The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► There's a lot going on yeah, it's good time to be us

00:00:03 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. I

00:00:05 ◼   ► Don't even know where to start I guess

00:00:08 ◼   ► Did I miss anything? I feel like I I had like a I got a weekend list of things. I wanted to write about today and

00:00:15 ◼   ► And you know, it wasn't like extensive I didn't write anything huge I just had a few things we're recording on Monday the 21st and

00:00:24 ◼   ► it's like

00:00:26 ◼   ► just like in today there's like so much new stuff that has come out like and and I

00:00:31 ◼   ► Feel like I'm already behind in other words. I was just watching pixel review videos all morning

00:00:37 ◼   ► I've hardly even touched the pixel for reviews because I was trying to catch up on the stuff

00:00:43 ◼   ► That I wanted to write from over the weekend. Yeah, so I read Dieter bones in the verge didn't watch the video yet. I

00:00:53 ◼   ► Don't know what's the consensus at Dieter's who seemed excellent it also seemed

00:00:57 ◼   ► I'll share my thoughts on it in a second. But what would you what do you take as the consensus?

00:01:03 ◼   ► Yeah, so I think the consensus is that it's got you know, still got really good stills

00:01:09 ◼   ► Disappointing video the battery life especially in the small one was bad enough that a few people couldn't recommend it just based on that alone

00:01:17 ◼   ► and it it it seemed like I

00:01:21 ◼   ► I think there was a lot of spoilers that went out

00:01:23 ◼   ► before the event.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And people were expecting more than the spoilers,

00:01:27 ◼   ► and they didn't get it.

00:01:28 ◼   ► They got slightly less.

00:01:30 ◼   ► And your project solely was this huge, cool--

00:01:32 ◼   ► you'd be able to twist your fingers in midair and do

00:01:34 ◼   ► things, and right now you just wave at your phone.

00:01:37 ◼   ► So partially a tech demo, but it didn't

00:01:39 ◼   ► seem like anyone was that blown away by it this year.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I mean, it's almost like an interesting experiment

00:01:50 ◼   ► in pre-leaking as much detail as you can.

00:01:54 ◼   ► You know, and what is the effect going to have on reaction?

00:02:00 ◼   ► You know, I mean, and you can-- you know,

00:02:03 ◼   ► you and I are going to see this through iPhone-colored glasses

00:02:08 ◼   ► just from our perspective.

00:02:10 ◼   ► But you know, there's often, when stuff leaks about Apple

00:02:14 ◼   ► stuff, there's sometimes an undercurrent of, well,

00:02:18 ◼   ► who cares?

00:02:18 ◼   ► it's all just hype or or the the conspiracy theory of you know that every

00:02:24 ◼   ► leak that proves accurate must have been delivered on Apple's part and they they

00:02:29 ◼   ► drip drip drip these leaks out as a way of increasing hype which is not true

00:02:35 ◼   ► yeah absolutely not true and I think part of it is the per I think part of it

00:02:42 ◼   ► is just personal. I really do think that from Schiller and

00:02:45 ◼   ► Jaws on down in Apple, there's just a personal desire to keep

00:02:51 ◼   ► this stuff secret. And Steve, you know, and the DNA of the

00:02:55 ◼   ► company is shaped by its founder, you know, Steve Jobs,

00:02:57 ◼   ► absolutely, whether you could have mathematically proven to

00:03:00 ◼   ► him, that there was financial value to be had in pre leaking

00:03:05 ◼   ► stuff, you just said to hell with it, I'm not only gonna

00:03:07 ◼   ► goddamn thing, I want to tell people about it on stage. So

00:03:10 ◼   ► Part of it is personality-wise,

00:03:11 ◼   ► and part of it, though, I think,

00:03:12 ◼   ► is that it is the correct PR strategy to surprise people

00:03:16 ◼   ► and to have features come out,

00:03:18 ◼   ► to have the first impression of the features

00:03:24 ◼   ► be what you want that first impression to be

00:03:27 ◼   ► as the company releasing it,

00:03:29 ◼   ► as opposed to some random leaker's perspective on it,

00:03:32 ◼   ► which may or may not be positive.

00:03:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also the talking point after all the events is,

00:03:38 ◼   ► oh, there was no surprises.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Sort of like reading the script to Star Wars

00:03:42 ◼   ► and then complaining you didn't get any surprises

00:03:44 ◼   ► in the movie.

00:03:45 ◼   ► But that ends up being the buzz after the event.

00:03:47 ◼   ► And this one, the Android events are weird to me,

00:03:50 ◼   ► just coming from an Apple background,

00:03:51 ◼   ► because more and more, and I think Google,

00:03:53 ◼   ► maybe for the first time, the event starts

00:03:56 ◼   ► and then the hands-on embargo drops,

00:03:58 ◼   ► because they bring people in before the event even

00:04:00 ◼   ► to show them the phone and they shoot video

00:04:03 ◼   ► and then they put up their videos.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And I don't know what to watch.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Like I'm watching the event

00:04:06 ◼   ► and I see like an MKBHD video come out

00:04:09 ◼   ► or a Verge video come out,

00:04:10 ◼   ► and then I don't know where to put my attention anymore,

00:04:12 ◼   ► and I think it makes it harder to follow the events.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so too.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Did you, you didn't go to the Pixel event, right?

00:04:23 ◼   ► - No, I had my colleagues go, but I did order one.

00:04:25 ◼   ► I ordered the orange one during the event.

00:04:27 ◼   ► - I ordered the white one,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and I'm in the process of selling my Pixel 3,

00:04:32 ◼   ► which is in mint condition, I have to say.

00:04:34 ◼   ► I did keep it in a case most of the year,

00:04:36 ◼   ► mainly because it was always sort of a secondary camera and so

00:04:40 ◼   ► but there were you know were you know, and I'm I don't baby my iPhones but you know, the one of the knocks against last year's

00:04:46 ◼   ► pixel 3 was that the the

00:04:48 ◼   ► matte finish glass was easily scratched that you know as easily scratched as

00:04:54 ◼   ► Like your fingernail and people would be like, well, that's not scratch

00:04:58 ◼   ► That's just calcium from your fingernail rubbing off and people were like no. No, it's actually the class

00:05:03 ◼   ► I don't know big one or the small one. No, I always get the small one because I tried to I

00:05:07 ◼   ► Try to as best as I can

00:05:11 ◼   ► Buy the one you know that I would get if I were going to use it and I you know

00:05:16 ◼   ► I still prefer the smaller of the iPhone

00:05:18 ◼   ► 10

00:05:21 ◼   ► series phones and I still would prefer the

00:05:24 ◼   ► smaller pixel for now again, I saw the initial

00:05:29 ◼   ► Reviews, you know even Dieter's not even I don't mean that that Dieter pointed out

00:05:33 ◼   ► I mean in the even in the sense that I've only read one

00:05:36 ◼   ► Yeah, even the one review I read which happens to be Dieter's mentions that has it very, you know

00:05:42 ◼   ► gives it gives a different rating to both phones and and one of the reasons that the

00:05:45 ◼   ► XL gets a better rating is that the battery is

00:05:48 ◼   ► Average in his terms whereas the battery life on the smaller one is poor

00:05:52 ◼   ► I don't know why I enjoy site for the first time said that they couldn't recommend the small pixel just based on but I don't

00:05:57 ◼   ► remember them ever not recommending a Pixel before.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I don't know why the battery life is worse though. I'm not quite sure given how limited

00:06:08 ◼   ► my review depth is. Are people saying it's worse than the Pixel 3 smaller one last year?

00:06:14 ◼   ► And if so, I can't understand why it's worse because I...

00:06:16 ◼   ► The Pixel 3 was terrible. The Pixel 4 is a small battery but also they have a 90 hertz

00:06:22 ◼   ► display which is sucking down more power.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:25 ◼   ► more of the ML on device which is sucking down more power.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that might be the explanation. I thought that the battery life on the Pixel 3 was fine.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And you know, using, mostly using the camera, which should be a battery, you know, a draw

00:06:36 ◼   ► because the display is on and it's reading and writing. But we'll see what I think

00:06:41 ◼   ► about the Pixel 4. But I bought the white one because I bought the black one last year

00:06:50 ◼   ► it was too hard to tell apart from all my black iPhones.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And so I needed to buy a color that would be

00:06:59 ◼   ► easily distinguishable while they're in front of me.

00:07:03 ◼   ► 'Cause I wind up doing things,

00:07:05 ◼   ► it's more than just like two phones side by side.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I mean, I'm just a mess in September and October,

00:07:14 ◼   ► really I'm just sort of coming down from it.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Because I'm testing multiple new iPhones now

00:07:20 ◼   ► from Apple. And I, you know, as I mentioned, talking to Ben

00:07:25 ◼   ► Thompson, on my last episode of the show, I really didn't even

00:07:29 ◼   ► spend much time with the 11 Pro Max, just because I did enough

00:07:36 ◼   ► to trust to verify that Apple what Apple was saying that this

00:07:40 ◼   ► is the same phone just bigger. And once I verified it, then all

00:07:43 ◼   ► I did was test the 11 and the 11 Pro because it's just too much.

00:07:48 ◼   ► But I've still got it out. It's laying around on my desk, you know, so I've got like new three two or three new iPhones

00:07:53 ◼   ► I've got my year-old iPhone that I'm using as like a baseline to measure year over year

00:07:58 ◼   ► And then I've got the pixel three out to like measure. How's this night sight compared with their night sight, etc?

00:08:03 ◼   ► So having them all be black was just terrible

00:08:06 ◼   ► So I got the white one

00:08:08 ◼   ► I think it has a nice stormtrooper II look which is what I sort of think about like the addition

00:08:13 ◼   ► Apple watch the the ceramic edition Apple watch

00:08:17 ◼   ► And I it's funny like the orange seems to be

00:08:23 ◼   ► In certain photographs, I love orange and black. I went to a high school with colors that were orange and black

00:08:30 ◼   ► I think orange and black are underrated colors on sports teams. I

00:08:33 ◼   ► Do I think they go very well together?

00:08:36 ◼   ► The other colors I use for vector it's it's a underused combination I really like it

00:08:44 ◼   ► I think, you know, I think orange is sometimes difficult to get right and but when you do it can look great

00:08:49 ◼   ► But I there's sort of a different photograph show the orange in different light

00:08:54 ◼   ► You know some of them look a lot more coral and some of them don't look coral at all

00:08:58 ◼   ► And I don't really care for coral so I didn't go that way. I got white

00:09:01 ◼   ► I'm just a sucker for new color, so I'll almost always get whatever it color is new

00:09:05 ◼   ► The thing that surprised me in Dieter's review though is well

00:09:08 ◼   ► You know Google made that big pitch about they have the the pixel neural core now and they can do live preview

00:09:13 ◼   ► And what I didn't realize it was just for HDR plus and I really wanted it for portrait mode

00:09:18 ◼   ► And then Dieter responded on Twitter that Google doesn't think that preview on portrait mode is any good and a mutual friend Matthew pans

00:09:26 ◼   ► We know if TechCrunch had a mini a mini stroke episode Twitter right after that. I see I missed all of this

00:09:32 ◼   ► This is all context that I have missed. I

00:09:35 ◼   ► do know I did that is an interesting philosophical difference between

00:09:40 ◼   ► Google's internal pixel camera team and apples and Apple real apples internal team is

00:09:46 ◼   ► Very very keen about doing everything live almost religious

00:09:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and in fact that makes the exception that is deep fusion

00:09:56 ◼   ► Notable, even though it's in my testing. It seems to be well under a second

00:10:03 ◼   ► usually but noticeable like

00:10:07 ◼   ► long longer enough that you wouldn't call it instantaneous but

00:10:10 ◼   ► Generally less than a second and you can sort of see a little update in the you know

00:10:14 ◼   ► You snap your picture the deep focus post-processing takes place and then the preview little

00:10:20 ◼   ► Avatar icon whatever you want to call it updates

00:10:23 ◼   ► So that's not live in the camera

00:10:28 ◼   ► But just about everything else is and and Apple even goes to great lengths now

00:10:32 ◼   ► Now they can't, it's, you know, the definition of the feature means that night mode is, can't

00:10:39 ◼   ► be done live because it's a multiple second exposure from when you begin it.

00:10:44 ◼   ► So without the ability to travel into the future a few seconds, there's no way to do

00:10:50 ◼   ► it.

00:10:51 ◼   ► But yet the live, what you do see in the viewfinder on the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro for night mode

00:10:58 ◼   ► is remarkably close to what you end up getting.

00:11:02 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure even how they do that.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Whereas that has absolutely been,

00:11:06 ◼   ► I don't have a Pixel 4 yet,

00:11:07 ◼   ► and I've pre-ordered, we'll be here soon,

00:11:10 ◼   ► but the Pixel 3, as much as they deserve kudos

00:11:12 ◼   ► for their night sight last year,

00:11:14 ◼   ► the live version of it was garbage.

00:11:17 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Yeah. - It was really bad.

00:11:19 ◼   ► I mean, you really-- - I like it

00:11:20 ◼   ► for portrait mode 'cause I can,

00:11:22 ◼   ► if it's messing around with the glasses or the ears,

00:11:24 ◼   ► I can just move it a little bit

00:11:25 ◼   ► and it fixes it before I waste time taking photos.

00:11:28 ◼   ► - You could use it for composition,

00:11:31 ◼   ► but it was absolutely useless in terms of finding out

00:11:35 ◼   ► what is the end result going to look like.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Now, was it better to have the feature than not have it?

00:11:42 ◼   ► Sure, you know, but I can also see why in that state

00:11:46 ◼   ► Apple wouldn't have shipped it.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Apple would say that's not ready to go

00:11:49 ◼   ► because we want it to be a reasonable representation.

00:11:52 ◼   ► Anyway, I thought that the whole framing of Dieter's review,

00:11:58 ◼   ► my take on the Pixel all along,

00:12:00 ◼   ► Ever since they rebooted their internal,

00:12:05 ◼   ► this is Google's Android phone

00:12:08 ◼   ► from the Nexus line to the Pixel line.

00:12:10 ◼   ► And I think it's worth treating as a new line.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Like they changed philosophically, in my opinion,

00:12:18 ◼   ► not just, it wasn't just a rose by any other name.

00:12:22 ◼   ► They took a lot more in-house.

00:12:26 ◼   ► It really wasn't,

00:12:27 ◼   ► The Pixel phones are a lot more than just pure Android,

00:12:30 ◼   ► which is what the Nexus phones were.

00:12:33 ◼   ► They really are Google's version of Android,

00:12:36 ◼   ► by taking Android and Googling it up with extra degrees.

00:12:39 ◼   ► I've always felt that at a basic level,

00:12:43 ◼   ► the Pixels are Android phones

00:12:49 ◼   ► for people who like iPhone hardware.

00:12:52 ◼   ► That it's, not that they're copies, you know,

00:12:56 ◼   ► But the Pixel phones have always been a lot more iPhone-like.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Putting aside what you see in the software, which

00:13:04 ◼   ► is the iOS versus Android, but just treating them

00:13:06 ◼   ► as hardware devices, boy, they're very iPhone-like.

00:13:11 ◼   ► They're iPhone-like in dimension.

00:13:13 ◼   ► They're iPhone-like in feel, sort of, varying.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Some of the earlier ones were very similar in design.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:21 ◼   ► They've always put the camera in the upper left corner

00:13:25 ◼   ► the back, which seems like a little thing but an awful—especially three, four years

00:13:30 ◼   ► ago, a lot of high-end Android phones still had the cameras centered in the back.

00:13:34 ◼   ► Yeah, many of them still do.

00:13:35 ◼   ► They still do, you know, and those are all, you know, but it's just, you know, at a

00:13:41 ◼   ► basic level, it just sort of looks like, boy, if you could just run an Android on an iPhone,

00:13:48 ◼   ► that's sort of the Pixel aesthetic.

00:13:50 ◼   ► - So for me, they've always been curious

00:13:53 ◼   ► because my understanding is that

00:13:55 ◼   ► there was a sort of a shakeup in Google leadership

00:13:57 ◼   ► and one of the people in charge really wanted an iPhone.

00:14:01 ◼   ► They just wanted Google to have an iPhone

00:14:04 ◼   ► and they started putting a lot of the elements in place

00:14:06 ◼   ► from internal design groups.

00:14:07 ◼   ► They bought HTC, well, they bought HTC Design in house.

00:14:12 ◼   ► They started working on their own silicon.

00:14:13 ◼   ► They started doing a lot of things to make an iPhone

00:14:15 ◼   ► but at the same time,

00:14:17 ◼   ► they never made the same kind of choices Apple would.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Like they never, or even Huawei or Samsung,

00:14:21 ◼   ► they never put great camera hardware on there

00:14:24 ◼   ► because they figured their camera software was so great

00:14:27 ◼   ► they could do with a less capable camera.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And they had a lot of trouble with screens.

00:14:32 ◼   ► So they didn't make the manufacturing choices

00:14:34 ◼   ► that Apple would make,

00:14:36 ◼   ► but they still sort of wanted an iPhone.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And then over the last year,

00:14:39 ◼   ► some of those initiatives didn't really work out

00:14:41 ◼   ► the way they hoped.

00:14:42 ◼   ► So now it just feels like they want a platform

00:14:44 ◼   ► to showcase the best of Google algorithms and software.

00:14:48 ◼   ► - Right.

00:14:49 ◼   ► - Oh, and they're definitely keen on the camera angle.

00:14:51 ◼   ► I mean, there's no doubt about it and they deserve it,

00:14:54 ◼   ► but it sort of feels this year too.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And again, I didn't read all the reviews,

00:15:01 ◼   ► so I'm not sure what they're gonna say,

00:15:03 ◼   ► but it seems like yet last year was a real high point

00:15:07 ◼   ► for their ability to do stuff computationally.

