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204: ‘Flaunting That Notch’ With Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00   uh... hey so what's the situation so as we record and and we're going to do i'm

00:00:03   going to do my best to get the show out tonight on this is thursday the

00:00:08   twenty-six so that people can listen while they're rest staying up late for

00:00:12   pre-orders

00:00:14   but let me let me double check with you because i feel like you've got a better

00:00:18   sense of the things i am correct that tonight at three in the morning on the

00:00:23   east coast is when i've i've on ten goes on sale yeah absolutely

00:00:27   (laughing)

00:00:29   - Every time.

00:00:31   - Because they say Friday and you think,

00:00:33   oh, Friday at midnight, okay, there you go.

00:00:35   But what they really mean is Friday at 1201,

00:00:40   like technically Friday, but--

00:00:43   - Literally 12 a.m. Pacific Coast time.

00:00:45   - So I haven't been in this boat.

00:00:49   I don't even remember the last time I was in this boat.

00:00:52   I don't know why.

00:00:53   I don't remember when I ordered my iPhone sevens last year.

00:00:58   Uh, I don't think I stayed up till three in the morning to do it though.

00:01:02   I don't know why. And then in years prior,

00:01:05   I was at the XOXO conference in Portland,

00:01:10   which is on the West coast and up, you know,

00:01:13   like socializing with friends and we'd all like as a group,

00:01:17   it was a whole bunch of, of nerds and we'd all like have our timer set.

00:01:22   and at 11.55 everybody would put their drinks down

00:01:25   and fire up the Apple store on their phones

00:01:29   and get ready to order.

00:01:30   Everybody was ordering phones together.

00:01:32   So now I've got to stay up till three in the morning

00:01:35   to do this.

00:01:36   Is that the same situation in Canada?

00:01:38   - Yeah, I love how you said stay up and not wake up as well.

00:01:41   - This is no question for me.

00:01:44   - 'Cause the internet is full of all our friends

00:01:46   putting up the pictures of their nine or 10 alarms

00:01:48   they've set for every minute before midnight or 3 a.m.

00:01:51   If I get there, there's no chance that I—if I went to sleep before 3 a.m., there is no

00:01:57   chance that I—any alarm would wake me up. No way.

00:02:00   And I've tried the—because you go there at midnight or you go there at 3 a.m., and

00:02:04   you think that it's going to be up, and it's often delayed by several minutes. I

00:02:07   think one time it was 15 or 20 minutes before it actually started working.

00:02:11   Yeah, it's—and I think this one is going to be the shit show to end all shit shows,

00:02:17   because I feel like every you know there's more excitement about the iPhone

00:02:24   10 than any iPhone in recent years probably at least since the iPhone 6 and

00:02:29   6 plus when they first went to a bigger size and there was pent-up demand but

00:02:33   even then I feel like a lot of that pent-up demand for the iPhone 6 and the

00:02:39   6 plus was not really in from the enthusiast crowd but was truly

00:02:46   from the mass market that you know that that just regular people were like I

00:02:52   want a bigger phone I heard Apple's coming out with a bigger phone so I'm

00:02:56   gonna wait and it wasn't really a buy it the first day at 12 midnight Pacific it

00:03:02   was just sort of buy it in October November December when it first whenever

00:03:07   their contract recycled or was convenient right yeah absolutely yeah

00:03:14   Whereas this one it feels like it just feels like everybody who follows me on Twitter is buying one tonight

00:03:19   And it's also interesting because it's like the return of the lineup because for years

00:03:23   Marketing has been at war with utter war but you know they've had this thing with with retail where the lineups get a lot of

00:03:29   Attention, but it's a bad customer experience and since Angela Erin's arrived

00:03:33   She's been doing everything possible to reduce the lineups or eliminate the lineups and it also solves scalping and a bunch of other issues

00:03:40   But now people are legitimately gonna line up and super early again because on the off chance

00:03:44   They can't or just won't or don't manage to order successfully

00:03:47   They want to be there right when the Apple store opens to grab whatever stock they can I think that's nuts

00:03:53   I was it was so funny because I was talking to somebody

00:03:57   Just either yesterday or the day before I think it was yesterday. I

00:04:01   was chatting with somebody and they were like

00:04:05   They they're not even gonna do the store thing right because the quantities are gonna be so low and I was like, you know

00:04:09   I don't know and and I was gonna ping somebody at Apple just to ask like hey, what's the plan?

00:04:16   And I realized that they just like while I was chatting with my friend posted to their newsroom blog

00:04:23   here's here's the deal and they are in fact going to

00:04:27   have

00:04:29   Probably like one iPhone 10 per retail store

00:04:37   55 countries because if the suppliers were really or are as really as constrained as we all heard that they are

00:04:43   Doing things like I forget was like andaloria or something in 55 other Guernsey like is Guernsey getting one iPhone. I

00:04:50   Never even heard of that country, honestly

00:04:53   Honestly or Jersey, I don't know how to pronounce it. It might be slaughtering. I don't know

00:04:57   I at one point in 10th grade we had to

00:05:00   We had a

00:05:04   history class where we learned about all the countries in the world and one of the exams was we got a blank map of the

00:05:09   World and we had to fill in every country in the world

00:05:12   So at one point I knew every country in the world, but I feel like in the inner in the interceding

00:05:17   25 years. I feel like there's like a bunch of countries like rebranded or something. I did

00:05:23   Ireland Isle of Man, Monaco, Mexico Russians and Netherlands Slovenia Slovakia Spain

00:05:33   Andorra, Australia, Australia. There's so many countries for a phone that we think is going to be

00:05:37   in such... Latvia, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta.

00:05:43   I mean, it doesn't... it's like you said, it doesn't really... it doesn't jibe with the

00:05:49   rampant rumors that supply is going to be extremely constrained. And you don't even have to

00:05:57   have your own sources in the supply chain to speculate that supplies are going to be

00:06:03   constrained because obviously the phone is late. I mean ideally if everything had gone according to

00:06:08   Apple's wishes they would have it would have shipped you know alongside the iPhone 8 a month

00:06:15   ago. Right and they're not doing it the way they have certain launches like Apple watch or iPad

00:06:19   where they come they lock it down to maybe four or five countries like maybe the U.S., the UK,

00:06:23   Australia, China, you know, one or two others. It's a typical launch for them.

00:06:27   Yeah, so I don't know how to square those two things. Like, it's, you know, is it

00:06:35   really gonna be just a token launch where it, I don't know, this is one of

00:06:41   those things where I just do not know what to expect. I totally think that it,

00:06:45   if I had to bet, I would bet that if you get bad luck tonight in the reloadapple.com

00:06:52   dot-com

00:06:54   Or store dot apple.com website and you you

00:06:59   reload at the wrong minute and

00:07:02   Maybe something hiccups and your thing doesn't go through and then you reload again and all of a sudden it's two minutes after midnight

00:07:09   You're looking at four to six weeks

00:07:11   It's four to six weeks

00:07:13   You go back and try to think of white might be sooner and whites actually later right back to blackness even later

00:07:17   Yeah, yeah exactly that you know, you better get this stuff queued up. Yeah

00:07:22   And if you get bad luck it but who knows maybe not maybe you know, maybe Apple will surprise us and

00:07:27   There will be I don't know enough millions on day one, too

00:07:34   I'm sure no matter what by the morning by Friday morning. It's gonna be backordered by weeks. I mean that seems inevitable

00:07:43   But maybe they'll have enough millions that you know that it really, you know will be a legitimate 55 country launch

00:07:50   Yeah, I mean it's gonna be interesting to see I

00:07:53   Don't know I don't know what to do a lot of your plan a lot of coffee and I'll stay I've done this before I

00:08:02   Think one time we were at an event and actually had to do it either the night after or the right after the event

00:08:06   While I was while I was in an uber

00:08:09   Trying to get back to back to the hotel and it's always stressful

00:08:12   But I just get up I make sure I favored it in advance in the Apple Store app

00:08:17   So that it's right ready to go when I load up the app

00:08:20   And then I refresh it I force quit it if I have to if it's not loading and then I keep trying until it loads

00:08:25   And I just get my order in as soon as I can generally I've been like I I don't know if it's

00:08:31   if it's voodoo if it's just

00:08:34   you know a

00:08:36   Too small of a data set, you know that it's just my own personal experience. I personally find that the iOS app

00:08:43   the Apple Store app on iOS is

00:08:47   Seems like the way to go and like you said like get it in there favorite it so that you can refresh it right at

00:08:53   1201 and

00:08:55   Get through I find that it works better than the website now. I can I prove that you know

00:09:01   I don't know and in general

00:09:03   for you know for most things I find that going on a on a Mac in a browser to the

00:09:11   Website is a more reliable way to get something done quickly, you know that I can type faster and stuff like that

00:09:17   But since everything is already stored in it the app

00:09:20   It kind of is just sort of a tap tap tap and you're not really it's not like you have to type out your credit

00:09:26   Card or whatever you can just use Apple pay. Yeah, so it's it can go pretty quickly

00:09:30   And I don't know what's like in the US but here there's most credit cards is $100 limit on Apple pay

00:09:34   So I set up an American Express just for Apple for Apple pay and there's no limit on that. I

00:09:39   No, we don't have a limit. Okay. I just bought

00:09:42   Well, I don't know maybe there is a limit but I know it's not $100 because I just bought a

00:09:48   $400 SSD a hard drive from Apple yesterday on Apple pay. Yes the best thing

00:09:57   I always test drive at first just in case there's something wrong with your address or Apple pays not working

00:10:01   I don't want to find that out when I'm ordering an iPhone. I'll do that with a cable or a watchband or something

00:10:06   I don't know, I'm already nervous.

00:10:11   - And I keep the website open too.

00:10:12   And the thing is it's never 12 o'clock.

00:10:14   So I just, I refresh and I refresh over and over again.

00:10:16   And I feel like it's your willingness to refresh

00:10:19   until the exact moment that it actually comes live

00:10:22   that indicates whether you're gonna get it or not.

00:10:24   - Right.

00:10:25   - Like a psychological experiment.

00:10:29   - Oh.

00:10:35   I remember one time I said in years past what the at least for two or three years where where the XOXO

00:10:43   conference was running out in Portland it was the weekend after the event for iPhones and so my

00:10:54   pattern for those years was I would fly out to California on Monday there'd be a Tuesday event

00:10:59   where they would unveil new iPhones. They would go on pre-order that Friday, four days after the

00:11:07   event, but instead of flying east, I would just stay on the west coast and then meet my wife up.

00:11:13   My wife would fly to Portland on her own, and then we'd be in Portland for the weekend, but on

00:11:17   Thursday night, we would pre-order iPhones. And it's just so crazy. I remember the one time,

00:11:24   like I said, it was like four, five, six people all doing the same thing at once. And it was like,

00:11:29   I got mine. I got mine." And the next person over is like, "What? Ahh!" And then all of a

00:11:35   sudden they get through and they're like, "Four to six weeks?" And it's that, you know, literally

00:11:41   side by side using the same cell towers with the same app. It's crazy. My favorite was, I think it

00:11:48   was iPhone 11 where a mutual jerk acquaintance of ours set up his brand new conference for literally

00:11:53   the morning after the launch, and I was in line all night, had to go buy it and then go to the

00:11:59   Jerks conference right away, and I just didn't sleep that entire day. And I think people like

00:12:04   Marco were trying to decide if it was better to just try to order it or just walk down the street

00:12:08   and whether the exchange rate made it cheaper for them or not.

