0:00:00Hey everybody, it's your internet pal, John Gruber.
0:00:03I've got some good news and some bad news.
0:00:04The good news first, I have an amazing guest,
0:00:07Casey Johnston, who has done more writing
0:00:09and great writing about the saga
0:00:12of the butterfly switch MacBook keyboards
0:00:14than anybody else on the internet.
0:00:16And we're here to talk all about
0:00:18the new 16 inch MacBook Pro
0:00:20and its all new keyboard design.
0:00:21So that's the good news.
0:00:22The bad news is that I recorded the whole show
0:00:25using my review unit 16 inch MacBook Pro
0:00:28And to connect it to my regular microphone, I had to use a USB-C to USB-A dongle.
0:00:33And I think something went wrong there.
0:00:35And my side of the audio has a bit of static.
0:00:39And we're doing our best to mitigate it in post.
0:00:42But you're going to hear it, I think.
0:00:44And I'm just telling you upfront that you don't have to let me know.
0:00:48I'm really sorry about it.
0:00:49Nobody feels worse about this than me.
0:00:51I really do.
0:00:52But you don't have to let me know.
0:00:54And here's the weird part.
0:00:56I can't explain it.
0:00:57I'm recording this preamble where I don't have the static using the exact same microphone
0:01:01setup that had the static when I recorded with Casey.
0:01:05I can't explain it.
0:01:07It's some kind of thing.
0:01:09I don't know if I didn't have the USB key cable all the way in or what the heck I did
0:01:13wrong.
0:01:14Can't explain it.
0:01:15Sorry.
0:01:16On with the show.
0:01:19Casey Johnston, welcome to the talk show.
0:01:21Thank you.
0:01:22Are you excited?
0:01:24It's a big week for you.
0:01:25I mean, yes, I guess yes, it is. This is the culmination of years of complaining and effort on my part.
0:01:37So for I can't believe that anybody listening doesn't know but for anybody who doesn't know
0:01:42Casey, while employed at the outline wrote, I think all of the stuff on the keyboard was from your time.
0:01:49No, actually, the first time I wrote about it, I was not yet working there.
0:01:53That was it was like maybe four or five months before.
0:01:56But it but was it published at the outline or published at the outline?
0:02:01Yes, I wrote it as a freelancer.
0:02:03All right. All right. And it was
0:02:05headline. The new MacBook Pro, the new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life.
0:02:11I mean, it was no exaggeration.
0:02:13It really was and sort of continues even today, even this week at work
0:02:18Trying to use actually a different computer, but same same style of keyboard continues to run my life
0:02:23Because you are a professional writer and
0:02:28most professional writers
0:02:31Do a fair amount of typing on?
0:02:34keyboards
0:02:37So it's like, you know
0:02:40In a way the stakes are even higher because it's my job to make sure everything's correct. But with these keyboards, I'm out here
0:02:46introducing errors constantly
0:02:48But I really do think so the big news everybody listening by now obviously knows Apple released the new 16 inch MacBook Pro
0:03:01Which replaces the old 15 inch it's just slightly bigger. So they gave it a new
0:03:06Number for the size of the screen diagonal
0:03:09And it has an all-new keyboard design
0:03:14You, I think, along with Joanna Stern, I would say that you and Joanna Stern really led the
0:03:25way on the writing about this keyboard over the years.
0:03:30And there is a sort of Emperor has no close angle to it, where it's like, I feel like
0:03:39Ultimately the bottom line of your writing about the issue is this keyboard is garbage. I mean literally you said it ruined your life
0:03:46Yes
0:03:46I mean
0:03:47It's it's tough because you can't like the keyboard was the style of keyboard was out for a couple of years before
0:03:53I even got a hold of it let alone wrote about it
0:03:57So it was like there was some
0:04:00Negative feedback about it, but I think it really didn't gain any
0:04:07critical mass because no one really—I don't think it's not
0:04:10like no one bought the original MacBook, no modifier, the teeny
0:04:15tiny one with the super, super shallow keys. So I think that no
0:04:21one was out there trying to amass the negative feedback
0:04:26into one place and be like, "Wait, this is actually kind of
0:04:28bad." It was only when it started to proliferate out to
0:04:32the pro line, and then eventually the airline much
0:04:35that I think people or that I that I sort of
0:04:39Came to it and was like this is there's a trend here
0:04:43This is bad and it seems like it has been bad and just no one saying anything in a very strange way
0:04:48And it was hard because like
0:04:52Apple and
0:04:55various people
0:04:57various owners of these computers would sort of continue to insist that it was like
0:05:01Quote-unquote user error or like an extreme minority of people who are having this problem
0:05:06But just the ease with which I was
0:05:10Seeming to have it like without really doing much wrong or anything differently than I had with any other computer
0:05:16really involved a
0:05:19Yeah, like it was a real like there there are four lights moment like I just have to like know my own truth here
0:05:31Because it's two things. There's the
0:05:33What if the keyboard the butterfly switch keyboard which as you said was introduced with the teeny tiny?
0:05:39MacBook with no adjective after its name that is now out of the lineup
0:05:45Yeah, yeah then now with the air they've
0:05:51They've they've taken it out
0:05:57And you could kind of understand why they went to it because that was such a teeny tiny computer
0:06:03So emphasis, you know so much emphasis on being it's super small didn't even have fan a fan system
0:06:08It used a chipset that you know
0:06:10Wouldn't ever get hot enough to require fan. So there just wasn't room for a bigger keyboard with traditional travel blah blah blah
0:06:18It and then they use that keyboard eventually expanded to the whole line
0:06:24With you know, whatever mechanical differences when the computers got bigger whether you liked it or not is one thing when it functioned
0:06:31Completely as design is you know, and and I I never loved it, but I didn't hate it
0:06:37It's you know, that was always my impression of it. The bigger problem was for a lot of people it
0:06:45Tended to develop
0:06:49multiple types of problems one problem would be
0:06:52Keys that stopped working and so you'd go to type in E and no E would appear on screen
0:06:58Or you'd go to type a space and nothing would appear and then the other problem people had
0:07:03Was the opposite where you would type a key and you get two of them instead of one. That was the biggest
0:07:08Having for sure. I mean like the interesting thing is that those those MacBook sans modifiers?
0:07:15Were not really made for people who like used computers much at all. It seemed like because they were so underpowered and
0:07:22Just like they couldn't they couldn't do anything. If I recall they couldn't even have very many like browser tabs open
0:07:27They were almost like Chromebooks
0:07:29So it's like for values of that person
0:07:32It seemed like maybe the keyboard actually wasn't that bad because if it's like you never really like
0:07:37Take your computer outside of a single room in your house
0:07:39You never carry it around you never really open it when you open it you use it for like maybe
0:07:4515 minutes at a time like for those people it actually might have been fine
0:07:51Well, it only had one port which was yeah, which was one of the women
0:07:55It was really for people who like didn't really need a computer at all
0:07:59so that may have been why it takes it took so long for the
0:08:02keyboard issues to emerge but nonetheless what I'm trying to say is
0:08:06the keyboards like I
0:08:09Remember trying them in store
0:08:12When I went to go be like I was like I had heard the keys were not
0:08:18Great. I think I had tried them on the MacBook and
0:08:21Felt it was too shallow
0:08:24Just didn't feel great and I wanted to like wait and see what happened
0:08:29Even though I was kind of due for a new computer. So I was like in the market
0:08:33So when I went to the Apple store and I tried it there was a little bit more travel and I was like
0:08:38Oh, this isn't so bad. Like you can at least feel something and like there it's pretty responsive
0:08:45And it kind of feels nice to type on but the nice to type on feeling
0:08:48went away so quickly because of the like I assumed the dust problem that it just
0:08:53just anything getting in there would the the sort of drop-off point from
0:08:59the pristine state in which typing felt good to the
0:09:03Slightly less good state in which typing felt terrible. Like it was a very shallow sort of
0:09:08amount of
0:09:11Travel pun intended from from the one to the other
0:09:14So it just quickly became bad. So it's hard for me to say whether I actually liked the keyboard or not.
0:09:20It's like the keyboard in the pristine state, actually I didn't mind it so much.
0:09:23It was a little like,
0:09:26not as satisfying as like a mechanical keyboard obviously, but it was fine.
0:09:30But the normal state, it's like what is the normal state of keyboard then if you know,
0:09:36it can't even sustain the sort of pristine state where the typing was. At least
0:09:43You could you could ignore it like it wasn't it wasn't a significant factor. I
0:09:47Came around on this and I personally never bought a
0:09:53MacBook with one of those keyboards. I'm my the one that I still
0:09:58That you managed to stay with the market, right?
0:10:01but
0:10:04The nature of my job is that I have reviewed various of these models
0:10:09over that period for like six weeks at a time and with a MacBook and iPhones in particular is
0:10:17I'm not gonna say it's easy to review them
0:10:19but it's kind of the technique is easy is I put all of my stuff on and
0:10:25Just use it full-time and the nature of my life is that I use my iPhone all the time and I'm I
0:10:31just use whatever MacBook I'm reviewing all the time to do all my work and
0:10:38So I've used the keyboard cumulatively
0:10:41For months because I've reviewed several MacBook models over this stretch for six weeks at a time
0:10:50and the one time I think it was the summer of
0:10:552018 yeah, that sounds about right so it's like a year and a half ago
0:10:59they came out with new MacBook pros, and I was using one and
0:11:04One time the e key got stuck down and like the corner the corner was wedged under
0:11:10Yeah a little bit like or something it was like that and and I just sort of noodled it and I was like
0:11:19Oh now I've got something juicy and I tweeted about it
0:11:22I was like, ooh he got stuck and then it never got stuck again
0:11:26And I and that was like three days into testing it and I wound I used it for like the next six weeks
0:11:32non-stop as like my daily driver computer never happened again and
0:11:37And like weeks later somebody from Apple PR reached out to me and they were like, hey
0:11:42I missed it and they had like a link to my tweet from like a month ago and they're like, hey is everything
0:11:47All right, and I was like, you know what never happened again and they were like, oh shoot
0:11:50But I was like, you know, I mean
0:11:54That it was like almost a sort of gaslighting thing where it's not
0:12:00Not a consistent downslope and like the the dust or whatever it is that's getting under there can get
0:12:06Lodged and then sort of shake and loose
0:12:09Or move around like it wasn't it was very very possible for you to develop an issue and have it
0:12:16Consistently at home and be like I can't write emails like this and then take it into the store and in
0:12:21Transporting it to the store
0:12:22Whatever it was was shaken out from under the key and suddenly the key works fine and the genius would be like well
0:12:27I can't help you like there's nothing for me to
0:12:29look at or correct and I can't like take the whole computer apart for a problem
0:12:35that I can't reproduce. So best of luck. Right. Right. And maybe that term
0:12:42"gaslighting" gets thrown around a little too much today. You know, like 10 years
0:12:46ago, I don't know if I ever heard it, but it totally applies to this scenario
0:12:50where you know that you were writing and your E key was producing
0:12:56double E's and you take it into the store and son of a bitch every single
0:13:03time you or you could say let me do it and you type you know a sentence and it
0:13:08the key works perfectly and you kind of get it it's like what is the genius
0:13:14supposed to do I mean but on the other hand if they know Apple knows that
0:13:20there's a lot of people coming in with this problem where the real where the
0:13:26gaslighting thing comes in is like when you know a problem is a problem and other people are having
0:13:31it and other people are coming and claiming it and you're pretending like they're some crazy
0:13:36weird one-off or that their problem is relatively innocuous like the the line that I kept hearing
0:13:41oh maybe it's just a piece of dust is like you know you know in your like cosmic like overlord
0:13:49apple brain that you have done something wrong here and even if the genius doesn't know it
0:13:55Someone somewhere up the chain knows it so for someone to be facing me telling me that my problem is like some sort of non-problem
0:14:02It is really kind of messed up
0:14:05yeah, and
0:14:08the other thing is that the
0:14:11MacBook or the lap the idea of a laptop has been around for a very long time at this point and Apple
0:14:21deserves credit. I mean, this is going back into like the 90s, but sort of defining the modern idea
0:14:27of what is a laptop piece of hardware because like in like the early 90s, the industry was all over
0:14:34the place. And sometimes the keyboard was right up at the front of the device. And people didn't know
0:14:40if there should be a trackball or should the keyboard you know, and eventually this idea of
0:14:45put the keyboard towards the back, use the front as like palm rests and put a pointing device in
0:14:51the middle became like the defining idea of a laptop. And in the early days, they were all
0:14:57super expensive because computers were expensive. And it was like the entry model was like $6,000.
