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Upgrade

323: The Edges are More Interesting

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 323. Today's show is brought to you by Hover, DoorDash, and Pingdom.

00:00:17   My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:21   Hi, Myke Hurley, how are you?

00:00:22   Very good, this is one of the product review episodes of the fall.

00:00:27   There's gonna be one of many, I think, as we lead up to the rest at the end of the year.

00:00:31   Every year I think Apple has done too much and then the next year they just do it again or they do more

00:00:37   and it just keeps on happening. It's the relentless pace of Apple's fall and we're in it now. We're deep in it.

00:00:45   I'm sure it's gonna be fun for you when it comes to putting the report card together.

00:00:50   Oh boy, and the upgrade-ies. Let's just tease everything that happens at the end of the year.

00:00:54   There's a lot of stuff that happens every year, especially towards the end of the year, but we have a whole episode

00:01:01   to get to today and it will begin with a #SnellTalk question from Ty and Ty wants to know,

00:01:06   "How often do you change the background on your iPhone?"

00:01:11   Unfortunately, this is gonna be a really boring answer because the answer is almost never.

00:01:15   Okay.

00:01:16   A couple of years ago they came out with those the rainbow Apple logo stripe backgrounds and I thought those were great.

00:01:26   The six-color rainbow Apple logo and I set one of those as my iPhone background and it's still my iPhone background.

00:01:32   So I would say it's a couple of years usually and even my lock screen has basically been the same for two or more years at this point.

00:01:40   So rare for me, very rare. How about you, Myke? Are you a frequent wallpaper changer?

00:01:46   No, it's once every couple of years at most.

00:01:49   Yeah.

00:01:50   Something might change it if something happens or I come across something specific, but it's very unlikely.

00:01:57   If I charted it, it's probably multiple years for me to make those changes before I do.

00:02:02   Yep, same.

00:02:04   If you would like to send in a question to help us begin an episode of the show that we can answer,

00:02:10   just send out a tweet with the hashtag #SnellTalk and yours may be included for a future episode.

00:02:15   If you're in the Relay FM members discord, use the command question mark SnellTalk.

00:02:20   I have a couple of follow-up items. Well, I guess the first one is follow out.

00:02:23   We were both, you invited me to join a panel on the incomparable to talk about the Apple TV+ television program,

00:02:31   Ted Lasso, which we've mentioned in passing many times on this show,

00:02:36   but we didn't get into any detail about it because I knew that I was going to be on this panel

00:02:40   along with James Sansom, Dan Morrow, Kelly Gremont, Elian Sims, Glenn Flashman, and yourself.

00:02:46   It was fantastic. I loved it. I really loved it.

00:02:48   It's an incomparable episode. There's lots of people.

00:02:50   And we added you because I wanted a little more London football knowledge to drop.

00:02:58   I don't know if I had much of that, but I did have what it is to be a Londoner and to live in London.

00:03:03   I could definitely add that to the mix.

00:03:06   I really wanted to be on the show because I really wanted to talk about Ted Lasso

00:03:09   because like many people, I consider it one of my favorite television shows in a very long time

00:03:16   for reasons that are typically not why I like television shows, I think,

00:03:19   because it's a very different type of program. We're not going to rehash it here.

00:03:23   You should go listen to episode 537 of the incomparable where we spoke about it at length.

00:03:29   Yes, yes. And that's our second Apple TV+ show to get the incomparable treatment after For All Mankind.

00:03:35   So we pick our spots there, but Ted Lasso demanded, just demanded it.

00:03:40   Which is unlike Ted, really, I think, to make a demand like that.

00:03:45   He's a very polite gentleman.

00:03:46   That's true.

00:03:47   No, it was his actions. His actions demanded it.

00:03:49   His actions made it necessary. He inspired us. How about that? He inspired us.

00:03:52   French Upgradients came out in force, which I was very surprised about.

00:03:57   Nobody got upset at our accents. Instead, they gave us all the follow-up that we required.

00:04:01   We received this many, many, many, many, many, many, many times, but I believe the first was

00:04:05   from Simon, who sent us in a picture of their own iPhone box that included the EarPods.

00:04:12   We were wondering, how is Apple going to package the particular box for French customers who

00:04:19   require, because of laws which are interesting, that there are EarPods in the box with the new

00:04:25   iPhones, unlike anywhere else in the world? Well, it turns out that they put the EarPods in a box,

00:04:30   and then the iPhone in that box, and it's just a big outside box with the iPhone box inside.

00:04:35   It's a box inside of a box, everybody. That's how they did it. There's a link in the show notes

00:04:39   if you want to see the tweet that Simon sent in, but basically, that's what they're doing.

00:04:45   Simon did also mention that the iPhone is a little bit more expensive in France than it is in Germany.

00:04:52   So it seems like Apple may potentially have increased the price of the phone a little

00:04:58   in France to account for the included EarPods. That's great. I love that there's a box within

00:05:04   a box. It's like a cheap, lousy outside box. Box in a box. Box in a box. Yep.

00:05:10   Should we do some upstream headlines? I think so. It's been a little while. Let's get into it.

00:05:15   There's a lot going on. There is a lot going on. There always is. We spoke about the possibility

00:05:19   of this, and it has now been announced. The Apple TV app and Apple TV+ content will be available on

00:05:27   the PlayStation 5 at launch. This is something that we'd seen rumored that Apple was trying to

00:05:33   get their streaming services and their applications onto these games consoles, which are, both the

00:05:40   PlayStation and the Xbox, are content boxes. It's very normal. Actually, all of the streaming

00:05:45   services will have an app on the consoles, and Apple is now joining them. I don't think every

00:05:54   content partner gets this, but this is the package of Apple TV+ content. If you want to watch any of

00:06:00   the Apple TV+ shows, you can. But also, any TV show or movie you have bought in the iTunes app

00:06:06   or the movies app, whatever it's called now, will also show as you have bought on your PlayStation 5.

00:06:12   It's another great way for people to get the 4K content, the HDR content, which I expect

00:06:21   will be available because the PlayStation 5 supports all of that. Everybody's streaming

00:06:26   services should be available everywhere. That's how that should work. This was going back a long

00:06:31   time, but we were really concerned that Apple would not do that. I think that they definitely

00:06:37   chose the right path in following the industry conventions here because it allows for their

00:06:43   content to get out. When we look at a show like Ted Lasso, which I think has got a lot of word of

00:06:49   mouth behind it, if the only way to get that was to then buy an Apple TV, it wouldn't work.

00:06:55   But if you already own a Roku or you own a PlayStation 5 when it comes out, and you're like,

00:07:01   "Oh, the Apple app is here. I hear people talking about that Ted Lasso. I'll check it out." That's

00:07:05   the only way that you can build that business. If you enforce it by making people spend hundreds of

00:07:10   dollars to buy a box first, it's just not going to work. Well, this actually came up with the

00:07:15   announcement that Apple, which we mentioned I think last week, signed the distribution deal

00:07:21   with the owners of the Peanuts cartoons. The story in America is that they have been on

00:07:28   broadcast TV on a network, even though they're very old, they're from the late '60s and early '70s,

00:07:35   they are still aired every year on network TV, and it's become a tradition, especially the Christmas

00:07:41   one. It was CBS for the longest time, but it's been ABC the last few years, and their contract

00:07:50   ran out. As far as anyone can tell, I think this has been confirmed unofficially, behind the scenes,

00:07:56   Apple is the only one that has it now. There will be no broadcast of Charlie Brown Christmas

00:08:06   in the U.S., which is a huge deal, so it's on Apple TV Plus. But here's the thing,

00:08:15   Apple has gone so far with distribution of Apple TV Plus that you can actually just go to,

00:08:20   I think it's tv.apple.com, in a web browser on any platform, essentially, and watch Apple TV Plus.

00:08:29   And of course, they're making those Peanuts holiday specials available for about three days,

00:08:35   four days, around the individual holidays. So even though it's very different because you've got to

00:08:42   have an internet connection that can stream video, as opposed to free over-the-air television, which

00:08:47   reaches different people. So it's not the same, and there are debates to be had about access to

00:08:52   this kind of content. But I will say that Apple, you know, Apple making it free isn't enough.

00:08:59   Apple also has to make it available, and this shows that Apple has built out Apple TV Plus to be

00:09:06   in a whole lot of places, including all the way back to, do you have a web browser? Then you can

00:09:13   see this stuff, including presumably the free thing, but also you could pay for Apple TV Plus,

00:09:18   and literally just watch it on a Windows laptop in a browser, and it should work.

00:09:25   Apple's partnership with A24 is bringing yet another movie to TV Plus, this time starring

00:09:31   Scarlett Johansson. Directed by Sebastian Lileo, I believe is how you pronounce that.

00:09:37   It is a genre-bending movie called Bride. This is a quote from Deadline. The plot follows a woman

00:09:44   created to be an ideal wife, the singular obsession of a brilliant entrepreneur. When she rejects her

00:09:49   creator, she's forced to flee her confined existence, confronting a world that sees her as

00:09:53   a monster. It is on the run that she finds her true identity, a surprising power, and the strength to

00:09:58   remake herself as her own creation. Seems like a kind of Frankenstein. It's Bride of Frankenstein,

00:10:03   yeah. It's Bride of Frankenstein, but modern and interesting. Interesting. Apple has shared the

00:10:10   trailer for Servant season two, so this is the M. Night Shyamalan show. Premieres January 15th,

00:10:17   10 episodes coming each Friday. See, the two season twos are starting to appear. I did not

00:10:22   watch Servant season one. We can see why they did that extension to February now, can't we?

00:10:26   Because everything's coming out in January. Exactly, exactly. And I think For All Mankind

00:10:32   is gonna premiere at some point probably in that ballpark and the morning show we know is being

00:10:38   shot now. And like, yeah, yeah. This is why we observed the extension, because they need more

00:10:46   time to roll this stuff out. Because you know that, you know, without a pandemic, they would

00:10:49   have had a big fall rollout. We'd be in the midst of it right now. But that's not what happened.

00:10:54   We don't live in that timeline. And it all would have been timed as they're timing it now that

00:10:58   the trials will end, the free year will end halfway through the seasons being aired. Which is,

00:11:04   that's what they should have done the whole time, that's what they're doing now. Yeah, go for it.

00:11:09   Big hubbub over the last couple of days, that Apple and Netflix were rumored to have approached

00:11:15   MGM regarding acquiring rights to the next Bond movie. This has been reported in many places,

00:11:21   in many ways. Some outlets saying that MGM were willing to talk about it, but they wanted $600

00:11:27   million and apparently Apple and Netflix weren't sure about this. No Time to Die is the Bond movie,

00:11:33   it's been heavily delayed at this point, currently postponed to potentially be released in April 2021.

00:11:39   As you noted in our document, the rumor has been shut down by MGM, and they at this point seem

00:11:45   pretty firm on a theatrical release. Personally, I still think that this Bond movie going to a

00:11:51   streaming service is a possibility. I would feel that MGM are testing the waters. I reckon that

00:11:57   there is smoke to this rumor, or smoke where there's fire kind of thing. So I agree to a point

00:12:04   with you, but the point is, the way that I think a lot of people are reading this is that they're

00:12:10   going to come up with, it's going to be a deal where there's an easy exchange of money and then

00:12:15   movies that we don't get to see because they're not going to be in theaters for a long time,

00:12:19   we'll just not be in theaters. And while we're here in the pandemic, we can just watch them on

00:12:23   our TV screens and people wish for that and so they want to see it. And could it happen? Sure.