00:12:10   Ted

00:12:21   sometimes but that the the reviews for new phones always come out at least in

00:12:28   my memory always come out after the pre-order yeah start and and like with

00:12:34   the iPhone 8 it was like here's the event and the people who got review

00:12:40   units immediately got them either like that afternoon or the next day and the

00:12:46   Embargo on the reviews was like a week later, but the pre-sale started that Friday just like usual

00:12:53   So the pre-orders always at least in my memory maybe in the ancient history like 10

00:12:59   9 10 years ago is different but in a recent years

00:13:03   The pre-orders always start before the reviews

00:13:06   And in this case, there's so much new with iPhone 10

00:13:12   I mean literally it's like the entire point of the product is that it's it it really is sort of a rethinking of what an

00:13:19   iPhone is and so people have

00:13:21   Legitimate questions, you know is face ID all it's cooked up to be is it you know, it is this is this a good

00:13:28   iPhone honestly

00:13:31   nobody knows but I feel like it's not that big of a risk to

00:13:35   Pre-order because a you can cancel if it's not going to it's not like they're going to ship them out

00:13:41   There don't ship till next Friday

00:13:42   So if like reviews come out next week and it turns out to you know

00:13:47   You like read these reviews and you're like, oh that that sounds terrible. You could cancel

00:13:51   But the other thing is it seems like a sure thing that you'll be able to resell the thing

00:13:56   Especially if you keep it new in box, you'll probably turn a nice profit on it. Well, I mean that's the thing is that I think Apple

00:14:02   just

00:14:03   Assumes that anyone's gonna pre-order is a die-hard sure bet, you know, they're gonna buy it no matter what they're just an early adopter

00:14:10   And and they just want it and it's the people who once it's in retail who aren't certain or on the fence

00:14:16   And just to maintain sort of the the hype cycle from the order

00:14:19   To make sure people know that it's in stores all the reviews are cured up for that cute up for then

00:14:24   hmm

00:14:27   Yeah, I know it's it's totally in their interest

00:14:31   But all it would do to have reviews before the pre-orders is opt people out

00:14:34   It would just it would give people reasons not to buy it

00:14:37   they'd much rather do that before the retail because it might opt people in rather than,

00:14:42   or qualify them in—I forget what the marketing term is—before they can actually go to the store

00:14:46   and buy it. So what are you going to pre-order? 256 gig space gray, because I like the idea of

00:14:58   the vapor coating on the stainless steel. I'm not like gray-coating smart. I don't know if that's

00:15:03   the same as the DLC coating. I know DLC is a type of vapor coating, but this just says

00:15:07   vapor coating. But when I saw it at the event, I liked the silver one was so shiny. It was

00:15:12   like original iPhone. It's the closest I've seen to original iPhone shiny. And I really

00:15:16   like that, but just the black, the space gray look was nice and stealth and goes with my

00:15:20   watch and I'm just that shallow.

00:15:22   Yeah. I always order black. I mean, that's the way I don't have to second guess myself.

00:15:28   So it doesn't matter on the front this time. This time the front is the notches are all

00:15:32   black so you can't go wrong right right and i really do i i genuinely dislike the white faces

00:15:39   on ipads and iphones i really do i i just don't like that look of a black screen with a white

00:15:46   face although you know but it yeah i just don't like it but i you know my wife loves it i know

00:15:51   lots of people love it it's obviously you know they've kept with it ever since they started you

00:15:56   know, so it's obviously popular. But I do think that's interesting, though.

00:16:00   And I think it speaks to that. I just feel like you almost couldn't do white with that

00:16:12   notch design. I mean, and again, staying away from the entire subjective opinion of what you

00:16:17   think of the notch. I don't think it would work with white. I think it just has to be black.

00:16:23   Yeah, because the whole way it works internally is that it is a full screen. Like when you see

00:16:28   the multitasking and the app shrinks down to its card view, it's not cut out. The app's fully all

00:16:33   the way across on the top. It's just behind there. And I think it sort of would draw a lot of

00:16:38   attention to it being there if it was bright. Yeah. So it's at least a maybe for me to order

00:16:44   the silver. I guess they're not really calling it white. They're calling it space gray and silver.

00:16:50   And I do like the silver look on the sides.

00:16:55   And it totally, I think it's deliberate,

00:16:58   but it definitely hearkens back to the original iPhone.

00:17:01   - Yeah, I-- - And the silver.

00:17:05   It's so funny though, looking at the original iPhone,

00:17:07   like I've gotten mine out to look at it.

00:17:10   And I still love it.

00:17:12   I do think it really is one of the best objects

00:17:17   that I've ever owned in my life as a design piece.

00:17:21   I really do think it, you know, 100 years from now,

00:17:24   it'll be in, you know, a museum.

00:17:26   But it's funny looking at how many pieces there are.

00:17:29   (laughing)

00:17:31   Right, 'cause the silver thing around the display

00:17:34   was totally separate from the sides, you know?

00:17:36   It was, it's like an entire extra piece

00:17:39   was this silver thing around the screen

00:17:42   before it even gets to the sides.

00:17:44   - Yeah, and then the big antenna window at the bottom

00:17:46   taught the RF signals out and yeah, yeah, but I kind of like that.

00:17:51   I like that. I almost feel like it looks better with that big black antenna window at the bottom.

00:17:57   There's something about it that to me, uh,

00:18:00   even though I realized it's a concession and that in theory,

00:18:03   if they could have just made the back just one piece of aluminum, they would've,

00:18:08   uh, but there's something about it that I like, I don't know.

00:18:11   It's like pants on your iPhone. It just doesn't look naked. Yeah.

00:18:15   I kind of like the look of the new Pixel 2s in the same way.

00:18:20   I kind of feel like,

00:18:21   at least the one that they're calling the Panda,

00:18:25   the white one with the black window at the top,

00:18:27   I kind of feel like they're,

00:18:30   it's a way of owning the fact

00:18:33   that they couldn't do all one material on the back,

00:18:35   that they needed a window.

00:18:36   Whereas the original Pixel, which I own,

00:18:38   I have the black one or whatever they call it,

00:18:40   whatever goofy color name they gave it.

00:18:43   - Not quite black or something.

00:18:44   Yeah, whatever goofy name they use. But the last year's one, the black one,

00:18:49   it seems weird that there's two materials on the back.

00:18:55   The whole thing is weird.

00:18:56   I feel like the new one where they own it and have it as a totally separate color is a better design.

00:19:04   I had the original. I mean, Serenity borrowed it a month or so ago. But I had the original one. I

00:19:08   used it up until a month or two ago. And it was just a weird product. And it's a total tangent.

00:19:14   But I have this pet peeve that the reality distortion field around Google is way bigger

00:19:19   than Apple's, has been for years, and yet they don't get called on it. Because that was the first

00:19:23   phone designed by Google, but it's clearly using HTC design, like industrial design.

00:19:27   And people often say, "Well, it's like Apple uses Foxconn." But no, no, Foxconn designers have

00:19:32   nothing to do with iPhone. They have zero input in it, where HTC had a lot of input in that. And

00:19:36   you can see there's antenna lines and a big RF window, and it's almost layered on top of each

00:19:40   other in a rather haphazard fashion. So I'm glad they sort of cleaned that up a lot with

00:19:45   Pixel 2 XL.

00:19:46   Yeah. Well, we can get into that in a minute. But let me take a break here and thank our

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00:23:06   All right, let's, let's shelve the pixel to discussion for a second.

00:23:10   Let's keep it in the back of our minds, but let's finish off the iPhone 10.

00:23:13   I'm going to get the, the space gray one.

00:23:18   But I kind of wish there's a part of me that wishes that the space gray back came with

00:23:24   that silver side.

00:23:26   Yes. Yeah. I don't know why. I kind of see why they didn't do that because it's kind

00:23:33   of that way that they do look different because otherwise they wouldn't look different from

00:23:36   the front. And maybe I'll grow to love that that dark side. But I've actually wasn't sure

00:23:42   about what the coding was. I don't think it's the same as DLC. No, it's a DLC. I again,

00:23:47   I would need someone like Greg to explain it. But DLC is a kind of vapor, but not all

00:23:51   vapor is DLC. Right. I will say, I mean, I still have my original DLC coded space black

00:24:00   Apple watch the original one. Yeah. And I'm telling you, if I wipe it on my t-shirt, it

00:24:07   looks like I could take it back to the store as new inbox. I mean, there is literally the

00:24:13   thanks to the Sapphire crystal on the front and this DLC coating on the side. I mean like

00:24:18   Even under like a loop there are no scratches on that. It is absolutely like indestructible

00:24:24   I still have the band I still wear the band and I think we taught us before but every time I think that I've scratched

00:24:29   It or hurt in some way

00:24:30   It turns out like it's a bit of stone or others to all that it took off a wall or something as I walked by

00:24:35   Yeah, we have talked about this. It is true. That's absolutely true. Like I've got some marks on mine, but I'm

00:24:40   Run it under hot water and yeah

00:24:42   And and you know a little bit of soap or rub it or whatever and it comes off and again

00:24:48   You could take the bracelet back and be like hey, I need to exchange this. It's I didn't I never wore it

00:24:52   Yeah, it's so tough. It's like Captain America shield tough

00:24:55   So I doubt that the iPhone has that coating but it'll be interesting. It will be I am interested to see because

00:25:01   Have they ever had stainless steel on an iPhone? I

00:25:05   Think iPhone for the bands were stainless steel. I think it was the same stainless steel and glass sandwich that we're getting this year

00:25:12   But that was sort of a brush to stainless steel or in fact it was not even sort of it was a brush stainless steel

00:25:19   So I don't feel like like that. My curiosity is whether this is gonna be susceptible to scratching sort of the way that old

00:25:25   iPods work because the iPods the original ones like when the click wheel era had stainless steel backs, right?

00:25:32   You're the early iPod touches as well and mine it to me. It's like a Millennium Falcon thing

00:25:36   It's just I'm just you have to or that book the Johnny

00:25:39   I've booked that came out that you just have to accept worn technology at some point

00:25:42   Or you'll drive yourself a little bit nuts trying to stop it from getting any scratch ever

00:25:45   right

00:25:47   I've been thinking I don't know if I'll have time but I've been thinking before the iPhone 10 comes out of

00:25:52   re-reviewing my jet black iPhone 7

00:25:57   Because it truly is one of my favorite iPhones that I've ever owned

00:26:03   It's my by far and away my favorite since they went big the only one, you know, the last one I had this much affection for

00:26:10   At the end of its life as I was getting ready to take take hold of a new one

00:26:14   Was the the iPhone 5s, yeah

00:26:19   I wanted to re-review the original because the only one I've never reviewed and just somehow we got so busy between

00:26:25   September and now I didn't have time

00:26:27   My thoughts on the iPhone so the jet black thing when it was new last year

00:26:32   The big thing was that Apple even on their website said hey, this thing is gonna pick up

00:26:38   What micro abrasions was their their euphemism, but it actually it

00:26:44   It is a euphemism

00:26:46   But I actually feel like it is

00:26:48   Justified one year in of heavy use almost never in a case. The only time I ever had it in a case was

00:26:54   Just you know, like my review unit came with a case and so I tried it just to see what it was

00:27:01   You know see what the case was like. I just don't like him

00:27:04   So like 98% of the lifespan of this phone has been without a case and it is the back is covered with fine

00:27:12   Scratches, but I wouldn't call them scratches that I would say micro abrasions is actually a much better term

00:27:20   There actually are a few actual real scratches

00:27:22   But most of the marks on the back are you really have to look at them in just the right light to get like a reflection

00:27:29   and

00:27:31   And you know, I don't mind them at all. I kind of like it. It's yeah, it's very different

00:27:36   It's almost like a texture. It's like in leather. They never say it's staying

00:27:38   They say it's patina and I look forward to beginning all Indiana Jones like with age and that's sort of what it felt like to

00:27:43   Me like this this aluminum would age as opposed to the other ones which would just like look scratched

00:27:48   Yeah, and and it's you know

00:27:51   this jet black finish was obviously ahead of its time and I've done this because I have the review units for the iPhone 8 and

00:27:59   with my eyes closed I I can't tell the difference between the the jet black finish and the glass of

00:28:06   The iPhone 8 at least at room temperature. I feel like maybe you know

00:28:11   If I if it was cold or something, I could feel the difference between aluminum and glass, but it's a very similar feeling

00:28:17   To the glass of all of this year's new iPhones the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 10 to me. It's slightly tackier

00:28:26   There's a tackiness to the jet black that I haven't felt on any other iPhone

00:28:30   Yeah, and it's it's definitely partly why I have such an affinity for it

00:28:35   Is that I just feel like ever since they got big and I've never been a plus

00:28:39   I've never been in what do they call it the plus Club?

