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249: ‘Better Than Nothing’ With John Moltz

 

00:00:00   You've been away for a bit. I've been away and Peter and I spent the whole time talking

00:00:04   just about the media event. And Guillermo Rambo at 9to5Mac uncovered 67 things that are going to

00:00:14   be announced at WWDC. We could save that for later, I guess. I should have made notes.

00:00:29   Karen asked me what I was going to be talking about today, and I said, "I don't know."

00:00:31   He usually sends me notes 15 minutes before we start talking.

00:00:35   I don't even have those notes. I actually do have a note, but it has no news in it. It has a bit of

00:00:40   follow-up. I think it was when Paul and I were on. Yeah, I'm doing follow-up, John.

00:00:46   Yeah, do that first, yeah.

00:00:48   Yeah, you got to get that out of the way.

00:00:50   Yeah. Some people just tune in for the follow-up, and then they turn off the episode.

00:00:53   Right. Because then they'll just hear the corrections for the rest of the episode

00:00:57   in a future episode up front.

00:01:00   - Right.

00:01:02   - But I think it was the episode that Paul was on,

00:01:04   Paul Kvassus, a couple of weeks ago,

00:01:06   and we were talking about AirPods 2.

00:01:08   The fact that two years,

00:01:13   if you've been wearing your AirPods regularly

00:01:15   for two years, your battery,

00:01:17   for me, they're not unusable.

00:01:18   It's just noticeably worse.

00:01:20   For Amy, it's a little worse.

00:01:21   Hers, 'cause she uses 'em even more.

00:01:23   She really, I mean,

00:01:26   probably giving herself hearing damage.

00:01:28   Just how often, but she always wear headphones a lot.

00:01:31   - Well, is that or listen to you?

00:01:35   So. - Yeah, exactly.

00:01:36   Yeah, I don't, honestly,

00:01:37   I wonder if she even is listening to anything.

00:01:40   - Karen wears hers a lot, I'll say.

00:01:42   She didn't get them until September,

00:01:47   but they've hardly left her ears since then.

00:01:49   - But we mentioned that this kind of stinks

00:01:52   that the problem with them isn't that they're broken,

00:01:54   it is that the little tiny batteries that power them wear out after two years.

00:01:59   It doesn't that feel like a shame, you know, that it, for want of a battery,

00:02:04   you're throwing out a device and you know, it really,

00:02:06   historically like back in the day when you and I were kids and you know,

00:02:10   through the nineties, you know, battery operated devices had batteries that came

00:02:14   in and out and you know,

00:02:15   the idea that I had to throw out my calculator cause the battery is dead is

00:02:19   silly. But that's, you know, where we are.

00:02:23   But it turns out there is, this is my correction,

00:02:26   a few people wrote in with this, I did not know,

00:02:29   but Jonathan Goulbranson, I believe, was first,

00:02:33   so thanks to him, but everybody who wrote,

00:02:35   a couple people wrote, "Apple has a support page."

00:02:37   I will put it in the notes.

00:02:39   But you can get AirPod service and repair.

00:02:42   - Yeah, but it's kind of expensive, right?

00:02:45   - Right, so battery service is $49 each,

00:02:51   but I believe it's, and then it says out of warranty fee, $69 each,

00:02:55   and then lost is $69 each, uh,

00:02:59   charging case $49 for battery service out of warranty fee 59.

00:03:03   I'm not sure if the out of warranty fee is for battery service or like out of

00:03:07   warranty battery service or what, but anyway,

00:03:10   it is very close to the price of replacing them.

00:03:15   And the fact that the lost the one,

00:03:17   if you lose it or you get the battery replaced, it's not that big a difference,

00:03:21   But it looks like you can get the batteries replaced for 49 each.

00:03:24   So that's a hundred bucks. So you would be saving, you know,

00:03:27   a third of the price of a new set,

00:03:29   almost a third of the price of a new set of AirPods.

00:03:31   Right. I wonder if they,

00:03:32   I can't imagine they're actually replacing the batteries because didn't I fix it,

00:03:37   take those things apart and find that it's mostly glue in there.

00:03:40   Yeah. I thought so too. It doesn't, you know, I figured they're just,

00:03:42   I figured they're just swapping out a pair. Yeah. But are they actually,

00:03:46   but do they re you know, reuse the things? I don't know. Yeah. It seems a little,

00:03:50   you know again it's a little gross to think that they're no matter how well they clean

00:03:53   it you know I mean like a refurbished phone you clean it you touch it that's fine yeah

00:03:59   you know refurbished earpods no I don't want yeah I don't I don't want it I don't care

00:04:03   how thoroughly they clean it mm-hmm so I don't know but there it is you can do it doesn't

00:04:09   really you know and I don't play on you once I got the new ones too well actually I didn't

00:04:14   buy them yet Amy bought hers enjoys them I still have the review ones that Apple sent

00:04:20   me. I have to say I think some of the initial reaction is one of the things I

00:04:24   wanted to talk about some of the initial reaction to AirPods to, to me is getting

00:04:29   Apple all wrong. There's I've seen a couple of YouTube reviews that were sort

00:04:34   of like this is it these look exactly the same and they at work exactly the

00:04:38   same. What how is this new? And my reaction to that is well they didn't

00:04:45   it's not like they got up on stage and had a big show about the new AirPods

00:04:49   they don't even call them air pod to you know, they just

00:04:52   replace the old air pods with new air pods and

00:04:55   In my experience so far they work a lot better and I thought the old ones work really well

00:05:00   So like to me that's Apple at its best. Yeah, I

00:05:03   Mean that I'm not gonna say but the hey dingus thing I think is

00:05:08   Actually made me start using

00:05:10   Siri a lot more

00:05:12   and the latency overall of all of the things that had some degree of latency like

00:05:17   When you first put them in your ear when you hear that that tone that says hey, I got you, you know, I'm in your ear

00:05:24   It seems like that happens much sooner. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah

00:05:29   Yeah, I used to have to Easter I had developed this tick where I would open the case and wait a three-count

00:05:38   Hmm and then pull them out and put them in and I found that always that worked

00:05:42   Well, I gave because occasionally I would open the case put one in quickly put the second one in the second one would

00:05:47   bong and the right one would not be, you know, the first one would not be connected.

00:05:51   Right. And so the way I worked around that was open the case 123, put the first one in and then

00:05:58   the second one, which is kind of dumb, but it worked every time. And now I'm trying to

00:06:03   untrain myself from that, which I'm having more difficulty than I expected because I don't need

00:06:09   to do it anymore because they're they're fast. Yeah, that the hey dingus experience is

00:06:15   exactly as promised. Just say it. Yeah. And it happens and she answers. The first time I did it,

00:06:21   I was shocked because there's no tone. There's no tone. Right. It doesn't, it doesn't, you know,

00:06:26   it doesn't give you that tone that it does on the phone. And I, it just did what I wanted. And I was

00:06:35   like, wow, wow. Was that an accident? Did I miss something? Did, is it, is that the way it's

00:06:40   supposed to work? And that is the way it's supposed to work. The only thing I still have,

00:06:44   I'm still very uncomfortable saying, you know, talking to it in public. Yeah, me too. So like,

00:06:50   I go out for a walk or a run or something like that. And I always look around to make sure

00:06:54   there's nobody around me before I tell it to do something. Right. Like, so, um, I do like an

00:07:02   idiot that I am. I often do a lot of grocery shopping, just like three items at a time,

00:07:06   you know, cause it occurs to me that I would, I would like a ham sandwich and I will just go to,

00:07:11   a nice little market we have a few blocks away where it's good Italian bread and good lunch meat

00:07:16   and pick up like two, three things, you know, listening to podcasts. And then I always take

00:07:21   my AirPods out. I've said this before. I think most people, I think people should consider this.

00:07:25   I like to take them out or at least take one out at the register so that the, you know, don't just

00:07:32   stop your audio, take it out to let them know, hey, I'm not listening. I'm not so inconsiderate

00:07:38   it that I'm listening to music or a podcast while I should be having a little retail exchange here.

00:07:43   But that means every time I leave the store, I've got to put it back in. And I often will want to

00:07:49   give a direction to the dingus, you know, for what I want, what I want to be listening to. And that

00:07:54   like store entrance is always busy. And I can't bring myself to do it like, and every single time

00:08:01   I think I should just get over this. I really should, but I can't.

00:08:06   **Matt Stauffer:** Yeah. And I wonder if that's a generational thing or if that's...

00:08:10   **Trevor

00:08:10   I don't know. I don't. I see tons of people wearing them, you know, more and more every

00:08:15   day. It is clearly one of not just a good product that I like, but also a very successful

00:08:22   product. Like it's gotten to the point, Amy, we were, we were out to dinner with friends

00:08:25   last night and Amy even said at one point at this point, sometimes she sees people with

00:08:28   the wired ones and she's like, what's wrong with you? Especially in winter. Like, and

00:08:34   that's the other thing too. Like we're, it's April now, the weather, we've had a great

00:08:37   month of weather here to put me in a good mood because of it. But having gone through

00:08:43   winter now, I realized that for years, I really stopped listening or largely stopped listening

00:08:47   to podcasts while running errands in the winter because it was such a pain threading a cable.

00:08:54   Where do you put the thing? How do you do it? Wearing a winter coat and listening to

00:08:58   headphones was terrible. Now it's not a problem. But the latency thing is super, super impressive

00:09:05   to me. It just—and again, it wasn't like the old ones had bad latency. They seemingly

00:09:10   had the lowest latency of any wireless headphones I'd ever tried, and I'd tried a few. But

00:09:16   now it is almost—it's gotten to the point where it's uncanny.

00:09:21   Switching devices is also a lot more reliable. Like, if you had them paired with your phone

00:09:26   and now you want to switch to your iPad, that doesn't seem to—sometimes that would just

00:09:30   spin and spin and spin, and it was like you had to do it over again.

00:09:34   Right, right. The only problem I can still have problems, the only device I still have problems

00:09:39   with is the Mac. I find that it'll work if I've recently logged out of the account and back in

00:09:46   again or rebooted. And then I'm not sure what, there's probably some audio thing that I'm doing

00:09:53   that it doesn't like, and then it won't see the AirPods again after that, whatever it is.

00:09:58   Maybe it's podcasting.

00:10:01   there's a couple of utilities. So there's Michael sigh has one

00:10:11   what's his air buddy?

00:10:12   Oh, yeah, I did hear about that. I'm not sure if that fixes that

00:10:16   problem. No, everybody is the one from speaking speaking of

00:10:19   Garum Rambo. I forget what Michael sizes. It's like, I've

00:10:25   got it up here in my menu bar. I forget the name of it. Here. Oh,

00:10:30   Tooth Fairy. So I guess I got to start putting these things in the show notes. So Tooth Fairy

00:10:35   is a menu bar utility from Michael Tsai that I think it makes it better switching it to your Mac,

00:10:42   but I don't think it's great. I think AirBuddy from Guillermo Rambo is much, it's much better.

00:10:48   Have you ever tried it? No, I have not. So when I first read the description, I didn't think it was

00:10:55   going to solve my particular problem, but maybe I was mistaken.

00:10:59   So AirBuddy works, makes it work. It really, I hate to say it, I mean, but it really works

00:11:04   the way I think Apple should have made it work on the Mac where you just open the case

00:11:08   near your Mac and it shows up in a nice little animated window like the little slidey panel

00:11:13   on iOS and shows you the AirPods and has a nice animation. And then there's a little

00:11:19   button that says connect and then you can connect and then connect. And then that makes

00:11:24   me wonder how come on iOS they don't have a connect button. That's like now my biggest

00:11:28   complaint with AirPods is like let's say I have it paired with my phone and I want to

00:11:32   switch to my iPad. Why can't I just open the case near the iPad and hit a connect button?

00:11:39   Why do I have to go to settings and Bluetooth and stuff like that? It seems like it could

00:11:45   be like the technology is all there. They just need the interface to make it easier

00:11:49   to switch between devices. And shouldn't I maybe be able to tell my Siri dingus? Shouldn't

00:11:57   I just be able to say, "Hey, dingus, switch my AirPods to my iPad?" And if I've only

00:12:06   got one iPad, then it should do it. That would be really cool. It seems like something that

00:12:12   they could do.

00:12:13   Yeah. This says he's apparently has not updated everybody yet for AirPods too.

00:12:20   So it doesn't work with AirPods too? Well, I think he did. He's not saying that, but he just

00:12:26   hasn't tested it out yet. Yeah. And there is a preference in the window. It says enable for other

00:12:31   W1 headsets. And AirPods are not a W1 headset anymore. They're the H1. So maybe he's doing

00:12:40   something at such a low level because he's so devilishly clever that it doesn't work. I actually

00:12:46   haven't noticed. I don't really use my AirPods with my Mac very often, so that's one reason why

00:12:52   you know, so I don't know. I don't, I guess I haven't even tried it.

00:12:57   **Matt Stauffer** It's definitely the device I use it with the least. So that's why I still

00:13:01   enjoy the experience so much, but it does every once in a while I do want to use it and it

00:13:06   often stumbles. Yeah, I use it for, of course, for watching baseball games on the iPad.

00:13:13   You're Seattle Mariners. Wow. What an opening to the season they had. You don't care. It's

00:13:19   pretty good. I do know I care, but I've been hurt too many times. So they opened the season with

00:13:25   20 straight games where they hit a home run in every game, which is, I think, broke the

00:13:30   major league record. You would think the Yankees would have that record, but now the Mariners do.

00:13:35   Yeah, I have a lot of stupid ideas about sports teams that are that are based on just the the

00:13:42   branding and attitude of the teams from when I was a child. Like, like I feel that the Miami

00:13:49   Dolphins should always be a team that has a good passing game. But that's just because they had

00:13:54   Dan Marino when I was a kid and but that's just what I think. Right. Right. The Dallas Cowboys

00:13:59   should always have a superstar running back. That's just I just feel like that's the way it

00:14:04   should be. The Seattle Mariners to me should always be a team full of like 300-pound sluggers

00:14:11   who can hit the ball 500 feet. Like they may or may not be good. They're probably not going to win

00:14:17   the World Series, but they are going to hit the hell out of the baseball. That's just to me that

00:14:23   Mariners should always be a very hard slugging baseball team. Yeah. Well, and they have a park

00:14:28   for it too. Right. So, right. I do think it's whatever the hell it's called this year. T-Mobile

00:14:34   Park. Yeah. God. That's the worst. That role is trippingly off the tongue. Oh my God. Did you,

00:14:41   I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't a huge fan of Safeco Field to begin with either, but we got used to

00:14:45   that and now I got to get used to something else. See, that's the thing about super annoying.

