The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Here's what I got for us to talk about.

00:00:01 ◼   ► WWDC.

00:00:03 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:00:04 ◼   ► The live talk show at WWDC.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Mac OS, or what's it called?

00:00:09 ◼   ► Mac OS.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Mac OS 10.12.

00:00:11 ◼   ► - I've lost track.

00:00:12 ◼   ► - iOS 10.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Watch OS 3.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Taking the headphone jack off the iPhone.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Covering your laptop cameras with tape.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Podcast ads, the future of podcasting and mid-roll.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Buying Stitcher.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And then at the end we can talk about cars

00:00:28 ◼   ► talk about the shitty Shifter design that led to the guy from Star Trek stuff. So let's

00:00:37 ◼   ► get started. WWDC. We don't have to talk about the actual announcements.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Nah, everyone's heard about those already. I want to talk about your show.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Alright.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Because, you know, I have some to say about it and you probably won't be saying all

00:00:51 ◼   ► this so I will say it because you won't. So, number one is, you know, first of all,

00:00:57 ◼   ► I greatly enjoyed it.

00:00:58 ◼   ► You began the show by posing the question of like,

00:01:03 ◼   ► you know, you had Phil on last year, how do you top that?

00:01:05 ◼   ► You know, there's only so far you can go up the chain

00:01:08 ◼   ► to top having Phil on the show.

00:01:10 ◼   ► And you ended up having Phil and Craig on the show this year

00:01:16 ◼   ► and I put forth now this theory that that is the top,

00:01:19 ◼   ► that is the best you can do for that show in that week.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - I agree with that.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I think that's actually probably true.

00:01:26 ◼   ► because, and this is, I know that it,

00:01:29 ◼   ► I think I successfully kept it secret, number one.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I don't know what the people were whispering

00:01:33 ◼   ► out in the audience.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - I was guessing Tim, but I had no idea.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, Tim, that was by far the most common guess,

00:01:39 ◼   ► that like, and people were,

00:01:41 ◼   ► and people were bugging me like that they,

00:01:42 ◼   ► not bugging me, I shouldn't say that.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Everybody who come up and said hi to me at WWDC,

00:01:45 ◼   ► I always enjoy it, and sometimes I see people on Twitter

00:01:48 ◼   ► who say, "Hey, I saw you somewhere,

00:01:49 ◼   ► "and I thought, ah, I won't bother you."

00:01:51 ◼   ► No, just come say hi, I like to say hi to people,

00:01:53 ◼   ► it's great, it's one of my favorite parts of WWDC.

00:01:55 ◼   ► And it was really weird for me in the early years because it does not come naturally to

00:02:00 ◼   ► me.

00:02:01 ◼   ► But I've learned over the years how to make those things go pretty well.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Pretty much what I did was the one year at South by Southwest I was hanging out.

00:02:10 ◼   ► It was the year Merlin and I spoke together at South by.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And I just noticed that when people would come up to us, whether they knew Merlin, Merlin

00:02:19 ◼   ► is amazing.

00:02:20 ◼   ► He's absolutely amazing when someone comes up and says, "Hey, are you Merlin, man?"

00:02:24 ◼   ► obviously never met them. They're a fan. He's so good at it. And I just suddenly

00:02:27 ◼   ► went into like, "I'm just gonna copy his moves and just do what he does." And it's

00:02:35 ◼   ► gotten a lot better. So anyway, people would come up to you. They'd say blah blah blah.

00:02:37 ◼   ► But then they'd say, "Who's gonna be on your show?" And I would just say, I started

00:02:40 ◼   ► saying to them, "You don't really want me to tell you, right? I mean, you want to be

00:02:43 ◼   ► surprised." Yeah, and like you and you know, I don't know what the listeners think,

00:02:47 ◼   ► but like, you know, so you and I are friends. I didn't know either last year

00:02:50 ◼   ► or this year. Like, you don't even tell your friends. Like, you don't, as far as I

00:02:53 ◼   ► know the only people you tell are like Amy and Paul who are working the event

00:02:56 ◼   ► with you like you don't tell anybody I didn't tell Paul Amy did and Caleb

00:03:04 ◼   ► Sexton knew as of like three or four in the afternoon of the day and I did tell

00:03:10 ◼   ► Caleb that you know to prepare three lav mics so he knew there would be two to

00:03:15 ◼   ► two guests but no I did not tell anybody because that's how you keep a secret how

00:03:19 ◼   ► How do you keep a secret? It's easy. Don't tell anybody. I swear to God, it is the...

00:03:25 ◼   ► It sounds stupid, but most people don't do that.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Amy tells me a great story. I'm going to butcher this in some way. But when she was in law

00:03:36 ◼   ► school, she had a criminal defense course that was taught by a former FBI agent. And

00:03:45 ◼   ► He told them, he said, "You want to know how to get away with a murder?

00:03:48 ◼   ► It's actually very easy.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Don't leave any evidence.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Don't leave any evidence behind.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Don't tell anyone what you did, and don't ever do it again, and you'll get away with

00:04:01 ◼   ► it."

00:04:02 ◼   ► AARON LINDQUIST >> Useful information for law students.

00:04:04 ◼   ► JEFF ZELENY >> Most murderers do not get away with it because most murderers either leave

00:04:08 ◼   ► something behind or, most commonly, they tell somebody.

00:04:12 ◼   ► It's very, very easy.

00:04:14 ◼   ► I didn't murder anybody, but I did not tell anybody who was going to be on the show.

00:04:17 ◼   ► And I agree with your assessment that the duo of Phil and Craig is, I think, unbeatable.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Tim Cook would be a bigger get.

00:04:26 ◼   ► Johnny Ive would be a big get.

00:04:28 ◼   ► But I don't think that the combination of my interviewing skills combined with their

00:04:34 ◼   ► personalities I don't think would be as enjoyable.

00:04:37 ◼   ► Well, especially in this setting, too.

00:04:40 ◼   ► You are there and you want to talk about what was just said in the keynote.

00:04:43 ◼   ► seen interviews of Tim, Tim doesn't really stray from the talking points.

00:04:46 ◼   ► He's very well prepared, very well controlled, and he says what he wants to

00:04:50 ◼   ► say and nothing more. And what you really want at the BBC is, and in the

00:04:55 ◼   ► talk show, is like the live talk show is still your show. It's still the talk show

00:05:00 ◼   ► and you know the the mood of it takes on what you set there. So it really it's

00:05:06 ◼   ► kind of like you know like you like you say that this is the director's

00:05:09 ◼   ► commentary for Daring Fireball. You know when you have these Apple execs on

00:05:12 ◼   ► on your show, which I love that now two years in,

00:05:16 ◼   ► it just has become like, oh, this is just what you do now.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Last year it was like, holy crap,

00:05:19 ◼   ► this year it's like, oh yeah, again, okay.

00:05:21 ◼   ► But when you have them on the show,

00:05:24 ◼   ► it kind of becomes the director's commentary for WWDC.

00:05:29 ◼   ► 'Cause it is like, mood-wise, it's like the closest

00:05:32 ◼   ► that any of us will ever get to sitting down

00:05:35 ◼   ► and having a beer with Apple executives.

00:05:37 ◼   ► And I think Phil and Craig not only have

00:05:41 ◼   ► very good personalities that mesh well with that.

00:05:43 ◼   ► But also like topic wise at WWDC,

00:05:47 ◼   ► if there's any two Apple execs you can pick

00:05:49 ◼   ► to ask questions to that are gonna be interesting

00:05:52 ◼   ► and relevant to developers after having heard

00:05:54 ◼   ► that keynote that day, it's gonna be those two.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Because you have Phil who now runs the entire app store,

00:05:59 ◼   ► policy wise at least, he runs the whole app store

00:06:01 ◼   ► and then he's also kind of like,

00:06:04 ◼   ► I don't know what his role is unofficially

00:06:07 ◼   ► but it seems like he is in many ways

00:06:10 ◼   ► like heavily involved or possibly the head of a lot of product decisions. Yeah,

00:06:15 ◼   ► I've always said, and I mean, just maybe I should have asked. I've always had this

00:06:19 ◼   ► on my list. What would you say you do here? Well, I have had that, and I've run

00:06:24 ◼   ► out of time. I've both ears, you know, it's better that way, but I have more stuff

00:06:28 ◼   ► to talk to them about than I have time to ask them. And I tend to favor,

00:06:34 ◼   ► "Hey, let's fill this up with questions from the keynote," because I think it's

00:06:39 ◼   ► that's more relevant to now than forever.

00:06:42 ◼   ► But I have ideas, I go into it with a couple ideas

00:06:45 ◼   ► for things to talk about just in case the keynote

00:06:47 ◼   ► doesn't really have a lot of stuff.

00:06:49 ◼   ► But I've always said, and from my perspective on the outside,

00:06:52 ◼   ► the best way to understand Schiller's role at Apple

00:06:55 ◼   ► would be to take the word marketing out of his name

00:06:57 ◼   ► and edit title and edit senior vice president of product.

00:07:01 ◼   ► 'Cause the marketing is in and of itself,

00:07:03 ◼   ► it's part of the product, it's not a separate thing,

00:07:06 ◼   ► it's not like the products are developed

00:07:07 ◼   ► and then Schiller's group figures out how to advertise them or what pictures to take

00:07:11 ◼   ► to put on the box. It's all of a piece. That's the type of marketing that gives, especially

00:07:17 ◼   ► engineers who are analytical, and they roll their eyes when they think about marketing.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Bad marketing is when you start with a bad product and somebody is told, "Here's a kind

00:07:26 ◼   ► of crappy product or a thing with a bunch of problems. Figure out a way to sell it."

00:07:29 ◼   ► Well, the marketer still has to do their job, but whereas if you have a good product, you

00:07:35 ◼   ► just let the product speak for yourself and figure out how do we let the product speak

00:07:38 ◼   ► for itself. And I think that's ideally what, you know, at their best, that's how Apple's

00:07:43 ◼   ► marketing works.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And it seems too like...

00:07:45 ◼   ► He is intimately familiar with all of their products.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Oh, clearly. And also, and you know, having Craig there too, like, it's amazing because,

00:07:53 ◼   ► you know, you think of like, you know, what is an executive? And you think of like, what

00:07:57 ◼   ► kind of person is it? What do they know? What kind of involvement do they have? And to have

00:08:00 ◼   ► the kind of incredibly deep knowledge that these two executives have about

00:08:05 ◼   ► what they apparently oversee with pillar you know and what and what Craig does

00:08:09 ◼   ► officially oversee you know like Craig was throwing out deep technical

00:08:13 ◼   ► implementation details and and I know from talking to people in the company

00:08:17 ◼   ► that that's genuine like Craig is really a genuine like hardcore engineer and

00:08:22 ◼   ► he's really he really knows his stuff and he gets deeply involved in it and and

00:08:27 ◼   ► is, but at the same time is a really good leader. I mean, I don't think I've met

00:08:31 ◼   ► anybody who has worked under Craig or anywhere near Craig and has a single bad thing to say

00:08:36 ◼   ► about the experience of working with him. I mean, he seems incredibly good at his job

00:08:42 ◼   ► and very well suited to that leadership role, but also, like Phil, having this incredibly

00:08:47 ◼   ► deep knowledge of the product and the decisions. And to have that there, this is why I think

00:08:53 ◼   ► this is better than having Tim for your show.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Because not only, not only like I think you have,

00:08:57 ◼   ► you'd have a better personality mesh with these guys,

00:09:01 ◼   ► but also I think, you know,

00:09:03 ◼   ► Tim doesn't take that kind of deep knowledge

00:09:07 ◼   ► of like the little details of how these things

00:09:09 ◼   ► are engineered or product decisions like,

00:09:11 ◼   ► and 'cause I think Tim kind of knows

00:09:13 ◼   ► that he's not like ahead of product the way Steve was,

00:09:16 ◼   ► and so he has delegated that to some of the other SVPs,

00:09:20 ◼   ► and you know, different combinations.

