ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, I think even today's PC's, they can't be that bad, can they?

00:00:03 ◼   ► They don't have ethernet on a card.

00:00:05 ◼   ► I remember the bad old days when you'd get a USB card.

00:00:07 ◼   ► You're like, "Oh, you've got USB, yeah, but I only take up one of my PC's."

00:00:11 ◼   ► I have six PC iSlots, so it's not a big deal.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Well, you would have a card for the fast...

00:00:16 ◼   ► You'd have a USB 2.0 card with two USB 2.0 slots on it,

00:00:20 ◼   ► and then on your motherboard's little riser thing, where all the other ports were.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Yeah, the 1.1 for your keyboard and mouse.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Yeah, then you'd have the slow ports.

00:00:26 ◼   ► And then plus the PS/2 port, right?

00:00:28 ◼   ► because that's probably what your keyboard and mouse connected to if you had a Dell.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Yeah, you'd have two PS/2 ports, and they'd be color-coded helpfully with the...

00:00:33 ◼   ► Right, with the teal one for the mouse and the lime green one for the...

00:00:37 ◼   ► What was that standard called? The standard that gave all those ugly colors in the late

00:00:42 ◼   ► 90s? You're talking about with the PS/2 port, like

00:00:44 ◼   ► the mouse was purpley? Yeah, they were color-coded. They were like

00:00:47 ◼   ► pastel. Yeah, when they got colored, it was like

00:00:49 ◼   ► around 1998 or so, and there was a standard released by the PC group of whoever. They

00:00:55 ◼   ► They all agreed to use these colors.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - And they were ugly colors.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - Oh, horrendous, and they're still in use today.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I think the colors have not changed.

00:01:02 ◼   ► The ports have changed somewhat,

00:01:04 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure it's still the exact same colors.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - PC-97 introduced color code for PS/2 keyboard,

00:01:11 ◼   ► purple, and mouse green.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's it.

00:01:13 ◼   ► PC system design guide.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Were there more, though?

00:01:16 ◼   ► 'Cause there were all sorts of,

00:01:17 ◼   ► there was the sound one, oh yeah, here we are, yeah.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Color coding scheme, PC-99.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Perhaps the most end-user visible

00:01:24 ◼   ► and lasting impact of PC 99 was that it introduced

00:01:26 ◼   ► a color code for various standard types of plugs

00:01:28 ◼   ► and connectors used on PCs.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Sky blue is USB 3.0 super speed.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - Oh, good.

00:01:35 ◼   ► - Burgundy is parallel port.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Teal or turquoise, serial port.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - I think the sound ones are the ugliest,

00:01:41 ◼   ► like the pink light blue, lime green,

00:01:43 ◼   ► those are always like the ugliest ones

00:01:45 ◼   ► on the back of a case.

00:01:46 ◼   ► - It made every PC extra ugly,

00:01:48 ◼   ► 'cause no matter how tasteful you made your case,

00:01:49 ◼   ► you'd like, they'd put the little plastic ring

00:01:51 ◼   ► around all the little audio things,

00:01:52 ◼   ► It was just like a rainbow of ugly pastel.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - Oh my God, and then the audio plugs

00:01:59 ◼   ► that would be on the end of the cables

00:02:00 ◼   ► would also be those colors so you could easily line them up.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Oh my God, so this is just a library

00:02:06 ◼   ► of horrible 90s colors right here.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - It was like a tasteless person's idea

00:02:10 ◼   ► of solving a problem that users don't know

00:02:12 ◼   ► where stuff plug into on the back of their PCs.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Let's color code them all is problem number one.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Problem number two is if we're gonna color code them all,

00:02:18 ◼   ► let's make them all ugly colors

00:02:20 ◼   ► that all clash with each other

00:02:21 ◼   ► and will never match any peaceful PC ever made.

00:02:24 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Oh, PC 99.

00:02:26 ◼   ► It is our 200th episode spectacular.

00:02:32 ◼   ► - Before we go totally off the rails,

00:02:33 ◼   ► I'd like to have a touchy-feely moment,

00:02:35 ◼   ► since I am, well, I used to be

00:02:37 ◼   ► the touchy-feely person in chief,

00:02:38 ◼   ► but since "Reconcilable Differences" is a thing,

00:02:42 ◼   ► I don't know if I am anymore, but I do wanna say--

00:02:45 ◼   ► - What's that supposed to mean?

00:02:46 ◼   ► - That "Reconcilable Differences" is like analog,

00:02:49 ◼   ► but with people who actually know what they're talking about

00:02:51 ◼   ► with all respect to Mike Hurley, whom I love.

00:02:52 ◼   ► - Wait, are you suggesting though,

00:02:54 ◼   ► because you're talking about the three of us,

00:02:55 ◼   ► are you suggesting that Jon is the touchy-feely one

00:02:58 ◼   ► on that show?

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Jon is the dark horse touchy-feely one, I'd say.

00:03:04 ◼   ► But anyway, we're getting sidetracked again

00:03:08 ◼   ► in typical ATP style.

00:03:09 ◼   ► This is the 200th episode if I've ever heard it.

00:03:12 ◼   ► No, but I wanted to take a moment

00:03:13 ◼   ► and genuinely from the bottom of my heart

00:03:15 ◼   ► thank every single one of our listeners,

00:03:17 ◼   ► past, present, future, every single one of you.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Those crazy people who go all the way back in time to listen from the beginning when

00:03:24 ◼   ► they discover the show later in the run.

00:03:27 ◼   ► For the 13 of you that listened to "Neutral," I'm sure that was sufficiently painful and

00:03:32 ◼   ► I apologize on behalf of all three of us.

00:03:35 ◼   ► But truly and genuinely, being a part of the show has been a tremendous highlight of my

00:03:41 ◼   ► life and has afforded my family some things that we may not have been able to do otherwise.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Thanks to all of the listeners, even the ones who write us cranky emails.

00:03:50 ◼   ► appreciate you. The ones who write us lovely emails, we really appreciate you. And even

00:03:54 ◼   ► if you listen and don't write in, we appreciate you too. So thank you from all of us to all

00:04:00 ◼   ► of you for being you and for listening to the show. And also on a somber note, if I

00:04:06 ◼   ► can't remember my Gmail password, oh there we go. This is going to be a short show because

00:04:09 ◼   ► I can't see the damn show notes, but I just remembered it. So we're good.

00:04:13 ◼   ► So what is it that makes somebody buy a white car exactly?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Oh, here we go again. God, you're such a dick. Anyway, it's funny, you know, looking

00:04:22 ◼   ► back on that very first episode of "Neutral," had I known that that was going to be the

00:04:29 ◼   ► first released episode, I probably would have started with a better phrase. My introductory

00:04:34 ◼   ► phrase to the world would have been something better than...

00:04:39 ◼   ► What is it that makes somebody buy a white car?

00:04:42 ◼   ► Oh, you're a dick.

00:04:45 ◼   ► That seems about right. What are you complaining about? That's like on the nose.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I mean, are we really that different now?

00:04:55 ◼   ► No, but I would have—had I known better at the time, I would have chosen a better

00:05:01 ◼   ► introductory phrase. Because if you think about it, I mean, that was my very first appearance

00:05:05 ◼   ► on any podcast ever. And my first appearance was "Getting Grumpy at You," which, again,

00:05:11 ◼   ► maybe is fitting in retrospect.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Now we just sound better, but it's the same,

00:05:16 ◼   ► we're the same people doing basically the same show.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Now just, we sound better and the car stuff

00:05:22 ◼   ► tends to wait 'til the end of the show.

00:05:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is accurate.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It is wild to me to think, and actually I was just

00:05:30 ◼   ► talking to a friend of mine at work at lunch today.

00:05:33 ◼   ► He was reflecting on the time when the two of us

00:05:36 ◼   ► were jackals in the five by five chat room,

00:05:38 ◼   ► and here it is, I'm talking with you guys every single week,

00:05:41 ◼   ► which is crazy, it's bananas,

00:05:43 ◼   ► and I'm very thankful for it.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And again, I'm thankful for all our listeners.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And this touchy-feeling moment is gonna end in a moment,

00:05:49 ◼   ► but it is important to me anyway,

00:05:51 ◼   ► and I think I speak for the other two guys,

00:05:53 ◼   ► it's important to all of us,

00:05:54 ◼   ► that you guys know that we appreciate you

00:05:58 ◼   ► despite the fish that we play

00:05:59 ◼   ► before the livestream every week.

00:06:01 ◼   ► - We all like you, even John.

00:06:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:04 ◼   ► - Especially the people who go back

00:06:05 ◼   ► and listen from the beginning,

00:06:06 ◼   ► because those are the best people.

00:06:08 ◼   ► - Not that it's a competition.

00:06:09 ◼   ► - 'Cause there's so much important continuity

00:06:11 ◼   ► that you'll be missing out on if you don't do that.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And it's becoming increasingly hard to do that

00:06:16 ◼   ► as time passes, so better hurry up

00:06:18 ◼   ► and go through that back catalog.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Those people are the best.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - That's the thing.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause these aren't 200 short shows.

00:06:24 ◼   ► - No.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Well, the first five were.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Wasn't the first episode 15 minutes or something like that?

00:06:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it was like the after show of "Neutral"

00:06:30 ◼   ► that we just recorded one night and threw up on SoundCloud.

00:06:33 ◼   ► - It was an inversion where the after show became the show

00:06:35 ◼   ► and the show became the after show.

00:06:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:38 ◼   ► - Oh, man.

00:06:39 ◼   ► But to think that it was something like March of 2013 that we formally announced that this

00:06:47 ◼   ► was a thing, and here it is.

00:06:50 ◼   ► It's December of 2016, and with the exception of the one crossover episode, all three of

00:06:55 ◼   ► us have been on every single episode for 200 episodes every single week without fail.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And in the grand scheme of things, it's not a difficult thing to talk to your buddies

00:07:05 ◼   ► at home in front of your own computer for a couple hours each week. But you'd be surprised

00:07:10 ◼   ► how challenging it can become, especially with holiday schedules as we're coming into.

00:07:15 ◼   ► So I appreciate the two of you guys sticking with me, and I appreciate all the listeners

00:07:18 ◼   ► sticking with us. And with that touchy-feely moment done, unless you guys have something

00:07:22 ◼   ► to add, we can go on to a normal, completely accidental show.

00:07:26 ◼   ► [music]

00:07:27 ◼   ► Well, Marko, we'll start some kind of celebratory 200-episode sound at this point in the podcast.

00:07:33 ◼   ► No pressure.

00:07:34 ◼   ► We could just make this a clip show.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Just like, you know, just all the wonderful clips from times past.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It is the holiday season.

00:07:42 ◼   ► Next up, let's talk about file systems.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Alright.

00:07:48 ◼   ► That's more work than doing a regular show though.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it actually is.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Really, honestly.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I mean, if I could just sit here and bullsh*t with you guys for a couple hours, that's way

00:07:55 ◼   ► easier than actually going back and pulling clips.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I just, 19 Safari windows, oh my God.

00:08:05 ◼   ► 19. - How many Chrome windows

00:08:06 ◼   ► do I have open?

00:08:07 ◼   ► - Oh, God. (laughing)

00:08:10 ◼   ► - Oh my God, I didn't even think about that.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Of course it's multiple browsers.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Of course. - Oh, it's so bad.

00:08:14 ◼   ► - 12 Chrome windows. - Oh my God.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - In addition to the 19 Safari.

00:08:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I run Safari and Chrome all the time.

00:08:19 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:08:20 ◼   ► - Why?

00:08:22 ◼   ► Why on God's green earth do you need

00:08:24 ◼   ► more than 30 web browser windows open?

00:08:27 ◼   ► Why is that necessary?

00:08:29 ◼   ► How many fricking tabs are in all 30 of these web browsers?

00:08:32 ◼   ► - I can close them now.

00:08:33 ◼   ► I can close the thing in my web browser.

00:08:34 ◼   ► - Oh, woo!

00:08:35 ◼   ► I can close like four of them, woo!

00:08:37 ◼   ► - I can close the pages with the dates of,

00:08:39 ◼   ► the Superclock dates in it.

00:08:41 ◼   ► - What's the average number of tabs per window, you think?

00:08:44 ◼   ► - It's like, so you can still see the titles.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Like usually, you know.

00:08:47 ◼   ► - So like eight?

00:08:48 ◼   ► - No, that's too many.

00:08:49 ◼   ► One, two, three, four, like five or six.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Like for example, when I was looking up,

00:08:52 ◼   ► I wanted to look up the dates for Superclock.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I had one window dedicated to looking up the date

00:08:56 ◼   ► that Super Clock was released.

00:08:59 ◼   ► One window looking up the date

00:09:01 ◼   ► that System 7.5 was released.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And within those windows, I have the Google thing,

00:09:06 ◼   ► and then I have tabs for the Google search results

00:09:09 ◼   ► that I thought would be likely,

00:09:10 ◼   ► and then one of the tabs eventually led to the answer.

00:09:12 ◼   ► That window is done, off to the side.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Next window, search for the--

00:09:15 ◼   ► - Wait, stop!

00:09:16 ◼   ► Why is it off to the side, and why is it not closed?

00:09:18 ◼   ► - So I could refer to it when I just discussed this

00:09:20 ◼   ► and did the math in my head about what the dates were.

00:09:22 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:09:23 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:09:25 ◼   ► So let's do some follow-up as we always should.

00:09:28 ◼   ► And John, why don't you tell us about an LG 4K HDR monitor?

00:09:33 ◼   ► Fun.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Back when I was buying the new monitor for my new PlayStation,

00:09:39 ◼   ► I was lamenting the fact that it didn't seem to be any place--

00:09:44 ◼   ► you could buy a 4K monitor with HDR support.

00:09:48 ◼   ► You could buy 4K televisions with HDR, but not monitors,

00:09:51 ◼   ► not like reasonable-sized small things you'd put on a desk.

00:09:55 ◼   ► And LG just preannounced/announced that they're going to have a 4K 32-ish or something inch

00:10:03 ◼   ► HDR capable monitor.

00:10:04 ◼   ► I thought they'll be showing it CES or something.

00:10:08 ◼   ► So you know, you're welcome.

00:10:10 ◼   ► All I had to do was buy a monitor.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And then, you know, they announced it.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Hey, can you buy a new Mac Pro, John?

00:10:15 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:10:16 ◼   ► No, I haven't pulled that trigger yet.

00:10:18 ◼   ► Although, I had a dream about the Mac Pro last night speaking of the Mac Pro.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Of course you did.

00:10:23 ◼   ► I wish I had, I should have written it down or told it to an ancient bird, uh, Merlin

00:10:28 ◼   ► style because I'm something that's fading from memory.

00:10:31 ◼   ► But if something like, so Apple had introduced a new Mac pro that looked from the front of

00:10:35 ◼   ► look kind of like the trashcan Mac pro.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Uh, the name of it didn't make any sense to me in the dream.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It didn't make any sense.

00:10:42 ◼   ► And I kept asking anybody, everybody who had listened in the dream, why is it called this?

00:10:45 ◼   ► And I believe the name was something like, it was like a browsing computer, like web

00:10:50 ◼   ► browsing.

00:10:51 ◼   ► Like, why are you calling it a browsing computer?