0:15:02And that's in like 1995 dollars. And it came down in price and everybody got them. And at this
0:15:10point, most people when they think of getting a computer, what they mean is a laptop, like the
0:15:15The desktop is the oddball.
0:15:17Everybody knows what it is.
0:15:19Everybody's used one.
0:15:20People who do work on computers, which is an awful lot of people.
0:15:23That's what they think of.
0:15:24And all of those years, all of that typing, most people never want to have a key go bad
0:15:32on any computer.
0:15:35It's an awful lot of typing.
0:15:37I did the math one time, just like back of the envelope.
0:15:40like, all right, I do a lot of typing because I am a writer, but just sort of spitballing
0:15:45well the typical week has I do this many words and let's just take a guess that the average
0:15:51word is four characters in a space. And, you know, take a look at my sent email and just
0:15:59copy you know, like, how many emails did I send in the year so far and you know, just
0:16:03a quick estimate and it's like, Oh, I press keys on a keyboard millions of times a year,
0:16:09no exaggeration. There's, you know, that's actually true. And it works every time. It's
0:16:13not like 99.9% of the time, right? Because it's like you people living in the modern
0:16:20world with a job that involves email, you don't have to be a writer to do a lot of writing,
0:16:24like just email and Skype or slack and stuff like that. You we press these keys and the
0:16:31accuracy is way more than 99.9% accurate, because if it was only like one out of 1000
0:16:39and failures, you would feel like you would go insane. It
0:16:43really is like 100% accuracy historically. And so to have
0:16:47these,
0:16:47I was I was gonna say this is like more this is like one of
0:16:50the better feel like realizations that I had when I
0:16:53was writing this first article was that keyboards keyboards
0:16:57were a solved problem. Like no one. No one thought of you
0:17:01didn't I didn't even think about a keyboard like that a keyboard
0:17:04could like do I have to like check that the keyboard is going
0:17:07to be okay. It had not been something that I had thought
0:17:11about in so long. And for Apple to go and try and reinvent it
0:17:18to the degree that it had become—I mean, as you're
0:17:21saying, even a sort of extremely marginal failure rate
0:17:25is so much greater than how anyone had ever thought about a
0:17:30keyboard before. Keyboards are supposed to be extremely
0:17:33reliable. They're the primary interaction mechanism for a
0:17:36computer and to take it even from that like tiny percentage
0:17:41like a fractional percentage increase in like, inaccuracy is
0:17:45actually quite devastating to the entire mechanism.
0:17:49Right? And some people know no. I'm gonna claim no judgment is
0:17:57being asked, but I am judging you. I'm sorry, dear listeners,
0:18:00because I know some of you this applies to you. Some people, some
0:18:05people eat and drink around their laptop. Right at the keyboard. I don't I never have
0:18:12because I just you know, I like I don't I just don't want my keyboard to get gross.
0:18:20But people do. And for good reason, you know, people are eating at lunch and at lunch, you
0:18:26kind of need to do work or you need to catch up or you just want to be entertained. Right.
0:18:30and you just want to watch a YouTube and hit the spacebar because you want it to play.
0:18:35But people do that. They have done it. They'll continue to do it. And their keyboards just
0:18:41keep working or kept working like the keyboards that were the standard, not like, oh, I'm
0:18:47going to buy an Apple keyboard. I mean, like you could go buy a Toshiba, you could go buy
0:18:51a Samsung, you could go buy an HP or a Dell or any of the various brands that are out
0:18:58there. And there's all sorts of things that you would say or
0:19:02janky about like cut rate laptops, you might say, Oh, my
0:19:06god, this display is terrible. Look at it. You could just
0:19:09eyeball it. Or the hinge that you open it with is like, just
0:19:14janky trackpads notoriously kind of had bad tracking on PCs on a
0:19:20lot, especially cheap. Yes. And like in trying to have like
0:19:22right click mechanisms and so are like scrolling mechanism,
0:19:25things like that. Yeah. The Yep. Or I remember one time long ago, I mean, obviously long ago,
0:19:31because I haven't had a real job in a very long time. But one time, I had to work at a place where
0:19:35everybody got a Dell laptop and the Dell laptop had like the early 2000s. It had and I know
0:19:43everybody has this as an option. I don't like it. But the thing where you can just tap the keyboard
0:19:48without clicking it to have it register as a mouse click. Oh, it was it was turned on.
0:19:54It was turned on on the Dell and this is a brand they issued me a brand new laptop right out of the
0:20:00you know, I got to unseal it factory unsealed. And it had that turned on and it was driving me nuts.
0:20:08And I'm searching around the goofy windows, preferences or settings, whatever they called it,
0:20:15can't find it. I do some googling on the model number and it turns out it is there is no way to
0:20:21turn it off. I was like this is insane. Anyway, one thing I didn't have a problem with on that
0:20:27on that laptop was typing. Like it's it really it's more than a solved problem, right? It really
0:20:34is like the thing that made it insane is that it wasn't even something we thought of as a solved
0:20:40problem right like nobody really thought about buttons that don't click right I
0:20:45mean it's um I can't even conceive of the I mean I wish I knew the process
0:20:55that went into making these decisions that led to this keyboard that like they
0:21:02were like this is a this is a reasonable sort of leap to make and in changing the
0:21:08functionality and the design and I don't think I don't think it's like they anticipated these problems, but
0:21:13it's it's not a
0:21:16uncommon mistake for Apple to make that they sort of fail to account for any
0:21:19real world
0:21:22issues like I the other thing I would compare it to is like
0:21:25When it used to be that iPhones didn't work super well in the cold
0:21:30Because I think it doesn't get very cold and like it's cool. It's it can be it's cold
0:21:35North San Francisco, obviously, but it's not like Northeast cold there. So the fact that they never
0:21:43sort of accounted for that functionality problem is, is I think, part and parcel to this keyboard
0:21:49issue as well. Yeah, yeah. And I think that even in those early years, I could be wrong, but
0:21:55certainly with the original iPhone, it never even got to San Francisco, because I'm sure they didn't
0:22:00even let the test units leave Cupertino. Like, however, however limited the number of people
0:22:05who had access to pre-release hardware, they almost certainly weren't going to San Francisco.
0:22:10Like maybe Steve Jobs could take it home, but he lived in Palo Alto. Right. I get it. No,
0:22:15they've had some issues with that. The one I remember in particular was, I think it wasn't
0:22:19the first or one of the iPod Nanos. And it was, it had like a plastic front and it scratched just
0:22:31just by looking at it.
0:22:32And sometimes people get real, you know,
0:22:35there's a large number of people who kind of want
0:22:38their Apple stuff to stay mint condition
0:22:40and it's like normal wear and tear.
0:22:42It's like, oh, come on, nobody but Apple.
0:22:44But this one iPod Nano really could get scratched
0:22:47by like rubbing a tissue over it.
0:22:49I mean, it was like putty and it was like,
0:22:53how in the world did this ship?
0:22:54Well, somehow it must've like, you know,
0:22:58like never left the Johnny Ive team design lab,
0:23:01and they just loved the way it looked
0:23:03and the way it felt on your fingertip.
0:23:06And they never really tried,
0:23:08like just throwing it in a pocket with some keys
0:23:10to see what would happen.
0:23:12But it only lasted one generation.
0:23:14The very next iPod Nano had like a much different polymer
0:23:19on the surface and it was much more scratch resistant.
0:23:21- Yes, I do recall that.
0:23:23I mean, yeah, it's funny that they've,
0:23:26that they continue to make the same type of mistake where we don't get this real world
0:23:31testing. And I think there's something to be said for like, I like Apple design, and
0:23:36I like the fact that it's not super ruggedized. I would never want that from them. But the
0:23:42fact that these sort of glaringly obvious real world test cases continue to slip through
0:23:50their design ideals is very telling and interesting. It's surprising to me that they can't even
0:24:02get together a test case, or they couldn't have gotten together a test case where someone
0:24:06just brought one of these computers home back and forth or outside of a testing lab, apparently,
0:24:15like see the issues that start to come up with the keyboard. I
0:24:20mean, it really didn't take very much at all. I wouldn't say, I
0:24:23wouldn't claim to never bring a, say, crumbly cookie around my
0:24:30keyboard, but I had done it for years and years with other
0:24:33laptops, other Mac books. Never, ever, ever an issue with the
0:24:39keyboard as far as keys sticking or needing to clean under them
0:24:44or it becoming any sort of like failure condition in the way that it did with this one.
0:24:50It became like, because there was like a standard, or there's still it still exists. I mean,
0:24:55we're laughing, but every single laptop that Apple sells other than the starts at $2,400,
0:25:03and is as big as a lunch tray 16 inch MacBook Pro is still using
0:25:08I mean, I thought it was absolutely wild, like just as a sort of preparation for getting the for this podcast
0:25:14I was on their website just like double-checking to make sure I wasn't the one going crazy
0:25:20They're still selling like if you want a 13-inch MacBook Pro, it still comes with this old keyboard
0:25:24I'm like, are you kidding me? This is absolutely wild to have it an only one computer. I can't understand
0:25:31I could never understand a justification for
0:25:33That being the case. I would love to hear them explain that
0:25:38not. But they won't. All right. I am going to take a break right
0:25:43now because we're just going to keep rolling on keyboard. It's
0:25:46all keyboards all the time this episode, no sports, no, no other
0:25:49stuff. I mean, we will fill up five hours on the keyboard. But
0:25:53I'm going to take a break and thank our first sponsor. It's
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0:26:27be for reasons I don't want to expand upon. But the basement is
0:26:30not a great place for your Wi Fi signal to start. But I got a
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0:27:42can't reach the whole place.
0:27:44Really, they have fixed that.
