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307: ‘Soviet Toilet Paper’, With John Moltz

 

00:00:00   I feel like we're getting institutionalized, you know?

00:00:02   - Well, yeah, I mean, it does feel like that, right?

00:00:05   I mean, like you're kind of locked up,

00:00:07   but don't have to get up early anymore, so that's good.

00:00:12   And basically the entire family appreciates that.

00:00:16   Even the dogs have gotten into that routine now.

00:00:18   The big dog, he won't get, I mean,

00:00:20   he doesn't get up before nine.

00:00:21   (laughing)

00:00:24   - That's pretty good for a dog, really.

00:00:27   That's pretty good. - Well, he's old now.

00:00:28   I mean, both of them are old.

00:00:30   They're both 12.

00:00:31   But yeah, he does not see the need to be up and around.

00:00:34   He basically gets up when he has to go,

00:00:36   like when he has to go to the bathroom,

00:00:37   he gets up and he's like in a big hurry too.

00:00:40   He's a typical old man.

00:00:43   He's just like, "Oh, I gotta go to the bathroom

00:00:46   and I gotta go right now."

00:00:48   - I do think that is part of why dogs are so great,

00:00:51   is they are very much like people in that way,

00:00:54   in that they age in similar ways.

00:00:58   I don't need that, right?

00:01:00   (laughing)

00:01:03   There's just a whole bunch of stuff in life

00:01:04   that as you get older as a person,

00:01:06   you're like, "Ah, I don't need that.

00:01:09   I don't need to put up with that."

00:01:10   That's why old people, the older you get,

00:01:12   the more curt you are with bad service.

00:01:14   - And he makes a lot of noises

00:01:17   like getting up and getting down, like I do.

00:01:20   (laughing)

00:01:22   It's just, "Oh, oh, my hip, ah."

00:01:26   - I remember with my childhood dog who lived,

00:01:28   I believe he died when I was in college.

00:01:30   He lived a long time, Chester.

00:01:32   And he was, I mean, vicious to the mailman.

00:01:36   I mean, I know all dogs hate the mailman,

00:01:39   but I mean, he was nuts.

00:01:42   And there were times when he'd get real old

00:01:43   and I'd come home from college

00:01:44   and there'd be times where he'd be sleeping

00:01:46   and the mail would come and he'd get up,

00:01:48   he'd perk his head and you could see the anger.

00:01:50   'Cause he was like, they don't call him rescue dogs anymore,

00:01:55   but we got him from somebody in a trailer park.

00:01:57   It's, he wasn't, he was like a total mixed breed poodle,

00:02:02   peek-a-poo thing, had a bad underbite.

00:02:06   And when he'd get angry, the underbite would get worse

00:02:09   'cause he'd grit his teeth, he'd get up and grit,

00:02:12   and he'd ask for it.

00:02:13   (laughing)

00:02:15   - That seems like a lot of trouble.

00:02:17   (laughing)

00:02:19   You might expend the energy.

00:02:24   - It's sorta like he was saying to the mailman, you know.

00:02:27   - Just reminding him.

00:02:30   - Did you ever hear that?

00:02:32   - Hey Carl, hey Carl, I'm still here.

00:02:34   - Man, we got a lot to talk about.

00:02:38   Can you believe that old Trumpy's out of office?

00:02:40   This is the first post-Trump episode of the talk show.

00:02:43   - Is that right?

00:02:44   - It is. - Wow.

00:02:45   Yeah, I guess so.

00:02:45   - Yeah, I did one with Montero after a sort of a,

00:02:50   you know, there was like a little insurrection,

00:02:52   a little, (laughing)

00:02:55   - There was an incident.

00:02:56   - There was an incident.

00:02:57   But old Trumpy was still in office, and now he's out,

00:03:00   and man, do I feel better.

00:03:01   - Oh yeah.

00:03:04   Another, I mean, yeah, I was talking about sleeping.

00:03:06   I mean, really what I was doing was staying in bed.

00:03:09   I wasn't sleeping much.

00:03:11   - Do you have any idea?

00:03:12   - Now I'm sleeping.

00:03:13   - And it is true, there are so many things

00:03:16   that have gone on in the last year.

00:03:18   I would say over the four years of Trump,

00:03:20   but 2020 in particular will be remembered,

00:03:24   it's the most memorable of the four Trump years for sure.

00:03:27   But it's been an obsession of mine recently,

00:03:32   is the way that we as human beings convince ourselves

00:03:36   that we can intellectualize certain things,

00:03:39   but it's not the same thing as actually experiencing them.

00:03:42   Like, it's like, you know that war is vicious and bad,

00:03:47   and violent, and that it's gruesome and horrible.

00:03:50   But if you see pictures of it, it hits you in a way, right?

00:03:53   And it's like, you know, like when those pictures

00:03:56   of the Abu Ghrail prison in the Iraq situation,

00:04:00   15 some years ago, came out.

00:04:03   You could hear a description of those photos

00:04:06   and be appalled and outraged,

00:04:07   but because the pictures actually leaked, it was worse.

00:04:11   It shouldn't be, in theory, we should be able to see

00:04:14   be fully outraged through the intellectual aspect of it,

00:04:18   but we're not, you know, we're animals at a certain sense.

00:04:21   We knew that it would be better when we had a president

00:04:27   who we didn't have to check if he tweeted

00:04:29   at something every morning.

00:04:31   - Well, yeah, and that's the thing.

00:04:32   I mean, also just having an empty platform from Twitter,

00:04:35   as you guys talked about, is huge, right?

00:04:39   I mean, because you imagine what he'd be saying

00:04:41   - Right now. - now, and I had him muted.

00:04:45   I mean, I think I had blocked him, you know, from day one,

00:04:49   but you still couldn't get away from it.

00:04:52   People would like screen capture, tweet, retweet.

00:04:55   I mean, they would do, like, there's any number of ways

00:04:57   that other people can force you to see the idiotic things

00:05:02   that the president is saying, and it was exhausting.

00:05:06   (laughing)

00:05:08   - It was exhausting. (laughing)

00:05:12   - I knew I'd sleep better, but man, do I sleep better.

00:05:15   Like, do you, we're recording on Saturday.

00:05:18   Do you have any idea what Joe Biden is up to right now?

00:05:20   (laughing)

00:05:22   I have no idea, none.

00:05:24   - I don't, though I do tune into the news conferences now,

00:05:27   the press conferences. - Oh, aren't they great?

00:05:29   - Because it's just such a, you know, it's like,

00:05:31   oh my God, there's competence.

00:05:33   That's the sort, 'cause that's also relaxing.

00:05:37   It's just, it's delightfully boring.

00:05:39   - That is exactly the word, though.

00:05:41   It's competence, right?

00:05:42   And it's like, even if you don't agree

00:05:44   on certain other policies, it's like,

00:05:45   isn't it nice to have competent people

00:05:47   talking about these things and giving answers

00:05:50   that aren't screaming, yelling, confrontational?

00:05:54   It's, you know, sometimes, hurry.

00:05:57   - And there are still things I worry about, of course,

00:05:59   because the GOP is not, it's not really improved.

00:06:02   I mean, they're doubling down on the same stuff

00:06:07   that they've been saying for the last two and a half months.

00:06:10   And I just, I don't see this ending in a good place,

00:06:14   but at least we're not in the same crappy situation

00:06:18   we were in back in the fall.

00:06:20   - All right, and like listening to Fauci talk now,

00:06:23   it's like, man, how did that guy skate through?

00:06:25   It's really remarkable.

00:06:27   I mean, and again, I'm not saying that even Fauci

00:06:31   in particular is without blame and that there were,

00:06:34   you know, certain policies and aspects

00:06:35   like with the masks and stuff early in the pandemic

00:06:38   where he was wrong.

00:06:40   He's not perfect.

00:06:42   Like that, again, it's like one of the things

00:06:44   that's so obvious is the worst thing in our media culture

00:06:49   that you can be is wrong about one thing one time,

00:06:54   really obviously.

00:06:55   Like if you're mostly right and then you make one mistake,

00:06:58   then it's like there's this giant pile on

00:07:01   as opposed to other people who are wrong

00:07:04   every single time they open their mouths.

00:07:06   Like that Larry Kudlow guy, just talk about something.

00:07:10   That guy is wrong about everything, everything.

00:07:13   (laughing)

00:07:15   Right?

00:07:16   It's like, oh, well, you know, the CDC and Fauci

00:07:19   made some pretty bad mistakes in their messaging

00:07:23   on face masks early on in the pandemic.

00:07:25   But it's like, okay, they were wrong.

00:07:28   Mistakes happen, but for the most part they're right.

00:07:31   But Fauci looks, he looks five years younger.

00:07:34   - Yeah, yeah.

00:07:35   And you heard that comment he made

00:07:37   in like his first press conference about,

00:07:40   he asked him some question and he said,

00:07:42   I really, I don't know the answer to that.

00:07:43   And then he said something along the lines of like,

00:07:46   one of the differences between the previous administration

00:07:48   and this administration is when we don't know the answer,

00:07:50   we're gonna tell you

00:07:51   and we're not just gonna make something up.

00:07:53   - Right, which is so, that was,

00:07:57   and in particular, and he's like,

00:07:59   we're gonna let science and medicine guide

00:08:01   all of our answers and policies.

00:08:03   And that's a big change.

00:08:04   And it's like, yes.

00:08:06   - Not whatever makes the president look good.

00:08:08   - Right, and it's like, I think we all knew that

00:08:11   what makes the president look good

00:08:13   or just what the president wants to hear

00:08:16   or the way he wants it to be,

00:08:18   and that's what he wants you to say,

00:08:20   versus what we actually think

00:08:22   do the best of our knowledge scientifically and medically

00:08:25   is the difference in messaging.

00:08:27   But that I don't know part,

00:08:31   to me, was not clear while Trump was in office,

00:08:36   but I suspected it.

00:08:37   But that Fauci coming out and saying that I don't know

00:08:40   was an unacceptable answer

00:08:42   during the last administration is so important.

00:08:47   It's like so many people in so many fields

00:08:50   will just bullshit if they don't know,

00:08:52   'cause they feel like I don't know makes them look bad.

00:08:54   It's better to bullshit than say it.

00:08:55   I don't know is like, once you accept it

00:08:58   and you're like, when you don't know, just say, I don't know.

00:09:01   It's life-changing.

00:09:02   It is like one of my top 10 tricks for life is embrace--

00:09:06   - It's the same thing.

00:09:07   It's the same thing.

00:09:07   I think you've said this before

00:09:09   and other people have as well,

00:09:09   but Trump is a poor person's idea of a rich person.

00:09:14   - Right.

00:09:14   - And he's also like a dumb person's idea of a smart person.

00:09:19   - Right, very true.

00:09:21   'Cause he's nothing but confident, right?

00:09:23   - Yeah, mm-hmm.

00:09:25   (laughs)

00:09:27   Anyway, I feel good.

00:09:29   (laughs)

00:09:32   I do, I really do.

00:09:33   - I feel better, let's put it that way.

00:09:36   - I do feel, I feel better.

00:09:37   - I feel a lot better.

00:09:38   - My folks have a vaccine appointment for Tuesday.

00:09:43   - Oh, nice.

00:09:44   - Which is a huge relief and what a hassle.

00:09:47   Oh my God, what a mess this whole vaccine thing is.

00:09:49   But yeah, and my dad is 83, my mom is 75.

00:09:53   They should be, you know, it should not be hard

00:09:57   for them to get scheduled for this, but it was a mess.

00:10:01   I mean, and thank God they were diligent about it.

00:10:03   Like, my mom had to work the phone for days

00:10:06   because they'd be like, okay, here's the number to call.

00:10:09   And it, eh, eh, eh, because it's--

00:10:12   - Oh, really?

00:10:13   - Yeah, it was like overwhelmed.

00:10:14   And they were like, they got an email,

00:10:16   like some parts of the system worked.

00:10:18   Like some part of the healthcare system

00:10:23   that they're in sent them both an email that said,

00:10:25   okay, you're eligible now for a vaccine

00:10:28   and you can go to this website.

00:10:30   And the website crashed, you know, and it was like,

00:10:34   you know, and I'm only talking on the phone.

00:10:36   I can't prove it.

00:10:37   But then like they said, like the next day,

00:10:38   the paper came out and said, oh yeah, the website crashed.

00:10:41   (laughing)

00:10:42   Just terrible.

00:10:43   So I'm relieved about that.

00:10:46   I figure, I feel like--

00:10:47   - I don't think, yeah, my parents haven't had it yet

00:10:49   and they're 87-ish, 86, 87,

00:10:54   and they're in, but they're in Florida.

00:10:58   And I just assume the whole system

00:10:59   is completely screwed up in Florida.

00:11:01   - Well, Florida has a thing where there are people

00:11:04   who are flying in from other parts of the country

00:11:06   to get the vaccine because it's like,

00:11:07   you don't have to be a Florida resident.

00:11:09   This, it's just the exact sort of thing

00:11:13   that has to come top down instead of bottom up.

00:11:18   And the Trump administration--

00:11:20   - Each state having their own system is bananas.

00:11:22   - Well, and then each state delegates it

00:11:24   to like the county levels.

00:11:25   Like that's who my parents are dealing with.

00:11:27   It's a county level issue.

00:11:28   Here in Philly, it's the city and you know,

00:11:31   it's a mess, it's horrible.

00:11:33   You know, we're like a national disgrace

00:11:36   'cause somehow the city hired, do you see this story?

00:11:40   I'll put a link in the show notes.

00:11:42   I gotta link it from "Daring Firewall."

00:11:43   But even Colbert had a whole segment on it last night

00:11:46   where the city hired some outfit called

00:11:49   Philadelphia COVID Fight and they got like a sort of

00:11:53   a rocky-ish logo and apparently they ran a testing site

00:11:57   earlier in the year that was somewhat successful.

00:12:00   And so they somehow got a contract from the city

00:12:03   to help administer vaccines.

00:12:04   But the, I'm not making this up,

00:12:06   the CEO of the company is a kid from Drexel

00:12:08   who's 22 years old.

00:12:09   They're all college students.

00:12:12   None of them, nobody in the company

00:12:14   has any medical expertise at all.

00:12:16   Nobody's a doctor, they're all like 20.

00:12:19   And they started taking appointments from people,

00:12:21   turning people away at the door.

00:12:23   There were senior citizens who had these appointments.

00:12:25   They're crying out in the street

00:12:26   'cause they won't be let in.

00:12:28   And then it turned out that all these 19 and 20,

00:12:31   21-year-old kids were just giving each other the vaccines

00:12:34   and they're not even nurses, doctors.

00:12:37   I mean, you couldn't make this up.

00:12:40   - I did not see that.

00:12:41   - Oh, you can't make it up.

00:12:43   And everybody is like, how did this happen?

00:12:46   Like somebody's head is gonna roll in the city

00:12:48   'cause people are, I mean, tempers are short.

00:12:51   People are at the end of their freaking ropes.

00:12:56   Bad.

00:13:00   I don't know, I don't expect to get the vaccine

00:13:02   until like, I'm 85.

00:13:05   - I think, yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm gonna get mine

00:13:10   until late spring, early summer.

00:13:13   For sure, I would imagine.

00:13:15   I mean, I'm in my 50s, you'd think I'd be like,

00:13:18   have a decent chance of getting it, but I don't go anywhere.

00:13:21   Like I don't need to be anywhere in particular.

00:13:24   I would imagine that puts me down a few notches.

00:13:29   - Yeah, the city of Philly does have a signup form

00:13:33   where you can get like on some kind of list.

00:13:35   I'm not quite sure how it works,

00:13:36   but my own doctor sent it to us and said,

00:13:39   you should sign up here.

00:13:40   I don't know what's gonna come of it,

00:13:42   everybody should sign up.

00:13:43   And so I signed up and it's like, what's your name,

00:13:46   what's your address, what's your age?

00:13:48   And it's like, do any of these apply to you?

00:13:50   And there's a list of like 30 things

00:13:52   and they're clearly all things

00:13:53   that would make you more likely to get it.

00:13:55   Like, are you a healthcare worker?

00:13:57   Are you a first responder?

00:13:58   Do you, you know, are you morbidly obese?

00:14:02   Do you have, there's not a single thing on the list

00:14:06   that I even vaguely, possibly even like squint your eyes

00:14:12   and look on the horizon could possibly claim to qualify for.

00:14:15   - You could pull a Homer Simpson and just start eating.

00:14:17   - I know, that was my joke to Amy.

00:14:21   I was like, let's start, nothing but carbs.

00:14:25   - That's why you had the big pasta meal last night.

00:14:28   - Yeah, exactly.

00:14:29   All right, let me take a break and thank our first sponsor.

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00:15:33   The problem for me is I wear 'em 18 hours a day every day

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00:15:37   But it's freezing cold here in Philadelphia.

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00:16:59   (laughing)

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00:18:31   - Yeah, I did exactly what you suggested.

00:18:33   Like a year or two ago, I threw out all my underwear

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00:18:38   - And buy it in a big batch,

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00:18:43   time to throw it all out again and start all over.

00:18:45   - Yeah, mine haven't worn out yet.

00:18:47   - Well, I'm hard on underwear.

00:18:49   (laughing)

00:18:51   - Just sitting a lot.

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00:18:52   (laughing)

00:18:55   Right in the seat.

00:18:56   All right, what do we wanna talk about?

00:19:00   Let's--

00:19:01   - Yeah, where do you wanna start?

00:19:02   - Why don't we start with the stonks?

00:19:05   That's a word that I learned this week.

00:19:08   Did you know this?

00:19:10   - I've never heard it.

00:19:11   I mean, I assume it's just a meme thing, right?

00:19:13   It's just a dumb way of saying stonks, right?

00:19:16   - Yeah, I think so.

00:19:17   But this is--

00:19:18   - It's not anything other than that.

00:19:19   - In addition to my personal thermostat policies,

00:19:22   another sign of my rocketing into the deep ends

00:19:26   of middle age are the fact that I just see slang now,

00:19:30   and I don't even look it up.

00:19:31   - Right, don't look it up.

00:19:32   - I take a guess, but the kids call them stonks.

00:19:36   My dad called me yesterday.

00:19:41   This is a true story.

00:19:42   This is how I knew that this was for real.

00:19:44   This is a real sensation.

00:19:46   My dad called me yesterday to ask,

00:19:48   what the hell's going on with this game stock?

00:19:50   (laughing)

00:19:52   He actually called it game stock.

00:19:57   And I'm like, and now that he said it,

00:19:59   now I can't say, it's hard for me not to say.

00:20:01   - It's hard to say the other way, yeah, the right way.

00:20:04   - So that was a fun call.

00:20:05   That was actually fun.

00:20:06   I should have recorded it.

00:20:07   It would have been a fun little mini podcast.

00:20:08   - Oh yeah, instead of having me on, jeez.

00:20:11   - Me explaining to my dad the GameStop situation.

00:20:14   And where do you start?

00:20:17   It's kinda nuts.

00:20:19   This is the thing that's always been in the back of my mind

00:20:21   with the stock market is,

00:20:23   if I were Tim Cook or Jeff Bezos

00:20:27   or anybody who runs a big, good, successful company,

00:20:31   I would lose sleep every night knowing

00:20:33   that the fate of my company is in the hands

00:20:36   of this totally irrational market

00:20:40   that could do something like drive GameStop up 1,900%

00:20:44   in a month.

00:20:48   - Institutionalized gambling is what it is.

00:20:51   - But like, (laughing)

00:20:53   it's very strange.

00:20:56   And then you combine it with the story

00:20:58   of this Robin Hood brokerage,

00:21:01   and it really becomes a fascinating story.

00:21:05   And a couple of explanations I've seen,

00:21:08   and I believe it, is that there's really

00:21:11   like three or four stories.

00:21:13   And it's not that they're in conflict with each other.

00:21:15   It's that they're all true, and they're different,

00:21:18   and sometimes they don't even intersect,

00:21:21   but that the conflation of all of them happening at once

00:21:25   made this bizarre thing happen.

00:21:27   - Yeah.

00:21:28   Years ago, I used to know the details of shorting.

00:21:34   - Right.

00:21:35   - And I don't remember them anymore.

00:21:37   And I almost, at the beginning of this thing,

00:21:39   I was like, "I should figure out how that works exactly."

00:21:41   And I started reading something,

00:21:43   and I said, "They're betting."

00:21:45   - Right.

00:21:45   - They're placing a bet that the stock is gonna go down.

00:21:48   That's all I really needed to know.

00:21:50   And lo and behold, a bunch of other people decided,

00:21:54   "Now we're gonna make it go up."

00:21:57   - How much of internet jerks decided

00:21:59   we're gonna make it go up?

00:22:00   - Well, and the other aspect to it is that

00:22:03   they did these, some of these, like,

00:22:07   so the idea that the people who made it go up

00:22:10   stuck it to, quote, "all of Wall Street"

00:22:12   is, of course, nonsense, right?

