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The Talk Show

311: ‘Toaster Fridgey’, With Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00   it's free, but if you don't wear glasses, you're not welcome.

00:00:05   So anyway, the WWDC announcement went up today.

00:00:08   So we're lucky that we're recording this afternoon.

00:00:11   And the theme of the invitations, it's

00:00:15   a slew of widely diverse Memoji characters looking at opening

00:00:22   a creepily-- not creepily.

00:00:26   Craigily.

00:00:26   That's the wrong word.

00:00:27   Craigily.

00:00:28   Craigily opening a MacBook and having various icons

00:00:34   from the MacBook screen reflected in their glasses.

00:00:38   If you could only find someone to love you the way Craig loves that M1 Mac,

00:00:42   you'd do well in life.

00:00:44   That's such a fun--

00:00:45   they knew what they were doing when they did that, right?

00:00:52   It's not like they were surprised by the reaction.

00:00:54   And there is, from my interactions with Craig Federighi,

00:01:02   he's done my show a couple times, and I've

00:01:04   gotten to talk to him backstage.

00:01:06   He's the guy you think he is.

00:01:08   That is him.

00:01:11   So that's a fun little callback for the invitation.

00:01:13   But of course, people are going bananas, thinking that the fact

00:01:17   that they're all wearing glasses and that you see bits of software

00:01:21   reflected in the glasses is that it's a hint that the AR glasses

00:01:26   announcement might be coming at WWDC, to which I say maybe.

00:01:32   But I wouldn't bet on it.

00:01:34   What do you think?

00:01:35   I was more surprised and excited that it was Mac front and center

00:01:39   in the invitation.

00:01:41   Yeah, I like that too.

00:01:42   I totally dug that.

00:01:44   I thought that too.

00:01:46   Was it 2010 there wasn't even any Mac at WWDC?

00:01:50   One of those years.

00:01:51   Yeah, there was.

00:01:52   Or getting little tiny coffins ready.

00:01:55   There was a year of the Go-Go iOS era, which again, people read into that

00:02:00   and thought, well, this is a sure sign that the Mac is going away.

00:02:03   But it was really just a reaction to the crazy gold rush era of iOS developers

00:02:13   storming into the Apple platform.

00:02:16   Yeah.

00:02:17   I don't know.

00:02:18   What do you think about the invitation?

00:02:19   This year, no one's panicking that there's no iPhone in the invitation.

00:02:23   Yeah, right.

00:02:24   Nobody's reading into this that the iPhone is going away.

00:02:28   Yeah, I always like these because, well, you and I,

00:02:31   we know people who've been on or are on Apple's graphic design team.

00:02:35   And they just get given a brief.

00:02:36   They're not given any context, any background.

00:02:39   It would be great if it looked like bokeh lights.

00:02:42   Or it would be great if it looked like this and they just go off and make it.

00:02:46   And then they watch everyone talk about it on Twitter and laugh and drink.

00:02:49   And celebrate all this smart and dumb stuff that we say.

00:02:53   So this is just--

00:02:54   they probably just were told, the way Craig looked at that MacBook, that,

00:02:58   but with a diverse range of emoji.

00:03:01   Did you notice that one of the emoji is a fellow--

00:03:04   maybe there's more than one, but I don't know how many there are.

00:03:07   But there's one where the fellow's wearing a hearing aid.

00:03:11   I mean, just as a nice, to me, elevation of accessibility stuff

00:03:17   to being front and center on their list of diverse adjectives

00:03:23   to include in the characters.

00:03:25   Yeah, it's a smart nod, too.

00:03:27   And the WWDC Swift Scholarship has the same--

00:03:30   I believe it's the same person, but a younger version with a graduate cap

00:03:34   on to signify students, which is nice.

00:03:36   Yeah.

00:03:38   So what do you think?

00:03:39   Do you think glasses are coming?

00:03:41   I mean, they've got to be coming eventually.

00:03:43   Whether they're coming this year or not, I still

00:03:46   feel like something that could be an acceptable glasses product.

00:03:49   It's a little early.

00:03:50   Even if we assume that they're introducing frameworks

00:03:53   at WWDC that will give them a six month or one year lead time

00:03:57   before there's an actual product, or if there's a developer specific hardware

00:04:01   test the way there have been the Mac developer kit for the M1 processor.

00:04:07   Even if there's something like that, it still feels really early to me.

00:04:10   So I wonder if it's just, hey, we want to show

00:04:13   a little bit of software in this.

00:04:14   We could do reflections in glasses.

00:04:16   Yeah.

00:04:17   And I wrote in my little write up on Daring Fireball,

00:04:22   like there's also-- there's no way that Apple didn't realize

00:04:25   that people would read into this.

00:04:27   I think the most likely explanation is they

00:04:29   wanted to play off the Federighi thing from the M1 announcement.

00:04:35   The brief was that if some of the characters are wearing glasses,

00:04:39   they should all wear glasses because that's sort of the part of the--

00:04:44   if somebody-- if some of the characters weren't wearing glasses,

00:04:47   you wouldn't see the screen reflection.

00:04:48   And having those icons in the reflected lenses is like--

00:04:54   that's the art direction.

00:04:56   And the fact that people might read into it because Apple's AR VR efforts

00:05:01   are probably at the top of the list of anticipated products

00:05:08   that they might--

00:05:09   are apparently rumored to be working on.

00:05:12   So be it.

00:05:13   Because there's no harm done.

00:05:14   And it's not like, oh, if WWDC's keynote comes to pass

00:05:18   and there's no mention of any kind of glasses or goggles,

00:05:22   it's not like you could say that Apple ripped us off.

00:05:26   They just had characters wearing glasses.

00:05:27   It's sort of a free way to tease us if it's just a teaser.

00:05:31   And they keep doing it.

00:05:32   That's the thing is like--

00:05:33   I wonder if this is an elaborate troll at some point

00:05:36   because when there was the September event

00:05:38   and they had that AR logo that would morph and change,

00:05:41   everyone was sure that AR would be the big focus in September.

00:05:44   And then previous to that, one of the characters

00:05:47   was wearing glasses in the WWDC artwork.

00:05:49   And then Phil Schiller's Memoji got glasses.

00:05:51   And they were sure that that was a sign that we

00:05:53   were going to be getting the Apple.

00:05:55   I think we just want to see it so much that we lay it on anything.

00:05:58   And Apple's smart to sort of lean into it.

00:06:01   Right.

00:06:02   It might be.

00:06:03   Honestly, I wouldn't put this past them.

00:06:07   Like, the rumors are twofold.

00:06:10   And it makes sense because they're very different products.

00:06:12   There's the rumor of VR goggles that cover your screen like RoboCop.

00:06:20   And you're looking at a screen or two screens, really, one per eye.

00:06:25   One of the rumors is that there's two 8K displays, one for each eye.

00:06:30   And then a camera on the outside would show reality.

00:06:34   So it's like you're wearing a camera on your eyes.

00:06:38   And then the other product would be the AR glasses, where you're just

00:06:43   wearing see-through glasses.

00:06:45   Like, if the battery was out, you'd still be able to see through them.

00:06:48   They look like regular prescription eyeglasses,

00:06:52   but somehow project an image onto the lenses.

00:06:58   Google glasses, remember those?

00:07:00   Yeah.

00:07:01   Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:02   Google glasses were sort of along those lines.

00:07:05   I think that they had a screen that--

00:07:07   you could actually see the little screen, and it only

00:07:09   projected it onto the one lens.

00:07:11   It was like the Borg.

00:07:12   It was like that little Borg--

00:07:14   like, cute as a Borg thing in front of your face.

00:07:16   Right.

00:07:16   And according to the rumor mill--

00:07:19   and this is why I wanted you on the show this week.

00:07:22   This is the rumor episode of the talk show.

00:07:24   According to the rumor mill, the VR product

00:07:30   is closer to shipping than the AR product, which would be like,

00:07:36   you would just go get prescription glasses

00:07:38   and have a magical heads-up display in front of you

00:07:42   and an interaction model.

00:07:44   And that makes sense, but that is true, right?

00:07:47   Like, the rumor mill is sort of like, maybe the VR thing is a 2022 thing,

00:07:50   and the AR thing is maybe a 2023 thing.

00:07:54   Yeah.

00:07:55   Yeah, and it makes sense to me, having both those products--

00:07:58   and I don't mean that it's happenstance-ual that they're both under--

00:08:03   you know, Dan Riccio now, they're both in the same special projects group.

00:08:06   But I think it's two products, like, really two focuses.

00:08:09   The VR headset sounds like a next-generation Apple TV.

00:08:12   You know, Apple's never going to make a television set.

00:08:15   There's no margin in it.

00:08:16   There's no really good update path in it.

00:08:18   But a VR headset could take all the entertainment, all the gaming,

00:08:22   all the fitness plus stuff, just all the content that Apple's working on,

00:08:26   and turn it into a device that each person has to buy their own,

00:08:29   basically, at a really high premium, perfect Apple product.

00:08:33   And then the glasses sound like a next-generation Apple Watch,

00:08:35   where it's wearable.

00:08:36   It's tricked out.

00:08:37   It's even more convenient.

00:08:38   You don't even have to lift your wrist anymore.

00:08:40   The notifications, the sensors are all just built right in front of your face.

00:08:44   And that sort of takes the Apple Watch into the future.

00:08:47   And both those things make a lot of sense to me as distinct things,

00:08:50   not like a holdover between one and the other.

00:08:53   Right.

00:08:53   So given that loose timeline-- and it makes sense

00:08:57   that the AR product would be further ahead, harder to make, right?

00:09:02   Like this VR product is more or less an iPhone in front of your face.

00:09:09   And a little different--

00:09:10   And it can have vents and a fan and can run an M1-style processor,

00:09:13   like all those things.

00:09:16   No vents, no fan.

00:09:17   But you know.

00:09:18   No, I'm sure they're going to--

00:09:19   I think if they want the amount of-- because remember,

00:09:21   the rumor was they're going to have a separate box,

00:09:23   and Johnny kiboshed that.

00:09:24   So they're going to put all that compute power in.

00:09:26   They need something as big as a VR headset

00:09:28   to put all that compute power in.

00:09:30   You really think that-- you were serious.

00:09:32   I thought you were making a joke.

00:09:33   I don't think there'll be any vents or fan.

00:09:34   There's no vents or fan in the box.

00:09:35   Well, I don't think fan, but like--

00:09:37   sort of like what they're doing with the Mac.

00:09:38   It's like I can't hear what they're doing with the M1 MacBook Pro,

00:09:42   but it's better than no cooling.

00:09:45   But if the MacBook Air doesn't need a fan,

00:09:49   I can't help but believe that they're working on a product that--

00:09:52   That was one of the rumors.

00:09:52   So I would rather not have it either, but that

00:09:54   was listed high up in the information's rumors.

00:09:57   Yeah, I don't know.

00:09:59   And I thought that-- I always thought that rumor back when Johnny was there.

00:10:03   I just didn't-- the idea that it would be tethered to a box at all

00:10:07   just seems like a nonstarter.

00:10:10   I never believed that.

00:10:12   I think the product has to be completely untethered.

00:10:15   Same.

00:10:17   But anyway, to go with what I'm thinking in my Kremlinology aspect

00:10:22   of looking into these WWDC announcements,

00:10:25   and maybe even the little subtle things like Phil Schiller's

00:10:28   Memoji getting glasses over--

00:10:32   is that they're just subtly making--

00:10:34   hey, it's cool to wear eyeglasses all the time.

00:10:38   Yeah.

00:10:38   Right?

00:10:39   That's--

00:10:40   Boiling water.

00:10:41   Yeah, I even think Memoji are like that,

00:10:46   just getting people used to having an AR presence.

00:10:48   Because it's not going to be comfortable for a lot of people.

00:10:51   But if they get us in there with the iPhone, the iPad early,

00:10:53   they get us to make our fun little Memoji characters

00:10:56   so we're used to seeing avatars of ourselves in an AR world.

00:10:59   I think all of this stuff is really smart premarketing

00:11:02   for those products.

00:11:04   I mean, that's the thing about the AR glasses.

00:11:06   It's like, before the Apple Watch, a lot of people--

00:11:10   commonly, very commonly--

00:11:11   I hear it now, but a little bit less so.

00:11:13   But a lot of people were like, I don't wear a watch.

00:11:15   So I don't-- and watch--

00:11:18   I don't know what the percentage of adults wearing wristwatches

00:11:22   was pre-Apple Watch.

00:11:26   But it certainly-- I would wager with certainty

00:11:30   that it skewed lower as a percentage

00:11:34   as you go lower in age brackets.

00:11:36   That the younger people are, the less likely

00:11:38   they were to regularly wear a wristwatch.

00:11:43   And it makes a ton of sense.

00:11:46   And the most common explanation is, why would I wear a watch?

00:11:48   I have a phone with me.

00:11:50   If I ever need to check the time, I look at my phone.

00:11:52   And it's sort of like the phone as the return of the pocket

00:11:55   watch.

00:11:56   Yeah.

00:11:57   That makes sense.

00:11:59   But the pitch for, OK, you--

00:12:05   the pitch for you always wore a watch,

00:12:09   and now we want you to wear an Apple Watch is easier,

00:12:14   I think, than you never wore a watch,

00:12:16   and now we want you to wear an Apple Watch.

00:12:19   But even so, it's like asking you to overcome the,

00:12:24   well, I'm not used to having a thing that I can feel

00:12:28   on my wrist, and it feels weird because I never wear a watch.

00:12:31   But it doesn't really affect the way you look.

00:12:34   Whereas, if you have perfectly good vision,

00:12:38   or you wear contact lenses, asking

00:12:42   you to spend all day wearing glasses is a big ask.

00:12:46   I mean, we don't know anything about this product.

00:12:48   I realize this is two years out.

00:12:50   But it is-- it's a weird thing, and it affects the way people

00:12:55   look significantly.

00:12:56   People look different wearing glasses,

00:12:58   and they might not want to do it.

00:12:59   And I can say, as somebody who spent 40-some years wearing

00:13:03   contact lenses, and the last two or three years full-time

00:13:07   wearing glasses, wearing glasses sucks.

00:13:09   Yes.

00:13:11   Yeah, no, same.

00:13:12   And the other thing that's sort of inopportune about this

00:13:17   is people do wear sunglasses.

00:13:18   Famously, people love to wear sunglasses.

00:13:20   People with perfect vision wear sunglasses a lot.

00:13:23   But it sounds like the technology

00:13:24   to make it work on sunglasses is harder

00:13:26   than to make it work on clear glasses.

00:13:28   Right, and so again, it's a real sci-fi-sounding product

00:13:34   at this point.

00:13:34   But it's like, let's say you do get it.

00:13:37   You're like, well, I do wear glasses.

00:13:39   So I'll just switch to wearing Apple glasses.

00:13:45   And the heads-up information proves

00:13:47   to be extremely useful and addictive.

00:13:50   And you're like, oh, I can't imagine going back

00:13:53   to not wearing Apple glasses.

00:13:56   But then you're going out in the sunshine,

00:13:58   and you have to swap them for other glasses.

00:14:01   And you miss-- now you don't have a glass.

00:14:03   I don't know.

00:14:03   I don't know what the solution is.

00:14:05   And I realize it's years away.

00:14:06   But I feel like it's got to be solved.

00:14:09   And I don't know that it's ever going to work to get those--

00:14:12   what do they call them?

00:14:14   Not progressives.

00:14:15   Yeah, transitions, which always look weird to me when people

00:14:19   come in from the sunshine, and it

00:14:21   looks like they're trying to look cool wearing sunglasses.

00:14:26   But maybe that's one of those things

00:14:28   where Apple can surprise us with their engineering

00:14:31   expertise in a materials field outside computer.

00:14:36   I don't know.

00:14:37   And then I think Kuo Ming-Chi said

00:14:39   that they're trying to make it into contact lenses for, like,

00:14:41   2030 or something.