00:15:12 ◼   ► Night Sight in particular would be the shining--

00:15:16 ◼   ► - And Super Zoom was another good example.

00:15:18 ◼   ► Superzoom is another good example, where they do digital zoom, but by taking multiple exposures

00:15:23 ◼   ► and running it through a neural net. And it's a great, to me, it's a great example of how

00:15:31 ◼   ► this AI stuff really does deserve to be treated as a different sort of computing than, you

00:15:42 ◼   ► know what I mean? It's like there's all sorts of algorithms that are supposed to make things

00:15:47 ◼   ► seems smarter. Is it AI? No, not in a classical sense, but using a more efficient sorting

00:15:54 ◼   ► algorithm when you have to sort something, if it makes your spreadsheet faster when you're

00:15:59 ◼   ► reordering 10,000 columns of data by having a more efficient sort algorithm. That's just

00:16:05 ◼   ► classic computer science of being faster and stuff like this. Whereas the way that they're

00:16:10 ◼   ► doing the super zoom isn't really a human thinking, "Well, if this pixel is this color

00:16:17 ◼   ► and this next pixel in a tenth of a second later exposure is within 9%, then do this

00:16:23 ◼   ► and that. It really is just sort of feeding this into a machine learning model and by

00:16:30 ◼   ► telling it this looks better, this looks worse, and then you feed these things in there, all

00:16:34 ◼   ► of a sudden they come out with a way to very quickly, using the dedicated chips for this,

00:16:41 ◼   ► a digital zoom that is just seemingly way, way better than you could expect to get out

00:16:47 ◼   ► of a digital zoom.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Yes, absolutely.

00:16:50 ◼   ► But it feels like this year they're on a downside, even though they've added, you

00:16:54 ◼   ► know, extra hardware by adding a 2x telephoto lens and going beyond one camera lens on the

00:17:03 ◼   ► back. So they've definitely added hardware. It just feels like this is a down year for

00:17:07 ◼   ► there sort of will do most. Most of the benefit will come from our computational stuff and

00:17:13 ◼   ► we don't have to worry so much about the actual hardware. Like ideally you want both.

00:17:18 ◼   ► And I feel like…

00:17:19 ◼   ► Yes, absolutely. Because you also, I mean, you can tweak, like Apple is adding deep fusion

00:17:26 ◼   ► and they can tweak battery algorithms and they can tweak, but you can't go to everybody's

00:17:30 ◼   ► house and put a better camera system on their phone. You can't go to everybody's house

00:17:33 ◼   ► and stick a bigger battery in. You need a baseline. The better the hardware, the better

00:17:37 ◼   ► the software is going to work, and that's the balance they seem to be struggling with.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Dave Asprey And Apple is really doing some impressive

00:17:45 ◼   ► stuff with video. I mean, and that's always been the weak spot, Android wide, but Pixel

00:17:51 ◼   ► in particular, you know, the video stuff, just, you know, wherever you want to argue,

00:17:56 ◼   ► they rank on still mobile phone photography on video. Everything from Android is way behind

00:18:03 ◼   ► I mean, nobody else does 4K 60 yet, or maybe with some—

00:18:11 ◼   ► I think Samsung does.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe some—

00:18:13 ◼   ► But I don't think they do the interleaved extended dynamic range at 60.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Yeah, put an asterisk there, and it's, okay, maybe they do, but it's not great.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Like, you pointed—I got it from you and gave you credit when I linked to it, but Jonathan

00:18:23 ◼   ► Morrison, you know, well-known Twitter—or not Twitter, but YouTube personality, who

00:18:32 ◼   ► does great work and usually shoots with, you know, really,

00:18:34 ◼   ► truly professional camera rig.

00:18:36 ◼   ► And Arri Alexa Mini, which is like, I think $85,000.

00:18:40 ◼   ► It's just, you know, as good as it gets. Yeah, you know, it's

00:18:44 ◼   ► super pro. Filmmaker style kit, had a video with his first

00:18:50 ◼   ► thoughts on the pixel four, and he shot the whole thing, not

00:18:53 ◼   ► just with the iPhone 11, but with the iPhone 11 front facing

00:18:56 ◼   ► camera and it's clearly 60 frames per second. It probably clearly 4k but I looked at it

00:19:05 ◼   ► on a 13 inch MacBook so I don't know if I could I don't mod 100% sure that I could peg

00:19:10 ◼   ► moving video is 4k versus 1080 on a screen that size but you can definitely tell 60 frames

00:19:14 ◼   ► per second. Yeah. And you know, just totally. I didn't know in advance I don't think I would

00:19:22 ◼   ► guest and then at the very end of his video he had some like meta shots showing him shooting

00:19:27 ◼   ► it showing that he shot it with the front-facing camera like i don't see how he was joking on

00:19:32 ◼   ► twitter when google announced that he's at their the iphone selfie camera now shoots better video

00:19:36 ◼   ► than the main camera on the pixel it really does i mean it's actually i mean at least by some

00:19:41 ◼   ► measure there may be some ways that the that the bigger sensor on the rear-facing camera

00:19:45 ◼   ► there might be some scenarios where you get better video on the rear facing you have really good like

00:19:50 ◼   ► but like their algorithms for color and balance

00:19:52 ◼   ► and for stabilization are amazing.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Like they have, again, amazing algorithms.

00:19:57 ◼   ► But today I think they put out a statement

00:19:58 ◼   ► saying they didn't do 60 frames per second

00:20:00 ◼   ► because they thought it was a waste.

00:20:02 ◼   ► It was too much storage.

00:20:04 ◼   ► And that's my biggest problem with Pixel in general

00:20:06 ◼   ► is that Google doesn't have a strong opinion.

00:20:08 ◼   ► They, the first Pixel, they said,

00:20:10 ◼   ► "We don't need a camera bump."

00:20:11 ◼   ► Second year, like, "Oh, we need a camera bump.

00:20:13 ◼   ► We don't need new camera.

00:20:14 ◼   ► We don't need two cameras.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Oh, we need two cameras, but we don't need a wide angle."

00:20:17 ◼   ► And you just know next year

00:20:18 ◼   ► they're gonna add a wide angle.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And it's the same, we have a chin and a forehead

00:20:22 ◼   ► because we want two front-facing speakers.

00:20:24 ◼   ► That's really important to us.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And this year they put the speaker

00:20:26 ◼   ► right where the iPhone is.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And it feels like they sort of go halfway

00:20:30 ◼   ► and then rationalize it

00:20:31 ◼   ► and then change their mind the next year.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And I just want them to be super opinionated

00:20:34 ◼   ► about what they want a phone to be.

00:20:36 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:37 ◼   ► I would have encouraged them to go notchless

00:20:42 ◼   ► last year as well.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Like I feel like what they've done this year

00:20:46 ◼   ► where they, instead of having a notch,

00:20:48 ◼   ► It just goes across the top.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And so there's, you know, in that chin forehead terms,

00:20:53 ◼   ► they have a forehead, small by historical forehead sizes,

00:20:58 ◼   ► but still a forehead that's effectively the height of,

00:21:02 ◼   ► you know, what a notch would be on an iPhone 10

00:21:05 ◼   ► or any of the other phones that have curiously come out

00:21:08 ◼   ► with notches since the iPhone 10.

00:21:10 ◼   ► It has a bit of a chin, but not,

00:21:15 ◼   ► it's not anywhere close to the height of the forehead.

00:21:17 ◼   ► So iPhones have always been symmetrically designed

00:21:21 ◼   ► so that when you hold them sideways,

00:21:22 ◼   ► if it has a chin and forehead, it matches.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And if it doesn't have a chin or forehead,

00:21:27 ◼   ► it's the same bezel size all the way around.

00:21:29 ◼   ► I think that that's a better design

00:21:34 ◼   ► than the weird, ugly ass notch

00:21:36 ◼   ► that the Pixels had last year.

00:21:39 ◼   ► - And last year, the notch was only on the bigger one.

00:21:41 ◼   ► The smaller one didn't have a notch.

00:21:42 ◼   ► So did they have an opinion on notches?

00:21:44 ◼   ► Did they do one with a notch

00:21:45 ◼   ► just because they wanted to support it in Android

00:21:47 ◼   ► I figured they had to do it themselves.

00:21:48 ◼   ► I don't understand their opinions though.

00:21:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they obviously didn't spend a lot of work

00:21:53 ◼   ► last year on the corner radius of the rounded off screen.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Sort of like a first pass.

00:21:59 ◼   ► - And this year it's gestures.

00:22:00 ◼   ► I mean, they're sort of like the iPhone,

00:22:01 ◼   ► but they don't work the same as the iPhone

00:22:03 ◼   ► and they just end up confusing.

00:22:04 ◼   ► It's always a little bit of halfway.

00:22:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I gotta say I'm not, I mean, I'll try it

00:22:08 ◼   ► and I don't wanna prejudge it,

00:22:09 ◼   ► but what they're doing the radar stuff with

00:22:13 ◼   ► does not interest me really.

00:22:15 ◼   ► I don't really, I can't imagine,

00:22:17 ◼   ► so they have a feature now that you can wave your hand

00:22:20 ◼   ► without touching the phone and do a couple things.

00:22:23 ◼   ► One of them is you can fast forward tracks

00:22:27 ◼   ► if music is playing by just passing your hand over it.

00:22:30 ◼   ► You can, the useful one seems to be that it'll sense

00:22:36 ◼   ► when your hand gets near and fire up

00:22:39 ◼   ► their face recognition sensors

00:22:42 ◼   ► so that before you're even pointing it at your face,

00:22:45 ◼   ► they're already looking because they know your hand

00:22:47 ◼   ► has entered the little sphere of three-dimensional space

00:22:50 ◼   ► above the phone.

00:22:52 ◼   ► And I guess you can tickle your Pokemon or something

00:22:54 ◼   ► on your home screen by just waving at it,

00:22:57 ◼   ► which really seems weird.

00:22:59 ◼   ► - The whole thing in there was odd to me too.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I think it's a good idea to warm up the camera

00:23:04 ◼   ► if it detects you, but Apple had the iPhone 11 event

00:23:07 ◼   ► and they have a U1 chip in the iPhone 11

00:23:09 ◼   ► and they didn't mention it because there's no compelling

00:23:11 ◼   ► user-facing feature yet.

00:23:13 ◼   ► on their product page at the bottom, it says,

00:23:15 ◼   ► "Yeah, it'll help you with AirDrop."

00:23:16 ◼   ► But the obvious consumer-facing feature hasn't shipped yet,

00:23:21 ◼   ► so they stayed mum.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Where with this, it feels like they don't,

00:23:25 ◼   ► it's nothing like the early demos.

00:23:27 ◼   ► The early demo showed people doing very fine-grained

00:23:29 ◼   ► controls of radios and video and all these things,

00:23:32 ◼   ► and none of that is ready.

00:23:34 ◼   ► So I would have just completely downplayed it,

00:23:36 ◼   ► just not mentioned it very much at all.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And everyone left being disappointed,

00:23:39 ◼   ► like, "Oh, it wasn't as good as the demo."

00:23:41 ◼   ► - Right, there are white papers on the technology,

00:23:45 ◼   ► or I don't know if that's their official term,

00:23:46 ◼   ► but they've talked about the technology for years,

00:23:49 ◼   ► and they make it sound as though it's as fine-grained

00:23:53 ◼   ► as the touchscreen itself, right?

00:23:55 ◼   ► So in the way-- - We have videos showing it.

00:23:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you can, if you're adjusting the volume

00:24:01 ◼   ► on your phone by using the slider in your finger,

00:24:03 ◼   ► and you have this incredible fine-grained control,

00:24:06 ◼   ► they're showing it that you could just hold your finger

00:24:08 ◼   ► above the phone and get the same thing,

00:24:10 ◼   ► Whereas all they really have here is simple,

00:24:13 ◼   ► broad stroke, fast forward, next track type.

00:24:15 ◼   ► - Which aren't working consistently.

00:24:17 ◼   ► If you look at the reviewers somewhere,

00:24:18 ◼   ► I think Marques was saying it worked 10% at first.

00:24:20 ◼   ► He's figured out how to make it work 60% of the time.

00:24:23 ◼   ► And that's not a flagship feature.

00:24:25 ◼   ► - No, but that's terrible.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I think anything that's less than 100% is terrible.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And it gets me to, I mean, I have complaints

00:24:31 ◼   ► about Apple stuff that works like that too.

00:24:33 ◼   ► - Yes, same.

00:24:34 ◼   ► - Trying to think of a good one.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I mean a lot of the stuff with iOS 13 is just still kind of busted.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm trying to think of it. Off the top of my head I can't think of it, but maybe some Apple TV type interactions are pretty good.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Like even though I use Apple TV all the time, me using that little remote to move the selection around the screen, I'm still not as precise as I think I should be.

00:25:01 ◼   ► That's for example one example.

00:25:04 ◼   ► - The big one for me on Apple TV is apparently

00:25:06 ◼   ► the longer you press, it's whether it'll shoot you back

00:25:09 ◼   ► to the episode selector or all the way back to the screen.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And I could never get that right.

00:25:13 ◼   ► So I would just always try to go, no wrong episode,

00:25:15 ◼   ► try to go back, oh, I'm back on the home screen,

00:25:17 ◼   ► play the episode again, oh, I'm back on the home screen.

00:25:19 ◼   ► It was like a random frustration generator.

00:25:21 ◼   ► - Oh, I can think of a good example.

00:25:22 ◼   ► A good example is the keyboard problems

00:25:25 ◼   ► people are having on MacBooks,

00:25:27 ◼   ► where even if your keyboard isn't completely failed,

00:25:30 ◼   ► Like if it's just that like, you know, one time out of 50,

00:25:34 ◼   ► you'd hit the E key and get two E's instead of one E.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And it's only one out of 50.

00:25:40 ◼   ► That's terrible.

00:25:41 ◼   ► That's absolutely unacceptable.

00:25:42 ◼   ► It has to be every time.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Like when you click an okay button in the dialogue,

00:25:45 ◼   ► it has to click every time.

00:25:47 ◼   ► So like trying to do next track with a gesture

00:25:50 ◼   ► and the gesture only works 60% of the time,

00:25:52 ◼   ► that you'll, I mean, 60% is so low

00:25:56 ◼   ► that you'll stop using the feature.

00:25:57 ◼   ► There's no way.

00:25:58 ◼   ► - Even just like Siri still,

00:25:59 ◼   ► Like if I tell it to call my mom,

00:26:01 ◼   ► nine out of 10 times is perfect.

00:26:02 ◼   ► The 10th time it recommends a,

00:26:04 ◼   ► sorry, a veterinarian to cross town from me.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And then you have learned helplessness.

00:26:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, Siri's a perfect example of that too.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And there's just stuff,

00:26:13 ◼   ► and to me the bar for that is a little bit different

00:26:17 ◼   ► than a physical UI, right?

00:26:21 ◼   ► Like a button that you tap on a touchscreen

00:26:24 ◼   ► or click on a mouse-driven interface

00:26:28 ◼   ► or a keyboard shortcut you invoke to do it

00:26:31 ◼   ► is very, very, it's provable whether it worked

00:26:36 ◼   ► or didn't work exactly as expected

00:26:40 ◼   ► with the latency you expect.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Whereas the Siri stuff is always gonna be a little nebulous

00:26:46 ◼   ► as to where the edge conditions lie.

00:26:50 ◼   ► But for the most part, to me, I think that the standards

00:26:54 ◼   ► by which we should judge Siri

00:26:56 ◼   ► the similar voice assistants is basically what if you hired a college kid to be your intern?

00:27:01 ◼   ► Would you expect them to understand what you just said? And if you, you know, so if you hired

00:27:07 ◼   ► somebody to be your assistant and follow you around, and you're like, you wanted to call

00:27:12 ◼   ► your mom and you don't want to touch the phone, you're like, get my mom on the phone, right? You

00:27:17 ◼   ► expect your mother to be on the phone every single time. You don't expect to have like a pizza place

00:27:22 ◼   ► open up. Did you see Joanna's video for the Pixel this morning? With the speed talker? Yeah,

00:27:33 ◼   ► she's always so creative with those videos and she put the, because the new Google voice recorder

00:27:36 ◼   ► also transcribes, so of course she got someone with a Scottish accent, with a West Indian accent,

00:27:42 ◼   ► with a German accent, transatlantic, yeah maybe we're Australian or something, and the world's

00:27:47 ◼   ► fastest talker and just let them all loose on it. Yeah the world's fastest talker or fastest woman

00:27:52 ◼   ► talker. I'm not quite sure if she has the record, but that was just cruel.

00:27:58 ◼   ► But the stenographer kept up, which was amazing.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I will. Yeah. And she had a professional court stenographer there,

00:28:04 ◼   ► like the Paul Bunyan, the real-life flesh and blood alternative. Anyway, that is a killer feature,

00:28:12 ◼   ► I have to say, for me personally, as somebody who occasionally, somewhat occasionally,

00:28:16 ◼   ► needs or wants transcription. Boy, that's a fantastic feature that I wish, I hope the iPhone

00:28:21 ◼   ► can follow as quickly as possible.

00:28:24 ◼   ► It seems to work for you.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Yeah, well someone pointed out that Clips does a little bit of that.

00:28:26 ◼   ► So hopefully Apple can flesh that out into a full-fledged.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:30 ◼   ► But something like that if you have an on-the-record meeting as somebody

00:28:34 ◼   ► in the press, or if you're a student and you want to record a lecture

00:28:36 ◼   ► or something, that if you can hear it and understand it,

00:28:40 ◼   ► your iPhone can hear it and transcribe it.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And hopefully--

00:28:43 ◼   ► The other thing that was baffling for me is that they have the brand new Google

00:28:46 ◼   ► Assistant.