00:28:41   Even even with the 4.7 the combination of the aluminum and the rounded sides

00:28:47   Just makes it so much less sturdy in in grip than the iPhone

00:28:53   five five s and and SE

00:28:56   Yeah, I've used since iPhone 6 plus I have never gone back like I've used them just to review them and I'll go back and

00:29:03   Forth to do camera tests and things but I stuck with the plus the entire time

00:29:06   I haven't had a problem with them

00:29:07   But I did notice going to the 8 because the 8 is is pure glass that if I if I put it on a table

00:29:13   It's fine

00:29:13   It's not like a Nexus 4 where if you put it in the middle of a dining room table an hour later

00:29:17   It will fall off the edge

00:29:18   But if you put it like on a sofa on the edge of a sofa my iPhone 7 will do it would have set there

00:29:23   For three or four days where the iPhone 8 will find its way to the floor within a matter of an hour or so. Yeah

00:29:28   So anyway, I'm ordering

00:29:30   The space black my wife will be getting the silver. Nice. I

00:29:36   Really? Hope this is always my fear. My fear is that my order will go through and hers won't because

00:29:41   You don't have to do both right?

00:29:45   No, I think

00:29:46   Because I think it's easier to just say replace this phone. Okay, so we always tend to do it separately

00:29:52   That's a good question though.

00:29:56   That's good too because that way if you order yours first and then order hers, you're

00:29:59   not…and it comes later.

00:30:00   No, no, no.

00:30:01   No, I think we'll be doing it simultaneously.

00:30:04   But that's the other question I know people have.

00:30:09   The other question besides Apple.com versus the iOS Apple Store app is should you do it

00:30:15   through your carrier instead?

00:30:17   Should you go through your carrier?

00:30:18   And I feel like it's another one of those things

00:30:22   where who knows, you know what I mean?

00:30:23   Like my guess is no, but who knows?

00:30:27   You know what I mean?

00:30:28   Like, so anybody, if you are,

00:30:29   happen to be listening to this podcast

00:30:31   before the pre-orders start,

00:30:33   and it turns out that the Apple store completely collapses

00:30:37   and like AT&T and Verizon have plenty of units

00:30:39   to go around and you missed out.

00:30:41   Don't blame me.

00:30:42   I mean, I'm saying, I don't know, but.

00:30:44   - I have never had luck going with the carrier

00:30:48   because always something seems to break down.

00:30:50   So I've just gotten used to buying factories,

00:30:52   you know, SIM unlocked right from Apple

00:30:54   as soon as it becomes available.

00:30:55   But if you don't pre-order or you get such a delayed date

00:30:59   that you wanna try your luck at retail,

00:31:01   if you don't get there super early

00:31:03   and there's a long line in the Apple store,

00:31:04   it will behoove you to go to your carrier store

00:31:06   because they might have some inventory,

00:31:08   even a Best Buy and have very little lineup

00:31:10   because everybody in the mall is already at the Apple store.

00:31:13   - Yeah, yeah, I feel like if you're gonna try to sneak it in

00:31:16   on next Friday, November 3rd,

00:31:18   the last place to go is the Apple store.

00:31:20   Unless you're one of these nuts

00:31:22   who wants to camp out for a week.

00:31:23   I've heard, somebody told me that there's already

00:31:25   people camping out at some of these stores.

00:31:27   - I think weeks ago, but there's often paid people,

00:31:29   like people who are paid as a publicity stunt

00:31:31   to be there with a sign or something,

00:31:32   and then they just take rotating shifts.

00:31:34   - Yeah.

00:31:36   And that's the other, the X factor in all of this,

00:31:39   in addition to all of the enthusiasts

00:31:41   who just want to get one right away.

00:31:44   And in fact, I feel like,

00:31:46   'cause I feel like it's gonna get backordered

00:31:47   four to six weeks quickly, even if it's not like,

00:31:50   oh, I need one on Friday, November 3rd,

00:31:53   even if you just want one this year,

00:31:55   you kinda have to pre-order tonight.

00:31:57   I mean, I really feel like it will be the case

00:32:00   that if you don't pre-order tonight,

00:32:02   you might be looking at early 2018 delivery.

00:32:05   But the X factor in this is the gray market,

00:32:10   the scalpers, the resellers, yeah, the scalpers.

00:32:12   And that's another funny thing about having been

00:32:15   Portland for the pre-order date the one year we were there I don't know why that

00:32:24   was I guess it wasn't even pre-orders but that they went on sale right away

00:32:27   wasn't there one year where it was like it it was like pre-orders and

00:32:32   availability were the same date it must have been because what I remember

00:32:36   specifically is that our hotel was right across the street from a big mall in

00:32:40   downtown Portland and there were there's an Apple store in the mall and there

00:32:44   were people lined up literally around the block overnight and every one of them

00:32:51   was Asian and it turned out a lot of them didn't even speak English and they

00:32:57   were just they were all just buying them to you know on behest of middlemen who

00:33:04   were gonna ship them all to China yeah no totally I think I think the pre-order

00:33:09   started later I think initially it was just it was available in store and

00:33:12   online on the same day. So if you wanted it that day, you had to go to the store. And

00:33:17   here, even in my small suburb, there would be a line in front of the Apple store, like

00:33:20   a sign saying "line up here for iPhone." And for days and weeks after launch, it would

00:33:25   be there were several people from Asia, several people from Latin America countries that hadn't

00:33:29   had launches yet, and some people from Emirates countries that hadn't had launches yet. And

00:33:33   they just all knew that if they got those phones, you know, that was going to pay for

00:33:36   their year.

00:33:37   Right. I have I have a friend who is

00:33:41   Vietnamese and

00:33:44   Her brother and they still have family there and her brother was going to Vietnam, you know to visit family last year

00:33:52   And you know the iPhone 7 wasn't that hard to come by he bought ten of them

00:33:57   Yeah, and took them with him and it and resold them in Vietnam

00:34:01   For cash and the money he made on them paid for the whole trip. Yeah

00:34:06   - Yeah, yeah.

00:34:08   I've heard a lot of people doing that

00:34:08   in the Caribbean as well.

00:34:10   - Like he's not like a professional scalper.

00:34:12   It was just something he did to, you know,

00:34:15   her younger brother did just to pay for the whole trip.

00:34:17   It's crazy though.

00:34:18   But imagine how, I don't even,

00:34:21   I can't even imagine how bad that's gonna be

00:34:24   with the iPhone 10.

00:34:26   - Yeah, especially, I mean,

00:34:28   it's anytime demand far outstrips supply,

00:34:31   we have that problem.

00:34:33   - Yeah, and I just feel like-

00:34:36   and it's starting at $1,000,

00:34:37   it's not even gonna quickly reach $1,000.

00:34:40   - And it is distinctive,

00:34:43   and there's the whole argument of

00:34:45   how often should a new iPhone

00:34:47   clearly look like a new iPhone,

00:34:48   and I'm of the opinion that the fact that the iPhone 7

00:34:52   looks largely like the 6 and 6s is not a problem,

00:34:55   and I think that the success of the iPhone 7 shows that,

00:34:58   and I don't think it's a problem that the iPhone 8

00:35:01   largely looks the same from the front, at least.

00:35:04   But clearly, if you are looking to have a phone

00:35:09   that clearly is the new iPhone,

00:35:11   the iPhone X is gonna be very obvious.

00:35:13   - You're gonna be flaunting that notch.

00:35:17   - Right, and by all accounts, that's a big deal,

00:35:20   particularly a big deal in China,

00:35:22   having jewelry or cars or clothes or whatever,

00:35:28   purses and handbags and stuff like that,

00:35:30   as a status symbol is a huge deal

00:35:33   and is not seen as, you know, here in the US and Canada,

00:35:37   I think there's sort of a modesty involved

00:35:40   where, you know, somebody, you know,

00:35:42   I don't wanna be seen, I'm not getting a new iPhone

00:35:45   so I can go out and flash it around, you know,

00:35:48   it's a different cultural thing.

00:35:50   But in China where it's a big deal,

00:35:52   I really do feel like the resale value on these

00:35:55   is gonna shoot up to, I'm not joking,

00:35:57   to 2,000, maybe $2,500.

00:35:59   Maybe I'm even vastly underestimating.

00:36:02   Maybe it'll be even higher.

00:36:05   - Yeah, and it'll depend exactly on how many orders there are

00:36:06   and how fast, how long it gets pushed out

00:36:08   and how soon Apple can start meeting demand.

00:36:11   - Yeah.

00:36:13   What do you make of reports?

00:36:16   Apple doesn't say stuff like this mid-quarter.

00:36:21   And even when they do announce results,

00:36:24   they don't break down sales by model.

00:36:26   You have to kind of backwards engineer it

00:36:28   from the average selling price.

00:36:30   But there's been a couple of reports

00:36:31   based on like surveys at carriers,

00:36:35   that the iPhone 7 is outselling the iPhone 8.

00:36:39   - Yeah, I've seen some good analysis of this.

00:36:41   There's a couple things,

00:36:41   like I remember when my father was asking me

00:36:44   what he should upgrade to,

00:36:45   and he said, you know, should he get the iPhone 7?

00:36:48   And I was asking him why, and he said,

00:36:49   well, Bell was offering him a much,

00:36:53   the discount rate for getting an iPhone 7 was so good

00:36:57   that he didn't wanna pass it up.

00:36:58   You know, it was just the incentives

00:37:00   were putting behind it were so great he didn't want to pass it up.

00:37:03   But also, and I think Neil Seibert did a really good job of explaining this, those surveys

00:37:06   are hugely problematic because one, they don't have a good picture, they don't have a good

00:37:11   look at the complete picture, but also they're often misinterpreted.

00:37:14   And sometimes what they mean to say is that demand for iPhone 7 was higher at this exact

00:37:18   point in time last year than demand for iPhone 8 is.

00:37:21   And that gets translated into iPhone 7 is outselling iPhone 8.

00:37:24   But it just really means that iPhone 7 was more popular at that point in time than iPhone

00:37:27   8 was.

00:37:28   And then iPhone 7 didn't have to contend with another flagship phone being released just

00:37:32   a month, another flagship Apple phone being released just a month after it was.

00:37:36   But I think in general, that stuff, I usually treat it like garbage.

00:37:39   And I don't mean that to be insulting, but I don't think there's any relevant data in

00:37:43   there.

00:37:44   And unless and until we hear something from Apple and we look at the ASPs and see how

00:37:47   those fall down, I think there's very little we can draw from it other than it makes, again,

00:37:50   it makes a great headline.

00:37:51   Yeah, it does my good I

00:37:53   Kind of feel the same way and I kind of feel like any comparison to previous years is just off it

00:38:00   There is no comparison. There's you know it and it's not the I

00:38:06   Forget who somebody had a column last week. I think it was Tim Colpin from business week about

00:38:13   It's more or less making it sound as though the iPhone 8 is like the iPhone 5c

00:38:20   That it that it's a that you've got a luxury problem debuting alongside a low-cost

00:38:26   device and the iPhone 8 is not a low-cost device like

00:38:30   And I really do think that in an alternate world where there is no iPhone 10 yet where the iPhone 8 is the only

00:38:37   new phone in

00:38:40   2017 from Apple it's it's a good year-over-year up update. It's is it you know, is it world?

00:38:47   shaking? No, but it's good. What do you expect from a stable product, a successful, stable

00:38:57   ten-year-old established product? You're not going to have an iPhone X every year. There's

00:39:00   not going to be something as earth-shaking as the iPhone X next year, right?

00:39:04   No, and it goes back to that article you did for Macworld, how Apple rolls, and that they

00:39:07   do year after year iteration, and this adds wireless charging, and it adds… previous

00:39:12   things like portrait mode and AR would peg the processor on an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus, and

00:39:17   you know that's bad for the battery and this one has plenty of headroom on it

00:39:20   and the iPhone 7 could do photos in low-light that you simply couldn't do

00:39:23   before with the iPhone 8 can take those photos and really make them look good

00:39:27   and you just you have all these benefits to it. I think the biggest lesson Apple

00:39:31   learned was when iPhone 6 and 6 Plus came out there was no new iPhone 5s and

00:39:36   a lot of people were like okay I'm glad you made those big phones but I really

00:39:39   want the smaller phone and they waited 18 months to get it because as much as

00:39:43   some people get bored other people really don't like change and this year

00:39:46   Apple could have just in an alternate alternate reality where Apple just put out iPhone 10

00:39:50   do it in a slew of people saying I want a touch ID I like touch ID I liked having bezels

00:39:54   on my phone I like the home button why did Apple get rid of it and we'd wait 18 months

00:39:57   to have an iPhone 7e or whatever it would be and now people can choose if they're reticent

00:40:03   if they just want I love everything about my iPhone 6s or my iPhone 7 I just want it

00:40:08   to be better they have that and if it's like I really am bored I want something new they

00:40:12   have that and Apple I think they learn to cater to both of those markets and you have

00:40:16   to do that when you talk it's easy when you're selling a million of something

00:40:19   when you're selling a hundred million all those little segments really matter

00:40:22   yeah it's funny you brought that up because that's actually a point I wanted

00:40:25   to make is that the more I think about it the more I think that that's really

00:40:31   the logic between the iPhone 8 and iPhone 10 coming out at the same time is

00:40:37   is really part of it is about filling in every price point from the $350 iPhone SE

00:40:45   up to the what is 1150 for the the 256 gigabyte iPhone 10 part of it is about

00:40:54   filling in every price point but I think a bigger part is really about having

00:41:00   something for the leading-edge crowd like yes give me the new new new and

00:41:07   catering to the literally hundreds of millions of people who are familiar with

00:41:14   with the iPhone that evolved year over year from the original with a home button that

00:41:20   you click and everything where, you know, because I was confused at first at the event

00:41:30   when things like control center on the iPhone 10 moves up to the top right.

