The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I got really excited when I bought a mechanical keyboard and I'm really loving it. It's this weird

00:00:04 ◼   ► Korean... I guess they call it a 60% keyboard, so it's got no function row, but it's super small

00:00:11 ◼   ► and it's very clicky and I really like it. I thought, "Aha! Now I can get rid of this other

00:00:15 ◼   ► keyboard!" And I realized I have to keep the other keyboard within arm's reach because I can't

00:00:20 ◼   ► type and talk. What brand keyboard is it? It's a Leopold. You get them on eBay.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Really? You can't buy them direct? Are they like used or...?

00:00:31 ◼   ► No, they're all new.

00:00:32 ◼   ► That's just how they sell?

00:00:34 ◼   ► Yeah, and they've got them in different mechanisms. There are a couple different

00:00:42 ◼   ► mechanisms of, you know, like the different key switches. Mine is like a cherry blue,

00:00:48 ◼   ► but I'll send you a link.

00:00:51 ◼   ► I got them. I got it here. Mechanicalkeyboards.com.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and it's the FC660M is the one that I've got.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And I love it because it's so tiny,

00:01:00 ◼   ► and it's really enjoyably clicky.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I got the Matthias small keyboard too, and it's not bad,

00:01:08 ◼   ► but it's way bigger, like the whole thing.

00:01:11 ◼   ► It's got another row of keys, and it's got--

00:01:14 ◼   ► the only problem with this one is you've got to map some of the keys,

00:01:17 ◼   ► because it's missing a few keys.

00:01:18 ◼   ► But the arrow keys are properly oriented as arrows,

00:01:22 ◼   ► and it's nice and clicky.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And then I started buying keycaps.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So you got Blue Cherry.

00:01:27 ◼   ► What do you mean keycaps?

00:01:29 ◼   ► Does this company sell the official ones?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Uh, no.

00:01:32 ◼   ► So I ended up on eBay.

00:01:34 ◼   ► There are a few places,

00:01:35 ◼   ► including, um,

00:01:36 ◼   ► I ended up with,

00:01:38 ◼   ► uh,

00:01:38 ◼   ► Oh,

00:01:38 ◼   ► what is it?

00:01:39 ◼   ► The people that make the code keyboard.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Um,

00:01:42 ◼   ► they have,

00:01:42 ◼   ► uh,

00:01:43 ◼   ► they have a whole,

00:01:46 ◼   ► uh,

00:01:46 ◼   ► like they have,

00:01:47 ◼   ► like a key cap,

00:01:48 ◼   ► uh,

00:01:49 ◼   ► shop.

00:01:50 ◼   ► We can order custom keycaps because the one I got came with,

00:01:54 ◼   ► like black keycaps and they were sort of Windows keys and I ended up spending probably way

00:01:57 ◼   ► too much money on some like orange custom keycaps, which was kind of cool. I blame Josh

00:02:03 ◼   ► Topolski. He posted a couple of pictures of this model keyboard that he's built and I

00:02:11 ◼   ► said, "That's really interesting," and that was then I was I was kind of ruined, but it's

00:02:16 ◼   ► terrible for podcasting because the clicks, the clicks are very loud.

00:02:20 ◼   ► There's the one that this picture I'm looking at of this keyboard on the left side at the bottom left corner. There's a control key and

00:02:27 ◼   ► then there's

00:02:30 ◼   ► There's like a keyboard key. It's a picture that has a what is that? Yeah, I think that's the

00:02:34 ◼   ► Operating system key. So that's like your your command key or your Windows key

00:02:40 ◼   ► Oh, it's like the one those key and then you send those logo and then I mapped yeah, I mapped it all to

00:02:45 ◼   ► to Mac, so I actually flipped the keys around, so that's my option key.

00:02:49 ◼   ► So what does cherry blue feel like? This is the thing that confuses me, and I have a collection of Apple Extended 2s,

00:02:56 ◼   ► and I'm using my third one of my lifetime right now,

00:03:00 ◼   ► including one, I forget who sent me the one that was mint,

00:03:06 ◼   ► I still have one, I have one that is literally like sealed mint in the box,

00:03:11 ◼   ► which I'm saving, you know. And the one that I'm using now was like truly near-mint when I started using it.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I've tried other mechanical keyboards,

00:03:20 ◼   ► but I've never found one that I really like. And it doesn't have the same feel. And I get so confused

00:03:25 ◼   ► by the different switches, and

00:03:28 ◼   ► it's very confusing to me.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Honestly, when I was shopping for this, I went to Matthias's website, and they have audio clips of a few different key

00:03:40 ◼   ► mechanical key switches that you can actually sort of listen to the sound of

00:03:44 ◼   ► them being made, like just typing, and I listened to that for a while and I

00:03:49 ◼   ► thought that that the cherry blue sort of sounded like I wanted, like I kind of

00:03:53 ◼   ► wanted it and it's not all sound right, it's like taste.

00:03:57 ◼   ► When you eat something you're tasting it but you're also smelling it and those

00:04:00 ◼   ► two things go together. Keyboards it's like that, it's the feel and it's the

00:04:04 ◼   ► sound and they go together. And like I said, I ended up with the Matthias one, which is

00:04:10 ◼   ► supposed to be more like the Apple Extended, I think. And then I got this one, which is

00:04:16 ◼   ► the Cherry Blue, and I like the Cherry Blue better. I mean, the Matthias is fine. I like

00:04:21 ◼   ► it. It's a little more of what at least my sense memory of those old Apple keyboards

00:04:27 ◼   ► was, which is a little more kind of like clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. And this is a little

00:04:30 ◼   ► more clicky, like high pitched clicky, clicky, click, click, click.

00:04:33 ◼   ► I gotcha, I gotcha. I say I think I don't like that. So yours is maybe a little bit

00:04:37 ◼   ► more like the IBM style? I know that IBM buckling spring is different. The buckling spring ones

00:04:43 ◼   ► are different.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Yeah, like Rich Siegel uses that style, I believe, and he's like, that's, you know,

00:04:48 ◼   ► it's sort of whatever mechanical keyboard you grew up with, I think is the one you end

00:04:52 ◼   ► up gravitating toward. I wish there was a place, I'm sure there is, I'm sure like keyboard

00:04:57 ◼   ► people get together and have little key parties where they type on the different mechanisms

00:05:03 ◼   ► and you can really get a sense of it. But I'm just sort of slowly learning about the

00:05:09 ◼   ► different ones. But I've been happy with it. I didn't use a mechanical keyboard for a long

00:05:14 ◼   ► time. I was just sort of using analogs of the MacBook keyboard because I was using a

00:05:20 ◼   ► MacBook as a primary system, so I kind of wanted my keyboards to all match and feel

00:05:25 ◼   ► as much as possible, but now that I'm sitting in an iMac for a lot of the day, I thought,

00:05:29 ◼   ► "Why don't I give it a try?" And I've been pretty happy with it. It is good that I'm

00:05:33 ◼   ► working in a closed office with nobody in it, because it would drive everybody else

00:05:36 ◼   ► crazy if they could hear me typing.

00:05:40 ◼   ► If the blue cherry switches are what I think that they're like, the more clicky than thunky,

00:05:47 ◼   ► then that's actually—to me, it's more—maybe it's just my ears, but it's louder, or more

00:05:52 ◼   ► prominent.

00:05:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it might be. It depends on what frequencies you're tuned into. But I do enjoy

00:06:00 ◼   ► going back to having that tactile feedback. As much as I loved the MacBook keyboard style,

00:06:08 ◼   ► I totally get, now that I've been back on a mechanical keyboard for a while, I totally

00:06:12 ◼   ► get why people criticize them for feeling mushy. I get what that means now.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So there's blue cherry and brown cherry.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Yeah, there's multiple different kind of cherry switches.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And red cherry.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I know, and I have no idea. I am not an expert. I just kind of took a shot in the dark on one of them.

00:06:27 ◼   ► And it's truly where shopping on the internet is the worst. Like, this is the sort of thing where, like, in the old days...

00:06:34 ◼   ► Unless you want to buy 10 keyboards.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I know, and I hate sending stuff back. It's just like, and it's irrational. It makes no logical sense whatsoever that I would rather just have a $110 keyboard that I'd put in the closet and never use,

00:06:49 ◼   ► but I just hate sending stuff back.

00:06:51 ◼   ► I just don't like it.

00:06:53 ◼   ► But I guess that's the way to do it.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - I just sent a keyboard back and I didn't love it,

00:06:55 ◼   ► but I tried that mechanical keyboard for the iPad,

00:06:59 ◼   ► the Razer, and it just wasn't that good.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And so I did go through the rigmarole of sending that back

00:07:06 ◼   ► 'cause that was a pretty pricey thing,

00:07:08 ◼   ► but I hate doing it too.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And so you end up a lot of times not buying things

00:07:12 ◼   ► 'cause it's just like, it's too complicated.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I don't know what to pick.

00:07:15 ◼   ► And so I'll just kind of give it up.

00:07:16 ◼   ► But I took a shot in the dark with this one

00:07:18 ◼   ► and I'm pretty happy with it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Is it the best keyboard for me?

00:07:23 ◼   ► Maybe not.

00:07:23 ◼   ► There may be some other one out there

00:07:25 ◼   ► that's totally one I would prefer to this,

00:07:28 ◼   ► but I haven't gone and bought five different keyboards yet.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:07:35 ◼   ► - I have also, I have bought some,

00:07:38 ◼   ► I think at least two keyboards from Matthias over the years

00:07:41 ◼   ► and specifically billed by Matthias as being

00:07:44 ◼   ► for aficionados of the Apple Extended Keyboard 2.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And I have to say that I didn't even think it was close.

00:07:51 ◼   ► For whatever reason, the Matthias ones don't appeal to me.

00:07:54 ◼   ► I'm so picky about these keyboards

00:07:56 ◼   ► that I don't even like some Apple Extended Keyboard 2s,

00:08:00 ◼   ► even ones that are seemingly in good condition,

00:08:02 ◼   ► that there's variance between them that I detect.

00:08:06 ◼   ► That it's some of them-- it's like a-- like the one

00:08:11 ◼   ► that I had from college.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And I think I've told this story before.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I loved this keyboard.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I should see, somebody once said that they could fix it.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Somebody who knows how to solder could probably fix it.

00:08:23 ◼   ► It's the E key that broke,

00:08:24 ◼   ► which is probably because it's the one I typed the most.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Right, it makes sense? - Sure.

00:08:28 ◼   ► - My sophomore year of college,

00:08:32 ◼   ► I was playing John Madden football in the dorms.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And there was, let's see,

00:08:39 ◼   ► so it would have been like Madden '92.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And I was always the Houston Oilers with,

00:08:45 ◼   ► who was the great quarterback that the Houston Oilers--

00:08:47 ◼   ► - Warren Moon?

00:08:48 ◼   ► - Yes, Warren Moon.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Warren Moon with a cannon of an arm.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I mean, it was like on a,

00:08:53 ◼   ► like the stats were like up to 15.

00:08:55 ◼   ► It was like 15 distance, 15 arm strength, 15 accuracy.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And this other kid, I think his name was Jeff,

00:09:02 ◼   ► who always played with the Philadelphia Eagles,

00:09:04 ◼   ► the Buddy Ryan Eagles.

00:09:05 ◼   ► So it was me with my pass-happy long bombs

00:09:10 ◼   ► and him with these like bone-crushing defensive guys.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And we had a great rivalry.

00:09:16 ◼   ► And one time we bet, I think I bet, $50 cash up against his Apple extended

00:09:21 ◼   ► keyboard, too.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Because I had a Mac LC, which came with the real shit keyboard.

00:09:26 ◼   ► I don't even know what it was, small and mushy.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And he got the Mac SE30, which came with the extended keyboard, too.

00:09:34 ◼   ► So the deal was, it was winner takes all, one game of Madden football,

00:09:37 ◼   ► where if I won, I got his keyboard, and I'd give him my crappy one,

00:09:40 ◼   ► so he'd have a keyboard.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I think I put up fifty bucks cash, which I knew was a good deal because they sold for

00:09:46 ◼   ► like $180 to get one new. And I won the game and that's where I got my keyboard. And

00:09:52 ◼   ► it was the best one I've ever used. I still feel like it. I still take it out of the closet

00:09:57 ◼   ► sometimes and type on it and I still feel like, you know, other than that E key that's

00:10:02 ◼   ► busted, it still feels better. I should find somebody who can just fix that E key for me.

00:10:06 ◼   ► You should. And there may be a keyboard out there that is a closer match for what you're

00:10:11 ◼   ► looking for than the Matthias, I don't know. It's WASD keyboards is where I got my keycaps

00:10:16 ◼   ► and they sell, I think they make the code keyboard and they sell, they sell mechanical

00:10:20 ◼   ► keyboards and it's like literally choose your size and choose which switch type. But again,

00:10:26 ◼   ► you know, you can't reach through the screen and feel how the keys, they have audio files

00:10:31 ◼   ► I think, like I said Matthias does too, but it's not quite the same because that's only

00:10:34 ◼   ► one, the sound is part of it and the feeling is part of it.

00:10:39 ◼   ► The only reason I never do a real deep dive

00:10:42 ◼   ► and try to find a new keyboard is once I try it,

00:10:44 ◼   ► and I do have a couple, and I've spent probably,

00:10:46 ◼   ► I don't know, it's a couple hundred bucks on keyboards

00:10:49 ◼   ► out of curiosity, and then I think to myself,

00:10:51 ◼   ► why am I doing this?

00:10:52 ◼   ► My Apple Extended Keyboard 2 is the best keyboard

00:10:55 ◼   ► I've ever had, and it works perfectly on my--

00:10:57 ◼   ► - Boy, if it works, that's the thing.

00:10:58 ◼   ► So I've got an extended-- - I don't know why I do it.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I don't know why, I don't know why.

00:11:02 ◼   ► - I've got an Extended here in my office,

00:11:05 ◼   ► and I've got a couple of the USB ADB converters,

00:11:08 ◼   ► And I don't know whether it's that the keyboard is bad

00:11:11 ◼   ► or whether it's the converter is bad,

00:11:12 ◼   ► but I have a problem where I,

00:11:15 ◼   ► or is it that I type too fast?

00:11:16 ◼   ► 'Cause I find that it drops key, it drops characters.

00:11:21 ◼   ► - Maybe, maybe with your extraordinary typing skills, maybe.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Every once in a while, I've noticed some weird things.

00:11:28 ◼   ► There was a thing, I got panicked,

00:11:30 ◼   ► where there was one key, like a couple months ago,

00:11:34 ◼   ► I think it was like T, and every, it was like,

00:11:36 ◼   ► And it was like an insidious typo where I would just be typing.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And every time-- like maybe once out of every 100 times I typed a T,

00:11:45 ◼   ► I'd get like three Ts.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, I've seen that.

00:11:48 ◼   ► That's it.

00:11:49 ◼   ► I've seen that.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And it's something combined with my slightly worse vision.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And it's just like a couple of Ts together, like in the word "little."

00:12:01 ◼   ► It's like an extra three Ts.

00:12:03 ◼   ► It's like it would just slip through.

00:12:04 ◼   ► You know? And I got real panicked because I thought this is definitely like, it's

00:12:10 ◼   ► not me holding the key down too far, and it was always like the letter T, so I knew it

00:12:14 ◼   ► must be like electrical, but then it just went away, solved itself, fixed itself.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that's my concern, and I've seen it, is that you're gonna end up with

00:12:24 ◼   ► a problem with the hardware or with the, I mean, presumably there are still thousands

00:12:29 ◼   ► of USB ADB adapters out there that are sitting,

00:12:34 ◼   ► you know, that you can get on eBay or something.

00:12:36 ◼   ► But that's my fear is that something's gonna break down

00:12:38 ◼   ► either the keyboards or the adapters

00:12:41 ◼   ► or something in the system that changes

00:12:43 ◼   ► and that you're gonna,

00:12:45 ◼   ► then you're gonna need to find a replacement.

00:12:47 ◼   ► It's great, I mean, honestly, how great is it

00:12:49 ◼   ► that you're using these keyboards that are 25 years old?

00:12:54 ◼   ► And they're huge too.

00:12:56 ◼   ► That's the other thing is I like the smaller keyboard

00:12:58 ◼   ► 'cause I like to have my track pad

00:13:02 ◼   ► as close to the keys as possible.

00:13:05 ◼   ► So I don't like have a number pad or anything like that.

00:13:07 ◼   ► So I always preferred,

00:13:09 ◼   ► and I think it goes back to having an SE.

00:13:10 ◼   ► I had the SE, which had the smaller keyboard.

00:13:12 ◼   ► It was still clicky, but it wasn't the full extended.

00:13:14 ◼   ► It was like a little mini one with the power,

00:13:17 ◼   ► like the horizontal power button at the top.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And I think that sort of set me down that path.

