0:00:00Katie why do people call you KD?
0:00:02Can I call you Katie here? Yeah, okay. My first name is Kevin. Uh-huh, right and my second my last
0:00:11My second name. My last name is Durant or the D KD
0:00:15This year what percentage you plan on giving on the court 90 95 100 110. What are we looking at?
0:00:25110 110 I just got off the phone with the Dolan family and they said that they're talking to the Commissioner now
0:00:33They're looking at working a contractual deal that will allow you
0:00:36For days off you'll be able to play for the Knicks comments. All right, Dave. That was the last one
0:00:43I'm sorry. Was that a cousin? How about you? Do you ever come in?
0:00:47Wrap it up. Okay. I'm being told my time is done. Have a have a great year
0:00:54What about the Pelicans when you guys play the Pelicans that kind of make you giggle?
0:00:57Yeah, okay, all right, that's all I got that's it everybody thank you good night, why did why did they call you JS Jason
0:01:07well
0:01:11Big fan of January
0:01:14And
0:01:17September is the best
0:01:20And my middle initials a because August, you know, oh man
0:01:24Do you think Kevin Durant knew that it was Letterman? Yes, I
0:01:29Have I have a theory on this now now one of the reasons it delighted me that this dropped this gem of a
0:01:37Perfect letterman moment dropped days before I had already asked you to be on the show
0:01:43But you know for those who do not remember from your multiple appearances on the show
0:01:50You and I are both David Letterman fanatics. Yeah fair to say and I
0:01:55What what percent are you planning to give this season 80 90 oh man
0:02:02110 under 10
0:02:06110 all right
0:02:08110 it is
0:02:10And then Dave Dave from basketball digest just just notes
0:02:15110 the way that like the census person would be like how many how many children under the age of 18 do you have in?
0:02:21The household one two three. We have three three three it is. Okay 110
0:02:26It's I I just I love the idea that media day
0:02:32For the NBA was literally being satirized on
0:02:36Media day for the NBA that literally I mean that that was kind of his bit was always he's a TV guy, but he's also
0:02:45Simultaneously satirizing everything there is about TV, but for for for the Nets
0:02:50I mean, I don't know the backstory of it
0:02:52but I assume for somebody in the Nets PR to be willing to let David Letterman kind of sit in the the media day scrum and
0:03:00Ask stupid questions to Kevin Durant like bless that person whoever they are
0:03:05I have a theory and it didn't even occur to me until I was putting together show notes for this and all of a sudden
0:03:12It popped into my head. Here's my theory
0:03:13My theory is that Kevin Durant is gonna be on
0:03:16My next needs no introduction. Oh, yeah, you know, that's a good that's that's good
0:03:23And then and then they're doing they're doing a bit that we'll see the other side of mm-hmm
0:03:28On Netflix at some point that makes sense that that checks out. Yeah, because and I kind he's kind of a fascinating figure
0:03:36He's he's he's I don't know what the word is
0:03:39I mean, he's obviously a super talented basketball player, but he's also sort of
0:03:45Anatomical freak he's seven feet tall, but he doesn't play like a center. He plays like a guard and
0:03:51He's sort of bounced around the NBA had tremendous success. He's just inordinately
0:03:57Talented but personality wise he's I don't know. What's the word mercurial? He's he's very hard
0:04:05To get a so anyway, I think he'd be a and I think that Letterman loves that sort of
0:04:12Subject for that his Netflix show is somebody who we don't really know, right? I
0:04:19Got to see him
0:04:21You know not quite up close but every day because he was with the Warriors for a couple of years and yeah
0:04:28I mean we always like watch the Warriors and we always joke. Oh, hey, that's Steph Curry. He's good at basketball with Kevin Durant
0:04:34It was like I think I think it was Mike Schur
0:04:37The the TV producer who had who said this first
0:04:41but it's like an
0:04:43alien came down and said I can play your basketball because he's he's the wrong size and
0:04:49Shape to do what he does and it's like no he's like from another league
0:04:53Whatever league is out there in the galaxy
0:04:55That's above the NBA and he for some reason has been sent down here for a while because it doesn't make sense
0:05:01He's and then yeah, he's an interesting guy. He
0:05:03He I don't know
0:05:05I I think he is exactly the type of guy that Letterman would want to talk to and see if he could get some like
0:05:11Really crack the egg a little bit about right what he's thinking and I kind of feel like this like and and I so I think
0:05:17Like Letterman surprised him and he didn't he wasn't he didn't know that Letterman was gonna be on the call. I think he knew
0:05:23Partly through that it was Letterman on the audio, but he wasn't gonna break character
0:05:29And then he finally did when he asked him. I would they're trying to get Letterman off the line
0:05:38Pelicans does that make you giggle, you know, I
0:05:41That made me laugh so hard because I mentioned we went to actually to a Warriors game where they played the Pelicans and I mentioned
0:05:49To my wife that they're playing the Pelicans and she looks at me and she goes haha and I don't know what she says
0:05:56That's not a real team and it it became a running joke in our house that the Pelicans was just something you made up
0:06:03That's not a real there's no team pelicans
0:06:05That's not a team and then Letterman does the same bit who's like do you hear the word Pelicans and just laugh?
0:06:10It's I I made for listen for listeners in New Orleans
0:06:14I mean, I'm not putting the team down but it is oh it's a very odd nickname for a sports franchise and and it sort of
0:06:22feels like
0:06:24You know like like with the great Incredibles franchise at Pixar and and they've decided we're just gonna make our own
0:06:34Universes superheroes rather than rely on Marvel. I mean obviously at this point Pixar couldn't there use Marvel because it's a Disney but
0:06:41it'd be easier for the the stories they want to tell to just you know, and we'll we'll use some of the
0:06:49Tropes of superheroism like, you know Frozone is a guy with frozen power and all right
0:06:55You know Marvel has a guy like that Iceman and you know, there's super fast kid
0:07:00Who's like the flash and you know, there's there's super power, you know, superpowers are sort of like a list
0:07:06You can choose from sure but then you you get down the list and you can maybe phone some of them in right and and
0:07:12For the you wouldn't really make a superhero like something but you know 37 superheroes down the list
0:07:18it would be the same thing if you were gonna make like a
0:07:20Pixar movie about a fictional version of the NBA and
0:07:26You might make up some teams like the pelican right down down at 28 29 30. You're like, I don't know pelicans. Let's just say pelicans
0:07:33Yeah, and it has no history, right?
0:07:36So it's also like wait did I miss like if you don't follow the NBA that closely and you know
0:07:41We don't really in our house. So we are very fair-weather. Oh are the Warriors in the finals. Hooray kind of people
0:07:47But so you might miss it and then and they changed their name, right?
0:07:51Because they were the Hornets and then they gave the name of the Hornets back to Charlotte and they got a new name
0:07:55So there's a lot of reasons why there's not a lot of history built up there, right?
0:07:59So yes apologies to pelicans fans. I saw them but I saw the Warriors play the Zion Williamson is great
0:08:05But it is one of those things that it's also kind of a funny name if you well
0:08:10It's it's not the type of name that you would pick if you
0:08:13Were like the general manager and the marketing manager and and the owner of the franchise, right?
0:08:20Like you might pick it if you're a screenwriter
0:08:22Making a list of fake names and you're not even going to really feature this team in your movie
0:08:26But like when you're you're all in this is your life. You're going to be a you know, 18 hours a day all year long
0:08:34Sweating this NBA franchise nothing but pelicans
0:08:38Yeah, and you wouldn't pick a team like the Pelicans but a name like the Pelicans but you know, there we are
0:08:43You know New Orleans Jazz, it's right there. Well, they think they used to be in New Orleans. That's why they're called jazz
0:08:50I don't know how they kept the jazz in Utah. That should have a Utah name like the Utah assault, right?
0:08:55Utah assault sorry, I've been doing this bit since I was in high school
0:09:00Utah assault all the local broadcasters and all the local writers are gonna say oh my god
0:09:05Thank you for giving us the name salt because now we can do all of these like salt puns and like seasoned veterans
0:09:12And like oh my god, it's gonna be great. But instead they're the jazz. So alright fine. Pelicans is still available
0:09:19They had the best nickname that told you exactly what city they were from New Orleans and then
0:09:26Moved to the least jazzy city in North America
0:09:31Very few lakes in LA by the way for to be fair
0:09:36Lakers and very few like I do kind of love that I
0:09:41Somebody talked about like sure again Mike sure and Joe Paz Nansky the sports writer have a podcast and where they talk mostly about baseball
0:09:49But they propose this idea that if your team moves cities
0:09:52You should just have to change your name and like as the fan of a of a baseball team that moved from New York
0:09:59I actually kind of agree like
0:10:01Maybe you should leave the name behind and if somebody wants to pick it up later, they can pick it up later
0:10:05but maybe you should come up with a like the the the
0:10:08Giants is just kind of a random name. But like the the Dodgers are
0:10:13Trolley Dodgers right from the trolleys in Brooklyn. There are no trolleys to dodge in LA but they kept the name and it sort of just
0:10:20means
0:10:21Nothing now and there's an argument to be made that you should let let the let the jazz lay there and maybe one day in
0:10:28The future another team in New Orleans will pick it up, but that's not what happened. Yeah, I think it's dear
0:10:33I think that that late 50s
0:10:35Expansion across North America was different than today's era of franchises moving
0:10:43Right. It was like almost like a land rush right there where and baseball in particular
0:10:49It was entirely East Coast like I don't know what the West western most franchise was maybe Kansas City
0:10:56I'm not great at knowing. No, no st. Louis. I think was the there wasn't a Kansas City team at that point
0:11:02So st. Louis would have been the westernmost I think oh there wasn't the Royals
0:11:06No, not the Royals didn't as a major league team wasn't until the 60s. Oh, okay
0:11:13Okay, I wasn't sure when they came into being in there in Chicago. But anyway, they all traveled by train
0:11:18They were all like, you know train distances
0:11:21And there's this whole great
0:11:24Western part of the country that also has fantastic weather and lots of baseball fans and and so, you know the
0:11:32Teams like the Dodgers and the Giants, you know, it was it it it didn't feel like they were moving and becoming a different team
0:11:40it felt like the team was moving and and
0:11:42conceding New York to the Yankees and
0:11:45And making a claim to their own great cities, right?
0:11:50San Francisco deserves a great team and they got a team with a history in Los Angeles
0:11:55obviously the second biggest city in the country deserves
0:11:58You know a team full of
0:12:01Sad-sack losers like the Dodgers. Yeah, exactly
0:12:04well
0:12:05I mean and of course the classic story is that the
0:12:07Dodgers owner knew that he wanted to move to LA and he kinda conned the Giants owner into moving to San Francisco
0:12:13Really? Yeah
0:12:16But but you know it worked it worked out for everybody including the Yankees it just yeah we could I mean it's all theoretical anyway
0:12:24But I can see the point of saying like I was very happy when the Cleveland Browns
0:12:27Moved to Baltimore that they left the yeah Browns behind and let the new Browns come in and I like that the Hornets
0:12:34Got I don't care at all about basketball in Charlotte, North Carolina
0:12:37But I think it's nice that they got their name back and they don't have to be that whatever they were the Bobcats or something
0:12:43which never made sense and like I
0:12:45Just I feel like to a certain extent the team
0:12:48Identity kind of belongs to the city and that you can take your team if you need to but you got to leave the leave
0:12:54The laundry leave the name by the door on your way out right and now the Browns are good again, finally
0:13:00But we are a long last they are they are actually good again only took like since Bernie Kosar
0:13:06Yeah, like literally they haven't been good since before they were not there for a while before Bill Belichick was there. Yep
0:13:14Anyway, let me take our first break and thank our first sponsor
0:13:20It's a new sponsor very excited about this sponsor sanity dot I oh
0:13:24It's the platform for structured content that lets you build better
0:13:29Digital experiences. It's like a CMS but it's like a CMS system that you can make your own CMS in
0:13:36they offer a terrific API experience and
0:13:39You what you do is you keep your content and what they call the sanity
0:13:43Content lake and it makes it easy to respond to your needs
0:13:46It's sort of like a soup where you just store your stuff you shape your own JSON documents via their API
0:13:52You don't need to recrop your images in advance
0:13:55You just register a focal point and you ask the API for a different aspect ratio of the image and it crops it on the fly
0:14:02it treats rich rich text as structured data that can be used in apps voice assistants and
0:14:08Their fancy new web framework that you will want to try out
0:14:12Look your time is better spent actually developing your product or service than building your own CMS from the ground up or to hack
0:14:21Another one to fit your need sanity. I oh is a content platform that will get you up and running quickly
0:14:27It's not your regular CMS
0:14:29They have also invented open source technologies
0:14:33I haven't even heard of this one before but it sounds really cool grok G R. O Q. It's a query language for JSON and
0:14:40Portable text that is their agnostic rich text format that you can integrate into any platform
0:14:47It is used sanity dot IO is used and trusted by renowned brands
0:14:52You've heard of them companies like National Geographic
0:14:55Nike
0:14:57Conde Nast and more Sonos uses sanity to integrate product and marketing efforts Figma and
0:15:03Netify use it to drive conference and event content. You can use it for just about anything
0:15:09It's scalable and reliable serving more than 5 billion globally
0:15:14Cached API requests every day. You can start building with sanity. I dot IO today for free
0:15:20No credit card required go to sanity dot IO
0:15:24Slash the talk show and by going to that URL you get a boosted free plan
0:15:31To try out sanity IO you can also run
0:15:35NPN
0:15:37NPM knit sanity in your command line if you just want to try it out go to sanity dot
0:15:44IO slash the talk show
0:15:46All right, you saw the list
0:15:50Let me start with this I want to get this out of the way
0:15:54I'm gonna blog about it and I feel like if I put it on the podcast
0:15:57It'll force me to throw this on daring fireball - that's beautiful. That's that that's the modern now
0:16:02That's how we do it, right? You got a blog the blog makes a podcast the podcast makes a blog, right?
0:16:06All right
0:16:07You're familiar with the rumors the rampant rumors from multiple sources that the Apple watch series 7 was going to have flat
0:16:14Sides and you know this sort of design language of the the current iPhones and iPads and then it didn't happen
0:16:20And there was a lot of hmm
0:16:23Here's my spitball theory on that
0:16:28What if it is true?
0:16:30but also but the other the counterpart of it and and there's the sort of the
0:16:35We were right. It doesn't matter if it didn't happen. We were right Apple canceled it at the last minute
0:16:40Well, that doesn't make any sense because Apple watch series 7 is clearly all new it is a new form factor with entirely different screen
0:16:47You can't just throw together
0:16:49Like days I'll off file it off a little bit
0:16:53I just jam it in there and now they're both real but here's my theory. My theory is what if the flat side?
0:17:00Apple watch is real
0:17:02But it's the new low-end model like what we're about to get in the coming weeks at some point
0:17:09You know because it was not ready when it was announced a couple weeks ago as series 7 was always intended to be series 7
0:17:16The new top-of-the-line latest and greatest technologies Apple watch
0:17:20But what if this flat sides thing?