00:10:53 ◼   ► make any sense this is supposed to be the new mac pro pro the replacement macro what does that do

00:10:57 ◼   ► with web browsing that's what it was called and when you rotate it around the back of it instead

00:11:01 ◼   ► of it looking like the current one on the back of the the trash can cylinder was a section that was

00:11:06 ◼   ► just cut out flat and what it looked like you know what the flattened place looked like it was like

00:11:11 ◼   ► the back of an old pc you know with the the pci slots with the little covers on them you know the

00:11:15 ◼   ► little sort of unfinished steel that's what it looked like on the back just steel like a big flat

00:11:20 ◼   ► section that was steel and had like the graphics card with a little port picking out of it and then two PCI slots

00:11:25 ◼   ► But shouldn't make any sense because it's a cylinder in there. Anyway, that's what it looked like. It was gross

00:11:29 ◼   ► I wasn't happy with it and it was named after something having to do with browsing which didn't make any sense

00:11:33 ◼   ► See normally I cannot stand to hear about someone else's brain taking a dump in their dreams. Like I just I cannot stand

00:11:41 ◼   ► Dream recollections because they make no sense. I tried to make it concise like there was way more to it

00:11:46 ◼   ► But I had the highlights but but I will

00:11:48 ◼   ► You know for whatever reason I I will tolerate dream recollections about the Mac Pro because I'm just that desperate for anything about the Mac Pro

00:11:56 ◼   ► You wouldn't want this one

00:11:59 ◼   ► Just like I'm still having like flashbacks in the back of this thing like a back of a PC shoved into

00:12:04 ◼   ► The back of a trash can it was some and there was some crap was about like oh

00:12:07 ◼   ► I guess the old back with like the little you know the little light up

00:12:11 ◼   ► Things and everything and the the ports being on the little curve that was just too expensive

00:12:15 ◼   ► So they're just going with like the back of a PC XT case.

00:12:19 ◼   ► But you know that I would still buy it and you would still not buy it.

00:12:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Who knows what I'll do in the future.

00:12:26 ◼   ► All I know is if Apple releases something that they call a Mac Pro, even if it is only

00:12:32 ◼   ► slightly what Jon is interested in, Jon, if you don't buy one, I'm going to buy a friggin'

00:12:37 ◼   ► one for you.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So this way I don't have to continue to hear you lament about how you have a Mac Pro that's

00:12:42 ◼   ► older than my child, by quite a long stretch, I should add.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Your Mac Pro is like four times older than my child.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - It's older than both of our children combined.

00:12:51 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:12:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:12:53 ◼   ► Good grief.

00:12:54 ◼   ► All right, let's move on before I have to go find a bottle of vodka and start drinking.

00:12:58 ◼   ► I wasn't planning on this being a holiday spectacular.

00:13:00 ◼   ► The headphone port/jack audio source bugs.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I think it was Marco that talked about this an episode or two ago.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And the way it was pitched, given the information we had at our disposal at the time, was that

00:13:14 ◼   ► it was perhaps something with the lightning headphones where, oh no, I'm sorry, it was

00:13:17 ◼   ► Jon that brought this up, wasn't it?

00:13:20 ◼   ► Regardless, when you plug in lightning headphones, sometimes the audio doesn't go to the headphones.

00:13:24 ◼   ► When you unplug them, sometimes weird things happen.

00:13:27 ◼   ► And I guess we've gotten word that this may be an iOS 10 thing and not necessarily a lightning

00:13:32 ◼   ► headphones thing.

00:13:33 ◼   ► So do either of you want to build on that?

00:13:34 ◼   ► Well, that was the feedback that started coming in because my report was like, "Look, I got

00:13:38 ◼   ► this new iPhone 7 and this new thing is happening to me and I'm gonna blame it on the new headphone

00:13:42 ◼   ► thing because it never happened with my old headphones. And the first set of reports I

00:13:46 ◼   ► got were people saying "hey I've got an older iPhone that has a plain old headphone jack

00:13:50 ◼   ► and it's happening to me too so I guess it must be iOS 10 related and not hardware related."

00:13:54 ◼   ► And then eventually more reports started coming and saying "nope, happens on iOS 9 too so

00:13:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna say that I was just lucky up until this point that I had never run into this

00:14:04 ◼   ► bug and I just happened to see it coinciding with my lightning headphones because so many

00:14:08 ◼   ► people have said they've seen this on iOS 9 and with plain old headphones so oh well.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Alright fair enough. So we also just spoke about my Safari back and forward swipe issue

00:14:22 ◼   ► and brief recap. Occasionally, and this used to happen constantly years ago, I would use

00:14:28 ◼   ► on my Magic Mouse or perhaps on the trackpad on my laptops, I would do on the Magic Mouse

00:14:34 ◼   ► one finger swipe on the on the laptop. So it's a two finger swipe, and I would attempt to go, say,

00:14:40 ◼   ► back or forward a page, and the page would start to animate, say, back, so from left to right,

00:14:47 ◼   ► and then it would get stuck, and Safari would be effectively locked. And I thought that I was just

00:14:52 ◼   ► a unicorn in the bad way, and that I was one of the few people this happened to. I got a lot of

00:14:57 ◼   ► people—I can't put a number on it—but more than I expected, people tweeting at me saying, "Oh my

00:15:03 ◼   ► my god, I thought I was the only one. It turns out there's more of us than just me. A lot

00:15:09 ◼   ► of people have said that they had this problem. And we did get a handful of people that said,

00:15:14 ◼   ► and I haven't had a chance to try this myself, that when Safari freezes when swiping back,

00:15:19 ◼   ► you need to restore the page to the original position by swiping the other direction and

00:15:24 ◼   ► then Safari will continue working. You don't have to like quit Safari or reboot or whatever

00:15:27 ◼   ► the case may be. I, again, haven't corroborated that myself, but I saw that mentioned a couple

00:15:33 ◼   ► of different times. So it's worth trying if you're one of those sad unicorns like I am.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Moving on. Andrew Buckey writes in to say, "I'm a controls engineer working primarily

00:15:44 ◼   ► in automotive powertrain and I am based in the Detroit area. Just for your info, the

00:15:48 ◼   ► machine in the video that we mentioned last week is usually referred to as a mill turn

00:15:52 ◼   ► as it can do milling, straight cuts and drilling done by a mill, and turning, which is done

00:15:57 ◼   ► by a lathe." And the important piece here is that we were talking about how this is

00:16:01 ◼   ► a very fancy crankshaft and how wild that is. He said, "Cranks are not usually produced

00:16:06 ◼   ► like this. That was either a prototype part or a crank for a race car engine or "hypercar."

00:16:12 ◼   ► Usually the crank is cast in the rough shape of the crank and only a few millimeters of

00:16:15 ◼   ► material needs to be removed. Some surfaces are not even touched by the cutter. In most

00:16:19 ◼   ► every case, except low-volume parts, the machining process is progressive, with the part passing

00:16:24 ◼   ► through around 10 different mill-turn lathes, a balancer, a polisher, and a high-pressure

00:16:28 ◼   ► which is 5,000 psi water for deburring and cleaning before a finished part pops out.

00:16:33 ◼   ► So this is not a normal procedure, but man was it cool to watch.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense because you're saying like,

00:16:39 ◼   ► "If this is what it takes to make every crankshaft, this seems excessive.

00:16:44 ◼   ► It seems like not a mass producing, and not a process by which you'd make a lot of anything,

00:16:49 ◼   ► because it just looks so... I mean, you know, you're only making one of those things at a time,

00:16:53 ◼   ► And the machine is the size of a truck and so it just doesn't work out as a mass production type of thing

00:16:58 ◼   ► Jake Rob also added something that and he says I don't know of a single production car with a billet crank

00:17:04 ◼   ► That's you know, these are these are a machine from a steel billet

00:17:06 ◼   ► So you call it billet crank Ferrari McLaren Kona stag all use forged to billet is for custom race engines

00:17:12 ◼   ► So it's not even even hyper cars don't use it

00:17:15 ◼   ► It's like only if you are making an engine for an actual

00:17:18 ◼   ► Custom racing car like for f1 or something about you're gonna do this if you're making a hyper car to sell the consumers

00:17:22 ◼   ► Even that doesn't give you enough money to occupy a gigantic truck size

00:17:27 ◼   ► computer-controlled milling machine for god knows how long it takes to make one of those things indeed

00:17:32 ◼   ► we also had a

00:17:35 ◼   ► conversation via email with an anonymous Amazon employee

00:17:39 ◼   ► Who has tried Amazon go and this email chain? I wish I could publish it because it was

00:17:45 ◼   ► Fascinating and I'm not being silly. I'm being genuine

00:17:49 ◼   ► I thought it was really, really interesting.

00:17:51 ◼   ► And so this particular individual, they said that they were on the queue to get in the

00:17:57 ◼   ► beta but weren't there yet.

00:17:58 ◼   ► And then just like the next day, they said, "Oh my goodness, I'm in the beta."

00:18:01 ◼   ► And then the following day, they said, "Okay, I've been and here's the situation."

00:18:05 ◼   ► And so to quote them, "I just got back from my first visit.

00:18:08 ◼   ► No RFID, no slanted shelves to push product up front, no clear weight pads on the shelves,

00:18:12 ◼   ► though all shelves are set up to be connected to a network."

00:18:15 ◼   ► So it's possible the entire shelf is being weighed and not a single aisle.

00:18:21 ◼   ► They got their receipt about five minutes after they left, so no door clustering.

00:18:26 ◼   ► It had everything I grabbed, including the Starbucks I pulled from the back of the stack

00:18:30 ◼   ► — I thought of you, John," said our anonymous writer.

00:18:33 ◼   ► "The entire ceiling is an array of wireless sensors and cameras.

00:18:36 ◼   ► I think they may be taking full radar of the store to track people and product."

00:18:39 ◼   ► How freaking cool is that?

00:18:40 ◼   ► I would love to see this in person.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Waiting five minutes for your receipt is like, do they just have, are the servers just slow

00:18:48 ◼   ► or is it always going to be five minutes?

00:18:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that does stop people from clustering, but it also stops you if you got accidentally

00:18:55 ◼   ► charged for 99 bottles of something you bought one bottle of.

00:18:59 ◼   ► Finding that out five minutes later, you could be driving away and now you have to circle

00:19:02 ◼   ► back, so that's kind of crappy.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Well no, because maybe this was a private email just to me because I exchanged a couple

00:19:08 ◼   ► with this individual.

00:19:10 ◼   ► But they said that if you look at the special app that you have to put on your phone in

00:19:15 ◼   ► order to use Amazon Go, once you get your receipt, you can just do a delete swipe, you

00:19:19 ◼   ► know, so that's a right to left swipe, and it will immediately remove that charge or

00:19:24 ◼   ► refund you that item or whatever the case may be.

00:19:26 ◼   ► I'm assuming since it's all Amazon employees right now, it's kind of honor system, I guess,

00:19:30 ◼   ► but…

00:19:31 ◼   ► Yeah, or just come leave the store and then just delete swipe everything you just bought.

00:19:34 ◼   ► This is a great system.

00:19:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:36 ◼   ► But I mean, according to this individual, it was very accurate and there was no obvious

00:19:42 ◼   ► witchcraft about it other than the sealing array of sensors.

00:19:47 ◼   ► So very cool stuff.

00:19:49 ◼   ► I'm really curious to see if this goes anywhere, but very neat.

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00:21:44 ◼   ► Was it yesterday as we record? We're recording on Wednesday the 14th. I think it was yesterday

00:21:48 ◼   ► or maybe this morning, sometime. It's been a blur for me at work lately. Apple finally

00:21:52 ◼   ► allowed us to give them $180 of our money and order AirPods right at the end of the

00:22:00 ◼   ► year by an hour after it went on sale. The date had slipped to after Christmas and within

00:22:06 ◼   ► just a couple hours after that. The date had slipped to well after Christmas and well into

00:22:11 ◼   ► the new year. I haven't looked lately at what the date is. I would just like to say a personal

00:22:17 ◼   ► thank you to Apple that they had decided to do this based on the one true time zone, which

00:22:24 ◼   ► is Eastern Time. And that makes me extremely happy because those jerks make us stay up

00:22:29 ◼   ► till three in the morning or wake up at three in the morning to order our darn iPhones.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And it was lovely, well, it would have been lovely had I ordered some, to be able to just

00:22:38 ◼   ► casually say, "Yes, I'd like one of these, please. I've been awake for an hour or two,

00:22:42 ◼   ► and I am prepared to make this kind of decision.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Meanwhile, I should add, a certain little someone

00:22:48 ◼   ► whose name might rhyme with smell

00:22:51 ◼   ► is sending me a picture of him listening to our show

00:22:54 ◼   ► in AirPods, excuse me, AirPods right now, that big jerk.

00:22:57 ◼   ► So hi, Mason Smell.

00:23:00 ◼   ► It's good to see that you're listening

00:23:02 ◼   ► on your fancy pets at AirPods.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - You can take solace in the fact that his right ear hurts.

00:23:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:23:07 ◼   ► - Did either of you guys order a pair?

00:23:09 ◼   ► Marco, I know you did, so I guess I shouldn't ask you.

00:23:11 ◼   ► John, did you order a pair?

00:23:13 ◼   ► - I did, I was excited to.

00:23:14 ◼   ► - Really?

00:23:15 ◼   ► - I also, I'm glad they did it in the right time zone

00:23:17 ◼   ► because I was awake and near a computer at the time.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Everyone said, "AirPods are available."

00:23:23 ◼   ► And so people said, "AirPods are available."

00:23:24 ◼   ► And I went click, click, click, click, click, order.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And mine are supposed to be delivered on the 21st.

00:23:29 ◼   ► - Yep, same deal, same as me.

00:23:31 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to how much they're gonna hurt my ears.

00:23:33 ◼   ► But I really hope they don't.

00:23:35 ◼   ► No, honestly, all of Apple's earbuds

00:23:38 ◼   ► and all earbuds have always hurt my ears enough

00:23:41 ◼   ► that I really can't ever use them.

00:23:43 ◼   ► I'm hoping these will be different

00:23:45 ◼   ► because the immense convenience of them is, you know,

00:23:50 ◼   ► I don't care how crappy they sound,

00:23:54 ◼   ► if they are comfortable at all,

00:23:56 ◼   ► I want to wear them on a regular basis

00:23:57 ◼   ► to listen to podcasts while on the go.

00:23:59 ◼   ► That will be awesome and it'll be extra awesome

00:24:02 ◼   ► to just like, you know, their case is so small

00:24:04 ◼   ► that you can bring them like in a,

00:24:05 ◼   ► you know, like all earbuds people have always known forever,

00:24:08 ◼   ► you can bring them like in a pocket or a bag

00:24:10 ◼   ► that would otherwise be too small

00:24:12 ◼   ► for most other kinds of headphones.

00:24:14 ◼   ► So you can kind of always have them with you,

00:24:16 ◼   ► and that's something that I have wished for

00:24:19 ◼   ► since I started carrying portable music devices, basically.

00:24:22 ◼   ► To just always have it with you

00:24:24 ◼   ► so that if you find yourself in a situation

00:24:25 ◼   ► where you need it, or where you'd like to listen

00:24:27 ◼   ► to something, you can just take your headphones

00:24:28 ◼   ► out of your pocket and listen.

00:24:30 ◼   ► And I've never had headphones that small before

00:24:32 ◼   ► 'cause they don't fit my ears,

00:24:33 ◼   ► but I'm gonna really try to make these work

00:24:35 ◼   ► 'cause I really want that convenience

00:24:37 ◼   ► for everyday walking around.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - Why don't you try whittling them down or something?

00:24:41 ◼   ► You have like a carving knife, you could.

00:24:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:24:43 ◼   ► He carved it himself from a bigger ear pod.

