0:00:00I got really excited when I bought a mechanical keyboard and I'm really loving it. It's this weird
0:00:04Korean... I guess they call it a 60% keyboard, so it's got no function row, but it's super small
0:00:11and it's very clicky and I really like it. I thought, "Aha! Now I can get rid of this other
0:00:15keyboard!" And I realized I have to keep the other keyboard within arm's reach because I can't
0:00:20type and talk. What brand keyboard is it? It's a Leopold. You get them on eBay.
0:00:28Really? You can't buy them direct? Are they like used or...?
0:00:31No, they're all new.
0:00:32That's just how they sell?
0:00:34Yeah, and they've got them in different mechanisms. There are a couple different
0:00:42mechanisms of, you know, like the different key switches. Mine is like a cherry blue,
0:00:48but I'll send you a link.
0:00:51I got them. I got it here. Mechanicalkeyboards.com.
0:00:55Yeah, yeah, and it's the FC660M is the one that I've got.
0:00:58And I love it because it's so tiny,
0:01:00and it's really enjoyably clicky.
0:01:03I got the Matthias small keyboard too, and it's not bad,
0:01:08but it's way bigger, like the whole thing.
0:01:11It's got another row of keys, and it's got--
0:01:14the only problem with this one is you've got to map some of the keys,
0:01:17because it's missing a few keys.
0:01:18But the arrow keys are properly oriented as arrows,
0:01:22and it's nice and clicky.
0:01:24And then I started buying keycaps.
0:01:26So you got Blue Cherry.
0:01:27What do you mean keycaps?
0:01:29Does this company sell the official ones?
0:01:31Uh, no.
0:01:32So I ended up on eBay.
0:01:34There are a few places,
0:01:35including, um,
0:01:36I ended up with,
0:01:38uh,
0:01:38Oh,
0:01:38what is it?
0:01:39The people that make the code keyboard.
0:01:40Um,
0:01:42they have,
0:01:42uh,
0:01:43they have a whole,
0:01:46uh,
0:01:46like they have,
0:01:47like a key cap,
0:01:48uh,
0:01:49shop.
0:01:50We can order custom keycaps because the one I got came with,
0:01:54like black keycaps and they were sort of Windows keys and I ended up spending probably way
0:01:57too much money on some like orange custom keycaps, which was kind of cool. I blame Josh
0:02:03Topolski. He posted a couple of pictures of this model keyboard that he's built and I
0:02:11said, "That's really interesting," and that was then I was I was kind of ruined, but it's
0:02:16terrible for podcasting because the clicks, the clicks are very loud.
0:02:20There's the one that this picture I'm looking at of this keyboard on the left side at the bottom left corner. There's a control key and
0:02:27then there's
0:02:30There's like a keyboard key. It's a picture that has a what is that? Yeah, I think that's the
0:02:34Operating system key. So that's like your your command key or your Windows key
0:02:40Oh, it's like the one those key and then you send those logo and then I mapped yeah, I mapped it all to
0:02:45to Mac, so I actually flipped the keys around, so that's my option key.
0:02:49So what does cherry blue feel like? This is the thing that confuses me, and I have a collection of Apple Extended 2s,
0:02:56and I'm using my third one of my lifetime right now,
0:03:00including one, I forget who sent me the one that was mint,
0:03:06I still have one, I have one that is literally like sealed mint in the box,
0:03:11which I'm saving, you know. And the one that I'm using now was like truly near-mint when I started using it.
0:03:16I've tried other mechanical keyboards,
0:03:20but I've never found one that I really like. And it doesn't have the same feel. And I get so confused
0:03:25by the different switches, and
0:03:28it's very confusing to me.
0:03:31Honestly, when I was shopping for this, I went to Matthias's website, and they have audio clips of a few different key
0:03:40mechanical key switches that you can actually sort of listen to the sound of
0:03:44them being made, like just typing, and I listened to that for a while and I
0:03:49thought that that the cherry blue sort of sounded like I wanted, like I kind of
0:03:53wanted it and it's not all sound right, it's like taste.
0:03:57When you eat something you're tasting it but you're also smelling it and those
0:04:00two things go together. Keyboards it's like that, it's the feel and it's the
0:04:04sound and they go together. And like I said, I ended up with the Matthias one, which is
0:04:10supposed to be more like the Apple Extended, I think. And then I got this one, which is
0:04:16the Cherry Blue, and I like the Cherry Blue better. I mean, the Matthias is fine. I like
0:04:21it. It's a little more of what at least my sense memory of those old Apple keyboards
0:04:27was, which is a little more kind of like clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. And this is a little
0:04:30more clicky, like high pitched clicky, clicky, click, click, click.
0:04:33I gotcha, I gotcha. I say I think I don't like that. So yours is maybe a little bit
0:04:37more like the IBM style? I know that IBM buckling spring is different. The buckling spring ones
0:04:43are different.
0:04:44Yeah, like Rich Siegel uses that style, I believe, and he's like, that's, you know,
0:04:48it's sort of whatever mechanical keyboard you grew up with, I think is the one you end
0:04:52up gravitating toward. I wish there was a place, I'm sure there is, I'm sure like keyboard
0:04:57people get together and have little key parties where they type on the different mechanisms
0:05:03and you can really get a sense of it. But I'm just sort of slowly learning about the
0:05:09different ones. But I've been happy with it. I didn't use a mechanical keyboard for a long
0:05:14time. I was just sort of using analogs of the MacBook keyboard because I was using a
0:05:20MacBook as a primary system, so I kind of wanted my keyboards to all match and feel
0:05:25as much as possible, but now that I'm sitting in an iMac for a lot of the day, I thought,
0:05:29"Why don't I give it a try?" And I've been pretty happy with it. It is good that I'm
0:05:33working in a closed office with nobody in it, because it would drive everybody else
0:05:36crazy if they could hear me typing.
0:05:40If the blue cherry switches are what I think that they're like, the more clicky than thunky,
0:05:47then that's actually—to me, it's more—maybe it's just my ears, but it's louder, or more
0:05:52prominent.
0:05:53Yeah, I think it might be. It depends on what frequencies you're tuned into. But I do enjoy
0:06:00going back to having that tactile feedback. As much as I loved the MacBook keyboard style,
0:06:08I totally get, now that I've been back on a mechanical keyboard for a while, I totally
0:06:12get why people criticize them for feeling mushy. I get what that means now.
0:06:15So there's blue cherry and brown cherry.
0:06:18Yeah, there's multiple different kind of cherry switches.
0:06:20And red cherry.
0:06:21Yeah, yeah, I know, and I have no idea. I am not an expert. I just kind of took a shot in the dark on one of them.
0:06:27And it's truly where shopping on the internet is the worst. Like, this is the sort of thing where, like, in the old days...
0:06:34Unless you want to buy 10 keyboards.
0:06:36I know, and I hate sending stuff back. It's just like, and it's irrational. It makes no logical sense whatsoever that I would rather just have a $110 keyboard that I'd put in the closet and never use,
0:06:49but I just hate sending stuff back.
0:06:51I just don't like it.
0:06:53But I guess that's the way to do it.
0:06:54- I just sent a keyboard back and I didn't love it,
0:06:55but I tried that mechanical keyboard for the iPad,
0:06:59the Razer, and it just wasn't that good.
0:07:03And so I did go through the rigmarole of sending that back
0:07:06'cause that was a pretty pricey thing,
0:07:08but I hate doing it too.
0:07:09And so you end up a lot of times not buying things
0:07:12'cause it's just like, it's too complicated.
0:07:14I don't know what to pick.
0:07:15And so I'll just kind of give it up.
0:07:16But I took a shot in the dark with this one
0:07:18and I'm pretty happy with it.
0:07:20Is it the best keyboard for me?
0:07:23Maybe not.
0:07:23There may be some other one out there
0:07:25that's totally one I would prefer to this,
0:07:28but I haven't gone and bought five different keyboards yet.
0:07:33Anyway.
0:07:35- I have also, I have bought some,
0:07:38I think at least two keyboards from Matthias over the years
0:07:41and specifically billed by Matthias as being
0:07:44for aficionados of the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.
0:07:47And I have to say that I didn't even think it was close.
0:07:51For whatever reason, the Matthias ones don't appeal to me.
0:07:54I'm so picky about these keyboards
0:07:56that I don't even like some Apple Extended Keyboard 2s,
0:08:00even ones that are seemingly in good condition,
0:08:02that there's variance between them that I detect.
0:08:06That it's some of them-- it's like a-- like the one
0:08:11that I had from college.
0:08:12And I think I've told this story before.
0:08:14I loved this keyboard.
0:08:16I should see, somebody once said that they could fix it.
0:08:21Somebody who knows how to solder could probably fix it.
0:08:23It's the E key that broke,
0:08:24which is probably because it's the one I typed the most.
0:08:27Right, it makes sense? - Sure.
0:08:28- My sophomore year of college,
0:08:32I was playing John Madden football in the dorms.
0:08:37And there was, let's see,
0:08:39so it would have been like Madden '92.
0:08:42And I was always the Houston Oilers with,
0:08:45who was the great quarterback that the Houston Oilers--
0:08:47- Warren Moon?
0:08:48- Yes, Warren Moon.
0:08:49Warren Moon with a cannon of an arm.
0:08:52I mean, it was like on a,
0:08:53like the stats were like up to 15.
0:08:55It was like 15 distance, 15 arm strength, 15 accuracy.
0:08:59And this other kid, I think his name was Jeff,
0:09:02who always played with the Philadelphia Eagles,
0:09:04the Buddy Ryan Eagles.
0:09:05So it was me with my pass-happy long bombs
0:09:10and him with these like bone-crushing defensive guys.
0:09:14And we had a great rivalry.
0:09:16And one time we bet, I think I bet, $50 cash up against his Apple extended
0:09:21keyboard, too.
0:09:22Because I had a Mac LC, which came with the real shit keyboard.
0:09:26I don't even know what it was, small and mushy.
0:09:29And he got the Mac SE30, which came with the extended keyboard, too.
0:09:34So the deal was, it was winner takes all, one game of Madden football,
0:09:37where if I won, I got his keyboard, and I'd give him my crappy one,
0:09:40so he'd have a keyboard.
0:09:42I think I put up fifty bucks cash, which I knew was a good deal because they sold for
0:09:46like $180 to get one new. And I won the game and that's where I got my keyboard. And
0:09:52it was the best one I've ever used. I still feel like it. I still take it out of the closet
0:09:57sometimes and type on it and I still feel like, you know, other than that E key that's
0:10:02busted, it still feels better. I should find somebody who can just fix that E key for me.
0:10:06You should. And there may be a keyboard out there that is a closer match for what you're
0:10:11looking for than the Matthias, I don't know. It's WASD keyboards is where I got my keycaps
0:10:16and they sell, I think they make the code keyboard and they sell, they sell mechanical
0:10:20keyboards and it's like literally choose your size and choose which switch type. But again,
0:10:26you know, you can't reach through the screen and feel how the keys, they have audio files
0:10:31I think, like I said Matthias does too, but it's not quite the same because that's only
0:10:34one, the sound is part of it and the feeling is part of it.
0:10:39The only reason I never do a real deep dive
0:10:42and try to find a new keyboard is once I try it,
0:10:44and I do have a couple, and I've spent probably,
0:10:46I don't know, it's a couple hundred bucks on keyboards
0:10:49out of curiosity, and then I think to myself,
0:10:51why am I doing this?
0:10:52My Apple Extended Keyboard 2 is the best keyboard
0:10:55I've ever had, and it works perfectly on my--
0:10:57- Boy, if it works, that's the thing.
0:10:58So I've got an extended-- - I don't know why I do it.
0:11:00I don't know why, I don't know why.
0:11:02- I've got an Extended here in my office,
0:11:05and I've got a couple of the USB ADB converters,
0:11:08And I don't know whether it's that the keyboard is bad
0:11:11or whether it's the converter is bad,
0:11:12but I have a problem where I,
0:11:15or is it that I type too fast?
0:11:16'Cause I find that it drops key, it drops characters.
0:11:21- Maybe, maybe with your extraordinary typing skills, maybe.
0:11:25Every once in a while, I've noticed some weird things.
0:11:28There was a thing, I got panicked,
0:11:30where there was one key, like a couple months ago,
0:11:34I think it was like T, and every, it was like,
0:11:36And it was like an insidious typo where I would just be typing.
0:11:41And every time-- like maybe once out of every 100 times I typed a T,
0:11:45I'd get like three Ts.
0:11:47Oh, yeah, I've seen that.
0:11:48That's it.
0:11:49I've seen that.
0:11:50And it's something combined with my slightly worse vision.
0:11:58And it's just like a couple of Ts together, like in the word "little."
0:12:01It's like an extra three Ts.
0:12:03It's like it would just slip through.
0:12:04You know? And I got real panicked because I thought this is definitely like, it's
0:12:10not me holding the key down too far, and it was always like the letter T, so I knew it
0:12:14must be like electrical, but then it just went away, solved itself, fixed itself.
0:12:18Yeah, yeah, that's my concern, and I've seen it, is that you're gonna end up with
0:12:24a problem with the hardware or with the, I mean, presumably there are still thousands
0:12:29of USB ADB adapters out there that are sitting,
0:12:34you know, that you can get on eBay or something.
0:12:36But that's my fear is that something's gonna break down
0:12:38either the keyboards or the adapters
0:12:41or something in the system that changes
0:12:43and that you're gonna,
0:12:45then you're gonna need to find a replacement.
0:12:47It's great, I mean, honestly, how great is it
0:12:49that you're using these keyboards that are 25 years old?
0:12:54And they're huge too.
0:12:56That's the other thing is I like the smaller keyboard
0:12:58'cause I like to have my track pad
0:13:02as close to the keys as possible.
0:13:05So I don't like have a number pad or anything like that.
0:13:07So I always preferred,
0:13:09and I think it goes back to having an SE.
0:13:10I had the SE, which had the smaller keyboard.
0:13:12It was still clicky, but it wasn't the full extended.
0:13:14It was like a little mini one with the power,
0:13:17like the horizontal power button at the top.
0:13:19And I think that sort of set me down that path.
0:13:22But I don't know,
0:13:23I think you may have to go on a quest one day,
0:13:26but as long as it's working for you, that's the... it's kind of brilliant that you've got, you know, that old tech still...
0:13:31I'm still on the first... my first ever Griffin ADB. It was called the iMate.
0:13:36And it's... it was...
0:13:38I got two of those here.
0:13:39It's Bondi Blue, Bondi Blue, whatever that... whatever that...
0:13:44Right, well, they, you know, they had plastic. Everybody was making blue plastic things in 1997.
0:13:49But it's funny because the only thing you'd ever want to... it's like...
0:13:52It's funny that they made the adapter in the trendy 2001
0:13:56Apple, you know, clear plastic colors, when the only thing you could possibly
0:13:59want to plug into it was going to be the classic beige. Everything was beige.
0:14:05Yeah, but how do you add coolness to an ADB adapter? The answer is
0:14:10clear plastic. Do you remember the Apple Extended Keyboard 1, the original?
0:14:14It was very similar to the Extended Keyboard 2, but it was short-lived.
0:14:17I'm not sure why. It didn't go up and down. It was like at a...
0:14:21but it was a little bit bigger, I think even the extended keyboard too.
0:14:25And it had a definite different feel to the keys. It was more,
0:14:30I would say more clacky. It was louder and a little bit more clacky.
0:14:34My, all my, uh,
0:14:36early Apple keyboard experiences were in my college newspaper.
0:14:38So that would have been like nine D 1990 era. And,
0:14:42and so it really would have been like,
0:14:44what keyboards did we have there? Cause we had a keyboard attached to a two CX,
0:14:48and we had a bunch of keyboards on the SEs that we used.
0:14:52And then later we got a 2FX.
0:14:54And so we had some that had the extended.
0:14:57- The 2FX would have come with the extended keyboard too,
0:15:00but I'll bet that you're, I bet you, if you saw one,
0:15:03you'd be like, oh yeah, I remember that.
0:15:04It was like, just slightly different.
0:15:07- Probably.
0:15:08- You know what other keyboard I loved?
0:15:09I loved the keyboard that came with the Apple II GS.
0:15:14Do you remember that keyboard?
0:15:16- I never had one.
0:15:17I had a friend who had a 2GS, so I vaguely remember it, but not that well.
0:15:21If you... Let's see if... But it was ADB. That was the... 2GS had ADB. That was the other computer
0:15:28that wasn't a Mac that had the ADB plug on it, was the 2GS. Yeah, that's actually a lot like that
0:15:34early, the SE keyboard that I had, where you had that big, the wide power button at the very top.
0:15:41Yep. Yeah. Well, you had to restart those machines a lot.
0:15:44A lot. It's true. It's true. Yeah, it's a... I don't know. It was very easy to write your
0:15:51own program that completely wedged the machine. Oh man, it was a good keyboard. And it had like
0:15:57the weirdest key caps I've ever seen where they were sort of like... I'll put a picture in the
0:16:03show notes, I swear to God. But it's just the weirdest key caps where they weren't really...
0:16:07they were like squares, but then on top of the squares were like round racks. Yeah, right. It's
0:16:13It's like two-tier keycaps.
0:16:17I love keyboards.
0:16:18You know what?
0:16:18I'll tell you what.
0:16:19I was thinking about this too when
0:16:21you were going to be on the show.
0:16:23I was thinking about keyboards.
0:16:24But I was just thinking, I know you're a baseball fan.
0:16:26And sometimes when a baseball fan is on,
0:16:28I will try to have a conversation that
0:16:29will be of interest to even all of the-- stop.
0:16:32Don't skip.
0:16:32Don't skip.
0:16:33Yeah.
0:16:34Even to all of you who don't like baseball.
0:16:35Just sort of, for me, a sort of melancholy week
0:16:39with alex rodriguez uh... skin
0:16:42dump from the yankees uh...
0:16:44as we record on thursday will be playing tonight in boston and tomorrow night
0:16:47he's playing in new york and then that then that's it he's going home except
0:16:53and combine it just is interesting to me that
0:16:56you know he's forty one years old he's at a very contentious really
0:16:59up-and-down
0:17:01career with uh... is is controversies over the performance enhancing drugs uh...
0:17:07and the same week uh...
0:17:09Ichiro Suzuki, who's now playing for the Florida Marlins, got his 3,000th hit in Major League
0:17:15Baseball.
0:17:16And Ichiro is, to me, a guy who, if you could just put some video clips together and talk
0:17:21about it, he's a player that would be of interest even to non-sports fans.
0:17:26Because he seriously is like an alien.
