0:00:00just kicked out the cord to my MacBook Pro.
0:00:03And guess what, it's not a problem,
0:00:07'cause I'm still using a 2014 MacBook Pro with MagSafe.
0:00:10- There you go, there you go.
0:00:12- You know, I was thinking about this.
0:00:13- Brilliant invention.
0:00:14- I'm still getting feedback from people
0:00:19about that Brian Chen iPhone.
0:00:21I don't know if you listened to me and Nely
0:00:23on the Vergecast podcast.
0:00:24- I did, I did.
0:00:25I mean, I enjoy the two of you always,
0:00:28but I knew you were gonna tell that article,
0:00:30so I made a special flight to make sure to listen to it.
0:00:33- Well, I also think, wasn't that the one too,
0:00:35where we sung your praises?
0:00:37It was disgusting.
0:00:38- I think you might have said something kind.
0:00:39I do appreciate it.
0:00:40- Yeah, it made me sick.
0:00:41I knew you were gonna listen too.
0:00:42Son of a bitch.
0:00:43(laughing)
0:00:45But anyway, one aspect of this is like the whole theory
0:00:50that people like me and Neelai and other people
0:00:54who write these reviews are cheerleaders
0:00:57telling people to go by the newest thing by the newest thing by the newest thing
0:01:02just isn't true and the fact that I'm using a 2014 MacBook Pro it's literally
0:01:06five years old at this point I believe I even bought it around this time of the
0:01:11year in 2014 so I'm using a five-year-old laptop right now literally
0:01:16to record this show I've been typing almost everything I've written for the
0:01:20last year or so on this machine I still love it it is it is I need to write like
0:01:27a five-year review of this thing because I do believe that it is the single greatest
0:01:31computing device I've ever purchased in my life. I love it.
0:01:34I had the exact same generation and I also loved it and it was absolutely fantastic.
0:01:39Then I dropped it and now I have one of the new MacBook Pros and I don't like it nearly
0:01:44as much. I can promise you that.
0:01:45Do you know what it has that's wrong? I don't know if you've seen this. I know
0:01:48Syracuse had it and other people had it. It was a known issue that Apple had a support
0:01:52page up around the display, the black bezel around the display. It is there's some kind
0:01:59of adhesion that keeps the plastic surface to whatever's behind it. And at some point,
0:02:06I mean, at this point, I've had it I've had the problem longer than I didn't have it,
0:02:09you know, three, three years ago, maybe more. It's it looks like the screen needs to be
0:02:14cleaned. Like it looks like something you could just wipe off. Yeah, I know exactly
0:02:18that is. I didn't realize it yet. No, I had that for sure. My thing was unfortunately
0:02:23I put on, I liked the messenger bag style. I think it's much more convenient for putting
0:02:29stuff in or out. But I like carrying things as a backpack because I destroyed my back
0:02:33carrying around a messenger bag back in business school. So Toomey makes this great bag where
0:02:39you use it like a messenger bag but it has backpack straps and also has a little thing
0:02:44to put over your carry on. It's perfect. It's a brilliant bag.
0:02:47So when you're actually walking great distances, you can wear a backpack and then right before
0:02:51you meet people, you can turn it into a messenger bag and look a little bit cool.
0:02:56No, no, no. I don't carry the messenger bag strap, but it does have briefcase handles
0:03:00so you can carry it or whatever. But I have no shame, so it's fine. But I put it on,
0:03:07because the zipper's on the side, and I hadn't zipped up the computer part where
0:03:12you put the computer in. So I throw it over my shoulders and the computer goes flying
0:03:17out the side. And that was the end of my beloved… I think it was 2015, the last year that they
0:03:23had that model.
0:03:24I think so.
0:03:25That was their one of my beloved 2015 13-inch MacBook Pro.
0:03:29And I could even be misremembering. Mine might be a 2015. Actually, I guess I can just go
0:03:33to… what about this Mac?
0:03:34I think it's 2014. You've talked about it before.
0:03:38Yeah, mid-2014. All right. I just psyched myself out of it. But anyway, I've had this
0:03:43adhesion problem around the bezel for like three, four years even. And Apple had a page
0:03:48they and it was a known defect and their thing was just bring it into the store. We'll take
0:03:53one look at it as soon as we eyeball it, we will take your MacBook away and fix it. I
0:03:59don't want them to fix it. I don't want to be without it for a day. And I kind of have
0:04:03grown, I went through the stages of grief with, you know, some kind of physical defect
0:04:07on it where now I feel like it's charming. And it doesn't affect the pixel area. So
0:04:14it's not like there's a section of my screen at the right side where I'm looking at a
0:04:18defect. It really is only most noticeable when the screen is off. It's like, how often
0:04:24do I look at the screen when it's off? As soon as I lift the lid, the screen comes on.
0:04:27So no, it's funny. You met, I totally had that problem. I like, I, now that you mentioned,
0:04:31I didn't, I didn't even know what it was either. I just kind of ignored it. Yeah. Cause
0:04:34You're right. It wasn't on the screen. It looked like it was dirty and it didn't really matter
0:04:39So yeah, it looked like a weird stain like you spit milk on your screen or something. You know, it's like
0:04:43or worse
0:04:46But it really did the first time I noticed it it really looked I really was like a Lady Macbeth moment where I was sitting
0:04:53There like, you know like huffing on the screen that you know and then like potty like I better go get the the serious
0:04:58screen cleaner
0:05:00and nothing worked and I'm like what the hell and then they're like Google it and say god known defect and then like
0:05:05As soon as I found out it's a known defect and I see apples policy. They will fix it
0:05:09I immediately stand up and think like well, I'm gonna walk to the Apple Store right now and then I thought about it
0:05:15I don't want to be without this machine, you know
0:05:18There's like I have a big and I think you subscribe to the same theory with my with my max
0:05:23I have a very strong if it ain't broke don't replace it
0:05:26Don't don't replace it and don't update the OS
0:05:30until you absolutely have no choice.
0:05:34I didn't used to have that opinion with their OS. I guess I would never update on
0:05:39day one of a major new operating system, but I would upgrade quickly. But now I'm…
0:05:45I don't think I upgraded to Catalina. No, not Catalina. Catalina is the next one.
0:05:50Mojave.
0:05:51I'm sick of these goddamn names. I'm 10-14. I didn't upgrade to 10-14 until like June.
0:05:55Yeah, no, same here.
0:05:59It disrupts your day for like an hour, hour and a half.
0:06:07This frustrates me about the way Apple has dealt with it.
0:06:12The Mac is a pure work machine.
0:06:15I don't use it really for anything other than work.
0:06:17I use my phone for almost everything else.
0:06:20There's a certain number of things I need the Mac to do and do them very, very well.
0:06:25I don't need anything else and I want them to do it perfectly and to never disrupt anything.
0:06:29Like that's all I want from the computer.
0:06:31Like I don't need any bells and whistles,
0:06:33anything along those lines.
0:06:34All I want is to see those things.
0:06:35And once it's set up and it's doing those things,
0:06:37I don't wanna mess with it.
0:06:38- Yep, no, I feel the same way.
0:06:40And I don't know, I will probably upgrade
0:06:43to Catalina earlier than I did 10.14.
0:06:46Because I'm stupid, but. (laughs)
0:06:51But there are some things in Catalina
0:06:52that I really do wanna use.
0:06:54I do feel like there is one huge tent pole feature
0:06:57in 10.15 Catalina.
0:06:59and that is what they're calling sidecar, which is the ability to use an iPad, either
0:07:05wirelessly or connected, like by a USB cable, as an external display. And then you could
0:07:12like draw on it and stuff like that.
0:07:14Yeah. No, I used to use Duet. I think I still have Duet. During the summer, I'm usually
0:07:24back in the States most of the summer, and I will occasionally, especially during earning
0:07:28season when I'm looking at spreadsheets and stuff like that. I have a 13-inch iPad and
0:07:33I will use it just as a screen. Duet doesn't do the whole touch thing. It's just a secondary
0:07:39display but it is very useful.
0:07:42And then there's the third-party thing called Luma Display.
0:07:45Yeah, that's the one that actually does incorporate the touch stuff. That requires a kernel extension,
0:07:51I think.
0:07:52No, sort of. So, Luma Display is a very intriguing product. I would still encourage people to
0:08:03look at it and consider it. There's a very strong chance that this sidecar thing in Catalina
0:08:08is going to Sherlock them and put them out of business or at least put that product out
0:08:12of business. But the idea with Luma, I think it was a Kickstarter and if it wasn't Kickstarter,
0:08:17was, you know, Indiegogo or one of those similar things, but they raised money. It was a hardware
0:08:23and software product. So there's two things that could go wrong. And they completely pulled
0:08:27it off. I believe they were on time. And it works exactly as advertised. So it's like,
0:08:32oh, yeah, they're totally wireless. Whereas Yeah, the duet required a cord. And the other
0:08:37thing with duet is the duet didn't fill the screen properly. Whereas just looking at the
0:08:40website of the Luna display, it Yeah, it clearly looks like a much more Yeah, a much, much
0:08:46much better product than what I was using.
0:08:47So it's super clever. So the hardware part is a dongle and you have to buy the one for
0:08:52your machine. So they have a DisplayPort one or whatever it's called for like an older
0:08:56MacBook Pro like mine and a USB-C one for the newer ones with Thunderbolt. And you know
0:09:02how you can plug an actual external display into those ports. Well, this is just a little
0:09:07dongle like what used to come with like a mouse. You know, like you'd plug a thing into
0:09:11USB-C or like a clicker for a presentation and you'd put a little wireless thing into
0:09:17your USB port and it only sticks out a little tiny bit but it goes into display port. By
0:09:24which I mean lowercase d, lowercase p, display port, the port on your computer that thinks
0:09:31it's for displays. So as soon as it goes in, your Mac thinks a display has been plugged
0:09:36in and says, "Okay, now you have an external display." But it's just a little wireless
0:09:39dongle that communicates to their app on your iPad and all of a sudden, boom, your iPad
0:09:46is an external display for your Mac. The kernel extension part is without installing their
0:09:52kernel extension, you don't get retina.
0:09:54Chuck Liddell You don't get retina.
0:09:56Jay Haynes Retina, oh, that's what it is. Okay.
0:09:58Chuck Liddell So the iPad shows up with non-retina graphics.
0:10:04So every pixel is actually four pixels on the display.
0:10:09And in a weird way, when you have a retina display showing a non-retina thing, to me
0:10:16it looks worse than an actual non-retina display.
0:10:20Because if you have an actual non-retina display, like an older iPad pre-retina, the pixels
0:10:26are fuzzy.
0:10:28So the fact that it doesn't look as good as retina, but there's a fuzziness to it
0:10:32that kind of, it's like de facto anti-aliasing almost.
0:10:36Whereas when you have a retina display
0:10:38and it's using four pixels to show one pixel,
0:10:42the pixeliness is super sharp.
0:10:46It is very pixelated.
0:10:47And I just didn't, I bought it to support them.
0:10:52I, you know, idiot that I am,
0:10:54it's like, ah sure, I'll spend 200 bucks
0:10:56or whatever it was to see if this works.
0:10:58And then I saw that it worked.
0:10:59And it's not that I don't trust them.
0:11:01I believe that the team is like former Apple engineers. And I know people who use this
0:11:07product and have the kernel extension displayed, and I've never once heard of anybody saying,
0:11:12"Yeah, I crashed my machine," or anything. No problems at all. So I'm not even bad-mouthing
0:11:18it. I just didn't feel like installing it. So I didn't use it.
0:11:21It's $70 for the record.
0:11:22There you go. $70. So it's something for people to look at. But anyway, it might be
0:11:28put out of business, unfortunately. We'll see what they do. But anyway, so I'll probably
0:11:34upgrade to 10.15 earlier than later.
0:11:36I'm just hoping that those new MacBook Pros come out because I will be first in line to
0:11:41get them. The problem for me is I've committed to a certain deadline, so I have to write
0:11:50four days a week. And so to travel with the constant fear that my computer is going to
0:11:57stop working. It just drives me up the wall. I feel like this current computer I have is
0:12:06just like a constant low grade worry, like all the time. If I see some speck of dust
0:12:14fall on it, or like, I just like...
0:12:16Wait, which one do you have? What is your laptop?
0:12:20I have the MacBook escape. So the one with only two ports and non-touch bar.
0:12:25Is it the new one? Like the one that was updated?
0:12:27No, no, it's not. It's 2017 maybe, something like that. So yeah, so it has the old, I think
0:12:38it's the second generation, but it doesn't have the membrane or whatever it is. But the
0:12:45other thing too is I feel, I'm just getting older, and the 13s are nice, but I feel, especially
0:12:51those summers when I'm using it every day. I'm like, "Yeah, I could use a bigger screen
0:12:56here." So anyway, I never fixed my screen. I don't want to now. It's charming to me.
0:13:01So I'm rocking it until Apple comes out with a MacBook Pro that I feel is appealing, hopefully
0:13:06soon. So maybe this beloved computer will be retired soon. I don't know. But anyway,
0:13:12I kicked the cord out. And every time that happens, I think, "I wonder what the hell
0:13:16I'll do when that's a USB-C thing and it's gonna like is it gonna yank my whole
0:13:20table I haven't heard a lot of stories from people like like it when when Apple first went
0:13:27USB-C only for power and everything and got rid of magsafe with these there was lots of people saying wow, that's a shame
0:13:34I loved magsafe seems like an odd feature to do away with
0:13:37but I haven't really heard stories from people like
0:13:41Son of a bitching because they kick the cable and their laptop fell over the fell off the table or desk and broke
0:13:47I haven't heard that so maybe the cable, you know the USB C cables
0:13:51Come out easily enough. I don't know
0:13:55Yeah, I think they do come out easier. I yeah, I've I've found to be
0:14:00Less of an issue than I thought as well and actually it's nice in some ways
0:14:04I again one of my biggest cases is on airplanes and
0:14:08that's
0:14:09it's more likely they're just gonna kind of knock out the mag safe there and
0:14:13When you don't want to and in this case the fact that it's a little sturdier is is a nice thing
0:14:18I could and I would imagine having it on both sides
0:14:20You could plug it on either side would be pretty handy, but the one I have only has ports on one side
0:14:24So it's it's kind of a moot point. Yeah, the two side thing would be nice, but you don't have it
0:14:28Well, I I mean, I mean I just I have no desire for a touch bar
0:14:33So but that's the that's what we'll see. Do you think the 16-inch or whatever this rumored new one is gonna have a touch bar?
0:14:40That's a good question. I think yes, and I wonder though because
0:14:45It seems like universally the touch bar is considered either
0:14:51I don't know anyone that likes a touch bar like literally. I don't think I know a single person
0:14:55I would say the range of opinion only goes from
0:14:58despising it to
0:15:01ambivalence
0:15:03And I don't know anybody who actually likes it like to me the the best sentiment
0:15:07I can I know of anybody who has about it is yeah, yeah, that's okay. You know it's yeah
0:15:13It's fine. It's fine. Where's the whereas I know other people who?
0:15:18Truly just truly despise it well
0:15:20It's interesting because they did dump the 3d touch on the phone which which I really liked. I'm
0:15:26I'm disappointed that it's gone
0:15:28I can understand like anything that's not discoverable is just sort of fundamentally problematic so I can understand why it's gone
0:15:35But I I do I really like that phone 11 if the thing to say it's a it's a great phone
0:15:40The camera is obviously amazing. I feel particularly great because I have the I have the green model with the
0:15:47Yellow gold leather case so it has my green factors colors
0:15:52Looks very sharp very sharp
0:15:54But I do miss 3d touch a lot like a lot more than I expected
0:15:57well, and the shame of it is
0:16:00That we should skip have iPhone 11 as an entire topic so we can
0:16:05table most of this for that but but I feel the shame of it with 3d touch is that
0:16:10It's like now it's gone in all of the new phones
0:16:15And so the future is clear that iOS devices. It's this haptic touch going forward
0:16:21But the worst part is that for devices that do have 3d touch like a year-old iPhone. It's finally
0:16:28implemented the way it should have been all along
0:16:31where
0:16:33I've been us. I don't know if I've written strongly enough about it
0:16:36But all along I have thought the the discoverability is a bit of an issue, but I feel the bigger problem is the
0:16:43has always been the
0:16:46overloading of similar
0:16:49That's right, because you had both long press and you had 3D touch at the same time.