00:41:36   Why didn't it move to the, why didn't it move there on all phones?

00:41:39   Why is it only on the iPhone 10?

00:41:42   Why not do that?

00:41:43   That's what you need to do to have app switching from the bottom on the iPhone 10

00:41:47   Why not keep the two is as as similar as possible and the more I think about it the more

00:41:53   I think it's about having a phone that's a new phone

00:41:56   That's high-end has like the same at least the the wide-angle camera is is the same

00:42:02   You know lens and sensor is on the iPhone 10. So you're getting a you know, the same great camera you're getting the same

00:42:09   a11

00:42:11   CPU

00:42:12   Like you said there's the the digital image

00:42:15   Processor that that that takes things off the see it takes things off like portrait mode off the CPU

00:42:23   You can get all of that stuff, but it's the iPhone you're already familiar with

00:42:27   Right, right and I feel but but it's also very familiar to anybody who has any previous iPhone no matter where you're upgrading from

00:42:39   It's as familiar as possible.

00:42:41   Whereas the iPhone X is obviously,

00:42:44   it's always a challenge when you have

00:42:48   a massively hit product in the technology world

00:42:53   to how do you keep moving forward and not grow stagnant

00:42:59   while still catering to the mass market

00:43:03   that really craves familiarity

00:43:06   and doesn't want their habits broken.

00:43:08   - Yeah, and it's also something we've suffered.

00:43:10   We've literally suffered from not having before.

00:43:11   Like if Apple had introduced the new MacBook,

00:43:14   but also revved the MacBook Air

00:43:15   or introduced the new MacBook Pro

00:43:17   and also revved the existing MacBook Pro,

00:43:19   even if it was just the new processors and things like that,

00:43:21   there'd be much less pressure and animosity

00:43:23   from people who don't like the current models.

00:43:26   - Right.

00:43:27   And I feel like the iPhone is so popular.

00:43:32   I feel like I can't even get my mind around

00:43:36   just how many people use it.

00:43:38   And I don't think that, I think Apple is smart not to say that everybody who gets a new iPhone

00:43:44   gets this thing that doesn't have a home button, that moves control center to the corner, that

00:43:49   has a totally different way of switching between apps.

00:43:55   I feel like that's, you know, there's an awful lot of people who would come in and even if

00:44:00   they don't care about the difference in price, are going to look at the iPhone 10 and the

00:44:05   iPhone 8 side by side and say well I want the one I'm already familiar with

00:44:08   yeah absolutely and also it does nicely solve the problem of not being able to

00:44:13   produce tens and little and hundreds of millions of iPhone tens this year yeah

00:44:17   that was my take you know I wrote about that before they came out and and I do

00:44:21   think that plays into it but I feel like they could have done they could have

00:44:28   they didn't have to take the iPhone 8 as far as they did you have a device to do

00:44:32   that you know 7s right it really is at a just checklist you know if you want you

00:44:40   know which I you know I've also written about a lot is a terrible way to compare

00:44:44   products is to just make a list of features and put a checkmark next to the

00:44:48   ones that it has but when you do that comparison the iPhone 8 compares really

00:44:53   well to the iPhone 10 and it was interesting is I mean we talked about

00:44:56   before the that it looks the same and that is intentional Apple read like they

00:45:00   did with the iPhone 5s, they rebuilt that phone on what the

00:45:02   atomic level it's got all new glass, all new stainless, all

00:45:06   new aluminum, the processors are new, the internals are new, the

00:45:09   radios are new, everything is new, they could have made it

00:45:10   look like anything they wanted. Right. They they intentionally

00:45:14   made it look exact as much as possible, like an iPhone seven

00:45:17   or seven s be it because they wanted that familiarity, or they

00:45:20   just believe at their design core that that is the best way

00:45:23   to have a phone with bezels and home buttons and to change it

00:45:26   for change of sake is stupid. But they made all the new stuff

00:45:29   they have look like last year's phone.

00:45:32   That's absolutely intentional.

00:45:34   - Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:35   All right, let me take a break here

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00:46:18   Why would you want a pillow like that on your bed?

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00:47:13   we've been on vacation and stay in a nice hotel and a nice bed. And the number one thing

00:47:18   my son looks forward to when we get home is getting his Hello pillow back. He really loves

00:47:23   it. Do you do the thing? I used to do this. We use two pillows or fold your pillow and

00:47:28   attempt to get better support. Well, that's a sign that your pillow isn't thick enough

00:47:32   or full enough. Hello allows you to sleep with just one pillow and you can prop it up

00:47:37   and you'll stay supported. And you can even add or remove the buckwheat fill from the

00:47:45   zippered opening. So if when you get it, you feel like, "Well, this is too big. This is

00:47:48   too big. You can just open it up, pour some of the, pour some of the buckwheat out or

00:47:53   if you want to, you can order more and you can fill it up even bigger and then you can

00:47:57   do that and you can wash the case. You can empty it, wash the case there. The beans,

00:48:01   the little buckwheats, they stay, you know, for years they stay. They don't like break

00:48:06   or anything like that. It's a really, really great way to sleep. These pillows are made

00:48:10   in the USA with quality construction and materials. It's certified or got organic cotton for the

00:48:17   case and it's cut and sewn for durability. I can vouch for it. I've had one for, I don't

00:48:23   know, at least two years and it looks brand new. Here's the deal. You buy it, you can

00:48:27   sleep on it for 60 nights and if you don't like this pillow, just send it back and they

00:48:32   will give you a full refund. Go to HelloPillow.com/talkshow and if you try more than one pillow, if you

00:48:46   order two or more, you'll get a discount of up to 20 bucks per pillow depending on the

00:48:51   size. And you get fast free shipping on every order. And last but not least, 1% of all profits

00:48:59   from HelloPillow are sent to The Nature Conservancy. It's a great sponsor and a great product.

00:49:05   My thanks to HelloPillow, HelloPillow.com/talkshow to get yours today. So let's talk about the

00:49:13   Pixel 2. So Google had a bad week.

00:49:19   Yeah, a little bit.

00:49:22   So there, the Pixel 2's reviews came out, I guess it was at the beginning of the week

00:49:28   or was it last week? I guess it was last week.

00:49:30   Last week, yeah.

00:49:32   And the reviews came out and they largely got good reviews. But there was an interesting

00:49:38   little intrapublication debate at the verge between Dieter Bohn, who wrote their canonical

00:49:48   review for the two phones, and Vlad Savov, who's a noted Android enthusiast and really

00:49:56   likes the Google branch of Android phones. Where Vlad came out after the reviews came

00:50:05   out and said, "Hey, I've got to say this. The XL, the Pixel..." So there's the regular one,

00:50:09   you know, sort of like the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.

00:50:12   The Pixel 2 is made by HTC and then the Pixel 2 XL is made by LG.

00:50:16   Yeah, but the smaller one has a Samsung OLED display and the bigger one, the XL, has an LG

00:50:27   OLED display. And the bigger ones, OLED display is—I forget what Vlad called it, but something

00:50:37   like a disaster—and said that the colors look bad, images look bad, and when you look at it

00:50:42   at any sort of angle, everything has a blue tint, sort of like all the OLED phones from like five,

00:50:47   six years ago did. And then it turns out about a week after these reviews came out,

00:50:55   all the people with these review units started noticing that that the XL the bigger one was

00:51:00   already suffering from image retention. Yeah, after after a week, which is not good.

00:51:08   Jared Ranere: I mean, they had what was interesting when you like when you do the constructed they

00:51:11   had several separate issues and full disclosure, our Android site, Android Central, I think noted

00:51:17   at least three out of the four of those they didn't have the burn in yet because it wasn't a

00:51:21   week yet but they noted the three main issues. So did Ars Technica and I think

00:51:25   Dieter Bohn did as well. So some publications did not but all three of

00:51:29   those to my knowledge did and so did people like like Vlad and Alex Dobie on

00:51:32   Twitter. So basically first Google tuned the display. Google went to LG to

00:51:36   source the display. It's the same display as the LG V30 and it's a P OLED display,

00:51:41   a plastic substrate OLED. There's really only two companies that can make OLED at

00:51:45   any scale and Samsung does the vast, I think it's like 90% of it, the vast

00:51:48   majority of it and they have all OLED is problematic people love to say all that

00:51:53   is greatness the future and it might be but there's huge problems with OLED and

00:51:56   Samsung has worked really hard Samsung display something has it's really a

00:52:00   bunch of companies but Samsung display has worked really hard to make good OLED

00:52:03   LG makes really good LED for televisions but that uses filtering in a very

00:52:07   different technology OLED is a is a umbrella term for a bunch of different

00:52:12   display technology or implementations of organic light emitting diode and they

00:52:16   And they sourced it from LG because for a variety of reasons they just couldn't get

00:52:19   the Samsung panels, probably because Apple was taking up a bunch of the supply by then

00:52:23   as well.

00:52:24   So they got it from LG and the LG V30 has some of these issues as well.

00:52:27   But so they got these panels and then Google has really good color management now in Android

00:52:32   Oreo and it's sRGB extended 16-bit float and it'll take like a Mark Edwards or somebody

00:52:38   to explain that.

00:52:39   But basically apps and developers can tag the color space they want like standard RGB

00:52:44   or DCI-P3 or Rec. 2020 or whatever they want.

00:52:48   And then it's supposed to just figure it out.

00:52:50   But Google chose what they called

00:52:52   a naturalistic color profile.

00:52:54   But to many people used to like an iPhone

00:52:56   or even a super saturated Samsung phones,

00:52:59   it just looked dull and drab

00:53:00   and it looked really washed out.

00:53:02   And you can see that in side by side photos.

00:53:04   So already it was unappealing

00:53:05   because people really see with their heart

00:53:07   more than their eyes.

00:53:08   That you want something that,

00:53:09   it's the same thing reason you have foreshortening

00:53:11   and forced perspective.

00:53:12   Like you want to play to people's perceptions,

00:53:15   not start numbers in reality.

00:53:16   And Google seems to have missed that.

00:53:18   And then on top of it, LG's Piole has this problem

00:53:22   where if you move even slightly off axis,

00:53:25   it begins to shift towards the blue spectrum.

00:53:28   So you've got this already doesn't look good

00:53:30   and then it starts looking blue tinged.

00:53:31   On top of that, they noticed this grain pattern

00:53:34   when you have sort of a solid color

00:53:36   and you're scrolling especially.

00:53:38   I think LG did something to mitigate that,

00:53:40   but Google didn't.

00:53:41   They just went full on with it

00:53:42   and you can see like a sandiness or graininess.

00:53:45   I think ours called it a dirty grain inside the display,

00:53:48   which they also found off-putting.

00:53:51   And then you have the screen retention issue where,

00:53:54   or burn-in, I don't think anyone's sure what it is yet,

00:53:56   but just a week later, if you go to a full,

00:53:58   like if you bring up Daring Fireball, for example,

00:54:01   you'll see the controls burned in,

00:54:04   the menu button burned in at the bottom of the display.

00:54:07   And some of these things you can mitigate with software.

00:54:09   Like they could redo the color calibration

00:54:11   or the color profile, and they can try to avoid the tones that bring out the graininess.

00:54:16   But the color shifting and things like burn-in, those might be problematic at the hardware

00:54:21   level.