0:17:31He's like a creature who was just born to play baseball, but he doesn't play like anybody
0:17:38else. Well it's like the, what was it, back in the 19th century there was a player named
0:17:46Wee Willie Keeler, and I believe he was the one who famously said "I hit 'em where they
0:17:51ain't." The idea is that, they're like "How are you such a great hitter?" and he says
0:17:55"Well I hit the ball where the fielders aren't," and that's it, like it's so simple. And yet
0:18:00when you look at Ichiro, and I think Tony Gwynn was kind of like this too, in a century
0:18:06of baseball players, you get a couple of people who's like, "Somehow, this guy can use that
0:18:11stick to put that ball that's coming at him at 100 miles an hour wherever he wants it."
0:18:17And it's just unbelievable.
0:18:18I read a—I just read a story the other day. It was actually in response to somehow, like,
0:18:22from one link to another in a Twitter conversation with somebody, you know, a discussion that
0:18:26started with Ichiro, and it led to Tony Guinn. And just talking about, like, the best hitters
0:18:31of the last 20 years, like best hitters of like your and my adult life. And there's the power guys,
0:18:37like I think, but number one, I think Bond is the best hitter we've ever seen. And I can't,
0:18:42I don't really cotton to any discussion otherwise. But take the steroids out of that. And he probably
0:18:48still is. Yeah, well, maybe, but even with, I mean, the numbers are there and they're just
0:18:53astounding. I mean, the one, the one year he had 200 and some intentional walks. So in this game
0:18:58where you have 162 games, he drew over an one intentional walk a game.
0:19:04There's never been anything like that. I watched every one of those games, too.
0:19:07It was a daily occurrence. They walked him with the bases loaded one time.
0:19:11It's true story. True story. Rather than let Barry Bonds hit with the bases loaded,
0:19:15the team actually chose to walk him on purpose and give up a run.
0:19:19And they won the game because of it. So, you know, good call.
0:19:21So Alex Rodriguez right now, as it stands, has 696 home runs, career home runs, fourth of all time.
0:19:28truly a great home run hitter. I mean fourth of all time in the history of the
0:19:31100 and some history of the game. Bonds had more intentional walks in that one season than Alex
0:19:36Rodriguez has had in a 20-year career. A 20-year career. Yep. It's, anyway, Bonds is great. Gwynn
0:19:46was amazing and I read this story. My favorite player ever. He is absolutely my favorite
0:19:50baseball player ever. Tony Gwynn used to call it the 5.5 hole, meaning it was between,
0:19:56there's numbers for the players. So in between shortstop who's six and the third baseman who's
0:20:01five on the scorecard, he'd just try to hit the ball between shortstop and third base and
0:20:06could do it with remarkable accuracy. But the thing I read was like when he started slowing
0:20:12down a little bit, his average dropped and for him dropping meant he got close to 300.
0:20:17And the difference was that he wasn't beating out the ones that the shortstop would backhand
0:20:22anymore." And he had a conversation with Ted Williams, and Ted Williams told him to
0:20:28start. He said, "You need to pull the ball more." And just that one
0:20:33conversation with Ted Williams. And all of a sudden, Gwyn purposely started
0:20:36trying to pull the ball a little more, and that led to the
0:20:40seasons where he was hitting like 350, 360. Yeah, I mean, it's so simple, right?
0:20:44Just hit it to the other part of the field. They're like, "All right, I'll do
0:20:47that then because like Ichiro, Gwyn could seemingly put the ball wherever he wanted it.
0:20:53So there's two things about Ichiro. Number one, you have to watch him. If you don't,
0:20:57if you even if you don't like baseball, just go to YouTube and Google Ichiro hitting. He starts
0:21:03running before he hits the ball. He's a left-handed batter, and when he sees the ball, his batting
0:21:09stance is such that he's running to first base as he makes contact with the ball, which nobody
0:21:14has ever done, nobody would ever teach. If you saw a little kid doing it and you're coaching
0:21:18Little League, you'd immediately say, "No, no, no. You can't do that. You're never going to hit the
0:21:22ball." The other thing is that he treats his bats as though they're samurai swords. And this is where
0:21:28I'm going with the keyboard, where he comes in and spends an hour a day examining his bats
0:21:36with his eyes an inch away and rubs over every surface of them. He carries them. He has a
0:21:43collection of them that he carries in like a custom-made like we call like a
0:21:47humidor what do you put cigars in it's like humidor yeah it's it's a
0:21:52moisture-proof carrying case that he carries himself by hand and doesn't hand
0:21:57over to like the team equipment people and and when you know this and you
0:22:02realize this about him and then you watch him on TV you realize that his
0:22:05bats are all in like mint condition like most of the bats are all gunked up with
0:22:10pine tar and nicked and have marks from where they hit balls in batting practice.
0:22:14Ichiro's bats all look like they're in mint condition.
0:22:19Yeah, they're his professional tool, and he treats them as such.
0:22:23And when you see him use them, you can see it's like an extension of his body.
0:22:27It's surgical precision with what he does with them.
0:22:30The other thing I read about Ichiro is that every year, or I think it's every
0:22:33year, but at least several times, he has visited the
0:22:36the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in the off season
0:22:40and orchestrates a behind the scenes tour.
0:22:44And he takes out the bats, he gets some of the bat,
0:22:47he has a list of hitters whose bats he wants to examine.
0:22:50And I saw pictures of it and he's got the white gloves on
0:22:55'cause these are historic artifacts.
0:22:57And he studies the bats of great hitters
0:22:59and weighs them and examines them in fine detail.
0:23:04It's just amazing.
0:23:06And that to me is like what justifies me
0:23:08caring so much about my keyboard.
0:23:11- Yeah, I think it's your professional tool, right?
0:23:13It's how you make your living, and that's the bottom line.
0:23:16And so writers, do writers talk about things
0:23:19like keyboards and notebooks and pens and things like that?
0:23:24Yeah, they do, but you have to understand
0:23:26it is actually a professional tool.
0:23:29It's like how our livelihood happens.
0:23:32- Yep, it's worth it.
0:23:34All right, let me take a break from all this great keyboard
0:23:37and baseball discussion.
0:23:38- I was trying to keep us off of baseball
0:23:39by talking about keyboards.
0:23:40No, we did it both.
0:23:43- And tell you about our first sponsor.
0:23:45This is a great company.
0:23:46It's Global Delight.
0:23:47Now we all use headphones,
0:23:48and we're gonna talk a little bit more later
0:23:50in the show about headphones,
0:23:51to listen to music on our iPhones and iPads.
0:23:53But no matter which headphones we use,
0:23:55the audio often feels like it lacks depth.
0:23:58Global Delight, they're the company behind the Mac app,
0:24:01Boom, it's like an audio enhancer for Mac.
0:24:04It's a great app actually,
0:24:05and it was the, actually if it rings a bell,
0:24:08they were sponsored on the show a couple weeks ago.
0:24:11So these are the same kinds between the Mac app Boom.
0:24:15They have an iOS app that solves this issue.
0:24:17It's called Boom for iOS.
0:24:19Now iOS, you can't have like a system-wide extension
0:24:22that enhances audio across the board
0:24:23that doesn't work like that on iOS.
0:24:24So Boom on iOS is a music player app.
0:24:27And no matter which headphones you use,
0:24:29turns the music you listen to into an amazing 3D surround sound. It's an amplifier, like a sound
0:24:36filter music player. It doesn't stop there. You can change the equalizers. You can adjust the base
0:24:43and the intensity of the audio with fine control. You can be real picky. This is for people who
0:24:46really care about what this stuff sounds like in your headphones. Boom plays its magic with the
0:24:52downloaded music from your iTunes library. So it's not like you have to do any kind of magic stuff or
0:24:57or pain in the butt stuff to import your music into it.
0:25:02Just plays the system stuff,
0:25:03the system stuff in your iTunes library.
0:25:05And it's very, very simple to use.
0:25:08Here's the best part.
0:25:09It's free, it's a free download.
0:25:10So if you're skeptical,
0:25:12you don't know what it's gonna sound like,
0:25:13go download it, get it from the app store, try it out.
0:25:17And then it's an in-app purchase to unlock everything
0:25:19if you like the way it sounds.
0:25:21So open your browser.
0:25:23If you wanna see their website,
0:25:24It's boom4ios.com.
0:25:28So just spell boom, then F-O-R-I-O-S dot com.
0:25:33And you'll be taken to the Boom app directly,
0:25:34and then you can hit the download button.
0:25:36All you need to do is then just buy the in-app purchase
0:25:38if you like it, and you'll enjoy it.
0:25:41It's a great app.
0:25:42These guys do a great job,
0:25:43even though their specialty is obviously audio,
0:25:45they do a phenomenal job with the user interface stuff.
0:25:47Their stuff looks exquisite,
0:25:49always very, very, very impressive UI design.
0:25:53And here's the best part, they've got a special offer
0:25:56for talk show listeners.
0:25:57They've got a sale running through the 21st of August.
0:26:00I think it's normally 4.99 for the in-app purchase, yes, 4.99.
0:26:06Right now, you'll buy it right now before August 21st,
0:26:09you get it for a buck 99.
0:26:10So that's two bucks and you get this great app.
0:26:13So go download Boom for iOS and try it out
0:26:16and buy it before August 21st
0:26:18and you'll save a couple bucks.
0:26:19Uh, there is a lot of news. We probably, it was probably pretty stupid to waste so much time on keyboards, but I do love them.
0:26:32You do chapter markers in your podcast? That'll solve everything. Stick a chapter marker in there.
0:26:35I don't, yeah. You know, I should mention this, that I, you know, I, because ATP does it, and you guys do too. Do you guys do chapters?
0:26:43Yeah, yeah. Here and there. Not on everyone, but on some of them, yeah.
0:26:46So for everybody who wants them on this show, we are looking into it.
0:26:51There's a tooling issue where it's actually there is no good tool for this yet.
0:26:56A friend of the show, Marco Arman, is actually working on such a tool.
0:27:00So I'm aware of that. And there will be chapters on this show eventually.
0:27:06All right.
0:27:08So the news. What do you want to talk about first? I guess we should talk about German stuff?
0:27:13Yeah, I mean, so Mark Gurman, right, he's back, he's at Bloomberg, we saw he had a report
0:27:20like a month ago, but he dropped a few reports this week that are, you know, his sources
0:27:25are so good, especially on the hardware side, that it feels like confirmation to me, and
0:27:32I know it's not, it's just another story with anonymous sources saying this is what Apple's
0:27:38going to do, but it feels like confirmation now that Gurman has said, you know, given
0:27:42the nod and been like, "Yeah, this is what's going to happen with the iPhone and with the
0:27:47new MacBook Pro."
0:27:48Yeah, it's like having a four-run lead in the bottom of the ninth. You're probably going
0:27:51to win.
0:27:52Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I feel like—and it's funny because now that he's at Bloomberg,
0:27:57I know some people who have worked or do work at Bloomberg, and Bloomberg is a very—they're
0:28:02a little idiosyncratic in what they do in terms of their style guide and their copy
0:28:08desk and things like that, but they're sticklers. And you can see it in in Gurman's reports
0:28:12that some of the phrasing is kind of different than maybe he did at 9to5Mac where they probably
0:28:18just you know made sure that you know I don't I don't want to impugn 9to5Mac but you know
0:28:23most online stuff including stuff I do you give it a read and then you put it up you
0:28:27don't have a copy desk with who are sticklers. And and so it's sort of been interesting to
0:28:34see how they change some of his phrases or they make it very specific about what he knows
0:28:39and what he doesn't know and what the details are. And so it ends up being a little bit
0:28:45fuzzier.
0:28:46At 9-5 Mac, I would say it was always mentioned, and he always wrote in a sort of reporter-y
0:28:51fashion even at 9-5 Mac, as opposed to a columnist style. Joanna Stern and I were talking about
0:28:57that on the last episode of this show. I could do it, I guess, but it would feel like, "Oh,
0:29:04drudgery to me. I've always wanted to be a columnist and write in my own voice. So
0:29:09German always wrote in a reporter's voice, but he would just—the biggest
0:29:13difference I would say is that when he had a scoop, he would put the "according
0:29:17to, you know, sources familiar with it" once in the first paragraph, and then the
0:29:22rest of the story would be "here's what I've found out," whereas the bigger—the
0:29:26biggest stylistic difference with Bloomberg, with him at Bloomberg, is that
0:29:29the "according to the people" threat. There's an awful lot, it just keeps
0:29:35coming back and back that this is according to what people have told
0:29:39him. And I personally, you and I were engaged in a thread on Twitter about
0:29:44this. I actually like this better. I really do. And maybe it's a little inside
0:29:49baseball, you know, like that you and I think about these the copy desks and
0:29:53stuff like that. But I like it that it emphasizes that this is not a known fact
0:29:59and that Gherman isn't saying that he's seen this thing himself, which would, you know, alleviate the need to source it.
0:30:06It's from sources who said that they know this, and I think that's worth emphasizing.
0:30:13Yeah, and them, you know, being sticklers, that's what they want to do, is say, "We've got information, but we haven't confirmed it ourselves.
0:30:20It's from a source that we trust." And so we're going to say it's an anonymous source,
0:30:25And then throughout the story, every time we cite something, if we can't say it as a fact,
0:30:31because we saw it with our own eyes, essentially, we have to say, we have to attribute that to whoever got it.
0:30:36And so as a result, you get the things about, you know, "There won't be a headphone jack," the sources said.
0:30:42Or "people," I think they said "the people" said.
0:30:45Right, but that's interesting too, because it's a way of corroborating that that piece of information came from multiple sources.
0:30:53Exactly. And that's good. That's clarity, right? And it may feel weird to read it that way because
0:30:58it's definitely being done with great care, but as a user of that information, it's really good
0:31:04to have clarity about what Mark Gurman is being told by his sources and what he maybe is
0:31:12extrapolating from that. And I like having that because then we can leave it to our judgment,
0:31:19but it also eliminates just the confusion of like, what's he really saying here?
0:31:23Is he—does he know that or is he supposing that? And the way it's—the Bloomberg process seems to
0:31:28have taken his stuff is it's a little bit clearer about the stuff that he has been told by his
0:31:34sources, like sort of laying it out. Like this is what we know from sources.
0:31:38- The other thing that you and I know, and I think it's probably true for you too,
0:31:45I definitely think so. I think that the whole reason that you and I have eked out
0:31:48you know, these positions we have is that we attract, we don't attract the most readers,
0:31:53but we attract discerning readers, right? Like, there's no way that the readership of your stuff
0:31:59and my stuff combined amounts to a hill of beans from the Huffington Post perspective, right? If
0:32:04we're counting page views, we're, you know, little fish. But we attract discerning readers. And so,
0:32:09a lot of times when I go off on a track like this about just how meaningful it is when
0:32:15Bloomberg or a Wall Street Journal prints out a rumor,
0:32:19sometimes I get a lot of pushback from readers
0:32:20who are skeptical readers, which is good,
0:32:24and I'm not surprised that I have readers who are like,
0:32:26"Hey, I don't believe it just 'cause it's
0:32:28in the Wall Street Journal."
0:32:29And that's true, and I think everybody should read
0:32:32everything they read, my stuff, your stuff,
0:32:33and especially news reports with a skeptical mind,
0:32:36like where did this information come from?
0:32:37I think being a critical reader of journalism
0:32:40is an essential skill.
0:32:42It should be taught, emphasized in schools, I think,
0:32:44in a way that it wasn't for me.
0:32:48So I'm not saying it's true.
0:32:50But inside baseball, it's like you
0:32:53know that a publication like Bloomberg or the Wall Street
0:32:57Journal or the New York Times knows
0:32:59that when something like this gets reported,
0:33:02what almost everybody else says is
0:33:05Bloomberg says the big iPhone is going to have two cameras.
0:33:09And they don't go into--
0:33:11nobody else reports that.
0:33:12it's Mark Gurman who says this, one reporter,
0:33:15like if it doesn't turn out to be true,
0:33:17it's mostly on Bloomberg.
0:33:19- Yeah, Bloomberg is a huge company
0:33:23with financial information.
0:33:25I mean, reporting about one of the largest,
0:33:28if not the largest public company in the world,
0:33:31getting information wrong about their biggest product,
0:33:35that would be colossal, right?
0:33:38And so they wanna be careful with it,
0:33:40but it also says something that, you know, when he reports this stuff,
0:33:43they are standing behind it. And, and,
0:33:45and as observers of what Gurman has done over the years, um, I,
0:33:50we can see why, because his sources are, his sources are good.
0:33:53He always has been careful. Um,
0:33:55I think he's actually a great fit for Bloomberg because of all of those things.
0:33:58He's not a super speculative guy.
0:34:01He's somebody with good sources who lays out what his sources say.
0:34:04It is funny. It's funny to me. I heard, I've,
0:34:06I found out that he was going to Bloomberg back in March,
0:34:11where whenever it was that Apple held an event in California--
0:34:13what was that, March?
0:34:15I think it was March, like mid-March.
0:34:18And it wasn't an open secret, but there
0:34:23were a couple of other people in the Cover Apple Press game who
0:34:27knew that he was going to go to Bloomberg.
0:34:31And it was funny to me that it never actually was published.
0:34:34Like the guy who's known for spoiling Apple's secrets,
0:34:39his own secret, everybody was just like,
0:34:42it just seemed like uncouth 'cause it seemed like,
0:34:45everybody seemed to not wanna publish it
0:34:46or tweet it or anything just because it just seemed like,
0:34:49well, let's not bother the kid.
0:34:51- Yeah, exactly.
0:34:52I think everybody was-- - It was like a courtesy.
0:34:54- Kinda happy for him too 'cause he does good work.
0:34:56He's really young, he was in college.
0:34:58He has done some incredible things
0:35:01and now he's got a really high-profile job
0:35:04a major source of news and business information. So it's like, yeah, we kind of didn't want
0:35:08to wreck it for him. He does good work.
0:35:11I think it's a really good fit because Bloomberg in particular, in my opinion, really emphasizes
0:35:16scoops. They really pride themselves on breaking things like this, being first, while simultaneously
0:35:28being completely accurate, right? As opposed to, you know, they won't cross that line of
0:35:33being first by taking a chance that it's not true, but they really want to be first.
0:35:37Well, it's a feather in their cap. As a provider of business intelligence, because, I mean,
0:35:42the number one way Bloomberg makes money, as far as I can tell, and what I've heard,
0:35:47it's like the terminal. They have these terminals, they're in the offices of people in the financial
0:35:53sector, they are giving real-time business information and news. And when you view Bloomberg
0:36:00through that lens where they're not like a wire service or something. They are a financial
0:36:05information provider and news is one of the things that they do. When you think of them
0:36:09that way, it sort of makes sense.
