ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► That's one of the amazing things about the making of Empire Strikes Back book.

00:00:03 ◼   ► The digital version has a bunch of audio clips of like people talking about stuff. I'm like,

00:00:07 ◼   ► "I'm glad somebody recorded these things," because here they are having actual conversations about

00:00:11 ◼   ► making this movie and then people have recollections like, "Oh, I talked to them about

00:00:14 ◼   ► this. Guess what? We've got audio too, you know? 15 minutes of audio about this one thing and it's

00:00:18 ◼   ► great to hear," even though the quality is terrible because it was the 80s. That's true of many things

00:00:22 ◼   ► in the 80s. But not Empire Strikes Back. That was in the 80s and it was great. Yeah, so were me and

00:00:27 ◼   ► - I'm being casey.

00:00:29 ◼   ► - So young, so young.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - I feel like I have spoken to Marco and John

00:00:36 ◼   ► both extremely recently and also not in weeks

00:00:39 ◼   ► because we saw each other three days ago, is that right?

00:00:42 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - And yet at the same time, we haven't had the opportunity

00:00:48 ◼   ► to really and truly nerd out for a couple of weeks now.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - I like how when we tried to talk about computer stuff,

00:00:53 ◼   ► we were all together like,

00:00:55 ◼   ► everyone else did not wanna hear it.

00:00:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:58 ◼   ► It was there, they're just like rolling their eyes

00:01:01 ◼   ► and trying to change a subject to anything else.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, they effectively said with body language,

00:01:06 ◼   ► save it for the show.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And also happy birthday, John Siracusa.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - Hey, hey.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - It's a little bit late at this point.

00:01:13 ◼   ► It is four days ago now, but happy birthday.

00:01:16 ◼   ► You are the answer to, what is the actual phrasing?

00:01:20 ◼   ► The answer to life, the universe and everything?

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, pretty much.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Fair enough, all right.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Do we have any pre-show banter?

00:01:26 ◼   ► We just want to go straight to follow up.

00:01:27 ◼   ► - I think that was the pre-show banter.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:01:30 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about the naked robotic MacBook Pro,

00:01:33 ◼   ► Mr. Syracuse.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - This is the bestest thing ever.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - Was said with not an ounce of sarcasm.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - I think it is, I think it is pretty neat.

00:01:42 ◼   ► This, if someone had posted this as a joke

00:01:47 ◼   ► a couple weeks ago, I think we all would have had

00:01:49 ◼   ► a good laugh about it.

00:01:50 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - The first time I saw this, I thought it was a joke.

00:01:53 ◼   ► And I was like, it's on April 1st.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I guess somebody just has a bad joke timing.

00:01:57 ◼   ► >> Yeah, but you know, this is apparently a real thing.

00:02:00 ◼   ► This is from OWC, our friends at OWC,

00:02:02 ◼   ► Otherworld Computing.

00:02:04 ◼   ► This is a product that you can't buy yet, right?

00:02:07 ◼   ► They've just sort of announced it and more details to follow.

00:02:11 ◼   ► You take your new slim four USB port,

00:02:16 ◼   ► a MacBook Pro that we've talked about at length on this show,

00:02:20 ◼   ► and you sit it on top of an aluminum rectangle

00:02:24 ◼   ► that's the exact size and shape as the bottom of the MacBook Pro, making your very slim

00:02:32 ◼   ► 2016/2017 model MacBook Pro the thickness of a 2012 MacBook Pro.

00:02:39 ◼   ► And in the process, it gives you a bunch of extra ports on the side.

00:02:42 ◼   ► You get USB Type-A ports, you get Ethernet, you get an SD card slot, you get another USB-C.

00:02:48 ◼   ► As far as I can tell, you don't get any additional battery.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It does claim also 4TB of internal storage of some type.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And additional things to come.

00:02:57 ◼   ► They haven't revealed all the things it's going to do.

00:03:00 ◼   ► So right away I have some technical questions about this.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Oh yes.

00:03:04 ◼   ► My first, how does it work?

00:03:05 ◼   ► Because I expected it to plug into the USB-C ports on the side.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Because you know you can do that.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Like the Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.

00:03:12 ◼   ► You can plug, for example, a Thunderbolt 3 dock into there and on that dock you can have

00:03:17 ◼   ► an SD card port and USB ports and storage and you know you can you can do

00:03:21 ◼   ► all that we know you can do it but you have to plug into one of those ports and

00:03:25 ◼   ► the pictures they have show both sides of this thing with all four of the

00:03:30 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 ports on the side of this MacBook Pro completely open so that's

00:03:35 ◼   ► mysterious. No I don't think it's mysterious at all I mean I understand

00:03:39 ◼   ► what you're saying but I will bet you a gazillion dollars that if you're looking

00:03:44 ◼   ► at the images of the two sides. So they're showing the right hand side of it, but it's on the left

00:03:49 ◼   ► hand side of the image. And then the left hand side on the right hand side of the image. So the

00:03:53 ◼   ► right side of the dock where the SD card is, there's a USB-C port directly under one of the

00:04:01 ◼   ► four onboard USB-C ports. It's hard to paint a word picture about this, but anyway, I bet you

00:04:06 ◼   ► anything they're going to have one of those little stubby USB-C cables right there. It'll be like,

00:04:12 ◼   ► You remember the daughterboard video cards from PCs way back in the day?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:16 ◼   ► You would go like VGA from your 2D card.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Jon doesn't remember.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Yeah, you go from VGA from your 2D card to your 3D card, and then VGA from your 3D card out to your monitor.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And they would have these little like stubby VGA cables. It was barbaric.

00:04:31 ◼   ► So I'm gonna make an even older reference.

00:04:33 ◼   ► Back in the Mac days when they had SCSI as their external connector for hard drives and such,

00:04:39 ◼   ► and you would buy hard drives that fit exactly underneath the classic Mac shape, so you'd

00:04:43 ◼   ► stack them and they would be exactly the size of the base of like a Mac Plus or a 512 or

00:04:50 ◼   ► whatever.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And since you would stack them, each one would be a different hard drive and you would need

00:04:53 ◼   ► to daisy chain them together.

00:04:55 ◼   ► In typical Scuzzy Passion, one would have a terminator and then you'd go from one to

00:04:58 ◼   ► the other.

00:04:59 ◼   ► They made C-shaped brackets.

00:05:00 ◼   ► They were not cables at all, but were exact brackets.

00:05:02 ◼   ► You know, a single manufacturer would sell them, like Jasmine or whatever, and they would

00:05:06 ◼   ► plug into the back and connect one drive to the one right above it exactly matching these

00:05:10 ◼   ► gigantic 50-pin SCSI connectors.

00:05:13 ◼   ► So not a cable at all, but a very stiff bracket-y type thing.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And I can imagine that as well, but they don't show it in the pictures.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Correct.

00:05:21 ◼   ► That is fair.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Well, and also, these pictures should be taken with a huge grain of salt, because they have

00:05:26 ◼   ► even stated these are renderings, these are not the final product.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And in fact, when I first looked at this page, maybe an hour before that MacRumors article

00:05:33 ◼   ► was posted, these exact pictures in this exact spot

00:05:37 ◼   ► on the official owcdigital.com/dec on that page,

00:05:42 ◼   ► these exact pictures, the two sides were a blank

00:05:44 ◼   ► except for one, the one single USB-C in port.

00:05:48 ◼   ► All, like the, oh, and the card reader was there,

00:05:50 ◼   ► but all the USB-A and the ethernet port you see right there

00:05:53 ◼   ► were not there like 12 hours ago.

00:05:54 ◼   ► So clearly, like, this is a work in progress.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Like, I learned more from the MacRumors post about it

00:06:00 ◼   ► than I did from their page.

00:06:02 ◼   ► So clearly this is still in the very early phases.

00:06:06 ◼   ► They said it will be available in 2017,

00:06:09 ◼   ► but I don't think they got more specific than that,

00:06:11 ◼   ► nor have they listed a price or anything.

00:06:13 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, it's basically, yeah,

00:06:15 ◼   ► it's a docking station that happens to be the same shape

00:06:19 ◼   ► as the MacBook Pro, so you can sit it on top of it.

00:06:21 ◼   ► But when I first saw these pictures,

00:06:23 ◼   ► without seeing the MacRumors article,

00:06:24 ◼   ► when I first saw the pictures

00:06:26 ◼   ► and got almost no information,

00:06:28 ◼   ► I assumed that what they were doing

00:06:30 ◼   ► was basically offering a service

00:06:31 ◼   ► where you could send your map to them

00:06:32 ◼   ► and they would like unscrew the bottom of it

00:06:35 ◼   ► and replace, like, and kind of semi-permanently attach

00:06:38 ◼   ► this thing and if they were doing that,

00:06:41 ◼   ► then they could maybe do something like give a bigger

00:06:42 ◼   ► battery and use internal, whatever kind of internal

00:06:47 ◼   ► connections that are present, if any.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I honestly would be surprised if there are many, if any.

00:06:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was thinking where were they connected internally

00:06:55 ◼   ► but you can do a bigger battery with an external too

00:06:57 ◼   ► because remember that USB-C port is also the charging port

00:06:59 ◼   ► works like the smartphone iPhone case or whatever.

00:07:03 ◼   ► - Exactly, but anyway, that isn't what this is

00:07:06 ◼   ► as far as we can tell from the very little information

00:07:08 ◼   ► we have, but either way, so basically it sounds like

00:07:11 ◼   ► it almost certainly doesn't offer any additional

00:07:13 ◼   ► battery power, and that's the only real reason

00:07:15 ◼   ► I would see for wanting to have this tremendous

00:07:19 ◼   ► additional bulk added permanently to your MacBook.

00:07:22 ◼   ► - Well not yet, we don't know, because they say

00:07:24 ◼   ► more stuff is coming, and if you look at the stuff

00:07:25 ◼   ► that's in there, obviously there has to be more,

00:07:28 ◼   ► because the stuff they have in there would not

00:07:29 ◼   ► take up all that space.

00:07:30 ◼   ► So I guess it could just be filled with air,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but if you're gonna put a battery,

00:07:33 ◼   ► it's not like there's not room.

00:07:34 ◼   ► - They could put an optical drive.

00:07:35 ◼   ► No, I actually thought the same thing, believe it or not.

00:07:39 ◼   ► They could put a really good keyboard that you can't reach.

00:07:41 ◼   ► No, so I, you know, we'll see when this thing

00:07:44 ◼   ► actually provides a little more information

00:07:46 ◼   ► and when it actually launches,

00:07:47 ◼   ► but I don't think the market for this is gonna be very big.

00:07:50 ◼   ► I certainly won't use it.

00:07:54 ◼   ► No way you could make me use that,

00:07:56 ◼   ► because the fact is that the MacBook Pro, as it is,

00:08:01 ◼   ► is almost pretty good, and this pushes it so far

00:08:06 ◼   ► in the other direction that it's like, okay,

00:08:08 ◼   ► you've turned something that's almost pretty good,

00:08:11 ◼   ► but has mediocre battery life and a bad keyboard

00:08:14 ◼   ► into something that is still having mediocre battery life

00:08:18 ◼   ► and a bad keyboard that is just bigger and heavier

00:08:22 ◼   ► to add what is really a very small handful

00:08:25 ◼   ► of capabilities so far.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I don't see why people would want this, honestly,

00:08:31 ◼   ► but somebody might, I guess.

00:08:34 ◼   ► - Well, remember, Marco, that you cannot possibly

00:08:37 ◼   ► do any kind of work on a MacBook Pro

00:08:39 ◼   ► unless you have an SD card slot,

00:08:41 ◼   ► so if you wanted to do any kind of work on a MacBook Pro,

00:08:45 ◼   ► you must have this dock, otherwise it's impossible.

00:08:48 ◼   ► - No, and honestly, so in the massive span of time

00:08:53 ◼   ► since we've last spoken on this podcast,

00:08:55 ◼   ► I did, you know, we traveled upstate for parent Christmas

00:09:00 ◼   ► stuff and I had my laptop there and there was one point

00:09:05 ◼   ► in which I had brought some, every year we're making

00:09:08 ◼   ► Christmas video from the previous Christmases photos

00:09:11 ◼   ► and time lapse, Tiff does all the work,

00:09:13 ◼   ► she gets all the credit.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Anyway, I bring with me on my laptop copies of all the

00:09:17 ◼   ► so that way when we get there,

00:09:19 ◼   ► after you've shown it to everybody,

00:09:20 ◼   ► we can then give everybody their own copy.

00:09:22 ◼   ► - On the thumb drives that don't go into your computer?

00:09:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, so one of the film members has an iPad,

00:09:27 ◼   ► one has a laptop, and one has a thumb drive.

00:09:30 ◼   ► So this is like how you put the wolf on the boat,

00:09:32 ◼   ► and it's like this crazy thing,

00:09:34 ◼   ► it's like how do we--

00:09:35 ◼   ► - Don't put the wolf in with the chicken.

00:09:36 ◼   ► - Right, it's like how do we get these files

00:09:39 ◼   ► to these different things, right?

00:09:41 ◼   ► I'm sitting there on the couch with my new MacBook,

00:09:44 ◼   ► and first my father-in-law brings down

00:09:47 ◼   ► the Lightning card reader adapter with an SD card on it

00:09:51 ◼   ► that he uses in his iPad.

00:09:52 ◼   ► He's like, "Can you put it on here?"

00:09:54 ◼   ► And I look at the Lightning and I look at the SD card

00:09:56 ◼   ► and I'm like, "Nope." (laughs)

00:09:59 ◼   ► And then I get handed this USB key,

00:10:03 ◼   ► like this USB thumb drive thing.

00:10:05 ◼   ► No, I guess I gotta get a dongle for that.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Like I gotta go upstairs, get the dongle.

00:10:10 ◼   ► And it wasn't that I didn't own the dongle,

00:10:13 ◼   ► And it wasn't that I didn't even have the dongle

00:10:15 ◼   ► like technically with me on the trip,

00:10:17 ◼   ► but it was upstairs and I was downstairs

00:10:19 ◼   ► and I was on a soft couch and it was Christmas.

00:10:21 ◼   ► There's just gonna be so many of these times

00:10:24 ◼   ► with these new MacBook Pros where like,

00:10:26 ◼   ► even if it's a minor inconvenience,

00:10:29 ◼   ► it still makes you regret the limitations

00:10:32 ◼   ► of this computer in use, in practice.

00:10:35 ◼   ► I bet more often than Apple might have estimated

00:10:39 ◼   ► by whatever data they were using to make this decision

00:10:41 ◼   ► to omit all the useful stuff from this computer.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And there are so many things about it that are nice.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Like every year we go to the same place, my in-laws place,

00:10:50 ◼   ► and every year I have to plug in my laptop,

00:10:54 ◼   ► and every year I had this weird layout

00:10:58 ◼   ► where to reach the left side where the charging port was,

00:11:01 ◼   ► where MagSafe was, I had to kind of lean the laptop

00:11:03 ◼   ► in a strange way overnight when it's charging.

00:11:06 ◼   ► And this year I could use the other side,

00:11:07 ◼   ► which was really helpful, and there's gonna be times

00:11:09 ◼   ► like that where it's nice to have charging on either side.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Like, that would be great, right?

00:11:13 ◼   ► So, you know, it isn't all bad,

00:11:15 ◼   ► and it was also really nice to have this thing be lighter.

00:11:19 ◼   ► As I was carrying it around the house,

00:11:20 ◼   ► and you know, doing basic stuff,

00:11:23 ◼   ► like it was nice having it lighter.

