326: ‘A Very Large Nap’, With John Moltz

0:00:00I have in front of me, there's so much to talk about, but in front of me right now,

0:00:05my hands are on it, is the one product from Apple that everybody wants to hear my thoughts about.

0:00:10You know what it is. It's the cloth. It's the polishing cloth.

0:00:16Sorry, I ruined your reveal. I should have played dumb. I should have played stupid.

0:00:21It's the MacBook Pro. Nope, you know. Nope, I blew it. I blew it with a heavy-handed intro.

0:00:28You telegraphed it too much. What I did is I bought a 14-inch. I keep wanting to say 13-inch.

0:00:35That's going to be a hard habit to break. Yeah. For some reason, when the 15-inch ones went to 16,

0:00:40I found that easy. 14's new, right? Yeah. They've never had a 14 before. There was a 12-inch MacBook.

0:00:48They never had 16 before either. They used to have 13, 15, 17. Right. Which, in hindsight,

0:00:55was kind of weird, but I've often said this. You know who was a huge fan of the 17-inch

0:01:00PowerBook? My wife. Oh, really?

0:01:02She still misses it. Wow.

0:01:04Because she likes to have the biggest screen possible, but she hasn't had a home office set

0:01:10up in, God, might be decades at this point. So she kind of needs to do her MacBooking from the

0:01:18kitchen. We have plenty of room in the kitchen and stuff like that, but an iMac, which would

0:01:22really satisfy her desire for a big, huge screen, would only go into a room all the way on the top

0:01:29floor that she wouldn't want to spend a lot of time in. Yeah.

0:01:33And it's good she doesn't listen to the show, because…

0:01:36But I often feel like I could just buy it for her, but honestly, I worry that she would think

0:01:42I'm trying to get rid of her. Why don't you go upstairs? But anyway, she loved the 17-inch,

0:01:52the old lunch tray. But 16-inch is a nice medium in between, right, where it's less of a footprint

0:01:58on your desk, more likely to fit on an airport or airplane tray or whatever. 14-inch is getting hard

0:02:04for me. I'll get used to it, I guess. But anyway, I ordered the 14-inch MacBook Pro with everything

0:02:12stupidly maxed out, which I don't need, but I just want.

0:02:17You just want. Right.

0:02:18It is maybe my midlife crisis. Instead of buying a sports car, I've bought a laptop.

0:02:23Yeah, right. Absolutely.

0:02:25I bought a laptop that cost several thousand dollars extra.

0:02:28Well, we used to spend—I mean, I used to spend a lot more. I was looking it up because I was trying

0:02:33to figure out what the most that I had spent was, and I think it was—actually, I can't remember,

0:02:37it was the 400 MHz or the 1 GHz, but one of those two titanium power books was like 2,600 bucks.

0:02:45Which I think—I mean, I was doing a little bit of programming back then, so I probably

0:02:51used it a bit for that, but I probably didn't use it to capacity either.

0:02:56I have spent more than that in the past. I don't know that this—this might be—I don't think it's

0:03:05the most expensive MacBook I've ever bought, but it's more than I need. And I could always justify

0:03:10it before because, you know, like, "Oh, I need the RAM." I really do use RAM because I sloppily

0:03:18leave hundreds of browser tabs open. And it's nice. It is nice to just keep opening all the

0:03:24apps, every app you use, and just keep them all running and not worry about it. But in the old

0:03:29days, when you ran out of RAM on a Mac—well, in the really old days, of course, you would—

0:03:34You'd buy more.

0:03:36No, you'd put RAM double or RAM.

0:03:37No, but like in the classic—well, you'd either put RAM double or in classic,

0:03:42it would just tell you there's not enough memory to launch an application.

0:03:44Everything would stop.

0:03:45Which is—it made sense. And then, until, you know, it didn't make sense. Like,

0:03:52in the '80s, it made perfect sense. Well, of course, if you don't have enough memory,

0:03:56you can't open any more applications. But in like the early days of Mac OS X,

0:04:01when they switched to the Unix philosophies, you never really run out of memory.

0:04:05It just turns—you know, it just uses disk space as swap. And we'll just swap it out.

0:04:12And it used to be so slow because you had spinning hard disks, and even the RAM was slower compared

0:04:19to today. And it—you know, when you actually ran out of real RAM for what you wanted to do,

0:04:26you'd notice it. I mean, you'd actually hear the hard drive going, or you'd feel—you know,

0:04:30you could like feel it under your palm or wherever the hard drive was on your laptop.

0:04:35You know, and then that stopped being so much of an issue. And I have to say, like, testing out

0:04:40last year's 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, I would go look in Activity Monitor and see that I was using

0:04:48way more than the 16 gigabytes of RAM that were in the machine, and that swap was up at, you know,

0:04:5410 gigabytes or something like that. And I didn't notice because it's all so fast. The SSD is fast.

0:05:02But anyway, I bought a stupidly fast M1 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro. It is not here yet. I believe

0:05:11it is coming soon. But when I ordered it down at the bottom, when they give you the, "Hey,

0:05:16do you want to buy some add-on stuff?" You know, this is when Apple turns pure retail, right? I

0:05:22mean, because why not? I mean, I'm not even complaining about it. This is what you do if

0:05:26you're selling stuff, is, you know, you put some mints at the checkout counter, you know,

0:05:32you want to buy some gum? Well, they had that $19 polishing cloth.

0:05:37Pete: Well, once you spent that much money, $19 for a polishing cloth doesn't seem like anything.

0:05:43Matthew: Right! It doesn't, it's the perfect, for me, it was the perfect little add-on. And

0:05:49it really is like the John Travolta/Uma Thurman scene in Pulp Fiction where they go out to eat,

0:05:56to the diner, and she buys, I forget how expensive the milkshake is. Amy and I just watched that

0:06:02movie recently, and it's been so many years that it doesn't even sound like an expensive milkshake.

0:06:09It sounds like what you would order at any restaurant, you know? You just pop into a

0:06:14Red Robin or, you know, any chain. This is what milkshakes cost. But he's like, "I got to see

0:06:19what a $10 milkshake costs." I don't remember what the cost. I had to see what a $19 Apple polishing

0:06:25cloth was like. It is very nice. It comes in like a sleeve or like a case almost, right?

0:06:36Yep. Well, it's like a sort of a, yeah, it's like a paper envelope. But it is a little

0:06:43three-dimensional. The envelope, the cardboard box that it comes in is exactly, almost exactly,

0:06:50the dimensions of a standard personal checkbook. Do you remember writing checks?

0:06:56I still do. I'm 109 years old. We do too, but it's like every time I do,

0:07:05I can still see checks from 2019 are on the same page of the ledger. But it's the size of a

0:07:12checkbook. It is not very heavy. It comes not in a ridiculously-sized shipping box, but it is far

0:07:20larger than a checkbook. Of course, it's review season. Apple is sending me products to review.

0:07:28Most of them, like with the MacBook, all came in one big box. If they're going to give you extra

0:07:32stuff, like I got the MacBook and, spoiler for something I want to talk about in a bit with you,

0:07:37the third-generation AirPods, were all sent together in one meta box from Apple to me,

0:07:46the reviewer. But I've ordered other stuff. You forget what you ordered and what's coming.

0:07:54I could tell it was an Apple product, but I had this sinking feeling at first when the FedEx guy

0:07:59handed it to me that I'd gotten ripped off, that it was an empty box. Because nothing rattled

0:08:08inside. They use a bit of cellophane to strap the small product box within the larger brown

0:08:19shipping box. So nothing rattled. And it sure as shit felt empty.

0:08:23There was also a look on the FedEx guy's face like, "Hey, this box looks like it's still

0:08:32sealed up." And we didn't say anything. And then it was maybe a second, two seconds before I thought,

0:08:42"Oh, it's the polishing cloth." I did buy something stupidly light.

0:08:47I'm surprised those aren't back ordered already, though.

0:08:48I heard that they were. I don't know.

0:08:52Okay. So you got it, but you don't have your MacBook yet.

0:08:55No, no. But even when I ordered them together, they had very different shipping dates.

0:09:01Yeah.

0:09:02The cloth itself is surprisingly thick. I don't know what it's made of. It feels like suede.

0:09:11Like it's not like a terrycloth type thing. It feels like suede. I'm guessing it's not suede,

0:09:16but it's some sort of artificial material. It's a light gray that is darker than a silver MacBook

0:09:25but lighter than a space gray MacBook. It has a very nice feel, round corners, an embossed Apple

0:09:32logo in the lower right corner. And it wipes the screen about as good as gets grease off the screen

0:09:43and little dots off the screen, exactly as well as every other anti-static cloth I've been using

0:09:51that I probably bought for $2 on Amazon.

0:09:55Not $18.

0:09:56You know, my mother-in-law, God bless her, often struggles with—I'm very hard to buy gifts for.

0:10:02I don't know. You probably are, too. Because there's not a lot of stuff I like. I'm picky

0:10:07about it. And usually if there's something I need, I just buy it for myself.

0:10:11Yeah. Well, that's always a problem.

0:10:14And my mother-in-law always wants to buy me some stuff for Christmas, like stocking stuffer type

0:10:18stuff. And one time, somehow she found out that I like to have a nice cleaning cloth for my stuff.

0:10:27You're not supposed to use paper towels. It's just to wipe screens. And she got me these ones

0:10:33that I think that they're meant—they seem clearly more meant for washing a car.

0:10:37Because they're so big, they're enormous. It's like a napkin you could easily—even if you have

0:10:46a very large nap, you could cover your lap with it. But they're great. But they're more of like

0:10:54a terrycloth type thing. Do you know what I mean? Like, where there's little threads. Super soft,

0:11:00and they work great. But I'm betting you can find the equivalent for a lot less.

0:11:05I'm not quite sure why Apple makes this, other than the fact that people like me

0:11:11are just going to click the button.

0:11:14Because they got an additional $18 out of you.

