ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Oh, and what did you say? Nobody looks at a man's shoes?

00:00:02 ◼   ► I did not place that reference until somebody linked it in the show notes. What a surprise. What a surprise.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Neither one of you got my Monty Python one last week. Finally, one person on Twitter got it.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I don't know that I've seen Monty Python. I think I've seen Holy Grail, and that's the only Monty Python

00:00:17 ◼   ► I think I've ever seen. That's what I did. It was from Holy Grail. I knew I recognized the reference about the shoes.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I just couldn't place it until I saw the link. Does that give me like partial credit?

00:00:26 ◼   ► No, 'cause Shawshank is not an obscure movie.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I know, it's one of my favorites, too!

00:00:30 ◼   ► It's not an obscure line from the movie either.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It is a very popular movie right in your wheelhouse for your age group,

00:00:35 ◼   ► and it is a pivotal, important line from the movie.

00:00:37 ◼   ► It is. I have no excuses.

00:00:39 ◼   ► No, you don't.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Sorry, Dad.

00:00:40 ◼   ► I try to tailor my things to you and they just go by.

00:00:43 ◼   ► The Monty Python I didn't expect you to get, 'cause that's before your time.

00:00:46 ◼   ► But I expected more people on the internet to get it, but only one person on Twitter got it.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Please love me anyway. I'll try to do better.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Okay, I'll do it. Yeah.

00:00:54 ◼   ► [

00:00:54 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:56 ◼   ► September is, among other things, the most popular month amongst Apple people, but it is also a very, very, very important month.

00:01:05 ◼   ► In September, it's National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and our dear friend Stephen Hackett, his eldest son,

00:01:12 ◼   ► Josiah, has

00:01:14 ◼   ► has been affected by childhood cancer since he was six months old, and

00:01:19 ◼   ► Two of Stephen's children are, including Josiah, are running or walking or doing some sort of marathon

00:01:24 ◼   ► to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. And if you're not from the United States, St. Jude's is a

00:01:31 ◼   ► children's research hospital. They take no money from their patients. They run entirely from

00:01:37 ◼   ► donations and grants and things like that. And so

00:01:39 ◼   ► this month, as every September, Stephen Hackett is trying to raise money for St. Jude's. And I

00:01:47 ◼   ► I can't think of a better, more universally agreeable target of your hard-earned money

00:01:54 ◼   ► listener than Children's Research Hospital.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And I mean that genuinely.

00:01:58 ◼   ► And so, Steven originally had asked, or had not asked, but I had hoped to raise $9,000.

00:02:05 ◼   ► As we record on Wednesday the 20th, he is at $17,000.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And I will consider it a personal failing of the ATP listeners.

00:02:13 ◼   ► We need a good name like Tims, like Hello Internet has.

00:02:16 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:02:17 ◼   ► not a good name. It's a fantastic name. It is not because it's gender specific, which

00:02:20 ◼   ► is awful. They're trying to brush over it on the re-show and it drives me nuts. But

00:02:24 ◼   ► anyway. We can call our listeners upgradients. That probably isn't taken. So anyway, we

00:02:30 ◼   ► need to call the, that didn't work at all. Yeah, we'll just edit that out, don't

00:02:36 ◼   ► worry. And whenever I say that, I know that means it's not getting edited out. Anyway,

00:02:41 ◼   ► The fundraiser is at $17,048 as I sit here now.

00:02:46 ◼   ► If we are not, well I shouldn't say we, if the Hacketts haven't raised $20,000 by

00:02:52 ◼   ► the end of September, I will consider it a personal failing of all of you that listen

00:02:57 ◼   ► to ATP.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And so I am asking, nay begging all of you, perhaps the accidentals, if you will, that's

00:03:06 ◼   ► terrible also, but it's the best I got.

00:03:08 ◼   ► The accidents.

00:03:09 ◼   ► the accident, so that's really terrible.

00:03:13 ◼   ► So I'm asking, we gotta stop this, we'll workshop it.

00:03:15 ◼   ► But anyway, we'll put it in the parking lot.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I'm asking all of you to please,

00:03:19 ◼   ► even if it's just a dollar, I mean that.

00:03:21 ◼   ► Even if it's just a dollar, whatever.

00:03:22 ◼   ► A dollar's more than no dollars,

00:03:24 ◼   ► please donate to the Hackett's fundraiser for St. Jude's.

00:03:28 ◼   ► It would mean a lot to Steven,

00:03:29 ◼   ► and it would mean a lot to all three of us.

00:03:30 ◼   ► So if you have any extra money with which

00:03:32 ◼   ► you can scrape a donation together,

00:03:34 ◼   ► and I mean that genuinely, I'm not trying to be a jerk,

00:03:37 ◼   ► please consider throwing a little bit of your hard-earned money their way because gosh knows

00:03:41 ◼   ► they deserve it. So just a quick serious note on that. Anything else you two?

00:03:46 ◼   ► I would go even further and say if we don't hit $20,000 John will give you all a thumbs

00:03:50 ◼   ► down.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Individually. He will tweet every single one of you individually.

00:03:54 ◼   ► All of the accidents he will tweet.

00:03:56 ◼   ► We don't want to just use the stick. We should use the carrot. If we break 20K we should

00:04:01 ◼   ► come up with a good name for ATP listeners.

00:04:04 ◼   ► Oh, I like that.

00:04:05 ◼   ► That's putting a lot of pressure on us.

00:04:07 ◼   ► - The person who makes it cross over 20K

00:04:10 ◼   ► sent us a screenshot and you might have input

00:04:12 ◼   ► on what the name is.

00:04:13 ◼   ► - Ooh, I like that too.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - A screenshot, because those can't be fake.

00:04:16 ◼   ► - Not at all.

00:04:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:18 ◼   ► - I love when people screenshot things.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Look, take a screenshot, then you'll have proof.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Young people who grew up in a world with computers.

00:04:24 ◼   ► - We can at least verify whether it has crossed $20,000

00:04:27 ◼   ► yet or not.

00:04:28 ◼   ► - We can verify that.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - It would be at least, everyone trying to fake it

00:04:32 ◼   ► would have to do it at around the same time at least.

00:04:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:36 ◼   ► And this would be a good problem to have.

00:04:38 ◼   ► All right, so. - Yeah, exactly.

00:04:40 ◼   ► So anyway, please, if you have any extra cash,

00:04:43 ◼   ► please send it to St. Jude,

00:04:45 ◼   ► and I know all of us would appreciate it,

00:04:47 ◼   ► so thank you for that.

00:04:48 ◼   ► - And look at it this way,

00:04:49 ◼   ► like, you know, Apple just released

00:04:50 ◼   ► a whole bunch of new crap,

00:04:52 ◼   ► none of which cost less than about 40 bucks.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Like, of everything they've released,

00:04:56 ◼   ► like, is there anything that costs under $40?

00:04:59 ◼   ► A single, any accessory or anything, probably not, right?

00:05:02 ◼   ► Even like, if you wanna get, like,

00:05:03 ◼   ► Now your phone can fast charge,

00:05:05 ◼   ► but you need to spend like $70 between a brick and a cable

00:05:08 ◼   ► to make it fast charge.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And we're willing to do that kind of crap all the time.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Like we, geeks, fans, listeners of this show.

00:05:15 ◼   ► So to drop like 50 or 100 bucks to St. Jude

00:05:19 ◼   ► for literally helping children with cancer,

00:05:22 ◼   ► like as Casey said, it's pretty hard to find

00:05:25 ◼   ► a more agreeable cause and a more beneficial cause than this

00:05:29 ◼   ► and the fact that the families who have to go through that

00:05:31 ◼   ► literally do not pay a dime for the healthcare

00:05:35 ◼   ► for like hundreds of thousands of dollars or more

00:05:38 ◼   ► worth of healthcare that their children need,

00:05:40 ◼   ► the last thing you wanna worry about

00:05:41 ◼   ► is how are we gonna pay for this?

00:05:43 ◼   ► You know, that's a hard enough thing for people

00:05:44 ◼   ► to go through.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So to have that burden of the finances lifted

00:05:49 ◼   ► from the parents who have to go through that

00:05:51 ◼   ► is so remarkable that this is worth supporting.

00:05:54 ◼   ► It's worth helping to make that possible when we can.

00:05:57 ◼   ► So those of us who can, please help.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And to go back to the the stick rather than the carrot the chat room is saying ATP ons is the leading contender right now

00:06:06 ◼   ► That's awful. Yeah, and that's what we're gonna use if we don't get to 20k. No

00:06:09 ◼   ► bad name

00:06:12 ◼   ► Like the stick I like the carrot

00:06:19 ◼   ► All right anyway moving on right so since we haven't had follow-up for a while guess what everyone

00:06:27 ◼   ► we've got a little bit of follow up.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So let's start with Marco.

00:06:30 ◼   ► You apparently would like to slightly correct yourself

00:06:33 ◼   ► about how you were slightly wrong

00:06:35 ◼   ► about the iPhone X screen size.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, so last episode I was talking about

00:06:38 ◼   ► the different screen sizes,

00:06:39 ◼   ► and I pointed out that the iPhone X screen

00:06:42 ◼   ► has the same resolution, the same point width

00:06:46 ◼   ► as the iPhone 678, the non-plus version,

00:06:50 ◼   ► which I was disappointed that we're not getting

00:06:52 ◼   ► at least more width in screen real estate,

00:06:55 ◼   ► but it turns out that while that was correct,

00:06:58 ◼   ► it is the same number of points in the user interface,

00:07:01 ◼   ► it actually is physically larger.

00:07:04 ◼   ► I would still like to have the same density

00:07:06 ◼   ► and just more space, but this is better than that at least,

00:07:10 ◼   ► because maybe this might allow you to set

00:07:12 ◼   ► the dynamic text size one notch down.

00:07:15 ◼   ► So you can kind of find ways to fit more on screen.

00:07:18 ◼   ► It will also, of course, help with photos and video

00:07:21 ◼   ► to look better, because this is a true 3x screen,

00:07:24 ◼   ► So we actually are getting nicer resolution,

00:07:27 ◼   ► photos will look better and everything.

00:07:28 ◼   ► So it isn't a total loss on the width gain.

00:07:32 ◼   ► There is some width gain,

00:07:34 ◼   ► just no gain in points as measured by the screen.

00:07:38 ◼   ► - So we should hoist up an item from lower and follow up.

00:07:40 ◼   ► The guys who do Paint Code,

00:07:42 ◼   ► 'cause the URL is paintcodep.com,

00:07:44 ◼   ► have a really cool diagram showing the resolution in points,

00:07:48 ◼   ► so the logical resolution, the pixels,

00:07:50 ◼   ► the physical resolution, and the physical size

00:07:52 ◼   ► for all the different size phones that Apple has made.

00:07:55 ◼   ► It's a great diagram, and if you want to have a visualization

00:07:58 ◼   ► of all his info all on one page that you can look at,

00:08:01 ◼   ► I will put that link in the show notes.

00:08:03 ◼   ► - I will also say Paint Code is an amazing app.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I used it to make my blog post of the month,

00:08:09 ◼   ► and it's wonderful, I absolutely love it.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And I have searched for this page pretty much,

00:08:17 ◼   ► probably once every two weeks for the last two years.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Like, 'cause I always have to refer like,

00:08:23 ◼   ► "Wait, how wide is the plus again?"

00:08:25 ◼   ► Or I have some question,

00:08:26 ◼   ► and this is right at the top of my search results,

00:08:29 ◼   ► and it's always purple 'cause I already clicked on it,

00:08:31 ◼   ► and it's just, yeah, this page is very helpful.

00:08:34 ◼   ► So thank you, Paint Code.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Also, Paint Code is an awesome app.

00:08:37 ◼   ► - All right.

00:08:38 ◼   ► I don't think it was last episode.

00:08:40 ◼   ► I think it was the episode prior,

00:08:41 ◼   ► but in the last couple of episodes,

00:08:42 ◼   ► we've talked about John's new MacBook Pro

00:08:44 ◼   ► that he has at work,

00:08:45 ◼   ► and how he is now a resident of Dongle Town.

00:08:48 ◼   ► And I thought you covered, Jon, why you don't plug your mouse or keyboard into the back

00:08:54 ◼   ► of the monitor, but let's talk about that.

00:08:57 ◼   ► And could you also cover that everyone and their mother recommended—all the ATPons

00:09:01 ◼   ► recommend—I can't even do that with a straight face—that everyone recommended

00:09:07 ◼   ► that you use some Thunderbolt dock, of which there were like five or ten different options.

00:09:12 ◼   ► So can you kind of do a little refresher and build on that for us?

00:09:16 ◼   ► so long ago no one remembers that show except for me.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Why not plug the mouse and keyboard

00:09:20 ◼   ► into the back of the monitor?

00:09:21 ◼   ► I'll tell you why, because I forgot

00:09:23 ◼   ► there were USB ports back there.

00:09:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:26 ◼   ► Whoever looks at a man's shoes.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I don't look at the back of my monitor,

00:09:29 ◼   ► I totally forgot they were there.

00:09:31 ◼   ► So many listeners wrote in and said,

00:09:32 ◼   ► "Hey, you should plug into the back of your monitor."

00:09:33 ◼   ► And they were right and I did and it is better.

00:09:35 ◼   ► So one port free.

00:09:37 ◼   ► - Oh, there you go.

00:09:38 ◼   ► - And now when I do manual KVM,

00:09:40 ◼   ► I just have to swap the disconnect two things

00:09:43 ◼   ► from their two different adapters

00:09:44 ◼   ► plug the two cables into the back. Anyway, I'm slowly phasing out my big Mac Pro at work.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I just wiped a bunch of the disks today. So it's not long for this world, and I'll be

00:09:56 ◼   ► down to just the one computer and I won't have to swap it. But yeah, moving things to

00:09:58 ◼   ► the back of the monitor. A, it actually works, which I doubted when people suggested that.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And I said, "Oh yeah, I should use that." I said, "Oh no, that would be really convenient,

00:10:08 ◼   ► but what if they don't work?" But they do, it's fine. And B, I think I'm probably just

00:10:12 ◼   ► gonna keep them there.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Although I'm having some problems with my mouse cord.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Like my new keyboard tray doesn't support my mouse cord in the same way the old one

00:10:20 ◼   ► did and it kind of adds some extra friction and now I'm starting to think about like I've

00:10:23 ◼   ► got to find a Bluetooth mouse that I can deal with because being corded is not, you know,

00:10:30 ◼   ► it's not the way of the future as they say.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Second question, why not use, insert my favorite Thunderbolt dock here.

00:10:37 ◼   ► The main reason is that they're all really expensive and I already have all these goggles

00:10:40 ◼   ► and adapters that I spent a lot of my discretionary desk budget at work on.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And they gave me some of the smaller dongles and stuff like that.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And the cheapest Thunderbolt thing starts at around $100 and something and they go up

00:10:52 ◼   ► to like $300.

00:10:54 ◼   ► But all that said, I have actually ordered the cheapest Thunderbolt dock I could find

00:10:59 ◼   ► with the main display port.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And I'm going to see how that works out.

00:11:02 ◼   ► If it actually does work better, I'll try to see if I can get that expense too.

00:11:06 ◼   ► But if I don't like it or if it's flaky, I'll just return it.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So that's an update on my dongle town.

00:11:10 ◼   ► - I would say too, like the various docs that people recommended, the two that got by far

00:11:17 ◼   ► the most recommendations were the OWC one and the Elgato one, both of which are $300

00:11:25 ◼   ► and not very small and externally powered by their own power supply and everything.

00:11:30 ◼   ► So like it isn't that surprising that maybe those can be more reliable than the little

00:11:34 ◼   ► like 30 to $60 dongles that we get,

00:11:37 ◼   ► but they also aren't particularly portable,

00:11:39 ◼   ► and it's also kind of a hard sell to tell people,

00:11:41 ◼   ► oh, this new laptop that was more expensive

00:11:44 ◼   ► than the one it replaced can be great

00:11:45 ◼   ► if you spend 300 more dollars

00:11:47 ◼   ► on this semi-desktop brick-looking thing

00:11:50 ◼   ► to make it into as useful as it used to be.

00:11:53 ◼   ► That's not a great sell.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, if I can get work to pay for it, though.

00:11:57 ◼   ► I got the OWBC one.

00:11:59 ◼   ► They make a big, expensive one and a smaller one.

00:12:01 ◼   ► I got the smaller, cheaper one for $150 in space gray, the one with mini display port

00:12:07 ◼   ► on it.

00:12:08 ◼   ► Put a link in the show notes.

00:12:09 ◼   ► They don't do a good job of linking to items from their emailed invoices, so I'll just

00:12:12 ◼   ► link to the page.

