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249: Beehives Full of Bees

 

00:00:00   I'm fired up tonight in the sense that I love hate my phone and we're gonna have to talk about this later.

00:00:08   There are some parts I really, really, really love in some parts that are driving me freaking crazy.

00:00:16   And I think we should talk about that later. That's what we in the business like to call a teaser.

00:00:22   If this stays in the show, I guarantee someone will write in and say, "So that's actually not a teaser."

00:00:28   (laughing)

00:00:30   - That's actually a sting preview.

00:00:32   - Yeah.

00:00:33   (laughing)

00:00:34   - It's a blast reference.

00:00:36   - Oh God, it's a miracle that anyone puts any content

00:00:39   on the internet by choice ever, ever.

00:00:41   - Well, if we ever wanna get to that,

00:00:43   I do wanna talk about the feedback to my laptop article.

00:00:47   - Oh, I have feedback I would like to file, actually.

00:00:50   - Unfortunately, Syracuse covered it pretty well.

00:00:52   (laughing)

00:00:53   I don't have great today.

00:00:54   - No, I didn't talk about it.

00:00:55   I purposely didn't try not to talk about your article.

00:00:58   We have still plenty of things to talk about

00:01:00   on your article with you specifically.

00:01:02   - All right, good.

00:01:03   - Yeah, and I have plenty of complaints to levy,

00:01:05   so I would like my chance.

00:01:08   Let's start with some follow up

00:01:11   about the multitasking gesture on the iPhone X.

00:01:15   It was funny because as a podcast listener,

00:01:19   I have listened to every Apple-related tech podcast

00:01:22   I listen to, get all of the feedback about the one true way to do the multitasking gesture,

00:01:29   the one true way that is flawless and will never ever fail. It just so happens that there

00:01:36   are about 75 one true ways to do the multitasking gesture on the iPhone 10. And I had thought

00:01:43   by the time we had covered it, perhaps the internet will have gotten this out of their

00:01:49   system. Oh no, my friends, the internet is not done. So, one of you has comically put

00:01:57   in the show notes, and I'm guessing this is Jon, the tyranny, the tyranny, tyranny,

00:02:02   the angst of the pause. The tyranny, the tyranny of the pause. Tell us about this.

00:02:09   Jon Streeter Yeah, this was the implied context of all

00:02:12   of my comments on the multitasking gesture. Last year we were talking about how I had

00:02:16   difficulty doing it from the home screen, but how it was as far as I could tell the

00:02:19   same gesture as elsewhere and why I had difficulty doing it on the home screen.

00:02:23   And at one point I ratted off a bunch of gestures that I had tried, things that people had suggested

00:02:28   and things that work elsewhere.

00:02:30   The implied but not stated part of that conversation was that all the things I was describing I

00:02:37   was doing instead of the one where you drag up and then pause for a little bit and then,

00:02:44   you know, like basically what I think of as the sort of standard one, I think it's the

00:02:48   one they demoed in the keynote, where, you know, pull up from the bottom but don't take

00:02:52   your finger off the screen and then wait a little bit and then the multitasking thing

00:02:55   comes. And the reason that was my implied context is because I hate pauses. I hate,

00:03:03   you know, tap and hold. I hate anything where I have to do something for a set amount of

00:03:07   time and there's no way I can speed it up. That's why I was interested in the, you know,

00:03:12   j-turn, 45 degree angle, swipe, all sorts of other little things.

00:03:16   So everybody who wrote in to tell us, "Why are you doing all these strange gestures?

00:03:21   Just pull up from the bottom and then wait a second and it'll come up."

00:03:25   I definitely knew that.

00:03:27   I don't want to wait.

00:03:29   The second category of people are saying, "You actually don't have to wait.

00:03:33   If you pull up a precise amount from the bottom and immediately remove your finger from the

00:03:36   screen, it will bring up the multitasking gesture."

00:03:41   And I guess that gets rid of the weight, but I find it more difficult to exactly get that

00:03:47   distance right than I do to do one of the J-turn or 45-degree anchovies, whatever.

00:03:51   So anyway, in case it wasn't clear and you didn't know, you can pull up from the bottom,

00:03:55   pause for a moment with your finger on the screen, and the multitasking thing will come

00:03:58   up.

00:03:59   And that is probably easier to pull off than any of the gestures that I was describing

00:04:03   in which you don't have to do that, but you do have to wait, and I don't like waiting.

00:04:09   had no idea. It's like you grew up in the New York area. We got a little bit of feedback

00:04:15   about the refund requests for AppleCare+. I could have sworn I had put this in the show

00:04:21   notes, but I was wrong for the past episode. So we'll be in the show notes for this episode.

00:04:26   And John Him was the first person I saw to write in with a link to a KBase article, "Hello,

00:04:31   Steven Hackett," wherein it's entitled "How to Request a Refund for an AppleCare Plan."

00:04:36   Blah, blah, blah. There are a few important things to keep in mind when you cancel and

00:04:39   return AppleCare coverage plan. If you cancel your plan within 30 days of your purchase

00:04:42   date, you'll get a full refund minus the value of any service already performed. If you cancel

00:04:46   your AppleCare plan more than 30 days after purchase, you'll get a refund based on the

00:04:50   percentage of unexpired AppleCare coverage minus the value of any service already provided.

00:04:56   And so it's a thing, which I didn't know. And we even heard a couple people say that

00:04:59   they told geniuses, or perhaps not geniuses, and perhaps it was salespeople, but one way

00:05:06   or another told Apple retail employees that this was a thing, and they didn't even know

00:05:10   it was a thing, as it turns out. So, yeah, it's a thing. We'll put a link in the show

00:05:15   notes. All right, who is it that put this weird Kickstarter that I'd never heard about

00:05:19   before in the show notes?

00:05:21   It was me. It's always me. We were talking last week about the advantages of face ID

00:05:29   over touch ID, especially if you have things wrong with the tips of your fingers or they're

00:05:33   dirty or scratched up, stuff like that. And also if you're wearing gloves, and I mentioned

00:05:38   that they had gloves that will let you use your touch screen, but those gloves don't

00:05:41   let you activate Touch ID. Well, someone sent me this link to a Kickstarter for gloves that

00:05:48   let you touch your screen, you know, with gloves on, like they work with a touch screen.

00:05:53   But also, they provide not your fingerprints through the gloves, like I was suggesting

00:05:58   last show, like there are no gloves that magically surface your fingerprints, but instead give

00:06:03   you a bunch of stickers with ostensibly unique fingerprints on every single sticker that

00:06:08   work with Touch ID.

00:06:09   So what you do is you put on these gloves, or put on these little stickers on your gloves,

00:06:13   right?

00:06:14   And each one is unique.

00:06:15   Like every single person who gets one gets a unique fingerprint thing.

00:06:18   Train it on your gloved fingerprint thingy, and then you can unlock your phone and use

00:06:24   it with that glove.

00:06:25   Of course, what that means is that if someone wants to unlock your phone, they just need

00:06:27   to steal your glove instead of cutting off your finger or lifting your prints off a glass

00:06:30   of water or whatever Mission Impossible type thing they're gonna do. But anyway, it's a

00:06:35   Kickstarter. All the normal caveats are by Kickstarter. But, you know, someone's always

00:06:40   got an interesting idea, and here's another one. Unique fingerprint stickers.

00:06:44   I had no idea this was a thing. Well, it's a Kickstarter, so is it a thing?

00:06:50   Touché. Touché, sir. Well played. Aye yai yai.

00:06:55   All right, so apparently we have some things to talk about with regard to iCloud restores

00:07:00   during iPhone X setup.

00:07:02   - I spoke too soon.

00:07:03   Last week we all spoke, well, maybe you didn't,

00:07:04   but I did, about like, oh, iCloud restore during setup,

00:07:07   it's much faster now, everything works great.

00:07:10   That was all true up until the point

00:07:12   where my wife's phone wanted to update to whatever,

00:07:16   I think it's like the iOS update

00:07:17   that gets rid of the weird funny character thing

00:07:20   when you try to have capital I, whatever,

00:07:21   whatever update that was.

00:07:23   And she normally updates her phone

00:07:25   and eventually tried to do the update.

00:07:28   And it said something to the effect of, oh, yeah, no,

00:07:32   this OS update will run as soon as your iCloud restore

00:07:34   finishes.

00:07:35   And it said that for about two weeks now.

00:07:38   And that's bad.

00:07:39   Oh, lovely.

00:07:40   And whenever a question is to me,

00:07:42   it was like, can I just cancel this iCloud restore?

00:07:45   And it's like, I don't know.

00:07:48   It's another one of those iCloud things where reboot your phone.

00:07:54   As far as I'm aware, the iCloud restore

00:07:56   finished the day we set up your phone.

00:07:59   Like all the apps are there.

00:08:01   What remains to be done?

00:08:03   I don't know.

00:08:04   It's not like I have some view into the system that

00:08:06   tells me what the iCloud restore process is doing.

00:08:09   So I find this mildly upsetting.

00:08:11   And I don't as yet have a solution.

00:08:12   I assume what I'm just going to do

00:08:14   is Google the error message, because that's

00:08:16   the level of debugging we're at in the iOS world these days,

00:08:18   especially as it relates to iCloud things.

00:08:20   So you can find how many other people have this problem.

00:08:23   But in the end, yeah, it's like reboot the phone, step zero,

00:08:26   and see if that magically changes something.

00:08:29   - We got some bad news from Apple, and I'm quoting now.

00:08:34   We can't wait for people to experience HomePod,

00:08:37   Apple's breakthrough wireless speaker for the home,

00:08:39   but we need a little more time

00:08:40   before it's ready for our customers.

00:08:42   We'll start shipping in the US, UK,

00:08:44   and Australia in early 2018.

00:08:46   This was not given directly to ATP,

00:08:48   but it was given to a couple of news sites

00:08:50   or bloggers or what have you.

00:08:52   The HomePod is indeed delayed,

00:08:53   So I guess next week or perhaps later this week

00:08:57   we'll hear the same for the iMac Pro.

00:09:00   'Cause weren't both promises here, is that right?

00:09:03   - Yeah, but the iMac Pro's gonna make it.

00:09:05   - Is it?

00:09:05   - Sure, why not?

00:09:07   'Cause like five people will buy them

00:09:08   and it doesn't really matter and it will probably make it.

00:09:10   - I mean technically the 2013 Mac Pro

00:09:13   was available in December 2013,

00:09:15   but if you actually wanted to try to order one,

00:09:17   you weren't gonna get it until February 2014.

00:09:20   So the iMac Pro might follow a similar path.

00:09:22   I don't really know if anything in particular

00:09:26   is holding up the iMac Pro.

00:09:28   I'm sure they have their reasons,

00:09:30   but I'm sure they have nothing to do

00:09:31   with whatever's holding back the HomePod.

00:09:33   The HomePod seems like it's just very,

00:09:37   it seemed like it was in such an early state

00:09:39   when they announced it last June

00:09:41   that it slipping a few months now

00:09:44   is not that big of a surprise.

00:09:46   And it's all new.

00:09:48   All new hardware, more importantly,

00:09:50   probably all new software relying on their fairly shaky

00:09:54   service back end for Siri, so lots of possible things

00:09:59   could have gone wrong here or could have missed deadlines

00:10:03   here to make that get delayed by a few months.

00:10:06   So this is not at all a surprise.

00:10:09   And I hope, from what we've seen from the HomePod so far,

00:10:13   which is admittedly very, very little,

00:10:16   it sure doesn't seem like it's that competitive

00:10:18   with the other products in that market.

00:10:21   So maybe they're making it a little bit better.

00:10:22   That's kind of my hope here is like,

00:10:25   maybe this will be a little bit more competitive

00:10:26   against the Echo line of products especially

00:10:29   and then also against things like Sonos and Google, whatever.

00:10:32   - Maybe it will be done is more like

00:10:35   what I think this is getting at.

00:10:37   They showed the hardware, but they had so little

00:10:39   of the software done that all they would let people do

00:10:41   with it is play music, but this is ostensibly something

00:10:44   you can talk to and they were demonstrating none of that,

00:10:47   Which makes me think that the hardware was at that time much farther along than the software,

00:10:53   and software is much harder to predict when it will be done, and I feel like it's not

00:10:57   done, and that's why it's delayed.

00:11:00   And as I said on upgrade today with Jason, when they announced that the HomePod would

00:11:05   be released, and the iMac Pro for that matter, in December, they announced that it's in September

00:11:11   when they had the iPhone event?

00:11:12   Is that when all the stuff—

00:11:13   No, they announced it in June.

00:11:14   Or June, whatever it was.

00:11:15   Anyway, when they announced,

00:11:16   they announced December then, right?

00:11:17   - Yeah, in June during the W2C keynote

00:11:20   is the only time we've ever heard about the HomePod,

00:11:22   and then they said December.

00:11:24   - Was that W2C, really?

00:11:26   Yes, oh wow, anyway.

00:11:28   - Right.

00:11:28   - As soon as they announced December,

00:11:31   they preannounced that they would not make

00:11:33   the holiday season, right?

00:11:34   So now, when they're delaying it until early 2018,

00:11:39   it's not as if suddenly they're missing the holiday season.

00:11:41   They already preannounced

00:11:42   they were missing the holiday season.

00:11:43   This is not a new change.

00:11:45   All they have done is crossed it over the year boundary.

00:11:48   And it's probably because, you know,

00:11:52   I think we can make it by the end of year.

00:11:53   That's our stretch goal team.

00:11:55   And they didn't make it so it gets pushed out, right?

00:11:57   But the nice PR side effect is,

00:11:59   if they had announced HomePod and said,

00:12:01   "This isn't coming until 2018,"

00:12:02   there would be all these groans

00:12:03   because you crossed the year boundary.

00:12:05   But if you say December 31st, you're like,

00:12:06   "Oh, but you know, it'll be here in 2017."

00:12:09   And that's a better PR story.

00:12:10   And then as December approaches and it becomes clear

00:12:13   that you're not gonna do that

00:12:14   and people just want to go home and get their vacations,

00:12:16   then they can announce that it got delayed.

00:12:17   So I think they were shooting for the end of the year,

00:12:21   and they just didn't make it, and that's fine.

00:12:23   Don't release a product that's not done.

00:12:24   At no point was this going to be a holiday purchase,

00:12:27   and it's still not a holiday purchase, so it'll be fine.

00:12:30   - So one possibly worrying thing about this

00:12:33   is that nobody seems that sad about this.

00:12:37   Is that a concern?

00:12:38   - Well, what are they gonna be sad about?

00:12:40   I want that amazing demo that they,

00:12:41   oh, they didn't show a demo.

00:12:42   showed up playing music and it sounded good. Like, we don't even know what to expect other

00:12:46   than it will play your music and some people said it plays music nicely and sounds good,

00:12:51   right? There's no wow factor to this, especially with the Sonos announcements, right? If you

00:12:58   want a speaker that sounds good that you can talk to, Sonos tells you that. And this is

00:13:03   just like, "Oh, it sounds good and you can talk to it and you can talk to it and make

00:13:07   it play Apple Music," whereas Sonos will play Apple Music but not when you talk to it right

00:13:10   now. Like, yeah, this is Apple trying to enter a market that it's currently not in. But if

00:13:18   they have something special to show this market, here's Apple's entry. And this is the special

00:13:23   Apple magic. They haven't shown that yet. So what is there to really get excited about?

00:13:28   I don't know. All I know is I feel less and less confident in Siri as time goes on. And

00:13:36   There was actually a really, really tremendous crossover between Welcome to Macintosh and

00:13:41   20,000 Hertz, both of which are phenomenal podcasts that you should be listening to.

00:13:46   And I think it was Mark Bramhill of Welcome to Macintosh had said, he was of the opinion

00:13:52   that as Siri sounds more and more and more lifelike and less robotic, we as human beings,

00:14:01   And I think I certainly fall into this, are less and less and less tolerant of it being

00:14:07   anything but perfect.

00:14:09   Because the voice is getting eerily close to maybe not perfect, but really good.

00:14:15   And so you expect the best out of this.

00:14:18   And man, I don't know if it's me or what, but I just feel like Siri has been garbage

00:14:23   the last few months.

00:14:25   But you know what isn't frustrating, kids?

00:14:27   Me being vindicated.

00:14:28   And oh, boy, am I vindicated.

00:14:32   We have some follow-up about the great dust-up of November 2017.

00:14:37   The chili cook-off.

00:14:38   The chili cook-off.

00:14:39   If you recall, I had put an Ask ATP question into the show notes that Jon had tried to

00:14:48   move out of the episode, and then obnoxiously I'd pretty much forced all of us to drag

00:14:53   it back in.

00:14:54   And we quickly discovered that Jon had built himself a beautiful mind style conspiracy

00:14:59   theory as to what the actual intention of this question's author was.

00:15:05   During the recording of that episode, I tweeted at the author, whose name is Jonathan Bowling,

00:15:10   I said to him, "Was this an honest question or were you making an in-joke about John Merlin,

00:15:14   etc."

00:15:15   To which he replied at the time, "Honest question, but I was betting something pretty funny might

00:15:18   happen in the answers."

00:15:19   And I believe we brought all this up during the show.

00:15:21   John said, "See? He thought something funny would happen. He's setting us up."

00:15:26   John: Marco cut that part out of the episode.

00:15:27   David: Oh, did he?

00:15:28   John; That's why, yes.

00:15:29   John; Wait, did I? Yeah, that's why I put it back in this one, because it was like in

00:15:31   the after, after, after, after show.

00:15:34   David; Anyway, yeah.

00:15:35   John; This response did come in, and so it was an honest question, but I was betting

00:15:38   something pretty funny might happen. And my reading of that question was, "But I was

00:15:41   betting something pretty funny might happen," and Casey's reading is different. But anyway,

00:15:44   go ahead.

00:15:45   David; So, we got an email from Jonathan. I will not read all of it, but I will read

00:15:49   some of it. Episode 248, "Chili Cook-Off" turned out to be more fun than I could have

00:15:54   imagined. I was just hoping that you would include my question, so I had no idea that

00:15:57   it would cause a mini-Saracusa rant, TM, that would backfire and make the question stay

00:16:02   in the show. Thank you, Casey, for defending my good intentions. I've been a big fan of

00:16:06   hypercritical build and analyze and ATP, longtime listener, first time, quote, "close to the

00:16:09   metaller," quote. John's suspicions were unfounded. I do enjoy "Reconsolable Differences," which,

00:16:14   by the way, is a tremendous program which you should listen to, but I didn't have anything

00:16:18   from rec diffs in mind when I asked the question. I'd be curious to know which episode or episodes

00:16:22   he thought I was referencing. Casey, I look forward to hearing you point out to John that

00:16:25   he was wrong in the next episode's follow-up, copyright John Siracus of 2011. I should note

00:16:30   that's in the email. I also look forward to his continued good-humored suspicions with

00:16:34   a winky emoji. John, would you like to try to defend yourself at this time?