00:12:29   The problem is that when you abandon theatrical revenue, you take an enormous hit because a Bond

00:12:35   movie in theaters is going to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, right? And just releasing it,

00:12:41   even if you do a Trolls World Tour kind of thing and you sell it, or a Mulan kind of thing,

00:12:51   and you've got like, oh well, it's $30 or whatever. Very hard even then to come close to

00:12:58   what you'd make in theatrical. Plus, don't forget, you have to subtract what you would have made on

00:13:03   home video because you just did home video, right? And so you're not going to have that window. And

00:13:10   bottom line is, the business model and the money are not going to map from theatrical down into

00:13:20   first run theatrical in your house. They don't map, they're different. And that means in the

00:13:25   long run, that may be what happened. That may happen. And all the budgets for movies are going

00:13:32   to have to change because right now all these are enormous budget movies because they can make huge

00:13:35   money. Remember, we've spent decades now building up that movie theaters are basically only for

00:13:41   blockbusters. They're only for things that are suitable for large screens that you can get huge

00:13:45   amounts of money in. - And that if you have a good one, you'll make a billion dollars. - Exactly,

00:13:50   right. - Like the last Bond movie, Spectre, grossed $880 million. Now that I see that,

00:13:58   I didn't know it was that high, I now adjust my thinking. I do think they're going to, personally,

00:14:04   I think they're going to have to do this, but I understand why MGA don't want to. - So this is the

00:14:10   trick. So in the long run, if it turns out that theatrical is just not going to happen anymore,

00:14:15   to the degree that it used to, what will happen is the strategy will change and they'll make movies

00:14:19   that are cheaper. But they've got these movies that they made under the old rules that may still

00:14:23   be the new rules. They may not be, we don't know. Nobody knows when movie theaters will be open

00:14:29   everywhere because there are lots of markets where the virus is ramping up and the movie theaters

00:14:33   are closing, where they're going to be closing. And then when they open, how comfortable are

00:14:37   people going to be sitting in an enclosed space with random people for, especially packed movie

00:14:43   theater on a new release for three hours, two and a half hours, that is going to take a while.

00:14:48   It's going to take a while. So we don't know what the fact is, but if it comes back,

00:14:52   then they'll keep on doing what they're doing. And if it doesn't, they'll change and they'll make

00:14:58   cheaper movies. But in the meantime, we've got these movies made under the old rules,

00:15:03   assuming those are true. And if you're MGM, you're like, well, and we've seen everybody do this.

00:15:08   We've got a big tent pole movie and we're going to move it because we have already spent hundreds of

00:15:16   millions of dollars on this thing. And if we wait it out, wait the virus out and put it in a theater,

00:15:22   we'll make our money back and we'll make a profit. If we give up, we're really just cutting our

00:15:27   losses, but we're guaranteeing our losses. And that's a tough one to do, especially if you don't

00:15:35   own the, for example, streaming service to which value can accrue. So like Pixar has a movie that

00:15:43   is by all accounts, a great movie, Soul, which is coming to Disney+. It's going to premiere on

00:15:48   Disney+. It's just not going to go to theaters. - And they're not doing the Mulan thing. It's

00:15:51   just they're doing the Hamilton model. - They're doing the Hamilton thing. And we talked about it

00:15:55   a couple of weeks ago, but like Pixar is owned by Disney. It loses money for Disney, but it also

00:16:02   promotes Disney+ and accrues value to Disney+. And so you can bite the bullet. You can get away with

00:16:07   it. You're like, well, okay, we might as well put on Disney+. We're going to lose some money, but

00:16:11   we gain cash for Disney+. And that's the next best thing. But if you're MGM, you can't do that.

00:16:20   MGM is looking at like, we put all this money into this movie. We need to make the money back. We

00:16:25   need 700 million, 600 million. - MGM is always struggling financially and they need James Bond,

00:16:32   right? James Bond makes MGM is my understanding. - Yeah. - But so like, you know, the way that this

00:16:39   could work is, is Apple going to give MGM a billion dollars for James Bond because that's what they're

00:16:44   going to, you know, that could be what they want. Is it possible? Probably not. - Probably not.

00:16:49   - A good thing to do, but who knows? - But this is, this is the trick is the negotiation isn't pay us

00:16:56   what we would, what we would have made without a pandemic. Cause there's a pandemic. The negotiation

00:17:00   is how much are you willing to pay for exclusivity on your streaming service of this James Bond movie

00:17:07   that will drive, presumably drive people to subscribe in order to watch this movie.

00:17:11   Um, or, or I don't know what, like maybe there are other models there too, but let's just assume

00:17:18   it's simple and it's like James Bond movie premiers on Netflix or on Apple TV or whatever.

00:17:22   How much are you willing to pay us? And internally as MGM, we're thinking, how are we ever going to

00:17:30   get to release this? - And if, and if and when we do, will we never make the money that they

00:17:34   would have given us because no one's going to go and see it and they'll wait for it to come

00:17:38   to home for cinema. - Right. Cause they delayed Tenet, right? And then they finally released Tenet

00:17:42   and Tenet didn't do well because there were lots of places where in the US where the movie theaters

00:17:46   weren't open and the, the number of people who were going was very small and, and you could wait

00:17:51   it out. But like at one point, are you saying, well, we're not going to release No Time to Die

00:17:55   until, you know, 2022 or something like that. Like at some point you got to release it, I would think.

00:18:02   And you are betting that the, that the theater market theatrical market is going to come back.

00:18:09   But I think if you look at what people thought in April or May, they would have thought that

00:18:13   December would have a theatrical market back and that's not going to happen in a lot of places.

00:18:19   And so that's, that's what's weighing on MGM is, is there, is there an amount of, an amount of money

00:18:25   that allows us to cut our losses, actually get paid for this thing and get it off of our plate

00:18:33   instead of having it just sit there where we just have to wait until hope, because if it was certain

00:18:41   that theaters would be open at a hundred percent box office in August of next year, MGM would just

00:18:47   say, we're coming out in August of next year. And they'd, Warner would move Wonder Woman to August

00:18:53   of next year. Like everybody would be like, great. If we've got to guarantee that the box office is

00:18:57   back that moment, that weekend, when the box office is back, we're there, but nobody knows.

00:19:01   And so that uncertainty means that you have these kind of interesting negotiations. So if I, if I

00:19:06   had to bet, I'd bet that this is not happening, but never say never. Right. Like, I don't know what

00:19:13   motivates MGM. I don't, I don't know. Well, you can say it the one time, just never say it again.

00:19:19   So, uh, we'll see, because the truth is somebody may make MGM an offer that they can't refuse.

00:19:29   That's a Godfather movie. That's totally different. Anyway, uh, it's fascinating to watch this because

00:19:35   this is, this is about like money invested that there's like sunk costs. And you're like, do we

00:19:40   get a little bit back now or do we, do we double down and hope for the best coming up later? But

00:19:44   what I do want to, I just want to re state that. I've seen a lot of people, especially tech people,

00:19:50   people in our sphere saying, Oh, just put it on home video. It's great. Like charge 30 bucks or

00:19:54   whatever. And it'll work out. And the truth is it won't work out because they are not for, if they

00:19:59   do something like that, they're not going to make a hundred million dollars. They're not, they're

00:20:02   going to make less than that. I wish, I wish it were that simple. Trust me, all of these movies

00:20:08   that have been delayed would just get released on home video. If it was a one-to-one equivalent

00:20:13   or even, I don't know, maybe even a two to one equivalent or one to one half equivalent in terms

00:20:19   of money, but it's not like it's not the money and theatrical has been enormous and they really don't

00:20:26   want to bypass that if they can avoid it. I wonder what the whole James Bond back catalog is worth.

00:20:33   You know, like, is there a deal? I don't know what the rights are that MGM have. I don't think

00:20:37   James Bond is available for streaming anywhere. I don't think I don't recall it, but you know,

00:20:42   is there a situation where MGM can wrap it all up to someone and ask for like 2 billion for it?

00:20:49   I mean the entire James Bond back catalog streaming on a streaming service would be very

00:20:55   valuable. Yeah. I think the only place that streaming is on Pluto TV with ads,

00:21:02   which is that Viacom CBS owns that. I don't know. The rumor about MGM was always that they were

00:21:10   going to get bought by somebody, that somebody was going to buy them and, you know, and buy out

00:21:14   them and Eon or whoever owns all the rights to James Bond and basically like take it all and just

00:21:20   absorb it into a larger entity. Like one of the tech companies, Netflix, Amazon, Apple.

00:21:25   The more desperate that MGM gets, the more likely something like that is to happen.

00:21:31   They're all just pushing them. No, you wait. You just wait. We'll talk about it later on.

00:21:38   Yeah. Check back with me later. It's fascinating to watch this because it's a very difficult

00:21:42   situation that everybody who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a movie expecting hundreds

00:21:48   of millions of dollars or a billion dollars back and has been left. Like the music stopped and

00:21:54   there's no chair to sit on. And they're like, uh, uh, what do we do now? So, um, it's, it's

00:22:01   fascinating to watch. We'll see. Last thing we have to talk about at least a little bit.

00:22:06   Uh, Quibi is, is shutting down. Yeah. Quibi. We talked about it a little bit. This is the

00:22:11   quick bites service. The idea that what you really want is not, uh, to watch a movie when you're in

00:22:17   the checkout line or play a video game. You want to watch a very short video. Um, and, uh, this is

00:22:23   the just Jeffrey Katzenberg led service. Couldn't take screenshots. It wasn't available on anything

00:22:30   but phones. It was a bad idea. Somebody wrote in to us a few months ago and said, uh, what,

00:22:34   what about Quibi? And basically we made fun of it and said, it's a disaster waiting to happen.

00:22:38   And that was, you know, I think even before the pandemic, we thought that, but then pandemic

00:22:43   happened, it's like, well, who is out and about where they would watch Quibi things. I, I think

00:22:50   the short version of Quibi is Jeffrey Katzenberg's historic hit, uh, success in the entertainment

00:22:58   industry convinced a lot of overly credulous investors. It bought him some class that they

00:23:06   could invest. They were investing in the confidence and savvy of Jeffrey Katzenberg and he had a plan

00:23:11   and that they didn't understand mobile video or anything that the kids are into, but surely

00:23:17   Jeffrey Katzenberg understands it. And so we're going to invest in him and he's going to figure

00:23:21   this thing out. And I think that, that you could look at it and say, this is essentially,

00:23:27   you know, it's a bad idea by people who didn't really get how people use mobile devices for

00:23:32   entertainment, um, who convinced other people who knew even less than them, that they had the

00:23:37   answers and everybody who knew better looked at it and said, there's no way this makes sense.

00:23:44   And they raised a lot of money and are now shutting down. And my, the only question I've

00:23:49   got is did they spend all that money or did, or did they get to the point where they realized

00:23:56   that they were, that they were not going to make it. And they were going to hand back what,

00:24:01   what portion of the money they hadn't spent in order to exit in order to not burn all of

00:24:06   their bridges with investors for the future. And that part, I don't know, because I don't

00:24:10   understand how they could have spent the billion plus dollars that they spent, but apparently,

00:24:15   you know, it's Hollywood, the lunches are expensive or, or something.

00:24:19   wasn't Katzenberg the thing where it was like he was having three breakfasts.

