0:00:00So I'm seeing people all over Twitter say, "Oh my god, update Chrome right away."
0:00:04Hmm. I can't for the life of me figure out how to update Chrome.
0:00:08About Google Chrome? About?
0:00:12Yeah, that's always where it is. Oh, updating. Well, mine's updated already.
0:00:16I'm on the beta channel, though. Why? What's going on on the regular channel?
0:00:20What's the issue? I haven't bothered to look yet. Everyone's saying update now.
0:00:24Maybe they're just finally getting the new ugly tabs? I don't know.
0:00:28That I've had for like three months now? What happens if your Chrome
0:00:32colon slash slash help is spinning?
0:00:36That seems not good. You go to the task manager window that
0:00:40Chrome has. Oh god. I just don't know how
0:00:44people tolerate Chrome. It's so... I like Chrome.
0:00:48Oh god, how can you be such like a Mac person?
0:00:52Seriously, like you're preach. I'm not gonna say it's Mac-like. You won't even own an
0:00:56Xbox because Microsoft makes it.
0:01:00Microsoft doesn't make Chrome. Oh god. Marco, I could not
0:01:04agree with you more. I am right there with you, dude. Like, you might as well be using Windows.
0:01:08Chrome is so bad. It's not Mac-like, but it is a good
0:01:12web browser. It is not a Mac-like web browser, but it is a good web browser.
0:01:16And its dev tools are still better than Safari's. Yeah, that you're probably right about.
0:01:20I can't really say, but like, if you're not a web developer,
0:01:24I don't understand why you would use Chrome for anything besides, I mean,
0:01:28I guess I use it for like Google Docs. That's about it. It's like
0:01:32ugh, I just, I don't like it. It's so wrong. Everything it
0:01:36does on the Mac is just so wrong. Like, it just behaves
0:01:40horribly. Nothing is where it should be. Not to mention
0:01:44like all the battery life issues on laptops and stuff. It's just bad.
0:01:48Yeah, I wouldn't use it on a laptop if I... Oh, it is so rough.
0:01:52I mean, I do use it on a laptop all day, but my laptop is plugged in all day. But battery life,
0:01:56forget it. It's brutal. But no, it loads all my web pages, and
0:02:00sometimes Safari doesn't. It's like the unreliable keyboard. I just
0:02:04need you to always load web pages. Sometimes Safari decides it is not going to do that anymore, and it makes
0:02:08me angry. And I run both web browsers all day long. I'm always running
0:02:12both. I'm never just running one. So it's not like I'm picking favorites, but
0:02:16I like Chrome. I could not agree with you more, Marco. Like, Chrome
0:02:20is so... I am not one of those people that's
0:02:24super angry about things being not Mac-like. Like, Slack is a
0:02:28sh*t show, and Chrome is probably second place for that.
0:02:32Chrome is worse than Slack. Yeah, I agree, actually. It is less
0:02:36Mac-like than Slack. Well, and because like Chrome, you have alternatives. Like,
0:02:40Slack, it's like if you have to run Slack, you probably have to run it because
0:02:44of a decision other people have made that you need to interact with. So it's fine.
0:02:48Like, you know, you run it, you deal with it, it's no big deal. Whereas with Chrome, like,
0:02:52that's less defensible. Like, you can just run Safari, and chances are
0:02:56everything you need to do probably works in Safari. So like, why would you not run Safari?
0:03:00Why are you running Chrome, oh god, it's so bad.
0:03:04I gave you a reason because of those web browsers. Looking at this tweet that, just in one of our channels, also, seriously
0:03:08update your Chrome installs. It sounds like a security thing. Some kind of security flaw in existing
0:03:12Chrome. Yeah, that's why I tried to figure out how to update Chrome
0:03:16for a good, like, two or three minutes before giving up and asking you guys.
0:03:20The about box. Of course, why is this the about box? Every other update, every other,
0:03:24so I, first I checked the Chrome menu for like a check for updates thing. Then
0:03:28I went over to the help menu, because sometimes things put it in the help menu. Then I went to preferences,
0:03:32which of course is not a real preference window, it's just this crazy URL that opens up the preferences
0:03:36in the browser. And I'm scrolling through all these things that make no sense, like, and then it's like, well,
0:03:40it's not here, I click on advanced, and it's nowhere in any of those either. Like,
0:03:44for god's sakes, like, where the hell do you have to do this app?
0:03:48I would never have thought to go to the about box. I would have done the exact same steps.
0:03:52Uh, you just gotta know that. Whoever goes to the about box of anything.
0:03:56So, Chrome is so aggressive about updates, though, like,
0:04:00there should be an icon in your toolbar that's like a colored arrow, whether it's green or
0:04:04yellow if you've been waiting a while, like, Chrome totally wants to update itself.
0:04:08And will update itself whether you ask it to or not.
0:04:12But if you need to do it in a hurry, either quit and relaunch, which I think will also do it,
0:04:16or the about thing. Well, you can't even quit it anymore. You gotta, like, hold down
0:04:20the quit button. The about, they don't even have an about window either, by the way, just in case
0:04:24you think they're actually gonna pop up a dial. No, of course not. Like,
0:04:28it's like, everything about Chrome is just a giant
0:04:32middle finger to the Mac, but I like the Mac, so it's like a giant
0:04:36middle finger to me. I hear ya.
0:04:40I really do. Alright, let's start with some follow-up.
0:04:44A lot of the internet wanted to write in and tell us
0:04:48in generally very gentle ways that we are all idiots
0:04:52and there is a fix for the springboard rearrangement
0:04:56woes that Jon was talking about last episode. So, if you didn't
0:05:00hear last episode or would like a brief recap, Jon was lamenting in the way that only Jon
0:05:04can, and I mean that in the best possible way, that it is nigh impossible
0:05:08to rearrange things using springboard, you know, using the
0:05:12home screen on Apple devices these days. It is just an exercise in frustration from
0:05:16top to bottom. And I was quietly and silently cheering along with Jon
0:05:20as he made this entire rant because I could not have agreed more. However, I
0:05:24forgot, and I bet Jon also knew this and also forgot, that there is a pro-level
0:05:28maneuver to fix this problem. Jon, can you tell us about this?
0:05:32I did not forget about this suggestion that many
0:05:36people think is a better way. Some people said
0:05:40easier, some people said less error prone, some people, you know, whatever. But
0:05:44there is another way to rearrange things, which is to use two
0:05:48hands. And you may be asking yourself if you think like me,
0:05:52adding a second hand to the surface of the screen
0:05:56does not make this operation any simpler. But their theory is
0:06:00okay, it is more complicated but it is less error prone because yes, you have to put two
0:06:04hands on the surface of your thing or at least be very dexterous with your one hand
0:06:08and have one finger holding the icon and another finger swiping across or whatever.
0:06:12But the advantage you get is that you do not have to hit the edge of the
0:06:16screen, which is true, but now
0:06:20like you are still hovering over, you are still, the
0:06:24icon or icons, you can do multiple that you are holding, you are still hovering over the screens
0:06:28as you swipe past them. And unlike the edge thing, you are not
0:06:32guaranteed that you will advance to the next screen at the fastest possible rate
0:06:36because you have to swipe a second time. So that gives you even more
0:06:40time to perturb the icons on the screens that you are passing through.
0:06:44And I think a multi-handed, multi-finger gesture actually is more
0:06:48difficult and more likely to screw you up, especially if you foolishly
0:06:52grab multiple icons because then when you accidentally drop those somewhere, it is all over.
0:06:56So I do not think this actually makes things any easier. Yes, it is an alternate way
0:07:00you can do it. It works a little bit better on the iPad where you have a chance of perhaps
0:07:04sitting on a table or you have more space to put two hands or whatever, but
0:07:08it does not change the fundamental problem which is that there is no undo
0:07:12and it is very easy to accidentally mess up things that you did not want to mess up.
0:07:16And then even when you get to where you want to go, there is a very small
0:07:20ill-defined safe area where you can actually hover where it will not cause something
0:07:24you do not want to happen. To me, like the multi-finger
0:07:28drag and drop thing has the similar kind of
0:07:32value proposition and also downsides in practice as
0:07:36the rest of the iOS drag and drop system that was introduced in, what was it, iOS 11.
0:07:40It adds a bunch of delays to things that used to not have delays like
0:07:44tapping to get a menu in Safari or things like that or you know, it accidentally
0:07:48starts a drag when you might not want to start a drag. See also, forced touch
0:07:52which has similar problems. But it brought
0:07:56the great advance of being able to hold down something
0:08:00with one finger and use a second hand, but you can use a second finger
0:08:04to like scroll a view or to navigate the interface such that you can drop
0:08:08the thing with the first finger somewhere else in the interface. And it is great
0:08:12that they added that to Springboard, but it has the same problem that that has everywhere which is that
0:08:16not only is it a big delay to get into that mode and it is very error prone to enter
0:08:20the mode or to not enter it depending on what you want to do, but once you are in the mode
0:08:24it is also very error prone to move around with the second finger because a lot of times
0:08:28what you do with the second finger when you think you are going to swipe or scroll, you actually end up
0:08:32picking up a second item. And if that is what you want it to do, great, but
0:08:36the problem with this whole system is that it is kind of unreliable and
0:08:40as John said, very error prone. So in practice, you know, I have known about the second
0:08:44finger trick since iOS 11 or whatever it was released
0:08:48and I have been using it, but I would say I fail and it
0:08:52does something I don't want it to do probably at least half the time that
0:08:56I am actually trying to use it. And I have the, honestly I have the exact same error rate
0:09:00with drag and drop on the iPad as well and the exact same error rate with
0:09:04reordering things in Overcast. Like I had my own
0:09:08drag handles before and then when this system came in, not only
0:09:12did I want to implement the new system, but it also broke my hack that gave me drag handles
0:09:16before, so I figured I was kind of forced to implement the new system. And
0:09:20it is just like the rest of drag and drop on iOS, like I find it very error prone. And when it
0:09:24works, it is great. Like when you can pick up one or two things and then scroll
0:09:28with another finger, that is great. But in practice, it is
0:09:32very error prone and does something I don't want it to do a lot of the time.
0:09:36Yeah, you know, I had completely forgotten about it. And it is
0:09:40funny, this is a tangent, but as I have been using my iPad Pro more
0:09:44and more, I do really, really like it. But it is
0:09:48apparent to me, even as I have adjusted a lot of my
0:09:52workflows is overkill for what I am describing, but like
0:09:56my process for doing things, it occurred to me just in the last
0:10:00month or so when I was trying to like send a link to somebody
0:10:04but I didn't have messages open or something like that, or maybe it was an image, I don't remember exactly
0:10:08what I was doing, but I can, oh wait, wait, wait, I can tap and hold and that will start a drag
0:10:12operation and then with my other hand, sound familiar, I can swipe up to get
0:10:16the doc and open messages and then flick, not really flick, but kind of
0:10:20drag the other thing that I picked up over to messages, drop
0:10:24it there and be good. Which is actually really, really
0:10:28nice and fairly intuitive once I thought about
0:10:32what I needed to do, but because I grew up with an actual, well I shouldn't say an actual
0:10:36computer, oh my god, please don't email me, but because I grew up with a traditional
0:10:40oh god, because I grew up with a traditional computer,
0:10:44it's just very foreign to the way I think and I'm trying to get better
0:10:48about embracing the touch way of life
0:10:52and I am getting better about it, but it's definitely a slow journey
0:10:56for me that has taken longer than I expected.
0:11:00So getting used to stuff like that, like this, you know, part of it is just
0:11:04like you said, what you grew up with and what you are accustomed to
0:11:08but there is another aspect of it, you can actually measure
0:11:12people's performance with different operations and
0:11:16certain things are more friendly to the way
0:11:20people work than others. So to give an example of like
0:11:24the original Mac and using a mouse, this comes up a lot when
0:11:28someone digs up some old computer stuff, maybe in my attic,
0:11:32maybe on eBay, the original Mac came with a
0:11:36guided tour, it was a floppy disk, it was a guided tour, but it also came with
0:11:40an audio cassette that you would play while the floppy disk was in because you can't fit
0:11:44that much audio on a floppy disk, that would be madness. And one
0:11:48of the first things they taught you on the guided tour was how to use the mouse and they had a little
0:11:52animation and they showed when you move it on the horizontal surface of your desk
0:11:56the cursor moves to match it and they had a little graphic that was showing that and the voice
0:12:00is explaining it to you, because you had to explain to people how to use the mouse.
0:12:04But touch is a much more direct interface where it's like, well, there's something
0:12:08that looks like a button on the screen and we say hit the button and you just shove your
0:12:12finger in, you know, and we all see with our toddlers how quickly
0:12:16you don't really have to be taught that much about that once you realize
0:12:20I can just put my MediPause on the screen, I can do something. That's an example of improving
0:12:24an interface. Before there was an indirection, however slight
0:12:28it might be and however easy it was for people to overcome it, but it was still an indirection.
0:12:32Getting rid of that is better. But the same token, all these things we just
0:12:36described with rearranging icons and starting drag operations and holding
0:12:40your finger down and using another finger to swipe through, that's never going to get
0:12:44more friendly than it is. That is inherently an
0:12:48awkward error prone thing to do. And there's no amount of
0:12:52culture or getting used to things that's going to make that a more friendly interface
0:12:56than alternatives that don't require that kind of both mental
0:13:00and physical gymnastics. It's just more difficult things for people
0:13:04to do. It's not impossible. You can do it. You know, toddlers can learn how to do it as well. Like
0:13:08you see a two year old doing the same operation. But all things being equal
0:13:12compare that to an operation where you get to split the
0:13:16task up into pieces. First set the icon aside. Next find
0:13:20the destination. Then put the thing in. It's less error prone.
0:13:24It may actually be mentally, there may be more cognitive load to do the multi-step
0:13:28process because you have to sort of understand what you're going to do. But if you were to test people
0:13:32for their error rates or whatever, you'd see that it's more error prone to do
0:13:36the other thing. Especially if you tested a wide swath of humanity. This is a thing that Apple used to do
0:13:40back in the day that they stopped doing Roundabout when
0:13:44Steve Jobs came back. Which is, you know, you don't have to just have your
0:13:48intuition and gut about what is better for
0:13:52usability. You can test this. You can use science to determine.
