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270: Three Major Zippers

 

00:00:00   I'll go with the zipper one just because I feel like I have a mnemonic for remembering.

00:00:04   Yes! Three major zippers, four apple heydays. That's my mnemonic.

00:00:07   That's how you're gonna make this work? Jesus.

00:00:10   Whatever you need, Josh. That could be the title. Three major zippers,

00:00:14   four apple heydays. Too long.

00:00:17   So, I don't know where to begin here because in our show notes it reads, "Follow up. Casey was

00:00:26   was right about something. I don't know if I should be really excited and really

00:00:31   smug about this or really fearful about this. So I have steeled myself, I am bracing myself.

00:00:39   Marco, what was I right about?

00:00:41   - As you know, we are going to the beach with increasing frequency.

00:00:47   - Okay, uh-huh.

00:00:49   - Sometimes we go there for long spans, and electric cars are not ideal to leave at the

00:00:54   the ferry because of gradual self-discharge basically.

00:00:58   - Margo bought a Jeep Wrangler.

00:01:01   - Oh my God, that would be amazing.

00:01:02   - Now there's no charging available there,

00:01:05   so it's, you know, electric is not great.

00:01:07   We kinda decided we need to maintain a gas car.

00:01:10   Also, normally the only way to get all the way

00:01:13   to the beach town that we go to is via ferry.

00:01:17   And the ferry's fine, but you know, it's slow,

00:01:19   you know, it's not impervious to weather,

00:01:21   it runs very infrequently in the off-season.

00:01:24   - Marco bought a boat?

00:01:25   (laughing)

00:01:27   - Now you can save a lot of time

00:01:28   and you could be able to go there a lot more easily

00:01:30   in the off season by driving all the way there,

00:01:34   which requires you to drive across the island itself,

00:01:37   which requires a permit for driving on the sand.

00:01:40   - Oh my God.

00:01:41   - Now there are very, very few of these permits.

00:01:43   They're tightly controlled by the National Park Service,

00:01:45   they're very hard to get.

00:01:47   Now there was an opportunity to get one,

00:01:49   but we had to act quickly if we wanted it.

00:01:52   Now the only downside is that it requires

00:01:56   a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

00:01:57   - Oh my God.

00:01:58   - All-wheel-drive is not good enough.

00:01:59   It needs true four-wheel-drive,

00:02:01   and it needs at least 10 inches of ground clearance.

00:02:03   - Oh my God.

00:02:04   - But it also has to be reasonably compact

00:02:06   to actually fit in the beach town once you get there.

00:02:10   Now this didn't have to be a very nice, high-end vehicle,

00:02:14   just something usable.

00:02:16   And of course, if it's gonna be a gas car,

00:02:19   I wanted it to be a transmission I could tolerate.

00:02:22   So I wanted it to be a manual transmission if possible,

00:02:26   'cause I don't think, I couldn't find anything

00:02:28   with a, you know, DSG or whatever.

00:02:31   - You guys, I'm so happy right now.

00:02:32   Carry on.

00:02:33   - Now as you know, there are not a lot of options

00:02:36   that fit this description.

00:02:37   And because we wanted it used and we wanted it quickly,

00:02:42   we also didn't have a lot of choices

00:02:44   on things like what color it was.

00:02:48   - Oh my God!

00:02:48   - Oh my God, oh my God, tell me you,

00:02:52   tell me a white Wrangler happened to you.

00:02:55   - Now certain colors, despite not being my favorites,

00:02:59   are more popular than others.

00:03:01   - Oh my God, I'm gonna be so sad

00:03:02   if that's not where this ends up.

00:03:03   - And sometimes these lighter colors

00:03:07   happen to be what you find on used listings.

00:03:11   - Oh my God.

00:03:12   - So, I have some news.

00:03:14   - Tell me about your new car.

00:03:17   - Never gonna let me hear the end of.

00:03:19   - Tell me about your new car, Marco.

00:03:21   ♫ Never gonna give you up

00:03:23   ♫ Never gonna let you down

00:03:25   - God dammit.

00:03:27   You're the worst.

00:03:28   All of this to Rick Roll Me, are you serious?

00:03:30   - Is it too late for an April Fool's joke?

00:03:32   - Yes.

00:03:33   (laughing)

00:03:34   - It's like a Friday the 13th joke, I guess.

00:03:35   - Oh, God, I was so happy.

00:03:37   - There was one thing,

00:03:39   there was one thing that I was not lying about.

00:03:41   You were right about something.

00:03:43   - Oh, here we go, all right.

00:03:44   - It was Tom Bihn.

00:03:45   - Oh.

00:03:46   - Tom Bihn backpack and it's really nice.

00:03:48   - Who knew?

00:03:49   (laughing)

00:03:51   - Damn it, Marco.

00:03:52   - Yeah, you were right.

00:03:53   You were right about something big.

00:03:53   Tom Bihn is actually really good.

00:03:56   - At some point I was trying to square the idea

00:03:58   of you getting a Wrangler.

00:03:58   Like, there's no way in hell I got a Wrangler.

00:04:01   Even if all that other stuff was true,

00:04:03   like, oh, I got a chance to get one of those things

00:04:05   and we're gonna drive across the thing

00:04:06   instead of taking the ferry and so on and so forth,

00:04:08   there's just no way.

00:04:09   - No, the truth is almost everything I said

00:04:12   would have been a sound thinking process,

00:04:13   but there is no way we're ever gonna get

00:04:15   one of those sand permits.

00:04:15   and we would never have any reason to drive there.

00:04:17   - Yeah, and you would have gotten a Land Rover.

00:04:19   That's what you would have ended up with.

00:04:20   - That's probably--

00:04:21   - There'd be nowhere to park it.

00:04:22   No, honestly, if I ever would get a sand permit,

00:04:24   a Wrangler would probably be what I get.

00:04:27   Because you do want some things to be small, inexpensive.

00:04:30   - Yeah, but you would have to drive it from home,

00:04:33   and you do that once, you'd be like,

00:04:34   there's no way I'm getting into that

00:04:36   rickety shopping cart again,

00:04:38   driving across the belt park wherever you're going.

00:04:41   - I was waiting for you to say in your terrible joke

00:04:43   that somehow the permit was associated with the car.

00:04:47   Like, you had a friend at the beach

00:04:49   that was unloading a Wrangler,

00:04:51   and the permit is associated with the car.

00:04:53   Yeah, yeah, which I understand would have been

00:04:55   like a nutso scenario, but that was the only way

00:04:58   I could fathom that you would actually end up

00:05:00   with a Wrangler.

00:05:01   It turns out you're just a big jerk.

00:05:03   - Sorry, I knew we were low on topics this week,

00:05:05   so I figured I'd start with that.

00:05:07   - So starting by trolling me is your new amusement,

00:05:10   and I see how it is.

00:05:10   - I mean, it's better than just like whining about

00:05:12   like, you know, the Mac Pro or Destiny or something, right?

00:05:15   - Debatable.

00:05:15   - Who would whine about Destiny?

00:05:16   Who would do that?

00:05:18   Besides, you already kicked that question

00:05:19   out of this episode.

00:05:20   - Yeah, true. - Thank goodness.

00:05:21   You're welcome, everybody.

00:05:22   - Next week, watch out.

00:05:23   - Oh, God.

00:05:24   Okay, so HomePod sales, not looking too good.

00:05:28   According to Bloomberg--

00:05:29   - You're right, this is better.

00:05:31   (laughs)

00:05:31   - During the HomePod's first 10 weeks of sales,

00:05:33   it eked out 10% of the smart speaker market,

00:05:36   compared with 73% for Amazon's Echo devices

00:05:39   14% for the Google Home, according to Slice Intelligence.

00:05:42   Three weeks after launch, weekly HomePod sales slipped to about 4% of the smart speaker category.

00:05:50   On average, the market research firm says.

00:05:53   I'd also seen, maybe it was in this article, that Apple retail employees are saying that

00:05:57   they'll sell like a couple each day, which I guess maybe shouldn't seem that dramatic

00:06:04   to me, but it seemed pretty dramatic to me.

00:06:06   So who knew when you have a speaker

00:06:10   that is completely reliant on good software

00:06:14   and that good software is Siri,

00:06:17   well guess what, the software ain't so good

00:06:18   and thus the speaker is kind of useless, who knew?

00:06:21   - Well it's also about price and features too.

00:06:24   - That's true.

00:06:25   - There's a lot they can do in the short term

00:06:28   that a lot of people are not buying the HomePod

00:06:30   because of its price versus its competitors.

00:06:33   A lot of people are not buying the HomePod

00:06:35   because it lacks features people want,

00:06:38   like the stereo pairing or the multi-room audio

00:06:40   or whatever else.

00:06:41   So I can see over the next year,

00:06:44   as Apple presumably improves the features of it

00:06:48   via software and maybe drops the price

00:06:50   during the holiday season or something like that,

00:06:52   I can see it getting a small boost.

00:06:54   But ultimately, I do think that the biggest problem it has

00:06:59   is still Siri and that's,

00:07:01   if Siri ever gets really meaningfully better,

00:07:05   It's going to be a long-term thing.

00:07:07   It's not going to happen quickly.

00:07:09   So I don't know if I buy the premise of this article.

00:07:11   Because, well, first of all, Apple's

00:07:13   not telling people what its HomePod sales are.

00:07:14   So it's all these market research firms

00:07:16   trying to come up with things and interviewing Apple Store

00:07:18   employees.

00:07:19   So it's not concrete numbers.

00:07:21   And second of all, because Apple's not

00:07:23   giving you numbers, you don't know what Apple expected.

00:07:26   It's just kind of saying, from the outside,

00:07:27   as far as we can tell, it doesn't

00:07:29   look like they're selling a lot of them.

00:07:30   And presumably, Apple wanted to sell a lot of them.

00:07:32   it's selling less than they want it to. We talked about the product and how it

00:07:37   stacks up, right? But given how it stacks up, and I know it's the launch and so it

00:07:42   should be bigger numbers, but 10% compared to Google Home's 14%? That's not

00:07:47   bad considering how much worse HomePod is than Google Home's product at this point, right? I don't, and I think about the slow start that lots of Apple

00:07:54   products have had, you know, from the iPod all the way to obviously the Apple TV's

00:07:58   other obvious example. Is Apple super disappointed in this? I mean we hope

00:08:05   they're a little disappointed that they couldn't get all their planned features

00:08:08   out the door, but in the grand scheme of things if they are really dedicated to

00:08:12   this market this is you know I think that this is kind of what they would

00:08:17   have expected. Like I don't I don't think you could have put out the HomePod

00:08:20   missing some of your announced features knowing that your competitors are on

00:08:23   multiple generations ahead of you and not expect to, you know, start off in third place.

00:08:30   So I, you know, I'm not too upset about this.

00:08:34   Now maybe Apple's upset about it, maybe they had grand visions of, you know, suddenly becoming

00:08:38   the market leader.

00:08:40   And I think despite how vague market research can be, I think we'd be able to tell if suddenly

00:08:47   the HomePod was the dominant smart home cylinder thing that you talk to.

00:08:51   And it's not, and I hope Apple expected that,

00:08:55   because I certainly did.

00:08:57   - Yeah, no argument here.

00:08:59   All right, so Cloudflare is on ARM servers.

00:09:04   So Cloudflare, that's sort of like Linode

00:09:07   or something along those lines, is that right?

00:09:09   - No, it's like a really big CDN,

00:09:11   and they provide advanced services

00:09:14   that are related to being a CDN,

00:09:15   so like DDoS protection and stuff like that.

00:09:18   - That's right, I feel so--

00:09:19   - We talked about them from the DNS thing

00:09:20   other episode, right?

00:09:21   Mm-hmm.

00:09:22   Yes, yes, yes.

00:09:23   Sorry, I got my wires crossed.

00:09:24   So apparently they're using ARM.

00:09:26   I didn't get a chance to read this article before we recorded tonight, so I apologize.

00:09:30   I am slacking on my chief summarizer and chief duties.

00:09:33   Can one of you give me kind of a quick summary, if you don't mind?

00:09:35   I put in the handy quotes.

00:09:38   Cloudflare has servers, right?

00:09:40   That's how they do all of this CDN and DDoS.

00:09:44   They have things out there on the network that serve content and that route traffic

00:09:48   and do all sorts of other things, a lot of them, right?

00:09:51   And so this is from the Matthew Prince, the Cloudflare COO.

00:09:55   He said, "I'd give better than even odds

00:09:57   that by Q4 this year, we will no longer spend any money

00:10:00   on Intel."

00:10:01   He's talking about is they want to buy ARM for all

00:10:04   of their servers from now on.

00:10:06   And he's talking about the performance for Watt

00:10:07   and everything.

00:10:08   And he says, "We think we're now at the point

00:10:11   where we can go 100% ARM.

00:10:12   In our analysis, we found that even if Intel gave us

00:10:14   the chips for free, it would still make sense

00:10:16   to switch to ARM because the power efficiency is so much better.

00:10:20   Now obviously Cloudflare is perhaps a special case because exactly what they're doing with

00:10:24   their servers is very narrow and it's the type of like they're not running applications

00:10:30   that you know they're not running a bunch of software that they need x86 compatibility

00:10:34   for.