00:12:13 ◼   ► But anyway, you'll see all of them there.

00:12:15 ◼   ► I got some recommendations.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Some people said they had tried a bunch of docs, and the ODA/OSU ones were very reliable,

00:12:20 ◼   ► and I've had success with their things.

00:12:21 ◼   ► So I'm going to try it.

00:12:22 ◼   ► All right, we will see.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Window management comes back again.

00:12:28 ◼   ► We did get a lot of positive feedback from people who had never heard episode, what is

00:12:32 ◼   ► it, 96?

00:12:34 ◼   ► The end of 96, whatever episode it was we linked in our most recent episode.

00:12:38 ◼   ► But we got a lot of complimentary feedback on that, which I appreciate, because as I

00:12:41 ◼   ► think Marco agreed, that is my favorite episode of ATP Bar None.

00:12:46 ◼   ► But anyway, we had lots of people writing in, "Well, Jon, why don't you stay Moom,

00:12:50 ◼   ► Tiling Window Managers, etc., etc., etc., etc.?"

00:12:52 ◼   ► So why not, Jon?

00:12:53 ◼   ► This has been discussed before, but I guess it's a perennial topic.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I don't use them because they don't work the way I want them to work.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I've tried all of them.

00:13:01 ◼   ► And I thank people for sending suggestions because maybe they'll always send one that

00:13:05 ◼   ► I haven't heard of, but they just don't work the way I want them to work.

00:13:08 ◼   ► Tiling, forget it.

00:13:09 ◼   ► I don't want to tile at all.

00:13:10 ◼   ► And Stay and Moom I've tried and they just don't get into my workflow.

00:13:14 ◼   ► A lot of them sort of are based on the notion that you have a fixed set of windows or that

00:13:19 ◼   ► you want to memorize a set of windows, but that's not the way I want it to work.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I want to just, you know, I want to be able to arrange my windows however I want them,

00:13:25 ◼   ► whenever I want them and have them be in the places where they are.

00:13:29 ◼   ► I don't want them to be snapshotted and restored.

00:13:33 ◼   ► I don't want them to snap to each other or the edges and be in thirds and halves and,

00:13:39 ◼   ► you know, as I've said, if I ever made a Mac app, it would be a window management app that

00:13:44 ◼   ► would work the way I wanted it to work.

00:13:47 ◼   ► But those type of system hacks are not really wise investments in terms of if you're going

00:13:52 ◼   ► to make a Mac app.

00:13:53 ◼   ► you probably wouldn't be able to sell them in the App Store, and the Windows Server changes

00:13:56 ◼   ► all the time, and yada yada yada. So anyway, I don't use those, I do it the old-fashioned

00:14:01 ◼   ► way.

00:14:01 ◼   ► So, I don't know anything about Mac programming, really, but couldn't you do that with, like,

00:14:07 ◼   ► sending Apple Event codes and Apple's --

00:14:09 ◼   ► Don't say "Apple Events." Don't say "Apple Events."

00:14:11 ◼   ► No, because if you could, then that might make it hard in the future to distribute this

00:14:15 ◼   ► app widely publicly, but you could probably make some little scripts yourself that just

00:14:20 ◼   ► kind of monitor for things and keep things where you want them to be.

00:14:23 ◼   ► It's not about keeping them.

00:14:24 ◼   ► My window manager that I want would have to be real time,

00:14:27 ◼   ► kind of like when you drag things around

00:14:29 ◼   ► in any application that has smart guides, like OmniGraffle

00:14:32 ◼   ► or Keynote or any of those things,

00:14:34 ◼   ► where they have all sorts of guides and snaps

00:14:37 ◼   ► and adjustable borders and grid things.

00:14:40 ◼   ► But like none of those things, though.

00:14:42 ◼   ► Not like-- the UI would look like that.

00:14:46 ◼   ► In other words, it would have to be real time drawing

00:14:48 ◼   ► on your screen in response to things that you're doing.

00:14:50 ◼   ► So forget about Apple events.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Forget about any snapshot your windows, which all those things have problems because windows

00:14:55 ◼   ► are not identifiable.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Like they're identifiable with humans.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Like that's my whatever window, right?

00:15:02 ◼   ► But inside the application, there's no sort of identifier of that window that matches

00:15:06 ◼   ► up with your identifier.

00:15:07 ◼   ► There's probably a bunch of unique IDs.

00:15:09 ◼   ► And of course there's process IDs and there's the window title and there's maybe the document

00:15:12 ◼   ► that it's opened up as a document window.

00:15:14 ◼   ► But that combination of things does not map directly to your conception of that window.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Right?

00:15:19 ◼   ► so much about keeping the windows where they are because I'm not going to resize my screen

00:15:22 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:15:23 ◼   ► And that's what these things are trying to solve.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Oh, we'll just snapshot your screen so when you unplug and replug everything will go back.

00:15:27 ◼   ► What if I open 20 new windows and close 10 other ones or close the window and open that

00:15:32 ◼   ► same window again, my conception of it is that it's the same, but the application conception

00:15:36 ◼   ► of it is this an entirely new window, but I consider it the same window.

00:15:39 ◼   ► When I go back to my computer and it restores the previous state, it doesn't know about

00:15:42 ◼   ► all the new windows that open, has no idea where those are supposed to go, which is the

00:15:45 ◼   ► problem with my screen changing size.

00:15:47 ◼   ► And that one window that I think is the same window doesn't go back to where it was because

00:15:50 ◼   ► as far as the program's concerned, it's a new window.

00:15:52 ◼   ► So I'm setting all of that aside.

00:15:53 ◼   ► I'm just saying window management in general, one screen never changes.

00:15:58 ◼   ► I want an application that helps me with window arranging, helps me be more retentive about

00:16:03 ◼   ► lining things up so I don't have to do it manually a pixel at a time, which someday

00:16:06 ◼   ► will be really hard for me to do.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Like I guess it's kind of hard at retina already, but if we go like another doubling of screen

00:16:13 ◼   ► resolution, I'm not going to be able to line things up by the pixel anymore.

00:16:15 ◼   ► My eyes won't be good enough and my shaky old hands won't be good enough.

00:16:18 ◼   ► And then how will I live with my windows one pixel higher than where I want them to be?

00:16:23 ◼   ► Just remember, Jon, better to be anal-retentive than anal-explosive.

00:16:26 ◼   ► I gotta do both, or you can't keep it in.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Speaking about poopy things, let's talk Apple TV remote.

00:16:34 ◼   ► So, I stand by that it's really not that bad, and some people have written in and said

00:16:40 ◼   ► I'm right, and other people have said I'm wrong.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Ed Morris writes, "To John's point regarding who was able to use the Apple TV remote, my

00:16:48 ◼   ► five-year-old daughter. She whips that thing around like it's nothing."

00:16:52 ◼   ► Arbone writes, "Hard to use. My four-year-old and 68-year-old dad both use the Apple TV

00:16:56 ◼   ► remote without issue." Additionally, Anonymous writes, "I work at an Apple retail store.

00:17:01 ◼   ► The complete list of complaints about the Apple TV remote." And that was the end of

00:17:06 ◼   ► that section of either their tweet or email. They followed up and said, "And I've had several

00:17:10 ◼   ► people scream at me about it because of a free U2 album. So a lot of people apparently don't have

00:17:15 ◼   ► a problem with the Apple TV remote. We also got infinite feedback I measured about how why don't

00:17:20 ◼   ► you use such and such Amazon link and I'm assuming it was like a case for the remote or in some cases

00:17:25 ◼   ► like a tail. Oh one of those like rubber condom things. Yeah exactly and I have never tried these

00:17:31 ◼   ► because I don't mind the Apple TV remote. Some days I like it, some days I have ambivalence

00:17:36 ◼   ► toward it, but I presume and thought that one or both of you guys have tried like a

00:17:43 ◼   ► remote condom or a tail or whatever, right?

00:17:46 ◼   ► I haven't because I just find like as much as the Siri remote annoys me, the idea of

00:17:52 ◼   ► having some kind of big like rubber gummy thing around it, that just seems even worse.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Like those things are just ugly and just feel weird and the whole reason you buy Apple stuff

00:18:04 ◼   ► is because it's nice.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Like I want this remote to be nice,

00:18:07 ◼   ► to fit in with the other nice things

00:18:09 ◼   ► that are in my couch and living room area.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Like I don't want some weird rubber thing around it.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Like the real solution is fix the damn remote.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Like the real solution is make the remote work nice

00:18:21 ◼   ► rather than just having it look nice.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Apple used to be able to do both.

00:18:25 ◼   ► - So the reason I put all these quotes in here

00:18:27 ◼   ► is because I think they're a good example of how,

00:18:32 ◼   ► I was gonna say how people can get used to anything,

00:18:35 ◼   ► But it's not "get used to," it's more like—I'm trying to think of a good analogy.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Maybe if you had—in the DOS era, everyone's using DOS and its precursor operating systems

00:18:49 ◼   ► on Apple II and all sorts of other—like Tandy, Commodore PET, whatever, Commodore

00:18:54 ◼   ► 64—they're all command lines, right?

00:18:57 ◼   ► And everybody's using them, and most people would agree that there is some baseline level

00:19:04 ◼   ► of difficulty of using computers. But even in that environment, plenty of people would

00:19:08 ◼   ► say the Commodore 64 is not hard to use, my 8 year old daughter has no problem, you know,

00:19:12 ◼   ► my 5 year old is on the Commodore 64 all the time and they love it, so how hard could it

00:19:16 ◼   ► be to use? And my 68 year old dad uses the Commodore 64 and he's fine, right? And if,

00:19:24 ◼   ► say, there was a graphical operating system that comes along and some people are still

00:19:28 ◼   ► using DOS, you might say, "Well, okay, so DOS can be learned and used by people old

00:19:34 ◼   ► and young, but computers could be easier to use. Look at this." And the opinion you could

00:19:40 ◼   ► have there is, "Well, you may think that's better, but only sort of froufri connoisseurs

00:19:46 ◼   ► care about these so-called usability and user-friendliness that's better. I know WordStar and DOS backwards

00:19:53 ◼   ► and forwards, and I teach a class of seventh graders to use it and they are experts in

00:19:58 ◼   ► it, and so you may think this whole thing with like little pictures of folders and stuff

00:20:03 ◼   ► is better, but it must be better in some subtle way that only essentially hipsters, although

00:20:08 ◼   ► they didn't have that word back then or didn't mean the same thing, only hipsters can appreciate,

00:20:12 ◼   ► right?

00:20:13 ◼   ► But in the grand scheme of things, time has shown that a graphical user interface is in

00:20:18 ◼   ► general better than having everybody use the command line, and it took a long time for

00:20:23 ◼   ► had to happen, but at any given point when the command line was still the paradigm and

00:20:28 ◼   ► GUIs existed, it wasn't clear. They would say, "I have no problem with the command line."

00:20:34 ◼   ► Well, Apple's remote, and indeed all remotes, this was brought up by people, all remotes

00:20:37 ◼   ► are pretty terrible, with a few exceptions. And you might say, "Well, they're bad, but

00:20:43 ◼   ► people use them all the time." Like, whatever, there's a remote that comes with your cable

00:20:46 ◼   ► box, and yeah, it's a little bit weird and complicated, but you know, my five-year-old

00:20:49 ◼   ► picks that remote right up and knows right what to do, blah, blah, blah. How bad could

00:20:52 ◼   ► the remote really be? There exists good remotes, but people would say, "Oh, maybe that's better,

00:20:59 ◼   ► but only better in weird subtle ways that like remote hipsters and real connoisseurs

00:21:03 ◼   ► of usability snobs might care about." I think we're in the same situation where most remotes

00:21:09 ◼   ► are terrible, people get by with them because they can get the job done. And by the way,

00:21:13 ◼   ► one point that a lot of people brought up that we should be fair to the album, but one

00:21:15 ◼   ► thing the album does have going for it is that it doesn't have a lot of buttons, which

00:21:19 ◼   ► which is one of the big complaints about most remotes that you see, right?

00:21:23 ◼   ► All that said, that we can exist in a world where all that is true, and also the Apple

00:21:27 ◼   ► TU remote is awful for all the reasons that we have stated, right?

00:21:31 ◼   ► Just like the other remotes are awful for different reasons.

00:21:33 ◼   ► They have way too many buttons, and maybe the buttons are hard to press, or they die

00:21:37 ◼   ► after a certain period of time.

00:21:39 ◼   ► But even though the Apple TU remote has a small number of buttons, it is worse than

00:21:44 ◼   ► your average cable box remote in important reasons like how easy is it to find?

00:21:49 ◼   ► How easy is it to pick up without inadvertently doing something?

00:21:51 ◼   ► How easy is it to find which way is up?

00:21:53 ◼   ► How safe do you feel when picking it up?

00:21:55 ◼   ► Or do you have to pick it up like a game of Operation?

00:21:56 ◼   ► Because if you touch anywhere on the touchpad, something is going to happen.

00:22:00 ◼   ► And do people have accidental inputs and have trouble doing the gestures?

00:22:03 ◼   ► Yes, they do.

00:22:04 ◼   ► I see it all the time.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Does it mean that they can't use it?

00:22:06 ◼   ► And it's like one of those as seen on TV commercials where the person gets egg shells in their

00:22:10 ◼   ► hair and their house catches on fire when they're trying to make an egg.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Oh, eggs are so messy.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Like no, it just means that it's not a good remote.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And how do we know it's not a good remote?

00:22:18 ◼   ► better remotes exist. The TiVo remote is absolutely 100% a better remote. Easy to find, easy to

00:22:26 ◼   ► pick up, easy to grip. You can use it in the dark. Once you learn how it feels, you can

00:22:30 ◼   ► use the select button and the 5-way and the play/pause and a bunch of buttons that are

00:22:32 ◼   ► different shapes that are all under your fingers that are prioritized. The important ones are

00:22:37 ◼   ► close to you and the unimportant ones are far away. It's an amazing remote, right? It's

00:22:42 ◼   ► not like we don't know how to make a good remote. And it's also telling that almost

00:22:45 ◼   ► no remote is as tiny and skinny as all the Apple TV remotes because they get caught in

00:22:49 ◼   ► the couch cushions because they're hard to pick up and almost none of them have an always

00:22:52 ◼   ► on completely active capacitive touch swipey thing on them because then it's very difficult

00:22:57 ◼   ► to pick up and almost none of them are symmetrical front and back in ways that you can't tell

00:23:01 ◼   ► without either looking at it or putting a rubber band around it or something. So yes,

00:23:05 ◼   ► your five year old daughter can use it and yes, your six year old dad can use it, but

00:23:09 ◼   ► it is a bad remote. We should want better. We know better can exist. The difference may

00:23:13 ◼   ► seem subtle to you, but it's not subtle. In the long term, we will look back on this remote

00:23:17 ◼   ► and say, "This is the hockey puck mouse of the remotes." And we'll say that when Apple

00:23:23 ◼   ► finally makes one that's better.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I saw these quotes appear in the show notes, and because I'm the eternal optimist, I thought,

00:23:31 ◼   ► "Oh." Well, I think I added the last one, but I thought, "Oh, maybe they're realizing,

00:23:36 ◼   ► the two of them, that things aren't so bad." I should have known, however, that this was

00:23:41 ◼   ► just a bait and switch waiting for me." And that, "Oh no, this is just more fodder."

00:23:46 ◼   ► It's like that. DAS is not so bad either, right? I mean, people used it for years. It's

00:23:51 ◼   ► fine. You get the job done, right? You could even get kind of good with it. But it is worse

00:23:55 ◼   ► than a GUI for most people. And again, the things that make a good remoter are not mysterious.

00:24:01 ◼   ► The reason we are so angry is because there are obvious problems with it. The fact that

00:24:06 ◼   ► it's so small. I mean, I think it's actually better for five-year-olds because their hands

00:24:08 ◼   ► are so tiny. Regular people's hands. It's like trying to change a channel on a stick

00:24:14 ◼   ► of Wrigley spearmint gum. No, that's not how big my hands are. Just make it so that...

00:24:21 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm still angry about the remote. You can feel free to suffer through it.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I had no idea. All right, so...

00:24:29 ◼   ► That was glorious.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Do you have good news for us, Jon, with regard to fans and the Apple TV 4K?

00:24:35 ◼   ► I asked last week for some very pointed questions about the Apple TV and I got some responses

00:24:40 ◼   ► that I consider hopefully reliable and authoritative.

00:24:43 ◼   ► The Apple TV 4K does not have a fan, so that question answered.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Does have holes in the bottom, or bigger holes than the other one did, but it does not have

00:24:50 ◼   ► a fan.

00:24:51 ◼   ► So thumbs up on that.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And about the 24 frames per second cadence, still a little bit of mystery.