0:27:47In a townhouse type scenario like me,
0:27:50it just never would work.
0:27:51And starting in the basement, it would be impossible.
0:27:53So really, I'm a big fan of Eero,
0:27:56even even though they're a sponsor of the show. I'm not or I should say, I'm not just
0:28:01saying it because they're a sponsor of the show. Here's what to do. To find out more.
0:28:05You go to ero.com slash the talk show, euro.com slash the talk show and use that code the
0:28:15talk show I think you can get the code automatically by starting at that URL. But just remember
0:28:19the code the talk show. And when you check out, you will get your hero delivered with
0:28:25free overnight shipping, you can have it 24 hours from now pause the podcast, order your
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0:28:36talk show. The keyboards so it is one of the here's the thing Apple is I don't think any
0:28:45company is well suited. No, no company, no person, no team, no organization, nobody does
0:28:51well when they make mistakes, right? Mistakes. That's the definition of a mistake. I think
0:28:57Apple is particularly unsuited to dealing with significant mistakes, small mistakes.
0:29:05Sure. Like imagine if going to the second generation butterfly keyboard had fixed all
0:29:11the reliability issues, then we would have thought timeline wise, well, this was reasonable.
0:29:18the first generation was all new. It ends up there were issues with reliability of commonly used keys.
0:29:26And, you know, like a year later or so or eight months later, when they came out with the second
0:29:33generation, whatever that was, you would think, well, that's a reasonable amount of time for Apple
0:29:38to acknowledge it and address it and ship a next generation product that fixes it.
0:29:48that the real ghost in the room and we'll spend time talking about this the new 16 inch MacBook
0:29:53Pro which is really great I will you know spoiler it is really great and the keyboard is really
0:29:58really I really do think it's fixed everything the the biggest issue here is how long it has taken
0:30:05for this thing to ship and how long will it take for it to spread throughout the rest of the MacBook
0:30:12family in 2020, which Apple, of course, won't even say they're going to do. I mean, we all
0:30:19are guessing that they're going to do it. It would seem crazy if they didn't because
0:30:25this keyboard is so much better. And presumably, they're they're losing a fortune on fixing
0:30:32these damn things while they're under warranty. I mean, they have this crazy keyboard repair
0:30:36program.
0:30:37That's what's really crazy to me is that I can't imagine this is a winning proposition
0:30:44for them to continue to double down on their nothing being wrong with these keyboards.
0:30:49But that is, I mean, obviously, I think they're going to phase out of it.
0:30:53But still, it's been so long.
0:30:54They've been like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
0:30:58I don't know.
0:30:59It's a crazy decision to me.
0:31:01Yeah, and I think it's I think Tim Cook is a very interesting and nuanced person. And I also think
0:31:10though he is public persona is very, he's clearly very private. And whatever he's like in person,
0:31:18I think is impossible to glean from what he exposes to us in the public. And so I don't
0:31:26subscribe to the notion. I don't I think he's a very interesting fellow. And I think if you really
0:31:30found out what he's interested in and what aspects of these things he gets involved with,
0:31:35I think it would all be very interesting. But there's certainly a, a, a line of thought that
0:31:41I don't subscribe to. But there's a line of thought that well, look, he came from operations.
0:31:46He's not a product person. He's not a designer. He wasn't, you know,
0:31:50his he's a bean counter, right? He's only interested in making in that fortune of money
0:31:58that Apple takes to the bank every three months and when they do these quarterly things, right,
0:32:04he's a bean counter and therefore, whatever your pet peeves with Apple are X, Y and Z.
0:32:10It's because Tim Cook is a bean counter and he doesn't allow engineering to spend time fixing
0:32:16bugs. And so their software is buggier than it used to be because of Tim Cook, because he's cheap
0:32:20and whatever, you know, everybody's there's a whole bunch of people whose pet peeves about Apple,
0:32:26they attribute to because Tim Cook is in love with profits first and the product second as opposed
0:32:33to Steve Jobs who loved the products first, right? Even if that's true, this is the thing that doesn't
0:32:39make any sense. It either way, it doesn't make sense. Because if his first concern is the quality
0:32:46of the products, well, then the keyboard should have been fixed sooner. But if his first concern
0:32:51is with profit margins and making money, then this thing that has... and the repairs were
0:32:59insanely expensive because the design of the computer was that if the keyboard broke, they
0:33:02had to take the whole quote unquote top case and the top case was all of the computer bits.
0:33:09Right?
0:33:10Like that's the other thing that's so confounding about this whole thing is if your E key broke
0:33:16and Apple said, "We have... all right, we'll take your computer and you can come back tomorrow
0:33:20and pick it up."
0:33:21fix did not involve popping off the E key and doing something and then popping the E key back on
0:33:27the fix was effectively to just give you a new computer right i mean i think now i think the
0:33:32the latest generation can be like if i think at least the keys can be taken off and cleaned under
0:33:38if i recall correctly there's there's still delicate like uh slightly slightly more um
0:33:45fiddling that can be done without dealing with the computer in like two whole pieces
0:33:49Mean this has been how Apple computers have been I think I'm pretty sure this was in the first article that I wrote
0:33:56largely about the keyboard but
0:33:59Sort of speaking to the level of ridiculousness that repairability has gotten that
0:34:03the previous
0:34:06MacBook Pro that I owned
0:34:08one of the little rubber feet fell off and I brought it in the
0:34:12Apple Store thinking they would just like give me a little
0:34:17Stick on rubber foot and I would just pop it on and be on my way and I ended up being there for
0:34:22like an hour and talked to like three different people for them to figure out that
0:34:28The only way to fix the fallen off rubber foot
0:34:31Was to take the computer and replace the entire bottom half of the case
0:34:35There was no other way to get another foot on the on the computer, which is just
0:34:42Like they the three geniuses who were all going through this like also couldn't believe that that was true
0:34:47But that's the level that things have gotten to with this these these computers
0:34:56Yeah, and that sort of is is a canary in the coal mine that
0:35:03apples
0:35:05Whole support system
0:35:08It has holes in it right like that's not an uncommon problem. I don't think that Apple's laptops
0:35:16have a
0:35:18Particular problem with the rubber feet falling off. No, I've seen it. Yeah
0:35:22It does happen. They're not I'm pretty sure well maybe it's different in the latest ones, but I'm pretty sure they're not
0:35:29Adhered anyway, except for like sticky goop between the case the foot. Yeah
0:35:35and so that and
0:35:37And they have this thing that none of-- it's a huge competitive advantage that, at this
0:35:44point, I think goes under-talked about, is that they have this worldwide chain of retail
0:35:52locations where you can go in and talk to an actual person from Apple who Apple has
0:35:58certified is technically proficient enough to figure out common problems.
0:36:06And it boggles the mind that with all of the secret drawers they have around those stores,
0:36:13that there's not one that's just full of rubber feet.
0:36:16I know.
0:36:17Neatly filed, right?
0:36:18And it wouldn't be like a junk drawer.
0:36:19It would be like this thing that you would love.
0:36:22You would like, "Oh my God, come take a picture of that."
0:36:24Because it would say like, it would have like these little index cards, 2013 MacBook Pro,
0:36:2813 inch, you know, so that you would get the exact right rubber foot.
0:36:32Right.
0:36:33Right?
0:36:34I mean, it's insane that they don't have it.
0:36:35I really feel this has been a shift in
0:36:38how the Genius Bar works and how their repair
0:36:43whole thing is structured because, I mean,
0:36:46I got my first MacBook laptop in 2006.
0:36:51And back then, they were quite responsive and helpful
0:36:55and just sort of realistic in a way that
0:36:58dealing with geniuses now is like talking to a robot,
0:37:03like talking to Siri or like to Alexa,
0:37:08it's like you want there to be
0:37:11a sort of human behind the
0:37:13interaction in the way a human, like if
0:37:15if a stick-on rubber foot fell off they
0:37:17would hand you another stick-on rubber
0:37:17foot
0:37:19rather than being like, "I'm sorry to hear
0:37:21your computer is defective. Please
0:37:24allow me to consult with my
0:37:27other geniuses and my iPad and figure out
0:37:28what it is you should do." It's like,
0:37:31there's a very easy answer here, which is
0:37:31just a stick on foot. And it's like that sort of level of service, so to speak, has been
0:37:38totally lost within the genius or the Apple sort of Genius Bar ecosystem.
0:37:45And it's sort of it's sort of like when you go to any sort of premium brand retail type
0:37:53thing, they, they want to take care of your products, you know, like, so if you buy like
0:37:58a ring at Tiffany and then five years later you come in and you're shopping for something
0:38:03else but they know you've got the ring from Tiffany. They'll like beg you, they're like
0:38:07let us clean it, we'll clean it for you right now and just take your ring and go and do
0:38:13like this professional magic cleaning thing and then give it back to you and it looks
0:38:16brand new. You know like just as a courtesy like they just want your ring that you bought
0:38:20five years ago still look perfect. And you know you go to a good car dealer and it's
0:38:25like you go in and take something in with your car. They'll like vacuum it, you know,
0:38:28they'll like vacuum the inside for you free and stuff like that. Give you a free car wash
0:38:33because they want the car looking good. Right? Like so like, right, like a no name,
0:38:37Chrome brand equity in the in this like, sort of subjective more like, strapped way.
0:38:41Right. So like you buy a no name Chromebook and the feet fall off the rubber feet fall off. Well,
0:38:47you know, just buy a new Chromebook or whatever. But Apple should want you they want your five year
0:38:52old MacBook Air to have all four rubber feet.
0:38:54Right. They want us, they want, see, I mean, this is how it used to be. They want you to
0:38:58be out in the world with your like, sort of identifiably old computer, but it's still
0:39:04like I used to admire the crap out of those people when I would see them around like,
0:39:08New York people were still carrying around their like 12 inch PowerBook in like 2012.
0:39:14It was just like, that's, that's like such, that's like, it's like seeing somebody drive
0:39:18like a vintage car. It's like that's how good those computers are that people, they love them so much
0:39:23and they take care of them and like the entire ecosystem sort of like supports itself. It really
0:39:28was like that's a kind of brand equity that you can't really buy and to sort of connect
0:39:34back to the Tim Cook point you're making that you say you don't necessarily buy, which is fair, but
0:39:39But the fact that, it's hard to take that externality
0:39:44and turn it into a line item where you can sort of
0:39:51put a value on the sort of user experience
0:39:55and how people are out there in the world
0:39:57and the fact that if I'm typing an email to you
0:40:01and I'm sort of in a hurry and I don't have time
0:40:03to go back to fix all the doubled Es
0:40:04or the doubled spaces, this is how my emails
0:40:07coming through and it's like my computer's fault. It's like, how do you ascribe a value
0:40:13to that, either as my frustration or this sort of bafflement of the person I'm talking
0:40:19to on Slack or sending an email to? Those things all come, they do sort of amount to
0:40:26something that is not, that can't be described by me bringing in the computer. And maybe
0:40:33then the issue can't even be replicated to the genius and then it's like oh saved money
0:40:38in Tim Cook's pocket. It's like well no, there's a lot lost there. That's very subjective.
