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ATP

612: Screen on Face

 

00:00:00   recording this, this is the day after election day. We just got Trump for a second term.

00:00:06   None of us are happy. We're going to save our, you know, sadness and wallowing and feelings

00:00:13   about that for the after show. So we're gonna do a regular show. You know, you can go back

00:00:18   and listen to our episode in November 2016 titled The Show Must Go On, where we said

00:00:26   something very similar and we're gonna do something I think very sadly similar. But

00:00:32   you know, the show must go on. We're gonna try to have this be, again, our regular computer

00:00:37   tech show because in challenging times people need normalcy from wherever they can get it.

00:00:43   So here we are. We talk about tech now and we will talk about our feelings about the

00:00:47   election in the after show.

00:00:51   With that in mind, let's talk about something that I think we can all agree is pretty awesome

00:00:53   and that is the ATP holiday store. You can go to ATP.fm/store and you can see all sorts

00:01:01   of absolutely awesome merchandise. We've got M4 shirts, we've got M4 Pro shirts, M4 Max

00:01:08   shirts, we've got monochrome colors, we've got monochrome comma colors, sorry that all

00:01:13   kind of ran together. We've got monochrome colors.

00:01:16   Well, you can have monochrome colors as long as it's singular colors each. Like that is

00:01:20   a thing.

00:01:21   Exactly. But anyways, we've got all sorts of different shirts that you can put these

00:01:27   on. We've got tanks, we've got tees, we've got long sleeve, we've got pullover hoodies,

00:01:32   all sorts of different stuff. We have brought back the ATP pixel shirt, which I've had at

00:01:37   least a couple of people say to me or reach out to me and say, you know, I didn't go for

00:01:42   the pixel shirt and then I saw one or I saw another picture of it or something like that

00:01:47   and I messed up. I should have gotten a pixel shirt. So you can, this is your opportunity

00:01:51   to grab one of those?

00:01:52   Yeah, let me tell you, when we design the shirts, we don't get advance copies of the

00:01:58   shirts. They're printed all at once. So we see the shirts for the first time when you

00:02:03   see the shirts for the first time. And yeah, when the Pixel 1 showed up, I was like, oh,

00:02:07   this is a special one. This is really good. So yeah, if you missed it the first time.

00:02:11   We did test prints of the Pixel 1s though, by the way. We did test prints of the original

00:02:14   Pixel 1 and then in this store around, the new addition to the Pixel is you can get it

00:02:18   on sweatshirts and we didn't know if it would work on that. So I saw a picture of a sweatshirt

00:02:22   test print and it seems just as good as the other style shirts. But yeah, we don't get

00:02:25   them in our hands, but we do at least, if we're nervous about it, we get a test print

00:02:29   and take a look at it.

00:02:30   Yeah, because the Pixel 1 in particular, that takes a lot of, I think, precision and skill

00:02:34   from the printer because it's a pretty hard thing to screen print a very large number

00:02:39   of very small differently colored blocks and have them all line up correctly and have the

00:02:43   right gaps and everything and not bleed and all this stuff. So it was a risk for sure

00:02:48   to make that and Cotton Bureau, of course, rose to the challenge and did a really good

00:02:51   job with it. So yeah, definitely pick up the Pixel shirt. That's a really good one.

00:02:56   The other degree of difficulty on that one is that so, you know, as people know who hear

00:02:59   us complain about this all the time, the more colors you put on a shirt, the more it costs

00:03:03   due to the way screen printing works. So obviously you've got a rainbow stripe colors on the

00:03:07   ATP logo, but the Pixel shirt, all the stripes and all the letters also have shadows, which

00:03:13   is a darker version of the same color. It's brutal. But anyway, Pixels. Yeah. And by the

00:03:19   way, speaking of the Pixels design, which people, this is only the second time we've

00:03:22   sold it and people seem to like it. I get lots of emails from people saying, Hey, when

00:03:26   are you going to sell the insert shirt? We're not currently selling again. And I don't have

00:03:32   answers for them. Maybe someday we'll sell a particular design again, but we just have

00:03:36   so many products. We can't put them all on sale at the same time. So my advice to you

00:03:40   is if you see something you like buy it or maybe buy two because who knows when it will

00:03:45   ever come back. Some things we've only sold literally once. Some things we will probably

00:03:48   never sell again since such narrow interests. Some things come back once every three years.

00:03:53   So yeah, don't, uh, don't just assume, ah, I'm not going to get it to sale, get an Excel.

00:03:58   Maybe it won't be for sale then. The only thing we always sell is obviously our logo

00:04:02   shirt with our plain ATP logo on it, but everything else is a rotating collection. So if you want

00:04:07   them, get them. Yeah. And it's not like a Disney vault sort of situation. It's just

00:04:10   that generally speaking, we have at least a pretty good idea of what, what people are

00:04:15   interested in, what's going to sell. And generally speaking, the kind of more esoteric stuff,

00:04:21   for example, the ATP polo, which is available right now, I love it. Not everyone else does.

00:04:25   And so that will do every like second, third or fourth sale. So like John said, it's not

00:04:30   that we're saying it'll, these things will never come back, although we're making no

00:04:33   promises either. Um, but you should definitely grab at least one, if not a couple, if there's

00:04:38   something that you like that's available. So we've also got the zip hoodie, we've got

00:04:41   pullover hoodies. That's a new one. We've never done pullover hoodie before. We've got

00:04:45   the mugs that have come back in white and like a deep, deep, deep blueish purpley. What's

00:04:50   the official name for this? John? Thank you. Uh, we've also got the ATP hat. Uh, all sorts

00:04:55   of stuff is available. All of it is available until I believe it's Sunday, November 17th.

00:05:01   Yes. Sunday, the 17th at a basically end of the day, New York time and literally end of

00:05:06   the day, not end of the business day, not close the business, not COB, but EOD. Uh,

00:05:11   that's just for you, John. But, um, anyways, so you can order until the 17th of November.

00:05:15   You can go to HP dot FM slash store. Now, John, I have two questions for you. Number

00:05:19   one, what should you do if you're a member? And number two, what if you want to become

00:05:24   a member in aren't and maybe don't want to pay for it?

00:05:27   Yeah. So if you are a member, you have 15% off discount code, uh, that is on your member

00:05:32   page, go to ATP dot FM and log in and go to your member page. You'll see the code there

00:05:36   and you can copy and paste it into the little promo code field during checkout. Or if you

00:05:40   are logged into ATP dot FM, when you go to ATP dot FM slash store and click through on

00:05:45   any of the products, we will auto fill your discount code for you just so you don't forget

00:05:49   it. But anyway, it's on your member page. If you want to copy and paste it 15% off,

00:05:52   uh, totally worthwhile to use that if you are not a member and want to become one, just

00:05:57   so you can save 15% off, you can easily make up the cost of membership with the amount

00:06:01   that you save. Go to ATP dot FM slash join. You can join for one month and get the discount

00:06:06   and be done with it. And uh, of course we also have ATP gift memberships, which you

00:06:11   can buy for someone else in your life who you think might want to be an ATP member or

00:06:15   you, if you're a member, you'll see a link that lets you send that link to somebody else

00:06:19   and say, Hey, buy me ATP membership for my holiday gift or for my birthday or for whatever.

00:06:26   So those are also available to you right now on the store page and also on your member

00:06:30   page. John, if I, if I'm already a member, a paying member and somebody gets me a year

00:06:35   subscription, what happens? It just tacks on to the end of your current subscription.

00:06:39   Now gifts memberships never expire, so you can just hold them and not redeem them, but

00:06:43   you can also just redeem them immediately. They just add time to your subscription there.

00:06:47   I think there is like a sane limit where you'll, it'll always just keep adding time, but due

00:06:53   to a limitation in Stripe, if you add like four years of membership or maybe it's longer

00:06:57   than maybe it's like seven years of membership, we can't, we won't continue your membership

00:07:02   after your gift memberships run out because Stripe has a limitation and the way we're

00:07:07   handling recurring subscriptions. Anyway, you will always just add time. The only difference

00:07:11   is at the end of seven years, we won't continue your subscription. You don't have to do that

00:07:15   manually, but anything less than seven years or whatever the ridiculous amount of time

00:07:19   is, we will just add, we will just continue your subscription. You're paying subscription

00:07:23   after your gift subscription runs out. So yeah, gift membership as the gift that keeps

00:07:28   on giving. Indeed it does. And remember you get a whole plethora of member specials if

00:07:35   you become a member. And again, you get 15% off at the store. ATP.fm/store. I will do

00:07:41   our visualization exercise that I know all of you love so very much. If you're driving,

00:07:45   if you're walking, you can either use your turn signal because you're an adult or you

00:07:50   can get to the side of the sidewalk or whatever the case may be. Maybe you're biking, you

00:07:53   know, use the little arm signals if you need to, but one way or another pause and go to

00:07:57   ATP.fm/store and spend all of your money. I mean, by the things you are interested in

00:08:02   buying or if you are not in a position you can do that, where are you going or where

00:08:06   will you have some free time later? Visualize that spot. Maybe it's your desk at work. Maybe

00:08:10   it's your desk at home. Maybe it's somewhere else entirely. Maybe you're going to Wegmans

00:08:13   to do work like I do most Wednesday mornings in order to prep for the show. Wherever you

00:08:18   may be heading, think about what it'll be like to go to ATP.fm/store and buy some stuff

00:08:25   when you get there. You can also set a reminder with your voice assistant of choice. You know,

00:08:28   one thing I have learned now that I have CarPlay, which is amazing, is that... Oh wait, are

00:08:33   we Team CarPlay now? Of course we're Team CarPlay. I was always Team CarPlay. Well,

00:08:38   yeah, there were times when I said, "It's fine. I can do without it if I have to." But

00:08:43   I always wanted it if it was available. And over time, the "I can do without it if I

00:08:49   have to" has gotten smaller. But anyway, one thing I discovered is that when your phone

00:08:57   is connected to CarPlay, you can usually just say into the air in your car, "Hey, thing.

00:09:02   Remind me in two hours to go buy ATP merchandise." And it will almost always pick it up without

00:09:08   any waiting. You don't have to say, "Hey, thing," and then wait for the car to be like,

00:09:12   "Waiting, waiting, bloop. What do you want to say?" You can just say in one phrase, "Hey,

00:09:17   thing. Remind me in an hour to go buy ATP merchandise." And usually that will work.

00:09:22   So even in Casey's case where, like, "Oh, you can just try to think about it later."

00:09:28   If you're anything like me, you will forget immediately. God, I thinking back to like

00:09:35   my life before being able to set reminders via voice assistance that would then beep

00:09:40   in my pocket and wrist, you know, at a certain time, like, "Oh my God, how did I ever get

00:09:44   anything done?" I mean, the answer is I didn't. But how did I remember anything? I didn't.

00:09:49   How did I get through life? I got in trouble a lot. Like, but now we now we are in a better

00:09:55   place where we can be reminded of things with very little effort by sitting around or pretty

00:10:01   much wherever we are. So it's wonderful. So you can use that ability to say, "Hey, thing,

00:10:06   remind me in an hour to buy ATP merchandise."

00:10:08   All right, let's do some follow up. We have some information with regards to the Mac Mini

00:10:13   as is expected and other Macs as well. Let's start with headphone jacks. Where is the headphone

00:10:18   jack in the Mac Mini, Jon?

00:10:19   We didn't talk about it last time, but it's in the front, which is interesting. So here's

00:10:25   the thing about the headphone jack. I don't think there's any perfect place to put the

00:10:31   headphone jack on a computer the size of the Mac Mini because you can make an argument

00:10:36   for the front, you can make an argument for the back, you can probably make an argument

00:10:39   for the side. I bet somebody can make an argument for the top because that thing is so little

00:10:42   you can put it in so many different places. It's, you know, people who want a clean setup,

00:10:48   but they don't want to see that wire. They'd rather have the wire going from the back and

00:10:51   underneath the desk and I don't know, snaking up through some other thing. People want it

00:10:54   on the front because they're constantly plugging and unplugging it. People want it on the top

00:10:57   because the Mac Mini is on a little thing next to them and they have good easy access

00:11:01   to the top. If it's underneath your desk all this changes. So they had to pick somewhere

00:11:06   to put it and they picked the front, which is so much more defensible. Sort of front

00:11:10   and top are so much more defensible on a giant tower computer because it's just so hard to

00:11:14   reach around the back of a giant tower computer, especially, you know, like, but the Mini is

00:11:18   so small it could be literally anywhere on anybody's desk. So I kind of feel for Apple

00:11:22   in choosing the placement, but anyway, they chose the front and I don't think you'll see

00:11:27   a lot of pictures in Apple's PR photography showing a wire connected to the Mac Mini anywhere

00:11:33   in the front, let alone a headphone wire connected to the front, but there it is.

00:11:37   Yeah, I think we're lucky that they still have one at all. So, you know, let's not look

00:11:43   at Get Horse in the Mouth too much, but also I think, yeah, if you're going to have a headphone

00:11:47   jack on a desktop computer, the best places for it are either the front or the side. And

00:11:53   if you look at the Mac Mini, like there's not really anything on the sides and, you

00:11:58   know, if you put it on the side, you know, that kind of restricts, you know, certain

00:12:02   positioning of the Mac Mini. So yeah, I think this is fine.

00:12:05   People like the back too because they don't want to see the wire.

00:12:07   Well, it depends on what you're plugging into it.

00:12:09   So you don't see the wire, it may say like, I never unplug it, I just want something plugged

00:12:13   in the back. Like say you have to hook up to some other like bigger, more complicated

00:12:18   piece of audio equipment than just headphones. It's like, I don't want to see that wire.

00:12:21   Like imagine if, I don't know, you explained to me they have like headphone amps or something.

00:12:24   I don't even know what kind of things you can connect to that jack. But if it's something

00:12:28   permanently connected and it's not your headphones, like it connects to some other box that connects

00:12:33   to a thing that connects to your headphones or connects to big speakers, you wouldn't

00:12:37   want that connected to the front because now you've got to like immediately turn the wire

00:12:40   around and have it go backwards. Like it's just so dependent on what your setup is, what

00:12:45   you're going to have plugged in there and how often you're going to plug and unplug

00:12:48   it. But then there's the break. I guess if you don't like it, you can get one of the,

00:12:51   you know, USB audio connection and use one of the back USB ports. So you have options.

00:12:56   But it's difficult to choose where to put the ports. And I just think it was interesting

00:12:59   for Apple for so long, really not be pretty against ports on the front of their computers.

00:13:06   Now even the tiny Mac mini is not just the headphone port, but other ports in the front

00:13:10   of it as well. The Mac studio has an SD card slot in the front of it. Plus ports. It's

00:13:15   a brave new world.

00:13:16   Right. And that is where you'd want an SD card slot because, but no, I mean, keep in

00:13:21   mind like, you know, with, first of all, if you, if you do, you know what John said of

00:13:25   like the nightmare scenario, having a permanently plugged in cord into the front of your Mac

00:13:28   mini and you hate that it has to sneak around to the back. Let me advise you on something.

00:13:32   Get a right angle headphone plug. Like you can get a right angle cord from Amazon for

00:13:35   like $3. So that helps a lot because then the cord goes straight down. I have a couple

00:13:40   of things on my desk where I have like, you know, a wire that would stick straight out

00:13:44   and I just went on Amazon, paid the three bucks to get a right angle plug on that one

00:13:48   that was exactly the right lane so it wouldn't have too much excess and it made a much cleaner

00:13:51   setup. But also, yes, if you really are going to be doing something permanent that, you

00:13:57   know, you always want something at the back and you want a really clean front, odds are

00:14:02   somewhere in this setup you're going to have a place to put a USB audio device and that,

00:14:07   you know, whether you call it a DAC or a speaker amp, these are all the, or a headphone amp

00:14:10   rather, these are all the same things. It's just, you know, a USB audio device that has

00:14:14   a headphone output of some kind and you can, you know, bury that wherever you want to bury

00:14:18   it in your setup so that you have lots of options. Also, one thing to consider, I was

00:14:21   just looking up the weight of the Mac mini is only 1.5 or 1.6 pounds depending on configuration.

00:14:30   This is, you know, less, substantially less than a MacBook Air in weight. That's still

00:14:36   going to be a little bit dense but it is possible if you had a headphone jack on the back and

00:14:42   you tugged on that a little bit, you could like twist the whole Mac mini around. You

00:14:46   could like, you know, move the physical Mac mini with the motion of your headphones if

00:14:50   you pulled hard enough because, you know, it's only 1.5 pounds sitting there on the

00:14:53   desk. So, that's another consideration like they've made this so small and it's getting

00:14:58   lighter over time so you don't want it like being scooted around the desk needlessly either.

00:15:04   So, yeah, another reason why being on the front is fine.

