ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Also my throat's burning from all the ginger I put in my lemon ginger honey thing.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I put too much.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Normally I just mince the ginger, but this time I decided to put a ginger and hot water

00:00:09 ◼   ► solution in my blender and really puree the crap out of it.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Really in there.

00:00:14 ◼   ► And wow, is it stronger that way.

00:00:16 ◼   ► You're using chemical weapons on yourself.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Next Marco pepper sprays his throat.

00:00:23 ◼   ► And then of course all the ginger particles sank to the bottom of the cup.

00:00:27 ◼   ► So the whole rest of the time I was drinking it,

00:00:29 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this isn't too bad.

00:00:29 ◼   ► But now, I mean, now I'm at the bottom.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And now, every sip is like fire.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - You just need to get crystallized ginger

00:00:36 ◼   ► so you can slowly eat the crystals.

00:00:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Did you know that ginger tea is almost always BS?

00:00:43 ◼   ► Like, if you try to get just like, bad ginger tea

00:00:45 ◼   ► so it's all dried, every single one of them I've ever seen

00:00:49 ◼   ► includes as one of the ingredients black pepper.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - What?

00:00:53 ◼   ► Why, is that BS?

00:00:54 ◼   ► 'Cause you don't like black pepper?

00:00:56 ◼   ► because they're trying to make it feel like fresh ginger

00:00:59 ◼   ► with the burn in the back of your throat

00:01:01 ◼   ► by making you drink black pepper, basically.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Does ginger, fresh ginger give you a burn

00:01:06 ◼   ► in the back of your, I guess I don't need enough

00:01:08 ◼   ► fresh ginger to know, I mean I--

00:01:09 ◼   ► - Ginger is spicy, it's like, there's like a spice to it.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But when you dry it out and make dry tea bags with it,

00:01:15 ◼   ► you lose that, and so to make you think you're tasting

00:01:19 ◼   ► more fresh ginger than you are, they add black pepper

00:01:22 ◼   ► to ginger tea bags to remind you of the burn

00:01:25 ◼   ► that you get with fresh ginger,

00:01:26 ◼   ► but it's like engine noises, it's totally fake.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - When do you eat fresh ginger other than this thing

00:01:31 ◼   ► that you're doing to yourself 'cause you're sick?

00:01:33 ◼   ► - I'm not sick, I just enjoy this.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - Yes, it's fresh, but then you chop it up

00:01:37 ◼   ► and then you cook it, you make it hot in some kind of pan.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - What about the ginger that comes with sushi?

00:01:42 ◼   ► - That's pickled.

00:01:43 ◼   ► - Ah, okay.

00:01:44 ◼   ► - And I don't eat sushi.

00:01:45 ◼   ► - Have you tried it?

00:01:46 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, I don't like fish.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Oh, John.

00:01:49 ◼   ► - Neither do I, I finally, so my problem is I don't like

00:01:52 ◼   ► fish and I'm allergic to avocado.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Try to find anything at a sushi restaurant

00:01:58 ◼   ► that contains neither of those things.

00:02:00 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm eating fresh ginger right now in this drink.

00:02:03 ◼   ► It's really good, but a little burny.

00:02:05 ◼   ► - But a little burny.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause I'm making my own ginger tea

00:02:08 ◼   ► because actual ginger tea is bull (beep)

00:02:10 ◼   ► - Just because it contains pepper.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Like I'm not convinced that people

00:02:13 ◼   ► just don't like the taste of pepper.

00:02:15 ◼   ► You think it's ginger fakery,

00:02:17 ◼   ► but maybe it's just, it's positive peppering.

00:02:20 ◼   ► - If that's the reason they added it,

00:02:22 ◼   ► they would put pepper on the label.

00:02:24 ◼   ► They would advertise it as ginger pepper tea.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Zero of them do this.

00:02:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:29 ◼   ► - They don't put salt on the labels, they're salting.

00:02:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:32 ◼   ► - No, actually, I don't think so.

00:02:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:35 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:02:37 ◼   ► - So let's do follow up.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Peter Kendall writes that he loves that, Marco,

00:02:40 ◼   ► you purchased some walkie talkies for your road trip,

00:02:42 ◼   ► since he is an amateur or ham radio operator,

00:02:45 ◼   ► and he is glad that they worked well.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Peter continues, "While walkie talkies

00:02:49 ◼   ► "don't have the best range,

00:02:50 ◼   ► "once one passes an amateur radio exam,

00:02:52 ◼   ► that you can get access to much more powerful radios. For example, one can get these mobile

00:02:56 ◼   ► radios that pump out 50 watts and are powered by the 12-volt battery in your car and have

00:03:01 ◼   ► a detachable head unit to put on your dash. There are other shapes and sizes as well,

00:03:05 ◼   ► including smaller ones that are basically glorified walkie-talkies but more powerful.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Holy monkey, 50 watts is--I don't know anything, and I know that's significant.

00:03:13 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I mean, for reference, the walkie-talkies max out at 2 watts, and you only get the 2

00:03:18 ◼   ► if you go, you're only legally supposed to use

00:03:21 ◼   ► the two watt versions, if you go to the FCC's website

00:03:25 ◼   ► and register for a GMRS license, which I actually did,

00:03:29 ◼   ► and I didn't want to get in trouble for using

00:03:31 ◼   ► the two watt channels, and I did it because it was

00:03:33 ◼   ► really easy and inexpensive to do it.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Going all the way for a full ham radio license

00:03:38 ◼   ► is considerably more involved, and I didn't think

00:03:43 ◼   ► it was necessary to communicate between two vehicles

00:03:45 ◼   ► that were usually at most a few hundred feet apart.

00:03:50 ◼   ► So it wasn't necessary for this use case,

00:03:52 ◼   ► but ham radio is one of those things,

00:03:54 ◼   ► there's a lot of overlap between ham radio and nerd culture,

00:03:58 ◼   ► and I respect a lot of it,

00:03:59 ◼   ► but I don't know that much about it.

00:04:01 ◼   ► But ultimately, I've never had much of a reason

00:04:04 ◼   ► to get into it, because the broadcast nature

00:04:08 ◼   ► of that hobby for me I've solved with podcasting,

00:04:11 ◼   ► and the short-range communication nature,

00:04:13 ◼   ► never really had a need until now, and walkie-talkies serve my needs perfectly well.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I put this in here because I feel like it fits well with Marco's vinyl revival and

00:04:25 ◼   ► Raspberry Pi stuff. Not that he's going to be into it now, but maybe this is like

00:04:30 ◼   ► the ghost of Marco Future when he wants another tech thing to get into, or maybe he finds

00:04:33 ◼   ► himself traveling to Upstate a lot, or maybe he retires to Upstate and needs to have walkie-talkies.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Seeing Marco take an amateur radio exam to get a license for a more powerful radio is

00:04:43 ◼   ► a thing that seems plausible to me.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So just put a marker here.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Come back in 20 years.

00:04:48 ◼   ► There is no way I would ever be allowed to put a giant antenna in my yard.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Once you have your giant compound upstate, you have plenty of land for that.

00:04:56 ◼   ► It's true.

00:04:58 ◼   ► There's some sort of ham joke here that I just can't put my finger on.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I'm more of a brisket person.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Nah, that's not the ham I was going for, but I'll allow it.

00:05:07 ◼   ► As long as one of us got one in, I'm good.

00:05:09 ◼   ► All right, Eduardo Ponce writes,

00:05:10 ◼   ► "If anyone's wondering whether the new onboarding screens

00:05:13 ◼   ► "on iOS 11.3 were all about GDPR, wonder no more."

00:05:17 ◼   ► And they include a link to a photograph of their Apple TV

00:05:22 ◼   ► where there are clearly some string,

00:05:26 ◼   ► what would you call these?

00:05:26 ◼   ► I don't know, like placeholders.

00:05:28 ◼   ► - There are localization identifiers, basically.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Like when you're writing an app

00:05:32 ◼   ► that's supposed to be localized to different languages,

00:05:35 ◼   ► you usually wrap the string calls

00:05:37 ◼   ► in some kind of localization layer,

00:05:39 ◼   ► like NS localized string or something like that.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And so the idea is you don't just hard code

00:05:45 ◼   ► the language strings that are gonna be shown to the user

00:05:47 ◼   ► in the source code, you have some kind of resource file

00:05:50 ◼   ► that is a strings file,

00:05:52 ◼   ► and then you can localize the strings file

00:05:54 ◼   ► that's just like a list of all the strings

00:05:56 ◼   ► that would be displayed to a user.

00:05:57 ◼   ► You can have that localized by translators,

00:05:59 ◼   ► and then you can have a whole bundle of those things

00:06:02 ◼   ► in your app, and you can have different ones

00:06:03 ◼   ► for different language and locale settings.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And your app simply, instead of saying,

00:06:08 ◼   ► ask the user, are you sure, the app says,

00:06:11 ◼   ► give me the string for the are you sure dialogue

00:06:12 ◼   ► on this page.

00:06:14 ◼   ► So it might have some kind of identifier for that,

00:06:15 ◼   ► some kind of like, are you sure dot identifier

00:06:18 ◼   ► dot setup dot one or something like that.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And so what we see here is there was some kind of problem,

00:06:25 ◼   ► some kind of bug or something where the string didn't load

00:06:28 ◼   ► and instead it just showed the identifier

00:06:30 ◼   ► and it has GDPR in the identifier,

00:06:33 ◼   ► in the name of the identifiers for the text

00:06:35 ◼   ► of this dialog for these boxes.

00:06:37 ◼   ► So clearly, Apple considers these GDPR dialogs.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - Right, so like a couple samples,

00:06:42 ◼   ► ATV for Apple TV, .videos.gdpr.welcometomovies

00:06:46 ◼   ► or ATV.videos.gdpr.continuebuttonlabel.

00:06:50 ◼   ► So yeah. (laughing)

00:06:51 ◼   ► It was funny to me because I was pretty darn confident

00:06:55 ◼   ► that this was, this boiled down to GDPR,

00:06:58 ◼   ► And man, there were not a lot of people who disagreed, but who boy did the people who

00:07:03 ◼   ► disagree, they were very confident that we were wrong.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And guess what?

00:07:07 ◼   ► Told you so.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Moving on.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Oh man, I did not think to figure out how to pronounce this.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Salian Kallion?

00:07:16 ◼   ► Mr. or Mrs. Babcock writes in, "I've dealt with technology at the high school and elementary

00:07:21 ◼   ► levels.

00:07:22 ◼   ► When it comes to cost and collaboration features, Google wins.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Since that device is configured and locked down, iOS doesn't count much.

00:07:28 ◼   ► As for video editing, it sounds cool,

00:07:29 ◼   ► but it's a huge time sink.

00:07:31 ◼   ► I didn't add this, who did?

00:07:32 ◼   ► What are we trying to say here?

00:07:34 ◼   ► - I just put a little bit of EDU feedback.

00:07:36 ◼   ► We got a lot of people replying,

00:07:38 ◼   ► so I just wanted to have a few samples

00:07:39 ◼   ► to sort of cover the range.

00:07:41 ◼   ► That's what the next few items are about.

00:07:43 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Andrew Link writes, "Creativity is the peak of learning,

00:07:47 ◼   ► "but 40% of the time I'm dealing with

00:07:48 ◼   ► "quote unquote classroom management,

00:07:50 ◼   ► "and 50% is trying to even get students

00:07:52 ◼   ► "to reach the baseline.

00:07:54 ◼   ► "There are broad family and cultural issues

00:07:57 ◼   ► to address before tech really matters.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Andrew's school or whatever is implementing Google Suite

00:08:04 ◼   ► over the next two years, it's a mixed bag,

00:08:05 ◼   ► the software's okay, the network hit

00:08:06 ◼   ► is slowing everything to a crawl.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Also, tween memories and Google-level secure passwords

00:08:12 ◼   ► are a painful mix, in other words,

00:08:14 ◼   ► everyone's always forgetting their passwords.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Didn't one of your kids have that happen to them?

00:08:18 ◼   ► - Not me. - No, not me.

00:08:20 ◼   ► - My kid has good password hygiene.

00:08:22 ◼   ► - I don't even know if you're serious or not,

00:08:23 ◼   ► and I'm a little scared.

00:08:24 ◼   ► - The reason I picked these two bits here

00:08:26 ◼   ► is that we have a lot of people who are actually in education writing to us, and maybe not

00:08:33 ◼   ► all of them, but no matter what it was these people were using, everyone had complaints,

00:08:38 ◼   ► right? So it's not complaints about the thing they're not using, complaints about the thing

00:08:41 ◼   ► they are using, complaints about the difficulty of the job, about the difficulty of dealing with

00:08:46 ◼   ► technology, and no matter what it was they were using, if they were all Apple, if they were all

00:08:49 ◼   ► Google, if they were Mix, that everything had problems. We know this, we're a tech podcast,

00:08:53 ◼   ► we complain about technology and we know the frustrations that most people who aren't

00:08:57 ◼   ► tech enthusiasts feel about technology like they're just frustrated when it doesn't work

00:09:01 ◼   ► especially if it's you're supposed to be using as part of your job um so not not a lot of feedback

00:09:07 ◼   ► was like here's what we use and we love it and it's awesome awesome some people liked one thing

00:09:11 ◼   ► better than the other and would say i'm so glad i have x it's better than y but they all had

00:09:15 ◼   ► complaints about whatever it was they were using so no silver bullet for tech in schools and i

00:09:22 ◼   ► particularly like the idea of like that creativity is the peak of learning sort of like a pyramid of

00:09:26 ◼   ► like you know what was that uh is it maslow's hierarchy of needs somebody has a hierarchy of

00:09:32 ◼   ► needs yeah and it's like uh you know safety and blah blah and very other topics like self

00:09:37 ◼   ► actualization or whatever and so it's like in in the classroom get the kids to show up get them

00:09:43 ◼   ► to be safe uh get you know get them to pay attention get them to absorb something like

00:09:49 ◼   ► And creativity is like when you get all that other stuff taken care of and then finally

00:09:53 ◼   ► they're allowed to blossom.

00:09:55 ◼   ► And that's the aspirational nature of what Apple is pitching, that by buying our products

00:10:01 ◼   ► they will enhance the peak of learning, but you have to get to that peak first.

00:10:07 ◼   ► You have to have the students in the seats paying attention, absorbing the material,

00:10:11 ◼   ► and then spreading their wings and being creative with the things that you've successfully

00:10:16 ◼   ► taught them.

00:10:17 ◼   ► It was interesting to me that I felt like a lot of the feedback we got about education

00:10:22 ◼   ► was very contradictory.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Somebody would say, "Oh, of course you would want an iPad.

00:10:26 ◼   ► The total cost of ownership is so much better.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Oh, you could never get an iPad.

00:10:30 ◼   ► The total cost is so much worse."

00:10:34 ◼   ► It was very yin and yang, and it made me laugh.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Oh yeah, one more thing.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I didn't put anybody's feedback in.

00:10:39 ◼   ► I should have.

00:10:40 ◼   ► About the idea of Apple devices or whatever devices being expensive and then only being

00:10:45 ◼   ► available in "rich schools." Lots of people were—there seems to be a disconnect between

00:10:52 ◼   ► the students that attend the schools and a tax base that potentially feeds into them,

00:10:56 ◼   ► because a lot of people are like, "We have iPads in our school, and we're not in a wealthy

00:11:01 ◼   ► area." So it doesn't mean necessarily that the students who go to the school are well

00:11:09 ◼   ► to do, but it seems in some areas more than others, money somehow is getting to these

00:11:15 ◼   ► schools that is not directly attributable to the incomes of the individual students

00:11:20 ◼   ► who are attending. And I think that's just the nature of tax spaces. It depends on where

00:11:24 ◼   ► you live, it depends on how your taxes are distributed, it depends on if there's some

00:11:30 ◼   ► other program that's feeding money into the school to buy the fancy iPads for the school

00:11:35 ◼   ► that otherwise is not awash in cash.