00:24:45 ◼   ► - The other thing too, like you know,

00:24:46 ◼   ► as I have used my iPhone 7 more

00:24:51 ◼   ► without its real headphone jack,

00:24:53 ◼   ► basically the more I live with the iPhone 7,

00:24:56 ◼   ► the less I ever want to use wired headphones with it again.

00:25:00 ◼   ► It's not that you can't do it,

00:25:01 ◼   ► you know, we know we can do it with the $9 dongle,

00:25:05 ◼   ► but it is such a clunky experience

00:25:07 ◼   ► and such a limited experience,

00:25:08 ◼   ► like if you wanna charge your phone on a plane,

00:25:10 ◼   ► I really do not intend to ever buy another pair

00:25:14 ◼   ► of wired headphones that isn't intended

00:25:16 ◼   ► for my desk ever again.

00:25:17 ◼   ► - So how amazing would it be?

00:25:21 ◼   ► Like this is Casey's fantasy tonight is,

00:25:24 ◼   ► Marco gets a set of AirPods, puts them in his ears

00:25:27 ◼   ► and realizes, hmm, you know these don't hurt my ears,

00:25:31 ◼   ► maybe this earbud thing ain't so bad.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And in typical Marco style, fast forward two months,

00:25:37 ◼   ► You know what, Casey, have you ever heard of getting your ears poured and getting like

00:25:41 ◼   ► in-ear monitors?

00:25:42 ◼   ► These things are amazing!

00:25:43 ◼   ► But that's not the same thing.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Ear pods are not the same as the little, you know, setty eel going into your ear canal.

00:25:51 ◼   ► These are outside, you know.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I think there's a long distance to go from "Can Margo's weird-shaped ears tolerate

00:25:59 ◼   ► plain old earbuds," which is what I would call these things, to "Can I get some crap

00:26:04 ◼   ► shoved right up in my ear?"

00:26:05 ◼   ► That's a whole different thing.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Also, in your monitors, I respect them as a category.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I've never been able to wear them myself.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I've tried, I've tried a couple,

00:26:15 ◼   ► and I got the fancy Comply tips and all those things,

00:26:17 ◼   ► and yeah, none of them have really ever worked for me.

00:26:20 ◼   ► But they also are very different in the way they function.

00:26:23 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, there are very few,

00:26:25 ◼   ► if any, wireless ones, and as I just said,

00:26:28 ◼   ► right now, for my needs away from my desk,

00:26:31 ◼   ► I'm only interested in wireless from this point forward.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And the other problem is that they isolate

00:26:36 ◼   ► really, really well.

00:26:38 ◼   ► They really block out all outside sound.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And most of the time when I'm using my portable headphones,

00:26:43 ◼   ► that's actually not what I want.

00:26:44 ◼   ► If I'm like walking around my town,

00:26:47 ◼   ► walking my dog or walking from the city

00:26:50 ◼   ► or if I'm walking through an airport alone,

00:26:52 ◼   ► I will use these headphones in all those times

00:26:54 ◼   ► where I really don't want that much isolation

00:26:57 ◼   ► from the outside world.

00:26:59 ◼   ► So in-ear monitors are great for lots of people

00:27:03 ◼   ► and use cases that I don't have.

00:27:07 ◼   ► - No, that's fair.

00:27:08 ◼   ► In case listeners, you weren't aware,

00:27:10 ◼   ► I've been beatin' Marco up for probably a year or two now

00:27:13 ◼   ► that my dad has a set of custom in-ear monitors

00:27:17 ◼   ► that he had had done a couple of years back

00:27:20 ◼   ► where you go to some sort of special ear doctor,

00:27:22 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a term for it.

00:27:24 ◼   ► - Audiologist.

00:27:25 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, or an audiologist, or whatever the case may be,

00:27:27 ◼   ► and you get a mold made of your ear canal

00:27:29 ◼   ► and then you send that mold to a company

00:27:31 ◼   ► will make a set of earphones, I guess they would be called, that is molded for your ears

00:27:37 ◼   ► specifically. And I keep saying to Marco, "Oh my God, imagine how amazing it would be

00:27:40 ◼   ► to have a speaker or a series of speakers millimeters away from your eardrums or whatever

00:27:46 ◼   ► the receptacle is that you need to listen to things." And every time Marco said, "Yes,

00:27:52 ◼   ► but anything that goes in my ears is evil and doesn't work." And so that is the source

00:27:55 ◼   ► of my fantasy is what if this was the way to get Marco to try in-ear monitors and realize

00:28:01 ◼   ► that this headphone business is just a bunch of waste, it's a total waste of time. We'll

00:28:04 ◼   ► see. Time will tell, listeners, time will tell. Anyway, in any case, I am actually hopeful

00:28:09 ◼   ► that I will at some point receive a set of AirPods. I didn't buy them only because I

00:28:16 ◼   ► don't have an urgent need for them. I mean, the holidays are coming up, but I don't expect

00:28:21 ◼   ► to receive them for the holidays. But my birthday is—

00:28:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I was going to say, did you expect—did you not order them yourself, or did you casually

00:28:28 ◼   ► send the URL to Aaron or something?

00:28:29 ◼   ► No, no, no. I thought about it, but I didn't. I didn't.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Not a good plan for something like that.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Yeah, probably not. Plus, Erin has been going on and on about how this is going to be a

00:28:38 ◼   ► great Christmas in Hanukkah for me, and I got to tell you the truth. I did not do as

00:28:42 ◼   ► well for her this year, so I'm already feeling pretty guilty. But anyway…

00:28:45 ◼   ► Way to set expectations.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Yeah, right? So, in any case, I figure my birthday's in March, so maybe I'll get

00:28:52 ◼   ► a set pair, whatever, for my birthday. But I definitely want to try them. I am super

00:28:57 ◼   ► intrigued by them. I think they look really, really awesome. And I think it's a very appley

00:29:02 ◼   ► way. Like this to me is the apple that the three of us love. And I hope this doesn't

00:29:07 ◼   ► take a negative turn, but this is Apple taking a thing that was annoying, but we all, well,

00:29:11 ◼   ► most of us lived with. Like the traditional Bluetooth, I am a proponent and defender of

00:29:16 ◼   ► it, but I cannot sit here and say it's perfect and it's flawless. It's sufficient. And for

00:29:21 ◼   ► me the trade-offs are worth it. But this W1 chip and all the fancy Bluetooth stuff that

00:29:26 ◼   ► they're doing. This just looks awesome and is solving a problem in the most aptly best

00:29:30 ◼   ► possible way. And I'm really looking forward to at least trying AirPods at some point,

00:29:35 ◼   ► if not getting my own set. And I agree with you, Marco, that as much as I'm giving you

00:29:39 ◼   ► a hard time, in-ear monitors are not the right answer for like walking around or anything

00:29:43 ◼   ► like that. I had sent to me a set of bone-conducting headphones. I will put a link in the show

00:29:50 ◼   ► notes for the life of me. I can't remember the name of them and I apologize because it's

00:29:56 ◼   ► right on the tip of my tongue. But anyway, we'll put a link in the show notes.

00:29:58 ◼   ► I know what you're talking about. I've actually been meaning to try those myself,

00:30:02 ◼   ► but haven't quite gotten to it yet. Yeah, well, if you remind me, we're going

00:30:06 ◼   ► to see each other in a few weeks, and I'll bring them. They are not the greatest for

00:30:12 ◼   ► music. It's a bit tinny, which makes sense, because if you're not familiar with bone-conducting

00:30:15 ◼   ► headphones, the way it works is there's nothing over your ear itself. They go kind of around

00:30:19 ◼   ► your ears and press, I guess it's your cheekbones that are the bones that kind of stick out

00:30:25 ◼   ► where your cheeks are. Well anyways, so they vibrate your cheekbones, which kind of somehow

00:30:30 ◼   ► vibrates the inner ear. That sounds really scary and sketchy, but actually it works really

00:30:35 ◼   ► well. And my word, for podcasting, they are, for listening to podcasts I should say, they

00:30:41 ◼   ► are phenomenal. And what's great about it is you can have them in and still be completely

00:30:47 ◼   ► and totally aware of what's going on around you. The Aftershokz Trex Titanium is the name

00:30:54 ◼   ► of the headphones. I'll put a link in the show notes. If all you're doing is listening

00:30:59 ◼   ► to podcasts, I cannot recommend these enough. And I think that the AirPods are going to

00:31:03 ◼   ► fill a similar gap, except they'll probably be far better for music. Now they'll probably

00:31:09 ◼   ► have a little more isolation, which is both good and bad, but they'll probably be far

00:31:12 ◼   ► better for music. So I'm really anxious to try AirPods. Hopefully you guys will bring

00:31:17 ◼   ► a set and I'll bring some disinfecting wipes or something so after I try them I can disinfect

00:31:23 ◼   ► them but I would love to try them when we see each other in a few weeks. I am super

00:31:27 ◼   ► amped to see how these are and see what the real world says once they're out in the

00:31:31 ◼   ► wild.

00:31:32 ◼   ► - The one concern I have, and I'm remembering now why I didn't rush to order the bone conduction

00:31:36 ◼   ► ones, the main issue I have with so many Bluetooth headphones is a lack of easy or good or any

00:31:46 ◼   ► controls for volume, seek back, seek forward, play/pause. Regularly with the wired ones

00:31:53 ◼   ► you have the clicker and the clicker is its own set of challenges of the various multi-click

00:31:58 ◼   ► gestures doing those reliably is always a little bit tricky and everything. But the

00:32:02 ◼   ► reason I've stuck with my ugly Sennheiser PX210BT for so long is because it has these

00:32:09 ◼   ► big plastic buttons on the right ear cup. And right now it's getting cold outside so

00:32:14 ◼   ► on a lot of my walks now I'm wearing gloves and I can feel and accurately push these giant

00:32:20 ◼   ► plastic buttons through gloves even.

00:32:23 ◼   ► And it's one click for back, one click for forward,

00:32:26 ◼   ► click up and down for volume, middle for pause.

00:32:29 ◼   ► It's so convenient.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And almost every good Bluetooth headphone

00:32:34 ◼   ► does not have good controls.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Almost all the other ones, the ones that are on ear

00:32:39 ◼   ► or over ear, they get all fancy with touch gestures.

00:32:43 ◼   ► And those are all, believe me, I've tried so many,

00:32:45 ◼   ► they are all awful.

00:32:47 ◼   ► They're just the worst.

00:32:49 ◼   ► It's like, oh, make a little swirl motion with your hand

00:32:51 ◼   ► to turn the volume up.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yeah, that works really precisely.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Like, it's just, oh my God, and there's delay,

00:32:57 ◼   ► and you gotta tap again, and oh, they're so unreliable,

00:33:00 ◼   ► they're so annoying.

00:33:01 ◼   ► That's always a challenge with Bluetooth headphones.

00:33:03 ◼   ► And you gotta figure, it's kind of a physical design problem.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Like, where do you put the controls on some of these?

00:33:09 ◼   ► And the AirPods, from what we know so far,

00:33:13 ◼   ► they only have one control gesture,

00:33:15 ◼   ► which is, it's either a tap or a double tap, I forget.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Do you remember which one?

00:33:18 ◼   ► But anyway, whatever it is, it's by default,

00:33:21 ◼   ► it toggles Siri and you can apparently change it

00:33:24 ◼   ► in the preferences to instead be a play/pause button.

00:33:28 ◼   ► But that's it.

00:33:30 ◼   ► And so I do worry about that.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And I worry about that as is with all Bluetooth headphones

00:33:35 ◼   ► 'cause most of them have either bad to no controls.

00:33:38 ◼   ► So that I think is going to be frustrating

00:33:41 ◼   ► to only have play/pause control or you can ask Siri

00:33:45 ◼   ► to play and pause your stuff,

00:33:47 ◼   ► but I don't think that would be good for me

00:33:50 ◼   ► to remain positive about Apple stuff.

00:33:52 ◼   ► So I think I'm not going to configure mine that way.

00:33:55 ◼   ► But I assume, I guess the design assumption here

00:34:00 ◼   ► is that maybe you'll wanna control things

00:34:03 ◼   ► either all through Siri, which is probably not great,

00:34:06 ◼   ► or through the Apple Watch, or through your phone

00:34:09 ◼   ► by taking it out of your pocket and everything.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And those are all okay answers.

00:34:12 ◼   ► None of them are as good as having actual physical controls

00:34:15 ◼   ► that are near or on the headphones,

00:34:17 ◼   ► but we'll see how that works in practice.

00:34:19 ◼   ► I think the AirPods overall will be so incredibly convenient

00:34:24 ◼   ► that we'll probably be willing to overlook the annoyance

00:34:27 ◼   ► of the lack of physical controls on them,

00:34:30 ◼   ► even though that will be a big annoyance,

00:34:32 ◼   ► but I think the convenience will just be so great

00:34:33 ◼   ► that we'll overlook that.

00:34:36 ◼   ► - There's another wireless dongle to be the controller.

00:34:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:34:40 ◼   ► Right, so you got the ear,

00:34:41 ◼   ► because I mean, as far as I'm concerned, it's not--

00:34:43 ◼   ► - You mean like an Apple Watch?

00:34:44 ◼   ► I would probably take that.

00:34:46 ◼   ► In fact, I did wear my Apple Watch recently just to--

00:34:48 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:34:49 ◼   ► --give it a clap.

00:34:50 ◼   ► But I-- boy, watches still annoy me.

00:34:54 ◼   ► But I just don't want the wire connecting,

00:34:56 ◼   ► because that gets caught on things and it's annoying.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And also, reaching into my pocket

00:35:02 ◼   ► to try to find the volume on my phone,

00:35:04 ◼   ► I can probably pull that off.

00:35:05 ◼   ► But I don't think there's any hardware

00:35:07 ◼   ► button I can hit on my phone that will advance or go back.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Funny thing, I actually--

00:35:12 ◼   ► I prototyped a while ago with Overcast.

00:35:15 ◼   ► I used the accelerometer on the phone during playback

00:35:17 ◼   ► to try to detect if you would just tap the phone

00:35:20 ◼   ► in your pocket, like if you just hit the back of it

00:35:22 ◼   ► with your finger and try to interpret tap gestures

00:35:25 ◼   ► the same way you do it on a remote clicker.

00:35:27 ◼   ► And I almost got it working.

00:35:28 ◼   ► You can actually do it and it works okay,

00:35:32 ◼   ► but it doesn't work reliably enough.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Like I get to be good for maybe like 2/3 of the time,

00:35:37 ◼   ► but that's nowhere close to how reliable it has to be

00:35:40 ◼   ► to make it actually usable without one or three,

00:35:43 ◼   ► or throw your phone out the window.

00:35:44 ◼   ► But I actually, I wanted to solve this exact problem.

00:35:47 ◼   ► I wanted a remote control in my pocket

00:35:49 ◼   ► and just go tap, tap, or whatever it is,

00:35:52 ◼   ► just tapping the back of your phone in your pocket

00:35:54 ◼   ► as you're walking.

00:35:55 ◼   ► - You don't wanna tap something.

00:35:56 ◼   ► I want buttons.

00:35:57 ◼   ► I want buttons that I can feel.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Buttons you can feel with gloves on even.

00:36:00 ◼   ► - But you can tap it with gloves on too, doesn't matter.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - Tapping is not the way to plus it,

00:36:05 ◼   ► but your app would have to be front most, right?

00:36:07 ◼   ► - No, if it's playing audio, it can be continuous.

00:36:10 ◼   ► - All right, well, anyway, I don't wanna tap anything.

00:36:13 ◼   ► I don't wanna buy anything bought, sold,

00:36:15 ◼   ► I don't wanna manufacture anything sold or processed.