0:13:56Given a wide swath of people of varying ages and
0:14:00abilities, whatever thing we're trying to make happen here, we want people to
0:14:04be successful. We want them to be fewer errors. We want them to feel less frustrated. We want them to be able to accomplish
0:14:08a task in a small amount of time. We want them to remember how to do
0:14:12a task across a long period of time. You can pick what your goals are
0:14:16and then you can test your interfaces against those goals and find out how miserably you're doing on them
0:14:20and compare multiple approaches. Bruce Tognazzini
0:14:24if I'm pronouncing his name right, has a, what, asktog.com or something.
0:14:28He's got a website. You can go through all the old tests they did to figure out
0:14:32to come up with the Mac interface. How many buttons should a mouse have? How should the menus work?
0:14:36You know, all that stuff. Which it doesn't mean like once you test it
0:14:40once that's it forever and ever because things get refined over time and we come up with improvements.
0:14:44But you don't just have to guess about these things.
0:14:48But Apple today tends not to do that much of that type of formal research.
0:14:52More, you know, if you read about Ken Kachenda's book where they're like
0:14:56doing that but in an informal way like amongst
0:15:00other engineers in the hallway, "Hey, I tried this and here's how it felt" or whatever.
0:15:04Which is better than nothing. Like if you read a lot of usability books, especially about web usability, they'll say
0:15:08like it doesn't take much to get a, you know,
0:15:1260 to 70% of the value of usability testing. You don't need this big
0:15:16complicated usability lab and a big one-way mirror and cameras on
0:15:20people's faces and, you know, pulse monitors. You can just, informal testing with
0:15:24your co-workers is much better than no testing.
0:15:28But I would say, you know, there's still a place
0:15:32for that sort of actual scientific testing to
0:15:36come up with something better. Because right now the reason we have all these weird interfaces in
0:15:40iOS is because there's nothing obvious and better.
0:15:44Like if you want this capability, if you want to be able to do all these things, it's cool that you can
0:15:48do them. It's awkward. But it's not obvious
0:15:52how you would be able to do those same things with less
0:15:56awkwardness and fewer errors, other than the things I just suggested, which is like
0:16:00a shelf to put things on or using an interface on a
0:16:04different computer.
0:16:08On a personal computer. If you could use a mouse and a keyboard and a much larger
0:16:12screen, I could rearrange Springboard and some holding areas and stuff.
0:16:16And a trial commit interface, it would be much easier to rearrange
0:16:20Springboard. Even iTunes was better, I think. But even that could be improved
0:16:24upon. So I look forward to rearranging
0:16:28the Springboard on our Apple Glasses in 2035,
0:16:32being a much simpler, less error-prone experience.
0:16:36Oh, God. Alright, speaking of simple and error-prone,
0:16:40Apple supplier Corning is working on flexible glass for foldable displays.
0:16:44There's a post on The Verge where this is discussed.
0:16:48Apparently, someone from Corning, the CEO or R&D person, whatever,
0:16:54has said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're working on this foldable glass thing."
0:16:58And they have a very fascinating GIF that they have provided that is at the top of the page
0:17:04that I could watch all day. And there isn't too much to say here,
0:17:08I don't think, other than this is, I guess, a subtle hint that
0:17:12Apple, who uses Corning and their Gorilla Glass for iPhone displays,
0:17:16Apple could, hypothetically, use this forthcoming
0:17:20glass that they say is coming in the next couple of years for a foldable display, if they so choose.
0:17:24So that's good news if you're into it. That's definitely an Apple-style thing to do
0:17:28because, like I said at the last show, plastic, no matter how good that plastic is,
0:17:32if you're constantly going to bend it, plastic is not known for its ability to be
0:17:36bent back and forth many, many times and not show any signs
0:17:40of wear. Same thing, plastic is not known for its ability to resist scratches,
0:17:44like it's just generally a softer material than
0:17:48glass or metal or other things. So there's kind of, you know,
0:17:52there are many reasons that Apple settled on aluminum and glass for basically all of its products.
0:17:56They have the properties that make the products
0:18:00pleasant to use and stand up to wear and tear.
0:18:04Plastic, less so. The original iPhone almost had a plastic display, but they
0:18:08dodged that ball at the last minute. The iPod Nano did have plastic
0:18:12over its display and that was very bad. So here's hoping
0:18:16Apple can figure out the bendy glass because that would be a hell of a way to
0:18:20enter the bendables market. Is that a thing? We got wearables
0:18:24and bendables. I think foldables is what you're looking for. Isn't that what a mic and Jason... Bendables.
0:18:28It's like phones that fold in half, bendy straws.
0:18:32What else is in that market? iPhone 6 Plus. Ooh. Yeah, I guess.
0:18:36Folding chairs. Yeah, I would love to
0:18:40see if bendable glass can actually be a thing. I mean,
0:18:44I am no expert in materials. That sounds impossible
0:18:48to me. Transparent aluminum. But yeah, I mean... It could be worth something to you.
0:18:52If it can be done, that sounds great because, you know,
0:18:56I think it is a critical problem. You know, if folding
0:19:00phones are going to take off, we are going to have to get over this issue of right now
0:19:04all we know how to make the front of the screens out of is plastic and plastic kind
0:19:08of sucks as screen material. Like, you know, it works. It's fine. But if we
0:19:12can have glass, we'd rather have glass. And it makes a pretty big
0:19:16difference in niceness if we can have glass. So that would be great.
0:19:20But I mean, I'll believe it when I see it, I guess.
0:19:24Computer? Computer. What was that? Star Trek 4?
0:19:28Is that right? Marco hasn't seen it. That Star Trek
0:19:32should not have worked. Now I'm going to get everyone emailing me about how it didn't work.
0:19:36But I loved that one. I thought it was hilarious. Everybody loved that one. Really? Oh,
0:19:40I assumed it was just me. It was universally beloved. But it shouldn't be.
0:19:44It's terrible. It's a good movie that makes people happy. It is a good movie that makes
0:19:48people happy. But can you just concede that if you look at the description of
0:19:52"Oh, all these future people are going to come back in time to get some whales," like, come on.
0:19:56It's fish out of water. It's beloved. Beloved characters.
0:20:00Coming back there. And we get to see the
0:20:04crew that we know and love being in a fish out of water type scenario.
0:20:08And it's fun. Again, I agree with you. If you
0:20:12were to look at it only on paper, I maintain that it should not have worked even though it did.
0:20:16Bats aren't bugs and whales aren't fish.
0:20:20Anyway, alright, moving on. We have
0:20:24more riveting USB naming related news.
0:20:28And this actually is kind of cool. Apparently USB 4
0:20:32has been kind of announced in a way. And that is that
0:20:36Thunderbolt 3 is not... patent encumbered isn't what I'm
0:20:40looking for, is it? It is... the specification has been
0:20:44made royalty free. There you go. And Intel has given the spec to
0:20:48the USB Implementers Forum, which are the people that decide how USB works.
0:20:52And so Thunderbolt 3 will eventually be called USB 4.
0:20:56And that's actually really cool because that theoretically paves the way for what we
0:21:00know as Thunderbolt today to be more universal and not require maybe a
0:21:04Intel CPU. Hint hint Apple, hint hint.
0:21:08Yeah, this is a smorgasbord of USB, Thunderbolt, and
0:21:12naming stuff. So first the royalty free nature
0:21:16we've covered that before. That's been a while coming. I guess this is the
0:21:20one of the most prominent fruits of that labor. Second is that Intel is building
0:21:24Thunderbolt and the new USB into its CPUs so that will make both
0:21:28much easier to implement. You don't have to have a separate chip for it. If you get an
0:21:32Intel CPU it's got it built in. It being open, anybody else could do the same thing.
0:21:36Hint hint Apple could make ARM CPUs and build in Thunderbolt. And then
0:21:40you have the USB 4 spec
0:21:44being a superset of Thunderbolt 3 and all the USB 3.2 stuff
0:21:48which makes sense. USB 4 is not here yet. USB 3.2 is like this year. USB 4
0:21:52is like out next year somewhere. And then finally,
0:21:56just to add a little bit more ridiculous naming,
0:22:00all the other versions of USB were like USB space 2.0
0:22:04USB space 1.1. But USB 4 removes the space between the
0:22:08B and the number. So it's USB 4 because it has to be different.
0:22:12Everything they do is like, it's so close
0:22:16to good and they do something to make it either bad
0:22:20or confusing or both. They're going to run out of variations.
0:22:24What do they do for 5? Oh, Roman numerals. They haven't done Roman numerals yet.
0:22:28So, USB V. Can't wait. There you go.
0:22:32I have to keep saying it's pronounced 5.
0:22:36Now this is very cool though. I am really enthusiastic about Apple being able to use
0:22:40Thunderbolt 3/USB4 on their
0:22:44forthcoming ARM computers. Am I right? Yeah, and Thunderbolt 4, I think
0:22:48we talked about that before, but Thunderbolt 4 is also a thing. So I don't know if that has to be
0:22:52in a separate chip, but seeing Thunderbolt built in to CPUs
0:22:56and subsumed into USB means that it is much more likely to be
0:23:00a part of everyone's future than it was before. Moving on,
0:23:04we had talked last episode, I think it was in Ask ATP, about
0:23:08hey, how do I know what my 32-bit apps are on my iPad
0:23:12so if I upgrade this or update the software,
0:23:16what am I going to lose? And we weren't entirely sure how to do this, but
0:23:20unsurprisingly there is a post at iMore that describes exactly what to do,
0:23:24which apparently is settings, general, about applications
0:23:28and then in there it will show you an app compatibility screen that will
0:23:32tell you which apps are no longer going to be compatible in the future.
0:23:36Everything is in the settings somewhere.
0:23:40That's why they have search. But the search doesn't work. The search never works. Yeah, exactly.
0:23:44I think I've had the search work I think one time out of
0:23:48the probably at least five or six times I have tried to use it to find something.
0:23:52I don't know how they possibly implemented the search in settings
0:23:56to make it so bad at finding things that I'm typing the exact name of.
0:24:00Does it work for anybody? It works okay for me. It's kind of like the search
0:24:04it reminds me of the search in System Preferences on the Mac, remember when they added that and they were
0:24:08That actually works! Right, but it's hand-tuned. They added like, I think
0:24:12attached metadata, like you could type wallpaper, which is not a word that Apple uses to describe
0:24:16desktop background, but it would find that preference pane because they put a bunch of synonyms in.
0:24:20But in iOS, like either
0:24:24it's not hand-curated like that or they didn't do a very good job of attaching
0:24:28metadata because you'll type a word that is a reasonable synonym for what you're looking for and it won't
0:24:32find it. And as you pointed out, sometimes you'll type in a word that you think is an exact match and it still won't
0:24:36find it. So I'm not sure what data it is searching across
0:24:40but it's certainly not doing a full text search of all text that
0:24:44appears on the screen in settings screens. No, like you can type literally
0:24:48a word that is in the title and the thing you're looking for will not
0:24:52show up. Like it isn't even like a failure of synonym search or a failure of
0:24:56a spell check or anything like that. Like it's literally not indexing the words that
0:25:00show up on screen. I feel like it doesn't go very deep. Like I remember I was looking for something that was like
0:25:04three or four screens deep and it could never find it and maybe it just does like the first
0:25:08two layers or something. I don't know. Anyway, once you have a search in your UI
0:25:12it's probably a sign that something is amiss. I'm still not
0:25:16entirely convinced that the idea that your settings are in a settings
0:25:20application rather than within the apps themselves is long term
0:25:24the way to go because settings just gets tremendous and it's not like
0:25:28we haven't figured out ways to put screens
0:25:32for configuring your applications within your application and most apps do it anyway. So
0:25:36it's weird. Indeed. Cirilla writes that Microsoft
0:25:40already has Xbox Game Pass which is a quote unquote Netflix for Games
0:25:44service with millions of subscribers. I had no idea this existed
0:25:48but I also have not owned an Xbox since the original Xbox way back
0:25:52when. Yeah. What I was getting at on the last show which was not very well communicated was
0:25:56like how different the phone game market is
0:26:00than console games. Like PlayStation has something similar where you subscribe to PlayStation
0:26:04Plus and you get like a bunch of free games each month. It's not the same thing as like a subscription
0:26:08service but it is a subscription service but you don't get access to a ton of games
0:26:12you get like one or two hand pick free games a month or whatever. But both of those things
0:26:16like both Xbox and PlayStation have a large game
0:26:20library of sixty dollar games of fifteen to sixty dollar
0:26:24games that people want to play each of which is
0:26:28you know significant and worthwhile.
0:26:32Kind of like Netflix with a whole bunch of movies whereas Apple has
0:26:36a collection of literally hundreds of thousands of
0:26:40mostly very bad games that most people don't want to play
0:26:44and a small collection of good games that are already either
0:26:48selling well or getting people to download for free and then selling them in game
0:26:52stuff. And I'm not sure your typical iOS gamer
0:26:56feels like they would derive enough value from any
0:27:00reasonable subscription because most people I see playing
0:27:04games on their phones don't go through enough games
0:27:08to make the subscription work. Because iOS games are so cheap
0:27:12or free if the subscription was five dollars a month they'd be like why don't I just spend that
0:27:16five dollars on games. I spend one dollar and fifty cents on games a month
0:27:20and you want me to subscribe I guess I would have access to way more games
0:27:24but history has shown that I only play three free games and
0:27:28one ninety nine cent game and one fifty cent in app purchase
0:27:32per month on average so it's harder to come out ahead
0:27:36versus sixty dollar Xbox games where if I can get access to a huge library of sixty dollar Xbox
0:27:40games it's easy to see how that math work out if you have enough time to play games.
0:27:44I don't know, it remains to be seen. There could be some untapped market for people who want access
0:27:48to a hundred thousand games of which they're going to play too but we'll see.
