The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:02 ◼   ► Pretty good. I'm just failing to fight the temptation to ask you a follow-up question about mechanical keyboards right now

00:00:09 ◼   ► Do it, we'll lose the whole show.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Did you try a keyboard that like some modern mechanical keyboard as a potential replacement for your Apple Extended? No, not yet

00:00:22 ◼   ► Well, sort of I should take that back. I got

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm nowhere near as in deep with you. Actually. I should take this all back. I have I have tried several I shouldn't say

00:00:33 ◼   ► We're seriously gonna lose the whole show here. Yeah, I have a DOS keyboard

00:00:37 ◼   ► That that's spelled das like yeah, that's 3.3 keyboard. That would be something else das is in like das boot the

00:00:46 ◼   ► fantastic submarine movie

00:00:49 ◼   ► I

00:00:50 ◼   ► Bought several years ago and I forget what kind of switches that one has

00:00:56 ◼   ► But I have since given that one to my son Jonas and he loves it and it is apparently a pretty decent gaming keyboard. I

00:01:05 ◼   ► Never really liked it. It was too clicky

00:01:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and then based on some recent back and forth with you

00:01:13 ◼   ► based on your

00:01:15 ◼   ► I don't know if you consider it portable you can say but it's your iPad as a writing setup. You have right sure the Matthias

00:01:24 ◼   ► portable something something yeah, it's like a Bluetooth they have a Bluetooth

00:01:28 ◼   ► Keyboard that's got their key switches

00:01:32 ◼   ► Which are not the same and and people give me such grief for it because it does feel very old Apple design school

00:01:37 ◼   ► It's a big kind of puffy silver plastic keyboard, but it's very hard to find a good

00:01:43 ◼   ► Bluetooth

00:01:45 ◼   ► Mechanical keyboard there. I just USB it is puffy puffy is a good way to describe it. I'm gonna put this in the

00:01:52 ◼   ► it's just a big thing of plastic like right now now it would be kind of a metal kind of

00:01:59 ◼   ► fringed thing but instead it's just like a big piece of plastic with a keyboard in it

00:02:05 ◼   ► and i don't use that well it doesn't even make sense for me to use it with any of my

00:02:09 ◼   ► macs because when i'm not going to use a separate keyboard with a macbook and i've got my beloved

00:02:15 ◼   ► extended apple extended keyboard 2 on my iMac which it's um i mean i guess in theory i could

00:02:22 ◼   ► someday find a keyboard I like better than an Apple Extended Keyboard 2, but until I

00:02:25 ◼   ► do, I won't. But I do use it. I just feel like you need to be doing some

00:02:28 ◼   ► groundwork now for that day where the last Apple Extended Keyboard falls apart.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Right. You can just plug in something new and be like, "All right, I can just keep

00:02:38 ◼   ► on writing." Well, I've mentioned before that there's

00:02:41 ◼   ► a decent chance that—it depends when I replace my iMac. I mean, because the thing is with

00:02:48 ◼   ► the iMac, it'll probably be one of the last computers that Apple ships that still has

00:02:53 ◼   ► the old style USB-A port in the back because there's plenty of room. But surely within

00:03:01 ◼   ► a handful of years, it'll be USB-C everywhere.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Yeah, just adapt your adapter and you just keep on going. I have at one point, I adapted

00:03:14 ◼   ► Firewire 400 the the i-link Sony stuff to proper Firewire 400 to Firewire 800

00:03:21 ◼   ► to Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3. Wow that's actually worked it actually

00:03:28 ◼   ► worked so you know there's no end to the number of adapters you can just stack on

00:03:32 ◼   ► top of that extended keyboard to keep it going. You know but you know someday if I

00:03:36 ◼   ► want to use my extended keyboard to on an USB C only machine I'll have to go

00:03:40 ◼   ► So from ADB to my ADB to USB-A, the iMate, Griffin iMate adapter, of which I have two

00:03:51 ◼   ► backups.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Which may die.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I was going to say, that may die before your keyboard dies.

00:03:54 ◼   ► I have two mint condition backups, but my original, which I bought in, geez, probably

00:03:59 ◼   ► like 1998 or something.

00:04:01 ◼   ► I would think, yeah.

00:04:03 ◼   ► You know, and it's maybe '99, but it's, you know, it's if anybody has never seen a Griffin

00:04:07 ◼   ► iMate, I believe they were all the same color.

00:04:10 ◼   ► They were the IMAX-style Bondi blue translucent plastic, as everything was after 1998.

00:04:20 ◼   ► But I'm still on my first one.

00:04:21 ◼   ► It is a very durable little adapter.

00:04:25 ◼   ► But eventually I'll have to plug that into a USB to USB-C adapter, which is nowhere near

00:04:30 ◼   ► the chain that you just said you put together for data.

00:04:33 ◼   ► This is only for typing.

00:04:34 ◼   ► But anyway, I have the Matthias that you have.

00:04:38 ◼   ► I do like it.

00:04:39 ◼   ► It is certainly the favorite hardware keyboard I've ever used with an iPad.

00:04:44 ◼   ► I wish I knew which stand I have.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I have a stand that I don't know that I've ever seen anybody recommend, but it's from

00:04:50 ◼   ► … Jeez, I could go upstairs and get it, but I have to interrupt the show and I don't

00:04:57 ◼   ► want to do it.

00:04:58 ◼   ► But it's … You know, I'll just put it in the show notes.

00:05:00 ◼   ► But I think it's from Belkin.

00:05:04 ◼   ► It just is a little foldy thing.

00:05:05 ◼   ► It doesn't raise the iPad at all because I don't really, I'm fine with, because I only

00:05:09 ◼   ► pretty much use it on like a kitchen counter and it's already sort of like I'm sitting

00:05:14 ◼   ► on like a, you know, a, not quite barstool height, but you know, more than a floor seat,

00:05:19 ◼   ► you know, like a kitchen counter seat.

00:05:22 ◼   ► So I don't mind that the iPad isn't raised off the thing and it folds and it has several,

00:05:27 ◼   ► it's not like you can bend it to any angle.

00:05:30 ◼   ► It has like a bunch of incremental steps, but there's enough of them that it's always,

00:05:34 ◼   ► always a good one and it's an excellent, excellent little stand because when you fold it all

00:05:39 ◼   ► the way up it it's very small and when it's open it's very sturdy because it clicks and

00:05:47 ◼   ► so it's in addition to being a good stand for popping up an iPad for typing it is an

00:05:51 ◼   ► outstanding it is the best stand I've ever used in what close to 10 years 10 years for

00:05:57 ◼   ► iPad for watch using it as like a little TV I guess that's cool I swear to God I'll put

00:06:02 ◼   ► it in the show notes, but it's a nice little stand. I like the Matthias, but I don't love

00:06:07 ◼   ► it. It's mushy. It bothers me. It's always bothered me how many little glyphs Matthias

00:06:13 ◼   ► puts on the key caps. I guess some people would like it, but they'll put little things

00:06:19 ◼   ► up in the right corner to show you that option left bracket gives you a curly quote and that

00:06:27 ◼   ► option shift bracket gives you a double curly quote and vice versa.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it's overkill. I get that some people really get off on the idea that like literally

00:06:36 ◼   ► every character you can make with that keyboard is labeled on the keys, but that seems like

00:06:41 ◼   ► overkill to me too. No, I am right there with you. I have yet to find a perfect solution

00:06:47 ◼   ► to any of this, but I'm always on the lookout because I do like not always being at my desk

00:06:55 ◼   ► and being able to go to the bar in my kitchen and take an iPad and just sit there and write

00:06:59 ◼   ► a little bit. It's a great change of pace. And so I like that and having a good keyboard

00:07:04 ◼   ► for that, I've gone through all sorts of different kinds and the Matthias is the one that stuck

00:07:09 ◼   ► so far, but it's definitely not perfect and I would love to get something else. I could

00:07:13 ◼   ► attach some of my good mechanical keyboards of which I have too many with USB, but the

00:07:19 ◼   ► problem there is that like the command and option are flipped because a lot of them are

00:07:23 ◼   ► Windows keyboards and some of them have like dip switches that let you flip them the other

00:07:26 ◼   ► way and some of them aren't and it's too much so and maybe there'll be a new iPad Pro that'll

00:07:33 ◼   ► solve all of these things by something I don't know what on the Mac it's not a problem using

00:07:38 ◼   ► those keyboards right because you can use the system preference thing to change exactly

00:07:42 ◼   ► and iOS doesn't doesn't do that at least not yet you know and my second last episode Marco

00:07:49 ◼   ► garment was on and we were talking about keyboards and Marco has this tip for using that you

00:07:57 ◼   ► go to the keyboard system preferences thing. It's not no third party stuff at all. It's

00:08:02 ◼   ► all supported by the system and you can switch a bunch of modifiers. It's helpful if you

00:08:06 ◼   ► have a third party keyboard but with even with the standard keyboard, you can switch

00:08:10 ◼   ► caps lock to you to be escape or control some people love. There's like a bunch of Unix

00:08:16 ◼   ► people who—there's all sorts of Unix commands that use the control. And on an Apple keyboard

00:08:22 ◼   ► controls this little fiddly thing to the left of Z, caps lock is one of the easiest keys

00:08:28 ◼   ► on the whole keyboard to hit. So either way, but using caps lock for escape is pretty interesting.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And we'll get into this later, I guess, talking about MacBook Pros, but without the escape

00:08:39 ◼   ► key on MacBook Pros.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, exactly right. No, that's a smart thing.

00:08:43 ◼   ► I'm so happy that Apple did that.

00:08:45 ◼   ► For the longest time, you always had to download

00:08:46 ◼   ► weird software in order to do slight

00:08:50 ◼   ► keyboard modifications, and now you just don't.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I mean, there are so many different things

00:08:55 ◼   ► that are just built into the keyboard,

00:08:57 ◼   ► little keyboard system preference, it's great.

00:09:00 ◼   ► - There was, in years past, there was some truly sketchy,

00:09:03 ◼   ► low-level, unsupported, and in addition,

00:09:08 ◼   ► even when you found one that was like rock solid

00:09:10 ◼   ► and it didn't seem to cause any problems,

00:09:13 ◼   ► you'd upgrade to the new version of Mac OS X and it would just do nothing. It would just

00:09:17 ◼   ► be like, "Ugh." And it's like, you go to the -- it'd be like, "Where's the webpage?" And

00:09:20 ◼   ► you go to the webpage and it hasn't been updated in six years and it's like, "Ugh."

00:09:24 ◼   ► Well, and there's the overkill factor too that I always felt. It's like, I literally

00:09:27 ◼   ► need to flip two keys on my keyboard and I've got this whole piece of software that usually

00:09:31 ◼   ► did like 9,000 other things and it's like, "No, no, no. I just -- I do this with Keyboard

00:09:36 ◼   ► Maestro now for some things," where it's like, "Yeah, at least I use Keyboard Maestro occasionally

00:09:40 ◼   ► for actual automation of stuff and it's really great for that. It doesn't, apps don't have

00:09:45 ◼   ► to be scriptable. It's amazing the stuff that you can get it to do. But I always feel a

00:09:49 ◼   ► little bit bad saying I really just want to map key A to be key B and vice versa. It's

00:09:54 ◼   ► like what a waste. But you got to do it, right? You got to get the keys to be what you want

00:09:59 ◼   ► them to be.

00:10:00 ◼   ► I've been talking more about Keyboard Maestro lately and I've been using it more lately.

00:10:05 ◼   ► I just did a thing. Here's an example. I really, I meaning to once like the news stuff, it's

00:10:11 ◼   ► like calms down this fall. Like I'm queuing up a bunch of ideas for keyboard, my stuff,

00:10:15 ◼   ► but the idea and it goes with my sort of recurring theme of here's why I love the Mac and can't

00:10:24 ◼   ► really imagine switching to iOS full time. Not that there's anything wrong with iOS,

00:10:28 ◼   ► but you could never do this on iOS file. You know, that's the tag category for these articles.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Um, for, for reasons that aren't worth going into, I use an app called, uh, Mars edit to

00:10:42 ◼   ► edit during fireball. It's a great blog editor from a red sweater software friend of the

00:10:47 ◼   ► show, Daniel Jowkut. I've been using it for years. Um, don't know quite what I would do

00:10:51 ◼   ► without it. Uh, really don't. Um, and the way I have movable type set up, it writes

00:11:00 ◼   ► every file, every time I write a post during Fireball, movable type generates two static

00:11:06 ◼   ► files, one of them with a dot text extension, a plain text version of the file, one with

00:11:11 ◼   ► a dot PHP. So if I write an article called the talk show episode 229, there'll be a

00:11:22 ◼   ► file in the file system with the date, and it'll say the talk show 229 dot T-E-X-T,

00:11:28 ◼   ► one with the same little slug dot PHP. But then I have everything set so that the public

00:11:33 ◼   ► URL that everybody sees doesn't have any file extension at all. Right. And I have a patchy

00:11:39 ◼   ► set up my web server on the server set up with a thing called multi views. So there

00:11:43 ◼   ► is no actual file in the file system that matches the URL. And what multi views does

00:11:49 ◼   ► is just make the best guess possible and it defaults to the PHP version, which is what

00:11:54 ◼   ► you want, which is what I want. And you see a little web page. And so you get the right

00:11:59 ◼   ► version, there's no file extensions visible to the user. And even if you go to the dot

00:12:05 ◼   ► PHP version, I have also have Apache set to redirect you to the one without the PHP version,

00:12:10 ◼   ► right. And then you can go to the dot text version and see my raw markdown source for

00:12:15 ◼   ► any article just by adding dot txt to any article on during fireball, nice little like

00:12:22 ◼   ► an Easter egg. Now for reasons that aren't worth explaining, in Mars Edit, it's sort

00:12:28 ◼   ► of like a mail app. I can go to any article and I can control click on it and I can copy

00:12:33 ◼   ► the published URL. In most blogging systems, or if I had movable types set up so that my

00:12:39 ◼   ► public URLs had those .php extensions, this would all be fine. But what Mars Edit copies

00:12:44 ◼   ► has dot PHP at the end. And so, you know, a couple times a week, I want to copy, I want

00:12:51 ◼   ► to get the URL for a recent article for during fireball. And the easiest way for me to do

00:12:55 ◼   ► it, at least in my mind, is to go to Mars edit, not go to during fireball and page down

00:12:59 ◼   ► looking for it because it might be, you know, three, four, five days ago. But in Mars edit,

00:13:04 ◼   ► it's just one, you know, I can go three, four or five days down just by looking with my

00:13:07 ◼   ► eyeballs. So I control click, I copy, and I either paste it into another article or

00:13:12 ◼   ► I paste it into a tweet or whatever. And then, you know, for 15 years, I've been pasting

00:13:18 ◼   ► and then delete, delete, delete, delete.

00:13:20 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:13:21 ◼   ► Sure.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And after 15 years of being annoyed by that every single time, because I want to delete

00:13:28 ◼   ► that .php extension, even though I know that I have it set up so that if you go to that

00:13:33 ◼   ► URL, it'll automatically redirect you. I just, it bothers me on aesthetic grounds. It's the

00:13:40 ◼   ► anal retentive side of John Gruber. After 15 years of being annoyed by this, I finally

00:13:45 ◼   ► thought, you know what, there's got to be a way I could fix this in Keyboard Maestro.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And of course, it took me like, I don't know, two minutes to solve it. I just have a global

00:13:55 ◼   ► shortcut that looks for command V in every app. And before it actually pastes Keyboard

00:14:02 ◼   ► Maestro looks at the clipboard sees if it sees if it matches the regular expression,

00:14:08 ◼   ► with HTTPS, Daring Fireball, ending with .php, and if it matches, strip the PHP from the

00:14:17 ◼   ► clipboard and then, no matter what, whether it matched or didn't match, actually paste

00:14:22 ◼   ► whatever was on the clipboard. And there's the old fuddy-duddy in me who thought, "Well,

00:14:27 ◼   ► wait a minute. You don't want to slow down pasting system-wide just so that once or twice

00:14:31 ◼   ► a week you don't have to manually delete it." And of course, it's instantaneous on a modern

00:14:35 ◼   ► and computer takes, you know, it obviously is technically slower, but it's slower by

00:14:40 ◼   ► like a thousandth of a second imperceptible. And I'm so happy, so proud of myself.

00:14:46 ◼   ► That's great. I was thinking, is there a utility out there that just watches your clipboard

00:14:51 ◼   ► and acts on it in different ways, but you're right. You could just do it at paste. Well,

00:14:54 ◼   ► that was my first chain. You could chain a whole bunch of different things. Like, oh,

00:14:57 ◼   ► if the active app is this, then do this other thing based on the contents or whatever. Yeah.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Right. There's also, I'm sure of other people have way more complicated things out there

00:15:05 ◼   ► that modify their clipboard. But anyway, KeyboardMeister is one of the most essential utilities to

00:15:10 ◼   ► my life that I can ever imagine. And I have other ones that are more important. This is

00:15:16 ◼   ► like a minor annoyance, but to me, eliminating those minor annoyances is a big deal.

00:15:21 ◼   ► What's the brand, the other brand of mechanical keyboard? You have a couple. A couple of years

00:15:25 ◼   ► ago, I was talking about one and I almost bought one of their keyboards and the big

00:15:30 ◼   ► problem was they had too many options. It paralyzed me. But even on this show, I talked

00:15:36 ◼   ► about it. They have like a little—

00:15:38 ◼   ► So the WASD keyboards?

00:15:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that's it.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Yeah, and they've got their own keyboards and they've got the code keyboards as well,

00:15:46 ◼   ► and then they've got the different sizes and then you can choose which kinds of labels

00:15:49 ◼   ► you've got and what colors your keys are and what the key switches are because they use

00:15:53 ◼   ► cheery key switches and yeah, I have one of those and it's really nice, although I don't

00:16:00 ◼   ► usually use it because it's too big. I really have gotten into these super compact keyboards

00:16:05 ◼   ► there. I want my trackpad as close to my keyboard as possible and that means like the smaller

00:16:09 ◼   ► so the opposite of the extended keyboard. I want it to like the least width possible.

00:16:15 ◼   ► But WASD has some really nice keyboards, but there are a lot of them and it's a tyranny

00:16:18 ◼   ► of choice because it's like, "Oh, I want the blue switches, the brown switches, the red

00:16:21 ◼   ► and do I want the ANSI layout or do I want the ten key list or do I want to have the

00:16:25 ◼   ► number pad and do I want the black keys or the white keys and it just goes on and on.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Here's how bad my memory is getting, Jason. Possibly yours as well. I just did a search

00:16:37 ◼   ► on Daring Fireball for WASD keyboards and it instantly came up. It was the talk show episode

00:16:45 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - With special guest,

00:16:46 ◼   ► Jason Snell. - Oh yeah.