00:09:22 ◼   ► And honestly, I think it's a little bit vague as to what the combination is right now, and that might be a bit of a problem.

00:09:25 ◼   ► But overall, you know, it's, you know, Tim is not really a product person, and Phil very clearly is.

00:09:33 ◼   ► And honestly, I mean, from just my point of view, I am very happy you had those two people on.

00:09:39 ◼   ► And I would say Phil and Craig are my favorite Apple executives.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And I think the ones that most closely align with my priorities, it seems.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's fair to say. So I don't know why I'm screwed for next year.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Yeah, well just have them on again or have moles. That's it. Those are your

00:09:57 ◼   ► choices.

00:09:57 ◼   ► I think Eddie, Eddie Q, uh, when he was on this show with Craig was good and I

00:10:01 ◼   ► think he would be good, but his personality wise, uh,

00:10:06 ◼   ► but his domain isn't a good fit,

00:10:09 ◼   ► especially for the WWDC show.

00:10:11 ◼   ► If I had something where I did like a quarterly show or a twice a year show and

00:10:16 ◼   ► like maybe if I did a live show after the September, you know,

00:10:20 ◼   ► iPhone event or something like that.

00:10:22 ◼   ► Eddy Cue might be good then,

00:10:24 ◼   ► but I feel like WWDC in particular,

00:10:26 ◼   ► when the news is supposed to,

00:10:28 ◼   ► and in late, most years recently really is,

00:10:31 ◼   ► mostly about software, it's, you know,

00:10:34 ◼   ► there's, it wouldn't really make any sense

00:10:37 ◼   ► just to have him on because it's not his domain.

00:10:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, also, I would also say like,

00:10:44 ◼   ► one of the greatest things we saw

00:10:45 ◼   ► at the live talk show this year

00:10:47 ◼   ► is that we on the outside got to see,

00:10:51 ◼   ► in a very, very rare circumstance,

00:10:53 ◼   ► we got to see two Apple SVPs interacting with each other.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And if you think about it,

00:10:59 ◼   ► what other chances do we ever have to see that?

00:11:02 ◼   ► And from what I understand,

00:11:04 ◼   ► again, talking to some people inside the company,

00:11:06 ◼   ► even most people who work in the company

00:11:08 ◼   ► rarely see two SVPs in the same room,

00:11:11 ◼   ► 'cause usually you're presenting to at most one of them.

00:11:14 ◼   ► So to see two execs who have clearly worked together

00:11:18 ◼   ► for a very long time and know each other really well

00:11:21 ◼   ► and clearly respect each other very much,

00:11:23 ◼   ► who are also good in all these other ways,

00:11:25 ◼   ► it really brought a lot of amazing humanity

00:11:28 ◼   ► and just insight into just who these people actually are.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And this is something that you're not gonna get

00:11:34 ◼   ► in a carefully scripted keynote

00:11:36 ◼   ► or any kind of carefully planned event.

00:11:38 ◼   ► And this is why I love this show so much,

00:11:40 ◼   ► because you get to do this

00:11:41 ◼   ► and you get to reveal this to the world,

00:11:44 ◼   ► and you do it in a way that, because it's a podcast,

00:11:49 ◼   ► I love podcasting because if you write something

00:11:52 ◼   ► on a blog or on a news site,

00:11:54 ◼   ► that spreads all over the place really quickly

00:11:56 ◼   ► if there's anything about it that's controversial

00:11:57 ◼   ► or inflammatory or anything else.

00:11:59 ◼   ► Believe me, I know that better than a lot of people.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And that can often be prohibitive

00:12:04 ◼   ► to encouraging people to continue writing.

00:12:07 ◼   ► With a podcast, it seems like just because podcasts,

00:12:11 ◼   ► they just don't really spread like wildfire

00:12:13 ◼   ► the way text spreads.

00:12:15 ◼   ► You can quote someone's post or paraphrase someone's post,

00:12:19 ◼   ► stick an inflammatory headline on it

00:12:20 ◼   ► and it just spreads like wildfire.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Podcasts, that just doesn't happen.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I thought last year when you had Phil on,

00:12:28 ◼   ► which, let's anybody forget,

00:12:29 ◼   ► that was remarkable at the time,

00:12:31 ◼   ► I thought that was gonna be literally world news.

00:12:35 ◼   ► I thought it was gonna be reported on CNN

00:12:38 ◼   ► that this happened and everything that was said

00:12:40 ◼   ► would have been scrutinized and reported on

00:12:43 ◼   ► just as much as an Apple press release would have.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And instead, there was one MacRumors article about it.

00:12:49 ◼   ► It was almost nothing, almost nothing happened.

00:12:51 ◼   ► And then the same thing happened this year,

00:12:53 ◼   ► where again, it's like now you have two Apple executives.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Now you should have CNN and the New York Times

00:12:57 ◼   ► reporting on it, double the coverage.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And again, you had one MacRumors article

00:13:01 ◼   ► and basically nothing else.

00:13:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I thought the same thing last year.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Not necessarily that I was disappointed, I was just curious.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And I think one measure of it would be tech meme.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And it's like, I write blog posts that get more attention

00:13:17 ◼   ► on tech meme than this.

00:13:20 ◼   ► The good thing is that I found with my experience,

00:13:23 ◼   ► like I've been writing a lot less in part because

00:13:27 ◼   ► of this problem of just like any slip up

00:13:30 ◼   ► and it spreads like wildfire.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And in podcasting, that just doesn't happen.

00:13:34 ◼   ► But also because of that effect, the podcasting kind of--

00:13:38 ◼   ► and because of the conversational nature of it just being more casual, podcasting is kind

00:13:44 ◼   ► of like a safe space. And you can go on a podcast, you can talk off script and answer

00:13:52 ◼   ► questions that you didn't get in advance or that were unplanned or whatever. You can accept

00:13:56 ◼   ► that gig because it really isn't dangerous. People give you the benefit of the doubt,

00:14:01 ◼   ► it doesn't really spread like wildfire if you screw something up in some kind of minor

00:14:05 ◼   ► way. It's a conversational context, so it doesn't seem as official or as like, you

00:14:09 ◼   ► know, coded in stone. And I feel like, you know, that's, again, that's something that

00:14:13 ◼   ► Apple never gets in any kind of public way. So it's, and for the listeners or the attendees

00:14:20 ◼   ► of the live show, it's almost like being led into like an exclusive club. Like, you

00:14:25 ◼   ► know, it's like, it's a club of obscurity, basically. Like, you know, we get to be here

00:14:30 ◼   ► and listen to this and get to know these people

00:14:33 ◼   ► and get these great insights into things,

00:14:36 ◼   ► but it's not a big problem for them

00:14:39 ◼   ► and they don't get in trouble for things they say.

00:14:42 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing.

00:14:43 ◼   ► - I was thinking about what you said before

00:14:46 ◼   ► about how we don't get to see Apple's executives

00:14:49 ◼   ► interact with each other in a personal way.

00:14:52 ◼   ► And one evidence of proof of that,

00:14:53 ◼   ► and again, I often bring up Scott Forstall.

00:14:57 ◼   ► And I have met him and I liked him, you know, like backstage after a keynote.

00:15:02 ◼   ► And I think he did fantastic work for the company.

00:15:05 ◼   ► And so, you know, I bring him up not to dump on him because I really think the

00:15:09 ◼   ► guy did a great job. But, famously, I mean, it was, you know,

00:15:15 ◼   ► he did not get along well with the rest of the

00:15:17 ◼   ► leadership team. I mean, the press release announcing his,

00:15:20 ◼   ► I forget what they called it, but, you know, that he was no longer...

00:15:25 ◼   ► He was quit fired.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Well, his promotion to Tim Cook's assistant or whatever, special advisor.

00:15:33 ◼   ► That the title of the press release was something about enabling collaboration or something like

00:15:41 ◼   ► that. It was very clear. And my sense since that, but on stage you'd never know it. Shiller to

00:15:50 ◼   ► Forrestal handing off in a keynote, and here to tell you all about it is Senior Vice President

00:15:56 ◼   ► Scott Forrestal, is exactly the same as his interaction with Federighi now, because they're

00:16:04 ◼   ► pros. They're total pros. They're polished. From the outside, you'd never have any idea

00:16:09 ◼   ► whether there was a difference, whereas on stage, with those two, you could tell that

00:16:13 ◼   ► they like each other.

00:16:14 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

00:16:15 ◼   ► The way they razzed each other, especially Phil Razzing, Federighi.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought it went pretty well.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And you know me, I'm not gonna sit here and say how good my show was, but...

00:16:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I will.

00:16:26 ◼   ► It was really good.

00:16:27 ◼   ► So we did.

00:16:28 ◼   ► I love how uncomfortable this makes you.

00:16:30 ◼   ► It does.

00:16:31 ◼   ► It really does.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Let's talk about the problems with the show.

00:16:33 ◼   ► We had audio problems.

00:16:34 ◼   ► We had this feedback at the beginning.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And anybody who's watching the video, watch the video, the recorded one on Vimeo or listen

00:16:42 ◼   ► to the podcast.

00:16:43 ◼   ► You won't hear it.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:16:45 ◼   ► I don't think Caleb had to clean that up.

00:16:48 ◼   ► I don't think he had to remove it.

00:16:49 ◼   ► I think that the audio, like the mics didn't pick it up.

00:16:52 ◼   ► But what happened, and it wasn't Caleb's fault,

00:16:56 ◼   ► it was during the, and they definitely did a sound check,

00:17:00 ◼   ► but Caleb let the house sound guy at Mezzanine,

00:17:05 ◼   ► who was new, he wasn't the same guy as last year,

00:17:07 ◼   ► talk him out of a, I don't know what, I don't even know,

00:17:10 ◼   ► I didn't wanna know what the details were,

00:17:12 ◼   ► but Caleb let the guy talk him out of something

00:17:14 ◼   ► against Caleb's better judgment,

00:17:16 ◼   ► and then the fix, five or 10 minutes into the show,

00:17:19 ◼   ► was exactly what Caleb wanted to do at the outset.

00:17:23 ◼   ► It violates the number one rule of sound equipment, which is get it working and then don't touch

00:17:27 ◼   ► anything.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not sure where that went wrong, but it did get straightened out.

00:17:31 ◼   ► It wasn't too bad.

00:17:35 ◼   ► If anybody watched the video and I look a little bit like I'm looking around, it was

00:17:40 ◼   ► because of the feedback.

00:17:43 ◼   ► But you won't hear it when you watch on the show.

00:17:47 ◼   ► The other thing I think that I wonder how it affects the immediate, "Holy shit, these

00:17:51 ◼   ► two guys are on Gruber's show," is that the show doesn't come out right away.

00:17:56 ◼   ► This year it didn't come out till Friday, so I feel like on my list for what can I fix

00:18:00 ◼   ► for next year is figure out who do I have to pay, what do I have to do to get the video

00:18:04 ◼   ► out hopefully like 24 hours.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Well, on the other hand though, why?