0:16:54Right.
0:16:55That's a great point.
0:16:56Yeah, you should only have one of the two.
0:16:57And it'd be great if the only one was 3D touch instead of the only one is long press.
0:17:02So just look no further than the home screen, an aspect of the iPhone that everybody has
0:17:06to deal with in some way.
0:17:08And a long press on an icon put you into jiggle mode to delete or rearrange apps, and a 3D
0:17:13touch got you the shortcut menu.
0:17:15But that is a really fine distinction in terms of-- I have always thought that 3D Touch should
0:17:21just be a faster way to do a long touch.
0:17:25It's a long touch without waiting for the long.
0:17:27You can just skip that delay.
0:17:29And now that's what it is if you still have a phone with 3D Touch, which is awesome, which
0:17:33is what it should have been all along.
0:17:35And it's unified the interface, and it's the same set of things.
0:17:38And I have a new iPhone, and so I'm stuck with the delay.
0:17:42And it really does annoy me.
0:17:44I heard the ATP guys bitching about it.
0:17:46I think I'm an episode behind now,
0:17:48but their second to last episode was the episode
0:17:50where Casey and Marco had just gotten their new phones
0:17:55and were maybe even like the day or day before
0:17:59they recorded and they were both being driven nuts
0:18:01by the delay on the home screen
0:18:03when you press and hold on the camera button.
0:18:05- Well, the lock screen.
0:18:07- Lock screen, I mean.
0:18:07- Lock screen is particularly annoying.
0:18:09- That's what I meant, lock screen.
0:18:10You kind of get used to it after you've had the phone
0:18:13for a week or two, but not really.
0:18:16I mean, it always seems like it should be faster.
0:18:19And it is very, very strange that the phones are literally,
0:18:23they literally have the fastest single core performance
0:18:27of any computing device Apple has ever sold.
0:18:30So on, you know, the iMac Pro is definitely
0:18:33a faster computer at multi-core stuff.
0:18:35And that's really what the pro workflows are optimized for.
0:18:38So it's not a faster computer overall than an iMac Pro,
0:18:42but on single core, which a lot of things you do
0:18:46are on one thread, it is the fastest computer they sell.
0:18:50It's a phone, a cell phone,
0:18:52that is the fastest single core computer Apple sells.
0:18:55And yet, getting to the camera takes longer,
0:18:57which is very frustrating.
0:18:59All right, let me take a break, thank our first sponsor.
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0:21:09Hey, speaking of new laptops, Microsoft had an event two days ago, I believe.
0:21:20They did.
0:21:23Where was it?
0:21:24This is right.
0:21:25Where the hell did they even have it?
0:21:26I was in New York, in New York City.
0:21:27So you were down the road.
0:21:28Yeah, I should have gone.
0:21:31I don't think to ask for things like that until after the event.
0:21:34Right.
0:21:35Oh my gosh.
0:21:38But it was really interesting.
0:21:41You were up late, as you are right now.
0:21:43I was up early.
0:21:44I was following along live.
0:21:51I thought it was an interesting event.
0:21:52I think they're doing some interesting stuff.
0:21:54And then at the very end, I think that they blew it.
0:21:58But you commented, I know we were chatting with each other, that one of the first things
0:22:03they did, and I don't know which segment it was, if they were talking about their laptop
0:22:06or their two-in-ones with the detachable keyboards, but they made a pointed reference up there
0:22:12in front of the audience that one of the things they would never compromise on is the keyboard.
0:22:19We want to make sure that it always works. It's always there for you. Your computer
0:22:23is something you can trust. And then what was great is not only did the presenter say
0:22:28the keyboard, but before he said the keyboard, the slide like cut to the keyboard. So it
0:22:33was like, it was like first a visual reminder and then like the pregnant pause and then
0:22:38the actual statement of, of for example, the keyboard.
0:22:43So I mean, the only thing they could have done to make it more clear would have been
0:22:46to like pause the whole thing and start winking. To know what
0:22:54they're referring to. And, you know, that's fair game. You
0:22:59know, Apple did this to themselves. You know, it's is a
0:23:03legitimate, you know, like, Microsoft has had some ham
0:23:06fisted marketing, to say the least over the years. I mean,
0:23:10they held a funeral for the iPhone at one point. And they
0:23:14literally had a funeral procession marching around Redmond, Washington. Turns out iPhone
0:23:21wasn't dead at the time. Turns out. But this keyboard thing with MacBooks is a legitimate
0:23:30issue and we can argue about the severity of it. Certainly it seems as though it has
0:23:36been mitigated to some degree finally with this, the combination of the membrane and
0:23:43quote-unquote material change that they made over the summer with the current keyboards if you go
0:23:49in and buy one today or if you get your old one serviced but they're not great keyboards period
0:23:55in my opinion i even if your key work as they are designed on your keyboard i just don't think
0:24:01they're great keyboards so i feel like and to me as a writer uh the keyboard is very important
0:24:08I'm also very picky about my keyboard, so it's even more important.
0:24:12And there are an awful lot of people out there, maybe their business card doesn't say writer,
0:24:16but there are certainly an awful lot of people out there whose day-to-day work involves a
0:24:20lot of typing.
0:24:22That is just what it means to be a worker in our generation, in the world today.
0:24:28You send emails, you do presentations, you're in Slack, or I guess in the Microsoft world,
0:24:33you're on Teams or whatever they call their thing.
0:24:37doing work are doing a lot of typing. So that's fair game, good for them. And Microsoft has
0:24:44always made good peripherals. We know they've always made good mice.
0:24:50I have a Microsoft keyboard sitting in front of me right now.
0:24:52You are a devotee of the Microsoft keyboard. What's it called? Is that the one that Marco
0:24:57has too?
0:24:58The Sculpt. Yeah, the same one as Marco. Yeah, the first version of the Sculpt keyboard.
0:25:02It's a great keyboard. It's just a great keyboard. The keys are great. My wife has
0:25:12a Surface laptop also. It's a great computer. I didn't like the look of that weird felt
0:25:21sort of thing, but actually, once you actually use it, it's not nearly as bad. Actually,
0:25:24she has this blue color that looks quite sharp. The keyboard is great. The hardware is fantastic.
0:25:31actually, you know, Microsoft laptops, they actually have good trackpads, which is always
0:25:37like a bugaboo on PCs in general. Like the hardware is really, really, really good. I
0:25:42mean, obviously, it's Windows, it's not Mac OS, and that's, you know, for many folks,
0:25:47a deal breaker. But as far as just the pure hardware goes, I think given this keyboard
0:25:52issue, I think it's pretty safe to say that Microsoft makes the best laptops in the industry.
0:25:59They do. There's nothing—they work—it's what they said. So, they look great, they
0:26:05have a better port selection, they have great screens, they have great keyboards, they have
0:26:09great trackpads.
0:26:10It's a fair shot.
0:26:12And that's a recurring theme in my writing for years, ever since I've been doing it,
0:26:17that for me, the OS is primary and the hardware is secondary. And I've always said that
0:26:23I would much rather, by far, without a moment's hesitation, use macOS on PC hardware than use
0:26:31Windows on MacBook hardware. And the same way with iOS and Android, but it's far stronger of
0:26:37a preference, Mac versus Windows, than Android versus iOS. Even now, that's a strong preference.
0:26:45It's funny because in many respects, that's what a Surface is. It's basically MacBook quality,
0:26:50but it runs Windows.
0:26:52But I'm fully cognizant of the fact that there are many people who don't feel that way and
0:26:59have either through ambivalence or through deliberate choice in the software that they
0:27:07choose to use can switch between platforms rather easily. Certainly, if you have a mostly web
0:27:16app workflow, it's almost trivial to switch from one OS, you know, Windows to Mac to Chrome OS,
0:27:25because you're just using browser tabs. And there's, you know, people who use real apps who
0:27:32still don't, you know, are fed up, you know, I get email from people who are like, you know,
0:27:36I've been a Mac user for a while, and I had a bum keyboard, so to hell with it. I bought
0:27:41some Windows thing, and I'm very happy with it.
0:27:45So there's certainly a lot of people like that, and Microsoft is certainly pitching
0:27:49them.
0:27:50And it's more than just that the hardware is good, too.
0:27:52The other thing that I always thought was part of the Surface appeal—and you wrote
0:27:59about this this week on Stratechery and your coverage of the Microsoft event—is why do
0:28:04they even make hardware, right?
0:28:05It's a good question, right?
0:28:07And it's certainly not important to Microsoft financially.
0:28:10I always thought I thought the one thing maybe you didn't mention in your coverage was that
0:28:13part of it was I think internally they were just a little fed up with all the shovelware
0:28:18and crap where that all the OEMs put in that in the same way that why Google makes the
0:28:24pixel hardware I feel like Microsoft makes the surface stuff as to at least have one
0:28:29set of here's high quality hardware with Windows as we meant it to be used by the user.
0:28:35Yep. That was definitely a part of it. And not having the crapper on it, and also just
0:28:42the little stuff, like I mentioned the trackpad thing, like the, just all this small stuff
0:28:48works right. There's attention to detail throughout the machine. And for sure that
0:28:53was a motivation. The reason why I've always been a big critic of Surface generally, it's
0:28:58a very sort of like, it's just because the origin of Surface, and this is something I
0:29:03this week. I mean, it was such a delicate there. The reason we started Surface seven years ago,
0:29:08and it was all total BS, because I was there at the time. And so in the day that I went back and
0:29:16linked to Steve Ballmer's presentation, which was, there was all about Windows, Windows, Windows,
0:29:21and Surface. Surface was a manifestation of Windows, and Windows was the center of Microsoft,
0:29:25etc, etc. And that part of Microsoft needed to die. Like, it needed to not be a company about
0:29:31Windows. And so that was why I was always against the Surface because in my mind, Surface existed
0:29:37because it was meant to be a physical manifestation of Windows. And anything Windows related needed to
0:29:42die. And now I'm like, you know, well, the Surface, honestly, it's not that big a deal. It's $6 billion
0:29:48in revenue. Microsoft did what, 120 billion last year or something like that. And you know, the
0:29:52margins are much smaller than the rest of the company. But you know what, Satya Nadella killed
0:29:57Windows. It's one of the most incredible sort of corporate change jobs ever, the way he really
0:30:04transformed the culture there. And so you know what, if they want to mess around making hardware
0:30:08and very good hardware at that, and frankly, from what I can see, they seem to be pretty popular. I
0:30:13mean, I see them around, fair bit, probably more than the other PCIC. That's fine. It's fine,
0:30:21because like the the reason I worried about Surface's existence is gone and all those other
0:30:28reasons like we want to have actually have nice PCs and we don't want to have much of crap we're
0:30:32on it and we want to sort of have more control and hey we'll we'll take that extra bit of margin if
0:30:37we sell into the corporate place where we get the hardware margin and the software margin that's
0:30:40fine it's great I I'm glad they're doing it and and you know what I'm glad someone is up there
0:30:46making fun of Apple or having for having shit keyboards because heaven knows Apple deserves it
0:30:49so good for them. Yeah, and it's sort of like, in a way, you're right that what Nadella has done
0:30:59is truly extraordinary because, and I think if you want to boil down what was the reason for
0:31:06showing Balmer the door and switching, you know, putting Nadella in, I mean clearly there were
0:31:13several strategic shifts that Nadella introduced, but I think if you really want to boil it down to
0:31:19a nut, it was weird. It's no longer Windows first.
0:31:26That's right. That's absolutely right.
0:31:28And it's not like Windows has been put in the ash heap. They still…
0:31:32No, they still make a lot of money off of Windows, right? Which is fine, but it's
0:31:36not the driving force of the company like it was.
0:31:39No, but in another sense, by focusing on what was important, like Office productivity apps
0:31:46And the Azure stuff is certainly very important to them too.
0:31:50The cloud stuff is very successful.
0:31:52But like with the Office stuff, in a sense,
0:31:56the strategy hasn't changed at all.
0:31:58The idea, the old idea was we'll have Windows everywhere
0:32:01and therefore we'll be able to have our apps everywhere.
0:32:04Well, their apps are still everywhere.
0:32:05And it's, in fact, there are more places
0:32:07because now they're, you know,
0:32:10I think when Ballmer was still there,
0:32:11they were still sort of sitting on iPad apps
0:32:14that for Office that they had that were like ready.
0:32:17Yeah, that's right. They were built under Balmer, but he wouldn't release them until the Windows
0:32:21version is ready. And so when Nadella came in, the first presentation he did is about a month,
0:32:27month in, month, two months in, was Unveil Office for iPad. And it was, it was a, and yes, they were
0:32:34built under Balmer. And maybe by the end, Balmer said, "Okay, fine. I'll let this sit until you
0:32:38come out." I don't, I mean, who knows what the mechanics were, but it was such a perfect sort
0:32:42of like coming out party for Nadella. Do you like, like, no, like Windows doesn't call the shots
0:32:47anymore. Right. And you know, it was an important way of saying it was symbolic, right? And it was
0:32:53sort of like, exactly. You know, Steve Jobs did the same thing when he came back to Apple in 1997.
0:33:00Well, that's such a great analogy. I wish I would have made that before. You're right. It's the
0:33:03exact same thing. It's the exact same thing. And what Jobs did was launch the Think Different ad
0:33:09campaign. And because it was he wanted to say he wanted something
0:33:13out the door that said, Hey, Apple is different now. There's
0:33:17a new there's a new team in town. And a product takes too
0:33:20long, right? Because it jobs and the next crew came in, and they
0:33:26had years of work ahead of them. They underestimated it, of
0:33:30course, because everybody underestimates how long software
0:33:31is going to take. But what we now know is Mac OS X didn't come
0:33:34out till 2001. It was four years ahead.
0:33:37It wasn't really usable until 2003.
0:33:39Yeah, and the iMac is the more important thing.
0:33:43But the iMac, they had to start from scratch when Jobs came in and realized that there
0:33:47was this guy named Johnny Ive and a great industrial design team.
0:33:53They got working on it very soon, but they still had to wait for it.
0:33:55So what could they get out the door quickly?
0:33:57An ad campaign.
0:33:58Well, Nadella, luckily enough, had these iPad apps there ready.
0:34:04Just polish them up.
0:34:05Let's get them out.
0:34:06It'll tell the world, hey, there's a new team
0:34:09running Microsoft, we have a new strategy.
0:34:11But if anything, the let's put our office apps
0:34:14everywhere strategy, everywhere includes more places now
0:34:18than when it was Windows, Windows, Windows,
0:34:20'cause it's still, there's still first class apps
0:34:23on Windows, of course, but now they're everywhere.
0:34:25They're on Android, which we'll have more to talk about
0:34:27in a moment, iOS, and of course, the Mac still.
0:34:32If anything, it's more strategic.
0:34:35it's almost impossible to buy a computer today where you can't run MS Office.
0:34:39Well, actually, I thought that what you were going to go back to was not the campaign.
0:34:43I thought you were going to go back to the Macworld Boston where Bill Gates appears on
0:34:47the screen and Steve Jobs is up there saying, "Look, we can't be fighting this battle
0:34:52anymore. We've got to move on." And to me, that's an even better comparison to
0:34:58this because it's quite literally embracing your competitor and that's what Nadel did.