00:16:48 ◼   ► No, we've done this.

00:16:49 ◼   ► - One year ago. - We've done this before.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I just wanna point out to listeners of the talk show

00:16:52 ◼   ► that I could have mentioned baseball and I didn't.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Oh God, I just mentioned baseball.

00:16:55 ◼   ► Let's not talk about that.

00:16:57 ◼   ► That's the show killer.

00:16:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think so.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I think we gotta stay away from that.

00:17:00 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It's too, too.

00:17:02 ◼   ► - We did a nice bit about Keyboard Maestro there.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I was gonna even throw in the thing that blew me away

00:17:06 ◼   ► about Keyboard Maestro is that it literally,

00:17:09 ◼   ► because it'll drive the UI,

00:17:10 ◼   ► you can put, you can like take a screenshot

00:17:12 ◼   ► of like a part of the interface and say, find this,

00:17:17 ◼   ► and then click, and you can say like,

00:17:19 ◼   ► and then click 20 pixels to the right.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And like with that, you could literally,

00:17:24 ◼   ► it will drive anything.

00:17:26 ◼   ► It'll do keyboard commands, it'll click on things,

00:17:29 ◼   ► and you can get it to automate anything

00:17:32 ◼   ► you can ever imagine in macOS, which is amazing.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And I have used that because I have some apps

00:17:38 ◼   ► that are completely unscriptable.

00:17:39 ◼   ► - I had no idea I had that.

00:17:41 ◼   ► look at the screenshot and click on this.

00:17:43 ◼   ► - It's amazing.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Like I had some radio buttons that had some text on them

00:17:47 ◼   ► in an app that I don't use anymore,

00:17:49 ◼   ► but I use for a very long time,

00:17:50 ◼   ► which was Nicecast from Rogue Amoeba.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And it wasn't scriptable and it had a drawer.

00:17:55 ◼   ► That's how old the UI was.

00:17:57 ◼   ► It had a drawer with a radio button in it.

00:17:58 ◼   ► And I took a little screenshot of the radio button

00:18:01 ◼   ► and the text next to it and said, find this,

00:18:04 ◼   ► and then click the radio button.

00:18:06 ◼   ► And it totally worked.

00:18:07 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, it's sort of sad that it came to that,

00:18:10 ◼   ► but it did it.

00:18:11 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:18:12 ◼   ► - This is really rather uncanny though.

00:18:13 ◼   ► This episode with you was literally

00:18:15 ◼   ► the 25th of August last year.

00:18:17 ◼   ► And as we record, it's the 23rd.

00:18:19 ◼   ► - Cheers to the season.

00:18:20 ◼   ► - And this show will probably come out.

00:18:21 ◼   ► It was a Friday though.

00:18:22 ◼   ► So it was Friday the 25th of August when it was published.

00:18:25 ◼   ► This show will almost certainly be published

00:18:27 ◼   ► on Friday the 24th of August.

00:18:28 ◼   ► And I'm gonna have the same.

00:18:29 ◼   ► - This is the Numinos Oreos episode.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:32 ◼   ► - My favorite side result of that episode a year ago

00:18:35 ◼   ► was I linked not just to WASD keyboards,

00:18:37 ◼   ► but WASD has a thing called the keyboard tester.

00:18:39 ◼   ► And it's just, it's not an electronic device.

00:18:42 ◼   ► It's just a little, a little thing, six key,

00:18:45 ◼   ► little strip, six keys wide with one of the,

00:18:48 ◼   ► each of the six Cherry key switches they offer.

00:18:52 ◼   ► And it's in addition, a nice way to sort of get

00:18:55 ◼   ► a basic idea of what the different key switches are.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Although some of them are so subtly different.

00:19:00 ◼   ► It is, it, it, but it also makes for one

00:19:05 ◼   ► of my favorite desk toys of all time.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It is one of the greatest desk toys of all time.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I've had it on my desk ever since.

00:19:12 ◼   ► And the funny side effect of that is I got an email

00:19:16 ◼   ► from the CEO of WASD Keyboards a week or two later.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And he was like, "I had no idea what was going on.

00:19:22 ◼   ► We sold out of the keyboard testers."

00:19:23 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:19:25 ◼   ► We sell three a week and all of a sudden we sold out

00:19:28 ◼   ► of all of them in a day and I thought we were hacked.

00:19:32 ◼   ► And then somebody figured out that it was your podcast.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And he was very nice and he was like,

00:19:38 ◼   ► that's fantastic, so thank you so much for linking to it.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Would you like me to send you a keyboard?

00:19:43 ◼   ► What would you like?

00:19:44 ◼   ► So he offered me a free keyboard

00:19:46 ◼   ► and I wrote back and thanked him for that.

00:19:47 ◼   ► And I said, let me think about it.

00:19:48 ◼   ► But I never wrote back because I couldn't decide.

00:19:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, there are a lot of decisions.

00:19:55 ◼   ► They ordering the keys and the fact that they can do custom

00:19:58 ◼   ► like any kind of key labeling you want on it too.

00:20:01 ◼   ► So they can like make one that looks like

00:20:03 ◼   ► the your extended keyboard or they've got ones that are super modern, you know, that

00:20:08 ◼   ► goes into it too. But yeah, they're very nice people. And you can order custom keys from

00:20:13 ◼   ► them and stuff and the tester is great. That also solved my problem. I did figure out which

00:20:17 ◼   ► key switches I preferred and that was great. So I'm looking at, you're going to love this

00:20:28 ◼   ► because I know that it's something that you wanted to follow up about from the Marco episode.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I'm looking at my pictures from the Antennagate press conference.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Ah, yes.

00:20:37 ◼   ► And you have never seen three more unhappy people than Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and Bob

00:20:43 ◼   ► Mansfield in these pictures.

00:20:44 ◼   ► They are just miserable.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Nobody wants to be there.

00:20:49 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Well, the follow-up aspect of it is that on the show with Marco, we were talking about

00:20:54 ◼   ► that.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I forget how it came up.

00:20:56 ◼   ► the fact that I asked the question of whether, you know, that there was, it seemed to me like

00:21:02 ◼   ► the way that questions were going in the Q&A period, that people were starting to take the

00:21:07 ◼   ► tack of Apple is saying the solution to this. That's such, yeah, just Jason's photo just popped

00:21:15 ◼   ► into my note and they definitely do not look happy. I could see the narrative forming in the

00:21:21 ◼   ► questions that people were starting to say, okay, Apple says the answer to Antennagate is that

00:21:26 ◼   ► they're going to give everybody a free bumper and everybody should use it to avoid the problem.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And I asked the question whether of any of the people on stage, you know, you guys having

00:21:34 ◼   ► problems, do you need a bumper or, you know, I forget exactly how I phrased it. And instead

00:21:38 ◼   ► of saying anything, all three of them just took their iPhone 4s out of their pocket and

00:21:42 ◼   ► held them up and showed that they were bumper free and it, it, it lightened the mood in

00:21:46 ◼   ► the room. But anyway, the mis—I misremembered. I thought it might have been, I knew Mansfield

00:21:53 ◼   ► was there. I thought it might have been Jobs, Mansfield, and Phil Schiller on stage, but it was

00:21:57 ◼   ► not. It was from left to right, Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, and Big Bob Mansfield from left to right,

00:22:03 ◼   ► who were on stage for the Q&A after that. So that's a correction from two episodes ago.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Jared: Good. Good memories. I was happy to look up my pictures of that. Because, yeah, nobody,

00:22:15 ◼   ► Steve Jobs, I think, came back from a Hawaiian family vacation for that press conference. He

00:22:19 ◼   ► did not want to be there. No, he did not. But it was a masterstroke in PR management.

00:22:27 ◼   ► It was very as arrogant as Apple can be. I think they accurately assessed that the narrative

00:22:35 ◼   ► that the iPhone 4 had a crippling antenna problem was spinning out of control and they

00:22:39 ◼   ► needed to nip it in the bud. Yep. The other correction from the same episode is we were

00:22:46 ◼   ► talking about that trick of what do you do if you really miss the hardware escape key?

00:22:51 ◼   ► And I said something to the effect of maybe what I wish you could do and that the keyboard

00:22:58 ◼   ► system preference panel doesn't let you do is map the tilde key to escape, you know,

00:23:05 ◼   ► the little back tick tilde key, which I forget what I said about it that I don't use tilde

00:23:09 ◼   ► much, but I know I use backticks for code blocks in Markdown, which is in turn a problem

00:23:17 ◼   ► that I never foresaw when I created Markdown because certain keyboards around the world

00:23:23 ◼   ► don't have an easily accessed backtick character.

00:23:28 ◼   ► But anyway, I think it was actually Daniel Jowkett—I mentioned twice already in this

00:23:32 ◼   ► episode—who texted me after listening and said, "I bet you use tilde all the time.

00:23:36 ◼   ► You use Command-tilde to cycle through Windows."

00:23:39 ◼   ► I in fact do and I'd forgotten about that. But anyway, I thought that would be a good

00:23:43 ◼   ► tip just to mention out there for people because it might be one of those little things that

00:23:46 ◼   ► people don't know. But on the Mac, you can in a window in an app with multiple windows

00:23:51 ◼   ► open, you can use the tilde key command tilde and cycle through the open windows. Yeah,

00:23:59 ◼   ► I use that all the time. In fact, speaking of mechanical keyboards, I had a really weird

00:24:02 ◼   ► mechanical keyboard I use for a while that did not have the backtick key or at least

00:24:08 ◼   ► didn't have it in the right place.

00:24:09 ◼   ► And I had to do some keyboard maestro again,

00:24:12 ◼   ► using a giant tool for a really stupid job

00:24:15 ◼   ► to remap it to, I think maybe command escape,

00:24:18 ◼   ► 'cause I think the escape key was in that same upper left.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And that was dumb, but I really needed it

00:24:24 ◼   ► because I suddenly couldn't cycle through windows.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Or type a code block in Markdown,

00:24:31 ◼   ► which I do from time to time.

00:24:33 ◼   ► And then it was just like somebody cut off

00:24:36 ◼   ► one of my fingers.

00:24:37 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here before we really get going. I'll thank our first

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00:27:26 ◼   ► the fizzy water train? I always forget who's who drinks fizzy water and who doesn't. I

00:27:31 ◼   ► am on the train. We have a soda stream and also we've been lately we've just been stuck

00:27:35 ◼   ► in the fridge with La Croix stuff too. So I everybody knows everybody listens to this

00:27:41 ◼   ► show knows I've been a SodaStream user for years. I really am a big fan of their product.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I've got the Penguin. I know they have a bunch of different ones and I think some of their

00:27:51 ◼   ► lower-priced ones aren't as honestly powerful. The Penguin that I have doesn't take plastic

00:27:59 ◼   ► bottles. It takes glass bottles and they've got a real nice top that you can squeeze on.

00:28:04 ◼   ► The old tops I see and the thing is that with the Penguin at least, you can carbonate it

00:28:10 ◼   ► as much as you want. It's not like it gets to a certain standard level of carbonation

00:28:14 ◼   ► and stops. You just keep pushing down on the beak of the penguin and it keeps adding more

00:28:19 ◼   ► carbonation and they usually they say it like it beep it like squeaks when it gets to like,

00:28:24 ◼   ► hey, this is pretty carbonated like what most people would consider fizzy water. I usually

00:28:28 ◼   ► go to about six weeks. I just give it about five, five or six more. And with the old,

00:28:33 ◼   ► the original caps I had with the penguin, they only lasted about six months for me because

00:28:38 ◼   ► Because even though they kind of screwed on and had gaskets, like the level of carbonation

00:28:42 ◼   ► I had in there would crack them.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Like the glass didn't crack, but the bottle caps did.

00:28:47 ◼   ► And now they have a new cap design for the last few years.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I still love the product.

00:28:51 ◼   ► But I was up with my family was up with the Marco Arment and Tiff Arment family in New

00:28:59 ◼   ► York at the beach a while back.

00:29:01 ◼   ► listen to ATP know that there was a risky moment where mid-ATP episode, a torrential downpour

00:29:09 ◼   ► happened. Marco realized all of the windows in the house were open. And I also remembered that I left

00:29:15 ◼   ► my 15-inch MacBook Pro review unit on the kitchen table, which is right next to an open window,

00:29:20 ◼   ► which window does not have any sort of awning. And he went over it. But I was lucky enough,

00:29:28 ◼   ► the lid was closed. There were a couple of drops on the on the lid, but nothing on the keyboard or

00:29:32 ◼   ► anything in them and the machine is fine. But apparently I still haven't gotten I'm still like

00:29:35 ◼   ► an episode or two behind on ATP. Haven't listened to that one yet. And apparently it was sort of

00:29:39 ◼   ► left up in the air with whether John Gruber's review unit was rain stretched or not. But anyway,

00:29:48 ◼   ► on this trip to Fire Island, New York, I found a new product and it's called house a tail,

00:29:56 ◼   ► you know, sort of like the computer how's New York seltzer water. And it is, it is fantastic.

00:30:03 ◼   ► One of the reasons it's fantastic is it seltzer water not and I'm not exactly sure on exactly

00:30:09 ◼   ► what the difference is between like all the different fizzy plain waters like seltzer water

00:30:16 ◼   ► and club soda club soda has some kind of like, like to technically be club soda you have to

00:30:20 ◼   ► have to have like some kind of potassium or something added. To me, when I just get like

00:30:25 ◼   ► a club soda at a restaurant or something, it just tastes like fizzy water to me. But

00:30:30 ◼   ► seltzer water is artificially carbonated, which is what I want because naturally carbonated

00:30:35 ◼   ► water is not fizzy enough. This house, seltzer water, is the busiest goddamn commercial seltzer

00:30:43 ◼   ► water I've ever seen in my life. I want you to listen. I've got a sealed bottle here.

00:30:48 ◼   ► if we can do that. I'm hoping I won't ruin the computer because usually even without shaking the

00:30:52 ◼   ► bottle and having it in the fridge for days, it'll still explode out of the bottle. Listen to this.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Oh, there it went. Holy cow. Got the computer a little wet. Hopefully it'll be all right.

00:31:09 ◼   ► It's been wet before. It's been wet before.

00:31:16 ◼   ► It is fantastic. And here's the thing. Here's the thing that's really got me going and it's got my

00:31:20 ◼   ► whole family addicted to it is that they have a black cherry version. It's just some kind of

00:31:26 ◼   ► natural black cherry flavoring, zero calories, no sweeteners at all. But it sort of tastes like

00:31:32 ◼   ► unsweetened Dr Pepper, which is one of my all time. In fact, I don't really drink sugar soda

00:31:38 ◼   ► water anymore. But back when I did, I love to Dr Pepper. This stuff is absolutely fantastic.

00:31:45 ◼   ► and you can get it mail or you go to the how old New York just Google house New York seltzer

00:31:52 ◼   ► water they don't sell directly but they have links to two distributors who do and it's

00:31:55 ◼   ► somewhat reasonably priced but anyway I gotta throw that out there tell my fizzy water drinking

00:32:02 ◼   ► listeners but I'm telling you when you get the first bottle watch out this stuff is explosive

00:32:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I've been buying,

00:32:14 ◼   ► the Firestone Brewery makes a stout that I really like

00:32:20 ◼   ► that is called the Velvet Merlin,

00:32:22 ◼   ► which always makes me laugh because I know,

00:32:24 ◼   ► I know somebody named Merlin.

00:32:26 ◼   ► - That's actually my nickname for Merlin.

00:32:28 ◼   ► - It's the Velvet Merlin, sure.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Well, they now have a nitro Merlin that they have in a can.

00:32:33 ◼   ► So it's nitro bubbles instead of carbon dioxide.

00:32:37 ◼   ► So it's nitrogen bubbles, so they're smaller.

00:32:39 ◼   ► And the idea is that it's more like a traditional

00:32:41 ◼   ► kind of Irish stout where it's creamier and the little bubbles have this kind of effect

00:32:46 ◼   ► where it starts out looking completely white with bubbles and then the bubbles all just

00:32:51 ◼   ► kind of like slowly migrate to the top. It puts on a show. But anyway, it is fascinating

00:32:57 ◼   ► because it is counterintuitive to how you always have been taught to deal with fizzy

00:33:02 ◼   ► objects that are in pressurized containers. The side of the Nitro Merlin can says, "Flip

00:33:08 ◼   ► can up and down at least three times to then open and pour it as hard as possible into

00:33:16 ◼   ► a glass. Because the idea is you really actually want to agitate those nitro bubbles and get

00:33:21 ◼   ► them out of there, which is great. It is huge fun. It is a show every time I open one, but

00:33:26 ◼   ► I will say when you open it, you will get stout fizz just sort of aerated all over you.

00:33:35 ◼   ► It's part of the show, I guess.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I really was joking when I thought that this would fizz all over my lap. It is all over

00:33:47 ◼   ► my shirt, and there's quite a bit on this MacBook. Seems okay. Good test of that membrane

00:33:55 ◼   ► cover, I guess.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Sure.

00:33:58 ◼   ► Well, all right, that brings us to, I guess, to the news.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I wrote this week about this, as I call it, this new MacBook Air successor thing, which

00:34:13 ◼   ► is effective.

00:34:14 ◼   ► What I tried to do is I tried to square three things.

00:34:18 ◼   ► In terms of what Apple might be doing with MacBooks, the MacBook lineup, for the rest

00:34:22 ◼   ► of this year. Because just last month, they updated the Touch Bar MacBook Pros 13-inch

00:34:29 ◼   ► and 15-inch with faster processors, true tone displays, and this third generation butterfly

00:34:38 ◼   ► keyboard that has some kind of membrane that supposedly keeps out dust, etc. But they didn't

00:34:44 ◼   ► update the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro 13-inch, aka the MacBook Escape, didn't update the

00:34:51 ◼   ► the 12-inch MacBook and Apple hasn't updated the MacBook Air since the late 1990s or so

00:34:59 ◼   ► it seems. So I tried to speculate what Apple might do that would make sense for Apple,

00:35:08 ◼   ► what Apple might do that would be appealing to customers.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And then the third thing I tried to do is square it with what has been reported by Bloomberg's

00:35:18 ◼   ► Mark Gurman, who had a piece earlier this week.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And he had written about it a few months ago,

00:35:25 ◼   ► right before WWDC, which, and DigiTimes,

00:35:30 ◼   ► a Chinese or Taiwanese, I forget,

00:35:32 ◼   ► trade paper that often has rumors,

00:35:34 ◼   ► especially from the display industry had written.

00:35:38 ◼   ► And I think Ming-Chi Kuo, I didn't link to him,

00:35:39 ◼   ► but even Ming-Chi Kuo,

00:35:41 ◼   ► who usually only writes about iPhones and iPads,

00:35:43 ◼   ► he had something to say about it.

