00:00:04 ◼ ► We are starting a merchandise sale starting about the day that you're going to hear this.
00:00:09 ◼ ► We have new t-shirts for sale, some of the old ones are coming back, and we have pins that are back.
00:00:13 ◼ ► They're a little bit more improved from before, but pretty much the same design as before. Really hot sellers last time.
00:00:18 ◼ ► So get them if you can, get them quickly. We will put the link in the show notes here, or visit our website atp.fm and you will find the link there. Thank you very much.
00:00:26 ◼ ► Also, we forgot to mention in our wonderful extravaganza covering the Apple event that you're about to hear,
00:00:32 ◼ ► that voting day in the US is going to happen between this episode and the next recording.
00:00:37 ◼ ► And we would like to very strongly encourage all of our listeners who are able to vote in the US to please do so.
00:00:56 ◼ ► No matter what races are in your area, no matter how much you think your vote doesn't or does count, please, please vote. Thank you.
00:01:13 ◼ ► Okay, and I'm also in my house, but that doesn't make sense because I hugged you like five hours ago.
00:01:21 ◼ ► Anytime I speak at more than normal speaking voice for more than like ten minutes, I sound like a chain smoker.
00:01:28 ◼ ► It's been a long day. Marco and I worked together. It is currently nine o'clock in the evening on Tuesday, Halloween Eve.
00:01:55 ◼ ► And so this morning I woke up a little before four, flew to LaGuardia, went to the event, and got home about an hour ago.
00:02:07 ◼ ► And I was listening to last week's episode, actually just yesterday or today or whatever, and I made a snarky comment about how, "Oh, we all got our invites to the event, right?"
00:02:25 ◼ ► And thank you for having them on the East Coast, even though I couldn't make this one, unfortunately, because of my day job.
00:02:30 ◼ ► I appreciate the fact that it was on the East Coast, and my ability to make it was, you know, made it much greater by the location.
00:02:39 ◼ ► And if Apple would like to make them in Boston, that would be super convenient for me, too.
00:02:42 ◼ ► But anyway, it's awesome, it's exciting that we got invited, and it's exciting that you two got to attend.
00:02:47 ◼ ► You know, and I would like to reiterate what Jon said, because I was particularly curmudgeonly/whiny about the fact that podcasters do not exist according to Apple PR.
00:02:59 ◼ ► And I honestly don't know how or why we got invited, and if a little birdie wants to tell me, I'd be curious to hear how that happened.
00:03:10 ◼ ► And so I am extremely thankful, and well, we are extremely thankful, and it was super cool.
00:03:18 ◼ ► And we'll talk a lot about the event, of course, because I think that's what the people tuned in for, but I'm sure we'll be a little inside baseball about what it was like for us to be there.
00:03:26 ◼ ► Jon, I am genuinely sorry you couldn't make it, but I'm glad that even one of us, let alone two of the three of us, could go. So it was very cool.
00:03:35 ◼ ► I'm actually kind of relieved that there was nothing related to the Mac Pro at the event.
00:03:41 ◼ ► It was hard enough for me not to be there, right? But I'm like, "Well, but at least there probably won't be any Mac Pro stuff," right?
00:03:54 ◼ ► I think we'll go through it as usual in show order, in presentation order, but I do have an opening statement that I was going to make more forcefully, and now I'm waffling, huh?
00:04:08 ◼ ► I'm sure we'll talk about this in the event, and this is not what the event was about, but it's something that a lot of people on Twitter were talking about, and something that I was thinking when I watched the video of the event.
00:04:20 ◼ ► That aside from everything that was announced at the event, the subtext that I was getting, right or wrong from this event, is this is Apple whispering slightly louder to the world, not to tech nerds who have already been talking about this for literally years, but to the world, saying, "We're going to make our Macs."
00:04:50 ◼ ► Now, the reason I'm waffling is I'm like, "Oh, sure, they could be saying that publicly in subtext as a negotiating tactic for the company whose name was not uttered or shown to the degree that it normally is in this presentation, Intel."
00:05:07 ◼ ► So if you are trying to get the upper hand on Intel in any sort of future negotiations about whatever they might negotiate about, one way to increase the power of your position is to stop really talking about their products so much.
00:05:23 ◼ ► Stop really bragging about them. In fact, don't mention their name at all, but just sort of use generic terms, like the number generation they're on and maybe the word "core."
00:05:39 ◼ ► So that's my one meta comment on the whole thing, and that is not what this presentation was about. It was about iPads and all the products we're going to talk about, right?
00:05:47 ◼ ► But I felt that signal coming through to me through the video. You guys can tell me what it was like to be there in the room if this was really about Apple today, and I'm just wrong because I was watching it by video.
00:06:01 ◼ ► It's potentially a negotiating tactic, right? I was going to boldly predict, like, this is it. Because I was coming out of this like that, Apple just basically said, "We're making RMX."
00:06:11 ◼ ► Like, "Hello, everybody. To the public, tech nerds have been talking about this for years. Now we're saying to the public, 'We are making RMX.' If you can't figure it out by now, it's going to happen. You want it to happen. Everyone knows it's going to happen. We're making RMX."
00:06:23 ◼ ► But if you were trying to negotiate with Intel about anything, this would be the way to increase the power of your position. To get the public on your side to say, "Oh, the public wants us to make RMX. Everyone agrees our ARM chips are better than everything you have. So what have you got to offer us?"
00:06:42 ◼ ► That ship may have already sailed. We don't know, right? And no negotiating can change the fact that Intel is behind on process, which Apple emphasized in this presentation.
00:06:53 ◼ ► 7nm. Did you know that nobody on a laptop or a phone or, no, I think it's a laptop or desktop market has that. Did you know that? Apple knew that, and they mentioned it.
00:07:04 ◼ ► It was just like, it was hit after hit. Anyway, that's it. That's my opening statement. If I'm out of commentary, we'll go back to it when we get to that section.
00:07:11 ◼ ► Just to answer that question that you posed, I don't think this is a negotiation tactic. I think Apple has made the decision already that Intel is being phased out over time. It's only a question of how and when that happens.
00:07:24 ◼ ► It's like when a job is really horrible and you decide to quit the job. If you go into your boss's office and they're like, "Well, how about we pay you 10% more?" That's not going to change your decision. You already made the decision. It's just an issue of executing it.
00:07:36 ◼ ► That's how Apple's decision is. I think Apple decided probably over the last few years to break up with Intel, and they're just slowly doing that.
00:07:47 ◼ ► I guess I have to add at this point because we probably won't talk about the Mac Pro. I'm kidding. We will. Anyway, this is also making me think that I may be in a position, personally, and many other people may be in a position of buying the last great Intel Mac, assuming the Mac Pro comes out next year and is Intel-based.
00:08:09 ◼ ► What is it going to be like to buy an $8,000 Intel-based Mac the year before all Macs go ARM and the processors are amazing? The other fantasy that's going around is, as everyone has said, "But what if the new Mac Pro is taking so long because it is ARM?" That would also blow my mind.
00:08:26 ◼ ► I feel like I'm in an uncomfortable Mac Pro position right now, but as we'll get to later, Apple is kicking some major CPU butt.
00:08:36 ◼ ► All right. It starts with the MacBook Air. We are talking about the Mac right up front. We spent a fair bit of time talking about the Mac. I didn't time it or anything, but I expected the Mac to take up three minutes at the top of the show. It was a while.
00:08:56 ◼ ► Yeah, because this is major updates. Before we get into the Air, I do want to talk one second about the black and white video about creative people using the Macs that came right before the Air segment.
00:09:08 ◼ ► I thought it was very interesting that almost every Mac laptop that was in that video had the glowing white Apple logo on the back, which means it was pre-2016 models.
00:09:20 ◼ ► You pointed that out to me when we were in the show. There were definitely some that did not have a glowing Apple logo, but you were right. The majority to my eye, or at least once I started paying attention when you said something, the majority were absolutely older ones, which is definitely interesting.
00:09:35 ◼ ► And we also got a number. Tim said that the active Mac installed base is 100 million. That's a number that I don't think we get very often, if ever.
00:09:45 ◼ ► We also don't know how they measure that, so it's like, okay, I guess. What does that even mean? There's many different ways to slice that. It's a round number and it's a section on the Mac, so they've got to look for some number to brag about, I guess.
00:09:57 ◼ ► I wonder if it's connections to XProtect or connections to other software update mechanisms or the App Store.
00:10:04 ◼ ► Yeah, there's definitely ways you can measure that to come up with a bigger number or a smaller number. If you just measured the ones that are supported by Mojave, for example, that number is way smaller, right? Because they actually started cutting people off.
00:10:16 ◼ ► If you measure hardware that you could take from an Apple store and get repaired, like not in Apple's obsolete list, I wonder if that number shrinks as well. Anyway, they're selling a lot of Macs.
00:10:26 ◼ ► Indeed. So they start by discussing how everyone loves the MacBook Air, which was true, if not anymore. And we got a new MacBook Air, which up until just a few minutes ago as we record, I think we all kind of assumed, and Marco, you had reached this conclusion almost immediately, assumed that it was a MacBook Escape, but not.
00:10:50 ◼ ► But it sounds like that is actually not true. So can you tell me a little more about this, Marco?
00:10:54 ◼ ► Yeah, so this, I've been kind of like on a research rollercoaster all day trying to figure out the MacBook Air. Like, so here's, you know, it was introduced, like, you know, we've all in the Mac community and especially Apple users, we love the MacBook Air.
00:11:11 ◼ ► We have loved the MacBook Air for a very long time. And they capitalized very much on that in this presentation. They, like, Tim called out the MacBook Air as the most loved Mac, which I think that was probably an accurate description.
00:11:26 ◼ ► They even, he even brought up the, he called back the envelope reference, which was really nice. And so, like, it referred back to all the MacBook Air history and really capitalize on the MacBook Air love that it has built up over time as, like, one of Apple's most valuable product names and brands and icons, right?
00:11:49 ◼ ► The funny thing is, if you look at what they actually have shipped as the new MacBook Air, it looks a lot like a middle point between two computers they've been shipping for two years now.
00:12:03 ◼ ► The MacBook Escape, which they've been shipping since 2016. And it also now we're learning that it actually has a lot of similarities to the 12-inch MacBook, which shipped in 2015.
00:12:14 ◼ ► When the MacBook Escape was unveiled in 2016, Phil Schiller, during the presentation, actually called out this configuration of the MacBook Pro without the touch bar as an Air successor.
00:12:28 ◼ ► He mentioned the Air and he said, he said they created this new configuration of it to, you know, to appeal to Air buyers or to, something like that, right? I forget the exact words.
00:12:37 ◼ ► And so they were positioning, oh, and it made sense, like, technically, because it had the same processor class as the Air, the same approximate guts as the Air.
00:12:46 ◼ ► It was totally different from the touch bar models. Like, all the guts were different, like the components, the CPU and everything.
00:12:53 ◼ ► - Yeah, it was 3.0 pounds, 13-inch screen, like, it was very, very similar to the MacBook Air in many, many ways.
00:13:01 ◼ ► Clearly, the MacBook Escape was supposed to be the MacBook Air replacement and the market basically said no, for lots of reasons.
00:13:12 ◼ ► Like, there was, since a price drop in the Escape, that brought it down a little bit further, but, you know, in 2016, it was much more expensive than the Air and people didn't like the new keyboard, which also kept dying.
00:13:25 ◼ ► People didn't like the fewer ports and, you know, the loss of the legacy ports and the fewer total ports, you know, because it only had the two, plus the headphone jack.
00:13:34 ◼ ► That has been on sale for two years and the market has spoken very loudly that, no, that is not the MacBook Air replacement we were looking for.
00:13:43 ◼ ► - One thing I'll throw in there, obviously the price, I think, is the number one concern in everything you brought up, but I actually think, and I can say this more confidently now that Apple probably agrees with me,
00:13:53 ◼ ► that the taper, the lack of a taper, was like the third place factor, which sounds stupid and I've railed against the taper before saying you can fit more battery if you don't taper it.
00:14:02 ◼ ► But it's clear that Apple considers, as I think I mentioned a couple shows back, the taper to be an important part of the MacBook Air's branding.
00:14:13 ◼ ► They put it on the 12-inch MacBook, the MacBook One, that tapers, and the new Air has the taper as well, and the Escape didn't.
00:14:22 ◼ ► And so, obviously the price, I think, was the number one, and number two was probably lack of ports and MagSafe and all that other stuff, but number three, I think, was the taper.
00:14:30 ◼ ► Because if you love the MacBook Air and it's your most loved thing, what you want more than anything is a replacement for the MacBook Air that is like your MacBook Air, but better.
00:14:39 ◼ ► And like your MacBook Air, like I was talking about this when we were talking about the rumors, what does it mean to make a new MacBook Air?
00:14:44 ◼ ► Like the MacBook Air means, essentially, it has to be wedge-shaped, because that's the MacBook Air.
00:14:48 ◼ ► And I think it feels thinner because of the skinny edge, and I think it makes people think, "Oh, I had an old MacBook Air that I loved, and now here's a new MacBook Air," which we'll see whether we love or not, but it's clearly a MacBook Air, whereas the new MacBook Escape was not a MacBook Air as much as Phil Schiller may have wanted it to be.
00:15:02 ◼ ► It was the MacBook Escape. It was the MacBook without Touch Bar with a really big Escape key. That's what it was, and it cost a bazillion dollars, and it was not a new Air.
