Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 329.

00:00:12 ◼   ► It's made possible this week by our sponsors,

00:00:15 ◼   ► Squarespace, Pingdom, and ExpressVPN.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I'm joined as always

00:00:21 ◼   ► by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - Hello.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - Hello.

00:00:25 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Oh, well, jinx.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - Jinx.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Now that'd be fun, wouldn't it?

00:00:30 ◼   ► The jinx your podcast co-host?

00:00:33 ◼   ► How's that one gonna last?

00:00:34 ◼   ► - Can't talk until you bring me a coke.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - Why is that the thing?

00:00:37 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:00:38 ◼   ► - 'Cause here, if you jinx someone,

00:00:40 ◼   ► the person can't speak again

00:00:43 ◼   ► until you say their name three times.

00:00:45 ◼   ► - Hmm, I don't know.

00:00:46 ◼   ► - That's how it works.

00:00:47 ◼   ► I don't know why coke's gotten into it.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Well, there's a scene in "The Office" where that happens.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And I don't know if it was a thing

00:00:55 ◼   ► before that "Office" episode or not.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Anyways, hello, I'm glad you're well.

00:01:01 ◼   ► We're also joined by Federico Vatici.

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Hello, I'm good before you ask.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm doing fine.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - We haven't got time to waste.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - No, we have a lot of stuff to talk about this week.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Nevermind me, go on, follow up, go on.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Follow up.

00:01:16 ◼   ► We have a great idea sent in from a listener, Leon,

00:01:22 ◼   ► who writes, "When air tags come out,

00:01:25 ◼   ► "can you please all get some?

00:01:27 ◼   ► then your significant others can hide them somewhere around your house or city if you can go outside

00:01:32 ◼   ► and you can all race to see who can find their air tag the fastest in a competition we'll call

00:01:39 ◼   ► the taggies. I don't know why anyone would think that we'd be interested in such trivial

00:01:47 ◼   ► competition. I don't know, I'm not sure what it is that would make people believe that

00:01:52 ◼   ► we would compete for such silly things but I guess somehow we've given ourselves this

00:01:59 ◼   ► this mentality I suppose. People think of us. I'm not too opposed to the idea,

00:02:08 ◼   ► personally. There are so many issues around rules for an event like this. I don't even want

00:02:15 ◼   ► I don't even want to think about what the reading of the rules would look like because

00:02:19 ◼   ► Well, what? Like if Sylvia hit it at the beach and you're in Rome and like Mary just hit Stevens in the back garden, like, you know.

00:02:32 ◼   ► This to me sounds like the sort of game that we should be playing at WWDC.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Once we can do that again in person.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Oh my god, three air tags. They're hidden around the auditorium.

00:02:43 ◼   ► This to me feels like a WWDC game.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Yes, it really does. Ooh, I like the sound of this. Well, we can hold that for maybe

00:02:55 ◼   ► three years or maybe not.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Oh no, oh no. Please don't say it three years. 2022, come on, next year.

00:03:03 ◼   ► I still don't think so. I still don't think so. I'm not putting any money on it.

00:03:10 ◼   ► In relation to this, Federico, you last week very boldly claimed that you have never lost

00:03:17 ◼   ► thing. That is still true. Even though it was proven on the episode that he had in fact

00:03:24 ◼   ► lost multiple things. Yes. And you were supposed to double check that with Sylvia. Have you

00:03:30 ◼   ► done this? Yeah I did. We cannot remember any single particular thing that I've lost.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Well I mean I've told you. We're supposed to believe you. It's a heart rate monitor.

00:03:41 ◼   ► you can text Sylvia if you don't believe me. But like I have an example. I have the example.

00:03:48 ◼   ► That was stolen from me. Your heart rate went up. You lost that. It was stolen from me.

00:03:51 ◼   ► I didn't lose it. It was stolen. It was taken from me. To be on somebody else's sweaty chest.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Not mine. So. Now that he's mad.

00:04:08 ◼   ► The streak is unbroken. Stephen has broken another iPhone.

00:04:12 ◼   ► When you say another, that's kind of a loaded term.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Yeah, he's right. Another.

00:04:18 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure you have broken a version of every iPhone for like the last four years.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Well, let's find out.

00:04:24 ◼   ► You break every one of them?

00:04:25 ◼   ► Let's find out. I keep a list.

00:04:28 ◼   ► How?

00:04:29 ◼   ► I keep a list.

00:04:29 ◼   ► You keep a list of the phones you've broken?

00:04:32 ◼   ► Yes.

00:04:32 ◼   ► That shows how often you break phones.

00:04:35 ◼   ► Well, it shows that I don't have a list.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I don't have a list.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I care about my content creation job.

00:04:38 ◼   ► I have never broken an iPhone.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Should we go through this history?

00:04:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:43 ◼   ► iPhone 4s fell out of my car at a job I used to have, facedown with a parking lot and broke.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:04:52 ◼   ► iPhone 6 was dropped down a flight of stairs in a parking garage.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:04:56 ◼   ► People remember that one, I think.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Super dead.

00:05:03 ◼   ► iPhone 6 Plus was bent by the emergency brake in my car.

00:05:10 ◼   ► iPhone 7 Plus got knocked off my desk in my office, which has concrete floors, and it

00:05:15 ◼   ► missed the rug by about 4 inches and shattered.

00:05:19 ◼   ► iPhone 10, I just have "unknown."

00:05:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure what happened to that one.

00:05:25 ◼   ► iPhone XS Max, I was working under my truck and I dropped a tool on the screen on my phone

00:05:31 ◼   ► and broke it.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And then the iPhone 12 Pro, I broke the back glass while dropping it while tripping.

00:05:38 ◼   ► You didn't break the iPhone 11?

00:05:40 ◼   ► No.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And not like 420 tripping, I tripped over a rug.

00:05:44 ◼   ► If you would have broken iPhone 11, you would have been like on a streak from the iPhone 6.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Yep.

00:05:50 ◼   ► 6, 7, 10, 10S.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Do we all agree that the problem is you at this point?

00:05:56 ◼   ► You mean we have to?

00:05:57 ◼   ► Like, do you realize that you have a problem?

00:06:00 ◼   ► Seems like it.

00:06:01 ◼   ► yeah like really like this is what you keep breaking everything life when you

00:06:08 ◼   ► have is it like a fetish like why I love the sound of glass real problem yeah

00:06:15 ◼   ► like is this how you get your kicks he just like walks around holding it just

00:06:20 ◼   ► two fingers like well now be the time I don't understand I don't know it just

00:06:28 ◼   ► happens to me. Like you know it's not necessary to break it. Is it just iPhones? Like if you

00:06:33 ◼   ► only broke iPhones do you break other things? Like technology wise? Mmm I broke a laptop

00:06:38 ◼   ► screen in the past, a laptop fell and I broke a screen. That was recent right? Uh-huh it

00:06:44 ◼   ► was like last year. Do you break other things consistently in your life? No I've never broken

00:06:49 ◼   ► an iPad. My foot. I broke an iPad. My foot I guess counts. It was only once. So yeah

00:06:57 ◼   ► It's quite a record, but I got my new phone here and I got some bad news about the new

00:07:02 ◼   ► phone.

00:07:03 ◼   ► It's not broken.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Don't worry.

00:07:05 ◼   ► You just just to confirm you got you had Apple Care, right?

00:07:09 ◼   ► You did know I this is why I buy Apple Care on my phones because I know this is going

00:07:12 ◼   ► to happen.

00:07:14 ◼   ► You've really got your money back over time.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:07:18 ◼   ► So I shipped my broken iPhone back to Apple just this morning, actually, and have my new

00:07:23 ◼   ► phone.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I got it set up yesterday did the migration thing.

00:07:26 ◼   ► as a sidebar the direct phone to phone transfer like over wireless is awesome

00:07:31 ◼   ► it's the second or third time I've used it and I cannot say enough good things

00:07:36 ◼   ► about it especially if you do it overnight and you don't miss using your

00:07:40 ◼   ► phone although this morning both phones went off with my alarm the problem is

00:07:45 ◼   ► doing it on launch day because you want to use the phone and the phones like out

00:07:50 ◼   ► of action for three hours or whatever yeah you know the discord thinks that

00:07:56 ◼   ► Apple's gonna stop selling me Apple Care at some point. Is that a thing? I don't

00:08:00 ◼   ► think, I hope not. I mean it's like an insurance, right? Like if you keep

00:08:04 ◼   ► claiming at a certain point you're costing them more money. Maybe. Maybe they

00:08:08 ◼   ► will just like cut you off. You think they're thinking you're committing

00:08:12 ◼   ► Apple Care fraud? I mean the phones are really broken and I pay them $99 a time

00:08:16 ◼   ► to replace it. But still, can we get to the bad news? So the bad news is, last

00:08:25 ◼   ► night I have my old broken phone which was now in a case. So you're painting a

00:08:31 ◼   ► whole picture. Yeah I gotta paint the picture. Sure. What did you have for

00:08:35 ◼   ► dinner? What did I have for dinner? I don't know what I had for dinner last night.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Smell in the air. Yeah, smell of broken glass. So my broken phone which is being

00:08:46 ◼   ► held together by the case it was now in, I put it in a case after I broke it to

00:08:49 ◼   ► keep it together, that phone was sitting on the MagSafe charger on my nightstand

00:08:53 ◼   ► stand and I brought a lightning cable in and had the new phone plugged into

00:08:59 ◼   ► lightning because I knew this was gonna take three hours I didn't want the

00:09:01 ◼   ► phones to die while this was going on and I go to lay down and I hear

00:09:08 ◼   ► something I hear a little sound and I had flashbacks to my iPhone 7 plus and I

00:09:16 ◼   ► realized that my new phone makes the same coil whine hissing noise here we go

00:09:22 ◼   ► again. That my phone 7 plus did. Stop the presses, Steven's going on the morning shows.

00:09:27 ◼   ► No, no, this cannot be happening again.

