of money

00:40:25 ◼   ► to get them could. And so I want to say this is roughly 2012, maybe, actually. And I just

00:40:32 ◼   ► feel like that was the heyday of Apple laptops. And I think things have taken some turns from

00:40:39 ◼   ► here. And even though I don't think it's so bad that if I was buying a new 15-inch, I

00:40:43 ◼   ► would actually buy an old 15-inch High Marco, but I definitely agree that there are problems

00:40:48 ◼   ► in the current lineup.

00:40:50 ◼   ► The other answer I had is perhaps a couple of years ago when the iPad Pro was announced,

00:40:58 ◼   ► and the 12-inch iPad Pro.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And even though that didn't really do anything for me, if I am willing to concede that the

00:41:05 ◼   ► Mac is a relic of a bygone era, or soon to be bygone era, and the iPad is the future,

00:41:12 ◼   ► I think the iPad Pro probably was the inflection point at which it became clear that the iPad

00:41:20 ◼   ► was a real computer, and as much as I snark about it, it's not a toy anymore.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Not specifically because of the iPad Pro, but I think that moment in time was about

00:41:29 ◼   ► when that happened, which is a combination of iOS 10, iOS 11, it doesn't matter really,

00:41:35 ◼   ► but you know, multitasking got a lot better, the software got a lot better, the device

00:41:40 ◼   ► was far more capable, it was bigger, everything about it just seemed like a

00:41:44 ◼   ► confluence of good events, and I know that the iPad lovers of the world, like

00:41:48 ◼   ► the Mike Hurleys and the Federicos and the Jason Snell's, could not have been

00:41:51 ◼   ► happier. And so that actually was just in the last couple of years. The

00:41:58 ◼   ► Intel, you know, pinnacle of the Mac laptop was a few years ago, and I would

00:42:05 ◼   ► I would choose probably one of those as my answer.

00:42:09 ◼   ► - So I actually feel a little more positive

00:42:12 ◼   ► than you do about this.

00:42:14 ◼   ► The idea of trying to nail down like,

00:42:17 ◼   ► when was Apple's heyday?

00:42:19 ◼   ► It's hard because, first of all,

00:42:22 ◼   ► you do have the rose-colored glasses issue,

00:42:25 ◼   ► which is hard for us to really think past objectively.

00:42:28 ◼   ► It matters a lot what's important to you

00:42:31 ◼   ► and what stage of your own life you were at

00:42:34 ◼   ► certain things came out or whether you missed certain things

00:42:36 ◼   ► 'cause you came too late or 'cause you're young,

00:42:40 ◼   ► which I'm sure Jon's gonna tell us about.

00:42:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:42 ◼   ► So, you know, there's a lot of,

00:42:43 ◼   ► and also, you know, parts of this are tied up

00:42:45 ◼   ► in things like just kind of missing Steve

00:42:49 ◼   ► because he was a big personality that we all really liked

00:42:52 ◼   ► and, you know, Apple's not gonna recapture that without him.

00:42:56 ◼   ► So, it's hard, it's hard to try to think

00:43:00 ◼   ► about this objectively.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Getting around the rose-colored glasses thing,

00:43:04 ◼   ► I think it's also hard to look back and to remember

00:43:09 ◼   ► there actually were product flaws and software flaws

00:43:13 ◼   ► and missteps and iPod Hi-Fis.

00:43:17 ◼   ► There were these things during the times that I think of

00:43:21 ◼   ► as really great times in Apple's past.

00:43:24 ◼   ► So it's really hard to nail down one time and say,

00:43:26 ◼   ► this was significantly better than today.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Obviously the implication with the question,

00:43:32 ◼   ► when it was Apple's heyday is that it's not today.

00:43:34 ◼   ► What I think my answer is for when the heyday was

00:43:39 ◼   ► was probably right around 2012 or so.

00:43:43 ◼   ► - Okay, that's what I was thinking, somewhere around there.

00:43:45 ◼   ► - And I know this is like right after Steve died,

00:43:49 ◼   ► so his influence was still very strong,

00:43:50 ◼   ► so this kinda sounds like it was partly

00:43:53 ◼   ► like a Steve versus Tim thing,

00:43:54 ◼   ► and I don't mean that specifically.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I do think there's some elements of that,

00:43:58 ◼   ► but I don't think that's like the,

00:44:01 ◼   ► like the only problem or even the biggest difference.

00:44:05 ◼   ► If you look back, like, you know,

00:44:07 ◼   ► when I wrote my best laptop ever post,

00:44:09 ◼   ► you know, praising the 2015 laptop

00:44:10 ◼   ► in a thinly veiled attempt to insult the 2016 laptop,

00:44:14 ◼   ► I realized, like, you know, the 2015 MacBook Pro,

00:44:17 ◼   ► Retina MacBook Pro, which was actually the 2012

00:44:19 ◼   ► Retina MacBook Pro just after a few updates,

00:44:21 ◼   ► really is such an amazing computer.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I can't point to any time before that computer

00:44:27 ◼   ► and say, "I'd rather be back then than now."

00:44:30 ◼   ► or like the Macs back then were better.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Like no, they weren't.

00:44:34 ◼   ► That computer, which I'm still using, is,

00:44:38 ◼   ► to me, that is like the pinnacle of

00:44:41 ◼   ► what I love most about Apple design.

00:44:43 ◼   ► And yeah, it isn't like totally perfect.

00:44:45 ◼   ► There have been problems with screen delamination

00:44:47 ◼   ► for some people, and the ones with dedicated GPUs

00:44:50 ◼   ► often had GPU failures, well that was a problem

00:44:52 ◼   ► with pretty much every MacBook Pro generation.

00:44:55 ◼   ► So, you know, it's not perfect,

00:44:58 ◼   ► but it's really damn good,

00:45:01 ◼   ► and I think it's better than everything

00:45:02 ◼   ► that came before it.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And I can't say, you know what,

00:45:04 ◼   ► obviously I have a lot of problems with modern laptops,

00:45:06 ◼   ► so I can't say that about the current generation.

00:45:08 ◼   ► The current ones, I cannot say either

00:45:10 ◼   ► that they are really good,

00:45:11 ◼   ► or that they are better than the ones

00:45:12 ◼   ► that came before them.

00:45:14 ◼   ► But I think that's actually a fairly recent thing.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Most of the rest of the Mac lineup

00:45:19 ◼   ► has been pretty great in the meantime.

00:45:22 ◼   ► You know, it isn't always updated

00:45:23 ◼   ► as much as I want it to be.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And the Mac Mini, I know some people

00:45:27 ◼   ► look at the Mac Mini these days and say,

00:45:28 ◼   ► "Oh, they haven't updated it forever."

00:45:29 ◼   ► Yeah, they never updated the Mac Mini very often.

00:45:30 ◼   ► It's always been a last priority, even under Steve,

00:45:33 ◼   ► even when it first came out.

00:45:34 ◼   ► It's always been a very low priority,

00:45:36 ◼   ► and it's always been very overpriced for what it is

00:45:39 ◼   ► and very rarely updated.

00:45:40 ◼   ► And yeah, so anyway, the iMac, the MacBook Pro

00:45:45 ◼   ► up through 2015, the MacBook Air,

00:45:48 ◼   ► which got that amazing update in 2010

00:45:51 ◼   ► that made the best computer possibly ever

00:45:54 ◼   ► for most average people.

00:45:56 ◼   ► they had some really good years fairly recently

00:46:00 ◼   ► and some really good products.

00:46:02 ◼   ► Look at the iPhone line as it's matured,

00:46:05 ◼   ► the iPad line as it's matured.

00:46:07 ◼   ► They've made some amazing products

00:46:09 ◼   ► across almost all their product lines

00:46:12 ◼   ► up until either the present day or pretty recently.

00:46:16 ◼   ► The crappy laptops only came out in 2016.

00:46:18 ◼   ► That wasn't that long ago.

00:46:19 ◼   ► It feels longer by the day,

00:46:20 ◼   ► but a lot of bad decisions were made by the world in 2016,

00:46:25 ◼   ► And Apple was not immune to that.

00:46:26 ◼   ► But maybe there's hope in some of these areas, I hope.

00:46:31 ◼   ► God, I hope.

00:46:32 ◼   ► But so the premise of this question is that Apple

00:46:35 ◼   ► is currently in a really, in like a bad state

00:46:39 ◼   ► and that their heyday was maybe a long time ago.

00:46:43 ◼   ► And I do think Apple has some problems today,

00:46:45 ◼   ► which I could talk about every week.

00:46:46 ◼   ► But I don't think that their best times were that long ago.

00:46:51 ◼   ► Their best times, I think, were only a few years ago

00:46:54 ◼   ► and included years that were under Tim Cook,

00:46:57 ◼   ► and included years where Johnny Ive was designing things,

00:47:00 ◼   ► and you know, so like, I don't think

00:47:03 ◼   ► this is like a massive problem

00:47:05 ◼   ► that we have to look back very far

00:47:07 ◼   ► to get what we think is the heyday,

00:47:09 ◼   ► and I also wouldn't say that today

00:47:11 ◼   ► isn't the heyday for everything.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I think the iPhone is great today, you know?

