The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► So does this mean that you're not coming to my beach house this summer?

00:00:02 ◼   ► No, I'm definitely coming to your beach house this summer.

00:00:05 ◼   ► But I thought of that, I thought of that where the last few times that you've been on my

00:00:10 ◼   ► show, it's always been me and you recording at, you know, while I've been at your house.

00:00:16 ◼   ► But it's like, I would like to talk to you.

00:00:20 ◼   ► And the other thing, and it really riled me up, is that I think you're really wrong about

00:00:26 ◼   ► the air tags.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I thought, what, the accessory, the design of them not having like a key loop?

00:00:32 ◼   ► Is that?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:00:34 ◼   ► We'll get to that.

00:00:36 ◼   ► And talk about—

00:00:37 ◼   ► That's gonna be our two-hour conversation.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Right, so we talk about privilege, right?

00:00:42 ◼   ► And you know, privilege is a real thing.

00:00:44 ◼   ► But my privilege is that when I get particularly riled up about an episode of ATP, I can get

00:00:53 ◼   ► one of you on my show.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I can get you—

00:00:56 ◼   ► You just grill us for two hours.

00:00:59 ◼   ► I think you're wrong about putting a hole in the air tags.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I think the air tags are fine.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I think they're fine.

00:01:06 ◼   ► And your take for those—and I do, I always assume that most people who listen to my show

00:01:11 ◼   ► listen to ATP as well.

00:01:14 ◼   ► But your take on the air tags, I don't even want to put words in your mouth.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Your take, though, is that they're poorly designed.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:22 ◼   ► My take is the industrial design of them is just not good because such an incredibly common

00:01:28 ◼   ► use case is you want to attach them to something somehow.

00:01:33 ◼   ► And the way—you know, if you look at like tile and all the other things that have done

00:01:35 ◼   ► similar kinds of trackers before, they all have like a key loop hole in them.

00:01:41 ◼   ► There's always like a hole in the corner or something where you can loop a key ring through.

00:01:44 ◼   ► And you look at all the air tag accessories that are out there, and they're all basically

00:01:48 ◼   ► ways to add a key loop by like having to encase the entire thing in some other layer of some

00:01:54 ◼   ► other kind of material and then have a key loop off to the side or something like that.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And so it could just save so much bulk and so many of these like high-priced accessories,

00:02:02 ◼   ► which I kind of cynically think maybe that's why I decided this way.

00:02:05 ◼   ► But you know, it's clear to me that this would be a much more functional object if it had

00:02:11 ◼   ► a loop built into it that you could just loop any key ring through.

00:02:15 ◼   ► But instead, they've made this like perfect, you know, UFO shape that you—it's not even

00:02:19 ◼   ► flat on the top and bottom, so you can't even easily stick it to things.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Like, it's kind of a ridiculous object for the actual use cases in which I think it's

00:02:28 ◼   ► actually going to be used.

00:02:30 ◼   ► All right, so my counterargument is—I mean, I guess in theory, if it had a hole in it,

00:02:38 ◼   ► that would be better.

00:02:39 ◼   ► If it was exactly the same as it currently is.

00:02:42 ◼   ► That's my argument!

00:02:43 ◼   ► But I don't know how that would work with the replaceable battery pack, right?

00:02:50 ◼   ► It's like, all of a sudden, that seems to make it more complicated.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And the bigger factor is that, okay, don't judge the accessory market by what's going

00:03:03 ◼   ► on right now on June 20—what is it?

00:03:07 ◼   ► 21st?

00:03:08 ◼   ► Or May 21st.

00:03:09 ◼   ► May.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Jeez.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Close enough.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I'm going to miss WWDC already.

00:03:15 ◼   ► You can tell how rattled I am after this week.

00:03:17 ◼   ► But on May 21st, 2021, you can't judge the accessory market, because you know that there

00:03:26 ◼   ► are going to be like $3 rings on Amazon as soon as—probably by the time this episode

00:03:36 ◼   ► comes out, you know what I mean?

00:03:37 ◼   ► Like, by next week, it's going to happen any day.

00:03:40 ◼   ► All they were waiting for was to find out exactly how big these things are.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And it's going to be much cheaper.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Like to me, where your argument falls apart is the argument that, hey, all of these rings

00:03:53 ◼   ► that you put around the AirTags cost like $20.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Which I agree is actually, you know, too much.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And that's part of the argument.

00:04:02 ◼   ► The other part is that it bulks it up.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And it makes it, you know, by definition, if you have to have some kind of material

00:04:08 ◼   ► that wraps around the AirTag, you're basically adding a second casing to the AirTag in at

00:04:13 ◼   ► least most of its dimensions.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And then you have to then have some other thing protruding from that to be able to offer

00:04:20 ◼   ► a ring attachment point or something.

00:04:22 ◼   ► So it just makes it big.

00:04:23 ◼   ► But they're so small, you know, it's like a minimal ring with a key ring attachment

00:04:30 ◼   ► to me is not going to make this too big.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:33 ◼   ► You know what?

00:04:34 ◼   ► I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if this was a Johnny Ive farewell product because it was

00:04:39 ◼   ► designed a long time ago.

00:04:41 ◼   ► We've heard all these stories about how it was designed and ready to ship like two years

00:04:44 ◼   ► ago.

00:04:45 ◼   ► It was ready to go a while ago.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Maybe this is like the final Johnny Ive send off.

00:04:49 ◼   ► We thought it was the Mac Pro.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Maybe it's this.

00:04:52 ◼   ► Well, and people have been like squinting at the fine print on like the little stickers

00:04:56 ◼   ► on the boxes.

00:04:57 ◼   ► And they do say there's some, I think they say like copyright, like 2019 Apple.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it is.

00:05:07 ◼   ► And there was a similar sentiment about the new Apple TV, which we will get to.

00:05:13 ◼   ► That is on the schedule for the show.

00:05:15 ◼   ► But the Apple TV box that I got from Apple says, and the reason people are saying like,

00:05:22 ◼   ► "Hey, when the hell was this supposed to come out?"

00:05:25 ◼   ► Because it says on the back of the box, you turn it upside down and it's like, "Hey, you

00:05:28 ◼   ► can get great stereo surround sound or whatever they call it, awesome audio out of your home

00:05:36 ◼   ► pods, the ones that are the full size home pods that are discontinued."

00:05:41 ◼   ► People are like, "Hey, maybe this was supposed to come out a while ago."

00:05:44 ◼   ► But it does say copyright 2021 on the back of the home pod box or Apple TV box, I can

00:05:50 ◼   ► verify.

00:05:51 ◼   ► So even if it's a little awkward that they're advertising how it works with full size home

00:05:57 ◼   ► pods, which have been discontinued now for a couple of months, whatever degree of left

00:06:06 ◼   ► hand not knowing what the right hand's doing within Apple on that, it's all within 2021.

00:06:14 ◼   ► But the AirTags thing having like a 2019 copyright is like, "Hmm, I don't know."

00:06:24 ◼   ► The other complaint that I do agree with is I kind of feel that they should be completely

00:06:30 ◼   ► flat.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I do feel that the fact that the AirTags are sort of, like you said, UFO shaped, they're

00:06:38 ◼   ► like capsules, I don't know what you want to call them.

00:06:41 ◼   ► It's a spree candy shape.

00:06:42 ◼   ► That's what it's supposed to be.

00:06:44 ◼   ► If you ever had a spree candy, it's that exact shape, just a little bigger.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Okay, how about this?

00:06:48 ◼   ► Can we take an aside and talk about the fact that Siracusa didn't know what a spree was?

00:06:54 ◼   ► He knows everything.

00:06:55 ◼   ► How did he not know that?

00:06:56 ◼   ► How do you not know what a spree was?

00:06:59 ◼   ► Sprees are, they were like my favorite candy.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah, when you get like the bag of Halloween candy after trick or treating, I think the

00:07:06 ◼   ► sprees were one of the first things to go.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Right, because you got your Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, which is the...

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's obviously tier one.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Snickers.

00:07:18 ◼   ► That's tier one.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's up there.

00:07:21 ◼   ► For me, a Snickers is way up there.

00:07:23 ◼   ► But the sprees are way at the top, right?

00:07:26 ◼   ► And if we call the 50 yard line for a Halloween candy, I would call the 50 yard line a Sweet

00:07:33 ◼   ► Tart, right?

00:07:34 ◼   ► Because Sweet Tarts are like, "Ah!"

00:07:37 ◼   ► It's good enough to eat.

00:07:38 ◼   ► You're always going to eat them.

00:07:40 ◼   ► But it's just like sugar packed into a tablet.

00:07:46 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:07:47 ◼   ► Sweet Tarts are kind of like filler.

00:07:50 ◼   ► It wasn't bad filler that you're not going to eat.

00:07:52 ◼   ► You are still going to eat it, but you're not looking forward to devouring all the Sweet

00:07:55 ◼   ► Tarts first.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Whereas sprees, those are going first.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Oh, the sprees were fantastic.

00:07:58 ◼   ► As soon as you're out of Peanut Butter Cups, you're up for the sprees.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Oh, the sprees were fantastic.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And the other thing too is, aside from Halloween, when you had a couple of bucks to buy candy,

00:08:08 ◼   ► a roll of sprees?

00:08:10 ◼   ► Man, that was great.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And it bought you so much social capital where you could like, somebody would be like, "Oh,

00:08:16 ◼   ► you have a roll of sprees.

00:08:17 ◼   ► Can I have one?"

00:08:18 ◼   ► And you'd be like, "Yeah."

00:08:21 ◼   ► And then you'd give, you know.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's easily shared.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah, easily shared.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And it's just really fun candy.

00:08:26 ◼   ► I cannot believe that John Siracusa, of all people, a consumer of North American pop culture,

00:08:37 ◼   ► had no idea what a spree was.

00:08:39 ◼   ► And the other thing, it really bothered me that neither you nor the, what's the other

00:08:44 ◼   ► guy's name?

00:08:45 ◼   ► What is it?

00:08:47 ◼   ► I'm so sorry.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Casey Liss?

00:08:50 ◼   ► Yes, Casey Liss.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Casey Liss.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:08:53 ◼   ► He's gonna kill you.

00:08:54 ◼   ► That's it?

00:08:55 ◼   ► He's on his way to your house.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I'm not good with names, Margo.

00:09:02 ◼   ► He's fully vaccinated now.

00:09:03 ◼   ► You gotta watch out.

00:09:04 ◼   ► He can travel now.

00:09:05 ◼   ► But neither you nor the other guy called him out on not knowing what a spree was.

00:09:10 ◼   ► To me, that should have been like, "Lift the needle off the record.

00:09:14 ◼   ► The show is over.

00:09:15 ◼   ► How do you not know what a spree is?

00:09:17 ◼   ► You should have paused the show and made him go out and buy some sprees."

00:09:22 ◼   ► 'Cause I kind of feel like he would have been like, "Oh, oh, oh, those are sprees.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Okay, I got them."

00:09:28 ◼   ► You know, he did know what they were.

00:09:29 ◼   ► But again, maybe not.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Maybe he grew up in like a weird neighborhood where there was like no sprees.

00:09:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Sprees are great.

00:09:36 ◼   ► But he grew up on Long Island.

00:09:37 ◼   ► They have regular candy here.

00:09:39 ◼   ► It's not that different.

00:09:40 ◼   ► It was a great description.

00:09:42 ◼   ► As soon as you said it, I'm listening to your show, and as soon as you said, "It's sort

00:09:47 ◼   ► of like a spree," I was like, "Yes, that's the perfect description."

00:09:51 ◼   ► And it is a little weird that neither side is flat.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Even the silver side underside is perfectly flat.

00:09:58 ◼   ► And I was like, "That's perfect."

00:09:59 ◼   ► And he's like, "I don't know what a spree is, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

00:10:02 ◼   ► And it's like, "What the?"

00:10:03 ◼   ► And all of a sudden, I just lost the track of the Air Tanks discussion.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And I'm like, "How do you not know what a spree is?"

00:10:10 ◼   ► And I feel like it's very kind of stereotypical Apple design of six years ago.

00:10:19 ◼   ► They made a beautiful object in a category where the beauty of the object is not that

00:10:25 ◼   ► important.

00:10:26 ◼   ► And what is important is the real world kind of ergonomics or functionality of the thing.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And I feel like not having a keyhole, I guess, a loophole, whatever they call it, the hole

00:10:38 ◼   ► in the plastic you could loop a keyring through, not having that, I think, is one of those

00:10:42 ◼   ► areas where I think if Apple redesigned this product next year, new Apple seems to be kind

00:10:48 ◼   ► of righting old wrongs in a lot of ways with the laptop stuff and the keyboards and the

00:10:53 ◼   ► rumored port changes and obviously the whole M1 series of stuff.

00:10:59 ◼   ► They're going through and righting old wrongs.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And I feel like this product looks like it was made two years ago or three years ago

00:11:05 ◼   ► by the old design team that was more obsessed with looks and functionality.

00:11:09 ◼   ► And that maybe the new design team ever since Johnny went into the sky, maybe they wouldn't

00:11:14 ◼   ► have put out this exact design.

00:11:15 ◼   ► It would be better.

00:11:17 ◼   ► That's the thing.

00:11:18 ◼   ► It would be better if it had an integrated hole.

00:11:23 ◼   ► How can you argue that it wouldn't be better if it was exactly the same, no difference

00:11:28 ◼   ► except an integrated hole?

00:11:30 ◼   ► And if somehow when you take the back off to swap the battery, if there's only one way

00:11:36 ◼   ► to screw the back back on and the one way is that once it's back on, the hole is perfectly

00:11:44 ◼   ► oriented.

00:11:45 ◼   ► In fact, maybe it would even be better because then it would prove that you've screwed the

00:11:49 ◼   ► back on the right way, right?

00:11:51 ◼   ► But I do feel though that there's going to be a gazillion $3 AirTag holders and AirTag

00:12:00 ◼   ► and, you know, like your example of putting it on the bikes on the island, you know, there's

00:12:06 ◼   ► got to be, there's got to, there's going to be just give them a month or two, right?

00:12:11 ◼   ► And there's going to be like a gazillion ways to do it.

00:12:16 ◼   ► It is sort of the, again, to bring up a Syracuse, to me it is sort of the naked robotic core.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Like they know nobody's going to use these things other than like what, putting them

00:12:29 ◼   ► in your purse or your laptop bag.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Most use cases require some kind of attachment.

00:12:38 ◼   ► I just don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be though.

00:12:44 ◼   ► It's just, yeah, it's, in reality this is not a thing that's going to massively impact

00:12:48 ◼   ► my life, but it just seems like a weird misstep that's so obvious to me.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:55 ◼   ► You know, and to me the product that it brings to mind is the Apple TV remote, which I just

00:13:03 ◼   ► wrote about.

00:13:04 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:13:05 ◼   ► But that's the one where it's like, do you even use the goddamn thing?

00:13:10 ◼   ► How can this be?

00:13:11 ◼   ► You know?

00:13:12 ◼   ► Can we just celebrate that's fine?

00:13:14 ◼   ► I don't have mine yet, but can we just celebrate that era is finally over?

00:13:18 ◼   ► I'm so happy.

00:13:20 ◼   ► It's the greatest thing in my life.

00:13:21 ◼   ► It's so great.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So is it really as good as you wrote?

00:13:25 ◼   ► Yeah, it really, well, of course.

00:13:27 ◼   ► What do you think I'm going to do?

00:13:28 ◼   ► Lie about it?

00:13:29 ◼   ► I just, I almost can't believe it.

00:13:32 ◼   ► Like until I have it in my hand, which is probably not going to be until tomorrow, I'm

00:13:36 ◼   ► just not going to believe that they could possibly have fixed this, this, you know,

00:13:40 ◼   ► six year long mistake.