0:17:22Was intended and whether it was intended to ship now or maybe it's one of those like off cycle things like the iPhone SE that often
0:17:30Appears in like March or April or something like that
0:17:33And therefore it to me would fit with Apple's needs where right now they're still selling the Apple watch series 3
0:17:41Which is a bit of a shame
0:17:43I've actually wore my series 3 last week paired with a review unit and it's like this thing's a little long in the tooth
0:17:49Oh, yeah
0:17:51And it's sort of crappy that they're selling it to people
0:17:54yeah, but on the other hand they kind of want that product marketing thing where there is a
0:18:01Visual oomph of hey if you spend more you get a better looking thing. I
0:18:05I think that's an interesting theory
0:18:09I don't I don't believe it would be the low-end watch because I feel like there's still mileage in the SE that they
0:18:15Released last year. In fact, I'm the thing about the series 3 that that boggles my mind
0:18:20Is that the SE looks by all accounts you look at it and you're like, this is the entry-level watch
0:18:27This is what Apple wants the entry-level watch to be and yet whatever their calculations are about how much margin they need to make
0:18:32they can't get it down to the price where they can pull the series 3 out of the equation and
0:18:37The series 3 serves a really good purpose. It is it is old. It is long in the tooth
0:18:43It's got that little screen with the big bezels and all that
0:18:47But what it does do it gives Apple an entry price to the Apple watch
0:18:50It lets it compete with a whole level of like fitness trackers that they otherwise
0:18:56Can't compete with and it feels to me like the SE they can't get it down there to their satisfaction
0:19:02So they're gonna keep that series 3 around for a while
0:19:05So could there be another like designed to be even cheaper than the SE version of the Apple watch on
0:19:11The way at some point to get a tracker market. Maybe my theory about the Apple watch rumor is
0:19:18Forgive me for being a little more boring about it
0:19:22But like I think it goes to the heart of how rumors get reported which is Apple leaks
0:19:26Obviously we get all these rumors
0:19:29But Apple leaks from weird locations because Apple tries to prevent leaks even though things do leak
0:19:36They silo off people and they've got supply chain leaks
0:19:39But they also are trying different stuff that doesn't end up being products people play games of telephone
0:19:45They hear about something that was true
0:19:48But isn't true any longer a lot of the gotchas people do when when rumor reports are wrong. I
0:19:53Really believe that most of those reports were probably true at some point
0:19:58There are liars out there, but I think most of the people in this stuff who have a batting average
0:20:02I think what they're getting is information that may have at one time, but it doesn't always stay true
0:20:07And so when I hear about this flat-sided Apple watch thing
0:20:10My guess is that it either was or still is a thing that they're working on
0:20:15But there were some assumptions somewhere in the chain about when it was gonna come out that were wrong
0:20:21Either they were always wrong or they became wrong when something changed
0:20:26So they saw a new industrial design for the Apple edge like oh you got you got to know about this
0:20:31It'll probably be out. I don't know 2021 and it turns out that at some point in that process
0:20:37Apple said we can't ship this and they pushed it back and that doesn't mean that those rumors are completely
0:20:45Untrue the inaccuracy may come from the fact that at some point along the way
0:20:49Apple changed direction and you might say well, why did we hear about it a week before the event that they were totally gonna do this?
0:20:56I think the answer is
0:20:57Somebody was talking to somebody who heard something
0:20:59but you go back far enough in the chain and you realize it was kind of stale information and it probably changed a while ago and
0:21:05Those people didn't leak. So this is the best they could do
0:21:09Yeah
0:21:09And the big hole in my theory is that the Apple watch SE there's only been one model of Apple watch SE so far
0:21:16And it was only announced a year ago. Yeah, and
0:21:19Apple tends to at least if we base
0:21:22base it on the copious data from
0:21:26two iPhone SEs
0:21:28They they tend to put an SE model out and then keep it around for years
0:21:35Let it sink let it sink in price maybe but you like you keep it around and you ride that for a while because it's designed
0:21:40To be the one that does that that the three still being around is weird and I'm positive that they don't want it to be around
0:21:48But for whatever reason they just can't kill it and replace it with the three
0:21:52I don't know. They're making too much money on the SE to replace the three with the SE. I don't know what it is
0:21:58So supply chain in 2021 be maybe maybe they got a lot of parts for that that series 3 and they're like we got to sell
0:22:04Through all these parts first before we can get rid of this thing. So my other theory is that
0:22:09A lot of rumors out there about right the Apple watch hasn't changed in the whatever six seven years
0:22:14The Apple watch has existed. It hasn't changed. It looks basically the same
0:22:17Yeah, I know the dimensions are different but like it has the look that we all know is the Apple watch look
0:22:22So one of the rumors that's floating out there is this idea that Apple is gonna change it up
0:22:27But not in the way you necessarily think there's this thought about this
0:22:31ruggedized version of the Apple watch right and I wonder if that's part of the mix here to what Apple's planning for the future of
0:22:37The Apple watch is that it's a product line where the core of the watch electronically is the same
0:22:42but they do it in in some things that are different than just saying we have a stainless steel model like a
0:22:48Proper like ruggedized model and it's still the same internals as the regular one
0:22:52But it uses different bands and it's rugged and it's a totally different one
0:22:58And if they did that they could potentially offer other designs of the Apple watch
0:23:03Which would allow them to kind of like spread out a little bit and say some Apple watches look different from other ones
0:23:09They're all the same technically
0:23:11And you can still get the one that works with the bands that you're all familiar with
0:23:14But we've got a couple new models now
0:23:16We've got this rugged one and we've got this flat sided fancy
0:23:19Whatever one and I do wonder if that might be the direction that they're going in the long run is trying to iterate
0:23:26Outside of you know, like the screen and what the guts of the device are to make watches that look a lot different
0:23:34Even if they don't work any different
0:23:36It was a lot of fun that this in my opinion as somebody who isn't in the rumor game
0:23:41It was nothing but fun to see that the actual Apple watch 7 was a complete surprise and you know
0:23:46And I like to laugh and cook my claim chowder, but it also is fun
0:23:51It's fun to be surprised when they announce stuff, you know, everybody likes that, you know
0:23:55Start tossing out theories and one theory was that maybe the flat sided thing is the rugged Apple watch that Mark Gurman first reported
0:24:02I don't think that's the case at all. The rugged Apple watch
0:24:05Has to be something that looks rugged screams rugged because a g-shocks kind of thing
0:24:12Yeah, it's gonna pass it's gonna be bulky and and totally different but there'll be an Apple watch embedded in it, right?
0:24:18Yeah, and and Garmin has a terrific business making watches like that
0:24:23I know, you know, there's a bunch of other fitness tractors
0:24:26It is it's fairly competitive in the fitness area
0:24:29But Garmin in particular sort of has a market to their own for the ones that are big
0:24:34Chunky, you could go rock climbing with it. You can fall off your bike and it's going to be fine
0:24:41I mean Apple shows people falling off their bike for fall detection
0:24:44But you kind of don't want to smash your Apple watch screen against a rock no matter which one you have right now
0:24:49They call them Garmin on their website. They actually call them adventure watches, right?
0:24:53And that's but it has to the design language has to say to the person buying it
0:24:58This thing can take a beating so that flat one isn't it but the flap that the thing to me?
0:25:04I think that they did change
0:25:05I think they with series 3 to series 4 when you look at them side by side and like I said
0:25:11I had my series 3 on last week paired to a review unit phone
0:25:15It it does the the design change going to series 4
0:25:20It's one of those classic changes where when they made it it was like I see they you know
0:25:25It's sort of more curvy but then when you go backwards, you're like, ah, this thing looks like a box
0:25:30It's right
0:25:32It's like you go from the series 1 2 or 3 or the series 0 and then you get a series
0:25:374 5 6 and it's like I see it's a little bit curvier, you know a little bit bigger
0:25:41But then you go backwards and it's like this thing looks like a box with round sides
0:25:46Yeah, I tacked on I get it that there's an evolution there. I guess what I would say is that they're all still
0:25:51recognizably Apple watch as we have come to know it and if you're making an argument at some point that Apple needs to make a
0:25:58Like a clean break and do a totally different thing
0:26:02It would need to not look like an evolution of the Apple watch. It would need to look different
0:26:05I think that the problem is that the Apple watch has been so successful now and is so iconic in a way
0:26:11when you look at it you cannot look at a person in the news or on TV or in a movie and
0:26:18Not be like that's an Apple watch when you see it and that is a lot of product value and marketing value
0:26:24So for Apple to just say we're not making it anymore. We're doing something different
0:26:29Not that they won't do it
0:26:30But like they need a really really really good reason to make something that doesn't scan as Apple watch and I don't know if the rumor
0:26:38Of the flat-sided one was you know?
0:26:41Was it too subtle?
0:26:42Will it essentially still look like an Apple watch just subtly different was it oversold in terms of the rumor?
0:26:47Or is it something that we're not even seeing that's a different style of Apple watch altogether
0:26:51I don't know and this gets into something from the original Apple watch introduction where they really kind of played it up as part of the
0:26:58Watch industry right and talked about it being the most accurate watch, you know ever made and it in the watch industry
0:27:08Watches don't change right like a Rolex Submariner looks the one that Sean Connery is wearing in dr
0:27:14No from 1961 which was actually like a five or six year old
0:27:18Submariner that I think Cubby Broccoli like they do like he needs a watch and Cubby Broccoli was like oh here
0:27:25Let him wear my Rolex
0:27:26That's something a spy would wear to most people's eyes other than like the scratches it might have accumulated over 60 years
0:27:33It's almost exactly the same design as a Rolex Submariner
0:27:36You could try to buy today like that's that's how watches work Rolex doesn't
0:27:41Jerk their designs around back and forth just to say this is new
0:27:46It's sort of like you establish a classic and that's it right and then you establish other product lines around it
0:27:51Which Apple hasn't really done and that's that's sort of what I'm getting at with the idea of do you do a ruggedized one?
0:27:56And you do something with a different look you could diversify your watch line in that way
0:28:02Style wise while still keeping the technology in it, you know in a series the same like yeah
0:28:08I was at the jewelry store the other week and
0:28:10They had Speedmaster watches there and like they look exactly like the watches that the Apollo astronauts. Yeah. Yeah
0:28:17Yeah, they're not but they are they're because why would you give up like you've got you've got the astronaut watch
0:28:22I'm gonna keep selling it right? You've got the watch Buzz Aldrin war on the moon. You're not gonna beat it
0:28:28You're never gonna beat that for cool. That's like one of the coolest watches ever made
0:28:32It's exactly true. So that's my theory basically if like six months from now
0:28:37There's a new iPhone SE and it has flat sides and maybe the price Apple watch Apple watch se yeah Apple watch
0:28:44I keep saying iPhone se Apple watch se thank you Jason for saving me
0:28:48Maybe what happened is everybody knew that?
0:28:51There's gonna be a new Apple watch in September and there's this flat design thing floating around the supply chain
0:28:58And prototype changes so people put two and two together and think well, that's the new Apple watch
0:29:03for September, but wasn't it was something else that's
0:29:07That was never intended to ship now
0:29:10It's intended to ship six months from now or maybe even a year from now and let the other se have two years as the SE
0:29:17model
0:29:18Something like that. That's my theory because it does to me. I think it looks plainer. I don't think that flat side design
0:29:24I think it's a legit design and looks like something that you could actually see Apple making but that to me looks like a
0:29:32$199 Apple watch it does not look at all like what would sell for a $500
0:29:38stainless steel Apple watch or the
0:29:41Even more expensive or mez models, etc. Yeah, I think that the existence of the current Apple watch se
0:29:47Would be theoretically an argument against what you're saying
0:29:50The problem is that the fact that the SE has come out twice now, you know two cycles of Apple watch announcements
0:29:56And it hasn't moved down the price the price list does make me wonder if there's a problem with it
0:30:02Like they can't make it right it is not fulfilling the need that the three is fulfilling
0:30:08you know working with the competitors that are trackers and
0:30:10Maybe they do go back to the drawing board and say why don't we do a watch OS based?
0:30:16Fitness tracker so like let's simplify and we want to hit that price point that we want it to be cheap
0:30:22And we may call it an Apple watch or we may not
0:30:25But it's it the goal is not to have everything in it every sensor
0:30:29Like let's let's engineer this to be our place down there at the bottom of the product line where we can compete with other fitness
0:30:36trackers right well while still being committed to Apple watch up here higher up and you know
0:30:41most Apple watch buyers won't buy that watch because
0:30:43It's it really is just a fitness tracker, and it doesn't have any of the niceties of it
0:30:47It's possible that that's the scenario here is that the SE it turns out you know they built a cheaper Apple watch
0:30:53But it's really not yeah what they want yeah the Apple watch
0:30:57Se came out last year, and it is the the Apple watch series 6 form factor
0:31:04But it doesn't have the EKG feature, and it doesn't have the blood oxygen. Yeah, right
0:31:09I think it's basically an Apple watch series 4
0:31:13I want to say it's like an amalgamation of a couple of different Apple watch series right there. They kind of put together
0:31:22so they couldn't give it a
0:31:25Series number of its own in order to have something a little lower down on the price list they can't like that the that it's still
0:31:30The series 3 they know that it has all those issues with its processor and with the screen size and like they they can't want
0:31:37They keep it there so the real question is is the SE its true successor
0:31:42Or was the SE sort of something intended to do that couldn't do it
0:31:45And they went back to the drawing board to make an even cheaper watch right and as much as our developer friends
0:31:50Are sort of like sigh because now there's this other screen size with totally different. It's not just shrunk
0:31:58It's a totally different design language for the series
0:32:02before for
0:32:04screens that their Apple watch complications and their apps have to support well Apple has to support all that too because they're selling a
0:32:12Brand-new watch and if they're gonna be selling this brand new you know to a customer brand new
0:32:17Series 3 Apple watch that means watch OS has to support it for at least two years
0:32:23I would think as a minimum my favorite watch face is utility which is one of those pre
0:32:30Series 4 watch faces and this is one of those examples where I mean my argument is that Apple should update all those watch faces
0:32:36For the bigger screens, but I think one of the reasons they don't is because they're they got to support them on the
0:32:42Series 3 they're like they can't not have watch faces for series 3 so they keep it around and it's it's a face that will
0:32:49Work with the series 3 complications and that smaller screen size and so yeah
0:32:53Everybody's being held back by that device being there and again if they made a low-cost tracker
0:32:59Maybe you know maybe it's safer
0:33:02It's easier for them to say it only supports a certain number of faces, and it only supports the certain kinds of apps
0:33:08It doesn't need to be a full-on Apple watch or maybe it can be I don't know, but it's an interesting idea
0:33:13I like I think Apple watch is fascinating
0:33:16And this is why we've been talking about it all this time
0:33:18Because there's a lot of potential there for Apple to do way more than they've done
0:33:21During the first handful of years of its existence, and I think it has been a successful product for them
0:33:27I think it's probably been maybe even more successful than they expected and
0:33:31So where do they go from here?
0:33:33How does this thing change over the long haul and can they do more than just sort of a new model every year?
0:33:39Yeah
0:33:40We know what the big three fitness stats are because it's one of those things that they got right in addition to this sort of iconic
0:33:46Industrial design where you can just tell like you said when you're watching a Colbert showing like oh Stephen Colbert's wearing an Apple watch
0:33:52You know it the big three one of the things they got right are the Rings, right? You've got your calories
0:33:58Your exercise minutes and your stand hours and a watch that only did those
0:34:04There's an awful lot of people who you like and you're like, oh, but if you spend another
0:34:08$150 you can get EK in there like no no. No, I want I want the exercise
0:34:12I want the exercise and the stand and the calories
0:34:15Yeah
0:34:15and and maybe maybe there no apps other than the Apple apps on there and it's a slimmed down number of apps and there's no
0:34:20Third-party apps and it really is more like a watch OS based fitness tracker than it is an Apple watch as we know it today
0:34:27And there's a market for that without necessarily eroding the whole Apple watch market
0:34:32Anyway, that's my spitball theory
0:34:35I'm coming around. I'm coming around. It's like they've got to the two markets. I see them
0:34:39Looking at and thinking hmm. There's that rugged Garmin g-shock market and then there's the fitness tracker market, right?