0:11:16Yeah, $19. Now, here's the other interesting thing. Because I believe that this same cloth

0:11:24ships with the Pro Display XDR with the infamously expensive $5,000 6K display that comes—or doesn't

0:11:34come with, but has an optional $1,000 stand. And there's a little card that comes in the box. And

0:11:41it says, it's got it written in four languages, but the English version says, "Safe for use on all

0:11:46Apple displays and surfaces. For infrequent cleaning of hard-to-remove smudges on nanotexture

0:11:56glass, a 70% isopropyl alcohol solution may be used." Now, the nanotexture glass, I was like,

0:12:06"What the hell products do I have with nanotexture glass?" Then I remembered, that's what they call

0:12:10the matte finish XDR display. Right? Okay, so only one kind of XDR display.

0:12:18One kind of XDR display, which I think is actually more expensive. Who knows, though,

0:12:22the way they wrote this, the way that they don't mention the Pro Display XDR specifically.

0:12:28Perhaps they have plans in the future to have other nanotextured displays and their forward

0:12:35thinking and their warning. But I actually think, this is my genuine complaint,

0:12:42I actually think that this is insufficient instructions.

0:12:48Because—

0:12:49Oh, yeah. I think so, too. I mean, like, nobody—I mean, you have to do research in order to figure

0:12:54out which thing you can use it on. Right. You have to do research to know which one.

0:12:57How am I supposed to use the 70% isopropyl alcohol?

0:13:02Do I—Am I supposed to apply a dab of it to this polishing cloth?

0:13:07Well, usually, that's usually what they tell you to do, right? Because you don't want to

0:13:11spray it on the thing because then it could drip down inside the—

0:13:13Right. That's what I would—

0:13:14—it works.

0:13:15Yes. But I think they should tell you that and maybe have, like, a little—make it one of the

0:13:19little pamphlets instead of just a single-sided card and show an illustration of it, you know,

0:13:25that you would put just a smidge of the alcohol solution on the polishing cloth and then use that

0:13:32to get off the—what, how do they describe it? Hard to remove smudges. Right.

0:13:37I think they could—for a $19 polishing cloth that is seemingly mainly intended for use on a

0:13:47$5,000 nanotextured display—

0:13:49And can you—and then can you wash that thing?

0:13:53Doesn't say. And I thought that, too.

0:13:56That's another thing that's always confused me because I got—years and years ago—I mean,

0:13:59I've had this stuff forever, but it's like, I got two sets of some sort of cleaning product

0:14:04that's supposed to be safe to use on laptop screens because it doesn't have alcohol in it.

0:14:09Does it come with—is it an orange cloth thing?

0:14:12No, it's green.

0:14:12But again, I got it, you know, during the Boer War. And I've never run out of it because I

0:14:22use it. I just don't end up using it that much. But when I need it, I definitely need it because

0:14:26someone has put a finger on my screen. And it said to make sure to spray it on the cloth.

0:14:32But then—and I think it says you can just throw the cloths in the washing machine.

0:14:36Because they're not suede. They're definitely fabric. I've never done it because I'm still,

0:14:42for some reason, kind of scared. And I've never needed to, but I feel like it's getting to the

0:14:46point where I've probably washed—cleaned the screen off too many times with them. And now I'm

0:14:51just wetting gunk and putting it back on. So I may have to bite the bullet pretty soon to do that.

0:14:57All right. The product I bought before, and I think I bought it from Apple or else somebody

0:15:04told me that it is the brand that Apple themselves use in retail to clean all of the devices they

0:15:14have on display. It's called Whoosh. W-H-O-O-S-H. Whoosh.com. And you buy it. It comes with a little

0:15:26spray bottle. You can get a two-pack where one of them is sort of a bigger size and the other

0:15:34one is more like a lipstick size that you could put in a laptop bag. They come with their own cloths.

0:15:41They're orange cloths. They're very distinctive. And the two sides of the cloth have sort of a

0:15:47different texture. One's a little bit softer and fuzzier, and the other side is a little

0:15:53smoother, more like a T-shirt. Fuzzy side, T-shirt side. And their instructions are pretty—they're

0:16:04much better than Apple's. And they tell you to spray onto the cloth, not the screen,

0:16:09use one side to wipe the screen, and to—I forget exactly how they tell you to do it, but

0:16:17they either tell you to go in circles or—I have to look it up every time I use it. They either

0:16:21tell you to go in circles or tell you to go straight across, but they tell you which way to go.

0:16:25And then to turn the cloth around after that pass and use the other side of the cloth to sort of

0:16:32take a second pass and dry it off. And the solution is very safe for all—and they tell you,

0:16:40they list all sorts of things that it is safe for. And it would be anything you would care to use it

0:16:46for—plastic and glass and touch screens, and that it won't interfere with the oleophobic coating

0:16:52on a phone, and you can use it on aluminum, and blah, blah, blah. That's what I expect from

0:17:00Apple. I expect painstaking instructions to tell me exactly how to do it. That's the other thing

0:17:05about the Apple cloth. It feels, as far as I can tell, it's exactly the same on both sides.

0:17:10So anyway, I probably should have just stuck with whoosh.

0:17:15But I got a podcast segment out of it, so maybe it was worth it.

0:17:22Jared: I want to correct myself from earlier, because I said they'd never made a 14-inch,

0:17:27the iBook G3 was a 14-inch. I was mostly talking about PowerBooks or Pro versions.

0:17:33Brian Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:17:34Jared The iBooks used to come in 12 and 14 inches.

0:17:37Brian No, I think they—

0:17:39Jared But they were square. Or, you know,

0:17:41not square, but they were, the aspect ratio was very different.

0:17:44Brian I don't think they made it,

0:17:45maybe they did make a 12-inch. Yeah, they did.

0:17:49Jared Yeah, they did. Yeah, because I remember,

0:17:51because I had the 12, I had a 12-inch, this was back when I was, like, I bought a 12-inch for

0:17:56travel. I had the titanium PowerBook and then I bought, this was before I had a kid.

0:18:02Brian I remember I really wanted the 12-inch PowerBook,

0:18:08but couldn't afford it. And so, I got the 12-inch iBook and was not so pleased with it. Like,

0:18:17I didn't like the keys on that.

0:18:19Jared Oh, yeah, they're pretty squishy.

0:18:21Brian They were squishy and they kind of yellowed

0:18:25quickly, you know, like they looked, it was one of those products that looked way better

0:18:30in product photography than it did in real life. And I know that some people, you might think,

0:18:34"Well, everything looks better in professional product photography," but that's not true.

0:18:38Like, there are aspects of like the new MacBook Pro that, to me, look better in real life. Like,

0:18:45with nice lighting, it's like, man, this looks even nicer in real life. You know,

0:18:49you just can't even photograph like how nice the etching on the bottom of the name MacBook Pro

0:18:55looks. It just, photographs don't do it. Just, those 12-inch iBook clear keyboard keycaps,

0:19:02they look really bad in real life.

0:19:03Jared Yeah. I always liked that generation,

0:19:06though, because you could pop up the, you pop the keyboard up and then you get to have access to the

0:19:10RAM and the airport card, I think.

0:19:12Brian Yeah, that was, because I think you had to

0:19:14pay extra for the airport card.

0:19:16Jared Yeah, yeah, at least, yeah, the very beginning, at least. I can't remember if they

0:19:20started in a clue, but you might have had to add it on as an option, yeah.

0:19:22Brian Oh, we're getting old, John.

0:19:24Airport cards.

0:19:26All right, let me take a break. Thank our first sponsor. It's a memberful,

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0:19:58Jared Like me, for example.

0:20:00Brian Like—

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0:20:02Brian There we go.

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0:20:39Moltz just said, the rebound, which is—

0:20:41Jared That's right.

0:20:42Brian Which is a podcast.

0:20:44Jared Which is a podcast you can listen to.

0:20:45Brian It's a podcast you can listen to.

0:20:47Again, you can get started for free, no credit card required, and here's what you do. Visit

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0:21:01talk show. And sign up, you know, pay for the rebound. Give the rebound a surprising talk show

0:21:06spike of sign ups and have them say, "What the hell just happened?" And Moltz will say, "This is—

0:21:12Jared Exactly. Yeah, no, that sounds great for me. Also, I will say that it's really great to use. I

0:21:16mean, we've really, I mean, it's been super easy, and we wouldn't use anything else, honestly.

0:21:22Brian Everybody I know who uses it swears by it, and they don't even really look back. It's great

0:21:26stuff. What's up next on the review schedule? I got to do a whole separate episode on the MacBook Pro.

0:21:34Jared Pro, yeah.

0:21:34Brian And so, for people who go, if you're going through this thinking, well,

0:21:37Gruber's got to talk about the MacBook Pro because the reviews just came out like two days ago,

0:21:42and he wrote a long review, and everybody's talking about it. They're very interesting

0:21:46machines, and we could talk about them a little, but I got to do a whole show about that. The other

0:21:50product—

0:21:50Jared And I don't have one.

0:21:51Brian You don't have one, so what the hell are you going to say?

0:21:53Jared No, no. And I'm not getting one. I'll just say that right now. I have

0:21:56an M1 MacBook Air, and that is perfect for my needs.

0:21:59Brian Yeah, you should think about some Woosh, though. Not a sponsor. Not a sponsor, but should

0:22:07be. Woosh, come to me.

0:22:09Jared I guess I'm not allowed—can you only buy that cloth as an add-on?

0:22:12Brian You know, I think they do sell it separately.

0:22:16Jared Will they even sell me one is my question.

0:22:18Brian I keep wanting to call it the cleaning cloth, but they call it the polishing cloth.

0:22:23It's a polishing cloth.

0:22:25Jared Okay.

0:22:26Brian Nineteen bucks. I'll try to put a link in the show notes.

0:22:28No, but next up is a product I have had, and I hinted at it a segment ago, and have not written

0:22:35about because I've been too busy writing about the MacBook Pro, but the AirPods third generation.

0:22:43Now, you do have these.

0:22:44Jared These I do have. This is the one thing that I bought

0:22:47from last week's announcements.

0:22:49Brian I'm curious what you think.

0:22:50Jared I like them. I had the first generation and

0:22:54the second generation. I've never had the Pros before, so this has some of the features

0:22:57of the Pros that I'm really kind of enjoying. They are larger in my ears, which is interesting.

