0:00:00John how are you? Let's lighten the mood. How's things going with you John? I'm tired. I'm exhausted. You guys are making me more exhausted.
0:00:06I seem to have become the authority on not seeing easy solutions to my problems.
0:00:15Is somebody going to tell you about rsync now?
0:00:19I have heard about rsync and I actually have used it for years literally years, but that's not the issue
0:00:26I've been working on an app that I don't particularly want to talk about the specifics on the show, but
0:00:31Suffice to say it relates to health kit, which already means I'm kind of treading on underscores waters actually, but whatever
0:00:37So I asked him you know hey
0:00:39is there any way to export health kit data and
0:00:44Bring it into the simulator because I'd prefer to do most of my development against simulator because it's quicker and easier
0:00:49So I need a whole bunch of health kit data on on the simulator
0:00:53And I was like, "Man, is there any way to export it, and then like import it?
0:00:57Is there somewhere on the file system or something like that that I can do this?"
0:01:00And in the most polite way, which is underscores, you know, M-O, in the most polite way he said
0:01:06to me, these are my words, mind you, "You friggin' idiot, you can get on iCloud on the
0:01:12simulator.
0:01:13Just join your account on iCloud."
0:01:14I didn't know you could do that, actually.
0:01:16Well, see.
0:01:17But I did know that you could do that, but I didn't put two and two together.
0:01:20But this is where it gets really bad, and I shouldn't share this publicly, but here
0:01:22Here I am.
0:01:23He said, I said to him, "But underscore, here's the thing.
0:01:27I want to be able to like save things to HealthKit, but I don't want them to actually save to,
0:01:32you know, like the canonical instance of HealthKit.
0:01:36So in other words, if I save, I don't know, like a workout, which is not actually what
0:01:40this app does, but for the sake of conversation, I save a workout, I don't want it to go to
0:01:44like my actual canonical HealthKit, I don't know, identity, for lack of a better word,
0:01:50repository.
0:01:51that to kind of just live alone on the simulator. So without batting an eye, Underscore says,
0:01:55"So sign out of iCloud." I'm so annoyed right now.
0:02:03>> You're like two weeks away from having an armful of Apple watches, like Underscore does,
0:02:07you know? >> I know, right? But it's like,
0:02:10this is such an easy solution. Why do I not see these things? Maybe I'm just a really crummy
0:02:15developer and I don't realize it. But, oh, golly, like, I don't think I'm an exceptionally great
0:02:20developer, but I didn't think I was that bad of a developer. Why don't I see these things?
0:02:24Why can't I recognize this?
0:02:26>> So everyone, hire Casey for your development needs.
0:02:28>> Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the trick. That's the ticket right there.
0:02:34>> You really do a good job at selling yourself.
0:02:36>> This is why I don't want to be an independent consultant.
0:02:39>> I love that you keep--I heard your episode of Analog. It was very good. Last episode
0:02:45of Analog where Mike talked you through a lot of this stuff, which I highly suggest
0:02:49everybody I listen to, just because it's a good show
0:02:51to begin with, but also if you're interested in our arc
0:02:54of trying to convince Casey to go out on his own somehow,
0:02:58it was a very good episode.
0:03:00And I think, and we even got,
0:03:01we got this like 2,000 word email that,
0:03:04(laughing)
0:03:05it does seem like your heart is not really in consulting.
0:03:08Like it does seem like you don't really care to do it, right?
0:03:10- And that's the thing, that's the thing.
0:03:12- Then, you know, fine, I'm not gonna push that anymore
0:03:15because to do anything like that,
0:03:18you have to be a little more into it than what you are.
0:03:22So that's probably not gonna happen.
0:03:23So okay, I'll stop pushing that button.
0:03:25I do however think it's hilarious
0:03:27that you keep trying to trade in these ways
0:03:30that you can immediately get a lot of money
0:03:32for things that take years to build up to a livable wage.
0:03:36Like I think I'm gonna start a YouTube app
0:03:38and making small indie apps.
0:03:39(laughing)
0:03:41Or YouTube channel rather, excuse me.
0:03:42- Yeah, that's indie success right there.
0:03:44- Guaranteed.
0:03:45Everyone is making money hand over fist
0:03:48in the app store and on YouTube.
0:03:50There's no way for this to be a disaster.
0:03:52- All right, here's what you do.
0:03:54You get five envelopes, and each one you put $5.
0:03:56You mail the top two to these people,
0:03:58then you mail out a whole bunch of letters to the other.
0:03:59It's like, this is never gonna,
0:04:01it's like, if you started doing these things 10 years ago,
0:04:05you might now have enough to live on.
0:04:07- Exactly.
0:04:08- These are slow buildings, slow, like,
0:04:11it takes a while. (laughs)
0:04:13That's so true.
0:04:14That's so true.
0:04:15I don't know.
0:04:16I don't know.
0:04:17I have been waffling about this.
0:04:18Aaron and I have been talking a lot about this, and not in an angry way.
0:04:24Like I'm not upset about it at all.
0:04:25But I don't want to talk about it anymore at this particular moment because I feel like
0:04:28all I've been doing is stressing about it for the last month and a half.
0:04:31But I have such conflicted and mixed thoughts that I don't know what to do.
0:04:37And it's like, you know, I think your assessment is accurate that the idea of just 1099-ing
0:04:43my way through life, that is to say being an independent consultant, like, there are
0:04:48ways in which I think that would be fun.
0:04:49Like let's say for the sake of discussion, I can wave my magic wand and I can have you
0:04:55give me, I don't know, between five and 10 hours of work a week.
0:04:58I can have Underscore give me five to 10 hours of work a week.
0:05:01I can have some of my other independent app developers like, you know, Jelly who works
0:05:05on Gifrap, which if you believe in animated gifs at all, you should have. Or, you know,
0:05:10Curtis who works on Slopes as another example, which if you believe in skiing or snowboarding,
0:05:14you should have that app. You know, if any of these people, if all of you guys, and Underscore
0:05:18of course, you know, if you guys could each, you know, shave off five to ten hours each,
0:05:24then I could probably make a living. But the idea of just like going out and chasing random
0:05:27people for work and random businesses for work is just, just the thought of it is extremely
0:05:32tiring. And that's not to say that that's bad or wrong or anything else. It's just,
0:05:37I don't, to your point, Marco, I don't think my heart is in chasing, chasing work
0:05:41from random people. And I mean that in a nasty way, just in an observational way.
0:05:46So, well, I do wonder though, I think that the part of that, of the 2000 word email that
0:05:51we got, that was mostly a little bit off-putting. But the part of it that I thought was interesting
0:05:57and potentially a good path to consider,
0:05:59is the part where the author says that,
0:06:02clearly your heart's not in consulting,
0:06:04which I think was true,
0:06:06but that maybe you should consider
0:06:08being the Swift person,
0:06:11like the person who has a lot of
0:06:13instructional Swift content.
0:06:15Granted, that's a very crowded market.
0:06:16There's a lot of people who have been doing
0:06:18a lot of instructional Swift content for a long time,
0:06:21but you also already have an existing audience
0:06:24of developers, which is pretty good.
0:06:27That's a pretty good advantage to start with.
0:06:30And so you do have a bit of an unfair advantage there,
0:06:32which you can use to your advantage.
0:06:35The other thing I would say is,
0:06:38when talking about who you can get consulting work from,
0:06:42don't do me and Underscore and Curtis.
0:06:45We're all indie developers working on indie budgets.
0:06:48- Yeah, I know, that's the thing.
0:06:49- We're the worst people to have
0:06:50trying to get consulting work for
0:06:52because we can barely afford employees.
0:06:54- I think Margot just pre-fired you.
0:06:56(laughter)
0:06:58- I told him I'd give him some hours if he did this,
0:07:00but I'm in a position that most indies are not.
0:07:04And even I, I couldn't afford you full time.
0:07:07- Although, can I just say publicly
0:07:10that it may be worth, maybe not the money,
0:07:13but worth the experience for both of us
0:07:16to watch me have to slum it in Objective C land
0:07:19and watch you have to slum it and deal with an employee.
0:07:21Like, that would be hilarious on many different levels.
0:07:26the world's least interesting reality show.
0:07:28Well, it would be the least interesting, but perhaps most funny.
0:07:32You get cards against humanity to sponsor it.
0:07:34Yeah, right? Oh, God. But seriously, like, you—don't let me speak for you, but I
0:07:39have the feeling, like, even with me—and I like to think I get a little bit of special
0:07:43privilege here—you have no interest in having anyone as, like, an employee in any capacity.
0:07:49And although I don't have any real angst against Objective-C, I have—let's say
0:07:54I feel like it's a little bit old and a little bit tired.
0:07:57- I mean, that could be said for all of us, right?
0:07:59- Well, that's fair.
0:08:00(laughing)
0:08:01I just think it would be hilarious.
0:08:02- Some days more than others.
0:08:04- Can you imagine, like, you send me off
0:08:06to work on some bug fix and I, like,
0:08:07rewrite an entire class in Swift and try to pass that,
0:08:09but I wouldn't do that for several different reasons,
0:08:12but just for the sake of discussion,
0:08:13like, I write this entire class,
0:08:14or I rewrite an entire class in Swift,
0:08:15and I'm like, "Here you go, here you go, Marco,
0:08:17"this is good, right?"
0:08:17You just look at this and I'm like, "What did you do?"
0:08:21- I could just set all this money on fire
0:08:23by making you write unit tests?
0:08:25- Well, I don't know if it'd be setting it on fire.
0:08:27I almost walked into that, you bastard.
0:08:29(laughing)
0:08:31You're more right than you are wrong, you big jerk.
0:08:34Oh, goodness.
0:08:36We should get started or slash continue
0:08:38with talking about how Siri is all up
0:08:41in front of the show, Daniel Jalkut's business.
0:08:43So who added this to the show notes?
0:08:45Can you tell me what's going on?
0:08:47- I added it.
0:08:48Here's the first account I read of, I think,
0:08:50a story that I've heard from a lot of people now,
0:08:52as it relates to HomePod, it's that you've got this thing in your house, and unfortunately
0:08:58it has the same trigger phrase as a bunch of other things that you might also have in
0:09:02your house.
0:09:04So once you get past the, you know, being amazed that it can hear you over loud music
0:09:08or whatever, and you just happen to be in your house, and you talk to some device that
0:09:12may or may not be your HomePod, and your HomePod decides, "Oh, I can totally hear you, and
0:09:18I'm gonna take this for you.
0:09:20Hang on, I got it."
0:09:21And Apple has this thing where if multiple devices are around and you say the trigger
0:09:25word they negotiate amongst each other to figure out who's going to answer, but HomePod
0:09:30will grab a request that it can't handle just to tell you that it can't do that.
0:09:37So that it would have worked if it was on your phone, but HomePod grabs it, maybe because
0:09:42it has better microphones or because it takes priority or whatever, and then it grabs it
0:09:46and says, "Oh yeah, no, I totally can't do that.
0:09:47Sorry about that."
0:09:50So that's not nice behavior, and a lot of people have complained about that.
0:09:53And it's kind of another situation where—Apple's had a few of these—where their best customers
0:10:01are more likely to run into these complex problems, right?
0:10:05Apple wants you to have a household of Apple devices.
0:10:07You've got Macs and iPads and phones, and everybody should have one, and they should
0:10:10be all over the place.
0:10:11And yet, if you do that, you run into all the situations in which Apple doesn't handle
0:10:15a house full of devices.
0:10:17We've talked before about the families sharing iCloud and photos accounts, before the family
0:10:25plans for iCloud storage existed.
0:10:27It was a while before Siri could understand different people and you had to do the training
0:10:32and everything, so now it can distinguish voices.
0:10:34Well, here's another growing pain of the multi-Apple device lifestyle.
0:10:38If you've got multiple things in your house listening for the same trigger phrase, it's
0:10:42great that they negotiate with each other.
0:10:43it's not so great that the negotiation results in
0:10:47the worst possible device answering your question.
0:10:50- I mean, the funny thing is, like, in many ways,
0:10:51this actually rewards you if you're a person
0:10:54who has not gotten into the Hey Siri ecosystem.
0:10:57Like, if you, like me, like, I don't leave it on my phones.
0:11:00I try to, 'cause I have, like, my iPad
0:11:02that just sits in the kitchen all day for the most part,
0:11:04and I figured, like, maybe I could use that
0:11:07the way I use the Amazon Echo.
0:11:08Like, maybe I could set timers and stuff
0:11:09using Hey Siri on the iPad, and I've tried that,
0:11:12And it's terrible, so I'd never do it.
0:11:15But, oh crap, my development phone just went off.
0:11:19- Well done.
0:11:20- I was like, why are you saying,
0:11:21see how nicely I said trigger phrase like nine times?
0:11:23So you're just rattling them off
0:11:24and now you're being punished.
0:11:25- No, the rule is if Phil Schiller can go on the talk show
0:11:27and say, hey Siri, in front of everybody
0:11:29and have nothing go off, then I can do it on a podcast.
0:11:32- But he's got a computerized chip in his throat
0:11:33that masks it so the devices won't pick it up.
0:11:36Like the Amazon Echo ads in the Super Bowl.
0:11:39- By the way, that Amazon Echo method
0:11:40where you cut out the three kilohertz thing,
0:11:42I played with that.
0:11:43I could not reproduce that.
0:11:44I could not get that to actually work.
0:11:45And that post was like a year old, so I'm guessing it's not the thing.
0:11:48I tweeted something about it.
0:11:49There was some paper about how you can make basically any spoken phrase be interpreted
0:11:53by speech recognition engine as any other phrase that you want.
0:11:57You have to know the details of the recognition engine, but of course Amazon does know the
0:12:01details.
0:12:02It's pretty neat.
0:12:03You can notice that it's been modified, like there's noise added, but it's fascinating
0:12:06and terrifying that you can have the audio say anything you want and have the transcription
0:12:10say an entirely different phrase.
0:12:11- Yeah, yeah.
0:12:12Anyway, so the point is, if you are a HomePod person,
0:12:16you actually have a pretty good reason right now
0:12:18to disable the Hey Dingus feature
0:12:21on as many devices as you can get away with it.
0:12:24Because if you don't end up using that much,
0:12:27if you're willing to just hit the button on things,
0:12:29you're way better off having that off on lots of devices
0:12:31because that way you won't have this problem
0:12:33where the HomePod grabs it when it's actually not the device
0:12:36that either you want or that even can handle
0:12:39the request you're giving it.
0:12:41Jalka had a good story too, he was using timers for like a midday meditation and the HomePod
0:12:46grabbed the "please set a timer for whatever" which is fine, you know, whatever, you can
0:12:50set a timer for me.
