Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 405.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Electric,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Text Expander and Trade.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hi Jason.

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Hi Myke.

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Oh, hello.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, we're on a first name basis here.

00:00:23 ◼   ► It's very friendly.

00:00:24 ◼   ► You know, it's a podcast where we can--

00:00:26 ◼   ► - You sounded quite trepidatious to me.

00:00:28 ◼   ► - I think, well, you just said my first name,

00:00:31 ◼   ► so I wanted to counter,

00:00:33 ◼   ► and it got all personal in here, is what I'm saying,

00:00:36 ◼   ► and what better for a podcast?

00:00:38 ◼   ► - Are you saying I need to call you Jason Snell now?

00:00:41 ◼   ► Mr. Jason Snell, ask that.

00:00:42 ◼   ► - No, I don't.

00:00:43 ◼   ► I don't.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Just let's get tangential here

00:00:47 ◼   ► before we even do the Snell Talk question,

00:00:49 ◼   ► which is I just wanna point out

00:00:50 ◼   ► that in the ATP show notes last week,

00:00:53 ◼   ► they referred to Steven Hackett as Steven.

00:00:55 ◼   ► They referred to me as Snell,

00:00:56 ◼   ► and they referred to Jon Gruber as Jon Gruber.

00:00:59 ◼   ► And I don't understand what's happening over there.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - That's interesting.

00:01:02 ◼   ► - I prefer to be called Jason and not Snell

00:01:05 ◼   ► because it's more personal.

00:01:09 ◼   ► It's like, oh, it's our buddy Jason.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - We don't need to call you Snell

00:01:11 ◼   ► because there's not another Jason

00:01:14 ◼   ► in like that immediate group, right?

00:01:16 ◼   ► - Well, and I grew up, honestly, and I grew up with,

00:01:19 ◼   ► that you always had to specify which Jason it was.

00:01:22 ◼   ► So I get it.

00:01:23 ◼   ► But if it's clear, I'm just saying,

00:01:26 ◼   ► Why is Steven-

00:01:27 ◼   ► - 'Cause when I say I understand John Gruber, right?

00:01:29 ◼   ► Because there is a John on the show.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - There's so many Johns.

00:01:32 ◼   ► I get it, right?

00:01:32 ◼   ► But like Steven, incredibly common name.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And they're like, "No, no, it's Steven.

00:01:36 ◼   ► "You know, y'all know."

00:01:37 ◼   ► - You'll know Steven.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - It's like Sal who y'all know.

00:01:40 ◼   ► It's Steven who y'all know.

00:01:41 ◼   ► But then Snell with his story that he wrote.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So I don't get it, but hi Myke.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - Hello Mr. Jason Snell Esquire.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:01:50 ◼   ► - I have a #SnellTalk question for you.

00:01:52 ◼   ► It comes from Victor who wants to know,

00:01:55 ◼   ► Mr. Jason Snell-Asquire, how do you animate

00:01:57 ◼   ► the cycling six colors in the menu bar of your website?

00:02:01 ◼   ► - Well, I stand by the server and whenever a beep comes in

00:02:06 ◼   ► and it means that somebody is watching the site,

00:02:09 ◼   ► there's a crank, people don't know this,

00:02:10 ◼   ► but on the side of the Leno box,

00:02:12 ◼   ► there's a little yellow crank that you fold out

00:02:14 ◼   ► and you crank it and the colors change.

00:02:17 ◼   ► And that's how it works.

00:02:18 ◼   ► It's JavaScript and CSS and Krista Murgen did it.

00:02:23 ◼   ► There's not much more to it than that.

00:02:26 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:02:27 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a #SNELTalk question

00:02:30 ◼   ► for us to open an episode of the show with,

00:02:33 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the #SNELTalk.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I use question mark SNELTalk

00:02:36 ◼   ► in the Relay FM members discord.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I have some real time follow up for you, Jason,

00:02:41 ◼   ► based on the ATP show notes for episode 480.

00:02:44 ◼   ► James Thompson is referred to as James Thompson.

00:02:47 ◼   ► John Gruber's name is crossed out.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Casey's referred to as Casey.

00:02:52 ◼   ► and uh... John Siracusa is referred to as John. Yes but that makes sense though right? John Casey

00:02:58 ◼   ► Marco that totally makes sense. Makes that track. Because they're the hosts of the show. Yep. But

00:03:03 ◼   ► but I'm Snell, Stephen is Stephen, and James is James Thompson. Yep. I don't know. I have some

00:03:10 ◼   ► real follow-up, well you do, the studio display firmware has been updated to quote unquote improve

00:03:17 ◼   ► the camera. Mm-hmm. That's what they said. And did they? So I was out running and I got

00:03:26 ◼   ► a text from Apple PR saying we're releasing a firmware update. I'm like oh boy. So I get

00:03:31 ◼   ► back to the house and I update the firmware on one of the displays but not the other one

00:03:36 ◼   ► because I have a review unit that I haven't sent back yet and I have one that I want.

00:03:39 ◼   ► Pretty great that you've got two displays right now, isn't it? Right? So I updated the

00:03:42 ◼   ► firmware on one and that took a lot longer than you thought you would think because you

00:03:45 ◼   ► you have to update to a beta of the OS

00:03:48 ◼   ► and then you have to update from the beta the firmware.

00:03:50 ◼   ► - When you say the OS, you mean Mac OS,

00:03:52 ◼   ► or you have to update to a Mac OS beta,

00:03:54 ◼   ► then it updates the monitor. - Yeah, to a developer

00:03:55 ◼   ► or public beta, and then it updates the monitor,

00:03:58 ◼   ► which is not great 'cause now I'm on a beta again,

00:04:00 ◼   ► and it broke stuff, it broke shortcuts,

00:04:03 ◼   ► it broke a bunch of stuff, so I'm not happy about that.

00:04:06 ◼   ► And the truth is, you could just,

00:04:08 ◼   ► all you need to do is update something,

00:04:10 ◼   ► some Mac to the beta, update the display,

00:04:13 ◼   ► And then it'll work the same on any Mac it connects to

00:04:17 ◼   ► 'cause it's standalone software running on this thing.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Anyway, so is it different?

00:04:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Is it better?

00:04:23 ◼   ► I guess.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Like in our show doc,

00:04:26 ◼   ► you've got like image looks a little better,

00:04:28 ◼   ► crop is better.

00:04:28 ◼   ► And I added question marks at the end of them

00:04:30 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, what, what?

00:04:32 ◼   ► And it's hard to say,

00:04:33 ◼   ► but I had them placed as closely together as possible.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I did a bunch of video.

00:04:38 ◼   ► So I have one on an arm.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And so I had that one basically kind of spooning

00:04:44 ◼   ► the other one that it was right in front of it.

00:04:47 ◼   ► So that the cameras were very, very close.

00:04:51 ◼   ► One of them was about a half an inch higher

00:04:53 ◼   ► and maybe a half an inch back,

00:04:55 ◼   ► but they're as close as they could possibly get

00:04:57 ◼   ► to one another and not interfere with the wide angle camera

00:05:00 ◼   ► on either one of them, right?

00:05:01 ◼   ► Because when I was setting it up, I was like,

00:05:03 ◼   ► "Oh, that looks good."

00:05:04 ◼   ► And then I realized that I could see the top

00:05:06 ◼   ► of the other display.

00:05:07 ◼   ► So I had to adjust a little bit.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I got them as close as I could.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And as far as I can tell in my setup,

00:05:13 ◼   ► and of course every environment's different

00:05:14 ◼   ► 'cause it is dynamically changing its settings

00:05:16 ◼   ► based on who knows what, what it sees,

00:05:20 ◼   ► it looked like they backed off on the crop a little bit.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So that gives them more pixels to work with,

00:05:27 ◼   ► which is kind of smart.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I think maybe the crop was too aggressive

00:05:31 ◼   ► and it seems to be maybe a little less aggressive

00:05:35 ◼   ► when it's moving around,

00:05:37 ◼   ► that it does that a little bit less.

00:05:40 ◼   ► But, oh, and key point, if you turn it off,

00:05:45 ◼   ► the crop, when you turn off center stage,

00:05:47 ◼   ► is a little bit lower.

00:05:49 ◼   ► It's still not as low as it probably should be,

00:05:51 ◼   ► but it's a little bit lower than it was before,

00:05:53 ◼   ► where you turn it off and it would be like

00:05:54 ◼   ► the top half of your head

00:05:56 ◼   ► when you were sitting in front of your display,

00:05:57 ◼   ► which is just terribly framed.

00:05:59 ◼   ► They seem to have moved it a little bit.

00:06:01 ◼   ► So is it better?

00:06:03 ◼   ► A little.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Does this solve all the problems?

00:06:06 ◼   ► Well, no.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't change the fact

00:06:08 ◼   ► that this is a wide angle 12 megapixel camera

00:06:13 ◼   ► that they also used in the iPad

00:06:14 ◼   ► and that it is not ever gonna provide,

00:06:19 ◼   ► the hardware wise,

00:06:19 ◼   ► it's just never gonna provide the same experience

00:06:22 ◼   ► as a camera that is devoting all of its pixels

00:06:25 ◼   ► to the perfect frame of you sitting in front of the display.

00:06:28 ◼   ► That's just a decision they made

00:06:30 ◼   ► that they thought it was more important

00:06:31 ◼   ► to forego some image quality

00:06:33 ◼   ► in return for getting center stage.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And as you pointed out to me privately last week,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and then also I think mentioned on Connected,

00:06:42 ◼   ► I am a big proponent of center stage on the Mac.

00:06:45 ◼   ► So it's my fault that this happened.

00:06:46 ◼   ► I apologize to everyone.

00:06:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:49 ◼   ► Myke literally wrote, you did this.

00:06:52 ◼   ► - It was very funny to me because

00:06:55 ◼   ► I don't remember what it was,

00:06:57 ◼   ► but I think at a moment you mentioned

00:07:00 ◼   ► like maybe center stage was a mistake.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I think we were talking about this.

00:07:04 ◼   ► and to which I said, "You, you for months, months."

00:07:07 ◼   ► And I was like, I think I went back

00:07:09 ◼   ► and found your first article,

00:07:10 ◼   ► like where you said like this must, you know.

00:07:12 ◼   ► - I'm in the bag for center stage.

00:07:14 ◼   ► So here's the thing,

00:07:15 ◼   ► three quarters of the Macs that are sold are laptops, right?

00:07:18 ◼   ► It kind of makes sense on a laptop.

00:07:20 ◼   ► You're doing a Zoom call, you put it on the coffee table,

00:07:23 ◼   ► you're sitting back, it auto frames you,

00:07:25 ◼   ► you know, you're talking to family

00:07:26 ◼   ► and a family member comes in,

00:07:28 ◼   ► like it makes more sense on a laptop.

00:07:30 ◼   ► I still think that there's a use case for it on an iMac

00:07:32 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:07:33 ◼   ► because it's sitting on a table somewhere

00:07:35 ◼   ► and you may be moving around or it's in the kitchen

00:07:37 ◼   ► or they've got all these different places

00:07:38 ◼   ► where you might use an iMac theoretically.

00:07:40 ◼   ► I have yet to see a kitchen iMac in the wild.

00:07:44 ◼   ► I'm sure they exist.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Anyway, a standalone display to sit at a desk and use

00:07:49 ◼   ► is probably the least likely Mac scenario

00:07:55 ◼   ► that requires center stage, but they ran with it, right?

00:07:58 ◼   ► - I think they made the wrong call.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I believe the studio display is collateral damage

00:08:03 ◼   ► in an overall product decision that Apple has made,

00:08:07 ◼   ► which is that all front facing cameras

00:08:10 ◼   ► will get center stage except the iPhone,

00:08:13 ◼   ► maybe the iPhone one day, but.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - I think you're probably right, and I think that,

00:08:17 ◼   ► although I think that our little corner of the world

00:08:19 ◼   ► is not necessarily representative of the whole user base,

00:08:24 ◼   ► for a standalone display, it's a lot closer, right?

00:08:29 ◼   ► Like the people who focus on Apple stuff

00:08:31 ◼   ► and listen to podcasts about Apple and stuff like that.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Probably not representative of all Apple users,

00:08:37 ◼   ► certainly all iPhone users,

00:08:39 ◼   ► probably not even of all Mac users.

00:08:41 ◼   ► But when you get down to the level

00:08:42 ◼   ► of the standalone $1,600 display,

00:08:45 ◼   ► that's for people who care about

00:08:47 ◼   ► the resolution of that display

00:08:51 ◼   ► and the fact that it's 5K at 27.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And that is actually kind of us.

00:08:56 ◼   ► And so seeing this reaction, it's very clear.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And I'll just say it.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Like, I'm not as strident about this

00:09:03 ◼   ► because I kind of don't care.

00:09:05 ◼   ► I like center stage and I can perfectly accept

00:09:08 ◼   ► that the quality is lower.

00:09:10 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, okay, you know, whatever,

00:09:12 ◼   ► but center stage is cool.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Like I get it, but it's clear, I think,

00:09:15 ◼   ► that most people just want a nice webcam that works

00:09:19 ◼   ► and that if Apple had built in a static 4K webcam

00:09:22 ◼   ► properly framed in a way that we have come to appreciate it,

00:09:25 ◼   ► that would be good enough.

00:09:27 ◼   ► And they didn't.

00:09:30 ◼   ► And I think that center stage still has its place

00:09:32 ◼   ► on the Mac, but one, they might wanna consider

00:09:36 ◼   ► upgrading the optics on it, like using a better camera.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And two, let's not, just to step back a second,

00:09:42 ◼   ► I still think the firmware is bad.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I still think that turn off center stage crop

00:09:47 ◼   ► is still wrong, it's better than it was,

00:09:50 ◼   ► but I think it's still too high.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I used it over the weekend for a D&D session

00:09:54 ◼   ► and I had to like lower my display and raise my chair

00:09:58 ◼   ► in order to try and get it to the right height.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I don't know, it doesn't seem like it's,

00:10:03 ◼   ► it still doesn't seem right.

00:10:04 ◼   ► So there's that.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And then I think if you,

00:10:07 ◼   ► people looked at like the white balance

00:10:09 ◼   ► and looked at a histogram of the image

00:10:10 ◼   ► and did some like contrast stuff.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And it's like, I also feel like

00:10:14 ◼   ► the software is making bad decisions

00:10:15 ◼   ► that make it look worse than it needs to,

00:10:18 ◼   ► even if the hardware is so limited.

00:10:20 ◼   ► So I think that the firmware shipped in an unfinished state

00:10:25 ◼   ► or an unacceptable state.

