0:00:00All right, we shouldn't be on this tangent. We got a lot of things to talk about.
0:00:04We can say that about almost every topic almost every week.
0:00:07Yeah, we can mean it this time.
0:00:08All right, so this week was our first real introduction to Apple Park and the Steve Jobs
0:00:15Theater at Apple Park, which we've all seen many, many, many pictures, most of which are beautiful
0:00:21of the Steve Jobs Theater and of Apple Park. I don't have the link handy, but Dan, is it from
0:00:28or Frommer? I always get it wrong.
0:00:29- I think it's Frommer.
0:00:31- There you go. Well, Dan, we apologize.
0:00:32But anyway, we will try to find wherever the link was
0:00:36that flew by earlier today, wherein he had like
0:00:39a little photo essay of his day at the Steve Jobs Theater,
0:00:42and the pictures are beautiful and really well done,
0:00:45and so you can check that out.
0:00:47But it was a neat event.
0:00:49It was interesting that we knew a lot.
0:00:53We didn't know some things, and that's cool too.
0:00:56And I guess, do we want to start with just a kind of opening remark or do we want to
0:01:02just dive right in?
0:01:03- We're going chronological like we always do.
0:01:05What's the first thing that it did to Steve Jobs tribute?
0:01:07- To Steve Jobs tribute, yeah.
0:01:08- Oh my word.
0:01:09- I thought, honestly, I thought it was excellent.
0:01:11You know, they had to say something.
0:01:15If they're dedicating the theater to him and naming it after him, they had to say something
0:01:19and I think they did a remarkably good job of it.
0:01:23Tim delivered it really well.
0:01:24It was very well designed and written.
0:01:26It was really great to hear a recording of Steve
0:01:29saying some stuff.
0:01:31And honestly, I did not recognize that quote.
0:01:33And I've heard it from other podcasters,
0:01:35didn't seem to know where it came from either.
0:01:37That was new to me.
0:01:38- I remember it.
0:01:38I would have picked a different quote.
0:01:40He said so many things.
0:01:41(laughing)
0:01:42That's the one I picked.
0:01:43Anyway, no, I remember him.
0:01:45- Yeah, no, I remember him.
0:01:46- I know we're supposed to be talking about
0:01:48how much we love Steve Jobs and miss him,
0:01:49but that particular quote reminds me
0:01:53of some of the worst aspects of Steve Jobs,
0:01:58because it was about like how some people express their,
0:02:02you know, their love for humanity
0:02:04by making great things for people.
0:02:06Tinged with a little bit like,
0:02:08I may not do nice things, but I make really cool hardware.
0:02:13Like as a, he said that before of like, you know,
0:02:16when people complained to him about, you know,
0:02:18doing things that are not nice or not giving to charity
0:02:21or whatever, he's like, my time is,
0:02:22I would do more good for the world by making an awesome phone, which is possibly true,
0:02:27right?
0:02:28But also a nice way for him to excuse himself from doing nice things.
0:02:33And I was reminded of that aspect by that quote.
0:02:35So I was like, please pick a different one.
0:02:36He's got so many good quotes.
0:02:37Don't pick the one that has a tiny touch of sort of rationalization baked right into it.
0:02:46But it's clear that most important thing was not the quote or the pictures or anything
0:02:50like that.
0:02:51It's clear that Tim still does miss him and had real emotion.
0:02:55You know, the reason that segment took longer than you would think is he paused a lot
0:02:58between talking and I don't think that's an act. I think everybody really does miss Steve Jobs,
0:03:03including Tim, probably every time he gets up on that stage and thinks,
0:03:07"Boy, Steve would do this better than me," which is true.
0:03:09Oh, poor Tim.
0:03:11He does fine, but I'm just saying, just like he said, Steve loved days like today,
0:03:15and he would have loved to announce this new phone and everything, right? And just,
0:03:19that's the worst time to think about it, you know, like that's what he lived for.
0:03:22All the hard work and all the yelling at people and driving everyone to be their best and everything
0:03:27to get to go up there and to announce it, he loved that. And so them having to talk about like,
0:03:33here we are in this theater, you know, that he would have loved the theater, he would have
0:03:36loved to announce these things, but instead it's us and we'll do the best we can.
0:03:39- I think if you were not holding back tears during that segment, you're not wired up right.
0:03:45it was incredibly moving and very very well done and very fitting to what they were doing
0:03:50and you know to the time and everything. I do agree with what Jason Snell said on Upgrade
0:03:55this week which he was saying this is probably the last we're going to hear about Steve
0:03:58from Ample for a long time and I think that's probably right. It has, he's been gone for
0:04:02a very long time. This was a very fitting time to pay him tribute in this way but I
0:04:09wouldn't expect them to make a regular habit of it even when doing events in this theater.
0:04:14But it was a really, really nice thing.
0:04:16And I'm glad they did it,
0:04:17and I'm glad they did it the way they did it.
0:04:19- Yeah, and I think the important point,
0:04:21well, first of all,
0:04:22there never is an occasion to talk about Steve Jobs.
0:04:24Like, they can make one every single time they do anything.
0:04:26They could, but they don't, right, to their credit.
0:04:28And this, the intro part that I thought was fitting
0:04:33was the explanation of, you know,
0:04:36not explaining why they're talking about him now,
0:04:38'cause obviously the theater is dedicated to him,
0:04:39he's got his name on it, like that's the time to do it,
0:04:41right, but also that enough time has passed
0:04:44that Apple and we all in the audience
0:04:48can have some more perspective on it.
0:04:50So it's not as fresh as it was.
0:04:51I don't remember, you had a good tweet, Marco.
0:04:53I think what Tim said on stage was that we can,
0:04:56what was it, look back, not with sadness,
0:04:59but with whatever, what did he say?
0:05:01Do you remember the quote?
0:05:02- Like celebration or something like that?
0:05:04- Yeah, right, and you tweeted, I'm still sad.
0:05:06- Yeah, I am still sad.
0:05:08- We are still sad, but the idea is that
0:05:11a lot of time has passed and now hopefully
0:05:12we all have some more perspective
0:05:14This is a good time to be able to at least try to shift a little bit from just like it being completely raw and just
0:05:19Being just you know forgetting and then remembering. Oh, that's right. He's gone
0:05:23He's never gonna do that thing that he does again to shifting towards hopefully
0:05:27Fonder memories of just like it happened long enough ago that it is not
0:05:31You know that it's scabbed over a little bit and then we can look back
0:05:35You know and think that you know that uh, I don't know like I think that was a it's not like putting a cap on it
0:05:43to say we're never going to talk or think about him again,
0:05:45but to say this is a milestone, right?
0:05:48Especially since the whole Apple Park thing
0:05:49was one of the last big,
0:05:51as they noted, one of the last big projects
0:05:52that he undertook that he didn't get to ever see completed,
0:05:56but he definitely knew, you know,
0:05:58had a vision for how it was supposed to go, right?
0:06:00So it was, you know, it was,
0:06:02as with most things, Apple, it was very taste,
0:06:03well, I'm not going to say as of most things, Apple,
0:06:05as we expect from Apple,
0:06:07but as occasionally they don't live up to,
0:06:10it was very tasteful.
0:06:10Like if you think of the intro videos
0:06:12they've had it other times. Sometimes they're a little bit goofy. Sometimes they miss the
0:06:15mark. Sometimes they hit. The bad ones I think we just tend to forget. But if we search our
0:06:20memories you can remember a lot of opening videos that are like, "Mmm, I roll, whatever,
0:06:25get us the announcements." This was tastefully done and it was nice.
0:06:29But it was the right amount of time. It was the right timing and the right amount of time.
0:06:34It was long enough that it was taken seriously. I don't remember hearing it, but I saw widely
0:06:40reported that they told the people in the audience like, "Hey, shut off your laptops
0:06:44and pay attention for a minute, would you please?" I don't know how they phrased it,
0:06:47but that was basically the message. And I watched bits and pieces of the keynote again
0:06:53over the last 24 hours. And if you look, there were a couple of people with phones or laptops
0:06:58open, but generally speaking, that theater was completely dark for that entire segment.
0:07:03And I thought that that was tastefully done. And I'm glad that the press actually listened
0:07:08because, you know, if we remember the "turn off your Wi-Fi" moment from years ago...
0:07:13Jobs would have yelled at them and said, "He said close your laptops! It's gonna ruin the effect of the
0:07:17'Just welcome to the Steve Jobs Theater' on a black background! Don't you understand?
0:07:20Look at the black levels on this projector! It's a completely dark room and white text and the background totally blends in,
0:07:27but we can't see it because you have your stupid laptops open!"
0:07:29Anyway, so after that, so they moved on to the Apple Park intro video a little bit.
0:07:34Apple Park looks like an amazing building
0:07:37and an amazing campus and an amazing place to be.
0:07:41However, there's kind of this reality of it,
0:07:44which is like them showing off,
0:07:45like here's this amazing building we've made
0:07:49for ourselves that you're never going to see.
0:07:52- Yeah, look at us, look at how smart we are.
0:07:53That's a visitor center for you.
0:07:55- Yeah, there's a visitor center
0:07:56that's not really the main building
0:07:58or that's not really what you wanna see.
0:07:59You're not gonna be allowed near like the cool thing.
0:08:02You're not gonna be in the big ring.
0:08:04You're not gonna be in the courtyard
0:08:05or the middle of the big ring.
0:08:07Only the press will ever see
0:08:09the Steve Jobs theater probably.
0:08:11So it's just like, I don't know,
0:08:13it has this kind of, it's like,
0:08:16look at this cool thing we made, you can't have it.
0:08:18Like I would love to see Apple Park.
0:08:22- You could go there and walk around.
0:08:23I mean you can't go into people's office pass
0:08:25where you have to badge through stuff,
0:08:26but I'm sure you could walk into the middle of the thing
0:08:28and go through the Cafe Max
0:08:30or whatever they're gonna call it in this place.
0:08:31- I bet I can't.
0:08:33You want to bet?
0:08:34Well, I think you can.
0:08:35Yeah, okay.
0:08:36I don't think that's the case, because—
0:08:38You've got to get some Apple employee to escort you.
0:08:40Well, that's the thing.
0:08:41It's less on Earth than Google, where you have to print out yourself a little badge.
0:08:44You don't even have to do that at Apple.
0:08:46Oh my god.
0:08:47Uh, I'm pretty sure we needed badges.
0:08:49I'm trying to remember when we went back—or when we went there, but—
0:08:51I think you need stickers.
0:08:52I mean, that's what I meant.
0:08:54But, um, yeah, I think without an escort, you don't see squat.
0:08:57Like, you certainly didn't see squat at Infinite Loo.
0:08:59But if you just want to go through the food place into the middle of the ring where the
0:09:02the trees are. I think you can pull that off.
0:09:04- Yeah, I would love that, but even that is nearly impossible for anybody to actually
0:09:08do.
0:09:09- Do you just get a friend at Apple, dude? Anyway, um, I--
0:09:12- Oh, yes, because everyone has friends at Apple.
0:09:15- All of us have friends at Apple on this show.
0:09:17- The three of us do, but--
0:09:18- I visited--so I visited Infinite Loop I think about four or five times now. I've been
0:09:23actually brought through and gone to Cafe Max one time. That's like, once I've actually
0:09:28gone like, into the building, and not even really into the--I just walked through the
0:09:32building to get to the food court like one time. So I'm an Apple Park thing like I remain
0:09:40unconvinced by the utility of Apple Park. It is unquestionably a beautiful place. The
0:09:50buildings are beautiful as sort of works of art. The views from and of the buildings are
0:09:55beautiful but I don't know if the buildings are good places to do the
0:10:05things they're designed for you to do is it a good place to work is it a good
0:10:07place to commute to is it a good place to I mean you can ask the press was it a
0:10:11good place to have a press event it seems like mostly pulled that off yeah
0:10:15although you know because it's purpose-built for that I would hope so
0:10:19like but this the bar is low there because if you try to do it in like an
0:10:24an actual old theater that's not designed to have a huge amount of press in it. You know,
0:10:28you fill theaters with an audience and a small amount of press. You don't fill an actual theater
0:10:33like the Billy Graham Theater with, you know, giant amounts of press that every single person
0:10:40in the audience is there because they're reporting on something. So hopefully this fulfills that
0:10:43purpose. But even there, like the top part of this building, as amazing as it is to see a giant glass
0:10:50cylinder with a big hat on it, you know, like how is that big thing holding up there? Is it gonna
0:10:53to collapse and kill us?
0:10:55How do they get the wires up to the lights?
0:10:57Oh, it must be these little skinny--
0:10:58it's like a magic trick, right?
0:11:00Little spinning elevator and the cool stairs
0:11:02that are like the ones from the Regent Street store in London
0:11:05and all other things that you recognize from Apple retail.
0:11:08It's so empty of things.
0:11:10Like, where are the garbage cans and the bathrooms
0:11:13and someplace to get a drink of water and something
0:11:16to sit down on?
0:11:17It's like, well, those are outside,
0:11:19and we bring them in and have rentals.
0:11:21And there are bathrooms there, and you can get to them.
0:11:23But it's just I don't know I look at it
0:11:26and I think of it more as a beautiful sculpture and less as a functional place for people to do a thing but
0:11:32the theater I think can't afford to be weird kind of like the Sydney Opera House like it is itself a
0:11:38Theatrical thing the rest of Apple Park is still you know
0:11:42Nobody knows we'll have to wait until everyone moves in and then we can all talk to our Apple friends
0:11:45We were just talking about and say how what's it like what's like to work there?
0:11:47Is it better or worse than the weird 80s infinite loop canvas?
0:11:50You know, is it better or worse than Google or whatever other place that you might have worked?
0:11:54So I remain
0:11:57slightly
0:11:59Dubious about the utility of Apple Park as a place to work but certainly looks cool in pictures and none of us have to work
0:12:04There so we can just enjoy it in that way
0:12:05I mean probably as as the answer is so often with modern Johnny
0:12:10I've creations probably the answer to all your practical needs is either wireless or dongles
0:12:16Yeah, get a dongle to put your garbage in. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the AR installation looked pretty neat though
0:12:22I mean, it's totally like I can't think the word I'm looking for but it's like oh, of course
0:12:26You have to have an AR installation, but it did look cool
0:12:28like, you know if you didn't see the video it it looks like they they did almost like a
0:12:35monochrome
0:12:363d display monochrome also isn't the best word for it, but like a very very blank looking 3d display that's somewhere
0:12:42I guess at the visitor center and then you can take your like iPad or iPhone or whatever and hold it up to this 3d
0:12:49miniature of the park of
0:12:51Apple Park and it will show you like the full res, you know
0:12:56All the trees all the happy trees everywhere and everything and here's here's where here's where all the airflow is because people care about that
0:13:03But it does look clever and use of a neat use of AR and speaking of airflow and things like that
0:13:09Apparently the whole building is 100% renewable energy
0:13:11Which is pretty cool because I'd like my kid soon-to-be kids to be able to I don't know have a planet to live on after
0:13:17I'm dead. So that's kind of neat
0:13:19Especially since it is huge. But yeah, I don't know I did there was a lot of
0:13:23Especially around Apple Park. There was a fair dose of self-congratulation
0:13:28Which I think some of that is to be expected
0:13:32I think it ran a little bit long for my taste, but you know, it's their event not mine so they can do what they want
0:13:38Yeah, I think the Apple Park and the Steve Jobs thing fine, right
0:13:42But then when they went into the retail thing, which is the next segment I started to think all right
0:13:46Yeah, get on with it. You're allowed a certain amount of introductory material, right but
0:13:52You know
0:13:53I I mean maybe it's just because I'm not that interested in retail or maybe because it didn't seem like it fit in the event
0:13:59because this is supposed to be an event about products and
0:14:01The reason you get to talk about jobs and Apple Park is because that's the venue and it's the introduction of it
0:14:06But retail you could talk about any time and I I confess I mostly zoned out and when I rewatched it
0:14:12I didn't bother watching that segment again
0:14:15Did they announce anything new or say anything that made it worth the amount of time that it took in this presentation?
0:14:21Of course, they did if they're not Apple Store. Yes, they're not Apple Stores anymore. They're the town centers town centers indeed
0:14:29Which speaking like I don't know I'd block this out
0:14:33I'd block out the segment where they try
0:14:35to redefine vocabulary.
0:14:37- The problem with this whole segment is that
0:14:40it was full of retail jargon and the way
0:14:44that their internal initiatives are probably
0:14:47talking about these things, but there's a fundamental
0:14:50mismatch between how they talk about this to themselves
0:14:54and what we care about as the customers.
0:14:56And I don't think they respected that difference
0:14:59or understood that difference for this segment.
0:15:01This is not the first time they've made that mistake.
0:15:04This is actually one of the major criticisms I have
0:15:08of generally Tim Cook's presentations about things
0:15:12is that it seems like they often blur the line
0:15:16or don't find the right balance between
0:15:19internal language and external language
0:15:22and external concerns.
0:15:24- Would you say that your customer stat
0:15:25is not exactly where you wish it was?
0:15:27- Oh, it's blow away.
0:15:29So the whole thing with the stores,
0:15:32Angela Ahrens is going through telling how
0:15:34they're gonna have all these great events
0:15:35and they're making all these atriums and forums
0:15:37and theaters and that's all, that's interesting.
0:15:40But what people want out of the Apple store experience
0:15:45that we have today--
0:15:46- In and out of the Genius Bar appointment
0:15:48in a reasonable amount of time.
0:15:49And nowhere to line up.
0:15:50- Yes, what people want is literally shorter Genius Bar
0:15:55waits and make it easier to get appointments.
0:15:59In general, Apple stores are overcrowded
0:16:02and there's a huge burden on the staff that's there,
0:16:06so we need more of them probably
0:16:08and they need to have more staff.
0:16:10And I don't think people care if they're waiting for an hour
0:16:14and standing next to a table somewhere
0:16:16or in something called a forum
0:16:17with a couple plants in it.
0:16:19That's nice and I'm glad they're doing things like that
0:16:22for their own sake, but we the customers,
0:16:25that doesn't really solve a problem we have
0:16:27and the stores have real problems.
0:16:29that seem to not be getting solved.
0:16:31So it's hard to enjoy a segment like this
0:16:34when it's not solving the problems we really have
0:16:37and also full of this crazy jargon that we don't care about
0:16:40and that's really hard to pay attention to.
0:16:43- I think the whole Apple retail thing
0:16:44is another great example of success hides problems.
0:16:48It is important that the stores are nice.
0:16:51That is important.
0:16:52It's part of the mystique of Apple.
0:16:54It's part of the reason people are excited to go there
0:16:56and see the products that are on the tables.
0:16:57And all of that is important.
0:16:59Not to say that it should just be like a giant supermarket with a million checkout lines
0:17:03to be for efficiency, right?
0:17:04It has to be a nice place.
0:17:06But the success that's hiding the problems is the reason Apple retail is worth more money
0:17:12per square foot than any other retail place is because they sell expensive high margin
0:17:16products and they sell a lot of them because they're really good and people want them,
0:17:20right?
0:17:21That's it.
0:17:22You have a store with products that people want presented nicely in good locations and
0:17:27and your margins on those products are good.
0:17:29And that'll gives you this store
0:17:34that people just wanna go to
0:17:36and throw huge wads of money at you constantly,
0:17:39like over and over again.
0:17:41People are crowding in the stores
0:17:42and you take all that success.
0:17:44You're like, we should make nicer atriums
0:17:46and have a living wall
0:17:47and carve this thing out of stone and call things like,
0:17:51you're losing sight of the purpose of this.
0:17:55I mean, maybe they're not,
0:17:55maybe this is for the external thing,
0:17:56Like the purpose of the store is exchanging goods for money, right?
0:17:59People come in with money and they want stuff to come out.
0:18:01And again, it has to be nice, but you know, none of this stuff you're doing is
0:18:07making it more likely that people are going to come in and buy your things or
0:18:13making it so that you sell more of them per second, right?
0:18:16You know, it seems like it's mostly a wash and you're just kind of like polishing
0:18:20the tables and rearranging the decor and trying not to interrupt the flow of money.
0:18:25But certainly if your goal was to, you know, either increase the satisfaction, then you'll be like less wait times, more staff, so on and so forth.
0:18:33Or if you want to increase profits, then get people in and out faster.
0:18:36And that might also increase satisfaction.
0:18:38Nobody is clamoring for even nicer materials than an Apple store.
0:18:42And yet they're constantly redoing things.
0:18:44I'm not saying they shouldn't make them nice.
0:18:46They totally should.
0:18:47But, you know, that's, I don't know, maybe we're unique.
0:18:50Maybe we don't spend enough time in Apple stores.
0:18:52I think they're plenty nice.
0:18:54I think that I think they are really nice and I think they do they should remodel them refresh them periodically
0:18:59But all that money flowing in lets them sort of stick their head in the stands that yeah
0:19:04Sometimes it's frustrating but the money keeps coming in. So let's you know, try to get a new material for the floor
0:19:10yeah, you know, uh, this is a somewhat silly example, but um
0:19:14I went for a run and I was putting my phone into my little fanny pack. Hi Brits. Hello
0:19:21I was putting my phone into my fanny pack or whatever it's called and not that and yeah, well, it's called that here
0:19:28It's not called that there. But anyway, bum bag. Thank you slate 401. That's what I was looking for
0:19:33I think that's the British version. Anyway, is that real bum bag? Yeah, I've heard that several times
0:19:38Not just a parody of fanny pack. I don't think so. I mean they're all kind of parodies of themselves, but but yes
0:19:44Anyway, I'm gonna get through this darn it
0:19:48So I dropped my phone on the pavement,
0:19:51shattered my first iPhone.
0:19:52It's the first time I've done that
0:19:53since getting my 3GS way back when.
0:19:56I made it almost 3,000 days without shattering a phone.
0:19:59I've had some like nicks or scratches or what have you.
0:20:01- No, is that before or after the last Mac mini update?
0:20:04- That's a good question, I'm not sure.
0:20:06But anyway, I went to schedule an appointment
0:20:11on Friday mornings.
0:20:13This was at like 6.45, seven o'clock in the morning
0:20:16when I was done with my run.
0:20:17And there was some availability. There was like a hair of availability Friday and some availability
0:20:23Saturday and I ended up having to wait until Sunday and just a couple days out.
0:20:28The times that I had were not available to me were not terribly convenient, which yes,
0:20:35I understand that like, "Oh, I live very close to an Apple store. Don't be creepy."
0:20:39You know, if you live an hour or two away from an Apple store, it's much, much worse.
0:20:42So this could have been a whole lot worse. But if I had been able to schedule like a same day
0:20:47appointment for a convenient time for me, that would have been amazing. Instead, I was like,
0:20:52"Oh, I guess that's when I'll go in." And then when I got there, it was like, "Okay, wait 10,
0:20:5715 minutes for somebody to come talk to you to just verify the fact that you have the phone you
0:21:02say you have. And then wait 10 or 15 minutes for somebody else to come and grab the phone. And then
0:21:07wait the two hours to have the phone repaired." And yes, I understand that this is a first world
0:21:12problem to end all first-world problems, but the point I'm bringing, the reason I
0:21:17bring all this up is because if I had had like a next-day appointment, would
0:21:19have been in and out in an hour, which I think if the store was empty or perhaps
0:21:23more appropriately staffed, then I could have been, that would have been amazing!
0:21:27And I wouldn't have stopped talking about that forever! But instead it's like,
0:21:31"Oh, well, I guess I got to go to the Apple Store." You mean you have to go to Apple
0:21:35today? You will be today at Apple today, going into their forum,
0:21:41atrium to be in their Genius Grove. I'm actually glad you brought that up. I
0:21:45actually think I like Today at Apple. I think I like the name and I think I like
0:21:48the premise. Will I ever do it? Probably not. I like the idea. Even though I don't
0:21:54think it's for me, I think it's a good idea and I actually really really like
0:21:57the name Today at Apple and in the little video they showed, you know, they
0:22:00showed Today at Apple we're gonna, I don't know, do a photo walk. Today at
0:22:03Apple we're gonna do sketching. Today at Apple we're gonna do Teacher Tuesday,
0:22:06which I also think is really awesome.
0:22:09So as much as I want to poke fun,
0:22:12and I know you were joking,
0:22:13but I want to poke fun at today at Apple,
0:22:15I actually do enjoy that.
0:22:17Apple Town Center, however,
0:22:18get out of here with that nonsense, it's terrible.
0:22:21- All right, now we've spent too much time on retail,
0:22:23(laughing)
0:22:24accurately reflecting the presentation.
0:22:27(upbeat music)
0:22:28- We are sponsored this week by Aftershokz
0:22:30bone conduction headphones.
0:22:31Go to ATP.Aftershokz.com to learn more.
0:22:35Aftershocks headphones work by bone conduction.
0:22:38Small transducers rest in front of your ears,
0:22:40not inside or around them like most headphones,
0:22:43and they send vibrations through your cheekbones
0:22:45that are too small for you to feel
0:22:47directly to your inner ear.
0:22:49So unlike every other kind of headphone,
0:22:51bone conduction leaves your ears completely open
0:22:54with nothing sitting on top of them or resting in them
0:22:57or squishing inside your ear canal.
0:22:59And this brings some major benefits.
0:23:01So first of all, there's a major comfort benefit.
0:23:03If you, like me, can't wear earbuds
0:23:06'cause they just hurt after a while,
0:23:07this doesn't have that problem.
0:23:08There's nothing in your ear.
0:23:10They're also awesome for exercise and for hot weather
0:23:14because you don't sweat as much without this thing
0:23:16covering up or sticking inside your ear.
0:23:18They also stay in place really well
0:23:19as you move around during exercise
0:23:20and they are IP55 certified for water resistance.
0:23:24So if they get too sweaty or if it starts raining,
0:23:26you don't have to worry about it.
0:23:28And the biggest difference for me with Aftershock
0:23:30compared to any other headphones
0:23:31is that nothing is blocking your ears,
0:23:33so you hear all of the sound of the world around you.
0:23:37So this is not so good if you're in a very loud place,
0:23:39like a subway station, but it's awesome
0:23:42if you're doing something like running outside,
0:23:45or doing stuff around your house
0:23:46where you wanna be able to still hear
0:23:48what's going on in the house,
0:23:49or taking a call in an office.