00:11:39 ◼   ► I mean I can tell you the opposite here.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Where I live it's filled with rich people and yet a lot of the technology in the schools

00:11:48 ◼   ► that my kids attend, especially elementary school, is entirely funded directly by the

00:11:53 ◼   ► parents as in there is no money in the school budget for technology whatsoever.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And the only reason there's any technology is because all the kids' parents are rich

00:12:01 ◼   ► and give directly money to buy.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Like, if you want to see any computers in your kid's school,

00:12:06 ◼   ► you're going to have to collect money and give them to us,

00:12:09 ◼   ► right?

00:12:10 ◼   ► And is it because the tax base isn't big enough here?

00:12:13 ◼   ► No, that can't possibly be it.

00:12:15 ◼   ► It's just a question of budgeting

00:12:16 ◼   ► and how much money goes towards elementary

00:12:18 ◼   ► and how much priority they put on putting technology

00:12:22 ◼   ► in school versus tearing down one local elementary school

00:12:27 ◼   ► and rebuilding it to be this Taj Mahal multimillion

00:12:30 ◼   ► dollar amazing piece of construction, right?

00:12:34 ◼   ► That costs a lot more money than iPads, and that was not funded by people's parents

00:12:38 ◼   ► with direct contributions, but with good old-fashioned taxes and bonds.

00:12:42 ◼   ► Would one of you like to tell me about what happens when you open a new document in pages?

00:12:47 ◼   ► I think there is a video of it.

00:12:49 ◼   ► This is related to our topic for, like, how do you—how do people find help in iOS apps

00:12:54 ◼   ► when the screen is so small?

00:12:56 ◼   ► How do you communicate the features of your application so people know when it launches

00:13:01 ◼   ► what you can do with it?

00:13:02 ◼   ► Again, because the screen is so small and there's no omnipresent menu bar with a help

00:13:05 ◼   ► menu.

00:13:06 ◼   ► And we talked about the bad ways you can do this by circling a bunch of stuff on the screen

00:13:11 ◼   ► and throwing a bunch of words in people's faces and pointing a finger and saying, "Tap

00:13:16 ◼   ► this thing to do this.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Tap that thing to do that.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Tap that thing."

00:13:19 ◼   ► And expecting them to memorize it the one time they see it.

00:13:21 ◼   ► So this is Benjamin Mayo tweeted a little video of what happens in, I'm assuming this

00:13:26 ◼   ► is the new version of pages on iOS.

00:13:30 ◼   ► So they have, you know, what you do have visible in many iOS applications is a toolbar with

00:13:34 ◼   ► some glyphs on it of some kind, icons or glyphs, whether it's the top or the bottom.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And in pages, this looks like on a phone, you launch it and the new collaboration glyph

00:13:45 ◼   ► pulses.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Like it just gets a little bigger and smaller.

00:13:48 ◼   ► I don't know if it ever stops pulsing, because in the video,

00:13:50 ◼   ► it taps it right away.

00:13:52 ◼   ► But if you tap it, it takes you to this little video that

00:13:55 ◼   ► shows you, like, oh, the collaborate feature.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And it sort of does this wordless animation showing you

00:14:01 ◼   ► how collaboration might work.

00:14:02 ◼   ► It's a pretty good animation that communicates

00:14:04 ◼   ► without too much text, kind of what collaboration does.

00:14:09 ◼   ► It has a brief explanation, but then shows you

00:14:11 ◼   ► a bunch of things.

00:14:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I think you kind of already have to know how collaboration works

00:14:15 ◼   ► to understand the video, frankly.

00:14:17 ◼   ► But that's-- I mean, I don't know

00:14:21 ◼   ► if I like that better than the overlay,

00:14:23 ◼   ► but I guess it's certainly trying to be more subtle.

00:14:25 ◼   ► I just can imagine people launching the app

00:14:27 ◼   ► and going, why is that button pulsing?

00:14:29 ◼   ► Especially if it doesn't stop.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Or if it does stop, you might think

00:14:32 ◼   ► you're going a little bit mad that like,

00:14:34 ◼   ► I could swear last time I launched this application,

00:14:36 ◼   ► part of the toolbar was pulsing.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And I'm pretty sure I wasn't on cold medicine or anything.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Anyway, I just thought it was interesting.

00:14:44 ◼   ► Here's Apple trying alternate solutions

00:14:48 ◼   ► to scribbling all over our screen with a bunch of arrows.

00:14:51 ◼   ► So, keep trying, Apple.

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00:17:03 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:17:06 ◼   ► Apple giveth and Apple taketh away.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Good news, 200 gigs of free iCloud storage,

00:17:12 ◼   ► for bad news, every managed Apple ID account

00:17:15 ◼   ► that's involved in education, womp, womp.

00:17:18 ◼   ► - I bring that up because we talk about,

00:17:19 ◼   ► oh, they need to give more iCloud storage to everybody.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And they haven't for a really long time,

00:17:25 ◼   ► someone put it how long it was,

00:17:26 ◼   ► like seven years or something since the five gig free.

00:17:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's since iCloud was introduced,

00:17:31 ◼   ► like it was never less than five gigs,

00:17:32 ◼   ► that's what it started at.

00:17:34 ◼   ► Yeah, and so for education, this is something

00:17:37 ◼   ► a lot of people cited in feedback,

00:17:39 ◼   ► including one that just came in just before the show.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Like, how much it costs to buy all the third party things you

00:17:43 ◼   ► have to buy to fill in the gaps in functionality

00:17:45 ◼   ► that Apple doesn't offer, including having cloud storage.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Which according to an email we just got, I believe,

00:17:51 ◼   ► a person said that there is no way

00:17:53 ◼   ► to pay for more iCloud storage for students.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Even if you wanted to give them more money for more,

00:17:58 ◼   ► you couldn't.

00:17:58 ◼   ► That seems very strange to me.

00:18:03 ◼   ► But anyway, Apple said, "Hey, we're increasing to 200,"

00:18:05 ◼   ► and got lots of applause, but why wouldn't you?

00:18:07 ◼   ► 200 gigabytes free, up from five, that is a big increase.

00:18:11 ◼   ► But for people who are not students, still five gigabytes.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - And we've heard from lots of other podcasters

00:18:19 ◼   ► and fans and Apple users, I keep hearing

00:18:23 ◼   ► that everyone expects that, oh, well,

00:18:25 ◼   ► they're just waiting until WWDC in June,

00:18:28 ◼   ► and that's when they're going to raise the limits

00:18:30 ◼   ► for everybody for free.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I honestly would not consider that a safe bet at all.

00:18:35 ◼   ► In fact, I might even bet against that.

00:18:38 ◼   ► You know, the five gigs is indeed comically stingy,

00:18:42 ◼   ► and even was seven years ago when I'm pretty sure

00:18:45 ◼   ► Steve Jobs introduced it.

00:18:47 ◼   ► But it was bad then and it's bad now,

00:18:50 ◼   ► but services are Apple's biggest area

00:18:53 ◼   ► of potential growth, I think.

00:18:55 ◼   ► I don't think they're gonna wanna give up

00:18:57 ◼   ► services revenue that easily.

00:18:59 ◼   ► and this is probably not a small portion of it.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Like, you know, the people who upgrade to a paid

00:19:05 ◼   ► iCloud storage plan for basic functionality

00:19:09 ◼   ► of their iOS devices, really,

00:19:12 ◼   ► that's probably not a small amount

00:19:13 ◼   ► of their services revenue.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So I can't imagine them all of a sudden

00:19:17 ◼   ► raising it to a level that would cover

00:19:19 ◼   ► way more people for free.

00:19:22 ◼   ► It'd be nice if this happens.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Apple has, in the past, occasionally,

00:19:27 ◼   ► intentionally taken a hit on margin to do something really compelling for consumers,

00:19:31 ◼   ► and they'll usually even warn analysts of that in one of the earnings calls beforehand.

00:19:35 ◼   ► But honestly, I just don't see that.

00:19:38 ◼   ► I mean, that happened a lot more in the past than it does now, and I don't see them giving

00:19:43 ◼   ► up a big chunk of services revenue when that is clearly an area where they're focusing

00:19:48 ◼   ► a lot on and depending on for growth.

00:19:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the balance that they have to keep looking at is how many people are willing

00:20:00 ◼   ► to pay money for extra storage versus how many people are at their storage limits but

00:20:05 ◼   ► still unwilling to pay.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Because when you're at your storage limit and are still unwilling to pay, that becomes

00:20:11 ◼   ► Apple's problem if it starts to affect their satisfaction.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Like if they don't like Apple because they want to charge me money, I don't want to give

00:20:18 ◼   ► many money and my phone is constantly full because a constantly full phone is

00:20:21 ◼   ► a bad user experience. It yells at you about having too much storage, you can't

00:20:24 ◼   ► take pictures, you have to choose precious things that you want to delete.

00:20:28 ◼   ► It's a bad experience, right? And so it is in Apple's interest to get people

00:20:34 ◼   ► somehow to have more storage, ideally by paying Apple money, right? That's what

00:20:38 ◼   ► they prefer. But if it turns out that nothing they do can dislodge this very

00:20:43 ◼   ► large percentage of people who refuse to pay money and constantly have full

00:20:46 ◼   ► phones, that's not a good situation.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Maybe it's still just a fraction of people.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Maybe like people do in the end, they complain but they pay, and Apple may be willing to

00:20:55 ◼   ► do that and then people feel better.

00:20:56 ◼   ► But whenever I see somebody with a full iOS device who refuses to pay for additional storage,

00:21:04 ◼   ► I feel Apple's pain by proxy.

00:21:06 ◼   ► This person is dissatisfied or unsatisfied, whichever of those is the correct word, with

00:21:11 ◼   ► their product and there's an obvious solution that doesn't cost that much money but there's

00:21:18 ◼   ► no way you will convince them to pay for you know pay for nothing to pay for air to pay

00:21:23 ◼   ► for whatever storage should be free blah blah blah software should be free like it's it's

00:21:28 ◼   ► a tough sell but it really does affect their opinion of their device maybe not enough to

00:21:34 ◼   ► get them onto another device maybe eventually beat them on another device but they are mad

00:21:37 ◼   ► about it. So I think that's a problem Apple needs to address in some way. Maybe they can

00:21:41 ◼   ► address it just by reducing the prices or changing the tiers or cleverly arranging the

00:21:45 ◼   ► tiers such that people get on board, like with the thin end of the wedge, like get on

00:21:49 ◼   ► board a cheapo tier and then slowly ratchet up as they need storage to make it feel better

00:21:54 ◼   ► for people to pay for storage. Because I feel like that's the big barrier. The big barrier

00:21:58 ◼   ► is not how much it costs, it's getting people over the hump from not paying anything to

00:22:03 ◼   ► paying something.

00:22:04 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, because so much of this is psychological.

00:22:09 ◼   ► It's more about feeling than about whether you can afford

00:22:13 ◼   ► or not afford the, whatever the cheapest plan,

00:22:16 ◼   ► like three bucks a month or something.

00:22:18 ◼   ► A lot of it is more like, people are just kind of annoyed

00:22:21 ◼   ► on principle that they have to pay for this,

00:22:22 ◼   ► or they're annoyed on principle that their phone's

00:22:24 ◼   ► bugging them about this thing that they haven't even

00:22:25 ◼   ► actually really read or looked into,

00:22:27 ◼   ► they just know that their phone's bugging them.

00:22:29 ◼   ► Or they're annoyed on principle that they only get

00:22:30 ◼   ► five gigs for free and that bugs them,

00:22:33 ◼   ► or they look at the prices of additional storage

00:22:35 ◼   ► on other services like Dropbox and how it compares

00:22:38 ◼   ► and they're like, oh, well this is a bad deal.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And so it's so much more about like,

00:22:43 ◼   ► I don't want to pay,

00:22:44 ◼   ► than I can't afford the X dollars a month in a lot of cases.

00:22:49 ◼   ► - Or they're putting their money, like you said,

00:22:51 ◼   ► towards a different thing.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Like, well, if I'm gonna pay for storage,

00:22:53 ◼   ► I'm gonna get the most bang for my buck

00:22:54 ◼   ► and that takes people off Apple services.

00:22:56 ◼   ► If you're using Dropbox for all your file storage,

00:22:58 ◼   ► you know, it's actually even more viable now

00:23:00 ◼   ► that Apple has the, you know, the ShareChute integration

00:23:02 ◼   ► for Dropbox and stuff, but I think

00:23:06 ◼   ► Apple would be upset if people decided

00:23:10 ◼   ► to use Google Photos instead of Apple's photo solution.

00:23:12 ◼   ► I think Apple wants you to use their photo

00:23:14 ◼   ► solution for a variety of reasons.

00:23:16 ◼   ► Well, they should be trying a little harder

00:23:17 ◼   ► on a variety of fronts then.

00:23:19 ◼   ► True.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And I think Apple would tell you that their photo

00:23:22 ◼   ► solution is better on privacy and all those other reasons

00:23:25 ◼   ► why you might use it, but that's the feature

00:23:28 ◼   ► that Google has hammered Apple on.

00:23:30 ◼   ► If you're constantly running out of storage

00:23:31 ◼   ► because you're filling up your film with videos and photos,

00:23:35 ◼   ► and Apple wants you to pay more money,

00:23:36 ◼   ► and Google says, "Don't pay us anything.

00:23:38 ◼   ► We'll keep an unlimited amount of your photos,"

00:23:40 ◼   ► radius quality, asterisk, forever and ever.

00:23:43 ◼   ► People say, "Oh, well then why would I pay

00:23:44 ◼   ► for the Apple thing?

00:23:45 ◼   ► I'm just gonna use Google Photos,

00:23:46 ◼   ► and I'm gonna use the Google Photos app

00:23:49 ◼   ► instead of the Apple Photos app,

00:23:50 ◼   ► and I'm gonna use the Google website."

00:23:51 ◼   ► Apple doesn't want you to go all in

00:23:53 ◼   ► on the Google ecosystem, right?

00:23:54 ◼   ► So Apple should do something.

00:23:58 ◼   ► I don't know if that means increase the five gig tier

00:24:01 ◼   ► 200 for everybody for free, but something would be nice.

00:24:03 ◼   ► You know what it is that bothers me so much about this is that I feel like 5 gigs is an

00:24:10 ◼   ► egregiously, obnoxiously paltry amount.

00:24:13 ◼   ► If it was maybe as much as the smallest modern iPhone, so let's say it's 30 or whatever

00:24:20 ◼   ► gigs, you know, 32 gigs or thereabouts, that at least feels like, okay, they're giving

00:24:24 ◼   ► you something reasonable.

00:24:26 ◼   ► If you have one single iPhone attached to your Apple ID, it stands to reason that you

00:24:31 ◼   ► should be able to back that up to iCloud for free.

00:24:35 ◼   ► That to me would be still more paltry than I would want.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Like something along the lines of 200 gigs sounds really great.

00:24:42 ◼   ► But let's say for the sake of argument, 32 gigs is what they're going to bring tomorrow.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Tomorrow you can have 32 gigs of storage.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Then I wouldn't be as offended by it.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I would be slightly annoyed, but I wouldn't be friggin' offended.

00:24:56 ◼   ► but five gigs is like, man, screw you.

00:25:00 ◼   ► We don't give you any storage.

00:25:02 ◼   ► But here, fine, fine, okay, we'll give you a little bit.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Be happy about that.

00:25:07 ◼   ► I just find it obnoxious, it's so little.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And that's the thing that bothers me.

00:25:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wonder how much of this is just like inertia.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Like, if they were launching this service today,

00:25:18 ◼   ► I doubt that the number they would pick would be five gigs.

00:25:21 ◼   ► But it's probably hard for them to,

00:25:24 ◼   ► first of all, in typical Apple fashion,

00:25:26 ◼   ► they probably don't look at this very often.

00:25:28 ◼   ► You know, like they set it up, it's going,

00:25:32 ◼   ► and it's probably, you know,

00:25:33 ◼   ► a lot like a lot of their hardware releases

00:25:35 ◼   ► where like it just gets ignored for years

00:25:38 ◼   ► until somebody realizes they should look at it eventually.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And so I'm guessing this hasn't actually been

00:25:43 ◼   ► reconsidered that often.

00:25:45 ◼   ► And then because there's the inertia

00:25:48 ◼   ► of having it there for so long,

00:25:49 ◼   ► the idea of increasing it by a large amount

00:25:53 ◼   ► probably does scare them on two fronts.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Number one, you know, margin, as I mentioned earlier,

00:25:56 ◼   ► they're probably afraid of that services revenue

00:25:58 ◼   ► going down or having the growth slow down.