00:14:48   That's the thing about selling these naming rights is bad enough, you know, when it just goes to some

00:14:53   crappy bank. But they switch it around and then you forget what they're called like our I don't

00:15:02   I think it's the wells Fargo center now. Yeah, that's our Philadelphia's like hockey and

00:15:07   basketball arena. But it's changed names at least three or four times since it opened. And it's

00:15:16   often not because it's like, because these banks merge, and then the bank who had the naming rights

00:15:22   doesn't even exist anymore. So they have to change it because they spend all their money

00:15:27   on advertising, right? It was and I kid you not. I think it was. I forget what it opened as.

00:15:33   I forget the name of the bank when it first opened, but then they got bought by a bank

00:15:40   called First Union and it was already called the whatever center and I guess they wanted to keep

00:15:45   the center name so that I swear for at least five or six years it was the first union center. If you

00:15:50   see. Like who would do who thinks that's a good name? That's crazy. Can't have a curse

00:15:56   word for the initials. They try they kept trying to call it like the announcers would

00:16:03   kept trying to call it the safe. Like no, that did not that did not catch on. And now

00:16:10   it's you know, and fine because it's now something else. But then you have to use that now I

00:16:14   guess they have to use the like the I haven't been up there since they changed the name,

00:16:16   they have to use the T-Mobile colors, I guess, which is pink, which is, you know,

00:16:22   it doesn't really go well with the, it doesn't go well with anything, particularly in baseball, but

00:16:29   oh man, you know what they call a Comiskey park now where the White Sox play

00:16:34   it's it is called guaranteed rate field. Oh yeah, that's right. I swear to God,

00:16:39   that's the name of the stadium guaranteed rate field.

00:16:42   That's just one of those things where like you're like a White Sox executive. You got

00:16:50   to sell the rates. The guaranteed rate is on line one and they give you the number,

00:16:56   you know, and it's a good number. It's the biggest number you got and you just sit there

00:17:00   at a table and you're looking at guarantee. You're looking at drawings of the sign guaranteed rate

00:17:05   Field. You're imagining the announcers welcoming you to guarantee Great Field 81 dollars a year.

00:17:12   The one thing that we have that is that I absolutely adore and get just like a ridiculous

00:17:17   thrill out of every single time I go by formerly Safeco Field is there's a name renamed a street

00:17:24   Egger Martinez Drive. That's good. And I that is I think that's delightful. Yeah and then see

00:17:33   And that should always be you know at least for a long long time will be Edgar Martinez Drive

00:17:37   He did not pay for those rights guarantee guaranteed rate

00:17:40   Until guaranteed rate buys it up right and then it's just in small parentheses

00:17:48   Start selling off the names to everything and then every street will change every

00:18:00   Confusing no not at all. So anyway, I'm glad you have the new air pods. I'm glad you like them

00:18:04   I'm glad I'm not alone and notice I like I tried talking to Amy about the latency and

00:18:09   Again, she just put him in her years. Yeah, she's like whatever right right?

00:18:13   Shut up nerd

00:18:16   Do you did you get the wireless charging pad?

00:18:19   I did not because I'm still I still do not have a wirelessly charging phone. So I'm still using an SE

00:18:28   And I thought well

00:18:30   I'll kick that can down the road and see

00:18:33   See what happens because I'm not gonna run out and buy a wireless charging pad just for like my earphones

00:18:39   Amy asked me what to buy and I told her to get the wireless one just because it seemed to me like for 30 bucks

00:18:46   Why not just get it, right?

00:18:49   Even though she doesn't have she has a phone that could use a wireless charging pad, but doesn't have one set up anywhere

00:18:55   Like I've got one bedside, but she doesn't want one. She's just got like cables really

00:19:00   Yeah, I got I got Karen a wireless charging pin. She absolutely loves it. I had she probably would like it

00:19:06   So I probably should just buy her one. Yeah, I'm just a very cheap now - yeah, they really are

00:19:11   Well, but now it's like that was part of the thing with airpower. The dream was that you would know which one to buy

00:19:18   Right. Mm-hmm. Although it probably wasn't going to be cheap. It was certainly not going to be cheap

00:19:23   But at least I do particularly when it burned your house down. The idea of it though, it was

00:19:32   so appealing. And in hindsight, now that they've officially canceled it, and it's no longer like

00:19:37   it years for you. For five years, it was, it was a dream. I don't know, it seems like it was a long

00:19:47   time ago. But in hindsight, though, especially now that I have this, not just the watch,

00:19:53   like I had the watch and you know, obviously has to charge inductively because it only

00:19:58   charges that way. And I had a, I have my watch charger over on a dresser apart from my bed

00:20:03   and then I've got a thing there from my phone right next to my bed. And now that I've got

00:20:09   this third thing that can charge that way, it seems like it would be so perfect to just

00:20:14   have one thing right there next to my bed and I could put all three of them on it and

00:20:19   that would be great. Long story short, I just don't, I haven't, other than to try it and

00:20:24   see if it works, I don't really charge it wirelessly. I just do what I did with the

00:20:28   old ones and if it seems like it's low, put it on the lightning and it charges so fast

00:20:33   that by the time I want to listen to something, even if it's 10 minutes later, it's good to

00:20:38   go.

00:20:39   Yeah. She well she the one I gave her is the one that like an anchor that stands up and

00:20:47   and so she has it next to her desk and that is for her. It's awesome because she's working.

00:20:55   She can just tap on it. It'll open up. I looking at her face and then she can do whatever she

00:21:00   wants to do right. I have that one on my desk too or maybe I don't know if it's the same

00:21:03   one but I have an anchor stand up one on my desk and I actually like it better than a

00:21:09   a lay down pad. And not just in terms of the ergonomics of, "Hey, it can actually see

00:21:16   your face and you can use it and you can look at the screen and poke at it," but I never

00:21:20   misplace it on the mat. Whereas the one I have bedside, the old… I still, every once

00:21:27   in a while, wake up in the morning and I've got no charge because I screwed it up.

00:21:32   didn't put it on the pad correctly. Right. Because that was also part of the dream of

00:21:36   airpower was a non finicky. Yeah, non finicky place. Any of the devices anywhere.

00:21:44   But laying those coils on top of each other doesn't work so well.

00:21:52   Well, I just posted right before we started out, you probably didn't read it because I posted

00:21:58   like that's why I postponed our show is I posted a piece on the Galaxy Fold and yeah and I mentioned

00:22:05   the air power you know to compare and contrast the companies we'll get to that okay but uh

00:22:10   I actually posted I used the headline I want to know what you think I should have checked with

00:22:15   you beforehand I actually I used the headline this is my headline know when to fold them yeah

00:22:20   was it worth it for the pun or is that all yeah why not all right I might be the first to make

00:22:27   that fun. I'll say that but it's a it's a it's a solid pun. It's so obvious though, right? That's

00:22:32   the problem. I might be asking the wrong person. All right, let me take a break here. And thank

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00:24:39   the talk show. You get three months free with a one year package. If you follow that URL.

00:24:44   thanks to express VPN. What else? What else have I missed? Well, did you get yourself a Galaxy phone?

00:24:52   No, I did not. I'm surprisingly not on the on the list of reviewers for the for Galaxy devices. I

00:25:00   could probably get it, you know, you probably could. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure I could not now,

00:25:03   but no, no, not now. Friend of the show and and off times guest just Joanna Stern wrote a,

00:25:12   a non review of the Galaxy Fold, just more or less excoriating Samsung for having given reviewers

00:25:20   something that was so clearly unfinished product, just absolutely scathing. It's hard to overstate.

00:25:29   Like I, at some level, I'd like what I tried to write about today is at some level, the whole

00:25:33   thing feels like a joke like haha Samsung, you know, they tried to sell a $2,000 phone that folds

00:25:39   and when you fold it, it breaks after a day or two. At some level, it is kind of funny,

00:25:44   but there is something profoundly wrong happened with that device or in the company with that

00:25:52   device. How did that get out the door? Yeah, well, it seemed like they thought that they

00:26:01   needed to ship one and somebody else's. Was it LG? No, it's a Huawei, I think. Huawei,

00:26:07   which I think makes it worse because it's the up and comer right Huawei is sort of the one of the

00:26:14   you know maybe one of the companies that really is putting Samsung in a bad place in China you know

00:26:19   well not maybe there's no maybe about it let me take that back definitely are yeah right

00:26:23   and so they're they're shipping one that means we have to have one too right we have to be first

00:26:29   yeah you know and I guess I understand the goal of wanting to be first and I totally get like I've

00:26:36   I've been opposed to this device ever since they showed it just based on the,

00:26:41   just the physical aspects of it.

00:26:43   The fact that it's roughly two regular phones thick when folded and doesn't even

00:26:48   fold when you do fold it. If you look at it sideways, you know,

00:26:52   like looking at the spine of a book, it does it,

00:26:55   the two halves don't even meet neatly. They're sort of in a wedge shape. It's,

00:27:00   it's so the folding part of it is so ungainly.

00:27:05   There's a part of me that really is annoyed that that Samsung the company that spent an awful lot of time making fun of

00:27:13   notches in phones

00:27:16   Put an incredibly ugly notch on this phone

00:27:21   Yeah asymmetric

00:27:25   off in the corner

00:27:28   It's a bad design, but I'll just concede though that I

00:27:35   like

00:27:36   Apple style products. I mean this is not that

00:27:40   Might seem like a statement of the obvious given what I do what I write about what I talk about

00:27:44   But there is an Apple

00:27:48   aesthetic and there always has been and it's not even like it's the same aesthetic right like the the

00:27:55   1984 Mac style didn't look like a 1998

00:28:04   Original iMac right totally different in every way, you know use of curves use of rectangles the plastics

00:28:11   All this aluminum and glass stuff they've had for the last 10 to 15 years different

00:28:18   But it I just mean though that it's a company that at a very deep cultural level wants to ship beautiful objects

00:28:23   Right, you know and and there's that offed offed off quoted Steve Jobs line that design so most people think design is

00:28:31   What it looks like it's not design is how it works

00:28:34   Um, but even that said that true design is how it works or the hard part of design is

00:28:43   how it works. Let's face it. Apple and Steve Jobs like to ship objects that look good,

00:28:49   right? There's, it's it. What he really should have said is it's not just what it looks like.

00:28:55   It's also how it works. But you know, he's Steve. He was Steve Jobs. So of course he

00:29:00   wasn't going to wasn't going to put like a caveat. Yeah, no

00:29:04   caveats from Steve Jobs. There's a reason why I'm not as oft

00:29:10   quoted as Steve Jobs. It's all the caveats. That should be my

00:29:18   middle name, my new nickname caveat. That'd be a cool

00:29:21   nickname. caveat. But you know what I mean? Like you just I

00:29:28   I don't know if I'm going to carry a phone around all day.

00:29:31   I want it to be a device that I think looks good.

00:29:34   I care about stuff like that.

00:29:36   - Although I don't think this,

00:29:38   I mean, I think anybody who reasonably looked at this phone

00:29:41   would not come away with the conclusion

00:29:42   that you're gonna use this as your daily phone.

00:29:47   I mean, it seemed like it was a prototype

00:29:49   that was shipped to satisfy--

00:29:53   - Just to say first, right?

00:29:55   Like a comment.

00:29:55   - Yeah, like a comment, right?

00:29:58   - Yeah, and they have a history of shipping wacky features

00:30:03   that aren't well developed in order to do them

00:30:07   and say that they've done it.

00:30:09   And this is another possibly more high profile instance

00:30:14   of that.

00:30:14   - Yeah, so what I'm trying to get to is that maybe

00:30:17   subjectively, I think it's an ugly device

00:30:20   that never should have shipped anywhere close

00:30:22   to looking like this personally.

00:30:24   But I will admit that maybe for Samsung,

00:30:27   that that's fine. That's fine for Samsung and that there are other people with consumers

00:30:33   with tastes very different than mine who are so taken by the novelty of this and maybe

00:30:40   and let's say it in theory it is very useful idea. It's an interesting idea to have a big

00:30:47   screen that can be folded into a smaller screen for pocket ability. You know it in theory

00:30:55   The basic idea of devices that can be smaller and stretched

00:31:00   or folded or whatever else from science fiction rolled up.

00:31:03   There's a reason that all the oft-cited science fiction

00:31:08   sources with foldable tablet type things,

00:31:12   they always look cool, right?

00:31:13   The Westworld tablets look super cool.

00:31:16   And it seems like it would be super useful.

00:31:18   So I can totally see how somebody would be,

00:31:23   Maybe my opinion that it looks ugly doesn't matter

00:31:26   and if they could have made it work exactly as promised,

00:31:30   this would have been fine for Samsung even at $2,000, maybe.

00:31:35   But let's put that aside.

00:31:38   What it actually is is a device that clearly doesn't work.

00:31:42   It is almost mind-boggling that,

00:31:45   it wasn't just one reviewer.

00:31:48   It seemed like most of them.

00:31:51   broke after a day or two like completely broke like how not just and not just the

00:31:55   ones who peeled off the plastic covering that looked like a screen protector that

00:32:02   was actually supposed to be part of the screen I forget whose YouTube video did

00:32:06   it and I I don't know I maybe it was MKB HD but he actually was pointing out that

00:32:13   not only does it look like something you're supposed to peel Samsung itself

00:32:17   ships its other flagship phones with a thing that looks like this that you peel and then he cut to like

00:32:23   His review of like the last thing where he you know was unboxing it and peeling off the thing

00:32:29   Yeah, that's when you when they decided they needed to put that screen on it

00:32:37   It really seems like maybe that was part, you know

00:32:40   Part of the process there where that should have gone up the chain of hey, we might not be ready

00:32:44   this might not be ready. This now might be a good idea. It, it, there must have been people,

00:32:52   engineers, and quality control, there must have been people inside Samsung who knew that this

00:32:59   was going to happen, that these things weren't going to work. And yet the company was full steam

00:33:05   ahead, giving out review units. They had press events that they cancelled yesterday, because

00:33:12   because they were, I guess, in Korea where they were going to have, you know, briefings

00:33:15   and they would until yesterday, they were planning to start selling these things Friday,

00:33:21   this Friday. I mean, I don't know what the actual failure rate is. Like, let's say if

00:33:27   they sent 1000, the first 1000 of them that they made, and they put them into people's

00:33:32   hands, how many of them were going to fail, maybe the reviewers just had it was just bad

00:33:36   luck that so many of them failed. But clearly, though, you're like, if you have enough of

00:33:41   them that fail after a day. I mean, you know, some phones, you can't test something for a year,

00:33:50   right? You can't test it necessarily for that amount of time before deciding whether or not

00:33:55   you can ship it. So you don't know if there's some sort of defect that's going to crop up in a year

00:33:59   after regular use. But you can definitely test it for 24 to 48 hours.