00:36:18 ◼   ► That's the second one you guys missed today.

00:36:20 ◼   ► The second. - No, well,

00:36:22 ◼   ► I get that that is a reference.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I forget what it's a reference from.

00:36:26 ◼   ► It's always on Back to Work.

00:36:27 ◼   ► That's all I know.

00:36:28 ◼   ► - It's a movie you haven't seen.

00:36:29 ◼   ► That's what it's a reference to.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Like, so many things in life.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - Well, that's every movie, you're right.

00:36:33 ◼   ► - Real time follow-up from Mason Smell.

00:36:36 ◼   ► It is double tap, and you can choose

00:36:39 ◼   ► to either have that engage Siri, play pause,

00:36:42 ◼   ► or do nothing at all.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Also, Mason Smell would like to tell John Syracuse

00:36:47 ◼   ► that it was say anything,

00:36:48 ◼   ► say anything that you were referencing.

00:36:49 ◼   ► - I know Jason knows, or you can have it do nothing at all.

00:36:51 ◼   ► That's a great option.

00:36:52 ◼   ► - Excuse me, excuse me, it's Mason

00:36:54 ◼   ► that we're speaking with, thank you very much.

00:36:56 ◼   ► - I'm impressed that you're keeping this straight.

00:36:58 ◼   ► - I'm trying real hard, you have no idea.

00:37:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:01 ◼   ► In any case, so yeah, so in summary,

00:37:03 ◼   ► we're all amped for our new headphones,

00:37:05 ◼   ► ear pods, ear pods, whatever we're calling them,

00:37:07 ◼   ► headphones, things.

00:37:08 ◼   ► You can't keep that straight.

00:37:09 ◼   ► - Right, before I move on from AirPods,

00:37:11 ◼   ► if Apple sold AppleCare+ for AirPods for like $30 to $50,

00:37:16 ◼   ► would you buy it?

00:37:19 ◼   ► - Would it cover, well--

00:37:21 ◼   ► - It would cover like if you lose one of them

00:37:22 ◼   ► or if it falls and you step on it or whatever,

00:37:24 ◼   ► like instead of having to buy a whole,

00:37:26 ◼   ► because I'm assuming your only option now,

00:37:27 ◼   ► say one of them falls out of your ears

00:37:29 ◼   ► or it gets knocked down and you step on it and it breaks.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Is your only option $160 out of pocket

00:37:33 ◼   ► to buy an entire new set?

00:37:34 ◼   ► You can't just buy one, right?

00:37:35 ◼   ► So the AppleCare thing would be like 30 to 50 bucks

00:37:38 ◼   ► where you get, you know, if you damage them

00:37:40 ◼   ► or lose them anyway, you get a replacement

00:37:42 ◼   ► for another 50 or some crap like that.

00:37:44 ◼   ► Would you buy that?

00:37:45 ◼   ► - I don't think I would, but I'm cheap as hell, so.

00:37:48 ◼   ► - And everyone trying to gauge is like,

00:37:49 ◼   ► do you predict that you're gonna have problems

00:37:51 ◼   ► either losing or breaking these things?

00:37:52 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Marco?

00:37:55 ◼   ► - My policy with buying extended warranties

00:37:57 ◼   ► most of the time is to not buy them.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And then if in my life I end up having to pay out of pocket

00:38:04 ◼   ► so many repairs that it would have been more expensive than buying all these things up

00:38:09 ◼   ► to that point, then I will start buying the extended warranties from that point forward.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Your policy is close the barn door after the horse is gone.

00:38:17 ◼   ► No, but my policy is basically like, let me take the risk and see if in my life I need

00:38:24 ◼   ► to pay this kind of insurance premium or not.

00:38:26 ◼   ► And so far in my life, in my entire adult life of owning expensive gadgets, I have almost

00:38:33 ◼   ► never bought the extended warranty and have also almost never needed one. So I'm coming

00:38:38 ◼   ► out way ahead, basically.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Have you thought about insuring your watches for either theft or damage? I'm genuinely

00:38:45 ◼   ► asking. I'm not trying to be snarky.

00:38:46 ◼   ► No, I have. I mean, it's smart. You know, when you have like homeowners insurance, that's

00:38:50 ◼   ► a different thing. And so, yeah, we have our jewelry items covered under the homeowners

00:38:58 ◼   ► insurance, you know, specifically like under like a rider for them. But that's very different

00:39:02 ◼   ► and way cheaper than $350 for every laptop I buy.

00:39:06 ◼   ► - Sure, sure.

00:39:07 ◼   ► - Is it $350 for laptops?

00:39:09 ◼   ► Is that how much it is?

00:39:10 ◼   ► - I think for the 15 inch, I think it's 300 or 350.

00:39:12 ◼   ► - Glad I don't buy laptops.

00:39:14 ◼   ► - Well, and so with Apple,

00:39:16 ◼   ► so the price of the warranty does not take into account

00:39:20 ◼   ► the price of the options when you buy it.

00:39:22 ◼   ► So the warranty for the base model Mac Pro, that's $3,000,

00:39:27 ◼   ► is the exact same price as if you spec it all up

00:39:30 ◼   ► and make it like $9,000.

00:39:32 ◼   ► So if I'm buying, so for my iMac,

00:39:35 ◼   ► I actually did buy the extended warranty

00:39:37 ◼   ► because my iMac was something like a $4,400 configuration.

00:39:41 ◼   ► It's like as much as you could put into an iMac

00:39:43 ◼   ► when I bought it two years ago.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And it was priced at something like 200 bucks

00:39:49 ◼   ► for the extended warranty.

00:39:50 ◼   ► So I did buy it for that, figuring like,

00:39:53 ◼   ► this is a large thing with everything inside

00:39:55 ◼   ► and this is a really a very small percentage of the cost

00:39:58 ◼   ► based on the cost of the whole item.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And so I figured like, you know, the risk reward ratio there was different.

00:40:07 ◼   ► But on almost everything else I don't get it because on almost everything else it doesn't

00:40:11 ◼   ► make any sense.

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00:41:13 ◼   ► - Marco had an experience today, or recently anyway.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Would you like to tell us about that?

00:41:22 ◼   ► - Oh, I went to a Microsoft store.

00:41:25 ◼   ► - I'm so sorry, I mean, really, how was it?

00:41:27 ◼   ► - So yeah, I was in the mall recently,

00:41:29 ◼   ► I had some time to kill while my wife and kid

00:41:31 ◼   ► went and did something else,

00:41:32 ◼   ► so I went to the Microsoft store,

00:41:35 ◼   ► and amazingly, there was nobody there.

00:41:38 ◼   ► - Really?

00:41:39 ◼   ► - It's usually so crowded.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - So I got to play with the big Surface Studio

00:41:42 ◼   ► they had on display.

00:41:43 ◼   ► - So, snark aside, I'm genuinely interested to hear

00:41:47 ◼   ► how you thought of this, because at a glance,

00:41:49 ◼   ► this thing does look pretty damn cool,

00:41:50 ◼   ► and we talked about this a few episodes ago.

00:41:53 ◼   ► I'm curious, so did you play with the tilt?

00:41:55 ◼   ► Did you play with the little dongly thing?

00:41:57 ◼   ► Tell us all about it.

00:41:58 ◼   ► So I did, I played with everything.

00:42:00 ◼   ► So first of all, the base is way too light.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Like, the base of it--

00:42:05 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:42:05 ◼   ► - Like, they use laptop components.

00:42:07 ◼   ► Like, you know, people accuse the iMac

00:42:09 ◼   ► of being laptop components, but the iMac

00:42:10 ◼   ► is kind of a combination of desktop and laptop components.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Mostly desktop parts, really.

00:42:14 ◼   ► The Surface Studio is really laptop components.

00:42:18 ◼   ► And the base of it is very small and light.

00:42:21 ◼   ► It's a lot smaller than you'd think.

00:42:24 ◼   ► And kind of unnecessarily so.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Like one of the issues I had with it was like

00:42:29 ◼   ► while tilting it, it would kind of wobble sometimes

00:42:31 ◼   ► 'cause it just like, the screen is so much heavier

00:42:34 ◼   ► than the base that it kind of, I don't know.

00:42:37 ◼   ► I don't know why they had to make the base so tight

00:42:39 ◼   ► and so tiny and take all the trade-offs

00:42:42 ◼   ► of lower power components to do that.

00:42:44 ◼   ► I think that was probably a mistake, but oh well.

00:42:46 ◼   ► - Well, I think part of their advertising pitch

00:42:48 ◼   ► is that it's supposed to be easy to move around.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Like it's not supposed to feel like it is rooted

00:42:53 ◼   ► in whatever place it is because as you can imagine,

00:42:55 ◼   ► having it set up when it's vertical like a screen,

00:42:57 ◼   ► it would be positioned differently

00:42:58 ◼   ► than when it's the other way.

00:43:00 ◼   ► So I think they actually have like a lazy Susan

00:43:02 ◼   ► on the bottom type of thing so it can rotate

00:43:04 ◼   ► and I think it's supposed to be light enough

00:43:05 ◼   ► that you don't feel like it is anchored to the desk

00:43:08 ◼   ► at the place where it's put.

00:43:09 ◼   ► - That's fair, okay.

00:43:10 ◼   ► And I mean, it does feel light.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Like you move it around freely

00:43:13 ◼   ► and it really does feel like,

00:43:15 ◼   ► it feels like a giant tablet.

00:43:17 ◼   ► It does not feel like a desktop computer.

00:43:19 ◼   ► So I got to play with the whatever they call their stylus

00:43:22 ◼   ► and whatever they call the big knob.

00:43:24 ◼   ► The Surface Style, and I'm not sure what the pen is called,

00:43:27 ◼   ► but Surface Style is the knob.

00:43:29 ◼   ► - Cool, so I got to play with the big knob.

00:43:33 ◼   ► Well, I got to feel the big knob, however--

00:43:35 ◼   ► - Not improving.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - None of the apps that I tried,

00:43:38 ◼   ► which was like something I already forgot what it was,

00:43:41 ◼   ► and then I spent a lot of time in Lightroom,

00:43:43 ◼   ► and Lightroom did not support the big knob,

00:43:45 ◼   ► so I did not get to use it for anything really.

00:43:49 ◼   ► So I put the big knob down,

00:43:50 ◼   ► and I just played with the stylus,

00:43:52 ◼   ► and the touch screen.

00:43:55 ◼   ► And this is the first time I've, I think, ever played

00:43:58 ◼   ► with a touch screen Windows PC, oh no, no,

00:44:00 ◼   ► I played with a Windows 8 one back in the day.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Anyway, so I have very little experience

00:44:05 ◼   ► with touch screen Windows PCs,

00:44:07 ◼   ► and I never use like a Modbook or anything,

00:44:09 ◼   ► so I've never tried it on a Mac OS either.

00:44:10 ◼   ► But I do have a lot of experience in Lightroom,

00:44:14 ◼   ► and so I figured, let me try Lightroom,

00:44:16 ◼   ► it's a program I already know how to use,

00:44:17 ◼   ► let me see how it works on this thing.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I gotta say, I really liked it.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And there are things that I didn't like about it,

00:44:24 ◼   ► but overall, it was surprisingly good.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Like, even using touch control in a desktop OS,

00:44:33 ◼   ► which everyone says is a terrible thing,

00:44:35 ◼   ► honestly, I suggest you try it,

00:44:38 ◼   ► because again, I'm not entirely sure

00:44:41 ◼   ► I'd want to do it full-time,

00:44:43 ◼   ► but to have the option, it was kind of cool

00:44:46 ◼   ► to be able to control Lightroom,

00:44:49 ◼   ► this program I already know how to use pretty well,

00:44:51 ◼   ► and people do things like,

00:44:53 ◼   ► when you're using a touch screen,

00:44:55 ◼   ► you effectively have multiple

00:44:56 ◼   ► pointing devices simultaneously.

00:44:58 ◼   ► So when you're sitting here on a desktop using a mouse,

00:45:01 ◼   ► you're controlling one mouse cursor.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And even if you get all fancy like I do

00:45:04 ◼   ► and you have a trackpad on the left and a mouse on the right,

00:45:06 ◼   ► you have two pointing devices,

00:45:07 ◼   ► you're still only controlling one mouse pointer

00:45:10 ◼   ► and there's only one thing at a time

00:45:11 ◼   ► that can have that mouse pointer.

00:45:13 ◼   ► You can only point to one thing at a time,

00:45:14 ◼   ► you can only click on one thing at a time.

00:45:16 ◼   ► When you have a touch screen,

00:45:17 ◼   ► even in this desktop environment,

00:45:19 ◼   ► you effectively have multiple input points

00:45:21 ◼   ► at any given time, you can use your different fingers

00:45:23 ◼   ► and different hands.

00:45:24 ◼   ► So it actually was really easy to work in Lightroom

00:45:29 ◼   ► very quickly on this thing.

00:45:31 ◼   ► And I can see, it would have been a lot better

00:45:35 ◼   ► if it was designed for it, and I guess this is the case

00:45:38 ◼   ► for just big iPads, 'cause they are designed for it

00:45:40 ◼   ► right from the start, but it was pretty cool.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And of course, I leaned the whole thing down,

00:45:46 ◼   ► like I did the almost flat on the desk screen arrangement

00:45:49 ◼   ► to do most of this, it wasn't up.

00:45:51 ◼   ► If it's up, if it's straight up vertical,

00:45:53 ◼   ► then touching it makes no sense, I agree with that.

00:45:55 ◼   ► But when it's kind of like drafting table angle,

00:45:58 ◼   ► it actually worked surprisingly well.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And I still really didn't like any part of Windows at all.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And I wasn't confused by it really,

00:46:09 ◼   ► like you know, I've used Windows long enough,

00:46:10 ◼   ► I have a rough idea of the Windows vocabulary

00:46:13 ◼   ► of how to do things, because most of it's still the same

00:46:16 ◼   ► from how it was back when I was a Windows expert.

00:46:19 ◼   ► So the core of it is still the same.

00:46:22 ◼   ► And so most of Windows I still don't like.

00:46:25 ◼   ► However, if you were buying a computer

00:46:29 ◼   ► whose main purpose was to be like a creative workstation

00:46:32 ◼   ► to run a particular app like Lightroom or Photoshop

00:46:35 ◼   ► or like a video editor, if that app runs on Windows

00:46:40 ◼   ► without any kind of massive downsides,

00:46:42 ◼   ► this could be a really compelling option.

00:46:44 ◼   ► So like really, and so because Microsoft is positioning

00:46:48 ◼   ► it that way, they're positioning this as like a creative

00:46:51 ◼   ► thing you put in a studio that where you're basically

00:46:53 ◼   ► buying a workstation for the purpose of running

00:46:56 ◼   ► like one or two creative apps as your main thing,

00:46:59 ◼   ► as your main role for that computer.

00:47:02 ◼   ► This is actually pretty compelling.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I can really see like, basically if what you're doing

00:47:08 ◼   ► doesn't really, if it doesn't really matter that it's

00:47:11 ◼   ► running on Windows, like if it's one of the Adobe apps,

00:47:14 ◼   ► It's kinda cool.

00:47:16 ◼   ► And I did have issues with, like,

00:47:19 ◼   ► you know, like Lightroom has a lot of very tiny

00:47:21 ◼   ► interface elements, like little tiny sliders and everything.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And they were a little hard to hit with the pen sometimes.

00:47:27 ◼   ► But it wouldn't take a lot of adjustment

00:47:29 ◼   ► if Adobe really wanted to put any effort into this

00:47:31 ◼   ► to make that really awesome.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Also Windows, like, I don't know what the deal is

00:47:36 ◼   ► with Windows high DPI mode.

