0:00:00I hate looking at text manipulation in JavaScript.
0:00:02It just makes me sad.
0:00:03Of course.
0:00:04We've got a for loop with an iterator.
0:00:06That's great.
0:00:07Good.
0:00:08Nice language.
0:00:09For var i equals zero, i less than words dot length, i plus plus.
0:00:12Seriously?
0:00:13That's every C-based language, John.
0:00:15Come on.
0:00:16No, wait.
0:00:17No, no, no.
0:00:18Not necessarily.
0:00:19Iterating.
0:00:20Even Objective-C has been iterating over collections without an explicit iterator for many, many
0:00:24years now.
0:00:25In fact, there's been like seven different versions of iterating over collections.
0:00:28Even PHP has that.
0:00:29- It's just depressing.
0:00:30Every single JavaScript library
0:00:31implements their own each thing, you know,
0:00:33and all the ES6 and all the other, you know,
0:00:37maybe even the later versions of ES5 have stuff like this,
0:00:41but then you gotta go back down to just the very bottom.
0:00:44- JavaScript is the new PHP.
0:00:46- I'm saying it.
0:00:47- Don't forget to use triple equals.
0:00:48Avoid those cautions.
0:00:50- We should probably do some follow up.
0:00:53So Chris Adamson wrote in to tell us about audio bus.
0:00:57Do you wanna talk to us about that, John?
0:00:59Sure, I think it was Marco who misled us in the last program.
0:01:02Yep, that was me.
0:01:03About Audiobus being a network thing.
0:01:07Chris says, "Audiobus never relied on network loopback
0:01:09for inter-process communication."
0:01:11There was a blog post by Michael Tyson,
0:01:12who I think is one of the creators.
0:01:14We'll put a link in the show notes.
0:01:15And it explains that the earliest versions of Autobus
0:01:18used MIDI SYSX messages, which allow
0:01:20for arbitrary buffers of data to be sent across the MIDI bus.
0:01:22Later, he migrated to MachPorts--
0:01:23I know what those are--
0:01:25which Apple's MIDI messaging is built on top of.
0:01:27So there's Audiobus.
0:01:28audio boss who is getting a bad rap on the last episode.
0:01:32It is not as crazy as we made it sound.
0:01:35And how about the interapp audio framework?
0:01:37Yeah, and so last episode we were also talking about supported, better supported APIs rather
0:01:42than, not that the random third-party thing is bad necessarily, especially since it's
0:01:46building on top of existing facilities like the MIDI thing and mock ports which are part
0:01:50of the kernel that's underneath the iOS and OS X and Apple TV OS and the watch OS and
0:01:57and so on and so forth.
0:01:59Well, there is, added in iOS 7 to the audio unit framework,
0:02:04something called InterAppAudio, IAA,
0:02:07that enables the ability to send MIDI commands
0:02:10and stream audio between apps on the same device.
0:02:12And so if there are a bunch of applications
0:02:15that support this mechanism,
0:02:17as I imagine there are after iOS 7,
0:02:19things like virtual effects pedals for audio applications
0:02:24that you can send audio from one app to the other,
0:02:26But of course, as Marker pointed out last time,
0:02:29Skype doesn't support these type of things,
0:02:30probably is never going to support these type of things.
0:02:32So there's still a place for,
0:02:34and officially supported by the OS way
0:02:36to route audio arbitrarily,
0:02:38because all the audio is going through,
0:02:40or the OS is aware that it's happening.
0:02:43And the routing capabilities are probably in there,
0:02:46which is how tools like Loopback and AudioHijack
0:02:48work their magic.
0:02:50But the fact that they're using private APIs
0:02:53makes them a little bit dangerous
0:02:56to support over the longterm.
0:03:00So it would be better if Apple,
0:03:02instead of forcing every single application developer
0:03:05on an entire system to write to a new API,
0:03:09especially if those applications
0:03:10don't consider themselves audio apps,
0:03:12like most of these APIs are for people
0:03:14who are making music applications to work together,
0:03:17I think it would still be nice for the OS
0:03:19to expose the mechanisms that are so clearly there
0:03:22to control the audio routing at the OS level
0:03:26rather than just the individual app level
0:03:28cooperating with each other through the OS.
0:03:31- So Marco, tell us about lightning only headphones
0:03:33as John Casey asked about.
0:03:35- Yes, this is not confusing at all.
0:03:36So John Casey asked about something, John and Casey,
0:03:39and I will be talking about it.
0:03:40So basically, he threw out an interesting idea
0:03:44regarding the future of the iPhone 7
0:03:47not having a headphone jack probably
0:03:49and a future in which headphones are lightning only,
0:03:54he said, "Many headphones come with detachable
0:03:56"and replaceable cables.
0:03:58"Any chance Apple might make a replacement cable,
0:04:00"not just an adapter dongle?"
0:04:02So the idea there would be that Apple sells you
0:04:05just a straight replacement cable for your legacy headphones.
0:04:09So one end has lightning, the other end has
0:04:12a little skinny thing that plugs into headphones
0:04:13at the top end instead of just being
0:04:15this clunky adapter on the bottom.
0:04:16This, and of course in the middle,
0:04:18they could put a really good clicker,
0:04:19which would be great.
0:04:20So this is a great idea in theory.
0:04:23In practice, it would probably not work very well
0:04:26because the problem is the end of the cable
0:04:29at the headphone, at the ear cup end of it,
0:04:32that end is not standard.
0:04:34Now usually it is either another three and a half inch jack
0:04:38just like the end by the phone.
0:04:40Or it could be a smaller one, the two and a half inch
0:04:42version or the two and a half millimeter.
0:04:45And then around it, you have a similar problem
0:04:48to the very, very first iPhone where it had that big plastic surround and you couldn't
0:04:53fit every kind of headphone plug into it. Sometimes the plug would be too wide, like
0:04:58the plastic around the plug would be too wide and it just wouldn't fit around the housing
0:05:03around the port. That problem exists big time on headphones with replaceable cables where
0:05:10so often, I'd say most of the time, a headphone can't actually, even a headphone that has
0:05:15that has a detachable cable usually can't use
0:05:18another cable made for a different headphone.
0:05:20Usually something about it doesn't fit
0:05:22or it doesn't click in right if there's some kind
0:05:24of locking mechanism or something like that.
0:05:26So in practice, the end of the headphone cable
0:05:29on the headphone, on the ear cup,
0:05:32is not standardized enough even among the ones
0:05:35with removable cables to make it possible
0:05:37for somebody to make like a general purpose
0:05:39aftermarket replacement that fits a lot of them.
0:05:42That being said, Apple could of course make,
0:05:45like one that works for all Beats,
0:05:47or at least the most, I mean,
0:05:48Beats doesn't have that many popular models.
0:05:50They could cover those and cover a large portion
0:05:53of the Apple headphone using population.
0:05:56That is not saying it's likely they would do this.
0:05:59I think the most likely answer is
0:06:00they wouldn't address it at all,
0:06:02and the answer would just be, well, buy new headphones,
0:06:04or use our adapter.
0:06:05- Do all Beats have detachable cables?
0:06:08- I don't know enough about them to say if all do.
0:06:11I know many of them do.
0:06:13And generally speaking, detachable cables are something
0:06:16I always hope that headphones have,
0:06:18and I always ding them if they don't in the review,
0:06:21because especially for desk headphones,
0:06:24it's not as necessary,
0:06:25because you tend not to wear those out.
0:06:27Portable headphones, they're constantly being wrapped up
0:06:30and unwrapped and put in bags and taken out and everything,
0:06:33and so there's a lot of stress on the cables,
0:06:34and usually what makes headphones die,
0:06:38what makes headphones go bad or stop being usable,
0:06:40is usually one of two things.
0:06:42usually either the wire frays near one of the ends,
0:06:45usually the phone end, but if it's a permanent cable
0:06:48it can also fray at the place where it meets the ear cup.
0:06:50Or if they're beats, they literally break in half.
0:06:54Because the head, literally, because if you're on,
0:06:57if you have a plastic headband,
0:07:00when you put headphones on,
0:07:02the headband has to stretch out a little bit,
0:07:03and so it's constantly being stretched and un-stretched,
0:07:06and stretched and un-stretched.
0:07:07So the stress of that, if you have an all plastic headband,
0:07:10very often results in the headband cracking
0:07:13right in the middle.
0:07:14That is usually how bad headphones break.
0:07:16Good headphones usually eventually break
0:07:17'cause the cables go bad somewhere along the way.
0:07:20- All right. - Anyway.
0:07:21- We have some super important follow-up.
0:07:25The internet, possibly the country
0:07:28or maybe even the world would like to know, John,
0:07:32what's going on with your Destiny HUD?
0:07:35- We talked about when I had to move my PlayStation 4
0:07:39off of my plasma television onto a separate gaming monitor because I was playing Destiny
0:07:43a lot and I noticed that the HUD that is up on the screen while playing Destiny was burning
0:07:47into my plasma screen.
0:07:49So I had to evict the entire console from the television, which was kind of a shame
0:07:52because it looked way better on my TV than it does on this terrible little monitor that
0:07:55I'm using right now.
0:07:57But when I moved it away, I also set a calendar reminder for a year in the future to say,
0:08:05me to check whether the destiny hud had finally uh worn off of my television because what i had
0:08:11heard from people who had uh people who had the same model as me is that yes image retention is a
0:08:15problem but in most cases it's not actually permanent it just takes forever to go away so
0:08:21i said fine i'll put a thing for a year some people say it took many months some people say
0:08:24it took multiple years so i figure i'll put a reminder for a year and it's not like i've
0:08:27forgotten about it i've been watching tv and i've been looking at it in fact i'm always looking at
0:08:31my television i was noticing that the you know the cartoon network logo that i've complained about
0:08:35and past shows was burning in. But anyway, this is the year anniversary. To the day, I think?
0:08:40Probably to the day. So I took a look on my television in the various ways that you can do,
0:08:45the way you're putting solid colors behind it and a pure white screen and stuff like that.
0:08:49And I can say that from a normal sitting distance, if I didn't know where the HUD was supposed to be,
0:08:57I wouldn't be able to see it. I think a normal person would not be able to see it.
0:09:01Can barely see only the super bar the big bar that fills with with color as your super gets charged up and
0:09:09Turns the other one. It's fully charged
0:09:11I can barely
0:09:13Kind of make out where that used to be no other part of the hud is visible and that even like I got up really close
0:09:18To television like am I just imagining that it's there because I remember where it was
0:09:22I'll love to see this so I it's it is almost entirely gone
0:09:27You can totally see the big C and a little bit of the end in Cartoon Network
0:09:31Network so that's a good you know thing to compare it to like I can see the CN
0:09:34And Cartoon Network has been banned from this television as well now
0:09:37But so I say that the the destiny had experiment destiny's not coming back to my TV
0:09:42My ps4 is not coming back to TV of I I might move it back for an individual game or two
0:09:47But I wouldn't play destiny over there
0:09:50But anyway, it has faded substantially so what looked like a permanent image retention was not actually permanent
0:09:56It just took a really really long time to go away
0:09:57So I suppose I'll put another calendar in for a year from now
0:10:01I'm gonna revisit for a second year to see if it's really really gone
0:10:04But at some point I just want to replace this TV with a fancy old lead one
0:10:06So people who need to start making better televisions
0:10:08The theme of every episode people need to start making better televisions they do John Syracuse
0:10:15This is a bad time for TVs. I'm trying to wait it out. I I bought I felt like I bought at the right time
0:10:21I bought the peak of the previous generation of televisions and now just
0:10:26to endure this until we come out the other side.
0:10:28- Yeah, it does seem like you bought probably
0:10:30the best 1080p plasma that will ever exist
0:10:33and probably the best plasma that will ever exist.
0:10:36And now you just kind of have to wait for like
0:10:38when 4K gets non-stupid.
0:10:41- Well, yeah, they got to work out all the HDR stuff
0:10:44and work out their standards there
0:10:45and get the OLED kinks worked out.
0:10:47Like there was a fancier model than the one I got
0:10:49but it had slightly lower brightness and so I sacrificed
0:10:52and it was also more money and I was like,
0:10:54It's very similar, it's really too close to call,
0:10:57and I think the extra brightness will be what I wanted.
0:10:59But yeah, I bought pretty much at the right time,
0:11:02and I lucked out with the fan noise and everything,
0:11:04which I was afraid of.
0:11:06That turned out not to be an issue,
0:11:07especially compared to my previous television.