00:26:01 ◼   ► And number two, every iOS device is a lot of iOS devices.

00:26:05 ◼   ► And so the scale at which they would have to scale this up,

00:26:10 ◼   ► they probably can't offer something like a terabyte

00:26:14 ◼   ► for free to everybody, 'cause there probably aren't

00:26:16 ◼   ► enough hard drives in the world, or something like that.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Like, there is probably some kind of major limit

00:26:21 ◼   ► on scale in place here.

00:26:23 ◼   ► I don't know where that limit is.

00:26:24 ◼   ► it's gotta be way higher than five gigs,

00:26:27 ◼   ► but they probably couldn't, say, offer 200 gigs

00:26:30 ◼   ► to everybody, like that might be too high,

00:26:33 ◼   ► or it might be just impractical, or it might be like,

00:26:36 ◼   ► maybe they can do it in a couple years, maybe not yet.

00:26:38 ◼   ► So there's definitely, I guarantee you

00:26:41 ◼   ► there's some kind of scale concerns there.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Whether they are impassable or not, I don't know.

00:26:45 ◼   ► But if you start doing the math of how many

00:26:47 ◼   ► active iOS devices there are out there,

00:26:49 ◼   ► and how many hard drives and data centers

00:26:53 ◼   ► they would need. It is pretty large numbers, so there is definitely a factor there. But

00:26:58 ◼   ► it might not, you know, it's gotta be higher than 5 gigs.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Well, there's a new single region only variant of S3 for 22% less than the regular price.

00:27:07 ◼   ► I'll get right on that. I'm trying to think back to when the 5 gig limit was introduced,

00:27:14 ◼   ► and I'm pretty sure that 5 gigs was always positioned as this is not enough for you to

00:27:21 ◼   ► to—this is not covering you.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Apple never sold a 5 gig device with a 5 gig of thing.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It was always so clearly the starter price, you get a little bit for free, but if you

00:27:32 ◼   ► use and fill whatever device you purchased, you're going to run out of 5 gigs.

00:27:37 ◼   ► So it was always with the expectation that if you fill the device, you need to buy more.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Five gigs today still is something that if you get it and you fill it, you have to buy

00:27:48 ◼   ► more.

00:27:49 ◼   ► It fills the same role.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It is equally able to cause people to hit the limit.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And arguably with the Heath, you know, H.265 stuff, you could hit your limits more slowly

00:28:04 ◼   ► now than you did last year because your images are half the size and stuff.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Yeah, now you can fit 10 minutes of 4K video.

00:28:10 ◼   ► Yeah, but in general, every photo and every video is so much bigger than it was back when

00:28:15 ◼   ► the 5 gig limit was introduced that it feels more punitive now than it did before.

00:28:21 ◼   ► It's just, it's a bummer.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Classrooms for Mac.

00:28:25 ◼   ► So there's already a classrooms app for iPad, maybe iPhone, I don't remember, doesn't really

00:28:29 ◼   ► matter for iOS.

00:28:30 ◼   ► And they said, "Classrooms for Mac is coming in June as a beta."

00:28:36 ◼   ► What?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Why not now as a beta?

00:28:39 ◼   ► Why June?

00:28:40 ◼   ► Well, there's one clear, well, I shouldn't say clear answer.

00:28:44 ◼   ► one clear theory about that.

00:28:47 ◼   ► There's one hopeful theory about that.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And probably a few other explanations that are less interesting.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Right.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And one of the less interesting ones is probably the accurate, you know, real answer.

00:28:57 ◼   ► But the fun theory that we can pontificate about is Marzipan, which is that supposed

00:29:02 ◼   ► cross-platform framework that is maybe but maybe not coming at WWDC.

00:29:08 ◼   ► And perhaps that's why we can't talk about it, because there's more things to come in

00:29:15 ◼   ► June at WWDC, and then it'll all be made clear.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Well, that's why you can't download it.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Because if you download it, then everyone would just run GlassStump or whatever and

00:29:23 ◼   ► look at the frameworks.

00:29:25 ◼   ► But speaking of frameworks, the much more boring explanation is it's UXKit, the same

00:29:28 ◼   ► thing that Photos and stuff is made out of.

00:29:30 ◼   ► When Apple has been in situations in the past where there's an iOS device and they want

00:29:35 ◼   ► something more or less like that iOS device on the Mac,

00:29:38 ◼   ► they have ways of doing that that don't involve

00:29:40 ◼   ► the rumored cross-platform framework thing.

00:29:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also, it just might not be ready yet.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Like, it actually-- - Yeah, that's the most

00:29:47 ◼   ► boring explanation is they're just not done writing it.

00:29:49 ◼   ► - And that, I think, is by far the most likely.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I love the idea of this Project Marzipan thing.

00:29:54 ◼   ► I really hope it's real, and I do think this summer

00:29:57 ◼   ► would not be an unreasonable time to launch it into beta.

00:29:59 ◼   ► That would be a really fun explanation for this.

00:30:02 ◼   ► It's much more likely that it just isn't ready yet,

00:30:04 ◼   ► because it is not like, the fact that Apple said,

00:30:08 ◼   ► "Here's an event that we're going to announce something,

00:30:10 ◼   ► "but you can't actually see it or buy it

00:30:13 ◼   ► "or use it yet for a few months."

00:30:15 ◼   ► That's so common now.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Like that's constantly used for all sorts of reasons,

00:30:21 ◼   ► for all sorts of products.

00:30:23 ◼   ► The most rare thing now is when they have an event

00:30:26 ◼   ► and they announce something, that's ready right then.

00:30:28 ◼   ► You can buy like today or tomorrow.

00:30:29 ◼   ► That's the less common case now.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So the fact this isn't ready yet,

00:30:32 ◼   ► I really, I think it's unlikely that it has any other

00:30:36 ◼   ► meaning other than it's not ready yet.

00:30:38 ◼   ► - But it probably is using UXKit,

00:30:40 ◼   ► 'cause I don't see why they would port something from iOS

00:30:42 ◼   ► and not use the framework they have

00:30:44 ◼   ► that they have used successfully to port a bunch of stuff

00:30:46 ◼   ► from iOS, right?

00:30:47 ◼   ► That's not the cross, that's not Marzipan,

00:30:50 ◼   ► but it is a way that Apple has done this in the past,

00:30:52 ◼   ► and I'm sure it saves them time.

00:30:54 ◼   ► - Especially if Marzipan requires support at the OS level

00:30:58 ◼   ► on the Mac side, which it probably would,

00:31:00 ◼   ► they probably wouldn't have that support in High Sierra.

00:31:03 ◼   ► It would probably be pushed to the next version of Mac OS,

00:31:06 ◼   ► or maybe even the one after that,

00:31:08 ◼   ► if it's gonna launch in beta,

00:31:09 ◼   ► and that's not gonna be ready in time

00:31:11 ◼   ► for this coming school year.

00:31:13 ◼   ► It's gonna be launched probably in October or something,

00:31:15 ◼   ► and no IT administrator should be installing it in October.

00:31:19 ◼   ► So, it's probably just not ready yet.

00:31:23 ◼   ► - And setting aside UXKit,

00:31:28 ◼   ► I perceive lots of new Apple applications to be iOS-like, whether or not they use UX

00:31:34 ◼   ► under the covers, when they just feel like an iOS app.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Photos certainly does.

00:31:38 ◼   ► I think maps, maybe contacts or notes, depending on how you squint at them.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Reminders, calendar.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:46 ◼   ► It could be argued that this is actually not iOS-like, but merely the modern Mac way.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Like Apple's trying to say this is what modern Mac apps sort of look like.

00:31:53 ◼   ► But if you use iOS a lot, a lot of things look mighty familiar.

00:31:57 ◼   ► And again, I'm not class-numping every single one of these apps to see do they actually

00:32:02 ◼   ► use the same framework as Photos or is it, you know.

00:32:05 ◼   ► But from a user's perspective, they feel very iOS-y.

00:32:09 ◼   ► In this case, we know it's an application that already existed in iOS and so it makes

00:32:13 ◼   ► sense that they would use some technique to reuse some of the work that they've already

00:32:17 ◼   ► done in iOS rather than re-uploading it from scratch in AppKit.

00:32:21 ◼   ► But I'm sure when this application comes out, some of them will tell us definitively.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Steve Trout and Smith.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Steve Trout I have one quickie I just wanted to share.

00:32:30 ◼   ► I have finally joined the world of inductive charging and by and large my phone for the

00:32:36 ◼   ► last couple of weeks now has not had anything plugged into it.

00:32:41 ◼   ► And inductive charging is pretty cool, it turns out.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Steven McLaughlin Who knew?

00:32:44 ◼   ► Oh, that's right.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I told you this a long time ago.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Steve Trout Well, but the difference between you and me

00:32:49 ◼   ► is I didn't crap all over inductive charging.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I just said, "Oh, that sounds neat, sir."

00:32:53 ◼   ► Anyway, the point I'm trying to say is, the Mophie base that I think you and most of the

00:32:58 ◼   ► rest of the world recommended is really great.

00:33:01 ◼   ► And I got what appears to be, like what is aesthetically a terrible mount for my car,

00:33:08 ◼   ► but in functionality is a really great mount for my car.

00:33:11 ◼   ► And so what I can do is, I can get in my car, I can just kind of drop my phone in this little

00:33:16 ◼   ► mount and it starts charging.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And when I want to leave my car, I just pick it up out of the mount.

00:33:21 ◼   ► And it's super convenient.

00:33:22 ◼   ► I'm only ever in my car for like two minutes at a time,

00:33:24 ◼   ► so I'm doing this just 'cause I think it's cool,

00:33:26 ◼   ► not because it's ever particularly useful,

00:33:28 ◼   ► but inductive charging, super cool,

00:33:30 ◼   ► and it is super weird after having had an iPhone

00:33:33 ◼   ► since the 3GS to have gone for like two weeks

00:33:36 ◼   ► without having plugged anything into my phone.

00:33:38 ◼   ► So odd, but I love it.

00:33:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, I know a lot of people try it

00:33:43 ◼   ► and it's not for them, that's cool.

00:33:45 ◼   ► I find it very much for me as well,

00:33:48 ◼   ► like I really, like now, plugging in my phone

00:33:51 ◼   ► and when I travel it just feels barbaric.

00:33:54 ◼   ► It's like, man, I have to plug this in?

00:33:56 ◼   ► This is so weird.

00:33:57 ◼   ► The one thing I will, I do still plug it in in the car.

00:34:00 ◼   ► I did, so in our episode about my $7 piece of garbage

00:34:04 ◼   ► that I was using to mount my phone in my car before,

00:34:06 ◼   ► a bunch of people wrote in to recommend better phone mounts

00:34:10 ◼   ► and by far the most commonly recommended one

00:34:12 ◼   ► is the ProClip line of products.

00:34:14 ◼   ► And you basically, you go on ProClip's site

00:34:17 ◼   ► and you buy a certain base that's made to fit

00:34:20 ◼   ► exactly your model of car, and then you buy

00:34:23 ◼   ► like the second part of it, which is like the phone part

00:34:26 ◼   ► that you buy exactly the one for exactly the phone you have

00:34:29 ◼   ► and they interface in some kind of standard way.

00:34:32 ◼   ► And so like when you get a new phone,

00:34:33 ◼   ► you can just replace the phone part.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And you get a new car, you just replace the car part.

00:34:37 ◼   ► And it's not cheap, the combination of both sides of this

00:34:42 ◼   ► was $90. (laughs)

00:34:45 ◼   ► - Holy hell!

00:34:47 ◼   ► - And you have to mess up your dashboard too, right?

00:34:49 ◼   ► - Well no, so it does a pressure fit

00:34:52 ◼   ► inside one of the air vents.

00:34:53 ◼   ► So it's like pushing against the top and bottom

00:34:56 ◼   ► of the air vent to kind of wedge itself in there

00:34:58 ◼   ► with a little rubber pad under it to keep it in place.

00:35:01 ◼   ► And I gotta say, it is really, really solid.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Like, it is the only thing I've seen

00:35:08 ◼   ► that actually keeps the phone totally still.

00:35:12 ◼   ► You know, you can run over a bump or anything.

00:35:14 ◼   ► The phone does not move.

00:35:16 ◼   ► It is attached very firmly to the car.

00:35:19 ◼   ► It was very easy to get and install.

00:35:22 ◼   ► The cable routing, I got the kind, I got the, let's see,

00:35:26 ◼   ► the adjustable iPhone holder for lightning to USB cable.

00:35:30 ◼   ► So what you do is it has like a little clamp in the bottom.

00:35:32 ◼   ► You actually stick an Apple cable into it,

00:35:34 ◼   ► and this is where I used my one black Apple lightning cable

00:35:38 ◼   ► from my iMac Pro. (laughs)

00:35:39 ◼   ► I used it here 'cause it looked better in black.

00:35:41 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:35:43 ◼   ► And it is basically a dock,

00:35:45 ◼   ► and so I just stick my phone into it

00:35:47 ◼   ► and it is getting a wired charge

00:35:49 ◼   ► and it just stays right there and it's awesome.

00:35:52 ◼   ► The only major downside to this is that

00:35:54 ◼   ► it's $90 for this combo.

00:35:56 ◼   ► It was 30 for the car part and 60 for the iPhone

00:36:00 ◼   ► adjustable thing with the cable.

00:36:02 ◼   ► So again, not cheap. - Oh my goodness.

00:36:04 ◼   ► - Way more than my $7 piece of garbage.

00:36:06 ◼   ► However, also way nicer than my $7 piece of garbage

00:36:10 ◼   ► and I can see myself keeping this up.

00:36:13 ◼   ► As long as I continue to use Waze

00:36:14 ◼   ► on a semi-regular basis in my car.

00:36:17 ◼   ► I think as I get new phones and new cars down the road,

00:36:20 ◼   ► I think I will probably stay in the ProClip ecosystem

00:36:22 ◼   ► for now 'cause it is surprisingly nice.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Like, you can take the phone out with one hand

00:36:28 ◼   ► and the mount doesn't move and stuff like that.

00:36:30 ◼   ► It's just nice.

00:36:32 ◼   ► It's solid and heavy duty and just really nice.

00:36:36 ◼   ► The reason I stick with wired charging,

00:36:38 ◼   ► which is why I thought of this here,

00:36:40 ◼   ► is that Qi charging is not fast enough

00:36:44 ◼   ► to charge the phone and run Waze.

00:36:47 ◼   ► It can keep the phone at about the same charge level

00:36:51 ◼   ► it's already at, or maybe very slowly trickle charge it.

00:36:55 ◼   ► But the charge rate really requires a 10 watt plug,

00:36:59 ◼   ► like what you get from the iPad bricks

00:37:01 ◼   ► or from the high powered USB chargers.

00:37:03 ◼   ► So it really requires that to both run Waze constantly

00:37:07 ◼   ► and also charge the phone at a meaningful rate.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And right now I don't think any Qi chargers,

00:37:12 ◼   ► even the 7.5 watt Mophie one,

00:37:15 ◼   ► I don't think any of them can actually do it fast enough.

00:37:17 ◼   ► So, for Qi charging in cars,

00:37:20 ◼   ► I still honestly can't recommend that,

00:37:22 ◼   ► unless you are very light with your phone's usage in the car

00:37:26 ◼   ► but for wired stuff, I can recommend ProClip

00:37:28 ◼   ► if you are willing to spend $90

00:37:31 ◼   ► on a clip for your phone in your car.

00:37:33 ◼   ► - This is the difference between you and me in summary.

00:37:36 ◼   ► You bought one car charger for $90.

00:37:39 ◼   ► you could buy three and a half of the inductive chargers

00:37:44 ◼   ► that I just bought, which admittedly are not nearly as nice,

00:37:47 ◼   ► I'm quite sure, but--

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Three and a half of the chargers

00:37:50 ◼   ► still can't charge my phone for ways.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - You know what I'm saying though,

00:37:53 ◼   ► like it's just, this is you and me in a nutshell.

00:37:56 ◼   ► - I don't need three and a half chargers,

00:37:57 ◼   ► I need one charger.