00:24:57 ◼   ► The only direct feedback I got was someone telling me that it can do 4K 24 frames per

00:25:01 ◼   ► second but not 1080p 24 frames per second but then on parentheses on my TV.

00:25:06 ◼   ► What does that mean?

00:25:07 ◼   ► Does that mean that the box can't do it or your TV can't do it?

00:25:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It will not automatically switch.

00:25:11 ◼   ► Apple doesn't seem to believe TVs will change video modes fast enough or reliably enough

00:25:14 ◼   ► to make it worth it.

00:25:15 ◼   ► So my parsing of this is that perhaps, I don't have this box yet, my order has not arrived

00:25:19 ◼   ► yet, but perhaps you can set the thing to output 24 frames per second to your 4k television

00:25:25 ◼   ► in which case I guess the menus and the whole interface would be 24 because it never changes

00:25:30 ◼   ► Which is not ideal because what if you want to watch a television show that's 30 frames per second or?

00:25:35 ◼   ► 29.9 7 9 7 or whatever the hell it is like bottom line is I want it to switch modes

00:25:40 ◼   ► I want it to switch modes the same way that the other boxes that connect to television can and do do to match

00:25:46 ◼   ► The cadence of whatever content it is showing if you can find a number

00:25:50 ◼   ► That's a multiple 24 and 30 those numbers exist. I swear they do math tells me so

00:25:55 ◼   ► Then you can get away with it, but just by having a higher refresh rate and then you know

00:26:00 ◼   ► Duplicating frames an equal number of times. Anyway, we'll all find out when we get our televisions Marco can find that on his fancy TV

00:26:07 ◼   ► I'll find out on my old TV and we'll see but there is a glimmer of hope I guess

00:26:11 ◼   ► Alright, and then Lane Watson writes in to say I online chatted with an Apple wrap about any streaming or cash benefit favoring the

00:26:19 ◼   ► 64 gig Apple TV and they were advised that the capacity difference is for downloading only

00:26:24 ◼   ► I refuse to believe. Say it isn't so. I mean, the only reason I'm holding on a shred of

00:26:31 ◼   ► hope like Casey about the follow-up being optimistic is that it's an Apple rep and very

00:26:35 ◼   ► often like is it like a salesperson? Is it somebody at an Apple store? How would they

00:26:40 ◼   ► know? How would they know how big the cash is for downloaded movies, the flexible storage

00:26:46 ◼   ► management, the variant of iOS that it's using? Who knows what it's doing? Like we already

00:26:50 ◼   ► know there's a whole way in iOS and in macOS I think where you can tag data as purgeable

00:26:57 ◼   ► but so essentially use all the space you want but the operating system will consider it

00:27:00 ◼   ► purgeable so if it needs that space it will chuck it.

00:27:03 ◼   ► They have that technology why would they not use it?

00:27:04 ◼   ► What do you think you're telling me that the 64 and what is the smaller one the 32 reserve

00:27:10 ◼   ► exactly the same fixed amount of space for downloaded movies?

00:27:13 ◼   ► It's plausible I suppose it is but I want to believe that they instead say hey guess

00:27:18 ◼   ► Guess what, when we cache downloaded movies,

00:27:19 ◼   ► we're gonna use that great API

00:27:20 ◼   ► that we introduced two years ago

00:27:21 ◼   ► that lets me mark data as purgeable

00:27:23 ◼   ► and we'll just use up as much space as we want

00:27:25 ◼   ► and knowing full well that if anything else

00:27:27 ◼   ► in the system needs that space, it will dump it.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Please let that be the case.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Anyway, I ordered 64 mostly because I wanted

00:27:33 ◼   ► to give them enough money to make a new remote.

00:27:35 ◼   ► - Even though they didn't.

00:27:36 ◼   ► No, I mean, I also ordered 64

00:27:39 ◼   ► because it's only $20 difference on an almost $200 purchase.

00:27:43 ◼   ► So I figured like this might never matter

00:27:47 ◼   ► But usually I keep Apple TVs for a pretty long time.

00:27:50 ◼   ► They aren't updated that frequently,

00:27:51 ◼   ► so even if you buy every one,

00:27:53 ◼   ► you're still keeping it for a few years at least.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So I figure just in case it matters

00:27:58 ◼   ► for anything I choose to do, either now or down the road,

00:28:01 ◼   ► I'll take the extra $20 risk.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Again, I don't know why they even have this difference

00:28:06 ◼   ► and why this premium priced thing

00:28:08 ◼   ► needs to have two different models separated by 20 bucks,

00:28:11 ◼   ► but for some reason it does.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And I guess it worked on me and John

00:28:16 ◼   ► because we gave the next 20 bucks.

00:28:18 ◼   ► I would say if you are too unwilling to do that,

00:28:20 ◼   ► give 20 bucks to St. Jude.

00:28:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I bought the big one and the previous one too,

00:28:24 ◼   ► and it's totally because I want to give money

00:28:26 ◼   ► towards this product because I want them to make this better

00:28:28 ◼   ► because I bought a lot of movies and iTunes

00:28:30 ◼   ► and I don't wanna go through the hassle

00:28:31 ◼   ► of having to un-DRM them.

00:28:33 ◼   ► - Wow, wait, I have a couple of questions or thoughts.

00:28:36 ◼   ► First of all, they've now updated the Apple TV

00:28:39 ◼   ► twice in as many years, haven't they?

00:28:41 ◼   ► - I believe the first one came out two years ago,

00:28:44 ◼   ► the Apple TV4, so it's on a roughly two to three year cycle historically.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Okay. Well, in either way, when do you keep anything Apple makes for more than like an

00:28:53 ◼   ► hour ever, Marco?

00:28:55 ◼   ► Oh, I was looking at laptops on eBay this week. I didn't pull the trigger on any of

00:28:58 ◼   ► them, but I was looking at them like...

00:28:59 ◼   ► Hey, hey, hey, there we go.

00:29:00 ◼   ► Oh, I forgot to mention some more Donal. It's not the fault of the computer, but speaking

00:29:04 ◼   ► of my new MacBook Pro, I think it is the fault of some terrible third-party software that

00:29:08 ◼   ► work and insists on installing on it that I've hopefully disabled, but I would disconnect

00:29:12 ◼   ► it from my monitor and then I would open the lid and it would just sit there with a black

00:29:16 ◼   ► screen staring at me and it would be working fine. I could tell because you could command

00:29:20 ◼   ► tab and you'd see the touch bar changed. I recognized oh that's the touch bar from Safari.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Oh that's touch bar. You know what I mean? Like I could tell that the computer was working.

00:29:28 ◼   ► That's a clamshell thing. Yeah the screen was 100% black. Yep. Clamshell thing. And

00:29:33 ◼   ► there's like no way to bring it back. The only way I found to bring it back is if I

00:29:36 ◼   ► if I logged out it would show me the login screen right. So then the screen would come

00:29:40 ◼   ► back on. I have no idea why that's the case. But anyway, I think it's because of some stupid

00:29:43 ◼   ► display link driver for some kind of USB driven hub. Nope. And I disabled that and I haven't

00:29:48 ◼   ► had the problem since, so fingers crossed. Give it time. Probably isn't. Yeah, I'm with,

00:29:52 ◼   ► I'm, my experience is that that does happen probably once a week if you're not diligent

00:29:58 ◼   ► about like either opening the lid before you unclam shell or sleeping the computer before,

00:30:04 ◼   ► no actually I've had it happen when I sleep the computer. Oh yeah, I'll try, I'll try

00:30:07 ◼   ► - Probably the open lid thing starts happening.

00:30:09 ◼   ► I need to know all the secret incantations

00:30:10 ◼   ► to make a laptop work like a real computer.

00:30:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:13 ◼   ► - That's so bad.

00:30:14 ◼   ► - No, this is like, my experiment this summer

00:30:16 ◼   ► mostly failed, like I was going to bring home

00:30:18 ◼   ► the LG monitor and replace this iMac

00:30:22 ◼   ► with my clamshell MacBook Pro setup

00:30:25 ◼   ► until the Mac Pro comes out next year.

00:30:27 ◼   ► And one of the reasons why I'm not doing this

00:30:30 ◼   ► is because it turns out using a laptop as a desktop

00:30:35 ◼   ► It can work, but a real desktop does a way better job of it

00:30:39 ◼   ► on a number of fronts.

00:30:40 ◼   ► And so, if you can afford to have a desktop

00:30:44 ◼   ► and a laptop as separate computers,

00:30:47 ◼   ► you generally will not regret that decision

00:30:48 ◼   ► if you do a lot of work with it as a desktop.

00:30:51 ◼   ► And I do, I work almost only with it as a desktop.

00:30:55 ◼   ► And in fact, what I probably should have done

00:30:57 ◼   ► is kept Mike's MacBook escape and just gotten my,

00:31:01 ◼   ► and either brought this iMac to the beach

00:31:04 ◼   ► literally spent the difference of money on a new iMac

00:31:07 ◼   ► just for the summer usage.

00:31:10 ◼   ► That would have been a better use of the money

00:31:13 ◼   ► than buying myself another 15 inch

00:31:15 ◼   ► and then forcing it to be a desktop for most of its life.

00:31:19 ◼   ► So next time I buy a laptop,

00:31:23 ◼   ► I intend for it to be only a laptop.

00:31:26 ◼   ► And if you have the luxury, dear listeners,

00:31:29 ◼   ► of using your laptops only as laptops,

00:31:32 ◼   ► you have a much better experience than if you try to make a laptop behave and be used

00:31:37 ◼   ► as a desktop.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Why you said that, a lot of people ask why I don't have a desktop. Work won't let me.

00:31:43 ◼   ► I have to get a laptop. That's why I'm doing this. I would rather have a desktop.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I don't know if I agree with you, Marco, about laptops being terrible as desktops. I think

00:31:52 ◼   ► the problem is Mac OS and MacBook Pros, or really any Macs, they're not well suited for

00:32:01 ◼   ► clamshell because if you do like the the LCD by itself or the LCD you know

00:32:07 ◼   ► sitting next to an external monitor that generally speaking works pretty darn

00:32:12 ◼   ► well the problem that you have which I share and I hate just like you do is

00:32:17 ◼   ► that clamshell mode is just good enough to keep us using it but pretty freaking

00:32:24 ◼   ► terrible all told and that's where everything falls apart so I wouldn't say

00:32:28 ◼   ► that laptops are, on the whole, completely unusable as desktops. It's just the way you

00:32:33 ◼   ► and I prefer, and Jon actually, I prefer to use them, is not that great and is fraught

00:32:40 ◼   ► with peril.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I wonder if you can bring an iMac on the ferry.

00:32:44 ◼   ► I don't see why not. It's heavy though.

00:32:46 ◼   ► You can bring it to Panera Bread.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Is it just Panera now? Did they drop the bread? They probably dropped the bread.

00:32:54 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Aftershokz bone conduction headphones.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Go to ATP.aftershokz.com to learn more.

00:33:01 ◼   ► With bone conduction headphones, small transducers rest in front of your ears against your cheekbones,

00:33:07 ◼   ► not inside or around your ears.

00:33:09 ◼   ► And they send little vibrations that you can't feel through your cheekbones directly into

00:33:14 ◼   ► your inner ear.

00:33:15 ◼   ► So without having anything right on or in your ears, your ears are left completely open

00:33:20 ◼   ► to hear the outside world.

00:33:22 ◼   ► This also brings some major benefits.

00:33:24 ◼   ► If you feel uncomfortable with earbuds or in-ear monitors

00:33:27 ◼   ► 'cause they're sticking in your ear,

00:33:29 ◼   ► you don't have to worry about that.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Your ears are left open to the air.

00:33:32 ◼   ► If other headphones make you really sweaty

00:33:34 ◼   ► or you want something to wear while you're working out

00:33:36 ◼   ► or during hot weather,

00:33:37 ◼   ► this doesn't have that problem either

00:33:38 ◼   ► because again, nothing's covering up your ear

00:33:40 ◼   ► and making it all sweaty.

00:33:42 ◼   ► And they also, they stay in place during exercise.

00:33:44 ◼   ► They are IP55 certified for water resistance.

00:33:47 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about them getting sweaty

00:33:49 ◼   ► or getting rained on.

00:33:50 ◼   ► The best thing about them though

00:33:51 ◼   ► is that you are hearing the world around you.

00:33:54 ◼   ► You are hearing everything because your ears are not blocked

00:33:57 ◼   ► in addition to your music or your podcasts.

00:34:00 ◼   ► So this is actually not so good in very loud surroundings,

00:34:03 ◼   ► like a train station, you can't hear it very well,

00:34:06 ◼   ► but it's awesome if you wanna listen to a podcast

00:34:09 ◼   ► or take a phone call while you're doing something outdoors

00:34:12 ◼   ► or around your house.

00:34:13 ◼   ► So like if you're walking or running,

00:34:16 ◼   ► you really wanna hear the world around you

00:34:17 ◼   ► for your own safety or convenience.

00:34:19 ◼   ► If you wanna listen around the house or at work,

00:34:22 ◼   ► if you wanna listen to a podcast or take a phone call

00:34:26 ◼   ► without missing what's going on in the house or office

00:34:28 ◼   ► or maybe someone's knocking on your door

00:34:30 ◼   ► or you don't wanna miss it, it's fantastic.

00:34:32 ◼   ► They are incredibly useful tools

00:34:34 ◼   ► for listening to podcasts or taking phone calls

00:34:37 ◼   ► when you don't wanna block out the world around you.

00:34:39 ◼   ► I've been using AfterShokz Trekz Titanium

00:34:42 ◼   ► and now the new Trekz Air and they are both fantastic.

00:34:46 ◼   ► The titanium is wonderful, it's my overall favorite

00:34:49 ◼   ► 'cause it fits really nicely in my pocket.

00:34:50 ◼   ► The Trek's Air is almost as pocketable,

00:34:53 ◼   ► just a little bit different shape,

00:34:54 ◼   ► makes it a little bit less pocketable,

00:34:55 ◼   ► but it sounds better and is lighter.

00:34:58 ◼   ► So it's really up to you which one you pick,

00:34:59 ◼   ► but I think you can't go wrong with either one of them.

00:35:02 ◼   ► They have great battery life, they're water resistant,

00:35:04 ◼   ► they are by far my favorite portable headphones,

00:35:07 ◼   ► especially during hot weather.

00:35:08 ◼   ► So check it out today at ATP.aftershocks.com,

00:35:12 ◼   ► and you can get a pair of Trek's titanium for just $99.95.

00:35:15 ◼   ► Regular price is 130, so that's a nice discount there.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Once again, ATP.Aftershocks.com.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Thank you to Aftershocks for sponsoring our show.

00:35:23 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:35:26 ◼   ► - All right, let's talk about Apple Watch with LTE,

00:35:29 ◼   ► another thing that, in this case,

00:35:31 ◼   ► I was fired up about and you guys were less so.

00:35:34 ◼   ► So Charles Arthur has written a blog post

00:35:37 ◼   ► that's relatively long,

00:35:39 ◼   ► but there's a really good poll quote that I have here.

00:35:43 ◼   ► And he was saying that, in the same way I was,

00:35:46 ◼   ► the $10 a month that Americans are being charged is outrageous. And he said, "Why is it outrageous?

00:35:52 ◼   ► Because watch cellular data use is not additive. It's substantive, substantive, whatever that

00:35:58 ◼   ► word is I'm looking for. If you're pulling in data on your cellular watch, you must have

00:36:02 ◼   ► left your phone behind. Ergo, you're doing nothing with the phone, so it's consuming

00:36:07 ◼   ► next to no data. The data consumption has shifted to your watch." And I know that this

00:36:11 ◼   ► is probably not 100% completely and utterly true, but I think his point is fair in that

00:36:19 ◼   ► in general you're going to be using data on your phone or your watch in general and not both.

00:36:26 ◼   ► But data usage doesn't matter. There's no additional data. They don't care where you use

00:36:30 ◼   ► your data. If the carrier has an actual argument, it's network capacity because your phone is still

00:36:37 ◼   ► on the network. It's still hogging whatever, you know, spectrum and identification space that could

00:36:42 ◼   ► be used by another phone that's in use. It's not off the network when you're away from home. It is

00:36:47 ◼   ► still on the network. So that would be their answer. But you know, like I said, the real

00:36:50 ◼   ► answer is it has nothing to do with how much does it cost the carrier to have an additional device.