00:47:16 ◼   ► The iPad is great today.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - That's a good point.

00:47:19 ◼   ► - And the iMac, the iMac Pro is amazing.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And even the 5K iMac before that in 2014 was also amazing.

00:47:27 ◼   ► So there are parts of Apple

00:47:31 ◼   ► that are still doing amazing work.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And I would say almost all of Apple

00:47:34 ◼   ► was doing amazing work not that long ago, if not today.

00:47:38 ◼   ► So I don't think it's that far in the past.

00:47:41 ◼   ► I don't think it's like this thing

00:47:43 ◼   ► that can never be achieved again

00:47:44 ◼   ► or cannot be maintained.

00:47:47 ◼   ► I think they had to do some course correction

00:47:48 ◼   ► in a few areas, some big, some small.

00:47:50 ◼   ► There's evidence that they maybe have

00:47:54 ◼   ► or are beginning that process,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and some of the bigger ones like the Mac Pro

00:47:57 ◼   ► and stuff like that, and Siri maybe, I hope.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And so I think we're actually gonna be okay eventually,

00:48:05 ◼   ► I hope.

00:48:06 ◼   ► - All right, Jon, tell us the real answer.

00:48:09 ◼   ► - Marker will like this because there's four.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Here are my top four heydays of Apple Computer.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Yeah, there's been four-- - How many times?

00:48:16 ◼   ► - Four heydays for Apple Computer.

00:48:17 ◼   ► I guess we can count--

00:48:18 ◼   ► - Do you have any honorable mentions?

00:48:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's no honorable mentions, there's only four.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - How many number fours do you have?

00:48:22 ◼   ► - Just the one.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Actually, I'm not gonna even rank them.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I'm just gonna do them chronological,

00:48:26 ◼   ► and at the end, I think we can try to decide.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Well, I can try to decide,

00:48:29 ◼   ► 'cause you don't know three of them.

00:48:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:32 ◼   ► Two of them, all right.

00:48:33 ◼   ► - Finally, how can you possibly think

00:48:35 ◼   ► that western Pennsylvania is not the Midwest?

00:48:38 ◼   ► - It's state borders, man.

00:48:40 ◼   ► There's lots of places that are a lot like the Midwest,

00:48:41 ◼   ► but they're like in China,

00:48:42 ◼   ► and they're not part of the Midwest.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Yeah, so the four, or as I'm,

00:48:47 ◼   ► I'll do them chronologically, and you can vote for your favorite.

00:48:51 ◼   ► The one I'm not going to talk too much about is Apple II.

00:48:54 ◼   ► That's an obvious one.

00:48:55 ◼   ► That's Apple, the tech company from nowhere, the big tech company, IPO, the company that's

00:49:00 ◼   ► making personal computers, computers for the rest of us.

00:49:03 ◼   ► That was a big thing.

00:49:05 ◼   ► It only doesn't seem big in hindsight because of the much bigger things that would come

00:49:09 ◼   ► after it.

00:49:10 ◼   ► That's true of a lot of these earlier eras, but at the time the Apple II was very big.

00:49:14 ◼   ► So the IBM PC came along and kind of cut short their reign.

00:49:17 ◼   ► But for a long time, in the go-go '80s, '70s and '80s,

00:49:23 ◼   ► Apple and the Apple II were a big story and a big deal.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And if you are getting back to how old you are at the time

00:49:30 ◼   ► or what point you were in your life,

00:49:32 ◼   ► if you are just getting into the technology scene when

00:49:35 ◼   ► the Apple II came on board, it can be the most important event

00:49:39 ◼   ► in your life.

00:49:40 ◼   ► It was a very important event for the entire industry.

00:49:43 ◼   ► So that's the first heyday.

00:49:45 ◼   ► The second heyday starts with the advent of the Mac,

00:49:49 ◼   ► which was not a particularly successfully launched product.

00:49:53 ◼   ► And then Jobs was booted out shortly after, right?

00:49:56 ◼   ► So this is like, this is actually Jobs' exit.

00:49:59 ◼   ► He does this great thing with the Mac.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Mac is a super important product for the world and for Apple.

00:50:06 ◼   ► For kids that it was the iPhone of its day

00:50:09 ◼   ► because computers didn't look or work like the Mac

00:50:13 ◼   ► before the Mac, like computers that regular people bought,

00:50:16 ◼   ► like just run-of-the-mill parts of computers.

00:50:18 ◼   ► The IBM PC existed, but it did not look or work like the Mac.

00:50:21 ◼   ► And after the Mac, all computers looked and worked

00:50:23 ◼   ► like the Mac.

00:50:24 ◼   ► They all had mice, they all had a graphical interface,

00:50:25 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

00:50:26 ◼   ► So the Mac was super important.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And the reason I think this is a heyday, not because,

00:50:29 ◼   ► oh great, so you made the one Mac with not enough RAM

00:50:31 ◼   ► that nobody bought 'cause it was too expensive.

00:50:33 ◼   ► That's not what made this the heyday.

00:50:34 ◼   ► The heyday is actually the dawn of the Mac.

00:50:37 ◼   ► And then after Steve Jobs left,

00:50:39 ◼   ► the error that everyone complains about,

00:50:41 ◼   ► the Scully error, essentially,

00:50:43 ◼   ► When Apple produced a bunch of computers

00:50:46 ◼   ► with like the Snow White design language,

00:50:47 ◼   ► the Mac SE, the SE 30, the 2Ci, 2X, 2FX,

00:50:52 ◼   ► that whole era of sort of platinum,

00:50:56 ◼   ► pinstriped Snow White Macs,

00:50:59 ◼   ► the dawn of desktop publishing,

00:51:01 ◼   ► the dawn of color on the Mac,

00:51:03 ◼   ► that was perhaps the, you know,

00:51:08 ◼   ► strongest run of Mac models one after the other from the perspective of someone who

00:51:16 ◼   ► understood what made the Mac good.

00:51:19 ◼   ► To everyone else they're like, "Mac, whatever, everything's about MS-DOS and IBM and eventually

00:51:25 ◼   ► Windows.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Who cares about the Mac?

00:51:27 ◼   ► It's just a silly toy."

00:51:28 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:29 ◼   ► But that's kind of what made it special.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I mean, to get back to what the experience was like, you had a secret.

00:51:34 ◼   ► You and a bunch of other people understood, A, that Apple was special, maybe you understood

00:51:39 ◼   ► that from the Apple II heyday, and B, that the Mac was head and shoulders above anything

00:51:46 ◼   ► else that it was there.

00:51:47 ◼   ► And you had a long time to be living in everyone else's future.

00:51:51 ◼   ► It's as if the iPhone came out and nobody copied it for years, but they just derided

00:51:56 ◼   ► it.

00:51:57 ◼   ► They kept making Nokia candy bar phones where you typed with the number pad and stuff like

00:52:00 ◼   ► that.

00:52:01 ◼   ► They didn't immediately copy it, right?

00:52:02 ◼   ► But instead, they gave you several years where they made fun of you for using the phone that

00:52:07 ◼   ► you had, that your whole phone is a screen, you don't even have a keyboard, I don't know

00:52:10 ◼   ► how you can text people.

00:52:11 ◼   ► That didn't happen.

00:52:12 ◼   ► That happened for like a month and a half, right?

00:52:13 ◼   ► And then everyone's like, "Oh yeah, no, that.

00:52:15 ◼   ► We need to do that."

00:52:18 ◼   ► And so there was a long time there where Apple was putting out great, amazing Macintosh computers

00:52:23 ◼   ► solely for this narrow audience of people who understood how great they were.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And we got to see all the computing revolutions.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Yes, the GUI revolution, but also desktop publishing revolution and even things having

00:52:34 ◼   ► to do with color graphics, high resolution graphics, lots of things that were available

00:52:40 ◼   ► in a personal computer that was widely sold for the first time and would only much later

00:52:45 ◼   ► be copied.

00:52:46 ◼   ► So that's the second error, which is that they often derided the Mac, you know, Scully,

00:52:50 ◼   ► Jobs is gone and Scully is making all these computers that cost way too much money and

00:52:53 ◼   ► they did cost way too much money, but they were great.

00:52:57 ◼   ► The third era is the return of Steve Jobs,

00:52:59 ◼   ► the iMac and the iPod.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And I think we're getting to the things

00:53:02 ◼   ► that you'd remember now.

00:53:03 ◼   ► You've got the iMac obviously is the big,

00:53:06 ◼   ► Jobs comes back, the next, he comes back with next,

00:53:09 ◼   ► but that's not the era I'm talking about.

00:53:10 ◼   ► It's not like the Mac OS X era.

00:53:12 ◼   ► He's working on Mac OS X.

00:53:13 ◼   ► They've got to figure out the whole OS thing.

00:53:15 ◼   ► They have the false start with Rhapsody

00:53:18 ◼   ► and Mac OS X server, which is not what you think it was.