0:23:04I wasn't really even expecting that. I knew that they would be shorter, but I didn't know that they

0:23:09were sort of physically larger in the ear area. And so far, so good. I was kind of wondering if

0:23:16that would, you know, make my ears ache after a little while, but I wore them for a significant

0:23:22amount of time today, and it seemed basically fine. So that was good. And I really like the

0:23:27clicky thing. I mean, that took me a little while to figure out. I was, I think, you know,

0:23:34they always pop up those things that say, "Do you want to learn more about your device or your new

0:23:39software or whatever it is?" And I have a tendency to dismiss them, and then I can never find them

0:23:43again. Of course, of course, there is an app, right? I think there's like, there's an app

0:23:48someplace where that shows up, and I never, I can never find it. I'm sure that happened, and I

0:23:54clicked past it just to, you know, get to the point where I could actually start listening to things

0:23:57and then was like, "Oh, how do I advance songs and stuff like that?" I did eventually circle back and

0:24:04figure that out. I do the same thing where I'm like, "Well, look, I'm an expert, you know,

0:24:09have you heard of, have you heard of Daring the Fireball?" I saw the presentation. I should know

0:24:14how those works, but I forgot. I watched the presentation live with a notebook taking copious

0:24:20notes of everything they said. Why in the world would I need to do this? And it turns out that

0:24:25they go pretty fast and you don't remember everything they say, and you end up not knowing

0:24:31how to pause a song. Right. I have, I own a pair of the AirPods Pro, and I love them and prefer them

0:24:43and preferred them instantly over my regular older AirPods. And is that for functionality or

0:24:50fit? It was every, for me, it was every single thing about them. I enjoyed the fit once I got

0:24:58used to it. And I know, to me, the big fundamental difference is, well, at a feature level, it's the

0:25:06noise cancellation that the AirPods Pro have and the regular AirPods don't. But I don't think it's

0:25:11possible to do the noise cancellation without the sealed style of buds. And the sealed—

0:25:19Well, unless it's over the ear, yeah. Right, right. But if you're talking about AirPods

0:25:24or buds or any kind of bud-type-sized thing, it's either sealed or not sealed.

0:25:30Years ago, I mean, again, to go down memory lane, I got a pair of Shure earbuds with noise

0:25:39cancellation. I may have talked to you about that on this show. It was a gift in the gift bag from

0:25:44MacWorld Expo. And it was one of those things. It might have been the first year that I was a

0:25:52speaker at MacWorld Expo. I'd always heard that, like, at the Oscars, for example, they give people

0:25:57these gift bags with absurdly expensive gifts in them. I didn't know. I had no idea that MacWorld

0:26:04Expo gave me anything. All I thought was, "Well, I get a free pass." And I should—speaking to the

0:26:11MacWorld audience would be good for my professional stature, for lack of a better word. This is

0:26:18something I should do. And I go there and I register for the pass. They give me this bag

0:26:22full of stuff. And I'm like, "What the hell?" And I start looking through it. And I was ready

0:26:27to ditch it all. And there's a backpack. And it's like, "Well, I don't even have room to go home

0:26:32with this huge backpack." But I found the Shure headphones. And I was like, "Sure, that's a good

0:26:38brand." And I looked it up and they were like $400 earbuds. I was like, "I would never spend $400

0:26:44on these things." But they were noise canceling and had the seal. And similar to AirPods,

0:26:52when you open it up, there were four different style of rubber tips that you were encouraged to,

0:26:59if you find the default ones uncomfortable, try these larger and smaller and a differently shaped

0:27:06mushroom end that you would squeeze in your ear canal. And I used those for years and years on

0:27:14airplanes because the noise canceling is great on airplanes. And for me, the earbuds that go in your

0:27:22ear are way more comfortable for a five-hour flight than over-the-ear type things that make

0:27:29my ears sweat. I have the opposite experience, personally. I've never had success with those

0:27:35things that go in your ear canal. Now, I think Paul and other people have suggested getting the

0:27:40foam tips because you can get third-party foam tips for the AirPods. I have not tried that.

0:27:48I certainly haven't tried it with AirPods Pro because I don't have it. But I don't have AirPods

0:27:53Pro because those things have never really worked for me. That's a friend of the show,

0:27:57friend of the family, Paul Kifasis of Rogue Amoeba fame. Yeah, there's a whole cottage industry and

0:28:04the third-party foam style tips for AirPods. That's one of the nice things about Apple getting

0:28:12popular and having so few products that they only make three styles of AirPods and only one of them

0:28:20takes tips. I don't know if you heard, they were only repeated it about seven times last week in

0:28:25the keynote. They are the best-selling headphones in the world. So it makes sense that there'd be

0:28:30this whole cottage industry of $10, $5, $7 foam tips that you can buy from Amazon. I bought the

0:28:39other day from Amazon. This is a total tangent, but I feel like it's the same way with the

0:28:44foam tips. I am always losing the SIM card popper routers. You know what I mean?

0:28:54I don't know. Whatever you call it. Even though I get...

0:28:57That's the year about right.

0:28:57I get more of them sent to me by Apple than just about anybody because I buy new iPhones every year

0:29:05from me and the wife. I always buy them now with the idea that we're just going to swap the SIM

0:29:13card from our old phones into new phones because that always works better for me. We've had so many

0:29:17problems over the years when you transfer your line over and Verizon system doesn't even know

0:29:24what phone you bought. We just pop the SIM out. When you buy a phone that isn't already on

0:29:29Verizon or AT&T or T-Mobile, they send you an iPhone that comes with an Apple SIM card popper

0:29:35router. They're so tiny and I lose them. But in review season, I'm popping SIMs out of phones

0:29:43all the time. It's like I work at a phone store because I'm like, "I should go back to the...

0:29:48I have my old phone, my new phone, four review phones, and if I want to test something on the

0:29:56iPhone 13 mini, and it's like, "Well, if I'm going to use it for a day, I should put my SIM in it,"

0:30:01and I can't find the damn SIM popper routers. So I went and looked on Amazon to see if there was one.

0:30:07I was like, "They should make a big one that I wouldn't lose, more like a pen." You know what

0:30:12I mean? With a tip. You could always attach a giant brush to it or something. They do it

0:30:18for the key at a rest stop. I have tried putting them on a ring and I have kept that one, the one

0:30:26I put on a key ring. But I just popped into my head to look on Amazon. And of course, there's

0:30:31a gazillion of them and they are insanely cheap. But the one that I picked, I swear to God, it was

0:30:38like four bucks, free Prime shipping, two-day, three-day, whatever. But it included 10 other

0:30:49styles of SIM card popper. Two of these ones that look like a little tool, almost like a golf pencil

0:30:56size with a SIM popper out around the end. But they also had a bunch of the ones that are more

0:31:02like paperclips, more like the ones Apple includes. But— I mean, isn't the tip the same on all of

0:31:10them? They're just different handles? Yeah, just different handles.

0:31:13Wow. Hold on, hold on. You gotta see it.

0:31:17I have a little box on my desk and every time I get a new iPhone, I pull that thing out and I put

0:31:22it in the box on my desk. And I'll lose a few over the years, you know, but usually there's at least

0:31:28two in there at any given time. Here we go. I'm sending you a link.

0:31:34Oh my God. Are these repurposed dental tools or something?

0:31:43It is the A-Y-W-F-E-Y. I don't know what if—

0:31:51You see, this is $7 and it's 16 different SIM card poppers. And they're all—the tip's the same on

0:32:01all of them. That's wild. Of the 16 SIM popper routers, four of them basically look like Apples.

0:32:08Two of them are the little golf pencil style ones that I was—the whole reason I bought the damn

0:32:14thing. And I would have bought it just to get—I would have paid seven bucks for one of them.

0:32:18But, you know, why not pay seven bucks and get two of the ones I wanted? But then there's two each

0:32:24of a variety of other styles. Yeah. Some of them look like guitar picks.

0:32:31Yes, yes. The guitar picks. Well, there's like a solid guitar pick, a hollow guitar pick.

0:32:37I don't know. I mean—

0:32:40Some ellipses, two ellipses, two T-shaped ones that are hollow, hollowed out Ts.

0:32:47And then the things that look like the sliders you put over your laptop camera.

0:32:51Anyway, it's like if you need—if you're dissatisfied with your SIM card popper router

0:32:57lifestyle—

0:32:58Or you can't find it.

0:32:59Yeah. You're five or six bucks away from anything you want. And I feel the same way with the

0:33:06foam tips for AirPods. You can find replacements if you like foam instead of rubber. But the big

0:33:13fundamental problem with the whole concept is there are a lot of people who do not like

0:33:17anything sealed in their ear canal, whether it's a physical thing or a mental thing.

0:33:23For me, it's not the comfort of it, per se. It's the fact that they just keep sliding out,

0:33:27and then it doesn't work right anymore, particularly for the noise cancellation.

0:33:32I might be misremembering, but my friend, our friend, everybody's friend,

0:33:36Ben Thompson, who I do the other show with, he just cannot stand it, right? It's just—

0:33:42it's just a non-starter for him to have a sealed ear canal.

0:33:46So as a year-long or two years long—I don't know how long the AirPods Pro came out,

0:33:54probably two years ago—as a longtime AirPods Pro user, using the new third-generation AirPods

0:34:01for a week was very familiar because everything about them works like the AirPods Pro, where you

0:34:09have a little clicky thing on each earbud that you can do things. You know you can go into settings,

0:34:13too, and change it so that left and right do different things?

0:34:16Well, yeah, I mean, that I knew from previous AirPods.

0:34:21And ever since I've been using them, the old style of AirPod controls, where you tap your ear,

0:34:26seems so crude and primitive.

0:34:30And it was impossible to go back.

0:34:34And I never liked it. I never really liked it because it always felt like I was pushing it.

0:34:38You know, like tapping my ear, which felt like an unnatural thing to do.

0:34:43Right. It was like the AirPods equivalent of "shake to undo" on the iPhone, where it just

0:34:51felt like if you deleted text you didn't mean to delete. Shaking your iPhone like you're getting

0:34:58ready to pop open some champagne because you just won a championship—it just felt so stupid.

0:35:04It honestly feels like, not to be crude, a rude hand gesture.

0:35:08Just a gesture you might not make in front of children.

0:35:14And that's how you undo. Tapping your ear, it's like, imagine if there was a feature where

0:35:22if you banged your head against the trackpad, you entered full screen mode.