00:36:53 ◼   ► It's what will the market bear? And that gets us back to the root problem, which is that the market

00:36:57 ◼   ► for telecom in the US is not as competitive as it should be. There are a very small number of very

00:37:02 ◼   ► large companies that probably collude and do terrible things that we don't like, and there's

00:37:06 ◼   ► there's nothing we can do about it. That's why we're angry. And this is just like, this

00:37:10 ◼   ► is the US carriers flexing their muscle. They're taking advantage of the situation they're

00:37:18 ◼   ► in. And our complaint is really, we don't like the situation they're in. And that's

00:37:22 ◼   ► why other countries have these obscenely inexpensive rates, because either they have better systems

00:37:28 ◼   ► of government or companies that are actually competing with each other or the government

00:37:32 ◼   ► mandates that the companies have to be interchangeable in a certain way or all sorts of things that

00:37:35 ◼   ► make their environment for telecom better than the environment in the US. And that's

00:37:39 ◼   ► really what we're angry about at the root. Not so much, "Oh, this isn't worth $10 and

00:37:43 ◼   ► let me tell you because it doesn't cost them $10 to do this." That's not how business works.

00:37:46 ◼   ► It doesn't matter how much it costs them to do something. It just matters what the market

00:37:51 ◼   ► will bear. So the market is messed up in the US.

00:37:53 ◼   ► Well, I think it's both. I also don't think it's worth this kind of money.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Yeah, but you can't have that kind of thinking. It doesn't cost Marco any more money when

00:38:00 ◼   ► someone buys a new copy of Overcast. Does that mean it's not worth it? It's what the

00:38:04 ◼   ► market will bear, right? He doesn't have to like carve the bits out of a little

00:38:07 ◼   ► stone tablet every time someone subscribes to Overcast, Premiere or

00:38:10 ◼   ► whatever. Yeah, I know what you're saying and I should also add that I saw a ton

00:38:15 ◼   ► of feedback about what other countries are being charged and if there was

00:38:20 ◼   ► anyone who said, "Oh yeah, it's the same as America," then I genuinely don't

00:38:24 ◼   ► remember it because pretty much everyone said, like Australians were saying it's

00:38:27 ◼   ► about five bucks a month in either Australian or American dollars, I forget

00:38:31 ◼   ► which Canadians said it's about five dollars a month or five loonies or

00:38:36 ◼   ► whatever it is they use up there. That sounds right. They're sorry. They're so

00:38:40 ◼   ► very sorry. And also, you know, confirmation bias alert coming up. I did

00:38:45 ◼   ► not see anyone say to me, "No, you're crazy and it's exactly how much, you know, $10

00:38:51 ◼   ► a month is exactly right and you should stop whining." Now, I probably should stop

00:38:55 ◼   ► whining, but I was stunned because just about everything I say on this show,

00:38:59 ◼   ► somebody will come out of the woodwork to disagree with. And I did not see not one of those. And I concede,

00:39:05 ◼   ► unequivocally, this is confirmation bias at its finest, but hand on heart,

00:39:09 ◼   ► I do not remember seeing anyone say that. So it doesn't mean that those people don't exist, and please, for the love that is of

00:39:15 ◼   ► all that is good and holy, that does not mean, listener, that agrees with Marco that this is your moment to shine.

00:39:20 ◼   ► I know that you're out there, and I know there are people that disagree with me.

00:39:23 ◼   ► I was just surprised how few people wrote in, because that number seemed to be zero.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Anyway moving on Craig Federighi went on a press tour to talk about the face ID recognition

00:39:34 ◼   ► Flub up and and up swipe overlap and all sorts of different things

00:39:39 ◼   ► Does one of you want to tell us about this I put this in here

00:39:44 ◼   ► I'm linked to the talk show where Craig went on with a John Gruber and they had a

00:39:49 ◼   ► Conversation too short conversation because I guess they're busy and that had a lot of things to do only 30 minutes, but worth listening to

00:39:56 ◼   ► And Andreas Goebb wrote in say that this

00:40:00 ◼   ► interview on the talk show confirmed the idea that I put forward last show about how the iPhone 10 could

00:40:09 ◼   ► Let you swipe up before it has recognized your face

00:40:13 ◼   ► Just let you do it and if in the process of you know

00:40:17 ◼   ► It's doing the animation to show you the screen where you have to type in your passcode to unlock the phone

00:40:21 ◼   ► If during that process at any point it recognizes your face just go straight through it rather than saying hold the phone up to your face

00:40:28 ◼   ► Wait for it to recognize your face then swipe up. So Craig

00:40:32 ◼   ► Confirmed that it does in fact overlap them and it you know

00:40:36 ◼   ► That's smart thing to do and Apple has smart folks and so that's what they're doing

00:40:39 ◼   ► and so we'll put a link in the show notes to the entirety of that episode and also the

00:40:43 ◼   ► Timestamp at I think 16 minutes and 45 seconds where you can hear that bit

00:40:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm actually kind of happy that,

00:40:50 ◼   ► I mean, I know it probably really sucked for Apple

00:40:54 ◼   ► that the demo failed on stage,

00:40:56 ◼   ► but I'm actually kind of happy that the result of that

00:40:59 ◼   ► has been, we've gotten some really great interviews

00:41:01 ◼   ► out of Craig over the last few days.

00:41:04 ◼   ► And so, you know, yeah, I mean,

00:41:05 ◼   ► it's unfortunate that it happened,

00:41:06 ◼   ► but it's kind of nice for fans of the company

00:41:09 ◼   ► following all this stuff to have all this additional

00:41:11 ◼   ► exposure and information and good questions being asked

00:41:15 ◼   ► and getting more details about how Face ID works.

00:41:17 ◼   ► because the iPhone X is still a while out.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Like it's still, you can't even order it

00:41:22 ◼   ► for over a month from now,

00:41:24 ◼   ► and it's probably going to be at least,

00:41:28 ◼   ► I would say probably January,

00:41:30 ◼   ► before a lot of people even have them.

00:41:33 ◼   ► So this is still a while out,

00:41:34 ◼   ► so to get any more information earlier is kinda nice.

00:41:37 ◼   ► - You don't think you would've gone on this,

00:41:39 ◼   ► done all this press if the demo hadn't failed

00:41:42 ◼   ► for explicable reasons?

00:41:44 ◼   ► - No, I don't.

00:41:45 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:41:45 ◼   ► - Craig is going around doing all these interviews

00:41:47 ◼   ► all of a sudden talking about Face ID

00:41:48 ◼   ► and how awesome it is because it fell on stage.

00:41:51 ◼   ► And this is a form of damage control.

00:41:53 ◼   ► That seems to make sense.

00:41:54 ◼   ► I mean, part of it is also reacting to people's concerns

00:41:57 ◼   ► about how secure and private it is,

00:42:00 ◼   ► but I don't think that would've been enough

00:42:04 ◼   ► to get an Apple executive to go give interviews like this.

00:42:06 ◼   ► I think it's because it failed

00:42:08 ◼   ► and there was some bad press about that

00:42:10 ◼   ► 'cause it didn't just get noticed by nerds like us.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Everyone noticed and there were news articles about it.

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was the worst kind of mistake

00:42:18 ◼   ► because it is explicable,

00:42:21 ◼   ► but there's nuance in the explanation

00:42:22 ◼   ► and nobody wants nuance.

00:42:24 ◼   ► All they want is Apple demo fails.

00:42:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's no way this would have happened

00:42:28 ◼   ► had the demo not gone the way it did.

00:42:31 ◼   ► But again, I think this is good for us,

00:42:34 ◼   ► and ultimately it's fine for Apple

00:42:35 ◼   ► 'cause long term no one's gonna remember this,

00:42:36 ◼   ► but it's good for us to get all these wonderful interviews.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And Craig's a pretty awesome person

00:42:42 ◼   ► and there's always tons of info

00:42:44 ◼   ► in anything that he says publicly.

00:42:46 ◼   ► He obviously is very familiar with technical details,

00:42:49 ◼   ► with implementation details, with reasons

00:42:52 ◼   ► that they do things, and he's able to explain those so well

00:42:55 ◼   ► that he gives really good interviews about technical topics.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And so it's always really nice to hear more from Greg.

00:43:02 ◼   ► - Someone had a funny tweet when people were leaking

00:43:06 ◼   ► supposed inside news from the tense rehearsals

00:43:09 ◼   ► after the leak, right, when all the Apple people

00:43:11 ◼   ► were rehearsing their thing knowing that all this information

00:43:14 ◼   ► leaked out there and they're all angry about it and everyone was yelling at everybody and

00:43:18 ◼   ► someone tweeted that the worst thing about this Apple leak is learning that Craig Federighi

00:43:23 ◼   ► yells at people sometimes.

00:43:25 ◼   ► "Don't want to believe it, not Craig!

00:43:29 ◼   ► Hair daddy would never yell at me!"

00:43:31 ◼   ► I'll tell you one thing, hearing that he was yelling and getting mad, that drove home

00:43:37 ◼   ► to me like, "Wow, they must be really mad."

00:43:39 ◼   ► Assuming it's even true, I mean, that's just random hearsay from, I'm sure, people

00:43:43 ◼   ► who are inside the room during rehearsals

00:43:45 ◼   ► are texting secrets out of it, who knows?

00:43:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, the one thing, when we heard those rumors,

00:43:51 ◼   ► the one thing I kept thinking of,

00:43:52 ◼   ► how many people could possibly have been in that room?

00:43:54 ◼   ► - Right, are they on their phone in the audience

00:43:56 ◼   ► going, this is wild, guys.

00:43:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not like there's somebody in,

00:44:01 ◼   ► are there like 10 people in the room?

00:44:04 ◼   ► And they're not gonna be low-ranked people

00:44:07 ◼   ► who are gonna be leaking stuff.

00:44:09 ◼   ► They're not gonna have any random person in the room

00:44:11 ◼   ► when they're rehearsing their super secret keynote

00:44:13 ◼   ► days before the event.

00:44:15 ◼   ► - Anyway, everyone's human and I'm sure people were mad

00:44:18 ◼   ► and it was a difficult time.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And that demo, yeah, it was rough because like,

00:44:24 ◼   ► especially, I don't hold regular people to this

00:44:26 ◼   ► or even like the regular press, but for the tech nerds,

00:44:29 ◼   ► we'll get into this, actually the very next item,

00:44:31 ◼   ► let's just transition to it immediately

00:44:32 ◼   ► because I will make the point in both contexts

00:44:34 ◼   ► that it wants to save time.

00:44:36 ◼   ► The next item here is that APFS support for Fusion Drives

00:44:40 ◼   ► is not in the release version of High Sierra.

00:44:42 ◼   ► It was in the betas and Apple talked about it

00:44:44 ◼   ► and it would totally be a thing that you can have.

00:44:46 ◼   ► But then when they got ready to do the release version,

00:44:48 ◼   ► said, you know, here it is from right from Apple's page

00:44:51 ◼   ► with Google link.

00:44:52 ◼   ► If you installed the beta version of macOS High Sierra,

00:44:54 ◼   ► the fusion drive from your Mac may have been converted

00:44:56 ◼   ► to Apple file system basically if you check that checkbox,

00:44:58 ◼   ► you know, that they present during the betas.

00:45:01 ◼   ► Because this configuration is not supported

00:45:03 ◼   ► in the initial release of macOS High Sierra,

00:45:06 ◼   ► we recommend that you follow the steps below

00:45:08 ◼   ► to revert back to the previous disk format.

00:45:10 ◼   ► and this is long arduous series of steps to convert back.

00:45:13 ◼   ► This and also the on-stage demo of an unreleased product

00:45:19 ◼   ► for tech nerds specifically, not for the regular press,

00:45:21 ◼   ► not for casual people, but for tech nerds specifically,

00:45:25 ◼   ► this is what unreleased software,

00:45:28 ◼   ► unreleased hardware and beta software means.

00:45:31 ◼   ► It means that it might not work right

00:45:34 ◼   ► and things might change before the release.

00:45:36 ◼   ► And if you enter into a beta or watch a demo

00:45:39 ◼   ► something that is unreleased with the expectation that everything absolutely

00:45:44 ◼   ► must work perfectly and will not change before release you are misunderstanding

00:45:47 ◼   ► what a beta is. It just so happens that most of the time Apple is good with its

00:45:51 ◼   ► betas and more or less there's a steady progression from early betas to late

00:45:54 ◼   ► betas that converges on a finished product that we expect. But this is

00:46:00 ◼   ► exactly what happens during betas. The feature is there, they do all the betas

00:46:03 ◼   ► on it, they want to release it eventually, sometimes things get cut. APFS will

00:46:09 ◼   ► convert your SSD unconditionally blah blah blah they make that policy decision

00:46:12 ◼   ► they say the one that's working on fusion drives has a few more problems

00:46:15 ◼   ► we're gonna hold that back it will not be in the initial release and if you're

00:46:18 ◼   ► using a beta and all of a sudden you're really mad like oh it converted my drive

00:46:21 ◼   ► but now the release version won't work with it blah blah it was a beta this is

00:46:25 ◼   ► what betas are all about I think people are spoiled by betas that basically

00:46:28 ◼   ► never have any harmful effects and they can smoothly sail right from them to the

00:46:32 ◼   ► release version that shouldn't be expected to be the norm nor should it be

00:46:35 ◼   ► expected that an unreleased piece of hardware and unfinished software should demo perfectly on stage.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Never mind the fact that the hardware and software both worked as expected. It was a procedural error

00:46:47 ◼   ► having to do with the demo. Basically the people who were cleaning the fingerprints off the thing

00:46:50 ◼   ► accidentally locked them by activating Face ID too many times, which would make sense even if

00:46:56 ◼   ► Face ID required a swipe up. Anyway, I just want to, you know, tech people should remind themselves

00:47:03 ◼   ► Not done, beta, unreleased, those are all things

00:47:07 ◼   ► that we should expect that there will be bugs

00:47:09 ◼   ► and there will be changes before release.

00:47:10 ◼   ► So anybody who is super mad about that

00:47:12 ◼   ► and is also a tech nerd needs to like

00:47:15 ◼   ► check themselves a little bit.

00:47:16 ◼   ► - Before they wreck themselves, I know.

00:47:18 ◼   ► - I mean also just like, you know, everyone always asks,

00:47:20 ◼   ► every time there's a beta season,

00:47:23 ◼   ► we get tons of questions, people saying,

00:47:25 ◼   ► is it okay to install the beta on my phone

00:47:27 ◼   ► or whatever else?

00:47:28 ◼   ► And for an iPhone, you know, my answer is always like,

00:47:32 ◼   ► If you're able to do a restore at any time

00:47:35 ◼   ► and tolerate that amount of downtime,

00:47:38 ◼   ► because that might happen with pretty much any beta,

00:47:40 ◼   ► then sure, you can give it a try if you want.

00:47:43 ◼   ► If you don't need your phone to be that reliable, fine.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And I usually put the betas on my main phone

00:47:49 ◼   ► usually around beta two or three.

00:47:51 ◼   ► I have never installed a Mac OS beta

00:47:54 ◼   ► on my real computer, ever.

00:47:57 ◼   ► And I don't intend to.

00:47:59 ◼   ► To me, the needs that your computer has

00:48:02 ◼   ► should be far more conservative

00:48:05 ◼   ► than what you're willing to do

00:48:07 ◼   ► on an easily restored iOS device.

00:48:10 ◼   ► Your computer, that is like, for me at least,

00:48:12 ◼   ► I know this is maybe an antiquated view these days,

00:48:15 ◼   ► but the computer for me is like my primary store

00:48:19 ◼   ► of everything, it is my master device.

00:48:22 ◼   ► If everything else fails, my computer still has to work.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I need, like the computer has the master copy

00:48:28 ◼   ► of all the data, it is the thing that I can back up the most

00:48:31 ◼   ► that I can rely on the most, the thing I need to use

00:48:35 ◼   ► the most for work purposes and for hobby stuff.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Like I need my computer to be reliable all the time

00:48:42 ◼   ► at any cost.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And so the idea of installing beta software

00:48:47 ◼   ► of my main computer OS in a way that like formatting a drive

00:48:52 ◼   ► or losing all data would be inconvenient

00:48:55 ◼   ► or a problem or slow me down at all,

00:48:57 ◼   ► that just sounds like a terrible idea to me.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Like the only time I've ever installed a beta

00:49:02 ◼   ► has been on a laptop when I have not needed

00:49:06 ◼   ► to use it anytime soon.

00:49:07 ◼   ► And even then, like I almost never even do that.

00:49:12 ◼   ► Like you know, I think the last time I did it

00:49:13 ◼   ► was when they did Safari reading list

00:49:17 ◼   ► and I wanted to see what that was like

00:49:18 ◼   ► 'cause I was still running Instapaper

00:49:19 ◼   ► and I was worried that it would be too good

00:49:21 ◼   ► and nobody could tell me how it was

00:49:22 ◼   ► so I installed the beta.