00:14:43   That seems pretty far out.

00:14:45   But again, we've seen it in sci-fi movies for years.

00:14:50   So surely it's coming, because everything always comes true.

00:14:53   Yeah, well, then one day we'll do Old Man Gruber's talk show

00:14:56   and talk about Apple cybernetics.

00:14:57   I mean, everything's coming.

00:14:58   Which implant series did you get?

00:15:03   2.0 implant was so much better, I should have waited.

00:15:05   The other thing, the thing about Apple invitations,

00:15:08   I always feel like there's more to read into the slogans

00:15:11   than the artwork.

00:15:13   So they had the Time Flies event last September.

00:15:16   And I thought, well, that means the headliner of this event

00:15:19   is going to be the watch.

00:15:21   And then other people had these complicated explanations

00:15:25   for how, no, no, no, that actually means

00:15:28   the iPhones are coming in September.

00:15:31   I was like, no, Time Flies really

00:15:32   sounds like the watch to me.

00:15:35   Yeah, it's either the watch or flight,

00:15:36   and I'm pretty sure they don't have flight.

00:15:40   What was another good one?

00:15:41   I think There's Something in the Air.

00:15:43   Remember that one?

00:15:45   And it was at, I think it was at a WWDC.

00:15:48   Maybe it was a Macworld.

00:15:49   But I remember the banners were hanging in Moscone,

00:15:52   and it was one of those years where the banners were

00:15:55   photographed by long lens sharpshooters

00:15:59   from across the street in advance.

00:16:01   And if I'm recalling correctly, There's Something in the Air

00:16:07   was just, that was going to be the MacBook Air.

00:16:10   And that was the year that Steve Jobs famously took it out

00:16:13   of a Manila envelope.

00:16:15   But I remember there were people who

00:16:16   thought it meant that they had a partnership with Adobe

00:16:19   to make Adobe Air a new developer platform.

00:16:22   And it's like, no, no, they're not going--

00:16:28   they've been swimming against the tide in all things

00:16:30   developer related to own the full stack.

00:16:33   They're not going to--

00:16:36   and it was like Adobe Air doesn't

00:16:37   seem like it's going anywhere.

00:16:39   Occam's Razor, I think, is not often applied when

00:16:42   it comes to Apple invitations.

00:16:44   Right.

00:16:44   There's no slogan for this.

00:16:45   It's just WWDC 21.

00:16:47   The dates--

00:16:49   The glow, right?

00:16:50   Is the glow a slogan?

00:16:51   I don't think so.

00:16:52   Is it?

00:16:54   I mean, it's such a weird slogan.

00:16:57   What is it again?

00:17:00   Glow--

00:17:02   Oh, there is a slogan?

00:17:03   Yeah, it's on the development-- glow and behold.

00:17:06   Oh.

00:17:07   Oh, I didn't see that.

00:17:09   If you go to developer.apple.com/WWDC21,

00:17:12   the Craig book opens.

00:17:14   And then it just says glow and behold.

00:17:17   With a period, which is-- millennials

00:17:19   are going to read as hostile.

00:17:22   Oh, they need to get over that.

00:17:23   [LAUGHTER]

00:17:27   I've got my son trained.

00:17:28   He knows that I had my text with a period.

00:17:31   That doesn't mean anything.

00:17:34   I'm going to say that that means nothing,

00:17:35   and that it's just a play on the art direction,

00:17:37   and that maybe it's like they have a--

00:17:43   because they don't want to hint at anything specific,

00:17:45   they're just going to play off the gimmick of the Craig

00:17:48   Federighi style glow and behold, and that there is nothing

00:17:51   to read into it in terms of any specific announcements.

00:17:56   And it's not like they can just redo the Mac OS interface again

00:17:59   after last year and make everything glow.

00:18:01   No, no, no.

00:18:03   That'd be terrible.

00:18:04   There'll be light mode, dark mode, and romance mode,

00:18:06   which is a rosy color for Craig.

00:18:07   Oh my god, that would be horrible.

00:18:09   [LAUGHTER]

00:18:12   All right, let me take a break and thank our first sponsor.

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00:19:44   this episode of the talk show.

00:19:46   Well-timed for a developer tool.

00:19:48   So timing-wise, maybe we're not so lucky recording today,

00:19:55   because we got to talk about the WWDC news coming out.

00:20:01   But people are expecting an April event.

00:20:05   Some people were expecting a March 23 event.

00:20:09   It seems like Apple is due for a product announcement event.

00:20:12   They often hold events in late March, early April.

00:20:17   Seems like they have a bunch of pending products,

00:20:21   but no announcement yet.

00:20:23   And today is Tuesday, as we record, Tuesday the 30th.

00:20:29   Why is it that we were thinking April 7th as an event day,

00:20:35   which is a Wednesday, instead of April 6th, which is a Tuesday?

00:20:38   Apple has such a weird--

00:20:42   September has almost always been iPod and then iPhone,

00:20:45   and October has been recently a lot about the Mac.

00:20:49   But March has varied so much.

00:20:51   Even if you discount 2020, because there was no event,

00:20:53   it was 2020.

00:20:54   The year before that, it was the services event,

00:20:57   where they did TV Plus and Arcade.

00:20:59   And then they announced products like the AirPods 2

00:21:02   in press releases around it, the iPad Mini, the iPad Air.

00:21:06   The year before that, it was the education event in Chicago,

00:21:09   where they did announce the low-price iPad.

00:21:12   But mostly, it was a lot of educational initiatives.

00:21:15   But then they've also done things like the 2015--

00:21:18   they did the 12-inch MacBook, big product,

00:21:22   and a lot of the Apple Watch stuff.

00:21:23   So it seems like this is the event that just

00:21:25   does whatever they need it to do in the spring.

00:21:27   Right.

00:21:27   Things that aren't necessarily on a regular schedule.

00:21:30   The iPad Pros, for example, have been on not a random schedule,

00:21:35   but a somewhat irregular schedule.

00:21:38   Like last year's--

00:21:39   Like 18 months-ish?

00:21:40   Yeah, and last year's were a unique upgrade,

00:21:45   where it was just going from the A12X to the A12Z.

00:21:50   And the only difference was that the GPU went from seven cores

00:21:53   to eight cores.

00:21:55   And they added the LIDAR center.

00:21:58   The wide angle, yeah.

00:21:59   So that was a weird update.

00:22:04   I think we're--

00:22:05   And the Magic Keyboard was new.

00:22:06   We got the Magic Keyboard and iPhone SE.

00:22:08   Right, and the update to iPad OS to support the trackpad--

00:22:12   Yes.

00:22:13   --and mouse system-wide, which was, in my opinion,

00:22:16   a bigger deal than the actual hardware.

00:22:18   So I don't know.

00:22:23   I kind of feel-- and people are going to have to--

00:22:26   this episode won't air until tomorrow, the 31st.

00:22:29   I would say there's more than a 50% chance that we'll

00:22:36   get an announcement tomorrow that there's

00:22:39   going to be an event seven days later on April 7th.

00:22:44   I'm going to put the odds at 60%.

00:22:49   But if it happens, people will have

00:22:51   to take my word for it that we were recording this

00:22:53   on the 30th.

00:22:55   What do you think?

00:22:56   Is there a significance to the--

00:22:58   because is there something in the US or a holiday

00:23:00   or anything that would push it from a Tuesday to a Wednesday

00:23:03   this month?

00:23:03   I can't think.

00:23:04   The Easter is on Sunday.

00:23:06   That's true.

00:23:07   But why would that preclude using Tuesday?

00:23:11   Even Monday after Easter isn't really considered a holiday.

00:23:15   They don't do events on Monday.

00:23:16   They typically only do them on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

00:23:19   And maybe there's one weird example

00:23:22   where there was one on a Thursday.

00:23:24   But Tuesday and Wednesday are usually the days.

00:23:27   I don't know.

00:23:28   And maybe they announce it tomorrow,

00:23:30   and it's Tuesday the 6th.

00:23:31   I still think, though, that the announcement

00:23:33   could come tomorrow.

00:23:34   And because nobody has to travel for these things,

00:23:37   there's not that much reason to worry

00:23:39   about giving people six days notice or seven days notice.

00:23:43   And then the PR flow is, OK, today the WWDC announcement

00:23:50   takes up all the Apple cycles and puts

00:23:54   the date on the calendar, gets people talking about it.

00:23:57   Then, boom, the next day, hey, we have an event next week,

00:24:00   some kind of clever slogan with--

00:24:03   I don't know which event--

00:24:04   which product might be the one that gets the pun title--

00:24:09   keeps people talking about that for six days.

00:24:12   And then the actual event happens,

00:24:13   and they release these things.

00:24:15   I could see that being the plan.

00:24:18   And if it's not next week, then I

00:24:20   would think it's definitely the week after that.

00:24:23   I just feel like it's bursting at the seams at this point

00:24:26   to release some of this stuff.

00:24:28   Yeah, it feels like there's a bunch of products just

00:24:30   at Apple Park that just keep slamming against that door,

00:24:33   saying, let us out.

00:24:34   Let us out.

00:24:35   Right, so what would you--

00:24:37   I mean, do you agree that there's

00:24:38   got to be an April event?

00:24:41   Yeah, I think any time that--

00:24:43   if it's just iterative update stuff,

00:24:45   like the Intel MacBook Air with the non-butterfly

00:24:49   with the scissor key keyboard, that kind of stuff,

00:24:52   they can drop in a press release, no problem.

00:24:54   AirPods, too, no problem.

00:24:55   We know what AirPods are.

00:24:57   But any time they need to explain something,

00:24:58   it really, really behooves them to have an event.

00:25:01   And if there is anything significant about the iPad Pro,

00:25:04   like some of the rumors suggest, or just if they do finally

00:25:07   release AirTags, there are things

00:25:10   that I would like Apple to get ahead of,

00:25:12   because I can just anticipate a whole bunch of really

00:25:15   sensational headlines if Apple doesn't

00:25:17   have a good story in place.

00:25:19   They're going to do it anyway.

00:25:20   But I just think it'd be good for Apple

00:25:23   to get ahead of these products and sort of present

00:25:25   their case on stage for them.

00:25:27   Yeah, any one of them--

00:25:29   I mean, one good rule of thumb is even with the virtual events,

00:25:33   Apple is keen not to waste our time.

00:25:37   And they're not going to have even a 45-minute event just

00:25:40   to unveil new AirPods.

00:25:44   And I don't think they would--

00:25:45   they're not going to hold an event just to have a 15-minute--

00:25:49   they're not going to do a 15-minute event,

00:25:51   I don't think, if it was just AirPods.

00:25:58   But on the other hand, if they're

00:25:59   going to have a late March, early April episode of the Apple

00:26:04   event show, and there are just new third-generation AirPods,

00:26:11   well, let's give them 5 to 10 minutes

00:26:14   and talk about what a success AirPods have been out

00:26:17   in the world and how they're the number one whatever

00:26:20   way of phrasing it as the number one wireless AirPods

00:26:24   in the world.

00:26:27   And here's what's great about our most popular AirPods,

00:26:30   the regular AirPods.

00:26:32   And here's what's great about the new ones.

00:26:35   I would definitely give them time--

00:26:37   if I were them, I would see them giving them time

00:26:40   that they otherwise wouldn't get on their own

00:26:42   if it was the only thing.

00:26:44   My hope, my dream for this event would be the new iPad Pro,

00:26:49   the new Apple TV, and AirTags, because I am so ready for all

00:26:52   three of those things.

00:26:54   And if they have to sacrifice AirPods

00:26:56   to a press release or even a fall event

00:26:58   to give me those things, just sign me right up.

00:27:01   I think that they're good, though, especially

00:27:03   with the online format where there's not as much boilerplate

00:27:10   of, OK, we're on stage, and now we're going to introduce--

00:27:14   and not that those handoffs of, and now I'm

00:27:17   going to call so-and-so out to tell you about blank,

00:27:21   not that that takes a lot of time,

00:27:22   and they're always right in the wings,

00:27:24   and they're halfway out on the stage ready to take

00:27:26   the clicker from whoever's handing it off to them.

00:27:29   But it adds up in a way that they edit all of that

00:27:34   out with the online show version.

00:27:39   So HomePod Mini didn't take a lot of time in whatever event

00:27:45   that was where the HomePod Mini came out.

00:27:47   Plus you get that cool bottle city of Kandor special effect

00:27:50   when it was hiding behind him.

00:27:51   Right.

00:27:52   So I would say AirPods is probably the boringest thing,

00:27:55   right, because the idea would be it's

00:27:57   just a new version of the standard AirPods

00:28:00   without noise cancellation, but with it supposedly

00:28:03   with an industrial design that looks a lot like the AirPods

00:28:07   Pro.

00:28:08   Different ear shape, and I wonder

00:28:11   if they'll still have the rubber tips,

00:28:13   if that will become standard with the sizable rubber

00:28:16   tips like the AirPods Pro.

00:28:20   Is it a problem if they look indistinguishable

00:28:23   from AirPods Pro?

00:28:25   I think it's less the problem with the AirPods Pro.

00:28:27   Some of the rumors had-- like some of the leaked images

00:28:30   had tips or looked like they could have tips

00:28:32   or didn't have tips.

00:28:33   Right.

00:28:34   So it seems like it's still up in the air.

00:28:35   But a lot of people don't like-- like they're--

00:28:37   right now, some people don't like the AirPod,

00:28:40   the classic AirPods, because they don't stay in their ear.

00:28:42   So they get the AirPods Pro, and they like the tips.

00:28:46   Other people don't like having anything in their ear.

00:28:48   It either bothers them or is actually painful for them.

00:28:51   So they get the AirPods, and they

00:28:52   have that choice in products.

00:28:55   So this looks like it's trying to be a middle ground.

00:28:57   And maybe the tips will even be optional, which would be great.

00:29:00   Apple's not famous for giving you options,

00:29:02   but maybe they will be.

00:29:03   But I hope at least the people who prefer not to have them

00:29:06   still have an option.

00:29:07   Yeah, my son has regular AirPods,

00:29:09   and has tried my AirPods Pro and claims to hate them.

00:29:12   Like, he hasn't warned them long enough

00:29:16   to really give him a chance.

00:29:17   But he just-- he just--

00:29:18   he just like, ah, I don't like the feel of that in my ear.

00:29:21   It doesn't want.

00:29:22   So it's hard.

00:29:23   It's hard to please everybody.

00:29:25   I mean, putting things in your ear, just size alone,

00:29:28   it's hard to get one size fits all.

00:29:31   But--

00:29:31   And that was a problem with the AirPods.

00:29:32   Like, it was good for 80% of the people,

00:29:34   but then 20% of the people, they just fell out all the time,

00:29:36   and that's not great either.

00:29:37   Yeah.

00:29:39   What else?

00:29:40   iPad-- new iPad Pros.

00:29:43   Let's go in reverse order of novelty, right?

00:29:47   OK.

00:29:47   Because I'm going to say new iPad Pros seem like as close

00:29:54   to a sure thing as possible, because it's

00:29:56   an important product for Apple.

00:29:57   And like I said, last year's was just truly just a minor GPU

00:30:02   speed bump.

00:30:04   And the LiDAR camera, I always give poor LiDAR engineers.

00:30:08   I don't really give you much--

00:30:09   I just don't think people are using

00:30:12   LiDAR cameras on their iPad very often, to be honest.

00:30:16   No, that always felt like a developer-centric move.

00:30:18   You get it out in people's hands earlier.

00:30:20   Yeah, before the iPhone shipped with LiDAR.

00:30:23   And maybe it would become a bigger deal for the iPad

00:30:26   if the new iPad Pros used the LiDAR to help with low light

00:30:31   autofocus the way that the iPhone 12 cameras do.

00:30:36   Well, that was so weird.