0:12:52But unlike the device that he normally, that he was trying to talk to, it was his watch,
0:12:56like taps you when like your time is up, the HomePod would speak out loud about setting
0:13:02the timer and about when the time went off, it really kind of harshes your mellow when
0:13:06you're trying to meditate.
0:13:07So yeah, the intentionality of what you want, like if you talk to your wrist despite the
0:13:13fact that the HomePod can hear you just fine and like quote-unquote "wins the contest"
0:13:17and it can support timers, it doesn't understand that you were talking to your wrist.
0:13:21Anyone looking at you would know you were talking to your wrist because they'd see you
0:13:23doing that, but the HomePod can't see you.
0:13:25Maybe it just needs cameras.
0:13:27Wow.
0:13:28Wow.
0:13:29But on a happier note, tell us about the Sonos and wood furniture.
0:13:33That's not happy, it's sad.
0:13:34Why is this happy?
0:13:35But yeah, Sonos and I'm sure lots of other audio and non-audio products that have the
0:13:40same — feet made of the same or similar material that soaks up the oil from the wood
0:13:46and everything can also leave marks.
0:13:49And I think that's terrible.
0:13:50I think that, again, I said on the last show, I understand that it's important to have something
0:13:55vibration-absorbing down there for audio performance, but I have to believe there is some substance
0:14:00on the planet that is both squishy and does not absorb oil from wood furniture leaving
0:14:06rings or marks of any kind.
0:14:08So shame on Sonos, shame on Apple, and I believe we have the technology to solve this.
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0:16:00(upbeat music)
0:16:03- Who has a HomePod?
0:16:04Because I know I don't.
0:16:05And that's in no small part because I friggin' hate Siri.
0:16:07Marco?
0:16:08- I do not.
0:16:09Although that's in partially small part
0:16:11because I've been traveling,
0:16:12so I wasn't actually anywhere where I could buy one.
0:16:15I have still thought about maybe putting it on the counter.
0:16:17One thing I wanna know actually,
0:16:19I was thinking like, 'cause I know like some of our friends
0:16:21like Merlin are very positive about the Echo,
0:16:26is it the Spot, the little circular one?
0:16:28- I think that's right, yeah.
0:16:29- I was wondering maybe I could try one of those,
0:16:31'cause the one reason I got the Echo Show for a day
0:16:35and then returned it promptly was that I really would like
0:16:38to see the progress of the timers counting down
0:16:41while cooking.
0:16:43Right now I just ask the Echo, hey, timer status.
0:16:45But it's, ideally I could watch them or see them
0:16:49without having to ask something,
0:16:51have it hear it over the fan on the stove,
0:16:53and then, you know, so anyway.
0:16:55So I was thinking maybe I could get an Echo Spot,
0:16:58put it on the little counter right next to where we cook,
0:17:01and then have the HomePod on the kind of like
0:17:06transitional counter to the big great room
0:17:08and dining room area,
0:17:09where that's where the music should come from.
0:17:11So I thought about that, but I don't know.
0:17:12I still think I want to wait.
0:17:15It just seems like there's so many 1.0 limitations
0:17:19and little annoyances here and there that people are having.
0:17:22And also, again, I'm not that hot on Siri,
0:17:26so I think I'm gonna wait a little bit.
0:17:28Or until I have a really good reason
0:17:30for overcast development.
0:17:31(laughing)
0:17:32- Oh, we can hope, we can hope.
0:17:35How about you, Jon?
0:17:36- I actually got something for Marco.
0:17:38Mark it on your calendar.
0:17:39- What?
0:17:39- You got the HomePod?
0:17:40- I got a HomePod, yeah.
0:17:42- Just one?
0:17:43- Just one.
0:17:44Which actually, more than one would have been cool,
0:17:47But anyway, I had a place for it,
0:17:50'cause I put it in the same room
0:17:52that I have my Google Home Mini,
0:17:54which I got for free as part of some other purchase,
0:17:56and of course you'd never wanna play audio on.
0:17:58So there's competition for it
0:18:00in terms of answering questions.
0:18:02And in general, I think I'll probably still ask questions
0:18:06to the Google Home Mini, mostly about who stars in movies
0:18:09that I'm watching on television while I'm watching them.
0:18:11And yes, I know that lots of applications
0:18:14on Apple TV can do that for you.
0:18:17Some of them, like I think the Amazon one,
0:18:19even if you just pause,
0:18:20it will show you like who's on screen right now.
0:18:21So be aware of that.
0:18:22But anyway, I find myself asking questions
0:18:26of the Google Home, mostly because a force of habit.
0:18:30But I don't really have anything in that room
0:18:35that can play good audio that is always on.
0:18:38I do have okay speakers attached to my TV,
0:18:41but usually that whole receiver and everything is off
0:18:43when someone's not watching TV.
0:18:45So it's nice to have something in there that,
0:18:48you know, it sounds okay,
0:18:50and that I can both speak to to make it play something
0:18:53and in a pinch, airplay to.
0:18:55So I subscribed to Apple Music.
0:18:56I tried to do like some family trial thing or whatever.
0:18:58I still assume I will unsubscribe eventually,
0:19:01but I wanted to give it a fair shot to say,
0:19:03I wanna be able to just speak to the air
0:19:05and have it play music.
0:19:06And it sounds pretty good.
0:19:09No, I didn't put it on a coaster.
0:19:10It is sitting on top of my furniture,
0:19:11I don't have any nice furniture in my life period so I don't have to worry about it
0:19:17Uh, do I have any let me see like my dining room table is okay
0:19:20But anyway, I don't have a nice furniture for the most part so I don't have to worry about it leaving rings
0:19:24It's sitting on top of what I assume is a computer printed
0:19:27photograph of wood
0:19:29You know transfer it onto some kind of aluminum powder cover with the plastic dust
0:19:35crappy piece of furniture that I have. I tried it in a bunch of different positions to see
0:19:40how it would adjust its sound. Couldn't tell much of a difference, you know, I couldn't tell whether
0:19:47it was adjusting its sound or whether it just sound different because it was in a different
0:19:50place. I do have it kind of near a corner which I think is not great for boomy bass but I really,
0:19:56it's really the best place I have for the thing. I got white mostly because I couldn't decide and
0:20:01so I asked my son and he picked white which I think is a reasonable choice because all the
0:20:04the other things are white as well.
0:20:08In terms of filling the room with sound, you can tell that it's a point source.
0:20:12That's why I mentioned that if I get two of them it might be better.
0:20:16Even if it wasn't just stereo, I can tell the sound was coming from that part of the
0:20:19room, which of course you expect to be able to tell that.
0:20:22It's not magic.
0:20:23But let's put it this way, it is less enveloping than the 5.1 system that I have on my TV.
0:20:30I probably sounds better than the 5.1 system, but the 5.1 system surrounds the room. So when I play, you know
0:20:36Find that actually but most times I play music like during Christmas
0:20:39You like Christmas music when you're like decorating the tree or on Christmas Day or whatever
0:20:42It's nice to have it come from all around and maybe I'll still do that. But it's in the room. I talked to it my
0:20:49My like out-of-box experience was not the greatest because you go and you set up the thing
0:20:55It shows a little picture of the home pod. You're like, yes set up and you know, you go through the whole thing
0:20:59everything seems fine
0:21:01and then
0:21:03you can go to the home app to
0:21:05To control the device or to do something. I don't know I'd never even launched on it
0:21:08So I launched the home app and there's my home pod that I just set up and just got a big red message on it
0:21:13It says like not responding. It was like that for like 10 minutes. Like what do you mean not responding?
0:21:17The thing is right there. I'm talking to it. It's working fine. How can you tell me it's not responding?
0:21:21Eventually, it started responding and I saw you can tap on it to like pause the music and tap again to unpause and right whatever
0:21:28And then like 15 minutes later launched the home
0:21:31Application again to try to pause it from a different room and there was a little spinner on it like the little dotted spinner and the spinner
0:21:37Just spun there, and it just spun for like five minutes since I closed the home app
0:21:41Not you know what I don't know what the deal with that is. I don't know what its problem was seems to work now
0:21:46Not a great experience just one of those kind of like oh sometimes Apple stuff doesn't work. You just have to wait
0:21:51Those kind of kind of depressing I did all the experiments everyone else did turn the volume real bad
0:21:58talk to it, it's impressive how well it can hear you. I was not impressed with
0:22:02how quickly it executed my commands. It shows the most when you're telling it to
0:22:08stop playing a song because I do that all the time with the with the Google
0:22:11Homes I have because my kids make them play things and I want them to stop
0:22:14immediately, right? So this is probably my most common interaction with any of
0:22:17these devices, to tell it to stop playing whatever audio it's currently playing.
0:22:21And the HomePod will do it, but it's a little bit more lag than there is when
0:22:25telling any of the Google devices.
0:22:26The Google device is like, as soon as I get the word out of my mouth, it's like, boom,
0:22:30the audio cuts off.
0:22:31The HomePod seems like I have to think about it for half a second or so, and I find that
0:22:35a little bit annoying considering it's much more expensive than the other ones.
0:22:39So yeah, no real surprises.
0:22:44The only thing that I didn't anticipate is how angry my children would get when they
0:22:47try to talk to it using the Google trigger phrase.
0:22:52So they're constantly saying, you know, "Okay, Google," or whatever, to try to make it do
0:22:56things.
0:22:57Especially, again, if it's in the middle of something and one kid wants to stop it playing
0:22:59audio or play a different one, they're yelling at it to be—so the Google thing is answering
0:23:03them trying to play music at the same time.
0:23:06It's like, you have to talk to them, but it's like, they don't understand why you would
0:23:10have to use a different phrase.
0:23:11I mean, I guess you can explain like it's not a Google thing or whatever, but that's
0:23:14stupid.
0:23:15So, yeah.
0:23:16So, I have such mixed feelings about this.
0:23:21So we got a letter from Tim Wouters and Tim said, "I see some funny parallels between
0:23:28Apple product launches, even with you guys, with respect to HomePod in your latest episodes."
0:23:33And Tim enumerates a bunch of things and I'll try to summarize his summary.
0:23:38So when the iPod was released in 2001, it enters an existing market of MP3 players.
0:23:43Oh, there's no wireless, there's less space in a Nomad, lame.
0:23:46The iPhone, oh, it's ridiculously expensive.
0:23:48doesn't have a physical keyboard, no copy paste, no 3G, etc. etc. HomePod, well, it's
0:23:53ridiculously expensive, it doesn't do multi-room audio, it doesn't do stereo, it doesn't do
0:23:56multi-user series, it's severely limited, etc. So Tim's point is he continues, I'm assuming
0:24:03he continues, every time Apple obliterates critics with its relentless focus on continuous
0:24:08improvement. So in so many words, why isn't HomePod the same thing all over again?
0:24:12- Well, I mean, I don't think it's fair to assume
0:24:16that every Apple product that is kind of weird
0:24:19or iffy or delayed or incomplete 1.0
0:24:21will grow up to be an awesome 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0.
0:24:26The initial iPod was really expensive
0:24:29and it was pretty limited,
0:24:30especially 'cause it was Mac only at the time.
0:24:32There were reasons to be skeptical of the initial iPod
0:24:36and that market wasn't really proven yet.
0:24:38Whereas over time, they did make it great
0:24:42and it was very successful.
0:24:44The original iPhone was too expensive for a lot of people.
0:24:47That original one did not sell nearly as many
0:24:49as the follow-up models.
0:24:51But over time, they made the iPhone ridiculously great.
0:24:55I mean, in my opinion, it was pretty great from day one,
0:24:56but they made it more successful and more mass-market
0:24:59as time went on.
0:25:00But look at the Apple Watch.
0:25:03The first version of the Apple Watch was barely usable.
0:25:06It was really a pretty mediocre product.
0:25:09had lots of problems, lots of limitations,
0:25:12lots of weird and bad design choices.
0:25:14They did iterate that over time,
0:25:16but most of that iteration happened
0:25:18with the help of additional hardware generations
0:25:21and a couple of years of software generations.
0:25:24That doesn't mean that we were wrong
0:25:26to criticize the Apple Watch 1.0.
0:25:29The Apple Watch 1.0 needed a lot of criticism.
0:25:32The HomePod, I think, is gonna be more like that,
0:25:36although I think it's probably starting from a better place.
0:25:39The HomePod is clearly a one-pointer.
0:25:42There's lots of missing features.
0:25:43There's lots of things that are a little bit wonky
0:25:45or don't quite work the way people want them to.
0:25:48But I do expect over time for the HomePod
0:25:50to get significantly better.
0:25:52That doesn't mean that this HomePod
0:25:54will get necessarily a better look.
0:25:55That might require new hardware.
0:25:57So I think it is fair to criticize this one.
0:25:59And the other side of this is that
0:26:02a lot of the criticism about the HomePod today
0:26:07is about Siri and the limitations of Siri
0:26:10and inferior performance in some areas of Siri.
0:26:15I don't think we can reasonably assume
0:26:18that that's going to get better at the same kind of pace
0:26:20that we're used to seeing Apple products get better with.
0:26:24When you're mainly waiting on hardware advances,
0:26:27like we need the CPU in this thing to get faster,
0:26:30that's gonna happen, that's kind of a sure thing
0:26:33to happen one to two years after the launch of version one
0:26:36of pretty much anything that Apple makes.
0:26:38When you're worried about the local device software
0:26:41getting better, like Apple's pretty good
0:26:43at local device software, there's some flaws here and there,
0:26:45but they're pretty good at it.
0:26:46But Siri is not new and has gotten better
0:26:50at a glacial pace and in many ways has the same problems
0:26:55today as it did when it launched like seven years ago.
0:26:58I don't necessarily think it's a reasonable assumption
0:27:02that the HomePod's flaws that are Siri related
0:27:05are about to get better, or are gonna get better
0:27:08in two years.
0:27:09I actually don't think that's a safe assumption.
0:27:11I would love that to be the case,
0:27:12but the track record of Siri so far is pretty slow progress
0:27:17and certain types of things
0:27:19that basically are always problems.
0:27:21I don't see that changing quickly,
0:27:25at least not as a sure thing.
0:27:27So I think it is reasonable to criticize HomePod 1.0
0:27:30for no one to be making fun of us
0:27:32for criticizing the things
0:27:33that are actually wrong with it today,
0:27:35and also to be a little skeptical of Siri improvements
0:27:39being meaningful that are coming anytime soon.
0:27:42- The funny thing about this is that,
0:27:43Siri, or at least my understanding
0:27:45of the implementation of Siri,
0:27:47is one of the few things that Apple could actually tweak
0:27:50on their end without a software update, right?