00:54:22   Dave: Yeah, so I went to my local Verizon superstore here in Philadelphia, hoping that

00:54:29   they had the Pixel 2s. And it was weird. It's a really big Verizon store here. It's actually

00:54:36   very close, I think not coincidentally, to the Apple store here on Walnut Street. It's

00:54:45   a very nice spot and it's lots of glass, lots of sunlight. So I went in. I'd never

00:54:50   stepped foot in there before because why would I? They even had a kiosk, like a Google Pixel

00:54:57   kiosk, and I went over and it was just the Pixel 1s from last year. I was like, "Oh,

00:55:02   I wasted my time coming here.

00:55:04   But I thought I'd look around,

00:55:06   and then there's like in the back,

00:55:08   it's like they have a bunch of little,

00:55:10   I guess paid for kiosks from different manufacturers.

00:55:14   It's sort of like a little, a mall within the store.

00:55:19   - Like Tiny Town for carriers.

00:55:22   - Yeah, and there's like a branded LG kiosk

00:55:25   and a branded Samsung kiosk, and it's like,

00:55:27   I guess that's just the way carriers think.

00:55:31   But then in the back wall, there's like a, against the wall, it's sort of like, here's

00:55:36   every phone we sell side by side. And I went over there and they had the Pixel 2s. So I

00:55:41   guess it's just that Google hasn't yet updated their little in-store kiosk for the Pixel

00:55:47   2s, but they did have them in the back. And so I did get to see them side by side. And

00:55:51   the blue shift thing when you tilt the phone is totally real. And it's really weird. And

00:55:59   I guess it's not a deal breaker for me. Like, if I really wanted to use the pixel, like my take

00:56:06   after looking at the pixel x, x l, although this was before the image burn in thing, and I'm curious

00:56:12   how that in store one which I guess would show the same thing all day long. I'm curious how bad the

00:56:17   if the image burn in is bad on that one. I could see I kind of see Dieter's, Dieter bones take

00:56:24   where it's like he acknowledges these problems, but it's he still want you know, he still

00:56:30   likes the phone. And I can totally see that like it's not and therefore I can kind of

00:56:35   see why Google shipped it. Like if I really wanted and the plus sized Google Pixel. It's

00:56:44   not enough that would make me not want to use it. But it is weird because like the viewing

00:56:48   angle before you get the blue, any natural angle where you want to be looking at your

00:56:53   phone you don't see it. But it's—I could totally see, though, where you're going

00:56:58   to get it when you're taking photos sometimes, because sometimes when you're holding your

00:57:02   phone in front of you, you're not looking at it straight on.

00:57:05   Or you're looking at someone else's phone over the shoulder, or it's on a table, or

00:57:08   one of those situations.

00:57:09   Yeah, exactly. So I wouldn't call it a deal breaker, but it brings to mind what you referenced

00:57:17   earlier. Can you even imagine if the iPhone X had this problem?

00:57:21   It would be front page on every BizPub for a week.

00:57:26   And part of that is justified based on how many iPhones Apple actually sells and how

00:57:32   many pixels Google actually sells.

00:57:35   Google doesn't sell enough pixels and the pixel isn't a meaningful part of their revenue.

00:57:42   It literally might be like a rounding error.

00:57:46   And so part of the difference in attention that's paid to it is justified.

00:57:52   But part of it, it annoys me.

00:57:54   There's sort of a grading on the curve thing.

00:57:56   And the other thing too is that when you're choosing between an iPhone 8 and an iPhone

00:58:02   8 Plus, the camera is obviously different.

00:58:08   You can tell just by looking at the back, right, that this, the bigger one has two cameras

00:58:13   and the smaller one has one.

00:58:15   So it's right there, you can see by looking at it that there's a difference in cameras.

00:58:20   But the screens, you're literally just buying a bigger screen.

00:58:25   There's no difference in quality of the screens, which is exactly what you would think without

00:58:32   being like a nerd like us who's totally into this.

00:58:35   Just as a typical consumer who walks into the store, you'd say, "Well, it looks like

00:58:39   this one has a bigger screen, but it's the same and it has a better camera."

00:58:44   you would be right. Whereas with the pixels, they have the same camera and they look like

00:58:49   they have the same camera and they really do, so you'd be right to assume that. But

00:58:53   you would think, looking at them side by side, that they have the same screen, but it's a

00:58:57   totally different screen. The screen on the smaller new pixel is so much better it's ridiculous.

00:59:03   Yeah, there's a couple of things that I think are worth breaking down. One is that, so I

00:59:09   ordered a Pixel 2 XL the day of the event, you know, with no hesitation because every

00:59:13   Every year I try to get the new Nexus and now I try to get the new Pixel.

00:59:17   I considered canceling it because I think it would bug me.

00:59:19   It's like Lorne Brikter can see dropped frames and he can see the little stutter on the scaling

00:59:24   on the iPhone Plus and he hates that.

00:59:25   Some people can see those things.

00:59:27   I think in some it's going to bother me but not enough to cancel.

00:59:31   But also if I'm listening to a bad MP3 file it doesn't bother me where I have friends

00:59:35   with golden ears where again someone like Marco might be running screaming from the

00:59:38   room because he can't take that bad audio.

00:59:40   I'm totally immune to that.

00:59:42   So I'm interested to see how bad it is.

00:59:44   But I feel like there's, the difference here is that

00:59:46   Google is allowed to get away with a lot of things

00:59:48   that I don't think Apple does and it's bad for the consumer.

00:59:50   Like last year, when Google said,

00:59:52   this is the first phone designed by Google.

00:59:54   When, you know, that's clearly bullshit.

00:59:55   They collaborated on Nexus for years

00:59:57   and that phone was put together last minute with HTC.

01:00:00   And we know this, but they don't get called out on it.

01:00:03   And then this year they said stuff like, unlike,

01:00:05   it was sort of quote unquote, unlike Apple,

01:00:07   if you buy our big phone, there's no difference.

01:00:09   And there still is a difference.

01:00:11   It has a bigger battery and it has a completely different screen technology.

01:00:14   And it's completely disingenuous and they're not called out on it.

01:00:17   And then we saw all these articles about how easy it is to make hardware and how Google's

01:00:21   leapfrogging all the hardware, made by Google's leapfrogging all the hardware incumbents.

01:00:26   And it's totally not true and it creates a very false dichotomy.

01:00:29   Making hardware is hard and making good OLED is hard.

01:00:33   And it's going to be interesting because I think if iPhone X looks as good, you and I

01:00:37   have already seen it, but when it looks good, I think Samsung is going to get a lot of credit

01:00:40   And they deserve all the credit in the world for making a mature OLED panel, but do you

01:00:46   remember or care who made the LCD panel in the last three iPhones?

01:00:49   I think most people don't.

01:00:51   And that's just as relevant as who's making this OLED.

01:00:53   This is Apple OLED.

01:00:54   They might get the panel, the pixels from Samsung, but it's Apple display team who did

01:00:59   the sub-pixel and the alias thing, who's doing the color management, who's doing the burn-in

01:01:04   prevention, who's doing...

01:01:05   There is a slew of Apple technologies in this panel.

01:01:09   And it really is going to be Apple's first OLED.

01:01:11   And I think Apple's first OLED compared to Google's first OLED is a relevant discussion.

01:01:17   I think that one of the reports on—I forget who had it, if it was the Wall Street Journal

01:01:24   or Bloomberg—but one of the reports over the months before September's event on the

01:01:30   iPhone X's delay—and let's face it, it is delayed.

01:01:34   Ideally, it would have shipped in September.

01:01:37   But they're not using the exact same OLED displays.

01:01:41   I mean, they are made by Samsung, but they're not like the same displays that are in Samsung

01:01:45   phones.

01:01:46   Apple's are, it's like the description that the story I'm thinking of said something

01:01:53   to the effect of Samsung's has the touchscreen embedded in the display and Apple's, it's

01:01:58   a two-step process.

01:02:00   It's got more steps involved and is actually harder to manufacture.

01:02:03   And Apple has 3D touch layer and they have their two-tone color technology.

01:02:07   I mean, it's I think the 3d touch layer is why it's it's separate, you know

01:02:11   It sounds like putting it in one component sounds better

01:02:14   But I think the reason it's two for Apple isn't about making it look better

01:02:18   But about getting touch ID in there or not touch ID a 3d touch

01:02:21   Yeah

01:02:22   Because previously if you touch use the deformation of the glass as measured by the LED and all that doesn't have LEDs

01:02:27   You've got a completely and I think they used a film based technology now for 3d touch. Yeah

01:02:34   It it yeah a couple of factors on this one is that it is it shows where Samsung really has

01:02:42   Apple dead to rights on this like the fact that with

01:02:46   Google's

01:02:49   flagship

01:02:50   Phones and they've spent a fair amount of money promoting these things like I watch I've been watching the baseball playoffs and Google had a

01:02:56   Ton of commercials during the baseball playoffs for the new pixel phones

01:03:00   I mean, they're there's I don't know if that even compares to the amount of money that Samsung and Apple pay

01:03:05   But they're they're not like just throwing them out here and you know, putting some web ads up or something like that

01:03:10   But the fact that they're one that has a Samsung screen

01:03:15   Everybody says this screen looks great and the one that has an LG screen

01:03:19   Everybody says this is garbage and and the best people can say as well I can live with it

01:03:23   Really shows

01:03:27   Just how

01:03:30   There's really only one place or only one company to go to to get a high quality OLED display for a phone right now

01:03:36   Apple does use LG for watch and they use LG for

01:03:39   The touch bar and LG uses OLED it does a stripe RGB stripe

01:03:43   Which is you know, theoretically preferable to the diamond currently using they're using diamond pen tile in Samsung displays

01:03:50   Because the blue the blue sub pixel just doesn't have the lifespan of the red and green and it'll start it'll start evaporating faster

01:03:57   and you've got to do a bunch of stuff to mitigate that and Samsung's solution is Pentile and

01:04:01   they can they can do it at scale and LG can't yet. But Apple and Samsung both poured billions

01:04:05   of dollars into LG display and at the end Apple said we still can't use these panels

01:04:10   and Google's like ship them. So is the iPhone 10 going to have a Pentile display? Yeah I don't

01:04:15   know if they call it Pentile because I think that's a trademark but it's a diamond pixel

01:04:19   arrangement where you have like the blue, sorry the green oval-shaped green pixels with red and

01:04:25   blue pixels in between them.

01:04:27   Yeah, I feel like one of the many unknowns about iPhone X is something that we won't

01:04:34   even be able to judge for a long time is how is it going to hold up like after a year?

01:04:38   Yeah, well OLED has a shorter lifespan than… I mean there are technologies with OLED that

01:04:43   have a longer lifespan, but I don't believe any of them are shipping. It has a much shorter

01:04:47   lifespan, but that's more of a problem for TVs because you keep TVs 5 to 10 years, where

01:04:52   most people don't keep phones over five years.

01:04:54   But I did sort of an – because I sort of knew about the Pentile, well, about the diamond-shaped

01:04:58   thing when we were at the event.

01:05:00   And I did a brief survey afterwards.

01:05:01   I just asked people what they thought of the display.

01:05:03   And I don't remember anybody realizing it.

01:05:05   And that's because Apple has done a ton of stuff that nobody else has done with the

01:05:09   anti-aliasing and things.

01:05:10   And you'll hear people theoretically say, "Well, it's not as sharp as – like,

01:05:14   you can't compare the resolutions because Stripe and Diamond are different."

01:05:18   All that is true.

01:05:19   When a bunch of really picky nerds were looking at him, nobody noticed.

01:05:22   Yeah, and you know, when the pixels are small enough, the... and again, I'm with you, I

01:05:29   understand, I totally believe like Lauren Brikter, that he can see the scaling on the 7+, you know,

01:05:35   the plus-size screens. For those who aren't paying close attention, the 7, all the plus models,

01:05:41   the 6, the 6s and the 7 and the 8 even run at a 3x retina scaling factor. But on the

01:05:52   fly, the phone scales it down to a slightly smaller to actually, you know, the virtual

01:05:59   resolution of the screen that the software thinks it's running at is greater than the

01:06:03   actual resolution of the screen. And so everything is actually scaled down by like 15 or 20%.