0:35:28Everything reboots?

0:35:30Yeah. But if you want to enter full screen mode on Mac OS X, just bang your head against the trackpad.

0:35:36You don't have to bang it hard. But it still would feel like, "Why am I doing this? Why am I banging

0:35:44my AirPods?" And the other thing in hindsight, once you never have to tap your AirPods again to

0:35:49do anything, you realize how it always felt to me like you were also risking popping the AirPod out.

0:35:55That you would tap it, and it would rebound and pop out of your ear.

0:36:01I find spending a week with these AirPod third-generation ones, the thing for me is that I'm so

0:36:08used to the sealed ear canal that they constantly felt like they were on the cusp of falling out.

0:36:14No, really.

0:36:15Yeah, I think that all—and a lot of that just depends on people's—people have different ears.

0:36:23I've just gotten to the point where that's the only way I can explain it. And some people like

0:36:27the ear canal ones, and other people like the other kind. And my ears are meant to use this

0:36:37particular kind. And I've never really had—if I'm taking a shirt off over my head, yeah, then

0:36:43the AirPods will come out. But other than that, I've run in them, I've run wearing them, and

0:36:50I've never had one just fall out accidentally like that.

0:36:53Right, and I wear them in the winter with a winter hat that covers my ears, keep my ears warm. They

0:36:59don't fall out. I've never really had a problem with AirPods falling out, but it was just an

0:37:04uncanny feeling because I had been so used to the sealed thing. But as a product, I don't think

0:37:09that's a problem at all. I'm clearly, as a person on Team Sealed Ear Canal, and anybody who's not

0:37:19either doesn't own AirPods Pro because they know it, or they gave them away, or sold them,

0:37:26or returned them to Apple or something because they found them unpleasant, right? So anybody

0:37:30who's already got AirPods Pro and is happy with them is definitely not in the market for the

0:37:37regular AirPod third generation. What else? It's nice that they have unified on the MagSafe/Cheat

0:37:48charging cases and that they don't upsell you on those.

0:37:51Yeah, so this is my first that's actually Cheat charging because when I got the second generation

0:37:55ones, I just stuck with the Lightning charging. And so that's been nice too. And I don't have an

0:38:01extra MagSafe connector lying around anywhere, but I've got plenty of Cheat chargers lying around, so

0:38:09I was able to just put a Cheat charger on my nightstand. And so now when I go to bed, I just

0:38:13put the case on the Cheat charger. It would be cool. I mean, I tried it on the MagSafe one that

0:38:17I put my iPhone on and it's like just hanging there in midair was kind of cool, but I'm not

0:38:24going to run out and buy another MagSafe charger just to do that probably.

0:38:28I actually find that for charging, it's my, what do I have that charges by Cheat? I have phones

0:38:35and I think that's it. Then the only things I have are my AirPod cases and the phones. I like

0:38:43it better for AirPods than the phone because I don't really need the AirPods. The problem with

0:38:49AirPods is that the batteries last so long, especially for the case, that it was easy when

0:38:56I first got them, when there was no MagSafe for Cheat charging case, it was easy to forget about

0:39:02it for a week. And then you do get that sad little bloop, bloop. And you're like, "Oh, I guess

0:39:09the batteries finally did run out." Whereas now it is so easy to be completely lazy and just put

0:39:15them on a Cheat charger on your bedside or on your desk. And it's like for me, the case never

0:39:21even gets close to 50% because I've just... And then it's also a nice way, it's like having a

0:39:28little box for your keys so you never lose your keys when you come home because you always put

0:39:32them in the same place. It's like I actually stopped losing my AirPod cases or mis... You're

0:39:38not losing losing, but misplacing where the hell did I leave them because I just tend to leave it

0:39:42on the Cheat charger on my desk or on my bedside. What else do I have?

0:39:50Yeah, I mean, it's always nice to take away those failure points.

0:39:55Have you tried the new Find My stuff?

0:39:58No, I have not yet.

0:40:02That's sort of the direct consequence of the previous. I used to misplace my AirPods

0:40:10more frequently before Cheat charging than I do now because I just tend to know the couple of

0:40:16places around the house where I have a charging pad and that's where my AirPods tend to be.

0:40:20But I tried it out. It's pretty cool. They don't have... What are they called? The location chip?

0:40:27What's that called?

0:40:31I forget which number it is.

0:40:32Yeah, but whatever that chip is that lets find my do remarkably accurate location of a device.

0:40:40But it's fine. It was like I pretended I left them in my bedroom. I knew they were in my bedroom,

0:40:51but I was testing out the Find My and it got me closer. It took longer. It was like looking for

0:40:56a signal. This might take a while. Wait, wait, wait. It was certainly better than not having

0:41:00it and it definitely worked. And the phone got very excited like a dog when you come home.

0:41:06It got very excited when it got near the AirPods. It was like, "I've got it."

0:41:14Yeah, I don't lose mine. I mean, so you know that little coin pocket or whatever it is in jeans.

0:41:20I'm always wearing jeans and actually even the khakis that I have have the same pocket,

0:41:27but in just a different spot. I stick my AirPods in there and so the case is always in there during

0:41:32the day and I know where it is. And I put the AirPods in and then I put the case back in my

0:41:39pocket. And then at night I take it out of the pocket and put it in the charging stand.

0:41:42Yeah, I don't lose them often, but it's nice to have if you do.

0:41:46Yeah. I mean, Karen loses hers all the time because women's clothes don't have pockets.

0:41:54She's at an unfair disadvantage. We laugh, but it is true.

0:41:58Yeah, it's true. Or they have pockets that just don't even fit in AirPods case and it's not quite

0:42:06sure. Or don't hold things in very well either. Right. So it's nice to have. I think aesthetically,

0:42:14I never bought into the people look silly wearing AirPods thing. I was thinking about that before

0:42:21we recorded that. Remember when AirPods were new five years ago, that was like a big thing. People

0:42:27look so stupid with AirPods. I never quite got that. It felt weird to me wearing them,

0:42:33but I didn't think other people looked stupid wearing them because they looked exactly like

0:42:38wired earbuds that people had been using at least from Apple for like 20 years just without the

0:42:46wires. So if you don't look stupid wearing the same size or almost exactly the same size white

0:42:56buds in your ear with a white cable streaming out of both of them, how do you look stupid if you

0:43:03just cut the cables off? I never got it, but some people thought people looked weird. But I do think

0:43:09the newer look initiated by the pros and now followed by the new third generation regular

0:43:16AirPods where the stem is shorter, I think it does look better. I think it does too. Yeah. I would

0:43:21still like if there was a color option, I'd probably go with a different color than white, but

0:43:25they're fine. I mean, they're better now. The first time I was, I don't know if it was exactly

0:43:32the first, but one of the first few times I wore AirPods outside of the house was, I think it was

0:43:36walking the dog or something. And this guy stopped me and said, "Oh, you got those AirPods, huh?"

0:43:40I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "How do you like them?" I thought, "I love them. I think they're

0:43:44great." And he's like, "They look ridiculous." I said, "Okay, but they're really good."

0:43:50My friend Dave Whiskus, who I did the Vesper app with, he bought them right away and said,

0:43:57"I'm not going to return them. I'm going to use them because I love using them, but I feel like

0:44:03I look stupid with them." And that he'd be walking down the street and see somebody else with AirPods

0:44:10and think, "Boy, they look stupid." And then realize, "Oh, I've got them in right now."

0:44:14And he said he just constantly felt self-conscious about it. But it must be true. I don't really

0:44:19remember. I remember when the Sony Walkman was new and desperately wanted one. And of course,

0:44:27they were very expensive. It was the iPod of its day. And it took a couple, just a handful of years

0:44:34for Walkman-sized personal cassette players to get down to the price where somebody, my parents,

0:44:44would buy them for me as a then whatever 10, 11-year-old. But I'll bet that there was that

0:44:51sort of reaction to them at that time when people, all of a sudden, people are on the New York City

0:44:59subway and they've got a Sony Walkman. And it's like, "Look at that idiot. He's got two orange

0:45:04Nerf balls on his ears." Right? And- Yeah, I mean, people are always going to make,

0:45:09you know, anytime there's something new, there's going to be a bunch of people that make fun of it.

0:45:13But like Walkman-style, the initial Walkman-style headphones, the ones, you know what I mean? They

0:45:19had Nerf balls on the end. Yeah, I mean, I don't remember there being other kinds. All the headphones

0:45:26that I had prior to that were over-the-ear types. And then those were on-ear. They were way more,

0:45:33even without making an aesthetic judgment, they were certainly more obvious, right? You know,

0:45:43they're far from subtle. You had like a headband over the top of your head and orange foam.

0:45:49You know, and eventually they made other colors other than orange. But there must have been that

0:45:53type of reaction to that too by people who were not the early adopter mindset, who was like,

0:45:58"I don't know. I'm a little bored right now and I might enjoy listening to music,

0:46:02but I'm not going to look stupid with those." I know. I mean, we had one and I don't remember

0:46:11that. But of course, you know, we were kids when we got it. And it was, you know, like if you were

0:46:16in high school or something, junior high school, none of the kids were going to think that because

0:46:23they were like, "Oh my God, you've got to walk, man." Right. You can listen to music.

0:46:26Walking down the hall. They should have had podcasts back then. You just mail them out.

0:46:34We could have just— We were just cassette tapes.

0:46:36Yeah, just mail them out on cassette tapes.

0:46:38Isn't that what AM radio was?

0:46:40Yeah, and you could just, you know, and you could just, you know, encourage people. You know,

0:46:44it'd be sort of like the Grateful Dead where you would encourage people to make copies for

0:46:48your friends. You know, if you've got a copy of episode, you know, whatever of the talk show from

0:46:551986, then, you know, make as many copies as you want. You know, hand them out to your local Mac

0:47:01user group. I remember trying to tape songs off the radio by just putting a tape recorder up to

0:47:08the speaker because they had no other way of getting off the radio. Oh, man. That was—

0:47:14Amy and I talk about it all the time. That was a feature of the boom boxes of the era. Those big

0:47:19panels, those Panasonic silver plastic boom boxes where they had both a tape player and a radio.