0:40:47It's like I said, the confounding aspect of it is, I mean clearly whatever you think of
0:40:52Tim Cook, he's in charge of the company, right? You could tell he's the man. The buck stops
0:40:59with him. His highest priority, almost certainly, it doesn't make sense either way, is either
0:41:07the quality of their products and the user experiences that people have with them, or
0:41:13it is Apple's financials and its profit margins and revenue. I personally suspect that he
0:41:19truly because I think he gets it even though he's not a product designer himself. I think
0:41:25he understands the company and its relationship with the people who appreciate it.
0:41:32And I do think he's a long term thinker.
0:41:34I think that he's more interested in where Apple is going to be in 10, 20 years and not
0:41:38about what they're going to report to Wall Street in three months.
0:41:42But he knows that along the way, you've got to keep you know, part of his job is to keep
0:41:47those people happy who do care about that.
0:41:49And I think he gets it that the most important thing Apple can do, it's the whole reason
0:41:53Apple exists and is so different than other computer device makers is that they really
0:41:59do put the design of the hardware and the software and the overall experience first.
0:42:04So I personally believe that he believes that that that's the most important thing. But
0:42:08the thing that's so confounding is that it doesn't matter if you believe the other side,
0:42:12if you think he's most interested in profit margins, because either way, it does not make
0:42:16sense that this keyboard lasted as long as it did.
0:42:20I mean, yeah, I don't I I can't I can't make heads or tails of it really as far as
0:42:27Like they did they did quite clearly in ways. They didn't openly acknowledge but that were
0:42:33um sort of revealed in the the technical specs of or like the sort of little
0:42:39Nuances and changes of the structure of the keyboard mechanism that they were trying to fix it
0:42:45They were trying like it was all it all ended up being sort of meaningless half measures, but they weren't
0:42:50Completely like they they weren't completely resistant to the idea that it wasn't working and it was a significant problem
0:42:57I don't know why they didn't jump to I like I really don't know why they didn't jump to
0:43:02Just putting them at like what they ended up doing just putting the magic keyboard in the computer and people have been saying this
0:43:08For I think ever since the I I wrote my first piece
0:43:12They were like, why isn't the magic keyboard which is quite good and doesn't have this problem
0:43:17Why isn't that just the keyboard in the computer and it's like obviously
0:43:21It's thicker. There's a I mean well
0:43:25Then I'm curious to hear what your take is because I feel like that's a Johnny Ive thing
0:43:29to be like the computer needs to be maximally thin and it's worth the sacrifice of
0:43:34the faulty butterfly keyboards
0:43:36In order for the computer to be as tiny as possible
0:43:42Well, let's hold that thought that Johnny I've let's hold that thought see this is my this is my deal
0:43:47I I do this sponsor reads right here mid show and I have a notorious problem where I think well
0:43:52That's a great point for a break and because we can pick it up right there
0:43:54And then I do the sponsor read and I completely forget
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0:46:33fracture. Johnny Ive, that's like one of
0:46:39the other elephants in this whole saga.
0:46:43I had forgotten, right? I feel
0:46:46surprised. My brain since I started
0:46:48my new job is like just mush, but I think
0:46:53I didn't really account for... I've
0:46:54forgotten even as I started talking
0:46:56about Johnny Ive right now that he was
0:46:58gonna leave the company, and what a
0:46:58a significant moment that should have been, to me, somebody who knows intuitively, if
0:47:04not in any practical sense, that "Johnny Ive" is the reason the keyboard is this way.
0:47:10And that should have been the sort of like, "Oh, we're going to be saved," or at least
0:47:15this is an overall good sign.
0:47:17And maybe that's over-interpreting things, but I feel like now we can safely say that
0:47:23might have been the watershed moment that was needed in order for them to finally step
0:47:27that set us back.
0:47:30And again, so many people want everything to be black or white.
0:47:35Johnny Ive is either awesome or is awful.
0:47:37And so you sit here and we can sit here and speculate that he played even some role in
0:47:45the going forward with the butterfly keyboards, because of his personal preference for making
0:47:52things as thin as possible. And that even if it saves point four
0:47:58five millimeters of height on the laptop, worth it. That
0:48:03doesn't mean that we're saying Johnny I've sucks, right? So
0:48:06please get it through your head. But you used to and like you
0:48:09even said it like you complain about this stuff. And somebody
0:48:12out there who has one of these keyboards who never had a
0:48:14problem, will use it as proof that you did something wrong,
0:48:19Like well, I've got one and nothing's wrong with it. So I don't know what you're doing you idiot and it's like
0:48:25like how did you graduate from high school and and get through like
0:48:30Even eighth grade science class with that sort of
0:48:35Mind to evidence. I mean
0:48:38Way beyond keyboards for people to take their own lived experience as like the universal truth
0:48:45that's almost one of the greatest problems we're facing right now as a society, but I mean
0:48:51I would say what our podcast for other than wild speculation
0:48:54I mean
0:48:55I would never say like
0:48:56Johnny Ive was the precise reason and this is only being undone because he's gone, but I do think as far as
0:49:03the sort of bigger forces within
0:49:06Apple the company I don't think it's nothing and
0:49:12Right. I you know, I will never will we ever know for sure probably not but it seems it seems
0:49:19significant that this went on for so many years and through so many tweaks to the butterfly keyboard design trying and trying and trying to
0:49:27hold on to it and keep it as close to as what it was and now that
0:49:31He's leaving now. They finally push through a completely or not a completely different design, but like a
0:49:37More reliable design that they already had
0:49:41All right, I just you know again, I don't know for all I know somebody could come to me
0:49:47You know a little birdie who knows you know might come to me and say off the record that you know
0:49:52It turns out that Johnny personally hasn't looked at a MacBook design in six years
0:49:58It just is his attention has been elsewhere. He's you know, he's looking he's looking at architecture. He's looking at chairs
0:50:05He's he's obsessed with the volume buttons on iPhones, you know, but the MacBooks, you know
0:50:11he's he's delegated to other members of his team actually had nothing to do with the keyboard.
0:50:14It could say that I would be a little surprised I, I and I don't know. And again, I don't know how
0:50:21much of it is Johnny and how much of it is the whole team around him that he's selected that
0:50:26shares his priorities. What I have heard from other actually have heard from other little birdies
0:50:32is that the butterfly keyboard did get pushed through by his team in the you know, the hypothesis
0:50:40that their priority on thinness was higher than their priority on, well, how does it
0:50:48feel to type on?
0:50:49And even at the point where it got to questions of reliability, that's why they stuck with,
0:50:55well, let's try a second and a third generation of the butterfly design before we give up
0:50:59on it, that it did kind of come from the ID group.
0:51:03I mean, this has been--
0:51:04The other thing--
0:51:05We've been hearing this I feel like that like the Apple has always been
0:51:10designed forward and it was like here's the case thing figure out how to make the parts fit inside so for that to be
0:51:17All for that principle to be also applied for the keyboard just wouldn't surprise me at all
0:51:21Yeah, I think I think it's I think their design process is definitely more complicated than that
0:51:27Right who?
0:51:30Tell who's tail wagging dog dog wagging tail situation
0:51:35I think it's a slightly different relationship than other companies.
0:51:40Yeah. It's just so hard to say, you know? I don't know.
0:51:46And the other interesting thing about the new keyboard is that it's not just that they went back to scissor mechanisms from butterfly mechanisms,
0:51:57which have more travel, which I will verify you can feel that they have more travel.
0:52:02travel. They feel exactly like I know Mark, I'll put a link in the notes, Marco Arment did this
0:52:07wonderful thing where he actually created charts and graphs of key travel of the keys over the
0:52:13years. And like the old ones, before the dark days, had like, two meter, two millimeters of
0:52:24travel, or like 1.5 millimeters of travel, it was like 1.5. The butterflies only had point five,
0:52:30let's just call it 0.5 millimeters. I mean seriously 0.05 millimeters we're talking about a hair
0:52:35and these new ones are like one millimeter of travel so they're by measuring about halfway
0:52:42between the better butterflies and the old ones and I gotta say just using it for a week it feels
0:52:47yeah it feels like maybe like halfway in between. It's exactly what it feels like but in addition
0:52:54to fixing those mechanisms they've also gone back to the old arrow key arrangement in an
0:52:59upside down T, which was a big pet peeve of mine. They went back to having a hardware escape key
0:53:05up in the corner. They revisited several decisions that were unpopular with a lot of people. And
0:53:14again, why did it take so long? What is the attachment to some of these things? It's very,
0:53:23you know, mysterious. But the attachment that stuck, I mean they went down so many not great
0:53:30paths with these designs that people complained about and that they stuck to until now,
0:53:37mysteriously until this version of the computer. Some very interesting timing. I'm curious though
0:53:44about the motivations of the Touch Bar and how that's sticking around.
0:53:51that's yeah, that's interesting too. And the way they did well number one, let's just get this out
0:54:00of the way. Even though you are New York based, and you are in the media, and you have written
0:54:08the highest profile along with Joanna Stern articles over the years about the keyboard,
0:54:14you were not invited to the media shindig last week. Oh, absolutely not.
0:54:19Which I think is criminal. I mean, I've actually never been invited to an Apple event. I was not.
0:54:27I mean, back when I worked at Ars Technica, I was not Apple point person, so that sort of made sense.
0:54:32But I have had very little sort of communication from Apple about—I think after this article,
0:54:40this first article came out, I heard from nobody. What I did hear was, a few months later,
0:54:46recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn asking me if I would be interested in a job at
0:54:51Apple. True story. But yeah, I don't know what their
0:55:05methodology or like reasoning was for that maybe they were just like what is
0:55:11the outline, never heard of it before, maybe this will just blow over. But it was like that article,
0:55:18that like, I don't know that they have any way of like, sort of watermarking how much something is
0:55:25traveling. I don't even really have any confirmation that anyone inside Apple really like
0:55:31engaged that maybe maybe someone did tell me something and I just forget. But um,
0:55:36I think that it was it was the number it was like the second most trafficked article on the outline
0:55:43Which is not a that's it's kind of that's a big fish in a kind of small pond
0:55:47But it was it was definitely hundreds of thousands of views that have even been getting closer to a million
0:55:53By now, so it was not not nothing so not
0:55:59Sort of calculus of like never even engaging with me
0:56:03Even not even in an off-the-record like yelling at me sense like I'm like never heard from them
0:56:09Do you think that would have been different if you were still at ours technica?
0:56:14I mean, I know it's been a couple years since you left ours
0:56:17But I wonder about that and I don't know I I have obviously have more back and forth with Apple PR than
0:56:25Most people listening to this show probably most people but I don't know how they work
0:56:31I don't know how they work and even off the record even off the record with trusted people who I've had a years-long
0:56:37relationship with Apple PR they
0:56:40It's just in the bones of everybody at Apple that they don't explain why they do what they do
0:56:46I mean, I am I'm actually now I need to walk back what I said a tiny bit
0:56:50They did contact me but like as a customer, it wasn't like a PR like what I've heard is they will
0:56:57You know people they know or know of will get in touch and just I mean might be over an overstatement to scream at them
0:57:04But they will they will get very upset and you know
0:57:08Come come at you for the things that you say they sort of contacted me as a customer that was and we're like
0:57:13We're sorry, you're having trouble with your computer
0:57:15Do you want a new computer of the same exact and I was like, I think ultimately I did take them up on it
0:57:22but then ended up still getting rid of it because it just had the same—I think I might
0:57:29have messaged them back being like, "To be clear, we're talking about the same exact
0:57:33computer with the same exact keyboard that's by design going to have the same exact problem."
