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The Talk Show

322: ‘It Was More Arial Than Helvetica’, With Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00   René, I feel like before we get to yesterday's event, which was, am I correct? Was that yesterday?

00:00:05   [laughter]

00:00:05   Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yes, I think I had to do- I had to look at the calendar, but yes, it was.

00:00:09   Dr. Jon O'Reilly Before we get there, which I haven't done a show since last week when the

00:00:14   Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a ruling in the Epic Apple case, and I do not want to spend a lot of

00:00:19   time on this because I do not have a lot of insight to add. But I will say that the very most curious

00:00:25   thing about it is how incredibly wide ranging the interpretations of the injunction against Apple are.

00:00:32   Dr. Justin Marchegiani From the companies and from the pundits.

00:00:35   Dr. Jon O'Reilly So it's a short one-page injunction. It's that whole thing about,

00:00:40   you know, blah, blah, blah, and metadata buttons. People aren't quite sure what the

00:00:45   hell a metadata button is, which isn't what she meant. There's the- I guess on the one side is,

00:00:55   I will throw Nilay Patel under the bus and he's- he had a piece of The Verge with a sort of

00:01:02   maximalist interpretation of it, which is that if you're- if they're not allowed- if Apple is

00:01:08   no longer allowed to prohibit companies from directing users to external payment methods

00:01:16   with buttons, then the button that they're not allowed to prohibit could be an in-app payment

00:01:23   button that processes credit cards right in the app. Which if you only look at the injunction

00:01:30   isn't crazy at all. I know Nilay is- he's a friend. He's a frequent guest on the show. He's also-

00:01:36   Dr. Justin Marchegiani Former attorney.

00:01:37   Dr. Jon O'Reilly Former attorney.

00:01:38   You know, I happen to think though that he's all wet on this interpretation. And again,

00:01:45   the injunction taken of it by itself, the one-page injunction, very ambiguously worded,

00:01:50   really kind of odd. But it was delivered as part and parcel with the 158 page, I believe,

00:01:58   ruling. Which is a good read. Did you read it?

00:02:01   Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, I got more- I skimmed it more than read it,

00:02:04   but I think I got all the salient points.

00:02:06   Dr. Jon O'Reilly I always think I'm gonna read these things

00:02:08   and then I- I do- you have to skim at some point. But it's- it is very good. And I think, you know,

00:02:13   I know that it's sort of like file this under duh. But it is a very good and fair and comprehensive

00:02:24   overview of the whole debate, the whole thing about- the whole way the app- Apple's App Store

00:02:28   works. All of Epic's various complaints about the way that the App Store actually works. It is a

00:02:35   terrific layperson's overview. Comprehensive, fair, accurate, very well organized too, which is, you

00:02:43   know, and you know what that's like, you know, writing scripts for videos and writing articles.

00:02:49   I mean, 158 pages, effectively, it's a small book. It's very well organized, which is very difficult.

00:02:56   But I think when you read the ruling, it's very- and having followed along with the trial,

00:03:02   and again, I didn't watch the trial every day, because that just seemed like madness. But

00:03:06   watching the- reading the nightly recaps back in May, it was very, very clear that she was

00:03:13   casting a legal stink eye on Apple's anti-steering provisions.

00:03:17   Jared I Yes.

00:03:18   Dr. Jon O'Reilly Specifically.

00:03:19   Jared I Yes. She was really smart. Like Judge Gonzalez,

00:03:24   she's sort of what you hope for. You always have these nightmares that you're going to get a

00:03:27   completely tech illiterate judge who's not going to know what they're doing and make sort of

00:03:30   arbitrary decisions that are terrible for everybody. But throughout the entire trial,

00:03:35   from the way she threw shade at the lawyers, at the witnesses, at everybody, and sort of drove into

00:03:40   the heart of every matter, I thought was very impressive.

00:03:43   Dr. Jon O'Reilly Yeah, so I, you know, and I think this

00:03:45   controversy over metadata buttons, here's the phrase I have it now in front of me,

00:03:49   "They're permanently restrained and enjoined to Zapple from prohibiting developers from

00:03:54   one other calls, including in their apps and their metadata." I think there should be like a colon

00:04:03   there, like an implied colon. "In their apps and their metadata, colon, buttons, external links,

00:04:10   or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms in addition to in-app

00:04:16   purchasing, which is capitalized." And she says in a footnote elsewhere that "capitalized in-app

00:04:22   purchasing is Apple's IAP system." And "to communicating with customers through points

00:04:28   of contact obtained voluntarily." In other words, they can email customers if they get permission to

00:04:34   have their email, which, again, is clearly using Apple's App Store guidelines as the basis for that

00:04:39   phrasing. Right. My interpretation of this, again, I'm not a lawyer, but in the context of the ruling

00:04:46   is it is just steering provisions. And so if it comes to pass and Apple doesn't appeal this,

00:04:56   and it comes into action, it would allow any and all apps to tell users, "Hey, in addition to our

00:05:05   in-app purchasing," which goes through Apple and Apple gets their 30% or 15%, "you could go to our

00:05:12   website and sign up for $9.99 instead of $12.99," or whatever the price difference may be. Or even

00:05:19   if it's a game, like the Fortnite technique would be not that you can do what they did.

00:05:26   Like, Neelay is saying, Neelay's argument is that what Fortnite did would now be legal. Because

00:05:31   Fortnite, for people who don't remember, it was only up for a couple of days. It was easy to miss.

00:05:36   But Fortnite didn't replace in-app purchasing with their own purchasing system. They left them

00:05:41   both in it with the so-called hotfix, you know, ping that enabled this version of Fortnite.

00:05:49   And specifically, they did that because they wanted to prove the point that given the choice,

00:05:55   many users would choose to save 20% by using Epic's own payment processing instead of Apple's

00:06:04   processing. Part of their stunt was to put them side by side, not to completely remove Apple's

00:06:10   in-app purchasing and replace it with their own. But that, I believe, would still not be allowed

00:06:15   under this injunction. It's going to be interesting to see because Epic has already appealed and a lot

00:06:21   of this is going to be tested, whether it's right or wrong, people will test different scenarios.

00:06:25   And it also is an American ruling and Apple's an international customer. And we saw how they

00:06:29   reacted to the Japanese, the previous Japanese ruling, but by making a sort of a global change,

00:06:34   but we haven't seen any indication of how they'll respond to this. But my favorite summation of all

00:06:39   of this was early on it was Stephen Warwick who was covering it for iMore and Future for months.

00:06:44   And he just said, "To sum up, Epic Games has won after being defeated in court. Apple will be

00:06:49   forced to make massive sweeping, get very minor changes that will change absolutely everything

00:06:53   and yet nothing for developers and will cost the company its huge App Store cash cow that is

00:06:57   actually very tiny. Epic Games plans to appeal against this victory and Apple has welcomed the

00:07:01   court's ruling against it." That is pretty good. I have to add that to the show notes. Was that a

00:07:08   tweet? Did he get that all in a tweet? That's actually pretty good for a tweet. I do think if

00:07:16   Eli is correct, then this is far more sweeping than we're thinking. It's also with certainty,

00:07:21   far more sweeping than Apple is thinking. I was part of a press event, press call Friday afternoon

00:07:27   after this was, you know, on bet there was an on the on the record statement from Kate Adams,

00:07:34   the chief legal officer at Apple. And then a fairly substantial Q&A period that was off the

00:07:42   record on background with people from Apple and they clearly see that, see this as steering only.

00:07:50   Yes. And, you know, and people and I think some of the reaction out there is like, like me tweeting

00:07:59   that and a few other media people who were on the call tweeting that just saying, not saying, you

00:08:05   know, this is my legal opinion, just Apple doesn't think that that's what it means. The knee jerk

00:08:10   reaction against that was, well, of course, Apple is going to spin it their way. But there's I don't

00:08:17   understand what the thinking is there because it's not like they're going to spin Judge Gonzalez

00:08:22   Rogers. Right? Like, like if Judge Gonzalez Rogers really meant you have to allow all third party

00:08:30   apps to do their own payment processing in app for digital goods purchased in the app. Apple telling

00:08:38   the press the day that the ruling came out that that's not how they see it, not only doesn't help

00:08:44   them at all, it hurts them. Because if they're trying to set expectations for, let's just say,

00:08:53   investors, right, it does no good for them to have, let's say, an eight week period.

00:08:59   Initially, after the ruling where people like, oh, it only means anti steering, because that's

00:09:04   what Apple thinks. And then, you know, they go to get clarification before Gonzalez Rogers,

00:09:09   and she's like, No, no, I meant something else entirely, which is much worse for the company.

00:09:13   Well, then that's, that's bad for Apple. This does, there is no, there is no advantage to

00:09:18   spinning this in any way. The judge won't care what Twitter's hot takes are, right? Not one

00:09:23   little bit. The other thing that I thought was very telling was that Epic, Epic's lawyers and

00:09:30   CEO Tim Sweeney interpreted it the exact same way as Apple too, that they got their pants taken from

00:09:36   them on every single issue except the steering, which Epic itself didn't really care about. Like,

00:09:42   I don't think being able to tell people, I think it's better than nothing, you know, from Epic or

00:09:48   any other game makers perspective to say, you can go to epic.com or Fortnite.com, whatever their

00:09:54   website is, and buy V bucks there at a lower price. But if you can't process them in the game,

00:10:00   you remove the ability to, let's be frank, impulse purchases, right?

00:10:04   Jared: Right. And they also didn't say anything about, a lot of these hot takes didn't address the

00:10:09   previous part about, well, Tim Cook said it, but the judge also didn't say anything about Apple not

00:10:13   being able to collect commissions, whether you're using your own in-app purchase or even collecting

00:10:18   money outside the App Store. None of that was, it was specifically ruled out by this either.

00:10:22   Pete: Right. And that was a curious part of Tim Cook's testimony, which I don't think went very

00:10:29   well, to be honest, but maybe went well legally. I think publicity-wise, it went pretty poorly.

00:10:36   Maybe legally-wise, he made good points. And he obviously was sticking to a script of

00:10:42   a talking point about the legal right of a company, even if they have a monopoly and

00:10:49   are deemed to have a monopoly, they still have a right to profit from their own intellectual

00:10:53   property, which he emphasized over and over again. And that to me gets to the core of what Apple was

00:11:00   concerned about and why Apple posited this as a resounding victory is that Apple, I think,

00:11:06   was most concerned about being deemed a monopoly. And that changes, again, monopolies aren't illegal,

00:11:15   but then all of a sudden the laws, that's the big lesson I remember learning 20-some years ago from

00:11:20   the Microsoft case. You grow up thinking monopolies are illegal or something, or just plain bad,

00:11:26   but it's no, it's just a different set of laws apply when you're deemed to have a monopoly.

00:11:30   And it's very clear that that was what Apple was concerned about. And their initial

00:11:34   statements about this were about how she very clearly said that this is not a monopoly under

00:11:43   state or federal law in California. And the Japan Fair Trade Commission thing said the same thing,

00:11:49   that other than these issues of anti-steering provisions for "reader apps," we don't see

00:11:55   anything that's a monopolist or anti-competitive behavior at Apple.

00:11:58   **Matt Stauffer** And she clearly drew her own market definition,

00:12:01   which I thought was great too, because the other ones were way too far in either extreme.

00:12:04   **Trevor Thompson** Yeah, yeah. And she said for the purposes of this case, that the market was,

00:12:11   wait, actually I forget what it was, mobile gaming?

00:12:13   **Matt Stauffer** Yeah, mobile gaming, yeah, which applies definitely to Android. Does it apply to

00:12:17   the Switch? Like a lot of this is very curious to me.

00:12:19   **Trevor Thompson** Yeah, I think it does apply to the Switch because she was the one, remember,

00:12:21   she's the one who brought it up where it was something with, you know, she like embarrassed

00:12:26   one of Epic's lawyers at one point during the thing where she was like, "Yeah, but I could play

00:12:29   on my Switch." You know, he was like, "You can't play the PC version of Fortnite while you're on

00:12:34   the bus." And she goes, "Well, I could play it on the Switch." And he was like, "Oh, yes."

00:12:37   **Matt Stauffer** Yeah, he was rather battered and abused.

00:12:40   **Trevor Thompson** So we shall see. And the reason I don't want to belabor this too much is

00:12:44   there's no point, right? It's like, we'll find out soon enough. But I do think it's very instructive

00:12:49   that Epic's lawyers interpreted it the same way that Apple's did, which was that they lost

00:12:54   everything except the anti-steering, not in-app purchases. And it is...

00:13:00   **Matt Stauffer** Why they're appealing.

00:13:01   **Trevor Thompson** Right. And the argument that, well, of course, Apple's going to spin it

00:13:06   in the most favorable way for Apple. Well, then wouldn't those same people think Epic would spin

00:13:11   it in the most beneficial way to Epic? No, they spun it the exact same way, which was that the

00:13:16   only thing that should change if the injunction stands is the anti-steering stuff, which is the

00:13:21   number one point I've been hammering for years about the App Store.

00:13:24   **Matt Stauffer** Yeah. And what's interesting to me too is that I think a lot of times we get

00:13:28   trapped in the 10% of Twitter, which is very, very loud, but it's not at all representative of any

00:13:33   mainstream sentiment at all. Even when you talk about developers, even indie developers that we

00:13:37   know, they're not a uni-mine. You see a whole bunch of different reactions from people who

00:13:42   really want sideloading to developers who think it's going to increase piracy to people who really

00:13:46   want alternate payments, people who think it's going to increase fraud. They see different value

00:13:51   propositions in the App Store and by no means were they all aligned behind TimEpic or Spotify or DHH

00:13:57   or any of the people who I consider much more like online fire brands around some of this. And when

00:14:02   you look at customers, we just, we really care about the experience. It doesn't matter what Epic

00:14:06   thinks or what Apple thinks. I'm not going to be happy to like, and easily buy my comic books and

00:14:11   eBooks and everything else with one button tap in iOS because everything else is just a crappy

00:14:15   experience. I do think I know that the Epic thing is more fireworksy because there's lots, you know,

00:14:22   we have this debate over just what the injunction means and the and the difference in interpretation

00:14:27   is not subtle. That's it's a very significant difference. I think though, that if you take

00:14:35   the drama away, what Apple did with the Japan Fair Trade Commission is more interesting. And it was a

00:14:41   no drama thing. There was very little publicity. It seemed mutually respectful on both sides.