00:13:22 ◼   ► But I don't know,

00:13:23 ◼   ► I think you may have to go on a quest one day,

00:13:26 ◼   ► but as long as it's working for you, that's the... it's kind of brilliant that you've got, you know, that old tech still...

00:13:31 ◼   ► I'm still on the first... my first ever Griffin ADB. It was called the iMate.

00:13:36 ◼   ► And it's... it was...

00:13:38 ◼   ► I got two of those here.

00:13:39 ◼   ► It's Bondi Blue, Bondi Blue, whatever that... whatever that...

00:13:44 ◼   ► Right, well, they, you know, they had plastic. Everybody was making blue plastic things in 1997.

00:13:49 ◼   ► But it's funny because the only thing you'd ever want to... it's like...

00:13:52 ◼   ► It's funny that they made the adapter in the trendy 2001

00:13:56 ◼   ► Apple, you know, clear plastic colors, when the only thing you could possibly

00:13:59 ◼   ► want to plug into it was going to be the classic beige. Everything was beige.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but how do you add coolness to an ADB adapter? The answer is

00:14:10 ◼   ► clear plastic. Do you remember the Apple Extended Keyboard 1, the original?

00:14:14 ◼   ► It was very similar to the Extended Keyboard 2, but it was short-lived.

00:14:17 ◼   ► I'm not sure why. It didn't go up and down. It was like at a...

00:14:21 ◼   ► but it was a little bit bigger, I think even the extended keyboard too.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And it had a definite different feel to the keys. It was more,

00:14:30 ◼   ► I would say more clacky. It was louder and a little bit more clacky.

00:14:34 ◼   ► My, all my, uh,

00:14:36 ◼   ► early Apple keyboard experiences were in my college newspaper.

00:14:38 ◼   ► So that would have been like nine D 1990 era. And,

00:14:42 ◼   ► and so it really would have been like,

00:14:44 ◼   ► what keyboards did we have there? Cause we had a keyboard attached to a two CX,

00:14:48 ◼   ► and we had a bunch of keyboards on the SEs that we used.

00:14:52 ◼   ► And then later we got a 2FX.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And so we had some that had the extended.

00:14:57 ◼   ► - The 2FX would have come with the extended keyboard too,

00:15:00 ◼   ► but I'll bet that you're, I bet you, if you saw one,

00:15:03 ◼   ► you'd be like, oh yeah, I remember that.

00:15:04 ◼   ► It was like, just slightly different.

00:15:07 ◼   ► - Probably.

00:15:08 ◼   ► - You know what other keyboard I loved?

00:15:09 ◼   ► I loved the keyboard that came with the Apple II GS.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Do you remember that keyboard?

00:15:16 ◼   ► - I never had one.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I had a friend who had a 2GS, so I vaguely remember it, but not that well.

00:15:21 ◼   ► If you... Let's see if... But it was ADB. That was the... 2GS had ADB. That was the other computer

00:15:28 ◼   ► that wasn't a Mac that had the ADB plug on it, was the 2GS. Yeah, that's actually a lot like that

00:15:34 ◼   ► early, the SE keyboard that I had, where you had that big, the wide power button at the very top.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Yep. Yeah. Well, you had to restart those machines a lot.

00:15:44 ◼   ► A lot. It's true. It's true. Yeah, it's a... I don't know. It was very easy to write your

00:15:51 ◼   ► own program that completely wedged the machine. Oh man, it was a good keyboard. And it had like

00:15:57 ◼   ► the weirdest key caps I've ever seen where they were sort of like... I'll put a picture in the

00:16:03 ◼   ► show notes, I swear to God. But it's just the weirdest key caps where they weren't really...

00:16:07 ◼   ► they were like squares, but then on top of the squares were like round racks. Yeah, right. It's

00:16:13 ◼   ► It's like two-tier keycaps.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I love keyboards.

00:16:18 ◼   ► You know what?

00:16:18 ◼   ► I'll tell you what.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I was thinking about this too when

00:16:21 ◼   ► you were going to be on the show.

00:16:23 ◼   ► I was thinking about keyboards.

00:16:24 ◼   ► But I was just thinking, I know you're a baseball fan.

00:16:26 ◼   ► And sometimes when a baseball fan is on,

00:16:28 ◼   ► I will try to have a conversation that

00:16:29 ◼   ► will be of interest to even all of the-- stop.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Don't skip.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Don't skip.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Even to all of you who don't like baseball.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Just sort of, for me, a sort of melancholy week

00:16:39 ◼   ► with alex rodriguez uh... skin

00:16:42 ◼   ► dump from the yankees uh...

00:16:44 ◼   ► as we record on thursday will be playing tonight in boston and tomorrow night

00:16:47 ◼   ► he's playing in new york and then that then that's it he's going home except

00:16:53 ◼   ► and combine it just is interesting to me that

00:16:56 ◼   ► you know he's forty one years old he's at a very contentious really

00:16:59 ◼   ► up-and-down

00:17:01 ◼   ► career with uh... is is controversies over the performance enhancing drugs uh...

00:17:07 ◼   ► and the same week uh...

00:17:09 ◼   ► Ichiro Suzuki, who's now playing for the Florida Marlins, got his 3,000th hit in Major League

00:17:15 ◼   ► Baseball.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And Ichiro is, to me, a guy who, if you could just put some video clips together and talk

00:17:21 ◼   ► about it, he's a player that would be of interest even to non-sports fans.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Because he seriously is like an alien.

00:17:31 ◼   ► He's like a creature who was just born to play baseball, but he doesn't play like anybody

00:17:38 ◼   ► else. Well it's like the, what was it, back in the 19th century there was a player named

00:17:46 ◼   ► Wee Willie Keeler, and I believe he was the one who famously said "I hit 'em where they

00:17:51 ◼   ► ain't." The idea is that, they're like "How are you such a great hitter?" and he says

00:17:55 ◼   ► "Well I hit the ball where the fielders aren't," and that's it, like it's so simple. And yet

00:18:00 ◼   ► when you look at Ichiro, and I think Tony Gwynn was kind of like this too, in a century

00:18:06 ◼   ► of baseball players, you get a couple of people who's like, "Somehow, this guy can use that

00:18:11 ◼   ► stick to put that ball that's coming at him at 100 miles an hour wherever he wants it."

00:18:17 ◼   ► And it's just unbelievable.

00:18:18 ◼   ► I read a—I just read a story the other day. It was actually in response to somehow, like,

00:18:22 ◼   ► from one link to another in a Twitter conversation with somebody, you know, a discussion that

00:18:26 ◼   ► started with Ichiro, and it led to Tony Guinn. And just talking about, like, the best hitters

00:18:31 ◼   ► of the last 20 years, like best hitters of like your and my adult life. And there's the power guys,

00:18:37 ◼   ► like I think, but number one, I think Bond is the best hitter we've ever seen. And I can't,

00:18:42 ◼   ► I don't really cotton to any discussion otherwise. But take the steroids out of that. And he probably

00:18:48 ◼   ► still is. Yeah, well, maybe, but even with, I mean, the numbers are there and they're just

00:18:53 ◼   ► astounding. I mean, the one, the one year he had 200 and some intentional walks. So in this game

00:18:58 ◼   ► where you have 162 games, he drew over an one intentional walk a game.

00:19:04 ◼   ► There's never been anything like that. I watched every one of those games, too.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It was a daily occurrence. They walked him with the bases loaded one time.

00:19:11 ◼   ► It's true story. True story. Rather than let Barry Bonds hit with the bases loaded,

00:19:15 ◼   ► the team actually chose to walk him on purpose and give up a run.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And they won the game because of it. So, you know, good call.

00:19:21 ◼   ► So Alex Rodriguez right now, as it stands, has 696 home runs, career home runs, fourth of all time.

00:19:28 ◼   ► truly a great home run hitter. I mean fourth of all time in the history of the

00:19:31 ◼   ► 100 and some history of the game. Bonds had more intentional walks in that one season than Alex

00:19:36 ◼   ► Rodriguez has had in a 20-year career. A 20-year career. Yep. It's, anyway, Bonds is great. Gwynn

00:19:46 ◼   ► was amazing and I read this story. My favorite player ever. He is absolutely my favorite

00:19:50 ◼   ► baseball player ever. Tony Gwynn used to call it the 5.5 hole, meaning it was between,

00:19:56 ◼   ► there's numbers for the players. So in between shortstop who's six and the third baseman who's

00:20:01 ◼   ► five on the scorecard, he'd just try to hit the ball between shortstop and third base and

00:20:06 ◼   ► could do it with remarkable accuracy. But the thing I read was like when he started slowing

00:20:12 ◼   ► down a little bit, his average dropped and for him dropping meant he got close to 300.

00:20:17 ◼   ► And the difference was that he wasn't beating out the ones that the shortstop would backhand

00:20:22 ◼   ► anymore." And he had a conversation with Ted Williams, and Ted Williams told him to

00:20:28 ◼   ► start. He said, "You need to pull the ball more." And just that one

00:20:33 ◼   ► conversation with Ted Williams. And all of a sudden, Gwyn purposely started

00:20:36 ◼   ► trying to pull the ball a little more, and that led to the

00:20:40 ◼   ► seasons where he was hitting like 350, 360. Yeah, I mean, it's so simple, right?

00:20:44 ◼   ► Just hit it to the other part of the field. They're like, "All right, I'll do

00:20:47 ◼   ► that then because like Ichiro, Gwyn could seemingly put the ball wherever he wanted it.

00:20:53 ◼   ► So there's two things about Ichiro. Number one, you have to watch him. If you don't,

00:20:57 ◼   ► if you even if you don't like baseball, just go to YouTube and Google Ichiro hitting. He starts

00:21:03 ◼   ► running before he hits the ball. He's a left-handed batter, and when he sees the ball, his batting

00:21:09 ◼   ► stance is such that he's running to first base as he makes contact with the ball, which nobody

00:21:14 ◼   ► has ever done, nobody would ever teach. If you saw a little kid doing it and you're coaching

00:21:18 ◼   ► Little League, you'd immediately say, "No, no, no. You can't do that. You're never going to hit the

00:21:22 ◼   ► ball." The other thing is that he treats his bats as though they're samurai swords. And this is where

00:21:28 ◼   ► I'm going with the keyboard, where he comes in and spends an hour a day examining his bats

00:21:36 ◼   ► with his eyes an inch away and rubs over every surface of them. He carries them. He has a

00:21:43 ◼   ► collection of them that he carries in like a custom-made like we call like a

00:21:47 ◼   ► humidor what do you put cigars in it's like humidor yeah it's it's a

00:21:52 ◼   ► moisture-proof carrying case that he carries himself by hand and doesn't hand

00:21:57 ◼   ► over to like the team equipment people and and when you know this and you

00:22:02 ◼   ► realize this about him and then you watch him on TV you realize that his

00:22:05 ◼   ► bats are all in like mint condition like most of the bats are all gunked up with

00:22:10 ◼   ► pine tar and nicked and have marks from where they hit balls in batting practice.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Ichiro's bats all look like they're in mint condition.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Yeah, they're his professional tool, and he treats them as such.

00:22:23 ◼   ► And when you see him use them, you can see it's like an extension of his body.

00:22:27 ◼   ► It's surgical precision with what he does with them.

00:22:30 ◼   ► The other thing I read about Ichiro is that every year, or I think it's every

00:22:33 ◼   ► year, but at least several times, he has visited the

00:22:36 ◼   ► the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in the off season

00:22:40 ◼   ► and orchestrates a behind the scenes tour.

00:22:44 ◼   ► And he takes out the bats, he gets some of the bat,

00:22:47 ◼   ► he has a list of hitters whose bats he wants to examine.

00:22:50 ◼   ► And I saw pictures of it and he's got the white gloves on

00:22:55 ◼   ► 'cause these are historic artifacts.

00:22:57 ◼   ► And he studies the bats of great hitters

00:22:59 ◼   ► and weighs them and examines them in fine detail.

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's just amazing.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And that to me is like what justifies me

00:23:08 ◼   ► caring so much about my keyboard.

00:23:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's your professional tool, right?

00:23:13 ◼   ► It's how you make your living, and that's the bottom line.

00:23:16 ◼   ► And so writers, do writers talk about things

00:23:19 ◼   ► like keyboards and notebooks and pens and things like that?

00:23:24 ◼   ► Yeah, they do, but you have to understand

00:23:26 ◼   ► it is actually a professional tool.

00:23:29 ◼   ► It's like how our livelihood happens.

00:23:32 ◼   ► - Yep, it's worth it.

00:23:34 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break from all this great keyboard

00:23:37 ◼   ► and baseball discussion.

00:23:38 ◼   ► - I was trying to keep us off of baseball

00:23:39 ◼   ► by talking about keyboards.

00:23:40 ◼   ► No, we did it both.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - And tell you about our first sponsor.

00:23:45 ◼   ► This is a great company.

00:23:46 ◼   ► It's Global Delight.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Now we all use headphones,

00:23:48 ◼   ► and we're gonna talk a little bit more later

00:23:50 ◼   ► in the show about headphones,

00:23:51 ◼   ► to listen to music on our iPhones and iPads.

00:23:53 ◼   ► But no matter which headphones we use,

00:23:55 ◼   ► the audio often feels like it lacks depth.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Global Delight, they're the company behind the Mac app,

00:24:01 ◼   ► Boom, it's like an audio enhancer for Mac.

00:24:04 ◼   ► It's a great app actually,

00:24:05 ◼   ► and it was the, actually if it rings a bell,

00:24:08 ◼   ► they were sponsored on the show a couple weeks ago.

00:24:11 ◼   ► So these are the same kinds between the Mac app Boom.

00:24:15 ◼   ► They have an iOS app that solves this issue.

00:24:17 ◼   ► It's called Boom for iOS.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Now iOS, you can't have like a system-wide extension

00:24:22 ◼   ► that enhances audio across the board

00:24:23 ◼   ► that doesn't work like that on iOS.

00:24:24 ◼   ► So Boom on iOS is a music player app.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And no matter which headphones you use,

00:24:29 ◼   ► turns the music you listen to into an amazing 3D surround sound. It's an amplifier, like a sound

00:24:36 ◼   ► filter music player. It doesn't stop there. You can change the equalizers. You can adjust the base

00:24:43 ◼   ► and the intensity of the audio with fine control. You can be real picky. This is for people who

00:24:46 ◼   ► really care about what this stuff sounds like in your headphones. Boom plays its magic with the

00:24:52 ◼   ► downloaded music from your iTunes library. So it's not like you have to do any kind of magic stuff or

00:24:57 ◼   ► or pain in the butt stuff to import your music into it.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Just plays the system stuff,

00:25:03 ◼   ► the system stuff in your iTunes library.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And it's very, very simple to use.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Here's the best part.

00:25:09 ◼   ► It's free, it's a free download.

00:25:10 ◼   ► So if you're skeptical,

00:25:12 ◼   ► you don't know what it's gonna sound like,

00:25:13 ◼   ► go download it, get it from the app store, try it out.

00:25:17 ◼   ► And then it's an in-app purchase to unlock everything

00:25:19 ◼   ► if you like the way it sounds.

00:25:21 ◼   ► So open your browser.

00:25:23 ◼   ► If you wanna see their website,

00:25:24 ◼   ► It's boom4ios.com.

00:25:28 ◼   ► So just spell boom, then F-O-R-I-O-S dot com.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And you'll be taken to the Boom app directly,

00:25:34 ◼   ► and then you can hit the download button.

00:25:36 ◼   ► All you need to do is then just buy the in-app purchase

00:25:38 ◼   ► if you like it, and you'll enjoy it.

00:25:41 ◼   ► It's a great app.

00:25:42 ◼   ► These guys do a great job,

00:25:43 ◼   ► even though their specialty is obviously audio,

00:25:45 ◼   ► they do a phenomenal job with the user interface stuff.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Their stuff looks exquisite,

00:25:49 ◼   ► always very, very, very impressive UI design.

00:25:53 ◼   ► And here's the best part, they've got a special offer

00:25:56 ◼   ► for talk show listeners.

00:25:57 ◼   ► They've got a sale running through the 21st of August.

00:26:00 ◼   ► I think it's normally 4.99 for the in-app purchase, yes, 4.99.

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00:26:16 ◼   ► and buy it before August 21st

00:26:18 ◼   ► and you'll save a couple bucks.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Uh, there is a lot of news. We probably, it was probably pretty stupid to waste so much time on keyboards, but I do love them.

00:26:32 ◼   ► You do chapter markers in your podcast? That'll solve everything. Stick a chapter marker in there.

00:26:35 ◼   ► I don't, yeah. You know, I should mention this, that I, you know, I, because ATP does it, and you guys do too. Do you guys do chapters?

00:26:43 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Here and there. Not on everyone, but on some of them, yeah.

00:26:46 ◼   ► So for everybody who wants them on this show, we are looking into it.

00:26:51 ◼   ► There's a tooling issue where it's actually there is no good tool for this yet.

