The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► So, how are you? It's been a while.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm very well, thank you.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I have a lot to cover because my last episode was the Lisa Jackson episode, so it wasn't

00:00:08 ◼   ► really news-related. There's a lot on the agenda. I'm trying to think of even where

00:00:14 ◼   ► to start. I guess we could start with quarterly results. I don't know. I just wrote a big

00:00:22 ◼   ► piece about iPhone sales in China. I don't know. I don't think it's major. I don't

00:00:28 ◼   ► I don't think the quarterly results this time were all that bad or good.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I think long story short, my take on them is that it was a pretty good quarter everywhere

00:00:39 ◼   ► except China.

00:00:40 ◼   ► And it was iPhone sales continuing to slide in China turned a pretty good quarter into

00:00:45 ◼   ► an eh, okay quarter, where it was flat.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Overall.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Yeah, flat I think is a great word to describe it.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And there were two things that Tim Cook said that really stood out to me.

00:00:54 ◼   ► One was when they're talking about new customer acquisition,

00:00:57 ◼   ► that the rate of switchers from Android to iPhone

00:01:00 ◼   ► was up everywhere when you discounted China,

00:01:03 ◼   ► which is a different story than they used to tell.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - But that's a big but, because part of what I wrote

00:01:09 ◼   ► about today based on a very good column

00:01:13 ◼   ► by a friend of the show, Ben Thompson,

00:01:16 ◼   ► with some market research, at least two pieces

00:01:20 ◼   ► of market research, one from China and another

00:01:24 ◼   ► from UBS analysts that came out last year,

00:01:27 ◼   ► show that in China, there's a lot lower retention rate,

00:01:33 ◼   ► meaning when somebody who already owns an iPhone

00:01:37 ◼   ► goes to buy a new phone, do they buy another iPhone

00:01:39 ◼   ► or do they switch to another brand?

00:01:41 ◼   ► That's retention rate.

00:01:42 ◼   ► And it's really pretty, in the West,

00:01:44 ◼   ► it's pretty consistently in the mid to high 80s.

00:01:47 ◼   ► In the US, in the UK, in Germany,

00:01:50 ◼   ► for two or three years now,

00:01:52 ◼   ► very consistently 80-45. Germany's even a little higher 88-89. Japan is a little lower

00:01:59 ◼   ► like mid 70s but pretty flat year to year. But in China it went from like Western levels

00:02:05 ◼   ► in the 80s like in a couple years ago to around 50% now which is not good from Apple's perspective.

00:02:12 ◼   ► No, it's a very different narrative than what they spoke about previously. If you flash

00:02:16 ◼   ► back a couple years when they were talking about the lack of low entry level pricing

00:02:20 ◼   ► on iPhones, one of the things that Apple said

00:02:22 ◼   ► is they didn't need to be your first phone

00:02:24 ◼   ► if all you wanted was the cheapest phone.

00:02:25 ◼   ► If cheapness was your primary feature, that was great,

00:02:29 ◼   ► but it wasn't a feature they were competing on.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And they would count on the fact

00:02:31 ◼   ► that you would get into smartphones

00:02:33 ◼   ► and then if you wanted a better phone experience,

00:02:35 ◼   ► you'd upgrade to an iPhone.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And a lot of people did that either for status

00:02:38 ◼   ► or for iOS for iOS apps,

00:02:40 ◼   ► but that's no longer the case in China.

00:02:42 ◼   ► There is still the status symbol implement,

00:02:44 ◼   ► but as Ben pointed out, the platform layer has shifted

00:02:47 ◼   ► from base operating system to messaging.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Yeah, and especially, it's particularly this app, WeChat,

00:02:52 ◼   ► which is, I think, only in China.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Or at least it's really only a sensation in China.

00:02:58 ◼   ► But it's truly staggering numbers.

00:03:00 ◼   ► It's a four-year-old app from another company.

00:03:03 ◼   ► But it's, I don't know, 900 million monthly active users,

00:03:07 ◼   ► something like that.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And I don't want to go too-- I'll put a link,

00:03:12 ◼   ► I swear to God, in the show notes, at least in my article,

00:03:18 ◼   ► which has a link to the post from a woman named Connie Chen

00:03:23 ◼   ► at Anderson Horowitz, explaining more or less for what is WeChat

00:03:30 ◼   ► and why is it a sensation in China.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And long story short, it's sort of like an OS in an app

00:03:36 ◼   ► where it's a messaging app, but you can do so much stuff.

00:03:42 ◼   ► You can pay for-- it's like an Apple Pay type competitor

00:03:45 ◼   ► where you can go into a store and use

00:03:46 ◼   ► WeChat to pay for the lunch while you're in line.

00:03:51 ◼   ► And like Ben has said, that in China, it

00:03:54 ◼   ► makes you look like a rube if you pay with cash.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Everybody else is paying with WeChat.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Just all sorts of stuff.

00:04:00 ◼   ► You can buy stuff.

00:04:01 ◼   ► It's a shopping app.

00:04:03 ◼   ► That all sorts of companies that would

00:04:05 ◼   ► like to be on the WeChat platform

00:04:07 ◼   ► set up their own authorized accounts,

00:04:11 ◼   ► like a special account status that opens up a bunch of APIs

00:04:15 ◼   ► So you can have a programmatic backend

00:04:17 ◼   ► so other WeChat users can, when they're chatting with,

00:04:21 ◼   ► you know, Renee and John Incorporated,

00:04:25 ◼   ► we can sell them t-shirts or sneakers or whatever

00:04:27 ◼   ► right in the WeChat app.

00:04:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and messaging is fragmented,

00:04:32 ◼   ► so it doesn't really,

00:04:33 ◼   ► like you don't have to own messaging everywhere.

00:04:35 ◼   ► As long as you own the China market with WeChat,

00:04:36 ◼   ► you're fine, the Japanese market with Lion.

00:04:38 ◼   ► It's almost like people who are such casual computer users

00:04:41 ◼   ► that all they ever use is Facebook.

00:04:43 ◼   ► It makes no difference to them

00:04:44 ◼   ► they're on a Mac or a Windows PC or a library terminal

00:04:46 ◼   ► or anything, their entire computing experience is Facebook

00:04:49 ◼   ► and it makes it easy to migrate.

00:04:50 ◼   ► - Right, my argument, and I've said this,

00:04:52 ◼   ► I've always thought this and I still believe

00:04:54 ◼   ► it's always been true and always will be true,

00:04:56 ◼   ► is that in the basic Apple's model is selling nice hardware

00:05:01 ◼   ► differentiated by proprietary software that's also nice.

00:05:06 ◼   ► But the software part is more important

00:05:08 ◼   ► than the hardware part because that's what makes people

00:05:13 ◼   ► people sticky to the platform.

00:05:16 ◼   ► And so like a Mac user, and I've put this forth before,

00:05:20 ◼   ► I think you would agree with me,

00:05:21 ◼   ► I just love it as a thought experiment,

00:05:23 ◼   ► but would you rather use Apple's OS on competing hard,

00:05:27 ◼   ► on some other hardware, or would you rather use

00:05:32 ◼   ► some other hardware platform that's running,

00:05:39 ◼   ► wait, some other hardware platform running Apple's OS,

00:05:41 ◼   ► would you rather use Apple's hardware running the other OS?

00:05:44 ◼   ► So for example, would you rather have,

00:05:46 ◼   ► like I would rather have a Google Pixel that runs iOS,

00:05:49 ◼   ► hypothetically since that's not really possible,

00:05:52 ◼   ► instead of say an iPhone 7 that's running Android?

00:05:56 ◼   ► - Totally, and I think it's easy to see

00:05:57 ◼   ► because there are other companies

00:05:58 ◼   ► that can manufacture beautiful hardware

00:06:00 ◼   ► and they're in fact the suppliers

00:06:01 ◼   ► of a lot of Apple's components,

00:06:03 ◼   ► so we know they can make really good components,

00:06:04 ◼   ► but no one else has proven

00:06:05 ◼   ► they can make really good software yet.

00:06:06 ◼   ► That's a much more rarer skill.

00:06:09 ◼   ► - Right, and with the iOS example,

00:06:11 ◼   ► It's a real hypothetical, because I don't even

00:06:13 ◼   ► think it's possible.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I really think that there's technical aspects

00:06:16 ◼   ► of the secure enclave and stuff like that that

00:06:20 ◼   ► would keep something from iMessage from working.

00:06:22 ◼   ► In my hypothetical example, I'd have everything.

00:06:25 ◼   ► My iMessage would work.

00:06:26 ◼   ► My iCloud ID would work on this Pixel running iOS.

00:06:30 ◼   ► But I would rather have that, even though I do,

00:06:32 ◼   ► in any abstract, prefer an iPhone 7 over the Google

00:06:36 ◼   ► Pixel, which is the latest Android phone that I'm

00:06:38 ◼   ► most familiar with.

00:06:39 ◼   ► which I have to say is actually the nicest Android phone I ever saw, versus the other

00:06:46 ◼   ► way around. It would drive me nuts to—

00:06:47 ◼   ► You'd have to use Qualcomm's crappy processors instead of the A-series, but you could live

00:06:51 ◼   ► with it. Yeah, I could live with it. It's fast enough.

00:06:55 ◼   ► If you look at the specs, they're somewhere around 18 months to 24 months behind. I would

00:07:01 ◼   ► rather use a two-year-old iPhone 6 than use a cutting-edge Android, because the platform

00:07:08 ◼   ► is most important to me.

00:07:09 ◼   ► It's just my mind is warped around it.

00:07:11 ◼   ► It's part of the way I think about how

00:07:13 ◼   ► to do stuff on the phone.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And whenever I pose that question, with computers,

00:07:19 ◼   ► it actually is possible.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Because you could create-- you can create a hackintosh

00:07:23 ◼   ► that works, although there still is things like iMessage still

00:07:26 ◼   ► has problems and stuff like that because there's security.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It's not perfect.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Hackintoshes don't work perfectly, but they do work.

00:07:34 ◼   ► I'd rather have a hackintosh on a ThinkPad running Mac OS X

00:07:38 ◼   ► than anything, Windows, you name it, Chrome or whatever else desktop PC operating system

00:07:46 ◼   ► I could have running on a MacBook.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin Yeah, absolutely the same.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Dave Asprey But I've heard, I know there are people

00:07:51 ◼   ► that are probably listening to the show right now. I've heard from them whenever I bring

00:07:54 ◼   ► this up, because I do think it's an interesting hypothetical question. There are definitely

00:07:58 ◼   ► people who I hear from who read my stuff or listen to the show and say, "No, I used

00:08:04 ◼   ► used Windows forever, but switched to a MacBook

00:08:08 ◼   ► just because of the hardware.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And a lot of times, they'll say--

00:08:11 ◼   ► and not just the way it looks, but I just

00:08:13 ◼   ► got sick of the fact--

00:08:14 ◼   ► I wanted a laptop that just, when I opened it up,

00:08:16 ◼   ► it turns on.

00:08:17 ◼   ► When I close it, it shuts.

00:08:18 ◼   ► It's never had--

00:08:19 ◼   ► Trackpad works.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Trackpad works.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Trackpad working is a huge thing.

00:08:23 ◼   ► And I know Joanna Stern, friend of the show, is often--

00:08:25 ◼   ► she's like the absolute queen of trackpad judgments.

00:08:31 ◼   ► She's got the ranking in her head

00:08:33 ◼   ► of every single trackpad quality in the whole market.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And I totally trust her judgment on trackpad quality.

00:08:41 ◼   ► That's a huge one.

00:08:42 ◼   ► But the people who say that they switch like that, a lot of times

00:08:45 ◼   ► say, but that's the only reason.

00:08:46 ◼   ► And that they're-- for example, very common scenario

00:08:49 ◼   ► among my audience, at least, are web developers

00:08:51 ◼   ► whose entire life revolves around Chrome, a text

00:08:56 ◼   ► editor, and a terminal window.

00:08:58 ◼   ► So somebody like that, if that's your life,

00:09:00 ◼   ► If your life is just Google Chrome, a text editor, and a terminal, you can easily switch

00:09:07 ◼   ► to some other brand of laptop running another operating system, because those things are

00:09:11 ◼   ► available on every platform.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:14 ◼   ► Same as the Facebook example.

00:09:16 ◼   ► It's just your entire environment is abstracted away from your computer.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Right.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Well, that's why I think Facebook is such a—not really a threat to Apple, but like

00:09:25 ◼   ► a direct threat, but certainly looms large as an indirect threat.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Facebook is far more threatening to Apple than, to me at least, than say Samsung, even

00:09:42 ◼   ► though you would think Samsung would be the one who's the threat because they do the same

00:09:47 ◼   ► thing.

00:09:48 ◼   ► They make $700 cell phones that when somebody goes into a store to decide what to buy, they're

00:09:54 ◼   ► they're only gonna buy one.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Whereas I feel like Apple has,

00:09:59 ◼   ► it successfully has always been,

00:10:03 ◼   ► or at least has been for 20 years,

00:10:05 ◼   ► in a position where the quality of their products

00:10:08 ◼   ► are enough that they don't really have to worry

00:10:10 ◼   ► about somebody else who also sells nice things

00:10:12 ◼   ► because they've got the software platform

00:10:14 ◼   ► to differentiate themselves.

00:10:16 ◼   ► The problem with something like Facebook

00:10:18 ◼   ► is that Facebook, in a way, is sort of like

00:10:20 ◼   ► the WeChat of the West,

00:10:22 ◼   ► where if it's the most used app, and from a lot of people

00:10:27 ◼   ► it is, and it does all the same things in mostly the same ways

00:10:32 ◼   ► on iOS and Android, it's a lot easier for somebody

00:10:37 ◼   ► to switch from an iPhone to Android

00:10:39 ◼   ► if their most important app just works exactly the same way

00:10:43 ◼   ► and lets them do all the same things.

00:10:45 ◼   ► And it's interesting because the web arguably

00:10:46 ◼   ► helped Apple at a time when they were very far behind in terms

00:10:50 ◼   ► of just market share and mind share with PC,

00:10:53 ◼   ► but the web let them compete.

00:10:55 ◼   ► You could just have a web browser

00:10:56 ◼   ► and you have access to all these things

00:10:58 ◼   ► and it did ease the transition back to Mac,

00:11:01 ◼   ► but that door goes both ways

00:11:03 ◼   ► and it can let people leave as quickly as it let them in.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - Right, it was, that sort of cross-platform parity

00:11:10 ◼   ► that the web created was helpful to Apple

00:11:14 ◼   ► when Apple was struggling,

00:11:17 ◼   ► but it's detrimental to Apple

00:11:19 ◼   ► now that Apple's in a position of strength.

00:11:22 ◼   ► - And it's interesting because there's different layers

00:11:23 ◼   ► of abstraction where Facebook abstracts away

00:11:25 ◼   ► a lot of the operating system and you're just interfacing.

00:11:27 ◼   ► 'Cause for a normal person, the interface is the app

00:11:29 ◼   ► and the interface is the hardware.