00:53:21 ◼   ► But in the meantime, when he came back,

00:53:24 ◼   ► what they first did was the iMac,

00:53:26 ◼   ► the, you know, Johnny Ives big coming out party

00:53:28 ◼   ► that made all of our irons and vacuum cleaners teal

00:53:33 ◼   ► for a decade and the iPod.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And the Macs at this point are running classic macOS.

00:53:39 ◼   ► They're not running Mac OS X.

00:53:41 ◼   ► The iPod has like a monochrome screen and a wheel that moves

00:53:45 ◼   ► and it has Mac only and it's FireWire.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But this little section here that extends a little bit

00:53:50 ◼   ► farther into the Mac OS X era where every time Apple came

00:53:54 ◼   ► with anything, you never knew what the hell it would be.

00:53:57 ◼   ► The iMac was like, "What is this?

00:53:59 ◼   ► A weird teal computer?"

00:54:00 ◼   ► And then after that, the iMacs would come in different colors.

00:54:02 ◼   ► They're going to make them in all sorts of colors.

00:54:03 ◼   ► And the iPod, it's kind of a curiosity, but then it starts to gain a little momentum.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Then they got those toilet seat iBooks, and then you got the G4 Cube, and the tower computers

00:54:11 ◼   ► are weird looking.

00:54:13 ◼   ► Every time they went up on stage, there was the expectation that Apple could do anything.

00:54:17 ◼   ► You don't know what to expect.

00:54:19 ◼   ► You are ready to be bowled over every single time.

00:54:22 ◼   ► that is the sort of the defining period of the of the Steve Jobs keynote where

00:54:26 ◼   ► We would all gather and it was like we're just waiting for like, you know candy to rain from the sky

00:54:32 ◼   ► So I don't know but every time we go to one of these things something amazing happens

00:54:35 ◼   ► Whether it's just I mean in a way the bar was lower because back then

00:54:40 ◼   ► The audience would be blown away by just the audacity of the industrial design

00:54:45 ◼   ► You can't do that anymore, right if they came out with it with the toilet seat I booked now

00:54:48 ◼   ► It'd be like there's an ugly computer

00:54:50 ◼   ► I don't know why they made that.

00:54:51 ◼   ► Like we're so used to the fact that you can make

00:54:54 ◼   ► computers in colors and make them have fancy design

00:54:56 ◼   ► to all stuff, but back then it was mind blowing.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Every single time, even if it was like a flop like the Cube,

00:55:02 ◼   ► the Cube keynote was insane.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Everyone loved that.

00:55:04 ◼   ► Everyone was like, could not believe he's pulling

00:55:06 ◼   ► this little core out of the thing up on the stage.

00:55:08 ◼   ► And it was like, wow, it almost doesn't even matter

00:55:11 ◼   ► that it wasn't particularly successful in the market

00:55:13 ◼   ► because we got the benefit of like the amazing reveal

00:55:17 ◼   ► and the, I don't know, it's sort of like,

00:55:20 ◼   ► making people expand the notion of what the possibility space is.

00:55:25 ◼   ► That every time they put something else, it pushes some corner of the possibility space out again.

00:55:30 ◼   ► Like, I didn't even think you could put anything over there, but now they've pushed the envelope out over there,

00:55:33 ◼   ► and now who knows, maybe this product was a double, but who knows what else they can put in there.

00:55:36 ◼   ► It made room for the next product, the next product, the next product.

00:55:40 ◼   ► And then the final heyday of Apple is the iPhone error,

00:55:45 ◼   ► which I don't know where you want to cap that, but it starts with the iPhone,

00:55:48 ◼   ► iPhone and it extends at least through like probably the 6 and 6s where they finally made

00:55:56 ◼   ► the big phone.

00:55:57 ◼   ► But that run from the original iPhone redefining this entire category, you know, the 3GS but

00:56:05 ◼   ► the 4, the 4s and then the 5 and then I guess the big phone with the 6, that run right there

00:56:11 ◼   ► of Apple, once again redefining a whole product category, and also, by the way, redefining

00:56:20 ◼   ► a product category that would become the most important product category in all of technology,

00:56:24 ◼   ► despite the fact that they don't dominate at market share, but saying, "We define

00:56:28 ◼   ► this category, and it's not just like, 'Oh, we make some cool Macs and iPods, and

00:56:33 ◼   ► it's kind of cool, and the iPod gets big a little bit, but then it sort of dies down

00:56:36 ◼   ► or whatever, it was huge numbers, gigantic numbers.

00:56:41 ◼   ► If you graph any of these other errors I talked about,

00:56:45 ◼   ► graph Apple II sales, graph Apple's original IPO,

00:56:48 ◼   ► graph Macs or the iMac and the iPod, it's nothing.

00:56:51 ◼   ► It doesn't even show up on the graph

00:56:52 ◼   ► until the iPhone comes.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And it's not like we're all about,

00:56:54 ◼   ► oh, how much money Apple makes, who cares?

00:56:56 ◼   ► We don't run Apple, it's not our money.

00:56:58 ◼   ► But it is like the dawning of the modern Apple

00:57:03 ◼   ► as like the biggest and this incredibly important

00:57:06 ◼   ► technology company that everybody knows about.

00:57:10 ◼   ► It is no longer the secret that we had

00:57:11 ◼   ► back in the Scully era.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And it's no longer like a bunch of

00:57:15 ◼   ► crazed technology fans just waiting to see

00:57:19 ◼   ► what Jobs has hidden under a black cloth

00:57:22 ◼   ► on a stage or whatever.

00:57:23 ◼   ► This is the iPhone age is where everybody cares

00:57:25 ◼   ► what Apple does and everyone has to care.

00:57:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and then if you wanna cap that

00:57:31 ◼   ► because you think they've lost their way in some areas

00:57:33 ◼   ► or because the iPhone is tapering off or whatever,

00:57:35 ◼   ► I'll allow that, but I would actually, honestly,

00:57:37 ◼   ► extend the iPhone error probably all the way up to today.

00:57:40 ◼   ► Despite the fact that we complain about the Macs,

00:57:41 ◼   ► the fourth heyday of Apple is not about the Mac,

00:57:44 ◼   ► it's about the iPhone and iPad and other stuff.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So those are the four heydays of Apple.

00:57:49 ◼   ► What do you think is, if you had to pick one,

00:57:52 ◼   ► 'cause it's kind of cheating to pick four,

00:57:54 ◼   ► even though I'm following the rules of top four,

00:57:56 ◼   ► unlike some people, if we had to pick one,

00:57:59 ◼   ► what would you guys vote for?

00:58:01 ◼   ► - Got it, so we're talking Apple II, Mac.

00:58:05 ◼   ► - The Mac and the Scully era.

00:58:07 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about when I say those?

00:58:08 ◼   ► Like the Snow White design language

00:58:10 ◼   ► is the ones that are platinum

00:58:11 ◼   ► and they have lots of pinstripes on them.

00:58:13 ◼   ► The whole line of ones, the all-in-ones.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - I think so. - Oh yeah.

00:58:15 ◼   ► - Mac II, the Mac II FX, the Mac II CI, the SE, the SE30.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Portrait displays, desktop publishing,

00:58:21 ◼   ► the Laser Rider, all that.

00:58:22 ◼   ► - Right, and then your third option was what?

00:58:25 ◼   ► Was around-- - The third one

00:58:26 ◼   ► is the iMac/iPod era where everything was teal

00:58:28 ◼   ► and candy-colored and you got the toilet seat,

00:58:30 ◼   ► iBooks and the BlueMight Power Mac G3 and the Cube and all the different color iMacs

00:58:37 ◼   ► and the iPod mixed in there, the various lines of iPods.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Steven: And the fourth one is basically iPhone really coming into its own.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Rob: iPhone, yeah, just iPhone period. It's like the Mac ones, from the dawning of the

00:58:48 ◼   ► first iPhone and the whole line of finds, just took Apple from a company. Those three

00:58:53 ◼   ► heydays before that were like Apple heydays.

00:58:56 ◼   ► The iPhone is like worldwide heyday.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Like everybody, you know, they come to the size

00:59:03 ◼   ► that they are today.

00:59:04 ◼   ► They become a much more important company to everybody.

00:59:07 ◼   ► - Well, for me, you just answered the question

00:59:09 ◼   ► because what I was going to say is exactly that,

00:59:12 ◼   ► that the three prior heydays,

00:59:15 ◼   ► 'cause I picked the last one

00:59:16 ◼   ► if I had to pick one of those four,

00:59:17 ◼   ► the three prior heydays, there is an argument,

00:59:21 ◼   ► I guess it's how do you define heyday, right?

00:59:23 ◼   ► I don't mean that to be silly, but to me the heyday of a company or Apple specifically

00:59:29 ◼   ► is the moment at which everyone, be it the "fanboys and girls" or "sheeple" or whatever,

00:59:38 ◼   ► when everyone thinks that Apple can do no wrong.

00:59:43 ◼   ► And so back when the Mac was new, and I was only slightly paying attention at that point,

00:59:49 ◼   ► I actually know what the Mac was new in 82, right?