00:09:29 ◼   ► So if you're not aware of what happened, I had an iPhone 7 plus that did this. I shot the world's

00:09:36 ◼   ► worst video of it and posted it over the weekend and it went viral. 1.6 million views. Is that what

00:09:43 ◼   ► it's up to? Golly. And also to say you shot a video is a real stretch. It's just a picture.

00:09:50 ◼   ► and some sound.

00:09:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:52 ◼   ► It's not great.

00:09:53 ◼   ► - It's a 30 second video of a hiss.

00:09:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was on like the morning shows on Monday.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It was wild.

00:10:00 ◼   ► It was a terrible, terrible weekend.

00:10:02 ◼   ► - It started with a gate.

00:10:03 ◼   ► - It was a gate.

00:10:04 ◼   ► It was his skate.

00:10:05 ◼   ► - It was a gate.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Yeah, his skate.

00:10:06 ◼   ► - So anyways, this phone only seemed to do it

00:10:10 ◼   ► when it was transferring,

00:10:11 ◼   ► which is a really heavy duty task,

00:10:14 ◼   ► and it doesn't do it now, even if it's plugged in.

00:10:17 ◼   ► So I checked it this morning.

00:10:18 ◼   ► it doesn't make noise. So hopefully it's all good to go.

00:10:23 ◼   ► One thing I have noticed, like still my iPhone, it gets hot sometimes, like really hot to

00:10:29 ◼   ► the touch sometimes. I don't know if this is the thing that I'm just not wearing a case

00:10:33 ◼   ► on my phone, so maybe they've been like this for a while, but there is like just a point

00:10:37 ◼   ► on the top left of my phone kind of in the back, so it'd be the top right on the back

00:10:41 ◼   ► if you're looking at it on the back, where it gets a bit hot to the touch.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Ian has updated the Relay FM fandom wiki with your page, Steven, with a list of all the

00:10:53 ◼   ► devices you've broken.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Does Federico have a page yet?

00:10:56 ◼   ► So if people want to check your list.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I was the first one to have a page.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Yeah, we got upset about this because it says "Superpowers never loses anything, may temporarily

00:11:05 ◼   ► mishandle items" is Federico's page.

00:11:09 ◼   ► You live outside of London with your wife, Arumba, and a growing collection of mechanical

00:11:13 ◼   ► keyboards.

00:11:14 ◼   ► You started a gate five years ago, but you have started a gate with these AirPods Max

00:11:20 ◼   ► battery issues.

00:11:21 ◼   ► No I haven't.

00:11:22 ◼   ► You see?

00:11:23 ◼   ► This is a thing that I learned.

00:11:25 ◼   ► So I was having problems with the, I've mentioned this right, the battery on my AirPods.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And I hadn't heard anybody mention it at that point.

00:11:33 ◼   ► I hadn't heard it said anywhere, I hadn't read it anywhere.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Where did I talk about it?

00:11:38 ◼   ► On this show.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Where did I not talk about it?

00:11:40 ◼   ► On Twitter.

00:11:41 ◼   ► I knew if I tweeted about it, someone was going to make it a thing. Like that time when

00:11:47 ◼   ► I realized that it was like the iPhone 6s or something that the button, because remember

00:11:55 ◼   ► they turned the button to be like a solid state button, right? Remember that? It didn't

00:12:01 ◼   ► move anymore. And I realized that that meant that like if you had gloves on or whatever,

00:12:06 ◼   ► you couldn't use the home button. So I tweeted it. And then like my Twitter account exploded

00:12:11 ◼   ► for 24 hours, nowhere near the level of his gate.

00:12:14 ◼   ► But it ended up in some company sending me gloves

00:12:17 ◼   ► that had touch ID capabilities for them.

00:12:20 ◼   ► So what I didn't want to do is tweet about the fact

00:12:23 ◼   ► that the battery was bad on my AirPods Pro Max.

00:12:26 ◼   ► But now there have been like forum posts and stuff like this forum posts.

00:12:31 ◼   ► So MacRumors, a 9 to 5 Mac, picked it up.

00:12:34 ◼   ► I'm still experiencing this.

00:12:37 ◼   ► The thing is, it's random.

00:12:38 ◼   ► like some days my AirPods Max are fine, other days they're completely dead and this is even when I

00:12:44 ◼   ► leave them in the little silly case. So I haven't been able to track down any reproducible steps for

00:12:49 ◼   ► it. It basically seems like from my experience and the experience of others that are reporting issues

00:12:55 ◼   ► that their headphones they're not correctly switching to low power mode and maybe staying

00:13:00 ◼   ► connected to devices when they're not supposed to be and it's like it's just draining the battery

00:13:07 ◼   ► because they're just on all night. I tried like, I wondered if maybe my Macs were the issue or

00:13:13 ◼   ► something, I don't know, like maybe the new M1 Mac and these weren't playing nicely together,

00:13:18 ◼   ► so I turned off like automatic detection for the Macs but it hasn't changed anything

00:13:22 ◼   ► because I'm still having issues on my AirPods Macs rather than my Macintosh's.

00:13:29 ◼   ► I don't know, it's a thing, people are seeing it, I now expect that they're going to fix it somehow

00:13:35 ◼   ► because people are writing articles about it now.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Anything else in follow-up we need to address?

00:13:42 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Do I have a motion to close follow-up?

00:13:48 ◼   ► Is this a thing now?

00:13:50 ◼   ► I don't know. Motion it and see what happens.

00:13:54 ◼   ► What would you say? What's the opposite of motion denied?

00:13:56 ◼   ► What would you say? Would you say motion -- seconded?

00:13:58 ◼   ► Is it -- so I second it?

00:13:59 ◼   ► Someone has to motion, and someone has to second.

00:14:02 ◼   ► Okay. So you would say --

00:14:03 ◼   ► So like I motion to move to ad break?

00:14:05 ◼   ► Yes.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Do I have a second?

00:14:07 ◼   ► And then Federico has to second it.

00:14:08 ◼   ► What do I have to say?

00:14:12 ◼   ► Motion seconded?

00:14:13 ◼   ► Seconded?

00:14:14 ◼   ► I second the motion.

00:14:15 ◼   ► There you go.

00:14:16 ◼   ► I second the motion, yes.

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00:16:06 ◼   ► So Apple are doing podcast related things.

00:16:09 ◼   ► There's things they are doing, things they're rumored to do, uh,

00:16:14 ◼   ► but movements continue to occur. One of these, um,

00:16:17 ◼   ► is according to 9to5Mac,

00:16:21 ◼   ► sources have told them that there are Apple Music and Apple

00:16:26 ◼   ► podcast apps coming to Windows, which is interesting because Windows currently has iTunes and so

00:16:34 ◼   ► it looks like they're going to be bringing those apps over. I mean this could mean a

00:16:38 ◼   ► bunch of different things I suppose but I think ultimately it just, even if Apple wasn't

00:16:42 ◼   ► doing anything else with podcasts, I think it makes sense to kill iTunes on Windows if

00:16:47 ◼   ► they're going to continue wanting to support Windows and have an Apple Music app and a

00:16:51 ◼   ► podcast app because they're the brands like iTunes is not a brand for Apple

00:16:56 ◼   ► anymore but Apple Music and Apple podcasts are so rather than just leaving

00:17:02 ◼   ► iTunes on Windows to be this like withering on the vine type thing they

00:17:07 ◼   ► should actually make the applications that the other platforms have I think.

00:17:13 ◼   ► About a year ago maybe there were some job postings that pointed towards this

00:17:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:17:19 ◼   ► - And you're right, iTunes on Windows

00:17:22 ◼   ► is like stepping back in time.

00:17:24 ◼   ► It's really weird to use.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And it doesn't put Apple Music front and center.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I think that's what they want.

00:17:30 ◼   ► What surprises me about this really is that I,

00:17:34 ◼   ► we may see this before my pick of Apple podcasts on Android,

00:17:40 ◼   ► which I think makes more sense than this

00:17:42 ◼   ► 'cause most podcasts,

00:17:43 ◼   ► if something happens on mobile devices,

00:17:45 ◼   ► but who knows, maybe that's coming too.

00:17:48 ◼   ► But this would bring Windows along with the current state of Apple media apps.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm now coming around to podcasts on Android, but only if they do what is

00:18:02 ◼   ► reported to be done, like the information had that report that they're looking to

00:18:07 ◼   ► have some kind of podcast subscription service with original content.

00:18:11 ◼   ► If Apple do do that, then I also expect there to be Apple podcasts on Android.

00:18:17 ◼   ► The current product and their offering I don't think really dictates it, but at the point

00:18:23 ◼   ► that they want to start making it part of the overall services thing, they might want

00:18:28 ◼   ► to look at bringing that over.

00:18:30 ◼   ► I mean it does start to get awkward because then like, you know, Fitness Plus is part

00:18:34 ◼   ► of it technically, but that wouldn't work, you know?

00:18:37 ◼   ► Like because it's so integrated with Apple Watch, but Apple TV is on other platforms.

00:18:44 ◼   ► So yeah, it gets a bit murky, but I could imagine podcasts being more like Apple TV

00:18:50 ◼   ► than say, News+ or Fitness+ in what Apple offers for it to other platforms.

00:18:57 ◼   ► And there was also this thing, I read about this on Macintosh stories.net.

00:19:02 ◼   ► There is a new editorial feature for Apple podcasts where every month they're going to

00:19:07 ◼   ► feature a podcast from a quote, "up and coming creator".

00:19:12 ◼   ► Human Curation on the Podcasts directory or store, whatever you want to call it, is not

00:19:18 ◼   ► new.

00:19:19 ◼   ► In fact, they've been doing this for longer than any of their other Curation things like

00:19:22 ◼   ► the App Store or Apple Music.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Podcasts on Apple's devices and iTunes and everything, there's been an element of Human

00:19:31 ◼   ► Curation in it always.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It's always been a thing.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And they also have human submissions.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So all submissions to Apple podcasts, they're listened to by a human for the first time

00:19:45 ◼   ► when you want to get your feed in the store.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Maybe that plays into the curation, but I know that there's always been a curation element.