01:06:09   I don't see that. It's the pixels are too small for me to see it. I

01:06:13   Believe that there are some people whose eyes are that good but mine aren't yeah. No, they can see a small flicker

01:06:18   I have a friend who when they're when they drop frames on my OLED TV. He can see it

01:06:23   He says it makes him sick. I totally believe him. I don't notice it at all

01:06:26   I think it's like VR to some people get sick off VR 3d and other people don't I

01:06:30   Think the other thing and and it ties in with the pixel the pixel phones

01:06:36   And I kind of had a I thought in her to me the whole point of the pixels isn't just

01:06:43   like to me the difference between the pixels and the old Nexus phones from Google is

01:06:49   Pretty significant and I don't know. I don't see a lot of people writing about it. But to me the Nexus was

01:06:56   Google's vision for pure Android and the difference with the pixels to me is

01:07:03   that it's Google's vision of a of a

01:07:06   Google-oriented version of Android

01:07:09   Meaning it's tied into Google assistant and other Google services and it's not pure Android. It's pretty close

01:07:17   It's not like they've done like a touchwiz or whatever Samsung does it's not like they've put like a totally new skin on it

01:07:23   It is close to pure Android, but it's pure Android with as much integration with Google's other services

01:07:30   You know, it's it's the phone that Google envisions for somebody who's all in on the Google

01:07:34   Ecosystem where you've got your good, you know your calendars and Google Calendar all of your email goes through Gmail

01:07:42   You're using the Google Assistant. You've got your

01:07:45   You know, if you've got anything in your house, you're using the you know, one of those talking assistants. You've got the Google home

01:07:51   This is the phone that ties into their vision for all how all that stuff ties together and that's different

01:07:58   That is very different in my opinion. And I also think personally just looking at them that

01:08:04   They I wouldn't call them iPhone ripoffs

01:08:08   but they are they're obviously way more iPhone like than the current LG and Samsung and

01:08:15   The other whatever you want to call the other top tier Android manufacturers. There is a there's a certain aesthetic to

01:08:21   The Samsung and LG phones that is to me. I I don't like

01:08:28   You know, it's it, you know, part of it, I don't like part of it is the hardware. And part of it is just something as simple as their oversaturated color profiles for the displays.

01:08:39   You know, the random sizing of different icons.

01:08:44   Right.

01:08:46   - I've heard a story and I think these,

01:08:47   I think both might be true.

01:08:49   And one is that originally with the Nexus One,

01:08:51   Google just wanted to show what was possible with Android.

01:08:54   'Cause they felt like, you know,

01:08:55   the industry wasn't moving forward

01:08:56   as fast as they wanted it to.

01:08:58   And then after that,

01:08:59   they just really wanted a developer phone

01:09:00   that they could get into people's hands

01:09:02   with as close to a baseline Android experience as possible,

01:09:05   as cheaply as possible to sort of spur

01:09:07   development and app adoption.

01:09:09   And then they had a change in leadership recently,

01:09:12   and now the powers that be just really want an iPhone.

01:09:15   And part of that could be motivated by fear, which is--

01:09:17   like Android came into being because Google was afraid

01:09:20   originally that Microsoft would have such dominance in mobile

01:09:22   that they would get locked out of search, which was

01:09:25   their entire business back then.

01:09:26   And now there's sort of this fear that Samsung is so

01:09:29   dominant on Android hardware that things like Bixby and

01:09:32   Samsung Pay would lock Google out of the services that are

01:09:35   going to be super important to them going forward.

01:09:37   So they realize that unless you control the atoms, you

01:09:40   never have complete authority over the device.

01:09:42   and they do very much want an iPhone,

01:09:45   which is why it's looking like the iPhone.

01:09:47   And both Google and Microsoft are amazing

01:09:50   at getting media and everybody to talk about

01:09:53   Pixel versus iPhone and Surface versus MacBook

01:09:56   when the vast majority of people are deciding

01:09:58   between Android phones and Windows PCs.

01:10:01   And those are their real competition,

01:10:04   and I think that's how Google is sort of placing this.

01:10:07   - Yeah, I feel like the color calibration

01:10:10   the screen now says it all to me. Where the pixels to me are, and again, look, you can

01:10:19   see this very, like going to a Verizon store and going to the back table where they have

01:10:23   all these phones laid out. You can see it and you know, I can take my iPhone out of

01:10:27   my pocket and see that, go to the same web page and see that like the photo on the front

01:10:32   page of the New York Times looks pretty similar on my iPhone, my personal iPhone with these

01:10:38   pixels, you know, they're all obviously got the brightness turned all the way up in the

01:10:42   store. So to make a fair comparison, I've turned the brightness up on my phone temporarily.

01:10:47   Whereas when I look at it, like on a Samsung phone, the colors look garish to me.

01:10:52   Yes. Yeah, they totally get this stat. Right. And I've seen that where there are some like,

01:10:59   you know, I think some people act obviously like it. Otherwise, why would they do it?

01:11:03   people like it and I feel like there's other people who've gotten used to it.

01:11:08   Yeah, it's like stores on a display in a big box. You know, it's TV on a big box.

01:11:13   If you're used to Samsung's display saturation and then

01:11:22   you're like, "But I'd like to try this Pixel phone because I'd like to,

01:11:25   you know, why not get the phone right from the maker of Android?" And then you

01:11:29   look at it and I could see why people are like, "Ah, this screen looks

01:11:32   washed out. But it's not washed out to my eyes. It's actually pretty well-tuned. But

01:11:40   it's an interesting contrast to me.

01:11:41   Steven: The whole thing just reminds me that all this stuff is hard, and we're very easy

01:11:45   to say. Every year, "Yay!" It's so much better. But all this stuff is super hard. Apple's

01:11:49   been doing DCI-P3 color space for a couple generations now, and managing it across devices

01:11:54   for a couple generations. Where Android Oreo, this is the first big implementation of this.

01:11:59   And again, like a designer will tell you that the bigger the color space, the more room

01:12:02   to hang yourself if you get it wrong.

01:12:04   Like you can really see banding and you can really see other issues and you've got to

01:12:08   be super careful and really control what you're doing there.

01:12:10   And I think none of that is trivial.

01:12:12   Yeah.

01:12:13   And it's one of those things that since it's literally just with the version of Android

01:12:17   that is just shipped, it's, you know, and not to make hay over this again, it's an old

01:12:23   and I mean, it just is the way it is.

01:12:25   It's sort of like when a new Android-- the way I look at it

01:12:28   is that a new version of Android is effectively

01:12:30   a public beta from three years in the future.

01:12:35   It's going to be at least three years before there's

01:12:37   a significant number of people running

01:12:39   this version of Android.

01:12:41   And I know that there's a whole bunch of stuff that

01:12:44   ships through the Google Play Store in the whatever

01:12:47   that library is called, whatever the Google standard library.

01:12:51   The Google Play API, yeah.

01:12:53   Yeah.

01:12:54   And there's all sorts of new features

01:12:55   that you get with older versions of Android.

01:12:59   Without getting a new version of the entire operating system,

01:13:01   you can get stuff.

01:13:02   But something like this, like actual true color management,

01:13:05   you're not going to get until you get

01:13:07   a phone that's running Oreo.

01:13:09   And it's going to be like two, three years before that

01:13:11   happens.

01:13:12   So who even knows when developers of Android apps

01:13:14   are actually going to bother to do the work to actually use

01:13:17   these APIs?

01:13:18   And that's the thing, because I believe

01:13:19   they have to tag the color space they're using.

01:13:20   And if they don't, I think it defaults to sRGB.

01:13:23   these are DCI p3 and it's it is going to be a hard problem to solve with a bunch of you know again

01:13:29   because you're dealing and google does as far as i know they don't enforce the stuff the way apple

01:13:32   does like you can put an app on the store that doesn't use the latest apis and it's fine and if

01:13:37   you're not doing that like you'll load up your banking app it'll be purple instead of blue and

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01:15:52   new closed beta, getflow.com/thetalkshow. So anything, I want to wrap up soon. We want

01:16:00   to get this show out tonight. I wanted to talk about, you and I both, funny enough,

01:16:04   like yesterday I spent my day writing about a piece that I, well not just one piece, but

01:16:08   Sort of series of what I would call FUD fear

01:16:11   Yeah

01:16:11   That's the old fear uncertainty doubt on face ID and then you wrote one today about a really to me a weird piece at

01:16:18   wired on

01:16:21   positing that core ml is is a vector for privacy

01:16:24   Exfiltrations

01:16:28   And I just think it's so weird that they would write this feature story about I mean that just to this wired story is more

01:16:34   less like, "Hey, a scammy app could use these core ML machine learning APIs in iOS 11 to

01:16:42   go through your photos and do machine learning on them to learn what kind of photos you've

01:16:49   taken and send you targeted ads," which A, would be a violation of the App Store. It

01:16:54   could happen. I mean, in theory, it could happen. But the thing that baffles me is that

01:16:59   this is something that in theory could happen if somebody sneaks through the app store and

01:17:03   expressly does what Apple doesn't want developers to do. Meanwhile, actual companies like Google

01:17:11   and Facebook are doing it on their rampaging your privacy on a daily basis.

01:17:16   Right.

01:17:17   And what's worse is that with Core ML, I mean, if they didn't have Core ML, they would, it

01:17:21   would be smarter for them to do exactly what Google, Facebook and Instagram do already,

01:17:26   which is just get you to give them your photos.

01:17:27   It's the easiest way to take a weapon away

01:17:29   from a Grammaton Cleric is to ask him for it.

01:17:31   Give me your photos.

01:17:32   And then they do all this machine learning on their servers.

01:17:34   With this, they could say,

01:17:35   find me all the pictures of bananas on John's phone.

01:17:38   But if they did it the old fashioned way,

01:17:39   they would just take all your photos,

01:17:40   look for bananas one day, peaches the next day,

01:17:42   whatever the ad company wanted.

01:17:44   It just, it makes zero sense to me.

01:17:45   - Yeah, I don't get it.

01:17:48   - And they quoted Will Safley,

01:17:50   but they did it at the very end.

01:17:51   And he's the only one who was smart.

01:17:52   And they didn't learn enough from what he said

01:17:54   to just not run the article.

01:17:55   (laughing)

01:17:57   It was funny because,

01:17:59   and I hate to impugn bad motives on a writer,

01:18:04   but it's, and I'm not saying that's necessarily

01:18:07   what happened in this case, but I think it is,

01:18:10   which is that so often a writer of a news piece

01:18:15   has the article, the way the article is going to go

01:18:21   is already in their head,

01:18:24   and then they go out and find quotes to fit it.

01:18:27   And it's the complete opposite of how you should go.

01:18:31   And it's complete, I know I'm not a reporter.

01:18:33   I don't really write news reports, but I can't tell you.

01:18:35   I've always said this.

01:18:36   I can't say how many times where I've started writing

01:18:39   something at Daring Fireball,

01:18:40   thinking I was going in a certain direction.

01:18:42   And then as I wrote it,

01:18:43   realized I thought something different.

01:18:46   To me, thinking, writing is thinking.

01:18:48   And I don't really know what I think about something

01:18:50   until I write about it.

01:18:51   - Totally.

01:18:52   - And then when I write, it goes in a way.

01:18:53   So I can't believe they ran that quote from Will,

01:18:56   because--

01:18:57   - Basically said the article was, yeah, no.

01:19:02   In my experience with stuff,

01:19:03   and I'm not a reporter either.

01:19:04   You know, I never went to J School,

01:19:05   my background is not in reporting.

01:19:07   I'm like a commenter, if anything, commentator.

01:19:09   But I get pitches all the time from these companies saying,

01:19:12   "We have an expert ready to tell you why

01:19:14   Apple is doing this horrific thing."

01:19:15   And I look at it and A, it has nothing to do with Apple,

01:19:18   and B, it's usually not horrific.

01:19:19   Even in this article, there's like one brief aside

01:19:22   that says, "Also Google TensorFlow."

01:19:26   Google's been doing the biggest push into ML,

01:19:28   and they actually do it server side.

01:19:30   There's, if you want to address ML,

01:19:32   I don't see why it's 999% Apple,

01:19:35   and then a brief, and no mention of Facebook,

01:19:38   no mention of anything else.

01:19:40   - Right, Will Straffick's quote is,

01:19:42   "I suppose Core ML could be abused,

01:19:44   "but as it stands, apps can already get full photo access.

01:19:47   "So if they want to grab and upload your full photo library,

01:19:51   that's already possible if permission is granted.