00:37:58 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, yes, I'm just saying.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Also, before we get a bazillion pieces of email,

00:38:04 ◼   ► do we really care about the report that came out recently?

00:38:08 ◼   ► I don't remember where I saw it, about how wireless charging destroys your battery because

00:38:12 ◼   ► it's when it's trying to keep your battery topped up, it's like discharging, recharging,

00:38:17 ◼   ► discharging, recharging, discharging, recharging.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I don't think I really care that much.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And maybe I will if I see that my battery is not doing well, which maybe I could do

00:38:28 ◼   ► in this new battery window or screen in settings.

00:38:31 ◼   ► But I don't know, man, like, especially as someone who keeps iPhones only for a year,

00:38:36 ◼   ► I just don't care.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Like Apple wouldn't have made this a thing

00:38:40 ◼   ► if they thought it was going to nuke their batteries.

00:38:42 ◼   ► So #Yellow.

00:38:43 ◼   ► - I thought the pitch was that it was heat.

00:38:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, part of the idea was that

00:38:48 ◼   ► because Qi charging generates some heat,

00:38:51 ◼   ► like a little more heat than regular charging,

00:38:53 ◼   ► that charging your battery in a hot environment

00:38:56 ◼   ► is worse for it.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Operating your battery in a hot environment is worse for it.

00:39:00 ◼   ► So there might be something to that.

00:39:03 ◼   ► I can't imagine, 'cause it's,

00:39:05 ◼   ► Apple is doing the management of the charging on the phone end in their firmware.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I can't imagine they would allow it to abuse the battery like that.

00:39:14 ◼   ► I think they would control that a little bit better.

00:39:15 ◼   ► Well, that's not abuse.

00:39:17 ◼   ► Everything does that.

00:39:18 ◼   ► Laptops and phones, they allow it to discharge a little bit and then trickle it up and then

00:39:22 ◼   ► discharge a little bit.

00:39:24 ◼   ► Every Apple device has done that forever.

00:39:26 ◼   ► That's good.

00:39:27 ◼   ► I don't think Inductiv does that anymore than plugged in because like Marcus said,

00:39:31 ◼   ► Apple is controlling it.

00:39:32 ◼   ► if all charging things produce more heat for equivalent power transfer to the battery,

00:39:37 ◼   ► which makes sense to me for an inductive type thing, then maybe you have a little bit extra

00:39:42 ◼   ► heat.

00:39:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, but regardless, I think just using your phone on a regular basis is probably

00:39:49 ◼   ► doing way more wear on the battery than the minor differences in how you charge it. Generally,

00:39:57 ◼   ► charging it more slowly is usually better for its long-term health, which in which case

00:40:04 ◼   ► Qi chargers should actually be really good for, in theory. It's the kind of thing,

00:40:09 ◼   ► like we talked about it before, if you just use your phone normally, you're going to

00:40:12 ◼   ► burn through batteries over a year or two. Now that Apple's offering less expensive

00:40:18 ◼   ► battery replacements, I think if you care about this kind of thing, it's much more

00:40:23 ◼   ► - I think it's more reasonable to just go in

00:40:24 ◼   ► after two years and get a new battery for 30 bucks

00:40:27 ◼   ► than to have to micromanage your entire life

00:40:30 ◼   ► around not using convenient things

00:40:32 ◼   ► or trying to like tiptoe around the battery

00:40:34 ◼   ► 'cause you know what, no matter what you do,

00:40:35 ◼   ► it's gonna wear out in a reasonable amount of time.

00:40:38 ◼   ► It's gonna wear out probably around the same amount of time

00:40:40 ◼   ► as it would have no matter what you did.

00:40:41 ◼   ► So you might as well use your phone

00:40:43 ◼   ► to its fullest potential.

00:40:45 ◼   ► Use whatever's convenient about it.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Use it how you wanna use it.

00:40:47 ◼   ► And if your battery wears out in a year and a half

00:40:49 ◼   ► or two years, just get a new battery for 30 bucks

00:40:52 ◼   ► plan for that ahead of time.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And try to live a healthy life so you can live long enough for some battery technology

00:40:57 ◼   ► to come out that has way longer charge cycle failure rates.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Like I don't think we can expect infinite, like I can charge and recharge and uncharge

00:41:04 ◼   ► this a million times and it never degrades, right?

00:41:07 ◼   ► But if you can just change it from whatever these batteries are rated at, like they're

00:41:10 ◼   ► rated for like a thousand cycles or something before they're put, if that was, you know,

00:41:14 ◼   ► 100,000, it would seem like that you could use a phone basically forever and the battery

00:41:19 ◼   ► was as good the day you bought it as the day it went away.

00:41:21 ◼   ► We are not living in the current time with that technology available, but there are lots

00:41:26 ◼   ► of research things that are all the cliched five to ten years away.

00:41:32 ◼   ► So stay alive long enough and you might see one of those happen.

00:41:35 ◼   ► I will also say if you are interested in getting a battery replacement, maybe wait on that

00:41:41 ◼   ► a little bit.

00:41:42 ◼   ► You have no choice.

00:41:43 ◼   ► The wait time is like four months now, right?

00:41:44 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:41:45 ◼   ► We keep hearing from people that the wait times span from weeks to months for getting

00:41:50 ◼   ► new batteries, you know, there's so many people going in now after the battery gate scandal

00:41:54 ◼   ► and now with 11.3 actually telling them, you know, whether the battery is degraded or not.

00:42:00 ◼   ► There's a lot of people going in and apparently the wait for the batteries at the Genius Bar

00:42:05 ◼   ► is literally like weeks or months in a lot of places. And so, by the time, you know,

00:42:10 ◼   ► if you buy a new phone now and you cheat charge it all the time, by the time the battery wears

00:42:14 ◼   ► out, you should probably be able to get one.

00:42:17 ◼   ► It might not be $30 anymore.

00:42:19 ◼   ► That's probably true.

00:42:20 ◼   ► Oh, and one more thing on this ProClip thing.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I remember when you mentioned your clip and people sent in stuff.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I went to this site because I was looking for similar clips.

00:42:29 ◼   ► I think I had just bought one for my wife and I was wondering if there were better ones.

00:42:33 ◼   ► And on the ProClipUSA.com website, the image they have in the background at the top of

00:42:38 ◼   ► the page shows a mount that goes into the gap in the dashboard between the top stuff

00:42:46 ◼   ► and the thing that has the vents.

00:42:47 ◼   ► It doesn't go inside the vents like you were just describing.

00:42:50 ◼   ► And I have one right now that goes inside the vents.

00:42:52 ◼   ► That's usually a typical way to do it.

00:42:54 ◼   ► You see that on the website?

00:42:55 ◼   ► It's like going--

00:42:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I do see what you mean.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Mine does not do that.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Mine presses against the top and bottom inner edge of the vent.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:03 ◼   ► And so when I saw this, I was like, well, forget that.

00:43:05 ◼   ► I'm not jamming anything into the cracks in my dashboard.

00:43:08 ◼   ► If it had just gotten into the air vent,

00:43:10 ◼   ► I probably would have been like, oh, well,

00:43:11 ◼   ► that's how they all work.

00:43:11 ◼   ► So it would be fine.

00:43:12 ◼   ► So that scared me away.

00:43:13 ◼   ► So I guess it depends on your exact model of car.

00:43:16 ◼   ► but I really don't want anything.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Because once you do that, you know if you ever take that out,

00:43:20 ◼   ► now you have giant gaps,

00:43:21 ◼   ► where that thing had been wedged in

00:43:23 ◼   ► for the past six months or whatever.

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00:45:19 ◼   ► - Bloomberg reports that Apple was planning

00:45:25 ◼   ► to use its own chips and Macs,

00:45:26 ◼   ► starting in just a couple of years

00:45:28 ◼   ► and giving Intel the boot.

00:45:30 ◼   ► I feel like we on this show have flirted

00:45:34 ◼   ► with this topic on and off pretty much

00:45:36 ◼   ► since the show started in 2013.

00:45:39 ◼   ► So on the one side I find this fascinating

00:45:42 ◼   ► and I feel like we should talk about it.

00:45:43 ◼   ► On the other side, I feel like we've been around this topic

00:45:47 ◼   ► so many times, I'm not sure what else there is to say.

00:45:49 ◼   ► But yeah, Intel has not had the dramatic improvements

00:45:54 ◼   ► that they used to have.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Their, what is it, TikTok cycle has been slowing down

00:45:58 ◼   ► and now they've basically said,

00:45:59 ◼   ► "Yeah, we're not gonna do that anymore."

00:46:01 ◼   ► So Apple may be taking matters into their own hands

00:46:04 ◼   ► when it comes to CPUs,

00:46:05 ◼   ► and they may just start putting those in computers

00:46:09 ◼   ► rather than just iPhones and fake computers, I mean iPads.

00:46:14 ◼   ► So what are our thoughts?

00:46:17 ◼   ► Because what we assume, we don't know,

00:46:19 ◼   ► but we assume these would be ARM processors,

00:46:21 ◼   ► which is different than the Intel processor in a Mac.

00:46:23 ◼   ► It's a different instruction set,

00:46:24 ◼   ► which means things would have to be,

00:46:26 ◼   ► you know, all your apps and the operating system

00:46:28 ◼   ► would have to be compiled again.

00:46:29 ◼   ► Like there are many, many, many things

00:46:31 ◼   ► that fall out of this.

00:46:32 ◼   ► It would basically be the PowerPC

00:46:34 ◼   ► to Intel transition all over again.

00:46:36 ◼   ► How do we feel?

00:46:37 ◼   ► Are we excited, are we bummed?

00:46:39 ◼   ► I mean, let's start with Marco, what do you think?

00:46:42 ◼   ► - Ah, I don't really know what to think yet.

00:46:45 ◼   ► At a high level, it seems inevitable

00:46:48 ◼   ► that if Apple wants to keep maintaining the Mac,

00:46:52 ◼   ► competitively, and if they wanna push it forward,

00:46:57 ◼   ► basically, if they're gonna care about the Mac again,

00:47:00 ◼   ► this does seem like an obvious direction to take it.

00:47:02 ◼   ► And we have seen rumblings

00:47:04 ◼   ► that they are caring about the Mac again.

00:47:05 ◼   ► I mean, the iMac Pro, I think, is one of the biggest ones.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Like, there's a lot of things about the iMac Pro

00:47:10 ◼   ► that they didn't have to do, but they did it anyway,

00:47:14 ◼   ► and they made a really great product.

00:47:17 ◼   ► And so, I'm heartened to see, like,

00:47:20 ◼   ► they are actually investing, you know,

00:47:22 ◼   ► non-trivially into Mac hardware,

00:47:25 ◼   ► and I hope to see more of that as the year goes on.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I hope to see fixed laptops.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I hope to see the Mac Pro.

00:47:31 ◼   ► We'll see how that all turns out.

00:47:32 ◼   ► but clearly they have had some kind of change of heart

00:47:36 ◼   ► or at least change of direction with Mac hardware.

00:47:39 ◼   ► If they're gonna keep doing stuff like that,

00:47:41 ◼   ► this does seem like an obvious place to go

00:47:42 ◼   ► because Intel really is holding them back in a few areas.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Now I wouldn't say all areas,

00:47:47 ◼   ► as some people have pointed out,

00:47:49 ◼   ► we haven't seen what Apple's chip design department can do

00:47:54 ◼   ► for competing with like the Xeon in the iMac Pro.

00:47:58 ◼   ► They could probably do a pretty good job if I had to guess,

00:48:00 ◼   ► but we don't know that yet.

00:48:02 ◼   ► What we do know is that Apple can definitely compete

00:48:05 ◼   ► with Intel with their chip designs

00:48:07 ◼   ► at lower ends of the power spectrum.

00:48:10 ◼   ► So that would be most important in, frankly,

00:48:13 ◼   ► the most commonly sold Macs, small laptops.

00:48:16 ◼   ► Like that's where this makes a huge difference.

00:48:18 ◼   ► Like if you can actually have, say,

00:48:21 ◼   ► something like the size of a MacBook 12 inch,

00:48:24 ◼   ► or if you can have something like a real computer size,

00:48:26 ◼   ► like a 13 inch, you can get serious gains in battery life,

00:48:30 ◼   ► and maybe even performance at the same time

00:48:34 ◼   ► by switching to a modern Apple arm design

00:48:37 ◼   ► and these things probably.

00:48:38 ◼   ► So it does seem like that's a really clear place to go.

00:48:41 ◼   ► In addition, Intel has been a pretty crappy supplier

00:48:45 ◼   ► to Apple I think in recent years,

00:48:47 ◼   ► and not even that recently, like over a long time now.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Intel has really had a lot of problems itself,

00:48:54 ◼   ► a lot of problems shipping its chips on time,

00:48:57 ◼   ► getting its fabs going and whatever it's needing to do,

00:49:00 ◼   ► a lot of problems with performance per watt

00:49:02 ◼   ► compared to ARM chips.

00:49:04 ◼   ► In a lot of ways Intel is really not delivering very well

00:49:08 ◼   ► on supplying Apple with what it actually needs.

00:49:11 ◼   ► And this isn't that different from when IBM

00:49:14 ◼   ► was not delivering very well on PowerPC

00:49:18 ◼   ► and Apple made a switch, in that case to Intel

00:49:21 ◼   ► 'cause they were doing great then.

00:49:22 ◼   ► But it wouldn't surprise me at all

00:49:24 ◼   ► if Apple decided to take this kind of move

00:49:26 ◼   ► as long as they care enough about the Mac

00:49:28 ◼   ► to push this kind of thing through.

00:49:30 ◼   ► 'Cause it's a big job, it's a really big job.

00:49:33 ◼   ► It requires tons of major and long running changes.

00:49:38 ◼   ► It's going to be a heck of a transition if it happens.

00:49:42 ◼   ► It's gonna really need a lot of work, a lot of time.

00:49:45 ◼   ► It's gonna be a little messy.

00:49:47 ◼   ► However, I do think where they would end up

00:49:50 ◼   ► could be really nice.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Even if it doesn't even go to the whole line,

00:49:54 ◼   ► even if it doesn't do the high end,

00:49:55 ◼   ► like the desktops and the Xeons,

00:49:57 ◼   ► even if it just stays in the smallest laptop line,

00:50:00 ◼   ► maybe even the 15 inch doesn't even have it,

00:50:02 ◼   ► but maybe the 12 inch and 13 inch do,

00:50:05 ◼   ► it'd probably start on the 12 inch, honestly.

00:50:08 ◼   ► That would be really, really competitive for those products.

00:50:10 ◼   ► You could get really good battery life,

00:50:12 ◼   ► you could get pretty competitive performance.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And many of the apps that people use,

00:50:18 ◼   ► first of all, many of the apps people use

00:50:19 ◼   ► are the built-in OS apps that come with the system,

00:50:22 ◼   ► and so those would all be ready on day one, probably.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And then a lot of apps people use

00:50:27 ◼   ► be simple recompiles or not that much work to get them updated for it or recompiled for

00:50:31 ◼   ► it. So like, I think that could be a really great direction for the products to take.

00:50:38 ◼   ► The downside to this, where I'm concerned, and I did a little quick tweet about this

00:50:42 ◼   ► earlier, the main reason I'm concerned about this is that if this is true, which that's

00:50:45 ◼   ► a big if, I worry, will Apple in the near future or ever place enough priority on MacOS

00:50:56 ◼   ► to really make this happen well on the software side.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Because ever since iOS came out,

00:51:03 ◼   ► Mac OS has been really a distant second priority.

00:51:06 ◼   ► They have made no efforts to hide that,

00:51:08 ◼   ► and I think it's obvious to everybody.

00:51:10 ◼   ► And you could argue that that should be how it is,

00:51:12 ◼   ► 'cause iOS devices sell so much more than Macs,

00:51:14 ◼   ► and really are the bulk of the company's income

00:51:16 ◼   ► and everything, so like,

00:51:18 ◼   ► Mac OS is really not a priority for them,

00:51:21 ◼   ► and hasn't been for a long time.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And what we see every time they do try

00:51:25 ◼   ► to update Mac OS, they seem to be getting messier

00:51:30 ◼   ► and sloppier and introducing more and worse

00:51:34 ◼   ► and more embarrassing bugs.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Every time they rewrite a subsystem,

00:51:39 ◼   ► it comes out buggier than the one before it.

