ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► The correct title for this episode is "John Saracusa was wrong about something."

00:00:04 ◼   ► You too. You too. Love, love, love, love just listening and jumping on something you think is wrong. Both at once.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Well, it's not that we think it's wrong. It is wrong.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Oh, no, you think. You think. Are you saying this is only children?

00:00:20 ◼   ► Then it takes me ten minutes to explain what I actually said. You know, it's a thing.

00:00:24 ◼   ► No, you were wrong.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Where's that window? I have so many windows open I can't find it.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Actually, it's funny you say that. I have one, two, three, four, five, six different desktops running,

00:00:37 ◼   ► which is more than I usually do, and they're not in the places I usually leave them, which is a problem of my own creation.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I have three, what is it, spaces is the official Mac OS term, virtual desktops, I have three of them, like a maniac.

00:00:53 ◼   ► I have probably 15 tabs open across all my browsers.

00:00:56 ◼   ► This is ridiculous, I tell you.

00:00:59 ◼   ► 15, Jon, I have 15 tabs across probably,

00:01:02 ◼   ► well, I guess I can figure this out.

00:01:03 ◼   ► How many browser windows?

00:01:04 ◼   ► Three browser windows, and I have maybe 15 tabs open, maybe.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - You might have more tabs open than I do.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - It's unmanageable, I tell you.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Tell you what, listening back to the windows

00:01:15 ◼   ► of Syracuse County last week during the edit--

00:01:17 ◼   ► - Oh, so good, so good.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - I kept listening after the clip I pasted,

00:01:20 ◼   ► and man, it just, it holds up.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I mean, Casey and I sound like garbage

00:01:25 ◼   ► 'cause we have terrible microphones

00:01:26 ◼   ► and like recording at the bottom of a well,

00:01:28 ◼   ► like everything's all echoey and terrible.

00:01:31 ◼   ► John had his good microphone by then,

00:01:32 ◼   ► so he sounds perfect, of course,

00:01:33 ◼   ► 'cause he sounds frustratingly good

00:01:34 ◼   ► with the most difficult to use microphone of all of us.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - Naturally.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - But if you get past the audio quality,

00:01:40 ◼   ► oh my god, that holds up so well.

00:01:42 ◼   ► - It's probably my favorite episode of ATP

00:01:44 ◼   ► that has ever happened.

00:01:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - Oh god, so good.

00:01:48 ◼   ► The best part was,

00:01:50 ◼   ► And I think it's kind of like Top Gear at its finest,

00:01:54 ◼   ► which was, it was completely genuine.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Like genuinely we had no idea

00:02:00 ◼   ► where this conversation was going.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And the two of us, like my recollection,

00:02:04 ◼   ► Mario, I haven't listened to it

00:02:05 ◼   ► outside of what you put in the show.

00:02:07 ◼   ► The two of us, Marco and I,

00:02:09 ◼   ► were just completely stupefied, dumbfounded, flabbergasted,

00:02:14 ◼   ► that what was unfolding in front of us was real life.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I could not believe, Jon, and still can't, that you feel like that was an acceptable

00:02:25 ◼   ► way to manage your windows and browsers and tabs and whatnot.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Don't you realize that it's only a matter of time before both of you eventually adopt

00:02:32 ◼   ► that the quantities so ludicrously discussed, "I can't believe it, these numbers are so

00:02:39 ◼   ► big it's blowing my mind."

00:02:41 ◼   ► It's only a matter of time before.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I mean, you're getting close already.

00:02:43 ◼   ► You were making jokes about 15 tabs.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I mean, how many tabs do I have in open Chrome?

00:02:48 ◼   ► now I have two Chrome windows open with one, two, three, four, five, six, I have 12. 12

00:02:52 ◼   ► tabs. Two windows, six tabs each.

00:02:54 ◼   ► Honestly, I'd be surprised if both the Mac and the web last long enough for us to get

00:03:01 ◼   ► to that point.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Oh, here we go.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Oh, there's the Marco we know and love.

00:03:06 ◼   ► Welcome back.

00:03:07 ◼   ► One of those is going to, I mean, come on. Like, what are the chances really? Let's be

00:03:10 ◼   ► realistic here.

00:03:11 ◼   ► But tabs will live forever. Hopefully not in multiple rows, Windows style, because that

00:03:16 ◼   ► was ridiculous.

00:03:17 ◼   ► - I don't know, will Tabs live forever?

00:03:18 ◼   ► Do you think there's a few, honest question.

00:03:21 ◼   ► So everyone around this part of the commentosphere

00:03:25 ◼   ► seems to have some idea of what the future of computing

00:03:27 ◼   ► is like, the future of computing so far

00:03:30 ◼   ► does not seem to contain tabs much, if at all.

00:03:34 ◼   ► What do you think about that?

00:03:35 ◼   ► - Sure it does, they're in Safari on the iPad

00:03:37 ◼   ► so they're safe for the future,

00:03:39 ◼   ► but I really wanna put a pin in the commentosphere thing,

00:03:42 ◼   ► a big pin, a pin that fatally wounds that word

00:03:46 ◼   ► and causes it to die and never escape

00:03:48 ◼   ► from where it is pinned down.

00:03:49 ◼   ► - Would you rather I start a vlog, Jon?

00:03:51 ◼   ► Is that better? - A vlog?

00:03:53 ◼   ► - I just feel like you don't need to go to Commentosphere.

00:03:58 ◼   ► You could pick something, anything else.

00:04:02 ◼   ► - Blogosphere, that's just as bad.

00:04:04 ◼   ► - No, Blogosphere is better.

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's still bad, but it's better.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - But honestly though, so you mentioned,

00:04:11 ◼   ► okay, there's obviously tabs in web browsers,

00:04:13 ◼   ► even on iPads and stuff.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Well, how much of computing these days

00:04:18 ◼   ► is happening in web browsers?

00:04:21 ◼   ► And how much of the web browser part of it

00:04:23 ◼   ► is happening on mobile,

00:04:25 ◼   ► which is where the future apparently is?

00:04:27 ◼   ► Like, the future, like, if I'm using the Amazon app,

00:04:30 ◼   ► I can't do crap with tabs, I can't do anything.

00:04:33 ◼   ► If I'm using some other app, like,

00:04:34 ◼   ► if I'm working in an app, it's up to each individual app

00:04:37 ◼   ► to support tabs, like, there was this relatively brief span

00:04:41 ◼   ► in computer history where we did a whole bunch of stuff

00:04:44 ◼   ► PC based web browsers.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So there was this time that I think is pretty clearly

00:04:50 ◼   ► fading where we could have the amount of ridiculous tabs

00:04:54 ◼   ► that Jon had and we could have all this stuff open

00:04:57 ◼   ► and different, everything was a URL and we could have

00:05:00 ◼   ► multiple windows to everything we did because everything

00:05:03 ◼   ► was basically a web app.

00:05:05 ◼   ► That time is clearly fading away and we're moving towards

00:05:08 ◼   ► and very much already in this other thing with custom apps

00:05:11 ◼   ► for almost everything, most of them on phones.

00:05:14 ◼   ► And in that era, in the current paradigm that we have here,

00:05:18 ◼   ► I don't actually think that we're gonna get to a point

00:05:21 ◼   ► where the type of keeping all this stuff open,

00:05:25 ◼   ► that type of multitasking is really not gonna be possible

00:05:29 ◼   ► in this world for the foreseeable future.

00:05:32 ◼   ► - People love tabs.

00:05:33 ◼   ► You can't stop tabs.

00:05:34 ◼   ► They might not be on web browsers.

00:05:35 ◼   ► They might be on the future mobile Facebook app

00:05:38 ◼   ► that will have tabs, but people love tabs.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Until something comes to replace tabs, tabs will be a thing.

00:05:43 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that their tabs have to be what they are on PCs today, which is like

00:05:48 ◼   ► the document model, but instead of multiple windows, you have a single window with multiple

00:05:51 ◼   ► tabs and they're interchangeable.

00:05:53 ◼   ► That doesn't mean that they have to be that.

00:05:54 ◼   ► I'm just talking about tabs, like little things that when you hit them, switch it.

00:05:59 ◼   ► You could just call it the segmented control in OS X.

00:06:01 ◼   ► That counts as tabs too, because they actually used to be tabs back in the...

00:06:04 ◼   ► You guys never used Macs back on those actual tabs, right?

00:06:07 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:06:08 ◼   ► I remember when they were tabs.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:06:10 ◼   ► But like if you go to like system parameters now and go, "What is it called, Marco?"

00:06:14 ◼   ► You don't know.

00:06:15 ◼   ► The Segment Control?

00:06:16 ◼   ► Neither one of your Mac programmers.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Yeah, the Segment Control used to be tabs.

00:06:18 ◼   ► It used to be rendered as tabs, and they changed it to this big long capsule somewhere around

00:06:23 ◼   ► 10.3, 10.4?

00:06:24 ◼   ► I forget when they switched it.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Weird.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Go find it.

00:06:30 ◼   ► They were big, shiny, glossy aqua tabs.

00:06:33 ◼   ► They were like the aqua-est tabs you have ever seen.

00:06:37 ◼   ► You know, it would be really cool if there was some sort of resource that existed that

00:06:40 ◼   ► we could go to to see lots of screenshots and intense discussion about old versions

00:06:45 ◼   ► of Mac OS, or excuse me, OS X. Man, that would be awesome, wouldn't it?

00:06:50 ◼   ► - No, but honestly, I really do wonder how this, the way that we like to work with tons

00:06:57 ◼   ► of windows and tabs, and of course, John takes it to a whole other level, is there room in

00:07:03 ◼   ► in what we know today as the iOS and mobile paradigm,

00:07:07 ◼   ► and what everyone says is the future of computing,

00:07:10 ◼   ► and what Apple seems to be not only saying is the future,

00:07:14 ◼   ► but also allocating resources in order to basically force it

00:07:18 ◼   ► to be our only choice for the future.

00:07:21 ◼   ► Is there room in that for a lot of power users?

00:07:25 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I think that tabs are the easiest way to punt on

00:07:31 ◼   ► on having multiple things open at once.

00:07:35 ◼   ► You don't need to do a full-on windowing system,

00:07:38 ◼   ► you just have a little tab control at the top or the bottom.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And I mean, think about UI tab bar in iOS,

00:07:43 ◼   ► I mean, those are still tabs, strictly speaking.

00:07:45 ◼   ► - Well, no, that's different.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Tabs, the way we're talking about,

00:07:50 ◼   ► are not the way a segmented controller or tab bar

00:07:53 ◼   ► would separate out different functions of the same app.

00:07:56 ◼   ► That's just how you arrange one Windows interface.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I'm talking about what browser tabs are

00:08:01 ◼   ► than what Sierra introduced as kind of for any

00:08:03 ◼   ► document based app where like you can basically

00:08:05 ◼   ► spawn as many tabs as you want and each one

00:08:08 ◼   ► is like an independent document or window

00:08:10 ◼   ► for that application.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And the problem is on iOS, apps are not designed

00:08:14 ◼   ► to have multiple windows at all.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So you can't even simulate this easily for all apps.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Basically all apps would have to be rewritten

00:08:22 ◼   ► to support multiple windows on iOS.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Not to mention whatever kind of complexity

00:08:26 ◼   ► the iOS UI itself would have to add

00:08:30 ◼   ► for people to manage their Windows,

00:08:33 ◼   ► which I'm sure would not be good enough for Jon.

00:08:35 ◼   ► So I wonder, is the idea of having all these things open

00:08:40 ◼   ► a relic of the past that's going to die with the Mac,

00:08:44 ◼   ► which might be sooner rather than later?

00:08:46 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

00:08:47 ◼   ► - To be clear, I was actually just talking about them

00:08:49 ◼   ► as, again, not as browser tabs or separate targets,

00:08:52 ◼   ► but as just the plain old UI control,

00:08:54 ◼   ► So the iOS ones would count, as in a horizontal strip that has a bunch of things in it, and

00:08:59 ◼   ► when you hit one of the things, a larger area above or below it changes to reflect the thing

00:09:02 ◼   ► that you hit, and only one of them can be selected at a time.

00:09:05 ◼   ► So that's totally what I was talking about.

00:09:06 ◼   ► If you're talking about specifically the idea that it's user controlled arbitrary, in which

00:09:10 ◼   ► case like a tab bar wouldn't count, then that's a different thing.

00:09:13 ◼   ► But I'm just saying people like the idea of a strip where you can hit a thing and it's

00:09:19 ◼   ► always visible, it's like radio buttons basically.

00:09:21 ◼   ► You can only pick one of them, only one can be active at once, and when you pick it, the

00:09:24 ◼   ► whole rest of some large area changes to reflect the thing that you picked.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Tabs, people love them.

00:09:32 ◼   ► I pasted a bunch of ones in there, I think I got up to what, 10.

00:09:35 ◼   ► 10.2.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Oh wow, pinstripes.

00:09:37 ◼   ► 10.3.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Look at those tabs though, are those not the tabby-est tabs?

00:09:41 ◼   ► That same control, they changed the appearance in I think 10.5-ish, I haven't gotten up to

00:09:46 ◼   ► that, to look like segmented control.

00:09:48 ◼   ► So it was like your same code all of a sudden would go from that to what you see today more

00:09:52 ◼   ► or less with the segmented controls.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Because it isn't just the bar of words at the top, is it the whole frame there that

00:09:59 ◼   ► makes it the whole card thing around it?

00:10:03 ◼   ► It's exactly the same as the segmented control.

00:10:05 ◼   ► So if you look at this, look at one of these things and then just go to like system preferences

00:10:09 ◼   ► today, if you just took this code and were able to run it today it would look like it

00:10:13 ◼   ► does with like the little recessed well.

00:10:15 ◼   ► - I think I had a graphic because the cool thing was like,

00:10:17 ◼   ► they would change the original implementation,

00:10:19 ◼   ► they would change the texture of the well,

00:10:21 ◼   ► like the inset period, or inset area to be darker.

00:10:25 ◼   ► So if you nested a bunch of them,

00:10:26 ◼   ► it would just get darker and darker and darker and darker.

00:10:28 ◼   ► It was fun.

00:10:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, Windows did that too.

00:10:30 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:10:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:32 ◼   ► - Windows did the double row of tabs, which was just--

00:10:35 ◼   ► - No, but Windows had, I believe they called it frames,

00:10:39 ◼   ► but it was the similar kind of thing

00:10:41 ◼   ► where you'd have the inset area

00:10:43 ◼   ► with a label or tab row at the top.

00:10:46 ◼   ► But of course, Windows did it uglier, but more affordably.

00:10:50 ◼   ► - You know, that reminds me,

00:10:52 ◼   ► and I'll use this to segue into follow-up.

00:10:54 ◼   ► We had a handful of people write in

00:10:56 ◼   ► and say that they are Microsoft employees

00:10:58 ◼   ► that listen to the show.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And, woof, I'm sorry.

00:11:01 ◼   ► - Turns out there are some.

00:11:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm not sorry that you're a Microsoft employee.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I'm just sorry that, well, for basically anything

00:11:07 ◼   ► we've ever said about any Microsoft product,

00:11:09 ◼   ► except apparently the Surface.

00:11:10 ◼   ► - Not true, we say nice things

00:11:12 ◼   ► by Microsoft products all the time.

00:11:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and from what I understand,

00:11:15 ◼   ► from what I hear from people who work there

00:11:17 ◼   ► or have worked there, it actually sounds like

00:11:19 ◼   ► it's a pretty good place to work.

00:11:20 ◼   ► - Is that right?

00:11:21 ◼   ► I didn't know that.

00:11:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I've only ever heard good things

00:11:25 ◼   ► about the Microsoft work environment

00:11:28 ◼   ► and just like the kind of place it is to work.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - You never heard of microsurfs

00:11:31 ◼   ► or learned about stack ranking and stuff like that?

00:11:33 ◼   ► There's bad things about Microsoft, believe me.

00:11:36 ◼   ► - But when they're being ranked,

00:11:37 ◼   ► they'd be in a really nice office.