0:57:38They were like, "Yep."
0:57:39And I was like, "Okay, well, I don't really have any other choice, so sure."
0:57:47But yeah, in a PR sense, never heard from them.
0:57:50What were you going to say? Well, what computer are you using now?
0:57:56Like what is your daily driver? Well, I have my own personal...
0:58:01I bought one of the MacBook Airs last year in a fit of
0:58:05incredible optimism, but also I'm just like...
0:58:09I think I've become... I've really come into my own as a person
0:58:14who is just like... I guess I will waste my own
0:58:19money to prove that I'm right, even though in doing it I ruined my own life.
0:58:28That's sort of where I'm at.
0:58:29And now the keyboard has been having problems on and off, and they've gotten so bad in the
0:58:33last couple of weeks I made an appointment at the Apple store for next week.
0:58:39And it's funny because every time I go in, I'm kind of like, "Do these people know who
0:58:44I am?"
0:58:45And I'm never like, "Do you know who I am?"
0:58:46or I'm never like, "I'm Casey Johnston, here's the article I wrote. I want a new keyboard," or
0:58:51whatever. But I'm always so curious, because no one's ever shown any sort of, betrayed any
0:58:59recognition of like, "Oh yeah, you like that." I think most people don't look at bylines as
0:59:05definitely one potential answer to that thing. But it's like, there's really no flag in the back end
0:59:12of like this like a number not number one an enemy of the Apple state I would
0:59:19be surprised I don't feel like I get treated any differently and people still
0:59:23still do still talk to me like I'm you know a child like who doesn't who's
0:59:29never used a computer before the way they talk to everybody but I want to
0:59:34well you were asking me something about PR and Apple and Ars Technica mm-hmm
0:59:39Well, I was just curious if you think that if you had written the same series of articles
0:59:45and they were published through ours, do you think it would have had a...
0:59:50I'm not saying it would have changed the world and gotten the new MacBook keyboard out sooner,
0:59:54but I somewhat suspect that you would have gotten more of an official off the record
1:00:00almost certainly.
1:00:01I do wonder.
1:00:02I think that the main contact for Apple stuff
1:00:07while I was there was Jackie Chang,
1:00:09who was kind of Apple editor.
1:00:12And I can only imagine if I had done such an article
1:00:18that they would have contacted her at least
1:00:22and felt like, can we all sort this out maybe?
1:00:25Or if I had published it at, I don't know, The Verge,
1:00:32something like that. It might have been more. But then the
1:00:35question is too, I'm not sure how much of a stomach anyone had
1:00:40at that point. This was not to toot my own horn, but no one was
1:00:47asking the hard questions about this computer. And I think there
1:00:50was, and there was still at that point, I think there's been a
1:00:53little bit of a watershed since that of questioning Apple's
1:00:58design judgment and/or integrity that I think people were playing softball on these models.
1:01:09And I'm not sure that if I had pitched an article to a tech publication that was like,
1:01:14"These keyboards are garbage," I think, not to name any names, I never had any of these
1:01:19conversations, but I think that people are overall quite protective of their relationship
1:01:24with Apple, the company, and I think there would have been some real hesitation about
1:01:30putting a stake in the ground that was like, "These computers are bad."
1:01:33So it's a real credit to the outline, too, to Leah Finnegan, who was like…
1:01:38The only reason this article came into being was that she's a friend of mine and was
1:01:44listening to me rant over and over about these keyboards, and was like, "Can you just write
1:01:48this article?"
1:01:49I was like, "Okay."
1:01:52so many things that I write, I'm kind of like, I don't know that anyone will ever care or listen
1:01:57to this. It's a keyboard in one of the most expensive computers you can buy. What a sort of
1:02:03marginal and dumb complaint. But there's obviously a lot more there, and I'm being kind of
1:02:09facetious. But I think that it's hard to imagine this having played out in any different way
1:02:16because of that sort of Apple tech publication dynamic that is still an ongoing thing. I think
1:02:28it's changed a little bit, but it's a matter of fact.
1:02:32I get it. And I don't think you're tooting your own horn unnecessarily. I really mean it,
1:02:39that you sort of went out on your own and were sort of like the first to call "the
1:02:45The emperor has no clothes.
1:02:46This keyboard is actually a piece of crap
1:02:48and ruining my life.
1:02:50And you were on your own at that point.
1:02:51It wasn't like there was no acknowledgement
1:02:53that people were having problems, right?
1:02:56I mean, there was an undercurrent of that,
1:02:59a baseline of, you know, keys that--
1:03:01- Yeah, I mean, I did have to go and find,
1:03:02I went and found backup for what I was saying.
1:03:06I didn't wanna like make entirely about myself.
1:03:10And there were forum posts and people going back and forth.
1:03:13and just the fact that there seemed to be this sort of party line from the
1:03:20Genius Bar was another sort of telling element. Like there were a few things
1:03:23that had to be sort of in place in order for me to feel comfortable making this
1:03:27argument. But yeah, it was like no one was really naming the thing.
1:03:32And so just to be clear, your current computer is a MacBook Air that you
1:03:40got last year after the new MacBook Airs came out in November?
1:03:44Right. They were they were the sort of great new hope at that
1:03:48point, but they had like, whatever the fourth or third
1:03:50generation butterfly key that was supposedly gonna be better
1:03:53and they had the membrane and whatever and I was like, I don't
1:03:56trust this. But I'm gonna give it a shot. And like I really did
1:04:00need a new computer. My computer was a 2013. I could have done
1:04:06what I suggest people do or what I have been suggesting people do and like literally
1:04:11Gia Tolentino asked me about this a couple or maybe like a month ago. She was like my computer's dying
1:04:17What should I do this sort of de rigueur thing became to buy a refurb?
1:04:22like 2015
1:04:24Right. Oh the one at the time they were even sort of hard to find and I think they still are yeah
1:04:32So I think I was on the fence about doing that and that's oh it was only like sort of two years newer than the
1:04:39computer that I have that wasn't like doing so hot and I wanted more sort of
1:04:44Not that necessarily you would get more performance out of an air than a pro but just I think in terms of like overall
1:04:52Newness of the hardware. I wanted to like give myself a better chance at that
1:04:56And now here we are I
1:05:01I do think, and again, it's all anecdotal, but we have to treat Apple's statements on this.
1:05:06They've said over and over again, a small number of customers are affected by blah, blah, blah.
1:05:10And what is a small number? Famously, it's a Bezos number, right? Like Amazon will say, famously,
1:05:19we've had our best-selling Christmas, Black Friday ever, but then they don't tell you what it's in
1:05:26relation to. There's no baseline. So small number. I mean we all know that
1:05:32it isn't everybody. We all know it probably isn't most people, right?
1:05:37Is it 49%? It's never that many at any given time but like over the course
1:05:45of the lifetime of a computer, how many is it? I would be very curious. It's like maybe
1:05:50there are only let's say, I don't know, a couple thousand computers in the shop.
1:05:53That's a very small number to be having an issue at any given time
1:05:57But if you consider how many you've sold and how many you've treated I would be super curious what that statistic is
1:06:03right and you just know that they know because the people who work at Apple in
1:06:09Cupertino use MacBooks and so whatever the failure rate is we know it's high enough that it
1:06:15percolated within the company
1:06:18But I've seen crazy things like just like over the last three years and once this really became
1:06:24For lack of a better word a meme, you know that hey these keyboards are crap
1:06:28But like you see pictures on Twitter of people who use an external keyboard with their Mac books
1:06:34Which is insane and and they're like smart people and like professional developers and they're like, well
1:06:41I just don't feel like being without it for seven days while they replace it
1:06:46Like it's I'll actually go through the ridiculousness of plugging in a USB keyboard
1:06:52Or a blue, you know using a Bluetooth one
1:06:55rather than the built-in one because I don't want to do it and I could honestly see myself doing that because
1:07:01There are times where you just don't want to be without your your computer
1:07:06And it's such a pain
1:07:07I mean, I'm in a position where I have I have this my personal computer
1:07:13Which I guess I don't even need I have my work my work laptop
1:07:16Which is one of the MacBook pros the non non touch bar extra long escape key like
1:07:232016 or 17 and then I have also a desktop computer
1:07:27so I wouldn't be like totally hard up if I were to take this one in which I'm going to do and hopefully they will I
1:07:32Think the last time I brought this one and they sprayed it out with a can of hair
1:07:36Not in front of me notably
1:07:39And brought it back out and it did seem to be working better and I was like, okay
1:07:43But like now I've done that I have two cans of air here. I've tried to spray it out. It hasn't made any difference
1:07:49So I'm hoping they will just fix it and I'm very tempted to play that
1:07:54Do you know who I am card on this because I'm so tired of dealing with the problem and I'm hoping they will just
1:08:00Take it
1:08:04It's so funny that they won't even even if they're their first fix is to use the air air sprayed
1:08:11You know the compressed air trick that they won't do it in front of you
1:08:15It's sort of like like it's like their version of like you you flag your waiter and you know
1:08:19The I've got a fly in my soup and then the waiter isn't just gonna fish the fly out of your soup and walk away
1:08:25It's gonna take your soup away and right presumably give you a fresh bowl of soup
1:08:32I think, I mean, the whole service element of this
1:08:38keyboard issue has been so ridiculous. I think I wrote about this
1:08:42the first time, or I think the third time, but the sort of first
1:08:48cycle in the first model of computer that I had that was having this problem.
1:08:53One of the
1:08:56diagnostic tests was to put the computer in a particular,
1:09:00I think diagnostic or safe mode or something like that and ran a program where the
1:09:05Genius went through and pushed each key and I was like, this is such
1:09:10Theater, I can't I can't stand it. I think I like dissociated when I was sitting there
1:09:15I was like, this is what what would this tell you? I like absolutely nothing. I just can't I
1:09:20couldn't conceive of what useful input that would and I think it also there was also like a
1:09:27Software element where it was like there was a progress bar and it was like analyzing the keyboard. It's like this
1:09:32There's just no way that this is doing anything and it was like 45 minutes of
1:09:38This just like a few tests like that and I was like, oh my god
1:09:43You like you can type on the keyboard and see that it doesn't work, but you're gonna do all this stuff. Anyway, I
1:09:48Thought that the other thing that was frustrating at the point
1:09:54where and again, I don't think it was a problem that Apple shift
1:09:57Well, it's a problem
1:09:59but I
1:10:00don't think it's a mistake that Apple shipped this keyboard in the first place because I can imagine a
1:10:06scenario where it got through internal testing as
1:10:09reliable and it was only a question of whether people liked it and
1:10:14It gets out, you know, you can ship mistakes if you don't ship mistakes once in a while. Maybe you're not trying hard enough
1:10:21I actually believe that right that if you you know that you're you're being too cautious
1:10:25But it's like the way to be right all the time is to keep an open mind about having made mistakes
1:10:32You know and this is my philosophy
1:10:34You know with what I write it during fireball where it's like I try to be right all the time in what I write
1:10:39But then you know I try to keep an open mind that maybe I'm wrong about something and acknowledge it and then just say hey
1:10:45You know what I was wrong about, right?