00:10:35   And to them what's the most important as they say in this other quote is how many cores

00:10:40   per watt can we possibly get because in a CDN or DDoS type of environment or whatever

00:10:44   You want lots and lots of hardware out there, and you want them to be as small and as efficient

00:10:52   as possible because part of their money—I mean, the reason they say, you know, if Intel

00:10:55   gave us chips for free, it would still make sense to switch.

00:10:58   Electricity costs money.

00:10:59   It costs a surprising amount of money when you've got tons and tons and tons of servers,

00:11:03   and space and data centers cost a lot of money, and so on and so forth.

00:11:07   So perhaps they are the ideal case, but this is an example, a very timely example given

00:11:12   we just talked about Apple potentially switching to ARM, of ARM on the server still trying

00:11:18   to get a foothold. It's been a thing for many years now, the push for ARM on the server,

00:11:23   mostly from people selling ARM chips. But maybe it's finally getting a little bit of

00:11:28   traction. We'll see. But if it's going to start somewhere, starting someplace like this

00:11:32   seems like a safe bet.

00:11:33   Yeah. I had no idea that this was a thing. So that's pretty cool. Oh, real-time follow-up.

00:11:40   Which backpack did you end up getting, Marco?

00:11:43   I was so grumpy about your troll

00:11:45   that I didn't actually ask you which backpack it was.

00:11:47   - Oh, I feel bad.

00:11:48   - It's called the Wrangler.

00:11:50   - Yes, it's white and it's, yeah.

00:11:51   (laughing)

00:11:53   - Whatever.

00:11:54   - Anyway, I got the Synapse 25.

00:11:57   - That's what I figured.

00:11:58   - I can talk about it a little bit if you want.

00:11:59   - Sure.

00:12:00   - The only thing is I haven't traveled with it yet.

00:12:02   'Cause it just arrived yesterday,

00:12:03   I've been playing with it, packing it,

00:12:04   configuring it, stuff like that.

00:12:06   But I haven't actually traveled with it.

00:12:08   So far, what I like about,

00:12:10   so in my great backpack odyssey of spring 2018,

00:12:15   I have tried a few different ones.

00:12:18   The one that I've been using for the last couple of months

00:12:21   is the Peak Design Everyday 20 liter.

00:12:24   And the Peak Design is a really, really nice backpack

00:12:28   in a number of ways.

00:12:29   It is far better looking.

00:12:31   It is like a much more like fashionable backpack.

00:12:34   If you want to like look cool every day

00:12:36   with the way you're going,

00:12:37   you want to travel in style,

00:12:39   the Peak Design is by far the better choice.

00:12:42   It also has a few nice advantages,

00:12:44   like the Peak Design can stand up on its own.

00:12:47   The Tom Bin, I guess maybe you could load it

00:12:50   in a way that it would do that, but I haven't yet.

00:12:52   So it's just, you set it down and it flops over.

00:12:55   But the Peak Design can stand up, it's really nice,

00:12:56   it has really good handles, it has handles on the sides.

00:12:59   So you can carry it sideways if you need to do that

00:13:02   for some reason, I found that kind of useful.

00:13:05   So the Peak Design is good in a number of ways.

00:13:07   What I didn't like about the Peak design

00:13:09   and what made me ultimately start looking around again

00:13:13   is the, first of all, there really is not very much space.

00:13:17   And all the reviews said the 30 liter version

00:13:19   was really bulky and big looking.

00:13:22   And so good reviews, like our friend Chase Reeves

00:13:25   does really great bag reviews on YouTube.

00:13:27   And he said, and I saw a number of other things

00:13:31   and some photos that said basically nobody

00:13:33   should get the Peak 30 liter

00:13:34   'cause it's just too big visually,

00:13:37   and just looks weird on people.

00:13:39   So that's kinda what scared me away from it,

00:13:41   but the 20 liter really does not hold very much.

00:13:45   It's very hard to put things in it,

00:13:47   and one of the big problems with the Peak 20 liter,

00:13:49   well, with the Peak in general,

00:13:51   all of the compartments in it

00:13:54   intrude into the space of the main compartment.

00:13:58   So even like the laptop thing on the back,

00:14:00   like when you put a laptop in it,

00:14:02   it pushes into the main compartment,

00:14:05   which has a number of problems.

00:14:06   Number one, you lose space in the main compartment,

00:14:07   but number two, if the main compartment is full,

00:14:10   it's really hard to put a laptop in,

00:14:12   or it's really hard to have those side pockets close,

00:14:15   things like that.

00:14:15   So you're constantly intruding into that center space,

00:14:18   which is already not really big enough.

00:14:20   And then the side pocket, basically the Peak Design

00:14:24   has very little exterior organization.

00:14:27   It has all the organization interior.

00:14:29   So there's three major zippers to it,

00:14:31   and everything else is inside sub-pockets of those

00:14:35   or something like that.

00:14:36   So it's all these sub-areas.

00:14:38   So to get to the side pockets,

00:14:40   you have to actually open two different zippers.

00:14:42   Like first to open the main flap

00:14:43   and then second to actually get into the side pocket.

00:14:46   The side pockets I did not find very useful

00:14:48   because they're very skinny.

00:14:50   All the little pen slots and wire slots and stuff

00:14:53   are super tall and skinny or super tiny

00:14:57   and it's very hard to actually use that space.

00:14:59   And then when you close it up,

00:15:02   like you can't close those very well if the center is full.

00:15:06   And if you open it and the center is full,

00:15:07   your center stuff can fall out

00:15:08   when you're just trying to get to stuff in the side pocket.

00:15:10   So the Peak has a lot of great things going for it.

00:15:13   Ultimately, it is not very good when it's filled up a lot.

00:15:16   And like if you're carrying around a small amount of stuff,

00:15:18   it's great for, you know, they call it the everyday,

00:15:21   and I think that's a really good summary of it.

00:15:23   It's really good for like taking to work or something.

00:15:26   I would not say it's amazing for travel

00:15:29   because it just doesn't hold enough

00:15:31   and a lot of the organization inside is really clumsy.

00:15:35   It's also just heavy.

00:15:37   I weighed them with a little luggage weighing thing.

00:15:40   The peak empty is four pounds.

00:15:43   - Wow.

00:15:44   - And by comparison, the Tom Bihn Synapse 25 is 2.2 pounds

00:15:48   including the 15 inch MacBook Pro cash pocket inside.

00:15:52   So 2.2 versus four.

00:15:55   that's almost an entire MacBook One difference.

00:15:59   So that's, the Peak, it's made of this very thick,

00:16:03   heavy-duty material, it's really made to be

00:16:04   like a camera and gear bag.

00:16:07   - Which one, the Peak?

00:16:08   - The Peak, yeah.

00:16:08   - Okay.

00:16:09   - So all surfaces are padded.

00:16:11   You know how certain bags, they have padding

00:16:13   around the laptop compartment, but then if you

00:16:16   put the laptop in a different compartment

00:16:18   and there's no padding, you usually slide it in

00:16:19   and it could hit the ground really hard,

00:16:21   so you don't want that.

00:16:22   So the Peak, the whole bag is padded,

00:16:24   and I think that's one of the reasons

00:16:24   it's so much heavier, but the Tom Bihn,

00:16:27   the bag is just like thin fabric,

00:16:29   it's strong but it's thin,

00:16:31   and if you want something padded,

00:16:33   you have to buy some kind of insert

00:16:35   like the 50 nukes laptop cache that I got with it.

00:16:37   Anyway, instead of, in the peak,

00:16:39   all the organization is internal,

00:16:42   with the Tom Bihn, all of the organization is external.

00:16:46   You have many different pockets accessible from the outside.

00:16:49   You don't have to unzip one thing

00:16:52   and then go into another pocket on the inside.

00:16:55   Now you can, if you want to, have all these sub-bags

00:16:58   that you put into their pockets,

00:17:00   and they have this whole system for how you can attach them,

00:17:02   these O-rings and everything.

00:17:03   I'm not sure I'm gonna get into that, I don't know yet.

00:17:06   But what I like about the Tom Bihn is that

00:17:10   it seems you can more easily access stuff.

00:17:14   There's fewer steps, there's fewer pockets and sub-pockets.

00:17:19   it's more easily accessed to all your stuff.

00:17:23   And it's also just way lighter and it holds way more.

00:17:28   I cannot believe how much more it holds.

00:17:31   I can't say much more than that

00:17:33   until I actually travel with the Tom Bihn.

00:17:34   I did travel with the Peak a couple times

00:17:36   so I kinda knew what wasn't so good about it.

00:17:39   But the Tom Bihn so far, I think I'm going to like it.

00:17:42   It does seem like, it would I think be overkill

00:17:45   for an everyday carry to work bag,

00:17:49   But for travel, especially if you wanna do traveling light

00:17:54   and maybe just taking the backpack as your only bag

00:17:56   or as one of only two small bags,

00:18:00   then it's pretty, I think it's gonna be a lot more useful.

00:18:02   So ask me again after a few more trips this summer

00:18:05   and then I'll give a final verdict on it.

00:18:07   But so far, it does seem really nice.

00:18:09   It's also a lot cheaper, if that matters.

00:18:11   It's like $100 cheaper.

00:18:12   But it just seems really nice so far.

00:18:15   - Feels like you're creeping up

00:18:16   on my big ugly yellow bean backpack

00:18:18   because the previous one, the Peak Design one,

00:18:20   is very sleek and very stylish, trying to be understated.

00:18:23   - Oh yeah, the Peak is like a work of art.

00:18:26   It really is very stylish, very nice.

00:18:28   And parts of it, even the zipper pulls are,

00:18:32   the entire zipper pull is fabric,

00:18:34   and it's kind of like this rubberized, tough fabric.

00:18:38   Just using the Peak feels really nice.

00:18:40   It's a very nicely constructed bag.

00:18:44   Everything has a great look and feel and style,

00:18:47   but it just really, parts of it are very clumsy.

00:18:50   Oh, also one big thing to mention with the Peak.

00:18:52   The 15 inch Retina Map Approve in 2015

00:18:55   barely fits in the laptop compartment.

00:18:58   And I absolutely cannot recommend this bag

00:19:01   if you carry anything else

00:19:04   that would go in a laptop compartment besides a laptop.

00:19:06   So for instance, an iPad.

00:19:08   It technically has two different segments

00:19:10   of the laptop compartment, but it's so tight

00:19:13   that even getting an iPad in and out is really hard,

00:19:17   especially if you have one of these silicone covers on it.

00:19:20   It's really, really hard.

00:19:23   So I cannot recommend the Peak

00:19:25   if you carry a laptop and an iPad.

00:19:27   But otherwise, I really do like it.

00:19:30   I like a lot about it,

00:19:32   but I think for my actual needs,

00:19:35   where it's mostly a travel bag,

00:19:37   and I do need to hold a lot when I do travel,

00:19:39   I think the TomBin's gonna work out better.

00:19:41   - So if you're able to tolerate this backpack,

00:19:44   you are very close to tolerating the LOB1,

00:19:46   'cause this has a lot of pockets,

00:19:48   a lot of zippers, a lot of straps.

00:19:50   It is not particularly sleek.

00:19:51   So, and the LOB1, just to be clear,

00:19:54   holds way more than this

00:19:55   and has like 10 times as many pockets.

00:19:56   And it's 80 bucks.

00:19:58   - Yeah, the other thing is,

00:19:59   I don't want it to be too massive

00:20:02   because I also usually want this to fit

00:20:05   under the seat in an airplane.

00:20:07   - Yeah, mine fits under the seat.

00:20:08   - Okay, well, yeah.

00:20:09   So the peak, the 20 liter peak does fit very well.

00:20:14   I don't think the 30 would, or at least it would be,

00:20:17   maybe not on the planes, it'd have the big computer box

00:20:20   under the seat, you know.

00:20:22   - Oh yeah, the box under the seat, that's terrible.

00:20:24   - Yeah. - You can always get

00:20:25   a different seat.

00:20:26   (laughing)

00:20:28   - I use a Tom Bihn Cadet, which is similar,

00:20:32   except it's a messenger bag, which is terrible

00:20:35   if you're going to, it's terrible if you're going

00:20:38   carrying it for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, then I would use something

00:20:41   like a Synapse. But I only have it on my body for, you know, a half an hour at a time at

00:20:47   most, generally speaking, and I tend to prefer messenger bags for those sorts of uses, and

00:20:53   I love my Cadet. I've had it for like three years now. It looks brand new. It fits my—I

00:20:59   mean, my everyday carry for work is my 15-inch MacBook Pro that I use begrudgingly and use

00:21:05   sought out. It has my MacBook One in it, both in their own individual caches. I used to carry my

00:21:13   iPad with me when I still used iPads and then, you know, other miscellaneous cables and goodies

00:21:18   and things of that nature. So I love my cadet. I cannot say enough good things about it. I'll link

00:21:22   my review in the show notes. Tom Bihn's stuff is great. The people there are super nice. I adore

00:21:29   their stuff. And even if, you know, if you prefer a backpack, get the Synapse. If you prefer a

00:21:33   get your messenger bag, get the cadet or something else.

00:21:35   You can't go wrong with Tom Bennett's great stuff.