00:51:42 ◼   ► And maybe it might eventually catch up,

00:51:44 ◼   ► but it usually takes a few releases at least.

00:51:47 ◼   ► There's a lot of problems with Mac OS,

00:51:50 ◼   ► and it seems like they're incapable of touching it recently

00:51:54 ◼   ► without breaking stuff.

00:51:56 ◼   ► And a lot of times the stuff they break never gets fixed.

00:52:00 ◼   ► So I'm concerned if they're going to approach

00:52:03 ◼   ► this kind of move to ARM,

00:52:06 ◼   ► like a whole architecture transition,

00:52:08 ◼   ► if they're going to approach that

00:52:09 ◼   ► with the same level of, frankly,

00:52:12 ◼   ► I don't know if it's carelessness,

00:52:15 ◼   ► but at least they are not giving it the resources

00:52:17 ◼   ► that they need to make quality so far,

00:52:20 ◼   ► if they're gonna attack this problem like that,

00:52:23 ◼   ► then they might just break everything

00:52:25 ◼   ► and make everything way worse

00:52:27 ◼   ► and maybe never fix it or fix it very slowly

00:52:30 ◼   ► or never fix certain parts of it.

00:52:32 ◼   ► That's where I'm concerned is like,

00:52:34 ◼   ► I really want the Mac platform to be brought forward

00:52:38 ◼   ► in big ways, it needs it.

00:52:40 ◼   ► However, if it's going to do that

00:52:43 ◼   ► with the same amount of starved resources

00:52:46 ◼   ► and seeming disregard for quality

00:52:49 ◼   ► in exchange for ship dates,

00:52:51 ◼   ► That, I don't think, is beneficial to the platform.

00:52:55 ◼   ► So that's my concern.

00:52:56 ◼   ► So getting back to what you kicked us off with, Casey, the fact that we've discussed

00:53:00 ◼   ► this many times in the past, this is a bit of an inside baseball meta concern, but I'm

00:53:06 ◼   ► always worried about how much to repeat something that we've said on a past show, because

00:53:13 ◼   ► you can't assume that everyone listening now has listened to all the dozens of hours

00:53:18 ◼   ► we've talked about this same topic.

00:53:19 ◼   ► but on the other hand, if you have listened to them, you really want us to hear us say the same things again.

00:53:23 ◼   ► So on this topic, I'm looking for two things, and I think Marco was at least looking for one of these,

00:53:30 ◼   ► which is, one is something new to say on the topic, which I think Marco has found with his concern about the

00:53:36 ◼   ► care and attention that they've shown to macOS being applied to a hardware transition, right,

00:53:41 ◼   ► which we haven't really talked about that much in the past, because I think the past few times we

00:53:44 ◼   ► talked about this, we weren't collectively as disgruntled about the quality of macOS, right?

00:53:49 ◼   ► And the second one is specifically for the story when stuff like this comes out I'm looking for

00:53:52 ◼   ► is there any new information in this story? Like is there any information period other than

00:53:59 ◼   ► hey guess what Apple could could transition Mac to a different processor that it makes itself.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And in this story there isn't really much new information except perhaps some dates.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Whole lot of hedging this this line from the article is great. I would call this

00:54:19 ◼   ► comprehensive butt covering

00:54:22 ◼   ► Apple could still theoretically abandon or delay the switch

00:54:27 ◼   ► Theoretically is the icing on the cake there, but Apple could still abandon or delay. It's like you're reading this whole article

00:54:33 ◼   ► Let me tell you Apple's gonna do this thing halfway through the article says and by the way, they might not do this

00:54:37 ◼   ► It's like alright we get it. You're covering yourself. Okay, you can say well, we didn't say that we're gonna

00:54:43 ◼   ► we just said they they're gonna but they might not and then theoretically abandon or delay

00:54:48 ◼   ► theoretically they can abandon or delay it there's no theory you don't need to anyway uh i'm not a

00:54:55 ◼   ► big fan of the article but uh as in all these things set aside the article and just take it as

00:55:00 ◼   ► a data point as another little pebble to the pile uh you know maybe this pebble you know we'll see

00:55:07 ◼   ► like where there's smoke there's fire kind of as you see more and more stories about a topic maybe

00:55:11 ◼   ► start taking it more seriously than just like when we've talked about in the past, it has

00:55:16 ◼   ► just been sort of idle musing, like, because it's an obvious thing.

00:55:19 ◼   ► Like, Apple is really good at making and getting better at making ARM processors, and Apple

00:55:24 ◼   ► likes to control this stuff, and Apple is trying to make more and more of the stuff

00:55:28 ◼   ► themselves or design more and more of the stuff themselves and have it fab, and Intel

00:55:31 ◼   ► has been falling behind.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Like, there's lots of reasons to talk about this.

00:55:34 ◼   ► So I don't want to rehash all the things we've discussed about in the past, but I mean, actually

00:55:44 ◼   ► I kind of do, but I don't—I want everyone who's listening now to know all the hours

00:55:49 ◼   ► of discussion we had about this, because I want us all to get credit for having the foresight

00:55:53 ◼   ► and wisdom to have discussed these issues well in the past.

00:55:55 ◼   ► But I don't want to have to repeat them for everybody now.

00:55:58 ◼   ► The only one I will repeat explicitly is one of the things that is in tension about this

00:56:04 ◼   ► topic is the idea of Apple spending the money that would be required to make an ARM chip

00:56:12 ◼   ► that is essentially useless for iOS devices, right?

00:56:15 ◼   ► To make an ARM chip for the Mac Pro, for instance, right?

00:56:19 ◼   ► 150-watt Mac Pro-caliber chip.

00:56:23 ◼   ► To make something like that, to design it, is a lot of work, and you can reuse a lot

00:56:29 ◼   ► of the work you did for the lesser chips that are in phones and iPads, like to use the cores

00:56:33 ◼   ► and assemble them or whatever, but a lot of the stuff you do will only be for that Mac Pro.

00:56:37 ◼   ► Like, you won't be able to use that chip anywhere else because nothing else has that power envelope.

00:56:44 ◼   ► And in the past when we've talked about this, the question was always,

00:56:48 ◼   ► "All right, well, so Apple can reuse a lot of the chips directly like in the MacBooks and stuff,

00:56:53 ◼   ► but when it comes to the Mac Pro, if they're going to transition the whole line, they have to make

00:56:56 ◼   ► that chip themselves from scratch. There is no, you know, and that's a lot of money to invest.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Does Apple really want to invest that amount of money solely in the Mac?

00:57:06 ◼   ► As Margaret just said, in our modern iMac Pro having error, we can say, "Hey,

00:57:11 ◼   ► they actually spent a lot of money, money they didn't necessarily have to spend,

00:57:14 ◼   ► reusing and adapting technology from iOS things in an application that basically is only useful

00:57:23 ◼   ► in the iMac Pro." Like, that T2 chip is probably not going into an iPad anytime soon. It's probably

00:57:28 ◼   ► not even going into a laptop, right?

00:57:30 ◼   ► Because that, who knows, they've got a T1 in there,

00:57:32 ◼   ► we'll see, but they spent a lot of time and money

00:57:36 ◼   ► building the iMac Pro and they made a good product

00:57:38 ◼   ► out of it and like the Touch Bar before it,

00:57:40 ◼   ► as much as we may or may not like it,

00:57:41 ◼   ► it shows a willingness to invest in Mac hardware

00:57:44 ◼   ► that is probably out of proportion financially

00:57:47 ◼   ► to how much money the Mac brings in,

00:57:49 ◼   ► because as we've pointed out and as Apple now seems to agree

00:57:53 ◼   ► the Mac's importance is also out of proportion

00:57:56 ◼   ► to the amount of money it brings in.

00:57:57 ◼   ► It's important to the overall Apple platform, and not just because you develop iOS apps

00:58:02 ◼   ► for it, but that's part of it.

00:58:03 ◼   ► But Apple seems to be on the same page with all of us now about, you know, pro Mac users

00:58:11 ◼   ► are an important constituency.

00:58:12 ◼   ► They had that roundtable a year or so ago or whatever, and Apple said they agreed, and

00:58:17 ◼   ► it's made us all happy for a long time when we're patiently waiting for the fruits of

00:58:20 ◼   ► that labor.

00:58:21 ◼   ► The iMac Pro is one of the fruits of that labor, and it's good, right?

00:58:24 ◼   ► It came out good, right?

00:58:25 ◼   ► So we're all enthusiastic about that.

00:58:27 ◼   ► But that makes it more and more likely that they would be willing to spend the amount

00:58:33 ◼   ► of money they would need to spend to make a bunch of ARM CPUs reusing cores and other

00:58:38 ◼   ► technology and stuff from elsewhere, but in a big, giant, high-power blob that is not

00:58:44 ◼   ► useful anywhere except for Macs.

00:58:47 ◼   ► So this story is another pebble in the pile, the iMac Pro and that roundtable, some more

00:58:53 ◼   ► pebbles.

00:58:54 ◼   ► So it's starting to look more and more likely.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Things against it, I tried to come up with a new angle on this, and the new angle that

00:59:02 ◼   ► I have, not against this theory, because it doesn't mean they're not going to do it, but

00:59:06 ◼   ► something that if they did do it would be a disadvantage to Mac users, it would be a

00:59:12 ◼   ► step down from where they are today, is that none of the stories I've seen, rumors or whatever,

00:59:20 ◼   ► suggested that what Apple would actually be doing is making a new line of CPUs that they

00:59:25 ◼   ► would use in Macs and that they would also sell to the whole rest of the industry. I

00:59:31 ◼   ► haven't even seen that suggested. No one even dares speculate about that, let alone say

00:59:35 ◼   ► that they think it's something that Apple's going to do. So we always just assume, yeah,

00:59:39 ◼   ► Apple would make its own CPUs because they like to make their own whatevers, and they

00:59:43 ◼   ► make their own A-series system-on-a-chips, and then they make their own Wi-Fi—not Wi-Fi,

00:59:47 ◼   ► not Wi-Fi, whatever, the W1 chip, and they make all sorts of stuff, right? Not make,

00:59:52 ◼   ► but design and have someone fed for them. And they don't sell them to the rest of the

00:59:56 ◼   ► industry. Yeah, they license the W1 for the purposes of peripherals and stuff like that,

00:59:59 ◼   ► but they're not selling the A11 chip to other cell phone makers. This is not a thing they

01:00:04 ◼   ► do. And we just assume if they were going to make chips for the Macs, they also wouldn't

01:00:07 ◼   ► say, "Oh, this is our new business now, by the way. We're selling chips to everybody

01:00:10 ◼   ► industry. And what that would mean is that Macs would have CPUs that are not the same

01:00:19 ◼   ► as the CPUs that are running in other things in the industry. And what—so what is it?

01:00:24 ◼   ► Who cares? What does it matter? Don't we just care if we have a nice CPU on our Mac?

01:00:27 ◼   ► Well right now we are in a—I don't know what you would call it—a golden age? It

01:00:34 ◼   ► used to be a golden age. Now it's not quite golden. Now it's more of like a tarnished

01:00:38 ◼   ► brass age. Anyway, where Macs use the same CPUs that are also used in the servers that

01:00:46 ◼   ► we run server-side software in, which means that if you're writing server-side software

01:00:49 ◼   ► and using the Mac as your dev environment, you can run VMs and you can run Docker and

01:00:54 ◼   ► you can do all sorts of things and run the same software that's running on your server

01:00:58 ◼   ► locally on your Mac, because they're both x86-64 CPUs, right? And to a lesser extent,

01:01:06 ◼   ► You can also run Windows stuff because Windows runs on x86 and you can run Windows in virtualization

01:01:10 ◼   ► at high speed and so on and so forth.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And those are real advantages for certain constituencies of pro Mac users who use the

01:01:19 ◼   ► Mac as like a development platform for writing server-side software.

01:01:22 ◼   ► And maybe it's just because I'm in that world that I see it a lot, but I have been shocked

01:01:26 ◼   ► over the course of my career how prevalent Macs have become for people who, essentially,

01:01:33 ◼   ► who pejoratively use them as glorified terminals, right?

01:01:36 ◼   ► I don't think that's really true,

01:01:37 ◼   ► because lots of people do local development.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Like they will run Docker on their Mac,

01:01:41 ◼   ► they will run a virtual box on their Mac or whatever,

01:01:43 ◼   ► and they will use software and binaries

01:01:48 ◼   ► that run on the server, they will run them on their Mac.

01:01:51 ◼   ► And so they're not just using this glorified terminal,

01:01:53 ◼   ► they're actually doing local development.

01:01:55 ◼   ► That is one class of software developer,

01:01:56 ◼   ► the server-side software developer.

01:01:58 ◼   ► So if Apple makes a CPU transition,

01:02:01 ◼   ► The Mac as a server-side software dev platform becomes far less attractive because Apple's

01:02:08 ◼   ► not going to sell those CPUs to run on the server.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Now it could be if they just use the same instruction set and somehow ARM on the server

01:02:15 ◼   ► becomes a thing.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Lots of companies have been trying to make ARM on the server a thing for a long time.

01:02:20 ◼   ► It hasn't quite happened, but if Apple's not going to make it happen and no one else

01:02:26 ◼   ► makes it happen and Intel continues to – or even AMD – continues to dominate the server

01:02:31 ◼   ► space with x86-64, it makes the Mac less attractive in one particular area.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And same thing for Windows.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I'm just making this example, but if you rely on the ability to run Windows, virtualize

01:02:42 ◼   ► Windows at full speed as part of some important business that you do that lets you use a Mac

01:02:47 ◼   ► when previously you couldn't because you can also run Windows on it.

01:02:50 ◼   ► I know Windows is ported to ARM as well, right?

01:02:53 ◼   ► But it really just depends on do people port all their Windows software to ARM?

01:02:57 ◼   ► Do they recompile it for ARM?

01:02:58 ◼   ► most PCs sold become ARM. Ideally, whatever transition Apple makes, the whole rest of

01:03:07 ◼   ► the industry would also make, PCs, servers, everything, whether or not Apple helps them

01:03:13 ◼   ► make it. I think Apple will not help them make it. So the only way we can get, maintain

01:03:18 ◼   ► the golden age where everything runs on the same platform is if the rest of the industry

01:03:22 ◼   ► also transitions more or less at the same time without any of Apple's help, which seems

01:03:27 ◼   ► unlikely to me. So that would make me slightly more sad and I think it would make the Mac

01:03:33 ◼   ► slightly less desirable or even viable for certain pro applications.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Everything else that the Mac normally does, no one cares. You can develop Mac software

01:03:43 ◼   ► on it, you can run all your applications, you can browse the web, so it's probably not

01:03:46 ◼   ► that big of a deal, but it is the one angle that I have found myself pondering, you know,

01:03:50 ◼   ► if I'm able to bring myself to believe that they're really going to do this. What would

01:03:54 ◼   ► What would that actually be like?

01:03:55 ◼   ► How would it change my experience of Macs?

01:03:59 ◼   ► And I didn't even get into playing Windows games or whatever, because who cares, that's

01:04:02 ◼   ► really small.

01:04:03 ◼   ► But I look around my big company full of hundreds of developers and how many Macs I see and

01:04:06 ◼   ► everything they're doing with them and think, "What if that Mac was ARM but all of our

01:04:11 ◼   ► servers were still x86?"

01:04:13 ◼   ► How would that change how viable the Mac is for you?

01:04:16 ◼   ► And I think it would be worse.

01:04:18 ◼   ► So that's one more thing for me to not look forward to.

01:04:21 ◼   ► On the flip side of that is what Mark was talking about, how awesome it would be on

01:04:24 ◼   ► laptops and, frankly, I think how awesome it would be on the Mac Pro.

01:04:27 ◼   ► I would love to see a massive multi-core Apple-designed ARM processor that outperforms a Xeon with

01:04:33 ◼   ► less power.

01:04:34 ◼   ► I would love that.

01:04:35 ◼   ► And I think it's 100 percent possible maybe on Apple's second or third try and, hell,

01:04:38 ◼   ► maybe on their first try.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Those people are really smart.