00:15:11 ◼ ► See, I agree it was not a new Air, but to me, what it looks like they have done here is basically renamed the MacBook Escape, the new MacBook Air, I made it wedge-shaped, and now it still has almost all of the same drawbacks as the Escape did to Air buyers.
00:15:32 ◼ ► Right, yeah, okay, I'll get to that in a second. But now that they call it the Air, now everyone's like, "Oh, finally, they made the computer I wanted," but it appears as though they really have done a marketing jujitsu here.
00:15:44 ◼ ► It really is basically a halfway point between the 12-inch MacBook and the Escape, and it does not have the things that MacBook Air people want, but it's called a MacBook Air.
00:15:58 ◼ ► And it's wedge-shaped, and it's three pounds, and it's 13 inches, but they've already been selling a computer that is almost exactly that for two years that nobody has bought, basically.
00:16:07 ◼ ► So I don't, to me, everyone's really happy today because this is the day the event happened, everyone is very excited about everything, it looks really cool and everything, but if you enumerate the reasons why you weren't buying the Escape for the last two years, all of those reasons apply to this.
00:16:25 ◼ ► And more. And I remember a couple shows ago, I was saying, when we were in our umpteenth iteration of gnashing our teeth about the laptop line, it was like, something like, "Imagine if Apple shipped this computer, how much would you like?"
00:16:38 ◼ ► And I said, "Imagine a MacBook Air, but that's retina." And it's like, that's what people want, right? And so isn't that exactly what you got? Isn't it a retina MacBook Air?
00:16:47 ◼ ► And I look at this machine, and I say to you, "If I took this machine, and I put a 15W CPU instead of a 5W in it, and I put a USB-A and an SD card slot on it, and I put a different keyboard on, would you like it more or less than the computer here?"
00:17:00 ◼ ► And I would be hard-pressed to find somebody who would say they would like it less. Because those things I just changed about it, they would probably make it more expensive, but to the point that you're going to get to soon,
00:17:13 ◼ ► there already is a bunch of other laptops in Apple's line that are like this. There's a bunch of other products that are sort of spreading out along the line here.
00:17:26 ◼ ► If you wanted to make a new computer that fills a new role, the reason people don't like the escape, like you said, if you knew about all those reasons, if you want to counteract them, make a retina MacBook Air.
00:17:36 ◼ ► Which is, take the MacBook Air and put a retina screen on it and update the USB ports or whatever, but don't take away things that people love, which is the keyboard that they like that's more reliable, maybe an SD card slot, maybe a USB-A slot.
00:17:48 ◼ ► There's things that you could do, there's small things that everyone would say, "Oh, that's better. That's even better than what we got." But they haven't done that.
00:17:55 ◼ ► So I think when people look at this computer, I think they may actually go pretty far on the fact that it's called MacBook Air, but if you had that sort of Pepsi challenge where I said, "Do you want this one or the one with the single USB-A port?"
00:18:09 ◼ ► And they'd be like, "Oh, I'll take that one. Why wouldn't I take the one with the big chunky port? Because I have some stuff that's shaped like that that goes in that hole. Do you want this one or the one that has MagSafe?"
00:18:17 ◼ ► "Oh, well, I love the MacBook Air. It's the most loved Mac ever. And I love MagSafe. And first of all, I'll take the one with MagSafe." Those two changes right there wouldn't actually cost that much more money.
00:18:26 ◼ ► Obviously, Apple is on the outs about MagSafe for reasons that I don't think have been fully articulated to the public, but may actually be valid. We just don't know. Maybe it was starting fires or causing reliability concerns.
00:18:35 ◼ ► But a USB-A port? That doesn't cost that much money. They could find room to fit it, and people would love it, but Apple says no.
00:18:50 ◼ ► Yeah, okay, yeah, fair. But what that really means, though, is one port if you have it plugged in, plus the headphone port, which is on the wrong side.
00:18:57 ◼ ► No, having one more port sounds like paradise. Don't you knock it, my friend. That would be amazing.
00:19:03 ◼ ► And I'll get to that in a second, too. But anyway, so you have the same ports as the Escape, which I had for a while and decided were not enough, but okay, we'll move on from that. This is a low-end product, after all.
00:19:19 ◼ ► So, obviously, with the change of there being Touch ID without a Touch Bar, which, by the way, is awesome. I love that. I love that you can get Touch ID without the Touch Bar. That is a great option, and I hope that option moves across the line.
00:19:32 ◼ ► Well, you hope that just because you're begging for scraps. I hope Face ID moves across the line, but we're not there yet.
00:19:39 ◼ ► Fair enough, yeah. I'd say if we're going to keep having that giant top bezel on the screen, might as well make Face ID in there. But anyway, so it is the same keyboard, though.
00:19:48 ◼ ► So anybody hoping for a different keyboard, myself included, we are disappointed because it is the same.
00:19:54 ◼ ► Now, it does have that silicone membrane that the 2018 update brought to that keyboard to make it quieter, but we also know that there are still reports of these keys flaking out and dying, so it's not fixed.
00:20:06 ◼ ► The problem is not gone. It just seems to be maybe reduced. So it still has an unreliable, expensive, hard-to-service keyboard, which I still assert is a terrible choice, not only for anybody, but especially for a low-end model, where these have to last a long time.
00:20:23 ◼ ► They're sold to very value-conscious buyers. They need to withstand things like schools and heavy use. So specs of dust are going to be a problem, I think.
00:20:33 ◼ ► They're going to keep pushing this. I was hoping that this new MacBook Air would be the first model to show off a new industrial design that would spread across the line.
00:20:42 ◼ ► Obviously, that was wrong. That was not in the cards for this year. That is not going to happen yet. We're not ready for it yet. I'm disappointed by that, but oh well.
00:20:51 ◼ ► And your new hope should be that this is the last laptop in the old design language. So you were hoping this would be the first of the new generation.
00:21:01 ◼ ► Now we all switch to saying, "I really hope this is the last of this generation." Meaning this generation means, starting with the 2015 MacBook, of the butterfly keyboard generation of no ports, this keyboard, we should all pray that this is the last one.
00:21:16 ◼ ► That whatever the new generation is coming in the future, it wasn't in time for this. So this is the capstone. They've now converted their entire laptop line to this style and this generation.
00:21:28 ◼ ► And all the trade-offs that are made on pretty much every single one of these models are the same. It's not like they perhaps couldn't revisit the trade-offs. The best they could do was put some membranes on the keyboard.
00:21:39 ◼ ► But all the trade-offs that were present across the entire line, they're still there for every one of these computers.
00:21:44 ◼ ► And we're three years into this, almost three and a half years into this generation of natural design for the laptops. Typically these generations last like four to five years at most.
00:21:56 ◼ ► Obviously Apple slows down over time with Mac updates seemingly, so that might extend. But I'm guessing we still have another year of this left, unfortunately.
00:22:05 ◼ ► But anyway, besides it being not what I wanted, this does look like a good computer, but what's really interesting is this article that came out on MacRumors tonight.
00:22:15 ◼ ► They're doing some investigation of what processor is in this thing. They really didn't mention it very much. All they said was that it was 8th generation and we know it's like 1.6 GHz base.
00:22:25 ◼ ► There's only one processor option. There's no build to order upgraded processors. I noticed when I was looking through the tech specs that this computer only has a 30 watt power brick.
00:22:36 ◼ ► Which is the same wattage as the 12 inch MacBook. The escape, which has what used to be the Air Class 15 watt CPUs, ships with a 60 watt power brick.
00:22:47 ◼ ► So it seems like this computer uses way less power. So sure enough there's this MacRumors article tonight that seems correct that the processor based on just like model numbers existing in Intel's system and everything.
00:23:00 ◼ ► It is the MacBook class of power consumption and performance, not the MacBook Air and MacBook Escape class.
00:23:08 ◼ ► What this computer appears to be is a 13 inch MacBook, not a wedge shaped escape after all.
00:23:17 ◼ ► Once you learn this about it, a whole lot of things make more sense and a whole lot of things are kind of disappointing or weird.
00:23:25 ◼ ► It is tech forward. It's way more tech forward than the 12 inch MacBook. And by the way, the 12 inch MacBook didn't get an update this year, which is weird.
00:23:33 ◼ ► It should theoretically have gotten updated today with this. If this is basically a 13 inch MacBook, the 12 inch should have been updated with it.
00:23:43 ◼ ► I don't know why it wasn't, but oh well. We'll get there. Maybe it's some weird Intel thing, who knows.
00:23:47 ◼ ► But it is tech forward in the sense that the new MacBook Air has the T2, the T2 architecture with the SSD controller and everything. That's great.
00:23:55 ◼ ► It has the modern speaker system and microphones. It has touch ID, which is awesome. I did find it kind of funny that they were talking about things like retina screens and the force touch trackpad being new.
00:24:10 ◼ ► Because even though, it was basically like re-celebrating all the innovations they had for the last few years, but the Air never had them.
00:24:19 ◼ ► So to the Air, they were new, but it's like here's why a force touch trackpad is good. And it's like yeah, that was introduced to the MacBook line in 2015.
00:24:28 ◼ ► So thanks. But anyway, it does look like a really interesting product if you can tolerate that keyboard and if the pricing works for you.
00:24:39 ◼ ► But it's more, I'm really curious to see the performance of it and to see whether it throttles really badly because the MacBook has some issues like that sometimes.
00:24:49 ◼ ► But it sure does seem like it's actually a 13 inch MacBook, not a replacement for the Air directly. And it's actually going to be probably a performance hit.
00:25:02 ◼ ► Yeah, this was weird for me to watch because I'm not dying to upgrade my MacBook, but I would like to.
00:25:11 ◼ ► I got it, I think I placed the order during WWDC 2017, so I got it sometime in June of that year.
00:25:18 ◼ ► And I love my MacBook adorable, but it's not fast and the one port is kind of annoying.
00:25:26 ◼ ► Generally speaking, I don't mind it, but there are definitely times that it's kind of annoying.
00:25:30 ◼ ► And not having Thunderbolt is also kind of annoying because if I wanted to get a dock, I have to be super careful that it's a USB-C dock.
00:25:39 ◼ ► And that could potentially limit me, although it doesn't seem like I need anything that Thunderbolt gives me.
00:25:45 ◼ ► So I'm sitting in the presentation, I'm watching it, and I'm like, "Oh, there's two ports. Oh, they're Thunderbolt ports. This is all sounding great.
00:25:53 ◼ ► Everything's coming up Casey." And then we learn that it's basically the same CPU and that really puts a damper on things.
00:26:02 ◼ ► Because I want something quicker, like a lot quicker. And so I'm not desperate to upgrade my laptop, and thus I probably won't,
00:26:11 ◼ ► especially because the new iPads look so hot. But I don't know what I would do if I were to buy a laptop today.
00:26:19 ◼ ► And my personal priorities are something that is very small and very light, but preferably not quite as slow as my current MacBook.
00:26:36 ◼ ► And also I should add that when I was in the hands-on area, which it is so cool to be able to say that, but anyway, when I was in the hands-on area,
00:26:42 ◼ ► I had forgotten that I actually don't love the feel of the third generation butterfly keyboards. They feel a little bit mushier to me.
00:26:54 ◼ ► Now, I would probably get used to it, and it's probably for the best because they're all so quieter, allegedly.
00:27:00 ◼ ► But yes, I understand they touted the stability of the keys, but it just felt a little squishier to me.
00:27:12 ◼ ► And yeah, I can totally see how that may not be your Royal You and your, specifically Marco Armin's, cup of tea, but for me, I really like it.
00:27:21 ◼ ► And I'm not sure I like the new one quite as much, although if I had to sacrifice the stability of it in order to get,
00:27:29 ◼ ► or the crispness of it in order to get something that's more reliable, I would totally make that trade.
00:27:33 ◼ ► I'm really curious, especially if you look at, think about this too, the way this fits in with the lineup,
00:27:39 ◼ ► the 12-inch costs $100 more to start. Now, that's partly because there is no 12-inch configuration that only has 128 gig SSD,
00:27:49 ◼ ► which by the way, should be illegal. But if you actually configure these to be equally spec'd,
00:27:53 ◼ ► where basically you give the Air 256, then the 13-inch new Air is $100 more than the 12-inch at the same spec.
00:28:04 ◼ ► So what would actually finally make sense here, that would finally resolve this, would be if the 12-inch gets a 128 gig configuration
00:28:15 ◼ ► that is $100 less to start, so like $1,099 basically to start. Then you have the two MacBooks basically,
00:28:24 ◼ ► the 12 and 13-inch at $1,100 and $1,200 to start. And if you look at the pricing, like as you scale up,
00:28:31 ◼ ► like the Escape I think is like $200 more than them, the Touch Bar is another $200 more than that,
00:28:37 ◼ ► something like that, right? So like, the lineup would make so much more sense, except for the one hilarious difference
00:28:43 ◼ ► that these two very similar low-end computers, the larger of them would be called the Air.
00:28:50 ◼ ► I think I was just carrying along the branding. The more I think about this, the more it just looks like a 13-inch MacBook One
00:28:56 ◼ ► with Thunderbolt, right? Which is an okay computer to have, but it adds granularity to their line in a weird place.
00:29:04 ◼ ► I feel like there's still a gap. And incidentally, speaking of gaps, they're still selling the old MacBook Air.
00:29:10 ◼ ► That was a question we had going into this. As far as I can tell, they're still selling it. Maybe they're just clearing the inventory.