00:22:14   Because at some point, all of Wall Street,

00:22:16   at least if you consider Wall Street

00:22:18   to be the financial industry,

00:22:20   they are like the casino where they just win

00:22:23   the more people play, right?

00:22:25   It's like, if the casino is busy,

00:22:27   the casino is making money.

00:22:28   And so if people are making lots of trades,

00:22:31   Wall Street as a whole is doing well.

00:22:34   It's a few particular hedge fund investors

00:22:37   who had these short positions in GameStop

00:22:40   and maybe AMC movie theaters and,

00:22:43   who are the other darlings this week, I forget.

00:22:45   Blackberry, for some reason, that is sort of a--

00:22:48   - Oh yeah, Blackberry, yeah.

00:22:48   - That's the one that really escapes me,

00:22:50   because at GameStop, you get that these 20-year-olds

00:22:54   have affinity for the brand, right?

00:22:56   Because it was like their favorite store

00:22:58   is as kids and teenagers.

00:23:00   And same thing with AMC, where it's like,

00:23:03   "Hey, I loved going to movies.

00:23:04   "I can't wait to go back to movies.

00:23:05   "I don't want AMC to go bankrupt."

00:23:08   - Yeah, yeah.

00:23:09   - Blackberry, I don't get.

00:23:10   I don't get that. - No, I don't get that.

00:23:12   That seems like that one's just sort of,

00:23:14   (both laughing)

00:23:16   we picked the random one because we were,

00:23:19   like, to show that we're funny.

00:23:21   - Right, I guess.

00:23:22   - To show we have a sense of humor.

00:23:24   - Because Blackberry isn't really even Blackberry anymore.

00:23:27   You know what I mean?

00:23:28   Like, AMC is still AMC.

00:23:30   They still have the theaters.

00:23:31   So, like, let's say we all get vaccinated

00:23:33   and COVID goes away, as we hope it will,

00:23:36   as 2021 progresses.

00:23:39   When we go back to movie theaters, it will be,

00:23:41   and it looks like this whole crazy scheme

00:23:45   might have saved AMC from going bankrupt.

00:23:47   We'll be able to go see the James Bond movie

00:23:50   later this year, and it'll be like it used to be.

00:23:53   Whereas Blackberry isn't even Blackberry anymore.

00:23:56   If they don't run, it's not like you can still go buy

00:23:59   a Blackberry running the Blackberry operating system.

00:24:02   It's just like a brand that sells Android phones.

00:24:05   And I don't even know if they even have keyboards anymore,

00:24:07   which was, like, the whole point.

00:24:09   - Yeah, yeah.

00:24:10   - It's almost surprising that they exist.

00:24:14   It's like--

00:24:15   - Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, they have gone out of business

00:24:19   and almost everything, but actually going out of business.

00:24:23   - It's, do you remember mimeographs?

00:24:26   - Oh, yeah.

00:24:27   Yeah, you had to hand that out and you'd smell it.

00:24:29   - Yeah, that was great.

00:24:30   For those of you who are too young,

00:24:32   there used to be a copying technology called mimeographs,

00:24:36   and it was sort of a photo chemical,

00:24:39   it was a chemical-based process

00:24:42   rather than purely electronic.

00:24:45   - Yeah, before there were copy machines

00:24:47   in every school in the nation,

00:24:50   they used this technology,

00:24:52   which you would just write it on,

00:24:54   write whatever you wanted to make copies of

00:24:56   on a particular kind of, you know, the mimeograph paper,

00:24:59   and then you could run it through a printing press

00:25:02   sort of thing, like a roller.

00:25:04   - Yeah, and it would come out blue, right?

00:25:06   Ours were always blue.

00:25:08   And when they were fresh,

00:25:09   they would have a very pleasant sort of, you know--

00:25:14   - You get a little high off of it.

00:25:15   - Little high!

00:25:16   - Maybe not, like, really high, but it was just like a,

00:25:18   it was a weird chemical smell that it--

00:25:21   - Like if somebody broke a smelling salt

00:25:23   for somebody who passed out

00:25:24   and gave it to the passed out person,

00:25:26   and then after they got the bulk of it,

00:25:28   you took like a secondhand hit off the smelling salt.

00:25:31   (laughing)

00:25:32   But it was a real thing, like kids, you know,

00:25:34   they'd pass them out, and you know,

00:25:36   if the teacher hadn't made the mimeograph

00:25:38   until right before class, it would be fresh,

00:25:40   and it was a very pleasant smell.

00:25:41   It's like, Blackberry still being alive

00:25:44   is like if there was still a mimeograph company.

00:25:46   (laughing)

00:25:47   Right?

00:25:48   Like, it doesn't even make sense anymore.

00:25:52   - Yeah.

00:25:53   - I bought, I have to admit,

00:25:58   I bought a bit of GameStop on Thursday morning.

00:26:01   (laughing)

00:26:03   So I heard, just to have some skin in the game, you know?

00:26:08   (laughing)

00:26:09   And I have to say, it was very distracting.

00:26:13   I probably shouldn't have--

00:26:14   - So what did you, do you wanna go into

00:26:15   what you bought it for and what it's at now?

00:26:17   - I bought it at $360, it's at $330 right now,

00:26:22   and I didn't sell any of it, so I still have it.

00:26:25   I bought some at $360, and then it jumped up to like $480,

00:26:29   and I was like, thinking about selling,

00:26:32   'cause I was like, that's pretty cool,

00:26:34   and then I could, and I was like,

00:26:36   well, let's see if it gets to $500.

00:26:37   And then like an hour later, it was $112.

00:26:40   (laughing)

00:26:41   And plummeting.

00:26:42   (laughing)

00:26:46   And I didn't buy a lot, but I bought enough,

00:26:50   but as much as I would maybe take in my pocket

00:26:53   to a casino to play some blackjack.

00:26:55   But enough that, which is enough

00:26:58   that I don't wanna lose it all.

00:26:59   (laughing)

00:27:00   - Right, sure, no, of course not.

00:27:02   - When it went from $400 to $300 to $200,

00:27:04   down to, rocketing towards $100,

00:27:09   it really started looking like you might end up with zero,

00:27:12   which is what can happen when you play blackjack.

00:27:15   Not what you think when you buy a stock, right?

00:27:17   You go buy some Apple stock,

00:27:18   and you don't look at it for a year.

00:27:20   Maybe it's up, maybe it's down,

00:27:22   but it's not gonna be zero.

00:27:24   - Right.

00:27:25   - Well, the GameStop seemed like it could've been zero.

00:27:28   But then I did buy some more

00:27:30   to even out my position at around, I think around $230.

00:27:35   So the average of the shares that I hold are $301,

00:27:40   so call it $300.

00:27:41   And now that it's $330, I'm overall, I'm above water.

00:27:45   - Well, okay.

00:27:46   There was a piece in the Washington Post

00:27:49   about this kid in San Antonio

00:27:51   whose mom gave him 10 shares of GameStop.

00:27:55   And she was like, in 2019 for Kwanzaa.

00:27:59   And she was just trying to,

00:28:03   she wanted to give him a present,

00:28:04   and she wanted to give him something that,

00:28:06   like as a kid, he loved to go to GameStop

00:28:08   to buy games all the time.

00:28:09   So she was like, oh, there's a company that he enjoys.

00:28:12   I'm gonna get him some stock in this company

00:28:15   to teach him a little bit about the stock market.

00:28:17   And so she bought 10 shares at $6.19.

00:28:22   (laughing)

00:28:24   And he sold them.

00:28:25   So it goes up like crazy.

00:28:27   It goes up to like 320.

00:28:28   And she's like, hey, did you see this?

00:28:30   And he's like, and she wanted to make sure

00:28:32   that it was his decision about what to do.

00:28:34   And she was like, I was really hoping he would say sell.

00:28:36   (laughing)

00:28:37   And so he sold at 320.

00:28:39   So he got like 3,100 bucks out of this.

00:28:42   - That's amazing.

00:28:44   Wow, what a great story.

00:28:45   I will put it in the show notes, I promise.

00:28:47   That's fantastic.

00:28:49   But it's so great.

00:28:51   What a great story.

00:28:52   But perhaps, perhaps this might be damaging

00:28:55   to the young man's viewpoint of adventure.

00:28:58   - Yeah, and that's, yeah, she talked about that too.

00:29:00   She made very clear that this is not a usual event.

00:29:05   (laughing)

00:29:08   You can turn $60--

00:29:10   - Don't get used to this.

00:29:12   - Well, there's the guy who's the main,

00:29:16   I'm not gonna say instigator,

00:29:17   'cause I don't think he's done anything wrong.

00:29:19   But the promoter of GameStop is this guy on Reddit's

00:29:23   Wall Street Bets who goes under the name,

00:29:26   what is it?

00:29:29   It's got the F word. - Big fucking value?

00:29:30   - Big fucking value, something like that.

00:29:32   And now he's been, I don't know if he got exposed

00:29:36   or he chose to, but you know, the Wall Street Journal

00:29:39   had an interview with the real guy.

00:29:41   But anyway, he put $50,000 into GameStop back in April.

00:29:45   And his position now is like 40 million

00:29:50   or something like that?

00:29:52   It's like he cashed out a bit to have 13 million in cash

00:29:56   and is still holding the rest, which is fascinating.

00:30:00   But not a bad way to do it, right?

00:30:05   Because then if, you know what I mean?

00:30:07   If he still believes that the stock could go higher,

00:30:12   it's not a bad way to do it.

00:30:13   Put a little cash in your pocket, right?

00:30:15   13 million from 50,000 starting point.

00:30:18   If that's really what he walks away with,

00:30:21   he's still, that rags to riches story.

00:30:24   I mean, not that he, I don't think he was in rags, but.

00:30:26   - No, I'm sure he wasn't.

00:30:29   - Let's say average Joe to riches.

00:30:32   $13 million in cash is, you know,

00:30:35   it's a lot of money to most people.

00:30:38   You know, 40 million seems like more.

00:30:40   I would be very tempted to have sold

00:30:44   at some point along the way.

00:30:46   But you know, but not,

00:30:50   most people aren't making that type of money, but.

00:30:53   - No.

00:30:54   - I just wanted to follow.

00:30:55   - And I get, I mean, it seems like,

00:30:56   I mean, I'm sure that a lot of people are excited

00:30:58   about making a lot of money,

00:30:59   but it also seems like these guys are just mostly,

00:31:01   I mean, a lot of them are sticking a finger

00:31:03   in somebody's eye.

00:31:05   - Yeah, there's definitely a part of that where they're,

00:31:06   you know, and the idea is that,

00:31:10   one of the ideas is that GameStop

00:31:12   has been unfairly maligned by the short sellers

00:31:15   and that these hedge funds pounce on troubled stocks.

00:31:20   And you can see why,

00:31:21   and there, GameStop in particular seemed

00:31:25   open to this attack

00:31:30   because the short seller's story is true,

00:31:35   which is basically, hey, it's COVID,

00:31:38   GameStop is a physical retailer with all these positions.

00:31:43   Physical retail is already hurting before COVID.

00:31:47   COVID is death to physical retail, literally.

00:31:50   I mean, it's, you know,

00:31:51   'cause people are staying home

00:31:53   and they're supposed to stay home.

00:31:54   And the larger trend in the video game industry

00:31:58   is towards downloads only,

00:32:00   and people aren't buying discs,

00:32:01   and that's the whole thing that GameStop is about.

00:32:04   And so that rings, it is true to some degree,

00:32:07   and so it sounds true to other people,

00:32:09   and so when they say, you know,

00:32:11   you should short this stock

00:32:12   because they're gonna go bankrupt, it rings true.

00:32:14   But when you actually look at GameStop's numbers,

00:32:17   it's not that bad, you know?

00:32:19   It's like, and they had a strong holiday quarter,

00:32:21   you know, so there's some truth

00:32:23   that they might be more resilient to this

00:32:26   than that storyline would have you.

00:32:29   That bankruptcy may not be on the,

00:32:32   you know, in their future.

00:32:34   - Well, and part of the problem with the hedge funds,

00:32:36   you know, stuff that they do

00:32:38   is it creates kind of a feeding frenzy, right?

00:32:40   - Right.

00:32:41   - It does take, I mean, you know,

00:32:42   they're generally not doing it based on absolutely nothing,

00:32:46   but it becomes a fait accompli

00:32:47   because they all get together and they do the same thing,

00:32:50   and that drives the stock down,

00:32:52   and then they cash out and they make their money.

00:32:54   - Right, and when there's a very short, succinct story

00:32:57   that you can tell in 30 seconds during a hit on CNBC,

00:33:01   it's more compelling, and hey,

00:33:04   COVID hurts physical retailers,

00:33:05   GameStop's a physical retailer,

00:33:07   and kids are moving towards digital downloads.

00:33:09   End of story, they're going bankrupt,

00:33:11   and it's like, oh, that sounds good.

00:33:13   - You know, as people who follow Apple,

00:33:15   we, I think we are in not necessarily a unique position,

00:33:19   but we are in a good position to recognize the fact

00:33:22   that a lot of the activity that happens on Wall Street

00:33:25   is based on a bunch of crap that people are making up

00:33:29   or are ill-informed about.

00:33:32   - Yeah, that's very true.

00:33:33   You know, and again, I'm not an investment expert, trust me.

00:33:37   You, you know, you have more of a background in this,

00:33:39   and you know more about how the stock market really works,

00:33:41   but I do know the basics of how Apple in particular

00:33:46   over the last 25 years, oh, maybe 30 years,

00:33:50   you know, maybe the whole history of the company,

00:33:52   has largely been valued unfairly on the market.

00:33:57   And even at the point now where maybe

00:34:00   they're valued too high, right?

00:34:02   Maybe they're part of an overall bubble.

00:34:04   But the basic idea of price to earnings, you know,

00:34:09   where the average company over the last 100 years

00:34:12   in the S&P 500 has had a price to earnings of around,

00:34:15   I think it's like 19, but let's call it $20, right?

00:34:18   So it's like, however profitable you are,

00:34:21   your stock price is sort of like a 20 times factor

00:34:25   on earnings per share.

00:34:26   I think that's what price to earnings ratio is, right?

00:34:29   And you know, I don't know,

00:34:33   that sounds like that's the way it should be, right?

00:34:37   But for a long, long stretch,

00:34:40   Apple was always valued way under $20 price to earnings.

00:34:45   Because the narrative was, ah, this company is on the,

00:34:49   you know, they're in trouble.

00:34:50   They're, you know, even when they weren't in trouble.

00:34:52   - They're gonna go out of business.

00:34:53   They're gonna go out of business any day.

00:34:55   - Right, and every time they had a hit,

00:34:56   it would be like, ah, you know,

00:34:58   like the iPod is a great example.

00:35:00   'Cause the iPod, we can talk about as it's over, right?

00:35:05   It happened and it was a, not a flash,

00:35:09   but it was sort of a decade long thing, right?

00:35:12   It appeared in 2001, it was Mac only,

00:35:15   and Mac only until like 2003.

00:35:19   And then I think it was around 2003, maybe 2004,

00:35:21   when they added the Windows support with iTunes.

00:35:26   And you know, digital music really, really took off.

00:35:31   And they had a couple of years

00:35:32   where it was a true sensation.

00:35:34   And I always remember, I just remember being at the mall

00:35:39   and hearing people, kids talk about going to the iPod store.

00:35:43   And it'd be like, you kids, you know.

00:35:48   I mean, this is 20 years ago, so I was like 29 years old.

00:35:51   And I already felt like an old man.

00:35:54   You kids, that's the Apple store.

00:35:56   The iPod store.

00:35:59   But it became a thing.

00:36:00   But when it became a thing, the narrative was,

00:36:03   ah, Dell's gonna come out with a thing,

00:36:07   Microsoft's gonna come out with a thing,

00:36:08   and nobody's gonna buy these expensive ones from Apple.

00:36:11   There's gonna be cheap ones from other companies.

00:36:14   And it never happened, right?

00:36:16   But their stock never really took the value of the iPod

00:36:20   because the narrative was, at any given moment,

00:36:23   the iPod was gonna just poof, the bubble's gonna pop.

00:36:25   - Get replaced by, yeah, yeah, yeah,

00:36:26   get beaten by Microsoft.

00:36:28   - Yeah. - Yeah, I mean,

00:36:29   there was a rumor, I still remember this,

00:36:31   that Microsoft was going to give you the value

00:36:36   of whatever music you had already purchased on,

00:36:40   like just give it to you somehow,

00:36:42   like magically transfer whatever you had already purchased

00:36:44   onto the Zune when it came out.

00:36:49   And of course, that never happened.

00:36:50   I mean, you had to buy, you had to get a subscription

00:36:52   or you had to buy it all over again to get it on digital.

00:36:56   But it was just like, yeah,

00:36:56   but it was that kind of thinking.

00:36:58   It was like, Microsoft is too mighty,

00:37:01   and there's no way that Apple's gonna be able to keep up

00:37:04   when Microsoft introduces whatever

00:37:05   they're gonna bring to market.

00:37:06   - Right, and that basically Apple's only core audience

00:37:10   was a cult.

00:37:12   - Yeah. - All right.

00:37:12   I mean, there's even the site, Cult of Mac.

00:37:14   I mean, it's like it's been there for a while,

00:37:16   but it's no exaggeration to say

00:37:20   that that was the narrative on Wall Street,

00:37:22   was that the people who buy Macintosh computers

00:37:24   were cultists, you know?

00:37:26   - Yeah. - Because they couldn't see

00:37:28   any other reason why people would be buying

00:37:31   these other computers that don't accept DOS floppies.

00:37:35   (laughing)

00:37:37   I put my floppy disk in and it said it wanted to format it.

00:37:40   - What's the VGA porn on that laptop?

00:37:42   - Right, these people are in a cult.

00:37:46   - Yeah.

00:37:47   - The trackpad works, what the hell is that?

00:37:51   (laughing)

00:37:53   What kind of crazy--

00:37:55   - It's unsustainable.

00:37:56   - What kind of crazy laptop is this?

00:38:00   It actually wakes up from sleep.

00:38:02   My computer shuts down if I leave the lid closed

00:38:07   for 10 minutes, just like God intended.

00:38:10   (laughing)

00:38:12   But the thing, so it's a weird story to follow

00:38:18   because I love the idea that they are, you know,

00:38:22   sticking a finger in the eye of these hedge funds.

00:38:25   But at the same time, you can easily see how,

00:38:27   and this may be an example of one,

00:38:31   but I don't even know, like I said,

00:38:33   I don't know exactly how it all started necessarily,

00:38:35   but you can see how this can be,

00:38:38   particularly after our experience in the 2016 election,

00:38:41   this could be weaponized, right?

00:38:43   How actors from foreign states or, you know,

00:38:49   just bad people can influence people on online forums

00:38:54   and other places and try and get them to do stuff like this,

00:38:59   thinking that they're doing something that's cute and funny

00:39:01   or even a social good and pointed in the wrong direction.

00:39:07   - Yeah, absolutely, you know, and especially,

00:39:09   maybe not especially, but you know,

00:39:14   Reddit in particular is,

00:39:18   I've never been a big Reddit user.

00:39:21   - Yeah, me neither.

00:39:22   - I mean, in fact, the opposite.

00:39:23   I'm a very rare and occasional Reddit user.

00:39:26   But like the culture of Reddit is complete anonymity.

00:39:32   Like as far as I can tell, nobody on,

00:39:35   I might be the only person on all of Reddit

00:39:37   who uses their actual name.

00:39:39   I think I signed up when, I don't know,

00:39:45   I was logged in 'cause I was looking

00:39:47   at Wall Street Bets this week,

00:39:48   and it says I've signed up 15 years ago.

00:39:50   So I don't know if that's early, how early that is,

00:39:53   but you know, but my username on Reddit is just Gruber.

00:39:57   I've got like one, I've got one karma point,

00:40:00   but I've been there for 15 years.

00:40:01   As far as I can tell, nobody on Reddit uses their name.

00:40:04   I don't know.

00:40:06   But when I signed up, I didn't know.

00:40:08   And I no longer know what made up name I would use.

00:40:12   I mean, Daring Fireball wouldn't exactly hide my--

00:40:16   - No.

00:40:17   - Hide my identity.

00:40:18   But, you know, and I know that there's lots of people,

00:40:23   a lot of people on Twitter,

00:40:24   including some of my favorite people who I follow

00:40:26   who don't use their real name.

00:40:28   Darth, for example, who might be the single--

00:40:32   - First one I think of.

00:40:33   - Right, the single greatest Twitter user in the world,

00:40:35   maybe, does not use his real name.

00:40:39   And it doesn't make him less credible.

00:40:41   I think it's great that you don't have to.

00:40:43   I think Twitter would be for the worse

00:40:45   if they had originally had a real names only policy.