00:21:38   - And definitely I would strongly recommend anybody

00:21:39   who's looking at these kind of things,

00:21:41   check out Chase Reeves' video reviews on YouTube.

00:21:43   He is incredibly well versed.

00:21:46   He travels a lot, first of all, and he has tons of bags.

00:21:50   I don't know, I mean, at this point,

00:21:52   like if I was a bag manufacturer,

00:21:53   I would be sending him the bags to review.

00:21:54   I don't know if that's the situation,

00:21:55   but he has tons of great bag reviews,

00:21:58   mostly of backpacks, and he really takes the whole

00:22:02   out of everything and I think has a really good point of view on them. So definitely

00:22:06   check out Chase Reeves on YouTube.

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00:24:23   our show.

00:24:27   You have a Facebook group's problem, apparently. Can you tell me about this?

00:24:32   Yeah, I tweeted about this a couple weeks ago. The gist is, you know, I've never been

00:24:37   a fan of Facebook. We discussed a couple weeks ago how I really don't like Facebook, but

00:24:43   but I really do like Instagram,

00:24:45   and it's owned by Facebook, and so it's kind of awkward.

00:24:48   Anyway, I would love to delete my Facebook account entirely.

00:24:52   I've never actively used it.

00:24:55   It's only a source of spam and stuff I don't care about

00:25:00   and drama for me, so I just wanna escape Facebook.

00:25:05   The only thing keeping me there

00:25:07   is these two private groups,

00:25:09   one for the local parents of our school,

00:25:12   And then the second one is the beach town

00:25:15   has a local community group.

00:25:18   And they're both private, you gotta apply to get in,

00:25:20   so no kind of public scraping of them,

00:25:23   whatever actually work, at least in a simplistic way.

00:25:27   Maybe I could scrape something together

00:25:28   with using my login cookie or whatever, who knows.

00:25:30   But I wanna just delete my account

00:25:31   and just be done with Facebook entirely.

00:25:34   And so my question was, first of all,

00:25:37   do I need to retain membership in these groups?

00:25:41   And then second of all, could I attempt,

00:25:45   you know, the local parents one is very unimportant to me.

00:25:49   The beach one is actually pretty important

00:25:51   because it's a small community there

00:25:54   and it's a lot of old people

00:25:56   who live there year round at least

00:25:58   and so I like to keep up with what's going on in the town

00:26:00   and they can check on everyone's houses

00:26:02   to make sure it's not flooded and everything else

00:26:04   and it's just a nice little community.

00:26:06   So I was wondering, could I plausibly start

00:26:10   another community to replace it and maybe get some

00:26:13   or many of those people to move to it.

00:26:15   And what I came to, so I asked Twitter this,

00:26:20   like you know, basically I asked like,

00:26:21   have you ever, has anybody tried to move a community

00:26:24   like this off of Facebook or to start another one

00:26:26   somewhere else?

00:26:27   If so, like how did it go and where do you,

00:26:29   where are you supposed to do that?

00:26:31   - That was the plot of The Secret of NIMH, wasn't it?

00:26:33   - I think so, yeah.

00:26:34   (laughing)

00:26:36   - Didn't go well, spoiler alert.

00:26:38   - Yeah, anyways, so I, you know, my first thought

00:26:43   was maybe a Slack group, but I don't know how older people

00:26:47   appreciate or don't appreciate or understand Slack.

00:26:50   And I don't know how regular average people,

00:26:53   like who aren't like nerds, I don't know how popular

00:26:56   Slack is or how amenable people would be to it.

00:26:59   I didn't wanna just go to some other like, you know,

00:27:03   crappy social network.

00:27:05   Like a bunch of people recommended things like Nextdoor,

00:27:08   which I, what I hear from Merlin about Nextdoor

00:27:12   makes me not want to attempt that.

00:27:14   - Well, that's my first question for you on this topic is,

00:27:18   how much, speaking of Nextdoor,

00:27:20   how much like Nextdoor is the Facebook group?

00:27:22   Is the Facebook group, as it exists now,

00:27:24   just like, forget about moving it,

00:27:25   but just like as it exists now,

00:27:26   if you had to characterize it, what is it most like?

00:27:28   Because yeah, there's the mechanism,

00:27:30   yeah, people type words into boxes in Facebook,

00:27:32   but what does it seem like?

00:27:33   What do people talk about?

00:27:34   Does it seem like a next door community?

00:27:36   Does it seem like a Slack channel?

00:27:37   Does it seem like a web bulletin board?

00:27:39   What's the best analogy?

00:27:41   - It's pretty low traffic, first of all.

00:27:44   There's only one or two posts a day.

00:27:46   And it's usually people posting photos

00:27:50   of what's going on in town,

00:27:52   which I think is interesting, 'cause over the winter,

00:27:54   a lot of construction happens, and I like to watch,

00:27:56   like, oh, look, there's a new store, we're getting built,

00:27:57   or oh, they tore down that thing, stuff like that.

00:28:00   So that's kind of fun.

00:28:01   and it's also like local political summaries of like,

00:28:05   oh, there was a board meeting of the village or whatever,

00:28:09   and here's the notes from the meeting,

00:28:11   or here's this issue people are talking about,

00:28:12   requesting public comment, stuff like that.

00:28:15   It's not, you know, if I'm honest, it isn't that important,

00:28:19   but I kinda like it, and I also feel like it'll be useful

00:28:23   to be a part of some kind of community like this

00:28:25   as we spend more time there, because, you know,

00:28:27   one thing you can do in the summertime, it's like,

00:28:29   oh, I have to get rid of this old fridge.

00:28:31   want it, come pick it up for free, stuff like that.

00:28:33   Or like, anybody have any recommendations for where

00:28:35   to get prescriptions when we're out here?

00:28:37   Stuff like that, I feel like being a part of a community

00:28:40   like that is useful in ways like that, especially when it's

00:28:43   a fairly small and hard to access community, I guess.

00:28:47   It helps to have connections to people like this.

00:28:50   So I went through basically all people's replies,

00:28:54   looking at all the services people were recommending,

00:28:57   and I just, it just was, it was totally unproductive.

00:29:02   There was basically no consensus

00:29:04   except either using Nextdoor,

00:29:07   but nobody even had done it.

00:29:09   Like everyone was saying like, "Oh, just use that."

00:29:10   But the people who had said they'd actually tried to do it,

00:29:14   almost all of them said it just didn't work,

00:29:17   like that nobody moved over,

00:29:18   or they couldn't get it to work,

00:29:20   or everyone moved back, or the people complained,

00:29:22   they couldn't understand it, whatever else.

00:29:24   Even, you know, and that was for everything people tried,

00:29:26   for things like Slack, for things like,

00:29:27   I think Discord can be used in this way,

00:29:29   but I don't understand Discord yet, so I don't even know.

00:29:32   Or like, you know, somebody starts

00:29:34   setting up a forum somewhere.

00:29:37   I don't know, so there were a bunch of options.

00:29:39   None of them were very good.

00:29:42   And so here I am basically back at square one,

00:29:45   which was the situation that most of the responders were in

00:29:47   who had tried it.

00:29:49   Basically like, yeah, you know what,

00:29:51   I tried and nobody wanted to move.

00:29:53   And so my current theory is I wanna find out

00:29:57   how much I actually need to be a part of these communities.

00:30:02   I think the right answer's ultimately gonna be

00:30:05   I just don't need these.

00:30:06   You know, 'cause one thing is I found,

00:30:09   the other day I found basically the Instagram community

00:30:13   for this place, and I thought,

00:30:15   "Well, that's actually much more pleasant.

00:30:16   "There's way more photos."

00:30:18   And I can see kinda what's going on,

00:30:20   and there's nobody complaining to the mayor

00:30:22   about stupid stuff that doesn't matter.

00:30:24   So I kinda felt like maybe Instagram was enough.

00:30:28   It's certainly nicer, and I'm there anyway,

00:30:31   so I might as well enjoy this part of Instagram

00:30:33   instead of just dogs and watches.

00:30:35   So I guess maybe I could just have Instagram satisfy

00:30:40   like the photo fix and just stop the community interaction,

00:30:45   or I could, this summer, stick a bunch of papers

00:30:49   on the telephone poles and try to start my own Slack group.

00:30:52   and I don't know how that would be received

00:30:54   if anybody would actually join it,

00:30:56   if that would matter, I have no idea.

00:30:58   I think the conclusion I'm coming to is that

00:31:01   the Facebook groups are probably not able

00:31:04   to be easily moved, but are also either low value

00:31:08   or low traffic enough that I might just go without them

00:31:12   and that might just be fine.

00:31:14   - I think you have a pretty reasonable

00:31:17   long-term solution here.

00:31:18   I think you're right that you're not gonna be able

00:31:20   to move these people, right?

00:31:21   I also think you should not go to Nextdoor because I think that is all, from what I've

00:31:26   heard, it's all of the worst things about the Facebook group and it involves moving

00:31:30   people.

00:31:31   But what you can do, I think eventually pretty successfully, is start a new community.

00:31:38   Don't try to move anybody.

00:31:40   Start a new community, wait for the old people to die, aggregate the young people so that

00:31:45   eventually the Facebook community just dwindles.

00:31:49   You're not going to convince them to come over.

00:31:51   Don't stick anything on any polls.

00:31:52   Just get two or three people who are similarly inclined

00:31:57   to go on whatever you wanna use

00:31:59   with those two or three people, right?

00:32:01   And those two or three people probably will still be

00:32:03   on the Facebook group, but just slowly over the years,

00:32:06   many, many years, start moving the traffic there.

00:32:08   Start to build a critical mass

00:32:09   until people on the Facebook group start hearing

00:32:11   about things that were discussed on the Slack

00:32:13   or on the whatever else other thing you have.

00:32:15   That's the way you win in the end.

00:32:18   And in the meantime, you can do what we do in our households,

00:32:22   which is have one designated person in the pair

00:32:26   be the person who uses Facebook.

00:32:27   (laughing)

00:32:28   And so you have to use it, but Tiff could use it.

00:32:30   So I don't use Facebook, but my wife uses it

00:32:33   to look at things, and sometimes she tells me

00:32:34   what's happening there.

00:32:35   - Well, the sad part is, I used to be in that situation,

00:32:39   then Tiff got fed up with Facebook

00:32:40   and deleted her account like three or four years ago.

00:32:42   - Ah, yeah.

00:32:43   - And so now I'm that person.

00:32:45   - So you're that person, yep.

00:32:46   - Yes.

00:32:47   - Well, I mean, like I said, start the parallel thing.

00:32:50   It's the advantage you have of coming into a neighborhood

00:32:54   as the new person in the neighborhood.

00:32:56   Hopefully you're younger than a lot of the people

00:32:58   that are there and there will be turnover.

00:33:00   And so you can, if you start a new community

00:33:03   and start it small, you can build it up over the years.

00:33:06   - Yeah, that's probably the right answer.

00:33:09   But, and the reason I wanted to bring this up on the show

00:33:12   is because A, it's relevant 'cause Facebook is horrible,

00:33:14   and B, I think a lot of people are in situations like this.

00:33:17   I think a lot of people are in a situation of like,

00:33:21   I want to stop using slash delete my account on Facebook,

00:33:24   but I quote, "have to be there for something that's there."

00:33:29   Whether it's like my grandparents,

00:33:32   'cause that's the only place they post,

00:33:33   or some group they have to be a part of

00:33:35   for family or work or something.

00:33:38   I heard from so many people who this was the case for.

00:33:42   And so I feel like maybe I could come up

00:33:44   with some kind of solution or set a good example

00:33:47   that could maybe help more people than just me on this,

00:33:49   but I do think you're probably right that

00:33:52   I think the best solution, not only for me,

00:33:53   but probably for a lot of people who find themselves

00:33:55   in this situation is to just abandon those Facebook groups

00:33:58   and just take the hit of whatever you're missing.

00:34:01   Because honestly, I'm probably not gonna be missing

00:34:02   that much, honestly.

00:34:04   I wasn't a part of these groups six months ago

00:34:06   and I was fine, so maybe it isn't that bad, I don't know.

00:34:10   - Yeah, the big advantage you have is that it's not like

00:34:12   This is the only place where you can talk to your grandparents.

00:34:14   These aren't your families, aren't you know, you don't have any reason, like you're not

00:34:18   abandoning anybody, right?

00:34:20   So you are just going off and doing your own thing.

00:34:21   It's much more difficult when like this is the only thing my whole family knows how to

00:34:25   use.

00:34:26   So if I want to know what's going on in their life at all, I have to go to Facebook to find

00:34:30   out.

00:34:31   They're never going to move.

00:34:32   I'm never even going to ask them to move.

00:34:33   That's just not how this is ever going to work.

00:34:34   But I can't abandon them and go, "See you, grandma.

00:34:37   We're starting our own group over here.

00:34:39   Join us when you can."

00:34:40   she will never join, you'll just never hear about your grandmother again. So take advantage

00:34:44   of the fact that you don't have those kind of ties to the group and just start your own

00:34:47   much better, cooler group.

00:34:49   And then you'll take to the streets, snapping at each other in groups.

00:34:54   Mark hasn't seen that movie.

00:34:56   But Tiff has.

00:34:57   Probably true.