00:11:25 ◼   ► So I appreciate those things,

00:11:27 ◼   ► and I appreciate some of the progress,

00:11:29 ◼   ► but boy, not having the SD card reader,

00:11:32 ◼   ► and at least one USB-A port,

00:11:35 ◼   ► has already bitten me.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Like, more than once, in these like little,

00:11:40 ◼   ► tiny like, you know, razor blade cut ways.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Like just, ah, I just, it doesn't leave me

00:11:45 ◼   ► with a good taste in my mouth about this laptop overall.

00:11:47 ◼   ► - So I think this product, however it turns out to be

00:11:50 ◼   ► in the market, reveals some interesting things

00:11:53 ◼   ► that we've talked about before,

00:11:54 ◼   ► but this is like a concrete version of it.

00:11:57 ◼   ► The first is this is an extreme case

00:11:59 ◼   ► of the naked robotic core thing applied to the Mac,

00:12:01 ◼   ► which we talked about before.

00:12:02 ◼   ► The idea that if you just provide the core amount

00:12:06 ◼   ► of functionality and let people add stuff on top of that

00:12:09 ◼   ► that they might want.

00:12:10 ◼   ► So with the iPhone it's like we give you the skinniest little metal thing that you want,

00:12:13 ◼   ► and if you want extra battery or you want more protection or you know you want a place

00:12:17 ◼   ► to put your credit cards or you want a rubbery outside or whatever it is that you want to

00:12:20 ◼   ► do to it, everyone else can bring to it whatever they want.

00:12:23 ◼   ► You want it to be a different color or a different texture or whatever, you can put that on,

00:12:27 ◼   ► but by making the smallest thing possible we let the people who want a really small

00:12:30 ◼   ► thing have a really small thing and people who want something different, everyone can

00:12:33 ◼   ► apply it.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Because if we made a choice and added the big battery, the people who wanted the skinnier

00:12:36 ◼   ► ones can have it and so on and so forth.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So this thing being the Naked Robotic MacBook Pro, if you want a bunch of ports, you can

00:12:43 ◼   ► slap it on the end.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And all the past times we've talked about this, it's like, yeah, but if you add it on

00:12:49 ◼   ► the outside, because you have to have, you know, phone, motherboard, battery, case, you

00:12:56 ◼   ► know, inner case, battery, outer case, like the extra layering, requiring them both to

00:13:01 ◼   ► be products in and of themselves, the case is a product and the phone is a product and

00:13:05 ◼   ► have their own walls and the combination of all the walls is your total thickness, it

00:13:09 ◼   ► makes them bigger than if you said if you just took that amount of battery that's in

00:13:12 ◼   ► this battery case and put it inside the phone it wouldn't be as thick.

00:13:15 ◼   ► So here we have a great example of that.

00:13:17 ◼   ► These ports that they're adding, if Apple had put these inside the MacBook Pro it would

00:13:21 ◼   ► be thicker, but it would not be this thick.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I mean you can look at it, they have the Ethernet port is stacked up with the USB-C ports above

00:13:27 ◼   ► it, like because they can't, they can't add, you know, they can't violate the integrity

00:13:31 ◼   ► of the case.

00:13:32 ◼   ► entire flat side thickness of the case. and then what they have left to put their ports

00:13:37 ◼   ► on is anything they can put below that.

00:13:39 ◼   ► they can't combine them.

00:13:40 ◼   ► so this does show a very graphic illustration of the highlight of the naked robotic core

00:13:46 ◼   ► strategy is that if you do add stuff it will always necessarily be bigger than if it was

00:13:50 ◼   ► built in.

00:13:51 ◼   ► and the second thing i think is that i don't know if this was just someone making an estimation

00:13:54 ◼   ► or if they say it in the copy as a real thing but i believe it.

00:13:57 ◼   ► saying this makes your 2016 / 2017 MacBook Pro the same thickness as the

00:14:04 ◼   ► 2012 model but we all look at this and it looks like that that comic

00:14:07 ◼   ► illustration of the the power book g5 remember that oh yeah Photoshop it looks

00:14:13 ◼   ► like it's just comically thick like it's like the size of a dictionary or a phone

00:14:18 ◼   ► book I don't know if kids know what those are it's a really thick book it

00:14:22 ◼   ► looks it looks huge and yet this was the thickness of a product that Apple sold

00:14:27 ◼   ► Not too long ago 2012 MacBook Pro that people still have in like and often they say I'm sticking with my 2012 MacBook Pro

00:14:33 ◼   ► He's got all the ports. I want or whatever this I think illustrates what I always talked about

00:14:37 ◼   ► You know that a hypercritical post long ago about people complaining that the iMac was getting too skinny when they took away the optical drive

00:14:44 ◼   ► It made it super skinny. It's like who the hell needs a super skinny iMac. What's the point?

00:14:47 ◼   ► and I

00:14:49 ◼   ► Transferred over the iPhone to say look you have to go thinner year after year because even though from year to year

00:14:54 ◼   ► The the sacrifice doesn't make that much of a difference

00:14:57 ◼   ► You think oh what so it's a few millimeters thicker multiply that by year after year after year

00:15:01 ◼   ► And you will find yourself far from where you started so in 2012 them shaving no millimeter off

00:15:06 ◼   ► 2013 and another millimeter off in 2014 another mill. It seems like what's the point you're just making my thing thinner in a way that

00:15:13 ◼   ► I can't even detect and I'm not getting any gains from it, but like you said Marco

00:15:16 ◼   ► You appreciate the the lightness

00:15:19 ◼   ► Even just compared to your previous model, which wasn't that old

00:15:23 ◼   ► Imagine that you know what it would be like if you upgraded from a 2012 model to this and here we have a

00:15:28 ◼   ► Rewind button to go back to what it was like in 2012 and now you can't go back now you say no, that's too far

00:15:33 ◼   ► I can't go back that far. I don't care how many ports you have. It is too big and it's too heavy

00:15:38 ◼   ► I know now that I know what's possible. I I can't go back to that again. So

00:15:43 ◼   ► There is something to be said for apples. We're relentless pursuit of thinness

00:15:47 ◼   ► I still don't think they've had any sort of inflection point like my the thing I always go back to is the

00:15:52 ◼   ► the credit card sized phone that just flutters to the ground and you don't have to worry about it cracking because no one worries about

00:15:57 ◼   ► Dropping their credit card on the ground and cracking it because it's so friggin thin. We haven't we haven't got there

00:16:02 ◼   ► we're not even close but

00:16:04 ◼   ► This this illustration and our general disgust with it this product and our disgust with how thick it is

00:16:09 ◼   ► Really hammers home that this thin this thing

00:16:12 ◼   ► Even though we complain about it

00:16:15 ◼   ► The upsides aren't just academic like once you become accustomed to it being that thin we want it to be that thin and also

00:16:22 ◼   ► maybe have an SD card slot, which by the way,

00:16:24 ◼   ► they could totally do because there's plenty of room.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Or add two millimeters, like we're willing to bargain

00:16:29 ◼   ► a millimeter or two, but none of us want to add

00:16:33 ◼   ► half an inch to this thing,

00:16:34 ◼   ► because we just can't go back to that.

00:16:35 ◼   ► - By the way, I can't let this go without pointing out

00:16:38 ◼   ► that this ancient, thick 2012 MacBook Pro

00:16:42 ◼   ► that they're comparing this to was sold

00:16:44 ◼   ► in the form of the 101 until like two months ago.

00:16:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, had an optical drive, plenty of room in there.

00:16:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, but I mean, you're right,

00:16:51 ◼   ► I love the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro.

00:16:53 ◼   ► The 15 inch Retina, it's so, so nice.

00:16:56 ◼   ► It's such an overall awesome machine.

00:16:58 ◼   ► But now that I've had this new one for one month,

00:17:01 ◼   ► the old one, which I still have in my closet

00:17:03 ◼   ► 'cause I haven't sold it yet,

00:17:05 ◼   ► I look at it and I pick it up every so often

00:17:06 ◼   ► and it feels ancient.

00:17:09 ◼   ► And it feels like a big, heavy, awkward lunch tray.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Even though a month ago, I was like, this is fine.

00:17:15 ◼   ► This doesn't need to get any smaller.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Like it really is all about what you're accustomed to.

00:17:19 ◼   ► And as soon as you get accustomed to this new one,

00:17:21 ◼   ► even though the difference in weight and in thickness

00:17:25 ◼   ► is not tremendous, it is a savings that is noticeable.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And as soon as you start noticing it,

00:17:31 ◼   ► it's really hard to ever go back

00:17:33 ◼   ► and to have it feel normal.

00:17:35 ◼   ► I mean, heck, even the keyboard.

00:17:36 ◼   ► I hate the keyboard on the new one,

00:17:38 ◼   ► but when I use the keyboard on the old one,

00:17:39 ◼   ► I'm like, this is kinda mushy.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Like, I'm ruined, I'm completely ruined.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I still hate the new one, keyboard-wise,

00:17:47 ◼   ► but it's like, and honestly, I think I would hate

00:17:50 ◼   ► new keyboard a lot less if they would give me back the gaps above the left and

00:17:54 ◼   ► right arrow keys. That has bitten me more than any other thing about this

00:17:59 ◼   ► keyboard. Like the key switches I still don't like but I've gotten used to.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Escape I have mapped to caps lock and it was a very easy transition. The shaping

00:18:09 ◼   ► of those arrow keys and not having the little gaps above left and right the

00:18:12 ◼   ► way they have been for years, that keeps messing me up so much because I can no

00:18:17 ◼   ► longer orient myself on the arrow keys by feel reliably.

00:18:21 ◼   ► And this, as it turns out, this is something I need

00:18:24 ◼   ► quite frequently in use.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I didn't realize it until I used one of these things

00:18:28 ◼   ► for a while, but wow, that is a big change.

00:18:33 ◼   ► But yeah, when you go back to the old one,

00:18:35 ◼   ► it's like wow, I don't want, even though it is

00:18:38 ◼   ► in so many ways better, you use the quote mushy keyboard,

00:18:43 ◼   ► and you see the relatively tiny little,

00:18:46 ◼   ► quaint little track pad on there,

00:18:47 ◼   ► and you're like, wow, this is like using a PowerBook

00:18:49 ◼   ► by comparison.

00:18:50 ◼   ► The new thing really does feel so much newer

00:18:54 ◼   ► and more modern, even though in these fairly large ways

00:18:57 ◼   ► it is definitely worse.

00:18:59 ◼   ► - This is one of the dangers of using iOS

00:19:01 ◼   ► or growing up with iOS.

00:19:02 ◼   ► When I watch my son, he's mostly the one

00:19:05 ◼   ► who has to do school assignments,

00:19:06 ◼   ► like they use Google Docs and he writes school papers

00:19:08 ◼   ► and stuff in it, which is a pretty good system

00:19:10 ◼   ► in terms of letting teachers and peers comment on

00:19:15 ◼   ► and see their work.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Anyway, because he's a child of iOS and a child of the post-PC age, watching him try

00:19:22 ◼   ► to use a word processor on a Mac just makes me want to tear my hair out because all of

00:19:27 ◼   ► his cursor movement he does with the mouse.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And I'm like, "See these keys on the keyboard with the arrows on them?

00:19:34 ◼   ► I swear to you, they will move the insertion point one character easier than you, finding

00:19:38 ◼   ► where the mouse is, steering your –" because he's not good with the mouse either – "steering

00:19:42 ◼   ► your cursor over, moving it over two characters."

00:19:44 ◼   ► like, "Just use the mouse." You don't even say, like, "Option or Command arrows." "Just

00:19:48 ◼   ► plain use the arrow key." Like, it is so much faster. And "Forward Delete" and just, like,

00:19:52 ◼   ► these amazing technologies that, like, watching him try to do text editing, because all he's

00:19:56 ◼   ► ever used to is the terrible text editing on iOS, where you have to hold your stupid

00:19:59 ◼   ► finger down, you get that magnifying glass. That also makes me want to tear my hair out.

00:20:03 ◼   ► Even after I show him the arrow keys, it's not like he's like, "Thanks, Dad. That's a

00:20:06 ◼   ► revelation. I'm so much more efficient." He's like, "No, I'll go back to the mouse." So

00:20:10 ◼   ► painful. I don't know how kids these days. Someday they'll learn about arrow keys.

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00:21:34 ◼   ► On pros leaving the Mac,

00:21:36 ◼   ► apparently somebody has done a little bit of polling

00:21:38 ◼   ► and research about whether or not designers

00:21:43 ◼   ► would ever consider, motion designers specifically,

00:21:45 ◼   ► whatever that means.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Would you ever consider switching to a PC?

00:21:48 ◼   ► Yes, 42%, maybe 40%, no, 18%.

00:21:53 ◼   ► - I have to listen to just to reinforce the idea

00:21:55 ◼   ► I said last show that like professional users

00:21:58 ◼   ► whose job is to do like motion graphics,

00:21:59 ◼   ► they're not Mac users,

00:22:00 ◼   ► they're motion graphic designers, right?

00:22:02 ◼   ► This is what they do.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I think this means like motion and video, you know, like basically video effects or

00:22:07 ◼   ► transitions during the news or whatever.

00:22:09 ◼   ► I think that's what this means.

00:22:10 ◼   ► This is what this website is about.

00:22:11 ◼   ► It's called schoolofmotion.com.

00:22:13 ◼   ► So it's entirely a professional website for people who do this for a living.

00:22:17 ◼   ► It's not about Macs.

00:22:18 ◼   ► It's not about computers.

00:22:19 ◼   ► It's not about what tool you use to do for a living.

00:22:20 ◼   ► It's like I want to do this for a living and then they talk about the tools that they use.

00:22:23 ◼   ► So they want to get the job done.

00:22:26 ◼   ► They don't necessarily care about any particular one.

00:22:28 ◼   ► So the survey was would you consider switching to PC?

00:22:31 ◼   ► So it shows in general the bent of the side.

00:22:33 ◼   ► like, "Oh, we mostly use Macs to do this," and we talk about programs that are available

00:22:36 ◼   ► on the Mac to do it. Like Motion, I think it's still for sale. Anyway, would you consider

00:22:42 ◼   ► switching to UBC? 82% are either yes or maybe. Only 18% say no. Because the bottom line is,

00:22:49 ◼   ► it's like, "Well, if that's the way I have to go to do Motion graphics, I will do it."

00:22:54 ◼   ► Because they're not going to change their profession because the computer they like

00:22:58 ◼   ► doesn't let them do what they do, they're going to change platforms.

00:23:01 ◼   ► So you know, and again, like I said on the last show, it doesn't mean that every company

00:23:06 ◼   ► that tries to make that transition will be successful.

00:23:08 ◼   ► It's very disruptive to have to buy all new hardware and learn new programs and buy new

00:23:12 ◼   ► licenses and deal with file formats and legacy data and all that stuff.

00:23:18 ◼   ► But in general, if a company doesn't serve a professional market like that, the market

00:23:23 ◼   ► will switch very quickly because the market is not sentimental.

00:23:27 ◼   ► people may be sentimental, even whole companies can be sentimental, but the market in terms

00:23:31 ◼   ► of "I need a bunch of people to do job X for me with computers" is not sentimental,

00:23:35 ◼   ► and if you don't do the job, someone else will, and whatever tool gets the job done.

00:23:39 ◼   ► [Marty] All right, so the next item in the list scares me deeply.

00:23:44 ◼   ► [Joe] Me too.

00:23:45 ◼   ► [Marty] It says, it says "Casey and Marco's homework," and I think I can speak for Marco

00:23:50 ◼   ► in saying, well, maybe that I don't remember, that might be just me, but I can speak for

00:23:54 ◼   ► Marco in saying, "I didn't do my homework."

00:23:56 ◼   ► So what was I supposed to have been doing?

00:23:59 ◼   ► That could always speak for me, Casey.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Right, that part I was confident.