00:13:42 ◼   ► But I guess again, this is like, this is Apple writing old wrongs and this is, you know,

00:13:46 ◼   ► it's been a repeating pattern.

00:13:47 ◼   ► You know, they, they fixed the butterfly keyboards.

00:13:49 ◼   ► They fixed a lot of, you know, laptop issues with the M1 stuff.

00:13:53 ◼   ► They are allegedly about to kill the touch bar and make the laptops even better.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And like, it seems like this is really like on a good path here of like, okay, there were

00:14:02 ◼   ► some mistakes made.

00:14:03 ◼   ► They took a suspiciously and frustratingly long time to get fixed, but at least now they

00:14:08 ◼   ► are finally getting fixed.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Um, well, let's see what happens with their tags.

00:14:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:14:15 ◼   ► It is.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Do you think we're ever going to hear about them again?

00:14:20 ◼   ► You know, I wonder because it is, it's, it's also a very curious device for Apple, right?

00:14:27 ◼   ► Because it's not really a peripheral to a thing.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Like it really, it really does seem like the sort of thing that would be better if they

00:14:38 ◼   ► just, and I can't even think of another example where this applies where it would be better

00:14:44 ◼   ► if they just purely published a specification for here is how you can make a tracker that

00:14:54 ◼   ► contributes to the Find My network rather than them selling them themselves.

00:15:00 ◼   ► You know, it, it, but on the other hand, maybe they felt like they really had a good idea.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:08 ◼   ► Well, certainly, you know, I'm sure they, they thought that, you know, they would rather have the control over the design and over the product and everything that integrates with their system so tightly.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Like they'd rather have that control themselves.

00:15:21 ◼   ► You know, it has so much tight system integration with like the setup little overlay thing and

00:15:25 ◼   ► the constant Bluetooth network.

00:15:27 ◼   ► And you know, the kind of low power Bluetooth network thing.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I mean, I think the only reason we didn't get it earlier was because, you know, probably,

00:15:34 ◼   ► you know, part of it was probably because of COVID delays and something.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And in this case, the exposure notification API that they developed for COVID is based

00:15:43 ◼   ► on the same network and technologies that these use.

00:15:46 ◼   ► It's basically that network just used in a slightly different way.

00:15:50 ◼   ► So like, it seemed like they had a lot of this stuff in place already.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And the fact that this seemed to be ready to go two years ago, I think maybe what held

00:15:56 ◼   ► them back was antitrust stuff coming up with and knowing that tile was going to be one

00:16:02 ◼   ► of the companies that was going to really get up their butts about stuff that maybe

00:16:05 ◼   ► Apple thought, okay, let's wait until we have the third party accessory program out the

00:16:09 ◼   ► door first, before we release ours.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I think that's probably, you know, if there were any delays from COVID, you know, add

00:16:16 ◼   ► that to it.

00:16:17 ◼   ► But I think both of those factored into why this product seems to have been just waiting

00:16:22 ◼   ► to be released for almost two years.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I definitely don't see them only doing the third party thing.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Because this is the kind of thing it's just like how, you know, Apple makes so many like

00:16:32 ◼   ► weird little like leather pouches and stuff for other devices that I don't know why anybody

00:16:37 ◼   ► would buy based on how what they are and how much they cost.

00:16:40 ◼   ► But like, you know, they make a lot of accessories that we don't usually even talk about that

00:16:44 ◼   ► aren't barely even worth mentioning.

00:16:46 ◼   ► But they do make a ton of accessories.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Sometimes they're they're pretty nice.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I use some of them myself.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I even use that weird flip open white magsafe charger duo thing like I actually bought two

00:16:56 ◼   ► of those.

00:16:58 ◼   ► And even though there was like 100 bucks or whatever 130 bucks for those, it was I felt

00:17:03 ◼   ► like such a jerk buying those but they did solve a need that I had at that time very

00:17:08 ◼   ► well.

00:17:09 ◼   ► So I don't regret having bought them.

00:17:11 ◼   ► You know, it's like Apple has this whole world of kind of weirdly expensive kind of weirdly

00:17:17 ◼   ► limited sometimes accessories that we don't usually talk about.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And I think the air tags would have probably just been that and all the stuff that goes

00:17:26 ◼   ► that attaches to them would have probably just been more of that category of thing had

00:17:31 ◼   ► they not been seemingly delayed for two years without explanation.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Like that's, you know, see also air power, right?

00:17:38 ◼   ► Just that had a different ending.

00:17:39 ◼   ► But like what made these products interesting to all of us tech nerds out here talking about

00:17:44 ◼   ► this is like, why haven't they released that yet?

00:17:46 ◼   ► What happened?

00:17:47 ◼   ► You know, and that the question of what happened is a much more interesting story than the

00:17:52 ◼   ► actual products once we actually have them in our hands because like, oh, okay, well,

00:17:56 ◼   ► it's a tile but made by Apple and better.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Okay, well, a very exciting product, but hey, if you need it, it works.

00:18:01 ◼   ► The other thing I think the antitrust stuff probably figured in and I think that the privacy

00:18:08 ◼   ► like anti anti stalking stuff.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Yeah, figured in and it seems like they didn't really figure that out until very recently

00:18:20 ◼   ► and not that they didn't think about it all along, but that they didn't figure out what

00:18:27 ◼   ► best to do about it.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Like I feel like there's to me, there's a sense of okay, let's say that the the air

00:18:35 ◼   ► tags were ready to go 18 months ago, and they could have shipped them like a year and a

00:18:40 ◼   ► half ago.

00:18:43 ◼   ► It seems to me like the contingent with an apple that not that there was a dispute, I'll

00:18:49 ◼   ► bet everybody was like, yeah, we don't want these things to be used for stalking people

00:18:53 ◼   ► or tracking them against their will.

00:18:55 ◼   ► But the what do we build in?

00:18:59 ◼   ► How do we how do we accommodate that use case, which is an anti use case, maybe took longer

00:19:08 ◼   ► to come to fruition and actually ship then then they anticipated.

00:19:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Because certainly, like that's that's one angle that you would you could totally foresee

00:19:20 ◼   ► them having developed this product 95% of the way and then at the very end, somebody's

00:19:24 ◼   ► like, wait a minute, what what about this use case?

00:19:27 ◼   ► And they're like, Oh, no, we have to figure all this out.

00:19:31 ◼   ► And then, you know, holding it back until they really have a good solution for that.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And that's that's a very complicated problems problem space.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I mean, you know, Apple does things under a lot more scrutiny than anybody like, you

00:19:41 ◼   ► know, tile or anybody smaller, heck, even Android makers have way less scrutiny on them

00:19:44 ◼   ► than Apple does.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And so, you know, they have to think about things and design for things and accommodate,

00:19:51 ◼   ► you know, failure modes and flaws way more carefully and with way more diligence than

00:19:57 ◼   ► almost anyone else in the business.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Like, you know, if Apple releases something that has a problem, it's going to be a headline

00:20:03 ◼   ► everywhere.

00:20:04 ◼   ► It's going to be like, you know, breaking news.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Whereas, you know, if if somebody much smaller releases something that can be used by stalkers,

00:20:10 ◼   ► or whatever, like, it would, it wouldn't even make the news at all.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Well, and there's art there have already been a couple of stories, you know, like Fast Company

00:20:18 ◼   ► had a story, I forget who else did, but there have already been a couple of stories like,

00:20:23 ◼   ► hey, you could use air tags to stalk somebody.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And so we haven't even gotten to the point where somebody's actually done it, it's going

00:20:31 ◼   ► to happen.

00:20:32 ◼   ► There's no doubt about it, right?

00:20:34 ◼   ► To me, Apple's perspective on this is probably, look, even if we don't get into this, that

00:20:40 ◼   ► these devices already exist, why should we stay out of this just to avoid the stalking

00:20:46 ◼   ► situation?

00:20:49 ◼   ► It all leads to the sort of thinking like, yeah, I can sort of see why they sat on it

00:20:54 ◼   ► for a year and a half, you know?

00:20:56 ◼   ► Yeah, like they had to, I mean, look, there was there was even like the drama with the

00:20:59 ◼   ► Australian Safety Commission, I forget the actual name of it, but it's like the Australian

00:21:04 ◼   ► version of like the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

00:21:06 ◼   ► And they determined that it was too easy to get the battery out for like children to get

00:21:11 ◼   ► the battery, right, right.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And that because you know, because it's a lithium battery, and you know, the positive

00:21:15 ◼   ► and negative terminals are very physically close to each other.

00:21:18 ◼   ► And so you could you could theoretically take the take it out short circuit with some small

00:21:22 ◼   ► piece of metal and have like a heat or fire risk on your hands.

00:21:25 ◼   ► So you know, even that got criticized like instantly upon its release.

00:21:30 ◼   ► So yeah, they definitely have have a lot of scrutiny on them.

00:21:33 ◼   ► But I almost feel like, you know, we've we have had this kind of line in our head for

00:21:38 ◼   ► a while as Apple commentators, like, you know, Apple only interest markets where they can

00:21:41 ◼   ► make a big difference or whatever, or their core companies, they really, they really want

00:21:45 ◼   ► to focus on their core competencies.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And that's why they don't make Wi Fi routers anymore, or printers or whatever, right.

00:21:50 ◼   ► But you look at this, you're like, well, did they really need to make this?

00:21:53 ◼   ► I mean, on one hand, it is way better, way better than anything else out there because

00:21:59 ◼   ► of the integration it has with the system.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And that's something like, you know, tile and anybody else trying to make these things,

00:22:03 ◼   ► they will never be able to match that unless they just go into the MFI program of just

00:22:06 ◼   ► making these things which commoditizes their entire business.

00:22:09 ◼   ► No one else running a regular third party app on iOS could ever make a system that finds

00:22:14 ◼   ► things as effectively as these do.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It's just not accessible to third party apps on that level, which is its own potential

00:22:20 ◼   ► antitrust problem, but that's different discussion.

00:22:23 ◼   ► So on one hand, you can say Apple can make a difference here.

00:22:26 ◼   ► And they made a product that is way better than what anything else out there can be without

00:22:31 ◼   ► using like GPS and stuff.

00:22:33 ◼   ► But it almost, you know, a lot of Apple's recent moves, and this might lead to a larger

00:22:38 ◼   ► discussion, but a lot of Apple's recent moves.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Remember that that story?

00:22:42 ◼   ► I forget where this was from.

00:22:43 ◼   ► But there was a story is a back like in the 90s or whatever, where I think it was like

00:22:48 ◼   ► somebody's grandmother was describing Bill Gates, as like, he's the kind of kid who would

00:22:54 ◼   ► come over to your house and for dinner, and he would say, Oh, I'll take all the potatoes.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:22:58 ◼   ► That was it was a was a Riley.

00:23:03 ◼   ► What's the guy?

00:23:04 ◼   ► Who's the guy who's the founder of Riley?

00:23:07 ◼   ► You know, the Tim O'Reilly?

00:23:08 ◼   ► Yeah, Tim O'Reilly said that he said that when he was describing the Microsoft antitrust

00:23:14 ◼   ► case to his mother, she said he sounds Bill Gates sounds like the sort of fellow who would

00:23:19 ◼   ► come over to your house for for Thanksgiving and say, Oh, thank you.

00:23:23 ◼   ► I'll take all the mashed potatoes.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And like at the beginning of the Thanksgiving dinner, and it's like, uh,

00:23:30 ◼   ► yeah, leaving nothing for anybody else.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:33 ◼   ► And I feel like that that is really how Apple is starting to seem.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I think Apple's looking around any industry that they could possibly get into at this

00:23:42 ◼   ► point that that looks lucrative to them.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I think they're very hungry for all of the money.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And because and on some level, you can kind of understand like from from a like, you know,

00:23:52 ◼   ► from a financial perspective, they, they need growth to keep their investors happy and the

00:23:57 ◼   ► stock and everything else that they need growth.

00:23:59 ◼   ► But they're already such a massive company with so many massively profitable businesses

00:24:03 ◼   ► that in order to get growth, they have to keep doing more and more stuff, much of which

00:24:08 ◼   ► will be kind of gross.

00:24:10 ◼   ► And so like, that's why like, you know, they keep launching all these businesses that they're

00:24:14 ◼   ► just moving into whatever areas they can because they're really hungry for an ever increasing

00:24:18 ◼   ► amount of money.

00:24:19 ◼   ► And so on one hand, this looks like okay, they make a meaningful difference to this

00:24:25 ◼   ► category of product and making one that works better.

00:24:27 ◼   ► On the other hand, you asked like, why would Apple bother doing something like this that

00:24:31 ◼   ► that has, you know, not that much impact on the world and it might be kind of risky PR

00:24:35 ◼   ► wise and I think the answer is they thought they could make more money and I think the

00:24:40 ◼   ► answer the reason they have all these weird $25 accessories to solve basic design flaws

00:24:46 ◼   ► on it is that they wanted even more of that money.

00:24:48 ◼   ► And accessories are very high profit business for them because they they can make something

00:24:51 ◼   ► pretty nice out of some decent leather and sell it for like three times what it got at

00:24:55 ◼   ► least maybe 10 times what you know what it cost them to make and and so part of what

00:25:00 ◼   ► they're doing in many ways recently, you know, launching a credit card and stuff like that,

00:25:04 ◼   ► like it just it just seems to me like they're just wanting all of the money, all of it from

00:25:08 ◼   ► everybody.

00:25:09 ◼   ► You know, they keep pushing developers harder to you know, they keep more strictly enforcing

00:25:13 ◼   ► the in app purchase rules and everything else to just get more of the money and they they

00:25:18 ◼   ► want it all for themselves and they're just looking around the industry saying, you know,

00:25:21 ◼   ► where can we get more next?

00:25:22 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break and thank our first sponsors.

00:25:27 ◼   ► It also is isn't this great that I get to read the sponsor thing and it's not you.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Oh, it's so great.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I love I love showing up to this having done no preparation except I got myself a bottle

00:25:37 ◼   ► of seltzer.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I think that one of these shows you should make Syracuse it do the sponsor reads just

00:25:44 ◼   ► to stick it to it's it's not easy.

00:25:47 ◼   ► You know, you get used to it, but it's like, you know, I feel like he he skates over it.

00:25:53 ◼   ► I do I feel like he he does not appreciate the work that goes into you doing all of the

00:26:00 ◼   ► sponsor reads every week, weekend week out on a TV.

00:26:05 ◼   ► But anyway, that's

00:26:06 ◼   ► well, at the same time, like I have, I think, almost never added something to the topics

00:26:11 ◼   ► document.

00:26:12 ◼   ► That's that's one of his areas like he does that.

00:26:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:15 ◼   ► And then like I just I just show I do the ad reads before right before the show, I do

00:26:18 ◼   ► all the ad reads, I record them beforehand.

00:26:20 ◼   ► And then I just kind of show up and I open the document like 10 minutes before we're

00:26:24 ◼   ► going to record and I look over the ask ATP questions to make sure I don't have to like

00:26:27 ◼   ► prepare an answer.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And then that's it.

00:26:30 ◼   ► And then everything else like he's he and Casey drive the topic discussions.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And and you know, Casey kind of hosts, you know, and john does a lot of the documentation

00:26:38 ◼   ► of like, you know, preparing the topics and everything and, and yeah, and so and I do

00:26:42 ◼   ► the ad.

00:26:43 ◼   ► I have this division of labor that works pretty well.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Casey does the show notes, I do the editing, like all this all this stuff, but rest assured

00:26:50 ◼   ► that we all we all do our thing, including including john,

00:26:52 ◼   ► I'm writing this down right now.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I'm gonna I'm not gonna forget it.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Casey is the guy's name.

00:26:58 ◼   ► All right.

00:26:59 ◼   ► All right.

00:27:00 ◼   ► All right.

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00:30:55 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about new Apple products other than AirTags.

00:30:59 ◼   ► What do you want to talk about first?