00:19:51 ◼   ► What's kind of different about this is they put lengthy editor's notes in this first spotlight,

00:19:58 ◼   ► which is for a podcast called Celebrity Book Club by Chelsea Devanteze.

00:20:04 ◼   ► This is the first Apple podcast spotlight and then they wrote a big thing about why

00:20:07 ◼   ► they're picking it. I imagine this could be the start of a potential redesign of Apple

00:20:15 ◼   ► Podcasts that makes it more like the App Store with editorial stuff. You know, like when

00:20:19 ◼   ► you go into the App Store and they've got all those little stories. I could imagine

00:20:22 ◼   ► them doing that with podcasts just because there's so much content. They could quite

00:20:26 ◼   ► easily make these like, "Hey, here's a bunch of shows about this." Because again, they

00:20:30 ◼   ► already do this. There are categories on the podcasts directory. I could imagine them maybe

00:20:36 ◼   ► wanting to expand it out a little bit more than what they've currently got and

00:20:41 ◼   ► this could be the start of that. I think it's definitely gonna be something they

00:20:44 ◼   ► do more and more. I mean there's even some of that in Apple Music right? So I

00:20:48 ◼   ► think that this follows that logic pretty well. We spoke about AirPods Max a

00:20:55 ◼   ► little bit ago. iFixit did a teardown and came across some weird stuff I guess

00:21:02 ◼   ► is maybe the best way to describe it. So they found out that you can take the

00:21:09 ◼   ► headband off by of the of the like the ear cups by removing the magnetic ear

00:21:16 ◼   ► cups and then using a sim ejector tool you poke it in a hole and you can pull

00:21:21 ◼   ► out the headband from the ear cup and this seems like you know it's like a

00:21:26 ◼   ► weird thing and you know I've seen people say like aha this is gonna allow

00:21:30 ◼   ► for people to change their headbands.

00:21:33 ◼   ► And that didn't make any sense to me

00:21:34 ◼   ► because it's like it feels very much

00:21:36 ◼   ► like a service thing like the Apple

00:21:38 ◼   ► Watch data port, right?

00:21:40 ◼   ► That like you can pop open this

00:21:42 ◼   ► little door on an Apple Watch

00:21:43 ◼   ► and someone can stick

00:21:45 ◼   ► a cable in it.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And now like you can

00:21:50 ◼   ► do some.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Sorry, I just punched my microphone

00:21:52 ◼   ► literally into my face.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I actually got quite a little bit.

00:21:56 ◼   ► I got so excited about the Apple

00:21:58 ◼   ► the AirPods.

00:21:59 ◼   ► I punched myself in the face with my microphone.

00:22:01 ◼   ► You know, you can do that with the services thing for like

00:22:12 ◼   ► for the Apple Watch, they can plug it in Apple support

00:22:15 ◼   ► and they can do the diagnostics or whatever.

00:22:17 ◼   ► So I just figured that this is a similar thing, right?

00:22:19 ◼   ► Because it seems like such a weird thing to do.

00:22:21 ◼   ► But the nine to five Mac found code in iOS 4.4

00:22:25 ◼   ► that can detect a headphone band type,

00:22:29 ◼   ► Which made me go back to thinking about the original report, right?

00:22:32 ◼   ► That Mark Gurman put out ages ago about multiple material options and then apparently there were some kind of delays.

00:22:39 ◼   ► I wanted to know what you guys thought because now people are like "aha maybe you can change the headbands"

00:22:44 ◼   ► but this seems like too weird and tricky still as a way to do it?

00:22:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it feels like it requires too many steps. I don't know.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I'm intrigued by it because of the whole idea of, obviously we talked about this months ago,

00:23:04 ◼   ► like perhaps you want to have a headband for running and a headband for different types of

00:23:09 ◼   ► workouts or just different materials, different colors, whatever. And software being

00:23:14 ◼   ► aware of it means maybe it can detect and it can adjust certain types of workouts, for example,

00:23:24 ◼   ► if there's going to be a support headband. That was the idea at the time. Now obviously, like,

00:23:29 ◼   ► the procedure for changing the headband, I'm not sure about it because it feels like a very hacky

00:23:37 ◼   ► way to do it. It's very different from magnetic ear cups, right? Like, one is magnets, the other is...

00:23:43 ◼   ► Or changing a watch band, right? Yeah, the others. Just grab your sim ejector tool, like, okay.

00:23:51 ◼   ► I continue to be intrigued by the idea. I'm not sure how exactly Apple could deliver on it.

00:23:57 ◼   ► Like, we're just speculating here. Oh, wouldn't it be cool if you had a headband just for workouts?

00:24:02 ◼   ► Yes, it would be cool, but what would it actually mean in practice? We don't know.

00:24:05 ◼   ► But still, the way that they do it, the iFixit folks do it, I don't think there's going to be

00:24:12 ◼   ► an official way for consumers to do it. I just got a sim ejector tool.

00:24:16 ◼   ► Do it. Do you want me to try it?

00:24:17 ◼   ► Yes. You should do it live.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I'm doing it. Oh god. The Apple sim ejector tool is not long enough.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Maybe like a safety pin or paper clip? Oh no no it is long enough. No it's not. No it's not.

00:24:30 ◼   ► No it's not. No it's not. No I'm not gonna keep trying it. I've decided.

00:24:34 ◼   ► Well just keep digging around inside your $3,000 headphones.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Yeah tried it a little bit. Not gonna try it any more than that. Oh god I bent this sim

00:24:42 ◼   ► ejector tool a little bit. Oh no. I'm done. I'm done. I couldn't find mine and my replacement

00:24:48 ◼   ► phone oddly didn't it come with one of the box so I used a safety pin this morning to move my sim

00:24:52 ◼   ► card over but it worked that's weird that a replacement phone wouldn't come with the sim

00:24:57 ◼   ► ejector tool yeah I looked through all the paperwork unless I just missed it did I send it in a regular

00:25:02 ◼   ► box it's in a cardboard box and inside that's like a white service box oh so it's not like a proper

00:25:08 ◼   ► iphone box no no no no it's a service that's why the iFixit teardown is super interesting I mean

00:25:14 ◼   ► This thing is vastly over-engineered.

00:25:18 ◼   ► It is what you expect from Apple,

00:25:22 ◼   ► but we don't often see it in something like headphones.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Like, yeah, the Mac Pro is over-engineered,

00:25:29 ◼   ► but it doesn't have a much of moving parts

00:25:32 ◼   ► and springs and stuff.

00:25:34 ◼   ► The thing that really jumped out at me

00:25:37 ◼   ► is the connection between the two sides.

00:25:39 ◼   ► So obviously there has to be some sort of connection

00:25:42 ◼   ► between the two for power and charging and all that stuff.

00:25:47 ◼   ► So Apple uses an electromechanical hinge.

00:25:51 ◼   ► This thing has a flex cable

00:25:55 ◼   ► that is in the rotating portion of the joint.

00:25:58 ◼   ► So if you have the AirPod Max,

00:26:00 ◼   ► it's kind of like a ball and shoulder type joint there.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And there's springs and switches

00:26:07 ◼   ► to help keep the cable from breaking down

00:26:11 ◼   ► as the AirPod, I guess the ear cups and the band move

00:26:15 ◼   ► independently of each other.

00:26:17 ◼   ► And there are these two large springs

00:26:19 ◼   ► that do the clamping pressure.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And all this has to be designed as they pointed out,

00:26:24 ◼   ► something I didn't think of,

00:26:26 ◼   ► which is why I'm not a hardware designer at Apple, I guess,

00:26:28 ◼   ► probably just this one reason,

00:26:30 ◼   ► that anything inside these ear cups has to survive

00:26:35 ◼   ► over the course of its lifespan,

00:26:38 ◼   ► hours and hours of vibration because of the driver in the ear cups, right? So everything in here is

00:26:46 ◼   ► moving or vibrating and it all has to work and not break down and screws can't come loose and

00:26:53 ◼   ► there's actually way more screws than this than I thought. I kind of thought it'd all be glued

00:26:56 ◼   ► together and there's, it seems relatively easy for the most part to take apart if you have the right

00:27:02 ◼   ► bits and kind of know what you're doing. The whole thing was very impressive to me. I can't believe

00:27:07 ◼   ► that it got a six out of ten for repairability from iFixit. This seems like a high score these days.

00:27:14 ◼   ► You know, like over-engineered is it sounds negative, right? That phrase.

00:27:23 ◼   ► It doesn't necessarily mean it's negative, but there is... it's over-engineered compared to

00:27:33 ◼   ► other products. Like, in the iFixit teardown, they open up one of the Sony headphones.

00:27:39 ◼   ► The insides, and like the, I think Bose ones too, the insides of them just look so much more simple.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Now, you can make a very good argument that like the over-engineering there is like, well,

00:27:52 ◼   ► the Sony ones also sound really good and they didn't need to go to the wild lengths that Apple

00:27:58 ◼   ► have gone to, but this is just the way that they do things. Every company makes things differently

00:28:06 ◼   ► and Apple is starting from a different place. They're like, "We make computers, now we'll make

00:28:12 ◼   ► headphones." And maybe that means that you end up doing things in a way which is complicated,

00:28:21 ◼   ► but does result in a great product.

00:28:24 ◼   ► It's not like the over-engineering is pointless,

00:28:28 ◼   ► but it can also then explain why these are so expensive

00:28:31 ◼   ► because they seem to be very complicated to make.

00:28:36 ◼   ► - Well, that's why these things feel so premium, right?

00:28:40 ◼   ► Premium is about how something feels in your hand

00:28:43 ◼   ► and how it moves.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Apple really cares about that sort of thing.

00:28:47 ◼   ► And all of this engineering is what makes that possible,

00:28:50 ◼   ► right?

00:28:51 ◼   ► like flimsy plastic because there's no flimsy plastic in them.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And they're heavy and you can see looking at this

00:28:58 ◼   ► why they're so heavy because they're built like tanks.