00:10:26 ◼   ► and that's unfortunate.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And then the big issue,

00:10:32 ◼   ► which is the Apple it just works black box kind of thing

00:10:34 ◼   ► is out there too, which is,

00:10:36 ◼   ► why is there not a settings panel somewhere for this thing?

00:10:39 ◼   ► Why can I not choose to reduce the color,

00:10:42 ◼   ► you know, saturation or change the contrast

00:10:45 ◼   ► or something, anything.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And maybe it's because they're using their image pipeline.

00:10:49 ◼   ► Maybe do we need photographic styles for our webcam?

00:10:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:10:54 ◼   ► This would also solve your problem, right?

00:10:56 ◼   ► Like a webcam settings app for a separate webcam,

00:11:00 ◼   ► frequently those have a little box that lets you say,

00:11:03 ◼   ► what's the refresh rate of your lights

00:11:05 ◼   ► so that it doesn't flicker?

00:11:06 ◼   ► And Apple's like, no, no, no, we got this, we got this,

00:11:10 ◼   ► you don't need any settings, but they don't got this.

00:11:12 ◼   ► - Not on the studio display.

00:11:14 ◼   ► So listeners may remember me saying that on my iMac

00:11:18 ◼   ► and on my MacBook Pro, the flickering issue

00:11:21 ◼   ► that I was having here at the studio

00:11:23 ◼   ► because of the overhead light and I have had gone away

00:11:26 ◼   ► that Apple seemed to have in Mac OS 12.3 fixed this.

00:11:30 ◼   ► The studio display is not fixed.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Weirdly, in about one in five attempts of me opening

00:11:36 ◼   ► and quitting an app like Zoom, it will fix itself,

00:11:40 ◼   ► but it is incredibly inconsistent.

00:11:42 ◼   ► So like I can open an app and it's flickering,

00:11:44 ◼   ► quit, open, quit, open, quit, open, quit, oh, it's fixed.

00:11:48 ◼   ► So I don't understand why I think I'm using

00:11:50 ◼   ► the current shipping firmware. I don't know if there's any change in the beta firmware.

00:11:56 ◼   ► But at the moment I'm having this annoying situation where I'm at my desk on my studio

00:12:00 ◼   ► display and I need to do a video call. So I need to go over to my iMac, turn on my iMac

00:12:05 ◼   ► and use that one instead because my iMac's camera is fine. Finally it's very frustrating.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I don't know why this is happening. It seems like it's, you know, if you can fix it in

00:12:13 ◼   ► one place why haven't you fixed it everywhere? And like Jason said, if they just allowed

00:12:17 ◼   ► me to change the rate from 60 to 50 Hertz or whichever way around it is, I could fix

00:12:22 ◼   ► this. Like I've been able to, like every Logitech camera lets me fix this.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Settings, settings, settings.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah, just let me change it.

00:12:27 ◼   ► The default prop thing.

00:12:28 ◼   ► You can put this in system preferences. Just put it in system preferences. Like it's fine,

00:12:31 ◼   ► you know?

00:12:32 ◼   ► Like if you want to turn off center stage but you want to have the framing you want,

00:12:34 ◼   ► why is there not like a little interface with a little box where I can drag out how big

00:12:38 ◼   ► I want the frame to be and where in the frame I want it to be and have it be like I want

00:12:43 ◼   ► it to be a little bit lower. But Apple's like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got this."

00:12:46 ◼   ► And again, they don't, they don't got it.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And I can like setting aside the,

00:12:51 ◼   ► should they have put center stage on the desktop

00:12:53 ◼   ► and clearly from everybody in our sphere,

00:12:57 ◼   ► not everybody, a majority of people,

00:12:58 ◼   ► I would say in our sphere, the answer is,

00:13:00 ◼   ► no, it's not really necessary.

00:13:02 ◼   ► We really just wanted a good webcam that was solid

00:13:04 ◼   ► and that did its job.

00:13:05 ◼   ► People are pining for the iMac Pro webcam,

00:13:07 ◼   ► which is just a 1080 webcam.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It's nothing special at all, but it was okay, right?

00:13:13 ◼   ► And people are like, oh, remember that?

00:13:14 ◼   ► That's a bad sign, right?

00:13:16 ◼   ► But there is this whole other level,

00:13:18 ◼   ► which is if you're gonna do center stage

00:13:21 ◼   ► and you're gonna have it be like this,

00:13:23 ◼   ► software should be better.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Like the software should be better.

00:13:26 ◼   ► There's no doubt.

00:13:27 ◼   ► It doesn't look good.

00:13:28 ◼   ► And it looks like the software could do a better job.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And then separately, how about user settings?

00:13:34 ◼   ► How about letting me,

00:13:35 ◼   ► I get you want everything to be a default,

00:13:37 ◼   ► but like let me adjust a setting.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I would like to be able to say,

00:13:41 ◼   ► I did this on webcam settings

00:13:44 ◼   ► for my Logitech webcam all the time.

00:13:45 ◼   ► I was like, wow, it's too saturated.

00:13:48 ◼   ► My whole face is glowing red.

00:13:50 ◼   ► I would like it to be a little less saturated.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Can't do that either.

00:13:53 ◼   ► It just is what it is.

00:13:54 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

00:13:55 ◼   ► - This Friday, May 6th, at 9.30 a.m. Pacific,

00:13:59 ◼   ► 12.30 a.m. Eastern US,

00:14:01 ◼   ► and half past five British summer time,

00:14:03 ◼   ► I'm going to be voiding a warranty live on Twitch

00:14:08 ◼   ► at mike.live as I rip open a touch ID magic keyboard

00:14:14 ◼   ► with Mr. Jason Snow, Esquire's help.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And I'm gonna try and pull out all of the components

00:14:21 ◼   ► to get an external touch ID button.

00:14:23 ◼   ► So, and I don't think I told you Jason,

00:14:26 ◼   ► I've decided to drop it now.

00:14:28 ◼   ► My overall goal now is to try and embed this

00:14:32 ◼   ► in one of my keyboards.

00:14:34 ◼   ► - Oh man, imagine. - I don't know if or how

00:14:36 ◼   ► this is gonna be possible, but that's my like later goal.

00:14:40 ◼   ► But yeah, first I have to get it out of there.

00:14:44 ◼   ► So I've got all the iFixit tools,

00:14:47 ◼   ► and we're gonna have a blast this Friday, May 6th.

00:14:50 ◼   ► So come and join us, it'll be fun.

00:14:51 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, at the very least,

00:14:52 ◼   ► I would love for it to lead to a,

00:14:55 ◼   ► get a like a 3D printed enclosure or something.

00:14:59 ◼   ► - If I can't get it inside of a keyboard,

00:15:01 ◼   ► that's the plan, right?

00:15:02 ◼   ► Get a little box I can put on.

00:15:04 ◼   ► - So I will just be there to cheer you on,

00:15:06 ◼   ► I guess, as a guest star.

00:15:08 ◼   ► - Yep, and maybe to help me with the iFixit guide.

00:15:10 ◼   ► - Oh, sure.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Oh, help?

00:15:12 ◼   ► Love it, love it.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So instead of just sitting there going,

00:15:14 ◼   ► "Boo, you screwed it up, boo."

00:15:16 ◼   ► I can actually be helpful.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Wow, I don't know why I didn't assume

00:15:20 ◼   ► that I would be helping, but I did not.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So, okay.

00:15:22 ◼   ► - I'm gonna be able to shout at you.

00:15:24 ◼   ► And also, to contact the emergency services

00:15:26 ◼   ► in case of a thermal event.

00:15:28 ◼   ► - I dial 999, right?

00:15:29 ◼   ► That's what I do in the UK.

00:15:31 ◼   ► - Yep. - 999?

00:15:32 ◼   ► - If you were in the UK, yes, you would dial that number.

00:15:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I'll do one,

00:15:37 ◼   ► and then plus four four is the country code.

00:15:39 ◼   ► - Plus four four, nine nine.

00:15:40 ◼   ► - Nine nine nine.

00:15:42 ◼   ► And then I say, hello, UK emergency.

00:15:44 ◼   ► My friend soldered his hand to a keyboard.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - I have one rumor roundup item for you, Jason.

00:15:52 ◼   ► - It's a small corral.

00:15:53 ◼   ► There's only a couple of heifers in the corral today.

00:15:58 ◼   ► - And this is also kind of follow up

00:16:00 ◼   ► because last week we saw mock-ups

00:16:02 ◼   ► of the back of the iPhone 14 line, right?

00:16:04 ◼   ► So we got the kind of the sizes of the iPhones.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Now we are reportedly, we have images via MacRumors

00:16:11 ◼   ► of the displays.

00:16:13 ◼   ► These are again shared on Weibo.

00:16:16 ◼   ► What we can see here is the kind of,

00:16:20 ◼   ► the regular phones, the standard phones,

00:16:22 ◼   ► the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Max,

00:16:24 ◼   ► looking pretty much as you would expect with the notch.

00:16:27 ◼   ► But the Pro phones now feature two cutouts,

00:16:31 ◼   ► one for the camera, like a hole punch,

00:16:33 ◼   ► and then a pill-shaped cutout for the Face ID sensors.

00:16:36 ◼   ► The bezels are slimmer across all of the phones,

00:16:39 ◼   ► but also apparently the Pro phones

00:16:41 ◼   ► have a slightly taller, giving them a revised aspect ratio

00:16:46 ◼   ► of 20 by nine rather than 19.5 by nine.

00:16:49 ◼   ► - So I read Mark Gurman's newsletter this weekend

00:16:55 ◼   ► and he's the sheriff of the room around up, of course.

00:16:58 ◼   ► He, by the way, I'm enjoying that newsletter a lot,

00:17:01 ◼   ► but I also have noticed that, you know,

00:17:04 ◼   ► when you have to write a thing every week,

00:17:05 ◼   ► instead of just when you've got breaking news,

00:17:07 ◼   ► he's ventured into our sphere of speculation

00:17:11 ◼   ► what I would like instead of here's what I report.

00:17:13 ◼   ► - Honestly, I think that's part of why it exists.

00:17:15 ◼   ► So he can do that, right?

00:17:16 ◼   ► 'Cause you can't talk about,

00:17:17 ◼   ► he can't talk like that in a kind of like

00:17:19 ◼   ► official capacity, I guess.

00:17:20 ◼   ► - Right, here's a big Bloomberg story

00:17:22 ◼   ► about Mark Gurman speculating about

00:17:24 ◼   ► what he would like to see in the next, right?

00:17:26 ◼   ► They don't do that, right?

00:17:27 ◼   ► So no, it's fun to see him putting on his punditry hat.

00:17:32 ◼   ► What's confusing is where you start reading it

00:17:36 ◼   ► and you're like, is this a report?

00:17:39 ◼   ► No, it's just a dream.

00:17:41 ◼   ► It's just kind of wish casting.

00:17:43 ◼   ► And you just gotta keep those separate.

00:17:45 ◼   ► There was a Reuters, Reuters pushed out

00:17:49 ◼   ► an opinion column last week,

00:17:51 ◼   ► without getting into the subject more than this.

00:17:53 ◼   ► It pushed out an opinion column by somebody at Reuters,

00:17:56 ◼   ► you know, and it's a wire service.

00:17:57 ◼   ► So you can see why people sort of take it as like fact.

00:18:00 ◼   ► And the opinion column was,

00:18:02 ◼   ► I don't think the Elon Musk Twitter deal is gonna work.

00:18:05 ◼   ► and I saw that spread everywhere as like report.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Elon Musk's deal for Twitter is falling apart.

00:18:12 ◼   ► I was like, I read the story, it was an opinion column.

00:18:16 ◼   ► - So I don't know if they changed it,

00:18:17 ◼   ► but I think originally this went around

00:18:19 ◼   ► because the opinion column was called Breaking Views.

00:18:22 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Like Breaking News, so people just read it

00:18:25 ◼   ► as Breaking News. - Haha, fooled ya.

00:18:27 ◼   ► - But it's not, it's just--

00:18:29 ◼   ► - It's just an opinion column.

00:18:30 ◼   ► - It was a decent opinion, but--

00:18:31 ◼   ► - I would say, and I'm not criticizing Mark here

00:18:34 ◼   ► 'cause I actually really like it.

00:18:35 ◼   ► But since we're so used to,

00:18:36 ◼   ► we're so trained that he's doing reports,

00:18:38 ◼   ► that when he starts talking about what he'd like to see,

00:18:40 ◼   ► that's not a report, right?

00:18:41 ◼   ► That's just what he'd like to see.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Unless it's coded, but I don't think it is.

00:18:45 ◼   ► I think it's literally just what he'd like to see.

00:18:47 ◼   ► While we're talking about the new iPhones,

00:18:49 ◼   ► I wanted to mention something that Mark Gurman said

00:18:52 ◼   ► this week, which was, I'm interested how you feel about this.

00:18:56 ◼   ► He said, yes, the notch will be replaced in this phone

00:18:59 ◼   ► with the little pill shape and the little circle.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And what he was addressing was like,

00:19:04 ◼   ► what are the benefits of that?

00:19:05 ◼   ► And his response was, there are no benefits.

00:19:09 ◼   ► All it really does is make it look different.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And so if you want to have a new phone and say,

00:19:14 ◼   ► look, aha, I have the new iPhone,

00:19:16 ◼   ► look how different it is.

00:19:17 ◼   ► It's got these two little dots instead of a notch,

00:19:20 ◼   ► then great.

00:19:21 ◼   ► But in terms of functionality, like that's a safe area.

00:19:24 ◼   ► You can't put anything up there anyway.

00:19:26 ◼   ► I thought it was good analysis.

00:19:28 ◼   ► 'Cause I think that in the end,

00:19:29 ◼   ► while it is the goal is to make the notch disappear entirely

00:19:33 ◼   ► and the less stuff that's covered on the display

00:19:35 ◼   ► where you can have like background color and stuff,

00:19:37 ◼   ► the better, in terms of functionality,

00:19:39 ◼   ► it makes no difference because it's still in a space

00:19:42 ◼   ► where nothing can happen.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - I think it will be visually more appealing,

00:19:46 ◼   ► but I think this is just a step, right?

00:19:50 ◼   ► Like the step being to eventually hide all of this

00:19:54 ◼   ► behind the display, right?

00:19:55 ◼   ► Like that's the ultimate goal here.

00:19:58 ◼   ► lots of companies are trying and failing to make this work,

00:20:01 ◼   ► but like that's how all this technology goes, right?

00:20:04 ◼   ► The ideal here is that we don't have to see any of this.

00:20:07 ◼   ► The sensors are hidden behind the display,

00:20:09 ◼   ► the camera's hidden behind the display.

00:20:11 ◼   ► So I can imagine this being more visually appealing,

00:20:14 ◼   ► takes up less space.