0:27:52And this to me, this is just one more argument for why it makes
0:27:56way more sense to have this as part of a bundle than to try to
0:28:00sell it as a stand alone service because it like
0:28:04you know I see why it makes sense on game consoles even then it isn't for everybody but like
0:28:08I see why it makes sense for some people on game consoles but yeah like everything you said was correct
0:28:12about the iOS market it's just so different for games that I don't
0:28:16see people wanting to pay separately for this but
0:28:20if it was part of a bundle they would think
0:28:24aspirationally like that's great I would use that you know even if they don't end up
0:28:28actually using it for much like it would add to the perceived value
0:28:32of the bundle and it would help people justify purchasing the bundle if it includes
0:28:36games and stuff you know and just all sorts of things that they may or may not actually use in practice whereas if you try
0:28:40to sell it separately there's going to be a lot more like scrutiny on
0:28:44that purchase and after even after they subscribe for the
0:28:48people who do if they aren't really playing the games they'll be way more likely to cancel
0:28:52that pretty soon whereas if it's part of a bundle they
0:28:56aren't going to be scrutinizing every single part of that bundle every month to say
0:29:00am I still really using this or not so again it's ever more reasons
0:29:04why I think and hope this is all going to be
0:29:08one big bundle rather than individual services
0:29:12and interestingly I think they can like basically give away access to tons of games without
0:29:16being afraid that they're going to end up paying out a huge amount of the subscription
0:29:20fee to the developers because most games are free
0:29:24and I can't imagine in-app purchases being part of the subscription because
0:29:28that's the way they make all their money so you can get the
0:29:32games for free but the games are probably free already anyway
0:29:36maybe it'll open up a slightly larger market for a 99 cents game than exists now
0:29:40but yeah once you know all the popular
0:29:44games are free and then they get in there and you buy whatever thing they're making you buy in the game
0:29:48and Apple can't allow that to be part of your $5 subscription
0:29:52because everyone would subscribe just so they could play Candy Crush
0:29:56without whatever limitations they put in your way. Just oh unlimited in-app purchase go go go
0:30:00it breaks the whole model that they've
0:30:04painted themselves into. It's not a thermal corner, what's a word other
0:30:08than thermal? It's like a CINO corner. I don't know
0:30:12it's the game market
0:30:16on iOS is so strangely shaped from a historical perspective
0:30:20it's fine that it works for Apple and people enjoy it but I'm not sure how
0:30:24you could throw a subscription into there and it's almost like
0:30:28like Margaret was getting at it. It seems valuable from the outside
0:30:32but in reality it's pointless because no money really changes hands and it just
0:30:36makes you feel better about a bill you're already going to pay anyway.
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0:32:32I don't really
0:32:36know what this next topic is about. So what we're going to
0:32:40talk about is Apple and Nvidia. I know enough to know that
0:32:44Nvidia and Apple used to be chummy and now they're not.
0:32:48Because I am not someone who really cares about 3D cards and
0:32:52fancy graphics cards and things of that nature, I've never really spent the time to
0:32:56really dive in and understand the history here. But luckily
0:33:00I have a John Saracusa that can tell me all about it. So John,
0:33:04what's going on here? As we approach MacPro Day, which
0:33:08could be today. It could be the day you're listening to this.
0:33:12It's time to revisit this, especially in light
0:33:16of semi-recent development.
0:33:20We talked about Nvidia and Apple in the past and
0:33:24particularly Nvidia's place in the 3D market.
0:33:28They have had the best, fastest cards
0:33:32for gaming for a long time. The lead
0:33:36used to swap between Nvidia and ATI, AMD, and
0:33:40whoever else every once in a while, but we've been in a long phase where Nvidia is in the lead.
0:33:44They also have the most mindshare and market share in
0:33:48AI applications with their CUDA language.
0:33:52And for a long time Apple has not been including Nvidia
0:33:56GPUs in any of its products. That's not that big of a deal
0:34:00if Apple doesn't make any kind of computers that are focused on
0:34:04gaming or really GPU intensive
0:34:08AI, Pro 3D, machine learning, yada yada yada stuff.
0:34:12But in theory the MacPro could be targeted at some of those markets.
0:34:16And so it's an open question. Hey, this MacPro
0:34:20Apple is going to learn from all its past mistakes. Is Nvidia
0:34:24going to be an option on the new MacPro? Either from Apple or
0:34:28separately. Like if you buy one but then you could upgrade the
0:34:32card if the thing is indeed upgradable. And on that front you're like, well
0:34:36if they make it any kind of computer with replaceable cards
0:34:40Apple doesn't need to participate in that. They can ship it with an ATI
0:34:44card, AMD card, I keep calling it ATI, whatever. Same company now. They can ship
0:34:48it with an ATI card, but if it gets old or
0:34:52you don't like it you can buy an Nvidia card and swap it in and you'll be fine. The wrinkle
0:34:56there is you need drivers for it and Nvidia
0:35:00in recent months and years has been very willing to write drivers for Mac OS
0:35:04but they've hit a snag. And the snag is
0:35:08that in the latest version of Mac OS, I forgot when they did this, they've been locking down kernel
0:35:12extensions for a long time in Mac OS and the current iteration
0:35:16basically, and this is a quote from Nvidia in one of their support forums
0:35:20Apple fully controls drivers for Mac OS. Unfortunately
0:35:24Nvidia currently cannot release a driver unless it is approved by Apple. That's not strictly
0:35:28true. You could tell people to boot with a VRAM ARG that disables
0:35:32the system protection and loads unsigned kernel extensions, blah blah blah. I think they could
0:35:36get around it in that way, but that's not something people want to do and it's not really feasible for a consumer product
0:35:40but what they're complaining about is that
0:35:44you have to be like a licensed developer and you have to sign your kernel extension
0:35:48and Apple has to co-sign it essentially to say "Yep, we're okay
0:35:52with this kernel extension shipping." And for whatever reason, political
0:35:56technical, bureaucratic, apparently Nvidia
0:36:00can't get drivers for its latest GPUs to
0:36:04go through the process that's required to get them to load on Mojave
0:36:08Macs. And so this is upsetting for people to say like
0:36:12"I can't even just buy, I can't do it on a Hackintosh, I can't take my old
0:36:16Mac Pro and put in one of the new cards because there are no drivers for it."
0:36:20And, you know, the Mac Pro
0:36:24has a chance for Apple to fix all of its mistakes and to make a great new computer.
0:36:28It's not the end of the world if they continue to have this vendetta
0:36:32against Nvidia and say "We are just never going to deal with them." But
0:36:36it is kind of a problem for Apple that Nvidia is the leader in so many different markets
0:36:40and continues to have the "best cards"
0:36:44for many different purposes. And Apple apparently not only
0:36:48refuses to ship things in there but refuses to even let Nvidia do
0:36:52all the work itself and ship things that can work with Macs. I hope that's not true.
0:36:56I hope something else is going on and maybe behind the scenes they are working with Nvidia and these things will
0:37:00come out with Nvidia cards and it will be great. Another possibility is that
0:37:04ATI takes the lead again. They just released a new card
0:37:08I think they were the first to market with a 7nm GPU.
0:37:12The new architecture, new process,
0:37:16it's impressive, but they did not take the lead. Like this new card
0:37:20they came out with that's on a smaller process than Nvidia is currently shipping at
0:37:24just barely matched an existing year old Nvidia card.
0:37:28So ATI has not regained the performance lead. I think
0:37:32this is actually a little bit of a problem. Obviously some of the stuff Nvidia does
0:37:36competes with Apple and its metal initiatives and maybe this is all a mood if Apple starts making its own
0:37:40GPU so who the hell cares about Nvidia and ATI. But in the world we live in today
0:37:44a Mac Pro produced by a company that
0:37:48refuses to have anything to do with Nvidia and also refuses to let Nvidia
0:37:52ship anything that can work inside a Mac Pro is slightly lesser for it
0:37:56and I really hope that's not how things turn out.
0:38:00Of the many things that we'll all be watching for on Mac Pro Day, one of them is
0:38:04does it ship with an Nvidia card and the second one is can someone put an
0:38:08Nvidia card into it, a good modern Nvidia card into it after
0:38:12the fact and have it work. We've heard
0:38:16various rumblings and rumors and things from alleged employees for
0:38:20years now about how there's this massive bad blood between Apple and Nvidia
0:38:24and lots of reasons for it. The main reason I heard
0:38:28stemmed from back a few generations ago Nvidia had those
0:38:32GPUs and Mac Book Pros that died a lot and caused a lot of expensive repairs
0:38:36for Apple and basically Apple blamed Nvidia, Nvidia blamed Apple and
0:38:40Apple had to eat the bill for all that and kind of shunned Nvidia from all their product
0:38:44and so if that is indeed the reason why we haven't seen a lot of Nvidia stuff
0:38:48from Apple in the last few years, I think that's
0:38:52a dumb reason. If there is bad blood between these companies
0:38:56and it is within Apple's power to fix it
0:39:00I think they should fix it because as you said
0:39:04there's pretty strong demand from high end
0:39:08GPU users for Nvidia support. By continuing
0:39:12to not offer Nvidia GPUs, I think Apple
0:39:16is hurting itself and its customers more than
0:39:20whatever any dispute is worth.
0:39:24The interesting part is it's not that Apple has to ship
0:39:28Nvidia cards, they just need to not prevent their customers
0:39:32from using Nvidia cards. That's a, like they've talked about how they're
0:39:36changing their attitude about the Mac Pro and they're going to make the computer that pros want
0:39:40but part of it is Apple's stance. The idea that Apple would
0:39:44sell you a computer knowing that the people who buy it are
0:39:48going to change it after they get it, whether that's
0:39:52upgrades or even just component swaps, that
0:39:56mindset which Apple used to have, that they would sell you a computer with the
0:40:00expectation that whether it's you're going to buy third party RAM or you're going to buy a hard drive
0:40:04from someone else and slap it in there or you're going to buy a second GPU and put it in
0:40:08or you're going to replace the GPU that it comes with with a different one, selling you essentially a platform.
0:40:12A modifiable platform. Obviously that's not
0:40:16appropriate for laptops, for your iPhone, for a Mac Mini even.
0:40:20But the whole point of the Mac Pro is to be different from those other computers.
0:40:24It's different than an iMac Pro, different how? Because they sell it to you and it's got card slots
0:40:28or expansion or whatever. I don't know if they're going to go that far. Maybe they're like, oh yeah
0:40:32it's expandable but it's only expandable with Apple widgets.
0:40:36You have to buy components from Apple and stick them in there and if Apple doesn't sell it, tough luck.
0:40:40But I feel like that's leaving money on the table. If they really
0:40:44want to be serious in the pro market, part of what makes something pro is the
0:40:48idea that you can buy the chassis
0:40:52and the guts and be able to upgrade components as you go along.
0:40:56That's what you're paying all this money for, to have an upgradeable, reliable
0:41:00sturdy core computer that you can augment and build
0:41:04just the machine that you need for whatever you're doing. And again, that doesn't
0:41:08require Apple to deal with Nvidia at all. All it requires is them to allow
0:41:12Nvidia to do what it apparently wants to do, which is sell cards to Mac
0:41:16users and write the drivers itself. And then it's between those customers and Nvidia.
0:41:20If the drivers suck, then it's like anything else.
0:41:24People used to sell like raid cards and their own video cards and their
0:41:28own USB cards
0:41:32for Macs that had an older version of USB. That's part of what makes
0:41:36or part of what has historically made a Mac pro is the ability to do things like that. So this
0:41:40situation where apparently Nvidia can't even get its drivers to work on Mojave because of
0:41:44signing things, I really hope is some kind of misunderstanding.
0:41:48On the bad blood front, the only company I can think of that Apple has had
0:41:52worse bad blood with, if that makes sense, than Nvidia is Qualcomm.
0:41:56And Apple's solution to that is they're going to make their own freaking modems.
0:42:00Short term solution is we're going to have Intel do them. And long term is we're going to make them ourselves.
0:42:04Which, fine, if Apple's short term solution is we're going to
0:42:08use AMD ATI GPUs and all our stuff and our long term is I'll make
0:42:12our own GPUs, fine, then do that. But right now, we don't know that that's the
0:42:16plan. Right now we just see Apple about to release a Mac Pro
0:42:20that before it's even released, smart money is that
0:42:24it will not have GPU performance that is competitive with the best GPUs
0:42:28offered in PCs. Yeah, it just seems so obvious to me
0:42:32that this is, as you guys said, this is a problem that
0:42:36from what we can tell, Apple needs to fix. And being
0:42:40stubborn and petulant doesn't seem to do anyone a service.
0:42:44It doesn't help the users, it doesn't help Apple, it doesn't really
0:42:48help anyone. And I feel like
0:42:52my perception of Apple is that they can be extraordinarily
0:42:56stubborn and extraordinarily petulant if they so desire. And often times, not always,
0:43:00but often times it's for at least understandable reasons, if not good reasons.
0:43:04But geez, this time I don't think so.
0:43:08From everything I know, which admittedly is little, it seems like they just need to
0:43:12put this all to bed and start fresh. So
0:43:16are you going to put an NVIDIA card in your forthcoming Mac Pro, Jon?
0:43:20If it's possible to do so, I can imagine
0:43:24doing that, because I have had multiple GPUs in
0:43:28the Mac that's sitting right next to me right now, and I don't see why I wouldn't
0:43:32upgrade the GPU in my future Mac Pro, assuming that's a thing that is possible.
0:43:36And speaking of that, will you be able to configure that Mac Pro, Jon?
0:43:40This is on the other end of the spectrum. This is a couple of old articles, I've got to look at the dates on these.
0:43:44This was January, I believe. Yeah, one from Jason Snell
0:43:48and then Gruber chimed in about it. But the end of configurable
0:43:52Macs. Some of it is looking at the
0:43:56products that Apple has released recently, and some of it is just tea leaf
0:44:00reading and thinking about where all this is going.
0:44:04I think Jason was mostly inspired by the MacBook Airs.
0:44:08The fact that there's only one CPU option, which is
0:44:12fairly unheard of for Apple laptops, usually.
0:44:16They have a fast CPU and a regular CPU and they charge you a couple
0:44:20hundred bucks to get a small amount of clock speed increase and people wonder whether
0:44:24they should buy it. Sometimes they'll do like an i5 or an i7.
0:44:28This has historically been a way for Apple to boost its margins because
0:44:32they'll charge you a lot more than it costs them to get the
0:44:36faster CPU, more RAM, more storage, so on and so forth.