0:34:47And you see some of the people with the fitness trackers are really really small. They're almost more like bracelets than watches or really?
0:34:53They are bracelets. So I would say those are the two markets they're looking at
0:34:56All right. What about this? I wrote about this a little bit. I have it in our notes
0:35:00No lightning for you iPhone users. No lightning for you. You have to go to USB C. No, that's not true
0:35:06I still don't think I don't care what the European Union says
0:35:09I don't think there's ever gonna be a USB C Apple watch or now I'm saying Apple watch iPhone
0:35:14I don't know. I could see it at some point regardless of what the EU does. I also think that Apple
0:35:22Kind of doesn't want ports anymore
0:35:25And the question is sort of like well
0:35:28What are ports good for and ports do have?
0:35:30advantages that including the fact that they charge faster and that they do faster data transfer and that at least the way
0:35:38Apple's devices have been engineered for a while now
0:35:41Having the port is sort of the only way to save something that is otherwise basically a brick
0:35:45But you know, there are other options like Apple has experimented with the smart connector stuff on the iPad
0:35:54Which is a data connection as well as a power connection. It's not fast, but it is a data connection
0:36:00You could imagine a mag safe version that actually also has some data connectors
0:36:04You know
0:36:04If you get the right cable and you can plug it into a computer and you can do a reset on it or something like that
0:36:10I think I
0:36:12The longer we go the less terrified I am of the idea of a portless iPhone
0:36:18but I also realized that a portless iPhone can't happen until
0:36:23Apple is
0:36:26Sure that it isn't going to cost it a fortune in support when people brick their devices
0:36:32Right like so I had this like I have faith on this level that it's in Apple's own
0:36:37self-interest to make sure that the biggest problem with having a portless iPhone which is
0:36:42What happens if it breaks is?
0:36:45Not a problem because that is gonna come down on Apple like Apple has to support all of those devices
0:36:49You know plugging in your iPhone is a great way to get your iPhone back up and running if something dies
0:36:54So I think it could happen. I'm not putting it past them. They put USB C on everything else
0:36:59They could put it on an iPhone
0:37:00But I do think that the way they've been going is they want to make ports obsolete
0:37:06the European Commission's
0:37:08Decision draft decision to say all all these devices including all phones must have USB C ports
0:37:15prompted me to get my
0:37:18Here's why I think the iPhone is still on lightning and will continue to be post off my chest most of the time
0:37:24I have the idea that I think I could get this out in about a
0:37:28Thousand to fifteen hundred words and it'll take me a day and I'll do it and then boom it spirals and it's
0:37:354,000 words and it's taken me a week and I haven't showered and you know, where's where's John?
0:37:42Oh, he's you know, don't dance. It's 4 p.m. And you haven't had lunch yet. Yep. I know it don't bother your father
0:37:47Right. I thought this was gonna be one of those. I was like this is gonna be awful
0:37:52This is gonna take me some I've got so many thoughts
0:37:55I think it requires so much nuance and everybody just wants that the proponents of USB C
0:38:00Just want to say I want one plug that I can take everywhere
0:38:04I've already got you I have to have USB C for my iPad and and or my MacBook and I'm all in on Apple stuff
0:38:11Anyway, right. I've got a MacBook. I've got an iPad Pro. So I've got these USB C ports USB C has higher capacity
0:38:18you know, you can charge up to 85 watts I forget what the
0:38:22Maximum speed is and it does data much faster and you can you know
0:38:28Do things now like shoot ProRes video which is like six gigabits per minute and or gigabytes per minute
0:38:36I forget how it might be six gigabytes per minute. It's it's humongous
0:38:40And you got to get it off the phone and getting it off the phone with a lightning cable that maxes out at USB
0:38:46C two speeds is sort of you know, it's no it's ridiculous
0:38:51slow I get it
0:38:53That's one of the strongest arguments for USB C is just that if Apple has these pro phones that are just consuming so much data
0:38:59That you might actually need to get a decent cable connection in there to get all that stuff off all sorts of good reasons to go
0:39:07To USB C and like I wrote in my piece like when iPads moved to USB C. You can look at my reviews
0:39:12I never complained about it. It was you know, and I'm in the middle. I have me personally
0:39:17I've got all of these cables everywhere. I'm fine with it if they did it. It's okay, but
0:39:23That argument that the proponents of that are single-minded in favor of the technical advantages of USB C and the convenience
0:39:32advantages for them personally
0:39:34based on all the stuff they already have and just having one plug they could take with them to a hotel when they travel and
0:39:40They're not looking at it at all from Apple's perspective of having like seriously like a billion
0:39:48iPhone users around the world most of whom
0:39:52don't I I believe most iPhone users certainly don't own a Mac of any kind and
0:39:57Probably don't own an iPad, you know, and they might not you know, many of them
0:40:02It's the only thing that we would call a personal computer is their iPhone
0:40:05These people do not want to replace their cables and I cannot emphasize to underline that enough times with a thick enough
0:40:13Oh
0:40:15Sharpie, I know the pandemic has made this harder, but there was a period in there where?
0:40:20it was still very easy to go to hotels and almost always find a clock radio with a
0:40:27With a big iPod connector on it the 30 pin connector
0:40:31Yeah, because everybody invested in that ecosystem because the iPhone was so popular now look there is an argument to be made that
0:40:38That that's why you want everything on USB C because you don't want to have hotels
0:40:44Investing in these things that don't do the right port for half for the iPhones but do for Android or vice versa
0:40:50Everybody wants everything to be standardized great
0:40:53Like I get that argument but your argument is something that us very techie people
0:40:58I think are so easy to cast aside. It's a little bit like the new version of Safari
0:41:03Where we all talked about it over the summer, but then regular people just get their software update and they immediately say
0:41:09Oh, what the hell is this? How did this happen? Like how was this allowed to happen?
0:41:13We're like, yeah, we know we could have told you well guess what?
0:41:16Everybody who has an iPhone who gets a new iPhone that doesn't have the right plug and every accessory that they've bought over the last
0:41:24Five seven years is no longer functional without an adapter or a new plug or something like that
0:41:31They're gonna be really angry about it and which is not to say that that's a blocker, right?
0:41:36That that's not a reason not to do it Apple already did it once but it is a reason to be
0:41:40Really really sure that when you make the change again a thing
0:41:44I think people don't think about enough if Apple makes this change
0:41:47It needs to stick because Apple is not gonna make a generation of iPhones that have a different port and then the next year a different
0:41:54One right the last time they did this they were committing to lightning for a long time
0:41:59So if they do it again if it's to USB C, it needs to be like
0:42:04Confident that it's gonna stay there because it doesn't want to move again
0:42:12Phil Schiller introduced lightning in
0:42:142012 somebody dug this up on Twitter. I forget who sent me the mention or something. It was the 2012
0:42:21iPhone 4 introduction
0:42:24and
0:42:26obviously in
0:42:282012 Steve Jobs was
0:42:30Dead he died in
0:42:332011 so it was the first iPhone introduction
0:42:36I mean, obviously the iPhone 4s was introduced days before he died so he wasn't there for that
0:42:42But so it wasn't the first Steve jobless
0:42:45iPhone introduction, but it was the first one where he was dead
0:42:49Phil Schiller handled the the heavy lifting of the keynote and introduced the lightning port on the iPhone 5 and
0:42:58Said at the time it was it would be their port for the next decade to come
0:43:03And somebody posited well then they're definitely gonna keep it for 10 years because Phil Schiller is gonna want to be proven
0:43:08Right that it was 10 years and I'm like Phil Schiller does not care if it was eight years or nine years or ten years
0:43:14I mean a decade is you know a loose term he
0:43:18wasn't like he was promising 10 years of lightning but
0:43:22That it is true though that in all of the years 15 generations of iPhones
0:43:27they've switched once and the switch that they made the one the first time was from a
0:43:33Port that they had invented
0:43:35It wasn't in the original iPod you might remember when they switch because first two
0:43:41iPods used firewire and
0:43:43Actually generation used the dock connector actually had a firewire port on them
0:43:49Well with a little flap that you could cover it up with because otherwise, you know, everything would get in there and destroy it
0:43:55Yeah
0:43:57My thing is it's I think it's too late now to switch to USB C
0:44:01And I think that it was never a good time for the iPhone to switch to USB C. I think it is
0:44:05extremely telling like Apple isn't the Apple that we knew when you and I were younger and and computers were
0:44:14the the most casual person who bought a computer was still somewhat of a nerd compared to the general public right like
0:44:21everybody didn't have computers and then eventually especially with the iPhone now they do and Apple serves a
0:44:28very
0:44:30Different market with people like that and I think it is extremely telling that last month
0:44:36Apple introduced two brand new
0:44:39mostly consumer priced
0:44:42iPads the iPad mini at $500 and the new no adjective iPad starting at 329 and
0:44:49The just plain iPad still has lightning
0:44:54It's a different market and for those people like people who just want a plain old
0:45:00Right at this point we can say it's an old, you know the old style iPad
0:45:04it it speaks to the
0:45:08their
0:45:10Understanding of the different markets out there
0:45:12I don't I don't think I agree with that just because that old iPad has lightning because the old
0:45:18iPad design has lightning and it's cheap because they haven't changed the design right and they they
0:45:22Updated the mini to use the iPad Air design which last year got the USBC so state-of-the-art is USBC
0:45:29But they're not going to go back and insert USBC in the old cheap iPad because it is
0:45:34Basically a relic from five years ago that they update just to keep it alive
0:45:39So I don't think that necessarily says anything about their philosophy about connectors
0:45:44I think that the USBC on the Mac and on the iPad obviously they've completely embraced it
0:45:50But you know the thing is I mean and also I would throw out there
0:45:53I suspect that if Apple could have seen the future they wouldn't have introduced lightning
0:45:58because lightning and USBC are pretty similar and USBC solves most of the problems that lightning solved and but but the
0:46:05USBC was so slow in coming along that Apple basically
0:46:08Invented their own thing first
0:46:10But now it's everywhere on iPhones and on their trackpads and their mice and their air pod chart
0:46:19To charging ports are all lightning right? It's this light duty
0:46:22charging
0:46:24Leaving data aside charging plug that they've invested so much in and it takes I'm not it's not I'm not putting them past them
0:46:32To have a grand master to strategy to bring everything else to USBC
0:46:37What gives me pause on the iPhone is just that they seem to also have this other grand master strategy
0:46:43Which is getting rid of all the ports and does that on that particular product because right the I?
0:46:48The iPad and the Mac adopted USBC a long time ago
0:46:51But the iPhone has just steadfastly not and there's got to be a reason right there's got to be a reason
0:46:58That they don't want to do that otherwise they could have put it on the pro models a couple of years ago
0:47:03And just said well pro models. They need more
0:47:05We're doing USBC up there and instead they just they it feels like they either don't want to or they're not ready
0:47:12But I think don't want to is probably the answer that when they remove the headphone jack and you mentioned about like water ingress and things
0:47:20Like that you can make a waterproof USBC device
0:47:22But I think it is telling that Apple's one portless device the Apple watch is the one where they actually say yes
0:47:28Go ahead and swim with it right like it would be easier for them to
0:47:33Do true waterproofing if they could get rid of that port and they built magsafe so that they've got a new charging
0:47:40Infrastructure like all the pieces are there to say they don't want another port on the iPhone
0:47:45they think the port is the problem for a
0:47:47device as mobile as an iPhone I
0:47:51Think if you showed the typical user and the problem with the I I think that there's a very big difference
0:47:57I think with iPad Pro and and MacBook pros the people who buy them tend to be more
0:48:06Lowercase p pro they tend to the reason they're spending more for these higher price more capable faster
0:48:13Devices is that they are more, you know, they actually need them for their work or they're more
0:48:20They're just enthusiasts technical enthusiasts and they want the better product
0:48:25They want a nicer product and they're willing to pay for it and they're willing to put up with things like new ports and getting
0:48:31New cables and stuff like that
0:48:32The problem with the iPhone is even with the pro and I think it's great that they really are
0:48:36Differentiating the iPhone
0:48:39iPhones pro from the non pros with actual not just decoration like shiny steel instead of matte aluminum
0:48:46But actual technical improvements like it's seriously more advanced camera system
0:48:51I think that's great
0:48:53And I really think that that justifies like the $200 price difference from an iPhone 13 to an iPhone 13 Pro
0:49:00I think you get 200 I said this on my last episode with Matthew Panzarino
0:49:04Yeah that it's $200 worth of camera alone in there and if you combine it with the Pro motion display
0:49:11You know
0:49:11You really feel like you're getting 200 bucks worth of actual technical don't even even if they looked identical and they both use the exact same
0:49:19Stainless steel or aluminum finish you feel like there's 200 bucks worth of stuff in there
0:49:24The problem for Apple is there's there's a gazillion
0:49:28people who are not pro at all who just buy the pro models because they either want the camera or they just want the nicest iPhone or
0:49:35Yeah, you know they like the color better for sure right people just go in and go I like that color better
0:49:39And they're like well, that's $200 more and they're like well, okay sure I don't care
0:49:44And see well eyes I still think and then thing to me is if they switched now
0:49:51They switched with lightning and then they kept it for at least nine years, right?