00:35:00   We are sponsored this week by the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast. Subscribe in your podcast

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00:35:09   'cause that's kind of what it's for.

00:35:11   Before your ride home, go subscribe to Tech Meme Ride Home.

00:35:14   So techmeme.com has been around forever.

00:35:16   I've been reading the site for probably

00:35:18   over a decade at least.

00:35:19   It's great for kind of collecting important stories

00:35:23   that are happening around our world in tech,

00:35:25   in Apple, and kind of related fields.

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00:35:29   And so if you listen to this show,

00:35:31   you're probably gonna like Tech Meme Ride Home as well

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00:35:36   And Techmeme has been doing this on the web for years.

00:35:40   And what they're doing is they're taking it

00:35:42   to a podcast now.

00:35:43   So they take the same headlines from techmeme.com,

00:35:46   the same context, the conversation,

00:35:48   and thoughtfulness, and the curation,

00:35:50   and they make a daily show now, Monday through Friday,

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00:35:56   And it's only about 15 to 20 minutes long.

00:35:58   So it's perfect for listening to

00:36:00   on your commute home from your job.

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00:36:52   (upbeat music)

00:36:55   - So this topic has been in the show notes

00:36:57   for I feel like a couple of months.

00:36:59   John's Mongoose Californian?

00:37:00   - Yeah, actually it's been a couple of years.

00:37:02   - Didn't I talk about that?

00:37:03   - We did eventually.

00:37:03   - Yes.

00:37:04   - But that did take--

00:37:05   - We got to that one eventually.

00:37:06   - Even I remember that and it took a couple of years.

00:37:08   (laughing)

00:37:09   This showed up a couple of months ago

00:37:11   and pretty much every episode for probably the last

00:37:15   eight to 15 episodes has had us on the verge

00:37:20   of doing this topic and then we just run out of time.

00:37:23   So tonight's the night.

00:37:25   And Kyle Geeter writes in to say,

00:37:27   "When I hear you guys,

00:37:28   along with some of my other favorite podcasters, Jason Snell, Mike Hurley, Stephen Hackett,

00:37:31   Federico Faticci, talk about your many experiences over several years using Apple's various devices

00:37:36   and OS's.

00:37:37   It makes me feel like I missed out on the time when Apple was on the cutting edge, a

00:37:41   time when their products are pretty much universally regarded as being new and full of innovation,

00:37:45   something they seem to be lacking lately.

00:37:47   Don't get me wrong, I love Apple's ecosystem in its current state and perfections and all,

00:37:51   but I find myself agreeing with you when you're discussing everything that is currently lacking.

00:37:55   That's not to say that all their products are stale, but you get what I mean.

00:37:59   My question, or ask, rather, is if you guys, Jon specifically, can explain what that time

00:38:05   was like.

00:38:06   I'd love to hear a firsthand account of what using a new Apple product was like when it

00:38:09   genuinely had new features that no other product had.

00:38:11   I've watched some Steve Jobs documentaries and ended up watching the dramatic movies

00:38:15   Jobs and Steve Jobs pretty frequently because I find the idea of old Apple, or Steve Jobs'

00:38:21   Apple, very fascinating.

00:38:22   I wish I had migrated to it earlier so I could have been a part of it."

00:38:28   I don't have a clear answer for this, and I bet you Jon will, but he's going to be disgusted

00:38:36   by what Marco and I have to say, so we're going to start and then Jon will clean up

00:38:39   our mess.

00:38:40   And since I have the floor, I'll go ahead and start.

00:38:42   And I was thinking about this earlier as I was washing dishes, and I have two answers,

00:38:48   and I'm not sure which I prefer.

00:38:52   The answer that speaks to me the most is, a few years after the Intel transition, I

00:38:58   want to say probably the late aughts or early 2010s, which actually was quite a few years

00:39:04   after the Intel transition if I remember correctly, when the laptops were getting really frickin'

00:39:11   good.

00:39:12   And when you started to see regular people understanding the fact that if you want a

00:39:17   good laptop, you're buying a Mac. They're reliable, they're reasonably rugged, and they

00:39:24   pretty much just work. And at that point in time, they really did just work. And we've

00:39:32   talked a lot on this show about whether we're just getting old and curmudgeonly, which we

00:39:35   are, whether things are actually worse with software on Apple platforms, which it is,

00:39:41   or a combination of the both, which it is. But nonetheless, I remember, and maybe it's

00:39:46   rose-colored glasses, but I remember a time when my computer always just worked. I never

00:39:52   had to take compressed air to it, which by the way, don't tell Marco, but I need to take

00:39:55   compressed air to my MacBook One again.

00:39:57   I'm shocked.

00:39:58   I've never had—I know you are—I've never had to worry about things just randomly breaking

00:40:02   or not working anymore. It was just—it was great. And as a PC—well, PC as in, like,

00:40:09   personal computer user, it was awesome. And this was, again, probably—if I were to try

00:40:14   to pin it down even more, right around the time that SSDs were starting to be affordable.

00:40:19   So most computers did not have them, but those who were willing to part with a lot of money

00:40:25   to get them could. And so I want to say this is roughly 2012, maybe, actually. And I just

00:40:32   feel like that was the heyday of Apple laptops. And I think things have taken some turns from

00:40:39   here. And even though I don't think it's so bad that if I was buying a new 15-inch, I

00:40:43   would actually buy an old 15-inch High Marco, but I definitely agree that there are problems

00:40:48   in the current lineup.

00:40:50   The other answer I had is perhaps a couple of years ago when the iPad Pro was announced,

00:40:58   and the 12-inch iPad Pro.

00:41:00   And even though that didn't really do anything for me, if I am willing to concede that the

00:41:05   Mac is a relic of a bygone era, or soon to be bygone era, and the iPad is the future,

00:41:12   I think the iPad Pro probably was the inflection point at which it became clear that the iPad

00:41:20   was a real computer, and as much as I snark about it, it's not a toy anymore.

00:41:25   Not specifically because of the iPad Pro, but I think that moment in time was about

00:41:29   when that happened, which is a combination of iOS 10, iOS 11, it doesn't matter really,

00:41:35   but you know, multitasking got a lot better, the software got a lot better, the device

00:41:40   was far more capable, it was bigger, everything about it just seemed like a

00:41:44   confluence of good events, and I know that the iPad lovers of the world, like

00:41:48   the Mike Hurleys and the Federicos and the Jason Snell's, could not have been

00:41:51   happier. And so that actually was just in the last couple of years. The

00:41:58   Intel, you know, pinnacle of the Mac laptop was a few years ago, and I would

00:42:05   I would choose probably one of those as my answer.

00:42:09   - So I actually feel a little more positive

00:42:12   than you do about this.

00:42:14   The idea of trying to nail down like,

00:42:17   when was Apple's heyday?

00:42:19   It's hard because, first of all,

00:42:22   you do have the rose-colored glasses issue,

00:42:25   which is hard for us to really think past objectively.

00:42:28   It matters a lot what's important to you

00:42:31   and what stage of your own life you were at

00:42:34   certain things came out or whether you missed certain things

00:42:36   'cause you came too late or 'cause you're young,

00:42:40   which I'm sure Jon's gonna tell us about.

00:42:41   (laughing)

00:42:42   So, you know, there's a lot of,

00:42:43   and also, you know, parts of this are tied up

00:42:45   in things like just kind of missing Steve

00:42:49   because he was a big personality that we all really liked

00:42:52   and, you know, Apple's not gonna recapture that without him.

00:42:56   So, it's hard, it's hard to try to think

00:43:00   about this objectively.

00:43:02   Getting around the rose-colored glasses thing,

00:43:04   I think it's also hard to look back and to remember

00:43:09   there actually were product flaws and software flaws

00:43:13   and missteps and iPod Hi-Fis.

00:43:17   There were these things during the times that I think of

00:43:21   as really great times in Apple's past.

00:43:24   So it's really hard to nail down one time and say,

00:43:26   this was significantly better than today.

00:43:30   Obviously the implication with the question,

00:43:32   when it was Apple's heyday is that it's not today.

00:43:34   What I think my answer is for when the heyday was

00:43:39   was probably right around 2012 or so.

00:43:43   - Okay, that's what I was thinking, somewhere around there.

00:43:45   - And I know this is like right after Steve died,

00:43:49   so his influence was still very strong,

00:43:50   so this kinda sounds like it was partly

00:43:53   like a Steve versus Tim thing,

00:43:54   and I don't mean that specifically.

00:43:56   I do think there's some elements of that,

00:43:58   but I don't think that's like the,

00:44:01   like the only problem or even the biggest difference.

00:44:05   If you look back, like, you know,

00:44:07   when I wrote my best laptop ever post,

00:44:09   you know, praising the 2015 laptop

00:44:10   in a thinly veiled attempt to insult the 2016 laptop,

00:44:14   I realized, like, you know, the 2015 MacBook Pro,

00:44:17   Retina MacBook Pro, which was actually the 2012

00:44:19   Retina MacBook Pro just after a few updates,

00:44:21   really is such an amazing computer.

00:44:23   I can't point to any time before that computer

00:44:27   and say, "I'd rather be back then than now."

00:44:30   or like the Macs back then were better.

00:44:33   Like no, they weren't.

00:44:34   That computer, which I'm still using, is,

00:44:38   to me, that is like the pinnacle of

00:44:41   what I love most about Apple design.

00:44:43   And yeah, it isn't like totally perfect.

00:44:45   There have been problems with screen delamination

00:44:47   for some people, and the ones with dedicated GPUs

00:44:50   often had GPU failures, well that was a problem

00:44:52   with pretty much every MacBook Pro generation.

00:44:55   So, you know, it's not perfect,

00:44:58   but it's really damn good,

00:45:01   and I think it's better than everything

00:45:02   that came before it.

00:45:03   And I can't say, you know what,

00:45:04   obviously I have a lot of problems with modern laptops,

00:45:06   so I can't say that about the current generation.

00:45:08   The current ones, I cannot say either

00:45:10   that they are really good,

00:45:11   or that they are better than the ones

00:45:12   that came before them.

00:45:14   But I think that's actually a fairly recent thing.

00:45:17   Most of the rest of the Mac lineup

00:45:19   has been pretty great in the meantime.

00:45:22   You know, it isn't always updated

00:45:23   as much as I want it to be.

00:45:25   And the Mac Mini, I know some people

00:45:27   look at the Mac Mini these days and say,

00:45:28   "Oh, they haven't updated it forever."

00:45:29   Yeah, they never updated the Mac Mini very often.

00:45:30   It's always been a last priority, even under Steve,

00:45:33   even when it first came out.

00:45:34   It's always been a very low priority,

00:45:36   and it's always been very overpriced for what it is

00:45:39   and very rarely updated.

00:45:40   And yeah, so anyway, the iMac, the MacBook Pro

00:45:45   up through 2015, the MacBook Air,

00:45:48   which got that amazing update in 2010

00:45:51   that made the best computer possibly ever

00:45:54   for most average people.

00:45:56   they had some really good years fairly recently

00:46:00   and some really good products.

00:46:02   Look at the iPhone line as it's matured,

00:46:05   the iPad line as it's matured.

00:46:07   They've made some amazing products

00:46:09   across almost all their product lines

00:46:12   up until either the present day or pretty recently.

00:46:16   The crappy laptops only came out in 2016.

00:46:18   That wasn't that long ago.

00:46:19   It feels longer by the day,

00:46:20   but a lot of bad decisions were made by the world in 2016,

00:46:25   And Apple was not immune to that.

00:46:26   But maybe there's hope in some of these areas, I hope.

00:46:31   God, I hope.

00:46:32   But so the premise of this question is that Apple

00:46:35   is currently in a really, in like a bad state

00:46:39   and that their heyday was maybe a long time ago.

00:46:43   And I do think Apple has some problems today,

00:46:45   which I could talk about every week.

00:46:46   But I don't think that their best times were that long ago.

00:46:51   Their best times, I think, were only a few years ago

00:46:54   and included years that were under Tim Cook,

00:46:57   and included years where Johnny Ive was designing things,

00:47:00   and you know, so like, I don't think

00:47:03   this is like a massive problem

00:47:05   that we have to look back very far

00:47:07   to get what we think is the heyday,

00:47:09   and I also wouldn't say that today

00:47:11   isn't the heyday for everything.

00:47:13   I think the iPhone is great today, you know?

00:47:16   The iPad is great today.

00:47:18   - That's a good point.

00:47:19   - And the iMac, the iMac Pro is amazing.

00:47:22   And even the 5K iMac before that in 2014 was also amazing.

00:47:27   So there are parts of Apple

00:47:31   that are still doing amazing work.

00:47:33   And I would say almost all of Apple

00:47:34   was doing amazing work not that long ago, if not today.

00:47:38   So I don't think it's that far in the past.

00:47:41   I don't think it's like this thing

00:47:43   that can never be achieved again

00:47:44   or cannot be maintained.

00:47:47   I think they had to do some course correction

00:47:48   in a few areas, some big, some small.

00:47:50   There's evidence that they maybe have

00:47:54   or are beginning that process,

00:47:56   and some of the bigger ones like the Mac Pro

00:47:57   and stuff like that, and Siri maybe, I hope.