0:47:27If you hit record while the radio was playing, it would record the radio to the tape directly,

0:47:32you know, without any kind of— And that was easy.

0:47:35So you get the song you want without the first, like, five seconds.

0:47:38You'd get it without the first five seconds. Sometimes they would tell you,

0:47:42like, the disc jockey would say, "Hey, stick around. We're going to take a break. But when

0:47:47we come back, we've got the new Cyndi Lauper." And you'd be like, "Ah, that's one of them I've

0:47:52been waiting for. I've been waiting to get a—girls just want to have fun." And so you'd have your

0:47:58finger on it ready to go when he came back. But then it's like, a lot of times they would start

0:48:04the song and the stupid disc jockey would keep talking about the weather or whatever,

0:48:09you know, and telling you, you know, "We'll have a traffic break in 20 seconds." It's like,

0:48:13"Shut up! The song started!" You know? But it was a way you could collect music at a,

0:48:21you know, what was then a very high quality, quote unquote, "for free."

0:48:26Actually, it never even occurred to me that it might be illegal. I actually didn't even think

0:48:29of that as—I did not—at the time, I didn't think of it as piracy. I'm not sure what—

0:48:35Recording off the radio? Yeah.

0:48:37I mean, it didn't occur to me, of course. I mean, I was, what, 12? I wasn't looking into it.

0:48:42If I could do it, I would do it.

0:48:44Like, I think everybody knew, once MP3s became a thing, that if you were downloading

0:48:49songs from Napster, you knew you were technically breaking the law.

0:48:54And I think they had these things in certain cities here, too. But when I went to Japan,

0:49:00my junior year in college, they had—right next to the university where I was—they had a place where

0:49:05you could rent records. So you'd go in and rent a record and then take it home and tape it and then

0:49:12turn the record. Which obviously, you know, I mean, that's what everybody was doing. And I was always

0:49:19sort of surprised by that. Like, "Is this okay?" I was like, "Yeah, that's what they do here." So,

0:49:25yeah, so I did it as much as I possibly could while I was there.

0:49:29And it would also put it in a way more, like, binary, "Is it portable or not portable?"

0:49:35Right? Like, nobody had a record player in their car. I don't think. I don't know.

0:49:40Jared: I bet there were. I think I've seen that. There were definitely some crazy cars in the '60s.

0:49:46But they had turntables. But can you imagine driving around with a turntable going?

0:49:50Pete: How slow you would have to drive.

0:49:52Jared. How would that work? Yeah.

0:49:53Pete. You would have to go so slow to keep it from skipping.

0:50:02You mentioned the colors. That's an interesting thing that I, spending a week with another new

0:50:09set of AirPods and thinking about it. And I'm, it is very curious. So, they make the AirPods Max,

0:50:20the big over-the-ear ones, in a variety of colors. But the regular AirPods, they've never made in any

0:50:29color other than white. And that goes back all the way to when they were just AirPods, you know,

0:50:35with wires. Why do you think that is?

0:50:40Jared. I don't know. I mean, it might just be a branding thing in order for,

0:50:44but I guess, so like with the over-the-ear ones, they're obviously Apple, right? There's a logo on

0:50:54them. Pete.

0:50:55Is there? I don't think there is. I think that they count on them being a sort of iconic shape.

0:51:00I don't think there's a logo. The logo's inside the ear cup. It's in the mesh on the inside of

0:51:06the ear cup.

0:51:07Jared. Well, and I mean, I guess like if you know what the difference between

0:51:12expensive earphones, you wouldn't, you know, headphones, you would know that those are AirPods

0:51:17Max, but I don't think most people would. So, then that takes away my thesis, which is basically that

0:51:24it was a branding concept because I don't, I, maybe it still is. I mean, maybe the white still

0:51:30is like, they want people, they want other people to know that you're using Apple products, I guess.

0:51:34Pete Yeah. I think it's, I think it fundamentally is a branding thing. And that's why I think Apple,

0:51:39you're never going to get them to explain it. Like if, you know, I could ask Jaws about it in an

0:51:45on-stage interview and he's not going to say, I'm not, he's not going to get rude and say, well,

0:51:51F you, I'm not going to answer that, but he's going to talk around it. You know, he's, he's

0:51:55not going to give a straightforward answer because they don't explain branding decisions externally

0:52:01ever. But I think that the branding explanation would be AirPods Max are an iconic shape and

0:52:09therefore they can make them in any colors they want. And they're just, I don't think most,

0:52:15I don't think most people know what AirPods Max look like though. Yeah. Most people probably

0:52:19don't, but people who might be in the market for them do. Right. Right. Yes. And with the regular

0:52:26AirPods and EarPods going all the way back to the iPod, you know, and they made the, they started

0:52:32making iPods in various colors very quickly. Right. You know, we're just celebrated the,

0:52:37the 20th anniversary of the original iPod last week. It didn't take long. And, you know,

0:52:44you could have it in any color you wanted if it was white. It didn't take long for them to get to

0:52:50the iPod mini and then the iPod nano, which always came in a variety of very fun anodized aluminum

0:53:00colors, but they always shipped. You could buy a red one or a blue one or a green one,

0:53:05and it came with white AirPods. And I think that the branding logic of it is we're going to own

0:53:13this one color. It's the one neutral, it's the neutral color for distinctive earbuds. Black

0:53:21would be the other option for something neutral, but A, wouldn't have gone with the original

0:53:27iPod. And B, just isn't Apple-y, right? Like there's something, like Sony stuff would,

0:53:40has often been black, right? Like if you think back to any Sony home equipment you've had,

0:53:46PlayStations are black. We had a Sony DVD player or Blu-ray player for years. I had a Sony receiver.

0:53:56They were always black. That was just the Sony look. It's sort of a serious,

0:54:00you know, I don't know. It connotes a different feeling than white. It would be weird. Like if

0:54:08you were back in, let's say, 2004 and you were buying a Blu-ray player or DVD player,

0:54:15if Sony made one and it was the whole thing, it was meant to go underneath your TV, it would be

0:54:20weird if it was white. It just wouldn't feel like a Sony product. Although I guess now they, what,

0:54:25the PS5 is white? Yeah. You know, I think they've had certain color options for different, I mean,

0:54:31certainly in like mobile players and things like that. With Apple, I feel like with the AirPods,

0:54:36black earbuds would have never looked distinctive because so many earbuds were already black,

0:54:41right? If you just go into the store and say, "Hey, I need a pair of your, you know, I'm in

0:54:45the airport. I need headphones." What color are they? They're almost certainly black. The free

0:54:49ones. When you're on an airplane and they give you earbuds to use in the entertainment console.

0:54:55I don't even know if they do that anymore. I mean, who needs their stuff for that? But if you do,

0:55:02I guarantee you they're black. So black didn't make sense as the Apple's default color. White,

0:55:06therefore it was. And then once they became a popular thing, I mean, remember they ran those

0:55:12ad campaigns where they were just like silhouettes of people and all you would see are white earbuds

0:55:18coming out and a cable coming out. And they didn't even have to show the iPod. People just knew,

0:55:24"Oh, that's for Apple's iPod." And I just feel like they feel like that's a thing that they own

0:55:30and that sure, they can't stop other companies like Samsung or whoever else from making white

0:55:38earbuds. And of course, many other companies do now. But I feel like they feel like they know

0:55:46and everybody else knows they're ripping us off. Yeah, I assume. Yeah, I haven't looked. I mean,

0:55:52I'm looking at the ones that Microsoft makes and the ones that Google makes. I'm sure there are

0:55:58ones that Samsung makes that look almost exactly like earbuds. But the Google ones and the

0:56:04Microsoft ones look different, or at least different enough. The Google ones are white,

0:56:08but I don't think anyone would miss, well, I don't know. I mean, somebody might, but most people

0:56:12would not mistake them for earbuds. So I feel like they could go with other colors, but they're

0:56:17definitely not. They are moving into another color phase currently. And I think it's possible that

0:56:26they could reconsider that as part of this new phase because they might ship them in iMac

0:56:32style colors, but I suspect not. If you could get them in another color, what color would you want?

0:56:38Maybe that blue, the new iPhone, or I mean, I really liked the product red. I went out at

0:56:46iPhone SE, the current generation of iPhone SE for a while. That red was really nice, actually.

0:56:52Yeah. And I don't know if I would get black, honestly. If the case came in black,

0:56:58I might do that because the white always gets really blue because I keep it in my jeans all the

0:57:02time. My second generation case looks like crap. My stuff always gets blue too, everything,

0:57:09especially AirPod cases, because nine months of the year, I'm wearing blue jeans every single day.

0:57:17That was, and that was when I was checking out with these, I wanted to do engraving. I wanted

0:57:22to just put my initials on it or something like that. And it timed out on the engraving,

0:57:25and I was kind of worried like, "Oh, geez, I don't want to not get these on day one." So I just

0:57:31skipped the engraving and just went ahead and bought them. And then later I thought it was like,

0:57:37"It's going to be fine," because first of all, the case size is different than all the—Karen's

0:57:41got the older generation, so I'm not going to confuse it that way. But if she ever gets them,

0:57:45mine are going to be blue. I guess it's also a logistics issue.

0:57:51I mean, I know they do it with AirPods Max, and they have the colors, and they did it with iPods,

0:57:57as we just said. But at some level, Tim Cook's got to be happier. Tim Cook and Jeff Williams

0:58:02are happier if the product marketing people are like, "You know what? Once again, we're sticking

0:58:07with white." Well, and I know you don't want to talk about the MacBook Pro, but the cable is only

0:58:13in one color, right? Yes. Oh, man. It's a nice touch. We've got good friends, and a friend of

0:58:20the show, Jason Snell, texted me after our reviews came out and said, "Damn it, I wish I'd mentioned

0:58:28the thing about the cable, too." And it's the best compliment, right? Because I often, you know,

0:58:35I'll do the same for him or Panzerino or anybody else when they make a point in a review. I'm like,

0:58:41"Oh, I even had that in my notes, and I forgot to put it in my review." It irks me because these are

0:58:46the multi-thousand dollar laptops. And I think space gray is the better color, in my opinion,

0:58:54or at least I like it better. And it comes with a silver MagSafe connector and a white cable.