0:27:52Like, they can make tweaks to Siri server-side,
0:27:55and they can do that at any time.
0:27:57And obviously, that's not a universal thing,
0:27:59but generally speaking, they can make Siri a lot better
0:28:01without having to do any sort of software update locally.
0:28:04And so here's the one place where Apple is most well equipped to make changes.
0:28:09And yet I completely agree with you, Marco,
0:28:11that Siri has gotten potentially even worse than when it was new.
0:28:15No, it's not worse than it definitely. And they started out pretty bad.
0:28:19It definitely is better and it is getting better,
0:28:22but it's getting better at a very slow pace and it's still is, you know,
0:28:27it gains new abilities, you know, about once a year,
0:28:31which is not frequent enough.
0:28:33It gains new abilities about once a year,
0:28:35but it is not, it seems like it hit a plateau
0:28:39of reliability, like roughly in year two or three,
0:28:43and hasn't really gotten more reliable since then.
0:28:47- Yeah, the point I'm driving at though is that
0:28:49it's weird to me that this is the one place
0:28:51where Apple could really ship fast, ship off,
0:28:54and they don't, and it really bums me out.
0:28:56And, ah man, I have so many angry thoughts about Siri
0:29:00that we'll probably get to next
0:29:01that I'm just going to leave for now.
0:29:02But I agree with pretty much everything you just said.
0:29:06John.
0:29:07>> So, when you read this, I think we got all of it from the email.
0:29:11And so I think this, like we didn't leave out any examples.
0:29:14And basically the only two examples are iPod and iPhone.
0:29:16And the gist of the email is, you know, why do you doubt Apple?
0:29:19Like haven't they proven the doubters wrong?
0:29:21Right?
0:29:22You know, the last line of history proves you wrong, doesn't it?
0:29:26Right?
0:29:27I think to start we have to say whatever logical fallacy or statistical bias that is, you know,
0:29:32you cherry picked.
0:29:33Like it's iPod and iPhone are the two examples, yes.
0:29:36Yes there's the famous, what is it, Rob Muldove of Slashdot, anyone remember Slashdot?
0:29:42Who said the iPod was no wireless less space than an homemade limb, that's what that quote
0:29:45is.
0:29:46And that lots of people doubted the iPhone, right?
0:29:50Those are like Apple's two biggest products after the Mac.
0:29:53So yeah, you can pick them and say they were doubters.
0:29:56There were doubters for Ping, too, that didn't go anywhere.
0:29:59There were doubters for the iPod Hi-Fi that didn't go anywhere.
0:30:01There were doubters for the G4 Cube that, like, you know, if you just pick the ones
0:30:04that end up being smash successes, it can look like, "Hey, history proves you wrong."
0:30:07But setting that aside, like, so, whatever.
0:30:10You know, so you can't use these as examples to anything, but what's different about the
0:30:13HomePod than the successes?
0:30:15What makes it more likely to be more like whatever sort of not so great success than
0:30:23it is to be like the iPod and the iPhone.
0:30:26And I think there is – not to say that this means HomePod is not going to be a success,
0:30:32but I think it probably means that HomePod won't be as huge a success as the iPod and
0:30:35the iPhone.
0:30:37Both of those things came into the market and they were substantially different than
0:30:41the existing players.
0:30:43Obviously the iPhone was different.
0:30:44A lot of the criticism was about how it was different.
0:30:46There's no physical keyboard.
0:30:47No one does phones like that.
0:30:48You can't make a phone like this.
0:30:49It doesn't even have 3G.
0:30:50All the phones out there have 3G and it's expensive, but the iPhone was not just like
0:30:57a Nokia candy bar phone but with an Apple logo on it, right?
0:31:00It was very, very different.
0:31:02It had things that no other phone in the market had.
0:31:05The software, obviously, no other phone in the market behaved like that.
0:31:08People didn't even think it could possibly be real, right?
0:31:10The iPod was more conventional, but still it was smaller and more well-integrated than
0:31:17the other devices that you could buy that hold lots of songs in them.
0:31:20And the key part about the iPod was that normal people could be successful at the task of
0:31:25taking your music collection and putting it on this device and listening to it.
0:31:29I owned a bunch of pre-iPod solid state music players, and if you remember, they also had
0:31:35pre-iPod hard drive based ones that were the size of a truck.
0:31:39Normal people, if they bought those things at all, which they probably wouldn't, tended
0:31:44to be less successful.
0:31:45I know my wife was not successful at getting the audio onto her tiny little flash, whatever
0:31:50a Samsung or maybe it was Panasonic, I don't even remember, like there were, or maybe Yamaha,
0:31:57iPod was different than the others in that it was better in all ways in terms of like
0:32:02size and number of songs that it held, and it was better in all ways related to user
0:32:07interface and so even though it was very limited and it was Mac only and it was expensive and
0:32:10it had no wireless and it had less space than a Nomad which I think was the one of the hard
0:32:14drive based players in the market, it had significant advantages.
0:32:18HomePod enters a market already populated by devices that already do more than the HomePod
0:32:25does in exactly the same way that the HomePod intends to do it.
0:32:28There are cylindrically shaped speakers that play audio that you can talk to, right?
0:32:33There is no differentiator for the HomePod except perhaps audio quality, and it's not
0:32:37like there's no competition for audio quality.
0:32:39Sonos has good audio quality, and depending on whose test you look at, even the Google
0:32:43Max thing seems to be so-so, right?
0:32:46So HomePod comes in with no real differentiator, like there's nothing that it does that is
0:32:53different.
0:32:54It's not like everything else has a physical keyboard and it doesn't.
0:32:55All the other ones require you to touch them and HomePod lets you talk to it.
0:32:59No, it's exactly the same feature set.
0:33:01And that's why the HomePod's getting slammed because it comes into a crowded market doing
0:33:06nothing different or better than the competition and not doing many things that the competition
0:33:13does.
0:33:14only thing you could say HomePod has going for it is audio quality, but even audio quality
0:33:17per price. You can get two Sonos 1s versus the HomePod, and two Sonos 1s sound just about
0:33:21as good as the HomePod with the possible exception of bass, most people say. So that thin edge
0:33:27of like, okay, well, it's the best sounding cylinder that you can talk to that you can
0:33:30get, but on the other side of that coin, you can't talk to it in as many ways as you can
0:33:35talk to these seven other products, means that it's getting slammed for, I think, legitimate
0:33:40reasons and it also means that unless something very important changes, it doesn't have the
0:33:45potential to be a breakout hit in the same way the iPhone and the iPod do because it
0:33:48isn't differentiated enough.
0:33:51Even if it gets better at everything and it is as good as the Google Home devices at answering
0:33:56your things and as good as Sonos and audio quality or whatever, you've just caught up
0:34:02then, right?
0:34:03Whereas the iPhone is either going to live or die based on the idea that you can have
0:34:07a phone that's all screen.
0:34:08And guess what? It lived. Right? And same thing with the iPod. Is the ease of putting
0:34:13some music on this thing enough to make up for the high price? Well, you know, it turns
0:34:17out that it was, especially once it came to Windows. The iteration is definitely a thing,
0:34:22but even iteration can't save you entirely or can't make you wildly successful. Apple
0:34:28TV is a great example. Apple TV came out a long time ago, back when it was called ITV
0:34:32before Apple learned they couldn't use that name.
0:34:36The original Apple TV was not popular and did not succeed.
0:34:40Other devices came on market
0:34:43and did better than the original Apple TV.
0:34:45Eventually, Apple, you know, caught up and said,
0:34:48"We're going to make a little Puck-shaped thing,
0:34:50and we're going to do what everyone else is doing."
0:34:53But right now, Apple TV is, you know, it can --
0:34:58it's main advantage is that you can play
0:34:59your DRM-locked Apple content,
0:35:01But other than that, it has no great differentiator
0:35:05besides media lock-in from all the other
0:35:08television connected devices.
0:35:10And even some smart TVs can play Netflix
0:35:11just as well as the Apple TV.
0:35:13So they iterated an Apple TV for a long time
0:35:16and it actually took them essentially two tries
0:35:18to even figure out what the correct features
0:35:21and price bar for that type of device.
0:35:24So I think it's not like we're doubting
0:35:28that the HomePod will be a successful product,
0:35:32but I think it is entirely reasonable
0:35:34to give it all the criticism that it's getting,
0:35:37and I think it's entirely reasonable
0:35:38not to expect it to be a breakout success
0:35:41like the iPod and the iPhone,
0:35:42at least until it comes out with some differentiator.
0:35:47In fact, if it was, it would have,
0:35:49they always say this,
0:35:50if people aren't making fun of you,
0:35:52you're probably not gonna be that successful.
0:35:55If it was more differentiated
0:35:57and did something radically different, that would give it probably more potential, because
0:36:02maybe that weird thing that it's doing that nobody else is doing is going to be the thing
0:36:05that makes it a great success.
0:36:08But now you look at it and it's like, it's not doing anything differently than anyone
0:36:11else.
0:36:12It's doing exactly the same stuff, only some of it not as good.
0:36:15And that doesn't spell massive success, it spells okay success.
0:36:21Even the watch, I would say, is much more differentiated, and even the watch has taken
0:36:24while to get going but there was really no other smart watch that had the
0:36:28basically the the power and the you know the the fashion sense that the Apple
0:36:33watch did on its introduction so even that had more potential upside than the
0:36:37home pod so I think everyone is lukewarm on the home pod for valid reasons I
0:36:42agree I mean it's just it's a fair point like I understand why the email was
0:36:49written I just I don't currently see it as the same and even if HomePad version
0:36:557 is the best speaker that has ever been made I don't think that negates any of
0:37:00the criticisms we have now. And I'm trying to think of like what would be a
0:37:04breakout feature like you know it's a feature that doesn't already exist in a
0:37:09Google or Amazon or Sonos product that the HomePod could have and you know just
0:37:17Just because I can't think of one doesn't mean there isn't one.
0:37:19There could be one.
0:37:21But nothing Apple has announced I think fits that category.
0:37:24Maybe, well, I don't know.
0:37:26Maybe like if the HomeKit stuff ever takes off Apple could do a better job of integrating
0:37:30all of our light switches and doorbells and whatever than Amazon currently does.
0:37:35But I don't know.
0:37:38And in the meantime we're all just hoping that HomePod catches up.
0:37:41its voice stuff ends up being as good as Google and Amazon and that it gets all the capabilities
0:37:48that Apple originally advertised for it in terms of having multiple ones and multi-room
0:37:52audio and all the other things that some of its competitors already have.
0:37:55I want one, but I know I'm going to be disappointed by it, and so that's why I haven't bought
0:37:59one.
0:38:00And plus, it's, what is it, $350, $400?
0:38:02That's enough money.
0:38:04That's not an impulse buy to me.
0:38:06And not to say that it is to you two either.
0:38:07Just for me anyway, it's not an impulse buy.
0:38:10And so I just, it's new and shiny and Apple made it,
0:38:14so that means I should have one, that's the rule,
0:38:18that's what they tell me to do,
0:38:19that's what Uncle Tim tells me to do.
0:38:21And I don't know, I'll probably get one eventually,
0:38:23but sitting here now, I know it's gonna disappoint me.
0:38:26- Yeah, I really want to want the HomePod more.
0:38:30You know, like I feel like I'm on Apple's team
0:38:34for pretty much everything else,
0:38:35as much as some people think I'm not.
0:38:37I really am on Apple's team for the most part,
0:38:40and the reason why I sometimes criticize them
0:38:43is because I like them so much,
0:38:44and because I think they're better than everyone else
0:38:46in the industry at a lot of stuff.
0:38:47But I really want so badly to love
0:38:52and then buy everything that they make.
0:38:54But I can't, like, the HomePod is about 70%
0:38:58of the way there for me.
0:38:59Like, I need something else.
0:39:00I need really good AirPlay 2,
0:39:02or I need a reason for Overcast to be developing on it,
0:39:05which might be AirPlay 2 whenever that ships,
0:39:07or I need a Siri kit API, like something,
0:39:12give me something else, close one of these
0:39:15open check boxes here that are making it
0:39:19not quite enough for me.
0:39:21Ultimately the thing that could really make it awesome
0:39:23for me is if Siri gets a lot better.
0:39:25And I think we might be waiting a long time for that.
0:39:29- On the audio front, the audio quality,
0:39:34or even just the, there are all device quality
0:39:36and the integration with the Apple ecosystem.
0:39:38HomePod has the very easy potential
0:39:41to be the audio equivalent of Apple TV
0:39:43in that there are lots of Apple TV-like devices
0:39:47that you can connect to your television,
0:39:49they can play like YouTube and Netflix and Hulu
0:39:52and all that stuff, right?
0:39:54Apple TV is not the only competitor in that market,
0:39:57but a lot of people I know who are in the Apple ecosystem
0:40:00and like fancy Apple stuff,
0:40:01instead of having a Roku or a Fire TV, they have Apple TVs.
0:40:05And why do they have them?
0:40:06Is it because Apple TV is fantastically better
0:40:08than Fire TV and Roku?
0:40:09- Yes.
0:40:10- It's better in ways that Apple nerds care about.
0:40:13- No, trust me, it's better.
0:40:14I mean, I tried like, maybe what was it, two years ago
0:40:17when I tried like the all, I tried a Roku and a Fire TV
0:40:20because I was frustrated with the Apple TV
0:40:22and I'll tell you what, the Apple TV drives me crazy
0:40:26but it's still better than those.
0:40:29- I've used a bunch of them and I think it's,
0:40:31the difference is not that big.
0:40:32I feel like it's mostly aesthetic.
0:40:34I like some of the other remotes better than the Apple TV remote.
0:40:38That's for sure.
0:40:39Well, yeah, that isn't hard.
0:40:40But anyway, an Apple TV is more expensive, but people buy it because it's the Apple-iest
0:40:46one.
0:40:47So HomePod easily could get the market for people who want a cylinder they can talk to
0:40:52that plays audio nicely, and there are people who are in the Apple ecosystem and are willing
0:40:56to pay a little bit more for a nice-looking device that sounds really good.
0:40:59That's the easy market, right?
0:41:01Even if it doesn't do everything that Google Home and Echo do, and setting aside Sonos
0:41:06for now, HomePod for sure should get that entire market, which is not a small market.
0:41:12If it can suddenly be as successful as the Apple TV 4K, I think Apple would be okay with
0:41:17that for a 1.0 product, and then they can go from there.