00:15:06   Well, that's the Apple TV problem and I bet it's true of the Mac mini too. If you connect

00:15:10   cables to all the things in the back, power, a bunch of USB, Ethernet, those cables, the

00:15:16   force on those cables, the stiffness of those cables already may be like tilting your entire

00:15:21   Mac mini like on an angle off of the surface or like pulling it to the side. You try to

00:15:26   align it so it's like parallel to the side of your desk and you let go and it just slides

00:15:30   another two degrees because the cables are too stiff. It's so small compared to the strength

00:15:35   of the Apple TV. I have the same problem with Apple TV pucks. Sometimes you can find a place

00:15:38   in your entertainment center where it's just fine but sometimes it just wants to move because,

00:15:42   I mean, HDMI. If you have HDMI and you have a really thick HDMI cable, it's a problem.

00:15:47   I don't know, maybe you can just, every Mac mini should come with like a custom made exactly

00:15:53   the same proportions as the top of the case like tungsten slab that you can just put on

00:15:57   top. Probably not good for cooling though. No. Alright, and then Quinn Nelson was perhaps

00:16:04   the first person to point out something that we've heard pointed out to us many, many,

00:16:07   many times. Quinn writes, "You can buy another base model Mac mini," so this is 16 gigs of

00:16:14   RAM and a 256 gig SSD, "for the price that it costs to upgrade a single Mac mini to 32

00:16:20   gigs of RAM and 512 gigabyte SSD." So let me repeat that. "If you have the base model,

00:16:27   in order to get to a sum total of 32 gigs and 512 gigs, you can buy an entire second

00:16:35   Mac mini for about the same price as it costs to upgrade the original Mac mini with the

00:16:41   same specs." It's bananas. Yeah, well it's one dollar less. Yeah, if you double the RAM

00:16:46   and storage, it is double the price of the base model Mac mini. That's amazing. And I

00:16:52   wanted to break down, we talked about this before, and we didn't want to go into numbers,

00:16:56   but here let's go into numbers. How does this work out? So the base model is $599. Okay,

00:17:01   that's 16 gigs of RAM, 256 SSD. When you do the RAM upgrade to 32, that is plus $400.

00:17:09   That's adding 16 gigabytes to the base 16 at $25 per gigabyte. And you may be wondering,

00:17:13   how much does that cost for real, not in Apple Fantasyland? I tried to find something comparable,

00:17:18   same speed RAM to the best of my knowledge, and I was super fair with this because I'm

00:17:23   comparing it in this case to Crucial, which is a name brand 32 gig LPDDR5X 7500 memory,

00:17:31   right? But this Crucial thing, it's an entire printed circuit board with associated like

00:17:36   capacitors and resistors and multiple chips and oh yeah, also the two NAND chips. When

00:17:42   you upgrade the RAM on the Mac mini, it's just two different RAM chips that are soldered

00:17:49   into the package that the SOC is on. It's not a whole other circuit board with its own

00:17:55   associated circuitry coming with it. It's not a separately packaged retail product,

00:17:59   right? So anyway, this Crucial 32 gig thing is a retail product and it costs $174.99 on

00:18:08   the Crucial.com website, which I'm sure is not the cheapest place you can get it. Doing

00:18:12   the math on that, Apple's RAM upgrades are 6.5 times more expensive than buying a separate

00:18:20   retail packaged printed circuit board complete memory module. And this is one of those LP

00:18:25   low pressure compression attached memory modules for like a laptop or whatever. So this isn't

00:18:31   even apples to apples. Apple is just taking two RAM chips and putting in two different

00:18:36   ones. It's just insane. So 6.5 times more expensive. The SSD upgrade to 512. You go

00:18:42   from 256 to 512. That's a $200 upgrade. And that's adding 256 gigs at 78 cents per gigabyte,

00:18:49   which sounds cheap, but the actual retail cost per gigabyte of this type of storage

00:18:53   is 12 cents per gigabyte. And again, an extremely fair comparison. A Samsung 990 Pro, 1 terabyte

00:19:00   PCIe 4.0 SSD. The price per gigabyte is 12 cents per gigabyte, which is once again, amazingly

00:19:07   exactly 6.5 times more expensive for the Apple upgrade than a separately packaged retail

00:19:14   product that has its own printed circuit board, a whole bunch of other support chips, a heat

00:19:18   sink, a box, everything associated with it. And when you do an SSD upgrade on a Mac mini

00:19:24   or any of the other Macs, you can see people do them on YouTube. They will de-solder the

00:19:28   two NAND chips that are soldered onto the logic board. It's just two NAND chips and

00:19:34   they will buy two bare NAND chips and solder them in place. There's a whole bunch of other

00:19:39   stuff you have to do to get the OS to recognize it, whatever. But what I'm saying is the components

00:19:43   that you are getting for this additional $200 are so much more minimal than the components

00:19:48   in this standalone retail product printed circuit board that yes, also has NAND chips

00:19:54   on it, but a bunch of other stuff from Samsung name brand 990 Pro. It's ridiculous. Six

00:19:58   point five times more expensive. So again, that's $400 for the RAM, $200 for the SSD,

00:20:03   total upgrade price $600. So you got your base Mac mini, you want to bump it up from

00:20:09   a 16 to 32 and from 2 to 6 to 512 or do you want an entire separate Mac mini? Like if

00:20:17   you could somehow harvest the two NAND chips that come with the second Mac mini and somehow

00:20:25   harvest the SSD, so the stuff that comes with the other Mac mini and then throw away the

00:20:30   rest of it, it would probably be the same price. It's ridiculous. Anyway, yeah. So that

00:20:36   the Mac mini with 32 gigs of RAM and 512 SSD is $1,200 or double the price of the base

00:20:41   model. That's what we mean when we say Apple's upgraded prices are ridiculous. It's not like

00:20:45   they're just a little bit more expensive. When I say like six times more expensive,

00:20:49   I'm not exaggerating. That's literally what they are in the most generous possible comparison.

00:20:54   If we actually compared like what is the retail price of just those NAND chips? I couldn't

00:20:59   find that. So I had to go for a Samsung 990 Pro to get the price per gigabyte, but be

00:21:04   assured that the actual retail difference in price is probably more like seven or eight

00:21:09   when you get down to apples to apples. And then obviously the wholesale price that Apple

00:21:13   pays for this is, you know, one 18th of that, but whatever.

00:21:17   It's a lot. It's a lot. And I mean, what are you really going to do? You're not going to

00:21:20   buy a second Mac mini. You're going to upgrade as you need to, but it's going to hurt. It's

00:21:25   going to. And the storage, at least you can buy external and tack it on and deal with

00:21:28   that, which is annoying, but at least you can do it. But the RAM, there's not really

00:21:31   any option if you it's, you know, it's the RAM is soldered on and it's also a part of

00:21:37   the SOC package. So I, like I said, I've seen people do SSD upgrades by desoldering and re-soldering,

00:21:43   which is an incredibly difficult operation to pull off and requires a lot of expertise

00:21:46   and skill and the know how to get the OS to recognize it. But at least it's possible,

00:21:50   but I've never seen one attempt it with the RAM. So yeah, you're kind of stuck.

00:21:55   All right. So with the iMac things seem mostly okay. However, if you're one of those people

00:22:01   that really loves to have two pointing devices, both a magic mouse and a magic track pad,

00:22:06   well tough nugs, cause Apple apparently has removed the option to buy color match track

00:22:12   pad and mouse together reading from nine to five Mac with the M4 model. You can, you can

00:22:17   no longer get both the magic track pad magic mouse in the past. You could optionally buy

00:22:21   both iMac accessories as part of your purchase. This means that if you want a trio of color

00:22:25   matched magic keyboard, magic mouse, magic track pad, you're simply out of luck or you're

00:22:28   going to eBay or you go into Apple store and like Marco said, give them your iMac serial

00:22:33   number and tell them you lost your track pad when really you didn't. And really you bought

00:22:36   it with a mouse. There's probably some way to do it, but this is just another consequence

00:22:39   of Apple being weird about the color things. And it's kind of sad that you used to be able

00:22:44   to do it, but now you can. There's also been a little bit of grumbling about SSD limits.

00:22:50   So the M4 versus M4 pro and max have different SSD size limits, and they're also different

00:22:56   between devices if I'm not mistaken. So the largest SSD you can get as an example with

00:23:02   the M4 Mac mini is two terabytes, but the largest SSD you can get with the M4 pro Mac

00:23:09   mini is eight terabytes. What's going on with that, John? So sometimes, uh, it's the case

00:23:14   that Apple is just not offering certain sizes in certain products for whatever reason like

00:23:19   this, you know, too many combinations of products. They decide like, I forgot one of the ones

00:23:22   off the top of my head, but it's like one of them doesn't come with 32 gigs of Ram on

00:23:25   the, the laptop, but it does on the mini or vice versa or something like that. Right.

00:23:29   Uh, but for the storage size, we don't know this for a fact, but it is reasonable to assume

00:23:34   based on the M1 and M2 and M3, the M series SOCs have the SSD controllers on them essentially,

00:23:43   and they have limits on the number and capacity of NAND chips that they can address. And it

00:23:51   is reasonable to assume, assume again, based on the plain M1, M2 and M3 that the M4 actually

00:23:57   can't address more than two terabytes given current NAND sizes and number of chips that

00:24:01   it can address, but the M4 Mac Pro can. So it's not like Apple is refusing to let you

00:24:06   buy a plain M4 Mac mini with eight terabytes. I believe it is probably the case that it

00:24:11   literally can't address that given current NAND sizes. Um, so keep that in mind. And

00:24:16   you know, there are plenty of places where Apple subdivides, uh, its product line based

00:24:21   on, you know, capacities that don't really make any sense. And it's just a way of minimizing

00:24:25   skews and finding the ones I think they're going to make the most money on. But the plain

00:24:29   M series very often in the past have just simply not been able to address as much SSD

00:24:34   space as the larger ones. And that is almost certainly the case with the plain M4 as well.

00:24:39   All right. And then tell me about performance, uh, specifically with the M4 Pro and M4 Pro

00:24:44   Macs. So some, unlike what we'll talk about in the after show, there is some really good

00:24:50   news in the world of Macs, believe it or not. We talked about it when they had, what was

00:24:55   it Mac week? That's what we could have called it. We could have done a pun on the publication

00:24:59   that YouTube probably never read. Anyway, uh, when they released all those Macs on,

00:25:03   you know, uh, the iMac, the Mac mini and the new Mac book pros with the new M4 processors.

00:25:07   And we talked about how great they are now since, since that show came out, there have

00:25:11   been sort of preliminary, unconfirmed uploaded, uh, geek bench benchmarks for the M4 Pro and

00:25:19   the M4 Macs and various devices. This time is always so weird because technically these

00:25:24   things shouldn't be in people's hands, although some plain M4s were shipped in Russia a while

00:25:28   ago. But anyway, uh, they're showing up in geek bench. When people get their retail products

00:25:34   in their hands, geek bench sort of incorporates all of the measurements and they end up on

00:25:37   the leaderboards or whatever. But for now, if you explicitly search for the CPU's by

00:25:41   the Mac identifiers, you can find results. We'll put links in the show notes so you can

00:25:45   look at the results for yourself. Again, they are preliminary with a few number of data

00:25:49   points. So take that for the grain of salt. And as I always say, geek bench, like all

00:25:53   benchmarks may or may not be representative of anything you care about. Making a good

00:25:57   representative benchmark is very difficult. In the end, what you care about is does it

00:26:00   do the thing that I needed to do faster than my old thing, whatever that thing is, are

00:26:04   you rendering things? Are you compressing audio? Are you compiling an X code? Whatever

00:26:10   it is that you're doing, all you care about is how fast does it do that? But things like

00:26:14   geek bench try to be a representative benchmark for the various parts of the computer. So

00:26:20   you have some way to compare it. So here they are with all those caveats in mind. There's

00:26:24   some amazing stuff going on. We've talked before about the M4's single core performance

00:26:29   being amazing. We only really had measurements of that in the iPad Pro because that was the

00:26:33   only thing the M4 was in. But anyway, now the plain M4 is a route. The M4 Pro has the

00:26:40   same amazing single core performance as the M4, but a little better because it's probably

00:26:44   clock tired and has better cooling. So M4 Pro is reaching 3900 in the single core geek

00:26:51   bench benchmark and has that compared to its processors. That is a 26% increase over the

00:26:56   M3 Pro. It is also a 26% increase over the M3 Max because single core really doesn't

00:27:02   change. Pro, Max, whatever, like maybe they'll be clock tire or maybe they have better cooling

00:27:06   for sustained throughput, but single core is usually similar. This was true back in

00:27:10   the Intel days too, by the way. Very often if you wanted to get the fastest single core

00:27:13   performance you would get like an iMac or something with a smaller number of cores because

00:27:17   the big 24 core or 12 core or whatever it was back in the day. The big multi core thing

00:27:22   that was in the Mac Pro had lower single core performance because they couldn't clock those

00:27:26   single cores as high because the chip was just so big and hot. But anyway, single core

00:27:30   is still great. Versus the M2 Ultra, which is the fastest SoC that you can get in the

00:27:38   X Studio and the Mac Pro, the M4 Pro single core performance is 41% faster. Multi core,

00:27:46   now we start to get interesting. Multi core, remember the M4 Pro is 14 cores, it has 10

00:27:51   power cores and 4 efficiency cores. Multi core is 22,000. That is a 48% increase over

00:27:56   its predecessor, the M3 Pro. The M3 Pro made some very different choices. It was the 6.6

00:28:03   arrangement, 6 efficiency cores, 6 power cores. So it's bound to not do as well in multi core.

00:28:09   The M3 Pro is just aiming for like, I guess, better low power performance for lots of non

00:28:15   demanding jobs. But Apple has changed its mind. The M4 Pro is really cranking it up.

00:28:20   The M4 Pro's multi core performance is 8% faster than the M3 Max. So now it is better

00:28:28   than the previous Max chip. Oh and by the way, the M4 Pro's multi core performance in

00:28:33   this one really hurts. 6% faster than the M2 Ultra. Remember we're talking about the

00:28:40   M4 Pro here. This is not the best M4 chip. This is like the middle one. There's M4, then

00:28:45   there's M4 Pro. Its multi core performance is better than the M2 Ultra. That's bad. That's

00:28:52   real bad. That's great. This is a great problem to have. This is what happens when you don't

00:28:56   update your chip for two years. Yes it is. Right? I mean, M2 is old, obviously you can

00:29:01   just look at the number. M2, M3. But the M4 Pro, and by the way, this is not reflected

00:29:05   in our shirt sales. No one wants to buy an M4 Pro shirt. You should. The M4 Pro is crushing

00:29:09   it this generation. It is most improved. And granted, part of that is because the M3 Pro

00:29:15   was so weird and different in how it arranged itself, which is why you get that big jump.

00:29:19   But just forget about the M3 Pro and the 48% jump from the M3 Pro. It's better than the

00:29:24   M3 Max. It's better than the M2 Ultra in multi core. It crushes them all in single core too

00:29:28   by the way, but it's still better in multi core. So what the hell is the M2 Ultra actually

00:29:33   even good for? When you go look at memory bandwidth, again, huge jump over the M3 Pro,

00:29:39   so it's 70% faster than the M3 Pro. Because the M3 Pro actually went down in memory bandwidth

00:29:43   from the M2 Pro I believe. But it is 50% slower in memory bandwidth than the M3 Max. So that's

00:29:50   where you're going to get extra money. And it is 200% less memory bandwidth than the

00:29:54   M2 Ultra. So if memory bandwidth is your concern, the M2 Ultra is still twice as big. And by

00:29:59   the way, the memory bandwidth is 273 gigabytes per second and the M2 Ultra is 819. The metal

00:30:06   score, that's like the GPU benchmark, mostly the GPU benchmark that you care about. I didn't

00:30:10   even look at the OpenCL one because Apple does everything in metal these days. Metal

00:30:13   score is 110k. That's 41% faster than the M3 Pro. That's 40% slower than the M3 Max

00:30:21   and it's 100% slower than the M2 Ultra. So when you, you know, like why would anyone

00:30:27   want an M2 Ultra at this point? Well, really you shouldn't. But if you have one, take heart

00:30:32   to know that you have double the memory bandwidth and you are twice as fast as the M4 Pro in

00:30:39   GPU benchmarks. But boy, if you have one of those older beefier CPUs, it's kind of, or

00:30:46   it's, it's bad when the mid tier M4 is kicking your butt in a lot of ways. All right. So

00:30:52   anyway, we go to the M4 Max. The M4 Max is the first personal computer chip in Geekbench

00:30:57   to break 4,000 on single core. I believe the M4 was already like the top single core performer,

00:31:02   but the M4 Max has a bunch of ratings in there like 3900, 4000. So single core is even better

00:31:08   than the M4 Max. Why is it better? Is it just because it's clock tire? Is it just because

00:31:11   they had better cooling? Is it just because someone got lucky on a run or put it in an

00:31:14   ice pack again, unconfirmed preliminary reports, but just no single core and the M4 is like

00:31:20   the best in the entire industry. And these are chips that are in laptops by the way.

