0:00:00- [Dave] Neil, we always talk once a year on my show.
0:00:04- [Niel] This is one of my favorite traditions,
0:00:05is a post iPhone review kuber hang.
0:00:08- [Dave] It's a little late, but you know,
0:00:11Apple's schedule on the phone skips around,
0:00:13September, October, whatever, you know.
0:00:16- [Niel] There's also just a lot to talk about
0:00:19besides the phones.
0:00:20There's an endless amount of Apple stuff going on.
0:00:22- [Dave] Yeah, there really is.
0:00:23I'm curious though, and it's kind of interesting,
0:00:26I always like the,
0:00:28I shouldn't say that I like the cool off period,
0:00:30it's that I hate the, okay, you have six days
0:00:34to review this phone, and try not to miss anything,
0:00:38and try to let it settle in.
0:00:40It's interesting to me to keep talking about it.
0:00:43This to me is why podcasts are awesome.
0:00:45After the iPhone 13s are, not necessarily old news,
0:00:51but you know, they're not the hot, hot freshest.
0:00:54I'm curious what you think overall.
0:00:57- [Niel] I think they're great phones.
0:00:59And you know, there's that debate about the names,
0:01:02and whether they should have called them the 12s.
0:01:04- Right.
0:01:05- And my big takeaway is that in many ways,
0:01:10for one particular reason, which I'll say,
0:01:12this is the phone the 12 should have been.
0:01:14And like, I think calling it the 12s
0:01:16would have made that making more clear,
0:01:18but it's a great phone, and the 12 was a great phone,
0:01:21I really liked that phone.
0:01:22The specific thing I'm getting at is the 5G performance
0:01:25of this phone appears to be better than the 12 where I live,
0:01:28which is a really hard thing to talk about.
0:01:30- Right.
0:01:31- Because other people had great 5G experiences
0:01:33with their 12 wherever they lived.
0:01:35But for me, where I live in the middle of nowhere,
0:01:38the 5G performance on the 13 Pro Max
0:01:41is significantly better than the 12.
0:01:45And I'm assuming AT&T didn't put up a tower yesterday
0:01:48to make that the case, especially where I live.
0:01:50So there's just all this stuff
0:01:52that you start to notice over time.
0:01:54- Yeah.
0:01:55- That you would never catch,
0:01:56and I think the 12 came out with that wave of 5G hype.
0:01:59They had Verizon on stage,
0:02:01and it kind of fell flat for a lot of people.
0:02:04And this phone actually delivers on that set of hype.
0:02:06So that's, when I say it's the phone
0:02:07that the 12 should have been,
0:02:09it's the phone that to me, for the first time,
0:02:11delivers any true value out of 5G.
0:02:13Where on LTE or on the 12 with 5G,
0:02:17I was getting like 25 down here,
0:02:19my 13 will get 100 down, which is a massive increase.
0:02:22- Yeah, that's super significant.
0:02:24'Cause I would say 100 is sort of where,
0:02:27it's not necessarily super fast,
0:02:29but that's sort of, in today's world,
0:02:31that's pretty decent.
0:02:33Whether you're on WiFi or cellular,
0:02:34100 megabits per second down, it's pretty good.
0:02:37You can stream whatever you want.
0:02:40If you're downloading something truly humongous,
0:02:42like if you're tethering and using it
0:02:45to download the new Xcode to your Mac
0:02:48and it's multiple gigabytes,
0:02:50sure, maybe it's not that fast, but it's pretty good.
0:02:5225, on the other hand,
0:02:53you're probably gonna struggle to pull down 4K video
0:02:56or something like that.
0:02:58- Yeah, and all the people in Europe and South Korea
0:03:00are laughing, the two Americans.
0:03:02100 is great, they've been getting 100 on LTE for 10 years.
0:03:05- I can't complain, here in Philadelphia,
0:03:07Verizon, in Center City, Philadelphia,
0:03:09Verizon has been really good.
0:03:11I mean, I think I tend to get 200 on LTE most of the time.
0:03:16And I did get the super fast 5G UW
0:03:21just a few blocks from my house,
0:03:23and Verizon's map was super accurate.
0:03:27It was like, okay, if I go to this weird corner,
0:03:30which is not even a busy street,
0:03:31they're saying I'm gonna get 5G UW ultra wide,
0:03:35and it's like, boom, there I do,
0:03:37almost 2,000 megabits per second.
0:03:40- Well, in Philly, Comcast is in Philly, right?
0:03:42And Comcast has partnered with Verizon
0:03:43on their weird Xfinity.
0:03:46And so you have to imagine the Comcast executives
0:03:47are walking around being like, yo,
0:03:49can you get to work here?
0:03:50We run a network, we can help you.
0:03:52Not so much in the woods, right?
0:03:55- But I will say that over a year of iPhone 12 use,
0:03:59I went back and forth all year long
0:04:02whether I should just turn off 5G and just use LTE.
0:04:05'Cause I vaguely suspected that I was squandering battery
0:04:09all year for no real use,
0:04:11because if I was gonna get 200 megabits down
0:04:15or close to it on LTE, what's the point?
0:04:17If the regular 5G is around the same,
0:04:21anyway, it can only save battery.
0:04:23But the other thing was that for the whole year
0:04:25I was using the iPhone 12, for the most part,
0:04:27I never really went anywhere.
0:04:29So it was like, in a normal year
0:04:32where I was traveling several times a year,
0:04:35would have been traveling probably this coming weekend
0:04:38for the Mac event next week, et cetera,
0:04:43I always am interested in things like,
0:04:46hey, this new technology,
0:04:48like when the phones first went to LTE,
0:04:50it was like, nah, keep it on 3G when you travel,
0:04:52'cause you're not gonna get the speed.
0:04:53The first few years of these network rollouts
0:04:56never really pay off anyway.
0:04:57- Yeah, but that's what I mean.
0:05:00The 5G hype cycle was out of control
0:05:03and the 12 was like, I mean, right there,
0:05:07like 5G got real.
0:05:08It's really here now because of this phone.
0:05:10And that to me just never connected, it never landed.
0:05:13And then with this phone, I'm like, okay,
0:05:15I'm starting to see it.
0:05:16I think there is, the radios are slightly different,
0:05:19they access more bands.
0:05:22AT&T and Verizon, they've been aggressively lying
0:05:25about what 5G means for some time.
0:05:28- AT&T in particular, AT&T takes it to a new level.
0:05:32And they did the same thing with 4G too, right?
0:05:35Where they had, and they convinced Apple
0:05:38to put like a weird icon up in the status bar
0:05:40with like 5G with an asterisk or something like that.
0:05:45- Yeah, so it was 5G for AT&T.
0:05:46But the other thing they're doing,
0:05:48which it's like, it makes sense they would try to do this,
0:05:52but they're reusing and sharing LTE spectrum
0:05:56with 5G spectrum, it's called DSS.
0:05:58And it's this weird technology.
0:05:59And I would, when the 12 came out, I said,
0:06:01how often is this phone using DSS
0:06:03versus dedicated 5G spectrum?
0:06:05And there was a lot of hemming and hawing.
0:06:07And they're like, that's up to the carriers,
0:06:08you're gonna ask them.
0:06:09And now that it supports more bands
0:06:11and they're rolling out more of that mid-band 5G,
0:06:13which is the reason T-Mobile has had a faster network
0:06:16this whole time is they've always had the mid-band 5G
0:06:19as opposed to the millimeter wave.
0:06:21You can see it.
0:06:22And right, is it the phone?
0:06:24Is it the carrier?
0:06:25Is it the phone supports more bands?
0:06:26Like it's, this is why it's,
0:06:28I would have never been able to put this all in a review.
0:06:31I would have written an 8,000 word review,
0:06:33actually this year Dieter did the reviews.
0:06:35I would have made Dieter write an 8,000 word review
0:06:37on just frequency allocations in the phone.
0:06:41But I wouldn't, I don't think that we would have even known
0:06:43without this much more time passing
0:06:45and being able to say, okay, I'm starting to see
0:06:47that the phone is caught up to the network,
0:06:49has caught up to the phone,
0:06:50and that cycle is beginning to build to something useful.
0:06:53Now, do I think that I would accept a robotic surgery
0:06:57on this network or let a car drive itself on it?
0:07:00No, I would not.
0:07:01And that, like that part of the 5G hype cycle
0:07:03is out of control.
0:07:04But is it a little faster?
0:07:05It sure is.
0:07:06- It is one of the most interesting
0:07:09and unique aspects of reviewing any phone,
0:07:13but iPhone in particular,
0:07:14because it's the one thing that is outside Apple's control
0:07:19and is obviously a very touchy subject with the carriers.
0:07:26So Apple is in this untenable position, really,
0:07:30where they, what are they gonna do?
0:07:32Tell you that, hey, well,
0:07:33Verizon has a better 5G network than AT&T,
0:07:36or vice versa, whatever.
0:07:38They're not gonna do that, they can't, right?
0:07:40They can't throw any of their carrier partners
0:07:42under the bus and talk about problems or say that,
0:07:47well, it's not gonna be as good on Carrier X
0:07:50because they don't support the band that's better,
0:07:53blah, blah, blah.
0:07:54They can't talk about it.
0:07:55But yet, it's this thing that they want to hype
0:07:57because the carriers want to hype it.
0:08:00- I think especially this year,
0:08:01if you look at the pricing of these phones,
0:08:06it's almost useless to talk about the MSRP of the phone
0:08:10because the carriers are just gonna give you money,
0:08:13and that money is baked back into a more expensive 5G plan.
0:08:17The carriers are not, they're good at this math.
0:08:19It's a shell game, they're good at it.
0:08:22The vibe we got when the phone was announced was,
0:08:24man, we are right back to the days of phone subsidies.
0:08:27Right, we're giving the phones away for free or super cheap,
0:08:32and then we're baking that cost back into the plan,
0:08:34and we kinda know it,
0:08:35but we need the carriers to sell iPhones.
0:08:38People are at home.
0:08:39They're not necessarily incentivized,
0:08:41but offering people a ton of free phones
0:08:43is getting them to upgrade.
0:08:44We're managing our demand that way,
0:08:46and I think a lot of people are happy to see a free phone.
0:08:49But it's true that Apple needs the carriers to participate
0:08:52in this pretty intense subsidy program.
0:08:56The carriers want 5G phones.
0:08:58They wanna switch over that network
0:08:59and get away from DSS as fast as they can.
0:09:01Apple wants to sell a lot of phones.
0:09:03I don't know if it's untenable.
0:09:04Apple's selling a lot of phones,
0:09:06but there's a part of the business relationship
0:09:09that absolutely prevents them
0:09:11from evaluating the carriers to the customer.
0:09:13They're just not gonna do it.
0:09:14- I guess it is tenable in that way,
0:09:17but it's untenable in Apple's usual way
0:09:20of being as forthcoming as they can
0:09:23about the product's performance.
0:09:26And you have to learn to speak Appleese.
0:09:29They never throw anything under the bus.
0:09:30So here's one simple example.
0:09:33All of the iPhone 13s have an ultra-wide camera,
0:09:38but this year the 13 Pros
0:09:41have a significantly improved ultra-wide.
0:09:44It's the one that it has auto-focus,
0:09:46and that's what enables macro mode,
0:09:48and it also has a better sensor.
0:09:51Well, I guess that's partly why it has auto-focus,
0:09:53better sensor, but it's also better in low light.
0:09:57But when you ask them questions
0:09:59about the regular iPhone 13 ultra-wide in comparison,
0:10:02they don't say bad things about that lens.
0:10:06They'll only say good things about the 13 Pro lens,
0:10:09and you just have to learn to translate that,
0:10:12okay, no, the light sensitivity hasn't changed at all
0:10:14from the iPhone 12.
0:10:15That's what they're trying to say.
0:10:17But they can't talk even in their usual elliptical way
0:10:21about 5G performance.
0:10:23It is like a black box that they really can't
0:10:26because it's so tied to the promotion.
0:10:28But it is true too.
0:10:30Right after the event, I have a friend who's,
0:10:34I guess you would best describe as an analyst,
0:10:36somebody you know through Daring Fireball,
0:10:38and he was just like, weee!
0:10:40It's like back to 2008 with 2009
0:10:42with the subsidy model for pricing.
0:10:45Except now it's sort of, it's like inverted,
0:10:49where back then the subsidized prices
0:10:53were the prices that Apple would put up
0:10:54on the keynote slides, and they were the ones
0:10:57they wanted you to think of the real price,
0:10:58whereas now they tell you just the flat retail price
0:11:02and the subsidized prices that most people
0:11:06are actually paying when they go in
0:11:08and upgrade at their carrier at significant discounts,
0:11:10but who knows what they are.
0:11:12It's all sort of, and I think the carriers
0:11:14sort of like it that way where it's sort of,
0:11:16they don't really want you pricing,
0:11:18you know, shopping it around.
0:11:19- It is so hard.
0:11:20Apple did put up two slides.
0:11:23They showed you the MSRP this year,
0:11:25and then I think there was a second slide
0:11:26where they're like, we're so excited
0:11:27our carrier partners are gonna offer these discounts.
0:11:30So it was a little change, but then you,
0:11:32we just tried to do a story where we're like,
0:11:34here's how much the iPhone costs this year,
0:11:37and we just tried to break down all the carriers,
0:11:39and it quickly got out of hand.
0:11:40Like we realized what we needed to build
0:11:43was effectively a search engine,
0:11:45like a Google-caliber search engine
0:11:48where you typed in the plan you had,
0:11:51and every carrier now has like decades worth
0:11:53of weird grandfathered plans.
0:11:56The phone you had that you're trading,
0:11:58and we're like, the literal logic of this
0:12:01is a search engine.
0:12:02Like that's kind of what we're doing here.
0:12:04Like we don't know if we can do this.
0:12:05The one I saw, there's a bunch of YouTube videos
0:12:08where like YouTubers are doing Excel on YouTube,
0:12:11and I wanna, when you get the YouTubers
0:12:14to start like doing Excel on camera,
0:12:15you know, like maybe this is a little too complicated.
0:12:18(both laughing)
0:12:20- It is not the most cinematic way of presenting information,
0:12:25but there are some things that demand a tabular grid.
0:12:29It's interesting.
0:12:31I think the other thing that's interesting
0:12:33with the iPhone 13 models,
0:12:35and it ties into the Apple Watch Series 7,
0:12:38which we can pick up after a break,
0:12:40but is the lack of neutral color options
0:12:45at the consumer side.
0:12:47- Yeah.
0:12:48- There's the starlight,
0:12:51and which is the closest they come
0:12:53to what was always just called silver,
0:12:56and midnight, which is the closest they come
0:12:58to like a black or space gray or space black,
0:13:02those names that they've used over the years
0:13:03that have always been neutral,
0:13:04but midnight has a touch of blue.
0:13:06And it's, I've been, again, it's a privilege.
0:13:12I love my job.
0:13:14I know it will come back to normal eventually,
0:13:17but I really, really miss the hands-on areas after events.
0:13:23And I always thought it was interesting
0:13:25for evaluating color and finishes.
0:13:27I always bring up the iPhone 7,
0:13:32which is when they had oddly two black models.
0:13:34They had like a matte black, and they called one jet black.
0:13:38And the jet black was the sort of thing
0:13:41that it's like impossible to photograph.
0:13:43You can't really capture gloss
0:13:46when you're displaying it on a photograph.
0:13:50You really needed to see it.
0:13:51You needed to touch it to see how it felt
0:13:53that it had like a sort of tackiness,
0:13:55like I always say, like a basketball sneaker
0:13:58on a clean basketball court.
0:14:00With these colors this year,
0:14:02some of the feedback I've gotten from readers is,
0:14:05"Well, you're not talking about the colors."
0:14:07And it's like, "Well, I can't talk about colors
0:14:08"I haven't seen," right?
0:14:09It's like, we all see Apple's photos.
0:14:12You can see them as well as I do.
0:14:14I haven't seen them in person.
0:14:15I only have the things that they've sent me
0:14:17'cause they're not in.
0:14:18Now I have been to the Apple Store to see the phones,
0:14:21and so I've seen Starlight in person.
0:14:23I find that the Starlight is very champagne-y.
0:14:28It is clearly more like a silvery gold
0:14:33than a gold silver to me,
0:14:35whereas Midnight plays as black or neutral,
0:14:40and you really kinda,
0:14:41you have to catch it the right way to get the blue.
0:14:43Now, is that me?
0:14:45Is that the way my rods and cones in my eyes perceive color?
0:14:50But I know that there's a lot of,
0:14:52it's like the number one complaint about the watches
0:14:53seems to be the lack of neutral colors,
0:14:58and the same thing with the phones.
0:15:00- Yeah, it's interesting.
0:15:01There's a split there between the watch and the phones
0:15:03that is kinda interesting.
0:15:06I think Apple assumes, and the carriers assume, rightfully,
0:15:10that most people are putting these in cases.
0:15:12- Yep.
0:15:13- So the colors are almost secondary.
0:15:16Really, you're picking the color of your camera bump,
0:15:18'cause that's the only thing you're gonna see
0:15:19in most of these cases.
0:15:20I had the Sierra Blue review unit,
0:15:25and I bought my own Graphite Pro.
0:15:28Sierra Blue's beautiful,
0:15:30but I instantly put it into a case.
0:15:33Yeah, so that's interesting,
0:15:35'cause with the phones, you expect,
0:15:37I think they expect it,
0:15:38they can be a little more dramatic with the colors.
0:15:41Not so with the watch, right?
0:15:43Not very many people put the watch in cases,
0:15:45and I'd be curious to understand
0:15:48why they went that way with the watch,
0:15:50instead of the offering the neutral so you could,
0:15:54I mean, right now, I have a black watch.
0:15:56It's like, I'm not gonna not buy a black watch.
0:15:59- Right.
0:16:00Well, let me take a break,
0:16:01and then we can talk about Apple Watch Series 7.
0:16:04It's a great segue.
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0:18:20I'm with you.
0:18:22I think that the case situation is so different
0:18:26between phones and watches,
0:18:28where almost everybody puts their phones in a case
0:18:31and almost nobody puts an Apple Watch in a case
0:18:34or a protective wraparound strap.
0:18:37I'm not even sure why you would.
0:18:39I mean, I guess there's this sort of G-Shock mentality,
0:18:43and there's rumors,
0:18:44German has rumored that Apple's even considering a watch
0:18:47that's in that space.
0:18:49But when I see people with the thing,
0:18:50it doesn't look like they're using it to go rock climbing.
0:18:53There just seem like people
0:18:55who are afraid of scratching their watch.
0:18:57But it's very rare that I see somebody like that.
0:19:01- There's a specific kind of personality
0:19:02that puts everything in a case.
0:19:04- Right.
0:19:05- And I want to,
0:19:06maybe we should just find four of those people on profile
0:19:08and be like, why is your first instinct
0:19:10to wrap everything in a case?
0:19:11Like, I get it with a phone.
0:19:12I drop my phone a lot.
0:19:13Your watch, if you're dropping your watch,
0:19:16you're kind of necessarily dropping yourself, right?
0:19:19(both laughing)
0:19:21- You're kind of doing it wrong, right?
0:19:22It's like, and I know,
0:19:25I've worn a watch my whole, ever since I was a teenager,
0:19:28and it's like, every once in a while,
0:19:29you'll like bang it against a doorway or something,
0:19:32you know, and you take a look.
0:19:34And usually my watches over the years, I've never,
0:19:37every once in a while,
0:19:38I'd get like a scratch or something here or there,
0:19:40but for the most part,
0:19:40they don't really seem like they need a case.