00:40:49   But the fact that no one on Reddit uses their real name

00:40:53   does seem to make it even more likely to be,

00:40:55   like how would you tell if it's foreign actors

00:41:00   or people with the bad intent

00:41:01   of attempting to crash the stock market?

00:41:03   - Yeah.

00:41:06   - It's very strange.

00:41:08   - Yeah, I was, the other thing I saw was that there are,

00:41:11   now there are like 6.3 million subscribers

00:41:14   to Wall Street Bets.

00:41:16   And half of them subscribe since Wednesday.

00:41:19   - It's a very weird board.

00:41:24   Did you take a look at it at all?

00:41:26   I mean, now--

00:41:27   - Just the stuff that's been posted in articles I had.

00:41:30   I don't think I've gone there directly.

00:41:31   - Man, it's crazy.

00:41:34   I kinda see how people are into it,

00:41:36   but it's like, it's too frenetic for me.

00:41:39   But I love--

00:41:41   - And they have their own kind of cultural language almost.

00:41:44   - Yeah, I love it.

00:41:45   They say they call it, what they want,

00:41:47   with the basic idea that the hardcore users of it,

00:41:51   they want you to buy GameStop and AMC and hold.

00:41:56   Just buy some and hold it,

00:41:58   and it's gonna drive the share price higher.

00:42:01   And we're all gonna get rich,

00:42:03   and they post a bunch of rocket ship emojis

00:42:06   to show that it's going to,

00:42:09   I swear, this is part of the lingo.

00:42:10   It's like, there's like going to the moon.

00:42:12   Going to the moon is good, but going to Alpha Centauri

00:42:15   is like, that's where they want it to go.

00:42:16   'Cause they want GameStop to go to like 4,000.

00:42:19   I swear, I mean, I don't think, I don't know.

00:42:23   Well, you laugh, but--

00:42:25   - I know, I know.

00:42:26   - But it was at like $12 a month ago,

00:42:29   and now it's at 300.

00:42:30   So I don't know, could it, you know,

00:42:33   it's gone up 30 times in a month.

00:42:36   Maybe it could go up 10 times more.

00:42:37   I don't know, this is what they want.

00:42:39   But they call it, but buying and holding,

00:42:41   they call it diamond hands.

00:42:42   And if you-- - Okay, that's what that was.

00:42:45   Yeah, I saw that referenced a few times, yeah.

00:42:47   - That's diamond hands.

00:42:49   And what you don't wanna have is paper hands.

00:42:51   Paper hands would be like, let's say,

00:42:53   like when I bought my GameStop at 300,

00:42:58   and it went up to 480.

00:43:00   If I had paper hands, I would have sold right there

00:43:02   for a nice win.

00:43:04   But I don't, see, yeah, but I don't wanna have paper hands.

00:43:07   You know, I want diamond hands.

00:43:08   So I got the, I'm in with the kids.

00:43:11   I got diamond hands, John.

00:43:13   I'm old.

00:43:13   But I sat there, I'm sitting there thinking,

00:43:17   you know, and again, this is not an investment for me.

00:43:20   This is recreational gambling.

00:43:22   But I am, it did occur to me, well, wait,

00:43:24   if I don't sell at 400 or 450,

00:43:26   well, what am I doing?

00:43:30   - Yeah, right.

00:43:31   And that's a question for all of these people, right?

00:43:34   I mean, what's the end game here?

00:43:36   Because it doesn't seem like, I mean,

00:43:38   maybe it does go up to something,

00:43:40   some crazy value like 4,000.

00:43:41   But fundamentally, I don't think it's a $4,000

00:43:46   per share stock.

00:43:47   - No, I don't.

00:43:48   I think--

00:43:49   - And it's gotta come back down.

00:43:51   And when it comes back down,

00:43:53   somebody's gonna be left carrying a hole in the bag.

00:43:57   - Yeah, there's no doubt about it.

00:43:59   I mean, again, and I don't mean--

00:43:59   - Somebody's gonna have shit,

00:44:01   somebody's gonna have shit hands is what they're gonna have.

00:44:03   (both laughing)

00:44:05   - Somebody's gonna have to wipe their ass

00:44:08   with the free newspaper at the corner

00:44:12   'cause they can't buy toilet paper anymore.

00:44:15   So I guess they would have shit hands.

00:44:16   I don't know.

00:44:17   - I never thought of that as like a last ditch,

00:44:21   get the free newspaper.

00:44:22   - Yeah.

00:44:23   - Well, you know, I mean, it'd be hard for me

00:44:25   'cause I'd have to walk far, but I could do it.

00:44:28   - Remember when we couldn't buy toilet paper?

00:44:30   - Yeah, I know, yeah.

00:44:32   - Wasn't that a thing you'd never expected

00:44:34   in life in America?

00:44:36   - Yeah.

00:44:38   - A mass toilet paper shortage.

00:44:40   - Mm-hmm.

00:44:41   - But you know what, though?

00:44:43   It was a similar mania, though, right?

00:44:45   It's like that herd mentality.

00:44:48   'Cause people bought, and I have members of my family,

00:44:51   and when we wound up placing enough orders,

00:44:54   we didn't, we were at the tail end of it.

00:44:56   You know, like we didn't load up early,

00:44:58   but once we had trouble getting toilet paper,

00:45:01   we placed orders, you know,

00:45:02   like walmart.com and amazon.com,

00:45:05   and it was at a time when they were saying,

00:45:07   "Don't even leave the house."

00:45:08   And we wound up getting more toilet paper

00:45:10   to keep in the basement than we'd normally have,

00:45:14   but not massive amounts.

00:45:15   But I have family members who went to Costco

00:45:18   and loaded up their SUVs with toilet paper.

00:45:21   And we're like, you know, like Amy would be like,

00:45:24   "I don't think you need that much."

00:45:25   - What do you think is gonna happen?

00:45:27   Like people are pooping more?

00:45:29   I don't... (laughs)

00:45:30   - Well, no, I think somehow it was just this weird cycle of

00:45:34   everybody's saying there's a toilet paper shortage,

00:45:38   and somebody went to a store,

00:45:39   and they literally were out of toilet paper,

00:45:42   had nothing but the worst toilet paper imaginable,

00:45:46   like brand name, worst toilet paper. (laughs)

00:45:49   - Yeah. - Prison toilet paper.

00:45:49   - And that happened, that did happen to us.

00:45:51   We had, at one point there was like,

00:45:54   we had some toilet paper that was kind of sketchy,

00:45:55   but that was the worst, you know,

00:45:57   that was the worst that happened.

00:45:59   And because we, you know, 'cause we go to Costco,

00:46:02   and so we get it at Costco,

00:46:03   and so we usually have way more toilet paper

00:46:06   than we really need at any given moment. (laughs)

00:46:07   - But there were people buying pickup trucks full of it.

00:46:10   And then, you know, like I remember early on,

00:46:12   like when this was happening,

00:46:13   I had to go pick up a prescription.

00:46:14   And so I was at our CVS down the street.

00:46:17   And I went to, you know, I was like,

00:46:19   well, let's see if they have any toilet paper,

00:46:20   maybe I'll pick some up, you know, 'cause,

00:46:22   and I went, and they literally had nothing but like,

00:46:26   you know, like one sketchy roll.

00:46:28   - Yeah, Soviet toilet paper, yeah.

00:46:30   - We have some paper towels too,

00:46:32   'cause paper towels were running low.

00:46:34   And we got some really bad paper towels.

00:46:37   And then, you know, now everything normal, normal out,

00:46:40   and we don't have, but we still have some of this

00:46:43   really cheap paper towels that we use for cleaning.

00:46:46   You know, it's like, well, you know,

00:46:47   let's not let it go to waste.

00:46:48   But these paper towels, when they get wet, they dissolve.

00:46:53   Like they're not just bad paper towels.

00:46:56   They're like, what are you supposed to use it for

00:47:00   if getting it wet at all makes it dissolve?

00:47:03   (laughing)

00:47:04   Do you ever have, did you ever get those,

00:47:06   there's like eco-friendly packing material

00:47:09   that they even tell you, you can put it,

00:47:11   if you'd like to, you can just put it in a bucket,

00:47:13   fill it with water, and it'll dissolve.

00:47:14   - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:15   Yeah, I ate one of those.

00:47:17   - I did too, 'cause they said you can.

00:47:19   - 'Cause they said you could eat it.

00:47:20   - Yeah.

00:47:21   - I gave one to the dog too.

00:47:22   (laughing)

00:47:25   - This is why we're pals.

00:47:26   My wife was like, what are you doing?

00:47:29   If you get sick, if you get sick,

00:47:32   I'm never gonna let you forget this.

00:47:34   And I'm like, well, they say you can eat it.

00:47:35   And you know, but that's what these paper towels

00:47:38   are made out of.

00:47:39   You just get 'em wet.

00:47:40   And like, all we ever do with paper towels

00:47:42   is clean up spills, you know?

00:47:44   Anyway.

00:47:45   (laughing)

00:47:48   Well anyway, then it leads us to,

00:47:50   we gotta talk about this Robin Hood company,

00:47:52   Jiminy Christ.

00:47:52   - Yeah, yeah.

00:47:53   Do we need a disclosure?

00:47:55   They used to advertise on one of my podcasts

00:47:58   that long time ago.

00:47:59   - Well, that's fair enough.

00:48:00   I don't know.

00:48:01   They'd never advertise with me though,

00:48:02   so screw, it's the hell with them.

00:48:03   (laughing)

00:48:06   Even if they had, I'd still be,

00:48:11   it's such a bizarre story.

00:48:12   They're heading towards an IPO.

00:48:14   They're well-funded.

00:48:15   They're very popular.

00:48:16   They apparently have a very good app,

00:48:18   which I haven't been able to use.

00:48:21   So I signed up for a Robin Hood account five years ago.

00:48:24   And I think it was when they were first new.

00:48:26   There was like a, our friend Adam Lisagor's sandwich video

00:48:29   did a nice sandwich video for them.

00:48:31   And it sounded like a cool thing.

00:48:33   So I signed up and it never actually used it though.

00:48:37   And then the other day,

00:48:38   when I was thinking about getting in on this GameStop,

00:48:41   before the Robin Hood blockade,

00:48:43   I thought, well, maybe if I'm just gonna goof around

00:48:45   instead of using my real investment account,

00:48:47   where I don't play day trading at all,

00:48:50   I just buy some stocks and hold and never look at them,

00:48:53   just index, you know, S&P 500 index funds.

00:48:56   Why don't I just, why don't I try this Robin Hood thing too?

00:48:58   I'll put, you know, put a couple hundred bucks in there

00:49:01   and play with that.

00:49:02   And I couldn't sign in 'cause they,

00:49:05   I had my username and password and my email address,

00:49:08   but they said they wanted to send me an SMS

00:49:10   because I hadn't signed in for a long time.

00:49:13   And I said, okay, and it just said, it's just a button.

00:49:15   How, they were like,

00:49:16   how would you like to confirm your account, colon.

00:49:18   And there's only one option, SMS.

00:49:21   And I hit yes and my phone never got an SMS.

00:49:25   - Nothing happens.

00:49:25   - And my, I have a Google Voice that I was like,

00:49:28   maybe I use the Google Voice.

00:49:29   I often use that, which is a great way to have like

00:49:32   a throwaway account that can get and send SMS

00:49:35   without having to give people your real cell phone number.

00:49:38   Nope, nothing.

00:49:39   So my guess is when I signed up,

00:49:41   I gave them our landline number,

00:49:44   which is what I typically give, you know,

00:49:46   that they ask for a phone number.

00:49:47   - They're trying to send a text message

00:49:49   to your landline number, yeah.

00:49:50   - Right, which literally isn't even hooked up.

00:49:52   We don't even have a phone connected to it.

00:49:55   We just have this number and we can use it for, you know,

00:49:58   billing purposes with no risk of, 'cause I, you know what,

00:50:01   I don't want a phone call from them, but I sent them.

00:50:05   So they're like, all right, so if you can't log in,

00:50:08   what do you need to do?

00:50:09   You gotta send them an email to support.

00:50:11   My guess is that my request to have this SMS situation

00:50:16   straightened out.

00:50:20   - Is not high on their list right now?

00:50:23   - I'm guessing they might have a lot of emails in that.

00:50:27   - You'll get that, you'll get that response to that

00:50:30   when you get a COVID vaccine.

00:50:32   - Exactly, so I was not able to use it,

00:50:35   but apparently what people say,

00:50:36   and I have friends who have a counselor,

00:50:37   they say it is a very nice app.

00:50:40   I use E-Trade, I have an E-Trade,

00:50:42   and E-Trade's apps are, how do you say it?

00:50:47   Not good.

00:50:48   - Not good. - Not good.

00:50:49   I tried using their iPad app,

00:50:52   and I don't know how this is even possible,

00:50:54   but it seems like the fields,

00:50:56   like when it says how many shares would you,

00:50:58   you know, what stock, GME, how many shares, you know, 30.

00:51:06   The fields don't really align with the tap targets.

00:51:09   It's like you have to tap above the,

00:51:12   how do you, I don't even know how you do that in an iOS app,

00:51:15   and then the iOS app crashed,

00:51:17   and I haven't had an app crash in a long time.

00:51:20   It just, or at least on iOS,

00:51:22   it just doesn't seem to be a big thing anymore.

00:51:25   It's clearly, E-Trade is still,

00:51:27   and then I went to my Mac and just did it on the web,

00:51:29   and their website, it's not, it's very,

00:51:31   they have a lot going on, but it works,

00:51:34   and I can understand it, and it's a lot faster than an app.

00:51:36   It's just clearly meant to be an app,

00:51:40   and I mean a website, not an app,

00:51:42   whereas Robinhood is app first.

00:51:44   It's meant to be on the phone,

00:51:46   and you know, so I could see why that's appealing

00:51:49   to the kids, and especially these kids who are betting,

00:51:52   right, who aren't just buying and holding, you know,

00:51:55   once a month, put some more money into your fund

00:51:57   and buy an index fund and build an investment nest.

00:52:01   Kids who are sitting there in Reddit all day long

00:52:04   buying and selling and dumping and, you know.

00:52:06   - But the big thing, right, is they don't have fees, right?

00:52:10   - Well, E-Trade doesn't have fees anymore either.

00:52:13   Fees, you know, I think once some of these brokerages

00:52:16   went to no fee, everybody kinda had to go to no fee,

00:52:21   'cause the whole, the fees thing turned out to be a racket.

00:52:24   It was sorta like ATM fees, right?

00:52:27   And it's like, imagine like,

00:52:29   but you're a customer of theirs,

00:52:31   and so like, even if you still pay ATM fees

00:52:34   when you go like, out of your bank's network,

00:52:37   it would be crazy if your own bank charged you an ATM fee.

00:52:41   Right, that's, I think, I don't know,

00:52:43   maybe other people have fees,

00:52:45   but E-Trade doesn't charge fees anymore either.

00:52:47   - Okay, I don't know, yeah,

00:52:48   but I don't know E-Trade's business model,

00:52:50   but Robinhood is basically making money

00:52:53   off of selling all the information.

00:52:54   - Right, right, so their customers for money

00:52:58   is that they allow, you know, they have hedge funds

00:53:01   that they allow to get access to the fire hose

00:53:05   of the trade information, and what's it called?

00:53:09   High frequency trading.

00:53:10   Where, and it's sort of like trying to think about

00:53:14   how computers work these days,

00:53:16   and you know, how many computations per se,

00:53:19   like when Apple tells you that when you take a photo

00:53:22   with your iPhone, and it does three trillion operations

00:53:26   in the instant you hit the shutter,

00:53:28   and it's like, how is that even, three trillion, what?

00:53:31   It's like, how is that even possible?

00:53:34   And it's hard to wrap your mind around it,

00:53:36   but it's like these high frequency trade things,

00:53:40   it's like when they have access to the fire hose,

00:53:42   basically, I think this is a fair description,

00:53:44   and it's like, just John Molt's joke consumer

00:53:48   decides to buy 10 shares of GameStop at $300 even,

00:53:56   and the fire hose could see that somebody else

00:54:01   is selling ones at $299.75,

00:54:07   and so they can quick buy those shares at 299.75,

00:54:14   and then sell those to you for 300,

00:54:16   and make, you know, a couple of pennies.

00:54:18   And it's probably even smaller, I'm saying a quarter,

00:54:21   maybe it's like a penny, like, you know,

00:54:23   but if you do this at the thousands of times per second scale

00:54:28   you can make a large sum of money

00:54:31   with the arbitrage of just a--

00:54:33   - It's the change bank.

00:54:33   - Right, it is, it's the change bank.

00:54:36   I made that joke.

00:54:37   I saw Kevin Nealon on Twitter say that that still

00:54:43   is one of his all-time favorite SNL skits.

00:54:45   - It's great.

00:54:46   - But it's like, yeah, it's like the change bank

00:54:50   come to life and somehow, you know,

00:54:55   if two $10 bills are sometimes worth $20 and a penny,

00:55:00   that you, you know, it doesn't make sense with cash,

00:55:05   but if that's, you know, in stocks it's like

00:55:07   all of a sudden two $10 bills are temporarily worth $20

00:55:11   and one cent, you quick buy those and turn them

00:55:14   into a $20 bill and you pocket the penny.

00:55:17   Anyway, that's how these guys make money.

00:55:20   But it still isn't clear.

00:55:23   So anyway, this whole thing with Robinhood,

00:55:26   and the basic idea is, you know, you put money

00:55:28   in your account and then with your money

00:55:30   you can buy stocks and, you know, these options

00:55:33   and the other stuff, but they all have prices

00:55:35   and you can buy as many as you are allowed to buy.

00:55:38   And you buy them and sell them and you do things

00:55:41   and all of a sudden Robinhood said to these people who are,

00:55:46   and this is where it really gets interesting

00:55:48   'cause it's not like, so for example,

00:55:50   E-Trade, the one I use, apparently stopped allowing people

00:55:54   to buy GameStop at like 3.30 in the after,

00:55:57   like a half hour before trading closed on Thursday.

00:56:00   Nobody, you don't see any articles about it

00:56:02   because people weren't really using E-Trade for this.

00:56:05   And it was only for half an hour.

00:56:06   And it was just sort of, you know,

00:56:08   it actually seems much more reasonable.

00:56:10   It was just sort of like, we don't even know what's going on.

00:56:12   Just give us a break, give us a chance to catch our breath.

00:56:15   Whereas Robinhood just said, you can't buy it anymore.

00:56:19   - Yeah.

00:56:20   - And they're-

00:56:20   - Didn't they, I mean, they had some sort of fiduciary

00:56:22   problem with it, right?

00:56:23   Because they couldn't, there was so much trading going on

00:56:26   that it couldn't cover the amounts.

00:56:29   - Something like that.

00:56:30   I mean, it's still unclear.

00:56:32   - And it gets, you know, it gets to the SEC rules about,

00:56:36   you have to have a certain amount of money

00:56:38   in order to be able to execute these trades.

00:56:41   You can't just like, as an individual,

00:56:43   I can't walk in there and say,

00:56:44   I wanna trade a million shares of Apple.

00:56:47   It's like, no, you can't do that.

00:56:49   You don't, if it goes sour, you'll go bankrupt.

00:56:52   And then, you know, the whole thing will fall apart.

00:56:55   So you have to have a certain amount of money in the bank

00:56:58   in order to be able to do certain kinds of large trades.

00:57:01   And they didn't have enough money

00:57:03   because there was so much going on.

00:57:05   - One of the weird things about Robinhood

00:57:07   that I didn't realize, and even before last week,

00:57:12   but one of the knocks against Robinhood

00:57:14   was that they promote this gambling mentality.

00:57:18   And they know, and everybody knows their,

00:57:21   you know, their target audience is younger,

00:57:23   and that this isn't a good idea, you know,

00:57:25   that it's perhaps dangerous in sort of promoting the idea

00:57:29   that you can't lose, whereas, you know,

00:57:31   you definitely can lose.

00:57:33   But one of the weird things about it

00:57:34   is that the default account for,

00:57:36   if you just go through the default

00:57:39   of setting up a new Robinhood account,

00:57:42   your default is a margin account, not a cash account.

00:57:46   Whereas a cash account is, okay, like E-Trade,

00:57:48   you go there, sign up, you wire E-Trade $1,000,

00:57:53   and then when that clears, you know,

00:57:55   I guess maybe if it's a wire transfer,

00:57:57   it can clear instantly.

00:57:58   If you do like a regular bank transfer,

00:58:00   maybe it takes two days.

00:58:01   Then you have $1,000 in your E-Trade account,

00:58:04   and you can buy $1,000 worth of stock.

00:58:08   - Stock, yeah.

00:58:09   - Whereas a margin account is like buying on credit.

00:58:11   Do you understand?

00:58:12   I'm not quite sure I understand how that works,

00:58:14   but effectively-- - I don't know.

