ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► 100 episodes gentlemen, I'm proud of us. Yeah, if I had remembered we should have planned something better, but oh well

00:00:05 ◼   ► We just had an episode

00:00:07 ◼   ► That's but that that's the us thing to do. Yep, that totally is and that's exactly what we did because we're us

00:00:12 ◼   ► But sometimes I like to think that we can be better than us but nope

00:00:18 ◼   ► Actually, that should be the pre show right there feel free sets expectations exactly what you're gonna get

00:00:28 ◼   ► It was a fine show. It was a reasonable show. It was a regular show.

00:00:30 ◼   ► [

00:00:37 ◼   ► 100 oh my god. I forgot about that mm-hmm now. I'm excited

00:00:40 ◼   ► I thought about that like a week ago that we were coming up on a hundred, but I didn't remember it tonight well

00:00:45 ◼   ► so this shows were just a

00:00:47 ◼   ► Bunch of dudes who don't remember important dates, so we all forgot we all forgot our own birthday

00:00:51 ◼   ► No case you remember just me and you John we we forgot yeah

00:00:55 ◼   ► I guess so hypercritical made it to a hut to a hundred asterisk

00:00:59 ◼   ► What did build an analyze go to 108 like lost?

00:01:02 ◼   ► okay, so

00:01:05 ◼   ► If we make it to 101 then we have unequivocally done better than hypercritical is that fair to say?

00:01:13 ◼   ► That's not how that works

00:01:15 ◼   ► Well, I should have said better

00:01:17 ◼   ► That was a poor choice of words of I part thank you for keeping me honest we have perhaps completed more

00:01:25 ◼   ► Can I get that from you John believe more episodes? Yes, that's what it means when one number is bigger than another

00:01:31 ◼   ► I mean we technically have already completed more episodes because there was that one that was just like the promo

00:01:37 ◼   ► That was for the movie thing and there was the one that me and Merlin did when John couldn't do it

00:01:41 ◼   ► Which isn't really a real episode of hypercritical. It's a real episode of it's got a number and it's got a title

00:01:46 ◼   ► It's in the RSS feed. That's as real as real can be

00:01:48 ◼   ► Well, but it didn't have you on it doesn't matter was called hypercritical had a number had title

00:01:54 ◼   ► It had a page had show notes that had everything that an episode has I

00:01:59 ◼   ► I did think that was I mean, I haven't listened back but at the time I was actually very happy with how that turned out

00:02:03 ◼   ► It didn't feel like hypercritical at all, but I was very happy with it. I I wish Merlin like had a tech show

00:02:09 ◼   ► and and maybe maybe we're maybe it's better for everyone including him that that he doesn't that he instead just like

00:02:16 ◼   ► Makes parts of his other shows tech when he has something funny to say about it

00:02:20 ◼   ► but I like he is so good with the tech stuff so incredibly good and and provides a voice for it and and

00:02:27 ◼   ► opinion is for it that we really don't hear from other people and

00:02:30 ◼   ► And I always feel like like we're missing that you know if by good you mean makes me want to yell into the podcast

00:02:37 ◼   ► The best is when they do it on Roderick on the line here the two of them together talking tech just makes me want to

00:02:46 ◼   ► Throttle them both. Oh, I love it

00:02:48 ◼   ► I think it's the best that one they did like three or four episodes ago where like the whole first half was about tech was

00:02:53 ◼   ► amazing

00:02:54 ◼   ► All right, so the show bot is semi broken just like old times just like old times jerk

00:03:01 ◼   ► Do you want to is this a clip show?

00:03:04 ◼   ► Well play our hundredth episode spectacular

00:03:10 ◼   ► Would you like to wager a guest what happened?

00:03:13 ◼   ► Did you not properly non retain the closure to set timeout so the memory leak all over the place?

00:03:21 ◼   ► No, that's a good guess but now and I should say that I have not knowingly changed any of the code with relation to

00:03:29 ◼   ► The show bot specifically are you now gonna rewrite it and go no, but it is slightly tempting

00:03:34 ◼   ► Honestly, you probably should it's a fun exercise if you're right sitting go his site will pay him money for hosting

00:03:42 ◼   ► Go negative instead of being free. That's quite possible

00:03:46 ◼   ► No, that is not the case

00:03:50 ◼   ► So

00:03:51 ◼   ► Here it was I was thinking about making this big grandiose speech about how it really isn't so terrible

00:03:57 ◼   ► Relying on third-party code because it allows you to do things that are kind of cool more specifically

00:04:04 ◼   ► Earlier today. I decided that I was really tired of not being able to use markdown

00:04:10 ◼   ► Footnotes in my in my site because all the cool kids use markdown footnotes. I want to be a cool kid the particular

00:04:19 ◼   ► module or whatever that I was using was called marked and it's it's an NPM module or package

00:04:26 ◼   ► I get think is the word I'm looking for anyway, and so I

00:04:29 ◼   ► Swapped marked for markdown it which is a different package that also parses markdown

00:04:36 ◼   ► And I was all excited with myself because now I had markdown footnotes

00:04:41 ◼   ► the problem then that I ran into then was

00:04:45 ◼   ► Now on my main page, which is the only page that I can think of that has more than one complete post on a single page,

00:04:53 ◼   ► what happens when I have two posts that both have footnotes? Because they're both generated in isolation, and so they'll reuse the same anchors.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And so then I had to go through a humongous song and dance, which ended up being simple at the very end,

00:05:10 ◼   ► I tried like 34 different iterations to get to the simple answer of what to do and how

00:05:17 ◼   ► to make unique each of these Markdown footnote anchors.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So I got that accomplished.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Well, what I didn't think to do was check the Showbot, specifically the page that's

00:05:29 ◼   ► hosted on my regular site that handles the Showbot and see what the ramifications of

00:05:38 ◼   ► this markdown parser switch would be.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And it appears, for those of you who are not listening live, if this actually makes it

00:05:45 ◼   ► in the show, it appears that somehow it is emitting escaped HTML only for the links section

00:05:55 ◼   ► of the Showbot page.

00:05:57 ◼   ► So I'm seeing all the titles just fine, but the links are just the HTML header for the

00:06:04 ◼   ► table and nothing else.

00:06:06 ◼   ► So oops, sorry everyone.

00:06:07 ◼   ► All right, good talk.

00:06:09 ◼   ► All right, that was our 100th episode spectacular.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Hope everyone was happy.

00:06:13 ◼   ► - Yep, I guess the show's over now

00:06:14 ◼   ► 'cause we can't go past 100.

00:06:15 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:06:16 ◼   ► - We are joking, the show is still going on.

00:06:18 ◼   ► - Everybody relax.

00:06:20 ◼   ► - We've sold ads past 100.

00:06:21 ◼   ► So in fact, well past 100, so we have to keep doing it.

00:06:25 ◼   ► - That's actually a really good point.

00:06:27 ◼   ► All right, so let's do some follow up.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And I'd like to start with some very quick

00:06:33 ◼   ► anecdotal thoughts about using USB ports.

00:06:37 ◼   ► So we talked last episode about why is that so funny?

00:06:42 ◼   ► - And then we're gonna watch paint dry.

00:06:43 ◼   ► - Oh, come on, give me a chance here.

00:06:45 ◼   ► So last episode, we talked about how

00:06:49 ◼   ► on the potential iPad Pro/Macbook Air,

00:06:54 ◼   ► that there's theoretically only going to be one USB port,

00:06:58 ◼   ► it's USB type C port, and whether or not that's a big deal.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And particularly John and I were going back and forth as to whether or not that's a big deal.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And so I thought to myself, well, let me ask my family because they're normal computer users and see, okay, does anyone actually use USB ports?

00:07:13 ◼   ► Because one of the things I was, I was thinking during the show and hopefully explained during the show was, Hey, we have a lot of technologies now like airdrop, for example, that may, uh, obviate.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I think that's what I'm looking for.

00:07:25 ◼   ► That may obviate the use of USB keys.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of other examples, Bluetooth for mice and keyboards.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So I asked my family, what do you use your USB ports for?

00:07:36 ◼   ► And Aaron and my mom both said,

00:07:38 ◼   ► well, I charge my Fitbit that way.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Well, you know, that's something,

00:07:42 ◼   ► you could find other means for doing that,

00:07:44 ◼   ► but that's a reasonable answer.

00:07:45 ◼   ► And Aaron also has an iPod shuffle.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And so she said, well, I also, you know,

00:07:49 ◼   ► load things onto my iPod shuffle that way.

00:07:51 ◼   ► And obviously that's not a big deal for a phone,

00:07:53 ◼   ► but for an iPod shuffle, you're really out of luck otherwise.

00:07:56 ◼   ► My immediate younger brother, I have two younger brothers,

00:07:58 ◼   ► my immediate younger brother who is a real adult

00:08:01 ◼   ► and works in the video game industry actually, said that he typically uses his USB ports

00:08:08 ◼   ► for keyboard, mouse, iPhone and USB key, oftentimes but not always simultaneously.

00:08:13 ◼   ► And my youngest brother who is studying out in California, he's doing a master's, he said

00:08:20 ◼   ► and I'm quoting, "I don't have enough and I have three."

00:08:24 ◼   ► So he was saying that he uses his for a mouse of his phone and oftentimes more than one

00:08:31 ◼   ► USB key and additionally at least one external hard drive. So it appears that my theory that

00:08:39 ◼   ► really you don't need USB ports, maybe not so solid after all.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Well, I think, you know, I think you're seeing, I bet there's like a big bifurcation of the

00:08:48 ◼   ► market here where if I had to guess, I would guess that what you have here is a pretty

00:08:54 ◼   ► good representative sample actually, just by luck. I mean, I don't think your family

00:08:58 ◼   ► is like the most average family ever made.

00:09:00 ◼   ► But you know, I think like if I had to guess how it was,

00:09:04 ◼   ► I would guess this is how it is,

00:09:05 ◼   ► which is that most people use very few of them,

00:09:09 ◼   ► and the primary reason they use them

00:09:10 ◼   ► is to charge things that charge over USB.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Phones, Fitbits, some cameras, stuff like that.

00:09:16 ◼   ► Like charging things over USB I think is a big thing,

00:09:20 ◼   ► especially in recent years when so many devices

00:09:22 ◼   ► have become chargeable over USB.

00:09:25 ◼   ► And for that, you don't necessarily need

00:09:29 ◼   ► to be using a port on your computer for that,

00:09:31 ◼   ► although it is convenient,

00:09:32 ◼   ► because your computer is right there on your desk,

00:09:34 ◼   ► and it has these ports,

00:09:35 ◼   ► and you don't have to take up more outlets,

00:09:37 ◼   ► and you don't have to bring so many adapters on trips.

00:09:40 ◼   ► So it is definitely convenient,

00:09:41 ◼   ► although it isn't strictly necessary.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And then you have the people like Brady, your brother,

00:09:46 ◼   ► where three ports is not enough,

00:09:49 ◼   ► because he has lots of devices.

00:09:50 ◼   ► This will apply to a lot of people

00:09:51 ◼   ► who have a bunch of peripherals,

00:09:53 ◼   ► who have a bunch of disks,

00:09:54 ◼   ► who have a big desk setup with an external keyboard,

00:09:58 ◼   ► mouse, disk maybe, other stuff.

00:10:00 ◼   ► If you have a big setup where you're parking

00:10:02 ◼   ► a laptop all the time, you're gonna need more than that,

00:10:04 ◼   ► in which case, no number of ports on a laptop

00:10:07 ◼   ► is going to be enough and you're gonna be using a hub.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Now, things that are attached via adapters or hubs

00:10:13 ◼   ► are inherently less reliable than built-in ports

00:10:16 ◼   ► most of the time in my experience.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And as we move towards computers that have fewer

00:10:22 ◼   ► and fewer internal devices and ports,

00:10:25 ◼   ► I think this is gonna keep being a problem.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Fortunately, the need for many of these things

00:10:29 ◼   ► is also going away as this transition happens,

00:10:31 ◼   ► but you might not need an ethernet port anymore

00:10:35 ◼   ► because you just use wireless,

00:10:36 ◼   ► and especially on a laptop

00:10:37 ◼   ► where that's probably very frequently the case.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Whereas on a desktop, you need some of these things.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Now, what I don't want, what I'm not looking forward to

00:10:47 ◼   ► is a world in which you have this one port on the computer

00:10:51 ◼   ► and then you just have to plug in some random hub

00:10:54 ◼   ► from Amazon from God knows what manufacturer

00:10:56 ◼   ► with God knows who's chip inside of it

00:10:58 ◼   ► that has some weird cheapo power supply

00:11:02 ◼   ► that's gonna flake out and get all weird

00:11:04 ◼   ► and start causing weird hard to diagnose errors

00:11:07 ◼   ► for the things that are plugged into it

00:11:08 ◼   ► or intermittent failures for things that are plugged into it.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Like I don't wanna get to the point

00:11:13 ◼   ► where I'm dependent on some cheap USB hub from Amazon

00:11:17 ◼   ► and trying to find like the best one

00:11:18 ◼   ► that actually will work because like I have

00:11:21 ◼   ► that now and like there's a certain subset of devices that I will only plug

00:11:24 ◼   ► in directly to the computer ports because the hubs just are never that

00:11:28 ◼   ► reliable and please don't email me as saying I bought this hub but it's

00:11:31 ◼   ► perfect if you look at every hub I looked at all of them and and all of

00:11:35 ◼   ► them have mostly reviews that say this is perfect and a bunch of you saying

00:11:39 ◼   ► this flaked out on me and it's like it seems like they're all basically the

00:11:42 ◼   ► same I bet the number of actual manufacturers of these things is

00:11:46 ◼   ► probably pretty small the number of chipsets they use is probably even

00:11:49 ◼   ► smaller. So like it's just the kind of thing like being dependent on like the

00:11:54 ◼   ► random PC peripheral hardware market for your stuff to work properly is not a

00:11:59 ◼   ► good place to be. Yeah. So if Apple was gonna do this thing where it's like oh

00:12:04 ◼   ► one port and if you need more you can always have a hub or break I think like

00:12:07 ◼   ► at the very least you would think that Apple would have to sign itself up to

00:12:11 ◼   ► make a high quality one of these that works because I have problems with hubs

00:12:16 ◼   ► all the time too. And in addition to like the things you just mentioned, some things

00:12:22 ◼   ► just plain not working, some things being flaky. The worst of course is if you have

00:12:26 ◼   ► a drive attached to a hub, because the last thing you want to be flaky is your connection

00:12:30 ◼   ► to a drive, especially if it's your backup drive and who knows what it's doing over there.