1:10:50In the era, you know, let's say all of 2018 is where I feel it was maximal
1:10:57comedy of
1:10:59This is absurd, you know, and that's you know, it was March or May of 2018 when Joanna wrote her
1:11:06famous and so amazing
1:11:09Column the Wall Street Journal could left nothing on the table. It was it was just incredible. I
1:11:17I wish I told her if I had I know, I can't even I she was on my show a couple episodes ago and I told her I was like, that's the Hall of Fame column for anybody in this racket like because it was hilarious. It was spot on. It was totally fair. It the gimmick was execute was it sounded like a good gimmick and then the execution was amazing. And it wound up actually having an effect like I know I can't say for a fact but I can say with 99% of the time, I'm not even sure what I'm saying.
1:11:46can say with 99% certainty that Apple shipped that summer update to the MacBook Airs sooner
1:11:55than they were planning to.
1:11:57And the straw that broke the camel's back on changing their internal schedule was Joanna's
1:12:03column.
1:12:04Oh, I'm sure.
1:12:05I mean, I'm so envious of the platform.
1:12:07Like, how would anything – I mean, maybe that's the real question to ask is when
1:12:14anything have been any different? Like, leave aside the
1:12:17tech outlets if I had if I had written this for like the New
1:12:19York Times.
1:12:20Right. What would Yeah, very true. Yeah. Yeah, I think I
1:12:25think it would have had more fallout. I think there's no
1:12:27doubt about it. And that's not right. It's not fair. We should,
1:12:29you know, ideally in an ideal world, at this point with the
1:12:35way the world is today, it makes me laugh even imagining an ideal
1:12:38world. But in an ideal world, every article would be judged on
1:12:42its own merit and would reach the audience it deserves to reach, but that's not true.
1:12:46Of course.
1:12:47I mean, I think I feel some resentment about it also because it's not like, again, this
1:12:56is me being like, "Do you know who I am?" in a way that's just screaming into the void.
1:13:01But it's like, while the outline was nothing, it's like, I've been a tech writer for a very
1:13:07Not a very long time but like a decade and like it's like I know absolutely I I'm not
1:13:13I don't I don't I wouldn't believe that I am
1:13:16Entirely unknown to people who work at Apple from back when I worked at Ars Technica like it's not like I was
1:13:24Nobody who just happened to be hating their computer
1:13:28So it's it's frustrating to me also that it couldn't get traction just from that but it's like I don't know
1:13:34I'm just you know
1:13:36myself. It did something broke internally. It's like I said,
1:13:40Apple internally clearly wasn't hooked up to deal with a mistake
1:13:45of this magnitude. And 2018 to me was where it really I mean,
1:13:49it's great that it's fixed now at the end of 2019. Or at least
1:13:51the fix that started rolling out. But 2018 was ridiculous. If
1:13:54they had fixed it, by the end of 2017, or at the beginning of
1:13:582018, then Joanna never would have gotten to write her column.
1:14:01Right. And it's fine. See, but the other thing that I thought
1:14:05interesting about 2018 was 2018 last year was or no 2019 it was this year when they came out this
1:14:11year when they came out with the third generation butterfly keyboards with the quote unquote material
1:14:17change which i clarified what do you mean by that because material has different meanings you know
1:14:24there's the scientific meaning where you're using a different material material science yeah yeah
1:14:31Yeah. And then there's also the sense that material just means
1:14:34meaningful. And they were like, well, we really mean both. But
1:14:37we do there are, but there are there's one or more components
1:14:42and they wouldn't say, you know, one thing they wouldn't say it
1:14:45was this little hinge or whatever they you know, typical
1:14:48Apple, they don't want to explain. And I guess I don't
1:14:50know if the I fix it, people took it apart and figured out
1:14:52what what actually is. And it was just that it was the
1:14:55membrane and like the brain was a particular I think they like
1:14:58figured out or reverse not reverse engineered but sort of through through
1:15:03differential diagnosis figured out what the material of it was and like or at
1:15:09least what was extremely similar so that was. So I I do think so I feel like the
1:15:15ultimate good news bad news is I do feel that that change actually improved the
1:15:22keyboard reliability and it does and again this is my anecdotal data as the
1:15:27guy who writes during fireball is very different than what Apple knows from people coming into
1:15:31stores. But I hear from a lot of people, you know, like I've heard from an awful lot of
1:15:35people who read my site, follow me on Twitter or listen to the podcast, who've told me about
1:15:39problems with this keyboard. I really do think that that that third generation quote unquote
1:15:47material change fixed the reliability issues. I don't think it fixed the way it feels. I
1:15:54could be wrong. And so this is the bad news part of it. This is
1:15:59the Yeah, you don't have not within the MacBook Air. I think
1:16:01it's not within the MacBook Air by default. But I think if you
1:16:03do bring it in, and you have enough sort of like, yeah, they
1:16:07won't, they won't give you that. Right. Yeah, they won't. Yeah,
1:16:12if you need to fix, even though you bought the one at the end of
1:16:152018, they would give you the fixed one. And it is if you just
1:16:19think about the way Apple usually works. iPhones are unique because and you know, and they
1:16:27make the most money on them and they're everywhere. But iPhones, everybody knows when's the next
1:16:32iPhone coming out? I can tell you for a fact, it's coming out in like the second Tuesday
1:16:38of September unless September, the second Tuesday of September is September 11. In which
1:16:45case they'll do it on Wednesday because they don't want to do it on September 11. I guarantee
1:16:48it. They do it every year. It comes out like clockwork. It doesn't have a date, but it's
1:16:54like Easter. There's an algorithm where you can predict which Sunday Easter is going to
1:16:59be. You know what Thanksgiving is going to be?
1:17:03Yeah, why don't we institutionalize this into Apple Tuesday? I think Jackie Chang used to
1:17:08say this. Everyone used to breathlessly be like, "Oh, my God, the invites for the Apple
1:17:12event." It was like, "This is the date." She was like, "It's always the second Tuesday.
1:17:16been this way for a decade.
1:17:19Yep.
1:17:20Right.
1:17:21There are other products that are on irregular schedules, and MacBooks in particular, to
1:17:25the frustration of people who rely on them, like me and probably you, as their primary
1:17:32work computer, are harder to predict.
1:17:34But one thing we know is they don't update them more than once a year.
1:17:38And so the fact that they came out with...
1:17:41And the whole idea of a modernized MacBook Air was that they said so last year.
1:17:46It's their best selling MacBook.
1:17:48It's you know, this is what people think of as an Apple laptop, a wedge shaped
1:17:54thing with a 13 inch screen, which is like just right for most people, where
1:18:01it's this perfect balance of portability and lightweight and still still bigger
1:18:06than that little tiny MacBook.
1:18:07And it's bigger than an 11 inch iPad, blah, blah, blah.
1:18:09But everybody wanted one with the retina screen because it by that point it was like, well,
1:18:13this is ridiculous that their their most popular laptop is still sold with this screen that
1:18:19looks like it's from 15 years ago. So they came out with it in November. And the fact
1:18:25that they updated it in the summer this year to get that third generation keyboard standard
1:18:31and they did something else they like you switched to cheaper RAM or something. There
1:18:36something like that they made a couple of other they did more than just put the keyboard in
1:18:40it shows you that that the keyboard was an issue because there's no way they would have updated at
1:18:47the soonest they would have updated it as a regular apple product would have been
1:18:51one year later right doing it nine months is unusual right yeah very telling yeah all right
1:18:58you were asking about the touch bar before and i didn't really answer my understanding but
1:19:03shortened or something?
1:19:04Yeah.
1:19:06Well, so what they've done, it is different.
1:19:09And so now there is, on the left side, a physical escape key
1:19:13so that the touch bar doesn't go all the way to the left side.
1:19:17And it no longer shows you the fake escape key
1:19:22that it would have done, except for certain apps.
1:19:25There's actually an interesting thread on Twitter that--
1:19:28I swear, I hope I'll put in the show notes--
1:19:29where some guy who works at Apple
1:19:31actually wrote about it, which is unusual because people
1:19:32Apple often don't publicize stuff like this. But there are some cases where certain apps
1:19:39like might put up like a dialog box and they still put the equivalent they won't put an
1:19:46escape key on the virtual touch bar, but there might be like a done button or something that
1:19:52finishes something and their logic which is really, really smart. Like in a sense, you
1:19:57can almost see that this is how they tried. This is why they shipped the no physical escape
1:20:02key in the first place was that there are all sorts of situations and corners you can get painted into
1:20:09designing the software where it makes sense for the touch bar to be involved in canceling or
1:20:16stopping or whatever you would use an escape key for. But the basic idea now is that if you start
1:20:22something on the touch bar, if the app has some kind of thing where you start the process of
1:20:27changing the volume or whatever the can'ts the way to get out of it might still be on the
1:20:32touch bar anyway so that's one change there's a real escape key and the logic of what the
1:20:37touch bar shows has changed dynamically based on which computer you're on because obviously
1:20:43you might be running the same version of mac os 10 on a year-old macbook pro and you still need
1:20:49the virtual escape key uh on the right side the touch id sensor now has like a gap between it and
1:20:55the touch bar so you can feel it more clearly. Yeah, that's what the air has. I mean, I there
1:20:59obviously doesn't have a touch bar. But yeah, it's its own standalone sort of piece. Right?
1:21:03Right. Yeah, it's the exact I think it might be the exact same piece from the air. And then the
1:21:10other change they made was that they increased all of the keys have more space between them now.
1:21:15It doesn't really look like it at a glance. But if you really compare it side by side,
1:21:19well, it's good. I think it's a really important change because I feel like the keys being too
1:21:24close to each other led to sometimes not being sure where your fingers were on the right
1:21:29keys. So all of the keys on the keyboard have slightly more space between them. And they
1:21:36slightly you know, it's like a fraction of a millimeter, maybe. It's not a huge gap.
1:21:43But it's enough that I think it really makes a difference is that the touch bar is further
1:21:47above the number key row. There's a little bit more of a gap there too. And they said
1:21:52Good design call because I think I've I mean I experienced this too when I had one for you know
1:21:57It was a year and change I think but constantly hitting the touch bar by accident
1:22:01never really wanting to interact with the touch bar other than to use the
1:22:05The F key like basically the media keys are like the brightness up and down
1:22:10Either the keyboard brightness or the screen brightness is like all I ever
1:22:18Used it for and it was just like two extra taps than it was when it was just the hard
1:22:22function keys
1:22:24but it was otherwise just constant hitting it by accident and people were activating Siri by accident and that's fixable, but
1:22:30Yeah, moving it away from the rest of the keyboard. It seems like a
1:22:34merciful gesture
1:22:37All right. All right, you don't have a touch bar right now
1:22:39But let me let me just throw out a tip for everybody listening who does and is kind of annoyed by it
1:22:46Is you don't actually have to do an extra tap when you tap on the brightness or the volume on the?