00:14:47   I've said this, I said this on dithering, that I thought Phil Schiller's statement in the press

00:14:53   release announcing it was was very interesting and super respectful of the process. And I think

00:14:59   that what Apple and Schiller truly appreciated is that it was no drama. And the Japan Fair Trade

00:15:04   Commission was very serious and it's very serious business. But it it the fact is Apple agreed to

00:15:14   bend on something and you can argue that making it only for quote unquote reader apps, which is

00:15:20   sort of an arbitrary category that Apple defines. It still is significant to me because it's the

00:15:28   first time Apple's bent in that direction at all. It's the first sign we have that Apple is like,

00:15:35   hey, maybe we should backtrack a little bit on on the maximalist perspective of how much money

00:15:43   and rent we can seek from in app purchasing and subscriptions in the App Store.

00:15:48   Yeah, absolutely. And I think again, like they're playing the long game on all of this. And it

00:15:55   really is, I don't want to dunk on V bucks because they have zero marginal cost. And people just

00:16:00   throw money at them. It's a fortune with that returns almost no value, except for some enjoyment

00:16:05   at the time. But that's where all the money is. That's where all the money is for Apple. And

00:16:09   that's why Google regulates games on on the Play Store in the exact same way that Apple does on

00:16:13   iOS. And that's the part that I think is going to get not not reader apps, like for books, or for

00:16:18   movies, or for all those things. But games is going to be the big financial battleground.

00:16:22   Right. And they're already not making a cent from Netflix anymore, other than old grandfathered

00:16:27   accounts that didn't sign up. I mean, but people forget that when in the early days, Netflix was

00:16:32   allowing people to sign up through in app purchasing subscriptions. And Apple at the time

00:16:37   was publishing like top earning apps lists, stuff that they've gotten away from, I think for

00:16:43   competitive reasons, you know, that they don't want to let people know who's who's making the most

00:16:47   money. But for years, Netflix was the top grossing app in the App Store. And then even after Netflix

00:16:56   stopped taking signups, they still were because of all the users who were already in on that system

00:17:02   paying 15% to Netflix. We take them for Nebula. Now you can you can buy a nebula subscription in

00:17:09   app on iOS. There you go. It's it the lots of people do it. It's advantageous to a certain

00:17:17   there's to a certain class of customer, they value the convenience of it having all their

00:17:21   subscriptions in one place, being able to easily terminate subscriptions, which is not always the

00:17:26   case with New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, those things. So it has it

00:17:30   adds value for some people, right. But let's say take Kindle, for example, Apple doesn't make any

00:17:35   money from Kindle, they haven't, you know, very early on for like a year or so Kindle was able

00:17:39   to have like a web view in their app and people could buy books in the Kindle. And Apple, I think

00:17:45   because Apple had approached the whole App Store from a TV and a video and music store viewpoint,

00:17:54   where you buy shows and movies and songs and albums, and you download them and you can use

00:18:02   them in that is sort of also the traditional way of buying apps and games, right? You say this game

00:18:11   is $4.99, you pay $4.99, and then you download it, and then it's yours to keep and you play it.

00:18:17   And they just hadn't foreseen the rise of in app purchasing and subscriptions,

00:18:23   and how different it made the App Store than the iTunes store. But

00:18:31   all those reader apps are aggregators, like they aggregate comic books or books or music or something,

00:18:35   but then the App Store aggregates apps as all the App Store is, is a major aggregator. And there's

00:18:39   very little room in the profit margin for two aggregators for digital goods.

00:18:42   Pete: Right. So they're already not making money from Kindle, because you can't buy Kindle

00:18:46   apps. And so if Kindle can just link out and send you, you know, maybe you have to leave the app and

00:18:51   go to Safari, but you can quick buy, you know, buy stuff. And it'll have like a callback URL that'll

00:18:57   take you back to where you were in the app or something like that. That's it. It's all

00:19:01   meaningless. Honestly, it's not going to materially affect Apple's finances at all. The game stuff

00:19:07   would I mean, the end what that was some of the interesting stuff from the trial is from the

00:19:11   findings of fact that 70% of Apple's revenue on the App Store is games. And 98% of in app purchases

00:19:21   are for games, which I think and I've said that it only makes sense if that's literally in app

00:19:27   purchases, not subscriptions, you know, like a one time loot box or an emote or whatever they call

00:19:35   the things in fortnight, you know, you spend five bucks, get a new costume. 98% are games, but then

00:19:42   I think like, well, what else can you buy in app purchase? I mean, I know that there are, you know,

00:19:48   they know that's it. Like, we found out early on with the App Store that people would not pay $5

00:19:52   for a game, but they would pay 50 bucks to have a nicer looking farm, or to get their F1 racer back

00:19:57   on the track faster. We'll pay for instant and ego gratification. And that's it. And they've turned

00:20:01   into massive casino like businesses to harvest all of that from us. Yeah, it's amazing. And

00:20:06   the fortnight, you know, the other thing from the court case and just seeing epics financials, they,

00:20:11   you know, clearly they're they struck gold with the idea of fortnight. I mean, it's in hindsight,

00:20:17   it's kind of nutty to make a triple A caliber game that you just let everybody download and play for

00:20:22   free. And kudos to them for the fact that it wasn't pay to win, right? You could if you if you're a

00:20:31   kid with no money, you get your no competitive disadvantage to playing against an adult with a

00:20:38   full time job who can spend whatever they want on stuff. All they get are costumes and dance moves

00:20:42   competitively. You're completely on even ground. And it turns out that super lucrative like I think

00:20:50   that the I think I'm not a gaming expert, but I feel like in the early days of in app purchases,

00:20:55   it was paid a win. And pay to just look good is actually Yeah, more lucrative.

00:21:02   Yeah, no, absolutely. The only the only thing I want to take a little bit away from fortnight

00:21:06   there. I mean, they definitely packaged it really well. And they're very good at making partnerships

00:21:10   with Marvel and Star Wars and things like that. But they they had a game and then they saw pub G

00:21:15   and they integrated all of that into their game was very, very successful. Now they just integrated

00:21:20   among us into their game. Very successful, but you know, to complete didn't didn't even bother to talk

00:21:24   to the indie developer. And they famously just straight up stole a bunch of dance moves in the

00:21:29   beginning. Now they have creator agreements, but they for someone who takes the moral high ground

00:21:34   as often as Tim epic there. They were built on a lot of external ideas. Right? That's a lot of

00:21:40   lots of copying versus rip off is in the eye of the beholder all around.

00:21:47   Yeah. Well, they didn't copy forward, I think is like the goal of everything. They're more

00:21:51   like copy paste. Right. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our first sponsor. So good

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00:23:20   remember the code talk show, sign up for a year, you save 10%. All right, let's move on to the

00:23:27   event. Big event yesterday, California streaming. What'd you think?

00:23:33   You know, I think it was good. I like that they actually took it outside of Apple Park,

00:23:37   because after you know, to use your term two seasons, or at least one and a half seasons

00:23:41   of the Apple event show, it was nice to see them go outside for a minute.

00:23:44   I think that was the thinking. I know a lot of people like what is with all this pro California

00:23:51   stuff. It's like it was almost like the opening was like a promotional video for the state of

00:23:56   California tourism board. It was beautiful, undeniably, but does it did it belong in an

00:24:02   Apple event. And I kind of feel like I don't really feel it served any other strategic

00:24:08   point other than they wanted a theme for this episode of the show. And they wanted you know,

00:24:16   honestly, I think everybody's surprised at this point. It that that there's that we're still in

00:24:23   a situation where these things have to be virtual. Yeah, you know, certainly the way things were

00:24:29   looking up in May and June, it seemed likely to me at that point that that we might be back to

00:24:35   regular in person events by September. Obviously, the Delta variant had other things to say,

00:24:40   as well as vaccine resistance, for lack of a better term. Resistance, like,

00:24:47   political resistance, not medical resistance. And they needed a theme. I think you're right.

00:24:54   You know, they've kind of used up Apple Park as a backdrop. So get out, go around the state and

00:25:04   shoot in pretty areas. I thought that the the cayenne Drant segment for for the introduction

00:25:10   of the iPhone 13 and 13 mini in particular, was amazing at the turns out that's the San Diego

00:25:18   Symphony. They're outdoor, I guess you call it an amphitheater. Yeah. But I thought the thing that

00:25:25   number one, it was striking. It's a very beautiful outdoor theater. But I also thought that it struck

00:25:31   the perfect balance of being an attractive cinematic backdrop for cayenne Drants to

00:25:37   introduce these two phones, but also the thousands of empty seats in front of her and her being alone

00:25:45   on stage emphasize the we get it. We're still in weird times. And we can't have thousands of people

00:25:52   see this live. Yeah. And it was also kind of interesting to have it all centered around

00:25:58   California the same day as the recall election was happening in California.

00:26:01   Yeah, that was interesting, because California really was in the news. And I thought,

00:26:05   did they think about that or no? It doesn't seem like something Apple would think about. But it

00:26:09   also doesn't seem like something Apple would be ignorant of. Everybody knew this recall election

00:26:13   was coming up and the date has been sent for months. I think that the unlikelihood of that

00:26:18   is that it was, it turns out that the recall was big failure and Governor Gavin Newsom held on

00:26:25   by any count a landslide. But that wasn't so clear in the polling leading up. I mean,

00:26:33   in the last couple of weeks, it seemed pretty clear. And the polling was sort of held back by

00:26:37   one goofy poll a couple months ago that really skewed the average of polls. But it doesn't seem

00:26:46   like something Apple would want to bet on. Right? Like, you know, politics, absolutely.

00:26:50   Politics are funny nowadays. Things happen fast. So I don't know. I thought that was interesting.

00:26:57   What else? High level overview? Well, I mean, this is their big event. And last year, they couldn't

00:27:04   do the iPhone in September, they had to hold off till October. So we famously got Apple Watch and

00:27:09   iPad. And going into this, it was sort of unclear. I mean, a lot of people thought it was going to be

00:27:14   Apple iPhone and Apple Watch, but Apple's done iPads, at least the base level iPad for the last

00:27:19   few Septembers in a row. So I think they've gotten a really good package of things together. And I

00:27:24   was just left to wonder, you know, we have Macs in October, I'm sort of going through and checking

00:27:28   things off the list to see what's still on the list. Right. But I like the way that they move the

00:27:33   little cards around to plan out this event. I thought it ended up being a really solid hour

00:27:36   and a bit. What is left on the list? Macs? Obviously, we still have a whole bunch of Macs

00:27:43   that have never moved to Apple Silicon. We have the, you know, just what does that mean? Apple

00:27:49   Silicon wise? A, what like would a Apple Silicon MacBook Pro, 16 inch MacBook Pro look like?

00:27:54   Who knows? Maybe iMac Pros too? You know, 27. Who knows what else is on the agenda for the rest of

00:28:02   the year. But also, you know, are we going to see M2 chips, M1x chips? What is the Silicon? What is

00:28:09   the actual Silicon story? Something has to be coming. And people get so confused. Like people

00:28:15   get so confused with that. And they think that Apple can't announce like an M1x after the A15

00:28:20   comes out. And this is the same Apple that announced an A12Z iPad Pro after A13 shipped.

00:28:25   Right. None of the stuff works, I think the way that people presume it does. So like the M1x just

00:28:30   means more cores, an extended core version of the M1, where M2 isn't going to be like per core,

00:28:36   it'll be more powerful, but it won't have anywhere nearly the amount of cores. So that'll be like the

00:28:40   new MacBook Air chip. And then M1x will be the Pro chip. And it'll be an M2x eventually if Apple

00:28:46   sticks to pattern. Yeah, so we'll see. That's definitely coming. I guess people have been

00:28:51   thinking that there'd be updated AirPods 3. I think a lot of people thought they would come

00:28:56   yesterday. Meaning, according to the rumor, and we can get into this, but maybe you don't want to

00:29:02   take too much stock in according to the rumors this year. But according to the rumors, they would be

00:29:09   no adjective AirPods that look more like the AirPods Pro. Don't have noise canceling,

00:29:20   but do have a more compact, shorter stemmed appearance. That's obviously the sort of product

00:29:28   that's not going to be a tent pole in an event. But it's also the sort of product that it is either,

00:29:35   to me, either going to make it in time for the holiday season or forget it, let's do it in

00:29:41   January or February. Let's go into the holiday season with the AirPods that we already have

00:29:47   and know how to make and sell in massive quantities because that's just a humongous

00:29:52   stocking stuffer type presence. So there's no...

00:29:56   **Matt Stauffer** Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think

00:29:59   AirPods have been in a keynote since the original, like the AirPods 2, AirPods Pro. I don't even

00:30:04   think AirPods Max or any of those were in a keynote.

00:30:07   **Beserat Debebe** Yeah, I don't think so. So it might just be a Mac only event because I don't

00:30:11   think they're going to update the... They already updated the iPad Pros earlier in the year.

00:30:17   I don't think any of the other iPads are long in the tooth, right? The iPad Air is still pretty

00:30:25   fresh with the touch ID on the home button that the iPad mini is sort of following in the footsteps

00:30:32   of. So what else even is there? So I'm thinking an October Mac event, maybe they tuck in AirPods

00:30:39   or something like that. Because they do stuff like that. Like they'll have like, remember last year

00:30:44   when they did the HomePod minis as a sort of like a segment of the show.

00:30:49   **Matt Stauffer** But they did a whole event last November with three, with the MacBook Air,

00:30:55   MacBook Pro and Mac mini telling the M1 story, of course, but they'll tell the M1X story and then

00:31:00   they'll have these 14 inch, the 16 inch and that's a pretty decent event. Maybe the M1X Mac mini.