0:23:51It is incredible, it is like nothing,
0:23:53it's like no other kind of headphone I've ever used,
0:23:55and I use it for walking especially.
0:23:57It is amazing for walking,
0:24:00or any kind of other outdoor exercise
0:24:02where you want to hear the world
0:24:04and you don't want to be blocked out
0:24:06for safety or practicality reasons.
0:24:08The flagship model was the Trex Titanium,
0:24:10which they still sell and it's great.
0:24:12And it is, I think, my favorite overall one.
0:24:14They also just announced and are taking pre-orders
0:24:17for the Trex Air.
0:24:19This is 20% lighter, it now has a new lightweight
0:24:22all titanium headband, it has reduced sound leakage,
0:24:25improved microphones, and better bass response if you want.
0:24:29Personally, I prefer the pocketability of the original one
0:24:32'cause the shape is a little bit different,
0:24:33but they're both amazing.
0:24:34You can't go wrong with either one.
0:24:35They're both incredibly light, incredibly comfortable,
0:24:38and I highly recommend them.
0:24:39So go to ATP.aftershocks.com to learn more
0:24:43about the Trek's air and the Trek's titanium.
0:24:46Thank you very much to Aftershocks for sponsoring our show.
0:24:49(upbeat music)
0:24:52Next up was Apple Watch.
0:24:54This was, it started out with some new medical initiatives
0:24:58around continuous heart rate, not full-blown monitoring,
0:25:03but kind of like passive checks throughout the day
0:25:05for heart rate monitoring that can do new things
0:25:08like attempt to detect if your heart rate is elevated
0:25:11when it shouldn't be, like if you're not exercising.
0:25:14And they also announced a new heart study
0:25:15that they're starting that will,
0:25:18that the goal of which is to detect things
0:25:21like arrhythmias and AFib.
0:25:25And this is a really big deal.
0:25:28This is exactly the kind of awesome thing
0:25:31that I think the Jeff Williams-led health initiatives
0:25:34really get right.
0:25:36I really hope that this works out for them.
0:25:38I'm very glad they're doing this.
0:25:40They should be commended for doing this
0:25:42because this is potentially life-changing
0:25:45for a lot of people, a lot of people.
0:25:48So that's awesome.
0:25:50- Well, you have to opt into this, the study, though.
0:25:52It's not, I mean, it'll be better when,
0:25:54if everything works out.
0:25:55I don't know what the regulatory situation is,
0:25:57but can they just like build this in so you don't have to know anything you just put your
0:25:59Apple watch on and then one day you get some kind of notification says hey we noticed something
0:26:05weird maybe you should contact somebody and you know whatever versus now where you have
0:26:10to download this app sign up to be part of the study probably sign a bunch of disclaimer
0:26:14things or whatever so it's good for people who already know that they might be at risk
0:26:19for this type of thing to have monitoring but no one as far as I understand this program
0:26:23is going to passively get the benefit of this program because it's still in the sort of
0:26:26experimental stage.
0:26:28So it's a start, it's a start.
0:26:30- Yeah, and I'm pretty sure you'd have to opt in
0:26:32to being in the study and things like that.
0:26:35But they had like their--
0:26:36- You have to download an app and everything.
0:26:37- Yeah, but like Apple has been building a framework
0:26:40to do these things for some time now.
0:26:42So like that's, and to do it at quite immense scale too.
0:26:46So that's why these are so important
0:26:48and why they're so impressive.
0:26:50That Apple's doing this at scale
0:26:52with pretty advanced resources at their fingertips here
0:26:55or at their wrist tips.
0:26:57And so it's, there actually is potential
0:27:00to do pretty significant things here.
0:27:02- Yeah, they were saying that, you know,
0:27:03I thought it was during this keynote that they said that,
0:27:05you know, a lot of medical studies
0:27:06are something like a thousand people,
0:27:07and this is potentially going to be like tens of thousands,
0:27:10if not more than that, which is really awesome.
0:27:12We also skipped a brief moment.
0:27:14What did you think of the introductory video
0:27:16for Apple Watch?
0:27:17This is not the cellular video which comes later.
0:27:20- Oh yeah, where they have like the guy
0:27:22like reading his letter from his car crash and stuff.
0:27:24Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:27:26- My main complaint about that thing
0:27:27is that it was not clear to me
0:27:30whether the people in the video were actors
0:27:32or the actual people.
0:27:34- Well, it's funny you bring that up.
0:27:35I wish I could, it's like we planned this.
0:27:38Friend of the show, Kyle Seth Gray, or Kyle's the Gray,
0:27:41he was a relay listener,
0:27:43and I think he listens to the show, I'm not sure,
0:27:45so if so, hi Kyle.
0:27:46But anyway, he's definitely a relay listener,
0:27:49and he was one of the people in the video.
0:27:51He was the one on the bike, the stationary bike.
0:27:54And so that is a real person that I have met, and I have shaken his hand with my hand, and
0:27:59he is real.
0:28:00So yeah, I don't—maybe others were actors, but I'm pretty sure not.
0:28:04And I feel like we saw something fly by that the guy in the elevator was also a relay listener.
0:28:12It's always kind of weird to me when—I mean, they do this all the time, but they
0:28:16enter a segment about a product.
0:28:18And especially with the Apple Watch, where the new one looks just like the old one, it
0:28:23It takes a couple seconds to ramp up to say, they're just telling us how great their product,
0:28:28existing product is, which they tend not to do.
0:28:30Like there wasn't a big segment about how great the iPhone 7 is before the iPhone 8
0:28:34part, right?
0:28:35But it's like, let me just tell you about, and it was also about watchOS 4 and people
0:28:39love their Apple watch and sales are great, even though we're not going to tell you how
0:28:42many there are, but trust us, they're great.
0:28:45And then the video.
0:28:47And then of course the new, the new Apple watch on top of that.
0:28:50But it was like, it was almost like, again, a lot of time spent on something that is not
0:28:55the announcement of the new product.
0:28:57But you know, I don't, I guess they feel like it's important to them to emphasize
0:29:04the fact that the watch is a success, like, in a way that they don't feel like they
0:29:09have to do for the phone.
0:29:10I don't know.
0:29:11It beats me.
0:29:13But I thought the video was good.
0:29:14And I think, to come back to where we were before I interrupted, I really think this
0:29:18Apple Heart Study could be something extremely powerful and I'm pleased to see them doing
0:29:23it. This is another example of Tim or whomever deciding that this is something that's important
0:29:28to Apple or to them personally and then eventually Apple. And so they're making it happen and
0:29:35really making some stark positive change or hopefully, we don't know yet, but I would
0:29:39assume that will be the case and that's really awesome. So then after that, unless there's
0:29:43something else we had here.
0:29:44- Series three.
0:29:45Yeah, exactly. So series 3, which is with LTE.
0:29:50Well, optionally with LTE.
0:29:52That's a fair point, fair point. It's optionally with LTE. This is pretty exciting. It sounds
0:29:57like it will be a completely separate, of course, connection to your particular cell
0:30:03phone carrier. You will share, however, the same phone number with your iPhone. And there's
0:30:09been a little bit of chatter about how that's working technically behind the scenes. But
0:30:13The net effect is, if you run out of the house and your phone is at home and you go driving
0:30:18somewhere else or running or what have you, then if you get a phone call, your watch and
0:30:24your phone will both simultaneously ring and you can answer on either one.
0:30:28You can send text messages from either one, etc., etc., in a way that you can only do
0:30:32now if you're either connected to Wi-Fi in certain circumstances or connected via Bluetooth
0:30:36to your phone.
0:30:37And that's extremely cool.
0:30:39What's not cool is that at least in America, it seems that all the cell phone carriers,
0:30:44or at least anyone who's talked about it yet, is saying it's going to be $10 a month for
0:30:48a watch, which I think is preposterous.
0:30:50I don't know what it is.
0:30:51I don't know why I came to this conclusion.
0:30:53Because the watch is small and you pay more money for big things.
0:30:56No.
0:30:57No, I think you're right.
0:30:58K-man size comparison.
0:31:00Okay.
0:31:01I know that we are spoiled by modern cellular plans being amazing, but it's an entirely
0:31:06separate cellular data device that is only $10 a month to have on your plan, that's a
0:31:12good deal.
0:31:13No, it's not more data.
0:31:16They're selling you air like Woody Allen's father in that movie that I can't remember.
0:31:20They're not giving you more data.
0:31:22It doesn't cost them that much more money to have another device on their network.
0:31:28So trust me, they're making a huge amount of profit at an additional $10.
0:31:32- No, I know, but that is a very,
0:31:35compared to the industry and what they do
0:31:38and what we've always paid for,
0:31:39to have an entirely separately activated device
0:31:42for $10 a month is pretty good.
0:31:44- I disagree.
0:31:46- It's the same phone number.
0:31:48I mean, here's the problem.
0:31:49The problem with all this stuff is that it's not,
0:31:50we don't know what we should actually be paying
0:31:52for these things because so many telecom companies
0:31:55have not a monopoly, but you have one or two
0:31:58reasonable choices.
0:31:59The competition is not strong in this industry.
0:32:02Sure. Regulation is not, you know, so we don't know what this stuff would actually be worth with
0:32:07competition. And we do know that in other parts of the world, you get more data and faster speeds
0:32:11for less money. So the general frustration with carriers and telecom in the US underlies
0:32:16everything. And so it's hard to say, you know, what you're saying, your argument, you have Marco
0:32:21is the relative thing like thing thing x costs this amount and thing y is cost cost way less
0:32:28less proportionally. I'm getting another device and it's only $10. But it just feels like
0:32:34the bad, the doomsday scenarios of the net neutrality things where it's like every new
0:32:38thing you want to have they can charge you money for. The carriers have always been there
0:32:42and remain there. And now it's like, well, great, everything's going to have a cell connection
0:32:46and I have to get not nickel and dimed, but five and 10 for every single one of these
0:32:52new items that I add. It's untenable after a certain point, especially if it doesn't
0:32:56come with more data, right? Especially if it doesn't. So I, you know, we all hate carriages
0:33:00and wish they did a better job. At this point, when the number of devices starts going up
0:33:03like this, like we fast forward 10, 15 years and everybody in the family who is an adolescent
0:33:09or adult has a watch, a phone, a tablet, and not a laptop because Apple will never add
0:33:17cellular to it because they're evil. That's a lot of damn devices. And you start saying,
0:33:22"Can I just pay a huge amount of money for my whole family and just be like a flat rate
0:33:25for a huge amount of data and not have to get additional money every time someone adds
0:33:30a new device, but we're far from that.
0:33:33Anyway, it's not that bad.
0:33:35$10 seems reasonable for the kind of people who are going to buy an Apple Watch with cellular,
0:33:41which is already a pretty expensive product, as a companion to their already expensive
0:33:46phone.
0:33:47So Apple's right on the money in terms of who this product is for and what they're willing
0:33:50to pay.
0:33:51of that later when we start getting into the phones.
0:33:53But, you know, it looks good.
0:33:56- I agree with you, Marco, that getting this for free,
0:34:00and Jon as well, but Marco, I think you were,
0:34:02I think you thought I wanted this for free.
0:34:04I don't.
0:34:05I don't think that a free additional connection
0:34:09to, in my case, AT&T's network is reasonable.
0:34:11I don't think that at all.
0:34:13This is different, for example, than tethering,
0:34:15where tethering is still only one connection to AT&T.
0:34:19And how I choose to blow through my data
0:34:21to me should be my choice. And I found it completely egregious when tethering was an
0:34:26additional fee years ago, because it's still only one connection and it's still just my
0:34:31data. And in fact, in some ways, they should encourage tethering because then I'm going
0:34:34to blow through my data even quicker and then hypothetically pay them even more money. This
0:34:38is different in that I do think it should cost a non-zero amount of money to have an
0:34:45Apple Watch connected to your cell phone plan. The thing that bothers me though, is that
0:34:50I don't think $10 a month is a reasonable cost.
0:34:53I think it should be half that.
0:34:55Now, how did I come to that conclusion?
0:34:56No freaking clue.
0:34:57I think it's what John alluded to earlier.
0:34:59The watch is physically small.
0:35:00The iPad is physically big.
0:35:02It should be less than the iPad.
0:35:03And I can see that, really, if you put that on paper,
0:35:06it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.
0:35:08Nope.
0:35:09But it just seems--
0:35:10it just seems bonkers to me that something that really shouldn't
0:35:14necessarily be drawing that much data-- and even if it was,
0:35:17it's still the same bucket of data.
0:35:19It's not like I'm getting more data for it.
0:35:21I just don't think that $10 a month is reasonable.
0:35:24I think five would have been the right answer
0:35:26and I wouldn't have blinked an eye if it was $5 a month.
0:35:29But for $10 a month, that's making me go,
0:35:32"Ugh, I think I want cellular, but I'm not so sure."
0:35:37And I don't know.
0:35:39- You want cellular, forget it.
0:35:41- Okay, before I set you on fire,
0:35:43this kind of like micro price anger
0:35:47is why app developers can't charge money for apps.
0:35:49But anyway, let's not do that now.
0:35:52- Well, you're right, and actually--
0:35:53- $10 a month, $5 a month even is great for apps.
0:35:57Anyway, here's the thing.
0:35:59The cost of this device to the carriers
0:36:01is network capacity, right?
0:36:03Because every device that is communicating
0:36:05one of those towers adds, right?
0:36:06But in the grand scheme of things, even with Apple's,
0:36:09we have no idea how many they're selling things.
0:36:11We know roughly how many they're selling
0:36:14in proportion to the number of cell phones
0:36:15that are on a cell network at any given time, and it is minuscule.
0:36:18So there is a capacity increase for connecting these watches, but it is small, and all pricing
0:36:24of cell data plans is in the realm of whatever carriers make up and/or collude with each
0:36:30other for.
0:36:31There is no market pressure to lower prices because there are so few people, and the only
0:36:36one who's hungry is always like the one with the terrible network, or I think it was that
0:36:39Sprint these days or whatever, or T-Mobile, right?
0:36:43And even they pull prices essentially out of thin air.
0:36:46So it's hard for us to know how much this stuff is worth, other than, like I said, looking
0:36:50at the rest of the world and realizing we don't have it that great here.
0:36:53So I don't know.
0:36:54But anyway, if you're remotely on the fence, get the cellular one.
0:36:59Why would you even bother getting one of these phones and not get the cellular?
0:37:03If you were already looking at a Series 2 and you'd never had any interest in cellular,
0:37:08then get the Series 3 without cellular.
0:37:10if you thought I really love to have a cellular thing but that $10 month is you know I mean you know just
0:37:16Drop one of your streaming subscriptions like this is an expensive product for your expensive phone
0:37:21Well, but I might add a screen a streaming subscription because stupid Apple music which will get to you in a minute
0:37:25It's cellular on your wrist. That's awesome pay the ten bucks. Oh, it is awesome
0:37:32That's incredible what like even for this year even for this day and age even for the wonderful technology that we have
0:37:39that is still amazing.
0:37:41Like how is, how, you know, this is like the Louis C.K.
0:37:44like you know, sitting in a chair in the sky thing.
0:37:46- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:37:47- How is this not amazing?
0:37:49And like, you know, people are like,
0:37:51I've seen some of the comments are like,
0:37:52it's just a watch.
0:37:53No, it's not just a watch.
0:37:55It's a tiny little computer that lives on your wrist
0:37:57and can talk to anywhere in the world
0:37:58without any phone attacks to it now.
0:37:59Like, that's incredible.
0:38:01That is awesome.
0:38:02- But can I run overcast on it?
0:38:04'Cause that's really what I care about.
0:38:05- No, I'm like-- - Amen, brother.
0:38:06- But that's a software limitation.
0:38:08- That is not a hard, and we'll get to that.
0:38:11I mean, so okay, let's talk about that now.
0:38:14So, you know, cellular on the watch,
0:38:16what is it actually good for?
0:38:19And the answer so far is, you know,
0:38:21the basics of lots of times we have talked about,
0:38:25and other people have talked about, you know,
0:38:27do you bring your phone with you with the watch?
0:38:29And when the Apple would add features
0:38:31like standalone music playback from the watch,
0:38:34like to a Bluetooth headset,
0:38:36or when they talked about adding SOS,
0:38:38earlier this summer, we would, a lot of us would ask
0:38:41ourselves, like, why would I not have my phone with me?
0:38:45'Cause a lot of people, like, even when they go out
0:38:46for exercising, they still bring their phone with them
0:38:49just in case there's an emergency or somebody has to reach
0:38:52them or they need help or whatever else.
0:38:55So there's a clear reason for lots of people who would
0:39:00otherwise take just the watch with them somewhere.
0:39:03I would love to do that, but haven't been doing that,
0:39:05Not because of anything about the watch's hardware
0:39:08or software, but because it just didn't have cellular itself
0:39:11which I guess is hardware, but ignore that for a second.
0:39:14So that was holding back a lot of people.
0:39:16And so I mentioned last week, in our predictions episode,
0:39:20and we had already heard the rumors last week
0:39:22about the cellular watch because that was
0:39:23from the HomePod leak, but we had,
0:39:27I discussed the things I want in the watch
0:39:30are for it to be a smarter and nicer looking timepiece.
0:39:34But what most people use the watch for
0:39:36is exercise notifications,
0:39:38and that seems to be driving the sale.
0:39:39So what Apple's doing here is very smart in that way.
0:39:42It looks like they've done zero
0:39:45to make it a nicer looking, better, smarter timepiece.
0:39:49But this is a massive jump forward
0:39:52for making it an exercise and notifications device,
0:39:55because now there are significant times
0:39:58when people would want to bring just the watch with them.
0:40:03And those are times for which people are buying
0:40:06or want to buy the Apple Watch.
0:40:08So that's exercise, that's like going on the beach,
0:40:11that is certain types of travel,
0:40:14and let's be honest, it's mostly exercise.
0:40:16But that's a big thing.
0:40:17Like a lot of runners wanna run without having a phone
0:40:20strapped in some weird spot on their body
0:40:22or anything like that.
0:40:23- Yep.
0:40:24- It's a huge market.
0:40:25So this is awesome for that.
0:40:27Now going beyond the phone call in an emergency scenario,
0:40:32I think one of the other things,
0:40:34and they mentioned the Apple Music streaming,
0:40:36that's cool, that should be fine.
0:40:38I'm a little concerned about how that will affect
0:40:40battery life, but it's probably--
0:40:42- Wait, wait, you're underplaying that?
0:40:44I think that's the most important thing
0:40:45because when you take it when you're running,
0:40:47I think a lot of people bring their phones with them,
0:40:48they say, "Oh, it's in case I fall down,
0:40:50"I need to call somebody,"
0:40:50but really, they wanna play their music from it.
0:40:52And yeah, you can play music from your watch now,
0:40:54but it's a pain in the butt.
0:40:55I think streaming music plus AirPods
0:40:57is like the killer app that's gonna sell you there for me.
0:41:00You're gonna tell them, "Oh, I can make phone calls,
0:41:01that will make me feel better, but I think it is all about 40 million songs on your wrist
0:41:06and AirPods.
0:41:07Like that is the ultimate I want to run and listen to something.
0:41:10That's why I think it should work with Spotify and all the other services.
0:41:13I have no idea if it does.
0:41:14I hope it's not constrained to Apple Music and I agree with your concerns about the battery
0:41:18life and the streaming, but that is the killer and they show that in the ad.
0:41:22Like look at me, I got AirPods and I got wrist.
0:41:24It's the lightest way to listen to all the music in the world while you do some activity,
0:41:30while it also tracks your workout and your pulse and everything.
0:41:32That I think is the total package on this.
0:41:34Yeah, that's exactly right.
0:41:35And that's why a minute ago I alluded to, you know, I might need to get an Apple music
0:41:39subscription.
0:41:40I am a die-hard Spotify kind of guy.
0:41:43I love Spotify for reasons that are not interesting for right now.
0:41:46But the thought of being able to go for a run, like everything Marco just said, to be
0:41:50able to go for a run with just my AirPods and my watch and not have to worry about dropping
0:41:54my phone, but more importantly, just carrying my darn phone, that sounds amazing.
0:41:58And if I, you know, twist my ankle or something like that, that I can call for help and get
0:42:03help from Aaron or whomever, that's amazing.
0:42:06And that is what I want.
0:42:08But Casey, all this amazingness, including having all the music in the world accessible
0:42:14via voice control on your little wrist computer that you can wear anywhere and have cellular
0:42:18coverage is not worth 20 bucks a month, is it?
0:42:21It's not worth 20 bucks a month.
0:42:22He's not complaining about the price of the phone, no.
0:42:24He's complaining about the price of the carrier plant.
0:42:26I know.
0:42:27like he's already paying for. Especially if he doesn't bring his phone, he's not having
0:42:30extra network capacity. All right. No, but anyway, but the problem though, but leaving all,
0:42:34even all my whining convention aside about the price of the cellular part, you know, it could be
0:42:40that I'm actually in $10 to your point, Marco, $10 for the cellular, $10 for Apple Music, but,
0:42:45and that's monthly, which adds up real fast. But all of this really comes down to, however,
0:42:50the thing that I most enjoy listening to when I go for a run is actually podcasts. And the
0:42:57And the particular podcast client catcher, whatever, of choice that I enjoy, happens
0:43:02to be Overcast.
0:43:04And all I want in the world now is to be able to leave my phone in my house, take my watch
0:43:10and my AirPods, and listen to Overcast from anywhere.
0:43:15That would be nice.
0:43:16Tell me, Marco, that you're going to make this happen.
0:43:18I'm trying, but I don't think I'm getting anywhere anytime soon.
0:43:22I know.
0:43:23it at that because I'm literally not getting anywhere yet, but I am trying. I told you,
0:43:29you know, I said when I removed that feature, I'm going to try to bring it back. I am trying
0:43:33to bring it back, but so far I haven't. But I'm not going to stop trying. In fact, this
0:43:38has now lit a new fire under my butt because I really, really want this to be a thing that
0:43:44people can do, that I can do also.
0:43:46You know why that is, by the way, because I know why that is, and it has nothing to
0:43:50do with me or any of your customers. It has to do with your newfound obsession. And you
0:43:53don't want to bring your phone with you while you're riding your bike either, do you?
0:43:56Nope, sure don't. Shouldn't be listening to podcasts while you ride your bike.
0:44:00No, I actually don't. I more have been wanting this on dog walks, honestly. Biking, I'm still
0:44:05-- and even though I -- Well, fair enough. Fair enough.
0:44:07Even though I'm not biking on the street, I'm biking on a trail. But even on the trail,
0:44:11I don't want to listen to things. I'm listening to the world around me because I'm scared
0:44:16out of my mind.
0:44:17But anyway, so also there are other reasons
0:44:20to want a cellular watch.
0:44:22So I thought of a couple.
0:44:23So obviously there's a lot of app potential here.
0:44:25The watch so far has been a pretty mediocre app platform,
0:44:28but this changes things quite a bit
0:44:30for a lot of different types of apps.
0:44:32So this could be a big thing.
0:44:35Right now, a lot of the watch has been held back
0:44:38by the fact that the apps on the watch are pretty slow
0:44:44compared to doing the same thing on your phone.
0:44:46But if now more people have more reason
0:44:48to not have their phone with them at all,
0:44:50and all of a sudden the watch is all they have with them,
0:44:53that opens up new potential for apps,
0:44:54a new demand for apps.
0:44:56I also thought about things like,
0:44:58so they mentioned in the keynote
0:44:59that if you leave your phone at home
0:45:01and if you bring just your watch with you,
0:45:03just your new Series 3 with LTE,
0:45:05that updates your location for find friends tracking.
0:45:09- Oh yeah, that's right, that was really cool.
0:45:11which is not only awesome for like exercisers and things,
0:45:14but also I thought like,
0:45:16what if you wanted to track locations of your children
0:45:19and you didn't want to give them a phone,
0:45:21but you maybe could give them an Apple Watch with LTE?
0:45:24Like, I know this is an awfully over-engineered solution
0:45:28to this problem, but I think that's actually,
0:45:31that's a potential use I thought of here.
0:45:33- Give your children $300 watches.
0:45:35You know, I just bought a GPS tracker for my dog
0:45:37and it was much cheaper,
0:45:37so consider that if you wanna track your children.
0:45:39- It won't always be $300.
0:45:41And that's less than a phone, by the way.
0:45:43- The Apple One will always be three, well,
0:45:46199, the Apple One will get.
0:45:48- And $10 a month, so that kills it for Casey.
0:45:49All right, anyway, so I do think this is pretty remarkable.
0:45:54And they did BS the size increase a little bit, but--
0:45:58- Oh, I noticed that today. - Yeah, that was awesome.
0:46:00That was great judo there where--
0:46:02- The case is the thickness. - The case is exactly
0:46:04the same size.
0:46:05I felt like they should have stopped there.
0:46:07They shouldn't, but they felt like they needed to be honest.
0:46:09And they said, technically speaking,
0:46:11the little thing that bumps out of the case
0:46:12is tiny bit bigger, but the case,
0:46:14they could have just set the case the same size
0:46:16and left it, because honestly,
0:46:17it is bigger by a small amount,
0:46:19and I bet nobody would notice,
0:46:20but because they're Apple,
0:46:21they have to cover their butts.
0:46:23- Wasn't it like a quarter millimeter?
0:46:24Like that's a pretty small difference.
0:46:25- Yeah, two sheets of paper, they said.
0:46:27- It was almost nothing, but to be fair,
0:46:29if like Samsung had pulled something like this,
0:46:31we would be all, well, nobody would pay attention
0:46:33because nobody-- - No one pay attention,
0:46:34but because Apple, someone would say,
0:46:36"I put them next to each other
0:46:37and you could see two pieces of paper with extra thickness.
0:46:40No, but it is, I mean it is kind of BS though.
0:46:43Just call it like you see it and say, "Oh, we made it infinitesimally smaller."
0:46:46Or bigger.
0:46:47The most amazing thing, I think, and I always have to remind myself of this when I look
0:46:50at the Apple Watch, is that every time they talk about this, like, "Oh, you know, we've
0:46:54essentially kept the watch the same size for many generations.
0:46:57It's gotten a little bit thicker over time because the Series 2 was thicker than the
0:47:00original Series 0, and this is thicker still, so fine."
0:47:04But in general, it's the little Airstream trailer with the bulge on the bottom.