00:18:09 ◼   ► If the show doesn't make national news and they don't get in trouble for anything they

00:18:14 ◼   ► then that makes it easier to get them back. The main reason to turn to get the

00:18:20 ◼   ► turnaround quicker is just to make people who want to watch it happier. I

00:18:23 ◼   ► don't think it would have... I don't think it would really make a big difference in

00:18:27 ◼   ► terms of publicity. The main reason is that I know just from my tweets and the

00:18:32 ◼   ► emails that people were like chomping at the bit to get it. And I would be too if

00:18:36 ◼   ► there were two of me and one who does the show and the other one who just

00:18:38 ◼   ► listens to the show and really likes it. I would have been too if I couldn't get

00:18:42 ◼   ► to the live show. You know what you should do? You should hire the Apple

00:18:46 ◼   ► W2C video team because they get stuff out the next morning. I know, that's

00:18:50 ◼   ► amazing. They've really upped that. It's really incredible how quickly

00:18:55 ◼   ► they get it out. Yeah. The live stream broke this year. Last year it stayed up,

00:18:59 ◼   ► but this year it broke. I would suggest maybe doing an audio only live stream

00:19:03 ◼   ► because it's, I mean, unless you go to something like YouTube live, which should

00:19:06 ◼   ► also be probably an easier way to do it, but audio is a lot easier to scale up.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And we did that two years ago when you and your ATP pals were the guest.

00:19:17 ◼   ► That's how I know that.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Because we were streaming it off of my iPad in the back on Verizon and it was fine.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Absolutely true.

00:19:28 ◼   ► The thing I love about that, I don't know if it helped you because then you wouldn't

00:19:32 ◼   ► be nervous, it gave you something to do, or if it just made you even more nervous because

00:19:38 ◼   ► instead of thinking about the show, you were fiddling with it.

00:19:40 ◼   ► But the back story on that was that literally,

00:19:44 ◼   ► right up until we opened the doors to let people in,

00:19:47 ◼   ► you were back there.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And we weren't planning it.

00:19:49 ◼   ► You were just like, well, why don't we livestream it?

00:19:50 ◼   ► I can do it.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And you just took out your iPad and were plugging it

00:19:54 ◼   ► into the board.

00:19:56 ◼   ► It was worse than that.

00:19:57 ◼   ► You said, oh, by the way, we don't

00:19:58 ◼   ► have a way to record this.

00:20:00 ◼   ► So I was providing the only recording of it

00:20:03 ◼   ► and also the livestream.

00:20:04 ◼   ► That was a poorly planned show.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Poorly planned show.

00:20:08 ◼   ► That's funny that we've gone from there to here

00:20:10 ◼   ► in two years, I do keep pretty good notes

00:20:12 ◼   ► about what to improve for the next year.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - No, I'd say you now have a pretty good,

00:20:19 ◼   ► you have the Kings worked out,

00:20:20 ◼   ► and I would say just repeat this,

00:20:22 ◼   ► and maybe change the way you stream the video,

00:20:24 ◼   ► and that's about it.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Seemed like people had a good time.

00:20:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah, it was good, it was a good event,

00:20:31 ◼   ► and yeah, again, I mean, you won't say it, but I will.

00:20:35 ◼   ► It was great, and you should definitely

00:20:38 ◼   ► keep doing it if you can.

00:20:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I'll see what I can do, hopefully.

00:20:41 ◼   ► I thought it went well.

00:20:42 ◼   ► How about I take a break right here

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00:22:56 ◼   ► Anything else on the live show?

00:23:01 ◼   ► I feel like that covers it.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Anyway, I had a good time.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I have not watched it.

00:23:04 ◼   ► I can't bring myself to watch it yet.

00:23:06 ◼   ► I watched last year's at some point,

00:23:07 ◼   ► but I didn't watch this year's yet.

00:23:09 ◼   ► So maybe I should have watched it

00:23:11 ◼   ► before we started talking about it here.

00:23:13 ◼   ► - I listened to it again.

00:23:14 ◼   ► - macOS, here's my thing about macOS.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I can't believe that they changed the name to macOS,

00:23:21 ◼   ► but kept the 10.12 version numbering.

00:23:25 ◼   ► What is that 10 now?

00:23:26 ◼   ► Why, is this 10 forever?

00:23:28 ◼   ► - Well, you know, I think it's a lot like,

00:23:30 ◼   ► like, you know, like the dumb Windows kernel version thing

00:23:32 ◼   ► where Windows 2000 was NT 5.0, I think,

00:23:36 ◼   ► and then XP was 5.1, and it stayed at five for a while.

00:23:40 ◼   ► Just the numbers doesn't mean anything

00:23:42 ◼   ► relative to the marketing name and the marketing sequence.

00:23:47 ◼   ► So I think that it just doesn't really matter.

00:23:49 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised, though,

00:23:50 ◼   ► that they kept the California names,

00:23:52 ◼   ► and I'm kind of surprised they didn't just call this

00:23:54 ◼   ► Mac OS 12.

00:23:55 ◼   ► It seemed like even though people would have made fun

00:23:57 ◼   ► of them, oh, you skipped 11,

00:23:58 ◼   ► I think that would have made a lot more sense

00:24:00 ◼   ► to just say, all right, this is now Mac OS 12,

00:24:02 ◼   ► and then next year Mac OS 13 or whatever.

00:24:03 ◼   ► But I guess those numbers don't scale very well.

00:24:06 ◼   ► Nobody wants like Mac OS 17, I don't know.

00:24:08 ◼   ► - It did seem weird that they give,

00:24:11 ◼   ► I think they could have done both though.

00:24:12 ◼   ► They could have called it Mac OS 12 Sierra.

00:24:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe, that's a lot of tokens.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - I don't know why.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Why does Mac OS get a code name and iOS doesn't?

00:24:21 ◼   ► I don't get that.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Well, and maybe because of the high numbering problem,

00:24:26 ◼   ► like once you get into the teens,

00:24:27 ◼   ► it kind of is less cool sounding.

00:24:30 ◼   ► maybe they're going to transition iOS

00:24:32 ◼   ► onto a code name system.

00:24:33 ◼   ► And maybe they would unify the code.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Maybe they would say, you know,

00:24:36 ◼   ► this year we have iOS Sierra and Mac OS Sierra.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:24:40 ◼   ► There's a lot of things they could do there,

00:24:41 ◼   ► but I do think the numbers are really nice

00:24:43 ◼   ► and clean and simple now because they're relatively low.

00:24:46 ◼   ► But once you get into the teens and stuff, it's less cool.

00:24:50 ◼   ► - Anything else?

00:24:54 ◼   ► WatchOS 3.

00:24:55 ◼   ► - I love that.

00:24:56 ◼   ► I love that it's all we can talk about about Mac OS,

00:24:58 ◼   ► the name.

00:25:00 ◼   ► Well, have you used it yet?

00:25:01 ◼   ► I actually have.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I actually have it on a MacBook Pro downstairs.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And it's exactly the sort of thing I would like--

00:25:11 ◼   ► I'd like to see Apple do, which is it doesn't feel--

00:25:15 ◼   ► you could easily convince me that it wasn't even

00:25:17 ◼   ► a new version of Mac OS X. And it's like, oh, yeah, yeah,

00:25:20 ◼   ► look, that looks a little different.

00:25:21 ◼   ► They've changed a little bit here and there.

00:25:23 ◼   ► But it is such a minor refinement

00:25:26 ◼   ► in terms of everything I'm used to.

00:25:28 ◼   ► and then they've just added some nice new features.

00:25:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I'm happy with that too.

00:25:32 ◼   ► I mean, from a developer's point of view,

00:25:34 ◼   ► I would love to see some modernization of AppKit

00:25:38 ◼   ► and possibly some kind of cross-platform AppKit,

00:25:40 ◼   ► UIKit kind of hybrid.

00:25:42 ◼   ► So I basically wouldn't have to learn AppKit.

00:25:45 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:25:47 ◼   ► But I understand also why that's kind of a big job

00:25:50 ◼   ► and probably not worth doing necessarily.

00:25:53 ◼   ► - Ah, that's a good question. - Or maybe waiting until,

00:25:56 ◼   ► presumably in the future,

00:25:57 ◼   ► there's gonna be some kind of rewrite or refactoring

00:26:01 ◼   ► of a lot of the frameworks to better optimize for Swift.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And beyond just renaming.

00:26:07 ◼   ► Right now they've basically renamed them

00:26:08 ◼   ► when you're using them from Swift and that's about it.

00:26:10 ◼   ► But there's more that you could do there

00:26:13 ◼   ► to really optimize these things for Swift.

00:26:15 ◼   ► So maybe down the road they're planning on

00:26:18 ◼   ► a bigger change to the frameworks

00:26:20 ◼   ► and maybe they would unify them then.

00:26:21 ◼   ► 'Cause as you talk about it often,

00:26:23 ◼   ► Apple's a very patient company.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And when it comes to long-term technical decisions

00:26:27 ◼   ► like this, they're willing to wait five, 10 years

00:26:30 ◼   ► to do what they need to do if they think

00:26:32 ◼   ► it'll be better later to do it then.

00:26:34 ◼   ► So I think it would be interesting to see

00:26:37 ◼   ► if they ever do tackle this problem

00:26:38 ◼   ► or if they just kinda consider, you know,

00:26:40 ◼   ► AppKit's the right tool for this job

00:26:41 ◼   ► and UIKit's the right tool for that job,

00:26:43 ◼   ► which there's some basis for that.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Not 100%, but there's some basis for that.

00:26:47 ◼   ► And maybe they just kinda consider the Mac

00:26:48 ◼   ► to be kind of like a completed platform.

00:26:51 ◼   ► We don't need to do much on this anymore.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, sort of like the way I treat Markdown.

00:26:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:26:57 ◼   ► - I mean, no joke.

00:26:58 ◼   ► I mean, it's seriously like, you know,

00:27:00 ◼   ► it is what it is, you know, move on with the other stuff.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Maybe, I don't know.

00:27:03 ◼   ► I think you're right though that if they do do it,

00:27:05 ◼   ► it would probably coincide

00:27:06 ◼   ► with a swiftification of frameworks.

00:27:10 ◼   ► - Right, or if all these rumblers I keep hearing about,

00:27:12 ◼   ► they're like being like a single unified OS

00:27:14 ◼   ► coming down the road with new everything,

00:27:17 ◼   ► you know, for the car and God knows what else, you know,

00:27:19 ◼   ► then if that is actually true

00:27:22 ◼   ► and coming in the next five years,

00:27:25 ◼   ► then that would be the time to do it.

00:27:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:27:29 ◼   ► - I don't give that rumor a lot of weight, honestly,

00:27:31 ◼   ► because it seems really grand, and I don't know.

00:27:35 ◼   ► - It just seems to me, like, when I study it

00:27:37 ◼   ► and think about it, and it's like,

00:27:38 ◼   ► I'm trying to think about what to write

00:27:40 ◼   ► about the Mac OS beta.

00:27:42 ◼   ► I keep thinking about something Guy English,

00:27:45 ◼   ► friend of the show Guy English, said to me

00:27:47 ◼   ► last week when I was asking just friends,

00:27:51 ◼   ► I didn't say who, I just said, hey, let's just say if I got to interview somebody, interesting.

00:27:56 ◼   ► What are some questions?

00:27:57 ◼   ► Do you guys have any questions that you wish I would ask?