0:19:44But this lack of a neutral color option,
0:19:48that there's starlight instead of silver
0:19:50at the aluminum level, and midnight, which is blue.
0:19:54The other thing that that,
0:19:56my personal tastes, shockingly, lean towards neutral colors.
0:20:01But the other thing about neutral colors is
0:20:05they then go with any straps or bands you want to use,
0:20:09and that's sort of a big, or not even sort of,
0:20:13it's a big part of the Apple Watch ecosystem,
0:20:18is that a lot of people, for everybody out there,
0:20:21I'm sure most people pick a strap, never change it,
0:20:24you know, don't even know how to change the straps.
0:20:26But there are a lot of people who love the easy,
0:20:29I can change these straps, you know,
0:20:31with just push a button, slide it out, put another one in.
0:20:34The compatibility, the fact that every Apple Watch strap
0:20:38made since 2015 is still compatible, you know,
0:20:41either at the smaller or large size,
0:20:43means that people who are on like their second or third,
0:20:46or if you're like an enthusiast,
0:20:48like your fourth Apple Watch,
0:20:50the straps you've already bought are compatible.
0:20:54But you know, it's like, I don't know,
0:20:55if you have like champagne as your watch color,
0:20:59to me that rules out certain colors to go with it,
0:21:01and the same thing with like a blue-hinted midnight,
0:21:06maybe it doesn't go with certain straps
0:21:08that plain space gray would.
0:21:11- Yeah, I mean, maybe the data is saying
0:21:13that people aren't doing that as much as we think.
0:21:17I do think that's a fun part of the Apple Watch experience,
0:21:20that you can change these as much as you want,
0:21:21and there's like, there's a thriving aftermarket
0:21:25for straps, and Apple seems to love that too,
0:21:27which is sort of, here's a question for you.
0:21:30Is there more pressure on Apple to retain
0:21:33the Apple Watch connector, the strap connector,
0:21:36than there is to retain lightning?
0:21:38That thing is, it defines the shape of the watch
0:21:42at this point.
0:21:43- Yeah, I think it's different,
0:21:46a different sort of pressure.
0:21:48Would people be angry if they changed the strap connector?
0:21:52Probably, yeah, people get angry at everything.
0:21:55And there is, you know, and of course you're always
0:21:58gonna run into the people who say,
0:21:59well, I just bought three straps last month.
0:22:03(laughing)
0:22:04Right, and it's like, and now they're introducing
0:22:07a different strap size or different connector.
0:22:10I don't know, I do wonder whether they feel hamstrung.
0:22:14Is it a bit of an albatross around their neck
0:22:16as they designed the Series 7, and they're like,
0:22:19let's go a little bigger, 'cause we're gonna put
0:22:22this bigger edge, closer to true edge-to-edge display,
0:22:26and we're gonna increase the size of the case
0:22:29by a millimeter, but if, is that strap compatibility,
0:22:34like, if only we could just tweak the strap connector
0:22:38a little bit, whoa, this would be a little bit blank,
0:22:42I don't know if it'd be narrower or something.
0:22:45I don't know, probably, it's probably,
0:22:47at least to some degree, a constraint they wish
0:22:50they didn't have to deal with, but.
0:22:52- Well, I mean, they made that decision,
0:22:53well, you know, they made the decision
0:22:54before they announced it, they announced the thing in 2015.
0:22:57So they made this decision about the strap connector
0:23:00in what, 2013, 2014?
0:23:02They couldn't have known where the watch was going.
0:23:05- Right.
0:23:06- And most of those, you know, Johnny F's gone.
0:23:09So like, it's another person's ultimate decision.
0:23:13- And I've always thought about it, like, we spend
0:23:15so much time thinking about it, Lightning versus USB-C
0:23:17versus Apple's proprietary Bluetooth, and it's like,
0:23:22oh, they've got this, like, other hardware connector
0:23:24that has a, probably its most thriving ecosystem of straps,
0:23:29but it defines the shape of the product
0:23:32in a way that Lightning does not, right?
0:23:34- Yeah.
0:23:35- And I've always wanted to, do they,
0:23:37is there's gotta be some design in Apple
0:23:38that's just like, man, let me make it different.
0:23:40Like, the whole watch would look different,
0:23:42it would be so much cooler, but they're brought into it now
0:23:45after all this time.
0:23:46- Well, that's why I'm so intrigued by Germin's rumor
0:23:48about a G-Shock style sport watch, you know,
0:23:52like a rugged watch, for lack of a better term.
0:23:54Because, well, it could still fit the same straps.
0:24:00I mean, you know, just put that slot on the top and bottom.
0:24:04But that would, to me, would be an opportunity
0:24:06where they might introduce a different slot,
0:24:10you know, a different watch connector, I don't know.
0:24:14You know, 'cause presumably that watch would look,
0:24:16that would be the first Apple watch that they make
0:24:19that is instantly recognizable as a different watch.
0:24:22I mean, that was a big part of my review this week
0:24:24for the Series 7.
0:24:25They don't see this as a product that needs to be,
0:24:28like, reimagined in the way that, like, the iPhone 4
0:24:32was like, whoa, whoa, this looks nothing
0:24:35like the previous iPhones.
0:24:39The way that iPads have had a couple of moments like that,
0:24:43even though the tablet shape is sort of,
0:24:46look, it's just a tablet, you know,
0:24:47there's not that much you can do with it.
0:24:49Apple Watch, you know, it really does seem like they,
0:24:53they're not just content with it,
0:24:56but that they really feel like they nailed it
0:24:58from the first go, so I don't know.
0:25:00I feel like Lightning is more of a,
0:25:02probably more politically sticky.
0:25:07- Yeah, I mean, there's a million reasons.
0:25:08That's why I add, it's just a, like, a thought experiment.
0:25:10Like, it is.
0:25:11Which do they feel more constrained by?
0:25:13It's not Lightning, right?
0:25:14They're just, like, happy to keep putting that connector
0:25:17on there until we all assume one day
0:25:18they're gonna take it away, and while you're used to it.
0:25:21Whereas this one, it's like,
0:25:22there literally defines the shape of the product.
0:25:25You know, the iPad's, like, an interesting one,
0:25:28that, you know, that low-end iPad,
0:25:30the roots of that go straight to the iPad 2, right?
0:25:35And that, they've been very comfortable with that.
0:25:37And the other ones have had to make, look different
0:25:40to differentiate them from, you know,
0:25:44the base model, so they're pro.
0:25:45And Apple making things look different
0:25:48and not look different to drive sales,
0:25:50to drive market differentiation is, like,
0:25:53one of the most interesting dynamics of this company.
0:25:57Other companies make things look different all the time.
0:25:59It's the easiest way to get attention.
0:26:00It looks different.
0:26:02Apple is very deliberate about it,
0:26:04and I think with the watch,
0:26:06once they wanna drive that bigger upgrade cycle,
0:26:08and they're kinda at the far limit of,
0:26:11we made the screen bigger, right?
0:26:13'Cause bigger screens are the most,
0:26:15like, that was why I upgraded the last time.
0:26:17I was like, oh, the 4 has a bigger screen.
0:26:19I want that right away.
0:26:20It's why I'm like, even though I don't need this watch,
0:26:23I'm not leaving my house alone.
0:26:24(laughs)
0:26:25I don't really need this thing.
0:26:26I'm like, oh, that has a bigger screen I wanted.
0:26:28Whereas the next, they're kinda out of that move,
0:26:31so the next time they do this,
0:26:32it might have to change the way it looks.
0:26:34- Yeah.
0:26:34I've, the big one for me was the always-on display.
0:26:38So I skipped the Apple Watch Series 4,
0:26:42even though it did, it was the first one
0:26:43that introduced the bigger screen,
0:26:44and even though it intrigued me,
0:26:46'cause I'd just bought a Series 3 the year before,
0:26:48and I was like, well, I can live with it.
0:26:50And then when the Series 5 came out
0:26:52with the always-on display,
0:26:53I was like, I have to have that immediately.
0:26:55'Cause it was my single biggest complaint
0:26:57with Apple Watch original,
0:26:59then 2, 3, 4, was the lack of an always-on display.
0:27:03And I kind of realized that it's one of those,
0:27:06I persevered on that point more than a lot of people.
0:27:10Like, all of my reviews before the Series 5,
0:27:13people would be like, wow,
0:27:14you really spent a lot of words talking about the fact
0:27:16that the time isn't always on.
0:27:19And it's, I think I'm self-aware that I,
0:27:23it's partly because I'm used to mechanical watches
0:27:26where you never have to worry, you know,
0:27:28you can always, as long as there's enough light
0:27:30to see the dial, you can read the time.
0:27:33But it's also like a sort of,
0:27:36I've always been a little self-conscious
0:27:41about looking like I'm checking the time, you know,
0:27:43that it's like a signal that you're bored.
0:27:45And I know, I realize that like probably 98% of people
0:27:48don't even notice, they never think twice about it.
0:27:51But for some reason, like in 19, I think it was 1988,
0:27:55when George Bush was running against Michael Dukakis,
0:27:58they had a debate and George Bush,
0:28:01the old George Bush was seen checking his watch
0:28:04like halfway through the debate,
0:28:06which to me is a reasonable thing for somebody
0:28:08who knows they're in a 90 minute debate.
0:28:11Like whenever I'm on stage in front of people,
0:28:14and I think even if you're like running for president
0:28:18and you're used to it, it's high pressure.
0:28:20And you know that the debate is particularly high pressure
0:28:22and time flows in a funny way, right?
0:28:25Like where you feel like when I'm interviewing people
0:28:29doing my WWDC show and you know,
0:28:32a thousand people in the audience
0:28:34and one shot to take this video
0:28:38that's gonna be seen by, you know, 100,000 people
0:28:40after I publish it to "Daring Fireball."
0:28:42And I'll glance at my watch 'cause I think,
0:28:45oh my God, we must be halfway through, right?
0:28:48And I look and it's like, we're five minutes in.
0:28:50And I'm like, oh my.
0:28:51- Do you find that that first 10 minutes takes forever?
0:28:52- Yes, I do.
0:28:53- And then after that, the rest flies by.
0:28:55- Exactly, that's every single time.
0:28:58- This is me on "Decoder" every week.
0:29:00- Every time.
0:29:01- I'm like, oh man, I gotta make this interesting
0:29:02for an hour and that first 10 minutes are kinda cold, right?
0:29:05The guest is kinda cold and you're both open, whatever,
0:29:08like things work.
0:29:09And you're like, if I just make it through this first 10.
0:29:12- It takes forever and I realize
0:29:16that I'm only on like my first index card.
0:29:20And I'm like, I've blown this, we're halfway through.
0:29:22I'm only on the first index card.
0:29:24And then I think like, don't start sweating.
0:29:28Don't start sweating, even though you've clearly blown it.
0:29:31But then I sneak a look at my watch and I'm like,
0:29:33oh, we're only five minutes in, what?
0:29:35And then next time I check my watch, it's like,
0:29:37oh, I've gone over the time I promised them we'd be done.
0:29:40What happened?
0:29:42- Yeah, literally I have this experience
0:29:45every week on "Decoder."
0:29:46- But I like to glance at my watch in a way that is,
0:29:50without like the big wrist raise,
0:29:53and with the Apple Watch before the always on,
0:29:55the wrist raise was sort of an ostentatious movement
0:29:58'cause you wanna make sure your watch triggers it.
0:30:01So that was a good one. - I got really good
0:30:03at a subtle tap.
0:30:04Like I would just sort of put my hand over there
0:30:08and just like give me a little tap.
0:30:10What's funny to me about this is none of this matters to me
0:30:15because I don't leave my house anymore.
0:30:17Like all of this was really important
0:30:18when I was in meetings, I was going places,
0:30:20I was talking to people, I was waiting for trains, whatever.
0:30:24The always on display, its value has plummeted
0:30:27inside of my home, which is interesting.
0:30:30Like, you know, we're gonna go back out
0:30:32in the world eventually, but to me that,
0:30:35right, you make the screen bigger,
0:30:37always on is another screen upgrade.
0:30:40Right, the thing that has driven the cycle
0:30:42for the Apple Watch for me and for you in a different way
0:30:46is screen upgrades, right?
0:30:49Battery life upgrades to some extent,
0:30:50but mostly screen upgrades.
0:30:52They've added all the sensors, those are cool,
0:30:53but they come from the ride with the screen for me.
0:30:56They're just, they're kinda with this one,
0:30:59it's hard to see the next move they can make
0:31:02unless they make it yet bigger, which would be interesting,
0:31:04or they do something else.
0:31:06It's, you know, and like, the two newest sensors
0:31:11are the blood oxygen and the ECG.
0:31:15And you know, I'm glad I have an ECG sensor
0:31:19and so far, knock on wood, it has never once alerted me
0:31:24to anything, but I enjoy every time somebody sends me
0:31:28a random story from somewhere where somebody,
0:31:31some regular Apple Watch user who had no idea
0:31:35that they might have a heart problem,
0:31:36their watch said, "Hey, maybe you should call your doctor.
0:31:39There's an irregularity."
0:31:40And they go to their doctor and their doctor is like,
0:31:43"Yeah, you've got a problem, but we can,
0:31:45it's a good thing you came in, but we can fix this right up
0:31:47and you'll be fine."
0:31:48So I'm glad it's there, but it's never once gone off for me.
0:31:51I don't, I have never once checked my blood oxygen level.
0:31:54So like, if I found out that my Series 7 review unit
0:31:59actually didn't have either of those, I wouldn't know.
0:32:03- Well, it's hard to demonstrate the value of a thing
0:32:05that is only valuable when something is wrong, you know?
0:32:08- Right.
0:32:09- Well, and this is like the smoke detector problem.
0:32:11- Yeah.
0:32:13- You buy more expensive smoke detectors,
0:32:14but it's like, doesn't really matter.
0:32:17For the most part, our smoke detectors have only ever gone
0:32:19off when there's been like a smokey kitchen
0:32:22and it's an annoyance, but it always reassures me.
0:32:26It's like, "Hey, this actually isn't that smokey."
0:32:28So I'm glad, you know, that's what I always tell myself
0:32:31as I climb up a step stool because our ceilings
0:32:33are just tall enough that I can't quite reach it
0:32:35without using a step stool.
0:32:37And I think to myself every time, well, it's actually,
0:32:40you know, I'm actually glad that this went off.
0:32:42- And I'm glad that my,
0:32:43your searing a steak detector went off too.
0:32:47- 'Cause that's what happens for me every time.
0:32:48But do you read that Business Insider story
0:32:50about Apple's health division and kind of lack of focus?
0:32:54This to me is like the, right, they're really promoting.
0:32:56The ads for the Series 7 are all about health.
0:33:00They're all about, you know, these features,
0:33:02checking your blood oxygen on the side of a mountain.
0:33:04And it, you know, there's this Business Insider story
0:33:07that's like, this division has suffered from lack of focus.
0:33:10It's had a lot of executive turnover.
0:33:13There is a piece of this puzzle
0:33:15where they're adding the capabilities
0:33:17and they haven't really articulated why.
0:33:20And I, you know, I read that piece and I was like,
0:33:23oh, this kind of makes sense.
0:33:24Like, they are still figuring it out.
0:33:26- Yeah, and it does seem like, I have not seen the story,
0:33:31but it kind of rings true to me where,
0:33:36in a very, unlike most things at Apple,
0:33:40a sort of spaghetti against the wall approach
0:33:43kind of works, right?
0:33:45Like if, you know, there's been a team,
0:33:48presumably there was a team dedicated
0:33:51to getting blood oxygen sensing to fit in the watch
0:33:56in a way that would, you know, not make the watch enormous
0:34:00or make it more expensive, you know,
0:34:02a cost-effective way to add that sensor.
0:34:06And at one point they were like,
0:34:07we think we can do this this year, you know,
0:34:10get together with the rest of the hardware team, integrate it.
0:34:12But, you know, before that they were just working on
0:34:15this one thing, blood oxygen sensing.
0:34:19- Yeah, I mean, they have to build the sensors, but.
0:34:22- Right.
0:34:23- And that seems very difficult.
0:34:25And the sensors are doing well.
0:34:26You know, there's a handful of peer-reviewed studies
0:34:28saying they are as accurate as some of the medical devices,
0:34:32but they're still not medical devices, right?
0:34:33They're not FDA approved for this use.
0:34:35Like, there's a long way to go with just,
0:34:39is the sensor a medical device?
0:34:41Okay, that's a challenging problem.
0:34:43But, you know, Apple had these grand plans.
0:34:46You know, they bought a healthcare company,
0:34:47they're gonna run clinics for their own employees,
0:34:48they're gonna do all this stuff.
0:34:50That stuff turns out to be very complicated.
0:34:52It's a different kind of problem
0:34:54than just building the hardware and software capability.
0:34:57And that to me is where, you know, Tim Cook has said,
0:35:00for years Apple's greatest contribution will be in health.
0:35:03They're advertising the watch as a health device
0:35:05more and more.
0:35:06And underneath it, I mean, I haven't sent,
0:35:09other than, you know, Apple Fitness
0:35:11and track your heart rate, close your rings,
0:35:14which appears to be fairly focused
0:35:16because it's a simpler kind of thing.
0:35:18The actual, we're gonna integrate the watch
0:35:21with your healthcare, like your proper full-on healthcare,
0:35:26has never been fully connected.
0:35:28And I was wondering if you had any insight,
0:35:29'cause I read that story and I was like,
0:35:30man, this sounds like, you know,
0:35:32I would draw the parallel to like the car,
0:35:34where like they've taken 50 shots at the car
0:35:37and they haven't figured out how they wanna do it.
0:35:40But at least the car is secret.
0:35:42The watch is like, I'm still buying them.
0:35:43People are buying them.
0:35:44They're super popular.
0:35:46They have the scale to accomplish
0:35:47some of the things they wanna accomplish.
0:35:49- I think it's an interesting domain
0:35:51because I kind of feel that the unfocused,
0:35:54look, we can just keep adding sensors as we can
0:35:58and some will be more important than others, you know,
0:36:01or like the ECG thing is very important.
0:36:03'Cause if it actually,
0:36:05if you do have that sort of irregularity,
0:36:07it's genuinely life-threatening.
0:36:10But it's also very rare, right?
0:36:12So most people, it's never going to be an issue.
0:36:15You can kind of add them piecemeal over the years
0:36:22as they're ready and it doesn't matter
0:36:25because that's not the prime reason
0:36:27people are buying the watch, right?
0:36:29They're buying the watch because it's just a general,
0:36:33A, it's a watch, it tells you what time it is.
0:36:36It tells you your notifications,
0:36:37which is the big non-health-related breakthrough, right?
0:36:42All the other stuff, nonsense in hindsight,
0:36:45that they talked about in the original Apple Watch,
0:36:48notifications that you can get your notifications
0:36:50right there on your wrist,
0:36:52is the big non-health-related,
0:36:55this is why you want an Apple Watch
0:36:56or any other smartwatch like for Android
0:36:59instead of a dumb watch.
0:37:01And then there's the general health and fitness
0:37:03where you count your steps and your stands
0:37:06and your exercise hours.
0:37:09- You know how to add to that that is super useful
0:37:12and I recommend this to everyone?
0:37:14Put your Two-Factor app on your watch
0:37:15so you can get your codes right away.
0:37:18I don't know why Apple should just build a two-factor system
0:37:21and advertise it heavily because as a capability
0:37:24of the watch, remarkably convenient in our current climate.
0:37:29I use Authy for my two-factor, which I really like a lot.