00:26:56 ◼   ► A friend of the show, Marco Arman, is actually working on such a tool.

00:27:00 ◼   ► So I'm aware of that. And there will be chapters on this show eventually.

00:27:06 ◼   ► All right.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So the news. What do you want to talk about first? I guess we should talk about German stuff?

00:27:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, so Mark Gurman, right, he's back, he's at Bloomberg, we saw he had a report

00:27:20 ◼   ► like a month ago, but he dropped a few reports this week that are, you know, his sources

00:27:25 ◼   ► are so good, especially on the hardware side, that it feels like confirmation to me, and

00:27:32 ◼   ► I know it's not, it's just another story with anonymous sources saying this is what Apple's

00:27:38 ◼   ► going to do, but it feels like confirmation now that Gurman has said, you know, given

00:27:42 ◼   ► the nod and been like, "Yeah, this is what's going to happen with the iPhone and with the

00:27:47 ◼   ► new MacBook Pro."

00:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like having a four-run lead in the bottom of the ninth. You're probably going

00:27:51 ◼   ► to win.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I feel like—and it's funny because now that he's at Bloomberg,

00:27:57 ◼   ► I know some people who have worked or do work at Bloomberg, and Bloomberg is a very—they're

00:28:02 ◼   ► a little idiosyncratic in what they do in terms of their style guide and their copy

00:28:08 ◼   ► desk and things like that, but they're sticklers. And you can see it in in Gurman's reports

00:28:12 ◼   ► that some of the phrasing is kind of different than maybe he did at 9to5Mac where they probably

00:28:18 ◼   ► just you know made sure that you know I don't I don't want to impugn 9to5Mac but you know

00:28:23 ◼   ► most online stuff including stuff I do you give it a read and then you put it up you

00:28:27 ◼   ► don't have a copy desk with who are sticklers. And and so it's sort of been interesting to

00:28:34 ◼   ► see how they change some of his phrases or they make it very specific about what he knows

00:28:39 ◼   ► and what he doesn't know and what the details are. And so it ends up being a little bit

00:28:45 ◼   ► fuzzier.

00:28:46 ◼   ► At 9-5 Mac, I would say it was always mentioned, and he always wrote in a sort of reporter-y

00:28:51 ◼   ► fashion even at 9-5 Mac, as opposed to a columnist style. Joanna Stern and I were talking about

00:28:57 ◼   ► that on the last episode of this show. I could do it, I guess, but it would feel like, "Oh,

00:29:04 ◼   ► drudgery to me. I've always wanted to be a columnist and write in my own voice. So

00:29:09 ◼   ► German always wrote in a reporter's voice, but he would just—the biggest

00:29:13 ◼   ► difference I would say is that when he had a scoop, he would put the "according

00:29:17 ◼   ► to, you know, sources familiar with it" once in the first paragraph, and then the

00:29:22 ◼   ► rest of the story would be "here's what I've found out," whereas the bigger—the

00:29:26 ◼   ► biggest stylistic difference with Bloomberg, with him at Bloomberg, is that

00:29:29 ◼   ► the "according to the people" threat. There's an awful lot, it just keeps

00:29:35 ◼   ► coming back and back that this is according to what people have told

00:29:39 ◼   ► him. And I personally, you and I were engaged in a thread on Twitter about

00:29:44 ◼   ► this. I actually like this better. I really do. And maybe it's a little inside

00:29:49 ◼   ► baseball, you know, like that you and I think about these the copy desks and

00:29:53 ◼   ► stuff like that. But I like it that it emphasizes that this is not a known fact

00:29:59 ◼   ► and that Gherman isn't saying that he's seen this thing himself, which would, you know, alleviate the need to source it.

00:30:06 ◼   ► It's from sources who said that they know this, and I think that's worth emphasizing.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and them, you know, being sticklers, that's what they want to do, is say, "We've got information, but we haven't confirmed it ourselves.

00:30:20 ◼   ► It's from a source that we trust." And so we're going to say it's an anonymous source,

00:30:25 ◼   ► And then throughout the story, every time we cite something, if we can't say it as a fact,

00:30:31 ◼   ► because we saw it with our own eyes, essentially, we have to say, we have to attribute that to whoever got it.

00:30:36 ◼   ► And so as a result, you get the things about, you know, "There won't be a headphone jack," the sources said.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Or "people," I think they said "the people" said.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Right, but that's interesting too, because it's a way of corroborating that that piece of information came from multiple sources.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Exactly. And that's good. That's clarity, right? And it may feel weird to read it that way because

00:30:58 ◼   ► it's definitely being done with great care, but as a user of that information, it's really good

00:31:04 ◼   ► to have clarity about what Mark Gurman is being told by his sources and what he maybe is

00:31:12 ◼   ► extrapolating from that. And I like having that because then we can leave it to our judgment,

00:31:19 ◼   ► but it also eliminates just the confusion of like, what's he really saying here?

00:31:23 ◼   ► Is he—does he know that or is he supposing that? And the way it's—the Bloomberg process seems to

00:31:28 ◼   ► have taken his stuff is it's a little bit clearer about the stuff that he has been told by his

00:31:34 ◼   ► sources, like sort of laying it out. Like this is what we know from sources.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - The other thing that you and I know, and I think it's probably true for you too,

00:31:45 ◼   ► I definitely think so. I think that the whole reason that you and I have eked out

00:31:48 ◼   ► you know, these positions we have is that we attract, we don't attract the most readers,

00:31:53 ◼   ► but we attract discerning readers, right? Like, there's no way that the readership of your stuff

00:31:59 ◼   ► and my stuff combined amounts to a hill of beans from the Huffington Post perspective, right? If

00:32:04 ◼   ► we're counting page views, we're, you know, little fish. But we attract discerning readers. And so,

00:32:09 ◼   ► a lot of times when I go off on a track like this about just how meaningful it is when

00:32:15 ◼   ► Bloomberg or a Wall Street Journal prints out a rumor,

00:32:19 ◼   ► sometimes I get a lot of pushback from readers

00:32:20 ◼   ► who are skeptical readers, which is good,

00:32:24 ◼   ► and I'm not surprised that I have readers who are like,

00:32:26 ◼   ► "Hey, I don't believe it just 'cause it's

00:32:28 ◼   ► in the Wall Street Journal."

00:32:29 ◼   ► And that's true, and I think everybody should read

00:32:32 ◼   ► everything they read, my stuff, your stuff,

00:32:33 ◼   ► and especially news reports with a skeptical mind,

00:32:36 ◼   ► like where did this information come from?

00:32:37 ◼   ► I think being a critical reader of journalism

00:32:40 ◼   ► is an essential skill.

00:32:42 ◼   ► It should be taught, emphasized in schools, I think,

00:32:44 ◼   ► in a way that it wasn't for me.

00:32:48 ◼   ► So I'm not saying it's true.

00:32:50 ◼   ► But inside baseball, it's like you

00:32:53 ◼   ► know that a publication like Bloomberg or the Wall Street

00:32:57 ◼   ► Journal or the New York Times knows

00:32:59 ◼   ► that when something like this gets reported,

00:33:02 ◼   ► what almost everybody else says is

00:33:05 ◼   ► Bloomberg says the big iPhone is going to have two cameras.

00:33:09 ◼   ► And they don't go into--

00:33:11 ◼   ► nobody else reports that.

00:33:12 ◼   ► it's Mark Gurman who says this, one reporter,

00:33:15 ◼   ► like if it doesn't turn out to be true,

00:33:17 ◼   ► it's mostly on Bloomberg.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, Bloomberg is a huge company

00:33:23 ◼   ► with financial information.

00:33:25 ◼   ► I mean, reporting about one of the largest,

00:33:28 ◼   ► if not the largest public company in the world,

00:33:31 ◼   ► getting information wrong about their biggest product,

00:33:35 ◼   ► that would be colossal, right?

00:33:38 ◼   ► And so they wanna be careful with it,

00:33:40 ◼   ► but it also says something that, you know, when he reports this stuff,

00:33:43 ◼   ► they are standing behind it. And, and,

00:33:45 ◼   ► and as observers of what Gurman has done over the years, um, I,

00:33:50 ◼   ► we can see why, because his sources are, his sources are good.

00:33:53 ◼   ► He always has been careful. Um,

00:33:55 ◼   ► I think he's actually a great fit for Bloomberg because of all of those things.

00:33:58 ◼   ► He's not a super speculative guy.

00:34:01 ◼   ► He's somebody with good sources who lays out what his sources say.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It is funny. It's funny to me. I heard, I've,

00:34:06 ◼   ► I found out that he was going to Bloomberg back in March,

00:34:11 ◼   ► where whenever it was that Apple held an event in California--

00:34:13 ◼   ► what was that, March?

00:34:15 ◼   ► I think it was March, like mid-March.

00:34:18 ◼   ► And it wasn't an open secret, but there

00:34:23 ◼   ► were a couple of other people in the Cover Apple Press game who

00:34:27 ◼   ► knew that he was going to go to Bloomberg.

00:34:31 ◼   ► And it was funny to me that it never actually was published.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Like the guy who's known for spoiling Apple's secrets,

00:34:39 ◼   ► his own secret, everybody was just like,

00:34:42 ◼   ► it just seemed like uncouth 'cause it seemed like,

00:34:45 ◼   ► everybody seemed to not wanna publish it

00:34:46 ◼   ► or tweet it or anything just because it just seemed like,

00:34:49 ◼   ► well, let's not bother the kid.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I think everybody was-- - It was like a courtesy.

00:34:54 ◼   ► - Kinda happy for him too 'cause he does good work.

00:34:56 ◼   ► He's really young, he was in college.

00:34:58 ◼   ► He has done some incredible things

00:35:01 ◼   ► and now he's got a really high-profile job

00:35:04 ◼   ► a major source of news and business information. So it's like, yeah, we kind of didn't want

00:35:08 ◼   ► to wreck it for him. He does good work.

00:35:11 ◼   ► I think it's a really good fit because Bloomberg in particular, in my opinion, really emphasizes

00:35:16 ◼   ► scoops. They really pride themselves on breaking things like this, being first, while simultaneously

00:35:28 ◼   ► being completely accurate, right? As opposed to, you know, they won't cross that line of

00:35:33 ◼   ► being first by taking a chance that it's not true, but they really want to be first.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Well, it's a feather in their cap. As a provider of business intelligence, because, I mean,

00:35:42 ◼   ► the number one way Bloomberg makes money, as far as I can tell, and what I've heard,

00:35:47 ◼   ► it's like the terminal. They have these terminals, they're in the offices of people in the financial

00:35:53 ◼   ► sector, they are giving real-time business information and news. And when you view Bloomberg

00:36:00 ◼   ► through that lens where they're not like a wire service or something. They are a financial

00:36:05 ◼   ► information provider and news is one of the things that they do. When you think of them

00:36:09 ◼   ► that way, it sort of makes sense.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's where the culture of being first and having the scoop comes from is the

00:36:18 ◼   ► culture from the terminals.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Because you want to get ahead as an investor, you want that extra edge.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Right. I worked at a firm on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange when I was in college. I had

00:36:28 ◼   ► an internship doing IT stuff.

00:36:31 ◼   ► I wasn't doing investing stuff.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I was on the computer team.

00:36:33 ◼   ► But they had the,

00:36:36 ◼   ► the traders had the Bloomberg boxes, of course.

00:36:38 ◼   ► So I got to see them.

00:36:39 ◼   ► Interesting, fascinating devices for the mid 90s.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and well, the funny thing, and there's a--

00:36:46 ◼   ► - And they were fast.

00:36:47 ◼   ► That's the one thing is like--

00:36:48 ◼   ► - Well, that's the whole story.

00:36:50 ◼   ► There's a story somewhere I'm trying to find it

00:36:52 ◼   ► that the problem with the Bloomberg terminal is,

00:36:55 ◼   ► so it is, they call it the terminal.

00:36:56 ◼   ► It looks like a DOS interface.

00:36:59 ◼   ► It's got these weird keyboard shortcuts.

00:37:00 ◼   ► It's like something like WordStar or something.

00:37:02 ◼   ► It's that kind of thing, right?

00:37:03 ◼   ► It's a strange, strange thing.

00:37:05 ◼   ► But the thing is,

00:37:07 ◼   ► the people who know how to use the Bloomberg Terminal,

00:37:10 ◼   ► they can do everything fast with a couple of keystrokes.

00:37:14 ◼   ► It's this incredible thing.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So it's a huge UX problem

00:37:16 ◼   ► because it's impenetrable on one level,

00:37:19 ◼   ► but once you know it,

00:37:20 ◼   ► you can have complete control over it

00:37:23 ◼   ► and they're loathe to change it

00:37:24 ◼   ► because their loyal customers want to know how to use it.

00:37:29 ◼   ► So they end up in this weird place where it's like,

00:37:32 ◼   ► can we improve this product or do we need to leave it

00:37:34 ◼   ► looking like a DOS terminal forever?

00:37:36 ◼   ► - Well, and there's never a day for the traders,

00:37:40 ◼   ► there's never like a slow day.

00:37:43 ◼   ► So there's never a day where,

00:37:45 ◼   ► well, all right, we'll install this new version

00:37:49 ◼   ► that I don't know how to use and I'll be lost all day

00:37:51 ◼   ► trying to figure out how to, no.

00:37:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, they can't ever do it.

00:37:55 ◼   ► So it's better to just let your interns

00:37:57 ◼   ► and your new hires read the manual

00:37:59 ◼   ► and learn how to do it and get up to speed

00:38:01 ◼   ► and just leave it the way it is.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And it's, yeah, it's fascinating.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And that's the whole thing.

00:38:07 ◼   ► They're not afraid,

00:38:09 ◼   ► knowing people who've worked at Bloomberg,

00:38:10 ◼   ► they are not afraid to be different from the crowd.

00:38:14 ◼   ► Like they have different terminology for stuff.

00:38:16 ◼   ► They don't call, the laptops that their journalists get

00:38:19 ◼   ► aren't called laptops.

00:38:22 ◼   ► they're called like travel units or travelers or something.

00:38:24 ◼   ► Like it's just, they've got their own terminology,

00:38:26 ◼   ► they've got their own rules, it goes down.

00:38:28 ◼   ► It's just, they are different.

00:38:31 ◼   ► And I think that maybe comes from Mike Bloomberg

00:38:33 ◼   ► that he's a maverick.

00:38:35 ◼   ► He's not afraid to say,

00:38:37 ◼   ► let's do things kind of differently.

00:38:38 ◼   ► And it also comes from the fact that they are

00:38:40 ◼   ► not a traditional ad funded journalism outfit.

00:38:45 ◼   ► They're a financial services outfit.

00:38:49 ◼   ► So, Germin's two recent articles.

00:38:54 ◼   ► First was the one about the new iPhones.

00:38:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:59 ◼   ► - So, it seemingly confirmed,

00:39:03 ◼   ► definitely said that the plus size one

00:39:07 ◼   ► will have the two camera system.

00:39:10 ◼   ► - Right.

00:39:11 ◼   ► - And seemed to confirm that the 4.71 won't,

00:39:15 ◼   ► but doesn't quite say that.

00:39:18 ◼   ► And this is one of those things where the sourcing

00:39:20 ◼   ► is kind of interesting.

00:39:21 ◼   ► Here's, I'm gonna read the paragraph.

00:39:23 ◼   ► The dual system sharpens photos taken

00:39:25 ◼   ► in low light environments, the person said.

00:39:28 ◼   ► The combination of the merged photos

00:39:29 ◼   ► from the two camera sensors also allows users

00:39:32 ◼   ► to zoom while retaining more clarity, the person added.

00:39:35 ◼   ► The smaller version of the new phones

00:39:37 ◼   ► will not include dual lenses, KGI securities analyst

00:39:41 ◼   ► Ming-Chi Kuo said earlier this year.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Now that last bit is fascinating to me

00:39:47 ◼   ► because seemingly, German's own sources didn't, didn't or couldn't say whether the smaller phone has the two cameras.

00:39:54 ◼   ► He's only referring to a report from Ming-Chi Kuo.

00:39:57 ◼   ► It may be or may not because later they talk about the headphone jack being removed and they reference Mako Takara as being the original report.

00:40:08 ◼   ► So I'm not, I couldn't read this and say whether they're, you know, whether he doesn't actually know that for sure,

00:40:17 ◼   ► 'cause it sounds like he actually just said that it's not.

00:40:20 ◼   ► I think it's more that he may be doing,

00:40:21 ◼   ► in a Bloombergian kind of way,

00:40:23 ◼   ► the hat tip of who originally reported this,

00:40:27 ◼   ► because he didn't originally report it.

00:40:28 ◼   ► It was Ming-Chi Kuo.

00:40:30 ◼   ► - No, the Makatakara.

00:40:32 ◼   ► - Well, for Makatakara, it's for sure that way.