00:12:34 ◼   ► But then also like sleep/wake issues where it won't go to sleep with the hub attached

00:12:40 ◼   ► or won't wake with the hub attached or the hub will wake it up because something will

00:12:44 ◼   ► tickle it or it'll fire off a little thing and it'll make the computer think you've plugged

00:12:47 ◼   ► in a USB device when you haven't actually. So many problems. And the only way Apple can

00:12:52 ◼   ► sort of defend against them is that we sell, I mean, I can't believe I'm saying this because

00:12:57 ◼   ► like the Thunderbolt display had all the problems I had or associated with the ports that were

00:13:01 ◼   ► in it. It was effectively a big giant Apple made hub where you plug a Thunderbolt cable

00:13:05 ◼   ► into your computer and the power thing because it's actually powering your computer too.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And out of it you get Ethernet, USB, Firewire, like all these ports. And that was the problematic

00:13:13 ◼   ► part of the display, not the display part, but yeah, if that's going to be their solution,

00:13:19 ◼   ► they should make one and they should test that one and make sure it works and make sure

00:13:22 ◼   ► computers sleep and wake with it. And when I say that, I'm thinking they can't even make

00:13:25 ◼   ► sure their computers sleep and wake with nothing attached to them reliably. So sleep wake problems

00:13:30 ◼   ► are evergreen when it comes to all laptops and Apple laptops, I think are the same as

00:13:36 ◼   ► any other in that area. So yeah, but aside from all the reliability concerns, I still

00:13:42 ◼   ► come back to the convenience angle, which is like, why, you know, why the whole point

00:13:48 ◼   ► of the thing is supposed to be convenience and in the absence of some other reason, why

00:13:52 ◼   ► not put another one on if it can fit?

00:13:55 ◼   ► All right. So let's talk about re-clarification of context for the 12 inch air, Jon.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Yeah, the discussion we had, there's a lot of feedback about it, a lot of tweets, and

00:14:05 ◼   ► these aren't all tweets that were happening while people live tweeting while they listened

00:14:08 ◼   ► the show. To clarify again, how we were discussing the 12-inch air, we weren't making any judgment

00:14:15 ◼   ► about the validity of the rumors. We didn't spend any time, and I don't think we should

00:14:19 ◼   ► spend any time, discussing like, how likely is it that these rumors are true, that Apple

00:14:24 ◼   ► make this device, or whatever. We were just considering the rumored device as if it was

00:14:28 ◼   ► real, and saying, if Apple made this, would it be something that we would want? The only

00:14:33 ◼   ► thing we did about validity, and I think it's the main thing you should do about any rumors,

00:14:37 ◼   ► is like, is it technically possible?

00:14:40 ◼   ► And we covered that straight away in the last show.

00:14:43 ◼   ► And that's important because it's the easiest way

00:14:46 ◼   ► you can deal with rumors.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Like obviously there's, you don't know everything,

00:14:49 ◼   ► but if someone says that Apple is going to come out

00:14:52 ◼   ► with like a Mac Pro the size of a penny,

00:14:55 ◼   ► that'll be 10 times faster than the current model,

00:14:58 ◼   ► and it's coming out this year, you can dismiss it

00:15:00 ◼   ► because you know it's not technically feasible.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Like, and there's a range there.

00:15:03 ◼   ► If a rumor has a date or a technology or both,

00:15:06 ◼   ► You can, you know, like Apple is going to drive all of its ports over the headphone jack.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Well, we know that's not possible.

00:15:12 ◼   ► And, you know, barring some crazy thing that we've never heard of.

00:15:16 ◼   ► And if there's a crazy thing we've never heard of, it's probably bad

00:15:19 ◼   ► because it would be proprietary and Apple only and whatever.

00:15:21 ◼   ► But yeah, everything else about it, we weren't making guesses about it.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And then I was getting a couple of bits of angry feedback from people, mostly tweets.

00:15:30 ◼   ► And when I listened back to the show, I realized what they were all yelling at me about.

00:15:33 ◼   ► I wasn't responding to their tweets because I didn't understand what they were angry about or like worked up about and it was it was

00:15:39 ◼   ► the part of the episode where I think Margot or

00:15:43 ◼   ► Casey maybe was like what if the rumors are for like, you know an iPad Pro and 12-inch Mac

00:15:51 ◼   ► We get and I said these are not two separate devices

00:15:53 ◼   ► That was a reference to the iPhone keynote, but I said it like emphatically like Steve Jobs says it in the keynote. These are not

00:16:00 ◼   ► three separate devices

00:16:03 ◼   ► This is one device.

00:16:05 ◼   ► (audience cheering)

00:16:07 ◼   ► - For people who haven't memorized every second

00:16:09 ◼   ► of that keynote, it's a thing that Steve Jobs said

00:16:12 ◼   ► when the iPhone was introduced.

00:16:14 ◼   ► And watch the video and it will make more sense.

00:16:17 ◼   ► But it sounded like, if you just listen back to it,

00:16:18 ◼   ► it sounded like I was super emphatic

00:16:20 ◼   ► that these are not just, I don't know if they're just,

00:16:22 ◼   ► it was just a stupid rumor.

00:16:22 ◼   ► I was making a joke.

00:16:24 ◼   ► - Even we got that and we don't get anything.

00:16:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, if I'm gonna make a reference

00:16:27 ◼   ► that you're gonna get,

00:16:28 ◼   ► it's gonna be on the iPhone keynote, right?

00:16:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:31 ◼   ► It's not gonna, yeah, pop culture.

00:16:33 ◼   ► So we didn't even talk about iPad,

00:16:35 ◼   ► we've talked about iPad Pro in the past,

00:16:36 ◼   ► but because that story had renderings of a,

00:16:40 ◼   ► mock-ups of this rumored product,

00:16:41 ◼   ► and that's what we talked about.

00:16:42 ◼   ► Those renderings, those mock-ups, those rumors.

00:16:44 ◼   ► - Right, and the only reason I said that I was suspicious

00:16:46 ◼   ► whether this was two separate devices

00:16:47 ◼   ► is because the rumors over the last few months

00:16:51 ◼   ► have been all pointing towards two 12-inch Retina

00:16:55 ◼   ► ultra-portable devices from Apple

00:16:57 ◼   ► coming at about the same time.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, the same size display,

00:17:02 ◼   ► the same, like, all this stuff, like all these rumors,

00:17:05 ◼   ► all this smoke around this, you know,

00:17:07 ◼   ► there's probably fire behind it.

00:17:08 ◼   ► It's like, is this really gonna be two different devices

00:17:11 ◼   ► that are like the exact same size

00:17:13 ◼   ► that are radically different from each other?

00:17:14 ◼   ► Like, I was skeptical of that.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I remain a little skeptical of that,

00:17:19 ◼   ► except that I've heard from so many people

00:17:21 ◼   ► who claim to have knowledge of this,

00:17:24 ◼   ► and it's all, you know, secondhand here,

00:17:25 ◼   ► say all this stuff, but so many people

00:17:26 ◼   ► who claim to have heard authoritatively

00:17:29 ◼   ► that no, this is really two separate devices.

00:17:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, we just gotta wait for the 9to5Mac store

00:17:33 ◼   ► with mockups of the iPad Pro,

00:17:35 ◼   ► and then we could talk about that too.

00:17:36 ◼   ► 'Cause like, I mean, there are rumors everywhere.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And like the reason we discussed the 9to5Mac one

00:17:41 ◼   ► is because it was an interesting rumor at least.

00:17:44 ◼   ► And 9to5Mac's track record is reasonable enough

00:17:48 ◼   ► that we're not just like picking some random thing

00:17:50 ◼   ► from some website and saying,

00:17:51 ◼   ► "Somebody said this, let's talk about it."

00:17:52 ◼   ► Because, you know, and again,

00:17:54 ◼   ► because it was technically feasible

00:17:55 ◼   ► because it's a great rumor that takes advantage

00:17:58 ◼   ► of known technologies that we have.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Like the USB 3, the connector and what the bus can carry

00:18:03 ◼   ► makes new hardware designs possible.

00:18:05 ◼   ► So it's inevitable that Apple will use that connector

00:18:08 ◼   ► in interesting ways on its future Macs

00:18:10 ◼   ► and this rumor is one possible way that they could do it.

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00:22:05 ◼   ► - Okay, so John, would you like to tell us

00:22:07 ◼   ► a little bit about Hypercritical back in the day?

00:22:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's another person reminding me

00:22:12 ◼   ► of shows I did that I've forgotten.

00:22:13 ◼   ► This is Jason Becker.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Wait, is Hypercritical follow-up carrying you over to this show?

00:22:17 ◼   ► Yeah, more or less, because people keep reminding me that, like, "Hey, you talked about something

00:22:22 ◼   ► on Hypercritical that's relevant to what you're talking about on ATP," and hypercritical I

00:22:26 ◼   ► was talking about is probably one of my blog posts, so Hypercritical will go about things

00:22:29 ◼   ► getting thinner.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I think at the time it was about the iMac, because people were upset that the iMac was

00:22:33 ◼   ► super thin or whatever.

00:22:35 ◼   ► But it's relevant to the rumored 12-inch error, because the whole deal with the 12-inch error

00:22:39 ◼   ► is, like, they just keep making it thinner, and Marco was talking about, like, "Why do

00:22:42 ◼   ► you got to taper it?"

00:22:43 ◼   ► We've talked about this before, like if you don't taper it, you can fit way more battery.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And what does the taper give you?

00:22:48 ◼   ► That's another example of like, you know, give me the reason for this.

00:22:53 ◼   ► The reason I would imagine for the taper is perception of thinness and possibly weight.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Those are the two, like because the taper does make it feel like, wow, look at this

00:23:03 ◼   ► razor edge type thing.

00:23:05 ◼   ► It feels thinner than every uniform and making it actually be thinner reduces the weight.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Maybe there's room for a non tapered version to get more battery

00:23:14 ◼   ► But we don't know what the battery life is of this fictional project anyway, so we have to wait to see what it's like

00:23:17 ◼   ► But it always comes back to that question that we talked about with the phones

00:23:21 ◼   ► And I've always said that I even though it's frustrating that they don't expand the line to give a model that is a little bit thicker

00:23:28 ◼   ► And a little bit heavier in exchange for battery life

00:23:30 ◼   ► But just rely entirely on third-party you know battery cases and stuff or you know third-party

00:23:34 ◼   ► Recharge extra battery packs and other stuff they sell for laptops that you you know plug into it

00:23:39 ◼   ► On a long plane flight or whatever

00:23:41 ◼   ► Why do they keep making a thinner? Why and and why do I support that idea?

00:23:45 ◼   ► And one of the reasons that I supported it is I think I'll find I have to find this this post on my website

00:23:50 ◼   ► I didn't put in the show. It's

00:23:52 ◼   ► That you don't if you just keep making them the same thickness and keep making the battery bigger and just keep finding things to do

00:23:57 ◼   ► With the space available to you like oh we can use an even hotter GPU and now that the power of everything has gone down

00:24:03 ◼   ► We can you know, we have so much extra power budget

00:24:05 ◼   ► we can make the battery life even longer.

00:24:07 ◼   ► And you could do a lot if you stayed within a similar size.

00:24:10 ◼   ► But if you do that, you're never going to learn

00:24:12 ◼   ► how to make things really thin.

00:24:13 ◼   ► And it's not like five years from now,

00:24:17 ◼   ► someone's gonna be ready with some new technology,

00:24:20 ◼   ► like, wow, with that technology,

00:24:22 ◼   ► we can make a laptop even thinner.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And you won't have the expertise

00:24:27 ◼   ► to jump from your half-inch thick laptop

00:24:30 ◼   ► to the one that's the thickness of a credit card or whatever.

00:24:32 ◼   ► It works better with that analogy

00:24:33 ◼   ► when you talk about phones.

00:24:34 ◼   ► but I think that was the analogy I was using is like,

00:24:37 ◼   ► phones keep getting thinner and it's like stupid,

00:24:39 ◼   ► soon they're gonna be able to bend them,

00:24:41 ◼   ► like we've got the bending issues

00:24:43 ◼   ► with the iPhone 6 and everything

00:24:44 ◼   ► and they just, they start becoming thin enough,

00:24:46 ◼   ► you're like, geez, we're going in the wrong direction here,

00:24:48 ◼   ► we just need to stop.

00:24:50 ◼   ► You don't need to stop,

00:24:51 ◼   ► actually you need to just keep going and go through

00:24:53 ◼   ► and until your phone ends up the thickness

00:24:55 ◼   ► and weight of a credit card

00:24:57 ◼   ► and then when you drop it on the ground, who cares?

00:24:59 ◼   ► 'Cause if you drop a credit card on the ground,

00:25:00 ◼   ► nothing happens to it, right?

00:25:01 ◼   ► It's flexible, it's thin, it's lighter,

00:25:03 ◼   ► it's more durable, but you're not gonna get to your phone

00:25:07 ◼   ► that is so light and thin and durable

00:25:08 ◼   ► that you don't even care about it.

00:25:09 ◼   ► You're never gonna get there

00:25:10 ◼   ► if you keep making your phone the thickness

00:25:12 ◼   ► of the original iPhone and you just keep adding more CPU

00:25:14 ◼   ► and RAM and battery to that thickness.

00:25:16 ◼   ► So this I think is part of the march of progress.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And as it relates to the MacBook Air, rumored 12 inch,

00:25:22 ◼   ► or even just any of the MacBook Airs that are out now,

00:25:25 ◼   ► why do they keep making that thinner?

00:25:27 ◼   ► What are they aiming for now?

00:25:29 ◼   ► I think part of it is weight,

00:25:31 ◼   ► because as Marco found out with the iPad Air,

00:25:33 ◼   ► Even though weight is like, oh, who cares,

00:25:35 ◼   ► a couple grams here, a couple grams there.

00:25:37 ◼   ► For things that you either hold all the time,

00:25:39 ◼   ► like the iOS devices, or carry around a lot,

00:25:41 ◼   ► from room to room, or put in your backpack,

00:25:44 ◼   ► there are little thresholds of weight.

00:25:47 ◼   ► I think, speaking of Merlin talking about tech,

00:25:48 ◼   ► Merlin has discussed this on his podcast a few times,

00:25:52 ◼   ► how once you pass a certain threshold of weight,

00:25:54 ◼   ► he doesn't notice when that Apple hardware

00:25:56 ◼   ► is in his backpack.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Like he says he notices more

00:25:58 ◼   ► if he brings his Leatherman with him,

00:26:00 ◼   ► like a metal tool.

00:26:02 ◼   ► He notices when that's in his backpack,

00:26:03 ◼   ► but he can't even tell, is my iPad mini in there

00:26:05 ◼   ► or is it not?