00:11:38 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, yeah.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Oh, goodness. In any case, so I just wanted to thank those of you who have written in

00:11:45 ◼   ► that are Microsoft employees. They all were quick to point out that they were not in the

00:11:49 ◼   ► Surface Studio group, and they didn't know anyone from the Surface Studio group, which

00:11:52 ◼   ► was unfortunate. However, it was still nice of them to write in, so thank you for that.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Secondly, John's extraordinarily nerdy and fiddly wish for a battery burn-down chart.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Guess where it exists, kids? It exists in Android, because why wouldn't it?

00:12:08 ◼   ► So I didn't know what a burned down chart was,

00:12:11 ◼   ► as you correctly predicted during the show,

00:12:13 ◼   ► but I did of course find that afterwards

00:12:14 ◼   ► from all the people telling us Android has it

00:12:16 ◼   ► and showing us what they look like,

00:12:17 ◼   ► and yeah, it actually looks pretty useful.

00:12:18 ◼   ► I would love that.

00:12:19 ◼   ► And I think now the door is open

00:12:22 ◼   ► for people to make that for the Mac

00:12:25 ◼   ► as a little battery widget for the menu bar.

00:12:27 ◼   ► Honestly, it probably already exists.

00:12:28 ◼   ► I probably just don't know about it,

00:12:30 ◼   ► but that would be, I believe the market for that

00:12:33 ◼   ► on the Mac is now very real,

00:12:35 ◼   ► and I hope that either it already exists and it's good,

00:12:38 ◼   ► that somebody makes a good one.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's that.

00:12:42 ◼   ► Mario Run is now a thing.

00:12:44 ◼   ► It's out.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I personally have yet to try it.

00:12:47 ◼   ► I've been extremely busy.

00:12:48 ◼   ► But it's out, it's a thing.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And if you're John Syracuse, it's Mario Run.

00:12:53 ◼   ► So John, how do you like Mario Run?

00:12:56 ◼   ► It's what I thought it would be.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I mean, we've all seen the videos.

00:12:59 ◼   ► It plays like it plays.

00:13:00 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:13:01 ◼   ► You know, the online thing is annoying.

00:13:03 ◼   ► The UI that they put in there is weird.

00:13:06 ◼   ► the first run experience is cruddy, but as I said last week, they get the first one for

00:13:13 ◼   ► free because there's just so much pent up demand for a Nintendo game on iOS and it's

00:13:18 ◼   ► a popular property and so the first thing in the show I was just like, "Oh, it's been

00:13:22 ◼   ► downloaded 2.8 million times the first day and then we have updated numbers 40 million

00:13:27 ◼   ► times in the first four days."

00:13:31 ◼   ► And Phil Schiller made a statement, Nintendo made a statement, Phil says this is the fastest

00:13:36 ◼   ► selling – fastest downloaded game, not fastest selling – fastest downloaded game ever.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And then these various companies try to estimate how many people are actually buying it based

00:13:46 ◼   ► on the top charts and all of those stuff, guessing that maybe 4% of the people who downloaded

00:13:53 ◼   ► it actually paid for it at its astronomical $10 price.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And so that means it made like $16 million, which is pretty darn good.

00:14:00 ◼   ► I'm not going to say it's that money.

00:14:02 ◼   ► I don't know if it has already made back the amount of money it costs to develop it, considering

00:14:06 ◼   ► they use a third-party engine for it and had another developer, I think, help them actually

00:14:12 ◼   ► do the dev work.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's going well.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Their second game that they release, I guess they'll probably still do okay on their second

00:14:22 ◼   ► game because it'll be a different property or whatever.

00:14:23 ◼   ► But there's a lot of people who are sending me reviews that are saying, "This shows that

00:14:30 ◼   ► Nintendo or whoever helped them develop this game really understands the mobile platform because it's a great mobile game and it's good

00:14:38 ◼   ► It's fine. It's a good mobile game, but I still feel like it is

00:14:41 ◼   ► Taking an existing

00:14:44 ◼   ► Game a 2d Mario game you go run from left to right with marrying you jump and stuff

00:14:47 ◼   ► Taking that and finding a way to make it work on mobile

00:14:51 ◼   ► which is different than starting from scratch and finding a good mobile game idea and

00:14:58 ◼   ► It's different in subtle ways like I keep comparing it to Altos adventure like isn't Altos adventure exactly the same thing

00:15:04 ◼   ► You just go from left to right and you press the button to do some stuff. I

00:15:07 ◼   ► Would argue that it is not quite the same thing as Altos adventure is not

00:15:12 ◼   ► an established franchise

00:15:15 ◼   ► skiing platformer ported to single button press thing

00:15:19 ◼   ► It's conceived from the beginning to be a game for mobile

00:15:23 ◼   ► I find it more pleasing than a Mario game, partially because when I see him running from

00:15:30 ◼   ► left to right, I have certain expectations of gameplay and realizing that they had to

00:15:35 ◼   ► subvert that and find a way, and to their credit they did, but find a way to make it

00:15:40 ◼   ► interesting, novel, and fun while taking away freedoms that you expect when you see a static

00:15:47 ◼   ► screenshot.

00:15:48 ◼   ► expect to be able to stop and run left, and I expect to run into a Goomba and die instead

00:15:54 ◼   ► of automatically vaulting over him.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Changing these expectations, like, you're getting a lot of praise, so isn't that clever?

00:15:59 ◼   ► They chose just the right balance of things to make the game different and fun or whatever.

00:16:04 ◼   ► But you are taking a different kind of game and dressing it up and cosplaying it as a

00:16:09 ◼   ► Mario game, and I think it's a good game.

00:16:12 ◼   ► And people should totally get it.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It's well worth the $10 you pay for it.

00:16:15 ◼   ► But it is, I'm not saying this to say it's not a good game and you shouldn't buy it,

00:16:20 ◼   ► but I think Nintendo has not yet made a game conceived for the mobile platform.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Like I would be fine if it had their mascots and everything, but just like don't, in the

00:16:33 ◼   ► same way that Mario plays soccer, he plays baseball, he plays, I don't know, forget every

00:16:37 ◼   ► sport he plays, he drives around in go-karts and stuff, in the same way that you can take

00:16:41 ◼   ► that property and put it on a different genre, they have not yet taken that property and

00:16:46 ◼   ► put it on a genre or a style of game made for mobile phones.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Instead, they've taken an existing game style, which is the 2D platformer, and modified it

00:16:57 ◼   ► to work better in this environment.

00:17:01 ◼   ► And I don't think that's a sustainable business for them.

00:17:04 ◼   ► If it's just a way to get people into larger franchises, that's fine.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But I'm still looking forward to the day where they come up with a game concept and idea

00:17:14 ◼   ► that is for mobile first and truly plays to the strengths of that platform.

00:17:18 ◼   ► In the way that Pokemon Go did, basically.

00:17:21 ◼   ► But you know, not that specific franchise like Vermeer or whatever.

00:17:25 ◼   ► And then put whatever IP on it you want.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Call it Metroid Pinball, I don't care.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Whatever graphics you have to put on it to make it palatable, make people buy it, fine.

00:17:33 ◼   ► But they aren't quite there yet.

00:17:34 ◼   ► So I continue to view this as them dipping their toes in, making some money, making some

00:17:40 ◼   ► mistakes by making it online only, and doing silly things on first launch like making people

00:17:44 ◼   ► pick their country from a really long list instead of using location services and so

00:17:48 ◼   ► on and so forth.

00:17:49 ◼   ► But this is only a way to get people onto their other platforms.

00:17:56 ◼   ► By the way, even though these numbers look big, they still make more money selling one

00:18:00 ◼   ► of their other games on their own platforms because every single person who buys one of

00:18:04 ◼   ► those games pays for it, whereas those 40 million downloads, those aren't all paying

00:18:07 ◼   ► $10 for things.

00:18:08 ◼   ► So right now it still looks like a hedge, and if they're going to commit to it, we'll

00:18:15 ◼   ► be able to tell when they start getting serious about the game's development for these platforms.

00:18:20 ◼   ► Right now it still seems like they're going for the Switch, and so we'll see how that

00:18:24 ◼   ► turns out for them.

00:18:25 ◼   ► >> Trevor Burrus Marco, have you played this at all?

00:18:27 ◼   ► >> Marco

00:18:34 ◼   ► I honestly have enjoyed this game.

00:18:36 ◼   ► It is currently on my home screen.

00:18:37 ◼   ► I don't know how long it will stay there, but it is currently there and I use it as

00:18:41 ◼   ► a fun diversion.

00:18:43 ◼   ► I think they did overall a really good job with it.

00:18:46 ◼   ► There are areas of it that drive me nuts.

00:18:49 ◼   ► The internet connection thing hasn't hit me yet because I don't have a real job anymore,

00:18:54 ◼   ► but it will hit me next week when I'm traveling and when I'm in areas with poor reception.

00:19:00 ◼   ► it will definitely hit me then.

00:19:03 ◼   ► But overall, it's a really fun game.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I really enjoy it.

00:19:06 ◼   ► I like, like what I'm doing is,

00:19:09 ◼   ► rather than just blowing through all the levels,

00:19:11 ◼   ► I'm not moving on until I've gotten

00:19:14 ◼   ► at least the first two coin colors,

00:19:16 ◼   ► the pink and the purple in each level.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And so like, what I like about this game is that

00:19:23 ◼   ► while I'm probably playing it wrong

00:19:25 ◼   ► by whatever Jon would say I'm supposed to play it,

00:19:29 ◼   ► This game allows you to play it kinda however you want.

00:19:31 ◼   ► You can blow through everything you can do.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Like I haven't even done Toad's Racetrack

00:19:36 ◼   ► or whatever that is.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I haven't built anything.

00:19:38 ◼   ► I haven't redeemed any of the various currencies

00:19:40 ◼   ► I've been earning or whatever.

00:19:42 ◼   ► All I've been doing is playing the levels to get the coins.

00:19:44 ◼   ► That's it.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And I've currently gotten through

00:19:47 ◼   ► only World 1 doing it this way.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I haven't even gotten to the second row yet

00:19:52 ◼   ► because I'm not very good at video games, turns out.

00:19:54 ◼   ► But it's fun.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And I like this, this allows you to,

00:19:57 ◼   ► I don't like how much overhead there is,

00:20:00 ◼   ► like in waiting for menus and stuff

00:20:02 ◼   ► and waiting for loading screens.

00:20:04 ◼   ► I'm not crazy about that.

00:20:05 ◼   ► There's like, to me, like an iOS game like this

00:20:07 ◼   ► is something that you should be able to play

00:20:09 ◼   ► while waiting online for something quickly.

00:20:12 ◼   ► And they have, there's a lot of friction involved

00:20:15 ◼   ► in like getting started with this game.

00:20:17 ◼   ► And that's, I don't know if Nintendo is just incapable

00:20:19 ◼   ► of not doing it that way,

00:20:20 ◼   ► or if they just think it's the right thing to do.

00:20:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:23 ◼   ► Anyway, I just like it.

00:20:24 ◼   ► It's fun.

00:20:25 ◼   ► I am not analyzing it too deeply.

00:20:27 ◼   ► I'm just having fun with it because I've always been more of a casual Nintendo fan.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I'm not like a super diehard Nintendo fan or a diehard gamer for that matter.

00:20:36 ◼   ► So I'm having fun with it.

00:20:37 ◼   ► It's nice.

00:20:38 ◼   ► I bought the unlock.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I'm not going to give it a one-star review.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I'm having fun with it.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that phenomenon was the other story about this.

00:20:45 ◼   ► The fact that Nintendo released what I think anyone would have to say is a really good

00:20:50 ◼   ► iOS game, like despite whatever stumbles and first launch.

00:20:53 ◼   ► But it's a good game.

00:20:54 ◼   ► It's a fun game.

00:20:55 ◼   ► People enjoy playing it.

00:20:56 ◼   ► their reviews are being massacred by people who don't want to pay money.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Mostly by people who say, "This game is so fun, it's so mean of you to ask me for money

00:21:05 ◼   ► for it.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Why couldn't you give me this game that's fun?

00:21:07 ◼   ► I love this game.

00:21:09 ◼   ► Isn't my loving this game enough for me to get it for free?"

00:21:12 ◼   ► Huge number of reviews saying, "Not worth $10."

00:21:15 ◼   ► I love the people who are like, "I would pay $7, but not $10."

00:21:19 ◼   ► It's like, "Come on, people."

00:21:20 ◼   ► Anyway, welcome to the App Store.

00:21:22 ◼   ► There's so many things wrong with the App Store.

00:21:25 ◼   ► I always wonder who reads those reviews hoping to find out, you know, in many ways this game is review proof because

00:21:31 ◼   ► once if people are actually able to confirm that it is actually a Nintendo game and not a scam which is a topic that we

00:21:38 ◼   ► Keep pushing down on the show. So maybe we'll get to in a future show if they're able to make that determination

00:21:43 ◼   ► No one's reading the reviews say this is the one and only Mario game on the App Store

00:21:47 ◼   ► Let me read the reviews first the reviews on the App Store

00:21:50 ◼   ► Maybe people read reviews on their favorite like tech site if they really care

00:21:54 ◼   ► But people know whether they want a Mario game especially since it's free to download just get it the only people who are taking to

00:22:00 ◼   ► the review section after

00:22:02 ◼   ► you know I want to play this game, but I

00:22:04 ◼   ► Can't spend 10. I have to think most of those people are

00:22:07 ◼   ► Younger people children who

00:22:11 ◼   ► Literally don't have $10 to spend all right. I just can't imagine someone getting angry about $10

00:22:18 ◼   ► For Nintendo and taking to the reviews about being angry and or not sign out to buy it fine. Oh John

00:22:23 ◼   ► - Jon, you have never had an app in the App Store.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - For a Nintendo game specifically, I'm thinking it,

00:22:29 ◼   ► because you know, it doesn't matter.

00:22:31 ◼   ► - I don't think it matters.

00:22:31 ◼   ► - It doesn't matter at all.

00:22:33 ◼   ► - Someone who's angry about their note-taking app

00:22:35 ◼   ► or whatever, I can understand them going to it,

00:22:37 ◼   ► because those are adults, but these have to be children.

00:22:39 ◼   ► - Jon, when you tell me what it's like to have a real job,

00:22:43 ◼   ► I'm telling you what it's like to have an app

00:22:45 ◼   ► in the App Store.

00:22:46 ◼   ► - You've never put a Nintendo game on the App Store.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Obviously, if you're creating an app for adults.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - It doesn't matter, Jon.

00:22:52 ◼   ► That's the thing, it doesn't matter.

00:22:53 ◼   ► How many people, how many of those,

00:22:55 ◼   ► okay, so first of all, they've had,

00:22:57 ◼   ► what is this, 40 million downloads?

00:22:58 ◼   ► So it doesn't take a lot, a high percentage of those

00:23:01 ◼   ► to result in tons of reviews.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - Right, so that's why I think most of those

00:23:05 ◼   ► one-star reviews complaining about the price

00:23:08 ◼   ► are young people or children,

00:23:09 ◼   ► because it doesn't take a lot of them

00:23:11 ◼   ► to do the top 50 reviews.

00:23:14 ◼   ► There's 40 million people, 50 of them,

00:23:15 ◼   ► the 50 cranky children.

00:23:18 ◼   ► Who spends the time to write a review

00:23:21 ◼   ► for a Nintendo game.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Like, again, it's review proof.

00:23:25 ◼   ► It's like a Star Wars movie.

00:23:27 ◼   ► - I don't understand why you're hanging your hat.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Why are you hanging your hat on Nintendo?

00:23:30 ◼   ► Nobody gives a crap that it's Nintendo.

00:23:32 ◼   ► - Bingo.

00:23:33 ◼   ► - All they care about is that it's a game

00:23:34 ◼   ► that they wanna play, but they have to pay for it.

00:23:36 ◼   ► They're pissed off.

00:23:37 ◼   ► - But no, but adults understand that no one

00:23:39 ◼   ► is gonna look at reviews for a Nintendo game.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - Oh, no.

00:23:42 ◼   ► - Oh, they really don't.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - Oh, no, no.

00:23:44 ◼   ► - Trust me, they don't.

00:23:45 ◼   ► - If you are an adult who left an angry review

00:23:49 ◼   ► a $10 game about this specific $10 game, please write it into us and tell us why you think

00:23:53 ◼   ► it was a good idea for you to spend your time writing a review for a Nintendo game, for

00:23:56 ◼   ► the one and only, the first Nintendo game.