00:28:47 ◼   ► It's only available in the US for now, which that happens.

00:28:49 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:28:50 ◼   ► But if you have a Google Apps account,

00:28:53 ◼   ► doesn't matter if it's first account, second account.

00:28:57 ◼   ► If you have one on, the Assistant will not work.

00:28:59 ◼   ► What?

00:29:00 ◼   ► Yeah, if you have a Gmail account, it's fine.

00:29:02 ◼   ► But if you have a Google Apps account or a Gmail account

00:29:05 ◼   ► and a Google Apps account, the Assistant just will not work.

00:29:08 ◼   ► Oh, that's a strange limitation.

00:29:09 ◼   ► And they said they're working on a fix,

00:29:10 ◼   ► but it always seems like Google Apps accounts, which

00:29:12 ◼   ► people pay for, get way shorter shift than the Gmail accounts.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Wow, that's really weird.

00:29:16 ◼   ► And it also seems like the sort of problem

00:29:18 ◼   ► you'd more expect from Apple, you know,

00:29:21 ◼   ► the various ongoing problems that those of us

00:29:24 ◼   ► with two iTunes accounts, iCloud accounts,

00:29:27 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call them, Apple IDs, still get.

00:29:31 ◼   ► I don't wanna go on a whole sidetrack,

00:29:36 ◼   ► but basically I, among other old,

00:29:38 ◼   ► the longer you've been using Apple products,

00:29:40 ◼   ► the more likely you are to be in this boat,

00:29:42 ◼   ► where you opened up a iTunes store account

00:29:46 ◼   ► in the early 2000s with email address A,

00:29:51 ◼   ► and then later on with Mac.com,

00:29:53 ◼   ► created a Mac.com or a me.com account

00:29:56 ◼   ► to use Mac.com features,

00:30:00 ◼   ► but that's not the same thing you use for iTunes,

00:30:02 ◼   ► and still lo these many years later in 2019,

00:30:06 ◼   ► you've still got two separate accounts

00:30:09 ◼   ► because there's no way to merge them,

00:30:11 ◼   ► which I understand would be incredibly complicated,

00:30:14 ◼   ► and you know that there's all sorts of edge conditions

00:30:17 ◼   ► you could run into there.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Because if I want to, I can go to a new machine

00:30:20 ◼   ► and log in with my iTunes account.

00:30:22 ◼   ► And it is an Apple ID.

00:30:23 ◼   ► So I could use iMessage and note syncing

00:30:26 ◼   ► and calendar syncing all from that account.

00:30:29 ◼   ► I'm sure there's some people who are somehow

00:30:34 ◼   ► using two different things.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And so merging them would be complicated.

00:30:37 ◼   ► On the surface it sounds like, jeez,

00:30:41 ◼   ► why can't I just say I would like to just use

00:30:43 ◼   ► my iCloud account for everything and transfer all the iTunes accounts from this other account

00:30:47 ◼   ► over in a one-time transition and then that's that. But I get it, that's complicated.

00:30:53 ◼   ► But anyway, living life like that is always a little bit more complicated than the people

00:30:57 ◼   ► who have it all in one. You don't know how lucky you are if you only have one. It's

00:31:02 ◼   ► good to know Google has problems like that too. Anyway, I thought Dieter's basic opening

00:31:07 ◼   ► is the framing of his review read very iPhone-y to me as well. So I've always thought that

00:31:18 ◼   ► the pixels were, as a whole, the whole project is sort of Google's take on iPhone-style hardware

00:31:22 ◼   ► with stuff like screens that aren't super-saturated, less blingy, more understated design. You

00:31:31 ◼   ► know, there is a sort of designed-in-California look to their stuff, too, that's different

00:31:36 ◼   ► than stuff that's designed in Korea or China or Japan, you know, with some of Sony's very

00:31:42 ◼   ► cool stuff. Dieter's review though made it almost it almost read like the opening to

00:31:49 ◼   ► like what kind of product is he reviewing here, you'd almost think it was an Apple product

00:31:53 ◼   ► because it was about how specs don't tell the story of the product. And you can't just

00:31:58 ◼   ► look at the specs. You have to kind of look at the actual experience and you could say,

00:32:03 ◼   ► this phone it doesn't have the fastest processor and it doesn't have the greatest camera hardware

00:32:07 ◼   ► but you look at the actual photos you get from it and they look better than

00:32:11 ◼   ► other ones the other phones that might on on paper seemingly have a better camera.

00:32:17 ◼   ► No that's absolutely true. Huawei and Samsung both have tremendous some of the Nokia stuff

00:32:22 ◼   ► tremendous optics on them and they just they junk them up with really bad color science really poor

00:32:26 ◼   ► color management the cameras look different from one system to the other and yeah or they

00:32:31 ◼   ► they overblow them with AI,

00:32:33 ◼   ► what they call their AI modes and they over saturate them.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And Google, you can, like, I think if you look at them,

00:32:38 ◼   ► you can subjectively choose which one you prefer

00:32:40 ◼   ► because at this point they're both so good.

00:32:42 ◼   ► It's the artistic choices.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Like Google's tend to look cooler.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Apple's tend to look a little bit warmer.

00:32:47 ◼   ► They do different stuff with the details.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Their semantic rendering is slightly different,

00:32:51 ◼   ► but that is just personal preference at this point.

00:32:53 ◼   ► And it's amazing we've gotten to the point

00:32:55 ◼   ► where it comes down to that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's definitely,

00:32:58 ◼   ► can definitely see the different internal aesthetic choices in there. So what else with

00:33:07 ◼   ► the Pixel? I had another thought. Oh, I guess we could talk about the lens decisions. Why

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00:36:13 ◼   ► So there was a story, another story at the Verge. I think it was like right after the

00:36:19 ◼   ► iPhone 11 events by Sam Byford. It was like, I think literally said that Apple needed to

00:36:26 ◼   ► catch up to Android this year on the camera.

00:36:31 ◼   ► And it had been taken as a point of just fact for the last year

00:36:37 ◼   ► that the Pixel 3 was a better camera than the iPhone XS.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And Vlad was writing that a lot as well.

00:36:44 ◼   ► And I disagree.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I really do.

00:36:47 ◼   ► And I might say, oh, you know, Neelay and I

00:36:50 ◼   ► talked about this a few weeks ago on the Verge crash.

00:36:54 ◼   ► I feel like the differences were, they were real.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And I could see why subjectively somebody would prefer

00:37:01 ◼   ► the Pixel 3 for still photography.

00:37:02 ◼   ► But objectively, I think that there were plus and minuses

00:37:06 ◼   ► on both sides.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And, you know, Night Sight was the one feature

00:37:11 ◼   ► the Pixel 3 had for a year that the iPhone XS couldn't do.

00:37:15 ◼   ► But it wasn't, you know, how often do you need it?

00:37:18 ◼   ► And, you know, I don't know.

00:37:21 ◼   ► - I mean, I was on that portrait mode

00:37:23 ◼   ► before Google did it, but it didn't seem

00:37:25 ◼   ► to have such a big a reaction.

00:37:26 ◼   ► - Right, you know, there's things

00:37:29 ◼   ► that the iPhone still camera could do

00:37:30 ◼   ► that the Pixel couldn't, and for just regular photography,

00:37:34 ◼   ► I think it was debatable.

00:37:35 ◼   ► But I thought-- - The biggest thing for me

00:37:36 ◼   ► is that we went to CES and I was shooting with an iPhone

00:37:39 ◼   ► and everyone from our Android team

00:37:40 ◼   ► started off shooting with a Pixel,

00:37:42 ◼   ► but the camera just wouldn't launch,

00:37:44 ◼   ► they would miss the shot and the video would drop frames,

00:37:46 ◼   ► and by a day in, they'd all switch to Samsung

00:37:48 ◼   ► and Huawei phones because it didn't matter

00:37:50 ◼   ► how good the camera was if it couldn't get

00:37:52 ◼   ► shocked for them. And I think that's one of the most underappreciated aspects of a

00:37:56 ◼   ► camera.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and that was a knock against the Pixel 3 too with startup time. And we've all been

00:38:02 ◼   ► in that situation. And at times, I've even wondered whether Apple should make, you know,

00:38:07 ◼   ► should they add a dedicated phone button? And I can see why they don't. The Nokia

00:38:12 ◼   ► phones back in the day had a dedicated shutter button just for the camera and launching it.

00:38:19 ◼   ► We've all been in that situation where there's,

00:38:21 ◼   ► "Oh my God, there's something cute or amazing

00:38:23 ◼   ► "or whatever going on.

00:38:24 ◼   ► "I need to get my camera fired up as fast as possible."

00:38:26 ◼   ► And you really don't want that to be delayed.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But I thought the other thing, it was sort of a,

00:38:33 ◼   ► it's a well-known trope that the Macalope observes

00:38:39 ◼   ► very keenly, was that the gist of Biford's explanation

00:38:43 ◼   ► of how the, or assertion that the iPhone needed

00:38:46 ◼   ► catch up on the phone or on the camera was by citing at least three different Android

00:38:54 ◼   ► phones. You know, like, it didn't have Night Sight, which the Pixel did. It didn't have

00:38:59 ◼   ► an ultra wide lens, which these Huawei and other brand phones did. And it didn't have

00:39:05 ◼   ► something else that some other phone did. But none of those three phones have the three

00:39:09 ◼   ► features. You know what I mean? Like you could say, quote, unquote, Android had these three

00:39:12 ◼   ► features, but you had to have three different phones to have all three features. It's just

00:39:16 ◼   ► a sort of a classic gotcha of comparing the Apple ecosystem to Windows back in the day to Android in

00:39:24 ◼   ► recent years. I thought that the extra lens thing was particularly rich if you're going to—because

00:39:31 ◼   ► usually people held up the Pixel as the best Android camera phone, I think with good reason.

00:39:41 ◼   ► But if, you know, on those grounds, clearly it was the Pixel that needed to catch up and now still

00:39:46 ◼   ► needs to catch up. It still only has two lenses even at the highest lens, at the highest version.

00:39:51 ◼   ► And again, I don't say that that proves that the iPhone is ahead. I'm just saying I think

00:39:56 ◼   ► it requires a much more nuanced discussion. And I think that the certainty that some

00:40:03 ◼   ► Pixel aficionados feel that they have the best still camera phone is maybe not warranted.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very subjective.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Which brings me to this discussion of, okay, if you're going to add, like the standard

00:40:19 ◼   ► lens on a modern cell phone camera is pretty consistently in field of view at what in 35

00:40:28 ◼   ► millimeter terms would be around a 26 to 28 millimeter lens.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And there's a good argument to be made that we should kind of get away from those terms

00:40:43 ◼   ► anymore.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And Apple certainly has.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Apple doesn't really describe them.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Apple just calls them 1x, 2x, and now 0.5x, which is a better way of thinking about it.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And field of view, which is measured in an angle.

00:40:56 ◼   ► In other words, what angle from the lens pointing forward is captured in the sensor makes more

00:41:08 ◼   ► sense than just using 35mm sensor film terms, especially as 35mm sensors become a smaller

00:41:15 ◼   ► and smaller part of the camera landscape.

00:41:21 ◼   ► So what we call a 1x lens on most of these cameras is very, very similar in field of

00:41:26 ◼   ► view. Just a tiny fraction. The iPhone is a little bit wider than the Pixel was last

00:41:31 ◼   ► year. I don't know how they compare this year. But if you set a Pixel 3 and an iPhone

00:41:36 ◼   ► XS up last year, you could, if you knew what to look for, if they were set up at the exact

00:41:42 ◼   ► same location, you could tell instantly which one was which because the iPhones would be

00:41:46 ◼   ► a little bit wider. So you'd capture a little bit more information along the sides of the

00:41:51 ◼   ► the image. So depending on the subject you were photographing, you could just see it

00:41:56 ◼   ► if there's a little bit more. Like I think if you really wanted to do a side-by-side,

00:42:03 ◼   ► like double-blind, which one do you like, part of it would have been you'd have to

00:42:08 ◼   ► crop the iPhone pictures like one or two percent and do like a center crop just to get the

00:42:14 ◼   ► same field of view. If you're going to add a second lens, and now everybody's adding

00:42:20 ◼   ► second lenses because it's just the physics of these devices and you know how thin they

00:42:26 ◼   ► need to be mean you at least in the near future there's no way to make a zoom lens meaning

00:42:33 ◼   ► a lens that adjusts from these different fields of view so if you want to get the effects

00:42:40 ◼   ► of a zoom lens the advantages meaning to be able to go even wider or to zoom in more without

00:42:48 ◼   ► resorting to digital zoom, you need second and third camera lenses. I kind of feel and

00:42:57 ◼   ► did you watch the Pixel 4 event?

00:42:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:43:00 ◼   ► I forget the guy's name. Do you know the guy's name who's like their camera guy?

00:43:04 ◼   ► Oh, it's Mark. I'm blanking on his name too. He's the guy who made all those computations

00:43:08 ◼   ► with that original computational photography app.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Yeah, he's a very smart guy. I think he was a little salty about the ultra wide lens.

00:43:17 ◼   ► lens yeah like i kind of feel like google got caught with their just caught maybe making the

00:43:26 ◼   ► wrong decision on that front and that mark levoie mark levoie i'm gonna have to write this down

00:43:32 ◼   ► and i really think that apple made the right decision now that the non-pro

00:43:43 ◼   ► $799 new iPhone has two lenses. Instead of following in the footsteps of the iPhone 10

00:43:50 ◼   ► and 10S and going telephoto as the second lens, it only goes ultra-wide. I think that's

00:43:56 ◼   ► the right move for most people. I think it's also the right move for the non-pro phone.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And I'm on the record as saying we don't have to worry so much about what pro means in the

00:44:09 ◼   ► parlance of an iPhone Pro. It really can just mean iPhone premium. Yes, whether it's professional

00:44:16 ◼   ► or not. But the truth is, as just a basic rule of thumb, the wider the lens, the more

00:44:24 ◼   ► fun it is, right? And you can get, you know, some actual comical effects with the ultra

00:44:32 ◼   ► wide by having a subject really close and it exaggerates it. And then the longer the

00:44:38 ◼   ► lens the more serious it is. It just gives you a more serious feel. That's why the portrait lens,

00:44:43 ◼   ► you know, defaults to the two X perspective. It just is a more staid perspective. I remember

00:44:52 ◼   ► reading an interview once with Billy Crystal and he was talking, I forget who directed the movies,

00:45:00 ◼   ► but I think it was about city slickers to remember city slickers. And then there was

00:45:03 ◼   ► City Slickers was a smash hit and was a big, big hit and made Jack Parlance,

00:45:09 ◼   ► who was the crufty old cowboy, became a, you know, it had been like a big star in the 50s and 60s.

00:45:14 ◼   ► All of a sudden he became big star again. And then they made a sequel and the sequel wasn't so good.

00:45:21 ◼   ► And the story I heard was that Billy Crystal was talking to a new director for it and he was

00:45:26 ◼   ► talking to somebody else, I think like Rob Reiner, who wasn't involved with it. And he was just like,

00:45:31 ◼   ► from the set and he was just like so i could be butchering this anecdote but i know it was

00:45:34 ◼   ► billy crystal i know it was i know it was city slickers too may or may not have been rob riner

00:45:39 ◼   ► but anyway he was talking to somebody who he trusted as a director of comedy and he said hey

00:45:44 ◼   ► he always told me that wide angle lenses are funny and he's like yeah yeah that's real fast

00:45:48 ◼   ► you want something to be funny you got to put a wide angle lens on the camera and he goes would it

00:45:51 ◼   ► this guy's not putting nope this guy's shooting everything with a long lens and it was just like

00:45:55 ◼   ► crickets on the other end of the phone and then billy crystal was like yeah i thought so

00:45:59 ◼   ► It is though, but it's true. It really is fun. And I think just reading it, I think

00:46:06 ◼   ► I've read more people on Twitter who seem less, you know, prosumerary photo enthusiast

00:46:15 ◼   ► types and just more casual. I just shoot photos. They seem to be using the wide angle lens

00:46:21 ◼   ► more than, than I saw people using the telephoto lens in the whole two years when, when the

00:46:28 ◼   ► the iPhone if you had two lenses, or I guess three years maybe, where if the iPhone had

00:46:33 ◼   ► dual lenses, the second lens was telephoto.

00:46:36 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, I think that's really true. And it's interesting to me because I would

00:46:42 ◼   ► shoot a lot with the telephoto lens, but mostly because I wanted the bokeh and it gets a much

00:46:45 ◼   ► nicer natural bokeh than the other lens than the the ultra wide angle lens. But you can

00:46:50 ◼   ► computationally deliver telephoto Google did it last year with the Pixel three and super

00:46:55 ◼   ► That's essentially what they were doing was making a computational telephoto lens

00:46:58 ◼   ► But you can't do that with ultra wide-angle because you don't have the extra data. It just is it doesn't exist

00:47:04 ◼   ► So putting even on an iPhone 11 not the pro you have the wide-angle and the ultra wide-angle

00:47:09 ◼   ► You can still do a zoom

00:47:12 ◼   ► I wish Apple would put the button on there because I think it's a better user experience to just do the the 2x button

00:47:16 ◼   ► But you can zoom in and it's still a usable shot

00:47:19 ◼   ► You cannot zoom out on a pixel and I think that's a loss and when I look at a lot of the Android reviewers

00:47:24 ◼   ► Because like you mentioned not not a lot of the phones used to have every option but now a Huawei phone at Samsung phone

00:47:30 ◼   ► All of them have ultra wide all of them have night mode and it's pixel that stands out for not having everything. Yeah

00:47:36 ◼   ► Ben Rubenstein is the developer behind the excellent halide app along with his yes

00:47:43 ◼   ► Colleague Sebastian Dewit, who's the designer of the app?