0:47:07Then I remember it comes in two sizes and I think, how the hell does the smaller one work?
0:47:12They have to fit all the same stuff in there.
0:47:13The only thing that is smaller is the screen.
0:47:16So you can get a slightly smaller battery because you have a slightly smaller screen, but everything else can't be, doesn't shrink in power usage.
0:47:21It's not like, oh, the small one has a cell radio that uses less power.
0:47:24If they had a cell radio that uses less power, they would use it in both of them.
0:47:27So the small one is the miracle.
0:47:28And maybe that also means the small one doesn't get as good battery life, which is a bummer.
0:47:32- Well, that's always been the case.
0:47:34The small one has always gotten noticeably worse
0:47:36battery life.
0:47:37- I know, but I mean, like, does it scale linearly?
0:47:39'Cause now they add LTE.
0:47:40Oh, it's still the same all day battery life, blah, blah,
0:47:42blah.
0:47:43Is the small one even worse now?
0:47:45'Cause there's no, how, the battery must be so tiny in there
0:47:48and I don't know what the minimum battery size is
0:47:50to run any kind of cell radio to transmit to a radio tower
0:47:55that is potentially far away from you.
0:47:57Anyway, yeah, I'm reminded of that looking at the models.
0:48:02Oh yeah, they make one that's like way smaller.
0:48:05Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
0:48:06- What size does Tina have?
0:48:08- I think she has a small one.
0:48:09- So yeah, it's a thing.
0:48:11- She's gonna get one of these.
0:48:12- With LTE?
0:48:13- Yeah.
0:48:14- Are you gonna grumble about paying $10?
0:48:17(laughing)
0:48:18- No, I'm not gonna grumble.
0:48:21I'm encouraging her to get it.
0:48:22She uses it, she uses it for the intended purpose
0:48:25as shown in all of Apple's ads.
0:48:27So as long as they don't make a Pokemon Go app for it,
0:48:29then everything will be fine.
0:48:31You know, I wonder, I've heard through various reporting that the thing, the Series 3 just
0:48:38feels a heck of a lot quicker, like opening apps and things like that.
0:48:42I kind of wonder, and something Marco said earlier made me think of this, if it doesn't
0:48:47have to like, so let's say for example I'm using Lyft for the first time in forever and
0:48:51I try to do it on my watch for whatever silly reason.
0:48:54It has to, if I understand things correctly anyway, it has to wake up the Lyft app on
0:48:59my phone, or at the very least wake up the phone and say, "Hey, I'd like to use your
0:49:02internet connection," but something has to get woken up on the phone and it needs to
0:49:06communicate with the phone, blah, blah, blah.
0:49:08I wonder if not only obviously the processor is so much faster on the Series 3, but I wonder
0:49:14if just having its own connection to the rest of the world on these LTE models will also
0:49:20dramatically increase and improve performance and just make it feel a lot snappier, even
0:49:27leaving aside the tremendous gains in the processor.
0:49:30- Yeah, I mean, 'cause with the watch,
0:49:32like one of the reasons why the original watch
0:49:34was so unbearably slow is that the whole UI of apps
0:49:37was being driven effectively by the phone,
0:49:39like remotely over the Bluetooth connection,
0:49:40so like every tap was basically going back and forth
0:49:43with the Bluetooth to the phone.
0:49:45And so everything they've done to make the watch
0:49:47more independent in both hardware and software
0:49:51has had a noticeable increase of performance
0:49:54and responsiveness because anything you're doing
0:49:56to reduce those round trips is good.
0:49:58Now the current watch, the Series 1 and 2,
0:50:02they were pretty fast relative to the first one,
0:50:04the Series 0, and I'll have a rant here in a second
0:50:07about these names, but they could go over WiFi
0:50:11if they wanted to, but they would frequently default
0:50:16to Bluetooth to the parent phone instead of making
0:50:19their own WiFi connection for, I think,
0:50:22just power efficiency reasons, that WiFi used a lot
0:50:24of power, so it was kind of like a last resort.
0:50:25the phone or the watch would attempt to use Bluetooth
0:50:28for as much as it could.
0:50:29And they made a few comments about the W2,
0:50:32indicating that it is not only much faster,
0:50:36but much more power efficient for WiFi and Bluetooth
0:50:39than the W1.
0:50:40So I'm hoping that the watch will be more aggressive
0:50:45at using its WiFi and then when you're out using it cellular
0:50:49instead of just like trying Bluetooth first
0:50:51for everything to save power,
0:50:52because that will make lots of things better.
0:50:55If for instance, I wanted to bring Overcast
0:50:58back to the watch, one of the big problems there
0:51:00was file transfer speeds.
0:51:02And that's because most of the time
0:51:03it was going over Bluetooth.
0:51:04Even when the devices would be plugged in,
0:51:06they would still often use Bluetooth to transfer the files.
0:51:08That makes no sense to me, but they would.
0:51:11And there was no way for me as a developer to say,
0:51:13"Look, this is a big file.
0:51:15"Please, for the love of God, transfer it over WiFi."
0:51:17The user is literally waiting for it right now,
0:51:19and it's not being transferred over WiFi.
0:51:21Like, there's no way for me to do that in the API.
0:51:23So I'm hoping this will help push them in that direction
0:51:26of having these new chips.
0:51:27Now, before I forget about the naming here,
0:51:30the first watch was called Apple Watch.
0:51:33The second watch was called Series 1 and 2.
0:51:35- A zero index, that's great for programmers.
0:51:39- Yeah, right.
0:51:40- And so is the fourth watch.
0:51:41- As they're introducing 3 now,
0:51:44'cause Series 1 and 2 had the same guts,
0:51:46but Series 2 was waterproofed, basically.
0:51:49And it was like the same chip inside,
0:51:52like most of the same internals.
0:51:53So it was really like series one and series one waterproof.
0:51:57Like that's what they probably should have called that.
0:52:00Actually they should have called them both,
0:52:02series two and just retcon the first one, series one.
0:52:05But instead we have series zero unofficially called,
0:52:09we have the first one.
0:52:09Then we have series one and two and three now.
0:52:12But series two was discontinued
0:52:15because the new premium model is series three.
0:52:18So now we have series one and series three.
0:52:21Now the casual buyer will look at that
0:52:23and think Series 1 is two years old,
0:52:25but in fact is only one year old.
0:52:27And it's not two generations back, it's one generation back.
0:52:30And if you have an original Apple Watch
0:52:33and you're thinking about upgrading,
0:52:34you're gonna think the Series 1 is the one you have.
0:52:37So it's a very, very confusing name now.
0:52:40Not the first confusing name in this event,
0:52:42but a very confusing name. - Apple's not the best
0:52:43at naming. (laughing)
0:52:45The best thing is that the Series 3
0:52:46also comes without an LTE.
0:52:48So it's like, oh, Series 3 is the one with cellular.
0:52:50Like, well, sort of. (laughing)
0:52:52Right, exactly.
0:52:53Like, these are just terrible names.
0:52:55Yeah, well the good thing is they all look the same.
0:52:58Like from people, they're all lined up on the table, they all look the same, so I think
0:53:01the stigma of getting the lesser thing is like, well they all look the same to me.
0:53:05Like they have a, like on Apple's website or something, it has a big comparison thing,
0:53:09like what do you want out of your watch?
0:53:11Do you care about cellular or do you not?
0:53:13Do you care about waterproofing or not?
0:53:14Do you care about GPS or do you not?
0:53:15Do you care about a red dot on the crown or do you not?
0:53:18By the way, can we talk about the red dot for a second?
0:53:21Now, I love watches.
0:53:22I love red.
0:53:26I even love red watches, or red on watches rather.
0:53:29I have a watch with red accents, it's wonderful.
0:53:32I do not think this red dot looks good on any color watch
0:53:37except maybe the white edition.
0:53:39On every single, and I haven't seen them in person yet,
0:53:42but in all the press photos and all the shop photos,
0:53:45I do not think this looks good.
0:53:48And again, I love red.
0:53:50Everything I own is red.
0:53:51I love watches.
0:53:53I love red on watches.
0:53:54This does not work for me.
0:53:56- I think it works as long as all the rest
0:53:58of the colors are neutral.
0:53:59Like if it's based, that's why you like the white one.
0:54:01Like you just have, everything is neutral
0:54:02and the only accent of color is the red.
0:54:04I mean, it doesn't clash.
0:54:05I think it looks fine.
0:54:06It looks okay.
0:54:07I don't mind it.
0:54:09But it really does limit your aesthetic choices
0:54:11when you've got the stupid red dot
0:54:13that you can't get rid of.
0:54:14I mean, maybe it is changeable, I don't know.
0:54:15Didn't I do this before with the addition
0:54:17where you have different crown colors
0:54:19when you bought the Hermes thing, stuff like that.
0:54:22- Well, the Hermes was always, I think that was always black
0:54:24but with the original gold edition line,
0:54:27that would have, there was like,
0:54:28if you bought the fancy little red one,
0:54:30that would have the red dot.
0:54:32Also, Tim Cook was spotted wearing a watch with a red,
0:54:35wearing a regular steel watch with a red dot on his crown
0:54:38at one of the early events for the Apple Watch.
0:54:41So it was kind of like, ooh,
0:54:42he gets the special one with the red dot.
0:54:43And even at the time, I was like, ooh, I want that.
0:54:45But now that that's offered, I'm like, ew.
0:54:47I think I, I don't know.
0:54:49I don't think it looks good.
0:54:50Maybe it'll look better in person,
0:54:51but in the pictures on the Apple website,
0:54:54it does not look good.
0:54:55- But it limits your choices,
0:54:56because if you say you have a color scheme
0:54:58that clashes with red,
0:54:59like you have a particular band that you want
0:55:01or like a body color,
0:55:03like I want the gold aluminum with this color band,
0:55:05but the red clashes with it, so it's not great.
0:55:09Also, during the presentation,
0:55:10I was like, did they get rid of the stainless?
0:55:11'Cause that's the one that I like the best.
0:55:13That's the one that I have.
0:55:13- Yeah, me too.
0:55:14- I like that look the best.
0:55:15I don't like the aluminum at all, but it's still there.
0:55:17They have limited choices.
0:55:19I saw you can only get it with the Milanese,
0:55:22with the white sport, but like whatever.
0:55:24They didn't change the size of,
0:55:25they didn't change the band compatibility.
0:55:27So if I was to get one of these, which I'm not,
0:55:29I would just get the stainless at tremendous expense
0:55:31and then not use the white things
0:55:32and use one of my other straps with it.
0:55:34- I do not take the red dot at all.
0:55:39I think it's really terrible.
0:55:40And I don't know, there's a store online,
0:55:45watchdots.com, and they are not a sponsor.
0:55:48I have no idea if their product is any good or not.
0:55:50However, I will seriously consider, I'm not kidding.
0:55:55I will consider putting a sticker over it.
0:55:57Something like completely muted.
0:55:59- Yeah, it's that simple.
0:56:00It's like, so you can tell you have the fancy one.
0:56:02- Yeah, I don't know, whatever.
0:56:04But yeah, so now, see Marco, now I'm in $10 a month
0:56:09for the stupid cellular, and then $10 a month
0:56:12potentially for Apple Music,
0:56:13because it won't work with Spotify the way I want.
0:56:15And then $10 once for the stupid watch.
0:56:18I can't even get this out.
0:56:19It's a straight face.
0:56:20Yeah, you're not selling this.
0:56:23So before we leave the topic of the watch, which we should,
0:56:26I was trying to remember,
0:56:27like way back when we first talked about the watch,
0:56:31I don't remember it was like, after it was announced,
0:56:34it must have been after it was announced,
0:56:34'cause before we had just had all sorts of what that is.
0:56:36But after the watch was announced,
0:56:38talking about it on one of the shows,
0:56:41and I remember being pretty vehement about the fact that
0:56:45even though what you see here is a watch that does the things that Apple says it
0:56:49does, this thing is gonna have cellular. It's only a matter of time. And I thought
0:56:52I said by the fourth watch maybe it will have cellular but maybe I'm
0:56:55misremembering but either way like when the watch was introduced it was so clear
0:57:00that this thing is going to have cellular and live on its own and the only
0:57:03reason it doesn't is because they literally could not do that and I think
0:57:07they did it on a pretty pretty good schedule like it it hasn't been that
0:57:12long since the watch was reduced and they already got cellular into it. And they did
0:57:15that by doing something that we had previously described as very "unapple-like," which is
0:57:22don't actually make it thinner year after year. Don't actually change the case. Keep
0:57:25everything gigantic, you know, Airstream Trail on your wrist and reap the benefits of that
0:57:32by saying if we keep it the same size, we can get to where we know we're going, which
0:57:38is cell access on our wrist, right? We can get there faster. They could have shrunk it
0:57:42and kept similar functionality, but instead of shrinking it, what they did is add battery
0:57:46life, let's add GPS, let's add LTE. Now, finally, in a couple years, in the next major revision,
0:57:52now they can shrink because there's probably not that much more stuff they're going to
0:57:56stick in there, like in terms of tech-wise, maybe some cameras, right? And maybe better
0:58:01microphones and speakers. But now advancements in technologies don't have to be spent entirely
0:58:06on adding important features because they finally got the feature set that the watch
0:58:09always wanted to have.
0:58:10It is, you know, it's kind of like when the iPod left the Nest and no longer needed to
0:58:14be connected to your Mac to like initialize it or whatever.
0:58:17I think the phone, same thing, didn't you have to hook up the phone to your Mac in the
0:58:20beginning too?
0:58:21Like all these devices want to be free of the tethers of their larger devices and the
0:58:25watch is finally free.
0:58:26It is no longer, you know, I guess it's still tied to your phone's cell plan, but it is
0:58:31as free as it can be in the world.
0:58:33You can leave your phone at home, go out with your watch, and it does all the magic things
0:58:36that we always wanted it to do.
0:58:38So really quick before we move off, Marco, are you going to buy one?
0:58:43And if so, is it going to be pretty much exclusively for testing or do you expect to use it from
0:58:47time to time?
0:58:48Both.
0:58:49I use the watch now fairly regularly, but I'm not wearing it all day every day.
0:58:55I prefer to take it when I'm, as I said earlier, when I'm going on dog walks or when I'm biking.
0:59:00I like to at least track my distance,
0:59:03and at least use it as a remote control
0:59:06for the overcast app on my phone,
0:59:08even though I can't do local playback very well yet.
0:59:10Yeah, so I am gonna buy this because I think
0:59:14I wanna see what I can do as a developer
0:59:17with 3G on the watch, or LTE, excuse me,
0:59:20with LTE on the watch.
0:59:21- Okay, so which one do you think you'll get?
0:59:23- I'm probably gonna get steel,
0:59:26and since I've been getting the polished steel
0:59:28for the last two watches,
0:59:30but I think maybe this time I'll go black DLC steel.
0:59:34- Oh, you fancy.
0:59:35That's one we all wanted way back
0:59:36when the first one came out, isn't it?
0:59:37- Mm-hmm.
0:59:38- And then--
0:59:39- 'Cause I already have the black bracelet.
0:59:40I bought the bracelet separately.
0:59:42- Right, right.
0:59:43- And I liked the way the black bracelet looked
0:59:44with the contrast of the steel before,
0:59:47but now that I've become more of a watch nerd,
0:59:48the metal mismatch bothers me.
0:59:51And I've been wearing it more
0:59:52on the Rainbow Sportband anyway,
0:59:54so it's less of a problem.
0:59:55But I wanna try the black this time,
0:59:59'cause I do like, like the link bracelet that Apple makes
1:00:03is one of the best link bracelets in the world ever.
1:00:07Like it doesn't have micro-adjustment,
1:00:10which is unfortunate, but besides that one shortcoming,
1:00:13it's amazing, like it's a really, really good bracelet.
1:00:17So I wouldn't mind getting more usage out of it.
1:00:20- Fair enough.
1:00:21Jon, what's your plan?
1:00:23- I'm not getting one because I never wear my watch,
1:00:25which is a shame, I would really like to have one,
1:00:27it seems cool, but no.
1:00:29Well, then you can I wouldn't wear it because I would love to be able to have a thing that's on my wrist that you
1:00:33know, I wear I wear my watch like three times a year like when I'm traveling when I'm walking around city streets at WWC when
1:00:39I'm on vacation in London and for those times it's fun to do it, but
1:00:43that the rest of the year I don't wear it just sits on top of my dresser and if I got this new one I
1:00:47would wear it the same amount of time and
1:00:49and it would be cool to have cell access on my wrist, but
1:00:52Maybe maybe I could be convinced if overcast works on it
1:00:56But I don't know what the context is.
1:00:59I would still bring my phone with me to work.
1:01:02Anyway, it's expensive, I'm not gonna get it.
1:01:04(laughing)
1:01:05'Cause the only one I want is the $600 steel one,
1:01:09and it's like, yeesh.
1:01:11- And I would say too, for anybody who,
1:01:13like you might be waiting for Overcast
1:01:15before they get one, or might be buying one
1:01:17hoping for Overcast to work well on it.
1:01:19- Don't hold your breath.
1:01:20- Yeah, I would say, because I have not made
1:01:23any progress on that front yet,
1:01:25I can't tell you when I'll be able to re-add that feature
1:01:28or even if I'll ever be able to re-add that feature.
1:01:30So don't make this decision for Overcast.
1:01:33Make this decision for other reasons now
1:01:35and if down the road Overcast does end up
1:01:37getting the support again, by all means reconsider it then.
1:01:40But that might be the next watch, I don't even know.
1:01:43I don't know when it's gonna happen.
1:01:44- I would absolutely love to get the gray ceramic case
1:01:49with the gray black sports band,
1:01:50but at $1,300 there's no freaking way that's happening.
1:01:53So instead I will be getting the... I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave behind the space gray, even though I love it,
1:01:59but I want to have the ability to use basically any other color band.
1:02:05So instead I believe I'm going to get the aluminum, which does not bother me at all,
1:02:10the aluminum one with... what is it? Like the fog white or something along those lines.
1:02:15Basically the default cellular
1:02:19sports, whatever, aluminum watch. And I will be getting one of those. Erin will likely
1:02:25be getting the same thing, but I don't think she's going to want anything to do with cellular,
1:02:30particularly once I explain to her it is a non-zero cost per month. Even a dollar, she'd
1:02:34probably be like, "Ah, I don't need that." But yeah, that is my plan. So I will be waking
1:02:38up at three in the morning because the world has to revolve around California. And I'll
1:02:43be waking up at three in the morning to place my order for my two new Apple watches. And
1:02:48That is just the beginning of me going broke this year.
1:02:51- I will say also though, if it was my primary watch
1:02:54that I wore most of or all of every day,
1:02:57that white ceramic I still think
1:02:58is one of the best looking options in the whole lineup,
1:03:01if not the best looking option.
1:03:02And especially if you're gonna get the red dot,
1:03:05I would totally splurge for the white ceramic
1:03:07if it was my primary watch.
1:03:09- That's a lot of money.
1:03:10Gosh, is that a lot of money.
1:03:11- It is, it's stupid, but that's how watches work.
1:03:14When you like the way something looks,
1:03:15you're like, "Yes, set this money on fire.
1:03:17I need to have that on my wrist.
1:03:19Like, so if you don't miss the extra money,
1:03:21the white ceramic is a pretty awesome option.
1:03:24- Yeah, I don't know, $400 for the,
1:03:26or I guess it would be $430 with the LTE?
1:03:29I don't have it in front of me, something like that though.
1:03:32Yeah, $430, so yeah, the silver aluminum case
1:03:35with fog sport band is what I intend to get.
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1:05:42(upbeat music)
1:05:44- Now, we should move on to Apple TV.
1:05:47There's new Apple TV, 4K with HDR.
1:05:50There's still two storage tiers.
1:05:52The remote, which I won't mention out loud
1:05:55so I don't get flamed, really isn't that bad,
1:05:58is not changed with the exception of a raised loop
1:06:01around the menu button.
1:06:02Other than that, it's all basically the same old stuff.
1:06:05No USB-C ports.
1:06:07I don't think any of us really care that much,
1:06:10so let's move on.
1:06:10- I cannot believe. - I care.
1:06:12I care.
1:06:13- Of all, okay, so similar to like,
1:06:15when I said earlier how like,
1:06:17the one thing people want in an Apple retail store
1:06:19is like faster genius appointments and stuff.
1:06:21Like the one thing we want with the new Apple TV--
1:06:25- That's not true. - Is a better remote.
1:06:28- Not all of us. - A redesign remote,
1:06:29because this remote is terrible.
1:06:31And I would also say, I think high on the list
1:06:34of what people would want with the Apple TV,
1:06:35it would be a lower entry price.
1:06:38And we got neither of those.
1:06:40We got, the most insulting part is that
1:06:42they did change the remote.
1:06:44So like, they made a change at all,
1:06:47but it appears that it's only different
1:06:51in that they added a white circle around the menu button.
1:06:54That maybe there's other internal changes,
1:06:56I don't think anybody knows yet.
1:06:59I hope there's more to it than that,
1:07:01but it is still a small, skinny rectangle
1:07:05that is symmetrical in most ways
1:07:07that you will still fall off your couch cushion
1:07:11'cause it has a smooth back.
1:07:12It will still slip between your couch cushion
1:07:14and get lost because it's tiny and thin.
1:07:16It is still too small for good ergonomics.
1:07:18It still relies on an imprecise,
1:07:19annoyingly accidentally inputted touchpad.
1:07:22It is still hard to tell which way is up in the dark.
1:07:24I don't understand how the people in charge at Apple
1:07:32could go through the trouble of changing the Apple TV at all
1:07:36look at that remote and decide, this is fine,
1:07:39we don't have to change this.
1:07:39Like, are they listening to anybody, to any customers?
1:07:44Like, does what we think matter at all?
1:07:46Have they lost their sense of taste
1:07:48for shipping that in the first place?
1:07:50And then two years later, or however long it's been,
1:07:52shipping it almost identically again?
1:07:55- I was reminded of when you mentioned,
1:07:57as talking about the remote,
1:08:00you started talking about the new remote
1:08:01where you were going to get, as if it was a done deal,
1:08:05And it was just a question of what the new remote would be like.
1:08:08And I was feeling particularly snarky and I laughed and I said, "Wait a second, you
1:08:11think there's going to be a new remote?"
1:08:12I am so upset to have been right.
1:08:14Because honestly, I thought there was going to be one too.
1:08:16But I was in a snarky mood of being like, "Oh, you think they're going to change the
1:08:20remote?"
1:08:21We were all so confident.
1:08:22It's like, how could they not change it?
1:08:23Like you said, how could they not?
1:08:24It doesn't need that much.
1:08:26We need 4K, right?
1:08:28You know, update the hardware.
1:08:30They did gig Ethernet.
1:08:31Like, that was another big one in terms of hardware.
1:08:33Like you got to do that.
1:08:35- It's about time, it's 2017, I mean come on.
1:08:38- Right, and then--
1:08:39- We're celebrating that they finally upgraded
1:08:40the 10100 port on the old one.
1:08:43- Yeah, and then the new remote--
1:08:46- Was that the only device in history
1:08:48that had a USB-C port and a 10100 ethernet port?
1:08:51- Yeah, probably.
1:08:52Yeah, but like, yeah, it just,
1:08:56they didn't have time to redo the remote,
1:09:00so all they could do was,
1:09:01this is basically the equivalent of the little bump
1:09:03the iMac Puck mouse where it's like, "Well, we're going to design a new mouse eventually."
1:09:08In 2001, everyone will get an Apology mouse at the Macworld Expo.
1:09:13But in the meantime, is there something we can do for the existing mouse to make it so
1:09:16that people can tell which end is up?
1:09:17How about we put a little divot in the button?
1:09:21And so this is like, I don't even know, having not seen one of these in person, is the white
1:09:25ring even something that you can feel?
1:09:27Never mind that feeling around the remote.
1:09:28I'm pretty sure it is.
1:09:29Feeling around the remote is death because if you accidentally swipe the touchpad, then
1:09:32and you have to remember the correct incantation
1:09:34to not cause the play head to start playing in that position
1:09:38or you can just like not touch it and put it down
1:09:40and say don't touch it, it'll go away eventually
1:09:41and it won't accept my input.
1:09:43I hate that remote so much and they need to fix it
1:09:45and it's terrible.
1:09:46- Honestly, I want to see Apple
1:09:49with new industrial design leadership.
1:09:52- Oh God, here we go.
1:09:54- I wanna see someone else designing these things.
1:09:56The current team is out of ideas
1:09:58and is prioritizing things that I don't think
1:10:01are fully in line with what customers actually want.
1:10:05Put someone else on these kinds of decisions
1:10:07because this needs editing, this needs new leadership.
1:10:12Nobody should look at that remote and say,
1:10:13"That's so good, we should ship another one."
1:10:18- I don't agree at all.
1:10:19So I've blown all credibility by
1:10:22somewhat seriously whining about a $10 a month fee.
1:10:26But I don't, the things that the three of us care about
1:10:31are not the things that most people care about.
1:10:33And I personally don't really have a problem
1:10:38with the remote.
1:10:40Do I think it's stellar?
1:10:40No, I don't.
1:10:41Do I think it's amazing?
1:10:42No, I don't.
1:10:43Have I somehow stumbled into asking
1:10:45and answering my own questions?
1:10:46Yes, I have.
1:10:47So I gotta get off this treadmill.
1:10:48(laughing)
1:10:50I mean, I'm not trying to say you're wrong by any means.
1:10:52I'm not saying that this is a shining example
1:10:54of good design, but it's functional
1:10:57and it works just fine for me.
1:10:59And sometimes I think it's upside, it's sufficient.
1:11:02- It's a low bar, it's a low bar.
1:11:03It should be better than it is, that's what we're saying.
1:11:05- It should be, yes, yes, it should.
1:11:06- It looks really good, right?
1:11:08But that's the only real thing it's got going for it.
1:11:10It's a bad remote, right?
1:11:11And we all have bad remotes in our life.
1:11:13And more importantly than it being a bad remote,
1:11:15I think the most important thing about this remote
1:11:18is that it's difficult for people to use.