00:49:24 ◼   ► But otherwise, most people have no good reason,

00:49:28 ◼   ► unless you're a Mac developer working on cutting edge stuff,

00:49:31 ◼   ► most people have no good reason

00:49:33 ◼   ► to install macOS betas at all.

00:49:36 ◼   ► And if you're going to do it,

00:49:38 ◼   ► do it on basically a disposable installation.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Do it on a disposable partition, on a disposable disk,

00:49:44 ◼   ► on a computer that you don't really need right now.

00:49:47 ◼   ► Never ever do it on anything that matters,

00:49:48 ◼   ► because that's, it's hard enough for them

00:49:50 ◼   ► to get macOS releases stable

00:49:52 ◼   ► when they are released to the public.

00:49:54 ◼   ► let alone in the beta, like forget it.

00:49:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've never put a macOS beta

00:49:59 ◼   ► on anything I've ever owned.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And I can't imagine a reason I would,

00:50:04 ◼   ► other than what you've described, Marco.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Like it just seems really a poor choice to me,

00:50:08 ◼   ► unless you're like a macOS developer, like you said.

00:50:11 ◼   ► And similarly, I, generally speaking,

00:50:15 ◼   ► I avoid putting betas on my phones.

00:50:17 ◼   ► You and I both made the critical rookie mistake of,

00:50:20 ◼   ► was it the one with--

00:50:22 ◼   ► - iOS 5. - Yeah, with notifications

00:50:24 ◼   ► Center that, oh man, you and I I think ran right back to our hotel rooms right after

00:50:29 ◼   ► the keynote or something like that. I mean it doesn't matter exactly when it was.

00:50:32 ◼   ► We did it over lunch.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I think that's what it was. It was something like that that the both of us were like foaming

00:50:36 ◼   ► at the mouth. We were so excited to do this. And I think it took both of us but hours to

00:50:41 ◼   ► deeply, deeply regret our actions. And ever since then, like I know that you just like

00:50:47 ◼   ► you said, you put on betas relatively quickly. But I don't think for the last two or three

00:50:53 ◼   ► versions of iOS. I don't think I've put a beta on my phone. I think I might have,

00:50:57 ◼   ► you know, like this with iOS 11, I think I've been running the GM since it was

00:51:01 ◼   ► released a few days back, but I don't think I've put an honest-to-goodness

00:51:04 ◼   ► beta on my phone in a long time. And I agree, Marco, that once you get through

00:51:08 ◼   ► the first two or three, usually it's pretty okay. But in my experience, since I

00:51:13 ◼   ► don't absolutely need to for work and I can get, you know, I can get my hands on

00:51:16 ◼   ► test devices and things like that, and we're rarely on the bleeding edge for

00:51:20 ◼   ► these sorts of things anyway, I just, I don't recommend it, generally speaking, because

00:51:24 ◼   ► you never know what's going to happen. In my phone and my computer, I agree with you,

00:51:29 ◼   ► Marco, 150%, that those I do not want to mess with. Now, my iPad has been on iOS 11 for

00:51:34 ◼   ► a while, because for me, the iPad is kind of expendable, and if it doesn't work, eh,

00:51:39 ◼   ► oh well.

00:51:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a reasonable way to do it. But like, and like, for most people, I just,

00:51:44 ◼   ► I can't think of a compelling reason. Like, the real, like, I don't install macOS betas

00:51:48 ◼   ► is because honestly I just don't care.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Mac OS improves so slowly these days

00:51:54 ◼   ► that I can't even tell you what's in High Sierra

00:51:57 ◼   ► besides the file system.

00:51:59 ◼   ► I know there's a couple of things,

00:52:00 ◼   ► but most of it's like here's something for business Safari.

00:52:03 ◼   ► The Safari team is really pulling the weight

00:52:04 ◼   ► of the entire OS when it comes to notable features

00:52:08 ◼   ► that can be bullet points in a slide somewhere.

00:52:11 ◼   ► If you exclude Safari changes,

00:52:14 ◼   ► it's a pretty thin release

00:52:17 ◼   ► as far as user-facing features go.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And of course, every release of Mac OS X these days

00:52:20 ◼   ► breaks something also.

00:52:22 ◼   ► So it's like, I have to wait,

00:52:23 ◼   ► like am I willing to tolerate whatever part of

00:52:27 ◼   ► networking or USB or graphics or the PDF subsystem

00:52:31 ◼   ► or whatever, like, whatever they broke audio,

00:52:33 ◼   ► like whatever they broke in this version of Mac OS,

00:52:36 ◼   ► am I willing to tolerate that

00:52:38 ◼   ► to get whatever the new stuff is?

00:52:39 ◼   ► And usually there's so little new stuff

00:52:41 ◼   ► that I'm just, I can be very conservative and patient

00:52:44 ◼   ► the version of macOS I choose to run.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And you should check software update because you can get that new Safari right now and

00:52:49 ◼   ► you're the iMac you're sitting in front of.

00:52:51 ◼   ► I installed it today at work.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

00:52:53 ◼   ► Same.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:55 ◼   ► No more auto playing videos.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Go into the settings.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Yeah, in that case, what do I need to hide Sierra for?

00:53:00 ◼   ► You got the most important feature, the file system.

00:53:02 ◼   ► That's the one that Apple is advertising the most, right?

00:53:03 ◼   ► Or wait, no, is it just this program?

00:53:05 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:53:06 ◼   ► On betas, I've also had iOS 11 on my iPad for real time.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And also because iOS 11 was so iPad focused and had all the fancy iPad features that I

00:53:14 ◼   ► really wanted to see. But yeah, I don't care about my iPad's stability that much, and so

00:53:18 ◼   ► I suffered through some weird bugs. I didn't upgrade my phone, and that meant I was kind

00:53:24 ◼   ► of startled when I finally did upgrade to iOS 11 on my phone by a few things. I already

00:53:28 ◼   ► complained about one on Twitter about the -- that I missed the dots. I didn't think

00:53:32 ◼   ► I would miss the dots, but guess what? I missed the dots. And for the signal strength thing.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Oh, the little circles? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I kind of missed them. But really, the one

00:53:41 ◼   ► One thing that surprised me the most is that even with reduce motion enabled, which you

00:53:44 ◼   ► know I love to have enabled, when I unlock my iPhone 7 with touch ID, a big curtain raises

00:53:53 ◼   ► from the bottom.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Almost as if I had flicked upward, like on an iPhone 10, right?

00:53:57 ◼   ► But I didn't flick upward, I just used touch ID.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And even when reduce motion is on, that big curtain goes upward.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And it's not a big deal, doesn't bother me that much, but I kind of miss whatever the

00:54:05 ◼   ► old animation was, probably a crossfade, it probably takes the same amount of time, but

00:54:10 ◼   ► It's an animation that I'm not accustomed to seeing.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I guess I'll get used to it, but that's one of the things that I would have known about

00:54:16 ◼   ► months and months ago if I had been installing the betas.

00:54:18 ◼   ► And I could have complained about it earlier, and you know how important that is to me to

00:54:21 ◼   ► get complaints out early.

00:54:24 ◼   ► So that Apple could potentially fix them, but it's not a big deal.

00:54:26 ◼   ► It's not like my lack of lasers, which could not stand as we know.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Yeah, but you got that eventually.

00:54:33 ◼   ► I know.

00:54:34 ◼   ► It took a whole week.

00:54:35 ◼   ► We have to wait till the next show.

00:54:37 ◼   ► I'm still bitter that I lost that bet.

00:54:39 ◼   ► And at such speed, too.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I know, exactly.

00:54:42 ◼   ► It really rubbed my face in it.

00:54:44 ◼   ► To that end, something I've noticed, which I think this is legitimate and I'm not just

00:54:50 ◼   ► bananas, but when I...

00:54:52 ◼   ► So I have a picture of Aaron and Declan as my lock screen backdrop, whatever it's called,

00:54:58 ◼   ► wallpaper I guess.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And if I tap the sleep/wake button, the thing that's still there on the iPhone 10, I feel

00:55:05 ◼   ► like it kind of fades in in a way that's different than iOS 10 and I don't know

00:55:10 ◼   ► how to describe it I tried to take a screenshot of it yeah it does it does

00:55:14 ◼   ► fade in okay so I'm not totally bananas well at least not for that reason anyway

00:55:18 ◼   ► yeah there's a bunch like iOS 11 ads even more people who don't have reduced

00:55:22 ◼   ► reduced motion on are even those people are a little bit startled by the the

00:55:26 ◼   ► more sort of expressive animations about applications flying back into their

00:55:33 ◼   ► icons and all sorts of cross fades and things. I think it looks nicer in general, but if

00:55:38 ◼   ► you, you know, it has pushed some people over the edge. Like, they could tolerate the amount

00:55:42 ◼   ► of animations in iOS 10 and iOS 11 and just push a few more people over the edge to go

00:55:46 ◼   ► hunting for that reduced motion thing.

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00:57:47 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:57:49 ◼   ► - All right, so an anonymous Apple retail employee writes,

00:57:54 ◼   ► "On the back end of something,

00:57:57 ◼   ► were some significant changes to the way that the Genius Bar appointments work. Two years ago,

00:58:02 ◼   ► you more or less had to already have made an appointment online to be seen. Today's Genius Bar

00:58:06 ◼   ► holds back the majority of personnel in order to improve the experience for those walking into the

00:58:10 ◼   ► store to ultimately be seen within five to 30 minutes. Because of this, there is much less

00:58:16 ◼   ► availability for those who are enrolling from home. Please feel free to encourage the world to

00:58:19 ◼   ► walk into a store and be helped rather shortly. The ultimate goal here is to do away with the

00:58:25 ◼   ► days of "needing an appointment" in order to see someone at the Genius Bar.

00:58:29 ◼   ► I have such mixed feelings about this because on the one side, when I have an "oops" because

00:58:34 ◼   ► I just dropped my phone, I want to be seen pretty much immediately. But on the other side,

00:58:38 ◼   ► I'm the kind of person who likes scheduling things and who likes signing up in advance.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And I don't want to be punished just because I have the forethought to actually register myself

00:58:48 ◼   ► on the website. Yeah, who wants to wait 30 minutes? It needs to be like a real-time operating system

00:58:53 ◼   ► with deadlines, right? I can't go to the store for an undefined wait period. Like, I'm going to go

00:59:00 ◼   ► and get my thing and it's like, how long will you be waiting? I don't know. I mean, because you could

00:59:05 ◼   ► end up having to just abort the entire thing because an hour has passed and you haven't been

00:59:08 ◼   ► seen. An appointment, as the Seinfeld episode so eloquently emphasized, like, you know, you make a

00:59:15 ◼   ► reservation. And the important part of the reservation is that they hold the reservation.

00:59:20 ◼   ► So that when you get there, they say, "Yes, we recognize that we had arranged previously

00:59:25 ◼   ► to meet here at 3."

00:59:26 ◼   ► And if you arrive at 3, they aren't ready to receive you at 3.

00:59:29 ◼   ► That's how reservations work.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And I understand there's a balance.

00:59:32 ◼   ► You don't want to just have reservations because then everybody walks in like, "Sorry, you

00:59:36 ◼   ► have to make a reservation," and the nearest reservation is like going to a restaurant

00:59:39 ◼   ► that you can't ever get a table at unless you have a reservation two months out or something.

00:59:42 ◼   ► So it is difficult, and all this gets back to the discussion last week, which was one

00:59:47 ◼   ► One of the important functions of Apple retail is to have a place where people can go to

00:59:52 ◼   ► have someone help them with their thingy in person.

00:59:54 ◼   ► It's one of the most important functions of the Apple store.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Otherwise why not just sell everything online?

00:59:58 ◼   ► It's that you can go there and say my thing's not working.

01:00:00 ◼   ► It's broken.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I don't understand it.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Please help me with something.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Right?

01:00:04 ◼   ► And they will help you and they're great at it.

01:00:06 ◼   ► They do a good job and so on and so forth.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And there's high demand for that service because that is a good service.

01:00:12 ◼   ► High demand, not enough supply, long waits and they try to balance it.

01:00:16 ◼   ► How many reservations should we take if we take too few reservations?

01:00:20 ◼   ► That means if you try to make a reservation have to be two weeks out

01:00:23 ◼   ► But if we take too many reservations the walk-ins can't get served. I don't know what the solution to it is

01:00:27 ◼   ► I'm just expressing our frustration as users of the Apple Store with the system as it exists today

01:00:33 ◼   ► Maybe it's untenable and it's not economical for them to not make us wait

01:00:38 ◼   ► It is more economical to make us all wait for a small amount of time because I don't say whatever what's the alternative, right?

01:00:46 ◼   ► But that's you know, it's just us as customers of the Apple store expressing our dissatisfaction because I think most of us for the most part

01:00:52 ◼   ► buy things online rather than

01:00:54 ◼   ► Feel like we have to go to the Apple store to get especially if you wanted ASAP

01:00:58 ◼   ► We're there with the whole force quitting the app store app, you know all these schemes

01:01:02 ◼   ► We're not going to the mall at 5 a.m. And sitting in a big line. It's preferable for us to order them online

01:01:08 ◼   ► We do go there to check out products like oh, I want to see the new iPhone 10 mine hasn't arrived yet

01:01:15 ◼   ► but I hear they're in the stores.

01:01:16 ◼   ► That's another important function of the stores,

01:01:18 ◼   ► show off the merchandise.

01:01:20 ◼   ► Let people ooh and aah at it,

01:01:21 ◼   ► especially particularly people who aren't like tech nerds

01:01:24 ◼   ► and I've already read everything about it,

01:01:26 ◼   ► but just like regular people wandering through the mall,

01:01:28 ◼   ► they can say, "Ooh, there's the Apple store,

01:01:29 ◼   ► let's go check out stuff."

01:01:31 ◼   ► But yeah, I think it's, even those functions,

01:01:34 ◼   ► it's not serving that well

01:01:36 ◼   ► because the stores are often very crowded,

01:01:37 ◼   ► but the service function is the one that I feel like

01:01:42 ◼   ► has had the most challenges over the years.

01:01:43 ◼   ► So, you know, it's interesting to hear their strategies

01:01:47 ◼   ► for improving it, but I don't think

01:01:48 ◼   ► there are any easy answers.

01:01:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also like the whole thing where like,

01:01:54 ◼   ► oh, just show up and see how long you have to wait,

01:01:56 ◼   ► like that really doesn't work for people if, for instance,

01:02:00 ◼   ► the nearest Apple store is three hours away.

01:02:02 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, great point.

01:02:04 ◼   ► - Like there's a lot of people for whom

01:02:05 ◼   ► the nearest Apple store is not just,

01:02:08 ◼   ► you can't just pop over there anytime you want

01:02:09 ◼   ► and just, oh, it's gonna be two hours?

01:02:11 ◼   ► Oh, I'll come back.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Like, it's not that easy, you know?

01:02:13 ◼   ► So there's issues like that.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And also just like, I mean my experience,

01:02:18 ◼   ► and maybe this is just my local stores,

01:02:20 ◼   ► my experience has been the opposite.

01:02:23 ◼   ► That I used to just never make appointments

01:02:24 ◼   ► and just walk in because it used to be relatively common

01:02:28 ◼   ► that I'd get seen within 20 minutes and I just,

01:02:31 ◼   ► it would be fine.

01:02:32 ◼   ► And then in the last year or two,

01:02:35 ◼   ► that's been pretty much impossible.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And I walk in, they will either refuse to even book me

01:02:40 ◼   ► as a walk in, wait around reservation,

01:02:43 ◼   ► and just say, "Sorry, we are so full.

01:02:45 ◼   ► "You can't even do this."

01:02:46 ◼   ► Or they do a thing where they're like,

01:02:48 ◼   ► "Oh, well, sign up for this thing,

01:02:50 ◼   ► "and then we'll text you when it's about

01:02:51 ◼   ► "to be your appointment time."

01:02:53 ◼   ► But the current estimated time is like two hours away

01:02:55 ◼   ► or something, and it's like, "Okay, so what am I gonna do?

01:02:59 ◼   ► "Drive home, and then it's gonna take me

01:03:01 ◼   ► "25, 30 minutes to get back here,

01:03:03 ◼   ► "so am I gonna miss my window?"

01:03:06 ◼   ► That doesn't work for people, for a lot of people.

01:03:10 ◼   ► It works if you live next to an Apple store

01:03:12 ◼   ► and you can just pop over there whenever you want

01:03:14 ◼   ► and don't have a job and don't have anything else to do,

01:03:16 ◼   ► like that would work.

01:03:17 ◼   ► But for most people, something a little more predictable

01:03:22 ◼   ► is what you need there.

01:03:24 ◼   ► I will say though, overall, we got way more feedback

01:03:28 ◼   ► than I expected about the retail segment

01:03:32 ◼   ► that we talked about last week.