00:29:01 ◼   ► So we're like a what, a couple of months

00:29:04 ◼   ► into these being out, like are y'all still

00:29:07 ◼   ► in love with them?

00:29:08 ◼   ► Are you using them a bunch?

00:29:09 ◼   ► 'Cause I've returned mine, I like to kind of check in

00:29:11 ◼   ► and see how it's going.

00:29:12 ◼   ► - I use them every day, I love them.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Every day I use them.

00:29:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I really like them.

00:29:18 ◼   ► I basically listen to them, yeah, nearly every day.

00:29:22 ◼   ► I was actually looking for replacement ear pads

00:29:25 ◼   ► the other day because I wanted to mix and match

00:29:27 ◼   ► the black and red colors,

00:29:29 ◼   ► but those are still not available on the Apple Store.

00:29:32 ◼   ► But yeah, I like them.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I like them.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I'm a big fan of the digital crown approach.

00:29:37 ◼   ► As time goes on,

00:29:38 ◼   ► I really think that's a genius way to do it.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Just because I know how much I dislike gestures

00:29:45 ◼   ► and these finicky controls on other headphones.

00:29:48 ◼   ► So having this physical volume knob up there,

00:29:54 ◼   ► it's really well done.

00:29:55 ◼   ► It's really nice.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I don't particularly use noise cancellation these days,

00:29:59 ◼   ► because it's not like I'm on a train or on a plane

00:30:02 ◼   ► or somewhere, just at home.

00:30:04 ◼   ► There's not much noise to cancel these days.

00:30:08 ◼   ► But yeah, the volume works really well,

00:30:10 ◼   ► and the sound is fantastic.

00:30:13 ◼   ► I confirm my judgment from a few weeks back.

00:30:17 ◼   ► These are the best wireless headphones I've ever had.

00:30:21 ◼   ► And I don't use Siri, so I don't care about that part.

00:30:24 ◼   ► I just use it with Spotify and watching the occasional video.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Sometimes with my Apple TV, works totally OK.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So yeah, great sound.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Could be cheaper, I guess, but also the built quality,

00:30:36 ◼   ► it speaks for itself.

00:30:37 ◼   ► It's like wearing a HomePod around your head, basically.

00:30:41 ◼   ► So, you know, you pay for that kind of experience.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And that kind of build quality as well.

00:30:48 ◼   ► - Anything else with the AirPods Max?

00:30:52 ◼   ► - Well, I guess the only thing I wanna say is,

00:30:55 ◼   ► I'm curious to see if this is the kind of product

00:30:57 ◼   ► that will be updated in a few years.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Because if this is the kind of build quality

00:31:02 ◼   ► that we see in this first version,

00:31:04 ◼   ► it feels to me again, comparing to the HomePod,

00:31:08 ◼   ► to the first generation HomePod,

00:31:10 ◼   ► This feels to me like the once every X years kind of accessory.

00:31:16 ◼   ► I would be very surprised, I would be possibly surprised if this follow an annual update schedule like other AirPods.

00:31:24 ◼   ► I'm just very skeptical about that, given the nature of, you know, and the price of what this is.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I reckon it's every couple of years.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that seems more likely, you know.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Because the AirPods Pro have passed a year, right?

00:31:40 ◼   ► Don't they announce in like October or something of 2019?

00:31:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

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00:33:09 ◼   ► How's your Mac Pro feeling?

00:33:11 ◼   ► It's great.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I can touch the handle right now.

00:33:14 ◼   ► It's very smooth, it's cool to the touch.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Don't touch it too much in case it rolls away and all your cables unplug.

00:33:19 ◼   ► It's got wheels.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Do you lock those wheels in any way?

00:33:22 ◼   ► Do you do anything to stop it from moving?

00:33:25 ◼   ► No, but it's on a rug and so it's not really going to go anywhere on its own.

00:33:31 ◼   ► So how are you feeling about this Mark Gorman report?

00:33:33 ◼   ► I think it's really interesting.

00:33:35 ◼   ► Gurman has been doing a lot of reporting

00:33:37 ◼   ► and y'all broke a lot of it down on upgrade on Monday,

00:33:41 ◼   ► which was a really, really good episode.

00:33:43 ◼   ► The report says a couple of things.

00:33:45 ◼   ► So it says that there's two Mac Pros in the works.

00:33:50 ◼   ► One is full-sized, meaning the enclosure looks

00:33:55 ◼   ► the way that the 2019 enclosure looks,

00:33:57 ◼   ► you know, the big, big tower.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And that there's discussion with an Apple

00:34:01 ◼   ► that that machine may come with an Intel processor.

00:34:05 ◼   ► There's also this second model, which is more mysterious,

00:34:08 ◼   ► that is quote, half-sized,

00:34:10 ◼   ► which is a term he used previously in another report.

00:34:14 ◼   ► This report, he likens it to the design

00:34:16 ◼   ► of the Power Mac G4 Cube,

00:34:18 ◼   ► and says that it is also a Mac Pro, but obviously smaller.

00:34:23 ◼   ► When you look at what is inside a Mac Pro,

00:34:26 ◼   ► it is mostly air until you fill it up with PCI cards.

00:34:31 ◼   ► or MPX modules, which are just Apple's fancy PCI modules that also use

00:34:36 ◼   ► Thunderbolt and Apple uses them for their GPUs. So in my Mac Pro for instance, I've

00:34:41 ◼   ► got the GPU, I've got an afterburner, and I have a card with some SSDs on it. So

00:34:49 ◼   ► I'm using a good bit of mine. Mine has less air in it than it did when I first

00:34:53 ◼   ► got it, and I have two hard drives up at the top. In thinking about the first

00:34:59 ◼   ► one saying that there's another full-size machine with an Intel processor

00:35:04 ◼   ► in it. That seems to me like a spec bump of the 2019 Mac Pro. Yeah. I think that

00:35:11 ◼   ► makes sense for a couple of reasons. The Mac Pro is always gonna go last and so

00:35:16 ◼   ► if Apple does take two years the Mac Pro at that point would be three and a half

00:35:23 ◼   ► years old or so I think mm-hmm two and a half years old it would be getting

00:35:29 ◼   ► older at that point there are people who need to stay on the previous architecture

00:35:36 ◼   ► it was a huge deal power PC to Intel people needed to stay on power PC for

00:35:41 ◼   ► certain reasons the things that Rosetta couldn't handle or hardware support for

00:35:46 ◼   ► something weird or something like that this time around you not only have an

00:35:50 ◼   ► architecture change, but you also have the fact that in Big Sur and moving

00:35:56 ◼   ► forward, the way kernel extensions are handled is different. And if you're a pro

00:36:02 ◼   ► using pro apps that use kernel extensions, you could get locked out of

00:36:06 ◼   ► those in the future. And if your software isn't super actively developed, that

00:36:10 ◼   ► could be a problem. And so there are people, there's not many of them, out of

00:36:13 ◼   ► the Mac Pro community, which is not many people to begin with, a subsection of

00:36:18 ◼   ► them would maybe want to stay on Intel longer and want a as new of an Intel Mac

00:36:26 ◼   ► as possible. Now from Apple's perspective I don't know how much sense that makes. I

00:36:31 ◼   ► think it makes some sense from the consumers perspective but from Apple's

00:36:36 ◼   ► perspective it does a couple things. One you're putting an Intel machine out and

00:36:39 ◼   ► you probably just don't want to do that but it also resets the clock on how long

00:36:45 ◼   ► you need to support Intel hardware in your OSes. So in the PowerPC to Intel

00:36:51 ◼   ► transition, Tiger ran on PowerPC and Intel, Leopard ran on PowerPC and Intel,

00:36:58 ◼   ► but Snow Leopard did not. Snow Leopard dropped support for PowerPC and it was

00:37:04 ◼   ► Intel only and it was only, let's see, Snow Leopard was in 2009, so it was really

00:37:13 ◼   ► only a few years after the first Intel Macs shipped, three years. I don't think Apple

00:37:21 ◼   ► could get away with revising a Mac Pro or any Intel Mac in 2021 and drop them in 2024,

00:37:30 ◼   ► especially if it's high end hardware. Now, the the caveat to that is Apple only supports

00:37:38 ◼   ► It's current release minus two for security updates.

00:37:41 ◼   ► So right now we have Big Sur, Catalina,

00:37:44 ◼   ► and Mojave are getting security updates.

00:37:47 ◼   ► High Sierra is not anymore.

00:37:49 ◼   ► So three years does rule out the security update issue,

00:37:54 ◼   ► but it just seems to me that if they're gonna say,

00:37:58 ◼   ► "Hey, there's gonna be one last Intel Mac,

00:38:00 ◼   ► and it's an upgrade to the best Intel Mac we ever made,"

00:38:04 ◼   ► it seems to me that puts Apple on the hook

00:38:07 ◼   ► for another year or two of OS support for Intel Macs.

00:38:12 ◼   ► I don't know if that's a concern of theirs.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Part of me already thinks that Mac OS

00:38:19 ◼   ► is gonna support Intel Macs longer

00:38:21 ◼   ► than Mac OS X supported PowerPC Macs

00:38:24 ◼   ► because there are way more Intel Macs out there

00:38:27 ◼   ► than there ever were PowerPC Macs, right?

00:38:30 ◼   ► They operate at such a bigger scale now,

00:38:33 ◼   ► it's a lot more people to make mad.

00:38:35 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Hey Federico, do you remember two weeks ago when Steven said that there would be no more

00:38:46 ◼   ► Intel Macs on sale at the end of 2021?

00:38:49 ◼   ► I remember that.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:51 ◼   ► That was fun, right?

00:38:52 ◼   ► That was fun at the time.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Super fun.

00:38:54 ◼   ► It's aging really well.

00:38:55 ◼   ► It's extra fun now.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:57 ◼   ► It's going really well for you, man.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Yeah, you've had a great start to the year.

00:39:01 ◼   ► It really seems like annual picks die quickly or at the very end of the year.

00:39:06 ◼   ► There's no in between.

00:39:08 ◼   ► They get solved very fast and then nothing happens for a long time and then it's all

00:39:14 ◼   ► in September.