00:59:52 ◼   ► Or do I have that timeline? It doesn't matter. So 84. Thank you. Okay, so I was two so I was not paying attention

00:59:58 ◼   ► I was new in 82. Yeah, so was I so anyway point being I

01:00:02 ◼   ► Was aware of the Mac versus PC Wars when I was a kid

01:00:06 ◼   ► This is you know, I would guess late 80s early 90s

01:00:09 ◼   ► But I never thought that Macs were that particularly superior it with the hindsight of adulthood

01:00:16 ◼   ► I can see that I was wrong. But at the time I didn't I wasn't impressed and

01:00:19 ◼   ► And to me, the heyday is when, even if you for some reason choose not to use an Apple

01:00:26 ◼   ► product, even if you choose to use an Android product, you can look at an iPhone and say,

01:00:30 ◼   ► "Yeah, I can see why people would dig this."

01:00:33 ◼   ► Or look at a Mac, "I can see why people would dig this."

01:00:37 ◼   ► And thus, because to me, the heyday is about achievement in the mind, in the hive mind

01:00:44 ◼   ► of popular culture, to me that leads me to the iPhone, your final option as being the

01:00:52 ◼   ► actual heyday. But that's all based on how I'm defining "heyday," and it's completely

01:00:57 ◼   ► reasonable for either of you to disagree with that definition. So before you argue with

01:01:01 ◼   ► me on that, Marco, what would you pick of those four?

01:01:04 ◼   ► I think I would also pick the iPhone, in part, just selfishly because I was there for that

01:01:09 ◼   ► one. You know, like when, like the one and two I was, you know, a child and using a PC

01:01:16 ◼   ► for. Number three with all the candy colored computers, that was like right before I started

01:01:21 ◼   ► really getting into, you know, looking at Macs and eventually getting my own Mac in

01:01:25 ◼   ► 2004. That was all like, you know, late 90s, early 2000s and, you know, by the time I bought

01:01:32 ◼   ► a Mac, they were all metal again. So, it was, you know, I missed that whole era. But also,

01:01:39 ◼   ► You know, the Mac was, I was not a big fan of classic Mac OS

01:01:44 ◼   ► when I used it like three times ever.

01:01:46 ◼   ► So I can't say that really enthralled me

01:01:48 ◼   ► when I would see it like as a kid.

01:01:50 ◼   ► I think Mac OS X is really,

01:01:53 ◼   ► Mac OS X is the Mac that I know.

01:01:56 ◼   ► And I know that kills people like John

01:01:58 ◼   ► who have been around here for much longer.

01:02:00 ◼   ► - At this point Mac OS X has been around longer for classic,

01:02:02 ◼   ► longer than classic you realize.

01:02:04 ◼   ► - Okay, I guess that makes sense, yeah.

01:02:06 ◼   ► - I think it just barely crossed over,

01:02:08 ◼   ► - Like 16 years?

01:02:10 ◼   ► - Anyway, so like to me, the Apple I know

01:02:13 ◼   ► is the Apple that made OS X and metal laptops.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Like that's all I've ever known.

01:02:18 ◼   ► So, just by default, number four would win.

01:02:23 ◼   ► That being said, like I do have some, I guess,

01:02:28 ◼   ► slight hesitation or ambivalence about the iPhone

01:02:31 ◼   ► coming out because what I love so much, the Mac,

01:02:35 ◼   ► has undoubtedly been really de-prioritized

01:02:39 ◼   ► because of the iPhone.

01:02:42 ◼   ► So like in some way, even though I love using the iPhone,

01:02:44 ◼   ► and my entire career now is writing apps for the iPhone

01:02:47 ◼   ► and then talking about them--

01:02:48 ◼   ► - You did this to the Mac, Marco.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like-- - Stupid Instapaper.

01:02:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:02:53 ◼   ► - Like, it is kind of like, I have mixed feelings about it

01:02:56 ◼   ► because most of my statement about Apple's heyday

01:02:59 ◼   ► had a lot more to do about the hardware than the software,

01:03:01 ◼   ► but in reality, the software is just as much

01:03:04 ◼   ► part of the story and no question the advent of having Apple's attention being split between

01:03:12 ◼   ► two different major OS's and one of them being way more popular and profitable than the other

01:03:18 ◼   ► one, no question that split, which started with the iPhone, has done serious damage to

01:03:26 ◼   ► the Mac. It is really, in many areas software wise, the Mac is really behind, really in

01:03:33 ◼   ► and disrepair in certain areas.

01:03:36 ◼   ► Again, it seems like this might be turning around

01:03:38 ◼   ► based on rumblings and rumors and statements,

01:03:40 ◼   ► and we'll see if that actually turns into actions,

01:03:42 ◼   ► hopefully over the next couple years.

01:03:44 ◼   ► But I do have some ambivalence over the fact

01:03:46 ◼   ► that the iPhone killed my Mac, basically,

01:03:48 ◼   ► as much as I like the iPhone.

01:03:51 ◼   ► - iPhone bought your Mac.

01:03:52 ◼   ► - That's true.

01:03:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:55 ◼   ► - So if I had to pick one of these errors,

01:03:58 ◼   ► so first, if I was picking personally,

01:04:01 ◼   ► I would pick the Mac, the introduction of the Mac,

01:04:04 ◼   ► but that's just for personal reasons.

01:04:05 ◼   ► That's like what, you know, the age I was at the time,

01:04:07 ◼   ► what I was into, so on and so forth,

01:04:09 ◼   ► but I recognize that that is,

01:04:11 ◼   ► the only way I could argue for that is,

01:04:13 ◼   ► it wouldn't be Apple's heyday,

01:04:14 ◼   ► it's because we're using the word heyday.

01:04:16 ◼   ► If we fast forward 200 years,

01:04:18 ◼   ► I can retroactively argue why the introduction of the Mac

01:04:21 ◼   ► was, you know, super important, even more important

01:04:23 ◼   ► than the iPhone in some specific aspects,

01:04:26 ◼   ► but heyday, it was not Apple's heyday, right?

01:04:28 ◼   ► But for me, that is the era of Apple

01:04:31 ◼   ► that has the most emotional resonance,

01:04:32 ◼   ► mostly because of the age I was

01:04:33 ◼   ► and the fact that I was getting into computers at that time.

01:04:36 ◼   ► You know, how I idolized all the people who made it

01:04:38 ◼   ► and read all about it and all that stuff, right?

01:04:40 ◼   ► But if I have to pick the Hay Day out of these things

01:04:42 ◼   ► from a less personal perspective,

01:04:45 ◼   ► I would actually pick, surprisingly,

01:04:48 ◼   ► and mostly based on Kyle's question

01:04:51 ◼   ► and what I think he wants out of Hay Day,

01:04:53 ◼   ► I would pick the iMac/iPod era

01:04:56 ◼   ► because I feel like that was the most exciting time

01:05:01 ◼   ► to be into Apple.

01:05:05 ◼   ► And it culminated with the iPhone.

01:05:07 ◼   ► The iPhone marks the end of that error, right?

01:05:09 ◼   ► So this iMac, iPod error, like I said,

01:05:12 ◼   ► it was the dawn of the Steve note.

01:05:15 ◼   ► We would go to Macworld Expo,

01:05:16 ◼   ► which was still a thing then, and WWDC,

01:05:19 ◼   ► and it was a transitional period.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Steve Jobs is back.

01:05:23 ◼   ► We're not sure how things are gonna go down,

01:05:24 ◼   ► and it got kicked off with the iMac,

01:05:26 ◼   ► which was a big surprise.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And then from that point up until the iPhone,

01:05:30 ◼   ► every time we sat down there to hear what Apple had to say,

01:05:33 ◼   ► nobody knew what it was gonna be.

01:05:35 ◼   ► It could be anything.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And every time it was something that nobody expected

01:05:39 ◼   ► because again, the possibility space had been so small

01:05:42 ◼   ► and every keynote just kicked that possibility space

01:05:45 ◼   ► out bigger and bigger and bigger.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And it was just, you know, keynote after keynote

01:05:49 ◼   ► of just surprising, exciting stuff.

01:05:52 ◼   ► and it built to the iPhone, the most surprising,

01:05:56 ◼   ► the most exciting and the most successful

01:05:59 ◼   ► of all the stuff they produce.

01:06:00 ◼   ► And everything in there,

01:06:01 ◼   ► like I just think back through those keynotes.

01:06:03 ◼   ► I wasn't in my formative years then, right?

01:06:05 ◼   ► But so I don't think it's like rose colored grasses

01:06:09 ◼   ► of like the rock music you listen to

01:06:11 ◼   ► in high school or whatever.

01:06:12 ◼   ► This was, if you wanted to know what it was like

01:06:15 ◼   ► to be an Apple fan at a time when Apple

01:06:18 ◼   ► was doing the most stuff to make Apple fans' eyes

01:06:23 ◼   ► have the little emoji hearts over them.

01:06:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:26 ◼   ► It was this era, this was the heyday.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And I would say it wasn't Apple's best products.

01:06:31 ◼   ► There was lots of not so great stuff mixed in there,

01:06:33 ◼   ► not just the cube, like a lot of the stuff,

01:06:35 ◼   ► the computers, yeah, they look neat,

01:06:38 ◼   ► but were they good computers?