00:11:30 ◼   ► It's the face that they, literally the face that they see

00:11:32 ◼   ► and they work with.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And you can change all the plumbing behind it

00:11:35 ◼   ► and they may not notice.

00:11:36 ◼   ► But if you change one button on an interface,

00:11:38 ◼   ► you'll get complaints or, you know,

00:11:40 ◼   ► people will tell you about it.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And there's voice analysis too,

00:11:43 ◼   ► where you use Siri, for example,

00:11:45 ◼   ► which totally disintermediates Google

00:11:46 ◼   ► and all they see is queries coming from Apple.

00:11:49 ◼   ► and Apple could switch the plumbing for that,

00:11:51 ◼   ► and then Alexa intermediates things.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And it's almost like this battle

00:11:55 ◼   ► for who can be the final point of the user interface,

00:11:57 ◼   ► and that's the experience that becomes sticky.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - Right, and Facebook is doing WeChat similar things

00:12:02 ◼   ► with Messenger and stuff,

00:12:03 ◼   ► where there's apps within apps,

00:12:06 ◼   ► and it's the sort of thing that Apple, in its way,

00:12:11 ◼   ► has tried to discourage in the App Store all along.

00:12:17 ◼   ► They were never going to allow, say,

00:12:20 ◼   ► it's part of the whole Flash thing in the early years

00:12:22 ◼   ► when that was contentious and when Adobe first had

00:12:25 ◼   ► a sort of Flash to native iOS development chain

00:12:30 ◼   ► and Apple like put the kibosh on it.

00:12:33 ◼   ► It was sort of, you know, I'm sure there,

00:12:37 ◼   ► strategically there were multiple reasons,

00:12:39 ◼   ► but one of them was they were never going to allow

00:12:41 ◼   ► something like an Adobe app that when you open the app

00:12:44 ◼   ► gives you a secondary homepage of Flash-based games

00:12:47 ◼   ► that you can play, right?

00:12:49 ◼   ► You can't have an app store within the app store.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Except that if you already have a certain momentum

00:12:57 ◼   ► and size and importance like Facebook

00:12:59 ◼   ► and like WeChat has in China,

00:13:02 ◼   ► you can kind of get away from it,

00:13:04 ◼   ► get away with it because Apple can't really afford,

00:13:06 ◼   ► they can't say we're not gonna allow WeChat

00:13:08 ◼   ► on the iPhone in China and they can't say

00:13:11 ◼   ► we're not gonna allow Facebook on the iPhone.

00:13:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, people would just buy something else at that point.

00:13:16 ◼   ► - Right, but so, you know, they even talk about apps.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Like, you know, Facebook has things they call apps

00:13:21 ◼   ► that you can have within Messenger.

00:13:23 ◼   ► And like if you and I started a new chat app

00:13:27 ◼   ► and came out with it and we said that there were apps

00:13:30 ◼   ► you could have within the app,

00:13:31 ◼   ► it would not make it through app approval

00:13:35 ◼   ► in the iOS app store, or probably wouldn't.

00:13:40 ◼   ► It's just something that a company like Facebook

00:13:43 ◼   ► that has that sort of, what would you call it, stature?

00:13:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, well it also blurs the web services line

00:13:49 ◼   ► because like Apple wouldn't blink with,

00:13:50 ◼   ► just like you go to Google.com and there's your Gmail

00:13:52 ◼   ► and your Google Calendar, those are just

00:13:53 ◼   ► normal web experiences, and they've done that,

00:13:56 ◼   ► but they've packaged those things up inside chat clients

00:13:59 ◼   ► or inside social networks instead of having them

00:14:01 ◼   ► as a bunch of standalone URLs,

00:14:03 ◼   ► and that gives a very different experience

00:14:04 ◼   ► and probably a lot more compelling experience.

00:14:06 ◼   ► - Right, and you know, one of the ways that Facebook

00:14:09 ◼   ► is sort of threatening to Apple is in theory,

00:14:12 ◼   ► like I don't think this would happen.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I think it's, you know, so far it's actually

00:14:16 ◼   ► more likely the other way around where something like,

00:14:19 ◼   ► you know, Facebook's subsidiary Instagram

00:14:21 ◼   ► was iOS only for years before it came out for Android.

00:14:25 ◼   ► But if in theory Facebook somehow got better,

00:14:31 ◼   ► it was a better experience on Android

00:14:33 ◼   ► than it is on the iPhone, that's a threat to Apple

00:14:36 ◼   ► if people's favorite app and most used app is Facebook

00:14:39 ◼   ► and word spreads around that, oh, but you can't do

00:14:42 ◼   ► the cool new X, Y, and Z that all your friends

00:14:44 ◼   ► who have Android phones are doing on Facebook

00:14:46 ◼   ► unless you get an Android phone.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Facebook is so big and so popular

00:14:50 ◼   ► that if something like that happened hypothetically,

00:14:52 ◼   ► that's a problem for Apple.

00:14:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't wanna relitigate the whole App Store thing,

00:14:56 ◼   ► but when you look at it, if you look at the App Store

00:14:57 ◼   ► and you look at Google Play, for example,

00:14:59 ◼   ► Google Play offers freedoms and features

00:15:01 ◼   ► that a lot of App Store developers

00:15:02 ◼   ► have been wanting for years,

00:15:04 ◼   ► but you can't really point to things on Google Play

00:15:06 ◼   ► and say those are apps that aren't,

00:15:08 ◼   ► those are transformative apps

00:15:09 ◼   ► that are simply not possible on iPhone.

00:15:11 ◼   ► You can get Snapchat on iPhone, you can get Uber on iPhone.

00:15:14 ◼   ► But if there was ever a case where an app

00:15:15 ◼   ► could only exist on Android because the policies

00:15:17 ◼   ► or capabilities of Google Play and the Android ecosystem

00:15:21 ◼   ► were such to make it so, that would I think be the only thing

00:15:24 ◼   ► that could really change Apple's outlook on how all that thing

00:15:26 ◼   ► on how iOS and the App Store works.

00:15:28 ◼   ► - Right, if you really think about it, it's Apple's...

00:15:31 ◼   ► They have control over the app store that software vendors haven't had previously over

00:15:43 ◼   ► their platforms, right?

00:15:45 ◼   ► That they didn't have over the Mac because you can install any app you want on the Mac.

00:15:53 ◼   ► And so technically, yes, they could ban anything.

00:15:54 ◼   ► But practically speaking, they have lots of control, but they don't really have total

00:15:59 ◼   ► control.

00:16:00 ◼   ► only so far that they can push Facebook on,

00:16:04 ◼   ► if Facebook is doing shady stuff behind the scenes

00:16:06 ◼   ► like they have in the past, like when they use--

00:16:08 ◼   ► - Of used audio APIs or bloatware, yeah.

00:16:11 ◼   ► - You know, like, that was one of them,

00:16:13 ◼   ► like where over the years when you look and say,

00:16:16 ◼   ► well, why in the world is Facebook doing so much

00:16:18 ◼   ► in the background and how are they doing it

00:16:19 ◼   ► where there's rules of, you know,

00:16:22 ◼   ► that apps get killed in the background?

00:16:24 ◼   ► And Facebook at one point, one of the things they did

00:16:27 ◼   ► is they were playing, there was an API

00:16:31 ◼   ► so that an app that's playing audio

00:16:33 ◼   ► can keep playing it in the background indefinitely

00:16:35 ◼   ► and it won't get killed.

00:16:36 ◼   ► Because if you, let's say you're playing a podcast

00:16:38 ◼   ► and you're not, you're doing other things on your phone,

00:16:41 ◼   ► like you're going through email and browsing the web

00:16:43 ◼   ► while you're listening to the podcast,

00:16:45 ◼   ► you don't want your podcast player to get killed by iOS

00:16:47 ◼   ► because it's quote unquote in the background

00:16:49 ◼   ► because you're getting something from it, it's playing audio.

00:16:52 ◼   ► So Facebook used that API to play completely silent audio

00:16:57 ◼   ► track so that they keep going in the background while they do other things like waiting for

00:17:03 ◼   ► notifications and whatever else they're doing.

00:17:07 ◼   ► It's almost as egregious as when they had two hamburger buttons on both sides of the

00:17:09 ◼   ► app.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:11 ◼   ► I'd say that this was worse.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Two hamburger buttons don't run your battery down.

00:17:15 ◼   ► And this problem still exists.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I think it was a month ago people started complaining about the same issue with Pokemon

00:17:19 ◼   ► Go and I started investigating and if you go it says with two or three hours on the

00:17:23 ◼   ► background audio, which is not something that any app besides a streaming client should

00:17:27 ◼   ► ever present. It should get Jetson'd immediately.

00:17:30 ◼   ► Right. And so Facebook can get away with stuff like that in a way that other companies can't.

00:17:37 ◼   ► The other good example of that—I mean, I don't want to tie too many stories together,

00:17:40 ◼   ► but while we're on it—is the story that came out a few weeks ago about Uber getting

00:17:49 ◼   ► caught by Apple.

00:17:50 ◼   ► We could save that though.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Maybe we should save that for after the break.

00:17:55 ◼   ► So anyway, iPhone in China,

00:17:56 ◼   ► what else do we have to say about that?

00:17:58 ◼   ► - Well, I think just beyond China

00:18:01 ◼   ► is that Tim Cook used the same sort of wording

00:18:03 ◼   ► when he spoke about iPad and said that

00:18:05 ◼   ► large screen iPads were up.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Sales of all large screen iPads were up

00:18:10 ◼   ► when overall iPad sales were down again.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And that sort of was pointing the finger

00:18:14 ◼   ► right at the iPad Mini.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I think the reading between the lines on that,

00:18:19 ◼   ► that is a good, that did strike me too.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Reading between the lines on that

00:18:23 ◼   ► and also looking at the revenue number,

00:18:26 ◼   ► which wasn't really up either.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Like for example, for the Mac, unit sales were up 4%.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Good, year over year from the same three months last year.

00:18:40 ◼   ► But revenue was up 14%.

00:18:42 ◼   ► So 4% units, 14% revenue, that tells me

00:18:47 ◼   ► that the new MacBook Pros are selling pretty well.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Because that's the only thing that's new in the lineup.

00:18:55 ◼   ► - And the ASPs are higher on those models.

00:18:56 ◼   ► - And the ASPs are higher on those models.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And so, you know, if there's any concern out there

00:19:03 ◼   ► that the sort of mixed reviews those MacBook Pros got,

00:19:06 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like it's had an adverse effect on sales.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It seems like the opposite,

00:19:09 ◼   ► that they're actually proving to be pretty popular,

00:19:11 ◼   ► because they've driven the revenue per unit up.

00:19:17 ◼   ► But with the iPad, with them saying--

00:19:18 ◼   ► and again, those analyst calls, they can't lie on them

00:19:24 ◼   ► or else they're committing securities fraud.

00:19:28 ◼   ► They're very, very careful.

00:19:29 ◼   ► I mean, you know because you read the transcript

00:19:31 ◼   ► and read every word.

00:19:32 ◼   ► I mean, it's not loosey-goosey talk.

00:19:35 ◼   ► No, and they are well-prepared.

00:19:36 ◼   ► They have every fact in front of them

00:19:37 ◼   ► before they get on that microphone.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:40 ◼   ► So if they say-- I mean, again, in the actual PDF data

00:19:46 ◼   ► document for the quarterly numbers,

00:19:48 ◼   ► they give you units per product line,

00:19:52 ◼   ► like just for iPad, and the revenue for the product line.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And so they don't break down.

00:19:58 ◼   ► In the old days, like 10 years ago, they used to break down,

00:20:00 ◼   ► for example, Mac sales by desktop and notebook.

00:20:04 ◼   ► But they don't have any breakdown like that for iPads,

00:20:06 ◼   ► like between big and small.

00:20:07 ◼   ► But if they stay on the call, the big ones are up.

00:20:10 ◼   ► But they must be up.

00:20:12 ◼   ► Like, either that or they're committing securities fraud.

00:20:15 ◼   ► But given that everything was still down,

00:20:17 ◼   ► that must mean that iPad Mini sales have just dropped off

00:20:20 ◼   ► the face of the earth.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Which makes sense given the advent of the larger phones

00:20:24 ◼   ► and the lack of updates to the iPad Mini platform.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it's sort of a chicken and egg question for me,

00:20:29 ◼   ► is are they not even updating the iPad Mini because people

00:20:35 ◼   ► aren't buying the iPad Mini?

00:20:36 ◼   ► or are people not buying the iPad Mini

00:20:37 ◼   ► because they haven't updated the iPad Mini in a while?

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Well, this is a bit of a tangent,

00:20:41 ◼   ► but I went to, a mutual friend of ours

00:20:43 ◼   ► sort of prodded us about macOS Server the other day.

00:20:46 ◼   ► So I went to pick up a Mac Mini

00:20:48 ◼   ► so that we could write a series of articles on iMore

00:20:50 ◼   ► about the benefits of macOS Server.

00:20:51 ◼   ► And I went to the Apple Store, I bought it,

00:20:54 ◼   ► took it home, and it was running LCAP.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Which, I mean, that to me shows

00:20:59 ◼   ► there's not a huge turnover rate on Mac Minis.

00:21:01 ◼   ► And we talked about how Mac Mini is a languishing product,

00:21:04 ◼   ► and it's the same chicken and the egg problem,

00:21:05 ◼   ► That's what I gave me an indicator about how few magnities might actually be moving

00:21:08 ◼   ► It's pretty telling

00:21:12 ◼   ► Be funny if it opened it up and it was running like tiger or something. Oh, that'd be great, right?

00:21:26 ◼   ► Yeah, the old awkward stripes

00:21:28 ◼   ► Say how old is this?

00:21:31 ◼   ► Power PC apps

00:21:34 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of anything else from the quarterly results.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Services are way up, which is as predicted.

00:21:42 ◼   ► I mean, they've been saying this for a while that, "Hey, we're hell-bent on services,"

00:21:50 ◼   ► and it's showing in the results.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And it's repeatable revenue from the same customer base, so it's sort of the revenue

00:21:55 ◼   ► that Wall Street likes.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Because like we saw in China, you can't guarantee someone's going to buy the next iPhone, but

00:22:00 ◼   ► if they're paying you subscription revenue, you have a certain amount of period you can

00:22:02 ◼   ► look forward to that revenue.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Well, and I think the other thing that--

00:22:07 ◼   ► and it ties into my argument on the software being

00:22:10 ◼   ► more important than the hardware in terms of not

00:22:13 ◼   ► in any particular quarter, but in the long run of having

00:22:17 ◼   ► a loyal customer base that when they go to replace their blank,

00:22:22 ◼   ► whether it's their watch or whether it's their phone

00:22:24 ◼   ► or whether it's their laptop, if they've already

00:22:26 ◼   ► got an Apple one, they're going to buy another Apple one.

00:22:31 ◼   ► And to have the services revenue is a sign

00:22:35 ◼   ► that they're creating new ways

00:22:36 ◼   ► that make more stickiness in that regard.

00:22:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it's good in both directions too.