0:35:03you're right. He was fortunate enough that the product had already been built. So all he had to
0:35:09do was release it. And that was even more powerful than putting someone on screen or something on
0:35:14those lines. But I think the the idea and the impact that has not just on the outside world,
0:35:21but on your own employees and your own company. And it's like, "Shit, Steve Jobs on stage with
0:35:27Bill Gates. And now it's like, "Oh, Satya Nadella's first act, our new CO's first act is to
0:35:33is to walk around with an iPad in his hand." Yeah, that's a good one, too. I mean, it was,
0:35:37you know, they're all of the same mentality, though. Let's, let's, let's, you know, let's,
0:35:42let's show how different we are. And you're right, you know, it, I would say the Think Different
0:35:46campaign was the one that was first out the door, but less important. More important was that Mac
0:35:50World New York keynote where they buried the hatchet. I think very close to an accurate
0:35:58quote without googling it is, "We have to let go." This is Steve Jobs. "We have to let go of the
0:36:05idea that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. You have to let go." And it did not go over well.
0:36:11well, there were like, I don't think he got, I think there was
0:36:13booze. There were some booze and it was just like, whatever the
0:36:21sound, the collective sound of an audience going, what the
0:36:26fuck? That's the noise that was in the audience. It, you know,
0:36:31there were some scattered booze. Because there are a lot of Apple
0:36:35fans at the time who really did see this as a holy war. And
0:36:41Jobs was exactly right. You know, and like I often say about
0:36:44Apple, you know, they're more often than not, when they tell
0:36:48you something they mean, they mean exactly what they say. And
0:36:51what he said, it wasn't like subterfuge. It wasn't Yeah, I'm
0:36:54just gonna say that we're burying the hatchet with
0:36:57Microsoft, but I've got a secret plan where we're gonna kill him.
0:36:59No, he met it. He meant every single word that he said. Yep.
0:37:03And look, absolutely, you know, look at the years, you know,
0:37:05look at the success that they had by letting go of that
0:37:08notion.
0:37:09And what he said, actually, I wrote about this a while ago. So I actually was able to
0:37:13find the speech. And you said it almost perfectly. We have to let go of the notion that for Apple
0:37:16to win, my chef has to lose. And then his next line, I think, is just as good, which
0:37:20he says, we have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really
0:37:25good job. And like, there's something very refreshing about that. Because the fact of
0:37:32matter is, most of Apple's products then were kind of crappy. And certainly the operating
0:37:37system was a total mess. We've talked about this before. It's liberating in a way. It's
0:37:44like, you know what? We just need to do what we're good at and we will succeed. I think
0:37:49it was the same thing with Microsoft. They were fighting this losing battle to try to
0:37:53prop Windows up. What they needed to do was take their assets that were still valuable,
0:38:00that were still effective, and the new assets that were brought online in terms of Azure
0:38:04not, and let them win by being good. Don't let them win by being tied to Windows. Let
0:38:10them win on their own merits, and that's exactly what they've done.
0:38:15I'm not particularly interested in Microsoft's latest products because I'm not going to
0:38:19use Windows, but I'm glad they're there. But I get confused by the names. The one that
0:38:22I like is I like the one called the Surface Laptop because I know which one it is. It's
0:38:27the laptop. They also have the Surface Pro X, I guess. So this is confusing.
0:38:35So I will explain it. The Surface Pro is a regular x86 PC. The Surface Pro X is an ARM
0:38:44PC, is ARM-based. So, but yeah, it is a little confusing. It looks like great hardware. I
0:38:52mean, it's basically an iPad.
0:38:53Yeah. Or an iPad Pro. I would say it's iPad Pro class because it starts at $1,000.
0:38:57dollars. Yep. And it's got the keyboard attachment as the cool like the stylus goes into the keyboard,
0:39:03which is really nifty. So you don't have like a separate thing floating around. But yeah,
0:39:10and then they had the earbuds, you know, as I put them Twitter, are you a tech company if you don't
0:39:18sell earbuds? And then obviously the dual screen devices, they're not gonna watch for a while.
0:39:24The earbuds was the—I was on my way to a meeting at the time, and so the earbuds—which
0:39:30is a very strange thing for me to say. I don't really have a lot of meetings, but I was on my way
0:39:35to a meeting in New York, and I was watching the Microsoft event on my phone with my AirPods
0:39:44as I was getting ready to go to the subway, and I knew I'd lose the stream on the subway.
0:39:50and the earbuds was the last segment I saw. I just had to laugh because their pitch for the
0:39:55earbuds was entirely based on integration with Office. I know. It was pretty funny.
0:40:01Which I laugh, but maybe they know their audience. You know, like, but it was like, how did...
0:40:08You know what, though? I'll tell you why I didn't mind. I mean, it was a little... I mean,
0:40:13it was kind of silly. Like, who buys earbuds because they work with your favorite
0:40:17Office productivity suite. And favorite probably deserves some air quotes around that. But
0:40:22you know what it was? It was, that's a Microsoft with his head screwed on straight.
0:40:28You know what I mean? Like, yeah, at the end of the day, in a vacuum, it's ridiculous that
0:40:32you're going to try to sell AirPods because they work with Office. But if you zoom out,
0:40:36like that's emblematic of a Microsoft that knows where their bread is buttered.
0:40:39What matters is actually Office and Azure. And that's the cool part of the
0:40:46EarPods, whatever they're called, is that they do integrate with Azure and they do this live
0:40:49captioning and live translation and stuff like that. Basically, what Google promised with their
0:40:54Google buds last year, but it didn't really work very well. It certainly appeared to work much
0:40:58better with what Microsoft demonstrated. We'll see once it has come out. And so it's a product
0:41:04that ties in with Office and ties in with Azure. And maybe that's kind of silly for the product in
0:41:09a vacuum. But for what that says about Microsoft, at least their head's in the right place.
0:41:14I thought it was interesting too. I enjoyed watching the event and I thought that
0:41:18I feel like Microsoft has this down and I feel like they do their events like this the right way
0:41:24for them. I mean they're clearly smaller and lower key than Apple's. You know they're not in a big
0:41:29uh a huge room. It is it they are definitely press events like the one thing like neil and i were
0:41:36quite small yeah is that apple the one thing like that not to go too far digress but like the
0:41:42the Charlie Worzel column in the New York Times,
0:41:45goofily arguing that Apple should stop doing events.
0:41:49One of the misguided premises of that was that
0:41:51Apple's events are press events, that they're media events.
0:41:54They are not, they are Apple events,
0:41:57and they happen to invite a small number of media
0:42:00to observe them.
0:42:01Whereas Microsoft's thing this week was a press event.
0:42:05That was for the press,
0:42:07and most of the people there were press.
0:42:09But anyway, one of the things that I saw,
0:42:11that struck me was how different their demos are than Apple's demos.
0:42:15Apple's demos are very short, very flashy, very visual, and everything is set up.
0:42:21And it's like if they want to show you the new side-by-side stuff in the iPad, it's like,
0:42:27here's this pretty web page with beautiful pictures, and here's a note
0:42:33that already has a couple of nice pictures.
0:42:35And here's a -- we're going to drag this beautiful picture from the left
0:42:38to the right and let it go.
0:42:39and look at that, you can drag a picture
0:42:41and then it's onto the next thing, right?
0:42:43Like the demo's over, all they showed you
0:42:45was a beautiful photo being dragged
0:42:47from an app on the left to an app on the right.
0:42:49Whereas the Microsoft demos, it's like,
0:42:51you get to spend like four minutes
0:42:53watching somebody work in Excel.
0:42:55(laughing)
0:42:57- That was actually where the low key coolest demos
0:43:01was when they were writing in Excel
0:43:03and then it was changing it into actual text
0:43:05as they were doing it.
0:43:07But yeah, but it's like you are literally watching someone
0:43:10literally write to yourself.
0:43:12- It is exactly like if you work in a lowercase O office
0:43:16environment and you pop into somebody's cubicle
0:43:19and you're just like, "Hey, what are you doing?"
0:43:21You're just watching them over their shoulder
0:43:22for a couple of minutes while they put together
0:43:25a spreadsheet or a presentation.
0:43:27And again, I laugh.
0:43:28I laugh only because it's different.
0:43:30I'm not saying that that's wrong.
0:43:31I think that they know their audience
0:43:32and it's probably the appropriate type of demo
0:43:36for the audience and for the message they have.
0:43:38But it is kind of comical because it really,
0:43:40it couldn't be more different than Apple's.
0:43:42And Apple's is, if anything, gone further over the years
0:43:46into, not that it's unrealistic, but that it is really more,
0:43:50it's almost edited, you know?
0:43:52It's like they have the whole thing queued up ready to go.
0:43:55And even watching them do it live on stage
0:43:59isn't that different than what you would see
0:44:01if they cut it into a 30-second commercial
0:44:02to show you how it works.
0:44:04- Yep.
0:44:05So, the ear—I think they're just called earbuds? Surface earbuds? I don't know.
0:44:11Yeah, surface earbuds.
0:44:14And before I cracked wise about them, I wanted to make sure—check my bias. I showed them
0:44:22to my wife, and I said, "Hey, do these look goofy?" And she goes, "They look like
0:44:27an Apple Watch charger or those spacers that people put in their earlobes."
0:44:32Yes, that's what I thought of. The spacers and the earlobes is exactly what I thought
0:44:36of.
0:44:37So I didn't want to make—I thought of that too, and I didn't want to make fun
0:44:40of that. I felt like, you know, that paints me, you know, if you want to have spacers
0:44:45and earlobes, you have spacers and earlobes. So I didn't want to make fun of that. So
0:44:49I thought that the Apple Watch charger joke was the way to go, so I used it. And then
0:44:53like later in the day—it's nice to know, see, she thought she was getting a dig in
0:44:57on me. She says, "Ha, I see I'm writing for Daring Fireball now," because I used
0:45:03her joke, but secretly pleased me because she often claims not to read my website.
0:45:07And I know that she does.
0:45:09John: There you go. Are we going to talk about charcoal at some point in this podcast? That's
0:45:14the real question.
0:45:15[laughter]
0:45:16Dave: Well, we might as well. Yeah, we could talk about charcoal.
0:45:20[laughter]
0:45:21(laughing)
0:45:22- All right, let me just say that for the end.
0:45:24We still gotta talk about the dual screen devices.
0:45:27But we could save the charcoal for the end.
0:45:29- All right, let me make a note
0:45:31that we'll get back to charcoal.
0:45:33Do you need any charcoal?
0:45:34- Do I have a choice in the matter?
0:45:38- No, it's on its way, actually.
0:45:40Let me take a break though,
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0:48:01So the other thing, the thing that stole the show at Microsoft's event, they closed the
0:48:06show with two products. They had two more things, the Surface Duo and the Surface Neo.
0:48:15Which, again, I've already forgotten which one's which.
0:48:19I know, I was just thinking the same thing.
0:48:21I think the Neo is the tablet/courier one, the Duo is the phone, but I'm not certain.
0:48:27Oh no, I think it's the other way around.
0:48:29Son of a bitch.
0:48:31God damn it.
0:48:33Yep, no, I'm right.
0:48:35Duo is the phone.
0:48:37Duo is the Android and Neo is the Windows device.
0:48:39See, I was thinking Neo is an N and Android has an N, but that's wrong. Oh, man. All right.
0:48:46So, Duo is the phone. I don't know how I'm going to remember this. But anyway, it's a
0:48:55phone. I thought Lauren Goode, she had wired, she had a preview. She got to, I guess, talk
0:49:01to them a week before or a couple of days before the event and had a feature story and
0:49:07an interview with, what's his name? Panaya.
0:49:12- Both, I'm not sure either.
0:49:16Panos Panay and Satya Nadella, both of them.
0:49:21- Right, and Panos Panay is sort of the,
0:49:24he's the Surface guy.
0:49:25It's like Surface, the whole Surface division
0:49:27is sort of his baby at Microsoft.
0:49:30And she had a great story, and she's like,
0:49:34whatever you do, don't call it a phone,
0:49:35even though it's a thing that runs Android and can fit in your pocket and can make phone
0:49:40calls but don't call on a phone.
0:49:42There's a remarkable quote in here, just so we can get to the devices in a moment,
0:49:46but just going back to what we were talking about before where she asked Adela if they
0:49:51would ever bring back Windows Mobile and they both said no. And he says, "The operating
0:49:56system is no longer the most important layer for us. What is most important for us is the
0:50:00app model and the experience, how people are going to write apps, blah, blah, blah."
0:50:03And just to hear, I mean, that's clearly the case, but it's still remarkable to have
0:50:09a Microsoft CEO state, baldly, that the operating system is not important to us.
0:50:15Right.
0:50:16Well, and you know what, and it goes hand in hand with the fact that they're switching
0:50:19their browser to using the Chromium engine, you know, I think it's called Blink.
0:50:27It's like what WebKit is to Safari, Blink is to Chrome.
0:50:31that's what Microsoft is now using for their browser, which, again, go back to like 1998
0:50:37and tell somebody that and, you know, especially somebody like me who was doing web development at
0:50:41the time. And it's like, it's like, you know, what are you gonna tell me next? Donald Trump is the
0:50:47President of the United States? I mean, oh, man. I mean, it's crazy. That's it. That's the way they
0:50:52what kind of world are you guys living in in 2019? You know, but there we are. But you're right. You
0:50:58You know, they're making a phone, but it's not a phone.
0:51:01It folds.
0:51:03- It's definitely a phone.
0:51:04It's not coming out for a year.
0:51:05- I wanted to see pictures of the damn thing
0:51:07next to other phones, just to get a better idea
0:51:11of how big it is.
0:51:12It's clearly big for a phone, even when folded up,
0:51:15but some people really like these much bigger,
0:51:19much bigger than even the max iPhone phones.
0:51:21Some people like them.
0:51:23It certainly is interesting.
0:51:25It folds, but it's not a folding screen.
0:51:27is two screens with a seam in between. And then they've got two of them. They've got
0:51:31the phone size one and then the other one, I guess that's the Neo. So I guess the way
0:51:35I'll remember it is it goes alphabetical order by size, Duo then Neo. All right.
0:51:40Oh, there you go. All right. And then Pro. Then laptop kind of screws it up. Yeah. I
0:51:47mean, it's interesting because in some respects, if you want to go with the whole, like, this
0:51:52is all symbolism and none of it really matters. Then like, you know, I think as you know,
0:51:57Microsoft launching a phone that runs Android is like the tombstone on the Windows grave.
0:52:04I mean, it doesn't get any more sort of extreme than that. That noted, I don't know,
0:52:08I kind of wish, like I thought the Neo was a great sort of one more thing. Microsoft,
0:52:14there's this, there's this product called the Courier, this sort of legendary product
0:52:20that was that was never released. And everyone's like, Oh, it's so
0:52:23amazing that that was this two screen product. And and you
0:52:26bring this on, it's like, Oh, I remember they were gonna do that
0:52:29one time. And it's like, it's something new and interesting
0:52:31and innovative. And you can even get the I can understand where
0:52:34you're saying this, you know, announcing this a year early,
0:52:36because you want to rewrite, we want developers to write
0:52:39programs for two screens and stuff on those lines. And I
0:52:43thought that was fine. Like the phone, it's like, I guess I
0:52:47guess I get it. I don't know, I guess I feel like the Neo was
0:52:51fine. The duo's like, okay, that's the way if we're, this is
0:52:56all about symbolism, then by all means, launch, you know,
0:52:59announce it all you want. I'm a little unsure about what they're
0:53:03trying to accomplish there. But hey, they announced they
0:53:06announced an Android phone. So there you go.
0:53:08That's not coming out until the end of 2020 by there. It's
0:53:12Right. It's, I don't know. And then I went to put these show
0:53:17notes together. And and for, you know, for the me and you talking
0:53:21here, and it was actually hard to find links to the other
0:53:24products, because all of the stuff, like, yeah, everyone
0:53:28talks about that. Everything like on the entire front page of
0:53:31the verge is is about the duo in the Neo. Do you have to go to
0:53:35like page two to find the stuff that you know, is actually
0:53:38shipping?