00:31:06   **Trevor Thompson** Yeah, something like that. Who knows? But in the meantime, we've got what was

00:31:12   announced yesterday. I thought that the other thing at a higher level, Tim Cook opened up and

00:31:19   the first thing that was mentioned was the fall TV Plus schedule. And to me, TV Plus is a lot like

00:31:30   Apple Watch, where it's like, when Apple Watch first came out, so many people were like, well,

00:31:38   this is a dud. This isn't selling well. They can't make new products without Steve Jobs. This is why

00:31:46   everybody said we were right. Steve Jobs is irreplaceable. And then like a year or two goes by

00:31:54   and nobody ever really stops to think like, hey, this is a smash hit product. I see Apple Watches

00:31:58   everywhere and they're making Bongo revenue selling them. TV Plus maybe isn't going to be

00:32:05   that big a deal financially, but they're very, very serious about it. And I feel like everybody's,

00:32:11   instead of the way that the Apple Watch looked like it wasn't a big hit compared to, let's just

00:32:16   even leave the iPhone out of it, but let's just say the iPad, which had these crazy go-go years

00:32:23   in 2010, 2011, 2012, because they were filling this completely unsaturated market of demand for

00:32:32   tablet-sized computers. It was just a massive, massive hit and then had these weird years where

00:32:40   they went from selling like 20 million a quarter to 10 million a quarter and everybody was like,

00:32:44   what's wrong? What's wrong? And I think in hindsight, it was just, well, people are still

00:32:48   using their old iPads. The early years were inflated. Apple Watch didn't take off in a

00:32:54   huge way like that. It's been just like a slow, steady look. Every year it gets better. Every year

00:32:59   they add features. Every year they clarify their focus on what Apple Watch is actually good for,

00:33:05   notifications and fitness. And more and more people start buying their first Apple Watch and

00:33:12   it becomes a hit. The problem for TV Plus is that everybody's comparing it against

00:33:17   companies like Netflix and Disney Plus, Hulu, anybody like that. And you can say,

00:33:22   well, the numbers are smaller for TV Plus subscription than everybody's smaller than Netflix,

00:33:27   but it's not as big as Disney Plus, not as big as HBO Max. But for those companies that's existential,

00:33:33   right? There is no business for Netflix other than selling Netflix subscriptions.

00:33:40   Disney, of course, has a much wider corporate domain, theme parks and cruise ships and ESPN

00:33:50   and all sorts of other, big, big conglomerate. But their bread and butter is entertaining families

00:33:59   with classic characters. And that's what Disney Plus is chock full of, Marvel and Star Wars and

00:34:06   all the Mickey and Friends type stuff. It is a side hustle for Apple, but therefore they're

00:34:14   approaching it that way, right? And the big knock is, well, why would I say, if I'm only going to

00:34:19   sign up for one, why would I sign up for TV Plus, but they don't even have a big library of stuff?

00:34:23   Like I could sign up for Netflix and I can watch it 24 hours a day and I've fallen behind, right?

00:34:32   You go watch Netflix for 24 hours and they can release so much new stuff that you've actually

00:34:37   fallen behind on how much stuff is in the library. They don't need to do that, right? And it's never

00:34:43   been the goal. They're much more focused like the HBO of old where it's like, look, you could pay a

00:34:49   premium and you can get these shorter list of high quality shows. I thought the fall lineup looked

00:34:59   pretty good. I thought that Finch show with Tom Hanks, I didn't even hear about that one.

00:35:03   That looked amazing. The robot.

00:35:05   **Beserat Debebe:** I think it goes back to something you've mentioned several times before,

00:35:09   and that is like people have a hard time taking Apple executives at their word, even though they

00:35:13   are amongst the most plain spoken executives I've ever encountered at any company ever,

00:35:17   they really often do just tell you what's on their mind. And I think when you look at Apple,

00:35:21   at TV Plus through that lens, Apple, they want to have content. Obviously they want to

00:35:26   offer services on top of the iPhone as a platform. They want to make the value of their ecosystem

00:35:31   greater so that people, cynically they extract more value per customer that way, but they also

00:35:37   provide more value per customer. And that's increasingly important as iPhones become more,

00:35:42   I don't want to say commodity items, but reach saturation and become more like tools. But also

00:35:47   they have money and they want to tell great stories that they think aren't being told. And so

00:35:52   they're willing to put some of that money behind those stories. And I think you can see that in

00:35:56   where like Disney Plus has Marvel and Star Wars and the Magic Kingdom and all these brands. But

00:36:02   if you like Star Trek or DC Comics, they have nothing for you. And the opposite is true of

00:36:08   Warner Brothers and Netflix has a bunch of variety stuff, but it's not sort of HBO level variety

00:36:14   stuff. And I think Apple's got the, not just the desire, but the money to put new original

00:36:19   programming on, which is interesting to people like us who've been missing that as HBO has gotten

00:36:24   more and more Warnerized. And I think Apple is super happy to do it. It just increases value for

00:36:29   them and for us. And I think it's really no more complicated than that. Yeah. And they're getting

00:36:36   there, right? And they're not going to debut by focusing on original content and not buying

00:36:42   libraries of existing content to fill it up. It has to be a slow, you can't just debut with 50

00:36:49   shows, you know. But they're starting to pick up the other categories of shows that they haven't

00:36:56   had. Jon Stewart is a huge get, right? Because HBO has John Oliver and Bill Maher who do the sort of

00:37:02   political comedy type thing. Netflix famously has sort of taken over the market for comedy specials.

00:37:11   They don't really have shows like the John Oliver type thing. Chelsea Handler for a while,

00:37:15   but they don't seem to have invested much in it. Yeah. And it didn't really stick. It was,

00:37:19   and it was, I think she was doing, it was like, they weren't quite sure how to do it on,

00:37:25   in a streaming format. Like what's worked for John Oliver and Bill Maher is a once a week format,

00:37:32   whereas Chelsea Handler was more of a nightly format, like a traditional talk show. But,

00:37:37   you know, it's, you try stuff, you know, who knows, maybe the new Jon Stewart show won't

00:37:40   be any good. I don't, I mean, I'm looking forward to it, but I trust the guy, but you never know.

00:37:44   It certainly is the type of show that Apple TV+ hasn't had before. But the same with Foundation,

00:37:50   like the big sweeping space opera is coming out too. They're sort of filling the different

00:37:54   genres as they go. Right. Classic material, a true, I haven't read it since I was a teenager,

00:38:00   but I remember loving it. But with, you know, a top level cast, super high level production values.

00:38:07   So, I mean, I guess for all mankind, sort of, was that already? Which is one of my favorite things.

00:38:13   Jared: Yeah, I could have put that in alternate history genre, but this is sort of like,

00:38:15   like Battlestar or Star Wars or Dune or…

00:38:18   Pete: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's say with spaceships that bear no bearing to reality.

00:38:24   Jared; Interstellar space.

00:38:27   Pete; Right. But, and then compare and contrast with Fitness+, which I think is in, you know,

00:38:34   those were the two services that Apple gave time to yesterday. And of course, it makes sense to

00:38:38   do Fitness+ because they've, you know, it squeezed into the watch overall segment.

00:38:44   Jared; Yeah, it's a watch service.

00:38:45   Pete; Right. It literally is a fitness service that presumed, the one thing that service presumes is

00:38:51   that everybody has an Apple Watch who's using it. But it is interesting to me, it must be, and I know

00:38:58   they, you know, they must have 30 or 40 trainers now. And, you know, Peloton is obviously the market

00:39:04   leader in that category, where it's, it is sort of personality driven. You know, it's, it is,

00:39:12   it's like podcasts, sort of. It's like, but instead of listening to two lazy guys like me

00:39:17   and you talk about technology and whatever else, it's people who are actually helping you break

00:39:23   a sweat and do things. But people get into, it's not just like show me anything that is spin. They

00:39:32   have favorite trainers and they enjoy the music that they have, they enjoy their personalities,

00:39:37   and on the flip side, there's others who they don't like. And it's very personality.

00:39:40   Jared; It's almost like the 80s with like Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda.

00:39:43   Pete; Yeah, very much.

00:39:44   Jared; Those fitness shows, yeah.

00:39:46   Pete; Right. But it is, effectively though, it is shows, right? And it, you know, it makes sense

00:39:51   that it's a standalone separate service from TV+, but effectively it's, it's video shows. But it

00:40:00   must be so much, however good these trainers are and however many of them are, it must be so much

00:40:06   cheaper to produce than all of the big budget TV+ stuff, you know, like Foundation and paying

00:40:13   Jennifer Aniston for The Morning Show and… Jared; See.

00:40:18   Pete; Right. And even if you just look at Ted Lasso, which, you know, isn't like sci-fi levels

00:40:25   of special effects, there's a lot of special effects like to make stadiums look full and stuff

00:40:31   like that. You know, make it look like an actual soccer match took place at Wembley Stadium. You

00:40:37   know, that's expensive and just, you know, they've already built the studio and they can just,

00:40:42   you know, show it in the studio. It's so much cheaper to produce, but it costs more. It's $10

00:40:46   a month instead of $5 a month. Jared; Yeah, I think because fitness is one of those niches

00:40:51   where there's certain categories like finance, adult entertainment, fitness, where people are

00:40:56   willing to just pay more for content than they are in, you know, for news or for other sorts

00:41:01   of entertainment. Pete; Right. It's like you're not, it's a lot, a lot of entertainment works

00:41:05   that way, right? Like when you go to see the new Avengers movie that had a $300 million budget,

00:41:12   the box office ticket price is exactly the same as when you go to see the art house movie

00:41:17   that was shot for $50,000. You know, it's still… Jared; Even like, not to derail us completely,

00:41:23   but when you see what some influencers who quickly migrated to OnlyFans making millions of dollars a

00:41:28   month for essentially three or four snapshots, it just realigns your definition of how, of what it

00:41:34   costs to make content and what you can earn from content. Pete; And what people are willing to pay

00:41:38   for it, right? Exactly. The other, and I know that TV+ is not a new initiative and Fitness+,

00:41:45   yes, it's only nine months old, but I think it's something that they'd been planning for years

00:41:51   and it was a natural parlay from the fitness and health credentials and enthusiasm they've built

00:41:58   up among Apple Watch users. And it fits in with the overall push towards our big area of growth

00:42:05   for the company is services. But, so I'm not saying it's, putting them in the event yesterday

00:42:12   had anything to do with the legal and regulatory and just generally bad PR surrounding the App

00:42:22   Store and Apple's services revenues garnered through the 30 to 15% cut they take through

00:42:29   the App Store. I think that even if somehow in late 2021, those weren't hot button issues

00:42:38   worldwide, they still would have been talking about TV+ and Fitness+, but what stuck out to me,

00:42:42   so I'm not saying that's why they were emphasizing the show, but it stuck out to me in that context

00:42:48   that those are much better services for Apple to be making money for. Not me as a financial

00:42:54   advisor or investment advisor, but as a critic and observer of the company,

00:43:00   because it's their own services, right? They're not seeking rent on Peloton to get 30% of signups

00:43:09   from Peloton and they're not seeking rent by taking 30% of in-app purchases from Disney+.

00:43:16   They're making their own thing and they're getting all the revenue and that to me is much healthier

00:43:22   for the company's culture. Yeah, no, I think that's true. I'm going to push back on the term

00:43:26   rent. I think the term rent-like tax is a huge underservice to the value of infrastructure,

00:43:30   which is something that a lot of people pay routinely for, including the companies that

00:43:34   call it rent-seeking or taxing when it happens to be Apple doing it. But I think Apple had,

00:43:39   I don't want to say a problem, but they had a concern because they'd famously promised investors

00:43:42   to double services revenue by, I think it was 2020 and a large portion of their services revenue is

00:43:47   in-app payments from games on the app store. And so it was very difficult to see them doing anything

00:43:52   that would derail that promise because that would be a massive hit for them on Wall Street. But I

00:43:56   think it's also telling they didn't renew that promise after they hit it. They didn't say,

00:44:00   "We're going to do it again." And I think that is giving them the breathing room to realign how they

00:44:05   earn services income because hardware margins, Apple had really good margins this year, this

00:44:11   last quarter, but their hardware margins, because they're using more expensive components,

00:44:15   haven't been the same as they were in previous years. And services margins are enormous,

00:44:20   software margins are enormous. And I think building this out lets them take a lot of the

00:44:24   pressure off relying on app store in-app purchase, especially game in-app purchase revenue.

00:44:28   Pete: Yeah, and I didn't mean anything negative by rent. I rented most of my adult life and I

00:44:34   got a good deal, right? I paid a landlord what we agreed upon and I got a house to live in.

00:44:40   Jared; That's true. I think some people use it disparagingly as a way of saying that Apple's

00:44:45   trying to pull something that they don't, trying to steal something in a way that they haven't

00:44:49   earned. Pete; I get it. I think that they have earned it. I'm not an absolutist. I think they do,

00:44:55   or I think, you know, I'm not as anti-Apple's app store revenue as a lot of people on our,

00:45:04   in your and my sphere are. But I just don't think, it's not that I think it's illegal, it's not that

00:45:10   I think it's even immoral. I just think that it is sort of like financial junk food. And it's like

00:45:17   resting, you know, you've already built this thing, which is great. And it is, you know,

00:45:22   well, I'm not gonna, Apple calls it a financial miracle. I don't know if it's a miracle, but

00:45:26   it is certainly a financial success. Jared; There's no divinity involved.

00:45:29   Pete; It's certainly a financial success story. And they deserve to earn some money from it.

00:45:35   But I just don't think it's healthy for the company to be looking for ways. And there were

00:45:40   signs last year or over the last year and a half of app store reviewers seemingly looking for

00:45:49   companies that were doing, you know, getting signups on the web and being told you need,

00:45:57   you can keep doing that, but you need to add in app purchase for this too.

00:46:01   Jared; Yeah, it was trying to meet those, that app, that services revenue doubling goal,

00:46:05   which I think was unhealthy for them. But also to your point, it all, to me, it's like, yes,

00:46:10   they built all this, they deserve something, the judge said they deserve something,

00:46:13   but it just feels like the way they're going about it is so outdated. It's so 2009, 2010.