0:11:08But right now, I finally did read up on all the TVs
0:11:12at CES and everything, and now it's like,
0:11:14just a battle over the high dynamic range standards,
0:11:18and all those different standards,
0:11:20and which channels are gonna support what
0:11:23broadcast and will Netflix support it and what things the ultra HD blu-rays are supporting and
0:11:29what television manufacturers are and it's just it's a big mess I really want that to just be
0:11:34settled and then and then of course OLEDs you have to make you have to make a few generations
0:11:39of OLEDs before they get that all worked out so there's a long way to go here I mean a lot of the
0:11:43HDR standards are being supported by televisions that can't actually display the entire range of
0:11:47of the HDR stuff yet.
0:11:49So yeah, two or three years probably.
0:11:52- Now, just to prevent us from getting a crud load of email,
0:11:55would you mind reminding the listeners
0:11:56what TV you ended up buying?
0:11:58- Oh, I don't remember the name for it.
0:12:00It's Panasonic VT60.
0:12:03- Excellent.
0:12:04- The ZT60 was the fancy, the slightly fancier one.
0:12:07- All right, thank you very much.
0:12:09Now, do you wanna tell us about pirate eye patches?
0:12:11Because we got a surprising amount of feedback
0:12:15about pirate eye patches.
0:12:16Never in my life did I think we would be getting this serious about pirate eye patches on the
0:12:20Accidental Tech podcast, but here we are.
0:12:23I opened the door on the pirate eye patch, so I might as well finish closing in here.
0:12:26So the first thing to point out, which is not something we discussed last time, is not
0:12:30whether or not the things we said about pirate eye patches helping you see in the dark were
0:12:35actual, you know, it was actually true, does it actually help you see in the dark?
0:12:38Because we did link to the Mythbusters episode about that.
0:12:41But the larger issue of did lots of pirates have eye patches?
0:12:46And the consensus on that seems to be probably not, like there's no evidence of that.
0:12:51The only reason we think that is because, you know, Hollywood and various movies and
0:12:55stories and famous pirates and Blackbeard and all that other business or whatever, but
0:12:58historical records of pirates, like were there a lot of one-eyed pirates?
0:13:01Were all the pirates wearing eye patches so they could see better under decks?
0:13:05There's no evidence for that.
0:13:06So that is basically probably completely apocryphal, you know, and not really basinating.
0:13:11But the other part that we were talking about is, does that actually help you see under
0:13:15decks?
0:13:16And this, I think, is a great example of what I would call testing versus explaining.
0:13:22Somebody sent us a link to this other podcast that had, I forget what it's called, but it's
0:13:27a Q&A type podcast where they ask questions they had an expert on to answer, and the question
0:13:31was like, "Hey, if you put an eye patch over your eye, would that help you see better?
0:13:35one eye will be adjusted to the dark or whatever and the person on this show said their answer
0:13:40contained all correct information but didn't really lead to the correct conclusion and
0:13:44the idea was that you keep one eye under an eye patch and the other eye out of it, it's
0:13:49not as if the eye under the eye patch, the pupil is going to dilate massively and the
0:13:53eye that's out of the eye patch the pupil is not going to because in general if one
0:13:57of your pupils is way bigger than the other you probably just got hit in the head really
0:14:00hard and you should see a doctor like they they tend to be the same size, what is called
0:14:03like consensual response or whatever,
0:14:05like that your pupils are basically,
0:14:07you've heard it on all the television shows,
0:14:08you know, equal and reactive
0:14:10when they do the little light thing in your eyes
0:14:12to make sure that A, your eyes respond to light
0:14:14by, you know, your pupils getting smaller,
0:14:17and B, that they're equal.
0:14:18If one of them stays open,
0:14:20they want you to go to the doctor really quickly, right?
0:14:23And so they said, therefore,
0:14:25the whole idea of a pirate eye patch is silly
0:14:28because it's not as if the one under the eye patch
0:14:30is gonna have a really dilated pupil
0:14:32just waiting for you to go under decks and flip up the eyepatch, right?
0:14:35Now what the Mythbusters did instead was rather than trying to think of a theory of why it
0:14:38wouldn't work, they said, "Well, this is easy enough to test.
0:14:40Why don't we just make a dark place and put an eyepatch in someone's eye and give them
0:14:43some silly task, like see how fast" -- I forget they were doing it on the episode, but -- "see
0:14:47how fast they can accomplish a bunch of tasks in this really dark room."
0:14:49And they tried it without the eyepatch, and the eyepatch just crushed the non-eyepatch
0:14:53one.
0:14:54It was an extremely efficient way to see better in the dark.
0:14:58And so how do you square this circle?
0:15:01the explaining thing went wrong is the idea that the size of your pupil is the only thing
0:15:06that determines how well you see in the dark. That is one aspect of it, your pupil opens
0:15:10up to let more light in, but the other aspect of it is how sensitive the little things in
0:15:15the back of your eye are. And someone sent us a link to a thing about astronomy, red
0:15:19lights in astronomy, and why you want to use red lights when you're looking over the stars.
0:15:24And that contains another theory of what helps you see in the dark, and it's the sensitivity
0:15:29of the rods at the back of your eye that help you see in the dark from this article.
0:15:35During daylight hours, your rods are overexposed and so they're less efficient.
0:15:37As light gets dimmer, a chemical change allows them to become even more sensitive and your
0:15:41eyes become dark adapted.
0:15:43It only takes brief exposure to bright light for the rods to overexpose.
0:15:47Once that happens, you have a half an hour or more to regain dark sensitivity.
0:15:51So you really want it to be under the eye patch not to change the size of your pupil,
0:15:54but to get the rods in that eye, which are not consensual with the rods in the other
0:15:57right on like your iris dilation, to get them to be more sensitive to light.
0:16:02And it's important because if you expose them just for a short period of time, it's going
0:16:05to take like half an hour for them to get back to that super dark sensitive way because
0:16:08it's a chemical change in the eye and not just a physical change in, you know, essentially
0:16:12adjusting the aperture of your eyeball.
0:16:15It's ISO versus aperture basically.
0:16:16Yeah.
0:16:17So there you go.
0:16:19Everything you ever wanted to know about pirate eye?
0:16:21Probably not because people are still going to want to know why the hell do we think pirates
0:16:24have eye patches.
0:16:25particular pop culture thing caused us to think that. But regardless of whether or not
0:16:30they had eye patches, if they did, they could use them just like they did in Mythbusters
0:16:33and it would help them see in the dark better.
0:16:36Fair enough. And do you want to talk about how this relates to programming?
0:16:42Well, I don't know how. Like, the testing versus explaining, I guess, like, one of my
0:16:46pet peeves as an old cranky programmer is if you hear... Whether it's going on between
0:16:52you and another programmer or you hear two other programmers sitting near you talking
0:16:56to each other about -- it's usually some silly corner of the language thing because people
0:17:01love talking about language. But even it could be an API or whatever. Well, if you do this,
0:17:05it does that. And well, you know, if you call it in this way, that will happen. And this
0:17:10thing doesn't have blah, blah, blah. And they'll just go back and forth for what seems like
0:17:13a really long time, especially if they're sitting near you and talking and you're trying
0:17:15to get work done. And trying to come up with --
0:17:19Yeah, trying to come up with like, you know, explaining to each other.
0:17:23No, actually, language works this way.
0:17:24Oh, you're not accounting for this, blah, blah, blah, where there's no reason to have
0:17:28this discussion because in 20 seconds of typing, you can find the answer definitively.
0:17:32Like you don't have to speculate about what this language feature is like.
0:17:35So is that a syntax error or how would you do the expression?
0:17:38Is this the correct way to do references or whatever?
0:17:40Don't speculate.
0:17:41Don't debate it for 10 minutes.
0:17:42Just type it in.
0:17:43There's your answer.
0:17:46And then you can talk about why that's the answer or whatever, but you don't have to
0:17:49Google search, you don't do anything, like especially if you're in a language with a
0:17:51REPL, just find out. So it's testing versus explaining. Explaining and theorizing and
0:17:56thought experience are a good idea, but when it's really really easy or you know simple or
0:18:01very readily available to test it, just testing is faster and better and will lead you wrong
0:18:07in its own type of ways if you do your testing badly, but sometimes things are just very simple.
0:18:11So the eyepatch thing is like we have a theory, we think eyepatches help you see better in the dark,
0:18:15Is that true? So easy to test. You could spend all day talking to doctors and neurologists
0:18:22and theorizing about it, and they'll probably get the right answer. But if you get off on the wrong
0:18:26track and think about, "Oh, dilation, that's not going to help you there," it's just so much easier
0:18:31to test it. So I don't think most of us here knows or cares why it works. They just tested it,
0:18:35and assuming their test is reasonably sound, they come to a useful conclusion in much less time.
0:18:41Before we do the last bit of incredibly, incredibly exciting follow up, our first sponsor this
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0:20:30Now, the incredibly interesting follow-up
0:20:32that we've been holding off on this whole time.
0:20:35- Yes, this is riveting and really important.
0:20:38Actually, I joke because it is kind of silly,
0:20:40but I was really interested to know
0:20:42where the crap is the serial code,
0:20:45or the serial number on a Visa mount iMac.
0:20:50- As soon as we discovered last week
0:20:52that the serial number for a regular iMac with the big foot
0:20:55is on the bottom of the foot.
0:20:57- Right.
0:20:58- And so the question was,
0:20:59if you get one with the Visa mount,
0:21:01that is, you know, like that custom monitor mount
0:21:03in the back that doesn't have the foot,
0:21:05doesn't come with the foot,
0:21:06where would they put the serial number?
0:21:08- Right, and so we figured, you know,
0:21:10probably would be somewhere on the mount or what have you,
0:21:13because where else would it be?
0:21:15And sure enough, James McCain has written in
0:21:17and included a picture,
0:21:19this is professional level follow-up right here,
0:21:21included a picture of exactly where the serial number is
0:21:25on his Visa mount iMac.
0:21:28And so it turns out it is, if you flip the entire machine upside down, it's kind of printed in there right by the fan.
0:21:35Is that the exhaust or intake in the back?
0:21:37That is exhaust. The intake is the big ridge in the bottom.
0:21:40Fair enough. So anyway, so that's where it is as it turns out.
0:21:43I was waiting for Jason Snell to let us know, but apparently he's not caught up on the show.
0:21:47I'm very upset at him. But James McCain has saved the day. So thank you, James.
0:21:51I remember back in the day, speaking of serial numbers, that if you got certain repairs done to, say, your laptop Mac,
0:21:56the serial number would change because they give you a full motherboard swap or whatever.
0:22:01And if that's still the case, especially that's why I was asking if this was a sticker or
0:22:04etched onto the thing, you could end up with, if they replace the guts of your iMac, with
0:22:10a machine that has a different serial number than the one that is actually etched into
0:22:13the metal on the device, which could be very confusing to all involved if you're not aware
0:22:16of that.
0:22:17I think I remember we actually had a repair done like that maybe to a white iBook, maybe
0:22:20like my mom's white iBook or something, we had some repair and they said just so you
0:22:24know your serial number will be changing but even though you have the same external case.
0:22:28Anyway, I don't know if that's still an issue but it always struck me as weird that they would
0:22:32attach the serial number to the physical device but it's really connected to the innards of the
0:22:40device so you could end up in these scenarios where things are wrong. I think they can also,
0:22:43like, I don't know, there's another thing for genius as a consensus, I think they used to be
0:22:47able to change the serial number of your motherboard by like flashing it back to the old
0:22:51value but I don't know if that's a thing that they did.
0:22:53Yeah, so a friend of the show, Steven Hackett in the chat, is saying, crap I lost it, oh
0:22:59they have to re-serialize the boards and usually that comes with a sticker you put over the
0:23:03etch serial number.
0:23:05Also the tipster in the chat is saying when the serial is changed for laptops they will
0:23:08often swap the bottom cover with one that has no serial.
0:23:12They have to give you a sticker?
0:23:14Oh, the indignities.
0:23:16We fixed your Mac, but by the way,
0:23:18here's a sticker to put over the beautiful
0:23:21laser etched in serial number that's there.
0:23:23No thanks.
0:23:24- Yeah, I would, I mean, the good thing is that there,
0:23:26I mean, on laptops it's a problem.
0:23:28On the desktops, at least they're like hidden away
0:23:29in places that you'd never see it.
0:23:31But if it's on your laptop, like now with the modern ones,
0:23:34that's on the outside, on the bottom.