00:58:15   I don't understand it any better than that.

00:58:17   - Right.

00:58:18   But it's, you know, I understand how casinos

00:58:20   work much better.

00:58:21   You know, casinos, you can play,

00:58:24   but you can step up to a blackjack table

00:58:26   and put $1,000 in cash down and say,

00:58:29   "I would like $1,000 in chips,"

00:58:31   and then they'll count out the money for the camera,

00:58:33   and then they'll give you $1,000 in chips,

00:58:35   and then you can play.

00:58:36   But you can also get a marker.

00:58:38   Now, you have to, first thing you have to do

00:58:40   is you can't just walk up in a new casino and say,

00:58:42   "Give me a marker for $1,000."

00:58:45   You, there's a place in the casino,

00:58:48   like it's usually labeled casino credit,

00:58:50   and you go over there and wait,

00:58:52   and you give 'em your driver's license

00:58:55   and give 'em some information and fill out a form.

00:58:57   And I don't even know how long it usually takes,

00:59:01   but you could do it online now,

00:59:02   like if you know you're traveling to Las Vegas or something,

00:59:05   you could fill it out in advance,

00:59:07   and then you could say,

00:59:08   "I would like to be cleared for like $10,000 in credit."

00:59:12   At your casino.

00:59:14   And then they do some kind of check,

00:59:16   and then they'll say yes or no,

00:59:18   and then when you go there,

00:59:19   you can use your casino player's card

00:59:22   or just your driver's license,

00:59:24   come up to the table.

00:59:25   Once you have credit at a casino,

00:59:27   you can say, "Give me a $1,000 marker."

00:59:30   And then a pit boss will walk away,

00:59:31   and a minute or two later come over.

00:59:33   It looks like a check.

00:59:34   And you sign your name,

00:59:37   and it says you owe this casino $1,000,

00:59:39   and you haven't given them a dollar of real money,

00:59:42   and they'll give you $1,000 in chips,

00:59:44   but you do owe them $1,000.

00:59:47   (laughs)

00:59:49   Margin account is sort of like that.

00:59:54   You can buy stuff that you don't have cash for effectively.

00:59:58   But the thing about when,

01:00:00   so A, I think that is a very strange default,

01:00:05   and seems like it could get people into trouble.

01:00:08   'Cause for example, the default at a real casino

01:00:11   is cash, right?

01:00:13   You put real money into a real slot machine,

01:00:16   or you put real greenbacks down on the table

01:00:21   to play a table game,

01:00:22   and then you lose, you can only lose whatever you--

01:00:26   - Whatever you put in.

01:00:27   - Yeah, you've already handed them the money.

01:00:29   You've already put money on the table,

01:00:31   and they take it away and put it down the chute,

01:00:34   and give you these fun little chips that are a lot more,

01:00:38   they're a lot more fun to lose and win

01:00:41   than cash.

01:00:42   But you've already given them the cash,

01:00:44   and that's the most you can lose.

01:00:45   Whereas when you're playing with markers,

01:00:48   you could get into real trouble.

01:00:50   I guess when you play at a legitimate casino,

01:00:53   it's not quite like an episode of The Sopranos,

01:00:55   but they're gonna get their money.

01:00:57   Defaulting to a margin account is weird,

01:01:02   but the thing you have to understand with The Robin Hood

01:01:04   is they've blocked everybody from buying GameStop,

01:01:07   even if you had a cash account.

01:01:09   So if you gave them $1,000 in cash,

01:01:12   and they had it, and it's in your account,

01:01:14   you could not use that account to buy GameStop.

01:01:17   And it seems to be some kind of liquidity crisis

01:01:21   with Robin Hood, where it's not the relationship

01:01:25   between you, the user, and Robin Hood.

01:01:30   It's that Robin Hood as an institution

01:01:33   didn't have the funds to cover these trades

01:01:38   behind the scenes, because they don't actually

01:01:40   buy the stocks, they go to a middle person,

01:01:42   and I guess it takes two days for these things to clear.

01:01:45   And people were looking at it, and they're like,

01:01:48   you don't, you can't do this.

01:01:50   And that's a bad look for a brokerage.

01:01:54   - Well, I don't know.

01:02:00   I mean, I guess it's bad, yeah, it's bad to,

01:02:04   I mean, it's bad to the front end user, it seems bad.

01:02:08   But you've gotta, if you wanna play in that casino,

01:02:13   you have to make nice with the casino owner.

01:02:19   You can't just walk around doing things willy-nilly.

01:02:23   I mean, there are certain rules involved.

01:02:25   And I mean, it's a government thing as well.

01:02:30   It's not just like trying to make it good

01:02:33   for Fidelity or whoever they're doing the trade through.

01:02:37   It's a government requirement.

01:02:41   And I mean, I think there are few enough requirements

01:02:46   placed on this stuff as it is.

01:02:47   It's nice to see somebody actually,

01:02:49   to see one that's at least maybe working.

01:02:52   - Well, then now Robin Hood's open to suspicions

01:02:57   of chicanery though, because this idea that,

01:03:00   hey, they're in bed with these hedge funds

01:03:03   who have shorted the stock,

01:03:05   and therefore in the hedge fund's interest,

01:03:07   and they're the ones who actually pay Robin Hood

01:03:09   for this access to the high-frequency trading information.

01:03:14   It's in their interest for GameStop's stock,

01:03:19   there I go trying to call it GameStop,

01:03:21   GameStop stock to go down.

01:03:24   And the way to keep it from going down

01:03:26   is to have people buying it,

01:03:27   and the people who are most interested in buying it

01:03:30   are blocked out.

01:03:31   And it looks bad.

01:03:34   And I don't know if that's really what was going on.

01:03:37   Nobody seems to really know,

01:03:38   but it certainly, it passes the sniff test

01:03:42   of being credible, right?

01:03:44   It is a very, you know, again,

01:03:45   it's like the basic story against GameStop.

01:03:48   COVID equals retail bad, people buying digital downloads,

01:03:51   it means disks are bad, GameStop's in trouble.

01:03:54   Here, the basic story is hedge funds,

01:03:57   certain hedge funds want GameStop to go down.

01:04:01   The way to keep it from going down

01:04:02   is to have people like us buy it,

01:04:05   and we can't buy it,

01:04:07   and Robin Hood's in the middle of this.

01:04:09   - Right, yeah.

01:04:11   I mean, the whole thing is definitely,

01:04:13   you know, it's a big test of whether or not

01:04:15   the rules of the casino apply to everybody,

01:04:17   or if there are different sets of rules

01:04:19   for one group of people

01:04:21   and another set of rules for other people.

01:04:23   - Right, and that's what it looks like,

01:04:25   you know, it really does.

01:04:26   You know, it's like the hedge funds

01:04:27   aren't cut off from shorting it even further.

01:04:32   It's just a fascinating story.

01:04:34   - And so far, the bailouts that have happened

01:04:36   have come from other people in the industry, right?

01:04:39   So I think, I forget the name of the one

01:04:42   that was heavily leveraged on this,

01:04:45   and like lost like a third of their value

01:04:47   or something like that.

01:04:47   - Yeah, they got killed.

01:04:49   It's like Melvin or something like that.

01:04:51   - Yeah, it started with an M, right?

01:04:52   I couldn't remember the name of it.

01:04:53   But somebody, another company stepped in

01:04:55   and like bailed them out.

01:04:57   And the thing that I was afraid of happening was,

01:05:00   and you heard some of these jerks

01:05:03   on like the financial networks,

01:05:07   you know, getting on the air

01:05:09   and calling for like government bailouts

01:05:11   of these companies.

01:05:12   It's like, no, no, absolutely not.

01:05:17   - No, it is, and you know, it does get to the heart

01:05:21   of the broader outrage is the sense that

01:05:25   if you're in the suit and tie wearing industry

01:05:28   and you have a job and you regularly appear on CNBC

01:05:32   and they call you an analyst

01:05:34   and you work at a firm or whatever,

01:05:36   it's a tails I win, heads you lose.

01:05:43   That's the way I think Paul Krugman has put it.

01:05:47   Where the idea is if the stuff you've bought goes up,

01:05:50   you win because it went up.

01:05:52   And if it goes down, the public loses

01:05:55   because the government comes in and bails them out

01:05:57   and makes you right.

01:05:59   Right, I mean, basically there's a lot more people

01:06:02   should have lost everything in the 2008 financial crisis.

01:06:07   It really should be considered criminal.

01:06:09   It's criminal that it wasn't criminal, right?

01:06:13   But there were an awful lot of people who got bailed out

01:06:16   and whereas the whole game was, no, you're gambling.

01:06:20   You should be able to lose, you know?

01:06:22   - Yeah.

01:06:23   - And the public shouldn't be the one to fund making it.

01:06:26   - Right.

01:06:27   - It seems so obvious.

01:06:29   - It does, but they justify it.

01:06:31   And it's almost like you could see

01:06:33   that they believe it somehow, right?

01:06:35   - Yeah, I mean, this is, yeah, it's,

01:06:39   yeah, I could go on for a while about this, but.

01:06:42   - All right, let me take a break.

01:06:45   - I mean, I'll do one story real quick,

01:06:48   but I was talking to a CEO years ago

01:06:50   about like, you know, he was incensed about the fact

01:06:53   that he had to sign these things

01:06:55   that's, you know, for the government that said,

01:06:56   this is amounts that we made, these are our tax returns,

01:07:00   this is verifiable, and he was like,

01:07:02   I don't know how, I don't know if this is true.

01:07:03   Somebody in our accounting firm came up with this.

01:07:05   I don't know, I can't, and yet I have to sign these

01:07:07   and take personal responsibility.

01:07:09   I was like, well, maybe that's why they pay me so much.

01:07:12   I mean, like, you can't just like, you can't say like,

01:07:15   you know, I make a lot of money

01:07:17   because I take all these big risks

01:07:18   and then just try and mitigate the risks away completely.

01:07:21   Anyway.

01:07:23   - I don't know if these numbers are accurate.

01:07:25   - Exactly.

01:07:26   - I'm just the CEO.

01:07:28   Like as though you just asked like the night custodian,

01:07:35   you know, like.

01:07:35   - You're right, I just walked in here.

01:07:37   I don't know what's going on.

01:07:39   - Yeah, well, put your name on this.

01:07:40   You're on the hook with the FCC.

01:07:43   - Sorry, Rodney Dangerfield, you're the CEO.

01:07:47   - And if the numbers don't add up,

01:07:48   they just come in and whisk.

01:07:49   - Wait, right, well, we'll make it good.

01:07:52   Well, just, you know, the government will come in

01:07:55   and the entire country will pay for any mistakes you make.

01:07:58   - All right, let me take a break

01:08:01   and thank our next sponsor.

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01:10:11   What else we got on the agenda here?

01:10:17   Apple's quarterly results.

01:10:18   Yeah, I guess we might as well follow on the,

01:10:20   our, put on, keep our shirts and ties on.

01:10:23   I never know what to do.

01:10:27   This is one of those things where it's like,

01:10:29   I always mention the quarterly results,

01:10:32   but I never know how much, right?

01:10:33   'Cause it's not, that's not really what I'm interested in.

01:10:36   I mean, if something truly profound happened,

01:10:39   you know, you wanna know, you know, like,

01:10:42   you know, if you're really in trouble.

01:10:44   It'd be more of interest to me if there were trouble

01:10:48   than when they have a good quarter

01:10:49   and they just had, I think, a great quarter.

01:10:53   Yeah, I mean, for a first fiscal quarter, it was amazing.

01:10:59   And I guess, you know, the thing I take away from it

01:11:03   as somebody who's almost solely interested in Apple

01:11:06   for the products and services, I guess, now that they make,

01:11:10   and not as an investor.

01:11:11   I do not own Apple stock for the reason

01:11:15   that I think it would, you know, be a conflict of interest.

01:11:18   I just don't want the hassle.

01:11:19   So I'm not, and I know, you know,

01:11:21   Daring Fireball is not an Apple investors site,

01:11:24   but it is interesting to me how the results interact

01:11:28   with how I feel about how their products are going.

01:11:30   And I feel like everything is in pretty good shape

01:11:32   and the results reflect it.

01:11:34   It was a great quarter for the iPhone,

01:11:35   a great quarter for the Mac, pretty good for iPad,

01:11:40   and the services are on a slow, steady,

01:11:43   consistent march upward.

01:11:45   - Yeah, yeah, and for years, the whole thing was like,

01:11:49   oh, Apple is too dependent on iPhone revenue.

01:11:53   - Right.

01:11:53   - And now the services revenue and the wearables revenue

01:11:58   has really grown to the point where it, I mean,

01:12:00   you can't really say that's much of a concern anymore.

01:12:02   - I saw a tweet this morning, I think it was a tweet.

01:12:06   It was on a Philip Elmer DeWitt's PED30 site

01:12:11   from Horace Dedue.

01:12:12   But as Horace graphed it, Apple's,

01:12:16   if you subtract the iPhone from Apple's quarter,

01:12:20   the rest of the company is now at the size

01:12:23   that all of Apple was at in either 2012 or 2013

01:12:28   or something like that.

01:12:28   - Yeah, I thought it was, yeah, I think I saw that.

01:12:30   I thought it was 2012, but yeah.

01:12:31   - Yeah, so and 2012 was sort of at the height of,

01:12:36   hey, this iPhone thing is clearly fantastic,

01:12:40   but they're too dependent on it.

01:12:43   It's like, it's like Apple stock for some reason

01:12:49   has always attracted these Debbie Downers.

01:12:51   Oh, so they've got the most profitable product

01:12:57   in the history of consumer goods.

01:13:02   Too dependent on it.

01:13:03   - Can't last.

01:13:03   Yeah, yeah, right, right.

01:13:04   That's the way of finding, I mean, in the whole,

01:13:08   the idea is so ludicrous on the face of it.

01:13:11   I mean, the idea, what is the concern?

01:13:14   Is the concern that the iPhone

01:13:16   is simply just going to go away?

01:13:18   I mean, it's not like you're gonna wake up tomorrow

01:13:22   and there's not gonna be an iPhone.

01:13:25   - Right, and it's hard to, yeah, as opposed to,

01:13:29   and it's a great testimony to the idea

01:13:32   of cannibalizing your own product.

01:13:34   I mentioned the iPod earlier in the show,

01:13:36   and nobody buys, they don't even sell iPods anymore.

01:13:38   I guess they have the iPod Touch.

01:13:40   - Yeah, the Touch, yeah.

01:13:42   Do they have the Shuffle still?

01:13:43   They had the Shuffle for a while.

01:13:44   - I don't think they do.

01:13:46   Well, we'll find out.

01:13:47   I'm sure we'll find out on Twitter after the show airs,

01:13:50   but I don't think they do.

01:13:51   I do not think they still sell the Shuffle.

01:13:57   But the iPod was a very big hit,

01:13:59   and it was very successful,

01:14:01   and they made the iPhone such that

01:14:05   one of the first three things that Steve Jobs said it did

01:14:08   was it was a great, what, widescreen video-playing iPod.

01:14:13   And nobody, you know, and I guess if you go young enough now

01:14:20   like if, like our sons, if we tried to convince our sons

01:14:24   that they should buy a $400 device to put in their pocket

01:14:28   that plays music.

01:14:29   (laughing)

01:14:31   - And does the hard drive, a physical hard drive.

01:14:37   - And doesn't stream music.

01:14:38   You gotta load all the songs onto the device.

01:14:42   You gotta have 'em on there.

01:14:44   They would, you know, look at us like we're nuts,

01:14:46   because why would you do that

01:14:47   when you already have a device in your pocket

01:14:49   that plays all of your music and can have, you know,

01:14:53   does have a network connection and streams,

01:14:56   which is the only way they know how to play music.

01:14:59   - Looks like there's no touch.

01:15:00   - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:15:01   - You mean no shuffle?

01:15:02   - No shuffle, shuffle, yeah.

01:15:03   - You know, so they cannibalized it.

01:15:07   But it was easy to imagine how hypothetically,

01:15:10   like if in 2006, the year before the iPhone was announced,

01:15:13   and maybe we even did, I don't know,

01:15:16   maybe you and I did have a podcast where we talked about it,

01:15:19   but somebody could have easily imagined a future where,

01:15:22   hey, I think MP, standalone MP3 players are gonna go away.

01:15:27   I think phones, you know, maybe this rocker isn't it,

01:15:30   but the idea that you only need one electronic device

01:15:34   in your pocket and it can play music

01:15:36   in addition to make your phone calls

01:15:37   and send your text messages

01:15:39   or whatever we thought phones did in 2006,

01:15:42   you know, it can play the snake game.

01:15:45   You only need one device, right?

01:15:48   That argument makes sense, right?

01:15:50   And it's credible.

01:15:51   Whereas at this point, even now, 15 years,

01:15:56   or almost, you know, 14 years into the iPhone era,

01:16:01   it's very hard to imagine a near term.

01:16:07   I mean, do I think everybody's gonna have iPhones

01:16:10   in 20 years?

01:16:11   I don't know.

01:16:12   Maybe, you know?

01:16:14   I mean, the Mac has had a life like that.

01:16:16   But certainly for the next five to 10 years,

01:16:19   it's very difficult to imagine a world

01:16:21   where people don't have phones.

01:16:22   - Yeah.

01:16:23   - It's just almost impossible.

01:16:26   I mean, what?

01:16:28   I mean, I guess in theory, glasses or something

01:16:30   could replace it, but even then--

01:16:32   - I suppose.

01:16:33   - I don't see it replacing the phone though.

01:16:35   It's like even these glasses, I think,

01:16:37   would be like the watch where, you know,

01:16:39   they're tethered to your phone.

01:16:41   You've got your little pocket computer

01:16:42   and it wirelessly communicates

01:16:45   to these other devices that you wear.

01:16:47   - Yeah.

01:16:50   - So anyway, good quarter for the iPhone.

01:16:52   iPhone 12 seems to be a hit.

01:16:54   Good quarter for the Mac.

01:16:55   iPad, I don't know what else to say, you know?

01:17:00   Good quarter.

01:17:01   - And I think there used to be,

01:17:02   I mean, when they released unit sales,

01:17:06   there was a little bit more to talk about

01:17:09   based on comparisons to previous quarters

01:17:11   and stuff like that, and they don't do that anymore, so.

01:17:13   - Yeah, and you know, I don't blame them.

01:17:16   I guess it was more fun when they did, but--

01:17:18   - Yeah, but nobody else did.

01:17:19   - No, and you know, and you could see

01:17:21   how that was highly competitive information, you know?

01:17:24   - Yeah, right.

01:17:25   And you know, and people would nitpick it, right?

01:17:28   I mean, they would, oh, you know,

01:17:30   stayed flat or it didn't go up as much as we thought,

01:17:33   or I mean, just forget it.

01:17:36   They can, and I don't think they massage the numbers,

01:17:43   but they've gone to great lengths

01:17:46   to smooth out their revenue streams, right?

01:17:48   Because they've moved everybody,

01:17:50   they're trying to move everybody to subscriptions

01:17:52   for, and paying in, you know, the purchase plans

01:17:57   and things like that, so that they're not getting the money

01:18:01   in one quarter and then having to deal with the fact

01:18:05   that their money is not, that their income is uneven.

01:18:10   - Right, like the overall spike for the holiday quarter

01:18:13   is no longer, it doesn't seem to be as disproportionate

01:18:15   as it used to be, and everybody understands

01:18:18   that it's the basic nature that Apple makes devices

01:18:23   that are natural holiday gifts is, you know,

01:18:28   even if you're stupid, you could see that, right?

01:18:31   I mean, I thought it was interesting,

01:18:36   I wrote about it on Daring Faribault,

01:18:37   I thought it was interesting that the max sales

01:18:39   actually went down a little bit from the previous quarter,

01:18:42   which seems to be a little bit of column A,

01:18:45   which is that the July, September quarter is back to school,

01:18:50   and which is always a good quarter for the Mac,

01:18:53   and then a little bit of column B,

01:18:55   which is that Macs were supply constrained,

01:18:59   probably for COVID-related supply chain reasons,

01:19:03   and maybe because Apple Silicon's new in--

01:19:07   - I would think it's, yeah, gotta be that, right?

01:19:09   - Just, you know, but there, you know,

01:19:10   and a couple people were like, yeah,

01:19:11   I tried to buy, you know, there are certain configurations

01:19:13   of the new Apple Silicon Macs that are like 30 days out,

01:19:18   you know, no. - Yeah, you could,

01:19:19   'cause I ordered mine the day after Christmas,

01:19:23   and I just got it the other day.

01:19:26   - Yeah, well, there you go, that's literally 30 days, right?

01:19:29   - Right, right.

01:19:30   Yeah, and I configured it, and I think you could get

01:19:34   the non-configured ones relatively,

01:19:38   well, I don't know about how quick,

01:19:39   but you could get them faster for sure.