00:29:15 ◼ ► Maybe they won't. But if some people, somewhat snarkily saying, or people who are disappointed that this isn't the first of a new generation of MacBooks,
00:29:23 ◼ ► saying that if pressed, they might still buy the old non-retina MacBook Air for the keyboard, for the USB-A ports, for the, you know, whatever.
00:29:33 ◼ ► Especially if the main thing you're doing on it is typing. Maybe retina doesn't mean anything. You're not doing image editing or whatever.
00:29:39 ◼ ► And so if the main thing you do is, you know, go around with your computer and type words and maybe use a web browser and like plug in USB sticks and an SD card from your camera,
00:29:55 ◼ ► But if you were someone who loved the MacBook One, the 12-inch MacBook, but you just wish it had Thunderbolt and maybe a little bit bigger screen and was slightly faster,
00:30:03 ◼ ► this is the computer for you. But I'm not sure if it's going to appeal to MacBook Air owners.
00:30:09 ◼ ► Like that was the pitch during the presentation. Tim Cook was like, "Everyone loves the MacBook Air, so now we've got a new MacBook Air."
00:30:14 ◼ ► And it's, again, it's hard to tell when I'm not there in the room, but the video was like, "And the crowd goes wild." Like who doesn't want--
00:30:21 ◼ ► The crowd did go wild. It was like thunderous applause. Because people love the MacBook Air.
00:30:27 ◼ ► So I'm saying like they really are like really capitalizing on that. They're really pushing the marketing on this product hard.
00:30:39 ◼ ► And they might, because if they just want a wedge-shaped computer that is not the tiny, tiny MacBook One, this fills that role.
00:30:47 ◼ ► But as time wears on, if people replace their MacBook Airs with this computer, will they miss MagSafe and USB-A and SD?
00:30:58 ◼ ► Or will they just be like, "Oh, shrug. It's the new MacBook Air. It's a little bit weird, but I'll get used to it." Time will tell.
00:31:04 ◼ ► And again, still selling the old one is--that's not a shock because that's the thing that Apple does now.
00:31:11 ◼ ► And still selling it to schools makes some kind of sense. But having it in the line, making tech nerds--like not out of spite.
00:31:19 ◼ ► Not like, "Well, if you're not going to make exactly the computer I want, then I'm going to buy the old one forever." Like a Marco move.
00:31:30 ◼ ► I think it is really saying, "Let's really think about what do I actually want out of my computer, and am I willing to trade these things that I'm used to?"
00:31:39 ◼ ► I'm used to having MagSafe if you're just really obsessed with that and can't stomach the idea of not having it.
00:31:46 ◼ ► They will still sell you a computer with that, and you can decide whether typing your password every time you unlock your computer, or having a slow computer, or having a non-retin computer, or having terrible viewing angles are worth it to you.
00:31:57 ◼ ► All that said, I mentioned I was in the market for a new homework laptop, and I did the comparison after everything was announced to say, "Okay, so they've made their announcement.
00:32:05 ◼ ► Let me spec out the new MacBook Air that I would get, and now let me compare it." And I did the comparison. I compared it to the MacBook Escape, and the configurations I wanted, the pricing was frighteningly close.
00:32:17 ◼ ► And I'm like, "Well, then why would I get the Retina Air instead of the MacBook Escape?" And I said, "Oh, yeah, Touch ID." So for me, that puts it over the top.
00:32:25 ◼ ► Also, oh yeah, the MacBook Escape still has the more dust-prone keyboard. It has not been updated to the third gen.
00:32:31 ◼ ► I'm not entirely convinced that that's a material difference with the Memrines. But anyway, Touch ID was the big deal breaker. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I've forgotten that the Escape doesn't have Touch ID. Forget about that."
00:32:42 ◼ ► So I have been to the Escape, even though they're very similar in price, and the Escape is faster, surely, right? But I don't care about that for a homework computer.
00:32:51 ◼ ► And it's better in a whole bunch of ways. Touch ID makes the new Air much more attractive to me than the Escape. And then the 12-inch, when I compared the pricing there, surprisingly, if you start specing up the 12-inch to be close to the configuration I wanted from the Air, the pricing isn't that far apart there either.
00:33:21 ◼ ► Yeah, and then you've got the other different keyboard, and it's only got the one port.
00:33:24 ◼ ► So within Apple's lineup, the new Air, at least for my purposes, is the most desirable product for a sort of low-end laptop, because I don't want to get the non-retin-it because I just can't stomach it.
00:33:35 ◼ ► And because I just had one of those, I feel like I'd be buying the same computer, right?
00:33:39 ◼ ► And the two sibling computers that are around the same price range with different trade-offs in terms of size and power, neither of them have Touch ID.
00:33:49 ◼ ► And as much as I want Face ID, Touch ID on a laptop, especially one that multiple kids log into and parents and everything going back and forth, not typing your password is a big quality of life improvement.
00:33:59 ◼ ► So for all of our complaining about this computer, we can't buy what Apple doesn't offer, and among what Apple offers for a cheap laptop, as far as my specific use case is concerned, this is the most attractive model.
00:34:12 ◼ ► You know, like I'd said earlier, it was a rollercoaster for me, and what I was thinking about just a moment ago is that for my MacBook Adorable, generally speaking, the only real peripherals I ever plug in is an SD card reader, which I do a lot.
00:34:32 ◼ ► Occasionally Ethernet, which I actually use an old USB-A Ethernet adapter just because it works. Oh, that was why. Because I need it to be a plug-in. I need to be able to plug it into the dongle that has power input because I only have one port. That's what it was.
00:34:49 ◼ ► So, shut up Marco. So I was thinking about it though, like my SD card reader, which is a USB-C SD card reader, is physically way wider than these two ports directly next to each other will allow.
00:35:06 ◼ ► That's actually been a problem since all the 2016s. The ports are so close together that some peripherals will block the other ports next to them.
00:35:14 ◼ ► Right. So if we tunnel vision, and I'm tunnel visioning on purpose to make my point, but if we tunnel vision on the only reason Casey wants a second port is for an SD card reader, which is not the truth but is not far from the truth, this is still a one-port laptop because they're directly friggin' next to each other.
00:35:31 ◼ ► I couldn't plug in a power port at the same time, or I couldn't plug in power at the same time I'm using an SD card reader unless I get like a USB-C extension. I don't even know if that thing, does that exist? Is that a thing?
00:35:43 ◼ ► I wouldn't, I don't think that exists and I wouldn't trust one. But can't you just get a different dongle that has a built-in power pass-through and Ethernet and SD card reader? Like I have one that does that.
00:35:53 ◼ ► And they have adapters, like we have them at work. They're kind of terrible, but they go into both ports. Like they go, both of the USB-C ports and on them they have SD card and HDMI and USB-A and you know, a bunch of other stuff.
00:36:05 ◼ ► I'm always afraid those are gonna like snap off. Like the ones that have little short cables I think are way better.
00:36:10 ◼ ► I haven't broken one yet, but they're definitely ungainly. I noticed some things when I was going through the video. I think, I believe this is the first time that I can recall seeing an Apple promotional video that shows someone using an Apple product with an obvious white dongle poking out of the back.
00:36:26 ◼ ► I think it was when they were showing like Mac Minis or something and a bunch of kids were using them to do some, you know, video project or whatever and you could see the back of the computer and it jumped out at me.
00:36:34 ◼ ► It was like a sore thumb because you've got all these sleek little computers and the telltale white dongle poking out of the back, which is what real Macs look like in the world.
00:36:40 ◼ ► There's white dongles poking out of the sides of all of them, but very rarely do you see that. Like if you look at all of the, well at least from the pictures I saw, in the hands-on area, not a lot of white dongles poking out of the back of all those Mac Minis.
00:36:52 ◼ ► Just smooth, carefully arranged, like color matched cables to show how awesome and cool and sleek the Mac Mini is. Although we'll get to that in a second. That's the reason for that.
00:37:00 ◼ ► But yeah, they showed a dongle poking out of it and I continue to think that like until and unless the world catches up with Apple's vision of connectivity on laptops, the reality for all of us will be dongle town and dongle town is not a fun place to be.
00:37:16 ◼ ► I mean, it's not the end of the world. We're all doing it. It's a thing that works and it has advantages in terms of docking stations and everything, but it also has disadvantages.
00:37:23 ◼ ► So thus far, Apple seems either unwilling to compromise on this or they've compromised on it, but we haven't seen the fruits of that compromise yet. It's difficult to tell which is which. I feel like you two could have asked Johnny about that when you were there and maybe Marco did, but we'll get to that later.
00:37:39 ◼ ► I actually, I have a better idea for how they can solve this problem. Space gray dongles.
00:37:46 ◼ ► Then they'll still look pro and Apple can sell us a whole bunch of new copies of the same things we already bought. So everyone wins.
00:37:53 ◼ ► We are brought to you this week by Squarespace. Start building your website today at squarespace.com/ATP and enter offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off. Make your next move with Squarespace.
00:38:04 ◼ ► Squarespace simply put makes it super easy to make a really nice professional website with tons of functionality if you need it. So here's how this works. You go to squarespace.com/ATP. Start a free trial. There's no credit card or anything like that. Just start a free trial.
00:38:19 ◼ ► Next time you need to make a website for whether it's a new project, whether it's somebody asking you to make a website for them, or whether you just want to maybe modernize an old site you had that it's kind of hard to update or you want to add more functionality to it.
00:38:30 ◼ ► Try it on Squarespace and see how far you get in like an hour. You'll be shocked because Squarespace is super easy to use no matter what your skill level is. There's no coding required.
00:38:41 ◼ ► Everything is visual. It's live previewing. It's what you see is what you get. All everything, all the editors are super intuitive and easy to use.
00:38:49 ◼ ► And you can do all sorts of customization if you want. You can leave everything stock and it looks pretty awesome already, but if you want to customize it to your own colors, your own logos, your own fonts, your own designs, you can do that too.
00:39:01 ◼ ► And Squarespace sites support all sorts of functionality from basic stuff like content pages and splash pages to more advanced things that are harder to do on a lot of other places like storefronts or podcast hosting.
00:39:12 ◼ ► Squarespace has all this built into all their plans. It's wonderful. So see for yourself with that free trial at squarespace.com/ATP. If you sign up for a year up front, you can also get a free domain with your purchase.
00:39:24 ◼ ► When you decide to sign up with Squarespace, make sure to head to squarespace.com/ATP and use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase.
00:39:32 ◼ ► Once again, squarespace.com/ATP, code ATP for 10% off your first purchase. Thank you so much to Squarespace. Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.
00:39:45 ◼ ► I mean it's interesting. I feel like this is going to sell well because people are going to say, "Oh, this is the new version of the thing I loved."
00:39:52 ◼ ► And I just want a more modern version of the thing I loved. But it is certainly not without compromise, which is something we're kind of getting used to at this point unfortunately.
00:40:08 ◼ ► Yeah, because if you look at the desktops, we'll talk about the Mac Mini in a second. The Mac Mini update is awesome. It's fantastic.
00:40:27 ◼ ► And it seems like they can't ship a laptop that doesn't have severe compromises in some way.
00:40:32 ◼ ► Even if you like the keyboard that I hate, it seems like there's severe compromises on all these laptops.
00:40:39 ◼ ► Whether that's if you don't like the keyboard or if you need it to work reliably, or whether it's heat and thermal issues, whether it's simply that they just cost way more than they used to and the upgrades for them are very expensive and less and less is serviceable.
00:41:00 ◼ ► Right, exactly. So it seems like the laptop updates are just compromise after compromise after compromise.
00:41:08 ◼ ► Whereas the desktops and the iOS line, the hardware is so good and the updates are almost all positive. They're so strong.
00:41:18 ◼ ► And we'll get to that for the rest of the show, fortunately. I think our one downside thing is over because the Mac Mini update was fantastic.
00:41:26 ◼ ► Alright, so let's dive in. There is a new Mac Mini and that also made a lot of people very happy in the room and justifiably so because it had been how long? 18 years?
00:41:48 ◼ ► I love Tim's sly little, "There's another small but mighty Mac our users have been waiting for." Even Tim's making fun of it. This video makes fun of it.
00:41:58 ◼ ► I just love that they just kind of owned that we've all been waiting for the Mac Mini and it's super unimportant for the most part.
00:42:06 ◼ ► But they're going to make it seem really important for this one presentation for the next four years.
00:42:10 ◼ ► And I love the way they did the video. This totally over the top thing that makes it look like a giant spaceship. It made it look huge, right?
00:42:20 ◼ ► I just love that style so much. Apple spends a lot of money on these videos and many of them I think are way less successful than this. This was a lot of fun. I think it really worked.
00:42:30 ◼ ► It undercuts itself at the end when the audio switches to being whatever the movie making terms for this. Todd Vizzier would tell me. Music that you're hearing as background to the music of the video to music that is emanating from the computer that's distant in the video.
00:42:43 ◼ ► It's big, dramatic, and then it's like, "Oh, here it is. It's a Mac Mini hooked up to a display." And it's playing this video.
00:42:52 ◼ ► So we had this big discussion about the Mac Mini a while back and we were like, "What are they going to do with it?" Our main concerns were size and ports. And the answer to the question is size is the same and the answer to the port question is they didn't screw it up.
00:43:04 ◼ ► The only things they removed from the ports are the audio input, the SD reader, and the optical capability on the output. Which for an Apple update in 2018 after four years, that's really good.