00:24:23   Three. Yeah. Yeah. Three power breakfast followed by power lunches. And those,

00:24:26   those are all very nice restaurants, I'm sure. And, and the, yeah, it's, uh, it's Quibi. It

00:24:32   didn't make it. No one is surprised. It is, you know, every take has been shared

00:24:36   about Quibi at this point, but like the one thing that I'll say about it is it is actually quite

00:24:40   rare in technology for a hunch that you have to be proven right so fast. You know, I, I never

00:24:48   thought that this was succeed pandemic, no pandemic. It was just a flawed. I honestly

00:24:52   feel like that the hypothesis was flawed that for some reason, if you cut a movie

00:24:58   up into 10 minutes segments, people will want it more than anything else. When you can just

00:25:02   press pause whenever you want. Um, and also all of the content exists for free in other places,

00:25:10   you can get so much content for free. So it just never really made sense to me that this service

00:25:15   had to exist and everything that was a selling point about it just seemed to completely miss

00:25:21   the mark. And it wasn't like all of the other streaming services that I just put,

00:25:25   put in their time and effort into making good content that you can consume in whatever way

00:25:29   suits you. They decided that they would focus in areas that didn't make sense. And you know,

00:25:35   we spoke about it and you know, I'm sure people can go back and we'll find times when we said,

00:25:39   this is not going to work. And it is so rare that that occurs within six months.

00:25:43   Yeah. Well, I mean, credit to Quibi for failing fast, I guess, but, um, also worth mentioning,

00:25:50   Quibi's business model included getting around union restrictions by claiming that they were

00:25:57   doing shorts instead of like TV shows. And they were doing that by basically claiming that each

00:26:01   episode was a short instead of it being like an episode of a TV show, but it was all just kind of

00:26:08   just a hand waving to get away with not having to pay for stuff. And then secondly, the thing we

00:26:15   mentioned a while ago, which is this perception that they wanted big names. And so the big names

00:26:19   didn't really want to be on Quibi, but if their ideas had been rejected everywhere else, they

00:26:24   would go to Quibi and Quibi would pay for it, which meant you got a lot of second rate stuff

00:26:28   on Quibi. It was never seen as a place that you brought your good ideas. It was a place that you

00:26:33   cashed in your bad ideas that previously would have gone in a drawer. And instead Jeffrey

00:26:38   Katzenberg would write you a check. And so you'd say yes. And that was Quibi past tense.

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00:28:34   All right, Jason Snell. Let's talk a little bit about the iPad Air 4. So you have one of these for

00:28:42   review. I really liked the way that you positioned this review in a couple of areas. One was calling

00:28:50   saying almost pro, which I liked a lot. And then also talking about basically this being the

00:28:55   cheapest laptop that you can buy from Apple. So, but you know, to start off, I want to start off

00:29:01   with one of the main things that you began with in the review, which is basically talking about how

00:29:06   this product is almost too good and why that is an interesting thing to see in Apple's confidence,

00:29:14   right? Yeah. So the pro, I mean, we've talked about it here before. The idea is that they brought so

00:29:20   many iPad pro features down. This is basically an iPad pro, a slightly cheaper iPad pro and it's

00:29:27   good. Like it reminded me of all the things that we reacted to it back in 2018 when the iPad pro

00:29:35   sort of second design generation came out where the flat sides and the back and it's just, it's

00:29:41   so nice. It's such a nice design. I think this, you know, flat sides design has legs, Myke. I think

00:29:47   Apple should bring it to other products. Anyway, and then you throw in that it's the, one of the

00:29:55   features that they brought that they pro feature that they brought to it is it's the size of the

00:30:00   11 inch pro. So it fits the magic keyboard and you throw that in there and yes, it's true. The magic

00:30:06   keyboard is not cheap. It's a very large percentage of the price of the iPad air, but at the base

00:30:14   model of the iPad air, you can now get that in a magic keyboard for 898, which is makes it a

00:30:19   hundred dollars on one dollars cheaper than the cheapest Mac laptop. So I guess this is Apple's

00:30:25   low end laptop sort of right now, lowest end laptop. And then of course you could also buy

00:30:31   a totally different keyboard. You could buy the logitech case there. You know, you, there are lots

00:30:34   of other things you could do to make this into a laptop ish thing for cheaper than that, of course,

00:30:39   but the magic keyboard is the most laptop II, I think of all of the options. So a really interesting

00:30:46   product again, half interesting for what it is because what it is really is sort of a light

00:30:51   version of that iPad pro from 2018. But the other half of it is, you know, what it implies about the

00:30:58   rest of the iPad line, because like, it's so clear, this is so close to the iPad pro. It doesn't make

00:31:07   sense unless the iPad pro is about to become something different. The only place where that

00:31:13   the, cause I love that, like the laptop analogy. Cause I'll just say like the magic keyboard is

00:31:17   amazing. It's probably the best accessory Apple's ever made. Like what it does to the iPad, like

00:31:24   completely changes the product, makes it something else. It really is fantastic, beautifully designed,

00:31:29   so well made. I absolutely love the magic keyboard, the one with the trackpad for the iPad.

00:31:34   But the only place where the analogy of like the cheapest laptop kind of falls down for me is the

00:31:40   storage, which is where the iPad air falls down for me in general. So, you know, like the iPad,

00:31:47   the MacBook air starts at 999 for 256 gigabytes of storage, where the iPad air starts at 64,

00:31:55   which I think is really bad. For an iPad, 64 gigabytes is not enough. This thing should be,

00:32:03   I mean, cause especially when you have to jump up to 256, this should be starting at 128. I know that

00:32:10   it is a trend, it is maybe an annoying trope of Apple focused tech podcasters to complain about

00:32:17   based storage options. But I think that this product with how good it is, it's, you know,

00:32:23   it's so close to a no brainer for me, for people, except for that 64 gigabytes, because

00:32:29   you jump up one more level and then the price difference becomes even closer between that and

00:32:35   the comparable iPad pro. And I just think it's frustrating. If you get the 256 model,

00:32:40   it's $150 less than the iPad pro. So you're big, like, Oh, it's way cheaper is gone because then

00:32:46   when you're $150 away, I would kind of say, if you can go for the pro where, you know,

00:32:53   or go up $50 and get the 128 pro, right? Yes, that is exactly what I would recommend people do.

00:32:58   I'd forgotten about that. Right. Because then you are getting the additional features this lacks,

00:33:03   but if this started at 128, it's like, this is the no brainer iPad, but for me,

00:33:08   started at 64, there's a question mark around it. But that's why it doesn't in a way. And I would

00:33:12   say, you know, I get the criticism. I've seen a lot in, we're going to talk about the iPhone

00:33:16   in a little bit of questioning about like, how much iPhone storage do you really need?

00:33:22   And I like that people are looking. I looked at my iPhone the other day about how much storage,

00:33:28   cause I have a large storage iPhone and I looked and I'm using none of it. I'm using none of it.

00:33:35   I am particularly sensitive to this, especially in my iPhone, because I store all my photos locally,

00:33:40   but I think on an iPad, I know that's not, that's not a common, that's not a common approach,

00:33:46   but that's not what I'm talking about here. Right? Like I'm ignoring that from the situation because

00:33:51   like, I know that I am an edge case there, but I have enough space on my phone to do it. But the

00:33:55   iPad, you know, it is in essence, in many ways, like the best type of consumption device. So

00:34:04   you're going to want to put movies on it, right? You're going to want to put video on it. Once you

00:34:08   start doing that, I mean, very quickly you've lost it. But I think that's only true. I think that's

00:34:14   only true if you don't have, if you're going someplace with movies that you're not going to

00:34:18   have an internet connection. Yep. Which, which if you travel a lot or traveled a lot in the

00:34:22   before time in May again in the future, yes, I hear you like having the inability to store

00:34:28   a handful of movies before you go on a long trip, it stinks. But that's the, I think that's the

00:34:34   decision that everybody is going to have to make. But I do think for a vast number of people, 64

00:34:39   in an iPad is fine because they're using the cloud and they're streaming and it doesn't matter.

00:34:44   But I do, I do agree with you when I think that 64 is becoming what, you know, 16 was and what 32

00:34:51   was like, it is becoming the thing where it's like, really should start at 128. And we've seen

00:34:55   Apple elsewhere make that decision. But you know, the story of the iPad Air fourth generation really

00:35:01   is that right. It is, it is the places that Apple chose to be brave and bring down iPad Pro features.

00:35:07   And it's the choices where Apple chose not to like, and I'm not, not like they're being cowardly,

00:35:12   but more that they're, they're still doing some differentiation. You know, Apple's, Apple's making

00:35:17   these decisions knowing what the next iPad Pro is and we don't. And so we only get half the story

00:35:23   here, but it's still interesting to look at the differences and the similarities and see what

00:35:28   their choices are. Cause they said storage, we're not going to do storage. We're going to keep

00:35:32   at 64 face ID. We're not going to do LIDAR. We're not going to do, but magic keyboard and, and,

00:35:41   and moving the home button off and having the industrial design be identical.

00:35:46   All of those things we are going to do. Apple pencil two, we're going to do,

00:35:50   we're going to pick up all of the body stuff from the iPad pros and we're, we're just going

00:35:55   to roll those in here. And like the Apple pencil two is so superior to the, the first one having

00:36:01   the, having the screen that doesn't have the home button on the front and the big top and bottom is

00:36:06   such a big deal. Like there's so many things about it that they have rolled in. And then there's some

00:36:10   that they've chosen not to like they chose not to do the, the, uh, uh, true depth sensor bar stuff,

00:36:17   right? It's just not there. There's a, instead they went to the trouble of engineering a new

00:36:21   touch ID button instead. How did you overall feel about the touch ID versus face ID?

00:36:27   I didn't realize just how many times I was authenticating without thinking about it on

00:36:32   my iPad pro. Cause I imagine if you were, if you are somebody who's using, uh, an iPad with

00:36:38   the magic keyboard, which I know you were, I can imagine it is more frequently highlighted to you,

00:36:45   how you have to reach up to touch it where if you're using the iPad in your hands a lot,

00:36:50   it's probably not much of a problem because your hands is probably right there.

00:36:54   I, yes, it's true that if you're using it in a keyboard and you're touching the space bar

00:37:01   and then realizing that on the iPad pro, you just touch the space bar and you're in. Whereas on this,

00:37:05   if you, if you use that same gesture, it doesn't work because you have to reach up,

00:37:09   which means that you should really not use that gesture. You should use the gesture where you

00:37:13   reach up and press and let go and let it scan your finger. And that's the gesture you should use on

00:37:20   this because, you know, and I I'm so trained by the iPad pro that I do the other gesture,

00:37:24   but that wouldn't be logical if you were using the iPad air all the time.

00:37:28   And also you're unlikely to have had the iPad pro before having this iPad. So that gesture is

00:37:33   not ingrained for you, right? So it's a different gesture, but it does remind me that it's the

00:37:37   gesture that we all used to use, which is you have to reach up and touch your device somewhere

00:37:43   in order to unlock it. And I've gotten away from that. And so, yeah, it's exacerbated by the

00:37:49   keyboard, but I use my iPads out of the keyboard far more than I use them in the keyboards. And

00:37:56   even then, like you have to adjust your grip or you have to keep, you have to find a grip that

00:38:03   keeps your finger on the home button. That's your other choice, right? But like, it's not terrible,

00:38:10   but like face ID is almost invisible. And I think you train yourself to just sort of forget that

00:38:19   it's even happening. Whereas with touch ID, it's more in your face. It's ironically, it's actually

00:38:25   in your finger. It's more, it's a task you have to perform to unlock your device. The beauty of

00:38:31   face ID when it works is that it's essentially invisible. You don't have to do anything. You may

00:38:36   be aware that you just authenticated, but you don't really have to do anything. You're just

00:38:40   looking at your device and it works. And that's, I find that that works more often than not,

00:38:45   a lot more often than not, but touch ID, I mean, it works. It's great. They did a good job. It's a

00:38:50   good feature. It's nice. I just, it's not as nice as face ID. And that's the story here, right? It's

00:38:57   like those sensors are apparently expensive. And that was a place that Apple chose to skimp

00:39:03   a little bit, but they did put in this nice touch ID. That's perfectly good. So if you're coming

00:39:08   from an iPad experience that doesn't have face ID, then it's not going to matter to you because it's

00:39:13   a nice implementation of touch ID. But I don't think it's as nice. I had forgotten just how

00:39:19   big a change it was to go from touch ID to face ID on the iPad Pro.