0:44:40On the iOS line of
0:44:44computers or computing devices, there's configurability, but it is
0:44:48along fewer axes. Mostly just storage. You can't
0:44:52get an iPhone or an iPad with the faster CPU or more RAM.
0:44:56Or if you do get more RAM, it's part of the more storage model.
0:45:00I forget which one, the big iPad Pro I think had more RAM with
0:45:04one terabyte of flash or whatever.
0:45:08And so eliminating things that you can vary, like
0:45:12you can get more storage but you can't get more memory, you can't get more CPU,
0:45:16maybe you can't get anything at all, maybe this is just the way it comes.
0:45:20It seems to be the direction Apple is going and so the
0:45:24open question is, can we envision a future where
0:45:28all of the Macs, except probably the Mac Pro and maybe the
0:45:32iMac Pro, have
0:45:36far fewer things that you can configure about them. Maybe color would still be in the mix
0:45:40because that's the thing that everyone wants to pick, but that you wouldn't have a choice of CPU
0:45:44across any of the Macs, except maybe the super duper Pro models.
0:45:48MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, all those would come with just one
0:45:52CPU. It is the one and only CPU that they come with and it is a good one and it's made by
0:45:56Apple, for example. It's all ARM CPUs, it comes with the, we went through this before,
0:46:00the M11, the X12, whatever the heck letter and number
0:46:04combination that Apple comes up with for the Macs. And all of the
0:46:08MacBooks come with that. All of the MacBook Pros come with the M37
0:46:12or whatever it is going to be. And you don't have a choice. There's not clock
0:46:16speed differences, there's not, you can't get different amounts of RAM in them or whatever. Storage
0:46:20I can imagine them still, you know, they need some
0:46:24I feel like they need some dial that they can turn to charge people
0:46:28more money so I can never imagine them being totally unconfigurable and just having one price
0:46:32one product just because they make so much money by
0:46:36charging you more for more storage. But other than storage
0:46:40I can totally imagine, especially if Apple is making the CPUs on all of them
0:46:44no longer doing what they have done when other people are making the CPUs which is
0:46:48always getting, you know, different binned parts and charging you a couple of
0:46:52extra hundred bucks for a minor percentage
0:46:56clock speed increase. And not only can I see them doing that, I don't think
0:47:00it would be that big of a deal. I mean, witness the new MacBook Air.
0:47:04It only comes with one CPU, nobody cares. There wasn't even like a fake
0:47:08controversy article about it. Like the best we got were these articles, which is like
0:47:12hey look at this, they only offer one CPU on the MacBook Air.
0:47:16Basically what Apple is revealing is nobody
0:47:20like, it's not a thing that people want. Past MacBook
0:47:24Airs you had choices of CPU speed and all it did was require the customers to
0:47:28make another decision in the purchase process. They'd have to think, hmm, do I want this, do I want that
0:47:32and probably the decision most of them made was, oh, minus $99
0:47:36minus $200 minus whatever or like, you know, do I have to charge this much more
0:47:40for some number decimal point to go up that I don't care about? Forget it, I'm skipping it.
0:47:44And so I feel like this is an entirely safe thing to do
0:47:48for CPU speed. Probably also a safe thing
0:47:52to do for RAM. Again, they've done that before. I think there's some, is it MacBook Airs? Some Mac
0:47:56models I think only come with one amount of RAM. The 12 inch only has one option. Yeah.
0:48:00Like, I think that's mostly safe on the low end, especially
0:48:04if they give you a reasonable amount. And that just leaves storage, which
0:48:08is where Apple can put all their money by charging their normal exorbitant prices
0:48:12for additional storage. And they will. So I'm
0:48:16I think this is a reasonable prediction. I think we're already
0:48:20most of the way there and I think it's both a good move and
0:48:24no one will care about it. What do you guys think? Well, first of all, some real time follow up before everyone emails us. Apparently
0:48:28the 12 inch now does come with configurable RAM up to 16 gigs.
0:48:32It didn't when it first came out. The 12 inch? Really? Wow. Yeah, now the high end 12 inch
0:48:36can go to 16. Yeah, that's been the case for at least a year, because mine is 16. I'm almost sure.
0:48:40It hasn't updated for at least a year. Well, that's true. Actually, that's a very good point. What are you going to do
0:48:44with all that RAM? I don't think the CPU can work its way through all that RAM. No reasonable amount.
0:48:48Don't even get me started. I was just thinking to myself just a couple days
0:48:52back. I still do love my little MacBook Adorable. It is a great
0:48:56machine. It is exactly what I wanted in the sense that it is hyper portable more
0:49:00than anything else. But holy crap is this thing slow.
0:49:04Getting the iPad Pro was the worst mistake I've ever made when it comes
0:49:08to continuing to enjoy my Adorable, because it's just painfully
0:49:12slow. It really, really is. Like when I was not comparing
0:49:16it to an iPad, it wasn't that bad. It didn't
0:49:20seem that awful. Of course, it's slower than my iMac. You know, that's to be expected. But
0:49:24holy cow, the iPad Pro is so much quicker than this thing.
0:49:28So I'm kind of of the camp of bring on the ARM Macs, because clearly that will solve
0:49:32all our problems. But to answer your question, do we
0:49:36want configurable Macs? Ten-ish years ago, maybe a little
0:49:40more than that, I would have been probably offended. And I choose that
0:49:44word on purpose. I would have been maybe offended at not having any
0:49:48choice as to CPU options and many, many RAM options
0:49:52and storage options and this and that and the other. But now, I
0:49:56mostly don't care. And I think Gruber's point at the very, very end of his
0:50:00link to Jason's post, I think it's perfect. And I agree
0:50:04with it. Gruber wrote, "I want Apple's system architects to do all the work to make the decision
0:50:08for me to find the perfect balance." And I agree with that. I
0:50:12think storage, especially while it's still pretty expensive, I think it makes
0:50:16sense for that to be something that you can tweak. I'm
0:50:20less convinced that RAM is also on that list. I kind of feel like
0:50:24within financial reason, just dump as much RAM as you can into
0:50:28these laptops until you can't anymore because it's just unaffordable.
0:50:32Storage, it makes sense. I'd also love a configurable cellular radio.
0:50:36But we know that's not going to happen. So... By the way, why not?
0:50:40Why is that not going to happen? I know you're right, but just for the sake
0:50:44of putting Apple's feet to the fire, you're like, "Why does cellular
0:50:48seem like it's something that everyone is just okay with not happening?"
0:50:52We have it in the iPad, and it's great. Other PC makers
0:50:56have it in laptops, and it works for them. Why can't we have it in
0:51:00Macs? That seems like... Well, let me tell you, Marco. It's because when I
0:51:04try to tether to my phone from my Mac, you know, and I don't touch my phone,
0:51:08it works flawlessly every time. It never has a problem.
0:51:12Plus, everyone loves draining their phone batteries, right? Mm-hmm. That's right. And plus,
0:51:16there's no mechanism for having like a software-based SIM card, so you'd have to
0:51:20add another door to the laptop, because we haven't figured that out yet either.
0:51:24But it's okay. Nobody has unlimited data plans. Those don't exist yet, and
0:51:28definitely are not widespread. So I understand why they wouldn't want Macs to burn all your data.
0:51:32Oh, God, I agree with you. Although, all kidding aside, where would you
0:51:36put the little plastic piece for the cellular
0:51:40antenna, though? Where do they put all the other antennas? Yeah, but I don't know.
0:51:44I think they hide them in the hinge right now. They find places to put antennas,
0:51:48because laptops are made out of metal, and they have a lot of wireless radios in them. So like, they
0:51:52find places. This is a solvable problem. All of these are
0:51:56solvable problems, and solved problems in many other devices,
0:52:00including Apple's own devices. This is why
0:52:04I'm just, it makes me so angry that they don't have cellular, because PC manufacturers
0:52:08have been shipping cellular in laptops for over a decade. Apple has been shipping
0:52:12cellular in iPads since the very first iPad, well, since 30
0:52:16days after the very first iPad. But like, it blows my mind,
0:52:20like, why? It would be so useful, and as
0:52:24time goes on, we have more and more justifications
0:52:28for it. It isn't like the need for cellular in laptops is going down
0:52:32over time. It's actually going up over time, as more and more people, first of all,
0:52:36want to avoid, like, you know, using public Wi-Fi, for God's sake.
0:52:40You know, second of all, as like hotel Wi-Fi and everything gets
0:52:44all crapped up with people trying to download the entire internet worth
0:52:48of video all at once, and so it becomes, you know, decreasingly usable. And like,
0:52:52again, and you have, you know, huge increases
0:52:56of unlimited data plans, which neutralizes a lot of the
0:53:00arguments that, like, Mac OS is not optimized for, you know, conserving
0:53:04cellular data, which, by the way, is true, but is also
0:53:08a solvable problem. Apple introduced the NSURLSession cellular
0:53:12permission flags years ago, and those
0:53:16same flags exist on Mac OS, and I don't know if Apple
0:53:20knows about these yet, maybe, I don't know, but they could have rewritten all of their
0:53:24apps to use these. So it's like, it's not, it isn't a big
0:53:28deal, I don't think, to add support for this kind of stuff.
0:53:32And again, over time, we have unlimited data plans becoming more and more common
0:53:36anyway, and cellular carriers making it easier
0:53:40and easier to add additional devices to your account that have cellular
0:53:44modems besides just phones. Things like watches, smartwatches, iPads.
0:53:48So, the reasons to exclude
0:53:52cellular from Macs keep, you know, getting eroded away
0:53:56over time, and there's all the more reason to, like, the only reason
0:54:00you can say for not having it is, well, you can tether to your phone.
0:54:04And yeah, that's true, but why do they have it in the iPad then?
0:54:08If tethering to your phone is good enough, why have cellular in the iPad?
0:54:12The reason why is because it's way, way better
0:54:16than tethering, and there's lots of reasons to do it besides
0:54:20just tethering, and the same things all apply to laptops.
0:54:24So for God's sake, put cellular in laptops. Anyway,
0:54:28sorry for this massive interruption. Please continue with upgradeable Macs.
0:54:32So, I have to ask you and continue your interruption, because I agree
0:54:36with you, if you had to choose only SD card slot, have I asked you
0:54:40this already? SD card slot or cellular radio, what do you choose?
0:54:44Cellular, no question. I would use it more often, and it's harder to add later. Fair enough.
0:54:48I agree with you. I'm not going to argue, but I'm slightly surprised, because I know
0:54:52you really, really miss your SD card slot, so. I do, but I
0:54:56would use cellular a lot more. Like, because I have it on my iPad. I use it all the time.
0:55:00And there's lots of places where, like, you know, I would take my laptop, but I end up taking the iPad
0:55:04because I know it'll be easier to just quickly get online and check stuff on the iPad because it has
0:55:08built-in cellular. But I would like to use my MacBook for a lot more of those things.
0:55:12Anyway, so, regarding upgradeable Macs,
0:55:16I do have a small rant on this, too. I think
0:55:20people are really bad,
0:55:24and I mean this, I know lots of people, I'm friends with people,
0:55:28but people are really, really bad in general at
0:55:32estimating or guessing or deciding which hardware
0:55:36features or upgrades on a computer purchase are going to be useful and important
0:55:40and necessary for them, and which ones are worth the money and which ones aren't for them.
0:55:44I can't blame people for this, because it's,
0:55:48these things are marketed in certain ways that make you think that you need certain things
0:55:52or that certain things will be insufficient for you and you need to upgrade X, Y, or Z
0:55:56to, in order to do application, you know,
0:56:00A, B, or C, the reality is many, many, many of these
0:56:04upgrades that they sell you are things that you don't actually need or that have
0:56:08way less of an impact on actual usage than
0:56:12you might think. And CPUs, I think, are
0:56:16the number one offender here. And this doesn't apply to all the product lines. Like the ones,
0:56:20the product lines where you have meaningful differences in, say,
0:56:24the number of cores between different options. Like the iMac Pro, you can
0:56:28spec the iMac Pro from, what's the base model, six cores? All the way up to
0:56:3218. You know, there's a massive difference in core count there.
0:56:36Even then, it's not a linear increase in performance, because the clock speeds
0:56:40come down as the core count goes up, but you still do get a substantial
0:56:44improvement in performance between those low-end options and those high-end options
0:56:48for, you know, things like the iMac Pro or the Mac Mini, where you have
0:56:52huge differences in CPUs that are available to you. But in most of the products,
0:56:56and especially the portable products, and this is because of power constraints,
0:57:00the difference between the lowest-end CPU offered and
0:57:04the highest-end CPU offered, the difference in performance is usually very small.
0:57:08Way smaller than you would think from the numbers that are on the page.
0:57:12And it's usually on the range of like 10 to 25 percent,
0:57:16maybe. And so you might be paying like $300 extra
0:57:20to improve your CPU performance by 15 percent.
0:57:24And it seems like it'd be more than that, but the numbers that are on screen, but because of things like
0:57:28turbo boost and thermal limits and power limits, it actually ends up being
0:57:32less than you think in practice. But people tell themselves
0:57:36wonderful marketing lies, like, "I want to be doing video editing,
0:57:40and so I have to get the absolute highest-end thing possible."
0:57:44And it often has very little relation to what their actual hardware needs are in practice
0:57:48and what the thing that they're saying will actually use in practice
0:57:52and will actually need in practice, or the difference it'll actually make. And so many
0:57:56people are totally fine for their needs to be solved by the lowest-end
0:58:00option in a lineup, or at best the mid-range option in a lineup.
0:58:04CPU-wise. RAM-wise, I find
0:58:08I don't even know how much RAM to buy when I buy computers.
0:58:12Let alone, I can't even imagine how other people make this decision.
0:58:16And I think it's based on the same kind of voodoo. It's like, "Well, I want to edit
0:58:20video, so I guess I'll get the biggest." Or, "I'm only browsing
0:58:24the web most of the time, so I'll get the smallest." And the reality is,
0:58:28how are people supposed to know whether they need 8 or 16 gigs of RAM?
0:58:32If I can't even tell you whether I need 8, 16, 32, or 64,
0:58:36I have no idea. I usually get something near the middle because
0:58:40I can, and I figure I'll probably use it. But I don't know what I'm actually
0:58:44using. How can anyone else know? And the reality is, I have
0:58:48used high-end Macs, like this wonderful iMac Pro I'm using now that has
0:58:52pretty high specs, and I've used mid-range Macs, like my MacBook Pro
0:58:56which has, you know, it's a 13-inch MacBook Pro, it has nice mid-range specs
0:59:00there, and I've used the 12-inch MacBook.
