ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Would any executive who had other options ever choose to eat a box lunch like well, it's like anything that's executive

00:00:07 ◼   ► It's always the name is always two levels of status up from the thing. Otherwise, it wouldn't be a marketing name, you know, so

00:00:12 ◼   ► Executives would never have an executive box lunch. 17 year olds. Don't read 17 magazine and on and on

00:00:17 ◼   ► Aspirational, I don't think executives have any form of lunch that comes in a box. They should call it executive sack lunch

00:00:29 ◼   ► Like there there's literally there is nothing they could put in that box that would make that name seem reasonable

00:00:34 ◼   ► Just filled with caviar sack lunch the famous movie from Seinfeld

00:00:39 ◼   ► To begin with follow-up today a friend of the show Daniel Jalkett has spent

00:00:45 ◼   ► What seemed to be a surprising amount of time doing research on Moscone lunches, and I'm glad that Daniel did it

00:00:50 ◼   ► So we don't have to

00:00:52 ◼   ► He has looked up some information about the Moscone box lunches. We will put a link in the show notes

00:00:58 ◼   ► There's a few highlights that I wanted to call everyone's attention to the quote executive box lunch quotes is

00:01:06 ◼   ► $39 and 25 cents in the year 2017 according to Daniel. I love so much that this is called the executive

00:01:15 ◼   ► Yes, the executive box lunch. I am NOT kidding

00:01:19 ◼   ► I mean in all fairness Craig Federighi was allegedly eating one of these things backstage before talk show live and he is an executive and

00:01:25 ◼   ► And so therefore, I guess that's aptly named,

00:01:29 ◼   ► but I'll tell you one thing,

00:01:31 ◼   ► when all of us are getting it in the big dining hall,

00:01:32 ◼   ► I sure don't feel like an executive.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - No. - It seems like,

00:01:35 ◼   ► well, it's not, keep going Casey,

00:01:37 ◼   ► because it's not, $39 does not include all the pricing

00:01:40 ◼   ► and options included in this special Porsche Lunch

00:01:43 ◼   ► if you want floor mats and all four wheels

00:01:46 ◼   ► and also a transmission, it costs more.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Yes, so continuing on.

00:01:51 ◼   ► This is the description of the Executive Box lunch,

00:01:53 ◼   ► which Daniel notes, it's what he remembers from Dub-Dub, and it sounds the same to me.

00:01:56 ◼   ► So the description is as follows. "Four compartment includes compostable service,

00:02:01 ◼   ► because California, 25 guest minimum. Sandwich, wrapper, entree, salad includes a choice of side

00:02:07 ◼   ► salad, dessert, and fruit. To accompany your box lunches, we suggest adding assorted soft drinks

00:02:11 ◼   ► and bottled water." Okay, so let's talk about soft drinks and bottled water. "Soft drinks and water

00:02:15 ◼   ► are not included. A 22% service fee, as well as sales tax, which is almost 10%, are also added

00:02:21 ◼   ► it's the price. So that $39.25 box lunch comes out to around $52, and you haven't had anything

00:02:29 ◼   ► to drink yet. And this is Daniel writing, "Want to really lose your lunch? Each bottled

00:02:34 ◼   ► water is $5.25, coming to $7 after service and taxes." And this is, again, still Daniel.

00:02:41 ◼   ► And Marco's long-lost strawberry, sea-monstered, "Edwala," which is probably classified as

00:02:45 ◼   ► assorted juices, would set Apple back an additional $8 a bottle. Add it all up, and it's not hard

00:02:51 ◼   ► to imagine that meals and snacks are coming to $100 a day or $500 a week per person. Nearly

00:02:57 ◼   ► a third of the $1600 WWDC admission fee likely pays for food. Are you kidding me with this

00:03:08 ◼   ► garbage? Moving on, I don't know how the people who do it in San Jose, how their box lunches

00:03:15 ◼   ► compare, but the good news is the "gourmet" box lunch from the caterers in San Jose comes

00:03:21 ◼   ► in at only $22. Mineral waters, soft drinks, juices, and bottled water are a mere $4.50

00:03:27 ◼   ► each. So a considerable savings once they move to San Jose on lunches alone. How can you spend,

00:03:34 ◼   ► one, spend $500 a week on those lunches? Like, I was sitting here mostly defending them the last

00:03:40 ◼   ► couple episodes. Eh, they're not that bad. You know, they're passable. They work. Not at $500

00:03:45 ◼   ► for the week. Are you friggin' kidding me with this insanity? No. No. No. Hard pass. No.

00:03:49 ◼   ► So if they drop the price of the tickets by $500, like they gave that $500 back to the people,

00:03:56 ◼   ► and we all had to leave the building and find someplace else to eat and then come back,

00:04:00 ◼   ► I'm actually not sure that that would be better for the conference. You're like,

00:04:06 ◼   ► "Oh, just give me that 500 bucks. I could spend that in San Francisco." But then you

00:04:08 ◼   ► got to go find someplace to eat. And I'm not sure the eateries that you can get to and back

00:04:14 ◼   ► to the conference center in time to get the after lunch sessions can support

00:04:19 ◼   ► that many people or are any better so oh no they're better but they probably

00:04:24 ◼   ► can't support the people you're probably right about that but they are definitely

00:04:27 ◼   ► better I don't know I like it depends like you can go to the whatever the

00:04:32 ◼   ► little mall thingy that's over there and I mean yeah I mean the mall food court

00:04:35 ◼   ► is better than than the body is better but you gotta wait in these long lines

00:04:39 ◼   ► and then you get your thing you gotta find someplace to eat it you gotta get

00:04:42 ◼   ► back and that's like the closest possible choice, I'm wondering, I would actually mostly

00:04:48 ◼   ► be willing to pay for the convenience of not having to leave the conference center while

00:04:54 ◼   ► eating lunches that I don't really like.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Because that convenience is, I mean, and obviously the ideal choice would be to be able to get

00:05:01 ◼   ► food from someplace else, but as Daniel points out, that is in their rules, you can't get

00:05:04 ◼   ► food from anybody else in case it wasn't clear.

00:05:06 ◼   ► There is no choice.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Apple can't say, "Oh, we're just going to bring in someone else to cater."

00:05:11 ◼   ► not even an option. It's just insanity to me, like how they can get fleeced that badly.

00:05:19 ◼   ► It's not Apple's fault, it's just the way of the world. But oh my goodness, it is just

00:05:24 ◼   ► barbaric that that's the answer. Well, the way of the world in Apple, Apple world is

00:05:28 ◼   ► like if Apple, if this bothered Apple all that much, just buy Moscone. I saw a tweet

00:05:37 ◼   ► as I was catching up on my far behind on Twitter, someone saying that with its cash, Apple could

00:05:43 ◼   ► buy all of the Major League Baseball, NFL, and NHL teams and still have $100 billion

00:05:49 ◼   ► left over.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So crazy.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Now, and then somebody well-actually'd that person and was like, "Well, actually, that

00:05:56 ◼   ► doesn't account for taxes."

00:05:58 ◼   ► But still, the point stands.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Like, it's preposterous.

00:06:01 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about next iPhone rumors.

00:06:05 ◼   ► We talked in the past that there may be a Touch ID button on the back of the phone,

00:06:10 ◼   ► which some people think is the end of times.

00:06:14 ◼   ► A lot of people like myself think, "Eh, whatever."

00:06:17 ◼   ► But a couple people actually pointed out, "Well, what does this mean for the Home button

00:06:21 ◼   ► then?"

00:06:22 ◼   ► Because a Home button on the back does not seem good.

00:06:26 ◼   ► So how does that work?

00:06:28 ◼   ► And I don't know is the answer, but I would guess that there is some sort of Home button,

00:06:34 ◼   ► even a faux home button on the chin of the front of the phone.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I think that's what they've probably started down the path of, which with the immobile

00:06:43 ◼   ► or non-movable, whatever the word I'm looking for is, home button on the iPhone 7 and maybe

00:06:48 ◼   ► the whole thing becomes a home button.

00:06:50 ◼   ► I'm not really sure.

00:06:51 ◼   ► But it's certainly an interesting point I hadn't considered that today Touch ID and

00:06:55 ◼   ► home button are kind of co-located, but in the future maybe they won't be.

00:06:59 ◼   ► So Jon, what do you think about this?

00:07:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they they will be separate because it is more awkward to press a button on the back of the phone

00:07:08 ◼   ► Even a fake like non button. I mean they can have it there in addition. I suppose again, it doesn't move

00:07:13 ◼   ► It's not as if they they have to make room for some kind of mechanism and it's already going to be

00:07:17 ◼   ► this little cutout area, but I think they will continue to have a

00:07:20 ◼   ► Helm button on the front of the phone now whether that home button is virtual kind of like the touch bar where it's just a bottom

00:07:26 ◼   ► Section of the screen or something like that. There's lots of been lots of rumors in the past

00:07:30 ◼   ► I haven't heard any recently about how the touch bar technology of having this little

00:07:35 ◼   ► separate accessory screen controlled by the OS and, you know, accessible, perhaps accessible

00:07:41 ◼   ► to applications through an API, kind of like all, you know, the Android soft buttons and

00:07:45 ◼   ► stuff like that might be a thing that would appear on a phone, but even if that doesn't

00:07:50 ◼   ► exist at all, the idea of there being a, that you can squeeze the bottom part of your phone

00:07:56 ◼   ► to go home.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Like, whether you want to consider that a button, and especially if it's completely

00:08:01 ◼   ► embedded in the screen and there is no, it's just a flat featureless piece of glass with

00:08:04 ◼   ► no little cutout or circle or whatever, we're still going to call that the home button.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And I'm thinking that they're not going to get rid of that, no matter where the Touch

00:08:11 ◼   ► ID sensor goes.

00:08:12 ◼   ► So it's basically a divorce of home button and Touch ID, where the home button can stay

00:08:15 ◼   ► on the front, but because of the way it's done and the edge to the screen and everything,

00:08:21 ◼   ► the Touch ID sensor goes on the back and we just squeeze the bottom of our phones.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I think I would mostly be okay with that too.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Like, you know, I'll have to see,

00:08:28 ◼   ► have to try it for a while to see

00:08:30 ◼   ► if I missed the little indented circle.

00:08:32 ◼   ► A lot of listeners wrote in to express love

00:08:35 ◼   ► for the little indented circle as a way to feel

00:08:38 ◼   ► like which end of your phone is up

00:08:39 ◼   ► or like exactly where you have to squeeze.

00:08:41 ◼   ► But if you can squeeze anywhere

00:08:43 ◼   ► along the bottom edge of the phone,

00:08:44 ◼   ► I guess then your only problem is

00:08:45 ◼   ► if you have your thing upside down,

00:08:46 ◼   ► but I suppose you have the lightning port to check

00:08:49 ◼   ► whether that's the case.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Anyway, it's pretty weird that all of these rumors

00:08:55 ◼   ► about the next phone surround like actual important

00:09:00 ◼   ► physical changes to the exterior of the phone,

00:09:06 ◼   ► because all the past phones, including like this,

00:09:08 ◼   ► you know, six and seven generations,

00:09:10 ◼   ► where it's kind of the same on the outside,

00:09:11 ◼   ► have been about like, what does it look like

00:09:14 ◼   ► and what are the materials?

00:09:15 ◼   ► But the design of, it's a, you know,

00:09:19 ◼   ► rectangle with a circle button on the bottom that you press in to go home and

00:09:23 ◼   ► i guess the addition of touch id have been so constant this is the first phone

00:09:27 ◼   ► that's like that the story on this phone is it may

00:09:30 ◼   ► be differently shaped differently proportioned and functionality on it may

00:09:34 ◼   ► be moving around in ways that has never moved around before so that's

00:09:37 ◼   ► that's kind of exciting uh and you know kind of also risky and that like they

00:09:43 ◼   ► have a model that works here with this rectangle with the home button on the

00:09:46 ◼   ► bottom and they've iterated iterated and refined and iterated and

00:09:49 ◼   ► But the basic functions and stuff have been the same, aside from, you know, what Casey

00:09:52 ◼   ► mentioned in the last show, that the power button moved to the side, which is somewhat

00:09:57 ◼   ► explicable by the increasing size of the phone and the difficulty people would have reaching

00:10:00 ◼   ► all up to the top.

00:10:01 ◼   ► But other than that, the phone design of the phone has been pretty—oh yeah, and the headphone

00:10:06 ◼   ► jack moving from top to bottom.

00:10:07 ◼   ► But the physical design of the phone has been pretty constant, and I'm kind of excited to

00:10:10 ◼   ► see them, you know, say, "All bets are off.

00:10:13 ◼   ► We're moving things around, and we're going to try something new."

00:10:16 ◼   ► So I actually had a chance to play with the Galaxy S8

00:10:19 ◼   ► a couple days ago in a Best Buy.

00:10:21 ◼   ► With the exception of it feeling way too tall for its width

00:10:25 ◼   ► and it being hard to reach things as a result,

00:10:27 ◼   ► I actually really enjoyed the general look

00:10:31 ◼   ► of the edge-to-edge on the sides, the screen and everything.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And the way they did the home button,

00:10:36 ◼   ► I just kind of instinctively force touched the lower area

00:10:40 ◼   ► where the home button would be on an iPhone,

00:10:42 ◼   ► and it turns out that's exactly what they want you to do.

00:10:45 ◼   ► and it just clicked and it recognized any firm press

00:10:48 ◼   ► in that area as a home button click.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And so the very first thing I tried worked and was correct.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And then as I was playing with it over a few minutes,

00:10:56 ◼   ► I did that here and there a few more times,

00:10:57 ◼   ► and every time it just worked exactly as expected.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And even when there was something on screen there,

00:11:02 ◼   ► something from the foreground app that is in that spot,

00:11:05 ◼   ► that if it misinterprets it as a touch,

00:11:07 ◼   ► it would have activated that thing.

00:11:08 ◼   ► But every time it interpreted it correctly,

00:11:10 ◼   ► and it was great, it was totally fine.

00:11:12 ◼   ► So if Apple's gonna go in a direction like that

00:11:15 ◼   ► where part of the screen just becomes the home button.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I think they totally can.

00:11:20 ◼   ► We've seen with the iPhone 7 Force Touch button

00:11:22 ◼   ► that's a possibility, that's totally fine.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And now we see with the S8 that it actually really does work.

00:11:28 ◼   ► The only major question I would have for it is

00:11:32 ◼   ► how do they show this to people?

00:11:33 ◼   ► How is it handled in the UI?

00:11:36 ◼   ► Does the usable area of the screen for apps

00:11:40 ◼   ► actually extend that far like it does on the S8?

00:11:43 ◼   ► Or is there that little reserve

00:11:44 ◼   ► or like you were saying, John,

00:11:45 ◼   ► like maybe like a touch bar like API area down there

00:11:49 ◼   ► where apps would only actually take up

00:11:51 ◼   ► like the middle 80% of the height

00:11:54 ◼   ► and maybe not the very top and bottom

00:11:55 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:11:56 ◼   ► But anyway, having the just bottom area of the screen

00:12:00 ◼   ► accept a firm touch as a home button, that works just fine.

00:12:05 ◼   ► - I was gonna ask if there are any

00:12:06 ◼   ► accessibility implications for that,

00:12:08 ◼   ► but I would suppose with that,

00:12:10 ◼   ► I forget what you call it,

00:12:11 ◼   ► but we talked about it a lot like several months ago

00:12:13 ◼   ► where you have the little on-screen button

00:12:15 ◼   ► that lets you do the home button

00:12:16 ◼   ► and all sorts of other gestures.

00:12:19 ◼   ► What's the name of that thing?

00:12:20 ◼   ► You know what I'm thinking about?

00:12:21 ◼   ► - Assistive touch, I think?

00:12:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, assistive touch, something like that, thank you.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I was about to ask, is this an accessibility issue?

00:12:27 ◼   ► But I would suppose assistive touch

00:12:29 ◼   ► would fix any of those problems, I'm not sure.

00:12:32 ◼   ► But it's a change.

00:12:33 ◼   ► - Well, the issue would be

00:12:34 ◼   ► that you could no longer feel the button.

00:12:36 ◼   ► 'Cause now you can feel that ring.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So like John was saying, you can more easily tell

00:12:41 ◼   ► which direction the phone is oriented

00:12:43 ◼   ► without a physical depression on the front surface

00:12:46 ◼   ► where the home button goes,

00:12:48 ◼   ► it's harder to tell which way is up by feel alone.