00:24:02 ◼   ► It was the remembering part I wasn't as sure about.

00:24:04 ◼   ► I also don't remember what the homework was.

00:24:06 ◼   ► I felt bad because I was listening back to the show.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Well, so people were tweeting at us,

00:24:11 ◼   ► like I can't wait to hear Casey and Marco and their homework.

00:24:13 ◼   ► And by that point, I had forgotten

00:24:16 ◼   ► what I had assigned to you for homework.

00:24:18 ◼   ► But I remember doing it, but I did it mostly as a joke

00:24:21 ◼   ► because we know that you guys don't do any homework.

00:24:23 ◼   ► So when I was listening back to the show, as I do,

00:24:25 ◼   ► I was reminded of what the homework was.

00:24:27 ◼   ► But listeners, maybe they're new listeners.

00:24:29 ◼   ► They somehow thought that you were gonna actually

00:24:31 ◼   ► do this homework, A, remember what the homework was.

00:24:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:34 ◼   ► And B, come to the show ready to have the homework was--

00:24:38 ◼   ► - That's very optimistic.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, the homework was the idea of trying to say,

00:24:43 ◼   ► trying to figure out how you would distinguish

00:24:46 ◼   ► between a situation where the world is moving on from PCs

00:24:50 ◼   ► and we are just being left behind because we're dinosaurs,

00:24:53 ◼   ► or a situation where Apple is foolishly abandoning the Mac

00:24:56 ◼   ► market, even though the concept of a PC-style computer

00:25:01 ◼   ► has many, many years to go, and Apple is making a mistake.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And the idea from the perspective of someone

00:25:06 ◼   ► who loves a Mac, those can both look the same from the inside.

00:25:09 ◼   ► What might you look for?

00:25:11 ◼   ► What might you look for from the inside

00:25:13 ◼   ► to try to distinguish those two situations?

00:25:16 ◼   ► Is there something-- because they feel the same,

00:25:18 ◼   ► and they look the same, but is there some kind of thing

00:25:21 ◼   ► could look at to say, "Okay, well, if it was the case that we were being left behind as

00:25:25 ◼   ► dinosaurs, we would see this, but if it turns out that Apple's actually making a mistake,

00:25:28 ◼   ► we would see that instead. Is there anything we can look for to let us know which of those

00:25:33 ◼   ► two things are?" I couldn't think of anything on the show, and so I signed it as homework

00:25:37 ◼   ► and you two probably forgot about it, but I don't suppose you have any new interesting

00:25:40 ◼   ► thoughts on it now.

00:25:41 ◼   ► - Not really. I mean, I don't really care what the difference there is. I want what

00:25:45 ◼   ► I want, and if Apple's not going to provide it, I'm going to yell about it.

00:25:48 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I mean, that's true. I'm not saying you don't have to yell, I'm just saying, like,

00:25:51 ◼   ► I think it's interesting to, because I am interested in whether, it's the most difficult

00:25:56 ◼   ► to be objective about something that you care deeply about, but it makes you kind of an

00:26:03 ◼   ► enemy of progress if, you know, if the, whatever, the buggy whip sales or whatever, it's like,

00:26:10 ◼   ► you know, or as Casey was saying, the stick shift thing where if, you know, are you using

00:26:17 ◼   ► your influence to actually stop the future from coming or are you right and that's not

00:26:21 ◼   ► actually the future and really Apple's just doing something dumb. And I think it makes

00:26:24 ◼   ► a difference because I don't want to use all my power and influence and arguing skills

00:26:30 ◼   ► to try to hold back progress, right? So I would like to know if I am, you know, not

00:26:36 ◼   ► that I'm not going to be upset about it, but I would like to know if I am actually the

00:26:40 ◼   ► enemy of progress here by clinging to the idea of the personal computer, right? And

00:26:45 ◼   ► And so I'm interested in being able to determine what the situation is.

00:26:50 ◼   ► Now I feel like I'm not particularly strongly on either side of this, so I don't think this

00:26:56 ◼   ► is for me personally a situation and maybe Marco doesn't care, but I think it is a thing

00:27:02 ◼   ► worth considering for all, not just for silly New York and the Mac things, but for all things

00:27:07 ◼   ► of this type, especially as we get older.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Very often what you really don't want is for things to be different than you're used to.

00:27:14 ◼   ► It's very easy to decide that your desire to not have things change trumps everything

00:27:22 ◼   ► else.

00:27:23 ◼   ► And that's not, you know, I believe in progress and I constantly want to make sure that I

00:27:29 ◼   ► am not slowly shifting to the opposite side of progress because when you see that from

00:27:35 ◼   ► the outside, when you see somebody who is an obvious enemy of progress and doesn't realize

00:27:39 ◼   ► it, it's a pitiable situation and I never want to be in that situation.

00:27:42 ◼   ► - Well, I think it's somewhat useful to look around

00:27:47 ◼   ► and to see like, all right, I have these opinions

00:27:51 ◼   ► on how the types of work that I do,

00:27:54 ◼   ► the types of problems that I need to solve,

00:27:56 ◼   ► how these things should or need to be done.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Obviously, one of the biggest things you could say is,

00:28:01 ◼   ► well, look around at other people who have similar problems.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Are they insisting on the same requirements?

00:28:06 ◼   ► Are they doing things that way?

00:28:09 ◼   ► Or did they move to something else a long time ago

00:28:12 ◼   ► and you didn't, and they are now getting along just fine

00:28:15 ◼   ► without doing the same kinds of things that you wanna do,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but in the new quote progress way.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Obviously, it's hard to make this apply to everything,

00:28:26 ◼   ► and looking around, it's hard for people

00:28:29 ◼   ► to have a lot of good data on what a lot of people

00:28:32 ◼   ► are doing, 'cause mostly it's just anecdotal.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Well, I look around and I see the other people

00:28:36 ◼   ► in my office are doing this, or my parents are doing this,

00:28:39 ◼   ► or my kids are doing this, or whatever.

00:28:41 ◼   ► you could look at, or you have a few friends you can look at,

00:28:44 ◼   ► but most people have a pretty small sample group

00:28:46 ◼   ► they can draw from for that kind of analysis.

00:28:49 ◼   ► But I think sometimes that's enough.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I think if you can look around and you can see,

00:28:55 ◼   ► am I the last person doing this this way?

00:28:57 ◼   ► Then that's probably a sign

00:29:00 ◼   ► that you are on the wrong side of things.

00:29:02 ◼   ► But if there's still, if what you are defending

00:29:06 ◼   ► is still done by what seems like the majority of people

00:29:11 ◼   ► who do that kind of thing, then you might still be wrong.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Like you might be at the very beginning of a wave

00:29:17 ◼   ► and just everyone else hasn't realized it yet either,

00:29:20 ◼   ► but chances are you're probably at least a little bit right.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Chances are that you're probably on the right side of that,

00:29:26 ◼   ► at least for now.

00:29:27 ◼   ► It might be something that's really forward looking

00:29:29 ◼   ► that everyone's missing, but that doesn't happen very often.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Everyone thinks it happens a lot,

00:29:34 ◼   ► but it doesn't happen very often in reality.

00:29:37 ◼   ► - I was actually having an interesting conversation

00:29:40 ◼   ► with a friend of mine earlier tonight

00:29:42 ◼   ► about whether or not, well, he said to me something

00:29:47 ◼   ► I thought was very interesting.

00:29:50 ◼   ► And he said, the Mac, or not the Mac, excuse me,

00:29:53 ◼   ► desktop OSs are a solved problem.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And I think he was being a little bit,

00:29:59 ◼   ► I don't know if dramatic's the right word,

00:30:00 ◼   ► but he was kind of playing up his point of view

00:30:02 ◼   ► little bit, right, to make a point. But he was saying, you know, desktop OSes are a solved

00:30:07 ◼   ► problem. And at first I was like, what? No. God, no. What are you talking about? But as

00:30:14 ◼   ► I thought about it, I still disagree with him. And again, I think he was just making

00:30:18 ◼   ► the point to kind of play devil's advocate. But I understand where he's coming from in

00:30:23 ◼   ► that if you look at what do we want from a desktop OS? And he asked me that actually.

00:30:31 ◼   ► and what I said to him was,

00:30:32 ◼   ► I just want it not to be ignored, man.

00:30:34 ◼   ► Like, I just want progress.

00:30:36 ◼   ► But if you look at it, there's been progress.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Like, Siri doesn't really do anything for me on the desktop,

00:30:43 ◼   ► but that's progress, that's a big deal.

00:30:45 ◼   ► And that's just a single data point,

00:30:47 ◼   ► but it's an example of things that are happening.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Everyone has been moaning lately

00:30:53 ◼   ► about how Messages hasn't been touched on Sierra.

00:30:56 ◼   ► That's just not right.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Like, the rich previews, or however you phrase it,

00:31:00 ◼   ► where for example, you paste a link to a tweet

00:31:04 ◼   ► and you see the tweet in the messages window.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Like granted, I wish I had sticker support in Sierra.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Like I totally do.

00:31:13 ◼   ► I don't know that I would use it that often,

00:31:14 ◼   ► but I just wish I had the support for it, right?

00:31:16 ◼   ► But even something as arguably silly

00:31:21 ◼   ► as rich previews and messages

00:31:23 ◼   ► makes a world of difference and that's progress.

00:31:26 ◼   ► And so to me, I think just not even necessarily

00:31:30 ◼   ► bringing iOS into macOS, but just having that continued incremental improvement, that's

00:31:36 ◼   ► all I really want from a desktop OS right now.

00:31:39 ◼   ► And to that end, my friend was kind of right that in a large way, it's kind of a solved

00:31:45 ◼   ► problem.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Now, in the next breath, I'll tell you, well, is it really a solved problem?

00:31:47 ◼   ► Look at the touch bar.

00:31:48 ◼   ► This is a brand new paradigm that just came out.

00:31:50 ◼   ► We don't really know what we're doing with that.

00:31:51 ◼   ► So obviously, this is a very shaky argument.

00:31:54 ◼   ► But when you compare that to iOS, where there's plenty of work left to be done, certainly

00:32:01 ◼   ► iOS is in many ways the more interesting platform.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Now I'm not necessarily saying interesting to me.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I'm not saying interesting to everyone, because personally, I still like the Mac.

00:32:11 ◼   ► I still prefer the Mac.

00:32:12 ◼   ► We went over this either last episode or the episode before.

00:32:16 ◼   ► But there's a lot more progress to be made.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And I look at people like Ben Brooks, I look at Vitici, and I look at Mike Hurley, and

00:32:22 ◼   ► And I see them doing everything in their jobs, or nearly everything, on iOS devices, and

00:32:29 ◼   ► I come to kind of what Jon was saying a minute ago.

00:32:32 ◼   ► Am I the one that's telling everyone to get off their, get off my lawn?

00:32:35 ◼   ► Like am I the one that's really holding on to the past?

00:32:39 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that is the case, but I am definitely wondering.

00:32:42 ◼   ► And to more directly answer Jon's question, how do we know which one of these it is?

00:32:47 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:32:48 ◼   ► But right now I can tell you that it seems to me like there are some pretty direct ways

00:32:57 ◼   ► to accomplish things on the Mac.

00:33:01 ◼   ► And I can't think of a great example off the top of my head, but you can accomplish a lot

00:33:05 ◼   ► of things on the Mac directly, where in iOS you need to like daisy-chain seven different

00:33:10 ◼   ► apps to make the same operation happen.

00:33:14 ◼   ► And that doesn't mean that iOS is wrong, but to me, as long as that's still the case, as

00:33:19 ◼   ► long as you still have to write a custom workflow to get something to happen in the workflow

00:33:23 ◼   ► app, which by the way, is truly mind-boggling amazing, but as long as that's how you get

00:33:27 ◼   ► things done, like that is the official way to get things done on iOS, I don't think that

00:33:33 ◼   ► the Mac is dead quite yet.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And I'm not even talking about writing code or anything like that, I'm just talking about

00:33:39 ◼   ► general things that professionals do.

00:33:42 ◼   ► You can define professionals, professional podcasters, as professional project managers,

00:33:46 ◼   ► as CMOs, whatever Ben Brooks' title is, I don't even remember anymore.

00:33:50 ◼   ► But if they're jumping through hoops in order to get their work done, even if they don't

00:33:54 ◼   ► necessarily feel like it's jumping through hoops, it's still daisy-chaining a bunch of

00:33:58 ◼   ► different steps together.

00:33:59 ◼   ► As long as that's still a thing, I don't think the Mac is dead.

00:34:01 ◼   ► But when that stops being a thing, or it becomes even easier to kind of daisy-chain all these

00:34:06 ◼   ► things and you're out writing custom workflows because apps are supporting it, then I start

00:34:10 ◼   ► to wonder, "Ugh, maybe I'm the old man here after all."

00:34:14 ◼   ► - Well, this is why I think it's important

00:34:16 ◼   ► to really make these observational comparisons,

00:34:20 ◼   ► which I guess are called observations,

00:34:22 ◼   ► on people who do the same kind of work that you do, right?

00:34:26 ◼   ► Like, people you mentioned are podcasters and writers,

00:34:30 ◼   ► and the podcasters all still use Macs to podcast with,

00:34:35 ◼   ► not all podcasters, but the ones you mentioned,

00:34:38 ◼   ► and a writer can get away with using iOS only or primarily

00:34:43 ◼   ► a lot more easily than a programmer can today.

00:34:46 ◼   ► So I think once people, you and I, the three of us,

00:34:52 ◼   ► are all programmers, once a whole bunch of programmers

00:34:56 ◼   ► dump their PCs and Macs and do all of their work on iOS,

00:35:01 ◼   ► then I think we have to start looking, okay,

00:35:04 ◼   ► there's a thing here, we should consider this,

00:35:06 ◼   ► we should pay attention to this,

00:35:08 ◼   ► and maybe we are wrong at that point.

00:35:09 ◼   ► But until that happens, which might never come,

00:35:13 ◼   ► again, I wanna be very careful here in how I phrase this.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Like, you said, like, the Mac is dead,

00:35:20 ◼   ► and the Mac isn't dead until this happens.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And a lot of people, you know, you phrase these things

00:35:25 ◼   ► in a way that presents them as an inevitable future.

00:35:28 ◼   ► But I do wanna be clear here that when I talk about this,

00:35:31 ◼   ► I'm not necessarily considering this an inevitable future.

00:35:36 ◼   ► the future, I mean, obviously OS's eventually do die

00:35:40 ◼   ► and fall out of favor and fall out of use and maintenance,

00:35:43 ◼   ► but I am still not yet convinced

00:35:46 ◼   ► that the PC style operating system is destined

00:35:49 ◼   ► to be sidelined and killed in favor

00:35:53 ◼   ► of the mobile style operating system

00:35:55 ◼   ► within the foreseeable future.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Like, eventually on an infinite time scale it might happen,

00:35:59 ◼   ► but I don't see this as the obvious foretold future

00:36:04 ◼   ► that is certain to happen.

00:36:06 ◼   ► But anyway, I think you really have to just look at

00:36:09 ◼   ► people who do the kind of work you do.

00:36:11 ◼   ► And most of the people who are talking about

00:36:14 ◼   ► going iOS only or iOS being the inevitable future,

00:36:18 ◼   ► most of these people are writers and analysts

00:36:22 ◼   ► and executives, and that's fine,

00:36:25 ◼   ► and there's a lot of people who that will be fine for,

00:36:28 ◼   ► but if you start talking to people who do different

00:36:30 ◼   ► kinds of things with their computers,

00:36:32 ◼   ► including things that we all, that all three of us do,

00:36:35 ◼   ► then you start very quickly to hit limits of like,

00:36:37 ◼   ► oh well you kinda can't do that on iOS yet.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Or that's really difficult and clunky to do on iOS.