0:53:39Yeah, yeah. And like, I don't know, like the way I mean, again, if you do just the Neo, it's like,
0:53:46okay, yeah, Windows, hardcore Windows developers, I could see them spending time in the next year
0:53:50is to be the hot device in Windows world. And you know, they'll adapt their applications. I mean,
0:53:56but the duo what Android developers going to put in special support for the duo? Like,
0:54:01what are we accomplishing by announcing a year early? No one's gonna go out of their way to
0:54:04support it. I mean, I don't know. Like I said, I can buy the Neo and announcing it a year ahead of
0:54:10time because you want developer support, but that doesn't actually make sense for the duo. It kind
0:54:15of felt like they just, they, they, they're making it an Android product and they wanted to announce
0:54:20it and say, huh, look at this. And, um, yeah, I, I didn't quite get it, but whatever. Like I said,
0:54:26it doesn't really matter. So. All right. Well, so we got here, uh, I guess that's enough Microsoft
0:54:34Let's talk iPhone.
0:54:36So what'd you get?
0:54:37You got the iPhone 11 Pro.
0:54:40- iPhone 11 Pro, I think it's the perfect size.
0:54:42With the old version, when they had the WIPs,
0:54:46I thought it was too small,
0:54:47and so I did do a couple years of the large ones,
0:54:51which I didn't like, it was a little big,
0:54:52but I just found the screen too small on the other ones.
0:54:54Once the X came out and it went edge to edge,
0:54:57it got the screen size that I wanted, fit in the hand,
0:55:00so I'm very happy with the size.
0:55:03So no need to change and I'm very pleased with it.
0:55:08- And you got the yellow leather cover?
0:55:10- I have the yellow leather cover with the green case.
0:55:13It really is very, very Greenbit Packers like.
0:55:15I think the yellow looks great when it's just sitting
0:55:18on the table with the screen up,
0:55:21it's this yellow edge around it.
0:55:23Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with it.
0:55:25- And how's your battery life?
0:55:27- I did get the clear case originally.
0:55:29I ordered it with a clear case.
0:55:30So like, oh, finally they actually have a color
0:55:32for the high-end phone.
0:55:33I always liked the colors. But of course, I'm gonna get the high-end phone because I'm fortunate to
0:55:40do that. But I've always gotten the weather cases previously. And I was not a fan of the clear case.
0:55:50I felt it ended up looking grimy on the back. I didn't like the feel of it. The buttons were
0:55:54terrible. So it lasted about a week. And then I went to the new Apple store here in Taipei. And
0:56:02I actually didn't know there was yellow and
0:56:04And was pleasantly surprised to find this yellow and and I am a happy camper
0:56:10I have a friend who has the clear case. He likes it a lot. I think it's you know
0:56:17Polarizing though it you there like it or you don't it. Yeah, I mean, I'm used to the weather
0:56:23So yeah, so it's probably more just a habit thing than anything. Yeah, I have a real problem with cases is that I
0:56:31I spend probably over the years, in the 11 years of iPhone, I've probably spent close
0:56:38somewhere in the very high 90s, 98% of my daily use without any case at all. I mean,
0:56:45certainly in the early years, we didn't even have cases, right? Nobody put cases on like
0:56:48the iPhone 3G that I know of. Cases didn't really come into a thing until like around
0:56:54the iPhone 4. I guess maybe people did have iPhone 3 cases and that's why Apple made the
0:56:59the bumpers, I guess I'm wrong that people did have iPhone 3 and 3GS, 3G and 3GS cases,
0:57:08because that's when Apple, when the iPhone 4 shipped, they had the bumper. And it turned
0:57:12out, you know, in the whole Andenikate thing where they were like, "Here, we'll just
0:57:15give you the goddamn bumper." But I thought that the reason that they made the bumper
0:57:20with the iPhone 4 was that Apple was, now I recall this, it seemed very clear that Apple
0:57:25was sort of appalled that people were covering up the entire back of the iPhone for the case.
0:57:29So they're like, "Don't do that. We spend a lot of time, especially with the iPhone
0:57:334, we spend a lot of time to make this glass back very pretty. Don't cover it up here.
0:57:38Just put a bumper around the edges if you just want to give it some protection."
0:57:42No, the fact remains, I just popped my case off mine, I mean, these phones in the hand
0:57:46are beautiful, they're great to hold, it's a fantastic experience. The problem is that
0:57:52I went caseless with the iPhone 7 and within about two months, I actually had a large chunk
0:57:58of the front screen missing because it had been dropped multiple times. And you could
0:58:03see into the phone. And ever since then, I have kept the case on for... I would like
0:58:11to not use the case. I just do not trust myself at all.
0:58:14I chipped the front corner of my iPhone XS last year, early. I forget when. It was probably
0:58:21like around December, so maybe like two, three months into owning it. I was getting out of
0:58:26of an Uber after dinner and had like dress slacks on,
0:58:29which is unusual, you know, usually I'm either wearing jeans
0:58:32or jean-like pants that, you know,
0:58:36your phone doesn't fall out of--
0:58:37- And large pockets.
0:58:38- Yeah, your phone doesn't fall out of jean pockets.
0:58:39And most of the slacks that I own are more like jeans
0:58:42or are jeans, but I had dressier slacks on with the,
0:58:46you know, with the pocket where the phone can come right out
0:58:48and just sliding out of the Uber,
0:58:51just boop, right on the street,
0:58:52and it just put a little thing in the corner.
0:58:54and it just barely didn't reach the pixels.
0:58:59So it's just, the chipped part was just,
0:59:02and the iPhone XS has a very small black bezel
0:59:05around the screen, so it was,
0:59:06the entire chipped part was in the black area.
0:59:09So I didn't get it fixed, and it didn't spread at all
0:59:12in the subsequent nine to 10 months
0:59:14that I used it every day.
0:59:16So again, sort of like my MacBook Pro
0:59:19with the adhesion problem, it was just sort of like a scar
0:59:23that I came to like.
0:59:24If it had covered the pixels at all, I would have been at the Apple store in the morning.
0:59:29One pixel had been covered by it, I would have been at the Apple store to pay for a
0:59:32replacement.
0:59:33But—
0:59:34Justin Perdue I actually just got my tennis fixed because—oh,
0:59:36sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
0:59:38Dave Asprey But I did use a case last year afterwards,
0:59:41because I find—I've personally found the glossy glass backs to be slippery.
0:59:48And sometimes they're not, depending on the moisture of your hands, they're tacky.
0:59:53But there are other times when it's like a bar of soap.
0:59:57So I did use a case last year, but my problem is that I'm not satisfied with any of them.
1:00:01So I wound up buying like 10 cases.
1:00:03That I very seldom…
1:00:04I know.
1:00:05That's exactly what happens.
1:00:06I very seldom use any of them.
1:00:08Yeah, no, I was traveling, and I'm in the middle of a conversation, this group chat
1:00:17and WhatsApp or whatever, and suddenly my phone just stops.
1:00:21It's not working.
1:00:22And so I'm trying to restart it and finally I had to do the force quit with the volume
1:00:26buttons and the power button.
1:00:27I turn it back on and I can't get it to function.
1:00:31And like there's a dead part of the screen.
1:00:34Basically what happened was there was this vertical strip on the touchscreen that just
1:00:38stopped working.
1:00:39And it was so perfectly placed that I couldn't accomplish anything on my phone.
1:00:43There was a part of the keyboard that wasn't working.
1:00:45I couldn't slide the thing to turn the phone off because it would hit the dead part of
1:00:49the screen.
1:00:50And it was really quite bizarre. And then the weirdest thing was, I finally sent it
1:00:54in to get it fixed. And I get it back and I have the sheet that says, "Oh, we sent
1:01:00me your phone, we fixed this." And not only did they fix the touchscreen, they put a new
1:01:04camera in the phone. Apparently my camera had gotten broken too. I have no idea. I was
1:01:09actually always very dissatisfied with the XS camera. Maybe it was broken all along and
1:01:13I had no idea. But now I have basically a brand new XS and my 11. But it's funny,
1:01:21I should sell it because it's now in beautiful, pristine condition. But it turns out traveling
1:01:29and having your phone die is devastating. I mean, it's like, so I'm actually going
1:01:35to keep this. I'm not going to sell it. And I'm going to keep it charged up and
1:01:39I'm going to put in my bag when I travel. It's the same thing. It's like, with this
1:01:44stuff's your wife and it's like, yeah, I do buy new phones because I get paid. I
1:01:50need to be online all the time. I need to be reading stuff. I need to be knowing what's
1:01:53going on. And I destroy my batteries because I'm using my phone all the time. But that
1:01:58means I need backups. And you have to think about this all the time. Actually, you mentioned
1:02:02about applications. I could switch to Windows because one of the things I did a few years
1:02:07ago was I made it, I will not use any application in my day to day work that does not have a
1:02:13web service component to it. Because my feeling is if my computer dies tomorrow, I need to
1:02:18be able to walk, get any computer in the world, Windows or Mac, and be up and running and
1:02:23get my work done. And so like I won't use, and it's actually it's a very interesting
1:02:29way to think about some of your computing things. Probably the application I was the
1:02:33saddest to give up was OmniFocus, or not OmniFocus, OmniOutliner. Brilliant Outliner. I use Workflowy
1:02:40instead which is not nearly as fully featured as good, but it has a web component. It's
1:02:47a solid line for me. I have to be able to have access to my stuff no matter what.
1:02:51Pete: Who knows? Maybe there will be an online component to OmniOutliner because they actually
1:02:56did it for OmniFocus.
1:02:58Jon: For OmniFocus. They did and I actually switched back to OmniFocus once they did it
1:03:01because I switched away for that reason. And once they added it, I was back because it's
1:03:06-- I mean, I love their products in general, but I've been a long-time user of OmniFocus
1:03:11in particular.
1:03:12Pete: Yeah. Sponsor of the live episode of the talk show this year at WWDC and I loved
1:03:16-- I love my blurb about it where we're all bitching about companies that only make
1:03:21web apps and shovel them into a Mac wrapper and call it a Mac app and Omni did it.
1:03:27Justin: They shoveled a Mac app into a web wrapper.
1:03:30which is just so totally Omni. I love it. So maybe OmniOutliner is next. I have friends
1:03:37there but I don't know any such thing, so maybe not. Maybe OmniFocus as a—the nature
1:03:43of OmniFocus sort of suits it to being web appified in a way that the other productivity
1:03:49apps don't. But anyway.
1:03:50Justin: Yeah, that's right. Because I mean, with OmniOutliner, you could say stuff to
1:03:54a shared folder or whatever, which is fine. It's more a matter of—actually, because
1:03:58I used to work at Microsoft and when I was at my, I remembered a very formative moment was I needed
1:04:04a particular document that I knew I had made. And so I go into my Dropbox and I'm like, "Where's
1:04:09this document?" And the document was in pages format. And the problem was I was on a Windows
1:04:13computer. There was no pages online at that point. And so I remember I had to literally go into my
1:04:19car, drive home, get my Mac, open up this document, and then come back. And I'm like, "Never again.
1:04:25I'm never going to be stuck in a situation again where I can't access something I need.
1:04:30Well, good for you, Ben.
1:04:32But I'm very extreme. No need to copy me.
1:04:40Well, what the hell were we talking about? Oh, the iPhone.
1:04:42The iPhone 11. The camera is, like, you can't say enough about it. It's consistently fun
1:04:51to use. I was taking pictures of—I ran over to a friend's house before, I was taking my dog with me,
1:04:57and she knows that we're going to this particular house because they have a yard,
1:05:01which is relatively rare in Taiwan. They have a couple dogs. And so she sees the neighborhood
1:05:05and she's getting super excited. And I've taken pictures of her and it's relatively dark and you
1:05:10get these really cool pictures of her with her paws out the window, all pumped up. And it's just
1:05:17a whole new world that was not accessible as far as having my phone with me before. And I find that
1:05:25coming up all the time, and just all the—like, the Deep Fusion thing or whatever hasn't even launched
1:05:30yet. But it's really remarkable. Like, just, it's very tangible in the way it makes me feel about
1:05:37the phone and enjoy having the phone. Like, it's so noticeable.
1:05:41Yeah, and it's just it's rather startling just as somebody who's been a
1:05:45photo enthusiast. Now, I'm certainly not professional caliber in any way,
1:05:51but I've been a photo enthusiast for 20 years and it's just remarkable sometimes the images
1:05:59you get out of it in the dark with the night mode. It's and you know that even when you're not using
1:06:05night mode. It's just a great camera. And I noticed with the XS, and this is clearly
1:06:13a better camera, but I was on a family vacation. We went on a cruise with my family and my
1:06:17sister and her family in August. And I took my Fuji X100S and took a bunch of photos with
1:06:26it, but also took a bunch of photos with my phone. And then I was like looking at them
1:06:31in photos after the trip. And I was like, "Oh, this one I had to shoot with the Fuji." And I'd
1:06:36like do the Command-I on the Mac. You can get the Command-I to see the metadata about the phone.
1:06:43I was like, "Nope, that was the iPhone." There were a couple of shots with the Fuji where I was
1:06:49like, "I'm 100% sure that was the real 'real camera.'" And it was. So I'm not saying that
1:06:54they're indistinguishable, but there were some where I was like, "What the hell camera did I
1:06:59I use for this and I was totally blown away that it was the iPhone. Like you really can
1:07:03take camera, camera quality photos with it. And in the dark, it's better. It is actually
1:07:09a better camera in low lighting in like a dark restaurant or something like that than
1:07:15a $5,000 SLR. It really is. It's unbelievable.
1:07:20Yeah, I mean, it's fun. It's a feature that is enjoyable and fun to use. And at this stage
1:07:30of the smartphone evolution, it's nice. The XS was--the biggest thing for me with the
1:07:39XS relative to the X--and I know this because I was using the X when my XS was broken--is
1:07:43the face IDs was just so massively better. I mean, face ID on the X, go back--I mean,
1:07:49again, we're the most... we are the people that Brian Chen in the New York Times hates
1:07:54because we buy a new phone every year. But going back to the 10, the face ID was miserable.
1:08:01It was painful to use. But the rest of it was like, "Eh, yeah, there's really not much
1:08:08difference here from using it." But the 11, I don't know, both the 10 and the 10S camera,
1:08:15I was actually not a big fan of either of them. I just felt they looked very phone camera-ish
1:08:21in a lot of situations, particularly with any harsh light in them. And the 11 is just
1:08:25like taking photos for fun in a way that I haven't done in a long time.
1:08:33My son still has an iPhone X and we were out to eat last week and I just shot a little
1:08:39bit of video using his two-year-old iPhone X and my new phone. And the video difference
1:08:44is, it's under-heralded how good the video is on these phones. And I was talking with
1:08:50Joanna Stern on the last episode of this show about my family looking back at some like
1:08:5714, 15-year-old video of my son when he was a baby, which I had to shot on a mini-DV camera,
1:09:05which was, I thought was tiny at the time. I loved it.
1:09:08- Yeah, well my daughter, I think I had the Flip camera.
1:09:11- Yeah, we talked about that.
1:09:12Yeah, Joanna and I talked about that too.
1:09:14We have a lot of footage of Jonas
1:09:16from about three or four years later in the Flip era.
1:09:19It's just, it's not heartbreaking quite,
1:09:21'cause it's great that we have the video.
1:09:23And when I was a kid, me and Amy,
1:09:25and it's probably true for you too.
1:09:27Is there any video of you from when you were a kid?
1:09:30- No, not at all.
1:09:31I mean, yeah, my parents never,
1:09:33I don't know if they even owned a video camera ever.