00:46:18   Pete; It's just so much better for them to be growing the services revenue based on their own

00:46:23   services. And it's just, it's a better outlook. And it's, to me, even if it's less profitable,

00:46:31   I mean, and that they're maybe like with TV Plus, and I don't even know how they break it apart,

00:46:35   you know, because presumably they, what they would like most people to do is sign up for Apple One,

00:46:40   where it's a lot harder to say how much of Apple One is Apple TV Plus and how much of it is iCloud

00:46:49   storage and how much of it is the other stuff that you can get. It's just good, right? And Amazon has

00:46:56   sort of led the way on that, where it's like, look, just sign up for Amazon Prime, and we'll

00:47:01   give you all sorts of good stuff. We'll give you expedited shipping, and we'll give you discounts.

00:47:06   And here, you could just have all these TV shows here. We'll just, Jared, here, here you go. Here's

00:47:11   movies and TV shows. And just, just sign up, just sign up, be loyal, keep signing up. I think Apple

00:47:18   wants that. I think having your own original content that you own and control is good for them.

00:47:24   I don't know. I just thought that that was, it just stuck out to me in a way that it might not

00:47:30   have a year ago. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. All right, let's take another break here and

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00:50:27   meals. I say we go reverse order, iPhone, then the watch, then the iPads, but we could go the other

00:50:37   way. The funny thing about going the other way was, did you notice this, that with the iPad mini,

00:50:42   they didn't talk about the chip? Yeah. Yeah. And they didn't talk about the chip for the watch

00:50:48   either. So I wasn't sure what reason they were talking about the various chips that's for.

00:50:53   So maybe we should go in the order they went, actually. Let's take it back. Let's do it in

00:50:57   their order. They didn't talk about the iPad mini chip because it was the A15 and they wanted to save

00:51:03   the, let's tell you all about the A15 for the iPhone 13 segment. It's kind of interesting

00:51:09   because the iPad mini actually has the five core GPU variant on the iPhone 13 is only in the pro

00:51:20   models. The regular 13 and 13 mini have four core GPUs. It's a really nice device, the iPad mini.

00:51:27   Yeah. And that's an interesting choice because it's easy to see that Apple needs a little bit

00:51:32   more power in the iPhone pros because of pro res and cinematic video and some of the other stuff

00:51:39   we're going to be talking about promotion, but the iPad mini, the iPad air, which is basically

00:51:44   what the iPad mini is a shrunken down version of just it hasn't the A14, which was essentially the

00:51:49   exact same chip four core, four GPU core version of this chip. So obviously they're giving it a

00:51:54   little bit more graphical oomph and I'm not sure why yet. I don't know either. It might be, maybe

00:52:02   just because the iPad mini is sort of on a unique, seemingly its entire history from the beginning

00:52:10   until now on a unique schedule where it it's always been in the lineup. There's a certain

00:52:17   contingent of people in use cases who want that small size. Maybe it's kids playing games. Apple

00:52:23   mentioned doctors who have lab coat pockets that are sized for the iPad mini and a bigger iPad

00:52:28   would just be just heavy in a lab coat pocket pilots and particularly pilots and smaller

00:52:35   airplane cockpits where every single space saving decision is that can be made is made.

00:52:41   But it doesn't get up. It doesn't get updated every year and never has gotten updated every year.

00:52:48   But when it does get refreshed, tends to be refreshed to about as high spec as you could

00:52:54   reasonably expect for a $500 iPad. Yes. And I guess because of that they want to give it the

00:53:01   latest silicon so that it'll stay useful. It'll get updates for as long as possible when you do

00:53:04   buy it. Right. I don't know when they're going to update the iPad Air, but I would wager fairly

00:53:10   heavily that they'll update the iPad Air before they update the iPad mini again. I think the last

00:53:14   iPad mini, the one that just got obviated by the one released yesterday or announced yesterday,

00:53:21   had the A12. So it's sort of looked, you know, if we, I don't know, it doesn't really matter

00:53:26   going back historically past that, but you know, it's like in every three year up upgrade.

00:53:31   They were announced together like the iPad mini and the iPad Air had that new design and then they

00:53:36   were updating it without almost barely not mentioning the iPad mini after a while. And then

00:53:41   when the AirPods 2 came out right before Apple did the very first services event when they announced

00:53:46   TV Plus, they put a bunch of products out and press releases. And one was the new iPad Air and

00:53:50   the new iPad mini, but then last year they only updated the Air and then now this year they're

00:53:55   doing the mini. So they've, there seems like they're out of sync for the first time. Yeah.

00:53:58   The other thing that stuck out to me was that the volume buttons are on the top,

00:54:02   which I'm not even sure if we should call it the top, you know, is it the top or is it the

00:54:06   left-hand side if you hold it sideways? Opposite the port. Right. Opposite the port. Yeah, I guess

00:54:13   I guess that's what you, what you could call it. It's funny because like people were wondering,

00:54:17   well, Apple make a smaller pencil and they didn't, they just moved the buttons. Yeah. Well,

00:54:22   there are no buttons though on the, I have, well, I guess there are actually, yeah, that is where the

00:54:28   volume buttons are. Huh? They're on the right. Hmm. I guess that might be why they did it.

00:54:33   Because their smart keyboard would block them on the other side, but there's no smart keyboard or

00:54:37   smart connector on the iPad mini. I guess Apple didn't want to make a teeny tiny magic keyboard.

00:54:43   There is, it's little funny things like this that you and I noticed, but it's like,

00:54:49   even after all these years of being, having the job of obsessively devoting time to whichever

00:54:58   minute details of design that we see fit, I still think of things, you know, like it's always been

00:55:04   a little weird. I still think it's a little weird that the iPhone is one of the only phones on the

00:55:10   market with a mute toggle. I love it. And I don't know though, if that's just because I've been

00:55:15   using an iPhone for 14 years and so I don't know what I would do without it. I do not want to turn

00:55:20   the screen on and fish around in control center to mute it. I still wish that the iPad had it.

00:55:28   Remember the iPad had the mute switch and then they made a system setting that you could change

00:55:34   the mute switch to be a rotation lock. And I remember thinking, I get why they don't add two

00:55:42   toggles, but I kind of wish I had both. I like muting it with the switch, but I also like the

00:55:47   rotation lock for reading in bed and not having the screen rotate. And then they just got rid of

00:55:53   the switch entirely and you have to do it all through control center. And it's not the biggest

00:55:57   pain in the butt, but when my iPad is on my bedside and it's ping, ping, ping, and it's like,

00:56:04   ah, I can't just clumsily find a switch and flick it. I have to pick it up, have to look at control

00:56:12   center, have to remember exactly. Well, you can hold down volume down and if you hold down long

00:56:16   enough, it'll mute. But by that time you'd probably hit mute anyway by the time you've realized that

00:56:20   it's muted. So it's one of those counterintuitive things. Can you do it when it's locked? I don't

00:56:25   know that you can. I'm trying it right now. I have an iPad in my hand. Oh, maybe not when it's locked.

00:56:29   Yeah. Maybe only when you're using it. Yeah. I think you have to, I don't know if it's,

00:56:32   oh, but you can just wake the screen and it'll do it. Oh, that's it. That's a good tip. Yeah.

00:56:37   That's a good, I learned something. Although it did. Nope. It unlocked it. It's cry curse you face

00:56:42   ID. I don't know. You might be able to, but it still is interesting to me. But the other thing

00:56:48   that's interesting to me is that the phone has always had the volume buttons when you're holding

00:56:53   the phone with the camera at the top and the port at the bottom, the volume buttons are on the left

00:56:59   and on the iPad, they're on the right. But I guess it has, my thinking is it has something to do with

00:57:05   the way Apple presumes you would put the laptop in horizontal mode while in a keyboard. Yeah. Right.

00:57:13   And in fact, with the modern ones that have the smart connector, you know, you kind of have to

00:57:19   do it that way because the camera would, therefore the camera would still be at the top. And if you

00:57:26   put the volume buttons on the other side, you wouldn't be able to access the volume buttons

00:57:30   while it was mounted in the keyboard. But then they didn't have space for it. If they were going

00:57:37   to have the pencil be on that side where it kind of has to be, cause even though they don't have

00:57:41   a smart keyboard for the iPad mini, you can buy keyboard little tiny, tiny finger keyboards for it

00:57:48   and you'd want the pencil to still be on top. And that takes up space from the camera being in

00:57:54   landscape mode, which a lot of us want as well. Right. There's so much room in there. Right. Right.

00:57:58   So therefore the buttons had to move and there they are. And Apple doesn't like to explain

00:58:03   decisions like that, but I think we just backwards engineered it. I don't have much more to say about

00:58:11   it. The new iPad also, I mean, you know, what are you going to say? You know, it's the low end. The

00:58:15   one thing that struck me was that they emphasized repeatedly that it's their best-selling most

00:58:20   popular iPad. And maybe they do that every time they update it. But it's sort of a weird flex

00:58:27   because it, it so clearly is the most popular only because of its low price. Yeah. I mean,

00:58:34   a weird flex for Apple, like who's not really known for flexing about affordable prices.

00:58:41   I mean, the MacBook Air, they talk about it that way, but you never hear them talk about

00:58:45   like the iPhone SE is their most popular iPhone. I don't think it is. It's like the third most

00:58:49   popular, but it'd be a weird flex anyway. It does speak though to the difference. And I know that at

00:58:54   the high end, you know, you can configure MacBook Pros that cost $5,000. And so there's, you know,

00:58:59   there's clearly a high end for MacBook Pros. That's far beyond even the biggest, most expensive

00:59:06   iPad Pro, but at the levels that people typically spend for MacBooks or iPad Pros, the prices are

00:59:17   fairly similar, especially when you, if you bake in the cost of a magic keyboard, right? And if

00:59:23   anything, maybe the iPad Pros are more expensive. Whereas the MacBook Air has that magic $999 price

00:59:30   point and really good configurations for very typical people at around $1,200. And that's just

00:59:38   way more expensive than a pretty good iPad for most people that starts at like $329.

00:59:44   Jared: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it really is that, like I've called it the most, like the best

00:59:50   deal in tech for a long time. But if you're looking just to get into an iPad, getting one for

00:59:54   $329, especially one that has the, like it doesn't have high end specs and they're very clever about

00:59:58   what they compromise on, like the camera quality, and there's no laminated display and it's things

01:00:02   that would drive me personally up the wall, but it's things that a lot of people just do not care

01:00:06   about. Right.

01:00:07   Pete: Try explaining to a lot of those people what ProMotion does and try taking it away from

01:00:13   my teenage son and, you know, he's very excited about ProMotion on the iPhone 13.

01:00:17   Jared; Oh, awesome.

01:00:19   Pete; Well, he notices though, he's got young healthy eyes and an eye for graphics and he

01:00:24   notices that, you know, and is actually frustrated that like his MacBook doesn't have it, you know,

01:00:29   that the only device that has it is an iPad Pro. But I don't have much more to say about it. I

01:00:33   guess I'm not surprised. I guess you and I talk about this every time, but the mini got USB-C,

01:00:40   the regular iPad did not. Spoiler looking ahead a segment or two on this show, the iPhone 13,

01:00:47   including the Pros do not have USB-C. People don't get it, but it's, you know, it seems pretty

01:00:54   clear that the iPhone 10 marked the effectively 2.0 era of the basic concept. Face ID instead of

01:01:03   touch ID, round corners, no home button on the front instead of flick up from the top or from

01:01:09   the bottom gesture system. And the iPads have had a similar re-reckoning to remove the home button

01:01:17   from the front face, go to the all screen display as Apple likes to call it. And with those iPads,

01:01:24   they go to USB-C when they make that transition because they're being positioned as somewhat more

01:01:31   like computers, right? I mean, and it's like people will never let Apple forget that commercial they

01:01:36   made where it was like, what's a computer? And it's like, it's a commercial. It wasn't meant as

01:01:41   like a scientific argument. Yeah, it was meant to be thought provoking and it certainly succeeded.

01:01:46   Right. It's like with, did you see the thing where AOC went to the Met Gala and she wore a dress

01:01:53   that said "tax the rich" and people were like, "Does she not know that rich people do pay taxes?"

01:01:59   And it's like, are you serious? I mean, like, whatever you think. Does she not know that rich

01:02:02   people are at the Met Gala? Right. And it's like, yeah, she knows. She knows. Tax the rich doesn't

01:02:08   mean that she thinks that the rich people aren't charged any taxes. It's, come on. Nobody was trying

01:02:16   to argue that the iPad Pro is not a computer. Luckily, Nicki Minaj took all the heat off of

01:02:20   AOC. Yeah, yeah. So we didn't have to put up with too much of it. I don't even want to go there.

01:02:27   Either. But that was bizarre. I thought it was a joke that Tucker Carlson on Fox News went

01:02:34   deep on the Nicki Minaj's cousins, friends, testicles swelling from the COVID vaccine story.

01:02:40   I thought that was a joke. And it turns out, no, that was actually what his show was about.

01:02:46   We don't have Fox News here. So I only know him from CNN. So I'm really out of touch.

01:02:49   Those damn cousins, cousins, friends. You really couldn't make it up. My cousins, friends,

01:02:55   doctor says this. Anything else on the iPads? I don't really have much.

01:03:01   No, I just think a lot of people, or some people at least were confused why the iPad

01:03:05   Mini had better specs than the iPad, even though the iPad is bigger or why the iPad Mini. But I

01:03:10   think Apple clearly positions it as a, not like the top tier device, but as a good midpoint device.

01:03:16   And they don't see small as being cheap. They see small as being a feature. So they charge for it

01:03:22   accordingly. Yeah. And the iPhone 13 and 12 Mini throw that off because they are a hundred dollars

01:03:30   cheaper than the non-mini corresponding versions. And there is an argument to be had that, well,

01:03:37   a bigger screen is a more expensive component, blah, blah, blah. But the Mini has always been

01:03:42   a not premium product like iPad Pros, but... It's like mid-tier. It's the mini iPad Air,

01:03:50   not the mini iPad Nothing. Yeah. And in some ways you do, you know, you can be expected to pay a

01:03:55   premium for miniaturization. I thought it was pretty cool that like holster type thing that

01:04:01   the pilot had the Mini strapped to his legs that they showed. It's like people will pay a premium

01:04:06   for that to have, you know, there are, you know... I think the iPad Nothing is like the iPhone SE and

01:04:12   the iPad Mini is like the iPhone Mini and the iPad Air is like the iPhone, the iPhone 13 should be

01:04:16   the iPhone 13 Air and then it would all make sense. Yes, I agree. At least that's the way you should

01:04:22   think about them in your head as being the equivalent of each other. Apple Watch Series 7.