00:34:06   Right? Like how could they not? How could they not have been using it themselves in some number of

00:34:12   them inside the company, even if it doesn't leave, you know, like, you don't leave campus with it,

00:34:16   you come in in the day, but you your your phone once you get to work is a, you know,

00:34:21   a pre production galaxy fold. It had to have somebody had to have known. And there is I really

00:34:29   do mean this. I don't think there's any other way around it. Like, in theory, it could have been a

00:34:36   bad batch that was sent out to reviewers. But if that were the case, and Samsung were confident

00:34:41   that it was just a fluke that this batch that we sent over, all these reviewers got them from the

00:34:47   same batch. If they looked at the numbers and thought, "Hey, that batch was bad," they would

00:34:52   have sent the reviewers ones from a different production batch. I mean, it happens that you

00:34:58   get a review unit that doesn't work for other, even with Apple products.

00:35:03   Yeah, there was a there was an early problem with the watch, right? I yeah, I had a tactic. It was

00:35:08   a taptic engine. Yeah, I had a I had a watch review unit that the taptic engine failed after a day.

00:35:14   And Apple provided me, you know, the same day with a replacement and the replacement didn't fail.

00:35:23   And yeah, you know, I mentioned it in my review. They had they were having problems with one

00:35:28   supplier and they cut the supplier and that was one of the reasons why yeah, it was harder harder

00:35:31   to get a watch early on. Yeah. And I, you know, and they were very, very keen. I mean,

00:35:37   number one, they were embarrassed, you know, and they knew I was gonna mention it, you

00:35:40   know, it's, you know, that there are every any company would be, you know, you don't

00:35:44   want a reviewer to get a thing that fails. But, you know, they didn't try to sandbag

00:35:50   it at all. But they were all very, very keen. I think they were just as keen to get me a

00:35:56   replacement ASAP as they were to get their hands on my one that failed ASAP

00:36:01   mm-hmm yeah like I don't know what the fastest way of getting a broken watch

00:36:07   from Philadelphia back to Cupertino is but that watch took it like I that

00:36:15   express yeah that that thing was I would like I with a briefcase and that's

00:36:19   chained to his wrist yeah that's a perfect example though because there's

00:36:23   one that me personally experienced where I had the first generation Apple Watch, my review

00:36:28   unit, the Taptic Engine literally broke after a day. And it was sort of, it faded away,

00:36:34   right? Like, it was like, at first it didn't seem right. It just seemed like, Hmm, I could

00:36:40   have sworn when I had the hands on time that those the taps were better than this. And

00:36:44   then it seemed to get worse. And then it was like, this is definitely getting worse. And

00:36:48   I got in contact with them before it actually broke. And I was like, I really don't think I'm

00:36:55   nuts. I think that the taptic engine is failing on this unit. And then they were like, "Well,

00:37:00   we'll send a guy down from New York. Will you be home in an hour?" And I was like, "I don't think

00:37:05   you can get here in an hour." Damn if they didn't get here in an hour somehow. It's like a 90-minute

00:37:11   train ride. **Matt Stauffer**

00:37:13   helicopter. Yeah. But in between then in between saying like, I really think I need a different

00:37:19   unit. And when they got here, it was completely dead. And, and, yeah, that happens. I don't this

00:37:27   is obviously not that type of situation. You know, it. This is a device that clearly never,

00:37:32   never should have been launched. I thought it was I said it and I think that it seems so

00:37:41   the human, we're not meant to deal with extraordinary exceptions, right? A perfect

00:37:48   here per firsthand. A week ago, when the news broke that Notre Dame Cathedral was on fire and my

00:37:56   catastrophic fire, I thought, well, that can't happen. Right? No, yeah. I mean, that's why we

00:38:04   all that's why TV is it. TV is such an extraordinary thing, because then you turn on the

00:38:09   TV and you see that it is and it really helps whereas if I had only heard that I would have

00:38:14   thought well that it can be that bad it's probably like a little little fire in the

00:38:17   corner of the attic or something you know you you it doesn't have an attic it did no it did have an

00:38:25   attic and that's actually where the fire started I guess no not anymore it's no longer as an attic

00:38:29   and I believe that there when they rebuild it it'll have a different different attic

00:38:36   I approve that I don't want to go off. We have too many other things to talk about

00:38:39   but I did read some stuff there and there was a bit of

00:38:42   wishful thinking as opposed to

00:38:45   And apparently that's not wasn't unique that there's a lot of old cathedrals that are fire traps

00:38:52   Just because they you know, it's very old. It was what yeah

00:38:57   800 years old, you know

00:39:00   the fire standards weren't quite up to snuff then and they were the church was long resistant to putting

00:39:05   and they had smoke detectors but they were long resistant to putting in like

00:39:09   sprinklers and electrical stuff up there because they thought maybe just putting

00:39:13   the stream the electronic the the wiring might might cause the fire no but there

00:39:21   was some guy so many of the experts in news articles speak in such mealy ways

00:39:27   and then there's somebody I like it when they get somebody who just says it and

00:39:31   there they got some guy who was like an expert on fire safety and he just said

00:39:34   flat out. If it wasn't a cathedral, it would have been condemned, you know, decades ago.

00:39:39   Condemned should tear it down, right? If it was any other type of building, it would have been

00:39:46   condemned. Yeah. Anyway, but I think then when then when those reviews broke last week, when it

00:39:54   wasn't even reviews of people, it was so early on in the process that it was tweets because nobody,

00:39:58   you know, everybody had only had it for a day or two. And, and Gherman's broke. And Gherman's the

00:40:04   one who at least was the first I saw who kind of explained to the whole screen protector thing.

00:40:09   He showed that picture. I loved it. The picture he showed he's like, this is the thing they said I

00:40:16   wasn't supposed to take off. It just looked like a piece of garbage. It didn't look like he took

00:40:21   off a piece of a phone that looked like like a like a wrapper from a sandwich.

00:40:25   Did you see it? It was a question is the galaxy full of the sandwich.

00:40:33   It's more like a hot dog. Well, Joanna Star and put a hot dog in it in our video.

00:40:40   She put a dog in it. Why not? I guess you know. Yeah, you might as well use it for something.

00:40:47   Yeah. No, I think that some people saw those tweets and it was obviously the, you know,

00:40:53   the little hubbub of the day because it seemed extraordinary. You know, any one of them, it would

00:40:57   have been interesting. Like, hey, here's the guy who got a bum review unit of this foldable phone,

00:41:02   but it was a bunch of them. I wrote and I wasn't being hyperbolic. I was like, this thing is not

00:41:10   going to ship. And I think that some people took that as me sort of exaggerating, like I said,

00:41:16   being hyperbolic, but I meant it. I just think it was it's so hard to fathom that a company of

00:41:21   Samsung size and it would would ship a high profile device that never should have shipped.

00:41:27   Yeah, but it seemed very clear at that point that that's exactly what had happened.

00:41:31   Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it seems like this technology will be there someday, but it's,

00:41:38   well, guys, we'll see what the what the Huawei one is like. But it seemed that one seemed a little

00:41:44   bit better looking. It definitely seemed better looking. I, in theory, I like the idea of one that

00:41:51   folds outwards so that there's part of what I find distasteful about the greatly distasteful

00:41:58   about the design of the galaxy fold is that there's the main screen inside that you open it

00:42:05   up and you've got this sort of squarish screen. But then when you fold it, because it folds inside,

00:42:09   There's an another screen on the outside is a crappy smaller screen, right?

00:42:14   crappier screen bad specs, yeah, it huge, huge puzzles, like the biggest vessels on any

00:42:20   phone in the iPhone era. Because it's obviously meant to be secondary.

00:42:26   I just find it distasteful. Yeah, it's just, you know, whereas only having one screen.

00:42:32   And when folded, it's phone size and when unfolded, it's tablet size seems better.

00:42:38   But on the other hand, design wise, it seems very dangerous to have the screen on the outside of

00:42:49   both sides. And therefore, you can't put it in a case. I'm not really a case person. I've started

00:42:56   taking cases with me when I travel and we go on vacation. And when I'm using my phone more as a

00:43:01   camera than a phone, because it's like, I actually really enjoy having a case that gives it a bit

00:43:08   more grip. Yeah, yeah, it seems like it often when you're holding it in the camera style,

00:43:13   you're holding it on the edges with your fingertips. Yeah. And then you have to push the

00:43:17   screen or I mean, you can hit the button, but you can usually push the screen in order. And I'm

00:43:22   always afraid I'm gonna pop it out of my hand. Yeah, I like that. I like it using a case for

00:43:27   that. But you know, without going on a whole tangent about why everybody puts their phones

00:43:30   and screens, everybody puts their phones and screens effectively, you know, for some reasonable

00:43:35   value of something close to everybody. Everybody puts their phones, whether they're Android

00:43:40   phones or iPhones, they put them in cases. So I don't see how that Huawei design is.

00:43:47   I get the novelty of it and why people would look at it. And if it works, if it actually

00:43:52   works and doesn't break, people would say, wow, that's cool. But I feel like at a fundamental

00:43:57   level I don't know that that'll ever be popular. So I kind of get why Samsung put the fold

00:44:02   inside.

00:44:03   can't i mean you really can't put that phone the huawei one in a case at all right because

00:44:06   i don't see how i don't see how you covering up the screen and then when you go to unfold it to

00:44:11   use the the feature with that you paid two thousand dollars for you'd have to fumble

00:44:14   with some sort of cover to get it off right you could use it yeah and however bad the crease is

00:44:19   however noticeable the crease is when it's open if you have like a clear case over the

00:44:25   the one half of it that i think you're not gonna be able to touch on that side

00:44:31   And I mean, you can't use it with a case. So I don't see how I'm not sure how practical that is

00:44:36   in the real world. The whole thing just both even both even admitting that the wall one does look

00:44:42   better. It doesn't seem practical and doesn't seem like something real people would actually

00:44:47   buy in large numbers. It all just seems like, hey, we've got these screens that can fold in a cool

00:44:53   way. Here's the like, let's use them. Let's really let's make a phone that you can fold. Let's make a

00:44:59   a screen you can fold in half. Again, sounds cool, but does it make for a good product?

00:45:06   I think the answer is probably not. But I still think the meta story of how in the world

00:45:12   in what was the story like inside Samsung where this either wasn't noticed at any

00:45:20   level which seems impossible. I mean, but if that's the case, that's dreadful that

00:45:26   that they did nobody use they built this and nobody used it. Or I think more likely that

00:45:32   there was serious concerns raised if not, if not outright protestations that hey, this

00:45:41   shouldn't be built or shipped from engineering and quality control. And maybe at the production

00:45:49   level like maybe their pre production prototypes didn't fail this way. But then once they went

00:45:55   into actual production. The ones coming off the line obviously didn't like I'm pretty

00:46:00   sure that's what happened with airpower. By the way, you remember the stories there were

00:46:05   a couple of stories in January that the airpower had entered production. And then we all thought,

00:46:11   hey, we're going to get these things right that they've entered production. I don't have

00:46:15   any sources who confirm this. I've heard talked to several people who worked on airpower early

00:46:21   on not recently, but I actually think it probably did enter production. Like I think the long

00:46:28   story short of AirPower was that they had an idea. They thought they would ship it.

00:46:33   I think that those reports, by the way, there are other reports that there was a company

00:46:38   Apple acquired after they announced it. That was the company that they were relying on

00:46:43   for the technology. I think that's true that they acquired that company then, but they

00:46:47   They already had people working on AirPower before that.

00:46:51   They didn't, they did not get up there.

00:46:53   (laughs)

00:46:54   - And then now it's a product and then say,

00:46:56   okay, now we gotta go buy something to make this.

00:46:58   - Yeah.

00:46:59   But they did hit, effectively hit a reset button

00:47:03   and do like a redesign months and months

00:47:06   after they announced it and let's start over.

00:47:09   - And they went with Qi after,

00:47:12   because originally it wasn't Qi, right?

00:47:14   - No, it was always Qi.

00:47:16   No, if I should rewatch that whole thing, it was always Qi compatible,

00:47:21   but it was more than Qi.

00:47:23   So you would have been able right with the Phil Schiller's demonstrated model

00:47:28   onstage at that iPhone event. It, they said it's Qi compatible.

00:47:34   So any Qi device that you would have put on it would, would have charged.

00:47:37   It's just that they were adding more than Qi so that they could have the bigger

00:47:42   sweet spots and support the watch, which doesn't and still doesn't support Chi.

00:47:48   Whatever the watch does is Apple watch unique. You know,

00:47:52   it may be very similar to Chi, but it's not Chi. There isn't a,

00:47:55   to my knowledge, there's no cheap pad.

00:47:58   You can put an Apple watch on and have a charge and nor could you.

00:48:01   And I think that they got far enough along that they thought

00:48:06   maybe, you know, maybe this'll work. And then it went into production.

00:48:12   Like I think they got a design that they thought they could,

00:48:13   that might work and then it got into real production. And at that point,

00:48:18   it, it, you know, either didn't work or was unfeasible. Like this is,

00:48:22   there's too many of these that are failing. It's too expensive, you know,

00:48:26   at, you know, it, it, it's a screwed up story. It's embarrassing for Apple,

00:48:34   but at some level the system worked right.