00:16:39   John: Well, there's not really much to defend here because—well, first of all, I'm going

00:16:45   I want to say that my hope after last week's episode was that you two, based on the feedback

00:16:51   from everyone else, would come to a better understanding of what my objection was. Because

00:16:56   if you recall—

00:16:57   I'm more confused than ever.

00:16:59   Well, maybe I can help you out. But anyway, I'm saying what my hope was. If you recall,

00:17:06   the idea was there was this question in there. I moved it down. I said, "I don't like

00:17:09   this question." Casey asked me, and then he asked me on the show, "Why don't you

00:17:13   like this question?" And I explained why I don't like this question. And Casey said

00:17:18   that my reasons were dumb. Right? So here, that's it. It was, "John, please tell me

00:17:25   why don't you like this question?" I feel like I tried my best to explain why I don't

00:17:30   like the question. There's no being right or wrong about why I don't like the question.

00:17:34   But obviously, you two have not come to a deeper understanding of why I didn't like

00:17:39   the question. And I don't know why this example didn't occur to me, but I think I

00:17:42   have a better example to hopefully bring you to that understanding. If someone had written

00:17:47   into the show, ask ATP, say, "Should I buy a white car?" If Casey said, "I don't

00:17:54   like that question," I would understand why he doesn't like that question. That's

00:17:59   it.

00:18:00   Okay.

00:18:01   Right? I would understand. Now, imagine that person had never heard the show before except

00:18:05   like a friend said that we talk about cars sometimes and was legitimately thinking about

00:18:09   buying a white car and you know all they talk about cars all the time and maybe

00:18:13   in the after show they'll talk about white cars maybe I'll just ask them should I buy

00:18:15   a white car because you know they're hard to keep clean and so on and so forth

00:18:17   right still still if you said I don't like that question I would say I

00:18:22   understand why you don't like that question right and if that person

00:18:26   ordered and said I don't know what this thing you're talking about the white

00:18:28   cars I just heard you guys talk about cars sometimes I'm thinking of getting

00:18:31   one and white is hard to keep clean stuff so I for you to have an opinion

00:18:33   even if they were a hundred percent honest I would still understand why you

00:18:37   don't like that question. And I wouldn't say it was a conspiracy theory. Now imagine further

00:18:40   still that Marco and I said, "Casey, I don't know what you're talking about. This person

00:18:44   just asking about white cars. I have no idea of this larger context that you're trying

00:18:47   to refer to of white cars, because you didn't – because this was like seven years in the

00:18:52   future and we didn't remember this white car gag?"

00:18:54   Oh, I trick – I assure you, I will never be allowed to forget the white car gag, but

00:18:59   I'm with you in principle. I'm with you in principle.

00:19:01   This is the situation I find myself in, because believe me, the close to the metal thing was

00:19:05   as real as the white car as evidenced by all the people who wrote in to say that person

00:19:09   is 100% trolling and John is right. I mean, they don't know what's in this person's heart

00:19:13   any more than I do, right? But that it is legitimately a thing, as much a thing as white

00:19:17   cars were. And yet you two have no recollection of it. And this person claims to have no recollection

00:19:22   of it despite listening all the way back to hypercritical, which is where this is from,

00:19:25   not reconcilable differences. Anyway, all this is to say, I hope you now understand

00:19:31   where I was coming from. And I hope you can use the white car example as instructive to

00:19:36   say, "What? Maybe you wouldn't mind that question. Maybe you would. But all I'm saying

00:19:40   is if you said you didn't like it, I would understand why, and I think Marco would too,

00:19:45   because we both have the shared context. Without the shared context, would you seem like a

00:19:49   conspiracy theory person? What is this about white cars? What are you even talking about?

00:19:53   Imagine how frustrating it would be for you to have to re-explain to me and Marco what

00:19:57   to deal with the white car thing is.

00:20:00   I do think, I am laughing, but I do think I understand your point better. I think the

00:20:04   difference for me, and we can move on, but the difference for me is that the white car

00:20:10   thing is, for better or worse, like the defining gag about me. It's that and who the hell

00:20:16   is Casey.

00:20:17   You're so lucky to only have one, Casey.

00:20:20   Well two, but I'm with you. Again, I'm with you.

00:20:22   What's the second one? Water on the computer?

00:20:24   No, well, okay, three. I said, "Who the hell is Casey?"

00:20:26   In the computer.

00:20:27   Yeah, in the computer.

00:20:28   I see.

00:20:29   I'd forgotten about that one.

00:20:30   You'd have to re-explain that context and I would say, "You're crazy.

00:20:31   Everyone knows who you are."

00:20:32   Yeah, well, fine.

00:20:33   John Tiracusa, wise old soul.

00:20:34   Stan and his friends born in the back row.

00:20:35   Marco Orment, he's a product man.

00:20:36   He's selling them off just as fast as he can.

00:20:37   Casey!

00:20:38   Who the hell is Casey?

00:20:39   Who the hell is Casey?

00:20:40   Who the hell is Casey?

00:20:41   Who the hell is Casey?

00:20:42   One day, Max and Dan.

00:20:43   But my point is just that there are a handful of things that I think are going to be a lot

00:20:54   there are a handful of things that I feel like all of us, upon hearing them, would say, "Yes,

00:21:02   of course. Who the hell is Casey? I remember." And this one, to my eyes anyway, was way more

00:21:08   esoteric and way- It's older. I mean, it's older. Like, we traced it back. It was like

00:21:14   episode 50 of Hypercritical. That's like six years ago. So, you know, I guess you can feel forgiven

00:21:19   for completely forgetting about it. I was just very surprised that neither one of you could even

00:21:22   vaguely remember that it was a thing and we're just starting from whole cloth as if I was

00:21:25   just making this up. I assure you I am not.

00:21:28   No, I never really thought you were making it up. It just seemed—it seemed kind of

00:21:31   bananas to me that you were so unequivocally convinced that this was trolling.

00:21:36   I thought you would remember. I thought—I mean, obviously it's not as recent as a

00:21:39   white car, but I thought one or both of you would certainly remember it. And either way—by

00:21:44   the way, I will point out, like, at the end of this thing, I also look forward to John's,

00:21:47   you know, continued good-humored suspicions. I mean, obviously if someone was trolling,

00:21:51   the trolly thing to do is not to tell you they're trolling. Not that I'm doubting this person.

00:21:54   I'm sure this person is right, but I'm just saying there are people on the internet like it's

00:21:58   really easy to type words into a text box. But I'm sure this person is being honest and like you two

00:22:02   has just completely forgotten about this from my Hypercritical days because that was a long time ago.

00:22:06   David Tompa Although to be honest, so when did we record

00:22:09   Neutral that started in January of '13? Is that right? I think that's right.

00:22:12   John "Slick" Baum Yeah, that's about right.

00:22:13   David Tompa So that was almost

00:22:15   five years ago, and hypercritical was six or seven years ago. So, I mean, the white car thing is far

00:22:21   closer to hypercritical than it is to us today. You know what I mean? Like, that's—which is weird,

00:22:25   right? Because I feel like that was yesterday in so many ways. But anyway, it was—I was very punchy

00:22:32   when we recorded, but I was never, like, genuinely upset at you. I just thought you were being

00:22:36   utterly preposterous. But I wasn't. That's what I'm getting at. But just because you don't have

00:22:40   the context doesn't mean there isn't a context. And it's completely irrelevant whether he was

00:22:45   was being honest or not. That's what I was trying to get at with the white car thing.

00:22:47   Because legit, someone could listen to the show. That's a real question that people ask,

00:22:50   should I get a white car? I've had that question asked to me before I even came on this show.

00:22:54   But it would be a hell of a coincidence if they asked it on Ask ATP, wouldn't it?

00:22:58   Why would anybody ask if they want to get a white car or not?

00:23:01   Yeah, exactly. Why would they? No, but why would they ask ATP? Maybe it's just a legit,

00:23:05   honest question. But I would understand if Casey gave it a little bit of side eye and

00:23:10   maybe said, "I'm picking questions maybe." I'm not going to pick that one.

00:23:13   I mean, it seems to me that white cars just happen to Casey. He never has to actually

00:23:17   consider them. That's true. See? Exactly.

00:23:19   You've owned like 17 white cars. Have you ever had to ask anybody if you should get

00:23:23   a white car or not? I've never asked anyone if I should.

00:23:27   Like you said, it doesn't seem like he had a choice.

00:23:30   One of them was a choice. They just fall from the sky into your driveway

00:23:33   and then their engines break. Can you just dub in like the first 15 minutes

00:23:37   of the first neutral where we discuss this? One of them was absolutely, unequivocally

00:23:41   my choice. I specifically requested white for one. Every other one happened to me. I'm

00:23:47   sticking with it.

00:23:48   And for the record, I'm pretty sure Marco's the only one. He obviously originated the

00:23:52   white car thing, and I think he's the only one who really cares. My first car was a white

00:23:55   car too, and I think all I said on "Neutral" was that if you have a really nicely shaped

00:23:59   car, then you can get it in white, but if your car is ugly, don't get it in white, because

00:24:02   it highlights how badly shaped it is. But beyond that, I have no objections to white

00:24:06   cars.

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00:25:53   Speaking of Ask ATP, let's just mosey right on in.

00:26:00   Shane Bouslo writes, "Do you think using Qi chargers everywhere and topping off the

00:26:06   iPhone's batteries all the time will impact battery health?"

00:26:10   I have no idea, but I've had the same question.

00:26:14   So I think this is probably similar to lots of different battery health questions and

00:26:21   theories and best practices that we've heard over the years with computers.

00:26:26   There is probably some truth to the fact that

00:26:29   charging lithium batteries all the time

00:26:30   does actually shorten their lifespan

00:26:33   if they're not kept within their ideal

00:26:35   long-term charging health range,

00:26:37   which is usually not fully charged.

00:26:39   Usually it's closer to middle of the battery charge.

00:26:43   If you want a lithium battery to last as long as possible,

00:26:45   keep the charge level somewhere near the middle

00:26:47   or in some kind of range near the middle,

00:26:49   and that tends to keep them lasting longer.

00:26:52   The reason I added this,

00:26:52   and why I thought this was worth talking about,

00:26:54   I feel like with your phone that you're using every day,

00:26:58   that you are charging every night,

00:27:00   that you are using it throughout the day,

00:27:02   you're putting a good part of a full cycle

00:27:05   on a battery every day, sometimes more if you use it heavily.

00:27:09   I feel like your battery is not going to be very useful

00:27:13   for more than about two years, maybe three years

00:27:16   if you're more gentle on it.

00:27:19   But no matter what you do, this is really hard on a battery

00:27:23   to be used to be basically cycled,

00:27:25   a full cycle meaning like full charge to nearly empty,

00:27:29   to be going through a full cycle almost every day,

00:27:31   you're gonna wear out that battery

00:27:32   pretty much no matter what you do.

00:27:34   And so the alternative, which is topping it off

00:27:37   on these little chargers all over your house

00:27:39   and car and workplace all the time,

00:27:41   I don't think that's that much worse.

00:27:44   It might actually be better even.

00:27:46   What's worse for a lithium ion battery,

00:27:47   keeping it at a full charge for a day

00:27:49   or going through a full cycle?

00:27:51   I don't know.

00:27:52   but it's probably not gonna be that different.

00:27:54   Either way, you're using it heavily.

00:27:56   You know, like if you have a laptop

00:27:58   and you use it on battery for its full range every day,

00:28:03   that's gonna do the same thing with the laptop.

00:28:04   If you keep it plugged in all the time,

00:28:06   that's gonna be better for it,

00:28:07   but again, like maybe not that much better

00:28:10   because of the full charge being bad thing.

00:28:12   So I think the answer here is

00:28:15   keeping them on charges all the time

00:28:17   will probably impact battery health,

00:28:19   but the alternative would probably impact it more.

00:28:23   And in the grand scheme of things,

00:28:24   your phone battery, no matter what you do,

00:28:26   is gonna have a not that useful amount of charge

00:28:30   after two or three years, no matter what you do.

00:28:32   - There are other factors here as well that make it,

00:28:35   and I don't know what the answer is,

00:28:36   this just muddies the water even more

00:28:38   of whether this is better, worse, or the same.

00:28:40   But to start, I bet people are not going to buy

00:28:44   such a tremendous number of Qi chargers

00:28:46   that they are now charging their phone

00:28:48   appreciably more than they used to, if only because Qi chargers charge your phone so much

00:28:52   more slowly, and one of the things that shortens battery life is really fast charging.

00:28:56   So if you have a big iPad charger at your desk that you plug your thing into to get

00:29:00   as much juice as possible when you're at your desk, versus putting it on a Qi charger that

00:29:04   charges much more slowly, the slower one is going to be kinder on your battery.

00:29:09   But it won't charge as much, obviously, in the same amount of time.

00:29:11   But if you have a bunch of Qi chargers around the house, what you're instead doing, instead

00:29:14   of charging very quickly in one location, you're charging more slowly in multiple locations,

00:29:18   which again I think is better for the battery.

00:29:20   So there's, you know, you'd really need to come up

00:29:23   with an exact regime of where you're going to be

00:29:25   and what you're going to charge

00:29:27   to compare exactly this pattern of use

00:29:29   to exactly this pattern of use.

00:29:31   But in general, I would say, don't worry about this.

00:29:34   Don't worry about the battery life being affected

00:29:37   because there are just so many variables

00:29:39   and depending on how they're each weighted

00:29:41   in this giant equation, you can get better, worse

00:29:43   at the same battery life.

00:29:44   But like Marco said, either way,

00:29:47   If you use your phone the same amount every day,

00:29:50   that's in the end, you're using your phone that amount.

00:29:53   It's got two or three years of that many cycles.

00:29:56   Even if you don't cycle all the way,

00:29:57   two or three years of just that much,

00:29:59   putting energy into the battery and taking energy out,

00:30:01   even if you always do it in the fat part of the curb

00:30:03   where it's all good,

00:30:04   your battery is gonna be a lot worse

00:30:06   than it was when you bought it

00:30:07   and you're probably gonna want a new phone

00:30:08   and that's just the way things are.

00:30:09   - Indeed.

00:30:12   All right, JT would like to know,

00:30:14   what are your thoughts and feelings

00:30:15   Apple TV remote redesigned for AirPower and to fix other issues.

00:30:19   You know, a lot of people have been writing in about, "What about this for AirPower?"

00:30:22   Our—AirPower.

00:30:24   What about that for AirPower?

00:30:25   I don't get it.

00:30:27   Like I think I said this last episode, but I will be very surprised if anything else

00:30:32   gets AirPower support, except maybe the pencil, anytime soon.

00:30:35   I don't think this is going to be like the catch-all, you know, cover your—all of your

00:30:40   desks and all of your, you know, kitchen counters and AirPower sort of thing.

00:30:44   I think this is only going to be for iOS devices and, you know, the AirPods and, and, and I

00:30:51   guess watchOS is strictly speaking a different OS, but you know what I mean?

00:30:54   Like, I don't think it's going to be keyboard and mouse and Apple TV remote and any of those

00:30:58   things.

00:30:59   And MacBook.

00:31:00   And MacBook.

00:31:01   Yeah, exactly.

00:31:02   And especially like the Apple TV remote, I've charged that thing probably four times or

00:31:06   feels like I've charged it four times in the year I've had it.

00:31:10   may not be accurate, but my point is just it almost never needs a charge. Same with

00:31:15   my keyboards and my mice, mouses, Mises. They almost never need a charge. So what are you

00:31:22   really solving if it's at worst a momentary inconvenience, once a quarter or something

00:31:30   like that? But I don't know, what do you think Marco?

00:31:32   >> Marco: Pretty much the same. I mean, I have not, you know, we use our Apple TV almost

00:31:35   almost every day, at least we did before we got stuck

00:31:39   in Stardew Valley.

00:31:40   (laughing)

00:31:41   And yeah, I think I've charged it, yeah,

00:31:43   maybe three times.

00:31:45   It's not a high-drain device.

00:31:48   So the need to make charging especially convenient

00:31:51   is not that high.

00:31:53   Also, that tends to be a different place in your house

00:31:56   or your office, or you have one in your office,

00:31:59   and you tend not to travel with it.

00:32:00   So if the benefit of an AirPower, Matt,

00:32:02   is the thing that you stick on your nightstand table

00:32:04   you put all your stuff on at night,

00:32:06   well, you're probably not gonna have your Apple TV remote

00:32:09   in your bedroom if your Apple TV is not there.

00:32:12   Similarly, if the appeal of this thing ends up being

00:32:14   literally convenient while traveling,

00:32:16   you're probably not gonna travel

00:32:17   with your Apple TV remote either.

00:32:19   And if you do, you probably won't need

00:32:20   to charge it on the trip.

00:32:21   So, you know, it's a nice theory,

00:32:24   but I don't think it matters that much.

00:32:27   The Apple TV remote has so many other problems

00:32:30   that they refuse to address.

00:32:32   So if they're not even gonna bother making it usable

00:32:34   while it's charged, I don't think they're gonna care

00:32:36   that much that it's slightly inconvenient to charge it

00:32:40   when you do it every six months.

00:32:42   - I frequently forget that the Apple TV remote

00:32:45   has a battery.

00:32:46   - Yeah.

00:32:47   - Because it's so small and it's not like

00:32:49   there's a battery door and it like,

00:32:51   I'm not sure if I have ever charged my Apple,

00:32:55   I think I replaced my Apple TV before I charged

00:32:57   the battery on it, it lasts,

00:32:59   I don't use it as much as Marco obviously,

00:33:01   it lasts a really, really long time.

00:33:02   Although I have two quick Apple TV remote stories.

00:33:06   The last time I lost it, I'm always losing the Apple TV remote because it's skinny and

00:33:10   it goes down, couch cushion and stuff like that.

00:33:13   My kids use it and so it's not like, who knows, but they carry it into the kitchen, it's in

00:33:18   the bathroom, who knows where they're taking this remote?

00:33:20   It's just everywhere, right?

00:33:21   And there's no, as far as I'm aware, please tell me if I'm wrong, there's no like find

00:33:24   your remote function where you can make a beeping sound, I would love that.

00:33:29   That's a feature they should have.

00:33:30   But anyway, I lost my remote and I thought, like, this is it, I've well and truly lost

00:33:36   it.

00:33:37   And I was thinking, like, boy, I'm glad they reduced the price to $60 down from 80, because

00:33:39   I'm going to have to buy another remote.

00:33:42   And even though you've got the remote on your iOS device where you can use that instead

00:33:45   of the thing, as far as I'm aware, you can't – can you wake your thing from sleep with

00:33:49   that?

00:33:50   I don't know.