00:23:59 ◼   ► You don't understand.

00:24:00 ◼   ► You are getting clouded by your own love of Nintendo.

00:24:03 ◼   ► You are so out of touch on this one.

00:24:05 ◼   ► And your own faith in adults, apparently.

00:24:07 ◼   ► It's not about love of Nintendo.

00:24:09 ◼   ► It's about the idea—I can't imagine an adult wasting the time to write an angry review

00:24:14 ◼   ► about the one and only Nintendo game on the App Store.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Feel free to hate it, feel free to not spend $10 on it.

00:24:20 ◼   ► There are a lot of angry, naive children of all ages.

00:24:25 ◼   ► I know, I agree with that, but I feel like those people are writing angry reviews about

00:24:28 ◼   ► a $2 note-taking app.

00:24:30 ◼   ► They're not writing angry reviews about a $10 Mario game.

00:24:32 ◼   ► They very much are.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Oh, you are so wrong, Jon.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So let me put it to you differently.

00:24:36 ◼   ► Well, first of all, I don't think you don't know that because there's no ages attached

00:24:38 ◼   ► to this thing, and neither one of you have written the one and only Nintendo game or

00:24:41 ◼   ► the App Store.

00:24:42 ◼   ► So I'm not arguing whether there are adults sending angry reviews about note-taking apps.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Of course there are.

00:24:47 ◼   ► can tell that there are adults writing angry reviews about a $2 note-taking app. I know

00:24:50 ◼   ► they're out there, but for the Nintendo game, I feel like it's got to be young people.

00:24:54 ◼   ► It doesn't matter, Jon. It doesn't matter if it's Nintendo or Vesper or your mom or

00:25:00 ◼   ► 123 Notetaker. It doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is it's $10 they don't want

00:25:04 ◼   ► to spend. So let me give you an example. Just today, I was at Target and I realized that

00:25:09 ◼   ► Captain America Civil War is out. And whether or not you, the collective you, liked that

00:25:14 ◼   ► movie. I enjoyed it and I wanted to buy it on Blu-ray. It was $15. So it was $15 for

00:25:19 ◼   ► me to legally purchase a movie. Think about the incredible hoops adults go through, adults

00:25:27 ◼   ► who make over $100,000 a year go through in order to rip off a $15 Blu-ray. Think of all

00:25:35 ◼   ► the trucks that they look in to see if the back has come off of them to save $15 on a

00:25:42 ◼   ► And you think that they're gonna say, "Oh, well, this is Nintendo. They're okay. They

00:25:47 ◼   ► get a buy." Hell no!

00:25:48 ◼   ► No, you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. Those people are not writing angry reviews.

00:25:53 ◼   ► They're not going to Best Buy and going to the bottom of the Best Buy store section where

00:25:56 ◼   ► you buy Civil War and saying, "This movie isn't worth $15. I would maybe pay $10 for

00:26:01 ◼   ► it, but $15 is two wench, one star."

00:26:03 ◼   ► Have you seen Amazon reviews? Oh, come on, John.

00:26:06 ◼   ► There's a lot of people out there who will complain about anything.

00:26:10 ◼   ► No they're not, they're just gonna go get the movie another way.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And it's not because they're laying off because of Nintendo, it's because they realize that

00:26:18 ◼   ► nothing they can say in the comment section of a Nintendo game has any relevance to anybody.

00:26:22 ◼   ► No one is reading the comment section to decide whether they want a Mario game or not.

00:26:26 ◼   ► That's where this is the flaw in your logic, Sean.

00:26:29 ◼   ► These people who leave one star reviews think they have power.

00:26:33 ◼   ► They think this will hurt their sales, they think that people will be forced to read this,

00:26:39 ◼   ► that people will respond to it somehow,

00:26:41 ◼   ► they think they're voting with their one star.

00:26:44 ◼   ► They really do think they are powerful

00:26:47 ◼   ► and they are gonna register their complaint

00:26:48 ◼   ► and it's going to make a difference

00:26:50 ◼   ► and someone's gonna have to face them.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's true on note-taking apps

00:26:53 ◼   ► 'cause people do read reviews on note-taking apps

00:26:55 ◼   ► because they have to find which one

00:26:56 ◼   ► of the 8,000 note-taking apps is any good.

00:26:58 ◼   ► So they actually do have power in the note-taking apps

00:27:00 ◼   ► because by millions of people leaving credit reviews,

00:27:03 ◼   ► people will sort, you know, try to find ones

00:27:04 ◼   ► that have high star rates.

00:27:05 ◼   ► - You are so confusing logic with emotion.

00:27:08 ◼   ► No, this is so wrong. There is no logic in app store reviewers. I understand about venting, I understand all those things. Look, look, we don't have demographics, so nobody actually knows the ages of these people leaving reviews. You could try to surmise the ages by the grammar and punctuation, but that is questionable. No, that doesn't work either. You know, but it gives you something to hang your hat on. Like, that's all we've got to go on.

00:27:29 ◼   ► record show on the 21st of December in the year 2016, John Syracuse was finally wrong

00:27:35 ◼   ► about something.

00:27:36 ◼   ► John: You have no idea who is right or wrong. We don't have the demographics. You're just

00:27:40 ◼   ► assuming.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Jared: No, we know. You're wrong.

00:27:42 ◼   ► John.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Jared; I would love to see the demo on this.

00:27:44 ◼   ► Jared; There's 40 million people. It's all the demographics, John. Come on.

00:27:47 ◼   ► John; Yeah, exactly.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Jared; Yeah, there's 40 million people, but do you think the 40 million people are evenly

00:27:52 ◼   ► distributed and the people who write reviews, like demographically speaking, is an even

00:27:55 ◼   ► distribution?

00:27:56 ◼   ► John; No, of course not.

00:27:57 ◼   ► I don't think it's a bell curve hovering around 10-year-olds, though.

00:28:01 ◼   ► All right, here.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Here, let's put it this way.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Let's say distribution-wise for gender, what do you think the distribution is of gender

00:28:08 ◼   ► of people who write angry reviews?

00:28:09 ◼   ► As compared to the purchasers.

00:28:10 ◼   ► So let's say the purchasers are 50/50.

00:28:12 ◼   ► What do you think the distribution is of angry commenters?

00:28:15 ◼   ► Probably a little bit more male, but probably not as much as you think.

00:28:18 ◼   ► A little bit more?

00:28:19 ◼   ► I'm going to go like 98 to 2 percent male.

00:28:21 ◼   ► I would agree with Jon on that one.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I would agree with Jon on that.

00:28:24 ◼   ► This is an example of how the demographics of commenters can be wildly out of line with

00:28:30 ◼   ► the demographics of downloaders or purchasers.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Oh sure, however, there is absolutely no way that the people commenting on this are only

00:28:38 ◼   ► children because the adults know that it doesn't matter.

00:28:40 ◼   ► I didn't say only, I said mostly, I said mostly, I didn't say only.

00:28:44 ◼   ► I still disagree.

00:28:46 ◼   ► How many children do you know that have iPhones?

00:28:47 ◼   ► I know it's a lot, but still, come on.

00:28:50 ◼   ► I include young adults, like I said, young people.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh, that changes everything.

00:28:54 ◼   ► These are people of all ages who want to get their satisfaction and want to be heard and

00:28:58 ◼   ► want to send a message to those greedy money-grabbing people at Nintendo that, trust me, this is

00:29:04 ◼   ► the App Store.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I haven't read my App Store reviews for Overcast in probably two years, and I have been so

00:29:10 ◼   ► much more mentally healthy as a result of that, because for years I would worry, "What

00:29:15 ◼   ► would the reviewers say?"

00:29:17 ◼   ► With every change I made, with everything I did or didn't do, I was constantly worried

00:29:22 ◼   ► apps like, will I get more one stars for this?

00:29:26 ◼   ► And you know what?

00:29:27 ◼   ► It doesn't matter at all the vast majority of the time.

00:29:31 ◼   ► If you have any number, if you basically have anybody

00:29:35 ◼   ► looking for your app for any other reason,

00:29:38 ◼   ► if they heard about it somewhere,

00:29:40 ◼   ► if they know it by name, whatever else,

00:29:41 ◼   ► if you have any number of people seeking out your app,

00:29:44 ◼   ► the reviews don't matter.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And if you don't have any number of people

00:29:48 ◼   ► seeking out your app, you're gonna fail anyway.

00:29:50 ◼   ► So really, it kinda doesn't matter.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And I can urge all developers out there, please,

00:29:58 ◼   ► if you read your iTunes reviews, your App Store reviews,

00:30:01 ◼   ► same thing for podcasters, I don't read those either,

00:30:04 ◼   ► take six months and don't read them and see what happens.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Are you happier?

00:30:08 ◼   ► Is anything different, are your sales any different?

00:30:10 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:30:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's so true.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So there's a feedback form within the app

00:30:17 ◼   ► that I work on at work,

00:30:19 ◼   ► and it emails a mailing list that's internal to the office

00:30:23 ◼   ► and all of the developers, iOS and Android,

00:30:26 ◼   ► get all of the feedback from both iOS and Android.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And you would not believe the amount of four-letter words

00:30:34 ◼   ► and demands that we get.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Just the other day, I was stunned.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Somebody wrote in, "Such and such thing doesn't work.

00:30:41 ◼   ► "I expect this to be fixed immediately."

00:30:43 ◼   ► Like, this is just some random shmo writing into the ether.

00:30:47 ◼   ► They have no idea who this is going to.

00:30:48 ◼   ► I expect this to be fixed immediately.

00:30:51 ◼   ► What?

00:30:52 ◼   ► And it was clearly an adult.

00:30:54 ◼   ► This was not a child.

00:30:55 ◼   ► This was an adult.

00:30:56 ◼   ► You don't have to convince me that adults send angry emails and random feedback about

00:31:01 ◼   ► applications they want to use.

00:31:02 ◼   ► But not to Nintendo.

00:31:03 ◼   ► No, it doesn't have to – look, all I'm saying is this specific game, I would say

00:31:06 ◼   ► the reviews are skew way more male than the purchasers and skew way younger than the purchasers.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Not just by like a percentage or two, but hugely.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Way more male and way younger.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And I would say that if you took the top 10 or 20 angriest one-star reviews complaining

00:31:23 ◼   ► solely about price, those are going to be dudes, and they're going to be between the

00:31:27 ◼   ► ages of young enough to be able to write into a review and like 25.

00:31:30 ◼   ► I'm not so convinced.

00:31:31 ◼   ► I mean, you might be right.

00:31:33 ◼   ► I don't know, but I doubt it.

00:31:35 ◼   ► It's not they're all children.

00:31:36 ◼   ► It's not that adults don't write in angry things to other applications.

00:31:39 ◼   ► It's not that reviews kill other applications.

00:31:41 ◼   ► All those things are not things that I said.

00:31:42 ◼   ► I said that I have to think that these are mostly children, which nailed down into more

00:31:47 ◼   ► concrete terms that these reviewers skew more younger and more male. And the more male,

00:31:51 ◼   ► I think you can both get on board with because honestly, like, men are terrible. Like, just,

00:31:57 ◼   ► you know, that's a gimme, right? And not because people, not because men refuse to buy things

00:32:05 ◼   ► more than women or anything, it's just that they're going to tell you about it, right?

00:32:07 ◼   ► And then young people, like old people don't have time for that crap, right? So it's just a question

00:32:12 ◼   ► of how it skews compared to the demographics, right?

00:32:16 ◼   ► - The male part I agree with, the youth I agree with,

00:32:19 ◼   ► I believe these are both, it does skew that direction.

00:32:22 ◼   ► It's not all men, it's not all young people.

00:32:25 ◼   ► - Right, right, but compared to the purchasers,

00:32:28 ◼   ► 'cause I had to think the purchasers,

00:32:29 ◼   ► it's probably an even gender split for Mario.

00:32:31 ◼   ► It's a popular-- - But I will say,

00:32:33 ◼   ► it is all ages, and it doesn't matter

00:32:35 ◼   ► whether they've heard of Nintendo or not.

00:32:37 ◼   ► - Everyone's heard of Nintendo.

00:32:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:39 ◼   ► - You'd be surprised. - Everyone's heard

00:32:40 ◼   ► Nintendo but no but I think your affection for Nintendo is deeply clouding your perspective here

00:32:45 ◼   ► But we were it has nothing to do with affection

00:32:48 ◼   ► It has to do with it with an understanding that the older you get the more you realize what Marco just said

00:32:52 ◼   ► That no one reads those reviews to find out whether they're gonna download a game and all you have left is venting about it

00:32:57 ◼   ► And people don't really don't eventually give up on venting because they realize oh, no, they do not. Are you kidding?

00:33:05 ◼   ► What do you have you ever been around an old person?

00:33:07 ◼   ► All they do is vent.

00:33:09 ◼   ► - Well, they're writing to their congressman

00:33:10 ◼   ► and sending angry letters to the diner

00:33:12 ◼   ► because their soup was cold.

00:33:13 ◼   ► That's a different, they find different outlets.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - Oh, no sir.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - There's a personality type that they need

00:33:20 ◼   ► to get their satisfaction and they need

00:33:21 ◼   ► to make their voice heard about every minor complaint

00:33:24 ◼   ► in their life.

00:33:25 ◼   ► I mean, I can't really talk that much about this.

00:33:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:28 ◼   ► But this personality type, this does not change over time.

00:33:32 ◼   ► They don't grow out of that.

00:33:34 ◼   ► That stays with people forever, their entire lives, all ages.

00:33:39 ◼   ► That stays with people.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Well, maybe we have to wait until the generation that grew up with the App Store gets to that

00:33:43 ◼   ► age, but they're not that age yet.

00:33:44 ◼   ► All right.

00:33:45 ◼   ► We're going in circles on this, so let's move on.

00:33:48 ◼   ► But let the record show – Anyway, Apple, all you need to do, Apple,

00:33:50 ◼   ► is put demographic information attached to all the comments so we can just scroll down

00:33:54 ◼   ► there and say, "Oh, mail 18, mail 22, mail 25.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Oh, what a surprise."

00:33:58 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Oh, my God.

00:34:01 ◼   ► By the way, if you go to like, let's try to think of the application that has the audience

00:34:06 ◼   ► that skews the oldest.

00:34:08 ◼   ► So the oldest part, I guess it's probably like health related, like blood pressure things

00:34:14 ◼   ► or like health monitoring something.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Broadcast TV apps, like an NBC app or something.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:34:20 ◼   ► I bet that's probably broader than you think, but no, maybe the CBS app.

00:34:23 ◼   ► That's a huge deal, right?

00:34:26 ◼   ► And I have trouble, because those people who are that age didn't grow up with the app store,

00:34:30 ◼   ► I have trouble thinking how many of them realize

00:34:33 ◼   ► that leaving a review is a thing you can do even.

00:34:36 ◼   ► - Oh, they know.

00:34:38 ◼   ► - Oh, I agree, they know.

00:34:39 ◼   ► - I think in small numbers, but anyway.

00:34:41 ◼   ► - Oh, Jon, your innocence is beautiful.

00:34:43 ◼   ► - I would love to read the angry reviews

00:34:46 ◼   ► of the application whose customers skew the oldest.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Maybe the AARP app or something.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - Facebook.

00:34:53 ◼   ► - 'Cause I think they would look,

00:34:54 ◼   ► and comparing them sentence structure-wise,

00:34:57 ◼   ► the things they're angry about,

00:34:58 ◼   ► how they express themselves to the Angry Mario reviews.

00:35:01 ◼   ► I think you could feed the text through one of those

00:35:04 ◼   ► guess the age and education level

00:35:06 ◼   ► and the year they were born based on the words

00:35:08 ◼   ► and sentence structure they use.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I think the incredibly angry AARP app reviews

00:35:13 ◼   ► would look materially different

00:35:15 ◼   ► than the incredibly angry Mario run reviews.

00:35:18 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:35:19 ◼   ► So we actually have a new sponsor this week.

00:35:22 ◼   ► It is called We Sell Socks.

00:35:25 ◼   ► So it's at wesellsocks.com.

00:35:27 ◼   ► And the guy who runs this, it's a one-person operation.