0:59:04And the crappier one, like the, I think it was the second generation one that I used
0:59:08briefly, I felt some difference between them with the
0:59:12things I did, but it wasn't like, it wasn't as big
0:59:16of a difference in most operation as most people think.
0:59:20Like my MacBook Pro, which, you know, by the numbers
0:59:24should be like a quarter of the speed of my iMac Pro, isn't
0:59:28actually that much slower. In the things I do, even things like building overcast from scratch in
0:59:32Xcode, it's not that much slower than the iMac Pro. When I was testing the Mac Mini,
0:59:36that, I found the same thing, like, you would expect the Mac Mini to be a lot
0:59:40slower than the iMac Pro, but it wasn't that much slower. It was only, it was like,
0:59:44it matched it in CPU performance for the things I was actually doing, and it was
0:59:48just slower in a few other ways. But like, you know, so people are
0:59:52really bad at guessing what they need and
0:59:56what they should spend their money on for upgrade budgets and everything, and I think
1:00:00the two worst areas of that are CPU and RAM. So if Apple is
1:00:04removing CPU customizability from low-end
1:00:08and/or thermally constrained products, that's fine.
1:00:12Because the fact is, we don't have that much choice there now.
1:00:16We just have different ways to spend arbitrary amounts of money to get performance gains that are actually
1:00:20way smaller than we think that we probably won't even notice. RAM
1:00:24is a little more noticeable if you get it wrong,
1:00:28but the base model RAM in most of these machines is what most people buy anyway, and it's
1:00:32fine. You know, we have SSDs now, so running out of RAM when you have an SSD
1:00:36is a lot less of a performance penalty than it used to be when you had spinning disks.
1:00:40And so, if we're getting less configurability
1:00:44in these two areas, that's fine.
1:00:48For most products in the lineup, that's fine. Now, that is not fine for something like an
1:00:52iMac Pro, where the potential range of processor options and the
1:00:56potential range of RAM amounts is way bigger, and you have more
1:01:00outliers at the high end because these are like pro machines for pro workloads and everything
1:01:04and who knows what pros need. So anything that is targeting a high-end
1:01:08use where thermals and cost aren't necessarily constrained
1:01:12very much, it makes sense to offer huge options.
1:01:16Whatever the chipset can handle, whatever the power can handle, offer the biggest options you can
1:01:20and give people a range to pick from. But as you get further down the line, when you're in the smaller
1:01:24products, like especially the small laptops, it totally makes sense
1:01:28to just lock in like one CPU option, one or two
1:01:32amounts of RAM, and then whatever storage customizability you can afford
1:01:36to put in there. Because those are the things, like the CPU matters
1:01:40almost not at all when you're deciding between like, like the
1:01:4412 inch is offered in three different CPUs. If you actually look at the difference
1:01:48between those three, it's very, very small. Why? Why
1:01:52is it three different CPUs? The answer is Apple wants free money, right? Like that's basically what
1:01:56it is, and so does Intel, right? Because some of it's them. But like the reality is
1:02:00like if somebody has the top end, what is it, the 1.4
1:02:04gigahertz processor? Yeah, the top end, the 1.4.
1:02:08If you substituted that out for the 1.2, the base model,
1:02:12I bet they wouldn't even notice. I bet almost
1:02:16no one who has the 1.4 would notice if you swapped it out for the 1.2.
1:02:20And that's a $250 premium option. The fact is
1:02:24like at these, with the small processors, the small laptops, the small thermal envelopes,
1:02:28this stuff doesn't matter. So, fine, with the new Air,
1:02:32we have one option. I have heard zero buyers of
1:02:36the new Air and zero potential buyers of it complain that there is only
1:02:40one CPU option. Literally none, I've heard it from none of them.
1:02:44And you know, same thing, I don't know if the RAM's configurable, is it? But if it is, like
1:02:48that's a lot less important as well. Storage doesn't make
1:02:52a lot of sense to have configurable because storage is something that is
1:02:56hugely variable in people's needs and is extremely
1:03:00expensive. So you can't just put in the biggest amount of storage and call it a day
1:03:04because that would drive the price of the machine way too much. So that makes sense.
1:03:08And also storage is a hard limit. With a CPU
1:03:12you can edit video on a 12 inch MacBook. It'll just take
1:03:16longer. Yeah, it just takes longer.
1:03:20You can do it and it's a soft limit. You'll just be delayed.
1:03:24But it still has the same capability. You can still do the task
1:03:28you want to do, it'll just take longer. RAM, similar.
1:03:32You can still do most things you want to do, whether you have 8 gigs or 16, it'll
1:03:36just take a little bit longer if you don't have the high amount. Storage is a hard wall.
1:03:40You can't just fill your hard disk up bigger if you just do it more
1:03:44slowly. You don't get more space by filling it up slowly.
1:03:48And so that's one thing where it matters a lot more to have
1:03:52that be, to give that a high ceiling for people to configure.
1:03:56And because it's so expensive you can't just give everybody the same high ceiling.
1:04:00So, yeah, I'm on board with this. There really hasn't
1:04:04been an area that Apple has removed customizability
1:04:08from recently that I have really run into as a real
1:04:12problem. I do have problems with other things that Apple makes non-customizable.
1:04:16Like the fact that they use the same keyboard for all of their computers.
1:04:20That I have a big problem with. But that has never been customizable.
1:04:24That Apple has, as long as I have been an Apple
1:04:28customer, which was since the PowerBook G4, they have
1:04:32used the same keyboard in all of their laptops.
1:04:36I never thought that Apple would introduce third party keyboard support for their laptops, but then they did it!
1:04:40Right, like
1:04:44We used to think that about iOS and they actually added a third party, "Oh, like a third party keyboard?"
1:04:48No, they'll never do that. For the RAM question, if you're wondering how much RAM
1:04:52you should have or whatever, we all know this as developers
1:04:56but customers probably don't, but iOS
1:05:00started as a RAM constrained environment. It was a very
1:05:04different fitness criteria for applications than iOS.
1:05:08So iOS devices can get away with a fixed, very small amount of RAM.
1:05:12The Mac has a different history. And yes, even with all those iOS apps coming
1:05:16over to the Mac, that's not going to change anytime soon. So I would
1:05:20say on the Mac, if you're wondering whether you should get 8 or 16,
1:05:24if you're going to run a web browser plus Slack plus one other app, get 16.
1:05:28Because if you haven't looked at Activity Monitor
1:05:32lately, just look at how much RAM your Chrome tabs
1:05:36and Slack are taking by themselves. It is obscene how much RAM they take.
1:05:40Not the virtual memory. Measuring memory is very complicated. There's no one
1:05:44thing you can look at and add up in numbers and come up with a thing that's saying it's very, very complicated.
1:05:48And yes, SSDs are way faster than spinning disks, so it's much
1:05:52less important than it used to be, but SSDs are still way slower than RAM.
1:05:56So if you ever have a choice between 8 and 16, and you can stomach
1:06:00Apple's prices, which are ridiculous for that extra 8, get
1:06:04the 16. But you don't need 32 unless you know you need 32. So
1:06:08that's the tricky part with RAM, is that even on the low-end models, if Apple
1:06:12standardized on 8, it would be bad. If Apple standardized on 16 right now,
1:06:16that would be fine. So whatever the inflation adjusted equivalent of 16 is,
1:06:20they would have to revisit that number once in a while, but 16 is fine for
1:06:24pretty much everybody. But 8, it's not
1:06:28you don't have to be running fancy applications to use up
1:06:32all of 8. And then you're swapping to an SSD, and yes, it's fast, but it is not
1:06:36as fast as RAM. But I'm also eager with everything else that Marco said. And it's making me
1:06:40think... Real-time follow-up, I'm currently, apparently I have
1:06:4464 gigs of RAM in my iMac Pro.
1:06:48And I'm currently using 39 gigs.
1:06:52What are you running?
1:06:56Things have dots under them in the dock.
1:07:00Oh boy, how much time do you have? Finder, Mail, Messages,
1:07:04Safari, Things, iTunes, TextMate, Chrome,
1:07:08Xcode, Dash, Terminal, Tower, Slack, Preview,
1:07:12Calendar, Notes, Silver, Numbers, Tweetbot, Photos, ReadKit,
1:07:16AudioHijack, Colloquy, Skype, and Activity Monitor.
1:07:20So that's a lot of apps. But you're just over the threshold
1:07:24of a 32, so you wouldn't be fixed, fit into a 16.
1:07:28I'm only using around 8. I am running Safari, BB Edit,
1:07:32Terminal, Colloquy, Chrome, and
1:07:36Slack. And AudioHijack and Skype.
1:07:40But there is a gig of swap in use, and
1:07:44I closed all of them. I don't actually have a lot of windows or tabs open at this point
1:07:48because I closed everything down when I podcast for the most part. But anyway, yeah.
1:07:528 is a little bit too little to have breathing room.
1:07:56Especially when... There's another reason people spend the extra money for the faster CPUs.
1:08:00They feel like it's going to give them more longevity out of the machine. And it might, but RAM will give you much
1:08:04more longevity than CPU will. Because there's some,
1:08:08you know, say you bought RAM not knowing that Slack would come into existence, then it
1:08:12becomes an important part of your life, and you just realized how much of a RAMPig it was going to be and the fact that it's going to
1:08:16be running all the time and potentially has a memory leak. On the Mac, that's the
1:08:20type of thing that can happen. On iOS, it can happen because anything that was that much of a RAMPig would never
1:08:24run for more than 60 seconds at a time before being killed.
1:08:28What the hell is Adobe Desktop Service? It's half a gig right there.
1:08:32Yep. What column are you looking at? You can't really... This is the
1:08:36memory. You have to look at real memory.
1:08:40Real memory? Okay. Memory is the virtual memory. But even real memory, it's not... You can't just
1:08:44add up all those numbers. It's way... Wait. Real memory is way more than memory for some of these.
1:08:48Like it says photos, 4.5 gigs. But real memory is 4.5.
1:08:52Memory is 730 megs. I don't know.
1:08:56I thought memory was V size and real memory is RSS in PS parlance.
1:09:00Yeah, see, it's very hard to actually know, like, how much RAM
1:09:04is an app actually using because it isn't that simple.
1:09:08Real memory says R size, which itself is a complicated concept when you mouse
1:09:12over it. Private memory is R...
1:09:16I think I did... I tried to do an article about this once. Explain
1:09:20exactly how RAM is divvied up and, like, there is
1:09:24no number you can get out of PS where you can add up a bunch of things
1:09:28and get two values that's like, here's how much is in the RAM
1:09:32and here's how much is in the SSD. You'd have to
1:09:36go page by page and figure out who's sharing this page from this shared library and is it
1:09:40in RAM. Like, you'd have to dump the whole page table. It's ridiculous. Anyway,
1:09:44it's very difficult to express this to users, but you do know when swap is in use because you
1:09:48can see things getting paged in and out and you can feel things getting slower.
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1:11:48Anyway, your discussion before of like cellular
1:11:52and the configurability of laptops and everything, is making me think
1:11:56of something I've been thinking about for a couple weeks now, but I haven't been able to come up with a good visualization
1:12:00so I suppose people can make a bunch of charts and then spam them at us.
1:12:04And I just wrote it in the thing,
1:12:08the notes doc to remind myself to talk about it as the MacBook hierarchy
1:12:12of needs, but it's not really a hierarchy, it's not really what I'm thinking of. It's like
1:12:16so, new laptops. New laptops are coming. We're all excited about them.
1:12:20There's a bunch of things that could potentially come in new laptops.
1:12:24And I was visualizing them as kind of like an
1:12:28ordered list, and as you go down the list,
1:12:32like if you went down the whole list, it's a short list, it's maybe like 5 or 10 things,
1:12:36probably less than 10 things. If everything on the list appeared
1:12:40like in the new laptops, you'd be like, these are the best laptops ever.
1:12:44Apple is amazing. And if none of them appeared, you'd be super mad
1:12:48because they didn't fix anything, they're still crappy like they are now.
1:12:52And it's a ranked list, so the top item
1:12:56is the one that you say Apple has to do this, this is the most important thing for them to do.
1:13:00And the second one is like, oh here's the second most important. And you have to decide
1:13:04as you go down the list, sort of like a color coding, at what point do you draw a line
1:13:08and say, this is the line of acceptability, like let's say.
1:13:12Where if they do this one or these two or these three things,
1:13:16they will have acceptably addressed the shortcomings of the current laptops.
1:13:20And then there's the next line which is like, if they do these four
1:13:24or these five things, they will have really good laptops. And then if they do
1:13:28these six or seven, they will have great laptops. And if they do eight, nine, and ten, they have the best
1:13:32laptops ever. And I'm sure we all have different
1:13:36lists, but I can imagine a diagram and sort of like
1:13:40a temperature bar thing or color again. What I'm referring to by the way with the MacBook
1:13:44hierarchy needs is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is actually kind of inverted where
1:13:48it's like the basic things that everybody needs is
1:13:52like, what is it, safety is the bottom? No, actually
1:13:56the Wikipedia page says psychological is the bottom need. Anyway,
1:14:00there's safety, then there's love and belonging, then there's esteem and there's self-actualization.
1:14:04So you need safety, because if you don't have safety, if you don't have physical safety, who's
1:14:08worried about self-actualization, right? That's the idea, that there's certain things you need to address
1:14:12because they're like serious concerns and you can't worry about the other things until
1:14:16you address that. But as you go up in the Maslow's hierarchy of
1:14:20needs, you get to things that are sort of more nice to have
1:14:24or at the very top is like, I've got everything else going on in my life and
1:14:28my final thing is self-actualization, right? So the inverted version
1:14:32of that in the MacBook hierarchy of needs is I'm assuming we can all agree number one is keyboard.
1:14:36And I would say if you have to subdivide that, you
1:14:40would say keyboard reliability, because you can't start addressing key layout or
1:14:44key feel or anything else you care about keyboards until you do reliability, right?