00:12:51 ◼   ► So that would be an issue for sure.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And I don't know how they would solve that.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Maybe you would just start getting used to feeling

00:12:56 ◼   ► for the camera bump or other features on the outside.

00:12:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:59 ◼   ► - If it is a dedicated area, they could do haptics

00:13:03 ◼   ► to make it do the tiniest little jiggle

00:13:06 ◼   ► when your finger is over the reserved bottom section

00:13:09 ◼   ► of the phone.

00:13:10 ◼   ► There's all sorts of things they can do.

00:13:11 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:13:12 ◼   ► playing playing switch games with its little uh...

00:13:15 ◼   ► has been a couple of articles recently about the

00:13:18 ◼   ► haptic engine in the nintendo switch which is looks like the same tech that

00:13:22 ◼   ► apples been using its phones but i feel where they're called linear something

00:13:25 ◼   ► or other whatever but it's

00:13:26 ◼   ► it's better than the old vibrators are more precise in their using in games

00:13:30 ◼   ► uh... to make it feel like things on screen have some kind of physical

00:13:33 ◼   ► presence

00:13:34 ◼   ► and it's

00:13:35 ◼   ► surprisingly easy to

00:13:37 ◼   ► for loss i mean just we just talked about the home but last time i could

00:13:40 ◼   ► doesn't feel like a button

00:13:41 ◼   ► but it feels like a thing that we rapidly get used to

00:13:44 ◼   ► and come to accept as the physical reality of the phone.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And I think the best thing would be like,

00:13:50 ◼   ► if you could turn off, I mean, I suppose you can,

00:13:52 ◼   ► isn't there some way to turn off vibration entirely?

00:13:54 ◼   ► Can you turn off the haptic engine entirely?

00:13:56 ◼   ► - I would assume so, but I don't know.

00:13:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, but anyway, if it did turn off,

00:14:01 ◼   ► our devices would feel broken in a different way,

00:14:03 ◼   ► because we'd be like, this is not how my glass rectangle

00:14:05 ◼   ► is supposed to move or feel.

00:14:06 ◼   ► So adding something like,

00:14:08 ◼   ► "Oh, when your finger physically touches the correct bottom part of the phone, it gives

00:14:14 ◼   ► the tiniest little jiggle, and that would be a physical way for you to feel with your

00:14:19 ◼   ► hands which side is the top or bottom of my phone."

00:14:21 ◼   ► It wouldn't activate anything yet because you haven't actually pressed, but basically

00:14:25 ◼   ► when you're feeling for that little circle, you want to know which side is up.

00:14:30 ◼   ► You need that information to be provided physically.

00:14:33 ◼   ► That little circle is about as subtle as the little jiggle could be.

00:14:36 ◼   ► And once you find which side is up, if the whole bottom of the phone functions as one

00:14:39 ◼   ► giant button, it's even easier to hit than that little circle.

00:14:41 ◼   ► So that problem is solved.

00:14:43 ◼   ► So real-time follow-up to turn off system haptics, which has a subtitle of "Play Haptics

00:14:49 ◼   ► for System Controls and Interactions."

00:14:51 ◼   ► That's in settings, sounds, and haptics.

00:14:53 ◼   ► And then there's options for vibrate on ring, vibrate on silent, sound and vibration patterns,

00:14:59 ◼   ► and all the way at the bottom is system haptics, which is a switch yes/no.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Does that turn off the home button?

00:15:05 ◼   ► switch them all and find out. No, the home button still does a haptic click. Yeah. I presume because

00:15:10 ◼   ► it would be really, really eerie if it didn't. It would feel broken. I mean, to us, if you're used

00:15:15 ◼   ► to it, it's like it's whatever you get used to, but it would feel like it doesn't, it's not the

00:15:18 ◼   ► same physical device anymore. Right. That's the thing about haptics, like, oh, it's faking a

00:15:23 ◼   ► physical, this gets another one of my pet peeves that my, you know, things being done in hardware

00:15:30 ◼   ► on video cards, which is like now an increasingly dated peeve from the 80s.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Mechanical keyboards, that phrase drives me nuts because, you know, like, please show

00:15:39 ◼   ► me the non-mechanical keyboards.

00:15:42 ◼   ► I can do that.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Do you remember when they used to have the ones that they would like shine?

00:15:47 ◼   ► It looked like laser, like a laser keyboard, but it wasn't actually lasers, I'm sure.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and how did you use, and how did you use those keyboards, Casey?

00:15:56 ◼   ► You put your fingers on a surface.

00:15:58 ◼   ► take your finger and you move it you mean you take no you're missing the

00:16:02 ◼   ► point you're just shining light on a surface say like on a desktop no John

00:16:05 ◼   ► saying your fingers the machine I know what thing you're talking about but you

00:16:08 ◼   ► can't activate it with your mind you have to physically move your hands and

00:16:13 ◼   ► press them into certain areas you don't have to press but you have to place your

00:16:16 ◼   ► fingers into the zone where the keys are that is a physical action but the

00:16:21 ◼   ► keyboard itself is not moving John wait so like when when a conductor waves the

00:16:25 ◼   ► stick around in front of a band, is that considered a mechanical device?

00:16:29 ◼   ► You know, yeah. I would say, I don't know. It's difficult to say what you consider

00:16:34 ◼   ► mechanical because it's not like that light is just being emitted naturally from the desktop.

00:16:39 ◼   ► We need an episode of mechanical or not.

00:16:41 ◼   ► This is definitely a pretty broad definition of mechanical that you're using here, Joe.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Right. But when people talk about—really, in the context I'm saying when people talk

00:16:49 ◼   ► about mechanical keyboards, they're saying as compared to the keyboard that I'm sitting

00:16:52 ◼   ► in front of, which is the Apple aluminum extended, which is 100% mechanical. The keys move, you

00:16:59 ◼   ► know, making contact with a thing that causes a signal, but it's not a quote-unquote "mechanical

00:17:05 ◼   ► keyboard." It's a very strange interpretation.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Wait, can I nitpick your definition of 100% mechanical?

00:17:10 ◼   ► Yeah, what part of it is a mechanical?

00:17:12 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure there's like a USB controller in there and a bunch of...

00:17:16 ◼   ► No, I mean the keyboard part of it. I mean, it's the same thing with mechanical keyboards.

00:17:19 ◼   ► you're just activating a switch, it's so electronic. It's not like it's steam powered,

00:17:23 ◼   ► it's not like a typewriter where you're hitting a lever that's causing a big thing to whack into

00:17:26 ◼   ► a piece of paper that makes your key. >> [LAUGH]

00:17:29 ◼   ► Jason Snell, can you fix this for us so we don't have to do it?

00:17:32 ◼   ► >> I know what people mean when they say mechanical keyboards is just a silly phrase.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Like it is a term that has taken on this alternate meaning that doesn't really make sense if you

00:17:39 ◼   ► think about it, but it is accepted as a term of art, so we all just say it and don't think about

00:17:43 ◼   ► it. >> Help me, Jason Snell,

00:17:44 ◼   ► you're my only hope. >> But what I was getting at before

00:17:46 ◼   ► I derailed myself. I get that reference. Was the idea that haptics are a replacement for things

00:17:56 ◼   ► like the physical home button, right? When they're not, you know, they work by doing a physical thing.

00:18:05 ◼   ► Something in your phone is moving, causing you to feel that motion. It's just an entirely different

00:18:11 ◼   ► motion than the surface that you pressed moving downwards relative to the surface surrounding it.

00:18:16 ◼   ► But something is moving and you are feeling it as a physical sensation.

00:18:21 ◼   ► So it is an alternate physical action to replace other physical actions.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It is not the removal of physical buttons with non-physical buttons.

00:18:30 ◼   ► I would say the iPhone 7 button is still a physical button when haptics are turned on.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Because you press as a physical action and you tell that your press has been registered

00:18:40 ◼   ► or successful because you feel a response.

00:18:42 ◼   ► response is not your finger getting lower inside the thing, but it is a physical sensation.

00:18:48 ◼   ► And so this distinction between physical and non-physical controls, as haptics get better,

00:18:53 ◼   ► like maybe it'll be like mechanical keyboards, it's just that that's the way we'll describe

00:18:56 ◼   ► it and, you know, we won't bother thinking about whether it makes sense or not.

00:19:00 ◼   ► But it is a clever way to make a device more reliable while still doing the thing that

00:19:08 ◼   ► works best with humans.

00:19:09 ◼   ► We have hands and fingers that are sensitive to motion.

00:19:14 ◼   ► It's a good way to tell how things are happening

00:19:17 ◼   ► without looking at them.

00:19:18 ◼   ► So you can feel in your pocket just like a physical,

00:19:21 ◼   ► you know, physical buttons

00:19:22 ◼   ► as opposed to those non-physical ones.

00:19:23 ◼   ► I can feel where the volume controls are.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I can feel where the power button is.

00:19:26 ◼   ► I can feel where the home button is.

00:19:28 ◼   ► I can feel that it has been activated.

00:19:29 ◼   ► I can physically press it.

00:19:30 ◼   ► All that stuff plays to the strengths

00:19:33 ◼   ► of our hands and fingers, which is how we use our iPhones.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And so anything Apple does related to that is wise to leverage those abilities.

00:19:42 ◼   ► In the same way that the Touch Bar tries to do that, but because it has no haptics, you

00:19:47 ◼   ► are left with kind of a surface that you have to look at more than you would otherwise,

00:19:52 ◼   ► and you can press on it, but it's more like a touchscreen in that it doesn't do anything

00:19:57 ◼   ► when you press any of those things.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Which is another reason a lot of people have difficulties with the Touch Bar, is that it

00:20:01 ◼   ► is replacing buttons with something that is less button-like.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like the iPhone 7 home button replaced the button with something that is,

00:20:08 ◼   ► it's like an alternate take on a button, but it is, you know, it's like they replaced the

00:20:13 ◼   ► function keys on the MacBook with the screen from the iPhone.

00:20:17 ◼   ► The screen is not the same kind of a button because they don't know where the buttons

00:20:20 ◼   ► are going to be, but on the touch bar it seems like you could know they were kind of, you

00:20:23 ◼   ► know.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Anyway, this is just my mild musings on haptics, but I think they are, long term I think there's

00:20:31 ◼   ► legs to this whole haptic thing.

00:20:33 ◼   ► I mean, as Apple has been so excited and proud to show its little, you know, how much better

00:20:39 ◼   ► the vibration is in each phone and this haptic engine that they brand with this haptic stuff,

00:20:46 ◼   ► I think they're actually onto something there.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I think we'll just see more and more of that from Apple and other companies because it

00:20:52 ◼   ► works with humans.

00:20:53 ◼   ► That could be Apple's slogan since they're not doing the computer with the rest of us

00:20:56 ◼   ► anymore.

00:20:57 ◼   ► The computer with the rest of us anymore.

00:20:58 ◼   ► It works with humans, TM.

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00:22:55 ◼   ► Let's talk about WikiTribune, of which I know basically nothing and I am failing at my job as chief summarizer and chief.

00:23:03 ◼   ► So Marco, I feel like I saw you tweeting about this when it first broke.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Do you want to kind of fill us in as to what WikiTribune is about?

00:23:10 ◼   ► Honestly, I barely know. I just signed up because I wanted to support this cause.

00:23:16 ◼   ► So,

00:23:17 ◼   ► John, can you give a better summary than I can?

00:23:20 ◼   ► This has been in the notes like three weeks people

00:23:22 ◼   ► But I think I think one place we can start is Marco with his lack of knowledge

00:23:26 ◼   ► Why did you decide to sign up for what did you do by saying up?

00:23:30 ◼   ► Did you did you like have to give money or pledge to give money like what?

00:23:32 ◼   ► It was the sign up thing that you did

00:23:34 ◼   ► It's some kind of like pre commitment type system like Kickstarter

00:23:38 ◼   ► But like I don't think they're gonna charge me until they hit their minimum or unless they hit their minimum

00:23:41 ◼   ► Something like that, but it is a money thing like yours. Yeah, supporting this effort with money, right? Yeah, I sign up to make a monthly

00:23:48 ◼   ► donation or whatever it is to...

00:23:49 ◼   ► - Alright, so what led you to do that?

00:23:52 ◼   ► - Well, basically there's a lot of things about journalism

00:23:57 ◼   ► these days that I think are really dysfunctional or broken.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And this seems like it could fix some of them.

00:24:06 ◼   ► Not all of them, you know, I don't think it's probably

00:24:09 ◼   ► possible to fix all of them, but this could fix

00:24:11 ◼   ► some of them in a fairly big way.

00:24:13 ◼   ► So if it works, that'll be great.

00:24:15 ◼   ► If not, you know, I lost a little bit of money

00:24:17 ◼   ► all in the way and then I'll stop losing it

00:24:19 ◼   ► when I cancel it, that's it.

00:24:21 ◼   ► It seems like a good cause.

00:24:23 ◼   ► I feel like all of the Wikipedia donation prompts

00:24:27 ◼   ► that I've ignored over the years

00:24:30 ◼   ► and closed over the years without giving,

00:24:33 ◼   ► I feel like maybe I owe something to Jimmy Wales' causes.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So here I'm gonna finally make that good, I guess.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - So to go back and give a vague summary

00:24:41 ◼   ► of what the heck this thing is,

00:24:42 ◼   ► it is from the Wikipedia guy.

00:24:45 ◼   ► You've seen his face at the top of Wikipedia asking for money.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Now you can see his face on a different website asking you for money for a different thing.

00:24:52 ◼   ► So it has the pedigree of Wikipedia, which is a tremendously successful community platform

00:24:58 ◼   ► for doing whatever people do on Wikipedia.

00:25:03 ◼   ► And this is about trying to make the news better.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Like Marco said, he's got some of the same complaints about news and the incentive structures

00:25:09 ◼   ► and how it doesn't lead to good information being disseminated and there's lots of anti-patterns

00:25:14 ◼   ► and with how it's funded and what gets published and how it's published and versus what people

00:25:21 ◼   ► want to read and you know what sells ads and so on and so forth.

00:25:24 ◼   ► So this is a sort of Wikipedia style approach to news where it's very open and transparent

00:25:30 ◼   ► so everyone who's reading can see what's going on.

00:25:32 ◼   ► There's no ads so you don't have to worry about the entire thing being made to you know

00:25:36 ◼   ► to drive ad views which is a problem in the web in general not just on you know news and

00:25:40 ◼   ► and everything like that.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And like Wikipedia, it is community oriented

00:25:45 ◼   ► where it's not just like these people produce the content

00:25:48 ◼   ► and the rest of the world reads it.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Everybody participates in, in theory,

00:25:52 ◼   ► making the things better.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Although there are professional journalists involved as well.

00:25:56 ◼   ► So it's not just like, "Hey, make up whatever you want

00:25:58 ◼   ► and publish whatever you want."

00:25:59 ◼   ► Because that's just called the web.

00:26:00 ◼   ► That's not anything.

00:26:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:04 ◼   ► And trying to, you know, be transparent to the people

00:26:09 ◼   ► who are giving money.

00:26:10 ◼   ► you know, how are they going to fund all this through people like Marco,

00:26:12 ◼   ► the same way Wikipedia is funded. How does Wikipedia exist?

00:26:15 ◼   ► Jimmy Wales head asks you for money every once in a while.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And there are I'm assuming they're investors or stuff like that.

00:26:21 ◼   ► And they have this kind of Venn diagram at the top where it shows, uh,

00:26:26 ◼   ► three circles. And the three circles are community facts and journalists.

00:26:31 ◼   ► And Wiki Wiki Tribune is the confusing diamond shaped

00:26:36 ◼   ► intersection of the three of those circles.

00:26:38 ◼   ► When I see the intersection between three circles, I don't get a diamond shape, but

00:26:42 ◼   ► it's a logo.

00:26:43 ◼   ► There's some creative license there.

00:26:44 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Yeah, and so I think Marco's explanation of why he gave money is probably why a lot of

00:26:51 ◼   ► people gave money.

00:26:52 ◼   ► It's like, or you know, because it is like a Kickstarter.

00:26:55 ◼   ► It's like, you know, you pledge money, and if everything goes well, you will get charged

00:26:59 ◼   ► for your money or whatever.

00:27:00 ◼   ► And it probably will because this is very popular.

00:27:03 ◼   ► But it seems like a small amount, and just like a Kickstarter, you're like, "I don't

00:27:07 ◼   ► know if they'll ever ship this damn cooler. But it looks cool. So yeah, spoiler alert.