00:30:37   It's like the iPad came out with the LiDAR,

00:30:39   and they didn't hook it up to the camera app at all.

00:30:41   It was one of the most un-Apple-like things

00:30:43   I've ever encountered.

00:30:44   If you press the portrait-only button,

00:30:46   it flipped the camera around into the TrueDepth camera,

00:30:49   which is not intuitive at all.

00:30:51   And I thought that they were just super busy

00:30:53   and that we'd get it with iOS 14 in September

00:30:55   when the iPhone got it, and we still never got it.

00:30:57   No, they never had--

00:31:00   either they don't want to do the work,

00:31:01   or there's something lacking in the hardware camera that

00:31:05   prevents them from doing it up to what

00:31:08   they would view as useful.

00:31:10   So I'm going to say it's overdue.

00:31:13   So there was never an A13 generation iPad Pro.

00:31:16   A14X seems like a likely bet.

00:31:20   Yeah.

00:31:21   Yeah, I think that's true.

00:31:22   And I'm super fascinated, because a lot of people,

00:31:25   as soon as they saw the M1, they're like, we want that on an iPad.

00:31:28   But the M1 was essentially an A14X with just a little bit

00:31:31   of extra Mac-specific IP, like the virtualization,

00:31:34   the emulation, and the two Thunderbolt controllers.

00:31:37   So that's basically what we're going

00:31:38   to get in terms of just silicon power in the iPad Pro.

00:31:42   One of the interesting rumors--

00:31:44   and I made a little bit of hay out of it

00:31:46   when I linked to Mark Gurman's post on the iPad Pros--

00:31:50   is the rumor that they might switch to mini LED screens.

00:31:56   And according to the rumor mill, perhaps only in the larger 12.9

00:32:03   inch iPad Pro.

00:32:06   And that Apple-- the part I made hay over

00:32:08   was two weeks ago describing it as something Apple

00:32:11   was looking into.

00:32:14   Yeah, and they were testing Thunderbolt two weeks ago.

00:32:16   It's such odd language that Bloomberg uses.

00:32:19   You're not testing something that's close to release.

00:32:22   This mini LED rumor has been out there for a while.

00:32:27   The iPhones have, of course, switched to OLED.

00:32:33   The iPad Pros still using ancient, decrepit, regular LED

00:32:42   technology.

00:32:44   What is it?

00:32:45   Yeah, it's LCD with an LED backlight.

00:32:46   LCD with an LED backlight.

00:32:49   They're great looking displays.

00:32:51   But Apple moves fast on display technology.

00:32:55   Mini LED is supposedly next.

00:32:59   What is your understanding of why they would go OLED for phones,

00:33:06   but mini LED for iPads?

00:33:09   Why would there never be an OLED generation of iPads?

00:33:14   So I mean, there might.

00:33:15   There's a couple of things.

00:33:17   All of this stuff is kind of nerdy,

00:33:19   but I think this audience really appreciates that.

00:33:21   OLED is a terrific, but fundamentally flawed technology

00:33:25   where you require a ton of mitigations,

00:33:27   like you've got to mitigate against burn-in, off-axis

00:33:29   color shifting.

00:33:31   When you go to low brightness levels,

00:33:32   you have pulse width modulation, which some people say

00:33:34   they can see and gives them headaches or just bothers them

00:33:37   in general.

00:33:38   And OLED also didn't have the ability

00:33:41   to do promotion until basically the end of last year,

00:33:45   not in the quantities of devices that Apple shipped.

00:33:47   Samsung managed to get them into a few devices,

00:33:49   like the Fold 2 and the Galaxy Note.

00:33:52   Those are very small scale devices compared

00:33:55   to iPhones and iPads.

00:33:57   So they need basically the--

00:34:00   what do they call it?

00:34:02   You need a special kind of LTPO technology,

00:34:05   the same the Apple Watch has, to be

00:34:07   able to do the variable refresh rate.

00:34:09   Because people will complain.

00:34:10   They'll say, oh, like $3 Android phones have 120 hertz refresh,

00:34:14   but not the iPhone.

00:34:16   And it's just that Apple doesn't do high refresh.

00:34:18   They do variable refresh rates all the way down to one

00:34:21   on the Apple Watch, 24 to 120 on the iPad.

00:34:26   So they would lose promotion if they'd done OLED earlier.

00:34:30   And also, OLED still had problems

00:34:33   with the consistency of brightness on larger panels.

00:34:37   Not like TV sets use totally different technologies

00:34:39   than the phones and the iPads do.

00:34:42   So Apple's been looking at micro LED, which

00:34:45   is also completely different.

00:34:46   That's like a more advanced version of OLED for the watch

00:34:49   and probably the phone one day.

00:34:50   But for everything that's LCD now, the Macs and the iPads,

00:34:54   it gives you almost OLED levels of deep shadows,

00:34:59   brightness, contrast ratio by using local dimming zones,

00:35:04   which is what they showed off with the Pro Display XDR.

00:35:07   So that basically you stop the leaking of the light

00:35:09   into the larger part of the panel.

00:35:11   So it gives you almost everything

00:35:12   without all of the drawbacks that OLED has.

00:35:15   And I wouldn't be surprised if they bifurcated it now

00:35:17   that you can get LTPO OLED and maybe some iPads have OLED

00:35:21   and some have mini LED.

00:35:23   But it feels like mini LED is a better tablet solution right

00:35:25   now.

00:35:26   So there's mini LED and micro LED.

00:35:29   Yeah.

00:35:30   Micro LED is self-illuminating like OLED is.

00:35:32   Oh my god, these names.

00:35:33   Mini LED is as a backlight.

00:35:35   Yeah, it's terrible.

00:35:36   But it's interesting how bifurcated this has all

00:35:41   become, right?

00:35:42   Where when the iPad first came out,

00:35:46   it just had the iPhone screen just bigger, right?

00:35:49   And it was like the same pixels per inch

00:35:51   and it was all similar technology

00:35:52   and similar refresh rates.

00:35:54   And now iPhones have OLED and OLED

00:35:58   has certain characteristics that make that better.

00:36:01   But iPads, which are using this older technology,

00:36:04   have had promotion displays with higher variable refresh

00:36:08   rates for years now.

00:36:09   iPhone has still never had that.

00:36:12   Was a much anticipated maybe for last year's iPhones 12.

00:36:18   I'll bet it's coming this year.

00:36:20   It felt like that was like one of the last tipping point.

00:36:23   Hmm, could we do it this year now?

00:36:25   And now it'll come this year and there'll

00:36:27   be variable refresh rates.

00:36:29   Well, Samsung put it into the Galaxy S21

00:36:31   and that's the big indicator because that's

00:36:33   their popular phone, which means that they can produce it

00:36:35   at capacity now.

00:36:36   What else are we thinking about for iPad Pro?

00:36:38   So the new displays and maybe--

00:36:40   do you think they would do this with the big 13-inch model,

00:36:43   get some more advanced display technology than the 11-inch?

00:36:48   I would hope they keep it the same because like you,

00:36:50   I'm a big proponent of just let me choose the size.

00:36:53   Everything else identical and just let me choose the size.

00:36:55   I don't want to think I'm getting a lower class

00:36:57   iPhone or iPad just because I'm getting a smaller one.

00:37:01   But I think it also probably has to do-- like they're looking--

00:37:03   I just imagine Tim Cook has basically pivot tables

00:37:06   in his head at this point.

00:37:07   And they figure out everything in terms of price point

00:37:09   and yield and what each component costs

00:37:12   and what they can charge for the product.

00:37:13   And then all those little number sheets in his head

00:37:17   lock into what they can do for any given generation.

00:37:19   Right.

00:37:20   You would think technically it would be harder

00:37:21   to do it in a bigger device.

00:37:23   But on the other hand, the bigger ones sell for more money.

00:37:25   And so therefore, maybe it's not really an engineering problem,

00:37:28   but just a component availability and profit margin

00:37:33   issue.

00:37:34   And it's also not intuitive sometimes.

00:37:37   Like a couple of years ago at CES,

00:37:38   they were showing off the early mini and micro LED TVs.

00:37:41   And they were enormous because the panel size, the pixels

00:37:44   in the panels were still enormous.

00:37:46   They hadn't been able to shrink them down yet.

00:37:48   So you have all sorts of factors that always

00:37:50   complicate these things.

00:37:52   All right.

00:37:52   Yeah, I'd say it's a maybe.

00:37:54   And it's one of those weird rumors

00:37:56   where usually there's a little smoke, there's fire.

00:37:59   It seems like the display stuff with Ming-Chi Kuo

00:38:06   is often one of the leakiest aspects of Apple's supply

00:38:10   chain.

00:38:12   I wouldn't bet against it.

00:38:13   I hope not.

00:38:14   But it also sounds like something

00:38:16   that Apple definitely could do.

00:38:17   It's say only in the 12.9 inch, we have something even better.

00:38:22   We've got this amazing display with these amazing

00:38:25   characteristics.

00:38:27   Yeah.

00:38:28   And sometimes it just matters how much they can produce.

00:38:30   Maybe they can produce enough for one of them

00:38:31   and not the other.

00:38:32   Or like you said, absorb the price in one of them

00:38:34   but not the other.

00:38:36   I've gotten a slew of emails and tweets from readers thinking

00:38:45   that Apple might use the M1 chip in the iPad Pro

00:38:50   and that it might also therefore dual boot into Mac OS

00:38:55   and that this would be the solution that the one device

00:38:59   meets all.

00:39:00   And to that, I say no way.

00:39:02   Like the M1, they couldn't--

00:39:05   I don't know what the A stands for in the A series chips.

00:39:09   Apple maybe?

00:39:10   Yeah, it was just Apple originally.

00:39:11   Yeah.

00:39:12   The M1, the M in M1 is for Mac.

00:39:15   And Macs are Macs and iPads are iPads.

00:39:17   I would expect based on benchmark scores

00:39:22   comparing the regular old A14 and the iPhone 12

00:39:25   to the M1 Macs that the A14X, which

00:39:31   is what I would anticipate the iPad Pro chip being named,

00:39:34   would perform very similarly, benchmark wise, to the M1s

00:39:39   because it would probably have the extra high performance

00:39:42   cores and probably maybe clocked higher.

00:39:46   But that doesn't make it--

00:39:47   that's not the difference between the M1 and the A14.

00:39:50   The M1 has a bunch of other stuff

00:39:51   on the system on a chip that are specific to the needs of a Mac

00:39:55   that wouldn't make sense for an iPad.

00:39:58   So it's not like the A14X is going to be slow.

00:40:00   I think it would be crazy fast just like the M1.

00:40:03   But the M1 is way more than that.

00:40:07   And the dual boot idea, for those of you hoping for it,

00:40:11   I really--

00:40:12   I just don't see it happening.

00:40:14   It just seems like anathema to Apple's mindset

00:40:18   of how these devices and the OS--

00:40:21   Very toaster frisbee.

00:40:22   Yeah.

00:40:23   Yeah, and there's just no separation conceptually from--

00:40:28   I know in theory you could do it.

00:40:30   But-- and I know that the developer kits for the Apple

00:40:37   Silicon Macs that the developers are just being politely

00:40:42   told to hand back now were performance-wise very

00:40:46   similar to iPad Pros.

00:40:48   But there's a reason why they didn't let you run Mac OS

00:40:51   on an iPad Pro to develop your Mac apps, which is what--

00:40:55   also a year ago what a lot of people were thinking,

00:40:58   that there won't be developer kits.

00:41:00   They'll just have a way to dual boot your iPad Pro into Mac OS,

00:41:04   and that's how you'll develop.

00:41:05   No, they're not going to have Mac OS running on a touchscreen

00:41:09   when Mac OS doesn't support touchscreens,

00:41:11   even though you could.

00:41:12   And then, well, you could just use the Magic Keyboard,

00:41:15   and then you have a trackpad.

00:41:16   But it's like, that just isn't how Apple thinks about things.

00:41:20   Yeah, and I think there's one circumstance where

00:41:23   I can see them--

00:41:24   so again, just for all intents and purposes, the A14X

00:41:27   would be identical, just in terms of it

00:41:30   would have the same Ice Storm and Fire Storm efficiency

00:41:33   and performance cores.

00:41:35   And I'm going to just register a protest here

00:41:36   that the graphics and the neural engine cores

00:41:39   don't get fancy code names, because Shaderstorm

00:41:44   and Brainstorm seem like logical code names for those chips.

00:41:48   So I can just treat all your cores equally.

00:41:50   But they would be the same, like literally the same chip.

00:41:53   They might have frequency differences

00:41:54   in the thermal envelopes of the boxes they're put in.

00:41:57   But it's the same cores.

00:42:00   Apple right now has an A12 in the iPhone

00:42:02   and an A12 in the iPad Air.

00:42:04   It's the exact same silicon.

00:42:05   The iPhone will hit the image signal processor more,

00:42:07   because people take and process photos more on their iPhones.

00:42:11   And maybe the GPU gets hit harder in the iPad Air,

00:42:13   because people are using higher level apps,

00:42:16   like Procreate, things that hit the GPU harder.

00:42:18   But it's just efficient for them.

00:42:20   That's their whole scalable architecture thing.

00:42:22   It's why they don't become a silicon merchant for Apple

00:42:26   being their, you know, a bunch of different products

00:42:28   inside Apple is that everything from the watch to the Mac

00:42:33   has the same sort of core architecture.

00:42:35   So if it's cheaper for them to have M series,

00:42:39   and to just, because the names of it,

00:42:41   like the chips are the same,

00:42:42   if it's cheaper to have an M processor in an iPad,

00:42:45   they call it A14X,

00:42:47   turn off one of the Thunderbolt controllers,

00:42:49   turn off the virtualization and the emulation circuits,

00:42:53   maybe just it's economics that changes that.

00:42:57   Otherwise, if it's cheaper to make a whole separate line

00:42:59   of chips that don't include that to begin with,

00:43:01   that's what they'll do,

00:43:02   but there's no functional difference there.

00:43:04   - Yeah, that's what I anticipate.

00:43:08   Anything else?

00:43:10   I guess maybe it'll get a camera upgrade

00:43:13   compared to the existing iPad Pros,

00:43:15   because that's what happens.

00:43:17   Otherwise, though, you know.

00:43:20   - I'd love to see Thunderbolt, though.

00:43:21   I mean, now that they have Thunderbolt on the M1

00:43:23   and they could conceivably put on board

00:43:25   a Thunderbolt controller,

00:43:26   just because I have so many really fast storage drives now

00:43:29   that don't work on the iPad Pro,

00:43:31   and I'd love to be able to pull video and stuff onto there.

00:43:35   - Well, and I think if they go USB4,

00:43:38   that includes Thunderbolt.

00:43:40   And I know that, oh my God,

00:43:42   the entire saga of USB-ish standards

00:43:47   that use the plug that looks like,

00:43:51   we all just see that plug and we think that's USB-C.

00:43:55   And it's also Thunderbolt,

00:43:57   but a Thunderbolt cable costs $200,

00:43:59   and is thick and heavy and ray-shielded.

00:44:05   USB4, supposedly, is the USB with that plug

00:44:13   that works the way, it obviously all should have worked

00:44:18   all along, where everything is everything.

00:44:21   And so if you plug anything in that has that plug,

00:44:25   it'll go at the fullest speed that it supports,

00:44:29   including Thunderbolt. - Yeah, it's the dream, right?

00:44:31   Finally.

00:44:32   'Cause right now, like you said, the USB-C,

00:44:34   some of them have power, some don't, some support displays,

00:44:36   some don't, some do, it's just a mess,

00:44:39   and this hopefully will fix it.

00:44:40   - Right, especially if it's USB4.

00:44:42   And that should be the most future-proof as well,

00:44:46   and would be a very nice story.

00:44:48   And it would be a nice little feather

00:44:51   in the iPad Pro's cap that it has USB4 before the Mac even.