00:36:43 ◼   ► I don't think you can look at a bunch of people

00:36:45 ◼   ► who professionally write as their main job

00:36:49 ◼   ► and say like, well, they're all using an iPad,

00:36:52 ◼   ► so therefore I should be using an iPad.

00:36:54 ◼   ► You should be more concerned if people

00:36:57 ◼   ► who do the kinds of things you do,

00:36:59 ◼   ► like programming, if they switch.

00:37:01 ◼   ► and that's when you should pay attention.

00:37:03 ◼   ► - I largely agree with you, but I don't think it's fair

00:37:07 ◼   ► to classify Federico Mike and Ben Brooks

00:37:10 ◼   ► always simply writers.

00:37:11 ◼   ► I mean, I think they're doing--

00:37:12 ◼   ► - I didn't say simply.

00:37:13 ◼   ► That's important.

00:37:16 ◼   ► - Okay, well--

00:37:16 ◼   ► - It's a job that is very amenable to iOS primary

00:37:21 ◼   ► or iOS only work, and there are a lot of jobs

00:37:24 ◼   ► for which that's the case,

00:37:25 ◼   ► but there's a lot where it isn't also.

00:37:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess my point is that I don't wanna paint

00:37:31 ◼   ► the image because I can hear Mike Hurley and Federico screaming at us from the future.

00:37:36 ◼   ► It's not that all they do is write. They're doing sometimes relatively intense spreadsheet

00:37:43 ◼   ► work. I mean, look at the quarterly earnings reports that Federico farts out in the span

00:37:48 ◼   ► of like four seconds because of all the workflows that he's built. And Mike and Steven Hackett

00:37:54 ◼   ► are, you know, billing or invoicing advertisers and doing all sorts of like traditional business-y

00:38:00 ◼   ► things. So I don't, I agree with you that it is mostly writer-like things on the surface,

00:38:08 ◼   ► but there's a lot more to it when you start digging in. But that doesn't negate your point

00:38:12 ◼   ► that these people, with the exception perhaps of Federico actually, these people are not

00:38:16 ◼   ► developers. They're not writing code, well except Federico, on their devices.

00:38:20 ◼   ► I mean Federico's an outlier in a lot of ways.

00:38:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree, I agree.

00:38:25 ◼   ► But yeah, it's not the sort of thing that the three of us do

00:38:28 ◼   ► but I don't want to discount it in summary

00:38:30 ◼   ► as legitimate work that is more than just

00:38:34 ◼   ► writing prose on a piece of paper, that's all.

00:38:36 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, no, and I never said legitimate or simple.

00:38:38 ◼   ► Like I'm not saying these,

00:38:40 ◼   ► I'm not characterizing it this way.

00:38:42 ◼   ► It's just different software needs

00:38:44 ◼   ► and different things you need from your computing devices

00:38:46 ◼   ► and different levels of flexibility and access

00:38:50 ◼   ► to things like files and inter-program communication

00:38:54 ◼   ► and the integration of lots of things

00:38:56 ◼   ► within the same data set like what you need with programming

00:38:59 ◼   ► and like, you know, there are certain strengths

00:39:01 ◼   ► and weaknesses to both OS styles,

00:39:04 ◼   ► but again, you know, I think when people

00:39:07 ◼   ► who do the kinds of things you do are switching in mass,

00:39:10 ◼   ► that's when to pay attention.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Before that happens and unless that happens,

00:39:15 ◼   ► I don't think you need to be worried too much

00:39:18 ◼   ► that you are the dinosaur holding back progress.

00:39:20 ◼   ► Also, it's quite impressive that Jon thinks

00:39:22 ◼   ► that we can hold back progress.

00:39:24 ◼   ► - Well, no, I'm just saying, like,

00:39:25 ◼   ► what are you spending your time doing?

00:39:26 ◼   ► 'Cause like I said, if you see somebody yelling against it,

00:39:28 ◼   ► even if they don't actually do anything,

00:39:31 ◼   ► it's not, it seems like they're wasting their time

00:39:34 ◼   ► and it's a sad situation where they don't realize

00:39:36 ◼   ► that the world is passing them by.

00:39:38 ◼   ► One more item on this that I think about

00:39:40 ◼   ► is sort of the second level version of checking yourself,

00:39:44 ◼   ► which is more focused on Apple, the company,

00:39:48 ◼   ► and less focused on whether what the future of computing is.

00:39:55 ◼   ► And that is the question of whether it's important for Apple to be in the personal computer market.

00:40:04 ◼   ► So even if you see everything that Marco said, like, OK, well, people doing these types of

00:40:08 ◼   ► jobs still need a PC or whatever.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Is it the best thing for the company called Apple?

00:40:14 ◼   ► Does it need to be in the PC market?

00:40:16 ◼   ► And that's where we talk about, "Oh, well they need the Macs to develop for iOS.

00:40:19 ◼   ► What if they have a development environment on iPads?

00:40:21 ◼   ► Well, it's not the same, blah, blah, blah.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Could you develop iOS applications on PCs?"

00:40:25 ◼   ► That's the next question is, even if you stipulate PCs aren't going away anytime soon, should

00:40:30 ◼   ► Apple continue to sell PCs?

00:40:32 ◼   ► Is the Mac only hanging around for old time's sake and tradition and affection, but it would

00:40:41 ◼   ► be better for the company to allow all the people who develop for iOS to do so on a platform

00:40:48 ◼   ► that someone else maintains and really in us arguing for Apple to say in the market

00:40:54 ◼   ► really we're just trying to like you know I mean we've made the argument times that

00:40:57 ◼   ► like that every every other alternative is worse so we would be sad but from the perspective

00:41:02 ◼   ► of Apple the company they may say yes every we agree every alternative is worse than the

00:41:07 ◼   ► But the Mac is no longer worth the money for us to invest in and rather than letting a limp along with us never updating

00:41:13 ◼   ► Our stuff and you being all mad about it

00:41:15 ◼   ► Why don't we just get out of that business the same way we get out of printers and Wi-Fi hubs and whatever the hell else?

00:41:20 ◼   ► They're not in and won't that be refreshing we can finally concentrate on the thing we do best

00:41:25 ◼   ► Which is the iPhone with some ancillary iOS type things and blah blah blah blah blah

00:41:30 ◼   ► I I think you know obviously I disagree with that or whatever

00:41:33 ◼   ► But that's, I still keep it in mind as the second possibility.

00:41:38 ◼   ► The first being that, you know, we're on the wrong side of history.

00:41:41 ◼   ► And the second is we're on the right side of history, but just because we love Apple

00:41:45 ◼   ► and just because it's the best, it would actually be better for the company Apple

00:41:49 ◼   ► to get out of this business so it could concentrate on the other stuff, which again,

00:41:53 ◼   ► I don't buy, but I still entertain that as a thought experiment that I revisit to make

00:41:58 ◼   ► sure that it's not the case, because that can sneak up on you too, where you're like,

00:42:01 ◼   ► You feel so strongly that you're right that like look everybody who is editing video is doing it on a big powerful personal computer

00:42:06 ◼   ► First of all, we just can't go away. I'm a video editor. I need to edit video

00:42:09 ◼   ► I look at all the other people who are adding video and no one's doing on an iPad clearly the PC is a thing and

00:42:14 ◼   ► Then to make the leap therefore Apple needs to make a new Mac Pro

00:42:17 ◼   ► Does Apple need to make a Mac Pro or do you just need to switch to Windows and be sad like, you know?

00:42:21 ◼   ► Because again pros will use whatever they have to use to get the job done and the more like an appliance

00:42:27 ◼   ► This is what's talking about when Marco was talking about like getting the surface studio

00:42:30 ◼   ► The more you use a computer like an appliance to get your job done as a professional the less tied you are

00:42:37 ◼   ► Effectively if not emotionally two of the particular platform are using so if you're just gonna be in Lightroom all day and the surface studio

00:42:43 ◼   ► Is the best you know?

00:42:45 ◼   ► Dedicated Lightroom appliance you go into the office sit down in front and all you do is Lightroom Lightroom Lightroom all day long

00:42:49 ◼   ► Maybe that is better than any solution Apple has to offer and maybe Apple staying in that business is just some sentimental thing that you

00:42:56 ◼   ► you care about, but realistically speaking,

00:42:58 ◼   ► we would all be much happier if Apple got out of it

00:43:00 ◼   ► and stopped making that line of computers entirely,

00:43:02 ◼   ► and you just sat down in front of your server studio

00:43:03 ◼   ► and gave that business to Microsoft,

00:43:05 ◼   ► some company that is actually interested in pursuing it.

00:43:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, as soon as Apple starts being managed

00:43:10 ◼   ► by the numbers that way, they're going to find themselves,

00:43:13 ◼   ► I think, in a very boring and slowly declining place,

00:43:18 ◼   ► whether the numbers suggest so or not.

00:43:20 ◼   ► That is a very, very fast way to become Microsoft

00:43:22 ◼   ► with under Steve Ballmer.

00:43:23 ◼   ► I'm telling, like that's, you know,

00:43:25 ◼   ► There was this wonderful Steve Jobs video

00:43:29 ◼   ► that floated around on Reddit a couple weeks ago

00:43:31 ◼   ► about how it takes like five years to realize

00:43:34 ◼   ► when the bit flips and you start making computers

00:43:38 ◼   ► just to make money and not to make better computers

00:43:40 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I'm probably butchering it.

00:43:42 ◼   ► - He also said he would milk the Mac for all it's worth

00:43:44 ◼   ► and move on to the next big thing.

00:43:45 ◼   ► And guess what?

00:43:46 ◼   ► The Mac is not like an analogy.

00:43:48 ◼   ► He was talking about specifically the Mac.

00:43:50 ◼   ► The Mac we're talking about now.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Milk it for all it's worth and move on to the next thing.

00:43:52 ◼   ► And it's clear he thought the next thing

00:43:54 ◼   ► the iPhone and the iPad and it's pretty clear the next thing is the iPhone and iPad, but

00:43:58 ◼   ► we're still making Macs. So in some ways it would be like pursuing your passion, not continuing

00:44:02 ◼   ► to make the Mac just because you've always made it. If the company itself is enthusiastic

00:44:06 ◼   ► about iOS devices only, then continuing to make Macs in a disappointing way. You know,

00:44:12 ◼   ► it's not as if like, oh, well, you're just going to go if you're going to go by the numbers,

00:44:15 ◼   ► you're like, oh, I should go where the big business is. But maybe the passion is just

00:44:18 ◼   ► not in it anymore for the Macs. Maybe they see it as a declining business they're not

00:44:21 ◼   ► interested in and isn't it better for all of us to divorce this dysfunctional relationship,

00:44:27 ◼   ► stop making the Mac, force everybody to go to Windows or whatever, which will force more

00:44:31 ◼   ► money into that market that will hopefully motivate Microsoft to make the Surface Studio

00:44:35 ◼   ► better.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Again, I'm not recommending any of this.

00:44:37 ◼   ► These are all thought experiments and all things that I revisit.

00:44:40 ◼   ► I revisit and mostly reject, but if you never revisit them, they'll sneak up on you.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Well, but here's the problem with this thinking.

00:44:48 ◼   ► So you start running the company by the numbers

00:44:50 ◼   ► and you think, well, it'll be fine,

00:44:52 ◼   ► we'll let the Mac languish or we'll kill it

00:44:55 ◼   ► because it's not where we wanna go or whatever,

00:44:58 ◼   ► whatever the reason, doesn't matter.

00:45:00 ◼   ► - But it's not by the numbers

00:45:00 ◼   ► 'cause they're not passionate about it.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It's the past and they're passionate about the future.

00:45:04 ◼   ► So they're running it by their passion.

00:45:05 ◼   ► They're not being a slave to the past.

00:45:07 ◼   ► They're saying what we're interested in is, I don't know,

00:45:09 ◼   ► maybe they're interested in AR or whatever,

00:45:11 ◼   ► but maybe they're not interested in the Mac anymore.

00:45:13 ◼   ► So I would say it's the opposite of running it by the numbers

00:45:15 ◼   ► because the numbers would tell you,

00:45:16 ◼   ► why throw away $22 billion business, right?

00:45:18 ◼   ► That's free money, why are you throwing that away?

00:45:20 ◼   ► You say, we're throwing it away

00:45:22 ◼   ► so we can concentrate more fully

00:45:23 ◼   ► on the thing that we really believe is the future,

00:45:25 ◼   ► which is the opposite of Steve Ballmer.

00:45:26 ◼   ► Steve Ballmer would keep the Mac going forever

00:45:29 ◼   ► and just do exactly what the customers wanted

00:45:30 ◼   ► forever and ever as the rest of the world moves on.

00:45:33 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:45:34 ◼   ► I feel like that's more of the Steve Ballmer way.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - You're right, Apple would definitely not

00:45:36 ◼   ► keep selling the same products forever.

00:45:38 ◼   ► - No, I mean, like in terms of like,

00:45:40 ◼   ► of trying to do what that market wants exactly.

00:45:43 ◼   ► Like they would be giving us Big Macs with lots of ports and, you know, constantly revising

00:45:47 ◼   ► them and just sat like making them satisfied in the way that like, you know, IBM mainframe

00:45:52 ◼   ► customers are satisfied.

00:45:53 ◼   ► The IBM will continue to make mainframes for its mainframe customers and give them exactly

00:45:57 ◼   ► what they want.

00:45:58 ◼   ► All the while, the whole rest of the world is moving on from mainframes.

00:46:01 ◼   ► But they don't know.

00:46:02 ◼   ► They're like, "It's fine.

00:46:03 ◼   ► They keep making us better and better mainframes and we love mainframes."

00:46:05 ◼   ► And they wake up one day and the entire world has moved on.

00:46:08 ◼   ► They're like, "Wait, there's only like 10 of us left?"

00:46:11 ◼   ► But we were so happy for all these years,

00:46:12 ◼   ► and we were happy to give IBM all this money,

00:46:14 ◼   ► and they kept making these awesome mainframes from us,

00:46:16 ◼   ► and the world has moved on past you, right?

00:46:18 ◼   ► So I feel like that's more of a Ballmer thing.

00:46:21 ◼   ► - Fair, but everything you're saying about the Mac,

00:46:26 ◼   ► what happens when they apply

00:46:28 ◼   ► that exact same logic to the iPhone?

00:46:31 ◼   ► - Well, they can.

00:46:33 ◼   ► I mean, if they're no longer passionate about the iPhone

00:46:36 ◼   ► and they think the next big thing is something else,

00:46:38 ◼   ► then they should, like, it's exactly the same thing

00:46:40 ◼   ► Steve Jobs saying like milk the Mac for all it's worth move on to the next big thing.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Eventually it's milk the iPhone for all it's worth move on to the next big thing because

00:46:47 ◼   ► if you don't someone else will. Like someone else will eat your lunch if you don't eat

00:46:50 ◼   ► you know cannibalizing your business. Apple is the one who cannibalized its own iPod sales.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Apple didn't cannibalize iPod sales. The sales curve for iPods would look like the same big

00:46:59 ◼   ► hump with spikes on it for the holidays. It would look exactly the same but someone else

00:47:03 ◼   ► would have replaced it. Whether it's Samsung or Microsoft or whoever would have won that

00:47:07 ◼   ► war, if Apple didn't cannibalize the iPod, someone else would. So it's not like Apple

00:47:10 ◼   ► banked the company on the iPod and said it's going to be iPod forever. Remember when people

00:47:14 ◼   ► were saying the iPod is going to dwarf the Mac and now Apple is just an iPod company

00:47:18 ◼   ► and the Apple store was the iPod store? Apple is the one who cannibalized the iPod. It turns

00:47:22 ◼   ► out the iPod arc was obviously shorter than we think the iPhone arc is going to be. The

00:47:26 ◼   ► iPhone arc could last our whole lives for all we know, or longer. But that's the challenge

00:47:32 ◼   ► of the innovator's dilemma and all that other crap. That's the challenge of business. And

00:47:36 ◼   ► The Mac in all of these graphs is this aberration that never goes up and never goes down, but

00:47:40 ◼   ► just keeps on trucking.