00:47:37 ◼   ► I know it's a mess.

00:47:38 ◼   ► But basically, like, you know, with Apple,

00:47:41 ◼   ► you just 2Xed everything with Retina,

00:47:43 ◼   ► and everything kinda just worked,

00:47:45 ◼   ► and developers had to do a little bit of work,

00:47:47 ◼   ► but not much, and it was great.

00:47:48 ◼   ► With Windows, I guess they have their high DPI modes

00:47:51 ◼   ► where they can scale to any number of pixels,

00:47:54 ◼   ► and they kinda scale some interface elements,

00:47:56 ◼   ► but not all of them, and so I had like ridiculously

00:48:00 ◼   ► tiny little text and tiny little check boxes

00:48:03 ◼   ► in the middle of giant blown up interfaces.

00:48:05 ◼   ► It was very strange. - Yep.

00:48:06 ◼   ► - So obviously-- - Yep.

00:48:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I tried to run my VM that I was working

00:48:12 ◼   ► a few weeks ago. I tried to run that in high DPI mode and it was really, really bad. Like,

00:48:18 ◼   ► some things were tiny, like you said, some things were the size I expected them to be.

00:48:23 ◼   ► The fonts were just not built for high DPI. Like, it was just a really crummy experience

00:48:28 ◼   ► as compared to the Mac where I'm not trying to be funny, but everything really does just

00:48:32 ◼   ► work.

00:48:33 ◼   ► The Mac was going to be that the way you describe Windows as for a long time. I think I remember

00:48:38 ◼   ► WWDC 2007-ish where they were saying come 2008 resolution independence as they

00:48:43 ◼   ► called it then will be here so prepare your apps and then 2008 came and went

00:48:47 ◼   ► and they didn't they used to be a little slider in the resolution you go 1x 1.5x

00:48:51 ◼   ► 2x 3x and you can just move that slider around and watch every interface in your

00:48:55 ◼   ► computer break essentially you got pixel cracks you got things that are not

00:48:59 ◼   ► scaling in the right size you got ugly crap it was so smart of them to just

00:49:03 ◼   ► spend an extra few years to figure out how to make like that they weren't gonna

00:49:07 ◼   ► to ship it in a state where somebody could configure their Mac to look this gross. And

00:49:11 ◼   ► so eventually the solution they came up with, as we all know, is it's too extra, it's

00:49:16 ◼   ► nothing. And even that was hard enough to get everyone on board with. But at least when

00:49:20 ◼   ► that works, it works right and predictably.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Yeah, that Apple definitely bet on the right side of history on that one. And because Windows

00:49:29 ◼   ► is very much suffering from this. But anyway, so yeah, there's issues with Windows for

00:49:34 ◼   ► for sure, and again, I wouldn't be interested at all

00:49:38 ◼   ► in this computer if I wanted it to be

00:49:41 ◼   ► like a general purpose computer or my main computer.

00:49:44 ◼   ► But again, if I were building a computer

00:49:45 ◼   ► whose sole purpose was to be like a photo editing

00:49:48 ◼   ► workstation, I would really give this serious consideration

00:49:51 ◼   ► because it really was surprisingly good.

00:49:53 ◼   ► And I went in there all thinking,

00:49:55 ◼   ► oh, let me take a bunch of mental notes

00:49:57 ◼   ► and how much everything sucks so I can be funny on the show.

00:50:00 ◼   ► But no, it actually is good.

00:50:04 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it was terrible if it wasn't,

00:50:07 ◼   ► and here I am saying it's not terrible.

00:50:09 ◼   ► It really, if you can tolerate Windows in general,

00:50:14 ◼   ► it's a really cool computer.

00:50:15 ◼   ► - So what was the pen latency like?

00:50:17 ◼   ► Did you do any drawing in any of the drawing?

00:50:19 ◼   ► I know a lot of that is app dependent,

00:50:20 ◼   ► as it is in the iPad, for example,

00:50:22 ◼   ► how Notes on the iPad is perfect,

00:50:24 ◼   ► and many drawing apps like Procreate or Paper,

00:50:29 ◼   ► a lot of those, depending on what brush you're using,

00:50:30 ◼   ► are laggy, but anyway, one of the complaints

00:50:32 ◼   ► that heard about the Surface Studio

00:50:34 ◼   ► is that the parallax was a little bit off,

00:50:36 ◼   ► like because I guess the distance between the glass

00:50:40 ◼   ► that you touch and the place where the pixels are

00:50:42 ◼   ► was enough to make it feel weird,

00:50:43 ◼   ► and also that some people said it feels laggy

00:50:46 ◼   ► in certain situations.

00:50:47 ◼   ► - The parallax glass gap thing is a real problem.

00:50:50 ◼   ► I didn't use it for any kind of drawing app.

00:50:53 ◼   ► I really only used it for like,

00:50:55 ◼   ► some app I launched for like two seconds

00:50:57 ◼   ► that I couldn't figure out,

00:50:58 ◼   ► and then I just went to Lightroom

00:50:59 ◼   ► 'cause I knew how to use that.

00:51:01 ◼   ► but so I was mainly using the pen

00:51:02 ◼   ► to like drag around sliders and stuff.

00:51:04 ◼   ► So for that, basically using it as a precision mouse pointer,

00:51:08 ◼   ► it's great.

00:51:09 ◼   ► And in fact, I really enjoyed doing that

00:51:12 ◼   ► because like in the same hand that I had the pen in,

00:51:16 ◼   ► here I have all these fingers doing nothing

00:51:18 ◼   ► and so if I wanted to like, you know,

00:51:20 ◼   ► do like one of the pinch gestures

00:51:21 ◼   ► just with my other fingers, it mostly worked great.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And like palm recognition was great.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Distinguishing between pen and touch was great.

00:51:30 ◼   ► There was, I don't think in my, I don't know,

00:51:32 ◼   ► I probably used it for 10 minutes,

00:51:35 ◼   ► I don't think there was a single time

00:51:37 ◼   ► when it misinterpreted one of my inputs.

00:51:40 ◼   ► Like it seemed like it was really,

00:51:42 ◼   ► really quite good at that.

00:51:44 ◼   ► For latency's tough to judge,

00:51:46 ◼   ► because remember when the iPad Pro came out with the pencil,

00:51:49 ◼   ► latency varies a lot by the application.

00:51:52 ◼   ► You know, it really depends a lot

00:51:53 ◼   ► on what you're doing in the app.

00:51:54 ◼   ► So it was easy with the Apple Pencil to be like,

00:51:58 ◼   ► oh, you can measure it with notes,

00:51:59 ◼   ► 'cause Apple did a lot of work to make notes really fast

00:52:01 ◼   ► and with the notes sketching thing.

00:52:03 ◼   ► You could also go and look at one of the fancier art apps.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Their brushes were way slower and way laggier.

00:52:08 ◼   ► On the same hardware at the same time,

00:52:10 ◼   ► just 'cause their app wasn't as optimized

00:52:12 ◼   ► or it was doing way more complex rendering.

00:52:14 ◼   ► And so I can't really judge the Surface Studio in that way.

00:52:18 ◼   ► All I can judge is how the pen was as a mouse pointer

00:52:21 ◼   ► to adjust sliders in Lightroom.

00:52:22 ◼   ► And it was great.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And it was also really nice to have like

00:52:25 ◼   ► the pen slider in my right hand,

00:52:26 ◼   ► you know, the pen doing the slider in my right hand

00:52:28 ◼   ► and then using my left hand to pinch and zoom

00:52:31 ◼   ► and pan around the photo that I was editing

00:52:32 ◼   ► as I was dragging the slider.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I mean, again, to have that kind of multiple input,

00:52:36 ◼   ► you know, multi-touch, having multiple pointing devices

00:52:39 ◼   ► is really compelling when it's done well.

00:52:42 ◼   ► And I have never felt that productive on an iPad

00:52:45 ◼   ► mostly because the kind of apps I use

00:52:49 ◼   ► for high-end creative needs aren't really on the iPad.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Yes, there's Lightroom on the iPad, but it's kinda crappy.

00:52:55 ◼   ► It's not really the same thing.

00:52:57 ◼   ► And also, the hardware is not quite up to speed

00:53:01 ◼   ► to manage giant photos and stuff like that.

00:53:03 ◼   ► So iPads don't get this kind of use from me

00:53:06 ◼   ► and from I think most people who are dealing

00:53:07 ◼   ► with this high-end creative use right now.

00:53:10 ◼   ► But in the future, if there is a huge iPad

00:53:14 ◼   ► that's even bigger than the 12.9,

00:53:17 ◼   ► now I finally get why you would want a giant iPad,

00:53:21 ◼   ► even bigger than the 12.9, why you'd want a 27-inch iPad,

00:53:24 ◼   ► I finally understand that now.

00:53:26 ◼   ► it would be a desktop and it would be fine.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Like, I totally get it.

00:53:30 ◼   ► So, overall, without drawing this out too much longer,

00:53:33 ◼   ► I really just, yeah, I just wanted to say,

00:53:35 ◼   ► like, I was blown away by how good it was.

00:53:38 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna go out and buy one,

00:53:40 ◼   ► 'cause I don't really have a need in my life

00:53:42 ◼   ► for a single-purpose workstation computer

00:53:46 ◼   ► that's like a Lightroom station.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Like, I don't need that.

00:53:49 ◼   ► But if I needed that, I'd probably buy one of these.

00:53:52 ◼   ► - All my arguing over so many episodes and so many hours,

00:53:56 ◼   ► and the thing that convinced you is going to a Microsoft store

00:53:59 ◼   ► and using one and not even drawing on it.

00:54:00 ◼   ► I don't understand how you go into the Microsoft store--

00:54:03 ◼   ► I can't draw.

00:54:03 ◼   ► --to this giant thing, and you say,

00:54:05 ◼   ► you know what I want to do?

00:54:06 ◼   ► I want to use the pen as a mouse cursor in Lightroom,

00:54:10 ◼   ► an application that's not even optimized for touch.

00:54:12 ◼   ► But hey, whatever works for you.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Whatever works for you, I guess I just wasn't convincing.

00:54:16 ◼   ► I guess I should have pitched it.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Think of it this way, Marco.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Imagine if you're using Lightroom, a non-touch optimized

00:54:20 ◼   ► app, and used the pen as a mouse.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Now would you buy one?

00:54:23 ◼   ► Yeah, now I find that convincing.

00:54:25 ◼   ► - No, honestly, until I, it's very tactile,

00:54:28 ◼   ► until I actually did it and used it and tried,

00:54:32 ◼   ► and especially because I was using an app

00:54:34 ◼   ► that I already knew how to use and was already fast with,

00:54:37 ◼   ► I was able to really see how much

00:54:40 ◼   ► this kind of interaction can help,

00:54:42 ◼   ► because I wasn't just trying to figure out

00:54:43 ◼   ► a brand new app for the first time

00:54:45 ◼   ► where I'm stumbling around going all slow,

00:54:46 ◼   ► and oh, this is novel.

00:54:48 ◼   ► No, I was actually going through things

00:54:51 ◼   ► that I do in this app, things I already know how to do,

00:54:53 ◼   ► and workflows that I have, oh, I drag this,

00:54:56 ◼   ► then do this, then do this, so I could get an idea of,

00:54:59 ◼   ► like, is this actually more productive,

00:55:02 ◼   ► is this doable, what are the upsides, what are the downsides?

00:55:05 ◼   ► And honestly, I had a hard time finding downsides.

00:55:07 ◼   ► The only downside was Windows.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - So you're gonna make your audio editor application

00:55:12 ◼   ► for Windows now, for the Surface Studio.

00:55:14 ◼   ► 'Cause imagine how awesome that would be,

00:55:16 ◼   ► as I've said many times, your audio editing application

00:55:18 ◼   ► on a big, giant touchscreen.

00:55:20 ◼   ► - I have actually thought about, like,

00:55:22 ◼   ► So I've done no work on the audio editor so far.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I have a bunch of concepts in my head, yeah,

00:55:26 ◼   ► but I've done no actual coding.

00:55:28 ◼   ► So the options are totally open of where

00:55:30 ◼   ► I would actually do this if I ever choose to do it.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And my main debate point in my head was like,

00:55:34 ◼   ► should I do this on the iPad or on the Mac?

00:55:37 ◼   ► And I've been leaning towards Mac,

00:55:39 ◼   ► but I gotta say the appeal of doing this kind of thing

00:55:43 ◼   ► with multi-touch is something.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And maybe the touch bar on the Mac would be enough,

00:55:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:55:50 ◼   ► But I do think it is worth, for all of us

00:55:54 ◼   ► in the Mac commentosphere who, I apologize,

00:55:58 ◼   ► who have written off the idea of touch screens

00:56:04 ◼   ► on the desktop, it's easy to just repeat

00:56:07 ◼   ► the company line or the party line of like,

00:56:11 ◼   ► no, that's a bad idea, you shouldn't,

00:56:13 ◼   ► we don't need that, the desktop needs to remain the desktop,

00:56:15 ◼   ► nobody needs a touch screen PC.

00:56:17 ◼   ► I think that is a bad assumption.

00:56:21 ◼   ► It is possible to do this well.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And Microsoft already almost has.

00:56:26 ◼   ► If the software ecosystem was better on Windows,

00:56:28 ◼   ► it would be incredible.

00:56:30 ◼   ► It's not, and the software ecosystem is the kind of thing

00:56:33 ◼   ► that doesn't turn on a dime,

00:56:35 ◼   ► that doesn't all of a sudden become perfect in six months

00:56:39 ◼   ► just because Microsoft releases one desktop

00:56:41 ◼   ► that very few people will probably buy.

00:56:43 ◼   ► But I don't think we can say with confidence

00:56:47 ◼   ► that Apple should never do something like the Surface Studio.

00:56:51 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - You can just say I'm right, this is all right.

00:56:53 ◼   ► You can just shortcut this.

00:56:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:56 ◼   ► - Hashtag John was right.

00:56:57 ◼   ► - John was right again, go ahead, it's fine.

00:56:59 ◼   ► - So how funny would it be if it ends up

00:57:03 ◼   ► that during the run of this show,

00:57:05 ◼   ► like Neutral had the arc of you deciding upon

00:57:08 ◼   ► purchasing and receiving an M5.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Is the arc of the Accidental Tech podcast

00:57:13 ◼   ► for me to finally abandon .NET in Windows

00:57:17 ◼   ► only to have you go crawling back to Windows

00:57:19 ◼   ► and then suddenly becoming a .NET developer?

00:57:22 ◼   ► 'Cause that would be funny.

00:57:23 ◼   ► - I would say if Microsoft wants to send review units,

00:57:26 ◼   ► my nine-year-old daughter who loves to draw

00:57:28 ◼   ► would love to try out a Surface Studio.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - Yes, because I'm sure so many Microsoft employees

00:57:32 ◼   ► listen to this show.

00:57:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, a lot of nine-year-olds have $3,000

00:57:35 ◼   ► 28-inch tablet computers.

00:57:37 ◼   ► That's what I heard all the kids have these days.

00:57:39 ◼   ► - And the other thing is if I were to buy,

00:57:41 ◼   ► if I wanted one for my stated idea

00:57:44 ◼   ► of having it be a Lightroom workstation,

00:57:46 ◼   ► I would want a more powerful computer for it.

00:57:48 ◼   ► Like I would much rather have that--

00:57:50 ◼   ► - You?

00:57:50 ◼   ► What's the surface studio pro?