00:39:17 ◼   ► So the longevity of Intel Macs is a question for me and this rumored Intel Mac Pro spec

00:39:25 ◼   ► bump definitely plays into that.

00:39:29 ◼   ► I don't even know if the 2019 Mac Pro needs a spec bump. I mean, if you could do anything,

00:39:34 ◼   ► do what you did with the iMac Pro, get rid of the slowest CPU, or you know, the fewest

00:39:40 ◼   ► core CPU and just bump the prices accordingly. Right? Or do that with a GPU, not a spec bump,

00:39:47 ◼   ► but a configuration change to make it a little bit better value.

00:39:51 ◼   ► Are there new Intel chips they could put in these?

00:39:53 ◼   ► I don't follow the Xeon W landscape very well, but maybe.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know. I just don't know that answer to that.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Maybe if someone does let us know.

00:40:03 ◼   ► They could have new MPX modules or something.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Yeah. And they have, they've had newer GPU's.

00:40:09 ◼   ► The GPU I have in mind wasn't for sale on day one.

00:40:12 ◼   ► That's all they've done with MPX modules.

00:40:15 ◼   ► There hasn't been like an afterburner for audio or, you know,

00:40:18 ◼   ► any of the other wild stuff we dreamed of,

00:40:20 ◼   ► But they have begrudgingly released some new GPUs.

00:40:26 ◼   ► But even the high-end stuff, there's

00:40:27 ◼   ► new AMD stuff they haven't made into an MPX module yet.

00:40:32 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:40:33 ◼   ► I mean, my plan when I bought this machine-- look,

00:40:35 ◼   ► I bought this at the end of 2019.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And it was heavily rumored that Apple

00:40:40 ◼   ► was going to go with Apple Silicon at some point.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And they did it six months later, right?

00:40:45 ◼   ► They did it one year after announcing the 2019 Mac Pro.

00:40:49 ◼   ► My plan is to run this until I can't put new versions

00:40:52 ◼   ► of Mac OS on it anymore, and then I'll reconsider.

00:40:56 ◼   ► So for me, none of this really changes my decision

00:40:59 ◼   ► and the way that I plan on using this machine

00:41:01 ◼   ► for years to come.

00:41:02 ◼   ► This is not a machine I can casually change out

00:41:04 ◼   ► like a laptop, like way too much money into it for that.

00:41:08 ◼   ► - Mark it.

00:41:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, please save this clip.

00:41:11 ◼   ► - Everybody, what is it, episode 329.

00:41:17 ◼   ► He's gonna find a way or justification for getting the new Mac Pro.

00:41:24 ◼   ► I have...

00:41:25 ◼   ► We all know.

00:41:26 ◼   ► I have a second desk and that desk needs a Mac Pro on it.

00:41:31 ◼   ► So yeah somehow because like he's gonna make his studio bigger and well what you gotta

00:41:39 ◼   ► do with all that room am I right?

00:41:41 ◼   ► So he's gonna find a way to to get it and I don't even know why you say these things

00:41:47 ◼   ► anymore. Yeah, you shouldn't say them so definitively like that, because look, what they are announcing

00:41:54 ◼   ► is a computer you are going to be very excited about, like a G4 Cube-esque Mac Pro with power

00:42:02 ◼   ► by Apple Silicon. I mean, even I want it, and I have no use for it. I absolutely do

00:42:11 ◼   ► not need it, but I kind of want it, so. Me too, I'm like in for it. So the second part

00:42:17 ◼   ► of this report is that there is a half size Mac Pro in the works, powered by Apple silicon.

00:42:24 ◼   ► So if you go back to my opening, if a Mac Pro basically ships as a as an aluminum box

00:42:29 ◼   ► full of air, and it's your job to displace that air with technology, half size smaller

00:42:34 ◼   ► Mac Pro, whether it's cube shaped or not.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And like can we just say you said this on upgrade, I want to say it here.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Apple's never done a successful small Pro desktop machine.

00:42:45 ◼   ► They just haven't.

00:42:46 ◼   ► The Cube failed.

00:42:48 ◼   ► 2013 Mac Pro failed miserably.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:42:52 ◼   ► We'll see what this does.

00:42:54 ◼   ► So the question is, if it's smaller, what do they get rid of?

00:42:57 ◼   ► How do they reduce the amount of air they ship in this machine?

00:43:02 ◼   ► And the clear answer is, fewer expansion slots.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Because if you look at the inside of the Mac Pro, if you think, well, okay, well, the CPU

00:43:09 ◼   ► could be smaller, whatever, like, the CPU takes up very little space inside this tower.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Very little.

00:43:17 ◼   ► And the power supply's in the bottom.

00:43:19 ◼   ► So you still have a power supply.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It'd be smaller, I would assume,

00:43:22 ◼   ► but it's not like it eats into the space.

00:43:25 ◼   ► It's video cards and expansion slots,

00:43:27 ◼   ► so expansion cards that take up space.

00:43:31 ◼   ► And if you think about where Apple Silicon is today,

00:43:35 ◼   ► right now, okay, right now you have CPU, GPU,

00:43:40 ◼   ► and memory basically shipping as a unit, right?

00:43:45 ◼   ► The memory is slightly off to the side,

00:43:47 ◼   ► but system-on-a-chip design is very different

00:43:50 ◼   ► than what's in the Intel machines,

00:43:52 ◼   ► especially the Mac Pro,

00:43:53 ◼   ► where there are actually different parts.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I don't think that Apple could half the size of the Mac Pro

00:44:01 ◼   ► without fundamentally changing the way that it works.

00:44:09 ◼   ► So would this Mac Pro come with an Apple GPU

00:44:13 ◼   ► that's built in somehow?

00:44:15 ◼   ► Well, my thinking was, because I mean, there's been lots of reports that Apple

00:44:19 ◼   ► are developing their own GPUs, right?

00:44:21 ◼   ► For these more powerful machines.

00:44:23 ◼   ► So like the iMacs and potentially the Mac Pros, that it would be Apple made

00:44:28 ◼   ► GPUs. And one of the ways that you make this smaller is you don't need all of

00:44:33 ◼   ► the huge hardware for GPUs anymore.

00:44:34 ◼   ► But I don't think that the GPUs will be all integrated.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Like I could imagine much smaller Apple built modules for GPU,

00:44:43 ◼   ► upgrades. It could be that they're all one slot tall, right, where the

00:44:50 ◼   ► MPX modules are tall. Or they lean on eGPUs as well, as a

00:44:56 ◼   ► potential future option for this. I mean maybe. I think if you're gonna build a

00:45:00 ◼   ► tower, like what's the point of an eGPU? That's not much of a tower, is it?

00:45:04 ◼   ► No, it's not. And so far, you know, we should comment so far that this is what

00:45:12 ◼   ► the Apple Silicon machines look like. They don't support eGPU, it's all system

00:45:16 ◼   ► on a chip. That doesn't mean that will always be true, but it's true right now.

00:45:20 ◼   ► It's like we're in this weird middle state right now. Also in this middle

00:45:25 ◼   ► state we have the issue of, well, if you want a really different Apple Silicon

00:45:31 ◼   ► machine, like the options are very limited and how you can customize what

00:45:36 ◼   ► it is. Like we're at the very beginning of this. Seeing how it's gonna flesh out

00:45:40 ◼   ► we just don't know.

00:45:42 ◼   ► But knowing the size of the potential future Mac Pro

00:45:45 ◼   ► may help us understand that,

00:45:47 ◼   ► yeah, maybe the GP won't be upgradable

00:45:50 ◼   ► or it can be way smaller 'cause it can run cooler.

00:45:53 ◼   ► I mean, the MPX modules are so tall

00:45:56 ◼   ► because it's all heat sink and the fans of the case cool it.

00:46:00 ◼   ► But if Apple can make something that runs cooler,

00:46:03 ◼   ► maybe they don't need that.

00:46:04 ◼   ► There's also in this state of,

00:46:07 ◼   ► we don't really know what's gonna happen in the future.

00:46:09 ◼   ► currently there's no support for any non-Apple GPUs

00:46:14 ◼   ► in the Apple Silicon version of Big Sur.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Not just no eGPUs on Apple Silicon Macs,

00:46:21 ◼   ► no third-party GPUs whatsoever.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And so if they were to open this up to AMD

00:46:27 ◼   ► to build graphic cards for,

00:46:29 ◼   ► that would need to be addressed too.

00:46:31 ◼   ► So it's kind of hard to really estimate

00:46:33 ◼   ► what's gonna happen,

00:46:34 ◼   ► but clearly it would ship, I think, with fewer slots.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And Apple knows how many slots most people are using,

00:46:42 ◼   ► I would assume.

00:46:43 ◼   ► I would assume they collect that data.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And so maybe they say, oh gosh,

00:46:46 ◼   ► 95% of 2019 Mac Pro owners,

00:46:50 ◼   ► the only thing they've put in it is a GPU.

00:46:52 ◼   ► You know, maybe I'm unusual that I have a GPU

00:46:55 ◼   ► and an afterburner card and a PCI card in it

00:46:58 ◼   ► with solid state drives on it.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Maybe I'm the odd one out, I don't know.

00:47:03 ◼   ► I mean, very curious.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I have questions for people that bought that machine

00:47:06 ◼   ► and haven't put anything in it.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. What are you doing?

00:47:10 ◼   ► Like, I don't know why you bought it.

00:47:13 ◼   ► Like, even if you buy it and just, like, put stuff in it because it's fun to put stuff in it, you know?

00:47:19 ◼   ► Like, you don't have to put all those drives inside, but you want to put them inside,

00:47:23 ◼   ► because it's fun to put them inside, and you have this big computer. Why not put them inside, right?

00:47:26 ◼   ► Like, you could just as easily put them on the outside. But why would you? You've got this huge case.

00:47:31 ◼   ► But I do wonder if like, if Apple are gonna build

00:47:36 ◼   ► every part of it, which they might, right?