00:33:51   I didn't try it, but I was like, ugh, like, I think I can't use my Apple TV until I get

00:33:54   to replace a remote, because I don't think you can wake the little black cube from sleep

00:33:59   without the real remote. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can. If you try to airplay to it, I

00:34:04   believe it'll wake itself up. Oh yeah, that's a good, that's a good, yeah. I was

00:34:07   thinking like... I would guess the remote app would let you do it, but I can't, I

00:34:10   haven't tried it, so I don't know one way or the other, but I can tell you I'll

00:34:13   airplay to it from time to time and that will wake it up. Right, anyway, I was

00:34:17   halfway through that thought when I looked up at my little black thing and

00:34:20   the little white light was on. So like, you know, I don't have to wake it up. It's

00:34:25   already awake. And I'm like, but how can it already be awake? I've been looking

00:34:28   for this remote for 15 minutes and I know it goes to sleep like no one has been in this

00:34:31   room for a while."

00:34:33   And based on that information, I realized I must be sitting on the remote somehow.

00:34:39   And that's what's waking the thing up.

00:34:41   And sure enough, I took yet another run at the couch cushions and the little things that

00:34:45   are between them.

00:34:46   It's just like a sleeper sofa or whatever.

00:34:47   And eventually, I found the remote somewhere underneath my butt where I was squishing it

00:34:51   and turning it on.

00:34:52   And the second story is about someone had realized there was a bunch of iTunes purchases

00:34:56   going through where they'd purchase like every episode of Seinfeld and a bunch of TV series.

00:34:59   And there was like a husband and wife and they were asking each other, "Did you buy

00:35:03   these? Did you buy these things?" Turns out it was the cat. The cat would lay on top of

00:35:07   the remote and buy things for them on the turned off television through their Apple

00:35:11   TV remote. So I don't know if that makes us a bad remote or a good remote. It's bad because

00:35:16   it's lost easily. It's probably bad because a cat can buy things, but maybe not. Like,

00:35:22   are very devious. Oh my word. All right. And Kent Akungar writes, "How can Apple do such

00:35:32   amazing complicated things with software like face detection and AR, yet still get so many

00:35:37   simple things consistently wrong, like one plus one or one plus two plus three on the

00:35:41   iOS calculator and UI bugs related to device orientation, such as the attached?" We'll

00:35:46   We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:35:48   And it's a picture of what appears to be the phone or iPad,

00:35:53   I think phone in portrait mode,

00:35:56   yet the volume indicator is shown in landscape.

00:36:00   Whoops.

00:36:01   With regard to rotation,

00:36:04   I can say that rotation's a pain in the butt.

00:36:07   (laughs)

00:36:08   - Yep.

00:36:09   - Any iOS developer will tell you that.

00:36:10   So that I give them a buy on.

00:36:12   - Although it does seem that there are a lot more

00:36:14   rotation bugs in iOS 11 than there were before?

00:36:17   - There's a lot more everything bugs in iOS 11

00:36:21   than there have been in a while.

00:36:23   But yeah, you're right.

00:36:24   I don't have a good answer for this.

00:36:26   I guess to some degree it's easy to get amazed

00:36:31   by the new and shiny and it's hard to build software

00:36:36   reliably and predictably.

00:36:39   That's why agile software development became a thing

00:36:44   was it was an attempt to be better about building,

00:36:48   be better about predicting when software would be complete.

00:36:51   And the whole shtick of it was that you

00:36:54   wanted to be able to predict the future based

00:36:57   on your performance in the past, rather than, oh, well,

00:37:00   I should be able to get that done in two weeks.

00:37:02   You can look at your past history and say, no, actually,

00:37:04   that'll take you a month and a half.

00:37:06   And all of the stuff around enterprise-level software

00:37:11   development, which I know Marco doesn't understand, but John and I do. It's hard. It's hard work.

00:37:18   It's hard to figure out the balance between how many unit tests you should write and how

00:37:23   many you shouldn't and what your continuous integration story is. All of this stuff is

00:37:27   hard and it's not, to most people, it's not very sexy. And so what is sexy? Face detection.

00:37:33   What is sexy? Augmented reality. What's not sexy? Jenkins. So it's understandable, if

00:37:40   if not necessarily excusable, that this would be the case. But I don't know. John, as my

00:37:44   fellow boring old man when it comes to writing software, how do you describe this?

00:37:49   John

00:38:10   And it's just human nature and priorities.

00:38:14   And with anything where you, especially in a business like Apple's, where you're—it's

00:38:19   not that it's a hit-driven business, but that you're only as good as your last success.

00:38:25   Things like the calculated iOS calculator bug, where some animations in the calculator

00:38:30   caused it to be less responsive, right?

00:38:33   How many people are scrutinizing how good the calculator is from release to release?

00:38:37   It's not a headlining feature.

00:38:38   are not a lot of resources put towards the calculator. When it was first made, there

00:38:42   was probably more than there are now, but there is an inclination in companies that

00:38:46   have to make money to say, "We'll put time and resources and people into this thing,

00:38:52   because it's the thing that we need, and then when we're done with it, we'll be like,

00:38:55   'Great, we did that. What's the next thing? Move on to the next thing,' right? And take

00:38:59   people off of that and say, 'Those people are working on it.'" And you have to leave

00:39:01   somebody there, but there's some poor maintenance engineer responsible for the calculator and

00:39:05   seven other neglected iOS applications. And people are human and you don't notice that

00:39:11   maybe the animations you're adding are making the thing less responsive because, like, do

00:39:17   you have a test where something, some automated thing presses the buttons really fast and

00:39:21   makes it, you know, it's just less important. It's lower priority. There are fewer people

00:39:26   on it. And that's just the nature of humans, the nature of work, and the nature of a business.

00:39:32   So many, many things are explicable by the boring answer that we did that and we can't

00:39:42   afford to leave our very best engineers maintaining the calculator for the rest of their careers

00:39:47   because they're not going to like that and they're going to leave the company.

00:39:50   And it wouldn't be efficient use of our resources.

00:39:52   So we get our best people working on the next hard problem and everything else gets less

00:39:57   priority.

00:39:59   And because humans are humans, sometimes those things mess up.

00:40:02   Everything after that, that's like the easy thing to explain, everything after that, like

00:40:05   why does iOS 11 have more bugs, does it seem like it actually has more bugs, is your perception

00:40:09   different than their metrics, are they measuring the wrong thing, all the way down to software

00:40:13   is hard and software methodologies and all that stuff.

00:40:15   So from the outside it might seem inexplicable, but as Casey I think was trying to express,

00:40:23   software in any large enterprise, including making a car or any sort of thing, is much

00:40:27   more complicated than you think it is as a consumer of that thing, and complicated system

00:40:32   are hard to predict and hard to manage, and that's it.

00:40:37   There's no, it's not that Apple is being mean,

00:40:41   or it's still people who don't know what they're doing.

00:40:44   Nobody knows what they're doing.

00:40:45   There are no adults, there is no silver bullet, yada yada.

00:40:49   - Apple has, for a very long time,

00:40:52   shown that they are not very good at multitasking,

00:40:55   and that whatever is the current hotness

00:40:58   gets all the attention, and whatever isn't

00:41:01   gets either complete neglect or at best drive-by updates,

00:41:05   where they, like, disk utility on Mac OS is a great example

00:41:11   of it, where the entire Mac is pretty neglected

00:41:16   much of the time, and when things do get updated on the Mac,

00:41:19   they tend to get updated in these drive-by fashions

00:41:22   where someone seems to be assigned, like,

00:41:25   "Hey, wait, rewrite this whole thing, this app

00:41:27   "that nobody was really needing to be rewritten.

00:41:29   "Rewrite it all."

00:41:30   and then they're given enough time to rush together

00:41:32   an almost complete version, and then it ships,

00:41:35   and then it seems like no one's allowed to fix

00:41:37   any bugs in it ever again,

00:41:39   or they're not on the project anymore,

00:41:41   or they don't have the time,

00:41:42   or they're assigned to other things and have moved on.

00:41:45   And so things get updated or created from scratch

00:41:48   in these low-priority areas,

00:41:50   and then whatever is released as 1.0,

00:41:54   which was probably rushed to meet a very tight deadline,

00:41:58   those bugs basically stick around

00:41:59   for a very long time or forever.

00:42:01   Anything that is not the current hotness,

00:42:03   that tends to be the case with Apple.

00:42:06   As John said, there are lots of good reasons for that

00:42:08   involving money and priorities.

00:42:10   I think Apple's standards should be higher.

00:42:14   Apple's standards are higher than average

00:42:15   in most other ways.

00:42:17   I think their standards for how to deal with their

00:42:20   not as quite high priority products

00:42:22   should be also similarly high, but they're not.

00:42:26   and that's not a new thing.

00:42:28   That isn't even a Tim Cook thing.

00:42:30   Even under Steve, that was always the case.

00:42:32   Whatever was not the current hotness

00:42:35   got pretty badly neglected.

00:42:38   And there's also a secondary divide here

00:42:42   where Apple's frameworks have almost always been

00:42:46   really, really good.

00:42:48   Like in the entire era of modern Apple,

00:42:51   I don't know what it was like before OS X,

00:42:53   or like in the entire era of modern Apple,

00:42:56   The frameworks have always been amazing.

00:42:58   Things like the ARKit, things like Core Image,

00:43:02   Core Audio, the Foundation, all that stuff,

00:43:04   they make amazing frameworks,

00:43:06   and that stuff has been solid pretty much

00:43:09   the vast majority of the time and very advanced.

00:43:12   The applications that Apple shipped with the OS

00:43:15   and that they built on top of those frameworks

00:43:18   have had a much spottier past

00:43:19   and a much spottier record.

00:43:22   The applications definitely seem

00:43:23   like a lower priority for them.

00:43:25   That also seems like an area where in recent years,

00:43:28   applications have struggled way more

00:43:30   than the foundation stuff.

00:43:33   So it might just be Apple has not figured out

00:43:37   how to manage this well.

00:43:38   Certainly that's what the results seem to indicate.

00:43:42   - But it's like that for everybody.

00:43:45   You can't just say, oh, let's keep all the best people

00:43:47   working on the things that they originally create

00:43:49   because they don't want to and now it's a retention issue.

00:43:51   They don't want to work forever on this one thing

00:43:54   help create, they want to move on to the next thing because they're smart, ambitious people.

00:43:58   And if you don't let them, then you'll have a retention problem.

00:44:04   Even if you—it's a hyper-competitive world where everyone is scrutinizing what Apple

00:44:09   does so closely that if they actually did leave significant sort of standing armies

00:44:14   attached to everything they ever made to make sure that everything they make is continuously

00:44:19   improved and maintained, that's an inefficient use of resources.

00:44:23   are you spending all this money? Why are your margins going down? Oh, we needed to leave

00:44:27   a team of seven on the calculator forever and multiply that by every piece of software

00:44:32   we ever make. It's like, well, isn't the calculator done? What needs to be updated on it? It's

00:44:36   like, well, if we just leave one person on it, then there's a chance that that one person

00:44:40   can make a silly mistake and make us look bad. And so everything has to be higher quality.

00:44:44   So we'll leave, you know, we'll leave this team of seven on calculator. And no matter

00:44:48   what team of seven you leave on calculator, they won't want to do it. And like, a lot

00:44:52   of these things you feel like they're a training program for less experienced people. Like

00:44:57   before you get to be in the big show and, you know, work on a super important new feature

00:45:02   in UIKit or work on a major new feature in the OS, maybe you have to maintain disk utility

00:45:06   for a few years and that's how you learn, right? Like there's no easy solution. People

00:45:12   are not interchangeable cogs. Programming is a complicated endeavor and Apple doesn't

00:45:18   actually have unlimited money and does actually have people scrutinizing every cent that it

00:45:24   spends and telling them that they should have margins that are higher than they do. So,

00:45:29   you know, I don't know, there's, you know, there's a spectrum. It's not as if it's saying,

00:45:35   "Oh, everything Apple's doing, they're doing as well as they can." They can and should adjust

00:45:38   things, right? They can and should pay more attention to things that, you know, they shouldn't

00:45:44   shouldn't let as much slip as they do.

00:45:46   And they should not be penny-wise, pound-foolish, where, "Oh, we saved a couple of bucks here

00:45:50   by moving some people around.

00:45:53   What are the potential downsides for the image of the company?"

00:45:57   All the way up to, "What are the potential downsides if we invest a lot in a feature

00:46:01   and spend a lot of time and energy on it and it doesn't turn out that well?

00:46:05   How do we fix that?"

00:46:06   And insert your favorite feature there, whether it be the touch bar or the new keyboard reliability

00:46:10   or any other thing where they really did dedicate a lot of resources and it doesn't turn out

00:46:15   as well as they wanted. Like, "Your software is hard. Life is hard."

00:46:20   Yeah, but I think there's also a middle ground here. Like, the impression I have gotten

00:46:25   from reports from people within over the last many years—this seems to always be a consistent

00:46:32   story that we hear from people at Apple—is that it's not like there were seven people

00:46:37   on the calculator team and they reduce it down

00:46:40   or they couldn't have those people forever

00:46:42   or that it was done.

00:46:43   None of the things were true.

00:46:44   What was probably true is the calculator had zero people

00:46:48   working on it for a very long time.

00:46:50   Then when a new system design or style

00:46:53   or marketing heavy feature was being added to iOS

00:46:56   or new hardware, somebody who was already very busy

00:47:00   was tasked with updating this app

00:47:02   along with probably as you mentioned,

00:47:04   probably like seven other apps

00:47:05   to the new animation style or the new design style

00:47:08   or take advantage of the new feature of the phone

00:47:10   or just the new size of these phones or whatever else.

00:47:13   So that was someone's job.

00:47:14   They had enough time to do a 2/3 complete job

00:47:18   'cause they had to rush to meet the deadline

00:47:20   for when this OS and phone shipped.

00:47:22   And then after it shipped,

00:47:24   the staff was returned back to zero people.

00:47:26   We have heard that story so many times from people inside.

00:47:32   So it isn't that things are just done

00:47:35   and that the market's demanding that they,

00:47:37   or that all of a sudden they're undone.

00:47:40   It's following marketing features,

00:47:42   they have to keep things updated,

00:47:44   and they keep seemingly very, very small staffs

00:47:48   available to do things that aren't high priority apps

00:47:51   or features or platforms, like the calculator app,

00:47:54   or like the Mac.

00:47:56   And then as soon as that thing is done,

00:48:00   the budget of time allocation that's available

00:48:05   to fix bugs in it literally drops to zero.

00:48:08   Not some, zero.

00:48:09   That is a management problem.

00:48:12   That needs to be adjusted.

00:48:15   - Well, there are perverse incentives, too.

00:48:17   - And yeah, and we've heard that, too.

00:48:20   We've heard a lot of reports also from people

00:48:23   that one of the issues that causes this kind of thing

00:48:27   and leads to this kind of thing

00:48:28   is the incentive structure in the company

00:48:31   seemingly favors rewriting large projects

00:48:34   or being on high profile platforms

00:48:36   and doesn't favor doing more boring things

00:48:39   that still need to be done.

00:48:40   And that's also a management problem.

00:48:42   Like they need to find ways to adjust

00:48:46   their internal structures and policies

00:48:49   and workflows and incentives

00:48:51   to make high quality platforms and apps

00:48:56   happen more often than they do.

00:48:58   - Yeah, the incentive that I was thinking of was

00:49:00   if you're tasked with doing something

00:49:04   with calculator, or if you're one person who's responsible for seven applications in the

00:49:08   max utility folder or something, you're not particularly incentivized to slowly make the

00:49:16   thing better by adding a feature here and a feature there.

00:49:19   Because like, you know, take the terminal for example.

00:49:22   Terminal it only always amazes me when the terminal gets any features, because the downsides

00:49:25   are big.

00:49:26   If you mess up the terminal it's a thing that a lot of people use and they're going to yell

00:49:28   at you, and if terminal is working fine, like why add any minor features to it, because

00:49:33   all you're doing is adding more bug surface.

00:49:38   Like, oh, I added a silly feature to terminal,

00:49:40   and now I have 17 bug reports on it,

00:49:42   and I don't have any time to work on it

00:49:43   'cause I'm off doing other things now,

00:49:45   and I'm the one person who's responsible for terminal

00:49:47   and seven other applications.

00:49:48   I'm not motivated to add features to terminal

00:49:51   and justify them and say why I had to spend

00:49:53   engineering time on them, because every feature I add

00:49:56   is a new thing that people can file bugs against.

00:49:58   And if we just leave it the way it is,

00:50:00   we've got our existing bug backlog

00:50:02   that we're probably just ignoring forever

00:50:03   if we haven't fixed it by now, and there's nothing new to do.

00:50:06   And what you were getting at is being on the glory projects.

00:50:09   Like no one ever says, wow, this guy's great.

00:50:12   He's slowly improved the terminal over the course of eight years

00:50:15   and has had very few bugs in every new feature

00:50:17   that he added versus this person worked on the first version of Watchkit.

00:50:21   One of those probably helps your career inside Apple more than the other.

00:50:25   But from the outside perspective, especially if you never buy a watch,

00:50:28   I would love a slowly improving terminal that had the equivalent of one or two

00:50:33   Motivated indie developers working on it who like terminal was their entire livelihood and they had that kind of motivation

00:50:38   But that doesn't exist inside Apple no one inside Apple is

00:50:41   Going to work on terminal the same way like that the I term authors are gonna work on their thing as if their entire livelihood

00:50:47   Depends on constantly improving and maintaining the terminal application

00:50:51   Which you know is a shame, but there's that's it's not really

00:50:56   I don't know everyone always says I want we want to make it like a startup inside a big company

00:51:00   But I've never seen that done successfully

00:51:02   Well, I mean the thing of it is is that

00:51:04   My limited understanding of what the culture is like within Apple is that they still fancy themselves the plucky upstart and

00:51:13   they're not they're just not and

00:51:16   How do you maintain and both you've got the both of you guys have said this

00:51:21   How do you maintain any sort of talent at the company when part of being good at what you do is?

00:51:26   Being good at the boring stuff and it's just it's hard

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00:53:16   - So last year, I'm pretty sure single-handedly,

00:53:23   Marco came up with a genuinely brilliant idea

00:53:25   to do a little bit of a Thanksgiving special and ask and have each of us describe what

00:53:32   tech stuff we are thankful for this year. And I really, really loved how that turned

00:53:39   out and so did a lot of listeners. And so Marco, you were good enough to remember to

00:53:43   talk about it again this year. So Marco, what tech stuff are you thankful for this year?

00:53:47   Marco: I wanted to keep the list pretty short this year. I'm used to running a long time,

00:53:52   - You've only got four items,

00:53:53   but there's a tie for number three.

00:53:55   (laughing)

00:53:57   - Well done, sir.

00:53:59   - Yeah, I actually do have four items.

00:54:01   So one of them is my wonderful, beloved 2015 MacBook Pro.

00:54:05   We will get to that in more detail later.

00:54:08   - Oh my God.

00:54:09   (laughing)

00:54:11   - Look, I just love it.

00:54:12   I wrote a whole blog post about how much I love it.

00:54:14   It's great.

00:54:15   And it is exactly what tech should be,

00:54:18   which is it just works, it delights me,

00:54:22   and I don't really have to think about it if I don't want to.