00:57:52 ◼   ► - Right, like I would much rather have the monitor part

00:57:56 ◼   ► just be a monitor that I could plug into any PC

00:57:59 ◼   ► and then buy like a ridiculous Xeon workstation

00:58:02 ◼   ► with like 12 cores and have that be my crazy importer

00:58:06 ◼   ► and processor because Lightroom is very well parallelized

00:58:08 ◼   ► for a lot of its operations and would actually use

00:58:10 ◼   ► that power and really needs extra speed.

00:58:13 ◼   ► So that is, it's a little odd that they don't have

00:58:16 ◼   ► like a standalone option yet, but I would imagine

00:58:18 ◼   ► like if for some reason, I don't know if people buy

00:58:20 ◼   ► this thing, maybe they'll go that direction

00:58:22 ◼   ► and release it as a product.

00:58:23 ◼   ► But you know, the good thing about the Windows ecosystem

00:58:25 ◼   ► is that other people could basically do that

00:58:27 ◼   ► and it would probably be all right.

00:58:29 ◼   ► - So what you need is a Xeon, a PC Xeon workstation

00:58:32 ◼   ► that comes in a case that looks identical

00:58:34 ◼   ► to one of your weird German amplifier thingamabobbers

00:58:37 ◼   ► that you've already got on your desk

00:58:38 ◼   ► so your desk wouldn't look any different.

00:58:40 ◼   ► The only difference is you just take your screen

00:58:41 ◼   ► and tilt it down and whack some KVM

00:58:45 ◼   ► with your toe or something, and all of a sudden

00:58:46 ◼   ► you're running off of your aluminum amplifier tube thing

00:58:50 ◼   ► that's really a PC.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - So question for you, having experienced

00:58:55 ◼   ► this touchscreen PC, which I think it is important to note

00:58:59 ◼   ► that if it's pitched the way an iMac is pitched,

00:59:04 ◼   ► you said that you didn't really care

00:59:06 ◼   ► for the touchscreen features that way,

00:59:08 ◼   ► only when it was in kind of easel mode

00:59:10 ◼   ► or drafting table mode, is that fair?

00:59:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:13 ◼   ► So that being said, now that you've seen a touchscreen PC

00:59:16 ◼   ► and said, "Yeah, maybe it's not so bad,"

00:59:19 ◼   ► does that change your opinion on the touch bar

00:59:21 ◼   ► for better, for worse, or otherwise?

00:59:24 ◼   ► - I still think it's way too early to say.

00:59:27 ◼   ► - That's fair.

00:59:28 ◼   ► - And it also very much depends on the app

00:59:31 ◼   ► and what they're using the touch bar for.

00:59:33 ◼   ► You know, in my YouTube review, like, comment, subscribe,

00:59:35 ◼   ► my main focus on the touch bar is

00:59:39 ◼   ► it is not good as a row of buttons.

00:59:42 ◼   ► If I have to look at it, I have failed.

00:59:45 ◼   ► The touch bar is best as a sliding or panning surface.

00:59:49 ◼   ► And it does support multi-touch.

00:59:51 ◼   ► So you could do a pinch gesture on it,

00:59:53 ◼   ► but you could also just do it on the track pad right below.

00:59:55 ◼   ► So it kinda, like, I don't know how,

00:59:59 ◼   ► again, it depends on the app,

01:00:00 ◼   ► I don't know what makes sense to do on the touch bar

01:00:03 ◼   ► versus just using the track pad.

01:00:05 ◼   ► If some apps, as I mentioned,

01:00:07 ◼   ► it's nice to have multiple simultaneous touch input surfaces

01:00:11 ◼   ► So one thing you could do is have your left hand

01:00:13 ◼   ► on the touch bar and have your right hand on the trackpad

01:00:15 ◼   ► and have that be two different inputs

01:00:17 ◼   ► for things like panning a timeline

01:00:19 ◼   ► versus moving the play head, stuff like that.

01:00:21 ◼   ► There's all sorts of stuff you could do

01:00:23 ◼   ► in Creative Pro apps and lots of apps to make use of that.

01:00:27 ◼   ► It's way too early to tell for sure now

01:00:30 ◼   ► what works and what doesn't long term,

01:00:33 ◼   ► but certainly my immediate upfront impression,

01:00:36 ◼   ► my early use impression of the touch bar is

01:00:40 ◼   ► If it's a row of buttons, I never use it.

01:00:42 ◼   ► But when it's used as some kind of big slider,

01:00:45 ◼   ► that is nice.

01:00:46 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:00:47 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Betterment.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Go to betterment.com/ATP.

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01:02:11 ◼   ► So, it's tomorrow, which means by the time you're listening to this

01:02:16 ◼   ► today or perhaps yesterday, that Super Mario Run has been released to the App Store.

01:02:22 ◼   ► And I hope you're not getting on an airplane because you won't be able to

01:02:26 ◼   ► play it because it is online only. You must maintain a connection to the

01:02:30 ◼   ► internet in order to play.

01:02:32 ◼   ► What?

01:02:33 ◼   ► What is that about?

01:02:35 ◼   ► So the theories about what that's about are copy protection

01:02:39 ◼   ► You know

01:02:40 ◼   ► So everything is pirated on the app stores and the theory goes that it is slightly harder

01:02:46 ◼   ► To pirate it when you have to also deal with a phone home feature that you have to bypass in addition to cracking the whatever

01:02:53 ◼   ► You know to get it

01:02:54 ◼   ► Illegally, I'm not entirely sure if I buy that. I mean historically Nintendo has been really

01:03:00 ◼   ► not smart about copy protection in that they will do things that they think are saving them from piracy when really like

01:03:07 ◼   ► The decrease in piracy is not a good match for the pain that they put regular users through like Nintendo makes really bad trade-offs

01:03:15 ◼   ► They're historically so you can't entirely discount that theory even though practically speaking

01:03:19 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like it would do anything

01:03:22 ◼   ► Except to make it slightly more difficult to pirate it and I think there's a lot of motivation to pirate this thing because it's gonna

01:03:28 ◼   ► be popular. Second one, you can't really discount, is just playing, not gonna say incompetence,

01:03:35 ◼   ► but like, there is an online component to the game. Just having it be online all the

01:03:40 ◼   ► time is a simplification for development. And it could have just been maybe they didn't

01:03:47 ◼   ► think it would be a big deal and they miscalculated and it's simpler to do it this way anyway.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And they will, you know, this is one of the situations where if it's not some wrongheaded

01:03:57 ◼   ► misguided notion about piracy that they will update the game eventually to allow offline play maybe even though it's like six months to a

01:04:03 ◼   ► Year from now that they will update it when they get around to it

01:04:05 ◼   ► They just didn't get around to it and they'll you know, they will do a slow-motion

01:04:09 ◼   ► Reconsideration and say yeah, we messed up

01:04:12 ◼   ► I guess what? What is the third option? Is there any third explanation for online only besides incompetence and

01:04:19 ◼   ► Wrongheaded ideas about piracy

01:04:23 ◼   ► Analytics, I guess

01:04:25 ◼   ► Dynamic content. You can always do that periodically

01:04:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean anyway

01:04:30 ◼   ► The bottom line is it's I don't think it will affect the game because people are gonna buy it based on the brand it may affect

01:04:36 ◼   ► How satisfied people are with the game so that when Nintendo comes out with its second game

01:04:40 ◼   ► They will have to emphasize the fact that you're able to run it offline

01:04:43 ◼   ► But yeah, it does not seem like it Nintendo very often find some way to do something

01:04:51 ◼   ► Silly with every one of the things that should be sort of a pure win

01:04:55 ◼   ► So I don't think it will affect

01:04:57 ◼   ► The fortunes of this game just because there's so much pent-up demand for something Nintendo

01:05:02 ◼   ► Besides Pokemon and you know something Mario on on iOS. So I think they'll sell ton of these

01:05:07 ◼   ► I think what is the price gonna be 10 bucks? I believe so

01:05:09 ◼   ► Yeah, so I think they'll do just fine with it. But it but yeah, it's pretty

01:05:13 ◼   ► It's not a good idea to have this thing be online only that's just it's just gonna annoy people

01:05:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there was a great discussion about this

01:05:22 ◼   ► on Connected this week, and one of the things

01:05:25 ◼   ► that Mike was saying was like, pointing out,

01:05:27 ◼   ► and this is a huge thing, like, these kind of casual,

01:05:31 ◼   ► quick play, one-handed play games for phones

01:05:35 ◼   ► are really often used for people who are commuting,

01:05:38 ◼   ► like on a subway underground, or who are flying on a plane,

01:05:41 ◼   ► like it's very often used while traveling or commuting.

01:05:44 ◼   ► And there's gonna be so many times

01:05:46 ◼   ► where people would play this game,

01:05:48 ◼   ► like in an everyday subway commute,

01:05:50 ◼   ► where you're underground, you got no connection,

01:05:52 ◼   ► and you just can't play it.

01:05:54 ◼   ► And that's really unfortunate.

01:05:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wonder if it's gonna be,

01:05:58 ◼   ► will it not launch,

01:06:01 ◼   ► or does it want to phone home periodically

01:06:03 ◼   ► and you can play it for some period of time,

01:06:04 ◼   ► but then eventually it will complain to you

01:06:06 ◼   ► that it hasn't phoned home in a while?

01:06:07 ◼   ► I don't know what the mechanism's gonna be like.

01:06:10 ◼   ► 'Cause it's, I have a hard time believing

01:06:12 ◼   ► that the game won't even launch without a connection,

01:06:13 ◼   ► but who knows?

01:06:14 ◼   ► I mean, it's Nintendo's first try at this,

01:06:17 ◼   ► and maybe they just totally messed it up by thinking the entire world is as connected

01:06:21 ◼   ► as Japan is or something. I don't know. It definitely seems like a miscalculation, especially

01:06:26 ◼   ► since this is not a paid-up front game. So it's not as if it's like, "Well, you've got

01:06:29 ◼   ► your money." They don't. They want you to buy the unlock, and you're not going to buy

01:06:33 ◼   ► the unlock if the first two times you try to play it, it's a "Sorry, can't play because

01:06:37 ◼   ► you're offline."

01:06:38 ◼   ► I'm anxious to try it. I mean, back in the day, I know, Marco, that you were a Sega kind

01:06:43 ◼   ► guy, but I was a Nintendo kind of guy when I was a kid and had everything from the original

01:06:49 ◼   ► NES all the way through the Nintendo 64 and then eventually a Wii.

01:06:54 ◼   ► This is something that should appeal to me and so I'm anxious to try it, but...

01:06:59 ◼   ► And I don't expect that this online only thing is really going to bother me much, but I do

01:07:02 ◼   ► think it's a bummer and I would not put it past Nintendo, like you said, John, to just

01:07:06 ◼   ► be silly about this decision and just not realizing that this is more harm than good.

01:07:12 ◼   ► it.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Easy for me to say.

01:07:14 ◼   ► I have to say that Nintendo doesn't feel like they have, I was going to say mastery, but

01:07:21 ◼   ► I would say they don't even have a handle on mobile gaming yet because all they have

01:07:26 ◼   ► is the one game that they partner, they didn't even develop, Niantic or whatever, the Pokemon

01:07:31 ◼   ► Go thing, which is a second cut in an idea that they've already tried once and that does

01:07:36 ◼   ► take advantage of things that are uniquely mobile, like the fact that you walk around

01:07:40 ◼   ► with it and stuff like that.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Pokemon Go is a pretty good job and takes advantage of some unique things, but this

01:07:45 ◼   ► game itself was a little bit buggy and sketchy in the beginning.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Anyway, that wasn't Nintendo.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And this, I forget, is Nintendo doing this in-house or is this also outsourced to somebody?

01:07:57 ◼   ► But either way, this game, what it looks like, you know, it's got Nintendo's graphics, it's

01:08:02 ◼   ► got Nintendo's IP.

01:08:04 ◼   ► I'm sure it will play well, but in terms of what it is, it's one of those, you know, tap

01:08:08 ◼   ► the screen, Myra is running all on his own, you're tapping the screen to make him jump

01:08:11 ◼   ► and stuff like that, which is fine as far as it goes, but what I find myself thinking

01:08:16 ◼   ► about when I think about games that have stood out to me on iOS, I don't, you know, Super

01:08:24 ◼   ► Mario Run is not in the top tier.

01:08:27 ◼   ► I think of something from a developer that really seemed to understand both, I think,

01:08:33 ◼   ► context of multiple gaming and the things that, you know, playing to its strengths,

01:08:39 ◼   ► avoiding its weaknesses. I think of things like, you know, Alto's Adventure, which on

01:08:46 ◼   ► the surface seems similar. It's always not the same thing. This thing just goes and you

01:08:49 ◼   ► tap a button to make a thing happen. It's like a single tap gaming type experience.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And maybe it's because Nintendo doesn't have any IP that fit with that type of thing. But

01:08:59 ◼   ► I thought those adventures just a so much stronger statement on understanding what's

01:09:04 ◼   ► good about iOS gaming or even something like what is the one with Ida walking around on

01:09:11 ◼   ► the thing?

01:09:12 ◼   ► >> M

01:09:29 ◼   ► in the 2D world, it's like, that's the old context.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Like that may be okay.

01:09:34 ◼   ► Even the real infinite runners take more advantage

01:09:37 ◼   ► of mobile, or more sort of mobile native than this.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Like, so Nintendo taking its existing properties

01:09:43 ◼   ► and finding a way that you can play them

01:09:44 ◼   ► by putting one finger on the screen periodically,

01:09:47 ◼   ► that's all well and good.

01:09:48 ◼   ► But where is the Nintendo equivalent of Alto's Adventure

01:09:53 ◼   ► or even, you know, the Nintendo equivalent of Yearwalk

01:09:56 ◼   ► or whatever, just like, I feel like there are,

01:09:59 ◼   ► They haven't mastered the platform yet, and if they're ever going to make a truly great

01:10:02 ◼   ► iOS game, they have to start developing for it not as like a come on for you to buy the real

01:10:11 ◼   ► Nintendo games, which is what these currently are at this point, but getting their developers

01:10:16 ◼   ► to really understand this platform and producing something that will last in our collective memory

01:10:23 ◼   ► and be as well regarded as the best iOS games. Yeah. Agreed. Fair enough.

01:10:28 ◼   ► So, let's try to not take this to too negative a place, but Apple's made a curious choice

01:10:38 ◼   ► with the new Sierra update for laptops.

01:10:42 ◼   ► For every laptop.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Apparently the battery life meter has never been accurate.

01:10:50 ◼   ► We didn't realize this until people were dissatisfied with not reaching the claimed battery capacity

01:10:57 ◼   ► or length on their brand new MacBook Pros, but suddenly, surely it's not because of that,

01:11:03 ◼   ► but suddenly it's turned out that the battery life meter is totally inaccurate and it's

01:11:08 ◼   ► been removed.

01:11:09 ◼   ► So, I don't know what to make of this.

01:11:16 ◼   ► My initial inclination is, "Oh, we're just trying to sweep under the rug the fact that

01:11:20 ◼   ► these computers don't get the battery life we said they did."

01:11:23 ◼   ► My second thought of this is, well, battery life is just a guess, right?

01:11:29 ◼   ► We don't see on an iOS device how much time remaining we have on our battery.

01:11:34 ◼   ► We see a percentage for sure, but we don't see a time estimate.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And so I want to land in a place where this is not, I don't know if nefarious is really

01:11:50 ◼   ► the word I'm looking for, but it's the best word I can come up with, that it's not nefarious.