00:43:18 ◼ ► It could have been way worse. In the grand scheme of things, they adjusted the ports in ways that may or may not be, but it's clear there's not a new philosophy for the ports of the Mac Mini as there were in the laptops.
00:43:31 ◼ ► There's not a philosophy that like, "Well, you know what? We think all small Macs should only have USB-C Thunderbolt ports on them." The philosophy is the same as it's ever been.
00:43:40 ◼ ► Let's put a ton of ports on the back because we don't know what people are going to use these little guys for. And if we have room for HDMI, yeah, it's a weird old connector, but put it there because people hook us up with TVs.
00:43:49 ◼ ► USB-A, is there room for that? Sure, throw it on. Thunderbolt, that's cool too. Let's put one of those two. Let's put four of them on there. It's the same port philosophy as it was before.
00:43:58 ◼ ► Which is an incredible relief because as we discussed, that's what people use these things for, all sorts of random stuff, and it becomes massively less useful if you have some sort of overarching, very narrow philosophy of the ports that are "allowed" on the back of a computer.
00:44:14 ◼ ► Incredible relief. So, thumbs up on the ports. Yeah, which by the way, is the same position they took with the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro has all of the USB ports. It has 4C, 4A, plus Ethernet and everything else.
00:44:28 ◼ ► It also lost its audio input and its optical output, unfortunately. But the iMac Pro showed even a brand new design, they still believe we should give all the ports on a desktop because there's room and people need them.
00:44:42 ◼ ► Yeah, or not like every single port in the universe, but the philosophy is there should be a variety of ports. Even if we think that some of them are old or weird or we're not sure how many people can use them, if there's room for them and it's reasonable, we should put them on there. And they did.
00:44:56 ◼ ► Exactly. And I love, they even called it out, they said, "Customers love having lots of ports." Which, that was hilarious because the laptops and the iOS devices are the complete opposite direction. But I agree, customers love having lots of ports. I wish you could tell the rest of the company then.
00:45:18 ◼ ► Yeah, this Mac Mini, I saw, and there were so many things, like I love that you can spec it up really high if you want to basically make it, like it's basically like a mini iMac Pro. It is space grey of course. It starts out at a really crappy low power chip. The 4-core i3, which I think this is the first time Apple has shipped an i3 branded chip.
00:45:42 ◼ ► i3s are pretty low end. I don't even know much about them but I think they don't have hyper-threading or turbo, is that right?
00:45:48 ◼ ► But it's still faster than the old Mac Mini because it's so ancient. That's the beauty of this update.
00:45:52 ◼ ► Yeah, it's so ancient and the old one was 2-cores and this one was 4-cores. So even though it's an i3, it still has enough other benefits and recency to boost it up. But I would, to me, that actually makes some sense because Mac Minis are often used, mine for instance, mine is used in a capability where I don't need a lot of CPU power. Mine is mostly used as a file server and a low needs, low roll provider for the household.
00:46:20 ◼ ► The Mac Mini is sometimes used in rolls like that or it's used in rolls where it needs a bunch of power. It needs to churn CPU things for running tests or doing builds or who knows what else.
00:46:32 ◼ ► And so it does make sense to have a low power CPU option and I'm really happy they can also offer a 6-core high power one.
00:46:40 ◼ ► One of my big question marks on this is I don't know what the thermal situation is here. Can it sustain a heavy load for a while without throttling like a desktop should? I don't know. I don't know how the fan noise is. I don't know how the enclosure treats that.
00:46:53 ◼ ► Their enclosure design recently in this area has been really good though. I'm pretty confident. It's probably, like the iMac Pro is fantastic for fan noise. The laptops are okay. So I'm assuming this is going to be pretty cool.
00:47:07 ◼ ► I'm really looking forward to hearing more about it. Maybe testing one out or something. I don't know. It's great that the RAM is up to 64 gigs. And the biggest surprise of the day, upgradeable RAM on standard RAM So-Dim sticks.
00:47:23 ◼ ► Oh my god. This is the first time I think ever that Apple has taken a computer that they made less upgradeable and made it more upgradeable. Has that ever happened?
00:47:33 ◼ ► It's on Dim's, right? I've been reading conflicting reports about, so it is upgradeable as in one can upgrade it, but it is not meant to be user serviceable as in you, the person who bought the computer, are not meant to crack it open and do that.
00:47:47 ◼ ► Surely you can because iFixit will help you get the tools and the ability to do that, but I'm not entirely sure they recommend that you do it.
00:47:56 ◼ ► I think mainly it's like, look, if you have a whole bunch of these in a build farm or your Mac Stadium or you have a server or whatever, and the RAM goes bad on it, it's nice to be able to just swap out the RAM at a repair center or wherever you're supposed to do a quote unquote.
00:48:10 ◼ ► But yeah, they mentioned that specifically and it's not in the direction of trying to make this flexible and repairable.
00:48:17 ◼ ► This is also the dawn, as I think our friend Todd Vaziri has pointed out, the dawn of the $4,200 Mac Mini, which is slightly hilarious, but not that.
00:48:26 ◼ ► I mean, it's only hilarious when you compare it to PC pricing because as many people point out, oh, so you spec up this $4,000 Mac Mini? Yeah, it's a $1,500 PC.
00:48:33 ◼ ► As we went to the Intel NUC things, the Mac Mini has not suddenly become a performance bargain, but we're mainly relieved that they didn't mess up the things that people like about the Mac Mini.
00:48:44 ◼ ► They increased the power all around. They let you spec it to a ridiculous degree, which is good because if you have some application that needs a huge amount of RAM, but doesn't need a giant SSD, you can adjust those two things.
00:48:55 ◼ ► Or you need just a little bit of RAM but a really fast CPU. It's configurable for people.
00:49:00 ◼ ► And since we're a captive audience and we don't have a choice of a lot of desktop Macs, having a choice in the small, headless desktop Mac market that we can adjust in some way to our specific needs, even though it is still very, very expensive in the grand scheme of things and way more expensive than an equivalent PowerPC, we're still happy because we're Mac users and we like Macs.
00:49:20 ◼ ► And this option will keep us happy for at least like a year and a half, two years until we start grumbling again.
00:49:27 ◼ ► And just the range of, you mentioned that you can figure it up to like $4,000. And yes, the base model is more expensive than before, but again, I think the era of people buying cheap Mac Minis to be their new desktops as new Mac converts is long over.
00:49:43 ◼ ► And these are much more often used for things like servers and other specialized roles. So I think the price change here is fine.
00:49:51 ◼ ► And the new base model is better specced than the old one was. The old one had a hard drive at its base price and a really slow CPU. And the second you touched any of those specs, you were spending $1,000.
00:50:02 ◼ ► So like it was, I think the pricing is fine. Obviously, like all of Apple's modern pricing, it isn't ideal and everything's kind of creeping up gradually over time, but it's fine.
00:50:12 ◼ ► And I love how it has this massive range where you can spec it out to be that low end server, or you can do things like 10 gig ethernet. Like who would have guessed that?
00:50:22 ◼ ► Yeah, that was amazing to me. I mean, they charge you $100. But still, having that as an option, like if you decide what you need is a huge SSD and 10 gig ethernet, but a wimpy CPU, like it's amazingly flexible in ways that pretty much no other machine is.
00:50:38 ◼ ► Even the iMac Pro, which is basically like they just expect you want everything awesome, right? You can get some weaker stuff and some stronger specs on this and mix and match to the degree that you generally can't elsewhere.
00:50:48 ◼ ► And I thought it was interesting also in the hands-on area that they were showing the Mac Mini in all sorts of different scenarios that I assume that they believe it's really used in.
00:50:58 ◼ ► So they showed it as like a compiler farm for like Xcode or running your test suite or whatever. They showed it in the videos hooked up to a television, which is a thing that a lot of people do with their Mac Minis, right?
00:51:10 ◼ ► They also showed it in the video, actually used it as desktop computer, but I doubt many people use it in that way. Like the mixing and matching and the stacking of them and showing them in racks, which is like, it was not, you know, when Apple introduced the Mac Mini and even when they introduced this latest form factor of it,
00:51:26 ◼ ► I don't think they had in mind like, "Oh, people are going to be putting these in server racks." But MacStadium exists and Apple knows they exist and it's a thing that people do because it's a headless Mac and it's small and compact and you can actually stack them.
00:51:36 ◼ ► So Apple, you know, went with that saying, "We're going to show them stacked. We're going to show them stack sideways." Because it's a thing people do and we want to say, "Yes, we Apple recognize that this is the thing you might want to do with your Mac Minis."
00:51:49 ◼ ► And it's not like they're designing it for that, but they have that use case in mind. They're not going to ruin it for you. They're not going to, say, make it cylindrical, which makes it really hard to rack.
00:51:57 ◼ ► It's, you know, it's Apple embracing what people actually use their computers for rather than what they imagine or would like people to use them for.
00:52:08 ◼ ► We were so worried that we would have to use Ethernet through a dongle. The fact that we can get 10 giga Ethernet built in and they didn't take the power supply and make it external to make the box smaller.
00:52:20 ◼ ► Stuff like that. It's just a good update. If you would have asked, well, I was going to say, if you would have asked me to predict a Mac Mini update, then I realize, "Oh yeah, we have done that for the last few episodes."
00:52:31 ◼ ► But I never would have guessed that a Mac Mini update in 2018 would be this good. And I'm really, really happy that they did it.
00:52:40 ◼ ► Even though I'm probably not going to buy one for a while because my Mac Mini that I use for my home server is fine. Once it flakes out, I will gladly buy one of these.
00:52:47 ◼ ► Real time follow up from Tom Vaziri, the phrases I was looking for. I actually wasn't looking for them. I knew what they were, but I didn't know what order they went in, so it's kind of important.
00:52:54 ◼ ► Diagetic versus non-diagetic. I could not remember which one was the one where the sound is coming from an object on screen and which one is instrumental.
00:53:01 ◼ ► And apparently, "diagetic" means it's coming from an object on screen and "non-diagetic" means it's part of the movie soundtrack. So thank you, Todd.
00:53:13 ◼ ► Sorry. Thank you, Todd. Todd, you knew the answer too. I believe in you. But thank you, Jelly, for actually giving us the answer.
00:53:19 ◼ ► One more thing that I wanted to cover before we left the Mac section is they mentioned with the Air and the Mac Mini as well that they're now being made from 100% recycled aluminum.
00:53:30 ◼ ► And that got a massive applause in the room. And I think that's totally deserved. Like, that's a really cool thing.
00:53:36 ◼ ► I have some questions about some of the details of that, and as a few people on Twitter have pointed out, they did later kind of basically say that Macs are now made from the shavings off of iOS devices.
00:53:47 ◼ ► That is the worst. Like, that's the first thing I thought of. And then they said it in the presentation. I'm like, "Don't highlight that. We're all thinking it, but don't say it."
00:53:55 ◼ ► It's like, we spend lots of money on the highest quality aluminum for the products that we care about. And the shavings that come off, we make Macs out of those.
00:54:09 ◼ ► It's interesting, though, the way they phrased it. Like, and I'm not that I'm concerned about this, but I'm, like, you're curious about it.
00:54:15 ◼ ► They said that basically they make a new alloy out of the aluminum shavings. It's not like they're saying we take recycled aluminum and what we end up with is exactly the same as if we had started with fresh aluminum.
00:54:31 ◼ ► Right. But it's interesting that they're saying that, like, that basically I'm imagining if you gave a material scientist two chunks, one of the recycled and one of the regular, they could tell they were different. Like, the Apple phrased it as they're making a different alloy.
00:54:46 ◼ ► So I'm slightly wondering what, you know, is it actually the same? Is it softer, harder, bendier, more brittle, more prone to scratching?
00:54:57 ◼ ► Like, I mean, you saw them in person. I'm assuming they just felt like Apple aluminum laptops, right? That's probably not any variance that we can tell.
00:55:03 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, like, when you feel them for, like, two seconds, it's kind of hard to get a good idea of that kind of thing.
00:55:08 ◼ ► Yeah. So hopefully, like, and the reason I, I mean, I guess it is a concern. The reason I have a mild concern about this is, you know, it's 100 percent the right thing to do.
00:55:17 ◼ ► And I applaud Apple for doing it, and they should do it for all their products. But historically, as Apple has attempted to decrease the environmental footprint of their products, they've occasionally had struggles with matching the characteristics of the worst for the environment materials.
00:55:32 ◼ ► Think about all the different plastics used for power cords. Think about when they went to lid-free solder and everything.
00:55:37 ◼ ► It takes a little while to get the kinks worked out and to come up with, hopefully, a more environmentally friendly product that is also as durable and as pleasing and has the same performance characteristics as the worst for the environment thing that it replaces.
00:55:54 ◼ ► So hopefully the aluminum is not such a case, and they've nailed it on the first try, I imagine. It's probably closer because, you know, it's a big hunk of metal, and it's not as perhaps as finicky as the, you know, something as delicate as the kind of plastic they use for their cords or whatever.
00:56:11 ◼ ► Although arguably, some would say that no, that no plastic they've ever used for any of their power cords or lightning cables or whatever has ever been durable enough, and that's a separate issue.
00:56:21 ◼ ► So for the MacBook Air on a typical academic rating scale of A through F, how do we feel like that is? Because I went from this is great to this is garbage to eh, it's fine.
00:56:38 ◼ ► So I guess I would rate it like a C plus B minus, and then for the Mac Mini, I think this is an A. This is a good update. Marco, how do you feel about these two so far?