00:54:24   It just works.

00:54:25   Also in the world of Apple hardware,

00:54:28   I am incredibly happy with the 10.5 inch iPad Pro

00:54:33   and the smart keyboard that I bought with it.

00:54:37   You know, I don't use my iPad for very complicated things,

00:54:41   but I do use it frequently.

00:54:42   Every day I use it.

00:54:43   It's always in the kitchen or on the table or on the couch.

00:54:47   And every day I use it to not only play podcasts

00:54:51   in the kitchen and dining area,

00:54:53   but then I will often then use it

00:54:55   as my couch browsing device and things like that,

00:54:57   and it's just very pleasant to use.

00:54:59   I'm not an iPad power user by any means,

00:55:02   I still bring a laptop when I'm working,

00:55:04   but when I'm doing anything that's not really work,

00:55:06   especially around the house, the iPad is wonderful.

00:55:08   And the 10.5 inch was such a great update in so many ways.

00:55:12   The screen size is great,

00:55:14   and especially once you see it next to a 9.7,

00:55:17   again, you realize quite how much of an improvement it was.

00:55:20   It seemed like a pretty small improvement at the time,

00:55:22   but it's really nice.

00:55:23   So it's a great device.

00:55:25   I always have it propped up in the smart keyboard,

00:55:27   so text entry is nice and fast on it if I need that.

00:55:30   And it's just, it's great.

00:55:32   I'm very, very happy with my iPad Pro 10.5.

00:55:36   Third, I will add the general category

00:55:39   of power and charging gear by Anker.

00:55:42   This is, you know, it's not that new of an opinion

00:55:46   to like Anker gear.

00:55:48   The world of dealing with our tech these days,

00:55:51   especially iOS devices with lightning ports

00:55:54   and everything else,

00:55:55   things become a lot more convenient and easier

00:55:57   and more pleasant when you can get plentiful charging

00:56:02   and powering gear for not that much money

00:56:05   and that's pretty high quality.

00:56:07   And Anker is not the only brand that does this,

00:56:08   but I think they are the brand that does the most of it

00:56:10   and the most consistently.

00:56:11   And so very, very happy with Anker gear,

00:56:14   both like the multi-USB port wall chargers,

00:56:18   Their standalone batteries are also great,

00:56:21   and of course their heavy-duty braided cables,

00:56:24   lightning cables are great,

00:56:25   and they cost so little, relatively speaking,

00:56:28   that you can have a bunch of them,

00:56:29   and you can put them all over your house,

00:56:31   you can carry extras around in bags,

00:56:33   and you can set up different charging stations,

00:56:35   different rooms in different places,

00:56:37   like your office and your house and your car.

00:56:39   It's just really, really nice

00:56:40   to have all that stuff become inexpensive and good.

00:56:44   It really makes our digital lives

00:56:47   with all these charging things a lot easier.

00:56:49   And finally, special honorable mention

00:56:51   to everything I have ever bought

00:56:53   from the company Sound Devices.

00:56:56   This is very specialized.

00:56:58   If you are not a sound or video pro,

00:57:00   you probably have never heard of this company

00:57:02   and you probably shouldn't ever hear about this company.

00:57:04   But if you work with sound or video gear,

00:57:07   well, I haven't used their video stuff.

00:57:08   If you work with sound gear at all,

00:57:10   the devices by Sound Devices are not cheap at all,

00:57:14   But this is truly pro gear.

00:57:17   I use a USB pre two for recording here.

00:57:20   For our live show and for my increasing live

00:57:24   and multi port needs, I recently splurged

00:57:27   and bought one of their six series mixers.

00:57:29   Their stuff is just so damn good and it just works.

00:57:34   This is true pro gear.

00:57:36   And it's total overkill for most podcasters.

00:57:39   But it's the exact definition of like,

00:57:40   if you have a problem and you are willing

00:57:43   to just throw some money at it to make that problem

00:57:46   completely go away?

00:57:48   Sound devices, trust me.

00:57:51   Anyway, that's it.

00:57:52   - All right, so we can go in either surname or age order,

00:57:57   and either way that makes me next.

00:57:58   And so I will run through my list.

00:58:01   I will try to do this as quickly as possible.

00:58:04   In no particular order, AirPods, I freaking love my AirPods.

00:58:09   And I was just thinking a couple hours ago

00:58:12   how, as far as I can tell, I haven't noticed any particular degradation in battery quality,

00:58:21   despite the fact that these things have been in my ears for a probably concerning amount

00:58:25   of time, particularly during the work week.

00:58:29   And I think that's partially because any time I take them out of my ears, they're immediately

00:58:32   charging.

00:58:33   So, although I said no particular order, I lied because that is definitely number one.

00:58:38   The remainder, however, is not in any particular order.

00:58:41   CarPlay, believe it or not, and this surprises even me, it's got a lot of problems.

00:58:45   It is not perfect by any stretch.

00:58:47   But it is very, very nice, and I like that I can take pretty much any iOS device, plug

00:58:53   it into Erin's car, and immediately I have the entire device's experience in her center

00:59:01   console.

00:59:02   So that's really convenient because my phone isn't mated paired to her car via Bluetooth,

00:59:09   But I can try to find an address to somewhere in Apple Maps and get the directions ready

00:59:16   to go, plug in my phone, and suddenly she's got my navigation on her car, which is super

00:59:20   cool.

00:59:22   I believe in laptops that were built in this century, so I love my MacBook Adorable.

00:59:27   Again, it's got problems, but I love it.

00:59:31   And the problems it has—

00:59:32   It's slower than my ancient laptop by quite a margin.

00:59:34   That's one of the problems, coincidentally.

00:59:37   But yeah, I mean, it is not perfect.

00:59:40   And as I think I've said many times in the past, if this was my only computer, I'm not

00:59:45   sure I would have such fond feelings for it.

00:59:47   But in the same way you have such fond feelings for your 10-inch iPad Pro, I have tremendously

00:59:52   fond feelings for this MacBook Adorable, because it is, to me anyway, the ultimate travel computer.

01:00:00   And that can mean the couch, or it can mean a cross-country trip.

01:00:04   And I just love this thing.

01:00:07   Also on the list, in the process of filming the Alfa Romeo video, which I have a first

01:00:15   draft complete and I'm now refining it, anyway, in the process of filming that I borrowed

01:00:20   a GoPro from Mork, which I think I've mentioned in the past, turns out GoPros are really cool.

01:00:25   And if you're in a situation where you want to have a pretty decent camera, that if for

01:00:30   some reason it broke you wouldn't be financially ruined and you want to do something with that

01:00:34   camera like mount it to the outside of a car or put it somewhere there that there's not a lot of

01:00:39   room. The GoPros are really really cool. Very much a niche use case but man are they a great

01:00:46   city. It's like your sound devices right? You know it's a very niche thing but holy cow does it work

01:00:52   out well for those little niches. And finally, I love my LTE Apple Watch. I had already started

01:01:01   taking fitness a lot more seriously before my LTE Apple Watch, but it is much more pleasurable

01:01:07   to go for a run without having to carry anything on my person and still know that I can call

01:01:15   for help if, God forbid, something really bad happened. And so I am super thankful for

01:01:21   for my Apple Watch even though it is about 50% more expensive on a monthly basis than

01:01:25   it should be.

01:01:26   Eh, maybe even 100.

01:01:27   But that's okay.

01:01:28   Anyway, that's my list.

01:01:29   I didn't actually make a list, but I can go off the top of my head.

01:01:35   You didn't prepare for the show?

01:01:37   Yeah, well, Casey stole my first one with AirPods.

01:01:40   My main problem with all these things is I can never remember what happened this year,

01:01:44   like it's this, you know, what things you're thankful for this year.

01:01:46   Were AirPods this year?

01:01:47   I don't even know.

01:01:48   But since Casey listed them, I'm going to say they were.

01:01:50   Well, so they were since Thanksgiving.

01:01:53   Ah, all right.

01:01:54   Do you see what I'm saying?

01:01:56   So I received mine, I think, late, late, late December, and so I'm counting it as a Thanksgiving

01:02:01   to Thanksgiving thing.

01:02:02   Yeah, certainly for most people they were this year.

01:02:04   Yeah, so they have definitely just changed.

01:02:08   I was thinking about this the other day, just how much they've changed my life because I'm

01:02:12   constantly listening to podcasts inside and outside of the house, and maybe it's not as

01:02:17   big a deal.

01:02:18   I know the AirPods, everybody likes them.

01:02:21   Like if you ask someone who has them,

01:02:22   oh, they're great or whatever.

01:02:23   But for me, I think there's a little bit

01:02:25   of extra attraction to them.

01:02:27   'Cause I don't know how to describe this,

01:02:29   but I'm the kind of person,

01:02:30   I'm one of those people who's like disturbed by disorder.

01:02:35   I think I described it to Merlin once

01:02:36   where like there was some pictures on the internet

01:02:38   that show like a bunch of pencils all lined up,

01:02:40   but one pencil is poking out, right?

01:02:42   Or like just things that are a bunch of physical objects

01:02:45   that look like they could be nicely arranged,

01:02:48   but there's just something wrong with them.

01:02:50   - This is Aaron's kryptonite.

01:02:52   - Yeah, and whatever that is, people say OCD,

01:02:55   but that is an incorrect use of that term.

01:02:57   It's not what it is at all.

01:02:58   That's a whole different thing.

01:03:00   But if you're just generally like disturbed by disorder,

01:03:02   and headphone cords for me

01:03:05   are always a big source of disorder.

01:03:07   They're tangled in your pockets.

01:03:08   You have all these techniques for coiling them.

01:03:11   They get caught on things.

01:03:12   I think as I tweeted one of the other tweets

01:03:15   that I think back on every time this happened to me,

01:03:18   Nothing makes me more instantly enraged than having my headphones yanked out of my ears.

01:03:23   That just makes me want to immediately kill, right?

01:03:27   And I – no.

01:03:28   Like, as you're going through a door and your headphone cord gets caught on something

01:03:32   and the earbud is yanked out of your ears, the worst, right?

01:03:37   And it's not a big deal.

01:03:38   Like whatever, "Oh, the cords bother you.

01:03:40   Oh, it's just crippling.

01:03:41   You know, it really is ruining your day that you have cords."

01:03:44   It wasn't a big deal, but it was always there, and I'm the type of person who was bothered

01:03:48   by this kind of disorder, who's bothered by having to deal with it and having to have

01:03:51   all these techniques for dealing with it and having to be aware of it and being careful

01:03:54   with it and threading the cords through my clothes and doing all this other stuff. Air

01:03:58   pods get rid of all of that. There is no more cord. And despite being annoyed by not being

01:04:05   able to change the volume and all the other things and having to deal with the charging

01:04:08   and all that other stuff, boy, they have really just ambiently increased my quality of life

01:04:13   by a tiny amount, but that tiny amount has spread through like the whole day. So I really

01:04:16   love them. I'm going to give a slot to the Apple TV, the new Apple TV, now that the beta

01:04:23   OS does the frame matching stuff, mostly because I hadn't realized how much I had written off

01:04:30   the Apple TV as sort of a video file, audio file, like whatever, like a sort of a device

01:04:36   in which I can indulge my love of beautiful movies and stuff, because it's like, "Yeah,

01:04:40   that's a thing that we use it to watch TV shows and the kids play with it." But that's

01:04:44   outside the realm of my sort of TV nerd experience. But suddenly it's right back in. Now it's

01:04:51   back in the mix because now it can actually show things at the correct frame rate and

01:04:55   has HDR support and it's 4K and it's back on the board. And so I'm excited by that because

01:05:01   I never really disliked the Apple TV and I dreaded having to go to a geekier device like,

01:05:07   "Oh, build your own Raspberry Pi and you can make your own thing or use the Nvidia

01:05:10   shield and don't worry, you know, like, I didn't want to deal with all that, so I was

01:05:15   just stuck with my plastic Blu-ray discs and my TV and everything, but now I'm more optimistic

01:05:20   about the future of the Apple TV in my life, not just as a thing that my kids use to watch

01:05:24   stuff sometimes.

01:05:27   What was my third one?

01:05:28   Oh yeah, my camera, which I don't think was this year either, but going through my pictures,

01:05:34   I've been printing books from the Apple photo book thing, and so I've been going through

01:05:39   a lot of old pictures and everything.

01:05:42   And it's so clear where the dividing line is between my old cameras and my new one,

01:05:46   which is the Sony a6300.

01:05:50   Not that it's the world's best camera, but it was a significant leap in image quality

01:05:55   and sensor size over my old Super Zoom cameras.

01:05:58   And I notice it when I'm going through the pictures, and I'm much happier with the pictures

01:06:02   I'm taking with my new camera than I was with my old one.

01:06:05   I got some good ones with my old one too, but I see the difference.

01:06:08   And now, of course, I wish I could go back in time and take pictures of my son who was

01:06:13   born 13 years ago with a camera from 2017.

01:06:16   That's not the way the world works.

01:06:19   But I really do enjoy my camera, and it's making me think that maybe…

01:06:26   I'll wait for Arco's review of the bigger Sony, that maybe I should start cranking up

01:06:32   the size of the camera I'm willing to carry just to see if I can go all the way up to

01:06:37   a larger sensor size and make it worthwhile. But anyway, I really enjoy my camera.

01:06:43   And let's see, the final thing I guess I have to give a shout out to the Mac Pro. How can I be

01:06:46   thankful for a thing I don't actually have? I'm thankful that this year, again I'm pretty sure,

01:06:51   this year is the year that Apple said, "You know what? We should make a Mac Pro." And I agree,

01:06:56   Apple. You should. And I'm waiting patiently. Nice.

01:07:00   (laughs)

01:07:02   - Oh, God.

01:07:03   I haven't had enough to drink

01:07:05   to handle a Mac Pro conversation,

01:07:07   so let's just move on,

01:07:09   and let's talk about how I did not bring up the iPhone X,

01:07:14   and in fact, none of us brought up the iPhone X

01:07:17   as one of our things that we're thankful for.

01:07:20   - To be fair, John doesn't really have one.

01:07:21   I've had it for like two weeks.

01:07:24   It is really good so far.

01:07:25   I really enjoy it.

01:07:27   It's just a little early for me to say for sure that it's like a clear positive win on

01:07:32   all fronts.

01:07:33   But I think it's heading in that direction for me.

01:07:35   But apparently not for you?

01:07:37   So I'm having some troubles.

01:07:43   And I feel like it is clear that Apple has done something that they have no been, I think

01:07:51   I said this originally when we reviewed the iPhone 10, iPhones 10, they've done something

01:07:56   that they have no business doing, and broad technology that really should not exist in

01:07:59   2017, and ripped it from the future and put it in 2017.

01:08:04   So in a lot of ways, I am delighted and mesmerized by this device.

01:08:11   And certainly every time I look at any other device, as I think I described last episode,

01:08:16   any time I look at any other device that has the big chin and forehead, I look at it and

01:08:21   it just feels friggin' ancient.

01:08:23   I'm poking fun at your laptop, but really and truly,

01:08:26   these old devices look just ancient by comparison,

01:08:29   in a way that your laptop actually doesn't,

01:08:31   although I'll deny that in about 10 minutes.

01:08:33   - That's fair.

01:08:35   I'll allow it.

01:08:37   - In so many ways, this thing is wonderful.

01:08:39   And my goodness, when Face ID works right,

01:08:43   boy, does it feel amazing.

01:08:45   It feels like back in the day when I didn't put a passcode

01:08:48   in my 3GS, because why would you?

01:08:49   There's no need for it.

01:08:51   So in so many ways these phones are so great, but I am getting more and more and more infuriated

01:08:59   about the fact that I feel less and less and less able to use my phone at night or potentially

01:09:06   in the morning.

01:09:07   And let me tell you why.

01:09:08   So I think I described last episode that I have a very peculiar eye problem.

01:09:15   It's called keratoconus, which means that I wear hard contact lenses, and it means that

01:09:20   if I wear eyeglasses, which I do have a pair of eyeglasses, they get me from unable to do almost

01:09:26   anything to somewhat functioning human being. But I would never drive with my eyeglasses. It's very

01:09:33   difficult to work on a computer with eyeglasses. I need my contacts. And so at night when I'm in

01:09:38   bed or in the morning when I'm in bed and I don't have my contacts in, I have to keep the phone

01:09:44   uncomfortably close to my face. Well, it's not uncomfortable to me, but you know, it probably

01:09:48   looks just completely weird to anyone else. I would guess that it's two to three inches

01:09:53   away from my nose and my nose is about 800 feet long. So that's actually not as close

01:09:59   as it seems, I suppose, but it's close. And the point is that what I feel like is happening,

01:10:06   I don't know if this is true, but what seems to be happening is that I'm close enough that

01:10:10   Face ID can't see my eyes and it's assuming that I'm not looking at the phone. And so

01:10:15   So the symptom is that I will be actively using my phone, oftentimes having scrolled

01:10:22   in like Twitter or something within the last 15 or 20 seconds, and the phone just suddenly

01:10:27   decides to lock itself and turn the screen off.

01:10:31   And this is happening a lot.

01:10:33   It's not dimming before the screen is turned off.

01:10:36   I'm not in low power mode.

01:10:38   I am usually in do not disturb, but I'm not in low power mode.

01:10:41   And oftentimes I expect it would dim.

01:10:43   I would touch the screen to remind it,

01:10:45   "No, no, no, I'm here.

01:10:47   "Don't go away, I'm here."

01:10:49   But it happened this morning like two different times.

01:10:52   I'm sitting there, I'm reading something,

01:10:54   and next thing you know,

01:10:55   all of a sudden the phone turns itself off.

01:10:57   Well, I shouldn't say turns itself off.

01:10:59   - Are you sure you're not a ghost?

01:11:00   - No, I'm not sure.

01:11:01   Is this real life or is this just fantasy?

01:11:04   I don't even know.

01:11:06   - Sorry, did you mention

01:11:07   what's your auto-lock timeout set to?

01:11:09   - Whatever the default is, but I will stall for time

01:11:13   and I will tell you, but I'm pretty darn sure it's whatever the default is. And I feel like

01:11:16   that's like 30 seconds or something, which should be the default with the OLED screens.

01:11:20   Well, I'd argue it shouldn't because it sucks.

01:11:23   Well, touche. It is absolutely unequivocally set for 30 seconds.

01:11:28   Yeah. And maybe…

01:11:29   And that's bad, but you said it doesn't dim first?

01:11:32   No, that's the thing that's driving me bananas, because if it was dimming… Well,

01:11:36   I shouldn't say that. Occasionally it will dim, and then I'll touch the screen and

01:11:40   everything will be fine. But there have been times where I will be looking at the screen

01:11:45   and again in the defense of the phone, my device is very close to my face and all of

01:11:52   a sudden it'll just turn itself off. And yes, I do have attention detection on and no, I

01:11:55   have not tried turning it off, but I want attention detection on. I like it in every

01:11:59   other circumstance, but when I have my phone so close to my face, it just suddenly decides,

01:12:04   "Nope, you're done now," and turns itself off.