00:27:14 ◼   ► So like it's not a big deal. Like if they never go anywhere or if I fund it for a few

00:27:20 ◼   ► months and it's not that good, whatever. But I think there is an appetite for an attempt

00:27:26 ◼   ► to find a solution to the fix all of, you know, journalism finds itself in at this moment

00:27:33 ◼   ► in transition between the old world of newspapers and the way that they were funded and the

00:27:37 ◼   ► barriers to entry in this new world where it's much easier for more people to publish,

00:27:41 ◼   ► but it's much harder to find ways to fund content that isn't sort of lowest common denominator,

00:27:47 ◼   ► you know, because people go—what people want to read and what would be most beneficial to society

00:27:56 ◼   ► if people were to read are two very different things, and that is a—you know, the incentives

00:28:01 ◼   ► are not aligned. If the only way you can get money is by attracting people to read things,

00:28:06 ◼   ► you will inevitably end up giving people what they want, which is not always what they need,

00:28:11 ◼   ► which is a paternalistic view that people hate, like, "Oh, the people in the ivory tower are

00:28:14 ◼   ► going to determine what I need to see. Why can't people just pick what they need to see?"

00:28:17 ◼   ► There's a balance. Like, I mean, even in the bad old days of my childhood, when there was no

00:28:22 ◼   ► internet, there were things called tabloids that provided you same stuff that you can find on the

00:28:27 ◼   ► internet now. It's not like that stuff is like, "Oh, that didn't exist before the internet."

00:28:31 ◼   ► Of course it did. Like, you know, "Bat Boy found," "The National Enquirer," like, you know,

00:28:35 ◼   ► aliens are everywhere, right? That stuff has always and will always exist. And I'm not even

00:28:41 ◼   ► sure if it's any more prevalent than it is today. The difference today is that the sort of slow

00:28:46 ◼   ► motion decline of the ivory tower, we know what's best for you, we're going to apply a bunch of

00:28:52 ◼   ► reasoning and rules that you don't know about or agree with to try to provide what we think is,

00:29:02 ◼   ► you know, the news that's fit to print. And that has been in slow decline, mostly rightfully so,

00:29:07 ◼   ► because it's kind of a concentration of power that is not, you know, that is artificial,

00:29:13 ◼   ► you know, technological barriers to distribution information causing it to exist. But I would also

00:29:19 ◼   ► say that in this new world where it's easier to distribute information, a lot of people like Marco

00:29:23 ◼   ► and me, and I would imagine Casey, are less satisfied with how things are going. Not that

00:29:29 ◼   ► we want to go back to the old ways, because that was banned in a different set of ways, but the

00:29:32 ◼   ► that there are pathologies in the new structure of news that we wish we could get rid of.

00:29:40 ◼   ► It's like, you know, we all want to read really good, high quality journalism according to

00:29:46 ◼   ► the, you know, the system of journalism is something that most of us can agree upon,

00:29:50 ◼   ► kind of like the scientific method. It's just the question of, it is, you know, how is it

00:29:54 ◼   ► executed by fallible humans, and how do we provide the resources for it to be executed?

00:30:02 ◼   ► And that's what this thing is trying to provide.

00:30:04 ◼   ► Now my personal grudge against, disagreement with, indifference to Wikipedia as an institution,

00:30:13 ◼   ► depending on how you want to phrase it, gave—it caused me to have a little snarky chuckle

00:30:20 ◼   ► when I saw this Venn diagram here.

00:30:22 ◼   ► It's like community journalists and facts right underneath Jimmy Wales.

00:30:25 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, oh, now you care about facts, Jimmy Wales.

00:30:28 ◼   ► I thought it was just all about verifiability."

00:30:30 ◼   ► Wait a second.

00:30:31 ◼   ► And maybe they don't mean facts.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Maybe they actually mean verifiability.

00:30:33 ◼   ► But that's the thing about journalism.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Journalism, you know, like they are pursuing the truth of what happened.

00:30:41 ◼   ► It's not enough for a journalist to say, you know, there's one, you know, one thing for

00:30:44 ◼   ► reporters to say, "Let me just tell you what somebody said."

00:30:47 ◼   ► But journalists try to uncover the truth.

00:30:48 ◼   ► they can find out what really happened by talking to more people and gathering evidence,

00:30:54 ◼   ► that's part of journalism too. And the journalist is not going to call it a day when they have

00:31:00 ◼   ► quotes from three prominent people about what happened. The journalist would like to know,

00:31:03 ◼   ► "Yeah, but what really happened?" Right? "I know these quotes are verifiable. I know you

00:31:07 ◼   ► said this at this time, and this other paper published this thing, but what really happened?

00:31:11 ◼   ► What are the facts?" And that is an important part of journalism that is not an important

00:31:17 ◼   ► part of Wikipedia because Wikipedia doesn't care what the hell the facts are because that's

00:31:19 ◼   ► not what it is. It's a tertiary source. I don't want to go off on all my rants about

00:31:23 ◼   ► Wikipedia again. So it's kind of exciting to see this taking a different slant on things.

00:31:29 ◼   ► But as I scroll down through their plan and see journalists and community cooperating,

00:31:34 ◼   ► all I can think about is this is like a battle arena for edit wars. It's like edit wars distilled.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Because if you think there are edit wars on the Wikipedia page for insert favorite controversial

00:31:45 ◼   ► political figure. Can you imagine what the Edit Wars will be like on literally any actual

00:31:50 ◼   ► current event news story in the current political climate? Like, there's almost nothing you

00:31:54 ◼   ► can put in there, you know, articles being, you know, fact checked and verified by journalists

00:31:59 ◼   ► and community members working side by side as equals. I just picture a giant arena with

00:32:06 ◼   ► like people with boards with nails sticking out of them. Like, I don't, I'm not sure how

00:32:11 ◼   ► it can work. And you can say, well, look at Wikipedia, it works.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean like, that's the biggest example.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Wikipedia has the same issue.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Any kind of political topic also has a Wikipedia page,

00:32:23 ◼   ► and they've built systems and policies and norms up

00:32:27 ◼   ► around controlling that problem there too.

00:32:30 ◼   ► I think if anybody has shown that they have the ability

00:32:35 ◼   ► to manage that part of this, it's the people

00:32:38 ◼   ► who made Wikipedia and who built that whole community up.

00:32:41 ◼   ► So that I think, I'm actually not concerned

00:32:43 ◼   ► about the whole edit war problem.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I also don't think--

00:32:46 ◼   ► - Well, don't you think Wikipedia is a counter example?

00:32:48 ◼   ► 'Cause like-- - No.

00:32:49 ◼   ► - The fact that so many pages on Wikipedia

00:32:52 ◼   ► are incredibly locked down because of the edit wars,

00:32:56 ◼   ► almost to the point where they become frozen in time,

00:32:58 ◼   ► which is kind of okay for historical things,

00:33:01 ◼   ► but for pages that are ongoing,

00:33:03 ◼   ► they become the sole domain of a very small number

00:33:06 ◼   ► of people who have even the ability to edit page,

00:33:09 ◼   ► and everybody else is completely locked out,

00:33:11 ◼   ► And yet still they have edit wars and arguments

00:33:15 ◼   ► about what goes on.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Like, you can't do journalism in that environment.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I feel like the controversial pages on Wikipedia

00:33:22 ◼   ► are A, not the best source for information on their topics,

00:33:26 ◼   ► and B, do a terrible job of staying up to date,

00:33:29 ◼   ► and C, do not allow the input from the community

00:33:32 ◼   ► because they have to be walled off.

00:33:34 ◼   ► They have to be cemented, set in stone,

00:33:35 ◼   ► guarded night and day, incredibly protected.

00:33:39 ◼   ► They become ossified.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I think the best pages on Wikipedia are the pages that few people care about.

00:33:45 ◼   ► But you know, the classic example of being like lists of Pokemon and stuff, right?

00:33:48 ◼   ► Because a lot of people care.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Well, maybe there are edit wars in Pokemon, sorry if I'm picking.

00:33:53 ◼   ► But pages that are on more obscure topics, because the only people who edit and contribute

00:33:57 ◼   ► to them are the people who really are interested in the topic.

00:33:59 ◼   ► No one cares enough to vandalize it or edit them, and no one is there telling them what

00:34:03 ◼   ► they can and can't add, and especially if they don't have any kind of political or factional

00:34:07 ◼   ► angle.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Again, Pokemon may not be a great example.

00:34:10 ◼   ► end up being filled with all sorts of interesting and useful information.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Whereas the stories in any topic that has any controversial, any part of it that's controversial,

00:34:18 ◼   ► you're better off just scrolling to the bottom, looking at all the references and reading

00:34:20 ◼   ► all those than actually reading the Wikipedia page.

00:34:22 ◼   ► So I mean, I get what you're saying about they have systems in place, but I think the

00:34:25 ◼   ► systems negate the advantages they're trying to do, which is fine for Wikipedia because

00:34:29 ◼   ► every page on Wikipedia is not a super-duper controversial page.

00:34:32 ◼   ► In fact, very few of them are.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So the vast majority of Wikipedia is awesome when you just want to get a quick plot synopsis

00:34:38 ◼   ► of a particular episode of Dr. Hugh in a particular season.

00:34:41 ◼   ► That's on Wikipedia, and you'll find it quickly, and the webpage won't be gross or filled with

00:34:45 ◼   ► ads, and it's a reliable source for that, because no one cares enough about to screw

00:34:49 ◼   ► with it, or as reliable as any source could be.

00:34:51 ◼   ► But when you go do any page having to do with any controversial topic, I feel like, like,

00:34:56 ◼   ► when's the last time you read a Wikipedia page on a controversial topic?

00:34:58 ◼   ► Like, I don't even bother going to them anymore.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Like, I would, again, rather just scroll right down to the references and read the, you know,

00:35:05 ◼   ► primary and secondary sources than this tertiary summary

00:35:07 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't speak to me

00:35:09 ◼   ► as a great source of information.

00:35:12 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, keep in mind that these days,

00:35:15 ◼   ► every fact is a controversial topic,

00:35:17 ◼   ► even those basic things that you would think wouldn't be.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And also that WikiTribune is, I think, largely

00:35:25 ◼   ► probably not gonna have this problem

00:35:28 ◼   ► because it's probably not gonna be that big of a deal.

00:35:30 ◼   ► If it does become a big deal,

00:35:32 ◼   ► if it does actually start attracting large amounts

00:35:35 ◼   ► of traffic, then I think it will rise to the levels

00:35:39 ◼   ► of these kinds of challenges that Wikipedia has,

00:35:43 ◼   ► 'cause Wikipedia's been such a massive traffic getter

00:35:47 ◼   ► for so long, so it's ranked so well everywhere.

00:35:49 ◼   ► But WikiTribune is starting from zero.

00:35:52 ◼   ► It's starting from no audience, basically.

00:35:54 ◼   ► So it might be a while before you've had enough people

00:35:57 ◼   ► to matter, and honestly, I disagree with you.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I think Wikipedia is as good as something like this could be

00:36:03 ◼   ► about dealing with controversial things like that.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It's a hard problem, but--

00:36:07 ◼   ► - But it depends on the controversy.

00:36:09 ◼   ► The main controversy having to do

00:36:10 ◼   ► with Wikipedia controversial pages is the idea

00:36:12 ◼   ► that the people who hold the keys to power

00:36:14 ◼   ► to the controversial pages themselves tend to be homogenous

00:36:18 ◼   ► and have various biases, let's say.

00:36:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a problem.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - And that the system itself has no way to deal with that.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Like that it concentrates power.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I'm thinking of WikiTribune as perhaps an unintentional back door way to get people

00:36:32 ◼   ► to just straight up pay for news, which many people, the front door way has been like,

00:36:36 ◼   ► "Hey, sign up for the New York Times Digital.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Like, can we make money from people paying us to read our web pages?"

00:36:43 ◼   ► Everyone's been trying to do that.

00:36:44 ◼   ► It's really difficult, the whole paywall thing, right?

00:36:46 ◼   ► WikiTribune is like, "We're open and free to everybody, man.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Fast forward five years if they get super popular and they lock everything down."

00:36:52 ◼   ► And eventually it's like, "Wait a second.

00:36:54 ◼   ► This is just a newspaper.

00:36:55 ◼   ► where professional journalists do things and people pay them.

00:36:58 ◼   ► And it's not a giant community published thing.

00:37:00 ◼   ► It is like a bunch of articles that nobody can edit

00:37:03 ◼   ► because every single story about the president

00:37:05 ◼   ► is super duper controversial.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And every one of them is super locked down.

00:37:09 ◼   ► And the only people who get edited

00:37:10 ◼   ► are the professional journalists

00:37:11 ◼   ► who get money from the contributors

00:37:12 ◼   ► and the five people who all happen to be

00:37:15 ◼   ► the same type of person with the same type of background

00:37:17 ◼   ► who has the time and inclination

00:37:19 ◼   ► to spend all day on Wiki Tribune.

00:37:21 ◼   ► And now it is just a weirdly organized newspaper

00:37:23 ◼   ► that people pay for, which wouldn't be the end of the world

00:37:25 ◼   ► because again, that's things that people have been looking for.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Hey, can we get people to pay money to support news?

00:37:30 ◼   ► Like, as opposed to wanting everything for free

00:37:33 ◼   ► and wanting every article to be, you know,

00:37:36 ◼   ► a clickbaity tabloidy celebrity news kind of thing.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I guess if they do that, they're kind of a success,

00:37:42 ◼   ► but I have a hard time envisioning a future

00:37:46 ◼   ► where they are wildly successful

00:37:51 ◼   ► and yet still even open to the degree

00:37:53 ◼   ► that Wikipedia is open,

00:37:54 ◼   ► because unlike Wikipedia, pretty much everything

00:37:58 ◼   ► a news organization will report will attract factions.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Like you said, Marco, they could report on the weather

00:38:06 ◼   ► and people will leave nasty comments

00:38:10 ◼   ► about climate denial and stuff like that.

00:38:12 ◼   ► I can't think of a topic,

00:38:13 ◼   ► there's not even a human interest story.

00:38:15 ◼   ► You were trying to put something about dogs

00:38:16 ◼   ► and people won't like it.

00:38:17 ◼   ► Like nothing is safe in this climate.

00:38:18 ◼   ► So they have their work cut out for them.

00:38:20 ◼   ► But all this said, I don't feel like I'm slamming

00:38:23 ◼   ► could be on the potential what it could be. I didn't donate any money, but I wish them

00:38:29 ◼   ► well because I also, like Marco, want somebody to address this problem, and no one has tried

00:38:36 ◼   ► this approach, no one of this caliber has tried this approach, so we're not going to

00:38:40 ◼   ► find out if it works unless somebody does it. And so I'm like, "Alright, you know, go

00:38:44 ◼   ► for it." Certainly, the fact that facts with a little arrow is a big circle in the middle

00:38:49 ◼   ► makes me happy. By all means, go for that. The other aspect of this is, say they succeed

00:38:55 ◼   ► in producing what they say they're going to produce, and their system produces good content.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Do people read it?

00:39:03 ◼   ► I guess.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Like is that something people want to do? I want to go to WikitreeBoon because they

00:39:09 ◼   ► have, they got their facts straight?

00:39:11 ◼   ► I mean, everyone wants a non-partisan news source, right?

00:39:15 ◼   ► No, they don't. No, everyone wants to hear their own biases reflected to them and reinforce.

00:39:20 ◼   ► That's what people want.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Okay, fair, fair, fair.

00:39:22 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying. How do they get people to come and read this? It was easier

00:39:26 ◼   ► when you only had a few choices, and all those choices had systems in place that constrained

00:39:35 ◼   ► what could be talked about, which perpetuated tons of systems of power in terms of whose

00:39:41 ◼   ► stories got to get told with what angle on them. So it was terrible in many, many ways.