0:36:12Yeah, and that's where the culture of being first and having the scoop comes from is the
0:36:18culture from the terminals.
0:36:20Because you want to get ahead as an investor, you want that extra edge.
0:36:22Right. I worked at a firm on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange when I was in college. I had
0:36:28an internship doing IT stuff.
0:36:31I wasn't doing investing stuff.
0:36:32I was on the computer team.
0:36:33But they had the,
0:36:36the traders had the Bloomberg boxes, of course.
0:36:38So I got to see them.
0:36:39Interesting, fascinating devices for the mid 90s.
0:36:43- Yeah, and well, the funny thing, and there's a--
0:36:46- And they were fast.
0:36:47That's the one thing is like--
0:36:48- Well, that's the whole story.
0:36:50There's a story somewhere I'm trying to find it
0:36:52that the problem with the Bloomberg terminal is,
0:36:55so it is, they call it the terminal.
0:36:56It looks like a DOS interface.
0:36:59It's got these weird keyboard shortcuts.
0:37:00It's like something like WordStar or something.
0:37:02It's that kind of thing, right?
0:37:03It's a strange, strange thing.
0:37:05But the thing is,
0:37:07the people who know how to use the Bloomberg Terminal,
0:37:10they can do everything fast with a couple of keystrokes.
0:37:14It's this incredible thing.
0:37:15So it's a huge UX problem
0:37:16because it's impenetrable on one level,
0:37:19but once you know it,
0:37:20you can have complete control over it
0:37:23and they're loathe to change it
0:37:24because their loyal customers want to know how to use it.
0:37:29So they end up in this weird place where it's like,
0:37:32can we improve this product or do we need to leave it
0:37:34looking like a DOS terminal forever?
0:37:36- Well, and there's never a day for the traders,
0:37:40there's never like a slow day.
0:37:43So there's never a day where,
0:37:45well, all right, we'll install this new version
0:37:49that I don't know how to use and I'll be lost all day
0:37:51trying to figure out how to, no.
0:37:53- Yeah, they can't ever do it.
0:37:55So it's better to just let your interns
0:37:57and your new hires read the manual
0:37:59and learn how to do it and get up to speed
0:38:01and just leave it the way it is.
0:38:03And it's, yeah, it's fascinating.
0:38:06And that's the whole thing.
0:38:07They're not afraid,
0:38:09knowing people who've worked at Bloomberg,
0:38:10they are not afraid to be different from the crowd.
0:38:14Like they have different terminology for stuff.
0:38:16They don't call, the laptops that their journalists get
0:38:19aren't called laptops.
0:38:22they're called like travel units or travelers or something.
0:38:24Like it's just, they've got their own terminology,
0:38:26they've got their own rules, it goes down.
0:38:28It's just, they are different.
0:38:31And I think that maybe comes from Mike Bloomberg
0:38:33that he's a maverick.
0:38:35He's not afraid to say,
0:38:37let's do things kind of differently.
0:38:38And it also comes from the fact that they are
0:38:40not a traditional ad funded journalism outfit.
0:38:45They're a financial services outfit.
0:38:49So, Germin's two recent articles.
0:38:54First was the one about the new iPhones.
0:38:57- Yeah.
0:38:59- So, it seemingly confirmed,
0:39:03definitely said that the plus size one
0:39:07will have the two camera system.
0:39:10- Right.
0:39:11- And seemed to confirm that the 4.71 won't,
0:39:15but doesn't quite say that.
0:39:18And this is one of those things where the sourcing
0:39:20is kind of interesting.
0:39:21Here's, I'm gonna read the paragraph.
0:39:23The dual system sharpens photos taken
0:39:25in low light environments, the person said.
0:39:28The combination of the merged photos
0:39:29from the two camera sensors also allows users
0:39:32to zoom while retaining more clarity, the person added.
0:39:35The smaller version of the new phones
0:39:37will not include dual lenses, KGI securities analyst
0:39:41Ming-Chi Kuo said earlier this year.
0:39:44Now that last bit is fascinating to me
0:39:47because seemingly, German's own sources didn't, didn't or couldn't say whether the smaller phone has the two cameras.
0:39:54He's only referring to a report from Ming-Chi Kuo.
0:39:57It may be or may not because later they talk about the headphone jack being removed and they reference Mako Takara as being the original report.
0:40:08So I'm not, I couldn't read this and say whether they're, you know, whether he doesn't actually know that for sure,
0:40:17'cause it sounds like he actually just said that it's not.
0:40:20I think it's more that he may be doing,
0:40:21in a Bloombergian kind of way,
0:40:23the hat tip of who originally reported this,
0:40:27because he didn't originally report it.
0:40:28It was Ming-Chi Kuo.
0:40:30- No, the Makatakara.
0:40:32- Well, for Makatakara, it's for sure that way.
0:40:34But I wonder if maybe the Ming-Chi Kuo attribution is that,
0:40:38which is just, look, this person got it first.
0:40:42We should tip our cap to them.
0:40:44- Confirms no headphones.
0:40:46and the other, you know, none of this is new.
0:40:49There's not one bit of it that is new,
0:40:51but it's confirmation of a whole bunch of these rumors
0:40:53that are floating about.
0:40:54The other thing is that the home button now
0:40:56won't physically click.
0:40:58It will be tapped.
0:41:01- Force touch. - Yeah, force touch.
0:41:03Home button. - Like the track pads,
0:41:04like, you know, the modern MacBook track pads.
0:41:07Which is interesting, and I think, I wonder,
0:41:13you know, there's often a lot of,
0:41:14German story doesn't mention waterproofing at all, but one of the things that has been
0:41:18floated about is that whether Apple will bill it as waterproof or not, that one of the features
0:41:23of these new iPhones is that they will be even further water-resistant than previous ones.
0:41:28I can only imagine that a Force Touch home button would help in some way in terms of waterproofing,
0:41:38simply because it seems like every button that actually moves is a place where moisture could
0:41:43get through. Yeah, and it's also going to reduce repair incidences because, you know,
0:41:47even if it's not that common, home buttons malfunction because, I mean, it's a moving
0:41:52part, it has to go up and down, and so you take that out of the equation and it's not
0:41:56actually moving anymore, you just feel like it's moving when you press on it. I can see,
0:42:01assuming they do it right, although, you know, the 3D Touch and the Force Touch and the Trackpad
0:42:06is, they did a good job with that, so assuming they do it right so that you really do get
0:42:09that sense of action, because it would be the worst thing in the world if you're like,
0:42:13"Why is my phone locked up?" and you try to press the home button and nothing happens.
0:42:16You're like, "Yeah, what do I do now?" So they got to get it right, but there are a
0:42:20lot of benefits to simplifying the shape of the product, basically.
0:42:24It's one of those things that might be like keyboards, where some people might really
0:42:28like it and others might not, because it will feel different. And I love the new trackpads.
0:42:34I think you, I don't know, maybe you do too. I have a...
0:42:36Yeah, I do.
0:42:37review unit of MacBook Pro that Apple gave me to test, what's the new operator?
0:42:43Sierra.
0:42:44Sierra.
0:42:45Yeah, I've got one right behind me.
0:42:46Right.
0:42:47And so my personal MacBook Pro is older.
0:42:48I forget.
0:42:49I think it might be two years old at this point, or close to two years old.
0:42:52It doesn't have it.
0:42:53I love it.
0:42:54It's a 13-inch MacBook Pro.
0:42:55It's probably now my favorite MacBook that I've ever owned.
0:42:59The more I use it, I really appreciate how good it is.
0:43:03The one thing I really like better about the review unit one is that trackpad.
0:43:06I really like the Force Touch trackpad.
0:43:08And I think the main reason why is that I tend to click a lot
0:43:11at the top of the trackpad.
0:43:13And the lever that is the moving trackpad,
0:43:18the fulcrum is at the top.
0:43:20So it's actually a lot easier to click towards the bottom
0:43:23than it is at the top.
0:43:24And I love that on the Force Touch one,
0:43:28it's just as clicky everywhere on the whole thing.
0:43:30I know other people don't like it though.
0:43:31I think Marco Arman does not like the Force Touch trackpad.
0:43:34So maybe the home buttons will be the same way.
0:43:36- Yeah, it could be.
0:43:37Yeah, Marco doesn't like it.
0:43:38I do like it.
0:43:39I actually use the desktop Magic Track.
0:43:42- Yes, yeah.
0:43:43- Too, and I really like it.
0:43:46Amazon did this with the Kindle,
0:43:49which one was it, Voyage, I think.
0:43:51They put like, it's now with page turn buttons,
0:43:54which they had taken off of an earlier model,
0:43:55but it wasn't really a button.
0:43:56It was this haptic thing
0:43:57where you squeezed this thing on the side
0:43:59and it gave a little vibration
0:44:01and it didn't work there,
0:44:04although that was kind of cheaply done
0:44:05and I expect Apple to do a better job than that.
0:44:08But they ended up with their,
0:44:09the Oasis that they have now,
0:44:11it's just back to being a physical button
0:44:13because that was just a better experience.
0:44:15So it can be done badly,
0:44:17but I would imagine given the Force Touch track pad that,
0:44:21and I think that's why the reference is being made to it,
0:44:25is that whoever described this to Mark Gurman is like,
0:44:27no, no, it's gonna be like the Force Touch track pad.
0:44:28You're not gonna even be able to believe
0:44:30that it doesn't move, which that sounds good to me.
0:44:32- Yeah, it's funny to me
0:44:34'cause I thought one of my complaints for years with iPhones
0:44:37was that the home buttons were not good enough.
0:44:40And maybe I just got bad phones, I don't know,
0:44:42but like in the 3G, 3GS,
0:44:45and maybe even like the iPhone 4 era,
0:44:46like there was like a certain squishiness to it
0:44:50that I didn't like year after year.
0:44:52And I think I even wrote about it on "Daring Fireball"
0:44:55that on a device where there's really just one main button,
0:44:57that button should feel really good.
0:45:00If you're gonna minimize buttons,
0:45:02the buttons that you have left have to be really good because they're really going to
0:45:05stand out. And it's the sort of thing that Apple should pride itself on doing well. And
0:45:09I think that they've now, they've gotten it great. The clickiness of the Touch ID era
0:45:17home buttons to me is terrific. To me, it feels like one of the best buttons in the
0:45:22world.
0:45:23Yeah, it's good. There are lots of speculations about how Apple, I mean, because it's Apple,
0:45:30Apple wants to eventually have no buttons and no ports,
0:45:33'cause that's sort of the platonic ideal of a device
0:45:36and as thin as possible,
0:45:38that they would get rid of the home button entirely
0:45:40at some point, or at least the physical home button,
0:45:41even if there's a way to do a gesture.
0:45:44And this seems like a step in that direction,
0:45:46which is, okay, now we've got it
0:45:47so that we can read your fingerprint
0:45:49and you can press on it in order to get where you wanna go,
0:45:52but there's actually nothing moving.
0:45:54And that's like step one.
0:45:55And maybe step two is that they put, you know,
0:45:59they put that on the bottom center of the screen or something,
0:46:03and it's seeking that out, whatever a future iPhone design might be.
0:46:08I don't know, but it does seem like it's a very Apple step to make,
0:46:11to eliminate a moving part.
0:46:15And so, what are we left with the focus on here?
0:46:18The fact that the 4.7-inch phone apparently won't have dual cameras.
0:46:22And the rumor chain has been pretty consistent on that regard,
0:46:27Especially if you believe the supply chain links of the backs of these phones, there's
0:46:31never been one, a credible one that showed two cameras, the two camera oval on the 4.7
0:46:37inch iPhone and there's usually one on the 5.5 inch.
0:46:42I'm a little bummed about that because I prefer the 4.7 by far in terms of hand feel.
0:46:48And in fact, as anybody read my iPhone SE review, if anything I have mixed feelings
0:46:54about the 4.7 inch versus the iPhone SE size,
0:46:58four inch phone.
0:47:00- Yeah, I've been thinking about this
0:47:01and I think it's probably not true.
0:47:02I think the 4.7 is probably the mainstream phone
0:47:05and will remain so,
0:47:07but I did have that moment where I thought
0:47:09with the iPhone SE doing, I think way better,
0:47:12Apple even admitted, way better than Apple expected.
0:47:15And now we're talking about differentiating the iPhone Plus
0:47:18at the high end with a much better camera,
0:47:21which in some ways is taking advantage of the fact
0:47:23but it's just got more room.
0:47:26And it's more expensive so they can pack stuff in there.
0:47:29I do have those moments where I think,
0:47:32why would you get the 4.7 inch iPhone?
0:47:34Like if you really care about photography,
0:47:35get the big iPhone.
0:47:37If you're somebody who uses your phone all the time
0:47:38and wants the biggest screen possible, get the big iPhone.
0:47:41And if you care about size and that's your priority,
0:47:44or if you care about price, the iPhone SE is right there.
0:47:48And it's just, again, it's probably not realistic,
0:47:50but I feel like it's interesting that Apple is making
0:47:53the Edge phones kind of really appealing
0:47:56in almost like the simplicity of the one
0:47:59and the power and complexity of the other.
0:48:02And then what's the 4.7 inch iPhone?
0:48:04Well, it's just your average iPhone, I guess,
0:48:06in the middle.
0:48:07- There are other rumors that there will be three iPhones,
0:48:13new iPhones, then, have you seen this?
0:48:16- Yeah, the Pro and the Plus?
0:48:18- Yeah, so it would be like,
0:48:20forget, I don't think they're gonna call it iPhone 7,
0:48:23but maybe they will, but let's just say that they do.
0:48:25Cause otherwise,
0:48:26and let's note Mark Gurman story at no point calls it the iPhone seven, right?
0:48:31At no point.
0:48:32Hold that thought. Cause there's,
0:48:35that's key to understanding this, his sources or one of the keys sources.
0:48:40Uh, so let's just say they call it the seven that that's,
0:48:45this other rumor would say there'd be the iPhone seven, 4.7 inches,
0:48:49the iPhone seven plus,
0:48:51which would be 5.5 inches and still have the same camera,
0:48:54probably with like the image stabilization,
0:48:56but the single camera circle on the back.
0:48:58And then the iPhone 7 Pro,
0:49:01which would have the dual camera system
0:49:04and presumably like maybe like 256 gigs of storage.
0:49:09And part of that rumor is based on like supply chain links
0:49:16that show some of these plates that look,
0:49:18they're the bigger size,
0:49:19but they only have one hole for the camera.
0:49:21And who knows if they're fake?
0:49:22I don't know, some of those, it's like,
0:49:25when those pictures come out, they go so super viral
0:49:28that there's, you know, some of them have been fake
0:49:31over the years.
0:49:31I don't know what the motivation is
0:49:32for people making these fake ones, but it's crazy.
0:49:35That doesn't make any product marketing sense to me.
0:49:40- Yeah, I agree.
0:49:41And we've just defined, right, we got, what's an iPad Pro?
0:49:46Right, I feel like they could do an iPhone Pro,
0:49:48But to have a Pro and a Plus and the regular iPhone
0:49:51and the SE and have the Pro and the Plus
0:49:53be essentially the same, except one of them has this
0:49:56like one esoteric difference, it seems too complicated.
0:50:00And which is not to say that I'm not intrigued
0:50:03by the idea of like an iPhone Pro that is the two cameras
0:50:07and maybe support for the pencil.
0:50:09That's interesting.
0:50:11That's an interesting idea of branding that product that way
0:50:14but to have that and then it feels more likely to me
0:50:17that it's just, what we're seeing is the 6S Plus,
0:50:22just again, maybe slightly altered,
0:50:25but just the 6S Plus.
0:50:26And that's a question is like, what do they keep?
0:50:29Traditionally, Apple has kept the previous year's phones
0:50:31in the lineup.
0:50:33So, what happens there too?
0:50:35I don't know.
0:50:36It seems unlikely though,
0:50:37that they would have two identical phones
0:50:38except for like the cameras on the back.
0:50:40- Yeah.
0:50:41And it just, it makes it harder like with,
0:50:46By calling them the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus,
0:50:49and then the 6S and the 6S Plus, they can just say--
0:50:52they can say, shot with iPhone 6.
0:50:55And all of the new phones are carried with that,
0:50:58whether you have the Plus or not.
0:51:00The Plus just refers to the size,
0:51:02even though the camera was technically slightly better
0:51:04because it had the optical image stabilization.
0:51:07They didn't need to say that.
0:51:08They could just say-- they could run ads and billboards that
0:51:11just say iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S, and it covers
0:51:15both. Whereas if they do this, it doesn't. They'd have to run separate campaigns, and
0:51:20then it would peg the ones that are going to sell in greater quantities, the lower priced
0:51:26ones, the regular and the plus, it would peg them as being on the lower tier from day one.
0:51:34Which is just, I don't know, something about that doesn't sit right with me. I guess it's
0:51:38possible, like I wouldn't be shocked if that's how it turns out. But Germin's story makes
0:51:41it seemed like there's just two, 4.7, 5.5,
0:51:44and the 5.5 has a better camera.
0:51:46- Yeah, it has these double, you know, dual lens system,
0:51:49which is a cool idea.
0:51:50I mean, I think the place where smartphones
0:51:55could still get better, right?
0:51:56I mean, back in the old days,
0:51:57it's like they could get better everywhere.
0:51:58It's like everything could be better.
0:52:00But now the place, like number one place
0:52:02where I think a smartphone could get better
0:52:04in terms of priority has to be the cameras.
0:52:06The cameras could get so much better
0:52:07because we know what good cameras look like.
0:52:09And although the cameras on smartphones are amazing compared to what they used to be,
0:52:14they could still be so much better.
0:52:16So I like the idea that Apple is going down that path and saying, "What if we put two
0:52:20lenses on and use software and put them together and they should be doing that?"
0:52:25That's absolutely the right thing for them to do.
0:52:27Yeah, and I don't even think German's description of it is—his description is about, first
0:52:34mentioned, sharpening photos taken in low-light environments.
0:52:36I mean, that could help with that.
0:52:38But the biggest difference of the two-lens system isn't really light sensitivity.
0:52:42That's a problem that's really hard to solve just because of the physics of optics with
0:52:48the size of these devices and how small the sensors are compared to a full-size or even
0:52:53like the four-thirds system cameras or something, the ones with small sensors like APS-C.
0:52:59In a camera camera, those small sensors are so much bigger than the sensors that you can
0:53:03fit in a phone.