1:14:48And then we can start arguing about what number two and three and four are, but I think the most
1:14:52interesting part there is where would you draw the line? Like
1:14:56let's say the line of acceptability where they introduce new MacBooks
1:15:00and the new MacBooks have a reliable keyboard, right, as determined over the next
1:15:04six months or whatever. Do you draw a line right after that and say
1:15:08they will have crossed the line of acceptability? If everything else about the laptops doesn't
1:15:12change or like is awash, doesn't get any better, but they have reliable keyboards
1:15:16is that acceptable or is there a second item and a third item? I don't think we have to solve this now
1:15:20but I am visualizing like a color-coded rainbow chart that we work our way down
1:15:24during the keynote and I know they're not really ordered and I know Apple could like introduce items
1:15:28number one, five, and seven, so there's probably some visualization that would let us know
1:15:32ahead of time, so we sort of for our own personal opinions and say
1:15:36here's what I think if they hit X, Y, and Z
1:15:40here's how I'll feel about it. And doing that before the announcement as opposed to
1:15:44just seeing what they announced and then deciding how you feel about it is a way to
1:15:48keep yourself from going off the deep end and saying this one pet thing that I
1:15:52wanted, whether it's like an SD card slot or cellular or whatever, isn't there and therefore
1:15:56I think these laptops are crap even though they have like five of the items that I said I wanted and
1:16:00they've passed into the line of greatness or whatever. That's tough
1:16:04because on the one side I want to snark and say, oh well
1:16:08obviously if they don't have a good keyboard I can't buy it, but that's not really
1:16:12true, I'm going to buy anything that has... It's not a question of like
1:16:16whether you're going to buy it or not, it's like the line of acceptability is basically have they
1:16:20improved on the current models. Let's say they just kept giving the current models
1:16:24butterfly keyboards, they update the CPUs, they give them more RAM, they're like blah blah blah
1:16:28it's not like we wouldn't buy them because we'd have no choice, they'd be the only Mac laptops
1:16:32but I think we would all agree that they have not addressed any of the problems
1:16:36that we see with the current laptop lineup. We feel like the current crop of laptops of the last three
1:16:40years or so have problems, we want to see those problems addressed and I feel like
1:16:44the line of acceptability is, okay Apple you have acceptably
1:16:48you've addressed enough of the problems from our personal estimations
1:16:52with the current laptops that I feel like, you know
1:16:56okay, alright, maybe they're still not my favorite laptops in the world
1:17:00but you've gotten out from under the dark shadow that is
1:17:04the butterfly keyboard for example. And then from there of like
1:17:08oh these are good laptops or these are great laptops or these are the best laptops Apple has ever
1:17:12made, like all the way up and/or down the hierarchy depending on
1:17:16how you invert your pyramid. Yeah, for me I mean
1:17:20I agree with your definition of the pyramid, like you know it's not necessarily
1:17:24what I buy it because we all know I'm going to buy it no matter what it is, but it's
1:17:28more like you know what will make it fixed
1:17:32like what will be like this is now on the right track or this is
1:17:36no longer a product category that is on fire or covered in asterisks
1:17:40and yeah for me keyboard is number one and
1:17:44if they did nothing else except give it a
1:17:48good keyboard again and I define good there as
1:17:52multiple facets, reliability is number one, but if all they do
1:17:56is replace the keyboard with a good keyboard again
1:18:00I consider that good enough. I would like to see more improvements
1:18:04than that. Cellular is very high on that list but
1:18:08other than that like it's literally just a good keyboard is
1:18:12the only single required thing for me to
1:18:16say this product is back on track. Yeah, it's so tough
1:18:20I don't know. I think I'm less disgruntled with the
1:18:24current laptop line than you are Marco
1:18:28and John hates anything that you can move around so obviously
1:18:32he doesn't like laptops. It's tough for me to say
1:18:36I have definitely had some keyboard problems with my MacBook
1:18:40but they haven't yet been egregious enough to make me really
1:18:44angry about them. I actually quite like the feel of the keyboard even if
1:18:48I don't particularly care for the reliability. So I
1:18:52don't know man. I don't feel like
1:18:56there's anything really holding me back from buying another one today except
1:19:00that I don't particularly feel like I need one and in terms of in general
1:19:04is the line back on track then yeah I think it's what you said it's a reliable keyboard
1:19:08and probably little else. Now John earlier on you had
1:19:12said basically oh if this this and this happened it would be the best portable
1:19:16computer ever made. I think for me that would be
1:19:20continued extreme lightness because
1:19:24that's the kind of laptop I favor these days. All day battery
1:19:28which is obviously indirect. Which your laptop does not have. Yeah
1:19:32and I can't have them both right. I can't have it be extremely portable and light and
1:19:36also have an all day battery. Something that's reasonably
1:19:40speedy with a reasonably nice screen. Another thing that Marco I know you're really
1:19:44bothered by that doesn't bother me as much is not having true
1:19:48pixel doubling at least by default you know so
1:19:52that I can understand why that annoys you but it's not something that I'm
1:19:56particularly bothered by. And that isn't like a huge deal. Like that is like
1:20:00I consider huge deals to be like things that I don't
1:20:04like or that I'm worried about pretty much every time I use it.
1:20:08And really the number one thing on that list is the keyboard. Like I don't I never
1:20:12like it no matter how long you know I've been using these keyboards on and off now for
1:20:16almost three years and I still don't like them.
1:20:20But I'm also always worried that it's going to break.
1:20:24And I'm afraid like I use my laptop very
1:20:28gently and I'm afraid to use it in a lot of conditions where I'm totally
1:20:32fine using my iPad because I'm not worried about like getting a speck of dust on it. But like
1:20:36I'm afraid to use my laptop in a lot of conditions because I know
1:20:40how incredibly fragile that keyboard is. And if a speck of dust goes
1:20:44near it just the wrong way there goes seven hundred dollars and a
1:20:48week of not having my laptop. It's a constant worry and for anybody who has these
1:20:52machines if it isn't a constant worry for you it should be because they
1:20:56are that fragile and it is that random and capricious when
1:21:00they stop working and it is that much of a pain to get them repaired.
1:21:04So it's like that to me like it's it's that
1:21:08overshadow is everything. The rest of it like the USB-C
1:21:12only thing. The lack of the card reader. The lack of MagSafe.
1:21:16The higher price. Like all that stuff is stuff that I have
1:21:20had I've had you know two and a half years to very
1:21:24slowly come to terms with. And I mostly have the
1:21:28touch bar also like I still don't like the touch bar.
1:21:32But if my only option on the next laptop is a good
1:21:36keyboard that happens to also have a touch bar. Fine I'll take it. Like
1:21:40everything else is everything else I can say fine I'll take
1:21:44it. But not the keyboard reliability that and
1:21:48in general the keyboard design but the reliability is the number one problem. Like
1:21:52I worry about that every single time I use the computer and that
1:21:56negatively impacts when and how I feel
1:22:00comfortable using the computer. And so that's bigger than everything else.
1:22:04I was thinking of this I was mostly thinking of it not so much as I mean the line of
1:22:08reliability is an interesting question but I was thinking of it in terms of
1:22:12how if they go down the entire list they'd make the best laptop
1:22:16Apple has ever made. Because in many respects Apple's current laptops are the best
1:22:20they've ever made for example in terms of size and weight and
1:22:24sturdiness of the chassis. They're better than they've ever been. They're thinner than they've ever been.
1:22:28They're very sturdy. They look really good. Like that aspect of the design is great
1:22:32it's just they've dropped the ball in other areas. So I was thinking like if they just go down this
1:22:36whole list they'll be great. I haven't really drawn lines but I've typed
1:22:40up while we've been talking what I think is my personal list
1:22:44and it's not that long it's like seven items long and if they did
1:22:48all seven of these things potentially this is the greatest line of laptops
1:22:52Apple has ever made. So my number one is keyboard reliability
1:22:56my number two is screen resolution like you know native
1:23:002x all the stuff we've talked about. That's just important enough to me I feel like
1:23:04it's fundamental just like the keyboard. I'm talking about the Pro laptops by the way. I'm not
1:23:08talking about the MacBooks I'm saying the MacBook Pro. In particular I'm thinking of the 15 inch but you can
1:23:12map to 13 inch. It's a true retina res at
1:23:16least the old number of points.
1:23:20Number three is the keyboard layout and having a real escape key. So this includes
1:23:24anything improving the inverted T and you know maybe
1:23:28an home and end key on the 15 inch and all that stuff. Keyboard layout is my number three.
1:23:32My number four is SD card just because I have
1:23:36a camera that uses SD cards. Number five is improved battery life because as bad as the battery
1:23:40life is with the current things I don't you know it's lower on my
1:23:44list than all those other things just because I can get by with the battery the way it is like it's ridiculous
1:23:48when you know WebEx drains my battery in an hour long meeting but
1:23:52I'm usually not that far from plugs or whatever. So for me battery life is number five.
1:23:56Six is cellular. I think it's cool but it's
1:24:00and I would use it but it's below all those other things. Seven is MagSafe.
1:24:04A return of magnetic attached cables. I can work around that
1:24:08with a little MagSafe thing that I have from a MacBook Air but it would be great for it to be built in.
1:24:12And the last item is other additional ports. Whatever those ports
1:24:16may be I don't really care but just the idea that it wouldn't just be USB-C on the
1:24:20side. If they did all those things, reliable keyboard, native
1:24:242x, improved keyboard layout and real escape key, SD card slot, improved
1:24:28battery life, cellular, magnetic thing and some other ports, that could
1:24:32potentially be the best laptop Apple has ever made. We're not going to get all that I know
1:24:36but I think that list is technologically feasible
1:24:40let's say. Apple could build this computer and sell it for a reasonable price as the 15
1:24:44inch MacBook Pro and it would be the best laptop they've ever made. They won't
1:24:48for reasons that I find personally frustrating but there's that.
1:24:52Now my line of acceptability is
1:24:56I have to say, I think it's after number 2. Keyboard reliability and screen res.
1:25:00That's just my personal opinion but the screen res thing really bothers
1:25:04me. And I can't live in a world where we just accept from this point on that there will be
1:25:08non-native res on Apple's Pro laptops forever and ever. It's bad. I don't like it.
1:25:12So that's my line of acceptability. And then after that things get scrambled
1:25:16because I don't think they're going to put an SD card in it. I don't think they're going to change the keyboard layout
1:25:20but those are my next two items. So they're probably going to skip that and maybe go to improved
1:25:24battery life and then skip everything else. And they'll end up having good laptops.
1:25:28That's just my current thinking. I'm sure everyone else's
1:25:32lists vary. If I had to make a similar list for the Mac Pro it would be
1:25:36a big giant mess. I don't even know. And honestly the Mac Pro is more of like
1:25:40I feel like with the Mac Pro
1:25:44I have an out. They don't make a Mac Pro that fits my bill. I'll just buy an iMac Pro.
1:25:48It's a good computer. I just want them to be back in the market of making Pro
1:25:52Macs and in hopes that there will be another one
1:25:56after that unlike the trash can and that they have another chance to take a run at it. Just like with the laptops.
1:26:00They make a bunch of laptops that we have problems with but they're going to keep making more laptops
1:26:04so they have more chances to get it right. I just want the Mac Pro to be like that. You know a computer
1:26:08that they make more of every year or two. That's all. Anyway.
1:26:12It shouldn't be a lot to ask. A keyboard that works.
1:26:16That's my laptop list. Maybe I'll refine it before WWDC or whenever we think they're going to announce
1:26:20laptops and then we can all go down the list and check off and see where we end up on our
1:26:24our MacBook hierarchy of needs and/or wants.
1:26:28I'm working on mine as you're talking and I'm not
1:26:32satisfied with it. I don't know. What I've come up with
1:26:36which again I'm not terribly satisfied with is improved
1:26:40keyboard reliability and I'd also like the inverted 2. I do miss that.
1:26:44And that is pretty much the line of acceptability for me. Again I don't really...
1:26:48Well, I don't know. Dealer's choice.
1:26:52Well I said good keyboard but that's a compound item.
1:26:56If they failed on the inverted T then whatever.
1:27:00I would be annoyed by it. And they will. I'd be annoyed by it but I would move on.
1:27:04So to me the line is just a better keyboard. Be that one item
1:27:08or two. It doesn't really matter to me. I'm counting it as one though. My next thing
1:27:12is cellular. I would love to see cellular. Again I don't think
1:27:16it'll happen. MagSafe I don't think it'll happen. That's three.
1:27:20Four is an SD card slot. Five is improved battery life.
1:27:24Six is more frequent updates to the line. Even though
1:27:28I don't buy a computer every year or every month because my name is not Marco
1:27:32I would still like to see more frequent updates. I mean I don't think you guys
1:27:36understand how tough it is to be a laptop fan. We haven't gotten updates in like, I don't know, a year.
1:27:40That's not a feature of our product though. I'm gonna
1:27:44mix that one. Okay that's fine. That's fine. Like to me what matters
1:27:48you know some of these things matter. You know like updates matter only on an
1:27:52extreme scale. Right? Like if a product line only gets
1:27:56updated every like one and a half to three years like
1:28:00that matters if you're like trying to, if you're itching to buy one from one year
1:28:04in and you have to wait and wait and wait for the new models to come out in order to buy something that you think is current. That
1:28:08sucks. But once you own it that stops mattering.
1:28:12And there's a lot of these things like once you already own it
1:28:16things like the release schedule or even like the
1:28:20a lot of the purchase price or the upgrade pricing a lot of that stuff
1:28:24is a one time pain before or during purchase
1:28:28but then after purchase you can move on and it isn't constantly
1:28:32impacting you. Whereas things like an unreliable keyboard
1:28:36that impacts you the entire life of the product.
1:28:40So that's to me like that's way more important. Any factor that
1:28:44impacts you the whole time you own it is way more important than
1:28:48one time pains up front. I think that's fair.