0:37:33I moved away from Google Authenticator years ago
0:37:37because Google Authenticator,
0:37:38and apparently this is better now, I wrote about this,
0:37:40but with Google Authenticator,
0:37:42it was always a huge pain in the ass
0:37:44when you upgraded your phone
0:37:46because it was like a one-phone-at-a-time thing.
0:37:48And I had like a,
0:37:49I think I mentioned this on my show a couple weeks ago,
0:37:52like a real panic attack moment,
0:37:53like a couple of years back
0:37:57when I got a review unit phone, I'd set it up.
0:38:00I think I started setting it up in Panzarino's car,
0:38:03driving from Cupertino back to San Francisco.
0:38:06And it was out and needed a two-factor code.
0:38:10And I was on this new phone and went to Google Authenticator
0:38:14and they're like, "New number, who dat?"
0:38:16And it's like, "Oh my God,
0:38:17I don't have any of my two-factor codes."
0:38:20And you know, oh, I could just go back to my hotel room
0:38:24and get my old phone, which was still there
0:38:26and still had the codes.
0:38:28But it's a moment you don't want, right?
0:38:30Like when you go to get your two-factor codes
0:38:32and none of them are there,
0:38:34and it's like, we don't know who you are,
0:38:35it breaks you out in a cold sweat, you know?
0:38:39So I switched to Authy years ago.
0:38:40Authy has been great,
0:38:41but having it on my phone is awesome
0:38:43because if you're in some random place
0:38:45logging into a website or something like that,
0:38:48just having it on your wrist is awesome.
0:38:51- Yeah, it's just like funny to me
0:38:52that I'm assuming a lot of Apple employees
0:38:55have two-factor issues all the time.
0:38:57And like, here's this one function of watch
0:39:00that is just like completely underappreciated that I love.
0:39:03And it's like, oh man, this is,
0:39:06if you try to get me to switch smartwatches,
0:39:07I would ask, do you have a two-factor app that I can use
0:39:11that works as well as this one?
0:39:12And if you don't, I wouldn't switch.
0:39:14I use it all day every day.
0:39:17- To me, that's been the,
0:39:21the watch itself as the second factor has been a huge
0:39:26motivation for me to wear my Apple Watch
0:39:29way more than I had been before the pandemic.
0:39:32The thing with the masks has been game-changing for me.
0:39:35- Hey, did you notice in iOS 15,
0:39:40they are doing the watch unlock
0:39:44if you're wearing sunglasses that don't work with Face ID?
0:39:46- Yes, I have not. - It is incredible.
0:39:48I have not written about this on "Daring Fireball" yet,
0:39:51but as a longtime wearer of Ray-Ban sunglasses,
0:39:56and Ray-Ban notoriously has had their regular,
0:40:02non-polarized, just regular sunglasses,
0:40:06have never worked with Face ID.
0:40:08And they work now if you're wearing your Apple Watch
0:40:11same way as the mask.
0:40:12And it's, I've been waiting to write about it
0:40:15on "Daring Fireball" because I'm a terrible,
0:40:19terrible at getting things out of my mind
0:40:22and onto the site as fast as I should, but it's awesome.
0:40:26And it's not as big a deal for me at the moment
0:40:28because I no longer wear contact lenses.
0:40:31I wear prescription glasses all the time,
0:40:33and my new prescription sunglasses aren't Ray-Ban lenses,
0:40:37so they actually work with Face ID.
0:40:38But my son took my Ray-Ban Wayfarers
0:40:42and has been annoyed as hell.
0:40:45And I was like, "Wait until you upgrade to iOS 15,
0:40:48it'll work."
0:40:49And he was like, "What?"
0:40:50And then it happened, and he was like, "This is amazing."
0:40:52- Yeah, it actually, I had stopped wearing my sunglasses
0:40:56as much, I realized, like, I'm just not,
0:40:58I was like, "Am I just getting older?"
0:41:00No, it's actually, I just wanna unlock my phone more often.
0:41:02- No, it was driving me nuts,
0:41:04and the mask thing was driving me nuts.
0:41:05It's great that they made it work both ways.
0:41:08I wish that they did the unlock with the iPads,
0:41:12the ones that, like the new iPad Mini,
0:41:15and the iPad Air that have the Touch ID button,
0:41:18which is a huge pain in the ass, in my opinion.
0:41:21Like, once you're used to having a Face ID iPad
0:41:25that you just wake it up and you're in,
0:41:28I wish that, why can't, if I can unlock my phone
0:41:31while I'm wearing my watch, and I can unlock my Mac
0:41:34while I'm wearing my watch, why can't I unlock this iPad?
0:41:37This would make the iPad Mini way more desirable,
0:41:41in my opinion.
0:41:42So hopefully that's on their list.
0:41:43- The issue there is that sometimes the iPad
0:41:45is more often than not far away from you.
0:41:48- I guess, but if it is, but oftentimes
0:41:51it's actually being held by the hand
0:41:53that's wearing the watch, right?
0:41:55(laughing)
0:41:56- Right, yeah, just the, right,
0:41:59think about like the, I don't know,
0:42:01you're in the pilot's, every time I think about the iPad Mini
0:42:03I think about pilots, 'cause Apple loves the pilots using them.
0:42:05They do love the pilots. - They do love the pilots'
0:42:06lounge, and it's sitting on a couch,
0:42:07and you're getting coffee, someone can unlock your iPad,
0:42:09'cause you're around, right?
0:42:10Like, that's the problem to solve.
0:42:13- They do love the pilots.
0:42:14(laughing)
0:42:15- I mean, I honestly think they make the iPad Mini
0:42:17just 'cause they think it's so cool the pilots use them.
0:42:19- I do too.
0:42:21I like the product, I think it's really neat,
0:42:23but it's like, it could never be my only iPad.
0:42:25When they first came out with it,
0:42:26it was like, I've crossed the border on my eyesight
0:42:30and my age, where when like the first iPad Mini came out,
0:42:34my eyes were still really great at seeing really tiny type,
0:42:37and I was like, this is the most amazing iPad ever.
0:42:40And the phones were super small at the time, too.
0:42:42They were still like 3.5 inch screens.
0:42:45So it seemed like a novel size class,
0:42:49for like reading in bed.
0:42:51I like the iPad Mini, but it's,
0:42:54it probably couldn't be my only iPad.
0:42:57- Did you, they sent you, when I was looking at Dieter's,
0:42:59when we were at the code conference, the scroll delay,
0:43:04especially 'cause I was looking, you know,
0:43:05I got the 13 Pro Max, which is now at 120 hertz,
0:43:07like ultra smooth, I'm used to my iPad Pro.
0:43:11I agree with Dieter, like you can see it,
0:43:14and it's not a deal breaker of a problem,
0:43:17but it's there, man, it's really weird.
0:43:20- Yeah, so the jelly scroll issue is,
0:43:24and Dieter has, to his credit,
0:43:27illustrated it with precision, with like a slow,
0:43:30I tried to duplicate his slow motion video
0:43:33and I couldn't get it, I was like,
0:43:35I don't know how he did that,
0:43:35but you can definitely see it.
0:43:37So it's when you're only when you're holding it
0:43:40in portrait, you would be fine if it was in landscape,
0:43:44'cause you're never really holding iPad mini in landscape,
0:43:47right, but in portrait, you can see it.
0:43:50- And it is, it's a funny thing where
0:43:53the way that Apple arranges,
0:43:58the camera placement in particular suggests
0:44:02that even now in 2021, the one true orientation
0:44:07for an iPad is portrait,
0:44:09because that's where the FaceTime camera is.
0:44:12And it's a bit weird because they sell these
0:44:16seemingly very popular turn your iPad into a laptop,
0:44:21keyboard covers of, you know, ones with trackpads,
0:44:24simpler ones that are just a keyboard without a trackpad,
0:44:27which also is how a lot of people do their Zoom calls
0:44:33and Skype calls and FaceTime calls
0:44:37and whatever else they're using for work,
0:44:39which is a big deal, I don't know if you've heard,
0:44:41it's become a big deal over the last year and a half,
0:44:46they do it in laptop orientation,
0:44:48and it's really weird having your camera over there
0:44:52if you're in landscape.
0:44:55And, but I also think that there's a sort of,
0:44:59I think this day, I could be talking out of turn
0:45:01or misremembering, but I think it dates back
0:45:03to the original iPad all the way back in 2010,
0:45:08where there were rumors, and I've spoken to people at Apple,
0:45:13it's true that they actually considered shipping it
0:45:17with two 30-port, 30-pin,
0:45:21the old pre-lightning, goofy port.
0:45:24- There's prototypes for that.
0:45:25- Yeah, I've seen the prototypes,
0:45:26and I've spoken to people at Apple who said,
0:45:28we came really close to shipping it,
0:45:30and at the very end, Steve Jobs was just like,
0:45:34this is too, it's, having two ports is too ugly,
0:45:39pick one, and walked out of the room,
0:45:41and they're like, ah, we gotta pick one.
0:45:43(laughing)
0:45:44But really, it was like, it may be if Steve Jobs
0:45:46had been in a different mood on one particular day,
0:45:50that the iPad might have had ports on both sides
0:45:53and supported it, but from a developer's perspective,
0:45:57the orientation was, the true orientation
0:46:00at the developer level was landscape,
0:46:03and the fact that they made it seem like Portrait
0:46:08was the true thing was always sort of moving it,
0:46:11turning it 90 degrees, and I think that maybe
0:46:14that's what we're seeing with the iPad,
0:46:15this new iPad Mini, right, where it's in landscape
0:46:18and it never has any issue, nobody can complain
0:46:21about the scrolling, because that's the one true orientation
0:46:25for the display, and Portrait is sort of a secondary mode,
0:46:30and of course, the OS supports it.
0:46:32I think you can even, now they even do a better job
0:46:34of letting you turn it completely upside down
0:46:37and put the lightning port sticking up and it still works,
0:46:40but I don't see the scrolling issue,
0:46:43and my son, who's 17, has really good eyesight,
0:46:48is very, very picky about things like frame rate,
0:46:51like actually prefers using an iPad to his MacBook Air
0:46:56because of the 120 hertz frame rate.
0:47:02He sees it, he perceives it, he really likes it.
0:47:05Even he thought when I showed him the Mini,
0:47:09he was like, "Ah, I guess I see it, I don't really care."
0:47:12You know, what he really cares about is the fact
0:47:15that it's only 60 hertz, right?
0:47:17He's like, "That's the issue, is that it's,
0:47:19"I can see that it's only 60 hertz.
0:47:21"The jelly part is, I don't know,
0:47:25"I don't know what the negative version
0:47:27"of icing on the cake is."
0:47:29(laughing)
0:47:30- You know, it's interesting, Dieter and I obviously
0:47:32review a lot of products together,
0:47:32we're always talking to each other,
0:47:35we're working on something else right now,
0:47:37and it is just really obvious to me
0:47:39that he is really sensitive to motion,
0:47:42like he really cares about 120 hertz,
0:47:44he cares about that scroll stuff,
0:47:46and I am wildly sensitive to color, saturation,
0:47:50to off-axis shifts of brightness, right?
0:47:54There's a lot of bad panels out there
0:47:56where when you go off-axis, they drop in brightness,
0:47:59and for things you hold in your hand,
0:48:00you're kind of always off-axis.
0:48:02So I see that as a shimmer, right?
0:48:05Like I just see the display flickering at me,
0:48:07because my hand is moving a little bit,
0:48:09and I'm like, "Look at this!"
0:48:10And he's like, "What are you talking about?"
0:48:11And then he's like, "Man, 120 hertz, I can get back."
0:48:14I'm like, "I don't know, man, I can sorta see it."
0:48:17And that, I think that's the whole problem.
0:48:20It is impossible to communicate this stuff,
0:48:22it is very hard to take videos or photos of screens
0:48:26that you perceive with your eyes.
0:48:28Now you're leaping through some camera sensor
0:48:31that's gonna do something weird,
0:48:33through some JPEG compression
0:48:35that's gonna do something weird,
0:48:37through Twitter just destroying a photo with its compression.
0:48:41You're making all these steps,
0:48:43and then you're like, "Look at this thing
0:48:44that I perceive with my eyes,"
0:48:45and there's almost no way to communicate it.
0:48:47And then on top of that,
0:48:48different people care about wildly different aspects
0:48:51of display quality.
0:48:53And so to me, it's like, yeah, the motion is a thing,
0:48:56but if you're a Samsung phone out of the box
0:48:59and it's wildly oversaturated,
0:49:01I'm just like, "I can't even look at this."
0:49:05- I think my eyes are a lot like yours.
0:49:09The motion stuff never has bothered me as much.
0:49:12I like the fact that the phone has the true,
0:49:16what do I call it, true motion?
0:49:17No.
0:49:18- Promotion. - Promotion, right.
0:49:21'Cause I knew it was, without the camel case,
0:49:25it's indistinguishable from the word promotion.
0:49:28(laughing)
0:49:31I can kind of see it.
0:49:33To me, the big benefit is that it clearly seems
0:49:37to extend battery life when you're watching
0:49:3930 frames per second or 24 frames per second video
0:49:41because it drops the refresh rate of the display to match,
0:49:45and it really seems to extend battery life.
0:49:46The fact that it goes above 60, I can kind of see it,
0:49:49but I don't care 'cause I'm still,
0:49:51like you could read a scrolling article
0:49:55as you're scrolling it now,
0:49:56but I don't read that way anyway.
0:49:57I scroll first and then I go back to reading.
0:50:00So I don't care.
0:50:00I'm like you, I see the color,
0:50:02and in the early days of Android phones going OLED
0:50:06when they were super oversaturated,
0:50:08I'd be like, you don't see this?
0:50:10And some people would be like,
0:50:11I don't know what you're talking about.
0:50:12I'm like, look at this. - And some people would be
0:50:14like, I do see it and I love it.
0:50:15- Right, or right, right, vice versa, right?
0:50:18Where you'd be like, look at this guy's red shirt.
0:50:20It's like burning your eyeballs.
0:50:22And they'd be like, yeah, that's awesome.
0:50:24(laughing)
0:50:26- Burn me.
0:50:27I mean, that's like every TV ships with insane settings
0:50:31because they know that's what people,
0:50:33people will always pick brighter
0:50:34and they will always pick louder.
0:50:36- Or people don't care at all.
0:50:38Or people don't care at all.
0:50:39So why not turn up the brightness
0:50:40because the people who don't care will buy it anyway
0:50:43and the people who are attracted to it,
0:50:44like moths to a light bulb,
0:50:46are gonna be like, give me that TV.
0:50:49I want the one where everybody looks like they're radioactive.
0:50:52- Yeah, I mean, I just,
0:50:54there's like an element to, you know,
0:50:58I'm thinking about what you're saying
0:50:59about the one true orientation in the iPad.
0:51:00Like they're way past that, right?
0:51:02They know the iPad mini.
0:51:04Like they're making their own marketing materials
0:51:06showing the mini in portrait all the time.
0:51:09And like using a mini in landscape
0:51:12is like a challenging project
0:51:14unless you're playing a game.
0:51:16Yeah, it's like that screen is small.
0:51:17iPad OS to its credit supports it well,
0:51:21but it's still like,
0:51:23there's like weirdness still
0:51:24'cause it's a much smaller display
0:51:26as the rest of the iPads have gotten bigger
0:51:27and bigger and bigger.
0:51:28They know it's in portrait.
0:51:31I don't, I think that this is like a packaging question
0:51:35that they kind of just didn't think people would notice
0:51:37and we definitely noticed.
0:51:38But yeah, I agree with Dieter.
0:51:40It's not the end of the world, but I am not,
0:51:42as I've been saying, I'm not as sensitive to motion.
0:51:45- I wonder too, and it's so hard to say,
0:51:49but I wonder is it a coincidence or not
0:51:53that this iPad mini was almost certainly developed
0:51:57largely in the COVID era?
0:52:00And did it mean that fewer people saw,
0:52:03it was exposed to fewer people?
0:52:05And if whatever the percentage of people who care,
0:52:08and let's just say that everybody who works at Apple
0:52:11and would see prototype iPads in development
0:52:15care about details,
0:52:17that not enough people saw it for them
0:52:19to hit the minority of people who see this jelly scrolling
0:52:24and are like sickened by it.
0:52:27I wonder.
0:52:30- Yeah, I don't know.
0:52:30I mean, maybe this is why Apple wants everybody
0:52:32back in the office.
0:52:32- I don't know.
0:52:33- Right?
0:52:34But you have to know, I mean like,
0:52:37we put the display controller over here
0:52:39so that side of the display will update later.
0:52:42I mean, that's just like well-known.
0:52:45- Right.
0:52:46- Right, that's a design trade-off
0:52:47that you know you're walking into, like from the jump.
0:52:51- But if you do it and then you show it to 20 people
0:52:54and all 20 people that are like,
0:52:56yeah, that looks fine to me,
0:52:58which is what I think when I look at the iPad mini
0:53:01review unit that I still have up in my kitchen,
0:53:03I still, every couple of days think like,
0:53:05huh, let me try it on this page and scroll
0:53:07and I don't see it.
0:53:09But I don't, it's just like you were saying
0:53:13a couple of minutes ago.
0:53:14I don't doubt the people who see it and find it disgusting
0:53:17or revolting or that it makes the,
0:53:20actually gives them like a bit of motion sickness
0:53:22or something like that.
0:53:23I don't dispute that just because I don't see it.
0:53:25'Cause I know that I see things sometimes
0:53:27that other people don't see.
0:53:28- Yeah, or maybe it's as simple as,
0:53:32look, most of the popular apps or pilots
0:53:35are single screens and you can scroll a lot
0:53:36and they know that's the market.
0:53:39There's a million ways you make this decision.
0:53:41I just, I've come to the conclusion,
0:53:44especially with the big tech companies
0:53:46and the products that make a lot of money
0:53:48for those big tech companies,
0:53:49there are no accidents, right?
0:53:51Like, yeah, this is, you know,
0:53:53not to plug my own show, but like I spend all
0:53:56of Decoder as me asking people how to make decisions.
0:53:58Like, how do you make these trade-offs?
0:54:01And no one ever says we were surprised
0:54:05by a trade-off we saw coming.
0:54:07They all say this is, we saw it coming
0:54:09and there were two right answers
0:54:10and we picked the one that we thought
0:54:11was slightly more right.
0:54:12And I mean, in a case like this,
0:54:14Apple's really good at displays.
0:54:16Like, I still think they're the best company
0:54:18when it comes to just overall display quality.
0:54:21And I think a decision like this, they know.
0:54:23They knew from the beginning
0:54:25and I think they thought the trade-off was worth it
0:54:27and I think people probably have to,
0:54:28like you're saying with the colors,
0:54:29you gotta go see it for yourself,
0:54:31but on balance, it's not like a deal breaker.
0:54:33- Yeah, and like the Mini and the iPad Air exist
0:54:39in a weird mid-range zone
0:54:42that Apple doesn't typically have, right?
0:54:45They're not the $329 entry model iPad,
0:54:50which to me was so interesting
0:54:53how they emphasized over and over and over and over,
0:54:56like ad nauseum last month,
0:54:59that it's their best-selling model, best-selling model.
0:55:02And it seemed curious to me that they kept saying
0:55:04that it was their best-selling iPad
0:55:05because it is the cheapest, you know?
0:55:07Like for some reason though,
0:55:09they want everybody to know
0:55:10that that's their best-selling model.
0:55:12- You know, that's because of Chromebooks.
0:55:16- I guess, right?
0:55:17- Right, there's the iPad Pro at the top
0:55:21competes with Windows laptops, right?
0:55:24- Right.