00:31:24   And iPads. You can go, you can go search Geekbench for like, what if I want to, you know, buy

00:31:30   a really big, really hot, a high TDP Intel desktop CPU? Surely that is faster. And the

00:31:36   answer is no, it's not. It's just, you can, you can search the results. Again, it's just

00:31:40   a benchmark, but single core is amazing. So, you know, the M4 Max is 29% faster than the

00:31:45   M3 Max and 46% faster than the M2 Ultra. On multi-core it's 26,000, which is not much

00:31:51   higher than the M4 Pro, but still it's 27% faster than the M3 Max and 24% faster than

00:31:56   the M2 Ultra. And then memory bandwidth, it's 546 gigs a second, 33% faster than the M3

00:32:01   Max, but 50% slower than the M2 Ultra. And then in metal, 24% faster than the M3 Max

00:32:07   and 50% slower than the M2 Ultra. So the Max continues to pace from the M3, M3, the M4

00:32:13   Max is, you know, just a steady upward climb, but because the M3 Pro took that diversion

00:32:18   into not quite being as fast, it's got this huge boost. Yeah. So if you've got an M2 Ultra

00:32:24   and you bought it back when it was new, there are still some things that it does better,

00:32:28   but it has been handily surpassed by the mid tier laptop chip and single and multi-core

00:32:33   performance. That is just, I really hope this whole thing with the Pro series is just an

00:32:40   anomaly and they don't plan on doing this because you can't release a bunch of Pro products,

00:32:44   never change the price and then not update them for two years. Otherwise you're going

00:32:47   to get embarrassing things like this. I mean, if they just keep up with this pace, the phone

00:32:51   chips will be faster in every measure as well, but it's a great time to buy a Mac and it's

00:32:56   not a great time to want to buy one of the desktop Pro Max because they have fallen behind.

00:33:03   Oh, but maybe they'll come screaming back. We'll see. There are rumors to that effect

00:33:08   and the main rumor that we talked about before is about the, the reason I mention this now

00:33:13   is because I hope we'll find this out by next episode. Someone needs to get an M4 Max and

00:33:18   cut the thing open and show us what the die looks like. Because remember on the M3 Max,

00:33:23   someone did that and they said, Hey look, there's no interposer. You can't take two

00:33:26   M3 Max and stick them end to end and make an M3 Ultra. And that seems like it was true

00:33:32   because Apple never did make an M3 Ultra and maybe it's because they never planned to and

00:33:37   they didn't put that interposer on the M3 Max and you can't stick two of them end to

00:33:41   end. So when someone gets an M4 Max, they need to cut that sucker open and say, Hey,

00:33:45   is there that little strip in the bottom that looks like the Silicon interposer where they

00:33:49   take two Maxes and stick them together end to end? Because if that's not there, what

00:33:53   that means is either Apple's never going to make another chip better than the Max or when

00:33:58   the M4 Ultra or whatever comes out, it won't be two Maxes stuck together. But as the rumor

00:34:03   suggests it might be an entirely new chip that is just simply even bigger than the Max,

00:34:09   but it is not made up of two Maxes. And that would be smart because we've discussed in

00:34:13   the past putting two Maxes together, you end up with a lot of wasted stuff that you don't

00:34:16   need doubles of, right? You don't need doubles of all like the media encoders and all the

00:34:20   other stuff like you could just it's more efficient to make one big honking chip more

00:34:24   expensive, much more expensive potentially, but more efficient in terms of bang for your

00:34:29   buck out of the not bang for your buck bang for your square meters of the silicon area

00:34:34   for your buckets probably worse because the bigger you make the chip, the more expensive

00:34:37   it is to get one out that works. So I'm looking forward to that as soon as someone cuts one

00:34:41   of these open, we'll know if we're in for a surprise, but if someone sees an interposer

00:34:46   and it's just two M4 Maxes stuck together, which to be clear would be great, but boring.

00:34:50   All right. And then a handful of people wrote in to correct us when we said, oh, you can't

00:34:55   buy a Mac with eight gigs of Ram anymore. Au contraire, Walmart is still selling that

00:35:00   M1 Mac with eight gigs of Ram for $700. Although as we record this, it's actually on sale for

00:35:05   650. But yeah, that still exists. That's still a thing in their lineup. Yeah, I give that

00:35:11   a pass. I mean, like it's amazing that they went back and updated the M2 Air in addition

00:35:15   to the M3 Air to be 16. They could have updated neither of them and just waited for the M4

00:35:20   Air in the spring to go to 16, but it said they went back two whole product lines. They

00:35:24   just didn't go back to the M1 upgraded, which is fine, right? No problem with that whatsoever.

00:35:30   The new USB-C accessories, including those color matched ones that we were talking about

00:35:34   a little bit ago, apparently they require macOS Sequoia because they do not work with

00:35:40   anything before it or even the 15.2 beta, which is too bad reading from MacRumors. The

00:35:45   new USB-C accessories require macOS Sequoia 15.1 to work properly. And as noted on the

00:35:51   MacRumors forums, earlier versions of macOS do not work. There are reports from users

00:35:54   running macOS Sonoma and Ventura who are having issues with the new devices. With the keyboard,

00:35:59   touch ID and function keys don't work. And with the Magic Mouse, the scrolling doesn't

00:36:02   function. In some cases, the accessories are recognized as older devices inhibiting proper

00:36:07   functionality. And this isn't a problem limited to just people running older versions of macOS

00:36:11   because there are also reports from developers who have installed the first macOS Sequoia

00:36:14   15.2 beta. It appears that the macOS Sequoia 15.2 beta was released before Apple could

00:36:20   add in support for the new Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad.

00:36:23   I hope this is a developing story because don't you think it should be super prominent

00:36:28   on these product pages? Like don't buy this keyboard if you don't have at least 15.1.

00:36:36   That seems like something really important. It's not like there's some special feature

00:36:40   that gets enabled by having 15.1. It's like the basic functionality of the input device.

00:36:46   So like if you buy a Magic Mouse and you come home and you're connected to your computer

00:36:49   that's running, let's say Sequoia 15.0 and the scrolling doesn't work, you take it back

00:36:54   to the store and say this mouse is broken. They say, oh, you should have known when you

00:36:57   bought that mouse. It requires 15.1. You need to update your OS. That is super weird to

00:37:02   me. Is it because of the USB control? Backport this, Apple. Provide an update at least to

00:37:09   14 and 13.

00:37:13   How long did they know ahead of time that these products were being released? Did one

00:37:19   team not talk to the other? Surely these have been in the works for at least months. Why

00:37:26   wasn't this in .0? Who knows?

00:37:29   Why don't they just work out of the box? It's literally the same keyboard but with a USB-C

00:37:35   thing. I'm sure there are third party USB-C keyboards that you can buy and just plug into

00:37:40   a Mac and they just work. Like through some generic keyboard driver. But the Apple branded

00:37:44   one, that's why I couldn't believe this story and I thought it had to be a mistake or whatever.

00:37:48   So I hope by next week it'll be like, oh, that wasn't really true. It was just some

00:37:52   other issue or whatever. But this seems ridiculous to me. So be aware, as of the time this story

00:37:59   was written, which is granted, October 31st, people were buying the new keyboards and mice

00:38:05   and discovering that they don't work right unless you have Mac OS 15.1 or later. But

00:38:11   not too much later because the 15.2 beta doesn't work either.

00:38:14   Daniel Luz writes that the Apple $69 one meter Thunderbolt 5 cable is a passive cable. One

00:38:22   meter is the USB, what is the IF here? USB IF? Industry forum or something? Yeah, it's

00:38:26   the USB standards group. Thank you. The one meter is the USB IF's limit for passive cables

00:38:32   as is expected. Every compliant passive Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 cable is compatible with Thunderbolt

00:38:37   5. It's unclear to me, writes Daniel, what the situation is for Thunderbolt 3. There

00:38:41   appears to be a Gen 3 that works. If you have an old USB 4 cable, you might already have

00:38:46   a Thunderbolt 5 cable as long as it's passive and at most one meter long. So perhaps the

00:38:50   only difference between this new Thunderbolt 5 cable and the one that ships with the studio

00:38:55   display is higher power delivery. I think there's a little tiny five, a little

00:38:59   tiny light gray five in a square laser etched on the metal part of the USB C connector as

00:39:07   a further eye test of old people. But yeah, last time we said these cables are expensive

00:39:11   because they have little chips on them, but apparently under one meter, no chips. Apple

00:39:15   itself says this is a passive cable. So it was just a very well constructed, well insulated

00:39:19   $70 one meter long Thunderbolt 5 cable. No capes. Daniel Nelson writes that there is

00:39:27   at least one dock that supports 10 gigabit ethernet. The OWC Thunderbolt Pro dock. I

00:39:32   think I was the one who had said, as far as I know, there are no docks that exist that

00:39:36   have 10 gig ethernet. I knew that my beloved CalDigit TS4 has two and a half gig. But Daniel

00:39:42   points out this, there is this one from OWC that does include 10 gig. iFixit has torn

00:39:47   down the iPad mini A17 Pro to see if there's any physical or hardware reasons for jelly

00:39:54   scrolling improvements. And after watching this like six or seven minute YouTube video,

00:39:59   I can tell you that no, there doesn't appear to be any hardware changes, but they do put

00:40:04   the old one and the new one in super duper slow mo or they take super slow mo videos

00:40:09   of them. And you can see that it is unquestionably better now, but not perfect.

00:40:15   Yeah, it's better enough that lots of the seemingly all the reviewers except for the

00:40:18   one from the Verge said, oh, it's cured, no more jelly scrolling. But if you watch it

00:40:21   in super slow mo, you'll see it is just much improved, but it still exists. And a lot of

00:40:26   the theories people have with the old ones is like, oh, they need to take the video controller

00:40:29   and attach it to the screen from the top instead of the side, because when they do it from

00:40:33   the side, it ends up driving the display in a way such that one half of it doesn't update

00:40:37   as fast as the other half and you get the jelly scrolling and yada yada. So they open

00:40:41   this thing up and said, what do they do to fix the jelly scrolling? Did they do all those

00:40:44   things people suggested? The answer was no. It's just exactly the same as the previous

00:40:47   one. The hardware looks the same. It's in the same place. It's connected the same way.

00:40:51   So maybe it was just a hundred percent a software fix or there's something about the fix that

00:40:56   isn't detectable by iFixit, something inside the chips that they can't see or something.

00:41:00   But yeah, what a, what a weird situation like these, this complaint about the iPads was

00:41:05   existed for so long and they've seemingly all but entirely fixed the problem without

00:41:11   changing the hardware in a way that iFixit could detect.

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00:42:07   Killvor writes in regarding the quote unquote fork in the road for Apple TV, uh, I whether

00:42:13   or not it wants to keep pursuing GPU and CPU power beyond what is needed for streaming

00:42:17   video so it can play games better. The latest Apple TV is actually worse for games, even

00:42:21   if the chip is better on paper since in practice at thermal throttles a lot earlier. This is

00:42:25   according to an old colleague who was working on an Apple arcade title, absolute monkeys

00:42:29   paw. Yeah, that's such a weird thing. Like far be it for me to argue for fans, but the

00:42:33   Apple TV, uh, had a fan that I couldn't hear. And when they got rid of the fan, it's like,

00:42:38   oh great, they don't need the fan anymore. But apparently they did. If you're running

00:42:41   games on it, the fan apparently helps. So these passively cooled ones that seem to be

00:42:46   constructed much more cheaply than the much more expensive ones that had the little tiny

00:42:50   silent fan inside it. Uh, yeah, maybe those were the good ones. So yeah, I guess that's

00:42:54   another fork in the road for them. If they want to pursue gaming performance, they probably

00:42:57   need to bring that fan back. I mean, in all honesty though, like the Apple TV is not a

00:43:01   gaming platform. They, you know, they, when they first revamped it as the app powered

00:43:05   platform years ago, they tried to make it everything. They tried to make it, Hey, you're

00:43:09   going to, you're going to browse real estate listings on here. You can do your online shopping

00:43:13   on your Apple TV. You can play games and yeah, you can also watch TV shows. And you know,

00:43:18   similar to the Apple watch, we very quickly realized, okay, all of these things that this

00:43:23   launched with, you know, claiming to do, we really only want to do like one or two of

00:43:28   them. And the answer with Apple TV is yeah, this is really good as a TV like watching

00:43:33   thing, a video watching platform. It's not a great game platform. And it's, it's not

00:43:38   because of hardware reasons. Like I think this is one of the, obviously with the exception

00:43:43   of this throttling issue that this person reason, but like, I think one of the things

00:43:47   that's hard for nerds like us to get used to is that we can have devices in our computing

00:43:54   lives now that have the computing power to be really good game platforms, but just aren't

00:44:00   for other reasons that seem like insufficient justifications for it not being a game platform.

00:44:06   Like the Apple TV is a terrible game platform for two big reasons. Number one, just, you

00:44:11   know, Apple and gaming, they just, you know, they, they mishandle it in so many ways and,

00:44:16   and what brings so many games to the iPhone does not bring games to the Apple TV. Number

00:44:20   two, it doesn't come with a controller. And also by the way, number three, the weird on

00:44:24   demand resource loading on Apple TV makes it hard to deliver good games. So the Apple

00:44:29   TV, you know, it has the hardware to be a great game platform. There's nothing stopping

00:44:34   it hardware wise from being a great game platform, but it's all those other ecosystem problems

00:44:39   around it that, that, you know, make it so that that's pretty much not going to be a

00:44:43   thing. And, you know, we have kind of an embarrassment of riches in computing these days that the

00:44:49   good thing is we don't need it to be a game platform. Like if you want to play pretty

00:44:52   good games on your TV, you can get like a $30 raspberry pie and install packages on

00:44:59   that, especially if you're into emulators. Like that's, that's a great platform for that.

00:45:02   Like you can get a raspberry pie with game support that you can plug into your TV and

00:45:07   it's pretty good quality games for less than the cost of an Apple TV game controller. So,

00:45:14   you know, we have lots of other ways to play games, but it is frustrating as nerds to see

00:45:18   something like this that can have the ability to play really great games and just for kind

00:45:23   of crappy reasons doesn't really get there.

00:45:25   Yeah. And that's, that's the fork on the road that Apple has. Do you want to keep making

00:45:29   the Apple TV have better and better SOCs in it? If so, to one end. And even just taking

00:45:35   away the fan, like maybe, you know, makes it cheaper, fewer parts, you know, no potential

00:45:39   fan knows, though again, the old one was silent, but it makes it a worse gaming platform. Like

00:45:44   I said, last time I tried to play a game on the Apple TV, there are games that play perfectly

00:45:47   fine on the Apple TV. It's surprisingly powerful for its size and cost. And they were taken

00:45:51   away from like, they were no longer available. I had played them on Apple TV before and now

00:45:56   they weren't there anymore. And that's not a great experience. I can't remember the last

00:45:59   time that happened on any other gaming platform or console. Like it's not even, it was like,

00:46:03   it was available on an older version of Apple TV. It was just, it was removed from Apple

00:46:07   arcade or was removed from the Apple store or whatever. And that's frustrating. Like,

00:46:11   you know, I'm not expecting it to play like super duper fancy, you know, triple A games

00:46:16   with like, you know, I'm not expecting it to be a gaming PC, but for the games that

00:46:19   do run comfortably on it, it's nice that it runs games. I think it should run games and

00:46:24   it can run them comfortably with its current size SOC, but Apple's mishandling of games

00:46:28   ruins that. And going forward until we get to 8K or something, there's not really much

00:46:34   reason to double the power of the CPU and GPU because it can already play all your streaming

00:46:39   apps without breaking a sweat. So yeah, what is Apple going to do with this device? I assume

00:46:44   they'll just keep upgrading the SOC just because they don't want to keep manufacturing the

00:46:47   old ones. And at a certain point it's just less expensive to, you know, you know, turn

00:46:52   off the, or stop paying for the seven nanometer line to be manufacturing chips and just take

00:46:57   the five nanometer ones or whatever. But you know, I personally hope they steep, they keep

00:47:02   increasing the SOC because I believe there is a potential future in it as a casual game

00:47:08   platform for the television. I prefer it to, I certainly prefer to buying a Raspberry Pi

00:47:12   and hooking it up. And I prefer it to having to log over one of my big game consoles because

00:47:17   right now it's the only gaming thing I have connected to my big TV. And it's just there

00:47:21   for like brief casual game sessions or a few particular games that are available on Apple

00:47:25   TV. But yeah, it's, it's, uh, we'll, we'll find out when they release the next one, find

00:47:30   out what they do. Have they made it more powerful? Have they made it more expensive? Have they

00:47:34   added a fan or is it just status quo? Finally, in follow up a keyboard cleaning corner. Uh,

00:47:39   we were asked about this, I think in an Ask ATP, but basically, you know, how do you clean

00:47:43   your keyboard when powering off the computer and then mashing on any freaking key? We'll

00:47:48   turn it back on. Um, and I think we had a couple of solutions at the time, but I also

00:47:52   wanted to bring up a friend of the show. Uh, G Rambo writes and makes cleanup buddy. We'll

00:47:57   put a link in the show notes, which is another one of those tools that'll basically disable

00:48:00   the keyboard for a little while. And then, uh, Daniel Piper or maybe pepper Piper, I

00:48:04   believe, uh, wrote in, uh, and said, cleaning the keyboard and our on an arm Mac can be

00:48:09   achieved by doing the following. Hold down the left control and left command keys and

00:48:16   the right shift key for seven seconds. And then while still holding down those keys,

00:48:21   press the power button for another seven seconds. After that, the computer can only be powered

00:48:25   on by using the power button. I tried this and it didn't work. Then I turned off my computer

00:48:29   and I tried it again and it didn't work. Then I tried it. I turned the computer back off,

00:48:33   tried it for a third time and I'll be damned if it didn't work. And it really does do exactly

00:48:38   what Daniel said. I guess I just screwed it up the first, uh, the first time. And I guess,

00:48:42   and I think your computer has to be off to actually have it engage. It's not an easy

00:48:46   thing to do. And when he first sent this, I replied and I said, that sounds like the

00:48:50   way you did an SMC reset on T two max, but actually that particular finger twister is

00:48:56   slightly different. We'll put a link in the show notes to that one. So even though it

00:48:59   sounds like something you might've heard before, it's different. Uh, and Daniel said he tried

00:49:04   it while listening to show just to make sure it works. And uh, sure enough it does. So

00:49:08   it is complicated and it can be done lots of other people like why you have this problem,

00:49:10   just turn on the screensaver. Cause if you turn on the screensaver, like with a screen

00:49:14   lock, the only way you're going to do anything damaging to your computer is if you accidentally

00:49:17   fat finger your password into the lock thing or touch the touch ID thing with your fingerprint.