00:48:00   And so I think we're actually gonna be okay eventually,

00:48:05   I hope.

00:48:06   - All right, Jon, tell us the real answer.

00:48:09   - Marker will like this because there's four.

00:48:12   Here are my top four heydays of Apple Computer.

00:48:14   Yeah, there's been four-- - How many times?

00:48:16   - Four heydays for Apple Computer.

00:48:17   I guess we can count--

00:48:18   - Do you have any honorable mentions?

00:48:19   - Yeah, there's no honorable mentions, there's only four.

00:48:21   - How many number fours do you have?

00:48:22   - Just the one.

00:48:23   Actually, I'm not gonna even rank them.

00:48:24   I'm just gonna do them chronological,

00:48:26   and at the end, I think we can try to decide.

00:48:28   Well, I can try to decide,

00:48:29   'cause you don't know three of them.

00:48:30   (laughing)

00:48:32   Two of them, all right.

00:48:33   - Finally, how can you possibly think

00:48:35   that western Pennsylvania is not the Midwest?

00:48:38   - It's state borders, man.

00:48:40   There's lots of places that are a lot like the Midwest,

00:48:41   but they're like in China,

00:48:42   and they're not part of the Midwest.

00:48:44   Yeah, so the four, or as I'm,

00:48:47   I'll do them chronologically, and you can vote for your favorite.

00:48:51   The one I'm not going to talk too much about is Apple II.

00:48:54   That's an obvious one.

00:48:55   That's Apple, the tech company from nowhere, the big tech company, IPO, the company that's

00:49:00   making personal computers, computers for the rest of us.

00:49:03   That was a big thing.

00:49:05   It only doesn't seem big in hindsight because of the much bigger things that would come

00:49:09   after it.

00:49:10   That's true of a lot of these earlier eras, but at the time the Apple II was very big.

00:49:14   So the IBM PC came along and kind of cut short their reign.

00:49:17   But for a long time, in the go-go '80s, '70s and '80s,

00:49:23   Apple and the Apple II were a big story and a big deal.

00:49:26   And if you are getting back to how old you are at the time

00:49:30   or what point you were in your life,

00:49:32   if you are just getting into the technology scene when

00:49:35   the Apple II came on board, it can be the most important event

00:49:39   in your life.

00:49:40   It was a very important event for the entire industry.

00:49:43   So that's the first heyday.

00:49:45   The second heyday starts with the advent of the Mac,

00:49:49   which was not a particularly successfully launched product.

00:49:53   And then Jobs was booted out shortly after, right?

00:49:56   So this is like, this is actually Jobs' exit.

00:49:59   He does this great thing with the Mac.

00:50:00   Mac is a super important product for the world and for Apple.

00:50:06   For kids that it was the iPhone of its day

00:50:09   because computers didn't look or work like the Mac

00:50:13   before the Mac, like computers that regular people bought,

00:50:16   like just run-of-the-mill parts of computers.

00:50:18   The IBM PC existed, but it did not look or work like the Mac.

00:50:21   And after the Mac, all computers looked and worked

00:50:23   like the Mac.

00:50:24   They all had mice, they all had a graphical interface,

00:50:25   so on and so forth.

00:50:26   So the Mac was super important.

00:50:27   And the reason I think this is a heyday, not because,

00:50:29   oh great, so you made the one Mac with not enough RAM

00:50:31   that nobody bought 'cause it was too expensive.

00:50:33   That's not what made this the heyday.

00:50:34   The heyday is actually the dawn of the Mac.

00:50:37   And then after Steve Jobs left,

00:50:39   the error that everyone complains about,

00:50:41   the Scully error, essentially,

00:50:43   When Apple produced a bunch of computers

00:50:46   with like the Snow White design language,

00:50:47   the Mac SE, the SE 30, the 2Ci, 2X, 2FX,

00:50:52   that whole era of sort of platinum,

00:50:56   pinstriped Snow White Macs,

00:50:59   the dawn of desktop publishing,

00:51:01   the dawn of color on the Mac,

00:51:03   that was perhaps the, you know,

00:51:08   strongest run of Mac models one after the other from the perspective of someone who

00:51:16   understood what made the Mac good.

00:51:19   To everyone else they're like, "Mac, whatever, everything's about MS-DOS and IBM and eventually

00:51:25   Windows.

00:51:26   Who cares about the Mac?

00:51:27   It's just a silly toy."

00:51:28   Right?

00:51:29   But that's kind of what made it special.

00:51:30   I mean, to get back to what the experience was like, you had a secret.

00:51:34   You and a bunch of other people understood, A, that Apple was special, maybe you understood

00:51:39   that from the Apple II heyday, and B, that the Mac was head and shoulders above anything

00:51:46   else that it was there.

00:51:47   And you had a long time to be living in everyone else's future.

00:51:51   It's as if the iPhone came out and nobody copied it for years, but they just derided

00:51:56   it.

00:51:57   They kept making Nokia candy bar phones where you typed with the number pad and stuff like

00:52:00   that.

00:52:01   They didn't immediately copy it, right?

00:52:02   But instead, they gave you several years where they made fun of you for using the phone that

00:52:07   you had, that your whole phone is a screen, you don't even have a keyboard, I don't know

00:52:10   how you can text people.

00:52:11   That didn't happen.

00:52:12   That happened for like a month and a half, right?

00:52:13   And then everyone's like, "Oh yeah, no, that.

00:52:15   We need to do that."

00:52:18   And so there was a long time there where Apple was putting out great, amazing Macintosh computers

00:52:23   solely for this narrow audience of people who understood how great they were.

00:52:29   And we got to see all the computing revolutions.

00:52:30   Yes, the GUI revolution, but also desktop publishing revolution and even things having

00:52:34   to do with color graphics, high resolution graphics, lots of things that were available

00:52:40   in a personal computer that was widely sold for the first time and would only much later

00:52:45   be copied.

00:52:46   So that's the second error, which is that they often derided the Mac, you know, Scully,

00:52:50   Jobs is gone and Scully is making all these computers that cost way too much money and

00:52:53   they did cost way too much money, but they were great.

00:52:57   The third era is the return of Steve Jobs,

00:52:59   the iMac and the iPod.

00:53:01   And I think we're getting to the things

00:53:02   that you'd remember now.

00:53:03   You've got the iMac obviously is the big,

00:53:06   Jobs comes back, the next, he comes back with next,

00:53:09   but that's not the era I'm talking about.

00:53:10   It's not like the Mac OS X era.

00:53:12   He's working on Mac OS X.

00:53:13   They've got to figure out the whole OS thing.

00:53:15   They have the false start with Rhapsody

00:53:18   and Mac OS X server, which is not what you think it was.

00:53:21   But in the meantime, when he came back,

00:53:24   what they first did was the iMac,

00:53:26   the, you know, Johnny Ives big coming out party

00:53:28   that made all of our irons and vacuum cleaners teal

00:53:33   for a decade and the iPod.

00:53:35   And the Macs at this point are running classic macOS.

00:53:39   They're not running Mac OS X.

00:53:41   The iPod has like a monochrome screen and a wheel that moves

00:53:45   and it has Mac only and it's FireWire.

00:53:48   But this little section here that extends a little bit

00:53:50   farther into the Mac OS X era where every time Apple came

00:53:54   with anything, you never knew what the hell it would be.

00:53:57   The iMac was like, "What is this?

00:53:59   A weird teal computer?"

00:54:00   And then after that, the iMacs would come in different colors.

00:54:02   They're going to make them in all sorts of colors.

00:54:03   And the iPod, it's kind of a curiosity, but then it starts to gain a little momentum.

00:54:06   Then they got those toilet seat iBooks, and then you got the G4 Cube, and the tower computers

00:54:11   are weird looking.

00:54:13   Every time they went up on stage, there was the expectation that Apple could do anything.

00:54:17   You don't know what to expect.

00:54:19   You are ready to be bowled over every single time.

00:54:22   that is the sort of the defining period of the of the Steve Jobs keynote where

00:54:26   We would all gather and it was like we're just waiting for like, you know candy to rain from the sky

00:54:32   So I don't know but every time we go to one of these things something amazing happens

00:54:35   Whether it's just I mean in a way the bar was lower because back then

00:54:40   The audience would be blown away by just the audacity of the industrial design

00:54:45   You can't do that anymore, right if they came out with it with the toilet seat I booked now

00:54:48   It'd be like there's an ugly computer

00:54:50   I don't know why they made that.

00:54:51   Like we're so used to the fact that you can make

00:54:54   computers in colors and make them have fancy design

00:54:56   to all stuff, but back then it was mind blowing.

00:54:59   Every single time, even if it was like a flop like the Cube,

00:55:02   the Cube keynote was insane.

00:55:03   Everyone loved that.

00:55:04   Everyone was like, could not believe he's pulling

00:55:06   this little core out of the thing up on the stage.

00:55:08   And it was like, wow, it almost doesn't even matter

00:55:11   that it wasn't particularly successful in the market

00:55:13   because we got the benefit of like the amazing reveal

00:55:17   and the, I don't know, it's sort of like,

00:55:20   making people expand the notion of what the possibility space is.

00:55:25   That every time they put something else, it pushes some corner of the possibility space out again.

00:55:30   Like, I didn't even think you could put anything over there, but now they've pushed the envelope out over there,

00:55:33   and now who knows, maybe this product was a double, but who knows what else they can put in there.

00:55:36   It made room for the next product, the next product, the next product.

00:55:40   And then the final heyday of Apple is the iPhone error,

00:55:45   which I don't know where you want to cap that, but it starts with the iPhone,

00:55:48   iPhone and it extends at least through like probably the 6 and 6s where they finally made

00:55:56   the big phone.

00:55:57   But that run from the original iPhone redefining this entire category, you know, the 3GS but

00:56:05   the 4, the 4s and then the 5 and then I guess the big phone with the 6, that run right there

00:56:11   of Apple, once again redefining a whole product category, and also, by the way, redefining

00:56:20   a product category that would become the most important product category in all of technology,

00:56:24   despite the fact that they don't dominate at market share, but saying, "We define

00:56:28   this category, and it's not just like, 'Oh, we make some cool Macs and iPods, and

00:56:33   it's kind of cool, and the iPod gets big a little bit, but then it sort of dies down

00:56:36   or whatever, it was huge numbers, gigantic numbers.

00:56:41   If you graph any of these other errors I talked about,

00:56:45   graph Apple II sales, graph Apple's original IPO,

00:56:48   graph Macs or the iMac and the iPod, it's nothing.

00:56:51   It doesn't even show up on the graph

00:56:52   until the iPhone comes.

00:56:53   And it's not like we're all about,

00:56:54   oh, how much money Apple makes, who cares?

00:56:56   We don't run Apple, it's not our money.

00:56:58   But it is like the dawning of the modern Apple

00:57:03   as like the biggest and this incredibly important

00:57:06   technology company that everybody knows about.

00:57:10   It is no longer the secret that we had

00:57:11   back in the Scully era.

00:57:13   And it's no longer like a bunch of

00:57:15   crazed technology fans just waiting to see

00:57:19   what Jobs has hidden under a black cloth

00:57:22   on a stage or whatever.

00:57:23   This is the iPhone age is where everybody cares

00:57:25   what Apple does and everyone has to care.

00:57:27   Yeah, and then if you wanna cap that

00:57:31   because you think they've lost their way in some areas

00:57:33   or because the iPhone is tapering off or whatever,

00:57:35   I'll allow that, but I would actually, honestly,

00:57:37   extend the iPhone error probably all the way up to today.

00:57:40   Despite the fact that we complain about the Macs,

00:57:41   the fourth heyday of Apple is not about the Mac,

00:57:44   it's about the iPhone and iPad and other stuff.

00:57:47   So those are the four heydays of Apple.

00:57:49   What do you think is, if you had to pick one,

00:57:52   'cause it's kind of cheating to pick four,

00:57:54   even though I'm following the rules of top four,

00:57:56   unlike some people, if we had to pick one,

00:57:59   what would you guys vote for?

00:58:01   - Got it, so we're talking Apple II, Mac.

00:58:05   - The Mac and the Scully era.

00:58:07   You know what I'm talking about when I say those?

00:58:08   Like the Snow White design language

00:58:10   is the ones that are platinum

00:58:11   and they have lots of pinstripes on them.

00:58:13   The whole line of ones, the all-in-ones.

00:58:14   - I think so. - Oh yeah.

00:58:15   - Mac II, the Mac II FX, the Mac II CI, the SE, the SE30.

00:58:19   Portrait displays, desktop publishing,

00:58:21   the Laser Rider, all that.

00:58:22   - Right, and then your third option was what?

00:58:25   Was around-- - The third one

00:58:26   is the iMac/iPod era where everything was teal

00:58:28   and candy-colored and you got the toilet seat,

00:58:30   iBooks and the BlueMight Power Mac G3 and the Cube and all the different color iMacs

00:58:37   and the iPod mixed in there, the various lines of iPods.

00:58:40   Steven: And the fourth one is basically iPhone really coming into its own.

00:58:44   Rob: iPhone, yeah, just iPhone period. It's like the Mac ones, from the dawning of the

00:58:48   first iPhone and the whole line of finds, just took Apple from a company. Those three

00:58:53   heydays before that were like Apple heydays.