00:44:56   Let me think, yeah, that's a good one, and it seems likely.

00:44:59   And at the very least, Thunderbolt seems likely.

00:45:02   I mean, and for some reason,

00:45:03   the whole driving big Thunderbolt displays

00:45:07   from an iPad Pro is a thing,

00:45:09   and apparently people are using it.

00:45:10   I don't know, I've never plugged anything like that in.

00:45:13   - Well, just like I have these Samsung drives

00:45:15   that are almost like the MVNE drives,

00:45:17   and they just don't work on the iPad Pro,

00:45:19   and that's annoying. - Just don't work at all.

00:45:22   - Yeah. - Right.

00:45:23   Right, and it definitely works against the,

00:45:26   you know, and that's, not to get into the whole,

00:45:30   is the iPhone ever gonna support a USB-C plug,

00:45:33   to which I say, no, I really don't think so.

00:45:35   I think it's lightning all the way

00:45:37   until they go no plug at all.

00:45:38   But their explanation, and the people who,

00:45:42   for whatever reason, want the iPhone to go USB-C,

00:45:46   and I totally get the, I'm not dismissing you,

00:45:49   but I totally get the idea that then you only have

00:45:51   one type of plug type laying around your house

00:45:53   to charge everything, you know,

00:45:55   but then the Apple Watch chargers

00:45:56   would all have to go USB-C too,

00:45:58   and you know, it's not that easy.

00:46:00   - No.

00:46:01   - But Apple's original explanation

00:46:03   for when the iPad Pro first switched

00:46:05   from lightning to USB-C was we want to enable

00:46:09   pro workflows that would otherwise require a Mac,

00:46:13   I forget how they phrased it exactly,

00:46:16   but more or less, things you used to have to use

00:46:18   a Mac or PC for, they wanted the iPad Pro to do,

00:46:21   and that meant USB-C, and the best USB-C was USB-C,

00:46:25   so they have USB-C, so that you can plug USB peripherals

00:46:29   into your iPad Pro for professional workflows.

00:46:32   And that's not really a thing for phones.

00:46:35   People aren't, you know, Apple doesn't sell the iPhone

00:46:37   as a thing that you can plug PC peripherals

00:46:39   like Samsung Thunderbolt drives into your iPhone.

00:46:44   In theory, it could, but again, in theory,

00:46:46   they could make the iPhone dual-boot Mac OS, you know?

00:46:50   They're not gonna do it.

00:46:51   - Yeah, I think the thing for me is that,

00:46:53   like Apple built all these things,

00:46:55   like they contributed hugely towards USB-C,

00:46:57   and they knew the timelines,

00:46:58   and they wanted to make the iPhone 5,

00:47:00   and USB-C just wasn't gonna be ready for years,

00:47:02   and so they made lightning because they don't have

00:47:04   to worry about the USB consortium for that.

00:47:08   And then you just can't ask people

00:47:09   to change connectors that often.

00:47:10   When they changed from the dock to lightning,

00:47:13   people were super angry.

00:47:14   They have to get new cables and everything for it.

00:47:16   So you can maybe get away with that on a product,

00:47:19   like with Apple products, once a decade.

00:47:21   And so there was no point in going to USB-C,

00:47:23   and now I feel like lightning is a bottleneck.

00:47:26   Like it's still at, mostly it's still at USB 2.1 speeds.

00:47:29   It's not really great for anything.

00:47:31   It's more waterproof than USB-C.

00:47:32   It's slightly smaller than USB-C,

00:47:34   but all of that things,

00:47:35   it just feels like it's approaching end of life.

00:47:38   And is there USB-C in the future?

00:47:40   Will they make a new mini USB-C?

00:47:42   Like what's the point when they could just use MagSafe

00:47:45   and the U1 chip to do wireless charging and data?

00:47:48   - You know, the big problem

00:47:52   with only going wireless for charging

00:47:54   is that the highest speed isn't anywhere near as fast

00:47:57   as the highest speed you can get through a plug.

00:47:59   - It's fast now though.

00:48:00   Like if you look at,

00:48:01   some of the Android vendors are not only using

00:48:03   faster charges, but they're segmenting the battery

00:48:06   so you can charge them in parallel.

00:48:08   - Right, so I wouldn't be surprised

00:48:10   if that's Apple's long-term plan,

00:48:11   that they've got stuff on the whiteboard down the hall,

00:48:15   you know, like at the end of the hallway

00:48:16   where people are working on things two to three years out,

00:48:19   as opposed to things shipping this year,

00:48:21   they've got plans for getting wireless,

00:48:25   I can't believe I just said wireless,

00:48:26   but magnetic inductive charging,

00:48:30   working at higher speeds,

00:48:31   and then someone else down the hall

00:48:33   is working on actual wireless charging,

00:48:35   where you can charge at a distance

00:48:37   from a device truly over the air.

00:48:40   - Like that refrigerator that they were showing off in China

00:48:42   where you just walk around your living room

00:48:43   and it trickle charges you.

00:48:45   - Anything else for iPad?

00:48:48   - I would take USB-C and an iPhone Pro though.

00:48:50   I mean, I would take it anyway,

00:48:51   just because like, if you're giving me a Pro device,

00:48:54   like let consumers have all the inductive stuff,

00:48:56   but if you're giving me a Pro device

00:48:57   and you're gonna go to 8K for video

00:48:59   and all these things eventually, I just want that speed.

00:49:01   I want the speed to be able to take stuff

00:49:03   on and off that thing.

00:49:04   - It's possible, you know,

00:49:05   and maybe Pro would be the way they do it.

00:49:07   I just think that it's one of those things

00:49:09   where the nerd part of the population

00:49:11   cannot believe how the vast majority of non-nerds

00:49:16   think about things.

00:49:17   And one of my favorite examples is the old five watt charger

00:49:22   and how many people preferred that charger

00:49:25   because it was small

00:49:27   and you could keep it in your purse and it's lightweight

00:49:29   or you could plug it in to plugs

00:49:33   that were full of other plugs.

00:49:35   And if there was an open socket,

00:49:37   there was room for that plug

00:49:38   and that they don't really care

00:49:40   that it's not the highest speed.

00:49:41   They just, they really appreciate the size.

00:49:44   And it really wasn't until Apple could,

00:49:47   and again, could in theory,

00:49:50   make a higher capacity charger at a smaller size.

00:49:53   Sure, but do it at their scale

00:49:56   and at the cost they wanted to hit for the price

00:49:59   at a smaller size.

00:50:00   They really kind of needed to wait for that.

00:50:01   And the size issue never came up.

00:50:04   All the, in the nerd press,

00:50:05   all they wanted to talk about was five watt is slow

00:50:09   and iPhones are expensive.

00:50:11   It's a rip off that it doesn't come

00:50:12   with a high speed charger,

00:50:13   but it's like, people don't want that, you know.

00:50:16   - A lot of that was nonsense too.

00:50:17   Like when you, like there's levels of nerds

00:50:19   and there's like, there's nothing more dangerous

00:50:21   than like a half informed nerd.

00:50:22   And I mean that lovingly

00:50:23   because when you actually look at it,

00:50:24   it's the same thing as 5G

00:50:25   and all of these technologies.

00:50:27   When you looked at them,

00:50:28   they would peak charge at those wattage,

00:50:31   but they wouldn't sustain charge at that.

00:50:33   They would like give you a few seconds,

00:50:34   but if you actually started measuring the current,

00:50:36   it was nowhere near there.

00:50:37   And they were proprietary.

00:50:38   So if you lost whatever dongle,

00:50:40   you couldn't just plug it into anything else.

00:50:42   You wouldn't get anywhere near those.

00:50:44   The whole thing was really cockamamie.

00:50:45   And yet it was such good marketing

00:50:47   and such spec bait for a whole segment of the community.

00:50:51   - So I think the same thing is true of connectors.

00:50:54   I can't believe that the nerds don't remember

00:50:58   all the non-nerds in their life complaining so vociferously

00:51:02   when Apple switched to Lightning

00:51:04   from the old 30-pin connectors.

00:51:05   Even though when you now look back

00:51:07   at the 30-pin connectors, they look ridiculous.

00:51:10   - Every alarm clock in every hotel room

00:51:12   for like what, eight years?

00:51:13   - They're so, so big and so weird looking, right?

00:51:18   Because they exposed so much of the metal.

00:51:22   It was such a weird looking plug.

00:51:24   It's kind of hard to believe it was Apple's plug.

00:51:27   And you really have to go back 20 years ago

00:51:30   to the early iPod era when they first switched away

00:51:33   from FireWire to really appreciate how novel

00:51:38   that adapter was.

00:51:40   But it's not Apple's finest adapter design work.

00:51:43   It just exposed bits.

00:51:44   - And they had to keep re-switching the pins, remember?

00:51:45   'Cause they would switch something to HDMI

00:51:48   and then you had to cross again.

00:51:50   It was just a mess.

00:51:51   - But when they switched to Lightning,

00:51:53   which in hindsight seems, well, of course, obvious.

00:51:55   Look how small and elegant it is.

00:51:57   People went bananas on the theory

00:52:00   that this was just a money grab

00:52:02   and that they switched the plug just to get everybody

00:52:04   to spend 20 more bucks to replace all the cables

00:52:07   around their house.

00:52:09   And if they switched to USB-C, and again,

00:52:11   you could say, well, that's the open standard.

00:52:13   It's like people would still say it was a money grab

00:52:15   and they're mad because there are husbands and wives

00:52:20   where one gets a new phone on the even years,

00:52:24   the other gets the phone on the odd years.

00:52:26   And what do you do for the year where they don't have

00:52:28   the same plug on their phone and they wanna have one plug

00:52:30   in the kitchen?

00:52:31   That's a common scenario.

00:52:34   - Just look at last year when Apple switched

00:52:35   to a USB-C cable.

00:52:37   People got super angry saying,

00:52:39   we all have these USB-A connectors.

00:52:42   Most people with an iPhone have a PC, not a Mac,

00:52:44   and they have USB-A ports on them.

00:52:46   And Apple's clear message was, we know,

00:52:49   but we figure if you have the old connector,

00:52:51   you have the old cable.

00:52:52   What we're worried about is you not having a USB-C cable

00:52:54   if you have that connector.

00:52:56   So we're giving you one with it.

00:52:57   And they were like, no, this is outrageous.

00:53:00   - I'm not saying they won't do it.

00:53:01   And there are good reasons for it.

00:53:03   And I know some people would celebrate a change.

00:53:05   And the idea that maybe they would do it for the pros

00:53:08   and not the regular iPhone 13s, I could see it.

00:53:12   'Cause then they could pitch it as this is

00:53:15   for our pro customers who are connecting

00:53:17   these pro utilities.

00:53:18   - They're using DOLBY Vision.

00:53:21   They're doing AK, whatever video.

00:53:24   We're giving you a connector for all that.

00:53:26   - But on the other hand,

00:53:27   I think there's a huge security aspect

00:53:31   to their desire to go portless.

00:53:33   Because there still are, you still see some reports

00:53:36   that like those, what are those gray whatever boxes?

00:53:40   - Yeah, and also the Juice Jack attacks

00:53:41   where they just put it over the firmware in a USB-C cable.

00:53:44   - Right, that a bunch of the ways that iPhones get hacked

00:53:48   by the companies that sell these boxes to law enforcement,

00:53:52   supposedly only to law enforcement,

00:53:55   that these things go over-- - Celebrate.

00:53:56   - Yeah, celebrate.

00:53:58   And they go over USB.

00:53:59   And it's like, however, you can say,

00:54:02   well, fix all your USB bugs.

00:54:04   Well, one way to fix all your USB and Lightning bugs

00:54:07   is to just get rid of USB and Lightning.

00:54:09   Just take it out of the OS even, right?

00:54:12   You don't even need it if you don't have the port.

00:54:15   That's one way to nip all those bugs in the bud.

00:54:20   - And then if you have CarPlay,

00:54:22   they'll just make a dongle for you.

00:54:23   It'll be USB to wireless

00:54:26   or whatever Apple standard uses for wireless will be fine.

00:54:30   - Yeah, don't underestimate their ability

00:54:32   to make a dongle for you.

00:54:33   - Yes, dongle.

00:54:36   Again, I keep ranting about stuff,

00:54:37   but if you're pros, you're just so used to that

00:54:39   because you had FireWire 400 dongles, FireWire 800.

00:54:42   You have mini DVI, regular DVI DisplayPort.

00:54:45   We've had all the dongles.

00:54:46   We've never lived the dongle free life.

00:54:48   - No, just scuzzy things that used to screw in the back.

00:54:52   All right, what's next?

00:54:53   Let's do one more and then we'll take a break.

00:54:55   - Do you wanna do Apple TV next?

00:54:56   'Cause I'm waiting on that.

00:54:57   - All right, let's do Apple TV.

00:54:59   This is one, I don't, what do you think?

00:55:02   You think that there's new Apple TV hardware?

00:55:05   - I think so, 'cause there's rumors of a new,

00:55:07   I don't wanna call it a Siri remote anymore.

00:55:08   I don't know if it's gonna be Siri optimized,

00:55:10   but there's just, there's two sets of rumors.

00:55:13   One that it gets an A12X or an A12Z

00:55:16   and it just does HDR compositing better

00:55:18   and plays Apple Arcade games better

00:55:20   and it's just a spec bump.

00:55:22   And there's this other set of rumors

00:55:23   that it's gonna get an A14X,

00:55:26   which is odd to me because that's more expensive.

00:55:29   It's still not as good in terms of GPU

00:55:31   as an Xbox Series X or a PlayStation 5,

00:55:34   but it would let Apple do a higher level of games,

00:55:36   which, you know, despite Apple showing very little interest

00:55:40   in high order gaming,

00:55:42   making all the money on casual gaming,

00:55:44   people still have this fantasy of an Apple, you know,

00:55:47   like a more premium Apple gaming experience device.

00:55:51   And so that's the other way that they could go.

00:55:55   - Yeah, and I know that there've been,

00:55:57   somebody's splunking around,

00:55:59   I don't know if it was Guillermo Rambo or who,

00:56:02   but somebody was splunking around the latest iOS 14.5 beta

00:56:06   and found the strings that you're referencing,

00:56:09   you know, that there's strings in the source code

00:56:12   that reference a new remote

00:56:13   and maybe have a hint of something.

00:56:15   So I'm just so, I so want them to make,

00:56:20   to release a new Apple TV box,

00:56:23   just as a clear sign that they're still committed

00:56:26   to having an Apple TV box,

00:56:29   that I don't even care what the details are so much.

00:56:32   Like my number one thought is,

00:56:34   well, at least they're not getting away from it.

00:56:36   'Cause I do, I know I've talked about it

00:56:38   in the last few episodes.

00:56:38   I don't have to rehash it all here.

00:56:40   But the fact that they're so all in

00:56:43   on getting the Apple TV app for TV+ content

00:56:46   built into TVs and other companies' boxes and dongles,

00:56:51   is, you know, you could just say,

00:56:53   well, it's a dual strategy.

00:56:55   They have their own box

00:56:57   and they also want Apple TV+ everywhere.

00:57:00   But like if the, you know,

00:57:03   if the Apple TV box just fades away

00:57:06   and doesn't get updated

00:57:07   and eventually gets one of those sad Friday night

00:57:10   Matthew Panzorino stories at TechCrunch that,

00:57:13   you know, it's while supplies last, right?

00:57:17   Everybody, everybody-- - Poor Matthew.

00:57:20   He's therapy.

00:57:20   - Well, he's so, he's great at it though.

00:57:23   - Yes.

00:57:24   But he's like the last rights for every Apple product.

00:57:27   - Right, but it's like, you know,

00:57:28   like when they discontinued HomePod,

00:57:30   it's exactly like this.

00:57:33   I was disappointed, 'cause I like HomePods better

00:57:36   than most people do.