01:12:07   And I don't know what to do to fix it other than,

01:12:11   I mean, I suppose I could turn attention detection off,

01:12:14   but my goodness, this is frustrating.

01:12:17   And it's grating on me.

01:12:19   Like, it's that thing that when you hear somebody else

01:12:21   talk about, like John's headphone cables.

01:12:26   Like, "Okay, yeah, that's annoying, but whatever.

01:12:27   "Get over it, John."

01:12:28   No, like, I can't get over this.

01:12:30   It's killing me, you know?

01:12:32   Like, this is my headphone cables.

01:12:34   And I don't know what to do about it.

01:12:35   And it's getting to the point that it's kind of ruining

01:12:38   a phone that I otherwise really, really, really, really love.

01:12:42   - Did you put the RAM from your iMac into your phone

01:12:44   by any chance? (laughing)

01:12:46   Wasn't your iMac also doing a thing

01:12:48   where it would just turn itself off?

01:12:50   - Yes, indeed.

01:12:50   - Is the phone also just rebooting itself

01:12:53   like every few hours and you aren't telling us that

01:12:54   'cause you figure that's fine?

01:12:56   - But no, but he's complaining about it.

01:12:56   This is progress, he's complaining about it.

01:12:58   He says, "Look, I'm using my phone and it just turns off."

01:13:00   Whereas before he's like, "You know, sometimes when I use

01:13:02   "my iMac, it turns off, but whatever."

01:13:04   - Yes, yes, yes.

01:13:05   - I mean, it seems like step one is try turning off

01:13:08   attention detection.

01:13:09   - Yeah, you're absolutely right.

01:13:11   - Yeah, why haven't you tried that yet?

01:13:12   That's my question.

01:13:13   So you have this problem, what's been stopping you

01:13:15   from saying, "Oh, I'm gonna go to that obvious setting

01:13:16   "and flip it?"

01:13:17   - Because I don't wanna turn it off.

01:13:19   And I think the moral of the story is I need to try.

01:13:21   But I don't wanna turn it off.

01:13:22   I don't wanna have to flip that switch every morning either.

01:13:24   Because I really--

01:13:25   - Right, but why don't you want it off permanently?

01:13:26   Like, what is stopping you from saying,

01:13:27   "Why don't you want it off?"

01:13:29   - Because I like the whole, like,

01:13:31   the phone knows when I'm looking at it

01:13:33   and will show me the details of my messages.

01:13:35   Now, the next question you're gonna ask me is,

01:13:37   did I ever bother with that before?

01:13:38   No, I did not.

01:13:39   My text messages could be seen by anyone

01:13:41   who had access to my phone.

01:13:43   - I don't think that's mutually exclusive.

01:13:45   I think it's, as soon as the phone is unlocked,

01:13:48   it will show you the content of your text messages.

01:13:50   And it's unlocked whether attention detection

01:13:52   is enabled or not, it just uses Face ID for that.

01:13:54   - Interesting point.

01:13:55   Okay, that makes me feel a little better.

01:13:57   That's a, okay, that's an interesting point.

01:13:58   I didn't think of it that way.

01:13:59   I see what you're saying though.

01:14:00   - So attempt number one, turn off attention detection,

01:14:02   And then if that doesn't do it enough for you,

01:14:05   raise that auto-lock timeout above 30 seconds,

01:14:08   and that should significantly reduce the chances

01:14:10   of this problem affecting you.

01:14:12   - Yeah, but the interesting life lesson here is,

01:14:17   I don't view this as my fault.

01:14:20   And the chat room is already saying it's my fault.

01:14:22   I'm sure if you're listening, you're saying it's my fault.

01:14:24   But I don't view this as my fault.

01:14:26   I'm just trying to use my phone

01:14:26   the way I wanna use my phone.

01:14:28   And although by any normal metric,

01:14:31   I am in no way differently abled, or whatever the correct phrasing is that I'm looking for.

01:14:36   But this is the first time, perhaps in my entire life, that an ailment of mine has caused

01:14:44   me to have a problem with the way something's designed.

01:14:49   Because I don't think Apple's designers, I don't think, had ever really had to worry

01:14:55   about, "Well, what happens if somebody has really, really poor eyesight and is basically

01:14:58   touching their nose to this phone?

01:15:00   then what do we do? And so I feel neglected. And that's a weird feeling for me, because as an

01:15:07   able-bodied person by any other metric, this is the first time I've really have to deal with this.

01:15:14   And it's been a really good and useful lesson that it's easy to feel marginalized. And that's

01:15:21   probably not the word I'm looking for, but I can't think of a better one. It's easy to feel

01:15:24   marginalized just by being overlooked the littlest, teeniest bit. And that's been kind

01:15:30   of interesting too.

01:15:31   It's a glimpse of your future. As I think we've said many times when we've talked about

01:15:35   accessibility features, your choices are you will eventually use accessibility features

01:15:41   or you will be dead. And in general, I think people will choose the accessibility features.

01:15:46   Like, it's not a question of, "Oh, maybe you'll need accessibility features." No, you will.

01:15:50   The only way you won't need accessibility features is if you die or if they cure aging,

01:15:54   I suppose, but don't hold your breath for that.

01:15:56   Sorry, CGP Grey.

01:15:58   Yeah, we're all going to need these features in everything that we do.

01:16:03   If we just keep living and our bodies keep deteriorating, you may be perfectly healthy

01:16:06   now and everything works, but eventually it won't.

01:16:09   And then you are suddenly a customer for all the features that you are not using and all

01:16:14   your electronic devices and all of the appliances in your home and all of the places you go

01:16:19   and your car and everything else.

01:16:21   And so it's not speculative and it's not like there's some chance you might need

01:16:26   accessibility features.

01:16:27   You will need them.

01:16:28   And I also – obviously I don't have iPhone 10, but I also do exactly what Casey does.

01:16:33   I don't have his exact vision problem, but I have terrible vision.

01:16:37   And when I use my phone without my glasses in my bed, it might as well be touching my

01:16:41   nose.

01:16:42   Like that's when I get really intimate with the retina screen and be like, "Oh, look,

01:16:44   I can see the subpixels."

01:16:46   because my close-up vision is still pretty good, although maybe not true for Casey, but

01:16:51   bad news for other young people who think that, "Yeah, you know, I need glasses to see

01:16:55   far away, but I can see close-up real great." Well, guess what? When you get old, that goes

01:16:59   too. So you have that to look forward to. But yeah, and I think I would have the exact

01:17:03   same problem as you, and I think I would be in the same situation where I'd have to be

01:17:07   considering turning off the attention thing just because I don't want to give up like

01:17:12   and, you know, it's not a long time, but I do use my phone in my bed either before going

01:17:17   to bed or just after waking up, and I don't want to have to toggle setting to do that,

01:17:22   and I don't want the screen to turn off while I'm doing it.

01:17:24   So yeah, that's a thing.

01:17:26   So looking at the settings right now, and in Face ID and Attention, there are two settings.

01:17:33   Require Attention for Face ID, and then separately, Attention Aware Features, and the footer under

01:17:40   that says, "TrueDepth Camera will check for attention before dimming the display or lowering

01:17:45   the volume of alerts."

01:17:46   I am bummed to give away the lowering the volume of alerts thing, because although it

01:17:52   doesn't happen but once or twice a day, that is a super nice feature that when I look at

01:17:56   the phone, it will duck the audio, or maybe that's not the right term for it, but it'll

01:17:59   lower the volume of the alarm or the timer or what have you.

01:18:03   And the thing that I guess really grinds my gears about this the most is that one of the

01:18:08   coolest like wow things for me anyway about the iPhone 10 is that it is

01:18:15   attention-aware and in that it is capable of making decisions based on

01:18:19   whether or not you're looking at it like that's so cool I I'm seriously it's

01:18:22   super cool and now I feel like I'm giving up on a little bit of that and

01:18:26   that bumps me out because I like my new toy otherwise and it's a really nice new

01:18:30   toy and I don't want and I want all parts of my new toy to work not just

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01:20:07   - Do we have time for your best laptop ever discussion?

01:20:12   - We sure do.

01:20:13   The best, done.

01:20:15   - Yeah, that's exactly how this is gonna go.

01:20:16   (laughing)

01:20:17   Alright, so tell us,

01:20:20   this may or, I can't tell if you and I

01:20:21   are gonna hate each other by the end of this

01:20:23   or if we're just gonna shrug and say,

01:20:24   "Yeah, okay, that makes sense."

01:20:25   But tell us, make your pitch,

01:20:27   tell us about the supposed best laptop

01:20:30   that's ever been made.

01:20:32   - I actually already did tell you.

01:20:33   a few weeks ago on this show.

01:20:35   I basically, as listeners of this show know,

01:20:38   I have lots of complaints about the current generation

01:20:41   of MacBook Pros.

01:20:42   And I switched back recently to a 2015 model

01:20:46   that I got off eBay for a pretty good price.

01:20:49   And I just love it, I absolutely love it.

01:20:53   The wonderful design of it just resonates well with me.

01:20:57   It fits my needs incredibly well.

01:21:00   Even though it might not fit more modern needs

01:21:01   in certain ways if it's my fairly low laptop needs,

01:21:05   incredibly well.

01:21:07   It's incredibly convenient to have all the nice old ports

01:21:10   on it that I don't need dongles for.

01:21:11   I can have only USB-A cables in my travel bag

01:21:15   and be able to plug my phone into either chargers

01:21:18   or my laptop with the same cable

01:21:20   and not have to worry about two different kinds.

01:21:22   The keyboard is wonderful, it just works, it's reliable,

01:21:25   it's the kind that I like.

01:21:27   The trackpad is wonderful, it's just a great,

01:21:29   The battery life is wonderful.

01:21:31   And the biggest thing I was afraid about

01:21:34   when I went back to it was that it would feel old

01:21:37   or that I would miss some of the advances in the new stuff.

01:21:40   And in fact, that didn't happen at all.

01:21:41   It doesn't feel old to me at all.

01:21:43   It doesn't look old to me at all.

01:21:44   And I don't miss the advances in the new stuff at all.

01:21:47   So it basically was all good switching back to it.

01:21:51   And I had been thinking for a while

01:21:53   about whether I wanted to write a big blog post

01:21:56   about just how much worse I felt the new generation

01:22:00   of MacBook Pros is.

01:22:02   And I decided to take a more positive approach

01:22:06   and not even, not do that at all, I do that enough here,

01:22:09   but to instead really celebrate quite how good

01:22:14   this laptop is.

01:22:15   And in the entire post, while some of the things

01:22:17   I point out are kind of subtly in comparisons

01:22:23   to the current model.

01:22:26   I never actually call out the current model.

01:22:27   I never actually name it.

01:22:29   I'm just talking about the context

01:22:32   of how great this laptop is,

01:22:33   and that's really how I meant it.

01:22:34   You know, certainly it's going to serve the function also

01:22:38   of serving as a critique of the new ones.

01:22:41   But I didn't want this to be a negative article.

01:22:43   I wanted this to be a positive article

01:22:45   about just how much I love that generation of laptops.

01:22:49   And the great thing is you can still buy them.

01:22:51   If you agree with me, Apple still sells them brand new

01:22:55   if you scroll down to the bottom

01:22:57   of the 15 inch MacBook Pro buy page.

01:22:59   They still have this model brand new.

01:23:01   You can get them plenty fully on eBay and other resellers

01:23:04   if you want to pay used instead.

01:23:06   I just love this laptop a lot.

01:23:09   And so I wrote this big blog post.

01:23:10   I took some pretty pictures of it

01:23:12   and I wrote this big blog post

01:23:14   about just some of the things about it that I love so much,

01:23:16   some of the good design decisions

01:23:18   and some of the things that just resonate with me

01:23:19   and just how nice it is.

01:23:21   and I named it best laptop ever or something like that, and

01:23:26   I thought I had a hard time coming up with a title for this

01:23:30   and when I decided to go with that, I thought boy am I gonna

01:23:35   get hell for this. I like you put something on the internet

01:23:38   that says best ever and you're gonna hear from a lot of people

01:23:43   who disagree with that, especially especially when the

01:23:49   you're saying is the best ever is not the current thing and the people who

01:23:56   bought the current thing you're kind of implicitly telling them you made a

01:24:00   mistake you made a bad buying decision although I'm telling them from the

01:24:03   perspective that I too made that mistake and I too bought the new one twice three

01:24:08   times if you count the escape and so I expected this to be a highly

01:24:16   controversial article. And I also thought, "I must be the only person who cares as much

01:24:23   about this generation of MacBook Pros." Because no one's really talking about them anymore,

01:24:28   and everyone's just kind of swallowing the new ones. And so I really didn't--I thought

01:24:34   that this wouldn't go that far and wide, and that if it did, the response would be really,

01:24:41   mixed and I'd get a lot of complaints and a lot of flaming and a lot of

01:24:46   disagreement about what was the best ever. That was totally not what happened.

01:24:51   It immediately went very far and wide. Even like you know top of hacker news

01:24:57   immediately it got you know all over the place. Even MacRumors wrote about it

01:25:01   for some reason even though it was not news at all whatever and it went far and

01:25:07   wide very very quickly. And the shocking thing to me is that the response, even on hacker

01:25:15   news, which is horrible, the response pretty much everywhere was nearly universally positive

01:25:24   and with very very strong agreement. Not 100% agreement, but like I can write "the sky is

01:25:31   blue" and I will get more disagreement than what I got from saying this was the best laptop

01:25:35   ever, and that's really saying something.

01:25:39   Like, if Apple has any reason to be concerned,

01:25:42   it's not that I wrote this article,

01:25:43   they don't care about that,

01:25:45   it's how many people agreed with it.

01:25:48   I have gotten, I'm still, every day,

01:25:50   still getting responses from this,

01:25:52   but I got hundreds of responses,

01:25:55   hundreds of comments on other sites,

01:25:58   tons of inbound links, and almost all of them agreed.

01:26:03   And that to me is shocking.

01:26:05   Even the people who, and I thought for,

01:26:08   I thought maybe the MacBook Air people

01:26:11   would have a problem with it,

01:26:12   or maybe the 13-inch MacBook Pro people

01:26:14   would have a problem with it,

01:26:16   and they largely didn't.

01:26:18   Even the people who like those,

01:26:20   both of them said, "But you're right."

01:26:22   (laughs)

01:26:24   So I am just blown away by how much people agree with this.

01:26:28   And I heard from lots of people,

01:26:32   who have the old laptops, who have the 2012 through 2015

01:26:36   Retina and MacBook Pro, who I've heard it from,

01:26:39   tons of them who said, "I'm holding on to mine,

01:26:42   "I love it, I see no reason to upgrade,

01:26:44   "I hope it never dies."

01:26:45   Tons of them who were like, "I don't know what I'm gonna get

01:26:47   "when it does die," who I guess didn't know

01:26:48   that they still make these. (laughs)

01:26:50   Tons of people who have the new ones,

01:26:54   and who regret it, and who wish they would've kept

01:26:57   the old one, or have been thinking about switching back

01:26:58   to the old one.

01:26:59   A handful of people who did what I did,

01:27:01   and who did switch back to the old one and are very happy having done that. Again, I

01:27:05   can't underestimate or I can't understate how many people supported this point of view

01:27:10   in their responses. Also, I think worrisome for Apple is pretty much no one cares about

01:27:17   the touch bar in any of these responses. The big headlining feature of this laptop, touch

01:27:23   bar, not a lot of people care. The few people who disagreed with it, most of them decided

01:27:30   that the best laptop ever was actually a ThinkPad.

01:27:32   I disagree.

01:27:33   (laughing)

01:27:34   - And that wasn't me, surprisingly.

01:27:36   - Yeah, like so, most of the disagreement was

01:27:40   once it spread beyond the Apple crowd,

01:27:41   the PC people were like, "Duh, it's not,

01:27:44   "the best laptop ever is not an Apple."

01:27:47   But they can have that, I guess.

01:27:49   - No, no, no, that is, as a diehard ThinkPad fan,

01:27:53   you are way closer to right than they are.

01:27:56   - Right, so anyway.

01:27:59   So if you rule out the Windows people,

01:28:02   the biggest counter-argument was more theoretical.

01:28:06   It was more like, well, someone needs to push

01:28:10   the industry forward, and that's why Apple

01:28:13   needed to go all USB-C.

01:28:14   What about the original iMac going all USB, blah, blah, blah.

01:28:17   And most of those arguments were honestly pretty bad.

01:28:20   (laughs)

01:28:21   I disagree with many of those arguments.

01:28:23   I don't think we have time to talk about that.

01:28:25   I don't really care, but if we do, I will.

01:28:26   But for the most part, the response was just so positive,

01:28:31   and almost none of the people who disagreed

01:28:34   even mentioned the Touch Bar.

01:28:35   Well, I guess it wasn't a surprise, honestly,

01:28:37   but it was damning, I would say,

01:28:40   how few people cared about the Touch Bar.

01:28:41   People cared about Touch ID sometimes.

01:28:43   Even that, not as often as I would have expected.

01:28:46   But for the most part, the Touch Bar

01:28:49   didn't get much of a mention.

01:28:51   The new keyboard does have some fans,

01:28:53   people who said, "You know, I prefer it, and that's fine.

01:28:55   I get that if you prefer it, that's fine.

01:28:57   I think we can all still agree that it's unreliable

01:29:00   for a lot of people and that's a big problem,

01:29:01   but for the people who like it, you can like it, that's fine

01:29:05   but I think the whole package of the old one,

01:29:07   I just love so much and it just is a workhorse.

01:29:11   It just works and works and works for years

01:29:13   and some people did point out

01:29:16   that that generation has had its issues.

01:29:18   The first one I got in 2012 had image retention.

01:29:20   That was a common thing.

01:29:21   That's why I made my little grid page.

01:29:23   It was for the 2012 Red Am I Pro

01:29:24   and over the years they seem to have fixed that.

01:29:27   So that had some issues with some of those early screens,

01:29:29   if they were made by LG instead of Samsung.

01:29:32   That it had this continued screen delamination problem

01:29:37   for some people, that hasn't ever affected me, but oh well.

01:29:41   And the ones with discrete GPUs,

01:29:44   as every MacBook Pro with a discrete GPU has had

01:29:47   in the last probably decade or so,

01:29:50   those GPUs tend to die at a higher rate than average.

01:29:53   And so that causes problems for people.

01:29:55   But not only have they all done that,

01:29:57   but we don't even know yet if the current generation

01:30:00   will also do that.

01:30:01   I think it probably will.

01:30:03   So the overall, the response was great,

01:30:06   and pretty much everybody agrees with me,

01:30:08   I guess, except Casey.