00:39:23   MATT PORTER, What did you think about using the smaller keyboard?

00:39:27   CHUCK LAMBERT, You know, I'd never used it before, the 11-inch Magic keyboard.

00:39:35   And I'm impressed at how small it is and how it makes this very compact kind of like a writing

00:39:43   machine. Like I'm very impressed. I always think about that. Like if I'm somebody who's a writer

00:39:48   and I need to work from place to place, which right now there's a lot less of that, right? But

00:39:52   having the smallest, a little thing that has all of my writing and gives me everything I need,

00:39:58   the smaller, the better. Made me think about the 11-inch MacBook Air, like that kind of thing.

00:40:03   The first keyboards that you could clip into the first small iPad Pro, right? I was thinking about

00:40:10   that. All of those kinds of things. And their choice to make the keys normal size, the

00:40:18   alphanumeric keys, I think is good. I was able to type perfectly fast on it. It was all of the

00:40:24   modifiers and especially like the plus minus keys that are all like fractional width. They're weird

00:40:32   widths. That took some getting used to. But you know, if that's your keyboard that you use all

00:40:38   the time, you'd get used to it. The problem is if you switch among keyboards, it's a really weird

00:40:43   keyboard layout because of that. But you know, in the grand scheme of things, I think they made the

00:40:47   right decision to shrink down the modifiers and not to shrink down the alphanumerics. The

00:40:51   alphanumerics felt good. - I use it all the time and I really like it. I think they did a great

00:40:57   job with that small keyboard. I think I use it more than the bigger one these days. - I, you know,

00:41:03   immediately I wrote my review on it, but I immediately then went back to my iPad Pro with

00:41:07   a big keyboard. I was like, oh, it's just because it's more comfortable and it also is a better

00:41:13   match for every other keyboard in my life. But I do think they did a good job. I don't disagree.

00:41:18   It's like the iPad Air itself, right? It's got some trade-offs in order to be what it is,

00:41:24   but what it is, you can see why they made them. And to have that smaller size is really nice.

00:41:31   - So overall, what is your kind of conclusion about the iPad Air 4?

00:41:40   - Well, it's twofold. First, if you're looking for, I think it's a product for people who don't

00:41:46   want to buy an iPad Pro fundamentally. I think that's what it is, is you look at the iPad Pro

00:41:51   starting at what, $749, $799, $799. The 11-inch model is $799 in the US. And you say,

00:42:02   no, not going to buy an $800 iPad. Well, now your choice is a little more stark at the low end,

00:42:09   where you've got the iPad iPad that has the home button on the front and stuff like that.

00:42:14   And then you've got this thing, which is more modern than that. It's got the iPad Pro look,

00:42:21   it's got the modern Apple Pencil, it's got the A14. And I think it is going to appeal to people

00:42:31   who look at those two iPads and say, oh, I want the nice one. But that person is not going to buy

00:42:37   an $800 iPad. They're just not. And so I think that is how Apple has positioned this. I think

00:42:43   hovering all over this is what happens to the iPad Pro, because I've definitely had people say, well,

00:42:49   should I buy an 11-inch iPad Pro or should I buy this? It's like, I don't know how to answer that

00:42:53   question. Because the 11-inch iPad Pro is, if you're buying any amount of storage, you're now

00:42:59   not very far away from the iPad Pro with this thing. So unless you're buying the base model,

00:43:05   you're very close to that iPad Pro. But know that that iPad Pro is essentially

00:43:10   two-year-old technology that is very clearly going to be replaced. And so for people like that,

00:43:16   I would say, do you need to buy an iPad right now? Because if you don't, you might want to wait and

00:43:21   see what Apple does with the iPad Pro. And then it'll, I suspect, be much clearer about what your

00:43:27   choices are. And the reason it's hazy right now is because one of them is about to leave us and

00:43:32   be replaced by something different. But in the meantime, they're kind of in the ballpark.

00:43:37   Because in a lot of ways, in single-core processing tests, the iPad Air is faster,

00:43:44   because it's an A14. And in multi-core, the iPad Pro is a little bit faster, because it's

00:43:49   got more cores, even though it's an A12Z. So it's close, though. Yeah, right. So I mean,

00:43:57   that's what it comes back to, is if you're somebody who is shopping for a high-end iPad,

00:44:02   you might want to wait, because there are going to be new high-end iPads soon, I suspect,

00:44:06   that will be way more capable than anything Apple is selling right now.

00:44:10   If you're somebody who doesn't really care about that, then the iPad Air is a great choice,

00:44:15   because it's got most of the features of the iPad Pro. And it's going to be cheaper. And let me tell

00:44:21   you, nothing, looking at the space between the iPad Pro and the iPad Air, has convinced me that

00:44:30   the next iPad Pros are going to be more expensive. I was just about to ask you this question.

00:44:34   Right, right. I cannot see how the next small iPad Pro is going to start at $799.

00:44:42   It's probably going to start at $8 or something like that, or maybe...

00:44:45   $899? I mean, who knows? Apple does all sorts of things. But if I had to put down money,

00:44:52   I would say that the iPad Pro base price of the cheapest new iPad Pro, maybe they'll sell an old

00:44:59   model or whatever for a while. They do that sometimes. But the new ones that have all of the

00:45:03   new hot stuff for 2021, they're not going to start at $799. Not with the iPad Air here. I just don't

00:45:10   see it. So I think what's going to happen... It's probably one of the reasons that they made

00:45:14   that iPad Air for as good as it is, right? Exactly. I think that's exactly it. The iPad Air

00:45:20   looks strangely close to the 11 Pro, but it won't look close to whatever the next iPad Pro is.

00:45:28   Especially because the rumors are suggesting that the next iPad Pros will be potentially the debut

00:45:35   of new screen technology, right? I think it's micro-LED? And as we've just seen with the iPhones,

00:45:43   screen technology improvements increase the costs, right? So OLED in the 12 has made it more

00:45:50   expensive than the 11 that it replaces. Because, I mean, especially when these things are all screens,

00:45:56   I'm sure that there is a lot of the cost. And so I could imagine that. And if they do go for a new

00:46:03   screen... Because look, we've got to assume... We would just assume that the next iPad Pro is going

00:46:10   to be some big leaps in some places. Because otherwise this iPad Air 4 is just stepping all

00:46:16   over a more expensive product. Well, that's it. We just had a comment in the Discord that basically

00:46:20   said, "Well, why... There's so much power in the iPad Pro now, essentially. Why do you believe

00:46:26   there's a new iPad Pro coming?" And my answer is, "Why does the iPad Air exist otherwise?"

00:46:30   All of the signs point to there being another shoe to drop. And to your point, you just have

00:46:37   to go back to the iPhone 10 or in fact the iPhone 12 this year to see that bringing in a new nice

00:46:43   screen technology is often the point at which Apple says, "Well, the prices have to go up now."

00:46:48   Right? Like OLED did that. And if they have this micro LED that allows them to do a true HDR

00:46:55   on an iPad, yeah, well, guess what? That's going to start at $899 or $999. Who knows?

00:47:03   >> Because as well, you just got to look at the earnings, right? The iPad was struggling for a

00:47:09   long time. Then the iPad Pro came around and then the more they did on the iPad Pro, the more money

00:47:13   the iPad line made. I think Apple was aware that the iPad Pro is an area where they can do some

00:47:19   wild stuff and people will pay the money for it. Because the people that really want it, they want

00:47:24   it. And I think that that has proven out. The average revenue per user or whatever they call it,

00:47:31   the margins and stuff are good on the iPad Pro line, especially because of all the accessories.

00:47:36   So I think it is an area where they know they can push and I expect them to do that.

00:47:42   We're going to talk about the new iPhones, but I wanted to give a little bit of follow-up because

00:47:48   we said we'd talk about this. I went to a store to buy an iPhone. So we pre-ordered an iPhone for

00:47:56   Adina. She went up to the 12 Pro in Pacific Blue and we wanted to do an in-store pickup just to see

00:48:05   what that whole situation was like. So my overall review of picking up an iPhone from Apple's Regent

00:48:12   Street store, which is one of the flagship stores in the world, not London's biggest store,

00:48:17   that's Covent Garden, but I believe Regent, my favorite fact, I don't think it's true anymore,

00:48:22   but at a point the Regent Street Apple Store in London made more money per square foot than any

00:48:27   other Apple store in the world and it's a big store. So my kind of overall review of this is

00:48:34   it was fine. It took a long time. We had a pickup window of 12 to 12.15. We got there at 5 to 12 and

00:48:43   they were like, "Please come back at 12.15 because with the lines." And effectively, they just had

00:48:50   lots of lines across lots of sidewalks. So they really extended it out. They had all these stickers

00:48:57   on the ground to keep people two meters apart or whatever. And they also, you know you've got those

00:49:03   kinds of barriers that have what looks like a seat belt that goes in between them? You know what I'm

00:49:07   talking about? Those kind of like you put the barrier out and then there's like a rope, looks

00:49:11   like a seat belt. They positioned those to also be two meters apart. So just stand at the next post

00:49:17   kind of thing which I thought was quite clever. They had like basically lots of little holding

00:49:23   areas. So you would get there and say, "Okay, get in this line." And then you'd walk through this line.

00:49:27   Then you would get to a security person who was monitoring with somebody else who was doing

00:49:33   another line down the street which was the actual line that you wanted to be in, right?

00:49:37   So you'd go through this little line. They'd do their check-in thing, you know? That's like,

00:49:41   "Wanna make sure that you're in your window and all that?" They then send you to the main line

00:49:45   which actually snaked around the store. We was in that line for like 15-20 minutes. I got to the front

00:49:50   of the store line basically and then a guy said, "Hey, have you paid for this already?" I said, "Yes."

00:49:55   They said, "Do you want me to just bring it out to you in the street?" And I was like, "Yes, I do." So that

00:50:00   was what I did. So they just went in. They had a runner go in and then they brought the... I never even

00:50:04   went into the store. That was my experience with the watch band as well because it makes

00:50:08   sense, right? Like, why have more people in the store physically inside if you don't have to?

00:50:15   They did temperature checks. I had to read this thing to say I had no... Everyone in the line

00:50:21   had to wear masks or Apple would provide one. I would say that the staff was super conscious,

00:50:27   I thought, of making sure that people were safe. I really felt like they were paying a lot of

00:50:32   attention and were going above and beyond to try and expedite stuff. So it was a long process, but

00:50:40   I was fine with it. I'm gonna do it again for the Pro Max. I'll do it again. Because it was like,

00:50:45   you know, I liked the idea that if I've already paid for it, I don't want to... I don't need to go

00:50:52   in the store, right? You can just bring it out. They got it in the bag, put it in my bag, and I go.

00:50:57   And I guess you might be somebody who's like, "Well, I really want to shop for a case," or whatever.