00:47:48 ◼   ► Did some interesting work last year on?

00:47:54 ◼   ► Just comparing the 1x camera

00:47:57 ◼   ► Doing a 2x digital zoom versus yeah, Ben

00:48:02 ◼   ► Sandovski this name what I forget how I mispronounced it. Sorry Ben

00:48:06 ◼   ► But Ben Sandovski really smart developer really knows this stuff really found that in a lot a surprisingly well lit

00:48:14 ◼   ► Well lit but indoor lighting conditions a 1x camera with two with the 2x digital zoom

00:48:22 ◼   ► using a smart zoom algorithm would get you a better image than using a 2x camera with a slower lens meaning

00:48:28 ◼   ► slower meaning works worse with less light

00:48:31 ◼   ► You know digital the gist of it being digital zoom has gotten better than you think and in the old days when digital

00:48:39 ◼   ► Photography was new it was like don't ever resort to digital zoom, you know, unless you really really have to because it just looks like

00:48:46 ◼   ► muddy

00:48:48 ◼   ► Blurry pixels at every level whereas it's gotten better and like you said you can do it

00:48:55 ◼   ► However, whatever the trade-offs are of doing a digital zoom it

00:48:58 ◼   ► It's still certainly getting you that frame of view. Whereas there's absolutely no way to fake

00:49:04 ◼   ► 0.5 X lens field of view

00:49:08 ◼   ► I don't think most people notice because on the iPhone it will switch between

00:49:11 ◼   ► The real telephoto and sort of a fake telephoto if it gets into lower light

00:49:15 ◼   ► And I don't know how many people actually notice when it's doing that because when I point it out they're super surprised

00:49:20 ◼   ► No, and nobody nobody noticed. I mean all of us we wrote I'm not maybe somebody noticed

00:49:25 ◼   ► I don't know but I even wrote a piece a couple weeks ago about how when you're in night

00:49:29 ◼   ► Night mode on the iPhone 11 Pro it always uses the 1x camera lens

00:49:34 ◼   ► So if you're doing 2x in in night mode on a 11 Pro

00:49:39 ◼   ► It's using the 1x sensor and doing a digital zoom

00:49:43 ◼   ► along with the interpolation of multiple exposures, you know

00:49:47 ◼   ► And nobody knew nobody really caught on to that and there was a bit of

00:49:53 ◼   ► Apple not wanting to talk about how it worked which was weird and should have raised a flag people because if you did get the

00:49:59 ◼   ► Telephoto lens it looked like night mode didn't work and then when you didn't get it

00:50:02 ◼   ► It looked like night mode worked and you couldn't figure out why sometimes you don't work at 2x and not others and it was just confusing

00:50:07 ◼   ► Yeah

00:50:08 ◼   ► And you can do you can always prove this and it's just the simplest most obvious thing in the world if you're ever confused as

00:50:13 ◼   ► of which camera lens your iPhone is using for a "2x" shot, just cover one of the lenses

00:50:19 ◼   ► with your finger and you can actually see it happen.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Basically, I think that the confusion is that Apple in some ways presents the new camera

00:50:32 ◼   ► zoom interface with these separate buttons.

00:50:35 ◼   ► On the iPhone 11, you get a 0.5 and 1x buttons, but no 2x button.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And then on the iPhone 11 Pro, you get three buttons, 0.5, 1, and 2x.

00:50:46 ◼   ► And at some level, they want you—and I think overall they've really achieved—I think

00:50:52 ◼   ► that the camera team at Apple is doing some of the best user experience work in the industry.

00:51:00 ◼   ► In terms of what they're doing with the user interface and exposing a little bit more

00:51:05 ◼   ► complexity but in ways that don't get in a way of using the camera in the most

00:51:13 ◼   ► simplistic way possible which they know is what most people do is open the

00:51:18 ◼   ► camera make sure you're either in camera or video mode and then hit the button

00:51:22 ◼   ► right that's what people do and they've really not gotten in the way of that but

00:51:27 ◼   ► they've really exposed what you can do in a very you know very useful ways

00:51:33 ◼   ► there's a little bit of conflation there though where they really want you to

00:51:38 ◼   ► treat it as one camera yeah you can zoom in and out of and you don't have to

00:51:42 ◼   ► worry about the fact that there are three physical cameras on the back it's

00:51:47 ◼   ► just one camera app and it just zooms in and out like the way a point-and-shoot

00:51:52 ◼   ► camera can zoom in and out you know and you don't have to worry about it that

00:51:55 ◼   ► it's technically three different cameras and three different sensors and three

00:51:59 ◼   ► different maximum, you know, exposure speeds and stuff like

00:52:04 ◼   ► that. You don't have to worry about it. It'll just do what you

00:52:06 ◼   ► needs to do to get the best image at the perspective you're

00:52:10 ◼   ► looking for. But at the other hand, they still there is some

00:52:14 ◼   ► aspect of it, whereby only having the two x button on the

00:52:18 ◼   ► one that has the two x lens physical lens. It kind of makes

00:52:22 ◼   ► you feel that hitting that button is giving you that

00:52:25 ◼   ► camera that physical can agreed yeah it whereas that's not the case it's really

00:52:32 ◼   ► just about the field of view and it just means 0.5 is always going to give you

00:52:37 ◼   ► the 0.5 camera because there's no other way to fake it 1x is always going to

00:52:42 ◼   ► give you the 1x camera because if it's the best camera period so if you want

00:52:47 ◼   ► the 1x field of view it's never going to be better by cropping the other the

00:52:52 ◼   ► other images. The 2x though is the mystery where sometimes it if you're outdoors and

00:53:00 ◼   ► there's lots of light it's going to give you the 2x camera physically but indoors it may

00:53:04 ◼   ► not and if night sight it never will. Yeah. But that's okay. The other interesting thing

00:53:10 ◼   ► for me is that there's there's almost like this battle inside Apple because on one hand

00:53:14 ◼   ► they exactly what you said they just want it to be a camera you pick it up you shoot

00:53:18 ◼   ► you don't worry about it but on the other hand some of the technology is so cool they

00:53:21 ◼   ► resist talking about it. So I think like in a perfect world they wouldn't really

00:53:25 ◼   ► talk about deep fusion it would just be the camera shoots and it gives you the

00:53:29 ◼   ► best possible image based on when you're shooting and over time right now we have

00:53:34 ◼   ► Smart HDR and we have deep fusion and we have night mode and they're distinct and

00:53:38 ◼   ► it switches between them but over time it's probably going to do some amount of

00:53:42 ◼   ► each of them depending exactly on where you are in the continuum of lighting and

00:53:46 ◼   ► they will be less distinct but for right now people keep asking well when when do

00:53:50 ◼   ► I see deep fusion and Apple clearly doesn't want you to care because there's no deep fusion button

00:53:55 ◼   ► There's no night mode button, but at the same time they love the technology so much

00:53:58 ◼   ► They talk about it so people think that they're these distinct modes. Yeah. Yeah

00:54:02 ◼   ► I

00:54:04 ◼   ► Still haven't done I'm kind of waiting, you know

00:54:06 ◼   ► I have I went ahead and put I was thirteen point two developer betas on my my daily carry iPhone just because

00:54:14 ◼   ► Because I say what do I have to lose?

00:54:16 ◼   ► based on I would say the

00:54:19 ◼   ► point one point two is okay. It's not a horror show of bugs. Point three is slightly better.

00:54:27 ◼   ► I think I'd already switched to the developer base before that. But I just figured why not,

00:54:33 ◼   ► I might as well just use this and get deep fusion as quickly as possible.

00:54:38 ◼   ► But people are sweating a lot. They're just showing these sweater pictures and saying,

00:54:42 ◼   ► "Can you see the difference?" And I don't think you're meant to. I don't think it's

00:54:44 ◼   ► supposed to work that way. Yeah, I don't think so either.

00:54:47 ◼   ► I forget where I was going with that, but basically I feel like Apple did the right

00:54:57 ◼   ► thing by going ultra-wide on the 11. I think it's more fun. I think it's impossible

00:55:03 ◼   ► to duplicate in software. And I do agree with you. I still kind of feel, though, that the

00:55:10 ◼   ► regular iPhone 11 non-pro should have a 2X button.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and they could even style it differently like make it like a lighter color or light slightly less vibrant

00:55:21 ◼   ► I don't know. There's some kind of some kind of indication to show that it would that it would be software only

00:55:25 ◼   ► Maybe I don't know or maybe not

00:55:27 ◼   ► Software only portrait mode and they didn't really they didn't write any different way

00:55:31 ◼   ► It was just right, but just just as a convenient way to jump to an exact 2x digital zoom

00:55:38 ◼   ► Which is an interesting perspective and you know it to me

00:55:43 ◼   ► Yes, you can you can get there through the dial and the dial clicks a little bit at the 2x marker

00:55:48 ◼   ► But it just does a nice way to jump there and to get the exact if that's what you want for a couple of shots

00:55:54 ◼   ► To know that you're exactly at two point zero X and not two point one or one point nine that would satisfy me

00:56:01 ◼   ► the the vaguely

00:56:04 ◼   ► OCD parts of my brain if I'm gonna take a series of shots from this field of view

00:56:08 ◼   ► I want it to be exactly 2.0. I don't want it faster than dialing it dialing

00:56:13 ◼   ► It is a little bit of fidgety pressing that button is just immediate. Yeah, it's very immediate very exact very satisfying

00:56:19 ◼   ► so I but I so it's sort of hard to defend not including it other than as

00:56:24 ◼   ► What I call marketing spite that they just wanted to reserve that as a way to emphasize that the iPhone 11 pro

00:56:32 ◼   ► Has a 2x an entire 2x camera system. Yeah, that's three modes instead of two

00:56:38 ◼   ► Yeah

00:56:40 ◼   ► Here before we take another break I've got follow-up I would need to mention from my last episode

00:56:45 ◼   ► I was talking about Ben Ben Thompson, and I were talking about our

00:56:49 ◼   ► sort of

00:56:52 ◼   ► Conservative upgrade cycle to new versions of Mac OS and then neither of us were upgrading primary machines to Catalina yet

00:56:58 ◼   ► Ben's Ben waits like a year. It's very he's very pessimistic on new Mac OS software quality

00:57:06 ◼   ► I'm gonna upgrade sooner rather than later

00:57:08 ◼   ► I usually wait a year, but I did it this year just cuz I could not finish the review without using it on my primary

00:57:14 ◼   ► Machine there was just too much new stuff

00:57:15 ◼   ► I mentioned looking forward to sidecar

00:57:17 ◼   ► But I also mentioned looking forward to sidecar after extolling my my deep and abiding love for the 2014

00:57:25 ◼   ► MacBook Pro that is my daily driver

00:57:28 ◼   ► Completely forgetting the fact that sidecar requires like a 2016 MacBook or later

00:57:34 ◼   ► Yeah, because it needs like the t2 chip and I knew that

00:57:37 ◼   ► But I completely forgot it while I was talking about it and it doesn't really reduce my interest in upgrading this machine to Catalina

00:57:44 ◼   ► But a little bit it does because I'm gonna have to use a different machine just to try

00:57:48 ◼   ► sidecar

00:57:50 ◼   ► but I'm curious what you think of sidecar sidecar of course is the feature that allows you to

00:57:54 ◼   ► Use your iPad as an external display

00:57:57 ◼   ► Including using the pencil for as input to a Mac app

00:58:01 ◼   ► that can take

00:58:04 ◼   ► stylus type input and

00:58:07 ◼   ► And you, as somebody who illustrates and is a big pencil user, I'm curious,

00:58:12 ◼   ► have you given Sidecar a good ride yet?

00:58:13 ◼   ► **Matt Stauffer** Yeah. I mean, I used it a lot through the beta,

00:58:16 ◼   ► but it was kind of hard to use because none of the apps, none of the third-party apps could be

00:58:21 ◼   ► updated to support it yet. I like some of the features, some of the stuff they say,

00:58:25 ◼   ► like, you can just use it to sign documents. I do that stuff directly on the iPad or just sketching

00:58:29 ◼   ► notes. I just do that directly on the iPad. I don't need it. Maybe if I'm using the Mac already,

00:58:33 ◼   ► It's slightly more convenient, but I would just pick up the iPad and use those directly

00:58:37 ◼   ► I love it as a second screen though

00:58:39 ◼   ► especially if I'm editing in Final Cut and I have like a meeting on Google Meet or I just wanted to have slack or

00:58:45 ◼   ► I message up I have that all the time now

00:58:47 ◼   ► I just put the iPad up and it's great because I can leave the full screen on Final Cut and I can do everything else

00:58:52 ◼   ► on the iPad and slowly but surely

00:58:55 ◼   ► Photoshop was was tough but slowly but surely apps are updating now and I love that

00:59:00 ◼   ► but I can just pick it up, draw with the pencil,

00:59:03 ◼   ► put it back down, go back to editing with the mouse.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I think over the next month or two,

00:59:07 ◼   ► as the more and more apps update,

00:59:09 ◼   ► I'm just gonna do that all the time.

00:59:11 ◼   ► - And there's a happy little story here where

00:59:14 ◼   ► Luna Display, which is a great little company

00:59:19 ◼   ► that came out with these dongles

00:59:21 ◼   ► that go into the USB-C port of your newer Mac

00:59:29 ◼   ► or the Thunderbolt port on a slightly older Mac

00:59:33 ◼   ► and trick the Mac into thinking it's an entire display

00:59:36 ◼   ► that's been plugged in where what it really does

00:59:38 ◼   ► is just transmit the image to the Luna Display app

00:59:41 ◼   ► on your iPad so that you can use your iPad

00:59:43 ◼   ► as a second display.

00:59:45 ◼   ► And yeah, sidecar to use our little rackets term for it,

00:59:51 ◼   ► Sherlock to that feature pretty hard

00:59:53 ◼   ► because it's built into the system.

00:59:57 ◼   ► going to do things that using an app and a dongle just aren't as convenient for.

01:00:02 ◼   ► But the good news is the Luna Display team, rather than just go and drink and be sad about

01:00:11 ◼   ► getting Sherlock to put their heads down and did a lot of work, already have announced that they've

01:00:17 ◼   ► They've got a Mac to Mac mode for Luna display, which will let you use, like, for example,

01:00:27 ◼   ► a 5K iMac as an external display wirelessly, which is really, really cool.

01:00:35 ◼   ► A really interesting use case for, like, especially to me, the device that really stands out as,

01:00:42 ◼   ► that's this is a great way to keep that machine and your active use is the like

01:00:46 ◼   ► The five six year old iMac 5k is which still have but by today's standards outstanding displays

01:00:54 ◼   ► It's still hard. It is really hard to find a

01:00:58 ◼   ► 5k external display and with

01:01:01 ◼   ► Like the price of like the selling price of like a 5k

01:01:05 ◼   ► iMac even a new one is actually in the ballpark of what you might expect for you know

01:01:09 ◼   ► You think like well what a waste to have an entire

01:01:11 ◼   ► iMac computer go to waste and just use it as a display, but when you look at the prices,

01:01:17 ◼   ► it's actually not bad.

01:01:19 ◼   ► Jared Polin It's great, and Apple doesn't sell a standalone.

01:01:22 ◼   ► Pete Turner Right.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Jared Polin It's like that.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Pete Turner As we head towards the launch of the Mac Pro,

01:01:29 ◼   ► and it's like, are we really going to have a scenario where the only first-party Apple

01:01:34 ◼   ► display is a $6,000 Pro Display XDR?

01:01:39 ◼   ► 6K for 6K.

01:01:43 ◼   ► What the hell am I going to do?

01:01:44 ◼   ► People who don't really want to buy the LG displays, it seems ridiculous to buy this

01:01:50 ◼   ► expensive Mac Pro and then use an iMac as your display, but it might be a good secondary

01:01:56 ◼   ► display.

01:01:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:01:58 ◼   ► I just see this as being very useful to a lot of people.

01:02:00 ◼   ► I'm glad to see Lunax still doing awesome work.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Absolutely. Probably get Sherlock'd in 1016 next year.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And they'll just Mario art him right back again. Yeah, exactly. Just but I mean, it's just the

01:02:14 ◼   ► perfect attitude with your hardware software developer. It's like you kind of have to,

01:02:17 ◼   ► you ought to be thinking with whether it's an app or a product. Might Apple steal this idea?

01:02:23 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know, maybe that's a hard word steal. But you know what I mean? At least if

01:02:27 ◼   ► you're on the team, it's can feel like they stole your idea. If the answer is yes, then you should

01:02:31 ◼   ► should have a plan B for when that'll happen. Like if it seems

01:02:34 ◼   ► like it would be a good idea built into the system. It

01:02:38 ◼   ► there's a very high chance it will be built into the system.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And it's probably you know, the truth is, it's probably a higher

01:02:43 ◼   ► chance than if you didn't build your product because the

01:02:46 ◼   ► existence proof of Hey, here's a cool product that does this

01:02:48 ◼   ► thing makes it a very compelling argument. You know, inside Apple

01:02:53 ◼   ► to Yeah, we should do this right. Like that sounds like a

01:02:56 ◼   ► good idea is one thing here. Look at this. Look at what these

01:02:59 ◼   ► guys did is a way more compelling way to say, "Yeah, we should build that into the system."

01:03:05 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin Yeah, but they're also almost always only

01:03:07 ◼   ► going to do the baseline feature and leave a lot of gaps. So you can really thrive in

01:03:12 ◼   ► making the better version.