00:20:16 ◼   ► We'll see though, I mean it could be more distracting

00:20:18 ◼   ► to have these two little like black dots

00:20:21 ◼   ► in the middle of your phone. - I don't know.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - I don't know, but-- - Somebody can create a game

00:20:24 ◼   ► with a bunch of little black dots and pills

00:20:25 ◼   ► all over the screen and some of them move around.

00:20:27 ◼   ► - The two of them don't.

00:20:29 ◼   ► - But I do agree with Mark Gurman's analysis

00:20:32 ◼   ► that this is purely to make the new phone,

00:20:37 ◼   ► at least the pro models, visually identifiable.

00:20:43 ◼   ► 'Cause I think over time, what Apple has learned is,

00:20:46 ◼   ► that's when they have the big quarters,

00:20:48 ◼   ► when the phone looks different.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I mean, everybody knows this by now, right?

00:20:51 ◼   ► We've said it a million times,

00:20:52 ◼   ► everyone's said it a million times.

00:20:54 ◼   ► You can look at the charts.

00:20:55 ◼   ► When they change the design of the phone,

00:20:57 ◼   ► they see the biggest impact.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Of course, when they make physical changes,

00:21:02 ◼   ► I actually think that the iPhone 14's gonna do great anyway,

00:21:05 ◼   ► because like for this, and also the return of the large phone

00:21:09 ◼   ► that's not a pro phone.

00:21:12 ◼   ► - Large non-pro phone will sell a bunch of units.

00:21:14 ◼   ► - Between the two of these,

00:21:15 ◼   ► I think the 14's gonna be very good for them.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - And I love my iPhone mini,

00:21:19 ◼   ► and I'm probably not gonna replace it at all,

00:21:22 ◼   ► but I will say, even I feel the pull

00:21:25 ◼   ► when they create a pro level that's differentiated,

00:21:29 ◼   ► the more they do that, the more I'm like,

00:21:31 ◼   ► "Oh, I could get the pro, it's got all these features."

00:21:33 ◼   ► - Especially if this one's gonna have that camera, right?

00:21:34 ◼   ► The full game, like a picture camera.

00:21:35 ◼   ► - Well, this is the thing.

00:21:36 ◼   ► So they already added, they've got ProMotion,

00:21:38 ◼   ► they've got the third camera.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Now they're gonna do a camera upgrade,

00:21:42 ◼   ► there's a processor upgrade,

00:21:43 ◼   ► there's the replacing the notch with this stuff.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Like you were talking about a bunch,

00:21:48 ◼   ► like even more things are differentiated.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And that does have a gravitational pull, right?

00:21:55 ◼   ► That's gonna pull a lot of people who are like,

00:21:58 ◼   ► spec interested away from the cheaper model,

00:22:01 ◼   ► 'cause they're gonna be like, "Oh."

00:22:02 ◼   ► Whereas when they were basically the same,

00:22:04 ◼   ► except for maybe like an extra camera, a lot less appealing.

00:22:07 ◼   ► But when they're like, "Oh, and the processor's better,

00:22:10 ◼   ► and like everything's better in it,"

00:22:11 ◼   ► it will be a little more tempting.

00:22:14 ◼   ► And so I agree.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Do you wanna hear my A16 speculation?

00:22:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause we have, I was thinking about this.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I don't think we've touched on this, right?

00:22:22 ◼   ► So the report is that from Ming-Chi Kuo,

00:22:26 ◼   ► the Marshall of the Roundup, I guess, right?

00:22:30 ◼   ► Is that what we decided?

00:22:31 ◼   ► - That's what we decided, yep.

00:22:32 ◼   ► - Ming-Chi Kuo said that the Pro phone will get the A16,

00:22:36 ◼   ► the regular phone will stay on the A15,

00:22:40 ◼   ► which is weird, right?

00:22:41 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, well, we upgraded the new iPhone,

00:22:43 ◼   ► but it doesn't have a new processor.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It's just got the A15 that you all know.

00:22:47 ◼   ► And maybe that's the case, but I had a moment of clarity

00:22:52 ◼   ► Because the challenge here is that,

00:22:53 ◼   ► are they committing then to having every year,

00:22:56 ◼   ► like next year, it'll be the A16 in the iPhone 15

00:23:01 ◼   ► and the A17 in the iPhone 16.

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's very complicated, right?

00:23:06 ◼   ► What if, just throwing it out there, just spitballing,

00:23:11 ◼   ► this is all it is.

00:23:12 ◼   ► What if instead of it being the A15 in the iPhone 14

00:23:17 ◼   ► and the A16 in the iPhone 14 Pro, right?

00:23:21 ◼   ► - Right.

00:23:22 ◼   ► What if Apple says, "Hey, the A16 is here."

00:23:26 ◼   ► And what the A16 really is,

00:23:31 ◼   ► is a very small improvement on the A15.

00:23:36 ◼   ► It's using new cores maybe,

00:23:38 ◼   ► but it is otherwise essentially the A15.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And then there's an A16 Pro chip

00:23:50 ◼   ► that's better that goes in the iPhone Pro.

00:23:54 ◼   ► And I say that because it allows them to claim

00:23:56 ◼   ► that the new chip is in both models,

00:23:59 ◼   ► but that there's a better chip in the Pro phone.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And I think from a marketing standpoint,

00:24:05 ◼   ► I think that's a better move than saying it's 15 in the old

00:24:08 ◼   ► and 16 in the new, is to differentiate

00:24:11 ◼   ► like they do on the Mac and say there's an A16

00:24:14 ◼   ► and an A16 Pro.

00:24:15 ◼   ► And then we all do the benchmarking on the new iPhone

00:24:18 ◼   ► that's got the A16 and we're like,

00:24:19 ◼   ► wow, this is really just basically an A15.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Uh-huh, it is.

00:24:24 ◼   ► - Maybe they do the binning of the graphics processes

00:24:27 ◼   ► like they've done in some of the devices.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - Maybe so, maybe it's, yeah, it's purely based on binning

00:24:33 ◼   ► and the cores are the same

00:24:35 ◼   ► or the cores are a little bit better

00:24:37 ◼   ► but you can't really tell or they save some efficiency

00:24:40 ◼   ► so it's more efficient but it's slower on the A16

00:24:44 ◼   ► but the A16 Pro gets to, I'm just saying,

00:24:47 ◼   ► the more I think about this,

00:24:48 ◼   ► and this is based on no reports,

00:24:50 ◼   ► I am literally just making this up.

00:24:52 ◼   ► If I were in that room at Apple,

00:24:56 ◼   ► I'd be like, can we make it different enough

00:24:59 ◼   ► that we can call it the A16 and the A16 Pro

00:25:02 ◼   ► rather than having last year's chip in this year's phone

00:25:05 ◼   ► and also this year's chip in this year's Pro phone?

00:25:08 ◼   ► Would that be a better look for us?

00:25:10 ◼   ► And maybe not, maybe Tim Cook's like, nah, it's fine.

00:25:13 ◼   ► It's a cheaper phone.

00:25:14 ◼   ► They're gonna be a step behind.

00:25:16 ◼   ► We're already more than a lap ahead of the competition,

00:25:19 ◼   ► so we can afford to do this.

00:25:21 ◼   ► But I just think, I keep thinking calling it the A16

00:25:26 ◼   ► when it's not particularly better or different

00:25:29 ◼   ► than the A15 just a little bit,

00:25:32 ◼   ► and then saying we also have the A16 Pro,

00:25:35 ◼   ► keeps everything in lockstep a little bit more.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Anyway, I also think it's very confusing

00:25:40 ◼   ► that we have these chip numbers and model numbers

00:25:42 ◼   ► and they're off by two.

00:25:43 ◼   ► That also drives me batty.

00:25:45 ◼   ► So to have it be three different numbers

00:25:47 ◼   ► that you have to keep track of.

00:25:48 ◼   ► iPhone 14 with a 15 and a 16, that also is a lot.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So, you know, they got issues.

00:25:56 ◼   ► But anyway, that's my completely idle speculation

00:25:58 ◼   ► is what if they, instead of having a 15 and a 16,

00:26:01 ◼   ► they had a 16 and a 16 Pro,

00:26:04 ◼   ► and the 16 was essentially the 15,

00:26:06 ◼   ► but you know, dressed up a little bit.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - Here's what, I'll just put this out there.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I don't think this is gonna happen.

00:26:11 ◼   ► I'm gonna put it out there.

00:26:12 ◼   ► what if they say that there's the A16 in the iPhone 14

00:26:17 ◼   ► and the iPhone 14 Pro has an M2 chip in it?

00:26:20 ◼   ► - Could?

00:26:21 ◼   ► - Now that's, I mean, okay,

00:26:24 ◼   ► so I want to just unpack that a little bit

00:26:27 ◼   ► 'cause that's quite a thing I've said, right?

00:26:28 ◼   ► So what we could say is that the A16,

00:26:32 ◼   ► what we think of as the A16 is probably the base

00:26:37 ◼   ► of the next M chips anyway, right?

00:26:40 ◼   ► It's the expectation that we can make.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And you would say, well,

00:26:45 ◼   ► it's not gonna have a Thunderbolt port.

00:26:47 ◼   ► No, of course it won't.

00:26:47 ◼   ► And I think Apple could design it however they wanted to

00:26:50 ◼   ► and et cetera, et cetera.

00:26:52 ◼   ► And it's all branding at the end of the day.

00:26:54 ◼   ► What I'll say, the reason I would say this

00:26:56 ◼   ► as a possibility is just that the M line,

00:27:01 ◼   ► I think has a very good brand right now.

00:27:04 ◼   ► Maybe a better brand than the A line,

00:27:06 ◼   ► just like in general technology media

00:27:09 ◼   ► and like observation.

00:27:12 ◼   ► - I think the challenge is how much has the M

00:27:14 ◼   ► diverged from the A, right?

00:27:15 ◼   ► How much has it done?

00:27:17 ◼   ► I mean, is it really,

00:27:18 ◼   ► 'cause the impression I've gotten is that

00:27:19 ◼   ► it really is appreciably larger and uses more power

00:27:23 ◼   ► and is more appropriate for an iPad and a Mac

00:27:25 ◼   ► than it is for an iPhone.

00:27:27 ◼   ► I see what you're saying.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And this is the larger point I really support

00:27:32 ◼   ► even though I'm not quite sure that

00:27:34 ◼   ► the calling it an M2 works,

00:27:36 ◼   ► is Apple, these are Apple's chips,

00:27:38 ◼   ► They can brand them however they want.

00:27:41 ◼   ► I just don't think that the branding of holding

00:27:43 ◼   ► the iPhone 14 back year in school to help the teacher

00:27:48 ◼   ► makes as much sense.

00:27:51 ◼   ► All of their other chips now are like coming,

00:27:54 ◼   ► you know, Pro and Ultra and Max,

00:27:57 ◼   ► and their phones are in Pro Max and all of that.

00:27:59 ◼   ► So why not just say, "Hey, here's our non-Pro phone.

00:28:02 ◼   ► It has the non-Pro chip, and here's our Pro phone,

00:28:04 ◼   ► and it has the Pro chip," and be done with it,

00:28:06 ◼   ► and call it the same thing.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Like that, that makes more sense to me.

00:28:10 ◼   ► - I agree with you.

00:28:10 ◼   ► 'Cause pro is now in the chip lineup.

00:28:13 ◼   ► I will just say, you know,

00:28:14 ◼   ► in case I can stop people from sending their tweets to me,

00:28:16 ◼   ► I don't believe this thing about the M,

00:28:18 ◼   ► I just wanted to put it out there as like,

00:28:20 ◼   ► hey, it's a thing.

00:28:21 ◼   ► - 'Cause like, 'cause they can do what they want.

00:28:22 ◼   ► I mean, that's the bottom line.

00:28:23 ◼   ► They can call things what they want.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Yeah, they can call it whatever they want.

00:28:30 ◼   ► - And this is why I mentioned that,

00:28:31 ◼   ► because as you said, like,

00:28:32 ◼   ► they might just call something the A16

00:28:34 ◼   ► that's not actually really an A16 at all,

00:28:36 ◼   ► but they've just decided to call it that

00:28:38 ◼   ► because they want to keep bumping the numbers up.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And so that's why I would say this, right?

00:28:41 ◼   ► That like, it can share some architecture

00:28:45 ◼   ► and they can just call it the M2.

00:28:46 ◼   ► I do like honestly, the idea of A16 Pro

00:28:49 ◼   ► because of the fact that they use Pro and Max and not,

00:28:54 ◼   ► like they have these names now that are like,

00:28:57 ◼   ► their branding can let you kind of forget

00:28:59 ◼   ► the confusing part, which is the number.

00:29:01 ◼   ► - Right. - And then, you know,

00:29:03 ◼   ► honestly, I think maybe it's time to rebrand

00:29:05 ◼   ► the A line of chips anyway, just because we're getting up into way too high numbers and there's

00:29:10 ◼   ► too many numbers now.

00:29:11 ◼   ► And the iPhones are also numbered, right?

00:29:13 ◼   ► Yes, exactly.

00:29:14 ◼   ► It's too many numbers.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Too many numbers.

00:29:16 ◼   ► That's all right.

00:29:17 ◼   ► That's our big analysis.

00:29:18 ◼   ► That's right.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Thank you, Apple.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Thank you for hiring us as your consultants.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Too many numbers.

00:29:22 ◼   ► That's what we say.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Also, I'll throw out there, you could also just call the A16, the A15 Pro and do it that

00:29:28 ◼   ► way if you wanted to.

00:29:30 ◼   ► If the A15 is literally no different and you're not putting a new chip in that base model

00:29:35 ◼   ► iPhone you could call the new thing A15 Pro instead of A16 because you can call it whatever

00:29:41 ◼   ► you want and say yeah this is the A15 Pro and then they're in lockstep again one number

00:29:49 ◼   ► ahead of the iPhone number by the way but there it is too many numbers.

00:29:55 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by electric. When leading your small business it's not

00:29:59 ◼   ► all glamour. In fact sometimes it's a matter of spending hours trying to find a laptop

00:30:04 ◼   ► lost in the mail, sent out for that new hire, or dealing with some kind of technical emergency,

00:30:09 ◼   ► which you're well equipped to deal with, but maybe you don't have the time.

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00:30:32 ◼   ► With electric acting as your IT department you can get back to doing what you're good

00:30:36 ◼   ► at plus you get a really cool IT platform to see and manage everything.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I think this is awesome.