01:19:53   - And the counter argument is that they could use CoreML

01:19:56   to do only a few photos which you're less likely to notice,

01:19:58   but they could use geo tagging or any form of metadata

01:20:01   to get a small sampling of photos.

01:20:03   It has nothing, none of this has anything

01:20:04   to do with CoreML.

01:20:06   - So the piece I wrote, published last night,

01:20:09   and I've been meaning to get this off my chest for a while.

01:20:11   And I thought that the latest article at Bloomberg

01:20:16   was a good reason to do it now,

01:20:20   was to sort of, to get off my chest,

01:20:24   everything I've learned since September's Apple event

01:20:27   about the timeline of iPhone 10 and Face ID

01:20:30   and whether and when they were trying to put Touch ID

01:20:33   in the sensor or in the display

01:20:36   and go back and revisit all of the,

01:20:40   not all, but 'cause there were too many,

01:20:42   but there were just an avalanche of stories over the summer

01:20:45   alluding to, more alleging that Apple was,

01:20:50   was as late as July trying to get touch ID

01:20:55   into the edge-to-edge display of the iPhone X.

01:20:59   And only when they couldn't do it

01:21:02   or ran up against a deadline

01:21:04   decided to use Face ID as a fallback.

01:21:07   And I don't think that's an exaggeration

01:21:10   that that's the, you know, it wasn't just one story,

01:21:13   it was multiple stories.

01:21:14   Bloomberg ran some, the Wall Street Journal ran one

01:21:17   as late as, it was like just a couple of days

01:21:20   for the event in September.

01:21:21   - Still deciding, John, still deciding.

01:21:26   - And that didn't make,

01:21:27   it didn't make any sense to me all summer long,

01:21:29   but I had no sources to refute it.

01:21:33   But what I've heard for years is that iPhones are on a more

01:21:38   or less, it's like a two-year timeframe.

01:21:42   And it's like-- - Yeah,

01:21:43   an iPhone 10 was three, I think.

01:21:45   - I've heard that too, because it was, you know,

01:21:49   It's so new and there's so much new in it,

01:21:50   but that it's a really long time designing these things,

01:21:55   but that the last year of it

01:21:56   is pretty much locked down design-wise,

01:22:00   and now they have a year to figure out

01:22:02   how to make them at scale,

01:22:03   how to procure every single one of the components

01:22:05   that they need at the price they need,

01:22:09   and assemble them up to their standards,

01:22:12   that it's more or less a year.

01:22:14   And so it doesn't make any sense to me at all

01:22:18   that they would, as late as the summer, would still be dithering over whether they could do

01:22:22   something as significant as embedding a touch ID into the display. Again, that—and I've heard they

01:22:29   did look into that. That is, you know, there's a kernel of truth there, but that was something that

01:22:34   they looked into, like, in 2015. It was not something that they were still trying to do

01:22:39   this summer. I've been guilty of this too, and then I got a very polite note one day saying,

01:22:43   "Dude, that's like six to 18-month-old news," and I realized how long it took for the stuff to echo

01:22:47   out. Uh, and you know, I, I, it's like, I think people want it to be sort of, uh,

01:22:57   it, there's like a, uh, excitement to the idea that Apple is working on something like the

01:23:03   iPhone hardware up to the last second. Yeah. Uh, but it just isn't, it's just not the way it works.

01:23:11   And if you ever think, you know, like, just do the math of, you know, 70 million iPhones in a quarter

01:23:18   divided by how many the 90 days in a quarter you're talking roughly about a million phones a day.

01:23:26   Yeah. Right. It's give or take a roughly a million phones a day, rolling out of Foxconn in China and

01:23:36   going around the world. If you think about how you would get a production process set

01:23:41   up to be able to do that, there's no way that you can make changes at the last second.

01:23:48   No, I mean, the biggest we've ever seen, I think, is when they broke open an iPod touch

01:23:52   and saw the unused area for a camera. Yep, I was about to bring that up. And that's the

01:23:57   one, whenever I try to say, you know, these things are locked down months, maybe even

01:24:02   a year in advance depending on the quantity. And the fact that the iPhone is so important

01:24:07   to Apple and is made in such quantity and is often, if not usually, the leading edge

01:24:14   of technology. You know, the first device Apple shipped with a Touch ID sensor. Now

01:24:18   it's going to be the first device they ship with Face ID. It's leading edge technology

01:24:23   for the industry and the company, and it ships in the greatest quantity.

01:24:27   That's what Jeff Williams had a great quote on that last week where he said, "We need

01:24:30   to deliver cutting-edge technology at—that was at mainstream technology scale,

01:24:34   right along those lines. It was really interesting.

01:24:36   Tom Bilyeu: Whenever I bring that up, somebody who wants to refute it, and whether it's just a

01:24:44   random reader or listener of the show or somebody else who's like a writer who maybe had a source

01:24:52   from the supply chain alleging something like this, they always cite that iPod Touch that

01:24:58   was supposed to have a face ID camera and then shipped without one and then when when

01:25:02   people took it apart like iFixit you could see where it was supposed to go but if you think

01:25:06   about it that's the sort of change if anything could be done at the last minute just omitting a

01:25:12   part and then not putting a hole in the top bezel yeah no exactly it it's not like they added a can

01:25:22   you know like the thing that they couldn't do is add a camera at the last minute there's no way you

01:25:26   You could not do, they couldn't do it.

01:25:28   - Because that's made to be filled with something else.

01:25:30   - Right, not putting the camera in

01:25:32   and not cutting a hole, poking the round hole

01:25:36   for the camera lens in the bezel is something you could do

01:25:40   'cause it's not doing something, right?

01:25:44   But you can't add something.

01:25:45   You can't add, just add a touch ID sensor.

01:25:48   And the crazy part about it, it's funny

01:25:50   'cause I had a couple of sources, people who, engineers,

01:25:53   Not like people, not Apple PR,

01:25:56   not people from product marketing who you might think,

01:26:00   even though I've heard from them too as well,

01:26:02   corroborating that the timeline on this was nonsense,

01:26:05   that there was no such thing going on in the summer.

01:26:09   But I'm talking about actual engineers

01:26:10   who worked on this project for,

01:26:12   I don't even know how long,

01:26:13   'cause even though they'll tell me something like,

01:26:16   "That's nonsense, we decided on Face ID over a year ago."

01:26:19   I don't even know how long they were working on the project,

01:26:21   you know, you don't ask. But they were just bad. Like when these reports started coming up in the

01:26:26   summer, no one was more confused than the people who were involved with making the decision a year

01:26:33   ago, that face ID was was the way to go. Yeah.

01:26:37   Yeah, I think the only thing we have on the timeline is Johnny Siruji when he said that they

01:26:42   were working on bionic for three years to get the neural nets working. Yeah, that sounds about right,

01:26:48   right? That makes sense to me. And that means that like, what are they working on right now?

01:26:52   They're working on like the a 14. Yeah. Right.

01:26:54   Yeah, no, absolutely. And they need you. I mean, getting things like the neural networks. I mean,

01:27:00   it sounds, it sounds funny, but they talk about those things. I don't know if we talked to us

01:27:05   already or not. But when when I was hearing about the bionic, the way the language they were using

01:27:09   was like training a pet, not like programming a or coding a computer. It's and then they have two

01:27:14   neural networks fighting each other, essentially want to authenticate your face and want to try to

01:27:19   trick it. And I don't even know if they know what those things are doing anymore. It's like,

01:27:21   they let them loose, and they just make each other better all the time. And it's a substantial shift

01:27:25   in the way all this stuff works. And that's, that's not something that you do in the last

01:27:28   three months leading up to a device. No, and it's, you know, it's my understanding, and you know,

01:27:35   they have a great white paper that's already out on face ID security, because they realize,

01:27:40   you know, and naturally so that people, you know, it was it's so funny, though, to me that people

01:27:45   had the exact same qualms about touch ID, right? They had the exact same qualms where they were like

01:27:51   nervous about their, you know, rightly so that, you know, I don't know if I want my fingerprint

01:27:56   stored in this. Is it going to be is it actually going to store my fingerprint? The answer is

01:28:00   actually no, it stores like a hash based on your fingerprint. Is it going to be uploaded to iCloud

01:28:06   or something like that? No, it actually stays on the secure processor. Can apps read my fingerprint?

01:28:12   No, because it's on a secure enclave. It's not like a thing you can only, you know, an app can

01:28:18   ask you to verify your fingerprint, but it never actually sees your fingerprint, etc, etc. People

01:28:22   had all these qualms about it, and were nervous about it. And combined with that thought that

01:28:26   Touch ID wasn't going to work well, because other companies like sort of dirty the water by shipping

01:28:33   shitty fingerprint sensors beforehand. And now here we are, and people want touch ID,

01:28:41   you know, or like, I don't know, I don't know about this face ID thing. Why can't they?

01:28:45   I might wait till next year when they bring touch ID back.

01:28:49   I went through customs on my way to the launch event at Times at New York, sorry, Fifth Avenue.

01:28:54   And when I got there, I said, the guy said, Where are you? Why are you coming to America?

01:28:57   And I said, I'm going to the iPhone eight launch at Fifth Avenue. And he said, Oh, my

01:29:01   Apple with their face ID, now they're going to be storing our photos, we'll have a national

01:29:06   CCTV database, and there goes the privacy. I've got a PIN number and no one's ever breaking

01:29:11   it. And I'm like, you just saw me do an iris scan and fingerprint scan right before I spoke

01:29:16   to you, and I'm pretty sure your government stores that in an Equifax database. There's

01:29:21   nothing about what Apple's doing that's scary, but what you're doing already is really scary.

01:29:26   I just think it's so, I don't know.

01:29:29   But I do feel, and I feel like that that's where,

01:29:32   that these stories that have been circulating,

01:29:36   I don't know where they come from.

01:29:38   I get the end of the art,

01:29:39   I don't wanna spend a long time in the article

01:29:41   speculating about it.

01:29:42   I just wanted to shoot it down and say,

01:29:44   "Look, I've talked to people who I'm 100% convinced by

01:29:48   "that these decisions were made over a year ago,

01:29:51   "and that the iPhone 8, or iPhone 10, I'm sorry,

01:29:53   hardware was locked down by the end of last year, probably about a year ago, but at least

01:30:00   by the end of last year. But in terms of where did these rumors come from? I don't know.

01:30:07   I think the simplest answer is, and I think I stole it from you, honestly, is that it

01:30:11   just that that's just how long it takes. It takes nine to 12 months for decisions that

01:30:17   Apple makes on hardware to percolate out to the rumor sites and to the reporters who write

01:30:22   stuff like this and to the analysts. That's just how long it takes. Takes about nine to

01:30:26   12 months. And then so nine to, you know, decisions that are being made at Apple like

01:30:30   this week about next year's iPhone, like nine months from now will be reported as though

01:30:36   they're, that's what they're thinking about right now.

01:30:39   Yeah, I think the other issue is that, and we, they get a few things and like we've been

01:30:44   there too, we'll hear a few things, but it's usually out of context. And the contact is

01:30:48   critically important. Like you can listen to this story and you can see you can hear them say

01:30:53   "Apple reduced Touch ID, Face ID accuracy" but that's you know how they got there is not entirely

01:30:59   clear to me. A lot of times we saw this with Apple dual sourcing the A9. Apple will say we need this

01:31:04   component to do 10. Anything we need this component to be under 10 and they'll say 9.3 sure oh sorry

01:31:11   we can only do it at scale at 9.7. Apple's like that's still under 10 right? Yes go! And as long

01:31:18   as long as it's under 10 it's perfectly fine.

01:31:20   And the difference between 3 and 7, if someone wants to leak that, we'll get a story in the

01:31:24   Wall Street Journal, Apple changes spec from 3 to 7.

01:31:27   It's like, no, no, that spec was always 10.

01:31:29   And the supplier adjusted until they could meet capacity inside that spec.

01:31:34   And I think that's the kind of stuff we have here.

01:31:35   But it's reported without the context.

01:31:39   Either the people don't know it or the reporters aren't able to extrapolate it.

01:31:42   And it's just, it's fed to us like Apple is conning us or misleading us in some way.

01:31:49   And it's not true at all.

01:31:50   It's the way a product is manufactured.

01:31:52   And these decisions happen millions of times in every product.