01:06:39 ◼   ► Even some of the iMacs were like, eh, not quite.

01:06:41 ◼   ► The move to the aluminum glass era,

01:06:44 ◼   ► like you said, Casey, 2011 MacBook Air stomps all over

01:06:47 ◼   ► everything during this heyday, but if you just wanted to be super excited about what

01:06:51 ◼   ► the heck Apple's going to do next and have it climax in the most important technology

01:06:56 ◼   ► product of our lifetime, this was the error.

01:06:59 ◼   ► That was a good discussion. Thanks, Kyle, for that question. I really dig it.

01:07:07 ◼   ► You know when you said, "Oh, John's going to tell us that and be disappointed because

01:07:10 ◼   ► we're so young and everything"? What kills me every time we talk about this is that you

01:07:13 ◼   ► guys both just missed this error, right? And looking back on it, like I said, you look

01:07:17 ◼   ► back on it and it's like, "That doesn't look that good. The computers now are better."

01:07:19 ◼   ► And they were. The computers were better when you came on board, but you just missed this

01:07:24 ◼   ► like super exciting time when like every keynote was just like Christmas morning and you had

01:07:30 ◼   ► no idea what was going to happen.

01:07:32 ◼   ► I remember vividly that even when the iPod came out, I don't know why I wasn't that impressed

01:07:42 ◼   ► by it. And obviously it didn't work with PCs for the first—

01:07:46 ◼   ► This was $400 and it was FireWire and it was Mac only.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And this screen was monochrome.

01:07:51 ◼   ► - Leaving aside the Mac only part,

01:07:53 ◼   ► like once it was available to be used with the PC,

01:07:56 ◼   ► even at first, I guess it was the price,

01:07:58 ◼   ► 'cause at this point in my life,

01:07:59 ◼   ► I was considerably more price sensitive than I am now.

01:08:02 ◼   ► But for whatever reason, I remember not being impressed.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden, and it looks like it was 2005,

01:08:10 ◼   ► all of a sudden the iPod Nano happened.

01:08:13 ◼   ► the very, very first iPod Nano.

01:08:17 ◼   ► And that was the first Apple product

01:08:19 ◼   ► that I really and truly coveted,

01:08:21 ◼   ► and I wanted one badly.

01:08:23 ◼   ► And I eventually got one, and I loved it.

01:08:26 ◼   ► - That was a great example of having a keynote where,

01:08:29 ◼   ► you know, like at that point it was clear

01:08:31 ◼   ► Apple was making iPods.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Like iPods were going to be successful.

01:08:34 ◼   ► It was like, well, Apple's gonna be the iPod company,

01:08:36 ◼   ► and they're not even the Mac company anymore.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Ha ha ha, uncomfortable laugh.

01:08:39 ◼   ► But we had seen the big white iPods,

01:08:43 ◼   ► and we'd seen the mini, which were candy colored

01:08:46 ◼   ► and seemed not to be worth the price

01:08:49 ◼   ► from people who were measuring specs and everything

01:08:51 ◼   ► and yet sold like crazy,

01:08:52 ◼   ► as an indication of where this market was actually going.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And the Nano is a great example of like we,

01:08:58 ◼   ► oh, so they're gonna announce the iPods,

01:08:59 ◼   ► whatever one of these will be like.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And no one was thinking, hey, guess what?

01:09:03 ◼   ► You see what they look like now?

01:09:05 ◼   ► The iPods you're looking at now,

01:09:06 ◼   ► take them and cut them into like seven pieces.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And that little skinny sliver that you've had,

01:09:11 ◼   ► that's gonna be the next iPod.

01:09:13 ◼   ► I was like, "Yeah, right, yeah, maybe that's like the cover of the next iPod."

01:09:16 ◼   ► He's like, "No, that's the whole thing."

01:09:17 ◼   ► It just seemed impossible, right?

01:09:19 ◼   ► Because it was in his change pocket, right?

01:09:21 ◼   ► I was just about to ask, this was the one that was in the change pocket, wasn't it?

01:09:24 ◼   ► Right, right.

01:09:25 ◼   ► It was like, "You have got to be kidding me."

01:09:27 ◼   ► Every keynote was like that.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Every time they pulled something out, there was the reaction, "You've got to be kidding

01:09:31 ◼   ► me."

01:09:32 ◼   ► It doesn't happen anymore because we all know so much about the tech that's available, we're

01:09:35 ◼   ► following so closely that we know two years ahead of time that Apple's going to use an

01:09:39 ◼   ► OLED screen in its phone and it's gonna be like it's it was I guess mostly

01:09:45 ◼   ► because people weren't paying enough attention people were just learning to

01:09:47 ◼   ► start paying attention that we were all just surprised there was and the rumor

01:09:51 ◼   ► scene was completely bonkers like because anything was possible the rumors

01:09:56 ◼   ► that were happening then were just as outlandish as the things that came out

01:09:59 ◼   ► and like massively wrong and not found it in any information and just would you

01:10:04 ◼   ► know amuse us to no end because nobody knew anything and like when things did

01:10:08 ◼   ► leak like we weren't sure whether to believe them or not. So it was a hell of a time to

01:10:15 ◼   ► be an Apple fan.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I got to say that iPod Nano reveal was I think one of the best Apple reveals of all

01:10:23 ◼   ► time. Like it might have even been the best like short little moment because like with

01:10:27 ◼   ► the iPhone, Steve like really built up to it slowly, you know.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Although are you going to fault them for building up? Are you going to build up to something

01:10:34 ◼   ► building up to the iPhone? It's a good thing to build up.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - That's true, but if you're just talking about

01:10:38 ◼   ► the moment of the reveal, I think,

01:10:41 ◼   ► you know, the original MacBook Air coming out of the envelope

01:10:44 ◼   ► was good, that was very good.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I think that first iPod Nano coming out of its change pocket,

01:10:48 ◼   ► I think that wins, though.

01:10:49 ◼   ► I can't think of anything that was a more shocking,

01:10:52 ◼   ► initial view of something than that.

01:10:55 ◼   ► - Yeah.

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01:12:53 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Colin McKellar writes, could the Apple CPU in Max,

01:12:58 ◼   ► the potential forthcoming ARM CPU or whatever.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Is it possible that that might not be ARM or x86, but an Apple-designed architecture?

01:13:07 ◼   ► If Apple's switching architectures anyway, why not move to one they create or control?

01:13:11 ◼   ► It's not like they would ever use a non-Apple ARM chip and a Mac.

01:13:14 ◼   ► In short, how feasible is it to create your own chip architecture, and what are the disadvantages

01:13:18 ◼   ► or advantages from using an existing architecture?

01:13:22 ◼   ► This is an interesting question.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I don't really know what Apple would have to gain.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Like, yes, it would all be custom-made directly for Apple, but, like, chip architectures,

01:13:36 ◼   ► it's by design, the interface, the programming interface to a CPU is, I want to say simple

01:13:44 ◼   ► but somebody's going to weigh it, well, actually me, but it's a bunch of fundamental building

01:13:50 ◼   ► blocks that you can build into very impressive things. And I don't feel like this is an unsolved

01:13:56 ◼   ► problem. I don't know what they would have to gain really by doing this. But maybe I'm

01:14:01 ◼   ► missing something. So Marco, thoughts on this?

01:14:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you basically covered it. I don't think, you know, creating a new architecture

01:14:07 ◼   ► is a significant upgrade in the amount of work they would be spending on their own ship

01:14:13 ◼   ► design. Like, there aren't that many ship architectures in the world. And there's even

01:14:19 ◼   ► fewer that are actually in widespread use for general purpose computers. I really don't

01:14:25 ◼   ► think that they would have nearly enough to gain. You know, they already control a lot

01:14:30 ◼   ► about their chip design and they license the architecture from ARM. And ARM designs it

01:14:36 ◼   ► and I'm sure Apple influences it pretty heavily these days, but it's still being like,

01:14:42 ◼   ► that's mainly being outsourced and pooled with lots of other companies that are all

01:14:47 ◼   ► using ARM or making ARM chips or whatever else.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And then also, on the software side,

01:14:52 ◼   ► there's a lot of just software that can compile to ARM

01:14:54 ◼   ► that they take advantage of, they can only be running on

01:14:59 ◼   ► the same number of architectures

01:15:00 ◼   ► that the rest of the world's really running on

01:15:02 ◼   ► 'cause lots of stuff in the world now

01:15:03 ◼   ► is split between x86 and ARM.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Adding a whole other additional instruction set

01:15:08 ◼   ► for just Macs, I don't see that flying in today's world.

01:15:13 ◼   ► I think that would be a really tough sell

01:15:14 ◼   ► for a lot of people.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Also, I just don't see it being worth the work for Apple.

01:15:20 ◼   ► I wonder if there's patent issues too.

01:15:22 ◼   ► I mean, probably, right?

01:15:23 ◼   ► - There's always patent issues.