00:40:34 ◼   ► But I wonder if maybe the Ming-Chi Kuo attribution is that,

00:40:38 ◼   ► which is just, look, this person got it first.

00:40:42 ◼   ► We should tip our cap to them.

00:40:44 ◼   ► - Confirms no headphones.

00:40:46 ◼   ► and the other, you know, none of this is new.

00:40:49 ◼   ► There's not one bit of it that is new,

00:40:51 ◼   ► but it's confirmation of a whole bunch of these rumors

00:40:53 ◼   ► that are floating about.

00:40:54 ◼   ► The other thing is that the home button now

00:40:56 ◼   ► won't physically click.

00:40:58 ◼   ► It will be tapped.

00:41:01 ◼   ► - Force touch. - Yeah, force touch.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Home button. - Like the track pads,

00:41:04 ◼   ► like, you know, the modern MacBook track pads.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Which is interesting, and I think, I wonder,

00:41:13 ◼   ► you know, there's often a lot of,

00:41:14 ◼   ► German story doesn't mention waterproofing at all, but one of the things that has been

00:41:18 ◼   ► floated about is that whether Apple will bill it as waterproof or not, that one of the features

00:41:23 ◼   ► of these new iPhones is that they will be even further water-resistant than previous ones.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I can only imagine that a Force Touch home button would help in some way in terms of waterproofing,

00:41:38 ◼   ► simply because it seems like every button that actually moves is a place where moisture could

00:41:43 ◼   ► get through. Yeah, and it's also going to reduce repair incidences because, you know,

00:41:47 ◼   ► even if it's not that common, home buttons malfunction because, I mean, it's a moving

00:41:52 ◼   ► part, it has to go up and down, and so you take that out of the equation and it's not

00:41:56 ◼   ► actually moving anymore, you just feel like it's moving when you press on it. I can see,

00:42:01 ◼   ► assuming they do it right, although, you know, the 3D Touch and the Force Touch and the Trackpad

00:42:06 ◼   ► is, they did a good job with that, so assuming they do it right so that you really do get

00:42:09 ◼   ► that sense of action, because it would be the worst thing in the world if you're like,

00:42:13 ◼   ► "Why is my phone locked up?" and you try to press the home button and nothing happens.

00:42:16 ◼   ► You're like, "Yeah, what do I do now?" So they got to get it right, but there are a

00:42:20 ◼   ► lot of benefits to simplifying the shape of the product, basically.

00:42:24 ◼   ► It's one of those things that might be like keyboards, where some people might really

00:42:28 ◼   ► like it and others might not, because it will feel different. And I love the new trackpads.

00:42:34 ◼   ► I think you, I don't know, maybe you do too. I have a...

00:42:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

00:42:37 ◼   ► review unit of MacBook Pro that Apple gave me to test, what's the new operator?

00:42:43 ◼   ► Sierra.

00:42:44 ◼   ► Sierra.

00:42:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I've got one right behind me.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:42:47 ◼   ► And so my personal MacBook Pro is older.

00:42:48 ◼   ► I forget.

00:42:49 ◼   ► I think it might be two years old at this point, or close to two years old.

00:42:52 ◼   ► It doesn't have it.

00:42:53 ◼   ► I love it.

00:42:54 ◼   ► It's a 13-inch MacBook Pro.

00:42:55 ◼   ► It's probably now my favorite MacBook that I've ever owned.

00:42:59 ◼   ► The more I use it, I really appreciate how good it is.

00:43:03 ◼   ► The one thing I really like better about the review unit one is that trackpad.

00:43:06 ◼   ► I really like the Force Touch trackpad.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And I think the main reason why is that I tend to click a lot

00:43:11 ◼   ► at the top of the trackpad.

00:43:13 ◼   ► And the lever that is the moving trackpad,

00:43:18 ◼   ► the fulcrum is at the top.

00:43:20 ◼   ► So it's actually a lot easier to click towards the bottom

00:43:23 ◼   ► than it is at the top.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And I love that on the Force Touch one,

00:43:28 ◼   ► it's just as clicky everywhere on the whole thing.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I know other people don't like it though.

00:43:31 ◼   ► I think Marco Arman does not like the Force Touch trackpad.

00:43:34 ◼   ► So maybe the home buttons will be the same way.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, it could be.

00:43:37 ◼   ► Yeah, Marco doesn't like it.

00:43:38 ◼   ► I do like it.

00:43:39 ◼   ► I actually use the desktop Magic Track.

00:43:42 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah.

00:43:43 ◼   ► - Too, and I really like it.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Amazon did this with the Kindle,

00:43:49 ◼   ► which one was it, Voyage, I think.

00:43:51 ◼   ► They put like, it's now with page turn buttons,

00:43:54 ◼   ► which they had taken off of an earlier model,

00:43:55 ◼   ► but it wasn't really a button.

00:43:56 ◼   ► It was this haptic thing

00:43:57 ◼   ► where you squeezed this thing on the side

00:43:59 ◼   ► and it gave a little vibration

00:44:01 ◼   ► and it didn't work there,

00:44:04 ◼   ► although that was kind of cheaply done

00:44:05 ◼   ► and I expect Apple to do a better job than that.

00:44:08 ◼   ► But they ended up with their,

00:44:09 ◼   ► the Oasis that they have now,

00:44:11 ◼   ► it's just back to being a physical button

00:44:13 ◼   ► because that was just a better experience.

00:44:15 ◼   ► So it can be done badly,

00:44:17 ◼   ► but I would imagine given the Force Touch track pad that,

00:44:21 ◼   ► and I think that's why the reference is being made to it,

00:44:25 ◼   ► is that whoever described this to Mark Gurman is like,

00:44:27 ◼   ► no, no, it's gonna be like the Force Touch track pad.

00:44:28 ◼   ► You're not gonna even be able to believe

00:44:30 ◼   ► that it doesn't move, which that sounds good to me.

00:44:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's funny to me

00:44:34 ◼   ► 'cause I thought one of my complaints for years with iPhones

00:44:37 ◼   ► was that the home buttons were not good enough.

00:44:40 ◼   ► And maybe I just got bad phones, I don't know,

00:44:42 ◼   ► but like in the 3G, 3GS,

00:44:45 ◼   ► and maybe even like the iPhone 4 era,

00:44:46 ◼   ► like there was like a certain squishiness to it

00:44:50 ◼   ► that I didn't like year after year.

00:44:52 ◼   ► And I think I even wrote about it on "Daring Fireball"

00:44:55 ◼   ► that on a device where there's really just one main button,

00:44:57 ◼   ► that button should feel really good.

00:45:00 ◼   ► If you're gonna minimize buttons,

00:45:02 ◼   ► the buttons that you have left have to be really good because they're really going to

00:45:05 ◼   ► stand out. And it's the sort of thing that Apple should pride itself on doing well. And

00:45:09 ◼   ► I think that they've now, they've gotten it great. The clickiness of the Touch ID era

00:45:17 ◼   ► home buttons to me is terrific. To me, it feels like one of the best buttons in the

00:45:22 ◼   ► world.

00:45:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's good. There are lots of speculations about how Apple, I mean, because it's Apple,

00:45:30 ◼   ► Apple wants to eventually have no buttons and no ports,

00:45:33 ◼   ► 'cause that's sort of the platonic ideal of a device

00:45:36 ◼   ► and as thin as possible,

00:45:38 ◼   ► that they would get rid of the home button entirely

00:45:40 ◼   ► at some point, or at least the physical home button,

00:45:41 ◼   ► even if there's a way to do a gesture.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And this seems like a step in that direction,

00:45:46 ◼   ► which is, okay, now we've got it

00:45:47 ◼   ► so that we can read your fingerprint

00:45:49 ◼   ► and you can press on it in order to get where you wanna go,

00:45:52 ◼   ► but there's actually nothing moving.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And that's like step one.

00:45:55 ◼   ► And maybe step two is that they put, you know,

00:45:59 ◼   ► they put that on the bottom center of the screen or something,

00:46:03 ◼   ► and it's seeking that out, whatever a future iPhone design might be.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I don't know, but it does seem like it's a very Apple step to make,

00:46:11 ◼   ► to eliminate a moving part.

00:46:15 ◼   ► And so, what are we left with the focus on here?

00:46:18 ◼   ► The fact that the 4.7-inch phone apparently won't have dual cameras.

00:46:22 ◼   ► And the rumor chain has been pretty consistent on that regard,

00:46:27 ◼   ► Especially if you believe the supply chain links of the backs of these phones, there's

00:46:31 ◼   ► never been one, a credible one that showed two cameras, the two camera oval on the 4.7

00:46:37 ◼   ► inch iPhone and there's usually one on the 5.5 inch.

00:46:42 ◼   ► I'm a little bummed about that because I prefer the 4.7 by far in terms of hand feel.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And in fact, as anybody read my iPhone SE review, if anything I have mixed feelings

00:46:54 ◼   ► about the 4.7 inch versus the iPhone SE size,

00:46:58 ◼   ► four inch phone.

00:47:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been thinking about this

00:47:01 ◼   ► and I think it's probably not true.

00:47:02 ◼   ► I think the 4.7 is probably the mainstream phone

00:47:05 ◼   ► and will remain so,

00:47:07 ◼   ► but I did have that moment where I thought

00:47:09 ◼   ► with the iPhone SE doing, I think way better,

00:47:12 ◼   ► Apple even admitted, way better than Apple expected.

00:47:15 ◼   ► And now we're talking about differentiating the iPhone Plus

00:47:18 ◼   ► at the high end with a much better camera,

00:47:21 ◼   ► which in some ways is taking advantage of the fact

00:47:23 ◼   ► but it's just got more room.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And it's more expensive so they can pack stuff in there.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I do have those moments where I think,

00:47:32 ◼   ► why would you get the 4.7 inch iPhone?

00:47:34 ◼   ► Like if you really care about photography,

00:47:35 ◼   ► get the big iPhone.

00:47:37 ◼   ► If you're somebody who uses your phone all the time

00:47:38 ◼   ► and wants the biggest screen possible, get the big iPhone.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And if you care about size and that's your priority,

00:47:44 ◼   ► or if you care about price, the iPhone SE is right there.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And it's just, again, it's probably not realistic,

00:47:50 ◼   ► but I feel like it's interesting that Apple is making

00:47:53 ◼   ► the Edge phones kind of really appealing

00:47:56 ◼   ► in almost like the simplicity of the one

00:47:59 ◼   ► and the power and complexity of the other.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And then what's the 4.7 inch iPhone?

00:48:04 ◼   ► Well, it's just your average iPhone, I guess,

00:48:06 ◼   ► in the middle.

00:48:07 ◼   ► - There are other rumors that there will be three iPhones,

00:48:13 ◼   ► new iPhones, then, have you seen this?

00:48:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Pro and the Plus?

00:48:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, so it would be like,

00:48:20 ◼   ► forget, I don't think they're gonna call it iPhone 7,

00:48:23 ◼   ► but maybe they will, but let's just say that they do.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Cause otherwise,

00:48:26 ◼   ► and let's note Mark Gurman story at no point calls it the iPhone seven, right?

00:48:31 ◼   ► At no point.

00:48:32 ◼   ► Hold that thought. Cause there's,

00:48:35 ◼   ► that's key to understanding this, his sources or one of the keys sources.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Uh, so let's just say they call it the seven that that's,

00:48:45 ◼   ► this other rumor would say there'd be the iPhone seven, 4.7 inches,

00:48:49 ◼   ► the iPhone seven plus,

00:48:51 ◼   ► which would be 5.5 inches and still have the same camera,

00:48:54 ◼   ► probably with like the image stabilization,

00:48:56 ◼   ► but the single camera circle on the back.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And then the iPhone 7 Pro,

00:49:01 ◼   ► which would have the dual camera system

00:49:04 ◼   ► and presumably like maybe like 256 gigs of storage.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And part of that rumor is based on like supply chain links

00:49:16 ◼   ► that show some of these plates that look,

00:49:18 ◼   ► they're the bigger size,

00:49:19 ◼   ► but they only have one hole for the camera.

00:49:21 ◼   ► And who knows if they're fake?

00:49:22 ◼   ► I don't know, some of those, it's like,

00:49:25 ◼   ► when those pictures come out, they go so super viral

00:49:28 ◼   ► that there's, you know, some of them have been fake

00:49:31 ◼   ► over the years.

00:49:31 ◼   ► I don't know what the motivation is

00:49:32 ◼   ► for people making these fake ones, but it's crazy.

00:49:35 ◼   ► That doesn't make any product marketing sense to me.

00:49:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:49:41 ◼   ► And we've just defined, right, we got, what's an iPad Pro?

00:49:46 ◼   ► Right, I feel like they could do an iPhone Pro,

00:49:48 ◼   ► But to have a Pro and a Plus and the regular iPhone

00:49:51 ◼   ► and the SE and have the Pro and the Plus

00:49:53 ◼   ► be essentially the same, except one of them has this

00:49:56 ◼   ► like one esoteric difference, it seems too complicated.

00:50:00 ◼   ► And which is not to say that I'm not intrigued

00:50:03 ◼   ► by the idea of like an iPhone Pro that is the two cameras

00:50:07 ◼   ► and maybe support for the pencil.

00:50:09 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:50:11 ◼   ► That's an interesting idea of branding that product that way

00:50:14 ◼   ► but to have that and then it feels more likely to me

00:50:17 ◼   ► that it's just, what we're seeing is the 6S Plus,

00:50:22 ◼   ► just again, maybe slightly altered,

00:50:25 ◼   ► but just the 6S Plus.

00:50:26 ◼   ► And that's a question is like, what do they keep?

00:50:29 ◼   ► Traditionally, Apple has kept the previous year's phones

00:50:31 ◼   ► in the lineup.

00:50:33 ◼   ► So, what happens there too?

00:50:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It seems unlikely though,

00:50:37 ◼   ► that they would have two identical phones

00:50:38 ◼   ► except for like the cameras on the back.

00:50:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And it just, it makes it harder like with,

00:50:46 ◼   ► By calling them the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus,

00:50:49 ◼   ► and then the 6S and the 6S Plus, they can just say--

00:50:52 ◼   ► they can say, shot with iPhone 6.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And all of the new phones are carried with that,

00:50:58 ◼   ► whether you have the Plus or not.

00:51:00 ◼   ► The Plus just refers to the size,

00:51:02 ◼   ► even though the camera was technically slightly better

00:51:04 ◼   ► because it had the optical image stabilization.

00:51:07 ◼   ► They didn't need to say that.

00:51:08 ◼   ► They could just say-- they could run ads and billboards that

00:51:11 ◼   ► just say iPhone 6 or iPhone 6S, and it covers

00:51:15 ◼   ► both. Whereas if they do this, it doesn't. They'd have to run separate campaigns, and

00:51:20 ◼   ► then it would peg the ones that are going to sell in greater quantities, the lower priced

00:51:26 ◼   ► ones, the regular and the plus, it would peg them as being on the lower tier from day one.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Which is just, I don't know, something about that doesn't sit right with me. I guess it's

00:51:38 ◼   ► possible, like I wouldn't be shocked if that's how it turns out. But Germin's story makes

00:51:41 ◼   ► it seemed like there's just two, 4.7, 5.5,

00:51:44 ◼   ► and the 5.5 has a better camera.

00:51:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it has these double, you know, dual lens system,

00:51:49 ◼   ► which is a cool idea.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I mean, I think the place where smartphones

00:51:55 ◼   ► could still get better, right?

00:51:56 ◼   ► I mean, back in the old days,

00:51:57 ◼   ► it's like they could get better everywhere.

00:51:58 ◼   ► It's like everything could be better.

00:52:00 ◼   ► But now the place, like number one place

00:52:02 ◼   ► where I think a smartphone could get better

00:52:04 ◼   ► in terms of priority has to be the cameras.

00:52:06 ◼   ► The cameras could get so much better

00:52:07 ◼   ► because we know what good cameras look like.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And although the cameras on smartphones are amazing compared to what they used to be,

00:52:14 ◼   ► they could still be so much better.

00:52:16 ◼   ► So I like the idea that Apple is going down that path and saying, "What if we put two

00:52:20 ◼   ► lenses on and use software and put them together and they should be doing that?"

00:52:25 ◼   ► That's absolutely the right thing for them to do.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't even think German's description of it is—his description is about, first

00:52:34 ◼   ► mentioned, sharpening photos taken in low-light environments.

00:52:36 ◼   ► I mean, that could help with that.

00:52:38 ◼   ► But the biggest difference of the two-lens system isn't really light sensitivity.

00:52:42 ◼   ► That's a problem that's really hard to solve just because of the physics of optics with

00:52:48 ◼   ► the size of these devices and how small the sensors are compared to a full-size or even

00:52:53 ◼   ► like the four-thirds system cameras or something, the ones with small sensors like APS-C.

00:52:59 ◼   ► In a camera camera, those small sensors are so much bigger than the sensors that you can

00:53:03 ◼   ► fit in a phone.