00:49:23   So this is not that big of a problem, but if you really do want your computer to be

00:49:26   off, it is frustrating that it keeps turning itself back on. So if you, if you want to

00:49:31   fix to that problem, this will apparently work. I do wonder what this is doing. Like

00:49:36   that's why I was like, Oh no, is this doing an SMC reset? Is it going to reset some firmware

00:49:40   things? Is it going to like turn on the boot chime when the boot chime was off? Have you

00:49:43   noticed any ill effects Casey from trying this? No, except that it only does it for

00:49:49   the, until the next boot. So, so you can, you know, clean your keyboard, do whatever,

00:49:53   as long as you don't touch the power button. And then once you turn the computer back on,

00:49:57   it forgets that this is the mode it was in and it goes back to any, any button can, it's

00:50:01   can turn the computer back on again, which I don't like. I wish I could make this like

00:50:05   a permanent setting. Yeah. They should, they should just put this like instead of these

00:50:08   weird, you know, key combo and things that holding stuff, just put it in like the recovery

00:50:12   thing or put it something like they have a place where they have like the, so you want

00:50:15   to do a weird thing to your computer. Like when you boot in recovery mode or you hold

00:50:18   down the power button or whatever, put this there with a GUI or something or add a feature

00:50:23   to Mac OS. Maybe they'll get to it eventually. That just says, I'm going to clean my keyboard,

00:50:27   lock everything up. And I guess they would probably just say that's the screensaver,

00:50:29   but anyway, like they like the boot chime, right? So on, on max from the early, from

00:50:34   the very first Mac, and you turn them on, they would make a, a, a triming sound and

00:50:39   Apple has changed the chime over the years. And then eventually they added the ability

00:50:42   to turn off that chime. Uh, and that used to be like a firmware setting, but now there's

00:50:47   actually a GUI for it. That's a perfect example of something like some people don't want their

00:50:51   Mac to make a noise when it boots or restarts or whatever. And some people do, some people

00:50:55   don't want their Mac to turn on when they just hit, hit anything on the keyboard. And

00:50:59   some people do make the default, what you think the majority of people want. And for

00:51:02   everybody else, put a little tiny switch buried somewhere in system settings. We'll find it

00:51:08   eventually.

00:51:09   So for topics, uh, we have some somewhat breaking news from a little less than a week ago. Um,

00:51:17   Apple has come out of left field and has bought pixel mater, which I don't think I certainly

00:51:22   didn't see coming. I don't know that anyone really saw it coming, but, uh, there's a release

00:51:26   on pixel maters website. Uh, in part it reads pixel mater, sign an agreement to be acquired

00:51:31   by Apple subject to regulatory approval. There will be no material changes to the pixel meter

00:51:34   per to the pixel meter pro pixel made of our iOS and photo mater apps at this time. Stay

00:51:39   tuned for exciting updates to come.

00:51:42   Well, I think a lot, some people did predict this. I'm not in the world of seeing who's

00:51:48   going to get acquired by Apple and image editing apps, but some people in that world said,

00:51:51   Oh yeah, they expected this for a long time. Pixel mater is highly regarded company with

00:51:55   highly regarded products that have received awards from Apple in the past. I don't know

00:51:59   how many words they've gotten, but I think it's multiple. Uh, they're good apps. Uh,

00:52:04   they are Mac apps. I believe at least pixel mater is written with app kit cause it's that

00:52:09   old. Um, and I'm not sure what their other apps are written in, but they're good apps.

00:52:13   They are Mac apps. Uh, they are award winning. I think I own all of them except for maybe

00:52:18   the iOS one. Uh, cause I mostly do this stuff on my Mac. Uh, and Apple bought the whole

00:52:25   company and Apple being Apple, they're not going to tell you why they bought the company

00:52:30   other than giving you know, or they can statement. They have like a text expanded shortcut that

00:52:33   says Apple buys small companies from time to time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:52:36   Like they never tell you like what you're buying it for. But for those of us out here

00:52:40   who like and use, uh, some of these apps, you're immediately worried and saying, what's

00:52:46   going to happen to pixel mater or photo meter or whatever it is that you're doing. Obviously

00:52:51   the press release says no changes are planned at this time, but the big question is did

00:52:56   Apple buy this so they could continue, continue developing, uh, the pixel mater family of

00:53:02   photo editing apps. Did they buy this so they can incorporate that functionality into their

00:53:06   own Apple photos apps or did they buy it just as an Aqua hire where we don't care about your

00:53:11   apps. We just wanted the people because it's really hard to find excellent Mac developers.

00:53:16   Hey, there's a bunch of excellent Mac developers. Let's buy the company as a way of, of, of

00:53:21   hiring all the people in the company and put some golden handcuffs on them that says their

00:53:25   Apple stock doesn't invest until X or Y number of years and then just allow pixel mater and

00:53:31   photo mater to just wither on the vine and eventually stop working. Which one of those

00:53:35   things is going to happen? I don't know, but I'm kind of not happy about this acquisition.

00:53:41   Yeah, I think if you use the pixel mater family of apps, you probably should be a little wary

00:53:46   about this. Um, you know, the Apple's track record here, uh, from the point of view of

00:53:51   you, the customer of these apps is not promising. Now again, who knows what will happen? You

00:53:57   know, this, it's a new situation. They could always do things differently now than they've

00:54:01   done in the past, but it's not a great track record. So, you know, when they say, you know,

00:54:06   nothing will change or no changes to the apps at this time, well that doesn't mean anything.

00:54:12   They posted this few days ago. They could have, they could change it tomorrow like that,

00:54:15   you know, so that, that means nothing. Um, it does, they're very careful to, to not make

00:54:21   any claims about the future really that are substantial. So what we know is that Apple

00:54:26   has bought the company. It certainly seems like, you know, the team was a huge part of

00:54:30   it. I do think it's probably like, you know, there have been speculation on how much money

00:54:34   it had to be because they're seeking regulatory approval and everything. It's probably, if

00:54:38   I had to guess, too much money to pay just for an, a talent acquisition. They are not

00:54:45   probably going to spend that much money to just get a handful of people to work for them.

00:54:48   That, that doesn't seem like it's worth it to them for that amount. Um, so it is probably

00:54:52   about buying at least the apps as well. But if you look at what are the likely outcomes

00:54:58   here, I think the most likely is that they watered down some of this and integrated into

00:55:08   the photos app. So the, so these apps then go away. That is the most likely in my opinion.

00:55:13   Second most likely is these continue to be standalone apps in some form. And then maybe

00:55:18   Apple, you know, bundles them together with Logic and Final Cut and makes a pro bundle.

00:55:23   Maybe they give it away for free. Maybe it's a $200, you know, new version of Aperture.

00:55:27   Maybe they keep the name, maybe they don't. But either way, it's like still remains a

00:55:31   separate apps. Those, that's possible. I just don't think that's, that's the most likely.

00:55:35   I think by far, in my opinion, the most likely outcome here is bits and pieces of this get

00:55:42   integrated in possibly a watered down way into the photos app. That I think gives Apple

00:55:48   the biggest bang for their buck. Cause they don't like, you know, I don't think Apple

00:55:51   cares about the existing customer basis of these apps really. They just care about like,

00:55:56   what can we do with this asset? And I think that's the way Apple will get the most bang

00:56:00   for their buck in their view. That, although, you know, that is pretty rough for the customer.

00:56:05   So we can hope, what I'm hoping for is more of an Aperture situation. More of like, they,

00:56:11   they use this to, you know, to continue their own efforts into making, you know, high quality

00:56:18   pro apps. But the reason I'm a little wary about that is that we really haven't seen

00:56:24   a lot of evidence to suggest that they're looking for that right now. Or that they,

00:56:29   or that that's an interest for them.

00:56:30   Yeah, well, we have a couple of examples in a, well, one from recent history and one from

00:56:36   ancient history. The recent history one is workflows. Apple bought workflows and they

00:56:41   workflow, sorry, singular and incorporated into the OS and continued to enhance it. It's

00:56:47   shortcuts now. And they didn't just like, Oh, we'll fold it into the OS and then just

00:56:50   like never updated again. They've continued to work on shortcuts. It is sort of become

00:56:54   an essential headlining feature of their operating system. They essentially bought from a third

00:56:59   party and they didn't just like, you know, obviously shortcuts, the app went away, but

00:57:03   I'm not sure that's workflow. The app went away, but it was pretty quickly replaced by

00:57:07   shortcuts and it's for the people who liked workflow. I think they also like shortcuts.

00:57:12   So that's probably the best it could possibly go. If Apple buys you and decides you're going

00:57:17   to be part of our existing platform, right? You're not going to, we're not going to continue

00:57:21   to sell you as a third party app. You're going to literally going to be a part of iOS or

00:57:24   you're going to be part of an existing app like Apple photos or whatever. That's like

00:57:27   the best it can go. That's normally not how it happens. Most of the time when Apple buys

00:57:31   small companies, whatever they were making is never seen again. Now the bad story about

00:57:36   pro apps is Apple many, many years ago, went on a series of, uh, you know, buying sprees,

00:57:43   buying up all these pro applications to essentially make its own pro suite of stuff. Final Cut

00:57:49   Pro was bought from macro media. Maybe they bought shake and motion, uh, logic I think

00:57:56   was purchased. Um, aperture, I forget if that was purchased or they just purchased the people

00:58:01   who were writing it, uh, or hired them. But anyway, they had a bunch of pro apps that

00:58:05   they were making. I used to sell for a lot of money and one by one, Apple has lost interest

00:58:10   in those pro apps. Aperture went away. Shake went away. I think they sold something called

00:58:15   color as a color correction. Like they sold these things for hundreds of dollars trying

00:58:18   to sell into professionals and eventually Apple's like we're losing interest. Final

00:58:23   Cut somehow has survived barely. Uh, but a lot of the other ones that went away. And

00:58:28   so now when Apple buys an app like Pixelmator, any youngster who's like, wow, they're going

00:58:33   to make a Photoshop competitor. It's like, look, been there, done that. Apple had a brief

00:58:37   moment where it's like, we're going to make apps that compete with Adobe and they gave

00:58:43   up. Like it's not because the apps were bad or terrible, but the Apple stopped putting

00:58:48   money into the development of them and you will never compete with Adobe. If you do that,

00:58:51   Apple will continue to put money into Photoshop. So if you're going to compete with Photoshop,

00:58:56   you can't like make the app once and ship it and say, huh, isn't it great? Maybe we'll

00:59:01   update it again in six years, but we're not going to tell you like that's not how to compete.

00:59:04   So Apple needs to decide, do you want to make pro applications at all? If so, you could

00:59:11   make a Photoshop ish competitor product out of the Pixelmator suite of things. But if

00:59:17   you do that, anyone who's old enough to remember Aperture and so on will go, eh, no thanks.

00:59:23   Apple doesn't seem like they're really committed to this whole pro app thing. I'm not going

00:59:29   to switch my whole life to their platform and get all on board for it. Just when I'm

00:59:33   just when the finally the good version of Aperture comes out, it's the last version

00:59:36   and they're never going to make it again. And now, you know, I'm screwed. So there's

00:59:41   that sort of past trauma of pro apps, which makes anybody over a certain age look at this

00:59:46   and say there's just no way they are going to continue shipping and developing Pixelmator

00:59:52   to the degree that the Pixelmator company was. Pixelmator the company was making new

00:59:56   versions of Pixelmator Pro, improving it over time, adding, you know, when the AI features

01:00:00   came around, Pixelmator Pro was one of the first apps to have it. They have a really

01:00:03   good like, you know, equivalent of Apple's cleanup tool where you like scribble over

01:00:06   something to erase it or whatever. That's one of the first things I bought it for. It's

01:00:10   great at, right? In addition to just being a general purpose photo editor. I cannot imagine

01:00:15   Apple deciding we want to be in that business. We're going to keep developing Pixelmator

01:00:20   Pro. And even if Apple did that, everybody with a memory is looking at them and saying,

01:00:26   I think I'll take a pass. I think I'll stick with insert whatever they're using now, whether

01:00:30   it's, you know, Photoshop or Figma or any other of the big, big apps that compete in

01:00:36   that realm or something smaller like Acorn where you're like, I don't want something

01:00:40   that big and complicated or whatever. Now, if Apple does take the guts of these apps

01:00:45   and try to shove them into photos, again, especially with additions of like the cleanup

01:00:49   feature and everything, does that mean Apple's not going to take Pixelmator's AI cleanup

01:00:55   thing? And maybe it spoils for over time. We'll probably talk about some of these features

01:00:58   and how they compare later in the show. Or like, like if you look at the feature list,

01:01:06   will they say, okay, well, uh, 90% of these overlap. So which one do we take? Do we throw

01:01:11   away all the photos features for adjusting levels and curves and saturation and brightness

01:01:16   and brilliance and all those other things and highlights and shadows or whatever, and

01:01:19   swap them all out for the Pixelmator Pro equivalents? Or do we do 50 50 or do we just delete the

01:01:25   entire code base of Apple photos and replace it with Pixelmator? And how does that work

01:01:29   across platforms? Like I don't as great as Pixelmator Pro is, unless photos is going

01:01:36   to become a Pixelmator Pro caliber image editor, I don't want them to take the subset of features

01:01:43   that are in Pixelmator that are in photos and extract them from Pixelmator Pro and shove

01:01:47   them in photos. Because as a user, the result of that is the next version of photos I get

01:01:52   has all the same features, but it's code that was ripped out of another app and shoved into

01:01:58   an existing app. And it's probably buggy because of that. Not because it was buggy, but it

01:02:02   was Pixelmator Pro, but now they're just like ripping the guts out and shoving it in there.

01:02:05   And from my experience, it's not any different. Did you add any new features? Well, no, but

01:02:09   now they're Pixelmator powered. Does that make a difference to me? Are they appreciably

01:02:12   better than they were in photos? Like I don't, I don't understand this, which is why when

01:02:16   I look at it as an aqua hire, you said like they shouldn't, they probably wouldn't have

01:02:20   paid all these potential millions of dollars for developers. But there is something to

01:02:27   be said for how exactly how difficult it is to find good Mac developers. As we've said

01:02:31   many times, I'm not sure how many good Mac developers there still are inside Apple, let

01:02:36   alone out there in the world. And so this is just like a unicorn where it's like a group

01:02:40   of dedicated hardcore Mac developers familiar with Apple's platforms who are actually good

01:02:44   at making Mac apps. I think Apple does probably want those people. But yeah, it's probably

01:02:48   too much money to just pay for the people. So I really don't know where they're going

01:02:51   to use these apps for. Yeah. I mean, I think the obvious answer is to suck some of particularly

01:02:58   Photomator into photos, but I don't know. I don't know what this is about. And I don't

01:03:05   think I've used Photomator, but a couple of times I definitely do use Pixelmator as my

01:03:13   image editor of choice. But that being said, I almost never ever, ever edit images. So

01:03:19   I don't have a whole lot of experience with their stuff, but I will say that the experiences

01:03:24   I've had is that they are, as you said, Mac asked Mac apps like they really, really are

01:03:30   Mac apps. And I could imagine it as an Aqua hire, but I don't know. It seems like a whole

01:03:37   lot of money to pay and a whole lot of effort just to get people to work on your stuff.