00:31:00 ◼   ► I mean, I don't have that much to say about most of them because I haven't used them and

00:31:05 ◼   ► I honestly I don't, I don't think the iPad necessarily has much for me.

00:31:12 ◼   ► But first of all, the iMac I think is one of the most interesting because with a pretty

00:31:18 ◼   ► radical design change and a change that seems to by most of the reviews be a success.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I mean, would you say it was a successful redesign of the iMac?

00:31:26 ◼   ► Oh, I would think it's a super successful.

00:31:28 ◼   ► I, I, I, so Apple sent me all three and as far as I can tell, as the three things being

00:31:37 ◼   ► the iMac, the new iPad Pro and the new Apple TV 4k and I'm not trying to flex here.

00:31:45 ◼   ► I'm not trying to brag, but as far as I can tell today, after having published my Apple

00:31:54 ◼   ► TV quote unquote review late last night, I think I'm the only person who got all three

00:32:01 ◼   ► and which is weird.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And Apple never tells you stuff like that when they send you review units.

00:32:09 ◼   ► You know, they don't say like, hey, you're the only person who's getting all three blah,

00:32:12 ◼   ► blah, blah.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Of the three, the iMac is to me by far the most interesting.

00:32:19 ◼   ► So I'd almost rather push it back on the show to and to me, but I get why they staggered

00:32:26 ◼   ► the embargo dates on reviews the way they did iMac first, iPad second, Apple TV third.

00:32:35 ◼   ► But the iPad and Apple TV to me are easier to talk about because they're such minor overall

00:32:44 ◼   ► revisions and does that make sense?

00:32:50 ◼   ► Yeah, let's do it.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I mean, and I love the way you did the Apple TV.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I love that it was like, you know, 80% about the remote.

00:32:58 ◼   ► And you had like a paragraph the end basically saying, yeah, oh, the box is slightly updated

00:33:01 ◼   ► too.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Like that's exactly like, that's how I'm looking at it.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Like, you know, I have I have two TVs, one of them that they're both 4k.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Now, one of them had the old non 4k Apple TV box and like our secondary TV had had the

00:33:15 ◼   ► old Apple TV HD on it.

00:33:17 ◼   ► And we have a regular Apple TV 4k on our primary TV.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And so I ordered one new Apple TV, and one new just the new remote, right?

00:33:25 ◼   ► And then I'm just gonna, you know, shift the Apple TV 4k onto the secondary TV, the first

00:33:30 ◼   ► generation one on the secondary TV, replace the Apple TV HD.

00:33:33 ◼   ► And now I have new remotes for both.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And so to me, I'm gonna have two new Apple TVs, basically, because the difference between

00:33:39 ◼   ► them is, you know, when like, oh, this can now do HDR 60 frames a second, like, okay,

00:33:43 ◼   ► well, I have no content like that.

00:33:47 ◼   ► So fine.

00:33:49 ◼   ► That'll be great for my primary TV, I won't notice the lack of it on my secondary TV.

00:33:54 ◼   ► And the thread radio might be something that matters to me at some point down the road.

00:33:58 ◼   ► It isn't right now.

00:34:00 ◼   ► So great.

00:34:01 ◼   ► And I feel like I got two Apple TVs for the cost of you know, one and a half.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I mean, I even said in my review, it's like, the thread thing seems like it could be something,

00:34:10 ◼   ► you know, it really does, you know, when I just cursory read it, it's like, it seems

00:34:15 ◼   ► like it's, but I don't have anything in my house right now that is like, oh, you need

00:34:20 ◼   ► an Apple TV with thread support to do blank.

00:34:24 ◼   ► There's there's nothing I can't think.

00:34:27 ◼   ► It sounds like a good technology.

00:34:29 ◼   ► But it's like, right now, I can't think of anything.

00:34:33 ◼   ► And and the Dolby Vision, high frame rate, HDR support, it's like, what?

00:34:40 ◼   ► There's nothing I want to watch that is like that.

00:34:42 ◼   ► So if you already have an Apple TV 4k, the one that came out like four years ago, there's

00:34:49 ◼   ► it's not a diss on the new one.

00:34:53 ◼   ► It's like, what else do you want?

00:34:55 ◼   ► Right?

00:34:56 ◼   ► It's like it didn't need to support anything else.

00:34:59 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, this is a bad update, because it doesn't, it's not more compelling.

00:35:05 ◼   ► It's that if you already have a 4k TV, and you have the older Apple TV 4k, you're, there's,

00:35:14 ◼   ► there's not much that you need, except for a better remote.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Like that.

00:35:21 ◼   ► That was the big problem with the Apple TV.

00:35:23 ◼   ► I have lots of problems with like, tv OS and and you know, some of the weird UI decisions

00:35:29 ◼   ► there and some, you know, particular bugs in certain apps or certain behaviors of the

00:35:33 ◼   ► of the services and everything.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But that's all stuff that you're not going to fix in hardware.

00:35:37 ◼   ► So among the like category of things that need to be fixed in hardware, it was like

00:35:42 ◼   ► 90% the remote.

00:35:44 ◼   ► I've had no problems with my Apple TV 4k hardware.

00:35:47 ◼   ► The previous version of the hardware I've had lots of problems with like the the Apple

00:35:51 ◼   ► TV HD model, those actually for me, those tended to die after about two or three years

00:35:56 ◼   ► of use.

00:35:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I heard you say that.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And I never experienced that because I got one right away.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And then I used it right up until the 4k came out.

00:36:05 ◼   ► And I even bought I'm an idiot.

00:36:06 ◼   ► I bought the 4k one before I even had a 4k TV.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Because I thought, well, I'll get I'm, I'm planning to upgrade my TV soon.

00:36:14 ◼   ► So I should buy the Apple TV 4k.

00:36:16 ◼   ► But I never had one die.

00:36:18 ◼   ► But I heard you say that, which is weird.

00:36:20 ◼   ► You know, yeah, I mean, well, you also dodged bullet there.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Because in addition to the Apple TV HD model, in my opinion, having a lot of high death

00:36:28 ◼   ► rate, it also was noticeably slower, like just moving around the interface and you know,

00:36:34 ◼   ► just basic stuff in the apps.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Because it had a much older CPU.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I think it was an A8 in there or something like that.

00:36:39 ◼   ► So it was noticeably slower.

00:36:41 ◼   ► When you're talking about it, you're talking about it in the past tense, but they still

00:36:45 ◼   ► sell it.

00:36:47 ◼   ► That's that's, I love this so much.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I love that they are still selling it at the same price.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It's been like the last five years or whatever.

00:36:55 ◼   ► They're still selling.

00:36:56 ◼   ► It's $150 I honestly think that it might be the worst product Apple, Apple Incorporated

00:37:04 ◼   ► has ever sold in on today's date, buying the $150 Apple TV HD.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And again, if you're right, that they tend to die after a couple of years, it's even

00:37:18 ◼   ► worse.

00:37:19 ◼   ► But even if it works forever, it is a terrible price for that device.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Like if they sold it for, let's say $79, right?

00:37:29 ◼   ► That seems like an Apple like price.

00:37:31 ◼   ► If they were like $79 and you can get the non 4k Apple TV.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Okay.

00:37:38 ◼   ► But I see how they're looking at it and they're like, well, that would really stick out from

00:37:43 ◼   ► these $180 and $200 prices for the 4k.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So if we want to sell the new ones at $180 and $200, we better sell the old one at $150.

00:37:57 ◼   ► And it's like, but all of a sudden, it's like they're selling this ancient device with an

00:38:01 ◼   ► A8.

00:38:02 ◼   ► It's slow.

00:38:04 ◼   ► The OS is clearly not optimized for that processor.

00:38:08 ◼   ► No, it does at least get the new remote.

00:38:12 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:38:13 ◼   ► That is nice.

00:38:14 ◼   ► But it's just like for $30 more at that point, you know, if you're going to spend $150 on

00:38:19 ◼   ► a streaming TV box, which is at the high end of the price range for that market, spend

00:38:25 ◼   ► 30 more and get the one that is way better.

00:38:29 ◼   ► It's not a small, it's not a $30 difference in performance and everything.

00:38:32 ◼   ► It's a way bigger difference.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I that I don't know what's the worst product they currently sell, whether it's

00:38:39 ◼   ► that or whether it's still they still sell the old 21 inch Intel iMac.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And it's non retina.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Until recently, it had a spinning hard drive that's at least finally gone.

00:38:56 ◼   ► But they still sell the non retina base model Intel iMac.

00:39:00 ◼   ► But I kind of feel that with that.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Anybody who does buy it knows what they're getting.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And they're buying it for a reason.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Whereas the Apple TV, HD seems like a device that somebody could buy by by mistake, because

00:39:17 ◼   ► they think like, I, this is already a lot of money, I only want to spend 150 on a streaming

00:39:23 ◼   ► box.

00:39:24 ◼   ► Let's just let me buy this one or, or let's say you don't have a 4k TV, you've only got

00:39:31 ◼   ► a 10.

00:39:32 ◼   ► That's probably the more common failure mode here is like if you don't have a 4k TV, and

00:39:35 ◼   ► you have two things in front of you to say Apple TV, HD, Apple TV 4k, you might reasonably

00:39:39 ◼   ► conclude and they're very close in price, right?

00:39:41 ◼   ► You might reasonably conclude that the Apple TV HD is the one you should get.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And and to me, that's a huge mistake.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Because to me, as as someone who used an Apple TV 4k for a couple of years with a 1080 TV,

00:39:55 ◼   ► it was better, right?

00:39:56 ◼   ► And even if you're not driving it at 4k, it was it was better because it was faster.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Yeah, way faster.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And for 30 bucks, and, you know, let's say, you know, what, what's the minimum, I think

00:40:10 ◼   ► a normal person would would buy an Apple TV hardware device, you know, the little the

00:40:17 ◼   ► little thing.

00:40:19 ◼   ► And I think most people would use it for at least four or five years before they would

00:40:26 ◼   ► think, hey, I got to get a new one because I got to upgrade it.

00:40:29 ◼   ► It's a and so at that point, the $30 difference is we're talking about like, what, like six

00:40:36 ◼   ► bucks a year, you know, it

00:40:39 ◼   ► I wonder if maybe did they maybe sell a bunch of those to businesses for like air playing

00:40:44 ◼   ► to projectors?

00:40:45 ◼   ► Is that a thing that maybe they just sell a ton of them?

00:40:47 ◼   ► I I've heard from daring fireball readers that that is definitely a market, you know,

00:40:53 ◼   ► that there's absolutely a market for buying these things to use as a projector type things

00:41:00 ◼   ► that you airplay your presentation to right like, yeah, it's sort of that.

00:41:07 ◼   ► All the years that I spent making fun of PC laptops that still had VGA ports, which is

00:41:16 ◼   ► like, seriously, one of the worst, longest lasting ports in history.

00:41:22 ◼   ► It's like, you cannot believe how long VGA was.

00:41:26 ◼   ► But it was always every time I first computer had a VGA port, every time I would make fun

00:41:31 ◼   ► of a new machine that came out with it for years and years, people would, you know, I

00:41:36 ◼   ► hear from a handful of readers who would say, I know what you mean.

00:41:39 ◼   ► It wasn't like they were clueless.

00:41:41 ◼   ► You know, they were like, I get it.

00:41:43 ◼   ► But where I work, if you don't have a VGA port, you need a VGA adapter, because there's

00:41:50 ◼   ► no other way to project your presentation, blah, blah, blah.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And I think that Apple TV has and and airplay has taken a lot of that, you know, it's not

00:42:00 ◼   ► so much that VGA, etc, have been replaced by HDMI or newer ports.

00:42:07 ◼   ► I think airplay, you know, it's airplay is great.

00:42:12 ◼   ► And so I do think that that's part of it.

00:42:14 ◼   ► But still, wouldn't it be better to just get the low end 4k, even if you're only projecting

00:42:20 ◼   ► your thing at 720p, right?

00:42:23 ◼   ► Even if you're only projecting at 720p, it would still be better to just have the Apple

00:42:28 ◼   ► TV 4k.

00:42:29 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it would last longer, if it would be, it would have other advantages

00:42:33 ◼   ► to like the Apple TV 4k has a gigabyte Ethernet port instead of 100 megabit on the HD.

00:42:38 ◼   ► But it just Yeah, it's like, yeah, you're right, like lasting longer, I feel like is,

00:42:41 ◼   ► is the big thing there.

00:42:42 ◼   ► But I mean, if they have a ton of these things sitting around, like maybe, maybe it's like

00:42:46 ◼   ► a HomePod situation where they manufactured too many of them a few years back, and they've

00:42:50 ◼   ► just taken forever to sell through the inventory.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And they know that business buyers will buy them or, you know, mistaken home users will

00:42:56 ◼   ► buy them.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know why they're still making it, you know, it makes me feel like

00:43:00 ◼   ► I should do like a hidden.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Well, I wouldn't use the actual hidden camera, but do like a, but just go into the Apple

00:43:07 ◼   ► store and and act like, you know, Joe consumer, and be like, try to buy the Apple TV HD and

00:43:15 ◼   ► see if they will at least try to talk me out of it.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And again, because I do think that in general,

00:43:21 ◼   ► do this, can you please put your name in the little waiting system as Joe consumer?

00:43:27 ◼   ► No, because then they're gonna show up as Joe see to most of them.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess it might, because they're so they really are privacy conscious like that,

00:43:39 ◼   ► right?

00:43:41 ◼   ► Because, in general, I do think that, you know, one of the great things about Apple

00:43:47 ◼   ► is that if you go in, they don't try to upsell you to the, to the most, you know, it's not

00:43:52 ◼   ► like buying a car, right?

00:43:54 ◼   ► Like, everybody knows buying a car is the is the worst upsell experience, because they're

00:43:59 ◼   ► going to try to upsell you on everything.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And I, you know, I think the Apple store has a very good reputation for, you know, they're,

00:44:09 ◼   ► you know, maybe they'll reasonably try to ask, like, you know, how much do you have

00:44:14 ◼   ► on your phone?

00:44:15 ◼   ► And if you I think if you showed them your iPhone, and you're like, look, and and they're

00:44:19 ◼   ► like, you know, settings, general storage, and it looks like you've only got like, 20

00:44:26 ◼   ► gigabytes on your phone, they're not going to try to sell you a 256 gigabyte iPhone,

00:44:32 ◼   ► right?

00:44:33 ◼   ► Like, look, you've you're only using 20.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Now, what why would you buy a 256?

00:44:40 ◼   ► They don't do that in general, but so I'd be very interested to know whether but they

00:44:45 ◼   ► should in general, like doing a favor to the consumer, they should try to talk people out

00:44:51 ◼   ► of the Apple TV HD.

00:44:53 ◼   ► It's a terrible purchase at this point.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I wonder to what degree they're allowed to like, kind of push people away from a choice.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Because obviously, like, you know, in most retail environments, the employees would be

00:45:07 ◼   ► discouraged for any kind of implied insult of any of the products.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Like, you wouldn't want your employees to be telling customers, oh, you don't want that

00:45:16 ◼   ► one.

00:45:17 ◼   ► You know, like, obviously, upselling is a different story.

00:45:19 ◼   ► But you wouldn't want anybody to possibly imply that like, oh, that's that that one's

00:45:23 ◼   ► actually a bad choice.

00:45:25 ◼   ► And you should really get this.

00:45:27 ◼   ► I remember when Amy and I first moved in together in I think 1999.

00:45:35 ◼   ► We bought a new TV and my friend Don was a guy who had a van and we bought a big, big

00:45:43 ◼   ► Sony see it was you know, CRT is back then.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Big big TV.

00:45:49 ◼   ► You know, at 32 inches, right?

00:45:51 ◼   ► It was humongous, which, you know, again, by today's standards, not that big, but the

00:45:55 ◼   ► actual box was incredibly huge.