01:03:33 ◼   ► You know, we were talking about Angela Ahrens'

01:03:34 ◼   ► retail update and things like that.

01:03:37 ◼   ► And we must have a number of retail nerds in our audience

01:03:41 ◼   ► 'cause we got, of everything we said last week,

01:03:46 ◼   ► about everything about the event

01:03:47 ◼   ► and all the new products that were announced,

01:03:49 ◼   ► our complaints about the retail segment

01:03:51 ◼   ► were by far the most controversial things

01:03:52 ◼   ► we said according to the feedback.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Like, we got so many people saying like,

01:03:57 ◼   ► "Well, this wasn't really for you,

01:03:58 ◼   ► "this was explaining to X,

01:04:01 ◼   ► "whether it was explaining to the world of retail

01:04:03 ◼   ► "how Apple is saving the dying American retail sector,

01:04:06 ◼   ► "or whether it's explaining to the retail employees

01:04:08 ◼   ► "how to boost their morale

01:04:09 ◼   ► and what they're doing means a lot and everything.

01:04:12 ◼   ► All sorts of feedback from people who either claim to be

01:04:16 ◼   ► or were obviously very close to the retail world.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Saying why that segment not only needed to be there

01:04:24 ◼   ► or needed to be that long and detailed,

01:04:26 ◼   ► but what Angela Ahrens was really trying to say

01:04:29 ◼   ► and why that was so important and everything.

01:04:31 ◼   ► So I guess it resonated with somebody,

01:04:33 ◼   ► with people who were in the retail business.

01:04:36 ◼   ► I can just say as an Apple customer and fan

01:04:38 ◼   ► and commentator, it didn't resonate with me at all.

01:04:41 ◼   ► But apparently, it worked for a lot of people.

01:04:44 ◼   ► - A lot of the explanations were things like,

01:04:46 ◼   ► you don't understand how important Apple is,

01:04:48 ◼   ► they're like, they're keeping these malls alive, right?

01:04:50 ◼   ► That's great, that's fine.

01:04:51 ◼   ► But why does anyone need to be told

01:04:53 ◼   ► that Apple stores are keeping malls alive?

01:04:54 ◼   ► That's not a message that needs to get out,

01:04:56 ◼   ► and I don't think that was in there.

01:04:57 ◼   ► They just wanted to tell you more things about their store.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And I still am not sure

01:05:02 ◼   ► who they were trying to convince of what,

01:05:04 ◼   ► 'cause I don't think they're trying to convince people

01:05:06 ◼   ► that they're not trying to tell the rest of the retail industry

01:05:10 ◼   ► how they should do things, because why would they

01:05:11 ◼   ► help their competitors?

01:05:12 ◼   ► And they're not trying to take credit for saving malls,

01:05:14 ◼   ► because what the hell does Apple care about malls?

01:05:18 ◼   ► I still think it is a lot of deep thinking about what

01:05:22 ◼   ► a store can be when I wish they would think more about what

01:05:27 ◼   ► their store already is and how it can do what it is doing

01:05:30 ◼   ► better.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And that's why I put this feedback in here,

01:05:33 ◼   ► because this is an Apple retail employee saying,

01:05:35 ◼   ► things that you're asking for them to do, they are doing that, but they're also thinking

01:05:39 ◼   ► big about how a store can be a town hall, whatever, you know, I don't know.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Anyway, I thought it was a little overly long in a presentation that had some very important

01:05:49 ◼   ► products to get to.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Came after two other segments, right?

01:05:53 ◼   ► Maybe if it had been in the front we would be complaining about whatever the third one

01:05:56 ◼   ► was, right?

01:05:57 ◼   ► Because it was a lot of lead-in before they got to the three big announcements, but in

01:06:01 ◼   ► In the grand scheme of things, it's not iCards.

01:06:04 ◼   ► It was fine.

01:06:05 ◼   ► iCards, no one remembers that.

01:06:06 ◼   ► No one on this podcast anyway, but listeners remember.

01:06:09 ◼   ► Doubtful, but that's okay.

01:06:11 ◼   ► No, they totally do.

01:06:12 ◼   ► All right.

01:06:14 ◼   ► Please do not email and tweet us to say that you remember iCards.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Okay, time for some Ask ATP.

01:06:19 ◼   ► That actually went quicker than I expected.

01:06:21 ◼   ► I'm proud of us.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Really?

01:06:23 ◼   ► An hour?

01:06:24 ◼   ► That was quicker than I expected?

01:06:25 ◼   ► Given that we didn't have any follow-up last time, I am pretty pleased.

01:06:29 ◼   ► Jamie Billet writes in to say, oh man, I should have taken this out of the show notes, I didn't

01:06:34 ◼   ► look closely enough.

01:06:36 ◼   ► Jamie Billet, my new enemy, writes in to say, "If the new Mac Pro doesn't have Nvidia, will

01:06:42 ◼   ► it be a failed product?"

01:06:44 ◼   ► No, moving on.

01:06:45 ◼   ► Martin Diering writes...

01:06:46 ◼   ► I hope you got it right, guys.

01:06:47 ◼   ► Can't answer an extreme.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Why is this...

01:06:49 ◼   ► You got the answer right, though.

01:06:50 ◼   ► I like the fact that you got the answer right.

01:06:52 ◼   ► The answer is no, it won't be a failed product.

01:06:54 ◼   ► What does that even mean?

01:06:56 ◼   ► So, this is how I interpret the question.

01:06:59 ◼   ► I talked a lot about how Nvidia is kind of at the top of the heap in GPUs currently and

01:07:03 ◼   ► the Mac Pro is supposed to be the fastest and bestest thing in the world so shouldn't

01:07:06 ◼   ► it have Nvidia and they're saying if it doesn't have that, if it has a lesser GPU, a GPU that

01:07:10 ◼   ► is not as good, that is not as popular, that doesn't have as much software optimized for

01:07:14 ◼   ► it, will it be a failed product?

01:07:15 ◼   ► The answer is no.

01:07:17 ◼   ► The Mac Pro should be the best, fastest thing Apple can make if for some strategic or stupid

01:07:23 ◼   ► reason they want to go with AMD instead of Nvidia. AMD makes some good graphics cards.

01:07:29 ◼   ► If the Mac Pro is expandable, reliable, and frequently updated, it matters not as much

01:07:35 ◼   ► that it has the fastest and best video card on the market, as long as the next year there's

01:07:41 ◼   ► a new version with a better video card and so on and so forth. It would be a better product

01:07:46 ◼   ► probably if it shipped with Nvidia today, but I don't think it will be a failed product.

01:07:50 ◼   ► way it will fail is kind of like the trashcan fail. If it is never updated, if it has reliability

01:07:56 ◼   ► problems that are never addressed, if it doesn't address the needs of the customers that aren't

01:08:00 ◼   ► fulfilled by the iMac Pro and stuff, that's what will make it a failed product, not the

01:08:03 ◼   ► lack of Nvidia.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And then Chris Adamson asks, "Hey, how is John liking the beta of Twitter Effect for

01:08:10 ◼   ► the Mac, aka Phoenix?" And he also asks, "Do the other two use native Twitter clients or

01:08:17 ◼   ► the web. And Chris, I am deeply offended that you would think that I would use either the

01:08:21 ◼   ► native Twitter client or the web because they're both dumpster fires. Both Marco and I use

01:08:26 ◼   ► Tweetbot.

01:08:27 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL (

01:08:47 ◼   ► on the Mac. Earlier in the summertime, I deleted Tweetbot from my phone. I've tried various

01:08:54 ◼   ► schemes and tricks over the years to reduce my Twitter usage because I have frequently

01:09:01 ◼   ► been using Twitter too much, which has made me waste a lot of time and be less happy.

01:09:07 ◼   ► I tried for a long time deleting it from the desktop and only using it on phones and tablets

01:09:12 ◼   ► and laptops and stuff, so it was not on my main computer.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And this made things like work difficult,

01:09:18 ◼   ► 'cause my work sometimes involves posting things

01:09:20 ◼   ► to Twitter, like when I'm doing podcast live broadcasts

01:09:23 ◼   ► and when I'm just asking questions about,

01:09:25 ◼   ► you know, Apple APIs and stuff,

01:09:28 ◼   ► and so it was actually fairly difficult for me

01:09:30 ◼   ► to not have it available to me on the desktop.

01:09:34 ◼   ► It turns out, by deleting it from my phone,

01:09:37 ◼   ► I do still have it available, because I also have

01:09:40 ◼   ► the official Twitter app installed.

01:09:42 ◼   ► The official Twitter app I bury in a folder,

01:09:45 ◼   ► I have to only get to it from search,

01:09:48 ◼   ► and I find that it isn't very tempting

01:09:51 ◼   ► to just keep going to it over and over again

01:09:53 ◼   ► because the official Twitter app is so horrible

01:09:57 ◼   ► that it actually discourages you from using it very much

01:10:00 ◼   ► or for very long periods.

01:10:02 ◼   ► - Hey, put that quote in their App Store description,

01:10:05 ◼   ► Mark O'Armond, this app is so horrible

01:10:07 ◼   ► it will discourage you from using Twitter, Mark O'Armond.

01:10:09 ◼   ► It honestly is, like Twitter's app is such a confusing,

01:10:13 ◼   ► horrible mess of God knows what.

01:10:15 ◼   ► And the way it messes up your timeline

01:10:18 ◼   ► and puts the important stuff you might have missed

01:10:20 ◼   ► like up top, it actually is so hard to use

01:10:23 ◼   ► for more than about 10 seconds that it totally kills

01:10:27 ◼   ► my desire to continue to see it over and over again.

01:10:30 ◼   ► And so by not having it be visible on any of my home screens

01:10:34 ◼   ► and also by having it be so awful,

01:10:37 ◼   ► I still have Twitter if I want to post a photo

01:10:41 ◼   ► I just took while I'm out or something like that.

01:10:44 ◼   ► And if I really need to check something

01:10:45 ◼   ► or look something up, 'cause honestly,

01:10:47 ◼   ► sometimes you need to look stuff up on Twitter

01:10:49 ◼   ► and the website is really awful for that,

01:10:50 ◼   ► so I do occasionally have to check it for things.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But that's, having the official Twitter app

01:10:56 ◼   ► is enough to allow that, those kind of

01:10:59 ◼   ► basic occasional needs, but it's so bad

01:11:02 ◼   ► I don't wanna use it constantly.

01:11:03 ◼   ► And not having Twitter on my phone,

01:11:07 ◼   ► means that in the millions of other times

01:11:09 ◼   ► throughout the day when I'm wasting a few seconds

01:11:12 ◼   ► by reading my phone, and notably, the significant times,

01:11:17 ◼   ► right before I go to sleep and the first thing I do

01:11:19 ◼   ► when I wake up, if I'm not taking care of a kid

01:11:21 ◼   ► or a dog immediately, if I'm lying in bed for a few minutes,

01:11:24 ◼   ► or I'll read stuff on my phone like many of us do,

01:11:28 ◼   ► not having Twitter be a part of either of those times

01:11:32 ◼   ► and not having it be part of most of those little

01:11:34 ◼   ► interactions throughout the day where I'm just checking

01:11:35 ◼   ► stuff to like idly browse things or idly waste time

01:11:39 ◼   ► has been a dramatic improvement in my happiness level.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Just generally of how I feel about life

01:11:46 ◼   ► and what's going on in the country

01:11:47 ◼   ► and crazy people who follow me

01:11:49 ◼   ► and are occasionally rude and stuff like that.

01:11:52 ◼   ► It has given me an amount of distance from that

01:11:54 ◼   ► that I find incredibly satisfying and healthy

01:11:57 ◼   ► in a way that my previous experiments

01:11:59 ◼   ► of trying to delete it from my Mac and stuff didn't achieve.

01:12:03 ◼   ► It's so pervasive on the phone,

01:12:05 ◼   ► like every time I paid for my phone,

01:12:06 ◼   ► I would be checking Twitter

01:12:08 ◼   ► as like one of the very first things I did.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And now, I check email, which is usually nothing

01:12:13 ◼   ► 'cause I have systematically destroyed the reason

01:12:17 ◼   ► for most people to ever email me

01:12:18 ◼   ► or the mechanism for them to do so over the last 10 years.

01:12:22 ◼   ► So email is pretty quiet.

01:12:26 ◼   ► RSS is there, I check that all the time

01:12:28 ◼   ► in the Unread app, which is wonderful.

01:12:30 ◼   ► And I check Instagram, which is happy,

01:12:33 ◼   ► 'cause it's people posting pictures of fun things

01:12:35 ◼   ► and happy things.

01:12:36 ◼   ► And to not have Twitter be part of that,

01:12:39 ◼   ► like those apps that you just check habitually,

01:12:42 ◼   ► has been really nice, and I highly recommend it.

01:12:44 ◼   ► And to the people at Twitter who make the official app,

01:12:49 ◼   ► just never get better.

01:12:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:12:53 ◼   ► - Oh my word.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I really should try that at some point.

01:12:57 ◼   ► - One thing I would love to have,

01:12:58 ◼   ► I mean one of the things that kept drawing me

01:13:00 ◼   ► to Twitter was that over the last few weeks

01:13:02 ◼   ► I've been having a number of interactions

01:13:03 ◼   ► with people over direct messages.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And so I'd have to keep checking it

01:13:07 ◼   ► to make sure I was up to date on those conversations

01:13:09 ◼   ► or to respond to them.

01:13:10 ◼   ► I was unable to find a Twitter client

01:13:15 ◼   ► that only does direct messages.

01:13:17 ◼   ► It seemed like one of them did exist.

01:13:19 ◼   ► It doesn't exist anymore.

01:13:20 ◼   ► All the links were broken.

01:13:21 ◼   ► It's not in the app store anymore.

01:13:23 ◼   ► If anybody knows of a good Twitter client

01:13:24 ◼   ► that is DM only, I'd love to know about that.

01:13:27 ◼   ► - That's an interesting idea.

01:13:29 ◼   ► We're gonna answer my part of the question here before I move on, by the way.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Oh yeah, go ahead.

01:13:33 ◼   ► How do I like Phoenix?

01:13:34 ◼   ► It's great.

01:13:35 ◼   ► You should get it.

01:13:36 ◼   ► It's totally what I always dreamed the modernized version of Twitter would be, and I love seeing

01:13:41 ◼   ► the updates that are slowly adding, not slowly but pretty quickly adding all the new features

01:13:44 ◼   ► that were, you know, missing.

01:13:46 ◼   ► First you couldn't do direct messages, then you couldn't get info on the people, then

01:13:49 ◼   ► you couldn't show threads, and it's just like they're all like one after the other.

01:13:52 ◼   ► I love it.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Everyone should check it out.

01:13:54 ◼   ► It's great.

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01:15:23 ◼   ► There was some chatter about the Face ID training, which came through in part from the interview

01:15:29 ◼   ► with a friend of the show, Matt Panzorino at TechCrunch.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And just quoting Matt, he said, "Especially given that the data needed to include a high

01:15:38 ◼   ► fidelity depth map of facial data, so says Federighi, Apple went out and got consent

01:15:43 ◼   ► from subjects to provide scans that were, quote, 'quite exhaustive,' quote.

01:15:47 ◼   ► Those scans were taken from many angles and contain a lot of detail that was then used

01:15:50 ◼   ► to train the Face ID system.

01:15:52 ◼   ► As mentioned above, Apple went to great lengths to gather its own data for on-facial shapes

01:15:56 ◼   ► and angles.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And when it did so, it made sure to gather them across a broad basis of geographic locations,

01:16:02 ◼   ► ages, and ethnic backgrounds.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Federighi says that Apple has tested it extensively and it should not matter what your cultural

01:16:07 ◼   ► background is, Face ID should work with your face.

01:16:11 ◼   ► So that was Matt Pansarino summarizing an interview with Craig Federighi.

01:16:16 ◼   ► As I was reading this, it occurred to me, "This sounds familiar.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Where did I read this?"

01:16:23 ◼   ► And then I remembered.

01:16:25 ◼   ► An anonymous listener wrote us on the 2nd of June, 2017.

01:16:29 ◼   ► That listener wrote, "I was lucky enough to participate in a study ran by the scientific

01:16:32 ◼   ► consulting firm Exponent in a major U.S. city.

01:16:35 ◼   ► The study was run in multiple U.S. cities and also multiple sites abroad.

01:16:39 ◼   ► At my site each day about 70 or 80 participants, six days a week for about two months, at least

01:16:44 ◼   ► So 3,000 to 4,000 people or thereabouts were asked, or they were recruited, and that was

01:16:51 ◼   ► both individuals and family groups.