00:35:46 ◼   ► and trying to square all three of those things,

00:35:49 ◼   ► what Apple would do that's good for Apple

00:35:52 ◼   ► and what was appealing to customers

00:35:55 ◼   ► and what fits with this reporting is really hard to do

00:35:59 ◼   ► and took me, I thought this would be great

00:36:02 ◼   ► and it often works like this for me at least

00:36:04 ◼   ► is I think this is something

00:36:05 ◼   ► that I would love to write about.

00:36:07 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like anybody else has really written about.

00:36:09 ◼   ► It seems like people are confused already

00:36:12 ◼   ► by what I'm trying to say

00:36:13 ◼   ► because when I first linked to the Gurman story,

00:36:16 ◼   ► I was trying to make all the points

00:36:18 ◼   ► I ended up spending 2000 words making,

00:36:22 ◼   ► and therefore it's no surprise that I was misunderstood.

00:36:26 ◼   ► But it is complicated,

00:36:29 ◼   ► and I can think of nobody better to talk about it with

00:36:31 ◼   ► than somebody who I've talked about MacBook lineups with

00:36:35 ◼   ► many times before.

00:36:36 ◼   ► - It is super complicated,

00:36:38 ◼   ► and I laughed when I read your piece

00:36:40 ◼   ► about how you started thinking one thing,

00:36:42 ◼   ► then halfway through you're like, "Wait a second," and started to think of something

00:36:46 ◼   ► else because that has happened to me too, writing and talking about this issue because

00:36:51 ◼   ► there is sometimes, you know, there are Apple rumors and it's just like very clear what

00:36:56 ◼   ► the product is going to be. But with this, there are a bunch of different ways that could

00:36:59 ◼   ► go. None of them feels, as you elaborate, none of them feels particularly satisfying

00:37:05 ◼   ► like, "Oh, oh, that's it. That's the one they're going to do," because they all involve kind

00:37:09 ◼   ► choices that seem kind of un-Apple-like, which I think is rooted in this idea that I know

00:37:13 ◼   ► you and I have talked about, that the MacBook, which I think somebody thought at some point

00:37:19 ◼   ► in the process that that would replace the MacBook Air, but at $12.99 it's $300 too expensive

00:37:25 ◼   ► to replace the MacBook Air, and that that seems to have surprised somebody somewhere

00:37:29 ◼   ► at Apple and has led them in this weird position where they couldn't get rid of the Air, and

00:37:33 ◼   ► now what do they replace it with? And I think that's part of the problem here is that

00:37:39 ◼   ► that they're still kind of like trying to figure out

00:37:41 ◼   ► how to deal with the fact that they've got

00:37:43 ◼   ► the MacBook Pro Escape 13-inch,

00:37:46 ◼   ► they've got the MacBook,

00:37:48 ◼   ► and then they've got this MacBook Air,

00:37:49 ◼   ► and like they seem to have rationalized

00:37:51 ◼   ► kind of the top pro level of their laptops this year,

00:37:55 ◼   ► but the consumer part is the other shoe that has to drop,

00:38:00 ◼   ► and we all know it.

00:38:01 ◼   ► The fact that the Escape didn't get updated

00:38:03 ◼   ► also suggests that something is going on there.

00:38:05 ◼   ► I wonder about if it's really gonna stay a MacBook Pro,

00:38:08 ◼   ► or if it's gonna graduate to, or get demoted or whatever

00:38:11 ◼   ► to something else, but something's gotta give

00:38:14 ◼   ► 'cause they can't keep selling that MacBook Air forever.

00:38:16 ◼   ► But as you've said, none of the suspects

00:38:21 ◼   ► are like the stone cold lock where you're like,

00:38:24 ◼   ► that's what they're gonna do.

00:38:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's so many ways it could turn out

00:38:27 ◼   ► and I'd be like, okay, I get it.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But none of them are to me like in advance a lock.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And the one thing that blinded me at first,

00:38:36 ◼   ► and I think you'll agree, I think you'll be in,

00:38:39 ◼   ► say you're in the same boat with me on this,

00:38:41 ◼   ► is that there have been times

00:38:43 ◼   ► when Apple's entire portable strategy,

00:38:46 ◼   ► and I know that I just, for the first time in my life,

00:38:48 ◼   ► I noticed this week while researching this going back,

00:38:52 ◼   ► that when Apple needs a word,

00:38:54 ◼   ► I don't think they're 100% consistent on this.

00:38:57 ◼   ► I think they've said the word laptop at some point

00:39:00 ◼   ► and maybe said notebook at some point,

00:39:02 ◼   ► but rather than laptop or notebook,

00:39:03 ◼   ► and I often equivocate between the two,

00:39:06 ◼   ► Because my problem with laptop is it implies you have to use it on your lap.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Like and I very seldom, other than when I'm on an airplane, use my portable computer on

00:39:18 ◼   ► my actual lap.

00:39:21 ◼   ► But if you use the word laptop, people know what it means, right?

00:39:24 ◼   ► And maybe it's just like forget about the origins.

00:39:27 ◼   ► People know what you mean when you say a laptop.

00:39:31 ◼   ► But I've noticed that Apple often calls them portables, you know, portable Mac.

00:39:36 ◼   ► But anyway, so I'll use the word portable.

00:39:37 ◼   ► But Apple's portable Mac lineup at times has had extraordinary clarity dating back

00:39:44 ◼   ► to like the original little quadrant that Steve Jobs had in 1998 of, "Look, we've

00:39:50 ◼   ► got portables and desktops and we have consumer products and professional products and our

00:39:59 ◼   ► portable consumer product is the iBook

00:40:02 ◼   ► and our portable professional is the,

00:40:05 ◼   ► at the time, PowerBook.

00:40:07 ◼   ► And maybe there's multiple PowerBooks,

00:40:09 ◼   ► usually there's multiple PowerBooks,

00:40:11 ◼   ► but at least the basic idea of the lineup

00:40:13 ◼   ► has this sort of clarity.

00:40:15 ◼   ► And when there were, you know,

00:40:19 ◼   ► maybe eight years later

00:40:20 ◼   ► when there were those plastic MacBooks,

00:40:23 ◼   ► remember when the black MacBook

00:40:25 ◼   ► cost more than the white one,

00:40:26 ◼   ► even though it was the same material?

00:40:28 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I had one of those I paid the black tax on that for sure

00:40:32 ◼   ► I I never had one of those but I would have absolutely paid the black tax on that because

00:40:38 ◼   ► I've always if I have the choice between a black and white, I don't think I've ever chosen

00:40:43 ◼   ► white

00:40:46 ◼   ► It I always think of that when I think of the the premium that they charge on the new

00:40:51 ◼   ► keyboard and mouse and trackpad for the iMac Pro

00:40:54 ◼   ► Like it's

00:40:58 ◼   ► Everybody knows they're cool. Everybody knows darker is cooler, but

00:41:01 ◼   ► But that was a very clear lineup the plastic

00:41:04 ◼   ► Macbooks

00:41:06 ◼   ► versus the aluminum MacBook Pros and then just looking at the specs and you know

00:41:11 ◼   ► Everything about them it that why this one cost more than that one and why you might want one over the other was very clear

00:41:18 ◼   ► And then I think that the clearest that the Apple laptop line has ever been

00:41:24 ◼   ► and and maybe like that it's it's just the high water mark was when the the

00:41:29 ◼   ► the MacBook Air

00:41:32 ◼   ► First took over the low end and and they didn't have anything. They no longer had a computer called just the MacBook

00:41:39 ◼   ► Maybe naming wise that didn't quite make as much sense. But when it was an

00:41:44 ◼   ► 899

00:41:45 ◼   ► 11 inch MacBook Air a

00:41:47 ◼   ► 999 starting point 13 inch MacBook Air and

00:41:52 ◼   ► and then thicker, heavier MacBook Pros of 13 and 15

00:41:57 ◼   ► at a higher price point, that was, to me, very clear.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And I don't know that the lower end models

00:42:05 ◼   ► had ever or even since have ever been so appealing

00:42:09 ◼   ► in terms of there were people who could afford

00:42:12 ◼   ► a $3,000 MacBook Pro and were happy with

00:42:15 ◼   ► a slightly upgraded 1199 MacBook Air

00:42:19 ◼   ► because they actually preferred it in every way.

00:42:22 ◼   ► I was one of those people. I mean, I have a right near me, right over my shoulder right

00:42:26 ◼   ► now, an i7, maybe? MacBook Air 11-inch, right? Like, maxed out settings, but in this little

00:42:36 ◼   ► tiny MacBook Air. So, I always like those. And I think you're right. There was some clarity.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Again, I keep coming back to like the root of this, the kind of original sin of this

00:42:50 ◼   ► to me in the retina transition on the laptops, the MacBook could, the MacBook design they

00:42:57 ◼   ► made to replace the MacBook Air was more expensive than they thought it would be. And although

00:43:04 ◼   ► there's plenty of profit margin built in there, you know that Apple has some rules internally

00:43:09 ◼   ► about what every product has to throw off in terms of margin. And for whatever reason,

00:43:15 ◼   ► that MacBook ended up being way more expensive than I suspect they intended. Because I got

00:43:19 ◼   ► to think that MacBook was intended to be eventually to rest at, if not $999, then like $1099,

00:43:27 ◼   ► and they just haven't been able to do it. And so then there's this like, "Well, wait

00:43:30 ◼   ► a second, we renamed this as the MacBook." And that's one of your big questions in your

00:43:35 ◼   ► article is like, "What do you even call it?" Let's assume that it's not actually a MacBook

00:43:39 ◼   ► Air because I don't think it will be, but that there's a new model, a new model that's

00:43:44 ◼   ► intended to be sub $1000, assuming that there's no way for them to get the MacBook to start

00:43:49 ◼   ► at $999, which they might be able to do, but it's so compromised that I don't know whether

00:43:54 ◼   ► people would rush to buy it like they did the MacBook Air. But let's just assume there's

00:43:58 ◼   ► a new model. What name do they give it? Because they already took generic plain MacBook and

00:44:06 ◼   ► put it in the 12-inch that we know, and if they make like a 13-inch model but it isn't

00:44:12 ◼   ► as nice and it costs less so you're paying more for a smaller laptop, like they could

00:44:16 ◼   ► do that but I wouldn't say that that provides crystal clarity to the line and so that I

00:44:23 ◼   ► think that's at the root of us looking at this and scratching our heads is that to a

00:44:27 ◼   ► certain degree they're going to be doing I think a little bit of damage control because

00:44:31 ◼   ► they just didn't quite it didn't happen the way they thought maybe it would happen originally

00:44:36 ◼   ► yeah and I don't by any means think that the 12-inch MacBook is a dud or a failure I see

00:44:40 ◼   ► a fair amount of them my daughter has one and she loves it and I play around with it

00:44:45 ◼   ► and I think it's really great and if I wasn't using my iPad so much now I would almost certainly

00:44:50 ◼   ► have gotten that 12 inch MacBook because it's so light and you know it's it's it's fun it's

00:44:57 ◼   ► not gonna you know it's not a professional tool but it is it's pretty great the screen

00:45:02 ◼   ► is gorgeous and it's super small and light and it gets great battery life yeah my daughter

00:45:07 ◼   ► loves her, absolutely loves it.

00:45:09 ◼   ► I am 98% sure that—and again, this doesn't prove that he actually uses it on a regular

00:45:18 ◼   ► basis. I mean, it might have been his choice. But when there was that weird, "Hey, we're

00:45:24 ◼   ► going to do a Mac Pro thing at Apple," where they had me and Panzorino and Lance Ulanoff

00:45:30 ◼   ► and John Petzkowski and, you know, Fried, I think that was everybody who was invited.

00:45:36 ◼   ► the five of us and they were doing it. She had a little PowerPoint presentation for some

00:45:41 ◼   ► of, you know, just for what he wanted to talk through and it was on a MacBook, a 12 inch

00:45:45 ◼   ► MacBook and he was going through it and I really do get the impression that that was

00:45:49 ◼   ► his MacBook, you know, that he made this because it wasn't a big deal. I mean, why wouldn't

00:45:53 ◼   ► it be? It was his MacBook and he was talking about it at one point and he had it on the

00:45:58 ◼   ► whole time and I don't know, we were like an hour and five minutes into it and he like

00:46:01 ◼   ► turned it around. He was like, look, I've still got 99% battery life. I mean, it's really

00:46:05 ◼   ► a term and he's like, I love this thing, but it really is a tremendous computer. But I

00:46:11 ◼   ► do think that there's an awful lot of people who look at it and think it's too small. Like,

00:46:15 ◼   ► I think people look at a 13 inch laptop and think that's a normal laptop size. And you

00:46:22 ◼   ► know, 13 inches actually, you know, at least by Apple's 13 inches 13.3 and those little

00:46:28 ◼   ► point threes, you know, measure up like a third, you know, the the 12 inch MacBook looks,

00:46:34 ◼   ► know 12 and 13 don't sound like vastly different numbers but when you look at a

00:46:37 ◼   ► MacBook next to a 13 inch MacBook Pro it looks tiny truly tiny and I really feel

00:46:44 ◼   ► like it might be too small to be their best-selling model yeah I think so I

00:46:48 ◼   ► mean as an 11 inch MacBook Air user it was definitely an outlier and most

00:46:52 ◼   ► people thought that was a bridge too far to go down to 11 inches but the 13 work

00:46:56 ◼   ► for them yeah and I was for years you know longtime listeners at the show know

00:47:00 ◼   ► that I I think my current 30 personal 13 inch MacBook Pro is might be my longest running personally used

00:47:08 ◼   ► Laptop, and if it's not it probably will be by the time I replace it because I've had it at least four years at this

00:47:13 ◼   ► point

00:47:14 ◼   ► and love it, but I had an 11 inch MacBook Air for a long time and

00:47:18 ◼   ► Really liked it in a lot of ways

00:47:21 ◼   ► and

00:47:22 ◼   ► Especially when traveling man that thing was just it's just um was just um, but I had I forget which you know

00:47:28 ◼   ► Tom Bihn has like 30 different gazillion little over-the-shoulder bags, but I got one that

00:47:33 ◼   ► was meant for an 11-inch Air.

00:47:38 ◼   ► And honestly, I could sometimes be getting on an airplane and I just couldn't believe

00:47:43 ◼   ► how small this bag was with a complete MacBook setup in it.

00:47:48 ◼   ► It just seemed impossible.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And come to think of it, I never really thought about this before, but the years when I was

00:47:55 ◼   ► using that 11-inch MacBook Air as my travel computer was when my son was a lot younger.

00:48:01 ◼   ► And anybody who's traveled with even just one young child, you really wind up schlepping an

00:48:10 ◼   ► awful lot of stuff in and out of cars, cabs, monorails, and airport overhead bins. So it

00:48:22 ◼   ► sounds ridiculous to think that the difference between an 11 and 13 inch MacBook Air would really

00:48:26 ◼   ► make it, but it, whether it really, really did, it made me think it did, you know, it really felt

00:48:32 ◼   ► like, well, at least I'm saving something here. Oh yeah, every time I open the thing up, I'm like,

00:48:37 ◼   ► oh, it's so, it's so small, right? And, and although my daughter's computer does the same

00:48:42 ◼   ► thing, right? That 12 inch MacBook. So, so, okay. So what is it then? What is this thing? I would

00:48:47 ◼   ► say that also that in the Bloomberg story, they don't actually say, they kind of put it in the

00:48:52 ◼   ► context of the MacBook Air, but they don't say what it's actually going to cost, just

00:48:56 ◼   ► that it's low cost and that it's sort of a replacement for the MacBook Air. It's all

00:49:00 ◼   ► very hazy. And again, Mark Gurman, great sources. The facts he reports, I believe are facts.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I believe it. But then they have to build a story around it, and then we all kind of

00:49:09 ◼   ► add our own assumptions. So what do you think? Like, what is this thing? What is it going

00:49:15 ◼   ► to be?

00:49:16 ◼   ► Right. What I tried to point out when I first linked to this report was that I maybe I should

00:49:20 ◼   ► is stuck to saying this raises more questions than it answers. And there's this whole contingent

00:49:25 ◼   ► of people who I point these things out about Gurman reports publicly. And then I get so

00:49:31 ◼   ► much Twitter feedback of why are you jealous? Why do you hate Gurman? Why? You know, it's

00:49:35 ◼   ► a bad look, john, why do you always every time Gurman has one of these reports, you

00:49:38 ◼   ► should all over it. You know, it's a bad look. He's doing great work. He's better writer

00:49:42 ◼   ► than you. I mean, I get it all. And that's it. It doesn't really bother me except that

00:49:47 ◼   ► I feel like I'm being misunderstood and I worry that I don't worry that people are saying that

00:49:51 ◼   ► about me. I just worry that I'm failing as a writer because I've clearly failed to convey what

00:49:55 ◼   ► I'm trying to say, which is that basically this report, let's just take it all as true. And he

00:50:02 ◼   ► usually is right. And what he wrote here, I wouldn't be surprised if it's word for word true,

00:50:07 ◼   ► raises a lot more questions than it provides answers. And I'm not criticizing him. You know,

00:50:11 ◼   ► He's got a scoop here that nobody else seems to have,

00:50:14 ◼   ► but either his source doesn't know,

00:50:19 ◼   ► knows that it's coming out

00:50:22 ◼   ► and knows that it's supposed to be low cost

00:50:24 ◼   ► and knows that it looks, quote, similar

00:50:26 ◼   ► to the current MacBook Air and doesn't know anything else,

00:50:29 ◼   ► or he has a source who does know more

00:50:32 ◼   ► but wasn't willing to tell him more,

00:50:34 ◼   ► or wasn't willing to tell him more for publication.

00:50:38 ◼   ► There's all sorts of ways that that could work out.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And I feel like what some people who,

00:50:43 ◼   ► and people aren't supposed to know the inside baseball.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And it's like the people who compliment me sometimes

00:50:49 ◼   ► when I write things like this are like colleagues, you know?

00:50:53 ◼   ► And I say, hey, that was good when you called that out

00:50:55 ◼   ► or on something, something.

00:50:56 ◼   ► What people who aren't in the industry,

00:51:01 ◼   ► who aren't writers don't really think about

00:51:03 ◼   ► is they don't think about who the source is.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I read this story and I immediately think,

00:51:07 ◼   ► well, who could possibly be the source for this

00:51:09 ◼   ► and why wouldn't they know more?

00:51:10 ◼   ► And then I immediately think, oh wait, they might know more.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And either didn't tell him or told him

00:51:18 ◼   ► and insisted that he couldn't publish more than what he did.