01:19:41   - Yeah, so that makes sense.

01:19:43   I think that the back-to-school thing is really,

01:19:46   it's sort of like the holiday quarter

01:19:50   was a little bit good for the Mac

01:19:51   because these Apple Silicon machines,

01:19:53   a lot of people were waiting for them,

01:19:56   and they were universally well-regarded.

01:19:59   We'll get to talking about yours by the end of the show,

01:20:02   but I think that the back-to-school factor

01:20:05   in this COVID year was a bigger factor

01:20:09   than even Apple Silicon was

01:20:11   to pump up that back-to-school quarter

01:20:13   because it's like kids of all ages globally, right?

01:20:18   It's not just a US thing.

01:20:20   It's not just a high school or college thing.

01:20:23   It's like middle school kids,

01:20:24   any kids who might need a computer at home,

01:20:27   just how many, and the fact that adults

01:20:31   were working at home.

01:20:32   I mean, I know this firsthand

01:20:35   from our immediate greater family

01:20:37   that most families aren't like the Gruber household

01:20:41   where we have more Macs than people at any given time.

01:20:46   That's a highly unusual ratio.

01:20:48   There's an awful lot of families that,

01:20:50   in normal times when there's not a pandemic

01:20:52   that's locking everybody at home,

01:20:54   have shared computers, shared for multiple kids,

01:20:57   shared between adults and kids,

01:21:00   and a longstanding complaint about iPads

01:21:02   is that they do not support multi-user

01:21:05   in the way that Macs do,

01:21:07   where you can each, different family members,

01:21:09   there's a nice friendly menu up in the menu bar,

01:21:12   and you just switch it down to your name,

01:21:14   and now you're in your account.

01:21:17   And that doesn't work when you've got two kids in school

01:21:21   at the same time and up to two adults

01:21:24   who might be working at the same time

01:21:27   and all need computers.

01:21:28   People bought an awful lot.

01:21:30   You can see it in Tim Cook's remarks.

01:21:32   There's almost like an apology for how,

01:21:36   he does seem to be, I know he has a taste for profits,

01:21:39   and he is the capitalist CEO

01:21:41   of the most profitable company in the world,

01:21:43   but you can almost see it in his remarks.

01:21:46   It's like, this is terrible

01:21:48   that we're making all this money.

01:21:50   (laughing)

01:21:52   'Cause you can--

01:21:53   - I feel just awful about this.

01:21:55   - Yeah, well, I honestly think that if he could wish away,

01:21:58   if he had one wish and could be used

01:22:01   to make it so that COVID didn't happen,

01:22:03   knowing that it would mean that Apple

01:22:04   would have had a somewhat less successful year,

01:22:08   I don't think he would hesitate to do it.

01:22:10   I feel like he feels bad about that trade-off,

01:22:12   whereas some people might be like,

01:22:14   wow, this COVID is the best thing that ever happened to us.

01:22:16   - It's working out for me, yeah.

01:22:17   - Right.

01:22:18   But I think the Mac in particular

01:22:20   really, really benefited from that in Q3.

01:22:23   - Yeah.

01:22:24   - Anything else from the Apple quarterly results?

01:22:27   I didn't really, I guess there's some question.

01:22:31   I don't wanna go too far into it with the Apple report card,

01:22:34   but the one product that is so weird of all of 'em

01:22:38   is the Apple TV, right?

01:22:40   Like, Snell released his Apple report card yesterday,

01:22:43   and it's like, everybody has the same marks.

01:22:46   It's like, and it's bizarre.

01:22:48   Like, my quip on it for the report card is just,

01:22:51   it is just, it's not necessarily bizarre

01:22:54   that Apple isn't interested in selling set-top TV boxes.

01:22:57   Like, their living room hardware interest

01:23:01   has always clearly been a hobby, right?

01:23:03   It goes, I think literally goes back

01:23:05   to the Steve Jobs era of calling it a hobby.

01:23:07   But their overall interest in living room now

01:23:11   is very high because they are all in on Apple TV+

01:23:15   as a service.

01:23:16   - Right.

01:23:17   - The city of Philadelphia, all the billboard space

01:23:20   here in Center City, Philadelphia is all servant.

01:23:24   It's the M Night Shyamalan show

01:23:27   that actually takes place here in Philadelphia.

01:23:29   But I don't think that's why, probably nationwide.

01:23:31   But they've been advertising shows.

01:23:34   They had Ted Lasso advertisements.

01:23:36   You know, they're all in on this service.

01:23:40   But their hardware interest seems like,

01:23:44   oh yeah, do we, oh yeah, we still sell a box, yeah.

01:23:47   (laughing)

01:23:49   How do you like the remote?

01:23:49   - Occasionally, they occasionally sell a box.

01:23:52   They haven't up, I mean, that one's been out

01:23:54   for a few years now, right?

01:23:55   And there's been a rumor of a new one coming soon,

01:23:58   but I think it seemed like it was gonna come this past year,

01:24:01   but it didn't. - Right.

01:24:03   - And now it's been kicked to this year, supposedly.

01:24:05   - Right, and it--

01:24:06   - But, yeah, I mean, I have, so I have a TV in my office,

01:24:10   which is a bad idea, but, and I have not the Apple TV 4K,

01:24:15   but the Apple TV 4, yeah, attached to it.

01:24:19   And I have Apple Arcade, and I was gonna go play,

01:24:22   I was, you know, 'cause I figure, this is, you know,

01:24:25   what I do, I can justify it by doing it in my office.

01:24:28   (laughing)

01:24:29   Play some Apple Arcade games, and I went to play

01:24:32   one of the games, and it didn't play on that one.

01:24:36   So it's not the most recent generation,

01:24:39   but it was the previous generation, and it doesn't even,

01:24:41   you know, one of the Apple Arcade games

01:24:42   doesn't even play on that unit.

01:24:44   And then another game supposedly played,

01:24:47   but played like crap, and it's just,

01:24:49   that seems weird to me, like the previous,

01:24:52   you have to have the most updated one,

01:24:54   but I don't wanna get, like, I don't wanna go

01:24:56   get another one, I'm not gonna go buy another one right now,

01:24:59   because it seems like they should have released one already

01:25:02   by now, and they haven't.

01:25:03   - It's like, with everything in technology,

01:25:05   there's always a sense that if you don't buy it

01:25:08   as soon as it comes out, you're always at the edge of,

01:25:11   well, maybe I should wait for the next one, right?

01:25:13   I mean, that's always true.

01:25:16   And it is one of the nice things about the very regular

01:25:19   schedule of iPhones, right, that you just kinda know

01:25:22   the Apple now, the Apple comes out with the regular iPhones

01:25:26   in September, October, and it's annual,

01:25:30   and if, you know, there aren't many people

01:25:33   who are waiting for SEs that--

01:25:35   (laughing)

01:25:36   - Present to those, so you have present company excluded.

01:25:39   - I know, present, I don't wanna, you know,

01:25:41   present to, but you know, and you're savvy enough

01:25:44   where you could, you probably were, you know,

01:25:46   follow the rumors and you kinda knew when to get one,

01:25:49   and, but it's, you know, the whole point of the SE

01:25:51   is that it sells mostly to people who aren't, like,

01:25:54   knowledgeable about whether this phone is six months old

01:25:57   or whatever, it's like, how much does it cost,

01:26:00   and does, you know, okay, I'll take that one.

01:26:02   The Apple TV 4K, though, is so far at the extreme of that,

01:26:10   because it's so expensive compared to other competing,

01:26:13   plug this into the HDMI port on your TV

01:26:17   and you can stream stuff, right?

01:26:20   There's a whole bunch of boxes, a whole bunch of choices,

01:26:22   and Apple TV 4K is at the extreme end

01:26:25   of the cost spectrum on that.

01:26:26   It's still, it's like 160 bucks or something like that.

01:26:29   - Yeah, it's crazy, it's ridiculous.

01:26:31   I mean, for a company that wants you to get in,

01:26:33   I mean, that basically is selling it

01:26:35   for the services aspect.

01:26:36   - Right, and if, I didn't even realize

01:26:39   that some of the arcade games don't even play well

01:26:41   on the old one, but it doesn't surprise me,

01:26:43   because the old one is so many years older

01:26:45   that it really does, I'm sure, have a terrible GPU

01:26:48   by Apple standards today.

01:26:50   It doesn't make any sense.

01:26:52   Who wants to spend $180 on a box

01:26:54   that's already way more expensive than all the other boxes,

01:26:57   knowing that surely Apple has to be coming out

01:27:00   with a new one soon?

01:27:01   I don't know.

01:27:02   - Yeah, and I think most people don't even care

01:27:06   about the arcade aspect of it.

01:27:07   People who are, I would imagine that most people

01:27:13   who are into arcade are playing on their phone

01:27:15   or an iPad or something.

01:27:17   - Well, I think that's--

01:27:17   - I feel like I'm probably one of the few people

01:27:20   who actually plays some things on the Apple TV.

01:27:23   - And again, it's all very obvious,

01:27:25   and I know I've talked about it before,

01:27:27   but it really does make sense.

01:27:29   The 4K clearly is powerful enough to play pretty good games.

01:27:33   I'm almost willing to bet on the fact

01:27:38   that it's a more powerful GPU than the Nintendo Switch has,

01:27:42   and people play the Switch on their TV

01:27:44   a million times a day.

01:27:46   But it's the most obvious thing in the world.

01:27:49   I bet most people don't even realize Apple TV

01:27:51   can play games because it doesn't look like it plays games

01:27:54   because it ships with a remote control that--

01:27:57   - Crappy remote.

01:27:58   - That isn't even good for playing video.

01:28:01   Like if you thought that remote was bad

01:28:05   for streaming playback of video,

01:28:08   wait until you try to drive a cart game with it.

01:28:12   - And then they're caught in the middle.

01:28:16   The device is caught in the middle

01:28:17   because it wants to be two different things.

01:28:19   It wants to be like a TV stick,

01:28:22   and it also wants to be a game console,

01:28:24   and it's not good at either.

01:28:26   - I don't know what the answer is.

01:28:28   I hope they figure it out,

01:28:30   but I kind of hope that the idea that the company

01:28:35   is so interested in services,

01:28:37   and that Apple Arcade is a service that they see as,

01:28:41   they don't have many of them in the Apple One bundle,

01:28:44   and if they treat them all as being important,

01:28:48   that they're gonna come up with some, I don't know,

01:28:51   would they actually put an Apple game controller in the box?

01:28:54   I don't know, but some kind of--

01:28:56   - Yeah, I would, yeah.

01:28:59   - I don't know.

01:29:00   If they wanna keep it as $160-ish, $150, $200 device,

01:29:06   I don't think it's unreasonable to think

01:29:08   that they would put a good remote control

01:29:10   and a good controller in there.

01:29:14   - Yeah.

01:29:15   - And assume that they can make money on the service, right?

01:29:18   That that's sort of the thing, they say,

01:29:20   okay, we're not gonna make a lot of money on this,

01:29:22   but we'll get people to sign up for Apple One,

01:29:25   and they can watch Apple TV,

01:29:26   and then they can play Apple Arcade,

01:29:28   and they could still buy the new releases

01:29:31   on the iTunes movie store,

01:29:33   and it's not, selling stuff for break even

01:29:38   and making it up on the margin

01:29:40   isn't really Apple's business.

01:29:41   They like to sell stuff for a profit and do it,

01:29:43   but in this market in particular,

01:29:45   I don't see any way around it.

01:29:47   - Yeah.

01:29:48   - Or they--

01:29:49   - Unless you split it, right?

01:29:50   You could sell a stick and you could sell--

01:29:52   - Right.

01:29:53   - The thing that's supposed to be a game platform.

01:29:56   - Right, but they have third-party controller support

01:30:00   in Apple TV, but I feel like if it doesn't come with it,

01:30:02   people just don't, people don't wanna do it.

01:30:04   - Yeah, I completely agree.

01:30:05   - Like, nobody--

01:30:06   - I'm glad I got a SteelSeries, I'm glad I got it.

01:30:08   It's a really nice controller,

01:30:10   and it works very well with it,

01:30:12   but the fact that it doesn't come in the box,

01:30:16   I think, is a big deal.

01:30:17   - Yeah, and without it, it's like the games just aren't good.

01:30:21   I mean, there's only so many games where the,

01:30:24   what do they call it, the endless runners,

01:30:26   where there's like a one button and you run.

01:30:28   Some of those games are fun,

01:30:29   but they really do make a lot more sense to me on the phone

01:30:33   than they do when you're playing on a TV,

01:30:35   where you could be playing on any other way

01:30:37   to play games on your TV, you get more than one button.

01:30:41   - Yeah.

01:30:41   - Sometimes you get like a, you know,

01:30:43   a thing that can go in directions.

01:30:45   - Yeah.

01:30:47   - Anyway, I'm gonna take a break here,

01:30:48   thank our third and final sponsor of the show,

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01:32:33   What else, let's talk about your hardware purchases.

01:32:39   So the iPhone 12 mini, you've been waiting for a small phone.

01:32:45   - I've been waiting for four years for this phone.

01:32:49   So yeah, I mean, I got the SE, I had a 6S, right?

01:32:53   I think that was the one, yeah, so that was the last,

01:32:55   the last bigger phone that I had, I got a 6S, well.

01:32:59   Until I got the other SE, but the, so I had the 6S

01:33:02   and then I got the SE when that came out

01:33:03   'cause I really just prefer a smaller phone

01:33:06   and had that for four years and couldn't,

01:33:10   and it was really dragging at the end a year ago

01:33:14   and was, I was just kind of dying for the next thing

01:33:17   to be released and I knew that there was, you know,

01:33:19   the way the rumors looked that they were gonna release the,

01:33:22   you know, a 6S sized SE or seven sized, whatever

01:33:26   and then release a smaller phone than that in the fall,

01:33:31   which is exactly what happened,

01:33:32   but I was kind of at the end of my rope with my,

01:33:35   you know, 2016 SE.

01:33:36   So when the SE, the 2020 SE came out, I bought that

01:33:40   and that was a good phone.

01:33:41   I mean, it was still bigger than I wanted,

01:33:43   but it was a decent phone, it wasn't as big

01:33:45   as like the 10 sized ones.

01:33:47   And then of course, yeah, they came out with the 12 mini

01:33:52   and so I decided I'd return my SE two and get the 12 mini.

01:33:57   And this is the phone that I wanted.

01:34:00   - So it's interesting.

01:34:02   So that means you're like late to the game.

01:34:04   You're only really now into the new iPhone 10 style,

01:34:09   2.0 era of interaction with iOS, right?

01:34:13   - Well, except, I mean, I did have an iPad.

01:34:15   So I had an iPad Pro that I bought, the 11,

01:34:19   whenever the 11 inch Pro.

01:34:23   So I'd had it for a couple of years, right?

01:34:26   Something like that.

01:34:27   - So what do you think overall?

01:34:29   - I love it.

01:34:30   I mean, it's what, like I said, it's this, I mean,

01:34:32   it's even, I would go even a little smaller,

01:34:35   but it's great.

01:34:37   And I like the blue, I got the blue and it's,

01:34:42   I just don't like the bigger phones

01:34:46   and it doesn't really have much,

01:34:47   I mean, like my hands aren't unusually small.

01:34:50   They're not huge, but I just don't like trying to get

01:34:54   to that upper corner.

01:34:55   The, whatever icon happens to be up there.

01:34:59   And I just would rather have a smaller phone

01:35:04   and I don't like a huge phone in my pocket either.

01:35:07   If I want to look at something on a bigger screen,

01:35:10   I just grab my iPad.

01:35:11   I mean, 'cause I'm in the house most of the time anyway.

01:35:13   So I think that's part of it, right?

01:35:15   'Cause I'm not out and about in it.

01:35:16   I don't need a big screen on the move

01:35:19   where I want to carry just one device

01:35:21   and be able to read something or look at a video or whatever.

01:35:25   I'm usually in the house and if I want to look at a video,

01:35:28   I'll do it on my laptop or on my iPad.

01:35:30   And the phone is really for just,

01:35:34   when I'm moving around and I would rather have it be smaller.

01:35:38   So, and the camera, obviously the big difference

01:35:44   is the camera coming from the original SE.

01:35:47   - 'Cause it's a great camera.

01:35:48   It is the iPhone 12 camera with no compromises compared.

01:35:53   I mean, I know the pro models have the extra lens,

01:35:56   but the full, regular size, I guess I should say,

01:35:59   iPhone 12 has the exact same camera system as the 12 mini.

01:36:03   I've said this before, this is the hardest year.

01:36:07   This is the only year with the iPhone

01:36:08   where I had a hard time deciding which one I like best.

01:36:11   And I honestly think I might've,

01:36:12   I ended up deciding I want the regular iPhone 12, not pro,

01:36:16   because I love the difference in weight so much more.

01:36:19   I find the 12 pro, and forget about the max,

01:36:23   which is just too big for me.

01:36:25   I just don't have a taste for the size.

01:36:26   And I understand why some people do, I get it.

01:36:30   But I feel bad for people who just want a big one

01:36:32   and that there is no iPhone 12 max that's not pro,

01:36:37   that's made out of the aluminum and the lighter weight stuff.

01:36:42   But you get the big size.

01:36:44   Like if you really want big,

01:36:45   your starting price is $1,100, which is crazy.

01:36:50   - And that was the other, I mean, I liked about the,

01:36:52   I guess there are probably two kinds of people

01:36:54   who buy the SE, ever bought the original SE,

01:36:58   people who wanted something that was cheap

01:36:59   and people who wanted something that was small.

01:37:01   And I was not, it was great that it was cheap

01:37:04   because I could just pay for it with cash.

01:37:06   I mean, I bought that phone outright

01:37:08   and I did the same thing with the SE last year.

01:37:11   But--

01:37:12   - You would still like to have that iPhone 5 size though.

01:37:15   Like if they made it, if they came out

01:37:17   with an iPhone 13 Nano, that was--

01:37:19   - Well, if it didn't, yeah, I mean, if it didn't,

01:37:20   yeah, I mean, particularly if it didn't have bezels.

01:37:22   - Right.

01:37:23   - That would probably be enough for me.

01:37:25   - See, I think that would be too small.

01:37:26   But I've seen some, you know, Mike Davidson on Twitter,

01:37:30   longtime friend of mine, but he's a longtime small,

01:37:35   very similar taste to you, has always liked small phones,

01:37:40   likes the iPhone 12 mini, but his, you know,

01:37:42   very short tweet length take is that he still thinks

01:37:44   it could be smaller.

01:37:45   - It could be smaller.

01:37:46   Yeah, I think it could be a little smaller.

01:37:49   - I found it so hard to decide between the 12 and 12 mini.

01:37:53   Like to me, I liked the idea of the better camera

01:37:57   and the zoom and everything, but, and I did,

01:37:59   I went through my photo library and did like a smart search

01:38:01   for all the photos I took with the 2X lens.

01:38:03   And it's like, but just, and I used it more often

01:38:07   than I thought, but I don't think that using

01:38:09   the 1X lens and cropping to zoom in a little more

01:38:12   would make that big a difference, and I'm okay with that.

01:38:15   And I know that for the next year,

01:38:17   at least big chunk of the year, I'm not gonna travel.

01:38:20   So I'm not really, not taking as many photos,

01:38:23   not taking as many photos as I usually do.

01:38:26   But the weight difference for me is just so much,

01:38:29   I just so, I find the iPhone 12 Pro to be heavy.

01:38:32   I really, I don't know, I know it looks cooler

01:38:35   to some people's taste with the seal,

01:38:37   but it just seems silly to me to have a heavier phone.

01:38:40   And the weird, weird, totally, you know,

01:38:44   rarified, bizarre status where I have all four of them

01:38:49   from Apple as review units, and don't just have to stand

01:38:53   there at a table in the store with one that's tethered

01:38:55   to the desk and decide which, I can actually use them

01:38:58   for days, you know, I really try to give that info,

01:39:03   'cause I know most people don't get to do that, but.

01:39:07   - Yeah. - Man, the 12 mini,

01:39:08   I feel like the difference though for me,

01:39:11   if it hadn't been for COVID, I might've got the 12 mini

01:39:15   instead of the 12, because I feel like then

01:39:17   I would've been out, and the advantages of having

01:39:21   a nice small device in my pocket would be even more

01:39:24   prominent when I'm at home, and it's like,

01:39:26   I just have it on my desk, and it's not even in my pocket,

01:39:30   it's like, who cares, I don't know.

01:39:32   - Yeah. - It was a very close call

01:39:33   for me, the 12 mini is so nice.

01:39:36   It is so exactly like, just one of those items

01:39:39   that for a couple of years was on the list of,

01:39:42   boy, I hope Apple will make a smaller phone.

01:39:44   - Yeah. - And if they do,

01:39:45   I hope they, you know, don't give it like

01:39:47   a year old processor and a year old camera,

01:39:50   and it's like, nope, they did it, and it's great, and.