00:48:36   They didn't ship charging pads that caught fire or got hot or broke after a

00:48:40   day. You know, they made a they made a optimistic a wishful thinking era by announcing it before

00:48:48   it was ready as on the assumption that they they knew that they had technical hurdles

00:48:52   left to solve, but they figured out what raffle will figure it out. Yeah. And never actually

00:48:58   shipped it like something really screwed up happened within Samsung that the whatever,

00:49:03   you know, like I said, there had to be there had to be people in Samsung who knew that

00:49:06   this wasn't going to work. And yet, either they passed it up the chain and it was ignored

00:49:13   by executives at a high enough level to make the decision that we, nah, we still want to

00:49:19   be first. Or maybe their culture is such that people were afraid to pass it up the chain.

00:49:25   You know, you know, the chairman of Samsung was the one who unveiled it, you know, maybe

00:49:29   nobody wants to tell him, you know, you stood up and, and unveiled a phone that we shouldn't

00:49:35   It seems like a company like an organization. I don't know. I mean, I that's possible, I guess,

00:49:40   but it seems like that would be something that would be a problem constantly.

00:49:44   I don't know, but it is.

00:49:47   Even more than the two notable instances of the last, whatever it was, four years,

00:49:52   three or four years. But.

00:49:54   Well, it is the company.

00:49:57   Maybe they just scramble around so much in the background to make it work that it does,

00:50:02   they do get away with that.

00:50:04   It is the company that shipped the Note 7 which exploded and had to be recalled in a multi-billion

00:50:11   dollar recall. I mean, you know, an exploding phone is obviously a far bigger problem than a

00:50:17   phone that just doesn't work. And shipped to lots of customers. Oh yeah, it was huge. It was, you

00:50:24   know, it was tons of them. And they kind of, I was just reading about it to refresh my memory. They

00:50:32   They kind of bungled it to where they were late to really just give throw in the towel and just recall them all they were saying

00:50:37   We've got a new supplier for batteries

00:50:39   So if you you know your serial number is in this

00:50:43   You know right big range send it back to us and we'll put a good battery in and then they figured out the good batteries

00:50:48   The whole thing wasn't really the batteries. It was just just a design. Yeah, I

00:50:53   Don't know I wouldn't want that job like I

00:51:00   I would I I wouldn't want I wouldn't I wouldn't want could you imagine being like an engineer at Apple at the level of

00:51:07   where if you make a mistake your work is such like you're you're

00:51:12   You're designing the connection between the lithium-ion battery and the rest of the phone and if you really screw up

00:51:18   iPhones might catch on fire if I'm designing that connection. There's already something wrong with you. Yeah

00:51:29   - Yeah, but some people have those jobs and I salute them.

00:51:34   But the stakes are high, right?

00:51:37   I mean, it's not just at the personal level of feeling bad

00:51:40   if somebody's leg catches fire or they get burned, but...

00:51:43   Right?

00:51:45   I mean, I'd feel terrible if a bug in my software

00:51:49   caused somebody's leg to get a burn.

00:51:51   But just in terms of also the importance to the company.

00:51:58   I don't know. It's a really, it's fascinating.

00:52:01   Like I would just love to know how far up the chain

00:52:04   this got and where, I'd love to see the meeting

00:52:09   where it was decided we're gonna send these out

00:52:12   to reviewers and ship it on Friday anyway.

00:52:14   - Yeah.

00:52:15   - Mind boggling.

00:52:16   All right, I guess I should take a break.

00:52:18   That seems like a natural break.

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00:54:21   to support this podcast. All right, what about all these rumors? Man, I guess we got to get

00:54:26   to that. Holy smokes. And talk about another one where I think the meta story behind it

00:54:32   is fascinating. Yeah, I don't know it. But man, who, who and how these things leaked

00:54:40   all to one person, Garram Rambo, who writes at a nine to five Mac.

00:54:44   Like it's not like a whole bunch of stuff leaked to a whole bunch of people or

00:54:50   a couple of people. Cause that never happens with Apple. Apple leaks, you know,

00:54:54   I, it's hard to remember a time when there were lots of leaks to lots of

00:54:58   sources. For whatever reason,

00:55:02   they keep a close enough lid, but like you can never,

00:55:05   they can never seem to keep it completely sealed.

00:55:07   and there's always like one or two people out there

00:55:10   who are getting leaks.

00:55:12   Last couple of years would be Mark Gurman.

00:55:16   Now though Guillermo Rambo, wow.

00:55:19   I don't even know where to start.

00:55:22   (laughs)

00:55:24   - Well, it seems like he picked apart iOS 13

00:55:29   and Mac OS 10.15, right?

00:55:32   I mean-- - Right, yeah.

00:55:34   So it's iOS 13, most of the leaks,

00:55:35   It does seem, some of the clues, it's not all,

00:55:39   there's no hardware, right?

00:55:41   - Yeah.

00:55:42   Yeah, it's just, it's both those operating systems.

00:55:45   - So it's all software

00:55:47   and maybe a little on the services side.

00:55:50   I don't think he has his hands

00:55:55   on either of those pieces of software.

00:55:59   - Okay.

00:56:00   - And it doesn't have screenshots.

00:56:03   - 'Cause it's like some people are wondering

00:56:03   managed to get a copy I we had I wondered yeah I still don't know it's

00:56:09   and he's obviously protecting his source of course because of you yeah he

00:56:18   weren't that source would dry up very quickly we were sources it may be

00:56:22   sources like one of the things that's extraordinary about it is that he knows

00:56:26   he's revealed a whole bunch of items across iOS 13 and

00:56:30   Mac OS

00:56:33   10.15 got it. That's sick getting so it's really hard to say that. Yeah

00:56:36   it is I really wish that they would just say drop the ten just

00:56:41   And

00:56:47   Again, I knew this was going to happen by the way just as an aside when they switched to

00:56:52   Naming the Mac OS versions. I knew that I would soon start forgetting which ones which right?

00:57:00   Yeah

00:57:02   You know and what they've always had the nicknames for him, you know, like

00:57:05   For some reason I remember that 10.4 was Tiger

00:57:09   Or was it line? Actually now I don't yeah

00:57:12   There was cheetah and panther and

00:57:19   And cheetah was a real lie because cheetah is of course the fastest animal on the planet and it was Mac OS 10 was

00:57:26   dreadfully slow at the time

00:57:28   Just I'm painfully painfully slow at the time. It was easier for me. It was easier. Remember the cats just because

00:57:35   Everybody knows the cats. I mean a lot of the I'd like I've never been to these places

00:57:39   So it's harder for me to picture in my mind. Oh that version is

00:57:47   This place in California. I can all you know numbers they go in order and then you can sit there

00:57:53   You can figure out and and once you know the numbers you can sort of count backwards on your hand and go back to the year

00:57:59   You know, you can you know do a little subtraction there and you can get a year like at this point

00:58:03   I'm there's like was there was I know the new one is Mojave and all my Macs are now on Mojave

00:58:09   So I know that name but like what was Sierra was there a Sierra and then there was a high Sierra Sierra and then high Sierra

00:58:15   sure

00:58:17   But I can't remember if it went see

00:58:20   Cap there was el capitan. Yeah

00:58:28   But and I think that was after Yosemite. I think I've got I guess I'm gay

00:58:32   I guess it's all come about there was Yosemite and then el cap is the mountain in Yosemite. And so they use that

00:58:39   Okay. So here we go. Okay. Yeah

00:58:41   Mavericks Yosemite el capitan Sierra. Hi Sierra, Mojave

00:58:46   See Mavericks forgot that completely totally forgot that one

00:58:49   well anyway

00:58:52   The the breadth of the leaks that Garram Rambo has is extraordinary. I don't think I could be wrong

00:58:59   I but from what I understand I have friends at Apple it

00:59:03   I don't think there are many people at Apple who know about all of the things that he leaked

00:59:11   it's there's a you know famously compartmentalized company that one of the ways that they keep things under wraps is that

00:59:18   Teams don't talk to other teams about what they're doing unless they're working together

00:59:23   You know if they need to talk about it, but you don't it's not like everybody who goes and works people might be you know

00:59:30   Going and working on important new tentpole features of iOS

00:59:37   2013 or features to specifically support the new iPhones coming out in 2019, you know

00:59:43   Big important stuff for the company that gets the attention at the very highest executive levels. They don't know

00:59:51   Like all the features that are going on in the Mac

00:59:54   For the same year. It's just not how the company works

00:59:58   Like I really just don't think there are many people who have access to this the breadth of information that he published

01:00:06   Yeah. And these are, these are kind of all over the place. I mean, it's all software basically,

01:00:13   but it's, um, some of the people, some of the people who do know all of these things

01:00:19   are people like that, the highest levels of Phil Schiller's group and Craig Fetter, his group,

01:00:25   right? I don't think like Craig, right. Hand, you know, top executive, you know, managers underneath

01:00:35   him are leaking these things to 9to5Mac. And I would guess that those people like Frank Federighi

01:00:44   and Phil Schiller are angry about how these things leaked. Right. They would probably,

01:00:51   well, yeah, I mean, so if it's one person, they would know the person.

01:00:58   I guess it was two years ago, I think, when I asked Phil Schiller on stage at WWDC,

01:01:05   which I guess I should talk about, is my live show at WWDC. Are you coming, by the way? I might need

01:01:10   you. Well, you let me know if you need me. That will determine whether or not I'm coming.

01:01:16   It was two years ago, all right, Federighi and Phil Schiller were on together, and I asked

01:01:23   something about the leaks and that this really bothers you guys and Phil really got emotional

01:01:30   and he's very cool in that show. He's very laid back, but when he starts talking about leaks,

01:01:37   he can't help himself. He gets very angry and I really think he means it. I really think he

01:01:43   means it that one of the big reasons that he gets upset is that he thinks about all of the

01:01:48   individual teams who have been working sometimes for multiple years on something, kept it under

01:01:55   wraps, and we're looking forward to having the world learn about their work in just the right

01:02:01   way, the way that Apple wants to unveil it on stage in an event with the explanation of what it is,

01:02:09   why they're doing it, how it works, what it looks like done in the way that Apple thinks

01:02:16   gives the biggest pop and the most puts it in the most accurate light and then to have that spoiled

01:02:21   you know it just makes him angry because he you know he's he i i really believe that i really

01:02:27   believe that you know um i've seen it always happens it always happens when there's a big

01:02:35   leak thing like this where somebody i've seen it on twitter where there's people who think i think

01:02:40   Apple did this on purpose to get people excited about WWDC. There's no way all of this would

01:02:45   leak if they didn't want it to. And all I can say is, I mean, I can't disprove that, but no,

01:02:54   that is definitely not the case. Apple did not deliberately leak this.

01:02:59   **Matt Stauffer** When have they needed to do that?

01:03:02   **TK; Right. Well, I think that people underestimate how important Apple considers it

01:03:09   to announce things in the precise way that they want to and to explain them, you know,

01:03:15   that they really, they put more work into the keynotes than I think a lot of people like

01:03:23   a hundred times, maybe more work into the keynotes than people think that they,

01:03:29   some people think that they do like, they are very, very interested in, and they think it's

01:03:34   it's important to announce things in a way that people understand them correctly. Whereas

01:03:40   this is not really that this again is good work and he knows it. And I do think I mean

01:03:47   part of what makes it curious is so Mark Gurman let's compare Rambo and and Gurman. Gurman

01:03:52   obviously has had a lot of good sources at Apple over the years and has gotten leaks

01:03:57   of information but he's not technical. He's not a programmer. He's you know just a reporter

01:04:03   who cultivates human sources. Like, Gurman, to my knowledge, has never done anything like

01:04:10   discover a URL that's public that shouldn't have been public, which is one of the things that Rambo

01:04:16   and Stephen Trout and Smith, who they work together on some of this stuff, and Stephen

01:04:21   Trout and Smith got credit at the bottom of a couple of these 9to5Mac articles for helping

01:04:27   Rambo which makes me think that there is

01:04:30   It could be yeah that they have access to software

01:04:33   they're both extraordinarily clever and they're both really really talented at the to me black magic of

01:04:41   Getting these, you know, you could give me the the iOS 13

01:04:47   Download and I I wouldn't know what to do with I would compute. I have a computer science degree

01:04:53   I mean, I'm not an idiot

01:04:55   I'm not an idiot, but I don't know how I would get in there and figure out that hey, there's a new drawing recognition

01:05:01   Recognition thing that you'd fire you'd fire up res edit

01:05:05   Exactly if I could fire up res edit, maybe I could figure something out

01:05:10   No, I if I had to do it I would I would I would get in contact with Steven

01:05:15   So, I guess I do

01:05:22   That's the only way

01:05:24   All right

01:05:26   But I think it could also be though and I don't want to pry I know Stephen

01:05:34   I don't really I don't know that I've ever been in contact with Rambo, but I know Stephen trout and Smith

01:05:38   and

01:05:41   You know, we've I messaged about this a bit

01:05:44   You know

01:05:46   More or less he just a couple of these popped and he just sent me a text message just to show

01:05:51   you know, send me the URL so I'd see it early and I'm not going to pry because he's not

01:05:56   they're not going to tell me anyway. I don't want to pry. Yeah. And I don't, I don't like asking

01:06:00   questions. I know that can't be answered. But I have admitted that I'm curious what the hell is

01:06:06   going on. Yeah. One of the other ideas that I, you know, was that maybe the source is like a build

01:06:13   engineer at Apple, somebody who works on the part of the operating system where it's

01:06:21   like you take all of this various work and actually put it together into an iOS 13 beta

01:06:30   that can be installed on phones, right? When you really think about how big these operating

01:06:34   systems are is—it seems like devilishly complicated work to actually turn dozens of

01:06:43   different projects from wireless networking to screen recognition to pencil support to

01:06:50   new APIs for AR and put them all into a single downloadable bundle that will properly install

01:07:01   itself on iPhones. Somebody who works in that area maybe would be the sort of person, like one person

01:07:09   might have access to an awful lot of information across the operating systems. I don't know.

01:07:15   Are there any of these things that they've revealed that you found particularly interesting?

01:07:22   I mean, not any more than any other ones, I wouldn't say, but

01:07:27   Like you said, it's kind of a hodgepodge.

01:07:30   I mean, there's Siri stuff, there's Marzipan improvements,

01:07:32   there's augmented reality stuff, and then--

01:07:35   - At the highest level, some of what they've revealed

01:07:40   is stuff that we've all known from other rumors for a while,

01:07:42   which is primarily that the iPad is getting,

01:07:46   or should be getting, at least,

01:07:48   some significant updates to make it,

01:07:52   just to make productivity better on it.