00:56:52 ◼ ► Mac Mini, I'm with you. It's an A. The only thing that keeps from being an A plus is that the pricing gets pretty steep pretty fast, but it's an A.
00:56:59 ◼ ► The MacBook Air, there's still too many unknowns. I think we need to see how these perform in real life. We need to see how things like the battery life should be pretty good actually, given the size of the battery it has.
00:57:12 ◼ ► It's only about 10% smaller than the Escape's battery, but if it has a processor that uses half the power, that's going to be noticeable.
00:57:20 ◼ ► So it should have really good battery life, but performance might be questionable. The keyboard is eh, so I'm going to say based on John's logic of the MacBook Air being the least crappy option of what Apple actually is willing to sell us right now, it's kind of like it gets maybe a B or a C, but at a crappy school.
00:57:41 ◼ ► This grading system is getting more complex by the moment. I give the MacBook Air a B minus, mostly because despite all the complaints we had about it, I think it offers something that its siblings in the lineup don't offer.
00:58:02 ◼ ► The advantage of being a 13-inch MacBook One is that if you use the 7-watt CPU, you can get a lot of battery life when your thing is bigger. I give the mini an A minus, mostly because the pricing is just, I mean it's always been bananas, but it's really bananas for this particular machine.
00:58:24 ◼ ► And I was mostly considering A the top of the scale, but yeah, I'm going to give it an A minus.
00:58:30 ◼ ► We are sponsored this week by Eero, who lets you never think about Wi-Fi again. Wi-Fi is tricky to get right. You need to cover your entire home, you need it to be easy to set up, easy to administer, and you need network protection for things like security issues, malicious content across your network.
00:58:47 ◼ ► Eero addresses all of this. So they recently launched Eero Plus. This is total network protection with the ability to block malicious and unwanted content across your network. This has advanced security by checking the sites you visit against a database of millions of known threats, preventing you from accidentally visiting these malicious sites without slowing anything down.
00:59:05 ◼ ► And they also offer content blocking if you want. Eero Plus automatically tags sites that contain violent, illegal, or adult content, and you can choose what your kids can and cannot visit right in the super easy to use Eero app.
00:59:19 ◼ ► They also offer ad blocking with Eero Plus, get rid of annoying ads and pop-ups on all your devices on your Wi-Fi network.
00:59:26 ◼ ► Ad blocking super improves load times for ad heavy sites, so you can browse and stream way faster than ever before. They also have a selection of third party security apps available, VPN protection from encrypt.me, password management from 1Password, I love these two things, and antivirus software from Malwarebytes as well.
00:59:42 ◼ ► And Eero routers are also just really good routers. They're super easy to set up to give you a distributed network across your entire home, so you have great coverage with these wonderfully small, but yet very technologically advanced Wi-Fi radios.
00:59:56 ◼ ► It's the easiest setup I've ever seen of any router. I've set up a few Eero networks now, both for myself and others. It's so incredibly easy to use. I highly recommend it.
01:00:04 ◼ ► So check it out today, Eero.com/ATP. And never think about Wi-Fi again. Get $100 off the Eero base unit and two beacons package and one year of Eero Plus.
01:00:16 ◼ ► That's $100 off the package that has an Eero base unit, two beacons, and one year of Eero Plus at Eero.com/ATP. And check out UseCodeATP for that deal.
01:00:31 ◼ ► So we had a retail update, and then iPad. I gotta tell you, I'm gonna cut to the end and give my concluding statement up front, which is not exactly what Jon wanted to do, but that's okay.
01:00:42 ◼ ► I wanted an iPad for the first time in a long time. And if you recall, I had a RetinaPad Mini, fourth generation, which they're still selling?
01:00:56 ◼ ► And they put it on screen. That was the thing that blew me away. Speaking of things that were on screen, at the very beginning of the presentation, they showed...
01:01:04 ◼ ► All the rumors had leaked to the point, especially in the hours before the presentation, we more or less knew what was gonna be announced.
01:01:11 ◼ ► But they had a big product shot that showed their lineup of Macs. And it was the iMac Pro in the background, and it was the 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
01:01:21 ◼ ► And then it was all arranged in a nice little family portrait, and off to the left was the only computer with a big silver face pointing you, the MacBook Air.
01:01:30 ◼ ► And the Mac Mini was in a picture! Since when do they ever show the Mac Mini in a keynote presentation alongside other products?
01:01:38 ◼ ► It was clear that what they were gonna do is take the two things in this picture that are silver and replace them with ones that now fit in with the family.
01:01:45 ◼ ► Now the Mac Mini is space gray, and now the MacBook Air has the same black screen face. So that's how you could tell, early in the presentation, if you didn't already know, that they were gonna replace the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini.
01:02:01 ◼ ► When they were saying, "Here is our iPad lineup. We have the iPad Mini and the iPad, and then we have the two Pro models."
01:02:07 ◼ ► And for a moment I was like, "By showing the iPad Mini, are they telling me they're..." No, of course. And they didn't. They didn't do anything with it.
01:02:13 ◼ ► It's still there. It slid off the left side of the slide, never to be seen again. Mentioned one more time in the presentation is the iPad Mini 4, and anyway, it remains a product in their lineup.
01:02:22 ◼ ► So yeah, so I have an iPad Mini 4 that actually, hand on heart, I'm not sure where it is, because I haven't seen it in a while.
01:02:35 ◼ ► Yeah, maybe that's the problem. But these new iPads, they feel like modern Apple... I'm going to say computers, which kind of makes me feel a little weird, but modern Apple computers more than the iPads that preceded them do.
01:02:52 ◼ ► They ditched the home button, which looks archaic now. They're edge-to-edge screen, for the most part. No real big bezel, for the most part. So they look and felt like modern Apple devices in a way that I don't think the iPad has.
01:03:09 ◼ ► But even the iPad Pro just didn't look as modern to me once the iPhone X came into existence. All the iPads looked old and busted to me, and these do not. These look great, they feel great, they're super thin.
01:03:23 ◼ ► I love the flat edges around the outside. I'm trying to figure out an excuse, trying to convince myself that I need a 10-inch or 11-inch iPad Pro. But I was very impressed. These things look great and make me want an iPad again.
01:03:42 ◼ ► Here's the problem with this iPad Pro announcement and my problem with my feelings about it. I look at their presentation of what they chose to emphasize, what they spent time on, what they bragged about, and what the reality of these products is.
01:03:57 ◼ ► And as excited as I'm getting about it, my suspicion, and we'll find out shortly, is that the new iPad Pros are essentially faster in all meaningful ways than every single laptop Apple sells.
01:04:12 ◼ ► Which is, again, if you look at this thing, an 8-core A12, 120Hz screen, pencil support, we would kill to get these kind of specs and these kind of capabilities in any kind of thing that runs Mac OS.
01:04:32 ◼ ► I believe someone was saying this has 6GB of RAM, which is double what the previous ones did. The iPad Pros are tickling all of the "be dazzled by Pro hardware" stuff. They used to be a staple of Apple's presentations. Sometimes they tell you about the amazing thing you can get at a great price, and sometimes they say, "This is going to cost you an arm and a leg." But it's amazing.
01:04:55 ◼ ► It is incredibly powerful, it has new capabilities, everything about it is incredibly fast, we're going to brag to you about how fast it is and what it can do, and it's in a cool new form factor. It was pushing all of those buttons.
01:05:06 ◼ ► And certainly I want one, right? But also I'm thinking, how amazing would an Apple laptop be with these internals? And Apple would say, "What the hell do you need a laptop for? We got a cool keyboard for this? It's practically a laptop already."
01:05:22 ◼ ► But you know, me with the OS thing and all the rumors about what iOS 13 will have that got kicked out of iOS 12 that may make this an even more amazing computer.
01:05:32 ◼ ► But yeah, setting aside my uncomfortable feelings about how I wish the laptop line was as powerful as these iPads, consider it an isolation, these are amazing iPads.
01:05:42 ◼ ► This is what we've come to expect from Apple in the phone line, and now I feel like this is the first iPad that has received as much attention as the phones do.
01:05:52 ◼ ► This new iPad is so much better in every possible way than all of its already pretty good predecessors. That's the feeling we get very often in phones, like the iPhone 10 just makes the iPhone 7 look like junk.
01:06:05 ◼ ► Look at this and you look at the old iPads, you just fling them out the window. It's slower, it's uglier, I don't know where to put the pencil, it doesn't have a USB-C port, the speakers are worse, the screen is worse, everything is just like these totally eclipse all the previous iPads.
01:06:22 ◼ ► And they're lust objects, they're things that if you're into iPads, and even if you're not that into iPads like Casey, you see this and you want one because they press all the nerd buttons.
01:06:33 ◼ ► And if you can't figure out, like to Marco's point that he was saying before in Slack, maybe you're not that into iPads but you're like "I wish I was because this thing is awesome."
01:06:42 ◼ ► Is this faster than every single laptop Apple sells? Maybe. We'll find out soon. Certainly it's faster than a hell of a lot of them.
01:06:50 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean you cannot miss the contrast between the excitement and the energy and the mood around the laptop updates versus the iPad updates. Like, the Macs, the laptops seem like they are updated inconsistently, really incrementally, and almost begrudgingly.
01:07:12 ◼ ► Like it seems like Apple doesn't even want to update the laptops and the updates they do to them have very often come with significant regressions or as I said earlier, significant compromises.
01:07:24 ◼ ► Whereas the iPad updates are just blowing out the water like to the one before. The iPad updates are just like all good and every year they're like these massive, awesome, major new upgrades to the iPad.
01:07:38 ◼ ► And it's kind of sad as a Mac preferring portable person, but as you said John, it makes me want to use the iPad for more things.
01:07:49 ◼ ► And it's hard because the software still isn't there for a lot of the stuff I do and a lot of the ways I prefer to work.
01:07:58 ◼ ► And it's unwise to buy an iPad now thinking that oh well in the future this iPad will get much better in the ways I care about. Like, you know, buy it now for what it is now.
01:08:14 ◼ ► But it is striking, like the massive difference. And like wow, these iPads, every iPad update for the last forever has been just a ridiculously awesome update with huge advances, no regressions, no compromises.
01:08:31 ◼ ► And then you have the Mac line which is full of regressions and compromises in some really, you know, kind of tepid updates.
01:08:47 ◼ ► And the iOS line is just like full of love and like the most amazing work that, and it's just like I want so badly to move more of my portable needs to the iPad.
01:08:59 ◼ ► I just don't, I don't think I can yet. Like I don't think, like Stephen Hackett made a great argument for this on, there's a, if you're a Relay FM member, there's a show that members get to hear called Fusion.
01:09:11 ◼ ► And they did an episode today about this event and reacting to it. And you should be a Relay FM member to hear this episode.
01:09:21 ◼ ► And the analogy Stephen made, which I think is excellent that I'm going to rip off now, is that it's almost like you have like a supercar that has just an incredible engine performance but like can't put the power down on the road.
01:09:35 ◼ ► You know, like it just doesn't have like the tires or whatever to put that power down. That's how I feel about the iPad.
01:09:41 ◼ ► Whereas like the iPads have incredible capabilities, incredible hardware, incredibly sophisticated frameworks and everything.
01:09:49 ◼ ► But there's still fundamental parts of the software, fundamental limitations of the OS and the way work has to get done, the limitations it has, the apps that are available,
01:09:59 ◼ ► that just make it really hard for a lot of us to take advantage of all that power that they have.
01:10:05 ◼ ► And over time that line is moving, you know, it's moving down, like we are able to do more things with the iPad over time,
01:10:13 ◼ ► but it still is very far from what you can do with a Mac in certain industries for certain needs.
01:10:22 ◼ ► So I hope so badly that iOS on the iPad catches up more to where the Mac is because there's no question that if you can get done on the iPad what you need to get done,
01:10:39 ◼ ► To tweak Steven's analogy a little bit, I don't think it's so much that you can't get the power down.
01:10:54 ◼ ► It's just that, this is getting worse, I hate car analogies, the road doesn't go where we want to go.
01:11:01 ◼ ► Because when it's showing Photoshop it's using all of its power to do that Photoshop demo.
01:11:44 ◼ ► and so they're looking at a desktop computer, they're hitting keys on a keyboard or a tablet,
01:11:54 ◼ ► they have customized their tablets to have these hardware buttons that do what they want.
01:12:07 ◼ ► that is an efficiency downgrade for people who are experts at hitting the 17 keys they need to hit
01:12:43 ◼ ► who use Photoshop who never got used to a Wacom tablet and a keyboard and a desktop display,
01:13:08 ◼ ► So it's just setting aside the things which exist where you just can't do on an iPad still for a variety of reasons.
01:13:16 ◼ ► Even if you could do it on an iPad, like again, Photoshop, it's available on both now or will it be next year.
01:13:24 ◼ ► It's like, "Well, watch me use Photoshop and see how much my hand is hitting these keys on the keyboard
01:13:52 ◼ ► unless they have an awesome audio editing application on the iPad with awesome keyboard support
01:13:57 ◼ ► that supports a bigger screen and actually gives you a better experience than using a Windows PC
01:14:13 ◼ ► when the people who prefer to work the old way and travel those old roads are retired or dead,
01:14:36 ◼ ► and 5% devastated because he often uses, what is it, Ferrite to edit podcasts on the go,
01:14:47 ◼ ► And so he is really annoyed because he wants to be able to do podcast editing with no latency whatsoever,
01:14:55 ◼ ► and I guess his experience with AirPods is that there's enough latency there that it becomes frustrating for him,
01:15:00 ◼ ► and so now he's going to have to use a USB-C set of headphones or a USB-C to headphone dongle.