0:49:55It would be 2012 through 2021 are all lightning and so if they switch next year
0:50:01It would be nine years of lightning if they switch to USB C is USB C going to be around for the next nine years
0:50:07I I don't think so. I don't or at least I don't think it's gonna be state-of-the-art
0:50:11I really don't so this is where I think the eat that we're segueing into the EC thing. Yeah
0:50:16So I I'm gonna give a little bit of a defense of USB C because USB C is as much a port
0:50:24As a connection standard right it is a port and it's way better than USB A because there's only you can plug it in either
0:50:30Way and it doesn't matter and we already have seen that there's all sorts of kinds of things that use that port including
0:50:35USB C various versions of USB 3 that run on that USB C port
0:50:40Thunderbolt that runs on that USB C port and my counter-argument would be the USB a port because the USB a port
0:50:47Basically came into existence
0:50:49in real the real world in 1998 when the iMac came out and
0:50:54There's still USB a stuff in 2021
0:50:57Okay, so that USB a has had like a 24 year run of that connector now what has run over it has changed
0:51:06And it reached its limit at some point, but that connector was able to do USB 3 kind of speeds
0:51:12And that's a far cry from what was there in 1998
0:51:15It's also true that and I did this you can take a hockey puck mouse from the original iMac and plug it in to my iMac
0:51:22Pro that's got USB a ports and it works
0:51:25It works or you can use a little adapter and plug it into one of the new iMacs that only has USB C and it
0:51:30Totally works, so I guess what I'm saying is I kind of believe that as ports go the USB C plug that shape
0:51:38will probably be with us for a while at least potentially because
0:51:43Within that plug you can evolve the connection technology
0:51:47And we've already seen that like USB C has USB 3 it has
0:51:50Thunderbolt like there's a whole bunch of stuff that can live inside that plug and the plug it might
0:51:55Survive for a long time because the USB a plug which was a terrible plug survived for an awful long time
0:52:01So I think that would be my counter-argument is USB C as a pretty generic
0:52:06Thing you stick in a hole might have legs
0:52:11That's not to say that I think that it should be mandatory
0:52:14But I do think that there is at least a lot of innovation that can probably happen inside that plug
0:52:20Where you're changing what you know and they'll be in
0:52:23Compatibilities and everybody will get frustrated because they'll be like what do you mean I can only plug this into this kind of port
0:52:28It plugs into this other computer
0:52:30Why you know you take a thunderbolt thing and plug it into an iPad air and it won't work because it only does USB C
0:52:36It doesn't do Thunderbolt like there's a lot of frustration
0:52:39But at least the plug is the one plug and I so I that would be my defense of USB C
0:52:44Is is USB a had a long run USB C is actually way better
0:52:48just because you don't have to plug it in twice to plug it in right and it may survive on that even as the
0:52:54Underlying technology using that plug keeps changing. I think you're right that will see USB C
0:53:01sockets
0:53:03For the rest of our lives
0:53:05Maybe the rest of our lives and it might be on the I might be it might be the output of
0:53:10Chargers that you stick in the wall for a very long time
0:53:13Yeah, I just do not believe that nine years from now. It'll be the best Apple can do for the thing that you
0:53:20Use for data to get out of your iPhone now, maybe it'll all be wired
0:53:24Maybe the plan is to it'll all be wireless and they've got a new wireless thing in mind that will transfer things like
0:53:32humongous ProRes video at speeds that are comparable to
0:53:37Thunderbolt or something like that wireless or maybe it's some other but I Apple likes to make
0:53:45New plugs and the new plugs they make they are to serve
0:53:49purposes of
0:53:51This is really nice and and a great new example is the way you plug the new iMacs the 24 inch
0:53:58iMac
0:54:00M1 iMacs into power and you know what else they really really like of late
0:54:06magnet
0:54:08magnets I
0:54:10Always every time they come out with something else with magnets
0:54:12I always think of that scene in the graduate where the guy comes up the Dustin Hoffman and he goes I got once I got
0:54:18One word for you plastics plastics. That's a future plan
0:54:21I want to go to some if I time-traveled back like ten years ago
0:54:25I'd go to somebody and I'd say I got one word for you magnets
0:54:28It's all magnets all the way down. I
0:54:31Would love something like magsafe
0:54:36But like the magsafe from max of your
0:54:40but tinier like way tinier, yeah, and
0:54:45You know and and the the what do you call the thing on the back of the iPad pros the data connector the smart connector?
0:54:53smart connector
0:54:54Something like that and it could do
0:54:56Charging it could do data now that at very high speeds the iMac
0:55:0224 inch iMac, I mean they have that they basically in the wired in the wire that's going there is also Ethernet and
0:55:09So and then the Ethernet's on the brick, so they're already sort of like headed in that direction. So the idea is
0:55:14What's great about magnets is that they hold fast?
0:55:18But they also hold properly aligned so that all the pins are touching like a port
0:55:22But it's a magnet right and you could then do data and power over it. Yeah, and I wonder looking at the
0:55:31EU EC
0:55:33Regulations and they carve out a big exception for wireless which still drives me nuts that we call these things wireless when they have to
0:55:40Be touching right? It's just like I know that it's I'd someone of my own
0:55:44It's like my crusade against Ariel versus Helvet. Well more people care about that
0:55:50But I it really bothers me that that we call
0:55:53Wireless charging this thing that you have to be in physical contact
0:55:57like we wouldn't call Wi-Fi wireless if you had to have your device touching a
0:56:02Sir, you know like if you if you lose contact you lose your network
0:56:07Well, nobody would call that wireless networking, but we call it wireless charging. But anyway inductive charging
0:56:13The aka wireless is is accepted in the EC
0:56:17Guidelines so a device that only charges by what they call wireless
0:56:22Which is inductive is exempt and wouldn't need to include USB C and and it's not like they have the Apple Watch in mind
0:56:30I don't think but the Apple Watch therefore is
0:56:32Would fall under that and it's not like the EC is proposing that Apple has to add a USB C port to Apple Watch
0:56:40There are their description already says that you know such a price
0:56:44It's it's products that have charging ports have to include USB C
0:56:49Would something like what we're saying like a smart connector with a magnetic connection like, you know, maybe two
0:56:56Two make, you know little smart connector things on the bottom of the phone
0:57:01But then the cable would connect magnetically would that count as a port or would it count as wireless? I
0:57:06I think it's a question like if you put data on a magnetic connector
0:57:12even on the mag safe that we've currently got if there was if there was data in there would the
0:57:17European Commission say hmm. No, that's not now. It's not just charging now
0:57:22You're doing data and you should do USB C instead and and from their vantage point
0:57:26I would say also what they don't want to have happen and I think it's an admirable goal is they don't want everybody to go
0:57:33To charging paddles and have 80 different charging paddles each one for an individual phone model, right?
0:57:39They don't want that kind of a terrible kind of thing
0:57:42The thing is though that the Qi charging is a standard and what Apple is doing and this is unlike lightning
0:57:48Apple is building on top of Qi so they've got Qi charging support any
0:57:54Charger will do but then mag safe does a little bit more and that might be their model going forward is yeah
0:58:01yeah, yeah, we got the standard but
0:58:03Standard Plus is us and we do more with mag safe
0:58:09Then then you get from from Qi and would that work?
0:58:12Is that the kind of Apple like game that would pass muster as being like, alright
0:58:17well
0:58:18you support the standard and we're not gonna stop you from doing more than the standard as long as you support the standard or
0:58:23Are they gonna be like hold on wait a second?
0:58:25You mean if you want to transfer data, you have to buy a proprietary cable that only Apple sells
0:58:29And would they make a stink about that? And I don't know
0:58:33I mean that's the problem with with
0:58:35Regulation like this is that like I appreciate the idea that we don't want a wasteland where every phone has its own proprietary charger
0:58:41but I also don't appreciate the idea that
0:58:43everything in technology has to basically arrest its development because a
0:58:48Bureaucratic group has decided that we've reached Nirvana
0:58:52They're regularly one they're regulating the thing that that the market has already solved and sure it didn't resolve down to one
0:58:59Well, it resolved down to two and it everybody's fine with it. Nobody's clamoring
0:59:04Yes, in fact if you look at the charger side of it
0:59:07It's resolved down to one right like there is no doubt like that the new Kindles just got announced like a week ago
0:59:13Kindle paperwhites and they've got USB on them USB C. Thank God for years. It's been the awful micro USB and
0:59:21It's like okay
0:59:24It is gonna happen that every device really on the charging side all these little devices
0:59:30Almost everything's gonna have USB C anyway, and it's good and all the chargers that they're gonna sell are gonna be USB C
0:59:36Even if it's lightning on the other end like the world has already kind of adopted this so it's unclear to me why
0:59:43we need
0:59:45more than that and and
0:59:47because I mean when you and Ben talk about this on Stretachery, it's like
0:59:51Sometimes markets don't work markets do need to be regulated there need to be rules, but the power of
0:59:58Markets is that in ideal circumstances you get a result like this
1:00:03Which is finally after a lot of waste after 15 years of dumb stuff
1:00:07We have a single plug that pretty much everybody's gonna use and that that part is great
1:00:11Like USB C is gonna be with us for the rest of our lives
1:00:14Even if it's only in like just every gadget that charges as USB C
1:00:20The the the the line from somebody at the EC that I think it was the same clown who?
1:00:26Said that if Apple wants to still include lightning they can just put two ports on their iPhone
1:00:30I it's like he said we're not we're not preventing anybody from innovating
1:00:36it's like but the the second half of that that goes unsaid is
1:00:39We're not preventing anybody from innovating we're just saying you can't
1:00:45You can't invent anything better than the rest of the competition
1:00:50Which is actually innovation because I'm saying like but like that this to me is what Apple does like
1:00:57And it's a you mentioned it like when lightning
1:01:00Debuted nine years ago. It was so much better than any other
1:01:04Charger on any other phone or phone like device than anybody had ever seen
1:01:10It was so much better than micro USB and and and so much better than the 30-pin
1:01:17Adapter that Apple replaced it with and it's like what if Apple has something in mind that does to lightning what lightning did to the?
1:01:2530-pin adapter that and it and also would be way better than
1:01:29USB C and you know maybe well
1:01:33Yeah
1:01:34And and my my guess is that if Apple put support they'll just use
1:01:38USB C because they seem happy with it and they could do right they could do Thunderbolt in there and like I think the connector
1:01:44Is not the problem
1:01:45I think it's exactly what we've been talking about here, which is Apple seems to be looking at the port and saying
1:01:51But what if we did this through something that was external that I wouldn't have to worry about
1:01:57Ingress into there or the port hardware failing because there are no moving parts, and it's aligned magnetically
1:02:04And if you combine that one physical combination or connection type with the wireless stuff that we've got
1:02:11We've got this solved, and we don't need it anymore the one thing
1:02:14I know you've set up an iMac too
1:02:16And it's like plugging the iMac thing into the back of the new iMac is fun. It's so satisfying
1:02:22I god I did it and it's like I'm sitting there setting it up on my guy
1:02:26I can't you know you get a new computer, and you're excited, and you know and you also you know you get these review units
1:02:33You know you have a deadline so you kind of want to get it going and you know so you and it's like
1:02:36Instead of wanting to turn it on I'm like I'm just gonna sit here and play with the plug and it's like chung chung chung
1:02:43Chunk chunk, but like you mentioned that thing and I think it's really interesting is magnetically connected
1:02:50it lots and lots of power and
1:02:52High speed data because that's how the Ethernet comes in it does it do gigabit Ethernet, or yeah
1:02:59yeah, so gigabit Ethernet speeds over a
1:03:02magnetic connection yeah, I think they're literally you know I think they're literally putting the
1:03:08Ethernet
1:03:10Wires and attaching them to pins on the back, so it's like there
1:03:15They just hardwired it in but I think this opens up you get a little bit of maybe this angle of Apple's vision for the future
1:03:21Which Apple's never done docking stations?
1:03:24But you could argue that this iMac kind of has a docking station
1:03:28And it is one way to make your computer thinner and cleaner and lighter and all of those things that Apple likes is to say
1:03:34hide that plug
1:03:37Behind your desk, and I start to wonder about like a future a bigger iMac or maybe they'll call it iMac Pro
1:03:43It's like I really like that brick on that iMac and I start to wonder
1:03:47Could there be optionally like more stuff on that brick because I got a bunch of crap under my desk
1:03:53Like cables snaking out of my iMac to hubs under my desk in order to do that
1:03:59And I wonder if Apple could be like nah we get it
1:04:01We don't want those ports on the back of the computer either we put them on the brick and on a laptop
1:04:05What would it be like it'd be a little different because you don't want to like yank out your hard drive or something when the somebody
1:04:11Brushes against your computer
1:04:12But there is stuff like when you're docked at a desk with your laptop
1:04:15That it would certainly be a lot cleaner if you could do your magsafe thing and then everything kind of did the right thing and now
1:04:22Did the drives and did all of that stuff? I don't know how much of this they I'm sure they've talked about it
1:04:28But how much of this will actually come to fruition, but I do think there's some truth in that of like Apple
1:04:33idealizing that one way to get their idealized products is
1:04:37To push some of this junk like down the down the wire if they can
1:04:42and and to make a cleaner experience kind of at the at the
1:04:47little beautiful object that Apple has made and sold to you right and they're absolutely not going to do it and
1:04:53Wouldn't work anyway by going to the USBC
1:04:57Consortium before they unveiled the products and saying here's the idea. We've got fellas
1:05:02We're gonna do this and here's some schematics
1:05:04Can you imagine that iMac with like a USBC port on the back and the center is like yep
1:05:08There's your power just plug this plug this thing in and it's USBC like I just can't envision it
1:05:13And that's what they do on the laptops right now, and it's fine
1:05:16But the rumors are that they're also trying to not do that in the future that they that they really do think
1:05:23magnetic attach
1:05:25Magsafe for laptops is superior, which I would agree. I bought one of those things just like, Syracuse
1:05:30It's actually the same one that he bought I have one of those little things that pushes into the USBC
1:05:34port on my laptop
1:05:35That's magnetic and then it's got a little magnetic cable
1:05:38And so I'm all I'm back to mag safe even despite Apple right it's superior. It's a better thing for laptops
1:05:45Sorry, it really is all right. Let me take a break here and thank our next sponsor also a brand new sponsor
1:05:51It's a company called Ernest
1:05:53It's time to break out of your student debt cycle and earnest can help you by
1:06:00refinancing your student loan
1:06:02Earnest offers low-rate student loan refinancing and you can check your rate risk-free in just two minutes with earnest you get
1:06:10Radically flexible payments and you can pick your loan term student loans are in the news all the time
1:06:16It's a real pain, but you can get low interest right now
1:06:19refinance save money
1:06:22reduce your loan term and
1:06:25Combine multiple loans into a simple single monthly payment and if you have questions
1:06:30You can talk to a real live human at earnest for help isn't it time you stopped feeling overwhelmed by your student debt?
1:06:38They are offering our listeners on this show
1:06:40$100 cash bonus refinance your student debt at earnest e a r n
1:06:46est
1:06:48earnest comm slash the talk show
1:06:51Terms and conditions apply that's earnest comm slash the talk show get $100 cash bonus in addition
1:06:59to low interest rates
1:07:02Let's see what else we got
1:07:06iPhones 13 and brave I
1:07:09Used my last show with panzerino to talk about the iPhone 13s in detail, but I was intrigued
1:07:14I listened to the latest version of upgrade with you and and the melodious voiced Mike Hurley
1:07:21Speaking about your iPhone 13 purchases, which iPhone 13 did you buy for yourself?
1:07:26Jason so I I bought a iPhone 13 mini for myself
1:07:31Because the the size the size and the weight and my use cases
1:07:37over
1:07:39sort of overwrited the extra camera and the
1:07:42Promotion it's like those are nice
1:07:46But Mike was aghast when I said this too because he's all in on a pro max and he loves promotion all that and the promotions
1:07:52Good that I kept I felt like I had to keep saying to Mike no promotion is good
1:07:56I just little phone is better for me
1:07:58I prefer better phone and and really the test was because like you I got four iPhones
1:08:04I got every model and I've been spending time with them
1:08:06And promotion is good. But what I realized was when I went back to the mini I
1:08:13Didn't miss it and I was relieved to be in the smaller phone
1:08:17so I
1:08:18Realized that the mini really is the right one for me and I'm gonna live it up this year because all rumors suggest that it's not
1:08:25Coming back next year. So I'll I'm gonna I'm gonna enjoy it while I can I think it's entirely possible is an aging eyes
1:08:32Same thing and that I would have been more enamored of the higher than 60
1:08:39frame or Hertz refresh rates
1:08:42even ten years ago
1:08:44Than I am now I do see it and you even mentioned on the show
1:08:49You really see it when you're scrolling because as you're scrolling
1:08:53You're reading a long article on a web page and as you're scrolling
1:08:56You can still read the text as it's moving if you read content while you scroll your iPhone
1:09:02You need promotion right because it is vastly superior. I generally don't do that. Maybe that's that I've trained myself
1:09:09Yeah to do that. Yeah on my iPhone, but I don't do that
1:09:12And so I don't really miss it that much
1:09:14But boy when you start to scroll and you realize that it just the text never breaks up
1:09:18It just is crystal clear as you scroll it is
1:09:20spectacularly good and you said that I was like that's a good test and I was actually out and I stopped on the sidewalk and
1:09:26I was just open something and I was scrolling I was like, yeah
1:09:29I I can kind of read that and I got home and and went I actually went to the iPad
1:09:34Mini is just the nearest thing and I was like scrolling it and which does not have promotion
1:09:39I was like no I cannot read that while I smell and I'm like I'm okay with that to me
1:09:43The big win with promotion is the battery life change or advantages
1:09:48That it extends battery life further like if you're streaming video
1:09:54Because of the lower
1:09:57Refresh rates not the visually impressive Wow
1:10:00You can read while you scroll but the hey your battery light lasts even longer because if you're watching a 30 frames per second
1:10:08Apple TV plus show your screen only reflect refreshes 30 frames per second
1:10:13But all of the iPhones have an enormous battery life jump this year. It is it is
1:10:19the most it's it's kind of amazing like that I linked to the
1:10:24YouTube video where the the 13 mini that you bought has
1:10:29longer battery life than last year's regular sized iPhone 12
1:10:33That's bananas and and remember last year and the year before were pretty good in terms of battery life improvements
1:10:40so if you look at the
1:10:42Sort of like three or four year like if you're coming from a four or five year old phone the battery life will
1:10:47Stun you plus your old battery was probably bad, right?