0:53:05absolutely remarkable how good the photos you can get off these devices are with how tiny the sensors
0:53:09are, but that's really a limiting factor for light sensitivity. The two-lens system is really about
0:53:14having two lenses of different focal distances. So you've got the one that's wide angle like the one
0:53:20we already we've always had on our phone, and then to have a second one that has a longer focal length
0:53:25like, you know, I don't know what it would be the equivalent in 35 millimeter terms, but you know,
0:53:3050 or 85 or something. So that when you zoom, it can actually do it optically instead of,
0:53:38like if you're trying to shoot something far away and get it closer and fill up more of the frame,
0:53:43the optics of that are way better if you actually have, if you're doing it with a real
0:53:48longer lens instead of with just cropping the wide lens picture. And there's going to be,
0:53:56ought to be ways, there might be ways to do 3D stuff, you know, slightly 3D stuff,
0:54:00you know, for the live pictures and stuff like that. It could be all sorts of really cool optical
0:54:04stuff with this, so I better get bigger pockets. Yeah, I know that's my thought too, is I've always
0:54:12rejected that phone because it's so large, but I would be, if anything would tempt me to get a
0:54:18larger phone, it would be something like that, like a much better camera would tempt me to
0:54:22to just swallow my pride and expand my pockets and get the big phone.
0:54:27Yeah. The second factor for me in a little bit, like the hand, the size in the pockets in the
0:54:32hand I'm never going to like. But the second factor for me personally is that I'm rushing
0:54:38towards needing reading glasses when I wear my contact lenses. Like I've mentioned this on the
0:54:42show before, but long story short, when I wear my contacts, I need reading glasses to read in low
0:54:48low-light environments now. I can't focus at reading length when I have my contacts
0:54:52in. When I'm wearing my glasses, I can because—and I just talked to my eye doctor about this—because
0:54:57when you wear glasses, they're further from the lens of my eye, whereas contacts literally,
0:55:03they're right there. At a distance, I see exactly the same clarity with glasses on in
0:55:10contacts. But at a close distance, when you start getting presbyopia in your 40s, it makes
0:55:15a big difference whether you have contacts on or not.
0:55:18But really, when I have my glasses on, what I like to do when I read is take them off.
0:55:22Because I'm nearsighted, without any correction at all, I can read.
0:55:25That's when I read the best.
0:55:26I actually read tons and tons on my phone lately in the morning before I put my contacts
0:55:31in just because it's actually the way I see clearest is with no correction at all with
0:55:37my phone right in front of my face.
0:55:40But I wear contacts most of the time.
0:55:42having the bigger phone and being able to make the text bigger would actually
0:55:45would actually be optically good for me.
0:55:48Yeah. My,
0:55:49my wife has a six S and uses it in the mode where it's blown up to essentially
0:55:54it's pretending to be a five because she's, cause she's got, um,
0:55:59for the first time cause she's always had perfect vision,
0:56:00but she's in her forties now and she's now she needs reading glasses.
0:56:03And so she's just, uh,
0:56:05that's been one of her concessions to be able to use her phone without having to
0:56:08switch to reading glasses is using that extra screen space just to make everything bigger.
0:56:14What I've been doing, I haven't given into that zoom mode, but I do go into the text
0:56:20size. It makes me feel good about the fact that I've been promoting accessibility features
0:56:28long before I needed them, but now I really do. And my vision problems, I always want
0:56:33I'm trying to say this.
0:56:34If anything, it makes me appreciate
0:56:37how good my vision still is.
0:56:39Because it's like having a scare with losing
0:56:42all the vision in my eye when I had the retina detachment.
0:56:45It really makes me appreciate just how bad some people's
0:56:48vision really is, people who are on some scale legally blind.
0:56:54But some people who are legally blind can still see something.
0:56:57But the accessibility features in iOS, it's so great.
0:57:02And now I'm actually somebody who benefits from them.
0:57:05- Well, that's how my wife uses her Apple Watch.
0:57:06'Cause you can't really do the large screen mode
0:57:09on the Apple Watch.
0:57:10And she has used the accessibility feature
0:57:12to increase the text size
0:57:13and it makes her Apple Watch usable.
0:57:15Otherwise it's like, it's great that I have this watch on,
0:57:18but if I have to put my glasses on
0:57:19every time I need to read anything on the screen,
0:57:21it's pointless.
0:57:22So she uses the type size control.
0:57:24- I do too.
0:57:25It is a great, great, great feature.
0:57:27So I don't know.
0:57:31have a big phone. I don't know. I don't know. We'll have to see how what exactly
0:57:36the devil's in the details and this comes back to what you were saying about
0:57:38where Mark Gurman sources are is is a lot of times with these Apple products I
0:57:43always say this I mean it's just it's so true you got to know where the rumors
0:57:46are coming from and what and the what we know is what is us we know the product
0:57:52but we don't know the story and it's the marketing and in some ways it's the
0:57:56software like we know that there are two cameras and we can speculate on what
0:57:59those cameras do, but Apple will probably have a very particular story about how
0:58:03those cameras work together, when one camera gets used, when the other gets used,
0:58:07do they get merged together, how does that work, is there UI to flip between
0:58:11them or change the focus or things like that, and that we really don't know.
0:58:15Yeah, like what's the scenario where this is going to be better? Like a scenario I
0:58:19can think of that, and I'm sure you know you run into the same thing too, is
0:58:23parent in the auditorium and the kids on stage. That's where the phone, the phone
0:58:27is a terrible camera for that situation because you really want a picture of
0:58:31your kid but there's no way that optical zoom in a dimly lit auditor, not
0:58:37optical zoom, digital zoom, yeah, of a wide-angle lens with a
0:58:42tiny little sensor. You might as well not even do it. I always wonder when I
0:58:46see these parents holding their phones up for the entire thing, I really want to
0:58:52play that Louis CK rant of, "Hey, just be here." You know what I mean? Just be here
0:58:56from them. Because it's not just that you'd be better off just being there and watching
0:59:01it. The actual image you're getting from that camera, from a cell phone halfway back in
0:59:07an auditorium is going to be useless. You're not going to make out your kid's face. But
0:59:11a longer lens might actually save that.
0:59:14Yeah, we were coming back from a long weekend and we were driving, we were in Southern Oregon,
0:59:20and so we were driving back, driving south, and you go past, on Interstate 5, you go past
0:59:23Mount Shasta, which is a huge volcano.
0:59:27There's a-- it's like two miles above the rest
0:59:31of the landscape around it.
0:59:33And even middle of summer, within 90 degrees outside,
0:59:35there's snow and glaciers and stuff on the top of it.
0:59:38And it's spectacular.
0:59:39You're driving down the freeway, and there's
0:59:40this huge volcano right in front of you.
0:59:41And I get on my iPhone to take a picture of it.
0:59:43And I open it up, and I look.
0:59:44And it's just like-- it's like it's not even there,
0:59:46because it's that wide angle shot.
0:59:48It's got both sides of the windshield.
0:59:49It's got the road and all that.
0:59:51And I zoomed in, and I got an OK shot
0:59:53with the digital zoom, but those shots are no good because they are zoomed in so far
0:59:58that any of the majesty of it is now lost in all the little pixelation that happens.
1:00:03Yeah. It is. It does. It will make for, and I presume it'll be Schiller who does it because
1:00:09that's Schiller's gig. This is usually the, he's the guy who does the new iPhone in September.
1:00:17And I happen to know that, you know, Schiller is a truly, you know, real photography enthusiast.
1:00:23He really knows his shit about cameras and he really cares.
1:00:26But it's such a hard thing to present
1:00:29when you're saying how awesome this camera is
1:00:30and this other phone that we also want you
1:00:33to be excited about doesn't have it and can't do it.
1:00:36But that is, it's a perfect scenario though.
1:00:38Like you wanna get the mountaintop, you know?
1:00:40And that is exactly the sort of thing
1:00:41where a second lens that is longer
1:00:43will make a dramatic difference.
1:00:45But when they show you the dramatic difference,
1:00:47it's gonna be in comparison to what you get
1:00:49with the other new iPhone.
1:00:51I think they're just gonna have to say,
1:00:53we could do this because it's a much larger phone.
1:00:56And they're gonna have to explain it that way.
1:00:59The only way we could do this is because the iPhone 6 Plus
1:01:02or 7 Plus or whatever it is, is this much bigger.
1:01:05And so we have the room to do this.
1:01:10But I'm looking forward to that demo
1:01:12because I imagine that's gonna be the ooh and aah demo
1:01:14of the whole thing.
1:01:15Because they're gonna have some,
1:01:16first they're gonna have hired
1:01:17spectacularly good photographers
1:01:19to take all the sample images.
1:01:21And then they're gonna be perfect ones to show off
1:01:24when you flip a switch or you slide your finger
1:01:26or something, you go from A to B and everybody goes, whoa.
1:01:29And you can see what it's gonna be.
1:01:31It's gonna be a winner, that demo, yeah.
1:01:34- I totally think so.
1:01:35Before we leave iPhone, I'd hinted a few minutes ago
1:01:39that not knowing the product names
1:01:41is a clue to German sources.
1:01:42Like the product names in my experience,
1:01:46there are, that is like need to know basis within Apple.
1:01:49And I think that the number of people,
1:01:51even like who work in product marketing,
1:01:53who know the name of the new iPhone
1:01:54is probably pretty small.
1:01:56- Yeah, names, prices.
1:01:58- Yep.
1:01:59- And it also means they're also changeable, right?
1:02:01Like the hardware, the hardware's been locked for ages now.
1:02:04The software is basically locked,
1:02:07although yeah, they will have little bits,
1:02:09but it's stuff that they've had to be working on
1:02:11for months and months and months.
1:02:12Names, unless it's shipping that day,
1:02:14and it's still, the name is iPhone, right?
1:02:16They could literally ship a box
1:02:17that just says iPhone on it and it would be okay.
1:02:19So the names that you can leave those pretty late in the game
1:02:22and prices you can really leave late in the game.
1:02:24And so it's a very small group of people
1:02:28who are doing that in terms of marketing and PR.
1:02:32And they don't leak as much unless they want to.
1:02:36I think they don't, unless the company wants a leak,
1:02:40I think they don't leak as much.
1:02:42It comes from supply chain and it comes from kind of people
1:02:45in the broader company who know little bits about it
1:02:48and can leak those little bits.
1:02:50But my experience, I don't know,
1:02:52do you remember when they did "Mountain Lion"
1:02:56and everybody expected there would be no OS update
1:02:58for like another year or six months?
1:03:00And we all got briefings about "Mountain Lion."
1:03:05And I literally didn't know what I was being briefed on.
1:03:07I walked in and said,
1:03:08"Yeah, there's a new version of OS X.
1:03:09It's called 'Mountain Lion.'
1:03:10It's gonna come out and we're gonna announce it
1:03:12in two weeks."
1:03:13And just nobody had been talking about it.
1:03:15And literally it was not,
1:03:18I mean, the embargo dropped and everybody's minds were blown.
1:03:20That was a really instructive thing for me
1:03:24about how buttoned up Apple in Cupertino
1:03:28in the marketing department could be,
1:03:30because that was something that didn't leak.
1:03:32And why didn't it leak?
1:03:33'Cause not very many people knew
1:03:34and nobody in the supply chain knew.
1:03:36Nobody outside of Infinite Loop knew, really.
1:03:39- Yeah, and I don't know how they do the packaging,
1:03:44like where and how they make all the boxes
1:03:47for these phones, but that's, you know, like here, my box,
1:03:51here, I have one right here on my desk,
1:03:52and it says iPhone 6S.
1:03:54So somewhere there's somebody making all these boxes,
1:03:56and that could leak, but it's different
1:03:58than a regular supply chain.
1:04:00And it's notable that the phones themselves
1:04:02don't have the numbers on the back.
1:04:04They usually just say iPhone.
1:04:05Last year, they put the S underneath,
1:04:08but it just says iPhone S.
1:04:10And the iPhone SE has an SE underneath it
1:04:13on the back, etched into it, and that name did leak,
1:04:16because it was etched on the things
1:04:19that they were making in the supply chain.
1:04:21- Yeah, and you wonder about like, yeah,
1:04:23the security of who's printing, you know, the boxes.
1:04:27Yeah, where do they get printed and assembled
1:04:28and who is that?
1:04:29And presumably that's all happening in China
1:04:30because they're shipping them direct from China.
1:04:32But I'm not saying too that you couldn't, you know,
1:04:36you could hedge on the name if you wanted to,
1:04:37but the name was probably chosen,
1:04:39but it's a smaller group
1:04:41and they can keep it buttoned up more easily.
1:04:43And you see that in a lot of reports
1:04:44where there are details from the hardware side,
1:04:48but not from the marketing side.
1:04:50And that allows us to keep some degree of a mystery,
1:04:55at least for a while.
1:04:56Often you will see those reports happen
1:04:58like a day or two before the event
1:05:01when they have to tell people.
1:05:02But those people in the know
1:05:04can be really secretive about it right now.
1:05:08- Yeah, and once boatloads of these things are on route,
1:05:12or I guess they fly the first couple batches,
1:05:14I don't know, but once they're starting to put them on pallets and ship them,
1:05:18you know, across the Pacific Ocean, then there's obviously more sources for leaks.
1:05:22Right. Then the jig is up. Although that's one reason why,
1:05:25why they're not usually available today, right?
1:05:27When they announced them is that they are not quite in the,
1:05:30in the chain yet at that point to, to keep some amount of, of a secrecy,
1:05:35I think.
1:05:35Right. I wonder, I wonder how, like how much they, you know,
1:05:38that they only do like a small number of boxes beforehand so that they can give
1:05:41us the review units and stuff.
1:05:42but then once they announce it is when all of a sudden,
1:05:44like there's some place in China where they're starting,
1:05:46start printing out literally millions of boxes
1:05:50with the product name, like go.
1:05:53'Cause I presume that they can print these boxes
1:05:56a hell of a lot faster than they can assemble phones.
1:05:59- Oh yeah, sure, I'm sure, I'm sure.
1:06:01- It's probably a cool machine to see.
1:06:04- Yeah, I was thinking, I wonder if you could print
1:06:06on an assembled box, so like just keep the,
1:06:08- Yeah, I don't know.
1:06:09- Just keep the edge that says,
1:06:11whether it's a 6 SE or a 7 or something else and just stamp it, probably not. They probably
1:06:16print it on the cardboard and fold it up. Let's take a break before we talk about the Mac rumors.
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1:09:02They've got their people who make these themselves.
1:09:06last year or the year before I remember doing a read where they specifically the
1:09:10read included like in bold print like you know order now yeah please tell
1:09:15people to order by the end of November because by December 1st we might be
1:09:18backlogged past Christmas yeah all right back to Gurman so Gurman had the second
1:09:24thing and more recently I think it was just a couple days ago he had a report
1:09:26on the new MacBook Pro yeah and some of it there was one bit that was new to me
1:09:34I think, but the rest of it wasn't. The bit that was new to me was he said specifically that it is
1:09:39not a tapered design like the regular MacBook or the MacBook Air. It is still a symmetric thickness
1:09:46across the side, which surprised me because I sort of thought that they would go to a tapered design,
1:09:52that they would go, it would be like, think of a MacBook Air but with the retina screen.
1:10:00Yeah, I mean they must just, this is a way to differentiate it, this is a way to have more room
1:10:03in there for battery and stuff. I mean, it sounds like it's still thinner, slightly thinner, he says,
1:10:09but not tapered. That's a little surprising. I think that was the going theory, was that it would
1:10:16be more like the MacBook Air or the MacBook, just a little bit more chunky than that.
1:10:21Chunkier still. Part of my thinking it would be tapered is, it's three factors. One, Apple tends
1:10:28to make things thinner. I don't know if you've ever thought about this or noticed.
1:10:32Jobs's law. That's the jobs law right there.
1:10:34I don't know if you've ever noticed, Jason, but over the years, Apple tends to make devices
1:10:39thinner.
1:10:40Interesting.
1:10:41And going to a tapered design is a way to make it thinner in parts while still having
1:10:45– there's certain things that maybe require the thickness and they can stick them in the
1:10:49back.
1:10:50Right.
1:10:51Two is there was a report earlier this year from Ming-Chi Kuo, the supply chain analyst
1:10:57over in Asia who has very almost no sources I think within Apple itself but
1:11:02some very good supply chain sources in in the Asian countries where these
1:11:07factories are and he reported he had a curious report about a 13 inch MacBook
1:11:14meaning like the 12 inch MacBook that that we have today there's just plain
1:11:18MacBook a 13 inch version right which makes no sense whatsoever like 12 inch
1:11:2413-inch is not enough differentiation. And the 12-inch was just updated. Like, if they wanted to
1:11:31change the 12-inch to 13, I could see that. That would be believable. If they wanted to go back and
1:11:36have two versions, 111 and 113, like they used to with the Air, I could see that. But 12 and 13,
1:11:42you know, you've got to have like small and large. You can't have like large and semi-large. It
1:11:49doesn't make any sense. So to me, that made sense only in the context that it wasn't a MacBook, that
1:11:54that it was a MacBook Pro.
1:11:56And maybe he was just wrong
1:11:57and there is no 13-inch tapered MacBook.
1:12:00But that's just what I thought.
1:12:01And then the third factor is wishful thinking.
1:12:04Because I've said this before,
1:12:07for years my portable was an 11-inch MacBook Air.
1:12:10And it was really slow
1:12:14because I tend to,
1:12:16the thing that I do that really slows down a Mac
1:12:18is I have like 30 or 40 Safari windows open.
1:12:23I swear to God, I think I have like 40 windows over here on my iMac,
1:12:26each of them with like eight tabs and on the Mac book era, that would really,
1:12:31you know,
1:12:32I'd have to call tab bankruptcy way more frequency than I want frequently than I
1:12:37wanted to because it just was slowing it down.
1:12:40But the thing I loved about it and got addicted to and even two years into
1:12:44having this 13 inch MacBook pro still can't get used to is when I take it out of
1:12:47a bag, I turn, put it,
1:12:49set it in front of me the wrong way because the tapered design made it instantaneously
1:12:54knowable which is the front and which is the back. And I still have, if I want to do it visually,
1:13:01I'm so old and I'm so used to the old PowerBooks that I still remember when the Apple logo looked
1:13:06right when you were sitting in front of it closed, not when it was open. And so that doesn't help me
1:13:11either. Yeah, I still have my 11-inch Air here. That's my laptop that I take around if I need to.
1:13:18And I thought, yeah, I think there's a group of people who are like,
1:13:20well, that MacBook is not for me, but I'm sure the new MacBook Pro will be
1:13:25smaller and lighter than the existing MacBook Pro and that'll be close enough.