00:47:42 ◼   ► And I think there, you know, again, I'm not playing devil's advocate.

00:47:45 ◼   ► I'm just saying these are things that are worth thinking about.

00:47:48 ◼   ► I don't find them convincing.

00:47:49 ◼   ► If I had to make the argument, I would say Apple needs to continue making the Mac and

00:47:52 ◼   ► should do a much better job at it because the time has not come.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Because I mostly am on the same page as Marco.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Other people who are doing these tasks are not currently using anything that's not like

00:48:04 ◼   ► a PC.

00:48:05 ◼   ► PCs to do them. Like, they're not using Surface tablets, they're not using, at this point

00:48:09 ◼   ► they're still not using the Surface Studio, they're using PCs, whether they're Windows

00:48:13 ◼   ► PCs or Unix workstations running Maya or Macs, they're just not using iPads to do these jobs,

00:48:20 ◼   ► right? And that's, I think that is, you know, Marko didn't do his homework, but he came

00:48:24 ◼   ► up with a pretty reasonable last minute scribbling while the teachers come around and collecting

00:48:29 ◼   ► the papers. It's how I got through school. Yeah, I think that is a thing to look for.

00:48:34 ◼   ► You have to be careful because if you're just looking at the people who are like hanging

00:48:37 ◼   ► out in the same circles as you, then it's all like sort of self-selecting.

00:48:39 ◼   ► It's like, well, all my friends still use PCs, but maybe every kid graduating school

00:48:44 ◼   ► is doing, you know, like for example, digital video.

00:48:46 ◼   ► Like if every kid graduating film school is shooting digital video and editing digital

00:48:50 ◼   ► video and you're like, well, all my friends are still shooting on film, so film is never

00:48:53 ◼   ► going to die.

00:48:54 ◼   ► You're being blind.

00:48:55 ◼   ► You're missing it, right?

00:48:56 ◼   ► But I think in this case, for the jobs that we're talking about, certainly programming,

00:48:59 ◼   ► because I think we have a good view on that, not just for iOS and Mac programming, but

00:49:03 ◼   ► in all realms that serious programming is still done in PC style devices. Video editing

00:49:09 ◼   ► for the most part is still done in PC style devices, but you gotta watch the kids. Watch

00:49:12 ◼   ► the kids coming into film school. Are they editing their film school project on an iPad

00:49:18 ◼   ► or on a Surface Studio or on anything like that? That's sort of like the leading indicator

00:49:23 ◼   ► and that's the thing to watch for. I think right now the answer is that PC style computers

00:49:27 ◼   ► are still the thing to do. My big fear is that Apple decides that it's not worth them

00:49:31 ◼   ► being in the business. I don't particularly have a fear that in the near future the PC

00:49:36 ◼   ► style of computing is going to go away. I have a fear that the Apple personal computer,

00:49:41 ◼   ► meaning the Mac, is going to go away because Apple doesn't care about it or neglects it

00:49:45 ◼   ► to the point. And that's the worst case scenario where you still have to use a PC, but you

00:49:49 ◼   ► no longer get to choose the Mac because it's no longer any good for you.

00:49:53 ◼   ► That's when I switched to Linux.

00:49:55 ◼   ► (sighs)

00:49:56 ◼   ► - Gotta help us all.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Quick side note about that though, Jon.

00:50:00 ◼   ► I had some coworkers at the last gig

00:50:02 ◼   ► that did use Surface tablets to do their work,

00:50:06 ◼   ► like to write code, to do their work,

00:50:09 ◼   ► to do, that was their computer.

00:50:10 ◼   ► There were only a couple of them,

00:50:11 ◼   ► and I think by and large,

00:50:12 ◼   ► they kind of regretted their decision,

00:50:14 ◼   ► but in that sense, it is happening.

00:50:17 ◼   ► That is a thing that happens from time to time.

00:50:18 ◼   ► - Well, I think we call that,

00:50:19 ◼   ► I keep putting the Surface into it,

00:50:21 ◼   ► but I'm thinking more of like using the touch interface

00:50:23 ◼   ► to the Surface device, even more of the Surface Studio,

00:50:25 ◼   ► where you are touching the screen.

00:50:27 ◼   ► In many respects, the Surface Books and all that stuff,

00:50:30 ◼   ► they're just a convertible laptop.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Like it's muddled by the fact that Windows

00:50:34 ◼   ► is this unified platform.

00:50:36 ◼   ► But yeah, I have people at work who do programming stuff

00:50:38 ◼   ► on Surface too, but it's just a laptop at that point.

00:50:41 ◼   ► It's like a weird laptop with a bendy hinge,

00:50:44 ◼   ► and it's running Windows, and they're running terminal stuff

00:50:46 ◼   ► and they have a keyboard, and they have a trackpad

00:50:48 ◼   ► pointing device, and yeah, they also have a pen,

00:50:50 ◼   ► and yeah, it can kind of be a tablet,

00:50:51 ◼   ► But essentially they're using a laptop.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Like they have Windows with title bars and scroll bars.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Like it's confusing because of the way Microsoft has done

00:51:01 ◼   ► its unified OS strategy,

00:51:03 ◼   ► but I would still totally classify those as PC style

00:51:06 ◼   ► because it is very distinct from the iOS style.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Even when I see my daughter,

00:51:10 ◼   ► she's got like a keyboard, Logitech keyboard thing

00:51:12 ◼   ► for her iPad.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Even when she does form of laptop with her,

00:51:16 ◼   ► that's Wonder Twins for you.

00:51:17 ◼   ► You guys missed that show.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Anyway, when she makes a little laptop out of her iPad and her keyboard, it's still not

00:51:26 ◼   ► a laptop.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Yes, it looks like one.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Yes, there's a kind of a vertical-ish screen and a horizontal-ish keyboard, but there's

00:51:32 ◼   ► no pointer on her screen.

00:51:34 ◼   ► She's not using a trackpad.

00:51:35 ◼   ► There are no windows.

00:51:36 ◼   ► There are no scroll bars and scroll thumbs.

00:51:37 ◼   ► There's no menu bar along the top.

00:51:39 ◼   ► It is not a PC computing experience.

00:51:45 ◼   ► We live in a strange time.

00:51:46 ◼   ► We live in a strange transitional time,

00:51:47 ◼   ► but some things defy categorization,

00:51:50 ◼   ► but I think the salient points,

00:51:52 ◼   ► like what makes it a PC,

00:51:54 ◼   ► and what makes it a PC style computing environment,

00:51:57 ◼   ► are pretty clear.

00:51:58 ◼   ► For me, obviously it's all about Windows,

00:51:59 ◼   ► because what the hell,

00:52:01 ◼   ► imagine if the 28 inch Surface Studio did not have Windows,

00:52:06 ◼   ► like everything was full screen or split screen

00:52:09 ◼   ► like it does in the iPad.

00:52:10 ◼   ► We would say this is the biggest waste

00:52:12 ◼   ► of a 28 inch screen in the world,

00:52:14 ◼   ► unless you're only ever in one app

00:52:16 ◼   ► doing Lightroom all the time, then fine,

00:52:17 ◼   ► but for a general purpose computing device,

00:52:19 ◼   ► getting back to Marco's idea that you can do

00:52:21 ◼   ► more than one thing at a time,

00:52:22 ◼   ► a general purpose computing device

00:52:25 ◼   ► that can only show apps in full screen

00:52:26 ◼   ► on a 20-inch display is just a very wrong-headed idea,

00:52:30 ◼   ► and I would say that's not PC computing,

00:52:32 ◼   ► that's more like iOS.

00:52:33 ◼   ► - Here's a question.

00:52:34 ◼   ► In what product is Apple really stepping on the gas

00:52:40 ◼   ► and really firing on all cylinders?

00:52:42 ◼   ► - AirPods.

00:52:43 ◼   ► I know it's not a valid answer in this context,

00:52:46 ◼   ► but I cannot stop talking about how much I love my AirPods.

00:52:50 ◼   ► - I would say the iPhone.

00:52:51 ◼   ► I mean, I know, I think at last show,

00:52:53 ◼   ► I recently listened to it, so it's fresh in my mind,

00:52:55 ◼   ► and Marco said like, "Oh, the new iPhone 7,

00:52:58 ◼   ► "internally the changes aren't that big."

00:52:59 ◼   ► Like, look at the graphs, man.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Like, every part of this,

00:53:02 ◼   ► every part of this that can be better,

00:53:04 ◼   ► computing-wise and capacity-wise,

00:53:06 ◼   ► is better by leaps and bounds,

00:53:08 ◼   ► by like '90s-era PC leaps and bounds.

00:53:11 ◼   ► Like, it's not, the CPU is not just a little bit faster.

00:53:14 ◼   ► The GPU is not just a little bit faster.

00:53:16 ◼   ► The flash capacity is like the max is, you know,

00:53:19 ◼   ► isn't it double like you can only get 128 last year,

00:53:20 ◼   ► now you can get 256s.

00:53:22 ◼   ► It's fantastically better internal.

00:53:25 ◼   ► The only thing that's not better about it by,

00:53:30 ◼   ► oh, they're not standing on the gas,

00:53:31 ◼   ► it's like, oh, the case is the same shape.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And even there, they changed the surface

00:53:35 ◼   ► in such a way that Marco was saying

00:53:37 ◼   ► is his favorite product of last year,

00:53:39 ◼   ► because it made such a difference in day-to-day use.

00:53:43 ◼   ► So I still think iPhone is pedal to the metal,

00:53:46 ◼   ► and AirPods are part of that,

00:53:47 ◼   ► are part of their weird headphone thing,

00:53:49 ◼   ► which by the way has bitten me.

00:53:51 ◼   ► I don't have a USB-C laptop,

00:53:52 ◼   ► but I've been bitten by the headphones thing

00:53:54 ◼   ► like five times recently,

00:53:57 ◼   ► where I thought I had everything I needed

00:53:59 ◼   ► and was gonna plug a headphone in and realized,

00:54:02 ◼   ► even on the plane coming back,

00:54:03 ◼   ► I brought the adapter for me

00:54:04 ◼   ► to use my noise-canceling headphones,

00:54:05 ◼   ► but then my daughter wanted to use some headphones too

00:54:08 ◼   ► and plug in, it's like, oh, well, I only have one adapter.

00:54:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:11 ◼   ► Like you always think you have everything you need,

00:54:13 ◼   ► but here just use, oh, nevermind.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Or gone on a car trip and before,

00:54:18 ◼   ► and we're gonna plug, in my wife's old car,

00:54:21 ◼   ► she just had AUX in with like a headphone port,

00:54:23 ◼   ► and I brought my iPod with me, or my phone with me,

00:54:25 ◼   ► and we can listen to like the podcast

00:54:27 ◼   ► that I'm in the middle of,

00:54:28 ◼   ► and we get in the car and start driving away,

00:54:30 ◼   ► and I grab the little AUX cord from the center console

00:54:32 ◼   ► and pick it up and go, no.

00:54:33 ◼   ► There's no place I can plug that into my phone.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And of course I'm not carrying the adapter around with me.

00:54:39 ◼   ► So yeah, the struggle is real as they say.

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00:56:43 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:56:46 ◼   ► - All right, final bit of follow-up, speaking of cars.

00:56:49 ◼   ► - Still a follow-up.

00:56:51 ◼   ► - No, we're almost done.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Well, this is one of those episodes

00:56:53 ◼   ► where follow-up isn't exactly follow-up,

00:56:55 ◼   ► which is probably most episodes.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Anyway, Sam O'Balsamid, who is co-host

00:57:00 ◼   ► of the Wheel Bearings podcast, which,

00:57:02 ◼   ► if you ever wanted neutral, but with people

00:57:04 ◼   ► who actually knew what they were talking about,

00:57:06 ◼   ► you should look up Wheel Bearings.

00:57:07 ◼   ► It's pretty good. (laughing)

00:57:08 ◼   ► Anyway, he writes in to say,

00:57:10 ◼   ► "The 2016-2017 model year accords do indeed support

00:57:13 ◼   ► "both CarPlay and Android Auto, as do most new Hondas.

00:57:17 ◼   ► "The only Hondas that are still waiting

00:57:18 ◼   ► "for Android Auto and CarPlay update

00:57:19 ◼   ► "are the Fit and the HRV."

00:57:21 ◼   ► I'm not sure what that is.

00:57:22 ◼   ► I know the CRV, but not the HRV.

00:57:23 ◼   ► - You don't know what the HRV is?

00:57:25 ◼   ► Be glad it's terrible, but.

00:57:27 ◼   ► - Anyway, "The 2018 Odyssey is debuting

00:57:30 ◼   ► in a couple of weeks at the Detroit Auto Show. So that makes me think that Tina's car does

00:57:35 ◼   ► indeed have CarPlay, does it not?

00:57:39 ◼   ► So here's the question. I've never used CarPlay. I've seen pictures of it online, and I think

00:57:45 ◼   ► I've even seen screenshots of Marco's CarPlay stuff, and I've seen Marco's disembodied CarPlay

00:57:51 ◼   ► testing whatchapoos and things, right? But I don't know how CarPlay works. Do I have

00:57:56 ◼   ► to download an app onto my phone called CarPlay?

00:57:59 ◼   ► No.

00:58:00 ◼   ► - You think if I just plug a phone into my wife's car

00:58:03 ◼   ► with a wire, because we don't have the wireless version,

00:58:05 ◼   ► that something will happen on the screen

00:58:07 ◼   ► to indicate you are in CarPlay now?

00:58:10 ◼   ► - Apparently if you just plug it in,

00:58:12 ◼   ► there'll be one of those alerts, like a computer,

00:58:15 ◼   ► where it says, "Do you trust this car?"

00:58:16 ◼   ► Or something like that, and then magic happens.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Now, I've not witnessed this myself,

00:58:20 ◼   ► this is just real-time follow-up,

00:58:21 ◼   ► but that's what I'm being told.

00:58:23 ◼   ► - Do I trust this car?

00:58:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, last time Tina was saying

00:58:26 ◼   ► there was only uncertain trim levels.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Bottom line is this is like the Schrodinger's cat of CarPlay support.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Until I actually try it, her car both has CarPlay support and doesn't have CarPlay support.

00:58:37 ◼   ► But seriously, it had not occurred to me to think like, do I have to download an app,

00:58:42 ◼   ► and once I download the app do I do a thing, or is it just plugging it in?

00:58:45 ◼   ► And I think basically we've never actually plugged any of our iPhones into her car because

00:58:50 ◼   ► it's all been Bluetooth, so it could be that that's totally right as soon as I plug it

00:58:53 ◼   ► in.

00:58:54 ◼   ► Oh, Jon.

00:58:55 ◼   ► How do you not know this already?

00:58:56 ◼   ► That would be the first thing I tried.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - I've driven that car onto and off of the driveway

00:59:01 ◼   ► like twice, that's how far I've driven that car.

00:59:03 ◼   ► - Why don't you just go outside right now

00:59:05 ◼   ► and give it a shot?

00:59:06 ◼   ► I'm kind of not kidding.

00:59:08 ◼   ► I'm really not kidding.

00:59:09 ◼   ► - It won't take too long.

00:59:10 ◼   ► - Why don't you just go give it, it won't take too long,

00:59:11 ◼   ► it'll take just a minute.