00:39:45 ◼   ► But the good aspects of it were in the areas where the system wasn't completely aligned

00:39:51 ◼   ► against hearing about things that we weren't supposed to hear about, there was an expectation

00:39:56 ◼   ► that, for example, the news department and advertising were separated from each other

00:40:01 ◼   ► in some way. Like that was part of the principles that they worked based on. And that only works

00:40:06 ◼   ► if the news department isn't responsible for bringing in more money year after year after

00:40:10 ◼   ► year and that ship has long sailed so now it's like gotta make more money got

00:40:13 ◼   ► to get more viewers how do we do that tell them what they want to hear and the

00:40:16 ◼   ► cycle just goes around the round that's what this is trying to resolve so say it

00:40:19 ◼   ► resolves it and they make real quality news but no one ever comes and reads it

00:40:22 ◼   ► are they still a success maybe I don't know I think I really think this could

00:40:29 ◼   ► be very popular because I think somebody like that the two of you guys and myself

00:40:36 ◼   ► somebody like us, who wants to be informed but wants a very level-headed

00:40:41 ◼   ► take as to what's going on, I think this is a potentially, well maybe not

00:40:46 ◼   ► perfect, but really great answer to that need. I agree with you that I shouldn't

00:40:52 ◼   ► have said everyone wants this because a lot of people probably don't want this,

00:40:55 ◼   ► but I also think there's a lot of people that do want this, that do want a level-

00:41:00 ◼   ► headed take on things. That's why, for example, in my RSS reader that I rarely

00:41:04 ◼   ► Look at it anymore. My source of news is the BBC because I have the BBC's US coverage and I feel like that is the least

00:41:12 ◼   ► politically

00:41:14 ◼   ► Motivated news source that I can find I don't need to hear of better ones

00:41:18 ◼   ► I don't really care if the BBC isn't perfect. That's I'm not trying to start a fight here. Well, they're just they're just

00:41:25 ◼   ► Reinforcing your biases. That's why you like them if it could be very well could be that's why that's the situation

00:41:31 ◼   ► I think we find ourselves in.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - Wait, wait, what if your biases are true and facts?

00:41:36 ◼   ► - Well, let's take me out.

00:41:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:41:38 ◼   ► The idea, here's the problem with polarized marketplace

00:41:42 ◼   ► is that things don't exist in isolation.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Say there was a news source that did a really good job

00:41:50 ◼   ► of executing journalism, classic journalism,

00:41:52 ◼   ► the rules of journalism, which, you know,

00:41:54 ◼   ► like the traditional rules of journalism

00:41:56 ◼   ► in terms of what you're supposed to do as a reporter

00:41:59 ◼   ► and what your job is and isn't, all separate from editorial and opinion, which is a whole

00:42:04 ◼   ► separate thing, but just like the plain straight up journalism reporting thing.

00:42:09 ◼   ► There's still an editorial function deciding what should and shouldn't you cover, how many

00:42:15 ◼   ► stories in topic A, how many stories in topic B, how many stories about this aspect of whatever.

00:42:22 ◼   ► It's impossible to ever pull yourself entirely away from that.

00:42:25 ◼   ► And it's also impossible to think about what your publication is doing in isolation.

00:42:30 ◼   ► You exist as a publication in an ecosystem with tons of other publications.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And a lot of the ecosystem is defined by how many people read or watch or whatever consume

00:42:42 ◼   ► these different publications.

00:42:43 ◼   ► And in that environment, that's why you see a lot of people on our side of the world,

00:42:49 ◼   ► liberals or whatever, being drawn to liberal-leaning publications.

00:42:54 ◼   ► Because they see it as the only possible way to counterbalance the things leaning in the

00:43:00 ◼   ► other direction.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Because we know those things that lean in the other direction exist.

00:43:04 ◼   ► We know, we all think they're terrible, and we know tons and tons of people use them as

00:43:09 ◼   ► their exclusive source of news.

00:43:11 ◼   ► And so by providing a neutral thing, it's like, well, that's all well and good if we

00:43:16 ◼   ► just want to know what's happening.

00:43:17 ◼   ► But if we want to balance the scales, we have to have a left-leaning publication.

00:43:23 ◼   ► eventually you're like, "I want to read the left-leaning thing," because all I hear all

00:43:26 ◼   ► day from people who I disagree with is them citing their super-duper right-leaning things.

00:43:32 ◼   ► And that's how you end up with polarization. Super-duper left-leaning, super-duper right-leaning.

00:43:36 ◼   ► And so I don't feel like I want that. I tried to find something that I think is in the middle,

00:43:42 ◼   ► but like Casey with the BBC, I'm sure what I think is in the middle is not actually in

00:43:46 ◼   ► middle and really what I'm seeking is some, you know, some—it's not in the execution of the

00:43:53 ◼   ► journalism, but in the choice of what they're reporting about, right? Or in the choice of like,

00:43:58 ◼   ► you know, what their editorials are about and how they apportion their coverage, because that in

00:44:03 ◼   ► itself is a political stance, right? So when I read the Washington Post, I feel like here's

00:44:08 ◼   ► good reporting, they're still executing journalism according to the old ways, but what the Washington

00:44:13 ◼   ► Post decides to cover is decidedly left-leaning in terms of the number of stories on topic A, B, C,

00:44:18 ◼   ► and D, right? And I'm okay with that, but I would still, you know, and I would still say

00:44:24 ◼   ► the Washington Post and even the New York Times are examples of good executions of classic

00:44:29 ◼   ► journalism, but I would also agree that both of them are quote-unquote "left-leaning" as compared

00:44:35 ◼   ► to the choices of things and headlines that the right-leaning publications choose to cover,

00:44:40 ◼   ► and they're a counterbalance, right? So if there was something that was really straight up the

00:44:46 ◼   ► middle, I'm not sure that would be doing much of a service, because especially if the polarized ends

00:44:52 ◼   ► continue to be what they are, unless everybody at the ends kind of agrees, like the Wikipedia,

00:45:00 ◼   ► the Wicket Tribune is like the tiebreaker, right? And as Marco pointed out before, and we'll keep

00:45:04 ◼   ► going back to, that is impossible in a world where we can't agree on the facts. There is no,

00:45:09 ◼   ► it's like, "Well, we have this left-leaning editorial selection, and we have this right-leaning

00:45:15 ◼   ► editorial selection, but we all agree that the facts are what are on WikiTribune, right?" And

00:45:18 ◼   ► be like, "No, no," the right will say. "We don't agree on facts at all." And so, what function is

00:45:23 ◼   ► WikiTribune even serving there? Unless it starts getting cited by other newspapers, which would be

00:45:28 ◼   ► funny, but we'll see. I mean, at this point, there are people actually arguing whether to let people

00:45:35 ◼   ► die in our country who were sick once because they don't have enough money and they should

00:45:39 ◼   ► therefore die. That is literally what we are arguing about.

00:45:43 ◼   ► I liked it better in the 80s when they had sophisticated ideological arguments, but they've

00:45:49 ◼   ► abandoned those now. It's just like, "Why should you get to live?" It's like, "Good

00:45:53 ◼   ► point there, evil person. Why should I get to live?" What right do I have to life or

00:45:59 ◼   ► with liberty or any kind of looking for happiness.

00:46:02 ◼   ► That sounds crazy to me.

00:46:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, it was your fault

00:46:05 ◼   ► that you got sick when you were a teenager or something.

00:46:10 ◼   ► So therefore, the penalty for that

00:46:12 ◼   ► should obviously be death, right?

00:46:14 ◼   ► - Why don't you try living right, Marco?

00:46:16 ◼   ► You ever think of that?

00:46:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, look, we all did it, right?

00:46:19 ◼   ► Why can't you?

00:46:21 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:46:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, the Jimmy Kimmel son,

00:46:23 ◼   ► did you guys watch that monologue

00:46:24 ◼   ► from a few days ago? - Oh, I couldn't.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I heard enough about it that I couldn't watch it.

00:46:28 ◼   ► No, it, I, so I saw it fly by. I've been doing a couch to 5k lately and, uh, and during one of the

00:46:35 ◼   ► walking parts I was like, you know, cruising through Twitter as I was power walking, probably

00:46:38 ◼   ► looking like a moron, but be that as it may, whatever day it was, this, this popped in the

00:46:43 ◼   ► morning onto my, you know, my world and I watched it, or listened to it, I should say. I didn't watch

00:46:49 ◼   ► any of it, but I listened to it as I was like going between walking and running and walking

00:46:52 ◼   ► and running and basically I was on the verge of bawling the entire time. But if you're one of

00:46:57 ◼   ► those monsters that thinks that a pre-existing condition is something that, you know, just—that's

00:47:03 ◼   ► enough to disqualify you. That's cool. You should read—you should listen to this story about Jimmy

00:47:08 ◼   ► Kimmel's son, who was born with a terrible heart defect, and were it not for some of the protections—

00:47:14 ◼   ► I—we shouldn't be getting this political, but here we are, without some of these protections that—

00:47:18 ◼   ► Steven: No, I mean, you know, it's important. You know, like, certain—you know, we—as we've

00:47:22 ◼   ► we've talked about, like certain times, politics or other world events do bleed into

00:47:27 ◼   ► relevance to all people. And I think this is one of those times. Like, this is a topic

00:47:32 ◼   ► that is, among many things, so politicized more than I think it probably should be. And

00:47:41 ◼   ► I think a lot of that is intentionally artificial to hide the things that the politicians really

00:47:47 ◼   ► want to get accomplished, which mostly have to do with money for themselves and, you know,

00:47:51 ◼   ► their class of people and their associates and lobbyists

00:47:53 ◼   ► and everything else.

00:47:55 ◼   ► So there's lots of that stuff going on

00:47:56 ◼   ► in the background here.

00:47:58 ◼   ► And we're arguing about whether people

00:48:01 ◼   ► who have not been as lucky as some of us

00:48:03 ◼   ► should go bankrupt and die because of that.

00:48:07 ◼   ► And that is unconscionable.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so anyway, so this Jimmy Kimmel thing,

00:48:13 ◼   ► it's a little under 15 minutes.

00:48:15 ◼   ► It's worth every second in my personal opinion.

00:48:17 ◼   ► And like I said, I was on the verge of bawling

00:48:19 ◼   ► the entire time I listened to it.

00:48:20 ◼   ► But the short, short version is his son had a terrible heart defect, he is now fine, and

00:48:28 ◼   ► if some of the changes to American healthcare that have been proposed pass, then his son

00:48:36 ◼   ► would never be able to have health insurance for the rest of his life because he was born

00:48:40 ◼   ► with a problem with his heart.

00:48:43 ◼   ► So yeah, I guess his son should have been living in the womb better and made better

00:48:47 ◼   ► choices in utero, and then he wouldn't have this problem, right?

00:48:50 ◼   ► That's how this works?

00:48:51 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe he listened to too much heavy metal music?

00:48:53 ◼   ► Who knows.

00:48:54 ◼   ► I mean, and the thing is, like, this isn't, it's not like this is a theoretical.

00:48:58 ◼   ► It's not like, you know, we think people will go bankrupt and die because of this.

00:49:02 ◼   ► We know because that's how it was before the ACA.

00:49:05 ◼   ► A lot of people went bankrupt and died.

00:49:09 ◼   ► This is not a small thing.

00:49:11 ◼   ► This is not an unknown.

00:49:12 ◼   ► It's very much known.

00:49:14 ◼   ► We were there.

00:49:15 ◼   ► It was horrible.

00:49:17 ◼   ► We tried to fix it as best as we could,

00:49:20 ◼   ► and it wasn't perfect, but the right fix

00:49:23 ◼   ► is not to go back to that.

00:49:24 ◼   ► We've seen it already.

00:49:26 ◼   ► We've tried that.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I don't know why this is even possibly

00:49:29 ◼   ► a point of contention.

00:49:31 ◼   ► Well, I do know why, really, but it's not a good reason.

00:49:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, and one of the things that was fascinating

00:49:35 ◼   ► by about having this tweet that I'd sent in January

00:49:40 ◼   ► about the Affordable Care Act,

00:49:43 ◼   ► which we'll link all this in the show notes,

00:49:45 ◼   ► but one of the fascinating things about having a tweet

00:49:47 ◼   ► gets retweeted 16,000 times is that everyone and their mother comes and tells you about

00:49:51 ◼   ► why you're right, why you're wrong. And in the tweet that I had tweeted read, "Opposition

00:49:56 ◼   ► I've heard to the Affordable Care Act. Number one, it costs me money. Number two, it's not

00:50:00 ◼   ► perfect. Support for the affordable if that I've heard for the Affordable Care Act. Number one,

00:50:05 ◼   ► I would have died without the coverage of guaranteed." Which is what we're talking about.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And man, so many people came out of the woodwork and like, "No, you don't get it. It's about this.

00:50:13 ◼   ► it's about that. One person had said, I forget how he phrased it, but it's something along the lines of,

00:50:20 ◼   ► "I shouldn't have to pay for people who eat McDonald's all the time to deal with their

00:50:25 ◼   ► diabetes." Okay, I live a healthy life, I shouldn't have to pay for all these unhealthy people.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Well, aren't you a winner? But anyway, after just hundreds of stories about the Affordable Care Act,

00:50:39 ◼   ► why it's great and why it's terrible. The only good, or in my estimation anyway, the only good

00:50:44 ◼   ► answer I heard about why the Affordable Care Act was bad was that some people said, well, I make

00:50:49 ◼   ► enough that I'm priced out of all the subsidy tiers, and I'm way oversimplifying here, but I

00:50:53 ◼   ► make enough money that I'm priced out of all the like super cheap tiers, but I don't really make

00:50:58 ◼   ► enough to afford like the, the whatever the opposite scenario was, I forget what it is. But

00:51:04 ◼   ► but basically they were in this like negative, this really terrible middle of the road.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Here's an example, this is somebody that tweeted, "I pay more than I can afford for insurance

00:51:13 ◼   ► with a deductible too high to matter."

00:51:15 ◼   ► That's pretty crummy, and that should get fixed.

00:51:18 ◼   ► But everything else was like just people who basically are looking for their fellow man to die

00:51:23 ◼   ► because they didn't want to pay for them to live.

00:51:25 ◼   ► And that's just, I don't understand how this is a question.

00:51:27 ◼   ► How is this a question right now? I don't get it.

00:51:30 ◼   ► get it. That's the thing is like like there's you know that that sentiment of

00:51:34 ◼   ► like why should I pay for the people who you know are unhealthy like that is such

00:51:38 ◼   ► a toxic way to think because like okay well let's follow that through if that's

00:51:44 ◼   ► what you think that you don't that you shouldn't have to pay for people who are

00:51:47 ◼   ► you know who do things that you don't like or whatever and that makes them

00:51:49 ◼   ► unhealthy even though a lot of times they can't help what has made them

00:51:53 ◼   ► unhealthy but anyway suppose you don't want to pay for it okay what should the

00:51:57 ◼   ► what would the penalty be for someone

00:51:59 ◼   ► who does this thing you don't like who can't afford it?

00:52:02 ◼   ► Is that punishable by death?

00:52:03 ◼   ► Is that an appropriate penalty?

00:52:06 ◼   ► Literally, is that your actual position?

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like if that's what you think.

00:52:11 ◼   ► - Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to,

00:52:13 ◼   ► because they would say, "Yes, of course,

00:52:14 ◼   ► "they're getting what they deserve."

00:52:15 ◼   ► That's exactly what they say.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - Right, I mean, if these people actually think that way,

00:52:18 ◼   ► I think they should own that.

00:52:20 ◼   ► I think they should come right out and say,

00:52:21 ◼   ► "Yes, I think all these people

00:52:22 ◼   ► "who can't afford their healthcare should die."

00:52:25 ◼   ► Like if that's what they think,

00:52:27 ◼   ► Let's bring that discussion, let's see how that discussion goes in the ocean.

00:52:30 ◼   ► - We have people in Congress owning that at this point.

00:52:32 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:52:33 ◼   ► - I don't think that's a position people are shrinking from.

00:52:35 ◼   ► - I know, I mean, but the thing is like,

00:52:37 ◼   ► you can apply that kind of thinking,

00:52:40 ◼   ► why should I have to pay for that,

00:52:41 ◼   ► to everything that government provides.

00:52:43 ◼   ► That's kind of the whole nature of government.

00:52:45 ◼   ► It provides a bunch of services with people's tax money,

00:52:49 ◼   ► most of which, any given person probably doesn't directly

00:52:54 ◼   ► use a lot of these services, but they also benefit

00:52:57 ◼   ► from lots of other ones, and it's a different pool

00:53:00 ◼   ► for each person, you know, and that's the role

00:53:02 ◼   ► of government, like, why should I pay for a giant military

00:53:06 ◼   ► that starts wars I don't want?

00:53:07 ◼   ► Well, that's just part of the government,

00:53:09 ◼   ► like it's part of our system, we vote for things,

00:53:13 ◼   ► and you know, this is what happens,

00:53:15 ◼   ► and sometimes our votes even are counted properly

00:53:17 ◼   ► and equally, and I just, this is so toxic,

00:53:22 ◼   ► And I wish I knew what it was that made people so hateful

00:53:27 ◼   ► of everybody else, really.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Like, maybe it's just 'cause everyone else listens

00:53:31 ◼   ► to way less fish than I do,

00:53:33 ◼   ► but I just cannot possibly understand what it is

00:53:38 ◼   ► that makes someone think to themselves,

00:53:41 ◼   ► oh, those people don't deserve to live.