0:55:25- At the bottom, it's Chromebooks
0:55:27and they need people to know
0:55:28that they are putting up not only a fight,
0:55:31but sometimes winning the fight against Chromebooks
0:55:34because man, we have done so much coverage of education
0:55:39in the pandemic and like Chromebooks are dominant
0:55:42to a point where they are changing
0:55:45how kids think about computers as a whole, right?
0:55:48Did you see our story about files and folders?
0:55:50- Yep, I did, I love that.
0:55:51- Like that is a story about Google,
0:55:53that is a story about Google Docs.
0:55:56You know, there's a story about Apple,
0:55:58Apple also abstracts the file system,
0:55:59but you kind of like dig into it.
0:56:01You're like, oh, these kids have,
0:56:02they all get Chromebooks when they show up in school.
0:56:04Like it is a pretty universal experience now.
0:56:08They all get Google accounts and Apple needs to like win
0:56:11because otherwise you're living a life with Google
0:56:14for the rest of your life.
0:56:16- I thought that the story, I will,
0:56:19I'm making a note right now,
0:56:21I will get it into the show notes
0:56:22because it was a great story.
0:56:23But the gist of it is that there's an entire generation now
0:56:27that largely doesn't understand
0:56:29how to use a hierarchical file system.
0:56:33And they don't really think about their,
0:56:36they don't really think about files as files
0:56:39the way that people who grew up in an earlier time had to,
0:56:44whether they were computer enthusiasts or not, you know,
0:56:46like just go back to the floppy era, right?
0:56:50With floppy net, like when, you know,
0:56:51if you remember using computers in the '90s
0:56:55when most computers weren't connected to each other
0:56:57by any kind of network to get a file
0:56:59from computer A to computer B, put it on a floppy disk,
0:57:04take the floppy disk over, put it in the other computer
0:57:06and then move the file from the floppy disk
0:57:08to the computer's hard drive.
0:57:10You had to, you know,
0:57:12even that level of understanding of it,
0:57:14it doesn't even make sense to kids today,
0:57:16which is really interesting.
0:57:17- Well, I think about, you know, Apple,
0:57:20like Macs didn't have search,
0:57:22Windows PCs didn't have search.
0:57:24The primary method that we all use computers with now
0:57:28is search, like I launch every app on my Mac with Spotlight.
0:57:32It's just what I do.
0:57:33It's the Docker Spotlight all day long.
0:57:36I launch almost every app on my phone with Spotlight now,
0:57:39which is a really weird thing to think about.
0:57:41The idea that I need to know
0:57:42where any of this thing is in storage is gone.
0:57:45Now, I grew up in the same area as you.
0:57:47I had, I actually had zip disks.
0:57:49I had one zip disk for work, for school stuff.
0:57:52I had one zip disk for like random creative stuff.
0:57:56Like, yeah, I needed to know where stuff was.
0:57:59But like if you're a kid now,
0:58:01there's almost no reason for you to know
0:58:04how your file's organized.
0:58:05So our story was once you enter
0:58:08higher level STEM classes in college,
0:58:11you're generating an awful lot of data,
0:58:13that data is in files,
0:58:14and all these college professors are realizing
0:58:17they have to do like,
0:58:19here's how a directory structure works
0:58:21so the kids can do their homework in college,
0:58:25which is just wild to think about.
0:58:27And it's been going on for years,
0:58:29and they can kind of trace it to,
0:58:31in our story, you can trace it to the advent
0:58:34of the iPad and the Chromebook,
0:58:36because that's the moment when file systems
0:58:38are just like fully abstracted away.
0:58:40- Yeah, and not just the iPad, the iPhone, right?
0:58:43I mean, because the iPhone,
0:58:45I think even got the Files app later than iPad,
0:58:48or if it did, it was less of a big deal, right?
0:58:51And even the Files app,
0:58:54which lets you file stuff away hierarchically,
0:58:57still sort of defaults to a recent files view,
0:59:01where it just shows you any of the recent files
0:59:03that you've accessed from anywhere.
0:59:05And it sort of gets to outlining
0:59:10and using a real outliner,
0:59:12not just like the outline mode in Microsoft Word
0:59:15or Apple Notes, where if you start making bullet points,
0:59:18you get like automatic indentation,
0:59:20but a true outliner with flippy widgets
0:59:22where you can collapse parts of the outline
0:59:25and think in terms of major topics, minor topics,
0:59:30here's the actual content within the minor topic
0:59:34three levels in, and that's, you know,
0:59:36if your files are actually well-organized,
0:59:38or even somewhat well-organized,
0:59:40that's how you have your files structured.
0:59:42And that kids just, they just don't even think like that now.
0:59:46It just doesn't even occur.
0:59:47It's not that they're, they're not dumb.
0:59:50They just have never thought to do it.
0:59:52Their stuff is all just there,
0:59:53and you just search the name of it, and it comes up.
0:59:57- So Monica Chin wrote this story for us.
0:59:58She did a great job.
0:59:59When I pitched her the story, I was like,
1:00:02I'm looking up, you know, there's like a half-viral thread
1:00:05from a professor on Twitter.
1:00:07I was like, you should chase it.
1:00:07This is really interesting.
1:00:08And she's like, I don't use directory structure.
1:00:11She's much younger than me.
1:00:12So she was perfect to write it.
1:00:14But in the story, which I hope people read,
1:00:16she says all these professors can point specifically
1:00:19to 2017, and it started happening.
1:00:22And she's like, most of 2017 scholars, freshmen,
1:00:25were born in the late '90s.
1:00:26They were in elementary school, and they often came out.
1:00:28They are around the same age as Google.
1:00:29So they have never experienced a world of computers
1:00:33that doesn't have search
1:00:35and hasn't abstracted the file system away.
1:00:37So their mental models for how computers work
1:00:40are entirely search-based.
1:00:41There was actually someone,
1:00:44I apologize for not remembering who it was,
1:00:47but somebody who worked on Bertrand Cerlet's team at Apple
1:00:51in the very beginning said, like,
1:00:53Bertrand Cerlet was hot, like, hot
1:00:56that this was the future, that search was the future.
1:00:58And there's a great video of Steve Jobs actually demoing
1:01:01Spotlight to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher
1:01:04at an early D conference.
1:01:05And he's like, why is the face of our computer the finder?
1:01:08The second we start trying to explain the finder to people,
1:01:11the learning curve goes up.
1:01:12So we're just gonna make it all search.
1:01:14And there's like a direct line from that to now.
1:01:18- It is, and the irony, of course, as a long-time user,
1:01:21it goes without saying,
1:01:22is that the name of the Mac file manager
1:01:24has always been finder,
1:01:26and literally lacked a find files command
1:01:30until like some point in system eight,
1:01:32you know, like 13, 14 years into the platform's life
1:01:36did it have like built-in file search
1:01:38that was actually useful, which is ridiculous.
1:01:42Like you did.
1:01:42(laughing)
1:01:45The assumption was that you were so familiar
1:01:47with how your files were organized
1:01:48that you wouldn't need to actually search for them.
1:01:51- Yeah, it boggled my mind.
1:01:53- Yet the name was called finder.
1:01:55- I think it's really interesting, right?
1:01:58They're much better at, like, you know,
1:02:00college students are much better at doing things
1:02:02with computers in some ways than I will ever be,
1:02:05or people of my generation will ever be.
1:02:07Like the idea that, you know,
1:02:09like TikTok is like a video native communication system.
1:02:12- Yeah.
1:02:13- And like, that is, I have to make my brain
1:02:17not think about Adobe Premiere when I look at TikTok
1:02:20and how it is made.
1:02:22Like that is how my understanding
1:02:25of how video is created is like,
1:02:28there's a timeline and you layer things in the timeline
1:02:30and that is Premiere, and to some extent that is iMovie,
1:02:33and that's Final Cut, and then TikTok is like,
1:02:35no, it's just a bunch of weird, crazy AI stuff.
1:02:38And like, you think about these models
1:02:41and these metaphors we use,
1:02:42and it's fascinating to think about what I have prioritized
1:02:46and what, if you have none of this baggage,
1:02:48what you will prioritize.
1:02:49- And yet, I'm with you, where I can't really think
1:02:53in terms of the TikTok editing interface,
1:02:55it doesn't really make sense to me,
1:02:57but I totally see and am fascinated by the fact
1:03:01that this entire generation intuitively,
1:03:05without any formal training at all,
1:03:07just speaks the language of cinema.
1:03:10- Yeah.
1:03:11- And edits.
1:03:13And I grew up in an era when everybody,
1:03:17when I was a kid, wanted to watch as much TV
1:03:20as their parents would possibly allow.
1:03:21And we love going to movies,
1:03:23and video is just a super compelling format,
1:03:26it always has been, even when your best option
1:03:31at four o'clock in the afternoon is Brady Bunch reruns
1:03:34that you've already seen,
1:03:36and it's a show that kinda sucked anyway
1:03:38and is chock full of nine minutes of commercials
1:03:42for every half hour that you can't skip or fast forward,
1:03:46you'd still just sit there and watch it.
1:03:47But it's like, my generation didn't intuitively learn
1:03:51to think about cuts and editing and closeups and long shots
1:03:56and the way that you can bring about a humorous moment
1:04:00or a punchline through editing,
1:04:02whereas that's all TikTok is.
1:04:04- Yeah, and I--
1:04:05- Right, what is that?
1:04:06- It is, it's easy to not think hard
1:04:10about what you're consuming.
1:04:11It is even easier to think really hard
1:04:14about what you're making.
1:04:15And so that, to me, is like, yep, that's the promise.
1:04:18There was some great quote when iMovie first came out.
1:04:22Like Steve Jobs enlisted Scorsese or,
1:04:27with some famous director, Spielberg,
1:04:29it was somewhere in that zone,
1:04:31and they were like, this is the tool
1:04:33that's gonna make the kids destroy me.
1:04:35I don't know if that's happened, right?
1:04:37It is definitely true in many ways, right?
1:04:39But you just draw a line from there,
1:04:42iMovie coming out with FireWire
1:04:44and eight millimeter cameras and all that.
1:04:47I spent a lot of time downloading video
1:04:51off an eight millimeter,
1:04:52remember those tiny eight millimeter tapes,
1:04:54over FireWire to my Mac?
1:04:55- Yes, yeah, there was Super 8 and then High 8.
1:05:00- It was High 8, that's what it was.
1:05:03- High 8.
1:05:04- Now we're just like dating ourselves.
1:05:06But anyway, but you draw a line from that to
1:05:09every kid speaks the language of video
1:05:11in editing in that way,
1:05:12and that's exactly what they were talking about back then.
1:05:13Like just democratizing creation.
1:05:15- Yeah, I took a course in college,
1:05:17this would be like 1995, '96,
1:05:20and what was the name of the editing program?
1:05:24I think they effectively disappeared.
1:05:26It was, they were Avid's arch rival at the time.
1:05:29- Oh, I have no idea.
1:05:31- Well, whatever it was.
1:05:32It worked, it was cool.
1:05:34It had a really cool Mac user interface,
1:05:36you know, like the way that audio software
1:05:38and video editing software has always sort of been
1:05:41at the forward edge of like just cool sci-fi
1:05:45futuristic looking user interface design.
1:05:47But it would crash every 90 seconds,
1:05:50and it was fine because you would, you know,
1:05:52and they knew it was gonna crash,
1:05:54but you never lost data, right?
1:05:56It was like they were always, you know,
1:05:57like you'd be moving tracks along your timeline
1:06:00and then the app would crash
1:06:01and you'd wait for it to relaunch,
1:06:04and it would take a while
1:06:04'cause it was the 90s and computers were slow.
1:06:06But then you'd be right back where you were
1:06:08and you just accepted it because it was amazing
1:06:10because you were doing nonlinear video editing, you know?
1:06:14You didn't have to cut pieces of film
1:06:16and splice them together with tape.
1:06:18You were actually able to like make an edit, watch it,
1:06:22and say, "No, actually, you know,
1:06:23"maybe we should go like half a second later," you know?
1:06:26And then it was totally non-destructive
1:06:28and it was mind-blowing, and then it would crash
1:06:30and you'd relaunch it and go on to the next one.
1:06:35- It's funny, speaking of TikTok,
1:06:36I saw a great TikTok the other day.
1:06:37I have an old school audio engineer
1:06:40and he was demonstrating how to do it,
1:06:43an old school tape splice, where he's like,
1:06:46"We wanna make this drum intro shorter,
1:06:49"so I'm gonna wind the tape past the playhead,
1:06:52"I'm gonna cut it, and I'm gonna tape
1:06:55"in another piece of tape."
1:06:56And did you even hear the splice?
1:06:58And all the comments are obviously TikTok people being like,
1:07:02"Are you kidding?
1:07:03"Why didn't you just use a computer?"
1:07:06And he's like, "No, we couldn't.
1:07:07"This was a very manual process."
1:07:09- I actually did that 'cause in college, I took a course.
1:07:13That's where I confused Hi8.
1:07:15It was, Super 8 was the actual film.
1:07:18Super 8, you would shoot on film
1:07:20and it didn't even have sound, but it was amazing.
1:07:23But I've got like home movies of me from the '70s
1:07:26when I was a toddler that my uncle shot
1:07:29'cause he was the one I got the nerd gene from.
1:07:33But he had a Super 8 camera.
1:07:34But in college, it was like at the cusp,
1:07:37or a second course, we did video and non-linear editing.
1:07:41But I took a course where we shot short films
1:07:43using actual Super 8 video
1:07:46and had to splice 'em together that way.
1:07:48You'd make actual cuts and then use
1:07:50a high-grade scotch tape that would splice 'em together.
1:07:55- So I gotta ask you in the midst of this conversation,
1:07:59how are you feeling about cinematic mode on the 13s?
1:08:02- I can't get impressive results out of it,
1:08:06but I've seen enough footage from people who are talented.
1:08:10That movie, what was it called that I linked to?
1:08:13It was awesome.
1:08:15It was an incredible short movie that was shot with it.
1:08:17And I've seen a couple of other YouTubers,
1:08:20and I really value the YouTuber's perspective
1:08:22'cause they know way more about video.
1:08:24They forget more about video than I'll ever know.
1:08:27And they're pretty positive about it.
1:08:29And I also think that the ones who I think get it
1:08:31and see where Apple's going also emphasize,
1:08:34I've seen several YouTubers emphasize,
1:08:36if you're watching it on a phone,
1:08:38you don't see the problems with it.
1:08:41It just looks cool.
1:08:42And that's where most people watch this stuff.
1:08:45So I'm bullish on,
1:08:48I'm more bullish on cinematic mode
1:08:52at its debut right now than I was about portrait mode
1:08:56for still photography five or six years ago
1:08:59when they first introduced it.
1:09:00- Yeah, I would say last year with the 12
1:09:04is when they got me with portrait mode on the phone
1:09:06for the stills.
1:09:08And I was like, I'm just gonna start using this.
1:09:10And what I actually noticed was my wife started using a lot,
1:09:13which is fascinating, right?
1:09:15They got real close.
1:09:16It can be weird in some places,
1:09:19but on balance, it looks really good.
1:09:20I like using it.
1:09:22- You know, every video I've seen of cinematic mode
1:09:24looking good, it's from people who own lights.
1:09:28And I think this is like the gap for me.
1:09:34If you give me a light kit, I can make any camera look good.
1:09:39Right, like that.
1:09:39And this to me is like,
1:09:41I pulled this phone out of the box
1:09:44and I went and used cinematic mode.
1:09:46And the first thing it said to me
1:09:47was there's not enough light in this room.
1:09:49And I was like, it's the middle of the day, right?
1:09:51Yep, I was like downstairs.
1:09:53I was like near a window, but not like next to the window.
1:09:55But it was just not a situation where I expected a camera
1:09:59to tell me there wasn't enough light, you know?
1:10:00- Yeah.
1:10:02- And that to me is, yep, I can make anything look good
1:10:05with enough light.
1:10:07I think they introduced HDR last year.
1:10:12Those workflows are still pretty complicated.
1:10:14You know, like a lot of people want to turn them off.
1:10:18(laughing)
1:10:19For a variety of reasons, even though I like a short video.
1:10:22Like you said, most people watch this stuff on the phone,
1:10:24looks on the phone.
1:10:25Cinematic mode is like another set of file format
1:10:28complications, right?
1:10:30You can only edit it in Apple's apps.
1:10:31You can only do this.
1:10:32And on top of it, I just, I think it doesn't work well
1:10:34unless you light it really well.
1:10:36To the point where, you know,
1:10:37DDR talk like Apple's ads are pretty moody.
1:10:41And if you just thought you could do that
1:10:43and you know, lit by it,
1:10:45their, you know, their knives app parody is like,
1:10:47all fire light and candles.
1:10:49There's no way this thing works
1:10:50if you're just lighting your fire light and candles.
1:10:52- And the other one I see all the time on football games
1:10:56is like an old West scene with gunslingers
1:10:59in a very moodily lit, dark saloon type, you know,
1:11:04typical Wild West trope.
1:11:08- Yeah.
1:11:09And then of course at the bottom it says,
1:11:10additional equipment was used.
1:11:11I was like, oh, lights.
1:11:12What you mean is lights.
1:11:14Which is interesting.
1:11:16I don't think it's unfair.
1:11:17I mean, I do think, I think it's a fair thing
1:11:19that they're saying we actually shot this
1:11:21with an iPhone 13, you know, using our cinematic mode.
1:11:24This is actual footage.
1:11:25But it is different.
1:11:28And I remember talking to Phil Schiller about it
1:11:30multiple times where with their still photography examples
1:11:35over the years, they never, it was a religious rule.
1:11:39No artificial lights, you know,
1:11:42that we wanna be able to say when we show this photo,
1:11:46this was not post-processed, this is straight off the phone
1:11:49and we didn't use artificial lights, you know.
1:11:52And there would be some really, really just, you know,
1:11:57every, you know, as cell phone cameras have gotten better
1:12:00and the state of the art has gotten better,
1:12:01there's always examples that Apple and Google
1:12:06and Samsung can show shot by very talented photographers
1:12:11where you're just like, it's hard to believe
1:12:13that this was taken with a phone,
1:12:15but Apple would not use artificial lights and rigs
1:12:18and stuff like that to get them.
1:12:20But, you know, they have to with cinematic mode
1:12:22to get the results that they're showing.
1:12:24- Yeah, I can't see how you do otherwise.
1:12:26You know, I'm curious about it.
1:12:27I like playing with it.
1:12:28I do think that if you just look at the data
1:12:33that camera generates now, like the way it generates it,
1:12:37with photos, you have multiple file formats
1:12:42all bundled into a thing, right?
1:12:43You've got live photos, which tiny video file,
1:12:47you can shoot in photographic styles
1:12:49and that only outputs as JPEGs,
1:12:51you can't get RAWs off of that.
1:12:52You've got RAW, SmartRAW from Apple.
1:12:57Like there's a lot of ways to engage the camera now
1:13:00just for stills.
1:13:02And then now there's an increasing number of ways
1:13:04to engage the video.
1:13:05So you can obviously shoot regular video.
1:13:08You can shoot HDR, which I think looks good on the phone,
1:13:12but a lot of editors that I've talked to,
1:13:15this adds complexity in ways that, you know,
1:13:18it's only been a year, so industry's still dealing with it.
1:13:20And now you've got cinematic mode,
1:13:23which has a depth map sidecar file
1:13:27that can come for the ride that only Apple's apps can read.
1:13:30And one assumes people figure,
1:13:32it's not even an encrypted file,
1:13:33people figure it out over time.
1:13:35But like, it's funny, they'll publish it
1:13:38when they feel like we've stabilized the format enough
1:13:41and we can publish some APIs.