00:53:05 ◼   ► absolutely remarkable how good the photos you can get off these devices are with how tiny the sensors

00:53:09 ◼   ► are, but that's really a limiting factor for light sensitivity. The two-lens system is really about

00:53:14 ◼   ► having two lenses of different focal distances. So you've got the one that's wide angle like the one

00:53:20 ◼   ► we already we've always had on our phone, and then to have a second one that has a longer focal length

00:53:25 ◼   ► like, you know, I don't know what it would be the equivalent in 35 millimeter terms, but you know,

00:53:30 ◼   ► 50 or 85 or something. So that when you zoom, it can actually do it optically instead of,

00:53:38 ◼   ► like if you're trying to shoot something far away and get it closer and fill up more of the frame,

00:53:43 ◼   ► the optics of that are way better if you actually have, if you're doing it with a real

00:53:48 ◼   ► longer lens instead of with just cropping the wide lens picture. And there's going to be,

00:53:56 ◼   ► ought to be ways, there might be ways to do 3D stuff, you know, slightly 3D stuff,

00:54:00 ◼   ► you know, for the live pictures and stuff like that. It could be all sorts of really cool optical

00:54:04 ◼   ► stuff with this, so I better get bigger pockets. Yeah, I know that's my thought too, is I've always

00:54:12 ◼   ► rejected that phone because it's so large, but I would be, if anything would tempt me to get a

00:54:18 ◼   ► larger phone, it would be something like that, like a much better camera would tempt me to

00:54:22 ◼   ► to just swallow my pride and expand my pockets and get the big phone.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Yeah. The second factor for me in a little bit, like the hand, the size in the pockets in the

00:54:32 ◼   ► hand I'm never going to like. But the second factor for me personally is that I'm rushing

00:54:38 ◼   ► towards needing reading glasses when I wear my contact lenses. Like I've mentioned this on the

00:54:42 ◼   ► show before, but long story short, when I wear my contacts, I need reading glasses to read in low

00:54:48 ◼   ► low-light environments now. I can't focus at reading length when I have my contacts

00:54:52 ◼   ► in. When I'm wearing my glasses, I can because—and I just talked to my eye doctor about this—because

00:54:57 ◼   ► when you wear glasses, they're further from the lens of my eye, whereas contacts literally,

00:55:03 ◼   ► they're right there. At a distance, I see exactly the same clarity with glasses on in

00:55:10 ◼   ► contacts. But at a close distance, when you start getting presbyopia in your 40s, it makes

00:55:15 ◼   ► a big difference whether you have contacts on or not.

00:55:18 ◼   ► But really, when I have my glasses on, what I like to do when I read is take them off.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Because I'm nearsighted, without any correction at all, I can read.

00:55:25 ◼   ► That's when I read the best.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I actually read tons and tons on my phone lately in the morning before I put my contacts

00:55:31 ◼   ► in just because it's actually the way I see clearest is with no correction at all with

00:55:37 ◼   ► my phone right in front of my face.

00:55:40 ◼   ► But I wear contacts most of the time.

00:55:42 ◼   ► having the bigger phone and being able to make the text bigger would actually

00:55:45 ◼   ► would actually be optically good for me.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Yeah. My,

00:55:49 ◼   ► my wife has a six S and uses it in the mode where it's blown up to essentially

00:55:54 ◼   ► it's pretending to be a five because she's, cause she's got, um,

00:55:59 ◼   ► for the first time cause she's always had perfect vision,

00:56:00 ◼   ► but she's in her forties now and she's now she needs reading glasses.

00:56:03 ◼   ► And so she's just, uh,

00:56:05 ◼   ► that's been one of her concessions to be able to use her phone without having to

00:56:08 ◼   ► switch to reading glasses is using that extra screen space just to make everything bigger.

00:56:14 ◼   ► What I've been doing, I haven't given into that zoom mode, but I do go into the text

00:56:20 ◼   ► size. It makes me feel good about the fact that I've been promoting accessibility features

00:56:28 ◼   ► long before I needed them, but now I really do. And my vision problems, I always want

00:56:33 ◼   ► I'm trying to say this.

00:56:34 ◼   ► If anything, it makes me appreciate

00:56:37 ◼   ► how good my vision still is.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Because it's like having a scare with losing

00:56:42 ◼   ► all the vision in my eye when I had the retina detachment.

00:56:45 ◼   ► It really makes me appreciate just how bad some people's

00:56:48 ◼   ► vision really is, people who are on some scale legally blind.

00:56:54 ◼   ► But some people who are legally blind can still see something.

00:56:57 ◼   ► But the accessibility features in iOS, it's so great.

00:57:02 ◼   ► And now I'm actually somebody who benefits from them.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - Well, that's how my wife uses her Apple Watch.

00:57:06 ◼   ► 'Cause you can't really do the large screen mode

00:57:09 ◼   ► on the Apple Watch.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And she has used the accessibility feature

00:57:12 ◼   ► to increase the text size

00:57:13 ◼   ► and it makes her Apple Watch usable.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Otherwise it's like, it's great that I have this watch on,

00:57:18 ◼   ► but if I have to put my glasses on

00:57:19 ◼   ► every time I need to read anything on the screen,

00:57:21 ◼   ► it's pointless.

00:57:22 ◼   ► So she uses the type size control.

00:57:24 ◼   ► - I do too.

00:57:25 ◼   ► It is a great, great, great feature.

00:57:27 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:57:31 ◼   ► have a big phone. I don't know. I don't know. We'll have to see how what exactly

00:57:36 ◼   ► the devil's in the details and this comes back to what you were saying about

00:57:38 ◼   ► where Mark Gurman sources are is is a lot of times with these Apple products I

00:57:43 ◼   ► always say this I mean it's just it's so true you got to know where the rumors

00:57:46 ◼   ► are coming from and what and the what we know is what is us we know the product

00:57:52 ◼   ► but we don't know the story and it's the marketing and in some ways it's the

00:57:56 ◼   ► software like we know that there are two cameras and we can speculate on what

00:57:59 ◼   ► those cameras do, but Apple will probably have a very particular story about how

00:58:03 ◼   ► those cameras work together, when one camera gets used, when the other gets used,

00:58:07 ◼   ► do they get merged together, how does that work, is there UI to flip between

00:58:11 ◼   ► them or change the focus or things like that, and that we really don't know.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Yeah, like what's the scenario where this is going to be better? Like a scenario I

00:58:19 ◼   ► can think of that, and I'm sure you know you run into the same thing too, is

00:58:23 ◼   ► parent in the auditorium and the kids on stage. That's where the phone, the phone

00:58:27 ◼   ► is a terrible camera for that situation because you really want a picture of

00:58:31 ◼   ► your kid but there's no way that optical zoom in a dimly lit auditor, not

00:58:37 ◼   ► optical zoom, digital zoom, yeah, of a wide-angle lens with a

00:58:42 ◼   ► tiny little sensor. You might as well not even do it. I always wonder when I

00:58:46 ◼   ► see these parents holding their phones up for the entire thing, I really want to

00:58:52 ◼   ► play that Louis CK rant of, "Hey, just be here." You know what I mean? Just be here

00:58:56 ◼   ► from them. Because it's not just that you'd be better off just being there and watching

00:59:01 ◼   ► it. The actual image you're getting from that camera, from a cell phone halfway back in

00:59:07 ◼   ► an auditorium is going to be useless. You're not going to make out your kid's face. But

00:59:11 ◼   ► a longer lens might actually save that.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Yeah, we were coming back from a long weekend and we were driving, we were in Southern Oregon,

00:59:20 ◼   ► and so we were driving back, driving south, and you go past, on Interstate 5, you go past

00:59:23 ◼   ► Mount Shasta, which is a huge volcano.

00:59:27 ◼   ► There's a-- it's like two miles above the rest

00:59:31 ◼   ► of the landscape around it.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And even middle of summer, within 90 degrees outside,

00:59:35 ◼   ► there's snow and glaciers and stuff on the top of it.

00:59:38 ◼   ► And it's spectacular.

00:59:39 ◼   ► You're driving down the freeway, and there's

00:59:40 ◼   ► this huge volcano right in front of you.

00:59:41 ◼   ► And I get on my iPhone to take a picture of it.

00:59:43 ◼   ► And I open it up, and I look.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And it's just like-- it's like it's not even there,

00:59:46 ◼   ► because it's that wide angle shot.

00:59:48 ◼   ► It's got both sides of the windshield.

00:59:49 ◼   ► It's got the road and all that.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And I zoomed in, and I got an OK shot

00:59:53 ◼   ► with the digital zoom, but those shots are no good because they are zoomed in so far

00:59:58 ◼   ► that any of the majesty of it is now lost in all the little pixelation that happens.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Yeah. It is. It does. It will make for, and I presume it'll be Schiller who does it because

01:00:09 ◼   ► that's Schiller's gig. This is usually the, he's the guy who does the new iPhone in September.

01:00:17 ◼   ► And I happen to know that, you know, Schiller is a truly, you know, real photography enthusiast.

01:00:23 ◼   ► He really knows his shit about cameras and he really cares.

01:00:26 ◼   ► But it's such a hard thing to present

01:00:29 ◼   ► when you're saying how awesome this camera is

01:00:30 ◼   ► and this other phone that we also want you

01:00:33 ◼   ► to be excited about doesn't have it and can't do it.

01:00:36 ◼   ► But that is, it's a perfect scenario though.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Like you wanna get the mountaintop, you know?

01:00:40 ◼   ► And that is exactly the sort of thing

01:00:41 ◼   ► where a second lens that is longer

01:00:43 ◼   ► will make a dramatic difference.

01:00:45 ◼   ► But when they show you the dramatic difference,

01:00:47 ◼   ► it's gonna be in comparison to what you get

01:00:49 ◼   ► with the other new iPhone.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I think they're just gonna have to say,

01:00:53 ◼   ► we could do this because it's a much larger phone.

01:00:56 ◼   ► And they're gonna have to explain it that way.

01:00:59 ◼   ► The only way we could do this is because the iPhone 6 Plus

01:01:02 ◼   ► or 7 Plus or whatever it is, is this much bigger.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And so we have the room to do this.

01:01:10 ◼   ► But I'm looking forward to that demo

01:01:12 ◼   ► because I imagine that's gonna be the ooh and aah demo

01:01:14 ◼   ► of the whole thing.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Because they're gonna have some,

01:01:16 ◼   ► first they're gonna have hired

01:01:17 ◼   ► spectacularly good photographers

01:01:19 ◼   ► to take all the sample images.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And then they're gonna be perfect ones to show off

01:01:24 ◼   ► when you flip a switch or you slide your finger

01:01:26 ◼   ► or something, you go from A to B and everybody goes, whoa.

01:01:29 ◼   ► And you can see what it's gonna be.

01:01:31 ◼   ► It's gonna be a winner, that demo, yeah.

01:01:34 ◼   ► - I totally think so.

01:01:35 ◼   ► Before we leave iPhone, I'd hinted a few minutes ago

01:01:39 ◼   ► that not knowing the product names

01:01:41 ◼   ► is a clue to German sources.

01:01:42 ◼   ► Like the product names in my experience,

01:01:46 ◼   ► there are, that is like need to know basis within Apple.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And I think that the number of people,

01:01:51 ◼   ► even like who work in product marketing,

01:01:53 ◼   ► who know the name of the new iPhone

01:01:54 ◼   ► is probably pretty small.

01:01:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, names, prices.

01:01:58 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - And it also means they're also changeable, right?

01:02:01 ◼   ► Like the hardware, the hardware's been locked for ages now.

01:02:04 ◼   ► The software is basically locked,

01:02:07 ◼   ► although yeah, they will have little bits,

01:02:09 ◼   ► but it's stuff that they've had to be working on

01:02:11 ◼   ► for months and months and months.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Names, unless it's shipping that day,

01:02:14 ◼   ► and it's still, the name is iPhone, right?

01:02:16 ◼   ► They could literally ship a box

01:02:17 ◼   ► that just says iPhone on it and it would be okay.

01:02:19 ◼   ► So the names that you can leave those pretty late in the game

01:02:22 ◼   ► and prices you can really leave late in the game.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And so it's a very small group of people

01:02:28 ◼   ► who are doing that in terms of marketing and PR.

01:02:32 ◼   ► And they don't leak as much unless they want to.

01:02:36 ◼   ► I think they don't, unless the company wants a leak,

01:02:40 ◼   ► I think they don't leak as much.

01:02:42 ◼   ► It comes from supply chain and it comes from kind of people

01:02:45 ◼   ► in the broader company who know little bits about it

01:02:48 ◼   ► and can leak those little bits.

01:02:50 ◼   ► But my experience, I don't know,

01:02:52 ◼   ► do you remember when they did "Mountain Lion"

01:02:56 ◼   ► and everybody expected there would be no OS update

01:02:58 ◼   ► for like another year or six months?

01:03:00 ◼   ► And we all got briefings about "Mountain Lion."

01:03:05 ◼   ► And I literally didn't know what I was being briefed on.

01:03:07 ◼   ► I walked in and said,

01:03:08 ◼   ► "Yeah, there's a new version of OS X.

01:03:09 ◼   ► It's called 'Mountain Lion.'

01:03:10 ◼   ► It's gonna come out and we're gonna announce it

01:03:12 ◼   ► in two weeks."

01:03:13 ◼   ► And just nobody had been talking about it.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And literally it was not,

01:03:18 ◼   ► I mean, the embargo dropped and everybody's minds were blown.

01:03:20 ◼   ► That was a really instructive thing for me

01:03:24 ◼   ► about how buttoned up Apple in Cupertino

01:03:28 ◼   ► in the marketing department could be,

01:03:30 ◼   ► because that was something that didn't leak.

01:03:32 ◼   ► And why didn't it leak?

01:03:33 ◼   ► 'Cause not very many people knew

01:03:34 ◼   ► and nobody in the supply chain knew.

01:03:36 ◼   ► Nobody outside of Infinite Loop knew, really.

01:03:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't know how they do the packaging,

01:03:44 ◼   ► like where and how they make all the boxes

01:03:47 ◼   ► for these phones, but that's, you know, like here, my box,

01:03:51 ◼   ► here, I have one right here on my desk,

01:03:52 ◼   ► and it says iPhone 6S.

01:03:54 ◼   ► So somewhere there's somebody making all these boxes,

01:03:56 ◼   ► and that could leak, but it's different

01:03:58 ◼   ► than a regular supply chain.

01:04:00 ◼   ► And it's notable that the phones themselves

01:04:02 ◼   ► don't have the numbers on the back.

01:04:04 ◼   ► They usually just say iPhone.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Last year, they put the S underneath,

01:04:08 ◼   ► but it just says iPhone S.

01:04:10 ◼   ► And the iPhone SE has an SE underneath it

01:04:13 ◼   ► on the back, etched into it, and that name did leak,

01:04:16 ◼   ► because it was etched on the things

01:04:19 ◼   ► that they were making in the supply chain.

01:04:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you wonder about like, yeah,

01:04:23 ◼   ► the security of who's printing, you know, the boxes.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Yeah, where do they get printed and assembled

01:04:28 ◼   ► and who is that?

01:04:29 ◼   ► And presumably that's all happening in China

01:04:30 ◼   ► because they're shipping them direct from China.

01:04:32 ◼   ► But I'm not saying too that you couldn't, you know,

01:04:36 ◼   ► you could hedge on the name if you wanted to,

01:04:37 ◼   ► but the name was probably chosen,

01:04:39 ◼   ► but it's a smaller group

01:04:41 ◼   ► and they can keep it buttoned up more easily.

01:04:43 ◼   ► And you see that in a lot of reports

01:04:44 ◼   ► where there are details from the hardware side,

01:04:48 ◼   ► but not from the marketing side.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And that allows us to keep some degree of a mystery,

01:04:55 ◼   ► at least for a while.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Often you will see those reports happen

01:04:58 ◼   ► like a day or two before the event

01:05:01 ◼   ► when they have to tell people.

01:05:02 ◼   ► But those people in the know

01:05:04 ◼   ► can be really secretive about it right now.

01:05:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and once boatloads of these things are on route,

01:05:12 ◼   ► or I guess they fly the first couple batches,

01:05:14 ◼   ► I don't know, but once they're starting to put them on pallets and ship them,

01:05:18 ◼   ► you know, across the Pacific Ocean, then there's obviously more sources for leaks.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Right. Then the jig is up. Although that's one reason why,

01:05:25 ◼   ► why they're not usually available today, right?

01:05:27 ◼   ► When they announced them is that they are not quite in the,

01:05:30 ◼   ► in the chain yet at that point to, to keep some amount of, of a secrecy,

01:05:35 ◼   ► I think.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Right. I wonder, I wonder how, like how much they, you know,

01:05:38 ◼   ► that they only do like a small number of boxes beforehand so that they can give

01:05:41 ◼   ► us the review units and stuff.