1:10:50Cuz it's old so but even if it was fresh
1:10:52The battery life improvements will stun you and that was part of it too is like the the mini last year didn't get great battery
1:10:58Life, but it kind of didn't matter because I didn't go anywhere because it was a pandemic
1:11:02But that makes that phone a lot better like having a longer battery life on the mini makes it a lot better and that's why I
1:11:07think we talked about the promotion stuff and I'm sure promotion is a huge part of the
1:11:11battery life savings being able to crank down the frame rate on those pro models, but like obviously the a15 and
1:11:18The fact that they've kind of like put more battery into these like there
1:11:22I think it's probably three four five different little reasons that added together netted them the huge battery life
1:11:28But that's great because like I feel like camera and battery are the two features that yeah matter the most in a phone
1:11:33I I care it's not that I don't care about promotion, but for me, it's so little of a deal
1:11:38I I bought the 13 pro this year for the camera and only for the camera
1:11:44Yeah, and there's no other reasons and if the regular
1:11:4813
1:11:50Was just had the 13 pro 3 lens camera system
1:11:55Then I would have bought the regular 13 because I prefer the less the the lighter weight and I prefer the actual I actually prefer
1:12:02The feel of the aluminum and I prefer the feel of the glossy
1:12:07Therefore grippy glass back as opposed to the slippery frosted back the promo
1:12:13I wonder what promotion doesn't do you want to buy it?
1:12:15I wonder what they're gonna do next year because I feel like for this generation the 12 and the 13
1:12:19And I know everybody's got a different opinion style wise
1:12:23But I feel like that the the cheaper phones are better or like look better and feel better
1:12:27I do think that they the bright colored backs and I the surgical stainless steel band and all that
1:12:32It's like I kind of don't like it
1:12:34I think it's kind of gaudy and and it picks up fingerprints and like I really like that aluminum band
1:12:39I just I like the I like the cheaper phones and I agree with you
1:12:43I thought I would miss the telephoto more than I have for the last year
1:12:47Which is why I also was sort of accepting that but yes
1:12:50I would love it if the cheaper phones had the three camera stack
1:12:54But they don't and and like it wasn't enough for me to make the switch since I was also getting the size difference
1:12:59To your point among. I don't know if they sent everybody the same four phones. I got the
1:13:04The in my review units. I got the mini in
1:13:09Midnight, which is yeah, it's sort of near black that the regular size 13 in blue
1:13:16Mine was pink which is a joke because like because it looks white to me because I'm colorblind
1:13:20Right and I had this moment where I had to show it to my wife and say this pink and she says oh, yeah
1:13:25That's pink
1:13:26To me. I got the the regular one in blue
1:13:29I got the 13 Pro which I still have in my pocket in gold. Yes, same c3po style
1:13:37and then the I think they gave everybody the Pro Max in Sierra blue in Sierra blue because Sierra blues their big new thing but
1:13:45When I took them unboxed them
1:13:47Both my wife and my son and my son, you know, my wife is just like I you know
1:13:53Just has an eye for what's what's pretty, you know, and she's a very heavy iPhone and especially iPad user
1:14:00She uses her iPad way more than I do
1:14:02But but her her thoughts when she sees these new phones are what what looks great to her and
1:14:10My you know, my son is
1:14:13more technically minded, you know, he's
1:14:15But they both thought that the blue iPhone 13 was the pro
1:14:21Because it looks so cool and I was like, no, that's now that's not the pro. That's the regular one
1:14:27They're like what that's that's the coolest looking phone of the bunch that that blue is awesome. So I I
1:14:35I did get the midnight and other people are telling me that it like midnight is is
1:14:41Has a slight blue undertone to it and it's slightly different than last year's. I don't know folks. I got I got a black
1:14:4712 mini and a midnight 13 mini it look
1:14:51Identical to me and blue is not one of those colors that I can't see and they look identical but the one I bought
1:14:57Was the blue one? Yeah, I love it. Oh my god. It is the coolest color in my opinion
1:15:03I'm always my rule is I always buy the black and the one year where I
1:15:09where I kind of like my brain froze and I got like an edge condition and and and
1:15:14The Gruber OS crashed was the iPhone 7 where there was black and jet black
1:15:20Because of my rule of just buying the black one. It was like it was like a buffer overflow
1:15:27And I think I made the wrong decision. I bought jet black and I in hindsight
1:15:31I regret it and wish I'd bought the flat black. I was too I got I got too caught up in the the
1:15:37shiny I
1:15:39Think that the the flat black I regret it and mainly for touch reasons
1:15:43I think the flat back but anyway that I just always buy the black one the one year
1:15:48I came closest to not getting the gray was the year. I think it was the iPhone
1:15:5411 yeah the 11 where they had sort of a Boba Fett style green blue type thing
1:16:02Oh, yeah, I felt like midnight green or whatever it was. Yeah
1:16:07The pros had those two kind of we're gonna put color in our pro products
1:16:11Yeah, Apple doesn't apparently think pro products should be colored but then they did were very dark
1:16:15Yeah
1:16:18So I bought myself, of course the boring 13 Pro in graphite because it's boring
1:16:24But if I were going to buy I last year
1:16:27I bought the black iPhone 12 if I were gonna get the 12 again this year or the there are the 13 or the 13 mini
1:16:33this might be the year where I would have broken the streak and bought blue instead of midnight because that blue is
1:16:39One of the coolest things apples ever made and I know that I don't want to repeat it
1:16:44But you and Mike got a whole thing that there should be a color czar at Apple
1:16:47Whoever came up with that blue the glass looks cool. The anodized aluminum is this it's not like
1:16:55Oh, it's gray with a tint of blue. It's you know, you look at if you tilt it, right and you're in the sunlight
1:17:02Oh, it's nighttime and you're looking in in Kent. Oh, no, you won't see it. It looks over to you
1:17:07You know and and I know that the the Justin long videos for was it
1:17:14Dell or Microsoft who the hell paid Justin long to do sort of fake Mac PC ads
1:17:20Microsoft I think it might have been Microsoft
1:17:23Yeah, and it was or might know is Microsoft promoting the whole lineup the whole ecosystem or no, it was Intel. It was Intel Oh
1:17:30Intel yeah Intel right, but he was like you you know
1:17:34You can get all these different colors and with with the Mac you can get gray or slightly darker gray
1:17:40And you know what? That's an honest zinger. That's yeah, those were sort of cringy commercials, but that's actually kind of true
1:17:47So people can listen to that episode of upgrade where we talked about this
1:17:50but I and I did go off on a rant about the colors are because I feel like
1:17:54every now and then I feel like Apple's got its act together when it comes to color and
1:17:5924-inch iMac was an example. I'm like, yes. Look you're embracing these colors again
1:18:03I've wanted color in the Mac for so long now because they're fun and
1:18:07Why not and you always let somebody have silver or gray as an option because not everybody wants color
1:18:13but to like let people have color in their lives and and the last year's iPhones at least the the
1:18:1812s not the 12 pros but the 12s were
1:18:21Colorful this year's there are fewer color options and then you know
1:18:26I know that people have been talking about the Sierra blue, but I feel like our standards for color on a pro
1:18:32iPhone are so low that people are praising that Sierra blue
1:18:36Sierra blue in almost all lighting conditions. I've taken it into it's just gray
1:18:41It's it's gray with a very faint cast of blue
1:18:44It's not like and then you look at the the 12 the 13 blue and you're like, oh that's blue
1:18:50It's not this kind of like it's like how starlight it's like it's silver but very faintly yellow. It's like yeah, it's silver
1:18:56Guys, it's it's silver if you go into an Apple store with their
1:19:01Most of them or a lot of them are Sun, you know have sunlight if they're you know, connected to the outside
1:19:07You know the ones aren't in a mall, but they all have beautiful light inside and it'll look blue in the Apple store
1:19:14I guarantee you but but it if in real life in most cases it it looks silver
1:19:21It's it's real gray silver
1:19:24And then this is my larger point is again. I don't I think if you want a silver phone or a gray phone or whatever
1:19:30Like you should be able to get by it. I I'm not saying everybody must wear bright colors
1:19:35I'm just sort of saying that I'm a little baffled by apples kind of zigging and zagging about the idea that
1:19:40Some products have bright colors and some products don't that the product names don't always match up
1:19:45We may be seeing them like by introducing midnight in starlight
1:19:49They may actually try to be trying to define colors that will be the same across product lines down the road
1:19:54Unlike space gray, which has had like 15 different shades
1:19:57So none of them dark enough though, except for like and then there's space black on the one watch that is like
1:20:04What is that? What how why is that in space?
1:20:07I don't know
1:20:08but my point is I wish they would be more unified with their color choices and
1:20:12Also a little bit bolder and braver because it really disappoints me that pro
1:20:17Macs and pro iPhones and pro iPads they seem to think that what pro means is you can't have
1:20:25Bold colors on them. All right, and that that is so fresh you didn't until last year
1:20:31I believe you couldn't get a smart folio case
1:20:34for the iPad Pro
1:20:37That wasn't white or gray, right?
1:20:40And they finally did that and I have an orange case and I had a blue case for a while
1:20:45Like they finally caved on the accessories
1:20:48But like I just I would like them to be a little more adventurous
1:20:51With their and consistent with their colors and also I hope next year that the iPhone Pro models
1:20:57Look really nice because they they honestly have paled in comparison to the the base models the last two years
1:21:04I've I'm running the show notes and here from my iPad mini review unit, which they sent me in purple
1:21:12I don't know what color you got
1:21:15Right. I've I've been I've been using a purple
1:21:18iPad mini
1:21:21For two weeks now, I'm using it right now and I cannot tell you how many times over those two weeks
1:21:28I've I if there's one regret I have from my iPad review is that I didn't do a whole section about how
1:21:34Boring the purple is I keep forgetting its purple. I feel like it should be Minnesota Vikings purple, right?
1:21:41I shouldn't feel again. It's more like a gray or silver with a very very faint purple cast it if it was like the blue
1:21:49iPhone 13 if it was that vivid of a purple
1:21:54It would be like something that you could hold up to the Minnesota Vikings helmet and it would be like yeah
1:21:58That's like the same color and I think that would be really cool
1:22:01I wouldn't probably wouldn't be what I would buy but I think a lot of people would like to do that and I think my
1:22:06My argument would be if you're the kind of person who buys a purple computer
1:22:10You actually want it to be purple. Otherwise, you wouldn't have button pretty you would have bought I silver
1:22:16I can't tell you how many times over the last two weeks
1:22:18I forgot that this is purple and it's in my hand all the time all the time and I'm like, oh, yeah
1:22:24It's purple. It catches the light all of a sudden. I'm like, oh, yeah purple. I thought it remember earlier this year
1:22:29They made a big deal. They did a whole ad campaign about how they added a purple iPhone 12. Yes
1:22:35Yes, and that was really purple. Yes
1:22:38And I'll just point out as another footnote here. Is there a purple iPhone 13? No, it's gone
1:22:43Color they even had billboards dedicated to it
1:22:48I don't know if it didn't sell or what the hell's going on
1:22:50But that they got to get this cut they got it. They got to follow understand
1:22:54They got to get the colors are in there colors are appoint someone. I don't care somebody really good
1:22:58I'm not eligible because I'm colorblind but somebody who can see colors all the colors
1:23:03I please get it to be consistent. We haven't nobody has seen them in person yet outside Apple
1:23:09But I am excited to see the green
1:23:12Apple watch series 7 because the green Apple watch series 7 looks like a seriously deep rich green green
1:23:20That is to green what the blue is to the iPhone
1:23:2613
1:23:28But then why not? Why isn't there a green iPhone?
1:23:34Like it looks like a really nice green
1:23:36I I don't know if if this is like a coven thing like they've just you know, they're scrambling and they're not they're not
1:23:42Communicating with each other and they're not collaborating
1:23:45Maybe it may be that for all of our talk about color
1:23:48The truth is they have gotten their act together with color, but we just haven't they haven't gotten it in sync yet
1:23:53All right, I and that's what I hope I hope that you look at that 24 inch iMac and you're like, aha
1:23:58They got it. But then I look at these these products this fall and I'm like, nope, they don't got it
1:24:03So I don't know with as many listeners as we have
1:24:06I'm sure that there's somebody some people out there who bought the iPhone 13 and purple last year and love it and they're like
1:24:13Oh god, I did our iPhone 12 and they're like, I love my purple iPhone 12
1:24:17I would like to buy a purple iPad and I'll feel the same way about it. So you are gonna be very disappointed. Yeah
1:24:24Because it's going to look gray no in compare and I don't know why the color is restrained on an iPad mini that again
1:24:30It's crying out for fun. It should have the iMac colors. It should have the right
1:24:36It should be colored the color of the back of the iMacs. Why is it not colored like the iMacs like give me that
1:24:41I want a
1:24:43kooky
1:24:44Orange iPad mini right and they're like no we're gonna give you starlight
1:24:50Midnight and this very faint purpley gray and that's what you get. I don't get it
1:24:55I mean it is arguably the most fun iPad. It's just a fun little size
1:25:01It's like getting you know, it's like when you get the little Snickers they cut they literally call the little ones
1:25:06They call it fun size, right? This is the fun size iPad. It's the size iPad
1:25:11It's like you could just buy what if you don't even really need another iPad or another device in your life
1:25:16But you're like, yeah, what the hell I'm gonna spend 500 bucks get an iPad mini, you know
1:25:19It's it's it's a treat. It's a thing you play video games with it's it's a nice little portable
1:25:24So it's a fun size. It should be fun colors
1:25:26Yeah, yeah
1:25:28I don't I don't understand it. I
1:25:32Just don't understand for a company like Apple that seems to have at various points in its life and in its marketing embrace fun
1:25:40The restraint that sometimes comes out in there in their color choices for their products
1:25:46I just don't get it like I get that you want restrained choices because some people don't want big and bold
1:25:52But why you don't give people the option of big bold style?
1:25:57Just it baffles me. So I hope they I hope the iMac
1:26:02I'm gonna keep pointing at that iMac when they're MacBook Airs the next time I want them in all those colors
1:26:07Please don't water it down
1:26:09But my fear is that what we're gonna get is starlight right where it's like it's really just silver or midnight
1:26:15It's really just dark gray and that's not I just like those are fine
1:26:20But if you're gonna make a purple product, it should pop it should not just lay there like a purpley gray
1:26:26But then something like the blue iPhone 13 squeaks through and you're like I know that that looks like the most amazing
1:26:33Red's not my color, but the product red is gorgeous, too
1:26:37But like those are the two eye popping colors in the iPhone 13 and the rest of them are are boring
1:26:44Speaking of the eye pink, which I can't see. Yeah, which you can't see iPad mini
1:26:48Another one from you and Mike you were talking about the the very odd
1:26:53home screen icon layout on the iPad mini where the
1:26:59icons are like
1:27:01one two three four five six six six down when you're in portrait and four across and
1:27:08There's a huge amount of space around the bezels and yeah
1:27:14It in landscape. It's like
1:27:17You could fit a whole
1:27:20widget
1:27:21On either side of the space where the icons go, right?