00:53:44 ◼   ► Like, I don't get that at all.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And that makes me really sad

00:53:48 ◼   ► that that is such a prevalent attitude.

00:53:52 ◼   ► - That's why I was saying,

00:53:54 ◼   ► harking back to the days of the '80s

00:53:55 ◼   ► when it was commonly accepted

00:53:58 ◼   ► that the goal was to make people healthier,

00:54:01 ◼   ► and the only argument was about how best to do that.

00:54:04 ◼   ► The free market can do it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► No, the government can do it.

00:54:06 ◼   ► No, the government is inefficient and bloated,

00:54:07 ◼   ► and we will have a better system

00:54:09 ◼   ► if we allow competition, and blah, blah, blah.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like, that was the level of the argument

00:54:12 ◼   ► that was going on, right?

00:54:13 ◼   ► And these days, that is not the level of the argument.

00:54:18 ◼   ► accepted premises of trying to get everybody as healthy as possible like

00:54:21 ◼   ► Can people barely on the right give you know barely make faints in that direction like that

00:54:28 ◼   ► They're not even interested in saying you don't understand this way people will actually be healthier fewer people will die like

00:54:36 ◼   ► Everyone will you know, that's they'll say that at the broad level

00:54:39 ◼   ► But they will not make they will not actually show how the numbers add up. They will not show their math

00:54:44 ◼   ► They'll not say look here's what we say even if it's just BS predictions BS sort of trickle-downy predictions

00:54:49 ◼   ► If we allow this to happen this competition happens here and there what's gonna happen?

00:54:53 ◼   ► You know, let me show you my BS model with BS predictions that are gonna do that

00:54:57 ◼   ► They're like we don't need to do that. We just wave our hands and

00:55:01 ◼   ► you know pit one person against the other and

00:55:05 ◼   ► Get what do what it takes to get this past

00:55:10 ◼   ► And then you know then we end up with what we end up with I

00:55:13 ◼   ► Miss I miss the the pretend intellectual debates is what I'm saying. I

00:55:17 ◼   ► Just I don't get it just makes me so sad like it's just it just I don't understand how any

00:55:25 ◼   ► Intelligent human being with three brain cells to rub together can think that the Affordable Care Act is bad

00:55:31 ◼   ► I just don't get it like oh, it's not perfect. Oh, it is bad

00:55:34 ◼   ► I mean it's but but it's you know, it's like what should we move to something worse?

00:55:38 ◼   ► I'm gonna say no.

00:55:39 ◼   ► I'm gonna say no, we shouldn't do that.

00:55:41 ◼   ► - Right, it's the whole perfect enemy of the good thing.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Healthcare is a hard problem.

00:55:46 ◼   ► It's really expensive to provide healthcare for people.

00:55:50 ◼   ► That has to be paid for somehow,

00:55:52 ◼   ► whether it's people paying themselves

00:55:55 ◼   ► or whether it's government single payer kind of things

00:55:57 ◼   ► or some kind of weird thing in between like what we have now.

00:56:00 ◼   ► It's a hard problem.

00:56:02 ◼   ► It's a really hard problem.

00:56:04 ◼   ► But the ACA took this really hard problem

00:56:08 ◼   ► that was really in a bad state before,

00:56:10 ◼   ► and made it less bad.

00:56:12 ◼   ► And yeah, the cost went up.

00:56:14 ◼   ► We're all paying more now for worse coverage.

00:56:17 ◼   ► But that was happening anyway.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Anybody who was actually paying for their coverage

00:56:21 ◼   ► before the ACA saw that trend already.

00:56:24 ◼   ► In fact, with the ACA, I'm still now paying less

00:56:29 ◼   ► than what I paid the year before the ACA went into effect.

00:56:31 ◼   ► And the coverage isn't as good,

00:56:33 ◼   ► but I'm actually still netting less per year

00:56:35 ◼   ► in expenditure for it.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And also, I'm way less worried about some crazy,

00:56:41 ◼   ► hitting some crazy limit, or you know,

00:56:43 ◼   ► like a lifetime limit, or pre-sitting conditions,

00:56:45 ◼   ► all of a sudden excluding everyone from everything.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Like, this is a better system, and it still sucks.

00:56:51 ◼   ► And that's why people are so mad,

00:56:52 ◼   ► because it is still really expensive,

00:56:54 ◼   ► and coverage still does really suck,

00:56:55 ◼   ► and we all have high deductibles now,

00:56:57 ◼   ► and we all have like, having to go through

00:56:59 ◼   ► crappy mail-order pharmacies for our prescriptions.

00:57:01 ◼   ► But that was happening before.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Whatever the Republicans get through,

00:57:06 ◼   ► whatever they do to this, I guarantee you,

00:57:09 ◼   ► your coverage is still gonna be really expensive

00:57:12 ◼   ► and you're still gonna have to deal with BS

00:57:14 ◼   ► from mail order pharmacies and having to fill

00:57:16 ◼   ► all these different referrals and everything.

00:57:18 ◼   ► That's all gonna still be there.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And your costs are gonna go up the year after that

00:57:22 ◼   ► and the year after that and every year after that.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Your costs are going to keep going up and up and up.

00:57:27 ◼   ► This, whatever they pass is not going to solve that.

00:57:31 ◼   ► It can't.

00:57:32 ◼   ► What they, all they're trying to do

00:57:34 ◼   ► is go back to the way it was before the ACA, which sucked.

00:57:39 ◼   ► And yeah, the ACA sucked, but that sucked way more before.

00:57:43 ◼   ► And that's what they wanna go back to.

00:57:45 ◼   ► It is really hard to talk about this

00:57:47 ◼   ► because literally thousands of additional people

00:57:50 ◼   ► will die every year because of this.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Like this is not a small thing.

00:57:54 ◼   ► This isn't just like,

00:57:55 ◼   ► oh, I'll have an extra 200 bucks a month.

00:57:57 ◼   ► It's just like, no, thousands of people will die.

00:58:00 ◼   ► And like, you know, you look at things

00:58:02 ◼   ► that change in our country,

00:58:03 ◼   ► policies, laws, liberties that change in our country

00:58:07 ◼   ► as a result of, say, September 11th.

00:58:10 ◼   ► Lots of things change because of that.

00:58:13 ◼   ► And then if you look at how many people are dying

00:58:16 ◼   ► unnecessarily because of not having proper healthcare,

00:58:19 ◼   ► it is such a massive problem and so many people

00:58:24 ◼   ► go bankrupt or die or both unnecessarily,

00:58:29 ◼   ► it is unconscionable to me that we still continue

00:58:33 ◼   ► to try to go back to the way it was,

00:58:36 ◼   ► because it was worse.

00:58:37 ◼   ► And again, I know why people are so mad at the ACA,

00:58:42 ◼   ► because they see those bills coming in every month

00:58:44 ◼   ► for the healthcare, and they, oh yeah,

00:58:46 ◼   ► my premium keeps going up, my coverage keeps getting worse.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Yeah, but that was happening before.

00:58:50 ◼   ► This made it a little bit less crappy for everybody.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And now we're gonna go back to that.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I just, it's awful.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - It's a cut off your nose to spite your face situation,

00:59:02 ◼   ► and after tomorrow you won't be able to get your nose put back on.

00:59:06 ◼   ► And then it'll be a pre-existing condition if you try to switch coverage.

00:59:09 ◼   ► So you're just screwed the whole way down.

00:59:11 ◼   ► But don't worry guys, at least the figurehead of the new system won't be a black guy.

00:59:15 ◼   ► So it's all good now.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Yeah. Or woman. Heaven forbid.

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01:01:03 ◼   ► Amazon releases the Echo Look.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Here again, I don't know a lot about it, except in this case it's because I really don't care.

01:01:10 ◼   ► But apparently it's an Echo with a camera that will tell you if you look good or not,

01:01:15 ◼   ► or something along those lines.

01:01:18 ◼   ► So what's going on here, and are we enthusiastic about it?

01:01:22 ◼   ► John, you get one?

01:01:24 ◼   ► - I don't think I'm gonna get one of these,

01:01:26 ◼   ► but I actually am, I'm not gonna say

01:01:28 ◼   ► I'm enthusiastic about it,

01:01:29 ◼   ► but I think what it is doing is a natural thing to do,

01:01:33 ◼   ► and I think we're going to see more of it, not less.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Like in the same way that I was strangely,

01:01:39 ◼   ► or at least not uniquely, but it was,

01:01:42 ◼   ► I think I had more enthusiasm for the Amazon Echo

01:01:44 ◼   ► when they first showed that little ad with the cylinder.

01:01:46 ◼   ► More optimism, let's say,

01:01:49 ◼   ► that this could potentially be a cool useful thing,

01:01:52 ◼   ► then most people who saw it,

01:01:53 ◼   ► because they were like, this looks dumb,

01:01:55 ◼   ► it's never gonna work.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And I had the same kind of this looks dumb

01:01:57 ◼   ► and it's not gonna work as well

01:01:58 ◼   ► as they show a working reaction to.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But I was also kind of like this class of device,

01:02:05 ◼   ► seems like it could be a thing.

01:02:06 ◼   ► And now I see this, which is like essentially a little camera

01:02:09 ◼   ► so imagine combining with an echo with a camera.

01:02:12 ◼   ► It's a camera that you can talk to,

01:02:14 ◼   ► that has some awareness of who and where you are,

01:02:16 ◼   ► and it has some specific functionality,

01:02:18 ◼   ► having to do with fashion and Amazon trying to sell you clothes and yada yada

01:02:21 ◼   ► like I don't think the details matter that much except that this is like

01:02:26 ◼   ► because it's Amazon and because they have the pedigree of the echo that this

01:02:29 ◼   ► product and because they're gonna push it like crazy on their website that this

01:02:32 ◼   ► product has as good a chance as any to be the first product to get any kind of

01:02:37 ◼   ► traction in this category and the category is simply a computer that you

01:02:43 ◼   ► can talk to that also can see you. Right. The Amazon Echo and the Dot and Google Home

01:02:50 ◼   ► and all those things are like a computer that you can talk to. A computer that you can talk

01:02:53 ◼   ► to that can also see you. Natural evolution. The number of things that you can do with

01:02:59 ◼   ► that ability with all of our, even just current technology for like facial recognition and

01:03:04 ◼   ► identifying things in scenes and, you know, connect to Xbox style, understanding gestures

01:03:11 ◼   ► and your position, the position of your body and stuff like that.

01:03:16 ◼   ► That is a rich vein of interaction with computing devices that we should begin to tap.

01:03:24 ◼   ► And if it has to be a weird fashion camera that spas on you and uploads pictures of you

01:03:27 ◼   ► to Amazon to sell you more clothes, I mean, the cylinder ended up being an Amazon thing

01:03:33 ◼   ► to let you buy paper towels by talking to it.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Things come in weird packages, right?

01:03:38 ◼   ► And I suppose it beats the old way, which is everything had to be attached to porn in

01:03:42 ◼   ► some way to get an interaction, although this potentially could be as well.

01:03:46 ◼   ► But I am enthusiastic about the future of devices that are computers that can hear and

01:03:53 ◼   ► see you.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And so I think there needs to be more of these things, and they need to get better, and they

01:03:59 ◼   ► will be cool and make our lives better, provided we can avoid all the pitfalls that – which

01:04:04 ◼   ► which is basically all people are talking about, all the privacy and security and just

01:04:10 ◼   ► general creepiness implications.

01:04:12 ◼   ► But I think the foundation is sound, so I wish them some success and I hope they learn

01:04:16 ◼   ► from it and branch out.

01:04:18 ◼   ► I'm just now watching the video quickly with no audio.

01:04:22 ◼   ► I'm just looking at the video as you're talking.

01:04:24 ◼   ► And I think I would have noticed, but certainly it was called out in one of the podcasts I

01:04:30 ◼   ► this week that there isn't a man in this video until like the last 10 seconds, which is actually

01:04:37 ◼   ► pretty cool that they're, you know, pitching this directly at women. And I think it stands

01:04:42 ◼   ► to reason that your average woman would be more enthusiastic about this than your average

01:04:46 ◼   ► man. Obviously, that's not a universal truth, but I think that's kind of cool. And I personally

01:04:53 ◼   ► am not in love, partially because I haven't really lived it. I'm not in love with the

01:04:57 ◼   ► with the idea of an Echo in general,

01:04:59 ◼   ► let alone an Echo with eyes, but again,

01:05:02 ◼   ► just because I'm not really gaga for it

01:05:04 ◼   ► doesn't mean it's not a good idea and not a good device.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's just it's not something that I feel like

01:05:08 ◼   ► I need right now.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Marco.

01:05:10 ◼   ► - So first of all, there was a great discussion about this,

01:05:14 ◼   ► especially by Lisa Schmeiser, who knows a lot about retail,

01:05:17 ◼   ► on the first episode of the new Relay podcast

01:05:20 ◼   ► called Download.

01:05:22 ◼   ► This is kind of, this is like Jason Snell's

01:05:25 ◼   ► of new hosted show, almost like an expanded clockwise, but more broad and even more produced

01:05:31 ◼   ► and like even more wide audience. I'm guessing over time this might become the biggest show

01:05:37 ◼   ► on Relay and one of the biggest tech shows, period. So I would suggest getting on the

01:05:41 ◼   ► ground floor and going to subscribe to Download Now at relay.fm/download. Anyway, they didn't

01:05:47 ◼   ► pay me or even ask me to say that, but I think you should because it's really good. Anyway,

01:05:52 ◼   ► discussion on episode one by Alicia Smizer especially about this from the retail point

01:05:56 ◼   ► of view from a lot of good knowledge that we don't personally have but I greatly enjoyed.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm with you. Obviously, this is being marketed heavily towards women and it's hard

01:06:07 ◼   ► for me to fully understand it as both a man and also a man who doesn't care at all about

01:06:12 ◼   ► his own personal fashion. And so it's…

01:06:15 ◼   ► Steven: Except on your wrist.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Except on my wrist. I care very much about

01:06:18 ◼   ► that but I don't need a camera to tell me which watch to wear every day. I just put

01:06:21 ◼   ► on the one that I feel like wearing and I enjoy it. But you know, if there was one that

01:06:27 ◼   ► took a wrist shot for me every day and compared, you know, and gave me like a wrist book of

01:06:34 ◼   ► shots of how I looked over time, maybe that might do something interesting. I don't know.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Bottom line, this isn't for me and so I don't want to try to, I don't want to make large

01:06:46 ◼   ► proclamations about it either way because it's fundamentally a product, I don't understand

01:06:50 ◼   ► And this made very clear to me by the reactions on Twitter when this was announced.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It was extraordinarily polarized.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Tech dudes like us largely said, largely made fun of it and said, "Why would anybody want

01:07:05 ◼   ► to buy this?

01:07:06 ◼   ► Oh my God, Amazon is nuts."

01:07:09 ◼   ► And a lot of people who were not tech dudes, who, you know, I would venture to guess that

01:07:14 ◼   ► most of us, myself included, probably wear the basic, you know, t-shirt every day that

01:07:20 ◼   ► that we don't have to wear something for work.

01:07:22 ◼   ► T-shirt and jeans maybe, that's kind of the uniform

01:07:24 ◼   ► of tech, a hoodie if it's cool or if you live

01:07:26 ◼   ► in San Francisco.

01:07:27 ◼   ► That's kind of uniform of tech geeks.

01:07:30 ◼   ► So all of us looked at this and said, this is crazy,

01:07:33 ◼   ► why would we let Amazon put a camera in our bedroom

01:07:35 ◼   ► to do this thing we don't care about?

01:07:37 ◼   ► But people who were really into clothing and fashion

01:07:41 ◼   ► really enjoyed this.

01:07:43 ◼   ► The reaction from most of them, and this wasn't all women

01:07:47 ◼   ► I should say, I'm very carefully trying to dance around

01:07:52 ◼   ► the women angle here because I don't want to be sexist,

01:07:55 ◼   ► but it is very clear that this is how this is being targeted

01:07:57 ◼   ► and I did see very different reactions from most women

01:08:02 ◼   ► compared to most men in my timeline,

01:08:04 ◼   ► but I really don't want to say anything more than that

01:08:06 ◼   ► because I don't know what I'm talking about.

01:08:08 ◼   ► It is not at all for me,

01:08:10 ◼   ► but I think this will probably succeed.

01:08:14 ◼   ► When the original Echo Cylinder first came out,

01:08:17 ◼   ► we all made fun of it.