00:45:58 ◼   ► But I remember buying it Best Buy.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And I did all the research, you know, before going into the store, I was like, this is

00:46:07 ◼   ► the TV I want the here's the Best Buy that has it.

00:46:11 ◼   ► You know, let's go pick it up.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Don has a van, we'll, we'll put it in the van.

00:46:17 ◼   ► And I remember, very specifically that the salesperson was like, do you want any of these

00:46:22 ◼   ► monster cables?

00:46:23 ◼   ► And I looked at him like, come on.

00:46:25 ◼   ► And he and he gave me a look that was like, yeah, you're right there.

00:46:29 ◼   ► You know, it was just just a look.

00:46:30 ◼   ► He didn't say anything.

00:46:32 ◼   ► But it was like, come on.

00:46:33 ◼   ► This is this is nonsense.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And I was like, these are nonsense.

00:46:36 ◼   ► And he's like, yeah, these, you know, and it was all just in looks.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And it was like, you know, I'm not getting you in any trouble.

00:46:42 ◼   ► I know you're supposed to ask me, but

00:46:44 ◼   ► Oh, I flat out told I used to work at Staples in college.

00:46:49 ◼   ► And this was probably around that time period.

00:46:52 ◼   ► And, and this was, this was one of those times when you would sell a bunch of printers, but

00:46:57 ◼   ► printers stopped coming with cables.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Because they realized that you could, you know, the retailers were much happier, much

00:47:04 ◼   ► happier with the manufacturers and push the models that didn't come with cables in the

00:47:08 ◼   ► box.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Because then the retailers can sell you they're like $30 USB cable.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And it was like, it was just like a regular like six foot USB cable.

00:47:15 ◼   ► And of course, Staples and everyone else would have their like gold plated upgrade version.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And we had this, we had this whole book full of, like, justifications, we were supposed

00:47:23 ◼   ► to tell customers that they were trying to train us to tell people like, why they want

00:47:27 ◼   ► the gold plated cable, because that will ensure like faster printing or, you know, they would

00:47:31 ◼   ► tell it was there was no technical basis in it whatsoever.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And, and I just refuse to say any of that stuff to people.

00:47:38 ◼   ► And people would often, you know, they would get the printer and I was supposed to try

00:47:41 ◼   ► to upsell them on cable paper, you know, extra ink and the service plan and everything.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And I did, of course, none of that.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Except I would tell them like, you know, you need to use be capable for this.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And if they would, if they would, you know, seem to be balking at the price, and you know,

00:47:54 ◼   ► this was in like, you know, rural Pennsylvania, a lot of people didn't want to spend an extra

00:47:58 ◼   ► $30 for a stupid cable, you know, they're buying a, you know, they're buying the cheapest

00:48:01 ◼   ► printer they can, because they don't have a lot of money or something.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And so I would tell them like, look, if you just get this online, it's a lot cheaper.

00:48:07 ◼   ► Like if you can buy the printer here, but if you need to save money on the cable, you

00:48:10 ◼   ► don't you don't have to buy it here, you can use any or it's like, if you if you had a

00:48:13 ◼   ► USB printer before, you can probably use the same cable you already have.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And many people, many of the customers really appreciated that.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I can tell you the boss didn't so much that was that was not as popular with the boss.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Have you ever heard from anybody who like now knows you as the famous Marco Arment from

00:48:34 ◼   ► ATP and overcast and etc.

00:48:37 ◼   ► And it was like, I think that I went to your staples.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Probably in Ohio, right?

00:48:43 ◼   ► No, it was it was in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

00:48:45 ◼   ► Oh,

00:48:46 ◼   ► I don't know where there were even fewer people than where I'm from in Columbus.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I don't even know where that is.

00:48:50 ◼   ► I'm in Pennsylvania.

00:48:51 ◼   ► I don't even know where Meadville is.

00:48:53 ◼   ► I don't know if it's on the east and the west and the center.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Where it's about it's about two thirds of the way from Pittsburgh to Erie.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Oh my god, that's awful.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Why would you live there?

00:49:03 ◼   ► Those colleagues went to college there.

00:49:07 ◼   ► The college was great.

00:49:08 ◼   ► The it was a small town, you know, and, and it was fun when we were there.

00:49:12 ◼   ► But yeah, definitely not a lot of people.

00:49:15 ◼   ► That's a terrible location.

00:49:17 ◼   ► But have you ever heard from anybody who's like, I think that I went to your staples

00:49:20 ◼   ► and I think that you helped me or no, no, probably not a single person.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Which again, given you know, given where it was, that does not surprise me.

00:49:29 ◼   ► But I would have I would have done the same.

00:49:31 ◼   ► I never had like a job where I could give real advice like that.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like I my menial labor job was at a change.

00:49:40 ◼   ► I have I ever told you this that I used to work?

00:49:43 ◼   ► I guarantee you, you have heard of this chain.

00:49:47 ◼   ► But most people listening to the show will never have heard of it.

00:49:50 ◼   ► It was a chain called Far More.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Oh, I've we had those in Ohio.

00:49:56 ◼   ► Far More started in Ohio, which is why I knew that you would know it.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And do you know what their slogan was?

00:50:04 ◼   ► No.

00:50:05 ◼   ► So it was spelled PHA dash mor.

00:50:10 ◼   ► PHA-R.

00:50:11 ◼   ► PHA-R.

00:50:14 ◼   ► PHA-R dash mor.

00:50:17 ◼   ► And they left off the E at the end, you know, but the Far More and it was a pharmacy, but

00:50:23 ◼   ► it was sort of like the biggest pharmacy you could ever believe, you know, like,

00:50:29 ◼   ► Wasn't it like leave off the last E for savings?

00:50:31 ◼   ► No, no, it was Far More where you get Far More for your money.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:50:38 ◼   ► But I think you might be right, though, that they left off the last E for savings.

00:50:42 ◼   ► No, I think it was something that ended in S that did that.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Some TV commercial.

00:50:45 ◼   ► No, but I guarantee you, but it was over and over and over again.

00:50:49 ◼   ► And it was the way mattress, 100 mattress.

00:50:51 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Yeah, that's it.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Because you only get seven letters.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Right, right, right, right.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Yeah, they left off the last S for saving.

00:50:57 ◼   ► No Far More where you get for sponsor, you get far more for your money.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Well, they ended up going under because the founder and CEO was like engaged in some kind

00:51:07 ◼   ► of financial fraud.

00:51:11 ◼   ► But you got Far More for his money.

00:51:14 ◼   ► But I worked as the stock stocker, you know, they, you know, not S-T-A-L-K stock, but S-T-O-C-K.

00:51:25 ◼   ► But I would stock the shelves.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And it was my first job, too.

00:51:28 ◼   ► I was terrible at it.

00:51:31 ◼   ► It was, I was awful at it because I was great.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Oh, I was terrible.

00:51:35 ◼   ► So the worst aisle to get, so and I used to work the end of the day shift, which was like

00:51:42 ◼   ► three to 11.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And the store closed at nine or 10.

00:51:48 ◼   ► I think like 10.

00:51:50 ◼   ► But like 10 to 11 was like the golden hour of, all right, the store's closed, customers

00:51:55 ◼   ► are out.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But now is when the stock boys would come out.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And we were all boys, you know.

00:52:01 ◼   ► If you went there as like an 18, 19 year old and you were a young woman, they would put

00:52:08 ◼   ► you at the registers.

00:52:09 ◼   ► You know, it's a weird, you know, in hindsight, it made sense at the time.

00:52:14 ◼   ► But in hindsight, it's like, why?

00:52:16 ◼   ► Why was that like a thing where like automatically all of the girls worked at the registers,

00:52:22 ◼   ► but the boys were in the back?

00:52:24 ◼   ► You know, it's kind of creepy.

00:52:25 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, there are reasons.

00:52:27 ◼   ► They're just terrible.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Yeah, they're just terrible.

00:52:29 ◼   ► At the time, it's like, oh, this seems normal and they don't even look back.

00:52:32 ◼   ► Like, oh my God, it was tons of misogyny and racism constantly in society.

00:52:36 ◼   ► As much as we still have today, it was worse back then.

00:52:39 ◼   ► It was really bad.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Like you would be like a register person if you were a girl and you would be a stalker

00:52:46 ◼   ► if you were a boy.

00:52:48 ◼   ► But one of the things was at the end of the day, you'd get assigned an aisle and you would

00:52:53 ◼   ► have to, I forget what they, oh, blocking.

00:52:56 ◼   ► We used to call it blocking where it would be just taking all of the product and pushing

00:53:01 ◼   ► it forward on the shelves so that it looked like the shelves were full.

00:53:06 ◼   ► We call that facing.

00:53:08 ◼   ► We called it blocking and I was terrible at it.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And the worst aisle to get was the hair product aisle because there were so many, you know,

00:53:17 ◼   ► there's so many bottles of shampoo and so many bottles of conditioner and everything

00:53:22 ◼   ► else and people buy tons of it, right?

00:53:25 ◼   ► So it was always every day, tons of shampoo would be sold.

00:53:29 ◼   ► And then if they told me, you know, you're getting the shampoo, you know, go to aisle

00:53:33 ◼   ► 13, you got 13.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And I would just sit there and it's like, I would just lose my mind.

00:53:39 ◼   ► And then like the manager would come through and be like, John, what's going on here?

00:53:43 ◼   ► It's 1045 and you've only done like 10 feet of the aisle.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And I would just like look at them like, you know, like, I'm sorry.

00:53:53 ◼   ► You know, I had no excuse.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I would have no excuse.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And it wasn't like I had a phone or a device to dick around with.

00:54:03 ◼   ► It was just because I could not apply myself to it.

00:54:07 ◼   ► But anyway, far more is where I work.

00:54:10 ◼   ► But nobody ever asked me for my opinion on something.

00:54:13 ◼   ► So I could, but if I did, if my menial labor job had been at a Staples like yours, I would

00:54:19 ◼   ► have done the same thing as you.

00:54:21 ◼   ► I will say for my for the job where I was a stockist, that was that was at a natural

00:54:25 ◼   ► food store.

00:54:26 ◼   ► But I was it was like a little natural food co op, you know, before the era of like, you

00:54:30 ◼   ► know, the big ones now like Whole Foods and stuff.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And I was like, 15.

00:54:35 ◼   ► I didn't know what anything there was.

00:54:37 ◼   ► It just happened to be the nearest grocery store to my house.

00:54:40 ◼   ► And so and they gave me the first job I could get like on my 15th birthday.

00:54:44 ◼   ► And so my other my problem there was that if somebody did ask me anything, you know,

00:54:48 ◼   ► they'd be like, you know, oh, where's the kale?

00:54:50 ◼   ► And I would honestly say I have no idea what that is.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Right?

00:54:54 ◼   ► Like, you don't know if it's a hair care product, if it's a if that's something you put on your

00:54:59 ◼   ► feet, right?

00:55:00 ◼   ► Because this was like 1996.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Like, no, I didn't know what any of this stuff.

00:55:05 ◼   ► No, most people didn't.

00:55:10 ◼   ► So true.

00:55:11 ◼   ► You know what the best the best job at far more and it was hard to get into and I only

00:55:16 ◼   ► got to do it when somebody you know, people would call out sick and they'd be like, we

00:55:21 ◼   ► need somebody to do it.

00:55:22 ◼   ► But the thing that far more had was in a corner, but strategically placed, so you had to walk

00:55:28 ◼   ► through the whole store to get there.

00:55:29 ◼   ► They had a video rental corner.

00:55:34 ◼   ► And they had tremendously everything was 99 cents, right?

00:55:38 ◼   ► So you could get first run movies, rent them, you know, on, of course, on VHS tape for 99

00:55:46 ◼   ► cents.

00:55:47 ◼   ► And whereas it like Blockbuster, a dedicated video rental store.

00:55:53 ◼   ► They were I don't know, what were it was like five bucks to get like a first run movie.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Yeah, four or five bucks.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Yeah, four or five bucks.

00:56:00 ◼   ► And far more.

00:56:01 ◼   ► It was like 99 cents for all movies, any movie, including the first run movies.

00:56:08 ◼   ► But of course, they only you know, the whole trick of that era was that there you could

00:56:13 ◼   ► only have so many copies of the same movie.

00:56:16 ◼   ► So like a Blockbuster movie would come out and they'd have like five copies, five copies

00:56:22 ◼   ► of it.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And but but people were nutty for it.

00:56:26 ◼   ► It was like though I think it was the whole gimmick behind far more was the video rental

00:56:31 ◼   ► thing.

00:56:32 ◼   ► I honestly think it was what kept the whole chain afloat.

00:56:34 ◼   ► But it was so much fun to work at the video corner.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Because as like a like an 18 year old, you people would return to movies, and then you

00:56:47 ◼   ► you know, double check that they're they're rewound and, you know, and then you'd go to

00:56:52 ◼   ► take them back out.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And people would be they were they were like ravenous for them.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And what they wanted to do, because if you were carrying out 20 videotapes of returned

00:57:05 ◼   ► movies, and most of them were probably the first run ones that people wanted to get,

00:57:11 ◼   ► they wanted to take them right out of your hands.

00:57:13 ◼   ► But we were authorized by management to tell people, you are not allowed to take movies

00:57:20 ◼   ► out of our hands while until we're done.

00:57:22 ◼   ► And while we were restocking that you could say, Nope, nope.

00:57:27 ◼   ► And it was so much fun to tell full grown, like 50 year old adults, nope, you can't you

00:57:33 ◼   ► can't pick these movies out yet, until I'm done putting them on the shelves.

00:57:38 ◼   ► And then you'd put them back on the shelves.

00:57:40 ◼   ► And then you would say, Okay, go and people would like fight over them.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And it was like, this is amazing.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Like I'm 18 years old, and I'm watching full grown adult fight over 99 cent video rentals.

00:57:54 ◼   ► It was it was fantastic.

00:57:55 ◼   ► That's like the last thing an 18 year old needs is a power trip.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:58:00 ◼   ► And it was it was amazing.

00:58:03 ◼   ► It was really fun.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And it really was a terrible thing, a terrible power to grant to an 18 year old.

00:58:09 ◼   ► But I do appreciate, I do appreciate that they authorized us to do that.

00:58:13 ◼   ► And and people would get mad.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And they'd be like, I'm gonna go to the manager and tell him that you're, you know, you won't

00:58:19 ◼   ► let me.

00:58:20 ◼   ► And I'd be like, go ahead, you know, go go tell them, because they've they have told

00:58:24 ◼   ► me, you're not allowed to do this.

00:58:26 ◼   ► And I think it was because before they instituted the policy, it was a real problem where they

00:58:31 ◼   ► would like, effectively knock over the person who was like, you know, restocking the video

00:58:38 ◼   ► rentals.

00:58:40 ◼   ► I had no idea that was a rental place.

00:58:41 ◼   ► It's like we never rented videos when I was a kid, because like, we didn't have a lot

00:58:44 ◼   ► of money.

00:58:45 ◼   ► And the idea of just like, you would just spend three or $4 for one night, it would

00:58:49 ◼   ► just be gone.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Like we would never do that.

00:58:51 ◼   ► So like video rental itself was its own like separate luxury that we didn't do.

00:58:55 ◼   ► But we went to far more all the time.

00:58:57 ◼   ► And I'm just I'm kind of surprised I never even realized it was a video rental option.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Oh, it was a it was a huge driver.

00:59:02 ◼   ► You did.

00:59:03 ◼   ► Did you never rent video games?

00:59:06 ◼   ► Once really one time I was like, I Yeah, and Oh, God, it was terrible.

00:59:11 ◼   ► It was so one time, I convinced my mom to let me rent a video game.

00:59:16 ◼   ► And it was Genesis game.

00:59:18 ◼   ► And it was it was some it was somewhat expensive.

00:59:21 ◼   ► It was like, you know, four or five bucks to rent a video game at the time.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And it was Bart versus the Space Mutants.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Bart Simpson versus any it was one of the worst games I've ever played.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And we I mean, I guess it's a good thing.