01:05:42 ◼   ► but then once they announce it is when all of a sudden,

01:05:44 ◼   ► like there's some place in China where they're starting,

01:05:46 ◼   ► start printing out literally millions of boxes

01:05:50 ◼   ► with the product name, like go.

01:05:53 ◼   ► 'Cause I presume that they can print these boxes

01:05:56 ◼   ► a hell of a lot faster than they can assemble phones.

01:05:59 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, sure, I'm sure, I'm sure.

01:06:01 ◼   ► - It's probably a cool machine to see.

01:06:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was thinking, I wonder if you could print

01:06:06 ◼   ► on an assembled box, so like just keep the,

01:06:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:06:09 ◼   ► - Just keep the edge that says,

01:06:11 ◼   ► whether it's a 6 SE or a 7 or something else and just stamp it, probably not. They probably

01:06:16 ◼   ► print it on the cardboard and fold it up. Let's take a break before we talk about the Mac rumors.

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01:07:14 ◼   ► And when I really think about it,

01:07:15 ◼   ► I don't get enough of my pictures printed by Fracture.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I'm gonna get some printed after the show.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Because I love them.

01:07:20 ◼   ► I love having them around the house.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Everybody loves having pictures hanging up on the wall.

01:07:24 ◼   ► They look so great.

01:07:26 ◼   ► It is amazing how good digital photos,

01:07:28 ◼   ► even from your phone now,

01:07:30 ◼   ► look when you get them printed analog

01:07:32 ◼   ► on something that you can actually touch.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I can't say how happy these,

01:07:37 ◼   ► every time I buy these Fractures,

01:07:39 ◼   ► I can't tell you how happy they make me.

01:07:40 ◼   ► They even call it their happiness guarantee.

01:07:42 ◼   ► It's 60 days, so buy it.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Go, if you don't just wanna take my word for it,

01:07:46 ◼   ► buy it, get 'em, take a look at 'em,

01:07:48 ◼   ► and you have 60 days where if you're not happy

01:07:50 ◼   ► with the print that you ordered,

01:07:52 ◼   ► you can send it back and they don't care.

01:07:53 ◼   ► They do 'em, they're handmade in Gainesville, Florida

01:07:56 ◼   ► from US source supplies in a carbon neutral factory,

01:07:59 ◼   ► so you can feel good about that.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Here's what you do.

01:08:03 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com/podcast.

01:08:06 ◼   ► I love this note.

01:08:07 ◼   ► URL ends in podcast, not the name of your podcast.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Fractorme.com/podcast, and you will get 10%

01:08:13 ◼   ► off your first order.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And then they're gonna give you a survey,

01:08:17 ◼   ► and it's got one question, and the question is,

01:08:19 ◼   ► how'd you hear about Fracture?

01:08:20 ◼   ► And then that's where you say the talk show

01:08:22 ◼   ► or Daring Fireball or whatever you wanna say.

01:08:25 ◼   ► So go there, fractorme.com/podcast.

01:08:28 ◼   ► - Love those, I'm surrounded by those right now.

01:08:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're great.

01:08:33 ◼   ► It's just so great.

01:08:35 ◼   ► I cannot say enough good things about this company.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And it's not really gift-giving season in the middle of August, but my god, it is the best gift for family people you could ever imagine.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Well, they do actually assemble them in Florida, so they have limited... basically, I think they get busy at the holidays, so it's not bad to order ahead, quite honestly, because they don't have just a factory where they can just turn it up.

01:09:02 ◼   ► They've got their people who make these themselves.

01:09:06 ◼   ► last year or the year before I remember doing a read where they specifically the

01:09:10 ◼   ► read included like in bold print like you know order now yeah please tell

01:09:15 ◼   ► people to order by the end of November because by December 1st we might be

01:09:18 ◼   ► backlogged past Christmas yeah all right back to Gurman so Gurman had the second

01:09:24 ◼   ► thing and more recently I think it was just a couple days ago he had a report

01:09:26 ◼   ► on the new MacBook Pro yeah and some of it there was one bit that was new to me

01:09:34 ◼   ► I think, but the rest of it wasn't. The bit that was new to me was he said specifically that it is

01:09:39 ◼   ► not a tapered design like the regular MacBook or the MacBook Air. It is still a symmetric thickness

01:09:46 ◼   ► across the side, which surprised me because I sort of thought that they would go to a tapered design,

01:09:52 ◼   ► that they would go, it would be like, think of a MacBook Air but with the retina screen.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean they must just, this is a way to differentiate it, this is a way to have more room

01:10:03 ◼   ► in there for battery and stuff. I mean, it sounds like it's still thinner, slightly thinner, he says,

01:10:09 ◼   ► but not tapered. That's a little surprising. I think that was the going theory, was that it would

01:10:16 ◼   ► be more like the MacBook Air or the MacBook, just a little bit more chunky than that.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Chunkier still. Part of my thinking it would be tapered is, it's three factors. One, Apple tends

01:10:28 ◼   ► to make things thinner. I don't know if you've ever thought about this or noticed.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Jobs's law. That's the jobs law right there.

01:10:34 ◼   ► I don't know if you've ever noticed, Jason, but over the years, Apple tends to make devices

01:10:39 ◼   ► thinner.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And going to a tapered design is a way to make it thinner in parts while still having

01:10:45 ◼   ► – there's certain things that maybe require the thickness and they can stick them in the

01:10:49 ◼   ► back.

01:10:50 ◼   ► Right.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Two is there was a report earlier this year from Ming-Chi Kuo, the supply chain analyst

01:10:57 ◼   ► over in Asia who has very almost no sources I think within Apple itself but

01:11:02 ◼   ► some very good supply chain sources in in the Asian countries where these

01:11:07 ◼   ► factories are and he reported he had a curious report about a 13 inch MacBook

01:11:14 ◼   ► meaning like the 12 inch MacBook that that we have today there's just plain

01:11:18 ◼   ► MacBook a 13 inch version right which makes no sense whatsoever like 12 inch

01:11:24 ◼   ► 13-inch is not enough differentiation. And the 12-inch was just updated. Like, if they wanted to

01:11:31 ◼   ► change the 12-inch to 13, I could see that. That would be believable. If they wanted to go back and

01:11:36 ◼   ► have two versions, 111 and 113, like they used to with the Air, I could see that. But 12 and 13,

01:11:42 ◼   ► you know, you've got to have like small and large. You can't have like large and semi-large. It

01:11:49 ◼   ► doesn't make any sense. So to me, that made sense only in the context that it wasn't a MacBook, that

01:11:54 ◼   ► that it was a MacBook Pro.

01:11:56 ◼   ► And maybe he was just wrong

01:11:57 ◼   ► and there is no 13-inch tapered MacBook.

01:12:00 ◼   ► But that's just what I thought.

01:12:01 ◼   ► And then the third factor is wishful thinking.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Because I've said this before,

01:12:07 ◼   ► for years my portable was an 11-inch MacBook Air.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And it was really slow

01:12:14 ◼   ► because I tend to,

01:12:16 ◼   ► the thing that I do that really slows down a Mac

01:12:18 ◼   ► is I have like 30 or 40 Safari windows open.

01:12:23 ◼   ► I swear to God, I think I have like 40 windows over here on my iMac,

01:12:26 ◼   ► each of them with like eight tabs and on the Mac book era, that would really,

01:12:31 ◼   ► you know,

01:12:32 ◼   ► I'd have to call tab bankruptcy way more frequency than I want frequently than I

01:12:37 ◼   ► wanted to because it just was slowing it down.

01:12:40 ◼   ► But the thing I loved about it and got addicted to and even two years into

01:12:44 ◼   ► having this 13 inch MacBook pro still can't get used to is when I take it out of

01:12:47 ◼   ► a bag, I turn, put it,

01:12:49 ◼   ► set it in front of me the wrong way because the tapered design made it instantaneously

01:12:54 ◼   ► knowable which is the front and which is the back. And I still have, if I want to do it visually,

01:13:01 ◼   ► I'm so old and I'm so used to the old PowerBooks that I still remember when the Apple logo looked

01:13:06 ◼   ► right when you were sitting in front of it closed, not when it was open. And so that doesn't help me

01:13:11 ◼   ► either. Yeah, I still have my 11-inch Air here. That's my laptop that I take around if I need to.

01:13:18 ◼   ► And I thought, yeah, I think there's a group of people who are like,

01:13:20 ◼   ► well, that MacBook is not for me, but I'm sure the new MacBook Pro will be

01:13:25 ◼   ► smaller and lighter than the existing MacBook Pro and that'll be close enough.

01:13:30 ◼   ► And I think that, I think that's the question here.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And that's what you're getting at with sort of wishing that it's more of a wedge

01:13:35 ◼   ► shape is the hope that it's, yeah, it's a MacBook Pro,

01:13:39 ◼   ► but it's still really thin and light. And that may not be, you know,

01:13:43 ◼   ► That may not be possible, given that they do want it to truly be a pro and have the

01:13:49 ◼   ► power that the MacBook doesn't.

01:13:51 ◼   ► Yeah, that the pro, they're really serious about the pro part of the name.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And that makes sense to me, that, you know, because it is pro and they really want to

01:13:59 ◼   ► emphasize graphics, you know, and there's, according to Germin, some options to have

01:14:03 ◼   ► these really nice AMD graphics, you know, GPUs, and other, you know, battery life and

01:14:09 ◼   ► other things.

01:14:10 ◼   ► obviously it's easier to put a bigger battery

01:14:12 ◼   ► in a device that isn't tapered.

01:14:14 ◼   ► So it makes sense.

01:14:15 ◼   ► And maybe it still has the nicer keyboard if it's thicker,

01:14:20 ◼   ► 'cause I kinda, you know.

01:14:22 ◼   ► - I assume that these are going to have a keyboard

01:14:24 ◼   ► that's more like the Magic Keyboard.

01:14:26 ◼   ► So different than the Classic Keyboard,

01:14:30 ◼   ► but not the MacBook Keyboard.

01:14:32 ◼   ► That would be my guess, is that they engineered

01:14:34 ◼   ► this other kind of keyboard for a reason,

01:14:36 ◼   ► and it's probably not just as an external Bluetooth keyboard,

01:14:39 ◼   ► that this would be the basis of the MacBook Pro keyboard too,

01:14:44 ◼   ► instead of the super thin MacBook keyboard.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, that makes sense to me, I hope so.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And I guess the other thing, now again,

01:14:52 ◼   ► this was rumored before, I think maybe from Germin,

01:14:56 ◼   ► probably from Germin when he was at 9to5Mac,

01:14:59 ◼   ► and I've heard other things elsewhere,

01:15:01 ◼   ► but that the function keys are being replaced.

01:15:04 ◼   ► There will be no more function keys on the keyboard,

01:15:06 ◼   ► the F1, F2, F3, which most people use

01:15:09 ◼   ► for the other purpose, they don't usually use them

01:15:11 ◼   ► as function keys, but as the, whatever the little icon is,

01:15:14 ◼   ► you know, the volume up, volume down,

01:15:16 ◼   ► - Right.

01:15:17 ◼   ► - Keyboard brightness, et cetera.

01:15:18 ◼   ► That those are going away and it'll be replaced

01:15:21 ◼   ► with an LED touchscreen that will be software configurable.

01:15:26 ◼   ► So it'll be like having almost like an iOS device

01:15:31 ◼   ► on the keyboard where you tap on these buttons

01:15:34 ◼   ► that would be software configurable.

01:15:36 ◼   ► - Right, which presumably means that then there will be a,

01:15:39 ◼   ► when this is announced that all the like app developers

01:15:42 ◼   ► are going to be given no time to be handed a new API

01:15:46 ◼   ► of like, here's how you do this.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And then they're gonna have to kind of jump to it,

01:15:49 ◼   ► or we're gonna see slow adoption of it,

01:15:50 ◼   ► which is the downside of having a fancy new bit of hardware

01:15:54 ◼   ► that requires software adoption because there'll be a lag.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I'm a little skeptical of this.

01:16:01 ◼   ► It's all about the implementation,

01:16:02 ◼   ► but I'm skeptical only in the sense that

01:16:04 ◼   ► I don't look down at my keyboard a lot.

01:16:06 ◼   ► - Right.

01:16:07 ◼   ► and you use it by feel,

01:16:09 ◼   ► and this is gonna be an area

01:16:11 ◼   ► that you presumably can't use by feel

01:16:13 ◼   ► unless there's some other aspect of this

01:16:15 ◼   ► that is not clear in these reports.

01:16:17 ◼   ► And that concerns me.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Like if you have to look down in order to mute your system

01:16:22 ◼   ► because you don't know where the mute button is,

01:16:24 ◼   ► or if it's even visible, that seems less good to me.

01:16:28 ◼   ► - Can you hit the mute key without looking?

01:16:30 ◼   ► I can't, I can't use any of those function keys

01:16:32 ◼   ► without looking, I can touch type,

01:16:34 ◼   ► but I even after, I don't, I'm not even,

01:16:37 ◼   ► I can't even touch type numbers.

01:16:39 ◼   ► I have to look when I type numbers.

01:16:40 ◼   ► I can only do the alphabet and the--

01:16:42 ◼   ► - I do it some of the time.

01:16:43 ◼   ► I can touch type some of them some of the time,

01:16:45 ◼   ► and sometimes I do look.

01:16:46 ◼   ► If I'm not oriented, if my hands aren't on the keyboard,

01:16:49 ◼   ► I think it's true.

01:16:51 ◼   ► But that's the argument is that you just,

01:16:53 ◼   ► you look, you glance down and you tap.

01:16:56 ◼   ► I also, I'm kind of excited.

01:16:57 ◼   ► I used to have a Bluetooth keyboard

01:16:58 ◼   ► that had a volume control that was,

01:17:02 ◼   ► it had a little strip that you just slid your finger on.

01:17:05 ◼   ► And I think that's interesting

01:17:07 ◼   ► that some of the things we do with these devices,

01:17:09 ◼   ► like making the brightness more or less,

01:17:13 ◼   ► or making the volume louder or quieter,

01:17:16 ◼   ► don't really have to be,

01:17:18 ◼   ► they're not even, the best way to control them

01:17:20 ◼   ► is not two keys or three keys.

01:17:23 ◼   ► It's probably, because it's a spectrum,

01:17:25 ◼   ► and on an iPhone, you just slide a slider.

01:17:28 ◼   ► I could see that for something like this too,

01:17:30 ◼   ► where instead of having keys to control the brightness

01:17:33 ◼   ► of your display, there's just a brightness strip

01:17:35 ◼   ► and you slide your finger on it.

01:17:37 ◼   ► - Right, once you touch it,

01:17:38 ◼   ► once you turn it like the slider pops up next to it, right?

01:17:42 ◼   ► Like you put your finger on brightness

01:17:44 ◼   ► and then slide your finger to adjust.

01:17:46 ◼   ► - Exactly, even if you don't look,

01:17:47 ◼   ► if you know where to land your finger for the brightness

01:17:50 ◼   ► area, then at that point you're at wherever you are now

01:17:52 ◼   ► and you just slide left or right to make it brighter

01:17:55 ◼   ► or likewise with volume.

01:17:56 ◼   ► And then if you want it quiet,

01:17:57 ◼   ► you just touch the volume thing and slide to the left

01:18:00 ◼   ► until it's muted.

01:18:01 ◼   ► And that's a better interaction than tap, tap, tap, tap,

01:18:05 ◼   ► tap on a key. Yeah, I could see that, you know, I mean, and I, for system-wide stuff,

01:18:12 ◼   ► I can definitely see it. I'm, I, it's not that I'm skeptical, it's just that I can't,

01:18:17 ◼   ► I've yet to imagine a scenario where I would want per application stuff, and that's one

01:18:23 ◼   ► of the things Gherman said the point was that, you know, depending on what application you're

01:18:26 ◼   ► in, you could have different things. So, you know, would it be helpful, like, if you're

01:18:29 ◼   ► using Photoshop or an image editor to have the tool palette on the keyboard.

01:18:38 ◼   ► I guess the argument is like, you know, Final Cut users sometimes would have like stickers

01:18:42 ◼   ► that they put on keys in order to say like, "This is what I need to do to do this thing."

01:18:47 ◼   ► That you wouldn't need, you could just have custom labels. I mean, it's just like with

01:18:50 ◼   ► the iPhone, you have the custom label. So even if it's essentially the same as Command-Shift-Option-K

01:18:56 ◼   ► or it's command F2, that instead of that,

01:19:00 ◼   ► it just has a thing that says split clip,

01:19:03 ◼   ► and you tap it and it does what you want.

01:19:06 ◼   ► I guess that would be the idea.

01:19:07 ◼   ► - I guess, I guess there's some,

01:19:08 ◼   ► and it ties it back in with our earlier discussion

01:19:10 ◼   ► about custom key caps, where I've seen,

01:19:13 ◼   ► I've seen that you can buy,

01:19:15 ◼   ► if you use Final Cut as a professional,

01:19:16 ◼   ► you can get, not just stickers,

01:19:18 ◼   ► you could just buy a keyboard that has the keys.