01:04:28   Boy, I filed some claim chowder on this one. You didn't get the new flat design?

01:04:36   What a weird... Can you think of an example where more... So there's German, Ming-Chi Kuo,

01:04:43   and then YouTube sensation and teen heartthrob, Jon Prosser. All had this seemingly independently,

01:04:52   not based on each other's reporting, but all had it as a flat side design that basically like the

01:04:58   way that the iPhone 11 was rounded and sort of pill shaped on the sides and then the iPhone 12

01:05:05   and now 13 have flat sides like the iPad Pros that the watch would be making a similar move in form

01:05:13   factor to flat sides this year. Prosser had it back in May, German reiterated it last month,

01:05:22   and then Ming-Chi Kuo reiterated it on Friday, just like three days, three or four days before

01:05:27   the event. It's a very strange thing to get wrong. And the only possible explanation I've seen is

01:05:34   that sometimes Apple has more audacious and more conservative prototypes and if something goes wrong

01:05:38   with the more audacious one, they switch to the more conservative one. And when you heard rumblings

01:05:42   about the Apple Watch having complications in manufacturing, they pulled that lever,

01:05:47   but that would certainly have happened way before.

01:05:50   Right. It didn't happen when the rumors of the production problems in August hit. That decision

01:05:59   was made a while ago. Now, at what point might such a design have been in the running on the

01:06:07   whiteboard, or I guess at the time on the Zoom call for the 2021 watch? I don't know, but it

01:06:12   would have been like a year ago, I think. I have heard from somebody who heard from somebody that

01:06:19   the design is legit, but whether it was ever intended, whether it ever will ship, don't know,

01:06:25   but it was definitely never intended for 2021. It was a 2022 thing, which is interesting.

01:06:34   And I think it speaks to the sort of sources who leak these sort of things. Like the people in

01:06:40   Cupertino who work in Apple Watch product marketing and engineering, who know exactly

01:06:47   all of the technical details of this year's Apple Watch Series 7 are not the type of people who leak

01:06:55   these things. And the people who do leak these things are people who like, "Well, I know I have

01:07:00   these CAD files and I have a code name, but I have no idea when or if, what level of prototype this

01:07:06   is, when or if Apple intends to ship it." But to have a CAD file, they could leak and then someone

01:07:12   like Prosser can commission renders based on the CAD files and you could see what they would look

01:07:16   like. What else? The only thing that was interesting to me is like, years and years ago, you and I and

01:07:21   John Pachowski and even Gurman and Jim Dalrymple, we would have conversations about this stuff with

01:07:26   no animosity, no acrimony, none of that. But now, at least when I look at Twitter,

01:07:31   all of the leaked people are just clawing at each other constantly. And it's kind of sad.

01:07:35   Pete: Yeah, I keep score on the claim chatter, not to be a jerk about it, but I think it's worth

01:07:41   remembering what people's track records are.

01:07:43   Jared: I think also like one of the big issues this year is that

01:07:47   Mark Gurman famously started a newsletter and he tweets and he's very careful what he puts in

01:07:52   Bloomberg. Like what he puts in Bloomberg, he calls it a report and he lists out all this stuff,

01:07:55   but what he puts in Twitter and his newsletter are sometimes completely framed as opinions or

01:07:59   as guesses and yet people reblog them or promote them or video them as if they're the same vetting

01:08:06   as his reports, which has proven not to be the case. They're like, if you and I are spitballing,

01:08:11   we have guesses or opinions.

01:08:12   Pete; Right. And he will often too just sort of spitball ideas like we do, but like, you know,

01:08:20   oh, here's what three products I think would be announced together. I think, for example,

01:08:26   I think he just spitballed that the September event would be iPhones and the Watch and October

01:08:34   would be iPads and Macs. And they did the iPads yesterday. But when he spitballed that, he wasn't

01:08:41   saying that's what I've heard. That's what sources say my plan is. He was just thinking it through

01:08:47   and thought that would be a logical way to group the products together.

01:08:51   Ted; Right. But you are right that people don't parse the inside baseball sort of,

01:08:56   what is, what has a Bloomberg news byline and of course Bloomberg's typical sourcing where every

01:09:05   single paragraph includes according to the sources who declined to put their names on because they

01:09:10   don't have permission to talk about them yet or whatever that, you know, boilerplate they put into

01:09:14   every claim. But that's why they put those, we can say that it's sort of is a stilted way of reporting

01:09:20   but they're, the reason they insist on it internally is to assert that this is why we're

01:09:26   putting it in a report that sources who do know told us this was true. And then there's another

01:09:33   assertion in the next paragraph and we're going to say that it's from those people, same sources.

01:09:39   I thought that the watch too, the flat side watch rumor, it never, I mean who knows because renders,

01:09:47   they could be totally legit cataphiles with the dimensions exactly correct. And just the result

01:09:56   of the leaker renders, they never, it never looked right to me. It doesn't sit right with me.

01:10:02   There's something about it that's like, hmm, I don't know, that doesn't seem as physically

01:10:06   appealing to me as the pill shaped classic Apple watch. And like bad feng shui. Yeah, like, but

01:10:13   yeah, it's hard to even, it's ineffable. It's hard to even quite say sometimes when you're looking at

01:10:18   two fonts, it's sometimes you can't even say why you like one better. It was more aerial than

01:10:24   Helvetica. But I thought I'd still think it's interesting and it would be such a total 180 is

01:10:30   that the industrial design of series zero through series three and then with series four they

01:10:38   redesigned, that's when they resized them and instead of 36 and 40 went to 38 and 42 millimeters.

01:10:45   Is that how they went? I think so. Right. So yeah. But they got, it got rounder. It got more organic,

01:10:54   more round, less of a rectangle, like a round rect and more of a complicated 360 degrees all the way

01:11:04   around elliptical shape. Super ellipse or whatever they call it. Yeah. So it would be weird to me if

01:11:09   they then went flat, but you know, like I said, I've heard that maybe it's a legit design. I don't

01:11:14   know if it's credible or not, but it didn't happen. What we did get is a bigger screen

01:11:19   and faster battery charging 33% faster battery charging if you use a USB-C to Apple Watch charger.

01:11:26   Yes. Not a big deal. Not a big upgrade. Not bad. Now. It's a different market though. Like with

01:11:33   the iPhone, it's such a saturated market and the upgrade cycles are three, four, five years out now.

01:11:38   But most people, even most iPhone owners still don't have an Apple Watch and Apple's less

01:11:43   concerned about Apple Watch upgrade. I mean, they'll take your money regardless, but they're

01:11:47   less concerned about Apple Watch upgrades than they are of just getting people into the Apple Watch

01:11:51   to begin with. So I think they're just constantly chipping away at roadblocks and adding features

01:11:56   that they think will appeal so that more and more people end up getting their first Apple Watch at

01:12:00   this point. Yeah. And the other thing they didn't spend a lot of time talking about it, but they did

01:12:05   talk about some durability improvements to the front facing crystal, which I believe only pertains

01:12:11   to the aluminum models, the ones that use the ion glass or whatever they call it, not the Sapphire

01:12:17   that's on the steel and titanium ones. Yeah. The ion exchange glass. But that's the sort of thing

01:12:24   that it shows that Apple sees these and they know people are using them for fitness. I have friends

01:12:33   who are into rock climbing and are still, they really were looking for, they want that rumor.

01:12:38   Remember, Gurman had the rumor earlier this year of the Apple Watch. What did he call it? Expedition?

01:12:43   The rugged. Yeah, Expedition, the ruggedized version. Or Explorer. Explorer would be weird

01:12:49   because that to me would be a code name, not a product name because Rolex famously has the

01:12:57   Explorer and Explorer II. That was like the watch that was first taken to the top of Mount Everest.

01:13:03   I can't see them using Explorer, but whatever. The idea would be like a G-Shock type Apple Watch.

01:13:08   And I know there's demand for that. There's definitely demand for that because there's

01:13:13   people who just, it doesn't matter what you say about how rugged the glass is, it's still glass

01:13:18   and rock climbing in particular. Rocks are pretty hard. Or people still use garments because the

01:13:24   garment is just, they do have ruggedized versions and Apple doesn't. Right. I linked to it. I

01:13:28   remember it was when I was a kid. When Casio first came out with the G-Shock, the commercial,

01:13:34   the iconic commercial was they strapped it to a hockey puck and had a hockey player slap shot it

01:13:39   past the goalie and then show that the watch was unharmed. I wouldn't do that with an Apple Watch.

01:13:46   I mean, it's just not that type. So there's a market for that. This isn't that. But it just

01:13:50   shows though the idea that they would even re-engineer the way the crystal is made. It's

01:13:56   thicker. And then there's some talk on the web pages about how it connects to the aluminum frame,

01:14:03   that it's just more durable all across the board, like less likely to crack and less likely to like

01:14:10   pop off. That just shows though that Apple knows people spending four or $500 on an Apple Watch,

01:14:16   it's still a $400 watch. That's way more than most people spend on a watch. And they expect it

01:14:20   to last for years. And that commercial when you feel the person falling off the bike and just

01:14:26   slamming the watch into the ground, that was a wincing moment for me. The biggest

01:14:32   disappointment to me watch-wise yesterday is that the entry model is still the Series 3.

01:14:38   Jared: Yeah, same.

01:14:40   Pete: Because it's like, "Oh man, that thing is long in the tooth." And even just for

01:14:44   sympathizing with my developer friends who look forward to the day of no longer supporting the

01:14:52   old original sharp cornered display for two sizes of watch. Because the Series 3 is the one of the

01:14:59   old original form factor with the old original purely rectangular screen. And Series 4 is when

01:15:06   they started with the round racks for the display, significantly bigger display, and just nicer,

01:15:14   I would, it would be such a nicer baseline.

01:15:16   Jared I was thinking like, often it's based entirely on differentiation. And I was thinking

01:15:20   when they and they wanted the Apple Watch Series 3 because it doesn't look like the more expensive

01:15:24   Apple Watch. But now that the most expensive Apple Watch has a new design, I was hoping that they

01:15:28   would push down the previous Apple Watch 4 design, you maybe move the SE to the low end, which is

01:15:33   what the iPhone SE is, and then have maybe like a Series 4 or Series 5 somewhere in the middle

01:15:39   ground. Also because selfishly, that's the cap point for updates. And if Apple's selling a brand

01:15:46   new Apple Watch Series 3, that's going to keep watchOS bound to that device for at least a few

01:15:51   years. And maybe that costs us a few things over time.

01:15:54   Pete Right, no, it might, you know, that's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking. But I get it,

01:15:57   you know, and I know that that's sort of how pricing works. And it's not dastardly, but you can

01:16:04   say starting at $199, and then you go in the store and start looking at them. And when you're looking

01:16:10   at them, it's true of any sort of watches, but it's absolutely the case with like mechanical watches

01:16:16   too. You cannot judge by photos, you have to see it on your wrist, you have to look at it in real,

01:16:22   at the real size. And, you know, you look at the Series 3 compared to even the Apple Watch SE,

01:16:28   and it's like, oh, I do see Oh, that is nicer, huh? Well, all right, I was already gonna,

01:16:33   sure, I was already gonna spend $200. Why not I spend $300?

01:16:37   Jared It's that cheap microwave that you go to the store for and end up buying the nicer microwave,

01:16:41   it doesn't look like a piece of crap. But I'm also sure they have data that shows that there is a

01:16:45   segment of the customer base, that is parents or children, the people who are doing family setups,

01:16:50   that they just want the lowest viable product. Yeah, for an Apple Watch.

01:16:54   Pete Yeah, no, no, I'm sure they do sell the Series 3 too. But it's the biggest disappointment

01:17:00   to me just because not because I want to buy the cheapest Apple Watch, but I just like the idea of

01:17:05   getting everybody at Series 4 later. Yeah. Anything else on that watch or fitness?

01:17:11   Jared I guess overall, we're gonna have to wait and see because the watches aren't coming out.

01:17:16   You know, famously last year, we got the watch before the iPhone, now we're getting the iPhone

01:17:19   before the watch. So it's sort of like getting the shuttlecraft without the Starship. And I want it,

01:17:24   it's one of those products where I really want to get it in my hands and try it out and see what

01:17:27   palpable differences are really in it. Pete Yeah, that is interesting. And later

01:17:31   this fall, it leaves them an awful lot of leeway. I guess with manufacturing problems, and with the

01:17:37   chip shortages, and just the way COVID is still screwing up the whole world, they don't know. So

01:17:43   why not leave it as vague as possible? I would guess just based on previous years where items

01:17:49   were late, that we're talking mid to late October. Maybe with like reviews going out in mid-October

01:17:58   and pre-orders third week of October and shipping at the end of October-ish schedule, but I have no

01:18:04   idea. Jared

01:18:05   Because they're hot items for the holidays and they're going to want to make sure that they're

01:18:08   available to order. Pete

01:18:09   Yeah, it's exactly like I said with the AirPods. You know it's a huge holiday item. Whoever,

01:18:13   and Jeff Williams's team is directly overseeing, "Let's get these out as soon as we can." They're

01:18:21   not like, "Oh, la-di-da! Later this fall, I've got all the stuff." I'm going to take off.

01:18:25   Jared It's like, "Why aren't you on a plane?"

01:18:26   Pete Yeah, exactly. There's probably quite a few people who got the "Why aren't you on a

01:18:32   plane" already regarding this because the clock is ticking. We talk about it all every year,

01:18:38   but you know, a lot of people like to get their Christmas shopping out of the way or as early as

01:18:41   possible. So, it does make a difference. Jared

01:18:44   When the person who owns the product is also the COO, you have very little safety margin in there

01:18:48   for your inactivity. Pete

01:18:51   Let me thank our third and final sponsor of the episode. Another product I truly love. I would

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01:21:19   And you get a hundred-day free trial. All right, iPhone 13. I guess no surprises. Any surprises?

01:21:26   Jared: No, I don't think there were any big surprises. I mean, either because there were,

01:21:31   not just because there were leaks, but also because Apple, we've now got, what is it,

01:21:35   14 previous models to base Apple's release strategy or cadence at.