00:26:06 ◼   ► And the MacBook Air could be getting to that thing

00:26:08 ◼   ► where it's not a factor of like,

00:26:10 ◼   ► whoever used to be like,

00:26:11 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm gonna have a laptop in my backpack.

00:26:12 ◼   ► I don't wanna lug that big thing around."

00:26:14 ◼   ► MacBook Air has already kind of crossed the threshold

00:26:17 ◼   ► of like, it's not a big thing to lug around,

00:26:18 ◼   ► but you kinda know when it's in there.

00:26:20 ◼   ► And if they keep going along this path

00:26:21 ◼   ► and making it thinner and keeping with the taper,

00:26:23 ◼   ► making it lighter, they are,

00:26:25 ◼   ► they will eventually run up into a durability issue

00:26:27 ◼   ► because you can't make aluminum that thin

00:26:29 ◼   ► because it doesn't spring back like say,

00:26:30 ◼   ► carbon fiber would.

00:26:31 ◼   ► and then they got the screen problem there,

00:26:33 ◼   ► especially if you use glass anywhere in it for flexibility.

00:26:35 ◼   ► But they're approaching a place

00:26:37 ◼   ► where they'll have to do some materials redesign.

00:26:39 ◼   ► So within the current materials they're using,

00:26:41 ◼   ► they're just trying to keep it going thinner

00:26:43 ◼   ► to get the expertise of like, how thin can we make this?

00:26:45 ◼   ► How much can we remove?

00:26:46 ◼   ► What is actually essential?

00:26:47 ◼   ► Now you gotta get Johnny Iovine

00:26:48 ◼   ► in his white world talking about this stuff.

00:26:49 ◼   ► What is essential for a laptop?

00:26:52 ◼   ► Do you need a keyboard and a screen?

00:26:54 ◼   ► How about just a keyboard?

00:26:55 ◼   ► No screen.

00:26:56 ◼   ► The MacBook shuffle.

00:26:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:59 ◼   ► That's what I'm still thinking about these things,

00:27:01 ◼   ► which is why I'm not digging them so much for why you gotta make it something.

00:27:04 ◼   ► The port thing, I complain to them because if you think you need any ports, why would

00:27:11 ◼   ► you have one of them and not two?

00:27:12 ◼   ► So there's another follow up item about that.

00:27:15 ◼   ► I just wanted to follow that up because hey, I talked about an Africa critical and I actually

00:27:20 ◼   ► blogged about it and it is relevant to the rumors of this fictional product.

00:27:24 ◼   ► There was a really good post on Six Colors, Jason Snell's new website, with research help

00:27:29 ◼   ► from our friend Steven Hackett about Apple solving for X with battery life.

00:27:37 ◼   ► The gist of the post is, if you look, Apple has clearly decided what the right level of

00:27:43 ◼   ► battery life is for iPhones and iPads, and they've kept it fairly consistent, or at least

00:27:49 ◼   ► within a very small range.

00:27:51 ◼   ► iPads are exactly the same, and iPhones vary a little bit more, but it's clear that Apple

00:27:58 ◼   ► has decided through whatever, through research or experimentation or just thinking whatever

00:28:03 ◼   ► they think is best, they've decided clearly like, we don't need more battery life than

00:28:08 ◼   ► this in this device type.

00:28:10 ◼   ► And so any savings we get from advancements in technology or manufacturing, we can apply

00:28:15 ◼   ► to other areas like making it thinner and lighter.

00:28:19 ◼   ► And I think this, it's so obvious when you look at this that, okay, of course that's

00:28:24 ◼   ► what they're doing, that's what they have been doing.

00:28:27 ◼   ► And so looking at this I think it's pretty obvious that the "Macbook stealth" or

00:28:32 ◼   ► whatever this thing ends up being called, that's probably not its name, but whatever

00:28:36 ◼   ► this thing ends up being called if it's real, I think it's pretty obvious that it's

00:28:40 ◼   ► not going to be a quantum leap forward in battery life.

00:28:42 ◼   ► It is most likely going to, they're going to apply those savings towards the innocent

00:28:46 ◼   ► weight.

00:28:47 ◼   ► And I agree, John, with what you said about we do need to make progress in those areas

00:28:50 ◼   ► over time.

00:28:52 ◼   ► I do think though, like, I don't know anybody who has an iPhone who is extremely satisfied

00:28:58 ◼   ► with his battery life most of the time.

00:29:00 ◼   ► You do now.

00:29:02 ◼   ► I have an iPhone.

00:29:03 ◼   ► I am extremely satisfied with his battery life.

00:29:05 ◼   ► You've had an iPhone for like a day.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I know, but this is how I...

00:29:09 ◼   ► Part of the reason I didn't have an iPhone is because I don't really, you know, need

00:29:13 ◼   ► one, but now that I have one, I am completely satisfied with his battery life.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Like, I can forget to charge it for a day and I'm fine.

00:29:20 ◼   ► I go two days with it.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Who you know who uses an iPhone who goes two days with it?

00:29:25 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that it's not appropriate,

00:29:27 ◼   ► as I said before, for Apple to have a model of phone

00:29:30 ◼   ► that does a different trade-off for people,

00:29:32 ◼   ► for people who do use it heavily,

00:29:33 ◼   ► who do barely get through the day on a charge,

00:29:36 ◼   ► there should be a product for them,

00:29:37 ◼   ► but the current battery life is fine.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And I think in their little graphs,

00:29:40 ◼   ► they showed like an uptick for the,

00:29:42 ◼   ► I can think of it as the 6 Plus that had the big uptick,

00:29:44 ◼   ► but I think--

00:29:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, the 6 Plus is the only big jump on it.

00:29:47 ◼   ► - But the 6 is up a little bit too.

00:29:48 ◼   ► I mean we've talked over the past year many many times about the same exact thing of like

00:29:54 ◼   ► Of how of how they there hold the hold the battery life

00:29:59 ◼   ► Constant and then make it thinner if you can and I

00:30:03 ◼   ► Margot you were saying that like they've decided decided that's the best for that. I don't think they've decided anything like that

00:30:10 ◼   ► I think that's just that's the battery life they have and when they made a follow-up device there was a mandate no regression on battery life

00:30:16 ◼   ► Make it thinner if you can

00:30:18 ◼   ► and that mandate wavered on the iPad 3.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Again, we've discussed this many times.

00:30:23 ◼   ► And so that has been their mandate,

00:30:25 ◼   ► but I wouldn't wager too much on them deciding,

00:30:30 ◼   ► the same way that they decided like,

00:30:31 ◼   ► "Oh, this size for the iPhone is exactly the right size."

00:30:33 ◼   ► No, that's just the size they made it.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Seemed like a good size at the time.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Later they tried taller.

00:30:37 ◼   ► That was all right too, and then they made it bigger.

00:30:39 ◼   ► That's all right too.

00:30:41 ◼   ► It's up for grabs, right?

00:30:42 ◼   ► And I think the battery life on all the products

00:30:45 ◼   ► being held more or less constant

00:30:46 ◼   ► is simply a matter of the follow-up product

00:30:48 ◼   ► can't be worse than the one that came before.

00:30:50 ◼   ► But if you try to make it better,

00:30:52 ◼   ► all the areas that you can make it better,

00:30:54 ◼   ► battery life seems like the last on the list.

00:30:57 ◼   ► Like you're not gonna regress,

00:30:58 ◼   ► you gotta make it at least the same

00:30:59 ◼   ► 'cause the new phone's gotta be better

00:31:00 ◼   ► than the one that replaces it.

00:31:01 ◼   ► But we can make it better in CPU, in GPU, in screen,

00:31:05 ◼   ► in the interface, in cheapness in the manufacturer,

00:31:10 ◼   ► durability, like all these different categories.

00:31:11 ◼   ► And battery life is like, just don't regress.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Like it seems to be pretty darn low on the list

00:31:15 ◼   ► of things they're prioritizing.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And I think those are reasonable priorities,

00:31:18 ◼   ► again, for the reason I talked about with the thinness,

00:31:20 ◼   ► and also because faster CPUs and GPUs,

00:31:23 ◼   ► cell phones more than battery life.

00:31:26 ◼   ► You just need to make one model

00:31:27 ◼   ► that has decent battery, yeah,

00:31:28 ◼   ► but I guess maybe the 6 Plus is that model.

00:31:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's pretty clear

00:31:31 ◼   ► that that's their answer.

00:31:32 ◼   ► No, but I think similar to your arguing about thinness,

00:31:35 ◼   ► where we have to make progress gradually over time

00:31:39 ◼   ► to eventually have a major step forward in total,

00:31:44 ◼   ► you can apply the same thing to battery life,

00:31:45 ◼   ► And they have made incremental progress over time,

00:31:47 ◼   ► but it really has been fairly incremental.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And part of this is just because battery technology

00:31:53 ◼   ► changes so incredibly slowly.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And we're not gonna have--

00:31:56 ◼   ► - Compared to the silicon technology, basically.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Not that it changes that, I mean, it changes,

00:32:00 ◼   ► the speed is fine, it's just it compared

00:32:01 ◼   ► to almost every other component.

00:32:03 ◼   ► What you can do with those phones,

00:32:06 ◼   ► the screens are just twice as good,

00:32:08 ◼   ► twice, three times the resolution

00:32:09 ◼   ► in the lifetime of the phone.

00:32:10 ◼   ► The batteries have not gotten three times as good

00:32:12 ◼   ► in the lifetime of the phone.

00:32:13 ◼   ► is just the different rates of technology change.

00:32:15 ◼   ► - Right, and if you look at the laptops,

00:32:18 ◼   ► their battery lives have gone up substantially

00:32:21 ◼   ► over the last few years, where it wasn't that long ago

00:32:23 ◼   ► that a five hour battery life was top of the line

00:32:27 ◼   ► under the most ideal conditions only.

00:32:29 ◼   ► And now we're up to seven, eight, fairly regularly.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Although I've never gotten that,

00:32:34 ◼   ► but that could just be because I buy

00:32:35 ◼   ► the big four core models, I don't know.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Anyway, with battery life, where things get interesting,

00:32:41 ◼   ► where you get really interesting shifts

00:32:45 ◼   ► in what this enables you to do

00:32:47 ◼   ► is when you have a really big change in battery life.

00:32:49 ◼   ► When all of a sudden, if your laptop,

00:32:53 ◼   ► if you don't need to be plugging it in all day,

00:32:55 ◼   ► if you can actually work on battery all day

00:32:58 ◼   ► and not worry, not have range anxiety,

00:33:01 ◼   ► not worry about bottoming out and having to go plug in,

00:33:04 ◼   ► if you can treat it, if your laptop genuinely has 24 hour

00:33:08 ◼   ► in use with WiFi battery life,

00:33:11 ◼   ► then that enables uses, that enables freedoms

00:33:14 ◼   ► that you might not have before

00:33:16 ◼   ► or that you couldn't really count on reliably before.

00:33:19 ◼   ► That's where things get interesting

00:33:20 ◼   ► is when you can make jumps like that.

00:33:22 ◼   ► And over time, eventually maybe we'll get there,

00:33:24 ◼   ► I hope, maybe.

00:33:26 ◼   ► But if you look at the way Apple does these jumps,

00:33:28 ◼   ► it doesn't look like getting there is a very high priority.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Eventually they might get there accidentally,

00:33:37 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like they're pushing for that.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And I think that's a lost opportunity.

00:33:42 ◼   ► - I think the rumored 12-inch MacBook is an indication

00:33:46 ◼   ► of how they might make the next step on that.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Because as we said, when they have this extra capacity,

00:33:54 ◼   ► the batteries aren't getting better that much faster.

00:33:56 ◼   ► But what is happening is that every other component

00:33:58 ◼   ► that's in the laptop gets lower power,

00:33:59 ◼   ► and that's how we get the current good MacBook Airs

00:34:02 ◼   ► that have better battery life than the old ones did.

00:34:05 ◼   ► But for this rumored thing, this could be a way

00:34:08 ◼   ► they make sort of a larger step forward.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Like, well, the batteries aren't really getting

00:34:12 ◼   ► that much better, but, you know,

00:34:15 ◼   ► some in the back of some designers mind,

00:34:17 ◼   ► hardware designer or Johnny Iver both,

00:34:18 ◼   ► they have the idea of, well, our components keep getting,

00:34:21 ◼   ► but you know, our screens,

00:34:22 ◼   ► even though we went to the retina 5K iMac screen,

00:34:24 ◼   ► it's actually lower power than the previous screen.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Eventually they're gonna get decent OLEDs in these things

00:34:29 ◼   ► and you'll have an even bigger drop,

00:34:30 ◼   ► especially if they make the entire interface black.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Lots of the components are going down in power usage,

00:34:37 ◼   ► but somebody has in the back of their mind,

00:34:39 ◼   ► can I just rip everything out of this freaking notebook

00:34:41 ◼   ► and just have like a tiny little two centimeter square

00:34:46 ◼   ► that's the whole laptop

00:34:47 ◼   ► and then just fill the rest of it with battery?

00:34:49 ◼   ► Like what can I pull out of this laptop?

00:34:51 ◼   ► Well, you gotta have a keyboard

00:34:52 ◼   ► and you gotta have a screen.

00:34:53 ◼   ► All right, what else can I remove?

00:34:54 ◼   ► Can I remove everything except, can I remove all the ports?

00:34:56 ◼   ► No, you can't remove all the ports.

00:34:58 ◼   ► We need some place for power to go in.

00:34:59 ◼   ► I mean, something like,

00:35:00 ◼   ► how about I remove every single interface

00:35:02 ◼   ► except for one low power USB three thing.

00:35:05 ◼   ► I can get rid of, you know,

00:35:07 ◼   ► If they could have rid of, I think they got rid of audio in.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I know they have like the hybrid cable

00:35:11 ◼   ► that like the headphone jack is the input thing,

00:35:13 ◼   ► but I'm still like--

00:35:14 ◼   ► - Well, those don't offer audio in anymore.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Sorry, I should clarify on most hardware.

00:35:20 ◼   ► The iMac does have audio in,

00:35:21 ◼   ► the Mac mini has audio in, but the laptops,

00:35:23 ◼   ► as far as I know, the laptops don't have audio in anymore.

00:35:26 ◼   ► - I mean, that's not really probably a power saving,

00:35:28 ◼   ► so maybe like with a chip set or whatever,

00:35:30 ◼   ► like they just, they want them to be like the phone,

00:35:32 ◼   ► where it's mostly just a giant battery

00:35:34 ◼   ► in a case with a screen, and then off to the side,

00:35:36 ◼   ► there's this tiny little thing

00:35:37 ◼   ► that is the entire computer.

00:35:38 ◼   ► And if you look inside the MacBook Air,

00:35:39 ◼   ► as you watch the battery slowly eat the rest of the computer

00:35:41 ◼   ► over the past few years.