01:03:45   I mean, it seems to me like it would be more than that, that this is more of a test. Again,

01:03:49   we don't know the actual numbers. We're just guessing because people are saying like, oh,

01:03:53   they wouldn't have needed to submit it for regulatory approval unless it was over some

01:03:56   amount. Like Apple, to be clear, no one announced how much this acquisition is for. So we don't

01:04:00   actually know. So that is an unknown. Another angle on this is how people are saying is

01:04:04   like, boy, if Pixelmator can't make it as an independent Mac software developer, how

01:04:11   can anyone, because they were so good at what they did there. You again, award-winning,

01:04:15   they made amazing apps. Everybody loved them and they can't survive as an independent company.

01:04:19   And I don't think that's the case. I think they could survive as an independent company.

01:04:23   But when Apple comes knocking with a giant bag of money, if you want a giant bag of money,

01:04:28   you take it. Like everyone has their price. I don't think Pixelmator was like, at least

01:04:32   I hope, or if it was on the verge of like financial ruin, it was mismanaged because

01:04:37   they made really good products with a not too big company. They should have been profitable

01:04:41   and sustainable. I think they were profitable and sustainable. But Apple can solve that

01:04:45   problem by showing up with a sufficiently large bag of money and saying, you know, so

01:04:49   I don't think this is a condemnation of the Mac market. It's bad for the Mac market because

01:04:53   I liked them being an independent company that caused Apple to have to compete and cause

01:04:58   Adobe to have to compete and gave me an alternative to an Adobe subscription. Like I loved when

01:05:02   they were independent. So I feel for the people like, oh, that's one of our last great independent

01:05:10   Mac software developers gone because they got absorbed by Apple. That does suck. But

01:05:14   I don't think it says anything about the viability of making good software for the Mac. I think

01:05:18   if you make good apps like Pixelmator did and sell them on the Mac platform, you can

01:05:23   make money if you do so in a way that doesn't require like 10,000 engineers over the hell

01:05:28   Twitter used to have. Right. So, yeah, I, overall, I think this is bad news. It's bad

01:05:33   news for me because I like Pixelmator Pro. It's bad news for the Mac market because I

01:05:37   took a great player off the table. It's bad news for Apple's awards because who are they

01:05:41   going to give them to now? Right. But maybe it's good news for a bunch of really good

01:05:45   developers inside Pixelmator. Meanwhile, Apple is still throwing money out the window because

01:05:51   they apparently have put $1.1 billion into Globalstar's satellite network. And that includes

01:06:00   an ownership stake. So reading from six colors, Apple satellite partner Globalstar has disclosed

01:06:04   changes to its deal with Apple, including a new influx of $1.1 billion from Apple tied

01:06:09   to capital improvements and $400 million in equity, which gives Apple a 20% stake in the

01:06:13   company. This is quite a bit of money, but it's not necessarily a huge surprise. There

01:06:17   aren't that many companies around with this, with these kinds of capabilities and by locking

01:06:21   down investment in Globalstar, Apple ensures bandwidth and access. This is the company

01:06:26   that they use for the satellite texting, satellite emergency stuff, et cetera. This is where

01:06:31   he kept asking, what is Apple going to charge for that? They're like, oh, it's free for

01:06:34   the first year, but now it's free for another year. And now it's like, yeah, we're part

01:06:38   owners of the company. So I guess this will continue to be free. This is one way to resolve

01:06:45   it. We keep saying it's difficult for them to charge for this emergency type feature

01:06:50   and we came up with all sorts of schemes and how they could charge for it, but retroactively

01:06:53   after you've been saved. So they'll charge you at the time of using it, but if you live

01:06:57   through the thing, they can send you a charge or something. But it's like, actually maybe

01:07:00   we'll just invest $1.1 billion and get a 20% stake in the satellite company. And this is

01:07:05   one of those situations, kind of like TSMC and other things where it's like, you can

01:07:10   shop around for somebody who has a bunch of satellites circling the earth or around the

01:07:15   earth if they're stationary. But anyway, there's not a lot of options, right? There's this,

01:07:22   there's Starlink, I guess. How many choices do you have? And if you're Apple and you want

01:07:28   to essentially protect yourself both by making sure that you can continue to offer this feature

01:07:34   on your product, because there's a lot of iPhones out there, and so you need a significant

01:07:37   amount of capacity potentially. So you want to say, we don't want to stop shipping this

01:07:41   feature. We build it into our phones. We want to keep shipping the feature. You can sign

01:07:44   a contract with them or something, but an even better way is to invest in the company

01:07:49   and become a part owner and that you have much more control over what they do. And you

01:07:53   want to lock that up because if some other company comes in before you and buys them

01:07:56   and kicks you out and now you can't make contracts with them or you have to deal with Elon Musk,

01:08:00   which no one wants to do, that's bad for the company. So this seems like a relatively smart

01:08:05   investment. Although I do have to say 1.1 billion seems a lot for a feature that I personally

01:08:11   view as one of those like cool, like off in the corner features of an iPhone. It's great

01:08:18   that they have it, but it's not something hopefully that everybody uses every day. I

01:08:23   know they allow you to text from it now, but like how it's really just for emergencies

01:08:26   and for people who find themselves in an area without coverage and they still want to text

01:08:29   people like that's what this is for. So it is a boon for them to put it in their products,

01:08:35   but it's not as strategic as say, you know, investing in someone to make Silicon chips

01:08:39   or like a new factory in Arizona that we might talk about in the future or whatever. So it

01:08:43   is a lot of money, but I guess space equals a lot of money. Yeah. I mean, this makes a

01:08:49   lot of sense to me and I don't, I don't blame Apple for doing it. And certainly the idea

01:08:55   of this satellite features remaining free is appealing and it seems like it would be

01:09:02   crummy, not, you know, Apple's not above it, but it seems like it would be crummy to be

01:09:06   like, well, we're perfectly happy to save your life if you're out, you know, boondocking

01:09:11   or hiking in the middle of nowhere as long as you pay for Apple one. Like that's not,

01:09:17   that's just not a great look. And they're never going to do that. They could charge

01:09:20   you retroactively, but the thing is like these satellites as amazing as they are, they're

01:09:25   never going to be a major part of data communications on phones because there's just not enough

01:09:32   bandwidth, right? It's not like, Hey, you won't need a cell provider. You'll do everything

01:09:36   over satellite. I don't think the global star satellite network, even with this $1.1 billion

01:09:40   investment has any hope of becoming like a replacement for the cell network that now

01:09:45   Apple doesn't need carriers because they do everything through satellite setting aside

01:09:48   the speed of light delays and all that other stuff or whatever, which is no small thing

01:09:52   to set aside by that because I believe they operate geostationary satellites, in which

01:09:56   case there is no way that's ever going to compete. So what I'm saying is this is, this

01:10:01   is an investment purely for the types of things that currently doing, there's no future scenario

01:10:06   where this has some amazing new use that we're not even thinking of. It's never going to

01:10:09   be high bandwidth, low latency. Like it's not going to, they're not going to stream

01:10:15   Apple TV over to everybody's phones. Like that's just not going to happen. This is purely

01:10:18   for when you absolutely need to connect and there's no other option outer space, right?

01:10:24   And that is a very, it's a great use case and it's an important one and it adds value

01:10:28   to their products, but it is never going to replace any existing thing they do. So maybe

01:10:33   1.1 billion is just pocket change from Apple. So maybe it's not a big deal, but and again,

01:10:38   with them investing in the company, maybe Apple foresees other companies wanting to

01:10:42   do the exact same type of thing, whether it's a car company or you know, Android phone seller

01:10:47   that also wants to have the same sort of SOS type capabilities, powered satellites. If

01:10:52   Apple is a part owner in the company, they get a share of that profit as well. So maybe

01:10:55   it's just a smart business move.

01:10:57   By the way, real time follow up, they're actually not geostationary. They're actually low earth

01:11:00   orbit satellites from Globalstar. I did not know that and I would not have guessed that,

01:11:03   but that means they can be significantly lower latency than geostationary ones. However,

01:11:08   it seems like they're not anywhere close to like the high bandwidth usage of something

01:11:13   like Starlink.

01:11:14   Yeah, there's just not enough of them. I mean, as many as there are there and there are too

01:11:18   many Starlink satellites, but as many as there are, there are far more cell phone towers in

01:11:23   the United States and they're closer to you. Those cell phone towers are much closer to

01:11:27   you and they're way, way more of them. So that is, it's going to be difficult to compete

01:11:31   with that with things that are flying over you in space.

01:11:34   It's also, I mean, even with Starlink, like it's still a heck of a lot cheaper to build

01:11:38   a cell phone tower than to launch satellites.

01:11:40   Yep.

01:11:41   And will remain that way for a very long time.

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01:13:47   There's been some new rumors and rumors about changed plans for future vision pro hardware.

01:13:54   Apparently Apple hasn't totally given up on it. And according to Ming-Chi Kuo production

01:14:00   of a cheaper vision pro has been delayed beyond 2027. This means Apple's only new head mounted

01:14:06   display device in 2025 will be the vision pro with an upgraded M5 processor. Additionally,

01:14:13   Mark Gurman writes, I also continue to hear that Apple is seriously considering a device

01:14:17   that offloads the computing components to an iPhone and serves as an accessory for watching

01:14:21   movies. That's something that would be roughly akin to the glasses offered by companies like

01:14:25   Xreal. So the Ming-Chi Kuo one, I don't know if this throwing in this aside about the 2025

01:14:32   one is like reinforcing a past rumor or how well sourced it is, but the cheaper vision

01:14:37   pro is what we talked about in the past. And that's why this is a change of rumored plans.

01:14:41   Again, this is all rumored, but the plan that we heard about was, oh, they're not going

01:14:45   to make another high end one. First, they're going to concentrate on the cheaper one and

01:14:48   the cheaper one should be coming. And we talked about maybe like $1,500 and how can they make

01:14:52   it cheaper and blah, blah, blah. And the cheaper one will be coming like next year or something.

01:14:56   Right. And now the rumors have changed. You know that cheaper one 2027. So it's like,

01:15:01   okay, well, if that was the only rumor when I first read this, I'm like, oh, that's not

01:15:05   good. Cause if they were, if the cheaper one is going to be the next one and the next one's

01:15:08   going to be in 2027, that means we'd be stuck with the original vision pro until 2027 with

01:15:13   no changes. That is grim. Okay. But here comes this other room where it's like, and that

01:15:17   means if the cheaper one is late to 2027, all we have is the 20, 20 fine version, which

01:15:23   is basically today's vision pro upgraded to an M five. And that's not bad, honestly. Like,

01:15:29   you know, the member of the vision of rose M two, uh, upgrade to M five, maybe it'll have

01:15:33   like an R two processor in there or something, presumably with the same screens and probably

01:15:37   around the same price or whatever. But that is a better vision pro. The rumors are that

01:15:42   we'll be able to do Apple intelligence cause it will have more Ram M five is going to be

01:15:45   massively better than the M two same resolution on the screens means that we breaking less

01:15:50   of a sweat while doing all of its stuff. Maybe it'll even get better battery life. Like that's

01:15:54   a second version of the existing vision pro the cheap one being delayed sounds real bad,

01:16:02   but if they have the essentially upgraded vision pro in 2025, I think that does show

01:16:08   basically the minimum expected level of commitment to the product. Again, ask, ask Apple about

01:16:13   the uh, max studio and Mac pro Apple's commitment to its various products, sometimes waivers,

01:16:19   but not having another vision pro product to 2027 is just untenable. People would forget

01:16:23   that it exists. Right. And of course they'd be selling the M two model or $3,000 still

01:16:27   2027, which is ridiculous because by then like the Apple pencil would have more CPU

01:16:32   power. Um, but yeah, an M five version 2095 actually doesn't sound that bad to me. I mean

01:16:37   this, I consider this the minimum to keep this product going, but like if, if most of

01:16:43   the change is just taking the existing one, upgrading the processor and maybe making a

01:16:48   few tiny tweaks around here and there, that's not going to move the needle on sales. No

01:16:53   one is looking at the current vision pro and saying, well, I would have bought it if it

01:16:56   was faster. Yeah. I mean, I think it's just, if you have to just, just what you have to

01:16:59   do for the people who already want a vision pro to not feel like they should, to not be

01:17:04   repelled by the fact that it still has an M two in it, right. You want it to get better,

01:17:09   you know, on some reasonable schedule. And so this is sort of just it, think of it this

01:17:13   way. It's just maintaining the existing product. It's not making a new vision pro. It's not

01:17:17   making a vision pro successor. It's just like, Hey, the existing vision pro every once in

01:17:20   a while we do need to update these things cause they get old. Right. And more importantly,

01:17:24   it's not going to expand the market at all. Like if I think what, what they have hopefully

01:17:29   by now learned is like if they want to expand the market for their AR VR product, uh, you

01:17:34   know, category, they need to go in a different direction in some way, whether it's a substantial

01:17:39   cheaper design or you know, the glasses or, you know, just some other direction will be

01:17:44   required. But yeah, you're right. It is nice that they will be updating this product eventually.

01:17:48   Maybe. And pushing it out the cheap one out to 2027 to me basically reads like they couldn't

01:17:53   figure out how to make a cheaper one in 2025. Like we talked about where are they going

01:17:58   to get that cost from? What components are they going to, you know, remove and scale

01:18:02   down and you can rip out all the rip out the eyeballs in the front to make the case out

01:18:06   of plastic, try to put a cheaper SOC in there. But like those screens, if they have screens

01:18:11   don't get cheaper and Apple has limited control over that, like this just, there's not a lot

01:18:16   of components you can totally remove and not a lot of ones that get cheaper. So I think

01:18:19   they just did the math and said, we can't actually make a substantially cheaper vision

01:18:24   pro. We've know they, I'm sure they want to because again, if you're gonna, if you're

01:18:27   gonna move the needle at all at this market, you have to do something. And one of the things

01:18:30   is make it way, way cheaper. And maybe they just said, we can't do it or we could make

01:18:34   it, you know, if I make it $3,000 and 3500, who cares? Like that's, that doesn't do anything.

01:18:39   So hopefully in 2027, they think they have promises from their part suppliers that will

01:18:44   be able to get you screens that are good, that are half the price of the current screens

01:18:48   and you'll get rid of the front facing eyeball screen and you'll put an M5 processor in 2027,

01:18:54   which will be plenty fast, but it'll be like a two year old chip by then. Like, I think

01:18:58   that's what that rumor means. And then Gurman's rumor about glasses that offload their stuff

01:19:02   to the phone, yada, yada, like that will obviously happen eventually. But I have trouble seeing

01:19:08   how unless Apple is just going to like throw another, like dart at the dartboard and say,

01:19:13   Hey, people sell products like this, like the X real ones where it's just glasses and

01:19:16   it's just like another way to have a screen. Why don't we try that? Sure. You can, I guess,

01:19:20   but like that's not even in the division pro family is it? Cause that's just basically

01:19:24   like screen on face. That thing's not going to be watching your fingers for tapping and,

01:19:28   and doing all it's like, it's not, it's not a vision pro. It is a way to look at movies

01:19:33   on your, on the plane in glasses that are smaller and lighter and cheaper. And I don't,

01:19:39   I mean, I haven't actually ever tried any of those products. I've seen lots of reviews

01:19:43   of them. The things that are glasses with usually cheap, not very good looking screens

01:19:49   inside of them, but it's certainly a way lighter weight way to look at a movie on a plane,

01:19:56   for example, then strap it on a gigantic vision pro headset. Like they don't look like glasses,

01:20:01   glasses, but they look like dorky, big computer. They're like, kind of like, remember those

01:20:05   things you had Mark on like the Bose. Yeah. The audio sunglasses. Yeah. They're bigger

01:20:10   than that, but not much bigger, nothing compared to a vision pro and they're way cheaper and

01:20:14   they look worse. And it's like, okay, that's a product that exists. Seriously considering

01:20:19   though, this is a German rubber, so I can't totally dismiss it cause he's usually got

01:20:22   pretty good sources, but I don't know how people would try to sell that. It's like,

01:20:26   Hey, we make this vision pro thing that does all sorts of amazing stuff, but nobody wants

01:20:29   it cause it's too expensive. Do you want a worse experience and lightweight glasses?