01:21:40   Jay: Right. I am happy that it turned out to be true. I believe the rumors were all over the

01:21:49   place on this though, too, whether the pro cameras would all would both be the same, both sizes.

01:21:56   Last year was the first time since the Plus era, circa six, seven, eight, that the smaller

01:22:05   pro tier phone had a lesser camera system than the big pro max, which was a heartbreaker for me.

01:22:13   I actually wound up, I didn't even buy the 12 Pro. I bought the iPhone 12 with just two lenses.

01:22:19   Turned out to be a pretty good bet because I bought it at a time when COVID was already

01:22:23   not good. I knew that it was going to be bad all winter long. And I thought, so therefore,

01:22:28   I'll only really have the summer where I'll be going anywhere. Probably took less photos,

01:22:33   fewer photos last year than any other year. This year though, 13 Pro, 13 Pro Max, exact same camera

01:22:40   systems. And the 13 and 13 mini have the same cameras as each other.

01:22:46   Jared: Yes. And they all have sensor shift on the wide angles now, not just the max,

01:22:51   which is really nice.

01:22:51   Jay Right. Right. Everybody's got sensor shift on the wide angle, which is the, it still,

01:22:58   it screws me up because it's the 1X and I think wide angle is the one that 0.5X, but that's

01:23:04   ultra wide. Like I kind of wish it was, instead of calling it wide and ultra wide, they called

01:23:10   the 0.5 wide called the 1X normal or regular and called the telephoto, telephoto, but whatever.

01:23:18   I tried to stick in it to the numeric X modifiers.

01:23:23   Jared Yeah. They're just going by the effect of millimeter numbers, I guess.

01:23:26   Jay Right. There are, it is true though, that it's not the, oh, and the telephoto now goes to

01:23:33   3.0X. So that's pretty good. Like in, in terms of like, where is Apple making progress year over

01:23:42   year and where are they clearly devoting their engineering resources? It's the camera, right?

01:23:48   I mean, I don't even know what I'm going to do for a review this year because my lead last year

01:23:53   was entirely that they could just call it the Apple camera. It's way more of a camera than a phone.

01:23:58   Jared Screw pans, Reno, you could just go to Disney.

01:24:01   Jay Right. It's, it's the camera, you know, and I didn't stop watch it, but if you combine

01:24:08   both Kayan Drance's iPhone 13 introduction with JAWS's 13 Pro introduction, it clearly,

01:24:16   most of the time was spent talking about camera stuff, both video and still and with the new

01:24:20   cinematic mode for video. Jared So what do you think, like, just going back to the telephoto

01:24:25   for a minute, they went previously, it was effective 52 millimeter for the iPhone Pro Max

01:24:30   last year, they went up to 65. Now they've gone up to 77, like an effective 77 millimeters, but

01:24:37   at the same time, they've gone from, I think it was 2.0 to 2.4 and now 2.8. So they're going longer,

01:24:43   but they're not, but they're also going slower at the same time. Jay Right. With the aperture.

01:24:46   Jared Yeah. Jay And that's just sort of the nature of going to longer lenses. I mean,

01:24:50   you know this better than I do with your racket with YouTube, but well, but you go to longer

01:24:56   fixed lenses and they get slower, the aperture numbers go up as the widest that they get.

01:25:00   I think there's a lot that goes into it, but clearly part of it is that the Pro models are

01:25:08   the only ones with the LIDAR and that's used for night mode portrait photography and for

01:25:17   faster autofocus in low light. So the things that would be worse because the maximum aperture is a

01:25:24   larger number are being helped through the computational photography and with the help

01:25:30   of the LIDAR and the sensor shift and also there's all sorts of other things they're doing

01:25:35   to compensate. Putting all the numbers aside, it doesn't seem like it's getting worse to take

01:25:41   low light pictures with the telephoto lens. In fact, it's probably getting better even though

01:25:47   the aperture is going up. Jared Yeah, I think that's very true. I think they've always been

01:25:51   making smart trade-offs and now they have a bit of the same thing that Google's getting criticized

01:25:55   for and that is they're sticking with 12 megapixel sensors and using computational technology to get

01:26:00   past those where other phone cameras are doing these massive 108 megapixel sensors and pixel

01:26:06   binning them down, but they're clearly making trade-offs that generate the sort of imagery

01:26:11   that they want. Jay Right. They're not going to re-ignite the megapixel sensor war from the

01:26:16   early years of digital photography. They increased the size of the pixels again this year, right?

01:26:22   I mean, that was one of the things and they've been adamant. They didn't even mention it really,

01:26:25   but I mean, like from the years when Phil Schiller was doing the camera segment introductions,

01:26:29   that's more important to getting overall better images than more pixels. Bigger pixels is better

01:26:37   than more pixels at a certain point. You know, there's obviously a certain point where if it

01:26:43   was only one or two megapixels, that's not big enough to blow up. 12 megapixels is pretty big,

01:26:47   especially when you consider that it's in a friggin' phone.

01:26:51   And I say this as somebody who wants pixel binning and I want a periscope zoom because I feel like

01:26:56   big zoom is the last thing that a traditional camera does that an iPhone still can't do.

01:27:00   Jay But that's a, to go from 2.0 with a 52 millimeter equivalent in one year at 2.5 and then

01:27:08   now 3.0 and it's in the smaller 6.1 inch 13 Pro, that's pretty good two year over year improvement.

01:27:18   I look forward to it. You know, it's nice. I've missed having the telephoto lens. Like I said,

01:27:23   I didn't miss it as much as I would, I think most years because I didn't travel for most of the year

01:27:27   and even when we could travel, I didn't travel much, but I look forward to it for next year.

01:27:32   Phil I love it. I use it a lot because the natural

01:27:34   bokeh you can get off the telephoto without even using portrait mode is really nice.

01:27:38   Jay Yeah, it really is. And you get more of that with a longer lens.

01:27:42   Phil Yeah.

01:27:43   Jay I do think the other thing that's worth

01:27:44   pointing out and Apple isn't going to emphasize because they don't want to throw their very nice

01:27:51   iPhone 13 and 13 mini under the bus, but it's not just that the Pros have a 3x telephoto lens that

01:27:59   the other two don't have. The Pro models have better 1x and better 0.5x lenses as well. And

01:28:09   that's not something Apple points out. Like I said, they're not going to throw one of them

01:28:14   under the bus, but it's a pretty significant difference.

01:28:17   Phil Yeah, the light capture capabilities on the wide angle are way better. And for the first time,

01:28:22   they have focus pixels, which is what Apple calls phase adjust focus for some reason,

01:28:26   they have focus pixels in the ultra wide angle, which means it can do things that the previous ones

01:28:31   couldn't like the macro mode that they've introduced.

01:28:33   Jay Right. So macro mode is pro only. And that's because

01:28:38   it uses the 0.5x lens, even though I believe the process of doing it is in the camera app,

01:28:46   you pick 1x. And then you bring the camera really close to a subject two centimeters is really,

01:28:54   really close. And it will switch to using the 0.5x ultra wide camera, but you're still in 1x mode in

01:29:03   the camera in terms of the perspective, you know, in the field of view. But it's to get that close

01:29:09   and to focus that close, they need to switch to the other camera. And only the pros have an ultra

01:29:16   wide that supports autofocus. And Apple calls it autofocus. But like you said, it's not, it's,

01:29:23   you know, it's not what you traditionally think of as autofocus, but it definitely has a better

01:29:27   focusing system. Yeah, I think the 0.5, one, two x or three x thing is confusing, because

01:29:33   I think people actually think they relate to the cameras where they really just relate to the

01:29:37   punch in level. And then behind the scenes, Apple will use whichever camera it needs,

01:29:41   right, get the job done, depending on lighting and all these other conditions.

01:29:43   Jay Yeah, ever since they've switched to two camera lenses,

01:29:47   in low light, they will occasionally when you when you think in the UI, you're using two x,

01:29:53   it just means if it's sufficiently low light that the two x camera can't get a good image for the

01:29:59   same reason that we were just talking about a couple of minutes ago that that the longer lenses

01:30:04   have less, worse low light capabilities, they'll use the one x camera and just digitally zoom to

01:30:12   two x and just know that they're going to get a better result. And you don't have to worry about

01:30:16   it as a user, you just tap the button and do it. It's an implementation detail, I am a little

01:30:21   interested about I have to say personally, it's it's like a very, very low grade OCD,

01:30:32   where I like to shoot at exactly 0.5, one point x or two point x or now, you know, next year 3.0 x,

01:30:42   like I don't like dialing into 2.7 or 2.3. And knowing that it's digital zoom, but I think I

01:30:50   have to get over that, right? Because now, there is like, it's great that you can get optical zoom

01:30:57   up to a 77 millimeter field of view in traditional 35 millimeter photography, what they're calling

01:31:03   3.0 x, and that's totally optical from the camera. But it's also the case that the two x 52 ish,

01:31:12   50 ish, traditional standard lens, what photographers call a normal lens, because it's

01:31:19   like that perspective, supposedly is the closest to human vision, where it doesn't feel wide,

01:31:27   and it doesn't feel tele, it just feels totally natural. That's a very good field of view.

01:31:32   Jared: Like the compression, like at 13 millimeters, you look like Dobby the house elf,

01:31:36   right at 120 you look flat, right? And 50 you look like how you expect to look.

01:31:40   Pete: Yeah, normal is, it's an interesting adjective for it, but it's, now to get that

01:31:46   normal field of view at 2.0 x in the camera app, it would be, I presume, using the 1.0

01:31:56   wide angle lens and digitally zooming 2x. I think it'll be fine, and I shouldn't worry about it,

01:32:04   it'll look fine. Jared; The compression will be different,

01:32:06   but like you'll have to be a camera nerd to really notice it.

01:32:08   Pete; You know, that you're just cropping from the 1.0 view, but it's, overall, it's a win.

01:32:13   It's good. Jared; 80 millimeters is a very popular portrait.

01:32:17   Pete; Yeah, yeah, 85 is often, yeah, 85 and, you know, and they just work out to these equivalents

01:32:22   like 77, it's very close. What else was a big camera feature? The cinematic mode looks amazing.

01:32:33   Will it work as well as they say? I don't know, but I mean, especially with camera stuff, they've

01:32:38   never exaggerated, right? Like, they've, year after year, what they say iPhone cameras can do,

01:32:44   they've done pretty good. I mean, we can quibble about them selectively picking portrait examples,

01:32:52   especially in the early years of portrait mode, that did a much better job occluding

01:32:58   people's curly hair than you could get. Jared; Yeah, like not wearing glasses,

01:33:02   not seeing reflections. Pete; Right, right. Glasses were a big problem

01:33:06   for years, probably still are to some degree, but they've gotten better at it. So, I would guess

01:33:12   that cinematic mode video will have some things like that, but it is super cool that you can edit

01:33:18   all of it after the fact. So, if it misses that sort of, hey, the subject turned around to look

01:33:25   at this other person, rack the focus to focus on the other person. If the software, if the AI

01:33:33   doesn't do that exactly the way you thought that it would, you can fix it in post, you know,

01:33:38   like with no sacrifice other than the time it takes you to go into the editing mode and tweak it.

01:33:45   Jared; And just the thing that always impresses me about Apple is a lot of this is just based

01:33:50   completely on the power of their silicon, which is why they can do these things. And they almost

01:33:54   always insist, like I think night mode is the biggest exception, they insist on doing this

01:33:57   stuff in real time. And we've talked before, like I was shocked when I did, when I used other camera

01:34:02   phones and depth effect, like portrait mode was applied as a filter after the photo was taken,

01:34:07   where with Apple you've always just seen it in the viewfinder, you've pressed the button,

01:34:10   and it's captured that picture. And here, they're not just applying depth effect to the live frame,

01:34:15   but they're measuring the frames before and afterwards so that the, like the book is not

01:34:19   changing in between every frame, which would be a horrible look. They're trying to maintain

01:34:23   a consistency between them. And the pipeline for that and the pipeline for ProRes, at least

01:34:28   according to what JAWS was saying during the keynote was it's everything from the Apple neural

01:34:33   engine to the GPU to the controller for the storage, everything has been optimized to take

01:34:39   this huge amount of data, which is still limited to 1080p 30, because it's just so much data,

01:34:44   and they're crunching it in real time and then adding that as data you can edit into the video

01:34:49   file, which to me is just amazingly impressive and really pays off that investment in the

01:34:53   silicon they've been making. Yeah, it seems like the downside to cinematic mode is that it's 1080,

01:35:00   not 4K, and maximum frame rate of 30 frames per second. It's not clear to me whether it's going

01:35:06   to support 24 frames per second. It seems like some of the material I've read just says 1080,

01:35:12   30 frames per second. Yeah, that would, that's a little weird to me that they literally call

01:35:17   it cinematic mode and wouldn't let you shoot 24 frames per second, which everybody, most people

01:35:22   seem to agree is the most cinematic frame rate. But… There's already tons of complaints on Twitter

01:35:28   about that. It was like the first thing that the video, the video Twitter went crazy about.

01:35:32   But for whatever reason that's really never been clear to me, even though I've spoken to people

01:35:39   who would know, and it's one of those things you bring it up and they totally give you,

01:35:42   they look you in the eye and they know that it's a good question, and then the words coming out of

01:35:46   their mouth don't really answer the question. But they've always supported 24 frames per second

01:35:55   at 4K ever since they've started supporting 4K video, but they've never supported 24 frames per

01:36:02   second at 1080. I don't understand that. Like that to me is two different things that shouldn't be

01:36:09   tied together. Like why not if I'm like shooting something, or if I know I'm low on space, or I'm

01:36:18   going to shoot tons and tons of video footage, just fill up a 512 gigabyte phone with video footage.

01:36:25   So I want to shoot 1080 so I can get the most on the phone as possible. Why not let me shoot 24

01:36:31   frames per second? Because that's the sort of thing you can't fix in post. I mean, you can,

01:36:37   I mean, you know more about this than me, but you can shoot 30 frames per second and down sample to

01:36:41   24. But it comes out weird, right? Yeah, I mean, like, that's, it's a whole long story. Like I

01:36:49   shoot in 60 for B roll because 60 you can divide into 24 or 30 depending on what you need. But

01:36:54   otherwise, you've got to use one of those things like Final Cut Pro's frame filler, basically

01:36:58   optical frame filler, which goes in and tries to recalculate the frames based on the rate.