00:35:44 ◼   ► It used to be like a board inside there,

00:35:45 ◼   ► and then the board became like two little skinny things.

00:35:47 ◼   ► And it's just like, it's running away

00:35:49 ◼   ► from this giant battery that's eating it.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And one of the ways you get power savings back

00:35:52 ◼   ► is just to be merciless about what you remove.

00:35:55 ◼   ► I guess we should probably skip to that follow-up item

00:35:58 ◼   ► because it's related to this.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Troy Gall wrote in with some reasons of like,

00:36:01 ◼   ► I kept asking for why, what do I get with one port

00:36:04 ◼   ► that I don't have with two?

00:36:05 ◼   ► Why would they do this?

00:36:06 ◼   ► is there a reason that we can think of?

00:36:08 ◼   ► And he's got two guesses for reasons.

00:36:10 ◼   ► One is related to power,

00:36:12 ◼   ► but in a slightly different way that I was talking about.

00:36:13 ◼   ► I'm like, well, maybe two means you can't have,

00:36:16 ◼   ► like maybe ripping out the port

00:36:17 ◼   ► means ripping out the supporting chip set

00:36:19 ◼   ► because the one port is like, I don't know.

00:36:20 ◼   ► If there's some large gain

00:36:22 ◼   ► that's not just like incremental,

00:36:24 ◼   ► like it's, you don't need supporting machinery

00:36:26 ◼   ► behind it to have two ports.

00:36:27 ◼   ► The one port wires directly into the thing

00:36:29 ◼   ► without a control.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Who knows? I don't know what the details might be, but.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - No, it isn't about,

00:36:32 ◼   ► it is almost certainly not about controller logic inside.

00:36:35 ◼   ► it's about the amount of power that port could draw

00:36:38 ◼   ► by its own spec.

00:36:39 ◼   ► So if you have like FireWire devices,

00:36:41 ◼   ► I think could draw like 10 Watts or something like that.

00:36:43 ◼   ► So a new USB is, I think, I don't know, sometimes.

00:36:47 ◼   ► So anyway, it's like, if you have multiple ports,

00:36:49 ◼   ► you have to, the laptop has to be able to supply

00:36:52 ◼   ► the maximum power draw to each of those ports.

00:36:54 ◼   ► So it has to have a power supply big enough and so on.

00:36:56 ◼   ► - That just shortens the battery life

00:36:57 ◼   ► if you have something plugged in.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Like I don't think they're optimizing

00:36:59 ◼   ► for the everything plugged in battery life.

00:37:01 ◼   ► I think they're optimizing for the battery life

00:37:03 ◼   ► with nothing plugged in.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Like that's the life they're gonna, you know,

00:37:05 ◼   ► whenever they show battery life,

00:37:07 ◼   ► they're not saying with a bunch of drive-sucking,

00:37:09 ◼   ► self-powered hard drives,

00:37:12 ◼   ► spinning hard drives sucking power from all your ports.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Like it's always with nothing.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So I'm thinking is there some passive power,

00:37:17 ◼   ► you know, that you need other components?

00:37:18 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:37:19 ◼   ► - No, I think it's more like, you know,

00:37:21 ◼   ► 'cause if you have the port that can potentially

00:37:23 ◼   ► draw 10 watts or whatever,

00:37:25 ◼   ► then every, like the power supply circuitry

00:37:27 ◼   ► has to be bigger, the power brick has to be bigger,

00:37:29 ◼   ► the total power draw and thermal output of the laptop

00:37:32 ◼   ► has to be best to be higher.

00:37:34 ◼   ► - Well, the peak power, but yeah,

00:37:35 ◼   ► there could be some passive loss

00:37:37 ◼   ► to the larger supply or whatever.

00:37:39 ◼   ► But his angle on it is that if you had two ports,

00:37:41 ◼   ► he thinks that they would both have to support charging.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Like if you're gonna charge through it,

00:37:44 ◼   ► and then maybe that would be more complicated electrically,

00:37:47 ◼   ► and that would be the complication.

00:37:48 ◼   ► I would imagine that if they have two ports,

00:37:50 ◼   ► they would be perfectly fine,

00:37:51 ◼   ► so you can only charge through one of them.

00:37:52 ◼   ► It would be the one with the little like chargey symbol,

00:37:55 ◼   ► silk-screened on it and laser etched stuff

00:37:57 ◼   ► that no human being could see

00:37:58 ◼   ► without being two inches away.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And his second thought was there's no room for more ports

00:38:04 ◼   ► because the keyboard goes edge to edge

00:38:06 ◼   ► and you need space for the key travel

00:38:07 ◼   ► and they're putting the port in the one place

00:38:09 ◼   ► where it can be, where it doesn't interfere

00:38:11 ◼   ► with the keys going up and down

00:38:11 ◼   ► but the thing's so damn thin.

00:38:14 ◼   ► That doesn't explain why you can't have one on one side

00:38:16 ◼   ► and one on the other.

00:38:17 ◼   ► And the headphone port, I feel like you could shove that.

00:38:21 ◼   ► From looking from these fake mockups of a product

00:38:23 ◼   ► that doesn't actually exist,

00:38:24 ◼   ► it seemed to me that there was room on both sides

00:38:27 ◼   ► to have one USB on both sides

00:38:29 ◼   ► and still find a place to wedge in the thing.

00:38:31 ◼   ► But like, you're not constrained by a predefined case

00:38:36 ◼   ► or a mock-up rendering.

00:38:37 ◼   ► You get to design the product.

00:38:38 ◼   ► If you're gonna go keyboard edge to edge, fine,

00:38:40 ◼   ► like move it down an extra three millimeters

00:38:42 ◼   ► to make room for the, you know.

00:38:44 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't find any of these reasons

00:38:46 ◼   ► particularly convincing, but they're at least new theories.

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00:41:25 ◼   ► So we're going a little long on the follow up,

00:41:27 ◼   ► but I wanna try to trudge through all the 12 inch air stuff.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - Episode 100, all follow up.

00:41:34 ◼   ► - Yep, it probably will be, and that would be fitting.

00:41:37 ◼   ► So do you wanna talk, I think this is mostly aimed at Jon,

00:41:42 ◼   ► do you wanna talk about what Phil Compton said to us?

00:41:45 ◼   ► - There's a couple people who talked about

00:41:48 ◼   ► the rumored 12 inch air as he relates to Chromebooks,

00:41:52 ◼   ► and you mentioned it, wasn't you Casey in the last show

00:41:54 ◼   ► Talking about Chromebooks?

00:41:56 ◼   ► Well, anyway, the whole idea with Chromebooks,

00:41:57 ◼   ► people will know, it's like a laptop that, you know,

00:42:00 ◼   ► it's like the network computer all over again.

00:42:02 ◼   ► It's a laptop where,

00:42:04 ◼   ► the laptop itself doesn't have anything important on it.

00:42:06 ◼   ► Everything's on the cloud.

00:42:07 ◼   ► The laptop is just a local cache

00:42:09 ◼   ► and it's super simple and super cheap

00:42:10 ◼   ► and they like them for education.

00:42:11 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, if your Chromebook

00:42:13 ◼   ► just falls off a cliff, whatever, get a new one,

00:42:15 ◼   ► plug it in, sign in with your Google account,

00:42:16 ◼   ► all your crap's there again.

00:42:18 ◼   ► It's a really great idea.

00:42:19 ◼   ► The videos that Google has shown

00:42:22 ◼   ► when they presented it or whatever,

00:42:23 ◼   ► Like it's essentially the future of computing and Apple

00:42:25 ◼   ► and Google is there first and it's lonely there

00:42:29 ◼   ► because it's not ready yet, right?

00:42:32 ◼   ► Yeah, so, but there's two angles in the Chromebook.

00:42:35 ◼   ► People like the Chromebooks for the elimination

00:42:38 ◼   ► of all the headaches that come with like owning

00:42:40 ◼   ► and maintaining a computer to try and move it more

00:42:42 ◼   ► towards being a disposable type thing,

00:42:44 ◼   ► which obviously is the opposite

00:42:45 ◼   ► of the way Apple designs thing more or less.

00:42:47 ◼   ► And the second aspect of it is they're so damn cheap.

00:42:49 ◼   ► Like remember the netbooks from a long time ago.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Oh, everyone loves netbooks.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Everyone loves cheap things.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Of course, everyone is like, "Apple needs to make cheap things to compete."

00:42:56 ◼   ► But that's not how Apple competes.

00:42:57 ◼   ► We went around in circles about that.

00:42:59 ◼   ► But the network book and the Chromebook seems to be bringing the issue back again.

00:43:03 ◼   ► I think the people who learned the lesson in the netbook error are fine, but now there's

00:43:06 ◼   ► a new crap of people who either weren't around during the network thing or have forgotten

00:43:13 ◼   ► who are saying Apple needs to come out with a $300 laptop.

00:43:17 ◼   ► If they don't, the Chromebook is going to eat their lunch and they're going to take

00:43:20 ◼   ► over the education market because schools are cheap and they want cheap laptops and

00:43:24 ◼   ► you know the Chromebook is less expensive than iPads even.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Even if you're buying iPad 2s and all this stuff.

00:43:30 ◼   ► So there's a lot of angles for when you see a small thin light thing you're like oh that's

00:43:36 ◼   ► gonna be Apple's competition with the Chromebook and every time someone tweeted that at me

00:43:40 ◼   ► or sent feedback related to Chromebooks all I could think was Apple's gonna compete with

00:43:44 ◼   ► the Chromebook with a product that's four times the price or maybe ten times the price.

00:43:49 ◼   ► We didn't talk about pricing of the rumored fictional product here, but do any of us expect

00:43:53 ◼   ► this laptop to be less than around $1,000?

00:43:56 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean Chromebooks start at about $200, right?

00:44:00 ◼   ► Right so it says like it's 5x the price.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I'm guessing $1,500 start.

00:44:05 ◼   ► Right, and it's the other thing, it could be even more expensive because of the thinness,

00:44:09 ◼   ► that's just not how Apple works.

00:44:11 ◼   ► I don't think anybody thinks this rumored 12 inch Air is going to be some super duper

00:44:15 ◼   ► cheap thing.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be cheaper than the current Airs, somehow, possibly, because of all the crap

00:44:20 ◼   ► they rip out of it.

00:44:21 ◼   ► That's conceivable.

00:44:22 ◼   ► But is it going to be $200?

00:44:24 ◼   ► No!

00:44:25 ◼   ► And so it seems crazy to me to talk about competing with Chromebooks with a product

00:44:29 ◼   ► that's not in its price range.

00:44:32 ◼   ► No matter what you think about competition, it's very...

00:44:36 ◼   ► There's no sense in saying this competes...

00:44:38 ◼   ► It's like saying that my Honda Accord competes with a Ferrari.

00:44:41 ◼   ► They don't.

00:44:42 ◼   ► There is no competition between them.

00:44:43 ◼   ► You can't entertain thoughts of competition between them.

00:44:45 ◼   ► They're in a different market.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And no matter how much you think that, you know, Ferrari really needs to answer for the

00:44:50 ◼   ► new Honda Accord because the Honda Accord is going to eat up their market for like,

00:44:54 ◼   ► no, they don't.

00:44:55 ◼   ► They're just, what do you mean answer with us?

00:44:57 ◼   ► Actually, the new Ferrari, I think that the new Ferrari is Ferrari's answer to the new

00:45:01 ◼   ► Honda Odyssey.

00:45:02 ◼   ► How is it Ferrari's answer to the new Honda Odyssey?

00:45:04 ◼   ► Well, I know they're not, the pricing is, you know, multiples of each other, but I really

00:45:07 ◼   ► do think that's their answer.

00:45:08 ◼   ► No, they're not comparable.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So anytime I see the word Chromebook in relation to this thing, again, it's a rumored thing.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I don't know. Maybe it will cost $200. That'd be great. I'll buy three of them, right?

00:45:18 ◼   ► But I really don't really don't think it will you wouldn't even buy one you complain about the price

00:45:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't like laptops, but

00:45:24 ◼   ► See there's no there's no way until there is at least a pricing rumor about this. I don't think it's important

00:45:31 ◼   ► I do think that

00:45:32 ◼   ► Apple's competition is the idea behind the Chromebook and

00:45:35 ◼   ► Perhaps I think I think this was Casey was it perhaps like their answer to this?

00:45:40 ◼   ► Yeah, you were going the whole thing of like, oh we don't need ports anymore

00:45:43 ◼   ► We need to remove complications everything can be wireless or whatever that is eventually the future

00:45:48 ◼   ► It's just not quite the present and people buy computers

00:45:50 ◼   ► They want to use in the present and so in the present you can remove every single port from a laptop except for USB

00:45:54 ◼   ► We totally can do that. And by the way, someone just an hour ago tweeted us a picture showing us

00:45:59 ◼   ► USB type-c with DisplayPort going over it. I don't know how many times we have to reiterate this. Yes

00:46:04 ◼   ► It's not it's not a made-up crazy Apple thing. You can send DisplayPort over USB type-c connectors

00:46:09 ◼   ► It's part of the spec it is not and it can power retina 5k

00:46:12 ◼   ► It has enough bandwidth for that right like and just look up the spec

00:46:16 ◼   ► I will try to put in the show notes

00:46:18 ◼   ► They show you the pin outs to show you what goes over those pins. This is not a crazy proprietary Apple is and this is an

00:46:22 ◼   ► Industry-wide spec it is not speculation that we're saying this is technically possible. It really is technically possible

00:46:27 ◼   ► It's a thing so you'll be buying products with it anyway

00:46:29 ◼   ► I was I don't know why people keep sending us these things to show us the display can go over

00:46:33 ◼   ► Yeah, we know we said so

00:46:35 ◼   ► It's baffling to me

00:46:39 ◼   ► So, I do think Apple has to eventually have an answer to the idea behind the Chromebook,

00:46:46 ◼   ► but I think it's also, for now, it is trying to field products that fulfill needs, that

00:46:52 ◼   ► do the Apple thing.

00:46:53 ◼   ► They're premium products, they charge a premium for them, they make a lot of money, they're

00:46:56 ◼   ► fancy, they're nice.

00:46:57 ◼   ► Hardware-wise, we're all talking about here.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And thus far, Apple has not shown any interest in trying to compete with the various other

00:47:06 ◼   ► companies that sell similar devices for massively lower prices and I don't see

00:47:12 ◼   ► anything in this rumor that makes me think it's gonna be massively lower.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Again I can't entertain the idea that the entry-level model could have a three

00:47:18 ◼   ► digit price. I can't entertain the idea that it'll be 200 bucks. I don't think

00:47:23 ◼   ► it'll be anywhere near that cheap. I think you're both right that it'll be

00:47:26 ◼   ► around abouts of $1,000 if it's what we think it is which by the way obviously

00:47:31 ◼   ► it may be totally different but if it's less than $1,000 I will be stunned.