00:58:56   The iPhone is like worldwide heyday.

00:58:58   Like everybody, you know, they come to the size

00:59:03   that they are today.

00:59:04   They become a much more important company to everybody.

00:59:07   - Well, for me, you just answered the question

00:59:09   because what I was going to say is exactly that,

00:59:12   that the three prior heydays,

00:59:15   'cause I picked the last one

00:59:16   if I had to pick one of those four,

00:59:17   the three prior heydays, there is an argument,

00:59:21   I guess it's how do you define heyday, right?

00:59:23   I don't mean that to be silly, but to me the heyday of a company or Apple specifically

00:59:29   is the moment at which everyone, be it the "fanboys and girls" or "sheeple" or whatever,

00:59:38   when everyone thinks that Apple can do no wrong.

00:59:43   And so back when the Mac was new, and I was only slightly paying attention at that point,

00:59:49   I actually know what the Mac was new in 82, right?

00:59:52   Or do I have that timeline? It doesn't matter. So 84. Thank you. Okay, so I was two so I was not paying attention

00:59:58   I was new in 82. Yeah, so was I so anyway point being I

01:00:02   Was aware of the Mac versus PC Wars when I was a kid

01:00:06   This is you know, I would guess late 80s early 90s

01:00:09   But I never thought that Macs were that particularly superior it with the hindsight of adulthood

01:00:16   I can see that I was wrong. But at the time I didn't I wasn't impressed and

01:00:19   And to me, the heyday is when, even if you for some reason choose not to use an Apple

01:00:26   product, even if you choose to use an Android product, you can look at an iPhone and say,

01:00:30   "Yeah, I can see why people would dig this."

01:00:33   Or look at a Mac, "I can see why people would dig this."

01:00:37   And thus, because to me, the heyday is about achievement in the mind, in the hive mind

01:00:44   of popular culture, to me that leads me to the iPhone, your final option as being the

01:00:52   actual heyday. But that's all based on how I'm defining "heyday," and it's completely

01:00:57   reasonable for either of you to disagree with that definition. So before you argue with

01:01:01   me on that, Marco, what would you pick of those four?

01:01:04   I think I would also pick the iPhone, in part, just selfishly because I was there for that

01:01:09   one. You know, like when, like the one and two I was, you know, a child and using a PC

01:01:16   for. Number three with all the candy colored computers, that was like right before I started

01:01:21   really getting into, you know, looking at Macs and eventually getting my own Mac in

01:01:25   2004. That was all like, you know, late 90s, early 2000s and, you know, by the time I bought

01:01:32   a Mac, they were all metal again. So, it was, you know, I missed that whole era. But also,

01:01:39   You know, the Mac was, I was not a big fan of classic Mac OS

01:01:44   when I used it like three times ever.

01:01:46   So I can't say that really enthralled me

01:01:48   when I would see it like as a kid.

01:01:50   I think Mac OS X is really,

01:01:53   Mac OS X is the Mac that I know.

01:01:56   And I know that kills people like John

01:01:58   who have been around here for much longer.

01:02:00   - At this point Mac OS X has been around longer for classic,

01:02:02   longer than classic you realize.

01:02:04   - Okay, I guess that makes sense, yeah.

01:02:06   - I think it just barely crossed over,

01:02:08   - Like 16 years?

01:02:10   - Anyway, so like to me, the Apple I know

01:02:13   is the Apple that made OS X and metal laptops.

01:02:16   Like that's all I've ever known.

01:02:18   So, just by default, number four would win.

01:02:23   That being said, like I do have some, I guess,

01:02:28   slight hesitation or ambivalence about the iPhone

01:02:31   coming out because what I love so much, the Mac,

01:02:35   has undoubtedly been really de-prioritized

01:02:39   because of the iPhone.

01:02:42   So like in some way, even though I love using the iPhone,

01:02:44   and my entire career now is writing apps for the iPhone

01:02:47   and then talking about them--

01:02:48   - You did this to the Mac, Marco.

01:02:50   - Yeah, it's like-- - Stupid Instapaper.

01:02:52   (laughing)

01:02:53   - Like, it is kind of like, I have mixed feelings about it

01:02:56   because most of my statement about Apple's heyday

01:02:59   had a lot more to do about the hardware than the software,

01:03:01   but in reality, the software is just as much

01:03:04   part of the story and no question the advent of having Apple's attention being split between

01:03:12   two different major OS's and one of them being way more popular and profitable than the other

01:03:18   one, no question that split, which started with the iPhone, has done serious damage to

01:03:26   the Mac. It is really, in many areas software wise, the Mac is really behind, really in

01:03:33   and disrepair in certain areas.

01:03:36   Again, it seems like this might be turning around

01:03:38   based on rumblings and rumors and statements,

01:03:40   and we'll see if that actually turns into actions,

01:03:42   hopefully over the next couple years.

01:03:44   But I do have some ambivalence over the fact

01:03:46   that the iPhone killed my Mac, basically,

01:03:48   as much as I like the iPhone.

01:03:51   - iPhone bought your Mac.

01:03:52   - That's true.

01:03:53   (laughing)

01:03:55   - So if I had to pick one of these errors,

01:03:58   so first, if I was picking personally,

01:04:01   I would pick the Mac, the introduction of the Mac,

01:04:04   but that's just for personal reasons.

01:04:05   That's like what, you know, the age I was at the time,

01:04:07   what I was into, so on and so forth,

01:04:09   but I recognize that that is,

01:04:11   the only way I could argue for that is,

01:04:13   it wouldn't be Apple's heyday,

01:04:14   it's because we're using the word heyday.

01:04:16   If we fast forward 200 years,

01:04:18   I can retroactively argue why the introduction of the Mac

01:04:21   was, you know, super important, even more important

01:04:23   than the iPhone in some specific aspects,

01:04:26   but heyday, it was not Apple's heyday, right?

01:04:28   But for me, that is the era of Apple

01:04:31   that has the most emotional resonance,

01:04:32   mostly because of the age I was

01:04:33   and the fact that I was getting into computers at that time.

01:04:36   You know, how I idolized all the people who made it

01:04:38   and read all about it and all that stuff, right?

01:04:40   But if I have to pick the Hay Day out of these things

01:04:42   from a less personal perspective,

01:04:45   I would actually pick, surprisingly,

01:04:48   and mostly based on Kyle's question

01:04:51   and what I think he wants out of Hay Day,

01:04:53   I would pick the iMac/iPod era

01:04:56   because I feel like that was the most exciting time

01:05:01   to be into Apple.

01:05:05   And it culminated with the iPhone.

01:05:07   The iPhone marks the end of that error, right?

01:05:09   So this iMac, iPod error, like I said,

01:05:12   it was the dawn of the Steve note.

01:05:15   We would go to Macworld Expo,

01:05:16   which was still a thing then, and WWDC,

01:05:19   and it was a transitional period.

01:05:22   Steve Jobs is back.

01:05:23   We're not sure how things are gonna go down,

01:05:24   and it got kicked off with the iMac,

01:05:26   which was a big surprise.

01:05:27   And then from that point up until the iPhone,

01:05:30   every time we sat down there to hear what Apple had to say,

01:05:33   nobody knew what it was gonna be.

01:05:35   It could be anything.

01:05:37   And every time it was something that nobody expected

01:05:39   because again, the possibility space had been so small

01:05:42   and every keynote just kicked that possibility space

01:05:45   out bigger and bigger and bigger.

01:05:46   And it was just, you know, keynote after keynote

01:05:49   of just surprising, exciting stuff.

01:05:52   and it built to the iPhone, the most surprising,

01:05:56   the most exciting and the most successful

01:05:59   of all the stuff they produce.

01:06:00   And everything in there,

01:06:01   like I just think back through those keynotes.

01:06:03   I wasn't in my formative years then, right?

01:06:05   But so I don't think it's like rose colored grasses

01:06:09   of like the rock music you listen to

01:06:11   in high school or whatever.

01:06:12   This was, if you wanted to know what it was like

01:06:15   to be an Apple fan at a time when Apple

01:06:18   was doing the most stuff to make Apple fans' eyes

01:06:23   have the little emoji hearts over them.

01:06:25   (laughing)

01:06:26   It was this era, this was the heyday.

01:06:29   And I would say it wasn't Apple's best products.

01:06:31   There was lots of not so great stuff mixed in there,

01:06:33   not just the cube, like a lot of the stuff,

01:06:35   the computers, yeah, they look neat,

01:06:38   but were they good computers?

01:06:39   Even some of the iMacs were like, eh, not quite.

01:06:41   The move to the aluminum glass era,

01:06:44   like you said, Casey, 2011 MacBook Air stomps all over

01:06:47   everything during this heyday, but if you just wanted to be super excited about what

01:06:51   the heck Apple's going to do next and have it climax in the most important technology

01:06:56   product of our lifetime, this was the error.

01:06:59   That was a good discussion. Thanks, Kyle, for that question. I really dig it.

01:07:07   You know when you said, "Oh, John's going to tell us that and be disappointed because

01:07:10   we're so young and everything"? What kills me every time we talk about this is that you

01:07:13   guys both just missed this error, right? And looking back on it, like I said, you look

01:07:17   back on it and it's like, "That doesn't look that good. The computers now are better."

01:07:19   And they were. The computers were better when you came on board, but you just missed this

01:07:24   like super exciting time when like every keynote was just like Christmas morning and you had

01:07:30   no idea what was going to happen.

01:07:32   I remember vividly that even when the iPod came out, I don't know why I wasn't that impressed

01:07:42   by it. And obviously it didn't work with PCs for the first—

01:07:46   This was $400 and it was FireWire and it was Mac only.

01:07:49   And this screen was monochrome.

01:07:51   - Leaving aside the Mac only part,

01:07:53   like once it was available to be used with the PC,

01:07:56   even at first, I guess it was the price,

01:07:58   'cause at this point in my life,

01:07:59   I was considerably more price sensitive than I am now.

01:08:02   But for whatever reason, I remember not being impressed.

01:08:06   And then all of a sudden, and it looks like it was 2005,

01:08:10   all of a sudden the iPod Nano happened.

01:08:13   the very, very first iPod Nano.

01:08:17   And that was the first Apple product

01:08:19   that I really and truly coveted,

01:08:21   and I wanted one badly.

01:08:23   And I eventually got one, and I loved it.

01:08:26   - That was a great example of having a keynote where,

01:08:29   you know, like at that point it was clear

01:08:31   Apple was making iPods.

01:08:32   Like iPods were going to be successful.

01:08:34   It was like, well, Apple's gonna be the iPod company,

01:08:36   and they're not even the Mac company anymore.

01:08:37   Ha ha ha, uncomfortable laugh.

01:08:39   But we had seen the big white iPods,

01:08:43   and we'd seen the mini, which were candy colored

01:08:46   and seemed not to be worth the price

01:08:49   from people who were measuring specs and everything

01:08:51   and yet sold like crazy,

01:08:52   as an indication of where this market was actually going.

01:08:55   And the Nano is a great example of like we,

01:08:58   oh, so they're gonna announce the iPods,

01:08:59   whatever one of these will be like.

01:09:00   And no one was thinking, hey, guess what?

01:09:03   You see what they look like now?

01:09:05   The iPods you're looking at now,

01:09:06   take them and cut them into like seven pieces.

01:09:09   And that little skinny sliver that you've had,

01:09:11   that's gonna be the next iPod.

01:09:13   I was like, "Yeah, right, yeah, maybe that's like the cover of the next iPod."

01:09:16   He's like, "No, that's the whole thing."

01:09:17   It just seemed impossible, right?

01:09:19   Because it was in his change pocket, right?

01:09:21   I was just about to ask, this was the one that was in the change pocket, wasn't it?

01:09:24   Right, right.

01:09:25   It was like, "You have got to be kidding me."

01:09:27   Every keynote was like that.

01:09:28   Every time they pulled something out, there was the reaction, "You've got to be kidding

01:09:31   me."

01:09:32   It doesn't happen anymore because we all know so much about the tech that's available, we're

01:09:35   following so closely that we know two years ahead of time that Apple's going to use an

01:09:39   OLED screen in its phone and it's gonna be like it's it was I guess mostly

01:09:45   because people weren't paying enough attention people were just learning to

01:09:47   start paying attention that we were all just surprised there was and the rumor

01:09:51   scene was completely bonkers like because anything was possible the rumors

01:09:56   that were happening then were just as outlandish as the things that came out

01:09:59   and like massively wrong and not found it in any information and just would you

01:10:04   know amuse us to no end because nobody knew anything and like when things did

01:10:08   leak like we weren't sure whether to believe them or not. So it was a hell of a time to

01:10:15   be an Apple fan.

01:10:16   Yeah, I got to say that iPod Nano reveal was I think one of the best Apple reveals of all

01:10:23   time. Like it might have even been the best like short little moment because like with

01:10:27   the iPhone, Steve like really built up to it slowly, you know.

01:10:31   Although are you going to fault them for building up? Are you going to build up to something

01:10:34   building up to the iPhone? It's a good thing to build up.

01:10:36   - That's true, but if you're just talking about

01:10:38   the moment of the reveal, I think,

01:10:41   you know, the original MacBook Air coming out of the envelope

01:10:44   was good, that was very good.