00:59:13 ◼   ► - All right, I'll be back, hang on.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - So literally as I'm saying this,

00:59:18 ◼   ► Tina is sending me a text saying that it is not a thing.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Hold on.

00:59:25 ◼   ► - I'm looking up the HRV, it looks basically

00:59:28 ◼   ► like the Honda X1.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

00:59:31 ◼   ► Oh, standard on Accord EX, EXL, and Touring.

00:59:35 ◼   ► - Right, but I think she doesn't have the EX,

00:59:36 ◼   ► so I think it's optional for her trim.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Is it just not there, or was it optional?

00:59:40 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what we don't know.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - That I don't know.

00:59:43 ◼   ► What is it, Honda USA?

00:59:45 ◼   ► I hate that whenever you go to like Honda or Audi

00:59:48 ◼   ► or whatever, it's the corporate,

00:59:49 ◼   ► this is the most American thing I think I've ever said.

00:59:51 ◼   ► But why does it not go,

00:59:53 ◼   ► Why does it not go directly to America?

00:59:56 ◼   ► - It's just like in the country list dropdowns,

00:59:58 ◼   ► why are we not the first sign listed?

00:59:59 ◼   ► Like I know alphabetically we're not.

01:00:00 ◼   ► - Exactly, this is barbaric.

01:00:02 ◼   ► - Do I really have to scroll through like,

01:00:03 ◼   ► how likely is it that I'm actually from like,

01:00:05 ◼   ► you know, any of these other places?

01:00:07 ◼   ► Like just put the US on top for all the stupid,

01:00:09 ◼   ► arrogant Americans and put everything else below it.

01:00:12 ◼   ► - I am fully behind this.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Tina's saying there was no option.

01:00:17 ◼   ► It's, she does not have an EX, it's a sports special.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It was not an option.

01:00:21 ◼   ► there's basically no options, period, anyway.

01:00:23 ◼   ► - Well, I guess Jon went outside in the cold

01:00:25 ◼   ► in the winter for no reason.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Oh well.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I'm sure he won't be mad.

01:00:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:31 ◼   ► - I'm now getting yelled at by Tina

01:00:33 ◼   ► that nobody wants to believe her.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I did believe you, Tina.

01:00:36 ◼   ► - We just wanted to send Jon outside.

01:00:37 ◼   ► - Oh, that too.

01:00:38 ◼   ► This is basically every conversation

01:00:39 ◼   ► I've had with Aron ever.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Aron tells me this is not a thing,

01:00:43 ◼   ► or this is a thing.

01:00:44 ◼   ► No, you've gotta be wrong.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Oh, turns out you're right.

01:00:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:48 ◼   ► every conversation I've ever had with Aaron.

01:00:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I believe we have words for this.

01:00:53 ◼   ► One of the more charitable ones

01:00:54 ◼   ► is probably mansplaining.

01:00:56 ◼   ► - Oh, the magic of technology.

01:00:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:59 ◼   ► - All right, John.

01:01:00 ◼   ► - Here's what happened.

01:01:02 ◼   ► So I go to the car and I get all my stuff

01:01:04 ◼   ► and my cables and everything and I plug,

01:01:07 ◼   ► you know, the car turned on, I plug the thing in,

01:01:10 ◼   ► I wait to see something pop up on my phone screen,

01:01:13 ◼   ► nothing ever pops up, wait a couple seconds,

01:01:16 ◼   ► and I hear you two talking about what I'm doing right now.

01:01:20 ◼   ► Like talking about going to the car configurator,

01:01:23 ◼   ► the Honda website and stuff like that.

01:01:25 ◼   ► Because-- - Is it just Tina's phone

01:01:26 ◼   ► popped on Bluetooth? - Right, so Tina,

01:01:29 ◼   ► my wife is listening to the phone upstairs on Bluetooth

01:01:31 ◼   ► and the car is paired with her phone.

01:01:33 ◼   ► And so it start, for a second I'm like,

01:01:36 ◼   ► what in the world is going on?

01:01:38 ◼   ► - That is so amazing. - That's awesome.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Ah, the magic of Bluetooth.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Anyway, my result of the short experiment

01:01:43 ◼   ► was that plugging in the phone does nothing.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I was not prompted to do anything.

01:01:47 ◼   ► I couldn't find anything in any of the menus that mentioned CarPlay or anything about CarPlay.

01:01:51 ◼   ► I could connect my phone by Bluetooth, but that's not how CarPlay works.

01:01:53 ◼   ► It's not a Bluetooth audio thing.

01:01:56 ◼   ► So inconclusive results, but at the very least, merely plugging my phone in did nothing.

01:02:02 ◼   ► While you were gone, I'm pretty sure we found out that your wife was right the whole time,

01:02:05 ◼   ► and you didn't even need to go outside.

01:02:08 ◼   ► See, that's...

01:02:09 ◼   ► There you go.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Sam guy on the car podcast who knows something supposedly.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Your wife knows better.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I'm sure we'll get some feedback on this one.

01:02:18 ◼   ► Amazingly sometimes we don't know what we're talking about.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Really?

01:02:23 ◼   ► And this is why we used to do a car show kids.

01:02:27 ◼   ► People love when you don't know what you're talking about and you do a car podcast.

01:02:30 ◼   ► People really like that.

01:02:32 ◼   ► They think it's the best.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I reject this characterization.

01:02:34 ◼   ► I know a lot about cars.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I know a lot about what I was talking about.

01:02:37 ◼   ► You two keep saying that about yourselves, but I reject that.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Oh, God.

01:02:42 ◼   ► This episode is turning to be quite good.

01:02:46 ◼   ► I love how we just have no structure this week.

01:02:48 ◼   ► We did follow-up.

01:02:50 ◼   ► All those items were legit follow-up.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Mmm.

01:02:54 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:02:55 ◼   ► One of them was even homework.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Man, they went long. Sometimes follow-up goes long,

01:02:59 ◼   ► but that tends to happen after lots of stuff builds up

01:03:02 ◼   ► if we haven't recorded for a while.

01:03:04 ◼   ► The problematic part we have here is

01:03:07 ◼   ► as we transition to topics, go look what's lurking there.

01:03:10 ◼   ► The very first item, who put that in there?

01:03:13 ◼   ► Is that going to be Casey?

01:03:14 ◼   ► Did you put that in there?

01:03:15 ◼   ► Yes.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I don't think I want to talk about it, though.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:03:18 ◼   ► It's just like, it's the same thing we've been talking about for the past month on the

01:03:19 ◼   ► show.

01:03:20 ◼   ► I don't feel like, is it, like, I read parts of that article.

01:03:23 ◼   ► It's gone.

01:03:24 ◼   ► It's gone.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Yeah, you deleted it, but, um.

01:03:26 ◼   ► Oh, God.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Here we go.

01:03:28 ◼   ► Is there anything in that article that is not something that we've already talked about?

01:03:31 ◼   ► That's my only question.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Yeah, probably not.

01:03:33 ◼   ► So the article in question, hopefully we'll cut this from the show, but the article in

01:03:36 ◼   ► question is, uh, yeah, Chuck Von Rosspatch, uh, I've probably

01:03:40 ◼   ► pronounced that wrong, I apologize, but anyway, his Apple 2016 year in review, which, TLDR,

01:03:47 ◼   ► some things suck, some things don't, but...

01:03:49 ◼   ► It's a great post.

01:03:50 ◼   ► It is good.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's good.

01:03:52 ◼   ► It's totally good.

01:03:53 ◼   ► You know, he's expressing, in a much more succinct way, his position on the same issues

01:03:59 ◼   ► that we had talked about.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Yeah, "susinct" is not necessarily the word I would use.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Well, it's more succinct than, like, hours and hours of audio, but, like, you know, we're

01:04:05 ◼   ► We're both, we're all Mac fans, and we're all kind of experiencing some dissatisfaction

01:04:10 ◼   ► with the treatment of the Mac, and we've talked about it at length, and this was his take

01:04:13 ◼   ► on it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► And it was good, and it was articulate, and it was an expression of his opinion and his

01:04:17 ◼   ► desires and his hopes and dreams, and it was a good post.

01:04:20 ◼   ► But for the purposes of discussion on the show, I'm wondering if it is bringing any

01:04:23 ◼   ► new angle that we haven't already given our opinions on umpteen times.

01:04:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and since we'll be asked about it, um, god, who was it that wrote this?

01:04:33 ◼   ► Hold on one second.

01:04:35 ◼   ► - Chris Adamson?

01:04:36 ◼   ► - Chris Adamson, yes.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Chris Adamson's post.

01:04:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:39 ◼   ► - Also very good, although I honestly,

01:04:43 ◼   ► I don't know if the Mac Pro was the best choice there,

01:04:45 ◼   ► but we're seeing now from a lot of people

01:04:47 ◼   ► saying similar things.

01:04:48 ◼   ► This is not a coincidence, this is not an accident,

01:04:50 ◼   ► this is not a trend or people being wrong.

01:04:54 ◼   ► This is like legitimately, Apple is causing concern

01:04:58 ◼   ► in many of its customers and many of its best,

01:05:01 ◼   ► biggest fans and longest time customers.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And so, I think if I can summarize in a very quick way,

01:05:08 ◼   ► or at least try to put a cap on this for now,

01:05:11 ◼   ► 2017 is gonna be a very important year

01:05:14 ◼   ► for Apple to prove a lot of big things

01:05:17 ◼   ► to the market and to its customers.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Right now, there's a lot of things

01:05:23 ◼   ► where the answer from Apple so far

01:05:27 ◼   ► is either silence or just wait.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Wait 'til we see what we have next,

01:05:33 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:05:34 ◼   ► 2017, a lot of this stuff is coming due.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Like if 2017 passes through the whole year

01:05:40 ◼   ► and there isn't a major new iPhone design

01:05:44 ◼   ► and there isn't some answer to the Mac Pro

01:05:48 ◼   ► and there isn't maybe better quarterly earnings,

01:05:51 ◼   ► these are some pretty big things.

01:05:54 ◼   ► There have been bad signs on these fronts

01:05:56 ◼   ► for the last year or so, but everyone's like,

01:05:59 ◼   ► oh, next year or soon or this is gonna be out soon

01:06:02 ◼   ► or this is gonna be fixed soon,

01:06:03 ◼   ► or the next iPhone's gonna be great,

01:06:04 ◼   ► or those quarterly earnings were an anomaly.

01:06:07 ◼   ► All those promises are gonna be due this year.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And a year from now,

01:06:12 ◼   ► when we're presumably still having this podcast

01:06:14 ◼   ► and still doing follow-up,

01:06:15 ◼   ► we will see, were all of our concerns unfounded?

01:06:19 ◼   ► How well are all these complaints gonna age?

01:06:24 ◼   ► Are we all wrong?

01:06:25 ◼   ► Is Apple about to release over the course of the next year

01:06:29 ◼   ► amazing things that are gonna blow our minds

01:06:31 ◼   ► and we're going to feel good about the Mac again,

01:06:35 ◼   ► and we're gonna feel good about Apple's prospects again,

01:06:37 ◼   ► and we're gonna feel good about the iPhone design again,

01:06:39 ◼   ► all this stuff, and their number's gonna go up,

01:06:41 ◼   ► and everyone on the market's gonna be happy.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Is that really gonna happen this year?

01:06:44 ◼   ► It might, we don't know yet.

01:06:46 ◼   ► We'll find out, and I really hope things go better,

01:06:48 ◼   ► because frankly, if they don't,

01:06:51 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to find other stuff to talk about,

01:06:52 ◼   ► because I'm tired of being sad all the time

01:06:54 ◼   ► about all the stuff I love.

01:06:56 ◼   ► - Wargrove in the chat room had a good turn of phrase,

01:06:59 ◼   ► which I'm going to slightly improve.

01:07:01 ◼   ► 2017 year of Mac OS on the desktop.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Nice.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Pretty good, huh?

01:07:07 ◼   ► Nice.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Ooh.

01:07:09 ◼   ► So I know Marco wanted to put a capper on this,

01:07:12 ◼   ► but unfortunately the next item in the topic list

01:07:14 ◼   ► is the one tiny sliver of new angle on this, yes,

01:07:18 ◼   ► very old entire topic that I happened to--

01:07:22 ◼   ► that happened to occur to me and that I tweeted earlier today.

01:07:24 ◼   ► It was in response to Michael Sise.

01:07:26 ◼   ► He's had a series of articles on this whole same thing,

01:07:29 ◼   ► like so many other Mac bloggers,

01:07:30 ◼   ► and he's an old time Mac user,

01:07:32 ◼   ► and he's feeling all the same things.

01:07:34 ◼   ► And one of his posts was on finding an alternative

01:07:37 ◼   ► to what he calls Mac OS X.

01:07:40 ◼   ► But he's not on board with their naming, I guess.

01:07:43 ◼   ► And he links to Wesley Moore's post about this,

01:07:48 ◼   ► about trying to find,

01:07:49 ◼   ► I'm looking into different Linux distributions and stuff.

01:07:52 ◼   ► People are looking for alternatives for Mac OS X.

01:07:56 ◼   ► They're not looking for an escape patch,

01:07:58 ◼   ► but like at the very least,

01:08:00 ◼   ► trying to see what else is out there.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Like before I was happy using the Mac

01:08:04 ◼   ► and I wasn't even looking at all terms,

01:08:05 ◼   ► but now I'm starting to consider like,

01:08:06 ◼   ► hey, what else is out there?

01:08:07 ◼   ► How's Windows doing?

01:08:09 ◼   ► Is Linux any good?

01:08:10 ◼   ► Let me try a few different distributions, stuff like that.

01:08:13 ◼   ► And then Gruber also talked about it anyway.

01:08:15 ◼   ► So this Michael's slide post,

01:08:18 ◼   ► what I tweeted, I used the little quote tweet feature,

01:08:20 ◼   ► which I actually am starting to like

01:08:22 ◼   ► because it gives me room to actually write something

01:08:24 ◼   ► while also including their tweet.

01:08:25 ◼   ► - Welcome to like two years ago, Jon.

01:08:27 ◼   ► I know, I mean, my client has supported it,

01:08:30 ◼   ► the iOS version of Twitter, it's great,

01:08:31 ◼   ► it's totally up to date, but I'm still,

01:08:33 ◼   ► my habits are based on the old ways.

01:08:35 ◼   ► - Talk about like not knowing when to move on.

01:08:38 ◼   ► - No, I use it, but like my normal Twitter way

01:08:42 ◼   ► would be to like, I write a tweet

01:08:44 ◼   ► and then paste the last 20 characters,

01:08:46 ◼   ► be the shortened URL, right?

01:08:48 ◼   ► But by quoting, you get some characters back.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Anyway, what I tweeted was, "The last time Mac users

01:08:53 ◼   ► "were seriously passing around articles like this,"

01:08:55 ◼   ► articles like the one about finding alternatives,

01:08:57 ◼   ► was during the transition from macOS to Mac OS X.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And as I tweeted to someone else who had replied,

01:09:05 ◼   ► someone replied, "Oh, I can't wait for the million replies

01:09:08 ◼   ► that are gonna say, and now it's the transition

01:09:09 ◼   ► from macOS to iOS, ha ha ha."

01:09:11 ◼   ► Which yes, there were many of those replies,

01:09:13 ◼   ► but my commentary, follow up to this was,

01:09:18 ◼   ► analysis intentionally omitted.

01:09:21 ◼   ► A, because it's Twitter and you don't have room to do that.

01:09:24 ◼   ► And B, I like to just let this tweet lie

01:09:27 ◼   ► because it is like a Rorschach test.