1:22:53Touch bar you can just immediately start dragging and it'll immediately show you in and move the little slider to show
1:23:01It has always been that way, but if you don't know that I don't see any reason why any person would guess right
1:23:09It is a great little shortcut. It's very clever
1:23:12It's been like that since the day one, but it doesn't it looks like you have to tap it first
1:23:16Wait for the slider to appear because when you do it the way I'm telling you to the slider
1:23:22Doesn't your finger isn't actually on the slider because you're not starting where it is
1:23:27Mmm anyway play with it everybody. It's a game changer. Yeah, and it really does it
1:23:33The bigger question and I you didn't ask it directly, but I know what you're gonna
1:23:38I know what you're getting at is that the touch bar is not universally beloved. Oh
1:23:42like it's
1:23:45Another would be it would be a greater
1:23:47Folly headline were it not for the keyboard in general. I feel like but the key word has really stolen the
1:23:54the Thunder as far as like design mistakes, I
1:23:57Think that the touch bar is very different. It's a different caliber of
1:24:03Controversy compared to the keyboard because
1:24:07because I do think that the more if there weren't the keyboard to talk about.
1:24:12Yeah, probably. And
1:24:18so I think internally Apple sees the touch bar as
1:24:24a premium thing that is better than F keys now better how I'm not quite sure
1:24:31what they think internally, but that anything that's a premium
1:24:36MacBook is going to come with one. And so like the 13 inch MacBooks have had, you know,
1:24:45the what we colloquially have called the MacBook escape, because it had in, in addition to
1:24:51not having a touch bar period, therefore always had a physical escape key. But that's like,
1:24:58it's not really a pro pro device, it's actually slower, it has like more like a MacBook Air's
1:25:04internal
1:25:06chipset and stuff like that they just call it a MacBook Pro because it's the exact same size as the
1:25:12MacBook 13 inch MacBook Pros that do have a touch bar right and it's a lot cheaper. It was you know, it's hundreds of dollars less
1:25:20Right. I mean the 15 is like I don't I would never having used one now
1:25:25it's like I would never pay extra hundreds of dollars for this thing that it's slightly actually slightly less useful to me than the
1:25:34configuration of the function keys
1:25:36And solves a problem that you never had like there's nobody really I I think internally what Apple has thought and I get it like
1:25:43the idea of function keys
1:25:46Just period seems like this weird throwback to like 1978 right right like it. It's like
1:25:54You get I don't I don't like I'm not gonna say there's like no way to improve upon the function keys there
1:26:01there should there should be but it's like this is not this is not a chief you know
1:26:06yeah you know and it was asked at the media event the question and answer stuff was all
1:26:12off the record on background i forget the exact rules but i i didn't worry about it because i
1:26:20knew i wasn't going to quote anybody anyway so i treated it as on background um but you know they
1:26:26They did the media thing in groups of eight.
1:26:29I don't know how many groups there were.
1:26:31It's one of those other things.
1:26:32You just don't know what's going on when Apple holds these
1:26:35because they had a group of eight,
1:26:37had a little keynote presentation just for us
1:26:39that was on the record,
1:26:40explaining everything that was new.
1:26:44Then we had time for questions,
1:26:46and then they moved us around as a group of eight
1:26:48to a series of demo stations
1:26:49where like here's developer stuff,
1:26:51and they show you Xcode doing stuff super fast
1:26:53and literally made a point of saying that, you know,
1:26:56here, if you use the VIM text editor from Unix,
1:26:59the escape key is right there.
1:27:01So I don't know how many groups there were,
1:27:04but they moved us around.
1:27:05But somebody in my group definitely asked about the,
1:27:09and it was Marco.
1:27:10- Of course.
1:27:11- Definitely asked about, hey,
1:27:14why is there no option?
1:27:17Is there, just double checking,
1:27:18there's no option to buy one of these 15 inch MacBook Pros
1:27:21without the touch bar.
1:27:23and if not, why?
1:27:24And the first part of the question
1:27:27was answered very clearly, no.
1:27:30There is no option.
1:27:31And the second part wasn't answered at all
1:27:35because that's the sort of decision
1:27:37Apple just will not explain.
1:27:38And they won't say, we're not gonna explain it.
1:27:40They have an answer, but it's sort of word sally
1:27:43and they just won't say it.
1:27:44I think it's because they truly do believe it's better.
1:27:49I think they think it's more elegant
1:27:51And I think they think it genuinely is a premium product,
1:27:55a premium aspect of a product.
1:27:57And the one thing about the 15 inch MacBook Pros,
1:28:00even going back to the PowerBook era, I think,
1:28:02is that they've, the 15 inch ones,
1:28:05and now the 16 inch have always been very pro
1:28:10in terms of specs and price, right?
1:28:12Like there's never been,
1:28:14there's never been a sort of more affordable way
1:28:17get a 15 inch display on a Mac laptop, which I think kind of
1:28:22sucks. Because if you know, like, you know, it, the whole
1:28:26thing, this whole keyboard thing has really just shown that if
1:28:28you're a Mac user, we all know that we're beholden to one
1:28:32company's whims on everything. And, you know, if there's a
1:28:37problem, what if they start shipping crappy computers,
1:28:40where we're all fucked, right? We're screwed. Right. And I mean,
1:28:44we're already there. One of the are we right? We were a dark, a
1:28:48dark few years we've had here. Right.
1:28:49Right. But I it's kind of crazy to me that if you know, I
1:28:55totally get why someone would want the smallest laptop
1:28:58possible. Totally can imagine that I can also imagine why
1:29:02someone would want the biggest laptop possible to have the
1:29:05biggest display possible. Because they and they don't
1:29:08care. Maybe they don't even move it around much. Maybe they just
1:29:10mostly use it at their desk. So the fact that it's big doesn't
1:29:14really matter and they'd have a bag that fits in. And I also get why most people want one
1:29:19that's sort of right in the middle with like a 13.3 inch diagonal screen. I totally get
1:29:26all of that. But I think it really sucks that if you're, what you really want is a big 16
1:29:32inch, 15 inch screen, whatever size, and you want to use a Mac that you've, your starting
1:29:37price is $2,400. Like I think that kind of sucks. Like, cause what if, yeah, what if
1:29:42you really don't do anything other than use Safari and email and Slack and you
1:29:48don't need professional-grade RAM.
1:29:51But you just want a big screen, you're saying?
1:29:53Yeah, like wanting a big screen it seems like a very normal thing to want, you know?
1:29:57Like they'll sell you an iMac that, you know, that is relatively lower spec'd
1:30:02just because you want a big screen. Like I don't...
1:30:05I mean, the point that I would make is that like if you want like a laptop is so
1:30:11suboptimal for working on for a long time in so many ways that like to me if
1:30:16you want a big screen but you don't need it for any other purpose other like
1:30:20you're not editing video or photos or say like you're you don't have some
1:30:24visual need you just like want some visual space I'm kind of like that that
1:30:31speaks to you're on the computer for a long time you're using it a lot unless
1:30:38Unless you're super, super mobile, I'm kind of like, you should just have a desktop setup,
1:30:44like a monitor that you can plug into, and then that solves your problem.
1:30:50It's like only if you need this big screen and somehow need to be able to bring it lots
1:30:55of different places, which I don't think is the majority of people who need to bring it
1:31:00to some places and also need that huge screen.
1:31:05I think if they had one though, if they had a 15 inch MacBook Pro that had a slower CPU,
1:31:11like the 13 inch one that doesn't have a touch bar, and they took out the touch bar and it
1:31:15was only 2000 or maybe $1900, like cut $500 off the price, but $1900 still pretty, you
1:31:23know, expensive in the world of laptops.
1:31:25I think that thing would sell shockingly.
1:31:27Even if still it was like the same price as a 13 inch that worked that had better specs
1:31:36and just a smaller screen.
1:31:37Right and has a touch bar.
1:31:43I guess my other disappointment with the touch bar, I'm okay with them.
1:31:46I'm not a touch bar hater.
1:31:48I'm not a touch bar lover, but I'm okay with it.
1:31:51It wouldn't bother me in the least that I'll probably never buy a MacBook again that doesn't
1:31:56have one. I kind of wish though that they had thought of better
1:32:01things to do with it. Well, I think it just that that this is
1:32:04the most doesn't that seem like part of the problem is the most
1:32:07sort of positive thing that I can say for the touch bar is
1:32:10that it holds space for if they have they ever do come up with a
1:32:15good idea of how to use it. It's like the computers were will
1:32:19already are like a certain like back generation of computers
1:32:23will already have it. It's like they can't they can't go back
1:32:26and change the function keys. I mean, you sort of can, but they can't change the printing
1:32:30on them or whatever. So it creates space for a good idea if someone ever has one. There's
1:32:40some meaning to that, I think. I wouldn't say there's absolutely nothing that a touch
1:32:44bar could be useful for. There's a couple of applications, I think, where it's like
1:32:51scrolling through certain things or shortcuts. There's a way I think that it could be
1:32:58integrated that's useful, but we haven't gotten there yet.
1:33:01All right, I'll take a quick break here. Thank our third and final sponsor. Good friends at
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1:35:15a Squarespace with code talk show. All right. I guess we should talk more about this actual
1:35:23laptop that I'm talking to you on now. Yeah. What's there to say? I'm going to try something.
1:35:28Here's what I want to try. So the, so the keyboard being fixed that to me, this in order,
1:35:33Here's here's to me that the new the story of the new MacBook in order the keyboard totally fixed. I love it
1:35:39I really like this keyboard now when I go back to my
1:35:432015
1:35:45Which is my personal one. I actually I feel how jiggly all the keys are
1:35:49Like they've they've kept that stability of the key caps from the butterfly keyboard, but put it into a nice squishy
1:35:57Scissor key mechanism. I think you're gonna like it
1:36:01You haven't tried one, right? Because I just hit the stores
1:36:03Okay, yeah
1:36:08Well, they might be in stores and I know that if you pre-ordered on Wednesday, some people started getting them yesterday
1:36:14You're gonna like it. I think
1:36:16It definitely feels better than the butterfly keyboards. It even is like the magic keyboard the external keyboard, right?
1:36:22Yeah with less travel. Yeah
1:36:25But I think the keys even feel a little bit more stable though because the maybe because they don't move a lot
1:36:31It just has a good feel that has the same really nice backlighting that doesn't bleed around the edges from the recent keyboards
1:36:39You know like now I look at my 2015 MacBook and I'm like that looks kind of cheap the way the backlighting
1:36:43Bleeds out from around all keys
1:36:45I love the new arrow key layout. I'm hung up on that. I could never get used to the
1:36:51Full height left and right arrow keys. Are you are you a person who cared about that?