01:10:46   I think that first iPod Nano coming out of its change pocket,

01:10:48   I think that wins, though.

01:10:49   I can't think of anything that was a more shocking,

01:10:52   initial view of something than that.

01:10:55   - Yeah.

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01:12:49   (upbeat music)

01:12:53   - All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:12:54   Colin McKellar writes, could the Apple CPU in Max,

01:12:58   the potential forthcoming ARM CPU or whatever.

01:13:02   Is it possible that that might not be ARM or x86, but an Apple-designed architecture?

01:13:07   If Apple's switching architectures anyway, why not move to one they create or control?

01:13:11   It's not like they would ever use a non-Apple ARM chip and a Mac.

01:13:14   In short, how feasible is it to create your own chip architecture, and what are the disadvantages

01:13:18   or advantages from using an existing architecture?

01:13:22   This is an interesting question.

01:13:24   I don't really know what Apple would have to gain.

01:13:29   Like, yes, it would all be custom-made directly for Apple, but, like, chip architectures,

01:13:36   it's by design, the interface, the programming interface to a CPU is, I want to say simple

01:13:44   but somebody's going to weigh it, well, actually me, but it's a bunch of fundamental building

01:13:50   blocks that you can build into very impressive things. And I don't feel like this is an unsolved

01:13:56   problem. I don't know what they would have to gain really by doing this. But maybe I'm

01:14:01   missing something. So Marco, thoughts on this?

01:14:03   - Yeah, I think you basically covered it. I don't think, you know, creating a new architecture

01:14:07   is a significant upgrade in the amount of work they would be spending on their own ship

01:14:13   design. Like, there aren't that many ship architectures in the world. And there's even

01:14:19   fewer that are actually in widespread use for general purpose computers. I really don't

01:14:25   think that they would have nearly enough to gain. You know, they already control a lot

01:14:30   about their chip design and they license the architecture from ARM. And ARM designs it

01:14:36   and I'm sure Apple influences it pretty heavily these days, but it's still being like,

01:14:42   that's mainly being outsourced and pooled with lots of other companies that are all

01:14:47   using ARM or making ARM chips or whatever else.

01:14:49   And then also, on the software side,

01:14:52   there's a lot of just software that can compile to ARM

01:14:54   that they take advantage of, they can only be running on

01:14:59   the same number of architectures

01:15:00   that the rest of the world's really running on

01:15:02   'cause lots of stuff in the world now

01:15:03   is split between x86 and ARM.

01:15:05   Adding a whole other additional instruction set

01:15:08   for just Macs, I don't see that flying in today's world.

01:15:13   I think that would be a really tough sell

01:15:14   for a lot of people.

01:15:15   Also, I just don't see it being worth the work for Apple.

01:15:20   I wonder if there's patent issues too.

01:15:22   I mean, probably, right?

01:15:23   - There's always patent issues.

01:15:24   - Right, like Arm is the one who would be facing

01:15:28   any patent issues with their instruction set,

01:15:29   not, well, maybe not Apple directly,

01:15:31   but it would probably become Apple's problem at some point,

01:15:33   but if Apple started their own whole thing,

01:15:37   they would have to dodge a whole bunch of patents

01:15:39   and file a bunch of their own in this area

01:15:41   and have problems with those,

01:15:42   and using someone else's instruction set

01:15:45   helps them probably avoid quite a lot of that as well.

01:15:47   So there's lots of reasons for them not to do this,

01:15:50   and I don't think there's enough good reasons

01:15:52   for them to do it.

01:15:53   - So making your own instruction set,

01:15:55   like Casey kind of played it down as if like,

01:15:57   I don't see why they would do that,

01:15:59   but there is a bunch of important advantages

01:16:03   to being able to define the instruction set.

01:16:06   And it's the reason we're not using

01:16:08   the same instruction set now that we were in,

01:16:10   you know, the 60s or whatever,

01:16:12   before there were instruction sets,

01:16:13   before they were widely shared instructions. What is it? The IBM... Oh god, someone in the chat room

01:16:20   looks up for me so I can correct myself later. System 360 something? Anyway, in the modern era,

01:16:29   instruction sets, the advantage you get for defining one is you get to learn from the

01:16:33   mistakes of everybody who made an instruction set before you. And more importantly, much more

01:16:38   importantly, you get to tailor your instruction set to the nature of the hardware and software

01:16:45   of the day. So a lot of the older instruction sets are tailored to hardware designs that are

01:16:52   no longer relevant. Like CPUs are not designed the same way, and the problems they're asked to solve

01:16:59   are not the same either. Like for example, instruction sets that don't have any SIMD

01:17:03   capability were created in error before sort of large scale multimedia processing operations,

01:17:09   right? They didn't need an instruction set like that. If you make a new instruction set,

01:17:12   or you append an existing one, you have the opportunity to say, "Today, one of the problems

01:17:17   we have is dealing with lots of data that might be audio or video or sound or things where we can

01:17:22   do lots of operations in parallel on big chunks of data, and the old instruction sets don't work

01:17:29   with that so we can define a new one that fits that and fits like you know modern CPUs and we

01:17:34   have more transistors and we can put more cache than we used to so on and so forth right. IBM

01:17:39   system 360. I knew there was a slash in there system slash 360. I think it was the first

01:17:46   computer with like a common instruction set so they were gonna make a line of computers that

01:17:49   all use the same instruction set instead of making a new instruction set for every computer

01:17:52   which was a thing to do back then. Anyway, so the question is, has enough changed in the industry

01:18:01   or in the hardware world that Apple would gain some advantage from making a new instruction set?

01:18:06   Now ARM, in the grand scheme of things, is not new, but it's not super old. If anything, you know,

01:18:12   it's a modern-ish RISC architecture, but ARM has warts and it has extensions for SIMD stuff.

01:18:20   If Apple, knowing what it knows now, could design a new instruction set for iPhones or Macs, they

01:18:27   can make one that's better than ARM. It wouldn't have as many warts. It would be a better fit for

01:18:30   their compiler technology, for the hardware that they know that's out there. It would be better.

01:18:34   But it wouldn't be that much better. On the flip side of this is what we talked about all last show.

01:18:39   If Apple wants to have any chance of maintaining or eventually regaining the current situation

01:18:48   where you can run all the legacy x86 binaries

01:18:53   from like, you know, into fast virtualization for Windows

01:18:59   and for Unix and all those things,

01:19:01   like the client side and the server side

01:19:03   and cross-platform is all unified in x86.

01:19:06   If they ever wanna get that again,

01:19:07   they can't have their own instruction set.

01:19:10   If they make their own ARM chips

01:19:11   and that somehow the whole rest of the industry,

01:19:13   as we talked about before, also goes ARM,

01:19:15   then yay, we're back into our golden age again,

01:19:17   where everything is ARM everywhere.

01:19:19   And it's not because they're all using Apple chips,

01:19:21   but it's because they're all using ARM.

01:19:22   And ARM is an instruction set

01:19:23   that Apple doesn't own and control.

01:19:25   And so servers are free to use it,

01:19:27   and we have this nice ecosystem.

01:19:29   If I were Apple, I would never give up that possibility.

01:19:32   Even if it didn't look like it was gonna be likely,

01:19:33   I wouldn't give up the possibility.

01:19:35   So it's either Apple tries to define a new instruction set

01:19:38   and then sells it to the whole rest of the industry,

01:19:39   not likely, or they really, really need to pick one

01:19:43   that there's at least some slim chance

01:19:44   that the whole rest of the industry will eventually use.

01:19:46   They should not and will not go their own way on a CPU architecture for phones or Macs.

01:19:53   Fair enough.

01:19:54   Scott Norris writes, "Do you think Apple will upgrade the cooling design for the 2018

01:19:58   iMac lineup using ideas for the iMac Pro for longevity or perhaps better GPU options?"

01:20:05   I don't think that's unreasonable, but I don't know that they would put that much cooling

01:20:10   in a machine that they don't feel like needs that much cooling.

01:20:13   So I would be slightly surprised, but I don't know.

01:20:17   Jon, what do you think?

01:20:18   I think they totally should, because this is a very well worded question here.

01:20:22   Using ideas from the iMac Pro, they can't just take, "Oh, let's just take the iMac Pro

01:20:26   with the exact cooling design," because it's probably expensive and, like you said, you

01:20:29   don't need to remove that much heat from the lower powered chips.

01:20:32   But the ideas, whatever they did to the iMac Pro, a machine that dissipates more heat but

01:20:39   is quieter than the 5K iMac, yes, please, bring those ideas.

01:20:42   Because if you can make the iMac Pro that quiet, use slightly less money, and you have

01:20:50   slightly less power to dissipate, use those ideas in the 5K iMac and make it be less of

01:20:55   a hair dryer.

01:20:56   They should totally do that.

01:20:58   Will they do it?

01:21:01   Maybe in a couple of years.

01:21:03   I don't see them—because the iMac Pro is so big and important and expensive and seems—even

01:21:09   though it looks the same from the outside, when you look at it on the insides, it seems

01:21:12   like a different planet, like it was made by a different set of people than the 5k iMac

01:21:18   entirely even though it looks so similar on the outside.

01:21:21   So I'm not particularly optimistic about suddenly now that the iMac Pro is at the very next

01:21:25   5k iMac it's going to look like the iMac Pro on the inside.

01:21:27   But I hope in a few years there is a trickle down of those ideas and that cooling and that

01:21:35   airflow and heat management solution because Apple has proven they can do it.

01:21:39   They just need to do it slightly cheaper in a slightly easier situation.

01:21:43   Yeah, I would love for them to do it.

01:21:45   I think they absolutely should.

01:21:46   I agree with everything you just said.

01:21:47   The only problem is that the iMac Pro cooling solution won't fit in the regular iMac unless

01:21:55   they eliminate options for spinning disk hard drives.

01:21:58   We could also eliminate the fusion drive options.

01:22:00   And so it would significantly drive up the cost of low-end iMac configurations for people

01:22:06   who need a lot of space.

01:22:07   Now, I'm of the opinion that they should probably be doing that anyway.

01:22:11   I think that the time has passed where Apple should have stopped selling spinning disks

01:22:20   in the same way that I don't think they should be still selling anything with non-retina

01:22:24   screens.

01:22:25   Even fusion drives are not very good and not very fast and very inconsistent.

01:22:29   They even like, remember a few years ago when they cheaped out and made the SSD portion

01:22:34   of the fusion drives even smaller than it was before.

01:22:38   Like, the fusion drive is a bad hack.

01:22:41   There was a time for it when flash storage was smaller

01:22:44   and more expensive than it is today.

01:22:47   I think that time has passed,

01:22:48   and while they wouldn't be able to offer, say,

01:22:52   a terabyte or two terabytes as cheaply as they could today,

01:22:56   I think this is the kind of situation where

01:22:59   it's worth taking a temporary higher price

01:23:02   on larger storage tiers like that,

01:23:04   especially now as people need less storage

01:23:07   because of various cloud services

01:23:09   and the lack of large music libraries anymore.

01:23:12   This is a good time to do that,

01:23:14   even though things would be temporarily more expensive

01:23:16   because it would allow all of the iMacs

01:23:19   to then have this awesome cooling design,

01:23:22   and I think they would benefit significantly from that.

01:23:24   You'd probably have longer component lifespans.

01:23:26   You'd definitely have less noise.

01:23:28   The iMac Pro is a fantastic thermal design,

01:23:31   at least as we know it so far.

01:23:33   and we don't know if it has any kind of massive flaw

01:23:34   that'll happen three years in,

01:23:35   but so far it appears to be a great thermal design.

01:23:39   So the sooner that can get into all iMacs,

01:23:43   I think the better.

01:23:43   And the only thing holding that back

01:23:45   is probably cost of doing a redesign

01:23:49   and then the three and a half inch drive that's in there.

01:23:52   The other problem is if Apple decides

01:23:54   to remove the three and a half inch drive from the iMac,

01:23:57   they might decide to just make it thinner,

01:24:01   which nobody wants except probably Apple.

01:24:05   They might decide to just make it thinner

01:24:06   instead of spending that newfound space

01:24:09   on additional cooling capacity.

01:24:12   I hope that's not what they do.

01:24:14   I especially hope they don't also then force that

01:24:16   onto the iMac Pro somehow and then make it

01:24:18   just louder and worse or make it lower power

01:24:20   and make it throttle its CPUs at even lower speeds.

01:24:23   Both of those would be terrible

01:24:24   because nobody's asking for that.

01:24:25   But as for Kansai, this is Apple.

01:24:29   This is especially today Apple and heyday arguments aside,

01:24:33   we all know they love making things thinner

01:24:35   that nobody was really asking for.

01:24:36   So they might just do that instead.

01:24:38   I hope they don't.

01:24:39   - Oh, the iMac is gonna get thinner.

01:24:41   It's just a question of when.

01:24:42   - Eh, probably right.

01:24:44   (laughing)

01:24:45   Nick Alexander writes, "A legitimate question

01:24:48   "that's not trying to stir any bad blood.

01:24:49   "Do you think Steve Jobs' Apple would have treated

01:24:51   "the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini generally the same way

01:24:54   "that Tim Cook's Apple have?