01:30:10   - So I think your point is fair,

01:30:13   and I think part of the reason why you got

01:30:18   such good coverage of this is because you did take

01:30:21   the high road and said, "Hey, rather than telling you

01:30:23   why everything else is garbage. Let me tell you why this is good. And if that implicitly means that

01:30:27   other things are garbage, then so be it. The problem I have with it is that it is far more

01:30:35   absolute, or it reads as far more absolute than I think is really true. You know, this is the best

01:30:44   laptop ever made, period. It's not the best laptop for Marco. It's the best laptop ever made. And

01:30:49   And this is it. Look at your opening paragraph. "Apple's made many great laptops. The 15-inch

01:30:54   Retina MacBook Pro 2012-2015 is the epitome of usefulness, elegance, practicality, and

01:30:58   power for an overall package that still hasn't been and may never be surpassed." Like, it's

01:31:04   not an unreasonable thesis, but I feel like to some degree this entire article was "That's

01:31:09   fine for Marco." And that's okay. I mean, it's marco.org. It's not people that are like

01:31:15   marco.org. It's marco.org. So I mean, to some degree, I really need to give you a buy on this.

01:31:19   But that's, I think, where my primary complaint lies, is that there are other uses for Mac laptops,

01:31:26   besides what you need to do. As an example, a lot of people, and I think you were one of them,

01:31:33   had many, many beehives full of bees in their bonnets about the removal of the SD card slot.

01:31:43   And you were particularly perturbed about the removal of the SD card slot.

01:31:49   Obviously I have no idea how many people do or do not use the SD card slot, but I can

01:31:54   tell you that I had never ever ever used an SD card reader ever until 2014 when I bought

01:32:02   our big camera.

01:32:03   And I would argue that most people that I know anyway don't have big fancy cameras that

01:32:09   take SD cards.

01:32:11   So to me, if you were to lament the loss of the SD card slot, that's fine for Marco,

01:32:20   or really, I guess the loss is not fine for Marco, but you know what I mean.

01:32:24   For you, that's a big friggin' problem.

01:32:25   And I'm not trying to patronize you.

01:32:27   For you, that is a big friggin' problem.

01:32:30   That's a big deal.

01:32:32   But for me, it may not be, as it turns out it actually is.

01:32:34   But for the sake of discussion, it may not be.

01:32:37   Do you see what I'm driving at?

01:32:38   And so I think the thing is that I have one of these computers that I use every single

01:32:47   day, because that's my work computer.

01:32:49   And you know what?

01:32:50   It's a damn fine computer.

01:32:52   It really, really is.

01:32:53   But there's a lot that I wish was different about it.

01:32:56   As a perfect example, I wish it had the new keyboard, until it inevitably breaks.

01:33:01   But until that moment, I wish it had the new keyboard, because when I type on this thing,

01:33:06   When I go from my beloved Magic Keyboard to this, it feels like I've gone from a steel

01:33:12   roller coaster to a wooden roller coaster.

01:33:14   Everything is creaky and loose and just mushy and ugh, just gross.

01:33:21   And it's not fair of me to just hand-wave away the reliability problems of the new keyboards,

01:33:29   and I recognize that that's not fair.

01:33:32   But for me, I love the feel of the new keyboards.

01:33:34   If they could only make a reliable version of it, it would be tremendous.

01:33:37   - Well, but they haven't.

01:33:39   - And they haven't.

01:33:40   - So that's not a great counterargument.

01:33:41   Like until they do it, until they can make that keyboard without pretty horrible side

01:33:47   effects, then you can't say, "Well, I wish they had that keyboard everywhere," because

01:33:51   trust me, you don't.

01:33:53   - You're right.

01:33:54   And now, in my defense, my beloved MacBook Adorable has yet to have any keyboard problems

01:34:01   that compressed air couldn't fix.

01:34:03   (laughs)

01:34:05   But I haven't had, and to be fair to you,

01:34:09   I didn't have compressed air in the house.

01:34:11   I had to buy myself compressed air

01:34:13   to fix my six month old laptop.

01:34:15   - Yeah, like what year is this?

01:34:16   - That is pretty frickin' preposterous.

01:34:18   - And like, and how often did you have to use

01:34:20   compressed air to fix your keyboard

01:34:21   on the one that you don't like?

01:34:23   - Never. - Right.

01:34:25   - But it feels like mush though.

01:34:27   I mean, I see you're right, I really do.

01:34:28   I really do.

01:34:29   - And I do, I also, I wanna push back a little bit

01:34:32   on what you said about the SD card slot also,

01:34:34   because it seems like one of the counter arguments to this,

01:34:38   or one of the general arguments in support

01:34:39   of the new direction Apple has taken,

01:34:42   is the whole thing about moving forward and everything,

01:34:45   people always say, "Well, if Apple didn't move forward,

01:34:46   "we'd still have VGA ports."

01:34:48   And yeah, guess what, the world does still have VGA ports.

01:34:50   - I believe I made that exact argument to you.

01:34:52   - Right, you're not the only one.

01:34:53   But there seems to be a few brain virus themes

01:35:01   among Apple defenders, where they repeat back

01:35:05   some kind of dogma that doesn't actually apply very well,

01:35:08   or is not a very good argument.

01:35:10   And the iMac going all USB is a great one,

01:35:13   which doesn't apply at all, because that was

01:35:15   one desktop going all USB, a consumer level one no less,

01:35:20   in a lineup that had plenty of other options

01:35:22   that didn't go all USB.

01:35:24   And also, it went all USB and it was a big problem.

01:35:26   It was really annoying.

01:35:28   (laughing)

01:35:29   and then future versions added back a lot of ports

01:35:31   that weren't USB.

01:35:32   So that's one bad example.

01:35:36   There were other ones, things like VGA ports.

01:35:41   VGA ports, people still complain,

01:35:44   well yeah, you know what, VGA ports are still around

01:35:46   because they're still on a lot of projectors and stuff

01:35:47   and that's reality, that's fine.

01:35:50   There's all sorts of bad examples,

01:35:51   but I think one of the thought viruses

01:35:54   that is common among Apple defenders is that

01:35:59   If something is not used very often,

01:36:01   or by a large percentage of people, it should be removed.

01:36:04   That the removal in and of itself is progress.

01:36:08   And that's not always the case.

01:36:12   Like every Apple product, every desktop, every laptop,

01:36:18   every phone I have ever owned,

01:36:20   has features on it that I have never used.

01:36:23   For instance, on my MacBook Pro, on all MacBook Pros,

01:36:28   including the current ones.

01:36:30   I never use the front-facing camera for anything, ever.

01:36:34   I don't take selfies, and if I'm going to use FaceTime,

01:36:37   I use it on my phone or an iPad.

01:36:40   I never use the front-facing camera on a Mac for anything.

01:36:45   But it has them.

01:36:47   Should they remove the front-facing camera

01:36:48   because I don't use it?

01:36:50   No, because its presence there doesn't affect me in any way.

01:36:54   It's an inexpensive part, very inexpensive,

01:36:57   Apple never updates them and they're always terrible.

01:36:59   But it's an inexpensive part.

01:37:02   It doesn't add a meaningful amount of size or weight

01:37:05   or technical complexity in a way that gets in my way at all.

01:37:08   And for the few people who do use them, it's there.

01:37:12   And if I ever really need it, it's there for me too.

01:37:16   So even if I think I'll never use it, it's there.

01:37:18   Similarly, I never use video output on my laptops

01:37:23   because that's just not how I use laptops.

01:37:24   I don't have to connect them to projectors really ever,

01:37:27   and I don't use it at home like that.

01:37:29   And so I never used the HDMI port on my laptops

01:37:33   when they still had those,

01:37:34   and with the new ones I never use video output

01:37:36   on them either.

01:37:37   Should they remove it because not a lot of people use it?

01:37:40   No, because it doesn't get in the way at all.

01:37:42   It doesn't matter at all that I never use it.

01:37:44   It's not a problem in my life at all.

01:37:47   If I ever need it, it's there,

01:37:49   and it's there without me having to buy anything.

01:37:51   So like, if I happen to be like, in a hotel room

01:37:54   or something, and all of a sudden, oh, crap,

01:37:56   I have a quick need to show something from my laptop

01:37:59   on this TV that has an HDMI port.

01:38:01   I can just take a regular HDMI cable

01:38:03   that's probably already behind the TV,

01:38:05   unplug it from whatever garbage DVD player

01:38:06   that's already there, and plug it into my laptop,

01:38:08   and I didn't need to go to an Apple store and buy a dongle.

01:38:11   I can use what I already have,

01:38:14   and that will probably suffice.

01:38:16   That is called versatility.

01:38:18   So when a computer has things on it

01:38:21   that you might not think you need,

01:38:24   there is still value to have them be available

01:38:27   just in case you do need them sometime.

01:38:30   And as long as they are not really getting in the way,

01:38:32   it was not necessary when designing the 2012 MacBook Pro

01:38:38   to get rid of all these ports for like

01:38:41   fitness or lightness reasons or anything else.

01:38:44   They're all pretty thin, they're all pretty light,

01:38:45   they don't add a lot of cost or complexity or anything else.

01:38:47   that they left them in because people use them sometimes.

01:38:51   On the new ones, I don't know the details

01:38:54   of exactly what would have fit in the slightly thinner case.

01:38:58   By the way, using the old one,

01:39:00   don't notice the thickness difference at all,

01:39:02   don't notice the weight difference at all, but that's fine.

01:39:04   You might, that's good for you.

01:39:06   In the new ones, would it have killed them?

01:39:09   Could they have included an SD card slot

01:39:11   for people who use that and need that?

01:39:14   I think they probably could.

01:39:16   Could they have included any other ports?

01:39:18   I think probably yes.

01:39:20   They didn't as a feature, because the thinking that

01:39:24   removing things is itself a feature has infected Apple

01:39:27   to the highest levels, in addition to the Apple defenders.

01:39:30   So now, Apple views it as progress or courage,

01:39:34   whatever word they wanna use,

01:39:35   and all the defenders support this,

01:39:38   that removing things is itself a commendable thing

01:39:42   and it's quote, "moving forward,"

01:39:44   which is a meaningless phrase,

01:39:45   moving forward only means doing what we did this year.

01:39:47   Like it's not, there is no such thing,

01:39:49   like moving forward suggests there's like a certain,

01:39:51   like there's one future that you're moving towards

01:39:53   inevitably and that's not true at all,

01:39:55   like you create that future.

01:39:56   Anyway, that's a BS phrase that bothers me.

01:39:58   But the idea that removing things is itself

01:40:03   something that we should do as soon as we can,

01:40:04   we should drop things as soon as we can,

01:40:07   that's not true for everything.

01:40:09   And I think the more high-end and pro you get

01:40:12   computing gear, the less true that becomes.

01:40:15   Because what pros need is not only for their gear,

01:40:19   including their keyboards, to work incredibly reliably,

01:40:21   as reliably as possible, but also pros need that versatility.

01:40:25   Pros need the idea that if you're gonna be traveling

01:40:28   somewhere with your gear or on a set,

01:40:31   or in some kind of production environment,

01:40:33   and something comes up that you didn't foresee,

01:40:36   and because you didn't foresee it,

01:40:38   you probably don't have the right dongle.

01:40:41   If it's true pro gear, it will try to accommodate

01:40:44   as many of those situations as possible.

01:40:46   That's what pros actually need.

01:40:48   And Apple has been great at doing that in the past.

01:40:52   And now they're really taking, I think,

01:40:55   a pretty quick nosedive in that area.

01:40:58   And I really, really love so much of the old one

01:41:02   because it has so much of this versatility.

01:41:05   And the new one took such a stark change,

01:41:09   such a rapid turn.

01:41:11   in the other direction. That's why it bugs me so much.

01:41:14   See, and I understand everything you just said. And I can't, with an honest heart, sit

01:41:21   here and say you're wrong. But I can say I look at it differently. You said just a moment

01:41:26   ago, if it's true pro-gear, it will try to accommodate as many of these situations, these

01:41:31   basically "oh crap" situations, as possible. There is a very compelling argument that you

01:41:37   just made, that the best way to do that is to have as many ports as possible on that

01:41:42   device and as many different kinds of ports as possible on that device. But another approach

01:41:48   is, what if you had one port that can do anything? In which case, yes, you're right, Marco,

01:41:55   that I would have to carry an HDMI dongle with me. Full stop, there's nothing I can

01:41:59   do to argue that fact.

01:42:00   And buy one for $80.

01:42:01   And, well, I didn't pay $80 for mine, but you're still more right than you are wrong.

01:42:05   I would have to buy one. But the fact of the matter is, for any situation that I, Casey,

01:42:12   could possibly face, any situation that I would want to be prepared for, I have three

01:42:21   different USB-C things that I would need to carry with me, none of which are particularly

01:42:25   large. One of them is triple old USB and Ethernet. One of them is HDMI and pass-through USB-C,

01:42:32   by the way, has a old USB on it. And what was the other one? Shoot. Oh, the USB-C to

01:42:38   Lightning adapter. Which, truth be told, I could just use one of the dongles and a traditional

01:42:44   cable. So, I think the problem is, is that your perception of versatility is requiring

01:42:54   nothing but the device. And my, I shouldn't say that I don't agree with that. I'm implying

01:43:00   I don't agree with you. I do agree with you. But another perception of versatility is we

01:43:07   have one port that can do friggin' anything. It can do anything. So if you need an SD card

01:43:14   reader, Marco, and actually I do, and come to think of it, maybe that would be number

01:43:18   four, dongle number four, but nevertheless...

01:43:20   Yeah, they multiply. It's like cats. You think you have two, and then, you know, eventually

01:43:23   you get six.

01:43:24   It may be more like rabbits than cats, but we're saying the same thing. But you know

01:43:28   know what I mean? Like, finding an SD card reader, then fine. I paid $10 or $12 or whatever

01:43:33   it was on Monoprice to get one. But for Erin, who doesn't need one, she doesn't have to

01:43:39   have one. Her computer has one. I know you're ruining my point. You know what I'm saying,

01:43:46   though? You know what I'm saying? And so what was the other one? Oh, like Ethernet ports.

01:43:51   Like no normal human needs Ethernet ports anymore. I do because I'm a weirdo. You do

01:43:56   because you're a weirdo. But no normal human needs Ethernet ports anymore. And this is

01:44:00   where the entire Internet's going to write in and say, "Oh, actually, you really do need

01:44:03   Ethernet ports for this, that, and the other." Okay, fine, whatever. But I would say most

01:44:07   people who buy MacBook Pros don't need Ethernet ports. And I think the problem that you and

01:44:11   I have is actually the same problem. And although we disagree on the best possible mechanism

01:44:16   for fixing the problem, I think I share most of your complaints, and I think that by and

01:44:23   large were of the same mind, even if we're arguing about the particulars. And I think

01:44:27   the real honest to goodness problem, and I read this, I'm parroting somebody, maybe it

01:44:31   was you for all I know, but somebody said to me, maybe it was Jon, somebody said recently,

01:44:35   the problem is the lack of diversity in the lineup. That is, is that who it was? Okay,

01:44:40   thank you. There's no like 17 inch aircraft carrier option. And I bring that up not because

01:44:47   I think 17 inches is the right answer. Although here again, all the fanboys with 17 are going

01:44:51   to come out of the woodwork. But there's no way for you to get the Mac Pro, God help me,

01:44:57   of laptops, right? There's no way for you to say, "Money be damned, maybe even portability

01:45:05   be damned, maybe." I want the most flexible, versatile device I can get, by both definitions.

01:45:13   I want a couple of USB-C ports, I want a couple of USB whatever the hell the old one is, I want

01:45:19   SD card reader? Hell, give me a thicker computer so I can have onboard Ethernet. I'll take it,

01:45:25   whatever." And I think the problem is that there's no option for that. And so I think

01:45:31   it would make all of us feel better if there was an option. Because at least then we could say,

01:45:38   "You know what? I really don't want to have to buy the aircraft carrier laptop, but it's worth

01:45:44   it to me because I want all of these things." And that's what stinks. And I think that,

01:45:49   and it might have been you that said months ago, the problem with—one of the problems

01:45:54   with MacBook Pro is that "pro" implies things. But the reality of the situation is the MacBook

01:45:59   Pro is the every person computer, unless you want an adorable, which I would argue is a

01:46:04   much more niche device. Or a MacBook Air, of course. But does that make sense? Like,

01:46:09   the MacBook Pro is covering college students who are doing nothing but Google Docs all

01:46:14   way up through, you know, people doing Final Cut Pro on film sets and doing 3D rendering

01:46:21   or VR development.

01:46:22   Yeah, spoiler, VR people can't use MacBook Pros right now.

01:46:25   Yeah, exactly.

01:46:26   But maybe down the road with the external GPUs, yes I know, okay.

01:46:30   Right, so I think the problem is what Snell had said, I think a little while ago now,

01:46:36   was that there is no choice.

01:46:39   And that means that if I want to choose to have more ports,

01:46:44   or if I wanna choose to have a laptop

01:46:47   that is actually reliable,

01:46:48   or a keyboard that's actually reliable,

01:46:50   I'm screwed, 'cause I got nothing.

01:46:52   Then I'm buying a ThinkPad,

01:46:54   and that's not a fun place to be.

01:46:55   - Or 2015, which is still a valid choice.

01:46:57   It won't be forever, but right now it is.

01:47:00   - Yeah.

01:47:01   - No, I mean, that's all very, very fair.

01:47:03   And I will say also, you know,

01:47:04   to refute something in the book,

01:47:06   you didn't quite argue,

01:47:07   but that people will hear in your argument

01:47:09   and will argue with me against it.

01:47:11   (laughing)

01:47:11   Sorry.

01:47:13   USB-C can be great.

01:47:15   The idea of having versatile USB-C ports on a laptop

01:47:20   is great, and you're right that USB-C ports

01:47:23   can offer a great degree of versatility.

01:47:26   My problem with USB-C, one of my problems with USB-C,

01:47:29   I wrote a whole article about some other ones,

01:47:31   but one of my problems with USB-C is that

01:47:35   I don't think the ecosystem is ready

01:47:38   for that to be our only port.

01:47:40   I think the last year or so has really supported that view

01:47:44   that the ecosystem just is not there,

01:47:48   and it's going to maybe be a few more years before it's there

01:47:50   and one of the counterarguments I've heard

01:47:52   over the last few days about this is

01:47:55   Apple needed to do this because it would push the industry

01:47:57   to finally make more USB-C peripherals,

01:47:59   just like the iMac pushed them to make USB peripherals.

01:48:03   Two things, A, the iMac didn't push them

01:48:05   to make USB peripherals, the iMac wasn't that popular,

01:48:08   relative to the entire world of PCs.

01:48:10   The entire world of PCs was already making USB peripherals.

01:48:13   They were going to make them anyway,

01:48:14   and it just so happened that the Mac benefited

01:48:16   from some of them with the iMac.

01:48:18   Secondly, the idea that Apple going all USB-C

01:48:23   will push the industry to make USB-C peripherals,

01:48:27   that's a great theory.

01:48:28   So far, it hasn't happened.