01:16:53 ◼   ► With family groups, they had to sign up two or more people related by blood.

01:16:56 ◼   ► And this listener writes, "This strongly suggests authentication.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Obviously you want to be able to differentiate between relatives who can look very similar."

01:17:05 ◼   ► And they describe in quite a bit of detail what the test was, and it involves filling

01:17:10 ◼   ► at a survey, talking about your skin tone and things like that. The consent form talks

01:17:17 ◼   ► about how you're going to have an infrared laser shined at you, shined, whatever shined

01:17:21 ◼   ► at you. During the session, you're asked to use the device for a series of tasks, which

01:17:25 ◼   ► according to the listener was an iPhone 7 Plus with a heavy case-like attachment, blah,

01:17:30 ◼   ► blah, blah. And then they talk about the different tasks, which I kind of want to read, but I'm

01:17:34 ◼   ► trying to summarize this at least slightly. Also, they have you test for looking at the

01:17:39 ◼   ► phone, looking away from the phone, using different kinds of lighting, different kinds

01:17:42 ◼   ► of headwear with hats and scarves and sunglasses and masks, etc., and different background

01:17:47 ◼   ► objects and so on and so forth. And each participant was given ten variations, not the same ten,

01:17:51 ◼   ► and there were many other tests involved. So I just thought this was fascinating. This

01:17:55 ◼   ► is certainly within the realm of time where I think we thought Face ID was possible, but

01:17:58 ◼   ► this was, you know, again, three months ago, three and change. And this is clearly, to

01:18:04 ◼   ► me describing what the face ID test or not test but the face ID like data acquisition

01:18:10 ◼   ► process was all about. I just thought that was fascinating.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Each person got a hundred bucks too. Not cheap to run this. If you think of how many thousands

01:18:17 ◼   ► of people and they had to pay the staff and then you know the building to have them all

01:18:21 ◼   ► in and then give each participant a hundred bucks. Apple's got a lot of money.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Yeah. So I just thought that was fascinating. There are more details which John isn't allowing

01:18:30 ◼   ► me to tell you about but they are there. You can say if you can summarize them.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Find the interesting ones.

01:18:35 ◼   ► Find the interesting tidbits.

01:18:37 ◼   ► So the tasks they did-- a task was a game where dots appear

01:18:41 ◼   ► randomly on the screen.

01:18:42 ◼   ► You're asked to identify the emoji animals that pop up

01:18:44 ◼   ► in the dots as they flash by.

01:18:46 ◼   ► And they thought it was an eye-tracking calibration.

01:18:49 ◼   ► Task two, this had many variations,

01:18:50 ◼   ► but the basic structure was the same.

01:18:52 ◼   ► You're seated at an arc-shaped white table with a white wall,

01:18:55 ◼   ► more like a fabric surface, in front of you.

01:18:57 ◼   ► The wall and table are both divided two by three or three

01:18:59 ◼   ► by three grids by black lines with numbers in each partition.

01:19:02 ◼   ► In each variation, you're asked to hold the phone up

01:19:04 ◼   ► toward one partition of the grid, as if taking a selfie,

01:19:07 ◼   ► and then turn your head toward another partition,

01:19:10 ◼   ► so sometimes you're facing the phone, sometimes you're not.

01:19:12 ◼   ► You turn your eye to look at the phone or keep them straight,

01:19:14 ◼   ► then press the record button on the phone,

01:19:16 ◼   ► and then do an action with your face.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Shake your head in a different way, cover your face, et cetera,

01:19:19 ◼   ► and then the recording is done automatically.

01:19:22 ◼   ► Who knows if this was really Apple,

01:19:23 ◼   ► but certainly to my eyes, it seemed to be.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And then that explains how they trained this,

01:19:28 ◼   ► because obviously Apple's a very diverse company.

01:19:30 ◼   ► Maybe I shouldn't have said that.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Apple is more diverse than some of the companies that I see, and there are more employees of

01:19:38 ◼   ► various backgrounds there than a lot of companies.

01:19:40 ◼   ► Let me try to phrase it that way.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And so they could certainly, and I'm sure they did, train on internal people, but it

01:19:47 ◼   ► seems like they also did a lot of work by seeking out other people, which is great.

01:19:52 ◼   ► That's what I would hope.

01:19:53 ◼   ► And this is the only report I've heard about this, and this was sent directly to ATP.

01:19:57 ◼   ► I'm not saying that other reports don't exist, but it's the first I've heard.

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been thinking about this email a lot

01:20:02 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks as this Face ID thing

01:20:06 ◼   ► was ramping up and then it was finally unveiled.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And it's pretty cool.

01:20:10 ◼   ► I assume this was real.

01:20:12 ◼   ► I assume this was a true report

01:20:14 ◼   ► that was not just some made up tip or anything.

01:20:16 ◼   ► If so, it makes a lot of sense.

01:20:17 ◼   ► It's totally plausible.

01:20:18 ◼   ► And it's pretty cool that Apple went to such lanes

01:20:22 ◼   ► to try to get a lot of people's data

01:20:25 ◼   ► for training and everything else.

01:20:26 ◼   ► And all of this, as Craig has very happily pointed out,

01:20:30 ◼   ► over the last couple of interviews he's done,

01:20:32 ◼   ► all this is not being based on collecting data

01:20:36 ◼   ► from the field from iPhone 10s.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Like it's not reporting your face data back to Apple

01:20:43 ◼   ► for it to improve its algorithms

01:20:45 ◼   ► and train its machine learning.

01:20:47 ◼   ► It's doing separate studies that people

01:20:49 ◼   ► are explicitly opting into and being paid for

01:20:52 ◼   ► to get its data and to train its models.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And so that's, it's just all like, it's pretty cool.

01:20:58 ◼   ► it's really quite cool.

01:21:00 ◼   ► - And it does learn from your face,

01:21:01 ◼   ► but that information never leaves the phone,

01:21:03 ◼   ► which is kind of a bummer if you get a new phone

01:21:05 ◼   ► or get your front thing replaced

01:21:07 ◼   ► 'cause you cracked the screen or something.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Basically like with Touch ID,

01:21:09 ◼   ► it's gonna mean that you have to retrain it on your face

01:21:12 ◼   ► and it's gonna start over with learning.

01:21:13 ◼   ► So hopefully the learning curve isn't too bad,

01:21:14 ◼   ► but that's the whole MO with this stuff

01:21:16 ◼   ► is that it's in the secure enclave, it never leaves it.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And so if you break the front of your phone

01:21:21 ◼   ► and they have to replace the thing

01:21:22 ◼   ► that connects to the secure enclave, guess what?

01:21:24 ◼   ► You gotta re-register your face and start the learning over.

01:21:26 ◼   ► But that's how it learns with your face

01:21:28 ◼   ► as you age, as you slowly grow a beard,

01:21:31 ◼   ► hopefully as you put on scarves in the winter,

01:21:34 ◼   ► you'll have the scarf not obscuring your whole face

01:21:37 ◼   ► and it'll figure out that sometime the scarf is there.

01:21:39 ◼   ► I don't know how good it's gonna be

01:21:41 ◼   ► in terms of can you just put on a ski mask one day

01:21:44 ◼   ► and have it still recognize you.

01:21:45 ◼   ► But it does learn and improve as,

01:21:47 ◼   ► just like Touch ID by the way,

01:21:49 ◼   ► both these things do learn and improve just from you.

01:21:51 ◼   ► And it's just between you, the phone,

01:21:53 ◼   ► and the secure enclave, that's it.

01:21:55 ◼   ► - Moving on, we should probably dive back in

01:21:57 ◼   ► to the iPhone announcement or the keynote from last week.

01:22:02 ◼   ► And we have a little bit of information

01:22:05 ◼   ► about the Apple Watch.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Our Apple Watches are due to arrive,

01:22:08 ◼   ► potentially as listeners are hearing this.

01:22:11 ◼   ► The cellular watch has 16 gigs of storage

01:22:16 ◼   ► and the non-cellular watch has eight gigs.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And at first glance, that seems kind of weird, right?

01:22:20 ◼   ► Because the cellular watch can stream things,

01:22:23 ◼   ► but the non-cellular watch can't.

01:22:24 ◼   ► So you would think you would want more storage

01:22:26 ◼   ► on the non-cellular watch.

01:22:27 ◼   ► but everyone seems to agree, and I guess it makes sense,

01:22:30 ◼   ► that you're gonna wanna cache the things

01:22:32 ◼   ► that you've streamed, and so maybe having more space

01:22:34 ◼   ► does make sense on the cellular watch.

01:22:36 ◼   ► - Just waiting for someone on the watch team

01:22:37 ◼   ► to write in and tell us, "No, the extra space

01:22:39 ◼   ► "isn't used for caching."

01:22:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll be from an online chat support agent.

01:22:45 ◼   ► No, I mean, that actually, so it makes some sense.

01:22:47 ◼   ► First of all, the cellular model is $70 more,

01:22:50 ◼   ► so they have a little bit more leeway in the margins,

01:22:53 ◼   ► but also a cellular watch is more likely to be used

01:22:58 ◼   ► as a standalone music playback device

01:23:00 ◼   ► than a non-cellular watch.

01:23:02 ◼   ► 'Cause somebody who's going to go seek out

01:23:03 ◼   ► and buy the cellular one probably intends to use it

01:23:07 ◼   ► as a workout device wirelessly with music playing.

01:23:11 ◼   ► The chances of that being used for that purpose

01:23:13 ◼   ► are way higher than other watch models.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And if you're gonna go take a run with the watch,

01:23:19 ◼   ► one way you could do that, technically, with music,

01:23:23 ◼   ► is to literally stream the audio off the internet.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Another way you could do it is the cellular

01:23:30 ◼   ► should only be used very, very sparingly

01:23:33 ◼   ► and the watch can be smart and just cache things

01:23:36 ◼   ► from Apple Music that you like or that you've selected

01:23:39 ◼   ► to be available on your runs.

01:23:40 ◼   ► And Apple Music, based on recommendations and algorithms

01:23:43 ◼   ► and everything else, it knows before you go out running

01:23:46 ◼   ► what you should probably be listening to.

01:23:48 ◼   ► So it probably buffers that stuff overnight or something,

01:23:51 ◼   ► when it's plugged in and when it's charging,

01:23:53 ◼   ► it probably tries to fill as much space as it can

01:23:56 ◼   ► with downloaded music that it can then play for you

01:24:00 ◼   ► without touching the cell network at all.

01:24:01 ◼   ► 'Cause then it saves data, it saves a ton of battery life,

01:24:05 ◼   ► and it works with intermittent connectivity areas.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Like what if you're running under,

01:24:10 ◼   ► you know, between buildings in New York City

01:24:12 ◼   ► and the cell connection would keep dropping

01:24:14 ◼   ► or whatever else.

01:24:15 ◼   ► It has cellular, yes, but that doesn't mean Apple's

01:24:18 ◼   ► going to use it aggressively,

01:24:20 ◼   ► because from all the reviews that have come out today,

01:24:23 ◼   ► it looks like it has a tremendous cost to battery life,

01:24:27 ◼   ► and that even if this alleged Wi-Fi bug

01:24:30 ◼   ► that they're saying is causing

01:24:31 ◼   ► some of the connectivity problems

01:24:32 ◼   ► that some of the reviewers had,

01:24:34 ◼   ► even if that is fixed shortly,

01:24:36 ◼   ► 'cause it probably will be,

01:24:38 ◼   ► it does seem like the LTE connection of the watch

01:24:42 ◼   ► is not very aggressive about staying connected.

01:24:45 ◼   ► It seems like it only connects if it really needs to.

01:24:50 ◼   ► And so if they have enough space on the watch

01:24:54 ◼   ► to buffer a whole bunch of music before you go for a run,

01:24:57 ◼   ► why would you stream it?

01:24:59 ◼   ► Like why wouldn't you just play your buffer?

01:25:01 ◼   ► And then if you run out of buffer,

01:25:03 ◼   ► then maybe stream some stuff.

01:25:04 ◼   ► But why burn the battery when you don't have to?

01:25:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, that makes sense to me.

01:25:10 ◼   ► Actually, real time follow up on the watch,

01:25:13 ◼   ► Jason Sonnell has communicated with me

01:25:15 ◼   ► via the magic of Slack and told me

01:25:17 ◼   ► that what you just said, Marco, is absolutely correct.

01:25:19 ◼   ► the watch does use some of those like fancy pants Apple music playlists and

01:25:25 ◼   ► caches those overnight in addition to some of the music that it knows you like

01:25:30 ◼   ► and it tries to suck those in at least on the cellular models suck those in

01:25:33 ◼   ► overnight while it's charging when you're not on they said that in the

01:25:37 ◼   ► keynote which is why you have that vague memory of it that's where it's from yeah

01:25:40 ◼   ► well now I learned the iPhone I thought a couple of interesting things which may

01:25:46 ◼   ► I don't think we're noticed or noted in the keynote.

01:25:49 ◼   ► First of all, it includes the little headphone adapter,

01:25:52 ◼   ► the lightning to, what is it?

01:25:54 ◼   ► T-L-L-D-R, whatever it's called.

01:25:57 ◼   ► - T-R-R-S. - T-R-S, yeah, T-R-S.

01:25:59 ◼   ► - T-L-D-R adapter. - Yeah, as soon as I said that,

01:26:02 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh no, I do remember."

01:26:03 ◼   ► Anyway, it does include the adapter,

01:26:05 ◼   ► which I would say I lost a bet with myself.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I thought it would be included in the 7 and never again.

01:26:10 ◼   ► And I understand that not everyone upgrades every year,

01:26:13 ◼   ► so it makes sense for it to still be there,

01:26:15 ◼   ► But I had expected Apple to be kind of aggressive about getting rid of it, and they weren't,

01:26:20 ◼   ► which is a good thing, I'd say.

01:26:22 ◼   ► But it was surprising.

01:26:24 ◼   ► And then additionally, there are no USB-C cables of any sort included in the iPhone

01:26:30 ◼   ► box, no sort of adapter, no cable, nothing like that, which I can't decide if I think

01:26:35 ◼   ► that that's totally bananas or makes perfect sense.

01:26:38 ◼   ► And I think I'm ever so slightly leaning toward that makes perfect sense, even though it is

01:26:42 ◼   ► It is weird that none of their brand new computers,

01:26:45 ◼   ► or laptops I should say, can plug into an iPhone

01:26:48 ◼   ► without some sort of an adapter.

01:26:49 ◼   ► I don't know, Marco, what do you think about that?

01:26:51 ◼   ► Is that weird or does that make sense?

01:26:54 ◼   ► - I mean it sucks that we don't have an all USB-C world,

01:26:56 ◼   ► but the fact is we don't have an all USB-C world.

01:26:58 ◼   ► So if they would include the USB-C power adapter,

01:27:02 ◼   ► or USB cable in the box, as the only one,

01:27:05 ◼   ► then you would have the issue of like,

01:27:09 ◼   ► you can't plug it into pretty much anything

01:27:11 ◼   ► people use to charge their phones.

01:27:13 ◼   ► Yes, people do often charge their phones

01:27:15 ◼   ► by plugging them into their computers,

01:27:17 ◼   ► but they charge them way more often

01:27:19 ◼   ► by plugging them into other things,

01:27:20 ◼   ► power adapters, docks, USB outlets,

01:27:23 ◼   ► other USB multi-port things,

01:27:25 ◼   ► and none of those things really are USB-C yet,

01:27:27 ◼   ► practically speaking.

01:27:28 ◼   ► So if there's gonna be only one cable in the box,

01:27:31 ◼   ► I still think it makes sense for it to be the USB-A cable.

01:27:35 ◼   ► Now, you could also argue, as some people have,

01:27:38 ◼   ► that they should just put two cables in the box,

01:27:40 ◼   ► put a USB-C and a USB-A cable.

01:27:42 ◼   ► And that would be interesting.

01:27:44 ◼   ► I think Apple's argument against that,

01:27:47 ◼   ► there would be a small reason to not do it

01:27:50 ◼   ► for the sake of margins to be able to sell $25 cables

01:27:53 ◼   ► to the people who want this function.

01:27:55 ◼   ► But I think their bigger argument would be

01:27:57 ◼   ► that would be very wasteful, that like,

01:27:59 ◼   ► almost everybody, by definition,

01:28:02 ◼   ► almost everybody who got an iPhone

01:28:04 ◼   ► would not use that second cable.

01:28:06 ◼   ► They would almost certainly only use one of those.

01:28:09 ◼   ► so it would be kind of wasteful to have a cable in the box

01:28:12 ◼   ► that almost everyone's throwing away.

01:28:14 ◼   ► That doesn't make it great.