01:09:30 ◼   ► The last time I saw articles about this

01:09:31 ◼   ► was the transition from macOS to macOS 10.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Half the people are gonna see that and say,

01:09:34 ◼   ► "Yeah, and weren't those dummies wrong

01:09:36 ◼   ► "because macOS 10 was awesome

01:09:37 ◼   ► "and all the people clinging to macOS

01:09:39 ◼   ► "were a bunch of chumps."

01:09:40 ◼   ► And the other half of the people are gonna say,

01:09:42 ◼   ► "Yeah, that's around the last time the Mac almost died

01:09:44 ◼   ► "and we came through it by the skin of our teeth

01:09:46 ◼   ► "by struggling mightily to get this next based OS

01:09:50 ◼   ► "up into ship shape so that it's satisfying to Mac users."

01:09:52 ◼   ► And then yet another group of people are gonna say,

01:09:55 ◼   ► yes, but a lot of people actually did leave the Mac then,

01:09:57 ◼   ► it's just that they were replaced by Unix nerds

01:09:59 ◼   ► and it all evened out or actually was a net win.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And so many different views on how the Mac OS X

01:10:04 ◼   ► transition went, you know, I'm fairly intimately familiar

01:10:07 ◼   ► with the Mac OS X transition,

01:10:08 ◼   ► so I know what I think about it,

01:10:10 ◼   ► but so many different people had different ideas

01:10:12 ◼   ► of like what it was like.

01:10:13 ◼   ► You guys didn't experience this,

01:10:14 ◼   ► you didn't experience the incredible turmoil.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Much worse, I'm gonna say much worse

01:10:19 ◼   ► than the current turmoil phrasing,

01:10:20 ◼   ► much much worse of a dying practically a dying company certainly a dying OS like

01:10:27 ◼   ► this is you know the in your parlance the windows 95 you know no memory

01:10:32 ◼   ► protection no preemptive multitasking like trying to get from that world into

01:10:37 ◼   ► a modern OS while trying to preserve something anything that was good about

01:10:40 ◼   ► the Mac it totally felt like Apple as a company could be dying which is not a

01:10:45 ◼   ► thing that we are currently worried about right now at all right and

01:10:48 ◼   ► And certainly that the Mac could be dying along with the company because even if they survive,

01:10:52 ◼   ► what comes out the other side of this thing will not be a Mac. It'll be some stupid Unix thing

01:10:57 ◼   ► with a terminal that won't be a Mac at all and everything is terrible. In the end, you know,

01:11:04 ◼   ► I think we successfully navigated that transition, but all of the participants, all the players were

01:11:10 ◼   ► there. There wasn't that much podcasting going on, but I can tell you that there were many,

01:11:14 ◼   ► many people who are from the old school Mac world complaining just like we've

01:11:21 ◼   ► been complaining on this podcast through every channel available to them. Again,

01:11:26 ◼   ► Twitter didn't exist either, but like Usenet, lots of arguing on Usenet. I

01:11:29 ◼   ► remember arguing with some person named Guy English, which totally sounds

01:11:32 ◼   ► like a made-up name, on Usenet about the merits of classic Mac OS versus

01:11:36 ◼   ► Next. I don't know who that guy was. On, you know, on the nascent web and on our

01:11:42 ◼   ► blogs and in person and in Mac user groups and the pages of magazines and

01:11:46 ◼   ► letters to editors about how the Mac was going. And the reason I reference that is

01:11:53 ◼   ► not because I think we're in the same situation again, I think that was a way

01:11:55 ◼   ► more dire situation which gives me some comfort because it's like I came through

01:11:59 ◼   ► that and we're nowhere near as bad as that is. But just to say that no one was

01:12:05 ◼   ► seriously circulating "check out these alternatives to Mac OS X" in the circles

01:12:11 ◼   ► among diehard Mac users.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Obviously there's always articles about like, hey, if you're thinking of using this, look

01:12:16 ◼   ► at this alternative, blah, blah, blah.

01:12:17 ◼   ► But within our sort of blogging and tweeting circles of all these people who have been

01:12:23 ◼   ► using Macs for years and love it, I hadn't seen an article like this in ages, let alone

01:12:28 ◼   ► a series of them.

01:12:30 ◼   ► To find one, I have to go back to the last time our little community was in turmoil,

01:12:36 ◼   ► and that was when people were like, oh, if they're going to do this to the Mac, I might

01:12:39 ◼   ► as well use Windows or I might as well try Linux or I'm gonna leave the Mac and

01:12:44 ◼   ► go to you know there was you know no one said they're gonna leave the Mac and go

01:12:47 ◼   ► to Palm OS because that wasn't you know anyway it gives me some historical

01:12:51 ◼   ► perspective but it also highlights the fact that even though the current

01:12:54 ◼   ► situation is not as bad as it was then is at least of the same type that these

01:13:01 ◼   ► kinds of articles are are in circulation and are of interest to everybody even if

01:13:08 ◼   ► you don't feel that way, even if you just want to read it so you can sneer at the people

01:13:12 ◼   ► who are, you know, claiming that the sky is falling or whatever. The fact is the articles

01:13:17 ◼   ► are being passed around and people are reading them, people are thinking about it, and that

01:13:20 ◼   ► hasn't happened in a long time. How long ago was the M

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01:15:31 ◼   ► [Music]

01:15:35 ◼   ► Since clearly the Mac is doomed and the future is not even iOS, it's voice, tell us about

01:15:40 ◼   ► your Google Home.

01:15:41 ◼   ► My Google Home, yeah, so I got a Google Home as a gift for my wife/gift for the family.

01:15:51 ◼   ► It's complicated by the fact that our photos are, you know, I signed up for Google Photos

01:15:57 ◼   ► using my one terabyte of Google.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Wait, can we back up for a second?

01:16:00 ◼   ► I heard from your wife that you got this Google Home

01:16:04 ◼   ► as a gift-- - I'm getting to that.

01:16:06 ◼   ► - As a gift to her and then paired it to your phone?

01:16:09 ◼   ► - I'm about to, and it's not paired to the phone,

01:16:12 ◼   ► I'm about to explain this, so.

01:16:13 ◼   ► - Did it say Homer on it, is that?

01:16:15 ◼   ► - It's obviously for the whole family

01:16:18 ◼   ► because it just sits in a room,

01:16:19 ◼   ► it's not like one of us has it on their desk

01:16:20 ◼   ► or something, right?

01:16:21 ◼   ► But one of the things that it can do for you

01:16:24 ◼   ► is you can ask it to display your photos on your TV,

01:16:27 ◼   ► So show me pictures of whoever on my Chromecast,

01:16:30 ◼   ► and it will do that.

01:16:31 ◼   ► I don't have Chromecast yet, but I plan to get one.

01:16:32 ◼   ► They're like 30 bucks or whatever.

01:16:33 ◼   ► It's not a big deal.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And I do have HDMI ports available on the side of my TV.

01:16:37 ◼   ► So I'm gonna do that.

01:16:39 ◼   ► But all of our Google Photos are associated

01:16:42 ◼   ► with my Google account, not hers.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Even though she has the photo library

01:16:48 ◼   ► on her 5K iMac under her account.

01:16:51 ◼   ► So she owns that.

01:16:52 ◼   ► But I mean, and this is actually a feature.

01:16:54 ◼   ► I like the fact that we can do this.

01:16:55 ◼   ► I had one terabyte of Google storage

01:16:57 ◼   ► that I use for other things.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And so when it came time to look into Google Photos,

01:17:01 ◼   ► I said, I can run the Google Photos thing

01:17:04 ◼   ► on your account on your 5K iMac,

01:17:06 ◼   ► but use it to upload all of your photos

01:17:08 ◼   ► from the family photo library

01:17:10 ◼   ► up to my Google account storage,

01:17:12 ◼   ► because I'm the one with one terabyte of storage.

01:17:15 ◼   ► And so I have all the Google Photos,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and you could only associate the Google Home

01:17:20 ◼   ► with one Google account.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I do, it's the first thing I searched by Googling,

01:17:25 ◼   ► because I saw how you set up like,

01:17:27 ◼   ► "Okay, now how do I add another account?"

01:17:28 ◼   ► Because you know in all the Google web properties,

01:17:29 ◼   ► you can be signed into mobile accounts

01:17:31 ◼   ► and switch among them and have, you know,

01:17:32 ◼   ► like I thought surely that's the thing,

01:17:34 ◼   ► but I immediately found out that Google Home

01:17:36 ◼   ► currently is limited to being connected

01:17:37 ◼   ► to one Google account.

01:17:38 ◼   ► So it is connected to my Google account.

01:17:40 ◼   ► And the reason it's connected to my Google account

01:17:42 ◼   ► is because I'm the one with all the photos.

01:17:45 ◼   ► And that's one of the few things

01:17:46 ◼   ► that this thing can do for me.

01:17:47 ◼   ► So that's limitation number one about this.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Limitation number two is,

01:17:53 ◼   ► I mean, it's a big number two.

01:17:55 ◼   ► We'll link in the show notes this article Dan Morin wrote

01:17:57 ◼   ► about these devices 'cause he's been an avid Amazon.

01:18:00 ◼   ► - I look forward to the summary of this

01:18:02 ◼   ► like on the book jacket.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Like John Siracusa calls Google home,

01:18:04 ◼   ► dot, dot, dot, a big number two.

01:18:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, the number two thing is that basically

01:18:10 ◼   ► Amazon Echo has a big lead and it does way more stuff.

01:18:13 ◼   ► It just does, especially in terms of home automation

01:18:15 ◼   ► as other things, it's been out longer,

01:18:18 ◼   ► it has more integrations.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And so if you're looking for something

01:18:23 ◼   ► you can take out of the box and hook up a bunch of,

01:18:25 ◼   ► 50 different things too and make your own actions.

01:18:27 ◼   ► It feels like this is not that thing.

01:18:29 ◼   ► Someone asked me on Twitter,

01:18:31 ◼   ► if you had to do it over again,

01:18:32 ◼   ► would you still buy the Google Home?

01:18:34 ◼   ► And I'm like, how do you even know I have a Google Home?

01:18:35 ◼   ► And what are you talking about doing it over again?

01:18:36 ◼   ► I just got the Google Home.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Like, I don't know.

01:18:39 ◼   ► But the reason I got it,

01:18:41 ◼   ► and I think we've talked about this before

01:18:42 ◼   ► when I said I was interested to get it.

01:18:43 ◼   ► The reason I got it is because I believe in the promise.

01:18:46 ◼   ► I believe in the promise of Google Home as a product.

01:18:48 ◼   ► The actuality of Google Home as a product

01:18:49 ◼   ► is that it's nicer looking than the Echo

01:18:52 ◼   ► In some ways, it's better in terms of,

01:18:55 ◼   ► I think maybe the speaker is a little bit better

01:18:57 ◼   ► and it's smaller and it's a little bit more polished,

01:19:01 ◼   ► I think, but I'm totally buying it

01:19:03 ◼   ► because I believe that Google will eventually be better

01:19:07 ◼   ► at all the things that I care about,

01:19:09 ◼   ► which is understanding what I'm saying

01:19:10 ◼   ► and finding me useful information and answers.

01:19:13 ◼   ► And I do use Google Calendar.

01:19:14 ◼   ► We all use Google Calendar.

01:19:15 ◼   ► I use Google for my email.

01:19:16 ◼   ► We have all our photos on Google.

01:19:18 ◼   ► In theory, this has access to more of our stuff

01:19:20 ◼   ► than the Amazon Echo would.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And I subscribe to Google Play because I subscribe to Google Play family thing to get YouTube

01:19:25 ◼   ► Red or whatever.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So I can say things like, you know, I hate Ok Google but that's what it is instead of

01:19:31 ◼   ► Alexa.

01:19:32 ◼   ► I wish you could make that configure.

01:19:33 ◼   ► But I could say, "Ok Google, play some Christmas music."

01:19:34 ◼   ► And guess what?

01:19:35 ◼   ► It plays Christmas music because it has access to, you know, their streaming music service.

01:19:39 ◼   ► Whereas if you ask Amazon Echo to do the same thing, you could set something up to do it

01:19:43 ◼   ► or you can try to get it to play audio on another Bluetooth connected device and it

01:19:47 ◼   ► will play the audio that's on that device or whatever.

01:19:49 ◼   ► But anyway.

01:19:50 ◼   ► So far, mostly the children have been asking it to say things in foreign languages and

01:19:56 ◼   ► do unit conversions.

01:19:57 ◼   ► I did use it to set timers, but it is really limited.

01:20:03 ◼   ► One of the very first things I asked it to do was remind me in two hours to check on

01:20:07 ◼   ► the roast.

01:20:08 ◼   ► This was like on Christmas Day, right?

01:20:11 ◼   ► And it said, "I can't set up a reminder for you.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Sorry about that."

01:20:14 ◼   ► Something like that.

01:20:15 ◼   ► I'm like, "You can't set up reminders?

01:20:17 ◼   ► You don't need to do – this doesn't need to be a network integration.

01:20:19 ◼   ► do it right it can do timers set a timer for two hours for the roast okay I've

01:20:26 ◼   ► set a timer for two hours for the roast right but remind me in two hours it

01:20:29 ◼   ► knows that I want a reminder but I guess it classifies them in the same way that

01:20:33 ◼   ► Apple classifies reminders versus timers and it has no way to create a reminder

01:20:37 ◼   ► in the world of Google yet right so again I Google this and sit on a million

01:20:42 ◼   ► people saying yes it can't set reminders yet maybe it will be able to in the

01:20:45 ◼   ► future. So I really hope that they get cranking on the integrations and the

01:20:51 ◼   ► functionality. I am very impressed with its ability to understand my children's

01:20:55 ◼   ► poor diction as they yell over each other to try to get it to do things,

01:20:59 ◼   ► right? I'm impressed with its ability to understand me talking from other rooms

01:21:03 ◼   ► and mumbling and how responsive it is to asking you to set timers. It takes me

01:21:08 ◼   ► longer to figure out when I can start talking to Siri than it does to complete

01:21:13 ◼   ► the action on the Google Home, right?

01:21:15 ◼   ► Because that is an internal frustration to have the fanciest, fastest iPhone.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And half the time I'm like, "Is it okay for me to talk?

01:21:22 ◼   ► Do I have to wait for the boop boop?"

01:21:23 ◼   ► And then I start talking, then it goes boop boop, and then it doesn't understand me, and

01:21:26 ◼   ► I can't reset it, and I have to start all over.

01:21:29 ◼   ► I just want to be able to talk into the air.

01:21:30 ◼   ► You mentioned, Casey, before Siri and the Mac.

01:21:33 ◼   ► This is, I think, one of the things that both the Amazon Echo and the Google Home do so

01:21:38 ◼   ► much better than Siri and the Mac.

01:21:39 ◼   ► If Siri and the Mac really wants to be worth a damn,

01:21:41 ◼   ► it should be like those two devices where I can just say,

01:21:45 ◼   ► okay Mac, what's the weather like tomorrow?

01:21:47 ◼   ► No preamble, no pressing a key,

01:21:50 ◼   ► no making sure the Mac is ready before I talk,

01:21:52 ◼   ► just freaking say it.

01:21:53 ◼   ► 'Cause if this little tiny $100 cylinder can do it,

01:21:56 ◼   ► this huge multi-thousand dollar computer

01:21:59 ◼   ► should be able to do that too.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Let alone the fact that there's no, hey Siri,

01:22:02 ◼   ► it's like, oh, you can hook up his Apple script

01:22:03 ◼   ► to make it so it recognizes when you say hey, no.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Like if the cylinders can do it,

01:22:07 ◼   ► a Mac has to be able to do it too.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Because as Marco well knows, that is the killer feature,

01:22:13 ◼   ► to be able to just rattle it off in the air

01:22:15 ◼   ► with no setup and no preamble

01:22:17 ◼   ► and no making sure everybody is ready

01:22:19 ◼   ► and it just friggin' does it.