00:27:59 ◼   ► And Guy had pointed out that when Steve Jobs introduced the Mac OS X 10.0 back in 2001,

00:28:09 ◼   ► he framed it as saying, this is the operating system for the next 15 years.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Well, that was 15 years ago.

00:28:19 ◼   ► And I think it's almost, you know, he was trying to say this is the operating system for the, you know, the long term for Apple.

00:28:25 ◼   ► This is something that Apple can really, so what, Apple was, what, they're 40 years old now, so they were a 25 year old company then.

00:28:31 ◼   ► This is, you know, it was as far away from the original Mac as we are today.

00:28:38 ◼   ► I think, if anything, in hindsight, Jobs clearly undersold the longevity of the platform.

00:28:44 ◼   ► that's the thing I look at when I look at Mac OS 10.12 is that this doesn't feel

00:28:47 ◼   ► like an operating system on its last legs. This feels like an operating system

00:28:51 ◼   ► that is still in its prime and doing it's exactly what it wants to be and

00:28:55 ◼   ► really doesn't need anything major. I mean it could and it's someday something

00:29:01 ◼   ► like a you know your example about doing a lot of UI kitification to AppKit or

00:29:08 ◼   ► bringing UIKit to Mac OS 10 in some way to sit there alongside AppKit or who

00:29:13 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:29:14 ◼   ► There are major changes someday,

00:29:16 ◼   ► but at the moment it's really just fine

00:29:18 ◼   ► and does its job very well.

00:29:20 ◼   ► And the way I put it a couple years ago,

00:29:21 ◼   ► and it's funny too because I said something

00:29:24 ◼   ► about the next five years,

00:29:25 ◼   ► but it was like five years ago.

00:29:27 ◼   ► So I undersold it as much five years ago as Jobs did, 15,

00:29:31 ◼   ► was that the heaviness of the Mac, conceptually,

00:29:35 ◼   ► that it's so, you can have so many windows open

00:29:38 ◼   ► and you can go so deep and you have all these options

00:29:40 ◼   ► like services and control, right-clicking

00:29:43 ◼   ► and getting these contextual menus,

00:29:45 ◼   ► and even just the existence of the menu bar.

00:29:47 ◼   ► That heaviness is what lets iOS remain so lightweight.

00:29:52 ◼   ► That you couldn't have it like the iPad

00:29:55 ◼   ► and make it as simple as it is

00:29:57 ◼   ► without having a platform to go with it

00:30:00 ◼   ► that is as complicated as the Mac.

00:30:02 ◼   ► - I mean, the downside of that logic though,

00:30:06 ◼   ► which I think is mostly sound,

00:30:08 ◼   ► but the downside of that is that kind of assumes

00:30:11 ◼   ► that they will be both maintained over time

00:30:14 ◼   ► and will both succeed over time.

00:30:16 ◼   ► And I'm not sure that's a safe assumption to make.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - I wonder if it doesn't also conversely tie into

00:30:23 ◼   ► the fact that there's some productivity tasks

00:30:28 ◼   ► that just still aren't that great to do on an iPad.

00:30:31 ◼   ► You know, that it works both ways.

00:30:34 ◼   ► That it's like, they just haven't been,

00:30:38 ◼   ► they haven't felt forced to enable the iPad

00:30:40 ◼   ► to be good at X, because yeah, you could just use

00:30:43 ◼   ► your MacBook for that.

00:30:45 ◼   ► - Well, but also, as they have added more productivity

00:30:49 ◼   ► features to iOS, and especially to the iPad,

00:30:52 ◼   ► you're kind of seeing them basically try to address

00:30:54 ◼   ► the same problems, like basically trying to make it

00:30:56 ◼   ► closer to a Mac kind of environment.

00:30:58 ◼   ► So now you have things like a basic form of windowing,

00:31:01 ◼   ► and multiple windows on screen.

00:31:03 ◼   ► You have these document pickers that are a simplified view

00:31:07 ◼   ► of a file system that are still files.

00:31:09 ◼   ► They're having to solve the same problems

00:31:13 ◼   ► and oftentimes the solutions they come up with

00:31:16 ◼   ► are actually not substantially better than the solutions

00:31:19 ◼   ► that the PC and Mac world figured out years ago.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Sometimes they are, but it seems like

00:31:25 ◼   ► they're both kind of aiming for the same thing

00:31:28 ◼   ► where they try to make Mac OS easier to use

00:31:31 ◼   ► and more iOS-like in ways.

00:31:33 ◼   ► At the same time, they're trying to make iOS

00:31:36 ◼   ► more productive and more suited for pro use.

00:31:39 ◼   ► and by doing that they're kind of making iOS

00:31:41 ◼   ► a little more Mac-like in these certain areas.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And I'm not sure either effort

00:31:47 ◼   ► is a huge success necessarily.

00:31:49 ◼   ► I think the effort to proify iOS

00:31:54 ◼   ► is probably more successful

00:31:55 ◼   ► than the effort to iOSify the Mac.

00:31:58 ◼   ► - I think that if you think about it,

00:31:59 ◼   ► I can't think of anything this year

00:32:00 ◼   ► that really was iOSification of the Mac.

00:32:03 ◼   ► I feel like maybe they're done with that,

00:32:05 ◼   ► and they've done enough of it that they wanted to,

00:32:09 ◼   ► and now they're just letting the Mac be the Mac.

00:32:10 ◼   ► I mean, maybe I'm overlooking something,

00:32:13 ◼   ► but I can't think of anything.

00:32:15 ◼   ► - No, you might be right.

00:32:16 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it does seem like they've kind of

00:32:19 ◼   ► figured out that the Mac doesn't need to be iOS,

00:32:22 ◼   ► that it can stand on its own.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Maybe they've gained more confidence in it

00:32:26 ◼   ► as being its own thing.

00:32:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can't think of anything.

00:32:30 ◼   ► I mean, there are features that are obviously

00:32:31 ◼   ► in parallel with iOS,

00:32:34 ◼   ► like the fancy new messages, animations,

00:32:37 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:32:38 ◼   ► But that's not really iOS-ifying the Mac,

00:32:40 ◼   ► that's just getting the same stuff at the same time.

00:32:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, but ultimately, in the long haul,

00:32:47 ◼   ► I think having iOS be this juggernaut

00:32:50 ◼   ► that is most of the market for Apple,

00:32:53 ◼   ► it will hurt the Mac, it will cost the Mac,

00:32:55 ◼   ► because you have situations,

00:32:57 ◼   ► like Messages apps are a great example of this,

00:32:59 ◼   ► where you can now have, until iOS 10,

00:33:04 ◼   ► iMessage worked basically the same way

00:33:07 ◼   ► on all three platforms, iPad, iPhone, Mac.

00:33:10 ◼   ► It worked the same way,

00:33:11 ◼   ► it had the same capabilities roughly.

00:33:13 ◼   ► With the new version of Messages,

00:33:14 ◼   ► now you're gonna have this large amount of functionality,

00:33:17 ◼   ► especially if the app thing takes off,

00:33:19 ◼   ► which other Messages services have had apps

00:33:22 ◼   ► that have taken off, so they probably will.

00:33:24 ◼   ► And Apple's pretty good at apps and making apps take off,

00:33:27 ◼   ► as long as you weren't talking about the TV.

00:33:29 ◼   ► So by having this big app environment

00:33:33 ◼   ► that's going to take off on iOS,

00:33:35 ◼   ► and having almost none of it available on the Mac,

00:33:38 ◼   ► and having no easy technical bridge there

00:33:42 ◼   ► because the Mac is not UIKit and is not iOS

00:33:46 ◼   ► and is not running all these same frameworks

00:33:47 ◼   ► and does not have the same kind of extension system

00:33:49 ◼   ► and binary support and everything else,

00:33:51 ◼   ► I suspect that the Mac is gonna have some trouble

00:33:54 ◼   ► in the next few years if this stuff takes off

00:33:56 ◼   ► because it's going to feel even more

00:33:59 ◼   ► like a second-class citizen than it does now.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe. I mean, and that does tie in. This is a good, it's a good segue, I think,

00:34:08 ◼   ► because it does tie into, I can't believe I almost forgot to bring this up, is I have one major

00:34:14 ◼   ► regret from the live show. There was one question from my list. Like I said, there were a bunch that

00:34:19 ◼   ► I didn't get to that were fine, that were just sort of like, "Hey, if we have time, I'll get to

00:34:22 ◼   ► these, and if not," but there was one on that I had above the line of definitely want to ask

00:34:27 ◼   ► that I didn't get to, and it was on the tip of my tongue at one point, but it didn't seem

00:34:34 ◼   ► like the right moment and then after that it was like out of my mind and I'd forgotten it.

00:34:38 ◼   ► And the question would have been for Phil and it would have been more or less along the lines of

00:34:43 ◼   ► the Mac Pro hasn't been updated in over 900 days. I think as of the showtime it was 908 days.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And the Mac Mini hasn't been updated in over 600 days. And why do you hate pro customers?

00:35:00 ◼   ► And but it you know insert audience laughter there, but the true thing is I know for a fact talking to

00:35:08 ◼   ► developer friends and just reading email from from DF the Daring Fireball audience which has

00:35:17 ◼   ► in addition to developers I definitely have a lot of readers and listeners who are professionals in

00:35:22 ◼   ► video and photography and other things where you they want a new Mac Pro and they the concern is

00:35:28 ◼   ► is palpable that they worry that Apple's phenomenal success

00:35:33 ◼   ► selling consumer products has left them disinterested

00:35:39 ◼   ► in professional products.

00:35:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think that concern is warranted

00:35:43 ◼   ► based on a lot of the stuff that's happened

00:35:44 ◼   ► over the last few years.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Like a lot of, yeah, I mean, first of all,

00:35:46 ◼   ► losing things like Aperture and then seeing,

00:35:50 ◼   ► even the Final Cut transition to Final Cut,

00:35:53 ◼   ► now is that one X or 10?

00:35:54 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

00:35:56 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - I'm gonna say 10, I'm gonna guess 10.

00:36:00 ◼   ► That, I know, a lot of pros are still sore about that.

00:36:03 ◼   ► And from what I understand, that's mostly been kinda,

00:36:05 ◼   ► people now are okay with it.

00:36:07 ◼   ► But the software side, Apple has definitely backed away

00:36:10 ◼   ► from the pro market to a large degree.

00:36:12 ◼   ► The hardware side, I think it's been even more dramatic.

00:36:16 ◼   ► And granted, a lot of pros get away just fine with iMacs.

00:36:19 ◼   ► A lot of pros use the MacBook Pro,

00:36:21 ◼   ► and they're mostly fine with that too,

00:36:22 ◼   ► although it's pretty old.

00:36:24 ◼   ► I think one of the problems we have now,

00:36:26 ◼   ► and which ties into the Thunderbolt display thing also.

00:36:29 ◼   ► But one of the problems we have now is that

00:36:33 ◼   ► it seems like Apple has,

00:36:34 ◼   ► whoever is responsible for deciding these,

00:36:38 ◼   ► like, you know, these hardware generations

00:36:40 ◼   ► and when to ship things and what makes the cut

00:36:42 ◼   ► and what gets pushed to the next release,

00:36:45 ◼   ► it seems like their sensibility for,

00:36:49 ◼   ► do we ship now with the new stuff we've accumulated so far

00:36:52 ◼   ► or do we wait and do a bigger update in X time

00:36:56 ◼   ► with this stuff that's imminent, that we're soon,

00:36:59 ◼   ► if we wait now, we'll be able to do a bigger update

00:37:02 ◼   ► in six months that has X, Y, and Z.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And it seems like their sensibility for that

00:37:07 ◼   ► is just a little bit off in recent years.