1:09:35- No, I mean, video cameras weren't even a thing
1:09:37until the 80s and my parents never bought one.
1:09:39And in the 70s when I was a baby,
1:09:42you had to shoot Super 8 film.
1:09:45So there is some footage of me.
1:09:47I have it in a closet.
1:09:48I actually should pay the price
1:09:50and send it somewhere to get it digitized.
1:09:52I do have some reels of Super 8 film
1:09:55that my uncle, my mom's brother shot of me and my sister.
1:09:58There's like a combined,
1:10:00and like Super 8 was fun.
1:10:02And when I was in college,
1:10:03I made short films shooting Super 8.
1:10:05And it was kind of fun because it looked so much better
1:10:08than video in a weird way, 'cause it was,
1:10:10Super 8 is film, and so you, you know,
1:10:13but it was really hard to shoot and it didn't have sound.
1:10:16(laughs)
1:10:18And because it was so expensive shooting film,
1:10:20even Super 8, 8 mil, you know, it's called Super 8
1:10:23'cause it's eight millimeter,
1:10:23this tiny little frame of film.
1:10:25It was very expensive to get developed
1:10:27compared to, compared to photos.
1:10:30And so most consumer Super 8 cameras
1:10:33would shoot 18 frames per second instead of 24.
1:10:37Just so you could save-- - It's like stop motion.
1:10:39- Yeah, so you could save money.
1:10:40So you kind of get like that Charlie Chaplin
1:10:43silent film effect,
1:10:43even though you might've been shooting color.
1:10:46But anyway, there was no video.
1:10:47So it's great that we have hours of video of Jonas
1:10:49when he was a baby,
1:10:50but the footage, the quality is just horrendous.
1:10:54It's just absolutely appalling.
1:10:56But it's just unbelievable to me that just two years,
1:10:59iPhone X, which was a thousand dollar cell phone,
1:11:03Two years ago, the video quality in low light
1:11:06with shooting video compared to the iPhone 11
1:11:09is just astounding.
1:11:10It's just hard to believe it's two years.
1:11:12Looking back, my point is looking back
1:11:14at 15-year-old mini DV footage, well, 15 years, of course.
1:11:18Of course the difference is striking and it's stunning.
1:11:20It's cool that you can get this not just
1:11:23with a dedicated video camera now, but with your phone.
1:11:26Your phone shoots it, but 15 years is 15 years.
1:11:28But two years, it's insane.
1:11:30It's absolutely insane.
1:11:33how much better the video is on the iPhone 11.
1:11:35I guess the other thing I should touch on
1:11:40in the director's commentary,
1:11:42what have I written about this week
1:11:43during Fireball aspect of the podcast is the,
1:11:45something has not sat right with me all month long
1:11:51regarding night mode
1:11:56and which cameras on the Pro it applies to.
1:12:03I was left talking with Apple off the record with you know, when you get these review units, you know
1:12:09You talk to Apple throughout the week that you're reviewing them and you get phone calls and you can't quote them
1:12:15They're off the record
1:12:15but they answer all your questions and they're usually very forthcoming and very very accurate and
1:12:20While from a marketing standpoint, I totally get that they want to keep it very simple
1:12:25And they don't get into technical details
1:12:28but like with people like me and Matthew Panzareno and Neelai Patel who like to write about
1:12:35the camera stuff and explain how it works as best we can, they're remarkably forthcoming. But with
1:12:43the night mode stuff, when I'd ask questions about like, okay, so it doesn't work with the super wide
1:12:50angle, the ultra wide 0.5x lens, and I know the night mode doesn't work. It's, you know,
1:12:56The sensor doesn't have any focus pixels, so can't do it.
1:13:00When I talk, and you know, obviously works with the standard 1x lens.
1:13:06And I asked questions. I was under the impression that on the iPhone Pro that when you go into 2x,
1:13:12you can get night mode because there's a 2x button and it looks like it.
1:13:16And I asked questions about it and about like, well, why does it work with these lenses?
1:13:22with these lenses and the answers were weird.
1:13:24I don't think I was lied to at all
1:13:27and I've, you know, Neelay and I have chatting about this,
1:13:30you know, behind the scenes.
1:13:33But the answers just were,
1:13:35the best word I can come up with is obfuscutory.
1:13:38They just weren't, it was just weird word.
1:13:40It's just, it just was, I was like, all right.
1:13:43And then it turns out that it doesn't use the 2X lens
1:13:47in night mode.
1:13:48When night mode kicks in and you're at the 2x zoom level, it uses the 1x camera to take
1:13:55a night mode shot and then crops to a 2x zoom and just does a digital zoom to go up.
1:14:04That happened in low light with iPhone dual camera systems all the way back to—I forget,
1:14:10what was the first one?
1:14:12Some of the—like the iPhone 6s Plus.
1:14:14When did they first add the second camera?
1:14:15I forget even.
1:14:16- I think it was the iPhone 7.
1:14:19- Yeah, maybe iPhone 7.
1:14:20Yeah, that makes sense.
1:14:21So like the iPhone 7 Plus had two cameras
1:14:23and the regular smaller iPhone 7 only had one.
1:14:27And the dual camera was what they call telephoto.
1:14:31It's 2X zoom.
1:14:32And in low light, even then--
1:14:34- Oh yeah, that's right.
1:14:35'Cause I think that's one of the first time
1:14:36I got the larger phone one.
1:14:37- Right, 'cause you wanted the best.
1:14:38Right, you wanted the best. - That's right, yeah.
1:14:41- Even if you didn't like the size, a lot of people.
1:14:43I didn't do that, but I'll let you,
1:14:45it was a tough decision.
1:14:46But anyway, even back then, all throughout that in low light, the iPhone would make a
1:14:52decision that, and it's, you know, again, there's nothing scandalous about it.
1:14:56They were doing this because they, it was to get the best image that in low light, because
1:15:00the sensor for the telephoto lens is less sensitive, you know, it's not as good as the
1:15:06one X sensor, and especially in low light, they would, they concluded that in certain
1:15:11lighting situations, it would be better to just use the one X camera and digital zoom
1:15:16as opposed to the true optical 2x camera.
1:15:20Turns out it still works like that in night mode.
1:15:23And again, there's nothing scandalous about it.
1:15:26They're doing what gets the better image
1:15:28and everybody loves night mode,
1:15:30including when you're zoomed in.
1:15:31Like people are taking 2x shots with night mode
1:15:36and loving the images they're getting.
1:15:39So it's not scandalous that they're using
1:15:42the 1x camera to get them.
1:15:44They're doing what gets the best shot.
1:15:47But there was all sorts of confusion about night mode.
1:15:50Did it require 100% focus pixels?
1:15:54And the Panzorino was told something like that.
1:15:58And then we concluded, okay, so the 1x and 2x cameras have 100% focus pixels, but that's
1:16:03not true.
1:16:04And there's like a, you know, Phil Schiller had a slide when he was on stage that the
1:16:10One X camera sensor does have 100% focus pixels on the sensor, but the 2X camera just has
1:16:16quote "focus pixels," so has some focus pixels. The 0.5X ultra-wide has no focus
1:16:23pixels. So in a sense, putting it all together, what Apple told us behind the scenes was kind
1:16:30of true, that apparently night mode does require 100% focus pixels because it only works.
1:16:36means they're only using one camera.
1:16:38Right. But then the thing that still confused me was, "Well, why didn't they make this
1:16:46clear to us?" And then I figured it out. Like a day after writing, it was like I was
1:16:50chatting with Nilay, and I literally had like a light bulb moment. Like the closest you
1:16:56could get to an actual light bulb popping over my head and turning on was, "Oh, I
1:17:02get it, it's uncomfortable for them to talk about because it means the regular iPhone 11 takes the
1:17:09exact same 2x zoom level night mode shots as the $400 more iPhone 11 Pro. That's the rub, and that's
1:17:20what makes it the whole thing a little uncomfortable for them to talk about. And there's no 2x button
1:17:26on the iPhone 11. To get to 2x zoom, you have to pinch or use the little scroll wheel that they
1:17:34added in the camera app. But when you get to 2x zoom and night mode kicks in, the iPhone 11 takes
1:17:41the exact same night mode shots that the iPhone 11 Pro does because neither one is using the
1:17:45telephoto lens because the iPhone 11 doesn't have a telephoto lens and the iPhone 11 Pro
1:17:49doesn't use the telephoto lens for night mode. So anyway, that was like my big light bulb moment
1:17:56of the week. Well, that's interesting. I have to say, I mean, it's only been a few weeks, but
1:18:04I definitely enjoy and use the wide-angle lens more than I feel like I ever use the telephoto
1:18:09lens. It really opens up an entirely sort of new sort of photo, whereas the telephoto lens,
1:18:16it's like it's not telephoto enough to be really particularly useful. It's this weird
1:18:22sort of middle ground. Yeah, and like I was talking to a friend whose kids are really talented
1:18:30young baseball players. I mean, and so their family is always, you know, going to Little League
1:18:36baseball games. They have two sons and baseball games all the time. And he was asking, you know,
1:18:43if they should get the 11 Pro or the 11. His wife needs a new phone. And I said, well, you guys,
1:18:48you know, like for shooting baseball games, the telephoto is better, but it's still not like—you're
1:18:55not going to get a close-up of your kid in the batter's box from the bleachers, you know what
1:18:58I mean? Like, it's not as—you still might—if you really want to get good pictures of something
1:19:04like a sporting event or like your kid on stage in a school performance or something like that,
1:19:09you still want a real camera that has a real zoom lens that's longer focal length than the tele—quote
1:19:16quote unquote telephoto on the iPhone 11. I think you're right. And I think that I
1:19:20think they made the right decision with like the iPhone 11 where, okay, we're going to
1:19:25go to three lenses on the more expensive Pro, but the 11, which is going to be significantly
1:19:30lower price is going to have two lenses. Should it get a telephoto or should it get a wide
1:19:34angle or ultra wide? I think the ultra wide is more useful.
1:19:38Jared Polin Yeah, we haven't talked since the presentation,
1:19:41But to me, this was my big takeaway from the whole thing,
1:19:45is that Apple cut prices.
1:19:47Like they cut, and they cut prices pretty significantly.
1:19:49And it was, it's a bit hidden
1:19:51because the high end is the exact same.
1:19:53- Right.
1:19:54- But the, you know, the bit about the iPhone 11
1:19:58being cheap, cheaper than the 10R was last year.
1:20:03And then also the 10R being reduced in price
1:20:07by much more than phones had been reduced in price
1:20:10or previously. To me, I think it's a pretty big deal. And I
1:20:13think the what I sort of discussed at the time was, you
1:20:17know, that's what a company that actually is focused on services
1:20:23should be doing because you actually do want to have, you
1:20:26know, the way those those sort of businesses work is you're
1:20:29putting in a lot of expense up front, but then you're trying to
1:20:33spread it out over the maximum number of folks, you know, on
1:20:37the back end. That's why you know, Google is fine to have $50 Android phones that that's that many
1:20:42more people that can sort of, they get leverage on their services for and, and this is Apple at least
1:20:48sort of hinting at actually changing their their pricing strategy in a way that favors this sort of
1:20:56services approach where services isn't just something we sort of backed into because of this app
1:21:00store and we can, you know, have this narrative, but our strategy hasn't changed. Here is a hint
1:21:05that the strategy has actually shifted a bit. And the 11, to your point, I mean, it's
1:21:10an incredible phone. I mean, even particularly with by having that wide angle lens, you know,
1:21:16it's even more competitive than the XR was. The XR was already extremely competitive.
1:21:21And I really, Joanna and I talked about this, I really think, and I got a little pushback
1:21:25on it from some people, but I really think that for the most part, people should get
1:21:31the one level up from base storage.
1:21:33So both phones start at 64 gigabyte storage.
1:21:35- Completely agree.
1:21:37That's not enough.
1:21:38- And some people it is, and that's the, I get it.
1:21:41And there are, for those of you who sent me email
1:21:43and tweets saying, hey, I'm only using 38 gigabytes
1:21:47on my phone, so 64 is plenty for me,
1:21:49and I use the cloud storage for everything.
1:21:52So I get it.
1:21:54But that's an informed decision.
1:21:56And the people who listen to this show
1:21:58know that they really can fit their life comfortably in a 64
1:22:02gigabyte base model storage. That's, you know, you know what
1:22:06you're doing. I think for typical people, though,
1:22:08especially if you want to shoot lots of, you know, 4k video and
1:22:12stuff like that. It, you should go up a level but that's where
1:22:16the pricing difference is really stark. And I'll just emphasize
1:22:20it again, because the 11 goes to 128. And it's only 50 bucks
1:22:24more. So for 50 bucks, you can double your storage from 64 to
1:22:28128. And it's it's, it's nothing like the old days where we
1:22:32complained so vociferously about the 16 gigabyte base model
1:22:37storage. It was unbelievable, right? And it kept going on year
1:22:41after year after year, right. And you have to remember that
1:22:44it that that 16 gigabyte needed to include the system software.
1:22:48So however many gigabytes iOS and the apps that you include,
1:22:53And Apple likes to give you, you know, every time you upgrade, they stick you with GarageBand
1:22:57again, which is a great app.
1:22:59It's a fantastic app.
1:23:00But I have no musical inclination at all.
1:23:03And GarageBand is like a 380 megabyte app.
1:23:07And I guess that they load some of that stuff on demand, so it's not really taking up the
1:23:10space.
1:23:11But anyway, the 16 gigabyte phones included the OS.
1:23:15The 64 gigabytes do too.
1:23:16And it's not, you know, you get most of that 64, I guess, to use.
1:23:20when you go from 64 to 128, the entire extra 64 you get to use. That's not used by the phone.
1:23:26But the iPhone 11 Pro is just like the previous high-end, the X and the XS, at that $1,000 plus
1:23:37price tier, you have to go all the way to 256 from the base model, and it costs $150 to go
1:23:43from the base model to that. So to me, it, there's a $300 difference at the 64 gigabyte base model
1:23:51tier, but there's a $400 difference between the 11 and the 11 Pro if you just go from the usable
1:23:58tier. Yeah. And again, it's not apples to apples because the 11 is 128 and the Pro is 256. But that
1:24:04128 is so, so much good enough for most typical people. So to me, it's a $400 difference. And I
1:24:12I think that's significant. I do question, I question how much of it that this lowering
1:24:18the prices, I think you're exactly right, that the 11 is $50 less than the comparable
1:24:2410 our models were last year and the 10 are and I think this is really I think it's
1:24:28a huge deal. And really does justify calling the overall lineup as being lower price is
1:24:35that the 10 are really dropped in price. I forget what it's cost but $150 Yeah, I've
1:24:40And it used to only drop 100.
1:24:44Not just that, but the iPhone 8 dropped 152.
1:24:46So the iPhone 8 went from $599 to $449.
1:24:51So, yeah, so basically everything other than the top-end model went down by price by at
1:25:01least $50 more than it did previously.
1:25:05I just wonder, I don't question it, but I wonder how much of it is strategic and how
1:25:09much of it is just that they didn't really want the XR to cost as much as it did last
1:25:17year, but that's what it cost if they were going to maintain their margins.
1:25:21There might be something to it, particularly for memory pricing. Because I remember when
1:25:25the iPhone 8 jumped up to $699, that was at a time when DRAM pricing was through the roof.
1:25:32And so actually Apple's margin on that phone wasn't that much greater because a huge
1:25:37part of that increase was eaten up by memory pricing. And right now, DRM prices are very
1:25:45low. So you may be right. It may be that the memory, this is driven more by the cost of
1:25:52their components. And that's one of the biggest costs in the phone and it's one
1:25:57that changes the most. I mean, memory is notorious for it goes to these peaks and valleys. And
1:26:02been doing that for 50 years, gonna be doing it for the next 50 years. So that might be part of it.