01:08:18 ◼   ► 'Cause first of all, the way it was presented,

01:08:20 ◼   ► the video it was presented in was awful.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I mean, it was comically bad.

01:08:25 ◼   ► And it was pretty soon after the Fire phone,

01:08:27 ◼   ► and so we were pretty sure, like, yeah,

01:08:29 ◼   ► Amazon really is nuts with their hardware,

01:08:31 ◼   ► like they don't know what they're doing.

01:08:32 ◼   ► It did indeed sound crazy,

01:08:35 ◼   ► that you're gonna put a microphone in your house

01:08:37 ◼   ► that listens all the time and is owned by Amazon, really?

01:08:40 ◼   ► But then it only takes like one friend to get it,

01:08:43 ◼   ► and for you to be at their house for a little while,

01:08:45 ◼   ► and with them using it to kind of see like,

01:08:48 ◼   ► oh, actually, that's pretty cool.

01:08:51 ◼   ► And so it is the kind of thing where like,

01:08:53 ◼   ► it does sound kind of ridiculous up front,

01:08:57 ◼   ► but it might succeed anyway.

01:08:59 ◼   ► And I think all you need to know,

01:09:02 ◼   ► to know whether it will succeed or not,

01:09:03 ◼   ► is like, is there any group of people right now,

01:09:06 ◼   ► right up front who are saying,

01:09:07 ◼   ► oh my God, yes, give me that right now.

01:09:09 ◼   ► And the answer, from what I can see, is yes.

01:09:12 ◼   ► My wife wants one, I know a bunch of other people on Twitter

01:09:15 ◼   ► who said they wanted one.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Again, it isn't for everyone,

01:09:18 ◼   ► but it is probably definitely for some people.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And so even though it seems creepy to me as a nerd,

01:09:25 ◼   ► it's gonna be a thing.

01:09:26 ◼   ► And I think I would not discount Amazon in this.

01:09:31 ◼   ► I would not assume they're crazy.

01:09:33 ◼   ► I will occasionally make funny tweets about it,

01:09:36 ◼   ► but I do think they're probably going to sell this.

01:09:38 ◼   ► And it's probably gonna become part of a bigger thing.

01:09:41 ◼   ► And it's probably gonna have its own little weird oddities,

01:09:44 ◼   ► just like every Amazon product always does.

01:09:47 ◼   ► But I think it'll work long term.

01:09:49 ◼   ► - I don't think you need to have any weird speculation

01:09:51 ◼   ► and say like, oh, this will be for some people,

01:09:53 ◼   ► because like it is so right down the middle

01:09:55 ◼   ► of things that we know people already like to do

01:09:57 ◼   ► in massive numbers.

01:09:58 ◼   ► People like to take pictures of themselves.

01:10:00 ◼   ► The word selfie is known too far and wide

01:10:03 ◼   ► for a very good reason.

01:10:04 ◼   ► If you look at how people use social media

01:10:06 ◼   ► and how many times they're taking pictures of themselves

01:10:09 ◼   ► or what they're wearing, very often on a regular basis,

01:10:13 ◼   ► Right? This is merely an automation of that in the same way that the Amazon Echo is an automation of all the things you have other ways to do.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Like this is not speculative that people might want to take pictures of themselves or their outfits.

01:10:26 ◼   ► Right? This is just, you know, so there's so clearly a market need.

01:10:30 ◼   ► The only question is, does this product automate it in a way that actually makes it easier to do a thing that we know people want to do?

01:10:37 ◼   ► We know they want to do it. They do it like crazy now, manually, the hard way.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Having something that's, you know, this is, again,

01:10:45 ◼   ► as the first application of a computer

01:10:46 ◼   ► that can also see you, right?

01:10:48 ◼   ► Having something that can do that

01:10:50 ◼   ► with the smarts that we have developed

01:10:51 ◼   ► for cameras to find where the heck you are

01:10:54 ◼   ► and, you know, take good pictures of you,

01:10:56 ◼   ► it is easier for a computer to do that

01:10:58 ◼   ► than to you to try to do it yourself

01:11:00 ◼   ► with a mirror or holding out your phone

01:11:01 ◼   ► or doing other sorts of stuff like that,

01:11:03 ◼   ► especially if it becomes in the same way

01:11:05 ◼   ► that the Echo does, like, this becomes so easy,

01:11:08 ◼   ► it just becomes part of my routine, right?

01:11:10 ◼   ► the people who meticulously catalog their outfits each day

01:11:14 ◼   ► that they're proud of their outfits,

01:11:15 ◼   ► that is a big effort that most people don't go through.

01:11:18 ◼   ► But it's like Marco said,

01:11:19 ◼   ► if Marco didn't have to think about it,

01:11:20 ◼   ► but just went through his day and put on his watch,

01:11:22 ◼   ► and at some point,

01:11:23 ◼   ► at some point, 20 years in the future,

01:11:26 ◼   ► when his grandchildren are visiting

01:11:28 ◼   ► in his super duper fancy smart home,

01:11:30 ◼   ► he just wakes up in the morning,

01:11:31 ◼   ► picks out what watch he wants to wear, puts it on,

01:11:33 ◼   ► and then at the end of the month,

01:11:35 ◼   ► can view beautiful in-focus close-up shots

01:11:37 ◼   ► of every watch he wore on every day.

01:11:39 ◼   ► How did those pictures happen?

01:11:41 ◼   ► Because the cameras that are all over his house invisibly

01:11:44 ◼   ► can always find him and take these amazing photographs

01:11:47 ◼   ► in low light, perfect focus,

01:11:49 ◼   ► and he doesn't have to pose for them,

01:11:50 ◼   ► and he doesn't have to do anything.

01:11:51 ◼   ► In the same way that the magic checkout counter,

01:11:54 ◼   ► you know, barcode scanner,

01:11:56 ◼   ► just you bring the food by and you kind of twirl it

01:11:58 ◼   ► and spin it by the little scanner

01:12:01 ◼   ► and the little lasers will find it, right?

01:12:02 ◼   ► In that same type of technology,

01:12:05 ◼   ► if you had a bunch of smart cameras in your house

01:12:08 ◼   ► that eventually will be so cheap and so good

01:12:11 ◼   ► that they will be able to do this

01:12:12 ◼   ► without you having to stand in a certain place

01:12:14 ◼   ► or do a certain thing.

01:12:14 ◼   ► That is the future that is coming to.

01:12:17 ◼   ► The questions about it are all legit questions

01:12:19 ◼   ► in terms of who owns this data.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Is it okay for Amazon for us to upload it to Amazon

01:12:24 ◼   ► and for them to keep it forever?

01:12:25 ◼   ► And how is this funded if the hardware

01:12:28 ◼   ► isn't profitable itself is entirely funded about it

01:12:30 ◼   ► as a way to sell us clothes or whatever.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And what are the security implications

01:12:36 ◼   ► and how hackable are these?

01:12:37 ◼   ► All of these are gonna be,

01:12:38 ◼   ► there's gonna be terrible disasters in all these areas,

01:12:40 ◼   ► but there is no denying that the amount of computery things

01:12:44 ◼   ► in our house will only increase with time

01:12:46 ◼   ► and that it is kind of a ratcheting mechanism

01:12:49 ◼   ► and that this first one aiming, you know,

01:12:51 ◼   ► aiming to be a mechanization of a thing

01:12:54 ◼   ► that we know people already love to do is very smart

01:12:58 ◼   ► and builds on their echo stuff.

01:13:00 ◼   ► As for the things I talk about

01:13:02 ◼   ► in terms of technology and privacy,

01:13:03 ◼   ► I think Amazon is probably terrible in them.

01:13:05 ◼   ► I think their security is probably crap.

01:13:06 ◼   ► I think their privacy policy is probably terrible.

01:13:09 ◼   ► I think if they're hacked,

01:13:10 ◼   ► people are gonna get tons of data

01:13:11 ◼   ► and people will regret getting these things

01:13:13 ◼   ► if that ever happens.

01:13:14 ◼   ► If it doesn't, Amazon gets lucky.

01:13:15 ◼   ► If it does, we will all just regret it together

01:13:18 ◼   ► as people have a giant archive of photographs

01:13:21 ◼   ► and audio of you over many, many years

01:13:23 ◼   ► that use Amazon devices.

01:13:24 ◼   ► But even Marco, famously paranoid,

01:13:26 ◼   ► is willing to take that trade

01:13:27 ◼   ► because they do make his life better enough

01:13:29 ◼   ► that he's willing to take that risk.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And most people are not as paranoid as Marco

01:13:34 ◼   ► and won't think twice about this

01:13:36 ◼   ► it actually delivers on what it is intended to do.

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01:14:58 ◼   ► [music]

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01:15:09 ◼   ► They've taken what basically all of us wanted from the new MacBook Air that we have yet

01:15:15 ◼   ► to receive and made a Surface laptop out of it.

01:15:20 ◼   ► I love that you assume that a new MacBook Air is something that is coming.

01:15:24 ◼   ► It just isn't here yet.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Ah, fair, fair.

01:15:27 ◼   ► But yeah, so the thing that we all wanted, which would effectively be a new Retina MacBook

01:15:32 ◼   ► Air with better internals and better ports and whatnot, Microsoft seems to have just

01:15:37 ◼   ► released it.

01:15:38 ◼   ► So I think they're pre-ordering soon if memory serves.

01:15:42 ◼   ► As we record, I don't believe it's available for purchase.

01:15:45 ◼   ► But the very little bit that I've looked into it,

01:15:49 ◼   ► it looked really nice.

01:15:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think it's really interesting,

01:15:52 ◼   ► first of all, that the Microsoft Surface branding

01:15:56 ◼   ► was originally for, well, first it was for the giant table.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And then it went away for a few years.

01:16:01 ◼   ► And then it came back as this consumer,

01:16:04 ◼   ► convertible laptop/tablet thing.

01:16:07 ◼   ► and then it slowly became closer to regular computers

01:16:11 ◼   ► and now they're just like, "Alright, screw it,

01:16:14 ◼   ► "here's just a laptop and we're gonna call it

01:16:15 ◼   ► "the Surface laptop." (laughs)

01:16:17 ◼   ► And it's like they did all these crazy things

01:16:20 ◼   ► and they could just kind of slowly work their way back

01:16:22 ◼   ► to what most people actually want in their computer,

01:16:24 ◼   ► which is a traditional style laptop.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And it does have a touch screen, so bonus points for that.

01:16:29 ◼   ► I do want to also point out, we Apple people,

01:16:32 ◼   ► we keep following the company line of like,

01:16:35 ◼   ► "No, we shouldn't have touch screens on computers,

01:16:36 ◼   ► Nobody wants that, but meanwhile, touch screens have become

01:16:40 ◼   ► very prevalent on PCs, and most people who use them

01:16:44 ◼   ► seem to kinda like them.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Like, people seem, you know, they might not use them

01:16:50 ◼   ► all the time, or they might not use them for a lot of things,

01:16:54 ◼   ► but people who use them seem to enjoy them, largely.

01:16:57 ◼   ► - Yep, completely agree.

01:16:58 ◼   ► - So I do think that is something that should not be

01:16:59 ◼   ► totally discounted as a thing, and maybe Apple's right,

01:17:03 ◼   ► but they're sure to seem like a lot of people

01:17:06 ◼   ► are using them.

01:17:08 ◼   ► Anyway, but I also think it's interesting that

01:17:11 ◼   ► when the original Surface, not the table,

01:17:13 ◼   ► but the very first weirdo, bizarre tablet laptop thing,

01:17:17 ◼   ► when that first came out, it really seemed like

01:17:19 ◼   ► this really niche, low volume, low selling device.

01:17:24 ◼   ► But over time, Microsoft has been persistent

01:17:26 ◼   ► and has just kept iterating and iterating,

01:17:29 ◼   ► and now, Surface's are actually pretty common.

01:17:31 ◼   ► I see them out all the time.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And I don't know if I just don't recognize

01:17:35 ◼   ► other PC hardware, so maybe I don't visually notice it or count it. And whenever people

01:17:40 ◼   ► on Twitter do coffee shop surveys, like Gruber likes to do sometimes, or I see some other

01:17:44 ◼   ► people doing it, where like, "All right, number of MacBooks in this coffee shop, 10,

01:17:49 ◼   ► and number of Surface, 3, number of iPads, 2," stuff like that. Surface tend to be represented

01:17:55 ◼   ► pretty well, just like anecdotally out in the world. There seem to be a lot of them

01:17:59 ◼   ► in coffee shops and in airports and on planes and on commuter trains, stuff like that. So

01:18:04 ◼   ► So I do think that it is worth, I hope Apple is noticing,

01:18:09 ◼   ► and they probably are, they're smart over there,

01:18:11 ◼   ► I hope they are noticing that these experiments

01:18:15 ◼   ► that Microsoft has been doing with the Surface over time

01:18:18 ◼   ► seemed outlandish at first.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Not only are they getting less outlandish over time,

01:18:23 ◼   ► as we all realize that some of those things are good ideas,

01:18:26 ◼   ► but also they're getting pretty popular.

01:18:28 ◼   ► And so I think that is something

01:18:29 ◼   ► that we should not be ruling out.

01:18:33 ◼   ► And some things are popular that are terrible.

01:18:36 ◼   ► I mean Dave Matthews Band, right?

01:18:37 ◼   ► But their popularity I think should not be overlooked.

01:18:42 ◼   ► And we should not assume that everything about the service

01:18:45 ◼   ► and its line of products is Microsoft being weird and wacky

01:18:48 ◼   ► 'cause a lot of it's sticking.

01:18:49 ◼   ► So that is worth pointing out.

01:18:51 ◼   ► So this particular computer,

01:18:53 ◼   ► it looks pretty compelling for a lot of people.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I mean, in a lot of ways it's specs are lower end

01:19:00 ◼   ► than the MacBook Air.

01:19:01 ◼   ► It can be, although it is much newer,

01:19:04 ◼   ► the MacBook Air still has, I think like three generations

01:19:07 ◼   ► old now, parts, something like that.

01:19:09 ◼   ► And this, I believe the Microsoft Surface laptop

01:19:13 ◼   ► is Kaby Lake, so it's like really current.

01:19:15 ◼   ► If the MacBook Air had Skylake or Kaby Lake,

01:19:19 ◼   ► it would get way better battery life.

01:19:21 ◼   ► And it's already amazing, which means they could do

01:19:23 ◼   ► some pretty cool things, but they're not.

01:19:25 ◼   ► But they made the MacBook Pro instead,

01:19:28 ◼   ► and we'll talk about that in a minute, like the escape.

01:19:30 ◼   ► But this laptop looks really good because

01:19:33 ◼   ► when the MacBook Air first came out,

01:19:34 ◼   ► it was like the specialized thing,

01:19:36 ◼   ► but over a pretty short time,

01:19:38 ◼   ► it pretty quickly became like the mainstream laptop to have.

01:19:43 ◼   ► And now it's the low-end laptop to have,

01:19:46 ◼   ► but they still sell a ton of them

01:19:48 ◼   ► because the 13 inch MacBook Air especially,

01:19:50 ◼   ► like that form factor, like that combination,

01:19:52 ◼   ► as I talked about before in the show,

01:19:54 ◼   ► that's a really good sweet spot for a lot of people.

01:19:57 ◼   ► It's an incredibly compelling overall package.

01:19:59 ◼   ► there's a reason why everyone has MacBook Airs

01:20:03 ◼   ► and almost everyone who has them loves them.

01:20:05 ◼   ► It's no coincidence that when Apple introduced,

01:20:10 ◼   ► that's quite a mistake,

01:20:11 ◼   ► when Apple introduced the new MacBook Pros

01:20:14 ◼   ► and kind of made it clear that the MacBook Air

01:20:16 ◼   ► was on its way very slowly out

01:20:20 ◼   ► and that the new MacBook Air replacement

01:20:22 ◼   ► was this 13-inch MacBook escape that is more expensive

01:20:27 ◼   ► and in some ways more limited.

01:20:28 ◼   ► A lot of people were very upset about that.

01:20:30 ◼   ► It's like, no, you took this formula that we liked so much

01:20:33 ◼   ► and now you're telling us that it's over

01:20:34 ◼   ► and you're replacing it with something

01:20:36 ◼   ► that's more expensive and more limited?

01:20:37 ◼   ► So Microsoft comes along and says,

01:20:38 ◼   ► all right, well you know what, here,

01:20:39 ◼   ► this computer that you wanted, here, we just made it.

01:20:42 ◼   ► We made like a up-to-date, basically,

01:20:45 ◼   ► version of a retina MacBook Air shaped and sized computer.