01:11:53 ◼   ► And I really feel like the Apple community, and maybe just geeks in general, tend to land on the

01:12:02 ◼   ► nefarious point of view a little too easily. But golly, I'm struggling to figure out a way where

01:12:07 ◼   ► this is not just trying to sweep a different problem under the rug. So I'm—

01:12:11 ◼   ► So I'm –

01:12:12 ◼   ► It's definitely nefarious if you think that this is a sneaky evil thing that someone would

01:12:18 ◼   ► – but like I – in – encompassed in the word nefarious is a certain effectiveness

01:12:24 ◼   ► that I think is not inherent in this solution.

01:12:26 ◼   ► In other words, like a nefarious scheme to steal the jewels should end with you having

01:12:31 ◼   ► the jewels.

01:12:32 ◼   ► If this is a nefarious scheme to address concerns about battery life, it is not particularly

01:12:37 ◼   ► nefarious because it's not – like I – PR-wise, like I just –

01:12:41 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say for all of 2016,

01:12:43 ◼   ► let's just say Apple has not covered itself in glory

01:12:45 ◼   ► in terms of product introductions and everything, right?

01:12:48 ◼   ► And this move,

01:12:51 ◼   ► I don't see how there is a positive outcome

01:12:56 ◼   ► for this for Apple, regardless of the motivation.

01:12:58 ◼   ► Say the motivation,

01:12:59 ◼   ► it has nothing to do with the new laptops.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Like it just seems like a net negative

01:13:04 ◼   ► no matter how I slice it.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And so if it is a change meant to address a customer concern

01:13:10 ◼   ► no matter what that customer concern is,

01:13:13 ◼   ► I honestly don't see how getting rid of it will help.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Now, I understand it in a kind of naive sort of,

01:13:21 ◼   ► just very sort of one-sided view of the world

01:13:26 ◼   ► in that the battery meter is not accurate,

01:13:29 ◼   ► the holidays are coming, we don't have time to fix it,

01:13:33 ◼   ► to stop people from seeing inaccurate information,

01:13:37 ◼   ► or remove it, with the idea that we'll fix it

01:13:40 ◼   ► and put it back, but we don't have time now.

01:13:42 ◼   ► But I don't think you would think about that solution

01:13:46 ◼   ► for any period of time until you realize

01:13:49 ◼   ► that doesn't really help.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Like that makes things worse probably.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Like if it's not working and we're gonna fix it,

01:13:56 ◼   ► then fix it.

01:13:56 ◼   ► If you don't have time to fix it now, fix it later.

01:13:58 ◼   ► If you don't wanna fix it later

01:14:00 ◼   ► because people are upset now,

01:14:01 ◼   ► issue a statement, but removing it,

01:14:04 ◼   ► especially since that information is available elsewhere

01:14:06 ◼   ► in the US and through third-party apps anyway,

01:14:09 ◼   ► It just seems like not a good move PR-wise.

01:14:13 ◼   ► Again, regardless of the motivation,

01:14:14 ◼   ► even the motivations are entirely pure of like,

01:14:16 ◼   ► we realize there's a problem with the new max

01:14:19 ◼   ► and that meter and it's showing bad information, right?

01:14:22 ◼   ► 'Cause it doesn't solve a problem a customers have.

01:14:24 ◼   ► It might solve a problem Apple has

01:14:26 ◼   ► in terms of support requests,

01:14:28 ◼   ► and Apple might think it solves the perception problem,

01:14:30 ◼   ► although I really doubt it does,

01:14:32 ◼   ► but does it solve a customer problem?

01:14:34 ◼   ► I guess maybe the customer problem it might be solving

01:14:36 ◼   ► is like Marco's insistence on not having badges

01:14:39 ◼   ► as applications to tell you about how many things you haven't done in them to remove anxiety, but

01:14:45 ◼   ► it really depends because unlike notifications to tell you how many unread things you have in

01:14:49 ◼   ► Instapaper or whatever, if you hide the time remaining for someone who's used to constantly

01:14:55 ◼   ► looking up to see the time remaining, all you've done is replace one anxiety with another. The new

01:15:00 ◼   ► anxiety is I have no idea how much time I have remaining. Normally I know how much time I have

01:15:04 ◼   ► remaining, really they don't, they're just looking at a number that's like a random guess, or not

01:15:08 ◼   ► not random, but that is an estimate based on current whatever like, but it's not removing

01:15:14 ◼   ► anxiety because it's not as if when they glance up there and don't see the time remaining

01:15:18 ◼   ► they're going to relax and say, "Oh, I guess I don't have to worry about it anymore." No,

01:15:21 ◼   ► they're going to be like, "But what is the time remaining? Let me launch activity monitor

01:15:24 ◼   ► and check." Not a wise decision, Apple, I think. And the best thing for them to do is

01:15:32 ◼   ► If the number is misleading or inaccurate

01:15:36 ◼   ► or problematic in some way, make it better.

01:15:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, there are a number of separate issues here

01:15:45 ◼   ► and I think if we, we need to be careful

01:15:48 ◼   ► to talk about them separately and to not like,

01:15:50 ◼   ► let them bleed into each other where they don't need to

01:15:53 ◼   ► because that's a quick way to just lose a discussion

01:15:55 ◼   ► and get sidetracked.

01:15:58 ◼   ► So there's multiple problems here.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Problem number one is that the battery estimate meter

01:16:04 ◼   ► can be and sometimes is inaccurate.

01:16:08 ◼   ► But I've actually found,

01:16:11 ◼   ► I've been using Apple laptops for more than a decade now.

01:16:16 ◼   ► And I have found the battery meter

01:16:18 ◼   ► to be a pretty good rough estimate.

01:16:22 ◼   ► It's not like it says you get two hours

01:16:24 ◼   ► and you actually get 10.

01:16:26 ◼   ► It's not off by that much.

01:16:28 ◼   ► It usually gives you a pretty good estimate

01:16:31 ◼   ► of the number of hours you will roughly get

01:16:34 ◼   ► if you continue using the computer

01:16:36 ◼   ► the way you're using it right now,

01:16:38 ◼   ► or the way you have been using it for the last few minutes.

01:16:41 ◼   ► - But that mental model that you just described,

01:16:43 ◼   ► I don't know if everyone else has that same mental model.

01:16:46 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:16:47 ◼   ► - 'Cause what you described is how most, you know,

01:16:48 ◼   ► long time Mac users use it,

01:16:49 ◼   ► which is like you said, you look up at that number,

01:16:52 ◼   ► and then what the number is trying to tell you,

01:16:53 ◼   ► 'cause it's not an instantaneous measurement,

01:16:55 ◼   ► the number is trying to tell you is,

01:16:56 ◼   ► If you keep doing what you've been doing in the recent past,

01:16:59 ◼   ► we think this is what you're gonna get.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And you and I and most people use that number to say,

01:17:04 ◼   ► oh, I better not keep doing whatever the hell I'm doing

01:17:07 ◼   ► because my time, like in other words,

01:17:08 ◼   ► we are never surprised when that number goes up, right?

01:17:11 ◼   ► Because we understand why it goes up.

01:17:13 ◼   ► It's oh, it's because I quit that application

01:17:14 ◼   ► or I stopped that render or whatever I was doing.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Of course the number is gonna go up.

01:17:18 ◼   ► I think regular people,

01:17:20 ◼   ► when they look at that number and it says X,

01:17:22 ◼   ► and then half an hour later,

01:17:25 ◼   ► look at the number and it says X plus 50 minutes are perplexed and don't understand how that

01:17:30 ◼   ► could be the case and start thinking that it's not right. So I think the number is

01:17:35 ◼   ► that, I think that readout is, it's not conveying the mental, your mental model happens

01:17:41 ◼   ► to match the way it works, but I don't think the number itself on its own conveys that

01:17:46 ◼   ► to people. So I think the number is problematic.

01:17:47 ◼   ► - It is, well, it's problematic as it was displayed before

01:17:52 ◼   ► as if it's treated as fact.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So it's, for example, it's problematic

01:17:57 ◼   ► to give minute level precision on that estimate

01:18:01 ◼   ► because it isn't that accurate.

01:18:03 ◼   ► It isn't gonna tell you like, oh, your laptop is gonna die

01:18:06 ◼   ► in exactly six hours and 37 minutes.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Like, no, that's not what's going to happen.

01:18:10 ◼   ► But the value that it had before

01:18:14 ◼   ► in giving you a rough estimate of what you have left.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Again, even if the granularity is number of hours

01:18:21 ◼   ► you have left, that is actually pretty accurate

01:18:25 ◼   ► for a lot of people's uses.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And so we have a number of problems combining here

01:18:30 ◼   ► to make Apple decide to take action here.

01:18:32 ◼   ► One of them is, I think, pretty clearly

01:18:35 ◼   ► the reviews have all been stating,

01:18:38 ◼   ► have all basically agreed, and the customers,

01:18:40 ◼   ► not just crazy reviewers, but actual customers

01:18:42 ◼   ► have all kind of seen like, you know,

01:18:44 ◼   ► I'm not really getting more than like five to seven hours

01:18:47 ◼   ► of battery life on this 10 hour battery life laptop.

01:18:51 ◼   ► That's been a pretty common thing people have said.

01:18:54 ◼   ► My personal experience matches that pretty well.

01:18:57 ◼   ► The other problem is, as I mentioned before,

01:18:59 ◼   ► modern laptops, the main ways they've gotten more efficient

01:19:03 ◼   ► is by reducing the amount of power they use

01:19:06 ◼   ► when they're not doing much.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And when they're really doing a lot,

01:19:10 ◼   ► or when the GPU's on or whatever else,

01:19:12 ◼   ► the top of that power range they can reach

01:19:15 ◼   ► has actually not moved very much.

01:19:17 ◼   ► And they've gotten smaller and lighter

01:19:18 ◼   ► by shrinking the batteries by assuming a bunch of idle power

01:19:21 ◼   ► or a bunch of idle time.

01:19:23 ◼   ► But again, if you push them, if you make them do anything,

01:19:26 ◼   ► they're still using as much power as they used to.

01:19:28 ◼   ► So basically, as we keep making these advancements

01:19:31 ◼   ► and making idle power lower and lower and lower,

01:19:33 ◼   ► but keeping active power kind of the same,

01:19:36 ◼   ► what we're seeing is an increasing difference

01:19:40 ◼   ► in real world battery life depending on what you're doing.

01:19:44 ◼   ► So it used to be, like, you know,

01:19:46 ◼   ► back in the olden days of like, you know,

01:19:48 ◼   ► the Core Duo and the G4 and everything,

01:19:51 ◼   ► back in those early days when we hadn't made

01:19:53 ◼   ► all these advances in idle power reduction,

01:19:55 ◼   ► the difference in how much battery life

01:19:57 ◼   ► your computer would get if you were pushing it hard

01:19:59 ◼   ► versus if you were just browsing the web

01:20:01 ◼   ► was a pretty small difference,

01:20:02 ◼   ► relatively speaking, to today.

01:20:04 ◼   ► Maybe if you were really gentle on it,

01:20:06 ◼   ► you might get like 50% or 75% or 100% more battery life.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Whereas today, if you're like using the CPU hard,

01:20:14 ◼   ► or if you're playing a game,

01:20:16 ◼   ► versus if you're browsing the web

01:20:17 ◼   ► and doing nothing else in the background,

01:20:19 ◼   ► that difference could be the difference

01:20:20 ◼   ► between 90 minutes and 11 hours of battery life.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - That's so ridiculous, but you're right.

01:20:26 ◼   ► - Those are real numbers, like that's actually what happens.

01:20:28 ◼   ► It's surprising, like the difference is vast now,

01:20:32 ◼   ► depending on what you're doing.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And so that factor has over time

01:20:38 ◼   ► made the battery meter less accurate.

01:20:42 ◼   ► So there is, because as what you do changes,

01:20:46 ◼   ► like if you have just spent three hours

01:20:49 ◼   ► browsing the web in Safari with no pigs

01:20:51 ◼   ► that triggered WebGL, then great, you're all set.

01:20:55 ◼   ► But then if you go and somebody sends you a message effect

01:20:59 ◼   ► and the GPU turns on and something else tries

01:21:02 ◼   ► to keep the GPU on for some other reason,

01:21:04 ◼   ► then all, and then at the same time,

01:21:06 ◼   ► like a time machine backup starts,

01:21:08 ◼   ► and Photos decides to analyze some photos for you,

01:21:11 ◼   ► like then you could, your estimate for the last three hours

01:21:16 ◼   ► when all this stuff was happening,

01:21:17 ◼   ► might have told you you had five more hours left.

01:21:19 ◼   ► But now all of a sudden, because your computers

01:21:21 ◼   ► are doing things that use way more power

01:21:23 ◼   ► than what you were using before,

01:21:25 ◼   ► you might only have one hour left.

01:21:26 ◼   ► - That's why the fixing it, like the idea of like,

01:21:29 ◼   ► oh, if the number is bad, fix it.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Fixing it doesn't mean just make it put a better number

01:21:33 ◼   ► because there is no better number

01:21:34 ◼   ► because it can't predict the future.

01:21:35 ◼   ► Fixing it probably means changing it from something

01:21:38 ◼   ► that tells you a supposed amount of time remaining

01:21:40 ◼   ► to something that graphically displays memory

01:21:44 ◼   ► like as a burndown graph or usage over time.

01:21:47 ◼   ► Like you'd like to see a representation

01:21:49 ◼   ► that lets you know you were using energy at this rate.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Here's your total energy that you have.

01:21:54 ◼   ► You were using at this rate,

01:21:56 ◼   ► then more recently you'll be using at this rate

01:21:58 ◼   ► And therefore, like here's the rest of the time remaining,

01:22:00 ◼   ► like some kind of graph or something.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Some other representation that probably doesn't fit

01:22:04 ◼   ► in the menu bar, maybe you can do it as a spark line,

01:22:06 ◼   ► but then you click on it and get a bigger thing.

01:22:08 ◼   ► 'Cause that's, you know, like you said,

01:22:10 ◼   ► with this chain, with this increase in the difference

01:22:15 ◼   ► between idle and active power,

01:22:17 ◼   ► this ever increasing difference,

01:22:19 ◼   ► it becomes almost impossible to ever put a single number

01:22:22 ◼   ► up there that's representative

01:22:23 ◼   ► because the variability is too much.

01:22:25 ◼   ► By fixing it, I mean, give the people using,

01:22:29 ◼   ► the customer problem is I have to know how long I have left

01:22:33 ◼   ► and should I do something differently to change that, right?

01:22:36 ◼   ► And also like, people don't know

01:22:38 ◼   ► what they should do differently, right?

01:22:39 ◼   ► So you need to give them feedback.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Did quitting that app help at all?

01:22:43 ◼   ► Let me go look, click the menu bar icon and see the graph

01:22:46 ◼   ► and see like some line level out or something or not.

01:22:49 ◼   ► Like that's the customer problem is

01:22:52 ◼   ► I gotta know how long I have

01:22:54 ◼   ► And if I need to stretch it,

01:22:56 ◼   ► if I need to get a little bit more time out of it,

01:22:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna try a bunch of random crap.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Hopefully the energy saver menu will tell me

01:23:03 ◼   ► like which apps are using a lot of energy,

01:23:04 ◼   ► like that feature they had in Mavericks or whatever.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Hopefully I'll take some action based on that

01:23:09 ◼   ► and then have confirmation from this thing that tells me,

01:23:11 ◼   ► oh yes, you've now changed things

01:23:14 ◼   ► so that it looks like you're back on track.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And doing that with a single number

01:23:18 ◼   ► that fluctuates up and down,

01:23:20 ◼   ► I think is not as useful as some other thing

01:23:22 ◼   ► that gives a historic forward and backward perspective

01:23:25 ◼   ► on things.