00:51:01   But, you know, there are a lot of us... This is what happened with my watch band. It's like, "No, I just

00:51:04   want it. Just give it to me. I'll walk away." And I'm like, "Great. Here it is. Goodbye. And thank

00:51:10   you." That was... Yeah, very orderly. Not... Because it was interesting, right? I had a lot

00:51:16   of people say to me, I mentioned it, "Oh, no. This was better than when I go shop for groceries."

00:51:22   But like a million miles because in the grocery store, no one's doing anything, right? Everyone's

00:51:28   walking past each other all the time. You line up to go in, but once you're in, it's a free-for-all,

00:51:34   right? Or any store, really. Like, this was the best shopping experience I have had so far.

00:51:40   I found out... So, the liquor chain here, BevMo, when in the early days of the pandemic, they

00:51:50   started this thing where you could just order online, and they would basically... They were

00:51:54   in the store, and they would fill your order in the store, and you would show up, and you pay

00:51:59   online, and you'd show up, and they'd basically roll a shopping cart out and say, "Here."

00:52:03   And so, I bought beer that way. And I went in recently, and I actually went into the store,

00:52:09   and I thought to myself, "I think I might prefer... As long as there's offering to fill a shopping

00:52:16   cart with what I want and roll it out to me, I think I might prefer that. I think I might

00:52:22   actually like that approach rather than going into a store where people are randomly walking around,

00:52:27   and I'm wearing a mask, and I'm feeling kind of tense." So, I'm glad you had this experience. I

00:52:33   think it shows that Apple is trying to find ways that make sense to distribute these products in

00:52:40   this way, which is good. - Because I really thought, like, this is the stress test, right?

00:52:46   They haven't had to do this yet. Apple... Like, iPhone day. And I felt like they managed it

00:52:55   about as well as I could have imagined they could have managed it. So, I was happy with

00:53:00   the experience overall. Like, it was frustrating because we were there for a long time, I felt like,

00:53:06   but it was... But that was just kind of like, "Oh, I wish they would hurry up," but not so much in

00:53:11   that, like, I'm like, "Oh, how dare you," you know? - I have a funny story about... On iPhone day,

00:53:16   on Friday, I was running just in my neighborhood. I do... I did a couch-to-5K program, and now I run

00:53:24   three times-ish or a week, a couple of miles. And so, I'm out on iPhone day, and I'm running

00:53:29   through my neighborhood, and there are two delivery vans. There's a UPS van, and there's a white,

00:53:35   unmarked contractor delivery van that's clearly rented. And I think to myself, "Oh, iPhone day."

00:53:42   - Full of iPhones, yep. - And let me tell you, what was really funny about it is I am a very slow

00:53:49   runner, but I was able to spot these vans and ultimately surpass them because they kept stopping.

00:54:00   Like, they'd go down, like, 50 feet, and then they'd stop and then get out and deliver a thing,

00:54:05   because they were loaded down, I think, with iPhones. And so, I had that moment where I ran

00:54:10   past the UPS truck, and the guy was in the back getting something out, because I was going to

00:54:14   shout. I really was going to do it. I was like, "Happy iPhone day!" But then I ran past them,

00:54:20   and it just was a funny moment, because I got to watch, while I was slowly catching up to them,

00:54:25   I got to watch the progression of the vans as they unloaded their iPhones one by one.

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00:56:55   and all of Relay FM. So Jason Snell, iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro time. What phones do you have,

00:57:03   and how long have you had them? - I have the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro. - What colors? - I have

00:57:09   a black iPhone 12 and a graphite iPhone 12 Pro. I have had them since Tuesday, which is when those

00:57:20   embargo reviews dropped, because if you're not in the embargo set, but you're in the next set

00:57:25   of reviewers, you can tell when the embargoes are going to drop, because that's after that is when

00:57:32   they send you the phones. Yeah, exactly. So I've got those and I've been using them since Tuesday,

00:57:37   or primarily since Wednesday, since Wednesday was when my iPad Air review dropped. So I had

00:57:43   to finish that up. But yeah, so I've had them for a little while, almost a week. - Is there one that

00:57:50   you've been using more than another? Or do you kind of split it nicely? - Yes, I decided to put

00:57:58   my SIM and connect my Apple Watch to the 12. - Okay. Why? - And that was because I got them out of the

00:58:10   box and I spent, you know, a few hours looking at them and holding them, and I thought to myself,

00:58:16   "I like the iPhone 12 better. I'm going to put my thing on the iPhone 12 and carry that around,

00:58:23   because it seems really nice." And also, you know, the iPhone 12 Pro is pretty much a match for my

00:58:30   iPhone 11 Pro, and so I thought, "Let's experience what life is like on the iPhone 12 instead."

00:58:35   - I will say, color-wise, I think you really got the short straw with the Pro. I mean, I saw all

00:58:41   four just through a window. I really don't like the color of the graphite. I think it's, like,

00:58:45   muddy. It's a very strange color to me. - It's, I mean, I'm surprised they're not calling it space

00:58:53   gray. But yes, it's just, it's boring gray. It is the most boring, like, I don't know how to say this.

00:59:08   Apple somehow has managed to create the most boring iPhone, and it's this graphite iPhone 12

00:59:17   Pro. It's just dull. If dull is your thing, then this is the phone for you. But I know,

00:59:23   I know, I see why they talked up the gold and the glam of the gold, because the gold is supposedly,

00:59:29   you know, super shiny and awesome and gorgeous. And I have this, you know, kind of silvery gray,

00:59:36   boring iPhone. But yeah, it's boring. It's fine if you put it in a case or if you're somebody who

00:59:43   doesn't want any kind of personality on the device that you're using, then it's gonna be fine for you.

00:59:48   But I just looked at it and I was like, "Oh boy, this is my..." You know, we've gone on about a year.

00:59:53   - Because the black, I mean, you would assume black is simple and boring, but the black that

00:59:58   they chose for the 12 and the way it's presented, I think it looks really great, right? Like,

01:00:02   it's got a boldness to it. - I think it looks so good. In fact,

01:00:07   one of the things that made me laugh is I picked it up, I picked up the iPhone 12 backward

01:00:10   and the Apple logo was like reflecting a light source. So as my hand moved up, it glinted and

01:00:18   the Apple logo shined and I thought, "Oh no, did my phone reboot?" And I realized, "Oh no,

01:00:25   I'm looking at the back of the phone." But it reminds me of the front of the phone because it's

01:00:30   just this deep shiny black, just like an off iPhone screen would be. And then the metal border around

01:00:36   it is this matte, the aluminum anodized black. It's this matte finish. It reminds me of the black

01:00:45   iPhone 5, which when that came out, I remember being like so impressed with how it looked.

01:00:52   - Was that the one that dinged up a lot? - I don't know if there's a legend about

01:00:58   that. I had one, I loved it. It might've gotten dinged up a little bit. I didn't care. I thought

01:01:02   that it still looked cool, but it was the first like, "This is the all black iPhone." And it

01:01:08   looks so good. And this one looks like that. So I love it. I would not pick black. I think I want to

01:01:16   see the colors more because I think I would pick the blue, but let me tell you the black iPhone 12,

01:01:21   it's gorgeous. And you would think it would be boring, but it's not. It's the graphite 12 Pro

01:01:28   that's boring. What color did Adina get? - Pacific blue.

01:01:31   - Oh, right. Right. So how was that? - I like it a lot. I think I like it about

01:01:37   as much as I like the midnight green, where it's like, "This is different. I like the way

01:01:43   that this looks." And it's got a... I'm trying to pick the words here because I'm not trying to say

01:01:56   that if you pick another color, this isn't you. But the midnight green and the Pacific blue both

01:02:01   have this kind of like adult fashion forward feel to them, where they are not big, bright and bold

01:02:08   colors, but they are colors. And they go a lot more with other clothing because they're more dull

01:02:15   and you only really catch the color in certain lights. So I think that that blue is really nice.

01:02:20   Adina has a plum case and it looks excellent. So I think with some of these, with the midnight green

01:02:25   and the Pacific blue, more than any other iPhone, you can really make it look good with a case,

01:02:30   in my opinion, where you just see the little pops of color come through because they are...

01:02:35   You can make pairings with them, where if you have silver or black, it's just like,

01:02:40   "Well, whatever." Any color will go with it because they're so neutral.

01:02:43   So I think that the blue is really nice. I'm still into the gold big time, personally.

01:02:52   I've seen images of it. I've seen it, again, through a window. I just think it looks super

01:02:57   good. I'm very into that. But I also do... I really like the blue. If the gold didn't exist,

01:03:03   or if the gold was more like a regular gold, blue is what I would have gone with because I was such

01:03:09   a fan of the midnight green. And I think that the Pacific blue is the blue, what the midnight green

01:03:14   was the green. They are very different to the colors that are on the 12, but I think Apple

01:03:19   chose a very, very good overall look for that. And I think that the rails and the back, they match

01:03:26   really nicely, where maybe on some of the other phones, there is a mismatch to it, good and bad.

01:03:32   I think the gold, for example, the gold rails, the stainless steel rail is way more gold than

01:03:39   the back. But on the blue, they match it very well, actually. And again, similarly to the green,

01:03:45   the stainless steel green that goes around the green 11 Pro matches very nicely. So I think that

01:03:54   the blue is a good call for people that go for it. I've seen people enjoy the silver, and I

01:04:00   completely understand why because it's like any other silver iPhone. I used to be a white and

01:04:05   silver iPhone person for a long time as well. But yeah, I think the blue is a good call.

01:04:10   - And fundamentally, it's a personal choice. I think what's interesting now is that if you like

01:04:15   those kinds of muted colors or not colors, then the Pro is your choice. And if you prefer something

01:04:21   that is a little more eye-popping, then the non-Pro is your choice, which is, I could make

01:04:28   the argument a little unfortunate because you're basically, if you have an aesthetic preference

01:04:33   and a tech spec preference for something like the camera, you have to choose between them.

01:04:39   - Yeah. - I get why Apple wants consistency here. I am, and it's already clear, I am firmly

01:04:48   aesthetically on the side of the iPhone 12. And muted colors, if you're into that, if you want it

01:04:58   to be there or somebody just in the Discord just said, it doesn't shout, "I have a new iPhone,"

01:05:03   which I think is a fair point. Not everybody wants this. And if you wrap it in a case,

01:05:08   people aren't gonna notice anyway, and so it doesn't matter at all what the color of your

01:05:11   phone is because it's hidden in a case. That all said, I find it boring. I find it boring,

01:05:19   and I find Apple's reluctance to put any color or any appreciable color. I know last year there was

01:05:25   the green, now there's the blue, but it's like the subtlest. It's a dark grayish green or blue.

01:05:36   It's super subtle and muted, and this is Apple's belief, apparently, is that a professional product

01:05:42   shouldn't have color. And if it does have color, it should just have a very, very light touch of it.

01:05:46   That's a take. I don't agree, and I think they're kind of boring, and I think the iPhone 12s look

01:05:53   great. And honestly, the stainless steel, so it's shiny, and it's an enormous fingerprint magnet.

01:06:02   It's super gross, and the anodized aluminum on the 12 is matte and holds out against fingerprints

01:06:13   incredibly well. Looks better, I think. The back of the 12 is shiny, which means it's a fingerprint

01:06:19   magnet there, and it's matte on the back of the 12 Pro, so you can't see the fingerprints so much

01:06:27   on the back of the 12 Pro. However, I think the shiny 12 back is more grippy, because your

01:06:33   finger is just kind of like your fingertips just kind of hold on. And here's the funny thing about

01:06:38   my phone, I'm never looking at the back. I'm looking at the sides and the front. I very rarely

01:06:43   look at the back, and when I look at the back and I see fingerprints, I just kind of wipe it off on

01:06:47   my shirt or my pants, and then I move on with my life. I have been using a caseless, by the way.