1:26:09But at the same time, once they raised the price, they could have kept it that way. Exactly. And
1:26:16just taken the extra margin. And they didn't. They brought it back down. And to me, that's a good
1:26:21sign. There's always been the vague sort of concern that does Apple care a little too much
1:26:31about their margins and not enough about sort of the the ecosystem viability and it turned out with
1:26:36the iPhone that the the market was so large that there was enough room for two there you know both
1:26:41iOS and Android and particularly with iOS you know customers willingness to buy and whatnot
1:26:46but but when it comes to services and stuff that you invest in and you need to sort of spread out
1:26:53those costs and the maximum number of people this isn't really an ecosystem question iOS is a viable
1:26:57ecosystem without question, but at this point, from Apple's perspective, every single extra
1:27:04iPhone that's out in the market just makes the rest of their company's business that
1:27:08much—the profit, you make it up in volume, in a very real sense.
1:27:16Yeah, and I do think that the—DRAM is certainly part of it. I think that the Face ID versus
1:27:22Touch ID is a little bit more expensive and I know that the XR and now the 11 don't have
1:27:28the super fancy and clearly expensive OLED display.
1:27:33Oh yeah, that's crazy expensive.
1:27:34But I do think it has to be more expensive to make the 11's LCD with the round corners
1:27:44that goes close.
1:27:45Again, the bezels are slightly larger than on the Pro models, but compared to the old
1:27:51forehead and chin iPhones, it's more expensive. So the display, even though it's only quote
1:27:56unquote only an LCD, I think it's a wonderful display. It's still it's got to be a little
1:28:00bit more expensive. I think face ID is clearly a little bit more expensive than touch ID.
1:28:04So I think it was a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B where the 10R
1:28:08had to be a little more expensive. But I think you're right that that once they bit the bullet
1:28:12and raise those prices, they could have kept them there. And they clearly chose not to.
1:28:16I think it's great for consumers, I really do.
1:28:20It's just, as these 11s settle in,
1:28:24I just think that the value proposition
1:28:27of the regular iPhone 11 is just phenomenal.
1:28:30It's, you get the great 1X camera that's exactly the same.
1:28:35You get the ultra-wide, which is probably more useful
1:28:38for more people than telephoto.
1:28:40Same exact A13 chip, you get a,
1:28:43It's not the same display, but it's a great display.
1:28:46You get great battery life.
1:28:47It's just a great phone,
1:28:48and now it's a little bit less price.
1:28:50- Yeah, and I think it's great for Apple too.
1:28:53- Yeah, so the rumor, it's rampant now,
1:28:55and Ming-Chi Kuo had a report
1:28:58that was circulating this week.
1:29:00I was gonna say confirming it,
1:29:02but as close as we can get to confirming
1:29:04that Apple's full steam ahead on this rumored SE2
1:29:09for early in 2020, which will look like supposedly an iPhone 8, but will have the A13 chip from
1:29:20this year's phones, which is exactly what Apple did with the SE years ago when it came
1:29:27out. They used previous generations hardware design, which was the iPhone 5 5S design.
1:29:36But when the iPhone SE came out, it had whatever the A-series chip was from the iPhone.
1:29:41I guess it was the iPhone 6.
1:29:45And for the record, the iPhone 5S was the pinnacle of iPhone design.
1:29:49You know, I spent a day with my iPhone.
1:29:51I don't have an…
1:29:52I never bought an SE, so I don't have an SE to use, but I still have my iPhone 5S.
1:29:57And I do it every year.
1:30:00I put my SIM card in it and spend a day with it, and it's like, "Man, this is…
1:30:05an easily pocketable, lightweight design. Oh, it's just gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous.
1:30:11It also feels so sturdy. It feels like I don't know why anybody ever put a case on it. It
1:30:15just feels like you could literally throw it against a wall and it wouldn't crack.
1:30:19Yep. Yeah, no, I don't think I used a case then. I think I switched the cases once they
1:30:23got too big to sort of keeping your hand. Because the iPhone 4 was incredible, but that
1:30:29That glass back was—once they went to the all-metal enclosure, that's where it really
1:30:37hit its stride.
1:30:38So spending a day with my iPhone 5S, in addition to the size, which I want to come back to,
1:30:44because I think that's the thing that is most going to upset people about the rumored
1:30:49iPhone 8 size of this SE 2.
1:30:53But the other thing that really struck me—it's size and weight—unbelievable.
1:30:56The fact that it's so light makes it feel so,
1:30:58it just feels like you could,
1:30:59if it fell off your desk, it would be no problem.
1:31:02The fact that it's aluminum instead of glass on the back.
1:31:04But that's what struck me about that aluminum on the back,
1:31:08is I do have a Qi charger on my nightstand.
1:31:12It is not that much more convenient
1:31:17than just plugging in a cable or having a dock,
1:31:19especially if you have a table, you know, bedside dock
1:31:22where you can stick your phone overnight
1:31:24to charge overnight.
1:31:25Like, I do have the wireless charger from my phone.
1:31:29I use it, but I would probably happily trade
1:31:33to have an aluminum back on my iPhone 11 Pro
1:31:36and give up Qi charging.
1:31:39And there's still rumors that maybe in a software update,
1:31:43Apple's going to enable the iPhone 11s
1:31:46to charge your Apple Watch if you put it on the back
1:31:49or something like that,
1:31:50that there might be a two-way charging.
1:31:52That's all nice, it's neat,
1:31:54But I would honestly trade it for an aluminum back.
1:31:57Just I like the way it feels and I like the durability.
1:32:01I mean, have you seen the prices?
1:32:02If you crack the back on your iPhone 11 Pro,
1:32:05it's like a $399--
1:32:06- It's like $600 something, is it?
1:32:07- Yeah, is it $600?
1:32:08Or maybe it's $399 if you have AppleCare+ and it's more.
1:32:11It's like $600.
1:32:13It's like you honestly might be better off
1:32:15just keeping it and buying another one.
1:32:18It's ridiculously expensive.
1:32:20I don't even understand how that can be
1:32:22it's not the display, but it's very expensive. As far as I know, the whole reason they've gone to
1:32:31glassbacks is for the Qi charging. I just can't. I'm so sick of it. The problem is that, at least
1:32:40for me, whitening cables always go bad over time. And that time when you wake up and you grab your
1:32:46phone and it's not charged because the cable like is not just kind of starting to not work
1:32:51here it got jiggled or whatever it might be and what I like about the Qi charging is you
1:32:57sit on there it buzzes and it's going to actually charge and it's not going to like your wake
1:33:01up and find a dead phone so uh the I have a Qi charger on my desk too I could plug it
1:33:07in there that'd probably be fine I'd plug it in half time I have a cord here also but
1:33:11honestly just for that peace of mind that I know the phone's gonna be charged for sure
1:33:15when I wake up. I am pro-cheat charging. But there's also an argument that I should get
1:33:23my shit together and have working cables. So I could go in both directions.
1:33:28It just occurred to me, just using the 5S for a day, it just occurred to me that glass
1:33:32is a very odd substance to make a $1,000 to $1,500 device out of.
1:33:38It is. It is.
1:33:39- It's like you go into the Leica store
1:33:42and they're selling $5,000 cameras
1:33:45and it's like, I mean, I guess they have an LCD display
1:33:49on the back now, so that could crack,
1:33:50but they're not gonna make the majority of the frame
1:33:54out of glass.
1:33:55Like, it's just, when you think about it,
1:33:58it's just an odd, it's just odd that we have these
1:34:01very expensive cameras that are made out of glass,
1:34:04front and back.
1:34:05I mean, the front being glass is obvious
1:34:07because it's all display, it kinda has to be.
1:34:09It's just kind of odd that the back is glass
1:34:11when you think about it.
1:34:13Size, so I know that,
1:34:16I guess I should write about it,
1:34:19but in a way, I know that there are people
1:34:21who love that 5S eyes.
1:34:23And you called it the pinnacle of iPhone design.
1:34:26People love it.
1:34:27And what people really want Apple to do,
1:34:29people who love that size, is keep the size
1:34:32and just get rid of the chin and forehead
1:34:34and put an iPhone XR style LCD display in
1:34:39with rounded corners that takes up the whole front surface.
1:34:43So you'd get more screen area,
1:34:46but you would still have that same basic,
1:34:49entirely pocketable design.
1:34:51And by all of the accounts, that is not what Apple's doing.
1:34:56They're going with an iPhone 8 form factor
1:34:59with touch ID and the chin and forehead,
1:35:04- Which is disappointing if you love that small size,
1:35:06but it should be, to me, unsurprising,
1:35:08'cause in a way, what they're doing,
1:35:10like I said a couple minutes ago,
1:35:11they're doing exactly what they did with the SE.
1:35:15And the SE, I don't think, was defined by the size,
1:35:18from Apple's perspective.
1:35:19It was for people who were fans of the size.
1:35:22But from Apple's perspective,
1:35:23it was let's just take our previous generation form factor
1:35:27and update the internals to the latest and greatest
1:35:30and sell it at a low price.
1:35:32Apple's not going to invest in a completely new industrial design for what's going to
1:35:37be a very inexpensive phone. It's just not going to happen. So yeah, they're going to
1:35:43use what they have. And again, I can see the allure. I have no desire to use a 5S. I'm
1:35:51glad that they're getting rid of it, probably for our developer friends. They don't have
1:35:54to worry. Hopefully, you stop worrying about that size sooner rather than later. But yeah,
1:35:58fundamentally an economic issue. The reason they're doing that is because switching
1:36:05out the processor is relatively painless. While the other components are going to stay
1:36:09the same, making the case can stay the same, those assembly lines are still alive because
1:36:16they're still making the iPhone 8 and they're just going to change out the processor, which
1:36:24it a much more future-proof phone even though the industrial design is old and it makes a lot of
1:36:30sense. So I don't know. I would guess since they're replaying the strategy from the SE, I would guess
1:36:37that if you look back, I forget exactly when they announced the SE. I think it was either very late
1:36:42in March or very early April, if I recall correctly. I would guess that they'll announce this new
1:36:48iPhone SE, whatever they're going to call it, around the same time next year because it just
1:36:53feels like they're just replaying that strategy exactly. And I don't, like you just said,
1:36:59production-wise, I can't see how this would be a problem. I don't think there's going
1:37:02to be any kind of delay. I think it'll come out.
1:37:05Well, and there never was an iPhone 8S. So the name is available.
1:37:10Yeah, maybe that's what they'll call it. That's actually a very good guess. I'm
1:37:13going to steal that. The iPhone 8S. Yeah, I like that. I'm writing that down. iPhone
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1:40:07What else we got here Ben?
1:40:09Just waiting on charcoal
1:40:13I'm gonna talk about the Boeing 737 max saga briefly
1:40:19It's fascinating I know we've been sharing
1:40:23Messages about this that I'm generally like like I think a lot maybe a lot of techy's
1:40:29I'm an AV geek like I love following the airline industry generally
1:40:34My favorite blog is a thing called the cranky flyer
1:40:37Great blog another guy John Ostrore
1:40:40Runs a subscription site called the air current. Yeah, so I love reading about this stuff in general and have for a long time
1:40:47But this whole 737 thing has been has been I mean, it's incredible. It's incredible on multiple dimensions
1:40:54It's starting to it's starting to say
1:40:57When it first happened the first crash
1:41:01Was the one in I think Indonesia I forget which one was first but there were two deadly crashes tragedies
1:41:08First one it's sort of like fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me, you know
1:41:15It's like the first one it's like I don't know who knows what happened. Maybe it's a fluke the second one
1:41:19Everybody was like hey what something is wrong with this plane, right?
1:41:22That just doesn't happen and it would they were both weird crashes that it's just
1:41:28Very weird the details start coming out and this whole story about them
1:41:33It just it just read like bad leadership of that
1:41:39Basically when a new plane comes out with new controls and a new flight, what do they call a flight?
1:41:46envelope envelope
1:41:50Pilots, you know, this is seems like a good good rule pilots have to be retrained on this
1:41:57Yes, because if a new plane flies differently than what the pilot is used to, all the pilots
1:42:04need to train on it.
1:42:06And the major airlines have a lot of pilots, and so in the aggregate, a new plane would
1:42:12require an aggregate large number of pilot training hours.
1:42:18So you can see why the airlines would like to buy planes that pilots don't need to retrain
1:42:23on because that would save them money of, you know, they'd rather have to be paying
1:42:28their pilots to fly flights than to train. But you can also see why there is a law that
1:42:34if the plane flies differently, the pilots need to retrain, right? Both things make perfect
1:42:39sense. And what happened with the 737 MAX is it flew differently. And Boeing knew that
1:42:44would be a bad, hard sell to the airlines. And so they use software to try to make it
1:42:51fly like previous 737s and it turns out that's exactly as bad an idea as it sounds.
1:43:01Jeff
1:43:17it's the pilot's plane. And so it's in a weird sort of way, it's almost like this would have
1:43:25been better off on an Airbus plane where you kind of expect the plane to be in control. But the fact
1:43:32that a Boeing plane, you expect the pilot to be in ultimate control, and it turned out they weren't,
1:43:39like almost made it even worse, because it was against sort of the ethos and understanding of
1:43:43what these planes sort of mean.
1:43:45Yeah, and it really shines a spotlight on the rot at the center of Boeing's company culture.
1:43:53And you know, this is all old hat to you. I'm a way less of a aviation nerd than you or Dan Frommer,
1:44:01but I'm kind of into it. And it's interesting. And Boeing has always been a fascinating company. But
1:44:05basically, long story short, Boeing was always known as an engineering driven company. And
1:44:11And the record speaks for themselves.
1:44:16The 737 came out in the end of the '60s
1:44:20and was their best-selling plane until recently.
1:44:23It had three decades at the top.
1:44:26- Oh, it still is.
1:44:27I mean, it still is, yeah.
1:44:28- It's just a phenomenal design.
1:44:31That doesn't happen
1:44:32without truly great engineering and design.
1:44:35And secondarily, Boeing traditionally always had
1:44:40a firewall between their commercial aviation division and their military division. And the
1:44:48military stuff, for obvious reasons, is much more bureaucratic and not as engineering-driven because
1:44:55all sorts of, you know, you end up with, you know, everybody knows the pork barrel stuff,
1:45:01where somebody, some senator from Montana wants to have something in the state, you know,
1:45:08let's make the screws for the wings in Montana, whether that's the best decision or not.
1:45:13It's a political decision, not an engineering decision. And then in the '90s, Boeing
1:45:20acquired McDonnell Douglas, which was primarily, ostensibly a competitor at the time, but was much
1:45:27more focused on the military stuff. And however it came about, the McDonnell Douglas leadership
1:45:34wound up in charge of Boeing. It's sort of like one of those "reverse acquisitions,"
1:45:38like when Apple acquired Next and Steve Jobs and the Next crew wound up running the company.
1:45:44But definitely a bizarro version of that.
1:45:46A bizarro version because with Apple and Next, it was terrific leadership that was focused
1:45:51on exactly the right thing, which is great products. And the McDonnell Douglas thing
1:45:57was the opposite. Instead of focusing on making great airplanes, it was like squeezing money
1:46:01out of pinching corners and making decisions like the 737 MAX, which—
1:46:06Justin: Well, the thing is, before the 737 MAX was the 787, which was an absolute disaster.
1:46:11And there they tried to outsource everything and were trying to put the costs on everyone else,
1:46:19and they were getting pieces that were coming together that didn't even fit together,
1:46:23and there was—they forgot to design, to specify how the wires would connect with each other.