01:20:33   Well, honestly, I mean, I can kind of see the argument there. So, okay, two things we've

01:20:38   already talked about. Number one, the Apple watch, the first Apple watch launched with

01:20:42   all this functionality. They tried to sell it as doing a million different things and

01:20:45   we ended up learning it was really good at like two things. And that's enough of a product

01:20:49   right there. What we've learned so far with the vision pro admittedly is not much cause

01:20:53   it's still super young and super small and there's nothing there, et cetera. But what

01:20:56   we've learned so far with the vision pro is people seem to like it a lot for watching

01:21:00   movies and some people want to be able to use their Mac screen in it. Although I know

01:21:06   there's news in the beta there that's apparently better, but you know, we'll see how that plays

01:21:11   out for everybody in practice. But you know, for the most part, a large part of the, of

01:21:17   the, you know, good usage experiences of the vision pro come down to either using it as

01:21:23   a screen for something else or watching movies on it, which is a fancy way of using it as

01:21:27   a screen for something else. So if that, if it turns out that is a huge part of what people

01:21:33   want to do on this device and people keep saying, I would buy one if it was cheaper.

01:21:37   Well, if you can deliver something that gives people those use cases for a lot cheaper,

01:21:44   because again, like, you know, and the rumors that we were saying earlier about like there's

01:21:47   rumors of a cheaper vision pro, that's not to say a cheap vision pro, just a less expensive

01:21:54   one. You know, the rumors that we've heard so far about the, the full blown vision pro

01:22:00   getting cheaper over time peg the price at something like 1500 to $3,000 instead of $3,500.

01:22:09   That's still way too expensive for most people to want to buy this thing. But if most people

01:22:13   just want a fancy movie screen or a fancy external Mac display, then it turns out you

01:22:18   can do that for a lot less. There's a lot about the vision pro that you don't necessarily

01:22:21   need or that you can downsize or adjust in different ways. So if that ends up being a

01:22:25   good market for this, I think that's fine. Again, going back to our Apple TV discussion

01:22:30   earlier, computing on the vision pro, and this is something I wasn't really able to

01:22:36   say this for NDA reasons for, you know, for the lab, but this is something I felt immediately

01:22:40   when I started using the vision pro in the lab and certainly once I bought my own, I

01:22:44   felt it as well. Using, like trying to compute on the vision pro, getting, you know, using

01:22:50   apps, moving around apps, navigating, trying to get things done or, you know, certainly

01:22:54   doing any kind of text, but you know, just any kind of like working in the vision pro

01:22:58   or operating apps in the vision pro feels a lot like operating apps in the Apple TV

01:23:04   in the sense that you have a very large but kind of far away canvas. It's hard to get

01:23:10   a lot of information density in a way that's useful to you with the perspective that you

01:23:15   have. You have these kind of course input methods. You don't have a lot of input precision.

01:23:20   Text input is pretty rough. Certainly you don't want to be doing a lot of like editing,

01:23:24   moving around like fine motor movements. It's not very good at that. It feels like using

01:23:30   apps on an Apple TV. Well, what if it turns out again, like just like I was saying earlier,

01:23:34   the Apple TV has the hardware capability to be a gaming platform, a real estate pricing

01:23:40   platform, a shopping platform, but what people actually end up doing with it, what it's actually

01:23:45   best at and easiest to do on it is watching video. But what if the vision pro, what if

01:23:50   it turns out that what most people want to do with immersive VR glasses is either play

01:23:57   games, which Apple we know is not going to be amazing at, or watch immersive content

01:24:02   or use it as a screen for something else? I think that outcome not only is likely, I

01:24:08   think that's fine. Certainly that will change what the product should be and maybe some

01:24:13   of the things they've invested in won't end up panning out in that way, but that is very

01:24:19   possibly how this category will end up and that's fine. If it ends up that they mostly

01:24:25   sell much less expensive glasses or headsets that are mostly just being relatively simple

01:24:35   screens, that's still a perfectly fine market. This whole market with AR and VR, obviously

01:24:42   there's been all this news with META's glasses they came out with and the weird Snapchat

01:24:47   things they came out with, or META didn't come out with them, the glasses they demoed

01:24:51   and the Snapchat things. You look at what are we working towards with all of this huge

01:24:58   investment with AR and VR, but mostly AR now, what are we working towards with all of that?

01:25:06   What demand are we trying to solve with these products? And I think that the tech industry

01:25:12   that is making these so far has not done a great job of convincing me that people want

01:25:19   what this offers. They're convincing me this is really cool. They're making things

01:25:23   that are really cool, the demo really well, but then when you actually get one, maybe

01:25:30   you use it for a few days and then it's like, "Hmm, well, my work is better on my

01:25:36   laptop or my Mac, my portable needs are better done by my phone, my movie watching is better

01:25:43   done on my TV because I watch it with other people or whatever." What we're finding

01:25:48   is we're putting a whole bunch of massive investment and product development and money

01:25:56   and hype and time and attention into this dream of when we finally get AR glasses, it'll

01:26:04   be amazing. But I actually don't like, I think we might be putting too much on that

01:26:10   as an industry in terms of our expectations and our attention. In the same way that, again,

01:26:14   the Apple Watch was new, everyone was like, "This is going to replace phones." And

01:26:20   it just didn't and won't. That doesn't mean it's a failure as a product, it just

01:26:24   means that the role of this product was not what everyone expected at first. And everyone

01:26:29   expected it to replace phones, it will never do that. It's kind of not physically right

01:26:33   for that. What if AR and VR glasses are mostly just good for watching movies? That's not

01:26:41   bad. It's just not the next big thing and that's okay. There's room in tech for

01:26:46   lots of different things that do lots of different roles. But it seems like everybody wants AR

01:26:52   to be like the next big thing that replaces everything. I don't know. When you look

01:26:57   at the physical realities of this, I just don't see it.

01:27:00   So the tech's just not there yet. I feel like the things like Xreal and stuff are kind

01:27:04   of like, "Let's take this product and meet the tech where it's at today." And

01:27:10   there's the tech there to do something like evolution pro? Not at a reasonable price and

01:27:14   a comfortable thing. So what can we do with today's tech that makes a product that is

01:27:20   actually somewhat attractive and useful? So cut out everything you can't do well and

01:27:24   just, "Oh, I just want to watch movies on a plane and I don't want to do it on a

01:27:28   laptop." So that's where you get these glasses. And I'm not sure if that product is

01:27:31   super successful, but it is really cutting down and saying, "We'd prefer to do much

01:27:35   more but we can't. We literally can't. The tech is not there." And no matter how

01:27:38   much money you spend, it just gets bigger and bulkier and heavier and the balance is

01:27:42   off. So where is the sweet spot with current tech? It's kind of like Palm OS versus the

01:27:46   Newton, right? The Palm was worse, but the Newton was too big, too expensive, too heavy.

01:27:51   It did so much more than Palm. The OS was so much better. It didn't matter. It wasn't

01:27:55   as good a product. So the Xreal, I feel like, is trying to find that type of thing.

01:27:58   But with Apple investigating this, unlike with the Apple Watch, where they're like,

01:28:02   "Oh, we introduced this product. It's basically like a little tiny iPhone and it can do all

01:28:05   these things." And then they found out the things that people want to use it for. But

01:28:09   the platform didn't really have to change radically. It was still called Apple Watch.

01:28:12   It still ran Watch OS. Obviously, they changed Watch Kit to whatever the successor was. But

01:28:17   in general, you could still call it Apple Watch and it was fine, right? With them coming

01:28:22   out with something like this, like the Xreal thing, which doesn't watch where your hands

01:28:26   are, doesn't track your eyeballs, doesn't let you use your virtual Mac, is that even

01:28:30   the Vision Pro platform? Does it even run Vision OS? Can you sell that as a vision with

01:28:35   no Pro suffix? Or can you say, "Actually, this is the Apple Studio Display eyeball."

01:28:42   Is it just a display? Is it even the same platform? Which it's fine if it's not.

01:28:47   Who cares if it is? Is it this platform that has no content and no software? Who cares?

01:28:51   I know, but that's what I'm saying. Would they even try to connect it, branding-wise

01:28:57   and computing-wise? Would it even run apps? Or would it just be a screen? I'm not going

01:29:04   to say when you get it so wrong like they did with the Vision Pro. But if you decide,

01:29:08   "Let's try a different avenue," and that avenue is sufficiently different from the one you

01:29:12   tried before, you do have that question of, "Wait, are we rolling out a new platform?

01:29:18   Is this a new platform? Or are we going to try to say that this is the same platform?"

01:29:23   They kind of did that with the home accessories. Granted, they have no screens and people don't

01:29:27   really know it's running Audio OS or running a variant of TV OS or whatever. It's kind

01:29:31   of hidden. But they have that same thing. We'll see what they do with the home device

01:29:35   that is running with the screen. Is that a new platform? Or are we going to just pretend

01:29:40   that's the same platform as the HomePod and the HomePod mini, even though that platform

01:29:43   has changed a lot under the covers? The thing with the screen, what platform is that? What

01:29:47   app does it run? With the whole backdoor of, "It's not really another platform. It's just

01:29:52   a thing that runs iPad and/or iPhone apps." Macs run iPad apps. Vision Pro runs iPad apps.

01:30:00   Is the Mac and the Vision Pro an iPad? No, but that's the way for us to take a platform

01:30:03   that actually has apps for it and shove it onto other platforms that don't. It's so weird.

01:30:09   This is just a rumor. They're considering it or whatever. That would be the thing I'd

01:30:13   be watching for here. Not so much the product that they roll out, because again, there's

01:30:16   a bunch of existing products on the market like this. I don't think they're setting the

01:30:18   market on fire, but they are certainly cheap enough for someone to buy as just an impulse

01:30:25   purchase for a toy. People seem to like them and they're cool. Is it better than watching

01:30:29   a movie on your laptop on the plane? I kind of like watching a video on my OLED iPad.

01:30:37   A cheap pair of glasses is honestly not going to have the image quality as my very expensive

01:30:46   OLED iPad does. Then again, it's private and it's smaller than an iPad and it stays with

01:30:51   me wherever I look, so it does have some advantages. I think Apple is going to, if they pursue

01:30:57   this, they're going to have some very difficult decisions to make about what exactly they're

01:31:01   doing. The thing I suggested before of saying, "This isn't a platform. This is a monitor."

01:31:07   That is kind of like sidestepping it all and just saying, "Look, it's a monitor. We'll

01:31:11   update it every six years. It comes with an A13 inside it. It runs a variant of iOS, but

01:31:15   basically it's just a really cool screen that goes on your face."

01:31:17   It's no power button.

01:31:18   Yeah, exactly. That is saying, "We are not ready to do AR, but we are ready to put screens

01:31:24   in your eyeballs."

01:31:25   A while ago, we floated the idea on this show. I think every time Apple is rumored to update

01:31:30   the Apple Watch SE and then it comes out and the price doesn't go down or it doesn't get

01:31:35   an update. I think we frequently float the idea, "Does the Apple Watch SE or does the

01:31:40   low-end Apple Watch even need to run apps?" If you look at other wearables that compete

01:31:47   with the Apple Watch, obviously there's the Android smartwatches that have feature parity

01:31:53   and stuff, or at least in the ballpark.

01:31:56   But then also there's this whole category of things like Fitbits, like smaller wearables

01:32:00   that are mostly just activity trackers that either have no screen, like a ring, or they

01:32:06   have smaller screens that are basically just displaying the time in your step count or

01:32:11   something like that, much simpler devices that are not running full-blown third-party

01:32:16   app platforms in them.

01:32:18   Those are able to be substantially smaller, substantially cheaper, and therefore they

01:32:22   get a huge market share.

01:32:24   Well, there's not much pressure on Apple to do that necessarily for the watch because

01:32:29   the Apple Watch is a hit. It has been successful and has been selling in large volumes since

01:32:35   it was introduced. But what if the only way they could make the Apple Watch as the platform

01:32:40   that they shipped with software and apps and everything, such as they were at the beginning,

01:32:44   but what if the only way for them to do that was for it to be $2,000 and have a bunch of

01:32:50   trade-offs also? Then it wouldn't have sold very well and then maybe there might have

01:32:56   been more pressure on them to be like, "Okay, listen. If you want to make a smart wearable

01:33:00   that people buy, you have to cut it down. It has to be simpler." And then maybe they

01:33:05   would make something like a Fitbit.

01:33:08   That's kind of the situation that Vision Pro is in. They shot for the sky with this thing.

01:33:13   They put in so much tech and the software platform is quite advanced and there's so

01:33:19   much there. There's engineering, there's amazing hardware, amazing software. The capabilities

01:33:24   that it has are just incredible, but that gave it some really bad trade-offs and made

01:33:31   it very expensive. Meanwhile, there are industries, if you look at the smaller gaming headsets

01:33:39   or things like these extra glasses, which yes, they are just screens in your face and

01:33:42   that's not a very big industry, but you start to see if there is pressure from down below

01:33:47   in the price curve for these other products that people are choosing instead of the Apple

01:33:54   Vision Pro and Apple has this giant platform built into this thing that's not really working

01:34:01   very well for them, then maybe the answer really is to make something simpler.

01:34:06   Maybe if everyone is saying, "We want this to be not only cheaper, but we need it to

01:34:10   be a lot cheaper than what the current option is," they're not going to get there by retaining

01:34:16   all of the functionality of the Vision Pro as we know it today. They can either wait

01:34:22   a very long time for all of that approach to get cheaper and of course they can revise

01:34:28   the hardware to be cheaper, things like different manufacturing techniques, simpler materials,

01:34:32   maybe get rid of the weird external eyeball display, stuff like that. There are ways to

01:34:36   make it a little bit cheaper, but if they need to make it a lot cheaper, that's going

01:34:40   to take a very long time unless they dramatically cut scope.

01:34:45   Now granted, Apple is a very patient company, so it would not surprise me if they really

01:34:50   did just want to wait 10 years for those little tiny screens to get cheaper or whatever. That

01:34:55   might be their plan. I would be surprised if the product lasted that long if that's

01:35:00   their only plan, but hopefully it's not. Also, you can look at does this category of

01:35:07   product need to be what we shop for? They were so ambitious with trying to get us to

01:35:13   all start talking about computing. Is it ambient computing? Is that what we call it?

01:35:18   Spatial computing. Spatial, that's it. I already forgot the term.

01:35:21   It's been a week. Spatial computing, that's the term. No one said spatial computing before

01:35:28   Apple did. That was not a term anybody used. Or since.

01:35:32   Right. But what if the whole concept of spatial computing was not the right direction to go?

01:35:38   That's what I'm saying. If you try to compute in the Vision Pro in regular productivity,

01:35:45   switch around in apps kind of way, it's not very good for that. What if that's just

01:35:50   the wrong approach? And what if the right approach is something much simpler, like just

01:35:54   making it mostly about video playback or whatever? I don't think that's unreasonable to consider.

01:35:59   Or the right approach for this time. The right approach for this time and for this current

01:36:05   state of technology. I think Apple should continue to pursue the high end because that's

01:36:08   how you eventually get to the good version of that. But it's too expensive now. So

01:36:12   what can you do with existing tech? What is the Palm Pilot version of this?

01:36:15   Again, with this rumor, another thing leaning in the direction of it being more like a monitor

01:36:19   is they're basically saying offload computing to the phone. But you don't want your phone

01:36:23   doing that much heavy lifting in service of projecting an image onto your glasses. But

01:36:31   if you just ask it to project video, if you're watching a TV show or a movie or a YouTube

01:36:35   video, well there's hardware decoding for the video and that is actually one of the

01:36:38   lighter things that your phone can do. It doesn't have to show the video on its screen

01:36:42   so it's saving on battery life by not lighting up its screen, right? It's using the battery

01:36:46   that's in your glasses. But it's just, it's doing networking, it's downloading the video

01:36:51   or if it's already downloaded it's streaming it off the SSD, it's decoding the compressed

01:36:54   video, it's sending the image, right? Anything more than that. Where you're asking the phone

01:36:59   to track objects in 3D space and do stuff that the Vision Pro does to make a stable

01:37:03   floating window in front of you, your phone battery is going to get slaughtered. I mean,

01:37:08   hell, the Vision Pro with a huge battery that's bigger than the iPhone itself, two hours of

01:37:13   battery life. No one is going to want to sacrifice their phone battery life. That's why we're

01:37:15   saying with the Orion glasses where it's a separate puck or whatever, it'll be that way

01:37:19   for a while yet because what we ask these glasses to do in the sort of maximal Orion

01:37:24   or Vision Pro type feature set is just too computationally expensive. It will burn your

01:37:30   phone's battery and no one wants to spend their battery on that. But if it's just watching

01:37:34   video, I think people will, first of all, we know people will use their phone battery

01:37:38   for that because they literally watch movies on their phone on the plane and that's lighting

01:37:41   up the screen and sometimes they're using the phone's speaker which blows my mind because

01:37:44   you cannot hear anything on planes. But anyway, people do it. You hear them on the subway,

01:37:48   they've got their phones, they're blaring audio, they're watching video. It's rude but

01:37:52   it also kills their phone battery but they do it. That's what they want to use their

01:37:54   phone battery for. But yeah, a glasses device that uses the phone for compute, I think the

01:38:01   correct balance would be, "Hey phone, all you got to do is networking and video decoding

01:38:05   and then you just project to me."