1:13:30And I think that, I think that's the question here.
1:13:32And that's what you're getting at with sort of wishing that it's more of a wedge
1:13:35shape is the hope that it's, yeah, it's a MacBook Pro,
1:13:39but it's still really thin and light. And that may not be, you know,
1:13:43That may not be possible, given that they do want it to truly be a pro and have the
1:13:49power that the MacBook doesn't.
1:13:51Yeah, that the pro, they're really serious about the pro part of the name.
1:13:56And that makes sense to me, that, you know, because it is pro and they really want to
1:13:59emphasize graphics, you know, and there's, according to Germin, some options to have
1:14:03these really nice AMD graphics, you know, GPUs, and other, you know, battery life and
1:14:09other things.
1:14:10obviously it's easier to put a bigger battery
1:14:12in a device that isn't tapered.
1:14:14So it makes sense.
1:14:15And maybe it still has the nicer keyboard if it's thicker,
1:14:20'cause I kinda, you know.
1:14:22- I assume that these are going to have a keyboard
1:14:24that's more like the Magic Keyboard.
1:14:26So different than the Classic Keyboard,
1:14:30but not the MacBook Keyboard.
1:14:32That would be my guess, is that they engineered
1:14:34this other kind of keyboard for a reason,
1:14:36and it's probably not just as an external Bluetooth keyboard,
1:14:39that this would be the basis of the MacBook Pro keyboard too,
1:14:44instead of the super thin MacBook keyboard.
1:14:47- Yeah, that makes sense to me, I hope so.
1:14:49And I guess the other thing, now again,
1:14:52this was rumored before, I think maybe from Germin,
1:14:56probably from Germin when he was at 9to5Mac,
1:14:59and I've heard other things elsewhere,
1:15:01but that the function keys are being replaced.
1:15:04There will be no more function keys on the keyboard,
1:15:06the F1, F2, F3, which most people use
1:15:09for the other purpose, they don't usually use them
1:15:11as function keys, but as the, whatever the little icon is,
1:15:14you know, the volume up, volume down,
1:15:16- Right.
1:15:17- Keyboard brightness, et cetera.
1:15:18That those are going away and it'll be replaced
1:15:21with an LED touchscreen that will be software configurable.
1:15:26So it'll be like having almost like an iOS device
1:15:31on the keyboard where you tap on these buttons
1:15:34that would be software configurable.
1:15:36- Right, which presumably means that then there will be a,
1:15:39when this is announced that all the like app developers
1:15:42are going to be given no time to be handed a new API
1:15:46of like, here's how you do this.
1:15:47And then they're gonna have to kind of jump to it,
1:15:49or we're gonna see slow adoption of it,
1:15:50which is the downside of having a fancy new bit of hardware
1:15:54that requires software adoption because there'll be a lag.
1:15:58I'm a little skeptical of this.
1:16:01It's all about the implementation,
1:16:02but I'm skeptical only in the sense that
1:16:04I don't look down at my keyboard a lot.
1:16:06- Right.
1:16:07and you use it by feel,
1:16:09and this is gonna be an area
1:16:11that you presumably can't use by feel
1:16:13unless there's some other aspect of this
1:16:15that is not clear in these reports.
1:16:17And that concerns me.
1:16:19Like if you have to look down in order to mute your system
1:16:22because you don't know where the mute button is,
1:16:24or if it's even visible, that seems less good to me.
1:16:28- Can you hit the mute key without looking?
1:16:30I can't, I can't use any of those function keys
1:16:32without looking, I can touch type,
1:16:34but I even after, I don't, I'm not even,
1:16:37I can't even touch type numbers.
1:16:39I have to look when I type numbers.
1:16:40I can only do the alphabet and the--
1:16:42- I do it some of the time.
1:16:43I can touch type some of them some of the time,
1:16:45and sometimes I do look.
1:16:46If I'm not oriented, if my hands aren't on the keyboard,
1:16:49I think it's true.
1:16:51But that's the argument is that you just,
1:16:53you look, you glance down and you tap.
1:16:56I also, I'm kind of excited.
1:16:57I used to have a Bluetooth keyboard
1:16:58that had a volume control that was,
1:17:02it had a little strip that you just slid your finger on.
1:17:05And I think that's interesting
1:17:07that some of the things we do with these devices,
1:17:09like making the brightness more or less,
1:17:13or making the volume louder or quieter,
1:17:16don't really have to be,
1:17:18they're not even, the best way to control them
1:17:20is not two keys or three keys.
1:17:23It's probably, because it's a spectrum,
1:17:25and on an iPhone, you just slide a slider.
1:17:28I could see that for something like this too,
1:17:30where instead of having keys to control the brightness
1:17:33of your display, there's just a brightness strip
1:17:35and you slide your finger on it.
1:17:37- Right, once you touch it,
1:17:38once you turn it like the slider pops up next to it, right?
1:17:42Like you put your finger on brightness
1:17:44and then slide your finger to adjust.
1:17:46- Exactly, even if you don't look,
1:17:47if you know where to land your finger for the brightness
1:17:50area, then at that point you're at wherever you are now
1:17:52and you just slide left or right to make it brighter
1:17:55or likewise with volume.
1:17:56And then if you want it quiet,
1:17:57you just touch the volume thing and slide to the left
1:18:00until it's muted.
1:18:01And that's a better interaction than tap, tap, tap, tap,
1:18:05tap on a key. Yeah, I could see that, you know, I mean, and I, for system-wide stuff,
1:18:12I can definitely see it. I'm, I, it's not that I'm skeptical, it's just that I can't,
1:18:17I've yet to imagine a scenario where I would want per application stuff, and that's one
1:18:23of the things Gherman said the point was that, you know, depending on what application you're
1:18:26in, you could have different things. So, you know, would it be helpful, like, if you're
1:18:29using Photoshop or an image editor to have the tool palette on the keyboard.
1:18:38I guess the argument is like, you know, Final Cut users sometimes would have like stickers
1:18:42that they put on keys in order to say like, "This is what I need to do to do this thing."
1:18:47That you wouldn't need, you could just have custom labels. I mean, it's just like with
1:18:50the iPhone, you have the custom label. So even if it's essentially the same as Command-Shift-Option-K
1:18:56or it's command F2, that instead of that,
1:19:00it just has a thing that says split clip,
1:19:03and you tap it and it does what you want.
1:19:06I guess that would be the idea.
1:19:07- I guess, I guess there's some,
1:19:08and it ties it back in with our earlier discussion
1:19:10about custom key caps, where I've seen,
1:19:13I've seen that you can buy,
1:19:15if you use Final Cut as a professional,
1:19:16you can get, not just stickers,
1:19:18you could just buy a keyboard that has the keys.
1:19:21I think there's Photoshop versions of that too.
1:19:23- Yeah, well, you know, on ATP at one point a few months ago,
1:19:26they talked about that I think there's an incredibly expensive keyboard
1:19:30that has custom keys, like they're like little screens.
1:19:35- Oh, I have seen that, yeah.
1:19:37- And that's madness, but you know, that idea.
1:19:40So yeah, I mean, it's true.
1:19:42And, you know, I could see Apple pitching it as being a way
1:19:46to unearth the most important and little used features
1:19:51in your app in a way that you can expose them
1:19:54by giving them their own dedicated space on the keyboard.
1:19:57My fear is that Apple's gonna have
1:20:01some really great examples with their apps.
1:20:03And then all the third-party developers
1:20:05are gonna be like, well,
1:20:06and they're gonna not adopt it
1:20:09or they're gonna do it badly.
1:20:11We'll have to see, 'cause that's a real challenge for it.
1:20:15Like Mac software developers suddenly having to do
1:20:18this whole new approach to their UI,
1:20:21which is this, only on MacBook Pros, by the way.
1:20:24- Right. - I don't know, it's weird.
1:20:26- Well, maybe, presumably, I would think if it takes off,
1:20:30if there's any kind of traction with it whatsoever,
1:20:32it will come to the regular MacBook next revision around,
1:20:37and maybe will come to the Magic Keyboard?
1:20:39- Yeah, I mean, maybe.
1:20:41- I think it's a little weird,
1:20:43as I think about it and imagine it,
1:20:46I can imagine it being cool,
1:20:47I can imagine it being a gimmick.
1:20:48I'm not sold on it purely as an idea.
1:20:51But I do think it's weird,
1:20:54a weird mashup of touchscreens
1:20:57and the abstraction of the pointer-based Mac OS, right?
1:21:02That you've got a screen on the laptop that is abstract,
1:21:06meaning you have to use a trackpad or a mouse
1:21:08to move a pointer that is a representation of you
1:21:12in the system,
1:21:13and then to have an actual touchscreen right there, right?
1:21:16it gets to the whole point of people thinking that they want touch screens on
1:21:20the Mac itself, which.
1:21:21But it remains inside Apple's philosophy of it,
1:21:24which is that you don't go out of the, out of the plane.
1:21:27You don't go perpendicular that people don't want to do the zombie arms thing,
1:21:31but, but if your hands are down on the keyboard and on a laptop, you know,
1:21:34you're looking at the screen, but you're also looking at the keyboard,
1:21:36it's right there. You can't really look away from it. And that at the, you know,
1:21:39and then your fingers are already, you know, right next to that touch area.
1:21:43So you're not having to lift up and then reach out
1:21:46and touch the screen.
1:21:47So it does fit.
1:21:48It's a way for them to do touchscreen technology
1:21:52short of replacing the entire keyboard with a touchscreen
1:21:55while not kind of breaking their philosophy
1:21:58of not doing a touchscreen on the main screen.
1:22:00- Right, which would also require you to redo the entire UI
1:22:03of the Mac OS to make things of a size
1:22:06that would be amenable to being touched,
1:22:08which would make it, all the controls incredibly large
1:22:12for everybody using a mouse, which would be,
1:22:14which is one of the reasons why
1:22:16I don't think it's ever gonna happen.
1:22:17It doesn't say, Gurman doesn't say
1:22:19whether the touchscreen strip for function keys,
1:22:24as he describes it, will be a taptic.
1:22:28I hope that it is, because to me,
1:22:30that would make it make a lot more sense,
1:22:32because then you could navigate by feel a little better.
1:22:35Right?
1:22:35- I don't know if you can though,
1:22:36because if it's a touchscreen,
1:22:38then if you're running your finger over it,
1:22:41you're touching it, unless it's pressure sensitive.
1:22:44- Right.
1:22:45- I don't know.
1:22:46I mean, there's a lot of questions about this one.
1:22:48This is a real mystery where not knowing anything
1:22:52but the existence of the hardware,
1:22:54we're left to put our own judgments on it
1:22:57that may have nothing to do with the real approach
1:23:00and the real way Apple's going to explain it
1:23:02when they roll this out.
1:23:03- Also says it'll have USB-C,
1:23:05but doesn't say how many USB-C ports.
1:23:08Famously, I don't know if it's--
1:23:10- Or if they're removing USB altogether or Thunderbolt,
1:23:15or is there a mix?
1:23:16It's just sort of like there will be USB,
1:23:18it will include USB-C.
1:23:20That's it, one of his sources said.
1:23:23- Which ties back to my,
1:23:25how long will I be able to get away
1:23:26using an Apple extended keyboard too?
1:23:28The adapter I have goes to regular USB.
1:23:31So I, you know, what should--
1:23:33- You just have a USB-C to USB to ADB, just a chain,
1:23:35just keep chaining them forever.
1:23:37- Eventually though, right.
1:23:39So I'll be able to keep going with a USB-C only iMac,
1:23:44let's say the next one I replace this iMac,
1:23:47if that one only has USB-C.
1:23:49Although I presume on an iMac,
1:23:50they're not going to get rid of the,
1:23:52they can afford to just have a bunch of ugly ports
1:23:54'cause they hide them all on the back.
1:23:56- Yeah, probably.
1:23:57- So I probably won't, and that's where I use this keyboard.
1:24:00I've never used it with a MacBook.
1:24:03It doesn't make any sense to plug an external keyboard
1:24:07into a MacBook, so I'm not too worried about it,
1:24:09but it makes me wonder about, you know,
1:24:12at some point eventually, I think before the death
1:24:16of the Mac, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm using a Mac
1:24:20that doesn't have any ports at all, other than power.
1:24:23So, you know, 10, 15 years from now,
1:24:27will there be USB ports on a Mac?
1:24:29I don't know.
1:24:30- Well, you'll be going from wireless standard
1:24:32to USB-C to USB to ADB at that point.
1:24:35- Yeah, exactly.
1:24:36I'm sure there'll be a chain of adapters that you can use
1:24:39to keep using your 30 plus year old keyboard at that point.
1:24:42- I guess that's what I'll need.
1:24:43I'll need a USB port that, a hub that goes to wireless.
1:24:48- To wireless, yeah.
1:24:49- The Bluetooth 8.
1:24:50- Yeah, yeah, I'm sure.
1:24:52He also, the other report in here
1:24:53that I thought was really interesting when we talk about
1:24:55sort of how he qualifies his sources at Bloomberg is,
1:24:59he says, "Apple has also considered bringing
1:25:01space gray, gold, and silver."
1:25:04I mean, silver it already is,
1:25:05but basically adding the other two colors
1:25:08that they have on the iPhones and on the MacBook
1:25:10to the new line, a person said.
1:25:14And then he says, "It's unclear if this will happen."
1:25:16So basically he had one person say
1:25:18that they were talking about it
1:25:19and we don't know what the outcome is
1:25:22and if they're actually doing it or not,
1:25:23just that they thought about it.
1:25:24- Yeah.
1:25:25I think they probably will.
1:25:27- I hope they do.
1:25:28I mean, I feel like, I mean, I've been,
1:25:30on other podcasts I've been complaining about this
1:25:34for a while now is I kind of miss the old days
1:25:36of like the colorful iPods and stuff.
1:25:39And even the colorful Macs,
1:25:41if you go back to the original iMac.
1:25:43And they ended up having, you know,
1:25:45eight different colors of those.
1:25:47I kind of miss that.
1:25:48Like we were all silver Apple products for so long.
1:25:53And now we've got the gold and the space gray
1:25:55and that's good.
1:25:56I think it's a good step,
1:25:57but I do feel sometimes I know
1:25:59that there's supply chain issues
1:26:00and store issues and all of that.
1:26:03but I do kind of miss having more personality and color.
1:26:08I'm like, if somebody wants to buy a blue MacBook,
1:26:11that would be great.
1:26:12I would love that.
1:26:13But at least one of the things I like about the MacBook
1:26:16is that it isn't just the silver color.
1:26:19You can get it in the gold or the rose gold
1:26:21or the space gray.
1:26:22- Yeah, it's been a long time for me
1:26:25where there's one color for a MacBook
1:26:27and you're gonna like it.
1:26:28- I had the black MacBook when they made that
1:26:30and I loved that.
1:26:32And then that was the last MacBook I had before I switched to the MacBook Air,
1:26:36and it's been all silver laptops.
1:26:37I saw someone in Starbucks with the black MacBook earlier this summer,
1:26:41maybe earlier this year, and it was a great condition.
1:26:44I mean, this guy really obviously cares for it because at a glance,
1:26:49at least it was, it certainly wasn't grungy at all.
1:26:52Uh, and I was, I was, I had this moment where I was just like, whoa,
1:26:56what is that? That thing looks great.
1:26:59And then I realized that what it was and I was,
1:27:01and then I kind of saw how thick it was and I was like, "Ah."
1:27:04- They were more prone to fingerprints than the white ones,
1:27:06but I think they were more resilient overall
1:27:08because the white ones were super shiny
1:27:10and so they got scratched pretty easily,
1:27:11but the black ones were this matte color
1:27:13and they were more resilient. - At a glance,
1:27:15I thought it was gorgeous.
1:27:16The other one that I've had that,
1:27:17I haven't seen one in years now,
1:27:19but long after it was discontinued,
1:27:21occasionally I would see the 12-inch,
1:27:24I think it was called a PowerBook.
1:27:27- Yeah, 12-inch PowerBook.
1:27:28That was my-- - The one where the keyboard
1:27:30really went edge to edge.
1:27:31- Yeah, just like the MacBook now.
1:27:33I mean, that was the original edge to edge.
1:27:35This laptop cannot be any wider than the keyboard,
1:27:38the full-size keyboard.
1:27:39I love that.
1:27:40That was my favorite.
1:27:40Before the 11 inch year, that was my favorite laptop.
1:27:43- For years afterwards, after its discontinuation,
1:27:46when I'd see one, like at a press event
1:27:48or in a coffee shop or something,
1:27:49I'd have this moment of,
1:27:52whoa, what brand computer is that?
1:27:54That is a hot look.
1:27:56(laughing)
1:27:57You know, like, wow, Apple should get on that,
1:27:59Oh, oh.
1:28:00(laughing)
1:28:01- Yep.
1:28:02- 'Cause I knew it wasn't, you know, like the modern,
1:28:04I instantly did recognize it as something different
1:28:06than what is available now,
1:28:08and instantly recognized it as something that was gorgeous.
1:28:11- Yeah, but boxy because it's so thick now.
1:28:13But in terms of the width, I mean,
1:28:15it was incredibly small, way smaller,
1:28:17smaller than the MacBook
1:28:18because the screen was so much smaller.
1:28:20- Yeah, yeah.
1:28:21- But then super thick.
1:28:22- Yeah, it had, there was a certain elegance
1:28:25to the way that the keyboard looked edge to edge,
1:28:27where it's sort of like the same appeal
1:28:29as like those infinity pools.
1:28:31Like it just looks, something in my brain
1:28:34registers that as beautiful.
1:28:36Like it's the same way.
1:28:37Like there was somehow instead of being awkward
1:28:40that there was no edge around it,
1:28:42the proportions were so nice that it just looked sharp.
1:28:45Like really, really sharp.
1:28:47- I always felt that that computer was like a keyboard
1:28:49that had a computer around it.
1:28:50That it was like the computer and the keyboard
1:28:52were just all part of the same thing in a way
1:28:55because of that design.
1:28:57I, yeah, that was my favorite.
1:28:59The 11 inch took it over as my sort of favorite
1:29:01Apple laptop ever, but for a long time,
1:29:04it was that 12 inch.
1:29:05The MacBook is kind of owes something to that now,
1:29:09but it's not quite the same.
1:29:11- Yeah.
1:29:12There's a framing device in "Gurman's Story"
1:29:13that I don't buy at all, which is that,
1:29:17and if you watch the video he did with Bloomberg TV,
1:29:20they emphasize it too, which is sort of like,
1:29:23Apple is doing this new MacBook Pro because iPad sales have tapered off and the iPad didn't
1:29:32really succeed at being the replacement for laptops.