01:07:56   some system level interface improvements

01:07:59   to make side-by-side apps better,

01:08:03   multiple windows, and I'm not sure.

01:08:07   Windows seems like the wrong word,

01:08:08   'cause a window to me is specifically a rectangle,

01:08:12   well, it doesn't have to be a rectangle, I guess,

01:08:13   if we go back to those music player days, right,

01:08:18   with Audion and Sound Jam.

01:08:21   We had a lot of windows that weren't rectangles,

01:08:24   But it's a floating rectangle that you can drag around the screen and stack them in an overlapping fashion and

01:08:31   Possibly resize them. Yeah, I mean like the video explain window, right? Yeah

01:08:38   Yeah, so like the video player the heads-up display is a window but most of what like like in Safari those tabs aren't windows

01:08:48   So I'm not quite sure and it doesn't seem clear from this leak whether they're windows like windows still seems wrong on the iPad

01:08:55   it seems like they should all be like tiled and

01:08:57   in fixed rectangular full height space

01:09:01   But anyway some kind of way though that system-wide

01:09:04   You know apps will be able to have multiple things open at once. So you'll be able to have I

01:09:10   Presume for example two emails open at once that you're writing like that's it is the thing

01:09:18   I'm you know, I don't want to go on a whole Mac versus iPad ramp

01:09:22   But there's an awful lot of times where I have two half-written emails open on my Mac more than two two, unfortunately

01:09:30   It's weird to me that something that some people can use like I'm not sure how people some people do it

01:09:39   Like if your iPad journey device and I know that there's drafts

01:09:43   But and you can do the thing in mail where you can flick it down to the bottom

01:09:47   But none of it seems as elegant to me is just having a couple of emails open at once. Yeah, right. Yeah

01:09:52   Anyway, it seems like some thinking along those lines has been which was rumored for last year and seemingly, you know, according to rumors

01:10:01   Which I believe was punted for not being ready

01:10:05   So that stuff is coming

01:10:08   The marzipan stuff the one that I've forgotten about was there's also the the watch authentication

01:10:16   Yeah, what's different with that see I've lost I've forgotten half of these things. Well, it's just it's about using the watch

01:10:24   In order to do more stuff. Oh, right things

01:10:30   Right, right

01:10:32   right right that that your Mac will be able to trust your watch for more things and you'll be able to use it for things that

01:10:37   that the

01:10:39   the modern Mac books that have the

01:10:41   Touch ID sensor and can use the touch ID sensor for you'll just be able to use your watch instead. Yeah

01:10:46   - Yeah, which I think can be useful

01:10:49   'cause I often use my Macbook Pro

01:10:51   when it's closed and connected to a monitor.

01:10:56   And that's always annoying

01:10:57   when I can't do that touch ID thing to use passwords.

01:11:01   - I love the feature that you can unlock your Mac,

01:11:04   just open your MacBook and use the watch to open it.

01:11:07   - Are you wearing your watch now?

01:11:09   - I am wearing it right now as we speak.

01:11:12   I don't wear it every day.

01:11:14   In fact, I didn't wear it yesterday.

01:11:16   I have other watches I like to wear I wore a different watch yesterday and then I put my Apple watch on this morning and

01:11:21   It said you didn't move much yesterday John

01:11:24   You can do it today

01:11:26   And I should have taken a screenshot of it was like according to my watch my watch as far as my watch knows

01:11:34   I didn't move at all yesterday. I might have been dead. So because I didn't I didn't touch my watch

01:11:40   Yes, it does some of the move stuff with the phone, right?

01:11:42   I mean, so you'd think that the watch would ask the phone if you move. I don't know. Yeah, it's I guess they're not talking to each

01:11:49   Other I don't know. I don't know but yeah, it sounds like they're gonna do more

01:11:54   The other any other thing I can think of that you can do on the watch on your Mac now is Apple pay

01:11:58   You can definitely confirm Apple pay on a lot. Yeah

01:12:00   But that would be cool to have more stuff do that

01:12:03   especially if third parties can

01:12:06   Can hook into it then if you have like an a password protected app

01:12:10   You might be able to as an option say hey if you you know authenticate with Apple watch instead of having to enter a password

01:12:16   Yeah

01:12:17   That would be cool

01:12:19   The marzipan stuff is obviously a big part of it. That was one of the first leaks they had where there's gonna be

01:12:26   And I think I do think they structured him. Well, like I think they started with the biggest story which was this

01:12:32   That there's gonna be separate music podcasts and TV apps on the Mac

01:12:38   back. Which we assume will be the Mars Pan versions of the apps that are coming from

01:12:47   BIOS. And I believe they suggest that they are, and a new books app, a replacement for

01:12:51   the books app with, that'll probably also be Mars Pan. And yeah, I guess we should definitely

01:13:00   talk about that. I feel like this, the long awaited breakup of iTunes needs to be talked

01:13:06   I thought the ATP guys I thought they had a really good segment on it that I won't repeat

01:13:10   I but there was a recent episode of ATP

01:13:12   Where Marco was a bit pessimistic about this like we might be you know

01:13:19   We've we've all been frustrated for years that iTunes has gotten a bit cluttered and it takes on more stuff

01:13:24   You know and it used to be an app that it the funny thing that maybe the tragic part is it was beloved when it?

01:13:30   Came out. Oh, yeah

01:13:31   Right when iTunes came out man people loved it because everybody had just been managing their

01:13:37   Not everybody because I know there was sound jam which was actually the roots of iTunes and and panic had their audio on app

01:13:44   But you had to be like an indie Mac fan nerd to even heard of either of those apps at this point like normal people

01:13:50   If they had mp3 files, they just had him like in a folder on their desktop, right?

01:13:58   Like just throw them all in here

01:14:00   Just pop a CD in your Mac and hit one button and it'll all be organized and they're all be named right, right like

01:14:06   We didn't back when we were pirating all these songs that the file names are

01:14:11   001 right the artist empty string

01:14:15   You know

01:14:18   You know, you just you know, you know, which song was what?

01:14:21   Beatle songs and it was on your Rio and just right

01:14:26   Beatles songs with like a release date of 1999 because that was like the CD it was really

01:14:31   You know, I probably saw those

01:14:34   But it was a mess and iTunes came out and it was glorious and it was Apple at its best

01:14:41   and and the the the eye of Sauron Steve Jobs himself obviously was passionate about this app and

01:14:48   when he said he loves music everybody knew it was true and that this app was

01:14:55   meant to be the music playing app that Steve Jobs would not just use but want to use and

01:15:01   even some of the stuff that was extraneous like the

01:15:04   Screensavers, what did they call those the oh, yeah, they're still in there. Yeah, they're still in there. Everything's still in there

01:15:11   But it just seemed cool because then you if you were setting up your Mac to play music it wouldn't just look like a dumb

01:15:18   List of songs it you'd have as great visualizer doesn't that what they call it? Yes. Yes

01:15:24   Yeah, it makes your Mac look like a cool thing. Yeah, you're pumping music for your party or whatever, right?

01:15:28   People loved it and then it grew over time and you

01:15:33   know took on all this

01:15:35   responsibility where

01:15:38   The the iPhone

01:15:40   Took off. Yeah is when it really went poorly

01:15:45   you know went right far because now it had to handle the apps and

01:15:49   that whole process was and then I'd handle backing up the phone and doing all that and

01:15:54   Then it became ridiculously cumbersome

01:15:58   Just small amounts of accumulation of technical debt that made sense every step of the way

01:16:04   But eventually you're so many steps into it where it's like wow, how did we get here?

01:16:09   It was like well, of course iTunes was used to manage your iPod

01:16:12   That was almost probably half the reason they made the thing and it was great

01:16:17   It was like you just plug your iPod in and you get all your same playlists and all your music

01:16:21   It just all if you just ripped a CD you didn't have to do anything

01:16:24   You just plug your iPod in and then all that new music was now on your iPod

01:16:28   And then when they made the iPhone they were like, well, we need some kind of data port

01:16:34   Well, we've already got the 30-pin connector from the iPod

01:16:37   why don't we use the same port and then we could use the same cables and

01:16:40   Once you have that it's like well then how are we gonna get software updates and stuff like that?

01:16:45   Or how are we gonna get your music onto your iPhone?

01:16:48   Well, we'll have why don't we just have iTunes treat the iPhone as like an iPod, you know

01:16:55   And it all made sense and then all of a sudden, you know, there's there's an app store

01:17:01   In iTunes

01:17:04   Like that was weird right like it in hindsight. It is very very strange that the if you

01:17:13   would think of the way you felt about iTunes when it first came out in

01:17:16   2000 or 2001 whenever that was and then think about the fact that it eventually was filled up with dozens of mobile games. Yeah

01:17:24   And we have at least you know gotten to the point

01:17:27   I think we've got to the point where we don't do all that other man at the iPhone management stuff is not done

01:17:33   In iTunes anybody most people do you I don't even you do backups in it

01:17:38   No, I know I just do it for a long time

01:17:40   I did for a long time, but then I you know

01:17:42   I bit the ball and bought more iCloud storage and we just use iCloud and it's a lot easier

01:17:46   Well, and I also find that that Apple has quietly, you know, you know

01:17:52   I sometimes hate to misuse it quietly, but without much acclaim has made

01:17:57   iTunes or iCloud restore

01:18:00   Really really good

01:18:02   Yeah

01:18:02   Like it it comes in at about as fast as I could reasonably hope that it would over Wi-Fi

01:18:08   Yeah, and and it's gotten to me a lot. It's become more determinate like in the early years of it

01:18:15   It just seemed like

01:18:17   Indeterminate like well wait, I don't have any photos yet, and I don't see anything spinning

01:18:22   Hmm just wait and then I come back and I've got

01:18:27   323 photos and it's like well, I've got a lot more than 323 photos. I've got thousands of phone

01:18:34   Let me go look on my old iPhone. How many photos do I have? I have 19,000 photos

01:18:38   photos. And then eventually it would have a thousand photos. And then a day or two later

01:18:45   they'd all be there. But just show me a spinner and say you're working on it. You don't have

01:18:51   to update each number. You don't have to go 13,233, 13,234. Just show me that something's

01:18:58   going on. And I think they've gotten a lot better at that in my experience. And I tend

01:19:02   to use it a lot because I get all these review phones and I just do them all over the iCloud

01:19:07   restore or set them up as new or something like that. Yeah, because the other thing too

01:19:13   is that the using iTunes for it was always a little confusing. Like that was one of those

01:19:17   areas where I don't think they really got the interface right. Because it was like,

01:19:23   if you didn't encrypt your backups, they didn't include pass an awful lot of important stuff,

01:19:29   passwords, especially thing, I think, but, right. Which makes sense. But then maybe it

01:19:35   have been encrypted from by default instead of unencrypted by default. Yeah, I think it

01:19:39   should have been. And I think that they didn't want to encrypt it by default because it was

01:19:43   serious encryption and they didn't want to deal with all the people who forget their

01:19:46   passwords and then literally have to say to them there's nothing we can do. I guess that's

01:19:54   the thought process. But in addition to I think maybe discouraging more people from

01:19:59   doing what they should have been doing, I just think the whole explanation of it in

01:20:03   the interface was never quite clear. It was never clear that if you did encrypt it, you

01:20:10   would have a much better experience so long as you remembered it. It made it seem as though

01:20:16   it was just about like, hey, if you're spooked about having your backup unencrypted on your

01:20:20   hard drive because somebody might poke around in it, then encrypt it. I don't think they

01:20:25   made it clear at all that if you encrypt it, it'll also include a lot more of your stuff.

01:20:30   definitely not. So anyway, are you excited? What do you think?

01:20:35   So Marco's take? I don't want to? Well, so yeah, the idea,

01:20:39   right is that we'll get these, these apps will be ported over

01:20:42   from iOS to the Mac. And iTunes isn't going to go away really,

01:20:47   at least not to begin with, because it does a whole bunch of

01:20:50   other things that are not included in those apps,

01:20:52   obviously. But you won't have to deal with it if you don't want

01:20:57   to on a regular basis. So that seems like a big improvement. It may not be exactly, you know,

01:21:05   I think we would probably think, I mean, who knows? It depends on how well the apps are ported over.

01:21:13   As long as they're Mac feeling, that'll go a long way towards making that process

01:21:19   less painful but if it's like what was done you know with news and stocks and whatever it where

01:21:28   it's just like it slapped it's and now it's in a window and you can run it on the mac which i don't

01:21:34   think it will be but i guess the concern and the atp concern is hey everybody wanted itunes broken

01:21:40   up because it seemed like it was too much in one app and kind of got crufty um but in the be careful

01:21:48   what you wish for category of here you go, everything's broken up and then you get these

01:21:53   apps that might be too simplistic. Like there is if it's just the Mac music player is just the iPad

01:22:01   music player in a Mac window, you lose an awful lot of stuff that iTunes can do smart playlists

01:22:09   and complicated interfaces for making complicated smart playlists. And part of what we love about

01:22:18   Apple at its best is this, their ability to give you an app. The classic, you know, the old iTunes

01:22:28   in the early days is a perfect example where at a basic level it worked for everybody. You know,

01:22:33   anybody who really just wanted to play music on their computer had a pretty simple interface

01:22:36   that you could, you know, you could navigate by artist and by album. People could figure it out

01:22:42   just by looking at it and play. But if you wanted to do things like make complicated

01:22:47   smart playlists with ands and ors to exclude this and include that. They had an interface for it,

01:22:55   and you didn't have to write it in a programming language. You didn't have to do it by Apple

01:23:00   Script. It was a nice little interface like you get for making mail filters.

01:23:05   In other words, letting you use your computer as a computer, right? And I feel like at a very

01:23:13   flippant high-level description, part of what I think frustrates some of us about Apple

01:23:20   in recent years is not really letting you use your computers as computers anymore. Taking

01:23:27   away some of that computeriness and making them more abstract devices. Like this only

01:23:35   is a good idea if these apps are actually very good Mac apps that let you do useful

01:23:39   and powerful things.