00:59:35 ◼   ► I rented it before I bought it.

00:59:37 ◼   ► But at the same time, it was such a negative experience of like, wow, we just spent, you

00:59:41 ◼   ► know, quote, a lot of money on this terrible game.

00:59:45 ◼   ► That was a waste and never entered into the game after that.

00:59:50 ◼   ► My friend, same friend who helped me move the TV a couple years later, my friend Don

00:59:54 ◼   ► and I were roommates for a year.

00:59:57 ◼   ► And we we knew we needed a video game system.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And we bought the this must have been 1998.

01:00:05 ◼   ► We bought the Nintendo 64.

01:00:08 ◼   ► And we thought, well, you can't go wrong betting on Nintendo.

01:00:12 ◼   ► And we bought Nintendo 64 and we got the Super Mario 3d thing, which was a great game.

01:00:19 ◼   ► And we of course had golden eye, which is everybody knows the golden eyed James Bond

01:00:25 ◼   ► game for Nintendo 64 is legendary game.

01:00:29 ◼   ► It was tremendous fun.

01:00:30 ◼   ► It was ahead of its time.

01:00:32 ◼   ► It was groundbreaking in so many ways.

01:00:33 ◼   ► That was the first like four player, you know, first person shooter game consoles like that

01:00:38 ◼   ► was, it was incredible.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It was it and and it was just tremendous fun and just

01:00:45 ◼   ► by the way, if anybody wants to correct me on that, I don't care.

01:00:47 ◼   ► It there.

01:00:48 ◼   ► N64 having four controller ports built into the system with no additional accessories

01:00:52 ◼   ► was groundbreaking.

01:00:53 ◼   ► And that was the first big multiplayer shoot em up game that use them.

01:00:56 ◼   ► No, you could you could probably do it on other systems before with like adapters and

01:01:00 ◼   ► stuff because they were like they were multi they were like four player adapters for the

01:01:03 ◼   ► Genesis and for the Super Nintendo and probably even for the NES.

01:01:07 ◼   ► So like there I'm sure there were other ways to do it, but nobody did.

01:01:10 ◼   ► The thing about the the multiplayer golden eye was that it felt always felt totally fair.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Like it felt like every time you got killed, it was a Yeah, he got me you know that.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Well, it was it was fair.

01:01:23 ◼   ► But like, I was one of those people who wouldn't look at everyone else's screen.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:28 ◼   ► And so but everyone else would look at mine.

01:01:29 ◼   ► So it didn't feel fair in that way.

01:01:31 ◼   ► Well,

01:01:32 ◼   ► but that game really I mean, that like defined pretty much every like little get together

01:01:37 ◼   ► I'd have with my friends for like a two year span in high school.

01:01:39 ◼   ► It was it was all golden.

01:01:42 ◼   ► I got better.

01:01:44 ◼   ► I got slightly better.

01:01:45 ◼   ► It's probably one of the best games I have ever been at, you know, like in terms of my

01:01:50 ◼   ► competitive stature in the grand scheme of how good people are.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I was really, really good at golden.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I may be the best I've ever been at any game.

01:01:59 ◼   ► And I, my roommate Don and I were generally even he was good at video games too.

01:02:05 ◼   ► But I eventually got a little bit better than him to the point where I would get him every

01:02:10 ◼   ► time.

01:02:11 ◼   ► And one time he we lived on the third floor of a building.

01:02:16 ◼   ► And I swear to God, this is the honest to God truth.

01:02:19 ◼   ► The one time I killed him for like the fourth, fifth time in a row, and he threw his controller

01:02:25 ◼   ► out the window.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And it was the most satisfying moment of my entire video game life.

01:02:32 ◼   ► I did here we are 22 years later, and or 23 years later, and it's still to this moment,

01:02:39 ◼   ► it's like I can just drop the mic, you know, how can you possibly get better than making

01:02:44 ◼   ► your roommate throw his controller out the window.

01:02:47 ◼   ► And the best part was he had to go out and get it because we didn't have an extra controller.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And he went out and got it and it was fine.

01:02:55 ◼   ► It was fine.

01:02:56 ◼   ► It did have like scuff marks from where it like hit the sidewalk or whatever.

01:03:01 ◼   ► But it worked and it's like, hey, hats off Nintendo, you can throw your controller out

01:03:06 ◼   ► of the third floor window and it works.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Anyway, the video game rental story though was that we bought the Nintendo thinking,

01:03:17 ◼   ► well, you can't go wrong betting on Nintendo and we bought it and we did love GoldenEye.

01:03:23 ◼   ► But damn it, it's like you'd go to like Blockbuster and all of the cool games were on PlayStation,

01:03:30 ◼   ► all of them.

01:03:31 ◼   ► You'd go and look at Nintendo and it was like Yoshi's, you know, Yoshi's Carwatch.

01:03:36 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I feel like the like, if your goal was to like, try a bunch of different

01:03:42 ◼   ► games and to rent a new game every weekend or something like, you know, try a bunch of

01:03:46 ◼   ► different games.

01:03:47 ◼   ► The N64 was a terrible system for that because it never had great third party support.

01:03:51 ◼   ► But if you look at that generation and you want like, what are like the top five or 10

01:03:56 ◼   ► best games of the generation, way more of them are on the N64 than on any other system.

01:04:02 ◼   ► And if you want to just like have a couple of games, like have a small collection that

01:04:06 ◼   ► was really good, you could just get an N64 and get like GoldenEye, Mario Kart, Mario

01:04:11 ◼   ► 64, Zelda and be pretty much done.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Like that's it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Like that's all you really needed.

01:04:15 ◼   ► What was the name?

01:04:16 ◼   ► There was a really cool Star Wars game where they made up a guy who was sort of a Han Solo

01:04:21 ◼   ► type guy and he flew around in a spaceship and it was really cool.

01:04:26 ◼   ► But there were seriously only like four or five good games for an N64.

01:04:30 ◼   ► But you're right, like the best four or five games were the best games.

01:04:34 ◼   ► But like for the variety, it was terrible.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Every time we went into Blockbuster and thought, let's see if there's anything new we should

01:04:41 ◼   ► rent before we buy it.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It was so incredibly disparate where like there was this whole section of PlayStation

01:04:51 ◼   ► games and then there was like one shelf of Nintendo 64 games.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Terrible.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:57 ◼   ► But it was it was still like, if you look back now, like if you look back at those games

01:05:01 ◼   ► now and you want to like play old stuff, I'm kind of in that world of like the retro gaming

01:05:05 ◼   ► market.

01:05:07 ◼   ► I don't have any fondness for pretty much anything that was on the PlayStation or the

01:05:10 ◼   ► Saturn.

01:05:11 ◼   ► Like and I was a huge Sega fan.

01:05:12 ◼   ► I actually at once I did once rent a Saturn.

01:05:16 ◼   ► That was later on, of course, when I when I could pay for it myself, but that was also

01:05:19 ◼   ► a waste of money.

01:05:21 ◼   ► But even just to rent the system was a waste.

01:05:23 ◼   ► But like, you know, there were some fun games here and there on Saturn and PlayStation,

01:05:28 ◼   ► but the ones you'd actually have lasting value and want to go back to with those were all

01:05:32 ◼   ► in N64.

01:05:33 ◼   ► And again, it wasn't it wasn't a large number.

01:05:34 ◼   ► It was basically ones I just mentioned, like it was five or six games that were like really

01:05:38 ◼   ► good for that system.

01:05:40 ◼   ► But even at the time, like, you know, the N64, I love that we're still ostensibly talking

01:05:44 ◼   ► about the Apple TV.

01:05:46 ◼   ► The N64, it was such a better system than the other ones at the time because the other

01:05:50 ◼   ► ones were all CD-ROM based, and then 64 went cartridge and that was actually a pain in

01:05:54 ◼   ► the butt in certain ways for developers because they had they held so much less, but it had

01:06:00 ◼   ► much nicer 3D support.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And because it was on the cartridge, there was no load times, no load load instantly.

01:06:08 ◼   ► And it had four controller ports built in.

01:06:10 ◼   ► And so it ended up you know, the PlayStation, you'd spent a lot of time on loading screens,

01:06:14 ◼   ► and there are only two controller ports and the 3D you would get was really jaggy.

01:06:17 ◼   ► It was bad 3D like those it did not age well.

01:06:21 ◼   ► The N64, yeah, it was low polygon count.

01:06:24 ◼   ► And you know, by today's standards, it was it was pretty, pretty rudimentary.

01:06:27 ◼   ► But if you look back on it, like the PlayStation one games look like hell.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And the N64 games are at least like blurry and smooth, low polygon count and they they

01:06:37 ◼   ► loaded faster, they worked better.

01:06:39 ◼   ► And they had those four controller ports for parties.

01:06:41 ◼   ► It was just such a better system.

01:06:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I think and I say that that that Don had to go and get that controller.

01:06:48 ◼   ► We did have four controllers.

01:06:50 ◼   ► I think he just went to get it because on general principle, like, you know, I Alright,

01:06:55 ◼   ► I was a jerk.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I threw it out.

01:06:57 ◼   ► But we definitely had the four controllers because the four player Mario Kart was amazeballs.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Like that was yeah, that's like your top two experiences on N64.

01:07:06 ◼   ► I think number one is GoldenEye.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Number two is Mario Kart.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:09 ◼   ► Like, I would totally sell people on N64 just by Mario Kart.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Like I we'd have friends over and and they would be like, I'm gonna go buy a Nintendo

01:07:17 ◼   ► 64 just to get this game.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Yeah, that or GoldenEye like those those sold so many systems, like just those two games

01:07:24 ◼   ► sold so many systems.

01:07:27 ◼   ► But it was very true.

01:07:29 ◼   ► All right.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Let me let me take a break here.

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01:12:35 ◼   ► internet.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Like we're all going to, you know, the community will, will police this.

01:12:42 ◼   ► And it's like, I remember explaining it to Jonas where, where my son, where it's like,

01:12:48 ◼   ► uh, the whole internet really only works by IP addresses and IP addresses are like phone

01:12:54 ◼   ► numbers and it's all just numbers and the whole mapping of these names, which are human

01:13:00 ◼   ► readable and it's all anybody says, I mean, when's the last time you ever went to a website

01:13:05 ◼   ► and it like redirects you to the IP address?

01:13:08 ◼   ► It never happens except when you're like setting up like, uh, I just did it with like a label

01:13:13 ◼   ► printer where it's like you go to, you know, the local IP address.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Um, it's, it's so weird though, because domain names are so important, but it's like this,

01:13:26 ◼   ► like we'll just agree that everybody will be honest about this.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And instead what happened of course is that most of the companies who got involved in

01:13:36 ◼   ► it are terrible.

01:13:39 ◼   ► Try to sell you, uh, you know, and every, every, you know, nickel and dime you on everything.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I do own bad.coffee by the way.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Do you really?

01:13:47 ◼   ► I do.

01:13:48 ◼   ► I, when the, when the domain name first launched, I, I bought that.

01:13:52 ◼   ► Do you have anything there?

01:13:54 ◼   ► What's there?

01:13:55 ◼   ► It's a redirect.

01:13:56 ◼   ► Where does it go?

01:13:58 ◼   ► I'll give you one guess.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Oh, wait, I don't know.

01:14:01 ◼   ► I don't have a guess, but I'm going to go right now.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Bad.

01:14:06 ◼   ► But I won't, I won't spoil it for listeners.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I'll let them do it.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Oh, all right.

01:14:13 ◼   ► It kind of makes sense.

01:14:14 ◼   ► All right.

01:14:15 ◼   ► I should have guessed.

01:14:16 ◼   ► I should have guessed it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:18 ◼   ► All right.

01:14:19 ◼   ► I won't spoil it.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Everybody should go to bad.coffee though and figure it out.

01:14:23 ◼   ► You should also go to Yes, please.

01:14:24 ◼   ► They're really, I'm actually currently buzzed on their coffee right now.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I love, isn't it great?

01:14:29 ◼   ► I love it that they're not even a sponsor right now.

01:14:32 ◼   ► I was listening to your show a couple of weeks ago because they sponsored me and they sponsored

01:14:38 ◼   ► your ATP.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And you even said you're roasting less of your own coffee because of Yes, please.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually, I haven't roasted since I've been at the beach because roasting here

01:14:50 ◼   ► is more cumbersome for various reasons.

01:14:53 ◼   ► And so I just didn't set up the roaster this whole year.

01:14:56 ◼   ► So I haven't roasted for like over a year.

01:14:59 ◼   ► And I've been, you know, I've been altering between a few different mail order companies,

01:15:02 ◼   ► testing out different ones.

01:15:03 ◼   ► I spent by far the most time with Yes, please.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And they're the ones that I kind of just always go back to.

01:15:08 ◼   ► My, my, I actually have, I have a set up so that I get them every two weeks.

01:15:13 ◼   ► And then on the alternating weeks, I get other things like filled in for variety sake.

01:15:18 ◼   ► But no one else is as consistently good as they are like they are just rock solid consistent.

01:15:24 ◼   ► And that's why like they've never left my rotation.

01:15:27 ◼   ► My favorite story about it is that during the whole 2020 COVID year, like when when

01:15:34 ◼   ► the postal system really went to hell and everybody was freaked out and and thinking

01:15:39 ◼   ► like, Oh my God, this is like an election scam.

01:15:41 ◼   ► It's like the whole postal system had seized up and everybody's like, Oh my God, if people

01:15:47 ◼   ► try to vote by mail, they're not going to be able to, you know, get their vote counted

01:15:51 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I it's not Yes, please his fault, but my Yes, please shipments from Postal Service first

01:16:02 ◼   ► class mail would be like, I got some like three weeks late.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And it's like, I ran out of coffee.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And it's like running out of coffee when you're a caffeine addict is a serious problem.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And it was like, what do I do?

01:16:18 ◼   ► You know, like, where do I go?

01:16:20 ◼   ► And like, went out.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I like ventured out with my mask and you know, worried about COVID and I'd like buy coffee

01:16:27 ◼   ► and I'd be like, this coffee tastes terrible.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the problem.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Like, you know, normally you one would think, you know, most people who drink coffee in

01:16:37 ◼   ► the world, and there's a few of them, most people who drink coffee in the world, you

01:16:41 ◼   ► would think how could you possibly like run out and that'd be a big problem because you

01:16:46 ◼   ► can walk in literally anywhere and you can probably buy coffee, you know, you can either

01:16:50 ◼   ► go to a coffee shop anywhere ever, you can go to like, you know, a gas station and convenience

01:16:54 ◼   ► store, they all sell coffee.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And you can go there and buy bags of beans almost anywhere as well.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Any grocery store, you know, many like comedian stores and drugstores, coffee shops, usually

01:17:03 ◼   ► will also sell beans.

01:17:04 ◼   ► So like, you would think that this would be the easiest thing in the world to not run

01:17:09 ◼   ► out of.

01:17:11 ◼   ► But once you're accustomed to good coffee, right, then it's then it really becomes as

01:17:17 ◼   ► if no one else sells this, you just have to like wait for it to arrive to you.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And unless you happen to live near a really good coffee roaster, which most people don't,

01:17:26 ◼   ► like you when if you run out of that, you're like, Oh, my God, I literally can't get this

01:17:31 ◼   ► anywhere.

01:17:32 ◼   ► You can get something that will satisfy your chemical drug addiction, but it's not going

01:17:36 ◼   ► to be good.

01:17:37 ◼   ► And you're not gonna be happy.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Right.

01:17:39 ◼   ► It's like you're sitting there like, and all of a sudden, it feels like you're in like,

01:17:43 ◼   ► a clinic, like I'm trying to detox off my caffeine addiction.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And they're giving you know, like, in a Clockwork Orange.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Have you ever seen that?