01:15:24 ◼   ► - Right, like Arm is the one who would be facing

01:15:28 ◼   ► any patent issues with their instruction set,

01:15:29 ◼   ► not, well, maybe not Apple directly,

01:15:31 ◼   ► but it would probably become Apple's problem at some point,

01:15:33 ◼   ► but if Apple started their own whole thing,

01:15:37 ◼   ► they would have to dodge a whole bunch of patents

01:15:39 ◼   ► and file a bunch of their own in this area

01:15:41 ◼   ► and have problems with those,

01:15:42 ◼   ► and using someone else's instruction set

01:15:45 ◼   ► helps them probably avoid quite a lot of that as well.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So there's lots of reasons for them not to do this,

01:15:50 ◼   ► and I don't think there's enough good reasons

01:15:52 ◼   ► for them to do it.

01:15:53 ◼   ► - So making your own instruction set,

01:15:55 ◼   ► like Casey kind of played it down as if like,

01:15:57 ◼   ► I don't see why they would do that,

01:15:59 ◼   ► but there is a bunch of important advantages

01:16:03 ◼   ► to being able to define the instruction set.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And it's the reason we're not using

01:16:08 ◼   ► the same instruction set now that we were in,

01:16:10 ◼   ► you know, the 60s or whatever,

01:16:12 ◼   ► before there were instruction sets,

01:16:13 ◼   ► before they were widely shared instructions. What is it? The IBM... Oh god, someone in the chat room

01:16:20 ◼   ► looks up for me so I can correct myself later. System 360 something? Anyway, in the modern era,

01:16:29 ◼   ► instruction sets, the advantage you get for defining one is you get to learn from the

01:16:33 ◼   ► mistakes of everybody who made an instruction set before you. And more importantly, much more

01:16:38 ◼   ► importantly, you get to tailor your instruction set to the nature of the hardware and software

01:16:45 ◼   ► of the day. So a lot of the older instruction sets are tailored to hardware designs that are

01:16:52 ◼   ► no longer relevant. Like CPUs are not designed the same way, and the problems they're asked to solve

01:16:59 ◼   ► are not the same either. Like for example, instruction sets that don't have any SIMD

01:17:03 ◼   ► capability were created in error before sort of large scale multimedia processing operations,

01:17:09 ◼   ► right? They didn't need an instruction set like that. If you make a new instruction set,

01:17:12 ◼   ► or you append an existing one, you have the opportunity to say, "Today, one of the problems

01:17:17 ◼   ► we have is dealing with lots of data that might be audio or video or sound or things where we can

01:17:22 ◼   ► do lots of operations in parallel on big chunks of data, and the old instruction sets don't work

01:17:29 ◼   ► with that so we can define a new one that fits that and fits like you know modern CPUs and we

01:17:34 ◼   ► have more transistors and we can put more cache than we used to so on and so forth right. IBM

01:17:39 ◼   ► system 360. I knew there was a slash in there system slash 360. I think it was the first

01:17:46 ◼   ► computer with like a common instruction set so they were gonna make a line of computers that

01:17:49 ◼   ► all use the same instruction set instead of making a new instruction set for every computer

01:17:52 ◼   ► which was a thing to do back then. Anyway, so the question is, has enough changed in the industry

01:18:01 ◼   ► or in the hardware world that Apple would gain some advantage from making a new instruction set?

01:18:06 ◼   ► Now ARM, in the grand scheme of things, is not new, but it's not super old. If anything, you know,

01:18:12 ◼   ► it's a modern-ish RISC architecture, but ARM has warts and it has extensions for SIMD stuff.

01:18:20 ◼   ► If Apple, knowing what it knows now, could design a new instruction set for iPhones or Macs, they

01:18:27 ◼   ► can make one that's better than ARM. It wouldn't have as many warts. It would be a better fit for

01:18:30 ◼   ► their compiler technology, for the hardware that they know that's out there. It would be better.

01:18:34 ◼   ► But it wouldn't be that much better. On the flip side of this is what we talked about all last show.

01:18:39 ◼   ► If Apple wants to have any chance of maintaining or eventually regaining the current situation

01:18:48 ◼   ► where you can run all the legacy x86 binaries

01:18:53 ◼   ► from like, you know, into fast virtualization for Windows

01:18:59 ◼   ► and for Unix and all those things,

01:19:01 ◼   ► like the client side and the server side

01:19:03 ◼   ► and cross-platform is all unified in x86.

01:19:06 ◼   ► If they ever wanna get that again,

01:19:07 ◼   ► they can't have their own instruction set.

01:19:10 ◼   ► If they make their own ARM chips

01:19:11 ◼   ► and that somehow the whole rest of the industry,

01:19:13 ◼   ► as we talked about before, also goes ARM,

01:19:15 ◼   ► then yay, we're back into our golden age again,

01:19:17 ◼   ► where everything is ARM everywhere.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And it's not because they're all using Apple chips,

01:19:21 ◼   ► but it's because they're all using ARM.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And ARM is an instruction set

01:19:23 ◼   ► that Apple doesn't own and control.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And so servers are free to use it,

01:19:27 ◼   ► and we have this nice ecosystem.

01:19:29 ◼   ► If I were Apple, I would never give up that possibility.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Even if it didn't look like it was gonna be likely,

01:19:33 ◼   ► I wouldn't give up the possibility.

01:19:35 ◼   ► So it's either Apple tries to define a new instruction set

01:19:38 ◼   ► and then sells it to the whole rest of the industry,

01:19:39 ◼   ► not likely, or they really, really need to pick one

01:19:43 ◼   ► that there's at least some slim chance

01:19:44 ◼   ► that the whole rest of the industry will eventually use.

01:19:46 ◼   ► They should not and will not go their own way on a CPU architecture for phones or Macs.

01:19:53 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Scott Norris writes, "Do you think Apple will upgrade the cooling design for the 2018

01:19:58 ◼   ► iMac lineup using ideas for the iMac Pro for longevity or perhaps better GPU options?"

01:20:05 ◼   ► I don't think that's unreasonable, but I don't know that they would put that much cooling

01:20:10 ◼   ► in a machine that they don't feel like needs that much cooling.

01:20:13 ◼   ► So I would be slightly surprised, but I don't know.

01:20:17 ◼   ► Jon, what do you think?

01:20:18 ◼   ► I think they totally should, because this is a very well worded question here.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Using ideas from the iMac Pro, they can't just take, "Oh, let's just take the iMac Pro

01:20:26 ◼   ► with the exact cooling design," because it's probably expensive and, like you said, you

01:20:29 ◼   ► don't need to remove that much heat from the lower powered chips.

01:20:32 ◼   ► But the ideas, whatever they did to the iMac Pro, a machine that dissipates more heat but

01:20:39 ◼   ► is quieter than the 5K iMac, yes, please, bring those ideas.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Because if you can make the iMac Pro that quiet, use slightly less money, and you have

01:20:50 ◼   ► slightly less power to dissipate, use those ideas in the 5K iMac and make it be less of

01:20:55 ◼   ► a hair dryer.

01:20:56 ◼   ► They should totally do that.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Will they do it?

01:21:01 ◼   ► Maybe in a couple of years.

01:21:03 ◼   ► I don't see them—because the iMac Pro is so big and important and expensive and seems—even

01:21:09 ◼   ► though it looks the same from the outside, when you look at it on the insides, it seems

01:21:12 ◼   ► like a different planet, like it was made by a different set of people than the 5k iMac

01:21:18 ◼   ► entirely even though it looks so similar on the outside.

01:21:21 ◼   ► So I'm not particularly optimistic about suddenly now that the iMac Pro is at the very next

01:21:25 ◼   ► 5k iMac it's going to look like the iMac Pro on the inside.

01:21:27 ◼   ► But I hope in a few years there is a trickle down of those ideas and that cooling and that

01:21:35 ◼   ► airflow and heat management solution because Apple has proven they can do it.

01:21:39 ◼   ► They just need to do it slightly cheaper in a slightly easier situation.

01:21:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I would love for them to do it.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I think they absolutely should.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I agree with everything you just said.

01:21:47 ◼   ► The only problem is that the iMac Pro cooling solution won't fit in the regular iMac unless

01:21:55 ◼   ► they eliminate options for spinning disk hard drives.

01:21:58 ◼   ► We could also eliminate the fusion drive options.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And so it would significantly drive up the cost of low-end iMac configurations for people

01:22:06 ◼   ► who need a lot of space.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Now, I'm of the opinion that they should probably be doing that anyway.

01:22:11 ◼   ► I think that the time has passed where Apple should have stopped selling spinning disks

01:22:20 ◼   ► in the same way that I don't think they should be still selling anything with non-retina

01:22:24 ◼   ► screens.

01:22:25 ◼   ► Even fusion drives are not very good and not very fast and very inconsistent.

01:22:29 ◼   ► They even like, remember a few years ago when they cheaped out and made the SSD portion

01:22:34 ◼   ► of the fusion drives even smaller than it was before.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Like, the fusion drive is a bad hack.

01:22:41 ◼   ► There was a time for it when flash storage was smaller

01:22:44 ◼   ► and more expensive than it is today.