01:15:09 ◼ ► Yeah, and the headphone jack thing, this is the one downside besides the incredible price on these.
01:15:22 ◼ ► Yeah, the configuration that I would probably get, which is the 11-inch with keyboard and pencil, 256, was $1400.
01:15:39 ◼ ► Again, I haven't seen benchmarks, but go try to find, give Apple $1400 and try to get a laptop that comes close to the specs and performance of the thing you just described.
01:15:47 ◼ ► Granted, it's better as a laptop than having a floppy keyboard and all those other things, but it's no contest in terms of the power and capabilities.
01:15:55 ◼ ► Like, Face ID, 120Hz, True Tone, all this amazing light weight and everything, this thing is an absolute monster.
01:16:03 ◼ ► A better keyboard? The smart keyboard on the iPads is significantly nicer to type on, in my opinion, than the ones in the MacBook Pro.
01:16:15 ◼ ► I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying it's better. Although, I wish it was backlit, but otherwise...
01:16:24 ◼ ► Getting back to our earlier topic about how these compare to how the Mac is treated, one of the most important things about the iPad line in general is, you know, in this update, and basically all the updates before that in recent memory,
01:16:37 ◼ ► every update shows me that Apple has learned from their past products, which were themselves good. I mean, I have the original 9.7" Pro, which I think was a fantastic iPad.
01:16:47 ◼ ► Remember when it came out, we were like, "Well, this is the pinnacle. This is just the ultimate iPad. It's great."
01:16:52 ◼ ► Every new one that comes out, there's something about it that shows, "Well, we made this awesome product last time, and people loved it, but there were a few things that we could tweak."
01:17:01 ◼ ► And then they tweak them. And so this one, like, "There's no place to put the pencil." No, there's a place to put the pencil. "The stupid cap is annoying." Don't worry about it. There's no cap anymore.
01:17:09 ◼ ► "It rolls off the table. It's got a flat side." "The keyboard." "The smart connector." "It's kind of awkward to use at certain angles."
01:17:15 ◼ ► Well, now we have two angles, one for when you're looking down and one for when something...
01:17:18 ◼ ► It's like, everything in their new product shows, "We heard you about the last product, and in a timely fashion, we give you a new product that does some amazing stuff you maybe never even thought of,
01:17:28 ◼ ► but also, all the feedback you had about the old one, we incorporate that." I'm amazed at the physical characteristics in terms of how many iterations they do of the back case and the front case,
01:17:39 ◼ ► and dealing with the pencil and the connectors and where the speakers are and where the camera is and orientations. Every single iPad, they get slightly better.
01:17:46 ◼ ► There are minor regressions here and there where, like, "Oh, this case is bad," or, "They only put the front case and not the back," or, "This sleeve was awkward," and, you know.
01:17:53 ◼ ► But they learn from their mistakes. That's what you want to see. Forward progress. There's a new set of mistakes. Maybe the headphone jack is not a great idea.
01:18:01 ◼ ► Maybe there are other issues about this, which I think we'll get to in a bit when I talk about the physical form factor of the thing, but that kind of progress is so heartening to see.
01:18:10 ◼ ► And I feel like the same thing with the iMac, right? Assuming the iMac Pro was their new Pro computer, that they listened to Pros and said, "We're not going to slim it down or whatever."
01:18:23 ◼ ► The laptop line, which we were constantly harping on, seems either not to learn from the mistakes or to learn on a much longer timeline, right?
01:18:31 ◼ ► Because it wasn't that long ago that we got iPads with the pencil and it had all those complaints about it, and it seems like only a couple years later, we have an entirely new iPad, totally reimagined, which addresses a whole bunch of the problems we have with the old one, including very, you know, picky and things like the, "Oh, well, I'm not really happy with the angle of the smart keyboard," or, "The magnets in the smart keyboard, like, sometimes they're, you know, it gets loose," or whatever.
01:18:56 ◼ ► So now the magnets are stronger, and now there's multiple angles, and it attaches in a different way. It's just, you know, this is not to say that their solutions to this one are perfect.
01:19:04 ◼ ► I'm sure there'll be specific issues and complaints, and a lot of it owes, you know, if you look at this, it looks a lot like the Microsoft Surface in many aspects, right?
01:19:11 ◼ ► Because, you know, it's not like Apple solving these for the first time, but they're listening to their customers. They're looking at their products and thinking about how they could be better, and they've come up with a new product that improves upon all that stuff.
01:19:26 ◼ ► We are sponsored this week by Casper. Casper products are designed by humans for humans because you spend a third of your life sleeping, and they believe you should be comfortable while doing it.
01:19:38 ◼ ► So the experts at Casper work tirelessly to make quality sleep surfaces that cradle your natural geometry in all the right places.
01:19:46 ◼ ► They now have three mattresses. The original Casper combines multiple supportive memory foams for a quality sleep surface with just the right amounts of both sink and bounce.
01:19:55 ◼ ► All this is brought to you with a breathable design to help you sleep cool and regulate your temperature throughout the night.
01:20:01 ◼ ► And with over 20,000 reviews at an average of 4.8 stars across Casper, Amazon, and Google, Casper is becoming the internet's favorite mattress.
01:20:09 ◼ ► And now Casper offers two new mattresses, the Wave and the Essential. The Essential is a streamlined design at a price that won't keep you up at night.
01:20:17 ◼ ► And the Wave, this is the one that I have and I can strongly recommend it. If you can spring for the Wave, it's really good.
01:20:23 ◼ ► The Wave features a patent-pending premium support system to mirror the natural shape of your body.
01:20:29 ◼ ► And they also have a wide array of other products, pillows and sheets, to ensure you get a good night's sleep.
01:20:39 ◼ ► And they can bring these to you for affordable prices because they cut out the middleman selling them directly to you.
01:20:44 ◼ ► It's super easy to get Casper products. It's super easy to return them. They offer hassle-free returns within a 100-night trial.
01:20:51 ◼ ► If you don't like it, you can send it back within 100 nights. You can be sure of your purchase with Casper's 100-night risk-free sleep-on-it trial.
01:20:59 ◼ ► So you can get $50 toward select mattresses by visiting casper.com/atp and using code ATP at checkout.
01:21:18 ◼ ► Casey and I got a chance to play with these new iPads briefly in the hands-on area and they're just so good.
01:21:23 ◼ ► I get to play with the pencil, the keyboard. I spent a lot of time with the 11-inch, only a little bit of time with the 12.9.
01:21:29 ◼ ► I couldn't get too much with it because there was this beautiful Italian man in front of me, but I didn't want to interrupt.
01:21:34 ◼ ► But the 11-inch was fantastic. And I think one of the dilemmas that I think a lot of people will have now,
01:21:44 ◼ ► the 12.9 didn't feel as ridiculous as the previous one. It didn't feel too big. It didn't feel too crazy.
01:22:03 ◼ ► and it was the first giant iPhone most people had ever held and it just felt ridiculous.
01:22:12 ◼ ► But also the original 12.9 was really big and it was kind of hard to hold for a while and everything.
01:22:24 ◼ ► And it is noticeably smaller than it was before. And it no longer feels or looks extreme or crazy.
01:22:31 ◼ ► Now it feels like a big iPad. And I would be surprised, we have a number of friends who are like real iPad power users,
01:22:42 ◼ ► And a lot of them will have, they'll either alternate between the two or they'll actually own both the 12.9 and the 10.5 or some other smaller one.
01:22:55 ◼ ► I bet this generation a lot of these people just get the 12.9 and are happy with just that because it is,
01:23:03 ◼ ► like if you're going to have a 12.9 at all, I think the justification for also having a smaller iPad is greatly reduced now.
01:23:15 ◼ ► But the 12.9 is actually I think a much more accessible and reasonable option to a lot more people than it was before.
01:23:28 ◼ ► but if I got to the point where I could do a lot of my work on the iPad, I would get a 12.9 because it is that much better.
01:23:35 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm considering it too. Just because who doesn't want a bigger screen and if it's, I have to see what it's like.
01:23:42 ◼ ► And also the keyboard, if you have a keyboard with it, is also going to be a little bit roomier.
01:23:46 ◼ ► Because it can be because the thing is longer. It's definitely, I'm going to have to check them out in the store.
01:23:50 ◼ ► Not that I'm, I'm not planning to buy a new iPad, but of course I want one. Like who wouldn't want one? It's awesome.
01:24:00 ◼ ► It's like an iPhone 5. People can keep going to the iPhone 4, but it's more like the iPhone 5.
01:24:08 ◼ ► And a lot of times, if you look at the laptops, like take the MacBook escape, or any of the MacBooks you've seen lately,
01:24:19 ◼ ► very often, I mean part of the thing to make them seem thinner is that the edge, the flat edge that you see on Apple laptops,
01:24:26 ◼ ► is thinner than the height of the entire laptop. Right? It's not like, you know, whatever that flat portion is,
01:24:32 ◼ ► like, oh that's how thick it is. Well it's not. There's a curved section that goes underneath.
01:24:36 ◼ ► And part of that is to make it seem thinner than it is. Because if you had flat slab sides, it would look thicker,
01:24:41 ◼ ► even though it would actually be the same thickness. But there's another super important reason that tons of products,
01:24:47 ◼ ► including almost all of Apple's historically, that sit flat on a table, don't have right angle sides,
01:24:52 ◼ ► just straight up right angle sides that go all the way down. That they have that curve.
01:24:56 ◼ ► And that's so you can pick the freaking things up. Because if you made an Apple laptop, or any other device that had,
01:25:01 ◼ ► that was made of aluminum, perfectly machined, flat, blah blah blah, where the sides were straight all the way down,
01:25:07 ◼ ► you'd go to try to pick it up, and you wouldn't realize that you do this, but you'd go to try to pick it up with one hand,
01:25:24 ◼ ► You can't pick up a laptop that way. Like, you have to get your fingers underneath it somehow.
01:25:28 ◼ ► So maybe you'd push it sideways, or maybe you'd hope that it had rubber feet that elevated enough,
01:25:36 ◼ ► The fact that you never have to think about this with Apple laptops, that's called good design.
01:25:40 ◼ ► Like, they make them that way on purpose. Not just for ventilation, not just to make it look thinner on the side,
01:25:45 ◼ ► but because it's really important you can't freaking pick the things up if they didn't do that.
01:25:53 ◼ ► Those work because you can pinch it. You can have one finger on one side and a thumb on the other,
01:25:57 ◼ ► and you can pick the whole thing up. You're never trying to pick it up from one edge. Try that.
01:26:01 ◼ ► Put an iPhone 5 down on the table and try to pick it up without having fingers on opposing sides anywhere.
01:26:09 ◼ ► The only thing that might help you, not in the iPhone 5's case, but in the case of this thing,
01:26:17 ◼ ► is so that you finally have some fighting chance of getting your fingernails underneath the thing
01:38:59 ◼ ► because one of the issues with the old one is that when you have the smart keyboard cover
01:39:50 ◼ ► But I would love, like, if, I'm a little concerned given how much more material there is,
01:40:03 ◼ ► I would love if they could find a way to make them lighter without ruining the keyboard,
01:41:05 ◼ ► And I really hope -- so, you know, the iPad is showing off a brand-new industrial design style.
01:41:28 ◼ ► like with the space gray and the straight edges and everything being just nice in your hand.
01:42:03 ◼ ► You just need one. You just need a USB-C or Lightning, and they both charge each other.
01:42:37 ◼ ► But as many people have been pointing out, oh, now the phone is the odd one out, right?
01:44:36 ◼ ► So anybody who's looking to have a cable at a clock radio at a hotel or something like that,
01:44:53 ◼ ► let's not chase computer connectors with our hotel peripherals because that's going to--
01:45:02 ◼ ► And if you think about this, what do you see everywhere in terms of computer connectors?
01:45:25 ◼ ► I can totally see Apple going to USB-C. If the current situation is sustained for a long period of time,
01:45:34 ◼ ► they just probably won't be able to avoid it despite the fact that it's thicker and not proprietary
01:45:47 ◼ ► Let me give you one small counterargument, which is something that we can easily get past,
01:46:15 ◼ ► I would take one of the, say, batteries out of my away suitcase, which is exactly what I did today.
01:46:26 ◼ ► I took the battery pack and I used the USB-A port on that battery pack to charge my phone,
01:46:36 ◼ ► I know you can go USB-A to USB-C, but is that going to be enough power to actually power one of these iPads?
01:47:03 ◼ ► And also, one new little tidbit, the iPads now come with a new and seemingly unbuyable, separately,
01:47:14 ◼ ► I look forward to being able to buy more of those, because it seems like that's everything I've been wanting.
01:47:19 ◼ ► There's also now a few other new USB-C peripherals, so the aforementioned USB-C to headphone adapter dongle, $9.
01:47:34 ◼ ► I think it's the same charge cable as that comes with the new laptops, but those all come with two-meter cables.
01:47:41 ◼ ► And also, a fun little tidbit, you can now get an Apple Watch charging cable that has a USB-C end.