00:30:43 ◼   ► I think this is such a great idea as a project, as a product for somebody to get part of their

00:30:47 ◼   ► team rather than maybe having to hire an IT department before you're ready, maybe it's

00:30:52 ◼   ► like too big a cost to have a platform and a company look after it for you so you can

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00:31:02 ◼   ► and

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00:31:22 ◼   ► that's electric.ai/upgradefm. Go there now to get your free pair of Beats Solo 3 headphones

00:31:28 ◼   ► today for scheduling a meeting. Our thanks to Electric for their support of this show

00:31:32 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:31:33 ◼   ► I got my Playdate!

00:31:35 ◼   ► Yay!

00:31:36 ◼   ► It arrived on Friday, so I've had like 3 or 4 days with this beautiful little yellow device.

00:31:43 ◼   ► I got one playdate with the purple pouch.

00:31:46 ◼   ► And I wanted to talk through some of my feelings

00:31:48 ◼   ► of you, Jason, and then maybe touch on some more games,

00:31:51 ◼   ► 'cause obviously I've had two sets of games.

00:31:53 ◼   ► I think you've had three now.

00:31:54 ◼   ► - And I've had, I think I only have had

00:31:57 ◼   ► two sets delivered so far.

00:31:59 ◼   ► - Oh, okay. - Maybe today,

00:32:00 ◼   ► a third set has been delivered. - I think today

00:32:01 ◼   ► you're gonna get another two, I think.

00:32:03 ◼   ► You should if I've got my internal clock right there.

00:32:07 ◼   ► So the packaging is wonderful,

00:32:09 ◼   ► this beautiful yellow packaging.

00:32:10 ◼   ► - It is. - I did have to chuckle,

00:32:12 ◼   ► And it's a mean thing to laugh about, but I did chuckle that the copyright

00:32:16 ◼   ► date on the packaging is 2020.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:19 ◼   ► That was the easy part.

00:32:20 ◼   ► Well, I mean, that just is, that's when they thought they were shipping it.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Just they printed it with 2020 on it.

00:32:26 ◼   ► I've been there, right?

00:32:28 ◼   ► I am there still with some products, you know, it's just how it goes.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And if people want to see the packaging and all of that, I did unbox it as you

00:32:36 ◼   ► chastised me about last week, cause I didn't know how to play the games.

00:32:38 ◼   ► I know how to play the games now.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Uh, but I hadn't played them yet.

00:32:42 ◼   ► Anyway, so there's a YouTube video where I take it apart

00:32:44 ◼   ► and I show you the packaging and it's adorable.

00:32:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's definitely worth going to see

00:32:50 ◼   ► just 'cause it's cute, I'll say.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Like, they did a good job.

00:32:54 ◼   ► They've really, I think the branding

00:32:56 ◼   ► has been completely knocked out of the park overall

00:32:58 ◼   ► with the Play Date.

00:32:59 ◼   ► But yeah, we spoke a little bit about that last week.

00:33:03 ◼   ► My unit arrived totally dead.

00:33:04 ◼   ► The battery was 100% dead.

00:33:06 ◼   ► - This came up on the live stream.

00:33:09 ◼   ► I had to plug mine.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Mine was not so dead that the screen didn't show a thing

00:33:14 ◼   ► saying you need to plug me in.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - No, mine was 100%, nothing.

00:33:18 ◼   ► - But I heard from other people who had nothing

00:33:21 ◼   ► and it came out, I mean, we were thinking

00:33:23 ◼   ► 'cause mine had to sit for quite a while.

00:33:26 ◼   ► And it came out that if you did plug it in

00:33:29 ◼   ► and you just waited a long time,

00:33:31 ◼   ► it would eventually get to the point

00:33:32 ◼   ► where it would be responsive.

00:33:33 ◼   ► They just, a lot of them had been sitting for so long

00:33:35 ◼   ► that the batteries were completely discharged.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Mine was like half an hour and it was ready to go.

00:33:41 ◼   ► But that was fine to be honest.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Like it wasn't an issue.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I'm just happy I saw this on the Playdate Twitter account

00:33:46 ◼   ► 'cause I would have been pretty worried.

00:33:48 ◼   ► - Well, and they did that because it,

00:33:51 ◼   ► we were all figuring it out.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Like in the, those of us who got them right

00:33:54 ◼   ► in those first few days and this happened.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And then, and so then they're like, oh yeah,

00:33:57 ◼   ► we need to relay this to everybody that you may get it.

00:34:00 ◼   ► It's okay.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Just plug it in and wait.

00:34:02 ◼   ► - The setup process is great.

00:34:05 ◼   ► One of the things that I really enjoy is text input

00:34:08 ◼   ► with the crank. You don't have to intertext a lot. If you did this would be annoying.

00:34:13 ◼   ► But it's like a kind of like a slot machine. You have like these three drums and you can

00:34:18 ◼   ► just spin them with the... I like it. It's fun. Like you mentioned last week, it becomes

00:34:25 ◼   ► apparent very quickly that this device needs a backlight. It is the only thing that I have

00:34:30 ◼   ► negative to say about the Play Date. The screen is amazing. It's incredibly crisp and if you

00:34:37 ◼   ► have some light behind you it's fantastic and really visible but the problem is you

00:34:43 ◼   ► don't always like sometimes you know I kind of just I just hold the device at the comfortable

00:34:48 ◼   ► angle for me and now I've locked out the light you know and so like that is it's an issue

00:34:54 ◼   ► I hope somebody honestly I hope panic will I know why they might not but I hope that

00:34:59 ◼   ► they will just make a light accessory like we used to have for Game Boys.

00:35:04 ◼   ► light yeah. Just do it like it's fine right like embrace it and like you know I understand

00:35:09 ◼   ► what they're saying and I like the screen technology they chose with it being so reflective

00:35:15 ◼   ► cannot be backlit I get that. My question is why did you make that I'm really intrigued

00:35:22 ◼   ► as to why they made that decision anyway but it's where they went. You see it with Kindles

00:35:28 ◼   ► and things that they, you know, with a Kindle, they engineered side lighting, where basically

00:35:34 ◼   ► you add a little bit of thickness, but you've got lights on the sides that are, there's

00:35:39 ◼   ► like a little guide, a little light guide that shines the lights just down onto the

00:35:44 ◼   ► screen. And I guess that it's hard and it would make it thicker and like it's a first,

00:35:47 ◼   ► I get it, I get it all, but it is unfortunate that that is one of the things where you're

00:35:51 ◼   ► playing it and you get, you readjust your posture to be more comfortable and you can't,

00:35:56 ◼   ► suddenly you can't see what's going on on the screen. It's not great.

00:35:59 ◼   ► But I let it go because when you do have the right lighting the screen is like unfathomably

00:36:05 ◼   ► excellent to look at. It is just fantastic. It is similar to if you have played an analog

00:36:12 ◼   ► pocket which is the kind of the Gameboy machine right that is similar right the screen is

00:36:18 ◼   ► just like I can't believe how good this is. And so yeah as Zach has mentioned in the in

00:36:23 ◼   ► in

00:36:44 ◼   ► the music in every game that I've played so far is great which is which works really nicely.

00:36:50 ◼   ► I'm sure because of there being no lighting in it the battery life is great. I've been

00:36:55 ◼   ► really happy with the battery. I was playing the system a bunch over the weekend. I've

00:37:00 ◼   ► charged it once and it charges really fast. So overall like before I get into some of

00:37:07 ◼   ► the games and touch on those a little bit I just think like what I like about the playdate

00:37:13 ◼   ► is it pure fun.

00:37:15 ◼   ► Like, in a way that games aren't always,

00:37:20 ◼   ► or like playing games isn't always,

00:37:22 ◼   ► it's just like, it doesn't take itself too seriously.

00:37:25 ◼   ► It has a crank on it, which I've actually really enjoyed

00:37:30 ◼   ► the crank mechanic in the games that I've played so far.

00:37:32 ◼   ► A podcast that I was listening to recently,

00:37:37 ◼   ► one of the hosts, two of the hosts,

00:37:39 ◼   ► Blessing Erioya Jr. and Janet Garcia

00:37:42 ◼   ► on Kind of Funny Games Daily, they referred to the Playdate as this is a game system for

00:37:48 ◼   ► art kids and hipsters. And like, that is not, like I can hear someone hearing that, that

00:37:54 ◼   ► sounds disparaging, but I completely understand it. Like, the types of games that are on Playdate

00:38:01 ◼   ► are very artistic in their creation. Like, in a way that is not going to sell millions

00:38:09 ◼   ► of units but for people that have $180 to put down on a yellow thing which is tiny,

00:38:17 ◼   ► the size of a post-it note with a crank on it, those people probably want games for art

00:38:24 ◼   ► kids and hipsters because they are one of those two. You are a hipster game person if

00:38:29 ◼   ► you buy this and so the games should be focused on that. One of the games I'm going to mention

00:38:34 ◼   ► in a minute called Bloom is like that, which is a third-party game. But like it hits nicely.

00:38:40 ◼   ► - And, I mean, okay, so hipsters and our kids, right? Those are like stereotype terms and all

00:38:47 ◼   ► that. But I think what has struck me about it, and it's not just because we know the people

00:38:51 ◼   ► at Panic, although it is that too, is a group of regular people who love games and are techy people,

00:39:02 ◼   ► and they have a company, right, which allows them to do this, but they are not a giant

00:39:08 ◼   ► entertainment conglomerate. A group of techie people who love games said, "We're gonna make

00:39:15 ◼   ► a handheld game device." And they made it happen. And that's my favorite thing about the Playdate,

00:39:22 ◼   ► is that it is not part of a—although there is, I'm sure, corporate strategy involved,

00:39:26 ◼   ► and they had to spend all those years working with their factory in Malaysia and doing all

00:39:30 ◼   ► and all these things, right?

00:39:31 ◼   ► Like it is a corporation,

00:39:32 ◼   ► Panic's a corporation.

00:39:33 ◼   ► And they're trying not to, you know,

00:39:35 ◼   ► have this bankrupt them and maybe be successful.

00:39:37 ◼   ► - Panic is now a big company getting bigger all the time.

00:39:40 ◼   ► - Right, but I will still say,

00:39:42 ◼   ► Playdate is a product made out of love.

00:39:44 ◼   ► - Yes, and you feel it.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - And I defy you to find any piece of gaming hardware

00:39:50 ◼   ► or at least any piece of an original game device

00:39:55 ◼   ► that is made out of love.

00:39:57 ◼   ► I'm sure there are a handful out there.

00:39:59 ◼   ► And in fact that your--

00:40:01 ◼   ► - The analog pocket.

00:40:02 ◼   ► - Analog pocket is probably in that category.

00:40:06 ◼   ► But even there it's playing old software,

00:40:08 ◼   ► at least as one of the primary ideas here.

00:40:10 ◼   ► There's like Panic just wanted to make a fun piece

00:40:13 ◼   ► of hardware because they love games.

00:40:15 ◼   ► And again, it's more than that,

00:40:17 ◼   ► but like I just am trying to say the impetus

00:40:19 ◼   ► for so much stuff in the gaming world especially,

00:40:22 ◼   ► and really in the world is it comes from the top.

00:40:26 ◼   ► It comes from I'm a giant corporation,

00:40:28 ◼   ► what is our new product going to be,

00:40:29 ◼   ► and how do we compromise it,

00:40:31 ◼   ► and how do we tie it into all of these things.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And although the people who are working on that love games,

00:40:36 ◼   ► undoubtedly, it's not the same as making it out of love,

00:40:41 ◼   ► which is what Panic did.

00:40:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's like, again,

00:40:44 ◼   ► like I wanna bring it back to what I mentioned, right?

00:40:46 ◼   ► The art kids and hipsters.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Like the art part is, and why I think this works is,

00:40:51 ◼   ► the Play Date, it's for people who love

00:40:53 ◼   ► the art of video games.

00:40:55 ◼   ► It's like that video games are a work of art,

00:40:59 ◼   ► and you feel that in this device where it's like,

00:41:02 ◼   ► we have a great appreciation for what video gaming can be,

00:41:06 ◼   ► and it can be this.

00:41:08 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be all black and gray

00:41:12 ◼   ► and army suits and guns, right?

00:41:15 ◼   ► Like it can be there's a little robot

00:41:18 ◼   ► and he's late for a date

00:41:20 ◼   ► and he can move forward and backwards in time, right?

00:41:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:24 ◼   ► He gets kicked if he's too late.

00:41:28 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll talk about it.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it is adorable.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - One of the games, Casual Birder,

00:41:33 ◼   ► which is one of the first games that you get.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Casual Birder is a joke about casual gaming.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And you are referenced as a,

00:41:42 ◼   ► oh, you're just a casual birder.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Like, the joke in this RPG about bird watching

00:41:51 ◼   ► is the idea of like, you are not a hardcore gamer,

00:41:54 ◼   ► which I enjoy a lot. - Oh yeah, I said this

00:41:56 ◼   ► last time, the mean kids come out and say,

00:41:58 ◼   ► what are you, some sort of casual birder?

00:42:00 ◼   ► - It's really good.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And so casual birder, I really enjoyed a lot.

00:42:07 ◼   ► It is a-- - I thought you would.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I thought that was the one where I thought

00:42:09 ◼   ► this is in my kind of game.

00:42:10 ◼   ► - That I was so in, I've finished the game.

00:42:13 ◼   ► I didn't 100% the game.

00:42:15 ◼   ► You can, you have to like take photos

00:42:17 ◼   ► of a bunch of birds around the environment.

00:42:19 ◼   ► and I think it was like 26,

00:42:21 ◼   ► and you can complete it earlier than that,

00:42:22 ◼   ► which I did if you solve enough puzzles in the right order,

00:42:27 ◼   ► because it's very much like an RPG in the sense of,

00:42:31 ◼   ► you can tell you need to do something,

00:42:33 ◼   ► but you don't have the thing to do it,

00:42:36 ◼   ► so you have to go around the environment

00:42:38 ◼   ► until you come across the key for that puzzle, as it were.

00:42:43 ◼   ► And it's hilariously funny.

00:42:45 ◼   ► I was having a great time with it.

00:42:47 ◼   ► The music is amazing.

00:42:49 ◼   ► is a really funny, weird, cute little game.

00:42:52 ◼   ► This is one of the first games along with White Water Wipeout

00:42:55 ◼   ► which is the surfing game, which I will say Jason,

00:42:57 ◼   ► I enjoy it, but I'm not good at it.

00:43:00 ◼   ► - I have gotten way better at it.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And I'm really enjoying it now that I figured out

00:43:04 ◼   ► how to play it, which you were very angry about,

00:43:07 ◼   ► but I've done some 360s, I've done some triple 360s,

00:43:12 ◼   ► whatever that is.

00:43:13 ◼   ► I've done, I'm still, I wish there was a like a help screen

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I have this with a few of the games.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:23 ◼   ► And this one is like, there are controls in White Water Wipeout to help you get better

00:43:29 ◼   ► at the game and they tell you them through the game.