01:39:54   - Now we'll see if they ever make one ever again.

01:39:56   - Yeah, so there's reports that they've cut production,

01:40:00   but A, even if it's true, that doesn't mean

01:40:05   that it's not selling good enough.

01:40:08   And again, I don't have, Jeff Williams

01:40:11   is not one of my little birdies, so it's,

01:40:14   I don't know if I've ever even like,

01:40:16   said hello to Jeff Williams at a press event.

01:40:19   I don't have anybody in the operations group

01:40:24   whispering to me how well things are selling,

01:40:27   you know, they don't do that.

01:40:28   But I do know some people at Apple,

01:40:31   I do have some little birdies who aren't directly involved,

01:40:33   but are indirectly involved, you know, with,

01:40:36   the type of people who do fly to China in normal times

01:40:39   throughout the year to do work in the factories

01:40:44   and make sure things are going well,

01:40:45   and are therefore more reasonably informed

01:40:48   about what's actually going on with Apple hardware

01:40:52   in the supply chain.

01:40:54   And one thing over the years that a couple of these people

01:40:56   have told me is that whenever these reports come out

01:40:59   about like sales cuts or stuff like that,

01:41:03   almost inside Apple, they're like, where is this coming?

01:41:06   This is nonsense.

01:41:07   And it's not even like the opposite, it's not even,

01:41:09   you know, they're like, it just has no bearing on reality.

01:41:11   And in the other one that has even less bearing in reality

01:41:14   are when those, and it seems like this is a thing

01:41:17   that people don't write about as much as they used to,

01:41:20   but those cost of goods analysis, where--

01:41:22   - Oh yeah.

01:41:24   - Everybody loves these things,

01:41:25   where somebody will come out with,

01:41:26   somebody analyzed the iPhone 12 and the--

01:41:30   - Takes 15 cents to make an iPhone 12.

01:41:32   - Yeah, that's a self-defense.

01:41:33   (laughing)

01:41:35   - It's a 15, it's like--

01:41:36   - It's mostly just sand.

01:41:38   (laughing)

01:41:40   - And it's like-- - Sand is very cheap.

01:41:42   - And like those things are like,

01:41:44   I know Tim Cook has addressed those and said that

01:41:47   they're nonsense, but these production cuts aren't.

01:41:51   And a big reason, and I know this is true,

01:41:54   this is not just my conjecture,

01:41:56   it is something that people have told me,

01:41:58   is that Apple doesn't trust its supply chain partners

01:42:03   to keep information private,

01:42:08   because they know how valuable it is,

01:42:10   and they know that it leaks.

01:42:11   And so it's all a big game of poker, you know?

01:42:14   Where like, so like, I don't wanna throw anybody under the bus

01:42:17   or I won't name a real company, but like, you know,

01:42:19   maybe there's a company that--

01:42:21   - You could name Hyundai, right?

01:42:23   (laughing)

01:42:24   I mean, Hyundai talking about like--

01:42:26   - All right. - Project Titan stuff,

01:42:27   and they're like, Hyundai's like, I've got two fives.

01:42:31   (laughing)

01:42:32   - Yeah, what was up with that?

01:42:33   What, what? - I don't know.

01:42:35   I think it was just like, they're new.

01:42:38   I mean, like this stuff was, and maybe they didn't get it,

01:42:43   that they shouldn't be like talking about it.

01:42:46   - But like, you know, if there's some company

01:42:47   making screens for the iPhone 12,

01:42:49   and they're making the display components,

01:42:51   like Apple doesn't say to them,

01:42:53   we expect you to make 30 million of these iPhone 12 screens

01:42:58   in the January to March quarter.

01:43:02   And then, you know, and then they're like,

01:43:05   just keep it between us.

01:43:06   Like they might have, they have to give them

01:43:08   some kind of number, but it's all, you know,

01:43:10   not that they lie, it's like playing poker, right?

01:43:12   Like, you know, it, I just wouldn't read into that.

01:43:17   I do think there's probably some truth to the fact

01:43:19   that the iPhone 12 mini is not setting the world on fire,

01:43:22   that it's not some kind of smash hit.

01:43:24   And, you know, they even said, you know,

01:43:27   in a SEC legally liable way, you know,

01:43:30   that those statements on the quarterly analyst call,

01:43:33   that the pro models are selling higher than they expected.

01:43:37   That's a thing they said as a fact,

01:43:39   and it helps explain the bump in revenue.

01:43:42   I'm not worried about the 12 minis future.

01:43:45   I think it's such a good product,

01:43:49   and I kind of feel like the people who it most appeals to

01:43:53   are not, even if they're an enthusiast like you, right?

01:43:57   Not just, it's, yeah, just give me a small phone,

01:44:00   you know, I don't know.

01:44:01   Or type of people who just only ever buy phones

01:44:03   when their old phone literally breaks.

01:44:06   It's just such a good product,

01:44:08   and I can't help but think that it must be selling

01:44:11   well enough that it's probably not too far

01:44:14   outside their projections.

01:44:16   - Yeah. - I don't know.

01:44:17   - Right.

01:44:18   - I feel like if it's not selling well,

01:44:19   I mean, well, I mean, part of the reason

01:44:21   why it might not be selling well if it isn't

01:44:23   is the fact that they just introduced the replacement.

01:44:27   Like if you're an SE owner,

01:44:29   who's been holding out forever,

01:44:30   hoping that there's gonna be a smaller phone,

01:44:33   they released the SE in March, right?

01:44:38   And then six months later, they released another phone.

01:44:41   So I mean, I bought two 'cause I'm an idiot,

01:44:43   but I mean, I couldn't wait any longer, really.

01:44:47   I mean, that phone was really on its last legs,

01:44:50   and I had the battery replaced,

01:44:52   but it really could not hold much of a charge anymore.

01:44:55   And so I mean, I got the SE,

01:44:59   and then when they released the phone that I really want,

01:45:02   I sold the SE and got the one that I really wanted.

01:45:05   But most people, particularly in the middle of a pandemic,

01:45:08   aren't gonna be willing to do that.

01:45:10   - Well, anyway, I love it.

01:45:12   I think it's just such a great product.

01:45:14   I love the way it felt in the hand,

01:45:15   and now I'm second guessing myself

01:45:18   for buying the regular 12.

01:45:20   But anyway. (laughing)

01:45:23   - The other thing I was gonna mention,

01:45:25   really getting back to Snill's report card,

01:45:28   is that I felt like kinda maybe the iPhone

01:45:33   got a little bit of short shrift in that report card

01:45:35   because everybody was oohing and aahing over the max,

01:45:39   which is understandable.

01:45:42   But I think that the design change is awesome.

01:45:46   I mean, I think moving back to the straight sides,

01:45:49   which is a weird thing for me

01:45:50   'cause I don't think I liked them

01:45:52   when the iPhone 4 came out,

01:45:53   but now I love them.

01:45:56   And I was thrilled,

01:45:59   particularly moving from the second SE to the 12 mini,

01:46:03   that I mean, just the feel of it is so much nicer

01:46:06   with the straight edges.

01:46:08   - All right, speaking of straight edges.

01:46:11   - Yeah.

01:46:12   (laughing)

01:46:13   - You also-- - Yeah, which I find weird.

01:46:15   Okay, go ahead and introduce the story.

01:46:17   - You introduced the story.

01:46:19   - So we were talking about the rumors

01:46:20   of the upcoming MacBook Pros

01:46:23   that are supposedly coming in the third quarter, perhaps.

01:46:26   - Right. - And we'll include

01:46:28   a redesign along with, obviously, the new chips.

01:46:31   - Right, it started with Ming-Chi Kuo on January 14th

01:46:36   and then followed up a day later

01:46:38   by Mark Gurman at Bloomberg,

01:46:40   and then Gurman, again, a week later,

01:46:43   had even more information.

01:46:45   I found it odd that both of them described the redesign

01:46:48   as having straight edges.

01:46:49   - That's what I thought, too.

01:46:51   Like, mine, you know, looking at this laptop here,

01:46:54   it kind of already has straight edges,

01:46:56   and is it just gonna be thicker

01:46:58   so that the edges go down further?

01:47:01   Which I don't, why would people want that?

01:47:03   I don't, I'm not exactly sure what that was supposed to,

01:47:06   how that's supposed to play out.

01:47:08   - I think that they're both describing it poorly.

01:47:11   What I, and again, I have zero,

01:47:13   zero little birdie information on this at all.

01:47:16   All I'm doing is reading what Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo wrote

01:47:20   and extrapolating from what I perceive

01:47:25   as Apple's design trends overall.

01:47:29   And I think what they mean is that the top and bottom

01:47:32   will be flat, and so the sort of belly design

01:47:37   of MacBooks is going away.

01:47:41   And so it'd be like a, truly more like a book

01:47:44   where you could rest something on top of,

01:47:47   close your MacBook--

01:47:49   - Or a current iPad with like a lid.

01:47:51   - Yeah, like a current, yeah, or like an iPad

01:47:55   in the smart keyboard case, right?

01:47:57   That it's a more geometrically perfect,

01:48:01   you know, just a flat surface on the top and bottom.

01:48:04   Which to me, that's what I think they mean,

01:48:07   'cause the sides already are flat on these things.

01:48:11   That's the crazy part of, and they both describe them

01:48:13   the same way, which is very strange.

01:48:15   But I think that once you see it, and my,

01:48:19   I'm not, you know, I don't have a rendering here

01:48:21   to show you, but I think that once we see it,

01:48:25   it'll look weird at first because we haven't had

01:48:27   flat-topped MacBooks, I mean, ever?

01:48:31   To my recollection, I don't think Apple's ever made

01:48:34   a laptop with a perfect--

01:48:36   - No, the titanium.

01:48:38   - Was probably the closest they got, right?

01:48:40   - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:48:41   Maybe the titanium was.

01:48:43   But even the ones, like, let's say like the,

01:48:47   there have been some that have had more of a,

01:48:51   and a good comparison is just to the back of the iPad, right?

01:48:54   Like remember, the original iPad was like a rocker.

01:48:58   - Huge, kind of a big curve.

01:48:59   - Yeah, a very big curve.

01:49:01   And Apple has long used that sort of,

01:49:06   curved back surface shape to disguise how thick,

01:49:11   to create the illusion of a thinner device

01:49:15   than it actually is.

01:49:16   And it works, it actually does work.

01:49:19   Where you really only realize how thick the original iPad is

01:49:23   once you compare it to like a brand new one with the flat.

01:49:26   And you're like, oh my God, the original iPad was fat.

01:49:28   Why did I think this was so amazingly thin when I got it?

01:49:31   - Right, yeah, yeah, I'm looking at a picture

01:49:33   of a titanium power book and you can see,

01:49:36   I mean, that would be kind of cool.

01:49:37   It obviously wouldn't be nearly as thick.

01:49:40   - Right.

01:49:41   - But that's, you know, again, like the iPhone 12s,

01:49:45   it's a nice design choice.

01:49:49   - Yeah, I think once we see it,

01:49:51   it'll make all the existing ones look fat

01:49:54   and make them feel fat.

01:49:55   (laughing)

01:49:57   I do.

01:49:57   That's what I think they're talking about.

01:50:00   - And you're making it sound like

01:50:01   it's gonna hurt their feelings.

01:50:02   - Well, they use those curves

01:50:04   not because they think they're good,

01:50:06   but because again, I think it's entirely a trick

01:50:08   to make the overall device seem slimmer than it really is.

01:50:11   And the best way to look at it is the iMac, right?

01:50:14   So the iMacs now, there've been like,

01:50:18   the current overall design of the iMac

01:50:21   has had like two eras.

01:50:22   There was the one where it was an inch thick,

01:50:25   even at the edges, right?

01:50:27   At the edge of the display,

01:50:28   it was still like an inch thick.

01:50:30   And then they redesigned it like five years,

01:50:32   five, six years ago to come to almost to a...

01:50:37   - Point.

01:50:39   - Yeah, like a point, you know?

01:50:40   And I forget what they said when they described it,

01:50:43   but they really made it seem as though

01:50:45   that's how thick the whole iMac was,

01:50:47   whereas the belly part of the back really gets thick

01:50:51   by the time it gets to the middle.

01:50:53   But it definitely looks sleeker

01:50:56   than the ones that were thick all the way to the edges.

01:51:00   Apparently, there's another one of Germin's reports

01:51:02   was that the new iMac will be flat across the back as well.

01:51:05   And that also confirms to me what he's talking about

01:51:08   with the MacBooks.

01:51:09   - MacBook laptops, yeah.

01:51:10   - Right, that there won't be any curve on the back.

01:51:12   And it's not even, I don't think it's a sign of,

01:51:17   I think Apple would have gone flat years ago

01:51:19   if they could have, but they didn't because they couldn't.

01:51:23   That they internally know

01:51:24   that that's more aesthetically pleasing,

01:51:26   but that for the size of the components

01:51:29   and the amount of cooling they need, they couldn't.

01:51:31   And now that these machines are so much cooler,

01:51:34   they can go smaller.

01:51:36   - Right, right.

01:51:37   And that was the thing that,

01:51:39   I mean, it didn't stop me from buying this laptop, obviously,

01:51:41   because I was working on a 2016 MacBook Pro,

01:51:46   and I was pretty much done with it.

01:51:49   It was getting slow enough,

01:51:51   and the keyboard was bugging me enough

01:51:53   that I was ready for a new device.

01:51:57   But at the same time, I was thinking,

01:51:59   they're gonna change the form factor.

01:52:01   I know they're gonna do that.

01:52:03   And I'm gonna be looking at the new ones

01:52:05   that come out and being envious of those,

01:52:07   but I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger.

01:52:10   - Well, both of them, both Kuo and Germin are saying Q3

01:52:15   at the earliest, which would be after July.

01:52:17   So if you need a new computer, I wouldn't,

01:52:20   these rumors do sound good,

01:52:21   but if you need a new computer now--

01:52:23   - And these are just the pros, right?

01:52:25   - Supposedly.

01:52:26   And then Germin had a report that there's a new

01:52:29   redesigned MacBook Air that would be the end of next year

01:52:34   or 2022, so I think that's so early,

01:52:37   because they just came out with a brand new MacBook Air.

01:52:40   I think it makes, and you know,

01:52:41   so the timing makes sense that if Germin's information

01:52:44   is accurate, it makes sense that it would come out

01:52:46   like one year after the current MacBook Air or even later.

01:52:54   So the other thing that's interesting about these rumors

01:52:56   other than the shape is they both say the touch bar is gone

01:53:00   and replaced with function keys, which I find very odd.

01:53:05   So there's the, what are the, touch bar gone,

01:53:09   MagSafe comes back and it's like some kind of--

01:53:12   - Possibly other ports.

01:53:14   - And SD slot.

01:53:17   - I know, I mean, I missed MagSafe a bit.

01:53:21   I didn't miss it that much though with the MacBook Pro

01:53:26   because I liked being able to plug it in on either side.

01:53:30   I thought that was a nice trade-off

01:53:33   or good enough trade-off for me.

01:53:35   Now this Air only has two ports and they're on one side.

01:53:39   I wish they were on opposite sides, but it's okay.

01:53:42   I'll live with it.

01:53:43   - One of my questions, let's take these in order.

01:53:49   So MagSafe coming back.

01:53:51   I would say, hooray.

01:53:53   Wouldn't you?

01:53:56   I miss MagSafe.

01:53:57   - Like I said, I mean, I didn't miss it.

01:54:00   I didn't miss it all that much.

01:54:01   I missed it okay.

01:54:02   I didn't usually have a big problem with like kicking up

01:54:06   because the way I like to operate is I like to have

01:54:12   12 plugs all over the house.

01:54:15   So any desk or table that I sit down to,

01:54:19   I can plug in the device.

01:54:20   I don't have, I mean, I usually have like two or three,

01:54:23   and so I have them situated so that they're like draped

01:54:28   over the back of the desk,

01:54:30   for the different desks that I sit at.

01:54:32   And so I'm never concerned about like kicking a cord

01:54:36   and having the laptop go flying.

01:54:37   - It's happened once or twice to me since,

01:54:41   but the thing that's a little bit more unusual

01:54:44   about MagSafe coming back now,

01:54:47   but having gone away when it did,

01:54:49   is that the biggest difference with the M1 and Intel

01:54:53   is that the battery lasts so much longer

01:54:55   so that you really don't need to be.

01:54:57   - You don't need to plug it in as much.

01:54:58   - Right, and the places where you're likely to be plugged in

01:55:02   like at your desk, I would guess most people have

01:55:05   a desk set up where the plug isn't kickable, right?

01:55:08   It's sort of like, that's like a coffee table situation

01:55:11   or working at temporarily at the kitchen counter situation.

01:55:15   Like the type of situations where MagSafe seems the most

01:55:19   applicable because the power plug,

01:55:21   or the airport situation, remember airports?

01:55:26   Right, but you know, hey, I got a seat

01:55:29   with a power plug over there and I can plug my thing in,

01:55:32   but now somebody might roll their suitcase over the cord.

01:55:36   But it's still better than not having it, I like it.

01:55:40   But my big question and neither of them answer it

01:55:42   is okay, let's say they bring it back.

01:55:44   And both, or at least one of them had a report

01:55:46   that it's not like the phone's MagSafe

01:55:49   where it's like low powered magnetic.

01:55:52   It's high power, high watt, right?

01:55:54   Because you can't do like 87 watt charging

01:55:57   with the phone's MagSafe.

01:55:59   Like in fact, the phone's MagSafe is lower

01:56:01   than even plugged in lightning,

01:56:03   let alone high capacity USB-C.

01:56:06   - So it will probably look something like

01:56:11   what it used to be, right?

01:56:12   It's not gonna be just like a,

01:56:14   I mean the first thing that I envisioned is like,

01:56:15   well, maybe they're gonna do it differently

01:56:17   and it'll be like the pencil charges on the iPad,

01:56:19   but it's probably not that.

01:56:21   It's just a magnet and it connects.

01:56:25   - No. - So it's probably gonna be

01:56:26   like some sort of exposed pins and a magnet.

01:56:30   - I think it has to be to do the high watt charging.

01:56:32   And I don't think that low watt charging makes sense

01:56:36   for a MacBook, the batteries are too big.

01:56:39   - It'll take too long.

01:56:42   - Right, but my big question is,

01:56:44   let's say it's true and they bring back MagSafe,

01:56:47   does USB-C still work to charge too?

01:56:51   And I would think the answer is yes,

01:56:55   even though neither of them mention it,

01:56:56   because for example, with the iPhone,

01:56:58   you can charge magnetically on the back

01:57:00   or plug lightning in.

01:57:02   Because it would stink that,

01:57:05   okay, let's say you've already got USB-C chargers

01:57:08   all around your house, now you buy this new thing.

01:57:11   Now you've got this new thing and it has MagSafe,

01:57:14   which is cool, but it comes with only one MagSafe charger,

01:57:17   hopefully, right?

01:57:20   Hopefully it comes with the charger.

01:57:21   But now when you carry it into your kitchen

01:57:25   and there's USB chargers right there,

01:57:28   if you plugged in USB-C, even though it has MagSafe

01:57:31   that you could use, if you plug in USB-C,

01:57:34   why wouldn't that work too?

01:57:35   I mean, hopefully.

01:57:37   I don't know, it's a little bit weird to me

01:57:39   that they bring back MagSafe at the point

01:57:42   where the battery lasts as long as it does.

01:57:44   But okay.

01:57:45   - Yeah.

01:57:46   I mean, I think it's good, because I think in general,

01:57:49   people liked MagSafe, and I think more people miss it

01:57:52   than not.

01:57:53   - Right.

01:57:54   Bringing back the SD card slot,

01:57:56   again, a little bit surprising to me.

01:57:59   - Yeah.

01:58:00   - Because I kind of agree with the argument

01:58:03   that they took the SD card slots out too early,

01:58:06   that people were still using them.

01:58:08   But I kind of feel like they've weighted it out

01:58:10   to this point and that people are using them

01:58:12   less and less.

01:58:14   And it's, you know, if anything, of all these things

01:58:17   that you might need a peripheral for, like a dongle,

01:58:21   SD card slot has always felt to me like it's pretty fair.

01:58:24   And I know that there are some people

01:58:27   who really, really, really, really, really want

01:58:30   a built-in SD card slot.

01:58:31   But I just, you know, maybe I'm being selfish

01:58:34   'cause I don't use one that frequently.

01:58:37   - Yeah, I don't either.

01:58:38   - But it's hard not to see a couple of these things

01:58:42   as possibly, you know, and the timing sort of works out

01:58:45   with, you know where I'm going with this, right?

01:58:48   A guy named, remember Johnny Ive?

01:58:52   (laughing)

01:58:54   - Vaguely.

01:58:55   - He was a designer at Apple.