00:37:10 ◼   ► 'Cause there are new components they could have used

00:37:13 ◼   ► for the Mac Pro.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And the Mac Pro uses Xeon CPUs, Intel's server line.

00:37:17 ◼   ► Xeon's don't get released that often.

00:37:19 ◼   ► They get released, I think, roughly every 18 months.

00:37:21 ◼   ► There's a new generation of Xeon's that would be suitable

00:37:23 ◼   ► to use in the Mac Pro.

00:37:25 ◼   ► GPUs get released even more often than that.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And for Apple to say that this is a,

00:37:31 ◼   ► like they redesigned this entire machine

00:37:33 ◼   ► to be entirely like GPU focused,

00:37:36 ◼   ► that you can't even buy this with only one GPU anymore.

00:37:40 ◼   ► You can only get it with two GPUs

00:37:42 ◼   ► and they're gonna be server-ish

00:37:44 ◼   ► or workstation-ish grade GPUs.

00:37:46 ◼   ► There's some asterisks on that,

00:37:47 ◼   ► but basically they're gonna be workstation GPUs.

00:37:49 ◼   ► And this is the future of how we see pro computing

00:37:54 ◼   ► is these heavy GPU operating machines.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Well, the GPU world moves really quickly,

00:38:00 ◼   ► way faster than the CPU world ever did,

00:38:02 ◼   ► and it's still moving at that speed.

00:38:04 ◼   ► You can't say your vision for pro computing

00:38:07 ◼   ► is tons of GPU power, and then not update the GPUs

00:38:10 ◼   ► that you're selling for three years.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Like, it seems like they set on this course of,

00:38:16 ◼   ► we're gonna, you know, this is our vision

00:38:17 ◼   ► of the future of computing, and then they just

00:38:19 ◼   ► didn't follow through at all, and to the point now where,

00:38:23 ◼   ► A year in it was kind of like,

00:38:26 ◼   ► eh, I wish these GPUs were faster.

00:38:28 ◼   ► Two years in it was like, ah, is everything okay?

00:38:30 ◼   ► Three years in, people are looking for the exits

00:38:32 ◼   ► and looking to switch to Windows for their pro needs.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And that's a problem.

00:38:36 ◼   ► - It definitely is because,

00:38:37 ◼   ► and I think that in an ideal world,

00:38:42 ◼   ► well, maybe not ideal, 'cause ideal would be updated very,

00:38:44 ◼   ► you know, we'd see lots of updates.

00:38:46 ◼   ► I would say in a realistically ideal world,

00:38:49 ◼   ► the Mac Pro could still be on a greater than one year cycle.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I think, you know, it could, like 18 months though

00:38:57 ◼   ► is about the upper limit of some kind of update.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - And fortunately, that's about as often

00:39:02 ◼   ► as Intel makes new Xeons.

00:39:03 ◼   ► So all Apple has to do is stop skipping generations.

00:39:06 ◼   ► 'Cause right now, like in recent times,

00:39:09 ◼   ► the Mac Pro for maybe the last, I don't know,

00:39:11 ◼   ► six, seven years, they've released roughly

00:39:15 ◼   ► every other Xeon generation.

00:39:17 ◼   ► Like they just kind of skip every other one.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And I don't, you know, I'm sure there,

00:39:21 ◼   ► maybe there's good reasons why,

00:39:22 ◼   ► but I'm not aware of what those are.

00:39:24 ◼   ► And it appears from the outside

00:39:26 ◼   ► like they just don't feel like it.

00:39:27 ◼   ► And that's not a good reason if that's the reason.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And again, like even if for some reason

00:39:32 ◼   ► you have to keep the same CPUs,

00:39:35 ◼   ► if this computer's really gonna be a GPU focused machine,

00:39:38 ◼   ► release new GPUs for it.

00:39:39 ◼   ► And by the way, this is a pro machine,

00:39:41 ◼   ► make those GPUs upgradeable.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Because that's what pros who need a lot of GPUs need.

00:39:47 ◼   ► They need upgradable, powerful, recent GPUs.

00:39:50 ◼   ► - Right. - And if that's not

00:39:52 ◼   ► the focus of the machine, then make it cheaper

00:39:55 ◼   ► by making a single GPU option and give more CPU options.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Maybe redesign it so it can support two sockets again.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Then you can have then double the amount

00:40:04 ◼   ► of very high-speed cores, double the number of RAM slots.

00:40:07 ◼   ► It's like they designed this machine to accomplish a goal

00:40:11 ◼   ► that they are seemingly unable or unwilling

00:40:14 ◼   ► to actually fulfill.

00:40:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:17 ◼   ► It's just funny because it's a striking design

00:40:21 ◼   ► and obviously it wasn't designed as a second thought.

00:40:26 ◼   ► It was designed as let's redefine what it means

00:40:29 ◼   ► to make a kick-ass professional high-performance desktop.

00:40:34 ◼   ► But then it was, again, it's almost like they figured,

00:40:38 ◼   ► well, we're done.

00:40:39 ◼   ► We came up with a new Mac Pro and now we're done.

00:40:42 ◼   ► Let's work on the iPhone 6s.

00:40:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's sad because it does seem like,

00:40:48 ◼   ► from the outside, having no answers from Apple on this,

00:40:51 ◼   ► it does seem like they just don't care.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And the whole Mac lineup kinda looks like that right now,

00:40:57 ◼   ► or at least the vast majority of it.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And it's, I know they do care,

00:41:01 ◼   ► like I know that's not actually the case,

00:41:04 ◼   ► but it sure looks bad.

00:41:05 ◼   ► - It does, and it definitely doesn't.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And maybe it's not even entirely rational.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I think people's professionals' concerns

00:41:11 ◼   ► about Apple's long-term interest in this,

00:41:13 ◼   ► It's just that if your personal livelihood is based on

00:41:17 ◼   ► what you do at your computer, and that's probably true,

00:41:20 ◼   ► it's certainly true for me and you,

00:41:21 ◼   ► and it's true for a lot of people who listen,

00:41:23 ◼   ► I think, to this show.

00:41:24 ◼   ► It's reasonable to be concerned that the only company

00:41:28 ◼   ► that makes the tools that you use

00:41:30 ◼   ► may not be interested in serving you anymore.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause like, that's like, you know,

00:41:33 ◼   ► one thing pro users hate with very good reason

00:41:36 ◼   ► is being forced to change what they use to their job,

00:41:39 ◼   ► either their workflow, their hardware,

00:41:40 ◼   ► their software, whatever.

00:41:41 ◼   ► They hate doing that because it sucks.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Because when you're using something to get your work done,

00:41:46 ◼   ► you don't want to have to spend a bunch of time and money

00:41:48 ◼   ► to change systems, to relearn something else,

00:41:51 ◼   ► to update everything and fix everything that breaks

00:41:53 ◼   ► and deal with missing functionality for a while

00:41:55 ◼   ► or have to buy new hardware, buy new software.

00:41:57 ◼   ► It's very disruptive to pros to have their platform

00:42:02 ◼   ► and their workflow messed with or be forced to change it.

00:42:05 ◼   ► So when you're buying something for pro use,

00:42:07 ◼   ► you want to be buying into a system

00:42:08 ◼   ► that's going to be stable long term.

00:42:11 ◼   ► You don't want to have to be learning an app now

00:42:13 ◼   ► that is going to be discontinued next year.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And oh, by the way, you have to also switch to Windows

00:42:18 ◼   ► if you want to be competitive with your video encoding rig

00:42:20 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Nobody wants that.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And it kind of feels like this is

00:42:25 ◼   ► going to be like a downward spiral, where Apple will keep

00:42:30 ◼   ► really neglecting the pro hardware, which will then

00:42:33 ◼   ► make people trust it less, and they won't sell as many.

00:42:36 ◼   ► And then Apple can justify discontinuing those,

00:42:39 ◼   ► or neglecting them further.

00:42:40 ◼   ► and then they can say, well, we just don't sell

00:42:41 ◼   ► very many of these, so why should we pay attention to these?

00:42:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, you know, I feel like it doesn't take

00:42:46 ◼   ► a genius to analyze the situation,

00:42:48 ◼   ► where the Mac is the pro platform,

00:42:51 ◼   ► and iOS is the consumer platform,

00:42:54 ◼   ► and especially with the iPhone, that's where the,

00:42:59 ◼   ► you know, there's, what, I don't know,

00:43:02 ◼   ► 20-fold, 30-fold more of them sold per quarter,

00:43:06 ◼   ► all around the world.

00:43:08 ◼   ► It's their expansion into all these other countries

00:43:11 ◼   ► like India and especially China.

00:43:14 ◼   ► So of course, of course it's their most important priority.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Of course they're never going to be late on an iPhone.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Or if they are, it's a catastrophe,

00:43:24 ◼   ► not as a result of, eh, we can wait.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Like imagine if the iPhone didn't get updated for 900 days.

00:43:30 ◼   ► You can't, I mean, literally,

00:43:32 ◼   ► I know people make these jokes that,

00:43:34 ◼   ► the stock's down 10%, Tim Cook should be fired.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Or I shouldn't even say they make jokes.

00:43:38 ◼   ► I know there's jackasses who actually say that.

00:43:40 ◼   ► - They're serious. (laughs)

00:43:42 ◼   ► - But with no hyperbole, if Apple got even close to that,

00:43:48 ◼   ► if Apple went two years without an iPhone update,

00:43:52 ◼   ► I think it would be reasonable for the board

00:43:54 ◼   ► to maybe call Tim Cook in and say, "It's time, you're out."

00:43:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, that would be cause for serious concern.

00:44:00 ◼   ► - Right, it's like you can't even,

00:44:01 ◼   ► really it's unfathomable.

00:44:04 ◼   ► So 900 days for the Mac Pro,

00:44:05 ◼   ► you know, it's not gonna get anybody fired,

00:44:08 ◼   ► but it certainly looks bad.

00:44:09 ◼   ► And I can even see it with the Mac Mini,

00:44:10 ◼   ► where the Mac Mini's never been updated quickly.

00:44:12 ◼   ► And maybe that's not really a pro machine,

00:44:14 ◼   ► although I do know that there are some people

00:44:16 ◼   ► who use it in pro sort of ways by like, you know,

00:44:19 ◼   ► setting up like build machines and stuff like that.

00:44:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, or like servers for offices,

00:44:24 ◼   ► or even web servers in some cases.

00:44:25 ◼   ► - Right, and you know, my friend Brian Stuckey,

00:44:28 ◼   ► formerly of Mac Mini, colo, and now at Mac Stadium,

00:44:33 ◼   ► is the new company that he combined with.

00:44:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, they bought them, right?

00:44:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, well they merged.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And he even, I know he sent me like,

00:44:41 ◼   ► hey please ask, if you get any,

00:44:43 ◼   ► I don't know who you've got on the talk show,

00:44:45 ◼   ► but if you get anybody good,

00:44:46 ◼   ► can you please ask him about my poor Mac Mini?

00:44:48 ◼   ► So there is a pro angle on the Mac Mini.

00:44:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, but also it's worth pointing out too,

00:44:53 ◼   ► like the current generation Mac Mini

00:44:56 ◼   ► and the current generation Mac Pro

00:44:58 ◼   ► both do a lot less than their previous hardware designs.