00:51:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, my gut feeling with all of these,

00:51:24 ◼   ► and I agree with you,

00:51:25 ◼   ► always ask why somebody's giving the information out

00:51:30 ◼   ► and who they are.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Because that's like fundamental,

00:51:33 ◼   ► like every time that there's like a controversial thing

00:51:36 ◼   ► about a project that's been killed or something like that,

00:51:38 ◼   ► it's like, who would be motivated to do that?

00:51:40 ◼   ► So just something like this, I imagine the way Apple is siloed, that this is somebody

00:51:45 ◼   ► who has heard or knows a little bit, but doesn't know the whole story. And they're happy to

00:51:50 ◼   ► give Mark Gurman tidbits. That's like literally all they know. And I think Gurman, again,

00:51:57 ◼   ► I really think highly of him. I think he does a great job as a reporter. I think in the

00:52:01 ◼   ► context of Bloomberg, as opposed to back when he was on 9to5Mac, Bloomberg wants him to

00:52:08 ◼   ► these kind of larger narratives in which his stuff is embedded and it can lead to us all

00:52:15 ◼   ► looking at the story and going, "Well, wait a second. There's a thousand words here, but

00:52:19 ◼   ► there's really like five facts." And I think it doesn't, you know, sometimes those stories

00:52:24 ◼   ► are really great when he's got a lot of extra tidbits, but when he doesn't have a lot of

00:52:29 ◼   ► extra tidbits, it comes across that they're trying to create kind of a really thin gruel,

00:52:34 ◼   ► They're trying to stretch their what they've got by putting in a lot of water or a lot

00:52:39 ◼   ► of filler. And I think this is a good example of that because we don't know a lot. He doesn't

00:52:44 ◼   ► know a lot, but he has some tidbits. Like he's basically saying, and I believe him,

00:52:47 ◼   ► like low-cost laptop coming into the Mac line is going to happen. Like totally great. But

00:52:53 ◼   ► whoever he talked to, you're right, either wouldn't say or I think more likely doesn't

00:52:59 ◼   ► know because like above it's above their pay grade. Like they're working in a part of Apple

00:53:03 ◼   ► where they got like a little bit of a glancing blow like where they're like I know just enough

00:53:10 ◼   ► but no more because those people are probably either aware that they're being surveilled or

00:53:15 ◼   ► are very good employees who want to make sure that it's a secret. Right, so just to reiterate

00:53:22 ◼   ► for anybody you know I go over this in my article but it's good to talk about but like the actual

00:53:26 ◼   ► facts about this machine that he that his report lists and it is I should add it is co-bylined

00:53:32 ◼   ► with Debbie Wu at Bloomberg. So we're making some assumptions here about the sources coming

00:53:38 ◼   ► from Germin and who knows, they could have come from Debbie Wu. So it, you know, no slight

00:53:43 ◼   ► intended but I don't, you know, I think most people assume that the sources are Ghermans

00:53:48 ◼   ► and maybe some of the rest of the narrative comes from her but so we'll just say Bloomberg.

00:53:54 ◼   ► We don't know. Yeah, right. We don't know. But Apple will release a new low cost laptop

00:54:01 ◼   ► a professional-focused upgrade to the Mac Mini desktop later this year.

00:54:05 ◼   ► All right, we can get back to this new Mac Mini later.

00:54:11 ◼   ► Next paragraph, according to people familiar with the plans.

00:54:16 ◼   ► The new laptop will look similar to the current MacBook Air, but will include thinner bezels

00:54:22 ◼   ► around the screen.

00:54:23 ◼   ► The display, which will remain about 13 inches, will be a higher resolution "retina" version

00:54:28 ◼   ► that Apple uses on other products that people said.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:54:33 ◼   ► That is literally the entire description of this.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And the thing-- like I said, I have these assumptions

00:54:40 ◼   ► that Apple wants to get back to a simple lineup of MacBooks

00:54:44 ◼   ► and MacBook Pros.

00:54:48 ◼   ► One, two, that may be a bad assumption,

00:54:51 ◼   ► and I've revisited.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I think there's an awful lot of people out there.

00:54:55 ◼   ► I know that there's a lot of people.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I hear it on Twitter.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I hear it see it in my email from during fireball

00:54:59 ◼   ► I know that there are a lot of people who for three or four years have been clamoring for one specific thing

00:55:05 ◼   ► just take the MacBook Air and put a retina display on it that the one and only thing they don't like about the Mac book air

00:55:11 ◼   ► as Apple has continued to sell it is the lack of a

00:55:14 ◼   ► Retina display. Yeah, and I even saw people I don't know at this point

00:55:18 ◼   ► I think enough years have gone by that people sort of expect now that a retin-am MacBook Air would would take over at $9.99

00:55:25 ◼   ► And I think looking at the market, that's reasonable, especially for a retina display.

00:55:31 ◼   ► There's all sorts of other technologies that have cryptin to displays like higher

00:55:35 ◼   ► brightness levels and significantly wider color gamuts.

00:55:40 ◼   ► And now we even have, I'm looking at one right now, one with true tone.

00:55:45 ◼   ► Apple could fulfill… the number one thing that people want is retina.

00:55:50 ◼   ► So it could be a lower cost retina that doesn't have true tone and maybe the wide color gamut.

00:55:55 ◼   ► or something like that. And most people would be just fine with that. All they want is just take a

00:56:01 ◼   ► MacBook Air and stick a goddamn retina screen on it. I mean, and there's a lot of people

00:56:04 ◼   ► who've wanted that for a while, who still want it. And when they read this report from Mark

00:56:09 ◼   ► Gurman, what they read was, "Apple is going to take the MacBook Air and stick a retina screen in

00:56:16 ◼   ► it and lower the, you know, small enough the bezels." Yeah. And that is, it doesn't follow,

00:56:21 ◼   ► especially since the way it's phrased like looks similar to the MacBook Air. Oh, do you mean that it's gonna be an aluminum laptop?

00:56:27 ◼   ► I mean, right?

00:56:29 ◼   ► Like they all look like the MacBook Air.

00:56:31 ◼   ► Every day in some sense every computer Apple makes right now looks similar to the MacBook Air.

00:56:38 ◼   ► The 13th, you know,

00:56:41 ◼   ► maybe if we want to you could rule out the 15-inch, right?

00:56:44 ◼   ► You can say 15-inch doesn't look like the MacBook Air except you could say it looks like a bigger MacBook Air.

00:56:50 ◼   ► Yeah, right, so I'm not sure I kind of discount that like looks kind of like the MacBook Air

00:56:55 ◼   ► statement as being almost no information like right we can just discount that but it is

00:57:00 ◼   ► I agree. I mean, it's funny the things that people wanted and don't want like for lots

00:57:06 ◼   ► of good reasons like USB a ports magsafe SD card slot like there's so many reasons other

00:57:12 ◼   ► than the retina screen and the fact that it is a processor architecture that would the

00:57:17 ◼   ► whole internals would have to be redone because they have run out of road on that processor

00:57:21 ◼   ► and they want a more modern processor in there. But I feel like what you and I know about

00:57:25 ◼   ► Apple is if they're going to put time into doing a new piece of hardware, they want to

00:57:28 ◼   ► be able to ride it for a few years and to rebuild the internals of a MacBook Air and

00:57:34 ◼   ► yet keep everything else the same. I just I can't imagine them doing that, which is

00:57:38 ◼   ► if I had to guess today, I'm just and I may I reserve the right to go back on this immediately,

00:57:43 ◼   ► while we're talking, but if I had to guess today, what I would say is they're going to

00:57:48 ◼   ► do two things. They're going to, I mean, they'll update the MacBook, right? And hopefully maybe

00:57:52 ◼   ► even cut the price on it a little bit, but I think they're going to do two other things.

00:57:56 ◼   ► I think I want to predict, who knows what, I have no information, I'm just guessing,

00:58:00 ◼   ► that they really want to kind of push that MacBook escape down, maybe even take the name

00:58:06 ◼   ► Pro off of it. And that would be a good kind of like MacBook companion. There's the MacBook

00:58:13 ◼   ► 12 and the MacBook 13 and here they are. And then there's going to be another model with

00:58:18 ◼   ► a probably a different name that is going to cut lots of corners. It's going to use

00:58:25 ◼   ► stuff that is not up to the level of the hardware that's in the other laptops and that's going

00:58:33 ◼   ► allow Apple to maintain margin and be under a thousand. And I don't know what you call

00:58:37 ◼   ► that. I still think it's not going to be like a hunk of plastic. It's still going to be

00:58:40 ◼   ► an aluminum enclosure. But if I had to guess, based on this Germin report and the other

00:58:44 ◼   ► reports that we've seen, that they may have just finally at some point said, "You know

00:58:48 ◼   ► what? We just need to make an official, cheap, not as good laptop to replace the Air." But

00:58:54 ◼   ► I still think it's going to have USB-C and, you know, and charge via USB-C and all of

00:59:00 ◼   ► the things that are in modern Mac laptops. I don't think they're gonna just make a MacBook

00:59:05 ◼   ► Air with a new chip inside and a retina screen. Right. Even though I think that that's what

00:59:09 ◼   ► a lot of people in fact, even if I wrote it and tried to make the case against that people

00:59:12 ◼   ► are like, well, I hope you're wrong and they still do that. And it's like, well, I wish

00:59:15 ◼   ► you good luck. And you know, and of course, the other thing that people along those exact

00:59:19 ◼   ► same lines that people are very adamantly hoping will not change is the keyboard. And

00:59:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I just don't think that's... No, I get it. I totally... You and I, you said in your piece,

00:59:32 ◼   ► like, we totally get it. I wrote a piece earlier this year for Macworld called something like

00:59:36 ◼   ► MacBook Air, Why Won't It Die? And people are like, "Why are you trying to kill the MacBook

00:59:40 ◼   ► Air?" And I'm like, "No, no, no, no." The piece is basically like, people won't let it die. They

00:59:45 ◼   ► keep buying it because they like it and they like MagSafe and they like the keyboard and they like

00:59:49 ◼   ► the SD card slot and they like USB-A, like all of these things that Apple thought were like selling

00:59:53 ◼   ► points of the new generation of laptops and people are like "not really" and the only things you can

00:59:58 ◼   ► say are the processor could be faster and it should have a retina display. So you know totally get it.

01:00:04 ◼   ► I just don't believe that Apple will would put in all that effort to just make kind of a new version

01:00:10 ◼   ► of five years ago's laptop which is what kind of word we're saying it would be. Yeah and you know

01:00:16 ◼   ► it is funny because I know that there's I think there's a Dell where you know like the bezels

01:00:23 ◼   ► surrounding the current MacBook Pros, these latest ones, are significantly smaller than

01:00:29 ◼   ► the bezels on any MacBook Apple's ever made. I strongly suspect that if this new thing

01:00:37 ◼   ► is a low-cost computer, that the bezels, that's about the best you can hope for. But there

01:00:44 ◼   ► are other laptop makers out there, like I think Dell in particular, who have laptops

01:00:50 ◼   ► with bezels that make even the MacBook Pros look small.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Everybody's in phones, tablets, everywhere,

01:00:57 ◼   ► everybody's in a race to get edge-to-edge screens.

01:01:00 ◼   ► And aesthetically, I can see why.

01:01:03 ◼   ► But even if, and then you look at the Air,

01:01:08 ◼   ► and the Air, as we know it today,

01:01:10 ◼   ► really does have ancient-looking bezels.

01:01:13 ◼   ► They're not even, they're not even black.

01:01:17 ◼   ► there's like this big gray thick picture frame around the display.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean it is,

01:01:22 ◼   ► it is very old display tech cause they never changed that screen and there's

01:01:27 ◼   ► nice things about it because it's the super thin. Uh,

01:01:31 ◼   ► I always liked it because I thought it was,

01:01:32 ◼   ► had much less glare on it than the full sheet of glass on a Mac book pro.

01:01:37 ◼   ► I always liked the display on it other than the fact that it's not retina.

01:01:40 ◼   ► It's still like really nice.

01:01:41 ◼   ► But the trade off is that you get rid of that whole edge to edge sheet of glass,

01:01:46 ◼   ► but it means you got a big silver rectangle

01:01:49 ◼   ► that you're looking through to see your screen.

01:01:51 ◼   ► And that's Apple-designed styling

01:01:54 ◼   ► of like eight years ago, 10 years ago, it's super old.

01:01:57 ◼   ► So I can't imagine them sticking with something like that.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Technology's also advanced a lot in 10 years.

01:02:03 ◼   ► So I think that the kind of thing that they would use

01:02:05 ◼   ► may be more akin to a MacBook.

01:02:06 ◼   ► But I do keep coming back to that.

01:02:08 ◼   ► I was thinking about the Microsoft Surface laptop,

01:02:12 ◼   ► Surface notebook, I forget what it's called,

01:02:13 ◼   ► but it's the one that's a pure laptop.

01:02:15 ◼   ► It's not a tablet or a convertible, it's the laptop.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And they got that to start at 999.

01:02:20 ◼   ► - Yes. - And it looks very much

01:02:21 ◼   ► like a MacBook Air, but how did they do it?

01:02:22 ◼   ► It is this, to take a word from the car world,

01:02:27 ◼   ► it's decontenting, where it's just like,

01:02:29 ◼   ► its specs are terrible, but it starts at 999.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And I do have that question sometimes of like,

01:02:35 ◼   ► would Apple in the Tim Cook era do something

01:02:38 ◼   ► that Apple kind of has shied away from in the past,

01:02:40 ◼   ► which is to make an entry-level system

01:02:42 ◼   ► where the specs are really not very good.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Apple tends to sort of say, no, no, no, below here,

01:02:47 ◼   ► we're not gonna even go

01:02:49 ◼   ► because it's not a good enough experience.

01:02:50 ◼   ► But it would be one way to get those laptops

01:02:53 ◼   ► down under a thousand 'cause that's what Microsoft did.

01:02:55 ◼   ► And like you look at that 999 Surface laptop

01:02:59 ◼   ► and you don't want it.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Like you don't want that model.

01:03:02 ◼   ► You want one that's a couple hundred dollars more,

01:03:04 ◼   ► but they can say that it starts at 999

01:03:06 ◼   ► and that's important for buying psychology.

01:03:09 ◼   ► But I do fear like all the schools that are like,

01:03:11 ◼   ► yeah, that's great.

01:03:12 ◼   ► We're going to get that laptop.

01:03:13 ◼   ► It's like, no, you don't want that laptop.

01:03:15 ◼   ► If schools are even buying Surface laptops,

01:03:17 ◼   ► they probably aren't.

01:03:18 ◼   ► They're probably just buying Chromebooks.

01:03:19 ◼   ► - I think you're talking about the Surface Book.

01:03:22 ◼   ► - Surface Book, that's it.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Yeah, the one that, the one,

01:03:24 ◼   ► it's not the one where it like has the weird bendy hinge.

01:03:28 ◼   ► It's the one that's just a MacBook Air.

01:03:29 ◼   ► It's just a Microsoft MacBook Air.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think.

01:03:34 ◼   ► But I know what you mean.

01:03:35 ◼   ► And to some extent, Apple has clearly already been doing

01:03:38 ◼   ► that by continuing to sell this MacBook Air.

01:03:40 ◼   ► The MacBook Air, when you go in and say,

01:03:42 ◼   ► I want the 999 MacBook Air. You're not just getting a non retina screen, which is really

01:03:47 ◼   ► It in my opinion embarrassing in 2018, but it only has eight

01:03:52 ◼   ► Gigabytes of RAM it you can't even build the order to get more RAM

01:03:56 ◼   ► Literally the MacBook Air every MacBook Air gets eight gigs of RAM and you'll like it

01:04:02 ◼   ► and the default one only has 128 gigabytes of SSD storage, which I think is I

01:04:08 ◼   ► I mean, it's not terrible.

01:04:10 ◼   ► I know that the way that SSD doubles in these powers of two,

01:04:14 ◼   ► that going from 64 to 128 got them over the hump

01:04:19 ◼   ► of being usable for people as their main computer.

01:04:23 ◼   ► But 128 is pretty bad today.

01:04:26 ◼   ► But I wouldn't be surprised to see,

01:04:29 ◼   ► to hit that 999 mark if the new one comes out

01:04:32 ◼   ► and it still is at 128 for that 999 config.

01:04:35 ◼   ► - And so real time follow up,

01:04:37 ◼   ► It's the Surface Laptop.

01:04:38 ◼   ► - Okay, Surface Laptop.

01:04:40 ◼   ► - And it's the one that's got the kind of fabric cover on it

01:04:42 ◼   ► but it's a laptop and it looks kind of like a MacBook Air.

01:04:45 ◼   ► And it actually starts at $799.

01:04:47 ◼   ► But again, that is not a configuration that you would want.

01:04:51 ◼   ► So I do think about that sometimes,

01:04:53 ◼   ► like would Apple do that?

01:04:54 ◼   ► And like literally like one of the ways

01:04:56 ◼   ► you get down under a thousand

01:04:57 ◼   ► isn't by inventing a whole brand new computer

01:04:59 ◼   ► that is made with cheaper technology,

01:05:01 ◼   ► although they could do that.

01:05:03 ◼   ► One way to get down there is to do something

01:05:05 ◼   ► that they're very good at actually, which is, you know, you make a base configuration

01:05:10 ◼   ► and then all of the upgrades are kind of pricey so that the average selling price of a laptop

01:05:16 ◼   ► is still pretty high even though they now have something that's $999.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Right. And figure out a way to make it so that anybody could at least, you know, most

01:05:27 ◼   ► people could at least see, "Oh yeah, maybe I do want to spend a little bit more to get

01:05:31 ◼   ► it." Right. But to your point, it would be a hard,

01:05:34 ◼   ► currently designed the MacBook escape kind of can't go down there so they one possibility

01:05:38 ◼   ► is that the MacBook escape gets kind of like redesigned into something that's cheaper but

01:05:43 ◼   ► like I said earlier I think I think it maybe is more likely that there's just a new model

01:05:48 ◼   ► that doesn't have all the great stuff in it and it's not you know that Apple was a little

01:05:54 ◼   ► I think that this is the truth of the of the MacBook and of the retina MacBooks in general

01:05:58 ◼   ► with this generation is Apple was a little too aggressive with pushing the new expensive

01:06:05 ◼   ► tech, thinking people would really love it. And they don't love, love it, and it's more

01:06:11 ◼   ► expensive than they thought, and that has made this like space beneath. So maybe there's

01:06:16 ◼   ► yeah, maybe there's something that's just a little not as nice, but still a Mac, still

01:06:21 ◼   ► a good laptop, and something that is going to appeal to all those people who are, I mean,

01:06:26 ◼   ► Because let's be honest here, there are people still buying MacBook Airs in 2018 at $999.

01:06:30 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely. Right now, today, it is the best-selling Mac that they make. I don't know

01:06:35 ◼   ► this for a fact, but I'm convinced that it's true.