0:23:36Like you would totally see that.
0:23:37- Well that's why I was saying giving a bottom thing
0:23:39that has no serial numbers, then you can be like
0:23:40Steve Jobs with no license plates on his car.
0:23:42- Yeah, totally off the grid.
0:23:44untracked by Apple's serial number readers.
0:23:46- Untraceable except every other aspect of my computer.
0:23:50- Traceable except by all the software on the computer.
0:23:53- I just love how deeply offended you guys are
0:23:56about the thought of having a sticker on your computer.
0:23:58- Well look, either you're a sticker person or you're not.
0:24:00If you're not, the idea of any sticker on there
0:24:03is horrible, the whole reason we buy Macs
0:24:05is we wouldn't have Intel inside, Nvidia powered,
0:24:08all these, powered by invention, by Asus,
0:24:11like all this stupid stuff they put on their computers,
0:24:14and on the PC world, and here we don't have that.
0:24:17If you are a sticker person,
0:24:19you probably want better stickers
0:24:21than stupid Apple serial number one.
0:24:24- All right, so moving out of follow-up,
0:24:27Apple earnings were as we record last night.
0:24:30It turns out they made a lot of money, go figure.
0:24:33But there's a couple things that I think are interesting.
0:24:36First of all, their guidance for iPhone sales
0:24:41is down a bit, so they haven't said,
0:24:43if I understood things correctly,
0:24:45they haven't said that they've sold less iPhones already,
0:24:48but they are expecting to sell less iPhones
0:24:50in the next quarter, is that accurate?
0:24:52- That's compared to the year ago quarter, right?
0:24:55- 'Cause last year there were a number of reasons,
0:24:57and last year there were some overflow
0:24:59from the holiday quarter that was very strong,
0:25:00so some of those happened in the next quarter,
0:25:04and so we're not gonna have that this year,
0:25:06and then also last year there was tons of pent-up demand
0:25:08for the bigger screen phones,
0:25:10and this year that has been alleviated,
0:25:12and then there's currency fluctuations
0:25:14and economy fluctuations and everything else.
0:25:17I don't know, do we care?
0:25:18Does it matter?
0:25:20- Well, I mean, I don't think we care about the details
0:25:22in the way that the people on the financial call do.
0:25:24Like, tell us exactly why this quarter
0:25:26will be weaker than they were, but like,
0:25:29I'm looking at Jason Stell's six college post
0:25:31with all the pretty graphs and everything.
0:25:32If you just look at the four quarter moving average graphs
0:25:36and try to get a shape of the lines
0:25:38the various products and how they're doing.
0:25:42It's still kind of hard to help because a lot of it is revenue instead of units in these
0:25:44graphs but you can get a kind of idea of where the company is at with its various product
0:25:50lines.
0:25:51Are you guys looking at this page?
0:25:52Like look at Apple revenue, four quarter moving average showing the total and the iPhone,
0:25:57iPad, and the Mac.
0:25:59Right, so you get a picture of the company here.
0:26:02The total line shows you that the company is still going, you know, from the lower left
0:26:06to the upper right, more or less,
0:26:08if you're gonna draw a trend line.
0:26:09Growth, right, good.
0:26:11And then where does that growth come from?
0:26:12You see this iPhone line that is going up,
0:26:15but it's starting to get a little hump at the top of it.
0:26:17Not, you know, it's not going hockey stick upwards.
0:26:20Now it's starting to go more like, you know, ski mogul.
0:26:25Mump, I don't know, whatever you wanna call it.
0:26:28It's a mound, right?
0:26:29The slope is decreasing, right?
0:26:31Along the bottom you have the Mac,
0:26:33which always on these graphs looks like just a flat line,
0:26:35because the fluctuations, the Mac is so low below the iPhone that the fluctuations are
0:26:39barely visible.
0:26:40And then you've got the iPad, which like starts off around the same as the Mac, makes a tentative
0:26:45bid to go to the higher parts of the chart, and then says, "Nah, never mind," and actually
0:26:49dips below the Mac in the most recent year.
0:26:52Yeah, this was not a good report for the iPad.
0:26:55No.
0:26:56Yeah, so look at the iPad one.
0:26:58Look at iPad units, four-quarter moving average.
0:27:00Now it looks like it's like, you know, it's a hump.
0:27:03It's an upside-down U.
0:27:04It starts at the bottom, goes up to the top,
0:27:05and starts going down again.
0:27:07And now we're getting an actual proper hump.
0:27:09I think there's a better one later on
0:27:10if you ever see the iPod graph.
0:27:13Have you ever seen a graph with the iPod on it too?
0:27:15The iPod just looks like it comes out of nowhere,
0:27:17makes this big lump, and goes back down to basically zero.
0:27:20It makes a nice mound in the graph.
0:27:21Like, here I am in the iPod, oh, nevermind.
0:27:23(laughing)
0:27:25- It had a good run.
0:27:26- Yeah, that's over the course of many, many years,
0:27:28but I wish I could find that graph.
0:27:30The thing that's striking about looking at the iPod
0:27:32is like that the iPod is like,
0:27:34its hump is even smaller than the iPad's hump
0:27:37or similar size to the iPad's hump.
0:27:38We thought the iPod was this whole big world changing
0:27:40Apple's the iPod company kind of thing.
0:27:42It is nothing compared to the iPhone.
0:27:44The problem with all these graphs is
0:27:45as soon as you put the iPhone on the graph,
0:27:46it totally blows the y-axis
0:27:48and you can't read anything anymore
0:27:49because the iPhone is so ridiculously huge,
0:27:52makes so much money, sells so many units
0:27:55that everything else starts to kind of even out.
0:27:57But anyway, the one thing I put in the show notes about this
0:28:00I think the iPad is the real story that I'm interested in at least in these earnings results.
0:28:05Yeah, well and also one thing before we move on to the iPad is obviously the iPhone is
0:28:12the company. The iPhone is the most important thing in the company by numbers and by many
0:28:18other metrics by a long shot. It's not even close. Like it says down here on this chart
0:28:23it's the iPhone made 68% of the revenue
0:28:28in the entire company.
0:28:30The average selling price of the iPhone
0:28:32is incredibly important to the company's financial outlook.
0:28:37And this is why, when I make predictions
0:28:40or when I try to explain things
0:28:42that use the iPhone average selling price
0:28:45as a justification for why Apple did or might do something,
0:28:50this kind of shows you why that might override decisions from Apple about things like what's
0:28:56actually best for the customer or what actually might be the best product. Because everything's
0:29:02in balance with Apple, with any company, everything's in balance. No company is like pure good or
0:29:07pure evil. Everything's always these contending factors that are trying to reach equilibrium
0:29:13but there's always this contention between them. I don't know if contending is a word
0:29:17but it is now anyway.
0:29:19So with Apple, they're always kind of fighting
0:29:21between what they can make, what's possible to make,
0:29:23what they can ship on time, what's profitable,
0:29:26and what's best for the customer.
0:29:27In the case of the iPhone average selling price,
0:29:30I think they are definitely willing to do moves
0:29:33that will raise the average selling price
0:29:35by a substantial amount, even if it's kind of crappy
0:29:38for the customer.
0:29:39And I think you can look at the 16 gig base size
0:29:42of the phones as one of the biggest examples of this.
0:29:46that there is almost no other justification for that.
0:29:49You can look at almost every other reason
0:29:51people gave for that back when we all,
0:29:53you know, discussed it two years ago or whatever.
0:29:56And you can rule almost all of them out
0:29:58by other supporting reasons.
0:30:00Like people say, "Well, oh, well,
0:30:01"we buy all these phones in our company
0:30:03"and no one ever uses more than 16 gigs."
0:30:05Well, you could also say a lot of phones
0:30:06don't use the ear pods that are in the box,
0:30:08but they still include them.
0:30:09Like, or, you know, your company doesn't use,
0:30:11necessarily, like 3D Touch,
0:30:13but that thing's in every phone, too.
0:30:15So you can look at any part of it and you can say,
0:30:17a lot of people don't use this,
0:30:19that's not necessarily a reason why the 16 gig thing
0:30:22has to be there and be sucking and be problematic
0:30:23for so many people.
0:30:24Anyway, so Apple is willing and possibly,
0:30:28I wouldn't say forced to, but there's strong pressure
0:30:32for Apple to keep that iPhone ASP up and growing.
0:30:36And so for them to do things that will increase
0:30:39the average selling price by even a little bit,
0:30:42it matters enough and there's huge motivation
0:30:44to do it. And so you look at something like the headphone jack thing. And we are all saying
0:30:48Apple always includes headphones in the box. Well what if this fall the iPhone 7 comes
0:30:52out with no headphone jack and they don't include headphones in the box. Then a huge
0:30:57portion of iPhone buyers are going to go spend 30 more dollars when they buy that phone.
0:31:02That's going to be an attachment sale that counts towards the average selling price I
0:31:04think of the phone itself. Anyway however they count for that they're going to make
0:31:08a lot more money if they do that. You know you can look at this cynically and you can
0:31:12You can say Apple will do this for sure
0:31:14'cause it'll make them more money and it sucks for us.
0:31:16Or you can look at it the opposite way
0:31:18and you can say Apple always wants to do
0:31:19what's best for customers, they would never do that
0:31:21for that reason.
0:31:22I think the truth is somewhere in the middle there.
0:31:24So we have to consider that when we look at
0:31:27what Apple does with the product line,
0:31:29especially in regards to the iPhone
0:31:31and how that impacts their profitability
0:31:33even if it kinda sucks for us.
0:31:34And all this financial stuff that comes out every quarter
0:31:38is a perfect reason why they have very strong reasons
0:31:41to have some contention there.
0:31:43- I don't feel like they're so wed
0:31:44to average selling price,
0:31:46because in the past they've done things
0:31:47that have hurt their average selling price
0:31:49on their products to, you know,
0:31:50like the iPad mini is a great example.
0:31:52But margins, I feel like a lot of those decisions
0:31:55are just as easily explained,
0:31:57if not better explained by margins.
0:31:59Because like the 16 gig thing,
0:32:00the average selling price argument
0:32:02is this is gonna push people up to the bigger model
0:32:04'cause they don't feel like they can fit in 16.
0:32:06But it could also just result in more people buying 16s,
0:32:08you don't quite know,
0:32:09'cause Apple doesn't break it down like that for us, right?
0:32:11But surely one thing it does is increase margins, because it's like, 64 already had good margins,
0:32:16and by keeping the lower one in 16, and keeping the prices basically the same, that 16 gigs
0:32:22that they've been including on their phone for years and years, it's just got to be getting
0:32:25cheaper for them, and yet the phone price hasn't been dropping year over year over year,
0:32:29so their margins go up.
0:32:30And I think they are really sensitive to their margins, and their margins are, I think it's
0:32:34like 40% or something across the board on all of their stuff.
0:32:38So even if they have to drop the average selling price by selling the iPad mini, I bet they're
0:32:42very sensitive about what are the margins on the iPad mini.
0:32:45How can we bring that down by putting crappier stuff in it?
0:32:47You know, that's kind of always what they're looking for.
0:32:51Can we sell you something with last year's technology in it in some aspect because it
0:32:55saves us money?
0:32:56Whether it's like putting the credit of your camera in the iPod Touch that's not subsidized
0:33:00and they have to maintain their margins or, you know, whatever they put in their low-end
0:33:04phones or even on their highest-end phones will keep the prices more or less the same,
0:33:08but we'll give you 16 gigs for years and years
0:33:10because every year that gives us a little bit more
0:33:12on the margins.
0:33:13And like you said, Marco,
0:33:14anything to do, whether it's average selling price
0:33:16or margins multiplied by the number of phones they sell
0:33:18is a tremendous amount of money.
0:33:20And that's a lot of what this call was about
0:33:22was like foreign exchange rates
0:33:25and various other quote unquote headwinds,
0:33:29these fluctuations in how the dollar is valued
0:33:31against the other currencies in the world has,
0:33:34it seems like it's not that big a deal.
0:33:36It's not like we're in some financial meltdown
0:33:38the dollar is like worthless or worth 10 times more than all the currencies in the world,
0:33:42right?
0:33:43But even minute movement in the foreign exchange rates multiplied by Apple's revenue equals
0:33:49these tremendous numbers.
0:33:50So a lot of the things I saw getting thrown around on Twitter are like, "The amount of
0:33:53money Apple lost due to currency fluctuations is larger than the amount of money Facebook
0:33:58made in the entire year," or something like that.