01:23:27 ◼   ► - Jon, only you would want a burned down chart

01:23:29 ◼   ► for your battery power.

01:23:30 ◼   ► - Marco doesn't even know what that is.

01:23:31 ◼   ► - Nope, not even, not at all.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - It's all right, it's fine, it's in the parking lot.

01:23:34 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:23:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:37 ◼   ► So basically, I see the line of thinking

01:23:41 ◼   ► that could lead Apple to think,

01:23:44 ◼   ► we should just get rid of this meter

01:23:45 ◼   ► because it's not very accurate anymore.

01:23:47 ◼   ► But it has a lot of value.

01:23:50 ◼   ► And so to completely get rid of it,

01:23:53 ◼   ► if you just look at a percentage,

01:23:56 ◼   ► all you know is where my battery is right now,

01:23:59 ◼   ► but on something that gets one and a half

01:24:01 ◼   ► to 12 hours of battery life,

01:24:04 ◼   ► that percentage is not very useful.

01:24:06 ◼   ► You know, like it's--

01:24:06 ◼   ► - You gotta do the graph in your head.

01:24:07 ◼   ► You have to be like, oh, I looked at it five minutes ago

01:24:09 ◼   ► and it was this number and I looked at it now,

01:24:11 ◼   ► it's this number and so if I make the slope of that line,

01:24:13 ◼   ► like you're doing the graph in your head.

01:24:14 ◼   ► - Right, and so it is very, very helpful,

01:24:18 ◼   ► and this is not just a geek thing.

01:24:20 ◼   ► I don't wanna hear from people saying,

01:24:21 ◼   ► well, regular people don't need the estimate.

01:24:23 ◼   ► No, anybody who uses a laptop on battery power

01:24:26 ◼   ► and wants it to last a whole flight or a whole day

01:24:28 ◼   ► or a whole span often needs to know,

01:24:31 ◼   ► am I going to make it, given what I'm doing?

01:24:33 ◼   ► Is my battery enough?

01:24:35 ◼   ► That is the problem of the modern age,

01:24:38 ◼   ► is my battery going to make it? (laughs)

01:24:41 ◼   ► So this is a real problem for a lot of people

01:24:44 ◼   ► in a lot of situations.

01:24:45 ◼   ► So to have something that can indicate

01:24:48 ◼   ► whether your battery is going to make it

01:24:49 ◼   ► is very useful and while the time estimate

01:24:53 ◼   ► has never been perfect and as discussed

01:24:56 ◼   ► is actually getting less perfect over time,

01:24:59 ◼   ► it is something and they replaced it with nothing.

01:25:03 ◼   ► The percentage meter does not replace the need

01:25:07 ◼   ► for you to know am I probably gonna make it or not.

01:25:09 ◼   ► It doesn't, it is not good enough

01:25:12 ◼   ► and it's different with laptops versus phones

01:25:14 ◼   ► 'cause phones are so easy to carry extra batteries for.

01:25:18 ◼   ► laptops really aren't.

01:25:20 ◼   ► You know, the whole USB-C future

01:25:22 ◼   ► that will eventually be here

01:25:23 ◼   ► where we can have a bunch of external laptop,

01:25:25 ◼   ► or batteries for our laptops,

01:25:27 ◼   ► that's really only true for the 12-inch MacBook,

01:25:30 ◼   ► and only just barely,

01:25:31 ◼   ► because that has very low power draw.

01:25:34 ◼   ► It's, you know, in the realm of big tablet power draw.

01:25:38 ◼   ► So like, you can get a battery pack for those that's small,

01:25:41 ◼   ► and outputs like 15 watts, and that's enough.

01:25:45 ◼   ► You're never gonna get a battery pack

01:25:47 ◼   ► that's gonna be small and light

01:25:49 ◼   ► and can power your 15-inch MacBook Pro

01:25:51 ◼   ► for a meaningful amount of time.

01:25:53 ◼   ► Or that can recharge it quickly

01:25:55 ◼   ► so you can get back to using it.

01:25:56 ◼   ► Like, it's just too much power.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Batteries are big and heavy.

01:26:00 ◼   ► That's not gonna happen in a compelling package

01:26:02 ◼   ► for a very long time, if ever.

01:26:04 ◼   ► So, it is very important for you to know

01:26:07 ◼   ► when you're using your flagship

01:26:10 ◼   ► 15-inch professional-grade laptop

01:26:13 ◼   ► that has this nice big 75-watt-hour battery in it

01:26:17 ◼   ► and that can possibly draw up to 87 watts at full load,

01:26:21 ◼   ► it's very nice to know whether you're going to make it

01:26:23 ◼   ► without a charge or not to what you have to do

01:26:26 ◼   ► at the end of the flight or day or whatever,

01:26:28 ◼   ► because if you mess up that estimate,

01:26:31 ◼   ► you're basically out of luck.

01:26:32 ◼   ► You're basically just not gonna have a computer

01:26:34 ◼   ► for a few hours, because you're not gonna,

01:26:36 ◼   ► you can't just plug in a little lipstick battery

01:26:39 ◼   ► from Amazon that was $4 and charge it up again.

01:26:42 ◼   ► It doesn't work that way.

01:26:43 ◼   ► So to treat it like a big phone is not a good analogy.

01:26:46 ◼   ► It just doesn't work.

01:26:47 ◼   ► - Well, there is one phone feature that you could use though,

01:26:51 ◼   ► like you're thinking more fixes to this thing.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Treating it like a big phone made me think of like,

01:26:54 ◼   ► what do you do on your iPhone?

01:26:55 ◼   ► Like say you're on your iPhone

01:26:56 ◼   ► and you're on a cross country flight

01:26:57 ◼   ► and you wanna be doing stuff on your phone

01:27:00 ◼   ► and there's no time remaining on the iPhone,

01:27:02 ◼   ► but you look at the percentage

01:27:03 ◼   ► and you kinda know how long your phone usually lasts

01:27:05 ◼   ► and you're like, it's not gonna make it.

01:27:06 ◼   ► What would you do?

01:27:08 ◼   ► - Well, I'd plug it in.

01:27:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'd shoot the hostage.

01:27:11 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:27:12 ◼   ► No, yeah, plug in.

01:27:14 ◼   ► I guess that is an option

01:27:15 ◼   ► because like you said, the phone is,

01:27:16 ◼   ► but low power mode, I was thinking of low power mode, right?

01:27:19 ◼   ► So on the phone, the first on the phone itself

01:27:22 ◼   ► will go into low power mode,

01:27:23 ◼   ► but you can turn it on yourself manually at any time.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And you're hoping what that will do is like,

01:27:27 ◼   ► you don't know, it's just switching preferences

01:27:29 ◼   ► or I think it's in, is it in a control center?

01:27:31 ◼   ► No, I forget.

01:27:32 ◼   ► Low power mode will, you know,

01:27:34 ◼   ► you basically say go into like camel mode,

01:27:38 ◼   ► just try to like not do stuff and be more calm.

01:27:42 ◼   ► A low power mode for macOS,

01:27:45 ◼   ► but it's as simple as a switch,

01:27:47 ◼   ► would solve the customer problem better

01:27:50 ◼   ► than the very geeky, silly solution I was suggesting

01:27:54 ◼   ► of like graphs and everything,

01:27:55 ◼   ► which would be totally cool and would convey the information.

01:27:57 ◼   ► But again, the customer problem is like you said,

01:27:59 ◼   ► am I gonna make it?

01:28:01 ◼   ► And so in this respect, treating it like a phone

01:28:03 ◼   ► and having a low power mode switch,

01:28:04 ◼   ► I think is one possible viable solution.

01:28:08 ◼   ► And maybe Apple's got that planned

01:28:09 ◼   ► and maybe ditching this is, you know,

01:28:11 ◼   ► an ill-advised transition where they get rid of this

01:28:15 ◼   ► and replace it with low power mode.

01:28:17 ◼   ► And I'm hoping low power mode doesn't already exist

01:28:19 ◼   ► in Mac OS and I just don't know that

01:28:21 ◼   ► because I haven't reviewed the last two versions.

01:28:22 ◼   ► But you guys can confirm.

01:28:24 ◼   ► - Slacker.

01:28:25 ◼   ► - So, and this leads into another problem too,

01:28:27 ◼   ► which is, you know, the small laptops,

01:28:29 ◼   ► the Escape and the 13X Touch Bar, and the MacBook One,

01:28:34 ◼   ► these all suffer from moderate battery life

01:28:38 ◼   ► because they're so small.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And that's generally part of the trade off

01:28:42 ◼   ► of getting a very, very small laptop,

01:28:44 ◼   ► is usually the battery life isn't very good

01:28:45 ◼   ► 'cause batteries are big and heavy.

01:28:47 ◼   ► So to get something very small,

01:28:48 ◼   ► you gotta take a smaller battery life, that's okay.

01:28:51 ◼   ► On the bigger ones, like the 15 inch,

01:28:54 ◼   ► typically you get pretty good battery life.

01:28:58 ◼   ► And this hasn't always been the case,

01:28:59 ◼   ► but generally speaking, it's supposed to be pretty good.

01:29:02 ◼   ► However, on the 15 inch,

01:29:04 ◼   ► as I mentioned in previous episodes,

01:29:06 ◼   ► there used to be an option to not get a discrete GPU

01:29:08 ◼   ► on the base model.

01:29:09 ◼   ► That option is no longer present on the current line.

01:29:12 ◼   ► So every 15 inch comes with a discrete GPU

01:29:15 ◼   ► that is dynamically switched to, so it has both.

01:29:17 ◼   ► The integrated GPU that uses almost no power

01:29:19 ◼   ► and then the discrete GPU, the big AMD or ATI,

01:29:22 ◼   ► whatever it is, AMD one, that it switches to

01:29:25 ◼   ► whenever it feels that it needs more graphics horsepower.

01:29:28 ◼   ► And this is automatic switching.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And there's an option in settings

01:29:32 ◼   ► to lock on the discrete GPU to not automatically switch.

01:29:37 ◼   ► Almost no one should ever enable that option

01:29:40 ◼   ► because that just locks on the very high power draw,

01:29:43 ◼   ► very hot external GPU.

01:29:45 ◼   ► However, there is no option to only lock on

01:29:49 ◼   ► and to only use the low power integrated GPU.

01:29:53 ◼   ► - That's the first thing the low power mode

01:29:54 ◼   ► would do, obviously.

01:29:55 ◼   ► - Right, so basically, and there's a utility

01:29:59 ◼   ► by Cody Krieger called Graphix Card Status,

01:30:01 ◼   ► GFX Card Status, that shows you which one is in use

01:30:04 ◼   ► at any given time.

01:30:05 ◼   ► And I've been doing my testing,

01:30:09 ◼   ► It can even show notifications when the discrete one

01:30:13 ◼   ► turns on, so you can kind of tell why it turned on,

01:30:16 ◼   ► because it would be based on what you just did.

01:30:18 ◼   ► And it can tell you, of course, which apps

01:30:20 ◼   ► are holding it on as well, because it's held by an app basis.

01:30:24 ◼   ► So you can tell if apps are misbehaving,

01:30:26 ◼   ► or if something's using it that you don't really think

01:30:28 ◼   ► you need to be doing right now, you can turn it off

01:30:30 ◼   ► to say battery life, because the battery usage

01:30:34 ◼   ► when the discrete GPU is active is substantially higher.

01:30:37 ◼   ► and you get substantially noticeably worse battery life

01:30:40 ◼   ► when that high power GPU is on.

01:30:42 ◼   ► However, as I said, there's no option to say,

01:30:46 ◼   ► whatever you do, do not turn that GPU on.

01:30:49 ◼   ► And I would love to know from people in the know

01:30:53 ◼   ► with the engineering, maybe ATP Tipster,

01:30:56 ◼   ► is there a hardware reason, is there some reason

01:30:59 ◼   ► why there can't be an option that says

01:31:02 ◼   ► only use the integrated GPU right now?

01:31:04 ◼   ► because that would make a huge difference in battery power.

01:31:08 ◼   ► Like I've heard various times that like,

01:31:10 ◼   ► sometimes it's required when,

01:31:12 ◼   ► if you have an external display plugged in,

01:31:14 ◼   ► because like the way it's integrated in.

01:31:16 ◼   ► And that would be understandable,

01:31:17 ◼   ► 'cause most people, when they're using an external display,

01:31:20 ◼   ► are plugged into power.

01:31:21 ◼   ► - Or not on a plane, unless they're the iMac

01:31:24 ◼   ► and Panera bread again.

01:31:25 ◼   ► - 'Cause something's powering the display, so obviously--

01:31:27 ◼   ► - Someone should do that though.

01:31:29 ◼   ► Bring an external display with you on your flight,

01:31:32 ◼   ► and just put it on the tray next to you.

01:31:34 ◼   ► - Right, but anyway, I would like to know

01:31:37 ◼   ► why that option isn't there.

01:31:38 ◼   ► And there might be a good reason,

01:31:40 ◼   ► but if there isn't a good reason,

01:31:41 ◼   ► that option needs to be there.

01:31:43 ◼   ► Because we know that the integrated GPU

01:31:48 ◼   ► is good enough for a lot of things.

01:31:51 ◼   ► It is not a great GPU, it is not a high-powered GPU.

01:31:54 ◼   ► We have a different high-powered GPU for those needs.

01:31:56 ◼   ► But if I'm using the laptop and I need to eke out

01:31:58 ◼   ► every bit of power from it,

01:31:59 ◼   ► if I'm on some kind of long plane trip or something,

01:32:01 ◼   ► and as you said, this is low power mode, right?

01:32:04 ◼   ► If you want your laptop to go in low power mode,

01:32:05 ◼   ► you have to make sure that discrete GPU never turns on.

01:32:09 ◼   ► And there's currently literally no way to prevent that.

01:32:12 ◼   ► Like, code decreakers, graphics card status,

01:32:17 ◼   ► on older computers, it would be able to actually

01:32:20 ◼   ► block the switching and lock it on integrated only.

01:32:23 ◼   ► But on the more modern Macs, that doesn't happen anymore.

01:32:25 ◼   ► It can try, but then what happens is

01:32:27 ◼   ► the discrete one turns on anyway.

01:32:29 ◼   ► So it's, however it works, it seemingly isn't able

01:32:33 ◼   ► to override the system behavior now.

01:32:35 ◼   ► I would love to have that option be there.

01:32:37 ◼   ► We also know, in the last generation,

01:32:40 ◼   ► they had, as I mentioned, they had the option

01:32:42 ◼   ► to get a 15-inch without getting a discrete GPU at all.

01:32:46 ◼   ► If that option, I've heard from various people

01:32:48 ◼   ► that the current Skylake CPU generation from Intel,

01:32:52 ◼   ► that the GPUs aren't very good.

01:32:54 ◼   ► And that would be a plausible reason

01:32:56 ◼   ► why Apple wouldn't offer that option,

01:32:57 ◼   ► that basically they're too slow to offer that

01:33:00 ◼   ► as a good computer.

01:33:01 ◼   ► But I would love the option to opt into that sometimes

01:33:04 ◼   ► when I really need the battery power.

01:33:05 ◼   ► So that would be great.

01:33:07 ◼   ► If Apple wants to address its battery issues

01:33:10 ◼   ► with the 15 inch MacBook Pro,

01:33:11 ◼   ► the smaller ones, they have different issues.

01:33:13 ◼   ► They have, mostly 'cause they just have

01:33:15 ◼   ► really small batteries, 'cause that's how they're,