01:06:37 ◼   ► Sure feels like it, right? With the exception of when there's pent-up demand for a brand

01:06:40 ◼   ► new model, I think in general, over the long haul, I think you're probably right. And so

01:06:45 ◼   ► I don't think there's an argument to be made that says, "Oh, people aren't going to want

01:06:48 ◼   ► to buy a laptop that's made with cheaper substandard materials than the stuff that's available."

01:06:53 ◼   ► doing it now. It's like a three-year-old Intel processor in there and a non-retina display

01:07:01 ◼   ► and those big bezels and yeah, some features we like, like the keyboard and the MagSafe,

01:07:06 ◼   ► but like the people who are buying the Air are not going to get turned away because it's

01:07:11 ◼   ► not as nice as the Pro. That's not going to be an issue.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Right. I totally agree. I think anybody I don't think anybody I just think we've gotten to the point where for most people a

01:07:24 ◼   ► Three-year-old CPU in the in the MacBook Air is not a problem

01:07:29 ◼   ► They don't even care their eyes just glaze over if you told them if you just mentioned to them the better

01:07:34 ◼   ► CPU in the MacBook Pro their eyes just glaze over and even the things that they might understand the easiest like the

01:07:41 ◼   ► Gigahertz clock speeds are very close, you know, like the advantage to the you know

01:07:46 ◼   ► the pro is that it has more cores. It doesn't even sound that much faster. Like, people

01:07:52 ◼   ► who listen to this show and you and I might know that it is actually a lot faster, but

01:07:56 ◼   ► real people don't see it and they're not doing anything where they're hitting the CPU anyway.

01:08:00 ◼   ► And the only thing, if they gave any crap about games, they may not even be buying a

01:08:06 ◼   ► Mac like laptop in the first place. And they certainly wouldn't be looking at the MacBook

01:08:10 ◼   ► Air. So in terms of the GPU, as long as it plays full screen video, what else do they

01:08:17 ◼   ► do that is graphically intensive, right? And everything plays full screen video just fine

01:08:22 ◼   ► now.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's true. That's the thing is...

01:08:25 ◼   ► So I think Apple could really cheap out on CPU/GPU.

01:08:29 ◼   ► I don't think...

01:08:30 ◼   ► Well, certainly like the MacBook, right? They could use the... They don't call it Core M

01:08:33 ◼   ► anymore, but it's the cheap i3 or i5 and maybe slower SSD.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And I mean, and they could do, if they wanted,

01:08:41 ◼   ► they could just do USB-C and not Thunderbolt.

01:08:44 ◼   ► They could do that if they wanted to.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Like they've got lots of options to make something

01:08:48 ◼   ► that's still gonna be just fine for most people.

01:08:52 ◼   ► - What if they came out with a new quote unquote

01:08:54 ◼   ► MacBook Air and it had a retina screen

01:08:57 ◼   ► and it like geek bench slower than the old MacBook Air.

01:09:01 ◼   ► There's a certain contingent of people who know what Geekbench is whose heads would explode,

01:09:06 ◼   ► but I wouldn't put it past them. You know, like if they've switched to the Core M or

01:09:10 ◼   ► something like that.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Well, I remember like the first, what was it? Was it the MacBook Air? Like when the

01:09:16 ◼   ► first MacBook Air came out and keeping in mind, as you pointed out in your article,

01:09:19 ◼   ► it was super expensive.

01:09:21 ◼   ► $1,800 to start.

01:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And I tested that and then let's, leaving aside also the fact that if it got

01:09:26 ◼   ► too hot, like on a warm day in a warm room, it had this bug where it would just turn off

01:09:33 ◼   ► a processor core and your mouse would stop moving smoothly. It was so bad. Like, it was

01:09:38 ◼   ► great in a meat locker, but really, really bad in my office that had a west-facing window

01:09:42 ◼   ► in the afternoon. It worked great in the morning, in the afternoon, not so good. That thing,

01:09:48 ◼   ► when it came out, it was, I forget, it was slower, it was several years into the Intel

01:09:54 ◼   ► transition, and it was slower than any—it was the slowest Intel Mac ever made. And it was like

01:10:00 ◼   ► years in. It was like two or three years into the Intel transition. I don't remember the exact

01:10:05 ◼   ► time, but it was like, it was a throwback in terms of performance. It was not close to being as

01:10:13 ◼   ► fast as the slowest Mac from two years before. But you know what? It had other things going for it,

01:10:19 ◼   ► not price at that point, but size. And so something that's a regression in terms of speed at this point,

01:10:25 ◼   ► like, does it matter? Like, for most uses now, that's the truth of all of this stuff, is that

01:10:32 ◼   ► if you're a pro, you need pro stuff, but everybody else just, they don't. They really don't.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that original MacBook Air was such a glimpse of the future, though. And the 1800

01:10:42 ◼   ► version came with an 80-gigabyte spinning hard disk. Yeah, you could upgrade for like two grand,

01:10:49 ◼   ► You get an SSD in there and it was only 64 gigabytes and so it was like 30

01:10:53 ◼   ► $100 it was like a $3,100 laptop had a 64 gigabyte SSD, but I remember

01:11:00 ◼   ► It was will Shipley

01:11:03 ◼   ► I don't know if he was blogging or maybe Twitter was around because it probably was around 2008

01:11:07 ◼   ► So it might have been on Twitter and ship Lee bought one. He's a developer a delicious monster and

01:11:12 ◼   ► You know Mac developer a longtime Mac developer will ship Lee was tweeting about it and he loved it and he was like look

01:11:18 ◼   ► I know that the processor's slow, but like he was doing things in Xcode that were actually

01:11:23 ◼   ► faster, even though the processor was two years slower. It was faster in Xcode because

01:11:29 ◼   ► what he was doing was touching lots of little files and that's the sort of thing SSDs just

01:11:34 ◼   ► blow a spinning hard disk away and was actually seeing performance gains. And obviously that's

01:11:40 ◼   ► an edge case, you know, but it was a hint of the future. And one reason that our computers

01:11:44 ◼   ► today feel so much faster than old computers is the tremendous advantage. I mean, it's

01:11:52 ◼   ► so easy to overlook SSDs now that we're all used to them, but I mean…

01:11:56 ◼   ► Now, storage was always, I mean, slow hard drive, even in the days where there weren't

01:12:00 ◼   ► SSDs, if you had a slow hard drive, slow spinning hard drive, it was almost always the hard

01:12:05 ◼   ► drive that was the problem. The processors were so fast, have been so fast for so long

01:12:09 ◼   ► that almost every regular use, it was like your hard drive.

01:12:13 ◼   ► I upgraded an old Mac laptop a year or so ago to an SSD,

01:12:18 ◼   ► and it's just, it's laughable.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Like, it suddenly, it's like, you don't need a new computer.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Use this five-year-old computer with an SSD.

01:12:25 ◼   ► It's great.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Like, it is, it is staggering.

01:12:28 ◼   ► I looked it up, by the way.

01:12:29 ◼   ► New MacBook Air, original MacBook Air came out January 2008.

01:12:32 ◼   ► I believe the first Intel Mac came out in January 2006.

01:12:36 ◼   ► And that MacBook Air was slower than any of those.

01:12:40 ◼   ► To the two year old Intel Macs.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's unbelievable.

01:12:43 ◼   ► The other thing too, Liz, looking back on it,

01:12:45 ◼   ► going down memory lane is the way that spinning hard disks,

01:12:48 ◼   ► at least in a laptop especially,

01:12:50 ◼   ► 'cause you couldn't hide it under your desk,

01:12:52 ◼   ► gave your computer a noise and a feeling on your palms.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Like you could feel it when the computer was reading,

01:12:59 ◼   ► reading the disk.

01:13:01 ◼   ► - Or if they spun down to save power

01:13:02 ◼   ► and then you hit the disk and you could actually hear it

01:13:04 ◼   ► and feel it spin up.

01:13:06 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:13:07 ◼   ► - Yep, yeah, well that MacBook Air too,

01:13:09 ◼   ► the non-SSD version, that was like an iPod hard drive.

01:13:13 ◼   ► So it was like not even, it was a super small hard drive.

01:13:16 ◼   ► So it was incredibly slow.

01:13:19 ◼   ► - Right.

01:13:19 ◼   ► - It was not a good, I'm looking at the Macworld

01:13:23 ◼   ► Speedmark score now, which is like,

01:13:25 ◼   ► all the reference systems were like 170, 160,

01:13:30 ◼   ► and the MacBook Air scored 124.

01:13:34 ◼   ► It was just like, it was not,

01:13:35 ◼   ► It was faster than the PowerBook G4.

01:13:37 ◼   ► That was what we decided.

01:13:39 ◼   ► That was all we could do.

01:13:40 ◼   ► - Remember too, that in the spinning hard disk era,

01:13:43 ◼   ► they were also far less reliable,

01:13:46 ◼   ► probably by several orders of magnitude.

01:13:48 ◼   ► And I mean, everybody who's old enough

01:13:51 ◼   ► and it was in the computers in the spinning hard disk era

01:13:54 ◼   ► will remember this, that you'd get used

01:13:56 ◼   ► to the way your computer sounded quickly.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Like, and you bought a new computer,

01:14:00 ◼   ► it would be a different hard drive,

01:14:02 ◼   ► maybe a different enclosure.

01:14:03 ◼   ► You know, as the years went on,

01:14:04 ◼   ► computers sounded different,

01:14:05 ◼   ► but they all had a sound.

01:14:06 ◼   ► And if the hard drive started making a different sound,

01:14:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:10 ◼   ► you would immediately like bolt up from your chair

01:14:14 ◼   ► and run and get like a Disc Warrior CD

01:14:17 ◼   ► or some kind of disc utility.

01:14:20 ◼   ► 'Cause you knew that shit was gonna go bad very quickly.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Like you can actually diagnose-

01:14:24 ◼   ► - Just a slight change in the hum of the drive.

01:14:28 ◼   ► And you're like, oh no, that is, that's the end.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Yeah, they're bad.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Spinning drives, they served us well.

01:14:35 ◼   ► They still service well in some places, but boy, that is—I'm so glad that that technology

01:14:40 ◼   ► is out of most of the devices I use now.

01:14:42 ◼   ► You could diagnose a computer or at least know something was wrong from mechanical noises

01:14:46 ◼   ► that it made.

01:14:48 ◼   ► It's like mystical, magical wizard stuff, right, where it was literally like, "This

01:14:55 ◼   ► can't be real."

01:14:56 ◼   ► It's like using leeches on a patient or something.

01:14:57 ◼   ► It's like, "This can't be—you're just listening to my computer, and now you're

01:15:00 ◼   ► feeling the vibrations in my computer?

01:15:02 ◼   ► That can't be right."

01:15:03 ◼   ► But it actually was.

01:15:04 ◼   ► was totally real. It's terrible. What we're saying is listen to us old people warn you

01:15:10 ◼   ► of how bad things were back in the day. We got it good now. We really got it good.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Dave Asprey This trip down memory lane seems like a good

01:15:15 ◼   ► place to end it. We're thinking about something bad spinning our disk. Let's talk about something

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01:16:09 ◼   ► I like the light and the medium,

01:16:11 ◼   ► and sort of maybe what I should do

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01:16:30 ◼   ► and do it fresh right when you brew your own coffee.

01:16:33 ◼   ► It's a great coffee.

01:16:36 ◼   ► And they have this other thing.

01:16:37 ◼   ► In addition to the fact that you can just go and buy coffee

01:16:39 ◼   ► and be done with it right now, they've got subscriptions.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And subscription coffee is absolutely amazing

01:16:47 ◼   ► 'cause then you just never have to worry about it.

01:16:49 ◼   ► It just, you just figure out

01:16:50 ◼   ► how often you need a bag of coffee.

01:16:51 ◼   ► You can get it like weekly, every two weeks, every month,

01:16:54 ◼   ► whatever you need.

01:16:57 ◼   ► and then it just shows up from the postal service

01:16:59 ◼   ► and every two weeks you've got fresh coffee.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And part of this is the convenience.

01:17:04 ◼   ► You're never out of coffee.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And part of it is that they really go to great lengths

01:17:09 ◼   ► to make sure that the coffee you get is fresh.

01:17:12 ◼   ► Like it doesn't go from Tres Pontas to some warehouse

01:17:15 ◼   ► and then it sits on the shelf in a warehouse

01:17:17 ◼   ► and then somebody picks it off and sends it to you.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Tres Pontas does the shipping themselves

01:17:21 ◼   ► and they're only shipping freshly roasted coffee

01:17:24 ◼   ► all the time.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And I'm telling you, coffee is,

01:17:27 ◼   ► Marco backed me up on it two weeks ago,

01:17:29 ◼   ► but coffee is like a grocery.

01:17:31 ◼   ► It's like something from the vegetable aisle

01:17:33 ◼   ► in the groceries.

01:17:34 ◼   ► It goes bad quickly, or at least goes bland quickly.

01:17:38 ◼   ► It's not like it goes rotten,

01:17:40 ◼   ► but it really is something like a perishable item.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Fresh coffee tastes so much better.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Once you get used to it, you can't go back.

01:17:48 ◼   ► And I will say this,

01:17:50 ◼   ► they have two great ways to buy their coffee.

01:17:53 ◼   ► You can go to their website, tracetrespontas.com. Go right there. See their whole story. See

01:18:01 ◼   ► the details. You can order from them. But it's even easier if you buy Tres Pontas coffee

01:18:07 ◼   ► fresh on Amazon. Just go to Amazon and search for Tres Pontas. It'll be the first thing

01:18:11 ◼   ► you see. And when you buy on Amazon, Amazon is just acting as the e-commerce thing for

01:18:19 ◼   ► transaction. The order still gets fulfilled by Trace Pontas. It's fulfilled the exact

01:18:23 ◼   ► same people, exact same place, exact same fresh coffee as if you ordered from Trace

01:18:28 ◼   ► Pontas themselves. They're the ones encouraging you to go to Amazon and do it there if you

01:18:32 ◼   ► want because they want it to be as convenient as possible. They're the ones encouraging

01:18:38 ◼   ► me to tell you about buying it on Amazon and double enforcing that you get the exact same

01:18:44 ◼   ► shipment from the exact same place. And there's even more good stuff. All orders in the US

01:18:53 ◼   ► either from Trace Pone Toss or from Amazon. Enjoy free shipping. I don't even know how

01:18:57 ◼   ► that's possible. That seems too good to be true, but it is true. So go to Trace Pone

01:19:03 ◼   ► Toss. If you've never had their coffee before, buy some, try it out, see if you like it.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And once you have it and you like it, go back, get a subscription and get your beans every

01:19:12 ◼   ► one, two or four weeks, your choice. Here's the extra deal. When you get a subscription,

01:19:17 ◼   ► you pay 10% less per bag than you would buying a bag at a time. Listeners of the talk show get

01:19:23 ◼   ► an extra 10% off. Keep this to yourselves, but it's a bit of a secret. Extra 10% off just by

01:19:29 ◼   ► using the code "THETALKSHOW" at checkout when you buy a coffee subscription. That means you get a

01:19:35 ◼   ► total of 20% off every bag just for learning about Trace Pone Dust from this show.

01:19:41 ◼   ► So you got to enter that code at checkout to get that deal.

01:19:45 ◼   ► So my thanks to Trace Pontas for their continuing support of the talk show.

01:19:52 ◼   ► I want to mention that Apple has some experience in this making something a lot like the bigger

01:19:58 ◼   ► product but making it cheaper and look no further than the iPad lineup.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And again, that's sort of what has biased me towards the they should have a just plain

01:20:08 ◼   ► Whatever and then one called the pro, you know, like iPad and iPad Pro

01:20:13 ◼   ► although that ignores the

01:20:15 ◼   ► iPad mini which is still hanging around

01:20:18 ◼   ► But the iPad is now down to

01:20:22 ◼   ► $329 and it's a pretty you know, there's obviously some compromises compared to the iPad Pro

01:20:28 ◼   ► But you know, they've added things like the pencil pencil support it's a pretty good computer and so yes, there's compromises

01:20:36 ◼   ► but none that are like, oh, this is a bad machine.

01:20:40 ◼   ► This is actually a wonderful iPad for most people.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - No, it's a good, I think that is the like,

01:20:45 ◼   ► the flawless example of them getting their house in order.

01:20:49 ◼   ► 'Cause the iPad line was kind of a mess

01:20:51 ◼   ► and they did some really smart things

01:20:53 ◼   ► in terms of kind of breaking off the one iPad

01:20:56 ◼   ► and letting it kind of move down in price.

01:20:58 ◼   ► And then that also freed them to make the iPad Pro,

01:21:02 ◼   ► which I use every day, more powerful

01:21:04 ◼   ► because the people who care about this stuff,

01:21:07 ◼   ► they will spend $1,000 on an iPad Pro, and it's great.

01:21:10 ◼   ► And everybody else can just get the iPad,

01:21:12 ◼   ► and they're gonna be very happy.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And it's the right mixture.

01:21:16 ◼   ► Like that should be how I think the laptop line

01:21:20 ◼   ► should be very similar, right?

01:21:21 ◼   ► You should have the ones that are super powerful,

01:21:24 ◼   ► and then you should have the ones that everybody else

01:21:26 ◼   ► is gonna be very happy with.

01:21:27 ◼   ► They're not crappy.

01:21:29 ◼   ► They're not last year's or two years ago's model.

01:21:31 ◼   ► They're just enough for people

01:21:35 ◼   ► that have a really good experience

01:21:36 ◼   ► who don't need all the fancy bells and whistles,

01:21:39 ◼   ► because those people will be happy to spend more money

01:21:42 ◼   ► on getting the, like me, like the MacBook Pro,

01:21:45 ◼   ► the iMac Pro, and the iPad Pro.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Like, if you want one of those, you spend the money,

01:21:50 ◼   ► and it's totally worth it,

01:21:51 ◼   ► 'cause you know what you're getting.

01:21:52 ◼   ► And everybody else gets that iPad.

01:21:55 ◼   ► That iPad is great, and its price is amazing,

01:21:58 ◼   ► given where Apple's iPad pricing has been.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And I think people like it.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I think that the sales have shown that that is a strategy

01:22:05 ◼   ► that really works now,

01:22:06 ◼   ► having the two different lines of iPad.

01:22:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it works for Apple.

01:22:10 ◼   ► It's stabilized at least iPad sales,

01:22:13 ◼   ► if not increase them slightly,

01:22:14 ◼   ► but it's leveled off the decline.

01:22:16 ◼   ► It's good for Apple 'cause the iPad is selling well.

01:22:20 ◼   ► It is good for consumers

01:22:21 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like there's an iPad for everyone

01:22:23 ◼   ► and they understand it too.