0:34:00The numbers are so mind-bogglingly huge that any – like, the fluctuations in the chart
0:34:04look like nothing.
0:34:05You know it's a few pixels lower or whatever, but like those pixels are billions and billions and billions of dollars
0:34:10So it's it's it's mind-boggling to even consider this and that's why I'm so glad I'm not a financial world because
0:34:16Trying to judge Apple as a from a financial perspective
0:34:21It's just so so weird because of the way
0:34:23The things they value seem so out of whack with the things that like a regular person would value about a company
0:34:29Oh, they're making a lot of money. They're profitable they have a lot of money in the bank boy
0:34:32That must be a good stock like no. Where's the growth?
0:34:34- Growth.
0:34:35(laughing)
0:34:36- Yeah, this is like, when something like this happens,
0:34:38I am so happy that I no longer buy or sell individual stocks
0:34:43like, you know, I have mutual funds
0:34:46that include some of these things, I'm sure,
0:34:47but I don't manage that myself
0:34:50and I don't buy and sell stock anymore.
0:34:52I'm so glad because I would think of things
0:34:55like, you know, the way you would,
0:34:56like I would think of things like, you know,
0:34:57Apple's doing great, they have great prospects,
0:34:59they're making a lot of money,
0:35:00why did their stock just take a dive?
0:35:02And it would frustrate me like crazy
0:35:04And of course, that isn't how the market works at all.
0:35:06Like the market, everyone says the market is stupid
0:35:09and doesn't understand Apple.
0:35:10No, the market is doing its own thing.
0:35:11It's not stupid.
0:35:12There's a lot to be said about it that's bad,
0:35:15but it's not stupid.
0:35:16- There's some stupid.
0:35:17- Well.
0:35:18- Usually the stupid manifests in the other way
0:35:19where companies are overvalued for,
0:35:23like because anyway, it's just another form of gambling.
0:35:25Buy low, sell high.
0:35:26How do I know what's low?
0:35:27Well, low is something that's gonna be high later.
0:35:30And so people, a bunch of people will get together
0:35:32and say, look at that company.
0:35:33That's gonna be super high later.
0:35:35And you know, bid it up and have astronomical valuation
0:35:39because it's based on the potential.
0:35:40This could be really high later.
0:35:41Boy, if everybody decides to buy this person's thing,
0:35:45this'll be great.
0:35:46But you know, it's just basically speculation.
0:35:48What do you think is gonna be high next year?
0:35:51Is it gonna be Apple?
0:35:51Is Apple gonna go up by 50% by next year?
0:35:54Or is this a little company you never heard of?
0:35:55You can buy the stock for pennies, you know?
0:35:57So that's, yeah, it's not, it's kind of a sucker's bet.
0:36:00Not really because you can, in theory,
0:36:03have some knowledge that will help you do better.
0:36:05Witness people like Warren Buffett and everything
0:36:07are pretty sure not cheating.
0:36:09They're just a little bit better at playing
0:36:11this particular game of poker than other people.
0:36:14So there is a, it's not all luck,
0:36:15there is a skill-based aspect, but for the most part,
0:36:18like I don't get too mad about the way Apple is treated
0:36:22by the market because I have to think,
0:36:23like I mean this is what everyone's been thinking
0:36:24for years and years, you're like,
0:36:25well, there's nowhere for them to go but down,
0:36:27they're at the top.
0:36:28If you had thought that five years ago
0:36:30and five years before that and five years,
0:36:31you just put them in wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,
0:36:32That's what all the analysts always point out.
0:36:34It's like every time someone says that Apple's at the top
0:36:36and they can only go down, you just wait five years
0:36:38and you make fun of those people, right?
0:36:39But at some point they'll be right,
0:36:41because if not, Apple will have all the money in the world
0:36:43and we will literally have no money
0:36:44because Apple will have it all.
0:36:45And it's just like Moore's Law.
0:36:46You can't keep doubling forever
0:36:48because eventually you will have all the monies.
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0:38:45Squarespace, build it beautiful.
0:38:47- What I found interesting about this
0:38:50is that the iPads are down and down fairly big,
0:38:56Which, in and of itself, I know we have already covered that, but having just gotten a new
0:39:00iPad, and now being able to unlock, if you will, all the multitasking features in iOS
0:39:079, I have fallen in love with my iPad again.
0:39:12And I know that a lot of our friends, even ones like Mike Hurley, who were kind of aggressively
0:39:20anti-iPad very recently, are now falling in love with their iPad Pros.
0:39:26So what gives?
0:39:27Am I weird in that I really love my iPad Mini?
0:39:31And is Mike weird in that he really loves his iPad Pro?
0:39:35What is going on that apparently a lot of people have fallen out of love with the iPad?
0:39:39I'm going to answer the easy questions first.
0:39:41Yes, you're both weird.
0:39:42But that's not here, neither here nor there.
0:39:44That is a separate thing entirely.
0:39:45Thanks, Bobby.
0:39:46I was thinking about this, and I think like now that we have a nice shape to this graph,
0:39:49and now that we can clearly see that it's like this, enough time has passed where we
0:39:53We could be like, it's not replacement cycle.
0:39:56It's not some other thing that we like.
0:39:57It's just basically like this is starting to take the shape
0:40:00of the other type of devices.
0:40:01And I, although I still am totally signed up
0:40:04with the idea of the interface that we all know
0:40:07and love in our phones being eventually being the thing
0:40:10that supplants what we currently know as the PC,
0:40:12whether or not the iPad does it, I'm not sure.
0:40:14But the way I'm conceptualizing the iPad now,
0:40:18which I think kind of explains like your, Casey,
0:40:20your attitude towards it and Mike's and everything,
0:40:22is that currently, for now, the iPad is a specific product,
0:40:26not like the tablet in general,
0:40:28but the iPad is a specific product
0:40:29I'd see as filling two main roles.
0:40:33First, it is a rich toddler's toy.
0:40:37(laughing)
0:40:40Because, I mean, and I'm lumping myself in that,
0:40:42my kids have iPads, they're the kids of rich people, right?
0:40:45In general, like most of the people I know
0:40:48who live in a similar place that I do,
0:40:50have suburban lives, professional jobs, they have iPads they give to their kids.
0:40:55Sometimes they're hand-me-down iPads or whatever, but just like I see a lot of
0:40:59iPads that are used by kids, right? So it is and I say toddlers because once the
0:41:03kids get older they want a phone, right? Yep. And that's obviously, you know,
0:41:07that's everything. And the other thing the iPad is, is to use Steve Jobs
0:41:12parlance, it's a truck. The iPad is the truck of the world of, you know, iOS and
0:41:18touch devices or whatever. Most people don't need a truck. Most people get away
0:41:22with the car, which is called their phone. It does everything they could possibly
0:41:25need, but some people, the weird people, need a truck. Not just the iPad Pros the
0:41:30truck, but the entire iPad line is now revealing itself as a truck, because
0:41:33everyone else is saying, "You know what? The phone is fine. The phone is all I
0:41:36need. Phone does everything I want." And then in the other realm that you could
0:41:40say, "If it's not a Rich Toddlers toy, what about the non-Rich Toddlers?" I think
0:41:45tablets still have a role for everybody,
0:41:49for little kids in particular,
0:41:50because it's a great little child's toy,
0:41:52but they just buy cheap Android tablets
0:41:54so they can watch YouTube.
0:41:54I think if I replace my kids' iPads
0:41:57with $99 Android tablets just played YouTube,
0:42:00they would be mostly satisfied.
0:42:02That's mostly what they do with it,
0:42:03is they use it to watch YouTube.
0:42:04It doesn't take too much to run YouTube.
0:42:06So in the current life of the iPad product line,
0:42:10they seem like a product that has a much,
0:42:15much narrower appeal than the phone.
0:42:17And that's what they're really competing with,
0:42:19is the phone, not the laptop at this point or whatever.
0:42:21So in that light, I think it's a good move
0:42:24for Apple to have finally gotten off its butt
0:42:25and done the iPad Pro, which by the way,
0:42:27doesn't factor at all into these results.
0:42:29And I wouldn't expect them to move.
0:42:31I mean, they're factored some,
0:42:32but like the iPad Pro came at the tail end
0:42:34of the results that we're looking at right here.
0:42:36But that's not a mainstream product, right?
0:42:39So anyway, if the iPad's going to be a truck,
0:42:41make a better truck for crying out loud, right?
0:42:44- I mean, in the original analogy,
0:42:47the PC or the computer was the truck,
0:42:51and the iOS devices were the cars.
0:42:54And I think the PC still is the truck,
0:42:58and the iPad is like maybe the El Camino,
0:43:02or like the, what's that Subaru half-truck thing?
0:43:06- Oh god, I know exactly what you're thinking about,
0:43:07but I can't place it.
0:43:08- The Baja, that's it.
0:43:09The Subaru Baja.
0:43:11It's like, it's not even, it's neither a great car
0:43:14nor a great truck.
0:43:16It's kind of in the middle there.
0:43:17Maybe there's a reason why the El Camino is not made anymore
0:43:21and the Subaru Baja is not the most popular car.
0:43:25Nobody looked at the Subaru Baja and said,
0:43:28"This is the future of cars."
0:43:30You know, the same way, like, everyone looks at the iPad
0:43:32and says, "This is the future of computing."
0:43:34- But it is, but it is, like it totally is.
0:43:36- Is it? - Yeah, no, it totally is.
0:43:38I mean, we have it born out, when they say that,
0:43:40They mean like a thing that is not a PC,
0:43:43'cause it's totally not a PC, right?
0:43:45That you interact with mostly by touching.
0:43:47And it is the future of computing
0:43:48because that's what everybody does,
0:43:49but it's also, but they do it on their phone.
0:43:51It's like, oh, well, is the tablet
0:43:52a separate thing for the phone
0:43:53or is it just the same exact thing
0:43:54as the phone at a bigger size?
0:43:56And it is, but it's like,
0:43:57why would you need that bigger size?
0:43:58Well, most people don't.
0:43:59Most people, especially with their big honking phones,
0:44:01most people, that's all they're ever gonna need.
0:44:03Like the PC is still this separate, separate thing.
0:44:05But if you just set aside the PC entirely
0:44:07and just look at the computers that most people use
0:44:10where their personal computers are their smartphones
0:44:13at this point.
0:44:14And why would you ever need one that's bigger
0:44:16than your big phone?
0:44:17Well, that's kind of like the truck of the phone
0:44:19where like if you pretend PCs don't exist,
0:44:21which basically as far as my kids are concerned,
0:44:22they might as well not exist.
0:44:23Like so many kids, like your parents have a computer,
0:44:27but why would you like, I'm waiting to see
0:44:29if my kids will ever ask to have their own computer.
0:44:31They asked to have their own iOS devices and phones
0:44:34without any prompting very, very early.
0:44:36None of them even said,
0:44:37"Hey, I'd like to have my own computer."
0:44:39the computer is something that your parents use. So it's categorically different. That's why I'm
0:44:42refocusing and saying, "Now, forget about that crap that your parents use that you don't understand
0:44:46that's in some other room that has this thing attached to it with or without a wire."
0:44:50And think about your world of computing, which is a bunch of these screens. Most of them are like,
0:44:57"I just want a phone. I can talk to my friends. I can watch YouTube videos. I can listen to music.
0:45:01I'm good to go." Right? And maybe I'll go into my parents' room to type the papers or whatever,
0:45:06But sometimes they might want something bigger to do more truck-like things, and I'm not entirely sure that this upcoming generation
0:45:12It's going to occur to them immediately to say well now I need a PC rather they might say
0:45:17I have weird needs so I want one of those big fancy iPads now the the Subaru is the Baja
0:45:23I thought it was the Brat, but anyway, but they're they're both true
0:45:26The Brat is the very old one which is actually what I was thinking of and the Baja is the newer one
0:45:30It was actually called the Brat. Yes. They had it written on the side of it. It was great
0:45:36Wow, the little like a c-pillar equivalent on the pickup truck hybrid thing can't imagine why they changed it. Yeah
0:45:42But like the reason that I think is apt is because we all recognize that the iPad is not a great truck
0:45:48And yeah, the iPad Pro is a step in the right direction to say give us an even bigger screen
0:45:53Give us a stylus make more room for the multitasking stuff that you've added
0:45:57Right as a baby step in the right direction to really being like if you're gonna go truck go all the way
0:46:02But even if they succeed in that endeavor even if they say oh now the iPad is the truck of the new family of computing
0:46:08Devices because this entire family collectively is the future of computing and some people need to do fancy stuff like say run Xcode on
0:46:13Their iPad or wherever the hell they're gonna be doing 10 years from now, right?