01:03:13 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. If there's room in whatever your idea

01:03:15 ◼   ► is to go deeper and stuff like that, usually there's room to do that. For example, my

01:03:22 ◼   ► favorite example this year is the beefed up reminders app, which is, I think, I don't

01:03:28 ◼   ► how you could argue that it's not an improvement over the almost rudimentary reminders app

01:03:35 ◼   ► we've had until now, but I don't think is going to put any kind of dent in the sales

01:03:40 ◼   ► of apps like Things and OmniFocus, whatever your favorite to-do list app is. Because there's

01:03:48 ◼   ► just people have so many diverse needs for the way they want to do a to-do system that

01:03:54 ◼   ► nothing that Apple builds into the system that's meant for 90%

01:03:58 ◼   ► of people to use is ever going to touch most of those things.

01:04:01 ◼   ► The same thing with, you know, calendar and fantastic. Cal and

01:04:04 ◼   ► mail and spark and some people just always use the Google

01:04:06 ◼   ► version of the app regardless of whether they're using Apple

01:04:09 ◼   ► hardware.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Right or the fantastic group has the card hop, which is a context

01:04:15 ◼   ► app. Yeah, way better. But also, I wouldn't suggest it as

01:04:19 ◼   ► something Apple should adopt as the the system app. You know,

01:04:24 ◼   ► Fantastic All is probably a little closer to being, you know, it's so, you know, but

01:04:32 ◼   ► I can see why Apple didn't go that route on some of the UI decisions. But it definitely

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01:07:26 ◼   ► I guess we gotta talk, I can't just ignore it.

01:07:29 ◼   ► I gotta talk about the Apple Hong Kong China stuff.

01:07:31 ◼   ► But I feel like I've written so much about it

01:07:33 ◼   ► I don't need to spend a whole segment of the show on it." And it seems to have calmed down

01:07:40 ◼   ► a little bit. Basically, Apple got caught in sort of a perfect storm of China-related stuff.

01:07:51 ◼   ► It really is unrelated and just purely coincidental that the NBA situation where the GM

01:07:57 ◼   ► of the Houston Rockets just retweeted a simple pro-Hong Kong tweet and really set off a firestorm

01:08:07 ◼   ► of controversy that made even the Apple one seem small. And how often do you hear that,

01:08:11 ◼   ► like where Apple gets caught up in a controversy and somebody else is in the same controversy and

01:08:15 ◼   ► it's getting way more attention? But the Apple-related aspects, there's the HK Map Live app

01:08:27 ◼   ► and then there's this the sub secondary story of Apple requesting / demanding

01:08:40 ◼   ► that the people creating the shows for Apple TV Plus keep them China friendly

01:08:45 ◼   ► meaning don't don't don't put stuff in your shows that would anger the Chinese

01:08:49 ◼   ► or create a controversy with the HK map live I've written enough a lot about it

01:08:56 ◼   ► one thing I can say, and I'm not quite sure I made clear in my writing is that I've from multiple

01:09:00 ◼   ► people inside Apple, including a couple of people who are really, really interested at a personal

01:09:07 ◼   ► level that they, you know, whether it's their family or significant others, but they have a

01:09:13 ◼   ► personal investment in the whole situation in Hong Kong, in particular. And asked around within the

01:09:22 ◼   ► the company. I verified this from a couple people that the initial rejection of that

01:09:27 ◼   ► app was not a strategic dictum from the top of the company. That was just a single app

01:09:33 ◼   ► reviewer who looked at the app and thought, "Well, this Hong Kong stuff is controversial.

01:09:38 ◼   ► This seems like it's meant to circumvent the law. I'm going to deny it."

01:09:46 ◼   ► I think everything that happened after that came from that one ultimately erroneous decision.

01:09:51 ◼   ► So the three steps of the controversy is the developer submits this app to Apple.

01:09:57 ◼   ► And it's a map app that shows users submitted information about police activity and protest

01:10:06 ◼   ► activity around Hong Kong.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And you, the user, can use it however you see fit, whether it's because you want to

01:10:14 ◼   ► join in a protest or whether because you want to avoid the protests and as information about

01:10:20 ◼   ► like where tear gas is being used, which for obvious reasons is something that if you're,

01:10:25 ◼   ► you know, you might want to avoid. If the app had just been accepted, which internally

01:10:32 ◼   ► Apple determined it should have been, that this is not something, it's not illegal,

01:10:36 ◼   ► the app itself, the app is not illegal in Hong Kong, it's just information, should

01:10:42 ◼   ► have been accepted. I don't think it would have been that big of a news. I don't think

01:10:46 ◼   ► any kind of controversy would have come of it.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Nobody would have noticed no, I it's you know, I think word, you know

01:10:53 ◼   ► I think the app is somewhat popular in Hong Kong for obvious reasons. I think there's you know, it's it's small densely populated

01:11:00 ◼   ► Populated city. It's not like anybody in Hong Kong is unaware of the months-long protests

01:11:07 ◼   ► It's also a wrapper around the web page, which is accessible still to everybody right? What you know, we can mention

01:11:12 ◼   ► I just don't think it would have been news

01:11:14 ◼   ► I think Apple accepts this app that also is on the web and also is on Android is not a news story

01:11:21 ◼   ► The news story was the and again it people aren't wrong for assuming it right that that this was this was a corporate

01:11:29 ◼   ► executive level decision to

01:11:32 ◼   ► placate the mainland Chinese government by

01:11:37 ◼   ► Disallowing this app which is seemingly an app meant for people protesting for the democratic rights in Hong Kong

01:11:44 ◼   ► So then when the news came out that the app was rejected, more people than not, or at least the

01:11:51 ◼   ► sort of people who were tweeting about it or writing about it, were operating under the

01:11:56 ◼   ► assumption that that was policy from Apple, which I didn't think it was, but I didn't know. Two days

01:12:05 ◼   ► later, Apple, Apple agreed, you know, changed its mind the appeal process and the developer of the

01:12:10 ◼   ► app themselves. I don't want to say himself or herself. I don't

01:12:13 ◼   ► I'm not it's not even clear whether it's one person or

01:12:15 ◼   ► multiple people. But for obvious reasons of wanting to keep

01:12:18 ◼   ► their identity hidden from the Chinese government, they're

01:12:20 ◼   ► they're anonymous. So the developer, I'll just say plural

01:12:25 ◼   ► developers of the app, even tweeted when they said, Hey,

01:12:28 ◼   ► this, you know, we've submitted an appeal, we think this might

01:12:31 ◼   ► just be a bureaucratic mistake. You know, they weren't jumping

01:12:34 ◼   ► to the conclusion that Apple was trying to suppress the app. Two

01:12:37 ◼   ► days later, Apple said, Okay, the app is fine. There's no

01:12:39 ◼   ► problem with it, doesn't break the law. Now it's in the App Store and then it was in the

01:12:43 ◼   ► App Store. And then another two days later, they pulled it from the App Store. And in

01:12:47 ◼   ► the in the in the interim, there was a lot of publicity about it, including multiple

01:12:55 ◼   ► op eds in state run newspapers in mainland China, which the assumption is always have

01:13:02 ◼   ► the backing of the government. You know, the state run newspapers don't just run random

01:13:07 ◼   ► op-eds, absolutely dragging Apple over the coals for this, you know, saying that they're helping,

01:13:15 ◼   ► you know, rioters, you know, they're in mainland China, these people aren't protesters for

01:13:19 ◼   ► democracy, they're rioters who were making trouble. Very, very strongly worded.

01:13:26 ◼   ► The denouncements of Apple's decision to publish this, which wouldn't have happened in the first

01:13:34 ◼   ► place if they had simply accepted the app on first pass. Boy, this put Apple in a bad

01:13:41 ◼   ► position. And I really, I wish they had just weathered the storm and left the app in the

01:13:47 ◼   ► store and just had nothing to say about it. But instead, they pulled it again two days

01:13:54 ◼   ► later. And that's where it really gets interesting. I don't know what you think about it. The

01:13:59 ◼   ► assumption on the outside is clearly that Apple is simply placating the mainland Chinese

01:14:03 ◼   ► government. And that's, again, I say that's perfectly reasonable. There's no reason to

01:14:08 ◼   ► think otherwise. But from what I've heard internally from multiple people is that higher

01:14:15 ◼   ► level and lower level is basically that what Tim Cook's company-wide memo said, which I

01:14:27 ◼   ► even said really just didn't stand up to scrutiny. I mean, I think you kind of agreed with that

01:14:32 ◼   ► too.

01:14:33 ◼   ► It stands up a little better if you assume, and this is what I believe to be the case,

01:14:39 ◼   ► that Apple sort of got thrown under the bus by the Hong Kong government, not the mainland China.

01:14:45 ◼   ► It wasn't, you know, the mainland China communicates very, I don't think Apple heard from them. I really

01:14:51 ◼   ► don't. And I've heard from no one who said they did. I don't think mainland China sends messages

01:14:57 ◼   ► like that. They communicate indirectly.

01:15:01 ◼   ► Through disappointed editorials, usually anonymous in state newspapers.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Exactly. So, Apple's internal apparatus isn't really hooked up. They're hooked up

01:15:15 ◼   ► on Hong Kong in particular to protect Hong Kong from mainland China. And their assumption is that

01:15:23 ◼   ► if there's pressure overt or otherwise with tensions between mainland China's

01:15:31 ◼   ► laws and rules and desires and and hypersensitivity to perceptive issues

01:15:39 ◼   ► you know like there's there's this whole thing in recent years where China

01:15:44 ◼   ► effectively demanded that a bunch of airlines around the world that if you

01:15:48 ◼   ► fly into like Taiwan and Hong Kong that that these places be labeled as part of

01:15:52 ◼   ► China and not as independent locations. Very, very sensitive to stuff like this.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Apple set up internally to protect Hong Kong from China. And so their internal systems were set up

01:16:13 ◼   ► to, "Hey, if Hong Kong tells us blank, we should take their word for it and do it." And Hong Kong

01:16:19 ◼   ► authorities, not mainland Chinese authorities, Hong Kong authorities told Apple, hey, this app

01:16:25 ◼   ► is no good. This this isn't helping, you know, the right people. This is causing, you know, looters

01:16:30 ◼   ► and rioters are using it to circumvent police into the stuff that Tim Cook says they were told. I

01:16:36 ◼   ► actually think they were told by the Hong Kong authorities. That's part of the conflict in this

01:16:41 ◼   ► whole, you know, we could obviously do a whole podcast about it. And we're not experts. I'm

01:16:48 ◼   ► certainly not an expert on the politics of the Hong Kong thing, but part of it is that what people

01:16:51 ◼   ► are protesting for is they'd like to elect their own leaders, whereas the Wade stuff is set up with

01:16:56 ◼   ► the two systems, one country promise ever since the United Kingdom handed over control of Hong

01:17:08 ◼   ► Kong to China in 1997. You know, that the Hong Kong authorities aren't representatives of mainland

01:17:16 ◼   ► China, but they're appointed by mainland China. And part of this whole thing with these protests

01:17:20 ◼   ► is that the protesters are arguing, you know, that, that, you know, they'd like, they'd like

01:17:25 ◼   ► to replace them with people of their own choosing, you know, and I think like the the current leader

01:17:30 ◼   ► of Hong Kong is something like 15 or 19% approval rating or something like that, something that

01:17:35 ◼   ► totally untenable if if if the position were duly elected in a real democracy.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Apple just isn't set up to deal with that or wasn't set up to deal with that, that they,

01:17:46 ◼   ► you know, Hong Kong said X, Y, and Z, and Apple said, "Okay, X, Y, and Z, we should,

01:17:49 ◼   ► you know, pull this app from the store." Knowing, I mean, I'm not saying that the people at Apple

01:17:54 ◼   ► who made that decision weren't fully aware that, "Hey, this looks terrible for us because it looks

01:18:01 ◼   ► like we're flip-flopping all over the place. Reject, accept, reject all within five days."

01:18:06 ◼   ► And they knew that that looks bad. And they knew that there were all these op-eds in China

01:18:11 ◼   ► decrying them for this. And so they knew how weak it makes them look, but they thought it was the

01:18:15 ◼   ► the right thing to do because Hong Kong was asking for it.

01:18:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it was a, like to your original point,

01:18:24 ◼   ► the minute that app was first rejected,

01:18:26 ◼   ► by putting it back on the store,

01:18:29 ◼   ► there was no easy out for them on this whole thing.

01:18:32 ◼   ► It was either they have to keep it in the store

01:18:35 ◼   ► and risk what is happening in Hong Kong and China,

01:18:38 ◼   ► or take it down and risk being seen

01:18:40 ◼   ► as an instrument of mainland China.

01:18:42 ◼   ► The whole issue with Apple in China is so fascinating

01:18:44 ◼   ► because they are so deeply intertwined with China.

01:18:48 ◼   ► You know, one of my favorite things about reviews

01:18:50 ◼   ► is when people say, "Oh, a phone shouldn't cost this much,"

01:18:52 ◼   ► is if they have any idea what a phone,

01:18:54 ◼   ► what goes into making a phone.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And the reason the phones don't cost way more in part

01:18:59 ◼   ► is the way that they're manufactured.

01:19:01 ◼   ► And Apple has been leveraging that in China for years.

01:19:05 ◼   ► There's no easy exit for them there.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And at the same time, Tim Cook has this consistent policy,

01:19:11 ◼   ► and you can see this everywhere from how he deals

01:19:13 ◼   ► with situations with the mining of materials

01:19:17 ◼   ► to civil liberties in the US

01:19:19 ◼   ► to engaging the Trump administration,

01:19:21 ◼   ► to engaging China is that he believes

01:19:23 ◼   ► if he's not part of the conversation,

01:19:25 ◼   ► he has no ability to affect change.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But that's always dangerous

01:19:29 ◼   ► because one, you're gonna get those editorials

01:19:31 ◼   ► that say that you're appeasing people

01:19:32 ◼   ► because engagement and appeasement

01:19:34 ◼   ► is a very, very small buffer between them

01:19:36 ◼   ► and one can quickly be perceived as,

01:19:38 ◼   ► if not become, the other.

01:19:40 ◼   ► But at the same time, you give them a conduit back into you

01:19:44 ◼   ► and it's often easier.

01:19:46 ◼   ► I think you said this really well

01:19:47 ◼   ► in one of your posts a while ago,

01:19:48 ◼   ► is the only thing you can't tolerate is intolerance.

01:19:51 ◼   ► But by reaching out and making those engagements,

01:19:53 ◼   ► you give them a bridge back to you and they start to,

01:19:56 ◼   ► whether they actually influence your policy or not,

01:19:58 ◼   ► it's perceived again that they're influencing your policy.

01:20:01 ◼   ► So Apple has all of these things happening in China,

01:20:03 ◼   ► the removal of the Quartz app,

01:20:05 ◼   ► Tim Cook being elected chairman of the business school,

01:20:08 ◼   ► which could have been anybody it used to be.

01:20:11 ◼   ► There's a whole bunch of US CEOs on that board

01:20:13 ◼   ► and they all take turns.

01:20:14 ◼   ► But right now at the same time,

01:20:15 ◼   ► it just happens to be his turn and could he have gone,

01:20:18 ◼   ► "No, no, no, give it to Zuckerberg this time.

01:20:20 ◼   ► "I'll take it next time."

01:20:21 ◼   ► But all these things happen at once

01:20:23 ◼   ► and it creates really bad optics for them.

01:20:26 ◼   ► And the concern is always that China, for example,

01:20:29 ◼   ► wants iCloud storage in China

01:20:32 ◼   ► and people will find that dangerous.

01:20:34 ◼   ► But by the same token,

01:20:35 ◼   ► there are a lot of people outside the US

01:20:36 ◼   ► who want nothing to do with having data stored

01:20:38 ◼   ► in the US right now.

01:20:40 ◼   ► And France wants their citizens, their data,

01:20:42 ◼   ► and that's gonna be an increasing movement around the world.

01:20:45 ◼   ► But the fear is that China will ask for encryption keys

01:20:47 ◼   ► one day, the same way the FBI,

01:20:49 ◼   ► or ask for a backdoor the same way the US government did.

01:20:53 ◼   ► And the US government, you can see it, it's apparent,

01:20:56 ◼   ► there's a legal battle, there's litigation.

01:20:58 ◼   ► All this stuff happens in the open,

01:20:59 ◼   ► where with China, it's not that form of government.

01:21:02 ◼   ► And I think that's sort of the fear

01:21:03 ◼   ► that underlies all this,

01:21:04 ◼   ► is that when it happens in China,

01:21:07 ◼   ► it's gonna be much harder for Apple to affect,

01:21:09 ◼   ► to sort of stand their ground,

01:21:11 ◼   ► especially given all the small negotiations

01:21:14 ◼   ► that are happening now.

01:21:15 ◼   ► - I forget what the context was this week,

01:21:19 ◼   ► but I thought I had a good observation

01:21:22 ◼   ► on something with Apple in China

01:21:26 ◼   ► where Apple didn't fully, oh, I know what it was.

01:21:30 ◼   ► It's the safe browsing story.

01:21:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:21:32 ◼   ► So one of the other little stories this week was that Safari has long had this safe browsing

01:21:38 ◼   ► feature where I didn't even notice when it expanded to include Tencent, which is the

01:21:45 ◼   ► state-owned Japanese conglomerate. But Google famously is shut out of China at the moment.

01:21:53 ◼   ► So if you're in China and you're behind the great firewall, you can't use Google search.

01:22:00 ◼   ► You can't use Google anything for the most part.

01:22:04 ◼   ► And so the safe browsing feature that Safari has had for a while, which uses a blacklist

01:22:09 ◼   ► of either known or for all effect and purposes known malware or otherwise stuff that you

01:22:18 ◼   ► would want blocked.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Safari uses Google's server for this, can't use it in China, so they use Tencent.