1:28:52So my list then is keyboard and that's where my line is. Better keyboard, more reliable
1:28:56and inverted T. Then below or above the line however you want to look at it
1:29:00cellular, mag safe, SD slot, battery life and more ports
1:29:04because and I think I would move more
1:29:08ports way the crap up if I was committed forever to only buying an adorable
1:29:12because I got to tell you it is really nice to use
1:29:16I believe they're a past sponsor a Luna display with your MacBook adorable to get a lot
1:29:20more real estate when you're say working on like an iOS app or something like that or
1:29:24Final Cut. However that is really really
1:29:28really not as fun when you only have one port and that one port is being taken up
1:29:32by the Luna display and so I have a like two hour
1:29:36limit of having multiple monitors on my laptop because only when it comes to
1:29:40you know using the iPad as a second monitor because after that my battery is dead and I need to
1:29:44disconnect the Luna display which happened to me just the other night. So
1:29:48more ports would be like number one on my list if I knew
1:29:52I was going to buy an adorable and only an adorable for the rest of my life but the fact
1:29:56of the matter is this is a self created problem because I could have just as well chosen a
1:30:00different laptop that has at least one more port.
1:30:04I've got improved battery life somewhere in the middle of my list but obviously the ARM thing we expect
1:30:08will take care of that like we're going to get that whether we ask for it or not
1:30:12unlike all the other things on this list other than keyboard reliability. Are we going to get it?
1:30:16Because any gains that are possible by moving to ARM
1:30:20Apple could spend those by just making the battery smaller to make the
1:30:24laptop smaller and thinner. But I don't think they will because I think like the ten
1:30:28hour battery on the iPad I feel like Apple's line for
1:30:32acceptability for pearl laptop battery life they're currently below that
1:30:36line. They're below it because they you know this is the trade offs they've made but I think they're slightly
1:30:40below it. So I think we're getting improved battery life as a guarantee with the ARM. Not like
1:30:44fantastically better because like you said they can choose to trade it off but I feel like they're not going to say
1:30:48the current laptops have about the right battery especially like in terms of peak
1:30:52performance like if you run it hard how they drain down so
1:30:56fast. I feel like Apple
1:31:00would like their current line of laptops to get a little bit better so when they
1:31:04have the ability to do that they're not going to trade it all away for thinness. I think they're
1:31:08going to do it for that. And keyboard reliability
1:31:12I think about this too in my more pessimistic moments like I'm very certain
1:31:16that they're going to come out with a new keyboard. But I guess
1:31:20nobody can be really certain that the new keyboard
1:31:24will fix all their reliability problems. Obviously that's the whole point of the new keyboard is to solve
1:31:28the problems presented by the old keyboard. But it's not like Apple
1:31:32set out to make an unreliable keyboard right? So
1:31:36it's the type of thing where we'll all be happy when they announce a laptop with a new keyboard however
1:31:40they present it but we still kind of have to take a wait and see attitude
1:31:44to say okay is it actually more reliable?
1:31:48Because I don't think it's getting ten times thicker. It's not going back to
1:31:52the old keyboard. It's going to be a new thin
1:31:56keyboard that we hope doesn't have problems. But that's
1:32:00not an easy thing for Apple to make apparently.
1:32:04So there's that possibility as well. So I'm going to say improved battery life
1:32:08is even if only slightly is a guarantee with the ARM transition.
1:32:12Keyboard reliability is a guaranteed thing Apple will try to do and
1:32:16everything else on this list is potentially able to be
1:32:20ignored by Apple which I find very annoying because once again everything
1:32:24on this list is A. available on PC laptops and B. entirely
1:32:28within the realm of feasibility for Apple to make
1:32:32without any significant downsides
1:32:36in terms of oh we have to increase the price by hundreds of dollars or it is
1:32:40compromised in some terrible way that makes it a worse product. People would love
1:32:44this product that I listed on all these things. They would love it. Again just for the 15 inch.
1:32:48Put all these things on the 15 inch. Nobody would say I was going to buy a new 15 inch but I found
1:32:52that it comes with an SD card slot so screw that computer.
1:32:56Yeah like if you want to have a minimal laptop that offers as
1:33:00little as possible despite the hostility it provides to actual
1:33:04use focus at all on the 12 inch because those buyers relish in that.
1:33:08Hey guys. Sorry about that. We recovered this on past shows. There's no
1:33:12room for another port on that computer. It's impossible. Back when people
1:33:16were much more willing to believe that Apple could do no wrong. Very strongly argue
1:33:20that there is literally no room for another port on a computer that size.
1:33:24Seriously if you gave me the same computer or if Apple made available
1:33:28this exact same computer with all the same internals that I was just
1:33:32whining about what half an hour ago. If they made this exact
1:33:36same computer but with a second port and charged me another
1:33:40$2,500 whatever I paid for this thing for it. I would buy that tomorrow.
1:33:44I really would. I have great news for you Casey. They do
1:33:48make that computer. I don't want a Macbook Pro. No get a Macbook Air.
1:33:52Macbook Air. That's true. You're probably right. The Macbook Air is
1:33:56almost exactly what you want. The only thing is
1:34:00it is significantly heavier and bigger.
1:34:04Going from 2.0 pounds to 2.75 pounds
1:34:08is a pretty big difference and
1:34:12going from 12 inch to the 13 inch body. It is noticeably
1:34:16bigger and heavier. However, the new Macbook Air
1:34:20is basically a two port Macbook. That's basically
1:34:24what they made. It's very similar in a lot of ways and it's a lot better in a lot of ways.
1:34:28Every curve or continuum
1:34:32has a certain point at which you can make things smaller and
1:34:36smaller and thinner and thinner and at some point there is an optimal balance
1:34:40and then at some point you fall off a cliff. When you pass this certain point
1:34:44the trade offs are no longer worth it and they start becoming really severe trade offs
1:34:48that start to really impact you in ways that are no longer worth the trade offs.
1:34:52I think the 12 inch for a lot of people's uses is on the
1:34:56fallen off the cliff side of that. Whereas the 13 inch
1:35:00Macbook Air is comfortably on the other side of the line.
1:35:04I think if you want a super portable computer
1:35:08and you're willing to give up some performance and stuff to get there, the 13 inch
1:35:12Macbook Air is a way, way better balance
1:35:16for most people's needs than the 12 inch.
1:35:20I'm not saying the 12 inch should stop existing because there are people for whom that
1:35:24super tininess of it is worth those trade offs
1:35:28but it's such a severe drop off in utility to get that
1:35:32that you're an able bodied youngish person.
1:35:36You can carry an extra three quarters of a pound
1:35:40and it's fine. Apple already makes the computer
1:35:44that you should buy and it's the new Macbook Air. Except for that stupid keyboard.
1:35:48Well not with that keyboard maybe. Yeah actually that keyboard has proven to be pretty unreliable
1:35:52actually. But yeah they're almost making like
1:35:56the keyboard you have now is worse.
1:36:00Reliability wise maybe it's slightly worse but
1:36:04might be better feel wise. Oh and not so real time follow up I realize that
1:36:08I'm looking at this Wikipedia page. The bottom item in Maslow's hierarchy
1:36:12I just misread the word because the text is small and I'm tired and my eyes are blurring.
1:36:16Physiological safety not psychological. Physiological
1:36:20needs like am I hungry
1:36:24and then above that is safety. Am I in danger of being attacked
1:36:28by cougars or whatever. And then love, belonging, then esteem
1:36:32and self actualization. So the hierarchy, the Macbook hierarchy is not so
1:36:36neat as Maslow's hierarchy but what can you do?
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1:38:44Let's do some Ask ATP. And let's start with
1:38:48Matt Corkum who writes, "Hey Jon, what is the maximum you would
1:38:52spend on the new Mac Pro? Maybe or perhaps the
1:38:56Macs on the tower itself and the monitor separately if you'd like to
1:39:00enumerate those numerals differently?"
1:39:04So keep in mind the answer to this question is heavily warped by the fact that I'm using a 10 year old computer right now
1:39:08and have been saving money for a long time. So this is not to say this is not much money I would have typically
1:39:12spend on a computer. Wait, can we guess first before you say? Go ahead, yeah.
1:39:16Casey, what's your guess? I think Jon is
1:39:20willing to spend somewhere around $7,500
1:39:24for the computer and the monitor. Yeah, I'm gonna do the computer and monitor
1:39:28separately just so you know. Oh, okay. So I think he would spend easily
1:39:32$5,000 on the computer probably as much as, actually I bet you
1:39:36would do $7,000 on the computer and I think you would do another couple thousand
1:39:40on the monitor or monitors. So I would
1:39:44guess all in you're sitting at between $7,000 and $9,000.
1:39:48Alright, so I'm guessing, see there is gonna be some kind of
1:39:52value judgment here. Like I don't know what upgrades Jon
1:39:56will consider worthwhile to go all the way to the max because like when you go to the max
1:40:00for things like RAM or SSD size there's a massive step up
1:40:04in price, right? So I don't know, like is he gonna go for the 4 terabyte
1:40:08SSD? Is he gonna go for the 64 or 128 gigs of
1:40:12RAM? Like those are gonna be like huge steps up in price. Like those alone
1:40:16are like probably $3,000 each, right? So like there's gonna be
1:40:20the question of that but I'm guessing because it has been so long
1:40:24and because Jon has been so frustrated at
1:40:28not having a new Mac Pro, he's had so long to save and he's
1:40:32even dropped hints before that he's had like 10 years to save up and Jon doesn't buy a lot
1:40:36of expensive things. So I'm guessing that the budget for this is
1:40:40higher than what you said Casey. I'm guessing that he will actually
1:40:44end up spending more like $9,000
1:40:48or $10,000 on the tower or whatever it is itself.
1:40:52And the monitor, I mean this is kind of just a guess at what the monitor will cost
1:40:56I'm guessing the monitor costs between $2,000 and $3,000
1:41:00so I'm gonna say a total of around $12,000.
1:41:04Boy, you guys, one of the, just two or three shows ago you were trying
1:41:08to make fun of me for my frugality which you coarsely described as
1:41:12cheapness. I think you're both underestimating my frugality.
1:41:16My limits, and obviously this could change based on the computer and
1:41:20again based on the price of the options because there is
1:41:24a possibility that I spend way too much on a really big SSD just because I
1:41:28hate running out of room on stuff I wouldn't spend on the RAM.
1:41:32My current thinking is
1:41:36not over $6,000 for the computer and not over $2,000 for the monitor.
1:41:40That's my current thinking. Oh so I was pretty close. Yeah you were close, you were just
1:41:44off by like just one digit. I would be willing to spend
1:41:48$5,000 something for the computer but if the computer is pushing up to $6,000
1:41:52I would reconsider and I'd be willing to spend $1,800 for the monitor
1:41:56but if it's like a $2,500 monitor I'd reconsider. Now with the monitor thing
1:42:00if there is no other monitor I would probably go higher just because I'm gonna have to have an Apple monitor.
1:42:04But I'm hoping that if the monitor is more than
1:42:08$2,000 that there's a $5K option I would just take that one, it would cost less.
1:42:12That's my current thinking. Feel free to play this back to me when I
1:42:16plunk down $12,000 for the Marko computer.
1:42:20I hope you do. I really hope you do. Not just to make me right
1:42:24because I'm right enough. If you were describing the computer
1:42:28you're gonna get Marko. That's what you were describing.
1:42:32Mr. 64 gigs of RAM in his iMac Pro.
1:42:36But seriously, you've gone this long
1:42:40it means so much to you. You don't really treat yourself in a lot of other ways.
1:42:44For god's sake, life is short. Get the 4TB.
1:42:48That's the new ad campaign
1:42:52for Marko Almond for Apple Computer. Life is short. Get the 4TB.
1:42:56Don't look at the price tag. Treat yourself.
1:43:00Oh man. Alright, well I'm gonna claim victory on that one
1:43:04until you end up paying $10,000+ for this thing.
1:43:08I'm gonna claim victory until the receipt's in hand.
1:43:12Make sure we bring the receipts. Anyway, Asajj writes,
1:43:16"For thousands of people you are professional podcasters but many of you do different things full time.
1:43:20What do you consider yourself to be with regards to career? Programmers, podcasters, quote-unquote influencers?"
1:43:24I can start with this.
1:43:28I still don't think of myself as a really and truly professional podcaster
1:43:32because that's not really a job, right? But if you look at
1:43:36how I make money, yes it is, and yes I am.
1:43:40But I still think of myself as a developer predominantly
1:43:44and if I wanted to use a really self-involved term, I guess a producer
1:43:48because in terms of both creating video content
1:43:52and creating written content.
1:43:56I think of myself as a developer/quote-unquote producer
1:44:00even though the reality of the situation is I am a podcaster.
1:44:04What do you feel about this?
1:44:08For years I would always write, in anything that was asking me my job title
1:44:12when I'm filling out something for the IRS
1:44:16or entering a country and asking for your occupation, I would always write
1:44:20software developer. So for years I considered myself a programmer
1:44:24number one. It was only recently that I started
1:44:28if somebody asked me what I do now, I'll usually say
1:44:32a podcaster and an app developer. And I'll say it in that order.
1:44:36I spend more of my life creating podcasts
1:44:40than I do writing software at this point.
1:44:44Mine is easier because I just have a regular day job. I always tell people I'm a programmer
1:44:48and that just shuts them up because they don't want to hear about it. I mean it's such a dated term at this point
1:44:52everyone says like developer or software. I always just say programmer because it dates me because that's how
1:44:56old I actually am. I'm of the age when what I wanted to be was a programmer and that's what I
1:45:00ended up being and I just keep calling myself that. And honestly I don't really
1:45:04you know, like my Twitter bio I think says like
1:45:08programmer, tech writer, and podcaster but I haven't done tech writing in forever but I don't know
1:45:12like it's hard to pin yourself down. Like I did do a bunch of tech writing. I feel like it's defining
1:45:16characteristic of my quote unquote career. But just because I don't
1:45:20do it now doesn't mean I don't feel like a writer. Just like if I stopped podcasting
1:45:24I would still feel like a podcaster. But programmer is what I say to people and then they don't
1:45:28ask anymore questions. I should try that because app developer
1:45:32I always hear people's dumb ideas for apps. Yeah people love apps. No one likes
1:45:36programs. Hey I have this great idea for an app
1:45:40can you help me make it? Well first you got to send us NDA so you don't steal my idea.
1:45:4410 print John 20 go to 10.
1:45:48I'm a programmer. I write programs. Oh my word. Thanks to our sponsors
1:45:52this week. Hover, Eero, and Away. And we'll see you
1:45:56next week.