00:57:38   - Me too. - But that's because

00:57:40   I believe that the true HomePod experience

00:57:42   is two of them as a $700 product

00:57:45   and that, you know, that's more money

00:57:47   than people wanted to spend.

00:57:48   They didn't make the pitch.

00:57:49   But when they discontinued it, nobody was like shocked.

00:57:52   It wasn't like, oh my God, I can't believe it.

00:57:54   It was sort of like, well, yeah,

00:57:56   it didn't seem to be selling very well.

00:57:58   And if they did that with Apple TV,

00:58:01   everybody would be like, yeah, well,

00:58:04   it didn't seem like it was selling that well.

00:58:05   And they just spent the last 18 months

00:58:08   in this major push with rival companies

00:58:12   like Samsung and Google to get Apple TV

00:58:16   onto all those boxes.

00:58:17   What did you think that meant?

00:58:19   - There's a poor SOB somewhere in Cupertino

00:58:21   whose only job it is is to make a Tizen port

00:58:23   of the TV app, and I feel so bad for them.

00:58:26   (laughing)

00:58:28   - So I would be happy just,

00:58:32   you have me at new Apple TV, right?

00:58:35   - Yes. - You've got me.

00:58:37   - With a U1 chip and the controller

00:58:38   so you can find it when it's in the sofa cushions.

00:58:41   - Right, oh, that would be great.

00:58:43   Maybe something spatially oriented

00:58:47   so that they can do the spatial audio.

00:58:51   I would hope that that's part of it, right?

00:58:53   Because the problem, I've written about this,

00:58:56   I think most extensively when I was writing

00:58:58   about the AirPods Max with this cool spatial audio feature

00:59:02   where you can watch Dolby Surround movies

00:59:05   and get extraordinarily uncanny spatial audio.

00:59:10   It's not just left, right.

00:59:15   It really is truly directional.

00:59:17   - Yeah, if people aren't familiar with that,

00:59:19   like if you're in a room with speakers

00:59:21   and you walk around, the speakers don't move with you.

00:59:23   They stay in the same place,

00:59:24   but if you're wearing headphones,

00:59:26   the headphones move around with you

00:59:27   and spatial audio basically treats headphones like speakers.

00:59:30   So it doesn't matter where you're walking.

00:59:32   The audio stays in place

00:59:33   as if you were listening to speakers.

00:59:35   - Or when you turn your head, right?

00:59:36   You turn your head a little bit and you get this.

00:59:39   It is both uncanny and to me very pleasant.

00:59:44   I enjoy it very much.

00:59:47   It's a little crazy though that it only works

00:59:50   when you're watching a movie on an iPad or an iPhone.

00:59:54   I mean, if you're on an airplane, that's great

00:59:56   because that's where I would be watching the movie,

00:59:59   but I tend to watch movies on TV.

01:00:01   Now I don't have a baby in the house or anything like that

01:00:04   where I need to listen to headphones while I watch movies,

01:00:08   but I have a while ago and I remember,

01:00:10   and there's all sorts of other domestic situations

01:00:15   where you might wanna watch on a big screen

01:00:18   but use headphones to avoid disturbing somebody else.

01:00:22   And if that's the case, man,

01:00:23   the best thing would be AirPods Max with spatial audio,

01:00:29   but doesn't work even though Apple TV is like a $200 product

01:00:34   because Apple TV doesn't have any kind of spatial chip

01:00:37   that would let you orient it.

01:00:39   And you can't just assume that the Apple TV

01:00:42   is centered under the television

01:00:43   'cause how do the headphones even know

01:00:46   where the center of the television is?

01:00:48   That would be cool.

01:00:50   I would hope so.

01:00:51   I would hope that would be part of it

01:00:52   because I think the spatial audio is a thing

01:00:54   that they should put into everything they can.

01:00:57   Some kind of beeper U1 thing in the remote

01:01:00   would be fantastic.

01:01:02   - Also, once you get the spatial audio,

01:01:04   there's a HomePod mini,

01:01:05   but let's assume there's gonna be a next generation HomePod

01:01:08   with a U1.

01:01:09   You could theoretically just throw speakers

01:01:10   in a room anywhere and they would all know where they are

01:01:12   and where the TV is and just give you instant

01:01:15   at most everywhere, which I would love.

01:01:17   - Right, right, and just give you

01:01:19   this rich spatial experience just from the HomePods.

01:01:24   Don't even tease me.

01:01:25   Don't tease me with a new design for the remote.

01:01:29   I don't even wanna go there.

01:01:31   Boy, that would be a pleasant surprise.

01:01:33   If the only feature on the remote were a U1 chip

01:01:37   for making it beep when it's in the couch,

01:01:40   that would be pretty good.

01:01:41   - You hold up your new iPad and it shows you

01:01:43   where it is under the pillow.

01:01:45   I'm there.

01:01:46   - I mean, putting aside the idea of making it

01:01:51   an actual good game controller,

01:01:53   which again, I think would be ideal.

01:01:56   - That's the rumors, like an Apple game controller as well,

01:01:59   an additional, and I'd love to see Apple design

01:02:01   a game controller and I'd love to see John Siracusa

01:02:03   review the Apple game controller.

01:02:05   - That would be good.

01:02:06   I think that the Nintendo Switch shows

01:02:09   that you can make a credible game controller

01:02:11   in a very tidy, tight size,

01:02:13   'cause you can take the sides off a Switch

01:02:15   and play with just one of them

01:02:17   as an individual game controller, and it's not great.

01:02:20   It's not the greatest thing, but it's good enough.

01:02:22   I've enjoyed it, especially playing in it

01:02:26   with three or four people playing Mario Kart

01:02:28   and you don't have enough pro controllers to go around.

01:02:31   Just give one of these to everybody and it's good enough.

01:02:34   - And Super Smash Brothers is so confusing,

01:02:36   it doesn't matter what controller you give me.

01:02:37   I can't keep up and I'm falling off the stage

01:02:39   all the time anyway.

01:02:41   - So anyway, that would be great if it came.

01:02:43   Are we getting ahead of ourselves though?

01:02:45   Is this too many products for one April event?

01:02:48   - Yeah, this is fanfic at this point,

01:02:49   but I'm in for it, I'm down for it.

01:02:52   - Well, I don't know, it would be great.

01:02:54   It would be a weight off my shoulders

01:02:56   if they had Apple TV next week.

01:02:59   There certainly is the potential, right?

01:03:00   In terms of all of these products,

01:03:02   which one needs an update?

01:03:04   That would be one.

01:03:05   I feel like this A12 something

01:03:08   versus A14 something discussion,

01:03:11   if it's the A12 something, boy, it would be nice

01:03:15   if they reduced the price of Apple TV.

01:03:17   And I know it's like my favorite segment of the talk show

01:03:21   is spend Tim Cook's money and tell Tim Cook

01:03:25   how to make things lower priced

01:03:26   and make less money on a product.

01:03:28   - More for less, yep.

01:03:29   - But the price tag of Apple TV is, to me,

01:03:33   very similar to the full-size HomePods.

01:03:35   The price tag alone is clearly keeping

01:03:39   many, many people from even considering it.

01:03:42   They go in and they look and if they're in the market

01:03:45   for a box to hook up to their HDMI port on their TV

01:03:50   and the Roku's are 50 bucks and the Apple TV's are 170 bucks,

01:03:55   they just go back to looking at the Roku's

01:03:58   and the Amazon's and the other ones

01:04:00   and they just don't really consider it.

01:04:02   And whether they should or not,

01:04:04   I think there's an argument that they should.

01:04:06   I love my Apple TV, but Apple has had years now

01:04:09   and has not made the compelling case

01:04:13   for why it's worth it to spend that much money on it.

01:04:17   And given how many years old Apple TV 4K is

01:04:20   and hasn't been reduced in price,

01:04:24   it just isn't that compelling technically anymore.

01:04:27   I mean, it's really--

01:04:27   - It's the same year as the iPhone X, right?

01:04:29   The same event as the iPhone X.

01:04:30   - Yeah, and it just is, I know from talking to some friends

01:04:35   who are game developers, it's a challenge to get

01:04:39   and maintain 30 frames per second

01:04:41   on the current Apple TV 4K at 4K, right?

01:04:45   And that's one of the things like for Apple Arcade,

01:04:48   if you're playing, if you're a game

01:04:50   and you're running on Apple TV 4K,

01:04:51   you need to be able to play at 4K.

01:04:53   You can't just switch to 1080,

01:04:56   which for games is actually reasonable,

01:04:58   that even if you're hooked up to a 4K TV,

01:05:00   it'd be better to be running at 1080

01:05:02   at 30 plus frames per second

01:05:05   than running at 4K under 30 frames per second.

01:05:08   Frames per second is more important than the resolution

01:05:10   and in a game, there's motion blur

01:05:12   and stuff's moving around

01:05:15   but them's the rules and it's a challenge.

01:05:18   It's really hard technically for a lot of modern iOS games

01:05:23   to get 30 frames per second at 4K on Apple TV hardware.

01:05:27   So if it's A12 though, I kind of hope it goes

01:05:31   with a price cut and then if it's an A14,

01:05:34   it's oh, this is why they kept the prices as high

01:05:37   and never dropped the price

01:05:38   and it's still selling them at $180

01:05:41   because they plan to go all in with their best chip.

01:05:45   In an Apple TV and really make a play

01:05:48   for selling this as a good computer,

01:05:52   a good game system, whatever else to hook up to your TV.

01:05:55   - And it's such a, when the Apple TV 4K finally came out,

01:06:00   I know there was just a bunch of stuff going on

01:06:01   with like trying to decide should it be a media box,

01:06:04   should it be a higher end premium console,

01:06:06   what should the pricing be?

01:06:07   And then they had a bunch

01:06:08   of really interested game developers

01:06:10   when the future of apps were apps

01:06:12   who because of the market of the iPhone,

01:06:13   they were really eager to see

01:06:15   if they could do that again on the Apple TV.

01:06:17   And then at the last minute, they said,

01:06:18   no, you have to use the Siri remote

01:06:20   and you have to use on-demand resources.

01:06:21   And they're just like, okay, we're gonna wait and see then.

01:06:24   And there was never anything for them to see.

01:06:25   It didn't take off.

01:06:27   So I just hope that if they're gonna go

01:06:28   with that as their strategy, they do a holistic strategy

01:06:31   and it's less about conforming to what Apple wants

01:06:34   and more about how can we get developers

01:06:35   to make really good titles for this.

01:06:37   - Yeah, I think I was talking about it

01:06:39   with Snell recently on my show,

01:06:40   but to me, their requirement that Apple Arcade games

01:06:45   fully support Apple TV and Apple TV 4K, with no exceptions,

01:06:51   there's no Apple Arcade game that isn't playable on them,

01:06:54   is to me a very good sign.

01:06:56   I mean, again, maybe it's wishful thinking,

01:06:59   but as somebody who's really hopeful

01:07:01   that they're committed to Apple TV as a standalone platform,

01:07:04   that's pretty significant 'cause Apple Arcade

01:07:07   is clearly a major initiative for them.

01:07:09   It is one of only a handful of elements

01:07:11   of the Apple One bundle.

01:07:13   They promote the heck out of it in the App Store.

01:07:16   They continue to produce,

01:07:18   I don't know if that's the right verb.

01:07:19   I mean, would you call it produce?

01:07:20   I don't know what credit Apple gets for the games

01:07:22   on Apple TV, but I'll call them the producers.

01:07:25   - Yeah.

01:07:27   - They continue to produce games, hopefully.

01:07:31   I don't know, I think it would be very exciting

01:07:32   if they made a sort of, let's backtrack significantly

01:07:37   and come at this idea of pitching people on Apple TV

01:07:42   as a game console differently.

01:07:46   - If they're gonna do it,

01:07:46   I want them to go all in and do it.

01:07:48   Don't do any half measures.

01:07:49   Don't do any last minute changes.

01:07:51   Make the developers ridiculously happy,

01:07:54   and that'll make the customers happy.

01:07:56   - All right, let me take a break

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01:09:06   What else? Tiles, right? AirTags?

01:09:08   - Yeah, yeah.

01:09:10   - I mean, this is the one that's like,

01:09:12   it's gotta come eventually, right?

01:09:14   I mean--

01:09:14   - Unless it gets air-powered.

01:09:16   - Right, and even then, it feels like they would

01:09:18   just somehow get word out, right?

01:09:20   I mean, and it's like,

01:09:20   I know it's a little different situation than AirPower

01:09:23   'cause they actually announced it on stage and showed it,

01:09:26   and they've never officially said a word about the tags,

01:09:31   but man, this is one that really feels--

01:09:34   - They don't even hide the strings anymore.

01:09:35   Like the last few versions of iOS

01:09:37   have just had everything in them.

01:09:39   - It's been a while.

01:09:40   I mean, it's not just like betas.

01:09:42   And who knows?

01:09:45   If it's a COVID-type thing,

01:09:46   and it's like couldn't produce them,

01:09:48   add production problems.

01:09:50   I still don't know.

01:09:52   I'm curious about this,

01:09:55   and it certainly is the least likely

01:09:58   to be announced in a press release

01:09:59   because I feel like they really wanna tell

01:10:01   a story around them.

01:10:02   I still don't know what the heck

01:10:04   you're supposed to use them for.

01:10:05   I don't know.

01:10:08   - I think it's just like you said,

01:10:09   it's like a tile-like product

01:10:10   where it's supposed to give the benefits of apples,

01:10:13   and you find my network,

01:10:14   a privacy first,

01:10:15   but a powerfully, massively distributed location network

01:10:20   to anything, your wallet, your bag, your backpack.

01:10:22   My concern and why I really want an event

01:10:25   is that even though tiles have been

01:10:27   on the market for years,

01:10:29   and even though you could buy

01:10:30   pretty much any smartphone to do this,

01:10:32   the minute these things are announced already

01:10:33   before they've been announced,

01:10:35   people are just gonna call them a stalking device

01:10:37   and say that Apple,

01:10:38   the same way like they do with accessibility technology,

01:10:40   like the remote listening on AirPods,

01:10:41   it's a spycraft technology,

01:10:43   and we're gonna have to deal with

01:10:44   front page headlines for a week over this.

01:10:47   - It is true,

01:10:47   and going back to the rule

01:10:49   that everything is predicted by science fiction

01:10:51   and comic books,

01:10:52   Spider-Man's had the spider trackers since the '60s.

01:10:57   Peter Parker had these little,

01:10:59   and of course, he took the time

01:11:01   to make them in the shape of a Spider-Man logo

01:11:04   so that anybody who found one attached to their car

01:11:07   would know that it was Spider-Man who was tracking them.

01:11:10   But it's the same product, right?

01:11:12   It is the Spider-Man tracker.

01:11:13   You just stick it on things,

01:11:15   and the whole point of Spider-Man's doing it

01:11:18   was to stalk people.

01:11:21   We didn't really see him as doing something wrong

01:11:25   'cause he was using it against

01:11:27   criminal elements and supervillains.

01:11:30   - There was some speculation,

01:11:32   I forget if somebody found something in the beta or what,

01:11:34   but that there's clear signs that Apple's got a feature

01:11:39   to notify you if there's one near you?

01:11:42   - Yeah, if you're an iOS user

01:11:43   and there's another identified tile next to you,

01:11:45   it'll tell you,

01:11:46   but that's interesting because let's say you're on a bus

01:11:48   and the person next to you,

01:11:49   it just happens to have a tile in their bag,

01:11:51   or if you have an Android phone,

01:11:52   it's not gonna tell you squat.

01:11:54   So I'm curious to see how that's implemented.

01:11:56   - Right, you could see why they'd be thinking about it,

01:12:00   but then as soon as that was announced,

01:12:01   other people were like,

01:12:03   well, what good does that do me?

01:12:04   I wanted to put one on my bicycle seat or whatever

01:12:08   to track this item in case it gets stolen.