00:47:40 ◼   ► Like it's all stuff they make,

00:47:43 ◼   ► maybe they can make it more efficient and smaller.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Maybe it doesn't need to be so big

00:47:46 ◼   ► because it doesn't need the airflow, right?

00:47:48 ◼   ► - I mean, I mean, maybe if you look at the--

00:47:49 ◼   ► - Maybe that's one of the reasons everything's so big.

00:47:51 ◼   ► - Well, if you look at the fans,

00:47:54 ◼   ► there's three fans on the front.

00:47:55 ◼   ► The top one goes through the CPU

00:47:58 ◼   ► and that space where the hard drives go,

00:48:00 ◼   ► if you put that metal bracket in it.

00:48:02 ◼   ► The bottom two cool anything you put in the PCI slots.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And then you have a blower on the other side

00:48:08 ◼   ► that cools the RAM.

00:48:09 ◼   ► I think for it to be a Mac Pro,

00:48:12 ◼   ► for them to use that name and people not riot

00:48:15 ◼   ► outside of Apple Park, the RAM has to be upgradable,

00:48:19 ◼   ► the storage needs to be expandable,

00:48:22 ◼   ► and you need some slots.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Even if you can only buy GPUs from Apple,

00:48:27 ◼   ► even if it's not the GPU,

00:48:28 ◼   ► People need input Apple cards.

00:48:31 ◼   ► It's all the stuff we talked about in 2013

00:48:33 ◼   ► that that Mac Pro failed to do.

00:48:34 ◼   ► Lots of professionals need various hardware cards

00:48:37 ◼   ► to put inside the machine.

00:48:39 ◼   ► So I don't know, it's really interesting.

00:48:42 ◼   ► And it would be interesting for Apple to ship something

00:48:45 ◼   ► that you could put on your desk,

00:48:46 ◼   ► that you could hide behind your Pro Display or whatever,

00:48:49 ◼   ► and it'd be quiet and all that stuff.

00:48:51 ◼   ► And the current Mac Pro is silent most of the time,

00:48:54 ◼   ► but it is enormous.

00:48:55 ◼   ► - And it's like, look, it's worth noting,

00:48:57 ◼   ► like mini ITX or micro ITX boards, like can PCs exist?

00:49:01 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Like small form factor PCs that you can put massive graphics cards in,

00:49:06 ◼   ► right? Like this isn't like a, uh, there,

00:49:10 ◼   ► there are no computers of these smaller sizes.

00:49:13 ◼   ► And so like that's the kind of size we could be going for here,

00:49:16 ◼   ► which would be about half the size of the Mac Pro.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Cause the Mac Pro is ginormous, right? Like in PC standards,

00:49:23 ◼   ► It's very big and it is.

00:49:26 ◼   ► PC cases run the size gamut now.

00:49:29 ◼   ► And so they could still build something that is really expandable and really

00:49:34 ◼   ► small. Like it's very much possible to do that.

00:49:38 ◼   ► We're just going to see,

00:49:40 ◼   ► I have a lot of faith in this because I do not think that the same company

00:49:45 ◼   ► that made the Mac Pro would make a new Pro Mac that didn't have

00:49:50 ◼   ► sufficient expandability to it.

00:49:52 ◼   ► even if you can only buy the expandability from Apple,

00:49:56 ◼   ► because they're gonna make everything

00:49:57 ◼   ► really specific and custom,

00:49:59 ◼   ► I still believe that there will be expandability,

00:50:01 ◼   ► sufficient expandability to this machine.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Otherwise, what was the point?

00:50:06 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

00:50:07 ◼   ► - Yeah. - What was the point

00:50:07 ◼   ► in spending all this money and time

00:50:10 ◼   ► in building the Mac Pro,

00:50:11 ◼   ► when the iMac Pro would have done the job for most people,

00:50:15 ◼   ► and over time everyone would have just given up,

00:50:17 ◼   ► like they would have just stopped caring, right?

00:50:19 ◼   ► Like, so the iMac Pro was the plan.

00:50:22 ◼   ► They could have chose to stick with that plan if they wanted to.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And they wouldn't create the Mac Pro and have it be a one and done.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Like they, they never would have done that.

00:50:34 ◼   ► They would have just stuck with the iMac Pro and they would have just moved

00:50:37 ◼   ► forward into the all iMac future. Right?

00:50:39 ◼   ► Like it would be absolutely bananas for them to have spent all that time making

00:50:46 ◼   ► all of the infrastructure necessary to make a computer that can do what the Mac Pro can

00:50:50 ◼   ► do and then just abandon it. I reckon they're going to have two. That's what I think they're

00:50:54 ◼   ► going to have. I think they'll have a smaller one and a bigger one. Yeah, that's where I

00:50:58 ◼   ► if I could put my finger on it. That's where I think they're going to go. And the bigger

00:51:01 ◼   ► one would have more slots and be somehow more capable you think? Yeah, I think it would

00:51:06 ◼   ► be honestly I think that the small Mac Pro would probably sit capability wise kind of

00:51:12 ◼   ► around where we think of the iMac Pro now. And then they have the Mac Pro sitting where

00:51:18 ◼   ► the Mac Pro sits because there is a big price gap. Right. And I think they will plug that

00:51:24 ◼   ► price gap. They'll have iMacs and the iMacs can be super powerful. They'll also have this

00:51:28 ◼   ► Mac Pro Mini, whatever they'll call it. And then they'll have the Mac Pro as well. And

00:51:34 ◼   ► then that will be that because as well, the other rumors they're making a monitor. So,

00:51:38 ◼   ► know that you don't need to buy the Pro Display XDR to have an Apple monitor.

00:51:43 ◼   ► So I reckon that that I still reckon I'll have both.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I don't think that the small one will replace the big one because I also can't imagine them

00:51:52 ◼   ► introducing the small one and saying this is the new one.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, we've revved the old one.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:59 ◼   ► It just seems really weird to me.

00:52:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:01 ◼   ► I mean, if I had to put money on it today, I would say there's not an Intel update coming

00:52:07 ◼   ► and that these are either two concepts that are fighting it out or there will be a Mac Pro and

00:52:13 ◼   ► then something smaller in between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. You know the X Mac which people wanted

00:52:19 ◼   ► for 20 years maybe it's finally going to happen. So the other thing was that new display. Federico,

00:52:26 ◼   ► I was just wondering from your perspective like because I know that you would I could imagine that

00:52:32 ◼   ► of everything you would be most likely in the market for the display right like I know that

00:52:37 ◼   ► they announced MacBook Pro potentials and I know that you'd spoken about Sylvia wanting

00:52:42 ◼   ► a new MacBook Pro and that kind of feels like would be the logical next step but I was wondering

00:52:47 ◼   ► specifically about the display. Do you have any kind of like a feature list for this?

00:52:54 ◼   ► Well if they can make it nicer than the ultra fine that I have which is this ugly piece

00:52:59 ◼   ► of plastic that would be a good start. I guess I wouldn't I would love to have like a beautiful

00:53:06 ◼   ► display like thin bezels, not made of black plastic, something more elegant, more tasteful

00:53:14 ◼   ► than what I have. And in terms of features and specs, as long as it works with both,

00:53:20 ◼   ► whatever it's called, Thunderbolt and USB-C for the iPad Pro, like that, you know, to

00:53:26 ◼   ► have the same experience that I have with the Ultrafine, that would be cool.

00:53:31 ◼   ► Well I guess the expectation is that it would be Thunderbolt 4 which does unify the specs, right?

00:53:37 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:37 ◼   ► That would be my expectation because that's what's in the M1 Max so...

00:53:42 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:42 ◼   ► You would assume that that's what the monitor would be too.

00:53:45 ◼   ► But the iPad Pro doesn't have Thunderbolt 4.

00:53:48 ◼   ► No but it's USB-C. The point is that Thunderbolt 4, my understanding is Thunderbolt 4

00:53:54 ◼   ► unifies them both so it works the same, I believe.

00:53:59 ◼   ► I think that's right. That is a very confusing topic.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Right. Does anyone max not have Thunderbolt 4? What has Thunderbolt 4?

00:54:06 ◼   ► Something has Thunderbolt 4.

00:54:08 ◼   ► They have... So Apple calls it Thunderbolt 3 USB 4.

00:54:11 ◼   ► USB 4, sorry. USB 4. USB 4. I got it mixed around. So USB 4 is both Thunderbolt and USB C.

00:54:21 ◼   ► It's like all of it in one.

00:54:22 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:23 ◼   ► I believe that's the case.

00:54:25 ◼   ► I believe that is true.

00:54:26 ◼   ► So there'll probably be USB 4 and then it can be all of it. That would be my expectation.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It'd just be the same kind of... It's very confusing.

00:54:34 ◼   ► In any case, that, whatever the name of the spec is...

00:54:39 ◼   ► Whatever that is.

00:54:41 ◼   ► And I wouldn't mind... This is something that I've started seeing in a bunch of like third-party

00:54:46 ◼   ► displays and accessories. I would love to have a wireless charging station in the foot of the display.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Ooh, yeah.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Like, that feels like a useless waste of space, right?

00:54:59 ◼   ► Right now I'm just leaving stuff there in the base of the ultra-fine display that I have.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Like, my Walkman and my Sony earbuds are just there, because why not?

00:55:12 ◼   ► Make it useful. Make that part useful. Or make it smaller.

00:55:16 ◼   ► So, either it's smaller somehow, but I mean, if you've got to support a display,

00:55:20 ◼   ► you still gotta have a base acting as support.

00:55:25 ◼   ► So if it has to exist, at least give it some purpose,

00:55:29 ◼   ► give it some utility, you know?

00:55:31 ◼   ► - Maybe that's how they make you pay for a stand.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Like the regular stand is just normal.

00:55:38 ◼   ► - Look, they can call it the smart stand for all I care.

00:55:41 ◼   ► And I'm gonna pay for it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► - You pay a little bit and it's got a MagSafe.

00:55:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, MagSafe, you know, I can throw my AirPods,

00:55:47 ◼   ► my phone, whatever.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Just give it some purpose in terms of other Apple devices.