01:24:55   "If so, what do you think the Jobs

01:24:57   would have done differently.

01:25:00   I have no interest in doing the,

01:25:04   "Oh, if Steve were alive" thing.

01:25:05   So if one of you has a different angle on this,

01:25:08   then I'm happy to hear it,

01:25:09   but I respectfully abstain from this one.

01:25:12   - So I added this one because I thought it was interesting

01:25:14   not to just bash on Tim Cook

01:25:16   and wish for Steve to be here again,

01:25:18   but I thought there was some constructive commentary

01:25:22   to be had here.

01:25:23   Basically, we could ask ourselves a lot of questions like,

01:25:27   what would Steve do? How would things be different if Steve was still here? Or would Steve have

01:25:33   done the things that Tim Cook's Apple has done? There's a number of sides to this, some

01:25:40   of which are constructive, some of which are just useless speculation. What we have to

01:25:45   really consider here is that this is a completely different time and a fairly different company

01:25:53   from when Steve was alive.

01:25:55   He passed away in 2011.

01:25:57   That was a good amount of time ago now.

01:26:00   Since then, the company has gotten substantially larger.

01:26:04   It has more product lines.

01:26:05   It has significant maturation of the existing product lines

01:26:10   that were there when he was there.

01:26:13   So the iPhone, even though he was there

01:26:16   for the launch of the iPhone,

01:26:17   the iPhone today is very different from it was.

01:26:21   He passed away right after the iPhone 4S was unveiled,

01:26:24   to give you some idea of how far we've come.

01:26:27   So it's hard to say what this person would have done

01:26:32   who led a company that was much smaller than it is today

01:26:35   in a very different time seven years ago.

01:26:38   In general themes, we can speculate.

01:26:41   We can say things like, you know,

01:26:43   Steve did seem to really like computers a lot.

01:26:46   And Tim seems to have bigger picture ambitions

01:26:48   that don't prioritize computers.

01:26:52   But ultimately, Steve do lots of things too.

01:26:56   Steve ship bad products too.

01:26:58   I do really miss Steve for a lot of reasons.

01:27:02   I really, really miss Steve and I bet Apple does too.

01:27:05   But it's hard to say what he would have done

01:27:08   because what we saw from him and the company that he saw

01:27:12   was so different from the one today

01:27:13   and the environment and the competitive landscape

01:27:16   and all the product lines today.

01:27:18   So I think Steve Jobs probably would have treated the Mac Mini just as badly because

01:27:21   he didn't really care about the computer either.

01:27:23   He did treat the Mac Mini just as badly.

01:27:24   That's what I'm saying.

01:27:25   So that's not, you don't need to expect that one.

01:27:27   Yeah, the Mac Pro, you know, I think he had a pretty decent record with the Mac Pro.

01:27:31   Yeah, well, I think the best way to characterize how Steve would have done things differently

01:27:36   is that we wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have had so many situations where things were

01:27:40   in limbo because Steve was very decisive, right?

01:27:44   And so if he had decided that the iPhone and the iPad are the future and the Mac was the

01:27:51   past, he would have not hesitated to can the Mac.

01:27:56   Like if that was the thing that he wanted to do, right?

01:27:58   On the other hand, if he decided that because he's a computer guy and because of the time

01:28:02   that he grew up and he just, you know, he loves computers as evidenced by his entire

01:28:06   career that he just loves computers, that he was never going to let them go, he would

01:28:09   not have let the Mac Pro languish like that because he would have been so lucky that we're

01:28:12   We're doing Macs or we're not doing them.

01:28:14   Are we doing them or are we not doing them?

01:28:15   I'm the one who decides and I decide we're doing them,

01:28:17   so don't leave that thing out there

01:28:19   for all those years, right?

01:28:20   - He used a Mac Pro.

01:28:21   - Yeah. - Like that's like,

01:28:22   I don't think Tim Cook has ever sat

01:28:24   in front of a Mac Pro once.

01:28:25   I don't think Tim Cook really gives two craps

01:28:28   about Macs or computers.

01:28:29   He's a businessman first.

01:28:31   He's not a product person at all.

01:28:33   Whereas Steve loved computers.

01:28:35   He lived and breathed computers even more than I do.

01:28:39   And that's like, this is like my frustration so often

01:28:42   like I want Apple to care as much about computers as I do and a lot of times it seems like they

01:28:46   don't. But like with Steve I never had that concern.

01:28:50   So and the important thing to remember is like with the Mac Mini, right? It's not

01:28:53   as if you know that Steve gave 100% attention to every product like yeah he'd let the

01:28:59   Mac Mini be mostly language, right? And so how can you say he'd love computers if he's

01:29:03   not constantly updating the Mac Mini or if the Mac Mini is such a bad deal and like you

01:29:06   You know, like, how can you say that?

01:29:09   It's going back to the case for the true Mac Pro successor

01:29:13   car guy's analogy.

01:29:14   Steve Jobs was a car guy when he was a computer guy, right?

01:29:16   And computer guys, mostly, you know,

01:29:19   they have something that they like,

01:29:20   whether it's like big American muscle cars

01:29:22   or sleek, fast sports cars.

01:29:24   There are far fewer car enthusiasts

01:29:29   who are really, really into sort of low powered,

01:29:34   inexpensive cars part of being into cars is about you know speed right car

01:29:40   You know someone nice. This is the slowest car ever made isn't that great no?

01:29:43   Speed is part of car and motorsports right so of course Steve Jobs the computer guy

01:29:49   Love the big fast computers love to have all that you know computing horsepower up there

01:29:55   It was less enthused about making a really inexpensive headless Mac where you could use your own crappy

01:30:00   Logitech keyboard or your own crappy PC monitor with it like that wasn't his thing. It wasn't elegant. It wasn't beautiful

01:30:07   It was like a product that you make some people like maybe it's neat

01:30:09   Isn't it kind of cool that it's small or whatever, but he was never enthusiastic about it, right?

01:30:13   But he was enthusiastic about computers and in the same way that you can imagine the CEO of a car company

01:30:20   You know

01:30:22   Even something like Toyota like, you know, they make all these Camry's and you know, all the Corollas and everything, right?

01:30:28   But if you are the CEO of Toyota and you're going to like, you know

01:30:32   Hang out with the workers and see what they're up to you want to go to see the team making the LFA

01:30:37   Yeah, you're gonna visit the Camry line and check out the corrals and everything like that

01:30:40   But if you're you know, really into cars and you're the CEO of Toyota

01:30:44   You're gonna you want to go talk to the LFA people you want to say like how's the LFA coming?

01:30:49   I know this is like not important to our bottom line and shareholders care about how many cameras we sold

01:30:52   But I want to see how the LFA is coming right and Steve Jobs always seem to be the same way

01:30:56   So I feel like he would have been more decisive and

01:30:58   And that would have worked, you know

01:31:01   like I said

01:31:02   he's one of two ways he

01:31:03   Decisively cut off the Mac when he felt like it was time because he was ruthless in that way even though he loved computers

01:31:09   But up until that point he would have supported

01:31:12   Ridiculous overpowered computers that were he would have made that jellyfish hundred percent the Mac Pro jellyfish

01:31:19   He would have made that he made he made the cube. He made all those beard IMAX

01:31:22   He would have commissioned the jellyfish and he would have been like this is awesome

01:31:25   It's got tentacles and it's amazing.

01:31:27   Each one has a CPU in it and it probably would have flopped, but he did love some computers.

01:31:31   All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Away, Squarespace, and Techmeme Ride Home.

01:31:37   And we will see you next week.

01:31:39   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin.

01:31:46   Cause it was accidental.

01:31:48   Oh it was accidental.

01:31:50   John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental,

01:31:57   it was accidental.

01:32:01   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:32:06   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.

01:32:17   Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T-Marco, R-Men, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A-C, R-A-C-U-S-A, it's accidental.

01:32:32   They didn't mean to, accidental. Tech podcast so long.

01:32:42   I do want to, since we don't have anything else to talk about in the after show, I do

01:32:45   I do want to very briefly address topics that have come up

01:32:48   that people keep asking us to talk about

01:32:50   that we haven't mentioned.

01:32:52   One of them is Apple hiring that dude

01:32:54   and the other one is Mark Zuckerberg being a (bleep)

01:32:57   and I just don't, everything Apple does,

01:33:01   we also didn't cover the red iPhone.

01:33:03   Everything Apple does doesn't warrant mentioning, honestly.

01:33:07   It does a lot of stuff these days that's really boring,

01:33:10   that is not newsworthy and so we can't mention everything

01:33:13   and some of the stuff just gets cut.

01:33:15   And as for Zuckerberg's testimony to Congress

01:33:18   and everything else, it's all just a duck and pony show.

01:33:21   He's gonna keep doing what he's doing,

01:33:22   no one's gonna do anything,

01:33:23   no one's gonna leave Facebook except me

01:33:25   and maybe two people in my group.

01:33:26   So it's like, big companies do boring stuff all the time,

01:33:30   and Zuckerberg is gonna be a turd all the time.

01:33:33   (laughs)

01:33:34   There's just nothing's gonna change either of those things.

01:33:36   - I can always talk about Apple things though.

01:33:38   The person they hired,

01:33:39   the reason I think this didn't come up in the show,

01:33:43   like what was it, the AI person from Google or whatever,

01:33:46   oh this one hire is gonna make Siri better.

01:33:48   Like that's not how these things work.

01:33:50   - Yeah, exactly. - Like not how it works.

01:33:51   - Like the only, the times that happens

01:33:54   is very notable because it's rare.

01:33:55   Like getting, hiring Steve Jobs,

01:33:58   that was a big deal for Apple in 1997, right?

01:34:00   That's one case where you could say,

01:34:02   this one guy's gonna turn the company around?

01:34:03   Yeah, actually he did.

01:34:05   But it's hard to think, like it's not saying

01:34:07   that they're not gonna help

01:34:08   and it's not a good move or anything,

01:34:09   but we don't know this person,

01:34:12   We don't know. It's so hard to tell when you're like someone who works at that level in a

01:34:16   corporation. It's so hard to tell exactly what their skill set is. Right. Like what

01:34:21   are they bringing to the table. Were they just in the right place at the right time

01:34:25   and had the minimum necessary skills to take advantage of a success that was going to happen

01:34:31   with or without them. Or did that success happen only because they were there. Right.

01:34:36   And we don't know because we know these people are not like you know have like a you know

01:34:39   tech executive trading cards. I don't, I never heard this person's name. I don't even remember

01:34:43   it anymore. So when there's some big hire like that, I say, "Oh, good. Good for Apple.

01:34:48   Looks like they're, they know they need to work on Siri." And then I just don't pay attention

01:34:51   for a couple of years and we'll see. And if a couple of years it turns around, I'd be

01:34:54   like, "See, you thought that guy wasn't going to do it, but he did it. Great. Fine. Show

01:34:58   me." But I'm always like, "Show me the results. That's all I care about." Even with Steve

01:35:01   Jobs. "Show me the results." I didn't think he was going to succeed either, famously,

01:35:06   Because history had shown that he had flamed out spectacularly every time he tried to do

01:35:10   something and he was a mess.

01:35:11   But he figured it out.

01:35:12   So I always just think, "Show me the results."

01:35:15   And then the Facebook stuff, yeah, I can't be bothered.

01:35:19   Like our entire government is so depressing.

01:35:21   Nothing is going to happen from that Facebook thing.

01:35:23   Facebook is depressing.

01:35:24   I try not to pay attention to it.

01:35:26   Yeah, it's the best you could do.

01:35:27   Anything else?

01:35:28   Oh, and the red phones, I do like the fact that they're giving redbacks with black fronts

01:35:33   because that's the thing that I always wish they did.

01:35:35   I love that I started the segment with, "Here's things we're not going to talk about on the

01:35:37   show," and then we're talking about them on the show.

01:35:39   Yeah, it's two seconds.

01:35:40   It's a quickie.

01:35:41   That's the tech everyone has on it.

01:35:42   It's like everyone who likes the black fronts of the phones.

01:35:45   And I kind of like—my kids have a lot of like, mostly iPod touches and stuff that have

01:35:48   colored backs, but white fronts.

01:35:50   They do look kind of cool.

01:35:51   They look kind of like the red ones look Christmasy, like the white and the red, and we have a

01:35:56   blue and the white front.

01:35:58   It's not ugly, but I like the black fronts better for contrast reasons.

01:36:03   And having always to have the white front with the colorful backs and the black front

01:36:07   only with the boring backs, that streak went on too long.

01:36:10   So that and the supposed FCC picture of the gold backed iPhone X, did you see that one?

01:36:17   Yeah.

01:36:18   Yep.

01:36:19   Same thing, black front, gold back, I think that looks super cool.

01:36:20   It's like a bumblebee.

01:36:21   And the red back, black front product, red iPhone 8, I think it also looks cool.

01:36:28   Yeah.

01:36:29   I just wish it was like, it's just so like,

01:36:31   shameless that they wait until the slow mid-cycle time

01:36:36   and then they update the phones.

01:36:38   And they didn't even update the flagship phone

01:36:40   that costs more money and the people really want.

01:36:43   You know, it's just like, it's just so, bleh.

01:36:46   (beeping)