01:20:50 ◼   ► And in most ways it looks a lot like the MacBook Air.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Again, if you match it spec for spec,

01:20:57 ◼   ► it's about the same price as the Air, although newer,

01:21:02 ◼   ► and it is a few hundred dollars cheaper

01:21:06 ◼   ► than the MacBook Escape for similar specs.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Again, I think they're going to sell a lot of these.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Now, they aren't the first PC maker

01:21:12 ◼   ► to make a MacBook Air clone.

01:21:14 ◼   ► PC makers have been making these for a while.

01:21:16 ◼   ► Largely, I think one of the reasons

01:21:18 ◼   ► why services have taken off so well

01:21:20 ◼   ► is that PC hardware is largely total crap.

01:21:24 ◼   ► Like, it is really bad.

01:21:26 ◼   ► Like the designs are crappy,

01:21:28 ◼   ► they're cheap plastic builds,

01:21:30 ◼   ► and just designs with very poor taste.

01:21:33 ◼   ► And Microsoft's designs have largely been pretty good,

01:21:36 ◼   ► like for the Surface hardware.

01:21:38 ◼   ► They've had a couple of weird little missteps here and there,

01:21:40 ◼   ► but so has Apple, no one's perfect.

01:21:42 ◼   ► So Microsoft's actually, I think, doing pretty well here.

01:21:45 ◼   ► And if I were buying a Windows PC for some reason,

01:21:49 ◼   ► it would almost certainly be a Surface product of some kind.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Or I'd build my own, if it was a desktop probably.

01:21:55 ◼   ► But let's say if I was buying a PC laptop for some reason,

01:21:59 ◼   ► I would almost certainly get one of these.

01:22:01 ◼   ► - I agree with you.

01:22:02 ◼   ► The thing is, obviously my career prior to my current job

01:22:07 ◼   ► was all in the Microsoft stack,

01:22:09 ◼   ► and so though I don't have any particular love for Microsoft

01:22:12 ◼   ► in a nostalgic sense, I have admired the way

01:22:15 ◼   ► they've really changed themselves,

01:22:18 ◼   ► and really kind of adjusted the way they operate

01:22:22 ◼   ► with Satya Nadella at the helm,

01:22:24 ◼   ► and I think they've been doing a really good job,

01:22:25 ◼   ► have been doing really fascinating stuff for the San Franciscans, they pivoted.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So anyway, the funny thing is though, you can't really make Microsoft lose all of its

01:22:37 ◼   ► old bits because as I'm trying to get the URL for the Surface laptop to put in the show

01:22:42 ◼   ► notes, I arrive at microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/enus/pdp/productid.5102691100.

01:22:51 ◼   ► as I load that page, the page itself has been dimmed and I have a modal. Don't miss out.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Sign up to receive special deals, new offers, and more." No. The answer is no. So you can

01:23:05 ◼   ► make Microsoft a lot better in general, but you can't ever really make Microsoft forget

01:23:09 ◼   ► that they're Microsoft, can you?

01:23:11 ◼   ► Well, but what's the actual name of the MacBook escape?

01:23:14 ◼   ► I – oh, the MacBook Pro.

01:23:17 ◼   ► I believe it's the late 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro without touch bar.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Fair point, fair point, fair point.

01:23:22 ◼   ► - With delete me in all caps at the end.

01:23:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:27 ◼   ► - So anyway, but no, other than that,

01:23:30 ◼   ► I think this looks really great.

01:23:33 ◼   ► I agree with you if I were to buy a PC,

01:23:36 ◼   ► it would either be a Lenovo or very, very likely

01:23:39 ◼   ► a Surface laptop or something like this.

01:23:41 ◼   ► I agree with you that everything I've heard

01:23:43 ◼   ► from people who have touchscreen laptops,

01:23:44 ◼   ► they swear by them.

01:23:45 ◼   ► I think that seems really kooky,

01:23:47 ◼   ► but it's probably one of those things

01:23:48 ◼   ► that I just haven't tried it and so I don't get it.

01:23:52 ◼   ► And certainly for iOS simulator,

01:23:54 ◼   ► that would be super helpful.

01:23:55 ◼   ► So in that sense, I do get it.

01:23:56 ◼   ► But I do like that there are different colors available.

01:24:01 ◼   ► I don't recall what colors there are,

01:24:03 ◼   ► but there's certainly several shades

01:24:04 ◼   ► that you can get them in,

01:24:05 ◼   ► which is really kind of stupid, but I like it.

01:24:08 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of neat.

01:24:10 ◼   ► - Apple, look, Apple just sells like, you know,

01:24:12 ◼   ► the pink, gold, and dark gray 12-inch MacBook.

01:24:15 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Like there's nothing wrong with a little bit of color

01:24:18 ◼   ► in your life, tech people. It's fine. Color is nice.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Although here again, like the marketing copy is preposterous. If you look at the bullets

01:24:32 ◼   ► under Surface Laptop, luxurious Aucantra fabric-covered keyboard is bullet number two. Come on. I

01:24:39 ◼   ► mean, and Apple has their moments. Don't get me wrong. Apple is not innocent in this department,

01:24:43 ◼   ► but luxurious Aucantra fabric-covered keyboard, really, guys?

01:24:47 ◼   ► I'm glad you can't pronounce that word either, despite reading it in car magazines for the

01:24:50 ◼   ► past several decades.

01:24:51 ◼   ► I thought it was Alcantara.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:24:53 ◼   ► You never have to say it out loud when it's in car magazines, and all of a sudden you're

01:24:56 ◼   ► faced with this word.

01:24:57 ◼   ► You got to do it a syllable at a time.

01:24:59 ◼   ► Alcantara.

01:25:00 ◼   ► There we go.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like Bizelle.

01:25:02 ◼   ► In any case, Jon, what do you think about this?

01:25:04 ◼   ► So the narrative for this is, like Marco said, "Oh, Apple wouldn't make this laptop.

01:25:10 ◼   ► This is the retina MacBook Air that we have all wanted."

01:25:13 ◼   ► But as Marco already pointed out, it's not like there haven't been a million PCs that

01:25:17 ◼   ► that are similar, that are like small, thin, use the MacBook Air class of processor, but

01:25:22 ◼   ► are newer and have a retina screen and so on and so forth.

01:25:26 ◼   ► For this computer specifically though, this is not the retina MacBook Air that I would

01:25:31 ◼   ► want assuming it ran Mac OS, and not just because it's got a fuzzy top, which is kind

01:25:36 ◼   ► of weird and I think will get kind of gross.

01:25:40 ◼   ► If Apple made this computer, I would right now be complaining about the ports and the

01:25:44 ◼   ► RAM.

01:25:45 ◼   ► that you shouldn't even offer a computer with that much.

01:25:48 ◼   ► It's stupid, don't do that.

01:25:50 ◼   ► And the ports, one big USB,

01:25:52 ◼   ► one mini display port thingy,

01:25:55 ◼   ► headphone, like no USB-C.

01:25:59 ◼   ► That's not a modern computer.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Like I'm not saying you have to have all the ports

01:26:01 ◼   ► in the world, but especially if you're gonna be a PC,

01:26:05 ◼   ► like provide me utility.

01:26:06 ◼   ► The utility that Apple won't add would be, you know,

01:26:10 ◼   ► like what this thing has, except for USB-C

01:26:14 ◼   ► instead of playing USB, maybe throw in one regular USB.

01:26:16 ◼   ► It's not like there's not room.

01:26:17 ◼   ► Like this is not a MacBook size, super duper skinny thing.

01:26:20 ◼   ► It's big enough that you could fit some more ports on there.

01:26:22 ◼   ► And if I'm looking for anything in a PC,

01:26:24 ◼   ► it's to do the port stuff that Apple won't do.

01:26:26 ◼   ► So give me my ports, put some USB-C on there,

01:26:29 ◼   ► put one regular USB, put an SD card slot.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Don't give me one big USB and one mini display port

01:26:35 ◼   ► and that's it.

01:26:36 ◼   ► Like I feel like it is RAM starve and port slim

01:26:40 ◼   ► and form factor wise,

01:26:43 ◼   ► If I'm gonna buy into the Surface brand,

01:26:45 ◼   ► I know this is just like, this is a Surface laptop.

01:26:46 ◼   ► Like they do have a touchscreen on it,

01:26:48 ◼   ► but just like they do on the Surface Book and everything,

01:26:50 ◼   ► but those can sort of transform into tablity things

01:26:53 ◼   ► where all of a sudden the touchscreen is much more viable.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I'm not saying you don't wanna have a touchscreen

01:26:57 ◼   ► 'cause they should leverage the advantage they have,

01:27:00 ◼   ► which is they have created an OS that is touch accessible.

01:27:04 ◼   ► Right, that's the whole thing that they've done.

01:27:05 ◼   ► They have one combined OS

01:27:07 ◼   ► that it is usable with your finger.

01:27:09 ◼   ► You're not, you know, in theory,

01:27:12 ◼   ► The interface that is on the screen has some chance of being used by your big, you know,

01:27:18 ◼   ► 44-point in Apple parlance fingertip surface, right?

01:27:22 ◼   ► And that's what they're telling people to make.

01:27:24 ◼   ► Make an application that is usable in that way, or make controls and buttons and widgets

01:27:29 ◼   ► and things that are usable in that way.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Mac OS is not like that.

01:27:33 ◼   ► So one of the advantages that Microsoft has when it comes to directly competing against

01:27:37 ◼   ► the Mac, not iOS, but the Mac, is that they have an interface that is available for touch.

01:27:42 ◼   ► But touch on a plain old upright laptop screen like this,

01:27:45 ◼   ► you're right, the PC has been doing it forever.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And you're right that people do like it

01:27:48 ◼   ► because they can touch the screen.

01:27:49 ◼   ► But I think Apple's also right that it is a,

01:27:51 ◼   ► it is not a great experience.

01:27:54 ◼   ► So I don't say there's a reason

01:27:55 ◼   ► they shouldn't have put touch in here,

01:27:56 ◼   ► but I wouldn't chalk it up as much of an advantage.

01:27:58 ◼   ► It's more of a, well, we can do it anyway

01:28:00 ◼   ► and we got to do it,

01:28:01 ◼   ► but it makes me wish almost that

01:28:03 ◼   ► this was a straight up laptop,

01:28:05 ◼   ► but that the hinge went all the way around

01:28:06 ◼   ► and you could just bend it back on itself, right?

01:28:08 ◼   ► You know, like the convertibles

01:28:10 ◼   ► that they've made a million different varieties of.

01:28:12 ◼   ► If it's not gonna, I can get on board with them

01:28:14 ◼   ► not disconnecting it, but if it's gonna be a touchscreen,

01:28:17 ◼   ► what if there is some application

01:28:18 ◼   ► that I really wanna use a touchscreen with?

01:28:20 ◼   ► It is extremely awkward to use a very touch-centric interface

01:28:25 ◼   ► when it's in a laptop configuration.

01:28:28 ◼   ► So I put that down mostly as a neutral.

01:28:31 ◼   ► And then so then I'm just like left with a laptop

01:28:32 ◼   ► that is kind of middle of the road, kind of strange,

01:28:37 ◼   ► not a good complement of ports

01:28:38 ◼   ► and the low-end model has terrible specs.

01:28:39 ◼   ► So I'm not impressed with it as a laptop,

01:28:41 ◼   ► but I do agree that Microsoft has been trying everything

01:28:46 ◼   ► that you can conceivably try

01:28:47 ◼   ► and that they are putting in the work

01:28:49 ◼   ► to make an operating system that embodies their vision

01:28:52 ◼   ► for how computing, how a single operating system

01:28:55 ◼   ► can span multiple form factors

01:28:56 ◼   ► and all that other good stuff.

01:28:58 ◼   ► Styling-wise, the fur aside or the fuzzy fabric aside,

01:29:01 ◼   ► I still think Microsoft Surface and PCs in general

01:29:08 ◼   ► are sticking too closely to the Apple design formula.

01:29:13 ◼   ► Like they have their own twists, they have their own colors,

01:29:16 ◼   ► fabric and the weird hinge and all stuff like that.

01:29:18 ◼   ► But Apple has so dominated the aesthetic for laptops,

01:29:22 ◼   ► basically from the PowerBook days,

01:29:23 ◼   ► when they defined the current shape of laptop.

01:29:26 ◼   ► Keyboard goes there, pointing device goes here,

01:29:28 ◼   ► screen goes there.

01:29:29 ◼   ► It took a while for PC to get on board with that,

01:29:33 ◼   ► but that defined it in the same way

01:29:34 ◼   ► that the iPhone defined the smartphone form factor.

01:29:37 ◼   ► And when Apple came out with the modern MacBook lines

01:29:39 ◼   ► with the big flat square key caps

01:29:42 ◼   ► and this little perfect rectangle that Johnny Ive loves

01:29:44 ◼   ► and the big touch pad and like all the quote unquote

01:29:48 ◼   ► high-end PC laptops have been following along

01:29:51 ◼   ► with that aesthetic as if it is the one and only true way

01:29:54 ◼   ► to make laptops and I don't think it is.

01:29:56 ◼   ► There is variety out there and a lot of varieties ugly

01:29:59 ◼   ► and you could like, oh, I'm glad Microsoft is sticking

01:30:01 ◼   ► with the Apple design school because it looks good

01:30:03 ◼   ► and it does, but it also doesn't allow them to stand out.

01:30:06 ◼   ► very often speaking of coffee shop surveys,

01:30:08 ◼   ► I'm in a coffee shop and I have to squint

01:30:10 ◼   ► to make sure I can make out from the front.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Is that a MacBook Air or is it, you know,

01:30:15 ◼   ► it's easier from the back 'cause you can see

01:30:17 ◼   ► the little Windows logo, which is, you know,

01:30:20 ◼   ► better than the old Windows logo, but whatever.

01:30:21 ◼   ► Anyway, Apple says that you have to have your company logo

01:30:24 ◼   ► dead center in the back of your screen,

01:30:25 ◼   ► so that's what they do.

01:30:27 ◼   ► But from the front, it's like,

01:30:28 ◼   ► you could mistake it for a MacBook Air.

01:30:30 ◼   ► And I think that is leaving money on the table style-wise,

01:30:33 ◼   ► that I believe there can be a different aesthetic

01:30:35 ◼   ► that they could be pursuing instead of

01:30:37 ◼   ► what they're currently doing,

01:30:38 ◼   ► which is like Apple style, but with a twist.

01:30:41 ◼   ► So I'm not particularly impressed by this product.

01:30:43 ◼   ► I was much more impressed by the Surface Studio Pro.

01:30:46 ◼   ► But all of these products, all Microsoft hardware products,

01:30:50 ◼   ► and even to some degree, the software products,

01:30:53 ◼   ► reveal gaps in Apple's lineup.

01:30:57 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say they're necessarily weaknesses,

01:30:59 ◼   ► but they reveal gaps.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Like their operating system reveals the fact that there,

01:31:03 ◼   ► the things fall through the gaps between iOS and macOS,

01:31:06 ◼   ► whether 1.0 OS, 2.0 OS is the right strategy,

01:31:07 ◼   ► either way it shows gaps.

01:31:09 ◼   ► And all these variety of Surface Books

01:31:11 ◼   ► and Surface Studio Pro reveal gaps in Apple's lineup.

01:31:14 ◼   ► And that like, if you want a really big touchscreen

01:31:16 ◼   ► that runs Pro apps,

01:31:17 ◼   ► the biggest you can go on Apple is 12.5 inch.

01:31:20 ◼   ► And if you want an OS that's touch accessible, that's iOS.

01:31:23 ◼   ► You know, and like there's this big gap between

01:31:26 ◼   ► Pro hardware that in theory is coming to the Mac soon

01:31:29 ◼   ► and Touch OS and Apple has separated those two

01:31:32 ◼   ► from each other, whereas Microsoft has a combined OS

01:31:34 ◼   ► and a combined hardware strategy.

01:31:35 ◼   ► So I find that the most interesting thing

01:31:37 ◼   ► about the Surface efforts, and I suppose it's interesting

01:31:40 ◼   ► that they're extending the brain to a plain old laptop,

01:31:42 ◼   ► but this plain old laptop does not seem to be

01:31:45 ◼   ► a particularly compelling product beyond the fact

01:31:48 ◼   ► that it is a Surface branded laptop,

01:31:50 ◼   ► but I applaud Microsoft for taking the Surface hardware

01:31:53 ◼   ► and software brand and extending it outwards,

01:31:56 ◼   ► and hopefully they have some success.