1:13:43'Cause Apple's been pretty, is pretty open
1:13:46about allowing, you know, wanting third-party apps
1:13:49to be able to take advantage of powerful stuff.
1:13:51Like the way the pro camera apps like Halide
1:13:55can do things that Apple's built-in camera app can't.
1:13:58I don't think that they want to be the only editing software
1:14:02for cinematic mode.
1:14:03I just feel like maybe it's not something
1:14:06they feel is stable enough to publish or encourage.
1:14:09- Oh yeah, I wouldn't assign intent to that.
1:14:12Like whatever, like it's new.
1:14:13We asked them, they're like, we don't, it's new, right?
1:14:16Like that was basically their vibe.
1:14:18It wasn't, we're locking this down to make you buy,
1:14:20like whatever, but I can issue those criticisms
1:14:23about other thing Apple does, I would not issue it here.
1:14:25But what I'm saying is,
1:14:27if you're not just shooting and watching on the phone
1:14:32and you're trying to get it to go somewhere else,
1:14:35there's actually a surprising amount of complexity
1:14:37with the phone camera now, right?
1:14:39So if you shoot in HDR and you want to upload to Instagram,
1:14:43you kind of don't know what's going to happen, right?
1:14:46Right, like, or if you shoot cinematic mode
1:14:48and you want to edit it and then send it to TikTok,
1:14:50like I think a lot of people are like,
1:14:52oh, TikTokers are going to love cinematic mode.
1:14:55But you realize like TikTok is a video editor,
1:14:59so it doesn't support cinematic mode.
1:15:01So now you got to edit somewhere else and send it,
1:15:02and like all of that complexity is like,
1:15:05once you like think about it, it is surprising.
1:15:07- What did I do?
1:15:10I shot a simple little dumb video,
1:15:13it wasn't supposed to be particularly polished,
1:15:15but like a single take showing the line of people
1:15:18outside the Apple store on iPhone day last month.
1:15:21And I shot it in cinematic mode,
1:15:24'cause why not, I could kill two birds with one stone
1:15:27and illustrate this big long line
1:15:29and show how people waiting in line for an iPhone
1:15:32is still a thing, but also give cinematic mode a test.
1:15:35And when I went to upload it to Vimeo,
1:15:37the cinematic mode was gone.
1:15:42And I was like, what, this is crazy, I thought it was there.
1:15:44And I was like, oh, I get it,
1:15:45they don't speak cinematic mode.
1:15:48- Yeah, you got to bake it and export it from the phone.
1:15:51- Yeah, and I just thought, oh, that occurred to me,
1:15:56that's not going to occur to normal people.
1:16:00Like when your brain is like, oh,
1:16:01there must be a sidecar file,
1:16:02normal people are like, what's a file, right?
1:16:03- Yeah, exactly, as we just said, right.
1:16:06- But it's like, it's kind of stunning,
1:16:09like here's this very powerful tool
1:16:11that's getting more powerful and interesting in novel ways,
1:16:14but like it all comes back to files and folders
1:16:18and wanting to abstract that stuff
1:16:20to get the true power out of it.
1:16:22Whereas, you know, there's other pieces of it that are great,
1:16:24like it can shoot ProRes now,
1:16:26I think that's in one of the beta updates.
1:16:29And you can fill a one terabyte,
1:16:31I found in like five minutes shooting ProRes video on it.
1:16:34- All right, hold that thought.
1:16:35- That's awesome, I don't know who's going to use it,
1:16:36but that's awesome.
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1:18:17All right, I wanted to return to something
1:18:19that you brought up a bit ago,
1:18:21and that's the Lightning port.
1:18:23- Yeah. - Future.
1:18:24It's like Groundhog Day for writing about iPhones, right?
1:18:28Because it kind of feels like we've been arguing about this.
1:18:32We collectively, people who write about it,
1:18:34people who have an audience,
1:18:35people who have strong feelings one way or the other,
1:18:38every year for a large number of years,
1:18:41and it doesn't,
1:18:43eventually it will come to an end.
1:18:46There will eventually be an iPhone without a Lightning port.
1:18:50I don't know what it will have instead.
1:18:53I don't know if it's coming next year.
1:18:54I don't know if it's coming five years,
1:18:56but 10 years from now,
1:18:58they are not gonna be selling iPhones
1:18:59with this Lightning port.
1:19:02I'm confident.
1:19:03I'm confident 10 years. - Yeah, I feel good about that.
1:19:05- But the number one most compelling argument
1:19:10against the Lightning port to me is the,
1:19:15the two big ones are convenience.
1:19:18Like, hey, if they just added USB-C specifically,
1:19:21then I could just charge my iPhone with the same thing
1:19:24I charged these other things with,
1:19:27which is less compelling to me.
1:19:29I get it, and it is true,
1:19:31and that is sort of the European Commission's argument
1:19:35trying to mandate this.
1:19:37But to me, the more compelling one is the,
1:19:40hey, why are you letting me shoot ProRes video
1:19:43and RAW photos and these things
1:19:45that take up massive amounts of space,
1:19:47and you're leaving me with no high-speed option
1:19:51to get them off the device?
1:19:54- Yeah, it's funny, 'cause the USB-C to Lightning exists,
1:19:57but it's still pretty slow.
1:19:59I think it's still like USB two or three speeds.
1:20:02It's utterly confusing to me.
1:20:06I would add a third one to the mix,
1:20:08and I know Lightning's been around for a long time,
1:20:10and people are used to it.
1:20:13But Apple's own Lightning cables are notoriously shitty,
1:20:18and don't last a long time. - They're terrible.
1:20:20They're one of the worst products, in my opinion,
1:20:22that the company has ever made.
1:20:24- It is utterly bizarre to me,
1:20:26but there's this thriving market.
1:20:28But that's the real one to me,
1:20:30is it's been a long time with Lightning,
1:20:33and it appears that making a Lightning cable
1:20:34is very difficult,
1:20:36like adorable, long-lasting Lightning cables, right?
1:20:38- Yeah, so I think my gut feeling,
1:20:41I don't wanna spend a long time on this,
1:20:43'cause I guess we'll all find out eventually.
1:20:44I just don't think, to me, the answer is not USB-C.
1:20:49To me, the answer is something
1:20:53that's so much better than Lightning's,
1:20:55that it is much better than Lightning
1:20:58than Lightning was over the 30-pin adapter from the iPods.
1:21:02- Yeah, you know, the thing I'll say about USB-C
1:21:04is USB-C is Apple's baby.
1:21:08They are the ones who wanted this standard to exist.
1:21:11They are the ones who pushed it at the USB-C forum.
1:21:13They are the ones who more or less created it
1:21:18for that MacBook, that 12-inch MacBook.
1:21:20This is what they wanted, so we have it.
1:21:24It is a disaster.
1:21:25I think it would be better if we had less e-waste
1:21:29and we standardized on connectors,
1:21:31and everyone knows how I feel about standards,
1:21:32and I'm looking at this standard,
1:21:33I'm like, "F, I don't want this one."
1:21:36It's a mess.
1:21:38I've got a 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro in the next room.
1:21:42I am desperate for the M1X or the M2
1:21:45that's coming out next week.
1:21:46If I don't use Apple's 100-watt USB-C brick,
1:21:52and I try to use a different 100-watt USB-C brick,
1:21:54which is theoretically its standards,
1:21:56like these are name brand products I'm buying,
1:21:59like the SMC on my MacBook will kill itself,
1:22:03and I have to reset it.
1:22:04It'll just stop charging after a while.
1:22:05This is your standard.
1:22:08You made this.
1:22:09Like the whole industry is pushing on this standard.
1:22:12It's utterly fragmented.
1:22:14It is impossible for any normal human being to understand.
1:22:17Haim Gartenberger works at The Verge,
1:22:19is a genius when it comes to USB standards,
1:22:22and he's like, "This is hard to understand."
1:22:24I employ someone.
1:22:27I pay them money to understand USB-C,
1:22:29and they're like, "I don't, this sucks."
1:22:31It's a mess, and that to me is,
1:22:35when you say there's something better than lightning,
1:22:36yep, there's something better than lightning,
1:22:37but at some point, trying to make everything in the world
1:22:41happen through a single connector was just a bad idea.
1:22:46- That's visually indistinguishable,
1:22:47and will actually, it's not just that it looks the same.
1:22:50It actually, it will let you plug in the wrong cable,
1:22:54and it'll be just as securely seated
1:22:57as if it were the right cable,
1:22:59and you just won't get anything.
1:23:01- Yeah, USB-C and Thunderbolt, the same cable.
1:23:04Wildly different capabilities.
1:23:07There was a thing months, it was like a year ago,
1:23:09but with my dithering podcast with Ben Thompson,
1:23:13he was traveling, because it was at a part
1:23:17where Taiwan was open, and they were able to travel,
1:23:20and I was locked in, and he bought a portable USB microphone,
1:23:23and it was a USB-C microphone, and he couldn't get,
1:23:26just audio from a microphone,
1:23:28couldn't get audio without the right cable,
1:23:30and he just, it didn't even occur to him
1:23:33that he should definitely keep the cable
1:23:35that came in the box with the microphone,
1:23:37'cause that one would be guaranteed to work,
1:23:39and he had to run out to a corner store
1:23:41and buy two or three different USB-C cables,
1:23:45and only one of the ones he bought worked,
1:23:46so the fact that he bought three
1:23:48was actually a good idea.
1:23:50It's kinda crazy.
1:23:52It is a bad idea to have many different things.
1:23:59I mean, the Wikipedia page for how many different things
1:24:03use the same USB-C port is, it's bananas.
1:24:08- Well, so you've got power-only cables,
1:24:10which I'm just guessing that's what Ben was using,
1:24:13and so I wasn't transferring the data,
1:24:15and then they've just announced,
1:24:16I don't know if you've seen these logos there.
1:24:18- Oh, yes, I've mocked them mercilessly.
1:24:21They're the worst. (laughs)
1:24:22- So, there's a new version of the standard now for USB 4,
1:24:26same cables, and their idea is they'll just have
1:24:28these horrible logos that say,
1:24:30whether they support 240 watts of power or 40 gigabit
1:24:34per second data speeds, and it's like,
1:24:37no one's gonna look at these, and also,
1:24:40like, why don't all the cables support it?
1:24:42Why don't you just make all the cables support
1:24:43the fastest spec and label them,
1:24:46as opposed to just allowing this proliferation
1:24:49of mismatched cables everywhere?
1:24:51And what I just keep coming back to is,
1:24:53every time we talk to a standards body,
1:24:55you realize it's Congress,
1:24:57but with device manufacturers in it.
1:25:00That's just the way it goes.
1:25:01It's political, and there's no one pushing it
1:25:06the way that Apple can push lightning.
1:25:07So, I think Apple likes that they're just firmly
1:25:09in control of lightning, and no one's gonna monkey with it,
1:25:11and there's gonna be off-brand, not licensed cables
1:25:16on Amazon to charge your phone, but that's fine.
1:25:22We're just not in the zone where it's a constant,
1:25:25permanent, confusing disaster.
1:25:26That said, Apple has driven a lot of USB-C development,
1:25:31and for them to be like, it's too much of a mess,
1:25:35it's like, kind of funny, 'cause it's their baby.
1:25:38- But nobody, and that's the thing that the zealots
1:25:43who really think Apple is doing the world wrong
1:25:47by sticking with lightning on iPhone,
1:25:49and think in their mind that it's explained
1:25:52by a money grab, which really doesn't make sense.
1:25:55Apple does not make that much money
1:25:58from the Made for iPhone program.
1:26:00That is really like couch change from Apple's perspective.
1:26:05And then I bring that up on Twitter, and they'll be like,
1:26:07yeah, but what about their $30 lightning cables?
1:26:10And it's like, well, they sell $30 USB-C cables too,
1:26:13and anybody who's gonna buy Apple's lightning cable,
1:26:17which, if you know anything, are not even
1:26:20good lightning cables, they're not durable,
1:26:23there's nothing special about them,
1:26:25is also gonna buy Apple's USB-C cables,
1:26:28which will be just as profitable.
1:26:31And again, they don't really make that much money
1:26:33selling cables to people by Apple standards.
1:26:35It's not about the money.
1:26:37It might be about control, it certainly is,
1:26:39to some degree, about control,
1:26:41which you can argue with, as that Apple places
1:26:46too much of a priority on wanting to control
1:26:49something that could be using an open standard.
1:26:52But on the other hand, you can't look at Apple's
1:26:56other products other than the iPhone,
1:26:57and just look at the MacBooks.
1:26:59They literally shipped a MacBook at one port,
1:27:02or two, it had a headphone jack, and a USB-C port.
1:27:07One USB-C port, that was it.
1:27:09- Yeah, I mean, at that point, I loved that computer.
1:27:12I know that everybody does.
1:27:13I think Dieter loves it too.
1:27:16That was the best plain computer in history, in my opinion.
1:27:19Now I use an iPad Pro, which is slightly better,
1:27:21'cause you can put the iPad Pro in low data mode really easily
1:27:24but I just look at that whole mess.
1:27:28I agree with you.
1:27:29I would say that control is probably
1:27:32more accurate than profits.
1:27:34Apple's hardware ecosystems are shockingly undeveloped
1:27:39for the connectors they use.
1:27:41So the Lightning ecosystem has never been like,
1:27:45there's not just a huge wealth of cool shit
1:27:47you can plug into your phone.
1:27:48Just never been there.
1:27:49- Yeah, it really isn't.
1:27:51And it was way more common in the early years, right?
1:27:54And maybe even before Lightning,
1:27:55it was like, there were more crazy crap
1:27:59you could plug in with the iPhone 4.
1:28:01Everybody could see this was a huge explosive market.
1:28:05And so it's like, well, let's make weird extra cameras
1:28:08that you stick in the iPod port.
1:28:11- Right, but even if you come to now,
1:28:13the way that you end up plugging in, I don't know,
1:28:15like a DJ controller or something into it,
1:28:17iOS device to the Lightning port,
1:28:20is you get the, people were buying the camera connection kit,
1:28:23remember, with the USB port?
1:28:24So even Lightning was always intermediated
1:28:28through that USB connector.
1:28:29So that's one, and then you think about the fact
1:28:32iPads have a magnetic keyboard connector on the back.
1:28:35And it's open.
1:28:38We've asked Apple a million times,
1:28:40could anyone use this connector?
1:28:41And they've said, yes.
1:28:43No one uses that connector.
1:28:44- Nope, except Logitech.
1:28:46Who, and Logitech works hand in hand with Apple.
1:28:49It's almost like they're making Apple products
1:28:52and putting the Logitech name on them
1:28:54for the keyboards that Apple doesn't wanna make.
1:28:56- For the cheap keyboards for schools.
1:28:58- Yeah, exactly.
1:28:59- But that one is utterly mystifying to me.
1:29:01Here's a product that everybody wants.
1:29:03We know there's demand.
1:29:05You can literally walk out in the world
1:29:07and see the demand in front of you,
1:29:09and no one uses that connector.
1:29:10They always put you there.
1:29:11We've never been able to figure that out.
1:29:12Then there's MagSafe on the phone.
1:29:14And MagSafe to me is like, it's a year later.
1:29:19I should be able to buy a good car charger,
1:29:22MFI car charger, and you cannot.
1:29:25You can buy all kinds of wacky ones on Amazon.
1:29:28My instinct to trust them is low.
1:29:32But if, and you can buy a magnetic charger
1:29:39or a magnetic mount that has a Qi charger in it,
1:29:42but you won't get the fastest charging speed.
1:29:45And it's just like really weird.
1:29:46It's like, this one is just magnets.
1:29:47Anyone can make a magnet thing.
1:29:49But you talk to the Moment people.
1:29:51I have a great Moment car charger,
1:29:52and I've actually realized that music from my phone
1:29:55sounds better in my car when I plug in the cable
1:29:58as opposed to going over Bluetooth, so whatever.
1:30:00So you have this great Moment magnet mount,
1:30:02and I plug in the thing.
1:30:03It's not the end of the world.
1:30:04But the Moment people are like,
1:30:07"Apple, we want these stronger magnets,
1:30:09"and we can't do MFI if we make the magnets stronger."
1:30:12And it's like, this is all just nuts.
1:30:15People want to connect things to the phone.
1:30:17Lots of companies want to make cool things
1:30:18that connect to the phone.
1:30:19And kind of everywhere you can,
1:30:21you see that Apple's insistence on control
1:30:24is preventing it in some way or the other,
1:30:26whether it's Lightning or USB-C or the keyboard connector.
1:30:30MagSafe to me is, it's really cool.
1:30:33This is a really cool idea, and it somehow hasn't,
1:30:37the market has not been able to generate
1:30:39the first cool idea.
1:30:40- Yeah, and I think that that sort of gets to the
1:30:46widespread misconception about Apple's priorities, right?
1:30:50And I'm in complete agreement with you.
1:30:52I think Apple internally, culturally, values control
1:30:55more than eking out every last penny of money
1:31:00that they could get, right?
1:31:01Like if Amazon had this product,
1:31:04there'd be 30 gazillion MagSafe things
1:31:07that they're taking this tiny slice of each one.
1:31:10They'd be like, "Sure, whatever you want to make."
1:31:12Yeah.
1:31:13It would be more about getting, saturating the market
1:31:16with as many things as possible.
1:31:18And you could even look at the Alexa ecosystem
1:31:21for just software, right?
1:31:23It's not even a money grab.
1:31:24It's just free integrations with Alexa.
1:31:27And it's like, "Sure, whatever you think you want to make,
1:31:30we'll let you integrate it with Alexa."
1:31:31And the Siri stuff is way more complicated
1:31:35and under tight control, and there's therefore,
1:31:39almost shockingly, less of it.
1:31:40- Do you think MagSafe is like this baby step
1:31:44towards no ports?
1:31:45- I do.
1:31:46I really do.
1:31:47A combination of MagSafe, and then I often,
1:31:51I just stare at the back of the iPad Pro
1:31:54and look at that little, those three little circles.
1:31:57And I just think about something like that,
1:32:02but that could do data too.
1:32:04And I actually think in the written language
1:32:07of this EC guideline, who knows if it's going to come to pass
1:32:10but that Apple could actually get around it without,
1:32:14it's not even a loophole,
1:32:15'cause they've said wireless stuff is not affected.
1:32:20And so a device that is purely wireless,
1:32:24and by wireless, they mean inductive, right?
1:32:27So Apple Watch is a perfect example.
1:32:29Apple Watch has never had a port.
1:32:31And I know that there's the diagnostic port,
1:32:34which actually I just read on the Verge, of all places,
1:32:37is gone.
1:32:38That was actually where I learned it.
1:32:39So kudos to the Verge for the scoop on that.
1:32:42And I was like, "Ah, I should have looked,
1:32:43I should have looked in that little slot."
1:32:45Didn't even occur to me.
1:32:46But don't count that, 'cause that's not for users anyway.
1:32:52Apple Watch has never had a port.
1:32:54The EC guideline would not, by any interpretation,
1:32:57mean that future Apple Watches
1:32:59are supposed to have a USB-C port.
1:33:01But I actually think the iPhone could get around
1:33:04having a USB-C port in full compliance
1:33:07by having something like the iPad Smart Connector.
1:33:10It couldn't be the same,
1:33:12because the iPad Smart Connector does not do high-speed data
1:33:15or it's effectively just like the level of data
1:33:19you would expect from a trackpad.
1:33:21I don't know what the data throughput is on a trackpad,
1:33:26but it's not transfer ProRes video over this cable.
1:33:31But something like that, but that just attaches,
1:33:35snaps into place magnetically,
1:33:38would be way easier to waterproof and dustproof.