01:12:13   What good does it do if it's gonna tell somebody

01:12:15   who stole the thing I'm tracking

01:12:17   that there's a tracker on it?

01:12:18   And the answer, I guess, is going to be to clearly state

01:12:22   this is not an anti-theft device.

01:12:26   For privacy reasons, don't buy these air tags

01:12:31   as anti-theft devices.

01:12:33   That's not what they're for.

01:12:34   - It's also possible it would be more nuanced than that,

01:12:37   and it could be that they're in a passive mode

01:12:39   most of the time and they don't register anything

01:12:41   because they're not doing anything,

01:12:42   and then when you put them in lost mode,

01:12:44   then somebody would detect it.

01:12:46   And at that point, you probably know where your bike is.

01:12:49   You're putting them in a more active state,

01:12:52   so it's okay to alert people about that,

01:12:54   and no one can be tracking you in the passive state

01:12:56   anyway, you'd have to actually turn it on.

01:12:58   So I think that would probably be a fair compromise.

01:13:01   - I just don't know where I would put them.

01:13:04   And it's like, well, I guess I could put one

01:13:05   in my carry-on luggage bag, my suitcase,

01:13:08   and then when I check baggage at the airport,

01:13:11   I can obsessively check whether it made it onto the plane.

01:13:15   My wife does this with American Airlines.

01:13:19   If you have an American Airlines account,

01:13:22   you can use their app and it'll tell you,

01:13:26   you check your bags, then you go through security,

01:13:29   and then you go and wait, and then you board your plane,

01:13:31   and then you can sit there and look at the app

01:13:34   or the website and it'll tell you,

01:13:36   you have three bags that have been loaded onto flight 1821.

01:13:41   And I don't even wanna know, right?

01:13:43   'Cause it's like, she wants to know,

01:13:47   and so she loads it and she always tells me,

01:13:49   but I would rather just get to my destination

01:13:51   and find out then because it would decrease

01:13:55   the amount of time where I'm upset and angry

01:13:57   that my bag didn't make it onto the plane, right?

01:14:01   Just don't even tell me.

01:14:02   'Cause it doesn't help you, there's nothing you can do.

01:14:05   What are you gonna do, get off the plane?

01:14:07   So I don't know, and I don't need it.

01:14:11   So that would be my one case.

01:14:12   The only time I'm separated from my suitcases

01:14:14   is when I'm loading them onto a plane.

01:14:16   I just don't know where I'd put these tiles.

01:14:18   And maybe I'm lacking in imagination

01:14:20   'cause I've spent the last 12-plus months

01:14:23   barely leaving my house.

01:14:25   And when I do, taking--

01:14:25   - Did you use tiles?

01:14:27   - I had the regular tile brand one.

01:14:30   My wife bought me some years ago,

01:14:32   and I put one in my computer bag, and I didn't know where.

01:14:35   It was a very kind gift, she thought it sounded nerdy.

01:14:38   It was very sweet of her.

01:14:40   And I put one in my computer bag and never lost it,

01:14:43   and so I never even used it.

01:14:46   You know what I mean?

01:14:47   I put one in there, I set up the app,

01:14:49   and I never had a need for it.

01:14:53   - Yeah, yeah, I had the tiles too,

01:14:55   and I did put them in them.

01:14:56   And I remember a couple times I'd left my bag behind,

01:14:58   then I went, but I never needed a tile

01:15:00   because I was only at one place,

01:15:01   so I knew exactly where to go get it.

01:15:03   - It doesn't sound like it's a product.

01:15:05   I mean, what other things would people want to track?

01:15:08   I know people might want to track their kids

01:15:11   for safety reasons.

01:15:13   - The dogs.

01:15:15   - Your dog, would you use it as a dog tag?

01:15:18   It looks like, I don't know.

01:15:22   It's, I don't know.

01:15:23   I expect it to come.

01:15:26   It seems like it's overdue.

01:15:27   It doesn't sound like it's been canceled,

01:15:29   so I guess it's coming.

01:15:30   I'm most curious what they're gonna say it's useful for.

01:15:34   - And it's interesting because they went to all the trouble

01:15:37   of making it, like whether it was for antitrust issues

01:15:40   or to whatever, they made an API out of it,

01:15:43   announced the WWDC so that third parties

01:15:45   could use the Find My network as well,

01:15:48   and you'd have a variety of products.

01:15:50   I'm guessing the Apple one will just be for people

01:15:52   who have a high brand affinity for Apple

01:15:53   and want something functionally Apple in their keychain,

01:15:56   whether they use it or not, it's just like a brand value play

01:16:00   but I'm curious to see what third parties

01:16:02   decide to do something, like will there be Belkin versions

01:16:06   or whatever, and if people will find anything novel

01:16:08   to do with them.

01:16:09   - And I guess I didn't mention your keychain.

01:16:13   I guess that's the prototypical thing people often lose

01:16:17   where a bottle cap size thing is not a big ask.

01:16:22   I don't know, I don't lose my keys.

01:16:26   - But this way Apple can sell you,

01:16:30   because they don't come with a key attached,

01:16:31   you have to buy that separately like Apple Watch,

01:16:33   so there'll be a whole third party

01:16:35   accessory infrastructure built into it.

01:16:37   - You know, it'd be interesting if they do that

01:16:39   and then maybe they have a breakthrough design

01:16:43   for the key ring part.

01:16:45   - Yes. - Right?

01:16:46   - And then there's an Hermes,

01:16:48   I have to say it properly, I get yelled at,

01:16:50   a keychain to match your Apple Watch band.

01:16:52   - Right, right, they could sell little leather things

01:16:55   to put the AirTag in.

01:16:58   You know what, that's probably the whole idea.

01:17:01   It's all just, it's really just a keychain

01:17:03   and it's just an excuse to sell $100 Hermes keychain holders.

01:17:08   - Solved it.

01:17:12   - All right, what about Max?

01:17:16   Do we think we're gonna get new Mac hardware in April?

01:17:20   - I want, like I want that 16-inch M1, M1X,

01:17:24   and whatever Apple calls it, Macbook Pro so much.

01:17:28   I have a feeling we might have to wait 'til WWDC

01:17:31   to get them, the same with the iMac,

01:17:33   but I want those just as fast as is humanly possible.

01:17:36   - But on the other hand, they canceled the iMac Pro already.

01:17:40   Now, does that mean anything,

01:17:42   or is it really just a reflection

01:17:45   of Intel discontinuing the Xeon chips that were used in it

01:17:48   and they're not going to re-engineer the iMac Pro

01:17:52   for even a speed bump version of Xeon chips

01:17:55   that they're planning to do away with anyway?

01:17:58   Like I sort of feel like the iMac Pro's discontinuation date

01:18:03   doesn't really, there's not,

01:18:06   I wouldn't read too much into that

01:18:08   on the expectation of M1 iMacs, but maybe?

01:18:11   - I totally agree, and also like the low-end

01:18:13   21.5-inch iMacs have been discontinued,

01:18:15   but I think that's more along the lines

01:18:17   of we're running out and it doesn't make,

01:18:18   these aren't NFC, NFTs, we can't just mint them

01:18:21   when we want to, we're not gonna do a whole run

01:18:22   just for like three more, to keep three more of those

01:18:25   in stock until we officially announce something.

01:18:27   - Right, it sounds like the rumors are,

01:18:30   and I think even without paying attention to the rumors,

01:18:33   it makes intuitive sense to me that for iMacs,

01:18:36   as decades go on, screens get bigger.

01:18:41   So the small size changes from 21 inches to 24 inches,

01:18:45   the big size changes from 27 to 30,

01:18:48   that sounds about right to me.

01:18:50   - Yeah, or 32 to match the Pro Display XDR.

01:18:53   I've heard both rumors.

01:18:54   - That would be really nice too.

01:18:55   It also seems like that's getting close

01:18:58   to the upper limit, right?

01:18:59   Like, 'cause in theory, if you have a huge desk, sure,

01:19:04   a 50-inch display, there are some people

01:19:07   who love a setup like that,

01:19:08   and people with two 30-inch displays,

01:19:10   and they have effectively a 60-inch effective

01:19:14   two-display thing, wouldn't it be great

01:19:16   if there was one unified 60-inch iMac display?

01:19:20   In theory, that's fine, but I think it's too niche

01:19:23   to dream that they would actually sell something like that

01:19:27   as an iMac.

01:19:28   But does seem like 27 inches sort of dated as the big size?

01:19:33   - Yes, yeah, especially like, I tend to think,

01:19:38   you know, they haven't done this recently,

01:19:39   but previously Apple would make the iMac panel

01:19:42   and the Cinema Display panel the same.

01:19:45   You know, you could just choose

01:19:45   which one you wanted to get.

01:19:47   And obviously they haven't continued

01:19:48   the Cinema Display series, and the Pro Display is,

01:19:51   I think you famously called it 6K for 6K,

01:19:53   (laughing)

01:19:55   which is a lot.

01:19:56   But just having an iMac that size

01:19:58   with like a proper mini-LED display,

01:20:00   if they can do it at that scale,

01:20:03   yeah, I think that's a significant,

01:20:04   especially if it gets that redesign,

01:20:05   that's a significant upgrade for them.

01:20:07   And that industrial design is so long in the tooth now.

01:20:10   Like it still looks good, but the bezels are big,

01:20:12   it's got that pregnant bump on the back,

01:20:14   and it hasn't been updated in years.

01:20:16   - You could get M1 performance

01:20:22   out of a totally flat display, clearly, right?

01:20:26   There's no reason for any kind of bump in the back anymore.

01:20:29   And if it quote unquote only performs

01:20:32   as well as the existing M1 Max, that's great.

01:20:35   I mean, there are some Pro needs from the iMac Pro,

01:20:40   that it would require like an M1X or something,

01:20:44   but clearly the thermals are there.

01:20:48   And the iMac Pro showed Apple's prowess

01:20:52   at thermal design anyway,

01:20:55   that they could run these Xeon chips

01:20:57   in a totally silent form factor,

01:21:00   or nearly silent form factor.

01:21:04   - So I'm excited to see it.

01:21:05   I don't feel it in my gut for April.

01:21:08   It feels to me like,

01:21:10   just feels in my gut like they'll just spend

01:21:15   a big chunk of the WWDC keynote

01:21:17   bragging about what a great success

01:21:22   the initial Apple Silicon Macs were,

01:21:24   how great it was that developed.

01:21:26   A year ago we announced this.

01:21:28   You guys, you developers did a fantastic job

01:21:32   updating all of your apps and being ready,

01:21:34   and we launched the first series of M1 Macs in November,

01:21:39   and they've been, here's a quote from Joanna Stern

01:21:42   at the Wall Street Journal, and what a great success.

01:21:47   Customers love them, and here's pictures of people loving--

01:21:53   - Industry leading, power per watts.

01:21:55   - Right, and battery life and blah, blah, blah.

01:21:58   Now we're ready for the next step, and the next step.

01:22:01   And just do a big announcement and announce pro MacBooks.

01:22:06   And again, I know that there's a 13-inch MacBook Pro

01:22:09   with the M1, but do the one with four ports

01:22:11   and that supports as many displays as you can fit on a desk.

01:22:15   Do the 16-inch MacBook Pro, have an iMac story,

01:22:19   and talk about how the iMac now

01:22:22   is a totally credible pro level.

01:22:25   It will be thanks to the M1 Pro desktop.

01:22:28   And maybe, maybe even, I mean, the only other Mac

01:22:32   that's left is the Mac Pro, but do it all at once, right?

01:22:37   So what's left?

01:22:38   There's the pro level 13-inch MacBook Pro

01:22:43   with four ports and higher specs.

01:22:47   The entire 16-inch MacBook Pro,

01:22:49   possibly the 13-inch would go to 14 inches, right?

01:22:54   And that it would be more of a bezel to bezel,

01:22:57   where the footprint doesn't grow,

01:22:59   but the same way without growing the footprint of the device.

01:23:01   - They've finally snapped the bezels.

01:23:03   - Right.

01:23:04   Maybe an exciting new design, new colors for them, who knows?

01:23:09   iMac obviously had to, you know,

01:23:12   from one end of the spectrum to the other,

01:23:14   still hasn't been touched.

01:23:15   And the Mac Pro--

01:23:18   - Maybe an M1 Mac Mini, like an M1X Mac Mini,

01:23:21   because they reintroduced the silver version

01:23:23   and it feels like the pro version,

01:23:25   well, the pro version is still Intel,

01:23:27   and they could do like with the same chip

01:23:28   that goes in the 16-inch MacBook Pro could go in there.

01:23:30   - Right, and that's the same sort of situation

01:23:32   with the quote-unquote 13-inch MacBook Pro,

01:23:35   where there are pro ones and non-pro ones, right?

01:23:38   With more ports and the capability to drive more,

01:23:43   bigger and more displays, et cetera.

01:23:45   - Yeah.

01:23:46   - You know, is it too much--

01:23:51   - What do you think about the colors on the iMac?

01:23:52   'Cause that was a weird rumor to me,

01:23:54   not that they haven't made colored iMacs before,

01:23:56   but like in the modern era,

01:23:58   just having to manage supply chain

01:24:00   and how many weeks of inventory

01:24:02   on like a pink or a sky blue iMac, it's interesting to me.

01:24:06   - Yeah, I say why not though, right?

01:24:08   And I don't know.

01:24:09   I would like to see them do something like that.

01:24:12   It seems like it's been a little bit too boring

01:24:15   for too long that you can get your iMac in one color

01:24:18   and one color only, and that's aluminum.

01:24:21   And I know the iMac Pro had the darker color,

01:24:23   but again, only one choice.

01:24:26   So I kind of--

01:24:27   - Why can't you admit that?

01:24:28   It was one of the brief things that we were at,

01:24:29   and I was just like, why can't we get the big stuff

01:24:30   in rose gold?

01:24:31   And they were like, it's too big, it's too much rose gold.

01:24:34   And I said, I'm gonna file a radar asking for this rose gold.

01:24:37   - I just don't know if the actual rumored colors,

01:24:40   which the rumors seem to be doing it all sort of like

01:24:44   the iPads are colored.

01:24:48   - Yeah, exactly.

01:24:48   - Where they're all sort of muted light colors.

01:24:51   Like, I don't know, why not do the iMac ones

01:24:54   in very bold colors, right?

01:24:56   I mean, that's--

01:24:57   - Like the iPhone 12.

01:24:58   - Right, do it like iPhone 12 style

01:25:00   where there's a black one, and it is black.

01:25:02   And do one where it's product red,

01:25:05   and it is just a big, bright red iMac.

01:25:08   And if there's no bezel on the front,

01:25:11   the red wouldn't distract you from the display.

01:25:13   It would only be something you see at the base

01:25:15   and from the back.

01:25:17   I think some people would love that.

01:25:20   - Yeah, yeah, like the old product red iPhones

01:25:22   when they were still aluminum.

01:25:23   Just that look was so good.

01:25:25   - Right, if they get rid of that chin,

01:25:26   which I would expect that they could and would like to do,

01:25:30   and so that you really just see your iMac from facing it

01:25:34   is really just a display that goes as close as practical

01:25:38   to edge to edge, I think that opens up the door

01:25:41   to bolder colors that would be distracting

01:25:44   if you saw a big strip of it as a chin

01:25:46   at the bottom of the display.

01:25:49   - Do a vibrant blue iPhone 12 blue style blue iMac.

01:25:54   That to me would be the way to go.

01:25:57   I think the muted ones that just sort of look like aluminum,

01:26:01   but like dip, you know, like an Easter egg into a dip,

01:26:03   and it's got like a pink tint.

01:26:05   - Yeah, I mean, give us blue Dalmatian and flower power,

01:26:10   you cowards.

01:26:11   - How about this?

01:26:12   Make a black MacBook Pro, or nearly black, right?

01:26:16   Space gray, like not space gray.