00:47:36 ◼   ► - I think also, I saw a few people make the comment

00:47:41 ◼   ► that Apple has to respond Chromebook style

00:47:44 ◼   ► because Chromebooks are apparently selling well

00:47:46 ◼   ► to education.

00:47:48 ◼   ► First of all, I think Apple's answer to the Chromebook

00:47:51 ◼   ► is the iPad.

00:47:52 ◼   ► I don't think it's a cheap laptop.

00:47:54 ◼   ► - And by the way, iPads can push up into $1,000

00:47:57 ◼   ► if you buy the fancy model, so it's not like iPads

00:48:00 ◼   ► are 200 bucks either.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, and certainly the education market's buying

00:48:04 ◼   ► you know, the three and $400 models,

00:48:05 ◼   ► but still, you know, and that's still more than a Chromebook

00:48:09 ◼   ► and in many ways harder to manage for a big, you know,

00:48:12 ◼   ► school or fleet type use, but anyway.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I don't think Apple holds the educational relationship

00:48:18 ◼   ► as some kind of thing that they cannot ever lose.

00:48:20 ◼   ► Education customers are, you know,

00:48:23 ◼   ► just like big enterprise customers,

00:48:25 ◼   ► there is, there's a lot of buyers out there

00:48:28 ◼   ► that will buy the stuff,

00:48:29 ◼   ► but they're extremely hard to get,

00:48:31 ◼   ► And education, it's like enterprise but with no money.

00:48:35 ◼   ► Like there is money in education,

00:48:37 ◼   ► but not nearly as much as anybody wants.

00:48:41 ◼   ► - You can't fleece them like IBM will do

00:48:43 ◼   ► for its corporate customers by charging them insane fees

00:48:47 ◼   ► because they know it may look crazy,

00:48:48 ◼   ► but they have so much money, they'll pay it.

00:48:50 ◼   ► - Right, and many of, you know, the biggest buyers

00:48:53 ◼   ► are gonna be very high needs, high maintenance customers

00:48:57 ◼   ► that like you're gonna have to come to them on their terms

00:49:00 ◼   ► and make concessions to them because they have to buy

00:49:05 ◼   ► a couple hundred or thousand of these things

00:49:07 ◼   ► and then maintain them over time

00:49:08 ◼   ► and justify that to all these different committees

00:49:10 ◼   ► and funders and work within the grants and everything.

00:49:13 ◼   ► There's so, so much complexity in that system

00:49:17 ◼   ► and it's so hard to get and in the end,

00:49:19 ◼   ► there's not a whole lot of money to be made there.

00:49:20 ◼   ► And so, I don't think Apple looks at that

00:49:24 ◼   ► as something that they must keep.

00:49:26 ◼   ► I think education should be looked at

00:49:28 ◼   ► just like any other big enterprise customer

00:49:31 ◼   ► where they'll be happy to serve them,

00:49:34 ◼   ► but only on Apple's terms,

00:49:36 ◼   ► and they're not that scared to lose them.

00:49:39 ◼   ► And you can look at it and say,

00:49:40 ◼   ► well, you wanna catch kids early,

00:49:42 ◼   ► but I think the era of kids having their

00:49:47 ◼   ► primary computing experience at school

00:49:51 ◼   ► is certainly not going away,

00:49:53 ◼   ► and probably will never totally go away

00:49:54 ◼   ► from many demographics and kids,

00:49:57 ◼   ► But I think the relevance of that is being greatly reduced

00:50:00 ◼   ► by personal devices, smartphones,

00:50:03 ◼   ► iPod touches, and iPads at home.

00:50:05 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, Apple doesn't necessarily

00:50:07 ◼   ► have to be too concerned with keeping the education market.

00:50:11 ◼   ► It just has to be concerned with keeping the kids.

00:50:14 ◼   ► I think it's doing pretty well at keeping the kids

00:50:16 ◼   ► because, like you said, the kids have contact

00:50:19 ◼   ► with computing devices.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Computing is everywhere now.

00:50:23 ◼   ► It's not just in a school or work.

00:50:24 ◼   ► It's a part of life, right?

00:50:25 ◼   ► So as long as Apple keeps the kids, you're OK.

00:50:27 ◼   ► Now there is a danger here because like,

00:50:31 ◼   ► if Chromebooks ever did become pervasive,

00:50:33 ◼   ► which I don't think that Chromebooks are doing well,

00:50:36 ◼   ► but I don't think it's like they're wiping Apple out

00:50:38 ◼   ► of education.

00:50:38 ◼   ► But if they do become pervasive, Microsoft

00:50:41 ◼   ► hates it because all the kids are

00:50:42 ◼   ► going to be doing all their work in Google Docs instead of Word.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And Apple should hate it because kids

00:50:47 ◼   ► will become acclimated to the Google ecosystem, which

00:50:49 ◼   ► does not involve Apple.

00:50:50 ◼   ► And the Google ecosystem in terms of the cloud stuff

00:50:52 ◼   ► is actually pretty damn good.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Google, if you're email, Google, if you share documents,

00:50:55 ◼   ► Like that's Google's thing, a bunch of web applications,

00:50:58 ◼   ► lowest common denominator, works everywhere,

00:51:00 ◼   ► all your crap synced.

00:51:01 ◼   ► If kids get used to that, it's a short jump from there

00:51:04 ◼   ► to a Google phone where all your stuff is right.

00:51:05 ◼   ► So, you know, keeping the kids,

00:51:09 ◼   ► part of keeping the kids is keeping a toehold in education.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So far in sort of the jobs to error,

00:51:14 ◼   ► it seems like Apple's approach to education has been,

00:51:17 ◼   ► we in, if you are a prestige school,

00:51:19 ◼   ► if there's gonna be a news story

00:51:21 ◼   ► about your school getting fancy stuff,

00:51:22 ◼   ► we want to have our stuff in the prestige school.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And the prestige school is not necessarily

00:51:25 ◼   ► the rich kids school, but it's the school that's storyworthy.

00:51:28 ◼   ► Is it a school that's up and coming,

00:51:30 ◼   ► where it's doing much better now?

00:51:31 ◼   ► Is it a school that got a big grant?

00:51:33 ◼   ► Is it a school, you know, like, you want it to be a story.

00:51:36 ◼   ► You want it to be like the important ones.

00:51:38 ◼   ► And then it should be significant.

00:51:40 ◼   ► The kids in that school and teachers in that school

00:51:42 ◼   ► should feel lucky to have Apple hardware

00:51:44 ◼   ► because it's fancy and shiny, nice and expensive.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And that's where Apple seems to be in education these days.

00:51:50 ◼   ► It's not so much bending over backwards,

00:51:53 ◼   ► with the possible exception of keeping the iPad 2 around

00:51:55 ◼   ► for a long time, but they're not doing stuff like, remember, they used to do the EMAC and

00:51:59 ◼   ► the various Macs that were made just for education.

00:52:01 ◼   ► Those were all pretty short-lived, though.

00:52:03 ◼   ► Well, but they would do that.

00:52:04 ◼   ► They would say, "We're going to make a model of Mac that is only for education, and it's

00:52:07 ◼   ► going to make compromises that work for education."

00:52:09 ◼   ► Usually those compromises were ways to make it cheaper.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Sometimes it would be an education-only version.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I think they still have that on.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Right, like they're super cheap iMac and stuff.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Right, or a keeper on a model just for education.

00:52:19 ◼   ► So they still are doing stuff for the market, but I think the days are gone where they design

00:52:22 ◼   ► and like the giant tooth, the big molar,

00:52:25 ◼   ► you can look up what that is and put it in the show notes,

00:52:27 ◼   ► a computer that only ever sold to education.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Most of those were terrible by the way,

00:52:32 ◼   ► but they existed and Apple's not doing that anymore.

00:52:34 ◼   ► There's not a computer with a different name,

00:52:37 ◼   ► like it's not an iMac, it's not a Mac mini or whatever,

00:52:39 ◼   ► a different name that you can't buy

00:52:40 ◼   ► unless you're in education.

00:52:41 ◼   ► So Apple is out of that business.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - It's funny you mention education in Apple

00:52:46 ◼   ► because right around the time we moved to Richmond,

00:52:48 ◼   ► one of the surrounding counties,

00:52:49 ◼   ► they were using iBooks and issuing,

00:52:52 ◼   ► I believe all middle schoolers and high schoolers iBooks.

00:52:55 ◼   ► And they decided it was cheaper and better to go with Dells

00:53:00 ◼   ► and they've been using Dells ever since.

00:53:03 ◼   ► And you may have heard of this.

00:53:05 ◼   ► Oh, I did.

00:53:07 ◼   ► This was the area in which we live.

00:53:08 ◼   ► It made national news because they were selling these

00:53:11 ◼   ► like two or three, no four year old iBooks for 50 bucks

00:53:14 ◼   ► at the NASCAR track in downtown Richmond.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And there were actually like stampedes

00:53:19 ◼   ► trying to beat each other up to get to the front of the line

00:53:23 ◼   ► so you could buy a $50 four-year-old iBook.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And that was right around where we live.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And now they've been using Dells for years

00:53:29 ◼   ► and they're pieces of crap.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Although to be fair, these iBooks,

00:53:31 ◼   ► these iBooks were falling apart

00:53:33 ◼   ► by the time they were done with them.

00:53:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like buying a used police car.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Like, there's a reason why used police cars

00:53:41 ◼   ► usually just become the crappiest taxis

00:53:44 ◼   ► for the crappiest taxi services in the world.

00:53:48 ◼   ► these devices are in such constant heavy use

00:53:52 ◼   ► for those four years, like you do not want them afterwards.

00:53:56 ◼   ► Although to be fair to those $50 iBooks,

00:53:59 ◼   ► can you imagine a stampede for four year old PCs

00:54:02 ◼   ► at any price?

00:54:03 ◼   ► - No, definitely not.

00:54:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's not a fashion item,

00:54:06 ◼   ► it doesn't have the prestige associated,

00:54:08 ◼   ► even an out of date technology thing

00:54:11 ◼   ► still has the fashion cache, so people are interested

00:54:13 ◼   ► and they feel like it's a steal at 50 bucks.

00:54:16 ◼   ► If you want to make the foreign listeners, the non-US listeners, feel even more that

00:54:21 ◼   ► we live in a third world country, we can describe the other common phenomenon for technologies

00:54:25 ◼   ► in schools.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Technologies or tissues and paper towels, which is there's no money in the budget for

00:54:30 ◼   ► it at all.

00:54:31 ◼   ► The only way your school is ever going to get any kind of technology or paper towels

00:54:36 ◼   ► or tissues for the kids to use is the parents themselves, or the parent-teacher's association

00:54:42 ◼   ► or some other like, you know, organization thing will raise money and the parents will

00:54:46 ◼   ► all pay for the computers for their kids' school.

00:54:50 ◼   ► That only works for all the parents are rich.

00:54:51 ◼   ► So you can guess how many people's schools have max in them.

00:54:55 ◼   ► It's only the schools that are in districts where, and even in the districts with rich

00:54:58 ◼   ► people, even those districts can't pass laws to raise taxes enough to pay for anything

00:55:02 ◼   ► for their schools, barely can keep the buildings up, you know, barely can pay the teachers

00:55:07 ◼   ► their meager salaries, can't afford any computers, can't, if you want your classroom to have

00:55:11 ◼   ► paper towels, napkins, or tissues, you also have to pay for those and do drives to put

00:55:15 ◼   ► around. This is in their rich neighborhoods. That's the state of education in our country.

00:55:18 ◼   ► That's absolutely true. When I went to high school, it was in Fairfield County, Connecticut,

00:55:22 ◼   ► which at the time as a county was the single most affluent county in the entire country,

00:55:27 ◼   ► because they had a whole bunch of like silly rich superstars that are that instead of living

00:55:33 ◼   ► in New York, they'd live in Fairfield County. Now, the particular town I lived in was, I mean,

00:55:38 ◼   ► I guess reasonably affluent, but not nothing remarkable.

00:55:41 ◼   ► And every spring without fail come about March or so all of our Xerox paper,

00:55:46 ◼   ► our copy machine paper,

00:55:50 ◼   ► it was perforated about two thirds of the way down and then again in half.

00:55:55 ◼   ► And at the bottom it said Danbury hospital radiology department.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Because despite the fact that we lived in the most affluent County in the entire

00:56:04 ◼   ► country,

00:56:05 ◼   ► All of the people that lived in the particular town we lived in didn't want to pay enough money to the schools

00:56:10 ◼   ► So that we had copy paper for the entire year and we needed to accept donations of like crappy leftover

00:56:17 ◼   ► Perforated copy paper from the local hospital. Oh my god, that's so sad. Oh goodness. All right

00:56:24 ◼   ► What other follow-up do we have one last note? This is from Oliver agar agar

00:56:29 ◼   ► apologies Oliver

00:56:32 ◼   ► He had tweeted at the three of us

00:56:34 ◼   ► It's pretty clear now that both Thunderbolt and lightning are

00:56:37 ◼   ► They're going to be the shortest live ports ever. I don't I don't know if I agree with that. It's certainly possible

00:56:44 ◼   ► But I I don't see lightning going away anytime soon. I think Thunderbolt is more likely to go away

00:56:51 ◼   ► But I'm still skeptical that that's gonna be the case

00:56:55 ◼   ► What do you guys think?

00:56:56 ◼   ► I think thunderbolts gonna last just as long as firewire did just because it'll be sticking out the back of that Mac Pro until Apple

00:57:01 ◼   ► Stops making that computer. Oh

00:57:03 ◼   ► Like it doesn't mean it's gonna like

00:57:05 ◼   ► Thunderbolt sure totally go away from the MacBook Air

00:57:08 ◼   ► They want because like it can go away from the MacBook Air because the innovation of Thunderbolt that was a simplification

00:57:14 ◼   ► Hey display, you know USB all over one port

00:57:17 ◼   ► But if USB 3 can do all that too then right

00:57:20 ◼   ► Thunderbolt port gone at the very least from the small laptops probably also from the big ones because what you know

00:57:26 ◼   ► It's only for basically high speed storage

00:57:28 ◼   ► like it's kind of an aberration that thunderbolt ended up being on sort of the low-end laptops because it was like

00:57:33 ◼   ► We're not so much into the high-speed storage part.

00:57:36 ◼   ► We like the idea that there's one connector that you can carry all this sort of stuff

00:57:39 ◼   ► over.

00:57:40 ◼   ► You can carry the display over it, you can carry it, you can do an Ethernet adapter.