01:22:47 ◼   ► I think that time has passed,

01:22:48 ◼   ► and while they wouldn't be able to offer, say,

01:22:52 ◼   ► a terabyte or two terabytes as cheaply as they could today,

01:22:56 ◼   ► I think this is the kind of situation where

01:22:59 ◼   ► it's worth taking a temporary higher price

01:23:02 ◼   ► on larger storage tiers like that,

01:23:04 ◼   ► especially now as people need less storage

01:23:07 ◼   ► because of various cloud services

01:23:09 ◼   ► and the lack of large music libraries anymore.

01:23:12 ◼   ► This is a good time to do that,

01:23:14 ◼   ► even though things would be temporarily more expensive

01:23:16 ◼   ► because it would allow all of the iMacs

01:23:19 ◼   ► to then have this awesome cooling design,

01:23:22 ◼   ► and I think they would benefit significantly from that.

01:23:24 ◼   ► You'd probably have longer component lifespans.

01:23:26 ◼   ► You'd definitely have less noise.

01:23:28 ◼   ► The iMac Pro is a fantastic thermal design,

01:23:31 ◼   ► at least as we know it so far.

01:23:33 ◼   ► and we don't know if it has any kind of massive flaw

01:23:34 ◼   ► that'll happen three years in,

01:23:35 ◼   ► but so far it appears to be a great thermal design.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So the sooner that can get into all iMacs,

01:23:43 ◼   ► I think the better.

01:23:43 ◼   ► And the only thing holding that back

01:23:45 ◼   ► is probably cost of doing a redesign

01:23:49 ◼   ► and then the three and a half inch drive that's in there.

01:23:52 ◼   ► The other problem is if Apple decides

01:23:54 ◼   ► to remove the three and a half inch drive from the iMac,

01:23:57 ◼   ► they might decide to just make it thinner,

01:24:01 ◼   ► which nobody wants except probably Apple.

01:24:05 ◼   ► They might decide to just make it thinner

01:24:06 ◼   ► instead of spending that newfound space

01:24:09 ◼   ► on additional cooling capacity.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I hope that's not what they do.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I especially hope they don't also then force that

01:24:16 ◼   ► onto the iMac Pro somehow and then make it

01:24:18 ◼   ► just louder and worse or make it lower power

01:24:20 ◼   ► and make it throttle its CPUs at even lower speeds.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Both of those would be terrible

01:24:24 ◼   ► because nobody's asking for that.

01:24:25 ◼   ► But as for Kansai, this is Apple.

01:24:29 ◼   ► This is especially today Apple and heyday arguments aside,

01:24:33 ◼   ► we all know they love making things thinner

01:24:35 ◼   ► that nobody was really asking for.

01:24:36 ◼   ► So they might just do that instead.

01:24:38 ◼   ► I hope they don't.

01:24:39 ◼   ► - Oh, the iMac is gonna get thinner.

01:24:41 ◼   ► It's just a question of when.

01:24:42 ◼   ► - Eh, probably right.

01:24:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:45 ◼   ► Nick Alexander writes, "A legitimate question

01:24:48 ◼   ► "that's not trying to stir any bad blood.

01:24:49 ◼   ► "Do you think Steve Jobs' Apple would have treated

01:24:51 ◼   ► "the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini generally the same way

01:24:54 ◼   ► "that Tim Cook's Apple have?

01:24:55 ◼   ► "If so, what do you think the Jobs

01:24:57 ◼   ► would have done differently.

01:25:00 ◼   ► I have no interest in doing the,

01:25:04 ◼   ► "Oh, if Steve were alive" thing.

01:25:05 ◼   ► So if one of you has a different angle on this,

01:25:08 ◼   ► then I'm happy to hear it,

01:25:09 ◼   ► but I respectfully abstain from this one.

01:25:12 ◼   ► - So I added this one because I thought it was interesting

01:25:14 ◼   ► not to just bash on Tim Cook

01:25:16 ◼   ► and wish for Steve to be here again,

01:25:18 ◼   ► but I thought there was some constructive commentary

01:25:22 ◼   ► to be had here.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Basically, we could ask ourselves a lot of questions like,

01:25:27 ◼   ► what would Steve do? How would things be different if Steve was still here? Or would Steve have

01:25:33 ◼   ► done the things that Tim Cook's Apple has done? There's a number of sides to this, some

01:25:40 ◼   ► of which are constructive, some of which are just useless speculation. What we have to

01:25:45 ◼   ► really consider here is that this is a completely different time and a fairly different company

01:25:53 ◼   ► from when Steve was alive.

01:25:55 ◼   ► He passed away in 2011.

01:25:57 ◼   ► That was a good amount of time ago now.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Since then, the company has gotten substantially larger.

01:26:04 ◼   ► It has more product lines.

01:26:05 ◼   ► It has significant maturation of the existing product lines

01:26:10 ◼   ► that were there when he was there.

01:26:13 ◼   ► So the iPhone, even though he was there

01:26:16 ◼   ► for the launch of the iPhone,

01:26:17 ◼   ► the iPhone today is very different from it was.

01:26:21 ◼   ► He passed away right after the iPhone 4S was unveiled,

01:26:24 ◼   ► to give you some idea of how far we've come.

01:26:27 ◼   ► So it's hard to say what this person would have done

01:26:32 ◼   ► who led a company that was much smaller than it is today

01:26:35 ◼   ► in a very different time seven years ago.

01:26:38 ◼   ► In general themes, we can speculate.

01:26:41 ◼   ► We can say things like, you know,

01:26:43 ◼   ► Steve did seem to really like computers a lot.

01:26:46 ◼   ► And Tim seems to have bigger picture ambitions

01:26:48 ◼   ► that don't prioritize computers.

01:26:52 ◼   ► But ultimately, Steve do lots of things too.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Steve ship bad products too.

01:26:58 ◼   ► I do really miss Steve for a lot of reasons.

01:27:02 ◼   ► I really, really miss Steve and I bet Apple does too.

01:27:05 ◼   ► But it's hard to say what he would have done

01:27:08 ◼   ► because what we saw from him and the company that he saw

01:27:12 ◼   ► was so different from the one today

01:27:13 ◼   ► and the environment and the competitive landscape

01:27:16 ◼   ► and all the product lines today.

01:27:18 ◼   ► So I think Steve Jobs probably would have treated the Mac Mini just as badly because

01:27:21 ◼   ► he didn't really care about the computer either.

01:27:23 ◼   ► He did treat the Mac Mini just as badly.

01:27:24 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

01:27:25 ◼   ► So that's not, you don't need to expect that one.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Yeah, the Mac Pro, you know, I think he had a pretty decent record with the Mac Pro.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I think the best way to characterize how Steve would have done things differently

01:27:36 ◼   ► is that we wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have had so many situations where things were

01:27:40 ◼   ► in limbo because Steve was very decisive, right?

01:27:44 ◼   ► And so if he had decided that the iPhone and the iPad are the future and the Mac was the

01:27:51 ◼   ► past, he would have not hesitated to can the Mac.

01:27:56 ◼   ► Like if that was the thing that he wanted to do, right?

01:27:58 ◼   ► On the other hand, if he decided that because he's a computer guy and because of the time

01:28:02 ◼   ► that he grew up and he just, you know, he loves computers as evidenced by his entire

01:28:06 ◼   ► career that he just loves computers, that he was never going to let them go, he would

01:28:09 ◼   ► not have let the Mac Pro languish like that because he would have been so lucky that we're

01:28:12 ◼   ► We're doing Macs or we're not doing them.

01:28:14 ◼   ► Are we doing them or are we not doing them?

01:28:15 ◼   ► I'm the one who decides and I decide we're doing them,

01:28:17 ◼   ► so don't leave that thing out there

01:28:19 ◼   ► for all those years, right?

01:28:20 ◼   ► - He used a Mac Pro.

01:28:21 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Like that's like,

01:28:22 ◼   ► I don't think Tim Cook has ever sat

01:28:24 ◼   ► in front of a Mac Pro once.

01:28:25 ◼   ► I don't think Tim Cook really gives two craps

01:28:28 ◼   ► about Macs or computers.

01:28:29 ◼   ► He's a businessman first.

01:28:31 ◼   ► He's not a product person at all.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Whereas Steve loved computers.

01:28:35 ◼   ► He lived and breathed computers even more than I do.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And that's like, this is like my frustration so often

01:28:42 ◼   ► like I want Apple to care as much about computers as I do and a lot of times it seems like they

01:28:46 ◼   ► don't. But like with Steve I never had that concern.

01:28:50 ◼   ► So and the important thing to remember is like with the Mac Mini, right? It's not

01:28:53 ◼   ► as if you know that Steve gave 100% attention to every product like yeah he'd let the

01:28:59 ◼   ► Mac Mini be mostly language, right? And so how can you say he'd love computers if he's

01:29:03 ◼   ► not constantly updating the Mac Mini or if the Mac Mini is such a bad deal and like you

01:29:06 ◼   ► You know, like, how can you say that?

01:29:09 ◼   ► It's going back to the case for the true Mac Pro successor

01:29:13 ◼   ► car guy's analogy.