01:22:26 ◼   ► the way Google or the way Apple wrote the description. If you were like, "Hmm,

01:22:32 ◼   ► let me find out about this feature." It just said, "Safari may send your IP address." It's like the

01:22:44 ◼   ► privacy policy for the features. "Safari may send your IP address to Google or Tencent."

01:22:50 ◼   ► Yeah, it was completely tone deaf.

01:22:53 ◼   ► And people rightly jumped to the plain reading of it, which is that you don't know when they're

01:23:00 ◼   ► using one or the other.

01:23:02 ◼   ► And so they might be in the United States, you might be in the middle of Tennessee or

01:23:06 ◼   ► Texas and they're sending your IP address to its server in China in a state-owned media

01:23:11 ◼   ► conglomerate with all your…

01:23:14 ◼   ► The feature is as you would expect from Apple.

01:23:16 ◼   ► It is designed with privacy in mind and it uses hashed URLs and prefixes of the URLs

01:23:22 ◼   ► instead of the whole thing to keep Google or Tencent from seeing the specific URLs you're

01:23:28 ◼   ► visiting.

01:23:29 ◼   ► There's no way to avoid – well, I guess I shouldn't say there's no way.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I guess they could proxy the calls through an Apple server, which is an interesting question

01:23:36 ◼   ► as to why they're not.

01:23:38 ◼   ► The IP address is getting sent to these providers because Safari is calling them directly.

01:23:46 ◼   ► I guess there's a performance argument there that proxying is by necessity going to have

01:23:51 ◼   ► an extra hop where your device is talking to Apple and Apple's talking to Google and

01:23:56 ◼   ► then Google talks back to Apple and then Apple talks…

01:23:58 ◼   ► And the potential source of failure, which is what happens with Siri when it's like,

01:24:02 ◼   ► "Wait a second. Hold on."

01:24:04 ◼   ► Yeah. So, you know, there's obviously reasons for performance and simplicity to let your

01:24:08 ◼   ► device talk directly to Google. And then there's reasons of privacy where you'd want it proxied.

01:24:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:14 ◼   ► a separate thing. To me, the problem was the way this feature was described by Apple.

01:24:23 ◼   ► >> Absolutely.

01:24:24 ◼   ► >> And what I wrote is, "Trust us is not good enough." Like, effectively, these things are

01:24:28 ◼   ► sort of written with a trust us attitude that, look, you can trust us, we're Apple. And so

01:24:33 ◼   ► my assumption when this story broke last weekend was, well, I would guess that they're only

01:24:38 ◼   ► using Tencent for users in mainland China and they're using Google everywhere else in

01:24:42 ◼   ► the world. And in fact, that is how the feature works. But they didn't say that. And so the

01:24:48 ◼   ► people who jumped to the wrong conclusion, I don't think they're crazy. And I happen

01:24:51 ◼   ► to know it ties into Hong Kong specifically because this story went nuts in the Hong Kong

01:24:59 ◼   ► the multi user chat groups that they use. What do they use? What's the app? I forget.

01:25:05 ◼   ► I'm not sure it's Weibo in China. I'm not sure what it is. And it's not signal. It's

01:25:09 ◼   ► the other one. No, the one that starts with a T. Telegram. Telegram. Yeah. So Telegram

01:25:14 ◼   ► supports big multi-user chats. And so there's a whole bunch of groups in Hong Kong who are using

01:25:22 ◼   ► Telegram. And it went rampant, went super kindling going up in a fire, viral of, "Hey, turn off safe

01:25:34 ◼   ► browsing because they're going to send your IP address to Tencent. And, you know, protesters

01:25:39 ◼   ► in Hong Kong obviously don't want anything sent. I mean, your IP address isn't that,

01:25:44 ◼   ► you know, it doesn't reveal that much about you. But, you know, if I were a protester

01:25:47 ◼   ► in Hong Kong, I'd want to be sure that my even my IP address wasn't being sent to China.

01:25:52 ◼   ► I don't want it sent to Google. So I totally get that. And so the downside to this is that

01:25:56 ◼   ► anybody who got caught up in this, you know, it could really, it wasn't getting sent to

01:26:01 ◼   ► 10 cent. It was getting sent to Google. But you could wind up disabling a useful feature,

01:26:07 ◼   ► you know, that and now all of a sudden you're browsing, you think you've made your browsing

01:26:11 ◼   ► safer because you've protected yourself from having your IP address sent to 10 cent, but

01:26:15 ◼   ► it wasn't being sent there in the first place. And now you're liable, you know, you're susceptible

01:26:20 ◼   ► to all the sites that safe browsing would have blocked you from, which might be sites

01:26:23 ◼   ► that the that the yes, the Chinese government is using to try to hack Hong Kong protesters.

01:26:30 ◼   ► Yep.

01:26:31 ◼   ► And so anyway, trust us isn't good enough.

01:26:35 ◼   ► And my take, my quip was, if Apple is too embarrassed to explain in detail exactly what

01:26:40 ◼   ► they're doing to comply with Chinese law, then they shouldn't be doing it.

01:26:43 ◼   ► And I really feel like they, I wish that they had a white paper describing in more detail

01:26:48 ◼   ► how the setup is that iCloud users server data is stored in mainland China on third

01:26:55 ◼   ► party company hardware.

01:26:56 ◼   ► I wish that they would describe that in as much detail as they as they could

01:27:00 ◼   ► Standing is that it's there but Apple retains this the encryption keys

01:27:05 ◼   ► But I it shouldn't be our understanding. There should be a white paper that explains it in my opinion

01:27:10 ◼   ► You know and so that you can make your own

01:27:14 ◼   ► informed decision about how likely it is that the Chinese police could storm in and demand stuff how what what

01:27:23 ◼   ► What what the dangers are just that the Chinese government might have moles working for the company that hosts these servers, etc

01:27:31 ◼   ► Etc, but we don't know anything. It's it's way more of a black box than it should be in my opinion

01:27:35 ◼   ► I don't mean to be flippant about it at all

01:27:37 ◼   ► But you know that that line from equilibrium we said the easiest way to get us weapon from a grammaton cleric is to ask him

01:27:44 ◼   ► For it. They just made tic tocs. We just all give them

01:27:49 ◼   ► like they need to trick us into it anymore. They just made a catchy social media company.

01:27:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Ben Thompson has some good takes on this. And his observation, which to me was very

01:28:02 ◼   ► keen, and I'm like, "Yeah, why isn't everybody saying this?" is that with the NBA thing, so

01:28:06 ◼   ► this NBA executive, Dan Morey, I think his name is, who tweeted this one pro-Hong Kong tweet,

01:28:12 ◼   ► which was really just like, "Stand up for Hong Kong." It wasn't like, you know, "Hong Kong

01:28:16 ◼   ► should set the city on fire. It was, you know, we support Hong Kong. It was tweeted, which

01:28:24 ◼   ► is a social network that is completely blocked within China. And yet somehow the Chinese

01:28:29 ◼   ► state media would have us believe that millions of Chinese NBA fans saw this tweet and were

01:28:34 ◼   ► deeply offended by it. Like, you know, I thought it was a pretty keen observation of this is

01:28:40 ◼   ► manufactured because how could one message on a social network banned within China have

01:28:47 ◼   ► caused millions of people to be angry in China? They can't read it. But meanwhile, we on

01:28:53 ◼   ► the West with our open values totally allow—so we allow them to block our social networks.

01:29:00 ◼   ► I mean, here I am standing up for Facebook, you know. But I mean, on principle, it doesn't

01:29:06 ◼   ► right that we allow them to say, "Yeah, no Instagram in China, but we'll take TikTok

01:29:11 ◼   ► and let everybody install it on their phones." And if it's fun enough, people will have it.

01:29:15 ◼   ► Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, the thing that scares me is that this is like, there's that old saying

01:29:24 ◼   ► from the West Wing where there's no amount of manpower or money that equals a criminal being

01:29:29 ◼   ► stupid. And a lot of the stuff that we see all the time is buffoonery. It's just so dumb, it's easy

01:29:34 ◼   ► to catch. And especially with this stuff, it creates such a Streisand effect that it ends up

01:29:38 ◼   ► shining a huge light on things that are happening. But it's the stuff that we don't hear about that

01:29:43 ◼   ► worries me. It's the requests that get made that aren't, you know, "Oh, as we saw Twitter for an

01:29:48 ◼   ► NBA." That's ludicrous. It's just absolutely ludicrous. But it's the stuff that's not

01:29:52 ◼   ► so above board or so public that I worry more about.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah, totally. So anyway, Apple, they're in a tough spot in China. I think that it could get,

01:30:03 ◼   ► I think that my takeaway from this this whole saga though is that it's not that Apple

01:30:09 ◼   ► Just got through a terrible

01:30:13 ◼   ► Exposure

01:30:18 ◼   ► To to their foothold in China. It's that it just sort of hinted at how bad it could be

01:30:23 ◼   ► Yes, right like what happens? I mean if there is a Tiananmen Square like crackdown on the Hong Kong

01:30:33 ◼   ► protesters, you know what happens if if if the Chinese government

01:30:36 ◼   ► sends, you know, the their military into Hong Kong to put it put it into this, you know, it's

01:30:42 ◼   ► They you know there it's it's in my opinion right up there with natural disasters, you know as

01:30:51 ◼   ► Which would affect every company though, right?

01:30:55 ◼   ► Like Apple is sort of uniquely exposed in China as a Western company because no other

01:31:01 ◼   ► Western company is so reliant on them for manufacturing and

01:31:04 ◼   ► You know that this the second factor of Apple's sales within China

01:31:10 ◼   ► It's like this more or less tied, you know, it goes back and forth it ebbs and flows more

01:31:15 ◼   ► But you know us is the is the biggest market

01:31:18 ◼   ► US, you know or call it North America if you want to include, you know our Canadian friends like you

01:31:22 ◼   ► You know the North America is the biggest market China and Europe greater Western

01:31:29 ◼   ► Europe are more or less tied as their second biggest markets

01:31:32 ◼   ► It's a big market for Apple. It's certainly one of growth

01:31:36 ◼   ► It's certainly part of their growth story and everybody knows growth is important for the message of Apple to Wall Street

01:31:41 ◼   ► It would obviously be a shit show if Apple had to pull out or if their sales within mainland China were decimated through bad publicity

01:31:49 ◼   ► Or tariffs or any of their various things that could go bad, but Apple could exist as we know it

01:31:55 ◼   ► with their sales in

01:31:59 ◼   ► two consumers in mainland China being cut off. It would be a significant hit. It would be reflected

01:32:04 ◼   ► in the stock price, but Apple as we know it would still be there. It would be like, I don't know,

01:32:10 ◼   ► I think ballparking it, I don't know, like 20%, 25%, something like that.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's hard too because even if it's not a disaster—

01:32:18 ◼   ► Where is the myth—

01:32:19 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Keep going. No, keep going.

01:32:21 ◼   ► No, I was going to say, even if it's not something like an incident in Hong Kong,

01:32:24 ◼   ► even if it's something like tariffs, and people will say, "Well, Apple represents way too much

01:32:29 ◼   ► of the gross domestic product of Southern China

01:32:31 ◼   ► for any of that to, like the Chinese government

01:32:33 ◼   ► to want to affect that in any way,

01:32:35 ◼   ► but they have a remarkable ability for absorbing pain.

01:32:38 ◼   ► I think we don't understand the extent

01:32:41 ◼   ► at which they would allow something to happen

01:32:43 ◼   ► that was moderately, that was even severely painful

01:32:46 ◼   ► for them if it was worse

01:32:47 ◼   ► for whomever they were contending with.

01:32:50 ◼   ► And just if the tariffs got too bad

01:32:52 ◼   ► and it destroyed Apple's ability

01:32:54 ◼   ► to compete manufacturing in China,

01:32:55 ◼   ► even if it cost every job in Shenzhen province,

01:32:58 ◼   ► I don't think at the end of the day,

01:33:00 ◼   ► they would have that big a problem with it.

01:33:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, the manufacturing thing is just the angle

01:33:06 ◼   ► that cannot be, it just cannot be understated.

01:33:09 ◼   ► And there was a story, the Wall Street Journal

01:33:11 ◼   ► just had a story over the weekend.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Do you see this about how there's iPhone XRs,

01:33:14 ◼   ► I think being made in India now,

01:33:17 ◼   ► which is a weird thing to see.

01:33:19 ◼   ► It's just a weird thing to see that small print

01:33:21 ◼   ► that says, designed by Apple in California,

01:33:24 ◼   ► assembled in India.

01:33:26 ◼   ► But India, the Indian national government

01:33:28 ◼   ► is making a huge press to appeal

01:33:31 ◼   ► to smartphone manufacturers in particular

01:33:34 ◼   ► to build up India as a major production center

01:33:37 ◼   ► for smartphone hardware.

01:33:40 ◼   ► You know, Apple's part of it,

01:33:42 ◼   ► but it's, even if they put the pedal to the metal

01:33:46 ◼   ► and accelerated their trying to become independent of China

01:33:53 ◼   ► if they wanted to for manufacturing and assembly,

01:33:57 ◼   ► even the fastest they could do it, the most efficient way,

01:34:00 ◼   ► if they didn't make any mistakes, made all the right moves,

01:34:03 ◼   ► spent as much money as they needed to,

01:34:04 ◼   ► it's still a years-long process, possibly many years long.

01:34:09 ◼   ► Fascinating. - They made a deliberate choice

01:34:10 ◼   ► not to own the core technologies

01:34:12 ◼   ► when it comes to manufacturing,

01:34:13 ◼   ► and that gives them exposure.

01:34:15 ◼   ► - Right, they're absolutely exposed.

01:34:17 ◼   ► And in particular, the iPhone,

01:34:19 ◼   ► everybody knows it's the most important,

01:34:21 ◼   ► best-selling biggest revenue and profit maker will be for years to come. It's utterly dependent

01:34:29 ◼   ► on China at the moment. All right, let me take one final break here and thank our third and final

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01:36:24 ◼   ► of this podcast.

01:36:26 ◼   ► All right, how about this?

01:36:30 ◼   ► Let's go forward thinking.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Do we, or are you done?

01:36:33 ◼   ► I think we're done on China.

01:36:34 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:36:35 ◼   ► Yes, I agree. Apple event. As we record, this is the sort of segment of a podcast that could

01:36:41 ◼   ► be blown apart between recording and publishing. But as we speak on Monday, October 21st, there

01:36:48 ◼   ► are no signs, no invitations, no rumors that I've seen that there's going to be an Apple

01:36:52 ◼   ► event this fall. Another Apple event.

01:36:56 ◼   ► No event this month at least.

01:36:59 ◼   ► It's possible. I look back at the last few years. So last year, they sent out invitations

01:37:03 ◼   ► on the 18th of October for the October 30 event that was in Brooklyn. Two years before that,

01:37:09 ◼   ► in 2016, they sent out invitations on October 19th for—I think it was the last ever event at Town

01:37:17 ◼   ► Hall in Cupertino. But that was only eight days ahead. It was actually on the 27th, and it was

01:37:22 ◼   ► weird. It was a Thursday, which is—I don't remember that, but it was right.

01:37:27 ◼   ► **Ezra Klein:** So I'm going to use the dreaded "my understanding" language again, but my

01:37:29 ◼   ► My understanding is they're way too busy launching TV+ to have the resources to do an event in

01:37:34 ◼   ► October.

01:37:35 ◼   ► That sounds right to me.

01:37:37 ◼   ► October…

01:37:38 ◼   ► Because they're all over the place at the premiers, right?

01:37:41 ◼   ► Right.

01:37:42 ◼   ► The PR is spread thin.

01:37:45 ◼   ► And that's launching November 1st, right?

01:37:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:50 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:37:51 ◼   ► To my knowledge, Apple has never held a fall event in November.

01:37:55 ◼   ► And the closer you get to Thanksgiving, the more impossible it would be.

01:37:59 ◼   ► So the further along you get, the less anything that you want to announce would have time

01:38:06 ◼   ► to factor into holiday gift purchases.

01:38:11 ◼   ► What do we think is coming?

01:38:13 ◼   ► The three products?

01:38:14 ◼   ► So my guess is that it won't be consumer products.

01:38:18 ◼   ► It'll be professional products and it'll be similar.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Like I know they didn't show anything off at WWDC the way they did with the iMac Pro,

01:38:27 ◼   ► My guess is still that it'll be something like that,

01:38:30 ◼   ► where they have a very specific, not a giant media event,

01:38:33 ◼   ► but they have a bunch of stuff put together

01:38:35 ◼   ► to show us how the products are used in context.

01:38:38 ◼   ► - Well, the big-- - And we get

01:38:39 ◼   ► our introduction that way.

01:38:40 ◼   ► - The one product we've already been told by Apple

01:38:42 ◼   ► is to expect this calendar year is the Mac Pro, right?

01:38:46 ◼   ► And to me, what's instructive is to go back to 2017

01:38:51 ◼   ► when they were on a similar schedule with the iMac Pro,

01:38:54 ◼   ► where they showed it at WWDC in June.

01:38:57 ◼   ► said you can expect it later this year. And then they didn't have an event for the launch

01:39:05 ◼   ► of the iMac Pro. What they did was hold small private media briefings in New York and I

01:39:12 ◼   ► believe in Cupertino as well so that West Coast media didn't have to travel to New

01:39:17 ◼   ► York and vice versa from the East Coast. And there was no keynote. There was nothing that

01:39:23 ◼   ► It was live broadcast.

01:39:24 ◼   ► It was just small briefings of groups.

01:39:27 ◼   ► I think I was in a group of six or something like that.