01:17:52 ◼   ► I know that you've you've got a limited film.

01:17:55 ◼   ► I've seen parts of it.

01:17:57 ◼   ► But you know, the gist of the movie is that there's that's a very, that breath did a lot

01:18:01 ◼   ► of work there.

01:18:02 ◼   ► The gist of the movie is that there's there's a young man who's a criminal, and he goes

01:18:07 ◼   ► into the system, and they try to decriminalize him.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Well, I don't want to spoil it, but effectively, I think my analogy probably works as a better

01:18:19 ◼   ► synopsis of the movie where it's like, all right, imagine you're trying to get off coffee

01:18:23 ◼   ► and your your strategy is okay, I'll drink as much coffee as I want, but it will taste

01:18:29 ◼   ► terrible.

01:18:30 ◼   ► That's the gist of a Clockwork Orange.

01:18:33 ◼   ► And that's what every it's like, I don't know, I didn't know what to do when my Yes, please

01:18:38 ◼   ► shipments were late.

01:18:39 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden, I would get the one that was three weeks late and get a new

01:18:44 ◼   ► one that showed up on time.

01:18:46 ◼   ► And now now all of a sudden, I've got too much coffee.

01:18:50 ◼   ► But anyway,

01:18:51 ◼   ► I was I was lucky that our post for all the postal system and drama that happened in a

01:18:56 ◼   ► lot of places, it didn't affect us here.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Like we have a nice little like beach post office and they didn't have any of those problems.

01:19:01 ◼   ► So we we were very lucky to have Yes, please be pretty reliable throughout that whole that

01:19:06 ◼   ► whole ordeal.

01:19:07 ◼   ► But yeah, it certainly if you want to get off of coffee, it's very, very easy.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Like just tell yourself, all right, I'm only going to drink coffee from gas stations from

01:19:16 ◼   ► now on.

01:19:17 ◼   ► And no milk and sugar allowed has to be black.

01:19:20 ◼   ► I guarantee you, you will quit coffee very quickly.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Right?

01:19:24 ◼   ► You could drink as much as you want, but it has to be straight out of the gas station.

01:19:27 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, no, no adulteration allowed.

01:19:31 ◼   ► You have to drink it black, just straight.

01:19:33 ◼   ► And yeah, it's got to be gas station coffee.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I think I've told you this, it not on a podcast, but in person where I have had that experience

01:19:41 ◼   ► where I drink my coffee black, I don't put sugar in, I don't put any dairy product in

01:19:46 ◼   ► it.

01:19:47 ◼   ► I just like black coffee.

01:19:48 ◼   ► And I make it very simple.

01:19:50 ◼   ► I just grind the coffee, I boil water, I put a couple of ice cubes in after the water boils

01:19:57 ◼   ► just to cool it down a little bit, you know, so it's a little bit lower than boiling temperature,

01:20:02 ◼   ► you know, get it down closer to like the 190s in Fahrenheit.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And then I just do pour over.

01:20:09 ◼   ► It's just a simple pour over thing and I make a whole, you know, carafe of coffee and I

01:20:13 ◼   ► drink a pot of it a day.

01:20:19 ◼   ► It is crazy to me how simple making great coffee can be.

01:20:25 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:26 ◼   ► Because I don't know how to cook.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I can't cook anything, but I feel like I can make a really good cup of coffee.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Well, I think the thing is like, you know, obviously there's all sorts of different coffee

01:20:37 ◼   ► paraphernalia, different brewing methods, and I've actually owned many of them myself

01:20:41 ◼   ► and gone through a lot of that, you know, trying to go through all the gear and everything.

01:20:45 ◼   ► And what I have done most of the time is just AeroPress, which is fantastic.

01:20:48 ◼   ► You know, it's like $25 plastic plunger that makes amazing coffee with very little effort.

01:20:53 ◼   ► Recently, I've been using a ratio coffee machine.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Chase Reeves turned me on to them forever ago in one of his videos and I've been really

01:21:02 ◼   ► enjoying it because it is basically an automatic pour over.

01:21:05 ◼   ► And I still like AeroPress better.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Like I like the output better from an AeroPress, but the ratio is a little bit less effort

01:21:11 ◼   ► when we have kind of a busy morning schedule this year.

01:21:13 ◼   ► So I kind of needed to save some time.

01:21:15 ◼   ► So I went with something a little more automatic.

01:21:17 ◼   ► But what I think what this shows is like, it's like if you try to dress up really bad

01:21:24 ◼   ► produce, if you know you have a like, you know, canned asparagus, right, like, canned

01:21:29 ◼   ► asparagus is not super good.

01:21:31 ◼   ► It's pretty you have to do a lot to it to make anything good out of it.

01:21:35 ◼   ► You know, but if you have like, fresh, nice asparagus, you don't have to do nearly as

01:21:39 ◼   ► much to it, and you'll get much better results much more easily.

01:21:43 ◼   ► And you'll just have a much better time.

01:21:45 ◼   ► That's kind of how like, when you have crappy old stale coffee, which almost anything you

01:21:51 ◼   ► can buy, like on the shelf of a grocery store is going to be all those things crappy, old

01:21:56 ◼   ► and stale.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And or maybe over roasted, right?

01:22:01 ◼   ► Most likely over roasted as well.

01:22:03 ◼   ► And so if you have a because if you're selling old style coffee, one of the ways you can

01:22:06 ◼   ► get flavor out of it is to over roast it.

01:22:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so if you have old crappy input, no matter what you do, but you're gonna have

01:22:14 ◼   ► to do a lot to that coffee and really know what you're doing to be able to brew that

01:22:18 ◼   ► in a way that it will be a little bit less terrible.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Whereas if you start with really good, fresh coffee that's been well roasted by somebody

01:22:24 ◼   ► knows what they're doing, and is really recent.

01:22:27 ◼   ► And so you know, it's still fresh within it's, you know, within a couple of weeks of its

01:22:29 ◼   ► roasting date, you can do pretty much anything to it.

01:22:33 ◼   ► And it'll be great.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Like you don't really need a lot of skill as a coffee producer, or barista, I guess,

01:22:38 ◼   ► like you don't need a lot of skill to do to get good output out of good fresh beans like

01:22:43 ◼   ► that matters so much more than whatever, you know, technique and equipment you're using

01:22:49 ◼   ► to do it.

01:22:50 ◼   ► It's sort of like, honestly, I know, we're on a bit of a digression here from Apple TV,

01:22:56 ◼   ► but a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, the Apple TV was not that exciting of an update

01:23:00 ◼   ► once we got past the remote, but it's it's sort of like, wouldn't you rather read a really

01:23:06 ◼   ► good book, even if it was like a, you know, just typed out and then mimeographed and then

01:23:14 ◼   ► photographed and then crumpled up and then uncrumpled.

01:23:18 ◼   ► But you'd, you know, like the worst possible physical manifestation of a book, it would

01:23:23 ◼   ► be great, though, I'd rather read like, you know, F. Scott Fitzgerald, than read a bad

01:23:31 ◼   ► book prose wise, that was beautifully typeset, it just you can't, you know, just there's

01:23:37 ◼   ► no disguising it, you know, if it's a good story, it, you'll enjoy reading it no matter

01:23:43 ◼   ► how bad it looks, even though it'd be better if it looked good.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Coffee is like that where it's like, if it's good, if they're good beans, you almost can't

01:23:50 ◼   ► go wrong with it.

01:23:51 ◼   ► You can't make bad, a bad coffee beverage out of good beans.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Yeah, well, you can, but it's much harder.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Right.

01:23:59 ◼   ► And again, if you just take like basic, normal technique, and just do an okay job of it.

01:24:06 ◼   ► If you have good beans, you're gonna get great coffee out of that.

01:24:08 ◼   ► All right, Apple TV.

01:24:09 ◼   ► I've I love this remote.

01:24:14 ◼   ► I love it.

01:24:15 ◼   ► I wish I had it right here in my hand.

01:24:17 ◼   ► I did dithering last night with the remote in my hand just so I could play with it.

01:24:22 ◼   ► I love it.

01:24:23 ◼   ► It's it's a wonderful little device to have in your hand and it feels it it's it.

01:24:31 ◼   ► You know what, I was gonna go on a whole tangent about this in my review.

01:24:36 ◼   ► And then I was like, I don't know if it works.

01:24:38 ◼   ► It doesn't hold out because I didn't want to go into the whole video game thing.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Because the video game thing brings to mind the fact that the Apple TV is a video game

01:24:47 ◼   ► platform.

01:24:48 ◼   ► But I was going to talk about like, I mean, is it?

01:24:51 ◼   ► Well, well, but that's why I didn't want to get into it.

01:24:54 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:24:56 ◼   ► There was no way to do it in a paragraph, it would have had to have been the entire

01:25:00 ◼   ► thrust of the thing I wrote.

01:25:03 ◼   ► So I didn't even touch on video games.

01:25:05 ◼   ► But like you, no matter how good the video game console is, you have to have a good controller.

01:25:11 ◼   ► And with video games, it's more important because you're constantly there.

01:25:16 ◼   ► There's no point to playing a video game if you don't have a controller in your hand.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And for the most part with Apple TV, you use the controller to get to the thing you want

01:25:24 ◼   ► to watch, you hit play, and then you put the remote down and you just watch right it so

01:25:29 ◼   ► it the analogy breaks down.

01:25:31 ◼   ► But it's like the same way that you want a great controller to play video games, you

01:25:37 ◼   ► want a good remote to watch stuff on TV.

01:25:41 ◼   ► And this remote to me is is that remote.

01:25:46 ◼   ► I'm so happy to hear this.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Like, again, I can't wait to get mine tomorrow, probably.

01:25:49 ◼   ► But wow, I'm so happy to hear that because it just this was one of those things that

01:25:55 ◼   ► I feel like we've we've had we've been stuck with the old one for so long.

01:26:00 ◼   ► And what even like when they when they quote updated it by just putting that white ring

01:26:03 ◼   ► around them on the menu button.

01:26:05 ◼   ► That was the worst.

01:26:07 ◼   ► That was that's the worst part about the whole thing.

01:26:09 ◼   ► And again, I could have gone on a whole tangent about it was like, it almost would have been

01:26:13 ◼   ► better if they didn't change it at all.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:26:16 ◼   ► Right.

01:26:17 ◼   ► They were just like, nope, that's our remote.

01:26:19 ◼   ► But the fact that they changed something, right, because because that suggested that

01:26:23 ◼   ► they that they realized, oh, we need to fix something about this.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And then they thought this should do it.

01:26:31 ◼   ► That's the only problem.

01:26:32 ◼   ► We'll fix that problem.

01:26:34 ◼   ► So like, it was seeming like we were never going to get this fixed.

01:26:39 ◼   ► I mean, before that Apple TV update was announced.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Many people were saying, you know, they're probably not gonna make Apple TVs anymore.

01:26:46 ◼   ► Because right now everyone like no one's buying them because they're too expensive.

01:26:50 ◼   ► Apple won't make them cheaper.

01:26:51 ◼   ► And also now you can buy Apple TV content it on many other platforms now because they've

01:26:57 ◼   ► they've expanded their support like so now you can go and like, you know, most people

01:27:00 ◼   ► don't even buy TV connected boxes anymore.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Most people when they buy new TV, it has smart apps built in, and they just use those.

01:27:07 ◼   ► And so it was it would it would have been equally as surprising as a new Apple TV release

01:27:15 ◼   ► coming out if they would have discontinued the Apple TV as an entire platform and said,

01:27:19 ◼   ► all right, we're done.

01:27:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Well, and if it and I guess I've talked about this a lot where it's like I've always had

01:27:29 ◼   ► the gut feeling that they weren't giving up on the Apple TV console.

01:27:33 ◼   ► But again, I'm with you where it was to me like a 55 45 guess, you know, like 55% of

01:27:40 ◼   ► me thought I think they're going to come out with a new Apple TV hardware.

01:27:45 ◼   ► But 45% of me was like, but maybe not.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And they'll just you know, because it sort of seems like they were just stringing it

01:27:52 ◼   ► out with the old one and just saying, hey, just buy an LG or whatever TV that has Apple

01:28:00 ◼   ► TV plus built in and you can buy your iTunes movies there you log into iTunes and you get

01:28:06 ◼   ► all your movies and that's that's our future.

01:28:10 ◼   ► It really, it was hard to distinguish.

01:28:13 ◼   ► But I love the Apple TV platform.

01:28:16 ◼   ► I really like using it.

01:28:19 ◼   ► Most of the stuff that I watch, we still have cable TV.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Amy watches a lot of stuff and we have a TiVo you know, again, I should probably have Syracuse

01:28:28 ◼   ► on to talk about the TiVo but we still have a TiVo and when I like it TiVo is is is like

01:28:34 ◼   ► a terrific platform that never really took off it and still fast forwards and rewinds

01:28:42 ◼   ► again, I should have seen it really, the more we talk about it, like if you want to get

01:28:46 ◼   ► back at him for not knowing what a spree is, have me talk about the TiVo that'll do it.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I don't like the remote as much as he does.

01:28:55 ◼   ► He liked to me it's another remote that is hard to tell up from down in it when you just

01:29:00 ◼   ► pick it up.

01:29:01 ◼   ► But anyway, I love Apple TV.

01:29:05 ◼   ► So I'm glad that it came out.

01:29:06 ◼   ► But God damn that remote really started to irritate me as the years went on because it's

01:29:12 ◼   ► like, how do you how how did it was an experiment worth making?

01:29:18 ◼   ► And it sounds like a great idea.

01:29:20 ◼   ► But it sounds like you know, like that slogan that Apple used a couple of years ago, you

01:29:24 ◼   ► know, for every 1000 knows forever.

01:29:29 ◼   ► This seems like it was absolutely worth trying building, making actual real prototypes and

01:29:37 ◼   ► then using and then it should have been one of the nose like, you know, this is a great

01:29:42 ◼   ► idea.

01:29:43 ◼   ► And the basic idea of having a trackpad type surface so that you can swipe or something

01:29:49 ◼   ► like that is fundamentally it's the one idea that was great from that remote.

01:29:56 ◼   ► It really is a great idea.

01:29:57 ◼   ► And I don't know of any other remote control that has something like that it is actually

01:30:02 ◼   ► absolutely a great idea, but implemented horribly, really horribly in a practical sense.

01:30:10 ◼   ► And it's like, you just should not have a remote where if you pick it up wrong, it like

01:30:17 ◼   ► totally it could could just pause your content unintentionally.

01:30:22 ◼   ► It might take you back out of the content or lose your place.

01:30:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:28 ◼   ► And I can't even tell you how many times where it'd be like, I'll pause this, put the remote

01:30:32 ◼   ► down, I'm gonna go Do you want something, you know, maybe I'll go get a snack, maybe

01:30:36 ◼   ► get a refresh of a beverage or something.

01:30:39 ◼   ► Come back to the living room from the kitchen and then pick up the remote and you pick it

01:30:43 ◼   ► up the wrong way.

01:30:44 ◼   ► And all of a sudden, you're out of the thing that you already paused.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Because you picked it up wrong.

01:30:49 ◼   ► It was terrible.

01:30:51 ◼   ► And they made it like the very early releases of the software for it were even worse.

01:30:56 ◼   ► They actually made it a little bit better over time with some software updates to kind

01:30:59 ◼   ► of more aggressively reject, you know, accidental input and stuff like that.

01:31:03 ◼   ► But yeah, the initial version of software was even worse than this.

01:31:07 ◼   ► And because it's fundamentally like an ergonomics design flaw, they could never fully fix it

01:31:12 ◼   ► in software.

01:31:13 ◼   ► The only way to fully fix it was what they did now, hopefully, which is, you know, with

01:31:15 ◼   ► this new remote.