01:06:52   I haven't used a phone caseless since the 6 came out and was a bar of soap, and I'm loving that,

01:06:58   too. Are you using it caseless because you feel like you can, or is it because you want to? Yes,

01:07:03   because both, both. Because I feel like I can, again, because it feels a little more comfortable

01:07:09   in my hand and less slippy, and because I do prefer it. I prefer seeing it without a case,

01:07:14   and I prefer the weight without a case and the size without a case. That's another thing, by the way.

01:07:19   The 12 Pro is surprisingly noticeably heavier than the 12. It is a heavier phone. So, you know,

01:07:28   so much of this is just personal preference, and it's your personal style choice and aesthetics,

01:07:32   or maybe your priority about the cameras, but I immediately gravitated toward the 12

01:07:38   and liked the 12 better. I have come to a conclusion, personally, about the fingerprints

01:07:46   on the sides, because this seems to be something that everyone's talking about right now.

01:07:50   I mean, the 11 Pro is the same, right? There's fingerprints all over the sides of my phone,

01:07:56   because it's still stainless steel. People are maybe noticing it more because it's flat right

01:08:01   now, but like, honestly, this will not be a thing that I or anybody cares about after like two weeks

01:08:06   of owning the phone. Like, yeah, if you're taking a bunch of glamour shots for your phone, of your

01:08:10   phone to put online, you will see the fingerprints. So, I have two responses to that. One is the curved

01:08:18   edge of the previous model hides the fingerprints better. Maybe. Because the light bends around it,

01:08:27   and so you have inconsistent light around it. And second, I've never been tempted to carry my

01:08:33   iPhone 11 Pro without a case. Right, you see, but I have been caseless on my 11 Pro for months now.

01:08:39   So, like, you know, I can look at the side of my phone right now and I can see it's covered

01:08:43   in fingerprints, but I kind of don't care about it, really. All right. We had a question from

01:08:51   Malis in the Discord, one for each of us. Jason, is the millimeter wave window as ugly in person

01:08:58   as it looks in the photos? So, this is like a little cutout in the sides of the phones

01:09:02   for millimeter wave in America for 5G. Are you bugged by that at all? Well, on the...

01:09:09   It's different in the different models, right? Like, on my iPhone 12 Pro, it's this fairly light...

01:09:16   The stainless steel is this fairly light material, and then the millimeter wave cutout is black.

01:09:22   And so it really stands out and I think is less attractive. On my black iPhone 12,

01:09:31   you know, it is not a perfect match for the aluminum, but it's also matte and it's also

01:09:43   black or a very, very dark gray and essentially is a match with the wake/sleep button. Right.

01:09:51   So, aesthetically, I'd say it's fine. On the 12 and on the 12 Pro, I would say aesthetically it is

01:09:59   less attractive. Okay, that makes sense because of the mismatching material, right? Yeah,

01:10:03   and probably every color has a different story to tell there and I don't know because I only

01:10:07   have the two. I've seen pictures and some of them are better than others. Yeah. And Molly's also

01:10:12   asked about, for me in the European Union, the regulatory markings. So, there's like these little

01:10:17   etched regulatory markings on the side. I don't think you'd see them unless you're looking for

01:10:22   them. You can see them if you want to look at them, but like I barely noticed them. I can see

01:10:26   them on Adina's phone because, you know, it's like there they are, but it would not bother me,

01:10:31   personally. What else have we got? I want to jump ahead real quick because we were talking about

01:10:40   comparing these two. There's a lot more to get into, which we will, but there's kind of like

01:10:46   a concluding line that I've been thinking about that I wanted to share with you now, kind of like

01:10:50   how I have interpreted what the reviews that I've seen and from my own usage of the 12 Pro.

01:10:55   These two phones, depending on where you're coming from, there might not be a lot of enhancement for

01:11:04   you. Like if you're coming from the 11 to the 12, you're making a nice jump, right? Or, you know,

01:11:08   because you've got the OLED screen and all that kind of stuff and the new size and new design.

01:11:13   If you're coming from the 11 Pro, it's new design and some small tweaks here and there, right?

01:11:22   This feels like these two phones are the baseline for the reviews of this generation because the

01:11:28   Mini and the Max, that's where the excitement is, right? Because these two phones have different

01:11:34   things. The Mini, who knows what that's going to be like, right? No one has any idea at the moment

01:11:40   how it is going to feel to use an iPhone X size design phone in that size. It could be fantastic

01:11:47   or terrible and I bet it is both depending on your own personal opinions, right? I'm really excited to

01:11:52   see the reviews of that phone because it's going to be all over the map. And then the Max, what is

01:11:58   that camera going to be like, right? Like there is a lot of expectation placed on that because that is

01:12:03   super interesting. It could be a mammoth leap, right? Because of the stuff they're doing with

01:12:10   the sensor. So these are the two poles where the reviews are going to get, I think, really interesting.

01:12:17   And so it's kind of funny that we have a baseline now. All of the phones have these features and

01:12:23   we're going to talk about them and that is your typical year-over-year improvement to the iPhone.

01:12:29   But then on the ends, which are coming in a few weeks time, this is where we're going to start to

01:12:34   see the not normal year-over-year improvement. What we have in the 12 and the 12 Pro, more in the 12

01:12:43   Pro really is an S model phone, right? Because as I said, the 12 from the 11, that's really interesting

01:12:50   as an upgrade. But the 11 Pro to the 12 Pro, I mean, in the sense of you get an OLED screen,

01:12:56   right? And the new design, there's more going on there if you're coming from an 11.

01:13:00   - I guess my complaint about what you're saying, I get what you're saying in the sense that we've

01:13:06   seen the mainstream, but not the edges. And the edges are more interesting because they have some

01:13:14   real differences. Whereas these two mainstream phones are now almost exactly the same, right?

01:13:20   They use the same cases. They're the same size, even if their weight is slightly different and one

01:13:25   of them has a few extra features, they're essentially the same phone and the style

01:13:30   differences. But that's the beauty of having these opposite styles on these two models is

01:13:34   they're essentially the same phone. So choose what style you like and how much you want to pay.

01:13:39   Where I disagree is saying they're essentially S-class phones because you could argue

01:13:45   from an industrial design standpoint that this is the biggest change in the iPhone in many years,

01:13:54   in like six years. - The design is where my analogy falls apart there. So if we take that

01:14:01   part out where I said about the S line, what I'm really trying to say is it's like these two phones

01:14:07   have set the baseline for all four. And then from there, there's some differences, right? But these

01:14:14   two phones are like, this is the iPhone 12 line this year. All of them have this stuff. And then

01:14:20   on the mini and the max, we're gonna start to see things that are maybe more polarizing, more

01:14:25   interesting. But I agree with you that like a design change is always a good thing. It's

01:14:33   always an interesting thing. It's always a thing that makes people wanna buy phones.

01:14:37   But this is like a design change, which is really great and is wanted. - Yeah. Well, it's funny too,

01:14:45   because in my review, which is not finished yet, I talk about how there have been these eras of

01:14:51   iPhone design and there's like the early era, there's the original iPhone and then the 3G,

01:14:55   3GS, and then there's the like four and five era where they had the flat sides. And then there's

01:15:01   the six through last year era, six years of that. But this is a new era, but it's also going back

01:15:12   to that four and five era, right? Like these are recognizably the same phone as the iPhone

01:15:18   four and five. They really are. The design is very much the same. And so it's kind of a reversion,

01:15:26   but I love that design and I think it was the best iPhone design. So I'm very happy that it's back.

01:15:29   - I'm in camp five, by the way. I know like a lot of people talk about the four as the best design.

01:15:34   I am definitely in like five and five S is my favorite. - Well, the five is better, but maybe

01:15:39   my favorite iPhone is that black iPhone five because yeah, it got bigger and all that,

01:15:44   but it was still the same design language as the four. It was just a taller phone and yeah,

01:15:49   so it was better, but you kind of need to credit the four because the four is where it came in.

01:15:52   But I agree with you about the edge cases. I think it will be interesting to see those reviews.

01:16:01   However, I will say that my bet is that they won't be as interesting as you might think

01:16:08   because my bet is going to be that the reviews of the mini are,

01:16:11   yep, this is an iPhone 12, but it's kind of small. It's smaller than you think. And so for most

01:16:17   people, you should probably get the 12 and not the mini, which will be true because I think the 12 is

01:16:22   the mainstream model and the mini is kind of an outlier model, but that'll be how those reviews

01:16:26   go. And the max reviews will be like, you know, the camera, yeah, the camera's better, but it's

01:16:31   not as it's not dramatically better. You know, it's a little bit better than on the 12 Pro. So

01:16:38   you could, you know, I just that's my bet is that I don't think that these are going to be revelatory

01:16:44   because I think Apple would have said if they were, I think they're going to be incremental,

01:16:48   you know, the difference being that they're incremental within the same release year instead

01:16:51   of what Apple usually does, which is make those increments from year to year. But that's just my

01:16:57   guess is that these will be, you know, I'm still interested to see them because I think that both

01:17:02   of these phones are fascinating. I think the reaction to the mini is especially going to be

01:17:06   fascinating, but it wouldn't surprise me if the reviews are not quite as interesting as you might

01:17:11   hope they are. But do you see the things that you just said? That's really interesting to me.

01:17:15   Okay. Like even that, because like just people saying the mini is not as great as you might

01:17:21   think it is, it's too small of a knife. I find that like fascinating. Well, we'll see. That's

01:17:25   just my guess. That's my prediction. I've never held one in my hand, but that's my prediction is

01:17:29   that that's what those articles are going to ultimately say is that because they're going

01:17:32   to be written by tech reviewers who've used all the products and they're going to look at the

01:17:35   small phone and be like, yeah, it's nice that it's small, but it's too small. And then there'll be

01:17:42   people who'll be like, how dare you say it's too small tech reviewer. You just don't understand.

01:17:46   I mean, we know how the internet works, right? But I do think it will find a, it will find

01:17:50   a loyal following. And then on the, on the, on the high end with the Pro Max, I was looking at the,

01:17:57   uh, the Austin Mann review of the iPhone 12 Pro camera, which is great and people should check it

01:18:03   out. Um, but what I found interesting is he makes these beautiful images and he shows like off some

01:18:10   of the great features that have been updated, including some of the night mode stuff. But then

01:18:15   there are other features that Apple's like, oh, there's going to be more, um, there's new optics.

01:18:20   There's more detail around the edges of the camera. And he has a one line kind of dismissal of that

01:18:25   where he's like, yeah, not so yeah, maybe, but not so you'd notice. Like, he's just like, well,

01:18:29   that's not so some of the Apple's features. He's like, yes, Apple did this and other features he

01:18:32   kind of shrugs at. And I just, I was thinking about the Pro Max and thinking he might lose his

01:18:39   mind over the different sensor and the image stabilization and the Pro Max. But you know,

01:18:45   my guess is that it will be more measured. My guess is that it will be more like, yeah,

01:18:48   it's better. Like, but I don't think I, I, anyway, I am skeptical that the Pro Max is going to come

01:18:55   in and everybody's going to be like, oh my God, the camera on the Pro Max is so much better than

01:19:00   the camera on the regular pro that any photographer should always should just buy a Pro Max. I, I'm,

01:19:06   I'm dubious of that. I think it's going to be subtler than that. And the real reason you buy

01:19:11   the Pro Max is maybe because, uh, photography matters to you, but also because you want the

01:19:15   big phone, which is fine. Can we talk about the camera a little bit? I have a few thoughts,

01:19:22   you know, like I've taken a bunch of pictures and some video. Um, overall, I would say that

01:19:28   the photos that I've taken, uh, with Adina's phone and the video, um, much more vivid in color in a

01:19:35   way that I really like. Uh, there's more contrast, more color, a little more detail in certain places,

01:19:41   especially in indoors. So like, you know, what Apple is saying about the benefits that they're

01:19:46   seeing there, I completely agree with, uh, the, the HDR video looks fantastic. I, I took just

01:19:55   some video. I basically put both my iPhone and her from side by side and kind of walked around

01:20:00   my studio and played them back on the devices and even like transferred her video to my phone.