00:45:03 ◼   ► So they've taken these products and not only have they made them, in the case of the Mac

00:45:08 ◼   ► Pro it's actually more expensive now because now you have to pay for two GPUs, so now it's

00:45:11 ◼   ► more expensive and it has less flexibility and less upgradability and fewer configuration

00:45:18 ◼   ► options and less stuff you can put into it, less maximum capacity in a lot of areas.

00:45:23 ◼   ► And the Mac Mini too, the Mac Mini used to have a quad core option and it was a really

00:45:27 ◼   ► great way to get a decent amount of power in this little headless server and occasionally

00:45:33 ◼   ► they go up for sale on the Apple refurb store

00:45:36 ◼   ► and they just disappear in like a minute.

00:45:39 ◼   ► Like there is still incredible demand

00:45:42 ◼   ► for I believe it was a 2012 era CPU

00:45:46 ◼   ► in these roughly 2012 era Mac minis

00:45:48 ◼   ► because they happen to be quad core

00:45:50 ◼   ► and that's a lot more processing power in total

00:45:53 ◼   ► in parallel than the current model's dual core

00:45:57 ◼   ► highest configuration.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - Yeah and a lot of what people wanna do

00:46:01 ◼   ► is these things that are parallelizable.

00:46:02 ◼   ► Right, especially in a server.

00:46:04 ◼   ► Or even if you're using it at home,

00:46:06 ◼   ► like for a media thing for your TV,

00:46:08 ◼   ► or if you're using it as a build server, all those things

00:46:10 ◼   ► use all the cores.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Almost everything that a pro would want to do with it

00:46:15 ◼   ► is parallel.

00:46:16 ◼   ► And even for home users, at least make the option.

00:46:19 ◼   ► So Apple has these machines now where they're actually

00:46:22 ◼   ► making them worse, and in some cases worse and more expensive

00:46:27 ◼   ► over time, and updating them almost never.

00:46:31 ◼   ► And then so of course sales are gonna go down,

00:46:34 ◼   ► which again, it's gonna make that downward spiral start,

00:46:36 ◼   ► where then they won't be able to justify updating them.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And it's just gonna get worse.

00:46:40 ◼   ► And I feel like, you know, and we're gonna get to this,

00:46:43 ◼   ► I think if we ever get to the headphone jack,

00:46:44 ◼   ► and you probably shouldn't let us get to that,

00:46:47 ◼   ► 'cause I have a lot to say about that.

00:46:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:49 ◼   ► But-- - We're definitely

00:46:50 ◼   ► gonna get to that.

00:46:51 ◼   ► - It seems like Apple, somewhere in Apple

00:46:53 ◼   ► there's like this obsession with getting rid of things,

00:46:56 ◼   ► getting rid of options, getting rid of ports,

00:46:57 ◼   ► getting rid of hardware, getting rid of something,

00:47:01 ◼   ► just getting rid of things.

00:47:02 ◼   ► And I can see how you get that way.

00:47:05 ◼   ► I've gotten that way before in my software development,

00:47:07 ◼   ► where it feels really good to get rid of stuff.

00:47:10 ◼   ► And oftentimes there are benefits.

00:47:13 ◼   ► But not always.

00:47:14 ◼   ► It isn't always worth it.

00:47:15 ◼   ► And sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And it seems like, similar to how I question

00:47:20 ◼   ► the decision making that has led to,

00:47:23 ◼   ► oh, we'll just wait until thing in the near future

00:47:26 ◼   ► to update this computer, I also question the judgment

00:47:29 ◼   ► recently of, oh, we can just take this out,

00:47:31 ◼   ► or we can just make this worse,

00:47:33 ◼   ► or we can just make this more expensive or whatever,

00:47:35 ◼   ► and it'll be worth it in the end

00:47:36 ◼   ► because we're moving forward.

00:47:37 ◼   ► It's the future, the vision of the future

00:47:39 ◼   ► is things can do less and cost more.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like, no, but that's actually what we're seeing

00:47:44 ◼   ► in some of these products, and that does concern me.

00:47:48 ◼   ► - I think so, too.

00:47:51 ◼   ► It would've been interesting to ask,

00:47:52 ◼   ► so I regret not asking that question.

00:47:54 ◼   ► I don't know how we could've gone that long on stage

00:47:56 ◼   ► with it, but probably not.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I would've been interested in hearing--

00:47:58 ◼   ► that you didn't. There were, prior to WWDC, up until a couple of weeks, there were a lot of

00:48:04 ◼   ► expectations that there might be hardware announcements and if there would, you know,

00:48:07 ◼   ► Mac. People were thinking maybe new Mac books, maybe a new Mac Pro. I don't really think that

00:48:12 ◼   ► new Mac Pro ever really heated up too much, but there were whispers that the supply constraint

00:48:21 ◼   ► train of Thunderbolt displays was going down.

00:48:24 ◼   ► And it's just one of these like catch-22 chicken

00:48:28 ◼   ► and the egg problems, right?

00:48:30 ◼   ► Like which comes first, like, well, if they're gonna,

00:48:33 ◼   ► you know, they need a, desperately need

00:48:36 ◼   ► a retina standalone display.

00:48:38 ◼   ► Like at this point, once you're used to retina

00:48:40 ◼   ► on all of your devices, from the watch to your phone

00:48:43 ◼   ► to your iPad, and the iMac has this beautiful,

00:48:47 ◼   ► beautiful display, it just sticks out like a sore thumb

00:48:50 ◼   ► that their best display for a Mac Pro is not Retina.

00:48:53 ◼   ► And it's like, for me at this point,

00:48:55 ◼   ► it's like, I almost can't believe how,

00:48:57 ◼   ► I can't believe I lived my whole life

00:48:58 ◼   ► before Retina displays.

00:48:59 ◼   ► They're so fuzzy.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And so it sticks out, but if they make it,

00:49:07 ◼   ► what drives it, you know,

00:49:08 ◼   ► does, can they, you know,

00:49:09 ◼   ► if they came out with a 5K Retina display,

00:49:11 ◼   ► I think that the existing Mac Pro

00:49:13 ◼   ► wouldn't be able to drive it.

00:49:14 ◼   ► - Well, there's like, again,

00:49:15 ◼   ► there's like a whole bunch of asterisks on that.

00:49:16 ◼   ► it could with dual cables maybe and with certain hacks.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Basically, the way that displays are driven

00:49:25 ◼   ► over Thunderbolt ports is way more complicated.

00:49:29 ◼   ► The more, as time goes on, I learn even more about it

00:49:32 ◼   ► and I learn how little I know about it.

00:49:34 ◼   ► And basically there's an asterisk on everything

00:49:36 ◼   ► and it's not as simple as well,

00:49:39 ◼   ► Thunderbolt doesn't have enough bandwidth for this

00:49:40 ◼   ► because it isn't technically a Thunderbolt,

00:49:42 ◼   ► it's a DisplayPort that runs that.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And it's like, there's all these little asterisks

00:49:45 ◼   ► and like, well, you can make a bridge chip that did this,

00:49:47 ◼   ► you can use this hack over the cable to do this,

00:49:49 ◼   ► and it's basically a mess right now,

00:49:52 ◼   ► and it will be much cleaner and simpler with Thunderbolt 3.

00:49:56 ◼   ► - I remember when the original 5K iMac came out,

00:49:59 ◼   ► the first one, which is what I'm using right now.

00:50:02 ◼   ► - Me too. - Do you have the new one,

00:50:03 ◼   ► or do you have the original one?

00:50:04 ◼   ► - I have the same one you do.

00:50:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I have the exact same one that you do.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And I was talking after that was announced,

00:50:11 ◼   ► and I got to talk and I had like a product briefing,

00:50:13 ◼   ► and they explained to me,

00:50:15 ◼   ► like some of the product marketing people explained

00:50:17 ◼   ► exactly how they're driving it inside,

00:50:19 ◼   ► and it's just amazing.

00:50:20 ◼   ► It's such a hack.

00:50:21 ◼   ► I mean, not like a bad hack, like a dirty hack,

00:50:23 ◼   ► but it's just crazy.

00:50:25 ◼   ► But it totally makes sense as to,

00:50:27 ◼   ► it's like the embodiment of why Apple likes to make

00:50:30 ◼   ► an all-in-one product.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Because all of that ugliness,

00:50:33 ◼   ► they can just encapsulate it inside the thing,

00:50:36 ◼   ► and we'll just take care of it,

00:50:37 ◼   ► and we'll write our own,

00:50:39 ◼   ► I mean, they mentioned this on the event,

00:50:40 ◼   ► what do they call it, the custom--

00:50:42 ◼   ► - The T-Con, the timing controller.

00:50:44 ◼   ► - Yes, the timing controller,

00:50:45 ◼   ► because it's like they have to have these,

00:50:47 ◼   ► the reason they have a custom timing controller,

00:50:49 ◼   ► I think I have it in lay terms,

00:50:51 ◼   ► but because they need like two cables to do it,

00:50:55 ◼   ► they need this timing controller

00:50:56 ◼   ► so that the two signals coming in

00:50:59 ◼   ► look like you're just getting one picture.

00:51:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's basically it, yeah.

00:51:02 ◼   ► - It's two pictures that are being combined in once

00:51:05 ◼   ► out of Apple's very high frame rate

00:51:07 ◼   ► so that you don't notice anything.

00:51:09 ◼   ► They needed to write a custom timing controller.

00:51:12 ◼   ► It just perfectly embodies why Apple likes to make devices

00:51:15 ◼   ► like the iMac rather than the Mac Pro

00:51:17 ◼   ► with a standalone display.

00:51:19 ◼   ► So I think what's going on, I think what's going on

00:51:22 ◼   ► is that they're going to release a 5K cinema display

00:51:26 ◼   ► and they're gonna release new Mac Pros

00:51:28 ◼   ► and they're gonna release new MacBook Pros.

00:51:30 ◼   ► But it's like they can't release any of them

00:51:34 ◼   ► until they're all ready, I think.

00:51:36 ◼   ► - Honestly, that's probably just like a choice

00:51:39 ◼   ► that they want to release them all together.

00:51:41 ◼   ► I mean, they probably could stagger them a little bit

00:51:43 ◼   ► if they really felt like it,

00:51:45 ◼   ► but the fact is it doesn't really matter.

00:51:46 ◼   ► We don't really know.

00:51:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess they obviously could, for example,

00:51:49 ◼   ► they could release new Mac Pros

00:51:50 ◼   ► that are capable of driving this thing

00:51:52 ◼   ► and just say, "Just use your old crappy Dell monitor,"

00:51:55 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:51:56 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:51:56 ◼   ► So that's, you know, probably sometime

00:51:59 ◼   ► in the next six months,

00:52:00 ◼   ► we're probably getting all of these things.

00:52:01 ◼   ► If I would hazard a guess, I'm guessing,

00:52:04 ◼   ► well, the Mac Pro is a bit of a problem

00:52:05 ◼   ► because the, well, of course,

00:52:08 ◼   ► it's always a bit of a problem,

00:52:08 ◼   ► but the type of Xeon it would use,

00:52:12 ◼   ► if it's being released this fall,

00:52:13 ◼   ► would most likely be the Broadwell Xeon.

00:52:16 ◼   ► The Skylake Xeon is coming out sometime next year,

00:52:19 ◼   ► and it's a really big improvement for the Xeon platform.