1:11:21Forget about tech nerds, people listening to tech podcasts,
1:11:24people who are Apple enthusiasts who've been following
1:11:29company forever who care about the industrial design and everything, you give this remote
1:11:32to anybody, any plain old person off the street, anybody, and it is difficult for them to use
1:11:38successfully. They have accidental inputs, it's hard for them to swipe upward and right
1:11:43and left with their thumbs, it's hard to tell what's activated on the screen, it's not an
1:11:49easy remote to use. In many ways, the five-way was easier, even though it had a stupid circle
1:11:55that made it harder to tell when you were hitting up and down and left and right.
1:11:57And all these things, all remotes are difficult to use. You're seeing anybody
1:12:01using any kind of remote they're difficult to use. But this remote in particular, I feel like,
1:12:06does not have good usability in the old-fashioned sense of the world in terms of how successful are
1:12:10people, how confident are they when using it, or do they feel like it's a thing that they have to
1:12:15be careful touching because something could go wrong. I think people like us use this remote
1:12:20better than most people because we know all the nuances of how it works.
1:12:24We know how we have to approach it and how to work it.
1:12:26We have lots of experience swiping our fingers on things.
1:12:29We do it all day on our magic mice and iOS devices using our sophisticated
1:12:33gestures instead of just, you know, multitasking gestures and swiping from
1:12:36edge and all sorts of things that regular people don't know how to do because they
1:12:40don't care about this stuff that much.
1:12:41So I think the, this remote is more usable to us.
1:12:46We're just complaining about it more because we're picky and we want more of
1:12:48Apple. I just think this is this is a this remote it falls down in in all ways
1:12:56as a for what it's actually supposed to do and because we you know we in this
1:13:03podcast and we want Apple to be you know the best at everything feel like you get
1:13:07it wrong a couple times fine learn from your stakes revised do better this was
1:13:11their chance to do better after a very long break and they put a ringer on the
1:13:13menu button and so everyone is everyone is angry and I think justifiably so but
1:13:18But, you know, there's always,
1:13:22I was gonna say there's always next year,
1:13:23but there's always three years from now.
1:13:27- What annoys me so much about the Apple TV
1:13:29is not that it's worse than the competition.
1:13:32The sad thing is that it's better than the competition.
1:13:34But it really, it could be so much better than it is.
1:13:39It has always been an afterthought.
1:13:41It has always been the lowest of low priorities
1:13:44over things like the Mac Mini, I guess.
1:13:46but it could be so much better,
1:13:50and it's just so mediocre,
1:13:51and it seems like every time they do something new to it,
1:13:54either hardware or software,
1:13:56it's just two steps forward, one step back.
1:13:58It's just, things about it are so frustrating,
1:14:01and I think all three of us are heavy users of the Apple TV.
1:14:06For us, it is our only TV video source.
1:14:09The only things we ever do on our TV
1:14:11are Apple TV or the Switch.
1:14:13That's it.
1:14:14I just want this product to be so much better than it is,
1:14:17and I don't think my demands are that high
1:14:20for what I expect from a good product in this area.
1:14:23And it just, it fails to meet them so often,
1:14:26and it's very frustrating.
1:14:27- So a couple more quickies before I move on with this,
1:14:30'cause we do need to move off.
1:14:32One good thing about the Apple TV,
1:14:33aside from it being 4K and supporting HDR
1:14:35and all the HDR standards,
1:14:36is their announcement of their 4K media pricing,
1:14:40which is the same as HD and your HDs all get upgraded.
1:14:42So we always complain about any cues deal making or whatever,
1:14:45but this is a pretty damn good deal.
1:14:47Same price as HD is good.
1:14:49And free upgrades of all your HD content is crazy good.
1:14:52So--
1:14:53- Yeah, I was really surprised by that.
1:14:55- Yeah, as chat room just panned out,
1:14:57except for Disney asterisk yada yada yada.
1:14:59But if that deal is even remotely as real
1:15:02as it was announced on stage,
1:15:04that is a great deal for people.
1:15:06And it almost makes up for being locked into their ecosystem
1:15:09being forced to use this remote to,
1:15:11or like I said, you don't have to use your remote.
1:15:12you can get another remote, train it, and blah blah blah.
1:15:13Anyway, so that's good.
1:15:15- Yeah, that's awesome.
1:15:16That, like, to give them full credit on the Apple TV,
1:15:19like, the 4K content deals with the exception of Disney
1:15:23are awesome.
1:15:24That is unexpected.
1:15:25I am very, very happy with that.
1:15:27I'm even more happy about the 4K screensaver remaster.
1:15:30I think that's a big deal. - It's your favorite feature,
1:15:32and that comes for free.
1:15:33- Yeah, yeah.
1:15:34- You don't have to pay for it.
1:15:35$10 a month for the screensaver, you'd pay it.
1:15:36- I still don't know if I'm supposed to get
1:15:38the 32 or 64 gigabyte model,
1:15:40which for some reason still exist.
1:15:43- I know people question that,
1:15:44but it's for games and for video caching.
1:15:48Will your movie be cached on that?
1:15:49There's some automatic storage management,
1:15:51and the automatic storage management has an awareness
1:15:53of how much storage there is in the device,
1:15:55and so if you wanna have a higher chance
1:15:56of playing that movie or still being downloaded
1:15:58from the last time you played it three weeks,
1:15:59you go get the 64.
1:16:01I'm getting the 64, that's what I'm getting.
1:16:02- It's $20 difference.
1:16:04Why are these two separate models?
1:16:07- That's two months of your watch.
1:16:08(laughing)
1:16:10- I'm a 4.1 with Apple Music.
1:16:12I don't understand, okay, it seems like
1:16:14when the Apple TV 4 came out,
1:16:16whenever it was two, three years ago,
1:16:17the two big puzzling things about it were like,
1:16:21oh, why are there two different storage tiers?
1:16:23They never really explained why you'd need more storage.
1:16:27It's not really exposed to the user at all in the interface,
1:16:30and it just kind of seemed like, why are there two?
1:16:32Why does that exist?
1:16:33And then the other thing was why this remote sucks.
1:16:35And with this one, they fixed neither of those problems.
1:16:37They have not fixed their remote,
1:16:39and we still have two differently priced models,
1:16:42although they're closer in price.
1:16:44I believe it was a $50 difference before.
1:16:46Now it's a $20 difference.
1:16:48The old one didn't get any cheaper.
1:16:50The new ones are more expensive.
1:16:52This is a theme of the Apple event.
1:16:54The new ones are more expensive.
1:16:56This is fine for people like me
1:16:57who are gonna buy every Apple TV anyway
1:16:59because we use it so heavily.
1:17:01I don't see this really expanding their market much though
1:17:04because everyone else in the set-top box business like this
1:17:09is just killing them on price and features.
1:17:12You know, other, like Amazon or Roku have 4K boxes
1:17:16for $100 or less, and Apple's is now 180
1:17:20for the small tier, or 200 for the big one.
1:17:23The old one is still 150, where it launched two years ago.
1:17:26I don't understand why.
1:17:28I think that's a mistake, and whatever is causing them
1:17:31to keep the price high, even on the old low-end one,
1:17:35I gotta imagine there's cost in the market share.
1:17:38And I don't know if that calculus is right.
1:17:41- They're the premium brand.
1:17:42I don't mind the pricing,
1:17:43especially in the grand scheme of things.
1:17:44The streaming services that you're gonna pay for
1:17:46to watch on the thing are gonna swamp the price
1:17:49of this device pretty quickly.
1:17:50But this is a catch-up device.
1:17:52Like, there was a bunch of stories in the show notes
1:17:55for many weeks about people complaining
1:17:58how behind the Apple TV is.
1:17:59This is a catch-up device.
1:18:00It's catch up on 4K, it's catch up on all the other things they're adding, and maybe
1:18:03it's a little bit ahead in some areas in terms of the content deals or the 4K pricing or
1:18:08the live sports and live news.
1:18:11I'm not aware of what all the offerings are.
1:18:13I guess you got YouTube TV and a bunch of other stuff like that.
1:18:15It's behind on Amazon Video and YouTube TV, which apparently aren't still on this thing.
1:18:22But this is basically a catch-up product, but it's a good catch-up product.
1:18:24So I think they maintain their position.
1:18:26They are the premium brand because they have fancy expensive hardware and their interface
1:18:31looks pretty nice and their remote looks nice as long as you don't touch it.
1:18:36People had a lot of content in iTunes and so this was the Keep the Lights On product
1:18:43and they did it.
1:18:44I like the fact that they offered the big one because this is what I always ask for,
1:18:49make one that has more stuff that's really expensive.
1:18:53Most people shouldn't buy it, but the people who care about it will buy it if there is
1:18:57some benefit.
1:18:58And I think there is, because every once in a while I will play a movie that the kids
1:19:01watched three weeks ago and it's gone and it has to re-download and if the network is
1:19:04wonky or if iTunes is wonky, it'll spin for a while and I would rather just have it play.
1:19:09It would be great if I could actually pin movies to the thing and say just keep it on
1:19:12here, but anyway.
1:19:13So I'm getting this, we do have to move on, but two quick questions for the people out
1:19:17there listening.
1:19:18Does this have a fan?
1:19:19I asked people, no one told me.
1:19:20It has holes in the bottom of it that the other one didn't have, but those could just
1:19:23be for passive cooling, I have no idea.
1:19:25I would love to know if this thing has a fan in it.
1:19:27If it does, I suspect it'll be as quiet as the one in the Tower airport base station,
1:19:33which is so quiet I literally cannot hear it unless I put my ear up to it.
1:19:36I'm just curious if it has a fan.
1:19:37Probably not, because it's the same chip as an iPad, and this is bigger than an iPad,
1:19:41but who knows?
1:19:42And then the other question is, does this do 24 frames per second cadence?
1:19:47it show 24 frames per second video where it shows each of the 24 frames for the same amount
1:19:51of time, which is what you need to do to show a movie shot in 24 frames per second without
1:19:56screwing it up.
1:19:58And no Apple TV that has existed before could do this, except for maybe the one that ran
1:20:03Mac OS X Tiger.
1:20:05That could probably do it.
1:20:06I forget.
1:20:07I don't know what the video output was like on that.
1:20:08But anyway, none of the little black pucks can show 24 frames per second video showing
1:20:11each of the frames for an equal amount of time.
1:20:13I don't know if this one can either.
1:20:15I asked a bunch of people.
1:20:16no answer. So next week, Apple people who work on Apple TV, tell me, 24 frames per second
1:20:20cadence and is there a fan?
1:20:23So you said both of you guys are going to be getting one?
1:20:26Yep.
1:20:27Yeah.
1:20:28Even though, do you, both of you have 4K TVs or neither of you?
1:20:32I don't.
1:20:33I do and I'm getting it for that reason, but I'm also really interested to see how fast
1:20:37that new CPU is. The current Apple TV is kind of inexplicably slow during some common interactions
1:20:43that I have. So any CPU speed improvement would be welcome if that isn't the bottleneck,
1:20:50if it's not some kind of weird software thing. And going from the A8 in the current one,
1:20:56going from that, whatever it is, to the A10X, that's a pretty big jump. They have really
1:21:02spec'd this new one well. I still don't know why it comes in two storage capacities that
1:21:07are $20 different and why the old one is not cheaper, but they have spec'd this one well.
1:21:12So I hope it's a lot faster.
1:21:15So I would say even if you don't have a 4K TV,
1:21:17it might be worth it for some people just for that.
1:21:20Also because the old one didn't get cheaper,
1:21:23it's still 150, and this one's 180,
1:21:27just get this one for future proofing.
1:21:28If you're buying new today,
1:21:31if you already have a fourth gen,
1:21:33maybe the upgrade is a bit of an iffy question
1:21:36if you don't have a 4K TV.
1:21:37But if you're buying a new one, get the 4K one,
1:21:40because it'll be probably useful for longer.
1:21:43- And so John, why are you getting it then?
1:21:45Just because it's better?
1:21:47- Yeah, it's better.
1:21:48It's faster.
1:21:50It's faster, it's gonna slot right in.
1:21:52The best thing with the Apple TV,
1:21:53with the internal power supply, is when I get new ones,
1:21:55I don't even have to go back on the TV
1:21:57and unplug a bunch of crap.
1:21:58You just pull it out and plug it right back
1:21:59into all the same cables.
1:22:01- Oh yeah, mine's still plugged into a PS3 power cable.
1:22:03- I don't even know what power cables are.
1:22:04It's just the ones that are attached to the thing.
1:22:06I mean, I don't recommend people get one.
1:22:07If you have the old one and it works fine for your thing
1:22:09- And you don't have a 4K TV, there's no reason to get it.
1:22:13But I'm totally gonna get it.
1:22:14And one of the other reasons I buy the big one is
1:22:17'cause I want Apple to keep improving this product
1:22:19and by buying the most expensive one,
1:22:21I'm trying to encourage them with my money.
1:22:22Please, keep going.
1:22:25Take another shot at it, try again.
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1:24:00(upbeat music)
1:24:04- All right, so iPhone 8, big changes are glass back
1:24:08with better glass supposedly,
1:24:10although I feel like we've heard that almost every year.
1:24:12- And that should be great for gripability too.
1:24:14Like if, like the reason that I like the jet black so much
1:24:17is that the back kind of feels like glass,
1:24:19so it's very tacky and grippy on my fingers
1:24:21without using a case.
1:24:22So having glass backs on that, that's a pretty big deal.
1:24:25- Yeah, like I tweeted, it's jet black,
1:24:27but without the scratches,
1:24:28because glass is very resistant to scratch
1:24:30compared to whatever the hell
1:24:31the jet black thing is made out of, I don't know.
1:24:34some kind of chalkboard material.
1:24:35So yeah, it's all the benefits of jet black
1:24:39without the downsides.
1:24:41Speaking of, I wish I could look these things up in my past.
1:24:43I had to use the podcast search,
1:24:45but back when the iPhone 4 came out
1:24:48and still my favorite physical iPhone design,
1:24:51glass front and back looked awesome,
1:24:53but now you had a back that could shatter too.
1:24:55And then the back shattered is not as big deal
1:24:58as the front shattering, but people didn't like it.
1:25:00It was cheap to replace the back, cheap-ish,
1:25:03it's just a piece of glass but anyway after two generations of that the 4 and the 4s uh i remember
1:25:08talking on some podcast maybe it was this one had to be this one or maybe someone was like
1:25:12apple's gonna come up with a new phone and you can bet it will not have a glass back
1:25:16and of course the 5 didn't have a glass back and neither did the 5s and neither the 6 and neither
1:25:21the 6s and neither the 7 but they found their way back to it because i think they like i like that
1:25:27design i love the 4 design with the glass front and back it just had a couple of downsides it
1:25:31It took them this long, took them like five phones,
1:25:34five whole years to say,
1:25:36can we get the glass back on this phone?
1:25:39And they went through all like the laser welded mesh
1:25:41of copper and steel and blah, blah, blah.
1:25:44Like they clearly like they wanted to go somewhere.
1:25:48They went there and they backed off and regrouped
1:25:52and they eventually got where they wanted to go again,
1:25:55which is a glass back because there are so many vendors.
1:25:57Scratch proof is good for grip.
1:25:59You can make it look really pretty.
1:26:00It's a radio transparent-ish more so than metal, right?
1:26:05You don't have to have that glass window
1:26:07like the 5s had on the back for the radios
1:26:09and stuff like that.
1:26:10So this iPhone 8, I was more impressed
1:26:13by the industrial design than I thought it would be
1:26:14because I had, honestly, I hadn't been keeping up
1:26:15with the iPhone 8 rumors that had all been about the,
1:26:17you know, the edge to edge screen one and everything.
1:26:19I thought, yeah, these will just be like the 7s,
1:26:21it'll be fine.
1:26:22They'll have faster internals.
1:26:23I'm actually kind of excited about these
1:26:25because I think the physical design,
1:26:26despite being almost the same dimensions, it's cool.
1:26:30It looks cool in pictures,
1:26:31and I think physical properties-wise,
1:26:34it will be a better phone for people
1:26:37than the other phones that were also shaped like this.
1:26:39So I give the D8 a pretty big thumbs up.
1:26:42- Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate
1:26:45that it's gonna be kind of buried
1:26:46in the news cycle for the most part,
1:26:49and in the year, in the attention cycle by the iPhone X,
1:26:52because it does look like a pretty good release.
1:26:56- I was impressed by it,
1:26:57But of course, I was only paying half attention to it
1:27:01because I was just like, okay, whatever, whatever, whatever.
1:27:03Get to the iPhone X, get to the iPhone X,
1:27:05get to the iPhone X, except not.
1:27:07- I think you mean 10.
1:27:08- Oh, no, no, no, I said that deliberately.
1:27:10(laughing)
1:27:11- No, no, we'll get there.
1:27:12We'll get there.
1:27:13- Yeah, we're getting there, we're getting there.
1:27:14- All right, anyway, more good things about this one.
1:27:16So, I mean, we assume this would be the case,
1:27:18but it's worth reemphasizing.
1:27:20It's got the same chip as the fancy phone, right?
1:27:22It's not like it's got a lesser chip.
1:27:23This is not like, oh, this is last year's model
1:27:25and it has the A with one lower A.
1:27:28It's got an A10, no, it's got an A11 in,
1:27:30and the A11 is nuts, as usual.
1:27:32Like people posted the benchmark showing it,
1:27:35beating a 13-inch MacBook Pro in Geekbench benchmarks
1:27:39in both single and multi-core.
1:27:41- Yeah, if those are real, by the way,
1:27:42that means that they have now beaten Casey's computer,
1:27:44which is awesome.
1:27:45(laughing)
1:27:46- I mean, it's pretty amazing.
1:27:47And you get that in the 8,
1:27:48like you don't have to buy the fancy phone for that.
1:27:50It has wireless charging,
1:27:52which I didn't think it would have
1:27:53for differentiation purposes,
1:27:54but it does have it.
1:27:56And even though Apple's not ready with its charger thing,
1:27:59I love the fact that they use that Qi charging standard.
1:28:02A friend of mine has that charging thing.
1:28:04He bought wireless,
1:28:05he bought like a wireless charging case for his iPhone.
1:28:07Like you put, like I forget which phone it was,
1:28:09it was like a six or something.
1:28:10You put this case in it
1:28:12and it wirelessly charged your iPhone with this standard
1:28:14by like essentially having a case
1:28:16that makes it do the thing.
1:28:17And it was like, oh, that's great,
1:28:18but you just bought yourself into a dead end
1:28:21because when Apple comes out with wireless charging,
1:28:22it sure as hell is not gonna be this Qi stuff.
1:28:24when they came up with that slide, I'm like, "They did it! They used someone else's standard
1:28:29because they recognized that they didn't want to have to fight that same battle they did
1:28:32with carplay because they're putting these chargers in cars and stuff now." And it's
1:28:36so hard to, in the same way the stupid 30-pin iPod port went to every hotel room, and if
1:28:42you were another manufacturer and wanted to get in there, it's like, "Sorry, we already
1:28:45picked the thing that we're going to put on our nightstands, and it's this stupid thing."
1:28:49The Qi charger—am I pronouncing it right? Qi?
1:28:51I believe that's right.
1:28:52chargers are, I don't know if they won the market, but I've seen them around in a couple
1:28:57of places. I've read reports of them coming in cars or whatever, and so Apple getting
1:29:00on board with that, but also finding a way to like add its own twist and influence the
1:29:04standard to charge multiple devices with that air power thing. All that being on the "lesser"
1:29:10iPhone 8 makes this a pretty darn good phone. Like the only reason people should, you know,
1:29:16the only reason we're all going to start ignoring it is because we're tech nerds and we care
1:29:20about all the stuff we're gonna talk about for the iPhone 10.
1:29:23But this is an eight, it's one bigger than seven.
1:29:27It looks really cool, it has great features.
1:29:30If I had a friend or relative who was looking for a phone,
1:29:34I would not say, oh, just ignore the eight.
1:29:36I would ask them what they're looking for in a phone
1:29:37and I think a lot of people should get the eight
1:29:41instead of the 10 and I think it will be great for them.
1:29:44What's the other thing, Mark, are you gonna tell me
1:29:46the camera, did they add optical image stabilization
1:29:49for the zoomed in one on this or only on the 10?
1:29:51- No, only on the 10.
1:29:53But I mean, these are, the camera,
1:29:57we'll see how it is in practice.
1:29:59The specs sounded pretty good.
1:30:00It's still 12 megapixel, but they said
1:30:02it's an all new sensor, more light, better color, et cetera,
1:30:06kind of the usual suspects there, which is awesome.
1:30:08There's a whole bunch of custom silicon sounding things
1:30:11or custom processing steps kind of things
1:30:13that they gave fun marketing names to
1:30:16or that they glossed over.
1:30:17They mentioned that, first of all,
1:30:20I think it's interesting noting that the A11 Bionic,
1:30:23like they gave it a name, the Bionic afterwards,
1:30:25like to kinda-- - It was like the Fusion
1:30:28made even less sense, but whatever.
1:30:30They won't have names, they can have their names.
1:30:31- Yeah, but anyway, so they have a lot of names
1:30:34for these things now, but they also have pointed out
1:30:37in the presentation of a lot of these things
1:30:40that they have custom things.
1:30:42So they mentioned, first of all, this is a six-core chip.
1:30:46That's awesome, like that's, and I have no idea, you know,
1:30:51what the performance characteristics of this will be,
1:30:53but it seems like the answer's going to be fast.
1:30:58It does seem like there is a more than usual
1:31:02of a focus on power efficiency gains
1:31:04over straight performance gains,
1:31:07but it seems like they also got straight performance gains,
1:31:09so that's pretty cool.
1:31:10Again, we'll see how this does in practice,
1:31:12but I have a feeling it's gonna be kind of awesome.
1:31:15One of the things that caught my attention
1:31:17is that they now say they have an Apple designed GPU.
1:31:20The specs don't sound amazing at first.
1:31:24They said in the presentation that it is 30% faster
1:31:28than the A10's GPU.
1:31:30And for a GPU performance for an iPhone year over year,
1:31:32that actually isn't that amazing.
1:31:35They've had bigger gains before.
1:31:38They also said it can offer the same level of performance
1:31:40as the A10 at half the power as an alternative, I guess.
1:31:43So that's interesting.
1:31:45So again, focus on power efficiency.
1:31:48This is the first Apple designed GPU core in there
1:31:51that I would expect based on how they did
1:31:54when they took CPU core design in house with the iPhone 5,
1:31:59where they had their first core,
1:32:00which is code named Swift,
1:32:01inconveniently now, it's very hard to search for that.
1:32:04But if you look at those performance graphs
1:32:07that they used to show,
1:32:08but curiously didn't show this time,
1:32:10where it had performance of the original iPhone
1:32:12and then this big ramp up to performance of today's iPhone,
1:32:15there's a pretty noticeable acceleration
1:32:17right after the iPhone 5.
1:32:20That's when they took it in-house.
1:32:22So taking GPUs in-house as well,
1:32:26probably is significant long-term
1:32:28and will probably result in pretty impressive gains.
1:32:31Like they mentioned during the presentation
1:32:33that this is a custom design optimized
1:32:35for Metal 2 and Core ML, their APIs.
1:32:39And that's the kind of thing they can do
1:32:41when they take designs in-house,
1:32:43and when they can specialize the hardware
1:32:45to their software needs,
1:32:47and they can do things like analyze every app
1:32:49in the App Store and its performance characteristics,
1:32:51and what kind of instructions it needs,
1:32:53and what kind of optimization they need and practice.
1:32:56They can do some really cool stuff
1:32:57with some really impressive performance gains
1:33:00when they take silicon design in-house.
1:33:02They have in the past,
1:33:03and they're doing more and more of that,
1:33:04so we're gonna see benefits of that
1:33:07continuing down the road.
1:33:08That's pretty great.
1:33:09- For the GPU thing, we knew this was coming
1:33:11because of the whole imagination lawsuit or whatever thing,
1:33:14like in that Apple had preannounced,
1:33:16we're not gonna be using your tech anymore.
1:33:17So they kind of telegraph that themselves.
1:33:20But for the speed gain,
1:33:23it seems to me not having seen a floor plan view
1:33:26of this chip that they spent their die space
1:33:28and transistors more on the six cores and the neural,
1:33:33whatever thing and everything else and less on GPU
1:33:37because GPUs, honestly, aside from what they said,
1:33:41custom tailoring it to the APIs that know they're going to get called and making sure it's sufficient for those things and figuring out the
1:33:46right balance of execution units and stuff
1:33:48As they as they say GPUs are embarrassingly parallel and essentially you can make them as fast as you want
1:33:54with you know
1:33:57Just die space and power budget, right?
1:33:59And so the iPads obviously they have more pixels to push and they have more die space and more power
1:34:05And so it's the iPad GPUs that are the big monsters most of the time on the phone
1:34:10You don't have as many pixels to push around and you just don't have the die space and
1:34:15the power to, you know, it's not like, oh, we couldn't make it.
1:34:18They could have made it 300% faster by just, you know, adding 10 times as many transistors
1:34:24and sucking up 10 times as much power.
1:34:26But like the trade off they're picking is four tiny CPU cores, two big ones, the neural
1:34:31thing, the image processor, right?
1:34:34And then GPU, I think is like a distant third because as much as people are going to game
1:34:39on their phone, it's more important for the Apple TV to have a good powerful GPU for gaming
1:34:46than it is for the phone.
1:34:47The phone GPU is, like I said, it's like tertiary.
1:34:51It's like primary and secondary is the camera and image processing and the CPU, and I'm
1:34:55not even sure what order those should be in.
1:34:57And then third is the GPU.
1:34:59So I wouldn't worry about it.
1:35:00I think this GPU is not like Swift where they're like, the CPU, not the language, where it
1:35:07was just their first try and they weren't that good at it.