00:22:41 ◼   ► And I think they've even said this on the call

00:22:42 ◼   ► is that you, not in these terms though,

00:22:45 ◼   ► is that you can either double your amount of customers

00:22:47 ◼   ► or you can double the amount of revenue

00:22:48 ◼   ► you get from your customers.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And both of them result in substantial increases.

00:22:51 ◼   ► And as Apple starts to reach those big numbers

00:22:53 ◼   ► where it's really hard to start opening up

00:22:55 ◼   ► new iPhone markets, you've got Verizon,

00:22:57 ◼   ► you've got international carriers, you've got China Mobile,

00:22:59 ◼   ► getting people onto higher revenue streams

00:23:01 ◼   ► with things like subscription services

00:23:02 ◼   ► just creates more value from each customer.

00:23:04 ◼   ► - Right, and I think it's important too

00:23:06 ◼   ► because if Apple is Apple, they're never going to,

00:23:10 ◼   ► they're never gonna have market share,

00:23:13 ◼   ► like monopoly market share of these products

00:23:16 ◼   ► because they're just, it's just not what Apple does

00:23:19 ◼   ► is make products that are so low priced

00:23:22 ◼   ► as to take over the commodity level market.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I mean, it just wouldn't,

00:23:28 ◼   ► An Apple that tried to do that would no longer be recognizable

00:23:31 ◼   ► as the Apple we know.

00:23:32 ◼   ► There are certain markets they just choose not to compete in.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And whatever percentage of the PC market they have--

00:23:39 ◼   ► 4%, 5%, 6%, 10%, whatever you want to call it--

00:23:43 ◼   ► their market of the phone is significantly higher than that.

00:23:47 ◼   ► But it still is a minority and not even close to 50%.

00:23:52 ◼   ► Even in the most popular iPhone countries,

00:23:55 ◼   ► it's 20%, something like that.

00:23:57 ◼   ► is where we see the differential between their market share

00:23:59 ◼   ► and their profit share.

00:24:00 ◼   ► - Right.

00:24:01 ◼   ► And being able to get more money out of the existing

00:24:04 ◼   ► customers is a path to growth that lets them still be Apple.

00:24:09 ◼   ► - And there was one other thing that I thought

00:24:11 ◼   ► was really interesting and that's when he was talking

00:24:12 ◼   ► about Apple Watch and they still won't give numbers.

00:24:14 ◼   ► They did the Amazon-like thing where they said we had

00:24:16 ◼   ► almost twice the amount of sales as last year.

00:24:18 ◼   ► So X was last year, this was 2X.

00:24:21 ◼   ► But then Tim Cook said that if you take Apple Watch

00:24:22 ◼   ► and you combine it with AirPods and with Beats,

00:24:25 ◼   ► although he wasn't specific which Beats products,

00:24:26 ◼   ► just the W1 or all of them,

00:24:28 ◼   ► that makes a Fortune 500 company.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Yeah, my guess is there's a large amount

00:24:31 ◼   ► of Beats money in there.

00:24:32 ◼   ► It makes a Fortune 500 company.

00:24:34 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Well, let's take a break and we'll come back to that

00:24:40 ◼   ► 'cause I have some comments on the watch.

00:24:44 ◼   ► But let me take a break and thank our first sponsor.

00:24:48 ◼   ► It's a good friend of ours, you know him, Squarespace.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Squarespace is the place to go

00:24:55 ◼   ► if you need to make a new website.

00:24:57 ◼   ► I say this all the time.

00:24:58 ◼   ► They sponsored the show for a long time.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I'm telling you right now, next time you have an idea

00:25:02 ◼   ► for a website, any kind of website,

00:25:05 ◼   ► any project that needs a website, a podcast, a store,

00:25:08 ◼   ► try it at Squarespace first.

00:25:11 ◼   ► You will be, if you haven't recently or never have,

00:25:14 ◼   ► you will be surprised at how easy and flexible

00:25:17 ◼   ► Squarespace is to create a website,

00:25:19 ◼   ► how totally non-technical you have to be.

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00:25:27 ◼   ► You pick from a template.

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00:25:31 ◼   ► And then if you want to move elements around,

00:25:33 ◼   ► you just drag them around.

00:25:34 ◼   ► If you are technically savvy enough

00:25:36 ◼   ► to want to put your own JavaScript in or modify

00:25:40 ◼   ► the CSS or something like that, you can do it.

00:25:43 ◼   ► You would be surprised.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Here's the other thing, too.

00:25:45 ◼   ► Because part of the easiness of using Squarespace

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00:25:53 ◼   ► But I hear that.

00:25:54 ◼   ► If I hear that, if I'm listening to this show and I hear that,

00:25:57 ◼   ► my thought turns to, well, I don't

00:25:58 ◼   ► want to have a cookie cutter site that

00:26:00 ◼   ► looks like everybody else's.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Like, say, back in the day when you'd get a Blogspot blog,

00:26:06 ◼   ► and you'd know it was a Blogspot blog because there

00:26:08 ◼   ► were two or three templates to choose from,

00:26:10 ◼   ► and everybody had one of those.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Squarespace has so many templates to choose from.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And the templates they have, you can modify them so easily

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00:26:23 ◼   ► when you start poking around and looking in the source code

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00:26:26 ◼   ► you're like, wow, I never would have guessed that

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00:26:53 ◼   ► So sometimes I worry that I repeat myself too often,

00:26:56 ◼   ► Rene, that I've got like three or four columns,

00:26:59 ◼   ► and I just keep writing them all over and over and over again.

00:27:02 ◼   ► But the one I just wrote a couple of weeks ago was--

00:27:06 ◼   ► I forget the guy's name, but somebody wrote a column that

00:27:08 ◼   ► the Apple Watch hasn't changed Apple,

00:27:10 ◼   ► hasn't done anything for Apple at all.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And I think if you read between the lines of his arguments,

00:27:17 ◼   ► It's more or less that the Apple Watch is nowhere near

00:27:21 ◼   ► an iPhone-sized product and probably never will be,

00:27:25 ◼   ► and therefore it's meaningless to Apple

00:27:28 ◼   ► or close to meaningless.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And I just think that's such a wrong way to look at it.

00:27:33 ◼   ► It's like there might never be another iPhone-sized product

00:27:38 ◼   ► in any industry, let alone Apple.

00:27:40 ◼   ► Like Apple may not ever have an iPhone-sized hit.

00:27:43 ◼   ► it may well be that no other company has an iPhone size hit

00:27:47 ◼   ► in terms of just how much money

00:27:49 ◼   ► and how many people around the world the market size is.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And so I think judged by that,

00:27:56 ◼   ► nothing Apple ever does will succeed by that merit.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And I think if Apple internally took that mindset,

00:28:02 ◼   ► it would paralyze the company.

00:28:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, iPhone creates more profit than companies

00:28:08 ◼   ► that have oligopoly control

00:28:09 ◼   ► over scarce fossil fuel resources.

00:28:12 ◼   ► and people forget that perspective,

00:28:13 ◼   ► and they create this false equivalency

00:28:15 ◼   ► where everything for Apple has to be measured

00:28:17 ◼   ► by the success of iPhone,

00:28:18 ◼   ► and then everything is seemed to be lacking.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Where for other companies,

00:28:21 ◼   ► you could sell three Surface Books,

00:28:22 ◼   ► and it's a rousing success,

00:28:24 ◼   ► and you'll get 19 articles out of that.

00:28:26 ◼   ► When we saw that, I think,

00:28:27 ◼   ► I forget if it was Neil Seibert or Benedict Evans

00:28:30 ◼   ► who tweeted that, based on their metrics,

00:28:33 ◼   ► Apple Watch vastly outsold,

00:28:35 ◼   ► by, it was a factor of two or three,

00:28:38 ◼   ► Amazon's Alexa, sorry, Echo product,

00:28:40 ◼   ► And yet people were touting how great and transformative

00:28:43 ◼   ► Echo was and what a dismal failure Apple Watch was.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And it was completely out of whack with anything resembling,

00:28:48 ◼   ► any resemblance to facts.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:28:50 ◼   ► It's graded on such a bizarre curve.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And it's a perfect example because Alexa,

00:28:57 ◼   ► like every other Amazon product, the Echo

00:29:00 ◼   ► doesn't get numbers reported.

00:29:01 ◼   ► And Apple Watch gets a Bezos curve of twice as much as ever.

00:29:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's true.

00:29:08 ◼   ► It's really important technology.

00:29:10 ◼   ► You can kind of, at least with Apple Watch, it's in that other category, and there is

00:29:14 ◼   ► a revenue number for the headphones and beats and Apple TV and Apple Watch.

00:29:29 ◼   ► And given Apple TV is almost certainly pretty static.

00:29:35 ◼   ► There hasn't been an update.

00:29:36 ◼   ► There hasn't been a big promotional push.

00:29:37 ◼   ► There hasn't been a big change since the fall 2015 when the current Apple TV came out.

00:29:44 ◼   ► So it's pretty reasonable to assume Apple TV is flat at best.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Aeropods is a little hard to gauge for this quarter because they're obviously popular

00:29:53 ◼   ► enough that they're backordered, but it's hard to tell just how constrained they are.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I think you pointed out that they're not sold at a huge margin.

00:30:04 ◼   ► They're sold as cheaply as possible.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Well, the revenue number, though, might be big, because they're not going to break that

00:30:10 ◼   ► down by profit.

00:30:11 ◼   ► But I have reason to believe that they're not a big moneymaker at this point.

00:30:16 ◼   ► And it makes sense that they must be hard to make, because it's four months in, and

00:30:20 ◼   ► they're still six weeks out if you go to order them.

00:30:24 ◼   ► As an aside on that, for anybody looking to buy AirPods, I wrote about that on Daring

00:30:28 ◼   ► Fireball a couple times recently.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And a couple of people have written to me and said

00:30:32 ◼   ► that they scored AirPods on the fly recently from AT&T stores,

00:30:41 ◼   ► or Verizon stores.

00:30:44 ◼   ► They're showing up.

00:30:45 ◼   ► If you really want them and you don't want to wait six weeks,

00:30:48 ◼   ► try stores like AT&T and Best Buy and stuff like that.

00:30:52 ◼   ► And you might just get lucky and get them

00:30:53 ◼   ► before you would if you place an order at Apple.com.

00:30:55 ◼   ► So that's my tip for anybody out there looking for AirPods.

00:31:00 ◼   ► But the numbers from those that Apple reported another

00:31:03 ◼   ► back up the idea that Apple Watch is selling pretty well.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And personally, I mean, this is obviously very unscientific,

00:31:11 ◼   ► but personally, I see more and more Apple Watches

00:31:16 ◼   ► on real people out in the streets than ever before.

00:31:19 ◼   ► I see an awful lot of them.

00:31:21 ◼   ► - I went to the deli the other day

00:31:23 ◼   ► just to order a Montreal smoked meat sandwich,

00:31:25 ◼   ► and the waiter was wearing an Apple Watch,

00:31:26 ◼   ► and I asked him how he liked it,

00:31:27 ◼   ► and he said, "Best thing in the world.

00:31:28 ◼   ► not allowed to have our phones with us when we work,

00:31:30 ◼   ► but I can still check my text messages on my Apple Watch.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a big construction project

00:31:35 ◼   ► across the street from my house.

00:31:37 ◼   ► And I just, I noticed the other day

00:31:39 ◼   ► that the guy who controls the crane

00:31:44 ◼   ► is wearing an Apple Watch.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And I thought that, you know, it might be the same,

00:31:47 ◼   ► that might be the exact reason for that,

00:31:49 ◼   ► is, you know, that he, you know, while he's doing this,

00:31:52 ◼   ► he can't have his phone out, but if he glances at his wrist,

00:31:55 ◼   ► he can see, you know, text notifications.

00:31:57 ◼   ► I don't know, but just seems, you know,

00:31:59 ◼   ► I see 'em all the time.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I see an awful lot of 'em.

00:32:01 ◼   ► It backs up the idea, again,

00:32:02 ◼   ► not like it's as popular as the iPhone,

00:32:05 ◼   ► but nothing is, really, literally.

00:32:07 ◼   ► But I sure see 'em a lot, I really do.

00:32:11 ◼   ► - It does a subset of important brief tasks for you

00:32:13 ◼   ► in a way that saves you having to go to your iPhone,

00:32:15 ◼   ► the same way your iPhone does a subset

00:32:17 ◼   ► of really important tasks

00:32:17 ◼   ► that saves you having to go to your Mac.

00:32:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:32:20 ◼   ► - So it just depends how important those are to you.

00:32:21 ◼   ► - While we're talking about Apple Watch,

00:32:22 ◼   ► we can tie in the other story from this week

00:32:24 ◼   ► where Apple Insider discovered that a couple of big-name apps, iPhone apps, have dropped

00:32:32 ◼   ► their Apple Watch counterparts.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Was it Amazon, eBay?

00:32:37 ◼   ► And the one that, to me, was most telling was Google Maps.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I have to admit, when I first heard this story, my guess—and I checked into

00:32:44 ◼   ► it, but I couldn't get an answer—was that it happened at the same time they launched

00:32:47 ◼   ► their iMessage app, and I just thought they screwed up something in their bundle and enabled

00:32:50 ◼   ► the iMessage app and disabled the Apple Watch app by accident.

00:32:52 ◼   ► And I don't know if that's true or they're going to be updating it for our watch OS 4 or whatever

00:32:57 ◼   ► But their state their subsequent statement made it sound like it was it was returning. It was not a deliberate removal

00:33:02 ◼   ► Well the but the telling part is that it seemingly happened weeks ago and nobody really noticed

00:33:07 ◼   ► It's very notice right away. She's like what's happening here and sort of looking into it, but it wasn't a huge story now

00:33:13 ◼   ► I just think though I really do I think and I think it's you know

00:33:18 ◼   ► I think the emphasis that Apple I think Apple is fully aware of this based on

00:33:22 ◼   ► What they worked on for iOS 3 and what how they build it that

00:33:26 ◼   ► Even with the iPhone it was true that they'd you know, they certainly obviously at the be outset didn't see how much

00:33:35 ◼   ► How big a deal it would be to be an app platform?

00:33:38 ◼   ► They might have had the inkling but it certainly you know, and I think it's played out in ways that

00:33:44 ◼   ► That even they couldn't foresee. I don't think Apple would have predicted in 2007

00:33:50 ◼   ► That the iPhone would become the most important and popular camera in the world

00:33:54 ◼   ► you know, it's you don't know, you know, and I feel like they rolled out the Apple watch and

00:34:00 ◼   ► Obviously, I think initially thought that apps were going to be a bigger part of what might make it

00:34:06 ◼   ► Popular and in real use in even their own use like not just surveying users, but I think you know

00:34:13 ◼   ► Apple people using the watch themselves that the health tracking and

00:34:19 ◼   ► and that using it as a notifications input and output device

00:34:24 ◼   ► are far more important than the app story.

00:34:30 ◼   ► - I think that's absolutely true.