01:37:02   It's super interesting to me. It's like I would I would make a conspiracy theory that Marquez Brownlee

01:37:07   got to them and convinced them to do 30 frames per second, but there's no way he'd shoot in 1080p.

01:37:11   So that just throws that whole conspiracy theory out the window. Yeah, I would have almost been

01:37:16   less surprised if they only supported one and only one combination of resolution and frame rate,

01:37:22   I would have been less surprised if it was 24 frames per second than 30. Even though I get,

01:37:26   I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, because 30 is like the broadcast standard. But if you just think about

01:37:30   it, four is more common for movies, and 30 is more common for TV, but only because American TVs ran

01:37:35   at 60 hertz, that 30 was easily divisible. Right. So let's see if they do a software update for

01:37:42   that. But I can't help but wonder if I don't know, there's some kind of decision inside Apple that

01:37:46   1080 never drops to 24 and only 4k does. But it's obvious that the cinematic mode is so

01:37:54   processor intensive, or not just processor chip intensive, right? That it's it's computationally

01:38:01   expensive, that that's why it's limited to 1080 instead of 4k that they you know, it's it's that's

01:38:06   as much as they can do in real time. I wonder if it's just really simple in that movies aren't

01:38:12   1080p movies need to be bigger than that. And so they have the 24 frames per second for 4k. But

01:38:17   television is at least in North America, it's 64 it's 30 frames per second. So there's no 24 frames

01:38:23   per second television. So they just pegged 720p and 1080 at 30 frames per second. Yeah, I don't

01:38:28   know. We'll see. That's that's my only disappointment on that. But I expect to see a lot of

01:38:32   this. I hope it I hope it works mostly as good as they say, if it works exactly as well as they say,

01:38:38   I'm gonna love it. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. We shall see.

01:38:43   And it's also like you can manually adjust what you want the like you can rack focus,

01:38:48   basically, you can manually pick what you want. But it'll also detect eyes and focus on whatever

01:38:52   the closest set of eyes are. And if those eyes look away, it'll go to the next closest set of

01:38:56   eyes. And if a closer set of eyes comes back in, it'll then shift to those automatically for you.

01:39:00   And like you said, you can change it in post. But if if that's basically what you want, if you want,

01:39:04   like the the standard cinematography rules of Hollywood implementation, they've given you that

01:39:10   automatically. Yeah. Anything else camera wise? Like the one thing that that irks me in the entire

01:39:18   coverage is like Apple family, like you said, they didn't talk about the A15 at all with the iPad

01:39:23   Mini. They didn't mention the processor for the Apple Watch. And they didn't even spend very much

01:39:27   time on the A15 compared to what they spent on the A14 like twice last year. And I think that

01:39:33   led some people to believe that the A15 was somehow under impressive. And there were some

01:39:37   substack articles saying that Apple's hit a wall that there's been this mass exodus of talent,

01:39:41   that they're no longer improving their processors. And it was too profound to me because it was

01:39:46   it was based off such a flimsy supposition and completely weird thinking. Because as far as I

01:39:52   can tell, it's going to be a completely normal year. Like they're not getting the massive

01:39:56   benefits of a process shrink like they got last year when they went to five nanometers. But it'll

01:40:00   be and I say this with like no actual knowledge of the chip. I don't I don't have it to test at

01:40:04   this point. But like it'll be like the 10% increase that Apple typically gets on a processor, but

01:40:10   their thinking is so far beyond just the cores. Now, there's only so much you can do with pure

01:40:15   cores with the same process given the thermal envelope of the device without having to spike

01:40:20   the battery like all these constraints that they have. But what they can do with the with the extra

01:40:25   features like the non big core features is limitless. And we're seeing so much of that with

01:40:31   cinematic video, which is that whole new pipeline and ProRes, which is really a lot of heavy

01:40:36   computational work to optimize for in a chipset. And we're getting all of that, like all the stuff

01:40:42   the neural engine is doing. We've got new encode decode blocks, ProRes encode decode blocks, they've

01:40:47   made a dedicated always on coprocessor for your fingers so that it will be able to adjust promotion,

01:40:52   not just based on the content, but the actual interactivity of your finger at the instant it's

01:40:57   doing it. There's all these things in the a 15. But there's all these articles and hot takes popping

01:41:02   up about how Apple's hit a wall with processors nice. I had to get that off my chest. And it's

01:41:07   it's true, though, right? Who knows? Maybe it is disappointing performance was I don't know yet

01:41:11   either. I have yet to touch an iPhone 13 of any kind. Oh, so who knows? And it is true. Like I saw

01:41:18   that substack article. And I guess I take him as word that there have been a lot of great chip

01:41:22   engineers who've left Apple for other companies, you know, and that's that happens, right? That

01:41:28   people leave for other, you know, so who knows? But I it seems to me like what Apple knows is

01:41:36   nobody is talking about their iPhone being slow. Like it's things aren't slow on your iPad. And so

01:41:42   bragging about the CPU being 100 and you know, 1.3 times faster, whatever the number turns out to be.

01:41:49   That doesn't mean anything to people if they don't feel that they're 1.0 speed. That's the baseline

01:41:55   is anything but fast. With Apple's thinking about our effects of the chip, right? Like you said,

01:42:02   like promotion. I mean, so I don't even know how this is possible. But I was looking at the battery

01:42:07   life spec. So battery life is up across the board for all of the iPhone 13. And it's a super big

01:42:14   deal for the 13 mini, right? Everybody agrees the biggest the biggest knock about the 13 mini or 12

01:42:21   mini was a battery life. You know, for the obvious, it had a smaller battery because it's a smaller

01:42:27   device. And the I forget what factor they say it's up by but it is significant. I think it's like

01:42:33   1.5 hours 1.5 five for the bigger ones, right? Yeah, 2.5 for the bigger ones of actual real

01:42:40   daily use. And that's one thing talking to some people yesterday at Apple that they emphasize is

01:42:46   that they never quite know how to talk about battery life because you can run certain tests

01:42:52   and you know, but what they're trying to say with those numbers that they quoted,

01:42:56   is they mean real people really using the iPhone in a way like them, like the people at Apple who've

01:43:02   been testing these iPhone 13 models over the summer, when they had them in their pocket as

01:43:08   their daily driver. This is how much longer the battery lasted before the phone was dead in typical

01:43:14   in their typical use. That is significant an hour and a half is pretty good for the mini two and a

01:43:19   half is really good for the other ones. I don't know if you saw the optimized settings like when

01:43:25   you when you look at the actual page when it's optimized tasks like streaming video, like when

01:43:28   things are hitting the accelerator blocks, it's hours and hours of extra video watching and video

01:43:34   like that was ridiculous amounts more. Yeah, the compare page, which I always love. Yeah,

01:43:39   like the iPhone, apple.com slash iPhone slash compare and you can pick up to three I always

01:43:44   wish you could pick four or more I'd like to get more but it's great for just looking to try to

01:43:49   spot the differences between them. The video max is like 813 and 15 hours more than last year's

01:43:55   program. They they quote video playback, which is a fair comparison, right? Like let's say you're

01:44:00   going on a trans Pacific flight and you're going to watch movies on your phone the whole time.

01:44:06   The pro max 13 pro max is up to 28 hours, the 13 pro 22 hours, the 1319 hours and the 13 mini 17

01:44:18   hours. Now the thing I don't remember what last year's numbers were and I didn't I ran out of

01:44:22   research time before we started recording. But I find it fascinating that the 13 Pro has three

01:44:29   hours longer 22 versus 19 then the same sized iPhone 13. When they have the L shaped battery,

01:44:38   which gives them a little bit more juice. And it's the same physical form factor, you know,

01:44:42   same width, height and depth. But there was a lot of speculation that with the pro models getting

01:44:50   pro motion going to 120 hertz on the display that I remember seeing a couple articles speculating

01:44:57   that the 13 Pro might get worse battery life. Yeah, then the 13 and in fact, it's not just

01:45:04   equivalent, it's better. One of the reasons that's certainly true is because of the way

01:45:08   promotion works. I don't know, do you know if Android phones with high refresh rates, do they

01:45:12   dynamically adjust or if you're in high frame rate, you're always 120 hertz. So this is like

01:45:18   this whole thing that I think has been vastly underreported because like just doing 120 hertz

01:45:22   is not a problem. It's been a lot of the early ones that did it, they had to lower the resolution,

01:45:27   because it really did hit battery life or it would destroy their color management, or it would they

01:45:31   would have to change when the brightness level changed because they couldn't handle it. Like it

01:45:35   was it was a deeply compromised solution. The panels Apple using now the processor using now

01:45:40   is similar to what Samsung used for the last version of the note and the most recent Galaxy S

01:45:44   I think it's the 21. And that's the LTPO OLED and LTPO. It's the same thing as Ixo was for LCD.

01:45:50   That's when the iPad Pro got promotion. So that allows it to do all of this stuff much more energy

01:45:57   efficiently. And so this, I guess the best way to describe it is the previous implementations were

01:46:02   either not very good, or they were at such small scale that they could supply the LTPO panels for

01:46:06   it. This is the first time that you'd be able to do it at Apple scale. Right. So it's it's really,

01:46:11   you know, the only explanation for the 13 Pro getting noticeably better battery life than the

01:46:17   regular 13 is that it has a bigger battery again this year, just like last year. And it can get

01:46:22   those numbers for video playback. Because if you're watching a movie that again to bring up frame

01:46:27   rate, if it's 24 or 30 frames per second, the screen will dynamically adjust to 24 or 30 hertz

01:46:33   so that it's only updating for each frame of the video. It doesn't, you know, there's no point to

01:46:38   doing it faster. So I thought that dropping you off to an encode block, so you're not lighting up

01:46:43   the entire processor the whole time. Right. I thought that you know, and that's the sort of

01:46:48   thing Apple is putting the chips towards right. And it's like cinematic mode didn't just come

01:46:54   out of the software team for the camera app when they do features like that, I've spoken to them,

01:47:00   I haven't spoken to anybody on the camera team about cinematic mode, but I've spoken to them

01:47:06   about portrait mode before that that portrait mode for still photos was designed hand in hand with the

01:47:11   ISP team, you know, to have an image signal so that they could do it live, you know, that it really

01:47:17   is I know, like you said, sometimes people don't think that that Apple executives are speaking as

01:47:23   plainly as they can. But like when JAWS talked about that, it really is true that these features,

01:47:28   it's like we would like to be able to make do the equivalent of portrait mode for video,

01:47:34   but that it would, you know, it's more than just finding a face, it would be, you know, being able

01:47:40   to rack focus and do it do all this. They've been talking to the chip team for years about how can

01:47:45   we make that happen so that we can do it in real time and not affect battery life. So battery life

01:47:52   improvements is a much bigger selling point to almost everybody than being able to say that the

01:47:58   CPU runs 1.3 times faster and can compute, you know, whatever it is you think you need the CPU

01:48:06   to run faster for and I'm not downplay, you know, CPUs need to be faster, you know, and JavaScript

01:48:11   is slow is a slow programming language. And we all run lots of JavaScript. You know, I like faster

01:48:15   CPUs too. But it just isn't a compelling selling point. So I'm not surprised they didn't brag about

01:48:21   it, even if there were numbers that would assuage the fears of people who think the a 15 is no faster

01:48:27   than the a 14. The thing that I find interesting to do is like marketing will absolutely talk about

01:48:32   the speed of the processor. But when you talk to the silicon team, they almost never mentioned

01:48:36   speed like they don't mention performance. And when you talk to them to the almost downplay it,

01:48:41   they'll say like, you know, if we had to lose a little bit of frequency to gain a lot of battery

01:48:45   life, we'll make that trade every day of the week and three times on Sunday, because I think they

01:48:49   had this revelation early on, that efficiency creates performance, the more efficiently they

01:48:54   can do these things, the better the performance. And to your point, I think we're a lot of other

01:48:59   companies have made mistakes. It's like, we want faster JavaScript, do we need to make the entire

01:49:04   CPU faster? Can we have an efficiency core that does that? Can we have a dedicated Java

01:49:09   rendering IP on the chip that takes that away from the CPU, so we can do it way faster, which is what

01:49:14   they've been doing. When people talk about Apple's obsessed with performance, they aren't the

01:49:19   performance is almost a side effect, which makes it even more ludicrous to me.

01:49:22   Pete: I'm trying to think what else before we wrap up, whether to talk about the colors,

01:49:26   starlight, apparently, again, I haven't seen one in person, but it's, it looks silver to me on

01:49:32   screen. What I have been told is that it is silver with a touch of gold. But perhaps not quite

01:49:39   champagne, like champagne would be a description that implies too much gold. Midnight, as you might

01:49:47   guess from midnight blue is not just a pure black or very deep gray. It has a touch of indigo,

01:49:53   which is a fancy way of saying blue. I think from judging anecdotally from friends and spouses,

01:50:01   Sierra blue is going to be a very popular color this year.

01:50:06   Jared: Yeah, yeah. I was joking. Does this mean the iPhone 14 is going to be high Sierra blue?

01:50:10   Pete; High Sierra blue, that would be funny.

01:50:13   Jared; Also, the product red this year looks like a little deeper red and blue, the regular blue

01:50:19   looks a little more teal. So, every year they seem to refresh the colors slightly.

01:50:23   Pete; Yeah, it seems like blue is a big color this year. Even also, if we dial back to the watch,

01:50:30   maybe I'm reading into this, maybe it's something they could have done before,

01:50:35   but they just weren't, they didn't feel, you know, they have, we've talked about,

01:50:41   you and I have talked about this, where they have like a color team who figures out what the,

01:50:45   Jared; Yes.

01:50:45   Pete; What the popular colors of the moment trend wise are. But it seems like the green

01:50:52   Apple watch is such a deep green. I think Tim Cook was wearing it in his interview with iJustine

01:51:00   on YouTube. And it, at first looked black. It's such a deep, like olive green. It seems to me

01:51:08   like they've really upped their game on being able to anodize aluminum in very rich colors.