01:23:40   Are there other examples of them like smart playlists that

01:23:44   I mean, it seems like what about letting you manage it is this new music app going to let

01:23:51   you manage a local local pile of music if that's what you want to do, right? There's

01:23:56   there's the maybe the biggest level right like what if you've got and as old-fashioned

01:24:01   an idea that is for kids today who really have grown up in the streaming era and I kind

01:24:06   to get the beauty of the streaming thing where you don't you you're never gonna lose your

01:24:12   music you know it although I guess artists can leave your streaming service and you lose

01:24:17   access so but you don't have anything to worry about and it seems very simple right you know

01:24:24   and and with things like Netflix it doesn't even make any sense I mean I suppose there's

01:24:28   some people with piles of ripped blu-rays and DVDs and things that were downloaded off

01:24:35   the back of a truck. Yeah, as they say, but for those people, for those people, there's

01:24:39   Plex or something like that. Right? Yeah, they do have software. I mean, your days of

01:24:44   using iTunes for that kind of stuff are basically over a long time. I've been over for years.

01:24:50   Right. So I don't know. Music is a little bit different. And yeah, I only came trying

01:24:55   to remember like, because there were times when I would edit dates and things because

01:25:01   it would be the date of something and I think there were some in iTunes that are even still

01:25:04   like that. Like if they remaster something, it's the date of the remaster instead of the date of

01:25:11   the original song. Which always besides the bonkers, like, okay, these Beatles songs are

01:25:16   not from the 90s. Here's one that will surprise absolutely no one who knows me. Long ago, like,

01:25:24   when I had a big pile of music all in iTunes, it eventually made me—I couldn't stand it anymore

01:25:33   that I had a whole bunch of songs where all of the apostrophes were stupid straight apostrophes.

01:25:37   So I wrote, and you know where it really drove me nuts is when I was using an iPod,

01:25:45   the early iPods where they used the old classic Chicago bitmap typeface, the classic Mac one,

01:25:53   because the difference between the dumb apostrophe and the curly apostrophe is really,

01:26:00   really glaring in that font. And it's such a nice, it's such a nice improvement in it.

01:26:05   So I wrote AppleScript and I fixed all of my songs like hundreds and I didn't go by

01:26:09   hand and type it. I wrote an AppleScript and I don't know if it took me less time to write

01:26:15   the script to do it than it would have to do it by hand. But that sort of thing feels

01:26:19   at least felt like I saved tons of time. Yeah. And it was extremely satisfying to me ever

01:26:25   after that, where all of my album names and song names that had apostrophes or quotes

01:26:31   had typographically correct ones. It made me very, very happy. And it also made me a

01:26:38   little mad too that a lot of the ones I had were from the iTunes store. I was like, "I

01:26:43   feel like Apple should have gotten that right." But I could fix it, and it wasn't too hard.

01:26:48   I really, really doubt the new music app from Marzipan is going to be AppleScriptable.

01:26:54   In fact, I'm pretty sure—well, maybe not. I take that back. I think Stephen Trouton

01:26:58   Smith proved that it could be. So I won't say couldn't, but I think it's extraordinarily

01:27:04   unlikely that an app—the whole point of this developer framework is to share a code

01:27:10   base with iOS, which doesn't have AppleScript, would be AppleScriptable. So that's the

01:27:16   sort of thing.

01:27:17   And there's tons of iTunes, AppleScript out there. iTunes is a wonderfully AppleScriptable

01:27:23   application. There's the Doug's AppleScript site has so many great tools out there. If

01:27:29   you've ever wanted to do weird things with your iTunes, browsing his website and finding

01:27:34   a bunch of scripts is super fun. I really doubt we're going to get that.

01:27:38   Yeah. Well, I certainly don't think we'll get it to begin with, but it seems like the

01:27:45   kind of thing that might migrate over time or they just have to keep maintaining iTunes.

01:27:51   Well, they might, but will iTunes share a music library with the music app? There's,

01:27:56   I mean, that's just a technique. I don't know. It seems like the music app will do whatever,

01:28:01   you know, we'll take whatever's in your cloud, right? Which is, that's a good question. Are

01:28:05   they going to be completely separate? Yeah. Because then you'd have, you'd have to have

01:28:08   twice the space if they're separate, if you're storing them right on the device,

01:28:11   which I don't think anybody wants to do. I mean, mine's like 23 megabytes or something.

01:28:17   It's fairly and reasonably large and I you know, I really have to say I don't make

01:28:23   a but I don't want to start again than that. I don't want to spend too much time bitching

01:28:27   about Mars Pan again. I think I've beaten that horse to death but and I'm not sure

01:28:32   even calling it Mars. A pan is the right thing to do because I believe I hope I'm not fooling

01:28:39   myself with wishful thinking but I think I also have reason to believe that the Mars

01:28:43   Marzipan we know today from the Mojave apps, news, stocks, voice recorder, and home, they

01:28:54   are clearly from the iOS versions of those apps, painfully so because they just look

01:29:01   like iOS apps, especially like home just looks like an iOS app running in the simulator.

01:29:09   But it's part of the reason that it was unveiled at WWDC last year as a preview is

01:29:17   that what they had for those apps was only the tip of the iceberg, so to say, of other

01:29:24   developer things that will help make these apps not look like iOS apps running in an

01:29:31   emulator.

01:29:34   That there's a whole bunch of developer stuff along that line and what we've seen

01:29:38   is different.

01:29:39   boy if these apps are like those apps that would be that would not be good in my opinion yeah it's

01:29:45   sort of like the classic the classic max stage before going to yeah but i guess that's one of

01:29:52   the other tidbits they revealed is that marzipan apps will be able to open more than one window

01:29:57   which again as a bullet point isn't really it's not really a a hey that's a cool new feature

01:30:08   for this year's marzipan, it's really just condemning the marzipan that they decided to ship

01:30:15   with Mojave a year ago, that they shipped it in a state where it still wasn't capable of opening

01:30:21   more than one window. Which to me, in the news app is one example, I think it's absolutely

01:30:28   preposterous that you're supposed to treat this as a news app and there's no way to open more than

01:30:32   one article at a time. If you have a long article and you want to finish reading it later but keep

01:30:37   reading some new stuff. It really seems pretty obvious to anybody who's ever used a Macintosh

01:30:43   that you should be able to double click a story and have it open. I mean, anyway, and voice

01:30:50   recorders is another one where it's it seems absolutely ridiculous that you can't have two

01:30:54   recordings open at a time on a Mac. It's ridiculous. So you know, that's a good sign. Like that's one

01:31:00   small bullet point that seems like a silly little thing. But I think it it's that bullet point

01:31:05   really is a hint that the true marzipan story is way deeper than what they revealed last year

01:31:13   they just had to reveal this little bit of it because they wanted a news app for mac because

01:31:19   they knew they were going to do this apple news plus thing and etc yeah yeah i i find i find still

01:31:28   find that app supremely frustrating i still and i and it drives me crazy because people will send

01:31:34   me links and they're often links that are Apple news links. I'm just like, "Oh, God,

01:31:39   please don't."

01:31:40   You know what? I have a service. I used to publish stuff like this all the time, and

01:31:45   I should get back into doing it. I wrote a service, like an automated thing. So it's

01:31:52   on your Mac, and it's in your services menu, and it'll take any Apple news URL and just

01:31:58   you select it in any app and run the service, and it turns it into the original URL for

01:32:03   the story.

01:32:04   have to like it works it's pretty simple actually but hopefully I'm trying to

01:32:12   think if it relies on any weird pearl stuff that I have that everybody doesn't

01:32:16   have anyway all right I promise you I don't promise that everybody will get it

01:32:22   but it is super frustrating I hate getting an Apple news URL yeah and I had

01:32:28   like I had a story open to news and then someone sent me a link and I clicked on

01:32:32   link and it opened in news and like the story that I wanted to read that I've been sort of saving it

01:32:36   open that I wanted to read was just gone like and I couldn't go back to it. It was when I click back,

01:32:41   it would take me to the homepage. So yeah, this is not helpful. Yeah. And I get it, you know,

01:32:49   and just, yeah, I am going to beat the Mars a little bit like, but for example, I, and like,

01:32:54   I just think that the voice memos app is just atrocious. It's just a really bad Mac app,

01:32:58   app, but then people will say, "Well, it's better than nothing because I have voice recordings

01:33:03   on my phone and before this, there was no way to get them on my Mac and now they sync

01:33:09   through iCloud and at least have my recordings on my Mac. It's better than nothing." And

01:33:15   I will concede that it is better than nothing, but better than nothing as a company's slogan

01:33:22   is a lot different than insanely great. It used to be that we celebrated Apple for making

01:33:28   things insanely great. And now we're saying better than nothing. Like, that's true.

01:33:38   But there have been lots of transitional moments. I mean, like I was talking about, like the

01:33:42   classic, you know, when you had to get the classic interface when we were going from, you know,

01:33:47   s9 to s10. Those right. I hoping that that's what we're in right now with this, right?

01:33:53   Like what you're saying when you'd you'd have to open up a classic app because there was no native. Yeah carbon

01:33:59   Yeah, and you don't open up and it would look like the old, you know

01:34:02   Yeah, that was nine because you were basically running through operating systems, right? Right, right

01:34:07   Yeah, no better than nothing

01:34:09   But that's different though that to me though that was your it was clearly that's the old thing and you're hanging on to it

01:34:21   Whereas this is a new the thing that's different about this is that these are new things this voice memos app is new for the Mac

01:34:26   And it's coming you know

01:34:28   I don't excuse it as well. I don't think I think it's a little more

01:34:34   It's not as clear-cut because it's not as clear a dividing line

01:34:38   But but in but in a way it is still is still sort of a it's a transition

01:34:42   Because we're moving and theoretically I think we're moving from those iOS apps will not be the same either

01:34:50   It's not just a matter of moving the iOS apps to the Mac and making them more Mac-like.

01:34:56   The hope, I think, is that, based on some of the other rumors, that the way the iOS

01:35:02   apps themselves will be changing to make them a little bit more Mac-like.

01:35:09   The classic transition, the more I think about it, I get it that it's a transition, so I

01:35:13   think you're right on that part.

01:35:14   But the difference is that, and I think Apple itself did a very good job right from the

01:35:19   the get-go of having all of their stuff was native on Mac OS X. They nativized everything

01:35:26   and if you were using Apple software, I mean there might be some exceptions, but for the

01:35:32   most part the whole idea of classic was for third-party stuff and Apple couldn't make

01:35:37   them and there was no way, I understand enough about how it works, there was no possible

01:35:41   way that they could make a classic version of an app look like a native Mac OS X app.

01:35:49   It had to look like what it was.

01:35:51   It's just the nature of how it works.

01:35:53   Whereas there was no reason that Apple couldn't write

01:35:55   really great Mac apps for news and stocks

01:35:58   and voice recorder.

01:36:01   There's just no reason not to.

01:36:04   It's just very alarm, I don't know.

01:36:06   I don't wanna keep going on it.

01:36:07   - Okay, all right.

01:36:09   (both laughing)

01:36:11   - I just really hope that, one of my key hopes,

01:36:15   maybe my single biggest hope for WWDC this year

01:36:18   is that when they unveiled the "Here's the real Marzipan,"

01:36:22   we'll be like, "What the hell were they thinking last year?"

01:36:25   As opposed to thinking,

01:36:27   "Oh God, that was the beginning of the end."

01:36:29   (laughing)

01:36:31   Like, I don't wanna be too dramatic,

01:36:35   but I honestly think if those apps actually represent

01:36:38   what Apple thinks the future of the Mac is,

01:36:40   it's the end of the Mac.

01:36:42   I mean, that sounds terribly dramatic,

01:36:44   but I really hope it was just that for once

01:36:48   they actually thought, well, better than nothing.

01:36:50   What else is in these leaks?

01:36:55   - So there's the bit about combining find my friends

01:37:01   and find the iPhone.

01:37:03   And then that came with another little tidbit about them

01:37:06   selling like tile style things that you have fixed

01:37:11   to something that you lose frequently

01:37:14   and then your keys or whatever.

01:37:16   and then you can use that app to find anything

01:37:20   that you've attached. - Right, find anything

01:37:21   that you've attached the thing to.

01:37:22   And that sounds like a weird product for Apple to make.

01:37:26   - Yeah, although, I mean, it makes sense with that app,

01:37:29   and given that they have all that infrastructure,

01:37:32   it doesn't seem like that extra piece

01:37:34   is that hard to build, right?

01:37:37   - Yeah, it does seem like that.

01:37:40   And it does seem like a good--

01:37:40   - Just a little chip and a sticky thing.

01:37:42   - Yeah, it does seem like a good idea

01:37:44   that combine the two apps.

01:37:46   The Tile product is very curious.

01:37:51   I'm guessing, just purely a guess,

01:37:54   but I'm guessing that that Tile thing

01:37:57   is not a WWDC announcement,

01:37:59   that that is something that the support for it's in the OS,

01:38:03   I guess, which would suggest they think they're gonna,

01:38:06   they might ship it within the next year,

01:38:08   but that seems like something that they would unveil

01:38:10   in September alongside new iPhones.

01:38:13   - Right.

01:38:14   - But yeah, really interesting.

01:38:17   Sometimes I worry too about Apple stuff being too expensive.

01:38:25   Like I really do think, I don't think anybody at Apple

01:38:29   was fooled about how popular HomePod was going to be

01:38:34   at $350.

01:38:36   I think they kinda knew that in a market full of $70

01:38:40   speaker things that people think are fun,

01:38:42   350 is really high, but it really is like a $350 product.

01:38:46   Although they just cut the price a little bit, right?

01:38:48   Isn't it like 329 now or 300?

01:38:50   Well, I think that as they can reduce the price,

01:38:57   I think they are reducing the price.

01:38:58   I don't think it gets so much a sign that sales are so bad

01:39:03   they have to cut the price.

01:39:05   I think it's that production costs have gone down

01:39:07   so they can reduce the price.

01:39:08   But they built a very expensive speaker system.

01:39:12   300 bucks.

01:39:13   I worry that Apple might build $300 tile trackers.

01:39:18   I worry that Apple will charge you a service fee every month

01:39:24   to track certain--

01:39:27   it's $4 a month to track your keys.

01:39:30   Is there anything that you would use that for?

01:39:33   No.

01:39:34   I don't think so.

01:39:35   There's nothing that I--

01:39:37   and I may be more meticulous than most

01:39:41   about keeping track of things. So I rarely I never lose my

01:39:46   keys. I almost never lose my keys. I almost never lose my

01:39:53   keys and I'm pretty part of it is just by being fairly

01:39:59   rigorous about only putting them. That's right exactly in

01:40:02   like there's one place where I put them when I when I come

01:40:04   back in the house, they go right in the drawer right. It's

01:40:08   either in the drawer in my pocket or in the car.