00:43:31 ◼   ► I would just like to be able to see them at any point.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I also don't know what they all do.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Like, they're like, try holding down left when you do a jump.

00:43:40 ◼   ► I'm like, okay.

00:43:41 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm still not.

00:43:42 ◼   ► And it does something.

00:43:43 ◼   ► I think it moves the board quickly.

00:43:44 ◼   ► I don't know what it's-

00:43:45 ◼   ► Like, it helps you complete the move, but I'm not sure it does that.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - Like as a kid going to arcades,

00:43:50 ◼   ► if you stood in front of the arcade

00:43:53 ◼   ► and nobody was playing,

00:43:54 ◼   ► you stood in front of the arcade console,

00:43:57 ◼   ► it had like a little demo screen where it said,

00:43:59 ◼   ► "Here's how you play," basically.

00:44:01 ◼   ► "Press this to do this, jump over trees to stun them,

00:44:04 ◼   ► turn the ghosts blue and then eat them," right?

00:44:06 ◼   ► Like it explained how to play the game.

00:44:09 ◼   ► And that, if I have a criticism of these games,

00:44:13 ◼   ► it's that is I kind of want the little screen

00:44:15 ◼   ► that's like the help screen or the intro screen

00:44:17 ◼   ► or the, you know, press here to get some tips

00:44:20 ◼   ► and it shows you like, here's how to play this game.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And I get that maybe the argument is

00:44:24 ◼   ► the fun is figuring it out,

00:44:25 ◼   ► but I almost abandoned Whitewater Wipeout

00:44:28 ◼   ► because I could not understand how to play it.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And only--

00:44:31 ◼   ► - After you've told me them, let me see them then, right?

00:44:34 ◼   ► Like if part of it is like, I played a game,

00:44:37 ◼   ► I don't remember which one it was now,

00:44:38 ◼   ► one of the many third party games I've tried out,

00:44:40 ◼   ► when you pressed the kind of menu button,

00:44:43 ◼   ► like the little circle button that you press

00:44:45 ◼   ► to go back to the home,

00:44:46 ◼   ► like it kind of brings up like a pause screen first.

00:44:49 ◼   ► They had the controls listed on that screen,

00:44:53 ◼   ► which I just thought was like a smart place to put them.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Because there's another game, Boogie Loops,

00:44:58 ◼   ► which is in the second week,

00:45:01 ◼   ► where I do not understand what this game is

00:45:04 ◼   ► or what I'm supposed to do.

00:45:05 ◼   ► - I think it's a more like a software toy.

00:45:10 ◼   ► - I think, yeah, I think it just helps you make music, right?

00:45:12 ◼   ► But I don't know how.

00:45:13 ◼   ► - You make music and you get the characters to dance.

00:45:16 ◼   ► - I don't know how.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I don't get it. - I don't know how,

00:45:19 ◼   ► and I don't know what I'm missing.

00:45:22 ◼   ► And again, I get that the learning,

00:45:27 ◼   ► my son is obsessed with games, right?

00:45:30 ◼   ► I get that learning to play a game

00:45:32 ◼   ► is part of the game narrative, right?

00:45:34 ◼   ► Of like, we frustrate you, but then you learn.

00:45:38 ◼   ► But there is also a school of thought that says

00:45:43 ◼   ► You are not welcoming people who are not figuring it out

00:45:48 ◼   ► and are not gonna figure it out to your game.

00:45:51 ◼   ► You are excluding people by not being welcoming enough

00:45:55 ◼   ► that somebody who doesn't get your very potentially

00:45:57 ◼   ► esoteric gamers will get it,

00:45:59 ◼   ► other people won't kind of thing.

00:46:01 ◼   ► You don't wanna be that.

00:46:02 ◼   ► You wanna be a welcoming game.

00:46:04 ◼   ► You wanna be able to say,

00:46:06 ◼   ► "Oh, you're having trouble, let me help you."

00:46:08 ◼   ► And a game that doesn't do that or doesn't offer it,

00:46:12 ◼   ► Again, offering is something you can do

00:46:15 ◼   ► where you're like, no, I'll figure it out.

00:46:16 ◼   ► That's like every computer nerd

00:46:18 ◼   ► where they don't read the manual, right?

00:46:20 ◼   ► It's like, I don't need to read the manual,

00:46:21 ◼   ► I'll figure it out.

00:46:22 ◼   ► And then if you have trouble, you go get the manual, right?

00:46:24 ◼   ► That's how you do it.

00:46:25 ◼   ► But to not offer and to not have it

00:46:27 ◼   ► and just be like, good luck trying to figure it out,

00:46:29 ◼   ► I think it is a failure of game design if you do that.

00:46:33 ◼   ► And that's how I feel about that game

00:46:34 ◼   ► is that it doesn't want me to understand it.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And I don't like that.

00:46:40 ◼   ► I don't think that's my failure.

00:46:42 ◼   ► that I don't understand it and that you don't understand it,

00:46:45 ◼   ► I think that is the game failing to communicate properly

00:46:48 ◼   ► about how it works.

00:46:49 ◼   ► - But, you know, this is, so this comes back to it

00:46:52 ◼   ► of like that set, this game, I'm not into it,

00:46:55 ◼   ► like it's not for me, but I also got

00:46:57 ◼   ► Kranken's Time Travel Adventure today,

00:46:59 ◼   ► which is really fun.

00:47:00 ◼   ► This is the game they have used in most of the marketing

00:47:04 ◼   ► because of who has created this game.

00:47:05 ◼   ► This game, the idea of the game is,

00:47:08 ◼   ► and the design of the game is by Keita Takahashi,

00:47:11 ◼   ► who created Katamari Damacy and like the Katamari games,

00:47:16 ◼   ► legendary video game individual.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And it's, you know, Sean Inman helped with the pro,

00:47:21 ◼   ► like this is a, this game is like, oh, okay,

00:47:26 ◼   ► like serious people behind this game.

00:47:27 ◼   ► And I know that Cable Sasser is like a big fan

00:47:31 ◼   ► of the Katamari Damacy games and that whole franchise.

00:47:36 ◼   ► So like this was, I know this is a big game for them.

00:47:39 ◼   ► and it is the most crank heavy game.

00:47:44 ◼   ► It's like you are moving forward to backwards in time

00:47:47 ◼   ► as a way to solve puzzles.

00:47:48 ◼   ► - Okay, so it's not really,

00:47:52 ◼   ► even though it's called Time Travel Adventure,

00:47:54 ◼   ► you're not really moving forward and backward in time.

00:47:57 ◼   ► But that's part of the discovery of it.

00:47:59 ◼   ► I love this game, I think it's amazing.

00:48:00 ◼   ► I now understand why it took me a little while

00:48:03 ◼   ► to figure it out, but I figured it out

00:48:04 ◼   ► and the mechanic is so simple

00:48:05 ◼   ► that you can figure it out fairly quickly.

00:48:08 ◼   ► It's a good example actually of your failure

00:48:10 ◼   ► teaches you how to play the game.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:48:12 ◼   ► - 'Cause I was like, I don't understand,

00:48:13 ◼   ► why do I keep failing this level?

00:48:14 ◼   ► I was like, ah, patience. - Why do the birds

00:48:16 ◼   ► or whatever keep killing me?

00:48:17 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I see what's happening.

00:48:20 ◼   ► But I'm a little baffled that it's not on the console

00:48:24 ◼   ► at launch, that it's week two.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I don't get that.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Because it's so inviting.

00:48:30 ◼   ► And it's brilliant.

00:48:32 ◼   ► I love it.

00:48:34 ◼   ► I love that it is puzzle solving.

00:48:36 ◼   ► And then for those who, I mean, the way I would put it is,

00:48:40 ◼   ► it's not really about time travel

00:48:41 ◼   ► because your enemies in the game,

00:48:44 ◼   ► if the obstacles in the game move in regular time,

00:48:49 ◼   ► what it really is, is your little robot guy

00:48:51 ◼   ► is on his animation loop.

00:48:55 ◼   ► And you use the crank to move him

00:48:58 ◼   ► to different places on his animation loop,

00:49:01 ◼   ► with the goal being that he gets to the end

00:49:04 ◼   ► and gets to his date.

00:49:05 ◼   ► but there are obstacles in the way

00:49:07 ◼   ► that are moving at real time and they're going to stop him.

00:49:11 ◼   ► And so you have to adjust his animation loop

00:49:14 ◼   ► to be in the right position at the right moment

00:49:17 ◼   ► to avoid the obstacles.

00:49:18 ◼   ► It's a really brilliant mechanic.

00:49:20 ◼   ► It makes me laugh out loud.

00:49:22 ◼   ► There is a moment that I'm not gonna spoil here

00:49:25 ◼   ► that I had yesterday where I laughed for minutes.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Like I almost was crying at how funny

00:49:35 ◼   ► the and I failed it was a failure how funny uh that failure was so yeah I I uh that that

00:49:43 ◼   ► that game is genius I love it. So these are all the games that have come uh with the unit right

00:49:50 ◼   ► so these are the ones so far now we spoke like last time about like how are people going to take

00:49:56 ◼   ► to this like is it the right uh thing like what if you don't like a game right I think that it

00:50:03 ◼   ► They are, I would say, not lucky.

00:50:05 ◼   ► I think it is very fortunate.

00:50:07 ◼   ► There are third-party games,

00:50:09 ◼   ► and you can just download them and play them now.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Like you can buy them on itch.io,

00:50:14 ◼   ► you can download them from places.

00:50:16 ◼   ► We included in the show notes last week,

00:50:18 ◼   ► the Playdate Wiki that has a large selection

00:50:22 ◼   ► of all of the games that are available right now.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And like software, like there's some stuff is not games.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's just like software.

00:50:30 ◼   ► So I will put a link in the show notes to the Wiki.

00:50:32 ◼   ► because that's where I've been finding stuff.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And I found a game that I'd actually heard about already

00:50:38 ◼   ► called Bloom.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And Bloom is a $10 Playdate game.

00:50:45 ◼   ► And it is superb.

00:50:48 ◼   ► It is so good.

00:50:49 ◼   ► It's my favorite game on the Playdate so far.

00:50:52 ◼   ► It is exactly what I'm looking for.

00:50:54 ◼   ► So it is a really chill game.

00:50:56 ◼   ► It's played in real time.

00:50:59 ◼   ► You are playing a woman who has quit school

00:51:04 ◼   ► and wants to start a flower shop, and you're in Japan.

00:51:08 ◼   ► And you have not told your parents that you've done this.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And you've opened your flower shop, and you have rent to pay,

00:51:17 ◼   ► and you have flowers to grow, so you've got flowers to sell.

00:51:20 ◼   ► And you have a little phone, and on your phone,

00:51:22 ◼   ► you can exchange text messages with friends and family.

00:51:26 ◼   ► And you get to choose your responses.

00:51:28 ◼   ► and so there's some visual novel elements

00:51:30 ◼   ► as the story's unfolding.

00:51:31 ◼   ► But then there's also, you plant your flowers,

00:51:33 ◼   ► you water the flowers, and then you come back

00:51:35 ◼   ► later on in the day and pick the flowers and sell them.

00:51:38 ◼   ► So it's got that kind of mechanic of,

00:51:41 ◼   ► you see this kind of mechanic in free-to-play games a lot,

00:51:43 ◼   ► plant and wait, but the idea is,

00:51:45 ◼   ► because it's in real time, you're supposed to just,

00:51:47 ◼   ► throughout your day, just pop in, check in on Bloom,

00:51:51 ◼   ► and pick some flowers, and then plant some more flowers.

00:51:55 ◼   ► It's just beautiful.

00:51:56 ◼   ► The crank is used really nicely to move

00:51:58 ◼   ► between the elements of the game.

00:52:00 ◼   ► There's games within the game.

00:52:02 ◼   ► It is superb.

00:52:04 ◼   ► The writing is excellent.

00:52:06 ◼   ► The visuals are really great.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I adore this game.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like for me, it's like, this is exactly the type

00:52:12 ◼   ► of experience that I'm looking for out of this device.

00:52:15 ◼   ► The idea of having these little games

00:52:18 ◼   ► where I can check in on them throughout the day,

00:52:20 ◼   ► as when I told Adina about this, she was like,

00:52:22 ◼   ► "Oh, you got a Tamagotchi."

00:52:23 ◼   ► and I'm like, oh my God, please let somebody

00:52:25 ◼   ► make a Tamagotchi for the Playdate.

00:52:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:27 ◼   ► You're saying that already, right?

00:52:29 ◼   ► This is the kind of stuff I'm looking for

00:52:31 ◼   ► out of this device that's so tiny

00:52:33 ◼   ► that I can just check in on these little things,

00:52:35 ◼   ► have a little game experience, and leave.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And so, yeah, if you have a Playdate,

00:52:41 ◼   ► if you're gonna get a Playdate, please try out Bloom.

00:52:44 ◼   ► It is a wonderful game.

00:52:45 ◼   ► There's a video, there's a bunch of information

00:52:47 ◼   ► on the itch page, so you can see

00:52:50 ◼   ► if you think it might be for you.

00:52:52 ◼   ► but like I am like smitten with this game.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I think it's amazing.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I love it.

00:52:56 ◼   ► - The other games that I'll mention

00:53:00 ◼   ► that I think I mentioned last week,

00:53:01 ◼   ► but the Bomber Panda, which is a Bomberman game

00:53:04 ◼   ► and it's funny and it's pretty well done.

00:53:06 ◼   ► I want a lot of like takes on old arcade games on it.

00:53:10 ◼   ► Cause I think that that's a fun sort of,

00:53:11 ◼   ► they'll a lot of them have very simple mechanics

00:53:14 ◼   ► that will apply well.

00:53:15 ◼   ► That's why I like Playtris,

00:53:17 ◼   ► which is he has a name now for the Tetris rip off.

00:53:20 ◼   ► And he's actually updated it a few times

00:53:22 ◼   ► and he fixed the, on my live stream I think I die

00:53:24 ◼   ► and you can see the frames start animating

00:53:27 ◼   ► at like one frame per five seconds

00:53:29 ◼   ► 'cause he only built it on the simulator

00:53:32 ◼   ► and the guy changed the animation and fixed that.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And he's added a bunch of stuff to it.

00:53:37 ◼   ► So it's like, he woke up, he was like,

00:53:38 ◼   ► "Oh geez, people are getting play dates

00:53:40 ◼   ► and they're playing my thing

00:53:41 ◼   ► and it doesn't work that great, I better get back to it."

00:53:43 ◼   ► And he's done some updates to that.

00:53:44 ◼   ► So that's great 'cause I like having a Tetris on there.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And a joke that's worth 99 cents,

00:53:50 ◼   ► I've decided it's worth 99 cents.