01:22:25 ◼   ► It is easily understood what the differences are.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Like, you can look at an iPad and, you know, I, you know, I remember, you know, being in

01:22:36 ◼   ► college and knowing where I always, I know exactly where on Drexel's campus there was

01:22:42 ◼   ► the ATM machine that would like let you take out $10 bills.

01:22:47 ◼   ► So that if I had $17 left in my checking account, I could still get some cash.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Like I know what it's like to be strapped for cash.

01:22:53 ◼   ► So I can also imagine, and even then a technology enthusiast, I could see craving an iPad Pro

01:23:01 ◼   ► and having to settle for the iPad for budgetary purposes. But I also think that there's an

01:23:07 ◼   ► awful lot of people who would go in and could, if they wanted to, afford a more expensive

01:23:13 ◼   ► iPad but look at the iPad and are informed of the differences and don't care about the

01:23:19 ◼   ► differences and just get the regular iPad.

01:23:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the way to do it.

01:23:24 ◼   ► And it makes sense, right?

01:23:26 ◼   ► Before it was sort of like, well,

01:23:28 ◼   ► which iPad do I want?

01:23:29 ◼   ► It's like, now I think it's pretty clear.

01:23:31 ◼   ► Like, these have this, pay more.

01:23:33 ◼   ► These don't, pay less.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And it's like, all right, great.

01:23:36 ◼   ► And even the size, 'cause that first iPad Pro,

01:23:39 ◼   ► well, the first was the 12.9, but then they did the 9.7.

01:23:41 ◼   ► And it was like, okay, wait a second now.

01:23:43 ◼   ► You've got an iPad Air 2 and an iPad Pro 9.7.

01:23:47 ◼   ► And so they're exactly the same.

01:23:49 ◼   ► And so the next Rev, they're like,

01:23:50 ◼   ► it's 10.5 screen now. They're pushing it and I think this fall we'll probably see them push even

01:23:55 ◼   ► further away with what makes an iPad Pro an iPad Pro. And that's like that level of clarity I think

01:24:02 ◼   ► is really good for a product line which is why it's been so frustrating to look at the MacBook

01:24:06 ◼   ► line and be like what is happening? What are you guys doing there? And I think Apple, I mean what

01:24:11 ◼   ► I feel bad is like Apple, the people inside Apple know, like they know. They knew this was a problem

01:24:16 ◼   ► way before we did probably, but they know that it just is going to take probably there

01:24:21 ◼   ► was like two years where they're like, yeah, we're going to have to take our lumps for

01:24:23 ◼   ► two years while we sort this one out and maybe they'll reach the end of the line. Maybe they'll

01:24:27 ◼   ► finally get something that makes sense this fall. I hope so. A very slow moving ship to

01:24:31 ◼   ► turn around, I think. Yeah, I think so. I think the other kudos that they deserve for

01:24:36 ◼   ► the current lineup of iPads is that the both iPad pros, the 10.5 and the 12.9 are a bit

01:24:42 ◼   ► long in the tooth. They're certainly more each more than a year old and nobody and you know people

01:24:47 ◼   ► expect based on just you know sticking your finger in the air and thinking well it seems like they

01:24:52 ◼   ► should be new ones soon and based on the rumor you know there are rumors that there's ones coming out

01:24:56 ◼   ► with significantly shrunk bezels you know everything is smaller bezels these days um but there's

01:25:03 ◼   ► nobody's really like up in arms like boy these are these are outdated right like they did such a good

01:25:07 ◼   ► job with the current available iPad pros that they were they could last for well longer

01:25:14 ◼   ► than a 12 month cycle and be completely credible as as still being good purchases today. I'm

01:25:21 ◼   ► still using my iPad pro that I bought in December of what was that 15 the original 12 9 iPad

01:25:29 ◼   ► pro is still my mobile device of choice basically and it's great yeah it doesn't have the true

01:25:36 ◼   ► tone, doesn't have the white color gamut, but it's not as good a processor, but it's

01:25:43 ◼   ► still great. It's still legitimately great, and I'm going to buy a new one this fall,

01:25:46 ◼   ► but I will have gotten three years out of that thing.

01:25:49 ◼   ► Yeah, that's tremendous.

01:25:50 ◼   ► And without any moaning and complaining about it, it's still pretty great.

01:25:55 ◼   ► Yeah. So back to the MacBooks. I still, I don't know. I don't think they're, I think

01:26:04 ◼   ► bottom line is that they're not going to completely get out of this mess this year.

01:26:09 ◼   ► Mess being a lineup that offers significant clarity. Even rumors aside, I don't think

01:26:17 ◼   ► they're going to get rid of the 12-inch MacBook, but I don't think the 12-inch MacBook can

01:26:20 ◼   ► serve as their low-end model. Even if they could sell it for $999, I don't think that

01:26:24 ◼   ► would be a good idea. I think they do need something else, whether that's the MacBook

01:26:29 ◼   ► escape with a new name or you know and maybe and maybe engineered to be made out of cheaper

01:26:36 ◼   ► bits or something I don't know or whether it's that new thing I think it's got to be

01:26:40 ◼   ► one of those two because I think you're right I don't think they could just take the MacBook

01:26:44 ◼   ► make it $9.99 and say see buy it now I'm not I think people would be a little resistant

01:26:49 ◼   ► because it's unless unless they do some upgrades to it which would probably preclude it being

01:26:53 ◼   ► $9.99 it's gonna have the one port and it's small and it's got a small screen and that's

01:26:58 ◼   ► going to turn a lot of people off. So it doesn't seem to be the right vehicle to do. It might

01:27:03 ◼   ► be the right vehicle to get to $9.99. They could probably do that, but the Air isn't

01:27:09 ◼   ► just succeeding because it's $9.99.

01:27:11 ◼   ► Dave: Maybe it's as simple as just effectively taking the MacBook escape and giving an extra

01:27:20 ◼   ► what, almost two years, right? I think that those came out in 2016. I forget if there

01:27:27 ◼   ► was a speed bump, but the original ones were 2016. And just being able to put what that

01:27:33 ◼   ► is today into a wedge-shaped case that's more like the air, right? And then that separates,

01:27:40 ◼   ► because that wedge, the difference between, what would you call the MacBook Pro? Is that

01:27:45 ◼   ► rectilinear, the way that it doesn't have any kind of wedge or teardrop shape to it?

01:27:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just a rectangle extruded. It is just a shape. It doesn't have a weird

01:27:56 ◼   ► shape. It's just kind of a blob. And yeah, the Air had that kind of wedge. It was a little curvier.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Dave: Right. If they just took the… effectively just took the MacBook Escape, put it in a wedge

01:28:09 ◼   ► shaped aluminum case because maybe they could do this or that to reduce the amount of battery

01:28:16 ◼   ► or whatever else was in there without affecting battery life with two years of advances in power

01:28:21 ◼   ► efficiency. And there you go. And then it's visually distinctive from the MacBook Pros in

01:28:25 ◼   ► addition to which name is stamped underneath the display. Because, oh, I see it's teardrop

01:28:31 ◼   ► shaped, that's more like the air.

01:28:34 ◼   ► I also think there's, um, I mean, there's an argument to be made, Marco talked about

01:28:39 ◼   ► this quite a lot when he was buying and returning his MacBook escape, or escapes, I think he

01:28:45 ◼   ► might have done it more than once, is that technically the part, the processor that's

01:28:50 ◼   ► in the escape is the successor to the processor that's in the air.

01:28:55 ◼   ► So, like, and if you look at the weight, this is one of my favorite things, is look at the

01:29:00 ◼   ► weight and the size of the 13-inch MacBook escape compared to the 13-inch MacBook Air.

01:29:07 ◼   ► They are practically the same. They're not quite there. It is that MacBook escape with

01:29:12 ◼   ► a weird name where it's like there's two 13 MacBook Pros. Like, it's hard for me not to

01:29:17 ◼   ► think that they really intended that for it to be a MacBook and then they realized that

01:29:21 ◼   ► they had to sell it for $15.99 and they couldn't call it a MacBook. They had to call it a MacBook

01:29:27 ◼   ► Pro. But I do wonder, I do wonder if their way, I think it's a scenario, just spitballing

01:29:34 ◼   ► here, that they find a way to get that thing to be not quite as nice and not quite as advanced,

01:29:41 ◼   ► but enough to shove it down in the product line to have it be kind of down there with

01:29:46 ◼   ► the MacBook. And not, and ideally, by the way, just purely on semantics, I know that

01:29:50 ◼   ► you and I like to talk about how products get named and product lines get formed. Like

01:29:55 ◼   ► that we do not need 13 inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and without Touch Bar, right? Like

01:30:02 ◼   ► that needs to stop that Map Quick escape. It's a cute nickname, but like it needs a

01:30:07 ◼   ► real name that is not the name of another computer currently being sold. That's got

01:30:11 ◼   ► to stop. I try to avoid using nicknames, uh, not, not out of allegiance to Apple's marketing

01:30:19 ◼   ► I mean, because for example, I refuse to like spell Mac OS with a lowercase M or Mac Mini

01:30:25 ◼   ► with a lowercase M or anything like that. So it's not out of that. It's just that I

01:30:30 ◼   ► don't want I find it, it can be a little bit disdainful, you know, that it's it's not like

01:30:35 ◼   ► I feel like you have to do what Apple says, but I feel like it's disdainful. But I actually

01:30:38 ◼   ► feel like the MacBook escape thing is so much more clear. Like people know what that is.

01:30:43 ◼   ► when you do the mouthful 13 inch MacBook Pro without touch bar,

01:30:48 ◼   ► it is like you have to stop and think it's like a double negative almost,

01:30:52 ◼   ► you know, like the name includes something that it doesn't have.

01:30:55 ◼   ► It's the thing that it doesn't have. There are lots of things that,

01:30:59 ◼   ► that computer doesn't have, it doesn't have, you know, a, a,

01:31:04 ◼   ► a spinning wheel. It doesn't have a USB port. It doesn't have there,

01:31:09 ◼   ► you know, a floppy drive. It doesn't, there's lots of things it doesn't have,

01:31:13 ◼   ► Including the touch bar which is in its name that it doesn't have it like it's just I agree with you

01:31:19 ◼   ► Also, there's a communication thing like you reach a lot of people who are not tuned in to what's happening on Marcos podcast

01:31:25 ◼   ► or you know other places in the Apple kind of blogosphere and so

01:31:29 ◼   ► These names are cute

01:31:31 ◼   ► like Marco always called the MacBook the 12-inch MacBook the MacBook one right and I kind of like that as a

01:31:36 ◼   ► Little bit of a needle to Apple for like there's only the one port on it

01:31:40 ◼   ► But if you if you use that name people are gonna be like, I don't get it. What are you talking about?

01:31:46 ◼   ► That's a perfect example of a nickname that I either avoid it or mostly avoid it. That's a perfect example

01:31:52 ◼   ► I just call it the 12-inch MacBook and leave it at that

01:31:54 ◼   ► That that is that that you can gain some clarity on for people but the MacBook escape

01:31:59 ◼   ► Like not only is it kind of a great name makes me think of like it's a journey album

01:32:03 ◼   ► It's weird like it's a throwback. It's like why why is this happening? Is it trying to escape? We don't know

01:32:09 ◼   ► But it needs a name because basically Apple didn't give it a name

01:32:13 ◼   ► They just said that it's not the other one and I hope I hope it because it's actually a pretty great computer

01:32:18 ◼   ► I hope it kind of escapes the

01:32:20 ◼   ► See what I did there

01:32:22 ◼   ► escapes the MacBook Pro name and get some other name because it really doesn't it deserve to be

01:32:27 ◼   ► My I do wonder though if maybe it just we haven't seen the likes of it

01:32:32 ◼   ► Or we've seen the last of it that what we're gonna get is like a reconstituted Mac MacBook escape. That's something else

01:32:39 ◼   ► Another thing I'm gonna promise to put this in the show notes, but somebody on Twitter today in the midst of all this conversation about this

01:32:46 ◼   ► I

01:32:47 ◼   ► Remembered it. I remembered it the this bit from Phil Schiller at the debut of the current generation of MacBook pros

01:32:54 ◼   ► and

01:32:56 ◼   ► basically, he's making the point that the

01:32:58 ◼   ► 13 inch Mac new MacBook Pro is roughly the same size and weight as the MacBook Air. Yeah

01:33:05 ◼   ► But somebody linked to that part of the video like and had they even you know use the little

01:33:11 ◼   ► Code on YouTube to start right right at the point where he's talking about it

01:33:15 ◼   ► And it's actually it's you know, it's Phil Schiller at his best and Apple at their best at making

01:33:20 ◼   ► Some points that it might be a bit delicate to make like here you've introduced

01:33:26 ◼   ► You've spent all this time

01:33:27 ◼   ► bragging about the touch bar this new invention that they're very proud of and that it is expensive and that they want people to be

01:33:34 ◼   ► excited about

01:33:35 ◼   ► I'll link to the video because I don't want to summarize the whole thing because

01:33:40 ◼   ► it's really so good. But he makes a point that, hey, we still love the MacBook Air.

01:33:44 ◼   ► We're still selling the MacBook Air. That's fine. We know people like it. But we challenged

01:33:48 ◼   ► the team. That's like a phrase that often comes up with Apple, right? But it, you know,

01:33:53 ◼   ► it means this was tricky, but we challenged the team to maybe do a version with this MacBook

01:33:57 ◼   ► Pro that might be tempting for people looking at the MacBook Air. And it has the function

01:34:02 ◼   ► keys that you're used to. And you know, starting price that was lower, you know, I forget what

01:34:10 ◼   ► is the starting price 1299 I forget if it was then 1299 it was not that was something

01:34:14 ◼   ► that 14. Yeah, they cut it by a couple hundred, which is interesting, right? Yes, because

01:34:19 ◼   ► right away from the pros even more, right? If it was 1499 in November of 2016, and then

01:34:26 ◼   ► dropped to $12.99 a year later, could it drop another $200 now? And maybe even with, you

01:34:32 ◼   ► know, like a thinner case or something. But anyway, he made the point that the footprint

01:34:37 ◼   ► is smaller because they reduced the bezels, but it's still a 13.3 inch diagonal. So if

01:34:42 ◼   ► the bezels are reduced, then the footprint has to be reduced. And by volume, it was like

01:34:48 ◼   ► 13% smaller, even though it doesn't have the wedge shape because of the footprint smaller,

01:34:54 ◼   ► it actually does it. They showed a little video of a 13-inch MacBook Pro on top of a

01:35:00 ◼   ► MacBook Air, just lids closed and you could see how much smaller it is by surface area

01:35:05 ◼   ► on the footprint and that the weight was exactly the same. I mean, it's not quite exactly,

01:35:12 ◼   ► it's one ounce difference. It's like two business cards on top of a MacBook Air and you've got

01:35:17 ◼   ► the same weight as the 13-inch MacBook Escape. So the weight is exactly the same, 3.0 pounds.

01:35:24 ◼   ► footprint smaller, volume is smaller.

01:35:26 ◼   ► So if they could make that volume even smaller,

01:35:28 ◼   ► that would really be, you know,

01:35:31 ◼   ► in some ways, ignoring the 12-inch MacBook,

01:35:35 ◼   ► it would be a nice successor

01:35:36 ◼   ► to the MacBook Air as we know it.

01:35:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is essentially,

01:35:40 ◼   ► that's the thing that I think gets lost in the naming

01:35:42 ◼   ► is that it is that.

01:35:43 ◼   ► It's the same processor,

01:35:45 ◼   ► the, it's doesn't, not the same price,

01:35:47 ◼   ► not the same name, but same processor class, same weight,

01:35:51 ◼   ► same size, essentially functionally the same size

01:35:53 ◼   ► because although it doesn't have the wedge,

01:35:55 ◼   ► it's, I think, it's, you know,

01:35:57 ◼   ► other dimensions have contracted,

01:35:59 ◼   ► and like, it's a great laptop.

01:36:01 ◼   ► I think the big problem with it was the, yeah,

01:36:03 ◼   ► it was introduced at way too high a price,

01:36:05 ◼   ► and they obviously did, made some effort

01:36:06 ◼   ► to get it down in price a couple hundred bucks,

01:36:08 ◼   ► so now it's basically the same price as the MacBook.

01:36:12 ◼   ► And I can see, one of these days I wanna hear,

01:36:16 ◼   ► I gotta tell you, one of these days

01:36:17 ◼   ► I really wanna hear what happened.

01:36:19 ◼   ► - I do too. - Like, this is so clearly,

01:36:20 ◼   ► like, something went wrong, and I don't know what,

01:36:23 ◼   ► but like they totally didn't plan it this way.

01:36:25 ◼   ► They didn't plan to be selling the MacBook Air in 2018.

01:36:28 ◼   ► Like there's no way, they don't, nobody at Apple sold,

01:36:32 ◼   ► "I got a great idea.

01:36:33 ◼   ► Let's sell two different 13 inch MacBook Pros."

01:36:36 ◼   ► That'll be great.

01:36:36 ◼   ► People will love that.

01:36:37 ◼   ► No, they had to because something went wrong

01:36:40 ◼   ► and one day maybe we'll find out what happened

01:36:43 ◼   ► that surprised them that they couldn't do it.

01:36:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, one thing Apple really cares about

01:36:48 ◼   ► is the way their things look.

01:36:50 ◼   ► I mean, and a lot of times when they'll cheap out on things,

01:36:52 ◼   ► It's not by making them look worse.

01:36:54 ◼   ► And look at the iPad versus iPad Pro, right?

01:36:58 ◼   ► It's a great looking tablet.

01:37:01 ◼   ► It's still made of an aluminum back.

01:37:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not cheap plastic or anything like that.

01:37:05 ◼   ► - And so, like I don't think that the iPad has true tone.

01:37:10 ◼   ► There's no way that 329 iPad has true tone.

01:37:14 ◼   ► I could be wrong, but I don't think it.

01:37:15 ◼   ► I think that's one of the ways that it's less expensive.

01:37:17 ◼   ► But that's like nice to have, and I do love true tone.

01:37:20 ◼   ► But having a non-retina display looks bad.

01:37:24 ◼   ► I mean, it really is, you know, you just look right at it.

01:37:28 ◼   ► It looks ridiculous to my eyes today.

01:37:32 ◼   ► And they know it.

01:37:32 ◼   ► I think they're embarrassed.

01:37:33 ◼   ► They have to be embarrassed by it.

01:37:34 ◼   ► Nobody at Apple is happy that they're still selling it

01:37:37 ◼   ► in 2018.