00:34:31 ◼   ► It's almost like they overcompensated

00:34:33 ◼   ► for the lack of an app store at launch for iPhone

00:34:35 ◼   ► by making sure no matter what happens

00:34:36 ◼   ► or how poorly it performed,

00:34:38 ◼   ► they had one available for Apple Watch.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And almost the heartbreaking part about that is

00:34:43 ◼   ► they launched it at the same time that Extensibility

00:34:45 ◼   ► was launched and Extensibility was one of the technologies

00:34:47 ◼   ► allowed them to have apps on the Apple Watch.

00:34:49 ◼   ► But at the same time, you've written this really well,

00:34:53 ◼   ► what HTTPS, what web services were to websites,

00:34:57 ◼   ► where they basically, you didn't need a website anymore,

00:34:58 ◼   ► you could just provide an API.

00:35:00 ◼   ► Extensions were like that to apps.

00:35:01 ◼   ► You didn't necessarily need a binary blob

00:35:03 ◼   ► on the same device.

00:35:03 ◼   ► You could have features and functionality

00:35:05 ◼   ► that could be on the same device,

00:35:07 ◼   ► but could be projected or surfaced

00:35:09 ◼   ► in many different places in many different ways.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And they had that with Apple Watch,

00:35:13 ◼   ► but instead they sort of took this mentality

00:35:15 ◼   ► of binary blobs, where you had to have an app

00:35:17 ◼   ► on a carousel screen that you could tap with your finger

00:35:19 ◼   ► to launch.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And we've seen them move away from that.

00:35:21 ◼   ► But I think in hindsight, we're going

00:35:23 ◼   ► to see that the watch has to be a feature device and not

00:35:28 ◼   ► an app device.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think-- and I played around.

00:35:35 ◼   ► He's a friend, and I appreciate the feature.

00:35:37 ◼   ► But Marco Arment has worked on a much improved watch

00:35:41 ◼   ► app for Overcast.

00:35:43 ◼   ► and I know that he spent an awful lot of time

00:35:47 ◼   ► in the last few months on it.

00:35:49 ◼   ► And it shipped recently, and then over the weekend

00:35:52 ◼   ► I thought, well, I was gonna go for a run,

00:35:55 ◼   ► and I thought, in theory, I would love to go

00:35:58 ◼   ► with just my watch and AirPods,

00:36:00 ◼   ► and not have to figure out a way to carry my phone,

00:36:07 ◼   ► because there's just no great way.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I've got some kind of like belt-like thing

00:36:10 ◼   ► that I put underneath my shirt where I can strap it in,

00:36:13 ◼   ► but I don't want to run with it in my pockets.

00:36:15 ◼   ► I don't like using an armband.

00:36:17 ◼   ► There's no good way to go with a phone.

00:36:20 ◼   ► So I thought, well, this is perfect.

00:36:21 ◼   ► I'm not just trying this watch app of Overcast out.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I actually want this feature.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I would love to do this.

00:36:30 ◼   ► And it was absolutely horrible.

00:36:32 ◼   ► It was just terrible.

00:36:33 ◼   ► It was hard to get it installed on the watch

00:36:35 ◼   ► in the first place, which shouldn't be the case.

00:36:38 ◼   ► It was like from the watch app on the phone,

00:36:41 ◼   ► it said installing, and it just said installing dot, dot, dot,

00:36:44 ◼   ► forever.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And then once it was installed, getting audio--

00:36:49 ◼   ► it's like getting audio from the phone to the watch

00:36:51 ◼   ► takes forever.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And even once it did, and I got a podcast over there

00:36:57 ◼   ► to listen to, and I went to play,

00:36:58 ◼   ► I got my AirPod synced to it, the audio was whisper quiet.

00:37:02 ◼   ► And I mentioned this to Marco, and it's obviously not always

00:37:05 ◼   ► the case.

00:37:06 ◼   ► And other people are saying it happens sometimes,

00:37:08 ◼   ► but he has no idea why.

00:37:11 ◼   ► And I wasted like 45 minutes, and I was just like,

00:37:14 ◼   ► you know what, screw it, I'm just going with my phone

00:37:16 ◼   ► like I always do.

00:37:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:18 ◼   ► It was so much better.

00:37:19 ◼   ► I mean, it's just too finicky.

00:37:22 ◼   ► It's way too finicky.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Whereas there are other things like,

00:37:26 ◼   ► did you ever use this app,

00:37:28 ◼   ► did you ever use this service Nuzzle and use ZZEL?

00:37:31 ◼   ► - I've seen it, yeah, I've used it on the iPhone.

00:37:32 ◼   ► - It's really great.

00:37:33 ◼   ► It's a service you sign in with your Twitter account.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And what it does is it's really, really great

00:37:40 ◼   ► if anybody out there wants to try it.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I find tons of stuff that I link to on Daring Fireball from it.

00:37:44 ◼   ► But what it does is it follows your own-- the people you

00:37:46 ◼   ► follow on Twitter.

00:37:48 ◼   ► And when a certain threshold of the people you follow

00:37:51 ◼   ► have all tweeted the same link or a link to the same article,

00:37:53 ◼   ► it gives you a notification about it on the assumption

00:37:56 ◼   ► that if like five people you follow

00:37:57 ◼   ► have all tweeted the same link to blank,

00:38:00 ◼   ► you want to know about blank.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And it gives you a notification for that.

00:38:04 ◼   ► And when I first heard about it, I

00:38:07 ◼   ► thought that this is going to be something

00:38:08 ◼   ► that I'm going to try and quickly get rid of,

00:38:10 ◼   ► because I'm sort of sensitive to getting--

00:38:12 ◼   ► I don't want too many notifications from anything.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I find that whatever algorithm Nuzzle uses to do this--

00:38:18 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it's super simple.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Maybe it's just-- I don't--

00:38:21 ◼   ► but just the idea that if five of the people I follow

00:38:25 ◼   ► on Twitter link the same thing I want to know about it,

00:38:27 ◼   ► the ratio of interesting links to the times they notify me

00:38:33 ◼   ► is so high that I have no interest in turning it off.

00:38:38 ◼   ► but they don't even have a watch app,

00:38:39 ◼   ► but the notifications go to my watch just automatically.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Like you don't, you know,

00:38:42 ◼   ► like the only thing I would want from them on my watch,

00:38:45 ◼   ► they don't even need a watch app for

00:38:46 ◼   ► because the notifications, if my phone is in my pocket,

00:38:49 ◼   ► automatically go to my watch.

00:38:51 ◼   ► It's so great. - I remember Brad Ellis

00:38:53 ◼   ► was saying that when, I forget when, right,

00:38:54 ◼   ► when watch was introduced that, in his opinion,

00:38:57 ◼   ► developers should spend more time making

00:38:58 ◼   ► a really awesome notification experience

00:39:00 ◼   ► and not worry about an app at all,

00:39:01 ◼   ► and I think that turns out to be canny advice.

00:39:03 ◼   ► - Right, so like Nuzzle doesn't even have a watch app,

00:39:06 ◼   ► And to me, the watch app that I get is exactly what I want.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And poor Marco spent months working on an advanced watch

00:39:15 ◼   ► app that maybe someday will turn into something that's

00:39:17 ◼   ► actually good and useful, like a future version of the watch.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Maybe the foundation will be there

00:39:22 ◼   ► so that when the watch actually gets its own LTE or something

00:39:25 ◼   ► like that, it actually will be useful.

00:39:28 ◼   ► But he spent all this time on it,

00:39:29 ◼   ► and I don't want to use it at all,

00:39:31 ◼   ► even though I use Overcast almost every day.

00:39:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I've tried it.

00:39:35 ◼   ► I like it.

00:39:35 ◼   ► It has the issues that you mentioned,

00:39:36 ◼   ► and I always have my iPhone with me even if I'm out,

00:39:38 ◼   ► so I haven't been forced to use it.

00:39:40 ◼   ► But it's a problem that people want solved,

00:39:43 ◼   ► but it is not something

00:39:44 ◼   ► that is technically solvable right now.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - Right, like in all honesty,

00:39:47 ◼   ► if Overcast didn't have a watch app,

00:39:49 ◼   ► it wouldn't matter to me at all

00:39:50 ◼   ► because the only thing I ever really do,

00:39:52 ◼   ► I can do through the now playing anyway.

00:39:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:39:55 ◼   ► - So I don't know.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I feel like there's something that Apple,

00:40:00 ◼   ► I think they're well aware of it, that's what I think.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And I think we'll see more,

00:40:04 ◼   ► I think we'll see it go that way.

00:40:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's a classic example of,

00:40:07 ◼   ► they saw everything as a nail.

00:40:09 ◼   ► They had an App Store hammer,

00:40:10 ◼   ► and then everything looked like an app nail to them.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And in hindsight, you can look back and say,

00:40:14 ◼   ► we needed a different approach for this.

00:40:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - And I think they've known that for over a year and a half,

00:40:18 ◼   ► which is why we saw watchOS 3

00:40:20 ◼   ► and we'll see watchOS 4 be different.

00:40:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what they do with that.

00:40:28 ◼   ► Anything else on quarterly results before we move on?

00:40:32 ◼   ► - No, I mean, I saw at the same time

00:40:35 ◼   ► Tim Cook was on Jim Cramer

00:40:37 ◼   ► and said that he used Apple Watch to lose 30 pounds.

00:40:39 ◼   ► - Right.

00:40:39 ◼   ► - Which, I don't know where that was from.

00:40:41 ◼   ► - Right.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Like, and again, and Tim Cook does not strike me

00:40:45 ◼   ► as a bullshitter, right?

00:40:46 ◼   ► - No.

00:40:47 ◼   ► - Like, he's, if he says he lost 30 pounds,

00:40:50 ◼   ► I think he probably lost 30 pounds,

00:40:51 ◼   ► but I mean, I've seen him on stage every six months

00:40:56 ◼   ► for five, six years, and there was never any point

00:41:00 ◼   ► where it looked like he put on, you know,

00:41:03 ◼   ► or put on or lost 30 pounds.

00:41:05 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I mean, that's,

00:41:06 ◼   ► but anyway. - And more power to him,

00:41:08 ◼   ► it just, it was amazing. - Right.

00:41:10 ◼   ► What did the, it was a pretty good interview.

00:41:12 ◼   ► I mean, for, you know,

00:41:13 ◼   ► I give Jim Cramer credit for a guy

00:41:18 ◼   ► who's not really an Apple person,

00:41:20 ◼   ► but rather a finance person.

00:41:22 ◼   ► I thought it was a pretty informative interview.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I think that this announcement of a billion,

00:41:27 ◼   ► a $1 billion fund to promote advanced manufacturing jobs

00:41:32 ◼   ► in the US is pretty interesting.

00:41:34 ◼   ► That's cooking out.

00:41:36 ◼   ► So details aren't out yet.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I think he said to come in at the end of May.

00:41:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:41:42 ◼   ► It was entirely, I mean, it was super interesting

00:41:47 ◼   ► when you started to decompose the interest,

00:41:48 ◼   ► the relationship that Apple has with the administration

00:41:50 ◼   ► who is heavily pro US jobs and US manufacturing

00:41:54 ◼   ► and all these elements where Apple has

00:41:56 ◼   ► massive manufacturing capacity outside the US, but also a massive amount of money, which

00:42:00 ◼   ► we heard about on the call as well, that they want to repatriate.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And the last time that happened was under the Bush administration, and this administration

00:42:06 ◼   ► might be more amenable.

00:42:07 ◼   ► So I think it's a very careful balancing act.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:12 ◼   ► And it's—yeah, because one thing that has happened in recent years is Apple's had

00:42:22 ◼   ► large cash poured for a long time now, although the definition of large keeps growing.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Yeah, letting out the waste band.

00:42:33 ◼   ► But it has changed, even though they've sort of capped it off now where it's not

00:42:37 ◼   ► really growing so much, and rather, however much it would be growing, they just keep giving

00:42:42 ◼   ► to the shareholder, whatever they call it.

00:42:45 ◼   ► It's growing despite the biggest giveback, one of the biggest givebacks in corporate

00:42:48 ◼   ► history.

00:42:49 ◼   ► One shift that has happened, though, is that their US holdings have shrunk, and it's almost

00:42:55 ◼   ► entirely overseas. What they have now is almost entirely overseas. And so for this billion-dollar

00:43:00 ◼   ► fund in the US, they're going to borrow to get the money rather than use it because they don't

00:43:06 ◼   ► really have a billion. They have a billion, but it's—

00:43:11 ◼   ► I don't have it on me.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Right. It's in my wallet over in Ireland.

00:43:17 ◼   ► No, very true.

00:43:20 ◼   ► But it'll be interesting to see what comes of that.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And I don't think Apple is a--

00:43:27 ◼   ► and they've been thinking about this for a while.

00:43:29 ◼   ► I mean, with the Mac Pro, that was

00:43:33 ◼   ► 2013 where they announced that it

00:43:35 ◼   ► would be assembled in the US.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I mean, so it's not like they haven't--

00:43:38 ◼   ► like all of a sudden, just with Trump in office,

00:43:41 ◼   ► they're now looking to toe the line on bringing manufacturing

00:43:45 ◼   ► jobs back to the US.

00:43:48 ◼   ► But I don't think-- and I think if there's

00:43:50 ◼   ► a Trumpian aspect to it, I don't think

00:43:53 ◼   ► it's so much about toeing the line

00:43:55 ◼   ► or wanting to please the Trump administration,

00:44:00 ◼   ► but more a pragmatic, let's make sure we don't get caught

00:44:06 ◼   ► flat-footed if they start a trade war with China

00:44:10 ◼   ► or impose some other tariff or something like that.

00:44:14 ◼   ► like let's be ready for anything that might happen now that somebody with his temperament

00:44:19 ◼   ► and his stated policies toward overseas manufacturing jobs is in office.

00:44:25 ◼   ► It's almost like preemptive positioning when they bought Steak and Didi in China because

00:44:30 ◼   ► there's certain volatility in that leadership as well.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And it's true.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I think that was back when they were doing the iFactory series in New York Times and

00:44:39 ◼   ► and that was a big story, and Apple making Macs,

00:44:43 ◼   ► MacBook Pros, sorry, Mac Pros in the US

00:44:45 ◼   ► was a very good story for that too.

00:44:47 ◼   ► It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

00:44:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, it will be.

00:44:51 ◼   ► I mean, you know, again, you can say,

00:44:53 ◼   ► like I saw it on CNBC after the Kramer thing had aired,

00:44:58 ◼   ► where somebody was like, you know,

00:45:01 ◼   ► given Apple's $250 billion cash holdings

00:45:07 ◼   ► and their quarterly revenue.

00:45:11 ◼   ► It's easy to say a billion dollars isn't that much to Apple,

00:45:13 ◼   ► but still, a billion dollars is a billion dollars,

00:45:15 ◼   ► and saying you're gonna commit a billion dollars

00:45:17 ◼   ► to assembling, to advanced assembly

00:45:19 ◼   ► and manufacturing jobs in the US is significant.

00:45:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you have $250, you gotta give a dollar away.