00:52:22 ◼   ► There's a lot of other stuff that goes along with that.

00:52:25 ◼   ► So I'm kind of afraid that Apple's gonna wait for that.

00:52:28 ◼   ► - And if they do, or if they don't wait,

00:52:31 ◼   ► will Syracuse await? (laughs)

00:52:33 ◼   ► - Well, he's always gonna wait. (laughs)

00:52:35 ◼   ► - Syracuse's back is to the wall.

00:52:37 ◼   ► People who don't listen to ATP,

00:52:38 ◼   ► And I bet the overlap here is like 90%.

00:52:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably.

00:52:41 ◼   ► - But the macOS Sierra doesn't officially run on John's.

00:52:46 ◼   ► He's using like a 1998 Bondi Blue Power Mac.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Doesn't run on it.

00:52:57 ◼   ► It's finally been dropped.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So now he's in the conundrum

00:53:01 ◼   ► where he's been waiting for all of these years,

00:53:03 ◼   ► 20, 22 years or something like that to upgrade his Mac Pro.

00:53:06 ◼   ► and now he either has to,

00:53:10 ◼   ► or he won't be able to run macOS Sierra on it.

00:53:12 ◼   ► - Or there's one of those hack bootloader programs

00:53:15 ◼   ► that will modify Sierra to actually work,

00:53:17 ◼   ► 'cause it actually does work,

00:53:19 ◼   ► they just don't feel like supporting it, basically.

00:53:21 ◼   ► So you actually could install it

00:53:23 ◼   ► through this unofficially supported hack.

00:53:26 ◼   ► So what do you think is more offensive to Syracuse?

00:53:29 ◼   ► - No, I think that-- - Running the hack?

00:53:31 ◼   ► Or not running it, or buying a new Mac Pro?

00:53:33 ◼   ► - That he knows is gonna be obsolete, it's in.

00:53:35 ◼   ► - Right, like I, this is a really tough position

00:53:38 ◼   ► to put him in.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Boy, it's almost like a perfect,

00:53:41 ◼   ► a perfect-- - And it has

00:53:43 ◼   ► a new file system. (laughs)

00:53:44 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

00:53:46 ◼   ► (bell dings)

00:53:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:49 ◼   ► And it's the only way that he could use it.

00:53:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly. - No, no, no,

00:53:52 ◼   ► they are gonna come out with a file system

00:53:54 ◼   ► for El Capitan, right?

00:53:56 ◼   ► I think so.

00:53:57 ◼   ► - No. - No?

00:53:58 ◼   ► - No. (laughs)

00:53:59 ◼   ► Why would they do? (laughs)

00:54:01 ◼   ► - I thought that they were going to,

00:54:03 ◼   ► that you could like plug a disk into LCAP, but maybe by the time the file system actually

00:54:07 ◼   ► ships that Sierra will be the old release. I don't know.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I don't know. It's very funny though.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I mean this really was like a masterful trolling of Syracuse this year.

00:54:18 ◼   ► It really was. It really is. But it's his own fault for not buying. He should have bought

00:54:22 ◼   ► the Mac Pro as we know it as soon as it came out.

00:54:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and I even offered to sell him, when I sold my 2010 era one, which does run this,

00:54:29 ◼   ► which is decently better than his 2008,

00:54:32 ◼   ► I offered to sell to him for a really good price,

00:54:34 ◼   ► like well below market, just 'cause I wanted to get rid of it,

00:54:36 ◼   ► I don't wanna deal with selling it.

00:54:37 ◼   ► And he was like, "No, I'll just wait.

00:54:40 ◼   ► "I'm happy with my 2008.

00:54:41 ◼   ► "Okay."

00:54:42 ◼   ► - The best time to buy a computer is when it's brand new.

00:54:46 ◼   ► And maybe if you're really smart,

00:54:48 ◼   ► buy it just a little after it comes out

00:54:51 ◼   ► so you can read initial reviews

00:54:52 ◼   ► and just make sure there's not something really stinky about.

00:54:55 ◼   ► - Right, buy it like a month or two in.

00:54:57 ◼   ► Yeah, like six weeks in.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Because like Apple doesn't, they don't lower their prices over time as the computers get older.

00:55:02 ◼   ► Like you're paying the same price and getting the same computer on day number 900 of the Mac Pro as you were paying on day zero.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Like who's, I just can't even imagine who's buying a Mac Pro right now.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I mean if you have to, yeah, I just imagine that almost everyone they're selling right now is through gritted teeth.

00:55:19 ◼   ► Like somebody who's old one broke or they've made a new hire, you know, we've got a new guy on the staff,

00:55:26 ◼   ► "we gotta get him a Mac Pro," or something like that.

00:55:31 ◼   ► - Right, I mean, it's like if you drop your iPhone

00:55:33 ◼   ► on a toilet in like August.

00:55:35 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly. - You're like, "Damn it."

00:55:37 ◼   ► But like, you know, that makes people mad.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Like, this is yet another reason why Apple needs

00:55:42 ◼   ► to really look at this and see if they could do this better

00:55:44 ◼   ► and release things more often, because like,

00:55:46 ◼   ► right now, if you buy any Mac Pro, and even, you know,

00:55:50 ◼   ► yeah, not a lot of people buy the Mac Pro,

00:55:52 ◼   ► but you know what a lot of people buy?

00:55:53 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro.

00:55:55 ◼   ► and that is also really outdated.

00:55:57 ◼   ► And to have people knowing that these things

00:56:01 ◼   ► are old and outdated, and I think a lot of people,

00:56:03 ◼   ► I mean not every buyer knows that,

00:56:05 ◼   ► but I think a lot of buyers do,

00:56:07 ◼   ► and they're gonna go a whole other summer now

00:56:08 ◼   ► of all these back to school sales,

00:56:10 ◼   ► or kids going to college,

00:56:12 ◼   ► buying a whole bunch of MacBook Pros again,

00:56:14 ◼   ► like that everyone kinda knows

00:56:15 ◼   ► are basically like three year old hardware.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Man, this is making people unhappy

00:56:21 ◼   ► about buying Apple products.

00:56:24 ◼   ► That is not where you want them to be.

00:56:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, because I think Apple's mojo is the fact

00:56:30 ◼   ► that people love buying Apple products.

00:56:33 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:56:35 ◼   ► - It's like everybody, it's like your Christmas,

00:56:37 ◼   ► people who don't even do unboxing videos

00:56:41 ◼   ► save the unboxing video.

00:56:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and when I got my cylinder Mac Pro

00:56:47 ◼   ► like a couple months after it was released,

00:56:49 ◼   ► I don't know, like February or something of that year,

00:56:50 ◼   ► when I got that, I was really happy with it.

00:56:52 ◼   ► It was amazing.

00:56:53 ◼   ► But if I went to buy one today,

00:56:56 ◼   ► now that I've already replaced it with an iMac

00:56:59 ◼   ► almost two years ago,

00:57:00 ◼   ► like it's still the same computer today that I bought,

00:57:06 ◼   ► that I ordered in December 2013.

00:57:09 ◼   ► - It's really kind of strange, it really is.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And you know, it's like I think I was saying before,

00:57:15 ◼   ► it's like you can even go down the line

00:57:16 ◼   ► and just show that the,

00:57:18 ◼   ► even within the MacBook family,

00:57:21 ◼   ► the MacBook One has gotten a year over year update,

00:57:25 ◼   ► less overdue, like the more consumer friendly device

00:57:30 ◼   ► is updated more regularly than the professional one.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Even within the MacBook lineup,

00:57:35 ◼   ► the Pro end seems to get short shrift.

00:57:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's what I'm saying.

00:57:40 ◼   ► Like whatever Apple decides, you know what,

00:57:43 ◼   ► we need to hold back and wait for X, that needs tweaking.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And if for a long time it was just like,

00:57:48 ◼   ► oh, we'll just ship whenever Intel gives new laptop CPUs.

00:57:51 ◼   ► But in recent years Intel has had a lot of delays

00:57:54 ◼   ► and has gotten less reliable.

00:57:55 ◼   ► So maybe decouple that or definitely don't skip any

00:58:00 ◼   ► or figure out ways to give more frequent updates.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Like last year when they brought the Force Touch trackpad

00:58:08 ◼   ► to the 15 inch MacBook Pro,

00:58:10 ◼   ► so it has technically been updated

00:58:13 ◼   ► but notice that almost nothing else about it changed.

00:58:16 ◼   ► From what I heard the reason why is that

00:58:18 ◼   ► the GPU it was using was so old that Nvidia stopped making it,

00:58:22 ◼   ► or ATI, whichever one it was.

00:58:24 ◼   ► Like, they just stopped making the part.

00:58:26 ◼   ► And Apple was still selling these brand new,

00:58:28 ◼   ► in the 15-inch MacBook Pro, their highest end laptop.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:58:32 ◼   ► And if that's true, I mean, that's really embarrassing.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Hey, we just crossed the one-hour marker

00:58:37 ◼   ► a little bit ago.

00:58:37 ◼   ► So I think we're on pace for a two-hour show.

00:58:39 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:58:39 ◼   ► Yeah, OK.

00:58:40 ◼   ► You haven't seen the length of my notes for the headphone

00:58:42 ◼   ► jack.

00:58:43 ◼   ► I made an outline.

00:58:44 ◼   ► You're in trouble.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Let me take another break here and thank

00:58:47 ◼   ► our very good friends, longtime sponsor of the show, Audible.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Audible.com has an unmatched selection of audio books,

00:58:55 ◼   ► original audio shows, news, comedy, and more.

00:59:00 ◼   ► Get a free 30-day trial at audible.com/talkshow.

00:59:04 ◼   ► They've been advertising on podcasts forever,

00:59:06 ◼   ► and I always say it's duh because anybody who's listening

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00:59:11 ◼   ► is somebody who enjoys spoken word content,

00:59:13 ◼   ► and that's what Audible has.

00:59:15 ◼   ► They've got gobs and gobs untold count.

00:59:18 ◼   ► You don't have enough hours left in your life probably

00:59:20 ◼   ► to listen to everything that Audible has.

00:59:22 ◼   ► I used to think, here's one thing about Audible

00:59:25 ◼   ► that is eye-opening to me,

00:59:27 ◼   ► is that I always thought of them as the audiobooks company,

00:59:31 ◼   ► and they do have thousands and thousands of audiobooks.

00:59:35 ◼   ► But the other types of content they have,

00:59:38 ◼   ► like I just said, the original audio shows,

00:59:41 ◼   ► news, the comedy, and stuff like that,

00:59:44 ◼   ► tons of stuff like that too. So even if you're not into audio books like hearing a novel read out

00:59:51 ◼   ► loud or something like that, there is tons of stuff there if you like spoken word content. And

00:59:55 ◼   ► if you don't like spoken word content, I don't understand how you are hearing me talk to you

01:00:00 ◼   ► right now. So go there, check them out. You can get a 30-day free trial and you just sign up at

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01:00:17 ◼   ► audio content. All right, let's talk about the headphone jack.