00:35:30 ◼   ► He's a fan of the show and he said,

00:35:32 ◼   ► "I was wondering if I could request

00:35:33 ◼   ► "that Marco, John, and Casey critique the site

00:35:36 ◼   ► "and the service negative and positive on first glance

00:35:40 ◼   ► "instead of doing a regular ad read."

00:35:42 ◼   ► - That is a bold, bold maneuver, my goodness.

00:35:46 ◼   ► - It's a terrible idea.

00:35:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:48 ◼   ► - John's critique originally.

00:35:50 ◼   ► - Has he never listened to the show?

00:35:51 ◼   ► It's a good thing I'm not riled up today.

00:35:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:56 ◼   ► So, I think we should probably save Jon for last.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Casey, do you wanna go first or should I?

00:36:00 ◼   ► - Opening hero image, good.

00:36:01 ◼   ► Not a movie, good.

00:36:03 ◼   ► $14 a month.

00:36:05 ◼   ► It's a little aggressive depending on how many socks you get

00:36:08 ◼   ► and how fancy they are.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Scrolling down, pretty good calls to action.

00:36:13 ◼   ► Pretty simple poll quote.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Good FAQs.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Now the site looks good.

00:36:18 ◼   ► And I'm not clear on how many pairs of socks you get

00:36:21 ◼   ► for $14 a month, but the socks look nice.

00:36:24 ◼   ► They're colorful.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I don't know, seems good to me.

00:36:27 ◼   ► - I also was not sure, so $14 a month.

00:36:30 ◼   ► It says $14 a month delivered worldwide.

00:36:31 ◼   ► And I got clarification, and it's actually $14 Canadian,

00:36:36 ◼   ► which is about $10 US, but there's a $5 shipping charge

00:36:40 ◼   ► on top of that, I believe, and so that ends up being

00:36:44 ◼   ► $14.15 US, including the shipping,

00:36:48 ◼   ► so it ends up working at about the same.

00:36:50 ◼   ► So anyway, worldwide shipping, that's good.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And they also do a cool thing where for every pair

00:36:57 ◼   ► that he sells, and I'm pretty sure,

00:36:58 ◼   ► I also didn't know how many pairs you get,

00:37:00 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's one pair for that.

00:37:02 ◼   ► 'Cause these are like fancy socks,

00:37:04 ◼   ► it isn't like a pack of Hanes,

00:37:05 ◼   ► it's like these fancy designer socks

00:37:08 ◼   ► that people who are cooler than us would usually wear.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Although honestly I have been thinking about

00:37:13 ◼   ► whether I want to get into the world of fun socks

00:37:16 ◼   ► because right now I wear very boring things.

00:37:18 ◼   ► - What, you're a man that wears the same black t-shirt

00:37:21 ◼   ► every single day.

00:37:21 ◼   ► and a black t-shirt, but every day socks are different.

00:37:24 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Oh my God.

00:37:25 ◼   ► You two are out of control.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I need to start drinking, holy crap.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, and he also does this cool thing

00:37:31 ◼   ► where for every pair he sells, he donates a pair

00:37:35 ◼   ► to a local shelter for people in need.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - Oh, that's pretty cool.

00:37:39 ◼   ► - And it's not like, it isn't donate like a crappy pair,

00:37:41 ◼   ► he donates a good pair along with the pair that you buy.

00:37:44 ◼   ► - Oh, that's awesome.

00:37:45 ◼   ► - So it's a cool mission.

00:37:47 ◼   ► I think the site could communicate this better,

00:37:48 ◼   ► 'cause the thing about how that's $14 a month Canadian

00:37:51 ◼   ► and that it's one pair of socks.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I think there needs to be clarification on that.

00:37:54 ◼   ► But otherwise, I think it's pretty cool.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I know there are other sock subscription services out there,

00:38:00 ◼   ► but I would try this one first, honestly.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I've always, I will reveal a secret to you guys.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I have always had a dream of getting

00:38:08 ◼   ► a sock subscription service where I could wear

00:38:11 ◼   ► a pair of brand new socks every day.

00:38:13 ◼   ► - Of course, of course you did.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - 'Cause the feeling of new socks is so awesome, you know?

00:38:19 ◼   ► And the reason why I've never done this

00:38:21 ◼   ► because it just obviously sounds incredibly wasteful.

00:38:23 ◼   ► And because what do you do with socks that were worn once,

00:38:26 ◼   ► like for one day?

00:38:28 ◼   ► You can't just throw that away, that's terrible.

00:38:30 ◼   ► And nobody really wants used socks.

00:38:32 ◼   ► So I haven't ever done this or started this business

00:38:36 ◼   ► or patronized any such businesses

00:38:37 ◼   ► because that would just seem ridiculous.

00:38:40 ◼   ► But I feel like one pair of cool new socks a month

00:38:43 ◼   ► might be a nice compromise.

00:38:44 ◼   ► - You are the clothing equivalent of the billionaire

00:38:47 ◼   ► who smokes a cigarette once and then puts it away.

00:38:50 ◼   ► I don't know what anyone's cigarettes, but sure, yeah.

00:38:53 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I know what you're referring to.

00:38:56 ◼   ► All right.

00:38:57 ◼   ► All right, so I did look at ahead of time.

00:38:59 ◼   ► I had the same question.

00:39:00 ◼   ► I think it needs to be clearer how many things you get.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Maybe I would throw in some more reassuring text about, like, if you want to bail, you

00:39:10 ◼   ► just cancel.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Like, I'm sure, stuff like that.

00:39:14 ◼   ► You want to overcome people's—you want to tell people what the deal is quickly and overcome

00:39:19 ◼   ► people's anxiety about getting roped into something. As for the concept, Marco aside,

00:39:26 ◼   ► which still seems like a little bit of a description to me, this is a thing that I have seen, like

00:39:31 ◼   ► the idea that interesting socks is part of your look, and I can imagine if that was part

00:39:38 ◼   ► of something you do, just have fun with your clothing. But it's not that easy to find interesting

00:39:44 ◼   ► socks and also you never quite know like if you're presented with you just go on Etsy

00:39:49 ◼   ► and see like billions and billions of weird socks which one should I get now or whatever

00:39:53 ◼   ► there the aspect of having someone do the picking for you and just like you know having

00:39:58 ◼   ► it be a surprise each day like you take you know whatever you arrives that's what you're

00:40:02 ◼   ► gonna take that is both freeing and a little bit interesting and exciting so I can imagine

00:40:09 ◼   ► people, not Marco, doing this and getting a kick out of it.

00:40:14 ◼   ► The website, my only real complaint other than whatever those non-loading images are,

00:40:19 ◼   ► is I hate when they do the little cutaway with the position fixed background as you

00:40:24 ◼   ► scroll things above it so that the picture that's on the back when you scroll, I don't

00:40:28 ◼   ► like that.

00:40:29 ◼   ► I don't like things that break the physical metaphor of the scrolling page.

00:40:32 ◼   ► I know kids like that, but it's not for me.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think there's a lot of space taken up by stuff that is not the most important

00:40:45 ◼   ► three-para—I mean, they have the three paragraphs on the other thing, but I feel like information

00:40:49 ◼   ► density could be better. Yeah, I can see that.

00:40:52 ◼   ► But other than that, yeah. It's not for me, it's probably not for Marco, but I have seen people in

00:40:58 ◼   ► real life who are into fancy socks, and I subscribe to the idea of putting that into someone else's

00:41:06 ◼   ► - It's his hands.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - So anyway, I think it's a cool service.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I think, Jon, I agree with you that if I were to be

00:41:12 ◼   ► a fancy sock person, I would want someone else

00:41:16 ◼   ► who is more fashionable and into sock choices than me

00:41:20 ◼   ► to be choosing them for me,

00:41:22 ◼   ► and that's what this would offer.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And I think I might do something crazy like this,

00:41:26 ◼   ► because for basically half of the days of my life,

00:41:31 ◼   ► when I put on my outfit, which is the same thing every day,

00:41:34 ◼   ► About half the time, I put on the socks,

00:41:36 ◼   ► and I think, wouldn't it be great

00:41:38 ◼   ► if all of my socks were exactly the same,

00:41:40 ◼   ► and I wouldn't have to match up the subtle difference

00:41:42 ◼   ► between these minor black pattern variations.

00:41:45 ◼   ► - It solves the problem in a different way, right?

00:41:47 ◼   ► - Right, and then the other half of the mornings,

00:41:49 ◼   ► I think, you know, maybe I could try some fun socks

00:41:52 ◼   ► sometime, because everything else I wear is boring,

00:41:54 ◼   ► and I like it that way, I like to keep it that way,

00:41:56 ◼   ► but I'm always wearing a nice watch,

00:41:58 ◼   ► and I wouldn't mind always wearing cool socks.

00:41:59 ◼   ► So I have thought about this before,

00:42:01 ◼   ► and I might do it.

00:42:04 ◼   ► I also like the idea that inevitably you'll get some socks that you think are hideous

00:42:09 ◼   ► in the same way with like Jelly Bellies when there's like a bad flavor.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I think that is part of the fun.

00:42:14 ◼   ► The whole idea of letting someone just send you a bunch of socks is that you're going

00:42:17 ◼   ► to have some ones that are like exciting and cool and fun and maybe you wouldn't have picked

00:42:19 ◼   ► that for yourself and you're going to have some that are hideous and that is part of

00:42:23 ◼   ► the fun.

00:42:24 ◼   ► That's true, yeah.

00:42:25 ◼   ► Or I just send those to you.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Well, you know, you should still wear them.

00:42:28 ◼   ► You can do a thing of like even when they come and they're hideous in the same way that

00:42:30 ◼   ► end up eating like the jelly belly flavor you don't like or like you put them all aside

00:42:34 ◼   ► but then when you're done you still want more jelly beans so you just eat all the black

00:42:37 ◼   ► ones anyway.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Black ones are the worst.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Anyway thanks to We Sell Socks for sponsoring our show and check it out.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Thanks We Sell Socks.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Did you guys get your AirPods?

00:42:52 ◼   ► I did.

00:42:53 ◼   ► Jon did too.

00:42:54 ◼   ► I got my little clicky case right here.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Oh fancy.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Nice.

00:42:59 ◼   ► And what do you think?

00:42:59 ◼   ► Which one? You have to address one of us. Hosting 101.

00:43:06 ◼   ► So this is the one time, this is the one time that the two of you don't jump in and you wait for me to give you the…

00:43:13 ◼   ► This isn't the first time that's ever happened.

00:43:14 ◼   ► I know, I'm stupefied.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Well, no, I would have gone forward, but I want to go back to this.

00:43:20 ◼   ► The item I had for the Air Props is before we had received ours, so this was last week, is about why they were delayed.

00:43:28 ◼   ► You know, they were expected, I forget when it was there, so they were going to come out

00:43:31 ◼   ► October or something, and it was like, "Where are the AirPods?"

00:43:33 ◼   ► And it was like, "Oh, there's some sort of delay," and Apple had to scrap its entire

00:43:37 ◼   ► first production run of the things and remake a whole bunch, and now they're in short supply.

00:43:41 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stories about that, and whatever, they're shipping now, and it was

00:43:44 ◼   ► difficult to get them before Christmas, and even in the new year it'll be difficult, and

00:43:48 ◼   ► Apple stores are getting tiny shipments.

00:43:49 ◼   ► But what I'm interested in is the idea of the delay, because a lot of people were upset

00:43:56 ◼   ► about it just because people want what they want, but also, "Oh, Apple's supposed to be

00:43:59 ◼   ► good at making things, why did they do this?" And I think this is a situation where anyone

00:44:08 ◼   ► who thinks this delay is indicative of something bad about Apple or a problem has things backwards.

00:44:16 ◼   ► It's disappointing. Obviously, Apple would have liked to have gotten them out sooner

00:44:22 ◼   ► and someone made a mistake somewhere or whatever,

00:44:24 ◼   ► but the fact that there's a delay

00:44:27 ◼   ► is exactly what we want Apple to be doing,

00:44:29 ◼   ► especially in light of like Samsung Galaxy Note,

00:44:31 ◼   ► batteries exploding or whatever it is,

00:44:33 ◼   ► the Note 7 batteries exploding.

00:44:35 ◼   ► The most important thing Apple can do

00:44:39 ◼   ► is make sure that whatever it is they ship

00:44:41 ◼   ► meets their standards for whatever,

00:44:44 ◼   ► aesthetics, reliability, safety, so on and so forth.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Whatever this problem was

00:44:49 ◼   ► that cause them to have to delay the thing,

00:44:52 ◼   ► that's exactly what we want them to do.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Obviously, ideally, then you don't mess up, right?

00:44:56 ◼   ► But if you do mess up, you have to do the right thing.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And I just can't, I can't think about people being angry

00:45:04 ◼   ► at Apple for delay.

00:45:06 ◼   ► It's like, this is exactly what we,

00:45:08 ◼   ► if anything ever goes wrong, they say,

00:45:10 ◼   ► well, why did you ship it if it wasn't ready?

00:45:11 ◼   ► Don't ship it if it's not.

00:45:12 ◼   ► We say that about software all the time.

00:45:14 ◼   ► It's like quadruply true about hardware.

00:45:17 ◼   ► So I don't know what the problem was.

00:45:19 ◼   ► I don't really care what the problem was.

00:45:21 ◼   ► I would much rather have a product that is ready to be released than one that is rushed

00:45:26 ◼   ► out and has some sort of problem.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Because who wants to get AirPods and find out there's some little flaw and some, you

00:45:32 ◼   ► know, if even 2% of the people have to end up going back to the Apple Store, that's terrible.

00:45:35 ◼   ► No one wants to go back to the Apple Store.

00:45:36 ◼   ► I'll wait an extra two months, ship it when it's done.

00:45:38 ◼   ► So I'm not going to say I applaud the delay because no one likes a delay.

00:45:42 ◼   ► And again, ideally, whatever the problem was, Apple would have caught earlier and fixed

00:45:45 ◼   ► it.

00:45:46 ◼   ► exactly a good thing, but this is exactly what I want a company to do when they do make

00:45:53 ◼   ► a mistake, which happens. Companies made of people, people make mistakes. When they do

00:45:56 ◼   ► make a mistake, do the right thing about it, and it seems like that's what they did here.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Cool.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I'm a little bummed that there was a delay, just because these seem like they're super

00:46:04 ◼   ► cool, but I completely agree with you that if you're going to roll the dice, I'd err

00:46:13 ◼   ► on the side of caution, and gosh, only knows what the delay was. I think it was iFixit

00:46:18 ◼   ► said that there were some dubious tolerances or something like that in the case, which

00:46:24 ◼   ► they somehow extrapolated to mean that maybe there was some build quality issues. I don't

00:46:31 ◼   ► know about that one way or the other.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Yeah, that didn't read right to me. That read a lot more, like, completely based on speculation

00:46:38 ◼   ► than anything real.

00:46:39 ◼   ► I agree. Yeah, that's how I read it too, which is why I was kind of confused by it. But anyway,

00:46:44 ◼   ► but I don't know that we'll ever know why there was a delay, but it's certainly,

00:46:50 ◼   ► like you said, Jon, I'll take the delay. And they did eke it in by the end of the year,

00:46:52 ◼   ► and I'll take the delay over some sort of flawed product.

00:46:55 ◼   ► If anything, I'm hoping at this point that they didn't do anything silly to rush it out just to

00:47:00 ◼   ► get something ready for the holiday season. If anything, I'm hoping that it really was ready

00:47:04 ◼   ► to ship and there wasn't some immense pressure. Obviously, there's immense pressure to ship,

00:47:09 ◼   ► know, in time for the holidays, right? And that's exactly what causes a company to say,

00:47:15 ◼   ► "Well, under normal circumstances, I wouldn't do it, but because we have to make the holiday

00:47:19 ◼   ► season, everybody's under a huge amount of pressure to just make it happen, even if they're

00:47:23 ◼   ► not quite up to where they want them to be." And I haven't heard any stories yet, and I

00:47:27 ◼   ► guess we'll find out in a couple months if all our AirPods die or whatever, but I'm hoping

00:47:32 ◼   ► that they waited long enough. Because honestly, that's the right move for the company. Your

00:47:37 ◼   ► reputation as Apple as a company, just ask Samsung again, your reputation for reliability

00:47:42 ◼   ► and doing the right thing and only shipping products that are of the standard people expect,

00:47:50 ◼   ► especially for hardware where you can't ship a patch, you can't fix it in a point release.