01:39:30 ◼   ► And they had multiple demos set up in their little townhouse

01:39:34 ◼   ► in-- well, little-- their big townhouse in New York,

01:39:38 ◼   ► where we would just move from station to station.

01:39:40 ◼   ► And they'd show us, here's what the iMac Pro means

01:39:43 ◼   ► for developers.

01:39:44 ◼   ► Here's what it means for people who do 3D modeling

01:39:47 ◼   ► and rendering.

01:39:47 ◼   ► And here's what it means in these other demos.

01:39:53 ◼   ► There you go. I could see them doing that exact sort of thing again with the Mac Pro.

01:39:57 ◼   ► I could even see them doing it again if there is, as rumored, a 16-inch MacBook Pro coming

01:40:02 ◼   ► before the end of the year. Because what do you got? What would you, even if it wasn't

01:40:07 ◼   ► a time compression like, "Oh, we're so busy with TV+ that we don't even have time

01:40:12 ◼   ► to do this event," what are you going to do with a 16-inch MacBook Pro? You've already

01:40:17 ◼   ► shown Catalina. What's the demo? You know, what is the story to be held on stage? You

01:40:21 ◼   ► know, they don't hold stage events just because there's a new product. They have to have something

01:40:25 ◼   ► to talk about. And they're not going to talk about how bad the keyboard was for right.

01:40:29 ◼   ► Right. They're totally not gonna do it. Yeah, they're, you know, they might talk about how

01:40:36 ◼   ► great the new keyboard is, but they're not going to talk about how bad the old keyboard

01:40:39 ◼   ► was. Yeah. So the only other product that's rumored that might, you know, come out before

01:40:44 ◼   ► the end of the year, at least that I'm aware of is the AirPods with noise cancel relation.

01:40:49 ◼   ► Yeah. And again, it's pro cause everything's pro. They could just hold a briefing for that

01:40:53 ◼   ► and tell the press how great they sound. I don't see them holding an event for that.

01:40:57 ◼   ► Yeah. No, likewise. So I guess the one last thing I wanted to talk about this week

01:41:01 ◼   ► is a little bit on Catalina, which I've been playing with a little and a catalyst in

01:41:09 ◼   ► particular, which you sort of need Catalina to do. And I just know, I just know for the whole

01:41:14 ◼   ► next year, I'm going to say catalyst when I mean Catalina and Catalina. I've been doing

01:41:19 ◼   ► that too. It's just I make errors like that. It's, you know, talking about like hashing algorithms,

01:41:27 ◼   ► it's just I file stuff in my head alphabetically and C-A-T-A-L just doesn't have many items in it

01:41:34 ◼   ► and to have two of them be related to the same version of Mac OS is really going to screw me up.

01:41:42 ◼   ► So I apologize to everybody out there listening for all of the catalyst Catalina conflations I'm

01:41:48 ◼   ► about to make. The draft for my review, I called it Mac OS Catalyst. I had to fix it before it went live.

01:41:54 ◼   ► In the headline? Yeah. I'm glad you caught it. They had press briefings for Catalina for the

01:42:06 ◼   ► whole OS the week before it shipped. And, you know, Apple PR reached out to me to see if I'd

01:42:16 ◼   ► I'd be interested in going up to New York to have the briefing and I was and I thought,

01:42:23 ◼   ► "Boy, that's weird though." Like I was kind of more intrigued than I would have been because

01:42:27 ◼   ► in my head I thought that they said it was a briefing entirely about catalyst and I thought,

01:42:31 ◼   ► "Oh, this might be really interesting. They're preemptively having an entire briefing just

01:42:36 ◼   ► about this catalyst thing." And then I realized it wasn't. It was Catalina. It was the whole

01:42:42 ◼   ► a recap of the whole song and dance of all the—it wasn't—I'm glad I went. It was useful. It was

01:42:46 ◼   ► interesting. But it wasn't anywhere near as juicy as I thought it would have been if it would have

01:42:51 ◼   ► been catalyst-specific. So anyway, are you using catalyst—not catalyst, Catalina on your primary

01:42:58 ◼   ► machine? I did it. I don't usually do it because I have to edit video on it and I have to edit

01:43:02 ◼   ► podcasts on it and I'm very nervous about it. But again, I was using it on an alternate machine and

01:43:07 ◼   ► it just wasn't enough to actually review it. I felt like I had to use it. So I put it on my

01:43:11 ◼   ► main machine. It had some ups and downs, but it's pretty solid now.

01:43:15 ◼   ► So one of the big changes is that 32-bit apps are now gone. And Apple managed this transition

01:43:23 ◼   ► about as well as they could. They gave plenty of heads up years ago starting at WWDCs that

01:43:30 ◼   ► soon enough—at whatever point they made the announcement 32-bit frameworks—

01:43:36 ◼   ► Frameworks no leopard. It was up on remember Bertrand put up the huge 32-bit banner at snow leopard

01:43:41 ◼   ► Was that really when they first started?

01:43:42 ◼   ► I think they mentioned it a little bit with leopard but it was like it was a headline feature and snow leopard

01:43:47 ◼   ► Was that just though going to 64-bit? That's yeah. Yeah

01:43:51 ◼   ► As soon as they went to 64-bit apps

01:43:54 ◼   ► Everybody should have known that eventually they're gonna do away with 32-bit apps and it took a long time and that's the way it should

01:44:00 ◼   ► be

01:44:01 ◼   ► You know, I think it took longer on the Mac than then than it did on iOS iOS made the transition

01:44:08 ◼   ► Yeah quicker and that's the way it should be because the Mac is you know, it's just the nature of a desktop

01:44:12 ◼   ► Computing platform so I don't think Apple made a wrong decision at all

01:44:17 ◼   ► It might have been too long

01:44:19 ◼   ► It's like you know how sometimes you forget to plug in your iPad because a battery lasts so long

01:44:23 ◼   ► Yeah, you have to put this was like it was like 10 years and I think some companies like oh, they're never gonna do it

01:44:28 ◼   ► We're safe, you know, that's that's funny

01:44:30 ◼   ► you say that, you know, I didn't really think about that, but I think you're right, that

01:44:33 ◼   ► there might have been, it might have been too long. I don't know. But every time one

01:44:37 ◼   ► of these transitions gets made or when something goes away, you know, it's a little sad, you

01:44:41 ◼   ► know, that there's, you know, drags that sad the drag thing doesn't run anymore. You know,

01:44:48 ◼   ► there's some 32 bit stuff that isn't going to make the 64 bit transition and it's a bit

01:44:53 ◼   ► sad, but it was sad when classic went away. I hadn't, you know, nobody who really, what

01:44:58 ◼   ► of your, however fond your memories of classic Mac OS were. And mine are super fond. And

01:45:03 ◼   ► there are entire essays I could write about things of the user interface of the classic

01:45:07 ◼   ► Mac OS that I still think were vastly superior to anything that's come since, including Mac

01:45:12 ◼   ► OS and iOS. But running classic apps in Mac OS X was never a great experience, never looked

01:45:19 ◼   ► right, never felt right. But once the classic layer was removed from Mac OS X, it still

01:45:25 ◼   ► was a poor one out moment that you can't even launch these things anymore without an emulation

01:45:30 ◼   ► layer. For me personally, I don't think there's anything that I use that's 32-bit. I went

01:45:36 ◼   ► through. There's a way to check in, I think the best way, because it's not just checking

01:45:42 ◼   ► what's running in the activity monitor. You can add in activity monitor. You can go up

01:45:49 ◼   ► to the view menu, I think, and in the columns that are displayed, you can display type and

01:45:54 ◼   ► it'll say whether it's a 64 or 32-bit app.

01:45:57 ◼   ► And if you sort by that column,

01:45:58 ◼   ► you can see if you have any 32-bit stuffs running.

01:46:02 ◼   ► If you go to About This Mac

01:46:04 ◼   ► and then go to the system report,

01:46:06 ◼   ► when you go to applications,

01:46:07 ◼   ► it'll show all the applications

01:46:08 ◼   ► that are installed on your system

01:46:10 ◼   ► in your applications folder,

01:46:13 ◼   ► which is a better way of seeing

01:46:14 ◼   ► if you have anything laying around

01:46:16 ◼   ► that won't run if you upgrade.

01:46:19 ◼   ► And I think that even when you run the upgrader,

01:46:22 ◼   ► the updater from 10.14 to 10.15,

01:46:24 ◼   ► it'll even then point out,

01:46:26 ◼   ► hey, you've got this X, Y, and Z apps installed

01:46:29 ◼   ► that won't run.

01:46:31 ◼   ► They're doing as much as you can.

01:46:33 ◼   ► I think it's a non-issue for the most part.

01:46:35 ◼   ► - Because a lot of plugins seem to get bit,

01:46:38 ◼   ► especially audio plugins.

01:46:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that seems like a huge thing.

01:46:43 ◼   ► And I know a couple of people who work on audio apps,

01:46:46 ◼   ► seems like that's a really big deal

01:46:49 ◼   ► and sort of unfortunate, I guess.

01:46:51 ◼   ► I don't know why they haven't made the transition.

01:46:53 ◼   ► You would think they'd be actively maintained,

01:46:55 ◼   ► but they're not.

01:46:57 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah.

01:46:58 ◼   ► I was wondering if Adobe was gonna make it on time

01:47:01 ◼   ► because Adobe, they did.

01:47:03 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:47:04 ◼   ► So, you know, and I have upgraded a machine

01:47:08 ◼   ► that's not my primary machine.

01:47:10 ◼   ► And I know that one of the other things about Catalina

01:47:12 ◼   ► that people are complaining about

01:47:13 ◼   ► is that they've tightened up some of the,

01:47:15 ◼   ► you know, it's that fine line between

01:47:20 ◼   ► Is it a security feature or a privacy feature?

01:47:22 ◼   ► It's a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B,

01:47:25 ◼   ► but they've made the desktop a magic location

01:47:29 ◼   ► that apps have to have special permission.

01:47:31 ◼   ► Like such and such app is trying to read files

01:47:35 ◼   ► from your desktop.

01:47:38 ◼   ► - The first time you launch an app that was already open

01:47:41 ◼   ► when you upgraded and had documents from the desktop,

01:47:45 ◼   ► the downloads file and the documents folder open

01:47:47 ◼   ► at the time and it tries to reload them, God help you,

01:47:50 ◼   ► because it starts asking permission for every directory,

01:47:52 ◼   ► for every file that you had open at the time.

01:47:55 ◼   ► - So there's, you know, it takes some getting used to.

01:47:59 ◼   ► I really, I have a rant in me about it.

01:48:02 ◼   ► Like I kind of see why Apple's doing this,

01:48:05 ◼   ► but it really doesn't play well in the context

01:48:08 ◼   ► of that classic get a Mac ad,

01:48:11 ◼   ► where the John Hodgman PC got upgraded to Vista and was,

01:48:15 ◼   ► do you authorize this, yes or no?

01:48:18 ◼   ► Do you authorize that, yes or no?

01:48:20 ◼   ► You know?

01:48:21 ◼   ► - It'll only ask you once, but for every app.

01:48:23 ◼   ► It'll only ask you if you wanna download once,

01:48:25 ◼   ► but for every website.

01:48:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a lot.

01:48:29 ◼   ► And it brings in, I get it, I get why they're doing this.

01:48:36 ◼   ► I think some of these things are in response

01:48:39 ◼   ► to actual malware attack vectors that Apple is aware of.

01:48:44 ◼   ► My son ran into one.

01:48:48 ◼   ► I think I talked about this on the show a year or two ago,

01:48:51 ◼   ► but my son ran into one about two years ago,

01:48:54 ◼   ► maybe 18 months ago, but it was really interesting

01:48:57 ◼   ► where he somehow stumbled on a site

01:49:00 ◼   ► or he clicked on something.

01:49:01 ◼   ► It wasn't like super dubious.

01:49:03 ◼   ► It wasn't like he was trying to download,

01:49:05 ◼   ► crack games or something like that.

01:49:07 ◼   ► I forget, but he could reproduce it.

01:49:09 ◼   ► And there was a URL where it was like a fake Amazon result.

01:49:13 ◼   ► And I guess he kind of clicked on it accidentally.

01:49:16 ◼   ► But what it did is it went to one of these sites

01:49:21 ◼   ► claiming that your Mac had,

01:49:24 ◼   ► the site had detected that your Mac had malware

01:49:30 ◼   ► and that's why it was running slow

01:49:33 ◼   ► and that you needed to call this number.

01:49:34 ◼   ► And I'm sure if you did call it,

01:49:36 ◼   ► you know, that they would talk you into it.

01:49:38 ◼   ► You know, everybody knows people who've had family members

01:49:41 ◼   ► fall victim to this, where you call them up

01:49:42 ◼   ► they talk you into installing like a back door on your Mac. Just terrible stuff, terribly

01:49:49 ◼   ► shifty stuff. But the devious part of this website my son stumbled upon was what they

01:49:55 ◼   ► were doing was sending your browser downloads of, they were like empty text files or maybe

01:50:06 ◼   ► they were like text files that contained four characters like just just literally just like

01:50:10 ◼   ► Two or three characters and and but they were sending them as fast as the as they could and

01:50:17 ◼   ► Safari even just a year or two ago was willing to say, okay, you're gonna send me all these downloads

01:50:22 ◼   ► I'll download them as fast as as fast as I can

01:50:24 ◼   ► and

01:50:27 ◼   ► Just by downloading as many of these files as it could as fast as it could it

01:50:32 ◼   ► Made Safari really slow. It really was it slowed down it exactly as the website promised. It didn't install anything

01:50:39 ◼   ► It wasn't a year, you know

01:50:41 ◼   ► There was no malware running on your machine

01:50:43 ◼   ► But it slowed your browser down so fast that if you couldn't if you didn't know like the trick to force quit Safari

01:50:49 ◼   ► It was tough to get out of like it was so slow it slowed Safari down so far so fast that you couldn't really close

01:50:58 ◼   ► the window. So you could totally see how people would fall for it. And I'm sure that there's

01:51:03 ◼   ► a hundred other tricks that are similarly deep.

01:51:05 ◼   ► A bunch of Google Ad hijacks that would just send you to a fake website. Yeah.

01:51:10 ◼   ► So there's all sorts of stuff, I'm sure, that are out there. But some of this stuff, though,

01:51:17 ◼   ► it's like tightening up Safari I get, because I really do feel like you don't know what

01:51:22 ◼   ► you're getting there. I feel like having apps that beg for permission to read files off

01:51:29 ◼   ► your desktop, I feel like that's over the line. I feel like I'm not quite sure what

01:51:34 ◼   ► and again, maybe I'm wrong. And there's apps that are taking advantage of this and just

01:51:39 ◼   ► guessing that you have juicy personal stuff on your desktop and, you know, slurping all

01:51:44 ◼   ► the data from it. But it just seems contrary to the way that the Mac is trying to mitigate

01:51:49 ◼   ► Like if you double click or if you drag,

01:51:52 ◼   ► it's an explicit user action, so that overrides the check.

01:51:55 ◼   ► But it's just like when you do that reinstall

01:51:57 ◼   ► and you already have stuff open,

01:51:59 ◼   ► you don't have the opportunity to drag anything.

01:52:01 ◼   ► So that's like the worst case scenario.

01:52:03 ◼   ► - And it's just so telling, it's so much cleaner on,

01:52:08 ◼   ► even though iOS and iPadOS are still more limiting overall

01:52:13 ◼   ► in terms of being able to use an app

01:52:15 ◼   ► that can just see the real file system.

01:52:17 ◼   ► And I know that the files app has beefed this up

01:52:21 ◼   ► and there's integration with Dropbox.

01:52:23 ◼   ► But if you're treating data as files,

01:52:25 ◼   ► as opposed to just being a library app, right?

01:52:30 ◼   ► Like when you use photos and you use the Apple Notes app,

01:52:34 ◼   ► you don't treat the individual photos as files,

01:52:37 ◼   ► you don't treat notes as files,

01:52:39 ◼   ► they're just items in a library,

01:52:42 ◼   ► which is the sort of modern way

01:52:43 ◼   ► to have multiple bits of data in an app.

01:52:46 ◼   ► And in a lot of cases, it's great.

01:52:48 ◼   ► It's just conceptually simpler.

01:52:49 ◼   ► It's neater.

01:52:50 ◼   ► You're successfully encapsulating the file system

01:52:55 ◼   ► from the user.

01:52:56 ◼   ► You're not missing anything by not having these,

01:52:59 ◼   ► you know, your individual hundreds of notes

01:53:01 ◼   ► as individual files in a file system.

01:53:04 ◼   ► But if you really do want to deal with documents

01:53:06 ◼   ► in the traditional document mindset,

01:53:10 ◼   ► iOS's way is still limiting, right?

01:53:14 ◼   ► And the Mac is just natural.

01:53:15 ◼   ► It's just the way, you know, when you boot up into a Mac,

01:53:18 ◼   ► it still is the case where the default application

01:53:20 ◼   ► that's running is the finder, which is the file system app.

01:53:23 ◼   ► I feel like nannying all these decisions with,

01:53:29 ◼   ► are you sure you want to let this app read from the desktop?

01:53:31 ◼   ► Is just, it's just a pain in the ass.

01:53:34 ◼   ► And I really kind of wish there were,

01:53:38 ◼   ► if it's, even if there is a good idea for this,

01:53:40 ◼   ► I really wished that there was a developer mode,

01:53:45 ◼   ► for lack of a better word.

01:53:46 ◼   ► And I feel like the calling it developer mode

01:53:48 ◼   ► would properly scare the people off

01:53:52 ◼   ► who shouldn't be turning it on,

01:53:54 ◼   ► as opposed to calling it advanced user mode or something.