0:46:15Does that suddenly mean that this iPad sales curve that we see making a big hump and going to Allen Hill is gonna reverse?
0:46:22No, because most people don't need trucks like nothing. Nothing can save the truck from being the truck
0:46:27Nothing can save the computer that most people don't need
0:46:30Nothing is ever gonna make the Mac Pro like sell like the iPhone
0:46:34Nothing is ever gonna hockey stick any of these things up and so for now for the iPad product specifically just use hockey stick as a verb
0:46:40It's a well-established verb on the show my god
0:46:44Yeah, nothing is going to change the the inherent nature of of that and even even the PC
0:46:51It's like well, what if iPads replace all the PCs go look at the PC trend lines. Those aren't great either
0:46:55The only thing that is going that has been going upward
0:46:57Like a hockey stick has been the phone and even the phone is loving off a little bit
0:47:01At a certain point and the reason the phone is leveling off. I feel like not with Apple specifically, but eventually with everybody
0:47:07Eventually, there's only a certain number of phones you can sell in the world once every single human every single human alive babies adults
0:47:14Everybody has a smartphone then you're just fighting over how many you know
0:47:18Then you're just fighting of who gets to sell them, right?
0:47:20So you can have 100% market share I sell a phone to every single human alive in the planet
0:47:24But you're never gonna get more than that, right?
0:47:26So eventually all these curves have to level off and smartphone really is the type of product that can have that kind of penetration
0:47:31so I
0:47:32When I look at the iPad
0:47:34Curve and I see it going down and I see the phone leveling off
0:47:38The phone is like well Apple you got to compete with the other phones that are out there to make sure you
0:47:42maintain your market share and the iPad I just feel like it has
0:47:45Slowly growing into its destiny as the truck of the new world of computing
0:47:51but I just I just think it should be a better truck I
0:47:54I agree with some of what you've just said, but I see a better future for the PC than
0:47:59I think you do, and that a lot of people do. And again, I think you're right, it's not
0:48:05going to really go up from where it has been. I think it's going to go down a little bit
0:48:10and then just kind of level off at some point where the PC really is the general utility
0:48:16computing device, and that is incredibly powerful. And there are so many things that, you know,
0:48:23we can all call them edge cases.
0:48:24We can say, you know, you look at so much
0:48:28of what iOS devices can't do, and so many of them
0:48:32seem like, well, almost no one needs that, and that's true.
0:48:35But almost everyone needs one of those things.
0:48:39And it's kind of like, the world of people
0:48:43who need computing tasks or abilities
0:48:47that the iOS devices and that world view of computing
0:48:51can't address is a pretty big group of people.
0:48:55So I think the computer will always be relevant
0:48:57in the same way like Microsoft has always been relevant.
0:49:00They used to be dominant and the only game in town
0:49:03and now Microsoft is this kind of like mostly ignored
0:49:08boring company that no one talks about
0:49:11but that still has a great business
0:49:12and is still very useful to a lot of people.
0:49:15No one really talks about Microsoft
0:49:17but their stuff is still very, very popular,
0:49:21it's financially seemingly okay,
0:49:23and a lot of people rely on their stuff
0:49:26to get their work done.
0:49:27And I think that the PC in general,
0:49:29whether it's Windows or Mac,
0:49:30I don't make that distinction right now,
0:49:33the PC in general is so general purpose,
0:49:37it is so capable, it is so unbounded
0:49:40by so many of the restrictions
0:49:42that modern mobile devices have,
0:49:44both physical and software restrictions.
0:49:46There is always going to be a market
0:49:48for a more customizable, more open architecture,
0:49:52more hardware diversity kind of platform
0:49:55because there's always gonna be edge cases.
0:49:58And as these mobile devices get smaller, simpler,
0:50:01more locked down, fewer ports, everybody come on,
0:50:05you know, all the stuff that we celebrate as consumers
0:50:09as like, oh wow, this is great,
0:50:10it's getting thinner and lighter
0:50:12and everything's even more locked down
0:50:13than it was before, thanks a lot.
0:50:15All of that is very powerful in certain ways
0:50:18And if you're making something that's gonna sell
0:50:20as many units as possible to as many people
0:50:22in the world as possible, that is a good way to do it.
0:50:24And that's going to keep working.
0:50:26I always say it, never bet against the smartphone,
0:50:27it's very powerful.
0:50:29But I don't think that has to come at the expense
0:50:33of the entire PC business.
0:50:34It will come at the expense of some of the PC business.
0:50:37But again, I don't think, like not a lot of people
0:50:40are saying, you know what, I don't even need
0:50:43a computer anymore, I'm just gonna use my phone
0:50:45for everything.
0:50:46Some people say that with the iPad.
0:50:48And so the iPad is certainly more of a threat
0:50:50than the phone is, but I think it's much more likely
0:50:53that the people who are still using PCs today,
0:50:58even when good tablets are available,
0:51:01I don't see a whole ton of them making that jump
0:51:04if they haven't already.
0:51:06- No, but those people all die.
0:51:07I guess that's the way it works.
0:51:08Those people all die, and the people who are formerly
0:51:10using PCs, what we're waiting for,
0:51:12maybe not the iPad specifically, but tablets in general,
0:51:15The idea that something without the paradigms and the complexities that we currently associate
0:51:21with personal computers, that tablets can eventually replace them, and that maybe eventually
0:51:28the things that we think of as tablets now will eventually be called PCs to distinguish
0:51:32them from the phones.
0:51:33But they won't, because they won't be running Windows, they won't be running OS X, they
0:51:36won't have disks that you mount and volumes and exposed file systems and all the things
0:51:43that we associate with personal computing now,
0:51:46that's why I'm talking, it's important to differentiate
0:51:48between the iPad as a product,
0:51:49which Apple may never get their act together on, right?
0:51:52And the tablet as a whole,
0:51:54the idea that a future computing device
0:51:57should be more appliance-like and probably also mobile,
0:52:00because again, with the Moore's Law stuff,
0:52:01like having lots of headroom to put powerful,
0:52:03heat-hungry things in there is fine,
0:52:04but at a certain point, you can't,
0:52:07like at a certain point,
0:52:08we need another technological breakthrough
0:52:10to increase compute.
0:52:12If we can't do that then you just basically say well
0:52:14the fastest CPU in the entire world fits in a battery-powered device and we haven't figured out how to make faster because we haven't figured out
0:52:20How to do quantum computers or optical computing or anything yet? So in the meantime
0:52:24Enjoy your quote-unquote PC
0:52:26Which is basically a big honking tablet because that's what two generations of children know how to use and they have no idea what the hell
0:52:33You're doing with that freaking mouse. They just want to touch the screen, right?
0:52:35So whether Apple is the one that does that or somebody else long term after we're all dead
0:52:40I think the the total market for people who need to do computing besides using the appliances in their home and their phone
0:52:45Will probably be about the similar size of the quote-unquote PC market today
0:52:50But I would expect tablets to slowly cannibalize that well
0:52:55Maybe the whole line on the graph stays about the same while above it floats all the other mass-market devices
0:52:59But that's that's where the tablets are battling down there with the PCs who is going to who is going to to
0:53:06Get these people who need more than a phone to do their job who who's going to serve them and right now
0:53:12It's the Mac versus Windows computers versus a whole panoply of tablets versus surface versus Chromebooks versus you know
0:53:19All these things that are like PCs and post PCs battling and I just have to give the edge to the ones
0:53:24With less legacy crap that are more understandable for people to use even if right now
0:53:30They're just not powerful enough as we talked about the last show to actually replace those
0:53:33I think we'll all be gone by the time it happens, but I just look at my kids and my kids' kids.
0:53:37Having a television is going to be, I can't even think of a good analogy,
0:53:41but it's just, it's going to seem like having like a plow in your backyard to till the fields. I don't know.
0:53:46It's going to seem weird.
0:53:48Well, you know, I agree with you,
0:53:50Jon, more than I do Marco, that I think that the PC as we know it, again, like Marco said, Mac or PC,
0:53:55the personal computers we know it is not terribly long for this world, for almost everyone.
0:54:01And I agree John that the future is going to be touch the futures or you know something after touch or VR or VR
0:54:07Oh, I think the future is not the this beautiful new iMac that I just bought myself
0:54:13But what I'm where I'm having trouble is why then is the iPad so sharply down like I understand what you're saying
0:54:22It's not powerful enough. It's not doing enough right now, but
0:54:24Jeez, if the iPad really is the future's truck, don't you think it would at least maintain or not have such a stark
0:54:32downward slope?
0:54:33Yeah, because I think they misfired on the iPad.
0:54:36I think they thought things were further along than they were, and so there was the initial burst of like,
0:54:41"Hey, this is the future, everyone's gonna love it!"
0:54:43And then everyone realized, "You know what? I can do all the same stuff on my phone."
0:54:46Especially when the phones got bigger and more powerful, then it was like, "Oh, well, never mind.
0:54:50Just give those ones to the kids."
0:54:51It's like a burst of enthusiasm
0:54:54followed by the realization that
0:54:56it does not provide enough additional value
0:54:58and so that's why I feel like it's tapering off.
0:55:00- Well, I think there's a number of factors here.
0:55:02First of all, I think that the value of a tablet in general,
0:55:07if you use it for productivity tasks,
0:55:11then the iPad is very competitive.
0:55:14But I think what most people use tablets for
0:55:16is entertainment and I think, I'm not saying,
0:55:20you know, you can't do work on an iPad,
0:55:21but I think a lot of people,
0:55:22I think the market bears that out,
0:55:24that a lot of people use their tablets primarily
0:55:25for entertainment purposes.
0:55:27And if you're doing that, there's a lot less reason
0:55:31to get specifically an iPad over any other tablet out there.
0:55:35And there's tablets, you know, that cost nothing.
0:55:38Tablets are cheaper than like gas.
0:55:41- If you can play Flappy Bird
0:55:44and you can watch YouTube videos,
0:55:46like that cover, you know,
0:55:47you can play a couple of really simple games
0:55:49and watch YouTube, as far as my kids are concerned,
0:55:52it would be like indistinguishable from an iPad,
0:55:54'cause they are not using any of the iPad-y-ness
0:55:56of the iPad, they are just literally watching YouTube
0:55:58forever and then playing a couple games.
0:56:00- Exactly, so that's problem number one the iPad has,
0:56:03is that like in phones, I think what people tend
0:56:05to use phones for, kids are a different story,
0:56:08and I do wanna separately address that.
0:56:11John, you and many other people make predictions
0:56:15about the future of PCs being dead,
0:56:18because their kids don't ever want to use a PC.
0:56:20But a lot of people are making that assumption
0:56:23based on kids who are, I think, too young
0:56:28to make that determination.
0:56:29Because if you think about the kind of things
0:56:31that an iPad's really good at,
0:56:32and the kind of things that computers are really good at
0:56:33that an iPad isn't very good at,
0:56:35the overlap between what most kids used to use computers for,
0:56:39which is a lot of entertainment stuff,
0:56:41and some very light browsing and light work,
0:56:44that kind of stuff you can do on an iPad much better.
0:56:46But that's not to say, like, what if your kid
0:56:49starts wanting to be productive in multitasking
0:56:53kind of ways, things that you can do on the iPad,
0:56:57but it's easier or better on a computer.
0:56:59Or if they develop a hobby of like,
0:57:01you know what, I wanna try programming.
0:57:03That's hard to do on an iPad.
0:57:04Again, not impossible, but hard.
0:57:06And some kinds aren't possible so far, but you know.
0:57:09There are things that like, as kids get older,
0:57:12if they wanna type a paper for school or whatever,
0:57:15Like, yes, you can do it on an iPad,
0:57:18but in many ways it's easier on a computer.
0:57:20- You haven't met any kids who prefer
0:57:22using the keyboard on a screen than a physical one?
0:57:24Have you met those kids yet?
0:57:25'Cause they exist.
0:57:26- Yeah, no, I know they exist, but--
0:57:28- They're terrifying.
0:57:29- What I'm saying is, I don't think we can make the call
0:57:32to say kids these days aren't gonna ever use computers,
0:57:35because I think kids these days are too young
0:57:36to know that they're never gonna use computers,
0:57:38and for us to know that.
0:57:39- Well, it takes multiple generations.