00:57:42 ◼   ► It was kind of a shame that you could do each one of those things but you had to swap your

00:57:46 ◼   ► stupid adapters and crap like that.

00:57:47 ◼   ► But you could plug it into the Thunderbolt display and get a full complement of ports

00:57:51 ◼   ► through one connector.

00:57:52 ◼   ► I see no reason that USB 3.0 can't usurp that.

00:57:56 ◼   ► And so then the only reason left to have Thunderbolt is, alright, well actually it's a super high-speed

00:57:59 ◼   ► thing and of course the Mac Pro has a million Thunderbolt ports on it.

00:58:03 ◼   ► continue to have them, the Thunderbolt spec will continue to get revised, I think there

00:58:08 ◼   ► will still be Thunderbolt ports all over those things.

00:58:11 ◼   ► So I don't think Thunderbolt is going away, and Lightning I definitely don't think is

00:58:14 ◼   ► going away because Lightning is still smaller and more importantly thinner than I would

00:58:18 ◼   ► imagine potentially more durable than USB 3.

00:58:21 ◼   ► I don't think Apple is going to go through its entire iOS line and say "Oh, USB 3 Type

00:58:25 ◼   ► C is here, we can get rid of this silly Lightning thing and change it."

00:58:28 ◼   ► Nope, Lightning is going to be with us for a long time, at least as long as I think the

00:58:32 ◼   ► a 30 pin connector was for this.

00:58:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:58:36 ◼   ► I don't see, you know, Thunderbolt I think is

00:58:39 ◼   ► just like Firewire 800, where it's gonna be

00:58:41 ◼   ► on the highest end pro products and that's about it.

00:58:44 ◼   ► It does have that advantage, as you said,

00:58:46 ◼   ► of because it is really just PCI express over a cable,

00:58:50 ◼   ► you can offer like direct full speed,

00:58:53 ◼   ► like bus connected versions of the other ports

00:58:56 ◼   ► without a big performance penalty or translation penalty

00:58:59 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:59:00 ◼   ► but all those other ports it's offering

00:59:03 ◼   ► are getting less relevant over time

00:59:05 ◼   ► and less necessary over time.

00:59:07 ◼   ► So I think the biggest justification

00:59:10 ◼   ► for Thunderbolt in two years

00:59:13 ◼   ► is not even gonna be those PCI card case boxes

00:59:17 ◼   ► that you can use an old PCI video card,

00:59:19 ◼   ► video processing card in or anything.

00:59:22 ◼   ► I don't think that's it at all.

00:59:22 ◼   ► I think Thunderbolt in two years is gonna be looked at

00:59:27 ◼   ► only as the highest speed port for external SSD arrays

00:59:32 ◼   ► and disk arrays, like that's what it's mainly for.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And I think that's probably mostly what it's used

00:59:37 ◼   ► for today even, but I think that's gonna be like

00:59:41 ◼   ► its mainstay and everything else is gonna go to wireless

00:59:46 ◼   ► or USB three.

00:59:47 ◼   ► - And Thunderbolt will have to keep scaling up

00:59:49 ◼   ► because like, you know, I always imagined the Mac pros

00:59:52 ◼   ► with these Thunderbolt things having something to do

00:59:53 ◼   ► with video stuff, and 4K video eventually

00:59:57 ◼   ► becomes more common, like you just cranked up

00:59:59 ◼   ► your bandwidth requirements again.

01:00:00 ◼   ► So like these giant arrays of super fast storage,

01:00:03 ◼   ► and the only way you can let that storage run

01:00:06 ◼   ► at the full speed that it's capable of running at

01:00:07 ◼   ► and get the data into your computer

01:00:09 ◼   ► is either to have it inside your computer,

01:00:10 ◼   ► which Apple doesn't make any of those anymore,

01:00:12 ◼   ► or it's gotta be over the fastest possible external bus,

01:00:14 ◼   ► and right now, that is, even with USB 3,

01:00:17 ◼   ► Thunderbolt is still faster, and I imagine

01:00:19 ◼   ► they'll just keep making it faster and faster,

01:00:20 ◼   ► and it'll become more and more confined

01:00:22 ◼   ► the people who have insane data rates that are necessary to do like you know

01:00:27 ◼   ► uncompressed 5k video for Hollywood movies or God knows what they're doing

01:00:30 ◼   ► with these Mac Pros these days. And those enclosures cost more than a

01:00:35 ◼   ► MacBook Pro. Yeah, it's not the realm of regular people. I'm trying to

01:00:40 ◼   ► think is there any reason for a Thunderbolt to be to remain on like the

01:00:44 ◼   ► 15-inch MacBook Pro or anything? Well it is the highest end laptop in the

01:00:48 ◼   ► lineup and there's always going to be demand from people who try to do

01:00:52 ◼   ► Pro work on laptops on the go or on site or on set or whatever.

01:00:56 ◼   ► So there's always going to be demand.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Whether they choose to address that demand is not a guaranteed thing.

01:01:03 ◼   ► They might choose at some point, "You know what?

01:01:05 ◼   ► We're done with that."

01:01:06 ◼   ► Just like how many things died with the 17-inch MacBook Pro.

01:01:09 ◼   ► I think the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro I think is going to be the last Apple laptop with

01:01:20 ◼   ► Thunderbolt, but I don't know how soon it's going to come.

01:01:23 ◼   ► If I had to guess, I would say maybe two more years before it's relegated to only a handful

01:01:29 ◼   ► of models in the lineup.

01:01:31 ◼   ► I hope that they keep it around for at least a couple more years because I know we just

01:01:35 ◼   ► finally got done with the transition at work where every conference room has a mini display

01:01:40 ◼   ► board, a.k.a.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Display port, a.k.a.

01:01:42 ◼   ► Thunderbolt, to VGA connector so that every Mac that comes into the room can hook up to

01:01:48 ◼   ► the cruddy projector that's in the room.

01:01:49 ◼   ► It used to be that first everyone who had a Mac

01:01:52 ◼   ► had one of the adapters

01:01:53 ◼   ► and they'd write their names on them in a marker,

01:01:55 ◼   ► but then they'd lose them

01:01:56 ◼   ► and then you'd leave one in the conference room

01:01:57 ◼   ► and now they're like chained to the conference room.

01:01:58 ◼   ► So every conference room has one.

01:02:01 ◼   ► And if Apple drops Thunderbolt from their entire line,

01:02:03 ◼   ► it'll be like, well, we have,

01:02:04 ◼   ► every conference room has an adapter

01:02:05 ◼   ► that has no place to be plugged into any of the new Macs.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And that will be sad

01:02:09 ◼   ► because it seems like we haven't had enough time

01:02:11 ◼   ► where anyone with a Mac can go into any conference room

01:02:14 ◼   ► and plug into the projector.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Then I feel like we need to have a couple more years

01:02:18 ◼   ► before we have to redo all the adapters again.

01:02:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause they could put it over USB 3

01:02:23 ◼   ► in DisplayPort mode, the alternate mode,

01:02:26 ◼   ► which we talked about a few minutes ago.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And yeah, it's just another $30 adapter at the Apple Store.

01:02:31 ◼   ► - Right.

01:02:32 ◼   ► - Just this big, daily chain of that going

01:02:33 ◼   ► into a mini Thunderbolt to the HDMI or to DVI to VGA.

01:02:38 ◼   ► You'll have like this five adapter long chain.

01:02:41 ◼   ► - Sometimes it's VGA, sometimes it's HDMI.

01:02:43 ◼   ► That's not the problem.

01:02:44 ◼   ► It's the end that connects into the Mac that's the problem.

01:02:46 ◼   ► So it'd be nice to have some stability in that

01:02:49 ◼   ► for a little while longer,

01:02:49 ◼   ► because that's the other thing Thunderbolt does.

01:02:51 ◼   ► It's like, well, Thunderbolt,

01:02:52 ◼   ► I don't need high-speed stuff.

01:02:53 ◼   ► I don't care that I multiplex multiple things over it.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Then if you don't care about any of those things

01:02:58 ◼   ► and you look at the Thunderbolt port,

01:02:59 ◼   ► it's like, oh, that's just my external display port.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Like I think, I imagine most of the people in my company

01:03:03 ◼   ► who have Macs consider that their display port,

01:03:05 ◼   ► like this is where I hook up external monitors,

01:03:07 ◼   ► not knowing all the other things that that one port can do.

01:03:09 ◼   ► - Right.

01:03:10 ◼   ► And Apple's answer might be like,

01:03:12 ◼   ► for a big part of the line, it might just be,

01:03:14 ◼   ► Well, use AirPlay and have an Apple TV,

01:03:17 ◼   ► which of course is comical.

01:03:18 ◼   ► - There's lots of AirPlay enabled projectors.

01:03:21 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Anyway, our final sponsor this week is Fracture.

01:03:25 ◼   ► They're back once again.

01:03:26 ◼   ► Fracture prints photos in vivid color directly onto glass.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com to see more.

01:03:34 ◼   ► So I have Fracture pictures hanging all over my office.

01:03:37 ◼   ► We've heard from many people who've gotten them too.

01:03:39 ◼   ► They're great.

01:03:40 ◼   ► My idea, which I spread whenever I have one of these

01:03:42 ◼   ► that reads is I print my app icons

01:03:46 ◼   ► onto the small five by five size, which is 15 bucks.

01:03:50 ◼   ► I print my app icons on those whenever I make a new app.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And so I have this row of like app icon trophy pictures

01:03:55 ◼   ► across this part of the wall in my office.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And it's really nice.

01:03:59 ◼   ► People compliment them.

01:04:01 ◼   ► It's very nice, you know, as a physical representation

01:04:06 ◼   ► of things you've done in the software world,

01:04:09 ◼   ► where you don't usually get physical representations.

01:04:12 ◼   ► It's just really nice.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Their print quality is really great.

01:04:15 ◼   ► The way it works, so they print the photo

01:04:17 ◼   ► directly onto glass, and it's technically

01:04:20 ◼   ► it's onto the back of glass so that you see the front.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And it's a thin layer of glass mounted to a thin piece

01:04:26 ◼   ► of like a foam board kind of thing so you can hang it easily

01:04:30 ◼   ► and so they're actually pretty lightweight.

01:04:32 ◼   ► It's not like hanging this giant pane of glass

01:04:34 ◼   ► on your wall that you're afraid is gonna like

01:04:35 ◼   ► tear the wall anchor out of the wall

01:04:37 ◼   ► and fall out and shatter.

01:04:38 ◼   ► No, they're pretty lightweight for their size

01:04:40 ◼   ► and they just look fantastic 'cause it just looks

01:04:42 ◼   ► like a piece of glass, that's it.

01:04:43 ◼   ► Like there's no frame around it,

01:04:45 ◼   ► like it is its own frame,

01:04:46 ◼   ► it doesn't need another frame around it,

01:04:48 ◼   ► which is a huge cost savings and a huge hassle savings.

01:04:51 ◼   ► It's just really nice, the print quality is great,

01:04:54 ◼   ► the prices are very reasonable.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Once again, it starts to get $15 for the five by five

01:04:59 ◼   ► square print, which I use for my app icons.

01:05:01 ◼   ► It's also great for Instagram prints.

01:05:03 ◼   ► And then I have a couple of, I don't know, 12 by 17,

01:05:07 ◼   ► something like that in that size.

01:05:08 ◼   ► I have a couple of those above my monitor too.

01:05:10 ◼   ► They're just, they're great quality,

01:05:12 ◼   ► very reasonable prices.

01:05:14 ◼   ► About half of these I've actually bought at full price

01:05:16 ◼   ► without coupon codes and it was just that good

01:05:18 ◼   ► and I wanted them right then and that was it.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Anyway, check it out.

01:05:22 ◼   ► It is the thinnest, lightest and most elegant way

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01:05:29 ◼   ► you gotta send one kinda late.

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01:05:45 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com to see more.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring our show once again.

01:05:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually have a, I think four of them

01:05:55 ◼   ► on their way.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I copied your idea, but instead of apps,

01:05:58 ◼   ► I did it with the shows that I've been on,

01:06:01 ◼   ► that I've been around regularly.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And then I got that picture of Aaron and Declan

01:06:07 ◼   ► from the hospital that I really like printed.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And so they are on their way

01:06:11 ◼   ► and I'm very excited about it.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So definitely check them out.

01:06:13 ◼   ► - No feed icons?

01:06:15 ◼   ► - No feed icons.

01:06:16 ◼   ► I actually, the funny thing is as you were doing that read,

01:06:19 ◼   ► it occurred to me,

01:06:20 ◼   ► I don't know why I didn't put that in that order,

01:06:23 ◼   ► put fast text in that order.

01:06:24 ◼   ► Like that probably speaks poorly

01:06:26 ◼   ► to what I think about fast text these days.

01:06:29 ◼   ► - That's sad.

01:06:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know that is sad.

01:06:30 ◼   ► Actually, I'm a little upset with myself, but anyway.

01:06:33 ◼   ► - Well, use code ATP15 to go order one now.

01:06:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:06:36 ◼   ► So let's be done with follow-up,

01:06:39 ◼   ► and let's try to answer the question,

01:06:42 ◼   ► what can Apple do to fix the reliability,

01:06:46 ◼   ► what did you call it, Marco Nosedive?

01:06:48 ◼   ► - Oh God, we were still talking about this.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Can we please stop talking about it?

01:06:52 ◼   ► - We talked about the issue last time,

01:06:54 ◼   ► but we didn't get to like, okay,

01:06:56 ◼   ► so we agree that this is an issue.

01:06:58 ◼   ► We may disagree about whether things are worse now

01:07:00 ◼   ► than they've ever been or have been

01:07:02 ◼   ► in the past X number of years,

01:07:03 ◼   ► whatever value you want to pay for X's.

01:07:04 ◼   ► But I think we all agreed that regardless of the history

01:07:09 ◼   ► and whether the trend and what the direction the trend is,

01:07:11 ◼   ► the current state of things is not satisfactory

01:07:13 ◼   ► for the products and customers that Apple currently has.

01:07:16 ◼   ► That the customers are dissatisfied,

01:07:18 ◼   ► they have a lot of products,

01:07:19 ◼   ► they all interoperate with each other.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Marker is like multiplying factor of like,

01:07:22 ◼   ► your problem multiplied, probability of problem here

01:07:24 ◼   ► multiplied by the probability of problem there.

01:07:26 ◼   ► The probability that you have a problem somewhere

01:07:27 ◼   ► just goes up, it's not just additive

01:07:29 ◼   ► because of the way they all interact.

01:07:30 ◼   ► - By the way, I'm not clear on that math.

01:07:32 ◼   ► That might, it might actually be exponential or factorial.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not 100% confident on that math, go ahead.