00:47:55 ◼   ► That is so much more important than even hitting a holiday season, especially if our company

00:47:58 ◼   ► was as much money in the bank as Apple.

00:48:00 ◼   ► If you have to miss the holiday season, miss the holiday season.

00:48:03 ◼   ► You'll get dinged for it and you'll say, "Hey, you tried to hit the holiday season with your

00:48:06 ◼   ► product and you didn't and that's bad and you have made a mistake but it's still a lesser

00:48:10 ◼   ► mistake than shipping people ear pods that blow up in their ears or whatever.

00:48:15 ◼   ► And for whatever it's worth, ATP Tips during the chat is saying that the issue was not

00:48:18 ◼   ► blowing up in your ears. It was a manufacturing problem initially related to the Bluetooth

00:48:23 ◼   ► hardware that it was not performing well and it was using excessive battery during operation.

00:48:29 ◼   ► So that could be true. Any of those things like, "Oh, I got my AirPods and they don't

00:48:32 ◼   ► connect or the battery runs out too quickly and again,

00:48:35 ◼   ► Apple can't patch it if it's a hardware problem.

00:48:37 ◼   ► - And it does seem like the basic operation,

00:48:40 ◼   ► I mean most people have had them for one or two days so far,

00:48:44 ◼   ► but it does seem like they work well.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And with a few exceptions, a few people have had

00:48:50 ◼   ► interference problems or connection problems with them,

00:48:53 ◼   ► but with those few exceptions that I've seen,

00:48:56 ◼   ► almost everyone who has them seems very happy with them.

00:48:59 ◼   ► - So are you guys starting with Marco?

00:49:01 ◼   ► There you go.

00:49:02 ◼   ► One more item.

00:49:03 ◼   ► One more item.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Look at the notes.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:49:06 ◼   ► That was the perfect segue.

00:49:07 ◼   ► We are not beholden to the damn notes, Jon.

00:49:08 ◼   ► But okay, Jon.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Tell me.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Yeah, you are.

00:49:11 ◼   ► You are beholden to the passage of time.

00:49:14 ◼   ► The earlier things and then they're followed by later things.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Oh, God, Jon.

00:49:19 ◼   ► The earlier item is...

00:49:21 ◼   ► Well, first of all, I'll...

00:49:23 ◼   ► We'll turn this...

00:49:24 ◼   ► Marco, have you lost any of your AirPods yet?

00:49:25 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:49:26 ◼   ► Tiff has them right now.

00:49:27 ◼   ► But when I gave them to her an hour ago...

00:49:30 ◼   ► Last time you saw them, they were both there, right?

00:49:31 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:49:32 ◼   ► - All right, I haven't lost mine either.

00:49:34 ◼   ► But if I did, was asked on the last show,

00:49:36 ◼   ► what would we do about it,

00:49:37 ◼   ► you can apparently replace one for 70 bucks.

00:49:40 ◼   ► - I did have one fall out of my ear

00:49:41 ◼   ► during the first two hours of using it.

00:49:44 ◼   ► - All right, well now we can shift into Mark

00:49:45 ◼   ► for telling us what he thinks of them.

00:49:47 ◼   ► I just wanted to get the,

00:49:48 ◼   ► because that was a question on the last show,

00:49:49 ◼   ► what happens if you lose one, answer, 70 bucks.

00:49:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, and that's honestly not bad.

00:49:54 ◼   ► For what they cost, that's fine.

00:49:56 ◼   ► It's good that they will sell you individual ones at all.

00:50:01 ◼   ► They could've just very well said,

00:50:02 ◼   ► well, you just gotta buy a new pair, oh well.

00:50:04 ◼   ► And so to have an option at all to buy individual ones

00:50:07 ◼   ► to replace lost or broken ones is nice.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Yeah, so my impressions overall,

00:50:14 ◼   ► as you know I'm reviewing all the headphones

00:50:16 ◼   ► in the universe, and basically my concerns before this

00:50:20 ◼   ► were I've never had an Apple EarPod or any EarPod

00:50:23 ◼   ► or any earbud or any ear canal phone

00:50:27 ◼   ► that fit me comfortably and well.

00:50:30 ◼   ► that both was comfortable and would stay in.

00:50:33 ◼   ► I've never found one.

00:50:35 ◼   ► My ears are just weird, I guess.

00:50:37 ◼   ► And I was concerned the AirPods would fit me

00:50:40 ◼   ► just as well as the EarPods do,

00:50:42 ◼   ► which is with mediocrity, with some discomfort,

00:50:46 ◼   ► and they fall out.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And I was also concerned about the lack of controls

00:50:52 ◼   ► on the AirPods, excuse me.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Boy, that's a common mistake this week.

00:50:57 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, it is.

00:50:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, so like, the lack of volume and play pause

00:51:03 ◼   ► and seek back, seek forward,

00:51:05 ◼   ► which are very commonly used in podcasts.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I had one person on Twitter, I'm sorry, I forgot the name.

00:51:10 ◼   ► One person on Twitter said,

00:51:11 ◼   ► "I've heard more ads on Overcast this week

00:51:13 ◼   ► "than I ever have before with the AirPods."

00:51:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:17 ◼   ► But anyway, thanks to our sponsors.

00:51:20 ◼   ► So, they only have either Siri or play pause

00:51:25 ◼   ► with the double tap gesture.

00:51:27 ◼   ► We've gone over this before.

00:51:28 ◼   ► So anyway, when they arrive, those are my concerns,

00:51:31 ◼   ► and they are exactly what I thought they would be,

00:51:34 ◼   ► in good and bad ways.

00:51:36 ◼   ► So in all the good ways, the pairing process is awesome.

00:51:40 ◼   ► The case, the battery charging, all that stuff is awesome.

00:51:43 ◼   ► The case is a little bit thick for pocket use.

00:51:47 ◼   ► It fits okay in that little change pocket

00:51:50 ◼   ► on top of your jeans right pocket.

00:51:52 ◼   ► It fits okay in there.

00:51:54 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't think about that.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But otherwise, they're great.

00:51:58 ◼   ► They actually, you know, I'm not a huge fan of earbuds

00:52:03 ◼   ► for sound purposes, but these sound pretty good

00:52:06 ◼   ► if you like hold them in especially.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Like basically the amount of bass that earbuds have

00:52:12 ◼   ► depends entirely on how well they seal snuggly

00:52:16 ◼   ► inside of your ear.

00:52:17 ◼   ► If they seal well, if they can really rest in there

00:52:19 ◼   ► and really get, and really like lodge themselves in there,

00:52:22 ◼   ► you will get great bass and they will stay in

00:52:25 ◼   ► And if you are not me, they might even be comfortable.

00:52:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

00:52:30 ◼   ► I'm sorry for jumping in,

00:52:31 ◼   ► but I have a pair of Ultimate Ears.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I don't know how they're classified,

00:52:35 ◼   ► but they're basically earphones.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And I could not agree with you more

00:52:39 ◼   ► that when I have them seated just right,

00:52:42 ◼   ► they are probably the best sounding speakers that I own.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And I have a couple of pretty decent pairs of headphones,

00:52:49 ◼   ► not Marco Crazygood, but decent pairs of headphones.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And I actually think the stereo in my car

00:52:54 ◼   ► really darn good as well, but these Ultimate Ears are phenomenal as long as they're seated

00:52:59 ◼   ► properly, and the moment they get even the teensy-winsiest bit unseated, it's a totally

00:53:06 ◼   ► different scenario.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Yeah, so that's what the AirPods are exactly the same.

00:53:10 ◼   ► When they are very well seated, so that you get good bass out of them, the sound quality

00:53:14 ◼   ► is very good, because when they're that seated, the harshness of, like, and tinniness of the

00:53:18 ◼   ► mid-range and the highs that you often get if they're out a little more, that gets softened

00:53:23 ◼   ► and rolled off and muted a little bit.

00:53:25 ◼   ► So it's actually a very well-balanced sound,

00:53:27 ◼   ► and for $160, a properly sealed AirPod

00:53:30 ◼   ► is a really good deal in the headphone world.

00:53:35 ◼   ► It's not the best, but it's really good,

00:53:38 ◼   ► especially for something that small.

00:53:40 ◼   ► So when they are well-sealed, they sound good.

00:53:42 ◼   ► When they are not well-sealed, like how they sit

00:53:43 ◼   ► in my ears, they sit a little loose,

00:53:45 ◼   ► like I can't get them to seal

00:53:46 ◼   ► 'cause whatever, my ears suck.

00:53:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:49 ◼   ► The bass suffers tremendously,

00:53:51 ◼   ► but the rest of the sound actually isn't too bad.

00:53:54 ◼   ► The mid-range is a little bit accentuated

00:53:57 ◼   ► and so it sounds a little bit more harsh,

00:54:00 ◼   ► but overall, I'm very pleasantly surprised

00:54:03 ◼   ► by how good they sound.

00:54:05 ◼   ► And I really wish they fit me better

00:54:07 ◼   ► because I would use them a lot more.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Unfortunately, they don't.

00:54:11 ◼   ► They fall out of my ears, even if I'm just like,

00:54:14 ◼   ► like I wore them yesterday while I was wrapping gifts,

00:54:16 ◼   ► so I'm like walking around the table,

00:54:18 ◼   ► bending over here and there,

00:54:19 ◼   ► and they fell out, one of them fell out after a few minutes.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Fortunately, I kind of felt it happening, so I caught it.

00:54:25 ◼   ► The other day, yesterday, whenever it was,

00:54:29 ◼   ► I took my dog for a walk also,

00:54:31 ◼   ► and had to bend over to pick up something

00:54:34 ◼   ► that you have to do when you take your dog for a walk.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And the worst almost happened.

00:54:40 ◼   ► - Oh God.

00:54:40 ◼   ► - It didn't, it missed by like a few inches.

00:54:43 ◼   ► - So you almost spent $70 at the Apple store that day.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:54:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:49 ◼   ► - You wouldn't buy a new one, you can clean that off.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Come on, it's all natural.

00:54:52 ◼   ► - You can clean that off.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I would buy a new one.

00:54:55 ◼   ► But yeah, so--

00:54:56 ◼   ► - You have a kid, you know what it's like.

00:54:57 ◼   ► Everything in your house is covered with poop.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Don't pretend it isn't.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - I'm not putting it in my ear.

00:55:02 ◼   ► - You are, you don't know it, but you are.

00:55:04 ◼   ► - So yeah.

00:55:05 ◼   ► - Man's conjecture.

00:55:06 ◼   ► - They don't, and yeah, and that actually happened

00:55:09 ◼   ► to Jason Snell as well, he mentioned on Upgrade this week.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So yeah, they don't fit me well, and it's unfortunate

00:55:16 ◼   ► because it is really nice to have something that small.

00:55:19 ◼   ► The double tap to play/pause,

00:55:21 ◼   ► I have found to be fairly unreliable.

00:55:25 ◼   ► You have to tap it pretty firmly

00:55:28 ◼   ► to get it to work reliably, and that's not good,

00:55:31 ◼   ► because it's kind of uncomfortable.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - Why would you do that

00:55:33 ◼   ► rather than just pulling one of the earbuds out?

00:55:36 ◼   ► - So you could do that too.

00:55:38 ◼   ► So basically, I'm just saying, for reference,

00:55:40 ◼   ► the gesture of either invoking Siri or doing play/pause,

00:55:43 ◼   ► depending on your preference,

00:55:45 ◼   ► it is a little inconsistent and a little tricky

00:55:48 ◼   ► to do reliably, so that's unfortunate.

00:55:50 ◼   ► But other than that, they're fine,

00:55:53 ◼   ► the sound is better than I expected.

00:55:55 ◼   ► They are small and light and they almost fit

00:55:59 ◼   ► in my pocket comfortably with the charging case

00:56:01 ◼   ► and without it of course you could do whatever you want

00:56:03 ◼   ► with them, they do unfortunately fall out of my ears.

00:56:05 ◼   ► And so I'm not gonna return them,

00:56:09 ◼   ► they're nice to have around but I think they'll be more

00:56:12 ◼   ► like something I keep in my backpack for like,

00:56:14 ◼   ► in case I forgot big headphones and I'm on a trip.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Or if I'm going to the city, maybe I'd bring them,

00:56:20 ◼   ► at least something like that, where I'm not gonna be

00:56:23 ◼   ► bending over much.

00:56:25 ◼   ► If I'm gonna be sitting on a train or a bus for a while,

00:56:28 ◼   ► that would be better for that, but I don't know.

00:56:30 ◼   ► So I'm gonna keep them.

00:56:32 ◼   ► I'm glad I have them, but I'm probably not gonna use them

00:56:34 ◼   ► heavily because they just are physically incompatible

00:56:37 ◼   ► with me in a pretty big way, unfortunately.

00:56:40 ◼   ► Also, I found if you have a winter hat over them, it could help hold them in because the

00:56:46 ◼   ► winter hat will cover your ears.

00:56:48 ◼   ► And then, you know, like not too tight, but like it'll basically – basically it's

00:56:51 ◼   ► impossible for them to fall out with my big heavy winter hat down over my ears.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll try that next actually because walking with like bigger headphones is not

00:57:01 ◼   ► great in the winter, but yeah, so I'll try that.

00:57:04 ◼   ► So Jon, what do you think about yours?

00:57:06 ◼   ► I agree with most of the things Marco said, but the ear pods do stay in my ears like the

00:57:12 ◼   ► plain old ear pods do and so do the AirPods because I keep reading reviews of whether

00:57:17 ◼   ► they're shaped differently.

00:57:18 ◼   ► Even Jason Snell said he thought they were shaped differently and I looked at the ones

00:57:22 ◼   ► that came with my iPhone 7 and these and as far as my eyeballs can tell without a micrometer

00:57:28 ◼   ► they are identically shaped.

00:57:30 ◼   ► Anyway, they stay in my ears just fine just like all the other ones have and I've been

00:57:33 ◼   ► using them for a long time now.

00:57:36 ◼   ► So that's not a problem for me.

00:57:38 ◼   ► I was interested to see how they would change the way I listen to stuff, because I do listen

00:57:44 ◼   ► during my commute, and the commute is Bluetooth in the car, obviously, but walking to my car,

00:57:49 ◼   ► which is not a long walk, but even just walking around the house in the morning, and then

00:57:53 ◼   ► I go out to my car, and then I get into my car, and then it comes over Bluetooth, and

00:57:55 ◼   ► I take out my headphones, and then I drive to work, then when I get out of my car from

00:57:58 ◼   ► the umpteenth floor of the parking garage, I put my headphones back in, and I walk all

00:58:02 ◼   ► through the parking garage in the building, you know, so I'm using my headphones for the

00:58:07 ◼   ► walking part of my commute, and I also wear them a lot when I am doing dishes or when

00:58:14 ◼   ► I am cooking dinner at night and stuff like that, just other, or just folding laundry

00:58:20 ◼   ► or whatever, just doing my own less work by myself and not using my Bluetooth speakers

00:58:24 ◼   ► sometimes because I don't want to disturb other people in my house other times, it's

00:58:27 ◼   ► just, you know, you just want to have your own thing.

00:58:29 ◼   ► So I thought these would be ideal because I wanted some of these for a long time.

00:58:32 ◼   ► I was talking about it this many, you know, like six months ago or a year ago about wireless

00:58:37 ◼   ► earbuds and they mostly worked the way I thought they would.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Glad that they, you know, they pair with the phone, sound comes out of them, no real problems,

00:58:49 ◼   ► the taking the thing out of your ear to pause and putting it back in actually works for

00:58:53 ◼   ► the most part exactly as advertised.

00:58:57 ◼   ► The construction of them looks good, they sound more or less the same as I'm not picky

00:59:01 ◼   ► about the earbuds, I'm just listening to podcasts or whatever as the other earpods.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Here are the things that surprised me though.

00:59:08 ◼   ► I knew this was a thing that I did, but this really hammered on how much I do it.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Apparently I adjust the volume a lot on my wired earbuds.

00:59:19 ◼   ► In all sorts of circumstances, why would I be adjusting the volume a lot when I'm making

00:59:22 ◼   ► dinner alone in the kitchen by myself?