1:33:41And it doesn't bend, right?
1:33:46And you get that MagSafe advantage,
1:33:48where if you're on a train and somebody gets up
1:33:51and their ankle pulls the cable,
1:33:52it would just detach rather than send your device
1:33:55flying across the aisle of the train.
1:33:59Something like that is what I would imagine.
1:34:01I have absolutely no idea whether Apple's working
1:34:05on such a thing as a replacement for Lightning,
1:34:07but that would be my hope.
1:34:08- Yeah, it's funny.
1:34:10If the EU's point is to lower e-waste,
1:34:14that loophole exception accomplishes none of that goal.
1:34:19It potentially makes it shockingly worse.
1:34:22So we'll see.
1:34:24I'm not saying regulators around the world
1:34:29don't often miss the obvious unforeseen circumstance.
1:34:32I guess obvious unforeseen circumstance
1:34:34is kind of a paradoxical thing to say,
1:34:35but that's the loophole you'll drive the truck through.
1:34:41- We'll see.
1:34:42Again, I firmly believe the e-waste problem is real.
1:34:45I support Apple not putting the charger in the box,
1:34:48although I understand why people,
1:34:50the prices stay the same.
1:34:51- Right.
1:34:52- Fine.
1:34:53But I don't need more USB-C bricks in my house.
1:34:56I've got plenty.
1:34:57What I'm getting at is we should just have
1:35:01a power standard for these devices.
1:35:03That's really all we want, right?
1:35:05Is I've got a whole bunch of things to charge.
1:35:08Like AirPods Pro, that's what I have,
1:35:11AirPods charged with lightning.
1:35:14There's no real reason for them to.
1:35:16They can be USB-C very easily,
1:35:18but Apple knows that they're mostly attached to iPhones,
1:35:20and Apple charges, iPhones charge over lightning,
1:35:24so you probably have a lightning connector,
1:35:25and that's why they made that decision.
1:35:27And that sort of stuff does self-perpetuate
1:35:29the e-waste problem,
1:35:31because then you're gonna buy something else.
1:35:33Your MacBook is gonna have a USB-C brick,
1:35:37and now you've gotta carry two things around.
1:35:39That's just silly to me,
1:35:41and that is where, you know,
1:35:43I hear people say we shouldn't mandate
1:35:46these kind of standards and connectors,
1:35:47but we do it all over the place all the time
1:35:49in every other industry.
1:35:50The plugs in your wall are a mandated standard, right?
1:35:53Like, we should be able to get to a power standard at least
1:35:57without this much histrionics,
1:35:59and the industry is, thus far not being able to do it.
1:36:01Data standards on other stuff,
1:36:03that's gotta stay wide open.
1:36:04That's where the innovation happens,
1:36:05but charging the stuff,
1:36:07there's a part of me that says
1:36:09we just gotta make that simpler for people.
1:36:11- Yeah, and I kind of feel,
1:36:12I feel like we're just waiting for inductive charging
1:36:15to get to high speeds, right?
1:36:17'Cause like right now,
1:36:18I think the fastest you can charge anything over MagSafe
1:36:21is 15 watts, maybe it's 12 watts.
1:36:24I think-- - Yeah, and that's,
1:36:25but it's 15 if you engage Apple's chip.
1:36:28- Yeah, you have to have it just right,
1:36:29and you get 15 watts.
1:36:30But obviously, there are a lot of devices
1:36:33that need way more than 15 watts, right?
1:36:35I mean, like you said,
1:36:36the 16-inch MacBook Pro comes with 100-watt power adapter.
1:36:40Inductive charging, I think, will get there, though, right?
1:36:46That, to me, seems to be the future.
1:36:47It's not something you plug in and can get jammed in there.
1:36:52It's something that's more like inductive,
1:36:55but we gotta get it to a high speed.
1:36:57'Cause to me, the universal way to charge stuff now
1:37:01is sort of chi, right?
1:37:03Like if I have to charge my AirPods,
1:37:04I charge my AirPods by putting them on,
1:37:07I have a Nomad three-device charger,
1:37:11I forget what it's called.
1:37:13It's a really nice thing.
1:37:14It's like 130 bucks,
1:37:15but it lets you charge a phone and your AirPods,
1:37:19and even another phone if you wanted to at the same time
1:37:21on the same pad.
1:37:22And then, just like a regular Apple MagSafe puck
1:37:26sitting around the kitchen,
1:37:27I just put the AirPods on it rather than go to Lightning.
1:37:30But Apple, obviously,
1:37:32anything Apple has that just needs to charge,
1:37:34they use Lightning very consistently.
1:37:36It's not just like AirPods, you can argue that,
1:37:38oh, you're gonna use them with your iPhone
1:37:40so you have Lightning anyway,
1:37:41but there's no other explanation
1:37:44for why the Apple TV remote charges by Lightning, right?
1:37:47Why does your trackpad, or of course everybody's favorite,
1:37:50the mouse that charges on its belly.
1:37:53All of the devices that charge,
1:37:57you know, the keyboard, the trackpad, the Magic Mouse,
1:38:00they all charge by Lightning.
1:38:01Even though you're using them on a Mac
1:38:03that doesn't use Lightning.
1:38:05- I honestly think Apple makes a fair
1:38:09and well-supported assumption
1:38:12that if you have any of that stuff,
1:38:13you probably have an iPhone.
1:38:15- Yeah, I do too.
1:38:16- And so they can sort of guarantee
1:38:19that this charging cable exists
1:38:21and you're comfortable with it.
1:38:22Whereas if the Apple TV remote used USB-C,
1:38:26they might have to ship you a brick and a cable
1:38:29to charge your,
1:38:31they don't know.
1:38:31That to me, that's like why,
1:38:34like if you're,
1:38:35I keep them back, if your focus is reducing e-waste,
1:38:38then saying we assume you have an iPhone
1:38:40with a USB-C connector,
1:38:41lets them move all that other stuff too.
1:38:44But I think inductive may or may not get there,
1:38:47but you know, there's,
1:38:50wired connections are always gonna be faster
1:38:53and more reliable and able to ship more power,
1:38:55and they're not gonna go away in this,
1:38:57in any kind of timeframe that we can see,
1:39:00because yep, the, you know,
1:39:02however they do the GPU is the next MacBook,
1:39:05they're still gonna be GPUs.
1:39:07They're still gonna want a lot of power.
1:39:09- I just think that the regulators
1:39:10really ought to be smarter and think about,
1:39:13like regulating that you shouldn't,
1:39:16saying no more chargers and cables in the box
1:39:19is to me a good regulation.
1:39:21And then you only buy what you need
1:39:23and you can let market forces determine whether,
1:39:27like, should you be able to get a free charger
1:39:32with your iPhone purchase?
1:39:34I say yes.
1:39:35I say if you buy a new iPhone from Apple,
1:39:38there should just be a checkbox that says,
1:39:39would you like an 18 or a 20 watt power adapter too,
1:39:43and that they should send it to you in its own box,
1:39:45free of charge.
1:39:46Maybe I'm being too idealistic here though,
1:39:48and there's too many people who would say,
1:39:50well, why would I say no to a free charger?
1:39:52And they'd click the box, even though they don't need it,
1:39:55and it would just perpetuate the e-waste,
1:39:57'cause they'd feel like I'm a sucker if I don't take it.
1:39:59Maybe it should be $5, some nominal charge,
1:40:03so that it keeps you from blindly checking the box
1:40:07to get the free one, because free is why would you say no?
1:40:11I don't know.
1:40:11But like--
1:40:12- Well, no, actually I have a data point here.
1:40:14The CEO of Anchor is gonna be on Decoder
1:40:17in the next couple weeks.
1:40:18So I asked him when they took the charger out of the box,
1:40:22do you sell it to them?
1:40:23He goes, of course they do.
1:40:23People buy a phone and they immediately buy a case
1:40:25and a charger.
1:40:26- Hmm.
1:40:26- So yeah, the market, the consumer market
1:40:30is just conditioned to add these two things
1:40:34to every phone purchase.
1:40:35So I just think the idea that you know you have
1:40:39the one at home that's gonna work with the new one
1:40:41is not, people just haven't bought into it.
1:40:44- Right.
1:40:45You should not do blank is a better form of regulation
1:40:51than you must do blank in general.
1:40:54But my favorite example is, okay, so the EU overall
1:40:57is sort of ahead of the game on reducing e-waste
1:41:01and has tighter regulations, it's their culture.
1:41:04But in France, if you buy an iPhone,
1:41:06it still comes with the wired earbuds.
1:41:09In a separate box, of course,
1:41:12they didn't just make a new box for it.
1:41:13Because like 15 years ago, France passed a law
1:41:17that you have to have a headset because,
1:41:20I forget if it was like a driving safety thing
1:41:23or if it was at the time when people were afraid
1:41:26about the radiation, you know, the--
1:41:28- Oh man.
1:41:29- That holding a cell phone up to your ear
1:41:31was leading to brain tumors.
1:41:33But France passed a law that said all cell phones
1:41:36have to have a headset included.
1:41:40And once you pass a law like that,
1:41:42it's a lot easier to pass than to get it off the books.
1:41:45So it's still on the books.
1:41:46So in France, you buy an iPhone,
1:41:47you get a pair of wired earbuds that you probably,
1:41:50most people probably don't want, don't need, won't use.
1:41:53- I don't know that we should look to the French
1:41:56as a model of sensible regulation.
1:41:59- It might be unfair that I brought that.
1:42:00(laughing)
1:42:02- They're on a different element of the spectrum.
1:42:04This is like about Apple's ecosystem,
1:42:09the ecosystems around its products and control.
1:42:12And you brought up the headphone jack,
1:42:13so I'm just gonna take it.
1:42:14I'm gonna take the opening.
1:42:14- All right.
1:42:15- Apple fundamentally destroyed the headphone
1:42:20industry when they pulled that jack off the phone.
1:42:22And they now have Bluetooth, and I think, you know,
1:42:24they do a reasonably good job Bluetooth.
1:42:27But they have created a situation where instead
1:42:29of giving you wired headphones in the box,
1:42:31everybody buys AirPods with their phones.
1:42:33And the AirPods work better than everyone else's products
1:42:36because they have a proprietary extension to Bluetooth
1:42:40with a proprietary controller in the headphones
1:42:43and proprietary software on the phone
1:42:45that no one else can access.
1:42:46I think my AirPods are great.
1:42:49I'm not complaining about all this.
1:42:50But you can just see the downstream effect
1:42:53on the whole industry because they can no longer
1:42:56competitively attach their products to the iPhone.
1:42:59They just cannot do it.
1:43:01And so like huge headphone companies,
1:43:02like famous ones, are consolidating.
1:43:05They're doing that horrible thing that happens
1:43:07at the end of famous brands' lives
1:43:09where they stop making products and they license
1:43:10their brand to some horrible clumpy
1:43:12that makes horrible junk, you know?
1:43:14That's happening all over the place.
1:43:15And it's literally, it's not that Qualcomm
1:43:18doesn't want to make you a great headset chip.
1:43:21It's they are prevented from connecting to the iPhone.
1:43:24And that, that just, like, again, I like my AirPods.
1:43:28I wear them all the time.
1:43:29But you can just see it, that that level of control
1:43:33absolutely benefited Apple, but it also reduced
1:43:37a pretty enormous amount of competition in the market
1:43:40because you can no longer connect to the most popular thing
1:43:42that you want to listen to music on.
1:43:43And there's things that I would like
1:43:45from my music experience on the iPhone
1:43:48that you kind of can't get, right?
1:43:50Like they just roll out lossless music on Apple Music.
1:43:54Boy, your AirPods can't get them.
1:43:56And no one else can build that product.
1:43:58- Including your AirPods Max, which is the one that,
1:44:02that's the one that's a little crazy
1:44:04because they're $450 headphones, right?
1:44:06I mean, I think that's what they cost.
1:44:08- Right, but if Sony wanted to show up and say,
1:44:10"Look, we're really good at this.
1:44:11"And we've been making wackadoo high-res audio products
1:44:14"for two decades," 'cause they do,
1:44:16you can still buy like a $2,000 Walkman from Sony
1:44:19that is just a wackadoo high-res music product.
1:44:22And like, "We're really good at this.
1:44:23"We make headphones that people love.
1:44:25"We made the headphones that support
1:44:26"lossless music on the iPhone."
1:44:28Like, they cannot make that product.
1:44:30And that, to me, is, as the phone becomes more central,
1:44:33as the whole lives filter through this thing, yep.
1:44:37There's a lot of regulators interested in Apple.
1:44:39And that is just one very clear point
1:44:42where they made a decision that, yeah,
1:44:44do we need headphone jacks?
1:44:46French people all get wired, I don't know.
1:44:48But you could just see what happened
1:44:49to the rest of the market after they took out
1:44:51the open-ender connect and prioritized
1:44:53their own proprietary one.
1:44:55- But to me, that's progress.
1:44:56I completely acknowledge the trade-offs,
1:44:58and I think progress almost always involves
1:45:02some form of trade-off.
1:45:04And that is the trade-off where,
1:45:05when the default headphone connection to all phones
1:45:10was the standard 3.5 millimeter headphone jack,
1:45:13there were tremendous benefits to the fact
1:45:15that it was completely open, brain dead simple,
1:45:18analog, literally.
1:45:19And if you had a strong preference
1:45:24for a certain brand of headphones,
1:45:26it would work, 'cause it was the same plug.
1:45:28Or conversely, at the other end of the market,
1:45:30if you had no preference whatsoever,
1:45:32you could go into any corner of Bodega
1:45:34and buy a pair of headphones for $5,
1:45:36and they would work as well as you'd expect.
1:45:41- I once bought a corner of Bodega,
1:45:43a pair of wired headphones that looked exactly like Apple's,
1:45:45and I put them in and I was like, whoa.
1:45:47- I love those, I love the way that,
1:45:51they have everything that looks like Apple stuff, right?
1:45:54They've got the headphones,
1:45:54they've got the lightning cables, I love it.
1:45:57- They did not work nearly, so I threw them away
1:45:59like on the next block.
1:46:01- Well, I think that people,
1:46:04you know, they work as well as you think
1:46:05that $5 Bodega headphones are gonna work.
1:46:07All right, let me think.
1:46:08- My point is, just to end it, is fine.
1:46:11Yep, I agree with you, progress and progress
1:46:12obviously is integrated and proprietary.
1:46:14The fact that they've, the market cannot innovate
1:46:18on Apple's platform is the problem, right?
1:46:20So if you were allowed to ship your own weirdo extension
1:46:25to Bluetooth and give it to iPhone owners
1:46:27and let them run lossless music,
1:46:30well then now we'd be in a fight, and that'd be great,
1:46:32but Apple won't let that happen because of the,
1:46:34as we talked about, their interest and control.
1:46:37- Well, and the flip side of it is the standards bodies
1:46:41work about as well as Congress is also why
1:46:44the open standards almost always lag behind
1:46:48the proprietary ones like Apple's W1 chips
1:46:52or, you know, insert examples, A, B, C, D here.
1:46:57- Yeah. - You know, yeah.
1:46:58- So that to me is--
1:46:59- If Bluetooth had gotten its act together
1:47:01and had been as great as it ideally should have been
1:47:05years ago, then there never would have been a W1 chip.
1:47:08Like the door-- - I don't know about that.
1:47:10- The door was opened by the fact that Bluetooth
1:47:12has never been, it's like I always say,
1:47:15next year is the year Bluetooth gets its act together.
1:47:18- Yeah, I like, I wanna believe you,
1:47:20but Apple's now like the biggest, most powerful
1:47:21computer company in the world, and like,
1:47:23if they wanted Bluetooth to be good, it'd be good.
1:47:25- Yeah, well, and it's different,
1:47:26and that's the other thing, the big historical difference
1:47:29is that Apple in 20, when did they first come out
1:47:33with AirPods, 2017 or so?
1:47:36- Yeah, it was with the iPhone 7.
1:47:38- Yeah, you know, Apple in 2017 is very different
1:47:42than Apple in 2007, right, where, okay,
1:47:45we've come out with a phone, and the phone uses
1:47:47a wackadoo iPod connector, they're just, you know,
1:47:51it had less repercussions industry-wide
1:47:55because Apple was smaller.
1:47:56- Yeah, do you remember the connectors
1:47:58on the old Nokia smartphones?
1:47:59I mean, they were even worse.
1:48:00- Yes, y'all, they were crazy.
1:48:02I mean, they were, and it was like,
1:48:04you and your spouse could both buy Nokia phones,
1:48:07and it would, you both have Nokia phones,
1:48:09you can't charge each other's phones.
1:48:11- Yeah. - It's crazy.
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1:49:38Let's talk next week.
1:49:41I think this is fun, right?
1:49:43I'm-- - Yeah.
1:49:44- I just said to somebody, actually it was at CNBC.
1:49:48I know, are you still doing hits on CNBC?
1:49:51- Yeah. - Yeah.
1:49:52- I'll be on after the event, actually.
1:49:56Lots of fun for me.
1:49:57I'm trying to get, I tend to say no to things like that.
1:50:00And I've been trying to say yes
1:50:02every time they ask me recently,
1:50:04because I know that it's gonna change
1:50:06when I go back to being in California for these events,
1:50:09because I'm not gonna wake up
1:50:11at five in the morning Pacific time
1:50:13to go on CNBC before an event.
1:50:18And while I'm watching these events remotely,
1:50:21on East Coast time, it works out perfectly.
1:50:24But I was just talking to them about it,
1:50:26and they were asking me,
1:50:28"What do I think about next week's event?"
1:50:30And, "Does it warrant a lot of excitement?"
1:50:32And I was like, "I think people are more excited this year
1:50:36than last year."
1:50:38Because last year, nobody really,
1:50:41I think even people who were bullish
1:50:45on Apple's chip prowess,
1:50:49still couldn't bring themselves to think about
1:50:51how badly they were going to pants Intel and AMD
1:50:54and the rest of the industry on performance per watt.
1:50:59But yet, they've only shown their consumer Mac chips to date.
1:51:04So this is the year,
1:51:06clearly the ones that are coming are the Pro chips.
1:51:09They've never shown what they can do,
1:51:11and their consumer chips are, in many ways,
1:51:14faster than the Pro chips on the Intel side of things.
1:51:19So who knows?
1:51:20I'm super excited to see what they have.
1:51:22- Yeah, again, I have a 16-inch Intel MacBook Pro.
1:51:27In the context of when it was released,
1:51:30it was exactly what everyone wanted, right?
1:51:32They brought that computer back to where it needed to be.
1:51:36But man, this thing, it is hot, the fan runs a lot,
1:51:40it needs an enormous amount of power.
1:51:43If they can solve the problems
1:51:45the way they solved the problems with the M1 in the Air
1:51:48and the littler MacBook Pro, there just will not be
1:51:52another high-end laptop that can compete, in my opinion.
1:51:57I'm very curious to see,
1:51:59are they gonna stick with the touch bar?
1:52:01You know, there's rumors they're gonna add ports,
1:52:03I've tried this whole conversation on ports,
1:52:04there's rumors they're gonna add the SD card slot
1:52:06and the HDMI port back, which I would be thrilled about.
1:52:09But they've got some big decisions to make
1:52:12about Mac laptop design ideas along with the chip,
1:52:16and I'm kind of as interested in those
1:52:17as I am just raw performance, less heat,
1:52:21my fan not blown all the time.
1:52:22They're at a decision point, I think,
1:52:27with the Pro laptops.