01:31:55   And I think it's just, we're literally being made stupider by the way this stuff is being

01:31:59   reported now.

01:32:00   Yeah, the Bloomberg story that yesterday that prompted me to write was something to the

01:32:04   effect of that Apple lowered the standards for Face ID in order to meet production goals.

01:32:11   It very clearly suggested that face ID is not as accurate as Apple wanted it to be to do this

01:32:18   Whereas if you actually read the article and see what they actually have you can't draw that conclusion at all

01:32:23   It could be the case that could be the case but it there's no reason to think so and

01:32:28   The thing that really stuck out with me of that story is they don't say when this just when this

01:32:34   Lowering of a specification happened because if it happened before September

01:32:39   Everything that Apple's promised about face ID like the one in a million chance of somebody else's face unlocking your phone

01:32:46   Isn't that the number that they said? Yeah

01:32:48   It could be based on that, you know the the lower standard, you know

01:32:55   Like maybe they were looking at one in five million before I don't know. Yeah, it's

01:32:59   You see that they need it. I didn't it doesn't really matter what actually they wanted

01:33:02   They probably wanted the greatest accuracy in the history of the universe

01:33:05   But the actually they needed to shift the product was this has always exceeded the act that that level, right?

01:33:11   But the story got traction because it feeds into people's

01:33:14   Suspicion. Yeah that face ID is not going to work. Well and

01:33:20   that

01:33:22   And and that's this it's the exact same thing that feeds into that plus the the sort of natural desire for the familiar

01:33:29   That I just can't tell you how many times I see on Twitter where some people are saying I'm gonna wait this iPhone 10

01:33:35   out go for the iPhone 11 next year, which I'll bring touch ID

01:33:38   back. Because people really, people really believe these

01:33:41   stories. There's so I mean, there's no way like, one article

01:33:44   at during fireball is not going to change the belief. People

01:33:49   believe what they want to believe. But there's an untold

01:33:51   number of people out there who are 100% convinced that Apple

01:33:54   tried to put touch ID and iPhone 10 failed, and it'll be back

01:33:58   next year. But, you know, you and I know that is not gonna

01:34:02   happen.

01:34:03   No, and the thing is, like, it's, I don't want to say it's apparent, because Apple doesn't

01:34:06   communicate a lot. But if you look at the way the touch ID is built, it's not touch ID, it's biometric

01:34:11   identification, and the entire API is built that way. Apple or the app asks for biometrics, and then

01:34:16   it's up to the device to deliver whatever it can, whether that's touch, or that's face, whether

01:34:20   that's going to be something else in the future, like gait, whatever, the entire system is built

01:34:24   to be independent. Touch ID was one possible solution to how do we make it more convenient

01:34:29   to get into your device. But it's not the only solution, and it may not be the best solution.

01:34:33   and now Apple has what they think is a better one.

01:34:35   So for them, it's like, bye-bye Touch ID,

01:34:37   thanks for all the years, and Face ID goes right in there.

01:34:40   And if they think of a better thing in two years,

01:34:42   we'll get that instead as well.

01:34:43   - Right.

01:34:44   And one thing I asked about privately

01:34:48   to people who worked on it was whether it was ever even

01:34:51   on the table to do both Face ID and Touch ID,

01:34:53   and the answer was no, for the obvious reason that,

01:34:57   like what you just said, it's just one,

01:35:01   from an API perspective, it's just give me a biometric authentication. So if you had both,

01:35:06   what would what would it do? It would be so totally confusing. Like it's the sort of thing

01:35:10   I could see Samsung doing. I think they even have done it where they have fingerprint scanners.

01:35:15   Yeah, the Galaxy S8 has a fingerprint scanner, an iris reader, and a face scanner.

01:35:19   You know, and they give you a warning that the face, their face scanner isn't all that great,

01:35:25   so you can't even use it for things like authenticating a purchase. It's only for like

01:35:29   unlocking your phone. And you have to choose one or the other. One works in daylight, one works in

01:35:32   nighttime. They can't both work at the same time. You've got to pick one. Right. And, you know,

01:35:36   there's all sorts of things to complain about with Apple, you know, across the board. But one thing

01:35:44   is that they're never going to make you make decisions like that. Like, it's goofy. It would

01:35:49   just be—it would even make setting up the phone more of a pain in the ass, because then you'd have

01:35:52   two things to set up. It's the same with OLED. I mean, Samsung famously makes you switch between

01:35:58   profiles to get proper color for a photo versus like a movie or something and no human being

01:36:03   is ever like if my parents had the phone they would never do that they would just sit there

01:36:07   and wonder why the photo looked weird or something right where with apples OLED even though it's

01:36:11   the same company making the panel you never have to worry about the color management they

01:36:15   take care of that and they they combine that the true tone color management in at the same

01:36:20   time right i mean we we'll see soon enough you know how well face id actually works but

01:36:26   But—

01:36:27   They can't get a calculator to read all your input, but they can do all that.

01:36:32   I guess we should talk about that before we wrap up.

01:36:34   That was my favorite thing this week.

01:36:37   So on the iOS 11 calculator, if you type really fast—you don't have to be like a speed

01:36:42   typist, but just as fast as you can type in, like with two thumbs, 1+2+3, you'll probably

01:36:48   get 24 because the second hit on the tap on the plus button won't register and you'll

01:36:54   instead get one plus 23. And the reason is somebody on the calculator team added like

01:37:05   a four tenths of a second animation for the operator buttons, plus, minus, divide and

01:37:11   times. And while it's animating, you can't press it again. That's the bug.

01:37:16   Yeah, it's not interruptible.

01:37:17   Right. That's the bug. The bug is, you know, you can, whether you like Apple's slow animations

01:37:23   or not. And I kind of don't. I kind of wish they'd speed a lot of these animations up, frankly.

01:37:29   Animators love you watching their animation, but nobody else wants to sit there watching your

01:37:32   animation. Right. And I can't help but think that like, Suruji's team is like, "Oh my God,

01:37:37   this is so much faster than it looks." Like, this app is launched already and running,

01:37:43   and yet you're showing me zooming out and zooming in. It's already running.

01:37:47   That's totally fine. But even if you just hit the plus button over and over again,

01:37:51   it'll ignore every second tap on the plus button. Right. Because it's right. But it

01:37:57   does make me wonder and again, I'm not one of the I don't think Apple's software standards

01:38:05   have gone to hell. I like I'm not in that camp. But I do. I do have my complaints. And

01:38:12   it does make me question this because if I were working on iOS, and I got the job of

01:38:19   of redoing the calculator with a new design,

01:38:23   'cause the iOS 11 calculator looks new.

01:38:25   I think somebody told me that it might be written in Swift.

01:38:29   It might've actually been one of the few first system apps

01:38:32   that are written in Swift.

01:38:33   I don't know if that's true or not,

01:38:34   and it's beyond my technical abilities to investigate that,

01:38:39   but it certainly looks new.

01:38:41   So if that was my job, here's the design,

01:38:43   here's what it's supposed to look like,

01:38:46   and I'm writing the calculator app,

01:38:48   building and running and I'm putting it on my phone and I'm doing things like

01:38:52   typing 1+2+3 like I don't think you need it even a separate QA team like I

01:38:59   find it baffling that even if it was just one engineer that they wouldn't have

01:39:03   run into wouldn't have run into this just while running their own app that's

01:39:07   why I smiled like that calculator team I'm yeah I don't think they need a team

01:39:12   I'm guessing it's you know I think you know it's like my guess is that it's it's

01:39:16   It's one engineer and they're doing several things and they have a list of bugs, including

01:39:21   showstoppers that they have to get done before shipping.

01:39:23   And this was somewhere on that list and just, again, as egregious as it was, it didn't get

01:39:28   gotten to.

01:39:29   And I understand it's fixed on some internal builds now.

01:39:32   It's not fixed for me, at least on the current beta that came out yesterday.

01:39:35   But I have heard that on an internal build, it's already fixed.

01:39:39   Doesn't mean, I mean, like it should never ever happen.

01:39:43   And it's comedic.

01:39:44   And there's many, many examples of this.

01:39:46   You know, they totally have to get all this stuff under control

01:39:48   But and then I saw in the midst of this and it made for you know

01:39:52   Obviously the the Apple software is going to hell in a handbasket crowd loved this

01:39:56   James Thompson who does

01:40:00   Excellent peak alc app had a great fun with it and the peak alc Twitter account. I should put that in there

01:40:07   And it's funny it just speaks to me and my friends where I a lot of my friends are like

01:40:12   I never noticed this because I use peak alc

01:40:15   And I filed the radar and my radar account is no way tight

01:40:18   Like I don't think anybody who sees my radar is know who I am a totally different email address

01:40:21   But I put it on and it looks like it's already been followed up on

01:40:25   yeah, it's you know, it's got to be an easy fix but

01:40:28   It is it is kind of amusing and it just plays into people's

01:40:33   Worse suspicions about you know, the state of Apple

01:40:37   Well, I mean to go back to what we're talking about with Google

01:40:39   Like I I think every company should be held to the standard is better for us if we complain about everything

01:40:44   It's one of my favorite things about Syracuse is that you know, you want to hold these companies to the highest standards

01:40:48   imaginable and all of them to those standards

01:40:50   Yeah

01:40:52   And then the other thing that really cracked me up is in the midst of this discussion

01:40:55   I saw at least one tweet from the there's that

01:40:58   Won't accept any criticism of Apple contingent, you know, so the opposite of the apples going to hell in a handbasket contingent

01:41:06   Who said that you should just hit equals after each operation like a normal person?

01:41:12   And I really I looked at that tweet long and hard to try to decide whether it was being sarcastic or not

01:41:18   And I don't I don't think it was

01:41:20   Yeah, I mean it is really bad at multiple like you mentioned earlier

01:41:24   But like the horns I like calling the horns into the notch because it sounds more

01:41:27   Federighi like to me like even the horns like I think they're gonna bother me

01:41:32   But all the people I know at Apple who've been using the phone doesn't really bother them

01:41:35   But like you you look at the decision-making process everyone on Twitter thinks they're stupid and has to put up all these

01:41:41   Why don't Apple just do this Apple tried 30 40 60 different variations before they chose this one and you know

01:41:48   They could have not made horns to begin with that was an incredible amount of work to get the display

01:41:52   Cut out like that and to get the you know

01:41:55   That's a lot of silicon just to fill that display properly

01:41:58   and then they chose not to pave them over and there's a whole bunch of decisions that go into all those things and you can

01:42:04   you can totally hate them, but it's it's

01:42:08   It's a choice of not having an edge-to-edge display or having one with compromises and this is not that this is just them

01:42:14   Badly coding a calculator app. Yeah

01:42:16   It's like the Steve Jobs is not a debate. Yeah, you're calculating wrong

01:42:22   That's just the thing is they always these stories about like, you know

01:42:25   If this like Apple is lost out Steve Jobs under Steve this would never have shipped. There's

01:42:30   Calendar was crap for a decade under Steve Jobs and all sorts of bad things like bad bad products

01:42:37   bugs, "Bag of Mobile Me" shipped under Steve Jobs.

01:42:41   Right.

01:42:42   And I've seen that too.

01:42:44   Like you never got these rounded corners and the notch of Steve Jobs right here.

01:42:48   It's like, "Dude, did you ever look at Aqua and Mac OS 10.0?"

01:42:51   I mean, and he loved it.

01:42:54   Yeah.

01:42:55   That was Scott.

01:42:56   Brush metal.

01:42:57   Scott Forsloh gets all this crap for photorealistic design, but that was not the stitched leather

01:43:02   from his private plane that we had.

01:43:04   Right.

01:43:05   If you find my friends.

01:43:06   I forgot about that in the calendar. Rich Corinthian leather. Anyway, anything else

01:43:12   you wanted to talk about this week? I want to wrap this up so we can get this show out

01:43:15   out the door.

01:43:16   No, I just want to go pre-order, frankly.

01:43:18   All right. Good luck. I really wish you luck.

01:43:21   Thank you.

01:43:22   All right. Thank you, Renee Ritchie. Everybody can read Renee's stuff at iMore. And on Twitter,

01:43:28   is easy. Here's the one I remember. I often forget like Serenity's Twitter name. But yours

01:43:37   is easy. It's Renee Ritchie on Twitter. Thanks Renee.

01:43:42   Thanks John.