01:40:10   - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:40:14   - And what else?

01:40:15   - You can put it on the dog.

01:40:16   That might be cute.

01:40:18   That might be helpful.

01:40:19   I think he's already chipped though.

01:40:21   - And in theory, you could put it on a bag.

01:40:25   Like I did have,

01:40:25   Amy got me the tile trackers a few years ago as a gift.

01:40:28   And so I did put one in my back.

01:40:30   I didn't know what else to do.

01:40:31   I put it in my backpack,

01:40:32   but I never lost my backpack and never used it.

01:40:37   then the battery died. Yeah, and that tile tracker in the end. That was the end of the story.

01:40:42   Very sweet gift. It's clever because I had been thinking about it and it is certainly it was,

01:40:47   you know, but the only thing I really used it for was testing it. You know, like I'd hide it

01:40:53   somewhere and see if I could find it. Yeah. Oh, there it is. But anyway, interesting,

01:40:57   interesting unveil there. Yeah, I think we just spent like two days trying to find Karen's

01:41:05   AirPods case

01:41:06   See, but that wouldn't help right because you couldn't put a tile on that

01:41:09   I kind of wish the airpods case had that. Why could you not put a tile on that?

01:41:13   Well, I don't know maybe that fits small enough

01:41:15   Yeah, I mean, well, I'm fine. I don't know. I maybe I'm over imagining and for some reason I was imagining apples would be smaller

01:41:22   Yeah, maybe the tile would be but I don't know. I guess it probably would be. I don't know why I made that jump

01:41:27   I just figured it's gonna be way smaller because that's always been my problem with the tile thing

01:41:32   One of my problems with it. It seems like it's I'm not gonna put one of those on my keys for well

01:41:36   I mean cuz I don't lose my keys very much but

01:41:38   It's another thing to put on my keys and I've already got too many keys

01:41:42   Yeah keys are the obvious one, but I don't lose my keys and and my daily carry key thing is just one key

01:41:50   So, okay. Yes, we don't do cars. So I've got two fobs and then we have like

01:41:55   Door keys, you know two door keys

01:41:58   mailbox key

01:42:00   key to my

01:42:01   in-laws house

01:42:03   Anyway keys are the obvious solution, but it seems like Apple wouldn't do it if it was just keys

01:42:09   So maybe there's more to this, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot more

01:42:14   To it or if when they announced whatever the thing is if it's so different that we have to think before we go back and think

01:42:21   Oh wait about remember Rambo's nine-to-five leak about the tile tractors. That's that you know

01:42:26   Like it might be that sort of story where it's really the tip of the iceberg

01:42:31   Hmm so what else was there? Let me look at this. Hmm oh dark mode's coming to iOS.

01:42:41   Another one that was long rumored yeah but seemingly confirms it. That seems

01:42:48   weird. Are you a dark mode person? I am usually not always but I think it

01:42:55   depends to me well not on the Mac no I like in in-app dark dark modes so like

01:43:03   in tweet bot etc I tend to use them I've run I've run BB edit in dark mode for

01:43:09   many years I long ago I used to every three months or so get bored and switch

01:43:14   switch the theme I guess I had forgotten it has a dark mode well for years it

01:43:21   wasn't really like a system-wide dark mode for the app like the fine dialog

01:43:24   still looked like a regular platinum appearance, whatever you want to call it, Aqua appearance.

01:43:28   It's just that the actual text editor area would have a dark background with light colors,

01:43:33   and BB Edit is such a minimal app that whatever color the text background is really is what

01:43:38   color the app looks like. But for years now, I've kept it in dark mode, and it's just

01:43:44   somehow it sticks in my head, and I use it so often. I use it every day. I like having

01:43:48   it be in this very visually distinctive state where it doesn't look like all these other

01:43:52   apps with a white background. But yeah, I do that. I do that with terminal. I yeah,

01:43:57   so terminals another one where I use like a blue background in terminal so it doesn't

01:44:00   look like BB edit with a dark, dark gray background. So terminal and BB edit. I've always used

01:44:05   a dark background just to have it look different. Yeah. And I can't explain it justify. It's

01:44:10   probably just purely arbitrary and I could train myself to use dark mode system wide,

01:44:14   but I don't. But I don't even use I never use it on the iPhone. I don't it. I don't

01:44:18   I don't know if it's my eyes or what,

01:44:19   but I pretty much run every app in light mode all day long.

01:44:24   - Is terminal the only thing you can run opaque?

01:44:30   - Yeah, I think so.

01:44:31   Well, it's the only one where they expose it.

01:44:34   - Yeah, yeah, so I do a black background

01:44:36   and make it slightly see-through and have a green text.

01:44:38   So it looks like a, it looks very matrixy.

01:44:48   - I'm trying to think, so dark mode,

01:44:49   I know people are nuts for it.

01:44:50   There's an introduction of a new standard undo gesture

01:44:54   for the text input on an iPad.

01:44:56   You'll do a three finger tap or slide left and right

01:44:59   or something to do undo and redo.

01:45:01   And you think, ah, that may not be discoverable,

01:45:04   but there's some, apparently some sort of like,

01:45:06   hey, first time you're running it,

01:45:08   they're gonna tell you, hey, you can do this

01:45:10   and you can undo.

01:45:11   So that's good.

01:45:12   I was confused at first, 'cause I remembered

01:45:14   that my iPad has undo buttons above the keyboard,

01:45:17   But I had forgotten that the iPad Pros, as of today,

01:45:22   have a totally different keyboard than non-Pro iPads.

01:45:25   So the iPad Pros have extra buttons, like undo and redo,

01:45:30   that other iPads don't,

01:45:31   even if they're running the same version of iOS 12.

01:45:34   And the other iPads can still do the split view,

01:45:37   where you drag the keyboard up and it splits into two halves

01:45:40   and inexplicably, inexplicably,

01:45:42   this is one of the most inexplicable things

01:45:44   in all of Apple to me,

01:45:45   The bigger iPads, the pros, don't have the feature.

01:45:48   - It's very weird.

01:45:49   - The more I think about it, I get so frustrated.

01:45:53   I cannot believe it.

01:45:54   I try to end the work day and put the Mac away

01:46:00   and then use the iPad and my iPad and iPhone

01:46:04   in the nighttime as more of a relaxation day.

01:46:06   I can't believe when I wanna type out even just a tweet,

01:46:09   I type so much worse on my iPad than I do on my iPhone.

01:46:12   I'll actually put my iPad down, take out my iPhone,

01:46:15   and right there so that I can just use my thumbs.

01:46:18   Anyway.

01:46:19   - But it wasn't like that on the original ones, right?

01:46:21   I mean, in the original Pro.

01:46:23   - No.

01:46:24   No, you could split it, I think.

01:46:25   - It's just the new ones.

01:46:27   - Yeah, when they changed the size,

01:46:28   when they made it bigger than 10.5.

01:46:29   - Which made me think like maybe it had something to do

01:46:31   with like the camera, like the face ID thing,

01:46:34   but that doesn't make any sense.

01:46:37   - Yeah, I don't know.

01:46:38   What else?

01:46:40   Font management is getting a major update, upgrade on iOS.

01:46:44   and I wrote that that's a true finally for this one.

01:46:48   Because it just seems crazy.

01:46:50   If you would have told me back in 1992

01:46:54   that 17 years from now,

01:46:59   Apple would have an eight-year-old

01:47:00   personal computer platform

01:47:01   that didn't let you install your own fonts,

01:47:04   I would have shit my pants.

01:47:06   I would have thought,

01:47:09   I would have thought, oh my God,

01:47:11   I'll bet Larry Allison bought the company and turned it into a division of Oracle or

01:47:17   something.

01:47:18   You know, like there's no other way.

01:47:19   How could that be possible?

01:47:22   So you know, for something that people are supposed to quote unquote work on, it's, you

01:47:26   know, I really hope that they do a nice job with that because it seems important.

01:47:30   Yeah.

01:47:31   Then there's this sidecar thing.

01:47:36   What's that?

01:47:37   So that's where you can use the iPad as a desktop extension.

01:47:40   Oh, yeah, yeah, that sounds interesting another monitor right which

01:47:45   several people

01:47:48   Or is it you have I have I have the luma product. Mm-hmm Luna a little red Luna

01:47:56   that's a it's a little red dongle that you put on your Mac and then it it acts as a

01:48:01   Display port or whatever Thunderbolt I forget which version I have for my old Mac

01:48:06   but whatever it looks to a Mac like it's an external display, but it's really just a little

01:48:10   dongle, little tiny dongle plugged in, but then it shoots the image over to the Luna app on your

01:48:17   iPad and you can use the iPad and it works pretty well and I have, and I've, you know,

01:48:22   so I spent $100 or whatever it costs to see it and was impressed and never used it because I have no

01:48:30   need for it. Yeah, that's why I don't have it. I'm sure it's useful for, I mean, I can think that

01:48:35   there are many people who would have that need. But it also seems, and as impressive as it is that

01:48:42   a third party shipped that product and has it working as well as they do, it really seems like

01:48:48   it's something that has to be built into the system to really work well and to get the API

01:48:53   support so that Mac apps can totally understand that they might be getting Apple Pencil input.

01:48:58   Because that's sort of the holy grail of that application.

01:49:04   Right. I'm trying to think. I guess there's not much more. It's not worth going through

01:49:12   them all one by one other than that basic general meta story of how in the world did

01:49:20   all this stuff leak. Let me take a break here and thank our third and final sponsor.

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01:52:43   Uh, anything else? Is there anything we missed on this before we wrap it up? Uh, any other

01:52:50   stories? Um, I don't think you've talked about the Qualcomm thing, did you? Oh God, no, we

01:52:56   didn't talk about Qualcomm. That was, yeah, there's the other big story. I knew there

01:52:59   was a big one. Yeah, there we go. Now we have a, a final act. Uh, so what? So Qualcomm and

01:53:07   and Apple were fighting for years. Big stakes. Apple started withholding billions of dollars

01:53:15   in royalty fees. Basically, I guess there are two sides of it where there are actually

01:53:22   Qualcomm chips. In the area of modems, they are the clear leader worldwide and they charged

01:53:31   for it accordingly. And then there's the patent licensing, which is patent licenses that Qualcomm

01:53:38   charges, even if you weren't using their chips. And Apple seemingly took a deep moral outrage to

01:53:46   this and felt that they were being charged for things they weren't paying for and that Qualcomm

01:53:52   didn't deserve. And then there were other aspects of it. This part I learned and I'm glad I learned

01:53:56   it so I didn't shoot my mouth off and have to do a follow up. But I knew that the one

01:54:02   way that Qualcomm was charging for the license fees was based on the overall cost of the

01:54:06   device. So instead of saying, okay, this is a $7 part and you can put this $7 part in

01:54:13   $100 phone or a $500 phone or $1000 phone instead, they would charge you based on what

01:54:19   the price of the phone was for the price of the part. And then so Apple, because they

01:54:23   make more expensive phones was paying more for the same either chips or licensing fees

01:54:29   that other company were and they saw this as deeply unfair. And I always thought that

01:54:32   was a little curious for Apple to take an objection to because that's exactly how the

01:54:37   App Store works. Right? Isn't it a little rich for Apple? I have to agree with them

01:54:45   that it doesn't really sound fair. Yeah. But on the other hand, you know, if if a dollar

01:54:51   app yeah that always used to that you used to work in the financial services

01:54:55   industry and it used to drive me insane because we would get certain software

01:54:59   products and a lot of the companies would charge you not based on like the

01:55:04   number of seats of you know users or whatever but they would charge you how

01:55:06   much charge you for assets under management it's just like just numbers

01:55:11   stored in the system the system like still does exactly the same thing

01:55:15   whether you have a big number or a small number right and that's also the sort of

01:55:21   thing where I mean, I enjoy having money, I, I'm trying to

01:55:26   run a successful business, I think I'm doing okay. I believe

01:55:30   in capitalism overall, I don't want to go on a whole rant about

01:55:33   that. But but there is a part of me that has a sense of shame. And

01:55:36   so I a pricing scheme like that would never occur to me like, my

01:55:40   job is to come up with how do we charge moltz's company for our

01:55:43   software? How do we you know, because we want to make more

01:55:46   money, I might think of some ways to make more money, you

01:55:49   You know, like, you know, some kind of thing where if they have X number of seats, they

01:55:53   have to pay more or something.

01:55:55   It would never occur to me to charge by assets in management.

01:55:58   But it just wouldn't even occur.

01:56:02   But somebody thought of it and it worked and they're probably sitting on an island somewhere

01:56:06   that they own.

01:56:08   But anyway, Apple objected to that and they were fighting and, you know, they were going

01:56:14   to court and they even went to court.

01:56:17   They even had a full day in court.

01:56:19   the next day. That was one of the interesting parts of the story, right? Because the question

01:56:24   was who blinked? And it seems like it was probably Apple. Yeah, because it just, it's,

01:56:32   these things often do settle. They sometimes do go to court, but it's really unusual to

01:56:38   go to court and start it and then settle right away. And then later in the same day, Intel

01:56:46   announced that they were getting out of the business of making 5G cellular

01:56:52   motives for mobile devices. And so you kind of see what the problem was here,

01:56:58   which is that if Apple ever wants to have a 5G iPhone or iPad, and somebody

01:57:06   made—remembered—I did not—that Apple's first LTE product was the iPad, not the—an

01:57:14   an iPhone. The first LTE iPhone, the iPhone 5 came out after the first LTE capable iPad,

01:57:24   which actually makes a lot of sense at a technical level. You think like, hey, the iPhone's

01:57:27   going to get it because that's the favorite child. That's the flagship product of the

01:57:31   company. But these new chipsets tend to be bigger and hotter and not as integrated onto

01:57:38   a single tiny thing. And the iPad is a lot bigger and has a much huger battery and therefore

01:57:43   or at a simple basic technical level

01:57:46   would be a lot easier to support LTE or coming soon 5G.

01:57:50   So it seems as though my theory,

01:57:56   my take on the whole thing is that Apple's plan A

01:58:01   was to rely on Intel for these chips going forward.