1:52:29- I also think that, and again, I often say,
1:52:33I don't wanna just blame everything on Johnny Ive
1:52:36just because now he's not at the company,
1:52:38but you don't have to be an insider
1:52:45with inside sources at Apple to see how,
1:52:49after Steve Jobs died in the subsequent years,
1:52:54their products across the board seem to take on
1:52:58Johnny Ive-like sensibilities, you know?
1:53:02That however, you know, like you can tell
1:53:07by listening to Paul McCartney and John Lennon's solo work
1:53:12post-Beatles breakup, you can go back and look
1:53:15at the Beatles' work and see how they influenced each other
1:53:18and tempered each other and helped each other, right?
1:53:21And, you know, things took on a Johnny Ive flair
1:53:26in that decade, and it seems like now that Johnny Ive
1:53:29has left, there's a sort of return to balance
1:53:34between power and consumer elegance, right?
1:53:39And one of the ways that I would say that is
1:53:43to my eyes, in like the last, you know, maybe like 2014
1:53:48onward, there's just not that much distinction
1:53:52between Apple's Pro laptops and their consumer laptops,
1:53:56right, it's like sure, the Air has a teardrop form factor,
1:54:01but it really isn't that much different
1:54:04than the 13-inch MacBook Pro, sure, it's tear-shaped
1:54:07instead of not, but for the most part,
1:54:09they're just sort of like, the Pro seems unnecessarily thin.
1:54:14And I would even say that with the 16-inch MacBook Pro,
1:54:18which is their only 16-inch laptop,
1:54:20it didn't need to be so thin, it didn't need to get rid
1:54:25of ports that it didn't have to get,
1:54:26why are you doing a port reduction on this beast
1:54:30of a laptop that people are buying, right?
1:54:34People's SD card slot to me has always been like,
1:54:37you know every one of the customers for this product
1:54:41has SD cards in their life, you know it, it's obvious.
1:54:45- And even if they don't, they don't care,
1:54:47nobody, honestly, even somebody who's really, really picky
1:54:50about details and wanting things to be just right,
1:54:54that nobody's looking at that SD slot
1:54:56on their previous 15-inch MacBook Pro
1:54:59or the 13-inch MacBook Pro and thinking,
1:55:02I never used this, this is disfigured,
1:55:04the side of my laptop.
1:55:06- Yeah, you know, you said elegance,
1:55:09I've been thinking about this a lot in the context
1:55:11of I and Jobs, you know, it was the anniversary of Jobs.
1:55:15It's that I've had that nice note in the Wall Street Journal.
1:55:18I think Apple got confused that elegance
1:55:24meant making things hidden.
1:55:26- Oh, I think so too, and I think you see,
1:55:28and I bet you're going in this direction,
1:55:30it's still true with software, right?
1:55:32- Yeah, yeah, it's, they just keep hiding things from you
1:55:35that you need and actually making those things understandable
1:55:39and democratic in the sense that you can use them
1:55:43is the more elegant solution,
1:55:45as opposed to guessing on your behalf
1:55:47or hidden UI patterns that show up when something else,
1:55:51like you can just tell people what's going on.
1:55:54- Yeah. - And like, you know,
1:55:56one of the most elegant products Apple ever made
1:55:59was like that first sequence of iMacs,
1:56:02where they were like, look at the CRT tube.
1:56:05Just look at it, like we're making it the design element
1:56:08of the computer or the iMac G4, where they're like,
1:56:10we're moving the thing, you can see this whole hinge element
1:56:13and they were really good at saying,
1:56:15we're gonna show it to you and that,
1:56:18the elegance is how we're gonna display how it works to you
1:56:21and so you understand it and they've gotten to a point
1:56:23where they're like, what if we don't show it to you?
1:56:26What if we hide everything?
1:56:27And I think that balance is sort of coming back.
1:56:29I'm not saying they're gonna make a beautiful HDMI port,
1:56:32but that balance is coming back to practicality and hardware.
1:56:35I do not know if it is anywhere near there in software.
1:56:38Software is all over the map right now.
1:56:40- Yeah, yeah, let's leave that aside.
1:56:42That's too big of a discussion.
1:56:43But it's, but I do think, I really do think
1:56:47that if you look at the 16-inch MacBook Pro
1:56:50or the current 13-inch MacBook Pro,
1:56:52they're just, even before you turn it on,
1:56:55not running benchmarks, they're not pro enough
1:57:00just looking at them compared to what you know
1:57:03are consumer-level MacBooks, like the MacBook Air
1:57:06or the M1 13-inch MacBook Pro that only has two ports
1:57:11and is sort of, they call it a 13,
1:57:15it's not a pro MacBook Pro.
1:57:19The pro ones just aren't, there's just some obvious things
1:57:25and I'm not pro in favor of adding 40 different ports
1:57:30to the side, I just think though that the number of ports
1:57:34Apple used to put on MacBook Pros circa 2013, '14
1:57:39and earlier was the right level, right?
1:57:45And they've always been aggressive.
1:57:48Even whatever era you wanna say
1:57:50was your peak Macintosh for you.
1:57:53- I know a lot of people still talk about macOS 10.6,
1:57:56which I think was like 2006, that was the year
1:57:58they claimed no new features
1:58:01and were just gonna clean it up and--
1:58:03- Oh, that's mine.
1:58:03- Yeah, "Snow Leopard." - "Snow Leopard."
1:58:04- "Snow Leopard," yeah, it was great.
1:58:06And it was a great release and it was,
1:58:08and the cheers, I think it was still Bertrand
1:58:11who announced no new features during the keynote
1:58:14and the cheers in the keynote hall were legit.
1:58:19It was great, but they still were at a point
1:58:23where they weren't keeping antiquated old ports around
1:58:26just because some people still use them.
1:58:28They were somewhat aggressive, but they weren't,
1:58:31you're gonna get two ports, they're both gonna be USB-C
1:58:33and that's it.
1:58:34- Yeah, I mean, they were, I mean, right,
1:58:37that iMac all went to USB, but there was,
1:58:41the whole industry was coalescing and Apple pushed them.
1:58:44I think about just the things I plug into my MacBook Pro,
1:58:48it's power, it's a USB-C capture card for my nicer webcam,
1:58:53my RX100 that I use as a webcam,
1:58:56and it's a little dock that has HDMI out
1:58:57to run an external monitor.
1:59:00All of that should be one cable, right?
1:59:02But because USB-C is just messy, it cannot be.
1:59:05And that is the reality, right?
1:59:08The reality is even when I'm this close to being like,
1:59:12I could just plug everything into one,
1:59:14the reality is it's sort of better
1:59:16when you separate them apart and if one thing fails,
1:59:18everything else doesn't go to hell.
1:59:19I'm like, just make that reality elegant
1:59:23as opposed to pushing me towards a thing that you want
1:59:27that looks better, but is actually far less practical.
1:59:31And that to me, like, yep, I want this computer
1:59:33to have an HDMI port, I can get rid of the stock.
1:59:35That seems great to me.
1:59:36Like, it's one less thing on my desk.
1:59:39- I personally don't think, I can't remember the last time
1:59:44I wanted to plug an HDMI cable into my Mac.
1:59:48It's been a long time.
1:59:51But what I need, what defines my needs,
1:59:56I know isn't representative of everybody else.
1:59:59And I know that lots and lots of people who work
2:00:02in actual offices of any kind, schools, office buildings,
2:00:07need to plug into projectors on a weekly basis
2:00:15if pandemic aside, that you need,
2:00:19somebody needs to plug in to this thing.
2:00:22And if you always need dongles, it's a pain.
2:00:25And I'm not saying, and I used to make fun of,
2:00:27like, there were so many, I remember there were Sony,
2:00:30really elegant Sony laptops that really clearly,
2:00:35how they fit a VGA port on them was,
2:00:38like, it was like a weird, it almost looked like a meme
2:00:43from Reddit that somebody Photoshopped,
2:00:45because it looked like the VGA port was actually thicker
2:00:48than the laptop.
2:00:49I get it, you know, the PCs stuck with VGA for a long time.
2:00:53And it was, you know, because there were VGA projectors
2:00:56all over the place, and that's why they felt
2:00:58like it was needed.
2:01:00There's a better middle ground, I don't know.
2:01:02- There is, you know, I would say,
2:01:04I'll just give this advice.
2:01:05So I'm assuming you don't live your life on Zoom.
2:01:07I live my life in a series of Zoom meetings.
2:01:09- I try to stay off it as much as I can.
2:01:13Right, so I run this, like, 80 person newsroom
2:01:15at a 1600 person company, my life is Zoom meetings.
2:01:17The reason I use an, I wasn't using one all the time before,
2:01:22but I have a 48 inch TV or something,
2:01:27and then my camera is mounted on an arm
2:01:29in the middle of that TV.
2:01:30So I can sit six feet back from Zoom,
2:01:34and it is just like, my whole relationship
2:01:37to this product has changed because of that.
2:01:39But that's reality, like, if we're all gonna work from home,
2:01:44I'm gonna live my life on Zoom.
2:01:46In order to make that better, I need these cables
2:01:49to be plugged into my computer all the time.
2:01:51And if I wanna go away and type somewhere else,
2:01:53I gotta unplug all the cables.
2:01:54That, just understanding that that is reality
2:01:57for a lot of people now, I know a lot of people
2:01:59with setups like this.
2:02:01I know a lot of people with fancy webcams.
2:02:03Well, we gotta, you have to make the,
2:02:06the reality, like, surprise and delight, right?
2:02:08You have to make that reality delightful.
2:02:12And I, the, I think Apple is shifting in there.
2:02:14I think, you know, some of the stuff they're doing
2:02:15on the iPad with the center stage
2:02:17and moving the cameras around.
2:02:18Like, they're bending to the reality,
2:02:21but for the pro machines in particular,
2:02:24fighting against the reality of how people
2:02:26are doing their jobs has been a, has been a mess for them.
2:02:29So, like I said, I, the performance of the chips,
2:02:31super excited about it.
2:02:32I think that's gonna be, it's just fascinating to see
2:02:35what they do, how they solve the GPU problem,
2:02:38like, you're not expecting them to use AMD GPUs
2:02:40in these laptops.
2:02:41- No, I think they're, I think they're going
2:02:42with their own custom GPUs.
2:02:44And I think that they've, they've held that whole story
2:02:48close to their vest.
2:02:49They haven't shown a word of it.
2:02:51And I think it's exactly the way that people,
2:02:53they're just, we're naturally skeptical that their CPUs
2:02:56would really be that competitive with Intel's,
2:02:59oh my God, they're better last year.
2:03:01I think it's gonna be the same story with the GPUs.
2:03:03- Yeah, I mean, like, I'm ridiculously excited about that.
2:03:05I'm honestly, I'm just excited to open Chrome
2:03:08and not the fan turn on.
2:03:09This would be great for me.
2:03:11But like, that's all really interesting.
2:03:13But the other piece, are you gonna still force
2:03:15a bunch of pros to use the Touch Bar?
2:03:17- It's, right, I don't know.
2:03:20Here's what I think, before we get to Touch Bar.
2:03:21I think that the more, most interesting thing to me
2:03:25would be if, and as a sign of their commitment to,
2:03:29like, in almost every area of life,
2:03:32I think the most interesting products
2:03:34are at the extremes, right?
2:03:35So like, to me, the most interesting small laptop
2:03:39Apple has made ever is the 12-inch MacBook
2:03:42that only had one port, right?
2:03:43I didn't buy one, I was very close.
2:03:46I really, if I traveled more,
2:03:47I would have had one for sure.
2:03:48Super interesting product.
2:03:50I really hope that now that they're back on Apple Silicon,
2:03:53they can make something like that or even smaller again.
2:03:57Super interesting, even though it was super limited.
2:04:00And then to me, the most interesting other MacBooks
2:04:02are the MacBook Pros that are really pro.
2:04:05And what do you want with them?
2:04:08To me, just as a small sign of,
2:04:09oh, they're serious about this,
2:04:11would be if next week's Mac 16-inch,
2:04:14I assume that the rumors are right
2:04:16that the smaller one will be 14-inch instead of 13-inch,
2:04:18so I'll call it the 14-inch.
2:04:20I would say, even if they're thicker,
2:04:22what if they're thicker than the ones that they're replacing?
2:04:25Not a lot, not like bricks, not like dictionary thick.
2:04:29But just thicker.
2:04:30Just, hey, this endless pursuit of thinness,
2:04:33even in the Pro laptops.
2:04:36'Cause what if, all we've ever seen
2:04:38from Apple Silicon so far is heat-constrained, right?
2:04:42And sure, the 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 has a fan,
2:04:47but it's not like a fan fan.
2:04:48What if they let Apple Silicon run fairly hot?
2:04:52- You're like, what if when you open Chrome, the fan?
2:04:56- Right.
2:04:56(laughing)
2:04:57Well, no, but what if you don't hear it?
2:04:59What if they make it thicker
2:05:01and put slightly bigger feet on the bottom?
2:05:04I know there was a patent, you can't go by patents,
2:05:07but there was a patent filed about,
2:05:09hey, what if we had adjustable feet and put,
2:05:12just a little bit, not something awkward,
2:05:14something still elegant,
2:05:15but what if it sat a little higher off the desk,
2:05:18'cause it was gonna actually be assumed
2:05:20that you're gonna be doing things
2:05:21that are gonna make the fan turn on.
2:05:22We're gonna keep it silent.
2:05:24They did that with the iMac Pro, with the Xeon chips,
2:05:28and at the press event had us go
2:05:30and put our ears behind it
2:05:31while something processor-intensive,
2:05:34you could see it running on the display,
2:05:36and then you'd go back, and it's like, huh,
2:05:38I guess I feel the air, but I don't hear anything.
2:05:41This is kind of an amazing heat dissipation system.
2:05:45What if they go that way with the Pro laptops?
2:05:47I think even before we benchmark them,
2:05:50if it turns out that they're slightly thicker,
2:05:53just a few millimeters,
2:05:54but in terms of showing that,
2:05:56hey, we're willing to make these laptops thicker
2:05:58because we're gonna want more airflow and bigger batteries,
2:06:03we'd be like, yeah, they get it, these are Pro laptops.
2:06:06- Yeah, I think that would be fascinating.
2:06:08It would also let you put a bigger battery in there,
2:06:10which is like, which is a Pro feature.
2:06:13Yeah, like an actual all-day battery life
2:06:16in a 16-inch laptop.
2:06:17If you assume that Apple Silicon will get you
2:06:20the performance per watt,
2:06:22actually running a 16-inch laptop all day
2:06:25or a 14-inch Pro laptop all day would be incredible.
2:06:28That product doesn't exist.
2:06:29I think the real question is how the GPU.
2:06:32The GPU companies are not struggling like Intel is.
2:06:36NVIDIA and AMD are good at making GPUs.
2:06:39There isn't this plateau of performance
2:06:44that the industry has sort of hit on the CPU side.
2:06:46I wanna know, are they gonna,
2:06:49they've made bad GPU decisions in their Pro products before.
2:06:52- Yes, they have, that's true.
2:06:53- So they're scarred by this.
2:06:54I'm very curious to see which way they go.
2:06:57- Well, and I think that if there's an opening,
2:07:00it's that like the NVIDIA,
2:07:01the performance certainly isn't lacking,
2:07:04but maybe the performance per watt is, right?
2:07:07Like the gaming, you know, all these,
2:07:09the 5,700, whatever the numbers are.
2:07:12I don't know, my son, you know, is very,
2:07:14keeps me informed on them.
2:07:15But they have enormous fans dedicated just to the GPU.
2:07:19And I know I'm talking--
2:07:20- And power supplies.
2:07:21- And power supplies straight up, right on the card.
2:07:24There's certainly a performance per watt opportunity there.
2:07:29I think the other interesting thing though about it
2:07:33is if they go their own way,
2:07:34which is what I'm very strongly assuming they will,
2:07:38the software story, right?
2:07:40Like, 'cause you're gonna have to pro,
2:07:42anything that's gonna take advantage of it
2:07:43is gonna have to use Apple's metal APIs,
2:07:46not the APIs that run, the same ones that run on,
2:07:51and it's not like recompiling an app.
2:07:54Like, oh, so my app was only native for Intel.
2:07:57I just went into Xcode,
2:07:58changed the target to Apple Silicon, recompiled,
2:08:01and now I have a native Apple Silicon app.
2:08:03It doesn't work like that for high-end GPU intensive
2:08:07purposes, whether it's games or professional rendering
2:08:10software, that sort of thing.
2:08:12You know, your metal APIs require you to commit
2:08:15and write software for it.
2:08:16That to me would be the, hmm,
2:08:19what if Apple drops this amazing GPU in the forest,
2:08:22but there's no software to hear it?
2:08:25- This was true when I did the new Mac Pro review,
2:08:28not the, the old Mac Pro is the thing I was referencing,
2:08:32the trash can, where they made the GPU bet
2:08:34that didn't pay off.
2:08:35But the new Mac Pro, right?
2:08:37So what everybody wanted, everyone's happy about it.
2:08:38We reviewed it.
2:08:39I gave it to a bunch of people on our inbox.
2:08:42I mean, they gave it to the print designers
2:08:43at New York BAG, they gave it to our video team.
2:08:46I gave it to the people who make the Netflix show,
2:08:47the Explained show, Unboxed.
2:08:49And they're like, yeah, this thing is great.
2:08:51It seems really fast.
2:08:52None of our software is optimized for this.
2:08:53- Yep.
2:08:54- And it was just like, well, yeah, Adobe, like,
2:08:57in the end, I'm just reviewing Adobe software roadmap.
2:09:00That's what it felt like by the end of that review.
2:09:02Like, is Adobe gonna commit to this GPU architecture?
2:09:06Are they gonna commit to metal in this way?
2:09:09Who knows, right?
2:09:10'Cause on the flip side, a lot of big shops are, right,
2:09:14they're buying GPUs, they're buying Nvidia GPUs,
2:09:18they're putting them in PCs, that's where the action is.
2:09:21And they've made that investment
2:09:23and you're not gonna get them to move really fast.
2:09:25I hope they do.
2:09:26Like, there's something about a different kind
2:09:30of GPU architecture and a different form factor
2:09:32that might be faster, that is like the old school reasons
2:09:36I was excited about computing.
2:09:37Like, RISC versus CISC was a thing I used to care
2:09:41about a lot, right?
2:09:42- We all did, we all did.
2:09:43(both laughing)
2:09:44Like, I don't know.
2:09:45I'm like excited to have a little bit of that back
2:09:47in the mix, but you know, the industry is consolidated.
2:09:52So like, maybe we're gonna see some new kind
2:09:54of software vendors come up for these new architectures.
2:09:56- I think that's also one of the interesting things
2:09:59that to see in this event, and it seems,
2:10:02and maybe it's just the type of event they've had
2:10:04over the last year and a half, that there are fewer
2:10:06special guests from outside the company.
2:10:09I know sometimes they'll cut to a montage
2:10:11of like game developers or something like that,
2:10:13but it's like, it's a little different than
2:10:16in the on-stage events when they're like,
2:10:18let me introduce so-and-so from Adobe,
2:10:20and then they come out and they have like a full
2:10:23four minutes to demo something.
2:10:25- I don't feel sad about that.
2:10:27I feel like those demos always were like,
2:10:29you could see like the pressure they were under
2:10:32because they only found out they were doing it
2:10:34like eight days before.
2:10:36These events are now infomercials, right?
2:10:37They're like hour, 30 minute infomercials.
2:10:40They're like ultra produced.
2:10:41There's like a part of me that's like, yep,
2:10:43that's what it always was.
2:10:44I was just in a room.
2:10:46Like, let's have some production value.
2:10:48- It's like they've changed from stage plays
2:10:52to TV shows, right?