00:45:25 ◼   ► It's still a dollar you gotta give away.

00:45:26 ◼   ► - Right, and it's, a billion is a little different

00:45:29 ◼   ► than one dollar.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - And any problem is easy to solve

00:45:32 ◼   ► provided you're not the one in charge of solving it.

00:45:35 ◼   ► That's what the media keeps forgetting, I think.

00:45:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:39 ◼   ► - Let me take another break here

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00:47:09 ◼   ► And the prices, because they sell directly,

00:47:11 ◼   ► they make 'em right here in the US, by the way.

00:47:13 ◼   ► They make 'em here in the US.

00:47:14 ◼   ► They sell 'em to you directly.

00:47:16 ◼   ► There's no middleman, there's no markup

00:47:17 ◼   ► for a retail store or anything like that.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Their prices blow away the prices for premium mattresses

00:47:24 ◼   ► from the big name mattress companies.

00:47:26 ◼   ► There's just no comparison.

00:47:27 ◼   ► Where do you go?

00:47:30 ◼   ► Get yours today, you try it for 100 nights in your own home

00:47:35 ◼   ► with free delivery.

00:47:36 ◼   ► So you don't have to take my word for it, that's comfortable.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Go buy one, have it delivered, try it out.

00:47:41 ◼   ► You've got over three months, 100 nights,

00:47:43 ◼   ► and if you're not happy with it, no questions asked,

00:47:45 ◼   ► they will just arrange for someone to come

00:47:47 ◼   ► and get it out of your house.

00:47:49 ◼   ► No questions asked.

00:47:51 ◼   ► Go to casper.com/thetalkshow and use that code, thetalkshow,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and you will save 50 bucks towards any mattress.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Put an asterisk right here.

00:48:02 ◼   ► You can't save 50 bucks on their dog mattresses.

00:48:04 ◼   ► I'm sorry, because the dog mattresses are only like a couple hundred bucks.

00:48:07 ◼   ► But if you have a dog and you want to get your dog a bed, get them a Casper.

00:48:11 ◼   ► They have an amazing, amazing dog mattress.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And I keep mentioning it and readers keep saying that they bought it for their dog and

00:48:17 ◼   ► their dog won't get up off the mattress.

00:48:19 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:48:20 ◼   ► My thanks to Casper, makers of fine mattresses.

00:48:25 ◼   ► What else happened recently?

00:48:26 ◼   ► I guess this week, Microsoft had their education event, and they unveiled two things. They

00:48:30 ◼   ► unveiled on the hardware side, their own—this is their first true laptop, something that's

00:48:36 ◼   ► not like a detachable tablet type thing that they call the Surface laptop. And they unveiled

00:48:44 ◼   ► a new operating system called Windows 10 S. Which do you want to talk about first?

00:48:50 ◼   ► I was going to say Joe Belfiore's new blonde haircut.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Wow.

00:48:53 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:48:55 ◼   ► He famously Windows phoned Joe Belfiore,

00:48:57 ◼   ► who went away for a year and decided to focus on education

00:48:59 ◼   ► and then came back and is now leading this initiative.

00:49:02 ◼   ► - I didn't see that part of the show.

00:49:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think they put him on stage,

00:49:05 ◼   ► which was interesting.

00:49:06 ◼   ► - Oh, that's why I didn't understand.

00:49:07 ◼   ► - They had Meyerson on stage, yeah.

00:49:08 ◼   ► He was out front beforehand.

00:49:10 ◼   ► I think maybe the hardware first, because--

00:49:12 ◼   ► - Were you there?

00:49:13 ◼   ► - No, we had Daniel Rubino, one of my colleagues was there.

00:49:16 ◼   ► - I watched the video, but I really only watched the video

00:49:18 ◼   ► for the 10S part, I didn't watch the hardware part.

00:49:23 ◼   ► So what do you want to talk about first?

00:49:25 ◼   ► The hardware?

00:49:26 ◼   ► Alright, let's talk about the hardware.

00:49:27 ◼   ► It's so interesting, and I'm going to start off with this because why not, it's

00:49:31 ◼   ► the talk show.

00:49:33 ◼   ► If this laptop had an Apple logo on it, I think the coverage would have been very different

00:49:37 ◼   ► than what we saw.

00:49:39 ◼   ► How so?

00:49:40 ◼   ► Because there was a lot of things about this laptop that were very Apple-esque.

00:49:44 ◼   ► The design looks almost identical to a MacBook Air.

00:49:46 ◼   ► The price was almost identical to a MacBook Air.

00:49:49 ◼   ► You know a lot of the video and the language that they used for it was very similar to

00:49:54 ◼   ► Apple.

00:49:55 ◼   ► It's got one port on it, USB-A port instead of a USB-C port, but just one port on it and

00:49:59 ◼   ► it does have the Surface dock, you know, so you can do other things with it.

00:50:02 ◼   ► But I think a lot of people who were highly critical of Apple for doing things like a

00:50:06 ◼   ► single port MacBook or any of a dozen decisions they've made recently were strangely silent

00:50:12 ◼   ► when it came to Microsoft making very similar moves with this laptop.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Yeah, one port it's USB a which seems outdated and then they have a proprietary

00:50:19 ◼   ► Displayport right? Yeah, and the surface talked that to me that the proprietary

00:50:24 ◼   ► Displayport seems like the weird the part that like whoa if Apple did that that would be that would seem to generate a lot of criticism

00:50:31 ◼   ► I don't get you you are true. I wasn't even gonna bring that aspect up, but there's

00:50:36 ◼   ► How can Apple release a laptop with one port and get like in a month of criticism?

00:50:42 ◼   ► or years of criticism. People still complain about the MacBook, you know, people call it the MacBook One, and then

00:50:48 ◼   ► Microsoft releases one with one port. It happens to be outdated. The only other port is a proprietary one, which is an Apple move, and

00:50:56 ◼   ► it gets headlines like

00:50:59 ◼   ► here's the laptop, the Apple's, Apple's, or Microsoft's

00:51:03 ◼   ► MacBook killer that Apple can't ignore. And it gets, it gets funnier after that because it is running Kaby Lake,

00:51:09 ◼   ► which is a generation beyond what Apple ran, and there's reasons for that.

00:51:12 ◼   ► that the quad-core version of Kaby Lake wasn't ready when Apple needed it.

00:51:15 ◼   ► The graphics that Apple wanted, the more powerful graphics, were not available when Apple wanted

00:51:18 ◼   ► to put them into the MacBook Pro.

00:51:20 ◼   ► And this, in fact, doesn't have those sorts of graphics options.

00:51:22 ◼   ► So Microsoft made a different choice.

00:51:24 ◼   ► They went with a better CPU, but arguably a much worse GPU.

00:51:27 ◼   ► But at the same time, there's 8 gigabytes and 16 gigabytes of RAM, but the 16 gigabyte

00:51:31 ◼   ► version doesn't ship for months.

00:51:32 ◼   ► And can you imagine if Apple announced the new MacBook Pros that we went to in October

00:51:36 ◼   ► and said, "Oh, by the way, the 16 gigabyte version is not going to ship for a few months"?

00:51:41 ◼   ► And I also think I went through the configuration on it because there was also some initial

00:51:45 ◼   ► Twitter feedback that I saw where it was that it shows how overpriced the MacBook Pros are.

00:51:52 ◼   ► And I found the exact opposite where I configured one with a Core i7, 16 gigs of RAM, and a

00:52:01 ◼   ► 512 megabyte SSD.

00:52:03 ◼   ► the price was $2,199 and a MacBook with Core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM and a 512

00:52:11 ◼   ► gigabyte SSD was $2,199. The exact same price. $2,199 for both. And Apple offers a

00:52:20 ◼   ► one terabyte SSD. Microsoft doesn't. And Apple will let you get a 16 gigabytes of

00:52:26 ◼   ► RAM configuration in the Core i5 variant of the MacBook Pro and Microsoft doesn't.

00:52:33 ◼   ► If you want to get 16 gigs of RAM,

00:52:35 ◼   ► you've got to also upgrade to the Core i7.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And I'm personally, me personally,

00:52:41 ◼   ► I've actually totally changed my personal take on

00:52:44 ◼   ► laptops where for me, I think,

00:52:50 ◼   ► I'm podcasting from it right now.

00:52:53 ◼   ► I have a 2015, or is it 2014?

00:52:57 ◼   ► Jeez, I don't even remember.

00:52:58 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Pro.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Let's see what they say in here.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:53:03 ◼   ► That's a...

00:53:04 ◼   ► Um...

00:53:05 ◼   ► I...

00:53:06 ◼   ► My...

00:53:07 ◼   ► My take for years...

00:53:09 ◼   ► Oh, mid-2014.

00:53:10 ◼   ► So, yeah.

00:53:11 ◼   ► It's a late 2014 MacBook Pro.

00:53:13 ◼   ► 13-inch.

00:53:14 ◼   ► It's one of the best computers I've ever owned.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Um...

00:53:17 ◼   ► I maxed out everything when I bought it.

00:53:19 ◼   ► I got three...

00:53:20 ◼   ► Like what?

00:53:21 ◼   ► Three gigahertz Intel Core i7.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I got the 16 gigs of RAM, which is the most I could get.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And I got the one terabyte SSD.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And I'm happy with all those decisions, because I've got a couple hundred gigabytes

00:53:33 ◼   ► left but way more than 512.

00:53:35 ◼   ► I'm like 700 or something like that.

00:53:37 ◼   ► So I need the one terabyte was useful to me.

00:53:41 ◼   ► RAM is the biggest thing I need, because I'm lazy and I always keep all the Safari tabs

00:53:46 ◼   ► open and Slack takes, Slack itself, even if you run it as an app, takes like a gigabyte

00:53:52 ◼   ► of RAM.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I don't think I need a Core i7.

00:53:57 ◼   ► I think-- and I thought this when I was testing.

00:54:00 ◼   ► I had a couple of the review units of the new MacBook Pros

00:54:04 ◼   ► from October.

00:54:08 ◼   ► There's nothing I do on a day-to-day basis

00:54:11 ◼   ► where having a Core i7 instead of a Core i5

00:54:13 ◼   ► really makes a difference.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I don't use Xcode.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Or if I do, I do it rarely enough

00:54:19 ◼   ► that the difference in build times.

00:54:21 ◼   ► I'm not doing it all day long where

00:54:23 ◼   ► shaving some time off the build and run cycle

00:54:26 ◼   ► would really make a difference.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Other things I do that might be like batch processing,

00:54:32 ◼   ► it doesn't matter to me because it's running in the background.

00:54:36 ◼   ► The difference between a Core i5 and Core i7, performance wise,

00:54:39 ◼   ► isn't meaningful to me personally.

00:54:40 ◼   ► And the Core i5 is going to get better battery life.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And that actually is-- that's more important to me.

00:54:45 ◼   ► So I think the next time I get a MacBook Pro,

00:54:47 ◼   ► I'd get a Core i5 that would get better battery life.

00:54:50 ◼   ► And it's way more than fast enough.

00:54:53 ◼   ► And then just max out the SSD and the RAM.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Microsoft won't let you do that and I find that to be a very useful configuration

00:54:59 ◼   ► I have the exact same MacBook Pro that you have from before the exact same

00:55:03 ◼   ► Configuration and I came to the exact same conclusion about this one

00:55:05 ◼   ► And in fact, I can't mention any names, but someone who knows those chipsets inside and out just told me point blank

00:55:10 ◼   ► Don't give and tell the extra money. I

00:55:12 ◼   ► Really I

00:55:16 ◼   ► I believe that I really do and it's not so much that there's anything wrong with the core i7

00:55:20 ◼   ► But that the core i5 is just good enough and I really do on that curve

00:55:25 ◼   ► And I think that's why Apple has wisely made it the default,

00:55:28 ◼   ► even on the Pros.

00:55:31 ◼   ► It's not just that it's more expensive,

00:55:33 ◼   ► but that it's really a good--

00:55:35 ◼   ► even for someone who needs a hyper--

00:55:37 ◼   ► relatively on the scale of all of Apple's MacBooks,

00:55:40 ◼   ► higher performance model, the MacBook Pro, the Core i5

00:55:43 ◼   ► is a good one.

00:55:44 ◼   ► So anyway--

00:55:44 ◼   ► And for that money, you get an extra port.

00:55:45 ◼   ► I mean, you're actually getting one port from MacBook Pros.

00:55:48 ◼   ► So anyway, I do find that interesting on the surface.

00:55:51 ◼   ► I'll give them kudos.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I don't think it looks like a MacBook Air.

00:55:54 ◼   ► I think Apple has largely defined the modern laptop in a way that there are some basic

00:56:02 ◼   ► fundamental similarities to the MacBook Air.

00:56:06 ◼   ► The wedgey design.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Yeah, the wedge design is certainly one.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But I don't think that's the sort of thing that even me, as somebody who's relatively

00:56:13 ◼   ► sensitive to people ripping off MacBooks, I don't think that's something that they could

00:56:17 ◼   ► lay ownership to.

00:56:21 ◼   ► sort of like, Tim Cook mentioned this, I think, at the event last year when they introduced

00:56:28 ◼   ► the MacBook Pros, when they went through all of Apple's portables from the beginning,

00:56:33 ◼   ► at least from the first PowerBook. I think they skipped the Mac portable. But all the

00:56:38 ◼   ► ones that you would identify as a laptop, like the Mac portable was portable but wasn't

00:56:42 ◼   ► a laptop. It seems crazy now, but Apple was the first one who put the keyboard back so

00:56:50 ◼   ► so that you have palm rests in front.

00:56:53 ◼   ► All previous laptops had the keys

00:56:55 ◼   ► right up to the front of the device.

00:56:57 ◼   ► I just think that's just something that when you see it,

00:57:01 ◼   ► you're like, oh, that's an obvious way to do it.

00:57:03 ◼   ► I think that the wedge-- - Optimized design, yeah.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - Right, I think the wedge shape of the MacBook Air

00:57:06 ◼   ► is an obvious way to shave weight off a device,

00:57:10 ◼   ► where only some of the components

00:57:12 ◼   ► need the full thickness at the back,

00:57:15 ◼   ► and if you can make it thinner in the front,

00:57:17 ◼   ► you might as well.

00:57:18 ◼   ► So I don't hold that against them.

00:57:19 ◼   ► And at a glance, you don't look at it,

00:57:21 ◼   ► and you wouldn't look at that

00:57:22 ◼   ► and think that's a MacBook Air.

00:57:23 ◼   ► - I did, but I'm willing to concede the point.

00:57:26 ◼   ► I watched the video, 'cause the video, again,

00:57:28 ◼   ► is very similar to Apple Design Language,

00:57:30 ◼   ► and you see that computer opening up,

00:57:31 ◼   ► and if you squint a little bit,

00:57:32 ◼   ► you can't tell the difference.

00:57:33 ◼   ► - All right, and they obviously took a lot of pride

00:57:36 ◼   ► in the video, and it is an Apple-style video,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but there's a lot of pride in the internals, too.