00:59:25 ◼   ► because sometimes the little overhead fan is on and sometimes you're running the garbage disposal and sometimes there's a

00:59:30 ◼   ► Pan sizzling and something, you know, apparently I'm just like I'm a climate micro adjuster

00:59:36 ◼   ► You know a micro climate micro manager in the car. I am a volume micro manager with listening to podcasts

00:59:43 ◼   ► I'm shocked

00:59:45 ◼   ► Yeah a huge and me as well

00:59:47 ◼   ► I

00:59:47 ◼   ► Tried going with can I squeeze the little volume buttons with the thing in my pocket like in my jeans pocket or my jacket pocket?

00:59:53 ◼   ► as I'm walking because walking like in the parking garage is noisy as a car goes past

00:59:57 ◼   ► you, but then when you get on the street it's not as noisy, but then the UPS truck is driving

01:00:00 ◼   ► past and you can't hit your podcast again so you need to pause it or make it louder

01:00:03 ◼   ► again.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Taking them out of gear is not an option when you have a big thick glove on.

01:00:07 ◼   ► Anyway, volume adjustment is a no-go.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But I think I would probably tolerate that.

01:00:14 ◼   ► I think I would probably just put it at a louder volume and just tolerate it and just

01:00:17 ◼   ► or try to learn to it if it wasn't for the second thing, which is I pause the podcast

01:00:23 ◼   ► a surprising amount of time, specifically when I am in the kitchen cooking.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Because my wife will come in and ask me something and go back out, or I'll want to ask her something,

01:00:33 ◼   ► or one of my kids will come in and say something, I pause and play and pause and play a huge

01:00:37 ◼   ► amount.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Taking out is not really an option because then I have to have some place to hold it

01:00:43 ◼   ► and maybe my fingers are gross enough, you know, like too gross to be grabbing the earbud,

01:00:48 ◼   ► but just gross enough for me to use just my pinky and my thumb to press the little button.

01:00:52 ◼   ► I don't know. But like, you know, taking it out just didn't feel, and I was afraid I was

01:00:57 ◼   ► gonna like drop it down the disposal or not keep track of where it is, or then I had,

01:01:00 ◼   ► you know, then I'm occupying one hand because if I have to pause it to help do something

01:01:04 ◼   ► else. And often actually, I will pause when I need to concentrate on the important part

01:01:08 ◼   ► of the Blue Apron recipe that I'm doing because I have to read the instructions and I want

01:01:11 ◼   ► to pay attention to the instructions and not be like gloss over it or whatever.

01:01:14 ◼   ► So sometimes I'll pause when I'm alone in there just because I need to concentrate slightly

01:01:17 ◼   ► more and I'm an active listener who wants to listen to what they're doing.

01:01:20 ◼   ► You don't have to pay that much attention.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Seize them with salt and pepper.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Wash and dry the fresh produce.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Come on.

01:01:24 ◼   ► I'm like, well, it's easy to miss the fact that they said, "Only fry up a quarter of

01:01:29 ◼   ► the noodles, not all of them, because the fry ones are just to put on top and then you're

01:01:33 ◼   ► supposed to boil the other."

01:01:34 ◼   ► You know, so yeah.

01:01:35 ◼   ► You fried all the noodles in the chicken cassou soup?

01:01:39 ◼   ► I didn't, but someone we both know did.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Because I followed instructions and paused during that part.

01:01:43 ◼   ► But I'm just saying, it is possible to not follow.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Anyway, so I'm pausing and resuming a lot.

01:01:50 ◼   ► Now what about the double tap?

01:01:51 ◼   ► Here's the other thing that surprised me.

01:01:53 ◼   ► I was like, "All right, fine, whatever.

01:01:54 ◼   ► I have to pause or whatever.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I'll just do the double tap."

01:01:57 ◼   ► The double tap, reliability-wise, I found, like Marco, that it's not 100% reliable.

01:02:01 ◼   ► But I think you can live with that.

01:02:02 ◼   ► You know, it's not as 100% reliable as pinching the little thingy, but whatever, it'll get

01:02:06 ◼   ► by.

01:02:07 ◼   ► find it to be incredibly physically unpleasant. Yes, to tap that thing that's in my ear. Incredibly

01:02:13 ◼   ► unpleasant, like shockingly. Like it didn't even occur to me to think about how unpleasant

01:02:18 ◼   ► this would be. You know how unpleasant it is to get earbuds yanked out of your ear by

01:02:21 ◼   ► the wires, which will never happen again with earbuds? It's like that, but you're doing

01:02:25 ◼   ► it to yourself. You have to hit it surprisingly hard. And if you have to do it four times

01:02:28 ◼   ► instead of two, I'm like, "No, if someone was doing this to me, I would punch them.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I'm doing it to myself.

01:02:34 ◼   ► I'm doing it to myself.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I'm tapping the thing that's lodged into my ear.

01:02:38 ◼   ► It is terrible feeling.

01:02:41 ◼   ► And I just can't have it.

01:02:42 ◼   ► So in the kitchen now, I'm back to using my wired earbuds because pressing the little

01:02:47 ◼   ► play/pause button is way more pleasant and way faster and just – and I also have volume

01:02:54 ◼   ► control.

01:02:55 ◼   ► So the AirPods are banished from the kitchen.

01:02:58 ◼   ► For other environments, if I'm going out for a walk or just anything that is out and about

01:03:05 ◼   ► in the world, including mostly commuting, walking through the parking garage and down

01:03:10 ◼   ► and across the campus and up the air pods, I think are mostly still good for that and

01:03:14 ◼   ► I will still use them for that.

01:03:16 ◼   ► But for basically for non-exercise or non-mobile things for in the house, the wired ear pods

01:03:23 ◼   ► have beaten them out.

01:03:24 ◼   ► For me personally, I'm not saying this is going to be for you because everyone is different.

01:03:28 ◼   ► I'm gonna say, as a review of the product,

01:03:30 ◼   ► I think the product works as advertised

01:03:32 ◼   ► and does exactly what everyone says it does,

01:03:33 ◼   ► and you can read the reviews to see the feature set

01:03:35 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

01:03:35 ◼   ► You'll know there's no volume control, right?

01:03:37 ◼   ► But for me personally, the wired ones went for the house.

01:03:41 ◼   ► - So I gotta tell you, in my personal opinion,

01:03:47 ◼   ► I fucking love these things.

01:03:48 ◼   ► As it turns out, a listener of the show

01:03:53 ◼   ► who lives in Richmond, Matt Wallin, wrote me two nights ago.

01:03:57 ◼   ► right?" two nights ago and said, "Hey, I bought two pairs, one for my wife, one for me," and my wife

01:04:02 ◼   ► said, "Yeah, I'll pass, thanks. Do you want them?" And I said, "Well, yes. Yes, I do." And so, I met

01:04:09 ◼   ► Matt at a local Starbucks, sorry Marco, and he was a very nice guy and it happens. He was a very

01:04:16 ◼   ► nice guy and I gave him a very sketchy looking wad of $20 bills and he gave me a completely sealed

01:04:24 ◼   ► AirPods. So I do have AirPods, as it turns out, and I love these things. There are problems for sure.

01:04:30 ◼   ► I personally have not run into the double-tap thing because I find that I'm never ever ever

01:04:35 ◼   ► double-tapping the AirPod. If I want to pause, I'll just pull one of them out of my ear, and

01:04:41 ◼   ► I don't—I haven't even thought to use Siri for anything. The pairing process, as you said,

01:04:47 ◼   ► was phenomenally easy. They showed up on my iMac pretty much immediately, although it was a little

01:04:54 ◼   ► wonky getting them to attach. I don't want to say pair because they were paired to the iMac,

01:05:01 ◼   ► but getting them active on the iMac. And we'll come back to that in a second. It took a reboot

01:05:06 ◼   ► to get them to show up on my work computer, but my work computer has odd firewalls and security

01:05:11 ◼   ► restrictions and big business, yada yada yada. But after reboot, that did work just fine.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I use them off and on today at work.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I use them as much as I would use my traditional Bluetooth headphones.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And at the end of the day, the earbuds or the AirPods were pretty much entirely charged

01:05:31 ◼   ► because the handful of times that I would go and use the restroom or have a chat with

01:05:36 ◼   ► somebody or, I don't know, go downstairs to nuke my lunch, I would put them back in the

01:05:43 ◼   ► case and that would top them up.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And the case was down to about 52%.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Now, I did leave work early today.

01:05:50 ◼   ► I left work at about 1 o'clock, and so this isn't a perfect exemplar of a normal 8-9 hour

01:05:56 ◼   ► work day.

01:05:57 ◼   ► But having worked over half a day, the case was at 52% and the earbuds were basically

01:06:05 ◼   ► completely charged.

01:06:07 ◼   ► I didn't have any grumbling, or I didn't find it frustrating to not have any sort of playback

01:06:13 ◼   ► controls because most of the day I spend with them active on my work computer where I have

01:06:19 ◼   ► my keyboard with play/pause and all that other stuff right there waiting for me.

01:06:23 ◼   ► There are a handful of other times I use them throughout the day.

01:06:25 ◼   ► They were attached to my iPhone, which was attached to me.

01:06:28 ◼   ► I can absolutely see how it could be annoying.

01:06:30 ◼   ► And Jon, I totally understand what you're saying, and I can totally see why that would

01:06:34 ◼   ► be frustrating, but that's not something that has bothered me yet.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Aaron, every time she sees me with them in my ears, very casually and very politely reminds

01:06:44 ◼   ► me how much of a moron I am, or at least how much of a moron I look like, which I think

01:06:49 ◼   ► she's kind of right about that.

01:06:50 ◼   ► They do look a little goofy.

01:06:51 ◼   ► But I love these things.

01:06:53 ◼   ► The one complaint I have is that I haven't quite figured out the right dance in order

01:07:00 ◼   ► to get them to mate, if you will.

01:07:03 ◼   ► That's probably not a good word for it either, but whatever.

01:07:05 ◼   ► with a laptop or desktop as opposed to the phone, because the phone is pretty much always near me.

01:07:11 ◼   ► And even if the phone is off in the sense that the display is not on and it's just sitting there

01:07:18 ◼   ► idly, it seems like they really want to connect to the phone first, which I think I understand,

01:07:25 ◼   ► but I'll start playing a podcast or music or what have you on, say, my work laptop,

01:07:30 ◼   ► and that doesn't seem to be enough. Now, maybe this is user error and I just haven't broken

01:07:35 ◼   ► in the code on the right sequence of events to do, but it wasn't until I went into the

01:07:39 ◼   ► Bluetooth menu item and then went to my AirPods and then said "connect" that they would wake

01:07:44 ◼   ► up and start to connect to my work computer.

01:07:48 ◼   ► It was also very briefly discerning, or, um, it was just weird.

01:07:52 ◼   ► That's, thank you, that's what I was looking for.

01:07:56 ◼   ► That I would hear audio out of the right ear first consistently and then the left ear.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Now it was for a flash, just barely enough for me to tell that there was a difference,

01:08:04 ◼   ► and then they never got out of sync after that.

01:08:06 ◼   ► But that was a little weird.

01:08:08 ◼   ► But all in all, I love these things.

01:08:11 ◼   ► And I think a large part of the reason

01:08:14 ◼   ► that I love these things is because it reminds me

01:08:17 ◼   ► of the idealized apple that we all love.

01:08:20 ◼   ► And I think we're probably going to talk

01:08:22 ◼   ► about the other kind of apple that might be

01:08:24 ◼   ► the apple of today here in a few minutes.

01:08:26 ◼   ► But the apple that shipped these,

01:08:28 ◼   ► the apple of today that shipped these AirPods

01:08:31 ◼   ► is the apple that I love the most.

01:08:33 ◼   ► and the one that is whimsical and has soul

01:08:38 ◼   ► and has energy and has fun.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And God, I love these things.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And just doing the little flip.

01:08:45 ◼   ► I don't know if that's coming through on the mic,

01:08:46 ◼   ► but oh God, just doing that.

01:08:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna break this damn case from doing that constantly.

01:08:50 ◼   ► It's so satisfying, it's so satisfying.

01:08:52 ◼   ► And then the magnets that kinda like suck the AirPods

01:08:55 ◼   ► into the case, super satisfying, so good.

01:08:59 ◼   ► I love these things.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I do think $160 is pretty steep.

01:09:03 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's not fair.

01:09:05 ◼   ► - Honestly, for what you're getting,

01:09:08 ◼   ► in the competitive landscape of decent Bluetooth earbuds,

01:09:13 ◼   ► especially separate ones,

01:09:14 ◼   ► 'cause the level of complexity to make them

01:09:17 ◼   ► not have a wire that goes between them,

01:09:19 ◼   ► that's a very cutting edge thing.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Very few other things in the market can do that right now.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And they all have massive challenges in making that happen

01:09:29 ◼   ► and making it work well

01:09:30 ◼   ► because of the way Bluetooth works, basically.

01:09:32 ◼   ► But for what you're getting here,

01:09:35 ◼   ► I think they're actually well-priced.

01:09:37 ◼   ► They're like, it's not like a bargain basement,

01:09:40 ◼   ► like gonna blow the doors off with pricing only kind of thing

01:09:42 ◼   ► but it is a fair price for what you're getting.

01:09:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's fair.

01:09:48 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's not a fair price,

01:09:50 ◼   ► it's just $160 is a lot of money

01:09:52 ◼   ► for what appears to be physically not that much.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Now in reality, you're exactly right

01:09:57 ◼   ► that there's a lot there.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And in fact, getting it so small is a big freaking deal.

01:10:01 ◼   ► But I love these things.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I am surprised how much I like them.

01:10:06 ◼   ► I knew I was gonna like them,

01:10:07 ◼   ► but I really like them a lot.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And there's a little, you know,

01:10:11 ◼   ► there's a rough spot here and there,

01:10:12 ◼   ► like you guys were saying about double tapping.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Again, maybe it's user error,

01:10:15 ◼   ► but I haven't really gotten the sync

01:10:17 ◼   ► between computer and phone working quite right.

01:10:19 ◼   ► But the Bluetooth headphones that I use at work,

01:10:23 ◼   ► which I've talked about incessantly

01:10:25 ◼   ► for the entire run of this show,

01:10:26 ◼   ► they're terrible headphones,

01:10:27 ◼   ► but they work consistently.

01:10:30 ◼   ► However, they work consistently in part because I only ever have them paired to one computer

01:10:35 ◼   ► at a time.

01:10:36 ◼   ► These AirPods are paired to a work computer in iMac, an iPhone, and an iPad, and don't

01:10:41 ◼   ► blink an eye, and I only had to really do the pairing once.

01:10:45 ◼   ► And that is freaking magic.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And for that, that alone makes me super enthusiastic.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And I know that's silly.

01:10:54 ◼   ► I recognize how silly that is,

01:10:56 ◼   ► but just having the flexibility to use these things

01:11:00 ◼   ► with whatever I want, basically no more difficult,

01:11:03 ◼   ► in a way that's no more difficult

01:11:05 ◼   ► than unplugging, replugging a cable, that's just awesome.

01:11:08 ◼   ► So, I love 'em, I really do.

01:11:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there are other Bluetooth headphones

01:11:13 ◼   ► on the market that support being paired

01:11:15 ◼   ► to multiple devices at the same time

01:11:17 ◼   ► and having some way to choose between them

01:11:19 ◼   ► or to be simultaneously connected.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Like, that does exist in other headphones,

01:11:23 ◼   ► but none of them do it quite to this level.

01:11:26 ◼   ► To have this, especially the way they basically

01:11:29 ◼   ► sync the pairing to all of your other iCloud devices,

01:11:31 ◼   ► and if you have an Apple Watch,

01:11:34 ◼   ► it'll just show up as an AirPlay output device,

01:11:37 ◼   ► the same way an AirPlay device would show up.

01:11:38 ◼   ► It shows up on your other devices like that.

01:11:40 ◼   ► If you're sharing it between, as you said,

01:11:42 ◼   ► laptop and phone or phone and iPad or all the above,

01:11:47 ◼   ► it is way easier with the AirPods

01:11:48 ◼   ► than with anything else I've ever used

01:11:51 ◼   ► to have it on more than two devices.

01:11:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, so two thumbs up, I know I'm one person in a week.

01:11:58 ◼   ► Did you see that feedback we got way back when

01:12:00 ◼   ► that one person can't say two thumbs up?