01:26:18   I'm talking like, you know, black, black.

01:26:20   - Like iPhone 7 black.

01:26:21   - Yeah, people would go nuts for that, I think,

01:26:23   'cause I think we've had the same sort of very narrow range

01:26:28   of aluminumish colors.

01:26:30   You know, I mean, I know that was one of the jokes

01:26:32   in the Justin Long IBM ad, but it's like, you know, it is,

01:26:36   you get like, you can have gray,

01:26:37   or you can have gray or gray.

01:26:39   - Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.

01:26:43   - And they, you know, what has Apple said

01:26:46   about promising Apple Silicon?

01:26:48   - They've said they're gonna finish the transition this year.

01:26:50   They're very good.

01:26:52   - Well, in two years, so they have until dub dub next June.

01:26:55   - The Mac Pro would be the one that you would expect

01:26:57   might take the longest.

01:26:58   I mean, it's a nichest product.

01:27:01   - And there were some leaks about them doing a spec bump.

01:27:05   Like there was some, I forget what it was,

01:27:06   but like the latest Nvidia cars, Navi 2,

01:27:08   and I think some more recent Xeons showed up.

01:27:10   But after those commercials, I just think Apple

01:27:12   probably lost all their taste for Intel spec bumps.

01:27:15   But, you know, there are people who need the big things.

01:27:19   I don't know.

01:27:20   It seems like too much to ask for them to announce

01:27:23   all of the remaining Apple Silicon Macs at WWDC,

01:27:27   but maybe some of them are just pre-announcements, right?

01:27:31   And I kind of feel that the initial promise from a year ago

01:27:35   of we're gonna finish this in two years

01:27:36   was giving themselves an awful lot of ability

01:27:39   to under-promise and over-deliver.

01:27:41   - Like the Steve Jobs thing, right?

01:27:42   - Right. - The PowerPC.

01:27:43   He said two years and finished it in a year.

01:27:44   - Right, and this transition, I know.

01:27:47   I know that there's a bunch of people at Apple

01:27:51   who have been there, you know,

01:27:52   they have so little turnover overall for a tech company,

01:27:57   and that there were people working on this transition

01:28:00   who were there for the PowerPC to Intel transition.

01:28:04   And I would say so far in every way, it's been even better.

01:28:09   And that transition went very smoothly.

01:28:11   But the first machines are even better.

01:28:15   The OS transition was as seamless as you could hope.

01:28:19   So I would anticipate, I'm optimistic,

01:28:22   I'm bullish on them being pretty aggressive

01:28:24   at just saying, okay, we're done with Intel.

01:28:27   And I just don't think they have any taste.

01:28:29   They have no taste for those Intel machines.

01:28:31   They don't care for them.

01:28:32   - No, I think you're totally right.

01:28:34   I think exactly what you said about the iMac

01:28:36   where the thermal envelope can be so much smaller

01:28:38   for Apple Silicon will apply to the Mac Pro as well.

01:28:42   And you'll get so much more space

01:28:44   for however they continue the modularity,

01:28:47   like with MX cards or whatever they do there.

01:28:49   Or you'll just have a smaller case

01:28:51   and be able to take out that giant Xeon chip

01:28:53   in its heat sink, that giant AMD GPU with multi-layers.

01:28:58   You know, there'll be so much more room

01:28:59   for them to do interesting things.

01:29:00   - Yeah, so it just feels like the whole thing fits better

01:29:04   at WWDC, and that they can have some of them ready to go,

01:29:08   like they're gonna go on sale tomorrow

01:29:10   or go on sale later this month.

01:29:12   And some of them maybe are coming later this year.

01:29:16   I don't know.

01:29:17   - Like an October Mac event if they go back to traditional.

01:29:21   - Or, you know, I don't know.

01:29:23   I just feel like it doesn't feel like an April thing to me.

01:29:26   I'd be pleasantly surprised,

01:29:28   but I just don't expect Macs this month.

01:29:31   - Yeah, no, totally the same.

01:29:34   And I want them as soon as, like again,

01:29:35   as soon as inhumanly possible, but I think you're right.

01:29:38   I just feel like they got off to such a good start

01:29:42   and it still gives them runway

01:29:44   and it all fits together better at WWDC.

01:29:47   Here's an idea.

01:29:49   I have not heard rumors about this.

01:29:51   Maybe there are, I don't stay up on them all.

01:29:52   But there's a missing Mac in the lineup,

01:29:56   and that is the two-pound MacBook.

01:30:01   Like the MacBook Air is 2.8 pounds, I think,

01:30:05   and the 13-inch MacBook Pro is three pounds.

01:30:08   There's a lot of PC laptops that are about two pounds.

01:30:11   I forget how much the no-adjective Apple MacBook

01:30:15   that they've, you know, the adorable one-port thing.

01:30:18   But something that-- - MacBook nothing.

01:30:20   - Something that makes the MacBook Air look thick and heavy.

01:30:24   - Yes, well, there's a couple rumors

01:30:26   for a couple missing Macs.

01:30:27   There's a rumor that there'll be a G4 Lite Cube

01:30:29   for either a Mac Mini Pro or a Mac Pro Mini.

01:30:32   And then there's rumors that there'll be an M2,

01:30:34   a next-generation MacBook Air

01:30:36   that'll slim it down even more,

01:30:38   down to something closer to what the 12-inch MacBook,

01:30:41   maybe still with a 13-inch screen,

01:30:43   because maybe they can fit it in with zero bezels,

01:30:45   or maybe, you know, it's still 12-inch.

01:30:47   But it'll be the higher,

01:30:48   like the current MacBook Air will be the $999 one,

01:30:52   and then this will be the higher-end version of the Air

01:30:54   with the new design and everything.

01:30:56   - Yeah, I wonder, though, and who knows?

01:30:59   I mean, 'cause the names are the sort of thing

01:31:01   that leak the least, and maybe it's the same device, right?

01:31:06   And people are thinking it might be a MacBook Air,

01:31:08   it might be the iconic wedge shape,

01:31:09   but they wouldn't call it the MacBook Air?

01:31:11   I don't know, and--

01:31:13   - They'll pretty much call it MacBook Stealth again

01:31:15   and never gonna lose their minds.

01:31:16   - I don't know.

01:31:18   Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I just, I don't know.

01:31:21   There was something to the fact

01:31:22   that they called the MacBook just the MacBook

01:31:24   that just said to me,

01:31:25   this is what they think a MacBook should be.

01:31:28   And it was so constrained performance-wise,

01:31:32   and the one port idea played out so poorly in practice.

01:31:36   - And the pricing never could go down.

01:31:38   They never managed to reduce the cost enough

01:31:39   to get it down to a reasonable price.

01:31:41   - Right, but it's, you know,

01:31:43   there are definitely PCs out there

01:31:45   that are significantly lighter in weight.

01:31:47   I mean, I just was reading a Verge story

01:31:49   about a new ThinkPad, and it's 2.0 pounds,

01:31:52   and that is significantly less than a MacBook Air.

01:31:57   - Or the LG Gram, which are much, much lighter

01:32:00   than their MacBook counterparts.

01:32:03   - Yeah.

01:32:03   - And it's weird there's no MacBook.

01:32:04   Like, there's an iPad, there's an Apple Watch,

01:32:06   there's an iPhone, and there's no MacBook.

01:32:07   And I realize part of that is the success

01:32:09   of the MacBook Air branding,

01:32:10   because it came to mean both light and inexpensive,

01:32:13   and that leaves very little wiggle room

01:32:15   for a MacBook nothing.

01:32:16   But it feels like at some point

01:32:17   you gotta force that back into the brand.

01:32:20   - Yeah, so I, you know,

01:32:21   they've been known to do that, and just sort of,

01:32:26   you know, iBook has been like six different things.

01:32:28   - Yes.

01:32:30   - I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised

01:32:32   if that's the thing, but it just feels like,

01:32:33   man, that is something that they,

01:32:35   like if they were willing to do it

01:32:37   with Intel Atom processors, why in the world

01:32:40   wouldn't they do it with M1 processors

01:32:42   that we know can run in the thermal envelope?

01:32:45   'Cause they run in our friggin' iPhones.

01:32:47   So-- - Yes, absolutely.

01:32:49   - I know there's no like rampant rumors

01:32:51   that such a thing is coming or slated,

01:32:53   but it just feels like they have to,

01:32:55   they have to be thinking about it, you know?

01:32:56   And they could even do, they could even do

01:32:58   a good keyboard where the keys travel

01:33:00   because they have so much room inside.

01:33:03   - The A14X is gonna run in the 11-inch iPad.

01:33:06   I mean, that's much more constrained

01:33:08   than any MacBook would be.

01:33:09   - Right, so, I don't know, that would be on my list.

01:33:11   But again, I don't expect it this week.

01:33:14   All right, here's on my list.

01:33:16   iOS, not a hardware announcement,

01:33:19   but devoting some segment of the show to iOS 14.5.

01:33:25   I think, I said this to you in chat the other day

01:33:28   when we were setting up doing this show,

01:33:30   it just popped into my mind.

01:33:31   I've been running iOS 14.5 since the first beta

01:33:35   because I wanted to try the mask thing.

01:33:38   I mean, I've been known to run the betas anyway,

01:33:39   but I put the betas on my Apple Watch and my phone

01:33:44   so that I could try the unlock your phone

01:33:49   while wearing your Apple Watch if you have a face mask on.

01:33:52   And I wrote about it and I, again,

01:33:54   I can't encourage people to install beta OSs

01:33:57   on their devices, but this is a super stable OS.

01:34:02   I've been running the beta since the beginning

01:34:04   and I think I had like one bug in one, like the second beta,

01:34:08   there was a weird thing that was clearly an OS bug.

01:34:11   But on the whole, it's clearly as stable

01:34:13   as release versions of iOS.

01:34:15   The mask thing is a game-changing feature.

01:34:20   It's truly phenomenal.

01:34:22   I know some people are gonna say finally.

01:34:27   It's probably gonna be the most finally thing

01:34:30   in all of the news when iOS 14.5 comes out,

01:34:34   but it is a great feature.

01:34:35   I don't think it was easy because I don't think,

01:34:37   I think it's so contrary to the way the ML models

01:34:40   were trained on people's faces.

01:34:42   - Well, it's non-trivial because the watch,

01:34:44   the phone unlocks the watch.

01:34:46   And so there's so much room for potential exploits.

01:34:49   And they thought about it so carefully.

01:34:51   Like it's even if you unlock with your watch

01:34:54   and then someone takes your phone and leaves,

01:34:56   I forget what it is, like a hundred, it's several meters.

01:34:59   It'll lock again because they're assuming

01:35:01   someone's grabbed your phone and tried to get away with.

01:35:03   Like there's so many edge cases that they thought out

01:35:05   that it's a really smart implementation.

01:35:07   - So it's been great overall.

01:35:10   But I feel like the aspect they're gonna,

01:35:12   they don't wanna spend too much time,

01:35:14   I don't even know if they'll mention the mask thing,

01:35:15   although I think they should,

01:35:16   because I think it's a great way to get people

01:35:18   to upgrade their OS.

01:35:20   Maybe the next best thing since adding new emoji.

01:35:23   But I-- - You'll have to demonstrate

01:35:26   find my, like if those air tags come out,

01:35:29   they'd have to do it, like Craig will have to come up

01:35:30   and explain, find my network and the privacy policies

01:35:33   and everything. - But I think that they're

01:35:34   holding the release of the OS, I mean, who knows?

01:35:37   Again, this could be the thing where this whole segment

01:35:39   of the show is ruined because it'll come out tomorrow.

01:35:42   But I think they're holding it for the event

01:35:44   so that they can, and they'll say it's gonna be available

01:35:48   an hour after the event, at one o'clock Eastern Time

01:35:51   or whatever, it's available today.

01:35:54   It's going to be ready, the OS seems so ready.

01:35:57   But I think they wanna explain all this ad privacy stuff

01:36:00   and do it their way, because this is clearly

01:36:05   the most controversial thing Apple is involved with

01:36:08   at the moment, is their conflict with Facebook

01:36:12   very explicitly and the tracking ad industry as a whole.

01:36:18   I think Apple wants to talk about this and say how,

01:36:22   put their spin on what this means when you upgrade

01:36:26   to this OS and get asked, would you like to allow

01:36:28   Facebook to track you in the background?

01:36:31   - Did I give you my quick rundown on privacy policies yet?

01:36:35   I'm not sure if I did. - I don't think so.

01:36:36   - So I have an analogy for this where Apple is basically

01:36:40   going to a fancy restaurant, like a three-star

01:36:43   Michelin restaurant, it's an expensive meal,

01:36:45   but it's usually a really good meal.

01:36:47   They'll sell you a shiny box, but then you pay your own way

01:36:50   and you're out of there.

01:36:52   Google is like being bought a lobster dinner.

01:36:54   You get it for free, but they spend the whole time

01:36:56   leering at you and you've gotta decide what it's worth

01:36:58   for you to put out for that dinner.

01:37:01   And then Facebook just feels like it's a buffet,

01:37:03   but you have to eat it while you're naked and being probed.

01:37:06   And these are entirely different, and different people

01:37:10   have different limits for all of these things,

01:37:12   but I think as we learn more and more about what they take

01:37:15   in exchange for what they give, we'll all have our own

01:37:17   comfort levels with those things.

01:37:18   - And they start you with a mild roofie

01:37:21   so that you don't mind the probing.

01:37:24   - Yeah, but that's literally how their business models

01:37:27   are working, and I think we're just learning things

01:37:30   like what Apple's doing with the privacy policies,

01:37:32   and when you see the reaction of people like Mark Zuckerberg,

01:37:35   who still has complete first-party access to all of our data

01:37:39   how angry they get about it, I think it's more telling

01:37:42   than just what Apple's doing.

01:37:43   - Yeah, I just think that they wanna sell it.

01:37:45   I think they wanna pitch it, and it just, in Apple's mind,

01:37:48   and they could release it first and then talk about it,

01:37:51   but that's just not Apple's style to say like,

01:37:54   "Hey, this OS that's been out for a week,

01:37:56   "we'd like to tell you about it."

01:37:58   They want to tell you about it, get you excited about it,

01:38:03   and then tell you you can download it later today.

01:38:05   That's just Apple's style, whether it was ready

01:38:08   or not engineering-wise.

01:38:10   And it also sort of fits with the,

01:38:14   more than a rumor, but the word that Apple's original date

01:38:22   for this event was March 23rd, which I've heard

01:38:26   from people not even at Apple, but people at a company

01:38:31   that might be demoing something at the event sort of thing,

01:38:35   or have something that they are supposed to have ready

01:38:39   the day that Apple has an event, that March 23rd was

01:38:42   maybe not planned and canceled or postponed,

01:38:47   but maybe the original soft deadline.

01:38:50   iOS 14.5 seems like it could have been released

01:38:53   by that date, in my opinion.

01:38:56   Just sort of fits with that, and it's like,

01:38:57   for whatever other reasons they might have pushed back

01:39:00   the date two weeks or a week or three weeks

01:39:03   or whatever it winds up being, iOS 14 wasn't the reason,

01:39:06   or 14.5.

01:39:07   - Yeah.

01:39:09   Yeah, well, it feels like those dates were echoes

01:39:11   of early planning, just what potential dates could we have?

01:39:15   And then as different products lined up,

01:39:17   like we talked about this before, but an Apple event

01:39:19   is basically shooting arrows at other arrows

01:39:21   and hoping they all hit each other and then hit the target.

01:39:23   - Right. - So there's lots of core.

01:39:24   - Well, everybody who's ever worked with anything

01:39:26   with deadlines knows that if the best,

01:39:28   if you really, really, really wanna make sure

01:39:30   that in the worst possible case, you ship something

01:39:33   by April 14th, a good way to do that is to shoot

01:39:37   for March 23rd.