00:53:52 ◼   ► It's actually a very clever use of the,

00:53:54 ◼   ► it's hard and you won't play it for that long,

00:53:56 ◼   ► but it's actually, it makes me laugh at how hard it is

00:53:59 ◼   ► 'cause there's a song that plays

00:54:00 ◼   ► and the song continues to play every time you fail.

00:54:02 ◼   ► And so as you fail, you're like,

00:54:04 ◼   ► it goes, cuts right back to the song

00:54:05 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, song.

00:54:07 ◼   ► It's very funny and you use the crank mechanic.

00:54:09 ◼   ► - I've seen this game referenced a lot

00:54:11 ◼   ► and I was like, am I gonna enjoy this?

00:54:13 ◼   ► But if you like it, I'm gonna give this one a go too.

00:54:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the idea is that you're bouncing a thing

00:54:17 ◼   ► on the crank.

00:54:18 ◼   ► there's a version of the play date on the screen

00:54:20 ◼   ► and the crank matches where you position the crank

00:54:23 ◼   ► and you're supposed to bounce a little baby actually,

00:54:26 ◼   ► but you're supposed to bounce a thing

00:54:28 ◼   ► that hits these stars that appear across

00:54:31 ◼   ► the different screen and every star advances

00:54:33 ◼   ► the joke one line.

00:54:34 ◼   ► So, you know, see, basically you try to see

00:54:38 ◼   ► how long you can keep the little baby bouncing

00:54:41 ◼   ► and how many stars you can hit.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And when you fail and the baby falls,

00:54:46 ◼   ► the song cuts right back in and it's hilarious.

00:54:48 ◼   ► I gotta say.

00:54:49 ◼   ► It's not a game that you're gonna play for a lot of hours,

00:54:52 ◼   ► but every now and then I get back to it and make,

00:54:55 ◼   ► yeah, well, I mean, it's telling the joke,

00:54:56 ◼   ► but it's also, is it worth 99 cents?

00:54:59 ◼   ► I like the animation is really good

00:55:00 ◼   ► and the whole mechanic of using the crank to bounce

00:55:05 ◼   ► is brilliant.

00:55:06 ◼   ► So yeah, it's totally,

00:55:08 ◼   ► and it's literally, it's a 99 cent game on itch,

00:55:10 ◼   ► so it's totally worth it.

00:55:12 ◼   ► - Okay, this is actually kind of funny too,

00:55:14 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, it's $1 with a 1% off.

00:55:18 ◼   ► So it's 99 cents, but I also can't pay less than 99 cents.

00:55:23 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:55:23 ◼   ► - You have to pay a dollar on itch.

00:55:25 ◼   ► That's part of the thing that makes me laugh about it

00:55:27 ◼   ► is you have to pay a dollar.

00:55:30 ◼   ► - It's a joke that's worth 99 cents,

00:55:32 ◼   ► but you have to pay a dollar for it.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I appreciate that.

00:55:34 ◼   ► I appreciate the commitment to the bit there, you know?

00:55:37 ◼   ► So what I will say, right, like,

00:55:40 ◼   ► I know they're working on it,

00:55:41 ◼   ► but they desperately need to get the catalog together.

00:55:43 ◼   ► so I can find these games and install them on my Playdate.

00:55:48 ◼   ► - Directly, yeah.

00:55:50 ◼   ► - The sideloading works really well.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Like I've just been doing the version where I upload it.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Like you download the file,

00:55:56 ◼   ► you just drop it onto the webpage

00:55:58 ◼   ► and then you just download it and it works really well.

00:56:00 ◼   ► And I think that whole thing is pretty simple.

00:56:04 ◼   ► But I wanna be able to go to one place and read stuff

00:56:08 ◼   ► and see like information about the games

00:56:10 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff.

00:56:11 ◼   ► But I will tell you, man, I have waited a really long time for this, right?

00:56:15 ◼   ► Like everybody.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And I've been really, really excited about this device.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And it has not disappointed at all.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I adore this thing and I'm so happy they did it.

00:56:27 ◼   ► And I I'm just like, I'm in like, I'm in for the next like 10 weeks.

00:56:32 ◼   ► I'm super excited every Monday to get my new games and also to keep an eye on what

00:56:36 ◼   ► the community is building and that kind of stuff like this is super cool.

00:56:39 ◼   ► I love it.

00:56:40 ◼   ► I really love it.

00:56:40 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by our friends at TextExpander. Get your team

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00:58:33 ◼   ► Apple's Q2 results were posted last week.

00:58:37 ◼   ► Surprise!

00:58:38 ◼   ► There was a lot of money made.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean that part is not surprising at all, is it?

00:58:43 ◼   ► No.

00:58:44 ◼   ► So here's a rundown.

00:58:46 ◼   ► $97.3 billion total revenue, up 9% year over year, which is another record quarter for

00:58:54 ◼   ► Apple.

00:58:55 ◼   ► This is the highest Q2 of all time.

00:58:57 ◼   ► $25 billion in profit. $50.6 billion of revenue for the iPhone up 5% year over year. $10.4

00:59:06 ◼   ► billion for the Mac up 15%. $7.6 billion for the iPad down 2%. That's two down quarters

00:59:14 ◼   ► in a row. I want to get to that in a minute. $8.8 billion for wearables, that's up 12%

00:59:20 ◼   ► $19.8 billion in services.

00:59:23 ◼   ► That is up 17% year over year.

00:59:25 ◼   ► This is the first sub 20% year over year growth

00:59:30 ◼   ► since Q4 2020.

00:59:31 ◼   ► So all of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022,

00:59:36 ◼   ► the year over year growth was over 20%

00:59:38 ◼   ► and now it's less than 20%.

00:59:40 ◼   ► Did you make anything of that?

00:59:41 ◼   ► Like that just really stood out to me

00:59:43 ◼   ► when I was looking at your wonderful charts.

00:59:45 ◼   ► - I thank you for the compliment about my charts.

00:59:49 ◼   ► It is, it didn't.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I mean, the truth is the numbers have been going up

00:59:55 ◼   ► for so long and there was a spike that was in the twenties.

01:00:00 ◼   ► So to have services cool down to 17, like, you know,

01:00:05 ◼   ► in 2020 and 2019, there was an extended period

01:00:09 ◼   ► where growth was in the teens and it's back in the teens.

01:00:13 ◼   ► And so I just, I kind of shrugged it off.

01:00:17 ◼   ► I think occasionally they have moments

01:00:18 ◼   ► where they have a burst of growth,

01:00:21 ◼   ► but to come off of that burst of growth

01:00:24 ◼   ► and then just go back to growing in the teens,

01:00:26 ◼   ► 'cause you know, when you grow a lot,

01:00:28 ◼   ► it's harder to grow by that percentage again,

01:00:31 ◼   ► because the growth is so,

01:00:33 ◼   ► you're starting from a much larger amount

01:00:37 ◼   ► that you have to grow from, right?

01:00:38 ◼   ► Like it raises the bar.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And so for them to go off of that four quarters

01:00:42 ◼   ► in the 20s or 30s, back to 17,

01:00:46 ◼   ► where they kind of were before,

01:00:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, there are other things

01:00:51 ◼   ► you could complain about before you complain about that.

01:00:54 ◼   ► - Especially as well, and I know obviously,

01:00:58 ◼   ► services doesn't just include Apple TV+,

01:01:01 ◼   ► but from a Wall Street perspective,

01:01:04 ◼   ► services can mean for Apple whatever they need it to mean

01:01:07 ◼   ► at that moment, right?

01:01:08 ◼   ► But at a time where we've been speaking about

01:01:10 ◼   ► the past couple of weeks, right,

01:01:11 ◼   ► like Netflix and CNN+, not great.

01:01:15 ◼   ► And then for Apple to say, "Hey, we add growth,"

01:01:17 ◼   ► and they can in that growth talk about TV+ doing so well

01:01:20 ◼   ► at a time when it is critically doing so well, right?

01:01:23 ◼   ► Like it's good for them to have to continue

01:01:26 ◼   ► to be having growth is good for them.

01:01:28 ◼   ► And it's, you know, I guess probably Q3.

01:01:33 ◼   ► So the next quarter they will crack 20 billion

01:01:37 ◼   ► in the quarter for services

01:01:38 ◼   ► that just under now at 19.8, right?

01:01:40 ◼   ► So like that seems fair that maybe Q3 2022

01:01:45 ◼   ► will be the first $20 billion a quarter services revenue?

01:01:48 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Just keeps on going up.

01:01:52 ◼   ► - It's blasting up.

01:01:53 ◼   ► That's just, yeah, chart goes up, like they say.

01:01:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the only down, right?

01:02:00 ◼   ► The only down is our friend, the iPad,

01:02:02 ◼   ► which has had its second down quarter in a row,

01:02:04 ◼   ► as I mentioned.

01:02:06 ◼   ► What do you take from this?

01:02:09 ◼   ► - I just don't have, I mean, it was only down a little bit.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And as Apple has pointed out,

01:02:15 ◼   ► it is severely supply constrained, right?

01:02:19 ◼   ► Like it's severely supply constrained.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - Is that the only product

01:02:23 ◼   ► that's seeing these kinds of supply constraints?

01:02:26 ◼   ► - No, they're all seeing supply constraints,

01:02:28 ◼   ► but I think the idea was that the iPad was growing slowly

01:02:32 ◼   ► and got knocked down by it.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I just wouldn't worry about it.

01:02:34 ◼   ► The iPad is at a pretty good level.

01:02:35 ◼   ► It was only down 2%.

01:02:37 ◼   ► between supply constraints and Russia being cut off,

01:02:42 ◼   ► like, I don't know, I think you could over obsess about it

01:02:47 ◼   ► and I'm not particularly concerned about it.

01:02:49 ◼   ► It's at a whole new level.

01:02:53 ◼   ► It had that really burst of growth in 2020,

01:02:56 ◼   ► but I mean, last quarter was down 14 year over year.

01:03:01 ◼   ► This quarter it's down two, it's minor.

01:03:03 ◼   ► I just am not, I'm just not gonna sweat it

01:03:06 ◼   ► given the environment of--

01:03:08 ◼   ► - That's fair, minus 2%, like down 2%

01:03:11 ◼   ► is basically you have pretty much level, right?

01:03:13 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's not, obviously it's a lot of money,

01:03:16 ◼   ► but it's not hugely off.

01:03:17 ◼   ► We're like down 14%, that's a double digit,

01:03:19 ◼   ► like that's more of a concern, right?

01:03:21 ◼   ► - And they said very specifically

01:03:23 ◼   ► it was severely supply constrained.

01:03:24 ◼   ► So that's, you know, that's part of it too.

01:03:26 ◼   ► If people want them and can't buy them,

01:03:29 ◼   ► yeah, I'm just not gonna,

01:03:31 ◼   ► I refuse to do an iPad freak out.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - Fair.

01:03:35 ◼   ► The iPhone, 52% of the business for this quarter.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Services at 20, Mac at 11, wearables nine, iPad eight.

01:03:46 ◼   ► - Yep, Apple really has three really nice

01:03:51 ◼   ► 40 billion-ish a year businesses,

01:03:54 ◼   ► 30 to 40 billion a year businesses.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Wearables, home and accessories, Mac and iPad.

01:04:02 ◼   ► And then it's got services,

01:04:03 ◼   ► which is shooting through the roof.

01:04:05 ◼   ► and it's got the iPhone.

01:04:07 ◼   ► And services obviously is not unconnected

01:04:11 ◼   ► with all the others.

01:04:12 ◼   ► So it's kind of a different kind of beast,

01:04:14 ◼   ► but it is funny to think about

01:04:16 ◼   ► if you take services out of the equation for a second,

01:04:18 ◼   ► Apple's got these three similarly sized businesses,

01:04:21 ◼   ► Mac, iPad, and wearables,

01:04:23 ◼   ► and then it's got the iPhone

01:04:24 ◼   ► which takes up half the revenue.

01:04:25 ◼   ► And I think, and we've talked about it here extensively,

01:04:28 ◼   ► it is actually an interesting management challenge,

01:04:31 ◼   ► which is on one level,

01:04:32 ◼   ► you should just manage Apple for the iPhone

01:04:34 ◼   ► 'cause Apple is the iPhone at this point.

01:04:37 ◼   ► On the other hand, how can you do that

01:04:39 ◼   ► when you have these three other very successful businesses

01:04:43 ◼   ► that you need to manage too?

01:04:44 ◼   ► And so we've seen that

01:04:46 ◼   ► and I think they're in a better place now, right?

01:04:47 ◼   ► But there definitely was a feeling that the Mac especially

01:04:50 ◼   ► was kind of not being paid attention to.

01:04:53 ◼   ► And I do think that's gonna be a continuing challenge

01:04:56 ◼   ► for Apple is the iPad is a great example.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Like calling an iPad OS, maybe was a stake in the ground,

01:05:03 ◼   ► But like one of the challenges is iPad OS is basically iOS

01:05:07 ◼   ► and it's, you have to will it that you will have iPad stuff

01:05:12 ◼   ► in your iOS product cycle.

01:05:15 ◼   ► 'Cause there will always be more iPhone stuff.

01:05:18 ◼   ► And the iPhone stuff will always be a higher priority

01:05:21 ◼   ► overall because the iPhone is so huge.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And somebody has to have the discipline.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And it's not just like last year, it's every year,

01:05:31 ◼   ► every decision somebody has to have the discipline to say,

01:05:34 ◼   ► we're gonna do iPad stuff too,

01:05:37 ◼   ► because the iPad is an important product for our company,

01:05:41 ◼   ► even though it's only throwing off whatever,

01:05:45 ◼   ► only throwing off $30 billion a year,

01:05:49 ◼   ► whereas the iPhone is throwing off $50 billion a quarter.

01:05:54 ◼   ► I get it, but that's part of their challenge,

01:05:59 ◼   ► because otherwise they should just shut it all down

01:06:01 ◼   ► and be iPhone incorporated.

01:06:02 ◼   ► And they're not gonna do that.

01:06:03 ◼   ► But like that's, I'm fascinated by that challenge

01:06:07 ◼   ► that they have because that iPhone number

01:06:09 ◼   ► is always enormous and they have to acknowledge it

01:06:12 ◼   ► and do good things with the iPhone,

01:06:14 ◼   ► but they can't keep those other product categories around

01:06:19 ◼   ► if they devote themselves to the iPhone.

01:06:23 ◼   ► So it's always a back and forth.

01:06:25 ◼   ► You imagine the debate about,

01:06:27 ◼   ► do we implement this iPad feature or this iPhone feature?

01:06:30 ◼   ► and having it be like, how much gas does the iPad get

01:06:34 ◼   ► in this?