01:12:02 ◼   ► But anyway, two thumbs up from me anyway.

01:12:04 ◼   ► - I don't read the reviews. - 'Cause that's how much

01:12:05 ◼   ► I like 'em, yeah, fair enough.

01:12:07 ◼   ► Any other thoughts on AirPods from either of you two

01:12:09 ◼   ► before we move on?

01:12:10 ◼   ► - About the hardware, I was thinking about how

01:12:14 ◼   ► these things are so close to being,

01:12:17 ◼   ► just take the regular AirPods and cut off the wires.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And if we had seen this exact thing in a '90s sci-fi movie,

01:12:26 ◼   ► we'd have been like, that's so fake.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:12:31 ◼   ► We are-- they've done such an incredible job

01:12:34 ◼   ► of not having this look like a thing that plays audio,

01:12:39 ◼   ► plus a big blob that has the electronics in it.

01:12:42 ◼   ► And because it's an object that we've seen so often,

01:12:45 ◼   ► these white ear pods that have been

01:12:46 ◼   ► on the market for a long time, just

01:12:48 ◼   ► like a slightly thicker scam, it just appears to be magic.

01:12:51 ◼   ► That's part of what we're responding to, like, that it's a magic.

01:12:54 ◼   ► I mean, it's low-level magic, you know, it's not, you know, levitated mountain magic, but

01:13:02 ◼   ► it is low-level magic.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Like, you know, it is surprising that it works.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And very quickly you get used to it, but it's very impressive in terms of this.

01:13:12 ◼   ► This is the magic of design, of like, making a thing that looks boring and simple, but

01:13:16 ◼   ► Like if you look at the iFixit teardown and realize what they shoved in there and what

01:13:21 ◼   ► it manages to do and just, it's fairly incredible that even the basics work.

01:13:26 ◼   ► And I think they made sacrifices to do that.

01:13:29 ◼   ► By not having a wire you sacrifice the ability to have a little dongle.

01:13:32 ◼   ► By making them so small and perfect you sacrifice the ability to have like, oh, a little touch

01:13:36 ◼   ► area where you slide your finger up and down for volume control.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Like it wouldn't be the same magic with that.

01:13:41 ◼   ► I still would like a little extra dongle that would maybe let me use these that I could,

01:13:45 ◼   ► know, play pause or whatever, like I clip it to my belt or something, who knows what

01:13:48 ◼   ► the hell I would do with it.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And yes, we've seen the ones that are on the market like that.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I wish more of them had buttons that I could feel without looking instead of being a uniform

01:13:57 ◼   ► circle or whatever.

01:13:58 ◼   ► But anyway, hardware-wise, this is a pretty big home run I think.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Other minor details, a couple of people in the chat room were talking about how I didn't

01:14:08 ◼   ► like tapping it in my ear.

01:14:09 ◼   ► It doesn't matter where I tap it.

01:14:10 ◼   ► I tried every location, you could tap the thing.

01:14:12 ◼   ► I tried tapping, you know, the stem part, the end, the middle, the part that's in my

01:14:16 ◼   ► ear.

01:14:17 ◼   ► I tried tapping light, heavy, tapping next to it, not actually tapping, like every combination

01:14:22 ◼   ► that actually causes it to play/pause or to activate or whatever, I immediately changed

01:14:27 ◼   ► it to play/pause, I didn't even bother with the Siri thing, but anyway, at any location

01:14:30 ◼   ► I find it very unpleasant.

01:14:33 ◼   ► The other thing that my wife pointed out, after, you know, for me giving these a trial

01:14:38 ◼   ► run is that the signal that you send other people, if they try to talk to you and you

01:14:45 ◼   ► turn to look at them and double tap your ear, it's kind of like you're saying, "Uh-huh,

01:14:50 ◼   ► I'm listening to something here," like as you point to your own ear, "Hello, hello,

01:14:55 ◼   ► see the thing in my ear?"

01:14:56 ◼   ► Which is exactly the signal you do not want to send because it seems like, you know, because

01:15:00 ◼   ► you do turn to face them and then you double tap your ear like you're pointing to it, especially

01:15:04 ◼   ► if you have to do it four times.

01:15:05 ◼   ► you go one, two, three, four.

01:15:07 ◼   ► It seems like you're saying, you know,

01:15:09 ◼   ► you see the ear pod, don't try to talk to me,

01:15:12 ◼   ► which let me tell you, doesn't go over big.

01:15:13 ◼   ► I'm like, no, I'm just trying to play pause.

01:15:15 ◼   ► So I'm not quite sure.

01:15:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think obviously you're meant to just remove one

01:15:19 ◼   ► from your ear, which does the same, which also pauses it.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Like that's obviously like the more common thing

01:15:22 ◼   ► you're supposed to do.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - Right, right, yeah.

01:15:24 ◼   ► But I think the removing is just a non-starter for me,

01:15:28 ◼   ► like in that environment.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Like even if only because then that means

01:15:31 ◼   ► I have to re-seat them and I'm grabbing that thing

01:15:33 ◼   ► with my grubby fingers.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Again, I'm much better at tapping the little thing.

01:15:38 ◼   ► One thing that a lot of us who just received our EarPods

01:15:41 ◼   ► noticed a similar story of receiving them

01:15:44 ◼   ► a couple of days ago in the Northeast anyway,

01:15:47 ◼   ► it's very cold and you get the package

01:15:49 ◼   ► and you open it up and you wanna try them out.

01:15:51 ◼   ► And because they're so cold

01:15:52 ◼   ► and they have these tiny little batteries that are frozen

01:15:54 ◼   ► and lithium ion batteries do not do well

01:15:55 ◼   ► when they're frozen, I got them and it's like,

01:15:58 ◼   ► "Oh, these things need to be charged."

01:15:59 ◼   ► Like they're not, I opened up immediately

01:16:02 ◼   ► and it started to pair,

01:16:03 ◼   ► then it was like, you know, low battery or whatever, I'm like, oh, you know, I just got

01:16:06 ◼   ► out of the box, maybe they don't have a charge, I should charge them. So I went to plug them

01:16:09 ◼   ► in and the time it took me to take them over to the other room and find a lightning cable

01:16:13 ◼   ► and plug it in, like all of a sudden, they were, you know, they appeared as, on my phone

01:16:18 ◼   ► which I was bringing with me, as like, oh, they're almost already charged. Really, it

01:16:20 ◼   ► was just the batteries thawing out. Like, so if you do get these and it's cold and you're

01:16:25 ◼   ► anxious to open up the package, like, give them five minutes to warm up. Like, they usually

01:16:30 ◼   ► do come with some amount of charge in them. It's not as if they charged in five seconds.

01:16:34 ◼   ► They didn't. They just thawed out. So, chill when you're there. The reverse of chill. Let

01:16:38 ◼   ► them un-chill when you get them, and you'll be happier.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Warm out for a while.

01:16:41 ◼   ► Which, by the way, may be a factor for people who run in the cold. This is what I'm thinking

01:16:44 ◼   ► about. Like, these are the exercise air pods.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Well, now, if it's in your ears, your ears are going to keep them warm. The bigger issue

01:16:50 ◼   ► would be if you, like, leave them in your car all day and your car's parked outside

01:16:54 ◼   ► and you come back to your car and they've been there and they're frozen. That's going

01:16:57 ◼   ► to be the bigger issue.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Yeah, don't leave them in your car.

01:16:59 ◼   ► But I was thinking like for these,

01:17:00 ◼   ► it seems like they'd be ideal for exercise as well.

01:17:02 ◼   ► Especially, I know they're,

01:17:04 ◼   ► I don't wanna go into things

01:17:06 ◼   ► that are probably not public yet.

01:17:07 ◼   ► But anyway, I would love to be able to play podcasts

01:17:11 ◼   ► from my watch locally onto my ear pods,

01:17:15 ◼   ► went out for like a run or something

01:17:16 ◼   ► and not have my phone with me at all

01:17:18 ◼   ► for a lightweight way to do this without wires.

01:17:21 ◼   ► That is very appealing to me.

01:17:23 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to something like that this summer,

01:17:25 ◼   ► if possible.

01:17:27 ◼   ► - If it's possible, we could talk.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Not entirely possible.

01:17:32 ◼   ► - I know, I know, I didn't want to talk.

01:17:35 ◼   ► Anyway, you can talk about that later.

01:17:37 ◼   ► The final thing is the case is awesome.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Flicking the little thing is awesome.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Pulling the ear pods out of the case

01:17:43 ◼   ► is sometimes less than awesome.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Because they are held in there by weak magnets,

01:17:48 ◼   ► but there's not really a good place for you to grab.

01:17:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fair.

01:17:52 ◼   ► - And guess what?

01:17:53 ◼   ► Guess what ear is on ear pods eventually?

01:17:55 ◼   ► - Ear wax.

01:17:56 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, which can be kind of slippery.

01:17:58 ◼   ► If you're a greasy Italian like me,

01:18:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:01 ◼   ► I make the ear pods greasy. - Gross.

01:18:04 ◼   ► - And sometimes I'm trying to remove a greasy ear pod

01:18:07 ◼   ► from a tiny little case and it's slippery

01:18:10 ◼   ► and sometimes it's a little bit difficult

01:18:12 ◼   ► to get them out is all I'm saying.

01:18:13 ◼   ► (clicking)

01:18:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:16 ◼   ► - Anyway, yeah.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Like, and I, in closing, I agree with Casey.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Like this, these are such a good product.

01:18:25 ◼   ► this is Apple at its best.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Like, this is the kind of thing that most people

01:18:30 ◼   ► don't do as well as Apple.

01:18:32 ◼   ► It's them tackling an incredibly complicated problem,

01:18:36 ◼   ► both, it's a serious technology challenge

01:18:39 ◼   ► and a serious design challenge.

01:18:41 ◼   ► And I don't mean that in just the way it looks.

01:18:42 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of design choices that go into it.

01:18:46 ◼   ► This is a serious challenge,

01:18:48 ◼   ► and Apple really did a really good job with it.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I wish they fit me, they don't.

01:18:54 ◼   ► But for people who they fit,

01:18:56 ◼   ► you should really consider picking these up

01:18:58 ◼   ► because they're really, really quite good.

01:19:01 ◼   ► - And on the fit thing, by the way,

01:19:03 ◼   ► I'm trying to think about, you know,

01:19:04 ◼   ► 'cause there are people who just doesn't fit ears.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Everyone's ears are different, right?

01:19:07 ◼   ► There's not much you can do about it

01:19:08 ◼   ► because Apple only sells one shape.

01:19:10 ◼   ► Do you think it would, would it help you,

01:19:13 ◼   ► do you think, if they sold them like three sizes,

01:19:15 ◼   ► like standard and then like a smaller and a bigger?

01:19:17 ◼   ► Or like, I don't know if the problem is that they're too big

01:19:19 ◼   ► or too small or shape-strong or whatever,

01:19:21 ◼   ► but like, obviously Apple did that whole big thing

01:19:23 ◼   ► when they first came out with the ear pods,

01:19:25 ◼   ► the wired ones a long time ago,

01:19:26 ◼   ► we measured a million years and they try to go for the,

01:19:28 ◼   ► you know, the shape that will fit the most ears.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And they probably did, they probably nailed it.

01:19:32 ◼   ► This is a shape that fits the most possible ears

01:19:36 ◼   ► with a single shape, but with a single shape,

01:19:38 ◼   ► you're never gonna fit all the ears.

01:19:40 ◼   ► Do you think they could eventually expand

01:19:43 ◼   ► to have two or three different sizes?

01:19:46 ◼   ► And if they did, do you think that would help your fit?

01:19:48 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't know exactly what the problem is,

01:19:49 ◼   ► but I would imagine that if it's falling out,

01:19:51 ◼   ► that's probably either too small

01:19:54 ◼   ► so it's not gripping against the edges

01:19:55 ◼   ► or too big that you can't really get it wedged in there.

01:19:57 ◼   ► - Right, I mean, I also don't know what the problem is,

01:20:00 ◼   ► but assuming that that would be a problem

01:20:03 ◼   ► that they could address that way, I don't think they would.

01:20:06 ◼   ► I don't think it would be their style

01:20:09 ◼   ► to sell ear pods in three different sizes.

01:20:12 ◼   ► - I saw the watch in two sizes.

01:20:14 ◼   ► - Especially 'cause I think about,

01:20:15 ◼   ► when somebody returns an ear pod,

01:20:18 ◼   ► they cannot do anything with that.

01:20:20 ◼   ► they can't resell it, they can probably refurbish it

01:20:23 ◼   ► if they can get all the crap out, but they probably can't,

01:20:26 ◼   ► it's probably not worth it.

01:20:26 ◼   ► - They're gonna refurbish it, guaranteed.

01:20:28 ◼   ► When you pay your 70 bucks, I guarantee you,

01:20:30 ◼   ► you're getting somebody else's EarPod.

01:20:31 ◼   ► - Maybe, but it's, because it's been in somebody's ear,

01:20:36 ◼   ► like there's a lot of issues, anyway,

01:20:38 ◼   ► so they have to totally refurbish that.

01:20:40 ◼   ► If they sold them in three different sizes,

01:20:42 ◼   ► they'd get so many more returns from people

01:20:45 ◼   ► who they didn't fit, and they think,

01:20:46 ◼   ► you know what, this is the wrong size,

01:20:47 ◼   ► let me try this other size now,

01:20:49 ◼   ► And then you got it, and then, oh,

01:20:51 ◼   ► turns out that doesn't fit me either.

01:20:52 ◼   ► It's like, that would be problematic.

01:20:54 ◼   ► Also--

01:20:55 ◼   ► - They could have try-ons in the store.

01:20:56 ◼   ► They should have little inert plugs

01:20:58 ◼   ► that they douse in alcohol between, you know?

01:21:02 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:21:02 ◼   ► I mean, they wipe down all the stuff in the store.

01:21:04 ◼   ► - That's not Apple style.

01:21:06 ◼   ► They wouldn't do that. - But no, they do that

01:21:07 ◼   ► for all the phones and everything.

01:21:09 ◼   ► The rest of those are just germ transference devices anyway.

01:21:11 ◼   ► And they do wipe down-- - The phones, sure.

01:21:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, they wipe them down with these disinfecting wipes,

01:21:15 ◼   ► like, I don't know, all day long,

01:21:17 ◼   ► and also when the store closes

01:21:18 ◼   ► and everything like that. - Yeah, but they're not

01:21:19 ◼   ► - You're not gonna like open the little drawer

01:21:20 ◼   ► under the table that you're not supposed to know exists

01:21:21 ◼   ► and pull out a tray of ear plugs and be like,

01:21:24 ◼   ► here, it's, try this on.

01:21:26 ◼   ► That's not, no, they would rather take the return.

01:21:29 ◼   ► - They let you try on watches to see which size fits you.

01:21:32 ◼   ► They do have two different sizes of watch.

01:21:34 ◼   ► - Yes, but that's not putting something inside of you.

01:21:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you can see it, and I think most of the time,

01:21:39 ◼   ► you can just know by trying it on for a second,

01:21:42 ◼   ► and they can reuse that one that you tried on.

01:21:45 ◼   ► But yeah, that's very different.

01:21:48 ◼   ► - The chat room says they do AirPod try-ons

01:21:50 ◼   ► and then they wipe them down.

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Really, ew. - Already.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - Anyway, so, the other thing is like,

01:21:57 ◼   ► I don't really see today's Apple

01:22:02 ◼   ► as carrying a whole lot about edge cases.

01:22:05 ◼   ► And so anything that they consider an edge case,

01:22:11 ◼   ► it's they kind of, by their actions or lack thereof,

01:22:14 ◼   ► have been given the middle finger to recently.

01:22:17 ◼   ► So I can't imagine that they would care.

01:22:21 ◼   ► - Because it really matters what percentage they hit.

01:22:23 ◼   ► 'Cause again, their whole thing is like,

01:22:24 ◼   ► we measured thousands of ears and we tried to find one shape

01:22:26 ◼   ► that would fit the largest number of them.

01:22:27 ◼   ► If that number is like 95%,

01:22:30 ◼   ► no, they're never gonna do anything for the 5%.

01:22:32 ◼   ► But if it's 70%,

01:22:34 ◼   ► I think eventually they could be convinced

01:22:36 ◼   ► that 70% is too low.