01:29:14 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was a car guy when he was a computer guy, right?

01:29:16 ◼   ► And computer guys, mostly, you know,

01:29:19 ◼   ► they have something that they like,

01:29:20 ◼   ► whether it's like big American muscle cars

01:29:22 ◼   ► or sleek, fast sports cars.

01:29:24 ◼   ► There are far fewer car enthusiasts

01:29:29 ◼   ► who are really, really into sort of low powered,

01:29:34 ◼   ► inexpensive cars part of being into cars is about you know speed right car

01:29:40 ◼   ► You know someone nice. This is the slowest car ever made isn't that great no?

01:29:43 ◼   ► Speed is part of car and motorsports right so of course Steve Jobs the computer guy

01:29:49 ◼   ► Love the big fast computers love to have all that you know computing horsepower up there

01:29:55 ◼   ► It was less enthused about making a really inexpensive headless Mac where you could use your own crappy

01:30:00 ◼   ► Logitech keyboard or your own crappy PC monitor with it like that wasn't his thing. It wasn't elegant. It wasn't beautiful

01:30:07 ◼   ► It was like a product that you make some people like maybe it's neat

01:30:09 ◼   ► Isn't it kind of cool that it's small or whatever, but he was never enthusiastic about it, right?

01:30:13 ◼   ► But he was enthusiastic about computers and in the same way that you can imagine the CEO of a car company

01:30:20 ◼   ► You know

01:30:22 ◼   ► Even something like Toyota like, you know, they make all these Camry's and you know, all the Corollas and everything, right?

01:30:28 ◼   ► But if you are the CEO of Toyota and you're going to like, you know

01:30:32 ◼   ► Hang out with the workers and see what they're up to you want to go to see the team making the LFA

01:30:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you're gonna visit the Camry line and check out the corrals and everything like that

01:30:40 ◼   ► But if you're you know, really into cars and you're the CEO of Toyota

01:30:44 ◼   ► You're gonna you want to go talk to the LFA people you want to say like how's the LFA coming?

01:30:49 ◼   ► I know this is like not important to our bottom line and shareholders care about how many cameras we sold

01:30:52 ◼   ► But I want to see how the LFA is coming right and Steve Jobs always seem to be the same way

01:30:56 ◼   ► So I feel like he would have been more decisive and

01:30:58 ◼   ► And that would have worked, you know

01:31:01 ◼   ► like I said

01:31:02 ◼   ► he's one of two ways he

01:31:03 ◼   ► Decisively cut off the Mac when he felt like it was time because he was ruthless in that way even though he loved computers

01:31:09 ◼   ► But up until that point he would have supported

01:31:12 ◼   ► Ridiculous overpowered computers that were he would have made that jellyfish hundred percent the Mac Pro jellyfish

01:31:19 ◼   ► He would have made that he made he made the cube. He made all those beard IMAX

01:31:22 ◼   ► He would have commissioned the jellyfish and he would have been like this is awesome

01:31:25 ◼   ► It's got tentacles and it's amazing.

01:31:27 ◼   ► Each one has a CPU in it and it probably would have flopped, but he did love some computers.

01:31:31 ◼   ► All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Away, Squarespace, and Techmeme Ride Home.

01:31:37 ◼   ► And we will see you next week.

01:31:39 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin.

01:31:46 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental.

01:31:48 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:31:50 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental,

01:31:57 ◼   ► it was accidental.

01:32:01 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:32:06 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.

01:32:17 ◼   ► Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T-Marco, R-Men, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A-C, R-A-C-U-S-A, it's accidental.

01:32:32 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental. Tech podcast so long.

01:32:42 ◼   ► I do want to, since we don't have anything else to talk about in the after show, I do

01:32:45 ◼   ► I do want to very briefly address topics that have come up

01:32:48 ◼   ► that people keep asking us to talk about

01:32:50 ◼   ► that we haven't mentioned.

01:32:52 ◼   ► One of them is Apple hiring that dude

01:32:54 ◼   ► and the other one is Mark Zuckerberg being a (bleep)

01:32:57 ◼   ► and I just don't, everything Apple does,

01:33:01 ◼   ► we also didn't cover the red iPhone.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Everything Apple does doesn't warrant mentioning, honestly.

01:33:07 ◼   ► It does a lot of stuff these days that's really boring,

01:33:10 ◼   ► that is not newsworthy and so we can't mention everything

01:33:13 ◼   ► and some of the stuff just gets cut.

01:33:15 ◼   ► And as for Zuckerberg's testimony to Congress

01:33:18 ◼   ► and everything else, it's all just a duck and pony show.

01:33:21 ◼   ► He's gonna keep doing what he's doing,

01:33:22 ◼   ► no one's gonna do anything,

01:33:23 ◼   ► no one's gonna leave Facebook except me

01:33:25 ◼   ► and maybe two people in my group.

01:33:26 ◼   ► So it's like, big companies do boring stuff all the time,

01:33:30 ◼   ► and Zuckerberg is gonna be a turd all the time.

01:33:33 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:33:34 ◼   ► There's just nothing's gonna change either of those things.

01:33:36 ◼   ► - I can always talk about Apple things though.

01:33:38 ◼   ► The person they hired,

01:33:39 ◼   ► the reason I think this didn't come up in the show,

01:33:43 ◼   ► like what was it, the AI person from Google or whatever,

01:33:46 ◼   ► oh this one hire is gonna make Siri better.

01:33:48 ◼   ► Like that's not how these things work.

01:33:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly. - Like not how it works.

01:33:51 ◼   ► - Like the only, the times that happens

01:33:54 ◼   ► is very notable because it's rare.

01:33:55 ◼   ► Like getting, hiring Steve Jobs,

01:33:58 ◼   ► that was a big deal for Apple in 1997, right?

01:34:00 ◼   ► That's one case where you could say,

01:34:02 ◼   ► this one guy's gonna turn the company around?

01:34:03 ◼   ► Yeah, actually he did.

01:34:05 ◼   ► But it's hard to think, like it's not saying

01:34:07 ◼   ► that they're not gonna help

01:34:08 ◼   ► and it's not a good move or anything,

01:34:09 ◼   ► but we don't know this person,

01:34:12 ◼   ► We don't know. It's so hard to tell when you're like someone who works at that level in a

01:34:16 ◼   ► corporation. It's so hard to tell exactly what their skill set is. Right. Like what

01:34:21 ◼   ► are they bringing to the table. Were they just in the right place at the right time

01:34:25 ◼   ► and had the minimum necessary skills to take advantage of a success that was going to happen

01:34:31 ◼   ► with or without them. Or did that success happen only because they were there. Right.

01:34:36 ◼   ► And we don't know because we know these people are not like you know have like a you know

01:34:39 ◼   ► tech executive trading cards. I don't, I never heard this person's name. I don't even remember

01:34:43 ◼   ► it anymore. So when there's some big hire like that, I say, "Oh, good. Good for Apple.

01:34:48 ◼   ► Looks like they're, they know they need to work on Siri." And then I just don't pay attention

01:34:51 ◼   ► for a couple of years and we'll see. And if a couple of years it turns around, I'd be

01:34:54 ◼   ► like, "See, you thought that guy wasn't going to do it, but he did it. Great. Fine. Show

01:34:58 ◼   ► me." But I'm always like, "Show me the results. That's all I care about." Even with Steve

01:35:01 ◼   ► Jobs. "Show me the results." I didn't think he was going to succeed either, famously,

01:35:06 ◼   ► Because history had shown that he had flamed out spectacularly every time he tried to do

01:35:10 ◼   ► something and he was a mess.

01:35:11 ◼   ► But he figured it out.

01:35:12 ◼   ► So I always just think, "Show me the results."

01:35:15 ◼   ► And then the Facebook stuff, yeah, I can't be bothered.

01:35:19 ◼   ► Like our entire government is so depressing.

01:35:21 ◼   ► Nothing is going to happen from that Facebook thing.

01:35:23 ◼   ► Facebook is depressing.

01:35:24 ◼   ► I try not to pay attention to it.

01:35:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the best you could do.

01:35:27 ◼   ► Anything else?

01:35:28 ◼   ► Oh, and the red phones, I do like the fact that they're giving redbacks with black fronts

01:35:33 ◼   ► because that's the thing that I always wish they did.

01:35:35 ◼   ► I love that I started the segment with, "Here's things we're not going to talk about on the

01:35:37 ◼   ► show," and then we're talking about them on the show.

01:35:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it's two seconds.

01:35:40 ◼   ► It's a quickie.

01:35:41 ◼   ► That's the tech everyone has on it.

01:35:42 ◼   ► It's like everyone who likes the black fronts of the phones.

01:35:45 ◼   ► And I kind of like—my kids have a lot of like, mostly iPod touches and stuff that have

01:35:48 ◼   ► colored backs, but white fronts.

01:35:50 ◼   ► They do look kind of cool.

01:35:51 ◼   ► They look kind of like the red ones look Christmasy, like the white and the red, and we have a

01:35:56 ◼   ► blue and the white front.