01:37:39 ◼   ► And it's so unfortunate, really, really is,

01:37:42 ◼   ► that the timing on this, you know,

01:37:44 ◼   ► I think one of those other backstories is I think

01:37:46 ◼   ► whatever's going on behind the scenes,

01:37:48 ◼   ► that whatever MacBooks they might be announcing

01:37:51 ◼   ► later this year, I think they had really hoped

01:37:54 ◼   ► to have announced earlier this year,

01:37:56 ◼   ► because anybody who got a laptop for back to school

01:37:58 ◼   ► is getting a, you know, got a 13 inch MacBook Air

01:38:01 ◼   ► with a non-retina screen.

01:38:03 ◼   ► - I had so many people ask me this summer,

01:38:05 ◼   ► 'cause I wrote a piece last summer

01:38:07 ◼   ► about what laptop you should buy.

01:38:09 ◼   ► And this summer they're all like,

01:38:10 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, what's the update to that?"

01:38:11 ◼   ► And I said, "Quite frankly, there isn't one."

01:38:14 ◼   ► And that was like, people were getting gifts for graduates.

01:38:17 ◼   ► And I said, "I got nothing."

01:38:19 ◼   ► And then WWDC happened, and it's like,

01:38:21 ◼   ► "I still don't have anything."

01:38:22 ◼   ► And then a month goes by, and they update the pros,

01:38:25 ◼   ► but only the pros, not even the escape.

01:38:27 ◼   ► And so now we're at the point where everybody's going,

01:38:30 ◼   ► you know, "College students are back in school.

01:38:32 ◼   ► My kids are back in school."

01:38:33 ◼   ► Like, that whole period is over, and they completely missed it.

01:38:36 ◼   ► And you got to think they would have rather not missed it.

01:38:40 ◼   ► So that's another part of the story.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Like, I feel for them on the same --

01:38:45 ◼   ► They obviously made some bad calls.

01:38:46 ◼   ► They obviously made some calls that turned out to be wrong.

01:38:49 ◼   ► I feel bad for the people involved

01:38:51 ◼   ► because, like, when you make that mistake,

01:38:53 ◼   ► then you got to live with it for years

01:38:56 ◼   ► before it really can get resolved.

01:38:58 ◼   ► And that's why I keep coming back to,

01:39:01 ◼   ► "I hope they resolve it this fall."

01:39:02 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if they're going to be able to do it,

01:39:04 ◼   ► but, like, I saw what they did with the iPad,

01:39:06 ◼   ► where that was a mess, and it took them a couple of years,

01:39:09 ◼   ► but now it makes sense, and I hope that that happens

01:39:11 ◼   ► with the consumer part of the MacBook line.

01:39:14 ◼   ► I have to say while I'm on this I always want to mention this that one thing I've never recovered from and I've been using I

01:39:21 ◼   ► think I

01:39:25 ◼   ► Think I went right from the 11-inch air to this

01:39:29 ◼   ► 13 inch MacBook Pro in 2014. I don't think there was anything in between

01:39:33 ◼   ► One thing I've still so it's at least four years one thing. I still have never recovered from is when pulling it out of a bag

01:39:42 ◼   ► using the wedge shape to orient it as I take it out and knowing which way is front and which is back.

01:39:49 ◼   ► And I still have for four years when I take this one out, it is like a 50/50 chance whether I'm

01:39:55 ◼   ► going to put it on the desk the right way. And if anything, I've also got this weird, totally old

01:40:01 ◼   ► school PowerBook user habit of orienting by looking at the Apple logo the wrong way. Like one thing,

01:40:09 ◼   ► unless you're an old coot like us, you will not remember and you'll think, well, why in the world

01:40:13 ◼   ► would they have done that? Is that for the first many years of PowerBooks, the Apple logo was

01:40:19 ◼   ► oriented what you would now call upside down, such that the Apple logo looked correct when the

01:40:25 ◼   ► laptop was closed in front of you, the user. And then when open and in use was upside down

01:40:32 ◼   ► to anybody looking at you face on to what we now know is the proper way to do it.

01:40:40 ◼   ► The funny thing, too, I think I wrote about this on Daring Fireball as an aside recently, that

01:40:45 ◼   ► there are still people who are very angry about that decision, who want it to be the other way,

01:40:51 ◼   ► because they have a mindset that this is their computer and the Apple logo should look correct

01:40:57 ◼   ► to them, which means that—and I guess that was the thinking Apple originally had when they did

01:41:02 ◼   ► did it that way. That you, the user, owner of this laptop should have the Apple logo

01:41:08 ◼   ► look correct when it's closed in front of you. And they feel that now that it's oriented

01:41:14 ◼   ► the other way, they see it the wrong way. And their machine is acting as an advertisement

01:41:19 ◼   ► for Apple by having it oriented the correct way for everybody looking at it. Now, I disagree

01:41:24 ◼   ► with that. I actually think it should look correct while it's being used, not correct

01:41:28 ◼   ► It's not being used. But the downside of it is I still if I still sometimes look I think oh

01:41:33 ◼   ► There's the Apple logo and I put it down in front of me and the hinge is facing me

01:41:36 ◼   ► I can I blow your mind with something?

01:41:40 ◼   ► I use my iPad almost entirely in horizontal orientation and the Apple logo is vertical

01:41:48 ◼   ► all the time, so I'm always using it sideways and

01:41:52 ◼   ► It's a legacy of the iPhone being vertically oriented

01:41:56 ◼   ► But like, I really believe the iPad is a horizontal device, and it's like, forget it, unless they

01:42:01 ◼   ► make like a swiveling Apple logo or something.

01:42:04 ◼   ► It's just like, I don't know, some use case is going to be wrong, I guess is the truth

01:42:09 ◼   ► of it.

01:42:10 ◼   ► But yeah, I agree with you.

01:42:12 ◼   ► Although, you know, a cynical person would say they decided that the logo was to advertise

01:42:15 ◼   ► it to others instead of it being for you to have that little moment.

01:42:19 ◼   ► But I still think it was the right decision.

01:42:21 ◼   ► And if there's anything I miss when they changed the laptops in the last couple of years, it's

01:42:26 ◼   ► that the Apple doesn't light up anymore because that was pretty amazing and you could never

01:42:30 ◼   ► miss a Mac laptop in a cafe when they lit up. Now it's a little bit easier to miss them.

01:42:36 ◼   ► Well, or like that famous, famous picture from around 10 years ago of like a university

01:42:42 ◼   ► lecture hall, you know, with a very high slope, you know, like stadium seating and, you know,

01:42:49 ◼   ► it's just some kind of undergraduate lecture hall and like a wide angle view from the,

01:42:53 ◼   ► know, professor's standpoint. And it was like every student had a laptop. So it was

01:42:59 ◼   ► sort of like a sign of the times in a couple of ways. It's like when you and I went to

01:43:03 ◼   ► college nobody had laptops. And you know, by 10 years ago, every student had a laptop.

01:43:11 ◼   ► They had them open. That's what they did to take their notes and whatever else. And

01:43:15 ◼   ► it just, just the number of them that had glowing Apple logos was just staggering. Just

01:43:19 ◼   ► as a sign of, "Wow, look at how Apple has taken over the college student portable market."

01:43:27 ◼   ► You just don't get that anymore without the glowing thing. Marco and I talked about that,

01:43:30 ◼   ► and I guess I never did the research to figure this out. I spouted off and said that at some

01:43:38 ◼   ► point originally, the—hopefully, maybe you can know this. I was going to do research

01:43:44 ◼   ► and I didn't. Originally, the Apple logo was illuminated from the display. So all they had to do

01:43:54 ◼   ► was just put a translucent piece of Apple logo-shaped plastic back there and the display

01:43:59 ◼   ► of the old LCDs or LEDs, whatever they were called at the time, just glowed in both directions.

01:44:05 ◼   ► And that modern LCDs don't work that way, that at some point, you know, they really only glow

01:44:13 ◼   ► in one direction and that Apple had to put in a separate thing to light up the Apple logo.

01:44:18 ◼   ► Interesting. I had not heard that. I don't know if that would be amazing if they had to cheat.

01:44:25 ◼   ► I don't know. I couldn't test it at the time because all I had was this new MacBook Pro that

01:44:30 ◼   ► doesn't have a glowing Apple logo. And I said, like in the old days, I knew that when you change

01:44:34 ◼   ► the brightness on the display, it changed the brightness on the Apple logo. And what people

01:44:38 ◼   ► have written in to say is that that never changed. The brightness control for the display always

01:44:43 ◼   ► controlled the brightness color of the Apple logo, even if I'm correct that they ended up having

01:44:48 ◼   ► different lighting elements to make it work. And it makes sense that it would because anywhere

01:44:52 ◼   ► where you, now that I think about it, like if you're in, you know, using it in bed next to a

01:44:57 ◼   ► sleeping partner and you want to have the brightness down low because the room is dark and your eyes

01:45:02 ◼   ► don't need a bright screen and you don't want a bright screen to bother, you know, you're trying

01:45:06 ◼   ► to sleep partner, you wouldn't want the Apple logo growing, glowing real bright either. So of course

01:45:11 ◼   ► they were tied to the same brightness center. But I do think though that the, I really do

01:45:15 ◼   ► think it's true, even though once again I'm just pulling this out of my ass, I really

01:45:20 ◼   ► do think that at a certain point when the screen technology changed they actually put

01:45:23 ◼   ► in a separate lighting thing for the Apple logo.

01:45:27 ◼   ► It wouldn't surprise me. And it was a cool thing. It was a cool feature. Like on ATP

01:45:32 ◼   ► it might have even been the same episode where your laptop got wet. They were talking about

01:45:37 ◼   ► whimsy and people misinterpret what whimsy means but like...

01:45:40 ◼   ► - I did hear that episode.

01:45:41 ◼   ► - The whimsy is like,

01:45:43 ◼   ► I always viewed some of the stuff that Apple did as,

01:45:46 ◼   ► we did this because it was cool and we could do it, right?

01:45:48 ◼   ► And it was not because it was practical,

01:45:50 ◼   ► but because we're Apple

01:45:51 ◼   ► and we're gonna push a little bit further,

01:45:53 ◼   ► we're gonna make it cool.

01:45:54 ◼   ► So in the case of the cutout on the back,

01:45:57 ◼   ► that probably started with somebody saying,

01:45:58 ◼   ► oh my God, look at this.

01:46:00 ◼   ► We could like cut out the Apple logo

01:46:02 ◼   ► and it'll light up when it's in use, that's amazing.

01:46:05 ◼   ► And then later they get a screen and they're like, oh no.

01:46:07 ◼   ► And somebody's like, put in a light,

01:46:09 ◼   ► we have to keep the light up logo.

01:46:11 ◼   ► They're like, yeah, okay, we'll do that.

01:46:12 ◼   ► Or the one that Marco brought up that I think is great

01:46:14 ◼   ► is the breathing sleep light,

01:46:17 ◼   ► which is like totally unnecessary.

01:46:20 ◼   ► But because when you look on PC laptops,

01:46:22 ◼   ► they would always have like hard drive access light

01:46:24 ◼   ► and wifi light and all these things.

01:46:25 ◼   ► It's like, forget that, we'll put that on screen.

01:46:27 ◼   ► But when it's closed, it's gonna do the slow pulse

01:46:31 ◼   ► to let you know that it's there and that it's still alive

01:46:33 ◼   ► and that it's in sleep mode and not shut down.

01:46:36 ◼   ► I'm like, do they need to do that?

01:46:37 ◼   ► They totally didn't need to do that.

01:46:38 ◼   ► light on the power charger, right?

01:46:41 ◼   ► Like, do they need to do it?

01:46:42 ◼   ► No, absolutely not, but it was a nice little bit.

01:46:45 ◼   ► And I would, you know, I like that about Apple.

01:46:47 ◼   ► I like them having those little things that we do

01:46:50 ◼   ► because it's cool, because it makes you appreciate

01:46:53 ◼   ► how cool your product that you spent money on looks.

01:46:56 ◼   ► Not necessarily this more cynical,

01:46:58 ◼   ► like how cool it makes you look,

01:47:00 ◼   ► but like how good it makes you feel

01:47:02 ◼   ► that it does this thing that is pointless, but cool.

01:47:05 ◼   ► - It's funny you brought that up

01:47:07 ◼   ► because that was one of those points listening to ATP

01:47:09 ◼   ► where I wish I could have jumped in and started talking.

01:47:12 ◼   ► For anybody who doesn't remember,

01:47:14 ◼   ► for a long time, power books even and MacBooks,

01:47:17 ◼   ► but even in the aluminum era,

01:47:18 ◼   ► they figured out a way to do it through the aluminum.

01:47:21 ◼   ► They would have, when your laptop was sleeping,

01:47:23 ◼   ► there was a little light that would pulse on and off

01:47:27 ◼   ► to indicate-- - Gently pulse.

01:47:29 ◼   ► - Right, it didn't blink on and off.

01:47:31 ◼   ► It would slowly glow on, slowly glow off.

01:47:34 ◼   ► And it was more or less timed

01:47:36 ◼   ► to like the average breathing rate of a sleeping person.

01:47:39 ◼   ► It was a very soothing rate and a very-

01:47:44 ◼   ► - It was like my nightlight for many years.

01:47:47 ◼   ► I would wake up in the middle of the night

01:47:49 ◼   ► and I'd look at the ceiling

01:47:50 ◼   ► and the ceiling would very slowly pulse brighter

01:47:53 ◼   ► and then darker very subtly.

01:47:55 ◼   ► And I knew that was because my laptop was,

01:47:58 ◼   ► by the side of my bed

01:47:59 ◼   ► and that light was just faintly illuminating the room.

01:48:02 ◼   ► - So doing it with the pace tied to sleep,

01:48:05 ◼   ► like a very soothing, like having a Bob Ross type soothing voice tell you to breathe slowly

01:48:12 ◼   ► and really help you relax. That is whimsical and making sure that it didn't just blink

01:48:17 ◼   ► on and off, that it had like this nice curve to how bright and then it's off. That's all

01:48:23 ◼   ► whimsy by paying attention to stuff like that, making the effort to get that to work through

01:48:28 ◼   ► aluminum, even when they couldn't just put a hole in the aluminum to make a light. All

01:48:34 ◼   ► All of that is great, but there was also a purpose to having it in the first place, and

01:48:39 ◼   ► I do kind of miss it.

01:48:40 ◼   ► I wouldn't mind if they added that light back, but I can kind of see why they got rid of

01:48:45 ◼   ► it.

01:48:46 ◼   ► But what I remember specifically was that in the early years of portable computers,

01:48:51 ◼   ► there wasn't sleep.

01:48:53 ◼   ► Your computer was on or off, and when you were done using it, you had to turn it off.

01:49:00 ◼   ► And then they came out with sleep, and you might think I'm biased, but I think this

01:49:07 ◼   ► was undisputable at the time, like in the mid-90s, where PowerBooks, the sleep was reliable,

01:49:14 ◼   ► and on PC portables, the sleep was a crapshoot, whether it would actually wake up or still

01:49:20 ◼   ► be asleep or whether it would crash while it was supposedly sleeping.

01:49:25 ◼   ► At a technical level, Apple got sleep done right better years before Microsoft and the

01:49:31 ◼   ► PC makers got it together.

01:49:34 ◼   ► But even then, even when sleep was much more reliable on PowerBooks than it was on the

01:49:40 ◼   ► PC side, it was nowhere near as reliable as it is today, in my opinion.

01:49:45 ◼   ► There were still times when you'd think your PowerBook was sleeping and it either never

01:49:49 ◼   ► went to sleep and it was actually still burning through the CPU or it would go to sleep and

01:49:54 ◼   ► crash or something like that. So having that light glowing and knowing that your power

01:49:59 ◼   ► book was still successfully and healthily sleeping was actually useful. It was a useful

01:50:04 ◼   ► indicator to me at least.

01:50:05 ◼   ► Oh yeah, well there was a really nasty bug where sometimes you'd close the lid and it

01:50:11 ◼   ► would not go to sleep. And I had that happen to me so many times where I would take my

01:50:16 ◼   ► laptop, I'd open my backpack at home having come on the bus from work and it was hot.

01:50:22 ◼   ► I could tell. I put my hand toward it. I was like, "Oh, no." It had run through its battery.

01:50:28 ◼   ► It was still running, lid closed. I opened it up. The screen doesn't come back on. I

01:50:32 ◼   ► got force-powered down. Yeah, there were a few years there where sleep was really, really

01:50:38 ◼   ► unreliable. I know that it still happens, especially when you run lid closed. It can

01:50:42 ◼   ► get really confused. But even when I did things, I would open my laptop and unhook my external

01:50:48 ◼   ► monitor and get it to be like, "All right. Are you good? Are you feeling like a laptop

01:50:51 ◼   ► now I'm going to close you." And still half the time it would not go to sleep. You wouldn't

01:50:55 ◼   ► get the little pulsating light. It was frustrating.

01:50:57 ◼   ► Yeah, remember in the Mac OS 9 era with the Platinum user interface, there was a user

01:51:02 ◼   ► alert style with a red top. It was sort of a pink actually, but it was reserved for really,

01:51:09 ◼   ► really bad alerts. I think you've only got 5% battery life was one of those where it

01:51:15 ◼   ► that would come up.

01:51:16 ◼   ► And it was like the alert you didn't want to see.

01:51:18 ◼   ► If you had thought your machine was sleeping

01:51:22 ◼   ► in your backpack for all this time.

01:51:24 ◼   ► And the other thing too, again, going down memory lane.

01:51:28 ◼   ► In addition to the fact that sleep is more reliable now,

01:51:31 ◼   ► when a machine died in sleep back then,

01:51:35 ◼   ► there were a lot of bad things that happened.

01:51:37 ◼   ► Like if you had files that were open,

01:51:40 ◼   ► they lost the changes. - They were dead, yeah.

01:51:43 ◼   ► There's an awful lot of apps.

01:51:45 ◼   ► I mean, even wonderful, wonderful apps like BB edit,

01:51:49 ◼   ► which has always been ahead of the curve on things

01:51:51 ◼   ► like auto save and restoring and stuff like that.

01:51:54 ◼   ► But you know, if you had like a BB edit thing open

01:51:56 ◼   ► and the machine died, it was like,

01:51:59 ◼   ► there was a good chance you'd lose some of it.

01:52:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, they added a feature at one point, in fact,

01:52:04 ◼   ► that I remember being really grateful for,

01:52:05 ◼   ► that was they built in their own auto save

01:52:08 ◼   ► that happened in the background.

01:52:09 ◼   ► Even if it was an untitled file,

01:52:10 ◼   ► it would be saved somewhere.

01:52:12 ◼   ► It's funny though, ironically, the worst sleep failures I had were when Apple put in

01:52:19 ◼   ► a new feature that was if the battery died, it would, and they still do this to this day,

01:52:27 ◼   ► it would write the contents of memory to disk.

01:52:31 ◼   ► And this is the deep sleep.