01:20:05   You immediately see the difference. You can really see where the HDR is kicking in. Like I take it

01:20:09   near some light sources and you can see where the phone is illuminating. Um, it's really like,

01:20:14   really cool that the HDR video is awesome. My favorite thing though, I'm surprised about is

01:20:20   night mode portraits. So portrait mode and night mode combined. This is a thing that it does now.

01:20:26   They have this really like, there's a great example of this in Austin Mann's, uh, photo review.

01:20:31   And I've been able to produce some of these myself. They have this like dreamy look to them.

01:20:37   Like it's kind of like, like blurry, but illuminated in just the right places. Like,

01:20:42   I really like the look of night mode portraits in a way that I wouldn't have expected.

01:20:47   But basically like overall, even without like a ton of new hardware, I mean, they've changed

01:20:54   some stuff in the lenses and then they've done a bunch of software stuff. I think that the camera

01:20:58   improvements are exactly what I would want. Um, more detail, more contrast, more color,

01:21:04   like they're the three things that I'm always looking for. Like I do not profess to know a

01:21:08   lot about photography, but over the last couple of years, I have focused more on like using iPhone

01:21:14   apps to edit photos. And my personal tastes are for bright colors. I like color and saturation in

01:21:21   my images. It's just what I like. And I feel like that the iPhone 12 pro for me is more readily

01:21:28   producing images that have more color in them. And so I'm, I'm really happy with it. I think it's a,

01:21:34   it's a great improvement in the images that I've taken. The video is bananas good. Uh,

01:21:40   I'm and again, so I just remain excited about what the max will have and if and how it will

01:21:48   show more improvement. What is your experience with the camera so far? Any difference?

01:21:54   I've reached the point where I have a very hard time noticing differences between iPhone models.

01:22:00   They, you know, I, it, we've long since left the period. There are still moments. I haven't done

01:22:05   an HDR video test. There's probably something there because I remember when they went to,

01:22:10   when I, when they went to extended dynamic range, which they very specifically didn't call HDR

01:22:15   because it wasn't. And also because they knew they were going to be adding age, true HDR later.

01:22:20   When they went to extended dynamic range, you could see the difference. And I would imagine

01:22:24   that as you said, you can see it even even more. The idea that it is sampling probably

01:22:29   bracketing images and doing all sorts of very clever things to expand the dynamic range.

01:22:34   And for people who don't know, essentially our eyes are really good at seeing things in

01:22:39   brightness and darkness simultaneously. And cameras are really bad at that. And so when

01:22:45   they're doing tricks to make the cameras better at approximating what we actually can see with

01:22:51   our eyes. And that especially means things like a scene with bright sunlight and dark shadows,

01:22:56   and being able to get the details in both, which we do naturally as human beings with vision

01:23:02   that cameras are bad at. So I would imagine that they have taken it further, but again,

01:23:09   I have not done a lot of shots of that. And I am kind of at wits end when it comes to iPhone

01:23:15   photography, because I've gotten to the point now where I, I do the sample tests on different models

01:23:21   and I look at them and I can't tell the difference. And then, and so I rely on people like Austin Mann

01:23:27   who are photographers who can actually say, you know, yes. Because the answer is they look good.

01:23:32   And that yes, the things that Apple claims in terms of improved portrait mode, improved night

01:23:39   mode, and night mode, portrait mode for the first time using the LIDAR scanner on the Pro. Yeah,

01:23:45   like all that stuff is there and I'm impressed by it. I was impressed by night mode last year too.

01:23:50   But beyond that, you know, I don't know. I use my iPhone camera now and basically don't use my SLR

01:23:58   because the iPhone camera is so good. But beyond that, I don't, you know, I don't have anything

01:24:03   else to say about like comparing them because it's very hard for me to tell if what I'm seeing is a

01:24:09   difference in the, in the minutia of the moment to moment shots of the two cameras, or if it's

01:24:13   actually something happening. It's just like when we were struggling trying to figure out if deep

01:24:17   fusion was happening. Like it's really hard to tell. It's really hard to tell. Just they look

01:24:22   good and they look better than last year. And most people who are buying this phone are coming from

01:24:27   a camera that's two, three, four years older, and they're going to see a big difference. But,

01:24:31   you know, from year to year, it just gets incrementally better and the increments build up

01:24:35   and most people don't buy a new phone every year. Last thing before we finish up for now on the

01:24:42   iPhone 12 line, how do you feel about MagSafe? I mean, it's, I like it. It seems nice. The

01:24:55   magnet snapping on so you know that you've got a connection is very useful. That said, I had

01:25:02   the MagSafe down on my counter and before I went to bed, I laid the iPhone 12 on it, you know,

01:25:09   kind of old school style like the charging mats and felt like I had gotten the snap and I came

01:25:15   out in the morning and it had not connected. Well, to get that then I suppose. Yeah. But

01:25:22   it's a nice idea. I have a problem with the idea that Apple has not put a plug. I mean, so the plug

01:25:29   charger in the box of all of these, like I get it. It's fine. It is very strange that Apple has done

01:25:33   that at the same time that they put a USB-C cable in the box because you know what we all have a lot

01:25:38   of USB-A charging connectors, not USB-C charging connectors. USB-C charging connectors. I don't

01:25:44   have that many of them and I've got iPad pros that have them like I don't have that many of them.

01:25:49   And so the struggle with the MagSafe is that is a USB-C connector. And unlike the iPhone where you

01:25:56   can just go find your lightning to USB-A connector and use that instead, that thing only will take a

01:26:01   USB-C connector. So I had to pull an adapter that I was using somewhere else out and put it in my

01:26:07   kitchen where I charged my devices and plug it into the wall there. And you know, I don't know,

01:26:14   it's just kind of a pain, but I did it and then it works great. And I like the idea of MagSafe and

01:26:20   having a whole bunch of different accessories come out for it. I think that's all perfectly good,

01:26:25   but I don't know. The power adapter thing kind of annoys me, especially on the MagSafe. Like I get

01:26:33   it, the packaging is much smaller, but like it's USB-C. In the end, it's not going to matter,

01:26:39   but right now it does kind of matter. Even in my house, that's very tech-centric,

01:26:43   most of the excess charging plug capacity we have is USB-A, not USB-C.

01:26:50   - We bought two MagSafe things and I spent like half an hour looking for a spare one of those with

01:27:00   the USB-C end. I just kept coming across USB-A plugs and ended up finding one in a backpack

01:27:07   somewhere. Like similarly, right? Like I have lots of charging adapters, power adapters that have

01:27:13   USB-A ends on them, but not so many with USB-C ends. You know, you want to rip the band out of

01:27:22   at a certain point, but maybe one more year when we got USB-C, but whatever. Like then it's like,

01:27:28   what about the people three years before? It's a thing that's frustrating to lots of people. I

01:27:33   can see why they're doing it, but you know, as we said before, it frustrates me that it's clearly a

01:27:40   cost-saving measure as well, you know? - Yeah, well, I just think that they did it wrong. I

01:27:44   think last year they should have put a USB charger in the box with the USB-C cord, but it wasn't,

01:27:50   right? It was a USB-A charger last year? - Yeah. Maybe.

01:27:53   - See, that's, that's, I, oh, yeah, I guess we should look. That's the right thing to,

01:27:58   the right thing to do is seed the world with USB-C chargers and then take the charger out of the box.

01:28:03   - Yeah, but then the argument would be, which I understand is the year-over-year upgrade is not

01:28:06   necessarily the right place to do that anyway. - It's true. You're right, because they're not,

01:28:11   anyway, yes, ideally they should have switched to USB-C chargers several years ago.

01:28:15   - The Discord is telling us that the pro lines had USB-C last year, the regular ones had USB-A.

01:28:21   - Okay. Anyway, you're right that most people aren't upgrading from last year's model anyway.

01:28:26   So it's just, it's an unfortunate confluence of things that they put a USB-C cord in the box,

01:28:31   but the chargers most people have are USB-A. It's just...

01:28:35   - My main frustration with MagSafe is how short the cable is.

01:28:39   - It is. - It's a meter.

01:28:43   - It is. And you can't extend it, right? It's just...

01:28:46   - That's not a big enough. - Because you can't disconnect it. Yeah,

01:28:48   it's not very flexible. You know, it's only a matter of time before there's a MagSafe,

01:28:53   a three-meter MagSafe compatible charger on Amazon or something like that. It may be there already.

01:28:59   - I hope so. Because we really had to do some gymnastics to snake it up the back of the bedside

01:29:06   cabinet, right? It was not easy to do. So that's the iPhone 12. I mean, obviously, we're not done,

01:29:15   right? We'll be talking about the Mini and Max in a few weeks' time, I think. So I'm excited about

01:29:21   that. But yeah, these are interesting phones. The design, I think, is the real king here,

01:29:27   but it depends on what colors you want to go for. I think that's super cool. And I really like flat

01:29:33   sides. I'm looking forward to having my phone every day be like that rather than one that I

01:29:39   can just steal every now and again. - Yes. Well, I'm looking forward

01:29:43   to getting my hands on the Mini because I'm still intrigued by the idea of having a smaller iPhone.

01:29:49   Although I will say that I do love the 12. It's really great. And it's going to be harder for the

01:29:57   Mini to sort of dislodge me from the 12, but I am intrigued by it. - This episode is brought to you

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01:31:10   Are you ready for some #AskUpgradeQuestions?

01:31:15   Our first question this time comes from Marcelo. Marcelo wants to know, Jason,

01:31:22   what tools do you use for publishing Six Colors?

01:31:24   WordPress. That's it. These days, WordPress and custom templates that took me months to build,

01:31:32   I wrote about this on Six Colors. I spent like six months working on custom templates and working

01:31:39   with people at Automattic who helped out. I've got plugins and all sorts of custom stuff inside of

01:31:46   WordPress and I've paid to have a couple custom WordPress plugins written for me put all together

01:31:52   or modifying existing plugins. There's a lot of stuff going on there but we moved from movable

01:31:57   type to WordPress mostly because it allows me to do a whole bunch of membership features and have

01:32:02   people log in if they're supporters and they see different stuff and if you're not logged in,

01:32:06   you see different stuff and it's been great. What app do you use to send the text? Do you just

01:32:14   paste it into the web? Where are you getting from computer to, you know what I'm saying?