00:55:53 ◼   ► That would be kind of cool.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Anything else?

00:55:56 ◼   ► - I hope so.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Go on, sorry.

00:55:58 ◼   ► - No, I was gonna mention the matte display option,

00:56:01 ◼   ► but that feels like a Pro Display XDR thing with the nano.

00:56:06 ◼   ► - They put it on the iMac.

00:56:07 ◼   ► - Well then maybe there's hope.

00:56:09 ◼   ► - I reckon they would have an option.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Well, here's a question.

00:56:13 ◼   ► I hadn't thought about this.

00:56:14 ◼   ► What about on the MacBook Pro?

00:56:16 ◼   ► - I mean, I think the matte display could come.

00:56:18 ◼   ► It's what a $500 option on the iMac?

00:56:21 ◼   ► It's a thousand on the XDR.

00:56:23 ◼   ► I guess the question is,

00:56:25 ◼   ► is the MacBook Pro more likely to need cleaning

00:56:29 ◼   ► or be more prone to damage?

00:56:31 ◼   ► 'Cause there's all that stuff about you gotta clean

00:56:33 ◼   ► the matte display in a very particular way.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And with a desktop that's less likely to get stuff on it,

00:56:40 ◼   ► I mean, like mine's,

00:56:41 ◼   ► like I gotta clean mine all the time

00:56:42 ◼   ► 'cause stuff just magically appears on it.

00:56:45 ◼   ► But on a notebook, like what happens

00:56:47 ◼   ► you get a little piece of debris and it gets shut between the palm rest and the screen,

00:56:51 ◼   ► does it break it, does it cause problems?

00:56:54 ◼   ► I would imagine that durability is the primary concern.

00:56:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:58 ◼   ► I can imagine them putting it on the monitor though.

00:57:00 ◼   ► I can imagine it being an option for any monitor that they make just because they put it on

00:57:06 ◼   ► the iMac because you will naturally assume that now they've put it on the most recent

00:57:10 ◼   ► iMac that the next iMacs will get it.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And you will also assume that the iMac screen and the whatever display they make is the

00:57:20 ◼   ► same screen panel?

00:57:24 ◼   ► So in theory they should be able to do it, right?

00:57:29 ◼   ► If you kind of follow the logic through it seems like it would be possible.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Yeah I would get that.

00:57:34 ◼   ► I would pay for that.

00:57:35 ◼   ► display support for Mac and iPad at the same time, a stand that has some utility to it

00:57:45 ◼   ► other than just wasting space on my desk. That would be kind of cool.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I would like the adjustability and being able to turn it on its side and stuff.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Oh, well that's kind of default, right? I mean, yes.

00:57:57 ◼   ► These days, yeah.

00:57:58 ◼   ► But we should mention it. Yeah, we shouldn't take it for granted. Yes,

00:58:02 ◼   ► full adjustability.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Because Apple's never done that. Right, right, yes. That's a good point.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Except for what, the G4? I guess the Amac G4? Could you make it portrait?

00:58:14 ◼   ► No. What? No? Just moved around? Okay. I'm really

00:58:18 ◼   ► excited about Maxis here. Well, Sylvia's got in a MacBook Pro, we already

00:58:24 ◼   ► decided. She's gonna sell her 2017 MacBook Pro and as soon as the 14-inch Pro comes out

00:58:32 ◼   ► out, she's gonna get that. So she's gonna upgrade. I mentioned to her the reports from

00:58:41 ◼   ► Gherman and she was really happy to hear about the Touch Bar going away and keys coming back.

00:58:49 ◼   ► The Touch Bar will be the least missed product in Apple's history, I think. Well, maybe not

00:58:55 ◼   ► the most, but up there with some... Can we think of other... Steven, you're the man for

00:59:01 ◼   ► is things that Apple got rid of that people are not missing at all.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Like a feature.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Like a feature.

00:59:08 ◼   ► Oh man.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Like something.

00:59:10 ◼   ► I just gave you an idea for an article.

00:59:11 ◼   ► You're welcome.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:59:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:15 ◼   ► But this has got to be up there with that.

00:59:17 ◼   ► I don't know, like the Apple Pencil charging with lightning, for example.

00:59:21 ◼   ► You know, that kind of stuff.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I mean, the thing is, most of the time that takes years, right?

00:59:25 ◼   ► It's like, oh, now we know SCSI was ridiculous because you needed these cables and terminators

00:59:29 ◼   ► and stuff.

00:59:30 ◼   ► In 1999 when it was going away people were mad. So for things that like fall out of favor quickly

00:59:36 ◼   ► That's got to be a short list

00:59:38 ◼   ► Like is there any other feature that has the same level of criticism as the touch bar? That's interesting

00:59:44 ◼   ► One last thing before we move on. This is circling all the way back around to a mag safe stand

00:59:50 ◼   ► because

00:59:52 ◼   ► What MKBHD had a video about these and he mentioned something that I'd never hadn't thought about like

00:59:59 ◼   ► MagSafe on the iPhone has none of the safe that MagSafe had on the laptops.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Like if you kick that cable your phone is going with the charger.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Right? It is not safe at all. It's more dangerous for your phone because now it's got a weight on the back of it as it hurtles down towards the ground.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:22 ◼   ► There's no safety with the MagSafe.

01:00:26 ◼   ► It's more dangerous than it ever was before.

01:00:28 ◼   ► - The bag is somewhat safe. - There's no safety! It adds no safety. None of it. It doesn't exist anymore. It's more dangerous now.

01:00:38 ◼   ► - That's a good point. Emma in the Discord mentions, rightfully so, the butterfly keyboard.

01:00:46 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. That is another good one. - They are connected though, right?

01:00:52 ◼   ► Yeah, they're on the same machine. They're on the same surface of the same machine.

01:00:58 ◼   ► That MacBook Pro redesign really did not age well.

01:01:03 ◼   ► As we turn into old men, 10, 15 years from now, and connected like 1200, we will laugh

01:01:11 ◼   ► about that MacBook. Oh, do you remember that MacBook that had all those bad features and

01:01:15 ◼   ► none of them remained?

01:01:16 ◼   ► Yeah. They're just gonna undo all of it.

01:01:20 ◼   ► about it. When you think about it, it's really rough. Yeah. It's bad. So, yeah, Mark Gurman

01:01:26 ◼   ► is just having quite the year. The Mac's having quite the year. Yeah, no, nothing about the

01:01:32 ◼   ► iPad. We're going to talk about another report about the iPhone. He very briefly mentions

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01:03:56 ◼   ► So probably the report that had the least detail in it was one about the iPhone.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So I think this was...

01:04:05 ◼   ► Fold-a-phones!

01:04:06 ◼   ► Three or four Mark Gorman reports and this was the last one of them.

01:04:10 ◼   ► So basically saying that Apple is testing foldable displays for an upcoming device.

01:04:15 ◼   ► They've made basic prototypes but have no plans finalised.

01:04:19 ◼   ► This makes sense.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Of course they're testing it, why wouldn't they?

01:04:23 ◼   ► Right?

01:04:24 ◼   ► I've said it before, it might not pan out, but this is the next form factor that we can

01:04:30 ◼   ► conceive of.

01:04:32 ◼   ► We have phones and we have tablets.

01:04:34 ◼   ► Imagine if we could get something that was in between.

01:04:37 ◼   ► So I wanted to gauge with the two of you what your ideal foldable format would be from Apple.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Because there are a couple of ways these devices can go.

01:04:52 ◼   ► You can have a phone that becomes a tablet, like the Galaxy Z Fold.

01:04:57 ◼   ► You have a small phone, open it up, it's a tablet.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Or you could have a tablet which gets bigger.

01:05:04 ◼   ► You could start off with a 10 inch iPad and then make it a 12 inch iPad.

01:05:09 ◼   ► There's this whole thing, LG just showed off this rollable concept.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Which is, I don't know about this, this seems like a bad idea.

01:05:19 ◼   ► it's basically you have the device and then the device gets bigger like the

01:05:24 ◼   ► screen is kind of like expands it's very peculiar or the other one which is

01:05:30 ◼   ► arguably I think the most successful form factor so far is a flip phone so

01:05:35 ◼   ► you have a small phone which becomes a bigger phone so if you had to choose

01:05:40 ◼   ► even if you want to choose where would you be sitting right now it's like a

01:05:45 ◼   ► a cool Apple device for you?

01:05:47 ◼   ► What is like the ideal?

01:05:49 ◼   ► Like let's not think about reliability.

01:05:52 ◼   ► Let's assume that all of that is solved.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Where could you imagine some kind of adapting screen size

01:05:58 ◼   ► fitting in your life best?

01:06:00 ◼   ► - At the moment I'm leaning toward foldable tablet,

01:06:03 ◼   ► just because I know myself and I know that I would love

01:06:07 ◼   ► to have something small for reading and watching video

01:06:11 ◼   ► that can get bigger when I want to get work done.

01:06:16 ◼   ► So instead of having two tablets,

01:06:21 ◼   ► like an iPad Mini and an iPad Pro,

01:06:23 ◼   ► I could have one tablet that can solve both,

01:06:27 ◼   ► that can work in both scenarios, I guess.

01:06:30 ◼   ► So when I want to have something portable and compact,

01:06:32 ◼   ► but also something bigger for multitasking

01:06:34 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff.

01:06:36 ◼   ► I don't see personally at the moment,

01:06:38 ◼   ► the appeal of a flip phone,

01:06:40 ◼   ► Just because a phone being a device that I take out of my pocket and that I unlock so

01:06:46 ◼   ► many times a day, I don't want to have the friction of unfolding it every single time.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And I don't think that I would like to have a small display if I do not unfold it.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I just like to have a big enough display that I take out of my pocket and it's ready to

01:07:01 ◼   ► use.

01:07:02 ◼   ► So, the flip phone I don't care about.