1:29:36I mean, I'll just read his words.
1:29:38This year's MacBook Pro overhaul is aimed at increasing notebook sales at a time when
1:29:42consumers are taking longer to buy or replace iPads.
1:29:44Apple research suggests customers upgrade iPads roughly every three years while they
1:29:48buy new iPhones every 18 to 12 months, according to a person familiar with Apple strategy,
1:29:52which blah, blah, blah.
1:29:53That has nothing to do with why this MacBook is coming out now.
1:29:57It sounds to me like he had a tidbit, which is that Apple Research seems to have twigged
1:30:02on what the buying pattern is for the iPad, which we've all been wondering, like, what
1:30:07is the cycle? And it sounds like his sources suggest that Apple thinks it's three years.
1:30:14But it doesn't seem to have, I mean, like they weren't going to update the MacBook Pro.
1:30:18If the iPad was doing great, they were just never going to update it again. I think most
1:30:21people would say that it's surprising it's taking them this long, because they were waiting
1:30:24out Intel and Intel had some issues and they thought they could skip a generation and get
1:30:28away with it, but then they got bitten and now they're like, now it's too long.
1:30:32440 days or something like that.
1:30:34Yeah, well it's very clear that they thought that they could get away with skipping that
1:30:38one Intel processor generation and skating by because the next one was going to be great
1:30:42and then the next one had issues and now here we are, but I don't think it has anything
1:30:49to do with the iPad.
1:30:50Yeah, why has it taken so long for this new MacBook Pro to come out?
1:30:55And we're speaking about it as though it's out, and it's not out yet.
1:30:58And it may not be out until October or November even.
1:31:03And I think with this in particular, the Mac Pro is a totally different story.
1:31:09And I don't know what is going on there because it's been nine years, or not nine years, but
1:31:14it feels like it's been about nine years since it came out.
1:31:17Three years without any updates at all.
1:31:19And the story on that has to be more complicated
1:31:23and might be more worrisome to people
1:31:25who really depend on those machines.
1:31:29With the MacBook Pro though,
1:31:30I think the story is exactly what you said.
1:31:32I think that there was an Intel generation of chips
1:31:35that Apple thought they could skip
1:31:38and wait for the next one in this,
1:31:41'cause it's like, why do a new version of the MacBook Pro,
1:31:43of the old MacBook Pro as we know it,
1:31:46with a new chipset, when this new thing is coming, and we have all these plans for the
1:31:52keyboard and it's going to be thinner, we'll wait and we'll wow them with that. And it's taken
1:31:58longer than they thought it would. Because it's too many. They sell too many of these. It's easy
1:32:03to say that their eye is off the ball on the Mac Pro because it just doesn't sell in high quantities,
1:32:06but the MacBook Pro is a big moneymaker. It really is. I think it's their... I mean,
1:32:13my money would be on it being their number one Mac that they sell, right?
1:32:17Because they sell somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of the Macs
1:32:21that they sell. They don't break it out anymore, I think. So we can't tell,
1:32:24but it's a, it's a huge number. The majority of the Mac sold are laptops.
1:32:28They're not desktops, they're laptops. And I would think that, I mean,
1:32:33MacBook Air probably isn't selling very well now.
1:32:34The MacBook is probably doing okay, but MacBook Pro, that's the workhorse.
1:32:38That is at a normal time. That's gotta be the,
1:32:40the most important of all the Macs.
1:32:42And certainly by revenue and profit, because it's not quite there in quantity.
1:32:47It is a much higher price, especially, and because it attracts pros, it,
1:32:52I'm sure that more people buy them and max out the storage and the Ram and stuff
1:32:57like that. And the graphics, you know, whereas the people who buy,
1:33:00certainly the people who are buying Mac book errors are buying them for the
1:33:03price at this point, because the specs aren't there. The screens aren't retina.
1:33:07Whereas people buying the pros might be buying the ones that cost $2,500.
1:33:12So by revenue, it's got to be.
1:33:14So I think Apple is internally furious about the delay on this.
1:33:18So the other thing Gherman reports, and you alluded at it,
1:33:22Gherman says that they're not planning to debut them at the event next month,
1:33:28which I expect to be on September 7th.
1:33:30And that's mainly just going by history, which is that for the last three or four years,
1:33:35they've had an event somewhere around, this is like March 7th, or September 7th to 11th,
1:33:4212th, something like that. And if you look at the calendar, March or September 7th is
1:33:47the day. It's Wednesday, and the Monday two days before is Labor Day, which is why they're
1:33:51not having it on Tuesday.
1:33:52Exactly right. Well, it was two years ago, it was the 9th, and I think last year was
1:33:56the 8th, and I think that making it the 7th this year makes a lot of sense. If they're
1:34:00sticking with that pattern, that'll be when it is.
1:34:03I would have expected, and again, I have no inside information on this whatsoever, but
1:34:07just based on the fact that last year they used one event to do everything that was coming
1:34:13out in the fall, including the iPad Pro, which wasn't coming until late October, that even
1:34:20if these MacBook Pros aren't coming until October, that they would use this one event
1:34:24to unveil them.
1:34:25And the one thing I do know, just from last year, was talking to people at Apple, that
1:34:30it was definitely purposeful, a purposeful decision to go to one event in September for
1:34:36everything they were going to do that fall instead of what they had done in the previous
1:34:40few years, which was a big-ish event in September and then a small-ish event, usually at Town
1:34:45Hall and Cupertino in October, that they found that too hard to do back to back.
1:34:51You know, I think they could announce them at the event and just say, "Look, we love
1:35:00the Mac and we have a whole bunch of new Mac stuff, and here's a really quick look at where
1:35:03the Mac is going this fall." And they would say, "This is coming out in October, this
1:35:07is coming out in November, of course Sierra is out now, blah, blah, blah, we're done."
1:35:11They could do an event. Also, I mean, I know people don't like it when I say this, but
1:35:16there are, Apple can release products without an event.
1:35:19And for something like the Mac, which we all love,
1:35:23but at the same time is a small part of Apple's
1:35:26overall business now, is it the end of the world
1:35:28if Apple does a MacBook Pro press release?
1:35:33I mean, it would be a whimper, but they could.
1:35:36They could also do a really small event somewhere.
1:35:39They've done that before, where it's a Mac event
1:35:41and it's got a very limited invite and it's town hall.
1:35:44And they could even do that.
1:35:46I don't think they're ever gonna go back to town hall,
1:35:47but they got options.
1:35:49They don't have to give it 30 minutes on stage
1:35:52on September 7th.
1:35:54- Yeah, my guess is that they either give it 30 minutes
1:35:56on stage September 7th, or they'll release it
1:36:00without an event and do product briefings.
1:36:02- Yeah, they'll do briefings and press release
1:36:04and big website, and you know, I mean, the fact is,
1:36:07Apple can release a product without an event
1:36:10and still get lots of press coverage
1:36:11because they invite their key journalist contacts
1:36:15to pre briefings and give them an embargo and and then you know one day
1:36:20you wake up and suddenly all of these reviews are posting about what the new
1:36:24macbook that just was announced yeah I think when they do the briefings there's
1:36:26obviously fewer press than at an event but it's not it's not super exclusive
1:36:32either like I remember when the watch came out I there was an event in March
1:36:38that was the year that I couldn't travel because of the eye surgery but they
1:36:42didn't give them, they didn't have watches to give out yet. And then when
1:36:45they did, they did product briefings in New York and on campus
1:36:50in Cupertino for U West Coasters. So I went to New York, but it was tons and tons,
1:36:55I mean a big, big operation. I mean it was, it wasn't just like, "Oh, they invited
1:36:59three people and they're gonna give them a watch." I mean it was an operation.
1:37:04Yeah, although that's in part perhaps because they thought they would
1:37:08able to give them out at the March event and they couldn't.
1:37:12But they can do that with the MacBook, I'm sure.
1:37:14They certainly absolutely could.
1:37:17Yeah. I'm trying to think. Anything else about the MacBook Pros? I don't think so.
1:37:22I don't know. I mean, I just—we mentioned the seven years it's been since the Mac Pro
1:37:28got updated. I do think that that's an overarching question that we still need an answer to is
1:37:33is what's going on with the rest of the Mac line,
1:37:36other than the MacBook, that it's all kind of,
1:37:39this would be the season, this fall would be the season
1:37:42where they would do at least a speed bump on the iMacs,
1:37:45and maybe the Mac Mini, and certainly a story
1:37:49about what's going on with the Mac Pro.
1:37:51And it sounds like, you know, they're working on that stuff.
1:37:54I've seen reports that all of that stuff is in process,
1:37:57and it's just a question of when does it get formally
1:37:59announced and shipped?
1:38:00And it sounds like we may end up with a fall
1:38:02where the entire Mac line turns over,
1:38:04except for the MacBook.
1:38:06- And yeah, I hope so.
1:38:09- Yeah, we should.
1:38:10- I really do.
1:38:11'Cause it is, you know, it's damn curious
1:38:15if you want to use a Mac Pro
1:38:17that you have to buy a three-year-old computer.
1:38:20- I can't even believe they're still selling them.
1:38:22I mean, it's almost unconscionable
1:38:24that those products are still for sale
1:38:27because they're so outdated now.
1:38:29- It would be fascinating to know
1:38:31how many of them they're actually selling,
1:38:33because even more than the MacBook Pro,
1:38:37it's almost certain that nobody goes in
1:38:40and accidentally, just on a whim, buys a Mac Pro, right?
1:38:43Like, it truly is the most pro of any computer they sell.
1:38:48It's very expensive, it requires a display, you know.
1:38:54- I wonder if they're selling them
1:38:55to institutional sales now,
1:38:57where they actually buy a bunch of them
1:38:58and they give them a big discount,
1:38:59And yeah, you can buy them on the Apple store, on apple.com,
1:39:03but that maybe if they're selling any, it's really that.
1:39:06And it's to people that they may need a Mac Pro
1:39:09and they need it today.
1:39:10They need 100 of them.
1:39:11- I can totally see though how a lot of people coming in
1:39:13to buy a MacBook of any sort or an iMac,
1:39:17they have no idea when the last time it was revised
1:39:19and they don't care.
1:39:20- Sure.
1:39:21- Just look at it, it looks great.
1:39:22And it seems to be very, it's very fast right there
1:39:25in the store, hey, I'll buy it.
1:39:26Whereas the Mac Pro is only selling to people,
1:39:28whatever the reason, whether they're videos editors or photographers or developers, they're
1:39:34selling to people who know that this is a three-year-old computer and people who know
1:39:40that it's old, know that it's no longer a good value for the dollar, and know that it's
1:39:47going to physically pain them to buy one and then have a new one come out in short order.
1:39:52Exactly. Also, I wouldn't feel bad buying an iMac now, even knowing the whole iMac in
1:39:56'cause the 2015 update to the iMac,
1:39:59I mean, those are good, modern, fast systems.
1:40:02It's not the same situation.
1:40:04They're all faster than the Mac Pro too, basically.
1:40:06So yeah, Mac Pro is baffling.
1:40:09- I got the first 5K iMac.
1:40:11- Yeah, I've got that.
1:40:12- And I don't even feel bad about that one,
1:40:14even knowing that the next one came
1:40:16with the increased color gamut, which is gorgeous,
1:40:19but which I'm never gonna see it side by side with this one.
1:40:23And this one still looks, dropped it.
1:40:25this display is the best display I've ever had.
1:40:27So I don't even feel bad about that.
1:40:29- Yeah, I'm colorblind.
1:40:30So I really, I mean, I can see color,
1:40:33but I don't appreciate some of the finer details of color
1:40:36and the color gamut thing.
1:40:37I basically, I can see it a little bit,
1:40:39but yeah, it doesn't make me feel sad.
1:40:41I got the Core i7.
1:40:43Yeah, this is the i7 iMac.
1:40:46I did the build to order of the high end.
1:40:47It's like, it's the most powerful Mac I've ever owned.
1:40:50I'm just, even though it's a 2014, I'm happy with it.
1:40:54A friend of the show, Craig Hockenberry, is doing,
1:40:57he's a developer at Icon Factory.
1:41:00He's doing a lot of research into color technology,
1:41:05long story short.
1:41:06I helped him out, but I looked at,
1:41:07he had an image of whatever you wanna call it,
1:41:10what's deep resolution, whatever that's called,
1:41:12the extra color.
1:41:15- It's like the wide color gamut.
1:41:16- The wide color gamut.
1:41:17He had a photograph that took advantage of it,
1:41:20and I looked at it on the iMac,
1:41:23and I looked at it on the iPad Pro, which is the, I think the only device I have that has that.
1:41:28- The 9.7, yeah.
1:41:29- Yeah, and I could see the difference, but it was not a heartbreaking difference. It was a,
1:41:35"Wow, Apple's really killing it with these displays," but it did not break my heart
1:41:41that my iMac doesn't have it.
1:41:42- Yeah, exactly. I think that's exactly right. If I were a photographer working in that,
1:41:47you know, color space and being frustrated that my display couldn't properly display it, then I would
1:41:53jump on it. If it was Retina versus non-Retina, then I would just pick up this iMac and throw it
1:41:58under garbage and head to the Apple Store. Uh-huh, yeah. So I feel like Mac, what is it,
1:42:05MacRumors saying don't buy an iMac? It's like, yeah, you know, you could buy an iMac. I suppose
1:42:09if you're reading MacRumors, you're savvy enough, but it's like you could buy, I think you could buy
1:42:13and iMac, it would be fine. If you need it. If you have the need, you should definitely
1:42:17do it, I would say. Yeah, because it'll get better in the fall, there's no doubt, but
1:42:20it's already pretty great. It's going to be fine. But the Mac Pro, no idea. MacBook Pro,
1:42:25same thing. So I hope, I guess that's what I'm saying, is I hope that there's more behind
1:42:30this exciting MacBook Pro, which absolutely should be the number one thing on the list
1:42:34of Mark Gurman reporting about it. But I hope behind that there are a raft of, even if it's
1:42:40just sort of speed bump announcements of all the rest of the Mac line.
1:42:44Intriguingly, not mentioned in Germin's report is anything about the displays, including
1:42:50pixel sizes and including pixel count of the new iPhones, and whether they're going to
1:42:57get the wide color gamut and the room temperature, the temperature sense shifting. What do they
1:43:05call that feature? I don't have an iPad.
1:43:07True Tone.
1:43:08Which I kind of, even though Germin didn't mention it,
1:43:12I'm just gonna guess that it does have True Tone.
1:43:16- Yeah, I'm gonna guess that, yeah.
1:43:19- Because, here's why I'm guessing that.
1:43:21A, it's their flagship device,
1:43:23and the best stuff usually comes to iPhone first,
1:43:25and if it doesn't come first, it's like off by six months,
1:43:28which would be exactly right with the True Tone.
1:43:30And when it was introduced, Shiller said,
1:43:33"Once you get used to it, you can't go back."
1:43:36which makes me think that maybe Schiller already knew
1:43:38that he wouldn't have to worry about missing it
1:43:41on his iPhone.
1:43:42- Yeah, I agree.
1:43:43I think Apple is committed,
1:43:45just as it was obvious a few years ago
1:43:47that Apple was committed to bringing Retina
1:43:49to the entire product line.
1:43:50I think Apple is committed to bringing the wide color gamut
1:43:53and the True Tone stuff to certainly the iOS line
1:43:57and probably with the True Tone stuff,
1:44:00even the Mac line at some point,
1:44:02because I think they've decided
1:44:04that this just improves the user experience,
1:44:05that if you're in a place with yellowy light,
1:44:08then you ought to match the white point on your display.
1:44:11And you could turn it off.
1:44:12And people freak out sometimes.
1:44:13They're like, "Oh, you're messing with my colors."
1:44:14Like, well, you can turn it off.
1:44:16But a lot of people would prefer
1:44:17to have the computer screen color
1:44:20match the light of the room color.
1:44:23And I think Apple thinks they've got a winner with it,
1:44:24that it's kind of a crowd-pleasing feature.
1:44:26And all it really takes,
1:44:28I mean, they've got the new screen technology,
1:44:30but they seem to have that down now.
1:44:32And you need a light sensor
1:44:34that is more than just a one-bit light sensor,
1:44:37because you've got to detect the color temperature
1:44:39of the room.
1:44:40And that's it, you're done.
1:44:41- That's it.
1:44:41Yeah, and it's just another little chip
1:44:43in the pile of here's the year-over-year improvements
1:44:47that are in the iPhone that everybody will,
1:44:52not everybody, but the press at large will sigh
1:44:55and say, "That's it?"
1:44:56But it's exactly the sort of feature that on a checklist
1:45:03of what's new in the new iPhones this year
1:45:05versus last year's models is easy to poo poo,
1:45:08but is just like one iteration after another
1:45:13of all of a sudden, two, three, four years down the road,
1:45:17you've got a device that absolutely blows away
1:45:19the old iPhone.
1:45:21- And if the average buying cycle on a phone is two years,
1:45:24and it probably still is,
1:45:25even though some people will upgrade every year
1:45:27and other people will wait maybe,
1:45:29especially now that there's the different financing options,
1:45:31they might wait two and a half, three years.
1:45:33If two is the sweet spot,
1:45:34then Apple really only needs to make half the case
1:45:37for an upgrade every year
1:45:38because you're not upgrading from the 6S,
1:45:41you're upgrading from the 6.
1:45:42And now you've got to add all the 6S features
1:45:44and all of the whatever this new phone is features together
1:45:47when you make the case to buy an upgrade.
1:45:50- Totally agree.
1:45:51All right, let me take a break.
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1:47:24I don't know what you would call it.
1:47:29If you had IT experts, networking experts, come into your house and set up a Wi-Fi system
1:47:34with a bunch of devices, that's what you get with Eero, except you don't have to be a networking
1:47:38expert.
1:47:39You just plug them in, put them around the house on different floors.
1:47:43Their recommendation is one for every thousand square feet.
1:47:46Three packs of good starting point.
1:47:48And use the app to set it up.
1:47:50It's great.
1:47:51It is so easy.
1:47:52It is so easy. A 30-day money-back guarantee. You can't regret it. So if you set it up and it's not
1:48:00better, you can always return it. And if you want to, you can even return one of them. Like if you
1:48:06get the three-pack or a four-pack and you end up with two saturates your house with solid Wi-Fi,
1:48:12well then send the other one back. That's great. It really is a terrific product. If you don't
1:48:18believe me, search for the reviews. Walt Mossberg wrote a great review of it.