01:38:06   Yeah, I don't know how I feel about this. I don't think that Apple wants to admit defeat

01:38:15   on the Vision Pro. I don't think they want to go that much simpler because when they

01:38:21   simplified the Apple Watch, the hardware was largely the same and actually got more complicated.

01:38:26   It was the software that they focused. And I agree that using the Vision Pro as a computing

01:38:34   platform in my personal experience is trash when you don't have a TV, when you don't have

01:38:40   a keyboard connected. And it's not stellar when you don't have a keyboard connected.

01:38:45   And for me, the only time the Vision Pro was really great as a computing platform was when

01:38:52   it was simply a monitor for my Mac. And I have not yet tried this new version of the

01:38:57   display where you can get wide and I think ultra-wide versions of the display of your

01:39:02   Mac's display. It sounds incredible but it requires a beta of Mac OS which I am not going

01:39:07   to be messing with as well as the beta of Vision OS which I would mess with. But the

01:39:13   only time that the Vision Pro has really been a productivity tool for me was as a monitor

01:39:17   for my Mac. And a lot of that is probably because I'm an old man who just prefers using

01:39:21   the Mac. But I think a lot of that is because it's an imprecise tool. It's just not as precise

01:39:28   as a Mac is or an iPad or an iPhone. And so embracing what it is or what it's best at,

01:39:37   which is to say a really, really nice screen that you happen to be able to strap to your

01:39:40   head, I get that. But I just, I don't know, I find it hard to believe that Apple would

01:39:45   completely and totally get rid of basically all the smarts and just have a dumb display.

01:39:50   Which makes me wonder, okay, what's the Apple way of doing a display such that it's smart

01:39:56   but not quite as smart as a Vision Pro? And I don't have an answer for that. That's why

01:40:00   Apple is Apple and I'm just talking about it.

01:40:02   That's like a phone accessory. That's like an attachment to your phone sales. And by

01:40:05   the way, with the Apple Watch SE example, that's kind of an example of what I imagine

01:40:10   Apple is currently planning to do with the big expensive Vision Pro. Because today's

01:40:14   Apple Watch SE is massively more powerful than the original Apple Watch, right? What

01:40:20   they basically did was, let's just keep making Apple Watches until we can make a cheap one

01:40:25   that is actually way more powerful than the first one that we rolled out, just due to

01:40:28   the advance of technology. The screens are better, the battery life is better, it's thinner,

01:40:32   it's lighter. Like they just waited many, many, many years. And lo and behold, we have

01:40:36   an Apple Watch SE that didn't have to go like the ex-real rumored saying like, "We gotta

01:40:41   make a cut down version of it. It's gotta compete with Fitbit." They're like, "Nah,

01:40:44   we'll just keep making Apple Watches. We'll just keep plugging away. And Apple Watch is

01:40:48   an Apple Watch. There's no platform bifurcation. There's no limited version. It only does certain

01:40:52   stuff. We'll just patiently sit here." Because as Marco pointed out, the first one wasn't,

01:40:56   with the exception of the gold one, thousands of dollars, right? The first one was in the

01:40:59   ballpark price-wise. And they just did like they did with the iPhone. Mature the product,

01:41:05   diversifying the product line. Eventually you can make a pretty good Apple Watch for

01:41:08   cheaper and just keep iterating on that. And lo and behold, the Apple Watch SE now is,

01:41:12   would have been amazing if you had taken it back in time to the original Apple Watch introduction.

01:41:16   I think Apple would love to do that with Vision Pro. They're just many years away from getting

01:41:20   there. But in the meantime, the Vision Pro is so much farther away from the bullseye

01:41:24   than the Apple Watch was, I can imagine them considering things like this. Again, this

01:41:27   is just a vague rumor that Apple is seriously considering it. And Apple was so slowly, even

01:41:32   if they did roll it out, I'm not sure how they'd do it. But when I pictured it in my

01:41:35   head, I pictured it as an iPhone accessory that is essentially a monitor that only has

01:41:42   enough smarts to communicate with the thing that is rendering the video. And that's basically

01:41:45   all I use it for. And for that purpose, Casey, when you're like, "Oh, I want to play and

01:41:49   I want to take out my Vision Pro for my giant backpack and put it on and be that guy." Even

01:41:53   if the video quality, even if the image quality wasn't quite as good as the Vision Pro, I

01:41:58   think you might prefer these little monitor for your phone things to watch a movie on

01:42:04   a plane simply because they're so much smaller and lighter and the thing itself would be

01:42:07   cheaper. And if the image quality isn't quite as good, that's fine. It's still better than

01:42:11   watching on your tiny phone screen on a tray table.

01:42:13   All right, thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and One Passport extended

01:42:18   access management. And thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join us at

01:42:23   www.atp.fm/join. One of the many perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus

01:42:28   topic that is exclusive to members. This week in Overtime, we'll be talking about our experiences

01:42:33   so far with what's been released from Apple Intelligence. So you can hear all about our

01:42:38   Apple Intelligence experiences so far in Overtime by joining at www.atp.fm/join. Thanks everybody,

01:42:44   and we'll talk to you next week.

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01:43:44   [music]

01:43:49   All right. Let me start by reminding everyone, this is going to be group therapy for the

01:43:58   three of us. If you're not interested, that's fine. If you disagree with the way we feel

01:44:04   about this election, that's fine, I guess. You don't need to tell us about it, that's

01:44:11   fine. You can skip this chapter. This is why chapters exist. Just move right along. But

01:44:17   I think the three of us need this for the three of us, and hopefully maybe it'll be

01:44:21   a little cathartic to at least one of you. Last night, I was watching the coverage, and

01:44:30   as early as like 8, 8.30 Eastern, I was like, "This doesn't feel good." And by 9.30 Eastern,

01:44:40   which is when the first real big batch of polling started coming in properly, Aaron

01:44:46   and I looked at each other and we were like, "I don't think I want to stay up for this."

01:44:51   I was planning to stay up for me because we typically go up on a school night at like

01:44:54   10ish at the latest, and I was thinking I was going to stay up until like 11 or maybe

01:44:58   midnight and just ride this baby out and watch it come in. I was mostly excited for it, to

01:45:03   be honest with you. And 9.30, the two of us looked at each other and we were like, "Mm,

01:45:08   I don't like how this feels. I'm just going to go to bed." And we went to bed. I slept

01:45:12   like trash, and at about 5, I gave up and woke up, looked at the news and saw, "Oh

01:45:18   no. Oh no." And by the time I actually hauled myself out of bed at like 6.30ish, what was

01:45:25   a theoretical ending became an official in the terms of like the AP called it, CNN called

01:45:31   it, they called it for Trump. And I've been really sad. I've been really sad all day.

01:45:40   I've been really dejected all day. I've been really worried all day. Not as much about

01:45:47   me, particularly, but I'm worried a fair bit for the women in my life. I'm not too terribly

01:45:59   concerned for Aaron because we are officially done having babies. We are surgically done

01:46:03   with having babies. So short of something very unusual happening, all of the baby-related

01:46:08   stuff, I'm not too worried about. But there's a lot of women's healthcare that is not strictly

01:46:12   about baby-making, despite what many men seem to believe. And that concerns me. And I'm

01:46:17   very concerned for Michaela. She'll be 10 when this, well, she'll be 10 four years from

01:46:23   now. We'll see if that's the end of this term of presidency. I'm worried for her. But the

01:46:31   people I'm really worried for are the people that don't look like me. And I'm very scared

01:46:39   for them. And I am at a loss for what to do. I've been interrogating within myself and

01:46:45   talking with friends about like, how did we get here? And we can talk about that if the

01:46:49   two of you want to. I don't have any strong answers. I have theories, but no strong answers.

01:46:55   But I'm just, I'm really sad. I'm really sad that we as a country have decided that this

01:47:03   is what we want. And you know, even despite our full-throated endorsement last episode,

01:47:09   which I stand behind, I think all three of us could make passionate arguments. And, well,

01:47:15   let me just speak for myself. I can make a passionate argument that Kamala was not a

01:47:20   stellar choice, but it was the choice we had. And so that's the choice I went with. And

01:47:26   I, I feel like it's hard for me to wrap my head around and it's hard for me to figure

01:47:34   out, how do I tell my kids that a man who is convicted of how many felonies, a man who

01:47:44   at least suggested, if not caused an insurrection on the Capitol of the United States of America,

01:47:49   that, you know, seems to be saying very, very full-throatedly that he would like to prosecute

01:47:58   or otherwise imprison or get rid of the people who are, he considers his enemies, be they

01:48:04   domestic or foreign. I just, how can I look at a man who's a pathological liar, a man

01:48:10   who's cognitively falling apart. How can I look to my kids and say, there are consequences

01:48:17   for your actions when, as far as I can tell, he's never had a consequence for his action

01:48:21   other than failing upwards. And, and how do, how do I, how do I accept that half of the

01:48:29   country is enthusiastic about this? And again, I have some theories, but it's just hard to

01:48:35   wrap my head around. And, you know, we've got, we got some feedback from last week's

01:48:39   episode. Most of it was very positive and I very much appreciate it. Some of it was not

01:48:44   so positive, but thankfully it was mostly presented with respect, which I appreciated.

01:48:51   Um, but you know, a couple of the people who wrote us were like, you know, I couldn't believe

01:48:56   that anyone could vote for Joe Biden. I couldn't believe that anyone would vote for him. Like

01:49:00   I feel like our country is going down the tube when we elected Joe Biden. And I don't

01:49:04   doubt that that's how they felt, but like I tried to, I tried to wrap my head around

01:49:09   what the hell, why, why did you feel that way? And I got no answers. Like I just got

01:49:14   no answers. Like the man was, was especially this year, this election cycle, you know,

01:49:18   he bowed out because he was also cognitively falling apart. But I don't think Joe Biden

01:49:23   was a bad guy. Whereas Trump is a bad man. And like, I don't know where do we, where

01:49:30   do we go from here? What do we, what do we tell the women in minorities and in, you know,

01:49:35   the LGBTQIA community, like what do we tell these people? What do we do other than try

01:49:40   to defend them when we can? And what the f*ck do we do?

01:49:44   This is obviously going to be a much bigger topic than we can cover. My feeling on this

01:49:50   right now is I'm just massively depressed about it. I am fortunate that I don't typically

01:49:55   suffer from depression. Um, but I certainly feel depressed about this right now.

01:50:00   Yeah. Likewise.

01:50:01   You know, like, like, you know, I woke up this morning and, and just couldn't do anything

01:50:07   like, and I still, you know, I'm going to be like this for a while probably. Um, just,

01:50:13   you know, hard to focus on anything, hard to do anything. Um, certainly hard to be motivated

01:50:21   to do anything and hard to think about anything else. Um, you know, I think right now I'm

01:50:27   in coping mode. Um, you know, this is this, this pretty bad thing that has happened. Um,

01:50:33   you know, and, and the reality is like the, whoever the president is affects different

01:50:40   people in different ways in your day to day life. For most Americans, it won't affect

01:50:44   you much at all. Um, in, in, you know, everyday ways. It will probably affect you in, in kind

01:50:50   of big picture long term ways in lots of ways that are, that are not good. Um, and, and

01:50:57   if, if you are one of these people who is only being affected in bigger picture long

01:51:01   term ways, you are lucky and you are privileged. Um, because there are a lot of people who

01:51:06   were affected in much more significant ways, you know, right from the start. Um, right

01:51:11   now I'm, I don't want to even try to address that because there is just no way to, to give

01:51:16   it justice. Um, right now I'm in coping mode and everyone copes differently. Um, I would

01:51:23   encourage you as not a licensed psychotherapist, but instead as a person who talks about computers

01:51:31   on the internet, um, so take this with a grain of salt. Uh, I would encourage you to let

01:51:37   yourself feel your feelings. Don't try to hold it in. Don't try to hide it. Don't try

01:51:43   to follow what other people are telling you to feel. Whatever you feel, let yourself feel

01:51:48   it. Don't, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't at this point start pointing fingers and saying, this

01:51:53   is where we went wrong. This is where the campaign or the candidate was too wrong or

01:51:58   whatever. Like I, this, this is not a productive time to do that right now. Just let yourself

01:52:04   feel it. If you, if you are mad, be mad. If you're sad, be sad. If you want to be furious,

01:52:10   if you want to be despondent, be despondent. This is the lyrics of a terrible song. Um,

01:52:16   figure out, you know, right now this is, you know, we were just hurt significantly. Deal

01:52:22   with the pain, deal with it. Like don't, don't just try to shove it down and process it later.

01:52:27   No, process it now. Uh, this is, this is what's going on right now for you. Um, you know,

01:52:32   and I, you know, you've got to figure out, you know, what, what is helpful to your feelings

01:52:37   and mood and what is not and have an open mind to that. So, you know, one thing I have

01:52:42   found so far, things that do not help me include reading the news because I know it's bad.

01:52:50   I don't need to keep reading articles telling me how bad it is. I'm very aware of how bad

01:52:55   it is. Uh, we went through this already in 2016 through 2020. We, we went through this.

01:53:02   We've seen roughly how this is going to go. Now in some ways, I mean in some ways it's

01:53:09   less of a shock because this happened already and we can expect largely many of the same

01:53:17   things to happen in the second term than what happened as what happened in the first term.

01:53:22   It's probably going to be a lot of similarities. If you are like me in the sense that reading

01:53:26   the news does not help you feel better about anything or move on with your life in a significant

01:53:31   actionable way. What we saw the first time was basically a constant barrage of fire and

01:53:39   motion in scandals. Every day there was a different scandal. It was overwhelming. It

01:53:46   was basically a DDoS attack on everyone's attention because there was no like one scandal

01:53:52   for anyone to focus on for more than a few days at a time because after a few days there

01:53:56   will be another one. Can you believe what he did or said today? Like that just, that

01:54:02   kept happening like almost every day. That's going to happen again. We're going to have

01:54:07   that just overwhelming barrage, that DDoS attack of just scandal after scandal, lie

01:54:14   after lie, you know, awful unethical or illegal thing he does after an awful unethical legal

01:54:20   thing. It's just going to be a constant parade of those things. That's how he operates and

01:54:26   that's going to, nothing bad will happen to him as a result. You know, Casey you said

01:54:31   how you're going to explain to your kids that this person can, you know, commit literal

01:54:36   crimes and have no consequences and the answer is rich and powerful people often don't

01:54:42   pay for their, they often don't pay consequences for their actions. Like that's just the

01:54:45   reality of the world and that's what's happening here. He's a very powerful person

01:54:50   with a lot of very powerful friends and an important lesson to learn is that those people

01:54:56   don't often pay consequences, especially Republican politicians. Their base does not

01:55:03   hold them to those standards. So they like, Republicans do not care what their candidates

01:55:09   do as long as they win. They don't care about any other factor. Priority number one

01:55:14   above all else, above morals, above religion, above legal, like the laws, certainly above

01:55:21   standards, number one is winning and they don't care what their candidates do or what

01:55:26   they're like. Now in terms of what people, you know, trying to understand what people

01:55:32   voted for here, they voted for a worldview. You know, the people who vote for him are

01:55:40   not looking at every single action and saying, "Well, I wonder if I can still vote for

01:55:44   him even though he lied 14 times in the appearance he made or whatever." No one who is voting

01:55:51   for him is thinking that way. It's tribal, it's almost a religious style thing, it's

01:55:57   a worldview. Like, they are voting for a worldview. Now, they have been convinced that their worldview

01:56:05   is the correct one. And everyone has different reasons why and most of those reasons, honestly,

01:56:12   are like factually wrong or at least massively distorted. But the reality is they were sold

01:56:20   a worldview successfully and they voted for it. And that's what we're going to have

01:56:25   to contend with. That, you know, if people knew exactly what they were getting here,

01:56:28   they knew they were voting for a liar, a fraud, a criminal, a rapist, somebody who did many

01:56:35   worse things. They knew that, but they were voting for the worldview. And we're also

01:56:41   I think going to have to cope with the fact that Democrats don't act as a block together.