01:32:25   Yeah, so on the iPad, I modified all my shortcuts to use the posting API for WordPress which is

01:32:32   essentially the same posting API as for movable type because they're both using this old posting

01:32:38   standard XML RPC. So that was super convenient. I thought I was going to throw away all the work I

01:32:45   did to post for movable type via shortcuts on the iPad and it turns out I didn't. It was a shockingly

01:32:52   simple change to get it all to work on WordPress. On the Mac, I mostly write in bbedit and then I

01:33:00   can paste that in either to the web page CMS for WordPress or I use Mars Edit from Red Sweater

01:33:08   software which works great with WordPress. Works better with WordPress than it did with movable

01:33:12   type honestly because we had hacked movable type to do a bunch of things that Mars Edit was less

01:33:17   happy about whereas it all works just fine with WordPress. It doesn't surprise me as well though

01:33:23   because the version of movable type you were using was a billion years old. Yes, yes, with

01:33:28   modification. The modifications were really the killer. It's like adding custom fields that were

01:33:33   not necessarily seen by Mars Edit but Mars Edit sees all of the custom fields and stuff that we've

01:33:38   got in the WordPress version. So I use Mars Edit some of the time. I think Dan writes mostly in

01:33:42   Mars Edit. I do a lot of bbedit stuff and then just paste it in to the CMS or into Mars Edit but

01:33:48   on the iPad it's great. I have whether I'm writing in drafts or in one writer, I have like a keyboard

01:33:53   shortcut that just pops it right into the CMS and opens the web page in WordPress with it ready to

01:33:58   go out. Nice. Then I can check it out and preview it and do whatever but it's in there kind of

01:34:02   automatically. Got a Kremlinology question from Yitz who wants to know, do you think Apple might

01:34:15   have actually filmed all two or all three Apple events at the same time or at least the parts that

01:34:21   involve the same people? Like do you think they wrapped one and started a whole new one or do you

01:34:26   think there was a continuation? I think they wrapped one and started a new one. Like they

01:34:31   didn't film them at the same time? No and the reason I say that is first off I think it makes

01:34:37   more sense because they're different events with different people involved and some of the same

01:34:41   people but also I would say you would you know you could shoot all of Tim Cook's stuff at once

01:34:48   but you'd need Tim Cook to change his wardrobe and like you'd want it to seem like a different event

01:34:55   not a rerun of the previous event. So that's my guess is that my guess is that they are in

01:35:00   continuous production of these things especially if there's a third one but that they probably

01:35:06   unless there was a very specific scheduling thing but nobody's really traveling much my guess is

01:35:13   that they they probably have a schedule with all the different stuff but that they prioritize sort

01:35:17   of like this is for number one and then as they wrap number one they moved on to number two and

01:35:22   presumably as they wrap number two they moved on to number three that's just a guess. My guess is

01:35:27   that it is if you do it as one production you have to have all the scripts run ahead of time which

01:35:33   means that they would have needed everything for all three events before they started doing event

01:35:37   one. I doubt that they work that way even if they know what the products are that's a huge amount of

01:35:42   work to do in advance of the set whereas you can have it be if you think of it as a an assembly

01:35:48   line or a conveyor belt like the people who are working on the script and then they pass that off

01:35:52   and then it goes to production and they pass that off and they shoot it and then it goes to post

01:35:55   production and then coming right behind that is number two and then presumably coming behind that

01:35:59   is number three just kind of makes sense to do it that way. So my gut feeling is they didn't shoot

01:36:06   all of Tim Cook's introductions for the entire falls event also because like Tim's right over

01:36:11   there in his office and he can just Tim Cook would probably prefer a few shorter photo shoots or video

01:36:17   shoots too. Also keep in mind they have to be familiar with their scripts and stuff so you're

01:36:22   going to give people even more script to record. I think it breaks down so I don't know that for

01:36:27   sure it's possible but my guess would be that they didn't shoot these that way. So I think there's a

01:36:33   few things at play here one stuff changes as well right so like especially with some of these

01:36:39   products I'm sure they were going up to the wire on some of them so you would maybe want to give

01:36:43   yourself as much time as possible. The weather changes too what if it rains one day and then

01:36:47   it's sunny another day and or it's like a the smoke came in one day and then it's clear another

01:36:53   day and you're weird and you're like well wait that was on a smoky day and like I don't think

01:36:57   I think they want to keep I'm not saying they shoot it all in the same day but I'm saying

01:37:00   you know if you shoot in a compressed amount of time it's going to seem a little more unified

01:37:05   without you having to do work to fake it. Yeah and also as well throughout the presentations

01:37:11   you can tell that they got a little bit more relaxed about like social distancing as things

01:37:17   became that's true too a little bit more feasible people could understand what they were able to do

01:37:23   more people were allowed to be actually at apple park because there's there's more scenes where

01:37:28   it seems like people are in the space with each other right and also like those warnings at the

01:37:33   end have changed like the one is that they're doing at the end so there's no way they could

01:37:37   have filmed more at the same time there's a possibility that they may have shared some

01:37:42   some like time I think between the two most recent events but no way was there anything done from

01:37:47   WWDC1 at the same time like shown later on I don't think for sure. Steve says do you have any interest

01:37:54   in a bumper style case making a comeback now that we have the flat side phones again I love those

01:38:00   and they would make a lot of sense if you wanted to show off your new color and make use of the new

01:38:05   magsafe charging system. It's a good idea. Bumper cases have existed ever since the iPhone 4 right

01:38:12   companies continue to make them and you know I know people have used them there's a few companies

01:38:19   I think one of them that I've seen that I've I think I tried one once and didn't like it

01:38:23   as a company called rhino shield like I just didn't like it on that particular phone and they

01:38:29   are back again with their bumpers but I think maybe now it makes more sense again that people

01:38:35   might want bumper cases but I wondered kind of like is this a is that a case style that still

01:38:41   appeals to you? I'm not sure it ever really appealed to me right so would I get one probably not

01:38:51   like I've said all the things that I love about the anodized aluminum if I felt like I really

01:38:55   needed a little more protection maybe I would get the bumper case but I'm I have no plan on it but

01:38:59   I would imagine that people will make them and that they will be more aesthetically pleasing on

01:39:07   these models especially the on the 12s where they've got the bright colored back like my

01:39:12   daughter has a purple 11 and she's got it in a clear case and like she wants to show off the

01:39:17   color but the clear case is I don't like the clear case so something like this that provides a little

01:39:22   more protection without hiding the color on the back is a good idea but I'm not interested

01:39:30   personally. Yeah I don't know what it is exactly but I kind of just don't particularly feel for

01:39:37   this type of case anymore it's like I don't know why I loved it then but not now but now I'm kind

01:39:42   of just like I'm either gonna go with a full case or no case it's kind of how I feel about the matter

01:39:48   and for my plan is to go no case on the new phone that's the plan we'll see how that goes

01:39:56   I have ordered a new pop socket for it I'm you know I'm keeping the pop socket life going

01:40:03   I'm not changing that for the time being and I'm just waiting to see if or what would be a

01:40:08   possibility for me for magsafe I don't know if I've been actually thinking I'm not sure if pop

01:40:13   socket are actually making a magnetic pop socket or if they are making a pop socket that works with

01:40:18   magsafe right that you still adhese something to your phone but like magsafe will still work I

01:40:23   actually think that is more likely what they're doing than making a pop socket that attaches with

01:40:29   magnets because I don't think it's strong I don't think it's going to be strong enough and I think

01:40:32   maybe they know that. Dave asks I don't record geotag data on photos because I don't want to

01:40:39   risk it remaining when I share photos how do you manage this? Multiple ways. So there's a few things

01:40:47   going on here one when you share a photo with somebody in the share sheet on iOS there is a

01:40:53   little button a text label called options at the top of the share sheet if you tap that it gives

01:40:59   you the option to uncheck location so therefore when you share it it will wipe the location

01:41:06   metadata from the photo for you so you can share it with somebody in a message or however and it

01:41:12   would and it will remove it and I think there's a way to make that the global setting I believe

01:41:16   but I'm not 100% sure on that one but you can turn it off. Many apps like twitter actually remove the

01:41:23   metadata from the image when it's uploaded so if somebody shares an image to twitter and you

01:41:28   download it you don't get the location information even if they didn't do anything. I have also built

01:41:34   a shortcut to do this because sometimes I'll take photos and share them in show notes and stuff at

01:41:40   full resolution I will try to share a link to that shortcut in the show notes for you it's a very

01:41:48   simple one it just removes the metadata and asks where you want to put it so I will try and

01:41:53   generate a link for that shortcut and put it in the show notes. Do you have anything different on

01:41:57   this Jason? Do you ever think about this? No and no you've shown it like you have options to not

01:42:05   share with location that's it. Last question today from Daniel when you get a new phone do you set

01:42:12   it up as new or do you transfer and if you transfer how? I transfer it and I actually did it with iCloud

01:42:20   and with a direct device to device transfer because I had the two phones on Tuesday and the iCloud

01:42:26   transfer went way faster than the device to device transfer but on Friday Dan Morin tried the device

01:42:34   the iCloud backup transfer and it took forever and then he had to quit and then and then he redid it

01:42:39   and it worked fine. I suspect what happens is Apple servers got a peek of people transferring their

01:42:46   iCloud backups and that there was a hiccup and so maybe on iPhone day it's not as good but I had

01:42:52   I had a very good experience with the iCloud backup and weirdly the device to device transfer

01:42:57   seemed to take longer for me but that's what I do and you can even plug in a cable between two

01:43:02   devices and transfer it that way if you want to do it there's lots of different ways to do it

01:43:06   you can do it based on a Mac backup but I generally just use the iCloud backup when I get a new device

01:43:11   and it works great. So with Adina's phone this is super interesting to me. I tried to do the

01:43:18   device to device transfer but it failed and said that there wasn't enough storage but that wasn't

01:43:24   the case. We had it was a 256 gigabyte iPhone going to a 128 gigabyte iPhone and there was 46.7

01:43:32   gigabytes used on the 256 gigabyte iPhone so we were only transferring maximum like 50 gigabytes

01:43:40   of storage so I don't know why it wouldn't allow for it and then the only thing we could do was

01:43:47   reset the new phone to factory settings and start again and then we just did cloud store cloud

01:43:52   refresh and it was super fast and no problem. So I don't know if it's because like because it was

01:43:58   going from 256 to 128 but if that's the case that's madness because we weren't transferring 256

01:44:04   gigabytes of information but the phone only said it was using 46.7 so that was my as there is always

01:44:10   a weird setup problem that I encounter that was this one but so I'm just going to continue doing

01:44:18   the cloud backup because it was super fast. I have good internet right so you know it's I have

01:44:26   gigabit internet so everything was downloading quickly I was doing it on iPhone launch day had

01:44:29   no problems so I think I'll just continue doing the cloud backup which is what I'd done before.

01:44:35   The device to device backup was interesting but it takes a long time as well. Yeah it's

01:44:39   mostly for people who don't have a good internet connection or or are data rate limited in some way

01:44:45   or data capped so if you can if you can be on wi-fi and it's fast and you can do iCloud backup

01:44:51   I highly recommend it. If you'd like to send in a question for an episode of the show just send out

01:44:56   a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade or use question mark ask upgrade in the Relay FM members

01:45:01   discord. If you'd like to become a Relay FM member and support upgrade directly and get additional

01:45:07   content and the show with no ads just go to getupgradeplus.com so you get upgrade longer

01:45:13   episodes no ads what a great deal five dollars a month go to getupgradeplus.com if you want to find

01:45:19   Jason online go to sixcolors.com Jason will be publishing his more details about his thoughts on

01:45:25   the iPhone and iPhone 12 review probably later on this week I'm going to say. Jason's also @jasonel

01:45:32   on twitter I am @imike thank you to Pingdom, DoorDash and Hover for their support of this

01:45:39   episode and for you for listening we'll be back next time until then say goodbye Jason Stell.

01:45:45   Bye Myke Early.

01:45:52   [BLANK_AUDIO]