01:07:38 ◼   ► - It's not additive.

01:07:39 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, it's not a linear additive progression.

01:07:42 ◼   ► It is some kind of curve.

01:07:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can do the probability thing.

01:07:45 ◼   ► So just like if you have one thing

01:07:46 ◼   ► and you have a certain probability,

01:07:47 ◼   ► it's up 50% of the time, you have 50% reliability, right?

01:07:50 ◼   ► Or you have two things, they both have 50% of the time,

01:07:52 ◼   ► now you need them both to be up

01:07:53 ◼   ► and you can figure it out with marbles and jars

01:07:57 ◼   ► and all that other stuff and it's not, anyway, it's worse.

01:07:59 ◼   ► But so we all agree that they have a reliability problem,

01:08:02 ◼   ► the need to address it.

01:08:03 ◼   ► I don't-- yeah, and we talked all last show

01:08:05 ◼   ► about arguing about whether this is a new problem,

01:08:07 ◼   ► a no problem, whatever.

01:08:08 ◼   ► But so the question is, how does Apple improve its reliability?

01:08:11 ◼   ► If you say, how does it fix its problem,

01:08:12 ◼   ► it sounds like there's something,

01:08:13 ◼   ► and then there's someday there's going to be a fix to it.

01:08:15 ◼   ► I think a better way to phrase it

01:08:16 ◼   ► is, how does Apple improve the reliability of its products,

01:08:19 ◼   ► specifically the software reliability?

01:08:22 ◼   ► Because the hardware does have issues,

01:08:23 ◼   ► but whenever hardware has an issue,

01:08:25 ◼   ► you always wonder if it's like a driver issue.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Or sometimes it's actually a hardware issue

01:08:28 ◼   ► where something is overheating, or some solder joints are bad,

01:08:31 ◼   ► or something like, but then sometimes,

01:08:33 ◼   ► I think the vast majority of the time,

01:08:34 ◼   ► it's like a driver issue,

01:08:36 ◼   ► or they just never quite get it working right over.

01:08:38 ◼   ► So what can Apple do to improve

01:08:42 ◼   ► the reliability of its products?

01:08:44 ◼   ► - We talked a little about this last step,

01:08:46 ◼   ► whatever episode it was,

01:08:48 ◼   ► in that they could either space out

01:08:51 ◼   ► the releases between OSs,

01:08:53 ◼   ► which I think we all pretty much agree

01:08:55 ◼   ► is never gonna happen, or just bite off less each time.

01:08:59 ◼   ► - I don't agree that it's never gonna happen,

01:09:00 ◼   ► 'cause I could totally see them taking longer

01:09:03 ◼   ► between iOS releases or any iOS releases.

01:09:07 ◼   ► Not significantly longer, not like two years,

01:09:09 ◼   ► but I could see the Mac going to 18 months

01:09:11 ◼   ► and iOS going to like 14 or 15,

01:09:14 ◼   ► and it's slowly drifting through the year,

01:09:16 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

01:09:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, but they've set such a precedent,

01:09:20 ◼   ► and which they've broken precedents in the past,

01:09:22 ◼   ► but they've set such a precedent

01:09:24 ◼   ► of having a new version of iOS every fall.

01:09:28 ◼   ► And there was a time, not long ago,

01:09:30 ◼   ► when I think people, both nerds and non-nerds,

01:09:33 ◼   ► got really excited about that every fall.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Now, to be fair, they may not be so excited,

01:09:38 ◼   ► and we may not be so excited about that anymore,

01:09:41 ◼   ► and so maybe now is the time to break that precedent.

01:09:43 ◼   ► But I'm very skeptical they would do it on iOS,

01:09:47 ◼   ► and I'm fairly skeptical they would go less frequently

01:09:52 ◼   ► than every year on OS X.

01:09:54 ◼   ► But that's certainly one answer,

01:09:55 ◼   ► or just biting off less each time,

01:09:59 ◼   ► doing less new things and keeping yourself at a year release.

01:10:03 ◼   ► I mean, that's another option.

01:10:04 ◼   ► - Well, so the obvious option that's sitting in the notes

01:10:06 ◼   ► is, and the one that's been suggested by many people

01:10:08 ◼   ► and that I believe we talked about in the past many times,

01:10:10 ◼   ► is to go to what originally Intel dubbed the TikTok cadence

01:10:14 ◼   ► and which Apple has more or less de facto dubbed

01:10:18 ◼   ► the blank S cadence.

01:10:21 ◼   ► You get the four of the four S, the five of the five S,

01:10:23 ◼   ► and then who knows what they're gonna do with the six,

01:10:24 ◼   ► But the idea is you do a release that's your big release

01:10:29 ◼   ► with all your fancy crap in it.

01:10:31 ◼   ► And then the next one is pretty much the same

01:10:33 ◼   ► as the previous one, just modified in some way.

01:10:35 ◼   ► So after the four, you have the 4S.

01:10:37 ◼   ► The same hardware design, you tweak it,

01:10:39 ◼   ► you move the antennas around,

01:10:40 ◼   ► but it's not an entire redesign.

01:10:42 ◼   ► And in OS X, Apple did the same thing with Leopard.

01:10:46 ◼   ► That was their big release.

01:10:47 ◼   ► And then Snow Leopard is like,

01:10:49 ◼   ► "Well, it's like Leopard, but we just improved crap."

01:10:51 ◼   ► And then they had, what was it?

01:10:53 ◼   ► Lion, which is a big release, and they had Mountain Lion,

01:10:56 ◼   ► which was supposed to be the,

01:10:57 ◼   ► oh, it's like Lion, but we just improved some stuff.

01:10:59 ◼   ► They're off of that train in OS X

01:11:01 ◼   ► because Mavericks and Yosemite

01:11:02 ◼   ► are not related to each other in that way.

01:11:04 ◼   ► I mean, Yosemite's radically different than Mavericks was.

01:11:07 ◼   ► You could just say Mavericks was an in-between release,

01:11:09 ◼   ► and after Yosemite, they'll have one

01:11:10 ◼   ► that's like Yosemite but tweaked,

01:11:11 ◼   ► but it's very difficult to tell because without,

01:11:15 ◼   ► I mean, the names made it clear

01:11:16 ◼   ► with leopard, snow leopard, lion, mountain lion.

01:11:18 ◼   ► But then you could argue like,

01:11:20 ◼   ► well, did the contents of those releases

01:11:22 ◼   ► reflect the naming.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Only with Snow Leopard did Apple come out and say,

01:11:27 ◼   ► this is the no new features release,

01:11:29 ◼   ► all we're doing is frying stuff,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and even that was a lie because they added

01:11:31 ◼   ► tons of internal crap, and so.

01:11:33 ◼   ► - Right, it was a huge under the hood change,

01:11:35 ◼   ► just like it didn't look different to users.

01:11:37 ◼   ► - Right, and the big thing is if you don't add

01:11:40 ◼   ► user-facing features, even if you make tons

01:11:43 ◼   ► of under the hood changes, you can lie to people

01:11:45 ◼   ► and say no new features by basically saying

01:11:47 ◼   ► no new user-facing features, and if there's no new

01:11:50 ◼   ► user-facing features, your expectation is

01:11:52 ◼   ► that all they did was improve the functionality

01:11:55 ◼   ► of the existing user interface.

01:11:57 ◼   ► People weren't distracted by saying,

01:11:59 ◼   ► "Nevermind about making whatever work,

01:12:01 ◼   ► "make this new thing, or work better or whatever."

01:12:05 ◼   ► That is mostly, I think, a perception issue,

01:12:10 ◼   ► but I think trying to achieve that perception

01:12:14 ◼   ► from the customer base influences

01:12:18 ◼   ► the way the engineering organization operates.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Like in the same way that if you're trying to impress people

01:12:23 ◼   ► with gee whiz features, it influences how you assess

01:12:26 ◼   ► like risk reliability or whatever.

01:12:28 ◼   ► If you said straight out that like, oh,

01:12:30 ◼   ► this is gonna be a no new feature release,

01:12:32 ◼   ► that gives the engineering organization the freedom

01:12:34 ◼   ► to make different trade-offs internally

01:12:36 ◼   ► because there's no pressure to make the whizzy new feature

01:12:39 ◼   ► that's gonna be impressive in a demo

01:12:40 ◼   ► because you've already said like the public message

01:12:42 ◼   ► was no new features, so you don't have to do that.

01:12:45 ◼   ► And then you can make, when you make decisions about

01:12:47 ◼   ► what are we gonna refactor, what are we gonna rip out,

01:12:50 ◼   ► what giant new internal frameworks like GCD

01:12:52 ◼   ► we're gonna add, you can make all those decisions

01:12:54 ◼   ► without the pressure of having to serve

01:12:57 ◼   ► the external need to be impressive.

01:13:00 ◼   ► So it's kind of weird that the phone hardware

01:13:03 ◼   ► has been on that cadence for so long,

01:13:04 ◼   ► but the phone software has definitely

01:13:05 ◼   ► not been on that cadence, right?

01:13:07 ◼   ► - Well, and I would argue the hardware,

01:13:09 ◼   ► that's kind of a red herring.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Like, if you look at the 3S releases of iPhones

01:13:13 ◼   ► we've had so far, the 3GS, the 4S, and the 5S,

01:13:16 ◼   ► those were all major hardware releases.

01:13:18 ◼   ► the S minor revision designation is really only cosmetic

01:13:23 ◼   ► in all three of those cases.

01:13:26 ◼   ► - But it's not cosmetic because like,

01:13:28 ◼   ► it is cosmetic but it's like the cosmetics

01:13:32 ◼   ► are a huge part of the hardware design

01:13:35 ◼   ► because it's manufacturing lines,

01:13:37 ◼   ► it's the tooling, it's the materials,

01:13:39 ◼   ► it's the, you know, it's all that part of it

01:13:41 ◼   ► is a huge part of the product.

01:13:43 ◼   ► We think the product is like the tech specs of the CPU

01:13:46 ◼   ► or whatever and you're right, they made S things

01:13:47 ◼   ► is like the entire guts of this phone are different.

01:13:49 ◼   ► How is this like a minor revision?

01:13:51 ◼   ► There's like no shared part with the previous one.

01:13:53 ◼   ► But that's just the guts, right?

01:13:55 ◼   ► The big part of these phones is how do you make

01:13:57 ◼   ► a million little glass aluminum rectangle thingies

01:14:00 ◼   ► to the quality control that Apple wants?

01:14:02 ◼   ► And they put a huge investment into making

01:14:05 ◼   ► the production lines and the tools and everything,

01:14:08 ◼   ► the materials and the expertise to assemble these phones.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And they wanna get their bang for their buck out of that.

01:14:12 ◼   ► So they said, we're gonna make two years worth of phones

01:14:15 ◼   ► that use the same materials assembled

01:14:17 ◼   ► more or less the same way with only possibly minor external changes to, you know, like

01:14:21 ◼   ► again moving the antennas and the break points of the whatever, you know, construction techniques,

01:14:27 ◼   ► like whatever they're using or whatever, they want to get two years of value out of that.

01:14:30 ◼   ► CPU architecture?

01:14:31 ◼   ► Yeah, but like the silicon I think is easier because that's like, look, silicon revs when

01:14:35 ◼   ► it revs, right?

01:14:36 ◼   ► But that is a separate thing, but I'm saying the physical part of it is such a big part

01:14:40 ◼   ► of, you know, physical products that that's where they want to get the thing.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And like the fabs, like they don't have to make a new fab,

01:14:46 ◼   ► you know, except when they do die shrinks and stuff.

01:14:49 ◼   ► But it's like, once you have the fab up and running,

01:14:50 ◼   ► if you give it a different design,

01:14:52 ◼   ► then it just has a different design, right?

01:14:54 ◼   ► And if someone gets a new fab, like it's not part of,

01:14:56 ◼   ► it's not so much part of like the, you know,

01:14:58 ◼   ► the production line for a particular phone,

01:14:59 ◼   ► I think is more built for that phone

01:15:02 ◼   ► than a production line for a particular CPU

01:15:04 ◼   ► is built for that CPU.

01:15:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, but where they're having problems is not,

01:15:10 ◼   ► you know, oh, my 5S, you know,

01:15:12 ◼   ► the parts don't fit right together.

01:15:14 ◼   ► where they're having problems is in the software

01:15:18 ◼   ► and the low-level component interactions

01:15:20 ◼   ► and the services and stuff that like--

01:15:22 ◼   ► - But do you think that's hardware related?

01:15:24 ◼   ► Even the 64-bit transition,

01:15:25 ◼   ► I know there was problems with going from 33 to 64

01:15:28 ◼   ► and the 64-bit versions were buggy and stuff like that,

01:15:31 ◼   ► but I have to imagine,

01:15:33 ◼   ► you have to pay that transition some time.

01:15:34 ◼   ► They want it to be the first out of the gate.

01:15:36 ◼   ► I think they've reaped benefits of being the first,

01:15:38 ◼   ► but other than that,

01:15:39 ◼   ► I don't think any other silicon-based transition

01:15:42 ◼   ► has been particularly killer to them.

01:15:45 ◼   ► - No, no, I'm just saying that the idea

01:15:47 ◼   ► that the iPhone hardware is on this TikTok cadence,

01:15:51 ◼   ► I would say is mostly wrong.

01:15:52 ◼   ► It is on that TikTok cadence

01:15:56 ◼   ► in only the physical shell way,

01:16:00 ◼   ► but the parts inside seem to change

01:16:03 ◼   ► just as rapidly with every version of the iPhone

01:16:05 ◼   ► regardless of what letter is after its name.

01:16:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I agree on that,

01:16:08 ◼   ► but I think the physical shell part

01:16:10 ◼   ► is a huge percentage of the hardware product.

01:16:13 ◼   ► And so that's why I don't think you can dismiss it

01:16:14 ◼   ► as like just cosmetics or just the visual thing,

01:16:17 ◼   ► because like when you think about

01:16:19 ◼   ► the physical hardware product,

01:16:20 ◼   ► it's almost as if the silicon part is like,

01:16:22 ◼   ► might as well be a separate thing.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Like you have a certain allotted amount of space

01:16:25 ◼   ► that you have to fit in,

01:16:26 ◼   ► but really the product designers of the iPhone

01:16:28 ◼   ► are designing a physical thing.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And by the way, this little silicon sliver

01:16:34 ◼   ► goes in whatever's left over when we put the battery in.