0:41:20So I think there is a clear path to okayness for the HomePod, even without improving anything
0:41:26about it, simply because it is nice looking and it sounds good and it's integrated with
0:41:30Apple ecosystem and Apple people like you both just said, like to buy Apple stuff. So
0:41:34I think that's a gimme.
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0:43:11- Let's talk about Siri.
0:43:16I have thoughts.
0:43:18So this started a couple of weeks ago.
0:43:23I was having a conversation with my friend, Jamie Pinkham.
0:43:26And we were talking with a mutual friend of ours, and Jamie had said, "Siri is terrible,
0:43:34but I applaud Apple for sticking to their guns in regard to privacy.
0:43:38We all know if they gathered more info on us, it would be better."
0:43:41And I thought, "You know what?
0:43:43He's absolutely right."
0:43:44And maybe the reason I'm so grumpy about Siri is because Apple isn't just forgoing and eschewing
0:43:52— I think that's how you pronounce the word — eschewing privacy.
0:43:56doing what I would want them to do, which is to do the right thing and keep user privacy
0:44:01at the forefront and, you know, if their product is a little crummier because of it, then so
0:44:05be it.
0:44:06But then I got thinking about it a little bit more, and it occurred to me, but Siri
0:44:12still sucks for a lot of things that have nothing to do with my data.
0:44:17Like did I tell the story on the show?
0:44:19I think I did, about asking when the UVA Tech game, basketball game was.
0:44:25And I'd asked for like, you know, when is the Cavaliers game on?
0:44:28And it wanted to show me the Cleveland Cavaliers.
0:44:31Okay, fine.
0:44:31And then I asked like, when is the Hokie game on?
0:44:34And they was like, I don't know.
0:44:34Okay.
0:44:35When are the Hokies and Cavaliers playing each other?
0:44:37Uh, yeah, the, they played each other six months ago.
0:44:40Here's the score.
0:44:40Okay.
0:44:42What time is the Hokie basketball game?
0:44:43Oh, it's totally tonight at six o'clock.
0:44:45Why do you ask?
0:44:46Like, it's just, and that's the thing that's so frustrating.
0:44:49Well, one of the things that's so frustrating to me is that, yeah, I think
0:44:52Amy was right that in and of itself, things could be a lot better or Siri would be more
0:45:00knowledgeable if privacy wasn't as big a deal.
0:45:05So much more of this stuff could be crunch server-side.
0:45:08If my entire calendar was server-side, if all of my email was server-side, and by that
0:45:12I mean Apple could read all of it.
0:45:15In so many ways I feel like Siri could be so much better.
0:45:17And I respect Apple.
0:45:18I truly and honestly respect Apple for making their product by most arguments worse by not cutting that corner because I think that that's better
0:45:26For me even though the product on the whole is worse
0:45:28But can you get like an actor's name right? I was in even just basic dictation
0:45:34So I went for a run
0:45:37yesterday
0:45:40And it's one point to the Ryan my iPods in I'm all I'm on my Apple watch my Apple watch with this LT
0:45:45connection which I don't know if you've ever heard I'm a little grumpy about but here to be that as it may
0:45:49I'm on my AirPods Apple watch. I am panting to be fair, but I have I
0:45:55Had held down the crown on the Apple watch
0:45:58so it would listen to me because I have hey Siri or actually hey Siri doesn't work with the AirPods, but I
0:46:04Don't have the double tap to kick on Siri because I prefer to do it differently
0:46:09I prefer for the double tap to do different things. So I hold down the crown on the watch
0:46:13I hear the beep beep and I said something to the effect of like remind me to open a 529 savings account for Michaela and
0:46:19Holy God, I wish I had recorded what it had come up with in the defensive series
0:46:25I was panting this was like two-thirds of the way through my run, but it came up with like something that was barely intelligible
0:46:31I was able to piece it together after the fact but it was
0:46:35hilarious how bad the transcription was and all it was was a reminder like this shouldn't in
0:46:42theory have been that complex. Then I get home and I decide I wanted to listen to some
0:46:48probably god-awful music. I don't even remember what it was. And so I'm in front of my garage.
0:46:53I'm on my driveway. My phone was sitting in my kitchen. Now Marco, you've seen the house
0:46:58and we are talking 20 feet maybe from the, from basically the garage door to the kitchen.
0:47:05And to be fair, there's a couple of walls including an exterior wall between me and
0:47:09my phone. But...
0:47:10and probably a lot of Tito's and Velveeta shells and cheese.
0:47:12Naturally.
0:47:13And so I, you know, said, you know, "Hey, can you play me the latest album by, you know,
0:47:19Mute Math or something like that?"
0:47:20I don't remember exactly what it was.
0:47:23And then I see, "Hold on."
0:47:24Again, this is on my watch.
0:47:25Now, I have plenty of Wi-Fi coverage at this point, but it appears that's not good enough.
0:47:31Hold on.
0:47:33I'll tap you when I'm ready.
0:47:35Yeah.
0:47:36Nope, Siri's not available.
0:47:37Sorry about that.
0:47:38And it's like, come on, now maybe that isn't,
0:47:41I guess strictly speaking that's not Siri,
0:47:43like that's just a general connectivity issue because--
0:47:45- Well, I mean, is it?
0:47:47Or is it a local failure or a server failure?
0:47:50Either way, it's kinda Siri's problem.
0:47:52Like if your watch should be connected,
0:47:54you know, like if it's in an area
0:47:56where it has good coverage, it should be connected.
0:47:58- I mean, I have plenty of LTE, although I did look,
0:48:01and it was not on LTE at the time.
0:48:03I have plenty of LTE though, so hypothetically it could,
0:48:06should have falled back to—falled back—fell back to LTE. I certainly was well within my
0:48:13Wi-Fi coverage, without question I was in wi—within Wi-Fi coverage. And yet it insists
0:48:18on going, I think, to the phone, because, you know, when I did the swipe up to get the
0:48:22little control center thing, I saw a phone icon in the upper left. And it was insisting
0:48:26on going to the phone, which in and of itself is a first stop. Okay, fine, I'm okay with
0:48:29that, but can you not fall back onto something else? And whatever I was trying to play was
0:48:34something that I had in iTunes match. So this should have, like the way I expected it to
0:48:39work is that maybe it would have tried the phone and then given up when it wasn't a strong
0:48:44enough connection or whatever, and then just gone via either Wi-Fi or LTE and asked, you
0:48:48know, Apple, "Hey, what did Casey just say? Oh, he wants to listen to the latest album
0:48:52by Mutemath. Oh, okay. So does he have anything by, you know, Mutemath and iTunes? Oh, indeed
0:48:57he does. Here's what you should play and it should work." And it's just these little failures
0:49:03are happening all the friggin' time.
0:49:06And it's to the point that I feel like
0:49:09I cannot communicate with my phone verbally,
0:49:11I cannot communicate with my phone by typing on my phone,
0:49:15because that's become a disaster.
0:49:17So I just, I feel like the only device that I have
0:49:21that I can input any text into with any efficacy is my Mac.
0:49:25And it's driving me insane.
0:49:28- Let's better hope it's not the MacBook keyboard.
0:49:30- Actually, my C key was a little bit crunchy today.
0:49:33I was not too happy about that.
0:49:34I was able to mash on it and get whatever,
0:49:35you know, microscopic speck of dust
0:49:38was in there out of the way.
0:49:39I did not need to worry about grabbing
0:49:42the can of compressed air.
0:49:44That, I kid you not, I bought specifically for my MacBook.
0:49:47I hadn't had a can of compressed air in the house
0:49:49in like 10 years.
0:49:50- Right.
0:49:51- But I needed one for the MacBook.
0:49:53- No, I mean like, I think a lot of the frustration here
0:49:55is like, I mentioned I think last show
0:49:59or maybe it was on my 17 hour talk show last week
0:50:02or whatever it was.
0:50:03I mentioned that when I first got the Amazon Echo,
0:50:08after years of passively trying to use Siri
0:50:13and have it fail a lot of the time
0:50:15and just kind of be frustrated by that,
0:50:16it was striking to me how reliable the Amazon Echo was
0:50:21and how quickly it would answer me.
0:50:24And in part, this is kind of not a straight comparison
0:50:28because the Amazon Echo is stationary,
0:50:32plugged in all the time, listening all the time,
0:50:35for the wake word at least,
0:50:37and is in a controlled environment.
0:50:39It's always in the same spot.
0:50:41And there are acoustic things that can happen,
0:50:44like for instance, I mentioned earlier,
0:50:46when my range hood fan is on, on the stove,
0:50:49it creates a good deal of fairly broadband white noise,
0:50:54and the Echo just can't hear anything anymore.
0:50:57Even if humans can hear over it just fine,
0:51:00certain types of noise that are in the room,
0:51:02the Echo just seems to really hear very badly
0:51:05if those noises are present.
0:51:06But otherwise, the Echo is pretty reliable,
0:51:10but again, that's because it's in one place,
0:51:13plugged in all the time,
0:51:14listening for the wakeboard all the time,
0:51:16and has a stable connection.
0:51:17Like, it can remain connected to the network.
0:51:19It doesn't have to power save and drop itself off the WiFi
0:51:22when it's not necessary, stuff like that.
0:51:25So there are, this is not a straight comparison here
0:51:27to your watch situation, which was very possibly affected
0:51:30by connectivity and power saving stuff.
0:51:33But that being said, like, you know,
0:51:35the way the error rates of these things work,
0:51:38suppose the Echo hears me 95% of the time,
0:51:41and Siri hears me 90% of the time,
0:51:43that still means Siri fails twice as often.
0:51:45And so as you get closer to these higher numbers,
0:51:49you know, it's very, same math
0:51:50when you talk about cache hit rates,
0:51:51you know, the same problem with like,
0:51:53like, you know, it seems like my,
0:51:54Like when one of my cache servers is down,
0:51:57then about 8% of hits will miss.
0:52:02But that also means that my databases
0:52:04are then serving like five times as many hits
0:52:07'cause the hit rate is usually so high.
0:52:10So you'll see a huge spike in load on the databases
0:52:13for what seems like a small difference in the cache hit rate.
0:52:16So it's a similar problem here with like,
0:52:19for Siri to get like competitive and better in this way,
0:52:24it needs to get, it needs to dramatically reduce
0:52:29its error rate and its failure rate.
0:52:31And Apple might think it's really good.
0:52:33If Apple has data on this, which I'm sure they do,
0:52:36they might see it as somewhere being in the 80s or 90s
0:52:38and think that's great, but the competition
0:52:40is even better than that, and the difference
0:52:43can still be seen and felt pretty regularly.
0:52:46I would love so much for Siri to improve
0:52:50at the same rate as Apple's hardware and software
0:52:52usually improves, but it's been here a while
0:52:55and we haven't seen that, so I don't think
0:52:58anybody should reasonably anticipate
0:53:01that that's going to happen now.
0:53:02Like all of a sudden, is Siri gonna start
0:53:04getting better at a rapid pace?
0:53:06I don't know, like they have the HomePod,
0:53:08which depends very heavily on Siri,
0:53:10so you might think that's great motivation,
0:53:12but I think the iPhone for the last seven years
0:53:14is also pretty good motivation and they haven't done that.
0:53:17So, you know, I don't, it just, it doesn't seem like
0:53:20it's really a core competency of Apple
0:53:23to make really good AI-based big data services like this.
0:53:27And a lot of people lean on the privacy thing,
0:53:30and Apple to some reason, or to some degree,
0:53:32also kind of leans on the privacy angle
0:53:35almost as an excuse of why it has to be this way.
0:53:39And I think that's not a valid argument.
0:53:43I think the privacy aspect of the way Apple does things
0:53:49is nice, and there's merit to that, there's value to that,
0:53:53I'm glad they do that, but that does not preclude them
0:53:56from making really good services in this area.
0:53:58It just doesn't, it's two separate things.
0:54:01Yes, if they had more data, if they were more creepy
0:54:03with collecting stuff, certain types of certain services
0:54:06could get better, but Apple makes a lot of services
0:54:10that could get better with what they already have,
0:54:12and they don't, or they don't get better enough.
0:54:16So I don't think that Apple has to give up privacy
0:54:20to make great services.
0:54:22Conversely, I don't think the privacy is the reason
0:54:25their services in some of these areas are not great.
0:54:27I think that's a convenient excuse
0:54:29for people who don't really understand
0:54:30how to make these services very well,
0:54:32but otherwise, that's not the reality.
0:54:34The reality is these services can get way better
0:54:39with the amount of information
0:54:40that they already do or don't collect.
0:54:42I don't think Apple is culturally and structurally set up
0:54:46to make really great services of this type.
0:54:48I think they have proven that.
0:54:50- Yeah, and that's exactly my point
0:54:52when I was bringing up what Jamie had said to me,
0:54:53is that there's so much that has nothing to do with privacy.
0:54:56Like, okay, fine.
0:54:58Maybe if Siri saw that I was sitting in Virginia
0:55:01when I was asking about two Virginia colleges
0:55:04playing each other,
0:55:05maybe it could have narrowed down a little bit more.
0:55:07But either way,
0:55:09I don't think that would have made a tremendous difference.
0:55:11And okay, even if that would have made a difference, then what happens when I'm using Siri as like
0:55:15a front-end IMDB?
0:55:16Like, I think it was John had mentioned earlier, you know, I want to know about who's acting
0:55:20in the movie I'm watching or the TV show I'm watching.
0:55:22Like, Siri falls all over its face on that half the time, and that has nothing to do
0:55:26with anything, except I guess if it was listening to what I was watching, which is even creepy
0:55:32enough that I don't think Google does that sort of thing.
0:55:34So you know what I mean?
0:55:35Like there's so much that has nothing to do with privacy.
0:55:39And this is what I was saying originally, what Marco was saying now, just a moment ago.
0:55:43There's so much that is beyond this.
0:55:47And I just, it's frustrating.
0:55:51And I want to see it get better.
0:55:53And I'm frustrated that it's not getting better, especially since, unlike the annual release
0:55:58cycles for macOS and iOS, which we hopefully talk about this episode, I don't understand
0:56:04why this isn't getting better faster, except perhaps, just Marco, you said this a moment
0:56:09a corporate culture that isn't conducive to it.
0:56:13I think to generalize this from Siri specifically to these voice assistants in general, this
0:56:19is just to reiterate what Marco just said and what he said on this topic many times,
0:56:23and I think what we've all talked about in the past.
0:56:25I think it's actually analogous to the iPhone, which I'm thinking about because we had that
0:56:29earlier feedback about it.