01:47:54 ◼ ► even though I don't usually travel with the Apple Watch, but one thing I've been doing is
01:48:29 ◼ ► And apparently, in the last week or something, Apple released an Apple Watch charging cable with USB-C on the end,
01:48:36 ◼ ► and that was perfect, because that's the one thing I always felt like if I had to travel with my Apple Watch,
01:48:46 ◼ ► because it had that one cable, and that was your only option, so now you have two options.
01:49:14 ◼ ► Hopefully we'll get there before USB-D comes out and we'll have to throw all these cables away.
01:49:19 ◼ ► One thing that I think is a minor regression from going Lightning to USB-C has nothing to do with the port,
01:49:35 ◼ ► at the length of the stiff part of the connector, the thickness and bendiness of the cable,
01:49:41 ◼ ► even the ones that are just power, like the one that you connect to the one that comes with laptops,
01:50:00 ◼ ► Right, and it's because it's so long that even for a USB 2.0 it has to be a little thicker, right?
01:50:09 ◼ ► And it's just generally like, it feels less like there is a stiff twig poking out of the side of your thing,
01:50:27 ◼ ► And that's going to be a downgrade, because the thicker the cable and the longer the stiff part,
01:51:09 ◼ ► especially given Springboard and the lack of major interface changes to support the iPad,
01:51:27 ◼ ► They're huge, they're incredibly powerful, they're massively advertised with a keyboard,
01:51:55 ◼ ► That separation will be even healthier if and when iOS 13 comes out with much more iPad-specific features,
01:52:22 ◼ ► One interesting thing that I overheard was Marco talking to the developer of the DJ app.
01:52:41 ◼ ► "Hey, can you do kind of whatever you want with the external display, or do you have to..."
01:52:55 ◼ ► But it sounded like he said it's a free-for-all. You can do whatever the hell you want.
01:53:04 ◼ ► was that the very first thing they showed doing an external monitor, it was letterboxed,
01:53:18 ◼ ► And then later on, they showed a different app using an external monitor that it was filled all the way.
01:53:23 ◼ ► And so I was wondering, there has been external monitor support in the iOS SDK for a while now.
01:53:30 ◼ ► But I have never used it for anything, because there aren't a lot of reasons to play podcasts on external monitors.
01:53:47 ◼ ► And yeah, he basically said, I was asking, can you just render to it as any kind of window or surface or whatever?
01:54:07 ◼ ► and all applications to be usable in some form on whatever number of monitors you plug into them.
01:54:28 ◼ ► So it's always going to be a little bit different with iOS in the sense that you need each app
01:54:34 ◼ ► to actually code support for external displays and for that support to actually be for something useful,
01:54:50 ◼ ► So that should probably happen more as the pro software market on the iPad arrives and matures.
01:55:02 ◼ ► Maybe some of them were from the hands-on area where they'd show someone with an iPad Pro,
01:58:55 ◼ ► I won't tell them about the adapter, but Apple has a hilarious picture on their iPad Pro page
01:59:40 ◼ ► because I am all in on the AirPod lifestyle, because I'm an adult who can keep track of AirPods.
01:59:55 ◼ ► I, too, as the adult using the iPad, I, too, have almost never plugged headphones into my iPad
02:00:08 ◼ ► but if you think about it, the reasons that apply to the phone, which even they were shaky,
02:00:13 ◼ ► but it's not for thinness, it's not for water resistance, it's not for a lack of internal volume.
02:00:29 ◼ ► It's still on every Mac, so they're still important to "computers," and the iPad's a computer, right?
02:00:38 ◼ ► It's the one hardware change I would make to this. It's not a big deal, but if I had to say,
02:00:44 ◼ ► Even though I probably wouldn't use it, it just feels like it's another one of those philosophical changes.
02:00:59 ◼ ► I think that if Apple really wants to show that they're learning, they could potentially bring it back in a future model, but they probably won't.
02:01:05 ◼ ► This is, again, with the iPad being more like a laptop, and laptops, as you know, have a strict philosophical, orthodox adherence
02:01:15 ◼ ► to the idea of reducing the number of holes that are in them, even if it makes them less useful.
02:01:22 ◼ ► Once you get into a laptop size and power and price, there's lots of things that I can imagine being on the side of this thing, or even just another USB-C.
02:01:36 ◼ ► But as we both noted, it's probably not relevant for people who buy a $1,400 iPad, so I don't think there's going to be that much outcry.
02:01:44 ◼ ► Yeah, but it does, as Jason pointed out, it does reduce the potential usability of this, or it makes it more annoying to use, for a lot of pro things.
02:01:56 ◼ ► A lot of the things they demoed, things like DJs using it, or people doing live audio edits or mixing.
02:02:02 ◼ ► There are things where you really need a wired headphone for avoiding latency at Bluetooth and everything.
02:02:07 ◼ ► And now, you can do that now, but you need a dongle, which means that you can't charge the laptop while you do it.
02:02:13 ◼ ► It's like burning a bigger dongle or a breakout box, and maybe that's what they're envisioning in the pro scenarios.
02:02:21 ◼ ► If I'm using an iPad for something audio related, the last thing I want is to run my interface through a dongle.
02:02:29 ◼ ► Because dongles are unreliable, especially if I'm doing some kind of live performance or live need, in which case I probably wouldn't be doing this on an iPad, honestly.
02:02:37 ◼ ► But I would never want to run a critical audio interface to a live performance or live event through a dongle.
02:02:55 ◼ ► To also be running it through a dongle, doing its own USB translation stuff, is just stupid.
02:03:00 ◼ ► And so, by requiring that port to be used for adapters and dongles and everything, and also power now,
02:03:09 ◼ ► it just adds to the complexity and possibly reduces the reliability of using this in certain pro contexts.
02:03:15 ◼ ► And that's kind of annoying when it doesn't seem like there was any obvious good reason to remove the headphone jack.
02:03:22 ◼ ► And people in the chat room said, "Well, you know, you don't have to buy $160 AirPods, there's tons of cheap Bluetooth headphones."
02:03:28 ◼ ► That's true, but the advantage of cheap wired headphones is that you don't have to charge them, you don't have to worry about it.
02:03:37 ◼ ► You can get them incredibly cheap, you can buy just the cheapest earbuds or whatever, you don't care if they break, you don't care if they bend.
02:03:50 ◼ ► It makes it more useful. I can't wait for Apple's whole philosophical bent about holes in the sides of their portable products,
02:03:59 ◼ ► wraps around to the point where they start bragging about and touting the dongles that you no longer need because here's the new hardware item.
02:04:14 ◼ ► I mean, it's kind of hard for them to make that full circle, they have to wait for it to become sort of the thing we're used to, for all of us to just accept it.
02:04:19 ◼ ► And then they can say, "Look, if this was the only iPad and they introduced a new one and said, 'Now it has the headphone port, so you don't need to use that dongle to charge and listen to audio at the same time.'"
02:04:28 ◼ ► People would say, "Yeah, that's great." They can come around on this and make it seem like they're solving a problem that they solved and we'll all be grateful for it.
02:04:36 ◼ ► We're rapidly approaching the point where memories are short enough that people won't realize that they're solving a problem that they themselves solved.
02:04:44 ◼ ► Once we all have accepted our residence in dongle town and we've developed our collection of these white, pasty white dongles, we will pay Apple money to make it so we have to carry one fewer dongle.
02:04:56 ◼ ► I have to say that I haven't priced out the iPad that I'm going to try to resist buying, but if you wanted to get a top-of-the-line 12-inch iPad that's $1,900 with cellular is $130, a pencil is—oh, no, I'm sorry, that's $1,900 for the iPad with cellular, $130 for the pencil, $200 for the keyboard, $2,230.
02:05:22 ◼ ► And yet it probably has a faster CPU and potentially a faster integrated GPU, or maybe faster than the discrete GPU, than any $2,000 Apple laptop.
02:05:33 ◼ ► That's why I think the prices aren't that ridiculous anymore with these things, because it is so incredibly powerful. The screen is so good. It has so many things that no Apple laptop has.
02:05:48 ◼ ► Well, also, the use of the iPad. It's hard to mention enough how Apple's pricing is just going up and up and up.
02:06:02 ◼ ► Everything Apple has released in the last couple years has been noticeably more expensive than what it replaced.
02:06:08 ◼ ► Apple's pricing is really just tightening those screws, making us pay more and more and more every year for successive products.
02:06:18 ◼ ► There's a new MacBook Air. The old MacBook Air is still for sale at the same price. The new one costs more.
02:06:25 ◼ ► The price is one area where it's hard to feel good as an Apple customer when you price things out now and you see quite how expensive everything has gotten.
02:06:39 ◼ ► Apple stuff was never cheap, but it used to be at least a respectable value for what you were getting.
02:06:46 ◼ ► As the prices keep going up and up and up, that's a much harder rationalization to make.
02:06:52 ◼ ► But at least with the price, you feel that pain only once. When you buy it, you feel that pain.
02:07:00 ◼ ► But then once you have the product, you're able to move past what you paid for it, hopefully.
02:07:16 ◼ ► The expense of these items is an upfront pain. The laptops, I feel like, punish you every time you use them.
02:07:25 ◼ ► The laptops are just punitive. They just want you to hate yourself for having bought them.
02:07:31 ◼ ► Whereas the iOS devices, once you get past the cost barrier upfront, they're just pleasure. They're just wonderful.
02:07:38 ◼ ► Both the iPhones and the iPads are just so wonderful. They're so pleasing to use. This is why I wish I was more in the iPad ecosystem.
02:07:47 ◼ ► Because every time I use my laptop, I just hate it more. And every time I use an iPad, I'm like, "Man, I wish I could do more with this thing."
02:07:55 ◼ ► And a lot of that's on me. There is more I could do on it if I would invest the time into learning new tools and everything.
02:08:02 ◼ ► There's also a lot of my work I still couldn't do on it that would bother me. But boy, these iPad Pros look really, really awesome.
02:08:09 ◼ ► I'm much more excited about the prospect of spending $1,400 on an iPad Pro that I will use mostly to play overcast during breakfast than I am about any laptop I've bought from Apple in the last two years.
02:08:26 ◼ ► Alright, thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Squarespace, and Eero. And our indirect sponsor, Apple. And we'll see you next week.
02:08:35 ◼ ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
02:08:47 ◼ ► John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
02:08:58 ◼ ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.
02:09:08 ◼ ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey, Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T, Margo, R-M-N, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A, Syracuse.
02:09:37 ◼ ► So I'm curious, Casey, I know my answer to this. Did you run into any Apple executives or other Apple celebrities?
02:09:46 ◼ ► Run into just coincidentally. Well, cause, so at the hands-on area, there's a lot of the prominent people that we know from Apple events and stuff,
02:09:55 ◼ ► and high up executives and stuff, will be walking around. And, you know, they tend to be mobbed with people trying to get selfies, but you can occasionally interact with them.
02:10:03 ◼ ► I'm curious, I had a couple interactions. My first one, while Casey was playing with the iPad that I had just freed up, I noticed that right across the table was Johnny Ive having a big mob of people around him.
02:10:17 ◼ ► I thought, like, you know, first of all, I'm like, you know, what am I going to say to Johnny Ive? Anything I say, I would probably be making an idiot of myself.
02:10:24 ◼ ► And he doesn't know or care who I am. So like, what, what am I going to say? Like, and it was very clear also that Johnny was very uncomfortable in this setting.
02:10:33 ◼ ► Like, it's clear, like there's a reason why he's usually only seen videos and he wasn't this time. Like it was interesting. Like the, the, the role that Johnny would have normally played, which has the voiceover in the video, was Phil Schiller this time.
02:10:46 ◼ ► And for the iPad video. Who did a great job, by the way, I really thought he did a great job. I kind of miss seeing him. Like, cause normally Phil would present new IMAX or iPads or new Max or iPads.
02:10:56 ◼ ► But I kind of miss seeing him on stage, but it was, it was interesting, like hearing, hearing a Phil voiceover in that video. That was pretty cool.
02:11:03 ◼ ► But Johnny was nowhere in the event then, like, you know, he didn't have any voiceovers, but it's very clear, like why he normally does those.
02:11:10 ◼ ► Cause like, you know, we've, we've heard here and there, like he doesn't like being on stage or doing that. And he clearly was not that comfortable in a mob room full of people who are mostly his fans trying to get selfish with him.
02:11:21 ◼ ► Like this was not his scene. So I wasn't going to try to add to his crowd, but a few minutes later as he was leaving, he walked, he was going to walk past where I was standing.
02:11:33 ◼ ► I figure like, I'm not going to like stop him or anything. Cause again, what would I say? But as he was walking by, I did think of something. I thought of one thing. I said, Hey Johnny, I missed you in the videos.
02:11:43 ◼ ► And he was like, Oh, he laughed. He was like, thank you. And his wonderful British way. And I feel very proud of that, that I made Johnny Ive laugh.
02:11:53 ◼ ► And he was clearly, you know, uncomfortable and wanting to get out of there as fast as possible. I didn't stop him or slow him down and I didn't make an ass of myself. So I'm very proud of myself for that. Cause normally in that kind of situation, I would say something really stupid and make a total ass of myself. And I didn't do that.
02:12:09 ◼ ► I would still be thinking that Johnny thinks I'm a jerk for saying that. But anyway, I thought it was weird that he wasn't in the videos because this is an all new iPad design. And the time when you need Johnny to tell you about something is when it's an all new design.
02:12:26 ◼ ► How did they go from the old iPad to the new one? And what is it about this new design that's so great and tell us the philosophy behind it and tell us all that. And he wasn't there to do that. And so, you know, they had that thing, that animation, like the finger running around the outside of the iPad, flattening out, which I thought was cute.