01:39:39   - Yes, yes.

01:39:41   - It's just the way deadlines work, and it's certainly

01:39:44   the way they might work even worse than usual

01:39:47   with all the remote work and everything else

01:39:49   that's going on.

01:39:50   All right, let me take a break here and thank our third

01:39:53   and final sponsor, good friends of the show, Squarespace.

01:39:57   Look, if you're listening to this show, I'll bet

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01:41:20   to remember the URL, squarespace.com/talkshow,

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01:41:53   That's it for my maybes for April.

01:41:57   Do you have anything else that might come out

01:41:59   in a week, two weeks?

01:42:01   - No, I think there were early rumors of an iPhone SE+,

01:42:05   but those have sort of evaporated over time,

01:42:08   and while an iPhone SE is typically a spring product

01:42:10   for Apple, it just doesn't sound like it's imminent

01:42:13   at this point. - Yeah, I think the idea,

01:42:14   so the idea was the SE was taking a two or three-year-old

01:42:19   phone, keeping the hardware, and putting an up-to-date chip

01:42:25   in it to give that form factor legs for years to come.

01:42:30   And the new SE, the current one, that's what they did

01:42:35   with the iPhone 8.

01:42:37   They took an iPhone 8, updated it to the A13,

01:42:42   was that right, A13?

01:42:44   Yeah, and now it's a product with a home button

01:42:49   and a familiar form factor that will be more than usable

01:42:54   for years to come at a low price point.

01:42:56   For people who either A, just wanna get the cheapest

01:42:58   possible iPhone that Apple sells that's new,

01:43:01   or B, are like my mom, and really, really, really

01:43:04   just wanted one that worked the way her previous iPhone did

01:43:07   because that's just how she is.

01:43:10   And it's like, I know my mom is a very smart woman,

01:43:13   and she could easily figure out how to use a Face ID iPhone,

01:43:17   and if that's what she had to do, she'd figure it out

01:43:21   just as fast as anybody else, but she did not want it.

01:43:24   And I didn't need the grief, so we got her the new iPhone SE

01:43:27   and she loves it.

01:43:28   The missing idea would be that, hey, there was the 8 Plus,

01:43:33   why not make an iPhone SE Plus that just looks exactly

01:43:36   like the iPhone 8 Plus and sell it for 50 bucks more

01:43:40   or whatever?

01:43:42   Seems plausible.

01:43:46   There's more than enough rumors about it

01:43:50   that it certainly seems like Apple kicked it around.

01:43:53   I think their reluctance to do it, though,

01:43:55   is that they sort of have a thing going on

01:43:58   where if you really do want a big, physically big iPhone,

01:44:02   you pay a premium.

01:44:03   - Yeah. - You know?

01:44:06   - Yeah, well, that was the other part of the rumor.

01:44:07   One of the rumors was it would actually be an iPhone 8 Plus

01:44:09   that was tricked out, but then the other rumor,

01:44:12   which also seems to evaporate, is that it was more geared

01:44:14   towards other markets, and it would be something akin

01:44:17   to an iPhone 10R, iPhone 11 design, but instead of putting

01:44:21   a more expensive Face ID module in it,

01:44:23   they would just use the power button fingerprint reader

01:44:26   from the iPad Air, and it would be like a first,

01:44:31   well, I guess another attempt at an entry level,

01:44:33   a sort of modern iPhone.

01:44:34   - That seems plausible to me, but if they're backed away

01:44:40   from it, maybe it's that the iPhone SE is selling so well

01:44:42   that they're like, we don't need to go there.

01:44:45   We'll just keep, the SE's good, we're good for another year

01:44:47   with the SEs, it is, you know, keep it simple.

01:44:51   - Yeah, it doesn't seem like that's much rumored.

01:44:53   It seems like whatever the idea there is, no, not happening.

01:44:57   What else is going on for the rest of the year?

01:45:00   I don't wanna spend too much time speculating about iPhones,

01:45:04   iPhone 13 in the fall.

01:45:06   There's the German story, though, which I thought

01:45:08   was really interesting.

01:45:09   Mark Gurman had a report that Apple's working on a,

01:45:12   or considering, strongly considering a more rugged

01:45:15   Apple Watch that internally they're calling

01:45:18   the Explorer edition, and it would be sort of, you know,

01:45:22   he had no details about its design, but think, you know,

01:45:27   he mentioned the Casio G Shock watches,

01:45:30   which are truly, truly meant to be very durable.

01:45:33   Like, I always, it's one of those commercials

01:45:35   that's just burned in my brain where they,

01:45:37   the original 1983 G Shock, they strapped around

01:45:40   a hockey puck and showed a guy slapshotting into a net.

01:45:43   Like, pretty, you know, pretty rugged.

01:45:46   I mean, you certainly wouldn't do that with an Apple Watch,

01:45:48   as is.

01:45:50   I think this is a great idea, and I think that it would sell

01:45:56   very well, I think it would expand the market

01:45:58   for Apple Watch, 'cause I just think,

01:46:02   and I think it would sell a lot to people

01:46:05   who aren't doing particularly rugged things, you know,

01:46:07   like if, let's say you're a rock climber.

01:46:09   Well, you would love to have this watch, right,

01:46:12   because the glass and sapphire of the existing models

01:46:16   is not good for smashing against rocks.

01:46:18   - Yeah, yeah.

01:46:21   Also, people who work construction,

01:46:22   or any sort of job that has high impact,

01:46:24   and that's one of the things that Apple does,

01:46:26   is that they start to look at the next adjacent market

01:46:28   that they can move into, like, it's like one step

01:46:30   from what they do now, and there are people

01:46:32   who are excursionists, or adventurers,

01:46:35   or do extreme sports, or work in construction,

01:46:38   those sorts of things, and it's taking everything

01:46:40   that people already like about it,

01:46:41   and just taking it that one step sideways

01:46:44   that increases their market, and I think it's really smart.

01:46:46   - Yeah, construction is a great market, right,

01:46:48   and it's hopefully booming as the economy recovers.

01:46:53   It's just a huge number of people work in construction,

01:46:57   and wearing a glass-faced watch is just not a great idea.

01:47:02   - Law enforcement, military, I mean,

01:47:06   there's just so many applications.

01:47:07   - Right, and I, you know, and I think,

01:47:09   I really think a lot of people, it's the same thing

01:47:11   with people who put their iPhones in, not just cases,

01:47:15   which we know most people do, but like,

01:47:16   those OtterBox-style cases that are really thick

01:47:19   and very super protective, you know,

01:47:23   my mother-in-law uses one of those,

01:47:25   and she has no real practical need for it.

01:47:28   She just feels better.

01:47:29   She feels like her, you know, whatever, $600,

01:47:32   whatever her iPhone costs, that's way too much money

01:47:35   to spend on a thing with what looks like a delicate screen,

01:47:39   and, you know, it makes, she would be,

01:47:43   she would not enjoy owning a phone

01:47:45   if she just had it in a lesser case.

01:47:48   Some people feel like that.

01:47:49   It's, you know, probably people who are a lot more sensible

01:47:52   with their money than I am. (laughs)

01:47:55   - But also, like, G-Shock has almost like a cult-like

01:47:57   following, like it is something that people

01:47:58   have a high affinity and, you know, nostalgia for,

01:48:01   and I could see people having sort of

01:48:02   the same reaction to this.

01:48:03   - And I'm curious, it's also the sort of thing

01:48:05   where Apple Watch, so an iPhone is amenable

01:48:09   to being encased in a very durable, protective case,

01:48:14   and I'm sure that if Apple built, you know,

01:48:17   in John Syracuse's ideal world where there's way more,

01:48:21   you know, they expand way more into other product ideas,

01:48:25   if Apple built an iPhone designed to be, like, rugged,

01:48:30   like what's the Panasonic brand for laptops

01:48:34   that are used, like, on construction?

01:48:35   Yeah, the Toughbook, right?

01:48:37   The Panasonic has a long-standing successful line

01:48:41   of laptops that are meant to be used, like,

01:48:43   on a construction site and have dust just all over them

01:48:46   and be dropped and stuff like that.

01:48:49   If Apple designed an iPhone to be used in circumstances

01:48:52   like that without putting it in a case of some sort,

01:48:56   some people would buy it.

01:48:57   I'm just, I would just be curious to see

01:48:59   what it would look like, right?

01:49:00   Like, what would their ideas for that be?

01:49:03   But you can put an iPhone in a durable case.

01:49:06   You can easily, schools, every school with iPads does it.

01:49:10   They put iPads into durable cases.

01:49:13   The design of Apple Watch is such that,

01:49:15   I know some people sell things that you can use

01:49:19   to sort of, but it's just the way you put bands on

01:49:22   and the way it sits on your wrist, like,

01:49:25   it's nowhere near as cool and as low profile on your wrist

01:49:30   as something like a G-Shock where it's built

01:49:32   into the construction of the case itself.

01:49:36   I don't know.

01:49:37   And, you know, German's report wasn't very clear.

01:49:41   Seemed like it was a maybe for this year, though.

01:49:44   I don't know.

01:49:45   - Yeah, he's been throwing, like, he also threw out

01:49:47   the idea of HomePods with displays on them,

01:49:49   almost like there's a one-liner in another story.

01:49:51   So it could just be things that he's hearing,

01:49:54   but that aren't big enough really

01:49:55   for full fleshed out stories.

01:49:57   - I think the Watch, Apple Watch,

01:49:59   I'm calling it Apple Watch Sport to reuse the name.

01:50:04   I don't think, I know he said that internally

01:50:06   they're calling it the Explorer Edition.

01:50:07   I don't think they would ever ship it like that

01:50:09   because Rolex famously sells a watch called the Explorer.

01:50:13   - Yeah.

01:50:15   - And I realize there's only so many words,

01:50:17   and I don't think anybody would say

01:50:19   they're ripping Rolex off.

01:50:20   There'd be no confusing a G-Shock style Apple Watch

01:50:25   with a Rolex Explorer.

01:50:26   I don't know.

01:50:30   - And they couldn't call it Excursion

01:50:31   because of Ford or A-Shock.

01:50:32   - Yeah, I don't know.

01:50:33   - It's called Sport, Apple Watch Sport,

01:50:34   but I would be excited to see it.

01:50:36   I also think that it would,

01:50:38   I'm presuming it would be priced commensurate

01:50:42   with the current aluminum Apple Watches.

01:50:45   That it wouldn't be a higher priced product,

01:50:48   that it would be in line with the new,

01:50:52   this year's model year lower end watches,

01:50:57   which I think now start at like 300 bucks.

01:50:59   Is that right, or are they 400?

01:51:01   - That's something like that,

01:51:02   Apple might charge a bit of a,

01:51:03   just because especially in the beginning,

01:51:04   they might charge a bit of a premium

01:51:06   because they think they can.

01:51:07   - But if you keep it around for a year though,

01:51:09   and then they reduce the price.

01:51:11   You know though, I'm just going towards saying

01:51:13   that for people buying them for their kids,

01:51:15   which is definitely a feature Apple is pushing

01:51:18   in terms of adding the support

01:51:20   for setting up a second iPhone.

01:51:24   - Yeah, the family setup.

01:51:24   - Yeah, the family setup, which they've made clear

01:51:27   is for children and for older, elderly parents

01:51:30   who may not be able to do it themselves

01:51:32   or don't have an iPhone or something like that.

01:51:34   You know, and there's all sorts of limits built in

01:51:37   for children limiting your kids

01:51:40   and being able to set it so they can't screw around

01:51:42   with their iPhone while they're in school

01:51:44   and stuff like that.

01:51:45   I just think that there's an awful lot of parents

01:51:47   who would be more, if they're on the fence

01:51:48   and they're like, maybe I would buy my kid

01:51:51   a $300ish Apple Watch, right?

01:51:54   And it's something they would think about.

01:51:56   I think there's an awful lot of them

01:51:58   who could be nudged off the fence

01:52:00   into the, okay, let's get it for him

01:52:02   if it looked like a G-Shock durability-wise

01:52:05   as opposed to looking like Apple Watch does now.

01:52:08   And I think Apple Watch is probably more durable

01:52:11   without any extra protection than most people,

01:52:15   those people might think.

01:52:17   I think it's really pretty darn durable.

01:52:19   But it still is a glass screen.

01:52:25   And I just think the psychological benefits

01:52:27   of having it look like that would push

01:52:29   really help push parents into buying them for their kids.

01:52:33   'Cause the expectation is that your kid,

01:52:36   your 10-year-old might be over the moon,

01:52:39   ah, Apple Watch, exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

01:52:42   And then they're not gonna take any care of it whatsoever

01:52:45   or be any less reckless on the playground.

01:52:48   - Or they're just gonna be a kid.

01:52:49   - They're gonna be a kid, that's how kids are.

01:52:50   And people know they're kids

01:52:52   and they know they're like that.

01:52:54   I just think that, I don't know,

01:52:56   that was one of the most interesting rumors I've seen.

01:52:58   'Cause I've thought about it before,

01:52:59   but then once I read the report, I was like,

01:53:02   this is a surefire hit, in my opinion.

01:53:04   - Yeah, makes the kind of sense it does, totally.

01:53:09   - Anything else that you wanted to talk about?

01:53:12   I'm sorta out, what do you think?

01:53:17   - Yeah, I think we hit all the big notes.

01:53:20   - All right, what do we wanna talk about

01:53:22   that you do elsewhere?

01:53:23   You've got your YouTube channel.

01:53:25   How many--

01:53:27   - Yeah, it's my one-year anniversary.

01:53:28   You were kind enough to have me on

01:53:29   when I first quit my day job and went indie,

01:53:31   and that was a year ago this Thursday, I think.

01:53:34   - Well, there you go, I didn't even plan it this way,

01:53:36   but happy anniversary.

01:53:38   It's going very well.

01:53:39   - Indie-versary.

01:53:40   - It's going very well.

01:53:41   - Thank you.

01:53:44   - I don't know how you publish as many videos as you do.

01:53:46   It seems mind-boggling to me, but you're, you know.

01:53:51   - I cut down, I cut down recently.

01:53:52   I'm trying to do, I was doing like four to six,

01:53:55   sometimes eight a week, and now I'm trying for like three.

01:53:57   - Crazy.

01:53:58   - I can do two or three.

01:53:59   - I mean, do you sleep?

01:54:00   - I do, but like I lost,

01:54:04   like I made the choice to lose everything.

01:54:05   Like I didn't have a back catalog.

01:54:07   I didn't have anything to feed YouTube,

01:54:08   and YouTube really works well when you give it

01:54:10   a bunch of data about the kinds of videos you make.

01:54:12   So I wanted to build back that back catalog.

01:54:15   You know, it's like if you had to start over

01:54:16   with Daring Fireball, you'd have to write a lot

01:54:17   just to get it into Google.

01:54:18   - I get it, I get it.

01:54:20   You are also on MacBreak Weekly.

01:54:24   - Yes, sir.

01:54:26   - People can, you know where to get that.

01:54:28   Get it in your favorite podcast app.

01:54:30   What else, what else do we wanna talk about?

01:54:32   - Ah, that's mainly it.

01:54:34   I do a podcast with Georgia Dowell

01:54:36   that we talk about psychology of technology,

01:54:38   which I always find endlessly fascinating.

01:54:40   And I get to do the talk show with you

01:54:42   every single month, which is always wonderful.

01:54:44   - It's always a pleasure.

01:54:45   Let's see how right we are.

01:54:48   Hopefully by the time this show comes out,

01:54:50   they'll have an event announced for next week.

01:54:52   We'll look so smart.

01:54:54   - Maybe they could wait a day,

01:54:55   and then, yeah, and then people will have a record in place.

01:54:58   (laughing)

01:54:59   It's not like we recorded multiple versions

01:55:01   of all the different dates.

01:55:02   Please don't start any conspiracy theories.

01:55:03   - All right, thanks, Renee.