0:57:41Let's see what you're saying.
0:57:42It takes multiple generations for it to turn over.
0:57:44Like I said, we're all gonna be dead.
0:57:45Maybe our kids will be dead because it's the same way that like you still do things that your parents do just because your parents
0:57:49did them like it takes a while to turn over but
0:57:51The options available like you said the options available to them
0:57:56Let like my kids are all in a house with plenty of Macs and plenty of iOS devices and the only reason they ever
0:58:02Touch the Macs is to play Minecraft on a bigger screen and maybe that's a valid use case
0:58:08It's like well see they're like they like the big screen
0:58:10But if I had my PlayStation attached to the television, they'd probably play it there with the controller
0:58:14I don't know. Anyway, as we can see from the iPad curve, I think the current crop of tablets,
0:58:20iPad and all others included, are not yet up to the task of doing things to the kids. So when the
0:58:25kids have to type papers, they do end up using it or like using Chromebooks in school or something
0:58:29like that. And the Microsoft service is another take on this. Like, "Hey, we're both things at
0:58:32one. We're the old computer and the new computer at the same time." That definitely seems like a
0:58:36transitional fossil to me. But what I'm looking at long term is like, we're not there yet, but that
0:58:42seems the direction things are going. And it only takes a couple of generations of people dying
0:58:47before all these concerns that we have. When someone listens to this podcast, like,
0:58:51a hundred years from now, it will seem ridiculous that we're even debating this. In the same way,
0:58:55they would seem ridiculous if you were listening to people debate about whether, you know, people
0:59:00will actually be able to use a computer with a mouse to do real work. I mean, I was alive for
0:59:03that debate, and it was fierce, and people were like, you could have done the same thing. It's
0:59:09It's like, "Well, my kid's been born into a world with mice, and they're gonna only use mice."
0:59:13Like, "Well, when they get a job, they'll have to use a computer without a mouse to do actual work,
0:59:17because the only computers that have mice are toy computers."
0:59:19That's just the way things go.
0:59:21Like, so maybe it's a pointless thing to even talk about, because if we're all dead, do we really care that much?
0:59:26But I think it's interesting in light of this iPad graph, because it's like,
0:59:30it's the future that we think is coming, but the graph shows that it's not here yet.
0:59:36and what the graph may also show is that Apple may not be the company to nail it, because
0:59:42this was their shot and either they were too early or they just fumbled the ball and didn't
0:59:47hit the mark with their first attempt at this type of product and, as we keep saying,
0:59:53were basically totally outplayed by their Starark product, the iPhone, which everyone has basically
1:00:00voted with their wallets and their feet to say, "This is what we want right now. iPads,
1:00:05you know, convince us later maybe."
1:00:07- Right, well because like at the same time that the iPad has been, you know, going along
1:00:12and getting, you know, improving every generation, the iPhone has gotten better and bigger, and
1:00:19the Mac has gotten smaller and lighter. And so it really is being squeezed on both ends.
1:00:26If you're willing to carry something now,
1:00:29especially with the MacBook One,
1:00:30only a little bit bigger than an iPad,
1:00:33then if you need keyboard and touch input
1:00:37and a PC style OS, the MacBook One is going to be better
1:00:40for you than an iPad, even an iPad Pro,
1:00:43at that kind of task.
1:00:45On the small end, if you need a portable entertainment
1:00:49and consumption and communication kind of device,
1:00:54And iPhone is now able to take a lot of that,
1:00:58and especially with the six plus line,
1:01:01it's taking even more of it potentially,
1:01:02'cause that has the benefit of it's always in your pocket,
1:01:05it's always with you, and you probably paid less
1:01:06for it up front than you would have for an iPad,
1:01:08and all these different benefits.
1:01:10So it's being squeezed on both sides.
1:01:12Then it's being squeezed from the low end,
1:01:14because all these cheaper tablets that also can play YouTube
1:01:18and play some games and browse the web,
1:01:21all those cheaper tablets are coming
1:01:23eating the whole bottom end of it. So it's being attacked on so many fronts. And the
1:01:29good thing is two of those fronts are owned by Apple. And so it's being cannibalized
1:01:33by other parts of Apple, so it's not necessarily a horrible thing for Apple. But I think, I
1:01:38don't see a way out of this for the iPad anytime soon. Maybe long term, maybe you're
1:01:44right, you might be right long term, I'll give you that. But in the near term, the things
1:01:48that tend to improve quickly, relatively in computing, is the basic hardware specs, the
1:01:54speed, the quality of the screen and stuff like that. That stuff improves in the short
1:02:01term. The biggest challenges to the iPad, I think, are pretty deeply rooted software
1:02:08architecture and software limitations and input, both of which are not solved so quickly
1:02:14and easily. So I don't think, you know, you talk about how iOS could get better for productivity
1:02:21use and it's things like rethink multitasking and files. Those are big things. Those take
1:02:29years to possibly develop or to realize that you need to rethink if you do. That's a very
1:02:37slow moving thing. And then input is often times not solvable. Like there just isn't
1:02:44a way to make like a nine inch laptop with a keyboard that humans can use comfortably.
1:02:49You know like there's like there's like there's limitations like that where you're just fighting
1:02:54physics and you know the physical world and you just can't win those fights a lot of times.
1:02:59And tablets certainly are challenging in regards to how to how to fix input, how to make input
1:03:05that is good for both casual lean-back-on-the-couch use
1:03:08and also productivity use, and that is a very hard problem.
1:03:12It might not be possible to solve,
1:03:14and it's the kind of thing where progress
1:03:15is made very slowly, if at all.
1:03:18- Yeah, you're talking about cannibalization,
1:03:19and that's the other takeaway of this thing,
1:03:21is when you look at these little lines,
1:03:23you look at that iPod hump that's like,
1:03:25here comes the iPod, and then it arcs over,
1:03:27and then you look at the Mac.
1:03:29I tried to find this graph,
1:03:30'cause I think someone tweeted it, and I can't find it,
1:03:32but it was a graph over many, many years,
1:03:34just like the last five or ten years but like from the 90s all the way up to the current time
1:03:38and you look at the products and it's like little fireworks like the ipod launches up into the sky
1:03:43not too high then it's the ground again right and the ipad launches up into the sky and is arcing
1:03:48over to starting to be on its way down again you look at the phone and the iphone goes like into
1:03:52the stratosphere but then eventually starts leveling off right and so you can't see the
1:03:56other side of that things aren't the only line on the entire graph that is basically has any kind of
1:04:02you know, uphill slope for the entire length of it is the Mac and it's like way down at the bottom kind of blending with
1:04:08With the x-axis you can barely see it, but you can see it is a little bit higher
1:04:12it does go up over your viewer a tiny little bit and it's insignificant or whatever, but
1:04:17It's interesting that that trend line because it because it started off as like the loser in the PC market
1:04:23So it never had a lot of markets never had a high height to come down from and it has been steadily gaining
1:04:27You know, it has been gaining market share while Windows loses it or whatever
1:04:30So it does have a good graph, you know an uphill climb even though it's insignificant
1:04:34But when you look at all those other things what what Apple is hoping for when you mentioned is
1:04:38Alright, so Apple makes products that make these little arcs right every product has a lifetime
1:04:42The iPhone arc doesn't seem like it's even half over or maybe it's exactly half over right?
1:04:46If you would extend that graph out, however optimistic and pessimistic you want to be about the iPhone arc
1:04:51You draw that what you need is another lump. You need another big arch in that thing
1:04:57So what is the new product that is going to come like the watch isn't even visible because it's too new
1:05:01so who knows what that's gonna be like but
1:05:03Apple's whole thing is
1:05:06What is the next big thing? What is the next line that's gonna be on our graph?
1:05:09Maybe the line will never go up as high as the phone or whatever. Maybe it will maybe there's some VR thing out there
1:05:14Maybe it's the car if you want to do revenue because a lot of people have cars and they cost a lot more than a Mac
1:05:19Or a phone so the ASPs are really good on cars
1:05:23But the margins are much lower, you know, so I don't know what it is
1:05:26But like that's that's one of the reasons that investors are
1:05:29Cranky about Apple because they look at all these lines and they see all these little arcs and they're like, all right
1:05:33Well, I think we've played this out and we feel pessimistically that the iPhone is at its peak and now it's gonna go down
1:05:38So where is the next arc Apple and right now there is no
1:05:43convincing answer and it's Apple's job to come up with that like and I agree with you that the iPad Pro is not going to turn
1:05:47The iPad thing around because even if professionals love the iPad Pro. There's not a lot of them, right?
1:05:52So you have to either let the iPad arc follow its course down to the baseline and then start again with another tablet-ish product,
1:05:59or you need to somehow transform the Mac into a tablet-ish product.
1:06:04I don't know how you do that, like, just, you know, semantically how you could ever get there.
1:06:09That's why I still feel like the iPad must rise again in a new form at some point in the future.
1:06:14Or if not, then maybe Apple loses that and someone else does it, right?
1:06:17Maybe, you know, who knows what ends up winning in this, but I just feel confident that the
1:06:22PC is the past and we are the last great PC generation is already alive.
1:06:29Of people, I mean.
1:06:30Well, it also, you know, a lot of people, like in our walk of life here, and by that
1:06:36I mean geeks like us, a lot of geeks just deny the role of fashion and trends in things.
1:06:46and we try to make everything more logical,
1:06:48we try to justify things, and we don't understand fashions.
1:06:53Or fads, really.
1:06:55What if tablets have been a fad?
1:06:59I know this is crazy, I know this sounds like
1:07:02the champion of the computer trying to
1:07:04optimistically say that, oh, tablets are just a fad
1:07:08and computers are gonna come back.
1:07:09So I know this sounds crazy,
1:07:11and I'm not even saying I believe this.
1:07:14But I think it's worth thinking about.
1:07:15You're not saying computers are gonna come back though,
1:07:17you're just saying tablets are a fad,
1:07:18it's two separate things, right?
1:07:19- Right, so I think it's worth considering though,
1:07:22what if the entire idea of tablets had their peak already?
1:07:27And that in the future, the kind of casual,
1:07:32the future of computing was already here earlier than that,
1:07:36it's the mobile phone, it's the smartphone,
1:07:38and that what if that is really the future?
1:07:43And that tablets were just kind of this thing
1:07:44that for a brief time the whole world was kind of
1:07:47like in love with, kind of infatuated with,
1:07:49but it was actually just a fad,
1:07:51and now we're kind of realizing, eh, you know what,
1:07:54I think I'd rather just have a good phone
1:07:55and then maybe a good laptop also.
1:07:57- All right, I've considered it and I reject it.
1:07:59- That's fair, but I think a lot of people
1:08:01are not considering that as a possibility,
1:08:03but I think the data actually,
1:08:05like if you look at this iPad sales graph,
1:08:07that looks exactly like what's going on.
1:08:09- But that's just the iPad though,
1:08:11that's why I keep differentiating,
1:08:12like there's the iPad, which may be Apple Bluadon,
1:08:15and then there's the concept of a screen
1:08:17about the size of a piece of paper
1:08:19or bigger that you hold in your hands.
1:08:20And I would even include in tablets
1:08:21a screen that's much bigger than a piece of paper,
1:08:23like the iPad Pro that you hold in your hand, right?
1:08:26Or even a bigger thing that sits on your desk.
1:08:28I would say it's basically a big piece of glass
1:08:29that you touch that extends down to the portable range,
1:08:33but as I've always said,
1:08:34I can imagine a desktop replacement
1:08:36that is more like a drafting table.
1:08:38And just the utility of essentially having
1:08:40magic piece of paper that can show anything that is a piece of paper size.
1:08:44Like once that becomes like 99 cents, like the computing part of that is so, you know,
1:08:49again, as the price of compute drops to zero, of course people are going to want to have
1:08:52that because people want to hold things in their hand and read them and look at them
1:08:55and watch a video.
1:08:56And maybe that won't be an iPad anymore.
1:08:59Maybe it'll be something that comes in your cereal box that you unroll and it's like,
1:09:03there's no, and you can say, oh, that's not a tablet.
1:09:04It is though.
1:09:05It's like basically a screen that you hold in your hand that is way bigger than a phone.
1:09:08And that is absolutely not going to die.
1:09:10whether Apple has any role at all in that product line remains to be seen, which is
1:09:14why I say the iPad is an open question.
1:09:16But there's a reason everyone was all gaga.