01:52:32 ◼   ► They do this not just when the battery dies, but after it's been asleep for some period

01:52:35 ◼   ► of time.

01:52:36 ◼   ► If you've ever had that where you put your laptop to sleep and you come back the next

01:52:38 ◼   ► and it looks kind of like it's booting up but then it's just back and I didn't

01:52:44 ◼   ► actually reboot that is loading they do a deep shutdown memory gets voided but

01:52:48 ◼   ► they've written the memory to disk and then they load the memory back in and

01:52:51 ◼   ► then they pick up right where you left off

01:52:53 ◼   ► well the early days of that feature sometimes it would try to go to sleep

01:52:58 ◼   ► and it would be like oh something terrible happened I'm dead and that

01:53:02 ◼   ► would be it wouldn't go to sleep and it would sit there and we get hot and then

01:53:05 ◼   ► you have to reboot and you lost everything. And eventually they got through it. But that

01:53:09 ◼   ► was, I really remember that I would do like command line stuff where I'd be like, do not

01:53:13 ◼   ► try to page to disk because it will kill my laptop and just turn that feature off for

01:53:19 ◼   ► a couple of years while they while they get it settled. I remember turning that off on

01:53:22 ◼   ► a machine too. And it was also at a time when storage sizes hadn't raced so far ahead of

01:53:29 ◼   ► RAM sizes and you could possibly be, especially if you had like a machine maxed out on RAM,

01:53:36 ◼   ► you could run into a situation where there wasn't enough space on disk or it was so close

01:53:40 ◼   ► that it would fill up the disk to such a level that it would cause problems just by writing

01:53:44 ◼   ► that file to disk.

01:53:46 ◼   ► It still happens on some, there's still some small drives even now on modern Macs where

01:53:51 ◼   ► you can actually get a little bit of savings by turning that feature off and deleting your

01:53:56 ◼   ► save your ram save file and you're like hey I got another couple gigabytes back.

01:54:01 ◼   ► Yeah another good thing I just wrote about it today but I literally published right before

01:54:05 ◼   ► we started recording so I'll bet you haven't seen it but I can bring it I can just say

01:54:08 ◼   ► what it is is I wrote a short piece on inspired by a mutual friend Jeff Carlson tweeted yesterday

01:54:15 ◼   ► about all these years later and shake to undo still stinks or something like that or a dumb

01:54:20 ◼   ► idea I forget I don't want to put words in his mouth hold on let me look it up but anyway

01:54:24 ◼   ► I wrote a piece on shake to undo. No, it's good. It's good. And the fundamental misunderstanding

01:54:29 ◼   ► I think is is undo good. And the answer is yes, undo is good is the only way to undo

01:54:34 ◼   ► being to grab your phone and like shake it in the air like an idiot. Is that good? Maybe

01:54:39 ◼   ► not. Here's Jeff Carlson's tweet so many years in and shake to undo is still one of the worst

01:54:46 ◼   ► stupidest ideas in iOS. I would add but I would add though I bring it up in the in this

01:54:53 ◼   ► that it is an example though of whimsy, right?

01:54:56 ◼   ► It is whimsical to use the accelerometer

01:54:59 ◼   ► to add this feature.

01:55:02 ◼   ► And I add this anecdote that I heard years ago.

01:55:07 ◼   ► I don't know if it's true

01:55:08 ◼   ► because I did not hear it firsthand, so who knows?

01:55:10 ◼   ► But the idea, that story I heard somewhat reliably,

01:55:14 ◼   ► but again, not firsthand,

01:55:16 ◼   ► is that at some point, like two or three years into iOS,

01:55:18 ◼   ► like at the time where they were,

01:55:19 ◼   ► you remember it was only iOS 3

01:55:21 ◼   ► added cut copy and paste like that's how much iOS rethought the entire idea of a

01:55:27 ◼   ► graphical user interface and they knew they wanted undo but if you think about

01:55:31 ◼   ► it it's really hard on a little glass iPhone size thing where every little

01:55:38 ◼   ► finger size bit of surface area is valuable and the keyboard isn't

01:55:43 ◼   ► available all the time and even when the keyboard is showing there are no

01:55:48 ◼   ► modifier keys so you can't do command Z for undo how do you do undo and the

01:55:55 ◼   ► Newton did it by adding an actual like one of like six there are six hardware

01:55:59 ◼   ► buttons under the screen that were there permanently and one of them was undo

01:56:03 ◼   ► that's that's how hard it is to do undo on a on a touchscreen without a menu bar

01:56:08 ◼   ► and without command key shortcuts so the Newton solution was to just have one of

01:56:13 ◼   ► was one sixth of the buttons that were on the screen, one of them was undo. Obviously

01:56:20 ◼   ► they're not going to do that with the iPhone and I don't think it would have been a good

01:56:22 ◼   ► it's a tricky problem to solve. And the story I heard though is that Scott Forstall got

01:56:27 ◼   ► a bunch of iOS engineers together. So we got to figure this out. Somebody come up with

01:56:31 ◼   ► an idea and somebody said as a joke, you could just shake the phone, you know, we read the

01:56:36 ◼   ► accelerometer and when anybody shakes the phone will do undo. And it was meant as joke

01:56:41 ◼   ► because it was so obviously a terrible idea, but Forrestal jumped on it and said, "I love

01:56:46 ◼   ► it. Let's do that." And, you know, here we are.

01:56:50 ◼   ► It's ingenious. It really is. I just keep thinking like, and maybe some of this is evangelizing.

01:56:55 ◼   ► You point out in that piece that the iPad, you know, there's an undo button in the strip,

01:57:00 ◼   ► in the autocorrect strip, basically above the keyboard. And it's always there. And there's

01:57:04 ◼   ► actually, when you've got something on the clipboard, there's also a paste button there,

01:57:07 ◼   ► which is really nice when you're editing text.

01:57:09 ◼   ► If you're in an app like some of the photo editing apps,

01:57:13 ◼   ► they have an explicit undo button.

01:57:17 ◼   ► But I get that like every now and then you're somewhere

01:57:20 ◼   ► and you're in an app that does not have

01:57:22 ◼   ► like a content interface that's drawn up

01:57:24 ◼   ► that has an undo button and you do something

01:57:26 ◼   ► and you're like, "Oh no."

01:57:28 ◼   ► And the shake to undo, I mean, the fact is,

01:57:32 ◼   ► well, it's not always there, I was gonna say that,

01:57:34 ◼   ► but apps have to support it.

01:57:35 ◼   ► but at least it's something that you can use as a last resort.

01:57:39 ◼   ► But I don't disagree with Jeff that like, ideally, this should be solved.

01:57:43 ◼   ► And I think Apple has tried to start solving it by like putting it in context

01:57:48 ◼   ► in like the text editing strip above the keyboard, whatever they call that,

01:57:51 ◼   ► the smart something or other.

01:57:52 ◼   ► But here, I'll just throw out an example.

01:57:55 ◼   ► It just is just right off the top of my head.

01:57:59 ◼   ► Terrible idea.

01:58:00 ◼   ► They could have said, put four fingers on the iPhone screen

01:58:04 ◼   ► and move down, and that's undo.

01:58:07 ◼   ► And that also is a terrible idea, is not discoverable,

01:58:10 ◼   ► not something people would intuitively know about.

01:58:13 ◼   ► You'd have to hear about it from somebody

01:58:14 ◼   ► and then remember it and then do it.

01:58:17 ◼   ► But that would have no whim,

01:58:18 ◼   ► there's no whimsy to that at all, right?

01:58:20 ◼   ► So shake to undo, the one thing that it does have

01:58:22 ◼   ► going for it, as opposed to let's say a four finger

01:58:25 ◼   ► swipe down or swipe in a circle or whatever you wanna do

01:58:29 ◼   ► with multi fingers.

01:58:30 ◼   ► Shake to Undo does have whimsy.

01:58:35 ◼   ► And that's why I brought it up in the context

01:58:37 ◼   ► of whatever happened to Apple and whimsy.

01:58:40 ◼   ► There was, in times past, more of a...

01:58:43 ◼   ► I don't think Shake to Undo would fly today.

01:58:46 ◼   ► I really, I don't think they would do that again.

01:58:49 ◼   ► - No, no.

01:58:51 ◼   ► I wonder what you could do.

01:58:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's a hard problem.

01:58:54 ◼   ► That's the funny thing, is Shake to Undo is ridiculous.

01:58:56 ◼   ► I think the fact that it still exists

01:58:58 ◼   ► says something about how hard it is, though, to solve that problem.

01:59:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it is hard. It's really hard. You can't take it out unless you replace it with something,

01:59:04 ◼   ► and it's very hard to do. So it remains. It is super ingenious. Maybe at some point they'll just

01:59:10 ◼   ► have that sensor bar in the front will like see us scowling and be like, "I sense that they made

01:59:16 ◼   ► a mistake." Would you like to undo it? Like just an eyebrow-based undo system, maybe, eventually.

01:59:22 ◼   ► I don't know. Maybe the best solution would be to just have it listen and, you know,

01:59:25 ◼   ► if you just say undo. Siri as an undo shortcut that is actually not bad. Hey Siri undo. Oh

01:59:34 ◼   ► I shouldn't be saying that. I should say hey dingus but well whatever. Well it shouldn't

01:59:40 ◼   ► bother anybody who has this podcast playing audibly because Siri doesn't support undo yet.

01:59:45 ◼   ► Just wait until hey Siri can support you know wipe my hard drive.

01:59:54 ◼   ► be all sorts of fun on podcasts. All right, let me take one last break here and thank our third

02:00:00 ◼   ► and final sponsor. It is our good friends at Casper. Oddly enough, a year ago, when you were

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02:01:42 ◼   ► I bought the comforter.

02:01:44 ◼   ► We've got, I've got the pillows on my side of the bed.

02:01:47 ◼   ► - Me too.

02:01:48 ◼   ► I bought the sheets and the pillows.

02:01:50 ◼   ► - The comforter, I gotta tell you, I'm just telling you,

02:01:52 ◼   ► and again, I'm selling a mattress here on a sponsor read,

02:01:54 ◼   ► but I'm telling you, we had an old comforter,

02:01:56 ◼   ► my wife and I, that I don't even know

02:01:57 ◼   ► how many years we'd had it.

02:01:58 ◼   ► One of those things that you just,

02:02:00 ◼   ► you don't really keep track of how old it is.

02:02:02 ◼   ► And it was my wife's idea.

02:02:03 ◼   ► She said she, I don't know if she read something

02:02:05 ◼   ► or something, but you know how comforters have those,

02:02:07 ◼   ► they're like rows of stitching.

02:02:10 ◼   ► And the idea is that keeps the internal,

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02:02:17 ◼   ► The way that the comforters are stitched

02:02:19 ◼   ► is to try to keep that.

02:02:20 ◼   ► But that over time, it doesn't work anymore,

02:02:23 ◼   ► and you end up with a bad distribution.

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02:02:29 ◼   ► sometime a couple months ago, and it was still chilly.

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02:04:35 ◼   ► product. Long time sponsor of the show. Sponsored a show exactly one year ago. Last thing I

02:04:43 ◼   ► wanted to talk about, I don't know if you had anything you wanted to bring up, but I'm

02:04:46 ◼   ► working on one more piece. I'm prolific this week.

02:04:49 ◼   ► Yeah, big week for you. Yeah, I've still got another one. It's mostly written and I got I got interrupted

02:04:54 ◼   ► Is I I think it's interesting that nobody has been speculating

02:04:59 ◼   ► Until now about what the hell is Apple gonna call the new iPhones this year

02:05:05 ◼   ► Right because last year it and this is one of those things that Apple is able to keep secret the name iPhone 10

02:05:12 ◼   ► only leaked like two or three days before the announcement because of a

02:05:16 ◼   ► a leak of the GM build of iOS. And even then we didn't know if it was going to be pronounced

02:05:21 ◼   ► iPhone X or iPhone 10. And I guessed wrong and thought X because I didn't think 10 made

02:05:26 ◼   ► a lot of sense. And I was wrong that they were going to pronounce it X not 10. But I

02:05:33 ◼   ► was right that it didn't make a lot of sense because it seems like they've painted themselves

02:05:36 ◼   ► into a corner if they want to keep adding numbers. And I'm curious if you have any thoughts

02:05:42 ◼   ► on this? Yeah, you know I do. I love this. I was the one who was advocating that they

02:05:48 ◼   ► get OS X off of version 10 and go to 11 for ages, which they could do now at any point

02:05:53 ◼   ► if they really wanted to because it's out of the name entirely. It's ridiculous. They're

02:05:57 ◼   ► never going to get 10 point something forever. 10.90 is going to be the last version. So,

02:06:02 ◼   ► yeah, I do. I think it's interesting that they chose 10 instead of X for the name of

02:06:07 ◼   ► iPhone because I think doing like an iPhone X2 would be cool, but X2 doesn't make any

02:06:17 ◼   ► sense. So I'm going to say, I think what it's going to be is I think there are these three

02:06:23 ◼   ► rumored phone models. I think it's going to be the iPhone 9, the iPhone X, new 2018 version,

02:06:31 ◼   ► the iPhone 10 Plus. I think they're gonna, I think Apple really likes making multiple

02:06:36 ◼   ► products with the same X. Right, the new iPhone 10. The new iPhone 10, right? And then ride

02:06:43 ◼   ► it like the ones that look like this and have this sensor and do the OLED screen and all

02:06:47 ◼   ► that, they're gonna be the iPhone 10 for a little while. Alright, let me toss this out.

02:06:51 ◼   ► I wonder if they might not be done with Plus. Like, so in a way that the 13-inch and 15-inch

02:06:57 ◼   ► MacBook Pros are just MacBook Pros and the two sizes of iPad Pro are just iPad Pro. Forget

02:07:02 ◼   ► the Pro part. Even though I still, there's a part of me that thinks that they could go

02:07:05 ◼   ► iPhone Pro, but I don't know that they would go iPhone Pro with this one that looks exactly

02:07:10 ◼   ► like the iPhone 10. Right. I think if they were going to switch to iPhone Pro, they'd

02:07:14 ◼   ► wait till they had one that looks, yeah, no, yeah. But the thing about plus is obviously

02:07:20 ◼   ► the first thing people think of is, okay, the seven plus the eight plus are bigger,

02:07:25 ◼   ► But the plus also meant other things, right?

02:07:28 ◼   ► The camera was always slightly better.

02:07:30 ◼   ► The iPhone Plus models had 3x retina screens, not 2x retina screens.

02:07:35 ◼   ► So in addition to being bigger screens, they actually had more pixels per inch.

02:07:39 ◼   ► So you were getting more than just a bigger phone.

02:07:42 ◼   ► And I don't know the details.

02:07:44 ◼   ► I have no supply side.

02:07:47 ◼   ► But all the rumors I've seen about these two new iPhone X models, the one that's exactly

02:07:52 ◼   ► the same size as the current iPhone X and the big 6.5-inch diagonal one. I haven't seen anybody say

02:07:59 ◼   ► that the 6.5 one is going to have any advantage, technical advantage whatsoever, other than a

02:08:05 ◼   ► bigger screen. That the cameras will be exactly the same, the pixels per inch of the OLED displays

02:08:10 ◼   ► would be the same. Right, so more pixels but same resolution, the 3x. Right. Or are you thinking

02:08:20 ◼   ► the same pixels just blown up. I would imagine it's just more pixels.

02:08:23 ◼   ► I would imagine it's just more pixels at the same pixels per inch.

02:08:26 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I agree. That makes sense. So I wouldn't think blown up. I would think

02:08:30 ◼   ► more pixels, but at the exact, you know, effectively cut from the same sheets of OLED.

02:08:35 ◼   ► But that, like, and the thing that always bothered me, and maybe I just read too much into it,

02:08:41 ◼   ► but as somebody who doesn't like the biggest size phones and has never carried a plus size

02:08:46 ◼   ► phone longer than like a week to review one. It always bothered me that I was no longer

02:08:53 ◼   ► getting the best possible iPhone camera. The 6 Plus had optical image stabilization for

02:09:01 ◼   ► video. The next year, it had optical image stabilization for video and stills, I think.

02:09:06 ◼   ► I don't know. I know that the technical difference was that it had optical image stabilization.

02:09:10 ◼   ► In the one year, it was video. In the one year, it was video and stills.

02:09:15 ◼   ► then the second camera.

02:09:17 ◼   ► - Right, and then it got a second camera,

02:09:20 ◼   ► which is that's where it really started to hurt, right?

02:09:22 ◼   ► Because you're obviously,

02:09:23 ◼   ► and I use that second camera a lot.

02:09:26 ◼   ► And for them, I don't know what percentage.

02:09:28 ◼   ► That would actually be interesting

02:09:29 ◼   ► if I could script that somehow

02:09:31 ◼   ► and see what percentage of my iPhone pictures

02:09:34 ◼   ► I take with which lens.

02:09:35 ◼   ► I would guess that I take about 95% of my photos

02:09:38 ◼   ► with the 1X lens and about 5% with the 2X.

02:09:43 ◼   ► But when I take one with the 2X,

02:09:45 ◼   ► I'm getting a, and some of them are great photos,

02:09:49 ◼   ► and I'm getting image quality that I would never get

02:09:52 ◼   ► that blows away what I would get

02:09:53 ◼   ► with a zoomed in version of the 1X.

02:09:55 ◼   ► That really bothered me.

02:09:58 ◼   ► Whereas I don't think this one is actually plus

02:10:00 ◼   ► other than being bigger.

02:10:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think in the end,

02:10:03 ◼   ► maybe that's all that matters is that it's bigger.

02:10:05 ◼   ► I do have a theory and it's just a theory.

02:10:08 ◼   ► Mike Hurley and I talked about this on our podcast,

02:10:11 ◼   ► upgrade this week because he's a big Plus phone user and he's a big Apple Pencil fan.

02:10:18 ◼   ► I think it's less than 50% chance, but I feel like it's the biggest chance we've had in

02:10:22 ◼   ► a long time to say maybe this is the year that Apple introduces a phone that has support

02:10:28 ◼   ► for an Apple Pencil-like device. It would have to be smaller than the current Apple

02:10:33 ◼   ► Pencil, but something like that where you could basically say it's their equivalent

02:10:38 ◼   ► of the Galaxy Note where it's a big phone, it's so big it's like a notebook, you know,

02:10:43 ◼   ► like a paper notebook, not a laptop notebook, and you can hold it in your hand and use our

02:10:48 ◼   ► little golf pencil or whatever they call it, and the software is all already there because

02:10:52 ◼   ► it's already there for the Apple Pencil on the iPad to do something like that. And that

02:10:55 ◼   ► would be a way to differentiate it, right? If the iPhone 10+ also had Apple Pencil support,

02:11:02 ◼   ► because then it sort of makes sense on the bigger screen, you can sketch, you could write.