1:48:22Really, this is the first place I heard of it, even before they sponsored it. It really just works.
1:48:27It really is exactly what you think. Totally simple Wi-Fi system that saturates your whole
1:48:35house with really strong Wi-Fi signal. So, can't say enough good things about them. Go to
1:48:43ero.com and remember the code, the talk show, the talk show. Use that code and you know what you get
1:48:51with that? You get free overnight shipping. So go there. Go to Eero. See it. When you order, use the
1:48:58code the talk show and if you're listening right now, do it like right after the podcast ends,
1:49:01you'll have them tomorrow. They'll be there like free overnight and that's for free. So can't beat
1:49:06that. My thanks to them. I have them installed here. It is a great Wi-Fi network. Couldn't be
1:49:11easier, couldn't be a better signal, e-roll.
1:49:13Yep, got them here too. They're great.
1:49:16That read went on long, but it's because I'm so enthusiastic about the product.
1:49:21I cannot, I really rolled my eyes when they sponsored it first because I thought,
1:49:26well, I know they're going to want me to, if I'm going to talk about it, I got to set it up.
1:49:29And I thought it was, I really, really thought I don't want to spend an hour setting up a
1:49:34Wi-Fi thing at my house that I'm just going to have to disconnect a closet when I'm done.
1:49:39It seemed like way more, you know, being on a podcast, it's easy to get lazy and think
1:49:43that that's hard work. But A, it didn't take an hour. It took like 15 minutes. And B, it's
1:49:51like better than my old Wi-Fi. I was like, "Oh."
1:49:55Yeah, I think there's a great benefit in designing a Wi-Fi system for multiple routers instead
1:50:00of just the single base station that most of them are designed for, and it shows with
1:50:04that product.
1:50:05And here in Philly, everybody lives in a townhouse,
1:50:08so we have lots of floors.
1:50:10Floors are probably the bigger problem in my house
1:50:13than the walls, because we live on--
1:50:15- Right, 'cause you're vertical.
1:50:16- Right, and the cable is on,
1:50:19it's not in the middle, it's down below.
1:50:22- Yeah, that's hard.
1:50:23- No, it really is, it's amazing.
1:50:24I've said it before, I guess the read continues to go on,
1:50:29but in our garage, we never got good Wi-Fi in the garage
1:50:32before we had the Eero,
1:50:34And it was a problem in the garage because it would often be like you'd get in the car
1:50:38and you'd be like, "Oh, I wanted to open Overcast and finish downloading podcasts."
1:50:44But with like a media...
1:50:45It was like there's enough of a signal, easily enough of a signal that it wasn't going to
1:50:50LTE.
1:50:51It was still on Wi-Fi.
1:50:52But it was like when you see two bars on the Wi-Fi, that means you're on like a 56K modem.
1:50:59If you don't have all the bars on the Wi-Fi, you're screwed.
1:51:02Yeah. Anyway, E-roll. You want to talk about Rick Tetzelli's Fast Company piece? Or I guess there
1:51:11was a second piece too. There was an interview with Bazoma St. John. Right, that Mark Sullivan
1:51:17did, but Rick Tetzelli wrote the main piece. Yeah, I listened to your show, your upgrade with
1:51:24Mike Hurley, and I thought it was interesting. You guys both seemed a little non-pl-- it's like
1:51:30the casual, the new meaning of nonplussed. Like, not that enthusiastic about it. I loved this
1:51:36story. I really did. And I thought you and Mike were surprisingly, like, "Eh, I didn't really
1:51:41learn anything." Well, to be fair, one of the things about that podcast is we recorded on
1:51:46Monday morning, and so, like, literally I woke up, saw that there was this story, read it, and then
1:51:50we did a podcast about it. So it was— I was surprised when I heard it. I was like, "Wait,
1:51:53I just read the story." I went for a run, and I was listening to your show, and I was like,
1:51:58how are they talking about this? And then I realized that the air date of the podcast was like,
1:52:02I literally must have downloaded it as I left the house.
1:52:06- Yeah, the Wi-Fi radius allowed you to download it. Yeah, part of it for me is that I see the
1:52:13artifice behind it. And most people won't ever see that, but as somebody who has written and edited
1:52:19magazine features before, I looked at this and I thought, okay, I can see why this thing is
1:52:25constructed the way it is. And also part of it is some of my own personal bias where I
1:52:29look at a story that begins with like a lengthy anecdote about the surroundings of Apple and
1:52:39you know running into Eddy Cue and describing what he's wearing and the temperature in Cupertino
1:52:44and all of that. And there are two ways to view that. One is this is a feature story,
1:52:48he's setting the scene, he's letting his readers get the sense of who these people are and
1:52:51what this place is like. And that is how it's intended. As an editor, I also look at that
1:52:57and think, you don't have a lot of material to pack in here, so you have the room to tell
1:53:08a story, and in fact you kind of need to weave a story here and some imagery because that's
1:53:16part of what you've got, is the access. And maybe you don't have, you know, if you had
1:53:20Tim Cook saying something, you know, pretty profound and deep in terms of a pronouncement,
1:53:24you probably lead with that. But you don't, so you lead with the atmosphere. And it's
1:53:28like I kind of get the artifice of that. And part of it is just, yeah, as somebody who's
1:53:33been to Apple and has talked to a lot of these people, for me, I read that story thinking,
1:53:38what are they going to say that's new? And describing Cafe Max and the smell of the chicken
1:53:43masala doesn't do it for me. So part of it is that too. So I come with my biases.
1:53:47I liked that though. I really did. I did that a couple years ago. I think it was the time
1:53:51that you're talking about where Apple called us in for a briefing where they didn't tell
1:53:55us what the product was, and I had a briefing with Schiller in New York. And they said they
1:54:00made clear to me that the whole thing was on the record. I was like, "All of it? I can
1:54:03just write about all of it." And so really, instead of writing about the version of macOS
1:54:08that they showed me, I wrote what it was like to have the product briefing with Schiller.
1:54:13Apple did not like that. I was then told that there was a "Grouper clause" added to future
1:54:20on the record briefings, where it's what's being talked about the product is on the record,
1:54:25not the briefing itself.
1:54:26Yeah, not the quotes. Yeah, I've gotten read that riot act too, so thanks for that. But
1:54:32no, it's all about what you want to get out of it and how you want—I think it's a fine
1:54:39story. I think it's got some good stuff in it. I think it's interesting that it was done
1:54:42a while ago because it's clearly been held for a magazine deadline because they still
1:54:47apparently publish in print, good for them, and so it's like from when the Warriors lost
1:54:52at the NBA Finals, which is a while ago now, so it's not like it's kind of breaking news,
1:54:57but they did get access. It's not, you know, again, I read between the lines and think
1:55:01they didn't get a lot of time with Tim Cook and a lot of time with Eddie Q and Craig Federighi,
1:55:05but they got some, and I think it's a perfectly nice piece. I think the thing that impressed
1:55:10me most about it is that it cited all of the misconceptions about Apple without buying
1:55:15into them. And that's hard for a magazine piece or really any piece to do where usually
1:55:21you either see pieces that are denying the conception or you see them buying into it
1:55:27entirely and this piece didn't do that. This piece was like, "This is how it's perceived."
1:55:33But there are lots of reasons why that may not actually be accurate. And I was impressed
1:55:37that he walked that line because nuance is really hard to do and I think he did a good
1:55:41job with it.
1:55:42I think he really did a good job of painting a picture of what Apple in 2016 is, you know,
1:55:49and it's true and it's an interesting amount of time post Steve Jobs. Am I off by a year
1:55:57here? I'm pretty sure it's five years. I think it was 2011 where I think you're right. Right
1:56:01Right around now in August, Steve announced that he was stepping aside as CEO to become
1:56:07chairman of the board, and then it was October when he died.
1:56:12Five years is sort of a round number, and it's an interesting period of time.
1:56:15It's been a very strong five years for Apple.
1:56:18They mentioned in the article that the company's employee count has doubled in that time.
1:56:24Certainly their finances have improved.
1:56:26How much hand-wringing you want to give over the year-over-year decreases in the last two
1:56:30quarters. Overall, those quarters are still above 2014. It's just the abnormalness of
1:56:392015 with the abnormal success of the iPhone 6. Again, not good, but still, overall the
1:56:47company is way bigger financially in profits and revenue and just number of users than
1:56:54they were five years ago. It truly is Apple the industry behemoth now. They are. There's
1:57:03no other way to avoid it. I've been thinking about this a lot, big picture Apple stuff
1:57:09as a commentator and columnist, that I think in my heart I liked Apple the little company
1:57:15better. It was more appealing to me personally.
1:57:19- Oh, I mean, you're a Star Wars fan.
1:57:21It's like you're rooting for the Rebel Alliance
1:57:23when it's old Apple.
1:57:25And now I had this conversation with my friend, Greg Noss,
1:57:28who knows everybody on the internet apparently,
1:57:31who I went to college with, and he was saying,
1:57:32you know, it's kind of hard to root for Apple these days.
1:57:34This was a few years ago,
1:57:35or to even do something like read the Macalope,
1:57:37because it was one thing when they were the underdog
1:57:40and they were the rebel,
1:57:41but now they're kind of like the big guy.
1:57:43And it doesn't make me, you know, I don't know.
1:57:47There's just, the tone is different.
1:57:48The feeling is different.
1:57:49And you're right, this article gets at it.
1:57:51I mean, I think the maps anecdote
1:57:53was the most, is the most illuminating thing in it.
1:57:55And it's illuminating in so many different ways.
1:57:58Like they talk about, they talk about the fact
1:58:00that they were kind of in a bubble
1:58:01where all the maps in California were good
1:58:04or in Cupertino or in the Bay Area were good.
1:58:06And so they didn't realize they had data problems
1:58:08and that they thought, thinking like old Apple,
1:58:11which was, we have to do this with a very small team
1:58:15because we have to do it.
1:58:16And nobody's really disputing
1:58:17that they had to do their own.
1:58:19maps data, but they like, they had this little team
1:58:21that did it and they were kind of undersized
1:58:22and underpowered and it was a disaster.
1:58:25And now they said like it went from a couple dozen people
1:58:27or dozens of people to like more than a thousand people
1:58:30working on maps now.
1:58:32And I thought that's that moment where you realize
1:58:35the old playbook doesn't work for like,
1:58:37you have to do this thing, this maps thing,
1:58:40because it's key to your business
1:58:42and the future products that you do
1:58:43that you have your own source of map data, okay.
1:58:46But you can't do it in the old way,
1:58:49which is put a small team on it
1:58:50and have them kind of hack something together,
1:58:52you actually have to spend a huge amount of money
1:58:53and hire a whole bunch of people
1:58:55and make it really good everywhere in the world.
1:58:58And that was, I mean, I thought that was really interesting,
1:59:01not just because they say this is the reason
1:59:03why there are public betas now,
1:59:04because they need to test it more broadly
1:59:06than their Insular community,
1:59:08but also just because what it says about how
1:59:10they need to embrace the fact
1:59:11that they are playing on a much larger stage
1:59:14and the stakes are higher and they can't,
1:59:17there's some stuff they can't do the old way
1:59:19just because that's not who they are anymore
1:59:21and that's not the game they're playing anymore.
1:59:24- A thousand employees,
1:59:26I mean, they don't say what they're doing.
1:59:27Like, are these people who are just driving cars?
1:59:30- Driving cars, yeah, that was my thought is Apple--
1:59:33- It can't be engineers because there's a,
1:59:35you know, too many chefs spoil the soup aspect.
1:59:39- Right, but there's all the data
1:59:41and there's probably working with data sources
1:59:43and there is driving the cars.
1:59:44I do wonder sometimes when they say Apple's employees
1:59:46doubled. How much of that is retail and people like driving around cars?
1:59:50I don't know. And just manually going through the reports that people
1:59:55submit of places and maps and just the grunt work of, "Oh, that's no
2:00:01longer a laundromat. Now that was raised and now it's a townhouse."
2:00:06Exactly. But a thousand employees with an average salary of a hundred thousand
2:00:12dollars, that's a hundred million dollars a year.
2:00:15I mean, and even if it's lower than that as an average, because some of them are doing
2:00:19more menial tasks and they're not like engineers or something, even if you have that to 50,000,
2:00:25you know, that's still 50 million dollars a year. That's a significant investment. And I think it's
2:00:30exactly an example. Again, one of my favorite parts of the story. It is exactly the... Under
2:00:39Tim Cook, Apple is an industry behemoth that can do something like create a thousand person mapping
2:00:44division, whereas the Apple of, you know, when they unveiled the maps and Steve Jobs was the CEO was,
2:00:52I don't even know if they considered a big team. Like, every team at Apple is a small team. That's
2:00:56just, that was the Apple way of doing things. And I don't want it to come across that, like,
2:01:02oh, Apple is spending money like a drunken sailor now, because that's not the case. In fact, I know
2:01:07for a fact that Apple still, I think Tim Cook, this is one of the ways that Tim Cook and Steve
2:01:12jobs really were similar in their disposition is that it hurts them to spend money and hire
2:01:20lots of people. They don't want to do it. Apple has not managed as if they had more
2:01:26than $100 billion in the bank, even though they do, as if they weren't generating $7,
2:01:30$8, $9 billion in profit every single quarter. They're not managed like that. Every hire
2:01:36is scrutinized. Every team, there's always a question like, "Does this team need to
2:01:41be any bigger, it's true. So that's why it makes this map thing such a big step for them
2:01:45to be like, you know, if we think this is what we need to do, or the car thing, potentially,
2:01:50if we're going to do it, we have to do it. And that means hiring lots of people and spending
2:01:55lots of money because we're not a small company anymore. We are a company that has huge revenues
2:02:00and huge profits, and if we want to stay that way, we have to spend money.
2:02:04I think that institutionally, I know, I know from the various friends I have who work there
2:02:09and acquaintances. The people at Apple, and this came from Steve Jobs, and it's one of
2:02:14those things that "is instilled in the company's DNA." They are deathly afraid of making bad
2:02:19hires. Not in terms of talent, although that's part of it, but just in terms of whether people
2:02:25get the Apple way. There's nothing that would sink the company faster than polluting it
2:02:33with bad hires.
2:02:35- Bozos. - Bozos, that's right.
2:02:37And the same goes for if you speed hire,
2:02:41if you hire a lot of people,
2:02:42if you staff up really quickly,
2:02:43the danger there is that some percentage of those people
2:02:45are gonna be bozos.
2:02:46And that's why Apple's teams
2:02:48have traditionally been so small,
2:02:49they are so careful about it, they are run.
2:02:51I think it's not, you know, Apple's near death experience
2:02:55and the discipline of the way the culture changed
2:03:00when Steve came back and they got away
2:03:03from that near death experience,
2:03:05it informs the culture to this day.
2:03:06I think they have to fight when they do things like this.
2:03:08They have to fight against it
2:03:09because it is a different place that they're in now.
2:03:12But I see that, you know, my dad grew up in the Depression
2:03:15and he lived his entire life being incredibly concerned
2:03:20about what money was being spent on what and all of that,
2:03:23and reusing things and fixing broken things
2:03:26that most people would just throw out
2:03:27because he had that experience in the Great Depression.
2:03:29And I feel like Apple has that in their culture too.
2:03:32Like we almost went out of business.
2:03:34And so we're gonna be really careful
2:03:35about every dollar we spend,
2:03:37even though we've got 100 billion in a mattress somewhere.
2:03:40- I think that the debut of Apple Maps
2:03:41is one of the greatest stories
2:03:43that's really never been told.
2:03:45From what I know, I know more than what was in the story,
2:03:48but it's like nobody really has it.
2:03:50And part of the reason nobody has it
2:03:51is that Scott Forstall has never broken his silence,
2:03:55even off the record.
2:03:57He's, to this date, has never said a goddamn thing
2:04:01about anything.
2:04:03Other than that, when he popped up when he was producing that play on Broadway, which
2:04:07had nothing to do with Apple.
2:04:08But he's never leaked a damn word about his time at Apple.
2:04:14And my understanding, and again, this is not from a source that I could ever...
2:04:19I feel like I can podcast it, but I can't write it.
2:04:22But I spoke to someone at Apple, not high up.
2:04:24It was just this run-of-the-mill person who worked at Apple, but was in management, and
2:04:32that the word on the street in Apple was that he had a two-year, you know, you can't talk clause.
2:04:41That gardening leave kind of thing where they're paying him and he doesn't say anything and that's
2:04:45part of his severance or whatever. Right, that it was a very simple deal. It was a dump truck
2:04:49full of cash and you keep your mouth shut for two years and that was it. But then, even if that's
2:04:56off by a year or two that's expired. I mean, it's possible. It's possible.
2:05:01It may be keep your mouth shut about Apple forever, but you can talk about... Yeah, I
2:05:06don't know. That's unlikely, though. You know what I mean? It just seems like those packages
2:05:10are usually... And I think it's by choice. I think it's unsurprising that someone who
2:05:15is so successful under Steve Jobs for his entire career and within Apple would be of
2:05:23the nature to keep his mouth shut even afterwards, right? It's how do you how do
2:05:27you fill a company you know how do you how does the company keep its mouth shut
2:05:29collectively by hiring people who keep their mouth shut? Right. So my impression
2:05:34my impression too is that is that maps may have been the precipitating factor
2:05:38for him to be kicked out but that that you know if this was the one mistake he
2:05:42had made that he would still be there that was not this was the precipitation
2:05:46not the not the crime. But anyway all of that is to say though that nobody could
2:05:50write the definitive thing on maps unless they could get Forstall to open up, because
2:05:55otherwise it's all one-sided. And there is this sort of throw Forstall under the bus
2:05:59nature to it, but that is my understanding of actually what happened. The gist of it,
2:06:05I don't even know how, part of it that doesn't get talked about is the whole negotiations
2:06:10with Google aspect, where their agreement with Google to use Google Maps and iOS was
2:06:14was running out and needed to be renewed.
2:06:18And Google knew that.
2:06:20Apple wanted vector maps.
2:06:22Remember, at the time, they only had the bitmap maps.
2:06:24So they wanted vector maps, and they
2:06:26wanted turn-by-turn directions.
2:06:29And Google was holding this over them
2:06:31in exchange for allowing Google to get
2:06:34more user identifiable data, like get people to sign
2:06:37into their Google account.
2:06:38And then using the built-in maps in iOS,
2:06:41Google would have information about you, all of your location searches and stuff like that,
2:06:46which Apple didn't want to give them.