01:19:21 ◼   ► I think there's Photoshop versions of that too.

01:19:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, you know, on ATP at one point a few months ago,

01:19:26 ◼   ► they talked about that I think there's an incredibly expensive keyboard

01:19:30 ◼   ► that has custom keys, like they're like little screens.

01:19:35 ◼   ► - Oh, I have seen that, yeah.

01:19:37 ◼   ► - And that's madness, but you know, that idea.

01:19:40 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, it's true.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And, you know, I could see Apple pitching it as being a way

01:19:46 ◼   ► to unearth the most important and little used features

01:19:51 ◼   ► in your app in a way that you can expose them

01:19:54 ◼   ► by giving them their own dedicated space on the keyboard.

01:19:57 ◼   ► My fear is that Apple's gonna have

01:20:01 ◼   ► some really great examples with their apps.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And then all the third-party developers

01:20:05 ◼   ► are gonna be like, well,

01:20:06 ◼   ► and they're gonna not adopt it

01:20:09 ◼   ► or they're gonna do it badly.

01:20:11 ◼   ► We'll have to see, 'cause that's a real challenge for it.

01:20:15 ◼   ► Like Mac software developers suddenly having to do

01:20:18 ◼   ► this whole new approach to their UI,

01:20:21 ◼   ► which is this, only on MacBook Pros, by the way.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - Right. - I don't know, it's weird.

01:20:26 ◼   ► - Well, maybe, presumably, I would think if it takes off,

01:20:30 ◼   ► if there's any kind of traction with it whatsoever,

01:20:32 ◼   ► it will come to the regular MacBook next revision around,

01:20:37 ◼   ► and maybe will come to the Magic Keyboard?

01:20:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, maybe.

01:20:41 ◼   ► - I think it's a little weird,

01:20:43 ◼   ► as I think about it and imagine it,

01:20:46 ◼   ► I can imagine it being cool,

01:20:47 ◼   ► I can imagine it being a gimmick.

01:20:48 ◼   ► I'm not sold on it purely as an idea.

01:20:51 ◼   ► But I do think it's weird,

01:20:54 ◼   ► a weird mashup of touchscreens

01:20:57 ◼   ► and the abstraction of the pointer-based Mac OS, right?

01:21:02 ◼   ► That you've got a screen on the laptop that is abstract,

01:21:06 ◼   ► meaning you have to use a trackpad or a mouse

01:21:08 ◼   ► to move a pointer that is a representation of you

01:21:12 ◼   ► in the system,

01:21:13 ◼   ► and then to have an actual touchscreen right there, right?

01:21:16 ◼   ► it gets to the whole point of people thinking that they want touch screens on

01:21:20 ◼   ► the Mac itself, which.

01:21:21 ◼   ► But it remains inside Apple's philosophy of it,

01:21:24 ◼   ► which is that you don't go out of the, out of the plane.

01:21:27 ◼   ► You don't go perpendicular that people don't want to do the zombie arms thing,

01:21:31 ◼   ► but, but if your hands are down on the keyboard and on a laptop, you know,

01:21:34 ◼   ► you're looking at the screen, but you're also looking at the keyboard,

01:21:36 ◼   ► it's right there. You can't really look away from it. And that at the, you know,

01:21:39 ◼   ► and then your fingers are already, you know, right next to that touch area.

01:21:43 ◼   ► So you're not having to lift up and then reach out

01:21:46 ◼   ► and touch the screen.

01:21:47 ◼   ► So it does fit.

01:21:48 ◼   ► It's a way for them to do touchscreen technology

01:21:52 ◼   ► short of replacing the entire keyboard with a touchscreen

01:21:55 ◼   ► while not kind of breaking their philosophy

01:21:58 ◼   ► of not doing a touchscreen on the main screen.

01:22:00 ◼   ► - Right, which would also require you to redo the entire UI

01:22:03 ◼   ► of the Mac OS to make things of a size

01:22:06 ◼   ► that would be amenable to being touched,

01:22:08 ◼   ► which would make it, all the controls incredibly large

01:22:12 ◼   ► for everybody using a mouse, which would be,

01:22:14 ◼   ► which is one of the reasons why

01:22:16 ◼   ► I don't think it's ever gonna happen.

01:22:17 ◼   ► It doesn't say, Gurman doesn't say

01:22:19 ◼   ► whether the touchscreen strip for function keys,

01:22:24 ◼   ► as he describes it, will be a taptic.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I hope that it is, because to me,

01:22:30 ◼   ► that would make it make a lot more sense,

01:22:32 ◼   ► because then you could navigate by feel a little better.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Right?

01:22:35 ◼   ► - I don't know if you can though,

01:22:36 ◼   ► because if it's a touchscreen,

01:22:38 ◼   ► then if you're running your finger over it,

01:22:41 ◼   ► you're touching it, unless it's pressure sensitive.

01:22:44 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:45 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:22:46 ◼   ► I mean, there's a lot of questions about this one.

01:22:48 ◼   ► This is a real mystery where not knowing anything

01:22:52 ◼   ► but the existence of the hardware,

01:22:54 ◼   ► we're left to put our own judgments on it

01:22:57 ◼   ► that may have nothing to do with the real approach

01:23:00 ◼   ► and the real way Apple's going to explain it

01:23:02 ◼   ► when they roll this out.

01:23:03 ◼   ► - Also says it'll have USB-C,

01:23:05 ◼   ► but doesn't say how many USB-C ports.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Famously, I don't know if it's--

01:23:10 ◼   ► - Or if they're removing USB altogether or Thunderbolt,

01:23:15 ◼   ► or is there a mix?

01:23:16 ◼   ► It's just sort of like there will be USB,

01:23:18 ◼   ► it will include USB-C.

01:23:20 ◼   ► That's it, one of his sources said.

01:23:23 ◼   ► - Which ties back to my,

01:23:25 ◼   ► how long will I be able to get away

01:23:26 ◼   ► using an Apple extended keyboard too?

01:23:28 ◼   ► The adapter I have goes to regular USB.

01:23:31 ◼   ► So I, you know, what should--

01:23:33 ◼   ► - You just have a USB-C to USB to ADB, just a chain,

01:23:35 ◼   ► just keep chaining them forever.

01:23:37 ◼   ► - Eventually though, right.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So I'll be able to keep going with a USB-C only iMac,

01:23:44 ◼   ► let's say the next one I replace this iMac,

01:23:47 ◼   ► if that one only has USB-C.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Although I presume on an iMac,

01:23:50 ◼   ► they're not going to get rid of the,

01:23:52 ◼   ► they can afford to just have a bunch of ugly ports

01:23:54 ◼   ► 'cause they hide them all on the back.

01:23:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably.

01:23:57 ◼   ► - So I probably won't, and that's where I use this keyboard.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I've never used it with a MacBook.

01:24:03 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to plug an external keyboard

01:24:07 ◼   ► into a MacBook, so I'm not too worried about it,

01:24:09 ◼   ► but it makes me wonder about, you know,

01:24:12 ◼   ► at some point eventually, I think before the death

01:24:16 ◼   ► of the Mac, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm using a Mac

01:24:20 ◼   ► that doesn't have any ports at all, other than power.

01:24:23 ◼   ► So, you know, 10, 15 years from now,

01:24:27 ◼   ► will there be USB ports on a Mac?

01:24:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:24:30 ◼   ► - Well, you'll be going from wireless standard

01:24:32 ◼   ► to USB-C to USB to ADB at that point.

01:24:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:24:36 ◼   ► I'm sure there'll be a chain of adapters that you can use

01:24:39 ◼   ► to keep using your 30 plus year old keyboard at that point.

01:24:42 ◼   ► - I guess that's what I'll need.

01:24:43 ◼   ► I'll need a USB port that, a hub that goes to wireless.

01:24:48 ◼   ► - To wireless, yeah.

01:24:49 ◼   ► - The Bluetooth 8.

01:24:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I'm sure.

01:24:52 ◼   ► He also, the other report in here

01:24:53 ◼   ► that I thought was really interesting when we talk about

01:24:55 ◼   ► sort of how he qualifies his sources at Bloomberg is,

01:24:59 ◼   ► he says, "Apple has also considered bringing

01:25:01 ◼   ► space gray, gold, and silver."

01:25:04 ◼   ► I mean, silver it already is,

01:25:05 ◼   ► but basically adding the other two colors

01:25:08 ◼   ► that they have on the iPhones and on the MacBook

01:25:10 ◼   ► to the new line, a person said.

01:25:14 ◼   ► And then he says, "It's unclear if this will happen."

01:25:16 ◼   ► So basically he had one person say

01:25:18 ◼   ► that they were talking about it

01:25:19 ◼   ► and we don't know what the outcome is

01:25:22 ◼   ► and if they're actually doing it or not,

01:25:23 ◼   ► just that they thought about it.

01:25:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:25:25 ◼   ► I think they probably will.

01:25:27 ◼   ► - I hope they do.

01:25:28 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like, I mean, I've been,

01:25:30 ◼   ► on other podcasts I've been complaining about this

01:25:34 ◼   ► for a while now is I kind of miss the old days

01:25:36 ◼   ► of like the colorful iPods and stuff.

01:25:39 ◼   ► And even the colorful Macs,

01:25:41 ◼   ► if you go back to the original iMac.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And they ended up having, you know,

01:25:45 ◼   ► eight different colors of those.

01:25:47 ◼   ► I kind of miss that.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Like we were all silver Apple products for so long.

01:25:53 ◼   ► And now we've got the gold and the space gray

01:25:55 ◼   ► and that's good.

01:25:56 ◼   ► I think it's a good step,

01:25:57 ◼   ► but I do feel sometimes I know

01:25:59 ◼   ► that there's supply chain issues

01:26:00 ◼   ► and store issues and all of that.

01:26:03 ◼   ► but I do kind of miss having more personality and color.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I'm like, if somebody wants to buy a blue MacBook,

01:26:11 ◼   ► that would be great.

01:26:12 ◼   ► I would love that.

01:26:13 ◼   ► But at least one of the things I like about the MacBook

01:26:16 ◼   ► is that it isn't just the silver color.

01:26:19 ◼   ► You can get it in the gold or the rose gold

01:26:21 ◼   ► or the space gray.

01:26:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's been a long time for me

01:26:25 ◼   ► where there's one color for a MacBook

01:26:27 ◼   ► and you're gonna like it.

01:26:28 ◼   ► - I had the black MacBook when they made that

01:26:30 ◼   ► and I loved that.

01:26:32 ◼   ► And then that was the last MacBook I had before I switched to the MacBook Air,

01:26:36 ◼   ► and it's been all silver laptops.

01:26:37 ◼   ► I saw someone in Starbucks with the black MacBook earlier this summer,

01:26:41 ◼   ► maybe earlier this year, and it was a great condition.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I mean, this guy really obviously cares for it because at a glance,

01:26:49 ◼   ► at least it was, it certainly wasn't grungy at all.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Uh, and I was, I was, I had this moment where I was just like, whoa,

01:26:56 ◼   ► what is that? That thing looks great.

01:26:59 ◼   ► And then I realized that what it was and I was,

01:27:01 ◼   ► and then I kind of saw how thick it was and I was like, "Ah."

01:27:04 ◼   ► - They were more prone to fingerprints than the white ones,

01:27:06 ◼   ► but I think they were more resilient overall

01:27:08 ◼   ► because the white ones were super shiny

01:27:10 ◼   ► and so they got scratched pretty easily,

01:27:11 ◼   ► but the black ones were this matte color

01:27:13 ◼   ► and they were more resilient. - At a glance,

01:27:15 ◼   ► I thought it was gorgeous.

01:27:16 ◼   ► The other one that I've had that,

01:27:17 ◼   ► I haven't seen one in years now,

01:27:19 ◼   ► but long after it was discontinued,

01:27:21 ◼   ► occasionally I would see the 12-inch,

01:27:24 ◼   ► I think it was called a PowerBook.

01:27:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, 12-inch PowerBook.

01:27:28 ◼   ► That was my-- - The one where the keyboard

01:27:30 ◼   ► really went edge to edge.

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, just like the MacBook now.

01:27:33 ◼   ► I mean, that was the original edge to edge.

01:27:35 ◼   ► This laptop cannot be any wider than the keyboard,

01:27:38 ◼   ► the full-size keyboard.

01:27:39 ◼   ► I love that.

01:27:40 ◼   ► That was my favorite.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Before the 11 inch year, that was my favorite laptop.

01:27:43 ◼   ► - For years afterwards, after its discontinuation,

01:27:46 ◼   ► when I'd see one, like at a press event

01:27:48 ◼   ► or in a coffee shop or something,

01:27:49 ◼   ► I'd have this moment of,

01:27:52 ◼   ► whoa, what brand computer is that?

01:27:54 ◼   ► That is a hot look.

01:27:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:57 ◼   ► You know, like, wow, Apple should get on that,

01:27:59 ◼   ► Oh, oh.

01:28:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:01 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:28:02 ◼   ► - 'Cause I knew it wasn't, you know, like the modern,

01:28:04 ◼   ► I instantly did recognize it as something different

01:28:06 ◼   ► than what is available now,

01:28:08 ◼   ► and instantly recognized it as something that was gorgeous.

01:28:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, but boxy because it's so thick now.

01:28:13 ◼   ► But in terms of the width, I mean,

01:28:15 ◼   ► it was incredibly small, way smaller,

01:28:17 ◼   ► smaller than the MacBook

01:28:18 ◼   ► because the screen was so much smaller.

01:28:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:28:21 ◼   ► - But then super thick.

01:28:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, it had, there was a certain elegance

01:28:25 ◼   ► to the way that the keyboard looked edge to edge,

01:28:27 ◼   ► where it's sort of like the same appeal

01:28:29 ◼   ► as like those infinity pools.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Like it just looks, something in my brain

01:28:34 ◼   ► registers that as beautiful.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Like it's the same way.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Like there was somehow instead of being awkward

01:28:40 ◼   ► that there was no edge around it,

01:28:42 ◼   ► the proportions were so nice that it just looked sharp.

01:28:45 ◼   ► Like really, really sharp.

01:28:47 ◼   ► - I always felt that that computer was like a keyboard

01:28:49 ◼   ► that had a computer around it.

01:28:50 ◼   ► That it was like the computer and the keyboard

01:28:52 ◼   ► were just all part of the same thing in a way

01:28:55 ◼   ► because of that design.

01:28:57 ◼   ► I, yeah, that was my favorite.

01:28:59 ◼   ► The 11 inch took it over as my sort of favorite

01:29:01 ◼   ► Apple laptop ever, but for a long time,

01:29:04 ◼   ► it was that 12 inch.

01:29:05 ◼   ► The MacBook is kind of owes something to that now,

01:29:09 ◼   ► but it's not quite the same.

01:29:11 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:29:12 ◼   ► There's a framing device in "Gurman's Story"

01:29:13 ◼   ► that I don't buy at all, which is that,

01:29:17 ◼   ► and if you watch the video he did with Bloomberg TV,

01:29:20 ◼   ► they emphasize it too, which is sort of like,

01:29:23 ◼   ► Apple is doing this new MacBook Pro because iPad sales have tapered off and the iPad didn't

01:29:32 ◼   ► really succeed at being the replacement for laptops.

01:29:36 ◼   ► I mean, I'll just read his words.

01:29:38 ◼   ► This year's MacBook Pro overhaul is aimed at increasing notebook sales at a time when

01:29:42 ◼   ► consumers are taking longer to buy or replace iPads.

01:29:44 ◼   ► Apple research suggests customers upgrade iPads roughly every three years while they

01:29:48 ◼   ► buy new iPhones every 18 to 12 months, according to a person familiar with Apple strategy,

01:29:52 ◼   ► which blah, blah, blah.

01:29:53 ◼   ► That has nothing to do with why this MacBook is coming out now.

01:29:57 ◼   ► It sounds to me like he had a tidbit, which is that Apple Research seems to have twigged

01:30:02 ◼   ► on what the buying pattern is for the iPad, which we've all been wondering, like, what

01:30:07 ◼   ► is the cycle? And it sounds like his sources suggest that Apple thinks it's three years.

01:30:14 ◼   ► But it doesn't seem to have, I mean, like they weren't going to update the MacBook Pro.

01:30:18 ◼   ► If the iPad was doing great, they were just never going to update it again. I think most

01:30:21 ◼   ► people would say that it's surprising it's taking them this long, because they were waiting

01:30:24 ◼   ► out Intel and Intel had some issues and they thought they could skip a generation and get

01:30:28 ◼   ► away with it, but then they got bitten and now they're like, now it's too long.

01:30:32 ◼   ► 440 days or something like that.