1:46:00Well the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin.
1:46:04Cause it was accidental. Oh it was
1:46:08accidental. John didn't do any research
1:46:12Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental.
1:46:16Oh it was accidental.
1:46:20And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:46:24And if you're into Twitter
1:46:28You can follow them at
1:46:32C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey List
1:46:36M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:46:40N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C
1:46:44U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A. It's accidental.
1:46:48They didn't mean to
1:46:52Accidental.
1:46:56So since
1:47:00everyone loves hearing about cars, we thought we would move the last Ask ATP
1:47:04to the after show for you. Vincent S. was
1:47:08kind enough to send me a recording of how he pronounced his surname, but I genuinely don't
1:47:12think my mouth can make those sounds. So we'll just go with Vincent.
1:47:16What do you think of the Polestar 2? Now if you're not familiar
1:47:20Polestar used to be like the M division of Volvo.
1:47:24Or at least that was my understanding anyway. And recently they have kind of repurposed, they've pivoted
1:47:28I'm sorry let's bring this into programmer/developer terms. They've pivoted
1:47:32to being Volvo's all electric arm, or predominantly electric arm.
1:47:36And Volvo's recently announced the Polestar 2.
1:47:40Which is kind of sort of a model 3 equivalent.
1:47:44I happen to think it's pretty good looking, although John I know you and I were talking
1:47:48well all three of us were talking privately in Slack and you
1:47:52said you did not care for the look of it and we can talk about that in a minute. But all told
1:47:56it appears to be basically a model 3, but to
1:48:00my eyes better looking and from a manufacturer that's probably going to have a whole
1:48:04lot less problems and will probably be able to service this. Which is a
1:48:08novel idea for a Tesla owner to actually get service and do so timely.
1:48:12It's true. It hurts because it's true.
1:48:16But I mean I haven't looked too much into this. There's a really great video that
1:48:20John you had linked to us from Top Gear, not the television program
1:48:24but the journalist organization where they did like a
1:48:28ten minute quick look on it. Which I guess wasn't that quick. But anyway
1:48:32it looks really good to me. I am really enthusiastic about other
1:48:36traditional manufacturers getting into all electric cars. And
1:48:40I am not in the market for a car and won't be hopefully for many years.
1:48:44You know, five plus years. But if I were in the market for a car today
1:48:48I would take a very serious look at this. I really really would.
1:48:52I'd like to hear Marco's input last to someone who actually has an electric
1:48:56car. But John what do you think about this? I think Volvo
1:49:00modern day Volvo has been on a bit of a run of making some
1:49:04really nice cars. In particular I like the turn their styling has taken
1:49:08over the last five years or so. Which is why it breaks my heart that this
1:49:12car is ungainly and ugly. Very much disagree.
1:49:16It's not ugly but it is ungainly and it's just
1:49:20so slightly off of all their other beautiful cars. Like you made all these
1:49:24beautiful internal combustion cars and you have a chance to do an electric car on it which has
1:49:28far less stuff inside it. And this is what you come up with? This sort of
1:49:32tall chunky looking
1:49:36sedanish thing? It's just so... it breaks my heart. But all that said
1:49:40I think it will probably be a pretty good car.
1:49:44And it's a reasonable balance of features and range
1:49:48and performance and typical Volvo safety.
1:49:52I mostly give a thumbs up to the car. The styling just breaks
1:49:56my heart. Because there's just no reason they needed to blow it like this. And then you see the Pulsar
1:50:001 which is their hybrid fancier coupe looking thing.
1:50:04And I think the Pulsar 1 is not as nice looking as some of their
1:50:08gasoline cars but it is way better than the two. The 1 is way better looking
1:50:12I agree with that. It's a coupe. It's easy to make it low slung and stuff like that.
1:50:16I hope the Pulsar 2 is not the way Volvos are going to look
1:50:20going forward. I hope it's just their first awkward electric and they'll sort it out eventually.
1:50:24Marco. This is the kind of car that I've been
1:50:28waiting for more automakers to make. Tesla should
1:50:32not be the only car maker making the kind of cars that it makes.
1:50:36I'm very happy with my car but Tesla is not perfect and they
1:50:40could certainly use more competition. And I would certainly like
1:50:44to have more choices that offer the kind of things that I like about my Tesla
1:50:48in the future. They should not be the only company making these things.
1:50:52And so the Volvo Pulsar 2
1:50:56is Pulsar the brand name? Is it like saying Toyota
1:51:00Lexus? It's like AMG. It's affiliated
1:51:04but they want it to be a separate thing. I don't know how successful they're going to be
1:51:08but AMG is technically not the same as Mercedes but
1:51:12everyone knows it is. Or what is it? Hyundai has Genesis
1:51:16same type of thing. Genesis is a better example. I was going to say Ram vs. Dodge
1:51:20because the pickups are now. No it's not Ram vs. Dodge. It's totally a Hyundai Genesis.
1:51:24The successful ones, Toyota Lexus and Nissan Infinity, those are the successful ones
1:51:28but there's been a bunch of half successful ones recently and so far I think this isn't a half
1:51:32successful category. But we'll see. Well anyway, so the Pulsar
1:51:362 I think, I'm really happy to see this coming from
1:51:40a company that has the long standing manufacturing
1:51:44and logistics expertise that Volvo does. That is something that we really need.
1:51:48And that's like, I hope this takes off very well.
1:51:52It is, I don't think it's for me for lots of reasons
1:51:56number one, it says
1:52:00that in regards to like color
1:52:04material selection it says no bad combinations.
1:52:08But I would argue there's also no good combinations. This car comes in
1:52:12six different colors of grey ranging from white to black. It is
1:52:16literally like a grey, it's like you have six different shades, the top one is
1:52:20white, the bottom one is black and you have four in the middle that are all kind of greyish.
1:52:24Yeah that's very true. Have they ever had caffeine? Like
1:52:28these are the most boring configurations I've ever seen of a car.
1:52:32Midnight does look pretty good to me though, which is the almost black
1:52:36but not quite black. Also I like that they're black, speaking of being a
1:52:40programmer John, is called void. Yeah exactly.
1:52:44I agree, from the pictures Midnight is the least terrible color
1:52:48that I can see in this list. But yeah, just come on.
1:52:52Give it some personality. But other than that, it's fine.
1:52:56It looks fine. My main concern with something like this is that even
1:53:00a company with the history of a big maker like Volvo
1:53:04I still wouldn't want to buy their very first
1:53:08mass market electric car. Because you're still going to be a beta tester
1:53:12at that point. And it's going to have a lot of problems that they're going to have to work out
1:53:16just after it gets to market. You're going to have all those 1.0
1:53:20issues right? And I didn't buy a Tesla until
1:53:24they had been around for like five years. Or like shipping cars for
1:53:28five years. And I feel like I jumped in at a pretty good time
1:53:32because by that time a lot of the kings had been worked out. They were already on their second generation
1:53:36Model S interior and Model S design and everything. And like it was
1:53:40way better than the earlier cars. Which I would occasionally get a service loaner.
1:53:44I know, I could see directly how much better it was than the earlier ones.
1:53:48And right now, there are very few other
1:53:52automakers that have even remotely mature
1:53:56electric options. And this is probably going to be great
1:54:00in five years maybe. Maybe it might take more than that
1:54:04I don't know, hopefully not. But yeah, in five years this might be a great option. Like when it gets
1:54:08to its second version or its 1.5ish kind of version. This could be
1:54:12great. But I would not want to buy somebody's 1.0. In something
1:54:16like a car, which is like, if I buy your car or if I lease your car or whatever
1:54:20I'm stuck with that car for a number of years. Like that's
1:54:24a major purchase that you're going to be using for a long time.
1:54:28Do you really want to be stuck with somebody's 1.0 of a completely brand new thing
1:54:32they've never done before? For that long and for that important of a purchase? I don't think so.
1:54:36So that's something like, that's going to apply to all of these
1:54:40newcomers. Things like the Porsche Taycan, this thing.
1:54:44Pretty much everything that's like an established automakers first real
1:54:48Tesla competitor. It's so different. Like making an all-electric car
1:54:52is so different in so many ways that while I have full
1:54:56faith that they'll be able to do it well a few years in
1:55:00I don't have that faith for the very first wave. Because I think they still have a lot to learn.
1:55:04And I don't want to be their beta tester. You know I agree with you all in all but let's
1:55:08not lose sight of the fact that Volvo has been very forward thinking with regard to
1:55:12a subscription model for cars. And in fact that's exactly what it says on the Pulse Star 2 page.
1:55:16Oh yeah, can you explain that to me? Because I read the subscription thing and it sounds
1:55:20just like a lease. No, so it's
1:55:24a monthly fee. Pulse Star feels that car ownership should be more closely resembled
1:55:28with phone ownership. An all-inclusive monthly fee with the option to return
1:55:32or upgrade at the end of your term without any hassle or headache.
1:55:36How is that not a lease? Because they include insurance as well.
1:55:40Oh, okay. That's it? No, I could have sworn
1:55:44there was something else but I don't know what it is off the top of my head. Maybe that is it. But
1:55:48the idea is that, I think with
1:55:52other subscription services you might be able to change cars periodically. Didn't BMW do that?
1:55:58They said that you could have different tiers. Yeah, you could pick any
1:56:02other of the cars you want and they don't care which car you have. You just pay them the same
1:56:06monthly fee and then you just pick. So they make more money from you if you pick a cheaper car, I suppose.
1:56:10I don't know. It's always to just figure out
1:56:14how to get money from people who otherwise wouldn't buy one. But I feel like
1:56:18it doesn't sound like it's going to be a good deal. If it's the only way you can
1:56:22buy this car, then tough luck. But I wouldn't choose it.
1:56:26I'm excited though. I'm excited to see all these other
1:56:30manufacturers joining this electric future which
1:56:34I think we can all agree is probably everyone's future. And I just wanted to
1:56:38reiterate what John said about Volvo lately. I definitely have problems
1:56:42with our XC90 but by and large I cannot say enough good things about it.
1:56:46I had no desire to own a Volvo before we bought it.
1:56:50The car was for Erin so she basically
1:56:54chose it. I was supportive of it not only because
1:56:58it's her car but because it seemed like it would be nice and I really do love this thing.
1:57:02It is not without fault but I really, really love that XC90.
1:57:06I agree John that Volvo's really been on a tear lately in the best possible way.
1:57:10I wasn't talking about your Volvo, I was talking about the car. That's Marco's problem. He's just ignoring all the
1:57:14SUVs that are coming out because he's not interested in them. And for the record
1:57:18this Polestar 2 does look a little bit crossover-y for me. It's a little high.
1:57:22It is. I would agree. The one thing they totally blew in this
1:57:26Polestar is the, just from looking at it, I'm surprised it wasn't
1:57:30mentioned in the top gear thing, the giant walls surrounding
1:57:34their center console. What are they thinking? What are they thinking?
1:57:38They could have had an airy feeling interior that feels spacious like, you know,
1:57:42because you have less stuff that you have to deal with, fewer buttons, the big tablet has a lot of
1:57:46the controls on it and they put these gigantic walls around the center tunnel.
1:57:50Yeah that's not great. Although, you did say Casey this has CarPlay support
1:57:54right? You know based on what I saw on Twitter earlier, because I had asked this
1:57:58question on Twitter earlier, and some people who were very self-assured
1:58:02indicated that it should have CarPlay, yes. But the tablet
1:58:06system apparently, or I shouldn't call it a tablet, but the infotainment system is actually
1:58:10all Google apparently and it's running Android and so on.
1:58:14But I'm told from the internet, so it must be true, that it would support CarPlay
1:58:18as well, which is more than I can say for your two Teslas that you've owned.
1:58:22Yeah that's the thing, like CarPlay support is tempting. I would actually really enjoy that.
1:58:26And Aaron's, this is not the same setup in Aaron's car, but
1:58:30Aaron's car does have CarPlay and whether or not you like
1:58:34the census as they call it, which is basically their infotainment
1:58:38setup. And that is one of the things that I think is
1:58:42most frustrating about Aaron's car, because particularly startup takes an eternity.
1:58:46But the CarPlay implementation is really solid and really really good.
1:58:50And so I would hope and assume that it would also
1:58:54be good in this new Polestar. And CarPlay, you know
1:58:58I don't know if it's essential today, although I personally refuse to buy
1:59:02a car without it for future proofing reasons, but it is really nice.
1:59:06I don't use it that terribly often in my car, usually only if I'm in the car for more than a little
1:59:10bit or if I'm navigating with my phone, which I don't do that terribly often because I don't
1:59:14go new and exciting places that terribly often. But I
1:59:18really like CarPlay a lot and I've really been glad that I've had
1:59:22it on the occasions that I do use it. Can I just tell you that this
1:59:26configurator website is the worst one I've ever
1:59:30seen in my life. These giant semi-transparent overlays block the view of the car you're trying to
1:59:34configure. It's not obvious how to pick things. Fire the company that made this website.
1:59:38Yeah, it's not good. Fire this company. Like it took me the longest time to figure out
1:59:42how I picked different options because it's got the text on top, it's like slightly grayed out.
1:59:46Yeah. Car configurers are not
1:59:50high technology and this one has no features that those don't, it's just harder to use.
1:59:54Bad Volvo. Bad. It took me a good amount of time looking
1:59:58at this because the first thing you see is the exterior thing and it defaults to white.
2:00:02And for a good like 15 seconds I'm looking
2:00:06at this thinking, what an amazing control. This car is only coming in white.
2:00:10Like of course Casey told me to go look at this and like poke through.
2:00:14How could I not? Yeah. Oh, no, no, there is an X.
2:00:18You can close that. I just did it by accident. There's a little close overlay.
2:00:22Yeah, but then you can't pick things. Like the advanced technology of
2:00:26car configurators is you have a bunch of choices and you click on them and then you see the picture of the car
2:00:30change and neither one of those things blocks the other one. That's the technology.
2:00:34Yeah, and I agree. But then you can hit the bread icon.
2:00:38It's not a hamburger because there's no inside. It's not a hamburger. It's just bread. Chopsticks.
2:00:42Yeah, it's just bread. It's a chopsticks icon. You hit the chopsticks and then it comes back.
2:00:46And blocks your view again. And blocks your view again.
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