01:16:37 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know,

01:16:38 ◼   ► obviously it's not done that way or whatever,

01:16:39 ◼   ► If you look at the parts inside there, the phone is all everything else and then this little tiny thing

01:16:44 ◼   ► That's the actual phone phone

01:16:45 ◼   ► So I just see that I just see that as a separate cadence and that cadence has not so much been on the you know

01:16:53 ◼   ► Because like I think they just change everything every year like they get from year to year

01:16:56 ◼   ► They change like who's going to sell us the our radio chip this year like forget about the stuff

01:17:01 ◼   ► You know who's gonna sell the display controller this year or the battery controller like from year to year

01:17:05 ◼   ► It's just like whoever has the best chips with the best specs or if Apple needs to do custom designs itself

01:17:09 ◼   ► It just changes all the time on the phones and that hasn't been a you know a particular source of problems

01:17:16 ◼   ► I think if it is we don't have an insight to know like oh

01:17:19 ◼   ► This one phone had problems because of some flaky chip, and you didn't know about it

01:17:23 ◼   ► But next year Apple picked a different manufacturer and ironed out those problems

01:17:26 ◼   ► Or you know OS X or iOS was working around this problem and this buggy chipset

01:17:31 ◼   ► And you didn't know but it took a lot of engineering effort from Apple, but for OS X Apple you know

01:17:36 ◼   ► The Mac lines change much more slowly in a much more predictable way with you know

01:17:42 ◼   ► We kind of know is going into them with the Intel chipsets. We know it's available for them to go in to go into and

01:17:47 ◼   ► I think

01:17:49 ◼   ► For the OS 10 cadence like Apple is just again

01:17:52 ◼   ► You know chasing itself chasing its own tail of or as someone said like I was asking who they're chasing so they're chasing iOS

01:18:00 ◼   ► It's like well. That's just chasing yourself because they are iOS as well

01:18:02 ◼   ► They can make the decision of how to move along with two things and cadence to each other

01:18:07 ◼   ► But I think that type of cadence

01:18:09 ◼   ► formalized that type of kid is formalized and the reason you had to formalize it is like perception PR like if you formalize it

01:18:14 ◼   ► like Intel did Intel formalized it too because they

01:18:18 ◼   ► Recognized that if you just do this internally kind of sort of secretly

01:18:21 ◼   ► Then the marketing PR organization still has to come up with some reason why everything is awesome every single year

01:18:27 ◼   ► Whereas if you if you announce this is this is our new strategy for the foreseeable future

01:18:31 ◼   ► then only every other year do you have to impress

01:18:34 ◼   ► and everyone just gets used to,

01:18:36 ◼   ► oh, this is the year where they just make stuff work better.

01:18:38 ◼   ► And that becomes a story in itself and people like that.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Like customers like it and you don't get the bad stories

01:18:43 ◼   ► about, well, it was WWC,

01:18:45 ◼   ► but Apple didn't have any new features.

01:18:46 ◼   ► You just know this is a talk year or whatever.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I forget which one is the frigging ticker that talk.

01:18:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I never, I always forget that every time.

01:18:52 ◼   ► - You know what I mean.

01:18:53 ◼   ► - It's like, it's always, it's the opposite of what you think

01:18:54 ◼   ► like the tick, I think the tick is the minor one.

01:18:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the talk is like the loud one

01:18:59 ◼   ► 'cause it's, I don't know.

01:19:02 ◼   ► It doesn't make sense.

01:19:03 ◼   ► But anyway, a TikTok cadence,

01:19:05 ◼   ► Apple has considered and sort of played around with

01:19:10 ◼   ► in the past and continues to play around with arguably

01:19:13 ◼   ► on the non-silicon part of the hardware side.

01:19:16 ◼   ► I think that has the best sort of, you know,

01:19:21 ◼   ► the best features of any solution I can think of

01:19:23 ◼   ► other than the silly solution.

01:19:24 ◼   ► People will say, "Just be more careful and do stuff better."

01:19:27 ◼   ► Like that's not a solution, right?

01:19:29 ◼   ► because of the external effects of this,

01:19:32 ◼   ► because it is a thing that you announced to the world

01:19:35 ◼   ► and that announcement frees up things

01:19:39 ◼   ► inside your organization to act in a way

01:19:40 ◼   ► that they wouldn't be able to

01:19:42 ◼   ► if you tried to do it only as an internal change.

01:19:45 ◼   ► - You know, I read something earlier today

01:19:48 ◼   ► that I thought was really fascinating

01:19:50 ◼   ► for a bunch of reasons, but it's relevant here.

01:19:52 ◼   ► On Objective-CIO, they had an interview

01:19:54 ◼   ► with Andy Matuszak, I hope I pronounced that right,

01:19:58 ◼   ► I'm so sorry if I didn't.

01:19:59 ◼   ► Anyway, he used to work on UIKit of memory serves,

01:20:03 ◼   ► and they had an interview with him.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And the question that they asked was,

01:20:08 ◼   ► what effect do you think Swift will have

01:20:09 ◼   ► on Apple's framework APIs?

01:20:11 ◼   ► Do you expect something here in the short term?

01:20:13 ◼   ► And his answer was very interesting and relevant.

01:20:16 ◼   ► I don't actually have insider knowledge here,

01:20:18 ◼   ► so this is just speculation,

01:20:19 ◼   ► but I think it will be a long process.

01:20:21 ◼   ► At least when I was there,

01:20:23 ◼   ► the team spent the majority of their time

01:20:25 ◼   ► not maintaining and improving frameworks,

01:20:28 ◼   ► but really supporting market features

01:20:30 ◼   ► like new screen sizes or support for new hardware.

01:20:34 ◼   ► That's what takes most of the time.

01:20:36 ◼   ► So it will take a conscious decision

01:20:38 ◼   ► to do anything non-trivial,

01:20:39 ◼   ► and I don't see that forthcoming.

01:20:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, that actually mirrors what we heard

01:20:44 ◼   ► when somebody who works on iWork

01:20:46 ◼   ► wrote into us a couple of, maybe a month or two ago now,

01:20:49 ◼   ► who wrote in, 'cause we were talking about how,

01:20:52 ◼   ► we were complaining about iWork

01:20:54 ◼   ► and how there seems to be nobody working on it for years

01:20:56 ◼   ► and all of a sudden it gets rushed together.

01:20:57 ◼   ► And this person who wrote in basically said,

01:21:01 ◼   ► that's not the case, that instead,

01:21:03 ◼   ► the team is constantly working on it,

01:21:05 ◼   ► but that iWork always has to show off

01:21:07 ◼   ► the latest and greatest OS features

01:21:09 ◼   ► and directions of the company's sharing

01:21:12 ◼   ► and cloud platforms and everything.

01:21:13 ◼   ► And so they're constantly having to keep up

01:21:16 ◼   ► with the new marketing features

01:21:18 ◼   ► and the new directions of things like iCloud

01:21:21 ◼   ► instead of working on the core product functionality.

01:21:24 ◼   ► So it's actually very,

01:21:26 ◼   ► it sounds like this is possibly

01:21:29 ◼   ► infecting many parts of Apple.

01:21:30 ◼   ► And this is like, their market features

01:21:33 ◼   ► are moving so quickly and are so aggressive

01:21:36 ◼   ► that the rest of the engineering department

01:21:39 ◼   ► is maybe not able to keep up with things like quality

01:21:43 ◼   ► and long-term feature maintenance.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Is that, you think that's fair

01:21:46 ◼   ► based on what we've heard so far?

01:21:48 ◼   ► - Certainly sounds right to me.

01:21:49 ◼   ► - One thing that gives me hope here,

01:21:50 ◼   ► I mentioned this on the talk shows, I'll be quick,

01:21:52 ◼   ► but the watch is gonna be where Apple focuses

01:21:55 ◼   ► most of their PR for the next little while.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And we'll see how it goes, how long that lasts.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Maybe the watch is gonna be the primary focus

01:22:04 ◼   ► of Apple's marketing for the next year or two or three,

01:22:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:08 ◼   ► But I think that might help take some of the marketing burden

01:22:12 ◼   ► off of the other products.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And so maybe by focusing so much on the watch

01:22:17 ◼   ► and first watch kit stuff, and then later

01:22:20 ◼   ► on the native SDK and then the second generation

01:22:22 ◼   ► of the watch hardware, maybe that will be such the focus

01:22:25 ◼   ► of the marketing that just like the Mac was kind of

01:22:29 ◼   ► playing second fiddle when the iPhone came out,

01:22:31 ◼   ► maybe the watch will then make the iPhone and iPad

01:22:35 ◼   ► and the Mac now, it'll give them like a break

01:22:37 ◼   ► for a little while from being in the spotlight

01:22:39 ◼   ► and give them a chance to stabilize.

01:22:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, the whole idea of like having to support

01:22:44 ◼   ► new hardware factors or new APIs.

01:22:47 ◼   ► New APIs you have a little more control over

01:22:49 ◼   ► because you can just lay off on that.

01:22:51 ◼   ► But new hardware features, that kind of

01:22:53 ◼   ► gets back to what kind of company Apple is.

01:22:55 ◼   ► They're trying to make entire products that

01:23:00 ◼   ► have hardware and software integrated

01:23:02 ◼   ► and trying to improve both aspects of that.

01:23:04 ◼   ► And it seems like hardware is like, oh, I

01:23:07 ◼   ► want to make a nicer phone, a cooler laptop,

01:23:09 ◼   ► like I want to make a better product or whatever.

01:23:11 ◼   ► And that thing I was just talking about,

01:23:14 ◼   ► changing the chipsets you use for your radios

01:23:18 ◼   ► or the manufacturers for your power controller,

01:23:20 ◼   ► your display controller inside the phone.

01:23:22 ◼   ► You're just changing that all the time

01:23:23 ◼   ► because you wanna get the one that has the best features,

01:23:25 ◼   ► the lowest power, the best contract deal for parts,

01:23:28 ◼   ► and all these other things that change year over year.

01:23:31 ◼   ► I can imagine lots of time being spent supporting that.

01:23:35 ◼   ► It's like, can't you guys just pick one manufacturer

01:23:37 ◼   ► for like the, you know, whatever IO controller

01:23:39 ◼   ► for iOS devices and keep it for one or two years in a row

01:23:43 ◼   ► so that we can do something else or display controller.

01:23:46 ◼   ► you know, like that would make their lives easier,

01:23:49 ◼   ► but it would mean, well,

01:23:51 ◼   ► but the new one is slightly lower power

01:23:53 ◼   ► and it has this extra little feature

01:23:55 ◼   ► and we can combine these two things into one chip.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And it's like, if we don't do that,

01:23:59 ◼   ► if we try to make it easier for the software guys

01:24:01 ◼   ► by trying to make a stable, like a more stable platform,

01:24:03 ◼   ► kind of like the Intel, you know, motherboard,

01:24:07 ◼   ► Intel based motherboards and chip sets are whatever,

01:24:09 ◼   ► like a little bit more stable,

01:24:10 ◼   ► then the other guys will have a better phone than us.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And we will, every year we have to be,

01:24:14 ◼   ► we have to be better, better battery life,

01:24:15 ◼   ► better everything like I think the screen size changes.

01:24:19 ◼   ► That is a big hassle for them to do.

01:24:21 ◼   ► But part of that is like they're paying the price

01:24:23 ◼   ► for their expedience and doing the original version of iOS.

01:24:26 ◼   ► It's like, let's just get it working on this one phone.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Like they didn't do what Android did,

01:24:30 ◼   ► which was, was forced to do, which is,

01:24:33 ◼   ► let's make a generic, let's try at least

01:24:34 ◼   ► to make a generic framework for doing UI

01:24:36 ◼   ► on variable screen sizes.

01:24:38 ◼   ► And the Apple was like,

01:24:39 ◼   ► we're at the edge of what is even possible.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Just make it work on the original iPhone.

01:24:44 ◼   ► that is the mandate no matter what you have to do.

01:24:46 ◼   ► And so they've paid the price and like, you know,

01:24:48 ◼   ► they reap the benefits being the first person out

01:24:50 ◼   ► with the iPhone that no one else could even think

01:24:52 ◼   ► was possible.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And then the price is the engineering compromises

01:24:55 ◼   ► you had to do to get there,

01:24:56 ◼   ► meaning you have a long road ahead of you

01:24:57 ◼   ► to be able to support arbitrary resolutions,

01:25:00 ◼   ► arbitrary screen sizes, like,

01:25:01 ◼   ► and so that how many years has it taken

01:25:03 ◼   ► to get to where we are now with like multiple screen sizes

01:25:05 ◼   ► and auto layout and all the scaling and the high res screens?

01:25:08 ◼   ► Like it was very much unlike OS X

01:25:12 ◼   ► where in the beginning of OS X,

01:25:14 ◼   ► they had this model of what the future

01:25:15 ◼   ► of the display system is gonna be like,

01:25:17 ◼   ► and the hardware wasn't there to support it,

01:25:19 ◼   ► and it was terrible, and they're just like,

01:25:20 ◼   ► "We just gotta hold on for like six more years,

01:25:23 ◼   ► and this crap will work right."

01:25:26 ◼   ► And even then, they had to do

01:25:28 ◼   ► some fairly large architectural changes

01:25:30 ◼   ► to get stuff off the CPU and onto the GPU.

01:25:32 ◼   ► So everything in engineering, software, hardware,

01:25:36 ◼   ► engineering is a trade-off, and I just think

01:25:38 ◼   ► what we see now, and this whole idea of the UI

01:25:40 ◼   ► kept people spending their time treading water

01:25:42 ◼   ► and doing marketing features,

01:25:43 ◼   ► is the result of engineering trade-offs made

01:25:46 ◼   ► many, many years earlier,

01:25:47 ◼   ► just kind of coming home to roost now.

01:25:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, that makes sense.

01:25:51 ◼   ► All right, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

01:25:55 ◼   ► Squarespace, Igloo, and Fracture,

01:25:57 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:25:59 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:26:02 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:26:04 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:26:07 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:26:09 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:26:10 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:26:11 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:26:17 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, or it was accidental

01:26:22 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:26:27 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:26:32 ◼   ► @CASEYLISS

01:26:37 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liszt

01:26:38 ◼   ► M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:26:41 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment

01:26:44 ◼   ► S-I-R-A-C

01:26:46 ◼   ► USA Syracuse

01:26:49 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:26:52 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:26:54 ◼   ► Accidental

01:26:57 ◼   ► Tech podcast

01:26:59 ◼   ► So long

01:27:02 ◼   ► A hundred episodes in the bag.

01:27:05 ◼   ► God, we're getting old.

01:27:08 ◼   ► So how about the Detroit Auto Show?

01:27:10 ◼   ► Did anything happen to the Detroit Auto Show other than the Ford GT?

01:27:14 ◼   ► The NSX.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, but everyone knew about that.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Everyone saw pictures.

01:27:19 ◼   ► What was new that we learned about the NSX?

01:27:20 ◼   ► I haven't looked at any of the news, so I'm asking you.