0:59:00And the other thing that really is sort of like salt in the wound is they just shipped those

0:59:07colorful iMacs six months ago, and they each come with color-coordinated power cables.

0:59:16And color-coordinated lightning cables with a nice braided, this nice braided fabric. So,

0:59:23if you get an orange iMac, you get an orange lightning cable. So, you can definitely do it,

0:59:29and these are more expensive machines than the iMacs. I don't know.

0:59:35Jared: Yeah. I mean, the color stuff, like most of the color stuff, the bright color stuff is

0:59:44usually for the non-pro devices, so it makes a little bit of sense, but I mean,

0:59:50at least it's slightly consistent. I don't know if it makes sense, but it's consistent.

0:59:55Pete: All right, let me take a break to thank our next sponsor, Sir Good Friends at LinkedIn.

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1:01:34The one other thing I was going to mention is that they ship—and maybe they did this with the

1:01:38pros too, but this was the first one for me that they shipped with a USB-C to Lightning cable

1:01:45inside the box, which was nice because that's the kind that I actually need now because I don't have

1:01:50many of those. And the previous ones were A to Lightning.

1:01:55And they've started that with the watch too, right? And this has been a very tricky—I

1:02:02wouldn't want to manage it. That's not fun. A fun part of maybe designing products at Apple would be

1:02:09the argument over, "Hey, should we make product red AirPods? Should we make bright red earbuds?

1:02:17I don't know." And you can have fun mocking them up and doing it. Managing the logistics of how

1:02:23do we move a billion users from USB-A cables to Lightning to USB-C or the same thing with the

1:02:31watch. And when do we do it? Should we do it now in 2019? Maybe it's too soon. I don't know. But

1:02:37we're not selling any MacBooks with USB-A ports anymore, and people do charge these things from

1:02:43their ports on their MacBook. I don't know. Are they moving too fast?

1:02:47I don't. I mean, I would never charge my AirPods that way, honestly. I don't think I would ever do

1:02:51that. I mean, in a very rare circumstance would I do that. I just need the cable for other stuff,

1:02:57mostly for connecting my iPhone. I've run into that situation. This is one of

1:03:01those things now where we're so far into the pandemic and having done so little travel,

1:03:06a couple of brief months over the summer where we felt safe and we did. But it feels like another

1:03:12era, like black and white TV and listening to FM radio and taping cassettes. Remember traveling and

1:03:22going places? The thing I remember just many, many times over the years realizing that my laptop bag

1:03:31backpack or sling bag, whatever I was carrying at the time, didn't have enough chargers or

1:03:36something. But it's like I always have a MacBook or going back far enough, a PowerBook or something.

1:03:42Wouldn't forget that charger. And if I had a cable, I could plug it in and charge other devices

1:03:49from the MacBook ports while traveling. It just seems weird though. We're at the point now where

1:03:55USB-A seems old. And I know it's one of those things that like VGA ports, never ever going to

1:04:05actually die. Somebody out there still is using a projector somewhere with VGA out.

1:04:11USB-A ports are going to be places built into chairs at the airport or any of the various

1:04:21places where people have put them. You're going to be running into them for a decade, two decades

1:04:26at least. But they seem old, right? The watch charger thing was interesting because they

1:04:36advertised that the new Series 7 watches charge faster with the new charging puck. But only with

1:04:45that new charging puck that has USB-C at the end. But it's confusing because they previously made

1:04:51a charging puck with a USB-C port at the end. I guess last year, I don't even remember it.

1:04:56And they're not labeled, of course, because they're Apple products. There's nothing labeling it.

1:05:01And they're like, "You got to use the new one if you want the faster charging. Don't use the old

1:05:05one." But it does charge faster, I'll just say. Not to go on an Apple Watch Series 7 side note, but

1:05:12I did a side-by-side. I don't do a lot of those sort of, "Hey, run the battery down and see how

1:05:16long it takes to charge." But the watch charge is so small and doesn't take long that it felt worth

1:05:23it. And it's like, "Yeah, it actually does." It charges not like three times as fast. It charges

1:05:2840% faster for whatever the number is. But it's noticeable if you're ready to go in the morning

1:05:34and you just want to make some coffee and get something quick to eat. And it's like,

1:05:38you can charge up your Apple Watch noticeably more if it was run down overnight than you would

1:05:45otherwise. Yeah. I never needed to charge it much. Yesterday, I think about midday, I noticed it

1:05:52seemed like it was down a little bit too far. And so I stuck it on the charger for 15 minutes or

1:05:56something. And it was plenty to make it through the rest of the day. I'd love to know what

1:06:01percentage of AirPod purchasers get the engraving. I have mine by the ones I bought engraved.

1:06:08And it's one of those... We were laughing before about Apple upselling me on a

1:06:13polishing cloth. But they don't charge for the engraving, which even like any modest amount,

1:06:21like for five bucks more, you can get them engraved. I wouldn't hesitate to do it. I mean,

1:06:26I wouldn't... I didn't hesitate to buy a $19 polishing cloth. So obviously, I'm not good with

1:06:35not spending my money, so I would do it. But I think a lot of other people would, "Oh, I want to

1:06:39get some emoji engraved on my case or whatever." And I think a huge reason for it is families with

1:06:47multiple AirPod owners, let's tell them apart. You don't want to stick your son's gross earpods

1:06:55or your son definitely doesn't want to stick your... I guess it's that way, right? Your teenage

1:07:00sons and daughters don't want to stick your gross old man earpods into their ears.

1:07:05Pete: Did I tell... I don't think I told it on this show. Karen was having trouble... You could

1:07:12decide if you want to cut this story or not. But Karen was having trouble with a pair of AirPods,

1:07:17and I was looking online to see what could be the problem. One of them was not, you know,

1:07:21the sound wasn't coming out very well. And, you know, eventually, like little bits of earwax get

1:07:26caught in the grill and stuff like that. And so, this guy's solution was you get a toothbrush and

1:07:32you scrape it a little bit in like a circular motion, try and be gentle so you don't break

1:07:36the grill and stuff like that, and then you suck on it. I was like, "Well, it's my wife."

1:07:47So, I did it. And it worked. It worked really, really well. And it was really gross.

1:07:56You know, I started this whole segment the wrong way because I would do that for my wife as well.

1:08:04I would. And, you know, it feels like dad business, right? Where the whole world is moving away from

1:08:14gender-specific roles, and it's all for the better, and it's much better. But this is

1:08:21man business, right? Like, yeah, I don't think she was gonna do that. Yeah, my wife would not do that

1:08:26for mine. But I would do it for her. She certainly, she definitely wouldn't do it for mine. I don't

1:08:30think she'd do it for hers either. And it's one of the light bulb moments of parenthood is that you,

1:08:38I don't know why, but as a parent, you're not grossed out by your kid stuff.

1:08:44Oh, yeah. You can't afford to be. You just can't. The time, you know, when they're little,

1:08:50like the idea that, "Oh, I gotta go get a paper towel." Or like, "No, I'm just gonna,

1:08:55like, the kid's snotty. I'm just gonna use my sleeve." Or eating food off their plate. Like,

1:09:01are you serious? You're not gonna eat those last few bites? "I'll eat off your plate. I'll still

1:09:05eat off my son's plate." Whereas I wouldn't eat off my dad's plate, right? I love my dad. My dad,

1:09:13I have always loved him. I did not think of that. I would not eat off my dad's plate.

1:09:18It's not come up. If my dad had a problem with his AirPods, which he doesn't even own, but

1:09:25if my dad had a problem with his AirPods and I suspected that that trick might work,

1:09:31I would just go out and buy him a new pair of AirPods and tell him that I used a cleaning

1:09:36trick I got on the internet. Here they are. Also, by the way, I polished the case up a little for

1:09:41you. And got it engraved. Yeah. That was the thing, though. I need to, because I also got

1:09:50hung up on the emoji stuff. Like, I was like, "Oh, there's all these emoji." And I was like, "Oh,

1:09:55maybe I should." And then I was like, "I'm taking too much time." And then it crashed.

1:09:59And so then I was like, "I'm not going back into that. I'm just going to buy them."

1:10:01So I think if you're planning on buying AirPods on day one and you want to get them engraved,

1:10:07make sure you know what you want on the engraving before you get into that.

1:10:10Well, yeah. This will come as absolutely no surprise to you or anybody who listens to this

1:10:16show and who's familiar with my proclivities. When I first got an AirPod case engraved, I noticed

1:10:26that there's four different trigger points where the font size changes so that it can fit more.

1:10:34If you only get one, two, or three letters, maybe you just want your initials, like JG or for you,

1:10:42JM. It's the biggest font size. And then you get to, I forget what the points are, but I,

1:10:49of course, obsessively figured out each one. It's like you get to four and it shrinks a little. You

1:10:54get to like 13, it shrinks a little more. And I started playing around. And as an old school

1:11:01graphic designer, you can run into problems if you do things purely by counting characters,

1:11:10because the lowercase i is the narrowest character, whereas an uppercase M or W is much wider.

1:11:19I forget exactly what they do. But then I got to the point where it's like, "Well, you know what I

1:11:23like? I like really small fonts. I think small fonts look better. I would like my case engraved

1:11:29with a small font, but I don't have a long string of text to engrave. And I really wish that they

1:11:36had let me just get my initials, but use the smallest possible font size." And I was like,

1:11:43"Ah, I got it. Spaces." No, nope. And then I thought, "Damn." And I was like, "Ah, but what

1:11:50about like option spaces to get like a Unicode thin space? Maybe they're just looking for space

1:11:58characters." Nope. No, they're doing like a regular expression search for all white space,

1:12:03and they don't count it if it's on the sides. I also thought then I also, I wasted a lot of time.

1:12:09Jared: Your eyesight's terrible. I'm surprised you still like small fonts.