1:36:55I don't think I use the arrow keys enough to get upset about it. I mean I have
1:37:00um
1:37:02like
1:37:03My other my other computers. I think that I do when I'm doing arrow stuff. It's more
1:37:07On different keywords. Yeah, it's never it's not really bothered me. I've never really like fully understood that complaint, but I respect it. I
1:37:14Could never get used to it. I have a friend who's a system administrator
1:37:19And he was helping me with some stuff with during fireball this week
1:37:24He's gonna buy one just to get it
1:37:27Because he's using yeah, he uses the arrow keys all day every day like at the command line like to go up and down between
1:37:34previous commands
1:37:36Big is a big pet peeve for him. Oh, yeah, I
1:37:41so I think there's people there's a lot of people who didn't really care and
1:37:45The everybody who did care hated the the other layout right? So everybody who cares wants the upside-down T
1:37:52And everybody who was like the other one was fine
1:37:55I I found like one guy on Twitter who was arguing with me that the the new one was better
1:38:01I've and his his logic was that because the left and right keys are used more often than up/down
1:38:08therefore they should be bigger, but it's I
1:38:11Don't know where to start with it personal
1:38:14No, and the worst part is I know I talked to someone at Apple like I know that you know
1:38:20How they talked about how they did like all this user testing about like we put different keyboard prototypes
1:38:25in front of people and then like photographed, you know, they're
1:38:28accuracy, you know, like they use video, they did real testing to
1:38:31figure out what makes people make less mistakes. Well, that is
1:38:36true. They did do that testing. But the thing that Apple didn't
1:38:39say last week in the publicity for this device is that's
1:38:43something that they have done for like 25 years and never
1:38:47stopped and have always done like they've always done serious
1:38:50testing on things like that. And so they had all the data
1:38:55about how making the keycaps too big and decreasing the travel and using this different arrow key
1:39:02design. They had the data that showed that it made people slightly just, you know, how much less
1:39:08efficient, how many more errors? I don't know, but that there was slightly more errors and less
1:39:12efficiency. They knew that when they shipped the keyboards that had those designs. So, yeah.
1:39:18I mean, I find it so like what is the advantage of this of this one with the fat?
1:39:23Left right key is like it just looks it sort of like squares out the entire
1:39:28layout the only thing which is not not doesn't seem worth at all the trade-off of
1:39:34Yeah, it's like it's it's sort of like, you know like
1:39:42This is a terrible analogy, but it's like if you have a gap in your teeth
1:39:47It's like well, you can at least fit a toothpick in there. Yeah, like I don't know, you know what I mean?
1:39:52Like sure it doesn't look as good and aesthetically you should go to an orthodontist and get it fixed
1:39:57But there's a you know, maybe a functional aspect of it. I don't know
1:40:01There's a functional aspect to these to the gaps there the keyboard. It's just better
1:40:04I don't want to spend more time on this it really I really do think it's fixed
1:40:08I would wager money that the reliability issues are gone too because it truly is an all-new mechanism
1:40:13scissor keys
1:40:15Even though they have less travel than they used to never seem to have been
1:40:19bothered by
1:40:21bits of duster
1:40:23It was just never something I ever thought about with a computer
1:40:28It's like I never thought I never I never thought I would
1:40:34Use the word egress as much as I have in the last few years and I don't even write massively about the keyboard
1:40:40Anyway, number one story. The keyboard is an all-new design feels better
1:40:44I think it's going to be more reliable. I like it. Number two, this is the part that out of left
1:40:49field, I just wasn't even on my radar or something Apple might do. The speakers on this thing are
1:40:56amazing. They are my analogy, my first thoughts on it. I compare it to going from a non retina
1:41:03display to a retina display. It is that different side by side with like the 15 inch MacBook Pro
1:41:12that this replaces it is a it is totally credible that you could be in like a typical small like
1:41:18living room and use this laptop as the speaker to entertain guests and have music playing. It does
1:41:25not sound like a laptop. It sounds like a home pod junior. It really it is absolutely astounding.
1:41:33And it just came out to me it came out of left field because I never heard anybody say,
1:41:36"Boy, I sure wish my laptop had better speakers."
1:41:39But it's really night and day.
1:41:42It is like, and again, going from non-retina to retina
1:41:46to me is the difference because it's,
1:41:48like I feel like with iPhones,
1:41:51the iPhones have surprisingly good speakers
1:41:54and I don't use them much because, you know,
1:41:57in most contexts it feels rude to be playing the audio
1:42:02through your iPhone, like, you know,
1:42:04like if you're out in public.
1:42:06But when you do want to listen to a video and have it play through the speakers, the
1:42:11iPhone is at this point surprisingly good if you really pay attention to it.
1:42:16But it's been like a incremental thing where for 11 years, every year they've made the
1:42:23speakers slightly better, slightly better, slightly better, slightly better.
1:42:27And now we've gotten to a point where yeah, if you compare this one against a phone, iPhone
1:42:31from seven years ago, the speaker differences night and day, you can really hear it. It
1:42:36there was never one year where the iPhones or the iPads had like a huge increase. Whereas
1:42:42with this MacBook Pro, the speakers are absolutely amazing. I don't even know how much I use
1:42:48them. I mean, it's like I don't even know like when's the last time I played stuff through
1:42:52the speakers on my laptop? I usually just play through headphones. Now I'm like, that's
1:42:56I'm kind of like what what is the significance? I mean, I I will do it
1:43:00Let's see if I'm like doing
1:43:03Dishes or some house tours. I might like prop the computer somewhere and play a show through it
1:43:09All right, and that that is I'm telling you right now
1:43:13And I really I hope they bring these to all the MacBook pros these speakers that it is so much more
1:43:18Credible with this like yeah, just playing a show while you're doing dishes or preparing dinner or something like that
1:43:26it's really amazing for a year over year, you know, generation over generation difference. It
1:43:33is a totally different experience. I can't emphasize enough how much better it is.
1:43:37Shruti, I forget her last name, but she was the product manager for the MacBook Pros at Apple,
1:43:50was on Jason Snell's podcast Upgrade, and he did a fantastic interview with her after this
1:43:55event and he asked her about it like what exactly is the use case for putting
1:44:02good speakers in this and she goes well here's one that's very common let's say
1:44:05you're a film editor and you're working on a movie or a commercial or something
1:44:10like that and you've got a scene and the director comes over and standing right
1:44:14over your shoulder and you want to show it here you just hit the spacebar to
1:44:18play the thing having better sound is you know way more it's really important
1:44:25that scenario because you don't you can't use headphones because you're sharing it with somebody
1:44:28else it's a colleague and you know those little interactions between like a film editor and a
1:44:34director happen you know thousands of times in the production of a film and so having better
1:44:39sound could make a difference totally for some people the other thing they said was
1:44:49that they've increased, they've totally redone the internal microphone. And if it's much better,
1:44:55it's like a three microphone array. And that they even said it's studio quality,
1:45:02and that you could use it even to record podcasts, which sounds like a bold claim. So here's
1:45:07what I'm going to try right now. No, I have up here to four on this show, I've been talking to
1:45:14you through the sure beta 87 aid microphone that I've been using for the last several
1:45:21years on this show. But what I'm going to do right now is I'm going into Skype preferences.
1:45:26This could just totally blow up the whole podcast.
1:45:29All right, I haven't done it yet. In
1:45:39three two one
1:45:41on the internal microphone do i sound different yes you do all right so that proves that it worked
1:45:50it didn't interrupt the skype call actually it's interesting we were talking about you were having
1:45:57some like uh staticky on the um the other one but at least but um this one no static but you can hear
1:46:07the room around you a lot more. It's a little like echolier.
1:46:11I think that is worrisome. I suspect that there might be some bad. Well, we'll see.
1:46:23But anyway, I'm talking on the internal now. I'll do the rest of the show right here. We don't have
1:46:28much more to go, but I think that's interesting. I'm talking at about the same distance that I
1:46:33I would be from the screen if I were just like typing on the keyboard right now or doing
1:46:37like a like a FaceTime call.
1:46:43I mean, it sounds fine.
1:46:46It sounds even good.
1:46:47But like, I definitely I do hear a difference.
1:46:50It's not it's not the shorter.
1:46:54And that to me is it.
1:46:55There's performance increases that I'm not.
1:46:59Here's my question.
1:47:00Okay.
1:47:01I've been disappointed by computers, and particularly the MacBook Air, with this.
1:47:06How is the webcam?
1:47:07Because the webcam in the MacBook Air is garbage.
1:47:10You know, I didn't test it.
1:47:13I honestly don't know.
1:47:14I'm looking at it because the Skype preferences shows it to me.
1:47:19I don't know.
1:47:20I'm guessing it's not that good.
1:47:22I'm guessing it might be as good as the MacBook Air.
1:47:25interesting because it's not like a
1:47:27Sort of killer app for the computer. I feel like it's like a utility thing, but
1:47:34It's just so it's it's shockingly bad in the MacBook Air really bad. It's like a 640 by 480 not literally
1:47:42But it's it's just yeah
1:47:44breathtakingly awful
1:47:46Yeah, I recall it's better in the pros that's all yeah, maybe it's a little better
1:47:51I think that the problem is that they back themselves into the it is
1:47:54physical corner where they want the display to be so ultra thin and therefore there's even compared to like a phone
1:48:01There's way less thickness, you know, the the top of the MacBook Pro display is way thinner than an iPhone
1:48:07So there's just no room for a bigger better camera
1:48:10Yeah, I don't think it's that great
1:48:13Any other questions that you have about the new Mac?
1:48:16I think the only thing left is what is their schedule for the next year for rolling this out?
1:48:23You know across the rest of the product line, you know
1:48:26hmm
1:48:28All right. I wonder all right. Let's call it a wrap. Everybody can follow you on twitter at Casey Johnston
1:48:35It's a great Twitter follow right now you work at vice as the life editorial director
1:48:41That's correct
1:48:43You can find me. How's it going?
1:48:45It's pretty good. I mean, I'm writing my column as well right for vice ask us woman and that's that's going really well
1:48:52well. But it's great. I've been I hired a whole team and they're really firing on all
1:48:58cylinders. I'm so proud of them and they're really fun to work with. I'm having a great
1:49:02time.
1:49:03And so you're you're you're ask a swole woman column is your column where you take questions
1:49:07and answers from anybody, but obviously from the perspective of a woman. But you're a weightlifting
1:49:13and enthusiast people asking questions like, hey, what how do I pick a gym? Right. That
1:49:18was like one of your recent columns.
1:49:19Yes, yeah. It's just stuff about, it's sort of refracted through the lens of like, lifting
1:49:27weights but broadly about people's relationship with their bodies and food and exercise and
1:49:32like how to sort of get that part of your life in order and feel okay about it and approach
1:49:38it in a way that's sane and not subscribing to a lot of prejudices people have about themselves
1:49:45and what they can or should be doing when it comes to exercise.
1:49:49And you've been you've been writing that column at various publications now for at least like three years, right?
1:49:54Yeah, it's been a little over three years now. Yep hairpin and then self and now vice. Well, that's great. Thank you for being here
1:50:01I could not have asked for a more point on
1:50:06Guest to talk about these goddamn keyboards than you
1:50:10Well, and thank you honestly, I mean it from the bottom of my heart for for
1:50:17Sort of popping the bubble years ago and and yeah doing the work that you did on the keyboard
1:50:23Yeah, cool. Thank you
1:50:26[BLANK_AUDIO]