01:04:41 ◼   ► But there are some things I would miss.

01:04:43 ◼   ► One other thing to think about is, like, we're assuming that if Apple does this transition,

01:04:50 ◼   ► that the processors being in their hands

01:04:53 ◼   ► would be a good thing, and that they would outperform,

01:04:57 ◼   ► they would match or outperform what Intel is doing.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And the assumption in that is that they will always,

01:05:02 ◼   ► or at least for a long time, outperform

01:05:05 ◼   ► what the rest of the PC industry is doing.

01:05:07 ◼   ► But that might not hold.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Like, it might be.

01:05:10 ◼   ► What if they complete this transition,

01:05:12 ◼   ► and then they find themselves actually

01:05:15 ◼   ► not doing as well as the PC industry,

01:05:16 ◼   ► or not caring as much about the processors

01:05:20 ◼   ► for the Mac and therefore, today we have the issue of,

01:05:24 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like they care as much about the Mac

01:05:26 ◼   ► as they do about iOS, so they have these product lines

01:05:29 ◼   ► that just sit around forever.

01:05:31 ◼   ► When Intel does make a new generation of processor,

01:05:36 ◼   ► it's not that much work to update these new product lines

01:05:40 ◼   ► to use that new component.

01:05:42 ◼   ► It's way less engineering resources to take Intel's

01:05:46 ◼   ► newest chip and stick it in the Mac you already have

01:05:49 ◼   ► designed than it is to design the next version of the A10,

01:05:54 ◼   ► quadruple X, whatever it is that would be the high

01:05:59 ◼   ► performance version of this year's A series processor.

01:06:03 ◼   ► It's very possible that could backfire on us.

01:06:06 ◼   ► It could be that Apple takes it over, then down the road

01:06:10 ◼   ► decides the Mac is not that important to them,

01:06:14 ◼   ► which wouldn't be unheard of because that's already

01:06:16 ◼   ► how it's been, and then they just never update those chips

01:06:20 ◼   ► for the Mac, and because, as John said,

01:06:24 ◼   ► because they're not selling these chips outside of Apple,

01:06:26 ◼   ► which I can never see them doing,

01:06:28 ◼   ► there'd be no other pressure for them

01:06:31 ◼   ► to keep those chips updated.

01:06:34 ◼   ► So it actually might make them,

01:06:35 ◼   ► like it would basically raise the cost

01:06:38 ◼   ► of updating the Mac line to keep pace

01:06:41 ◼   ► with the latest and greatest hardware.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And I think the last thing Apple needs

01:06:46 ◼   ► is for that cost to be raised.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Because right now they already seem to have

01:06:50 ◼   ► a lot of trouble justifying investment in the Mac.

01:06:53 ◼   ► So if it's more expensive to update the Mac,

01:06:56 ◼   ► to update Mac hardware to the latest generation of whatever,

01:07:01 ◼   ► that actually could really backfire quite badly on us

01:07:04 ◼   ► and that could result in even less attention,

01:07:08 ◼   ► even fewer updates, even less competitive performance

01:07:11 ◼   ► what the rest of the industry is doing.

01:07:13 ◼   ► - It's like the trash can Mac Pro,

01:07:16 ◼   ► we were like, oh, why isn't Apple updated

01:07:18 ◼   ► to use the latest Xeon?

01:07:19 ◼   ► Well, imagine there were no latest Xeons

01:07:21 ◼   ► and Apple could say, we're using the highest performance

01:07:24 ◼   ► A whatever processor available.

01:07:26 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, but well, you got me there.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I mean, they are.

01:07:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:31 ◼   ► They just haven't made another one.

01:07:32 ◼   ► So technically it is still using the fastest one, yeah.

01:07:34 ◼   ► - Right, like you get the good and the bad

01:07:36 ◼   ► with like bringing this stuff in house to Apple,

01:07:39 ◼   ► You get probably pretty good performance

01:07:41 ◼   ► and power efficiency gains,

01:07:43 ◼   ► but at the cost of now you're at the whims of Apple.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And Apple is fickle and in many areas unreliable.

01:07:52 ◼   ► And you would be at the whims of whatever they felt

01:07:57 ◼   ► worth doing even more than you are now

01:08:00 ◼   ► because the cost of keeping things updated

01:08:03 ◼   ► would be higher to them.

01:08:04 ◼   ► - That's worth mentioning the other angle

01:08:06 ◼   ► that a lot of people are talking about,

01:08:07 ◼   ► mostly because this Bloomberg article is so careful not to say anything definitive about

01:08:12 ◼   ► anything. They're like, "Well, you know that Bloomberg doesn't actually say ARM anywhere.

01:08:15 ◼   ► They just say Apple would make its own chips. What if they make their own x86 chips?" And

01:08:20 ◼   ► they could do that. You know, money solves a lot of problems. Patents, licensing, instruction

01:08:26 ◼   ► set, whatever, you know, dealing with Intel, like, assuming you threw enough money at the

01:08:31 ◼   ► people you need to throw money at to be allowed to do that, Apple could probably make a pretty

01:08:34 ◼   ► good x86 chip. I have a hard time believing Apple could make a substantially better x86

01:08:41 ◼   ► chip than Intel, because Apple's expertise thus far has been in making ARM CPUs, and

01:08:48 ◼   ► x86, even just plain old x86-64, is a much more, let's say, wordy instruction set than

01:08:57 ◼   ► ARM. It has got a lot of history behind it. It's weird in lots of interesting ways, and

01:09:03 ◼   ► Intel has a lot of experience in instruction decode hardware and all sorts of chip-within-a-chip

01:09:10 ◼   ► ways to crack apart those big variables with instructions and feed it into a machine that

01:09:15 ◼   ► works more like a modern processor on the inside.

01:09:18 ◼   ► I mean, it's not as big a difference as people think because modern ARM RISC-style processors

01:09:25 ◼   ► also have to do lots of weird stuff internally as well.

01:09:28 ◼   ► But there's a lot of institutional expertise that both AMD and Intel have that Apple does

01:09:33 ◼   ► not have when it comes to figuring out how to make the x86 instruction set faster, even

01:09:37 ◼   ► just the x86-64 one, which is much nicer than the 32-bit, let alone the 16-bit or whatever

01:09:43 ◼   ► variants.

01:09:46 ◼   ► So that seems much less likely to me.

01:09:51 ◼   ► It really hammers on what Marco was getting at, which is like, "Okay, Apple, now you have

01:09:56 ◼   ► something to keep up with.

01:09:57 ◼   ► You're making your own x86 chips."

01:09:59 ◼   ► And so we can still ask the question, "Hey, Apple, you have an update, the whatever chip

01:10:02 ◼   ► and your whatever Mac for a long time. Meanwhile Intel has released three new chips that are

01:10:05 ◼   ► faster. What's the deal? You could just use those Intel chips. Why did you go on your

01:10:09 ◼   ► own? Or at least if they do ARM, we can't tell them unless someone else decides to make

01:10:13 ◼   ► like 17 core ARM chips that they're stubbornly refusing to use in their new ARM Mac Pro or

01:10:21 ◼   ► whatever.

01:10:22 ◼   ► So I think this realization and everything we're talking about is leading people to talk

01:10:27 ◼   ► more around this Bloomberg story about—I think for the first time I'm hearing people

01:10:30 ◼   ► speculate more seriously about the idea of them having x86 at the high end and ARM at

01:10:36 ◼   ► the low end, like for some sustained period of time, rather than having a transition where

01:10:40 ◼   ► you just say, "All the x86 Macs are gone, and all the Macs are A-whatever ARM chips."

01:10:46 ◼   ► But rather instead saying, "We're never going to make the investment to compete with Xeon's."

01:10:51 ◼   ► Those are always going to be Xeons in the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro, and we will keep

01:10:54 ◼   ► up with Intel's line as much as we always have, and we're just not going to do stuff

01:11:00 ◼   ► But for all of the Macs that can essentially take drop-in chips from our iPad and phone

01:11:07 ◼   ► line, maybe with some minor tweaks in terms of adding more cache or maybe some more cores

01:11:11 ◼   ► and a beefier GPU and stuff like that, those will get ARM.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And as Marco said, those are the majority of Macs sold.

01:11:20 ◼   ► And the x86 Macs will just be this technical curiosity that nerds and developers use, but

01:11:26 ◼   ► Macs that most people buy to do basic computing stuff and word processing and run Office and

01:11:33 ◼   ► web browsing and run spreadsheets and watch Netflix and whatever else people want to do,

01:11:39 ◼   ► those will all be ARM.

01:11:42 ◼   ► And that would be an unprecedented move because Apple has never had a sustained dual CPU strategy

01:11:49 ◼   ► on the Mac.

01:11:50 ◼   ► It has always been a transition.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Old chip goes out, new chip comes in, new chip has lots of advantages, everyone loves

01:11:56 ◼   ► the new chip, look how fast it is, look how fast Graphing Calculator runs on the PowerPC,

01:12:00 ◼   ► look how fast everything runs on x86 versus these ancient PowerPCs that IBM doesn't update

01:12:05 ◼   ► anymore. I am not enthusiastic about that future, even though it makes sense from a

01:12:12 ◼   ► technical perspective in terms of what you want to spend money on and what you don't,

01:12:16 ◼   ► because to Marco's earlier point, dealing with an OS that runs on two different platforms

01:12:24 ◼   ► is a, who is it, I think ATP Tipster said it on Twitter,

01:12:28 ◼   ► is a bug multiplier.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Like, potentially there are new bugs

01:12:32 ◼   ► that might only exist on one platform or another.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Throwing another, it's not double the bugs, right?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Because not every bug is architecture specific.

01:12:38 ◼   ► But throwing another variable into the mix,

01:12:41 ◼   ► especially as variable as significant as the instruction set

01:12:44 ◼   ► is not the best way to drive down bugs and cost.

01:12:50 ◼   ► And it could be that the software,

01:12:52 ◼   ► maintaining the software and dealing with the bugs

01:12:54 ◼   ► And the changes there is actually more expensive

01:12:56 ◼   ► than dealing with the hardware.

01:12:57 ◼   ► I don't know how that shakes out in the grand scheme of things

01:13:00 ◼   ► and exactly how many millions of dollars it would cost

01:13:02 ◼   ► to build a Xeon competitor yourself

01:13:03 ◼   ► versus how many millions of dollars it would cost

01:13:05 ◼   ► to maintain in perpetuity, or at least for a decade or so,

01:13:09 ◼   ► two architectures that you make the same OS for

01:13:14 ◼   ► with the same apps compiled to STAB binaries

01:13:16 ◼   ► and two tool chains and all this other stuff.

01:13:17 ◼   ► So that also strikes me as non-ideal.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Like the simplest solutions are

01:13:22 ◼   ► that Apple Note doesn't do this transition

01:13:23 ◼   ► that they transition everything to the same architecture on all their devices.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Any sort of hybrid thing, though it might make sense from a nickel and dime perspective,

01:13:33 ◼   ► I bet if you had to pitch it to the board of directors, it would seem too much like

01:13:37 ◼   ► a half measure.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And they would say, "Why don't we just all go?"

01:13:40 ◼   ► If you had to pitch them and say, "We're going to go all ARM and it's unified and we

01:13:43 ◼   ► have a unified framework and a unified architecture and we own all this stuff," that is way easier

01:13:47 ◼   ► to sell to a board of directors than any of the more technical solutions where you leave

01:13:51 ◼   ► the Pro Max's x86 and you support both of them and have two toolchains, two compilers,

01:13:55 ◼   ► and fat binaries, and you don't transition, I don't think that's a winner.

01:14:02 ◼   ► It's funny because I'm of two minds about this whole thing.

01:14:05 ◼   ► The KC from a couple of years ago that lived in VMware Fusion in Windows but on a Mac would

01:14:13 ◼   ► most likely really hate this.

01:14:16 ◼   ► And this is exactly what you were talking about earlier, Jon, that one of the advantages

01:14:19 ◼   ► of being able to virtualize an OS or a platform that's based on the same platform you're running

01:14:26 ◼   ► is that it happens really, really fast, right? This is in contrast to this hypothetical future

01:14:31 ◼   ► when you're trying to emulate x86 on top of ARM. And who knows, maybe this phantom Apple

01:14:36 ◼   ► processor would be so damn fast that you could get away with it, but the likelihood of that

01:14:40 ◼   ► is not good. And so, you know, past Casey, who was doing Windows development on his Mac,

01:14:46 ◼   ► not want this at all. And I think the last time we really spoke about this seriously,

01:14:49 ◼   ► I was still that Casey that does not want this at all. But the current me that only works on

01:14:57 ◼   ► Xcode and you know other things that are native to the Mac, and I haven't run Windows in at least

01:15:03 ◼   ► a year if not more, I don't feel like I have a problem with this. And the thought of my beloved

01:15:09 ◼   ► 12-inch MacBook being faster with a battery that lasts even longer, which to be fair I don't have

01:15:15 ◼   ► any particular complaints about the battery on this thing, but that being said, you can

01:15:19 ◼   ► always have more. More is always better. So having a 12-inch MacBook that is considerably

01:15:23 ◼   ► faster and yet has much better battery life, that sounds friggin' awesome! Like, I totally

01:15:28 ◼   ► want that. But what I'm not really doing is considering what am I losing out on, because

01:15:33 ◼   ► maybe there's some app that's vital to my workflow that I won't be able to use anymore.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Like, you know, FFmpeg, I believe, is open source, so presumably I could compile from

01:15:44 ◼   ► source if I needed to, but just let's suppose for the sake of discussion that FFmpeg was

01:15:48 ◼   ► never built for ARM, could not be built for ARM, like that would stink. I use FFmpeg all

01:15:53 ◼   ► the time for stupid stuff that doesn't matter, but it, but you know, whether or not it matters,

01:15:57 ◼   ► it's important to me. It matters to me. Wait, to be clear, you use it on the 12 inch?

01:16:02 ◼   ► Uh, every great once in a while, not usually, but yeah, this is perhaps not my best choice

01:16:08 ◼   ► of analogies or examples, but, but you get my point, right? Is that there, maybe it's

01:16:13 ◼   ► something else. Maybe it's the app Rocket, which lets you, you know, easily insert emoji

01:16:18 ◼   ► pretty much anywhere in the system. You know, Rocket is a modern app. I would assume if

01:16:23 ◼   ► this arm thing happened, that Rocket would get updated. But what if, for the sake of

01:16:28 ◼   ► discussion, Rocket isn't updated? I use Rocket constantly, probably hundreds of times a day.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And if it didn't get updated, that would really bum me out. And so there are probably tradeoffs

01:16:39 ◼   ► that I'm not considering, but on the surface and going on the assumption that in, you know,

01:16:45 ◼   ► a this phantom new Apple processor that goes in the 12 inch MacBook is, you know, five

01:16:51 ◼   ► times faster and uses half as much power or whatever the case may be. Like that sounds

01:16:55 ◼   ► frickin great. And Apple being in control of its own pipeline sounds frickin great.

01:17:01 ◼   ► But who knows? I mean, like you guys were saying, maybe it would be that Apple makes

01:17:06 ◼   ► crummy desktop-level CPUs. Maybe it would be that they're even slower than Intel. Like,

01:17:11 ◼   ► we don't know how it would turn out. But on the surface—

01:17:14 ◼   ► Or maybe they're faster and then they don't make a new one for three years.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Like, you never know how it's going to turn out, but the optimist in me thinks, "Hell

01:17:25 ◼   ► yeah." Like, even if it's painful at first, because some of the things I really love don't

01:17:31 ◼   ► get, you know, don't get moved to like fat binaries or whatever they end up doing.

01:17:35 ◼   ► In principle, this sounds great.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I'm all in on it.

01:17:38 ◼   ► I think I'd really like to see how this plays out.

01:17:41 ◼   ► But it sounds like we're waiting until at least 2020, if not after that.

01:17:46 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:17:47 ◼   ► I don't know how much steak you want to put in dates in this article.

01:17:49 ◼   ► I was thinking of your Windows VM thing.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Like I think that's definitely a pretty rare case, because you really, really wanted to

01:17:55 ◼   ► use a Mac, but we're kind of doing Windows development and you can get away with it because

01:17:58 ◼   ► of VMware.