1:46:29just an absolute disaster. They ended up spending way more than they would have otherwise,
1:46:34and delayed hugely, which also led to the 737 MAX, where instead of building a completely new
1:46:40plane like they probably should have, they said, "Well, let's re-engine sort of the venerable
1:46:46737 one time." So it's not just this, it's a cascading series of decisions over years,
1:46:53And it's amazing that these same folks are, yeah, I mean, it's a, this is a mess Boeing that is in
1:47:03right now that has been building for like 20 years, 25 years. And there's lots of other stuff in there
1:47:07like Weber and Ress, they built a new factory down in a non-union state and there's been apparently
1:47:14a ton of problems with those, and this is in a union commentary, so they've always built their
1:47:19their airplanes in Washington. And they moved away from that, not for engineering reasons,
1:47:24to your point, but for other reasons. And that's led to a lot of problems. And they
1:47:28moved their headquarters to Chicago, which is stupid. I mean, it's literally been like
1:47:3525 years of ineptness, but all those decades of engineering leadership have carried them
1:47:42through because the 737 was been selling the 777 was an absolutely brilliant plane. I think
1:47:49like the most profitable plane ever that has carried them through. But everything since then
1:47:55has just been a total mess. And it's just sort of heartbreaking because a great company, a company
1:48:02that has a decades-long record of being a great company is like a great thing to appreciate,
1:48:09you know? And it's just sort of a sad thing to see it. And it wasn't like, you know, sometimes
1:48:17a great company fades away because what they do fades away. You know, like maybe Kodak is a good
1:48:23example. And you can, you know, certainly you can make the argument that Kodak should have seen the
1:48:27digital thing coming and they had some great bet they invented the digital camera. That's the crazy
1:48:32thing about it. Right. And, and, and instead of, uh, uh, obsoleting themselves, yeah, obsoleting
1:48:42their own film business with their the up-and-coming digital business they you know tried to stick
1:48:47their heads in the sand and say film isn't going away um so that i guess kodak is sort of a not the
1:48:55best example because that's sort of i think i do think it's a good example though because like
1:49:00to your point a lot of companies go away because their industry and their place in the industry
1:49:05goes away through technological change. And with Boeing, actually, airplanes and commercial
1:49:11airplane sales are a bigger and more important industry than ever. It's completely self-inflicted.
1:49:17Right. That's, yeah, that's my point. Yes, it is completely self-inflicted, and that just is hard
1:49:23to watch. That is just sad. And what sucks about it, the 787 is a perfect example. Boeing, like,
1:49:31if they would have just developed the 787 the same way they developed every plane previously,
1:49:36and built it the same way previously, and did most of the work themselves in Washington like
1:49:40they did previously, they would be in phenomenally better financial shape than they were, than they
1:49:45ended up being. And so it's not only, it's like one thing if you cheap out, but at least you saved
1:49:52money, even though it might not have been as good as it would have been otherwise, they cheaped out
1:49:56and ended up spending way more in the long run. It's really a phenomenal run of mismanagement
1:50:08over literally a couple of decades.
1:50:11Dave: Yeah, and self-inflicted is just exactly—that just gets to the core of what I wanted to talk
1:50:17about, and it's just a bit sad. Hopefully they can turn it around. I don't know. It
1:50:21It feels to me like this MAX situation is going to be a legal nightmare for them.
1:50:26I mean, because the news that came out this week was that there was a whistleblower within
1:50:30the company in the engineering division whose report, more or less before any of these planes
1:50:38crashed, more or less said that this is all a disaster and management has ignored our
1:50:46warnings about this, that they pretty much ignored warnings from within the engineering
1:50:53division that the problems that we now know are real were going to be real, which is probably
1:50:59not good in terms of their liability for these things.
1:51:04Speaking of self-inflicted, you've been writing a bit about the Apple in China and
1:51:11Hong Kong and whatnot stuff. And I think there's a meta point to be made here. I've been writing
1:51:20about Apple in China, basically, ever since the Trump election, I think. And maybe before
1:51:29that, I'm trying to remember when exactly I was horny on this point. But it's very,
1:51:34very interesting. And what's interesting is Apple was by far the most successful sort
1:51:41of consumer tech company in particular in China. And the reason is because they had
1:51:45the right perfect business model. They weren't a service which could be blocked by the great
1:51:50firewall. They weren't pure software which could be pirated like Microsoft software is
1:51:54pirated. Because they sold software differentiated hardware, they could go into China and make
1:52:01the exact same margins in China that they were making everywhere else and be tremendously
1:52:05profitable doing so. It turns out though, that what goes around comes around. And after
1:52:14several years of China being a huge profit center, now it's a huge problem. And obviously,
1:52:23Apple's sort of exposed on both sides where they have the manufacturing there and they
1:52:28have the huge market there to sell, and they are more than any other tech company by, you know,
1:52:34at least U.S. tech company, you know, stuck in this trade war. And not just a trade war,
1:52:40but, you know, to the extent there is a sort of ideological war, it's a very tough place to be.
1:52:45Uh, yeah, because the other tech giants don't have physical goods. I mean, Apple, you know,
1:52:52Facebook, I mean, I get the they make stuff Facebook has these gadgets and and Amazon makes the
1:52:59Gadgets and Google's makes gadgets and words. We just talked about beginning of the show Microsoft makes gadgets
1:53:05They all do make their own gadgets
1:53:07but for all of those other giants that gadgets are a side business and for Apple, it's the inverse that the
1:53:14You know the vast overwhelming majority of the company's revenues and profits come from selling
1:53:20iPhones in particular but gadgets, you know overall the services are the
1:53:24Again, they're growing. They're they're right to focus on it
1:53:27We don't have to talk about it
1:53:28But it's you know
1:53:29Apple services revenues dwarf compared to the hardware stuff and the hardware stuff the iPhone in particular. They're all made in China
1:53:35And so they're completely square in the middle of the trade war with the Trump administration. I
1:53:40Think it's always been hmm
1:53:43this seems a dangerous place to put all your eggs in one basket because
1:53:48It's a communist dictatorship.
1:53:53I want to dwell on that because it's the most interesting about this. The whole Apple
1:54:00doctrine and the Cook doctrine talks about this idea of we need to control our most important
1:54:06technologies. And it turns out, maybe the most important Apple skill set and capability
1:54:14is its ability to manufacture massive numbers of devices that are very highly engineered
1:54:22and are manufactured at an extremely high level of quality. And it turns out that they
1:54:27don't have control of that. Like, they don't have control because it's in another country
1:54:34that follows a different value system than the one that Apple does, broadly speaking.
1:54:41I mean, there's certainly, you know, the whole thing about Apple privacy is a human right.
1:54:46Like it rings a bit cello when, when, when, you know, given their, their position in China in some
1:54:53respects, and also they're stuck in the middle of this trade war and, and we weaving aside it,
1:55:01which is extremely difficult to do. So bear with me here, but leaving aside the Trump sort of angle
1:55:07here. This collision of the US and China, I think in many respects is bigger and broader
1:55:14than Trump. And it was probably there was a degree that was inevitable is going to happen
1:55:20at some point. And I think what is a little concerning from the Apple perspective is it
1:55:26kind of feels like they didn't see it coming at all. And they're stuck and they really
1:55:32have no good options.
1:55:33Right, and there was a bit of news last week where Apple officially announced that the
1:55:37new Mac Pro, just like the previous trash can Mac Pro, will be manufactured in Austin,
1:55:43Texas, and that there's some kind of exemption from the tariffs that will allow them to import
1:55:52some of the components from China without paying tariff, blah, blah, blah.
1:55:56But the Mac Pro is literally the most niche hardware product that Apple makes.
1:56:01it might as well be called the Mac niche.
1:56:03I mean, it's by definition.
1:56:05I mean, it starts at five,
1:56:06and there's nothing wrong with that.
1:56:09But it's a $5,000, and really,
1:56:11in the configurations, most people who want
1:56:14and need a Mac Pro are gonna cost a lot more than $5,000.
1:56:17It's the price of a compact car.
1:56:21- You mean 128 gigabytes of hard drive is not sufficient?
1:56:25- Well, probably not.
1:56:26It's like, oh, yeah, I work at Pixar,
1:56:29here I've rendered one frame. I've got one frame of the movie here on my Mac Pro.
1:56:37I can, you know, yeah probably not. But they are in no position, I mean so, you
1:56:43know, that news I'll mention it, but I mean they are in no position to move
1:56:47iPhone production out of China. I mean it's really staggering. I would love
1:56:51to, you know, and it just must be an amazing thing to behold, you know, with
1:56:58how many, you know, to be able to produce 70 million or however many tens of million iPhones
1:57:06in a quarter with a brand new design and stuff like that, it's just staggering when you do the
1:57:11math and just think about how many they're making a day, you know, that there's like a million of
1:57:15them literally and how many million shipped on Friday, September 24th or whatever the day was
1:57:23when people who pre-ordered the minute that the pre-orders went available got their iPhones.
1:57:29Just staggering to think how many of these things come out. They're in no position to move that
1:57:33elsewhere or diversify. I mean, if… Yeah, and people are going to email and say, because they
1:57:38have set up factories like Brazil and India primarily to get around really restrictive
1:57:42sort of import controls in those countries, but they're not remotely capable of scaling to
1:57:48servicing the rest of the world the way China is. And they're stuck. Apple's really fundamentally
1:57:55stuck. They are not really capable of going elsewhere. And at the same time,
1:58:01as you've been writing about, it's kind of getting to be an increasingly untenable position,
1:58:08particularly in the context of Apple's rhetoric around the sort of company they claim to be and
1:58:13and the things they claim to believe in.
1:58:15- Right, and privacy is a human right.
1:58:17Literally, that's words that come out of their mouths.
1:58:22Tim Cook has said, "Privacy is a fundamental human right."
1:58:26China is a surveillance state.
1:58:29I don't mean to laugh, it's actually not funny at all.
1:58:33It's tragic.
1:58:35It is difficult.
1:58:38Now, I'm of the opinion that the fact that Apple
1:58:40in the Chinese market and and sells you know iPhones and you and I have talked
1:58:46about this a lot about how they're there we don't have to rehash it now but that
1:58:51their their success in the Chinese market has waxed and waned significantly
1:58:56more significantly than they have in other markets because the Chinese market
1:58:59is unique and the people you don't get locked into the Android or iOS
1:59:07ecosystems in China the way you do in other countries,
1:59:11'cause China has its own stuff,
1:59:13and you just use that stuff on an iPhone,
1:59:15or you use it on an Android phone,
1:59:16and if you wanna switch to a Huawei phone,
1:59:18you just switch and your stuff moves over.
1:59:20And you've talked about how,
1:59:23so that stuff like having a new rose gold color
1:59:26is very much more important in the Chinese market
1:59:28than elsewhere, because being able to signify
1:59:30that you have the new top of the line iPhone
1:59:33is more important, 'cause that might be really
1:59:35more than iOS or any part of the ecosystem. That's why people are doing blah, blah, blah.
1:59:40I don't think it's a problem. I think it's very, it requires a nuanced discussion to
1:59:45talk about Apple selling iPhones in a market that with politically difficult leadership
1:59:53like China. Because in some ways it's good if you're in China and you are as a Chinese
2:00:01citizen concerned with your privacy. Isn't it better that if you're fortunate enough
2:00:06to be able to afford an iPhone, isn't it great that you have the option of buying a phone
2:00:12that probably is more private than most of the other phones in the Chinese market and
2:00:17that protects your stuff? And whatever sacrifices Apple had to make to host Chinese iCloud accounts
2:00:24on servers within mainland China, we don't know what's going on with that and what sort
2:00:30of access the Chinese state has to that. But if it's as private as Apple would suggest
2:00:35that it is, it's better than if Apple just said, "You know what? We don't support
2:00:40China. We're pulling out. We're not going to sell our products in China." There's
2:00:47people who want Apple to do that, who think that if Apple's actions match their rhetoric,
2:00:53they should take a stance and say, "We won't sell our products in China because we support
2:00:57privacy in China's government is anti- privacy. I don't know. I get how that would please
2:01:04people who want Apple to make a stink about this, and it would certainly raise a ruckus
2:01:09and draw a lot of attention. But would that actually be good for the people in China who
2:01:14want iPhones and want the most privacy they can get? I would say no, it's not good.
2:01:21I think that requires nuance. But I do think though that, like you said, it's starting
2:01:26to come to a head and it's starting to become untenable.
2:01:31I think the point that you're driving at is, yeah, the sell of iPhones is one thing.
2:01:38The reason why Apple is in a no-win position is the manufacturer of iPhones.
2:01:44That's the part that like, they're just like, it's literally where else can they go, and
2:01:52are paying the price for decisions that were made many, many years in the past. And yeah,
2:02:02it's, I mean, I think they, my feeling is they need to start in making the sort of investments
2:02:11and pushing out into other countries and whether it's India or Brazil or they go to Vietnam
2:02:17or wherever it might be, like figuring out ways to start building out. But the problem
2:02:20is it's going to be, it's going to take years, but if it's going to take years, no better
2:02:25time to start than now. And my concern is that there's just a hope that this is going
2:02:31to blow over. And you talk about the Mac Pro and Apple getting the exemption. I mean, it
2:02:35kind of feels like Tim Cook played Donald Trump like a violin. I mean, I don't think
2:02:42they're making production decisions about the Mac Pro in October of the year it's going
2:02:47to ship, right?
2:02:48Right. Yeah, they were going to make that in Texas no matter what. So that, right.
2:02:53So I worry though that it's going to embolden Apple to be like, look, we can muddle through
2:02:59and it's all going to be okay. And I'm not sure in the one where it's going to
2:03:03be okay. Like, like, and so there's some really serious decisions that Tim Cook is
2:03:09going to have to make. And this is absolutely a CEO level, CEO level Tim Cook decision.
2:03:14He's the one that got him into China in the first place. And if they need to get out,
2:03:17the one that needs to get them out. And it's going to be really tempting to say, "This
2:03:22is all going to blow over. It's going to be fine." And I don't know. I don't
2:03:26know if it's going to be fine.
2:03:28It's interesting that Samsung is now out of China. I guess it does—the two sides
2:03:34of the coin go hand in hand in a way that I don't quite understand, that people are
2:03:40at least drawing the connection. Where China—or Samsung at one point had 15 percent just like
2:03:45six years ago had 15% of the Chinese phone market and with the rise of the in China brands
2:03:53like Huawei and what's the other one? Zee or what?
2:03:59ZTE.
2:04:00Yeah, there's a couple, but there's a couple of up and coming companies making truly impressive.
2:04:05Yeah, Xiaomi is the one I was thinking of. Well regarded high end hardware within and
2:04:14those companies have eaten Samsung's lunch. Samsung is under 1%, effectively zero in the
2:04:19Chinese market. And they've now just this week, pulled out of China for all assembly and
2:04:24manufacturing. So it's obvious, you know, the interesting part of that to me is like,
2:04:29it's proof that a company that Samsung makes more phones than Apple per year. So obviously,
2:04:36it's possible to make 100 million phones without making a single one of them in China.
2:04:42But, again—
2:04:43John: That's a great point. It's a great point. And it's mostly in South Korea, but
2:04:48yeah, it's a great point.
2:04:49Trevor Burrus It's not like China alone can do it, but
2:04:53it's not, again, like you said, to borrow a Chinese proverb, "A journey of a thousand
2:04:58miles starts with a single step." It's not like all of a sudden Apple can snap its
2:05:02fingers and make all of its phones outside China next year. This would take years. This
2:05:07is a long, long thing if they're going to do it. Anyway, the other news this week was
2:05:12a, you know, there's these protests, democracy protests in Hong Kong, the politics of which
2:05:19we don't have to touch upon, but you know, it's certainly interesting. It's been months
2:05:25long, it is certainly significant. And the Apple angle is that there is an app, a service
2:05:31called HK Map Live. And basically it is a map that shows police activity and other information
2:05:44that apparently is very useful for people, even people not just for the protesters. It's
2:05:51useful for people who are trying to avoid the protests. And there are, you know, it's
2:05:55all sorts of stuff. It's useful information. They have an app that they, it's available
2:06:00for Android, they submitted it to Apple, and Apple's App Store review process rejected
2:06:05it on the grounds that it was—I forget the exact words—but basically that Apple accused
2:06:12it of trying to circumvent law enforcement, which really does not seem to be the case.