00:57:41 ◼   ► They show the, what would you call it, the...

00:57:47 ◼   ► It's obviously done in CGI, but the computer--

00:57:50 ◼   ► The renders.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Yeah, coming apart.

00:57:53 ◼   ► The different parts of it are in the little screws

00:57:56 ◼   ► and everything going in.

00:57:57 ◼   ► The federalists, too, they've gotten much--

00:57:59 ◼   ► I mean, for a software company, they've

00:58:00 ◼   ► gotten remarkable hardware chops over the last few years.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Well, it's funny, though.

00:58:04 ◼   ► They've always had a good reputation

00:58:06 ◼   ► for making mice and keyboards, right?

00:58:09 ◼   ► Microsoft mice and keyboards have,

00:58:10 ◼   ► ever since they got into the business,

00:58:12 ◼   ► have had reputation as world class.

00:58:15 ◼   ► But the Xbox line, not so much.

00:58:18 ◼   ► No.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Red rings and squeaky boxes.

00:58:23 ◼   ► But yeah, they-- and I even like the way that the--

00:58:27 ◼   ► I think-- is it the Windows logo or the Microsoft logo,

00:58:30 ◼   ► the four rectangles thing?

00:58:31 ◼   ► The Windows logo, yeah.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Is that what it is?

00:58:34 ◼   ► It looks good.

00:58:35 ◼   ► They've finally gotten it to a point where it's reduced to a real icon.

00:58:40 ◼   ► It was probably the de facto Microsoft logo by now,

00:58:43 ◼   ► because I think they use it everywhere.

00:58:45 ◼   ► They're using a different material.

00:58:46 ◼   ► They've got a soft touch, I forget the name of it.

00:58:51 ◼   ► There's a brand name that I wasn't familiar with.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, acetyl something.

00:58:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's some kind of fake leather type,

00:58:58 ◼   ► artificial synthetic leather.

00:59:00 ◼   ► - It's still leather, what AstroTurf is to grass

00:59:01 ◼   ► or something.

00:59:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that it's used by premium luxury automakers

00:59:06 ◼   ► for components and the dashboards of cards

00:59:09 ◼   ► or stuff like that.

00:59:10 ◼   ► So it's supposedly a great material.

00:59:13 ◼   ► It will be interesting to see how it wears.

00:59:16 ◼   ► And you might think, hey, well, duh, of course

00:59:18 ◼   ► it's going to wear well.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Why would they use it if it doesn't wear well?

00:59:21 ◼   ► But then you think about the-- remember the iPod Touch that--

00:59:24 ◼   ► Yep.

00:59:25 ◼   ► Yes, sir.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Well, not an iPod Touch.

00:59:27 ◼   ► It was an iPod Nano or something that was like-- you could

00:59:31 ◼   ► scratch it with your fingernail.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Yeah, no, totally.

00:59:33 ◼   ► You can't-- it's hard to-- there's no amount of Q&A that

00:59:36 ◼   ► can prepare you for a million customers hitting your product.

00:59:38 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:59:38 ◼   ► But that's new.

00:59:39 ◼   ► I don't recall ever seeing a premium laptop that

00:59:42 ◼   ► was something other than aluminum or plastic as the surface.

00:59:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, they said they wanted it to be less sterile,

00:59:52 ◼   ► to be less cold, to be more like a warmer feeling.

00:59:54 ◼   ► I just thought, ah, that's gonna pick up a lot of stains

00:59:56 ◼   ► and a lot of dirt.

00:59:57 ◼   ► - At least the lighter colors would, I would think.

00:59:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:00:01 ◼   ► - But the argument, I guess, is that it's gonna patina

01:00:03 ◼   ► like a good leather.

01:00:04 ◼   ► - I don't know, but it's--

01:00:05 ◼   ► - Which is a fancy way of saying a stain.

01:00:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's weird, though.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I think things that patina by touch are different

01:00:10 ◼   ► things like if you have like a leather watch strap or a leather belt it will get a patina over time

01:00:21 ◼   ► but it doesn't look like too sweaty palm print. Yes. Right? No, yeah, exactly. You know, it's

01:00:29 ◼   ► coming from use as opposed to coming from just sweat on two spots, right? Right on the palm rest.

01:00:35 ◼   ► And those are heavily used. I mean, that's heavy traffic there. Yeah, so we'll see, you know,

01:00:38 ◼   ► but give them credit for something original.

01:00:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:00:42 ◼   ► - And it looks pretty good.

01:00:42 ◼   ► But I don't think the price is all that compelling.

01:00:45 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think it's bad,

01:00:46 ◼   ► but I don't get the argument

01:00:48 ◼   ► that it makes Apple's MacBook pricing look out of line.

01:00:51 ◼   ► - No, the one thing you could criticize Apple for

01:00:53 ◼   ► is that at $99, $999, they do not have a retina computer.

01:00:57 ◼   ► The MacBook Air is still a non-retina machine,

01:00:59 ◼   ► although it does have a wider variety of ports

01:01:02 ◼   ► than this machine does.

01:01:03 ◼   ► - Right.

01:01:04 ◼   ► - But for people who always wanted a retina MacBook Air,

01:01:07 ◼   ► the MacBook Pro Escape is not quite that,

01:01:10 ◼   ► and this is closer.

01:01:11 ◼   ► - Right, and that is the take,

01:01:13 ◼   ► there are a couple of tweets along the lines of,

01:01:15 ◼   ► this is the MacBook Air, the Retina MacBook Air

01:01:18 ◼   ► that Apple never made.

01:01:20 ◼   ► And you can kinda see that and squint your eyes,

01:01:23 ◼   ► and that's sort of basically what it is.

01:01:25 ◼   ► It's the wedge shape, it's 13 inches display,

01:01:28 ◼   ► it has a Retina display, it's got the Core i5

01:01:31 ◼   ► and Core i7 chipsets, as opposed to the Intel M3, M5,

01:01:35 ◼   ► seven chips that the MacBook has.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Yeah, which I still don't like.

01:01:40 ◼   ► Whenever those chips see my iPad Pro, they just cry.

01:01:45 ◼   ► That's the truth.

01:01:46 ◼   ► For people who don't pay attention to those specs, and I know some of you people listening

01:01:49 ◼   ► obviously do, but I think a lot of you probably don't.

01:01:53 ◼   ► But the MacBook, the one-port MacBook that we have today is very, very, very similar

01:02:00 ◼   ► conceptually to the original, when the iPad Air--

01:02:04 ◼   ► not iPad Air, MacBook Air first came out,

01:02:07 ◼   ► where it was not priced based on performance.

01:02:14 ◼   ► And in traditional computer thinking,

01:02:18 ◼   ► you spend more to get a faster computer, and you spend less,

01:02:21 ◼   ► and you get a slower computer, by some multiple measures,

01:02:26 ◼   ► often of speed. I/O, CPU, graphics, you name it. You spend more, you get faster, you

01:02:33 ◼   ► spend less, you get slower. And the MacBook Air was a dramatic exception to

01:02:38 ◼   ► that, where the MacBook Air was a lot more expensive and a lot slower, but what

01:02:43 ◼   ► you got was something remarkably thinner and lighter. You know, famously taken out

01:02:47 ◼   ► of a manila envelope by Steve Jobs on stage to announce it. To gasps, outright

01:02:52 ◼   ► gasps from the audience.

01:02:54 ◼   ► The appeal was immediate.

01:02:56 ◼   ► But in terms of how is it priced, it was very different.

01:02:58 ◼   ► It was a premium-priced product, even though the performance was

01:03:01 ◼   ► far behind a MacBook Pro, like far less expensive computers.

01:03:05 ◼   ► The MacBook today is sort of like that.

01:03:07 ◼   ► The difference isn't as dramatic.

01:03:08 ◼   ► It's not super expensive.

01:03:10 ◼   ► I think-- what does it start at, $1,299?

01:03:11 ◼   ► And a reasonable config is, I would say, around $1,500, $1,600.

01:03:18 ◼   ► But it's slower than a $999 MacBook Air.

01:03:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's also,

01:03:24 ◼   ► if you actually look at that computer,

01:03:25 ◼   ► the components that Apple used in it are expensive,

01:03:27 ◼   ► and it's a really bad analogy,

01:03:29 ◼   ► but they delivered futuristic computer technology

01:03:31 ◼   ► in the present, and that's always expensive.

01:03:33 ◼   ► And I remember sort of asking why it was this price,

01:03:35 ◼   ► and it seemed overpriced,

01:03:36 ◼   ► and I got this aghast sort of look,

01:03:38 ◼   ► and then I got a very behind-the-scenes rundown

01:03:41 ◼   ► of what actually went into making it.

01:03:42 ◼   ► That display is incredibly sophisticated,

01:03:45 ◼   ► and a lot of technology they had to invent

01:03:46 ◼   ► to make that computer the way it is

01:03:48 ◼   ► is incredibly expensive and sophisticated.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And you could argue that they don't need to do that kind of thing.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And I think we'll see that again with the iPhone 8 when it ships, that it's going to

01:03:56 ◼   ► be more expensive than the current iPhones, but because the technology they're putting

01:03:59 ◼   ► in it would otherwise not come to market for a couple years.

01:04:02 ◼   ► And that's the cost of bringing that stuff forward sooner.

01:04:05 ◼   ► So you really, we're skipping ahead, but you really think that they're going to ship an

01:04:09 ◼   ► iPhone Pro or X or 8 or something that actually raises the prices from the current iPhone

01:04:15 ◼   ► 7 and 7 Plus prices?

01:04:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:18 ◼   ► I think they saw that there's price elasticity

01:04:20 ◼   ► when they made the iPhone 7 Plus 20 bucks more

01:04:23 ◼   ► than the previous iPhone 7, sorry, the previous iPhone Plus

01:04:26 ◼   ► and that's gonna carry forward.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And when they start introducing things,

01:04:28 ◼   ► it's always a balancing act.

01:04:30 ◼   ► If we wanna put something like distance charging in,

01:04:31 ◼   ► if we wanna put a much better camera system in,

01:04:33 ◼   ► if we wanna put much better screen technology,

01:04:35 ◼   ► all these things have a cost

01:04:36 ◼   ► and they'll come down over time.

01:04:37 ◼   ► But if we do it today, it's gonna be this price.

01:04:40 ◼   ► If we do it next year or the year after,

01:04:41 ◼   ► it's gonna be this price.

01:04:42 ◼   ► And once in a while, I think they're gonna gamble

01:04:44 ◼   ► and say, we can afford to test the upper limits

01:04:46 ◼   ► of iPhone pricing.

01:04:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the other factor that comes into that

01:04:49 ◼   ► is that they can not have to bank on having 70 million

01:04:54 ◼   ► of those components in the first three months.

01:04:57 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it controls demand.

01:04:58 ◼   ► And the price is higher, less people want it,

01:05:00 ◼   ► and then the constrained supplies don't matter as much.

01:05:02 ◼   ► - I think if that's going to be their strategy

01:05:04 ◼   ► with the iPhone, which I don't think

01:05:07 ◼   ► they would call the iPhone 8, I really don't.

01:05:09 ◼   ► I think they would call the iPhone Pro,

01:05:11 ◼   ► or the iPhone something.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Because I think, and then if they also have iPhone 7S

01:05:18 ◼   ► and iPhone 7S Plus that stay at these same prices

01:05:20 ◼   ► we know today and just do a typical S upgrade,

01:05:23 ◼   ► which is often, if not usually, a better upgrade

01:05:27 ◼   ► component-wise than the non-S years.

01:05:30 ◼   ► I think calling the new one the iPhone 8

01:05:34 ◼   ► makes the iPhone 7S look older than it would

01:05:39 ◼   ► if they gave it a non-numbered name.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Like iPhone Pro. - Or I think iPhone edition

01:05:42 ◼   ► was the other-- - Right.

01:05:43 ◼   ► - Because Macbook was Macbook stealth originally

01:05:45 ◼   ► and then they just went with Macbook.

01:05:46 ◼   ► - Right.

01:05:47 ◼   ► - So they can play around with those things

01:05:48 ◼   ► until they just make a last minute decision.

01:05:50 ◼   ► - Right, and those things, the leak the least

01:05:52 ◼   ► because they don't print the names on the devices

01:05:56 ◼   ► so they don't come out of the,

01:05:57 ◼   ► like you look on the back of your iPhone 7,

01:05:59 ◼   ► it doesn't say iPhone 7, it just says iPhone.

01:06:01 ◼   ► And so it's just a small number of product marketing people

01:06:06 ◼   ► who do not leak.

01:06:08 ◼   ► - And they back that stuff around for a while.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Anyway, back to Surface laptop.

01:06:16 ◼   ► The other thing-- so the flip side of the event

01:06:20 ◼   ► was the software, which was Windows 10 S, which is--

01:06:24 ◼   ► and again, the comparisons were all to Apple.

01:06:27 ◼   ► Apple was so-- it's fascinating to me,

01:06:29 ◼   ► as somebody who's been following this stuff obsessively for--

01:06:34 ◼   ► I was a teenager.

01:06:38 ◼   ► It is absolutely fascinating to me how central Apple is

01:06:43 ◼   ► to this entire announcement, both software-- everything

01:06:46 ◼   ► on the hardware was compared to the MacBook,

01:06:48 ◼   ► and everything software was compared to iOS and Mac OS.

01:06:55 ◼   ► But the big news-- so Windows 10 S,

01:06:57 ◼   ► it's a cut-down version of Windows 10.

01:07:00 ◼   ► And it is iOS-style in some ways,

01:07:04 ◼   ► where apps can only come from the Windows App Store.

01:07:09 ◼   ► And to get out of that, it's not like the Mac

01:07:15 ◼   ► where you can click a checkbox and there's

01:07:20 ◼   ► a radio button in the Mac in the security thing where you can

01:07:22 ◼   ► choose--

01:07:23 ◼   ► The Gatekeeper switch.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Yeah, the Gatekeeper switch.

01:07:25 ◼   ► Allow apps only from the App Store

01:07:26 ◼   ► or allow apps from the App Store and from known

01:07:31 ◼   ► identified developers.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And you can also, even with that checked, you can also use apps from unsigned developers,

01:07:40 ◼   ► but you have to be nerdy enough to open them by not just by double clicking them.

01:07:45 ◼   ► You have to control click and choose open or use the gear menu in the Finder just to

01:07:51 ◼   ► double ensure that you know exactly what you're getting into in terms of using an app from

01:07:55 ◼   ► an untrusted developer.

01:07:57 ◼   ► So you can do that on the Mac.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Windows 10 S is like iOS where there are no options like that.

01:08:03 ◼   ► no options to get side load apps from outside the store from known developers, and certainly

01:08:08 ◼   ► no options to get unsigned apps.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:13 ◼   ► You have to pro your way out of it.

01:08:15 ◼   ► It's a huge, huge deal.

01:08:16 ◼   ► I mean, it's the sort of thing that, like, if Microsoft had tried it 10 years ago, would

01:08:21 ◼   ► have had antitrust regulators.