1:35:09I think they're already awesome at it and this is just a trade-off they made and the correct trade-off
1:35:13For the phone and we haven't gotten to the battery life yet
1:35:15of the the 10 but you know this that's the weird thing about this being
1:35:20The same system on a chip in both of them as far as we're aware like there's no differences
1:35:25But the whole neural processing thing for face ID
1:35:28iPhone 8 doesn't have face ID doesn't have the depth camera doesn't have any of that stuff
1:35:31But I think it's still got the neural processing thingy in there
1:35:35Otherwise they're making a custom version of it just for the iPhone 8 that doesn't have that or it's like well
1:35:40It probably has animoji support. Yeah, I
1:35:42Don't know anyway
1:35:45There's a little bit of weirdness there
1:35:46But I think they're choosing to spend their transistors where they want and I think when you see the a11x
1:35:51You will see
1:35:54the graph
1:35:56continue
1:35:57Just as before because they'll just have more room and more power
1:36:00the
1:36:0232 gigs is gone. It's 64 and 128 is gone, right? So it's now and now they all cost more to hit 64
1:36:09256 continuing that continuing the theme of
1:36:12price price hikes throughout the line
1:36:15Explanation for that is that flash storage
1:36:19cost more money
1:36:21Across all their products and it does well
1:36:23But I mean that's the estimate they gave it in their earnings call before where they're not gonna be making up BS because they're held
1:36:28To that their statements there by the SEC and everything. So they're basically saying hey
1:36:32our component costs have gone up and and the rest across the rest of the industry component costs are gone up and
1:36:36Because of the magical capitalism they pass on that lack of savings to you the customer
1:36:41They could have eaten it, but they didn't and it explains why everything is more expensive why you know there
1:36:48The price hikes across the board because all these things include lots of flash storage and especially because they got rid of the 128
1:36:55so it's like
1:36:5764 is entry-level. I think is acceptable now finally we can forget the days of like 16
1:37:01top tier devices of entry level and the fact that it's jumps all the way to 256
1:37:07that's not as granular as you would want but I like the fact that that you know
1:37:11that it doesn't top out at 128 which hasn't for a few years now so anyway
1:37:15that's typical Apple move the big big one cost you tons and tons of money and
1:37:20even more money because of their component prices what can you do I think
1:37:24I'm pretty happy with it with the the storage choices here because I honestly
1:37:28I think 64 is good for almost everybody and if you feel like you want more you should
1:37:34have the mostest and that is 256.
1:37:37Yeah I mean I don't love that they had to randomly increase prices across all their
1:37:41products including the iPad Pro weirdly.
1:37:43Yeah well that's what convinces you that it's component cost because that's not a strategic
1:37:46move like they don't want to have to do that but they have to to maintain their margins.
1:37:50They're the only company that going into the holiday season increases their prices.
1:37:53(laughing)
1:37:55- I mean, we should look.
1:37:56I mean, if component cost is really arguing out
1:37:57for everybody, I think this will hit everybody.
1:37:59Maybe other companies are not in a position
1:38:02where they can pass that right onto the customers
1:38:06and say that they'll take it, but Apple is,
1:38:08and so they're doing it.
1:38:09- Yeah, I'm guessing Apple's hand was not forced here.
1:38:12I'm guessing they're doing it because they know they can.
1:38:14- Also, that's an important part of,
1:38:15we're gonna go to the iPhone X in a second,
1:38:17but all of these price increases,
1:38:19like, I don't know what the correct term for this is.
1:38:22Someone who's an economics major who has read anything about it would know, like,
1:38:27pricey elasticity or whatever.
1:38:28Like, bottom line is, like, if you charge your customers more, if you increase the price
1:38:33of your product, how much does the demand go down?
1:38:36Right?
1:38:37And Apple has always been in this weird position, especially with its top-end most popular products,
1:38:42where it's like a game of chicken against itself.
1:38:44It's like, if we add $100, how much fewer of these will we sell?
1:38:49and they add $100 and they sell more than like, hmm.
1:38:53Did we just sell more but we would have sold even more
1:38:56if we hadn't increased the price?
1:38:57And so they keep running this experiment.
1:38:59If we had $50, will anybody mind?
1:39:02Right, and they're learning for the most part,
1:39:04especially on the high end,
1:39:06they can keep creeping that price up
1:39:09and people, I mean the Mac Pro is the perfect thing.
1:39:11They don't even ask the question of the Mac Pro,
1:39:12like how much can we charge this?
1:39:14I don't know, just like make up a number, $10,000?
1:39:16Sure, ship it, like whatever.
1:39:18because they can, they absolutely can.
1:39:20And towards the top end of the iPhone,
1:39:22especially now that they have this Ferrari of iPhones,
1:39:24they can just add a couple hundred bucks for that.
1:39:27I mean, they're already doing it with like,
1:39:28oh, you go up in storage and it's extra hundred bucks.
1:39:31Like they discovered they can do that.
1:39:32We're gonna add $5 in component prices,
1:39:35but the price the customers increase by $100.
1:39:37And we'll keep, we'll pocket the 95,
1:39:39like it is a great deal.
1:39:41And so this, you know, the component price,
1:39:43which I totally believe is a real thing,
1:39:46they should have been pretty confident to say,
1:39:49"Our component prices are going up.
1:39:50We can either take a hit in our margins
1:39:52or we can just increase our prices."
1:39:53And in fact, maybe we can increase our prices
1:39:56more than our component costs increase.
1:39:58So maybe our margins can actually increase.
1:40:00And so they're going to try it.
1:40:01And I think they're right.
1:40:02I think, especially, this will not deter customers.
1:40:05I don't, and it scares me because I'm like,
1:40:07if they doubled the price of the iPhone,
1:40:09how much would they sell?
1:40:10Half as many?
1:40:11Or would they sell like 20% fewer?
1:40:14Right?
1:40:15how they toy with their demand, right?
1:40:18I mean, it's another way to keep people out of Apple stores.
1:40:20You know, just keep increasing the price of your products.
1:40:21- Wow.
1:40:22- Become even more and more premium, right?
1:40:25And, you know, I don't think this is
1:40:28a good long-term strategy.
1:40:29I think they should be cautious
1:40:30because you don't want to leave a price umbrella,
1:40:33as Tim likes to say,
1:40:34like leave the loan available to everybody else.
1:40:37And it makes people angry,
1:40:39even the people who can afford it,
1:40:40as evidenced by all of us, or Casey and I,
1:40:42anyway complaining about $10 a month,
1:40:44we can go forward. So it is a dangerous game, but I think Apple is actually right that,
1:40:51you know, as the high end of their phones starts to get higher end, as I think it should,
1:40:58because they should be expanding their line, like, and, you know, having more diversity in their line
1:41:02and going for all different things, they can add lots of money to the price because they have a
1:41:07product that people want, and it's really cool, and it's fancy. And, you know, just crank up the
1:41:13price and sell people a $100 case and a $130 charging pad. That's why they make all the
1:41:23money. They're not dumb, and we are willing to pay for it. So unlike the $10 thing, which
1:41:32happens I'm mad at the carriers, I can't even be mad about this because unlike the carriers,
1:41:35Apple has products that people want, and I want them, and we're willing to pay for them.
1:41:40And if we can't pay for them, we will buy the lesser ones because they're still pretty
1:41:43cool.
1:41:44Yeah.
1:41:45But we have one more thing, gentlemen.
1:41:48Pretty appropriate use, I feel like.
1:41:50They save it.
1:41:51I don't think they should have retired it.
1:41:54I think it's fine for them to use it.
1:41:55I think it is an homage, an honor, and they do save it for the important ones.
1:41:59And this was an important one.
1:42:01Mm-hmm.
1:42:02I agree.
1:42:03I agree.
1:42:04I think it is worth—like, they're allowed to use it if they use it sparingly and appropriately.
1:42:10And so far they have.
1:42:11Yeah, yeah, I agree.
1:42:13The iPhone X, which I did call X earlier deliberately because I still think it should be called
1:42:20X.
1:42:21I will not call it the iPhone X anymore, but my point earlier was that I was just waiting
1:42:24for this iPhone X to show up, and then sure enough, we are immediately told, "No, no,
1:42:30no.
1:42:31It is not the iPhone X.
1:42:32It is the iPhone X."
1:42:33Wait, were you reading it?
1:42:35Were you in the Gruber camp where you thought they were actually going to pronounce that
1:42:38X is a 10?
1:42:39or that X is an X rather.
1:42:41- I thought it was gonna be X.
1:42:43- Yeah, so we saw the strings from the firmware
1:42:45and that's the problem with all of us having read it
1:42:49before anyone ever said it,
1:42:50'cause we all read it in the leak, right?
1:42:51And there's no pronunciation guide in the leak, right?
1:42:54If the first time we had ever experienced this was on stage,
1:42:56I think there would have been a fighting chance,
1:42:58like not a big chance honestly,
1:42:59but a better chance that we would all be saying it internally
1:43:04in our minds as 10.
1:43:06But now we had like a week or two of saying it in our head
1:43:10as X, and then they come out and say 10.
1:43:12And if I had to bet, I would have bet against Gruber.
1:43:16I spent several years opening all my Mac OS X reviews
1:43:19by saying, and by the way, this is another reminder,
1:43:21the X is pronounced 10.
1:43:23Because no one knew what the hell Mac OS X was, right?
1:43:26So I had to say, hey, you're reading your review
1:43:28right up there, there's an X,
1:43:28I know you're probably reading this,
1:43:29but just so you know, it's 10.
1:43:30Didn't work, people still call it X,
1:43:32that's all you can do.
1:43:33Couldn't stop them from calling it an iTouch,
1:43:35You're not gonna stop people calling this iPhone X.
1:43:37- Or iWatch, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:43:39- I will continue, I will try to do 10.
1:43:42I will never do 10.
1:43:43- No, no, no, and all kidding aside, I will too.
1:43:46When I was saying it earlier, it was in the mindset
1:43:48of 20 minutes earlier in the keynote,
1:43:50I expected to see the iPhone X.
1:43:51But now we know it's the iPhone 10,
1:43:53and if I slip up from now on, don't let me tell you
1:43:57it was deliberate, because it isn't.
1:43:58But earlier that was deliberate.
1:44:00- When they released one of the S models,
1:44:03I believe it was the 5S, and they gave it a lowercase S,
1:44:07and it just looked like the iPhone 5s,
1:44:09and nobody, like immediately,
1:44:11even like in the initial reviews of it,
1:44:14everyone just capitalized the S,
1:44:16because it was really weird without it.
1:44:18So like everyone just went against Apple's wishes,
1:44:20and eventually I think Apple just kind of gave up,
1:44:21and you know, it got normalized everywhere as capital S.
1:44:25I think this is the kind of thing where like,
1:44:27I have a feeling a lot of people
1:44:29are going to call this the iPhone X,
1:44:31no matter what, no matter how Apple says it,
1:44:34this is gonna be the iPhone X to most people,
1:44:37and we're just gonna have to deal with that.
1:44:38We're gonna have to be okay with that,
1:44:39because that's how it's gonna be.
1:44:42Calling it 10, yes, there is that history with Mac OS X,
1:44:46which everybody screwed up,
1:44:47but that was such a smaller scale than this.
1:44:51- Yep.
1:44:52- The iPhone is so much bigger than the Mac ever was
1:44:55or will be that most people who are gonna be calling it
1:44:59the iPhone X are probably not Mac owners.
1:45:02- I think, see, if the first time you hear the name of it
1:45:05is in an Apple store, the Apple people are all gonna say 10,
1:45:07and you won't even know that it's an X.
1:45:08If the first time you see it as an ad on TV,
1:45:10maybe you'll start saying X,
1:45:12but most people aren't reading about this,
1:45:13you know, in reviews like that.
1:45:14So percentage-wise, I think the breakdown
1:45:16will be about the same.
1:45:17It's just that the numbers are bigger.
1:45:18- I mean, most people are gonna be calling it the new iPhone.
1:45:21- Yeah, we had to be reminded by a listener, MT Walker,
1:45:24I had to be reminded anyway,
1:45:25that we had to show episode 172,
1:45:28the title of which was iPhone space capital X.
1:45:31Do you remember that show?
1:45:32- No. - You remember that discussion?
1:45:33- I didn't until I'd heard it because of that link.
1:45:35- So perhaps Margo should click the link in the show notes
1:45:37and here are very-- - We have show notes.
1:45:40- Impression discussion, yes.
1:45:42At 58 minutes and six seconds into episode 172,
1:45:46we will put the link to this in the show notes,
1:45:47we have a discussion where we jokingly say
1:45:49that the next iPhone should be 10
1:45:51but it should be an X like a Roman numeral.
1:45:54- Well, and so here's the problem with this.
1:45:56Like, if this was the only iPhone released this year,
1:46:01they could plausibly just call next year's 11
1:46:04and be fine with it or move on.
1:46:06- This one does not go to 11.
1:46:07- So here's the problem.
1:46:09They have two iPhones that they released
1:46:11that are very similar in many of the specs.
1:46:13One of which is called 8 and one of which is called 10.
1:46:16So similar to the watch series one versus series three,
1:46:20this makes the 8 seem older than it really is.
1:46:23It really makes it hard to talk about these phones
1:46:25We can't just say like, oh, it's the eight family
1:46:27or whatever else or, you know, like.
1:46:28So it makes there appear to be much more of a difference
1:46:32than there really is.
1:46:33That also is going to age badly.
1:46:35If you start thinking about what might they do
1:46:37in the next couple years for the product naming.
1:46:40Like, what are gonna be the phones next year?
1:46:42Nine and 11? - No, no, no.
1:46:45- Like, this naming scheme, like this,
1:46:47they're gonna have to like mess up the names again next year
1:46:50and it hurts their message this year
1:46:52of trying to make a lot of people
1:46:54still want to buy the 8s, because it makes them sound even older than they are.
1:46:59That's why people thought they were all going to be called 8, but I think Apple's willing
1:47:03to eat that because most people will shop based on the product, not the name.
1:47:08I think they have a plan in kind of the same way that when they went Mac OS 7.6, and then
1:47:15eventually Mac OS 8, which wasn't Copeland, even though it stole the name, and then they
1:47:20They did Mac OS 9 and they did Mac OS 10 with a Roman numeral and that Roman numeral did
1:47:27not ever change.
1:47:29Eventually it just went away and now we're just back to plain old Mac OS.
1:47:31But we had a Mac OS 10 with names and version numbers and year after year after year of
1:47:37Mac OS 10.
1:47:38Someone being reminded again, but someone sent me a link to my five years of OS 10 review
1:47:43at Ars Technica and I mentioned starting the reviews with a section saying what is Mac OS 10,
1:47:51so because people didn't know what it was and the pronunciation tips. And I noted that even
1:47:57Steve Jobs had said X instead of 10 on stage, like because you know he's a human being and I also
1:48:04know that he said PowerBook instead of MacBook because MacBook is a gross name and he knows it
1:48:07too. But it is a difficult name, but it is a system that has been proven to work. You just
1:48:15don't increase the number. You never go to 11. You just do the iPhone 10. And this iPhone 10,
1:48:23they didn't lean on this as much as I thought they would, but it is like two better than the eight,
1:48:30right? They didn't say, "Oh, and we skipped the nine and it's like living in the future," and so
1:48:34and so on and so forth, but that's the message,
1:48:35that this is not just one better than the eight,
1:48:38it's two better than the eight.
1:48:40It is the next generation of product,
1:48:42they did say this is the,
1:48:43in the same way the MacBook Air was the future of laptop,
1:48:46this is the future of phones.
1:48:47And it seems clear to me,
1:48:49fast forward a couple of years,
1:48:52they'll all be iPhone 10s.
1:48:54Like they'll all be like this phone, right?
1:48:56The notch, the edge, the edge screen, the physical design.
1:48:59And I don't think they're going to change the 10
1:49:03or they'll just drop it entirely and the whole,
1:49:05this is what all future phones will look like eventually.
1:49:08Not this year, because the eights look like the sevens,
1:49:11look like the sixes. - On an infinite time scale.
1:49:13- No, but this is, no, but it's pretty, not infinite,
1:49:15like within a couple of years.
1:49:17As these things go down market,
1:49:19they're gonna move this design down market,
1:49:22'cause they said it themselves,
1:49:23this is the future of the phone,
1:49:24and they have a name because it uses a letter
1:49:27and not a number, and because people don't know
1:49:29how Roman numerals work after a certain point,
1:49:31I don't think there's a temptation to go Super Bowl LMVXIZ.
1:49:35(laughing)
1:49:36There's no temptation to do that.
1:49:38So they either just keep the capital letter X
1:49:41or they just drop it entirely like they did in Mac OS.
1:49:43But it's an extensible naming scheme just about the time
1:49:47when the numbers are about to get unwieldy on iPhones.
1:49:50- Yeah, no, that makes sense.
1:49:52But the other thing to consider though is that,
1:49:54and this is one of the weirdnesses about
1:49:57that the line is now bifurcated,
1:49:59that as you think about how the names scale,
1:50:02don't assume that the bifurcation of the line
1:50:05into the regular phone at the regular prices,
1:50:09plus 50 bucks, and the new phone that's $300 more
1:50:14or whatever, that's gonna keep beating there.
1:50:17They're not gonna sell a phone for $1200 massively this year
1:50:22and have a huge hit rate with that,
1:50:24and then next year say, "Let's make it cheaper."
1:50:27there's no way that's going to happen.
1:50:30Once they get used to selling phones
1:50:32at these two different price points
1:50:34and selling a ton of the higher one,
1:50:36they're not gonna give up that profit in the future,
1:50:38but they're also not gonna wanna give up the market share
1:50:40of having the slightly less expensive ones
1:50:43also in the lineup at the base level.
1:50:45So they're going to keep having two lines for a long time.
1:50:49- No, it's not gonna be two lines.
1:50:50They're all gonna look like that.
1:50:51They're just gonna be three phones, three sizes.
1:50:53We, not so we, and freaking huge.
1:50:55That's SNL references everywhere.
1:50:59- Was that Austin Powers?
1:51:00- That was SNL, right?
1:51:02Maybe it was Austin Powers.
1:51:03It's Mike Myers.
1:51:04Mike Myers doing his impression of an Irish gentleman.
1:51:09Oh, no, Scottish, Scottish.
1:51:11- Did you know, John, that if it's not Scottish, it's crap?
1:51:15- Yes, I think it's the same thing.
1:51:17I hope it's Mike Myers.
1:51:18Might not be any story.
1:51:19Anyway, whole point is, yeah, like,
1:51:22The diversification of the iPhone line has not recontracted.
1:51:27They've only gone more.
1:51:28We've got the SE hanging out down there,
1:51:30which is kind of hanging out where the 5C was.
1:51:32And we got the little phone and the big phone,
1:51:35the 6 and the 6 Plus,
1:51:36and now we have this kind of in-betweeny size.
1:51:39And price range going down market with the SE,
1:51:42which is now like 350 or something,
1:51:43like the cheapest iPhone there's ever been
1:51:45in terms of just what the price is, right?
1:51:47And the most expensive one.
1:51:48They're not gonna give up that range.
1:51:50I'm just saying tech-wise, right?
1:51:52What distinguishes the X now is that it's got the edge to edge screen, it's got the notch,
1:51:56you know, it doesn't have a home button, like it is a new phone design, an Apple set explicitly,
1:52:01this is the future of the smartphone.
1:52:02So within I think a couple years, two, three years, the whole --
1:52:08they're going to come a September event and all three or four, depending on how they deal
1:52:13with the SE, all three or four new phones are going to be notch-bearing,
1:52:17edge to edge, non-home button having things.
1:52:20One of them is going to be 1,300 bucks, right?
1:52:22and one of them is going to be whatever the cheapest one here is, 400 to 500 or whatever.
1:52:25But that's what I mean. And once they all start being eduteted on a home button,
1:52:32notch bearing, watchamoosies, you can name them as a family, you can market them as a family,
1:52:37it is a family that spans the range. And it will be more cohesive than it is now where they show
1:52:42the family, you've got the SE design, and then the 6S and 7 and 8, and then you've got the 10.
1:52:48It's a little bit of a motley crew, but we're in transition.
1:52:51We're in transition the same way we were when we were transitioning to Retina, when we were
1:52:53transitioning to Touch ID.
1:52:56But things will flow downwards.
1:52:59And I have some confidence that their product line will be much more coherent in a few more
1:53:04years, even if their names aren't necessarily.
1:53:06Because let's be honest, Apple is a little bit weird with the names.
1:53:09There's a possibility for a brighter future for naming, but Apple's really good at screwing
1:53:14it up.
1:53:15So I don't put anything past them.
1:53:16Like as many people said, this is the new iPhone.
1:53:19One year they're going to drop the 10 and just they're all going to be the new iPhone
1:53:22and we're not going to have any way to talk about them.
1:53:23Who knows, but I'm sure it'll be fine.
1:53:26So we knew a lot about this phone.
1:53:27We didn't really acknowledge tonight that there was a tremendous leak of the iOS 11
1:53:34GM specifically for this phone, among other things.
1:53:36And Steve— In between the last show and now, the leaks
1:53:39came so fast that we, on our regular weekly schedule, we missed an entire gigantic leak.
1:53:45So we knew a lot of this.
1:53:48We certainly didn't know everything.
1:53:50We didn't know that they were going to call this OLED display "super retina."
1:53:53It's super retina.
1:53:54Such important things we didn't know.
1:53:55On that point of us not knowing everything, I think we knew the most about this Apple
1:53:59event than I've ever known about any Apple event.
1:54:03We had mock-ups of this phone that are indistinguishable on video from the actual real thing, probably
1:54:08down to the millimeter perfect, right?
1:54:10We knew so much about the software from the software leak, which has never happened before.
1:54:14Now that I'm, you know, like, I think a little bit about what would have been like in the
1:54:18era when people didn't pay attention to Apple and Apple didn't accidentally leak things.
1:54:23And we saw the iPhone intro and the 8 came out and we're like, "Oh, the 8s are okay.
1:54:26They're pretty good."
1:54:27And then out of nowhere came this one more thing and it was this phone.
1:54:30We would have, this show would have been 900 hours long, just about the 10.
1:54:33But luckily we had like months talking about this.
1:54:37We were talking about the phone and every single thing was, even the late-breaking German
1:54:42leak about the swipe up for home button and all that stuff, even though it was phrased
1:54:45in kind of a wishy-washy way, it's pretty much on the money. That's what was there,
1:54:49right?
1:54:50Yeah.
1:54:51So we knew so much. This is the new high watermark for how much can you know about an Apple event
1:54:54before it happens.
1:54:55Oh, yeah. We knew the Apple TV 4K deals.
1:54:58We knew -- we had a picture of the watch over the weekend from the software.
1:55:02Yeah, yep. That was tough.
1:55:03We had the picture of the red dot with the LTE watch.
1:55:05Like we -- oh, man.
1:55:06The new AirPods, right?
1:55:08We had the cute Face ID face.
1:55:11- Yeah, oh God, it was, you know, so this,
1:55:13I mean, it's a shame and Apple will work on it,
1:55:18but honestly, it's really fighting against the tide here.
1:55:21Like, for products this popular, for a company,
1:55:26for so many people who are so motivated
1:55:28to find out this information,
1:55:29it is a really Herculean task to keep anything secret.
1:55:34So that's why we should all concentrate entirely
1:55:36on the Mac Pro, which no one will care enough about to leak
1:55:38and we will all be totally surprised by it.
1:55:40Once again, the Mac Pro wins.
1:55:42Anyway, I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
1:55:44You're gone, Casey, back to the phone.
1:55:46I just wanna contest the narrative
1:55:48that we didn't know much about this.
1:55:50We knew the most we have ever known.
1:55:52- Yeah, yeah, it was somewhat disappointing in that regard
1:55:57because we did know so much,
1:55:59but there were certainly some things that we didn't know.
1:56:03And so they pitched the super-ended displays
1:56:06being brighter with wide color and better color accuracy
1:56:09and so on and so forth.
1:56:11Still is 3D Touch.
1:56:12A lot of people I saw on Twitter anyway asking,
1:56:14"Wait, what happened to 3D Touch?"
1:56:16They never really talked about it.
1:56:17I'm actually looking at the keynote right now
1:56:19and there's a slide that says 3D Touch right on it.
1:56:21- And they said it's now built into the display.
1:56:24I guess that's just like a construction detail
1:56:27about where it is mechanically.
1:56:28- Yeah, I didn't quite understand that part,
1:56:30but anyway, it's still there.
1:56:32- Yeah. - Yep.
1:56:32So now before we get into Face ID,
1:56:36which we'll talk about momentarily,
1:56:38The home button is indeed gone.
1:56:39There's been a lot of back and forth as to whether or not
1:56:42the home button would be gone.
1:56:42It is gone.
1:56:43Well, I guess not after the leak.
1:56:45But until the leak, there was a lot of back and forth
1:56:47about the home button.
1:56:48To get back to the home screen, to get back to screen board,
1:56:52you just swipe up from the bottom.
1:56:54There's a little-- not notch-- a little grabber handle,
1:56:58if you will.
1:56:59Not a physical one, mind you, a software one.
1:57:02At the bottom of the screen, generally speaking,
1:57:04that you grab and slide up.
1:57:06I noticed that when, I think it was an iOS 11 beta,
1:57:10they got rid of the force press on the left edge
1:57:14of the screen to multitask.
1:57:15And I saw a few people who really worked up about that.
1:57:19And now, as it turns out, you just swipe,
1:57:21not even force press, I don't believe,
1:57:22but just swipe the little knuckle at the bottom
1:57:27that represents the like home grabby thing.
1:57:30What is the right term for this?
1:57:31I'm failing all over the place.
1:57:32- Like a drag handle.
1:57:33It's called a gripper.
1:57:34It's not a question of where he grips it.
1:57:36drag indicator?
1:57:37Yeah, a drag indicator, whatever, a gripper, let's go with gripper.
1:57:40So if you swipe laterally on the gripper, you can just swipe between apps.
1:57:45If you go halfway up, you can get into multitasking.
1:57:49If you go the whole way up, like I said, you're going back home.
1:57:52To get to notification center versus control center, it depends on where you're swiping
1:57:56from the top, which I'm not a tremendous fan of.
1:58:00I don't think that's going to be...
1:58:01Oh, that's the best.
1:58:02Honestly, this sounds awful.
1:58:03No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:58:04- The swiping from the top, I think that is--
1:58:07- This sounds like they're, so yeah,
1:58:09so you basically, so now the top has those two ears
1:58:13on each side of the notch.
1:58:14You basically pull down on the left ear
1:58:16from notification center.
1:58:17- No, not the left. - And you pull down
1:58:19the right ear for control center.
1:58:21- The right ear is control center,
1:58:23everything else is notifications, including the middle.
1:58:26So if you pull down from the middle like you normally do.
1:58:28- But like, so basically this now puts control center
1:58:32in the hardest to reach corner of the phone
1:58:33if you hold your phone in your left hand.
1:58:35- Oh yeah, this is bad.