01:17:59 ◼   ► I'm honestly I'm surprised you were able to tolerate that because that's no way to live in a Mac constantly be

01:18:03 ◼   ► Using VMware to do Windows stuff. What's my alternative use Adele? I'm not a monster. Yeah, I know

01:18:08 ◼   ► Well at some point maybe that's better but like the reason I brought up so no point is that better?

01:18:13 ◼   ► Yeah, the reason I brought up service side of stuff is not just because it's what I do for a living but because

01:18:19 ◼   ► They're there, you know think of the big the big tech companies, you know, you've got

01:18:27 ◼   ► Apple, what is it, Apple, Google, Amazon, maybe Microsoft, Facebook, right?

01:18:34 ◼   ► Facebook, Amazon, increasingly Microsoft and Google write a lot of or mostly server-side

01:18:43 ◼   ► software.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And when you picture the stereotypical developer who works at any of those companies and you

01:18:48 ◼   ► picture them using a Mac and being a cool tech nerd hipster person, they're writing

01:18:53 ◼   ► writing server-side software on the Mac, and I have to think that there is some aspect

01:18:59 ◼   ► of having the same CPU architecture as all of their servers makes that a more desirable

01:19:06 ◼   ► development platform. And there are a lot of those people. I don't know how many people

01:19:11 ◼   ► are using a Mac to do Windows development because they hate Windows so much, but there

01:19:15 ◼   ► are a lot of people writing server-side software, and my impression is that Macs are very prevalent

01:19:21 ◼   ► at those companies. And that's why I think it's a use case that actually may raise to

01:19:26 ◼   ► the level of being a factor in Apple's decision, that they will at least consider it, right?

01:19:32 ◼   ► Because you know, like, just think of the Apple says, well, we considered it, but it's

01:19:37 ◼   ► not important enough use case. It's too small. Like we care about consumers, right? So fine.

01:19:41 ◼   ► Ten years from now, if you went into Facebook or Google or Microsoft or Amazon and looked

01:19:49 ◼   ► to all the developers who are doing server-side development, what would it look like? Would

01:19:53 ◼   ► it still be filled with Macs? Or would they be mostly gone now and people switch to what?

01:19:59 ◼   ► To Windows? To Linux? I don't know, something that's still on x86? Or it could be that by

01:20:04 ◼   ► initiating this thing that Apple finally kick-starts all other companies to start pushing ARM on

01:20:10 ◼   ► the server more and Amazon rolls out ARM on the server for all your EC2 instances and

01:20:14 ◼   ► everything and Microsoft ARM on Windows really starts to take off and Intel just really has

01:20:21 ◼   ► a bad decade and really just fades from prominence and we're all happy because we're all using

01:20:27 ◼   ► ARM everywhere.

01:20:28 ◼   ► That's a possibility I suppose, but the big tech companies these days aren't the big tech

01:20:35 ◼   ► companies because they make native applications and hardware.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Most of the big tech companies are big because they run server-side software on cloud infrastructure

01:20:47 ◼   ► on x86 CPUs, and their developers all use Macs and run Docker and stuff.

01:20:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Just to clarify what I was saying earlier about FFmpeg, that was really a crummy example

01:20:57 ◼   ► because FFmpeg is open source.

01:20:59 ◼   ► So presumably, like I think I said it earlier, but that could be rebuilt from source.

01:21:03 ◼   ► But there's got to be some closed source thing.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Maybe it's an Adobe product, which doesn't typically get updated very well.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Maybe it's some other thing.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Maybe it's MakeMKV, maybe it's any number of other apps that maybe you wouldn't be able

01:21:15 ◼   ► to recompile yourself from source and maybe won't ever get upgraded, or updated I should

01:21:19 ◼   ► say, for this new platform, and then you would never be able to run that app again, and that

01:21:23 ◼   ► would really stink.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Or you would have to be using some sort of, what was the virtualization, not virtualization,

01:21:27 ◼   ► but the thing that, thank you, where you would have some sort of Rosetta-style situation

01:21:31 ◼   ► where, yes, you can still run it, but it's at, you know, a compromised performance and

01:21:36 ◼   ► blah blah blah.

01:21:37 ◼   ► That's the thing that worries me, is that sitting here now, I'm all enthusiastic and

01:21:41 ◼   ► it sounds great, yeah, give me my ARM MacBook Adorable, give it to me tomorrow.

01:21:45 ◼   ► But maybe I'd get that ARM MacBook Adorable and realize, oh, this grass isn't quite as

01:21:49 ◼   ► green as I thought.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Marco, any other thoughts on this?

01:21:52 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I think the software argument is a good one.

01:21:56 ◼   ► Like, I think in any transition like this, one of the big risks and problems is that

01:22:01 ◼   ► you do lose some apps, you lose software.

01:22:04 ◼   ► Like, you know, when we went from PowerPC to Intel,

01:22:06 ◼   ► not everything made it along that transition.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And now, the Mac is in a very different place

01:22:13 ◼   ► than where it was in 2006,

01:22:15 ◼   ► when that transition really happened.

01:22:17 ◼   ► You know, now, a whole lot more Mac software

01:22:20 ◼   ► is really in maintenance mode,

01:22:22 ◼   ► or being totally unmaintained,

01:22:25 ◼   ► and the software that people still use.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Like, a lot of developer attention moved to mobile,

01:22:31 ◼   ► and a lot of Mac developers no longer work on their apps,

01:22:35 ◼   ► or rather the developers of a lot of Mac apps

01:22:39 ◼   ► are no longer working on them.

01:22:41 ◼   ► So the Mac is in a kind of a bad spot

01:22:44 ◼   ► to go through an architecture transition

01:22:47 ◼   ► with no other modifications.

01:22:49 ◼   ► I think this is possibly one of the reasons

01:22:51 ◼   ► why I'm so excited about this idea of Project Marzipan

01:22:54 ◼   ► of having iOS and Mac kinda cross,

01:22:56 ◼   ► having cross compatibility between the apps

01:22:59 ◼   ► is that I think that could really revive

01:23:01 ◼   ► the Mac software market.

01:23:03 ◼   ► That would dramatically, I think, increase

01:23:08 ◼   ► the developer interest in the Mac

01:23:10 ◼   ► and developer support of the Mac

01:23:13 ◼   ► because it would lower that barrier,

01:23:14 ◼   ► allow more skills to be shared,

01:23:15 ◼   ► allow more code to be shared, et cetera.

01:23:17 ◼   ► So, you know, we talked about that before.

01:23:18 ◼   ► So, anything to revive software interest in the Mac

01:23:23 ◼   ► among developers would be very well timed

01:23:26 ◼   ► to go before or during a partial

01:23:29 ◼   ► a partial or full architecture transition.

01:23:33 ◼   ► Because that's when you need the developers

01:23:37 ◼   ► to be active on the Mac.

01:23:38 ◼   ► 'Cause right now, if you look around,

01:23:39 ◼   ► like we're about to lose 32-bit probably this fall.

01:23:43 ◼   ► Almost everyone probably has something that will break.

01:23:46 ◼   ► You know, we saw this on iOS too,

01:23:47 ◼   ► like when iOS dropped 32-bit,

01:23:49 ◼   ► almost everyone lost something.

01:23:50 ◼   ► And you might not have been using it anymore,

01:23:52 ◼   ► but not everything made it.

01:23:55 ◼   ► And that's how this is gonna be too.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Like if Macs transition away from Intel,

01:24:00 ◼   ► not everything's going to make it.

01:24:01 ◼   ► We're already losing a lot of things with 32-bit.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And so to do that without significant destruction

01:24:09 ◼   ► and problems for your users, you need a healthy

01:24:12 ◼   ► and well-maintained software ecosystem.

01:24:15 ◼   ► The Mac had that in 2006, and that's why

01:24:19 ◼   ► PowerPC to Intel went so well.

01:24:22 ◼   ► It's hard to say the Mac has that now.

01:24:24 ◼   ► So this kind of transition, I think,

01:24:26 ◼   ► it would be a very bad idea unless and until

01:24:30 ◼   ► the Mac has more active development

01:24:34 ◼   ► from third parties on it.

01:24:35 ◼   ► And right now, I don't see that happening

01:24:38 ◼   ► without some kind of major intervention,

01:24:40 ◼   ► and Project Marzipan could be that,

01:24:43 ◼   ► and so that's one of the reasons, again,

01:24:44 ◼   ► I really hope that happens.

01:24:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the good news is that

01:24:47 ◼   ► if either one of these things happen,

01:24:49 ◼   ► I don't think anyone can imagine a sequence

01:24:51 ◼   ► in which the Marzipan-y thing doesn't come

01:24:53 ◼   ► before or simultaneous with the CPU transition.

01:24:56 ◼   ► Just because it takes so long to make CPUs and Apple has already dabbled in what it takes

01:25:03 ◼   ► to reuse stuff that you wrote on iOS on the Mac.

01:25:06 ◼   ► So that just seems so much closer to being a reality to me than a CPU transition.

01:25:12 ◼   ► So I think we will get something to address the GUI API parity between iOS and the Mac

01:25:22 ◼   ► before any CPU transition or at exactly the same time as a CPU transition, for the reasons

01:25:27 ◼   ► you just said, because Apple, I think, recognizes the same thing, that going through a transition

01:25:32 ◼   ► with the Mac market the way it is is just going to make more people say, "Well, that's

01:25:35 ◼   ► the last straw.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Screw it.

01:25:37 ◼   ► I'm just going to be an iOS developer or do something else."

01:25:39 ◼   ► Well, see, it's exciting times ahead, maybe, possibly.

01:25:43 ◼   ► You never know.

01:25:44 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:25:47 ◼   ► OhPlease writes, "Hey, will Lyft be generally available during WWDC, as in not swamped with

01:25:52 ◼   ► users, or should I rent a car if I want to see the things around San Jose, like the Computer

01:25:56 ◼   ► History Museum?"

01:25:59 ◼   ► In my experience, from only one year of WWDC in San Jose, it was fine.

01:26:04 ◼   ► I can't remember ever waiting on a Lyft for any particular reason or for any particular

01:26:08 ◼   ► amount of time.

01:26:09 ◼   ► I didn't have any troubles.

01:26:10 ◼   ► I don't know about you guys.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Compared to San Francisco, San Jose is like a neutron bomb went off.

01:26:14 ◼   ► Like, there's nobody there.

01:26:17 ◼   ► There is a weird side effect though.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Like, so you're right, first of all, San Jose is empty.

01:26:21 ◼   ► The, relatively speaking.

01:26:22 ◼   ► The problem with San Jose, so it's kinda like

01:26:25 ◼   ► the inverse plot of The Truman Show,

01:26:29 ◼   ► where it seems like you walking around

01:26:32 ◼   ► are the only human being there,

01:26:35 ◼   ► and everyone who works at every establishment in San Jose

01:26:40 ◼   ► seems like they're an actor,

01:26:42 ◼   ► and for the very first time ever,

01:26:44 ◼   ► you're asking them to do their job.

01:26:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:48 ◼   ► That is a bit much, but you are closer to the truth

01:26:51 ◼   ► than I really want to admit.

01:26:52 ◼   ► - Well, welcome to California.

01:26:54 ◼   ► - Like, it really does seem like

01:26:56 ◼   ► you are like the first customer everyone's ever had.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Everyone, it's their first day on the job.

01:27:01 ◼   ► Like, it's, we found this to be the case last year

01:27:05 ◼   ► almost everywhere we went, almost every day.

01:27:08 ◼   ► It like, and in various different contexts,

01:27:11 ◼   ► like, it just seems like the city,

01:27:13 ◼   ► it seems like this is the first time

01:27:15 ◼   ► people have ever come here.

01:27:17 ◼   ► And I know that's not the case,

01:27:18 ◼   ► like I know this is a big city,

01:27:20 ◼   ► like obviously people are here all the time, but--

01:27:22 ◼   ► - Well, it's not that big, that's the thing,

01:27:25 ◼   ► it's not a big city.

01:27:26 ◼   ► - So anyway, hiring lifts and stuff for your time there,

01:27:31 ◼   ► you might have to tell the person how to drive.

01:27:33 ◼   ► You are the first person to ever ask them to do their job

01:27:36 ◼   ► in all likelihood, or at least that's how it will seem.

01:27:38 ◼   ► So I don't know what happened in San Jose

01:27:41 ◼   ► to make everybody behave this way,

01:27:42 ◼   ► but that's how it felt the entire time.

01:27:45 ◼   ► San Jose from the perspective of an adopted New Yorker.

01:27:48 ◼   ► - You ain't wrong.

01:27:53 ◼   ► All right, Bart Hoefs writes,

01:27:55 ◼   ► "Hey, should I use the new Cloudflare DNS thing

01:27:58 ◼   ► or should I stay with Google's DNS thing?"

01:28:00 ◼   ► So to recap, Google has a free and not open,

01:28:05 ◼   ► but a free DNS.

01:28:07 ◼   ► It's the DNS servers,

01:28:08 ◼   ► actually the IP address 8.8.8.8.

01:28:11 ◼   ► And what you can do is you can use Google's DNS,

01:28:13 ◼   ► which is supposed to provide perks,

01:28:15 ◼   ► although honestly I'm not even sure what they are anymore.

01:28:17 ◼   ► The last time I used it,

01:28:19 ◼   ► the only thing it really provided for me

01:28:21 ◼   ► was making things like YouTube slower

01:28:23 ◼   ► because I was hitting servers that were very far away

01:28:26 ◼   ► from where I was sitting.

01:28:27 ◼   ► I guess one of the advantages is it prevents your ISP

01:28:31 ◼   ► from knowing as easily what web addresses you're going to

01:28:34 ◼   ► and things of that nature.

01:28:35 ◼   ► Instead, you're giving it to Google

01:28:37 ◼   ► because that's a better choice, I guess.

01:28:41 ◼   ► But nevertheless, but yeah, so that was a thing.

01:28:45 ◼   ► It is useful if your ISP's DNS craps the bed,

01:28:48 ◼   ► which I know is a Comcast-ic thing to happen,

01:28:52 ◼   ► but I don't know, I've never really had that trouble

01:28:55 ◼   ► on files.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Or if your ISP does stupid redirects,

01:28:58 ◼   ► where they take over the DNS when you typo something

01:29:02 ◼   ► and throw you to some stupid page

01:29:04 ◼   ► that has a bunch of corporate stuff on it.

01:29:04 ◼   ► - Oh God, of course, yes, that is terrible.

01:29:06 ◼   ► - That's the main reason not to use ISP DNS,

01:29:08 ◼   ► 'cause they do that.

01:29:10 ◼   ► who also, like, you know, I really don't trust ISPs

01:29:13 ◼   ► to be ethical at all, because they have shown in the US

01:29:15 ◼   ► that they're not, like they're just not.

01:29:17 ◼   ► They will do anything and everything

01:29:19 ◼   ► to be as sleazy as possible,

01:29:20 ◼   ► because what are you gonna do about it?

01:29:22 ◼   ► There's no competition,

01:29:23 ◼   ► and now there's no FCC to regulate them.

01:29:25 ◼   ► So they can do whatever they want,

01:29:27 ◼   ► and they know it, and they do.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Like, I would actually trust Google

01:29:31 ◼   ► more than I would trust Verizon, which is my ISP,

01:29:34 ◼   ► or any major ISP in this country,

01:29:37 ◼   ► because at least Google, there's a lot riding on that

01:29:41 ◼   ► if they mess up, if they do something creepy.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So I think they're less likely to try creepy stuff,

01:29:47 ◼   ► and if they do creepy stuff, they're less likely

01:29:48 ◼   ► to get hacked and have my information legal over the place.

01:29:52 ◼   ► So there's a few reasons why I think

01:29:54 ◼   ► I would trust Google over any ISP.

01:29:57 ◼   ► That being said, I think I trust Cloudflare

01:30:00 ◼   ► more than any of them because A,

01:30:04 ◼   ► they're not an advertising company,

01:30:06 ◼   ► and B, they've spelled out in their post announcing this

01:30:09 ◼   ► why they're doing this for free, what's in it for them,

01:30:12 ◼   ► like what is their business plan here,

01:30:14 ◼   ► and their business plan is in part because they seem

01:30:16 ◼   ► to honestly care about making the internet a better place,

01:30:19 ◼   ► and in part because they offer enterprise DNS services

01:30:23 ◼   ► that would be better and are faster if more people

01:30:27 ◼   ► who access the enterprises' sites

01:30:29 ◼   ► are using their DNS on the client side.