01:07:05 ◼   ► foldable tablet I'm really intrigued because right now I have two iPads each

01:07:11 ◼   ► serving a different function and I could have one in fact the display was

01:07:17 ◼   ► adjustable. For me then I think I agree with Federico but for a phone I think I

01:07:24 ◼   ► prefer a phone that I can do everything on on a phone size screen and then opens

01:07:31 ◼   ► into like an iPad mini for media experiences or a bigger keyboard or better multitasking.

01:07:38 ◼   ► While I like the idea and I'm nostalgic for the flip phone I once had, to Federico's point,

01:07:45 ◼   ► you have to open it for almost everything.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And I don't necessarily want that interaction every time I need to see the big screen.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Whereas if Apple had an iPhone that's iPhone size and then opened up into a small tablet,

01:08:03 ◼   ► that extra work to open the phone is optional when I want that experience and it's not interfering

01:08:10 ◼   ► with the experience of everyday use.

01:08:13 ◼   ► So I'll say with technology as it is today, the flip phone is the most compelling to use

01:08:20 ◼   ► like from my own use cases because the idea of a phone that becomes a tablet is I think

01:08:27 ◼   ► the most compelling on a daily basis, right? Wouldn't it be great to have one device that

01:08:33 ◼   ► is both your phone and a tablet? But technology right now just doesn't do this elegantly enough.

01:08:39 ◼   ► They're just thick and big. If they can work that out, which I think is possible, I think

01:08:44 ◼   ► that this could be a real winner. And I could imagine this being the area that Apple would

01:08:50 ◼   ► attack. Like I can imagine that this is what they're attacking like a you know

01:08:55 ◼   ► plus sized phone that becomes an iPad mini. That kind of seems like the way to

01:09:01 ◼   ► go but it's this is it's complicated right now because with the current with

01:09:06 ◼   ► technology where it is right now it's two devices in one it's not one device

01:09:11 ◼   ► that gets bigger right you have the phone on the outside and then you open

01:09:15 ◼   ► the device and you've got the tablet because you can't fold glass right now

01:09:21 ◼   ► like it's you can't do it and it still be protected like it still will be

01:09:25 ◼   ► protected so I think this is why Apple is maybe just prototyping like they just

01:09:31 ◼   ► in early stages because the technology's got a long way to go but I think luckily

01:09:36 ◼   ► for the industry Samsung don't care and they're gonna keep making their devices

01:09:41 ◼   ► because that's what's needed I think like for this technology to be pushed

01:09:47 ◼   ► forward there has to be companies like Samsung and LG to a point who are

01:09:51 ◼   ► willing to make devices in public that they'll charge you a lot of money for

01:09:57 ◼   ► that are not finished it's an important part of technology like Samsung did it

01:10:01 ◼   ► with the Note right and then the Note made phone the entire industry's phones

01:10:06 ◼   ► bigger but if Samsung weren't doing it no one would have done it because well

01:10:11 ◼   ► for one Samsung make the displays that a lot of companies use so it's kind of

01:10:16 ◼   ► important that someone's trying it but I just wanted to see where you guys were

01:10:20 ◼   ► I can also agree with Federico that somebody who owns two iPads I would love

01:10:26 ◼   ► just to have one and it's small for like social media stuff big for what I'm

01:10:31 ◼   ► getting work done on it. I think that would be really nice. But I believe this is the

01:10:37 ◼   ► future, but this future is still quite a way away, I think, especially for Apple. I think

01:10:43 ◼   ► we're multiple years, multiple years away from some kind of Apple folding device. But

01:10:49 ◼   ► Mark Gurman does also talk about the 2021 iPhones. It's going to be, it seems very much

01:10:55 ◼   ► an S year in scope. I would just say because Steven's put a note, I don't think that that

01:11:01 ◼   ► means necessarily S year in name I just don't think it means that because one of the things

01:11:08 ◼   ► that they're talking about, well look my friend you're not having a great year so far and

01:11:12 ◼   ► so you know I guess you could take them where you get them. There is apparently talk of

01:11:18 ◼   ► an in-screen fingerprint reader I think that that is a big enough feature on its own to

01:11:23 ◼   ► bump it up a year I do like people will go wild for that especially if they do that because

01:11:30 ◼   ► The touch ID button, right, feels very much like a compromise, right?

01:11:38 ◼   ► You bring touch ID back into a button, put it on the side of the phone.

01:11:43 ◼   ► People will be happy, but it's very much going to feel like

01:11:48 ◼   ► face ID didn't work for you, did it?

01:11:52 ◼   ► If they put it like touch ID into the display, if they do it right,

01:11:59 ◼   ► right? It's gonna be cool. I know it's a feature that exists on every single Android phone

01:12:09 ◼   ► but this is just one of those things that Apple will talk about how magical it is, right?

01:12:14 ◼   ► And how they've done something that nobody else has ever done, right? Because this is

01:12:19 ◼   ► what they do or what they say sometimes but it will at least feel like the technology

01:12:26 ◼   ► moved on than if they just put Touch ID back in a button.

01:12:31 ◼   ► So I can see them doing this.

01:12:33 ◼   ► I think this is probably what they'll do.

01:12:35 ◼   ► They'll make some kind of in-screen fingerprint reader and it'll be cool.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Mark also talks about AirTags still being planned for this year.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Still.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:46 ◼   ► With lots of accessories like a little leather pouch, which I guess why not?

01:12:51 ◼   ► Samsung just announced theirs.

01:12:53 ◼   ► I think they're called Galaxy tags or something.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:57 ◼   ► Like their product is going to be available and out there and it's, they're going to have

01:13:01 ◼   ► two versions of them and one of them is going to have ultra wide band in it and all that

01:13:05 ◼   ► kind of stuff.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And they have one that's just Bluetooth.

01:13:08 ◼   ► And then also we were talking about the iPad Pro.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Mark Gurman confirms plans for a mini LED iPad Pro with a much faster processor and

01:13:16 ◼   ► also the thinner entry level iPad.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Not a lot of detail about that because there's things we don't know, right?

01:13:22 ◼   ► Like what is the mini LED iPad?

01:13:25 ◼   ► Is it a 12.9?

01:13:26 ◼   ► Is it both of them?

01:13:27 ◼   ► Is it a third option?

01:13:29 ◼   ► Like the 12.9 splits into two.

01:13:32 ◼   ► There's also no talk of an iPad mini in here.

01:13:36 ◼   ► So not so much detail about the iPad, which is interesting because of all of the things

01:13:42 ◼   ► we've spoken about today, that's probably the first product for this year.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

01:13:50 ◼   ► the entry-level iMac and iPad Pros and the iPad is probably going to be the first products this year.

01:13:57 ◼   ► MacBook Pros likely mid-year and then the Mac Pro, I don't know when. So that's the reports.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Who knows? That's why it's so exciting. I'm having a lot of fun talking about this stuff.

01:14:12 ◼   ► It definitely doesn't seem like 2021 is going to be a calmer year for product releases.

01:14:18 ◼   ► No, it's going to be busy.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Man, Mark Gurman, he's a busy guy.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I mean, Friday, it was like every, I felt like every 30 minutes or something,

01:14:27 ◼   ► there was some new report.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw someone wrote in to upgrade and gave like a good theory on that

01:14:34 ◼   ► because Ming-Chi Kuo had a report that went out before about the laptops.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And it came out on Friday and it basically spoke about the 14 and 16 inch laptops.

01:14:48 ◼   ► So maybe like Mark was sitting on all this stuff and he was like, well better get it out now

01:14:52 ◼   ► Like maybe that wasn't the plan to release four articles in one day or whatever

01:14:56 ◼   ► uh

01:14:58 ◼   ► So yeah, I maybe that's why I don't know

01:15:01 ◼   ► I think that's it

01:15:04 ◼   ► Okay, if you want to find links to stuff we spoke about head on over to the website relay.fm/connected/329

01:15:14 ◼   ► While you're there, there's a bunch of stuff you can do.

01:15:16 ◼   ► You can send us an email with feedback or follow up.

01:15:19 ◼   ► You can become a member and have access to Connected Pro,

01:15:23 ◼   ► which is a weekly version of the show.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Each and every week we do it.

01:15:26 ◼   ► No ads and extra content.

01:15:29 ◼   ► It's a whole lot of fun.

01:15:31 ◼   ► This week we spoke about Footbones, Tidal, and the inauguration.

01:15:37 ◼   ► It was a good time on the pre-show this week.

01:15:39 ◼   ► You can find us all online.

01:15:41 ◼   ► you can find Myke on Twitter as @IMYKE and Myke is the host of a bunch of

01:15:47 ◼   ► shows here on Relay FM. Myke, anything you want to talk about? I'm gonna be

01:15:53 ◼   ► streaming again on Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern at Myke.Live if you want to

01:15:58 ◼   ► come and hang out. Cool. You can find Federico online as well. He is @Vittici on

01:16:03 ◼   ► Twitter V I T I C C I and he is the editor-in-chief of MaxStories.net.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Federico, I have a quick question for you this week.

01:16:12 ◼   ► - Sure. - Just a quick one.

01:16:14 ◼   ► - Quick one, okay.

01:16:15 ◼   ► - What is your least favorite household chore?

01:16:17 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I guess, well,

01:16:25 ◼   ► I wanna say cleaning outside.

01:16:31 ◼   ► Just because, I don't know, especially in the winter

01:16:35 ◼   ► when it's cold, I really dislike it.

01:16:39 ◼   ► And I also dislike it in the summer because it's too hot.

01:16:41 ◼   ► So you have no control over the temperature outside.

01:16:45 ◼   ► So cleaning outside, this really sucks in general.

01:16:49 ◼   ► So yeah, that one, just no particular chore,

01:16:53 ◼   ► just having to clean outside in cold or hot weather,

01:16:57 ◼   ► I don't like it.

01:17:00 ◼   ► - You can find me online, I'm ismh on Twitter and on Twitch,

01:17:05 ◼   ► and I write 512pixels.net.

01:17:08 ◼   ► I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Pingdom, and ExpressVPN.

01:17:13 ◼   ► And until next week guys, say goodbye.

01:17:15 ◼   ► Arrivederci.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Cheerio.