01:08:24 ◼   ► Well, that was a suspicion.

01:08:25 ◼   ► When the Mac App Store was first announced, there was a whole bunch of people who panicked

01:08:29 ◼   ► immediately and said that we're one step away from Apple locking down the Mac the way

01:08:32 ◼   ► They locked down iOS.

01:08:33 ◼   ► And this is just the first stage.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And Apple has thus far not done it at all.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And it's interesting that Microsoft got there first.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Because that's everybody's fear.

01:08:42 ◼   ► And I highlighted a tweet during Fireball

01:08:44 ◼   ► from Dieter Bohn of The Verge who said that Apple--

01:08:49 ◼   ► Microsoft's the first-- I might be paraphrasing,

01:08:52 ◼   ► but Microsoft's the first-- Microsoft

01:08:53 ◼   ► ships a completely locked down computer before Apple.

01:08:57 ◼   ► Odd.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Which I thought was interesting just because it's-- when he's

01:09:01 ◼   ► talking about a computer, it's clear that what he means is that he only thinks of Macs

01:09:05 ◼   ► as real computers and not iPads, because the iPad's been out since 2011 and has been locked

01:09:10 ◼   ► down the exact same way the whole time.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Other changes that they've done that are even tighter than Apple's iOS restrictions in some

01:09:18 ◼   ► ways are with web browsers. You can download other web browsers, but only from the store,

01:09:26 ◼   ► Chrome is not in the store.

01:09:29 ◼   ► It was at one point, so it might return.

01:09:31 ◼   ► But my understanding-- I've poked your ass around--

01:09:34 ◼   ► was more or less that Microsoft went to Google and said,

01:09:38 ◼   ► hey, with the version of Chrome in the Windows App Store,

01:09:41 ◼   ► you're turning it into Chrome OS.

01:09:42 ◼   ► That it had its own app store.

01:09:45 ◼   ► It did, again, circling back to our discussion of Apple

01:09:48 ◼   ► and apps that have, quote unquote, "apps within apps."

01:09:51 ◼   ► They were like, knock it off.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And so rather than sort of take out that Chrome OS style

01:09:57 ◼   ► integration of, quote, "apps within Chrome,"

01:09:59 ◼   ► Google just took their ball and went home.

01:10:04 ◼   ► But even if you do get a browser from their app store,

01:10:08 ◼   ► you can't set it as your default.

01:10:10 ◼   ► So if you get an email with a URL in it and click it,

01:10:13 ◼   ► it's always going to open in Edge.

01:10:16 ◼   ► And here's the part that would have

01:10:18 ◼   ► been so much more interesting if they had done this years ago

01:10:21 ◼   ► and if they had done it in Windows itself, is the search feature in Edge is Bing and

01:10:29 ◼   ► only Bing, and you have no other options.

01:10:31 ◼   ► So unlike, say, even iOS, which is pretty locked down, you get Google Search by default

01:10:37 ◼   ► still, but you have the option for Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's hard to take things away from people, and I think the expectations are different.

01:10:48 ◼   ► With iOS, the expectation has always been that you've never been able to have third-party

01:10:51 ◼   ► rendering engines which means like you know you've never been able to you've always been able to change your

01:10:56 ◼   ► Your default browser and with Microsoft in they're calling this windows. It feels like windows

01:11:00 ◼   ► It looks like windows those features now feel taken away. You've taken away my ability to get chrome

01:11:05 ◼   ► You've taken away my ability to search with Google rather than being a feature of the operating system. Yeah, it's interesting to see

01:11:10 ◼   ► I'm intrigued to see how it plays out because I don't know who the market is for this exactly and

01:11:14 ◼   ► There is an option last but not least there's an option

01:11:17 ◼   ► Where you can get this?

01:11:20 ◼   ► You could get if you buy any I guess any of these Windows 10s devices

01:11:24 ◼   ► If you pay 50 bucks you can upgrade to Windows 10 Pro

01:11:30 ◼   ► But it's clear

01:11:32 ◼   ► It's not just like you're paying 50 bucks to toggle a checkbox like you're changing the OS in certain ways

01:11:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not like a keeper where you can turn it off download the app you want turn it back on

01:11:42 ◼   ► It's not like you can download Windows Pro get Chrome turn

01:11:44 ◼   ► Then we go to it to Windows s you know, and I don't know enough about Windows to say for sure

01:11:49 ◼   ► But it's clear that the difference between Windows 10

01:11:52 ◼   ► S and Windows 10 Pro is more like it's

01:11:56 ◼   ► two different versions of Windows 10,

01:11:58 ◼   ► and there's obviously a lot of shared stuff in there.

01:12:00 ◼   ► And it's not like the difference between iOS and Mac OS,

01:12:03 ◼   ► where it's two entirely different operating systems.

01:12:08 ◼   ► One Windows.

01:12:09 ◼   ► But they did advertise repeatedly during the event

01:12:12 ◼   ► that Windows 10 S-- I forget what they call it,

01:12:16 ◼   ► but they don't call it sandboxing.

01:12:18 ◼   ► But there's the equivalent idea of sandboxing,

01:12:20 ◼   ► where apps from the Windows Store

01:12:26 ◼   ► can't do it like the old days, where you can do it right

01:12:28 ◼   ► all over the file system and add DLLs to the system level,

01:12:32 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah.

01:12:34 ◼   ► They repeatedly said that as you use a Windows 10s device

01:12:38 ◼   ► over time, it won't slow down, which is-- again,

01:12:42 ◼   ► I haven't used Windows on a regular basis in 10 or 15

01:12:45 ◼   ► years.

01:12:46 ◼   ► but it was always true and as far as I have heard recently is still true that if you know people

01:12:51 ◼   ► can't nobody who's like an expert Windows user gets a Windows machine and four years later is

01:12:56 ◼   ► still using it without having reinstalled at some point just to clean out the gunk.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's super interesting to me the a lot of the choices that they made with this operating

01:13:07 ◼   ► system and are they competing? It's clear they're competing with Apple in some aspects,

01:13:12 ◼   ► but they're also competing with Chrome and Chrome OS and the growth of Chrome OS in schools and

01:13:18 ◼   ► Chrome OS is the virtue is like the Chromebooks are super super cheap. Chrome OS is essentially free

01:13:23 ◼   ► Chrome services Google services are essentially free makes it an incredibly easy to manage environment which education, you know schools

01:13:29 ◼   ► everybody loves

01:13:30 ◼   ► And is Windows S really an answer to that is a way to get a super cheap free version of Windows onto a bunch of

01:13:36 ◼   ► Super cheap really inexpensive laptops. I think the surface laptop aside a lot of the third-party

01:13:42 ◼   ► the Surface laptop style machines

01:13:44 ◼   ► will be much less expensive.

01:13:46 ◼   ► But that brings with it a whole other set of concessions

01:13:50 ◼   ► or compromises.

01:13:51 ◼   ► - I get the impression that at a practical level

01:13:56 ◼   ► and from their business,

01:13:57 ◼   ► what they really need to be concentrating on

01:14:01 ◼   ► is Chrome and Chromebooks.

01:14:03 ◼   ► And they announced that through their,

01:14:06 ◼   ► nothing Microsoft branded, but through their partners,

01:14:08 ◼   ► OEMs like I think Acer and a couple of others,

01:14:11 ◼   ► that they're coming out with $189 notebooks

01:14:15 ◼   ► that run Windows 10 S, which is a pretty good price point.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And clearly, very specifically,

01:14:21 ◼   ► the event was education themed,

01:14:23 ◼   ► marked at the education market.

01:14:25 ◼   ► The Surface laptop is clearly not aimed

01:14:31 ◼   ► at that part of the education market,

01:14:35 ◼   ► the tray full of laptops for grade school kids

01:14:40 ◼   ► get as they come in the school.

01:14:43 ◼   ► There is, though, it's still quote unquote education,

01:14:47 ◼   ► but there's the teenagers who are

01:14:50 ◼   ► going to own their own computer for high school and college.

01:14:56 ◼   ► And that's where Apple thrives.

01:14:59 ◼   ► So Apple, because their prices are so much higher,

01:15:02 ◼   ► and because Chrome-- for various reasons,

01:15:04 ◼   ► Chrome has really, really taken off in the classroom education

01:15:09 ◼   ► market.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And it's going to be interesting to see if it repeats.

01:15:14 ◼   ► Because when I was young, a lot of us had Apple computers.

01:15:17 ◼   ► But you'd go to schools, and sometimes they

01:15:19 ◼   ► would have PC computing labs because they were cheap.

01:15:22 ◼   ► And all you'd hear is kids go, ah, I hate this.

01:15:23 ◼   ► My Mac at home is so much nicer.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And I wonder if we're going to get to the point where,

01:15:28 ◼   ► because schools are regimented the way that they are,

01:15:30 ◼   ► there's a bunch of cheap Windows S and probably a lot more

01:15:32 ◼   ► Chromebooks.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And kids will go in and go, ah, this is not like the iPad

01:15:35 ◼   ► I have at home.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I hate it.

01:15:36 ◼   ► and that sort of builds a whole separate cache

01:15:39 ◼   ► where maybe Apple isn't as competitive

01:15:41 ◼   ► in the schools anymore,

01:15:42 ◼   ► but they're super competitive in the homes

01:15:43 ◼   ► with the same sort of population.

01:15:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's definitely true.

01:15:46 ◼   ► As the father of a seventh grader,

01:15:49 ◼   ► and seventh grade is a little different,

01:15:51 ◼   ► but in the lower grades, just in the last few years,

01:15:55 ◼   ► at Jonas' school, most of the computers

01:15:58 ◼   ► that they had access to were Chromebooks,

01:16:00 ◼   ► and the kids hated them.

01:16:03 ◼   ► But, well, not hated them,

01:16:04 ◼   ► But they didn't really see them as something desirable.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Hate's a wrong word.

01:16:08 ◼   ► But they more or less were just Google Docs machines, really.

01:16:12 ◼   ► That's really all they were.

01:16:13 ◼   ► And I guess they do some research on web browsers.

01:16:17 ◼   ► But they're just literally just used

01:16:19 ◼   ► for searching the web for some amount of research

01:16:22 ◼   ► and for writing.

01:16:25 ◼   ► If you had a written assignment, you'd do it in Google Docs

01:16:28 ◼   ► and it saves to a folder where the teacher can get it.

01:16:31 ◼   ► And they're kind of junky, and they're kind of squeaky,

01:16:33 ◼   ► and they're kind of mushy.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Just like, I've asked, 'cause my co-workers

01:16:36 ◼   ► are the same way, they have Chrome at school now,

01:16:38 ◼   ► so they went all in on it, but they have iPads at home.

01:16:41 ◼   ► And they can tell, like it's not,

01:16:42 ◼   ► they don't put it in those terms,

01:16:44 ◼   ► but they can tell that it just feel like a sub,

01:16:46 ◼   ► like they're not the same experience.

01:16:47 ◼   ► - Right, and that's not necessarily a bad thing,

01:16:49 ◼   ► and I totally understand it from the school's perspective,

01:16:51 ◼   ► 'cause I don't, you know, that they don't think,

01:16:54 ◼   ► you know, you don't want more expensive, you know.

01:16:58 ◼   ► The price is a huge issue, and durability is a huge issue,

01:17:01 ◼   ► and if you can combine it and have a device that at least is reasonably rugged and even

01:17:06 ◼   ► if it does break, it's only $180 to replace or whatever, I totally get it. But the mind

01:17:13 ◼   ► share of the kids and what they actually used and wanted to use in their own time was iPhones,

01:17:19 ◼   ► really.

01:17:20 ◼   ► I think that's an important part of the discussion in the overall education market.

01:17:25 ◼   ► But the Surface laptop clearly is aimed… I feel like from a business sense, Microsoft

01:17:30 ◼   ► really needs to stem the growth of Chromebooks.

01:17:34 ◼   ► They need that market.

01:17:35 ◼   ► They need that, you know, their business is set up

01:17:37 ◼   ► on the assumption that all of these low-end machines

01:17:40 ◼   ► will be running Windows and we'll figure out a way

01:17:44 ◼   ► to make money even if the margins are really low.

01:17:46 ◼   ► That that's, you know, that Windows Everywhere strategy

01:17:48 ◼   ► is important to them.

01:17:49 ◼   ► I feel like it's more of a psychological pride thing

01:17:53 ◼   ► that they are, and for years now,

01:17:56 ◼   ► it's not just with the Surface laptop,

01:17:58 ◼   ► but that they've sort of been, not even sort of,

01:18:00 ◼   ► that they've been outright gunning for the MacBook

01:18:03 ◼   ► in advertising with their products, right?

01:18:06 ◼   ► They had a whole ad campaign based on the,

01:18:09 ◼   ► I forget the name of their products,

01:18:12 ◼   ► but I think it's the Surface Book?

01:18:14 ◼   ► - Surface Pro and the Surface--

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Or the Surface Pro?

01:18:16 ◼   ► I don't know, but it's one--

01:18:17 ◼   ► - Surface Pro was the first one

01:18:18 ◼   ► that was the convertible tablet,

01:18:19 ◼   ► and then Surface Book was the laptop-y convertible.

01:18:22 ◼   ► - Right, so the laptop-y convertible.

01:18:24 ◼   ► There's an ad campaign that was pretty big where they ran,

01:18:26 ◼   ► And the whole thing was based on,

01:18:28 ◼   ► can't do this on a MacBook,

01:18:30 ◼   ► and it's usually just drawing or touching the screen.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Trying to make that,

01:18:35 ◼   ► look, we've made a high quality laptop

01:18:37 ◼   ► and it has a touchscreen,

01:18:39 ◼   ► trying to make that into a differentiating issue.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And they mentioned, in that campaign,

01:18:45 ◼   ► they mentioned MacBooks specifically and nothing else.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I mean, and they can't really mention anything else

01:18:50 ◼   ► because it's not targeted at Chromebooks.

01:18:53 ◼   ► It's a very, these are different class machine.

01:18:55 ◼   ► or like the thousand dollar range machine, and they can't piss off their OEMs by talking

01:19:00 ◼   ► about other Windows laptops.

01:19:02 ◼   ► It feels like Microsoft is caught in a hard—it's sort of caught in the middle right now.

01:19:06 ◼   ► You have Apple at one side and Google at the other side, and Microsoft is sort of running

01:19:09 ◼   ► back and forth between them, not really certain of its own identity, sometimes competing with

01:19:13 ◼   ► Google, sometimes with Apple.

01:19:16 ◼   ► And I don't want to bring up the toaster fridge thing, but I think it's an apt description

01:19:19 ◼   ► of it sort of botches your focus with products because you don't have your own clear destination.