1:58:36This is totally bad for people, for lefties.
1:58:38I totally admit that.
1:58:39- This is, I mean, it's bad for everybody,
1:58:41'cause reaching the top corners is already hard
1:58:43for almost anybody.
1:58:43- The way I hold my phone, I think, I don't know,
1:58:48I'll have to see.
1:58:48This is the thing about the phone.
1:58:49We can all speculate on what it's gonna be like,
1:58:51but as everyone who's designing software for it has said,
1:58:54it's really difficult to do anything
1:58:55until you physically get one of these in your hand.
1:58:57I have to say that I was super doubtful, cautious, worried
1:59:02about based on the rumor,
1:59:04but seeing them use the home swipey thing,
1:59:07I started to believe, I started to believe two things.
1:59:11One, that the home swipey thing
1:59:14could be a thing I can get used to.
1:59:15I'm not sure about control center.
1:59:17I will have to like, I'm holding my phone now trying to see,
1:59:19can I get to that corner?
1:59:20Is it gonna be, I don't know.
1:59:21I'm not quite sure what the deal is there,
1:59:23but Apple has some options, but the home swipey thing,
1:59:24certainly that is something that we're gonna use all the time
1:59:26and I feel like that's gonna be pulled off.
1:59:28And the second thing is,
1:59:30I think this phone, the iPhone X and the presentation of it, worked its magic on me at least to
1:59:35the point where I even just started thinking about my phone, which has a section of the
1:59:41bottom which is not a screen, and the only thing in that is a giant circle that I press
1:59:47to do something and it seems barbaric.
1:59:49There's a section of like, that is just like this blank area of my phone with a button
1:59:55on it.
1:59:56And even it's not like a button that moves anymore, it is still like a button.
1:59:58It's like, what is that?
2:00:00It's like when you had to connect the trackballs to PC laptops on the side with those little
2:00:04hooks, right?
2:00:05Like Max had trackballs built in where the trackpad is now, like underneath the keyboard,
2:00:10and PC's laptops were then made where the entire bottom part was keyboard from front
2:00:15to back, so they had no place to put a trackpad, so you could clip it on the side.
2:00:18And now I look at my phone, I'm like, "This has this weird dead area appended to it where
2:00:23we have to put a physical button that's like steam powered or something."
2:00:28just barbaric when the whole thing should be screened. I don't know, maybe the screen will
2:00:33be terrible, maybe I'll hate the gestures, maybe I'll long for the button, setting aside Face ID
2:00:37just in terms of like what it's like to go back home or to activate multi-asking or whatever.
2:00:41But I came away from that keynote a pretty big believer in the correctness of the whole front
2:00:50of the phone being a screen and believing that pull up from the bottom or some kind of thing
2:00:57that is like I dedicated an entire edge of the screen to important common actions is better and
2:01:03requires less precision than finding that little button. Again, setting aside Touch ID, setting
2:01:09aside Face ID, just the part of like I'm using the home button to go home and do all the other stuff,
2:01:12I was pretty convinced. I went into this being skeptical that if I was going to buy a phone,
2:01:18which I'm not this year, whether or not I would get the fancy edge to edge one, and I came out of
2:01:21it saying if I was buying a phone this year, 100% I would get that one because I just, I need to try
2:01:25that and I am now optimistic that they're right about this future, that they're right
2:01:32about the fact that all screen is the way to go and we will look back on these phones
2:01:36that had these dead sections above and below that weren't screen and they will seem messed
2:01:40up.
2:01:41Now for the record, I am all in on the swipe up home gesture thing.
2:01:46I think that's going to be great.
2:01:48I really honestly do.
2:01:49I think that's going to be way more convenient and it's going to be very natural, very fast.
2:01:54What I just don't entirely love is having to be more precise to get to notification
2:02:00center versus command or control center.
2:02:02And it may end up that it's no big deal at all.
2:02:04But I use control center constantly and I use notification center frequently.
2:02:10And so I'm a little worried, again, not having tried it, that that's going to be a little
2:02:15bit frustrating.
2:02:16But I am totally with you that I am all in on the all screen front.
2:02:20I am all in on the no home button.
2:02:22I am right there with you on that.
2:02:24Marco, what do you think?
2:02:26- I'm basically with you, Casey.
2:02:27The swipe home button thing sounds totally fine.
2:02:31That seems sensible to me.
2:02:32Like, you know, if you're gonna get rid of the home button,
2:02:34that seems like a pretty okay way to handle it.
2:02:36Having to pull down on the right ear
2:02:39to get to control center,
2:02:40I think that's a very hard place to reach
2:02:42no matter which hand you're holding your phone in,
2:02:44especially 'cause this phone is now taller than the 7.
2:02:46So I think that's gonna be a problem for a lot of people.
2:02:50Also, keep in mind,
2:02:51when you're making size comparisons,
2:02:53which I'll get to in a minute,
2:02:54I have a lot to say about this, about the screen,
2:02:55but keep in mind that now because you aren't having
2:02:58that top and bottom chin,
2:03:00if you're thinking about whether certain parts
2:03:02of the screen are gonna be reachable for you,
2:03:04keep in mind that you're actually gonna have
2:03:05to reach higher on this one,
2:03:07because you're reaching into the area that used to be,
2:03:10the earpiece bar, you know, the forehead area.
2:03:13So that's gonna be a hard place to reach.
2:03:16Maybe one way to solve this,
2:03:17I haven't played with the software like in the simulator yet
2:03:20so maybe they can do this,
2:03:22maybe there's some reason why they can't,
2:03:23but maybe a shortcut to control center could be
2:03:26if you do the home gesture swipe up
2:03:28when you're already at the home screen,
2:03:31maybe you can open up control center.
2:03:32I know that's not perfect, but I don't know,
2:03:35having to pull down from that right ear area,
2:03:37that seems like it's gonna be really hard to reach
2:03:39for something that people not only frequently use,
2:03:42but frequently use when they're one-handed.
2:03:44So that seems like something that needs to be fixed.
2:03:47- On the iPad, remember, on iOS 11,
2:03:49do the thing where you pull up from the bottom and the dock appears but if you keep pulling
2:03:53control center appears they kind of did the same thing on the phone but now it's like
2:03:57if you pull up part way you get multitasking and if you keep pulling it's home.
2:04:00I feel like they have some options if reachability turns out to be a concern but the main thing
2:04:03I thought was really clever about control center is it is one instance where they made
2:04:10you know got some lemons which is the notch which I'll talk about a bit later and they
2:04:13made lemonade but it's like well we do have this notch here and it conveniently physically
2:04:18and prominently divides that bar into sections that are clearly understandable. Like, if,
2:04:23imagine the status bar was just straight across and the top of the screen was flat. This kind
2:04:26of thing where it's like, well, you have to know that if you swipe down on like the rightish third
2:04:30of the single continuous thing, that it does a different thing than if you swipe down on the
2:04:35other two thirds. But because the notch is there, it gives them like, essentially a button, like a
2:04:40physically outlined thing that says this place is different than the other place. And people can be
2:04:46forgiven for thinking that it's right ear versus left ear, but it's really right ear
2:04:50versus anything else in the entire bar is notifications, which lets people continue
2:04:54their muscle memory of swipe from the top and your right Marco that the top is toppier
2:04:57than it used to be. So we'll see how that goes. But that still works because I don't
2:05:01know how many, I mean, I pull notification down from the center middle of my phone and
2:05:05if you continue to do that, it will keep working. And since I can reach the center middle of
2:05:08my phone to get notifications, I feel I can probably get to the ear. I guess we'll all
2:05:13find out. But they do have, like they have options because it is all screen, they've
2:05:17got a bunch of multiple edges, they could even somehow work it into the bottom, give
2:05:22them some time to work it out, but I'm mostly optimistic about how this is going to work.
2:05:28Especially for poor people with the giant plus. Like I hope this phone brings people
2:05:31down from the ledge that is the plus. It says, "Look, you can get not as many pixels, but
2:05:36more. How do you feel about this? Is it better?" I don't know. Maybe it won't work. People
2:05:40like their giant phones.
2:05:41- Well, and so, on that part though, like--
2:05:46- Wait, hold on, really, really quickly.
2:05:47Do you feel like this is going to be difficult
2:05:50for more novice users?
2:05:53And maybe the answer is no, novice users
2:05:55don't even really know what control center is,
2:05:56or notification center for that matter.
2:05:58But I don't know, it's just, one of the things
2:06:00that I think was so great about the iPhone
2:06:03was that you always had a physical button to press
2:06:08when you needed to get out of jail.
2:06:09Like you needed a parachute, maybe is a better analogy.
2:06:12And I've noticed on Aaron's car, just bear with me,
2:06:16on Aaron's car, which has a touchscreen,
2:06:18there are occasions, or certainly when we first got it,
2:06:22especially, there were occasions when we got in some screen
2:06:25somewhere in the navigation, and I was like,
2:06:26I have no idea where I am.
2:06:29And it was nice to be able to find,
2:06:31I could see this physical button
2:06:32that I could just mash down on, and I went back home.
2:06:36I'm probably overblowing the issue here. Well, I don't even know that it's an issue,
2:06:43but I wonder—I can't help but wonder—if this is going to be difficult. So say you're like
2:06:4770- or 80-year-old, you know, grandparent who maybe is just now getting an iPhone for the very
2:06:53first time. Like, you need to explain to them, "Well, if you want to go home, you need to swipe
2:06:58up." But don't swipe up only an inch or so, because then you're going to multitask, and you need to
2:07:02swipe all the way up and where do you swipe from? Well just from the bottom.
2:07:05Well where on the bottom? Just from the bottom. You know what I mean? Like I feel
2:07:08like this is... it's a... it's... the home button was already so overloaded where
2:07:13single tap does this except when it doesn't. Double tap does that except when
2:07:16it doesn't. Double... double touch but not tap is something else entirely, which by
2:07:22the way is going away. It... it just seems like there's a lot here and I'm a little
2:07:26worried that for... for not us it's going to be a little more challenging. But
2:07:31But am I just being a big baby?
2:07:34- Well, Apple's doing the thing.
2:07:35Apple's doing something that I think is smart,
2:07:37where they have been shedding the previous conventions
2:07:41as the bulk of their user base has become more sophisticated
2:07:46because they grow up with phones or have used a lot of them.
2:07:49So in the same way, they got rid of slide to unlock,
2:07:52and like, oh, now there's not an obvious thing
2:07:54with the giant animated arrow saying,
2:07:56slide here, dummy, to unlock your phone.
2:07:58Now the whole screen's thing, but how will people tell?
2:07:59Can they see that subtle symbol?
2:08:01people figured it out.
2:08:02Like I'm mostly convinced of the fact
2:08:05that this will be successful by seeing people in the wider
2:08:09world use Android phones, which very often have basically
2:08:13soft buttons, like buttons that don't press in,
2:08:15but they're just symbols that you can press,
2:08:16which are pretty awful, I think, because there's not
2:08:19even any sort of good haptic feedback in a lot of cases.
2:08:21And lots of swipey gestures.
2:08:23And I see people navigating these things with no problem.
2:08:25They're just basically a minefield
2:08:27of touch-sensitive icons and back buttons and home things
2:08:30and swipe gestures that are all different from phone to phone,
2:08:33depending on what carrier crapware is on there
2:08:35and what version of Android you're using.
2:08:37A huge variety of fairly complicated swipes.
2:08:39And you're right about it being more difficult action
2:08:41than pressing a button, and that is a problem.
2:08:43But for the bulk of the market, I
2:08:44think the market has become more sophisticated
2:08:48because they're spending more times with phones.
2:08:50And appropriately, phone vendors are shedding the affordances
2:08:55that were required in the past to let people understand
2:08:58how the hell you use a phone that
2:08:59doesn't have a physical keyboard
2:09:00and doesn't have physical buttons,
2:09:01it doesn't have number keys,
2:09:03that becomes less and less necessary.
2:09:05And so, you know, Apple is,
2:09:08I feel they're mostly catching up with the Android world
2:09:10in terms of how featureless and swipey
2:09:13the front of the phone is.
2:09:15And net-net, I think it's the right thing to do.
2:09:19It would be good if they could come up
2:09:20with some kind of better, more comfortable,
2:09:24safer system for people who have difficulty
2:09:26with swipe gestures, which includes me a lot of the time.
2:09:29But I think it's going in the right direction.
2:09:33I think this step-by-step progression is the right thing to do.
2:09:37Did they overstep this time by a little bit?
2:09:38I think it may just be in the details, like Marco was saying.
2:09:40Like, okay, well, maybe the idea is right, all screen is right, but you have to rejigger
2:09:45things to figure out what's reachable and what's commonly used and stuff like that.
2:09:49So, Marco, tell us about the screens.
2:09:52All right.
2:09:53We have kind of jumped through a million hoops with the iPhone 10 in order to get
2:09:59this edge-to-edge screen and the reason we wanted an edge-to-edge screen with
2:10:04asterisks on some of that but the reason we wanted that is because we wanted to
2:10:08fit a bigger screen into a smaller phone but if you look at how big the screen is
2:10:14versus how big the phone is and if you consider the amount of space you're now
2:10:21losing in that big screen to things like the new status ears and the home indicator and
2:10:27the margins around these things. The gain I think is less compelling than I would have
2:10:33wanted it to be. The important thing to realize, and I think this is going to bite a lot of
2:10:38plus fans, I think a lot of plus fans are going to upgrade this phone thinking that
2:10:42it's going to give them the plus size screen in a smaller phone. But it isn't that much
2:10:47smaller and the screen is not plus sized at least not the way you might think so
2:10:54the iPhone 6 7 & 8 screens are 375 points wide so is the X sorry 10 the
2:11:06plus is 414 so it's 375 versus 414 and width the iPhone 10 is the same width we
2:11:13did not gain any width, which means things like
2:11:16if you're scrolling, for example, in Instagram,
2:11:19or any kind of photo stream thing,
2:11:21your photos aren't going to be any bigger.
2:11:23You'll be able to fit more than one on screen maybe,
2:11:25but it's gonna be the same width
2:11:27as the small phones have been.
2:11:30That also means the keyboard is presumably
2:11:32going to be the same width.
2:11:34So if you're one of the people like me
2:11:35who found it more comfortable to type on the Plus,
2:11:38you won't get that here with the iPhone 10.
2:11:40It is the same width as the 6, 7, and 8.
2:11:43The height is substantially bigger than the plus.
2:11:47So the height of the 678 is 667,
2:11:51and these are all points, not pixels.
2:11:53The plus is 736, and the 10 is 812.
2:11:57That is awesome.
2:11:57So you're gonna have much taller lists.
2:12:00However, you're also losing some height
2:12:03due to the home indicator, the drag indicator thing,
2:12:06due to the margin around it,
2:12:08and due to the now taller status ears/status bar.
2:12:11So if you actually consider, if you run the numbers,
2:12:13and if you see the size of what I would call
2:12:17the application content area,
2:12:19if you assume an application that includes
2:12:21displaying the status bar on all phones,
2:12:24then how big is the area between the status bar
2:12:28and either the bottom of the screen
2:12:30or in the case of the iPhone 10,
2:12:32where you can go before you hit the home indicator?
2:12:36And so basically how much area
2:12:37does an app have for its content?
2:12:40And the difference there is pretty small.
2:12:43So again, we're the same width between the old 6, 7, and 8
2:12:46and the iPhone X.
2:12:48The height though is 647 for the smaller screens,
2:12:53716 for a plus, and 734 for the X.
2:12:58So it is the tallest, it's taller than the plus
2:13:01in usable area, but not by that much.
2:13:05So what you're basically getting is the same width for sure
2:13:09as the smaller screen phones,
2:13:12a little bit taller usable area than the Plus phones
2:13:16in a phone that is bigger than the small phones,
2:13:21but smaller than a Plus.
2:13:22In order to get that, we had to change and give up a lot.
2:13:28We had to lose touch ID,
2:13:30we had to engineer this entire Face ID system,
2:13:33we had to change the way apps use the screen.
2:13:36Developers have tons of design changes to do.
2:13:39Also now those corners are now very rounded,
2:13:42so we have to stay away from the corners
2:13:44or design around that.
2:13:45We have to design around the notch
2:13:47and we have to use the ears
2:13:49and scroll content weirdly around it.
2:13:51Full screen things have a lot of work to do
2:13:53to either avoid the notch or go around it
2:13:56in a way that doesn't look weird or suck.
2:13:59This has been a lot of work and a lot of effort.
2:14:02And the phone, and for the people
2:14:04who use the small phones like me,
2:14:06the phone is getting larger for a screen
2:14:09that is not wider at all and is pretty tall,
2:14:12which is nice, but I don't know.
2:14:18Is that good enough for all,
2:14:19like all the sacrifices that had to be made,
2:14:22all the workarounds, all the hacks,
2:14:24all the UI changes and all the developer effort
2:14:27that's going to be required, both in Apple and outside,
2:14:30to accommodate all this craziness in this new phone.
2:14:33Is that worth a screen that isn't any wider
2:14:36and is just taller?
2:14:38I don't know if this size is the right set of compromises, but this design, all screen
2:14:44gesture blah blah blah, like I said, I am optimistic that this design will actually
2:14:49in the end be a better overall design.
2:14:52And when there's an entire family of phones, including the big one and the smaller one
2:14:56that are all like this with the ears, then there's less pressure on this one phone to
2:15:01be the right trade-off, which you know, change UI paradigm and all these sacrifices for not
2:15:07that much more screen. Well, you make something the size of a plus with edge to edge screen,
2:15:11there's way more screen there, right? Because you're getting rid of a very large chin and
2:15:17forehead on that phone because they're just so darn big, you know, comparatively. And the
2:15:21yet diminishing returns is you go smaller because the chin and forehead are smaller on the smaller
2:15:25phones. This may be not a great compromise, especially if the width is the same but the
2:15:30phone is actually wider, which I believe is the case. The phone is physically wider, but the
2:15:33the screen has the same number of points on it.
2:15:35Then again, it could be that just,
2:15:37what's the, is this a 3x?
2:15:39This is the thing that wasn't clear to me.
2:15:41- Yes, and to give them full credit,
2:15:44it is a true 3x.
2:15:45The Plus never has been true 3x.
2:15:47The Plus has been 3x pixels rendered down to a 1080p panel.
2:15:52And this actually is real 3x,
2:15:54so it is 458 dots per inch instead of 401.
2:15:58So it's going to look incredible.
2:16:01And OLED has benefits too.
2:16:03like OLED's gonna have a better contrast and everything.
2:16:05So it is going to look incredible,
2:16:07but I just can't believe we didn't gain any width
2:16:11by making the phone bigger and going edge to edge.
2:16:13- If you made something 100 points wide
2:16:17and you measured it with a ruler,
2:16:18is it wider on this phone than it is on the 67?
2:16:23- I don't know the answer to that.
2:16:24I don't think so, but I don't know.
2:16:27- The other important aspect of making a phone
2:16:30that is physically larger while the number of points
2:16:33is the same is that things are bigger for people with poor vision.
2:16:36So slightly anyway.
2:16:38And I know you have the zooming in all the text sizing and stuff like that.
2:16:41Anyway, I am less concerned with whether this exact size is the right compromise because
2:16:48I truly believe that this design will spread across all of them.
2:16:51And once it does, this problem goes away because then you don't have to worry about like, like
2:16:54first of all, I think the changes in the sacrifices plus or minus the notch, which I will still
2:16:59get to are worth it if this is a better way to interact with phones than having dedicated
2:17:04buttons on it.
2:17:05If face ID is actually better than touch ID, and overall, despite the edge cases where
2:17:11one might be the other, if arbitrarily swiping from the bottom is better than having to find
2:17:16home button in the middle, like if all this turns out to be true, then I think it'll all
2:17:22come out in the wash because they're not going to just make one size of this or whatever.
2:17:25And I would assume that they have some experience with sizes now.
2:17:31They could have made this phone any size, right?
2:17:34They could have chosen to make it wider or shorter or taller, and this is what they came
2:17:37up with.
2:17:38And I'm hoping that the size is a reasonable compromise.
2:17:42I think they did a good job with the 7, the 6 size, right?
2:17:45That it is a pretty good compromise when you have more screen, but it's not as big as the
2:17:49Plus.
2:17:50The Plus, of course, is ridiculous, but that's what people want.
2:17:52so they want a ridiculous phone and they got one.
2:17:55So I think I'm less worried than you, Marco,
2:17:59but even if this one is the wrong size for people,
2:18:02give 'em a couple years, I hope they'll work it out.
2:18:07- And honestly, I would be,
2:18:08I would caution people who really love the Plus,
2:18:13this might not be the phone for you.
2:18:15- Oh no, this is not,
2:18:16for Plus lovers who absolutely need the Plus,
2:18:18like that's why I'm telling my wife to get it,
2:18:20even though she is a Plus lover,
2:18:22to have to talk to her about the fact like you realize there's going to be less stuff on the
2:18:26screen like it's a smaller phone and it's not going to look like your plus does it's not going to have
2:18:31all that stuff on it so but yeah if you love the plus this is probably not the phone for you because
2:18:37it's just it's going to feel like using a big seven a tall seven right because that's what it is
2:18:41you're not going to get all that all that extra room which like i said i think is fine because
2:18:45I know that there's a giant monster aircraft carrier version of this phone coming in a
2:18:52year or two, or three, and so the Plus people will have their day and they'll have so much
2:18:57damn screen they won't know what to do with it.
2:18:59Yeah, it can be called the 10L.
2:19:00It'll come with a stylus, it'll be great.
2:19:04I agree with Marco, though.
2:19:05I think it's going to be very interesting and very funny to watch many of our mutual
2:19:10friends who swore up and down, "Oh, it's Plus Club or nothing, Plus Club or nothing."
2:19:15And I think they're going to have some really conflicting thoughts and some really uncomfortable
2:19:19thoughts about this.
2:19:20Yeah, but they'll have to get it so they can talk about it on their tech podcast, right?
2:19:23But I think there will be grumbly.
2:19:24I think there will be lots of – I bet a lot of them will say, "I wouldn't buy
2:19:31this phone if it wasn't for the fact that I need to be informed about it and talk about
2:19:36it," and like, you know what I mean?
2:19:37Like that they're taking one for the team because they have to, right?
2:19:42And some of them will just buy three phones and just use that one to play with or whatever.
2:19:47Yeah, we're going long.
2:19:48So on the notch, I have a little bit, there's probably way more that we can say about the
2:19:54notch and maybe we'll save something for a future episode.
2:19:57But the one thing I want to say about the notch is this is my time to say exactly the
2:20:01same thing that I alluded to earlier about the LTE on the watch.
2:20:06The notch, Apple doesn't want the notch.
2:20:10The notch is there because it has to be to get the job done.
2:20:14Apple wants nothing more than to make this exact foam with no notch on it.
2:20:17Apple is going to do everything that it possibly can over the next five years or so to get
2:20:21rid of that damn notch so the screen can go edge to edge.
2:20:25They are doing the sort of hang a lantern on it thing where we had to do this notch
2:20:29thing, we couldn't figure out a way not to have it, so we have to embrace it.
2:20:33We have to say we're not trying to hide the notch, we acknowledge that it's there, we're
2:20:36going to do all sorts of things and incorporate it into the UI and make it an aesthetic and
2:20:40super totally embrace the notch in the ways we all discuss here, but Apple make no mistake
2:20:45Apple wants to get rid of that notch
2:20:46They want it to be top to bottom left to right edge
2:20:50Johnny I've wants to not retire or die before he can do that. He might not make it but they don't want that notch there
2:20:56So the clock begins now and Apple's teams working two or three phones out are
2:21:00already trying to figure out how the hell they can get rid of that notch so
2:21:04Where people may hate them on the notch and hate all the stupid compromises that it requires for software and it's gonna be painful
2:21:10And it's gonna be annoying and it'll have varying degrees of ridiculousness
2:21:14But I am very very confident. This is not a thing that Apple did not set out to make a phone with a notch
2:21:20This is just what they had to do and I think it's the right trade
2:21:24I don't think they should have waited until they could have done this phone without a notch
2:21:27To to do it. I think they should do it now
2:21:31Whether they should have embraced the notch as much as they did is arguable, but I
2:21:35remain confident that we will have
2:21:38Top to bottom edge edge screens probably from Android makers first, but eventually also from Apple
2:21:42I'm still bummed about embrace the notch like I
2:21:45Haven't seen it. I haven't held it. I haven't played with it, but it just I don't know I from everything
2:21:52I've seen when people have mocked up the you know kind of hide the notch approach where the where the top bar
2:21:58adjacent to the notch is just black.
2:22:01It still to me looks better, but ask me again in,
2:22:06well, I was gonna say in a month,
2:22:07but I won't have one in a month, but ask me again.
2:22:09- The nice thing is the humor interface guidelines,
2:22:11which many people are quoting from,
2:22:13the section that says,
2:22:14"Do not attempt to hide the devices around a corner,
2:22:16sensor housing," sensor housing, it's not a notch,
2:22:18"or indicate if you're accessing the home button."
2:22:20They're telling you, "Don't try it, you must embrace notch."
2:22:22But guess what?
2:22:23App developers can do whatever the hell they want.
2:22:25So I think it'll be interesting to see
2:22:27how people decide to do that.
2:22:28Do they follow the Apple advice and say totally embrace the notch or do they decide to make the status bar black and not embrace
2:22:34The notch it's a thing like I have a pretty big problem by now playing screen
2:22:37Yeah, I mean, but it's all it's all
2:22:41Programmer addressable. There's no trickery to make it seem like the screen is smaller than it is like
2:22:46applications it seems have the ability to draw
2:22:49Pretty much anywhere on the screen
2:22:51I'm not sure if they can draw over the little home indicator under the home indicator thingy
2:22:55But lots of the by the way, I've already said tons of sort of like
2:22:59W2C videos not a W2C of how to do this
2:23:01They're all about like here's your margins and your safe area and stay away from the rounded corners all with insets
2:23:07With the idea that you know, I haven't watched these videos yet, but looking at the diagrams I'm thinking
2:23:12Oh, that means developers have to program all these insets in which is work for them
2:23:17But it also means that if they don't do that like on the watch
2:23:19They could draw right to the edge and look stupid, right?