01:06:35 ◼   ► Because the iPhone will always win

01:06:37 ◼   ► every single individual argument.

01:06:38 ◼   ► So you have to balance it and say, no, no, no,

01:06:41 ◼   ► we need to do this much with the iPad,

01:06:43 ◼   ► even though that means we're not gonna be able

01:06:45 ◼   ► to hit everything for the iPhone.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And that's okay because it can't all be about the iPhone.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I just think it's fascinating.

01:06:50 ◼   ► - And that's because they have that real,

01:06:52 ◼   ► I think, you know, maybe somewhat unique to Apple problem

01:06:57 ◼   ► of the scale of its percentage and relative-ness, right?

01:07:02 ◼   ► Like 10% of your business, no matter what business you have,

01:07:08 ◼   ► it's like, that's a big chunk.

01:07:10 ◼   ► But this is $40 billion a year, right?

01:07:13 ◼   ► So it's like, well, yeah, the Mac or the iPad

01:07:16 ◼   ► might only be 10%, but the relative amount of money

01:07:21 ◼   ► and resources that can be brought through that money

01:07:25 ◼   ► is astronomically large in a way that I'm sure not a lot of other companies have to

01:07:30 ◼   ► think about with their products, right? Where like, as you say, it is that of like, the

01:07:35 ◼   ► iPhone is 50% and it's hundreds and hundreds, you know, it's like hundreds of billions of

01:07:40 ◼   ► dollars a year. But then you also have this other one, it's 40 billion, which is so much

01:07:45 ◼   ► money, right? And it's super weird. It must be very strange. Like, yeah, but it's only

01:07:49 ◼   ► a small part of our company. Yeah, but look how much revenue it generates, how many customers

01:07:54 ◼   ► we have in this like bucket, you know, it's really weird. It is very strange.

01:08:00 ◼   ► And you can't set off a division, right? Because Apple structure doesn't work like that. The

01:08:05 ◼   ► way another company would do this is it would say, look, the iPad division has its own budget

01:08:12 ◼   ► based on how much money it makes. The Mac division has its own budget based on how much

01:08:15 ◼   ► money it makes. Wearables. You're the CEO of Wearables Incorporated.

01:08:19 ◼   ► what Google does or like what Facebook does, right, where they kind of spin them out.

01:08:24 ◼   ► And Apple can't do it. Apple literally can't do it because all its products are intertwined.

01:08:28 ◼   ► The silicon is intertwined. The base operating system is intertwined. And then big chunks of

01:08:33 ◼   ► it are intertwined with other products. Like Apple Watch cannot be Apple Watch Incorporated because

01:08:38 ◼   ► Apple Watch is entirely dependent on the iPhone. And so you end up in a situation where of their

01:08:44 ◼   ► own making and it is greatly beneficial to them. But it does mean that they can't wall

01:08:49 ◼   ► it all off. Instead, you got to make hard decisions. I guess this is nothing new, but

01:08:53 ◼   ► this is my regular rant that I appreciate the fact when they do things for the Mac and

01:09:00 ◼   ► they do things for the iPad and the Apple Watch and AirPods and all these things, on

01:09:05 ◼   ► one level, I appreciate the fact that they are paying attention to these businesses because

01:09:09 ◼   ► I think they are very important businesses. And yet, if you think about it, the iPhone

01:09:14 ◼   ► business is more important than them each by about 5X. So, you know, if push just came

01:09:23 ◼   ► to shove, the easy thing to do would be to let them all kind of die on the vine. And

01:09:28 ◼   ► I think there are points in Apple's history where that has happened. And I think it's

01:09:33 ◼   ► going to be and has been a constant challenge

01:09:37 ◼   ► to thread that needle of what love do we give to the iPhone

01:09:41 ◼   ► because it's the engine that really runs this company,

01:09:43 ◼   ► but at the same time,

01:09:44 ◼   ► we don't want to screw up these other products

01:09:46 ◼   ► that are also by themselves

01:09:49 ◼   ► very large successful product categories.

01:09:51 ◼   ► It's tricky is what I'm saying.

01:09:53 ◼   ► - So in listening to the earnings calls as you do,

01:09:57 ◼   ► you were able to pull out some points that were interesting.

01:10:02 ◼   ► And there was a couple that I noted down

01:10:04 ◼   ► from your Macworld article.

01:10:06 ◼   ► One being that the iPhone is kind of interesting

01:10:10 ◼   ► that they were able to beat up year over year

01:10:12 ◼   ► because they were beating a very tough compare

01:10:15 ◼   ► - Tough compare. - in the industry.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Because the 2020 iPhone came out late.

01:10:21 ◼   ► So the sales were pushed further into Q2 of 2021

01:10:25 ◼   ► than they usually would be.

01:10:26 ◼   ► So most of the sales from the iPhone,

01:10:29 ◼   ► like the big bump, usually you see in Q1,

01:10:31 ◼   ► which is the holiday quarter for Apple.

01:10:33 ◼   ► But there were the, of the iPhone 12,

01:10:36 ◼   ► there were way more sales into Q2

01:10:38 ◼   ► than there would be otherwise.

01:10:40 ◼   ► So the fact that the iPhone 13 was able to beat 2021's Q2

01:10:45 ◼   ► shows the demand for the iPhone 13 is very, very strong.

01:10:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's, I will accept this statement by them,

01:10:54 ◼   ► 'cause they're obviously gonna say whatever is self-serving,

01:10:57 ◼   ► but this is true.

01:11:00 ◼   ► Like it seems like a long time ago now,

01:11:02 ◼   ► but the iPhone 12 launch was late, right?

01:11:05 ◼   ► They spread it out, the Pro phones shipped a lot later.

01:11:08 ◼   ► And as a result, what they said is the buying cycle

01:11:10 ◼   ► was later and they made, you know,

01:11:12 ◼   ► they didn't have any in Q3 really.

01:11:14 ◼   ► It was really more of a Q4 thing

01:11:16 ◼   ► and then rolled into Q1.

01:11:19 ◼   ► So a year on the iPhone went back to the standard cycle,

01:11:23 ◼   ► which means that they're later in the buying cycle

01:11:26 ◼   ► than they were a year ago.

01:11:28 ◼   ► And so you'd expect that to be a tough compare.

01:11:31 ◼   ► But they still went up.

01:11:33 ◼   ► So that, yeah.

01:11:34 ◼   ► And there were also some supplies constraints out there,

01:11:37 ◼   ► I think too.

01:11:38 ◼   ► So again, it's interesting that like,

01:11:41 ◼   ► it's easy to write off,

01:11:43 ◼   ► obviously they get a huge bump

01:11:44 ◼   ► when they change the look of the product,

01:11:46 ◼   ► but the iPhone 13 demand has been pretty strong.

01:11:50 ◼   ► And they said as much,

01:11:51 ◼   ► and you can see it in the numbers

01:11:53 ◼   ► that like they're still selling iPhone 13s.

01:11:55 ◼   ► It's not like everybody got their iPhone 12s

01:11:57 ◼   ► and said, we're good.

01:11:58 ◼   ► they're still selling iPhone 13s and doing well with that.

01:12:00 ◼   ► - You mentioned supply constraints. There are "substantially larger supply chain constraints

01:12:08 ◼   ► on the horizon for Apple." It seems like there is a mood, as you referenced, that potentially Apple

01:12:17 ◼   ► are about to get hit by supply constraints in a way that they have been able to mostly shield

01:12:22 ◼   ► themselves for. - Yeah, there's two things that are affecting

01:12:27 ◼   ► Apple supply chain, right? There are the silicon, they refer to it as the silicon shortages or the,

01:12:33 ◼   ► you know, it's the legacy nodes. Tim Cook likes to talk about the legacy nodes. He's reached the

01:12:37 ◼   ► point now where he's like, "You all know about the legacy nodes." It's like, "Okay, thanks, Tim."

01:12:40 ◼   ► But the idea that, and that you see this throughout industries, there are all the stories

01:12:45 ◼   ► about the car industry having to struggle with this where it's like commonly available

01:12:49 ◼   ► parts for computers like USB chargers and Bluetooth chips and stuff like that,

01:12:54 ◼   ► commonly available, but what happened was COVID happened, factories shut down, then they had to

01:13:00 ◼   ► get restarted, and there's a huge backlog of orders for that stuff. And it has meant that the

01:13:07 ◼   ► just-in-time supply chain is still not back in shape where you've got to think, it's the story.

01:13:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not in time. It's out of time. Well, this is the story. My favorite example of this

01:13:18 ◼   ► is Tesla shipping cars without USB chargers in them and saying, "We'll fix it later."

01:13:23 ◼   ► And I actually love that idea.

01:13:25 ◼   ► And I'm sure there are other car makers doing it

01:13:27 ◼   ► where it's like, okay, we can either make all these cars

01:13:30 ◼   ► that we've sold and then not ship them

01:13:32 ◼   ► and not actually get paid for them

01:13:34 ◼   ► because of a legacy node somewhere,

01:13:37 ◼   ► or we can just ship without and say,

01:13:38 ◼   ► we will take the hit and we will,

01:13:40 ◼   ► you bring it into service and we'll install it later.

01:13:42 ◼   ► But do you want your car now or not?

01:13:44 ◼   ► That's where a lot of industry is dealing with now.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Now, Apple is not gonna be able to say,

01:13:49 ◼   ► "Hey, would you like your Mac studio without Bluetooth?"

01:13:52 ◼   ► We'll add it later, right?

01:13:53 ◼   ► They can't do that.

01:13:54 ◼   ► So it becomes a supply concern.

01:13:56 ◼   ► So that's been going on and they've dealt with it.

01:13:59 ◼   ► And they initially had a bunch of stock

01:14:02 ◼   ► that they were able to do to mitigate it.

01:14:03 ◼   ► But obviously there are still issues

01:14:05 ◼   ► where they've blown through their stock.

01:14:08 ◼   ► They said that last quarter

01:14:09 ◼   ► that they were kind of run out of that,

01:14:10 ◼   ► their padding that they had.

01:14:12 ◼   ► The other issue though is COVID.

01:14:15 ◼   ► And specifically a lot of Apple's products

01:14:19 ◼   ► are assembled in the greater Shanghai area.

01:14:24 ◼   ► And there have been lockdowns

01:14:26 ◼   ► and therefore shutdowns of factories in Shanghai.

01:14:29 ◼   ► And what Tim Cook said was their assembly plants

01:14:33 ◼   ► are coming back online,

01:14:36 ◼   ► but another term that I love is, but they have to ramp.

01:14:40 ◼   ► There's a ramp there.

01:14:41 ◼   ► The ramp, oh, the ramp, you know,

01:14:44 ◼   ► 'cause you don't, it's not,

01:14:45 ◼   ► a factory doesn't just flip a switch on and off.

01:14:48 ◼   ► when you gotta get the factory back in motion again,

01:14:50 ◼   ► it's actually very complicated

01:14:52 ◼   ► and they don't start at full capacity

01:14:53 ◼   ► and it takes time for the factory

01:14:55 ◼   ► to reach full capacity again,

01:14:57 ◼   ► 'cause you've got the stuff coming in

01:14:59 ◼   ► and then you have the stuff going out

01:15:00 ◼   ► and the people on the line and all of those things.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And Apple said that is a major factor

01:15:06 ◼   ► in their supply chain getting slowed down too,

01:15:09 ◼   ► is that they have had shutdowns.

01:15:11 ◼   ► And you can see it.

01:15:12 ◼   ► I mean, you can see it.

01:15:15 ◼   ► go to apple dot com and try to order a Mac studio with the high end

01:15:18 ◼   ► configuration and it'll be like you'll get this in July.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Um, like across the board, so many products are just not available

01:15:27 ◼   ► anytime soon, except in some configurations, mostly the base models

01:15:31 ◼   ► that are available, like at your local Apple store, you can get them pretty

01:15:34 ◼   ► soon. You're seeing this everywhere. And that's a big part of it is the

01:15:37 ◼   ► shutdown in the Shanghai region. Here's the big part though. And this is

01:15:42 ◼   ► part that made Wall Street go, "Excuse me, what?" And all the analysts on the call last

01:15:47 ◼   ► week were like, "Tim, can we talk about this a little bit?" is they think they will have

01:15:54 ◼   ► between $4 and $8 billion in product revenue that they will fail to fulfill in the fiscal

01:16:02 ◼   ► third quarter, which is going on right now, because of the inability to fulfill demand.

01:16:10 ◼   ► there are four to eight billion dollars that people are standing, you know, like the meme

01:16:14 ◼   ► with Fry from Futurama saying, "Shut up and take my money." Say, "Take my money, Apple.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I want your product." And Apple's like, "I don't have it for you." And that's what those

01:16:23 ◼   ► long lines on the Apple store are and all of that. And four to eight billion dollars,

01:16:30 ◼   ► even for Apple, is a lot of money. So I, and they didn't give any other like hints about

01:16:38 ◼   ► Like, we expect it to be probably a record or whatever.

01:16:41 ◼   ► They didn't say anything else about that third fiscal quarter.

01:16:43 ◼   ► So my guess is they're not going to have a great quarter next quarter,

01:16:48 ◼   ► not because of a lack of demand, but because of their lack of supply

01:16:51 ◼   ► and that they're, if they're sandbagging it,

01:16:54 ◼   ► they're doing a really good job of it because they seem pretty sober about it.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Like to call it out and say between four and eight billion dollars in product sales

01:17:01 ◼   ► that will just be bypassed because we can't give them the product.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And when somebody asked one of the analysts like, Tim,

01:17:07 ◼   ► about the four to eight billion.

01:17:09 ◼   ► What, what?

01:17:11 ◼   ► 'Cause they were all like asking about it.

01:17:13 ◼   ► It was amazing 'cause it's a big number.

01:17:15 ◼   ► It's a scary big number.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And one of them was,

01:17:18 ◼   ► do you have an idea of how much of that

01:17:20 ◼   ► will just be deferred to the next quarter

01:17:22 ◼   ► versus lost forever?

01:17:24 ◼   ► You know, it's one of those kinds of questions.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And Tim Cook's response was, who can tell?

01:17:28 ◼   ► Probably both.

01:17:29 ◼   ► Little bit of A, little bit of B.

01:17:32 ◼   ► We don't know how many people want a laptop,

01:17:36 ◼   ► won an Apple laptop, can't get one,

01:17:38 ◼   ► and immediately have to have a laptop

01:17:40 ◼   ► so they go buy someone else's laptop

01:17:42 ◼   ► versus I can wait until July for that next studio.

01:17:46 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Like they don't know.

01:17:48 ◼   ► So they were looking,

01:17:49 ◼   ► the analysts were looking for reassuring words from Tim.