2:06:49And so Apple, because of this, sort of knew that they had to switch to Apple Maps, make
2:06:55it as good as it can, but we need to switch now because our contract is up and we're at
2:07:00an impasse with Google over getting an extension to use their stuff and to get the stuff that
2:07:04we need turn by turn and stuff like that.
2:07:06So it wasn't like Apple collectively thought Apple Maps was just fine.
2:07:10They knew that it was going to be a step backwards.
2:07:14But, from what I've heard this from multiple people,
2:07:17but that effectively, what Eddy Q said is very true,
2:07:21that at a senior executive level,
2:07:23what they saw firsthand using the betas was pretty good.
2:07:28It really is pretty good.
2:07:29And I know, depending on where you are
2:07:30as a listener of the show, you really might not believe it.
2:07:32But really, right from the get-go,
2:07:34in the Bay Area, it was pretty good.
2:07:36I mean, you live there, right?
2:07:37- I live there, and people, to this day,
2:07:40People would be like, "I can't believe you use Apple Maps."
2:07:41I'm like, "Well, I live an hour from Apple.
2:07:44"The maps here are pretty good."
2:07:45(laughs)
2:07:47That was never a question.
2:07:48It's everywhere else in the world that it's a question.
2:07:51- And, you know, obviously, this is a very complex story,
2:07:54but long story short, what they saw firsthand
2:07:56with the betas was pretty good.
2:07:57Forestall gave them an impression
2:08:00of how good they were worldwide,
2:08:02which was, you know, raise your hand up to here,
2:08:05when in fact it was way lower.
2:08:06Like, Forestall did that, and again,
2:08:08This is not Forstall's side of the story.
2:08:10This is what I've heard.
2:08:11But that Forstall led them to believe
2:08:13that the rest of the data was better than it is.
2:08:16Not as good as Google, not as good as it needed to be,
2:08:18but that it was better than it would be.
2:08:20And that what further infuriated
2:08:24the rest of the executive team was the amount of time
2:08:26that Forstall had his team spend
2:08:29on the fancy pants flyover stuff.
2:08:32Right, remember when they first demoed Apple apps?
2:08:33- Oh yeah.
2:08:34- The most, and Forstall did the demo.
2:08:37And as Apple does, whoever worked on it and led it
2:08:41is the one who does the demo.
2:08:42It wasn't just like you're randomly assigned to do it.
2:08:44It was like Forstall had personally
2:08:46spent a lot of time overseeing Apple Maps.
2:08:48And he spent almost all of his time on stage demoing
2:08:50the Fancy Pants flyover stuff.
2:08:53And what I've heard is that the amount of time
2:08:56he spent in the demo on the Fancy Pants stuff
2:08:59was commensurate with the amount of time his engineering team
2:09:01had spent working on that.
2:09:03And there was anger that, hey, we wasted all this time
2:09:08on this flyover stuff, and people can't even
2:09:11get a direction from their home to their office.
2:09:14People are being told to drive into a brick wall.
2:09:17And then I have no idea.
2:09:20The other thing that--
2:09:21it's widely reported.
2:09:22I can't verify it.
2:09:23I don't have-- unless you get Tim Cook or Sportsdoll
2:09:28to go on the record, I don't know how you'd get it
2:09:30on the record.
2:09:31But there's that whole story about the apology letter,
2:09:33that Tim Cook ended up signing himself,
2:09:36and that supposedly,
2:09:39either Forstall was supposed to sign it,
2:09:41or he was supposed to co-sign it with Cook and refused.
2:09:44And if that's true, I've always thought this,
2:09:46assuming that that's true,
2:09:48that he was, you know,
2:09:48Cook wanted him to either sign it himself instead of him,
2:09:51or co-sign it with him.
2:09:52And knowing Tim Cook,
2:09:54I wouldn't be surprised if it was co-signed,
2:09:55'cause it doesn't seem,
2:09:56he seems to me like I know the buck stops here.
2:09:59But when the CEO asks you to sign a letter apologizing for something, your only choices
2:10:08are to sign it or to quit.
2:10:11Like the fact that Scott Forstall seemingly, and I've also heard that he was taken by
2:10:16surprise by his eventual ouster later that year, and I've never heard anything to the
2:10:21contrary on that, it's shocking to me that he thought that he was like an indispensable
2:10:27man.
2:10:28And I think his years working under Steve Jobs maybe misled him as to his political
2:10:34stature within the company.
2:10:36Because I don't see how you, when the CEO says, "Sign an apology," you can't say
2:10:41no and expect to keep your job.
2:10:43No, that seems pretty fundamental, right?
2:10:47At that point, you need to own up to this.
2:10:49And even if it's just like, "Look, we need to make a message here.
2:10:52We need to explain to the customers that we hear them."
2:10:56And it's almost defiant of like, "No, it's fine," or denial or whatever it is.
2:11:02But yeah, to be at that point, also you could argue that maybe that is enough stuff had
2:11:08built up with him that maybe this was a like, "Look, you're going to do this.
2:11:12This is your mess.
2:11:13You're going to clean it up."
2:11:15And if you refuse that, it's like, "Okay, I guess…"
2:11:18There's no way forward from that.
2:11:21That's a symptom of a bigger problem, right?
2:11:25the only way out apparently was to have him leave.
2:11:29Anyway, I thought so. It was about as interesting and on the record take of that as I've seen.
2:11:35Yeah, I loved just the line from Q that it was good here and we lost perspective,
2:11:42and that's one of the reasons we do public betas now is because we want more perspective, and that was really good.
2:11:48That was a good thing to hear, even though we all kind of expected that.
2:11:53It was good to hear that they have learned it and internalized it and changed what they've done because of that lesson that they got beat up for.
2:12:02And overall, I really think Ted Zelle painted an accurate picture of Apple as it currently is, the big giant company that their success inevitably led them to be, and why it means that they can't really be "doomed."
2:12:17I agree. I think it's a good story. My quibbles about it are a lot of just the art of it that I feel like he seems...
2:12:28I don't know. I'm not a big fan usually of the stories that take 500 words to paint a picture of the smell of the food at the restaurant where the interview is being conducted.
2:12:38Unless you're gay to lease, right? And Mr. Sinatra has a cold.
2:12:42See, that's what I like, though. That's exactly what he's going for.
2:12:46- Right? - Right.
2:12:46- Yeah, and it is.
2:12:48And if you like that sort of thing,
2:12:49then I think that it'll work for you.
2:12:51It was never my cup of tea.
2:12:52But the fact is that the Apple executives he talked to
2:12:57were forthcoming about things in a way
2:12:59that is not something we see very often.
2:13:01- Man, how about that picture of Federighi?
2:13:04Man, what a handsome son of a bitch.
2:13:08- He's blue stealing it there.
2:13:09That is total, he's gonna be, yeah, future as a male model.
2:13:13- I haven't seen any memes with it yet,
2:13:15it's inevitable. Somebody sent me one and and I think it was in the context of
2:13:20"please make more memes with Craig Federighi's eyes and what he's
2:13:26you know he's staring at you he's got and he's got his hand out on the table
2:13:29with the wedding ring so it's like sorry ladies." The other thing about this
2:13:33story that impressed me and I liked was that I really think it serves the
2:13:37purpose. I don't know how many people read Fast Company but for somebody who's not
2:13:39as in tune to Apple as I try to be and certainly as you try to be as a more of
2:13:45lay person and someone who might be prone to think like, "Hey, I keep hearing bad stuff
2:13:50about Apple. Maybe they're in trouble." I think it was a very good way of putting their
2:13:56recent troubles in context of where the company really is. This is a very good company that
2:14:02continues to thrive that has suffered some recent hiccups, that it is not a company that
2:14:07is in turmoil. If anything, they're more stable than ever.
2:14:11I agree. I mean, I could even argue that the article gives too much voice to the other
2:14:19side of the sort of--by discussing some of these really dumb arguments about Apple, that
2:14:28they're giving it too much credence at some point. But I did appreciate that he takes
2:14:32the time to bat them all down and say, "These are ridiculous arguments, and yeah, you might
2:14:37read about it at Fortune, but that doesn't mean that it's real. And I think for a broader
2:14:41audience that doesn't read the Macalope or anything like that, they're going to come
2:14:46out away from this thinking, "Oh, I see now. I understand more about what Apple's trying
2:14:50to do," and not that their sales are plummeting and it's a disaster and they're doomed.
2:14:56And I value that story for doing it and being so nuanced about it.
2:14:59I know you've got to go. I know that we've been going on a long time. Just briefly, have
2:15:04you been watching any Olympics?
2:15:06Yeah, I've been trying to. How are you watching it?
2:15:11It's not humanly possible to watch the Olympics in all its places because there's like 6,000.
2:15:14It would take a human being who didn't sleep like eight months to watch all the Olympics
2:15:18stuff that's being made available on TV. I've had the prime time NBC on in the evening.
2:15:25We haven't been watching a lot of other TV. Instead, we've been kind of having that on
2:15:29while we're looking at stuff on the internet and sort of swimming and volleyball and whatever.
2:15:34And then I've done some stuff with the Apple TV streams and with the, on my iPad too a
2:15:39little bit, which is the great thing about having everything available on video on the
2:15:43iPad or the Apple TV or on the web is you can pick a sport.
2:15:48Like if you want to see table tennis or rugby or whatever, you know, some of those may be
2:15:54on cable, but all of them have a feed on the internet.
2:15:58I just can't help but think that the app is so bad.
2:16:02so comically bad that I really can't help but think that it was designed by people who
2:16:07really want you to watch on regular TV.
2:16:09That's a pretty good thing. Given the fact that literally every item on the Apple TV
2:16:14says Olympic Sports, like that's their... Level one header of every single item is Olympic
2:16:20Sports, so you've got like 20 items that just say Olympic Sports instead of what the sport
2:16:25is. It's like, what? I don't even know what is going on there.
2:16:28It's not a new feature. I really can't believe that the iPad app doesn't support split screen
2:16:32view or the picture-in-picture. Yeah, well, I watch soccer, I watch like English Premier
2:16:38League soccer and they have all those games on there too, and it's been like this. I think
2:16:42it's because they're doing a custom video player so that they can do their ad insertions
2:16:45and they want to stick a banner ad on the screen next to their video and stuff like
2:16:50that, so they're basically motivated to not do picture-in-picture and it drives me crazy
2:16:55because what I want to do is pop it in picture-in-picture and do other stuff on my iPad. Yes, which
2:16:59is the whole point of the feature.
2:17:01And it was exactly, I wanted to watch the US men play Australia.
2:17:05It was a good basketball game yesterday.
2:17:06And I thought this is a perfect reason.
2:17:08I'm going to be the, like the kids today.
2:17:10I'm going to work on my iPad and this will be great.
2:17:13Except it doesn't support any of those features.
2:17:16Nope.
2:17:17Oh, it makes you crazy.
2:17:18Yeah.
2:17:19It's I think, you know, they've come a long way from the, you know, from the
2:17:23pay-per-view triple cast and all of that.
2:17:25And, and I feel like Comcast actually, now that they're running the show at NBC,
2:17:29They're more, they're more open.
2:17:31Like they're running.
2:17:32I don't know if you noticed this, they're actually running sports in
2:17:34prime time on cable channels, which they used to not do like when it was on in
2:17:38prime time on NBC, everything else went dark.
2:17:40It's like everybody very quiet.
2:17:41Now we're going to watch Bob Costas and, and they're playing with that now.
2:17:45And they've got this gold zone channel, which is like the NFL red zone, where
2:17:48you can theoretically just turn it on and it will just whip you around to all
2:17:52of the different venues and show you different stuff that's going on live.
2:17:55Which is a really cool idea.
2:17:57So I feel like in the end, maybe the Olympics is going to be best when it's
2:18:01completely nonlinear and that all the only thing that we have that's linear
2:18:06is a best of the day recap, which is the three hours in NBC prime time.
2:18:11It, it, I think that may be the ultimate destination of the Olympics.
2:18:14And it, I think it was obvious that that was the ultimate destination
2:18:17maybe like 12 years ago, but it.
2:18:19It's taken till now for maybe for Comcast and NBC to realize
2:18:22it's the obvious destination.
2:18:25It's just so frustrating because it's obviously not for a lack of money. This is a multi-billion
2:18:30dollar operation. And it just screams for it. It is like in the old days before the internet,
2:18:38trying to cover all of these sports from all of these countries on a TV channel was impossible.
2:18:44Whereas this is the perfect solution. You can watch your favorite sport and you can see your
2:18:49country. It's so poorly done. It makes me frustrated.
2:18:54I feel like I'm actually a little optimistic now because I feel like they've got the pieces in place now and that maybe they even realize
2:18:59where they're where they need to head ultimately. There are always gonna be issues people get frustrated by it
2:19:04It's like they spend billions of dollars for this
2:19:06So they're gonna be ads and they're gonna have stuff that's behind a cable login because it's Comcast
2:19:11They spent a lot of money. They're gonna get their money back one way or another they're gonna get they're gonna make their money back
2:19:16But I feel like now
2:19:18They are headed in the right direction where this could actually be good
2:19:22maybe in two or four years where they like fully embrace the internet, especially if there's an Olympics
2:19:27I don't know what the next Olympics is, but when when there's one that's completely off time zones from the United States
2:19:32Yeah, I feel like I feel like then they're really gonna be able to embrace it because they're gonna have to because you know
2:19:38Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna want to the primetime stuff's gonna be not live at all. Well, it's going back to China soon. So maybe then
2:19:44Anyway, I will say one good thing about being a Comcast customer
2:19:48and I think this is what happened.
2:19:50When I did authenticate with the app
2:19:52for my cable subscription,
2:19:54I didn't have to sign in with a username or password.
2:19:56I think that Comcast somehow figured it out,
2:19:59that they could tell I'm on a Comcast network
2:20:01and they're like, "Good enough." (laughs)
2:20:03- Yeah, yeah, me too.
2:20:03And that was good
2:20:04because sometimes the authentication thing
2:20:06is the most broken,
2:20:07especially at high times where everybody's trying to log in,
2:20:11those things tend to break.
2:20:12So I think, yeah, it looks and says,
2:20:15"You're on a Comcast IP, good enough."
2:20:17Hey, I want to say congratulations. You, your upgrade podcast, the one I just mentioned
2:20:24listening to, is episode 101. You guys hit 100 episodes on upgrade, you and Mike Hurley.
2:20:28So that means two years you've been going indie.
2:20:33And in binary, what is 101?
2:20:36It's five.
2:20:37It's five.
2:20:38I couldn't believe it.
2:20:39Yeah, I'm really bad. I'm really bad. I could work it out, right? Like, one and then one
2:20:43zero is and I was like oh yeah that's five okay got it but no thank you um yeah it's coming up
2:20:48you do a podcast every every week and it totals up to it's almost the reason I know that September
2:20:539th is when they did the event uh not just last year but the year before is because that was
2:20:57basically my last day at macworld yeah was September 9th yeah uh of uh 14 so it's been almost
2:21:05almost two years now of doing this which is it's been great like you know I I think I've said this
2:21:10before, but you are obviously an inspiration for me to go out and try to do this on my own.
2:21:16And I've got two kids that are going to be headed off to college in the next few years, and
2:21:21I live in the Bay Area, which is a very expensive place to live, and my wife doesn't have a full-time
2:21:26job, and it was very stressful, but we have managed to make it work for two years, and my
2:21:31wife was just saying to me the other day, you know, I was very much in the "let's give it six months"
2:21:36mode," she said, "when we started this." And now she's kind of out of that mode and
2:21:40like, it's working, which is great. And you never know what's going to happen, and
2:21:45you know better than anyone, you've got to watch everything and keep in mind, like,
2:21:48what if this happens and what if that happens. But it's been great that I've been able
2:21:51to actually live my life and do stuff that I love, which I kind of wasn't doing at
2:21:56the end at my old job.
2:21:57I know that feeling. Yeah, you got it. You know, when I went full-time on "Daring
2:22:02I don't even think I was doing a podcast yet.
2:22:05And if I was, the whole first run of the show with Dan Benjamin,
2:22:11we never had a single sponsor.
2:22:13We kind of put some feelers out, and people were like, podcast?
2:22:16So we just say, well, we'll just do it for fun.
2:22:19I mean, literally, I guess we lost money on the show,
2:22:22because whatever we paid for web hosting and I think Amazon storage.
2:22:29When I went full time on Daring Fireball, the idea that I'd be
2:22:3250% of my income would be from podcasting wasn't even,
2:22:36I didn't even think it was possible.
2:22:37I didn't even think I was good at it.
2:22:39I don't, not sure I am, but.
2:22:42- It's well, nobody knows what makes a good podcast.
2:22:44Even now they don't, but you're right.
2:22:46I didn't, even, I mean, even two years ago,
2:22:48I didn't, when I left, all of my calculations were,
2:22:53can I do a site that became six colors
2:22:56and can I do freelance writing?
2:22:59And can I make that work?
2:23:01Even then, and maybe a little from the incomparable.
2:23:04But even then, I wasn't really counting on
2:23:06what if I did some other podcasts with Relay
2:23:09and throw those into the pot.
2:23:10And now, yeah, it's a, I don't know if it's 50/50,
2:23:13but it's certainly a huge part.
2:23:15If I stopped podcasting, I would not be able to speak
2:23:19with as much confidence about making it work as I can
2:23:22because I'm also doing podcasting.
2:23:24- Yeah.
2:23:25My thanks also, so my thanks to you.
2:23:27- Thank you. - Upgrade, people can just,
2:23:28just Google for upgrade.
2:23:29- Yeah, relay.fm.
2:23:31Relay.fm and you'll find it there.
2:23:32And there's a whole bunch of other podcasts.
2:23:34And of course you've got like 30 podcasts
2:23:36at the incomparable.
2:23:37- And yeah, there's a lot of them.
2:23:38I'm not on most of them thankfully,
2:23:40but yes, there are a lot of them there.
2:23:41- And you know, home base, let's face it.
2:23:43I don't care how much time we spend podcasting,
2:23:46we're writers and do your writing primarily.
2:23:49And if you don't, if you do it elsewhere,
2:23:50you always link it up at sixcolors.net.
2:23:55- .com.
2:23:56- .com, dot something.
2:23:58- Yeah, .com.
2:23:59- And you can spell colors however you want.
2:24:00you put the you in there it redirects. My thanks also to our three sponsors
2:24:04StateEro, great Wi-Fi, go there and get your Wi-Fi fixed in your house. Fracture,
2:24:08get your pictures painted directly on glass. And Global Delight, who has the new
2:24:12Boom iOS app that you can download for free, just go get it and try it for free.
2:24:18Thank you, Jason. Thanks, John. It's always a pleasure.