01:22:38 ◼   ► And so either change the shape of the one

01:22:40 ◼   ► that we're selling to try to get to 80 or 90,

01:22:42 ◼   ► or if you can't, then, you know,

01:22:44 ◼   ► I'm sure they gather this information of like,

01:22:47 ◼   ► people who buy these things and then fill out a survey

01:22:49 ◼   ► or complain, 'cause they do do that.

01:22:50 ◼   ► Like every time you buy something,

01:22:52 ◼   ► it seems like every time I buy something,

01:22:53 ◼   ► I get one of the surveys and they ask you

01:22:55 ◼   ► very pointed questions about stuff like this.

01:22:57 ◼   ► If they ask anyone any questions about EarPods or AirPods,

01:23:00 ◼   ► guarantee one of the questions would be,

01:23:01 ◼   ► do you find that it falls out?

01:23:02 ◼   ► Do you feel like it fits well?

01:23:03 ◼   ► Is it comfortable?

01:23:04 ◼   ► Like this is one of the pillar items of this product is

01:23:09 ◼   ► they wanna know, you know,

01:23:12 ◼   ► can people put it in their ears and does it do the job of,

01:23:14 ◼   ► you know, playing the music reliably

01:23:15 ◼   ► and staying in their ears and doing what it's supposed to do.

01:23:18 ◼   ► And it seems to me anecdotally,

01:23:20 ◼   ► I think they already are getting a really high percentage.

01:23:22 ◼   ► So I think you're right that they're probably not ever

01:23:24 ◼   ► gonna do anything about that.

01:23:25 ◼   ► But if I'm wrong and they're really a low percentage,

01:23:30 ◼   ► I would say high is like 80 or 90 and low is 70 or lower.

01:23:33 ◼   ► If I'm wrong and they are low,

01:23:34 ◼   ► I think they will do something to try to address that

01:23:37 ◼   ► because 70% is not a high enough.

01:23:39 ◼   ► I think they would like to sell products like this

01:23:43 ◼   ► to more than 70% of their customers.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And granted, they're like, you know, buy Beats, buy whatever.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, it's third party ecosystem,

01:23:48 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

01:23:49 ◼   ► As long as it does Bluetooth

01:23:51 ◼   ► or has a lightning connector, ha ha, it'll be fine.

01:23:54 ◼   ► But, and also like when a product is really mature,

01:23:58 ◼   ► then, and you have nothing left to do,

01:23:59 ◼   ► that's when you start diversifying.

01:24:01 ◼   ► So we'll give it a few years,

01:24:02 ◼   ► but I think the first thing they would try

01:24:05 ◼   ► is maybe tweaking the design and they would say,

01:24:08 ◼   ► oh, now the all new AirPods three years from now

01:24:11 ◼   ► with a slightly different shape

01:24:12 ◼   ► that we think fits a wider variety of ears.

01:24:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe.

01:24:16 ◼   ► - Not Marcos though.

01:24:17 ◼   ► - No, they'll never fit my, and you know,

01:24:20 ◼   ► I don't really hold it against them in this particular case.

01:24:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause why can you do?

01:24:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, 'cause I don't even know

01:24:25 ◼   ► what the problem is, you know, so it's,

01:24:27 ◼   ► you know, that's fine.

01:24:29 ◼   ► I'm perfectly fine with other headphones.

01:24:32 ◼   ► I would be happy with AirPods, but I also do like

01:24:35 ◼   ► having a lot of good controls on my headphones,

01:24:37 ◼   ► and a little more isolation sometimes, so yeah, it's nice.

01:24:40 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm reviewing a bunch, you'll hear about them

01:24:42 ◼   ► later. Just to avoid the feedback that we'll get, what do you make of this

01:24:49 ◼   ► theory that these were originally supposed to charge via USB-C based on the

01:24:54 ◼   ► size and shape of the receptacle, the lightning receptacle, and then at the

01:24:58 ◼   ► last second they said, "Oh, just kidding, let's use lightning." I personally don't

01:25:03 ◼   ► really buy it. I have plugged an official first-party cable into my AirPods case

01:25:07 ◼   ► right now. Yes, it does look ever so slightly bigger, the receptacle does, and I don't have

01:25:15 ◼   ► a USB-C connector handy, but this seems like a really weak argument to me. What do you

01:25:20 ◼   ► think, Jon?

01:25:21 ◼   ► Jon Streeter No, I don't buy that one. Mostly because if

01:25:26 ◼   ► you remember we talked about the fat lightning connector that it didn't like plugging into

01:25:29 ◼   ► the bottom of an iPhone 7? The larger one that has the chip in it because it has the

01:25:34 ◼   ► back and everything like that. If you plug that into the case, which admittedly makes

01:25:38 ◼   ► no sense because it's a headphone, right? But if you plug that into the case, it perfectly

01:25:42 ◼   ► covers the opening. Like, it looks perfect. It looks exactly like it was made to plug

01:25:47 ◼   ► in there, right? If you plug in one of the older ones, or if you plug in the lightning

01:25:51 ◼   ► cable that is hidden at the bottom of your box that you may not have found, if you have

01:25:54 ◼   ► AirPods by the way, look in the bottom of the box, it comes with a lightning cable for

01:25:58 ◼   ► charging. Which, as Marco points out, has a USB-A connector on the end.

01:26:02 ◼   ► Yep

01:26:03 ◼   ► That one does not cover the ends of the connector and you can see these little parts peeking out and it looks weird

01:26:09 ◼   ► You know, like what's the deal Johnny I've?

01:26:11 ◼   ► But I have like here's here's the main reason I don't think it was USB C

01:26:15 ◼   ► but

01:26:18 ◼   ► Apple charges stuff with lightning connectors all of its iOS devices charge with lightning connectors

01:26:24 ◼   ► Everybody who has Apple crap has a bunch of lightning connectors to charge stuff. What in the world would they make this one thing?

01:26:31 ◼   ► Charge not with a lightning connector. So I think you know the only thing I could think of was like

01:26:36 ◼   ► Well, does that mean that every lightning connector is gonna be like these fat ones?

01:26:40 ◼   ► Even if they don't have the DAC chips in them like well the plan will charging cables be fat

01:26:45 ◼   ► I hope not because I don't like the fat one. I like the skinny ones

01:26:47 ◼   ► So I don't really have a good explanation

01:26:50 ◼   ► But I have a hard time thinking of any reason that this one particular peripheral

01:26:54 ◼   ► Would charge with USB C unless they're gonna go to USB C everywhere

01:26:58 ◼   ► which seems entirely unlikely because it's still bigger

01:27:00 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

01:27:01 ◼   ► But yeah, it's an interesting theory.

01:27:04 ◼   ► I would love to know the actual explanation.

01:27:07 ◼   ► And I guess if we wait a year

01:27:09 ◼   ► and every single lightning cable now comes

01:27:11 ◼   ► with the fat connector, there's your explanation

01:27:12 ◼   ► because it looks perfect on this thing.

01:27:15 ◼   ► - Marco, what do you think?

01:27:16 ◼   ► - John covered it well.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Basically like it, yes, there is this weird gap

01:27:20 ◼   ► that is kind of on Apple like

01:27:21 ◼   ► to have this weird looking mismatch.

01:27:24 ◼   ► It's extra weird that the cable that comes

01:27:26 ◼   ► in the box doesn't fill the gap properly.

01:27:29 ◼   ► But I also would think it would be very strange

01:27:32 ◼   ► to have this charge via USB-C given the current lineup

01:27:34 ◼   ► because all of their other accessories

01:27:37 ◼   ► like that are this size and in this area--

01:27:40 ◼   ► - Even the pen.

01:27:41 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Pencil, sorry.

01:27:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's its own weird charging thing

01:27:46 ◼   ► but like everything else charges by lightning

01:27:49 ◼   ► that's like this in the Apple world.

01:27:51 ◼   ► So yeah, I would be very surprised if it didn't.

01:27:54 ◼   ► And it would actually be, I think, less convenient

01:27:57 ◼   ► for most people if it charged via USB-C.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Because if you are using these,

01:28:02 ◼   ► you're almost certainly using them with an iPhone.

01:28:05 ◼   ► And you are going to have little lightning cables

01:28:08 ◼   ► all over your house or car or work or all of the above

01:28:11 ◼   ► to charge your phone wherever you are in most cases.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So you're always gonna have the ability to charge something

01:28:20 ◼   ► that charges via lightning if you own the AirPods.

01:28:23 ◼   ► So it makes total sense to have these

01:28:26 ◼   ► also charged by lightning.

01:28:27 ◼   ► And it would not make a lot of sense

01:28:29 ◼   ► in real world use for who's actually buying these

01:28:31 ◼   ► and how they're actually using them

01:28:33 ◼   ► to have the be USB-C port.

01:28:34 ◼   ► We are also sponsored this week by another new sponsor.

01:28:38 ◼   ► It is SQL Pro.

01:28:40 ◼   ► This is a Mac app at SQLProStudio.com.

01:28:44 ◼   ► I'm so happy that they actually told me

01:28:47 ◼   ► how to pronounce SQL.

01:28:49 ◼   ► Because otherwise I would have had to guess

01:28:50 ◼   ► and I'd be very, very worried that I'd guess wrong.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Anyway, SQL Pro supports many of the most popular

01:28:55 ◼   ► database platforms such as Postgres,

01:28:57 ◼   ► Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or is it MySQL, I don't know,

01:29:01 ◼   ► MySQL, and Oracle.

01:29:03 ◼   ► SQL Pro also offers an intuitive interface

01:29:06 ◼   ► where the most basic to advanced database needs

01:29:08 ◼   ► are very easily accessible.

01:29:10 ◼   ► This includes features such as autocomplete,

01:29:12 ◼   ► syntax highlighting, and support for multiple result sets.

01:29:15 ◼   ► And of course, all sorts of other advanced features,

01:29:17 ◼   ► some of which include support for cloud providers

01:29:20 ◼   ► such as Amazon RDS, Microsoft Azure, and Heroku,

01:29:23 ◼   ► you can check it all out today with a seven day free trial

01:29:27 ◼   ► available at SQLProStudio.com,

01:29:30 ◼   ► and you can save 20% off purchases

01:29:32 ◼   ► by using the promo code ATP20.

01:29:34 ◼   ► And if you're a student,

01:29:36 ◼   ► there are also student discounts available.

01:29:38 ◼   ► If you contact the author, Kyle, at Hankinsoft.com

01:29:41 ◼   ► for details, student discounts are available for students.

01:29:44 ◼   ► So check it out today, SQLPro@SQLProStudio.com,

01:29:49 ◼   ► and you can get 20% off your purchase

01:29:52 ◼   ► by using the promo code ATP20.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Once again, SQLProStudio.com, code ATP20 for 20% off.

01:29:59 ◼   ► Thank you very much to SQL Pro for the Mac

01:30:01 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

01:30:02 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:30:06 ◼   ► - All right, I'm bracing myself for impact.

01:30:10 ◼   ► Over the last couple of days,

01:30:12 ◼   ► there's been a little bit of chatter

01:30:14 ◼   ► about the state of the Mac.

01:30:17 ◼   ► This started, at least as far as I'm aware,

01:30:20 ◼   ► by a back and forth, a Q and A,

01:30:23 ◼   ► some sort of thing that happened

01:30:25 ◼   ► on some sort of internal Apple message board

01:30:27 ◼   ► that of course got leaked.

01:30:29 ◼   ► And it has Tim Cook discussing the future of the Mac.

01:30:34 ◼   ► And I don't have the exact quote in front of me,

01:30:39 ◼   ► but he says basically, "Hey, Jai Mac is great."

01:30:41 ◼   ► Oh, okay, would you mind jumping in then, please?

01:30:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the question from, I guess, an employee was,

01:30:46 ◼   ► We had a Big Mac Pro launch in October

01:30:48 ◼   ► and a powerful upgrade to the MacBook back in the spring.

01:30:50 ◼   ► Are Mac desktops strategic for us?

01:30:53 ◼   ► And so Tim Cook basically says,

01:30:55 ◼   ► I'll summarize a little bit,

01:30:56 ◼   ► he says the desktop is very strategic for us,

01:30:58 ◼   ► it's unique compared to the notebook, blah, blah, blah.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Then he says, the current generation iMac

01:31:02 ◼   ► is the best desktop we've ever made

01:31:03 ◼   ► and it's beautiful, retina 5K display

01:31:05 ◼   ► is the best desktop display in the world.

01:31:07 ◼   ► Some folks in the media have raised the question

01:31:08 ◼   ► about whether we're committed to desktops.

01:31:10 ◼   ► If there's any doubt about that with our teams,

01:31:12 ◼   ► let me be very clear, we have great desktops in our roadmap.

01:31:15 ◼   ► Nobody should worry about that.

01:31:17 ◼   ► So, this, yeah, I mean, here's the thing.

01:31:21 ◼   ► - That was a very Trumpian answer, I have to say.

01:31:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it wasn't that bad, let's be honest,

01:31:26 ◼   ► but it wasn't that much better.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Here's the thing, this was an opportunity

01:31:31 ◼   ► that Tim Cook chose to take to reassure people

01:31:35 ◼   ► who really care about Macs, and specifically Mac desktops,

01:31:38 ◼   ► to reassure them that Apple still has their needs covered

01:31:43 ◼   ► and plans to keep covering their needs.

01:31:47 ◼   ► And Tim basically gave an information-less answer

01:31:50 ◼   ► that committed to nothing, that had even less hope

01:31:53 ◼   ► than the last time somebody asked him about this,

01:31:55 ◼   ► that resulted in the 2013 Mac Pro, where he said,

01:31:57 ◼   ► we have something for our pro customers

01:31:58 ◼   ► coming later next year, whenever that was, 2012 probably.

01:32:01 ◼   ► If he had anything positive to say about any Mac desktop

01:32:07 ◼   ► other than the iMac, I think he probably would've made

01:32:09 ◼   ► a stronger implication about that,

01:32:11 ◼   ► or would've used some different wording.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Tim Cook chooses his words very carefully.

01:32:15 ◼   ► He knew by writing this,

01:32:17 ◼   ► he knew that somebody would leak it,

01:32:18 ◼   ► so he was obviously writing it with that in mind,

01:32:21 ◼   ► 'cause he's a smart person, he knows how these things work.

01:32:23 ◼   ► And again, he chooses his words very carefully.

01:32:25 ◼   ► If he had anything more reassuring to say

01:32:29 ◼   ► about Mac desktops, he would've said it.

01:32:32 ◼   ► So the fact that he didn't is actually a little unsettling,

01:32:36 ◼   ► even more unsettling than I think,

01:32:39 ◼   ► than if we didn't have this interaction with Tim.

01:32:42 ◼   ► If we had no information,

01:32:44 ◼   ► I'd be a little more confident with that

01:32:46 ◼   ► than what we have here, which is basically him saying,

01:32:51 ◼   ► we have desktops covered with the iMac.

01:32:53 ◼   ► That's basically what he's saying here.

01:32:55 ◼   ► And look, I'm talking to you from an iMac.

01:33:01 ◼   ► I have an iMac right here.

01:33:02 ◼   ► I sold an underperforming older generation processor Mac Pro

01:33:07 ◼   ► to get this iMac because the iMac outperformed it.

01:33:11 ◼   ► But that's not a problem, the problem there is not that

01:33:15 ◼   ► Mac Pros are terrible, it's that the Mac Pros we have

01:33:18 ◼   ► right now are not competitive and are not a very good buy

01:33:22 ◼   ► and are not being kept up to date.

01:33:24 ◼   ► The, you know, I wrote months ago now like, you know,

01:33:28 ◼   ► why I care about the Mac Pros so much

01:33:30 ◼   ► and why I think it needs to remain in the lineup

01:33:32 ◼   ► and remain good and remain up to date.

01:33:35 ◼   ► None of those things have changed.

01:33:37 ◼   ► The Mac Pro still does things that iMacs can't do.

01:33:40 ◼   ► Not to mention Apple also sells this other desktop

01:33:42 ◼   ► called the Mac Mini, which is even more neglected

01:33:46 ◼   ► most of the time than the Mac Pro, which is saying a lot.

01:33:49 ◼   ► The last update to it was not only many years ago,