1:09:18Like the fad part that I think you're sensing about tablets was like, "Oh, this is like
1:09:22those science fiction books I read.
1:09:23This is like those movies I saw.
1:09:24It's like the future.
1:09:25Like how many movies had, oh, you just hold this magic."
1:09:27Even before flat screens existed when everything was all CRTs.
1:09:31Every science fiction story, you know, back hundreds of years, like, "Oh, I just hold
1:09:34something that looks like a piece of paper, but it can show any image anywhere, and I
1:09:37can see anywhere in the world, and I can watch moving pictures on it."
1:09:40That idea is never going away because it has an amazing utility for people like us who
1:09:43have eyeballs in the front of our head and hands that we can hold things up with.
1:09:48Unless VR retinal imaging or any sort of interior mind type thing happens or strapped to your
1:09:54eyes thing, until that comes and wipes all of this away, having something big that you
1:10:00hold in your hand that is a screen, that idea will never die because it has an amazing utility.
1:10:06It just could be that Apple is not the company that either brings that to us, benefits from
1:10:10it or like it gets it right because if you just play out current trends eventually what
1:10:16will it take to have something to give your toddler to watch whatever the equivalent of
1:10:21YouTube is right maybe that'll be a dollar ninety nine in a drugstore that's a rolled
1:10:25up piece of plastic that the kid can just do anything they want to and when it gets
1:10:30destroyed you just throw it away right because seriously the the electronics the cost of
1:10:35of the electronics and everything to sort of get internet access and play video and
1:10:39stuff, that's going to, in our lifetimes, be so incredibly trivial that it'll be nothing.
1:10:45You know, I was going to ask you, Jon, what would make the iPad, you know, cross that
1:10:50hump and be the thing, or any tablet, but, and I think you just covered it in a lot of
1:10:56ways, but I was thinking, you know, when I got my first iPad mini, so this is two years
1:11:01ago now, the iPad mini with Retina display, I had given Erin my iPad 3, so the first full-size
1:11:09iPad with a Retina display.
1:11:11And I'd given it to her and I'd set it up with her iCloud account and iMessage account
1:11:15and some of the apps I thought she would use a lot.
1:11:18And I gave it to her and I think in those two years she has used that iPad 5 or 10 times
1:11:26Because it always ends up that she's either, well, she starts with her phone almost always.
1:11:33Everything she does is on her phone. And then if for some reason something she's working on
1:11:37is easier or just better suited for the truck, for her Mac, then she'll go to her MacBook Air
1:11:45and do that thing there. But generally speaking, for Erin, it's her phone and the iPad isn't even
1:11:52a thought. In fact, most of the last two years, the battery has been dead because neither of us
1:11:55ever touches it. And granted this is only one data point, that doesn't exactly make
1:12:00a line by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly bears what Apple's results
1:12:07are seeing, which is that the iPhone is going crazy, the Mac isn't doing bad, and the iPad
1:12:13is just not even there.
1:12:14Well, I mean, like, but you know, by, to be fair, by like, unit sales, the iPad and the
1:12:20Mac are kind of neck and neck right now, but the trend line is very clear that the iPad
1:12:24is on its way down while the Mac is still on its way up.
1:12:27>> BRIAN KARDELL Yeah, barely on its way up.
1:12:30Kieran Healy in the chat tried to give a bunch of charts, but it's not the one I was thinking.
1:12:34One is showing all the lines together, all different colors, and you just saw the only
1:12:37one that was steadily climbing uphill like a snail over the course of decades was the
1:12:41Mac and it was just hugging the bottom of the graph.
1:12:44Totally insignificant volumes compared to the other Firecracker products, but it's like,
1:12:48we're still here.
1:12:49We're still clawing our way up.
1:12:53It's both sad and heartening at the same time.
1:12:56But yeah, when I think about the car, and there were some rumors about the car this
1:13:00weekend, I think like, is that the next thing that's going to?
1:13:04I try to imagine what a car line would look like on this draft.
1:13:06Like imagine they do as well as Tesla, and they sell some piddling amount of really expensive
1:13:11cars to people with a lot of money, and the self-driving stuff doesn't work yet because
1:13:16it's not ready.
1:13:18But cars are really expensive, and so the revenues will be high, but the margins will
1:13:21necessarily be lower and it's like what does that line look like? does does the car line look like
1:13:26the ipod line? does it look certainly doesn't look like the iphone line does it look like the mac
1:13:30line where it closets way up or do they just can the car and it's a bad idea and they should really
1:13:34concentrate on something else like and then the lines we can't even think of though vr is the
1:13:39current question mark in the world of like is this a thing people are going to want to do because at
1:13:43this point the number of people who've done vr stuff is just a bunch of gaming enthusiasts and
1:13:47and that will be the case for a long time.
1:13:50I don't know what the next big thing,
1:13:53I remember several years ago when we were talking
1:13:54on the show, maybe the watch is the next big thing.
1:13:58Maybe it is, but if it is, it's definitely got
1:13:59a slower ramp up as far as we can tell.
1:14:01Well, you know, at this point it's still early, right?
1:14:05- The watch is the next iPod, in the sense that,
1:14:08not in the sense that the iPod, it was gone now,
1:14:10but in the sense that it's an accessory.
1:14:12It's something that serves a narrow range of roles
1:14:16very well, but that not everybody needs a device
1:14:19to serve that narrow range of rules,
1:14:20and also that is not going to replace your phone.
1:14:23- Yeah, I mean, or maybe just wearables in general.
1:14:26Like, it's just, it's very difficult to think of something
1:14:29that is ever going to be like the next iPhone,
1:14:32because the great thing about a phone
1:14:33is that literally every adult in the world
1:14:37probably could conceivably use one, right?
1:14:39And that's a big market.
1:14:40How many products can you say that about?
1:14:42Maybe cars, not really, because most people
1:14:45have cars in the world, they have bicycles and motorcycles if they're lucky, you know, whatever.
1:14:49Like you're just trying to think of something that everybody could find some utility for,
1:14:55for some values of everybody, and it's very difficult to think of that. A watch is one,
1:14:58like, well, sure, something you hold on your wrist that tells you the time, that seems like a
1:15:02broadly useful thing you could sell a lot of, but you can't sell them for that much money, and
1:15:06I don't know if you're ever going to be able to sell everybody in the world a $691, which I think
1:15:12I think was their ASP on iPhone $691 watch
1:15:15to everyone in the world.
1:15:16No, like somebody just get the high end of the watch market
1:15:19just like they have the high end of the phone market.
1:15:20I don't know.
1:15:21I don't know what the next thing for Apple is.
1:15:25But when I look at these graphs,
1:15:27if I was to continue the x-axis and go from 2016
1:15:30and extend that out for another 50 years,
1:15:33and let me just continue drawing the lines
1:15:35of all their current product lines,
1:15:38I see like, how optimistic can you be with the iPhone line?
1:15:42Like if you continue to draw the iPhone line,
1:15:43you know what it looks like.
1:15:44It's a big thing, goes up, up, up,
1:15:45and the slopes are a level off.
1:15:46How do you draw that line?
1:15:47Do you just draw a straight line out into the future
1:15:49and say, well, smartphones will continue
1:15:50for the next 50 years pretty much as is?
1:15:53Or do you make it go up more?
1:15:54Or do you make it slowly go down
1:15:56like the rest of the things?
1:15:56I don't know.
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1:17:30- All right, Marco.
1:17:31Is the iPhone 7 going to be waterproof?
1:17:33We're running a bit long,
1:17:34so let's keep it to just that question.
1:17:36Is it gonna be waterproof?
1:17:38- Why?
1:17:38I mean, why are we talking about this now?
1:17:40I mean, I think the answer is probably,
1:17:44it'll probably be very close.
1:17:47Just like the iPhone 6S is very water resistant.
1:17:53It is not waterproof, but if it happens to get wet,
1:17:56by most people's estimations
1:17:58and some little tests here and there,
1:17:59it seems to fare better than the other ones.
1:18:02- It gives water a stern talking to.
1:18:04- Yeah.
1:18:05(laughing)
1:18:06It has extra seals, it has these extra little seals
1:18:09like all over all the things on the board and everything.
1:18:11And so it is certainly water resistant to some degree.
1:18:15It's unadvertised this way,
1:18:16but that is how they seem to do it.
1:18:18If they drop the headphone jack,
1:18:20that might be a reason to make waterproofness
1:18:24a headlining feature, because that might help tame
1:18:28some of the anger that will result
1:18:30from losing the headphone jack from customers.
1:18:32So I think it's possible.
1:18:34I think the 6S and the watch both show that Apple,
1:18:38and the watch I think is a more interesting example of this
1:18:43because the watch has openings.
1:18:45It has a speaker, it has a microphone.
1:18:49- It has the crown too.
1:18:51- Oh yeah, right, yeah.
1:18:52And actually in traditional watches,
1:18:54the crown is usually the hardest part to waterproof.
1:18:56It's opening with a moving part in it and everything.
1:18:58Anyway, so you know, you have,
1:19:00they clearly have the ability to make things
1:19:02that are very water-resistant, possibly waterproof.
1:19:04The only question I think is how waterproof will it be
1:19:08and whether they will advertise this as a feature
1:19:11or whether it will just be quietly water resistant
1:19:13the way the 6S is.
1:19:14- Yes, that was the question.
1:19:15(laughing)
1:19:17So what's your answer?
1:19:18- I would say probably.
1:19:22- To which one of those, like the advertising
1:19:23or the fact that it will actually be?
1:19:26- I would say it is very likely that it will be
1:19:29more water resistant than the 6S,
1:19:30which is already pretty good.
1:19:31So I say the chances of it getting more water resistant
1:19:36are very good.
1:19:36The chances of them advertising that,
1:19:38I would give it maybe like a 60% chance.
1:19:41They probably will advertise it, but not necessarily.
1:19:44But I do think if they do actually delete the headphone jack
1:19:48then that would make it more likely
1:19:50that they would advertise that as a feature
1:19:52because that would help justify that decision.
1:19:54- Yeah, I think I mostly agree.
1:19:56Like the reason I put this in there is because
1:19:58electronic devices don't become more water resistant
1:20:01by accident.
1:20:02So the past phones that have been,
1:20:05that Apple seems to have been making more of an effort
1:20:08to seal them up.
1:20:09Again, totally not advertised as,
1:20:11you probably shouldn't put your phone in water.
1:20:13Many people kill their phones by putting them in water.
1:20:16But some part of the engineering process for these phones
1:20:19is, even if it's not about water,
1:20:21maybe it's just about dust or whatever,
1:20:23like they're making an effort to seal these phones up tighter.
1:20:26I don't see any reason that effort trend would diminish,
1:20:31especially since many of their competitors
1:20:34do try to advertise their phones as waterproof
1:20:37and Apple knows better than anybody
1:20:38how many people drop their phones in the toilet
1:20:40and come into the store and are sad about it
1:20:41and all the whole water resistance for their warranties.
1:20:44They have this info, they are trying to make their phones
1:20:46more order-resistant.
1:20:47So I think the only question is,
1:20:50do they start advertising,
1:20:52have they crossed the threshold
1:20:53at which they can start advertising?
1:20:54'Cause obviously they know,
1:20:56they're not gonna advertise until they can be very sure
1:20:58like they are with the watch,
1:20:59to spec it out and say,
1:21:00here's how we think it will perform and blah, blah, blah.
1:21:02- By the way, even the watch,
1:21:04they barely advertise that it's water resistant.
1:21:07- But there's expectations with the watch.
1:21:08Like they under promise and over deliver the watch
1:21:10'cause it's like,
1:21:11you totally shouldn't put this in the water,
1:21:12but realistically speaking, it's like,
1:21:14I mean, Craig Hockenberry swimming in the ocean with his,
1:21:16like every single week for God knows how long.
1:21:19Like if, when he tells us that his watch
1:21:21has been killed by the water,
1:21:22then we'll maybe know that the limits are,
1:21:25but seriously, like it's basically, you know,
1:21:29waterproof enough, but they don't say like you're right, they don't say much about it because like they have the specs and it's like it's
1:21:33Like watch specs you can go in and you can see what the little numbers are and they have all these standards or whatever
1:21:37But the phone they don't say anything about they're like do not bring your phone near water in any way
1:21:42Alright, and so at some point they'll be able to say something about the phone with respect to water
1:21:47So I think that is coming
1:21:49I just don't know if it's the iPhone 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever and if I had to put a percentage on it
1:21:55for the 7 I
1:21:56would say
1:21:58I so, the reason I put it in is I so want this to be an advertised feature of the iPhone
1:22:057, but I just feel like that even if they ditch the headphone port, they need one more
1:22:09generation to really go full waterproof, but I hope I'm wrong.