02:12:41 ◼ ► And that video was awesome, by the way. Like the video of the finger editing the old iPad to become the new one. That was really cute.
02:12:57 ◼ ► So I actually did miss him. You're right. Phil did a great job. But his voice and what he normally says in his scripts or whatever was slightly missing from explaining the thinking behind an all new design for a prominent Apple product. He doesn't need to explain me on Actbook Air or whatever, but I feel like the iPads he could have explained.
02:13:18 ◼ ► Around the time that this, I guess it was right before this was happening. So Marco was using an iPad and I saw Johnny across from him. And I snapped a few pictures and you can see one of them in my Instagram. I'll put a link in the show notes. Then I started using that same iPad. And for a while there, nobody really noticed that he was there, I think.
02:13:35 ◼ ► And then all of a sudden I noticed that people are shoving my back more and more aggressively. And then cameras are getting closer and closer to my ears to the point that there was a camera within like a half inch of each of my ears going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, because everyone is like leaning in and basically pushing me out of the way to take a picture of Johnny's across the table.
02:13:55 ◼ ► At some point I thought that Marco had left and I thought that Federico was either leaving or had left. And I didn't know what to do with myself because I wanted to stick around the two of them. But then I went outside and couldn't find them. And I thought, well, I'll go to that fancy new Apple store across the street.
02:14:12 ◼ ► And I walk in there and I happen to meet a couple of listeners, which was lovely, and I'm talking to them. And then all of a sudden, guess who comes walking in? But Tim. Of course he gets mobbed immediately. And one of the listeners I was speaking with, Parker, had no shame in running directly to Tim and getting a selfie within like 30 seconds. I was deeply impressed.
02:14:36 ◼ ► He said, Tim is trying to make his way to the back of the room and is being extremely gracious about it. And the Apple employees are pooping their pants because they want to get a picture with Tim more than anything. I'm pooping my pants but attempting to keep it under control because I would like to get a picture with Tim.
02:14:51 ◼ ► Yeah, I only had the pants I was wearing. I didn't bring a change of clothes because it was a day trip. I am not the kind of person who would do that sort of thing, generally speaking. When Marco and I got a picture with Federici several years ago, it was basically because Marco said, "Oh my God, there's Craig!" and then disappeared, like, you know, with the outline of Marco in dust, like Looney Tunes style. And then next thing I knew, he was taking a picture with Craig and I got a picture with Craig as well.
02:15:15 ◼ ► In this case, I required some amount of assertiveness on my part, which is not my strong suit. But sure enough, as he was walking by, I said, "Oh, you know, can I get a picture?" "Thank you." And I said, "You did a really good job today, you know. Thanks."
02:15:30 ◼ ► And, you know, for someone who has fallen out of love with the iPad, I really, really want one. It looks really good. And at this point, my body language and I'm trying to indicate to him, like, "You can ditch me, dude. I understand that you need to keep moving to the back of the store.
02:15:44 ◼ ► Just, you can walk away. I'm not gonna be offended." But when I said, you know, "The new iPad's really great, or look really great," you know, he fed me what was clearly, like, his standard canned answer of, "Oh yeah, you're really gonna love them. They're really beautiful."
02:15:56 ◼ ► But he did it in such a way that made me feel like he was at least slightly paying attention to what I was saying, you know, more than I think he was obligated to have done.
02:16:05 ◼ ► And the entire conversation between he and me probably lasted between 10 and 15 seconds, but it seemed like for those 10 or 15 seconds, he actually was trying to engage, which was very, very flattering and very cool.
02:16:18 ◼ ► I did introduce myself by name. I did not see even a glimmer of recognition in him, which is exactly what I expected. But if he had, like, had his eye, like, flutter the littlest bit or something as though he had recognized me, I probably would have keeled over dead right there.
02:16:33 ◼ ► But no, no such, no such a lock. But he was extremely nice, extremely gracious, and I got a picture, which is in that Instagram post I have in the show notes. It's, I think, the last picture because I did it chronologically, and then Mike justifiably yelled at me for not putting that first, but, you know, c'est la vie.
02:16:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing when I was paged at three in a picture. I was like, "You didn't really bury the lead on this one."
02:16:53 ◼ ► Yeah, my bad. But, yeah, I wanted to do it chronologically. I wasn't thinking about it in terms of growth packing.
02:17:07 ◼ ► Yeah, totally. But no, that was very cool. It was funny, though, as I was going through my pictures that I took of the day, because I did take my big camera and use it on and off.
02:17:16 ◼ ► At one point, well, somebody actually on Twitter pointed out to me that behind Johnny, when he was talking to some woman who had sunglasses on and had the air of someone who thought that they were important, I don't know if she was important, but, you know...
02:17:34 ◼ ► Exactly, yeah. This is the kind of thing, like, I just assume that anybody in there who has even, like, two people trying to talk to them is probably somebody really important.
02:17:42 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, you say all that, and I agree, but just behind Johnny, I'm almost sure was David Blaine. I had no idea until somebody pointed it out on Twitter. He's a magician, a relatively famous magician.
02:17:57 ◼ ► Even worse, was that my card? Was it the six of diamonds? Even worse, as I'm going through my pictures later, when Federico and I had lunch, I realized I took, like, three pictures of Phil, had no idea he was standing there. None.
02:18:08 ◼ ► Yeah, I didn't see Phil at all. Like, I was looking for him. I would have loved to say hi to Phil. I didn't see him at all.
02:18:20 ◼ ► I don't know. Maybe you're right. I believed it when somebody on Twitter said it was David Blaine, but maybe you're right.
02:18:31 ◼ ► Could be. Who knows? But one way or another, I did not post the picture of Phil, but I'm almost sure.
02:18:39 ◼ ► Lana Del Rey was in the hands-on area, too. I saw a picture that she posted from there. Some Apple person.
02:18:49 ◼ ► Yeah, and you know, I gotta say, like, not only was that... First of all, not only was it really cool to see, like, you have this empty stage.
02:18:56 ◼ ► Like, you... 'cause Apple events have an empty stage with an empty table for an arrow demo, of course, but otherwise an empty stage.
02:19:02 ◼ ► And it's funny to see, like, right as Tim's introducing the musical guest, this team of stagehands in black shirts comes out and brings out, like, four stage monitor speakers,
02:19:14 ◼ ► two microphone stands, and a piano, and rolls them all out, like, in, like, no time. And all of a sudden, this empty stage becomes a musical performance stage.
02:19:22 ◼ ► And it was a really good performance, and I gotta say, Tim was not awkward with the celebrity.
02:19:30 ◼ ► Well, they did have the awkward live mic moments. Like, they still... This is one criticism for Apple's incredible crack AV crew is when someone is leaving stage and someone is coming on stage and they meet each other,
02:19:43 ◼ ► I think both of them don't expect their mics still to be live. But very often, they are. Because we get to hear them speak to each other sort of in a non-stage voice.
02:19:52 ◼ ► I think what Lana Del Rey said was, like, "Oh, when I do these things, I'm always so nervous." And Tim was like, "No, you did fine. I'm the one who's nervous." Like, they were conversing with each other in a way...
02:20:00 ◼ ► Have you heard that? We couldn't hear that in the room. Yeah, we couldn't hear that at all.
02:20:03 ◼ ► Right. But go watch the video, you can hear it. And I think, basically, they're not expecting their mics still to be live.
02:20:08 ◼ ► So I feel like the AV crew needs to turn off their mics as soon as they start that transitional phase and only turn them back on once they're separate from each other.
02:20:15 ◼ ► Although it's cute to hear that interaction. I thought it was very honest and real moment that briefly snuck through a very prepared presentation.
02:20:23 ◼ ► Yeah, I gotta say, it was one of the better musical guests in a long time. And the way it was integrated in was pretty nice and it wasn't awkward or anything. It was just good.
02:20:32 ◼ ► Yeah, Tim was... If you're watching the video, I'm sure it was obvious when you were there too, but the volume was fine in the video because obviously they're mixing that audio differently than it sounds in the room.
02:20:42 ◼ ► But Tim was all full of beans, as they would say. Like, he was very enthusiastic, very expressive about everything.
02:20:48 ◼ ► I don't know if he's gotten notes on his past performances that he seemed like he was a little bit sleepy, but he was not sleepy.
02:20:53 ◼ ► He was very expressive about everything and seemed genuinely excited about it and was just really pumped about the stuff they had and introduced everything with enthusiasm.
02:21:04 ◼ ► He didn't have his thoughtful Tim Cook moment, you know, the thoughtful moment that he has, making notes where he retails about only Apple or can do this.
02:21:15 ◼ ► Or just, you know, about why they care about the environment or helping people or it's all about the creativity. This was all just like rah rah, go-go type of stuff.
02:21:29 ◼ ► Yeah, he was at the MacPro event back in 2014, right? So that was like his public introduction in one of these events and now he's on stage.
02:21:37 ◼ ► He was pretty good. The marketing guy they had felt a little marketing-y, but it's the first time I've seen him on stage, so you got to kind of a break. It takes a little while to get the stuff all together.
02:21:48 ◼ ► I thought all the presenters were pretty good and it was a lot of new faces. It was like a quarter women or something. It was better than just having one woman.
02:21:59 ◼ ► But, you know, I did notice that it wasn't just a bunch of dudes the entire time, which was nice.
02:22:06 ◼ ► I would say also it was fairly well-paced and it didn't, at no point, felt like it was dragging. Like they didn't get too down in the weeds at the demos or anything.
02:22:17 ◼ ► Yeah, and it was a very dense hour and a half, whatever it was. The excitement levels were maintained for most of it. It only did it a little bit during the demos, but it was overall pretty cool.
02:22:30 ◼ ► Even the demo people were excited. The person who was demoing Photoshop was excited about the fact that she was using Photoshop on an iPad.
02:22:36 ◼ ► I think the only time it really got creepy was when they took that very long shot of the very detailed basketball player model.
02:22:48 ◼ ► It felt kind of like, I really don't like wax museums because the people in wax museums, they just look a little bit too lifelike but still really creepy and fake and weird. Like, you know, Uncanny Valley kind of situation.
02:23:06 ◼ ► And then to have that one long zoom in on every detail of this guy's sweat beads, and I'm like, "Okay, this should have ended like 20 seconds ago."
02:23:16 ◼ ► He should have had an idle animation. You know, when characters in games have idle animations, which they're like bouncing up and down or breathing or blinking or just doing something that shows that they're not a wax mannequin but are in fact a living thing.
02:23:27 ◼ ► But anyway, the focus on gaming was interesting, especially when they compared the GPU power to the Xbox One.
02:23:34 ◼ ► That's all well and good, Apple, but you're not convincing me. Like, oh Apple, you've got all the GPU power in the world, you are like 100 times more powerful than the Switch, but you do not have Breath of the Wild.
02:23:55 ◼ ► How is Nintendo able to make these amazing games with so much less power? And by the way, that thing costs so much less money. Maybe that's part of it too, but either way, like, yeah.
02:24:07 ◼ ► I love the GPU, I love the fact they have gaming demos. Oh, look at this, it's in retina resolution. This game, you know, no console can do 120 frames per second, which is true, but PCs can.
02:24:16 ◼ ► But anyway, that's not the problem. They're filling the wrong gap. People aren't saying, "I would love to use the iPad as my primary gaming system if only it did 120 frames per second."
02:24:29 ◼ ► That's not what people are saying. People are saying, "I would love to use the iPad as my gaming system if only it had the games I want to play."
02:24:37 ◼ ► That doesn't. Red Dead Redemption 2 did not come out on the iPad. The Last of Us 2 is not coming out on the iPad. Zelda didn't come out on the iPad. All these games, they're not coming out on the iPad.
02:24:48 ◼ ► And it's not because the iPad isn't powerful enough. It's plenty powerful. Anyway, I don't want to go off on Apple gaming stuff, but they insist on bringing up gaming. They insist on comparing themselves to gaming consoles, and it's like, you don't see the differences that people care about. It's not the differences you think they are.
02:25:04 ◼ ► One very small tidbit that I noticed that I might be the only person that finds interesting is that when the Adobe people were on stage, Chantal, I think, was the woman who demonstrated the AR app by actually using the iPad.
02:25:27 ◼ ► When she came on stage, I believe she brought the iPad with her, it looked like, if memory serves. But when she exited the stage, she put the iPad in that cube that was on stage and walked off stage empty handed.
02:25:41 ◼ ► There were three spare iPads. If you look at the shot of when she does the AR thing, you get the reverse angle, there were a bunch of spares there.
02:25:47 ◼ ► That's not surprising. We couldn't see that from our seats, but it just struck me as weird that she would have brought it on stage. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I could have sworn she brought it on stage. But then deliberately, it looked like she pulled open a drawer and ditched it in the drawer before she walked off stage.
02:26:01 ◼ ► I always get kind of, when I see someone come up for a demo and I realize they're standing in front of what we've come to know as an AR table. Why is there a giant AR table? So you know there's going to be an AR demo. When she was demoing, I was like, "She's demoing Photoshop." That's not going to be an AR demo, but sure enough, it's an AR demo.
02:26:23 ◼ ► Of course it is. All of us have AR demo tables in our house, right? It's just a big, giant, flat, empty table that we use for AR demos to make sure there's a service that it can track well?
02:26:31 ◼ ► Yeah, because obviously, no table in our house would just fill with crap and never be empty ever again.