01:56:48   We never do. And so a huge challenge Democrats always face is how do we get more people who

01:56:56   are already Democrats to vote for our candidate? And that's a problem that the Republicans

01:57:00   don't have. Their people will show up and vote for any criminal as long as they bear

01:57:07   that party name because it's all about winning first and anything else is secondary. But

01:57:12   again, that's not how Democrats work. So Democrats need a different strategy. You know,

01:57:16   I'm not a smart enough person in politics to be able to say what they should do next,

01:57:21   but we've seen over and over again, you know, how we lose and maybe we can figure out, you

01:57:28   know, new things from there. But, you know, the reality is half the country is not, you

01:57:34   know, stupid or nuts. Like they were sold a bill of goods and we have to figure out,

01:57:40   you know, if we're on the other side of that, we have to figure out how we can reach

01:57:43   them at all or how we can reach our own people in enough numbers to overcome them. And that's

01:57:48   something to do over the next four years. But in the meantime, you got to find out what

01:57:53   helps you. You know, how do you get through this? You know, I mentioned earlier for me

01:57:58   reading the news does not help me. You know, there's a reason why I did not read much

01:58:02   news between 2016 and 2020 because it was just destroying my mental state. It was making

01:58:10   me just angry and stressed and afraid all the time. By the way, you asked earlier, Casey,

01:58:17   why somebody could possibly feel very strongly about Joe Biden. I honestly, I agree. I, you

01:58:23   know, I don't know why people could possibly hate him so much. He seems like a really kind

01:58:29   of neutral person to me. But the reality is that's what they have. People on that political

01:58:35   side of the aisle, they have been fed a constant worldview stream of anger and fear and claims

01:58:45   that make them hate this very neutral, like very milquetoast kind of candidate that makes

01:58:51   them hate him. They can't stomach him because they've been sold this, this incredibly

01:58:57   like severe worldview. I mean, Trump's entire campaign was basically anger and hate and

01:59:05   xenophobia. Just that was everything he ever said was angry. He was constantly talking

01:59:10   about how much America sucks. That was his entire campaign is everything sucks and is

01:59:16   awful and it'll get worse if you don't elect me. That was his entire campaign, but that

01:59:20   reached enough people to matter. So again, these people, it's hard to understand them

01:59:28   when we're on the other side of the aisle, but they got there for a reason. And you know,

01:59:34   so anyway, all this is to say, find ways right now, it's a fresh wound. Right now, stop

01:59:41   the bleeding. Find ways to cope. Experience your feelings. If you want to feel a certain

01:59:49   way, let yourself feel that way. If you want to be mad for a while, be mad for a while.

01:59:53   If you want to go into mourning for a while, go into mourning for a while. Figure out what

01:59:57   helps and what doesn't. So for me, reading all the news does not help. Reading social

02:00:02   networks does not help. You'll probably be seeing even less of me on the social networks

02:00:08   as you were already seeing, which already was not a lot recently. One thing that does

02:00:12   help me a lot is I'm a very social person. Being around people helps me a lot. Exercise

02:00:20   and especially spending a lot of time outside. Today I took a big walk. It was a nice weather

02:00:27   day, and I just took a huge walk. Even though I picked the wrong shoes, and they were a

02:00:32   little bit too tight, and it was a little uncomfortable, my feet were a little bit hot

02:00:36   too, but it didn't matter. I was outside. That helped a lot, spending a lot of time.

02:00:42   And then finally, I found that when I withdraw from the news cycle and put my time and attention

02:00:51   into making things or doing work, like being productive or being creative or producing

02:00:59   output, that also helps me a lot. Find whatever that is that helps you. It's not going to

02:01:06   necessarily always be obvious, especially if you don't frequently need to deal with

02:01:11   this kind of feeling. But what will probably help, honestly, I think what helps me I think

02:01:17   will have a lot of overlap and what helps a lot of people, not everyone is social like

02:01:21   me, but certainly I think most people tend to feel better with exercise outside time

02:01:25   and productive time, and most people tend to feel worse doom scrolling social networks

02:01:30   and reading terrible news. So maybe if you don't know what to do, maybe take that as

02:01:35   a starting point. But otherwise, look, we'll get through this. We got through it the first

02:01:40   time. It was not a cakewalk. There were a lot of problems that resulted. There's a

02:01:46   lot of damage that was done the first time that will not be undone for a long time. That's

02:01:51   going to happen again. We just have to be prepared for it. I rode the ferry today and

02:02:00   the ferry being a boat on Long Island has a giant American flag on the top. They always

02:02:05   do. I was listening to my headphones, listening to music, trying to get my mind off of things

02:02:10   and I happened to look up at the sky and there was the flagpole flying the American flag

02:02:14   boldly and proudly. I got to say I had very mixed feelings about that when I saw it in

02:02:18   that moment. I was like, man, this is some complicated feelings I'm feeling right

02:02:24   now, looking at the flag of my country on this particular day with these feelings. But

02:02:29   America is about democracy. And as I mentioned last time, anything that tries to subvert

02:02:37   or suppress that is the most anti-American thing you could possibly do. In this case,

02:02:43   this was by everything we know now, it seems like a very clear democratic result that this

02:02:50   is what the voters voted for. This is America and it doesn't always go your way and it

02:02:56   doesn't always progress. It doesn't always make positive forward progress or forward

02:03:01   motion. There's bumps along the way. There's regressions. That's what happens. That

02:03:05   has definitely happened right now. And we're going to have to just keep plowing forward

02:03:11   and figure out what's next. And it's going to be messy and it's going to suck for

02:03:16   a while for a lot of people. There's going to be damage done that will not be able to

02:03:20   be undone for decades. That is what happens with America. And so we're going to be in

02:03:26   a dark time for a while and hopefully sometime down the road, we will come out of it.

02:03:31   Make me feel better, Jon.

02:03:33   For anyone who's listening to this who is on the opposite side of us and somehow managed

02:03:39   to make it this point, congratulations on your hate listening.

02:03:45   Whatever email you're writing, you can just delete it right now.

02:03:48   No, they just want to hear the rest of the things you say so they know exactly how much

02:03:51   they should hate us. But I bet one of the things you're thinking is like, this is so

02:03:55   overblown. You're so sad because your team lost the Super Bowl. Who cares? Get over it.

02:04:01   You're depressed. That's ridiculous. What's the big deal?

02:04:04   To try to explain like, you know, we're saying our real feelings here, but you may think

02:04:11   our feelings are ridiculous, but to try to explain why this is different. Like I'm old

02:04:14   enough to have lived through the election of many presidents that I didn't want to win

02:04:18   the election. Right. I've lived through many Republicans. I didn't want any of them to

02:04:22   win. They did. Right. None of them felt like Trump. You know, term one and term two.

02:04:29   And there's a reason for that. Like this, this is different. All the people, all the

02:04:34   people in your life, you say, like, oh, you're so sad about the president election. Get over

02:04:38   it. Why is it a big deal? Why are you so sad about this? This is worse than it has been

02:04:43   in my lifetime for presidential elections. When George W. Bush was elected twice, like

02:04:50   I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe he was elected the first time. I couldn't

02:04:53   believe he was elected the second time. Why are we doing this again? Are you kidding?

02:04:56   We learned nothing. Right. But it was not as bad as this. Because George W. Bush, for

02:05:02   all his faults, and there are many, and for all the terrible things his administration

02:05:06   did, and there are many, had sort of minimum baseline level of humanity, and at least an

02:05:14   attempt to pretend to care about the duties of the presidency and the people who live

02:05:18   in the country. And the whole thing with Trump has been is like, there is no floor. He doesn't

02:05:25   know anything. He doesn't want to know anything. He doesn't care about anything. It's like

02:05:31   trying to decide who's going to fly your plane and like, I don't care if this person

02:05:34   knows or cares anything about planes, knows what a plane is, has ever flown anything before,

02:05:38   cares about any of the people on the plane, doesn't actively want to kill everybody

02:05:42   on the plane. None of that matters. Right? Trump is just like the bottom. Like, I can

02:05:48   think of worse people to be president, but it's hard. And it's below the baseline.

02:05:53   And so for people on our side, when we see him elected not once, but twice, we think,

02:05:58   you know, how many millions of our fellow Americans think this is acceptable? And we're

02:06:04   sad about that. Yes, obviously we're sad about all the people who are going to be hurt

02:06:08   and, you know, and killed and have terrible things happen to them under his administration.

02:06:13   But what a big component of the sadness of both elections is all of us thinking we're

02:06:19   in this country with these millions and millions of people who think this is acceptable for

02:06:26   the presidency. Right? Like that. It's it's not a good feeling. Can you imagine if you

02:06:33   are on the other side of this? If the Democrats elected somebody who said we should kill all

02:06:38   puppies, it was a big thing on that platform. We should totally kill all puppies. And that

02:06:44   person was a, you know, had murdered their wives and was convicted but got off on a technicality.

02:06:50   So it was a, you know, it was a murderer. And he said we should kill all puppies. He's

02:06:54   not actually killing all puppies, but he thinks we should kill all of them. And we elected

02:06:57   him president. Wouldn't you be sad thinking millions and millions of people think it's

02:07:00   okay that the person who wants to kill puppies and killed his wife should be president? You'd

02:07:04   be like, really? The puppy killing guy? Like, I know he hasn't actually killed any puppies

02:07:10   yet, but he said he wants to and he's going to really try to. That's okay. And we were

02:07:15   like, well, forget about the puppy killing. We like the other parts. But like, wouldn't

02:07:19   you be sad thinking that so many of your fellow citizens think that's okay? And I know it's

02:07:23   ridiculous. Like, oh, Trump doesn't want to kill puppies, whatever. But like, it's the

02:07:26   same type of deal. Like there's just a minimum level of care and humanity and knowledge that

02:07:31   Trump does not pass. And it's hard living in a world where you think that's okay for

02:07:36   a lot of other people. It's hard thinking all the bad things that he says are okay.

02:07:40   Like you can say, well, I don't believe in all the things he says. I just like him and

02:07:43   I just ignore all the bad stuff. But like at a certain point, knowing that your fellow

02:07:47   citizens are on board with all that, not on board with it being done, but on board with

02:07:51   saying the guy who says all that, he's my guy. I don't think he's ever going to do that

02:07:57   stuff. But the guy who says all that, he's my guy. That's a sad feeling, a sad feeling

02:08:02   to know your fellow humans. Forget about citizens. Your fellow humans think this is your guy.

02:08:05   Your fellow humans think this is good. And knowing that you're in the same country with

02:08:09   them, subject to the same laws, under the same government, and you have to deal with

02:08:14   the consequences of their vote. And again, that happens all the time. Sometimes your

02:08:19   person doesn't win. I did not feel like this when George W. Bush won, when George H.W.

02:08:23   Bush won, when Reagan won. I was always young then, right? It didn't feel like this at all.

02:08:29   This feels different. This feels worse because it is worse. That's why some people in your

02:08:36   life are really sad right now. Maybe they're special snowflakes and they should just get

02:08:40   over it and not be sad or whatever, but it is worse. We feel worse. So whatever I posted

02:08:47   this morning, I'm asked on National Sexator Your Stomach Day, I didn't feel like this

02:08:53   in any other presidential election when quote unquote my person didn't win. This is different.

02:08:58   This is worse. And we know what we're in for and it's going to be bad. And I feel like

02:09:06   if you study history and see what it takes for a governing system to be broken apart

02:09:15   and broken down so that what was once a functioning society that tried to raise the standard of

02:09:22   living for everybody and do better over time becomes the domain of dictators and warlords

02:09:27   and I mean it happens all the time throughout history. How do these societies end up in

02:09:32   a situation where there's one super powerful person who's oppressing everybody and doing

02:09:37   terrible things and everyone else is suffering? How do you end up in that situation? And the

02:09:41   whole American experiment is to try to design a system where that's harder to do, but people

02:09:45   are constantly trying to find a way to break down that system, to break away all the things

02:09:51   that are keeping us from becoming a lawless, becoming a mad max, right? A warlord state,

02:09:58   right? And we've made progress. If you look at Casey's reading The Power Broker and learning

02:10:03   all about as a side effect Tammany Hall and all the political corruption machines where

02:10:08   politics was just a way of like, it was basically like street gangs essentially. And when you

02:10:12   got elected you gave money and jobs to the people who supported you and graft and bribery,

02:10:18   like that was the system. And that was a bad system. And we had reformers who said, "Hey,

02:10:24   this is no way to run a government because it lets like the people who were loyal to

02:10:28   the political machine, it was like organized crime essentially, but that was the system

02:10:31   of government." That's bad because the citizens suffer and it's the same reason having organized

02:10:38   crime families battle each other is bad. Even if they're not killing each other in the street,

02:10:42   they're hogging all the money and good stuff for a small number of people and everyone

02:10:46   else suffers. Let's reform the system. Let's add laws and ethics and try to have a different

02:10:52   way of governing ourselves. It doesn't involve patronage and graft. And that took years and

02:10:57   years of reformers battling to try to make our system better and go all, that's the example

02:11:03   off the top of my head because I'm listening to The Power Broker podcast too and I've read

02:11:05   the book several times. But like that, that's the history, not just in America, but over

02:11:11   the entire world. It's difficult to make a governing system that is resistant to people

02:11:18   chipping it away. And if you don't constantly resist that, you end up with a small number

02:11:24   of very wealthy, very powerful people living really great lives and everyone else suffering.

02:11:29   And the American system is currently in a regression where we had all these things that

02:11:35   we're trying to be sort of bulwarks against that terrible thing happening that are being

02:11:40   eaten away slowly but surely. Citizens United, all the Supreme Court justices letting the

02:11:46   president do whatever he wants as long as it's part of his official duties, reversing

02:11:50   Roe v. Wade, installing judges who are loyal to Trump instead of the law. All the checks

02:11:56   and balances that we had are being chipped away in service of bringing us back to essentially

02:12:00   Mad Max and warlords, which by the way is not a good system of government for the general

02:12:04   citizens. It's that whole thought experiment of like, if you pick a time in history that

02:12:13   you want to travel, you have a time machine, you can travel back in time to any point in

02:12:16   history, pick a time in history. The only wrinkle is you don't get to pick what role

02:12:21   you have in that society when you land in it. So you say, "I want to go back to Roman

02:12:25   times and I'll be like Caesar." It's like, "Oh no, you don't get to pick to be Caesar.

02:12:29   You are just like a Roman slave." Now do you want to go back to the Roman times? Everyone

02:12:34   wants to be in whatever time in history they glorify, assuming they'll be at the top of

02:12:38   the hierarchy, right? An actual good functioning society is one where you would say, "Yes,

02:12:44   I do want to travel in time to that society and you can randomly place me anywhere in

02:12:48   that society and I'll be fine because there is not an underclass that is trod upon by

02:12:54   the upper class." And in America, we are unfortunately going in the other direction where we are

02:12:58   chipping away the institutions that try to make life better for everybody in service

02:13:03   of making life better for a small number of people while everyone else suffers. And part

02:13:08   of that is convincing most of the population to vote for you to do that by feeding them

02:13:12   information that makes them think that what they're doing is in their own or their own

02:13:15   interest when it really isn't. And we will obviously disagree on that, but every time

02:13:19   I even think about the idea of talking to somebody and trying to convince them of my

02:13:24   political position, I think of the concept of trying to, speaking of going back in time,

02:13:28   I want to go back in time to the 1800s in America and trying to convince somebody that

02:13:33   women should have the right to vote. I don't think, if you really want to understand another

02:13:38   depressing thing that people are upset about, do you think you could go and convince somebody

02:13:47   that women should have the right to vote in the 1800s? How difficult would that be? Presumably

02:13:51   you believe it. You're a modern person and you're like, "Of course women should have the right to vote. It's stupid."

02:13:54   Now go back in time to the 1800s and try to convince literally one person that that should

02:13:58   be true. And everything you say, they will have a comeback to and your brain will explode

02:14:05   and you're like, "But, but…" and they'll be like, "It's ridiculous. Women should vote. What's next? Dogs voting?

02:14:09   It doesn't make any sense." That's how a lot of us feel trying to say, "Maybe don't vote

02:14:15   for Trump." But people did it, and trying to convince them makes my brain explode in

02:14:20   the same way that trying to convince someone in the 1800s that women should vote would explode.

02:14:23   There's nothing you can say to convince them. They have a completely sealed, completely logical,

02:14:29   completely sensible, functioning, like Margo said, worldview that does not include the idea of women voting.

02:14:36   It took decades and decades of people fighting for it for us to finally get that done.

02:14:43   And these days I often think that we would never get a constitutional amendment to give rights to

02:14:49   a minority group just because our current system of government has been so degraded that that will

02:14:54   literally never happen because as long as one side doesn't like it, it's never going to happen.

02:14:58   So, anyway, I've rambled on too long. I just wanted to explain, try to explain to the three people still listening,

02:15:05   why people you know might be sad in a way that doesn't make sense to you and seems dumb.

02:15:10   I understand why it seems dumb, but I want you to know that it's not just people overreacting

02:15:15   or being overly dramatic. For those of us on this side of the aisle, the two Trump elections feel different.

02:15:22   I think they should feel different to any other human being, and I think across the globe they do feel different

02:15:26   to most human beings, but not apparently for half of the voters in this country.

02:15:30   [Music]