1:27:24like there's easily plenty of margin space for the you know, like the way that in
1:27:30Last year's version of iPad OS you had a whole strip to put widgets you could you there's that much room is still there
1:27:38It's just white space now
1:27:40It's it's very odd. I I did mention this in my review where it just feels like
1:27:46the
1:27:48iPad OS doesn't really treat this as an
1:27:53It doesn't target. There's a lot of areas of the OS that just don't seem
1:27:58it the scaling done to make it fit on the iPad mini just seems like an afterthought like well,
1:28:04It's I don't know what the percentage is. Let's say it's
1:28:0868% the size just shrink it by 68% put it there and then it just ends up like, huh?
1:28:14I did the same thing you did where I transferred over
1:28:17From for me. It was an 11 inch iPad Pro backup
1:28:22and I had my dock from the 11 inch iPad on the mini and the icons were like the size of a
1:28:28pencil eraser
1:28:30Oh, yeah
1:28:31You can put a lot of a lot of icons in that dock and then you rotate it vertically and they're all the size of your
1:28:36Your like fingernail. Yeah, it's you have to use your pinky. You can't use your index finger
1:28:42You got it. Do you switch to your pinky to poke at them?
1:28:44Just I'm glad it I'm glad I didn't stop them from making this product
1:28:48But it does show you all the places where iPad OS is sort of like not been given attention
1:28:52and the larger issue
1:28:55about iPad OS 15 is
1:28:57that
1:28:59Like we were expecting when widgets didn't come like freeform widgets like on the iPhone to the iPad last year
1:29:05That that was because Apple had something, you know bigger in mind and because since day one
1:29:10We've all looked at that iPad home screen and said it's it's like this loose grid
1:29:14It's really like, you know
1:29:16the iPhone grid with not a lot of effort to make it just also appear on the iPad and
1:29:22and surely at some point Apple will rethink the home screen of the iPad and they never have and
1:29:27Sure enough iOS 15 comes out and it's literally not rethought at all other than they loosened the grid even more
1:29:35So that one app icon which is much smaller than a small widget still takes the exact same amount of space as a small widget
1:29:43because there's so much padding around the app icon and
1:29:46They all flow around each other
1:29:49so if you try to place a widget you have to chase the app icons around the screen in order to get them to flow because
1:29:54Now you've got these big wide widgets that are pushing all the icons around and you can this is something that I mentioned on upgrade
1:30:00That turns out nobody knew
1:30:02apparently, I'm the only one who noticed it but
1:30:04You can order your widgets in a different location horizontally and vertically all your app icons still flow around them
1:30:11But you can actually put them in different places, which is nice
1:30:13But like I just the disappointment of the fact that they seem to have still not
1:30:17figured out like a new take on the home screen for the iPad and
1:30:21Then when you see the iPad mini you're like, oh wow
1:30:24It's all it's starting to break down right like they it really
1:30:28they need to think of a new approach that really properly uses all their different screen sizes and and
1:30:34This isn't it. I mean it's usable and I love it. I love the mini
1:30:37It's a lot of fun as a product but there are those moments where you realize oh, they didn't paint like behind this
1:30:44Piece of furniture, right?
1:30:46There's like the unpainted part of the wall that now has been revealed because this product is
1:30:51Shaped a little bit differently and suddenly you realize oh that that's an oversight and instead that the response was like
1:30:57Let's just put really big padding on the sides of the home screen and to just to compare and contrast. Let's say
1:31:05It I know they don't make the 12-inch MacBook anymore
1:31:09But the 12-inch MacBook is the smallest Mac screen in recent years
1:31:13When you're using that size MacBook
1:31:18It doesn't feel like well this OS was really meant for a 30-inch
1:31:25Apple Pro display XDR or a 27-inch iMac
1:31:29and
1:31:31You know, they've really sort of crammed it onto this thing or vice versa when you're using a 27-inch iMac
1:31:38You don't feel like you're using an operating system and a home
1:31:41You know a desktop and windows that was that were designed for a 12-inch
1:31:47Laptop it it scales and it feels like each one was designed for it the the iPad mini
1:31:54I do like this device. I think people who like it will will like it
1:31:58But it's very clear that iPad OS 15 was not designed for this device
1:32:04And it should it should feel that way. It should feel just iPad iPad OS 15 should feel just as ah
1:32:10Everything is just the way it should be in just the right amount of things
1:32:15You know right amount of icons in a row and the right size for widgets on a 13-inch
1:32:2112.9 inch but I like to call it 13-inch iPad Pro as on the mini and that's just not true
1:32:27This feels like an OS and a home screen that was designed for 11-inch
1:32:31iPads and bigger
1:32:34Yeah, I have a theory since we're talking about our our wild theories. I have a theory that Apple is
1:32:40Moving toward a more complex windowing system for the iPad and
1:32:46They've been putting pieces in place a lot of more a lot more pieces in place in iOS 15 with the new kind of windowing
1:32:52Controls and they've got a floating window thing now, and they've got quick note, which
1:32:57They get very excited to talk about quick note on the iPad and then you use it on the Mac and you realize oh
1:33:04It's literally a floating window like on the Mac
1:33:07It's pointless because it's just a window like you can have on the Mac
1:33:11But on the iPad a window from one app floating on top of other apps is mind-blowing right and you can move it to it
1:33:18Ever corner you want. Oh, it just and you move it off the edge and then bring it back
1:33:22It's just it is it is great on the iPad
1:33:25But it also exposes just how limited the iPads interface is so I have this feeling like with all the stuff
1:33:31They're doing their shelf the multi window all this stuff that they're trying to get somewhere
1:33:36It feels like they're headed somewhere that is probably a more complex
1:33:40at least optional windowing system of some kind and
1:33:44my theory is that that is connected to the fact that Apple at some point here is going to probably do an
1:33:51external display that is not the pro display XDR and
1:33:55They've got Thunderbolt on the M1 iPad pros and that at some point what they're going to do is announce a display
1:34:02And you'll be able to connect an iPad to it and it will be able to be
1:34:07Sort of more of a windowed kind of experience because on a big screen you can't just have a full screen app from an iPad
1:34:14It doesn't make any sense. And right now all you can do is sort of mirror an iPad display on an external monitor
1:34:19so that's my theory and
1:34:22One thing about like looking at the mini that I might be able to throw in there is maybe one of the reasons that some
1:34:28of these iPad things seem kind of stuck in the mud is
1:34:31Because they want to get to a place where the iPad interface scales better like the Mac
1:34:37And they have a plan to get there, but it's all kind of contingent on
1:34:42Going to their new world and they're not there yet
1:34:47That's and I realized that there's certainly some wish casting in that theory on my part because I would love to see it
1:34:54But I don't know otherwise why Apple would keep trying to do
1:34:59floating windows and
1:35:02Shelves with windows in them and remaking the menu bar when you hold down command keys
1:35:08You get a full menu bar now that is essentially a Mac menu bar
1:35:11floating in front of you like all the pieces are starting to form so I feel like that that's where they're going and
1:35:17Knowing Apple that's the kind of thing that they save for like a hardware
1:35:22Yeah announcement and if they ever did an external monitor that was more reasonably priced than the pro display XDR
1:35:28That would be where I would say they'll drop it because they'll be like boom look what you can do now with an iPad and
1:35:33Everybody will be amazed sort of like what they did with the the magic keyboard last year. Yeah my frustration
1:35:39I love that they added I forget what they call it
1:35:42They don't call it a menu bar because there is no bar, but you know, there is no a menu floating menu and system word thing
1:35:49But there is literally file edit
1:35:51The thing that kills me about it is if you don't have a keyboard connected you can't get it
1:35:57Yeah, I know like it's crazy. It's like a magic. Imagine if you got the Mac menu bar
1:36:03When you have a mouse connected, but if you if you're using a trackpad instead of a mouse it goes away
1:36:10It's like well that doesn't make any sense
1:36:12It's like I think that's not the best analogy because a trackpad and a mouse are sort of two ways to do the same thing
1:36:18Which is move a cursor around the screen
1:36:20And I should have but so Stephen Trenton Smith had in one of his apps. He's got like a button
1:36:25That's like a like a command key symbol button
1:36:28Yeah, and you tap on it and you get the menu
1:36:30But it's like that could be Apple could make that a convention where there's something you tap that brings up
1:36:35The list because it's very helpful to have a list of every command like
1:36:39That it can do right it and they are spaced out in a way that makes them easy to tap
1:36:47So if there was some way of doing you know
1:36:50Like they've put this quick notes in the lower right corner if maybe something in the lower left corner
1:36:55And then you could bring that up and then you could tap the menu
1:36:58It just seems crazy that they've added a really nice menuing system very thoughtful
1:37:04Very very thoughtful and you can only get it when you have a keyboard attached to a quote-unquote touch first device
1:37:11I'm gonna go with we haven't seen the end of the story yet
1:37:15And we're we're trying to make sense of a whole story that we're only halfway through
1:37:20I sure hope so
1:37:21I mean it feels like a big chunk of my job and your job is looking at what Apple does and then having these sort of two
1:37:28potential paths and the one is that I hope that they're planning something and then and then and they often are and
1:37:34Sometimes they aren't and you're like, oh, I guess I was just trying to do some pattern matching there
1:37:40And I got all swept up in this grand plan that they don't actually have but I think that there's something going on with the iPad
1:37:47and
1:37:48whether that's an excuse for why things like the home screen being broken are
1:37:52or if not broken uninspiring are
1:37:55That may or may not be true. But I do think that they're doing something and like
1:38:00Inefficiently you it certainly is inefficiently using the space right and which is crazy on on the iPad
1:38:08That has the least space
1:38:10I know I know it's kind of crazy that the iPad that has the least space because it is the mini
1:38:16Uses the space that is available the least efficiently
1:38:20Yeah, there is a with the iPad
1:38:24I feel like it's always like the moment that Apple opens the door that makes you realize that they are gonna go
1:38:29Do you go through the door?
1:38:31Doorway at some point so like I used to get people arguing about about file system access saying no out
1:38:38They're never gonna do a finder
1:38:39It's an iPad and I would point them at that iCloud Drive app that they released and I said well at this point
1:38:44they've opened the door and now that became files and
1:38:47There is an iPad take on a file system
1:38:50But it is there and that's how I feel about windowing is
1:38:54Now that they've got the little floating mail window
1:38:57There is a message that floats above your mail app and you can take it and put it somewhere else and now that they've got
1:39:02Quick note, they're basically admitting that having floating windows that you can move around on the screen is a thing that you can do on
1:39:10the iPad it's
1:39:11Possible for me to imagine that that isn't going somewhere because why would you break that metaphor but only one time?
1:39:18It doesn't it doesn't really follow so they will do something with it sometime probably but what it is, I don't know
1:39:25But but you're right about you're really right about those menus
1:39:28They're really great, but because they came out of the keyboard shortcut overlay. They have not been
1:39:34Just integrated into the rest of the interface standards and it's it's a it's a mistake
1:39:40If anything they're actually in a way better than
1:39:44Or not better than the Mac because the Mac's menus have to be that way because it's a mouse pointer driven system
1:39:50But in the Mac
1:39:52metaphor or any mouse and mouse pointer system
1:39:56You have to go up there and click to drag it down and you can only see one at a time
1:40:01And you have to you know, it's it's a lot of work
1:40:03Whereas with the iPad system you see them all at once and you can just sort of horizontally scroll
1:40:09Over them and you can see multiple
1:40:12If you forget whether like a certain command is in the view menu or the window menu
1:40:19Where do you go to turn that thing off? You can see them both at once and then and just tap at it
1:40:24You don't have to drag them anything down to get to it. You just stab your finger at it
1:40:28It actually could be more convenient to use than the Mac menuing system. It's it's the potential is huge
1:40:36It's a really nice design that you don't get if you don't have a keyboard. Anyway, I'm gonna take a break here
1:40:41Thank our third and final sponsor. Oh, guess what surprise?
1:40:45Not a new sponsor. It's our good friends at Squarespace man. Do I love Squarespace?
1:40:50That is the place all in one place for non technical people or technical people
1:40:58To create build and run their own website
1:41:03You can go at the just remember this code. I'll tell you now spoiler. Remember the code talk show
1:41:09just plain old talk show when you check out you get 10% off your order or
1:41:15You can tell your friends when they come to you. Hey, how do I build a website?