01:31:17 ◼   ► And this is why I just I can't wait to get rid of the old remotes from my house.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Well, the the other thing about the new remote that is so like, I cannot believe that of

01:31:27 ◼   ► all companies, Apple didn't think of this before, is that the the new thing where you

01:31:34 ◼   ► can use so they brought back the D pad circular dial, right, whatever you want to call it,

01:31:41 ◼   ► right, there's like an up down left, right clickable ring at the top of the remote.

01:31:47 ◼   ► But it now in that itself is a touch surface that you can run your thumb around to go to

01:31:55 ◼   ► do like as a jog dial.

01:31:58 ◼   ► And it's it.

01:32:00 ◼   ► It's like it.

01:32:02 ◼   ► It's not like an iPod, like a classic iPod.

01:32:06 ◼   ► It is exactly like an iPod.

01:32:08 ◼   ► It's not like a little bit.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Ah, it sort of reminds you of an iPod.

01:32:11 ◼   ► No, it's exactly like a classic iPod where you just run your finger in a circle to go

01:32:17 ◼   ► to scroll a list or, or go forward or backward.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Either way, it works.

01:32:24 ◼   ► The idea of running your thumb around a circle works equally well for going left to right

01:32:31 ◼   ► in a in a timeline or up and down in a list.

01:32:35 ◼   ► And Apple invented that it's it's it's an Apple thing, right?

01:32:40 ◼   ► Like it, but it's kind of the mind blowing part to me is why and again, maybe maybe somebody

01:32:48 ◼   ► a year ago was like, Hey, why don't we just do the iPod thing.

01:32:53 ◼   ► But I can't help but think that there was somebody like back in like 2012 who was like,

01:32:57 ◼   ► we should make the Apple TV remote, like the iPod where you run your thumb around in a

01:33:02 ◼   ► circle to go up and down or left and right, which works equally well.

01:33:07 ◼   ► And it'll be great.

01:33:08 ◼   ► And that somebody who was like, Nope, I don't want that I want the whole top to be a diving

01:33:12 ◼   ► board trackpad surface, no circle.

01:33:17 ◼   ► The circular thing on the new remote is the thing that that elevates it from okay, they

01:33:24 ◼   ► fix the problems with the bad remote.

01:33:28 ◼   ► But that circular thing is what elevates it to this is the best remote I've ever used.

01:33:35 ◼   ► It's it's fantastic.

01:33:36 ◼   ► I really love it.

01:33:37 ◼   ► The circular thing is, is the game changer for me because it is like this, this is the

01:33:43 ◼   ► thing.

01:33:44 ◼   ► And the thing about the the genius of the iPod click wheel is that you it's easy to

01:33:53 ◼   ► keep your thumb going, right?

01:33:55 ◼   ► You can just keep circles, circles, circles, you don't have to stop.

01:33:58 ◼   ► Whereas with the trackpad on the old Apple TV remote, you know, you'd get to the side

01:34:04 ◼   ► and then you have to pick your thumb up and and go, you know, you have to keep

01:34:09 ◼   ► Yeah, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, right?

01:34:11 ◼   ► It's you've gone through all those long horizontal lists.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Oh, the circular thing is so brilliant.

01:34:17 ◼   ► But it's, again, it's like, how did Apple of all companies not think we should make

01:34:23 ◼   ► the remote exactly like the iPod?

01:34:26 ◼   ► This is a great way to scroll a long list or to scrub content left to right.

01:34:32 ◼   ► It mind boggling.

01:34:34 ◼   ► I wonder if you know, one of the biggest pains in the butts about about tv OS, you know,

01:34:40 ◼   ► since the since the tv OS itself was launched, is how much navigation is swiping through

01:34:45 ◼   ► long horizontal lists, because before that previous Apple TVs, and almost everything

01:34:50 ◼   ► else that ever ran on a TV would organize lists vertically.

01:34:54 ◼   ► And, you know, if you were designing it for the trackpad remote, that you know, the outgoing

01:34:59 ◼   ► Siri remote, if you're designing for that, you might it obviously makes sense like, well,

01:35:04 ◼   ► if swiping horizontally is easier than swiping vertically, then you should align the interface

01:35:08 ◼   ► to that and design the whole thing to be all horizontal lists, right, even though it kind

01:35:12 ◼   ► of visually sucks, and it sucks when they're very long.

01:35:15 ◼   ► I wonder if now that the like, if the primary interaction method is going to become moving

01:35:20 ◼   ► your moving your finger around the wheel, then that would free them up to redesign tv

01:35:27 ◼   ► OS itself to be more vertical list based.

01:35:29 ◼   ► I wonder if they'll ever do that.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Because I think that would be that would be a significant improvement.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:35:35 ◼   ► It's it.

01:35:37 ◼   ► I would say with the new remote, though, it all works so much better.

01:35:42 ◼   ► And and if there's if if there's a downside, it's that that center area in inside the wheel

01:35:51 ◼   ► is a little small.

01:35:53 ◼   ► So when you are swiping in whatever direction you want to go, you're right, like not

01:35:57 ◼   ► just up and down or left and right, like with the wheel, when you're in the middle, you

01:36:01 ◼   ► can go whichever direction you want.

01:36:03 ◼   ► It is a little small, but I still feel it in my use over the last week.

01:36:09 ◼   ► It's it's it's big enough that for the most part, it's it.

01:36:13 ◼   ► It's big enough.

01:36:14 ◼   ► I was gonna ask about that, actually.

01:36:16 ◼   ► So like, so it's not like when you the combination of the D pad and the inner trackpad is not

01:36:22 ◼   ► one contiguous trackpad surface, right?

01:36:24 ◼   ► Right?

01:36:25 ◼   ► No, no, it's like two different trackpad surfaces.

01:36:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:36:28 ◼   ► And so like, so I assume it has to be doing some kind of, you know, heuristics and rejection

01:36:32 ◼   ► to to prevent accidental input from it from whichever one of those you're not trying to

01:36:37 ◼   ► use as you use the other one.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Like, does it do a good job of that?

01:36:40 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems to it seems to do a job.

01:36:43 ◼   ► I've I thought of that where it's a it almost feels like you need to, you need to tell somebody,

01:36:48 ◼   ► hey, you know, you can use the ring as a as a wheel.

01:36:52 ◼   ► Like, I feel like if there's a downside to it, it's that a lot of people are never going

01:36:56 ◼   ► to realize that they can run their thumb around the wheel.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Because if you don't know that you can do it, you would never know that the the outer

01:37:04 ◼   ► ring, the D pad ring is itself a a touch surface.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Right, right, right.

01:37:11 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's it's just a great remote.

01:37:14 ◼   ► And it's so much thicker than the old one.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Any of the old ones, right?

01:37:20 ◼   ► Like that I, you know, broke down and put a photo in my review just to show how much

01:37:24 ◼   ► thicker it is.

01:37:26 ◼   ► And again, there was no it's not like they needed the extra battery life like one, you

01:37:31 ◼   ► know, nobody complained that like of all of our 100 complaints about the crappy black

01:37:38 ◼   ► Siri remote, the battery life was fine, right?

01:37:41 ◼   ► You can you go most of a year without recharging it.

01:37:44 ◼   ► And when you do recharge it, you just plug it into a lightning cable for a couple minutes

01:37:47 ◼   ► and then it's fine.

01:37:49 ◼   ► It's not like they made it thicker because it needed more battery life.

01:37:52 ◼   ► They just made it thicker because it was too thin, you know, it was too light and flimsy

01:37:58 ◼   ► and inconsequential in your hand.

01:38:01 ◼   ► Whereas this one fragile, the old one was like, you know, you would drop that and break

01:38:04 ◼   ► the glass.

01:38:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

01:38:06 ◼   ► Like it was it was fragile.

01:38:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:38:08 ◼   ► This one contains no glass, which is good for remote.

01:38:10 ◼   ► No, it really feels like this aluminum slab that you could like throw against the wall

01:38:16 ◼   ► you or if you know it, again, not to get into a video, but you could throw it out the window.

01:38:23 ◼   ► And it'll be fine.

01:38:24 ◼   ► It'll be fine.

01:38:25 ◼   ► There's no way that's gonna break.

01:38:26 ◼   ► It's it feels almost indestructible.

01:38:29 ◼   ► It's a great device.

01:38:30 ◼   ► I, but again, I it's like, I want to praise it.

01:38:36 ◼   ► But I also want to make sure that I emphasize it's it's mind boggling that as if if you

01:38:43 ◼   ► are a hey, I'm going to update to the latest and greatest Apple TV hardware every time

01:38:48 ◼   ► they do it, that you spent six, six goddamn years with a terrible remote control that

01:38:57 ◼   ► they only mitigated by putting a ring around a button that you generally don't have to

01:39:04 ◼   ► use much.

01:39:06 ◼   ► That's the only thing they did in six years.

01:39:09 ◼   ► Well, and as you pointed out, too, like, it was always called menu, but even at the very

01:39:13 ◼   ► beginning, that was wrong.

01:39:14 ◼   ► It always logically meant back.

01:39:16 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:17 ◼   ► And like, when they put the white ring on, why didn't they rename the button to back?

01:39:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:23 ◼   ► And it's even better that it's just a chevron, right?

01:39:27 ◼   ► Because it's better than putting the word B A C K on the button.

01:39:31 ◼   ► It's better to just put the chevron because then it's universal.

01:39:35 ◼   ► And everybody understands it.

01:39:37 ◼   ► Right.

01:39:38 ◼   ► Like that, if I don't know, that was like a weird that that one to me also is like,

01:39:45 ◼   ► because it's the sort of thing that Apple does so well, like they really do.

01:39:50 ◼   ► And it's underappreciated.

01:39:52 ◼   ► Like they, they're very, very good at picking user interface labels for things, right?

01:39:58 ◼   ► Like they're, you know, they have very good user interface copywriters, for lack of a

01:40:04 ◼   ► better word.

01:40:06 ◼   ► Menu is it from the very first Apple TV, it's always been very strange because it never

01:40:12 ◼   ► brought up a menu.

01:40:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:15 ◼   ► Even in version 1.0, tvOS, like, I mean, it would occasionally bring you to a menu, but

01:40:20 ◼   ► by circumstance, like that's not that was not the common case.

01:40:23 ◼   ► It was very strange label.

01:40:26 ◼   ► Anyway, I love it.

01:40:27 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:40:28 ◼   ► And there's no reason I again, I unless you know, before we move on, unless you really

01:40:35 ◼   ► know that you you need thread support right now.

01:40:38 ◼   ► There's there's no reason to upgrade from the old 4k Apple TV to the new 4k Apple TV,

01:40:46 ◼   ► unless you need the thread support, or you really think that Wi Fi six is going to improve

01:40:51 ◼   ► your experience versus Wi Fi five.

01:40:54 ◼   ► I mean, that to me, that's good.

01:40:57 ◼   ► That's progress.

01:40:58 ◼   ► I'm glad they support Wi Fi six now.

01:41:00 ◼   ► But I cannot say that my old Apple TV 4k got bad Wi Fi, because it was only only Wi Fi

01:41:08 ◼   ► five.

01:41:10 ◼   ► I don't know what the thread stuff does.

01:41:12 ◼   ► I don't know what I have no Dolby vision, high frame rate HDR content to watch, you

01:41:20 ◼   ► know, just just just buy the new remote and you'll be fine.

01:41:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:41:25 ◼   ► Although if you know if you have one of the pro phones, you can shoot that content, right?

01:41:30 ◼   ► One of the one of the pro 12 series, those can shoot Dolby Vision 60 frames a second,

01:41:36 ◼   ► my lowly 12 mini, which apparently nobody except me wants to buy.

01:41:42 ◼   ► But my my 12 mini can only shoot 30 frames a second Dolby vision.

01:41:45 ◼   ► You know, that's funny.

01:41:46 ◼   ► I wasn't going to bring that up.

01:41:47 ◼   ► But I know that you got the 12 mini I regret not buying the mini when I bought I love it.

01:41:53 ◼   ► Well, what I bought for myself, though, was just the regular 12.

01:41:56 ◼   ► So I'm tech tech spec wise.

01:41:59 ◼   ► I don't have the pro I bought this the first year where I didn't buy the best possible

01:42:04 ◼   ► iPhone, I just wanted the plain 12.

01:42:07 ◼   ► Because I really thought that the glass back was just a better texture.

01:42:12 ◼   ► And I like the feel of it.

01:42:14 ◼   ► And the other thing too, and I think you've mentioned this, the other thing too, is I

01:42:18 ◼   ► knew when I bought it in October, that, you know what, it's going to be at least at least

01:42:25 ◼   ► best case scenario half a year before I even leave the house.

01:42:29 ◼   ► So why do I care about the camera?

01:42:30 ◼   ► Right?

01:42:31 ◼   ► Like, you know, battery life wasn't that important either.

01:42:33 ◼   ► Right?

01:42:34 ◼   ► Same thing.

01:42:35 ◼   ► It's well, on the mini.

01:42:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:42:37 ◼   ► Because the mini the battery life is not great.

01:42:39 ◼   ► But but you know, it hasn't mattered much to me in practice because I don't go very

01:42:44 ◼   ► far.

01:42:45 ◼   ► I think here's here's my gut feeling.

01:42:47 ◼   ► My gut feeling is that the mini if it is it seems to be selling relatively poorly, whatever,

01:42:54 ◼   ► whatever, however well it's shame, because honestly, I love it.

01:42:56 ◼   ► I feel though, that a big part of that is that the only way to truly appreciate it is

01:43:01 ◼   ► to see it in person.

01:43:03 ◼   ► You cannot look at specs and say, Oh, it's only five inches and or whatever the size

01:43:09 ◼   ► of the mini is, you know, and when you tell people the size on a on a web page, as you're

01:43:15 ◼   ► ordering a phone, it doesn't make sense in a way that if you go and hold it in your hand,

01:43:20 ◼   ► you're like, Oh, my God, this is amazing.

01:43:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:43:24 ◼   ► And because no one could really see these things in person this year, right?

01:43:27 ◼   ► I think that definitely played a part.

01:43:29 ◼   ► I don't think it played a big enough part though, too.

01:43:31 ◼   ► Like I think I think the real story is what we've seen over and over again, which is like,

01:43:37 ◼   ► people say they'll buy small phones, but then when you give them bigger ones, they buy the

01:43:41 ◼   ► bigger ones instead.

01:43:42 ◼   ► And while some people prefer the small ones, like me, you know, in this case, it's not

01:43:48 ◼   ► enough people to justify it.

01:43:50 ◼   ► And in many ways, the small phone market is also the low end phone market.

01:43:56 ◼   ► And Apple already satisfies that in part with the iPhone SE line.

01:44:01 ◼   ► And you know, I don't know to what degree they're going to maybe keep making the mini

01:44:04 ◼   ► in the future as a cheaper model.

01:44:06 ◼   ► I don't know if they're going to do that or not, or if they're going to just, you know,

01:44:09 ◼   ► once the 13 line comes out, maybe the 12 mini is just gone from sale, like they often do.

01:44:14 ◼   ► Or maybe maybe only the 12 is for sale, and not the 12 mini anymore, which wouldn't surprise

01:44:20 ◼   ► me at all.

01:44:22 ◼   ► But you know, it definitely does seem like the small phone market is mostly the low end

01:44:29 ◼   ► slash inexpensive phone market.

01:44:31 ◼   ► And there's a few people like me who would pay like whatever they wanted to charge for

01:44:36 ◼   ► a really high end but small phone.

01:44:39 ◼   ► But I don't think there's enough of us.

01:44:40 ◼   ► I think most of the high end market has shown they just buy what they actually buy.

01:44:45 ◼   ► They've shown they want the pretty big ones for the most part.

01:44:48 ◼   ► And you know, that's as somebody like me who appreciates the size.

01:44:53 ◼   ► Right now, this is a good year for me.

01:44:55 ◼   ► I expect, you know, based on the way Apple does things and the rumors, I expect we're

01:44:59 ◼   ► probably going to get a 13 mini.