2:23:22And have it be all you know the watch is the opposite we supposed to draw the edge anyway
2:23:26They could draw right up against these rounded corners and look bad in fact
2:23:30I believe during the keynote or one of the commercials
2:23:33I think it was during the keynote video they showed that AR game
2:23:35That they were doing the demo from it was like I think it was like in a commercial with the AR thing
2:23:39And one of the status indicators on the screen in the AR game was clipped by the notch
2:23:43Because it was too far to the left. It was outside the safe area. It was a circle
2:23:48It was like the flat tire Android phone speaking of things with screens cut off
2:23:51It was clipped by the notch because they just hadn't updated it to move everything over and in fact if they had moved it over
2:23:56I think I just got to shrink those circles, right?
2:23:58So
2:24:01in a way
2:24:03Software developers are going to decide this as much as Apple Apple can tell you what they want everybody to do
2:24:08But if the sort of consensus of software developers is yeah, we're not gonna brace the notch
2:24:13Then they won't and it will be fine. I've only heard sporadic reports from people who use these phones in real life
2:24:21The impression I get is that the notch is less onerous when using the phone then when watching it on video
2:24:27I guess where eyes are just drawn to it when you're using the phone
2:24:29You're not looking at that part kind of like Marco's not looking at the back of his phone. That's all scratched up
2:24:33Right, you kind of looking where the content is and you kind of get over it
2:24:36but it is a lot of work for developers and there are
2:24:39lots of awkward slash funny things related to this
2:24:43one of the two best ones I'll put these links in the show notes Ben Packard had
2:24:49interesting bit where like the scroll bar, you know when you scroll in iOS that little line appears to kind of the proportional scroll bar
2:24:55That you can actually grab and scroll like shows you where you are
2:24:57With that hiding underneath the notch when you're a landscape lots of fun stuff happens when you're a landscape like you'd scroll
2:25:02It's like where's the scroll thumb?
2:25:03Oh, it's under the notch and you scroll and you don't see anything up it popped up on the top
2:25:06it popped up on the bottom and the other one was uh
2:25:08both just a vic did a
2:25:11A joke posted look I fixed the notch where he had scrolling going by the notch amazing
2:25:18It's like a bunch of names and they're up against it's the Beatles names and they're up against the edge of the screen
2:25:22But then when they hit the notch they look like a bump around it. No it landscape the notch is a disaster
2:25:27It's not a disaster
2:25:28If you don't if you don't embrace it if you just black it off now
2:25:31You just have a screen that is slightly offset and people are worried about like they kept showing in the presentation
2:25:36Here's video with the notch cut out of it
2:25:38Which as many people?
2:25:39Guessed based on my last complaints about like the slightly rounded corners of a quicktime player years ago pissed me off now
2:25:46Now this phone has super rounded corners that you have no choice because literally the screen
2:25:49is rounded like there is, they're not just not lighting up those pixels like there's
2:25:53nothing there, forget it.
2:25:54And now you're going to show video with a notch intruding into it?
2:25:57No, never.
2:25:58But the thing is, that's not, not only do you not have to do that, that's not even the
2:26:01default.
2:26:02When you play video, it will play as a rectangle and you will see every part of it.
2:26:06It will be inset because it's got to stay away from the rounded corners and it's got
2:26:10to stay away from the notch.
2:26:12But it's fine.
2:26:13as far as I'm aware is the default on the built-in video players like in
2:26:17Safari and Apple videos. If you double tap it, it will zoom to full screen and
2:26:22then you'll be playing video behind a notch and you'll be losing all the
2:26:24corners. But if you zoom to full screen on an iPhone today, unless your video is
2:26:29exactly the same aspect ratio as your phone, which it probably isn't, if it's
2:26:33like a movie or something, if you zoom to full screen you're already cutting off
2:26:37sides too. So I'm not that annoyed about the notch in the rounded corners in
2:26:41in terms of video playing, I think it will probably be okay.
2:26:46But Apple's big push to embrace the notch is kind of,
2:26:51I mean, I mentioned hanging a lantern on it before,
2:26:55which is a narrative device where there's something
2:26:57that doesn't make sense.
2:26:58I hope I'm getting this right, God,
2:26:59or I was waiting a million corrections,
2:27:00where something doesn't make sense in a movie
2:27:02and you know it doesn't make sense
2:27:05and you don't want people to saying,
2:27:06"Oh, that scene was messed up
2:27:08"because that wasn't plausible to me."
2:27:10So all you do is you have a character in the movie say out loud what the audience is thinking.
2:27:15So like, you know, "We shouldn't be getting readings like this.
2:27:18They're impossible, but we are."
2:27:19And as soon as you have them say that by hanging a lantern on the thing
2:27:21that the audience knows is impossible, suddenly it seems okay because then the people
2:27:26in the movie are acknowledging the thing that you're all thinking.
2:27:28So by Apple hanging a lantern on the notch, like, "We should be able to light up all the pixels
2:27:33on the screen, but there's this giant thing there."
2:27:34And Apple says that, "Yeah, there's a giant thing there, and we're going to emphasize it."
2:27:38They're kind of, you know, they're making the best of a bad situation because nobody wants the notch
2:27:43but if there's gonna be a notch they are embracing it and they want you to embrace it too and
2:27:48It is an interesting aesthetic
2:27:51It kind of reminds me of those little cards from Rolodexes which are actually before my town
2:27:58I'm not actually that old but like, you know the little like cards with little notches
2:28:02Right. It kind of reminds me of that. It's kind of an interesting aesthetic
2:28:06It does look a little bit like rabbit ears.
2:28:09It does look a little bit weird in landscape, and I feel bad for all the software developers
2:28:13who have to deal with it.
2:28:14But you know, you dealt with size classes and going from fixed layouts to auto layout,
2:28:20and this is why you get the big bucks, right?
2:28:22Or don't get them, unless you know how to exploit people with free-to-play gambling
2:28:26mechanics.
2:28:27But anyway, I think it will work out, but I am already awaiting the day when the notch
2:28:33goes away.
2:28:34- How long do you think that that is away from now?
2:28:37'Cause if I had to guess, I honestly don't know.
2:28:40They might just stick with us because if you look
2:28:43at the problem they're trying to solve here,
2:28:45they have a whole bunch of sensors and cameras
2:28:49and speakers and stuff that for the phone,
2:28:51for these things to work at all,
2:28:54they pretty much need to be facing forward.
2:28:56And they clearly want the screen to go to the top edge
2:29:00and the bottom edge.
2:29:02So how would they get rid of the notch exactly?
2:29:04Would they somehow just make those things so small
2:29:09they would fit within the current bezel?
2:29:11Like that's above the screen?
2:29:13- You got it.
2:29:14- Like they're not very good at making cameras small.
2:29:17Like if you look, they have this giant camera bump
2:29:19in the back because to make a decent camera
2:29:21you need a little bit of size.
2:29:23I don't see how they get,
2:29:26how they retain the super thin bezel
2:29:29around most of the screen area
2:29:31while also fitting those front sensors,
2:29:34and by the way, now there's more of them with Face ID,
2:29:36so while also fitting those front sensors into that.
2:29:39I don't know, I don't see them getting rid of the notch
2:29:43as long as they have this general borderless design.
2:29:46I think the only way they can get rid of it
2:29:48is to basically backtrack on part of this design
2:29:51and make something that looks more like the S8,
2:29:54where it's like just thin top and bottom bezels.
2:29:58- So as people have pointed out,
2:30:00- This screen's not really edge to edge.
2:30:02I can see where it doesn't go to the edge.
2:30:03There's a big black pen.
2:30:05Like, there are margins on this thing.
2:30:07And like you said, they could go notchless next year
2:30:09by just putting a very thin forehead on it.
2:30:11They don't want to because then they'd feel the need
2:30:13to do a very thin chin as well,
2:30:15and then it'd be giving up on the edge.
2:30:16- You know where they could put a home button
2:30:18in a very thin chin because if it doesn't need
2:30:21touch ID anymore, then it can be a little skinny button.
2:30:24- No, I don't think they're going back on that.
2:30:26I think they're rolling on the gestures.
2:30:27- You're right, they're not.
2:30:28But if you look at the Galaxy S8,
2:30:31I have never said anything nice about an Android phone
2:30:33for good reason.
2:30:34However, that's a very attractive design
2:30:37for a edge-to-edge screen phone,
2:30:39and that's a different set of trade-offs.
2:30:41And yeah, the stuff on the back,
2:30:43the fingerprint on the back is dumb,
2:30:44but if you look at just the front of the Galaxy S8
2:30:48compared to the iPhone X,
2:30:49I have a hard time picking the iPhone X in that comparison.
2:30:54- I think the iPhone X looks better,
2:30:55But the way you get to the notchless without even
2:30:59the thin forehead is, yeah, like the march of progress
2:31:03can make some components smaller,
2:31:05and other components can be under the screen.
2:31:07That's how you get there.
2:31:09No one would have thought that cameras could
2:31:11be as small as they are now.
2:31:12You can make lesser quality cameras even smaller.
2:31:15Say the one front-facing camera is replaced by seven pinhole
2:31:19sized cameras dotted along the top,
2:31:21and the images are combined from that company
2:31:24you have the friend who works for that light camera thing.
2:31:27Like we're not saying this is, you know, technology is available now.
2:31:30You couldn't make a watch with LTE on it when the Apple Watch came out, and you can't make
2:31:34a notchless phone like this.
2:31:36But I think you will be able to eventually.
2:31:38I think there's nothing about the array of sensors that makes me think they can't hide
2:31:42them in an edge.
2:31:44You know, it's somewhere around the edge of this phone in the space that's already provided
2:31:49because they don't go all...
2:31:53Galaxy S8 goes way farther to the edge right and left than this phone does. There is actually room around it and
2:31:58you know if they're willing to compromise a little bit add two more pieces of paper with to the top right to to wedge things
2:32:05in and get a couple like at the IR sensor underneath the screen somehow or the the you know the dot spreader underneath or like I
2:32:12Feel like it will eventually happen and this design will become viable. I you said you asked me how long I thought
2:32:19five years is my best guess. I think it could come sooner. It depends on what appetite Apple
2:32:28has for it. If they don't feel pressured to do it because everyone loves the notch and their whole
2:32:33line is notch bearing and it's just like they're sailing and it's like, "Why do we... We didn't
2:32:37want the notch, but now that we've got it, everybody loves it and everyone's software
2:32:40is written for it and why would we even change it?" That could delay it just because they don't
2:32:44want to go for it, but I think technically plausible in five years.
2:32:47I couldn't even wager a guess. I mean, five seems reasonable, but oi.
2:32:53All right, so we are running long. Face ID seems to be mostly what we expected. I think
2:33:00we certainly got a lot more information about the mechanics behind it. I thought it was
2:33:06really fascinating that Schiller had talked about how they went and got Hollywood, like,
2:33:13makeup artists or prosthetics artists in order to make these eerily realistic masks that
2:33:19apparently employees would put on to try to fool Face ID.
2:33:23It's apparently considerably more secure than Touch ID, which seems weird to me because
2:33:29any face identification I've ever heard or seen anything about seemed very easy to defeat,
2:33:34whereas fingerprints seemed much harder.
2:33:37But I'm sure that's just because of crummy technology, and if Apple says it's better,
2:33:41I'm inclined to believe it's better.
2:33:43The reason it's better is because faces are so much bigger.
2:33:45So the problem with fingers is that the feature size down there,
2:33:48like the number of points they could sort of match up on your fingerprint,
2:33:52like the features are so small
2:33:53and there's not that many things to sort of hang on to.
2:33:55Whereas if you look at the number of dots that they're a little dot sprayer,
2:33:58assuming those diagrams are even remotely accurate,
2:34:00there's just more data points.
2:34:01So there's more places where things can vary than on fingerprints.
2:34:05Plus, people's fingers don't even fit entirely.
2:34:06Like the sensor doesn't even cover your whole finger.
2:34:08So you're just getting like a window snapshot of a finger.
2:34:11So it's not as if, oh, my fingerprint is the same
2:34:13as someone else's that I can unlock my phone.
2:34:15No, it's one tiny little square shaped region of your finger
2:34:18maybe close enough in the few areas
2:34:21that the Touch ID sensor can identify as distinguishing
2:34:25to a potentially totally different point
2:34:27on someone else's finger.
2:34:28So I totally believe that because I mean,
2:34:30Touch ID makes us, you know,
2:34:32oh, it unlocks my finger and it's great
2:34:33and no one else in my family can do it.
2:34:34And so it must be perfect
2:34:35'cause we have this mystique around fingerprints.
2:34:37But when it comes down to it,
2:34:38It's a bunch of little ridges and skin and it's not even that many of them because the sensor is small
2:34:42Whereas this thing is spraying our entire face with tons and tons of data points of you know
2:34:46Not just what it looks like but you know all the depth things and everything like that
2:34:49I still don't understand exactly how the masks aren't able to defeat it, but I'll take their word for it
2:34:55I mean, there's obviously, you know some secret sauce in there that can distinguish I guess living things from non living maybe with heat signatures
2:35:02I mean, I feel like they didn't reveal all their secrets here because maybe competitive advantage or whatever
2:35:06But we'll find out I mean I guarantee people are gonna start trying to fake this thing out with masks
2:35:11So I'm sure someone will
2:35:13Came out people faked it out by lifting people's fingerprints from cups and and you know using like superglue or rubber cement and stuff and defeating
2:35:20It it'll it'll be defeatable and they did mention like oh by the way your twin is a problem and
2:35:26They didn't mention this explicitly, but like maybe relatives that look a lot like you might be more of a problem, too
2:35:32but
2:35:35You know I believe less in this than when I can't you know
2:35:38As I came out believing in the idea of the all-screen phone with the gestures like believing that it could be good still having never
2:35:43touched one of these face ID they basically said all the things I thought they were gonna say I
2:35:48Have the same attitude about it now, which is you know?
2:35:52Show me the unlock I have to I have seeing is believing I have to try this myself because I love fast touch ID so
2:35:57much on my phone
2:35:59I believe like I said last show I believe facial recognition can be better
2:36:04than Touch ID for situations where the phone
2:36:07is able to see your face, I'm not entirely convinced
2:36:09that first gen is gonna be better than second gen
2:36:11Touch ID in terms of efficiency, but we'll see.
2:36:14- The speed of it is my one big concern.
2:36:17I mean, it's hard, you know, when Touch ID first came out,
2:36:19we all were wary of it as well, so it's hard to know
2:36:22before we've actually had a chance to use it
2:36:24how good it is or what the problem areas actually are,
2:36:27but I noticed they focused a lot on how it worked,
2:36:32which I thought honestly was a little bit creepy
2:36:34the way it was presented.
2:36:36They're like spraying dots all over people's faces
2:36:38and I didn't think it was explained well.
2:36:41- Did you see the tweet that said,
2:36:43the new iPhone will mace you if you do a bad tweet?
2:36:44- Yeah, right.
2:36:45- Should I start holding the phone in this big cone?
2:36:47Like I think that did them a disservice
2:36:49'cause it made it look like
2:36:50that you were having an actual spotlight
2:36:52shined in your face but my understanding is that it doesn't,
2:36:54I mean you can't see IR unless you're a bat, right?
2:36:57So it's not, or did bats see IR?
2:36:59I don't know, oh God, I'm gonna get corrections
2:37:00from the people.
2:37:02Anyway, some people had video where they could see
2:37:05a flashing sensor, but video cameras often pick up IR.
2:37:08- Yes, they do. - That our eyes don't.
2:37:10So I don't know what to think of it,
2:37:11but I think their demos made it look more onerous
2:37:14than it actually is.
2:37:15- Yeah, so I think it was presented poorly,
2:37:19or explained poorly, but I noticed that they focused
2:37:23on security and how it worked, but they never made
2:37:25any speed comparisons to Touch ID.
2:37:28And I suspect that we're gonna have a problem there.
2:37:31I bet it's gonna be a little slower.
2:37:33The other thing is, they mentioned,
2:37:35actually some of my favorite analysis of this event
2:37:38was on Back to Work this week,
2:37:39and they mentioned there something that I do too,
2:37:42which is, like Merlin was saying,
2:37:44that as he pulls his phone out of his pocket,
2:37:47he has already hit the home button with his thumb,
2:37:50and so the time the phone is out of his pocket
2:37:52and he's looking at it, it's unlocked.
2:37:54I do the same thing.
2:37:55Like, I just kinda automatically unlock my phone
2:37:58as I'm taking it out of my pocket,
2:37:59So I never have to wait for it to unlock,
2:38:02especially with the new fast touch ID since the success.
2:38:04And I wonder, is face ID going to have these little
2:38:09like slowed down microscopic interactions
2:38:12that are going to irritate me every single day?
2:38:15Like, I don't know.
2:38:16I hope it's fast.
2:38:18If it's really super fast when it looks at you,
2:38:20when it does finally have a view of your face,
2:38:22maybe this won't be a problem.
2:38:24But it just seems unlikely.
2:38:26- I heard from a couple people,
2:38:28You know the lock animation, it's got like a padlock type thing that basically when the
2:38:33top of the padlock twists to show you that it has successfully recognized your face that
2:38:38it's unlocked, that that animation, like so many animations, actually lags behind it actually
2:38:42recognizing your face.
2:38:43So I'm hoping they did the good game development thing where, alright, so it does have to have
2:38:49line of sight on me, so forget about the touch ID in the pocket.
2:38:53But you get it out, and what I want to be able to do is get it out, and as it comes
2:38:58in front of my face, I want to do the swipe up gesture, even though it hasn't been unlocked
2:39:01yet. I've started the swipe up gesture because if you swipe up and it doesn't unlock, like
2:39:06it brings you to the like, please type in your password screen, right? I want to be
2:39:10able to begin the swipe up. And if it recognizes me when it's in the middle of the swipe up
2:39:15or in the middle of doing the animation triggered by the swipe up, abort showing me the screen
2:39:20where I have to enter my passcode and unlock the phone. Like if they can overlap it in
2:39:24that way it will it will help to hide the latency right if instead you have to
2:39:31look at it notice with your eyeballs that the animation of the padlock going
2:39:36and then begin your swipe no matter how fast it is that will be annoying because
2:39:40the unlock animation has non-zero time you having to look for and recognize it
2:39:45has non-zero time I want to be able to take out swipe recognize open and that's
2:39:51probably the best they can do with this because you're right they didn't say it
2:39:54was faster it probably isn't faster it's probably amazing that it works at all
2:39:58and it's an amazing technological feat but it is also the first generation of
2:40:01this product and we'll have to you know try it and see. I do I do love me some
2:40:06Touch ID but I'm like I said before the idea of this dead area at the bottom of
2:40:11my phone where there's nothing ever a circular button it's not really a button
2:40:14anymore does seem like the past in the way that these Apple events always tend
2:40:19to do to you. It does seem old and steampunky, and I'm willing to believe that it will go
2:40:25away. But we brave pioneers will find out how long it's going to take.
2:40:29>> One thing that bummed me out is it only allows for one face, which I totally understand.
2:40:36But one of the things that I really liked about Touch ID was that I asked Erin if she
2:40:43could register one of her thumbs on my phone so that this way, if, for example, I wanted
2:40:49her to respond to a text for me because maybe I'm like playing with Declan or something
2:40:52like that and my phone is not in my pocket.
2:40:55I could just say to her, "Hey, can you grab my phone and tell Marco and John I'll be there
2:40:58in five minutes?" or whatever.
2:41:00And I have a very, very long passcode on my phone because I almost never need to type
2:41:05it.
2:41:06It's exceptionally rare that I need to type my passcode and it's something like 10 or
2:41:1015 or 20 characters.
2:41:11And so having Touch ID available to her is really, really nice for both of us because
2:41:18Sometimes she needs to look at something that maybe only I have, like an email that only I have, or sometimes I want her to
2:41:23respond to a text from me or something like that.
2:41:25And so she does know my password,
2:41:29but it's very inconvenient to type. And I'd really love to be able to register her face on my phone as well,
2:41:36which is, you know, a choice that I would make. And not everyone would make that choice,
2:41:39but that's something I would like to do. And as of right now, it is only allowable to use
2:41:45Face ID with one face and again, I understand why I only have one face. The phone is a personal device
2:41:51Like that like that's what the explanation other than just say this is a personal device
2:41:56I'm assuming it has to be storage related
2:41:58But the the thing reports I heard from the people it's like at launch only one face
2:42:02Which makes me think there's enough storage for more than one
2:42:04It's obviously they have more data points, right and the the whole evolving of the thing
2:42:08I can imagine it takes up more storage and touch ID in the secure enclave where they have to keep all this stuff, right?
2:42:13But I just hope hardware wise there actually is room for more than one. I've got fingers on every device in the house
2:42:19I've got all my kids devices my wife's everything because you're mostly for convenience
2:42:23It's not like they're gonna keep me out of the stuff like I know all their passwords
2:42:26I can get into all the things. It's just it's just convenient
2:42:29Yeah, exactly and and I had heard rumblings of the same that maybe in the future
2:42:34It'll be more than one, but I am a little bummed right now that it is just one
2:42:38Again as with earlier you know not really a big deal
2:42:41This is still a phone that is unlocking by looking at my face even in the dark like things can be a lot worse
2:42:48But it did bum me out a little bit
2:42:50What else about this what else is new other than face 4k 60 Marco wanted it he got it
2:42:55Oh, yeah, I got it and all the all of them, and they they didn't quite do a perfect job
2:43:01But they did a pretty substantial job in improving the telephoto camera in the two camera module
2:43:08but only for the 10, not for the 8 Plus.
2:43:12Where now the, you know, before,
2:43:14basically I said last episode what I wanted was that,
2:43:17you know, with the 7 adding the dual camera thing
2:43:19to the Plus, the zoomed in telephoto camera
2:43:22was a narrower aperture, so it let in less light
2:43:25and was noisier at night, and was not image stabilized.
2:43:28Which basically made it very hard to ever use that
2:43:31in low light and get a good picture.
2:43:32And the software was smart enough to basically not use it
2:43:34in low light and to just zoom in on the wide sensor
2:43:38that was better.
2:43:39Now, the new ones, the aperture difference is smaller,
2:43:43it's still there but it's smaller,
2:43:45and they're both stabilized on the 10.
2:43:48So that's really nice.
2:43:49I do wish the 8 Plus got the same module.
2:43:53I don't think there's much reason for it not to have
2:43:56gotten it other than just price and segmentation,
2:43:59because there's probably room for it.
2:44:01So it makes sense why the 8 didn't get it,
2:44:04there's probably not room for it in the enclosure,
2:44:05but I do wish they would have brought that
2:44:08to the plus as well.
2:44:09But the fact that it's there on the X, that's great.
2:44:13And that these now do all shoot 4K 60, that's amazing.
2:44:18Because again, as I mentioned last week,
2:44:20almost no professional video cameras shoot 4K 60 yet.
2:44:24That's very rare.
2:44:25And so to have that in anything, let alone a $700
2:44:31and up phone is really impressive.
2:44:34And on top of that, the iPhone is already
2:44:36such an amazing video camera.
2:44:39That's a pretty big deal.
2:44:40So I would say for most people, for most purposes,
2:44:44the iPhone remains the best video camera in the world.
2:44:47And this is a giant step forward even for it.
2:44:50So I'm very impressed with the camera on paper.
2:44:53And I hope, in practice, I hope it proves
2:44:55to be as good as it sounds.
2:44:57- 240 frames per second slow-mo.
2:44:59I thought that was what the old one did,
2:45:00but I guess I'm mistaken.
2:45:02Is that double what the old one did?
2:45:03- I think that did it, but only for 720p.
2:45:06- And now it does 1080.
2:45:07- And so they've upped it to 1080p, yeah.
2:45:08- Yeah, all right, so that's good.
2:45:10But now we get to finally the real reason
2:45:13why people will buy and be happy with this phone,
2:45:16if this is true.
2:45:17Two hours more battery life.
2:45:20It's what we've always wanted.
2:45:21Don't make the phone thinner, add more battery life.
2:45:23This phone got a big giant screen on it,
2:45:26extremely fast, powerful processor,
2:45:30all sorts of cameras and wireless doodads and sensors
2:45:34and blah, blah, blah, and they added two hours
2:45:36of battery life, which is a lot.
2:45:38That reason, I have to see how it measures up to the plus,
2:45:43but the seven was already pretty good.
2:45:46That is going to feel like a premium experience
2:45:49when people buy this fancy phone for all the money
2:45:51that it's gonna cost and they get it at their screen
2:45:53and it's a little bit weird and blah, blah, blah.
2:45:55But A, it's gonna be a new phone,
2:45:56new phone's always last longer than your old one
2:45:58'cause your old battery is shot.
2:45:59And B, the fact that this actually has more battery life,
2:46:02if that comes out the way it does,
2:46:04that is perhaps the most high-end feature
2:46:07that you can give to iPhone users in particular
2:46:10who are used to kind of being starved for battery.
2:46:12So I was very happy about that
2:46:15'cause that was one of the few questions we had
2:46:17because we may have known the exact milliamp hour size
2:46:21of the battery from leaks.
2:46:22I don't know if we knew that or not,
2:46:23but even if we did, you never know
2:46:25what is the overall battery life
2:46:28this very complicated system that involves tons of components going to be, especially
2:46:31since software is such a big factor in balancing the components. That's one of the things that
2:46:35can almost never be spoiled for us unless we leak the presentation, which I guess is
2:46:38what will happen next year. We'll get the keynote slides right a week in advance.
2:46:41We should get video of the rehearsals.
2:46:44Yeah, exactly.
2:46:45Seriously.
2:46:46That's a hell of a thing. That made me extremely excited to see that. But not just like, "Oh,
2:46:51and it's a little bit better." Two more hours that I put that up on a slide. That is amazing.
2:46:56- Yeah, I hope that translates into real world gains.
2:46:59We will see over time.
2:47:01It is worth pointing out that the 8 Plus
2:47:04still claims higher battery life.
2:47:07So if battery life is the most important thing to you,
2:47:11the Plus phone is probably still the right move.
2:47:14Also, again, if screen size is the most important to you,
2:47:16Plus phone, still the right move.
2:47:18But, see, I don't know, this is why,
2:47:21once again, in the Apple product line,
2:47:23they have made it so that there is no one
2:47:26best choice.
2:47:27Like this was the case for a while on the iPads,
2:47:29like it's definitely the case in the MacBook Pros,
2:47:32like there is no one best model here,
2:47:35it just depends on which things you prioritize
2:47:37over which other things.