01:53:58 ◼   ► Just call it developer mode

01:53:59 ◼   ► and it would turn off almost all of that stuff.

01:54:03 ◼   ► And just say, I trust that I'm not getting tricked

01:54:06 ◼   ► into installing malware on my Mac.

01:54:09 ◼   ► Let me run the Mac the way I was running it

01:54:12 ◼   ► five, six years ago, where I can write scripts

01:54:14 ◼   ► and not have to tell the system that Terminal app

01:54:19 ◼   ► has full disk access and stuff like that.

01:54:23 ◼   ► Just call it developer.

01:54:24 ◼   ► - They have a bit of that.

01:54:25 ◼   ► Like they got rid of the option to run any app.

01:54:27 ◼   ► Now there's only App Store and certified apps,

01:54:29 ◼   ► sorry, but you can go into Terminal and type in a command

01:54:33 ◼   ► and it restores the button for running the app.

01:54:36 ◼   ► But that's just one at a time.

01:54:37 ◼   ► There's no like Konami code to unlock all of it.

01:54:39 ◼   ► - Right, I just feel like the way that this has been added

01:54:44 ◼   ► over time to a design

01:54:47 ◼   ► That is you know, that is the way Mac OS X was originally conceived from the next era through the the you know

01:54:54 ◼   ► the transition period in 2000

01:54:56 ◼   ► Circa 2000 let's say

01:54:59 ◼   ► It's resulted in this system where you have to do these things a hundred times, you know, maybe that's an exaggeration

01:55:05 ◼   ► But you have to drag each app and drag, you know into full disk access and you have to authorize this and authorize that

01:55:11 ◼   ► Whereas I really feel like there should be a way to get and you have to jump all over the system to get these different

01:55:17 ◼   ► Things right and god bless them like Apple gets no exemption

01:55:20 ◼   ► I'd launched QuickTime for the first time and drew to a screen record

01:55:23 ◼   ► I had to launch settings go in check a box and then quick time and then reload and then it says like if you want

01:55:29 ◼   ► It to apply you've got to quit and restart the app, which is like very Skype or something

01:55:33 ◼   ► I really feel like there should be a they should take into account a way that if you really want to turn that stuff off

01:55:39 ◼   ► It's it's either all one checkbox like an idea I had is you know how like right now you can in users and groups you can

01:55:47 ◼   ► have

01:55:48 ◼   ► Administrator accounts yeah

01:55:49 ◼   ► And then you can have standard users and a standard user is limited in all sorts of ways where they can't delete apps

01:55:54 ◼   ► They have to have an admin password. Well. Why not make in addition to an administrator account?

01:55:58 ◼   ► Why not make a developer account and you can't just have an entire account?

01:56:02 ◼   ► That's you know has all the all the all the powers of an administrator

01:56:07 ◼   ► Plus the powers of a developer which is mostly I trust the software on my Mac. Yes

01:56:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm a grown-ass adult and I want to make these decisions. I mean, well, I'm an or you know, I'm an expert

01:56:18 ◼   ► You know like, you know, I'm an expert and I I trust myself to control the software that's running on my Mac

01:56:23 ◼   ► And it's a lot of little things to like I didn't notice this when I wrote my review

01:56:27 ◼   ► But I was using music and I'd right-clicked and I said oh show me and find it

01:56:31 ◼   ► It worked fine

01:56:32 ◼   ► and then I went to

01:56:33 ◼   ► Podcasts and I wanted to get the actual file for the podcast and I right-clicked on that option doesn't exist because it's a catalyst app

01:56:38 ◼   ► It doesn't it's not aware of I'm sure they could put it in but they didn't and so it's one less

01:56:43 ◼   ► It's one less feature that I use occasionally that's available to me. Well that brings me to my next section, which is the catalyst griping

01:56:49 ◼   ► Which could be an entire episode of the show and maybe will be in the coming weeks

01:56:57 ◼   ► But at the moment, you know, let's keep it short

01:57:00 ◼   ► Well shortish short by the standards of a segment on this podcast

01:57:05 ◼   ► The catalyst apps I

01:57:09 ◼   ► mean there's

01:57:11 ◼   ► Two groups of them. I mean there's apples own and then there's

01:57:15 ◼   ► Third party ones that are now in the app store

01:57:18 ◼   ► The

01:57:23 ◼   ► Apple ones are

01:57:25 ◼   ► Home where there's the the ones that we had left from last year home news and stocks

01:57:30 ◼   ► which I consider one app because they're really sort of the same stocks is just a

01:57:35 ◼   ► Version of news that has business related news. Yeah voice memos and

01:57:41 ◼   ► Podcasts or I guess podcast was was is new this year. So the four from last year home news stocks voice memos

01:57:49 ◼   ► All of these are weird and un-mack like in their own ways

01:57:55 ◼   ► and people including some people from Apple last year said well that's early given time and then

01:58:00 ◼   ► This year they didn't really look much improved at all and Craig Federighi

01:58:06 ◼   ► I forget who he was visit who talking to Vititi. I mean but

01:58:10 ◼   ► After WWDC said well, you know, these are design decisions. They're not I asked him about it on stage at my podcast

01:58:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and he said, you know, they're not technical limitations their design limitations, which is sort of a euphemistic way of there's

01:58:24 ◼   ► There's untalented people designing these apps, honestly.

01:58:29 ◼   ► - Or they were experimenting.

01:58:31 ◼   ► - But then later on, he said,

01:58:33 ◼   ► but it's early in the beta, they'll improve by the end.

01:58:35 ◼   ► Well, they didn't improve at all.

01:58:37 ◼   ► If they changed anything other than to fix bugs,

01:58:39 ◼   ► I can't notice it.

01:58:41 ◼   ► I mean, the home app still looks like an iOS app.

01:58:44 ◼   ► A lot, I mean, it even has the weird iOS-like controls

01:58:48 ◼   ► for the date picker.

01:58:50 ◼   ► - There were no design changes.

01:58:51 ◼   ► They optimized a few things

01:58:52 ◼   ► in terms of the mechanics of the apps,

01:58:54 ◼   ► but the designs didn't change.

01:58:55 ◼   ► - And that using iOS controls in a Mac app,

01:58:59 ◼   ► especially one from Apple, it's mind blowing to me.

01:59:02 ◼   ► I mean, part of what made the iPhone so great,

01:59:07 ◼   ► right from the get-go, was that they said

01:59:10 ◼   ► at like a technical level, you know,

01:59:12 ◼   ► we're building this, you know,

01:59:13 ◼   ► it's like a stripped down version of OS X

01:59:15 ◼   ► and we've, you know, taken our Cocoa frameworks

01:59:18 ◼   ► and made a new version for iOS.

01:59:21 ◼   ► there was no leakage at all of anything

01:59:25 ◼   ► that would look like a Mac control on iPhone.

01:59:30 ◼   ► Every single control that they had was,

01:59:35 ◼   ► I mean like push buttons are the one example

01:59:36 ◼   ► of a thing that works pretty much the same on a touchscreen

01:59:39 ◼   ► as on a mouse screen.

01:59:42 ◼   ► But things like date pickers or pop-up menus

01:59:46 ◼   ► all had very, very iOS style controls.

01:59:49 ◼   ► And even on the web, even in mobile Safari,

01:59:51 ◼   ► they went out of their way to create every,

01:59:54 ◼   ► take every single standard HTML user interface control,

01:59:58 ◼   ► like pop-up menus and do them in an iOS way.

02:00:01 ◼   ► And even today in 2019,

02:00:04 ◼   ► where one of the flagship features,

02:00:06 ◼   ► if not the flagship featured in my opinion of iPad OS 13,

02:00:11 ◼   ► is desktop class browsing, right?

02:00:14 ◼   ► Where it reliably asserts itself as Safari for Mac,

02:00:18 ◼   ► as opposed to Safari for iPhone,

02:00:20 ◼   ► so that you get the Mac, what you'd see on a Mac

02:00:23 ◼   ► or any other desktop class browser in the iPad.

02:00:27 ◼   ► Even though that's true, and I think it's just absolutely

02:00:31 ◼   ► my very favorite thing about iPad OS 13,

02:00:35 ◼   ► the hardest thing that would drive me crazy

02:00:38 ◼   ► if I had to go back to iOS 12 on an iPad.

02:00:41 ◼   ► Even so, they're not desktop style controls, right?

02:00:45 ◼   ► It renders the page that way, but you still

02:00:47 ◼   ► get touch-optimized versions of these controls.

02:00:51 ◼   ► They're not little tiny things that you need a pencil to pick.

02:00:55 ◼   ► They have big, fat, finger-sized things that you can tap on.

02:01:00 ◼   ► Everything is touch-optimized.

02:01:02 ◼   ► So to take something that's not mouse-optimized at all

02:01:05 ◼   ► and to stick it on the Mac almost literally unchanged,

02:01:08 ◼   ► it's mind-boggling.

02:01:09 ◼   ► It's just as offensive to me as a UI connoisseur

02:01:14 ◼   ► as it would have been if you had, every once in a while,

02:01:17 ◼   ► had a tiny little menu bar show up in an iPhone app.

02:01:21 ◼   ► - The original Windows on tablets.

02:01:23 ◼   ► - Right, it's mind boggling to me.

02:01:26 ◼   ► So the two new apps this year for Catalina

02:01:31 ◼   ► are Find My and Podcasts.

02:01:33 ◼   ► Those are both Catalina apps as well.

02:01:36 ◼   ► Podcasts is the standout.

02:01:39 ◼   ► It looks the most like it's non-Catalyst siblings,

02:01:43 ◼   ► TV and music. There's obviously a lot of confusion out there between what's Catalyst and what's

02:01:51 ◼   ► not Catalyst. I mean, I know a lot of people think that the App Store app is Catalyst because

02:01:58 ◼   ► it is very iOS-y. There's an awful lot of things in the App Store app that to me are

02:02:04 ◼   ► UI mistakes, but that they come across as iOS-isms. I mean, one that I just think it's

02:02:11 ◼   ► a bad decision is when you look at an app and you click in your updates and you can

02:02:17 ◼   ► click more to read the release notes. It opens up in a very iOS-style panel that has no close

02:02:23 ◼   ► button or done button. It just is like a rectangle on your screen and the only way to close it

02:02:29 ◼   ► is to click away.

02:02:30 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, it's baffling.

02:02:31 ◼   ► Dave Asprey It's a very—that's just bizarre from

02:02:35 ◼   ► a Mac user's experience perspective of how a window or a sheet or anything like that

02:02:40 ◼   ► would be dismissed.

02:02:42 ◼   ► Like, it's just strange.

02:02:44 ◼   ► But anyway, it's not a catalyst app.

02:02:46 ◼   ► App Store app, however, you know,

02:02:49 ◼   ► ultimately the user shouldn't have to know.

02:02:51 ◼   ► That's a key point, right?

02:02:53 ◼   ► And so like 32-bit versus 64-bit, typical user,

02:02:57 ◼   ► never had any idea, never should have had any idea.

02:03:01 ◼   ► When Swift became a way to make real Mac apps,

02:03:04 ◼   ► there was no way to like double click an app and tell,

02:03:07 ◼   ► oh, this app was written in Swift,

02:03:09 ◼   ► And this one was written in Objective C.

02:03:12 ◼   ► Like the programming language is not something

02:03:14 ◼   ► that a user should ever have to worry about.

02:03:16 ◼   ► There were some tiny, some things that, you know,

02:03:20 ◼   ► as an, even as a non-developer,

02:03:22 ◼   ► you could kind of get a hint.

02:03:23 ◼   ► Like you can always in the Mac, poke around in the,

02:03:26 ◼   ► you know, click on the control click or right click,

02:03:29 ◼   ► whatever you want to call it on the .app bundle.

02:03:32 ◼   ► Show the package contests and poke around in there

02:03:35 ◼   ► and look at the frameworks.

02:03:36 ◼   ► And until recently, an app that used Swift,

02:03:39 ◼   ► whether it was written entirely in Swift or partially in Swift,

02:03:41 ◼   ► had to include the Swift frameworks within the app bundle

02:03:44 ◼   ► because they weren't part of the system for technical reasons

02:03:49 ◼   ► that are irrelevant.

02:03:50 ◼   ► So you could poke around as a user

02:03:52 ◼   ► and just poking around the app bundles,

02:03:54 ◼   ► tell if it used Swift or not.

02:03:57 ◼   ► But as a typical user, there was no sign of it.

02:04:00 ◼   ► And that's how Catalyst should be.

02:04:02 ◼   ► Catalyst should not be something that users have to think,

02:04:05 ◼   ► like, hey, I know that this app is on the iPad

02:04:08 ◼   ► and it's on my Mac, is this Catalyst,

02:04:11 ◼   ► or is it just an AppKit app and a UIKit app for the iPad?

02:04:15 ◼   ► You shouldn't have to know.

02:04:16 ◼   ► Only developers should have to know.

02:04:18 ◼   ► But the truth is, you look at these Catalyst apps,

02:04:20 ◼   ► and they do stick out.

02:04:21 ◼   ► There's telltale signs that these are Catalyst apps.

02:04:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

02:04:26 ◼   ► And it's hilarious that if an AppKit app is something bad,

02:04:29 ◼   ► people should see them as Catalyst.

02:04:31 ◼   ► That's very true.

02:04:32 ◼   ► It's very telling.

02:04:34 ◼   ► So the Podcasts app-- so people are confused.

02:04:36 ◼   ► People think of music, TV, and podcasts are all catalyst apps.

02:04:40 ◼   ► They're not.

02:04:41 ◼   ► The music and TV apps are effectively

02:04:45 ◼   ► two forks of the old iTunes app.

02:04:47 ◼   ► And I love-- I just love-- I almost

02:04:50 ◼   ► feel like it's a troll from Apple--

02:04:52 ◼   ► that the preferences window is still a modal dialog box.

02:04:57 ◼   ► They rewrote so much of those apps to make them look new

02:05:00 ◼   ► and to separate stuff, and yet they still

02:05:03 ◼   ► have a modal dialog box, which is just wonderful.

02:05:05 ◼   ► - It's amazing to me, it's all of these apps,

02:05:07 ◼   ► even like the podcasts and music and TVs,

02:05:09 ◼   ► if you open up any list view or grid view

02:05:13 ◼   ► and you click into anything, you get this whole row

02:05:15 ◼   ► that all it has is a back button in it, a little circle.

02:05:18 ◼   ► And you go back and it just blanks you back into the grid.

02:05:22 ◼   ► Like on iOS, the title of the master view

02:05:25 ◼   ► becomes the title of the detail view

02:05:26 ◼   ► and it slides you back and forth so you're spatially aware.

02:05:29 ◼   ► Here it's just, oh, we're gonna throw an entire row up there

02:05:31 ◼   ► stick a little button in and then cross fade you in and out.

02:05:35 ◼   ► And it's across all the apps and it's baffling to me too.

02:05:37 ◼   ► - And it's, yeah, it doesn't read well as a Mac.

02:05:41 ◼   ► But then there's other things in the podcast app

02:05:43 ◼   ► that are just telltale signs that just,

02:05:45 ◼   ► it just would never imagine a Mac app,

02:05:47 ◼   ► let alone a Mac app from Apple that doesn't support this.

02:05:50 ◼   ► So like you go into the episodes of a show

02:05:54 ◼   ► and it lists them and you click on one,

02:05:56 ◼   ► you can use shift and then arrow key

02:05:58 ◼   ► to extend the selection and select multiple episodes.

02:06:02 ◼   ► Right, now there's a thing you think,

02:06:03 ◼   ► that's cool because you know that's the thing you expect to be able to do in a

02:06:07 ◼   ► Mac app with a list view is select multiple items by shift arrowing or

02:06:10 ◼   ► command clicking on just continuous one so you can select numbers one and three

02:06:16 ◼   ► but not two but guess what if you hit command a which you would expect to

02:06:22 ◼   ► select all the episodes nothing happens like yeah command a just isn't hooked up

02:06:27 ◼   ► which is like I guess it's an oversight you know I bet they fix it because the

02:06:35 ◼   ► podcast app really really goes out of its way to be as Mac like as it possibly

02:06:39 ◼   ► can but you the reason it sticks out is that support for command-a as select all

02:06:46 ◼   ► in a list view isn't something that's part of the beauty of cocoa and the app

02:06:50 ◼   ► can frameworks is that the reason that brand new apps never had we forgot about

02:06:56 ◼   ► about hooking up Command-A is that they didn't have to remember it because it just came for

02:07:00 ◼   ► free with AppKit, right? Like, that's why you can't remember even a brand new app that

02:07:05 ◼   ► didn't have support for Select All because it came for free and you didn't have to keep

02:07:10 ◼   ► this checklist of 50, 60, 100 standard little things that we have to hook up manually because

02:07:17 ◼   ► they don't come across for free because Command-A for Select All isn't a thing on UIKit on iOS.

02:07:23 ◼   ► I also mentioned that you can't right-click and go to see the file in Finder because there's

02:07:28 ◼   ► no directory. All my directories that had podcasts in are empty now, and they're all

02:07:31 ◼   ► in some /library/podcast/cache file.

02:07:35 ◼   ► Right. And that's just… I realize maybe that's the future we're heading towards,

02:07:42 ◼   ► but to me, it's a future that would be best provided by either an iPad OS device or another

02:07:51 ◼   ► iOS device that is iOS on a laptop form factor, not macOS. What macOS is, to me, is inextricably

02:07:59 ◼   ► tied to being, if you want, I think it's great that it has evolved in a way for casual users

02:08:05 ◼   ► that don't really have to interact with files in the file system often, but if you want

02:08:10 ◼   ► to, you should be able to. And in an app like that, where you know the back end is a file,