2:06:16I mean, and again, maybe somebody's politics are such that they, you know, because the
2:06:21Hong Kong protesters are on the side of democracy, and then the other side is the Chinese communist
2:06:26dictatorship that Apple should allow it anyway. But it really just, it's just information.
2:06:31It's effectively, you know, like traffic, you know, that this police activity is a real
2:06:37thing. The police don't even want people, you know, in some regards, I don't even think
2:06:40the police would object to this app. It's not, it just seems very, it seems like a very
2:06:46strange wrongheaded rejection. And it raises the question, the obvious question, you know,
2:06:51A lot of people seem to jump to the conclusion that Apple rejected it, for lack of a better
2:06:57word, kowtowing to the Chinese government that they just don't want to have anything
2:07:01that looks like Apple is siding with the protesters in Hong Kong.
2:07:07I think, again, the Hanlon's razor argument that never attributed to malice, that which
2:07:12can be attributed to stupidity, often is the case with the App Store, unfortunately.
2:07:19Even the HK map developer seems to think that might be the case. Give Apple a couple of
2:07:25days to relook at this and maybe it'll go through. Apple can't screw up stuff like this
2:07:34with China. Of course, it's perfectly reasonable for people to jump to the conclusion that
2:07:40Apple is doing this for politics, not for some kind of bureaucratic snafu within the
2:07:45App Store process that could have happened to any app?
2:07:47It's a fair point. But I do think, I mean, frankly, I don't
2:07:53know why there's any reason to give Apple the benefit of the
2:07:58doubt with anything China related, other than sort of our
2:08:01hope that they're going to do the right thing. Because the
2:08:04reality is, is every time they've had to make a decision,
2:08:06whether it be pulling VPN apps on the App Store or things on
2:08:09those lines, they've done what China wanted them to do. And to
2:08:13be totally clear. I've defended them on that. That's the reality of being a multinational
2:08:18corporation and being in different countries is you have to follow the law in those countries.
2:08:22So this isn't a condemnation of them. But the reality is, maybe this is the cynic in
2:08:34me, but I have a hard time seeing Apple pushing back on China in any sort of meaningful way.
2:08:42If China doesn't want this app, I don't think this app is going to be in the App Store.
2:08:46And yeah, maybe it is Hanlon's razor.
2:08:48I'd like to propose Thompson's razor, which is that this shit's super complicated, right?
2:08:53And like, oh, you see this again and again, whether it's Apple or Facebook or Google or
2:08:58all of these companies, anytime you think that a decision a company makes is absolutely
2:09:04100% wrong or absolutely 100% right, you almost by definition have not fully thought through
2:09:09all the trade-offs and the issues that are at hand, because almost all these decisions
2:09:15are like 51-49 decisions. It goes back and forth. I don't envy Apple in this situation.
2:09:22I don't envy them being in the middle. But I do really hope that they're thinking about
2:09:29ways to not be in the middle five to 10 years from now.
2:09:32I guess that's my point, is that I don't think Apple deserves the benefit of the doubt
2:09:35on this. I think, you know, and it's not like China is some obscure country. You know,
2:09:42like if it were, if it were, you know, there was some weird law in Ecuador and there's
2:09:48an app and it's like, "Oh, that's a really strange law that seems contrary to the values
2:09:52of, you know, Apple." You could see how maybe, you know, that wouldn't have, that
2:09:58that might be overlooked in the app store. Like China is not, you can't overlook China.
2:10:02I mean, it's the most populous country in the world.
2:10:05Everybody knows that Apple's in a weird situation there.
2:10:10It absolutely, there's no way to excuse,
2:10:14if this was a mistake, so either way,
2:10:16it makes Apple look bad, right?
2:10:19If they're doing it to kowtow to the Chinese government,
2:10:21that's a bad look, and it seems contrary
2:10:24to Apple's rhetoric on privacy
2:10:26and Apple's stance on various social issues.
2:10:31And if it happened through ineptitude,
2:10:35well that doesn't make Apple that look good either.
2:10:37How in the world can you be inept on a decision
2:10:40related to China and something as high profile
2:10:42as these Hong Kong protests?
2:10:45- Oh, let me tell you about the last 10 years
2:10:47of the App Store. (laughs)
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2:12:21Try it yourself. All right, charcoal's on the list. Anything else?
2:12:26We're here for charcoal.
2:12:29Let me double check that there's nothing else real on my agenda for this show.
2:12:34No, I think that's about it.
2:12:38I want the minute-by-minute breakdown, because as I understand it, you're the one that
2:12:44answered the door. Is that correct?
2:12:47Well, so we have a roof deck, we have a charcoal grill.
2:12:51No, I want the door opening.
2:12:54Then we can backtrack.
2:12:55Just give me a few contacts here.
2:12:57Well, we've been out of charcoal for a couple of weeks.
2:13:00And you live in the city and I could buy it at the corner store,
2:13:04but the amount of charcoal you can buy and walk home with is not a lot.
2:13:08So I mentioned it to Amy and I said, "We should Amazon some charcoal.
2:13:14That's what we should do."
2:13:15and she said that she would take care of it. And then she said charcoal is on the way.
2:13:19And what was it, Tuesday, two days ago, three days ago? It was actually part of it was—it's
2:13:25early October in Philadelphia, but it was over 90 degrees. We had a very hot streak.
2:13:32Doorbell rings, and there's a man—he's a very large man, and he's sweating profusely.
2:13:37He's carrying what looks to be a very heavy box. I would say it's, you know, I don't know,
2:13:45almost like a chest-sized cardboard box. And behind him is a—you know those hand trucks
2:13:57they have at the airport? Like if you come to the airport with a lot of—like you're
2:14:00going with your whole family on a long trip and there's a curbside porter who will take
2:14:04your luggage with him. It's like a push cart.
2:14:07It's got like four wheels on it. Four wheels and a push cart. And it could
2:14:11take maybe a family of sixes luggage to the to the check-in counter he's got one of those behind it
2:14:17also just stuck stuffed with six boxes like this and then he's got a colleague behind him
2:14:24in the street with another push cart with six similar boxes and he hands me the first box and
2:14:34it is very heavy uh i can tell you i i actually opened it up and checked it is it weighs 36 pounds
2:14:41Each box. And I guess—
2:14:45In a way, you have 12 boxes? Is that right?
2:14:47Twelve boxes, each of them 36 pounds. So it's 432 pounds.
2:14:5232 pounds.
2:14:53Charcoal. I guessed right away that it was charcoal. I had no idea why it was so much.
2:14:58And I thought, well, maybe. And then I thought—I realized that the first six boxes were definitely
2:15:03mine. The fellow behind him, I actually asked—I asked, I said, "Is that mine, too?" Because
2:15:10In my mind, I thought, "We can't possibly have this much charcoal."
2:15:13And I thought, "Well, somebody else must have bought a lot of charcoal."
2:15:16And as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized, "Well, what are the odds
2:15:19that somebody else in my neighborhood..."
2:15:21About six large boxes.
2:15:23Boxes of...
2:15:24About 216 pounds of charcoal.
2:15:26Right.
2:15:27I, as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized it was maybe the dumbest thing
2:15:30I've said in months.
2:15:32And he goes, "No, that's yours too, buddy."
2:15:34Did he actually drop the buddy?
2:15:39Yeah, I think so.
2:15:40And he says, "We've got more on the truck for you." And I was like, "More charcoal?" He goes,
2:15:45"Nah, it's other stuff." Because I thought, "Oh my God, there's more." So somehow my wife wound up
2:15:53buying 432 pounds of charcoal from Amazon. And she thinks what happened is that she—it sounds like
2:16:03like a good theory. It will number one, I opened a box, it's
2:16:08Kingsford charcoal. It's not just any bag, though, it is
2:16:13their new 18 pound bags that they are advertising is the
2:16:16biggest ever. So each bag, it's not just bags of charcoal, it is
2:16:21the biggest bags of charcoal that Kingsford has ever sold.
2:16:24Each box contains two of them. She thinks what happened is that
2:16:31she started buying it on one of her, like maybe her iPad,
2:16:36maybe her Mac or whatever.
2:16:38But she didn't finish the transaction.
2:16:41She bought one, meaning one two-pack,
2:16:45which would be a combined 36 pounds of charcoal.
2:16:49- Which is very sensible.
2:16:51You go in the city, it's hard to get charcoal.
2:16:52You get a bunch of charcoal at once.
2:16:54- That would be a fine amount.
2:16:55Kingsford advertises that one of these bags,
2:16:58One of these 18-pound bags is enough for nine grillings.
2:17:02And that she went to a next device and thought,
2:17:07you know what, why don't I buy two?
2:17:08'Cause then we'll be set for a while.
2:17:10And that on her iPad, on the Amazon website,
2:17:13it's not a pop-up menu for quantity, it's a text field.
2:17:16And that she poked it and typed a two.
2:17:20And that turned, instead of changing to two,
2:17:23it changed one to 12.
2:17:25This actually makes perfect sense.
2:17:27I believe that she has nailed the how in the fuck did this happen? I forget if I forget
2:17:33which devices which but that she started it on one went to the other and on the other.
2:17:38It's a text field not a pop up for quantity and she changed one to 12 instead of one to
2:17:44two and just banged her way through one click their way through the whole process and bought
2:17:50$240 or something worth of charcoal. So now we have $400.
2:17:57So what are you going to do with all the charcoal?
2:18:02I don't know. I really don't know.
2:18:09There needs to be odds in Vegas on the chances of this charcoal still being in your house
2:18:14like four years from now.
2:18:16Now the other funny thing, my wife owned up to it, well sort of. I mean, she tweeted by
2:18:22saying "Let he who has not ordered 432 pounds of charcoal cast the first stone" or something
2:18:28like that. And my reply to her was "He?" Because there was no "he" who inadvertently
2:18:35ordered all of this. And she posted a picture.
2:18:37My response to her was to link to that New York Times article about how it actually may
2:18:42not be a problem to eat lots of red meat. So that was good news. Good timing.
2:18:47Well, if Kingsford is correct that each bag is good for nine grillings, and you would
2:18:53think that, you know, much like the way that the toothpaste industry would have you believe
2:18:57that you should put, you know, like a big S-shaped longer than your toothbrush amount
2:19:02of toothpaste, you know, on your toothbrush each time you brush your teeth, I would imagine
2:19:06the Kingsford people encourage you to use plenty of charcoal each time you grill.
2:19:10That's like you burn through all the charcoal like there's no reuse or anything, right?
2:19:14so let's assume that they're accurate with their nine grilling spur bag with
2:19:1924 bags we would be 9 times 24 would be what 180 plus 36 would be
2:19:26260 216 grilling
2:19:36So I think we're set well
2:19:38I think I think that you started talking about the number of grilling's and you expected that number to be much smaller
2:19:44Yeah, and then you actually go
2:19:46It's like it's literally like eight months worth of grilling's
2:19:51If we grilled every single day, which we don't do and if it's gonna be winter soon
2:19:587.2 months I believe is the exact number I guess if we were smart people we'd send it back somehow
2:20:06But this it just seems embarrassed. It's embarrassing as well
2:20:10I don't even know how you send back
2:20:13430 pounds of charcoal or you know, I guess we'd keep some of it just send back 380 pounds of it or something
2:20:21Anyway my wife also she did own up to it
2:20:26She posted a picture with our son standing in front of all 12 boxes for you know for size
2:20:34You know large boxes. Oh, they are large boxes
2:20:37They are 36 pounds each and the odd thing was that the most common response that she got after tweeting
2:20:43It was the boxes all say Walmart
2:20:45But that's just fulfillment and and people were giving her a hard time for shopping at Walmart as though that's you know
2:20:52like morally, you know, I
2:20:54Don't understand the people who gave her a hard time about having purchased them from Walmart
2:21:00which A) I wouldn't have had a problem with, I don't think there's anything wrong with
2:21:03buying charcoal from Walmart, but B) she didn't even do it. She bought it from Amazon and
2:21:07Walmart just happened to fulfill it, you know, the weird way that Amazon is just sort of
2:21:12a front end to retail stuff these days. But more than that, the issue of buying it from
2:21:18Walmart isn't the issue. It's 432 fucking pounds of charcoal in my office.
2:21:23Why are you obsessing about the logo on the box? The fact is, there are 12 boxes here.
2:21:30With each containing two 18-pound bags of charcoal. It's a lot of charcoal. So anyway,
2:21:40do you need some charcoal?
2:21:42I think it's not going to be worth the price to ship it to Taiwan.
2:21:48I guess. Maybe we'll give it out at Christmas to people?
2:21:51you'll get a container chip. That would be hilarious. You got to start mailing out the,
2:21:55what are they 18 pounds? Yeah. Just you should start soon because you want to use like UPS
2:22:01ground or something or whatever the cheap US Postal Service service is. And just pick a bunch
2:22:07of friends and just start mailing them bags of charcoal and all of them are going to laugh their
2:22:11ass off. It's absolutely what you should do. You're going to spend way more than you spend
2:22:16the charcoal in the first place, but it'll be worth it. I don't know what it would cost to
2:22:20to mail 36 pounds of charcoal.
2:22:21The hilarious thing is you're going to mail this charcoal out, and then it's going to
2:22:24get to May, and you're going to be like, "Fuck, I have no more charcoal."
2:22:29If I ever do run out of charcoal, I've got to be upset. I guess the good news is charcoal
2:22:34doesn't go bad. I guess keep it dry and it should be fine. My wife was worried then.
2:22:38My wife got spooked. She worried if it was a fire hazard. And I said, "Well, think
2:22:45about how hard it is to light charcoal, really. I mean, it's actually notoriously tricky,
2:22:50you know, that's why they, you know, and it is not, it's not match light, you know, charcoal,
2:22:55which is pre-doused with lighter fluid. It is just plain old-fashioned charcoal.
2:22:59The original.
2:23:00The original.
2:23:01Yes.
2:23:02So I said, I don't think it's a fire hazard, given how tricky it usually is to get it going.
2:23:06So I don't think we're in danger. It's just…
2:23:10Well, I look forward to visiting your house in 2027 and using this shipment of charcoal.
2:23:19It really was. And that's the thing. And the other part too is she tweeted it and she,
2:23:24you know, she's owned up to it, but I wasn't mad at all. I didn't say a crossword. I,
2:23:29you know, to me it was an honest mistake, but it gets to the nature of our different
2:23:33personalities where I said to her, "I want you to imagine if I had accidentally ordered
2:23:40432 pounds of charcoal at a cost of over $200 and that you were home alone and had to answer
2:23:47the door and look this sweaty delivery guy on a 90 degree day right in the eye and just
2:23:58take ownership of 12 of these 36-pound boxes of charcoal. I want you to imagine how you
2:24:05would have reacted to that." And she admitted that she would not have handled it well. Well,
2:24:13there would have been crosswords. That's quite a thing. Anyway, I hope you like charcoal.
2:24:24Ben Thompson, everybody can follow you online @BenThompson on Twitter. No Tech Ben for your
2:24:31sports commentary, which NBA is picking up, so you don't have to be too depressed over
2:24:35there.
2:24:36I appreciate you not discussing baseball. It was a difficult conclusion to the season,
2:24:41to say the least.
2:24:42It's heartbreaking, to be honest. And of course, Stratechery.com, your daily newsletter
2:24:50with the weekly updates and keen insights into everything going on in the world of tech.
2:24:56I thank you. I always love having you on the show.
2:24:57I love being on the show and I love talking about charcoal.
2:25:01Yeah, find out how much it costs to send a bag to Taipei.
2:25:03Probably $432.
2:25:06- Three socks.
2:25:07(laughing)