0:56:34talked about the percentage differences in the gaps and like so you know if the
0:56:39competing products are this good in series that could even if a series
0:56:41improving there's still a gap between it but I think the important part of those
0:56:45hypothetical numbers is that like the original iPhone there is a there's a
0:56:52threshold on one side the same interface is not acceptable on the other side of
0:57:00that threshold you pass into the realm of acceptability. The iPhone was one of the first
0:57:05mass market devices to cross that threshold for touch input on a screen. The touchscreen,
0:57:11which touch screens which existed forever and people generally hated, suddenly got responsive
0:57:17enough that it, you know, it wasn't just like, "Oh, this is like 1% better." It crossed over
0:57:23all a line, right? And suddenly it was good enough. And they've gotten way better since
0:57:28then, right? But it was so clear that this is the first device that is good enough that regular
0:57:34people will use the touchscreen and not just find, you know, they'll like, they won't hate it. It'll
0:57:40feel good. It'll feel right. It'll feel like they're directly manipulating the things on the
0:57:43screen, right? For the cylinders that you talk to, the essential that there is the same line,
0:57:49and Amazon crossed it a long time ago, and it's, there's a couple of aspects. One is it's got to
0:57:55to hear you, right? Two is it has to know what the hell you're asking me about, and
0:58:01three is it has to do it fast, right? And the combination of those three things produces
0:58:06a feedback cycle for people who use the Echo that builds confidence. The first time you
0:58:12use it, you're impressed that it even understood what you mumbled. Then you're impressed that
0:58:16it did, like it could do the thing that you asked for. And then I think with the Echo,
0:58:20you're impressed that it did it so quickly. Like you feel like you barely have the words
0:58:23out of your mouth and it's setting your timer or doing whatever or telling you what time
0:58:26it is or telling you the weather.
0:58:28It just seems so fast.
0:58:29And when that happens, the threshold that it crosses, like the utility threshold of
0:58:34like, this is an appliance and it's no longer a computer thing where I just, you know, cross
0:58:38my fingers and hope that something cool and computery works just becomes part of your
0:58:41day, right?
0:58:43Even if it has limitations like, oh, I just know it can't hear me with the range hood
0:58:46on, right?
0:58:48There's parameters to it.
0:58:50If you know that's the case, that's bad, and Amazon should improve that.
0:58:54But it's not like on some days when it's raining you can't hear me, and then on Thursdays
0:58:59sometimes it doesn't hear me.
0:59:01You cross that threshold where it becomes reliable.
0:59:04And there are so many things that we can talk to, including Siri and lots of other things
0:59:08that have some kind of voice interface, that do not cross that threshold.
0:59:13And so you give up on them.
0:59:15You don't use them, or you use them for an extremely narrow set of things in particular.
0:59:20circumstances. Now, I think the HomePod has actually crossed some of those thresholds
0:59:24for Apple. I think the HomePod can hear me really, really well. It may be able to hear
0:59:28me better than any other device on the market. Not better enough, perhaps, to make a difference,
0:59:33because in general, I'm still amazed at how well the Google Home can hear me, and I've
0:59:38seen other people talk to their echoes from far distances, and it seems to work pretty
0:59:41well. But the HomePod, I think, crosses the threshold for, "Can it hear me?" It does not
0:59:46cross the threshold for "does it understand what I'm asking for?" because still many times
0:59:51it will neither not do what I think it should do or the same command will get different
0:59:59results.
1:00:01And it also, I think, doesn't cross the threshold, as I mentioned before, for responding quickly
1:00:04enough.
1:00:05When I tell it to stop playing music, I know it hears me, I know it understands what I
1:00:09want to do, and it does it, but it does it a little bit more slowly than I would like.
1:00:14enough that it gives me that millisecond of doubt whether it's doing it, it doesn't create
1:00:18that feedback cycle where I'm like, "Oh, now I feel like I have a voice connection to an
1:00:22off switch," right?
1:00:23In the same way that whenever Marco says, "Turn everything off," and it's downstairs,
1:00:27that it turns everything off, and you get used to it doing that, right then, you don't
1:00:32expect it to have a little spinner light going spin, spin, spin, spin.
1:00:35"Okay, I'll turn off your lights."
1:00:37That's too long.
1:00:38That doesn't create the feedback cycle.
1:00:39So I'm not sure exactly what values those lines are at, but I can tell that certain
1:00:44devices are over and certain devices are not.
1:00:46And I think HomePod, with the advancement of its audio output and input, has crossed
1:00:50over a bunch of those lines, but still a couple things lag behind.
1:00:56And you really got to get everything over the line, kind of like the original iPhone
1:00:59did.
1:01:00To sort of enter the game, to enter the realm of devices that regular people will use routinely
1:01:06day after day and stop thinking about it as a tech gadget and start thinking about it
1:01:10as an appliance that you just expect to work all the time.
1:01:13>> Yeah, we're a long way from there, unfortunately.
1:01:16>> But not for the other cylinders, Casey.
1:01:17You should get a Google Home or an Amazon Echo.
1:01:20>> I actually have an Amazon Echo on its way to me right now.
1:01:23>> Really?
1:01:24Wait, what?
1:01:25Sorry about "Bury the lead."
1:01:27>> Actually, yes.
1:01:28So a friend of mine, Justin Williams, he might know from Glassboard, among other things,
1:01:33He was getting rid of his Echo and said to me, rather than trying to figure out who to
1:01:40sell it to, if I covered postage, he would send it my way.
1:01:43And so Apple Pay cashed him the cost to send it from him to me, and it'll be here sometime
1:01:50next week.
1:01:51Probably after we record, actually, so you're not going to hear any more about this for
1:01:54a couple of weeks at least.
1:01:55I still don't have any particular interest in having an Echo in my house, but since almost
1:01:59Almost everyone I know has one and almost everyone I know loves them.
1:02:03I'm curious to see what will happen with it.
1:02:05But yeah.
1:02:06>> Put it in your kitchen and start asking it kitchen questions or putting it in a tea
1:02:08room and start asking it TV questions.
1:02:10By the way, I did test the HomePod on TV questions.
1:02:12I asked it who is the star of a movie that's out now and I asked it when a movie was released
1:02:19and I did both of them in just the first way that occurred to me.
1:02:23The questions that I have a good comparison to because I ask my Google things all the
1:02:27time.
1:02:28in the movie, it more or less got it. It basically read me a webpage, but it read me the relevant
1:02:35portion of the webpage, and it read me like seven of the people that are in the movie
1:02:39and then asked me if I want to read the next two as well. So it didn't get like who the
1:02:42star was. I think there's an obvious answer, like one person, but it read the cast. It
1:02:47didn't read me the title and the ratings. So I give it that one, but it definitely sounded
1:02:50like I found this on the web about blah, blah, blah, which is not as direct as when I asked
1:02:54the question of Google and just tells me straight up. I asked it the release date, and it was
1:02:58It was verbose about it, it said the movie XYZ was released on January 12th, blah blah
1:03:03blah, but it got the right answer.
1:03:04So I don't know if HomePod has gotten better about that than Siri.
1:03:12Mostly I'm just enjoying the fact that I find it so much more reliably able to hear me.
1:03:17I hate using Siri, I don't have my watch, I don't wear my watch most of the time, but
1:03:20I hate using Siri on my phone because I activate it and I never know when it's safe for me
1:03:23to start talking.
1:03:25And almost all the time, I hold down the home button, and a little Siri thing appears on
1:03:30the screen, and I say whatever I want to say, and I see the little waveform move, and while
1:03:37I'm talking it goes, "Bubaloop."
1:03:41That is exactly me.
1:03:43And then I'm like, "Well, maybe it heard me anyway."
1:03:45So I finish what I'm saying, and it just stares at me, and it says, "How can I help you?"
1:03:50You moved your waveform in response to my speaking.
1:03:53It's clear that the audio was entering into the system and jiggling, and so I always have
1:03:58to end up saying everything twice, and I hate that.
1:03:59It makes me feel dumb, and it's not a good interaction.
1:04:01If I wait for the "ba-bloop," I feel like I'm waiting there forever.
1:04:05Now is it okay for me to talk?
1:04:06It's the worst.
1:04:07Talking to a cylinder is so much better.
1:04:08I don't care if it's ready for me.
1:04:09I just start talking, and the HomePod definitely passes that test.
1:04:15Not once did it not hear me.
1:04:17Not once did it "ba-bloop" at me or do anything or interrupt me in any way.
1:04:22I was able to say what I wanted to say and it was able to do what I wanted it to do.
1:04:27I think HomePod definitely crosses some thresholds that previously hadn't been crossed by any
1:04:31Apple product.
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1:06:06That's betterment.com slash ATP betterment rethink what your money can do
1:06:11We got word and not us three specifically just in general there was word spread a couple of weeks ago
1:06:21I think that Apple is going to pull a snow leopard
1:06:25But for real this time like we really mean it this time for realsies pinky swear
1:06:31there's an article in Bloomberg that said Apple is going to kind of pump the brakes and
1:06:37It's going to well the the the headline is how Apple plans to root out bugs and revamp iPhone software
1:06:44so
1:06:47There's a quote that one of you pulled for my convenience
1:06:49So thank you quote instead of keeping engineers on a relentless annual schedule and cramming features into a single update
1:06:54Apple will start focusing on the next two years of updates for its iPhone and iPad operating system,
1:06:59according to people familiar with the change. The company will continue to update its software annually,
1:07:03but internally engineers will have more discretion to push back features that aren't as polished to the following year.
1:07:09I...
1:07:12don't know where to start with this, other than to say that if this really is true,
1:07:20sitting here now anyway, this sounds magical. This sounds like, you know, the glass of ice
1:07:26water in hell. Not to say that things are that bad by any stretch, but what I mean is
1:07:31I really think that Apple could stand to kind of pump the brakes on new features and just
1:07:36work on hardening things. And I think that the three of us are amongst many voices that
1:07:41have been saying the same. And when we were doing Jason Snell's end of year recap and
1:07:49survey or whatever he called it, we'll put a link in the show notes. One of the things that
1:07:53struck me as I was reflecting on some of the things he'd asked about, like software quality,
1:07:57is that over the past year, so during 2017, I had had a lot of my like family members. And you know,
1:08:04so most of my friends are kind of pretty big nerds, but most of my family members are not.
1:08:09And I had had some family members say to me in so many words, "Holy crap, this Apple stuff
1:08:15never works anymore. What happened to it just working? And that really struck me. And I
1:08:21mentioned that to Jason. I think he actually used that in the report card. And it seems
1:08:27like it's time, the perception anyway, whether or not it's reality, the perception is, and
1:08:31I'm very much in this camp, that software quality is really kind of taking a turn for
1:08:35the worse. So it's easy to blame the relentless speed of new features for maybe that being
1:08:44the problem. Maybe that's just that they need to not have a litany of new features to release
1:08:50every WWDC. So perhaps slowing down on new and shiny will give everyone time to improve
1:08:58the old and, well, busted. But I don't know. It's hard because I've worked in big software
1:09:05companies but not quite this big. John, you can be the adult in the room as you always
1:09:09are, so I'll come to you after I ask Marco. Marco, how do you feel about this?
1:09:13- First, let's have the children discuss it.
1:09:15- Exactly.
1:09:16You and me are at the kiddie table at Thanksgiving,
1:09:19so let's talk amongst ourselves.
1:09:20- Mark already talked about this for an hour
1:09:22on another podcast.
1:09:23- I haven't had the time to listen to that.
1:09:25- No one has the time to listen to that.
1:09:26- Well, I was trying to figure out a way to make that joke,
1:09:28so thank you.
1:09:29All right, so anyway, so can you give us
1:09:31the chief summarizer and chief version then
1:09:33of that argument?
1:09:34- Yeah, basically, this is great to hear.
1:09:37I'm happy that this, and this seems like
1:09:41it has multiple sources and everything.
1:09:43It probably happened, this meeting or this change,
1:09:45but I don't think it really means much of anything yet.
1:09:49It's very much a, like, okay, that sounds promising,
1:09:52let's see what happens.
1:09:53Let's wait and see what the actual results of this are.
1:09:56I do think that the annual schedule
1:10:00of heavy feature-filled releases
1:10:02on almost all their platforms
1:10:04has been a significant contributor
1:10:06to the recent quality issues.
1:10:11I think from the little bit we've heard here and there,
1:10:15it really does seem like they don't devote enough time
1:10:19to bug fixing and refinement before the engineers
1:10:22on most of these projects have to go to the next thing,
1:10:25have to build the next marketing features,
1:10:27build the next headlining features,
1:10:29or get to the next major version.
1:10:31There's not a lot of time in an annual cycle
1:10:34for refinement and bug fixes.
1:10:36And so if indeed they're moving to a two-year cycle
1:10:39for major efforts, and this isn't saying
1:10:42that they're gonna only release iOS
1:10:44every two years or whatever, it's just major features
1:10:47will now be allowed to take two years.
1:10:50That sounds good, I don't know how different that is
1:10:53from how it has been though.
1:10:54I mean, we know certain things like APFS,
1:10:57that didn't take one year.
1:10:59Major features have always been allowed
1:11:02to take more than a year.
1:11:05I don't know what exactly this is allegedly changing,
1:11:10and I think we're not really going to know
1:11:13whether it's working or whether it's having a real effect
1:11:16for probably a couple years.
1:11:17We're gonna have to just see how the software evolved
1:11:20over the next couple of years,
1:11:21and kind of see, does it seem better now or not?
1:11:25- Yeah, I've been in a lot of big software companies,
1:11:29and over the years I've seen,
1:11:31I can't speak to what it's like inside Apple,
1:11:33But I have to think that it's not so incredibly different from other large companies, especially
1:11:38these days.
1:11:40And a thing that happens in companies that do stuff with software or technology in general,
1:11:47and probably in any company, is that the higher you go up the management chain, the more the
1:11:52incentives are structured for those people to make it seem like things are going well
1:11:59and to themselves believe that things are going well.
1:12:04But eventually, something will happen that ripples all the way up the entire org chart.
1:12:11Me from down at the bottom of the org chart, I always saw those unfortunate things that
1:12:15happened as opportunities that must be seized upon by those in the lower ranks.
1:12:20Because that's your chance to say, "You people higher up have thought everything's
1:12:25great, but we've been down here telling you that X is really a problem, and now those
1:12:30chickens that have come home to roost to let's howl, you know, come together and have a discussion
1:12:35about how we're going to change things, right?
1:12:37And this cycle just repeats itself.
1:12:39Like it never actually like fixes all your problems, but basically, you know, you gather
1:12:44together, you say we're going to change how we do things in a way that will prevent things
1:12:47like this from happening.
1:12:48And you do it, like you make the actual change.
1:12:50You change procedures, you reorganize people,
1:12:53you change priorities, you do, you know,
1:12:55almost exactly the same things you're talking about here.