01:45:01 ◼   ► But then I think that's it.

01:45:02 ◼   ► I think, you know, once they change the case next time or whatever, like once they update

01:45:07 ◼   ► it, the initial design this it's out.

01:45:09 ◼   ► No, what I think they'll do is they'll they'll make a 13 mini and it'll be top of the end

01:45:14 ◼   ► specs.

01:45:15 ◼   ► And then the next time we see that size will be the next iPhone SE.

01:45:19 ◼   ► Oh, yep.

01:45:21 ◼   ► Right.

01:45:22 ◼   ► That's exactly it.

01:45:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:45:24 ◼   ► So like, like, like a year and a half after the iPhone 13s, or if they call them 12s,

01:45:29 ◼   ► who knows what they're going to call them this year, but a year and a half later, they'll

01:45:32 ◼   ► come out with one more at that size.

01:45:35 ◼   ► They'll call it the new iPhone SE and it'll be, you know, I don't know, only 400 bucks

01:45:39 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:45:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:45:41 ◼   ► And it'll be, it'll be the 13 mini with like the 15s guts.

01:45:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:45:45 ◼   ► And then that'll be it.

01:45:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:45:47 ◼   ► All right.

01:45:48 ◼   ► Let me take a break here and thank our friends at Squarespace.

01:45:49 ◼   ► Look, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here telling you about Squarespace.

01:45:52 ◼   ► You, you, you know what they are.

01:45:54 ◼   ► They're all in one.

01:45:56 ◼   ► This is where you go to build a website and it's, it's just fantastic.

01:46:02 ◼   ► You do it right in your browser.

01:46:05 ◼   ► What you see is what you get.

01:46:07 ◼   ► That's a phrase that used to be like, really, you know, we used to talk about WYSIWYG 20

01:46:11 ◼   ► years ago and it was like, that was like a huge thing where it was like, instead of like

01:46:16 ◼   ► putting formatting codes into a word processor, you just, you're, what you saw in your word

01:46:22 ◼   ► processing document was what would come out when you printed it.

01:46:27 ◼   ► Well, Squarespace is exactly like that.

01:46:29 ◼   ► You go to Squarespace and you, when you go to configure, design, tweak, change your website,

01:46:37 ◼   ► it it's literally your admin interface to your Squarespace website is it's just that

01:46:44 ◼   ► you as the admin get to edit it and then you say, okay, that's good.

01:46:50 ◼   ► That's the way it will be.

01:46:51 ◼   ► And then when people who are not, you go to your website, what they see is exactly what

01:46:57 ◼   ► you saw when you were tweaking it.

01:46:59 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

01:47:00 ◼   ► They have great tech support, great prices, everything, anything you would want.

01:47:07 ◼   ► If you need a website, and again, I always say this and I've stolen it from my guest

01:47:12 ◼   ► today, Marco, this, this idea, I repeat it every time, but you as a listener of this

01:47:18 ◼   ► show are probably the sort of person that anybody in your life who needs a website comes

01:47:24 ◼   ► to like, hey, I need a website, what should I do?

01:47:27 ◼   ► Send them to Squarespace, you'll get them out of your hair.

01:47:30 ◼   ► They can do it all themselves.

01:47:31 ◼   ► It's great.

01:47:32 ◼   ► Go to squarespace.com, enter the code talk show when you check out and they'll get 10%

01:47:41 ◼   ► off.

01:47:42 ◼   ► And you can start by going to squarespace.com/talk show and they'll know that you came here

01:47:46 ◼   ► from the show.

01:47:47 ◼   ► So go to squarespace.com/talk show, slash talk show, or send your friends and family

01:47:53 ◼   ► and everybody else there.

01:47:55 ◼   ► And when you use that code, just plain talk show, you save 10%.

01:48:00 ◼   ► Great.

01:48:02 ◼   ► What else we got?

01:48:03 ◼   ► We got the iMac.

01:48:04 ◼   ► You want to talk iMac?

01:48:05 ◼   ► I think it's been mostly well covered elsewhere.

01:48:08 ◼   ► The only thing I really will say on it is that it really shows how much a design matters

01:48:16 ◼   ► that in 2021, Apple has succeeded in getting people excited about a low end desktop.

01:48:26 ◼   ► That's true.

01:48:27 ◼   ► It's very true.

01:48:28 ◼   ► That actually was sort of the one of my ideas for the gist of my review.

01:48:33 ◼   ► Like what, how should I write it?

01:48:35 ◼   ► And it's like, isn't it cool that like just a low end desktop computer could be exciting

01:48:42 ◼   ► and worth talking about?

01:48:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:48:46 ◼   ► Like people are really excited about it.

01:48:48 ◼   ► They're excited to get it.

01:48:49 ◼   ► They're showing off, they're showing pictures.

01:48:51 ◼   ► People on YouTube were talking about it.

01:48:52 ◼   ► And like it shows you, first of all, I think the design is, is for the most part a home

01:48:58 ◼   ► run, but it just shows you how important design updates still are because this product by

01:49:03 ◼   ► all means is an incredibly boring product in Apple's lineup.

01:49:07 ◼   ► Like the, the, the low end small sized iMac has been, you know, a pretty good seller for

01:49:13 ◼   ► Apple.

01:49:14 ◼   ► I think forever.

01:49:15 ◼   ► And like being bought in large numbers for computer labs and for businesses and you know,

01:49:19 ◼   ► for like, you know, real estate offices, you'll like it where you'll have somebody coming

01:49:22 ◼   ► in like seeing a computer on your desk and you want to look nice.

01:49:24 ◼   ► You put an iMac there.

01:49:26 ◼   ► And they sell a bunch of these things.

01:49:27 ◼   ► And I think they always have, but it's not an exciting product.

01:49:30 ◼   ► Usually, like you look back at all the 21.5 inch iMacs that we've had, you know, up to

01:49:34 ◼   ► this point.

01:49:35 ◼   ► And there, it's mostly a pretty boring series of desktops that they would update every few

01:49:40 ◼   ► years and nobody would say a thing or like they would update it at the same time as the

01:49:44 ◼   ► update of the bigger ones.

01:49:45 ◼   ► And we talk about the bigger ones, maybe because we were buying them for ourselves, but no

01:49:48 ◼   ► one else would care.

01:49:49 ◼   ► You know, it wasn't exciting.

01:49:50 ◼   ► It wasn't like a big thing.

01:49:51 ◼   ► And, and the fact that like, you know, in 2021, for all intents and purposes, nobody

01:49:57 ◼   ► cares about desktops.

01:49:58 ◼   ► And I say this as a desktop user and lover, but most people who care about desktops care

01:50:03 ◼   ► about the high end, the higher end desktops.

01:50:06 ◼   ► And there's not many of us left even there.

01:50:09 ◼   ► You know, most computer users are laptop users.

01:50:11 ◼   ► And so the fact that they launched a brand new desktop design, now in this day and age,

01:50:19 ◼   ► and it's getting this much excitement and joy and attention from people and by all accounts,

01:50:24 ◼   ► it seems like a pretty good computer because of course, it's an M one and all M ones are

01:50:27 ◼   ► fantastic computers.

01:50:28 ◼   ► I know because I own two of them already.

01:50:31 ◼   ► Like, it's, it's, it really shows, first of all, how great the M one is, but which we

01:50:36 ◼   ► already knew, but also just how great it is to have like a fresh new redesign, and how

01:50:43 ◼   ► much energy that breathes into a category that otherwise, for all intents and purposes

01:50:49 ◼   ► was in the PR sense, just totally dead and useless.

01:50:54 ◼   ► And the bringing back of vibrant color choices, which has been missing for honestly, I mean,

01:51:03 ◼   ► since the G3 iMAX.

01:51:04 ◼   ► I mean, there have not been colorful desktop Macs for 20 years.

01:51:10 ◼   ► And people love to buy stuff that is in colors that they like.

01:51:15 ◼   ► It's like it.

01:51:16 ◼   ► And again, here's one where I'm totally willing to throw Johnny Ive under the bus because

01:51:22 ◼   ► I think you have to say it was Johnny Ive who really insisted that everything stay within

01:51:28 ◼   ► these very muted, true to the nature of aluminum colors, you know, because even the gold ones,

01:51:37 ◼   ► you know, the gold, you know, you can't say that they didn't have any colors other than

01:51:41 ◼   ► gray and dark gray, because they had the gold, but it's like, come on, the gold was very

01:51:46 ◼   ► muted.

01:51:47 ◼   ► I mean, didn't you buy you bought?

01:51:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually I have the gold M one MacBook Air.

01:51:52 ◼   ► Yeah, that's my laptop.

01:51:53 ◼   ► You kind of lose track of the color, though, right?

01:51:56 ◼   ► Like you're using it and it doesn't feel like you're using a gold computer.

01:52:00 ◼   ► It's like you're using a you just kind of sort of start to see it as that's the neutral

01:52:05 ◼   ► color.

01:52:06 ◼   ► Whereas when you're using these iMAX, it's like, Oh, this is orange and it pops, you

01:52:09 ◼   ► know?

01:52:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:52:11 ◼   ► And yeah, because I and I think, you know, part of this, I think is absolutely late at

01:52:15 ◼   ► Johnny Ive's feet.

01:52:16 ◼   ► And I think Phil Schiller's as well.

01:52:17 ◼   ► I think I think these were these were people who who aren't known for like, wanting a lot

01:52:23 ◼   ► of fun in the product necessarily, like they take a more serious approach.

01:52:28 ◼   ► And and I think, you know, you can look at that from one end and say, you know, man,

01:52:32 ◼   ► we like that sucks.

01:52:33 ◼   ► We missed all this color for all this time.

01:52:35 ◼   ► On another, you know, from another point of view, though, it's part of fashion and fashion

01:52:38 ◼   ► goes in and out of style.

01:52:39 ◼   ► And I think, you know, in the in the original iMac G3 era, like Apple introduced color to

01:52:45 ◼   ► the road of consumer electronics, and it was really big for a little while.

01:52:51 ◼   ► And then eventually, like that kind of phased out of fashion and things got more serious.

01:52:55 ◼   ► And as everything moved from plastic to metal, everything got, you know, just like the look

01:53:00 ◼   ► of raw aluminum became the look of nice hardware for a long time.

01:53:05 ◼   ► And that was just what was in fashion.

01:53:07 ◼   ► And then, you know, an Apple has always been good at at coloring aluminum like they did

01:53:10 ◼   ► with the original iPod lineup, like the iPod mini and everything had fantastic colors and,

01:53:16 ◼   ► and eventually the nano, you know, once that one aluminum as well, like, they always had

01:53:19 ◼   ► really good aluminum colors.

01:53:20 ◼   ► But, you know, for the most part, I think the the industry, just like what was cool

01:53:27 ◼   ► for a long time was metal, just sheer like natural looking aluminum, and then eventually,

01:53:33 ◼   ► dark metal, space gray, like what however, like 19 different colors that has meant over

01:53:37 ◼   ► the years.

01:53:38 ◼   ► You know, we just had gray and dark gray for a long time.

01:53:43 ◼   ► And eventually they realized that they could do colors in the iPhone line to help jazz

01:53:48 ◼   ► it up as their industrial design rate of change slowed down in other ways they would they

01:53:52 ◼   ► realize like, Oh, well, if we're going to keep the same industrial design for two or

01:53:55 ◼   ► three years for a phone in years two and or three, we can introduce a new color to help

01:54:00 ◼   ► jazz it up.

01:54:01 ◼   ► But for the most part, it was still and I think largely still is considered like, only

01:54:07 ◼   ► for low end stuff or only only for like, you know, the the more consumer line of things

01:54:12 ◼   ► to be actually want color and it remains to be seen whether Apple has seen the light on

01:54:15 ◼   ► that for the higher end of you know, their upcoming products.

01:54:18 ◼   ► I hope they have I fear they haven't.

01:54:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm pretty sure what's going to happen is that the the you know, iMac Pro with a

01:54:25 ◼   ► big iMac is probably just gonna look like the iPhone 12 Pro, it's going to be you know,

01:54:30 ◼   ► maybe like a steel ring within like the dark handful of colors they offer and that's it.

01:54:34 ◼   ► But ultimately, I think this was this was largely a part of I think, you know, the the

01:54:41 ◼   ► johnny i've exit and and what's your name Evans hanky the new Yeah, Evans hanky.

01:54:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:54:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:54:48 ◼   ► So I if this is what we're seeing from Evans hanky style, I'm a big fan.

01:54:52 ◼   ► I think it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's, that's a big part of the change that

01:54:56 ◼   ► precipitated this.

01:54:57 ◼   ► But again, I think like part of it was the staff change, like, you know, the leadership

01:55:01 ◼   ► change there.

01:55:02 ◼   ► But I think part of it's also just the world is coming out of that that fashion cycle where

01:55:08 ◼   ► what we wanted was just a bunch of dark metal.

01:55:10 ◼   ► And we're, we're for many reasons, kind of in the mood for some color now.

01:55:15 ◼   ► And so I think it's just it part of it is just that part of fashion came back around.

01:55:19 ◼   ► I know it's time.

01:55:20 ◼   ► I also feel and I talked to Apple, you know, in private briefings that are off the record.

01:55:28 ◼   ► But so I won't quote anybody directly.

01:55:30 ◼   ► But it it it is perfectly timed for coming out of the worst year in our life, anybody's

01:55:39 ◼   ► lifetimes, right?

01:55:41 ◼   ► This terrible year of being shut in and seeing the same stuff and everybody is just, you

01:55:46 ◼   ► know, wants to get back to normal and have some fun.

01:55:50 ◼   ► And boy, are these fun looking computers.

01:55:53 ◼   ► They're just gorgeous.

01:55:54 ◼   ► I mean, I've only seen the orange one in in person, because that's the only one that they

01:55:59 ◼   ► sent me.

01:56:00 ◼   ► Thank God because I wouldn't want I wouldn't.

01:56:02 ◼   ► It's a big, still a big box.

01:56:04 ◼   ► I'm so I'm glad they didn't send me like all six boxes.

01:56:09 ◼   ► And then you know, I'd have to send them all back and blah, blah, blah.

01:56:12 ◼   ► But just judging by the orange one and how much better I think the orange one looks great

01:56:19 ◼   ► on screen when you're like, hey, which one do I want?

01:56:22 ◼   ► I like the look.

01:56:23 ◼   ► It looks great on screen.

01:56:24 ◼   ► You see it in person.

01:56:25 ◼   ► It looks even better.

01:56:26 ◼   ► And I've heard and just chatting with the people who and and reading the reviews that

01:56:32 ◼   ► other people wrote, everybody seems to have that same opinion, no matter which color they

01:56:36 ◼   ► got that, hey, the blue one looks better in person than you then it looks on screen and

01:56:42 ◼   ► on screen.

01:56:43 ◼   ► It looks great.

01:56:44 ◼   ► And it's just so fun.

01:56:45 ◼   ► And it seems so perfect for the moment.

01:56:49 ◼   ► But I'm with you.

01:56:50 ◼   ► I haven't.

01:56:51 ◼   ► I don't think they're going to do it with the pro ones.

01:56:53 ◼   ► I think the pro ones are still going to be like you can get whatever whatever color you

01:56:56 ◼   ► want as long as it's a shade of gray.

01:56:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's I mean, this is this is another area where I'm so happy I went with the 12

01:57:04 ◼   ► mini this year instead of usually I would go for like the smaller of the pro phones,

01:57:08 ◼   ► you know, like the 10, the 10 R, the 10 or the 10, the 10 S and the 11 Pro like that.

01:57:13 ◼   ► That's how I went before.

01:57:15 ◼   ► But I was always envious of the better colors that would be on the like the 10 R and the

01:57:21 ◼   ► 11 base model and stuff like that.

01:57:22 ◼   ► I was always envious of those because they always have better colors.