01:48:31   The original USB-C MacBook,

01:48:33   the MacBook One/Adorable/12-inch,

01:48:36   came out now, what, two and a half years ago?

01:48:38   That was the first Mac with USB-C port,

01:48:40   and MacBook Pros went all USB-C now a little over a year ago,

01:48:45   and we still have a fairly immature,

01:48:48   fairly incomplete, and fairly unreliable

01:48:52   selection of USB-C gear out there.

01:48:54   It's still a really immature and inconsistent market

01:48:57   that has a lot of big holes in it.

01:49:00   I don't think that the industry has been forced by Apple

01:49:04   to make great stuff.

01:49:06   The reality is there's a lot of mediocre crap,

01:49:08   and some of it's good, most of it isn't.

01:49:11   I think if Apple would've continued to ship old ports

01:49:15   alongside USB-C, basically like,

01:49:18   if USB-C ports became the new Thunderbolt ports,

01:49:21   where most Apple laptops would have two of them,

01:49:24   along with other ones, you know,

01:49:27   Maybe even have four of them on the MacBook Pro,

01:49:30   on the big ones, you know,

01:49:32   'cause you know, you can do that.

01:49:36   They're pretty small, they're, you know,

01:49:38   they have very high technical needs.

01:49:40   You know, the idea that all of them can be

01:49:42   charging ports and Thunderbolt ports

01:49:44   means that Apple pretty much can't make, say,

01:49:48   a 15-inch with six of them or eight of them

01:49:51   because they can do too much.

01:49:53   You know, whereas like the old ones,

01:49:56   you can connect a total of more devices

01:49:59   before you have to go to dongles or hubs,

01:50:01   because some of those ports are pretty simple to add.

01:50:05   They're pretty low-needs, dumb ports on the old ones.

01:50:09   But when every single port you add

01:50:11   has to be able to charge the computer

01:50:12   and be a Thunderbolt port by your own design,

01:50:15   you can't have as many of them.

01:50:17   You run into issues with maximum bandwidth

01:50:19   on the Thunderbolt controllers, chipsets,

01:50:22   costs, running wires, et cetera.

01:50:24   So I think the better way to do this transition

01:50:28   would have been, you know, have an actual transition happen,

01:50:32   not just like jumping into the deep end with all USB-C,

01:50:34   to have an intermediary generation,

01:50:37   or at least like a high-end model,

01:50:38   like at least the 15-inch,

01:50:40   where there's more room for things

01:50:41   and more budget for things.

01:50:43   Have an intermediate where like,

01:50:45   you basically have some of the old ports

01:50:48   and an SD card reader and stuff like that,

01:50:50   and then you have replaced Thunderbolt ports

01:50:52   with USB-C ports.

01:50:54   That would have been great.

01:50:55   If that laptop would ever exist from Apple,

01:50:58   that would have a high chance of being

01:51:00   the best laptop ever,

01:51:01   because then you'd have all the versatility of USB-C,

01:51:03   you have the higher bandwidth for the higher needs of it

01:51:06   for things like 5K displays, that would be awesome.

01:51:09   But then you don't have to, I don't think,

01:51:11   I think in this world, I don't think you have to

01:51:13   give up the versatility of having one or two USB-A ports

01:51:17   on there also, and having an SD card reader,

01:51:20   and maybe an HDMI port, because these are things

01:51:22   that are either difficult, clunky, or unreliable

01:51:25   to do with adapters and dongles so far,

01:51:28   that would have been a very different reception

01:51:30   to this machine, I think, than what we actually got.

01:51:34   - John, you've been quiet.

01:51:36   - I did already talk a lot about this

01:51:38   on today's episode of Upgrade, so if you wanna hear--

01:51:40   - Oh, I haven't heard it, I haven't heard it.

01:51:41   - More in-depth commentary for me on this,

01:51:43   but one thing I didn't talk about specifically

01:51:46   about this article is, and I just scrolled through it again

01:51:49   to see if I was mistaken, I seem to have recalled

01:51:52   something in the article that's not actually there, but I think it's kind of implied,

01:51:56   and this is not really the substance of what either or two of you are talking about, so

01:52:00   I apologize.

01:52:01   But the title is "The Best Laptop Ever Made," and the implied thing that I thought was there

01:52:06   but doesn't seem to be is that part of what makes it the best is what Marco was talking

01:52:12   about before, that it's not actually that much slower than the current ones, because

01:52:16   Intel's progress on their laptop CPUs hasn't been that great, and because, you know, they

01:52:22   it's not, it doesn't feel like you're using an old computer. And part of that, like, that's what

01:52:27   I'm wrapping up, and it's like, "Okay, well, I can see where you come from in this article,

01:52:30   because if that's part of your definition, what that does is it excludes all the other laptops.

01:52:37   It excludes the PowerBook 100 and 170. It excludes the Wall Streets. It excludes the

01:52:42   TiBook. It excludes the 13-inch MacBook Air. Because all those are really old and really

01:52:46   slow by modern standards, or don't have retina screens, or don't have color screens, or whatever

01:52:51   the case may be, right? And if you narrow your definition in that way, the only real

01:53:00   contenders are the other laptops that can kind of hang with the modern ones. So that's

01:53:05   basically just this generation, which Apple still sells, and maybe one generation before

01:53:10   you can make some arguments for it, depending on how you're going to do trade-offs or whatever.

01:53:14   And I think that narrowing of the definition lessens the idea that this is the best laptop

01:53:22   ever made.

01:53:23   Because if I'm thinking of the best laptop ever made, I'm not going to put that qualifier

01:53:26   on.

01:53:27   I'm not going to say, "Oh, by the way, it has to be something that I could reasonably

01:53:30   use today and it wouldn't feel slow."

01:53:32   Because that excludes too many great laptops.

01:53:36   And I think most people took that implicit framing.

01:53:39   Because if they didn't, everyone would be coming out of the woodwork and saying they're

01:53:43   old favorite laptop from like 20 years ago or something, right, is the best one.

01:53:47   Arguably the ThinkPad people are actually doing that, but I don't know.

01:53:50   Modern ThinkPads are really as great as whatever one they're trying to cite.

01:53:52   I have no idea.

01:53:53   They're not.

01:53:54   Even I would probably go for like the 2011-ish 13-inch MacBook Air as a better overall laptop

01:54:00   than this one, because this 15-inch, like, you know, you've heard my complaints before,

01:54:04   but like design-wise, like the keyboard is too small, the arrow keys should be full-sized,

01:54:10   like the current ones, but like an actual inverted T that extends downward from the

01:54:13   keyboard. Like it is very wide at large and not particularly portable as far as portables

01:54:20   go. And I just feel like the 13 inch Air is a better laptop, but you're not going to use

01:54:24   a 13 inch Air to get your job done today. It is slower and it's worse and it's non-retina

01:54:28   and it's just, you know, it's not a better laptop than this, but if you do best ever

01:54:32   made, you know, so that, so anyway, that is more of a meta issue that I think, you know,

01:54:38   I think most people took it in the spirit that Marco intended it, but the title doesn't

01:54:44   reflect that.

01:54:45   And that the spirit Marco intended it excludes, saves him from a lot of criticism that would

01:54:52   be warranted if the scope was widened up.

01:54:55   Because honestly, I don't think this laptop in the pantheon of Apple laptops is the best

01:55:02   one or two or three.

01:55:04   Like it's maybe in the top five, really, but it really depends.

01:55:09   I was never in love with this model of laptop and there are a lot of things about it that

01:55:14   are suboptimal.

01:55:16   It only really shines when you consider that, hey, it's still a pretty great laptop.

01:55:21   And when you, whether, again, implied and not explicitly stated, when you start to compare

01:55:26   it to the 2016 and 2017 ones, because I don't think those laptops struck a good balance

01:55:33   and I don't think a lot of people really love them and I think the touch bar is kind of

01:55:36   a dud and all the things that we talked about a million times that that sort of the opposite

01:55:40   of reflected glory like you know as compared to the current line suddenly this 2015 looks

01:55:46   a hell of a lot better and I feel like that sort of the opposite of the basking in the

01:55:51   reflected glory like I've been basking in the reflected crappiness of the the modern

01:55:56   ones is what makes this laptop seem so great so I think this is more like how Marco has

01:56:02   found love with an older computer.

01:56:06   That's really not that much older, but is less about in the pantheon of all laptops

01:56:12   or even just all Apple portables how great this one particular model is, because there

01:56:17   are many things to not recommend this model, and when I look at it all I can see these

01:56:20   little things.

01:56:21   I've always complained about it, that I just feel like this exact laptop could have

01:56:24   been better with all the same features.

01:56:26   But that's not what we're talking about here.

01:56:28   I'm sorry to get hung up on that, but that's what I came away from Zorig with.

01:56:31   The larger point about the balance being struck, what I'm, you know, what Mark said before

01:56:36   that so many people agree with it.

01:56:38   The main thing I kind of can't get past is the idea that like so many of the people,

01:56:47   it's just so often when you complain about an Apple product, you're like, "I don't know

01:56:50   what Apple should have done instead, but I don't like this one."

01:56:54   And it's not really helpful and it's kind of Apple's job to figure out like, you know,

01:56:57   it's not customer's job to tell Apple exactly what to do.

01:57:00   They just can be satisfied or not satisfied, and their customer sat numbers are what they

01:57:04   are.

01:57:05   But in the case of the new laptops, I think people who have complaints know exactly what

01:57:12   they specifically want.

01:57:14   That it would be so easy to make a laptop that would satisfy all the people who are

01:57:19   dissatisfied with the current one.

01:57:21   And maybe it's 17 different laptops from 17 different people, but there's no mystery.

01:57:26   Like, and again, just, you know, experience of dealing with this and going to conference

01:57:30   rooms.

01:57:31   If you're in a conference room every single day and you constantly have to deal with that

01:57:34   dongle to plug in HDMI, all those people are not, there's no mystery.

01:57:38   They say, "Put an HDMI port on it," right?

01:57:40   I would be, you know, "Can you make this computer better?

01:57:44   Put MagSafe on it, put an HDMI port, put an SD port on it."

01:57:47   And throw that in front of all these people?

01:57:49   Actually, that would probably be enough.

01:57:51   It really would.

01:57:52   And they'll be like, "Well, you know, I don't use the HDMI, but I care about the SD.

01:57:56   I don't use the SD, but I care about the HDMI.

01:57:58   I don't really care about MagSafe,

01:57:59   but it's so easy to just say,

01:58:02   it's not a mystery what you need to do, Apple.

01:58:04   Make it slightly different, slightly different feature set.

01:58:07   Like Marco said, you don't have to have all the ports,

01:58:09   but everyone loves all the USB-C and Thunderbolt,

01:58:12   and those are all great and everything.

01:58:13   Just a few little tweaks here and there,

01:58:14   and don't make the keyboard so damn small

01:58:16   to make me happy and make it more reliable, right?

01:58:19   They're close, but everybody knows.

01:58:21   It's an open secret.

01:58:23   How can you make these?

01:58:24   It's like, wow, I wonder how we can make these more appealing.

01:58:26   We all know how to do it.

01:58:27   More ports, better ports, like bigger keyboard,

01:58:31   arrow keys that are easier to find, reliable.

01:58:34   Like it's right there, and the touch bar, you know,

01:58:38   do you need it, do you not need it, no one really loves it.

01:58:39   I don't even know how to go with that.

01:58:41   And that's what's frustrating.

01:58:42   Normally if people don't like something

01:58:44   or it's unsatisfactory in some way,

01:58:45   they don't know like exactly how to fix it.

01:58:47   And this, the solutions just seem so obvious.

01:58:50   And not to say that that's what Apple should do,

01:58:52   because we're always asking Apple like,

01:58:53   don't do the obvious thing that people know that they want.

01:58:55   do the thing they didn't even know they wanted, right? That's Apple's job? So I'm not saying

01:58:59   Apple should do it. Right, exactly. But I'm not saying Apple should like, "Oh, just do

01:59:03   what people expect," right? They have to do what people don't expect. They have to try

01:59:08   to go above and beyond. They have to push the limits with touch ID and face ID and all

01:59:12   the things they do. But when they miss, then it starts to feel like, "Oh, I wish they had

01:59:18   just done the obvious thing." So what's the solution? Should they now backpedal and do

01:59:23   the obvious thing, or should they make try number two at the transcendent thing? And

01:59:28   I think Mark has criticized them a lot in the past of like, "Apple, don't feel like

01:59:32   you always have to, like every single time, be transcendent, because we wait too long

01:59:37   for these big transcendent things. And so if you miss one of them, nobody wants to wait

01:59:41   around for another five years of unsatisfying, unreliable laptops that are shaped like this.

01:59:49   Pedal and do the obvious thing while you regroup. And as I think I said, an upgrade, they could

01:59:57   be doing that right now. Hardware timelines being what they are, there's only so much

02:00:01   they can do in response to the dissatisfaction. And the final thing, we've been on this topic

02:00:06   for a while, but before we get off it, is Apple just reported its results and they're

02:00:10   selling a ton of Macs, and I think they're selling a ton of these laptops, and we're

02:00:14   just back to success heights problems. Yeah, people have complaints, but look at the numbers.

02:00:18   If the metrics you're looking at don't reflect the supposed dissatisfaction, then either

02:00:23   we're all wrong and we're in the minority and Apple is on the right path and everything

02:00:26   will be fine, or they're measuring things the wrong way.

02:00:31   So I think, based on vague hints from the roundtable that I continue to read things

02:00:38   into that Mac roundtable they had, and the fact that they did try to adjust the keyboard,

02:00:41   and the fact that the keyboards really do appear to have reliability problems, that

02:00:45   Apple will do something and make different decisions about the next major revision to

02:00:50   the laptop line. Not just putting rubber gaskets in the keys because that's all they could

02:00:54   do in the time allotted to them. But in whatever the next round of MacBook Pros that come out

02:01:04   that actually get to meaningfully incorporate the feedback that we feel like we're all

02:01:10   providing and that people may be providing with all their different servers or whatever,

02:01:14   I think Apple will make different choices, and I think they will make adjustments that

02:01:19   make these more satisfactory and perhaps will make Marco revisit whether this 2015 computer

02:01:25   is indeed the best laptop that Apple ever can make, because like he said, he really

02:01:29   hopes that that's not the case, and I think it won't be the case. He just needs to wait

02:01:33   a little bit longer.

02:01:34   All right, thanks for our sponsors this week. Simple Contacts, Squarespace, and Betterment,

02:01:39   and we will see you next week.

02:01:41   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

02:01:48   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

02:01:53   John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him

02:01:59   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

02:02:04   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

02:02:09   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

02:02:18   So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

02:02:22   Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C

02:02:27   USA, Syracuse, it's accidental

02:02:33   They didn't mean to, accidental

02:02:38   I think we have one obvious choice for the after show.

02:02:48   What is up with this Tesla Roadster?

02:02:50   Yeah.

02:02:51   Actually, honestly, I think the Semi might be the more interesting one, but…

02:02:56   You're wrong about that.

02:02:57   The Semi is not the more interesting one.

02:03:01   I mean, maybe more impactful or maybe they're both vaporware, but the Tesla Roadster is

02:03:06   obviously much more exciting.

02:03:08   So no snark or joke intended. Can you set up for me what this event was? Because I had

02:03:14   heard that there was going to be a Tesla event, but I really honestly didn't know much about

02:03:19   it. And I don't follow Tesla that closely, so I don't have a good feel for what the

02:03:23   significance of this event was.

02:03:25   Jon, I mean, I don't honestly, I don't follow them that closely. I never watch their

02:03:31   events live because I find them a little bit insufferable so I don't watch them. I just

02:03:37   kind of see what news comes out of them afterwards. So this was, as far as I know, this was an

02:03:43   event ostensibly to reveal the Tesla semi-truck and then the Roadster I think was the one

02:03:48   more thing even though it has been kind of teased for a little while but no one really

02:03:52   knew anything about it yet.

02:03:53   Yeah, that's my impression too. I also don't follow that closely but yeah, this was a semi-event

02:03:57   but I wasn't shocked to see the Roadster because this has been like an open secret for such

02:04:00   a long time, the Roadster was their first car, and they were going to revisit that,

02:04:04   it seemed like an obvious thing they were going to do, and guess what, they did it.

02:04:07   And I didn't watch it live either, I just caught the news after the fact.

02:04:11   But I think it's interesting because if you said, "Oh, Tesla's going to do a Roadster,"

02:04:14   that makes perfect sense, they make a big four-door sedan and they make a smaller four-door

02:04:17   sedan and their original car was the Roadster, and it's obvious that there's probably a market

02:04:22   for a sporty car, and so here's their sporty car.

02:04:25   But I was surprised at exactly the form this sporty car took in many respects.

02:04:35   So it's called the Roadster, but it's not a teatop.

02:04:44   There's not much air above your head.

02:04:47   Just before you even think about what this car does, if you look at it, it looks more

02:04:50   like a coupe with a section of the roof that comes off.

02:04:53   And I feel like the sort of open air--

02:04:55   - That's not unusual.

02:04:56   That's like Porsche was huge into that.

02:04:58   - No, but like even think of a--

02:05:00   - Was it a Targa, is that right?

02:05:02   - Even think of a, I know.

02:05:03   It's more like a Targa.

02:05:05   Even the Boxster has more open air,

02:05:06   let alone like a proper convertible, right?

02:05:09   So it is, it feels less open

02:05:12   than I would have expected it to be.

02:05:14   It looks just more like a coupe.

02:05:15   And so they have to call it a Roadster

02:05:17   because their first thing was called the Roadster

02:05:18   and there's like the family thing or whatever.

02:05:20   But what they've essentially made is, like you said,

02:05:22   a Targa type of thing, which is fine, it just doesn't match with the name.

02:05:27   And the second thing I was surprised by was, it's not just like, "Oh, here's a sportier,"

02:05:34   it's a two-door sporty version so you don't have to have a big family sedan, it's kind

02:05:38   of a fun sporty car.

02:05:40   It seemed like, in typical Tesla fashion, they were going for the jugular and saying,

02:05:46   "No, no, no, you don't understand, we're making a hypercar.

02:05:49   Look at these numbers."

02:05:50   Right, 250 mile an hour plus top speed, which is pretty impressive even for hypercars because

02:05:56   they generally tend to go for downforce at the cost of top speed unless you're talking

02:06:01   about the Veyron or something, or the Chiron or whatever the new one is.

02:06:05   0-16, 1.9 seconds, which is a very typical Elon Musk-y kind of number that I don't doubt

02:06:12   this car can hit, but you know they just wanted to have a number with a 1 in front of it for

02:06:16   the shock value.

02:06:18   Is it necessary? And then the price, like, it's, you know, 250 grand or whatever it is.

02:06:25   It's not like, "Oh, it's a sporty car." It's like, "No, here's our competitor to, you know,

02:06:31   the P1 or the LaFerrari or all, you know, the Porsche 918, only it's got an open top

02:06:38   on it." And the range, by the way, is 600 miles. It's like they -- I'm almost surprised

02:06:45   doesn't go faster than the Huron, put it that way.