1:12:56You know, lengthen schedules,
1:12:57give people who are closer to the actual work
1:13:02more authority to push back on deadlines, right?
1:13:05You stop setting unrealistic internal deadlines
1:13:08just so some middle manager can get a bonus this year.
1:13:10Like you do all that stuff, right?
1:13:12And it works, like, it's not like it doesn't work, it works.
1:13:16Like you make things better.
1:13:20The countervailing forces of things slowing down and everything also happen, but then
1:13:24it just builds back up again.
1:13:25You get into a happy place again, and then the same incentive structures cause people
1:13:30to press hard and set aggressive internal deadlines, and fear of competition makes you
1:13:35have lots of features, and so on and so forth, and then another crisis happens, and people
1:13:39seize on it.
1:13:40And I feel like this is just a cycle of any large group of people doing things.
1:13:45And I'm not trying to be cynical about it.
1:13:48I agree with Marco and almost everyone else has looked at this, is like, yes, this is
1:13:51exactly what we want Apple to do. And I really believe that, A, they're really going to do
1:13:56it and, B, that it will really help, right? I think this same cycle has happened inside
1:14:04Apple many times in the past and it will happen many times in the future. And I just think
1:14:08we're kind of in, you know, in like a downswing that hopefully is about to take a turn into
1:14:14an upswing. So I see it as positive and there's an entire industry around how to not go through
1:14:21this rollercoaster cycle and how to get sustainable growth and just do great things forever and
1:14:26ever and it's just a constant struggle to get any large group of people to do that.
1:14:30Maybe Apple, that's another topic we won't get to today, but people have rose-colored
1:14:34glasses about whatever they think the heyday of Apple was and how well it was able to execute
1:14:39during those times and I think we will talk about that on a future show. But in general,
1:14:44This quality focus thing I think is positive, real, and we'll have real results, but we'll
1:14:51find ourselves back here in about 10 years at minimum, or at maximum rather.
1:14:56And that's just the nature of the beast and we just need to learn to ride it out.
1:15:01So I'm optimistic.
1:15:02I'm optimistic until I see what they do with the Mac Pro because if they disappoint me
1:15:07they'll really crush me, but I think I may be unique in that regard.
1:15:11- Well, and the Mac Pro is actually a really good
1:15:14thing to mention here.
1:15:16It's like they told us directly,
1:15:18like officially on the record,
1:15:20that they're working on a great new Mac Pro,
1:15:21that our Mac Pro problem will be solved.
1:15:24And honestly, half of us, I think our Mac Pro problem
1:15:26was solved by the iMac Pro, it's pretty great.
1:15:28But for the modular upgradable tower,
1:15:33or modular upgradable Mac Pro,
1:15:34I don't know if it's gonna be a tower,
1:15:35that's still a giant unknown.
1:15:36They said, they promised it will be better.
1:15:39but until it actually comes out,
1:15:41we don't know that it will be better.
1:15:43And so it's like, great, that was great talk to get,
1:15:46but we haven't seen the actions yet.
1:15:48So we can't really say whether that's
1:15:52an actual positive thing or not.
1:15:54- And this, one more minor point on this,
1:15:58and we've talked about this in the past as well,
1:16:00particularly for the Mac, where the phone,
1:16:03obviously they're still doing great in the phone,
1:16:04and they have fierce competition in the phone, right?
1:16:07So I bet they're going to still be running pretty hard on the phone front.
1:16:10And so far they have been running hard.
1:16:12They've been shipping good phones.
1:16:13So good on them, right?
1:16:14It's obviously the highest priority.
1:16:15They do a good job on it.
1:16:17You know, I don't expect that to change that much.
1:16:19The OS that runs in the phone, you know, the push features out here and there, I think
1:16:24they don't feel as much pressure from the competition as they did back when they had
1:16:28really, you know, back when Android was just so far ahead of them in terms of notifications
1:16:32and stuff and multitasking and stuff like that.
1:16:34I think that, you know, it's a closer race now.
1:16:36But the Mac, the fantasy opportunity that the low-level engineers would love to seize
1:16:41upon us, like, boy, imagine if we could have sets of people permanently responsible for
1:16:49every important part of the system, and those people just sat there and drained their bug
1:16:52cues, and improved performance and test coverage and drained their bug cues for like three
1:16:57years.
1:16:58And why would you do that?
1:16:59How can you afford to do that?
1:17:00Because the Mac's competition is not moving as fast as the phones and the tablets' competition,
1:17:06Not as much action is happening down there.
1:17:09And if you're trying to find a role for the Mac in the company, it could – one possibility,
1:17:14as we've discussed and chose in the past – is to make it the super reliable, bulletproof,
1:17:18industrial grade, never crashes, never does the wrong thing, just does what it's supposed
1:17:25to do reliably.
1:17:28Make that the reputation of the Mac.
1:17:30it seem, you know, you're in exchange for boringness and for slightly slower or
1:17:35perhaps, you know, much slower rate of change, you get massive reliability. So
1:17:39staff up the Mac teams, drain those bug queues, improve your test coverage,
1:17:43improve performance and memory usage and all those type of things. You know, this
1:17:50is assuming there's no major components that still need to be written because
1:17:52there may still be things lurking in there. And then do that for a couple of
1:17:57years to restore the Mac's reputation and to make it more attractive to the people who
1:18:02are most likely to use the Mac before you go on to the next cycle, whatever that is,
1:18:06the marzipan thing, and now it's time for the Mac to take its next evolution, time to
1:18:10get radical again.
1:18:11I don't think that will happen, but that is one way that, you know, were the people
1:18:16who seized on this opportunity able to really seize on it?
1:18:21I'm sure that's the dream of lots of low-level people who work on the Mac and who are sick
1:18:25of ignoring your bugs just as you are sick of them ignoring them.
1:18:28I mean this is definitely a good thing.
1:18:31I don't see any way we can spin it as a bad thing.
1:18:34But fast forward to what episode are we on?
1:18:35Like 265.
1:18:36Fast forward to episode, I don't know, 310 and we'll see what we think.
1:18:43But no, I'm excited about this as much as I'm joking around.
1:18:46I'm really excited about this.
1:18:47I think this is a good sign that Apple is seeing what we're seeing.
1:18:51And it's also tough too because, you know, we don't get to see all the like, I don't
1:18:57know if analytics is the right word for it, but like the analytics data that Apple sees.
1:19:01And they may see that, you know, hard crashes in software are trending down over the years.
1:19:09And I think that that very well could be true.
1:19:13But it seems to me that it's the kind of wiggly stuff that's really been letting us down lately.
1:19:19Siri just not working when you want it to, for example, let alone just, you know, answering
1:19:24the question incorrectly.
1:19:25I don't know, it's tough, and it's, it's, I don't know what to make of it, but Stephen
1:19:31Sinofsky, is that how you pronounce it?
1:19:33I think something like that, wrote a tweet storm about this, and we'll put a link to
1:19:38either the tweet storm or he eventually wrote a blog post about it, we'll put some sort
1:19:41of link in the show, in the show notes, but I wanted to call out a few tweets of his.
1:19:44He was a Microsoft engineer and headed up a lot of their bigger software products, if
1:19:52not most of software.
1:19:54I don't know exactly where he was when he left Microsoft.
1:19:57But it's nice to say the guy knows what he's talking about, and he knows what he's talking
1:20:00about when it comes to delivering software to lots and lots and lots of people.
1:20:04So in some of the tweets he wrote, and this is tweet number 28 of his tweet storm, no
1:20:09one ever anywhere has delivered a general purpose piece of software and hardware at
1:20:12scale to a billion people delivering such a broad, robust, consistent experience. We
1:20:17don't have a measure for what it means to be "high quality." I can say that in any absolute
1:20:22sense Apple has exceeded everyone else. And that's kind of what I'm talking about, right?
1:20:26It may be that really software quality is good, it's getting better, in terms of crashes
1:20:33perhaps, and we've talked about this more than once on the show, but maybe it's getting
1:20:37worse in some of the kind of gray area that's harder to track. Stephen continues in Tweet
1:20:4231. But what happens to a team as complexity evolves is simply the challenge of coordination
1:20:48and more importantly consistency or leveling of decisions across a complex system. This is
1:20:52particularly acute if the bulk of the team has only known the previous few years of success.
1:20:56He continues in 32. So Apple will just renew their engineering process. It means thinking about how
1:21:01risk is analyzed, how schedules are constructed, how priorities are set. This is literally what
1:21:05it means to run a project and what we are all paying them to do. So in conclusion, so to me
1:21:11on Apple, this is Steven, to me on Apple, even as an outsider, I feel confident saying
1:21:14this isn't reactionary or a crisis or a response to externalities. Importantly, it isn't a
1:21:19massive pivot or a student body left. It's a methodical and predictable evolution of
1:21:24an extremely robust and proven system. So the short, short version is, hey, when you
1:21:29have a lot of people writing a lot of code for a lot of different systems, every once
1:21:32in a while, just like Jon said, you're going to have to sit back and take stock and say,
1:21:36we got to tweak a few things. And that's what they're doing.
1:21:38I think what Sinovski missed is the cyclic nature of this.
1:21:41Like that yes, this is a totally routine thing that happens, and that it happens repeatedly.
1:21:46Like I don't know, again, that forms a kind of a rollercoaster that people don't like.
1:21:50They'd rather see just like a gentle slope with constant improvement.
1:21:55I've never seen that happen in the real world.
1:21:59But the cyclic nature of it can make you jaded if you're a long-time employee or a long-time
1:22:04engineer and be like, "Yeah, this always happens," or whatever, but the problems just come back.
1:22:08I think that's true, but it's better if you don't do the up and down roller coaster,
1:22:15it just becomes a down roller coaster that just goes down forever and you never do make
1:22:18that adjustment.
1:22:19So I fully believe that these type of adjustments have gone on at Apple for the entire life
1:22:24of the company and will continue to go on and you just have to roll with it.
1:22:28But I'm ready for an upswing, I think everyone is.
1:22:31Yep, big time.
1:22:34Barton Meeks writes in, "Do you think the modular Mac Pro will provide a solution to
1:22:37a Mac Mini update at a reasonable price? Nope. Nope.
1:22:41Alistair Campbell writes in, "You've alluded to a negative effect of running movies at
1:22:45the wrong frame rate, but I must have missed the original explanation. I'm wondering if
1:22:49it is better to hand-break Blu-rays at 24 or 30 frames per second. What's the good digital
1:22:54backup for you?" And Jon, you seem to be the most opinionated about this, so do you want
1:22:57to take this one? So the negative effect of running things at
1:23:00the wrong frame rate is that they're not nice multiples of each other. It has to show frames
1:23:04frames for different amounts of time. The video content we have expects you to show
1:23:08every frame for an equal amount of time, whether it's 1/30th of a second or 1/24th of a second
1:23:12or whatever. If you show some frames longer than you show other frames, it can make motion
1:23:16look stuttery because it's like long, long, short, short, short, long, whatever. You might
1:23:20not notice in lots of still images and maybe you don't notice that much in motion, but
1:23:23it doesn't quite look right. So that is the negative effect. You don't want that. Asking
1:23:29whether it's better to handbrake to encode Blu-rays at 24 or 30, you should encode them
1:23:34at whatever the frame rate of the original source material is.
1:23:38So if it's a TV show and it's a 29.97 whatever, encode it at that frame rate.
1:23:41If it's a movie and it's a 24, encode it at that frame rate.
1:23:44Don't do any kind of conversion.
1:23:46Whatever the source frame rate is, keep that.
1:23:49And what's a good digital backup?
1:23:51I'm assuming you mean like take it off of your plastic discs and put it somewhere.
1:23:55You have to just rip the data exactly as is.
1:23:57transcoding know anything if you really want to have a digital backup use
1:23:59something like make MKB or whatever to just pull the bit the bits off the disk
1:24:03exactly as is with no conversion of format whatsoever and that is the only
1:24:08digital backup then you can have stuff like this the best digital backup is
1:24:11perhaps to buy all these things in the cloud and then you don't have to worry
1:24:14about storing them but then you have to worry about the company going out of
1:24:16business and you having no way to watch that stuff anymore which leads us into
1:24:19our next question the next question is from Benjamin Esham John you've
1:24:24You've mentioned that you prefer ebooks to paper books.
1:24:26How do you deal with DRM slowly making your ebooks inaccessible over time?
1:24:30Benjamin continues, "I quote unquote own a couple of Palm Digital Media books that I'll
1:24:34never be able to read again."
1:24:35So this is tricky.
1:24:39There was a lot of churn in the ebook business early on.
1:24:42Some people who made and sold ebooks no longer do so.
1:24:45I worked for Palm Digital Media back when we had the largest ebook store in the world.
1:24:50If you can believe it, this is before Amazon entered the game.
1:24:54And many, many things went wrong there.
1:24:56But anyway, they were DRM encumbered, and if you purchased them from the store, you
1:25:00could read them in an application that was ported to all sorts of different platforms,
1:25:03so that eventually Palm went down the drain and the business of selling ebooks went down
1:25:08the drain with it, more or less.
1:25:10And eventually you get to the point where the iOS reader application, which existed
1:25:14for many years, doesn't even launch anymore.
1:25:16I think it's probably because it's 32-bit these days.
1:25:18So you've got these DRM-encumbered ebooks that you quote-unquote "own" that you can
1:25:23no longer read or that you can only read on like a really old Mac that can still run the
1:25:27old reader software or whatever.
1:25:29So what to do?
1:25:30How do you deal with that?
1:25:31I do still prefer ebooks just for the convenience or whatever.
1:25:34I understand the limitations they provide, but I think the convenience is worth it for
1:25:38me.
1:25:39In general, these days you're buying ebooks from one of the modern vendors.
1:25:45of them, there's some shady way for you to crack their DRM and to make them unencumbered.
1:25:52So you're still stuck with the format, like you can convert them to EPUB or whatever,
1:25:55but 50 years from now you want to read your EPUBs and like, we have nothing that can read
1:25:58EPUBs.
1:25:59You know, HTML died in the fire of nuclear Armageddon or whatever, you know, who knows?
1:26:04Who knows?
1:26:05You won't be able to read your EPUBs.
1:26:06But the point is it's not DRM-encumbered, at least you're only limited by the format.
1:26:10For Palm Digital Media books specifically, I don't know if there is a way to crack them.
1:26:17You can try the application Calibre, which I think is used to crack a whole bunch of
1:26:22the Amazon stuff with certain plugins or whatever.
1:26:25But Palm Digital Media ebooks were originally encrypted with your credit card number that
1:26:29you used to buy them.