01:19:25 ◼   ► You're sort of like what Apple's doing over here, what Google's doing over here, and you're meshing them together

01:19:29 ◼   ► And I think that's sort of the disconnect that I see in the Surface Book. Yeah, okay the Surface Laptop

01:19:34 ◼   ► well, and the other thing too is that they they

01:19:37 ◼   ► Tried to make some hay at the end of last year in the wake of the mixed reviews of the new MacBook Pros

01:19:45 ◼   ► And

01:19:48 ◼   ► It said you know

01:19:50 ◼   ► this is the end of 2016-- that I forget

01:19:54 ◼   ► if they said their surface in particular,

01:19:56 ◼   ► or that the premium market, which

01:19:59 ◼   ► is defined as like $9.99 and up for laptops,

01:20:02 ◼   ► that they're taking share away from Apple in that market.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And there were a couple of statements that they had.

01:20:08 ◼   ► But it was all Bezos numbers, where

01:20:10 ◼   ► they didn't give specific numbers or sources

01:20:12 ◼   ► and just set it.

01:20:15 ◼   ► But the actual numbers that have been released,

01:20:17 ◼   ► and were released since then, don't bear that out.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Apple's Mac sales have been up.

01:20:22 ◼   ► And again, Apple doesn't, in their numbers,

01:20:24 ◼   ► release the split between notebooks and desktops.

01:20:27 ◼   ► But there's no reason to believe that their desktop

01:20:29 ◼   ► sales are up, because their best selling one, the iMac,

01:20:32 ◼   ► is over a year old.

01:20:34 ◼   ► And there are other ones.

01:20:35 ◼   ► The Mac Pro and the Mac Mini are 17 and 23 years old,

01:20:40 ◼   ► respectively.

01:20:41 ◼   ► And even in the best desktop year, the laptops dwarf.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Just dwarf the desktop sales.

01:20:48 ◼   ► And so there's absolutely--

01:20:50 ◼   ► Apple's Mac sales are up the last two quarters

01:20:53 ◼   ► they've reported.

01:20:53 ◼   ► So there's absolutely no sign that Mac sales are down.

01:20:58 ◼   ► And so if it's true that Windows PCs in the premium market

01:21:02 ◼   ► have taken share from Apple, it doesn't make any sense.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Because if Apple's sales are up, technically it

01:21:08 ◼   ► would be possible if the overall market were growing so fast

01:21:11 ◼   ► that they could take share away, even though Apple is still

01:21:14 ◼   ► growing by outgrowing it.

01:21:16 ◼   ► But absolutely nobody is reporting

01:21:19 ◼   ► that premium Windows laptop sales are

01:21:22 ◼   ► a growing part of the market.

01:21:24 ◼   ► In fact, everybody's reporting that it's

01:21:26 ◼   ► a shrinking part of the market.

01:21:27 ◼   ► Not collapsing, but like a slowly deflating tire.

01:21:32 ◼   ► And there's no sign of that abetting.

01:21:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's funny that-- again,

01:21:41 ◼   ► going back to the Apple Watch thing,

01:21:43 ◼   ► The Apple Watch is considered beleaguered, it's considered doomed in a lot of the angles

01:21:47 ◼   ► taken in reports, where Surface was by no measure selling—well, we had no idea what

01:21:52 ◼   ► it was selling, but it was being ballooned.

01:21:54 ◼   ► It was being propped up.

01:21:55 ◼   ► There were headlines all over the place saying the resurgence of the Windows laptop.

01:21:59 ◼   ► And the coverage of the numbers you talked about that had no backing from Microsoft,

01:22:04 ◼   ► as far as I can tell, that was pretty extensive, and the coverage of the Surface not doing

01:22:07 ◼   ► well has not been similarly extensive.

01:22:08 ◼   ► No.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:10 ◼   ► sales are, not again, not collapsing,

01:22:12 ◼   ► but the surface sales were down pretty significantly

01:22:14 ◼   ► in the last quarter that they reported.

01:22:16 ◼   ► So I don't see that happening.

01:22:18 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

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01:23:58 ◼   ► - I should point out when I talk about the coverage,

01:24:04 ◼   ► I don't mean that Apple should be given

01:24:05 ◼   ► a free ride on these things.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I think it's the same thing as like when Touch ID

01:24:08 ◼   ► is considered a disaster at launch,

01:24:10 ◼   ► but the botched facial recognition is fine.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I think everybody should be scrutinized

01:24:13 ◼   ► to the level that Apple is.

01:24:15 ◼   ► It's not that they should give Apple a break,

01:24:16 ◼   ► but they should hold everybody to that same standard

01:24:18 ◼   ► because as a consumer, I want to know all that stuff

01:24:20 ◼   ► when I make my decision on what I want to buy next.

01:24:22 ◼   ► And I feel like I'm being underserved right now

01:24:24 ◼   ► because I hear every little, all the hot takes about Apple

01:24:27 ◼   ► and everything else sort of just skates by.

01:24:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Well, I think it's worth talking about.

01:24:32 ◼   ► The elephant in the room of Apple's MacBook lineup

01:24:36 ◼   ► is the MacBook Air because it's,

01:24:39 ◼   ► I think I checked today, I think it's 788 days

01:24:42 ◼   ► since they updated the specs, so it's two years old.

01:24:46 ◼   ► It still costs $999.

01:24:48 ◼   ► It doesn't have a retina screen.

01:24:50 ◼   ► It's the existence of that product that gives rise to the,

01:24:56 ◼   ► hey, Microsoft just put out this thing

01:24:58 ◼   ► and it makes the MacBook lineup look overpriced.

01:25:02 ◼   ► I don't think that's true if you look at the MacBook, the MacBook One port.

01:25:07 ◼   ► Even though I think we're probably due for an update on that because the last one came

01:25:10 ◼   ► out a year ago.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Yes.

01:25:12 ◼   ► But a year is not an unreasonable period of time to wait for an update.

01:25:16 ◼   ► So if we get one at WWDC, I would say right on time.

01:25:20 ◼   ► MacBook Pros obviously just came out last fall.

01:25:23 ◼   ► And I think our … I don't buy the argument that they're overpriced.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I think for what they are, they are correctly priced, even though at certain price points

01:25:32 ◼   ► that means that getting a "new MacBook Pro" has a higher price.

01:25:36 ◼   ► It's the price of a MacBook Pro plus the Apple Watch that's essentially embedded inside

01:25:40 ◼   ► it.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:42 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And I think that if you spec things out, like when I did the comparison to the Surface laptop,

01:25:52 ◼   ► what I was configuring it against, I don't think I mentioned this, I was configuring

01:25:55 ◼   ► it against the new MacBook Pro with the buttons, not the touch bar, because that's, to me,

01:26:02 ◼   ► the most apt comparison.

01:26:04 ◼   ► To me, that is the MacBook Air with retina that everybody claims that they want Apple

01:26:09 ◼   ► to make.

01:26:10 ◼   ► The MacBook Air with a retina screen is the new MacBook Pro that doesn't have the touch

01:26:16 ◼   ► bar.

01:26:17 ◼   ► I think Phil Schiller said as much when he introduced it.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:19 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it's so much in so many ways.

01:26:22 ◼   ► by comparing it to the size and weight and thickness of the MacBook Air, which it compares

01:26:26 ◼   ► very favorably. It matches up with and it's way faster and has a beautiful screen, et

01:26:33 ◼   ► cetera.

01:26:35 ◼   ► But the MacBook Air is old and is sitting there at $999 and doesn't have a retina screen.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Not arguing, but just having a very nice debate with people on Twitter about it recently.

01:26:45 ◼   ► Marco Arment on Twitter made the point—and it's hard to argue with—that in 2017, Apple

01:26:50 ◼   ► should not be selling any device that has a display that's not retina caliber in terms

01:26:55 ◼   ► of resolution.

01:26:56 ◼   ► And I agree with that.

01:26:57 ◼   ► In theory, 2017 is too late to still be selling a brand new product.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Brand new meaning that you're buying it out of the box and it's factory sealed.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Full price retail, yeah.

01:27:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I think the non-retina MacBook Air is like the new 16 gigabyte iOS device.

01:27:16 ◼   ► I can't defend it.

01:27:17 ◼   ► I think it's I would recommend against it

01:27:20 ◼   ► I would if somebody asked me if they should buy one I would say no and that would be the reason why what you pointed

01:27:24 ◼   ► Out so well with the Mac Pro thing is that Apple doesn't have a game plan for this

01:27:28 ◼   ► It's like if we don't have something new to announce and we're not canceling it

01:27:30 ◼   ► It just stays at exactly the same price in the catalog because they want to keep something at that

01:27:34 ◼   ► 999 price that is a Mac laptop, but they feel like they can't sell the MacBook

01:27:43 ◼   ► One port at that price yet. Yeah and still keep the margins they want

01:27:47 ◼   ► You know, I think what they're doing is waiting and and I don't know if it's this year

01:27:53 ◼   ► I don't I have no inside information. But my theory is what they will do is eventually they'll have an updated

01:27:59 ◼   ► State-of-the-art MacBook just playing MacBook. Yeah and put the year-old

01:28:04 ◼   ► Just playing MacBook at a lower price point until it gets to 999 and then at that point the MacBook air goes away

01:28:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'll be a little sad if they stick to the mint the Intel core M platform for that because it just it's not the

01:28:17 ◼   ► same

01:28:18 ◼   ► Either analysts its fan list, which is great

01:28:20 ◼   ► But it's just I don't know how to get out of that though because I don't you can't use a core

01:28:24 ◼   ► I don't know

01:28:25 ◼   ► You know

01:28:25 ◼   ► I think you're I think you're stuck waiting for the for the the M series to get fast enough that you don't mind

01:28:30 ◼   ► I mean and it can happen. I mean, you know the

01:28:33 ◼   ► The a10 is a fan list design and you know, it's fast

01:28:38 ◼   ► That's the other thing that sort of greats about the MacBook.

01:28:42 ◼   ► It's that the iPad Pro, in my opinion, has a faster CPU.

01:28:48 ◼   ► I think that the single core Geekbench scores

01:28:51 ◼   ► are a reasonable-- I realize that they don't correlate

01:28:54 ◼   ► exactly to real world use.

01:28:56 ◼   ► No, and they're purpose built. So the two things

01:28:58 ◼   ► that you note right off the bat is

01:28:59 ◼   ► that Apple can build those cores exactly for what they want.

01:29:01 ◼   ► So they can have super fast single threaded operations,

01:29:04 ◼   ► because that's what people hit when they do interface

01:29:06 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:29:07 ◼   ► But I remember the initial review unit I had

01:29:09 ◼   ► for the second generation MacBook,

01:29:11 ◼   ► it could barely handle one stream of 4K.

01:29:13 ◼   ► Well, the A9, not even the A10 version of the iPad Pro,

01:29:17 ◼   ► there is no A10 version yet.

01:29:18 ◼   ► The A9 version of the iPad Pro could handle three streams

01:29:21 ◼   ► of 4K because Apple built that chip exactly to do that.

01:29:23 ◼   ► And they don't have control over Intel.

01:29:25 ◼   ► And Intel will do things like,

01:29:26 ◼   ► as far as I can tell, the Core M3

01:29:28 ◼   ► is a deliberately hobbled chip

01:29:30 ◼   ► that maybe Apple shouldn't use.

01:29:32 ◼   ► But Intel just makes it worse than the M5

01:29:34 ◼   ► just because they want a lower price point for that chipset.

01:29:36 ◼   ► So there's a waiting game involved there.

01:29:40 ◼   ► And because part of it, I think, too,

01:29:42 ◼   ► is like you just alluded to, a big part of it

01:29:46 ◼   ► is out of Apple's hands where they were waiting for Intel.

01:29:49 ◼   ► And that opens the door to the whole, well,

01:29:51 ◼   ► maybe they'll go put an ARM chip, their own custom

01:29:54 ◼   ► ARM chip in a Mac.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Or buy AMD.

01:29:56 ◼   ► They have all this money.

01:29:57 ◼   ► Right, or buy AMD.

01:29:59 ◼   ► And who knows?

01:29:59 ◼   ► Who knows what they're thinking?

01:30:01 ◼   ► But switching to ARM on one model of Mac

01:30:04 ◼   ► is a lot more complicated than we have time to discuss.

01:30:08 ◼   ► And I don't think it's going to happen.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And therefore, there might be something I don't foresee.

01:30:12 ◼   ► There might be some way out of this.

01:30:14 ◼   ► But basically, they're waiting for Intel on that.

01:30:16 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:30:17 ◼   ► I don't know what to say.

01:30:19 ◼   ► But I can totally see.

01:30:20 ◼   ► I also wouldn't recommend that Apple update the MacBook Air

01:30:24 ◼   ► and put it right in the screen in there.

01:30:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it feels like there's something--

01:30:28 ◼   ► and there were rumors of a device in between that

01:30:29 ◼   ► was sort of a larger version.

01:30:30 ◼   ► It was a 14-inch MacBook or something.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it would never happen to that.

01:30:34 ◼   ► - It hasn't shipped.

01:30:35 ◼   ► - Right.

01:30:37 ◼   ► - There's no Kaby Lake version of the MacBook.

01:30:39 ◼   ► There's no 14 inch version of the MacBook.

01:30:41 ◼   ► There's just, then the updated iMac's not here yet.

01:30:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, the 14 inch MacBook was a weird rumor

01:30:48 ◼   ► that some people seem certain of and never shipped.

01:30:51 ◼   ► Anyway, let's move on.

01:30:56 ◼   ► WWDC stuff.

01:30:58 ◼   ► I just quickly want to say, I am having a live show.

01:31:02 ◼   ► It's announced.

01:31:03 ◼   ► People keep asking about tickets soon.

01:31:05 ◼   ► As you listen to this, it will be very soon.

01:31:07 ◼   ► We are moving.

01:31:09 ◼   ► But I don't have anything to announce yet.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So patience.

01:31:15 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:31:17 ◼   ► There are a couple of other events.

01:31:19 ◼   ► I know that they're on the same web page on Apple's WWDC.

01:31:22 ◼   ► It's very, very nice of Apple to promote these alternative--

01:31:25 ◼   ► or I forget what they call them-- but community events.

01:31:29 ◼   ► There is a CocoConf taking place in a hotel right

01:31:32 ◼   ► adjacent to the convention center where WWDC is.

01:31:37 ◼   ► CocoConf is held a couple times a year.

01:31:39 ◼   ► I've never been, but I have friends who have spoken there and have attended and swear up

01:31:44 ◼   ► and down that it is an amazing conference, like a $12.99 conference for developers.

01:31:49 ◼   ► They have a great speaker lineup.

01:31:51 ◼   ► They'll be right there next to WWDC.

01:31:53 ◼   ► So I think CocoConf is sort of a great plan B for people who wanted to go to WWDC and

01:32:00 ◼   ► It lost the lottery for tickets.

01:32:03 ◼   ► So look into that if you're a developer and you want something like that.

01:32:06 ◼   ► There's AltConf, which is also in a hotel adjacent to the convention hall.

01:32:12 ◼   ► I've never been there, but it seems to me like there's two hotels that are literally

01:32:16 ◼   ► connected to the convention center and that those hotels themselves have convention space.

01:32:22 ◼   ► And so one of them is a CocoaConf.

01:32:24 ◼   ► The other one is AltConf.

01:32:25 ◼   ► Alt Conf is free, so that's a great option