01:58:58   I, you know, it's hard not to draw the conclusion

01:59:06   that maybe Johnny Ive's leaving Apple

01:59:09   and the return of things like MagSafe and SD card slots

01:59:14   are related.

01:59:15   - Has something to do with each other, yeah.

01:59:16   - I mean, it could be a coincidence, you know,

01:59:18   but it's, both of those seem like backtrackings to me.

01:59:23   - Yeah, well, they are.

01:59:25   - Right, I mean, it's--

01:59:26   - I mean, literally.

01:59:28   - But it's, you know what I mean?

01:59:29   It would be different if they had made devices

01:59:32   that didn't fit them at all, right?

01:59:35   Like literally were so thin

01:59:38   that they couldn't make a MagSafe connector

01:59:40   that would fit the device, right?

01:59:44   And, you know, I've spoken to people at Apple.

01:59:48   I really do think that the headphone jack thing

01:59:51   really is about space.

01:59:53   And it's not that they couldn't make phones

01:59:55   that had a headphone jack,

01:59:57   but that by taking the headphone jack out,

01:59:59   it saves a significant amount of space

02:00:01   because headphone jacks,

02:00:02   it's not just the diameter of the jack,

02:00:06   it's how far into the device they go.

02:00:09   And that is, you know, in the annual design war

02:00:14   of what goes into the next generation iPhones,

02:00:18   that amount of volume is a huge amount of turf

02:00:22   inside an iPhone.

02:00:23   MagSafe, to me, they've never made a MacBook

02:00:27   that doesn't have room for MagSafe.

02:00:31   So it really felt like an aesthetic decision.

02:00:36   And to me, the most aesthetic decision

02:00:39   they've ever made on that front

02:00:41   was the just plain, no adjective, 12-inch MacBook

02:00:46   that literally only had one port,

02:00:48   or I guess two, it had one USB-C port

02:00:52   and one headphone jack, and that's it.

02:00:54   'Cause it really felt spiteful.

02:00:58   I mean, it just really did.

02:01:01   And if it had been one USB-C port and MagSafe,

02:01:06   that would be different, right?

02:01:07   And you could still see the argument that,

02:01:10   hey, I would like two USB ports, you know.

02:01:12   But not being able to charge the device

02:01:16   while you use any USB-C peripheral really is,

02:01:21   it's almost incomprehensible.

02:01:26   And it's hard not to think that it was

02:01:28   a purely aesthetic decision driven by Johnny Ive's team,

02:01:32   'cause it certainly wasn't a functional decision.

02:01:35   It's incredibly impractical, it always was.

02:01:39   There's almost not much to say about it.

02:01:42   Two ports really seems like the minimum,

02:01:45   especially if those ports are the charging ports.

02:01:48   - I mean, I think, yeah, Johnny's idea

02:01:50   was that everybody would do things over the air,

02:01:53   so you could charge

02:01:54   because you wouldn't have anything plugged into his.

02:01:56   (laughing)

02:01:57   - Right, why would you plug anything in?

02:01:59   - It's beautiful.

02:02:00   - Yeah, why not just have no ports at all,

02:02:03   and you could just use the charge

02:02:04   that it comes from the factory with until--

02:02:06   (laughing)

02:02:07   - And then throw it out and buy a new one.

02:02:10   - And well, put it on your shelf.

02:02:12   And it's, quite frankly, more attractive when it's closed.

02:02:17   - File your bathroom.

02:02:18   - Yes, turn it off and close it up.

02:02:21   (laughing)

02:02:24   You've walled.

02:02:24   - I was trying to remember what the original MacBook Air

02:02:27   came with in terms of ports.

02:02:28   - MagSafe and two USB, I think.

02:02:32   - That sounds right, yeah.

02:02:34   - The touch bar going away is also very interesting.

02:02:40   And I've long espoused from the get-go through now,

02:02:45   and now that I'm using a MacBook Pro with the touch bar,

02:02:49   I am so neutral on the touch bar, it's ridiculous.

02:02:55   - Yeah, I think I am as well.

02:02:57   I don't hate it, but I also don't.

02:03:00   I basically configured it as a control strip anyway,

02:03:03   so I'm not really using it as I think Apple thinks

02:03:07   that you should use it.

02:03:08   - Right, and I totally get it that there are other people,

02:03:12   and I know it's very divisive.

02:03:14   There are some people who truly hate it,

02:03:16   really, really hate it, and I believe them.

02:03:18   I believe that they hate it,

02:03:19   and therefore it's super frustrating to them

02:03:23   that it's not configurable,

02:03:24   that you can't do a build to order

02:03:27   and get a 16-inch MacBook Pro

02:03:29   that does not have the touch bar.

02:03:31   'Cause I sympathize.

02:03:35   I have strong opinions about certain things.

02:03:37   I don't about the touch bar,

02:03:39   but all things considered, if I could configure it,

02:03:42   if I could have the exact same MacBook right now

02:03:45   with or without the touch bar,

02:03:46   I would probably take the touch bar.

02:03:47   I think I like it better than the function keys, I do.

02:03:50   Now that they have the escape key.

02:03:52   The escape key was the thing that absolutely killed me.

02:03:55   - That never really bothered me that much.

02:03:57   - I, it turns out I use the escape key more than I thought.

02:04:01   And I don't use VI, but I use it more than I thought,

02:04:05   and it really bothered me.

02:04:07   - Okay.

02:04:08   - I also personally find that the fraction of an inch,

02:04:14   like it's like a 16th of an inch,

02:04:16   maybe even less than a 16th of an inch,

02:04:18   that they moved the touch bar up past the number row,

02:04:22   the one, two, three, four row of keys.

02:04:25   Totally eliminated my occasional accidental touches

02:04:29   of the touch bar.

02:04:30   - Okay.

02:04:31   - But once again, I know that it's very hard

02:04:33   to see that difference, but on the original ones,

02:04:36   I did run into that problem once in a while,

02:04:39   and I no longer do.

02:04:40   But I understand that other people might type faster

02:04:43   and more sloppily than I do or with bigger fingers,

02:04:46   and that they still run into that problem.

02:04:48   But it's, I can't, if this is true,

02:04:52   that they're gonna come out with,

02:04:53   just get rid of the touch bar across the line

02:04:56   with the 16 inch and the truly pro pro,

02:04:59   13 inch MacBook Pros, I'm fascinated to see

02:05:02   what they say about it.

02:05:04   Because this, that seems, isn't that, like--

02:05:06   - You think they'll say anything?

02:05:08   - Yeah.

02:05:08   - I think they won't say anything.

02:05:10   - Just pretend like it was never a thing.

02:05:12   - Just pretend it never existed.

02:05:13   - Just never existed.

02:05:15   I wonder, so maybe, maybe that's on stage,

02:05:19   or if, I don't know if we'll have on stage

02:05:22   by the third quarter, but in the video,

02:05:27   in their prepared show to unveil them,

02:05:33   I can imagine that they won't even mention it.

02:05:35   But they're gonna get asked about it,

02:05:39   so I'm curious what then their answer will be.

02:05:44   Even off the record, in a press briefing type thing.

02:05:46   I'm sure they'll come up with something.

02:05:48   - Yeah, yeah, right.

02:05:50   - But if it's true, that's a real backtracking.

02:05:53   And I'm a little surprised, I don't know.

02:05:58   In the back of my head, I thought, hmm, okay,

02:06:01   clearly, even if I don't mind the touch bar,

02:06:04   there's enough people who hate it where this is a problem,

02:06:08   and therefore they need to do something.

02:06:11   But I would have thought the solution

02:06:12   is to come up with a second generation touch bar

02:06:16   that solves the problems people have

02:06:18   and makes it compelling.

02:06:20   Okay, how do we make this more compelling?

02:06:22   Because fundamentally, the basic idea that I see

02:06:25   is that a row of twiddly little function keys

02:06:29   is so un-Apple-like.

02:06:32   It's unaesthetic, it's kinda gross, in my opinion.

02:06:36   And you could say, well, but it works, right?

02:06:38   But it's like, it,

02:06:42   I don't know, why would you,

02:06:44   why do you use that word gross?

02:06:46   - I don't, it's gross.

02:06:48   I'm in tune enough--

02:06:51   - That seems like a little bit of an exaggeration.

02:06:54   - No, I think it's gross, I don't know.

02:06:56   It's like, gross is maybe a strong word, but it is.

02:07:01   It's gross and fiddly in the way that a text mode

02:07:06   in a computer boot sequence is gross and fiddly.

02:07:09   Like when you used to boot up a Windows PC

02:07:12   and you'd see all this DOS crap flying by,

02:07:15   telling you to just load an autoexec bat, dot, dot, dot,

02:07:18   and then you get the Windows logo, right?

02:07:20   And now you're in graphical mode.

02:07:22   And there's a reason why Macs never, have never booted

02:07:25   with like a stream of DOS-like text

02:07:28   before you see the graphical interface of an Apple logo

02:07:32   or a Mac logo or whatever they boot with.

02:07:35   It's gross.

02:07:36   And function keys are gross in that spectrum.

02:07:40   And it also is, so here's an area where like,

02:07:44   all right, I think like, hey, getting rid of MagSafe,

02:07:47   putting only one USB-C port on a MacBook,

02:07:50   you've gone too far, Johnny Ive.

02:07:53   The function keys, I'm totally aligned with Johnny Ive.

02:07:57   They're gross and they should have,

02:07:59   there should be something better.

02:08:00   - Well, I bet you, I'm assuming you do not agree

02:08:04   with the arrow keys though.

02:08:07   - No, I could, no, I definitely,

02:08:08   I hated the full height left and right arrow keys.

02:08:13   I felt so strong about them

02:08:16   that when I was using a Mac with those,

02:08:17   I literally put pieces of gaff tape on the left right keys

02:08:22   so that I could feel them, which is really gross.

02:08:27   I had little pieces of tape on my keys, right?

02:08:29   So I get it, right?

02:08:31   - Well, that's good.

02:08:32   I mean, I kind of feel like though that there's a minimum

02:08:34   amount of like functional usage that you have to live with,

02:08:39   I mean, a level of quote grossness, unquote.

02:08:43   I mean, and that's an example.

02:08:46   I am perfectly fine with the function keys, frankly.

02:08:51   I mean, I feel like, you know,

02:08:52   Johnny would have preferred if all the keys

02:08:54   were the same size.

02:08:55   - So like--

02:08:56   - Like you'd have a square space bar.

02:08:58   - Yeah, yeah.

02:08:59   (laughing)

02:09:00   The tab key is just the size of a key.

02:09:02   Why is the space bar so large?

02:09:04   (laughing)

02:09:07   It's unseemly.

02:09:09   - And just arrange them all on a perfect grid.

02:09:11   And it's so much easier.

02:09:14   It's so much easier on the eyes.

02:09:16   - You're right.

02:09:17   - Your fingers will adjust.

02:09:18   I don't know, I can't think of a better example

02:09:22   than a computer that boots up with some kind of diagnostic

02:09:26   boot loading text first.

02:09:29   It's just unaesthetic.

02:09:32   And function keys are that type of thing.

02:09:34   And you know, Steve Jobs had feelings like this too, right?

02:09:36   There's this famous story of somebody who had like

02:09:38   my beloved Apple extended keyboard too,

02:09:41   and wanted Jobs to sign it.

02:09:43   And he's like, what are all these keys?

02:09:45   Do I have all these keys on it?

02:09:46   And he started prying off the guy's keys.

02:09:48   And then he signed his name on the back.

02:09:50   But you know, why doesn't Apple ship keyboards

02:09:52   with 110 keys anymore?

02:09:54   Even the big ones.

02:09:55   Because the extra keys are, they're gross.

02:09:59   To some, you know, a little gross.

02:10:01   It's a little gross, you know.

02:10:02   (laughing)

02:10:04   It's like one, you know.

02:10:05   - I don't know, I think.

02:10:07   - It's not like a whole, you know,

02:10:09   like somebody dropped a bag of barber hair in your food.

02:10:11   But it's like finding a hair in your food, you know.

02:10:14   It's a little gross.

02:10:15   So I get it.

02:10:18   Like I think there's a general aesthetic.

02:10:20   And part of it's marketing, and part of it I think

02:10:22   is just not getting it.

02:10:24   But I just saw an ad from Microsoft,

02:10:26   I think it was when I was watching football on Sunday,

02:10:29   where they had like a teenage kid talking about

02:10:32   why he wanted a Surface instead of a Mac laptop.

02:10:36   And he was saying like, look, Apple gives you

02:10:38   this little touch thing up here.

02:10:40   Microsoft gives me a whole touch screen.

02:10:42   And I know that, you know, if you have a touch screen

02:10:46   and Apple doesn't, that's a way you can market it.

02:10:50   And they've been trying that for years.

02:10:52   So I don't blame them for marketing it that way.

02:10:55   But I've seen reviewers talk about this too.

02:10:58   That thinking that the touch bar is Apple's answer

02:11:01   to putting a touch screen on the Mac.

02:11:05   And why not just make the whole screen a touch screen?

02:11:07   We definitely don't have time for me to reiterate

02:11:11   my opposition to that.

02:11:12   But I'm 100% convinced that that has nothing to do

02:11:16   with why they have a touch screen, or a touch bar.

02:11:18   Why they tried the touch bar.

02:11:19   The touch bar wasn't, okay, people want some kind

02:11:22   of touch screen, we don't wanna make the top screen touch,

02:11:25   so we'll give them this.

02:11:27   I think it's basically, function keys are some ancient idea

02:11:31   from 1973's, you know, terminal computers.

02:11:35   They're gross, it's ridiculous.

02:11:37   And even though we've repurposed them all

02:11:39   from traditional functions to dedicated things like,

02:11:43   hey, here's one for brightness, here's two for,

02:11:46   or I guess three for volume, up, down, mute.

02:11:49   - Well, yeah.

02:11:49   And so I guess that's what I would, I mean,

02:11:51   and that's how I use them.

02:11:52   And that's why I configured the touch bar like that.

02:11:55   And I would be, I mean, I'm looking at,

02:11:59   I'm sitting in between an ancient, almost ancient MacBook,

02:12:03   the unibody plastic MacBook.

02:12:07   That's what I usually record on.

02:12:09   And I keep, I change nothing so that my recordings work,

02:12:13   'cause I know my recordings work, and I have this laptop,

02:12:15   and I'm not using it for anything else.

02:12:17   And so I record all my podcasts on that laptop,

02:12:20   which is great.

02:12:22   And then I have this new MacBook Air.

02:12:26   And I would say the icons on the MacBook are better

02:12:31   because they are much more oriented.

02:12:36   Like the function is larger, like this stop, start,

02:12:41   whatever, sleep, I mean, all those icons are larger.

02:12:44   And then the F numbers are smaller and in the corner.

02:12:48   I would even go so far as to like remove the F numbers.

02:12:52   I don't think I ever use the F numbers personally.

02:12:56   And, but on the Air, they're smaller,

02:13:00   but they're in the middle,

02:13:01   which makes them a little bit more prominent.

02:13:03   And I think they actually better the old way.

02:13:05   But anyway, I mean, like I said,

02:13:07   I would think that it would be better to just have the,

02:13:11   like the new functions on them

02:13:12   and not have the F numbers on them at all.

02:13:14   Although I guess lots of people still use the F numbers.

02:13:16   - But it gets exactly to Steve Jobs's explanation

02:13:21   of why the iPhone only had a home button back in 2007,

02:13:26   where it's like, look, all these other smartphones

02:13:28   have all these buttons at the bottom

02:13:29   and it takes up all this space

02:13:31   and they can only do one thing.

02:13:34   Once you put like a green button for make a phone call

02:13:37   and a red button for hang up a phone call

02:13:40   and it's a hardware button,

02:13:42   that space is always occupied by those buttons.

02:13:44   And you might come up, maybe you make the device

02:13:47   and then you come up with new ideas

02:13:48   and you can't add buttons.

02:13:52   And we figured out we already have a solution to this.

02:13:55   It's called software.

02:13:56   And if we made the whole screen a touchscreen,

02:13:59   we could do it all in software.

02:14:00   But that argument fits.

02:14:03   So you've got all of these buttons.

02:14:05   I almost never play music on my Macs, ever.

02:14:10   If I play music, I play it on HomePods

02:14:12   or I listen to it on my iPhone.

02:14:15   I can't tell you the last time I've used

02:14:17   the play, pause, fast forward buttons on the keyboard.

02:14:20   I mean like ever.

02:14:22   And going back to when they first added

02:14:24   dedicated buttons for it.

02:14:25   I never use them.

02:14:26   So why are they there?

02:14:28   I'm always looking at them.

02:14:29   What about the weird button on F4

02:14:31   where it's like what happens if I,

02:14:32   I don't even know what happens.

02:14:33   Oh, it goes to the, what's that thing called?

02:14:36   That's the alternative launch screen?

02:14:39   - Oh yeah.

02:14:41   - I've never used it so I don't even know what it's called.

02:14:47   I don't even know what it's called.

02:14:48   - Launchpad.

02:14:49   - Yeah, Launchpad.

02:14:50   So there's a dedicated button on my keyboard for Launchpad.

02:14:53   Now I could go in and use keyboard maestro

02:14:56   or something in system preferences

02:14:58   and make that button do something else.

02:15:00   But I can never get the glyph removed from the key cap.

02:15:04   Right?

02:15:05   And then the one for the all windows mode,

02:15:08   it's like, it's an ugly looking icon

02:15:10   with a bunch of rectangles in weird spots.

02:15:14   It's gross.

02:15:15   The whole thing is gross.

02:15:16   And the touch bar, I'm convinced,

02:15:19   the whole point of the touch bar was,

02:15:21   all right, let's take this fiddly old thing from the 1970s

02:15:24   and let's do some, what's a new idea?

02:15:26   And okay, it wasn't good enough.

02:15:28   I'm just surprised they're not coming back

02:15:30   with like touch bar 2.0.

02:15:32   - Well, and I thought they would have done that

02:15:34   before now, right?

02:15:35   I mean, I thought, oh,

02:15:37   they would introduce this new thing.

02:15:39   It's software based.

02:15:40   They will iterate it.

02:15:42   And even if it's clunky like the watch,

02:15:44   even if it's a little clunky to begin with,

02:15:47   it'll be good by the next version.

02:15:49   And then there never really was a next,

02:15:51   much of a next version anyway.

02:15:52   They made some very small changes to it.

02:15:55   And I could not get used to the idea.

02:15:59   I mean, I understand the concept for the phone.

02:16:02   It's a little bit more obvious on the phone though, I guess,

02:16:07   when the entire interface changes.

02:16:08   But I never wanted to get into the business

02:16:12   of configuring the touch bar for different applications.

02:16:17   - No, me neither.

02:16:18   - Because I found that crazy confusing.

02:16:20   Like now I'm in a different application

02:16:22   and the touch bar behaves completely differently.

02:16:25   - Yeah, I don't either.

02:16:26   I almost, I will admit, I almost never use it.

02:16:28   And I just use it for volume and brightness.

02:16:31   - Yeah, so that's what, yeah.

02:16:32   I mean, that's why it changed it to a control strip

02:16:34   and that's what I used it for.

02:16:36   - Yeah, but the other thing for me

02:16:38   is I just never looked down there.

02:16:39   Even though I'm right there using it

02:16:41   and in the flow using my Mac for hours,

02:16:43   I'm like staring at the screen

02:16:45   and I'm typing on the keyboard

02:16:46   and it just never even occurs to me to look there.

02:16:49   And every once in a while I'm using an app

02:16:50   and it's like, hey, there's something

02:16:51   I might wanna use there, you know?

02:16:53   Like sometimes you'd be typing in a password

02:16:55   and it'll have like a couple of email addresses

02:16:58   to choose from for filling in a form.

02:17:00   It's like, hey, that's actually kind of easy.

02:17:02   I didn't even realize that was there

02:17:03   'cause I never look at it.

02:17:05   I don't know, it's just interesting to me if it's true

02:17:08   that they're just getting, just saying, you know what?

02:17:10   We're calling it quits on this thing.

02:17:12   It's hard to think of something

02:17:14   they've backtracked so far on, right?

02:17:17   'Cause it's different when you backtrack on,

02:17:19   okay, we took out built-in SD card slots.

02:17:21   Now we're putting it back in and they can just say,

02:17:24   look, we didn't have room for them for a couple years.

02:17:25   Now, you know, because of the M1 or the M2

02:17:28   or whatever they're up to by the time

02:17:29   these machines come out, it's so small

02:17:33   and so space efficient, we have room to add SD card slots.

02:17:38   They're back and you can sell it.

02:17:40   And they could even spin it that way with MagSafe.

02:17:45   We've come back with MagSafe 3 and it's better than ever,

02:17:48   but the Touch Bar is gonna be a tough one to spin.

02:17:52   - That's why I think they won't mention it.

02:17:55   - Yeah, other than just saying, well, you know.