1:22:12So I'm going to put it at slightly under 50%, but I hope I'm wrong.
1:22:14So even if they ditch the headphone port, there's still a lightning port, right?
1:22:19Unless we go full inductive.
1:22:20Yeah, I mean, like this, there's always going to be openings.
1:22:23I don't think the headphone, it's what Marco said, like it's not so much that getting the
1:22:27headphone something makes it possible to be waterproof, it's a nice thing to be able to
1:22:31say when telling people that you took away their headphone port.
1:22:34Yeah, because there are ways to waterproof certain ports and the design of the port can
1:22:40make it easier or harder. I'm sure Lightning was probably designed with that in mind, to
1:22:47have future devices be more water resistant in order to make it easier to do it. All that
1:22:52being said, one thing that I find promising about this is that one of my common criticisms
1:22:57of Apple design, especially recently, that I think seems to be getting worse, honestly,
1:23:03it seems like the newer products that come out oftentimes seem to ignore what customers
1:23:08actually need, like the problems that we face in the real world and what we actually want
1:23:12on our devices, and instead give us things that we weren't really asking for, even though
1:23:18they might be nice, but just things we weren't really asking for, like increased thinness
1:23:21and lightness is one of the most common things.
1:23:23So you know, you get things like the MacBook One
1:23:27with its really controversial keyboard,
1:23:30I'll be nice to it tonight,
1:23:31well a really controversial keyboard
1:23:32that was made in the name of thinness.
1:23:35It's like, well we didn't need it
1:23:36to be that thin necessarily.
1:23:37Things like the iPhone, the best example
1:23:40that I can give on the phone is battery life,
1:23:42where so many people would love for their phone
1:23:44to get better battery life.
1:23:46And most people don't say, I wish my phone was thinner.
1:23:49In general, I see this happening at Apple,
1:23:52and I'm a little saddened by some of this.
1:23:54However, if you look at what else people really want
1:23:58out of their iPhones, very high on the list
1:24:01is resistance to damage.
1:24:03And the two kinds of damage that happen most to phones
1:24:05is water damage and dropping damage.
1:24:08And so if they can make it more durable
1:24:11and more resistant to shattering or scratching
1:24:16or cracking of the glass surfaces,
1:24:18and if they can make it more water resistant.
1:24:21That will seriously benefit a large number of customers.
1:24:25That is very promising in that Apple is clearly trying
1:24:29not only to make things super thin,
1:24:30so John and I can be proud of them,
1:24:32because it seems like they don't really know
1:24:34what else to do with the physical designs,
1:24:35but they can also at least solve real customer problems,
1:24:39things that are really big,
1:24:41that really affect a lot of people.
1:24:41So that I think is great.
1:24:43And if they're doing stuff like this,
1:24:46If they're improving waterproofness and shockproofness at all, those will pay off big time and actual
1:24:52customer benefit.
1:24:53So Casey, what's your answer?
1:24:55I think that if the headphone port goes, absolutely.
1:24:59I think it might even be so far as, "Hey, we made it waterproof, but oops, we had to
1:25:04make the headphone port go away.
1:25:05It's just the way it had to be."
1:25:07I think it's probably going to be, I don't know if it'll be advertised as full-on waterproof,
1:25:11But I do think we will hear something advertised about significantly increased water protection,
1:25:19for lack of a better way of phrasing it, or water resistance, I guess.
1:25:22I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around how this would work while still having a lightning
1:25:27port.
1:25:28And I can't help but wonder, could we do not only inductive charging, but inductive data?
1:25:34I believe that's called Wi-Fi.
1:25:35Well, touche.
1:25:36Fair point.
1:25:37Yeah.
1:25:38But I don't think you'd...
1:25:39I think they're gonna still have a lightning port.
1:25:41And I think lighting port, probably, because it's their own port and they can do whatever
1:25:45the hell they want with it and it has always been kind of like a non-traditional sort of
1:25:49software controlled port where it's not as if you're making a spec for the whole world
1:25:52to build and you tell them what the pin outs are and you have no control of what's at the
1:25:55other end of those pins because they're all like hardwired pins for different voltage
1:25:59levels or whatever, like it is entirely up to Apple so I feel like the lighting port
1:26:02is the least of their concerns.
1:26:03Probably the trickiest parts are like the baffles around the speakers and microphones
1:26:08and stuff because I mean they've done it on the watch already.
1:26:10But to do that and still have a reasonably high quality speaker and microphone assembly,
1:26:15which they seem to be concentrating on in recent iOS devices, it all seems within their
1:26:19own possibility.
1:26:20And that's why I think in the past few years of devices, they've been slowly but surely
1:26:24gaining expertise in how to do this, all the while not telling anyone any about it at all.
1:26:29And the only reason we're finding out about it is because people on YouTube are dropping
1:26:32their phones into water and then filming it and seeing what happens.
1:26:34At least they finally stopped blending them, I think.
1:26:36I think that phase is probably over.
1:26:38Did you hear all the things like the best the best waterproof electronics things they just use distilled water or something without any like free
1:26:44Ions or whatever so they can't conduct electricity you can put basically any electronics in that or so the theory goes
1:26:49Whereas if you use tap water or something with minerals or impurities or whatever that it'll short out your phone
1:26:54Uh-huh. Yeah, do not put your phone in water
1:26:58It's the lesson like even when if they make this water-resistant one don't make it
1:27:02I think Margot was never trying to keep this just a waterproof but like
1:27:05smart to bring up the dropping thing because
1:27:08Apple is kind of stuck on that one until some kind of materials
1:27:13Change because they pick glass for a reason and they try to keep making tougher glass the glass that is
1:27:19That's more resistant to breaking and bending like that super gorilla whatever glass and trying sap like
1:27:24But the bottom line is if they just put plastic on it would be super durable, but it would be terrible
1:27:30You think Johnny I've can't handle things now with the camera protruding although I don't entirely agree with that
1:27:35But uh forget it then they want glass because it is it feels nice it feels expensive
1:27:41It doesn't get all scratched up and gross like all of the great qualities of glass that we love the reason why glass is the right
1:27:47Choice of the phone the one thing it has against it is does tend to shatter if you drop it on to asphalt just the right
1:27:52way
1:27:53So I don't know how they get out of that bind because if the whole if the goal was
1:27:57Make it so I can take this phone and throw it on the ground like I'm spiking a football and it survives make the whole
1:28:03thing out of Fisher Price plastic. Like it's not as if there's a hard drive disk head to
1:28:07crash inside there. It's extremely durable, all except for the fact that it would feel
1:28:11terrible if we made it out of Fisher Price plastic and it would get scratched up and
1:28:13it would look gross and it would be a worse product. So at least Waterproof is something
1:28:17they can do. With dropping, not quite sure what they can do there.
1:28:22And instead we all just cover our phones in cases that look like big Fisher Price plastic.
1:28:27Well some people do. I mean my case is not saving my phone. Did I tell you that my wife
1:28:31dropped her her big plus no success that was a while ago it was like a week after
1:28:37she got it and it just like slipped out of her pocket or whatever from basically
1:28:40waist-height on to the cement sidewalk completely shattered oh that's why you
1:28:45get Apple care plus yeah well in her defense the plus was really easy to drop
1:28:50yeah well it was her first like she's getting used it was in the silicone case
1:28:53but that didn't save it but yeah no and shattered we all see shattered runs all
1:28:57the time I just I felt there's no way out of that other than to keep leaning
1:29:01on your glass manufacturers to make it stronger and better but the you know
1:29:05until we get transparent aluminum I guess from the Star Trek movie would
1:29:10that be worth something to you and we're done all right thanks let's about three
1:29:14sponsors this week Harry's Squarespace and fracture and we will see you next
1:29:19week
1:29:21now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
1:29:29Oh it was accidental.
1:29:31John didn't do any research.
1:29:34Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
1:29:37Cause it was accidental.
1:29:39It was accidental.
1:29:42And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
1:29:47And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at
1:29:53at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M. Anti-Marco Arment. S-I-R-A-C.
1:30:07U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A. It's accidental. They didn't mean too accidental. Tech podcast so long.
1:30:22Why do we still have a lightning port?
1:30:23Why not go inductive charging and just say the hell with it
1:30:26to having a port at all?
1:30:27- My friend has one of those things.
1:30:28I forget what it's called, like the key charger
1:30:30or something, QI or whatever.
1:30:32He uses it with his iOS devices.
1:30:34It's a case that you basically put on your phone
1:30:36and it plugs into your lightning port.
1:30:37And then it's a very thin case
1:30:38'cause all it really has to do is have a big like
1:30:40sort of inductive contact thing.
1:30:42And you just put it on, he likes it.
1:30:43You just put it on these little stands and it charges it,
1:30:46I would assume slightly slower than the other things.
1:30:49But yeah, why did they not have that?
1:30:52- I don't know, I'm not entirely sure it is a clean win.
1:30:56You're like, isn't that better in all ways than a wire?
1:30:59Setting aside performance entirely, is it better?
1:31:02I don't think it's better in all ways than a wire
1:31:05because the charging then takes up more room.
1:31:07- Yeah, 'cause imagine if you're traveling with your phone,
1:31:10you go to plug it in like in a hotel or something,
1:31:12look at what it is with the watch today
1:31:14and imagine the watch but bigger basically.
1:31:17Bringing the watch with you is kind of a pain in the butt
1:31:19'cause of that big cable and it doesn't really stick
1:31:22very well to it and when you're traveling somewhere
1:31:25that kinda sucks, whereas the phone,
1:31:27you plug in this thing and it holds,
1:31:28you can swing the phone around like a rope from the cord
1:31:33and it holds it, I mean you shouldn't,
1:31:36but you probably can and it will probably hold.
1:31:38The cords are just really, really practical
1:31:42in the real world, even though they are totally unsexy
1:31:46and they offend the sensibilities of geeks like us
1:31:49like why can't everything be wireless?
1:31:51But the reality is like in practice they are
1:31:54just really good, really simple, really cheap
1:31:58and they suffer from very few of the downsides
1:32:02of inductive charging for like,
1:32:03like I know speed is actually a big issue.
1:32:06How much current you can get through an inductive charger
1:32:09at once safely in that kind of situation.
1:32:13I'm pretty sure that the cord still wins
1:32:17at a pretty big margin.
1:32:18And looking forward to the future,
1:32:20it would be ideal if our phones charged even faster,
1:32:23especially if the batteries keep getting smaller.
1:32:26It would be ideal if they could charge faster,
1:32:28which means more current,
1:32:30which means the cable will still win.
1:32:31- Super capacitors, that's all you need.
1:32:33We haven't talked about that, super capacitors.
1:32:34That's the current five to 10 year technology
1:32:36that's gonna make our phones charge in 15 seconds.
1:32:39- Well, you still need to get all that current across,
1:32:40though.
1:32:41- But you were mostly addressing inductive,
1:32:42but I think the other thing out there is the whole
1:32:46try not to cook the people in the room
1:32:47by carefully directing microwaves
1:32:49to exactly where your phone is sitting.
1:32:51And in that case, you would go to the hotel,
1:32:52you would have all your devices with you,
1:32:54and all you do is plug one wall or into the wall
1:32:56and it would charge every device in the room at the same time
1:32:58hopefully not cooking your insides when it doesn't.
1:33:01- Yeah, and you'd be sleeping five inches away
1:33:03from one of them, yeah.
1:33:04- Well, you know, like technically you can do that.
1:33:07It's kind of, sort of, I don't know if that would be legal,
1:33:09but like, I'm trying to think of things that would be
1:33:13with, that would be a clean win.
1:33:14'Cause I think we would all agree that if that
1:33:16work and not cook people, you know, using whatever technology you want to make up about
1:33:21some future technology, that would be a win, because it's better than plugging things in,
1:33:25you don't have to have a bunch of pads with you, it does all of them at once, and it's
1:33:28just, it's fire and forget.
1:33:29Like, the same way that Wi-Fi is like, oh, now, you know, for most people, I don't have
1:33:33to wire my whole house up, I just put this one thing in the corner of my house, and then
1:33:36internet is everywhere.
1:33:37If you put this one thing in the corner of my house, and charging is everywhere, that
1:33:41would be cool, I would buy that.
1:33:42If it didn't cook me.