01:22:20 ◼   ► And that's awesome, right?

01:22:22 ◼   ► I mean, that I think the most important feature

01:22:24 ◼   ► of all these cylinders is really good microphones

01:22:27 ◼   ► that can understand you from far away with background noise

01:22:30 ◼   ► and incredible responsiveness.

01:22:31 ◼   ► And iPhones don't have that

01:22:33 ◼   ► and Macs don't have that and it's a damn shame.

01:22:35 ◼   ► So anyway, Google Home, it shows promise.

01:22:39 ◼   ► For the things that it can do, it's very responsive.

01:22:42 ◼   ► I intentionally bought it because I believe in the promise of Google doing this type of

01:22:48 ◼   ► stuff really well.

01:22:49 ◼   ► And the things that it does do, it does do really well.

01:22:51 ◼   ► You can phrase your, even like Google search, you can phrase your unit conversions or questions

01:22:55 ◼   ► about the weather or follow-up questions in a fairly natural way, and it pretty much nails

01:22:59 ◼   ► it.

01:23:00 ◼   ► It just needs more features, so I'm patiently waiting for them to appear.

01:23:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I gotta say, I mean, I have yet to see

01:23:06 ◼   ► the Google Home, but having had now quite a bit

01:23:10 ◼   ► of experience with the Amazon Echo,

01:23:13 ◼   ► these like home cylinders with voice stuff

01:23:15 ◼   ► that connect to simple things like timers

01:23:17 ◼   ► and weather and music services and home automation,

01:23:21 ◼   ► this is a real deal.

01:23:22 ◼   ► This category is really great, it's really fun,

01:23:26 ◼   ► and there is this pretty significant land grab

01:23:30 ◼   ► going on right now, mostly being won by Amazon.

01:23:33 ◼   ► I am honestly kind of concerned that Apple's not playing in this space yet.

01:23:36 ◼   ► And, you know, we've heard rumblings that they're working on it.

01:23:38 ◼   ► I really hope they get here soon because this is the time to get into this business.

01:23:43 ◼   ► So over Christmas we got my in-laws an Echo.

01:23:46 ◼   ► It was kind of funny, like, for the last, you know, five or six Christmases, we've

01:23:52 ◼   ► gotten people various Apple things, you know, like Apple TVs here and there and occasionally

01:23:58 ◼   ► iPads for like big gifts sometimes.

01:24:02 ◼   ► This year, nobody got anything by Apple.

01:24:05 ◼   ► This year was, Apple had nothing to do

01:24:07 ◼   ► with our holiday fun this year.

01:24:09 ◼   ► They were just, we were all using iPhones basically,

01:24:12 ◼   ► but there was no new stuff from Apple this year for us.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Granted, I know the AirPods are a big deal for a lot of people

01:24:18 ◼   ► but that wasn't, anyway, that wasn't for our holiday season.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Anyway, all the fun was playing with the Echo

01:24:25 ◼   ► and all the home automation,

01:24:27 ◼   ► I got a handful of the Belkin BMO outlets

01:24:30 ◼   ► and everything that you can switch with them.

01:24:32 ◼   ► And it's just like, this stuff,

01:24:34 ◼   ► this is where all the action's happening right now

01:24:36 ◼   ► in like cool, fun, new technology.

01:24:38 ◼   ► And yeah, it isn't like, you know, a massive business.

01:24:43 ◼   ► There's not a lot of profit to be made here.

01:24:44 ◼   ► I mean, Amazon's already selling the Echo for under 200 bucks

01:24:47 ◼   ► and the Dots are like 40 bucks.

01:24:50 ◼   ► And what's the Google Home, like 150 or something?

01:24:52 ◼   ► - I got it on sale.

01:24:53 ◼   ► It was one of the reasons I bought it.

01:24:54 ◼   ► I got it for like 110 or 120.

01:24:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, so like, you know, this is,

01:24:57 ◼   ► it's obviously gonna be like a low margin business

01:24:59 ◼   ► for probably forever.

01:25:00 ◼   ► And that's gonna be difficult for Apple

01:25:03 ◼   ► 'cause I can't see Apple coming in at under 250 probably.

01:25:08 ◼   ► I mean look, the Apple TV is in a similar boat

01:25:10 ◼   ► where all the competitors are really cheap

01:25:12 ◼   ► and Apple TV is still very expensive compared to them.

01:25:15 ◼   ► So anyway, I worry about Apple and this business

01:25:17 ◼   ► because it's so cool, it's so much fun.

01:25:21 ◼   ► These devices are really, really awesome

01:25:23 ◼   ► but in order to be good, they require two things

01:25:27 ◼   ► Apple's not very good at, service consistency

01:25:29 ◼   ► and integrations with a whole bunch of other stuff.

01:25:31 ◼   ► I don't say that as a joke.

01:25:33 ◼   ► Siri, for all of its benefits and faults,

01:25:38 ◼   ► one thing it really isn't, even people who love Siri,

01:25:41 ◼   ► I think they would usually agree,

01:25:43 ◼   ► one thing it really isn't is consistent.

01:25:45 ◼   ► And the Echo is so incredibly rock solid.

01:25:50 ◼   ► So anyway, between Google and Amazon,

01:25:52 ◼   ► I really haven't read a single review of the Google Home

01:25:56 ◼   ► that makes me think anybody should buy over the Echo.

01:25:59 ◼   ► I honestly, like I, all the reviews seem to say like,

01:26:02 ◼   ► yeah, it's kind of the same thing, but worse.

01:26:04 ◼   ► Like I, what am I missing here?

01:26:07 ◼   ► - I mean, it is, I feel like it is better at,

01:26:10 ◼   ► all the same things that Google is good at,

01:26:11 ◼   ► that you can type things into Google search box

01:26:13 ◼   ► in lots of different ways

01:26:14 ◼   ► and it more or less figures out what you mean.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Like in the same way that, you know,

01:26:18 ◼   ► the difference between, we know when Google does that thing

01:26:20 ◼   ► where it puts like, it's like,

01:26:21 ◼   ► here are a bunch of search results and here are a bunch

01:26:23 ◼   ► of ads, but by the way, I'm pretty sure I know

01:26:25 ◼   ► you're getting at and here's a box at the top that shows like exactly what you're interested

01:26:29 ◼   ► like the score of a game or like the answer to the trivia question you were asking or whatever

01:26:34 ◼   ► before it even gets to the search results that type of stuff is more or less exposed in a spoken way

01:26:39 ◼   ► as opposed to like you know like what was it when dan morin and his review was talking about

01:26:43 ◼   ► doing the language translation uh the echo or elixir rather can do that as well but it displays

01:26:49 ◼   ► the results on your on your phone in the ios app it doesn't speak them back to you um so it's it's

01:26:55 ◼   ► It's like, it's basically all the things

01:26:56 ◼   ► that Google is good at.

01:26:57 ◼   ► If you're interested in controlling stuff in your home,

01:27:00 ◼   ► Echo has way more integrations.

01:27:02 ◼   ► If you're interested in buying things,

01:27:03 ◼   ► like forget it, that's Amazon's bread and butter.

01:27:05 ◼   ► You wanna buy things by talking, Amazon's got you covered.

01:27:08 ◼   ► I don't even know if you can do that at all on Google.

01:27:09 ◼   ► - Tell you what, by the way,

01:27:10 ◼   ► that sounds like a stupid thing until you do it.

01:27:13 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm sure you love it.

01:27:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:16 ◼   ► - Once you've given in to the Amazon way of life

01:27:21 ◼   ► and you start ordering everything from Amazon,

01:27:24 ◼   ► you can do things like say, name of thing,

01:27:27 ◼   ► reorder a fridge filter.

01:27:29 ◼   ► And it will go through your order history

01:27:31 ◼   ► and it will query it for the fridge filter

01:27:34 ◼   ► and it'll say, do you want me to add this thing?

01:27:37 ◼   ► It'll read out the name and it'll say,

01:27:38 ◼   ► here's how much it costs and here's,

01:27:40 ◼   ► it has four star reviews or whatever else

01:27:42 ◼   ► and it'll say, do you wanna buy it now?

01:27:44 ◼   ► And you can add it to your cart and just do it later.

01:27:46 ◼   ► You can add it to your shopping list

01:27:48 ◼   ► or you can just have it say yes

01:27:49 ◼   ► and place the order right then.

01:27:52 ◼   ► you can literally get rid of your like,

01:27:54 ◼   ► I ran out of this thing,

01:27:55 ◼   ► or I need another one of these things.

01:27:57 ◼   ► You can eliminate those problems

01:27:58 ◼   ► without ever touching a computer.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Oh, my fridge filter needs to be replaced.

01:28:01 ◼   ► All right, get a new fridge filter.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Two days later it just shows up.

01:28:04 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing.

01:28:05 ◼   ► I also, before we got this,

01:28:07 ◼   ► thought that was a ridiculous concept.

01:28:09 ◼   ► But once you do it once,

01:28:11 ◼   ► and you kind of break the seal almost,

01:28:15 ◼   ► you break hearts,

01:28:17 ◼   ► once you do it once, you're just like,

01:28:18 ◼   ► oh my God, this is kind of awesome.

01:28:21 ◼   ► Why have I not been doing this?

01:28:23 ◼   ► - I think we're kind of in an Apple Google situation,

01:28:26 ◼   ► like in the early days of the iPhone,

01:28:27 ◼   ► where it was like, oh, we have this nice sort of symbiosis

01:28:30 ◼   ► where Apple's gonna do this awesome hardware in the OS

01:28:33 ◼   ► and Google will do the cloud services,

01:28:35 ◼   ► like the maps and stuff,

01:28:36 ◼   ► and it's a marriage made in heaven, and then they split.

01:28:39 ◼   ► It seems like they're already split

01:28:40 ◼   ► because there are things that Amazon does better,

01:28:42 ◼   ► but there are also things that Google does better.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Like basically any kind of search or intelligence

01:28:48 ◼   ► or figuring out what you mean,

01:28:50 ◼   ► Amazon can do all those things mostly because they have integrations with Google or Google like services

01:28:54 ◼   ► But they don't do them themselves whereas buying things Amazon is totally like

01:28:58 ◼   ► It's all integrated with your Amazon account

01:29:00 ◼   ► It knows your order history can do all stuff like that

01:29:02 ◼   ► It it's too you would you would want a home automation thing that can do all of these things

01:29:07 ◼   ► Right and the same way of like I don't know as I'm probably has this because they have every service under the Sun

01:29:12 ◼   ► But Google has all my photos in Amazon doesn't have any my photos

01:29:15 ◼   ► I can't ask the echo to show photos of my son on the television, you know show photos of my son in 2015 on my Chromecast

01:29:22 ◼   ► I can't ask Amazon to do that

01:29:23 ◼   ► I mean I could maybe make a little skill or a program or a little app in there a little thing that make it do

01:29:28 ◼   ► But like but Google's got my stuff and in the same way Apple if they ever come up with one Apple's got a lot of

01:29:33 ◼   ► My stuff too. They've got also got my photos and you know

01:29:36 ◼   ► They have my reminders because I use reminders on my phone and they have my iMessages

01:29:39 ◼   ► but they don't have my calendar because Google has that and

01:29:42 ◼   ► So, you know in some respects

01:29:45 ◼   ► the best would be a

01:29:47 ◼   ► Cylinder that you talk to that doesn't have a horse in that race

01:29:52 ◼   ► But integrates with all of them sort of the cylinder equivalent of the omnivorous box

01:29:55 ◼   ► But of course that doesn't exist so instead we're we have to choose silos

01:29:58 ◼   ► The Apple silo has nothing except for a sort of cranky Siri that you can't really talk to and by the way if they ever

01:30:03 ◼   ► Did make a cylinder can you imagine that they made it respond to?

01:30:06 ◼   ► Ahoy telephone, which I'm not gonna say every device in your home would go off

01:30:11 ◼   ► and then maybe the cylinder would bloop later.

01:30:13 ◼   ► Like, they should just give these things

01:30:14 ◼   ► different names or whatever.

01:30:16 ◼   ► - Well, this is like, it actually is not

01:30:18 ◼   ► an easy problem to solve.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Like, when the Amazon set of products first came out,

01:30:24 ◼   ► if you had more than one, which they're so cheap,

01:30:28 ◼   ► and you kind of always want one nearby,

01:30:30 ◼   ► so I think a lot of people have or will have more than one,

01:30:34 ◼   ► which again, puts a problem on Apple's strategy

01:30:37 ◼   ► of probably a nicer, more expensive one.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Anyway, so when you have more than one,

01:30:42 ◼   ► if both of them are within earshot

01:30:45 ◼   ► when you say the trigger word,

01:30:47 ◼   ► originally they would just kind of

01:30:48 ◼   ► both operate independently.

01:30:50 ◼   ► Eventually in a software update,

01:30:51 ◼   ► which by the way I never even had to know about,

01:30:53 ◼   ► they just update themselves and don't even tell you,

01:30:55 ◼   ► they just update, it's amazing.

01:30:56 ◼   ► But in software update, eventually they added a thing

01:30:58 ◼   ► where you can give them both the same trigger word

01:31:00 ◼   ► and now whichever one heard you best

01:31:03 ◼   ► will handle the command.

01:31:04 ◼   ► I believe they're also wanting to work on things

01:31:09 ◼   ► like multi-room audio, similar to what Sonos does.

01:31:12 ◼   ► I think Google Home talked about something like that,

01:31:14 ◼   ► either they're doing it or they're going to do it.

01:31:16 ◼   ► Like, this is actually, it's going to ramp up quickly

01:31:19 ◼   ► into a category where like the minimum bar to entry

01:31:22 ◼   ► is actually, you know, non-trivial.

01:31:25 ◼   ► That's why I kind of, like for Apple's sake,

01:31:27 ◼   ► if they're going to play in this business at all,

01:31:29 ◼   ► I hope they get here soon, because there's a lot to do,

01:31:32 ◼   ► and the competitors are gonna keep raising that bar,

01:31:35 ◼   ► and Apple's just gonna be playing catch-up

01:31:36 ◼   ► if they really don't get here very, very soon.

01:31:39 ◼   ► - I feel like Amazon, even though they are the leader now,

01:31:42 ◼   ► is at quite a disadvantage, because both Google and Apple

01:31:45 ◼   ► have more of people's stuff than Amazon.

01:31:46 ◼   ► The only thing Amazon has for most people

01:31:49 ◼   ► is their purchase history and their purchases,

01:31:51 ◼   ► which is great for Amazon, because if they're trying

01:31:53 ◼   ► to find a way for you to order things by talking

01:31:54 ◼   ► and make money, that's fine.

01:31:56 ◼   ► But most people don't have all their family photos on there.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Most people don't have big video collections up on Amazon.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Most people don't have their calendars on Amazon,

01:32:05 ◼   ► or their reminders or their shopping list,

01:32:07 ◼   ► which even though it has these features,

01:32:08 ◼   ► like in other words, to win, like you said,

01:32:10 ◼   ► you have to have, it's an ecosystem play

01:32:12 ◼   ► and Apple has its ecosystem and Google has its,

01:32:15 ◼   ► and you can argue about whose is better or whatever,

01:32:17 ◼   ► but Amazon's is the least full featured of all of them.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Like, and Google, you know,

01:32:23 ◼   ► you have to actually integrate with them for you to win.

01:32:24 ◼   ► It doesn't help that Google like,

01:32:25 ◼   ► "Oh, Google has a calendar.

01:32:26 ◼   ► "If I can't do anything with the calendar,"

01:32:28 ◼   ► which you can, you can ask it about your day

01:32:30 ◼   ► and stuff like that.