01:31:58 ◼   ► We haven't even talked about Windows 10 S,

01:31:59 ◼   ► I don't know if we have time for it,

01:32:00 ◼   ► but that is a whole other aspect of this.

01:32:02 ◼   ► We'll get to that.

01:32:03 ◼   ► But also, and I think this ties into that too,

01:32:05 ◼   ► keep in mind, as you criticize this laptop's mediocrity

01:32:08 ◼   ► in certain areas, it's a low-end product.

01:32:11 ◼   ► This is a value product.

01:32:13 ◼   ► In the world of PCs, it's probably mid-range.

01:32:15 ◼   ► - It's a low-end Mac, it's a high-end PC.

01:32:17 ◼   ► A low-end PC laptop is 180 bucks.

01:32:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

01:32:21 ◼   ► It's a mid-range PC laptop,

01:32:23 ◼   ► but it uses those kind of mid-range parts and everything,

01:32:27 ◼   ► and it's in a pretty small case and everything.

01:32:29 ◼   ► Anyway, this is a value product,

01:32:31 ◼   ► and it's competing against Apple's value products.

01:32:34 ◼   ► And it is interesting to see the two very different ways

01:32:37 ◼   ► that Microsoft and Apple are tackling this problem.

01:32:39 ◼   ► Apple is largely addressing the very old,

01:32:44 ◼   ► un-updated MacBook Air towards the same market.

01:32:46 ◼   ► I mean, some of the people we pushed up

01:32:49 ◼   ► into a new MacBook Pro, but I think a lot of people,

01:32:52 ◼   ► like this is aimed at things like schools,

01:32:55 ◼   ► businesses, college students, people who need

01:32:58 ◼   ► either a lot of computers at the lowest possible price,

01:33:00 ◼   ► like a school or people who are buying a computer

01:33:04 ◼   ► who need a lot of value and can't spend a lot more.

01:33:07 ◼   ► So things like college students, things like that.

01:33:09 ◼   ► And the MacBook Air is on a variable for these people,

01:33:12 ◼   ► but Apple is basically just telling them

01:33:17 ◼   ► to just keep buying really old hardware

01:33:20 ◼   ► and Microsoft is showing them a new option.

01:33:22 ◼   ► And I don't think Apple really has a direct answer to this.

01:33:27 ◼   ► I guess technically Apple's answer is spend more

01:33:30 ◼   ► one of our new computers or tolerate one of our old ones. But I really, I think the MacBook

01:33:35 ◼   ► Air is kind of an embarrassment right now because it's not like this is some like, you

01:33:40 ◼   ► know, narrow little product that they don't sell many of. They sell tons of them. And

01:33:45 ◼   ► so it makes me kind of sad for Apple that they are happy to sell so many of an ancient

01:33:55 ◼   ► product that they have refused to update out of what seems like a combination of laziness

01:34:00 ◼   ► and greed because they're making good money on it so why update it? That's a crappy reason,

01:34:06 ◼   ► but that seems to be the reason they're using. And the new MacBook Pro will eventually, I

01:34:12 ◼   ► assume, will eventually get lower in price and eventually the 12 inch and the escape

01:34:19 ◼   ► line will replace the MacBook Air. But it doesn't seem like that's happening soon. It

01:34:23 ◼   ► seems like that might be still maybe three years out or something like that. So for this

01:34:28 ◼   ► this time or they're just gonna keep selling

01:34:30 ◼   ► this ancient MacBook Air while things like this

01:34:34 ◼   ► are coming out from the PC industry

01:34:35 ◼   ► and kind of embarrassing it.

01:34:38 ◼   ► I don't think I like that strategy.

01:34:39 ◼   ► - Don't we have like five years before

01:34:41 ◼   ► they have a special meeting to talk about the MacBook Air

01:34:43 ◼   ► at Apple's campus that they invite us like,

01:34:45 ◼   ► you know, say, we know we haven't updated

01:34:47 ◼   ► the MacBook Air in four years,

01:34:49 ◼   ► and people are wondering if we're gonna discontinue it,

01:34:51 ◼   ► but we've just decided last week

01:34:53 ◼   ► that we're gonna make a new MacBook Air,

01:34:55 ◼   ► and it won't be out this year.

01:34:57 ◼   ► but we are going to rethink the MacBook.

01:34:59 ◼   ► We've heard you that you want the MacBook Air.

01:35:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

01:35:02 ◼   ► - To specific Microsoft Surface thing,

01:35:05 ◼   ► like PC laptops have been embarrassing the Air

01:35:07 ◼   ► for a long time.

01:35:08 ◼   ► It's not just this one.

01:35:09 ◼   ► Like, oh, they finally made it like, like you said,

01:35:11 ◼   ► like there's been tons of PCs

01:35:12 ◼   ► that use the MacBook Air class of chip,

01:35:14 ◼   ► but they actually stay updated

01:35:15 ◼   ► of varying degrees of build quality and style.

01:35:17 ◼   ► So maybe the Microsoft one is notable

01:35:19 ◼   ► in that they have a good reputation

01:35:20 ◼   ► for hardware build quality.

01:35:21 ◼   ► And if you like the style, like that's fine.

01:35:24 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, that's,

01:35:26 ◼   ► it's revealing gaps in Apple's lineup.

01:35:27 ◼   ► Like that Apple wanted the combination of the new MacBook

01:35:31 ◼   ► and the new MacBook Pros to span the same range

01:35:34 ◼   ► that the old combination of the Airs plus the Pros

01:35:37 ◼   ► plus the weird MacBook-y thing in the middle span.

01:35:40 ◼   ► And it does kind of span the same range

01:35:42 ◼   ► as with gaps in different places,

01:35:44 ◼   ► but because of the way they're priced

01:35:45 ◼   ► and the way their capabilities spread,

01:35:47 ◼   ► it ends up being less satisfying.

01:35:49 ◼   ► And the Air still is very popular.

01:35:52 ◼   ► I don't know if I mentioned this about my UK trip,

01:35:54 ◼   ► But I did a, because I was actually in a Starbucks,

01:35:57 ◼   ► I think for the first time in my entire life,

01:36:01 ◼   ► because my wife went in there to get a drink

01:36:04 ◼   ► and I came in with her.

01:36:06 ◼   ► And I did a laptop count just because I was,

01:36:10 ◼   ► I glanced around and I was stunned at what I saw.

01:36:12 ◼   ► What I saw was like, I think it was like eight MacBook Airs,

01:36:17 ◼   ► one HP laptop and one MacBook Pro.

01:36:20 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:36:21 ◼   ► - And I was like, "Macbook Airs, like what's going on?"

01:36:23 ◼   ► I talked to some people in the UK and they said,

01:36:25 ◼   ► "Oh, schools buy them a lot.

01:36:26 ◼   ► "Like when you go to school, you get a laptop

01:36:28 ◼   ► "and they all buy MacBook Airs."

01:36:30 ◼   ► So like, are these people going to,

01:36:31 ◼   ► I mean, are these all old MacBook Airs?

01:36:33 ◼   ► They got as hand-me-downs?

01:36:34 ◼   ► Are people going to Apple stores

01:36:35 ◼   ► and continuing to buy MacBook Airs?

01:36:37 ◼   ► - Yes, they are.

01:36:38 ◼   ► - But yeah, I mean, I don't know.

01:36:40 ◼   ► I mean, if you look at the ASPs of the,

01:36:41 ◼   ► I was thinking of this when you say,

01:36:42 ◼   ► oh, the MacBook Pro prices will come down.

01:36:43 ◼   ► Like not at those ASPs they have

01:36:45 ◼   ► because the new MacBook Pros that are all super,

01:36:47 ◼   ► you know, more expensive than their old models,

01:36:49 ◼   ► tremendously increased revenues

01:36:51 ◼   ► and average selling price for Apple.

01:36:53 ◼   ► So because I get pent up demand, right, or whatever,

01:36:55 ◼   ► but I'm not so sure that they're gonna be

01:36:58 ◼   ► in a big darn hurry to lower the price.

01:36:59 ◼   ► And honestly, I'm okay with Apple jacking up the price

01:37:03 ◼   ► on its top end models,

01:37:04 ◼   ► as long as the top end models like justify that price,

01:37:06 ◼   ► not linearly, obviously, where it's like,

01:37:08 ◼   ► is this $500 better?

01:37:09 ◼   ► No, of course it's not gonna be $500 better.

01:37:10 ◼   ► But if anything, you're gonna fleece people on,

01:37:12 ◼   ► make it the super duper high end ones.

01:37:15 ◼   ► If they actually introduced a MacBook Air replacement,

01:37:19 ◼   ► sort of a worthy MacBook Air replacement

01:37:21 ◼   ► fills that same role, like has the same trade-offs of battery life, screen size, and ports and

01:37:26 ◼   ► capability as the old MacBook Air but has all updated internals and has retina.

01:37:30 ◼   ► If they ever made such a machine, that could lower their ASPs, but I think it would sell

01:37:33 ◼   ► like hotcakes.

01:37:34 ◼   ► And honestly, I feel like, I made the joke about the whole MacPro meeting, like, "Oh,

01:37:41 ◼   ► we've decided we're going to do this."

01:37:42 ◼   ► I feel like that decision is inevitable, because it seems like the range of capabilities in

01:37:48 ◼   ► and Apple's limited range from the super duper skinny

01:37:50 ◼   ► MacBook to the much more expensive Pros,

01:37:54 ◼   ► that doesn't seem to be the right distribution

01:37:55 ◼   ► of price points and capabilities to satisfy the market.

01:37:58 ◼   ► Whereas the Air has proven itself to be,

01:38:01 ◼   ► and not the first Air,

01:38:03 ◼   ► 'cause the first Air was a crappy mix, right?

01:38:04 ◼   ► But like the 2011 and on Air,

01:38:07 ◼   ► that was a really great sweet spot

01:38:10 ◼   ► for capability, size and price.

01:38:12 ◼   ► And I think Apple has proven with their experiment

01:38:16 ◼   ► that the super duper skinny one,

01:38:17 ◼   ► like it's a little bit too far down the capability ladder.

01:38:22 ◼   ► Like it sacrifices too much capability for other stuff.

01:38:24 ◼   ► They just, by all means, keep it.

01:38:25 ◼   ► 'Cause you should have a model

01:38:26 ◼   ► that's like the lightest possible thing you can have.

01:38:28 ◼   ► It's awesome for that, right?

01:38:29 ◼   ► But it doesn't, you know, whatever the curve looks like

01:38:32 ◼   ► of demand for laptop sizes and capabilities,

01:38:35 ◼   ► that one is also towards the edge.

01:38:37 ◼   ► So I think Apple will eventually come around

01:38:40 ◼   ► to making a machine that has the balance

01:38:44 ◼   ► of the MacBook Air.

01:38:45 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be the same exact size

01:38:46 ◼   ► and shape as the MacBook Air,

01:38:47 ◼   ► things change and USB-C is smaller and so on and so forth.

01:38:50 ◼   ► And whether that's because the MacBook evolves or they introduce a new model in the middle

01:38:55 ◼   ► or the 13-inch MacBook Pro, as Marco has talked about so many times, eventually shrinks down

01:38:59 ◼   ► to the point where it basically is a MacBook Air.

01:39:01 ◼   ► But that hasn't happened yet.

01:39:04 ◼   ► And so looking over at the PC side or the Windows side of things and seeing all these

01:39:08 ◼   ► MacBook Air equivalents and seeing how popular, you know, again, coffee shop surveys, a lot

01:39:14 ◼   ► of the PCs that I see are MacBook Airy-sized form factors.

01:39:17 ◼   ► I see less of the giant battleships

01:39:19 ◼   ► that you still see in corporate environments,

01:39:21 ◼   ► and I see more of the HP Lenovo MacBook Airy-sized machines.

01:39:26 ◼   ► So hopefully Apple will get on that

01:39:30 ◼   ► in T minus two and a half years.

01:39:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause that's the thing.

01:39:34 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

01:39:35 ◼   ► The strategy, what they seem to be doing now,

01:39:37 ◼   ► which is basically just never update the Air

01:39:39 ◼   ► and just keep selling it

01:39:40 ◼   ► until the other ones come down in price,

01:39:42 ◼   ► I don't think that necessarily works

01:39:44 ◼   ► unless there's other changes in mind

01:39:46 ◼   ► because like what you said, the 12 inch,

01:39:49 ◼   ► assume that comes down in price and becomes a new entry,

01:39:51 ◼   ► that's kinda not good enough to replace the MacBook Air.

01:39:54 ◼   ► It is so much of a compromise in so many more areas.

01:39:58 ◼   ► It has way fewer ports and things.

01:40:01 ◼   ► It is way slower than the MacBook Air in a lot of things.

01:40:05 ◼   ► It gets worse battery life by a good amount.

01:40:09 ◼   ► It will presumably improve over time.

01:40:12 ◼   ► Maybe the second generation 12 inch MacBook,

01:40:16 ◼   ► whenever that comes out,

01:40:17 ◼   ► maybe that one will be a better air replacement.

01:40:21 ◼   ► But the current one really isn't.

01:40:23 ◼   ► I mean, maybe the answer is that the 13 inch MacBook Escape

01:40:26 ◼   ► ends up going down in price eventually,

01:40:30 ◼   ► or it has a very low end configuration.

01:40:33 ◼   ► But the problem is, the base model is already

01:40:36 ◼   ► a pretty low end model for Apple standards.

01:40:39 ◼   ► Compared to the service book,

01:40:41 ◼   ► it's kinda mid-range to high-end.

01:40:43 ◼   ► So again, I'm not entirely sure that strategy makes sense,

01:40:46 ◼   ► but it seems like Apple is doing a pretty poor job

01:40:51 ◼   ► addressing what is probably by far

01:40:54 ◼   ► their most popular model of laptop.

01:40:58 ◼   ► That seems weird to me.

01:41:00 ◼   ► Although that being said, looking at the Surface laptop,

01:41:04 ◼   ► if you were buying one of these things,

01:41:06 ◼   ► which of these four colors would you get?

01:41:08 ◼   ► 'Cause I saw the video, the colors looked okay in the video,

01:41:10 ◼   ► Now that I'm seeing this page, like, all four of these colors look hideous to me.

01:41:15 ◼   ► They all look like cubicle walls.

01:41:18 ◼   ► The texture is the problem, not the color.

01:41:20 ◼   ► I think either one of the two grays, the darker gray or the lighter gray, they're fine.

01:41:25 ◼   ► But I'm not on board with the texture thing, both because I think it'll get dirty and gross

01:41:31 ◼   ► and it'll be harder to clean, and also because the edge treatment, like when the fabric runs

01:41:35 ◼   ► to the edge and, you know, joins up with the metal, that's just asking for it to fray.

01:41:39 ◼   ► The last thing I want is a frayed laptop.

01:41:41 ◼   ► That's not an aesthetic I like.

01:41:42 ◼   ► I can imagine people finding it attractive, right?

01:41:45 ◼   ► But I'm not into that.

01:41:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:41:49 ◼   ► It's hard to say.

01:41:50 ◼   ► On the configurator, the colors in the image is just microscopic.

01:41:57 ◼   ► It's very hard to say.

01:41:58 ◼   ► I would probably take a look at the cobalt blue, but in all likelihood end up with the

01:42:03 ◼   ► boring platinum.

01:42:04 ◼   ► Yeah, the colors are red.

01:42:06 ◼   ► you're right that their website like that they I know you just made fun of their website

01:42:10 ◼   ► for a while before but like if you have beautiful hardware like they made a really cool intro

01:42:14 ◼   ► video I think Gruber linked to and I hope all the people did that shows like all you

01:42:18 ◼   ► know it looked like an Apple video showing how beautiful all the parts are even on the

01:42:21 ◼   ► inside and how they all assemble and fly together and we've seen stuff from like Apple like

01:42:25 ◼   ► but then if you go to their website Apple the entire page would you just be like incredibly

01:42:31 ◼   ► close up high resolution beautifully shot photographs slash renders of their hardware

01:42:35 ◼   ► right, whereas here we're squinting at these little blurry JPEGs.

01:42:39 ◼   ► We can't even, you know, I was trying to look for a picture to show me all the ports.

01:42:42 ◼   ► Apple would have a shot that's like, "Your ports fill your entire screen and they're

01:42:46 ◼   ► impossibly clean because they're probably computer renders," and here it's like, "I

01:42:50 ◼   ► can't even get a shot where I can make out what the ports are on the side."

01:42:53 ◼   ► The color picker changes the color on this one-inch by one-inch postage stamp.