01:28:16 ◼   ► This is still an annoying problem,

01:28:18 ◼   ► but I think the other solutions to it would probably be worse.

01:28:22 ◼   ► While we're on the topic of the iPhone

01:28:24 ◼   ► and its ports and its cables,

01:28:26 ◼   ► I would also just like to suggest the idea here officially

01:28:31 ◼   ► that I bet the Lightning port is gone within five years.

01:28:34 ◼   ► And because now, we're gonna have wireless charging.

01:28:38 ◼   ► and we have it now, it's not as fast as everything else yet,

01:28:42 ◼   ► it's going to get faster, and it's going to get fast enough

01:28:45 ◼   ► that I would bet that the newest iPhone

01:28:49 ◼   ► that comes out in five years, whatever model that is,

01:28:52 ◼   ► does not have a Lightning port,

01:28:54 ◼   ► and has no replacement for the Lightning port,

01:28:56 ◼   ► it's just gone, you know,

01:28:58 ◼   ► 'cause they're going to deem it unnecessary.

01:29:00 ◼   ► So I would say for people out there,

01:29:03 ◼   ► I would hesitate to invest heavily

01:29:07 ◼   ► in lightning-based hardware.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Cheap things like cables, that's fine,

01:29:12 ◼   ► but for instance, there are now super fancy

01:29:15 ◼   ► lightning headphones from brands like Audizay,

01:29:18 ◼   ► like high-end audiophile headphone brands.

01:29:21 ◼   ► For many reasons, I would never suggest

01:29:24 ◼   ► anybody waste money on those.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Number one, they sound terrible,

01:29:27 ◼   ► but numbers like two through seven,

01:29:30 ◼   ► you can't use them with anything else ever,

01:29:32 ◼   ► and also lightning ports are, I would say,

01:29:36 ◼   ► not long for this world. Now that we have Bluetooth everything and now that we have

01:29:40 ◼   ► wireless charging, I would not depend on Lightning being around for a long time. Five years might

01:29:46 ◼   ► even be comically conservative. I would think that there's a good chance it's gone in three

01:29:51 ◼   ► years.

01:29:52 ◼   ► I think it's going to take a little bit longer than you think. I mean, obviously they have

01:29:55 ◼   ► to march towards the sort of platonic idea of just like a screen, this little skinny

01:29:59 ◼   ► magic thing, you know, right? Or, you know, it becomes a little tiny nodule and everything

01:30:05 ◼   ► is all in classes in VR right so on an infinite time scale yes lightning port is going away

01:30:10 ◼   ► I just don't know what the timing is like because getting rid of ports is all well and

01:30:16 ◼   ► good until it's the last one and then it's a little bit harder to get rid of I think

01:30:19 ◼   ► usage you've got everything covered but I heard just thinking like oh they get rid of

01:30:24 ◼   ► the lightning port but of course there's a USB C port for diagnostics in the back like

01:30:28 ◼   ► in the back like on the mouse where you stab it in there right sometimes there's no substitute

01:30:33 ◼   ► for making electrical contact for extraordinary situations and I'm wondering what their solutions

01:30:39 ◼   ► that would be.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Maybe just like two regions on the back that essentially act as contacts for doing diagnostic

01:30:45 ◼   ► things and really what I'm trying to get at is the light is the lighting port the last

01:30:49 ◼   ► port that'll ever be on there or does lighting port get replaced with some other port which

01:30:53 ◼   ► eventually goes away.

01:30:54 ◼   ► But yeah in our lifetime there will be no wire that you plug into the phone thing because

01:31:00 ◼   ► We're almost there now where that doesn't have to be.

01:31:02 ◼   ► And it's just a question of waiting for the whole world to catch up with it.

01:31:05 ◼   ► I would say, not just in our lifetime, I would say probably within my 4K Apple TV's lifetime.

01:31:10 ◼   ► I mean, five years was my prediction for the notch going away, although on that topic about

01:31:16 ◼   ► the notch and more like predictions on timelines, as I said at the end of the thing, five years

01:31:21 ◼   ► is when I think they could get rid of it.

01:31:23 ◼   ► But if it becomes a powerful branding thing, as we discussed, like why would they do the

01:31:27 ◼   ► notch and why does the icon of it show the notch and like how is this one differentiated

01:31:31 ◼   ► or whatever, it could last longer.

01:31:33 ◼   ► Not forever, because even the things that distinguish, like you know the click wheel

01:31:37 ◼   ► distinguished the iPod and that silhouette with the click wheel was really important,

01:31:41 ◼   ► but when it was time for that to go away, it did.

01:31:43 ◼   ► Right?

01:31:44 ◼   ► They didn't say, "But that's how we brand the iPods!"

01:31:45 ◼   ► Like they had no problem making an iPod touch without a click wheel because they realized

01:31:48 ◼   ► the future is not this little screen in a wheel, the future is all screen.

01:31:52 ◼   ► Right?

01:31:53 ◼   ► So they may hold on to the notch longer for branding reasons.

01:31:56 ◼   ► There's no such reason to hold on to the lightning cable, and technically speaking, they're

01:32:01 ◼   ► way closer to being able to get rid of it because all the pieces are pretty much already

01:32:05 ◼   ► there.

01:32:06 ◼   ► It's just a question of conservatism, like when do they think they can get rid of it.

01:32:09 ◼   ► I think they pushed a little bit on the headphone, which is why they're still shipping an adapter.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Lightning — I don't know, your five-year thing seems reasonable to me.

01:32:19 ◼   ► Your three-year thing seems a little bit aggressive, but who knows?

01:32:21 ◼   ► Also, there's an interesting question in the chat room from Yonatron saying, "Do you

01:32:25 ◼   ► "Do you think after lightning has gone from the phone,

01:32:28 ◼   ► "will/should they switch to USB-C on the iPad?"

01:32:32 ◼   ► And that's an interesting question.

01:32:34 ◼   ► I feel like it depends a lot on like,

01:32:37 ◼   ► what are these ports actually used for

01:32:39 ◼   ► and what could they be used for?

01:32:41 ◼   ► On the iPad, it has had the ability to plug in

01:32:44 ◼   ► a limited set of USB peripherals since day one,

01:32:50 ◼   ► since the very first iPad, it had that camera connection kit

01:32:54 ◼   ► and there was one that has the little USB port on it,

01:32:58 ◼   ► and there still is, they updated it with lightning,

01:32:59 ◼   ► and there was a new one last year

01:33:01 ◼   ► that had power pass through finally, which is awesome.

01:33:04 ◼   ► So like, and that USB port over the years

01:33:06 ◼   ► has worked for not any USB device,

01:33:09 ◼   ► but you know, things like standard HID compliant keyboards,

01:33:13 ◼   ► that's probably one of the biggest uses for it.

01:33:15 ◼   ► Also network adapters would work over it,

01:33:17 ◼   ► so you could have like ethernet wired on.

01:33:19 ◼   ► It has always worked for sound devices,

01:33:21 ◼   ► which is very, very nice during sound production.

01:33:24 ◼   ► And I don't think there's a wireless equivalent

01:33:27 ◼   ► to things like a microphone interface.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Like I don't think that anybody makes

01:33:31 ◼   ► Bluetooth audio input devices.

01:33:34 ◼   ► At least they shouldn't, and I hope they don't,

01:33:36 ◼   ► but they probably do.

01:33:36 ◼   ► But nobody should do that.

01:33:39 ◼   ► So there are these kind of edge case things

01:33:41 ◼   ► that like having a port at all,

01:33:44 ◼   ► and even if it requires crazy adapters

01:33:48 ◼   ► specialized hardware to use it for these kind of purposes.

01:33:53 ◼   ► Having a port that can be adapted to these kind of

01:33:55 ◼   ► weird edge cases does allow these devices to be used

01:33:59 ◼   ► in some pretty creative ways in some pretty

01:34:01 ◼   ► interesting fields.

01:34:02 ◼   ► And that having no port at all, relying totally on wireless

01:34:06 ◼   ► would make some of those things harder.

01:34:08 ◼   ► However, I think those limits are more important

01:34:10 ◼   ► to keep open on the iPad than on the phone.

01:34:12 ◼   ► That's why I think the phone is probably gonna get rid

01:34:14 ◼   ► of lightning first and probably fairly soon, relatively speaking. The iPad, because of

01:34:21 ◼   ► those edge case uses, I think it would be more destructive to lose its only port in

01:34:26 ◼   ► that way, but it also doesn't really matter what that port is. We've argued for years

01:34:33 ◼   ► like why don't they add a couple USB ports to it, but so far the iPad has done seemingly

01:34:38 ◼   ► pretty well and totally fine, having its own proprietary port that could be adapted to

01:34:44 ◼   ► to do a couple things here and there,

01:34:46 ◼   ► but for the most part was not a standard port.

01:34:48 ◼   ► And I don't see that demand curve in that way

01:34:53 ◼   ► changing much over time.

01:34:55 ◼   ► It got this far with no standard ports

01:34:57 ◼   ► and it's gonna keep going with no standard ports.

01:34:59 ◼   ► But I do think it would be a shame

01:35:00 ◼   ► if it lost the one that it has.

01:35:03 ◼   ► - No, it needs more ports.

01:35:05 ◼   ► For the big, for the 24-inch iPad Pro,

01:35:08 ◼   ► that's when you start, you don't need the Lightning port.

01:35:11 ◼   ► You can get rid of the Lightning port,

01:35:12 ◼   ► but it should have five USB-C ports.

01:35:14 ◼   ► the big pro version for the one you know for the surface book type of is that what am i

01:35:18 ◼   ► getting the name right of the imackey i can't even keep track of the 27 inch screen like

01:35:23 ◼   ► i i still think that's lurking out there in the future of the ipad as it becomes more

01:35:28 ◼   ► and more capable and as they expand the line so if and when that day comes that's the time

01:35:33 ◼   ► when the ipad needs ports because it is essentially going to you know it's it's the it's taking

01:35:37 ◼   ► the mantle of the pc and the laptop surface studio is apparently the uh the the drafting

01:35:42 ◼   ► table thing or whatever.

01:35:44 ◼   ► It's ridiculous to have a 27-inch tablet-sized thing that you use only at your desk because

01:35:48 ◼   ► it's huge that has one port on one edge.

01:35:51 ◼   ► That's ridiculous, right?

01:35:52 ◼   ► So lightning go away, but whatever the equivalent of USB-C, a Thunderbolt or whatever should

01:35:56 ◼   ► be there for all the reasons that we hook things up to our PCs today, right?

01:36:01 ◼   ► They're not all going away quite as rapidly as we feel like we could ditch them on the

01:36:05 ◼   ► phone because so many things.

01:36:07 ◼   ► Apple itself has come up with so many of the solutions like with the AirPods, with wireless

01:36:12 ◼   ► charging, getting rid of syncing and backing up to your Mac. They're practically there,

01:36:17 ◼   ► but it's too early for them to do it, if only because charging would take too long, because

01:36:21 ◼   ► the Qi charging is very slow now, supposedly going to get a little bit faster, but it's

01:36:26 ◼   ► probably not going to catch wire for a while yet.

01:36:29 ◼   ► Well, that's also like, we don't have Apple's yet. We only have the existing ones that are

01:36:33 ◼   ► out there. Once Apple ships their version of the Qi charging mat, which I hope is soon.

01:36:40 ◼   ► I'm kind of sad that it isn't until next year.

01:36:42 ◼   ► But once they shipped that,

01:36:44 ◼   ► before the iPad came out,

01:36:48 ◼   ► USB charging was very, very slow.

01:36:51 ◼   ► And the iPad was one of the first devices,

01:36:53 ◼   ► if not the first device,

01:36:55 ◼   ► to use higher amperage USB charging standards.

01:36:59 ◼   ► I don't even know if it was a standard back then,

01:37:02 ◼   ► or if Apple just kind of hacked it on there.

01:37:04 ◼   ► But they needed more power,

01:37:06 ◼   ► so they made their custom power brick

01:37:07 ◼   ► that delivered these, you know, the more power of a USB

01:37:10 ◼   ► to the iPad that needed it.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Maybe this is a similar kind of thing,

01:37:13 ◼   ► where like all the existing things out there now

01:37:15 ◼   ► are these low power things, but you know,

01:37:18 ◼   ► Apple is doing their magic with extending the standards

01:37:21 ◼   ► and pressuring the standards bodies

01:37:22 ◼   ► and manufacturers of things.

01:37:23 ◼   ► So maybe the, you know, maybe next year's Qi charging mats

01:37:26 ◼   ► are gonna be pretty fast.

01:37:29 ◼   ► - Speaking of, can one of you explain to me

01:37:32 ◼   ► what is the equipment I need to do fast charging

01:37:36 ◼   ► with the iPhones 8 and iPhone 10.

01:37:40 ◼   ► And my understanding from looking at some of Gruber's

01:37:42 ◼   ► recent work is that it's actually not that fast,

01:37:46 ◼   ► but what are the components I need,

01:37:48 ◼   ► and can we get links for these for the show notes?

01:37:49 ◼   ► Because I'm not trying to be funny,

01:37:51 ◼   ► I genuinely am not clear on what stuff I need

01:37:54 ◼   ► in order to make this work.

01:37:55 ◼   ► - All right, so the official answer is

01:37:57 ◼   ► you should not be asking us unprepared on a podcast,

01:37:59 ◼   ► you should just search for some article

01:38:02 ◼   ► that Serenity Caldwell has probably written at iMore

01:38:04 ◼   ► that tells us all the actual information.

01:38:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:38:06 ◼   ► But off the top of my head,

01:38:09 ◼   ► you need basically a USB-C power brick.

01:38:13 ◼   ► So not an iPad brick, all of those, those do charge.

01:38:16 ◼   ► If you have any iPhone passed, I believe,

01:38:18 ◼   ► I believe they started with the 6 or the 6S,

01:38:20 ◼   ► anything then or newer will charge faster

01:38:24 ◼   ► from an iPad power brick,

01:38:25 ◼   ► or any other 2.4 amp USB power device.

01:38:29 ◼   ► So if you aren't using one of those yet,

01:38:32 ◼   ► please use those for everything.

01:38:33 ◼   ► your phones will charge noticeably faster.

01:38:35 ◼   ► But if you wanna go even faster than that,

01:38:37 ◼   ► but not too much faster than that,

01:38:39 ◼   ► you can now use, with the new iPhones,

01:38:41 ◼   ► you can now use a USB-C power delivery brick.

01:38:45 ◼   ► So either the bricks that came with all the new MacBooks

01:38:49 ◼   ► and MacBook Pros, including your little MacBook KC,

01:38:51 ◼   ► that should do it, I believe.

01:38:53 ◼   ► And then you need a USB-C to lightning cable.

01:38:56 ◼   ► I think there's only one type of USB-C to lightning cable,

01:39:00 ◼   ► I hope, from Apple.

01:39:02 ◼   ► Because there has been, previously the USB C to C cables,

01:39:06 ◼   ► there were actually multiple different Apple USB C to C

01:39:10 ◼   ► cables with different power delivery abilities.

01:39:14 ◼   ► And I assume that's all legacy and that has been solved

01:39:18 ◼   ► in current inventory that didn't have like

01:39:19 ◼   ► an Apple store, but that was a problem before.

01:39:22 ◼   ► But with C to Lightning, I think there's only ever been one.

01:39:26 ◼   ► So if you have Apples, at least, I'm not sure I would trust

01:39:29 ◼   ► a third party cable for this just yet,

01:39:30 ◼   ► just 'cause, you know, not that it would catch fire

01:39:32 ◼   ► or anything, but I would just be wary

01:39:34 ◼   ► of whether it would work at the maximum rate or not.

01:39:37 ◼   ► So I would say go get the Apple Lightning to USB-C cable

01:39:42 ◼   ► and plug it into your MacBook's power brick.

01:39:44 ◼   ► That's the answer.

01:39:45 ◼   ► - Cool, all right, thanks, 'cause I was very confused.

01:39:48 ◼   ► - You could also use the Anker,

01:39:52 ◼   ► you know your little like five port thing

01:39:54 ◼   ► that charges things that you told us all to buy

01:39:55 ◼   ► in that awesome blog post?

01:39:56 ◼   ► Well, I ended up, this past winter,

01:39:59 ◼   ► I bought the version of that that has a single USB-C

01:40:02 ◼   ► output port as well that can power up to, I think,

01:40:05 ◼   ► 60 watts over it or something like that.

01:40:07 ◼   ► That's wonderful, by the way.

01:40:08 ◼   ► So, you know, if you're bringing a new MacBook

01:40:11 ◼   ► of any kind on a trip and you wanna just bring one charger,

01:40:14 ◼   ► that Anker thing that has one USB-C port

01:40:17 ◼   ► and like four USB ports is awesome