1:12:12Ted, you know, my eyesight has gone back and forth. It's been a wild rollercoaster over five

1:12:18years, but I'm at the point now where my eyesight is actually much better for small stuff than it

1:12:24was two or three years ago. I'm back to being able to read pretty small stuff when I take my glasses

1:12:31off or use like my progressive lenses. So, I'm back to that, but that is a good point. I also,

1:12:39of course, spent an inordinate amount of time, just way more, I mean like a ridiculous amount

1:12:45of time, like, and couldn't tell my wife because it would be like, "Hey, don't you have something

1:12:50better to do?" But trying to sneak swear words past their filters, like, how smart are they,

1:13:01you know? So, obviously, just matching for a known list of swear words or inappropriate words that

1:13:07they will refuse to engrave, that's not going to work. But things like putting a Unicode thin space

1:13:14between the F and the U, you know, would that work? Would that get it passed? And then I enlisted

1:13:23friend of the show, Daniel Jowkett, in this, and he got it to a point where they let him put it into

1:13:30the cart with a swear, some kind of inappropriate thing using some kind of trickery like that,

1:13:36you know, Unicode spaces or something. But then it wouldn't let him check out. So, there's like

1:13:42a subsequent level of checking beyond the engraving tool where there, and then it would just, and it

1:13:48would like take them out of your cart and set you back, it was like getting the worst chute in chutes

1:13:54and ladders, you know, the one that would make your little siblings cry if they landed on it,

1:14:00because it would send them all the way back to the beginning. And it's like, all of a sudden,

1:14:04you don't even have AirPods in your cart anymore, and you've got to...

1:14:11But that's the way my mind thinks.

1:14:12I get it. Have you ever put like your phone number on them? I mean, it seems like that's probably...

1:14:16Yeah, well, I never thought of it, but...

1:14:18I think Karen had a case that she had them in and that she had her phone number, and the person,

1:14:23you know, somebody found them in a parking lot and called her and she got them back.

1:14:26Yeah, that's pretty, that's not a bad way to do it. And it's, you know...

1:14:28Or an email. Yeah, like you could put a, you know, like a burner email account on there.

1:14:33Yeah. Yeah, because I wouldn't want to put my real email for some reason.

1:14:37Yeah, I wouldn't either.

1:14:39I don't know why.

1:14:39You could just make up an iCloud, you know, it'll have to have a temporary iCloud one.

1:14:44Yeah, I guess. But then I'd start to wonder, though, if I, you know, make up a temporary

1:14:51iCloud one, but it's not an easily typable string, or somebody, you know, are they going to be like,

1:14:56you know, i76543 at iCloud.com. Forget it.

1:15:02Don't like make them jump through hoops to return your AirPods.

1:15:04Right.

1:15:06Yeah, I'm not quite sure. But, you know, I have phone number. I bet that's very common.

1:15:11Yeah, I'm always just, for some reason, I never wanted, like, I don't know why. I've never,

1:15:14I've never done it. And I'm always leery of just putting my information on anything,

1:15:19I guess, is probably what it is.

1:15:20Yeah, we're two, you and I are two, we're probably overly conservative about stuff like that. Like,

1:15:27Yeah.

1:15:27You know, it's, I still laugh. We were just, we were just talking the other day about how

1:15:35back when we, Amy and I went to college, both of our schools, both the University of Pittsburgh

1:15:39and Drexel used your social security number as your student ID.

1:15:44Oh, yeah, your student ID. Yeah. I don't think my, I don't think my school did that. But honestly,

1:15:49I don't remember so long ago.

1:15:51It, and that's how you would order that we, you used to be able to get, Drexel had like,

1:15:55the way that the food plan worked your freshman year is you, you didn't just get meals, like,

1:16:02oh, you can get like three meals a day at the cafeteria, you got like $72 a week that you could

1:16:08spend at Drexel's food services. So one of the ways you could spend it is go to lunch in the

1:16:14cafeteria. And, you know, but you could also from like your dorm call up Drexel's pizza, which was

1:16:20the worst pizza in all of Philadelphia, just the absolute worst, like, you know, like, how pizza

1:16:27cheese is supposed to be closer to white or yellow. It was orange. It was orange cheese. It was

1:16:33terrible. But, but if you had no real money to call a real pizza place, and you still had, you

1:16:42know, 13, 14 bucks left on your weekly food service allowance, but you would just call up,

1:16:48tell them your dorm room number, and then to pay, you would just read, read them your social

1:16:52security number. And then they would be like, okay, you've got $7 remaining. And you'd be like,

1:16:58okay, thanks. And they'd, you know, they'd know my name. They'd be like, okay, John.

1:17:02You know, because once they typed it in, it all came up. In fact, now that I think about it,

1:17:07you may not have even had to tell them your dorm room number. You might've just given them your

1:17:11student ID and they knew your dorm room number, which is even worse. Like they had a book,

1:17:16they had a book full of everybody. The school probably printed out a book that did that.

1:17:21So anyway, I'm loathe to even tell anybody my name.

1:17:25I wonder how those, you know, they'll get a key and it said drop in any mailbox.

1:17:29Yes. I wonder how that works. Like you should be able to get one of those, you know, where it's

1:17:35not even, it doesn't even have any information on there. It's just drop, just some magic.

1:17:39I don't know. We should get like a mailman on the show. Anyway, let me take a break here and

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1:20:01for a full list of licenses. I got dinged last time. I didn't read all of that.

1:20:08You didn't do the numbers? I didn't do the numbers the last time.

1:20:11Man, that's, yeah. I got a note. Dropping any mailbox.

1:20:15Are you a Curb Your Enthusiasm fan? No, no. I've seen a little bit, but not that much.

1:20:26It's a funny, we're big fans. The show has always been on HBO and the new season started last week.

1:20:32I guess it's going to last all season. I'm not sure. But the gimmick is that Larry David is

1:20:37selling a new sitcom to Netflix, which is interesting. It's just an interesting little

1:20:42thing to me. I presume that Netflix, that they okayed it and that the people at HBO are okay with

1:20:52the fictional version of Larry David selling a show to Netflix and that they got Netflix's

1:20:57permit. It's just a weird meta thing that Amy didn't want to talk to me at all about.

1:21:02But he pitches. What's the point of having a lawyer in the house?

1:21:09He pitches the show to these Netflix officials and they love it. And they're like, "I think we're

1:21:13going to go ahead. We're going to do it." And he's like, "You're going to enjoy working with me. I'm

1:21:18easy to work with. Don't worry about what people say." And they're like, "Ah." And everybody's

1:21:21laughing and a meeting is breaking up and he goes, "But no notes. Don't send me notes." And they laugh

1:21:26and he goes, "No, I mean that." With my show, and I think in a real world where you do these shows

1:21:36for big companies like HBO and Netflix and any of the movie studios, everybody who follows movies

1:21:42closely knows about notes. I don't know where the lingo came from. It seems like an entertainment

1:21:47industry thing. You watch something, you say, "I have notes." In the computer world, we don't

1:21:57talk about notes. If you're making a new app, your boss doesn't say, "I have some notes."

1:22:03Maybe they do, but it's not so much of a term of art. I got a note about not reading the small

1:22:11print on the earnest, but they're good people. Well, yeah, we get stuff like that. Anytime you're

1:22:18in one of these, on a podcast and you have advertisers, every once in a while, they'll

1:22:22listen in and they'll say, "Could you tweak this? Could you do that?" And that's what they're paying

1:22:29for. Yeah, that's what they're paying for. And the other thing that I truly appreciate is I truly

1:22:34appreciate and understand the fact that it's a very regulated industry and that it's not for

1:22:41nothing that they would like me to assert all the specific legal details at the end.

1:22:46Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I don't have a lot to say about it, but have you upgraded to MacOS 12

1:22:53Monterey? I have. I did that on Monday when it came, or not the minute it came out, but

1:23:00that afternoon. What are your thoughts? I like it so far. I think the widgets I've actually enjoyed,

1:23:09because now I have a widget for... And for some reason, this seems more usable to me than

1:23:15Dashboard did, because I've actually been using it a lot more than I used to use. Well, maybe in the

1:23:23beginning I used Dashboard a lot, but I've got three things on here that I have on my phone.

1:23:30And I check it fairly frequently. So, I mean, the control center still seems very weird.

1:23:39The widgets thing, that's a good note, John. But I agree with it, because taking an app from iOS

1:23:53to Mac and just letting it run, let's say the home app or some of the first Catalyst apps, like the

1:24:01news and the stocks apps, it just felt like you were running an iOS app in the simulator. And

1:24:10if you're either, A, a developer of iPhone apps or iPad apps, or even just kicked around with Xcode

1:24:18playing with it, you know what I mean? Where it's cool that you can run your iPhone app on your Mac

1:24:25while you're developing it in a simulator, but it always felt like you were running an iPhone app in

1:24:31a simulator. It just didn't feel Mac-like. And the quick and easy, like the home app, still to me,

1:24:39doesn't really look and feel like a Mac app. It feels like an iPad app running on a Mac.

1:24:43The widgets are narrowly constrained in a way that they feel just at home across the board,

1:24:52right? And that there's not buttons and controls, and there's not a lot of interactivity.

1:24:56They're just sort of like little status panels. And somehow they've squared that circle in a very

1:25:04neat way where they feel very much at home. And I like them. I do too. And I think dashboard is one

1:25:12of those ideas where they've been taking several stabs at it over the decades now, and I feel like

1:25:18they finally got it. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, we'll see. I think I used dashboard for a while,

1:25:28because I used to—there's that iStat menu thing that is now in the menu. You can get it in the menu

1:25:34bar so you don't—I had that for a long time, and I don't currently use it. And so I remember going

1:25:39into—but I think that was back to our point about how Macs use memory and whatnot now. I don't feel

1:25:47like I need it anymore, is the thing. I don't feel resource-constrained anymore. Whereas when I was

1:25:53using a 400 MHz powerbook, I really did, with a physical disk. Right. My big feature, the one that

1:26:05is—my main machine is still running macOS 11 Big Sur, and over the years I've gotten a little bit

1:26:13more conservative about when I upgrade to the latest version of macOS 10 on my main machine.

1:26:18But it's prompting me to do it. As soon as I have all of my current work done and I feel like,

1:26:23just in case something goes bad, I can blow a day fixing it, I'm upgrading, is live text.

1:26:32And I know that's on all platforms, and I've been playing with—I've been using the iOS betas all

1:26:38summer, and there are times I'd use live text. But for me, the type of situations where I want

1:26:44to use live text are way more common on a Mac. Right? Like I want to—

1:26:49Exactly. Yeah.