01:51:16   So, as opposed to the early years where even like space wasn't all that dark, you know, and the gold

01:51:23   was just sort of a gold tint and everything was just sort of silver with a tint. Now they've got

01:51:27   these colors and the product red really pops. I mean, that is like, a really deep red and the

01:51:35   green really seems deep too. And the blue, all of these colors seem very blue. Now maybe that's just

01:51:40   trend wise. Maybe they could have done this a few years ago, but at the time they felt that fainter

01:51:45   tinted colors were called for and rich.

01:51:49   Jared; They're almost pastel for a couple years.

01:51:51   Pete; Yeah, yeah, very much so. Whereas this year they're very, very vibrant.

01:51:54   Jared; Except for the pink. You didn't get a hot pink this year.

01:51:56   Pete; No.

01:51:56   Jared; Kind of a subdued pink.

01:51:57   Pete; No, which was funny too because I thought that doesn't seem right to me. And then I realized

01:52:01   that I was judging it based on a mock-up from like MacRumors where somebody said they were

01:52:05   going to be pink. I hate, I just, I would pay MacRumors money, I would pay a subscription fee

01:52:11   per month to get a version that never shows me speculative mock-ups of products. Just don't,

01:52:18   I don't want to see them. It's like I somehow…

01:52:20   Jared; You should get Arnold Kim on the phone right now.

01:52:22   Pete; I somehow thought that they're like sort of Hello Kitty pink phone, which I'm not even

01:52:28   saying Apple wouldn't make. It might be super popular, but it wasn't what they shipped, you

01:52:32   know. But somehow…

01:52:33   Jared; It's the holograms edition.

01:52:34   Pete; Somehow it infected my head and I thought it was real and I was like, I thought that was

01:52:38   going to be more vibrant and I'm like, ah, that's just a mock-up.

01:52:41   Jared; Or like the matte black iPhone everybody was drooling about and got really angry that it

01:52:45   wasn't at the event.

01:52:46   Pete; Yeah, well, what happened to that? I don't know. It seems like people, colors are another one

01:52:50   of those things that to me speaks to where in the pipeline leaks come from. They come from like the

01:52:58   CAD stage and don't come from the product marketing stage and colors are always, I would say

01:53:04   that was probably the thing that the rumors were the most off on, other than the flat-sided Apple

01:53:10   watch.

01:53:10   Jared; Yeah, I mean, and the people who know what the final products are, not the people who leak,

01:53:15   those are people like in the product marketing, those are the deep Apple people.

01:53:18   Pete; No plastic wrap this year on the phones. Apparently they just come in cardboard boxes that

01:53:24   are not sealed. You just lift them up and that they're going to save 600 million tons of plastic,

01:53:29   which seems bananas to me, right? Like, because I feel like with all the review units I got last

01:53:35   year, I got like four review units and then I bought a phone and my wife bought a phone. So,

01:53:40   we had like six new iPhones and it doesn't feel like you could ever get to 600 million tons with

01:53:45   the plastic wrap, but it adds up, obviously.

01:53:48   Jared; Well, you know, the ASMR people are going to be so angry at Apple right now.

01:53:51   Pete; Oh, yeah, because it's nothing. There's got to be nothing to crinkle. Oh, no, maybe

01:53:55   that maybe there's a screen cover. I bet they've got a screen cover. I don't know.

01:53:58   Jared; It's got to be something or maybe they can just get some aluminum foil and crinkle that in

01:54:01   the background.

01:54:02   Pete; Right. The other thing I guess we would be remiss not to mention is that they've bumped up

01:54:07   the Mac, the minimum storage, even on, and this is the best part, I love it, that it's true for

01:54:13   the iPhone 13 non-pro. 128 gigabytes to start, 256, 512, and then the pro models come in a

01:54:23   whopping one terabyte size, which for the Pro Max costs $1600. Moving the minimum storage from 64

01:54:30   to 128 is great and I would have, not following rumors, I just would have bet against it because

01:54:37   I would have thought maybe next year. Famously, Apple held on to the 16 gigabyte minimum size.

01:54:42   Jared; Yeah.

01:54:43   Pete; For ridiculously long to my…

01:54:45   Jared; Well, they do it until it becomes, until the people stop manufacturing the smaller sizes

01:54:49   enough that it becomes more expensive to make smaller sizes.

01:54:51   Pete; You think that's what it is?

01:54:52   Jared; I think that's usually how it works.

01:54:54   Pete; I was giving them credit for being generous, but it is nice that it compared to year over year,

01:54:59   you get double the storage for the same starting prices for all of these phones, which seems…

01:55:05   Jared; Well, I think if you talk to somebody on the supply side who goes through this stuff,

01:55:07   there are a lot of volume purchasers like in enterprise and other places that just want the

01:55:12   cheapest iPhone. They use them as web front ends. They do not care at all about what's on board

01:55:16   in terms of specs. All they are for salespeople or other people too, like logistics on the road.

01:55:21   And if Apple made a 16 gigabyte one, they would still buy that as long as it was cheaper.

01:55:24   Pete; I do think though, the nice thing about going to 128 baseline storage is that I think

01:55:30   for an awful lot of people, the majority of people, that is a fine size. And that's rarely the

01:55:35   case for an Apple product, that the entry model storage is enough storage to recommend.

01:55:41   But even if you're shooting recreationally 4K video, you could go pretty long, especially with

01:55:49   iCloud photos to keep your whole library in the cloud. But you could take a whole week long

01:55:54   vacation and shoot lots and lots of 4K video and you'd still have room to spare at 128 gigabytes,

01:55:58   which is to me is… Jared; You do lose the ProRes 4K at 128

01:56:02   gigabytes though just because the bit rate and file size are too big. But I don't think people

01:56:06   using ProRes are going to go for 128 gigabytes. Pete; No, right. No way. Yeah. If you're,

01:56:09   if you know what ProRes is and have made a reasoned decision that you would like to shoot it,

01:56:16   there is no way you also know that 128 gigabytes is going to vanish in like a minute or two.

01:56:22   Jared; And like what you said, like the one terabyte iPhone is $1600, there are going to

01:56:27   be a bunch of articles written about how crazy it is that there is a $1600 iPhone, a terabyte.

01:56:33   The people who are buying that are not paying that. It's being charged to clients, it's being

01:56:37   paid by their studios. It is cheap for a video camera that can do what the iPhone can do because

01:56:43   video cameras cost thousands and thousands of dollars. So it's a complete inversion of what

01:56:47   a lot of people expect the market to be. Pete; I think that there is an enthusiast level,

01:56:52   people like us who have it in their head that they love the iPhone and it's this thing they

01:56:57   splurge on every year for themselves and they really do want to get the best one. Like I said,

01:57:02   like lowercase OCD, like a small grade OCD that it'll eat in the back of some people's minds that

01:57:08   they've only got 256 when 512 and now one terabyte are available. But the truth is, they've increased

01:57:16   these for professional purposes to a point that people don't need. I only have 256 gigabytes.

01:57:24   I mean, it does not, I forgot, I'm trying to look up how much storage I have.

01:57:30   Benji; You need to shoot a lot of ProRes to justify a terabyte iPhone and when you're

01:57:34   shooting that much ProRes, you don't have to justify a terabyte iPhone.

01:57:36   Pete; Live on the show, I'm calculating my iPhone 12 storage after like 11 months.

01:57:42   Benji; I'll do the same. Oh, the other rumor that didn't pay, I remember there was so much

01:57:46   ink spilt about how Apple's going to have to hike the price of the iPhone 13 because TSMC was doing

01:57:51   it and Apple bakes the stuff in like so far ahead and they buy so many premium device chips from,

01:57:57   like that was just never going to happen, but it got so much airplay.

01:57:59   Pete; Yeah, if anything comes out of that, that's like a years down the line thing.

01:58:04   Benji; That's the next process. That's like four or three nanometer problem.

01:58:07   Pete; Yeah, iPhone storage 104 gigabytes of 256 gigabytes used, mostly apps, some photos,

01:58:15   because I have iCloud photos on and so it doesn't keep my photo library there and I've got

01:58:21   well over half my storage available if I want to leave for a vacation and start shooting 4K video

01:58:25   right now. So. Benji; I have 508 gigabytes out of 512 available and I use my iPhone a lot.

01:58:30   It's just all on iCloud. It's all, it doesn't stay on the local device.

01:58:35   Pete; Right. So, really, the starting price 128, I guess I wouldn't buy that for myself,

01:58:42   but I'd buy 256, but I would encourage like most of my family members that 128 is probably fine for

01:58:47   them and anybody can check, so. Benji; Yeah, I mean, I think it's

01:58:51   counterintuitive because a lot of people assume that we're becoming more of a digital society

01:58:55   and we're accumulating more stuff, but we're becoming an online digital society where we're

01:58:58   streaming more and more stuff, TikTok-ing, Instagram-ing, YouTube-ing more and more stuff,

01:59:02   which doesn't take up a lot of local storage. So, I think it's on some people aren't using as much

01:59:07   as they used to use. Pete; Yeah. Anything else as we wrap up? I will say, the only thing I can

01:59:15   think of, well, the only thing I can think of is, again, to touch on rumors, which is maybe not

01:59:21   accurate at all. The rumor is that next year, they're going to drop the mini from the lineup

01:59:27   of new phones. Let's just presume for the sake of argument that we're talking about the iPhones 14,

01:59:32   that they would drop the mini and have the two tiers would be 6.1 and 6.7. And so, instead of

01:59:42   having only the consumer level one has a mini, there is no mini pro and only the pro tier one

01:59:49   has a max sized phone. They would both, there'd be one phone that's 6.1, one phone that's 6.7,

01:59:56   or maybe those numbers are slightly different. One big ass phone, one regular size phone

02:00:00   for consumers, same sizes for pro. I think there's two interesting things about that. I think that,

02:00:07   I'm still holding out hope and people who don't like the mini, people who think the minis of

02:00:11   failure tell me that it's just wishful thinking. But I still think that as people can actually see

02:00:17   it in stores, and now that the word might get out that the battery life is better, that the mini

02:00:21   might become more popular than it apparently was last year. That doesn't mean though that their

02:00:27   plans aren't already locked in. Their plans are probably close to locked in at this point for a

02:00:31   year from now. But I think the more interesting part of that is that they would no longer be

02:00:35   charging $1,100 to start for the big ass size. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think they were like,

02:00:43   right. Like the smartphone market has matured at this point. So you got to start treating it like

02:00:46   the car market, which means that you start creating segmented products to appeal to different

02:00:49   types of users. And it was absolutely worth the experiment because the original iPhone SE was both

02:00:54   smaller and less expensive. And then this time they split those two. So the SE two was less

02:00:59   expensive. And the mini was smaller, but basically the same price as a full, full fledged iPhone.

02:01:05   And it turned out that that's not enough of a market. Like when you put those two things

02:01:08   together, they're a big market. When you take them apart, there's a lot of people who buy a

02:01:12   cheap iPhone, but I think it's mostly, I don't want to say US centric, but for a lot of people

02:01:17   in the rest of the world, the phone is their primary computer and it behooves them to have

02:01:21   a bigger screen to get more done with. And, but I think it was a unique intersection where

02:01:25   tech Twitter, tech YouTube, people who work in human interface design and at Apple really love

02:01:30   that form factor. And so they decided to test it. Yeah. And I look at the pricing and you can see

02:01:36   exactly where the iPhone 14, not pro max would fit in right. The iPhone 13 starts at $800. And

02:01:46   that's ignoring the $29 carrier thing that you have to pay, but let's just call it. Let's just

02:01:51   go with Apple's pricing, call it $800. The 13 pro is not $900. It's a thousand dollars. So there's

02:01:58   that $100 more than the regular 13 or a hundred dollars less than the smaller 13 pro price point,

02:02:07   just waiting for a big giant ass consumer grade iPhone 14 that I think would prove phenomenally

02:02:16   popular. And all of the arguments about how many fussy people like John Moltz just love the mini.

02:02:22   I think in the mass market, we all have to face facts. People love big ass phones and they don't

02:02:28   care about some, but some of these people don't really care about fancy pro cameras. You know

02:02:32   what they like a big screen, big screen. I mean, if Moltz would Jamie Maddox himself into 50 million

02:02:37   people, he wouldn't have this problem. He's just not committed. I think if it was any other year,

02:02:44   like if next year was any normal year, I think they would drop the price of the regular iPhone

02:02:47   a hundred bucks to take it back down to pre 5g pre OLED levels, and then slide the bigger screen

02:02:53   one into like on top of that. So you get like a little bit of price relief on the iPhone. But I

02:02:58   think because components are going to continue to go up, it's going to be exactly what you just said

02:03:01   it's going to be. Well, the other thing I expect as years go on is I expect even more segmentation

02:03:06   and camera features between the pro and non pro versions. And so that's why I kind of feel like

02:03:11   there's room for that gap where it's like, wait, why would I buy the regular 13 pro? I could get a

02:03:16   bigger screen for less. And it's literally the pro features, you know, and some investors were

02:03:23   so cranky, the price didn't go up. They were so hoping that Apple would test upward elasticity

02:03:28   on the pricing again. Yeah, I think there's an awful lot of other people who are just just happy

02:03:33   that they didn't. And those are the absolutely those are the people out there who've already

02:03:38   queued up their pre orders for Friday and have like one button to click and are ready to charge

02:03:42   their phones. They're like, No, no, I'm good. I'm good with not testing upwards, upwards of higher,

02:03:48   higher starting prices. Anyway, Renee, thank you so much for your time. I know we're both

02:03:51   always busy this time of year. So yeah, good to talk to you. And people can of course,

02:03:57   yeah, I'm sure you'll have about three hours of videos out soon on your YouTube channel

02:04:03   at youtube.com slash Renee Ritchie. And of course, you're also at Renee Ritchie on Twitter.

02:04:09   Anything else you'd like to promote?

02:04:12   Renee Ritchie.net because I have to follow your lead in keeping.net alive. There we go. Renee Ritchie.net me and you keeping it alive to get the whole.net TLD me and you. All right, excellent. Thank you, Renee. Thanks, John.