2:10:54And guess what?
2:10:54More people like TV shows than stage plays.
2:10:57They do.
2:10:58- It turns out.
2:10:59- And so in terms of their popularity with the tens
2:11:04of millions of people who actually watch them,
2:11:06there's no doubt in my mind that people prefer
2:11:10the new non-staged format because it's more cinematic
2:11:14and more like a TV show and it keeps the ball rolling
2:11:18in a way that here's four minutes of, not blathering,
2:11:22'cause if they're demoing your app from Adobe,
2:11:25your eyes are glued to the screen.
2:11:27But if you don't use whatever it is that they're demoing,
2:11:30Photoshop with 470 layers in a PSD file,
2:11:34that's when you go check Twitter
2:11:37and see what people are saying about the event, right?
2:11:39- The other thing I'll say is that the live events,
2:11:42live audience keeps you honest, right?
2:11:44- Yeah.
2:11:45- So they're able to alight some things
2:11:48in their presentations.
2:11:49Like every company, I don't mean a single Apple,
2:11:52I just, we cover every, there's a Google event next week,
2:11:55there's a Samsung event next week.
2:11:57We're in prep mode for all this stuff.
2:11:59But you see over the course of the pandemic,
2:12:01as these have become TV shows, infomercials,
2:12:05the companies have gotten, they're able to be more selective
2:12:08about what they say in a way that a live audience,
2:12:12you know, you would see people frowning at you.
2:12:14- Yeah.
2:12:15- And it keeps you honest.
2:12:15And then right after you'd get off stage
2:12:17and have to go meet a bunch of journalists and people.
2:12:20Like, yeah, they don't have to do that anymore.
2:12:23So I think there's a back and forth here.
2:12:25Like, it's a TV show, it has all the upside of a TV show.
2:12:29It's well produced, it's fun to watch.
2:12:30All the downside of a TV show,
2:12:31which is there's no built-in accountability mechanism.
2:12:35But that's like, eventually we get the stuff in our hands
2:12:37and that comes anyway.
2:12:38- I, anyway, I brought up the demos simply
2:12:40because I'll be interested to see
2:12:43who they've already brought in to
2:12:47and gotten their buy-in, you know,
2:12:50Cinema 4D, I don't know who else, you know.
2:12:52- Yeah.
2:12:52- That somebody is gonna come in and say, yes,
2:12:53Apple came to us with this chip and we recompiled our app
2:12:58to take advantage of it using the Metal APIs.
2:13:01And we were blown away because, blah.
2:13:03Here, look, here's how long it took before.
2:13:06Boom, here it is now.
2:13:08So I'd be looking for that.
2:13:09- Yeah.
2:13:10- Now.
2:13:11- I mean, I would say, oh, they're always like,
2:13:11and we did it in just three days.
2:13:12- Oh yeah, always.
2:13:14But then it's because that's what Apple gave you.
2:13:16They gave you three days.
2:13:18- Exactly.
2:13:18It's like, it turns out it's not that easy.
2:13:22- No, it's always true.
2:13:23And then they're like, we did it in three days,
2:13:25but then the actual product that takes advantage of it
2:13:27comes out six months later.
2:13:29- Right.
2:13:30That's always the case.
2:13:31- I was like, you know how fast
2:13:33where there's a gun to your head?
2:13:34- Right, we expect this to be coming early next year.
2:13:37- Yeah.
2:13:38- And they're like, early next year,
2:13:39meaning any time, maybe November 2022.
2:13:43Anyway, we cannot finish the show without talking touch bar,
2:13:46which to me is an enormous, I am so excited,
2:13:51'cause it seems like there's absolutely no leaks
2:13:53one way or the other as to what they're doing.
2:13:56Whatever it is they're unveiling next week
2:13:58seems like it, you know, famous last words
2:14:01before the weekend, 'cause a lot of stuff
2:14:03sometimes leaks over weekends.
2:14:04But I always think that the reason
2:14:06a lot of stuff often leaked over weekends
2:14:08were rehearsals for live events,
2:14:11and that it inevitably was exposed to more people
2:14:15in the days before, whereas this is probably an event
2:14:17that they already have in the can, ready to go.
2:14:20I'm super excited to find out
2:14:24what the answer is on Touch Bar.
2:14:26- I'm very curious.
2:14:30I think that it's time to just call it.
2:14:33I just don't think it worked.
2:14:36And I think that, you know, you see the Air and the Pro,
2:14:38you see their consumer products.
2:14:40Usually when something works, they bring it to you, right?
2:14:43They bring it down, like we started the show
2:14:45talking about iPhones, the new 13s have the same camera
2:14:49from the 13 Pro Max last year.
2:14:51Like, that is remarkable, because it worked, it was good.
2:14:54They invested the effort in figuring it out.
2:14:56The Touch Bar is like, it's not adding enough value
2:14:59to anyone, they have no incentive,
2:15:01there's no call to push it down the line.
2:15:03And I think that is as strong of a sign as you can get
2:15:06that they should just walk away from it.
2:15:07Like, we tried it, it was good, people like buttons better.
2:15:10- I believe that the original Touch Bar shipped in 2016,
2:15:15five years old, has not changed at all, really.
2:15:21They've tweaked the size of it to restore
2:15:24the hardware escape key on the top left corner,
2:15:27so that, you know, but that's not changing the Touch Bar,
2:15:30right, they just sort of shrunk the Touch Bar
2:15:32and acknowledged, okay, having the Touch Bar
2:15:37will at least concede that it doesn't replace
2:15:40the advantages of an actual hardware escape key.
2:15:44Even though Apple's escape key story is very strange,
2:15:46because they don't have an escape key on iPad keyboards,
2:15:51which drives me crazy, I keep, I always,
2:15:54I've typed so many tildes thinking I'm escaping
2:15:56out of something over the years.
2:16:00And they've tweaked the Touch ID button
2:16:04in the top right corner.
2:16:05But I would say I'm ambivalent about the Touch Bar.
2:16:12I don't really hate it, I don't have strong feelings
2:16:14against it, I almost never use it though on my MacBook Pro.
2:16:19I also didn't really use the hardware buttons very much.
2:16:22And so I didn't have, I don't have strong feelings,
2:16:24but every single person I know who has strong feelings
2:16:27hates the Touch Bar.
2:16:29- Yeah, I haven't sold software to mostly disable it.
2:16:31So POC is really good.
2:16:33It's really, it's much more stable now
2:16:35than it was maybe a year ago.
2:16:36And I am left-handed, and I'm gonna have told the story
2:16:41on the show before, but I'm left-handed
2:16:43and the way I hold my left hand on the keyboard
2:16:46means my pinky is always touching a button up there.
2:16:49And so, right, the defaults for what happens
2:16:53in the Touch Bar is I was just turning
2:16:55my brightness down all the time.
2:16:57It was like, I was like, I need to turn this off.
2:17:00Like, I'm constantly messing with my own computer.
2:17:03So yeah, so I installed POC, POC is great,
2:17:06but like, if you're installing software
2:17:08to make something less useful,
2:17:10like, your instinct is like, I should just get rid of this.
2:17:12- There was a funny time, what was the product?
2:17:14There was a funny one, it was like one of the MacBooks,
2:17:17MacBook Pros, they like, they moved the Touch Bar
2:17:21like one millimeter further from the number keys.
2:17:25And they're like, we think this will,
2:17:28this will eliminate unwanted touches.
2:17:31And people, you know, in the press,
2:17:33in the hands-on, we're like taking their existing
2:17:35MacBook Pros out of the MacBook to like look,
2:17:38and it's like, you know, and like,
2:17:40without taking out like digital precise calipers,
2:17:42it was like, I guess I see it?
2:17:44I mean, are you serious that this is like the improvement?
2:17:47It's a very strange thing for five years in
2:17:50that it hasn't gotten better at all.
2:17:52So I--
2:17:55- I think they made it because there was all that pressure
2:17:57then to put a touchscreen on the Mac,
2:17:59and you know, they said, this is how we're gonna solve it.
2:18:01Like, you wanna touch stuff?
2:18:02Like, this is where your hands are.
2:18:04- Well, I also think there's a general sense,
2:18:09'cause I perceive this, I think having a row of F keys
2:18:12up at the top, whether you use them as F4, F5, whatever,
2:18:16or use them as these dedicated brightness,
2:18:20desktop, play, pause, whatever, it's super finicky.
2:18:25It's a very old way of thinking about keyboards.
2:18:27Having a bunch of hardware keys is old fashioned,
2:18:31and I perceive the lack of elegance of it,
2:18:33and so I see how this, you know,
2:18:35I think it killed two birds with one stone.
2:18:37What you said, we need to have a touchscreen story
2:18:41for MacBooks, and we've always been annoyed by these F keys.
2:18:45They're all sort of finicky, and once we print an icon
2:18:48on them that says, you know, volume up, volume down,
2:18:52it's got the icon printed on it, right?
2:18:54And you run into that whole problem that Steve Jobs
2:18:56talked about with the iPhone, that once you make
2:18:58these hardware buttons, you might come up with a new idea
2:19:01where you'd like to have something else.
2:19:03Well, we have an answer for it, it's called software, right?
2:19:06I get that thinking, it's just that in practice,
2:19:08it hasn't worked out, and it's--
2:19:09- Yeah, this is the elegance thing to me.
2:19:11- Right. - Sure.
2:19:12But you know what I do all the time?
2:19:13I change the volume on my computer.
2:19:15- Yep.
2:19:16- Hardware buttons for that are really useful.
2:19:19- And nobody complains about it, right?
2:19:20It's like there's an annoyance in the back of your head
2:19:23if you see the inelegance of it, but on the other hand,
2:19:25in the real world, they just work, and nobody is ever like,
2:19:28I went to delete some text and accidentally
2:19:31changed the brightness.
2:19:32It just doesn't happen.
2:19:33Because you feel--
2:19:35- Unless, wait, unless you have the touch bar.
2:19:37- Right, because the actual volume button
2:19:39is this little Tic Tac button.
2:19:41Your finger instantly knows that's not the delete key.
2:19:44So you don't press it, and just touching it
2:19:47doesn't do anything.
2:19:48It turns out just touching the touch bar
2:19:50does all sorts of things.
2:19:51So I would guess, if I had to bet, if I were a betting man,
2:19:56I bet they do not talk about it.
2:19:58They don't say anything about the touch bar.
2:20:01It's just gone.
2:20:02- Yeah.
2:20:03- And let Twitter erupt with clear eruptions of joy
2:20:08that it just has the same keyboard that the MacBook Air has
2:20:12with the touch ID up in the corner
2:20:13and just regular old-fashioned keys,
2:20:15and they don't talk about it.
2:20:16And they don't have to face me and you after the event.
2:20:20(laughing)
2:20:21Where of course that would be the first thing we'd say
2:20:24when we saw them after the event is,
2:20:26"Hey, you didn't talk about the touch bar.
2:20:27"What were you guys thinking about that?"
2:20:29And then hear their practiced, ready answer for it,
2:20:34but they won't have to see us accept over Zoom,
2:20:37which is easier.
2:20:38(laughing)
2:20:41That would be my bet.
2:20:42My outlandish what if would be
2:20:45what if there's a touch bar 2.0,
2:20:47and it's truly, it's not a tweak.
2:20:49It is like a altogether new take on it.
2:20:52I don't know what that would be,
2:20:54but what if they have some cool things
2:20:56where it is a touchscreen, it is dynamic,
2:20:59but it actually involves clickable buttons in some way.
2:21:02- Oh, that'd be interesting.
2:21:03Like those old Razer keyboards.
2:21:04- Yeah, yep, yep.
2:21:06- Or the Stream Deck from Elgato.
2:21:07- Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff on the Windows side.
2:21:10Like Windows laptops have been nuts for a while, right?
2:21:14So lots of experiments with making the track pad a touch pad,
2:21:19lots of experiments of moving the entire keyboard deck
2:21:23down to the front of the machine,
2:21:24having a big screen there.
2:21:26Like, you know, Apple sees all this stuff.
2:21:28- The Stream Deck, for people who don't know,
2:21:30my son has one, and he wanted it for Christmas last year.
2:21:33And he set it up, he has it like,
2:21:35he's like rigged out all of his home kit stuff
2:21:38and these lights on his wall,
2:21:40and he's got custom icons for it.
2:21:41It's really cool.
2:21:43It's like an old fashioned phone dialer,
2:21:45like a grid of actual clickable buttons,
2:21:48but each button has its own LCD screen,
2:21:52and you can make the screen show whatever you want.
2:21:55And so, you know, like a DJ could have a whole Stream Deck
2:21:58that is just rigged out with buttons for playing music.
2:22:02My son has his, you know, he has it dynamically changed.
2:22:05I don't know if he uses it for games or whatever,
2:22:08but for the most part, just shows a bunch of home kit stuff,
2:22:11and he's got custom icons for it.
2:22:12It's really cool.
2:22:13Like the general idea of using screens for buttons
2:22:17so they can do different things and show different things,
2:22:20cool idea, the Touch Bar as we know it
2:22:23for five friggin' years is not it.
2:22:27- Yeah, I think it'd be rad if they were like,
2:22:30you know what, we're doing keyboard in the front,
2:22:32the whole top of the machine is a touchscreen.
2:22:34Like, the Windows PC makers are doing it all over the place.
2:22:39I don't know if it's a good idea.
2:22:40It's just, we haven't seen that level of big idea
2:22:45from Apple and laptop design for a while.
2:22:47I'm like, you know, the most extreme ideas
2:22:49are always most interesting to me.
2:22:51- The best idea they've had in recent years was,
2:22:53well, obviously the M1 chips was one,
2:22:55and then the other one was going back
2:22:56to the old keyboard design.
2:22:58- Yeah, exactly.
2:22:59But, which by the way, those butterfly keyboards,
2:23:00they also kept around for five years, right?
2:23:02They're just a five-year limit on bad ideas at Apple.
2:23:05- And then they just toss 'em out the window and say,
2:23:07here, you can just have the thing you liked before.
2:23:09(Nelay laughs)
2:23:12Anyway, thank you, Nelay.
2:23:13This is always a pleasure.
2:23:16Very fun to speculate about next week's event,
2:23:18because it's so fun to have so many surprises ahead of us.
2:23:22I'm looking forward to it.
2:23:23I also feel, I'm like you,
2:23:25I feel like it's going to be this weird race to order.
2:23:29Like, you had a tweet the other day,
2:23:31like, I don't even need to know, just let me pre-order now.
2:23:33Like, let me get my pre-order in now.
2:23:36- Whichever is the most expensive one, just take the money.
2:23:40- Yeah, just so that I get it as soon as possible.
2:23:42I would like to place my pre-order
2:23:44before the event this time.
2:23:46I think that there are so many people
2:23:48who are going to be listening to this podcast
2:23:49who are like, yes, that's me, I've been waiting with,
2:23:52I hear from them all the time, they're like,
2:23:55this has been like the hardest year of my life
2:23:57not to buy an M1 MacBook Pro,
2:23:59because I've been waiting for the truly pro ones.
2:24:01I want a 16-inch, please tell me that they're coming.
2:24:04I know you don't often know everything,
2:24:06but just tell me I'm all right.
2:24:08And I'm like, I-- - Just soothe my soul.
2:24:09- Yeah, and I'm right back to 'em.
2:24:11I'm like, I don't know no, but I'll take--
2:24:15- A lot of people reply to that tweet of mine,
2:24:17they're like, this is what Tesla does.
2:24:18Just give us, like, $100 pre-order,
2:24:22and then one day you'll get a Cybertruck.
2:24:24Like, whatever, just psychologically close the loop for you.
2:24:29- Everybody, of course, can follow you on Twitter.
2:24:31You are reckless, spelled R-E-C-K-L-E-S-S,
2:24:35and of course, your new podcast is excellent.
2:24:38Truly-- - Oh, thank you.
2:24:39- Truly my favorite new podcast of 2021.
2:24:42I believe it's new to 2021, is that correct?
2:24:44- It is, we're closing in on just a year of it.
2:24:46So we started very late 2020, so new 2021.
2:24:48- Decoder, which is-- - Decoder.
2:24:50- Which is also, I even hate to tell you this,
2:24:53God, what a great name.
2:24:55When that came out, I was like,
2:24:58well, that's gotta be already a,
2:25:00and it's like, no, nobody had a podcast in tech
2:25:02called Decoder, I was like, damn, that is a good name.
2:25:05- Well, I gotta tell you, we took over
2:25:07Terrace Hirsch's Recode Decode feed.
2:25:10So we were like, wait, this is possible?
2:25:13And we took it as soon as we could.
2:25:15- But it's also, it's not just a cool word
2:25:18and a cool sounding name, it actually is the gist
2:25:20of the show, it's you interviewing people
2:25:23about how they think and how they work.
2:25:25My favorite, by far, episode was the MKBHD interview,
2:25:29which I think was like early, like February.
2:25:31- It was early, yeah.
2:25:33- But just fascinating, 'cause it was like,
2:25:35every single thing I've ever wanted to ask
2:25:37Marques Brownlee about this incredible channel
2:25:41that he's built and presence that he's built,
2:25:43it's like, you ask them, and it was like, this is crazy,
2:25:46that's exactly what I've been dying to hear
2:25:49from Marques Brownlee, totally decoded.
2:25:52- You know, my tiny plug, my thesis of the show
2:25:57is that we've gotten too used to taking things
2:25:59for granted in tech, specifically in tech.
2:26:01So like Marques, that's a business,
2:26:04he's running a very complicated business,
2:26:06multiple employees, and we're like, these videos are great,
2:26:09and there's a whole machine behind it
2:26:11that is worth thinking about.
2:26:14I just interviewed, the last one was Dave Limp,
2:26:16who runs devices and services at Amazon,
2:26:20and like, I don't think I asked about one Alexa feature
2:26:22the whole time, I was like, tell me how 10,000 people
2:26:25work on Alexa, what do they do?
2:26:28How do you organize their decisions?
2:26:31That's the stuff I've always been curious about,
2:26:34and this is stuff you've always been curious about.
2:26:36So when I had the opportunity to make a show
2:26:37that just did that, as opposed to yelling
2:26:41about headphone checks, which is like
2:26:44what most tech coverage is.
2:26:46- There's a huge space in between proprietary secrets
2:26:49that you know they're not gonna tell you,
2:26:50and interesting, hey, how do you actually do
2:26:55this amazing thing, right?
2:26:56Like MKBHD, it's like 120 videos a year,
2:26:59how is that possible?
2:27:00There's only 360 days a year, how do you make
2:27:03120 videos with that production quality?
2:27:06And that was the gist of the interview.
2:27:08- And the thing I will say, the thing I've learned the most
2:27:13from MKBHD, whoever else we've talked to,
2:27:16really smart people wanna be challenged, right?
2:27:20They're competitive, they're smart,
2:27:21they've been thinking about it.
2:27:23You ask the questions, they're gonna tell you,
2:27:25because they're excited to tell you.
2:27:27And I listen to a lot of other business and tech podcasts.
2:27:31Decoder doesn't have, there's like not a deference to it,
2:27:34like actively not a deference to it,
2:27:36because our theories that people wanna tell us,
2:27:38that smart people wanna be challenged,
2:27:40it has been working out, so thank you for the compliment.
2:27:42I hope people don't listen to it.
2:27:43- Yeah, I think people who like this show
2:27:44would love that show if they're not already subscribed.
2:27:48Anyway, fingers crossed that me and you
2:27:50are both happy come Monday afternoon.
2:27:53- Just take the money, take the money, Jaws.
2:27:55That's waiting for you, buddy.