02:06:48   It's almost surprising to me that they didn't say,

02:06:49   and by the way, the top speed is 327 miles an hour,

02:06:52   'cause why not?

02:06:53   Like, in Elon Musk fashion, this must be the best car

02:06:56   human beings have ever made.

02:06:58   It is faster, goes longer, you know, does everything,

02:07:01   you know, like, pulls 3.0 Gs, like detaches your retinas,

02:07:05   and it goes off the line.

02:07:06   And I feel like that's, oh, like, I don't,

02:07:12   I'm not sure, like this car is writing checks that Tesla probably can't cash because...

02:07:21   Oh, but it gets worse though.

02:07:23   Elon Musk on the 18th of November should clarify that this is the base model performance.

02:07:27   So it'll be a special option package that takes it to the next level.

02:07:31   And I think I complained in the neutral thing of like, "All right, so you want to make

02:07:36   a hypercar."

02:07:37   Maybe not the way I would have gone.

02:07:38   I would have just made a sporty car that costs 80 grand and you'd sell a lot of those and

02:07:41   be great and people would like them, but fine, you want to make a hypercar type thing?

02:07:46   There's more to hypercars than these particular numbers you put down.

02:07:50   Again, most of the reason that the hypercars that Top Gear or whatever have competing together,

02:07:54   the reason they don't go as fast as the Veyron, they consciously trade that for downforce

02:08:00   and handling because they're trying to go around a track quickly.

02:08:03   And when I see a 620 mile range, I think, is this a 5,500 pound hypercar?

02:08:09   once you start trying to turn 5,500 pounds around a track

02:08:13   suddenly all the power in the world is not really helping you because

02:08:17   You've got this big problem of this huge amount of momentum going into every single turn

02:08:22   and

02:08:24   So I feel like this car is not going to be able to compete with a Porsche 918 or a Ferrari or a P1

02:08:30   It's gonna get left behind on anything except for a straight line

02:08:33   And then so what is the market for this car people who only care about numbers?

02:08:37   but who never turn?

02:08:39   Do you just want to make an electric dragster?

02:08:40   Because you can make one of those.

02:08:43   It seems like a strangely misguided car in a way

02:08:48   that both the Model S and the Model 3

02:08:49   are not-- the Model X is kind of misguided

02:08:51   because of the stupid doors.

02:08:53   But I'm not sure--

02:08:56   I'm not sure they've-- even if they hit all their numbers

02:08:58   and this car is exactly what they say it is,

02:09:01   I'm not sure it is a car that makes sense in the price point

02:09:06   and market in which it competes. If I had 250 grand and I had to choose between this

02:09:11   and any of the other hypercars, I would choose any of the other hypercars in heart beat,

02:09:14   even if this is faster on the drag strip or whatever. Just because it doesn't seem to

02:09:20   deliver what is required to compete in that price range and that strategy. And like I

02:09:29   said, furthermore, I don't think Tesla needed to compete in this price range. It seems like

02:09:33   an ego exercise, they should have just made a really sporty fast version.

02:09:36   From Elon? No.

02:09:37   Yeah, exactly. It's on brand, but the Model S is so sensible. It's got so much room. The

02:09:44   packaging is so efficient. It's got the seats in the back. It's got all the safety stuff,

02:09:49   even the Model 3. So reasonable. You can make a really good sporty electric car for 80 grand.

02:09:57   Porsche's going to make one. Well, there's going to be 140, fine. But BMW's going to

02:10:02   make them like people are gonna make that Tesla's just got to go no like

02:10:06   this will destroy your body and liquefy your organs just don't turn so much so

02:10:13   you're unimpressed no I'm impressed technically or whatever it just seems

02:10:18   like such a weird like I would not have predicted this if you said what do you

02:10:21   think Tesla Road is gonna be like it's no way in hell I would have said oh it's

02:10:25   gonna be 250 grand have a 600 mile range go over 250 miles an hour because none

02:10:29   of those specs, I wouldn't even target them. Why even target them?" The base model, 0-60

02:10:35   in 1.9 seconds. Oh, God. And maybe Elon's goal is eventually to make a car that will

02:10:43   kill him, like literally kill him. As he ages and his cars get faster, it would just press

02:10:50   his heart against the back of his rib page until it explodes, and then finally he will

02:10:54   have achieved, but you know, yeah.

02:10:57   - So Marco, as an owner, does this rev your engine?

02:11:00   (laughs)

02:11:02   Or are you kind of whatever about it?

02:11:04   - Well, when I first was aware that they were teasing

02:11:08   a new Roadster, I thought that might be kind of fun,

02:11:10   like as a future car, but I don't want to pay

02:11:14   this amount of money for a car, ever.

02:11:17   Like, this is not anything I would get at all.

02:11:22   Your family can fit in the, I'm sure,

02:11:24   very spacious back seats because it does have four seats.

02:11:27   I'm not sure where those four seats are

02:11:29   and all the pictures, I can't imagine where they might be.

02:11:31   But yeah, it might be hard getting the car seat back.

02:11:33   - They're in the trunk.

02:11:35   Yes.

02:11:35   (laughs)

02:11:36   I, this, like, so I kinda see where they're going with this.

02:11:41   I think what you have to realize here is that,

02:11:43   you know, what Tesla can do

02:11:45   that almost no one else can do yet

02:11:49   is just obscene speed from a stop,

02:11:51   like obscene zero to 60 times

02:11:55   with their electric drivetrains that like,

02:11:58   that's how they are able to compete

02:12:00   with supercars right now, is that stat.

02:12:02   There's a reason why they keep pushing that

02:12:05   with the Model S.

02:12:06   And there is probably a market of people

02:12:10   who are buying the Model S just because it's so damn fast,

02:12:14   but who don't actually need it to be

02:12:16   this big full-size sedan.

02:12:19   People who actually want something more sporty and small

02:12:22   and hopefully nimble like this.

02:12:25   Right now those people are buying the Model S

02:12:26   because that's what they have to buy to get the speed.

02:12:30   But I think there is probably a market of people

02:12:32   who would rather have this.

02:12:34   And I'm sure John is right that the range suggests

02:12:39   this is probably gonna be a heavy car.

02:12:41   We don't know what that means actually, how heavy.

02:12:45   The reason the range has to be so high is probably

02:12:50   because in order to dump out so much current at once

02:12:53   to get that insane acceleration,

02:12:54   it probably needs a ton of battery modules

02:12:57   wired up in parallel to be able to dump all that current out

02:13:00   and so they probably achieve the range

02:13:03   not as a goal in itself,

02:13:04   but just as the smallest amount of batteries

02:13:07   they could put in here to get the simultaneous current out

02:13:10   to push those motors so hard to get that acceleration.

02:13:14   So I'm guessing the range and the weight of those batteries

02:13:18   is actually more of an annoyance in the design than a goal.

02:13:22   Yeah, but the goal is probably like, oh, under two seconds,

02:13:25   right?

02:13:26   So if they just said 2.5 seconds instead,

02:13:27   suddenly the car gets much lighter.

02:13:29   2.5 seconds is still plenty fast.

02:13:31   And maybe the price can go down because most of the cost

02:13:33   is in the batteries in these cars.

02:13:35   And everything cascades from the desire

02:13:37   to have these three numbers up here to be so fantastical.

02:13:41   And yeah, so the range probably wasn't a primary goal.

02:13:43   and maybe as a side effect, but it's up there with one of the three numbers.

02:13:47   And top speed, that makes no sense.

02:13:50   Where are you going to be able to drive it that fast?

02:13:52   And the fact that it does have that kind of speed makes me wonder exactly how stable it

02:13:55   is at that speed, because you need a lot of downforce to keep your car from becoming a

02:14:00   kite at that speed.

02:14:02   But if you have a lot of downforce, it's very difficult to get above 250 miles an hour.

02:14:06   So I just…

02:14:07   It probably has a lot of weight.

02:14:09   Yeah, I know.

02:14:10   - And unlike most cars, the weight's very low,

02:14:12   so it does have some advantages there.

02:14:14   But I think ultimately, there's a pretty big portion

02:14:19   of the market of people who would buy this kind of car

02:14:24   who will never, ever, ever take it on a track,

02:14:28   who will never take a turn at very high speed,

02:14:30   and who don't care how it handles

02:14:34   going around a competition track.

02:14:37   There's a lot of people who buy supercars

02:14:40   because they like the way they look

02:14:42   like in their neighborhood and on the highway

02:14:44   and when they go shopping and people see them.

02:14:46   Like, that's a huge part of the market for these things.

02:14:50   I would say probably a very small percentage of owners

02:14:53   ever actually take them on a track.

02:14:55   - I think this falls down in that area too though

02:14:57   because it looks less exotic than all of the hypercars

02:15:00   that it is competing with due to its price range.

02:15:02   I mean, it looks fine.

02:15:03   I don't think it looks bad.

02:15:04   It looks good.

02:15:05   But if you saw that next to a LaFerrari,

02:15:08   it's clear which one of those looks more impressive,

02:15:12   especially people who don't know cars.

02:15:14   This looks fine, but all of the hypercars have,

02:15:19   I feel like, more aggressive and more exotic styling

02:15:23   than this, which just looks like a fairly nice sports car.

02:15:25   This looks to me like it should be

02:15:27   competing with the Porsche and BMW equivalents that

02:15:32   going to be less expensive, probably have slightly less performance, but will look about

02:15:37   the same as this.

02:15:38   Like, they won't look like the 918.

02:15:40   They'll look like, oh, you know, like a really cool futuristic electric Cayman.

02:15:44   That's not exactly what that looks like, but, you know, it's not—it doesn't even

02:15:48   fulfill, I feel like, the "impress a bunch of teenage boys driving down the road" type

02:15:54   of thing.

02:15:55   If—less they know what it is.

02:15:56   If they know what it is, obviously they're impressed, but if they don't know what it

02:15:58   is and I saw it rolling up next to a P1 and a Ferrari, they're all gonna stare at the

02:16:03   P1 and a Ferrari and this is gonna be looking like Top Gear whenever they take like an Audi

02:16:07   with them along with a bunch of other cars, no one looks at the Audi.

02:16:10   I don't know man, 'cause Tesla is their company, whereas the McLaren.

02:16:15   I'm saying they know what it is, but for non-car people you look at it like all the wings of

02:16:19   flares, this is a very smooth, it's a fine looking car, but it doesn't look like this,

02:16:25   even the, let me pull up the Porsche thing, you know what I'm talking about, even the

02:16:28   The Porsche one looks more futurey and stuff.

02:16:30   I think Tesla does have brand cachet, especially for people who know.

02:16:35   But for non-car people, the cachet is, "Ooh, that's the electric one," not, "Oh, that's

02:16:39   the one that does 0-60 in 1.9 seconds."

02:16:42   The problem they have is that a lot of the market who buys these kinds of cars wants

02:16:47   them to be really loud.

02:16:49   And this won't be.

02:16:51   They can pipe that in.

02:16:52   Just like you're in five.

02:16:53   Up to the outside?

02:16:54   Yeah, they'll just have really great recordings of—

02:16:58   Hell, you could use the same recordings that were in your M5.

02:17:02   I mean, it would be perfect.

02:17:03   I pasted a link to the Porsche Mission E thing.

02:17:07   I mean, it really is very similar.

02:17:09   It's very kind of rounded.

02:17:11   You know, styling cues probably more or less derived from Tesla.

02:17:15   Say, "This car looks electric.

02:17:17   How do you style a car on the outside to make it look electric?"

02:17:20   And I feel like obviously all Teslas look like that.

02:17:23   And when I look at the Porsche, I think, "Oh, that looks like..."

02:17:26   I can kind of tell that's electric because it's styled differently than their gas things.

02:17:29   And it's not just because it doesn't have big exhaust and a giant grill in the front,

02:17:33   gulping in air or whatever.

02:17:34   Honestly, this Mission E I don't think is an attractive vehicle, and I think the Roadster

02:17:38   is.

02:17:39   I would agree.

02:17:40   Also, that illuminated Porsche.

02:17:42   John, you can't talk about attractive vehicles because you hated the Alfa.

02:17:46   So we can just move on from your opinion.

02:17:49   I think that the Tesla and this Porsche are similar.

02:17:55   There are things that annoy me about both of them.

02:17:58   And this is not a production car, by the way.

02:18:00   I think this is their concept.

02:18:01   So who knows what the real one will look like.

02:18:03   But I like the front end of this Porsche.

02:18:04   It looks, to me, it has the family resemblance,

02:18:08   but it also looks futurey.

02:18:09   That I would agree with.

02:18:11   The same thing with the Roadster.

02:18:13   It has a family resemblance.

02:18:14   It looks better than all the other Teslas, as it should.

02:18:18   but it is a little bit, I don't know, I was going to say dumpy.

02:18:27   It's a little bit awkwardly proportioned.

02:18:30   It looks a little bit like a, not an ugly duck thing, but it's a little stunted.

02:18:33   Maybe it's because the wheelbase is short, you know, like it's, or the back overhang

02:18:38   is so, it just doesn't, it feels kind of like a, more like a toy car.

02:18:43   I mean it looks more like the Lotus Elise, you know, or the tiny Lotus Chassis that they

02:18:48   the original Roadster was based on, it doesn't look like the big, long, wide supercar that

02:18:56   you would expect based on these performance numbers.

02:18:58   Well, they already have a big, long, wide car. It's called a Tesla Model S, and it's

02:19:01   also really frickin' fast, and like supercar levels are fast.

02:19:05   It's not low, it's not, you know what I mean, like…

02:19:08   And so they made this to be like a much smaller, faster version.

02:19:13   Well, it's like a really fast Miata. That's what it's like, styling works.

02:19:18   out that that would be really fun. A really fast Miata would be awesome.

02:19:21   Yeah, but that doesn't compete in the same thing. It's like when you see it again,

02:19:24   when you see it next to a LaFerrari or a P1, those don't look like really fast Miatas.

02:19:28   They look like big hypercar-y things. I mean, all I can—to me, as someone who

02:19:35   mostly doesn't pay attention to hypercars and supercars, or any cars for that matter,

02:19:39   but I mostly am not in that world. I'm mostly unfamiliar with it. And if you put all the

02:19:48   cars you've mentioned like the Ferraris and the Porsches and the P1s and all the weird

02:19:53   things that were always on top gear, if you put those in a lineup and took their badges

02:19:58   off and you asked me which one was which, I probably wouldn't be able to identify any

02:20:01   of them. I have to imagine that's true of a lot of people, including many people who

02:20:06   would be buyers of these things.

02:20:07   You stop being a car person when you get your stick shift and your gasoline engine.

02:20:10   That's true, but I have a feeling a lot of potential customers of these kinds of cars

02:20:16   might not even recognize things like a P1 if they saw it.

02:20:19   You are, because you are not only a car nerd,

02:20:22   but you are also a car nerd who specifically loves

02:20:26   supercars, and I think most people aren't,

02:20:30   and including many of the people who buy them.

02:20:32   (laughs)

02:20:34   So many people buy them just as a money or prestige symbol,

02:20:39   or just to have fun, you know?

02:20:42   And I think that for many of those people,

02:20:46   the downsides that you are citing of this

02:20:50   and the comparisons you're making of it

02:20:51   to other supercars just won't apply.

02:20:54   - I just felt like the Model S never really got its due

02:20:58   in all the car magazines and car websites

02:21:02   because, and maybe it's again because

02:21:05   of track performance reasons,

02:21:06   that it's not even considered

02:21:09   when they have these performance tests

02:21:11   like sports sedans, it's always like, oh, it's BMW versus the Alpha, and the Alpha's

02:21:14   on top this year, whatever. No one ever includes the Model S. And in some respects, it's like

02:21:19   unfair because it's like, oh, that will be in the electric test, and of course it'll

02:21:22   be the best electric car because it's not much competition. It's like, you know, the

02:21:25   Model S versus the Chevy Volt, which one? Obviously. But when it comes to the sports

02:21:31   sedans, like, there is a practical reason, and it's like, look, if we brought in this

02:21:35   test, it would lose because it's just too damn heavy, right? It's never going to win

02:21:38   and it's a performance test that involved turning.

02:21:41   It's never gonna win, so it's not even fair to include it.

02:21:44   But the other thing is it's just such an oddball.

02:21:47   And I think that will start to change

02:21:50   when everybody else essentially comes out

02:21:52   with their Tesla competitors,

02:21:55   and suddenly it will make sense to,

02:21:58   the Tesla will be included in all these tests,

02:21:59   and there'll be less bias against it to say,

02:22:03   "Oh, that's the weird electric one,

02:22:05   "and it has such weird trade-offs

02:22:06   "that we don't even know how to measure it

02:22:07   "against the other ones."

02:22:08   become par for the course and that's where Tesla will really have to prove itself.

02:22:13   This car specifically, based on Tesla's, you know, the Tesla modifier of like, when they

02:22:19   say they're going to make a car, add how much to when you'll actually be able to get the

02:22:22   car, it's conceivable that by the time deliveries start happening for this car, that its competition

02:22:29   will have arrived and that it will no longer, like, these numbers are great and impressive

02:22:34   because you can't buy this car now.

02:22:36   I have no idea what the numbers are going to be for the BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, and

02:22:39   whatever else full electrics that are all inevitably coming.

02:22:45   And so unlike the Model S which got to enjoy this time as like the uncontested king of

02:22:50   electric cars, this may not enjoy that time.

02:22:56   This may arrive at the same time as everybody else and it may be much tougher to be impressive

02:23:01   now.

02:23:02   And that may also mean that all those other cars have exactly the same things that I'm

02:23:05   complaining about. They're all big and heavy because they have to be because of the battery

02:23:08   packs or whatever. Or it could be that those cars make different trade-offs and those only

02:23:12   get to 60 in 3.2 seconds, but they trade that for being much lighter weight and we'll see

02:23:17   how that shakes out of what kind of things you want or don't want. Or maybe they could

02:23:21   be more aggressively styled or half the price or double the price. That's where I think

02:23:25   it'll be more interesting, but right now this is like a category unto itself in much the

02:23:31   same way that I guess the Model S was in the beginning, but unlike the Model S, which makes

02:23:36   sense both on paper and in reality, this car does not yet make sense to me. So send me

02:23:42   one to test. I'll tell you what I think about it.

02:23:44   Well, they wouldn't send it to you. They'd send it to Casey, because he's our car journalist.

02:23:47   Yep. I have dibs.

02:23:48   Oh, he only does gasoline cars. Sorry.

02:23:50   Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

02:23:53   no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

02:23:54   is the engine note. He's gonna put a microphone next to the tailpipe of this thing and it'll make no noise.

02:23:59   It's a high-pitched whine.

02:24:00   You have not seen my video, but that is slightly...

02:24:04   Just record, like, the tire noise.

02:24:05   That's right. Listen to how it crunches over gravel.

02:24:08   (laughing)

02:24:10   (door slams)