1:41:20I need a website for blank tell them to go to Squarespace get them started. They get a 30-day free trial
1:41:26No watermarks. They can do the whole thing. It'll look real
1:41:29There's no this is a demo version of Squarespace or anything like that
1:41:33Then 30 days are up. They're ready to go. They're like, I I love it. This is a great website
1:41:40Tell them the code talk show
1:41:42they'll save 10% they can pay for up to a year in advance save 10% on that whole year and
1:41:48Squarespace will know they came from the show
1:41:52So just remember that go to Squarespace comm slash talk show next time you need a website
1:41:57Or somebody, you know needs a website. You can do everything domain name registration analytics CMS
1:42:03Where you can actually post create a blog put it on the site you post right through Squarespace
1:42:08My thanks to them for their continuing support of this show Squarespace comm slash talk show
1:42:13Alright last but not least it's sad. It's this one. This is the sad thing Oh Safari tabs
1:42:20I'm I I'm I
1:42:27Was I was actually a little shocked when Safari 15 shipped
1:42:31For not not for Monterey and I forgot that they do that, you know that they've done that in past years
1:42:40But there hasn't been anything
1:42:42controversial or shocking in the Mac version of Safari and so if the new version of Safari ships in September and
1:42:48the actual
1:42:51Annual Mac OS update isn't coming until late October or even early November. So what it's Safari and you know
1:42:59New Safari with new vert new improvements to WebKit or it's all good
1:43:03but if you have automatic updates on or you even if you don't have automatic if you just saw Oh Safari 15 is out update and
1:43:11Now you have Safari 15
1:43:13Now now you got you got different tabs I
1:43:19I don't know what happened this summer like they obviously somebody was
1:43:24influential and got them to commit to this entire Safari redesign at
1:43:29WWDC and then they heard the feedback which apparently got enough internal momentum at Apple to make changes
1:43:38Especially on the iPhone, but there came a moment this summer. I don't know if you noticed this
1:43:43I don't know if you were downloading all the betas
1:43:44I've had a dedicated Mac for for the betas and I have but I have but I was less on the Mac than the it
1:43:51Then the iPad and iPhone so what happened is there was this moment where everything changed a little bit and they said no no
1:43:58No, no, no, it's not all it's it's it's gonna change more and then they did another release on the iPhone
1:44:04they really started to shape up the iPhone and
1:44:06I felt at that moment. It's like okay the iPhone needed the most work. They're doing work on the iPhone. That's good
1:44:12they got to come back to the iPad and the Mac and
1:44:15They never came back to the iPad and the Mac and it feels to me
1:44:19Like and this may not be true. I'm not trying to be unfair to them, but I'm just saying as an outside observer
1:44:26It feels to me like they shipped something that was unfinished and it's even worse than that
1:44:33It's like they had a vision for a new thing. We're told that the new thing wasn't good
1:44:38And so they needed to start tearing it down
1:44:40Tear it or tore it part of the way down and then walked away and
1:44:45It's a it's I don't see the point of what they did. I don't see how changing the tabs
1:44:53to be less able
1:44:56To be scanned they're harder to read the text in them is harder to read
1:45:02It's harder to see which one of them is active the colored background which you can turn off
1:45:06But that makes it even harder because the contrast of the text and the color is changing from tab to tab
1:45:12Which makes it even harder to look at a screen and say which is my active tab right now
1:45:17and they removed the metaphor of
1:45:22The tab of tabs, right? So you used to be on the the like the highlighting it
1:45:27You could literally see this tab goes down to the content. Well, they they moved they remove that now
1:45:32they're all little lozenges and they put the the
1:45:36toolbar favorites, which I still use I do to
1:45:39below the lozenges which even further breaks the metaphor because they don't
1:45:44Content that doesn't change from tab to tab should never be below the tabs
1:45:50It seems obvious and I'm not telling tales out of school
1:45:54But I did have a moment where I gave some feedback to somebody at Apple about Safari 15 and one of the things I said was
1:46:02This which is it doesn't make any sense for toolbar favorites to be below the tabs because the whole tab metaphor
1:46:09It's the stuff that's below the tabs is the stuff that changes and the stuff that's above doesn't change and they said yes
1:46:13Yes. Yes, of course. Absolutely. It never changed. They never fixed it. It's not like that on the Mac
1:46:18It's not like that on the iPad. They just sort of have kept this
1:46:21kind of halfway
1:46:24And you know what? The color thing is it's cute
1:46:27I updated six colors so it it matches the color in the menu bar when you go there. It's cute
1:46:33You could turn it off. That's fine. But like
1:46:36Decreasing the legibility of tabs if you like they put so much effort into tab groups
1:46:42Which is this really nice feature that acknowledges how important tabs are to people and yet at the same time
1:46:50They completely destroyed tab legibility. I
1:46:55Don't understand how an organization that understands how people use tabs
1:46:59Would at the same moment that they launched their feature that makes tabs better make tabs unreadable
1:47:05But that's what I mean at least at least it doesn't ship with the compact view which made them even more unreadable
1:47:12But they're still not very readable even in the non compact view
1:47:17There is so iPhone has already always called multiple
1:47:25Browser instances within Safari tabs, even though they almost never actually look like
1:47:32Actual tab tabs, although horizontal when you hold your phone
1:47:36horizontally you can you you can get it to look like tabs and I think that that's still an option in iOS 15 but
1:47:43Almost who uses their phone horizontally to read Safari other than to watch videos
1:47:47and
1:47:49I'm okay with that because people get it tabs is what people kind of get that tabs in browser
1:47:57means two different things it means
1:48:01multiple web pages open at once and
1:48:04it also means a
1:48:07visual UI
1:48:10element that is a metaphorical tab from like
1:48:15File folder tabs like that look like actual tabs
1:48:19It means both and they're sort of a one-to-one relationship in the way that and everybody
1:48:24I think just even even if you are a normal person who doesn't think deeply about user interfaces of the things you're using
1:48:31You get it that the iPhone is too small to have tab tabs
1:48:36but in a windowing system
1:48:40Like the Mac or Windows or you know any other system where you have what we consider a traditional
1:48:47GUI of windows that you can drag around the actual tab metaphor is important
1:48:52It is really important and it the thing with the the fifth favorites bar going under the tabs
1:48:59It could go under in the I actually dug up the old article. I wrote remember when Safari
1:49:06Had a beta with tabs on top. Yeah you that could work and I was like
1:49:11I think that's what I wrote and I went back and read my article had a really good article
1:49:15I have to say I almost never praised myself
1:49:17But I was like younger John Gruber who wrote this article really did a good job and made in a you know, broke broke
1:49:23Not not tradition. I don't have a rule against including images, but I'd you know people who listen to the show
1:49:28No, I don't put a lot of images in my articles usually but I for my by my standards copiously illustrated that with
1:49:35with the actual Safari tabs that that that the Safari beta was proposing and
1:49:40some
1:49:42Hmm. Here are some mock-ups from other people around the web
1:49:46Suggesting better ways to do it and the problem with the Safari tabs from I forget what year it was
1:49:53But it was you know
1:49:542009 2009 was that they went all the way to the top of the window and left no room
1:50:01For a place to grab to drag the window around which is a thing
1:50:06You might want to do and the idea is that were that I mocked, you know
1:50:10people mocked up were just move them down a little bit and leave a little bit of a strip up there of
1:50:15Just window area so you can grab the window move the window and then the tabs are underneath but
1:50:20tabs on top at least still establishes a
1:50:25Hierarchy where the hierarchy is there's a selected tab and then underneath the tab is all of the browser chrome like the address bar
1:50:33and the back button and the reload button and
1:50:36Extensions and then your favorites bar and then a line and then the web content
1:50:43Right that works too. What doesn't work? So it's not that
1:50:47You can't put anything under the tabs. But the problem is the tabs have to be at the top or they have to be at the
1:50:54bottom
1:50:55Right. They need to be the metaphor is that the tab is in closing?
1:50:59Yes, something and it can be in closing the entire browser window or they can be in closing the content space
1:51:06but it it's
1:51:09it is
1:51:11Maddening and and like if you open two tabs in Safari 15 on the Mac just two tabs in a window
1:51:17And it it's I think it's worse in dark mode, but it is bad in both dark mode and light mode
1:51:24To and especially if you and depends on if you've got the color option turned on it literally depends on which site is currently the
1:51:32active tab because the coloring completely changes
1:51:34But if you let's say and and I to me this is a common scenario to open two tabs for the same website
1:51:41Right, like maybe you're at the New York Times and you're reading two different articles today at the New York Times
1:51:47Or you're at a shopping site and you're comparing two products from the same company
1:51:51and so like the the fav icons are the same and and it I
1:51:56Dare you to tell at a glance which tab is active in Safari 15
1:52:01Because is it the one that has more contrast and it's lighter or is it the one that has less contrast and it's darker
1:52:10You have to think about it. Yeah, and and I know there are people I hear about them
1:52:15I hear from them on Twitter as I gripe about Safari and they're calling me old and they're like, you know
1:52:19Get with the times that things change and it's it's people
1:52:23You might like it. There are people clearly some people at Apple clearly like it, right?
1:52:29I mean, there's somebody at Apple likes it because they shipped it
1:52:32It is to me
1:52:35catastrophic to replace a
1:52:37Visual metaphor that nobody ever had to think about nobody ever had to think which tab is active whether you have one tab or two
1:52:44tabs three tabs
1:52:4720 tabs in a window you at a glance
1:52:50Anybody could tell which one is the active tab because there's no difference in contrast because it's connected to the chrome now
1:52:58It's it's this total guessing game where you you have to think about a thing that you never had to think about and Don Norman
1:53:05You user interface human interface
1:53:08Guru even wrote a book called don't make me think like that's actually a great adage
1:53:16You know and like Don Norman has talked a lot about like doors and like any door you ever got approached
1:53:21Where you've like pushed instead of pulled or pulled instead of pushed and it was the wrong way is a failure of door design
1:53:28It's an absent failure
1:53:29That was that's actually Steve Krug wrote that book because I said that was that was that when I taught web design at UC Berkeley
1:53:35Thank you for thank you for saving me again Jason early 2000s
1:53:39we assigned to that book because it is so good and yes the problem with the
1:53:44Two options both of which is slightly different
1:53:47But neither of which indicates which one is selected is a classic user interface problem
1:53:51Right and how to how does Safari 14 and all previous versions of Safari?
1:53:55Deal with that and the answer is only one tab has no barrier between it and the rest of the browser club chrome
1:54:02It's the one that's selected. It has no ceiling
1:54:05It's not walled off and so you know
1:54:07It must be active and they and they took it away and again if I ask why they took it away John
1:54:12I think the answer is it they didn't it was part of a larger strategy
1:54:17they had this strategy that they wanted to reduce the size of the browser chrome so that that
1:54:21Content could be free and fill the space which while an admirable goal
1:54:28makes less sense if you've got a Mac with a
1:54:3227 inch screen or even a Mac or an iPad with a 13 inch screen that it does if you're on an iPhone and
1:54:39When they realized there was pushback for their super compact interface they unraveled that
1:54:45but left all the pieces and so we're left with a design that sort of
1:54:50Comes out of the idea of having an incredibly compact bar
1:54:55The compact bar is off by default
1:54:57But we're left with all of the pieces of the compact bar that have all of the problems that kill legibility in tabs
1:55:05So I just I don't I can't believe they shipped it. I gotta say it
1:55:09I can't believe they shipped it. I can't believe they didn't do look they didn't ship shareplay
1:55:12You know they didn't ship universal control
1:55:15They're all these things that they didn't ship because they are not ready yet and yet somehow
1:55:19Broken user interface is not broken enough not to ship it
1:55:24I don't understand why they shipped it because could it be better
1:55:27They could tweak it and make it better and make it usable
1:55:30But what it is now is not that and yet they shipped it. I don't get it
1:55:35I don't I don't understand why they didn't say let's hold off on this a little bit
1:55:38I have talked to friends at Apple people who work at Apple in software. It had nothing to do with this
1:55:43They're just using the betas and and friends multiple friends who have said more or less the same thing, which is I?
1:55:49Work at Apple. I'm confused which tab is active in my browser
1:55:54I cannot believe you know and they cannot believe that this is the state of
1:55:57Safaris user interface design and the part that makes it so heartbreaking is that Safari invented tabs on Mac when?
1:56:06Safari first added tabs tabs were not a thing on the Mac and
1:56:09The Safari implementation of tabs was so good that when the finder added tabs
1:56:15When they added tabs to the end apps the NS document and all the NS document based
1:56:22You know like so you want to you could you know make a keynote tab text edit
1:56:26You yeah make those tab terminal all the people love people who use terminal love tabs and terminal. They're all Safari tabs
1:56:32They're all Safari tabs. It was it became the Safari implementation of tabs became the Mac
1:56:38Implementation of tabs and they just flushed it down the toilet for something. I don't understand is why why like again who?
1:56:45decided
1:56:47that
1:56:48They needed they so desperately needed to eke out a line of vertical space in a browser window on all the platforms
1:56:56That they needed to completely rethink it like that. That's that part. It gets me is
1:57:02What I want to say is look they didn't do it. They took their best shot
1:57:05It's kind of broken, but at least they tried to solve this nagging problem, but there's no nagging problem. There's no
1:57:12nagging problem to be solved it it comes across more like either
1:57:17They were just kind of bored and wanted to do something different or there was a problem on the iPhone that they wanted to solve and
1:57:23Because Apple strategically now wants to roll everything out across all their platforms
1:57:28rather than really rethink what they were doing they kind of took too many principles from the iPhone and
1:57:34rolled this project out across
1:57:36Because like again, I would be much more sympathetic if they were solving a problem that actually existed, but it was fine
1:57:43I think it looks like I think it looks like a design
1:57:47from a
1:57:49high budget movie or like sci-fi TV show where they want to make a
1:57:55Computer interface without showing a real, you know for product placement purposes
1:58:02Don't want to show Microsoft Windows don't want to show max and they make a fake computer interface, right?
1:58:07Like, you know and or like the Marvel like a bad like that Batman movie where Batman has the keyboard with a spacebar on the top
1:58:14Yeah, it's that kind of thing where it's like it's fake but it's okay because there's also a man in a bat costume
1:58:19It's fine and it's it's an art form right like to make like the Tony Stark interfaces for his devices that are not based on anything
1:58:26It looks like that type of interface. It looks cool and it does not work
1:58:31Well, and I know we know it would be unusable, but it doesn't matter because it looks cool
1:58:35It looks cool and that's all there is and I know
1:58:38That I throw it out a lot and other people use a lot and it's but it's not overused
1:58:44We we quote Steve Jobs on this because it is such a key keen
1:58:49Observation and it's so important that people think design is just how it looks
1:58:55But it's not design is how it works and it doesn't and it gets misunderstood
1:59:01Right because look is can be a part of the working and it can be aesthetically pleasing
1:59:06But if it looks good and doesn't work, it's not good design it it's almost like that part
1:59:11It was that's from an interview with the New York Times. I forget what year probably like
1:59:152004 or so but the part that Steve Jobs didn't even see fit to say is that of course our stuff looks beautiful
1:59:24You know because that's the thing that they're known for it went unsaid that their stuff looks really cool the hardware and the software
1:59:32but
1:59:34What he was trying to say is that's not the game we play though just to make it look beautiful
1:59:38It's how it works. It just went unsaid that it looks beautiful. Nobody looked at Safari 14 or Safari
1:59:45123 block dot dot dot through 14 and said well, that's an ugly looking web browser boy
1:59:52Those tabs are friggin ugly can't stand them. They're so gross
1:59:56It's and and the people who seem to love this all they and their only defense of it is
2:00:02Is that they think it looks cool and that's you know it and there are people you know
2:00:08and I used to we all did you know like when I was younger and loved playing with the
2:00:13kaleidoscope kaleidoscope and
2:00:16Aaron back in the classic days right there and and tweaked all customized all my icons
2:00:21And I'd have all sorts of custom themes on my Mac, but I knew that I was horsing around too. You know it's
2:00:27And even when I was custom theming my my Mac OS 7 or Mac OS 8 machines
2:00:34It wasn't breaking the usability of it. I wasn't I wasn't installing themes that made it so I couldn't tell which window was active
2:00:41Yeah, so and I will say this though. I feel like we dodged a bullet in the sense that they shipped with the compact mode off
2:00:49It's still there, and you can turn it on, but it ships off why it shipped at all I again
2:00:55I don't understand and somebody thinks that it's great, and they wanted to ship it like I the
2:01:00Everything gets compacted more
2:01:02Lots of buttons in the browser toolbar vanish and this happens on the iPad as well as on the Mac
2:01:07The tabs that are not the currently active tab you do see this is an effect of them ripping this stuff out is
2:01:13The tab that's currently active is much wider because it's the URL bar
2:01:18And that is a clue about what your current selected tab is the problem is one
2:01:24All the other tabs are so small that even if you only have three tabs open you basically can't read
2:01:29the contents of any tab which is bad for tab navigation because you really want to see what's in all of your tabs and
2:01:35To the currently active page you can't see what it's called
2:01:39Because it's a URL bar up there instead of the name of the tab that you're on which I think is also a mistake
2:01:44So like that that really made me scratch my head of like do they understand how people use web browsers because?
2:01:52You know and do they know that they're building a feature called tab groups
2:01:56That's all about celebrating the use of tabs and yet they've built a user interface that makes tabs illegible
2:02:02But at least that is turned off although still it's still there. They just turned it off
2:02:07I don't get it
2:02:08Pushes them off to the side where you can't even see them with no affordance to indicate how many of them are
2:02:14Scrolled off to the side and oh don't forget that on the iPad especially
2:02:18If they get really small
2:02:21The you basically to tap them is to close them beyond a certain point and you can't really
2:02:28Activate them because they're the tap target because the I think this is another user talking about minor
2:02:34but another user interface problem is that the
2:02:37Fat the fade icon becomes the closed box, right?