01:58:05   And the last year, like two years ago,

01:58:08   there were some iPhones that had Qualcomm modems

01:58:10   and some that had Intel.

01:58:12   It's a very un-Apple-like situation

01:58:14   'cause the Qualcomm ones were better.

01:58:16   They were, you know, network engineers tested them

01:58:19   and found that they were like 30% more efficient.

01:58:22   So they got like a stronger signal under more conditions

01:58:25   and used less energy while doing so.

01:58:28   And it was all based on like which carriers

01:58:29   you had around the world.

01:58:31   Which as one of the articles I read said

01:58:34   from somebody who obviously has sources

01:58:36   that the carriers was like, you know,

01:58:37   like I think AT&T got the bad ones.

01:58:40   didn't really endear Apple to AT&T.

01:58:43   (laughing)

01:58:45   Like Intel or Verizon had to get the good ones from Qualcomm

01:58:50   because Qualcomm's were the only ones that supported

01:58:53   both CDMA and whatever the opposite of GSM.

01:58:57   So because Verizon had the shittier CDMA network,

01:59:01   they got the better iPhones.

01:59:03   But then last year they went all Intel,

01:59:05   it's Intel across the board.

01:59:08   And that put and everybody who seems to know these things, I don't know jack about cellular

01:59:13   modems.

01:59:14   I although I although I do know from reading all this that it is apparently devilishly

01:59:19   tricky.

01:59:20   It is not surprising that one company like Qualcomm has a big lead because it is apparently

01:59:25   devilishly tricky and each jump up in networking, you think like, wow, that's amazing.

01:59:31   It's so much faster.

01:59:32   But the ways that it works to get faster are incredibly tricky.

01:59:36   the details of how 5G works, it sounds insane. I guess their plan was let's go to stick with Intel

01:59:46   so we can keep fighting Qualcomm. And I think that there were some reports that Intel was behind.

01:59:53   Like Fast Company had a good story. Apple obviously knew.

01:59:57   They weren't going to be shipping 5G chips anytime in the near future.

02:00:02   Right. Or at least not on Apple's timetable, whatever that timetable is.

02:00:05   is. So they had to settle. But how do you settle when you're between a rock and a

02:00:12   hard place? The terms were not disclosed exactly. The closest they got to exposing the terms

02:00:22   was Qualcomm revealed what an increase in earnings per share they expected because of

02:00:28   this. And it was like $2 to $3 earnings per share per quarter or something like that.

02:00:33   And so somebody who could do the math on that figured out, you know, it was like, you know,

02:00:39   seven or eight, nine billion dollars a year or whatever.

02:00:41   I don't know what that number was.

02:00:43   I don't know.

02:00:44   I don't have, it's interesting because Apple, as they often do, did seem to take

02:00:50   a moral stance on this, but it's hard not to also think this was all about the money.

02:00:54   Yeah.

02:00:55   Yeah, it had to be.

02:00:56   I mean, well, you, I mean, when you have one supplier though, it becomes, it does become

02:01:00   pretty difficult and they're probably paying a lot more than they.

02:01:03   Right. Well, if they were if there were like at least a couple players, and right the other

02:01:08   x factor is that Apple is working on their own modems. Yeah, right. And apparently are years away.

02:01:15   But but very, very full steam ahead, I would imagine. And my understanding is they've set

02:01:21   up their own facility, which is near Qualcomm's and they're just like, yeah, they're trying to

02:01:25   they're poaching as many Qualcomm engineers as they can. Yeah, yeah. That's why they it's in

02:01:31   San Diego, right? Qualcomm town. I still remember Qualcomm.

02:01:37   Is the Padres Park like Qualcomm Stadium?

02:01:40   I don't know. It probably should be. I still remember Qualcomm as the company that bought

02:01:47   Eudora. Oh yeah. That was a bit ago. And then wrecked it. Yeah. But that's neither here nor

02:02:00   speaking of classic Mac apps yeah I don't know what else to say about it

02:02:06   other than I think oh no they play at Petco Park that's at least a little fun

02:02:14   that you know at least it conjures up fun images you know there everybody

02:02:19   likes animals so do you know how Bill you know how Bill Gates and his wife

02:02:22   have, Bill and Melinda Gates have spent the last few decades spending their

02:02:31   enormous fortune on charitable endeavors around the world, vaccinations and a lot

02:02:38   of healthcare related stuff, beating malaria, I think they're getting

02:02:41   kids glasses and stuff like that. You know, it's truly a noble use of an

02:02:46   enormous fortune. I worry deeply that if I had like a Bill Gates

02:02:50   enormous fortune I would waste it fixing the naming rights or stadium stadium no I

02:02:58   don't know I would I would do is I would go back I wouldn't want to put my name

02:03:02   on any of them I I would want to go to the White Sox and say I want to buy out

02:03:07   guaranteed rate field and rename it committed park this I want this renamed

02:03:12   Comiskey Park I would like to give them all good names not spiteful names

02:03:16   because I'm not a fan of their team I would just like I would like all of

02:03:19   these ballparks to have a nice name that you know, hell, we I

02:03:25   might name that I might have the Mariners field named Edgar

02:03:28   Martinez partner. I don't know. I mean, something like that.

02:03:31   Sure. What a waste of a fortune. God, I wish I had a fortune to

02:03:35   waste. I'd be so good at it. Oh, and people would be so mad.

02:03:39   Imagine how mad they would be. They found out I could have been

02:03:43   could have been helping to get actually solving real problems.

02:03:49   But White Sox fans would be happy. Yeah, I know. No, yeah. I mean, some people would definitely be

02:03:53   happy. I'd never have to buy a drink in Chicago again, even though I'd have this enormous

02:03:59   fortune of billions of dollars and could easily afford it by my own. Which would have been better

02:04:02   spent just buying yourself some drinks and curing a disease.

02:04:07   I knew we had one more major story. I'm so glad that you remembered it. I don't really have much

02:04:14   to say about it. I guess the only other upside I can think of is that this may not be good for Apple

02:04:18   Apple. It's you know, I don't have a lot of them. Yeah, I mean at least for now, you know,

02:04:25   I mean I think that the competition now is going to be between Apple and Qualcomm, but

02:04:28   it's going to take them like you said a few years. I always I wonder what I haven't kept

02:04:35   up on Intel very much but it seemed like a number like five or six years ago. People

02:04:39   were saying oh they're getting into AR they're getting into these chips these modem chips

02:04:42   so you're going to be you know gangbusters because they're Intel and they're so big and

02:04:45   they can do anything and now they're like they're downsizing they're not

02:04:50   successful they've I think they've dropped their AR stuff they've dropped

02:04:53   them the 5g chips the modem chips I think it's a bit ignominious that there

02:04:59   it's like this is like totally this completes their any attempt at getting

02:05:03   into the mobile game yeah it is kind of ignominious given how what an ass

02:05:08   kicking company they were in the PC era and I'll just and it's just hard to

02:05:14   overstate how dominant they they were and you know along with Microsoft but

02:05:19   Microsoft is still doing their thing yeah Microsoft is later turned it around

02:05:24   to a large degree right right the the you know Satella Satya Nadella as as

02:05:32   really turn this you know turn that company around and they are you know

02:05:36   doing different things but doing well but man oh man it's very it seems very

02:05:40   painfully obvious that Intel should have in some sense of the word should should

02:05:44   have been a killer company in mobile chips. And they can't even make a modem. I know.

02:05:52   And I know I just got done. It's so unfair because I just got done saying how devilishly

02:05:57   tricky the whole thing is. But that's what Intel did.

02:06:00   They did make some modems, but they just didn't do well enough to make it a good business.

02:06:09   It does fit with the Cook Doctrine, which I think is interesting. I always link to Horace

02:06:13   dead used summary of it. It's some statement of a sort of mission statement that Tim Cook gave.

02:06:18   I don't know if it was when he first became CEO or maybe he was still COO.

02:06:21   And it's longer. It actually espouses more than this. But the part that always sticks with me,

02:06:26   that one of the things Apple does, according to Cook's doctrine, is owning and controlling

02:06:31   the primary technologies behind the products that Apple makes. And I think they obviously

02:06:37   miscalculated on these cellular modems years ago. And on the flip side, one of the least heralded,

02:06:46   but I think most astounding strategic successes in the history of the industry, let alone just Apple,

02:06:53   was their decision to get into the mobile chip game with that. What was the company they bought?

02:06:58   Jon Moffitt Oh, God, I can't remember.

02:06:59   Just that it was a small investment overall and you know turned it into these a-series processors

02:07:08   and I just I still remember the keynote where they announced I think it was the a4 was the first one

02:07:14   and that that was their design and the pride that Steve Jobs had in it was so palpable it was like I

02:07:24   just remember thinking like from this listening to the way he announced it that this really wasn't

02:07:28   about this A4 chip, this is about like Apple's future. Like it was a very big deal to them and

02:07:34   in hindsight it truly is. You know, I think they might have miscalculated on when they should have

02:07:42   gotten into the cellular mode because it may be miscalculated at how what a stranglehold one

02:07:47   company Qualcomm was going to have over it. Yeah. Well, ideally they will have set themselves up a

02:07:56   little bit better sometime down the road. The upside for us as users is we'll get better modems

02:08:02   because the Qualcomm ones are better. And I hopefully we'll get you know, maybe we'll get 5G

02:08:07   phones better. I don't really care. I don't I have to say it's not all rolled out yet. And right. And

02:08:12   it's not even close. There's a whole bunch of infrastructure even like, yeah, I mean, there's

02:08:16   so much that needs to be done in order for it to be truly meaningful that right. There's this

02:08:24   thinking that it's going to come in 2020 maybe but it may not come until 2021 but yeah it's

02:08:29   probably not going to be that big a deal well and yeah and the other thing is i have to say my lte

02:08:34   service is excellent most places i go like i can't think of i'm trying to think of things i do where

02:08:40   having something even faster would be better uh i you know i it's pretty pretty hard to come up

02:08:48   with anything like i stream video at the highest resolution i want i mean i guess there's coverage

02:08:53   is a little bit more of an issue than speed, really.

02:08:56   Right, and penetrating into like basements or thick buildings. And it sounds to me like

02:09:02   5G has a lot of problems in that area, but we shall see. But at the very least, it's

02:09:09   better modems for iPhone users. John, I thank you.

02:09:13   Thank you.

02:09:14   I guess there was one more thing. Here we have one more thing. One more thing. We could

02:09:17   do it quickly. You said before, thank God I forgot this. I didn't forget it. You still

02:09:21   use an iPhone SE. Yes. And there was a rumor recently separately from gear Rambo. It's

02:09:29   this at Apple. Yeah, go ahead is going to do they're going to do a new iPhone eight

02:09:33   with updated internals. Yeah. So like like like the Mariners, we started with the Mariners

02:09:37   and my not setting my heart on their early good performance. When we can close on me

02:09:45   not getting my heart set on rumors of a smaller phone. I will believe it when I see it. I

02:09:51   I hope that they make a smaller phone.

02:09:53   Even if it is, I would still rather it be smaller

02:09:56   than the eight form factor.

02:09:58   - Right, right.

02:09:59   - Because the SE is much more the sweet spot for me.

02:10:03   And particularly I just had my vision checked

02:10:06   and my prescription changed.

02:10:07   And now I can read things better because I'm at the age,

02:10:11   I'm so old now that my nearsightedness is correcting itself.

02:10:16   And so my prescription was overcompensating.

02:10:19   And so they dialed me back down.

02:10:21   now I can yeah now I can read text better and so now my my SE is you know I don't have to pump up

02:10:26   the text and it's not like getting like four words on the front of it. So I I'm back all in on on

02:10:35   small phones. It it sounds right to me that the if they were going to do another SE type thing

02:10:42   that doing it in the iPhone 8 size factor sounds about right even though I know for the those like

02:10:49   you and my friend Mike Davidson who's a huge aficionado of that smaller size and really

02:10:55   really was just bitching to me the other day about his iPhone XS being too goddamn big.

02:11:01   I know that you would rather have it be smaller but the 8 is definitely, I just picked it

02:11:05   off my desk when the rumor hit. It feels smaller and most importantly lighter. It is a lot

02:11:10   lighter than the XS.

02:11:12   Yeah and I lived with, I mean I had a 6 and then a 6s so I lived with that form factor

02:11:17   for like a year and a half before the SE came out.

02:11:21   Before you hit the jackpot.

02:11:24   The temporary jackpot which I've spent all of.

02:11:27   I have this phone, this phone is now three years old.

02:11:32   That's amazing.

02:11:33   Which is the first, I mean it's definitely the first iPhone that I've used for that

02:11:36   long.

02:11:37   Yeah, and it's in good shape?

02:11:40   You take care of your stuff.

02:11:41   Yeah, oh yeah, it's in a case of course because this thing I'm not risking.

02:11:46   think we finally reached the point where we're running out of clearance ones.

02:11:52   Darrell Bock Yeah. You can't afford to have it break.

02:11:55   It's like my –

02:11:56   David Bonilla It's like unless I want to get a

02:11:57   rose gold one, I better take good care of it.

02:11:59   Darrell Bock It's like my collection of

02:12:01   Apple extended keyboard tees.

02:12:03   David Bonilla Now I know how you live.

02:12:07   Darrell Bock When my second one broke – my first one

02:12:12   one lasted for so long and my second one which was used to start broke and I

02:12:17   suspect was never taken as good a care of before I started using it so when I

02:12:22   and then the one I'm on now was literally new in box when I started

02:12:26   using it and my one of my rules is no games I'm not allowed to play games on

02:12:30   my iMac because press too hard on those keys this thing so baby's got to last me

02:12:34   for a long time you need a second gaming keyboard all right yeah anyway John

02:12:42   Moltz I thank you very much you got a bunch of other podcasts but you've got

02:12:46   the one of them is turning this car around with our friends Dan and Dan

02:12:50   Lauren no that is John Armstrong and Lex Friedman and then John Armstrong Dan

02:12:56   does not have kids yet and then the rebound of Dan and Lex and the speedy

02:13:03   arrow cast with our good friends Dan and Guy English well I knew it was that I

02:13:10   knew he was on it one of the shows well they're all good shows that I obviously

02:13:16   listen to I'm so glad you listen to the speedy era guest yeah that's a favor did

02:13:28   not know I got I got notifications on for episodes come out of that one that

02:13:36   really means something to me