2:47:38Fans of the Plus should strongly consider
2:47:42getting the next Plus instead of getting the X.
2:47:45But the reality is, you know, all of us who talk
2:47:48on podcasts about these phones and everything,
2:47:50we're all gonna get the X anyway.
2:47:52- Yeah.
2:47:53- I do wanna mention that the,
2:47:55I think the 8 does as well,
2:47:57but doesn't the 10 get True Tone?
2:48:01- Yes, at least the 10 does.
2:48:03I don't know if the other ones do.
2:48:04- Yeah, I think they all get it,
2:48:05which is surprising to me,
2:48:06because that means they found a place
2:48:07to smuggle that sensor on the 8s.
2:48:10I mean, it's nice.
2:48:11I mean, although this is my biggest surprise
2:48:14of the thing actually was no ProMotion,
2:48:16which makes very little sense to me.
2:48:19Unless there was some kind of battery life thing,
2:48:21because it's not like they don't have the CPU grunt
2:48:25to do it and they're not moving that many pixels
2:48:27and there's plenty of room on the phone
2:48:29'cause it's a little bit bigger.
2:48:31I mean, it must come down to either component size
2:48:33or costs or battery life
2:48:35because it's not a technical limitation.
2:48:37So they found room for True Tone for everybody,
2:48:39but no promotion.
2:48:41- I wonder if maybe the OLED panel
2:48:43can't refresh that fast yet, at least maybe like--
2:48:45- People said that, but I don't see how that's like,
2:48:47OLED TVs are refreshed 120 easy.
2:48:51Like I think your TV does that already.
2:48:54Maybe they're different when it's smaller, I don't know.
2:48:56- Or maybe like their particular quality level
2:48:59of OLED panels getting their color and their contrast
2:49:02and their gamut.
2:49:03Maybe those can't do 120 yet,
2:49:05and they wouldn't have the 8's panels do it
2:49:09if the 10's panel couldn't do it.
2:49:11So like that could be a reason.
2:49:13- I don't know.
2:49:13I think it most comes down to the hardware
2:49:17to drive the panel at that rate and finding room for it
2:49:21and potentially what the power does.
2:49:23But I would love to hear from somebody
2:49:24who knows more about the internal details of how
2:49:29you drive any screen at 120 hertz
2:49:32and how that might affect-- or if someone on the iPhone team
2:49:34just wants to write in and tell us why the hell you don't
2:49:37have promotion.
2:49:38And especially since the animations on the 10
2:49:41in particular, they're kind of more prominent.
2:49:46like when you go back to the home thing of the application that you just chucked upwards
2:49:50it like floats back into the icon that it came from and all sorts of scaling things
2:49:54and all those animations would look better at 120 because they're short animations, there's
2:49:57not that many frames and so they can end up looking stuttery even if they're not actually
2:50:03dropping any frames because they're so fast so 120 would definitely help there and give
2:50:07a more sort of fluid experience but maybe next year.
2:50:11I'm stoked for True Tone though, because I don't have any devices with True Tone.
2:50:17From what little I've seen, it looked really, really nice.
2:50:19Not to say promotion isn't by any stretch, but I have seen promotion briefly, and I thought
2:50:25it was nice.
2:50:26I'm sure if I had time with it, I would start to say, "Oh no, this is amazing."
2:50:30But I'm really stoked to have True Tone.
2:50:33I think I heard it on Upgrade, and Jason had mentioned that a lot of times he's getting
2:50:38the brightness not to the position he wants it just because he's fighting kind of the
2:50:42ambient light situation in the room. And I feel like I suffer from the same problem from
2:50:46time to time for a very loose definition of suffering. But anyway, I feel like having
2:50:52True Tone is going to be really nice and it's going to be new for me. So I'm excited about
2:50:56that.
2:50:57But before you get off True Tone, the best thing I can say about True Tone is that I
2:51:01enable it and I don't notice that it's on because that's how it should work. You shouldn't
2:51:04notice that it's making your screen more brown and crap like this horrible flux and nice
2:51:08shift things that I hate, I leave it on and I don't even notice that it's there.
2:51:14And if I turn it off, like sometimes I go back and say "what would this look like without
2:51:17True Tone?"
2:51:18You see it being like more blue when you're sitting in your house at night.
2:51:21So True Tone gets a big thumbs up from me as a quality of life thing for a screen where
2:51:26you're not doing like color work for like, you know, where you need accurate reproduction
2:51:31of colors where you just want it to like look the way it's supposed to kind of look given
2:51:36the ambient lighting.
2:51:37So I really liked your job.
2:51:41The stuff that we had talked about up until the iPhone X, pre-ordering Friday as I think
2:51:47I mentioned earlier, and then available a week from Friday.
2:51:51This one though, the iPhone X is not going to be pre-orderable for basically a month
2:51:58and a half until the 27th of October, which is again Friday, and available the following
2:52:03Friday, November 3rd.
2:52:04That's, I mean, in the grand scheme of things,
2:52:06not a big deal, but that's a bummer.
2:52:08I wanna give Apple just unreasonable amounts
2:52:11of my money sooner than that, please.
2:52:14- I think it's also, like many Apple launches of late,
2:52:18the official day one launch, if you're very lucky,
2:52:22you might hit that, but I think most people
2:52:24are not getting this phone probably before January.
2:52:28- Yeah, I'm gonna be really bummed.
2:52:29- Yeah, and it's fine.
2:52:30I mean, we always knew this was gonna be,
2:52:32and there wasn't gonna be much supply and delay,
2:52:35like it's, you know, we'll survive.
2:52:37It's better than waiting around
2:52:38for the color you want, I guess.
2:52:40The gold phones, people getting in line,
2:52:44but you know, that's, I bet Apple would have liked
2:52:46to have more squarely hit the holiday season,
2:52:48but they're just, you know,
2:52:50like it's gonna be January for most people, sorry.
2:52:53You want one under the tree, just print out a picture of it
2:52:55and put it in a little box and then just sort of cradle it.
2:52:59- So any other thoughts?
2:53:01I have one final closing thought,
2:53:03but any other thoughts before then?
2:53:05- I didn't see any battery packs for the 10.
2:53:09- Oh, interesting. - No hunchbacks.
2:53:11- Yeah, it appears that there aren't new battery cases.
2:53:14They're saying that cases for the 7 will fit the 8,
2:53:18and similar for the pluses.
2:53:20So I imagine that probably means
2:53:23that the 7 battery case will fit the 8.
2:53:26There is no 7+ battery case, so that rules that out.
2:53:29And yeah, it does appear that there's not gonna be,
2:53:31at least there isn't yet a 10 battery case.
2:53:35- Yeah, although they do have a folio case.
2:53:37- Yeah, that's interesting.
2:53:38- They do have the leather,
2:53:40although the folio case,
2:53:40I saw someone with frustration had the same thing.
2:53:43They only show it from the back.
2:53:44There's two pictures on the Apple Store
2:53:45and they're both from the back.
2:53:47I think that's just a mistake in the store.
2:53:48But I'm not that I'll ever buy one of those,
2:53:50but I wanted to see what it looked like.
2:53:51But I was excited to see the leather case for the iPhone 10.
2:53:55That's essentially the same as the leather case
2:53:57that I have now that comes in some interesting colors.
2:53:59And I'm a big fan of that case.
2:54:00So hopefully the new one is just as good.
2:54:02And because the leather case, Apple's other case, the existing one and the new one are
2:54:05totally open at the bottom, the one edge where you're going to be swiping constantly, you
2:54:09won't have to be swiping against the edge of a case.
2:54:11Oh, and fast charging on both of the, on all the new phones.
2:54:14The whole like whatever, I don't know what standard is for the USB fast charging thing
2:54:17where you can get a 50% charge in 30 minutes.
2:54:20Yeah that was interesting.
2:54:21Setting aside the wireless thing.
2:54:22I think that's just like a USB fast charging standard or.
2:54:25Yeah, it's USB-C power delivery.
2:54:27And so basically if you have like one of the MacBook Pro adapters or if you have the iPad
2:54:32fast charge adapter, none of these come stock in the box of any iOS device.
2:54:38But if you happen to have the USB-C to Lightning cable, which also doesn't come stock in the
2:54:42box, and one of these fast charging power bricks that also doesn't come stock in the
2:54:46box and that many of which aren't even made for these products, then it will charge faster,
2:54:50which is a nice thing to have if you need it.
2:54:53I do question why they didn't just boost up
2:54:55the power bricks that come with it,
2:54:57but you know, Apple, what are you gonna do?
2:54:59- Yeah, yeah, well they wouldn't be able to fit it
2:55:02in the boxes, the one they give you is the little tiny nun.
2:55:05You know, and that's probably--
2:55:06- I honestly think, not to dress up too much,
2:55:09but I honestly think that one of the reasons
2:55:11why the Apple TV remote is so bad and unchanged
2:55:14is because they didn't wanna make the box bigger.
2:55:17I bet that's a big reason for it.
2:55:19- Yeah, it's not just the box.
2:55:21They don't wanna make the remote bigger.
2:55:22That's what it comes down to.
2:55:23They feel like it should be in scale,
2:55:26and it should be elegant and dainty,
2:55:27and they don't understand that people's hands
2:55:29are not that big.
2:55:30- Yeah.
2:55:31- Or not that small, rather.
2:55:32Real time follow up, someone in the chat room
2:55:33did helpfully provide a view of the front of the Folio case.
2:55:37I will never buy one of these, but some people like 'em.
2:55:39And so now there's one from Apple,
2:55:40because why wouldn't they charge you 70 bucks or whatever
2:55:42for a thing to put on your phone?
2:55:44- Yeah, some sort of something about it.
2:55:46And there's a whole bunch of other small stuff
2:55:48from the event that we don't have time for.
2:55:50I mean, we didn't talk about Animoji,
2:55:52we didn't talk about AirPower or the mats
2:55:54or anything like that, so yeah,
2:55:56I guess that'll be part of next week's show.
2:55:58That'll be like our junk drawer of all,
2:56:00two weeks with a follow-up, plus like Animoji
2:56:02and AirPower mats and things like that.
2:56:05- I don't wanna talk about Animoji other than to say
2:56:11I have received a few and they are pretty awesome.
2:56:16And I don't know it's something
2:56:17that I'm gonna be using a lot or doing a lot,
2:56:20but they are pretty cool.
2:56:21It is very amusing, and we can talk more about it next week.
2:56:25So, closing thought, Marco, what phone or phones
2:56:28are you going to be buying, and when will you be doing that?
2:56:32- I mean, again, because I'm a developer
2:56:35and an Apple commentator, I have to get the 10, no question.
2:56:39And that's probably gonna end up
2:56:40being the phone for me overall.
2:56:42I am disappointed that the screen isn't bigger, wider.
2:56:46I feel like for the size increase and all the trade-offs,
2:56:49I would've liked a little bit more width
2:56:51than what I already have, so that's unfortunate,
2:56:53but it's probably gonna be great,
2:56:56I'm probably gonna love it.
2:56:57I'm definitely going to love having that camera system,
2:57:01so I really want it for that, if nothing else.
2:57:04Oh, I'm gonna need to do a lot of work on Overcast
2:57:06to make it fit the notch.
2:57:07It's, basically it ruins my entire UI, is how this works.
2:57:12- The sleeve! - This ruins everything.
2:57:13So I'm getting the phone for that.
2:57:16If I were not a commentator and developer,
2:57:19I honestly might consider the 8 Plus instead,
2:57:22but oh well.
2:57:23Maybe I'll end up getting both and putting the 8 Plus
2:57:26as a dedicated Waze machine in my car
2:57:28because Waze is amazing.
2:57:29Anyway, so. (laughs)
2:57:31So I'm definitely getting the 4K Apple TV
2:57:34and just because, you know, again, I use it constantly
2:57:37and I do have a 4K TV and I'm getting the 3G watch,
2:57:41or sorry, the LTE watch series three.
2:57:44So yeah, overall it's been a pretty expensive event.
2:57:47- Yeah, tell me about it.
2:57:49I mean, I'm in for two watches, like I said earlier, one LTE, one not.
2:57:53I'm going to be getting definitely one iPhone X in 256 space gray.
2:58:02Probably one for Aaron too.
2:58:04We haven't really had time to talk it over yet, but I suspect I will.
2:58:07I don't know what color she'll want, and I'll almost certainly just insist that she gets
2:58:12a 256 there.
2:58:14So between two watches and two phones, no Apple TVs for me, not yet anyway.
2:58:18I'm looking at something like $3,000 this fall, which is truly and utterly preposterous.
2:58:24And if you've ever listened to any one of our ads ever, then thank you.
2:58:28Thank you.
2:58:29Because if it wasn't for that, I would not be getting probably any of these things.
2:58:33So, Jon, Jon, what's your situation?
2:58:35You said Tina's getting a watch and she's probably getting a phone as well and you're
2:58:40getting just the TV?
2:58:41Yeah, well, TV is for the whole family, not just for me.
2:58:44I am not going to live vicariously through my wife, who I'm trying to convince to get
2:58:47a 10 so I'll have one to play with but it's not it's not my phone year I'm gonna keep using my 7.
2:58:51I like it I'll add the rest of world experiment I hope she gets a 10 because then I will be able
2:58:54to play with it and see what it's like without having to actually use it as my phone which I'm
2:58:58not sure I'm ready for if it was my year I would get a 10 though if it was my phone year I would
2:59:02totally get that because I'm very convinced that that is the the one that I would want to try.
2:59:07It's the one that you want. Who who who. I got it but Marco didn't. Oh no I got it yeah. Oh how'd
2:59:15you get that reference. I know some music. Is it her influence? It's music. I know music.
2:59:20I have heard music. You can't go, you can't live in the world and not have heard that
2:59:26song. Ah, you can. Thank you for having heard and seen. Alright. Touche. Always continue
2:59:31to amaze me. Alright. Thanks to our three sponsors this week. Squarespace, Backblaze,
2:59:36and Aftershocks. And we will see you next week.
2:59:39[MUSIC]
2:59:49Oh it was accidental.
2:59:51Accidental.
2:59:52John didn't do any research.
2:59:54Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.
2:59:57Cause it was accidental.
2:59:59Accidental.
3:00:00Oh it was accidental.
3:00:01Accidental.
3:00:02And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
3:00:07And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at
3:00:13[music]
3:00:42- Oh my God, this is a long show.
3:00:44- Yeah, well I don't know if we really need much
3:00:45of an after show.
3:00:46I was surprised you didn't bring up aftershocks
3:00:47when you were talking about riding your bike
3:00:49because that is the ultimate time for aftershocks
3:00:52'cause they're open air.
3:00:53- I know, well, the only problem is that
3:00:56when I'm riding my bike, I am terrified
3:00:59so I don't want to die.
3:01:01So I've been mostly using the aftershocks on the walks
3:01:05and not on the bike rides.
3:01:06- What are you afraid of on the trail?
3:01:07There's no cars that are gonna run you over, right?
3:01:09- I'm mostly afraid of just getting myself to the trail
3:01:11even though it's quite close to my house.
3:01:14- Oh, you're on the bike doing it still?
3:01:16- I mean, I could just pause the podcast,
3:01:19drive to the trail, bike to the trail, and then resume it.
3:01:24I'll probably start doing that.
3:01:25I haven't gotten a lot of biking in.
3:01:28I guess this is our after show now.
3:01:31So I have finally completed my bike shopping extravaganza.
3:01:37- That's a lie.
3:01:39That's a lie you're telling us and yourself.
3:01:41- Mm-hmm.
3:01:42- It turns out I am terrible at buying bikes.
3:01:46So the way that I buy everything else basically
3:01:50is I do a ton of research,
3:01:53it consumes my mind for like two weeks,
3:01:56and eventually I convince myself to buy the best thing
3:02:01and I buy it and then I'm happy for a while
3:02:03until a better thing comes out.
3:02:04That does not work for bikes.
3:02:08What I have learned basically is that
3:02:11The correct best way to buy a bike
3:02:14is to go into your local bike shop,
3:02:17drive a few things around that you like,
3:02:20and whatever one feels the best to you, buy it.
3:02:23And that's it.
3:02:24You should do basically no research.
3:02:27You should learn about almost nothing
3:02:29about the high end of bikes.
3:02:31You should read no online reviews
3:02:33because they're pretty much useless.
3:02:35The way for most people to buy a bike is just that,
3:02:38to do it in the most casual way possible.
3:02:40the way most people buy everything.
3:02:43I have done such an insane amount of research online,
3:02:49browsing different things, looking at different specs,
3:02:52figuring, okay, I definitely want this kind of thing,
3:02:53I definitely don't want this kind of thing.
3:02:55It got me basically a lot of nowhere.
3:02:57It got me to a lot of wasted research time,
3:03:01a lot of consuming mental time.
3:03:03It got me to rule out things that I actually like,
3:03:06not knowing that I was ruling them out.
3:03:08It got me to get myself really dedicated
3:03:12to certain types of bikes that are not right for me,
3:03:14that actually don't fit my needs
3:03:15and that I'm not comfortable on.
3:03:17It has taken me a long time to finally figure all this out.
3:03:20What I did basically, and a special thank you
3:03:24to the people at Budnitz Bicycles,
3:03:26who I basically have been bothering and asking questions to
3:03:30and arranging, like trying to get a loaner to try out
3:03:33or trying to visit a showroom to try things out
3:03:35for a good three months now.
3:03:38They've been very patient with me.
3:03:40And they even did arrange for me to test out
3:03:42one of their bikes in the Hamptons,
3:03:44and therefore I drove to the Hamptons.
3:03:46They arranged to lend me one of their bikes for free
3:03:49so I could try it and then order my own,
3:03:52that, you know, things I would like.
3:03:54I tried it, it wasn't right for me.
3:03:56They were very, very tolerant of me, very patient with me.
3:03:58Thank you so much to the Budnits Bike people.
3:04:00And if you do want a bike of the kind they make,
3:04:04which is like a really nice city bike, that's amazing.
3:04:07they were ridiculously nice.
3:04:09But I learned basically through all this
3:04:10that what I actually want, what I'm most comfortable on,
3:04:12and what I actually need to ride this trail over here,
3:04:15which is the main way I ride here,
3:04:17is a pretty normal mountain bike.
3:04:20- I was gonna hope it was a penny farthing.
3:04:22- No, I know.
3:04:24But what I need is a basic mountain bike.
3:04:27What we've discovered, and Tiff and I went to
3:04:31a couple of local bike stores,
3:04:34we just discovered that we don't want to buy
3:04:37the thing that all the research tells us to buy.
3:04:39We don't want to get the best possible thing.
3:04:42We just want to get a bike.
3:04:43And we, now Tiff and I each have bought bikes
3:04:47in the last 48 hours.
3:04:48- And they say Trek on them in big letters.
3:04:51- Close, they almost did.
3:04:53No, mine says specialized in big letters.
3:04:55- Yeah, that was close.
3:04:56I was gonna say, you're gonna have to,
3:04:58one of your requirements is gonna have to give
3:04:59and I bet it's the one with the logos.
3:05:01- Yeah, no, that was, that had to, yeah.
3:05:04Once you go into a bike shop,
3:05:06trying to get something that looks fairly tasteful
3:05:09is incredibly challenging,
3:05:11because all the major brand bikes
3:05:13are just outrageous looking.
3:05:15- My Mongoose looks awesome, by the way.
3:05:16- Of course it does, yes.
3:05:18Present company excluded.
3:05:19What Tiff and I both landed on,
3:05:24even though they are kind of slow at times,
3:05:27is that we both really had a lot of fun
3:05:30on 27 and a half inch plus semi-fat tire bikes.
3:05:35So Tiff and I are each now owners of semi-fat mountain bikes,
3:05:40both at the fairly entry-level price points.
3:05:44Mine is literally, this is the actual name of this product,
3:05:47it is called the Specialized Fuse 6 Fatty/29.
3:05:52- Wow.
3:05:53- Is that a comment on the people who buy the bike?
3:05:55Get on the bike, Fatty?
3:05:57- I mean, I am buying this bike for fitness purposes
3:06:00as one of the--
3:06:00- Seems like a counterproductive marketing strategy.
3:06:03Bike for you, Fatty.
3:06:05- Yeah, so I put the link here.
3:06:06So yeah, so I have the six fatty 29,
3:06:10and then Tiff has the Orbea Loki 27+ H20,
3:06:15which is a mouthful also.
3:06:19- That's a lot of words for the name of a bike.
3:06:21- But basically what happened is we tried a few bikes
3:06:23in the store, and I tried all the red ones,
3:06:26and Tiff tried all the blue ones,
3:06:28and she picked her favorite blue one.
3:06:29- This is a great shopping strategy.
3:06:32- And I picked my favorite red one,
3:06:34And we got pretty good prices on them.
3:06:36They're pretty inexpensive, relatively speaking.
3:06:38And they're not the best bikes in the world.
3:06:40But they make us the happiest.
3:06:41And we're not going to be bike power users for a long time,
3:06:44probably.
3:06:45So I tried really hard to do my regular research heavy thing
3:06:51and then eventually get the best or at least get
3:06:54the most sensible.
3:06:55And it turns out that's just totally the wrong way
3:06:57to buy a bike.
3:06:57And it's just so much easier to just go to the shop
3:07:01and find the one that rides the best for you and just buy it.
3:07:03Well, because you have so little experience with bikes, and bikes are such a large world.
3:07:07Imagine if you had so little experience with computers, and computers are such a large
3:07:12world, you'd end up buying one based on, like, specs or something, but not realize the importance
3:07:16you placed on the OS, and it's just too much.
3:07:19But I bet your research strategy would work if you ride these bikes for many, many years
3:07:25and kind of get a feel for what you like, and then it's time to buy a new bike, and
3:07:28then you would be able to do the exhaustive research knowing actually really what you
3:07:32like and what you don't like.
3:07:33same way you can with cameras, because you've had a lot of cameras, and you can do the 10
3:07:36hours reading DP review because you're not going in with no foundational knowledge. Whereas
3:07:43bikes it was just like they have two wheels and you sit on them, and then there's a bunch
3:07:46of words that other people's opinions are basically informing yours, right?
3:07:50Yeah, and online reviews of bikes are all written by pro-bikeists, and they have very
3:07:56different preferences and needs than what I have as a casual recreational rider.
3:08:02'Cause you were shopping for pro bikes that cost like thousands of dollars, so of course
3:08:05all the reviews are gonna be from pro people.
3:08:06It's not gonna be from like, "I'm riding the trail behind my house in this $3,000 bike."
3:08:11- Well, and also, the pro bikes are doing things like complaining about certain component
3:08:15choices in certain bikes and everything.
3:08:17And if they say, "Oh, this doesn't have the SRAM A7 brakes," I'm like, "I don't even know
3:08:22if that's good or not."
3:08:24I had no concept of what components were good and what weren't.
3:08:30And there was a large price range for the different types
3:08:34of bikes people were recommending and that seemed to be
3:08:37popular sellers and everything.
3:08:38But what I found when I would go to a bike store,
3:08:41like ride the really nice ones versus ride the base level
3:08:44ones, is that I found that I just, in Casey fashion,
3:08:48I just didn't care about the difference.
3:08:51And the ones that I found that were super fun,
3:08:54that just felt right to me, were relatively inexpensive.
3:08:58No belt drive, no CVT.
3:09:01- That's true, I tried really hard to find a mountain bike
3:09:05that has a belt drive and any kind of internal gearing
3:09:08option, I found one with a belt drive, the Spot,
3:09:13Spot makes one that has a belt drive,
3:09:14but it's fixed gear only, and I found zero that have
3:09:19a belt drive and internal gearing.
3:09:22- That's what I was getting at when you listed like
3:09:23belt drive as your requirement, it's like you don't even
3:09:26know, you don't even know if this is, you just discovered
3:09:28This is the thing that exists and it seems fancier so you want it, but there's a reason
3:09:31the chains are all in use.
3:09:32And it may just be the belts haven't trickled down from the high end yet, but also—
3:09:35That seems like most of the reason.
3:09:37There's also that chains are a tried and true technology.
3:09:41They are a solved problem.
3:09:42They can make them pretty well.
3:09:44And of all things, you would think mountain bikes would have the internal ones and not
3:09:47have it all be mucked up and everything, but I guess they're just either not there yet
3:09:50or the sort of chunky reliability of a chain.
3:09:54So I notice this one doesn't have a front derailleur.
3:09:56That's an innovation in recent decades in mountain bikes.
3:10:00- I think it's probably also just because
3:10:01it's like a lower end model.
3:10:02Like it only has 10 speeds.
3:10:04You know, like you can get,
3:10:05a lot of them seem to have like between eight and 11 speeds
3:10:08that just had a rear derailleur,
3:10:09which is, that's fine for me.
3:10:11In many ways, it's probably a cultural demand thing.
3:10:13Like I don't think mountain bikists want the additional
3:10:16weight of internal gear hubs on the back wheels.
3:10:18And also there seems to be a large need for them
3:10:22to be able to do repairs like while they're out.
3:10:25So things have to be fairly mechanically simple
3:10:28for that to be possible.
3:10:29So like, you know, a belt and a fancy internal gear hub,
3:10:32like they exist, thank you, I know about roll off hubs,
3:10:35they exist, but it seems like putting them on mountain bikes
3:10:38is nearly unheard of, or at least is not usually done
3:10:43on bikes that you can buy that are stock configured
3:10:46that way, like people seem to customize them sometimes,
3:10:48but that's about it.
3:10:49So all this is to say, I totally failed at buying a bike
3:10:55through my usual methods, but I did finally just buy one
3:10:58and now I'm done with it, and now I'm going
3:10:59to actually enjoy riding it.
3:11:00'Cause, you know, a quick way to burn through a whole fall
3:11:03full of nice weather, not riding a bike,
3:11:06is to try to spend all this time going bike shopping.
3:11:08I spent so much time in my car in the last week,
3:11:12not like just moving bikes around or renting bikes
3:11:15or transporting myself to and from bike shops
3:11:18that are far away, like I've missed out
3:11:20on so much good riding time,
3:11:22because I was spending too much time
3:11:23overthinking this problem.
3:11:25- Sounds rough driving around to bike stores.
3:11:27- Yeah, the struggle is real.
3:11:29- Casey and I were at work, just so you know.
3:11:31(beeping)