01:30:34 ◼   ► Yeah, well it's very clear that they thought that they could get away with skipping that

01:30:38 ◼   ► one Intel processor generation and skating by because the next one was going to be great

01:30:42 ◼   ► and then the next one had issues and now here we are, but I don't think it has anything

01:30:49 ◼   ► to do with the iPad.

01:30:50 ◼   ► Yeah, why has it taken so long for this new MacBook Pro to come out?

01:30:55 ◼   ► And we're speaking about it as though it's out, and it's not out yet.

01:30:58 ◼   ► And it may not be out until October or November even.

01:31:03 ◼   ► And I think with this in particular, the Mac Pro is a totally different story.

01:31:09 ◼   ► And I don't know what is going on there because it's been nine years, or not nine years, but

01:31:14 ◼   ► it feels like it's been about nine years since it came out.

01:31:17 ◼   ► Three years without any updates at all.

01:31:19 ◼   ► And the story on that has to be more complicated

01:31:23 ◼   ► and might be more worrisome to people

01:31:25 ◼   ► who really depend on those machines.

01:31:29 ◼   ► With the MacBook Pro though,

01:31:30 ◼   ► I think the story is exactly what you said.

01:31:32 ◼   ► I think that there was an Intel generation of chips

01:31:35 ◼   ► that Apple thought they could skip

01:31:38 ◼   ► and wait for the next one in this,

01:31:41 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, why do a new version of the MacBook Pro,

01:31:43 ◼   ► of the old MacBook Pro as we know it,

01:31:46 ◼   ► with a new chipset, when this new thing is coming, and we have all these plans for the

01:31:52 ◼   ► keyboard and it's going to be thinner, we'll wait and we'll wow them with that. And it's taken

01:31:58 ◼   ► longer than they thought it would. Because it's too many. They sell too many of these. It's easy

01:32:03 ◼   ► to say that their eye is off the ball on the Mac Pro because it just doesn't sell in high quantities,

01:32:06 ◼   ► but the MacBook Pro is a big moneymaker. It really is. I think it's their... I mean,

01:32:13 ◼   ► my money would be on it being their number one Mac that they sell, right?

01:32:17 ◼   ► Because they sell somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of the Macs

01:32:21 ◼   ► that they sell. They don't break it out anymore, I think. So we can't tell,

01:32:24 ◼   ► but it's a, it's a huge number. The majority of the Mac sold are laptops.

01:32:28 ◼   ► They're not desktops, they're laptops. And I would think that, I mean,

01:32:33 ◼   ► MacBook Air probably isn't selling very well now.

01:32:34 ◼   ► The MacBook is probably doing okay, but MacBook Pro, that's the workhorse.

01:32:38 ◼   ► That is at a normal time. That's gotta be the,

01:32:40 ◼   ► the most important of all the Macs.

01:32:42 ◼   ► And certainly by revenue and profit, because it's not quite there in quantity.

01:32:47 ◼   ► It is a much higher price, especially, and because it attracts pros, it,

01:32:52 ◼   ► I'm sure that more people buy them and max out the storage and the Ram and stuff

01:32:57 ◼   ► like that. And the graphics, you know, whereas the people who buy,

01:33:00 ◼   ► certainly the people who are buying Mac book errors are buying them for the

01:33:03 ◼   ► price at this point, because the specs aren't there. The screens aren't retina.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Whereas people buying the pros might be buying the ones that cost $2,500.

01:33:12 ◼   ► So by revenue, it's got to be.

01:33:14 ◼   ► So I think Apple is internally furious about the delay on this.

01:33:18 ◼   ► So the other thing Gherman reports, and you alluded at it,

01:33:22 ◼   ► Gherman says that they're not planning to debut them at the event next month,

01:33:28 ◼   ► which I expect to be on September 7th.

01:33:30 ◼   ► And that's mainly just going by history, which is that for the last three or four years,

01:33:35 ◼   ► they've had an event somewhere around, this is like March 7th, or September 7th to 11th,

01:33:42 ◼   ► 12th, something like that. And if you look at the calendar, March or September 7th is

01:33:47 ◼   ► the day. It's Wednesday, and the Monday two days before is Labor Day, which is why they're

01:33:51 ◼   ► not having it on Tuesday.

01:33:52 ◼   ► Exactly right. Well, it was two years ago, it was the 9th, and I think last year was

01:33:56 ◼   ► the 8th, and I think that making it the 7th this year makes a lot of sense. If they're

01:34:00 ◼   ► sticking with that pattern, that'll be when it is.

01:34:03 ◼   ► I would have expected, and again, I have no inside information on this whatsoever, but

01:34:07 ◼   ► just based on the fact that last year they used one event to do everything that was coming

01:34:13 ◼   ► out in the fall, including the iPad Pro, which wasn't coming until late October, that even

01:34:20 ◼   ► if these MacBook Pros aren't coming until October, that they would use this one event

01:34:24 ◼   ► to unveil them.

01:34:25 ◼   ► And the one thing I do know, just from last year, was talking to people at Apple, that

01:34:30 ◼   ► it was definitely purposeful, a purposeful decision to go to one event in September for

01:34:36 ◼   ► everything they were going to do that fall instead of what they had done in the previous

01:34:40 ◼   ► few years, which was a big-ish event in September and then a small-ish event, usually at Town

01:34:45 ◼   ► Hall and Cupertino in October, that they found that too hard to do back to back.

01:34:51 ◼   ► You know, I think they could announce them at the event and just say, "Look, we love

01:35:00 ◼   ► the Mac and we have a whole bunch of new Mac stuff, and here's a really quick look at where

01:35:03 ◼   ► the Mac is going this fall." And they would say, "This is coming out in October, this

01:35:07 ◼   ► is coming out in November, of course Sierra is out now, blah, blah, blah, we're done."

01:35:11 ◼   ► They could do an event. Also, I mean, I know people don't like it when I say this, but

01:35:16 ◼   ► there are, Apple can release products without an event.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And for something like the Mac, which we all love,

01:35:23 ◼   ► but at the same time is a small part of Apple's

01:35:26 ◼   ► overall business now, is it the end of the world

01:35:28 ◼   ► if Apple does a MacBook Pro press release?

01:35:33 ◼   ► I mean, it would be a whimper, but they could.

01:35:36 ◼   ► They could also do a really small event somewhere.

01:35:39 ◼   ► They've done that before, where it's a Mac event

01:35:41 ◼   ► and it's got a very limited invite and it's town hall.

01:35:44 ◼   ► And they could even do that.

01:35:46 ◼   ► I don't think they're ever gonna go back to town hall,

01:35:47 ◼   ► but they got options.

01:35:49 ◼   ► They don't have to give it 30 minutes on stage

01:35:52 ◼   ► on September 7th.

01:35:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, my guess is that they either give it 30 minutes

01:35:56 ◼   ► on stage September 7th, or they'll release it

01:36:00 ◼   ► without an event and do product briefings.

01:36:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, they'll do briefings and press release

01:36:04 ◼   ► and big website, and you know, I mean, the fact is,

01:36:07 ◼   ► Apple can release a product without an event

01:36:10 ◼   ► and still get lots of press coverage

01:36:11 ◼   ► because they invite their key journalist contacts

01:36:15 ◼   ► to pre briefings and give them an embargo and and then you know one day

01:36:20 ◼   ► you wake up and suddenly all of these reviews are posting about what the new

01:36:24 ◼   ► macbook that just was announced yeah I think when they do the briefings there's

01:36:26 ◼   ► obviously fewer press than at an event but it's not it's not super exclusive

01:36:32 ◼   ► either like I remember when the watch came out I there was an event in March

01:36:38 ◼   ► that was the year that I couldn't travel because of the eye surgery but they

01:36:42 ◼   ► didn't give them, they didn't have watches to give out yet. And then when

01:36:45 ◼   ► they did, they did product briefings in New York and on campus

01:36:50 ◼   ► in Cupertino for U West Coasters. So I went to New York, but it was tons and tons,

01:36:55 ◼   ► I mean a big, big operation. I mean it was, it wasn't just like, "Oh, they invited

01:36:59 ◼   ► three people and they're gonna give them a watch." I mean it was an operation.

01:37:04 ◼   ► Yeah, although that's in part perhaps because they thought they would

01:37:08 ◼   ► able to give them out at the March event and they couldn't.

01:37:12 ◼   ► But they can do that with the MacBook, I'm sure.

01:37:14 ◼   ► They certainly absolutely could.

01:37:17 ◼   ► Yeah. I'm trying to think. Anything else about the MacBook Pros? I don't think so.

01:37:22 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean, I just—we mentioned the seven years it's been since the Mac Pro

01:37:28 ◼   ► got updated. I do think that that's an overarching question that we still need an answer to is

01:37:33 ◼   ► is what's going on with the rest of the Mac line,

01:37:36 ◼   ► other than the MacBook, that it's all kind of,

01:37:39 ◼   ► this would be the season, this fall would be the season

01:37:42 ◼   ► where they would do at least a speed bump on the iMacs,

01:37:45 ◼   ► and maybe the Mac Mini, and certainly a story

01:37:49 ◼   ► about what's going on with the Mac Pro.

01:37:51 ◼   ► And it sounds like, you know, they're working on that stuff.

01:37:54 ◼   ► I've seen reports that all of that stuff is in process,

01:37:57 ◼   ► and it's just a question of when does it get formally

01:37:59 ◼   ► announced and shipped?

01:38:00 ◼   ► And it sounds like we may end up with a fall

01:38:02 ◼   ► where the entire Mac line turns over,

01:38:04 ◼   ► except for the MacBook.

01:38:06 ◼   ► - And yeah, I hope so.

01:38:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, we should.

01:38:10 ◼   ► - I really do.

01:38:11 ◼   ► 'Cause it is, you know, it's damn curious

01:38:15 ◼   ► if you want to use a Mac Pro

01:38:17 ◼   ► that you have to buy a three-year-old computer.

01:38:20 ◼   ► - I can't even believe they're still selling them.

01:38:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's almost unconscionable

01:38:24 ◼   ► that those products are still for sale

01:38:27 ◼   ► because they're so outdated now.

01:38:29 ◼   ► - It would be fascinating to know

01:38:31 ◼   ► how many of them they're actually selling,

01:38:33 ◼   ► because even more than the MacBook Pro,

01:38:37 ◼   ► it's almost certain that nobody goes in

01:38:40 ◼   ► and accidentally, just on a whim, buys a Mac Pro, right?

01:38:43 ◼   ► Like, it truly is the most pro of any computer they sell.

01:38:48 ◼   ► It's very expensive, it requires a display, you know.

01:38:54 ◼   ► - I wonder if they're selling them

01:38:55 ◼   ► to institutional sales now,

01:38:57 ◼   ► where they actually buy a bunch of them

01:38:58 ◼   ► and they give them a big discount,

01:38:59 ◼   ► And yeah, you can buy them on the Apple store, on apple.com,

01:39:03 ◼   ► but that maybe if they're selling any, it's really that.

01:39:06 ◼   ► And it's to people that they may need a Mac Pro

01:39:09 ◼   ► and they need it today.

01:39:10 ◼   ► They need 100 of them.

01:39:11 ◼   ► - I can totally see though how a lot of people coming in

01:39:13 ◼   ► to buy a MacBook of any sort or an iMac,

01:39:17 ◼   ► they have no idea when the last time it was revised

01:39:19 ◼   ► and they don't care.

01:39:20 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:39:21 ◼   ► - Just look at it, it looks great.

01:39:22 ◼   ► And it seems to be very, it's very fast right there

01:39:25 ◼   ► in the store, hey, I'll buy it.

01:39:26 ◼   ► Whereas the Mac Pro is only selling to people,

01:39:28 ◼   ► whatever the reason, whether they're videos editors or photographers or developers, they're

01:39:34 ◼   ► selling to people who know that this is a three-year-old computer and people who know

01:39:40 ◼   ► that it's old, know that it's no longer a good value for the dollar, and know that it's

01:39:47 ◼   ► going to physically pain them to buy one and then have a new one come out in short order.

01:39:52 ◼   ► Exactly. Also, I wouldn't feel bad buying an iMac now, even knowing the whole iMac in

01:39:56 ◼   ► 'cause the 2015 update to the iMac,

01:39:59 ◼   ► I mean, those are good, modern, fast systems.

01:40:02 ◼   ► It's not the same situation.

01:40:04 ◼   ► They're all faster than the Mac Pro too, basically.

01:40:06 ◼   ► So yeah, Mac Pro is baffling.

01:40:09 ◼   ► - I got the first 5K iMac.

01:40:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've got that.

01:40:12 ◼   ► - And I don't even feel bad about that one,

01:40:14 ◼   ► even knowing that the next one came

01:40:16 ◼   ► with the increased color gamut, which is gorgeous,

01:40:19 ◼   ► but which I'm never gonna see it side by side with this one.

01:40:23 ◼   ► And this one still looks, dropped it.

01:40:25 ◼   ► this display is the best display I've ever had.

01:40:27 ◼   ► So I don't even feel bad about that.

01:40:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm colorblind.

01:40:30 ◼   ► So I really, I mean, I can see color,

01:40:33 ◼   ► but I don't appreciate some of the finer details of color

01:40:36 ◼   ► and the color gamut thing.

01:40:37 ◼   ► I basically, I can see it a little bit,

01:40:39 ◼   ► but yeah, it doesn't make me feel sad.

01:40:41 ◼   ► I got the Core i7.

01:40:43 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the i7 iMac.

01:40:46 ◼   ► I did the build to order of the high end.

01:40:47 ◼   ► It's like, it's the most powerful Mac I've ever owned.

01:40:50 ◼   ► I'm just, even though it's a 2014, I'm happy with it.

01:40:54 ◼   ► A friend of the show, Craig Hockenberry, is doing,

01:40:57 ◼   ► he's a developer at Icon Factory.

01:41:00 ◼   ► He's doing a lot of research into color technology,

01:41:05 ◼   ► long story short.

01:41:06 ◼   ► I helped him out, but I looked at,

01:41:07 ◼   ► he had an image of whatever you wanna call it,

01:41:10 ◼   ► what's deep resolution, whatever that's called,

01:41:12 ◼   ► the extra color.

01:41:15 ◼   ► - It's like the wide color gamut.

01:41:16 ◼   ► - The wide color gamut.

01:41:17 ◼   ► He had a photograph that took advantage of it,

01:41:20 ◼   ► and I looked at it on the iMac,

01:41:23 ◼   ► and I looked at it on the iPad Pro, which is the, I think the only device I have that has that.

01:41:28 ◼   ► - The 9.7, yeah.

01:41:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I could see the difference, but it was not a heartbreaking difference. It was a,

01:41:35 ◼   ► "Wow, Apple's really killing it with these displays," but it did not break my heart

01:41:41 ◼   ► that my iMac doesn't have it.

01:41:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly. I think that's exactly right. If I were a photographer working in that,

01:41:47 ◼   ► you know, color space and being frustrated that my display couldn't properly display it, then I would

01:41:53 ◼   ► jump on it. If it was Retina versus non-Retina, then I would just pick up this iMac and throw it

01:41:58 ◼   ► under garbage and head to the Apple Store. Uh-huh, yeah. So I feel like Mac, what is it,

01:42:05 ◼   ► MacRumors saying don't buy an iMac? It's like, yeah, you know, you could buy an iMac. I suppose

01:42:09 ◼   ► if you're reading MacRumors, you're savvy enough, but it's like you could buy, I think you could buy

01:42:13 ◼   ► and iMac, it would be fine. If you need it. If you have the need, you should definitely

01:42:17 ◼   ► do it, I would say. Yeah, because it'll get better in the fall, there's no doubt, but

01:42:20 ◼   ► it's already pretty great. It's going to be fine. But the Mac Pro, no idea. MacBook Pro,

01:42:25 ◼   ► same thing. So I hope, I guess that's what I'm saying, is I hope that there's more behind

01:42:30 ◼   ► this exciting MacBook Pro, which absolutely should be the number one thing on the list

01:42:34 ◼   ► of Mark Gurman reporting about it. But I hope behind that there are a raft of, even if it's

01:42:40 ◼   ► just sort of speed bump announcements of all the rest of the Mac line.

01:42:44 ◼   ► Intriguingly, not mentioned in Germin's report is anything about the displays, including

01:42:50 ◼   ► pixel sizes and including pixel count of the new iPhones, and whether they're going to

01:42:57 ◼   ► get the wide color gamut and the room temperature, the temperature sense shifting. What do they

01:43:05 ◼   ► call that feature? I don't have an iPad.

01:43:07 ◼   ► True Tone.

01:43:08 ◼   ► Which I kind of, even though Germin didn't mention it,

01:43:12 ◼   ► I'm just gonna guess that it does have True Tone.

01:43:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm gonna guess that, yeah.

01:43:19 ◼   ► - Because, here's why I'm guessing that.

01:43:21 ◼   ► A, it's their flagship device,

01:43:23 ◼   ► and the best stuff usually comes to iPhone first,