1:26:30And if you don't know the credit card number, with modern computing hardware, I can tell
1:26:36you that it should be feasible to brute force crack them.
1:26:39But I don't know because this is a long time ago. I don't know of any actual application that
1:26:44Understands enough about the DRM to actually brute-force it
1:26:48But I believe that you could in a reasonable amount of time literally brute-force crack
1:26:51It's much easier if you just know your your credit card number the palm ebook format was actually very simple
1:26:56So if you can get the data out, you can easily convert it to ePub or some other more modern format
1:27:01I know it doesn't help too much
1:27:03I'm sure I myself have some purchased Palm Digital Media ebooks and Peanut Press ebooks that I can no longer read
1:27:11But in most cases I also have those books in ePub from a different source and also in paper sitting to the right of me
1:27:19Right here
1:27:19So if you're really worried about it buy the paper copy and don't keep them in a basement that'll flood because you'll lose your paper
1:27:25books that way
1:27:26Not that you'd know
1:27:29Thanks to our sponsors this week Betterment, Squarespace, and Simple Contact, and we will
1:27:33talk to you next week.
1:27:34Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:27:41'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:27:46John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:27:52'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:27:57And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:28:02And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:28:12So that's K-C-L-I-S-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A
1:28:24It's accidental (It's accidental)
1:28:27They didn't mean to
1:28:29Accidental
1:28:31Accidental
1:28:32Tech
1:28:33Podcast
1:28:34So
1:28:35Long
1:28:38Don't know what made me think of this to be honest, but
1:28:41Obviously, I've been going back and forth about you know, if I'm going to buy a car which I'm not convinced
1:28:46I am actually what should I buy should I get a Jeep Wrangler? Should I get a goal a golf R?
1:28:50should I get something else entirely a new BMW etc and
1:28:53It occurred to me that I think to me or to some degree I am as well
1:28:59But particularly you to have self pigeonholed have pigeonholed yourselves into specific, you know kinds of cars Marco
1:29:06You've basically said that until something dramatic changes you're gonna be a Tesla owner until the end of time John
1:29:12You know unless something dramatic changes like, you know money raining from the skies right over your house
1:29:17You know, you're seem to be an accord guy for at least the foreseeable future. So I
1:29:22Have for each of you a question and I'll start with Marco
1:29:26you know if if you couldn't buy a Tesla or and then I'll even broaden it to
1:29:32if you couldn't buy an electric car,
1:29:35and you've made it very plain that that's what you prefer,
1:29:37but if you couldn't buy an electric car,
1:29:40just out of curiosity, what would you buy?
1:29:42- So I saw this in the notes earlier.
1:29:44I've been thinking about it this evening,
1:29:45and unfortunately I don't really know enough
1:29:48about what cars are available these days
1:29:51to have a great answer here.
1:29:52- What has happened to you?
1:29:53- But I'll tell you, very high on the list
1:29:56would be the new M5, because even though
1:29:59it doesn't have a transmission I would like,
1:30:01I really enjoy having a fast, large sedan.
1:30:05Now there's lots of options within that, you know.
1:30:09Obviously, you know, and I should probably list
1:30:12in this list something from like Mercedes or Porsche
1:30:15or something, but I just don't know their lineups at all.
1:30:18Audi might be somewhere on the list,
1:30:20because honestly, one thing I really enjoy about the Tesla
1:30:23that I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I do
1:30:25is having the nice big hatchback trunk.
1:30:28And so I know like the Audi A7 is kind of similar
1:30:32in like size and trunk nature.
1:30:35- And also hideous.
1:30:36- Yes, it's pretty bad looking.
1:30:38So yeah, like I don't know.
1:30:40- I still like it, I think the A7 looks great.
1:30:42- Oh, you're so wrong.
1:30:43- I would probably at least give that like a look
1:30:45just to see if I could tolerate it
1:30:46because I do like having a large fast sedan
1:30:49that is also a hatchback without being a wagon
1:30:51or an SUV or a crossover.
1:30:52So that's great.
1:30:54So yeah, probably on the list would be,
1:30:57maybe look at the A7, maybe look at the new M5.
1:31:00I would probably look at whatever Mercedes offered
1:31:03in the same thing.
1:31:05I also might just consider a regular 5 Series,
1:31:07like a 550 or even whatever the 540 is these days.
1:31:10I might look at those because the M5 was a fun time
1:31:15in my life, but I have now grown to appreciate
1:31:20the value of a quiet car.
1:31:23I like having a quiet car that is also fast.
1:31:26I feel like I don't need to shout to the world
1:31:29how fast my car is with noise.
1:31:32So, but ultimately, when I drive other cars now,
1:31:37like I, so I went on a trip,
1:31:39which is why we're a couple days late,
1:31:41and on the trip I rented a Nissan Maxima,
1:31:43and it was a perfectly nice car.
1:31:45It had lots of great features, you know,
1:31:47lots of nice little luxuries inside.
1:31:48I'm very happy I rented it,
1:31:49'cause we were somewhere very cold,
1:31:50and it was nice having the heated seats.
1:31:52But it just feels like going so far backwards
1:31:57to both have a gas car and to have some little
1:32:00entertainment system on a six inch screen
1:32:03with running basically DOS.
1:32:06That's how these systems all feel to me.
1:32:08And when I occasionally have to drive Tiff's car,
1:32:10which is a modern BMW 3 series,
1:32:13it doesn't feel modern to me anymore.
1:32:14It feels old.
1:32:16Using iDrive, everything without a gas car
1:32:19with starting it up, putting it in gear,
1:32:21and having to remember to actually turn it off and lock it.
1:32:24- Like an animal.
1:32:26- Yeah, it doesn't feel great to me.
1:32:31So I think if I had to get a gas car again,
1:32:35I might actually go lower end than an M5 or something
1:32:40because I don't get the enjoyment out of that anymore
1:32:44that I used to.
1:32:45Like it's almost, it's like, well, I was gonna say,
1:32:50It's like getting back with your high school girlfriend,
1:32:53but I don't really have any basis on which to say that
1:32:55'cause I never really had girlfriends in high school
1:32:56'cause I was just terrible at everything.
1:32:59So, but it's like I've moved past that in my life now.
1:33:02Like I had a great time with loud, fast cars,
1:33:06but now I'm perfectly happy with quiet, boring,
1:33:09more comfortable cars that also happen to be fast.
1:33:13So I would probably just get something fast
1:33:16but not too ridiculous.
1:33:17That's why I'm thinking maybe like a 550 or something like that.
1:33:21Fair enough.
1:33:23I want to hate the new M5 because it does use the ZF8 speed if I'm not mistaken, which
1:33:29is very good.
1:33:31But I can't believe the M5 can't be had with a stick anymore.
1:33:35But oh my word, all the initial reviews of the new M5, oh, 0 to 60 in like between 2.8
1:33:43It's a 90 million pound full-size sedan going to 60 in
1:33:47three seconds.
1:33:48I probably have mentioned this on the show 44 times, but when
1:33:52I was a kid and really getting into cars, I remember that
1:33:55having a 0 to 60 time in the four-second range was like
1:33:59Lamborghini and Ferrari territory.
1:34:01Like, nobody could get to 60 in four seconds.
1:34:03And here it is, this M5 will do it in maybe two
1:34:08worst-case low threes.
1:34:09maybe two worst case low threes.
1:34:12Like, yeah, god, it's just bananas.
1:34:15- Well, I'll tell you what, maybe one of the direction
1:34:17that I might wanna go is if I can't get my nice,
1:34:20big comfort boat from space, maybe,
1:34:23(laughing)
1:34:24if Tiff's car could become the family car
1:34:27that could hold a lot and be big,
1:34:29then maybe I would do something
1:34:31that electric currently is not very good at.
1:34:33I'd get something small and light and fast and fun.
1:34:35So maybe something like an M2
1:34:38or like a Cayman or something like that,
1:34:41something that electric cars really can't be very well yet.
1:34:46- That's interesting.
1:34:47Do you miss the 1 Series M ever?
1:34:50- Occasionally, but not significantly.
1:34:54Like, I would love to at some point drive the new M2,
1:34:58or even the 235, like the M235.
1:35:02I would love to drive either of those,
1:35:03just because they do, by all reviews and accounts,
1:35:07they do sound like they're pretty fun little cars,
1:35:10I think that would be fun to drive those
1:35:12and to consider those if I couldn't have
1:35:15my big comfort boat, but ultimately,
1:35:18I've gotten slightly older and a lot more boring,
1:35:21and I kinda just like my fast comfort boat now.
1:35:24So it's hard for me to really give this question
1:35:27an honest answer or honest consideration
1:35:29because my head's not in that space anymore.
1:35:33- Yeah, that's fair.
1:35:35I drove an M235i, which is now an M240i,
1:35:38and it was really great.
1:35:40I wouldn't say that there was anything
1:35:44tremendously remarkable about it.
1:35:46It was just a fun, small,
1:35:48nimble car, which there's something to be said for that.
1:35:55It was really nice in that regard,
1:35:56and I had a lot of fun with it.
1:35:59All right, so moving on to,
1:36:02well, Jon, do you have any comments on Marco's choices?
1:36:04to say that this was really designed to create an argument, but far be it for me to not give
1:36:08you a chance to respond. Any thoughts?
1:36:10I was going to start by telling Marco what he should have bought anyway in my answer.
1:36:14So the best direct replacement, best non-electric direct replacement for his Tesla is the Panamera.
1:36:21Has a hatchback. The new version is not as ugly as the old one. It's really fast and
1:36:25fun to drive. It seats four, which should be adequate for his needs. And yeah, I think
1:36:31would end up there because I think it is more exciting than the 5 series and you know shape-wise
1:36:38like it practically looks like a Model S at this point so I think it would have a lot
1:36:41of fun with it.
1:36:42They're still not good looking.
1:36:43You gotta see it in person.
1:36:45I think they actually are pretty good looking.
1:36:49The old one obviously had the weird hunchback that wasn't nice.
1:36:53This is much more nicely proportionate and when you see it in person like the Model S
1:36:56which I think looks kind of dowdy in pictures when you see it in person you realize it is
1:36:59is lower and wider than you thought,
1:37:01and it has a nice presence in person.
1:37:02I know, because I see them all over where I live.
1:37:05- Yeah, I mean, looking at these,
1:37:06on the show on their website and everything,
1:37:08because I really have enjoyed a hatchback,
1:37:11I would give this a look,
1:37:14but I wouldn't feel good about it.
1:37:15- And everyone said, like, this behaves,
1:37:18this is the least sedan, like, of all of the big sedans.
1:37:22Like, everyone says--
1:37:22- But I like sedans. - Porsche SUVs, no.
1:37:25But I mean, like, in terms of not feeling heavy
1:37:28and like a boat, right, that it feels nimble,
1:37:30and it feels like a slightly bigger Cayman.
1:37:33It doesn't feel like a souped up Cadillac or whatever.
1:37:38- Eh, fair.
1:37:39- They're making it electric too, by the way,
1:37:40so Marco actually might be in the market eventually
1:37:42when their electric come out,
1:37:44'cause they will actually have
1:37:44a direct electric competitor to Tesla,
1:37:46and that's another reason Marco
1:37:48will be in the Porsche dealership.
1:37:50- Well, and their concept, is it the Mission E,
1:37:53their concept that was like a year or two ago?
1:37:54That did look really cool, but it's just a concept,
1:37:57and who knows what will actually ship.
1:37:59And when it does ship,
1:38:01there's a big question of charging stations.
1:38:03Like Tesla has a lot of superchargers
1:38:06and they keep adding more at a pretty remarkable rate.
1:38:08I know there's like the standard based networks
1:38:13that are also out there,
1:38:15but Tesla has a pretty big head start
1:38:18and they're in a lot of places
1:38:19and they're a lot of places that I go.
1:38:21Like they now cover upstate pretty well.
1:38:24They used to have very little coverage,
1:38:25now they have great coverage.
1:38:27they're getting all over the place.
1:38:28And so anybody who comes in with a major long distance
1:38:33electric car competitor is gonna have a pretty serious
1:38:37fight ahead of them to get past the Supercharger network.
1:38:40- What you should be worried about though is
1:38:42when the hell are they gonna replace the Model S?
1:38:43Because this always happens in comparison tests.
1:38:44- I am worried about that.
1:38:46- So it comes out in comparison tests where like
1:38:48one model that has won the comparison test
1:38:50for the five years running is at the end of
1:38:52its generation's lifetime and it's about to be redesigned
1:38:55And it comes up against the newly redesigned competitor and then loses for the first time.
1:38:59And so yeah, the Model S is great, but you can't just keep the same car with minor interior
1:39:05and exterior tweaks for 15 years.
1:39:08You have to come up with the next version, and the next version has to be better.
1:39:11So presumably everybody who's targeting Tesla, they've got the Model S in their sights, they
1:39:16know what their benchmark they have to beat, and they're going to end up beating it, you
1:39:19know, setting aside the charger network things.
1:39:22Tesla, but you would fully expect,
1:39:24okay, well Tesla's gonna beat it too
1:39:25for the next Model S, and we'll see how that goes.
1:39:28- I am very, very curious to see
1:39:31what the heck the next Model S is,
1:39:33because they've done a lot of things with the Model 3
1:39:36that sound really good to me,
1:39:37and a few things that sound really bad to me.
1:39:40So I wonder, what are they gonna carry over?
1:39:42Like the single screen thing?
1:39:44Nope, not for me, that does not sound good.
1:39:48The elimination of the auto steer cruise control stalk?
1:39:52Nope, don't like that.
1:39:54But things like having the one giant vent across the top
1:39:56and having the way faster, more responsive touchscreen,
1:40:00that sounds great.
1:40:01So there's things I like from the Model 3.
1:40:03We'll see what they actually bring over, right?
1:40:05I really hope they don't ruin it.
1:40:07It seems like every Tesla model,
1:40:10they do almost everything right.
1:40:13And one thing that's just a dumb risk they took
1:40:17that didn't pay off that ends up being annoying
1:40:19or failure-prone.
1:40:20So like with the Model S,
1:40:22it was the stupid pop-out door handles that fail constantly.
1:40:24With the X, it was the weird gull wing doors
1:40:27that caused them to have lots of delays and issues.
1:40:29- Falcon wings, please.
1:40:30- Whatever, yeah.
1:40:31And then with the Model 3,
1:40:33I think their weird risk they took
1:40:34was having just that one screen
1:40:35and having way too many functions rely on that one screen
1:40:39and some menu there.
1:40:41So who knows what they're gonna ruin with the next Model S?