01:17:52 ◼   ► Tim did not have reassuring words for them.

01:17:54 ◼   ► - And just again, like that's about,

01:17:57 ◼   ► could be about 10% of their revenue for the quarter.

01:18:02 ◼   ► You know, they probably would lock in

01:18:04 ◼   ► in a regular scenario between 80 to 85,

01:18:08 ◼   ► looking at previous history, like if all things were good.

01:18:12 ◼   ► So that could be, if we get up to that top end of that scale,

01:18:15 ◼   ► which probably won't,

01:18:16 ◼   ► but if we got to the top end of that scale,

01:18:19 ◼   ► that's like 10% of the revenue for the quarter,

01:18:21 ◼   ► just a lot right off, like that's no joke.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - And traditionally Apple's Q3s

01:18:26 ◼   ► have actually been a lot less,

01:18:27 ◼   ► they've been in the fifties to sixties.

01:18:29 ◼   ► So it could be a scenario here too,

01:18:32 ◼   ► where they're looking at 81.4 last quarter

01:18:35 ◼   ► and they're thinking,

01:18:36 ◼   ► wow, we were actually thinking it'd be down

01:18:38 ◼   ► and it'd be more like 70.

01:18:40 ◼   ► And now it might be 62 or something like that.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And like, again, in the grand scheme of things,

01:18:47 ◼   ► is Apple fine?

01:18:48 ◼   ► Apple's fine.

01:18:49 ◼   ► I got a very, my Mac world column posted with a,

01:18:53 ◼   ► sometimes they're inflammatory headlines.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I didn't mind this one so much,

01:18:56 ◼   ► but I got a very angry email from somebody who was like,

01:19:00 ◼   ► how dare you say that Apple is doomed?

01:19:02 ◼   ► I'm like, "Well, didn't say that."

01:19:03 ◼   ► And he's like, "They're so rich."

01:19:04 ◼   ► I'm like, "I did say that part,

01:19:06 ◼   ► but Apple must be defended at all costs."

01:19:08 ◼   ► We know that.

01:19:09 ◼   ► Anyway, my point was just like,

01:19:13 ◼   ► they're gonna be fine having $8 billion of extra demand

01:19:17 ◼   ► in one way is a good thing, right?

01:19:19 ◼   ► People really want to buy your products,

01:19:21 ◼   ► but if you can't convert that into sales, that's painful.

01:19:24 ◼   ► And I think what they're gonna do is,

01:19:25 ◼   ► I think they're gonna have a painful quarter

01:19:26 ◼   ► where they're gonna be down

01:19:27 ◼   ► and everybody's gonna freak out.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And then, you know, what's probably gonna happen

01:19:30 ◼   ► is that they're gonna have guidance for the next quarter

01:19:32 ◼   ► that say, oh, we're gonna be fine.

01:19:34 ◼   ► We're gonna get it all back.

01:19:35 ◼   ► That's probably what's gonna happen.

01:19:37 ◼   ► But I would say, I would expect that next quarter

01:19:42 ◼   ► will not be like the last kind of eight boring quarters

01:19:46 ◼   ► where they've just done great.

01:19:48 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be one of those,

01:19:50 ◼   ► yeah, let me tell you about the impact.

01:19:52 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be like great news everybody,

01:19:53 ◼   ► only 4 billion, but still 4 billion in lost sales

01:19:58 ◼   ► is not great.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And it's the supply chain.

01:20:00 ◼   ► It's just, this is how it's hitting Apple.

01:20:02 ◼   ► And everybody who's trying to buy an Apple product right now

01:20:05 ◼   ► and discovering that they can't get it for months,

01:20:08 ◼   ► they know, they have felt this very thing.

01:20:11 ◼   ► That you are, your money that you wanna put

01:20:15 ◼   ► toward an Apple product that you can't buy right now

01:20:17 ◼   ► is part of that four to eight billion.

01:20:19 ◼   ► Like you're in this story.

01:20:21 ◼   ► - Is my, like, if I paint a doom and gloom picture of like,

01:20:27 ◼   ► what if this issue carries all the way through to new iPhone?

01:20:32 ◼   ► Like that there are people in September

01:20:35 ◼   ► that go to the Apple store to like, you know,

01:20:37 ◼   ► they log online to go buy their phone

01:20:39 ◼   ► and they cannot get one until 2023, right?

01:20:43 ◼   ► 'Cause that's like similar to what the Mac studio

01:20:45 ◼   ► has been like, right?

01:20:46 ◼   ► - Two things there.

01:20:47 ◼   ► One is, I do wonder if you're talking about the ramp,

01:20:51 ◼   ► if you're ramping up manufacturing of iPhones

01:20:54 ◼   ► and I don't know when that starts to happen,

01:20:55 ◼   ► but it probably will happen pretty soon, right?

01:20:58 ◼   ► - I mean, the fact that we've been seeing these screens

01:21:00 ◼   ► and as soon, right?

01:21:01 ◼   ► It's coming.

01:21:02 ◼   ► - So they're gonna start making this fall's iPhones.

01:21:04 ◼   ► They start in advance so that they can make lots of them

01:21:06 ◼   ► 'cause they sell lots of them.

01:21:08 ◼   ► I do wonder if one of the things that may be going on here

01:21:11 ◼   ► is actually them saying,

01:21:13 ◼   ► "We have to prioritize building the iPhone

01:21:16 ◼   ► so everything else is going to kind of not ship."

01:21:19 ◼   ► - Sacrificing.

01:21:20 ◼   ► - And we're gonna take a hit this quarter

01:21:21 ◼   ► because we can't not have iPhones in the fall.

01:21:25 ◼   ► So that may be going on here.

01:21:26 ◼   ► That is a, and when analysts ask, like, do you prioritize?

01:21:31 ◼   ► Tim Cook does a very much, I mean,

01:21:33 ◼   ► he doesn't say we love all our kids equally.

01:21:35 ◼   ► He says more, more something like that's secret.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And if I told you I would have to kill you

01:21:39 ◼   ► is more of the line of his thing.

01:21:42 ◼   ► But it's, I talk about prioritization

01:21:45 ◼   ► and the iPhone being worth half of Apple's revenue.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Well, I'll tell you, if there's like,

01:21:50 ◼   ► does the Mac studio slide?

01:21:51 ◼   ► I'm not saying this is actually an issue

01:21:53 ◼   ► 'cause they're probably assembled totally differently

01:21:55 ◼   ► in different places, but it's like,

01:21:56 ◼   ► you've got a choice that iPad Air sales

01:22:00 ◼   ► are gonna be held for a little while,

01:22:02 ◼   ► or we're gonna not have enough iPhones.

01:22:05 ◼   ► There's no decision to be made there.

01:22:08 ◼   ► Like we gotta have iPhones for launch.

01:22:10 ◼   ► We gotta have iPhones to sell.

01:22:12 ◼   ► It's our most popular product

01:22:13 ◼   ► and they sell all in the holiday quarter

01:22:14 ◼   ► and we've gotta make sure we make enough for that.

01:22:17 ◼   ► So it wouldn't surprise me

01:22:18 ◼   ► if that's going on in the background

01:22:21 ◼   ► and quite rightly so.

01:22:23 ◼   ► I also, the other thing hovering over this,

01:22:25 ◼   ► my second point here is COVID, which is okay.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Like in the United States, especially,

01:22:30 ◼   ► everybody's like, "Oh, we're over COVID now.

01:22:32 ◼   ► All the mask restrictions have been dropped

01:22:34 ◼   ► and stuff like that."

01:22:34 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, we're over."

01:22:35 ◼   ► Except people still are getting COVID.

01:22:37 ◼   ► My favorite baseball team just had like five guys get COVID

01:22:40 ◼   ► and not be able to play for a week.

01:22:43 ◼   ► And they were all vaccinated and boosted,

01:22:44 ◼   ► but it's Omicron and it happens.

01:22:49 ◼   ► But like, look at China, and the lockdown's in Shanghai.

01:22:53 ◼   ► And it's serious.

01:22:54 ◼   ► It's like really serious,

01:22:56 ◼   ► 'cause they have these zero COVID policy.

01:22:57 ◼   ► China being authoritarian state can just say,

01:23:00 ◼   ► "No, you stay inside now."

01:23:03 ◼   ► Whereas in the US, we're like,

01:23:04 ◼   ► "Okay, people are tired of it.

01:23:05 ◼   ► I guess it's over."

01:23:06 ◼   ► We move on.

01:23:08 ◼   ► China's like, "No, uh-uh, no, we don't want COVID cases."

01:23:11 ◼   ► And as a result, they've had very few COVID deaths.

01:23:13 ◼   ► But the result is that COVID is very much a thing

01:23:17 ◼   ► in a place that is super important for Apple.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Mark Gurman wrote about this in his newsletter this week.

01:23:25 ◼   ► It's like, this is one of Apple's issues.

01:23:27 ◼   ► We've talked about it here,

01:23:28 ◼   ► is like they are so dependent on China.

01:23:30 ◼   ► And in this case, it's not about the government in China

01:23:32 ◼   ► doing something that upsets Apple

01:23:34 ◼   ► as much as it is this knock-on effect

01:23:36 ◼   ► of the government in China saying,

01:23:37 ◼   ► "We're gonna be really serious

01:23:39 ◼   ► about controlling the spread of COVID in Shanghai."

01:23:41 ◼   ► But the net result is that the factory shut down,

01:23:44 ◼   ► and they're still dealing with those effects,

01:23:46 ◼   ► that's going to affect Apple to the state

01:23:48 ◼   ► of four to $8 billion.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Well, that's for this quarter,

01:23:50 ◼   ► but what it also says is,

01:23:54 ◼   ► how do you forecast when you don't know,

01:23:58 ◼   ► 'cause it's COVID and it's the Chinese government's policy,

01:24:02 ◼   ► what if there's another outbreak in July

01:24:06 ◼   ► and they close the factories again?

01:24:08 ◼   ► That's, I think, the scariest thing from,

01:24:13 ◼   ► if you're Tim Cook, is,

01:24:15 ◼   ► okay, we'll take this hit now,

01:24:17 ◼   ► but what if there's another hit

01:24:18 ◼   ► that precludes us from manufacturing

01:24:22 ◼   ► and hits our supply chain even harder

01:24:25 ◼   ► and we can't get these things out there

01:24:26 ◼   ► and we miss the moment for the iPhone again,

01:24:30 ◼   ► like they did two years ago.

01:24:31 ◼   ► That's pretty scary if I'm Tim Apple,

01:24:34 ◼   ► I would be worried about that.

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01:27:15 ◼   ► and Relay FM. This is some #AskUpgrade questions to finish out today's show. This one leads in

01:27:21 ◼   ► from what we were just talking about and this comes from Crumble Door. I'm a wizard Harry.

01:27:26 ◼   ► Apple's CFO said they quote planned, this is Luke, actually they Apple quotes planned to add

01:27:33 ◼   ► new services that they're offering.

01:27:36 ◼   ► What services do you think they're gonna add?

01:27:38 ◼   ► What services do you want them to add?

01:27:40 ◼   ► - Oh wow.

01:27:41 ◼   ► - So the one I'm not sure.

01:27:44 ◼   ► What I think they'll do is that stuff

01:27:45 ◼   ► we've mentioned in the past, right?

01:27:47 ◼   ► So I think more around finances and personal financing

01:27:50 ◼   ► and also financing of iPhones, right?

01:27:54 ◼   ► So like that you pay every month and you get an iPhone

01:27:56 ◼   ► or you pay every month and you get an iPad every year.

01:27:59 ◼   ► You remember we were talking about that?

01:28:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're gonna bring the iPhone thing

01:28:02 ◼   ► that's out there now that's like a separate kind of loan

01:28:04 ◼   ► thing and they're gonna bring it and make it a service.

01:28:06 ◼   ► They built, they're building their financial system

01:28:08 ◼   ► for that.

01:28:09 ◼   ► They're building it for a pay in four, pay in three

01:28:11 ◼   ► kind of thing where they'll do that themselves

01:28:13 ◼   ► instead of using a partner.

01:28:14 ◼   ► I do, yeah, I do wonder if they're gonna just do that

01:28:16 ◼   ► for all their products eventually, right?

01:28:19 ◼   ► Where it's like you just, you're on the iPad Pro plan

01:28:21 ◼   ► and you pay and whenever there's a new iPad Pro plan,

01:28:24 ◼   ► iPad Pro, you just get it and you send in the old one

01:28:27 ◼   ► and they just kind of do that because some people want that

01:28:30 ◼   ► and they are happy to have your credit card

01:28:33 ◼   ► and charge you monthly.

01:28:33 ◼   ► Apple's all about that now.

01:28:35 ◼   ► I throw in sports.

01:28:37 ◼   ► I think there will be a higher tier for Apple TV Plus

01:28:40 ◼   ► if they get NFL Sunday ticket.

01:28:41 ◼   ► I think that they may end up creating

01:28:43 ◼   ► a kind of like a sports plus thing

01:28:47 ◼   ► that will be maybe in a bundle,

01:28:49 ◼   ► but it'll be something that you buy extra

01:28:51 ◼   ► or even separately, which I think would be interesting.

01:28:54 ◼   ► What if you don't want Apple TV Plus,

01:28:56 ◼   ► but you want the Apple TV Sports,

01:28:57 ◼   ► they could make it a separate thing instead.

01:29:01 ◼   ► I don't know, I think there might be-

01:29:02 ◼   ► - I think classical music is another one, right?

01:29:04 ◼   ► Like I know that that's coming,

01:29:06 ◼   ► are they gonna add that on?

01:29:08 ◼   ► - Right, is that an add on for some things probably,

01:29:10 ◼   ► for other things probably not.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Keeping in mind that it's not just what new services,

01:29:13 ◼   ► but it's also things that it could add to a bundle,

01:29:17 ◼   ► which is interesting 'cause then it doesn't necessarily

01:29:19 ◼   ► have to stand on its own.

01:29:20 ◼   ► It could be a sweetening of the bundle,

01:29:22 ◼   ► even if they offer it on its own.

01:29:24 ◼   ► It's also just like it makes the Apple One bundle

01:29:26 ◼   ► look nicer.

01:29:27 ◼   ► God, what else could they do?

01:29:30 ◼   ► - The idea of what would I want them to do

01:29:33 ◼   ► is the one that I find the most complicated.

01:29:35 ◼   ► 'Cause while there are things that I want them,

01:29:37 ◼   ► they're just not gonna be able to do.

01:29:39 ◼   ► Like I want Apple to offer a service

01:29:41 ◼   ► where I pay them every month

01:29:42 ◼   ► and can watch a bunch of new movies from iTunes,

01:29:44 ◼   ► but like that's not gonna happen.