2:02:41Which I think is a huge mistake right because I just don't think like your congratulations your logo is now a closed box
2:02:49I don't I don't like it and on the Safari previous Safari the the X
2:02:54Goes off on the on the left side and that's where you close it you'd but now it's just like hovering
2:03:00Under the fat icon it's for you to for you to get it's kind
2:03:04it's kind of bananas because you'd think the fab icon might serve as a proxy for the URL and in fact like the
2:03:11document icon when you have a document in the finder or
2:03:16When you open it and it's in the window and you see the the proxy icon
2:03:21Although it last year they took it, you know, they hit it by the vault so that it only shows up on hover
2:03:27Clearly this is the work of the same team and let's face it, you know
2:03:31I'm not trying to throw Alan Dye personally under the bus, but he is in charge of human interface
2:03:36He's ultimately responsible and he does come from a graphic design background not a interface design background
2:03:43I have no idea if he personally, you know has had any opinion about any of this but he is ultimately responsible
2:03:48But I when you do get the proxy icon and you have to hover to get it now
2:03:53you can click on it to drag it to like drag it into a messages window to
2:03:58Send somebody a copy of it or drag it into a mail message to do it
2:04:02And so you might think oh I could drag the fav icon to drag this URL and guess what it closes the window or closes
2:04:09the tab
2:04:11That is a very bizarre conflation of
2:04:14the
2:04:16Most destructive action with the I want to keep this thing and do something with it intent
2:04:22I think I think there's a lot of pride showing here where
2:04:25Rather than just pull this out and say we'll come back with a new version later
2:04:29They tried to fix it in progress and then they just shipped whatever they had at the moment when they needed to ship it when the
2:04:34Wise thing to do would probably have been to say we'll be back
2:04:36You know, we're not gonna ship this right away like Universal Control
2:04:39We'd say like you said they've done with so many other things and they've been doing to their credit. I think one of the best
2:04:47changes at Apple in the last maybe four years or so for ish is
2:04:54to switch from trying to get as many features into the dot Oh fall upgrade of the OS and
2:05:02Instead treat WWDC as a roadmap for the year to come. Yeah, and
2:05:08And do more
2:05:10Fourteen point two fourteen point three fourteen
2:05:13We're up to like fourteen point six in iOS or something like that and to do and and roll out major features like the iPad
2:05:21Trackpad and mouse pointer support in March rather than you know, have everything all come out at once
2:05:28Yeah roll roll these features out when they're ready
2:05:31This tab design is not ready. It's and no and to me the cat kick
2:05:38It's risky for Apple. It's not just
2:05:40Hey
2:05:43People like me and you are annoyed and they're hearing it from the user interface critic of people
2:05:50Safari is in a very
2:05:55competitive and precarious state on the Mac because on the Mac you can
2:05:59Just you're two clicks away from installing Chrome or brave or Firefox or something like that
2:06:05And I'm not trying to be
2:06:07Snarky here I can actually foresee Google like you go to Google and you know
2:06:14They tell you sometimes if you're using Safari you can download Chrome
2:06:18I could see them doing it and say download Chrome the Mac browser with tabs that look like tabs and
2:06:24Show a little screenshot of
2:06:27Chrome's tabs that look like tabs
2:06:29You know talk about a glass of ice water and hell right?
2:06:33It's like so people who like get this surprise update what the hell happened to my Safari
2:06:39You get the color backgrounds by default and you have to go into preferences to turn it off and everybody knows that the more
2:06:47non nerdy and just
2:06:50Typical Joe and Jane user you might be the less likely you ever are to go into preferences
2:06:56So people are gonna know lots of people who don't like the color background the color tint whatever you call it
2:07:03And would like it if it were turned off
2:07:06But don't know they can turn it off and won't go hunting to turn it off
2:07:10We'll be using it in that mode and you can you know, Google can just show them
2:07:15Hey, take a look at Chrome looks like a nor, you know, looks like normal Mac window with normal Mac tabs
2:07:21Although they have the closed buttons on the wrong side
2:07:23Yeah, just like Safari on the iPhone. Oh, by the way, that's the worst thing about Safari. I don't get it
2:07:30Why did they do it? Why do they have the closed buttons in the top right like windows? It's it's
2:07:35it's a sign of
2:07:38Something's going on there something something bad is happening that that's the part that concerns me the most about I mean we can we can
2:07:46rail about this but but
2:07:47I'm more concerned about the fact that this happened and that and that while I am encouraged by the fact that
2:07:53it happened and yet somehow the the outcry and the feedback was enough that they they listened to a lot of the
2:08:00Criticism of it and actually changed some of it which they say is what the beta process is for but it isn't always true
2:08:07And I appreciate that yet. I am also extremely worried one that somehow this got in the keynote without
2:08:15What it's not without anybody criticizing it
2:08:18so without anybody criticizing it to the point that made it clear that they needed to put the brakes on it and that to as
2:08:25The summer went along that whatever they had they felt was shippable when it's really bad and and this all
2:08:33Could have been avoided like this all could have been avoided and they could have set save face by saying look
2:08:38We've got your feedback. It's very important to us. We're not going to ship the new version of Safari right away
2:08:43We will we will come back with changes and you're gonna love it
2:08:46But instead they just sort of made a few changes in the summer and shipped it and it's it why that was allowed to happen
2:08:53That's what worries me, right?
2:08:55It's we wasted all of our bullets fixing getting getting iOS Safari fixed and iOS Safari as as it
2:09:02Appeared in beta one was way worse. I mean it was catastrophically bad the worst and
2:09:07And indeed they fixed it I still I
2:09:14Really question whether they should have the address bar on the bottom. That was the first of my wife when she upgraded
2:09:20Was like what the hell is this and she never comes to me and complains like about things like that
2:09:25Like I interface changes she but like two minutes into using iOS 15 on iPhone
2:09:32She was on a web page and she was like what the hell is this and I said, oh you can hear go to the AA
2:09:36menu
2:09:38Address bar on top and she was like, okay. Thank you
2:09:40And then she hasn't been back to me since but I still think it was a bad default
2:09:44And I know people let some people like it but I to me they should not have changed that because I'm telling you
2:09:49It's it's a big change for people who don't like big change to to I think it's great as an option
2:09:55But I just don't think it should be the default but overall iOS Safari. Let's call it fixed. It's a good update
2:10:01It looks good. The tab closed buttons are in the wrong corner. I
2:10:05think that the address bar probably should still be at the top by default, but uh,
2:10:11Could hear the argument otherwise max Safari tabs disaster. This is one of the worst things Apple has ever shipped
2:10:16Yeah, I can't disagree and I'm telling you
2:10:20I don't I don't have analytics on daring fireball at the moment I because I got rid of Google Analytics last year for
2:10:25Privacy reasons and I looking at some privacy
2:10:28Respecting packages. So I don't know my exact numbers and I don't think my audience is quite
2:10:37Representative of anything as a whole but I would not be surprised that among websites that have
2:10:43representative audiences of you know, the general public Safari for Mac is going to if is going to see a
2:10:51significant decrease in in users because of this because I and because this is the thing nerds might argue about the difference in what you
2:11:01know support for progressive web apps and
2:11:04Aggressive support of the latest and greatest standards and stuff like that, but you know what normal people care about like
2:11:09Do I understand what tab is that is active? Does this look right? Does this look like a normal web browser?
2:11:14Yep, and that's a real shame because you know, it's not the WebKit people who chose this
2:11:20this is some kind of human interface thing and so all of this hard work that they put into WebKit and
2:11:25Safari is the only
2:11:27Major WebKit browser no offense to like iCAB and I know there's a few other browsers that are esoteric
2:11:33But if you want a mainstream browser that uses WebKit on your Mac
2:11:37Your choice is Safari and the reason that Safari is the only one is that Safari has been so good as a Mac app
2:11:44Yeah, and I just don't want to get like also the Safari team built tab groups and I think tab groups are pretty great
2:11:54Yeah
2:11:54a new feature and they auto sync across and you can put throw your tabs in there and
2:11:58It's really easy to throw things into groups and then they live on all your devices and like it's such a great tab
2:12:03feature and yet again, it's in this release that's so broken in so many other ways and and
2:12:08Sadly makes tabs worse like that. Why did that have to happen at the same time?
2:12:13It's a shame because that's a great feature. Yeah. Anyway, well enough ranting Jason. Thank you as always
2:12:20For joining. I will thank our our sponsors. We had Squarespace where you can go to
2:12:26Build a website we had earnest where you can refinance your student loans at a great rate and
2:12:34Sanity I owe the talk show also news from you before we go you've got a new podcast coming now
2:12:40This is what I've been telling you for years Jason. What you need is to do more podcasts more podcasts in my life. Yeah, I know
2:12:47There's so many but this is really taking the place of a podcast that we stopped last year called the TV talk machine that I used
2:12:54To do with Tim Goodman who was the chief TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter and Tim retired from TV criticism
2:13:00To become a TV writer. He got a development deal great great for him
2:13:04I hope one of his shows gets picked up someday. That would be really awesome
2:13:08But we used to talk more than his reviews of TV shows
2:13:12we ended up spending lots of time talking about the streaming wars and peak TV and
2:13:17Amazon and Apple and Netflix getting into the business and Disney and
2:13:22Warner
2:13:23Countering and and what the future of TV was gonna be linear versus streaming and all of this stuff
2:13:28Like I think it's really fascinating. It's it's changing really fast. Everybody wants to be one of the big companies
2:13:35That's left at the end
2:13:37Because a bunch of them are gonna lose but the ones who win are they're gonna be kings and I love talking to Tim
2:13:43about that
2:13:45Got the impression that his editors at THR just wanted him to review lots of shows and he was much more interested in talking about
2:13:51The future of TV than he was about this crappy sitcom
2:13:55And and so when that show ended I have had a TV talk machine sized hole in my life
2:14:01And we talked about some of that stuff on upgrade, but it's usually pretty Apple TV focused
2:14:06occasionally we spread out and in August I did a guest episode with Julie Alexander who used to cover this stuff for The Verge and
2:14:13Polygon and IGN and now her job is literally to be an analyst in this space for parrot research
2:14:20So they do research on like demand for various shows and various streaming services and lots of great stuff
2:14:27And I always thought she was really great
2:14:28She was a great guest on upgrade and at that at that point
2:14:32Basically, we started talking about could we do this as a podcast? So it's called downstream. It starts October 6th. We have a zero episode
2:14:39That's like a sample episode
2:14:41We recorded last month and an intro just to kind of get it into Apple podcasts and stuff
2:14:45But the real stuff starts October 6th. So if you're interested in sort of the future of the business of binging and
2:14:52Other stuff like that. We're gonna do every other week me and Julie Alexander talking about it
2:14:58So it is a new podcast for me, but I feel like I was holding open that spot when TV TM shut down
2:15:04Hoping that I would be able to put something else in there and this is what we're gonna do
2:15:08All right, you call it right now is Apple gonna get the NFL Sunday ticket. I
2:15:13Think they are
2:15:15Unless Amazon kind of out bids them and the reason for that is I think we've seen Apple
2:15:22Apple's really interested in live and and a lot of its competitors aren't like Disney's interested in live
2:15:29And that's ESPN. So maybe
2:15:31Amazon's interested in live and they actually have an NFL package next year that they're gonna start doing
2:15:38Netflix is not interested in live things as far as I can tell and live has its own like live streaming
2:15:44You've got to hit a peak demand. You can't just put it on your CDN
2:15:48You've got to actually serve it and your your servers have to have to survive and I think Apple
2:15:54Sees live sports is the future Sunday ticket seems to be one of the things that would get them on the map in terms of live sports
2:16:00so
2:16:02If I had to I think there may be the favorite for it at this point from what I've seen
2:16:06Maybe not over a 50% chance
2:16:08But I think maybe they're the favorite because they want to make their mark in in live
2:16:11Live events and they haven't gotten there other than their own product events. They haven't gotten there
2:16:17and so I think Apple is gonna do a sports play of some kind and Sunday ticket is a pretty good one because
2:16:22You for those who don't know that's like every
2:16:25NFL game that's out of market and you can just watch them all you can pick your favorite team from out of market and watch
2:16:31Their game I that has some interesting kind of interface
2:16:35Possibilities to it that I think Apple would really get into it's been exclusive to direct TV TV maybe from the get-go
2:16:42Yeah
2:16:42and
2:16:43It direct TV is now owned by AT&T and they spend three billion dollars a year or something like that on the NFL Sunday ticket
2:16:50And make a billion from it
2:16:51But supposedly I make it up by getting people to sign up for direct TV and AT&T
2:16:55That's like AT&T at this point say we don't care. We don't care about whoever
2:16:58whoever
2:17:00Pays for Sunday ticket is overpaying because they have the strategy reason why they want to get people on their platform a Apple
2:17:07I mean Apple is absolutely one of those people to say we are gonna overpay
2:17:12Because we want people to we want their credit card and we want them to sign up for Apple
2:17:17TV plus or sports plus or whatever they want to do next
2:17:20That's the reason you'd pay for something like Sunday ticket because you will overpay you'll never make the money back
2:17:25But you'll get people in your system one of the big customers for this or it's like a sports bar type place that wants to
2:17:32Have all the games so that you know
2:17:34no matter which game you want to see you can go to that bar and watch the game that you want to see and
2:17:40This I know that the Apple's
2:17:43TV strategy isn't really about selling TV hardware Apple TV hardware
2:17:48But that's a that's a use case where they might sell a lot of Apple TVs, right?
2:17:52like where the best way to like run a sports bar where you show every single Sunday game is to just buy like three Apple TVs
2:17:58And hook them up to TVs and and like you said it's an interface challenge
2:18:01And that's the type of thing Apple could make really really nice where it's really really a good interface
2:18:06For the people who run the establishment to be like, okay, we'll put the Kansas City game over there
2:18:12We'll put the 49ers over there and we'll put the the Dallas game on that TV over there
2:18:16And we better put it we better put a second version of the Dallas game over here because there's lots of Dallas fans
2:18:21It's plus it allows them to potentially innovate and like drop the radio broadcasts on so you could listen to the radio broadcast instead of
2:18:27The TV there's all sorts of stuff you can do once you've got those things on streaming instead of just on sort of more linear
2:18:32Satellite I did see a story the other day from a guy who runs a bar who said oh
2:18:36I hope it doesn't go to streaming because my internet isn't fast enough to stream seven different games at once
2:18:42Which I get but I also think dude, you're a cheapskate
2:18:46Upgrade your internet right and direct TV is not that great a stream, you know
2:18:51it's it's not and also I would say I think some of those bars are gonna lose customers because
2:18:56To install a satellite dish on your roof just to get to direct TV. It's a big big thresholds to cross
2:19:04Whereas just clicking a button on on a streamer box whether it's Apple or somebody else and say yes
2:19:10Give this to me and not have to install hardware just to get it
2:19:15it's gonna be a much more successful package than it was before because that was the whole idea is like I
2:19:20Got direct TV for NFL Sunday ticket. In fact when I bought my house, I was like, okay
2:19:25I guess we're getting satellite TV because I want that package and
2:19:28You know
2:19:29It's a lot to like put a box in your house and a giant dish on your roof and it tied to your chimney and stuff
2:19:35Like that and this is gonna be way easier
2:19:37So I think the access is gonna be better for consumers and maybe few fewer people will go to the bar seeking out that
2:19:43Philadelphia Eagles game I think the I think that I think Apple's gonna get it. Anyway, that's my prediction
2:19:47Yeah, anyway, stay tuned for that show. I think it's gonna be good. Thank you. Once again, Jason. This is fun
2:19:53Yeah, except for the Safari taps part
2:19:55so the
2:19:58JG
2:20:00Why do they call you that
2:20:03(laughs)