1:26:50I've got a picture of a thing I want—or here's this text on a printed thing.

1:26:53I don't want to retype it. It seems like long work. I don't want to do—oh, I'll just take a

1:26:59picture, and you take a picture and select it, and it's amazing.

1:27:02Yeah. It's absolutely amazing.

1:27:05Yeah, I was telling Paul in the Slack earlier today, I had a recipe that I've had for 20 years

1:27:13for Vietnamese catfish, and it's excellent. I love it. And it's the only recipe that I have

1:27:18that is actually something that we ripped out of a magazine a long time ago when we used to get

1:27:23something. I don't remember what it was. And so I would always go to the recipe box that we still

1:27:29have and pull it out every time I was going to make Vietnamese catfish. Back in May, I finally

1:27:34thought, "I'll take a picture of it." And then eventually, because I use Paprika for all my

1:27:40recipes, I was thinking, "I'll just type it in," because I'm tired of going to find it every single

1:27:46time. And I took the picture of it in May and never typed it in, but I still had the picture.

1:27:54It suddenly hit me once I upgraded to Monterey. Like, "Oh, I don't have to type it anymore." And

1:28:00I opened it up and just copy-pasted, put it in the Paprika, and did a little bit of editing, and

1:28:04now I have it, and I made it last time.

1:28:07To be clear, Paprika is a recipe app. You're not just talking about using the spice?

1:28:13No. No. Actually, there's no Paprika in this recipe.

1:28:16I was going to say, that would be a hell of a coincidence. But it's a feature that, A,

1:28:21once you get used to it, you almost can't go back to not having it. So it's like making me look at

1:28:27every machine I have that's not updated to the latest and greatest and cast a stink eye at it.

1:28:32But when I first started, it was like when they announced it, I was like, "That sounds awesome."

1:28:38And I know that there have been... OCR is a long-standing thing, and there's a utility

1:28:45called TextSniper for the Mac that you'll never believe who turned me on to it.

1:28:51[laughter]

1:28:52Paul Kefas...

1:28:53I bet I will. I bet I will believe.

1:28:55Paul Kefas is...

1:28:56No, you don't say.

1:28:57Paul, I wish... He's just Paul from now on.

1:29:00You should have had Paul on, I think.

1:29:01Yeah.

1:29:01I think that's the...

1:29:03And it's really... TextSniper is great. I wish I had known about it years ago.

1:29:08And if you, for whatever reason, either out of personal hesitancy or specific technical

1:29:15limitations or rules, can't upgrade to Mac OS 12 Monterey yet, you should definitely take a look

1:29:23at TextSniper in the meantime. But even TextSniper, which works great, very accurate, pretty

1:29:29convenient to use. It's sort of like taking a screenshot where it's like you say, "I wanna

1:29:34capture some text," and you go into a mode and you get a cursor that looks like a plus symbol,

1:29:40and you can drag it around the text you wanna capture and you get it.

1:29:45It works pretty well. But nothing... It can't compete with something built into the system

1:29:49where every time that you open an image, there's this little icon that says, "I've already

1:29:52identified text here. Just click here and you can copy it," like it's live text. It's amazing.

1:29:59And to me, like I said, it's so much... Something I will use so much more on the Mac than anywhere

1:30:06else, even though I'm glad it's on iOS and iPad too, but it's my favorite feature of Monterey.

1:30:13And I would update to Monterey even if that was the only feature. If they were just like,

1:30:19"You remember everything else we announced at WWDC? Well, that's all postponed,

1:30:23but we do have live text," I would be like, "Four gigabytes download right now. Here we go."

1:30:29Pete: Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I think that the second probably, actually,

1:30:36this was the first thing that I noticed for sure was simply the return of sensible tabs.

1:30:59Pete:

1:31:00I have a basic sense that Mac OS 12 Monterey is not a huge update and it's not that different

1:31:08than Mac OS 11 Big Sur in a good way, right? Like in a snow leopard, no major new features way and

1:31:16people... Some of those are the best remembered Mac OS versions over the years because they focused

1:31:24engineering resources on stability and fixing bugs and not adding a lot of... But there's more

1:31:31new stuff than I remembered off the top of my head. But like the Safari list is now funny

1:31:37because it's like the last bullet item is optional compact tab mode, saves space. And it's like...

1:31:46I laugh and I'm not trying to make fun. I'm glad that it worked out the way it did,

1:31:52that they changed their mind collectively and reverted to tabs that look... Not just when you're

1:32:00not in compact mode, but that that's actually the default tabs too, so that like my parents won't

1:32:06call me up and be like, "I don't understand." I don't want to...

1:32:10Jared:

1:32:11I didn't... Yeah, my parents did. That didn't occur to me, but I thought if Karen updated,

1:32:15I would be... Yeah, I would be hearing about it.

1:32:18Pete; So I'm glad they reverted that. I think it was a change that,

1:32:21again, worth trying, but never should have made it out of the prototype stage and probably should

1:32:28have been nixed early and somehow didn't. But it does make for a funny Safari section in the

1:32:35Monterey. Tabs still don't suck, right?

1:32:42Jared; Sucky tab option added.

1:32:48Pete; But I mean that in a very complementary way. I feel like Big Sur was a 11, Mac OS 11 Big Sur

1:32:57was a total corner-to-corner refresh of the UI. Not radical, but they redrew everything. The menu

1:33:06bar looks different and they added the control center, which like you said, it still is a little

1:33:14weird on the Mac, but...

1:33:15Jared; Yeah, it seems a little out of place. Like it doesn't seem,

1:33:19it seems very, it seems sort of iOS-y.

1:33:21Pete; But lots of stuff, you know, they made a couple of things more iOS-y for whatever

1:33:26reasons. But Monterey isn't like that, but in a good way, right? Like it's just sort of polished up

1:33:32stuff and I like it. And I've had very good, you know, a couple of Macs I've had it on,

1:33:37including the review unit upstairs, which, you know, the new MacBook Pro, which of course has

1:33:44to have Monterey because new hardware always runs the latest operating system. Kudos to Apple for

1:33:50shipping that. I guess the one buggy thing is shortcuts. Do you use the shortcuts?

1:33:54Jared; I don't. That's the thing. I don't use shortcuts, but yeah, that is,

1:33:58that's definitely what I've heard.

1:33:59Pete; Yeah. And I, you know, I don't want to go into it in detail. It is a weird,

1:34:03I think it's a weird saga though, where the long, I think the, the very, the layperson's explanation

1:34:11is that there's three ways to make a Mac app, but a native one. The AppKit, which is the long-standing

1:34:18framework that goes all the way back to NeXT, which is what most Mac apps are written with,

1:34:25you can use Catalyst, which is sort of debuted alongside Swift UI, what, three years ago,

1:34:31and is a way to use UIKit, which is the, the equivalent of AppKit from iOS,

1:34:38but you could use that now on the Mac too. And it's a way, you know, the, the idea is that

1:34:44you could share a code base across platforms to save time. And also for developers, there's just

1:34:52way more iPhone and iPad developers than there are Mac developers. Well, you know, maybe this will

1:34:57get more Mac apps and Swift UI and Swift UI is actually, it is also used to make all the widgets

1:35:06and it's Swift UI is great for widgets. Swift UI does not seem great yet for apps. And, but the

1:35:15way, you know, there's that term dog fooding, right? Like the way that a company needs to dog,

1:35:20they need to eat their own dog food, meaning use their own tools, use their own stuff.

1:35:24And, you know, you have to, somebody has to be the first major app inside Apple to use Swift UI

1:35:33as the framework to make the whole app. And it turns out it was shortcuts and it, you know,

1:35:41it was a Rocky landing is a way to put it. You know, Federico Faticchi is the biggest shortcuts

1:35:52fanad fan power user I could imagine. He not only, he writes about them, he shares them to

1:36:00Mac stories users, and some of them do amazing things. It's, and, you know, and he, he'll say,

1:36:06he's not a programmer and it's like, no, you're a programmer. Shortcuts hasn't turned you into

1:36:11a programmer. This is like a mental model for programming that, that works for you.

1:36:15And you're building these amazing things. And I'm, I read his stuff and it's not just on Mac,

1:36:21it's, you know, everywhere. It's like, it's shortcuts. It's like sometimes you enter,

1:36:25you know, you, it's like you have a 30 step shortcut and every three steps, the apps just

1:36:31stops letting you enter text and you have to close it, go back, reopen it. It's, it's Rocky.

1:36:38And it's, it's really kind of weird. It's, I'm glad it's there on Mac OS 12 Monterey. And it's,

1:36:44I can't wait to see once this stabilizes, you know, as a long time automation nerd and

1:36:50Apple script user, and I use keyboard maestro, but none of those things go cross-platform,

1:36:56right? Apple script and keyboard maestro are only on the Mac and shortcuts was only on the iPhone.

1:37:02And shortcuts seems to be a path forward where, where this automator was Mac only.

1:37:08But where shortcuts, you know, is today is, is not, not, not good. Yeah. Anything else?

1:37:18A quick note, I haven't used it yet, but I liked the idea and I expect that I will.

1:37:26Well, my thanks to you for being on the show. You, you've, what else do, what do you want

1:37:33to promote? We already mentioned the rebound, which is podcast with a membership system.

1:37:38That's right. You can be a rebound prime member, rebound prime member. Love it. We'd love it. If

1:37:44you would, if you would consider that. And I do a podcast called Biff with Dan and friend of the

1:37:49show Guy English. You should have Paul on that show. I don't think Paul watches Super, does Paul

1:37:59watch superhero shows? It doesn't seem like his bag. It doesn't seem like Paul would watch superhero

1:38:03shows. But it would have made, it would have made for a funny gag on this show. So yeah, and

1:38:10sometimes I hang out with Paul. I will thank our sponsors. We had Earnest, where you can refinance

1:38:18your student loans, LinkedIn jobs, where you can go place a free job listing and have great

1:38:25experience hiring to fill your, your openings. And of course, Memberful, where you can start

1:38:33your own membership system, monetize your interest and where the rebound can monetize their members.

1:38:40Monetize my appearance on this podcast.

1:38:43Monetize your appearance on this podcast. Thank you.

1:38:46No, thank you.

1:38:49Always good talking to you, John.