1:40:44I just hope it's something I can tolerate.
1:40:46- So Jon's challenge, similar.
1:40:49If you had to buy something that wasn't an Accord, what would you buy?
1:40:53I was a 6 because it is about the same size, gets good reviews, comes with a stick shift.
1:40:59Okay, and I didn't know specifically what you were going to say, but I had a feeling
1:41:03it would be something along those lines.
1:41:05So now let's assume for the sake of conversation that a two-pedal car is okay.
1:41:11Just for the sake of conversation, I'm not saying this is what you think.
1:41:14Would that change your tune?
1:41:15Would you choose something different?
1:41:17No, if it's okay, no, I would never pick it.
1:41:20Okay, poor choice of words.
1:41:22I'm not allowed to have a stick shift.
1:41:24Let's go with that.
1:41:25Let's say you're not allowed to have a stick shift.
1:41:31I think I might find myself in the one accord that I recently learned comes with an automatic.
1:41:36Not the CVT ones, but the one with the automatic.
1:41:38Interesting.
1:41:39Wait, is he allowed to pick an accord?
1:41:42Let's say no, actually.
1:41:44I didn't specify, but yeah, good point.
1:41:47Let's go with no because let's make this more interesting.
1:41:49Get you out of your comfort zone.
1:41:51I don't know because now we start getting to spending more money than I want to spend
1:41:56on a car.
1:41:57Well that's the next question.
1:41:58We're not there yet.
1:41:59I know but I'm trying to think of what's the cheapest non-disgusting automatic transmission
1:42:05car that it can fit my family that I would buy.
1:42:10I don't know.
1:42:11Does the Mazda 6 come with an auto?
1:42:13Maybe I'll get that.
1:42:14Yeah, I mean that's what Erin had.
1:42:15She had a 2007--
1:42:17- Yeah, I'm into the current model though.
1:42:18- No, no, I know.
1:42:19I'm just saying she had a 2007 Mazda6 Grand Touring.
1:42:22It had darn near every option on it.
1:42:23It was an automatic and it was a phenomenal car.
1:42:26It was a really, really, really great car.
1:42:28- Yeah, I think I would get the Mazda6 with an automatic.
1:42:30- All right, so now some African prince has died
1:42:35and bequeathed you all of his money,
1:42:37but it's actually legit this time.
1:42:39You have $10 million with which you can spend on this car.
1:42:44What would you buy?
1:42:46- 10 million dollars, well--
1:42:48- Well, I mean, you don't have to use all 10.
1:42:49- Can I spend part of that on the house to house the car?
1:42:52- Sure. (laughs)
1:42:54Don't worry about your Acorns, almost like a piece.
1:42:56- I'm worried about it.
1:42:57I'm not gonna buy a nice car and get ruined
1:42:59by my kids scraping their bicycle handles across it
1:43:01as I shove it into my little garage.
1:43:03- Don't worry about the Acorns.
1:43:04Just worry about the car.
1:43:05Let's just presume that everything else is taken care of.
1:43:08- And you said I can't, no Ferraris?
1:43:10- No, no, I didn't say that yet.
1:43:11You're cheating, you're looking at the show notes.
1:43:12So in the show notes it reads as follows.
1:43:15"John has to buy one non-accord, what would he buy?"
1:43:18"Next bullet."
1:43:19"What if two pedals were okay?"
1:43:20"Next bullet."
1:43:21"Okay, this is in the show notes."
1:43:22"Okay, fine.
1:43:23Now money is no object and it has to be two pedals, no Ferraris."
1:43:26But let's start with the Ferraris, but even though we all know your answers, whatever
1:43:30the V12 is.
1:43:32I was looking at the 488 again.
1:43:35I don't know, the 488 just hasn't grown on me as much as I thought it would.
1:43:38So I'm wondering if I would actually get a 458 or even a 430.
1:43:43Because I do like both of those cars better.
1:43:45But then I look at the interiors,
1:43:46and they're all kind of weird.
1:43:47So I don't know.
1:43:48But practically speaking, if you only let me have one car,
1:43:51I wouldn't get any of those.
1:43:52Because I can't drive that to work every day
1:43:55and carry your kids around.
1:43:56They didn't go on vacation and stuff.
1:43:58It's just not practical.
1:43:59It has to be your second or third or fourth car, right?
1:44:01So I'm back into four-door sedans then.
1:44:06I think, especially if I'm not allowed to get a new house.
1:44:10No, just don't, again, don't worry about the house.
1:44:13The Acorns have gone away, your kids will not touch the car.
1:44:17But wait, wait, wait, so it was only one car.
1:44:20I think I would end up with like an AMG E-Series, a Mercedes, because the S-Class, as much as
1:44:25I love it, I think it's just too big to be, I think I would like the E's better.
1:44:32Because the E's aren't that small these days, I feel like they're more or less a
1:44:35the chord size. they're really fast but also are comfortable and have lots of tech gadgets.
1:44:40i'm not even sure if i would get the AMG model frankly. i might actually end up with the
1:44:45non-AMG model if i felt like that was fast enough or the AMG one was squishy. but i really
1:44:49like the E's and i feel like they are more to my taste i think than probably the M5.
1:44:57that said i haven't really seen details about the new M5 so maybe they've adjusted a little
1:45:00bit and i did like Marco's M5 but i just feel like all the bad vibes that you've both
1:45:05give me about BMWs and repair wheels and everything. Go to the devil I don't know in Mercedes,
1:45:11I suppose.
1:45:12But you would not get a wagon? You would get a sedan?
1:45:14Yeah, I'd get a sedan.
1:45:16Do you like wagons in principle?
1:45:18I do. I just don't think I need one. We just have the two kids and it's not like we're
1:45:22going camping. I do like wagons. I would get a wagon over a minivan any day, but I just
1:45:26don't feel like I need that extra space up. Why would I get a wagon when I could just
1:45:29get a sedan?
1:45:30- Yes, I'm now a car journalist.
1:45:32I've been looking at--
1:45:33(laughing)
1:45:33- That's awesome.
1:45:34- I've been considering wagons more and more
1:45:36with each passing day.
1:45:37And even though, as an American,
1:45:39I'm supposed to hate wagons,
1:45:41there's something to be said for a fast wagon
1:45:43that has no business being as fast as it is.
1:45:46- So I'm configuring my Porsche Panamera.
1:45:48- Excuse me, excuse me, it's Porsche, ah, sir.
1:45:51- Don't pick the $20,000 option
1:45:53that gives you a colored key fob.
1:45:55(laughing)
1:45:56- The options that they give you are,
1:46:00First of all, there's like 90 different options.
1:46:02That's not an exact duration.
1:46:03And it is ludicrous.
1:46:06Like I thought BMW was crazy with all the little
1:46:08nickel and diamond for all the options.
1:46:09- Porsche is the king of options.
1:46:10- Oh my God.
1:46:11So among other things, I have the option to add
1:46:13a six disc DVD changer for $560.
1:46:18- Wow, that's cheap.
1:46:20- I can add a USB port in the rear for $420.
1:46:25That's just the port.
1:46:26I can add a fire extinguisher.
1:46:28I don't know where or how, for $180.
1:46:31(laughing)
1:46:34I've never seen this many options.
1:46:38It's ridiculous.
1:46:41- I was watching a Demirra video recently.
1:46:43I think it was talking about the 918 or something,
1:46:46but I think, was it a paint color option that was 65 grand?
1:46:51There was some option that was like a cosmetic option
1:46:55that costs more than like, you know, most cars.
1:46:58- So I can get the air vent slats painted for $2,330.
1:47:03- Oh, sounds like a worth it.
1:47:06- Oh, I do not like the look of this interior at all.
1:47:09- I bet the interior is very highly configurable, so.
1:47:13- It is very highly configurable as long as you're willing
1:47:15to spend $2,000 to paint your air slats.
1:47:18- Yeah, no, that's just, with Porsche,
1:47:19it seems like that if you want anything that's not stock,
1:47:24it costs such a huge amount of money that you're like,
1:47:27do they just buy the stock car and then take out the parts
1:47:29and burn them and then put it in new parts?
1:47:31Like, why does it cost so much money?
1:47:33- God, there's so many options.
1:47:35- See, like, it's--
1:47:36- Holy smokes.
1:47:38- Like, and yeah, the good thing is like,
1:47:41if, yeah, I think John's right, like, you know,
1:47:42if you wanna customize, I mean, they have,
1:47:44they have like 15 different wheels you can pick.
1:47:47(John laughs)
1:47:48Like, there's so many options to this.
1:47:52And half of them, I don't even understand
1:47:54what they would do or why I would want them.
1:47:56Seat belts in chalk, $660.
1:47:59- Decorative valve stems.
1:48:01Decorative valve stems in black
1:48:03with colored Porsche crest, $70.
1:48:06(laughing)
1:48:07- That might be the cheapest thing on this entire list.
1:48:10- Oh my word.
1:48:11- Oh my God, it's amazing.
1:48:13- And this is starting at 150,000
1:48:15for the Porsche Panamera Turbo Executive.
1:48:18- Oh, I didn't go to the executive.
1:48:19I stopped at the 4S, which my configuration is 124,000.
1:48:23(laughing)
1:48:24- Good grief.
1:48:25- And I haven't even gotten like, you know,
1:48:27like good seats and everything.
1:48:29- I think there's like a game with the Porsche Opus.
1:48:32You just, you wanna get the one with the good engine, right?
1:48:35And then after that, you want to pick like two things
1:48:39that are important to you,
1:48:40and everything else just accepts stock.
1:48:43- I think the real answer here is you wanna buy these used,
1:48:47because like, you know, used cars,
1:48:49you tend to get a lot of the options basically for free.
1:48:53'Cause you don't, if you spec up a car,
1:48:56the used pricing is based on not all the options,
1:48:59it's based on the engine trim level, year, and mileage.
1:49:02That's about it.
1:49:04So the way to get any of these cars,
1:49:06if you want a lot of options,
1:49:08is to just wait for a used one to come up
1:49:09that has a lot of options that someone else took a bath on,
1:49:12and you get those pretty nicely.
1:49:15- I think I mentioned this about Rolls Royce and Mercedes
1:49:17last time we talked about it,
1:49:18but I'm just so surprised that these companies
1:49:19stick to this.
1:49:20I mean, I suppose there is some attraction
1:49:22to the high-end clientele of being able to customize everything, especially like on Bentley
1:49:26and Rolls and stuff.
1:49:28But as Marco has noted in his salad power user diatribe, it's the paralysis of choice.
1:49:37I would be terrified that I would be accidentally configuring the world's ugliest Rolls Royce,
1:49:42right?
1:49:43Because you can choose everything, every kind of, every material, every surface, every color,
1:49:47everything.
1:49:48don't trust me to design it, especially if they have not so great visualization.
1:49:52It's like, I paid 350 grand for this Bentley and it looks like a clown car because I didn't
1:49:57think about how this color leather would look with this color stitching would look with
1:50:01this material because I'm not a car interior designer.
1:50:04Just give me some presets like Marco wants for his salads.
1:50:07And then maybe I'll say, "Give me that preset," and then they'll tweak one thing or something.
1:50:12Because think of how scary you, I mean, I think mostly in terms of how scary it would
1:50:15be to buy a car sight unseen. You've never seen a car with this material. You've never
1:50:20sat in it. You don't know what it's going to look like. You don't know how it's going
1:50:22to feel. And just picking from a menu? Terrifying. So I wonder if rich people have other people
1:50:27configure their cars for them, right? Or they just say, "Oh, I don't know. Just make it
1:50:32nice for me." Or they hire car interior designers just like you hire them for your house. Poor
1:50:38people just go to the home center and they pick out materials for their floor and their
1:50:42their countertops and whatever and they cross their fingers
1:50:44and hope it looks okay.
1:50:45The rich people hire interior designer
1:50:47and also cross their fingers I suppose,
1:50:50but pay gobs and gobs of money for them to come up with
1:50:53materials and everything that look good together.
1:50:55So I wonder if they do that for cars too,
1:50:57because it's a huge expense
1:50:58and there's just too many choices.
1:51:00- Yeah, I'm looking now like,
1:51:01I would rather have just a regular five series,
1:51:03I think, than the Panamera.
1:51:05Like, you get so much more for the money
1:51:08and it's a way nicer looking car,
1:51:09even though it does have a little bit
1:51:11the skin flap issue of modern ones.
1:51:13But yeah, I think I'd rather have that.
1:51:16- I found a new job for Casey.
1:51:18Casey, do you have any interest in being
1:51:19a car option configurer to rich people?
1:51:22- I would love to.
1:51:23Are you kidding?
1:51:24I would love to.
1:51:25- Wouldn't you feel the pressure though
1:51:26of not accidentally making an ugly car for them?
1:51:28- No.
1:51:29I really wouldn't.
1:51:31- 'Cause I mean, they're rich, who cares?
1:51:34They're just looking for someone to blame.
1:51:36- I mean, yeah, well you have to charge your fee.
1:51:38It's like interior designers.
1:51:39You have to charge your fee,
1:51:40should be like at least one third of the price of actually doing the job.
1:51:44Purely for like, you know, what service do you provide, you tell them how much options
1:51:47to pick.
1:51:48I have long thought about how fun it would be to be like a car headhunter, if you will.
1:51:54So you know, take me for example, when I was buying my 3 Series, you know, I wanted a 335,
1:51:59it had to have a stick, it had to have the M Sport package, you know, and I think there
1:52:04were one or two other options I insisted upon.
1:52:06white before either of you jerks pipe in.
1:52:10Anyway, the point is, I would love to be a car headhunter.
1:52:14I would love to be a car headhunter that my job is just
1:52:16to scour Autotrader to try to find that perfect unicorn
1:52:20for somebody.
1:52:21I think that would be super fun.
1:52:23But anyone who would have the money for that would be
1:52:25buying new anyway, so they would just order one.
1:52:27- I was gonna say, you just hang out, I wonder if you work
1:52:29at the dealer and say, "We have this person here,
1:52:32"their services are provided at a very small fee of 50 grand
1:52:35and they will help you select the options for your $250,000 car.
1:52:41I'm in.
1:52:43If you're looking to hire me, you can find my contact information at kclist.com.
1:52:47Yeah, 50 grand per car, like you can make some good money doing that.
1:52:52If only.
1:52:53And honestly, if I had the money to buy a Bentley, I would gladly pay 50 grand to someone
1:52:56who would prevent me from misconfiguring my car and getting an ugly $350,000 Bentley instead
1:53:01that I'd have a good looking $400,000 Bentley.
1:53:04[door closes]
1:53:06[BLANK_AUDIO]