01:30:31 ◼   ► So there is a clear business reason

01:30:34 ◼   ► why this benefits Cloudflare to do

01:30:37 ◼   ► that does not depend on creepy stuff

01:30:40 ◼   ► that I don't want them to be doing.

01:30:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this sounds good.

01:30:43 ◼   ► I'm not using it personally,

01:30:44 ◼   ► but I will say that I would be far more likely

01:30:48 ◼   ► to use this than Google's thing.

01:30:50 ◼   ► I do use my ISP's DNS because I don't often fat-finger URLs,

01:30:54 ◼   ► so I don't see that god-awful Verizon search page

01:30:57 ◼   ► that I hate, that it hijacks when you enter a bogus URL.

01:31:00 ◼   ► - They used to have a way for you to turn that off,

01:31:02 ◼   ► by the way, like you could go to Verizon's preferences

01:31:04 ◼   ► and find it somewhere and say, please don't do that.

01:31:06 ◼   ► - There still is, it's poorly documented,

01:31:08 ◼   ► but if you change the last digit of your DNS servers

01:31:12 ◼   ► in a certain way, you get alternate ones.

01:31:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, that used to be the way,

01:31:16 ◼   ► but there's a lot of outdated documentation in that,

01:31:19 ◼   ► and sometimes what used to work stops working,

01:31:21 ◼   ► and it's annoying.

01:31:23 ◼   ► - So anyway, I dig it.

01:31:24 ◼   ► - And on your concern, Casey, about 888 and 8844,

01:31:29 ◼   ► the other one, that was my concern and my experience

01:31:32 ◼   ► them as well as like a lot of the ISP DNS, like the sort of local DNS, use the fact that

01:31:39 ◼   ► that DNS is local to give you different names for common services so you get the closer

01:31:46 ◼   ► incarnation of it. And if you use the Google one, so the theory went that it didn't know

01:31:50 ◼   ► where you were to as much, you know, like, and it would just send you to a server far

01:31:54 ◼   ► away or that has a worse route to you. I'm pretty sure Google, with its 888 thing, does

01:32:01 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff to try to make that less severe. In other words, you're not going to

01:32:05 ◼   ► some central DNS server in the middle of the country that gives everyone the same number

01:32:09 ◼   ► for all of the different services, and that's why it tries to be local. Like all Google

01:32:15 ◼   ► things, it's massively distributed. It's not just one thing in one place. But my experience

01:32:20 ◼   ► has been that whatever that local thing is, it's not local enough, and still occasionally

01:32:25 ◼   ► I will get poor performance. On the flip side, sometimes you'll get better performance, because

01:32:29 ◼   ► if you try using your ISP's DNS.

01:32:31 ◼   ► I found ISP DNS to be unreliable,

01:32:33 ◼   ► as in no name resolves,

01:32:36 ◼   ► or crappy as in it gives me like the same IP for that name

01:32:40 ◼   ► as everyone else was on the same ISP as me,

01:32:43 ◼   ► and it's crowded, and if I switch to 888,

01:32:45 ◼   ► I get better traffic.

01:32:46 ◼   ► But either way,

01:32:47 ◼   ► I think Cloudflare is probably doing the same thing

01:32:52 ◼   ► as Google in that regard.

01:32:53 ◼   ► I didn't read their full blog list,

01:32:55 ◼   ► But that concern is real and does sometimes have ramifications.

01:33:01 ◼   ► And that's why I hesitate to suggest to non-technical friends and family,

01:33:05 ◼   ► oh, you shouldn't use the ISP DNS, just always use 888 or 1111 or whatever.

01:33:11 ◼   ► Because if they do find themselves in a situation where they're being sent

01:33:15 ◼   ► to a server far away and they get terrible performance, they're going

01:33:17 ◼   ► to have no idea how to debug that.

01:33:18 ◼   ► And I feel like it's better for them to just use the ISP DNS so then at least

01:33:22 ◼   ► when it breaks, they know the number to call and complain to people.

01:33:25 ◼   ► and the complaint will be legitimate and they won't find themselves in a situation where

01:33:29 ◼   ► they

01:33:29 ◼   ► the ISP support person eventually discovers that they have some weird DNS and say

01:33:33 ◼   ► "Oh, well there's your problem!" just

01:33:35 ◼   ► they're at the mercy of their ISP in more ways than one

01:33:39 ◼   ► but even for me I think maybe half of the devices in my house use the Google DNS

01:33:44 ◼   ► but

01:33:44 ◼   ► the other half use the native ones and I choose based on

01:33:48 ◼   ► how important it is for that device to get good video streaming from like

01:33:51 ◼   ► Netflix or whatever

01:33:52 ◼   ► Not an ideal situation.

01:33:54 ◼   ► An ideal situation would be if the kind of

01:33:59 ◼   ► technical expertise, general morality,

01:34:02 ◼   ► and aligned business incentives demonstrated by Cloudflare

01:34:07 ◼   ► actually existed in ISPs,

01:34:08 ◼   ► but we do not live in that country.

01:34:11 ◼   ► - No, not even close, which is too bad.

01:34:13 ◼   ► All right, so Josh Rappaport asks,

01:34:16 ◼   ► "Hey, Jon, with the release of Mac OS 10.3.4,

01:34:19 ◼   ► have you considered getting an external GPU enclosure

01:34:21 ◼   ► a fancy graphics card to do more gaming on your Mac. Can your Mac even support this?

01:34:26 ◼   ► Isn't it way too old for this?

01:34:27 ◼   ► It doesn't even have Thunderbolt.

01:34:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, I can't even, I'm running El Capitan. I can't even run Sierra, let alone

01:34:33 ◼   ► the latest version of High Sierra.

01:34:35 ◼   ► John's Mac doesn't even have USB 3.

01:34:37 ◼   ► Nope. But more generally to the question about external GPUs, I think those are a good solution

01:34:49 ◼   ► for people who need to use GPU-intensive things on a computer that can't fit an internal GPU.

01:34:54 ◼   ► So laptops, right?

01:34:56 ◼   ► And my main concern in the laptop realm is, based on my experience using my 2017 15-inch

01:35:05 ◼   ► MacBook Pro at work, constantly connecting it and disconnecting it to my monitor and

01:35:10 ◼   ► a hub thing that gives me USB-A connections and, you know, what else comes off of that?

01:35:17 ◼   ► well, many display port for my old monitor or whatever.

01:35:19 ◼   ► Anyway, I plug it into a thing that periodically makes it,

01:35:23 ◼   ► forces it to turn on the discrete GPU

01:35:26 ◼   ► and connect up to an external monitor.

01:35:31 ◼   ► And the reliability of that is terrible.

01:35:35 ◼   ► There, I have to do all sorts of weird dances

01:35:37 ◼   ► and do things to make sure the machine

01:35:41 ◼   ► doesn't feel too rushed or too hassled

01:35:43 ◼   ► by me plugging and unplugging things.

01:35:45 ◼   ► Very often I plug it in and it just ignores me.

01:35:48 ◼   ► Then I'll unplug it and plug it in again.

01:35:50 ◼   ► Oh, maybe now it'll pay attention.

01:35:51 ◼   ► Sometimes, no matter how many times I plug it in

01:35:53 ◼   ► and unplug it, I have to pull the power cord

01:35:57 ◼   ► out of my hub thing that it's connected to

01:36:00 ◼   ► and basically reboot the hub thingy.

01:36:02 ◼   ► Sometimes it freezes with a black screen.

01:36:04 ◼   ► And so like all this is making me think,

01:36:07 ◼   ► do I really want to be plugging and unplugging a GPU

01:36:10 ◼   ► and thinking this operating system

01:36:11 ◼   ► is gonna handle that gracefully?

01:36:12 ◼   ► 'Cause it can't even handle plugging it

01:36:13 ◼   ► into an external monitor in a consistent manner.

01:36:16 ◼   ► So I am not optimistic about how good an experience

01:36:21 ◼   ► it will be to use an external GPU,

01:36:24 ◼   ► but especially to connect an external GPU to a system

01:36:28 ◼   ► that didn't previously have it and disconnect it

01:36:30 ◼   ► without doing all sorts of dances and jumping through hoops

01:36:33 ◼   ► and bending over backwards to make sure the machine isn't

01:36:34 ◼   ► too rushed or isn't too upset by me plugging in the second GPU.

01:36:39 ◼   ► So my faith in the reliability of the Mac operating system

01:36:43 ◼   ► to handle this is shaken.

01:36:44 ◼   ► Despite the fact that I realize

01:36:46 ◼   ► this is a revolutionary feature for people

01:36:49 ◼   ► who are on the go previously had no way

01:36:51 ◼   ► to increase the GPU power of their portable machine.

01:36:56 ◼   ► Like there's only so much you can fit in that case.

01:36:58 ◼   ► And it was just the fans would be spinning,

01:36:59 ◼   ► you get the hottest one you could

01:37:00 ◼   ► and it would still be terrible.

01:37:01 ◼   ► And now all of a sudden you're telling me

01:37:02 ◼   ► I can get this little external enclosure

01:37:05 ◼   ► and have massively more powerful GPU.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Maybe they'll just deal with the bugs

01:37:08 ◼   ► and they'll just be worth it for them

01:37:09 ◼   ► to be able to do like live video previews

01:37:11 ◼   ► 4K video or whatever they're doing with their GPU rendering

01:37:15 ◼   ► stuff like that.

01:37:16 ◼   ► But for me personally, like I would not,

01:37:20 ◼   ► my choice of a gaming rig would not be a Mac laptop

01:37:23 ◼   ► with an external GPU.

01:37:25 ◼   ► There's a reason I'm waiting for the Mac Pro.

01:37:26 ◼   ► So I don't know, I'm not personally interested in this.

01:37:29 ◼   ► Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:37:31 ◼   ► Casper, Squarespace and Rover.

01:37:33 ◼   ► And we'll see you next week.

01:37:34 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:37:37 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:37:39 ◼   ► They didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:37:44 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:37:45 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:37:46 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:37:47 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.

01:37:54 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:37:55 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:37:57 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:37:58 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:38:02 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:38:12 ◼   ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:38:16 ◼   ► N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:38:24 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:38:27 ◼   ► They didn't mean to accidental (accidental)

01:38:32 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:38:36 ◼   ► So Casey, I think I have a solution to your BMW problem.

01:38:43 ◼   ► If I'm trying to solve my BMW problem with more BMWs and a shed load of money, then yes,

01:38:51 ◼   ► you have definitely found a solution for me.

01:38:53 ◼   ► BMW has come up with a subscription service.

01:38:57 ◼   ► You heard that right, that is not a joke.

01:39:00 ◼   ► It is now offering a subscription service only in Nashville, or I'm sorry, will be offering

01:39:04 ◼   ► a subscription service only in Nashville for $2,000 a month.

01:39:10 ◼   ► And up!

01:39:11 ◼   ► $2,000 a month.

01:39:14 ◼   ► You can choose between X5s, 4-Serieses, 5-Serieses, plug-in hybrids, etc.

01:39:22 ◼   ► And they will deliver with like white glove service, they will deliver the car you want

01:39:25 ◼   ► to your door, they will take away the car you already have, and you can be assured that

01:39:30 ◼   ► the car you are given is freshly detailed, etc. etc.

01:39:35 ◼   ► For $3,700 a month, you can alternatively get access to M4, M5, M6 convertibles, as

01:39:43 ◼   ► well as X5M, X6M, etc.

01:39:47 ◼   ► None of these apparently offer the 7 Series, but you know, whatever.

01:39:50 ◼   ► But what's interesting about this is it includes not only access to the car, but insurance,

01:39:54 ◼   ► maintenance, roadside assistance, etc., etc., etc.

01:39:56 ◼   ► So if you're willing to trade an asinine amount of money for a fair bit of convenience, you

01:40:02 ◼   ► can get a suite, or a fleet, I should say, of BMWs at your disposal.

01:40:07 ◼   ► And I think in general, this is a pretty cool idea, as long as you don't have kids where

01:40:15 ◼   ► you have to plug in a car seat, as long as you're not the kind of person that likes to

01:40:18 ◼   ► have a whole bunch of things sitting around in your car, be that a rag or a charger, perhaps

01:40:24 ◼   ► a obscenely overpriced car charger to go with your obscenely overpriced BMW subscription.

01:40:29 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** Wait, wait, wait. Do you have a rag in your car?

01:40:32 ◼   ► **Jaren L

01:40:32 ◼   ► Yes, I have a rag in my car. Why wouldn't you have a rag in your car?

01:40:35 ◼   ► Where—what kind of rag do you have and where is it?

01:40:37 ◼   ► I believe—well, so generally speaking, it is a blue surgical rag that was never used for surgery,

01:40:44 ◼   ► but my uncle was a eye surgeon for the longest time, and he would either purchase or snag a

01:40:51 ◼   ► series of these blue rags that are probably about a foot square, and they are the best rags for

01:40:56 ◼   ► general-purpose use. And they're intended to be used in, like, surgeries and things,

01:41:00 ◼   ► but he would just grab them and then give a batch to my dad or me and it is

01:41:05 ◼   ► sitting in the little container compartment whatever in in the driver's

01:41:08 ◼   ► side door so if I ever have to say wipe off the inside of the inside of the of

01:41:14 ◼   ► the windshield because maybe I've had my windows open and some like you know that

01:41:17 ◼   ► kind of like film that gets on the inside after a while you can wipe it off

01:41:21 ◼   ► with that if you ever have to kill a spider because somehow spiders found its

01:41:24 ◼   ► way into your car even then you're then you're smearing spiders all over the

01:41:28 ◼   ► windshield after the next time you clean it. Yeah, yeah. So the reason I asked about it

01:41:31 ◼   ► is because it brought back memories of my grandfather who also had a rag in his car,

01:41:37 ◼   ► but it was a filthy rag and it was in the trunk and it was used to clean off the dipstick

01:41:41 ◼   ► when you're checking the oil. Yeah, that's the only way I've ever seen. I'm more curious,

01:41:45 ◼   ► what are these rags used for in the surgery? I think to mop up blood and things like that.

01:41:49 ◼   ► Oh, jeez. For an eye surgeon, that's not terribly useful, right? Or one would hope

01:41:53 ◼   ► not anyway. But for general purpose surgeries, I'm assuming that's what they're for.

01:41:57 ◼   ► Speaking of surgery and surgical cleanliness, the reason I was moaning about your use of

01:42:03 ◼   ► this rag that you keep in the door pocket to clean the inside of your windshield is

01:42:09 ◼   ► because first of all, the inside of your windshield is a hard spot to clean. It's inconvenient.

01:42:14 ◼   ► It's hard to reach, right? You know, like just arm angle-wise. And stuff does. All sorts

01:42:21 ◼   ► of film of your human grossness collects on there and everything. But the other problem

01:42:25 ◼   ► especially I imagine in Casey's car,

01:42:27 ◼   ► well, you can correct me if I'm wrong,

01:42:28 ◼   ► is that potentially you may use something

01:42:32 ◼   ► to clean the dashboard that is right below the windshield,

01:42:35 ◼   ► some kind of product to keep that clean

01:42:38 ◼   ► or maintained or protected from UV or whatever.

01:42:40 ◼   ► - You're thinking like Armor All or equivalent.

01:42:42 ◼   ► - Or anything like that, right?

01:42:43 ◼   ► Something, something other than just a completely dry rag

01:42:46 ◼   ► to clean that part of your dashboard and make it look nice.

01:42:50 ◼   ► If you touch the rag that you're using

01:42:53 ◼   ► to clean the inside of your dashboard,

01:42:54 ◼   ► any part of it to the inside of your windshield,

01:42:58 ◼   ► if you touch that to the dashboard

01:42:59 ◼   ► and then bring that to your windshield,

01:43:01 ◼   ► you are in for a world of hurt.

01:43:02 ◼   ► Because the last thing you wanna do