02:17:57   - Didn't work out. - Didn't work out.

02:17:59   Anything else from these rumors that jumps out to you?

02:18:09   - So the sizes, I think the sizes they mentioned

02:18:13   were like a 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro, right?

02:18:17   - Yeah, yeah.

02:18:19   - Yeah.

02:18:20   - Well, the weird--

02:18:20   - Which makes sense.

02:18:21   - Yeah, the weird thing about the 14 inch is it seems--

02:18:24   - They've talked about a 14 inch for years.

02:18:26   - Yeah.

02:18:27   - It's been rumored for so long and it has not appeared.

02:18:29   - And that's the part where it's like,

02:18:32   gee, I wish it was my job and I had all the time,

02:18:34   all day that I could look it up and do the claim check.

02:18:37   - I do the claim chowder on this, so I guess I should.

02:18:40   That's the thing that throws the, hey, wait a minute,

02:18:45   aren't you the guys who told me

02:18:46   the 14 inch was coming two years ago?

02:18:49   (laughing)

02:18:51   You know, it's like, where did that come from?

02:18:54   It's sort of like the way that this game works

02:18:58   where there's smoke, there's fire,

02:19:01   and I guess somebody in the supply chain

02:19:03   started working on 14 inch laptop screens for Apple

02:19:06   and somebody else grossly misinterpreted

02:19:09   when they might be coming.

02:19:11   My guess is--

02:19:14   - I mean, I can see them moving to a 12 inch error,

02:19:17   14 inch and 16 inch pros.

02:19:19   But I'm not sure if that's necessary either.

02:19:24   - Well, the 15 inch to 16 inch transition

02:19:28   for the MacBook Pro I think is exactly what's gonna happen

02:19:30   with this 13 to 14 inch, where I don't think

02:19:32   they're gonna make a bigger footprint.

02:19:34   I think they'll just reduce the bezel size even further

02:19:37   and it'll round up to 14 instead of 13 inches.

02:19:40   I think Germin's report said that there's some,

02:19:44   and some talk about reducing the bezel size

02:19:47   on the 13 inch MacBook Air, keeping the display

02:19:51   at 13 inches but reducing the bezels

02:19:53   and therefore making the footprint smaller.

02:19:56   Which kind of makes sense, 'cause it kind of makes sense

02:20:00   that the Air would actually have a smaller footprint

02:20:02   than the MacBook Pro.

02:20:04   - I was actually surprised, 'cause, so the previous Airs

02:20:07   that I've had have been the, what, 10, 11 inch?

02:20:11   11 inch, right?

02:20:12   11.

02:20:13   - Yeah, 11 was the old tiny one.

02:20:15   - Yeah, and this is my first 13 inch Air

02:20:19   and I was kind of surprised at the bulk of it really.

02:20:22   I was thinking, oh, it's an Air, it's gonna be much smaller

02:20:25   and much lighter than my MacBook Pro,

02:20:30   my 13 inch MacBook Pro, but it doesn't really feel that way.

02:20:33   - No, it's hardly smaller at all.

02:20:36   Because it tapers, it does have the tremendous advantage

02:20:43   that I've still never got, I haven't had a MacBook Air

02:20:46   in years, but once I got used to the ability

02:20:49   to feel it coming out of my bag by touch,

02:20:53   I never ever put it down in front of me wrong,

02:20:55   whereas now I always, half the time,

02:20:58   and it's that damn Apple logo and I agree

02:21:00   that it's oriented the right way,

02:21:03   but now that I can't do it by feel, I see the Apple logo

02:21:06   and I put it down in front of me, hinged towards me

02:21:09   and it's like, ah, I put it down, you know,

02:21:11   how many years am I gonna go while I do this?

02:21:13   But it's 2.8 pounds versus 3.0 pounds,

02:21:17   so it's hardly lighter.

02:21:19   It's actually thicker in the back,

02:21:21   like the back of the MacBook Air is actually ever

02:21:24   so slightly thicker than the back of the MacBook Pro.

02:21:27   They're very oddly similarly sized

02:21:29   for a device whose name implies that it's smaller.

02:21:33   - Yeah. - Yeah.

02:21:34   What did you, so you got the Air, right?

02:21:35   That's your M1?

02:21:36   - Yeah, yeah.

02:21:38   - So how do you like it so far?

02:21:39   I know you only had it today.

02:21:40   - Yeah, Thursday?

02:21:43   Yeah, I got it Thursday.

02:21:44   I love it.

02:21:46   I mean, I'm glad I'm more pleased with it

02:21:50   than the Pro, I think.

02:21:52   I mean, the keyboard is really, (laughs)

02:21:56   it's really the big thing.

02:21:57   I never had the huge problems with the keyboard,

02:21:59   the old butterfly keyboard,

02:22:02   but I never really liked the fact

02:22:05   that it had such low travel.

02:22:07   - Yeah, I never--

02:22:08   - And I really hated the arrow keys.

02:22:10   - Yeah, the arrow keys were what killed me,

02:22:12   and I got used to the travel, and I never bought one.

02:22:17   I only ever used review units for a month or two at a time,

02:22:21   but it took a while to get used to the type,

02:22:23   you know, a while, like days, and then I got used to it,

02:22:25   but it's like, oh, this is so much better.

02:22:27   This is such a better dial it back, you know?

02:22:30   And again, I don't think it's backtracking.

02:22:32   I think this is sort of like--

02:22:33   - This is better, this is just better.

02:22:35   - Yeah, it's just sort of dialing it in,

02:22:37   you know, a little bit too far, ah, just right.

02:22:40   - Right, right.

02:22:41   - The arrow keys, I could never get used to.

02:22:45   Like I told you, I went so far as to put tape on them

02:22:47   so I could feel them somehow.

02:22:49   - Yeah, and I was clear.

02:22:51   I didn't really know that one of the things

02:22:53   that I have used the touch bar for was sleep,

02:22:57   or not sleep, but locking the screen,

02:23:00   'cause you can add a button for locking the screen,

02:23:02   and I did not realize that the power button

02:23:04   on the Air does that now.

02:23:07   If you just do a tap, or not a tap, but one push,

02:23:10   it locks the screen.

02:23:12   - Yeah, the funny thing, what's the funny thing?

02:23:14   Oh, I know the, I still can't get used to it,

02:23:16   and it's so hard.

02:23:17   It's like, now that any key turns on your Mac,

02:23:22   you know that if you power it down, you can turn it on

02:23:24   by just like hitting any key?

02:23:26   - I don't know that I powered it down.

02:23:30   - Yeah, you probably never will.

02:23:32   But it makes it hard.

02:23:33   - Well, yeah, I mean, I'm probably gonna do it a lot less.

02:23:36   - It makes it hard to clean the keys,

02:23:38   'cause you have to like do it

02:23:39   while the screen's on and locked.

02:23:41   But I think that the explanation, and again,

02:23:44   it's one of those things that Apple's never gonna say

02:23:46   on the record, and I've never gotten anybody off the record

02:23:49   to say, yeah, that's the problem.

02:23:50   But now that the button doesn't have the power logo on it,

02:23:53   people didn't know how to turn the Mac on.

02:23:55   - Oh, yeah.

02:23:56   - And I don't know if they could do that or not,

02:23:59   and it's like, I don't know if they don't want to.

02:24:01   If they, you know, like if the power logo

02:24:04   would get in the way of the fingerprint sensor,

02:24:07   or if they just think it's more aesthetic this way.

02:24:10   - They should write it on the edge of the laptop,

02:24:14   but that's in between the key and the screen,

02:24:17   and have an arrow pointing down to this, just this power.

02:24:20   (both laughing)

02:24:22   You know, since Johnny's gone.

02:24:23   - Or just put a sticker on it, you know?

02:24:25   (both laughing)

02:24:27   Put a sticker on this side with an arrow.

02:24:29   - Get rid of all the function keys and just put stickers.

02:24:32   (both laughing)

02:24:34   'Cause you can replace stickers.

02:24:35   - Yeah, yeah, maybe that is the answer.

02:24:38   - If you decide that the key should be something else later,

02:24:41   just send out another sticker.

02:24:43   - Yeah.

02:24:44   You know, I've said this before, when I was in high school,

02:24:47   I learned to type on manual typewriters,

02:24:49   not electric, not just typewriters.

02:24:51   I'm talking manual, clackety-clack typewriters.

02:24:54   And I was in seventh grade, and I weighed about 87 pounds.

02:24:59   And I was, my entire torso was about as thick

02:25:03   as a power cable.

02:25:05   I was a very skinny kid.

02:25:07   And my pinky fingers weren't strong enough to,

02:25:11   I could press the A and the semicolon keys,

02:25:14   and the Q and the Z, and the other ones

02:25:16   you're supposed to do with your pinky.

02:25:18   But I couldn't press them hard enough

02:25:19   to actually get a letter to show up.

02:25:21   So it would look like I hit space.

02:25:23   But we had this room, classroom full of manual typewriters

02:25:29   that had no key caps.

02:25:31   They were all blank because they were specifically meant for--

02:25:33   - Oh, 'cause you were supposed to learn how to type.

02:25:35   - Right, and I feel like they could go that route

02:25:39   for the Johnny Ive crowd.

02:25:42   - Sure, yeah.

02:25:42   - Just print these keyboards up.

02:25:44   - It would look a lot better too, just blank, all blank.

02:25:47   - I think the DOS keyboard company, DAS,

02:25:50   like the German DOS, I think they sell a keyboard

02:25:53   that's like that for the aesthetically purists.

02:25:57   The black turtleneck crowd.

02:26:00   Anything else?

02:26:04   Oh, so what's not in the new ones?

02:26:06   Last but not least is that apparently there's no face ID

02:26:09   and no cellular networking, according to these rumors

02:26:12   from Ming-Chi Kuo and Mark Gurman.

02:26:14   The face ID, the cellular, I'm not surprised

02:26:17   'cause I feel like the story on that is very complicated.

02:26:21   And I just wish my Mac could have cellular

02:26:25   like my iPad does is, I feel like the answer

02:26:28   is more complicated than that.

02:26:30   But again, Apple doesn't really like to explain it.

02:26:32   The face ID thing is a little bit more disappointing to me,

02:26:35   especially for the iMac where it seems like

02:26:37   that would be a natural.

02:26:39   - Right.

02:26:41   - So I can't imagine why the iMac doesn't have face ID.

02:26:44   It seems very weird.

02:26:46   Because if it doesn't have face ID,

02:26:49   that might mean it doesn't have any biometric authentication

02:26:52   because I think that there is some kind of

02:26:55   cryptographic problem.

02:27:00   - You can't do it in a non-connected keyboard.

02:27:02   - Right, right, so you can't do it.

02:27:05   For reasons I don't think I understand

02:27:07   and don't even wanna try to speculate on,

02:27:09   but you can't just make a Bluetooth keyboard with it on.

02:27:13   - Well, it's the same problem,

02:27:14   and that's why it's the same thing with,

02:27:16   it's a handshake between the sensor

02:27:20   and the whatever that chip is.

02:27:22   I can't remember off the top of my head.

02:27:23   - The secure enclave.

02:27:24   - The secure enclave, yeah.

02:27:25   - Right, right.

02:27:26   - And that's why they had that whole thing

02:27:31   where people were incensed

02:27:32   because they weren't letting third parties repair,

02:27:36   do certain repairs because it would disconnect

02:27:40   to those two and that would ruin the handshake.

02:27:43   - And so I don't know, we'll see if the rumors pan out,

02:27:46   but I hold out hope, not because I, again,

02:27:48   not because I have any info,

02:27:49   but just, boy, it would be nice for the iMacs

02:27:52   to have face ID.

02:27:54   Other handful of rumors, there's somebody,

02:27:58   people are saying they're gonna actually make a display

02:28:00   that costs, a standalone display

02:28:02   that costs less than $5,000.

02:28:05   - I'll believe it when I see it.

02:28:08   (laughing)

02:28:11   - You know how we always remember,

02:28:13   we always remember Craig Federighi's first ever

02:28:16   on stage appearance when his hand was shaking on the mouse.

02:28:20   I feel like the John Turnus equivalent of that,

02:28:26   it wasn't the first time we saw John Turnus

02:28:27   who just got a promotion to head of,

02:28:29   senior vice president of hardware across the company.

02:28:33   But to me, the Turnus moment is at WWDC 2019

02:28:37   when he introduced the XDR display

02:28:41   and said that the stand cost $1,000.

02:28:44   And I don't know, you were watching remotely, right?

02:28:51   And it was obvious even on the stream

02:28:56   that it got a poor reaction, right?

02:28:58   I mean, but in the room, it was like,

02:29:02   I don't know how somebody could fart so bad

02:29:05   that all 5,000 people in the room could smell it,

02:29:09   but that was what it was like.

02:29:11   (laughing)

02:29:13   - I know that, yeah, and I don't know how you,

02:29:16   I mean, given that that was the fact, that was the price,

02:29:20   I'm not exactly sure how you introduce that price

02:29:23   and make it seem more palatable.

02:29:26   - Well, how did they not see that coming, right?

02:29:30   I think if there is such a thing

02:29:31   as a $1,000 display stand, that Apple made it.

02:29:35   It is a truly tremendous piece of kit.

02:29:38   And now that they're in the field,

02:29:40   it doesn't seem like anybody is saying,

02:29:42   "Hey, I got it, and now my display droops,

02:29:44   it's worn out already."

02:29:45   I mean, if there is such a thing as a $1,000 display stand,

02:29:50   I think that's it.

02:29:52   But to me, it only makes sense in the context

02:29:55   of this is the big brother to this,

02:29:58   I don't know what the reasonably priced

02:30:01   standalone 5K display is, but let's say the whole display,

02:30:05   including a built-in stand is $1,500.

02:30:09   - Yeah.

02:30:10   - And it's great, and it's 5K,

02:30:12   and it's just like our iMac display,

02:30:14   and it does all the HDR cool stuff,

02:30:16   and it's super thin, and it's really nice.

02:30:20   And for the pros out there, we've got this Pro Display XDR

02:30:23   that's $5,000 and has a $1,000 stand.

02:30:26   But it all goes over better if there's like,

02:30:28   "Well, oh yeah, that's cool."

02:30:31   - Right, right.

02:30:32   - Yeah, it's the crazy expensive model, and you can move up.

02:30:36   - Right.

02:30:36   - Yeah, it's like the gold watch.

02:30:39   - And that's the only watch we have, right.

02:30:43   The Apple Watch 8, it comes in one model,

02:30:46   we've simplified it.

02:30:48   It's called, and it's solid gold, and it costs $20,000.

02:30:53   Right, the Apple Watch announcement comes out

02:30:56   real differently if the edition was the only version.

02:30:59   (laughing)

02:31:01   And that's, but that's their display story at the moment.

02:31:04   Right, the only display they sell is effectively

02:31:06   the Apple Display Edition, you know.

02:31:08   So hopefully that will come to pass, but otherwise.

02:31:11   - Maybe they should have called it that.

02:31:13   - And they maybe should have made it gold.

02:31:15   - Yeah, sure.

02:31:17   Or an option.

02:31:19   - Yeah, at least it's hard to believe

02:31:21   that that's not an option.

02:31:22   - Well, gold plated.

02:31:23   (laughing)

02:31:26   - Anything else, I think that's about it.

02:31:28   - Yeah, I mean, there's the, Tim Cook spoke at a privacy.

02:31:33   - Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't watch that yet.

02:31:34   I read the remarks, I do wanna watch it.

02:31:37   - Yeah, I read it on Six Colors as well.

02:31:39   And it was interesting 'cause I thought,

02:31:43   I had seen a bunch of people say,

02:31:44   "Oh, he really stuck it to Facebook."

02:31:45   And it's interesting, and he did,

02:31:47   but he also didn't mention Facebook by name.

02:31:50   And so it's just sort of funny that it's obvious

02:31:52   that like all these comments about the horrible things

02:31:56   that people are doing, oh, that's Facebook.

02:31:58   - It does seem like Facebook and Apple

02:32:00   are going into a cold war, and it is escalating.

02:32:04   - They're much more at odds than, say, Apple and Microsoft.

02:32:10   - Yeah, or even Apple and Google, right?

02:32:12   And I guess it probably helps that Google pays

02:32:16   $20 billion a year for default search placement in Safari,

02:32:21   or at least they do now.

02:32:23   I feel like that is seriously in jeopardy regulatory-wise

02:32:28   going forward.

02:32:29   And Apple doesn't really have any sort of real,

02:32:38   Apple doesn't really benefit from Facebook in any way.

02:32:41   Facebook gets a lot more from Apple

02:32:43   than Apple gets from Facebook insofar as that Facebook

02:32:46   has a lot of customers who are using iPhones.

02:32:52   And presumably, it's still the case

02:32:55   that the average iPhone user is a better demographic

02:32:58   advertising-wise than the general public.

02:33:02   And so you can see that, and Facebook,

02:33:05   they even issued it in their results last week.

02:33:09   They even issued it as one of their, we have to say this,

02:33:12   this is, there's negative headwinds or whatever lingo

02:33:17   they use with the ad tracking change,

02:33:18   which still has not, for all the publicity about it,

02:33:22   the ad tracking identifier change in iOS 14,

02:33:25   which was, Apple had originally said was intended to ship

02:33:28   with iOS 14 in September or October,

02:33:32   still hasn't shipped because of the resistance to people,

02:33:35   you know, like Facebook and Google against it.

02:33:37   But Apple has now said it is coming in the next version

02:33:41   of iOS, which is probably 14.5 and probably coming in March.

02:33:46   And they're saying it's gonna cost them money, so.

02:33:51   And now, and the other story I saw was that the information

02:33:55   had a story that Facebook is preparing

02:33:57   an antitrust lawsuit against Apple.

02:34:00   - Yeah, good luck with that.

02:34:01   - Well, that's, isn't that weird?

02:34:04   I didn't know that, I guess one company can sue

02:34:07   another company for anything.

02:34:09   I mean, that's like one of the things my wife,

02:34:10   who is a lawyer, has explained to me about Trump

02:34:13   over the years, that you can sue anybody for anything.

02:34:17   So, you know, making it seem like it's news

02:34:20   that so-and-so got sued for whatever,

02:34:22   it doesn't necessarily mean anything, you know?

02:34:25   It's like calling somebody a booger head,

02:34:28   doesn't necessarily-- - Well, you know, I mean,

02:34:28   it's like Trump's lawsuit's over the election.

02:34:31   - Right. - They were like,

02:34:32   they were like, oh, for 60 on those.

02:34:34   (laughing)

02:34:36   - Right, didn't really amount to a hill of beans.

02:34:38   But I, you know, it's, that's, I guess that's Facebook's

02:34:43   nuclear option, I really don't see Facebook

02:34:47   as having the, you know, whatever antitrust concerns

02:34:50   there are over Apple's control over the platforms,

02:34:52   and I know that they're nuanced in many.

02:34:55   I don't think Facebook is on the short end of 'em,

02:34:57   you know, and I guess there's certain areas

02:34:59   where they would like to do their own credit card processing

02:35:02   and they ran into a little thing,

02:35:03   but they certainly don't have as big a complaint

02:35:06   as most people have, you know, who are,

02:35:09   who would like to do their own credit card processing.

02:35:12   Well, it'd be interesting to see how it goes.

02:35:16   So is the Tim Cook video worth watching?

02:35:18   - I didn't see it. - Oh, yeah,

02:35:20   he did the same thing. - I read the,

02:35:21   so on Six Colors they have the text of his comments,

02:35:24   so I read the comments. - Yeah, yeah.

02:35:26   And I, yeah, and I also saw the--

02:35:28   - Not that I don't like looking at Tim.

02:35:29   I mean, Timmy's a handsome man.

02:35:31   - Yeah, but I did see, though, when I read his remarks,

02:35:33   the other thing, it wasn't just about privacy, though.

02:35:35   The particular Facebook part was about him saying

02:35:40   that the algorithmic-driven social media

02:35:45   that promotes inflammatory material

02:35:48   because it is addictive is a danger to society,

02:35:53   which is-- - And he didn't say

02:35:55   anything specific, but he talked about recent events.

02:35:58   (laughing)

02:35:59   - I did see also that, I haven't watched it either,

02:36:02   and again, it's six days old,

02:36:03   so I probably ought to watch it before the next one,

02:36:05   but I did see that he was on Fox News Sunday last week

02:36:09   to talk about Apple's decision

02:36:10   to remove Parler from the App Store.

02:36:14   That's a show hosted by Chris Wallace,

02:36:17   which is like the, you know, so he's on Fox News,

02:36:20   but it's like the sane part of Fox News.

02:36:24   - Right, right.

02:36:26   - But I've heard that it's good, and you know,

02:36:28   and it's, you know, you can see why he's on Fox

02:36:31   to talk about that, but we shall see.

02:36:36   Let me thank our sponsors.

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02:37:00   (laughing)