01:00:23 ◼   ► You sure? You wanted a short show. Let's see. I'm fascinated by this. I wanted to write

01:00:29 ◼   ► about this a few months ago, and it was one of those things where I'd collected

01:00:33 ◼   ► a lot of notes and had some thoughts on it, and just now I think it's one of

01:00:36 ◼   ► those ones where having a podcast sort of hurts my column at Daring Fireball

01:00:41 ◼   ► because it was like I talked about it with a couple people on this show over a

01:00:44 ◼   ► week or two and then it's like I felt like I got it out of my system so I

01:00:47 ◼   ► never wrote about it. See this is this is where you're in trouble now because you

01:00:51 ◼   ► know a few months ago when the rumor first started started going around we

01:00:53 ◼   ► all talked about it like I talked about on ATP. I remember. And so I probably

01:00:57 ◼   ► won't get a chance to talk about it on ATP this week so therefore I'm gonna dump

01:01:01 ◼   ► this all on you. Okay. Because it's interesting like you know so this kind

01:01:06 ◼   ► flamed up again this week because Neelai Patel at The Verge wrote the big thing

01:01:09 ◼   ► about it. Well, it goes back one step though. It started with Daisuke Wakabayashi,

01:01:14 ◼   ► published his story in the Wall Street Journal Monday, more or less confirming

01:01:18 ◼   ► all the stuff that we've heard. That the next iPhone is going to largely look

01:01:24 ◼   ► like the iPhone 6 and 6s, and yeah removal of the headphone port would be

01:01:32 ◼   ► one of the main features. I will happily rescind that and change it to changes.

01:01:41 ◼   ► I forget. But just a whole bunch of things that we've heard rumored for a while coming out of

01:01:48 ◼   ► the supply chain. And Wakabayashi had sources familiar with the matter who couldn't speak for

01:01:54 ◼   ► whatever reason confirm them. Which is worthwhile. There's nothing in it that I hadn't seen before.

01:02:01 ◼   ► But it's always worthwhile when somebody with the stature

01:02:05 ◼   ► and the track record of the Wall Street Journal confirms it.

01:02:09 ◼   ► But then after that, that's when Neelai published,

01:02:12 ◼   ► what was the headline?

01:02:15 ◼   ► - I forget, it was something like,

01:02:17 ◼   ► Six Reasons Why You Don't Want the Removal of Headphone Jack

01:02:19 ◼   ► and he even said in his Twitter link to it--

01:02:22 ◼   ► - Taking the headphone jack off iPhones

01:02:24 ◼   ► is user hostile and stupid.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - And he even kind of like disclaimed

01:02:30 ◼   ► in his Twitter link to it, like,

01:02:31 ◼   ► "I was really angry when I wrote this,

01:02:33 ◼   ► "so it probably sucks."

01:02:33 ◼   ► Like, it was something like that.

01:02:35 ◼   ► So, you know, I give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And a lot of his points I thought were valid and good.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Not all, I didn't agree with all of it,

01:02:43 ◼   ► but I think I agree with most of it.

01:02:45 ◼   ► And then you wrote this rebuttal piece,

01:02:48 ◼   ► mostly rebutting him, I think,

01:02:50 ◼   ► that was basically like, you know,

01:02:53 ◼   ► it's progress, it's going to happen, why not now?

01:02:55 ◼   ► Is that a fair summary?

01:02:56 ◼   ► - Yes, it's going to happen eventually.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Maybe, why not now?

01:03:01 ◼   ► If there's one thing that seems like people misread in it,

01:03:04 ◼   ► I think Steve Strese had a piece on Medium,

01:03:07 ◼   ► and his assumption is that I was arguing

01:03:10 ◼   ► that this is a good change for iPhone users.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And I never said that.

01:03:14 ◼   ► If you read my thing, I never said that,

01:03:16 ◼   ► because I don't know.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I have no idea what they're replacing it with.

01:03:19 ◼   ► I don't know, and Wakabayashi didn't either.

01:03:22 ◼   ► I think people assume that the default earbuds

01:03:26 ◼   ► will be lightning.

01:03:28 ◼   ► if they're getting rid of the audio port, what do we call it?

01:03:31 ◼   ► What is it called?

01:03:31 ◼   ► Standard headphone jack?

01:03:32 ◼   ► It doesn't even have a name.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - It has a few names.

01:03:34 ◼   ► Technically, it's one of the family of phone plugs,

01:03:37 ◼   ► and it is specifically a 3.5 millimeter TRRS jack.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - Well, the TRRS jack.

01:03:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:45 ◼   ► - You're welcome.

01:03:46 ◼   ► - I think most people assume that the standard earpods

01:03:48 ◼   ► are gonna be lightning,

01:03:49 ◼   ► because then they don't have to have batteries,

01:03:51 ◼   ► and there's no latency.

01:03:54 ◼   ► There's all sorts of good reasons why you'd still want

01:03:56 ◼   ► a wired set of earphones, earpods,

01:04:00 ◼   ► whatever you wanna call 'em.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Could be that the defaults will be Bluetooth

01:04:04 ◼   ► or some other new proprietary wireless thing.

01:04:07 ◼   ► - Bluetooth seems like an upsell.

01:04:09 ◼   ► - That does to me too.

01:04:10 ◼   ► - Also, if they were gonna have a proprietary wireless thing,

01:04:13 ◼   ► that would've been using the Apple Watch,

01:04:15 ◼   ► 'cause Bluetooth sucks for the Apple Watch.

01:04:17 ◼   ► So they definitely would've used it there if they had one.

01:04:19 ◼   ► - Well, maybe it wasn't ready yet.

01:04:22 ◼   ► It's possible. - Maybe it's up there

01:04:23 ◼   ► with the Skylake Xeons.

01:04:24 ◼   ► - Right, I don't know, but.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Who knows? But I just don't know. I don't know what the story is. And so my argument is more,

01:04:30 ◼   ► I think that the removal of this port is inevitable. Will it be there in 50 years? I just,

01:04:38 ◼   ► no way. So what is the time frame? Well, it was there 50 years ago. That is true. And I think it's,

01:04:44 ◼   ► you know, it has had a remarkable, you know, run. But I feel like the time is up. So just for the

01:04:51 ◼   ► sake of argument here, I looked this up before the show. There's a Wikipedia article on the phone

01:04:54 ◼   ► plug. The large, like the, have you ever seen like a stereo from like the 70s or

01:05:00 ◼   ► if you're a high-end headphone nerd and you've seen like the quarter inch

01:05:03 ◼   ► version of the plug, it's basically, it looks just like the regular one but it's

01:05:05 ◼   ► about twice as big in both dimensions. Yes. That version was invented in 1878 for

01:05:12 ◼   ► use in phone exchanges and the stereo version that we mostly know

01:05:18 ◼   ► today that has the two rings halfway through so it has like

01:05:22 ◼   ► three total areas of plug and it's smaller,

01:05:25 ◼   ► the 3.5 millimeter one.

01:05:26 ◼   ► That one appeared roughly in 1964

01:05:30 ◼   ► and became popular with the original Sony Walkman in 1979.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - So we're talking about at least a good 40 years.

01:05:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:05:39 ◼   ► So this thing is old and you know,

01:05:43 ◼   ► the reason it has lasted so long is because it is universal,

01:05:49 ◼   ► it is very simple electrically,

01:05:51 ◼   ► It's very, very simple.

01:05:52 ◼   ► There's no smarts to it.

01:05:54 ◼   ► It's just like, it's just pure analog signal

01:05:55 ◼   ► going over these, you know, two or three wires

01:05:58 ◼   ► inside the cable, or in the case of the headphone remote,

01:06:00 ◼   ► four wires inside the cable.

01:06:02 ◼   ► Very, very simple, electrically.

01:06:04 ◼   ► They're very reliable, for the most part.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Like, the port can get gunked up with dust,

01:06:09 ◼   ► but so can the lightning port, so can any port.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So, you know, compared to other ports,

01:06:14 ◼   ► it's not particularly bad for reliability.

01:06:16 ◼   ► It's very, very durable, and it's very, very cheap.

01:06:20 ◼   ► So you have this combination of like standard,

01:06:22 ◼   ► universal, cheap, durable, simple,

01:06:24 ◼   ► like it's really great for all these things.

01:06:27 ◼   ► And by the way, if you think it's too thick,

01:06:29 ◼   ► there is also a thinner version.

01:06:31 ◼   ► So this version is 3.5 millimeter,

01:06:33 ◼   ► there's a 2.5 millimeter version that used to be

01:06:36 ◼   ► on like some like answering machines

01:06:38 ◼   ► and then like more recently it's often used

01:06:40 ◼   ► like on the ear end of removable headphone cables

01:06:44 ◼   ► where like you'll have like the end that plugs

01:06:46 ◼   ► into the phone and the other end plugs into like

01:06:47 ◼   ► your ear cup, sometimes that end will be the skinnier one,

01:06:50 ◼   ► and you might have a couple of those.

01:06:51 ◼   ► - I've seen that.

01:06:52 ◼   ► I used to own something that had that.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I don't know what the hell it was though.

01:06:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't matter.

01:06:57 ◼   ► - Well, the other thing about making the devices thinner

01:06:59 ◼   ► with the standard headphone jack,

01:07:01 ◼   ► I keep pointing this out over and over again,

01:07:02 ◼   ► but the iPod touch still has it,

01:07:04 ◼   ► and the iPod touch is significantly thinner

01:07:06 ◼   ► than the current iPhones.

01:07:08 ◼   ► - And the Nano too, I believe it's also thinner,

01:07:10 ◼   ► and it also has it.

01:07:10 ◼   ► So like, the reason to remove it now

01:07:14 ◼   ► isn't a thickness barrier,

01:07:16 ◼   ► because there are,

01:07:18 ◼   ► we see Apple makes thinner devices with this.

01:07:20 ◼   ► So that's not the reason.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I would also say, so like in my category of reasons

01:07:25 ◼   ► it doesn't have to go yet, assuming it has to go

01:07:28 ◼   ► at some time, one of the reasons this might not be the time

01:07:31 ◼   ► is like what are we gaining by removing it,

01:07:33 ◼   ► 'cause there's cost removing it.

01:07:34 ◼   ► So I think one thing we're gaining would be

01:07:37 ◼   ► a lot of people assume space for the battery, right?

01:07:40 ◼   ► Except that if you look at the tear downs

01:07:42 ◼   ► of where this port is on the phone,

01:07:45 ◼   ► down there at the bottom next to the lightning assembly

01:07:47 ◼   ► and everything and then on the other side you have the speaker next to it, you have

01:07:49 ◼   ► the microphone and everything. Down there, like that's not where you need space for

01:07:53 ◼   ► the battery. I mean, they could go to some kind of crazy system like the MacBook One

01:07:57 ◼   ► where they have like different shapes of battery things all over the place, but this is a phone

01:08:02 ◼   ► and they have to replace a lot of phone batteries under warranty and people replace them aftermarket

01:08:06 ◼   ► and you know when they're old and in different countries and everything. You need the battery

01:08:10 ◼   ► to be easily serviceable, replaceable and cheap. And so keeping it as one regular rectangle

01:08:16 ◼   ► of a battery is way more practical for them.

01:08:19 ◼   ► And also, the total amount of space you would save,

01:08:23 ◼   ► or a space you would gain by invading that little

01:08:27 ◼   ► rectangle of area at the bottom of the phone,

01:08:29 ◼   ► where the headphone jack is,

01:08:30 ◼   ► you can just make the battery some minuscule amount thicker

01:08:33 ◼   ► and keep it in the same footprint,

01:08:35 ◼   ► and it would have that same volume increase

01:08:37 ◼   ► and be way cheaper and easier to deal with.

01:08:38 ◼   ► So, battery life is probably not the reason either,

01:08:44 ◼   ► because of just like where it is in the phone

01:08:46 ◼   ► and what else is down there.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Like I don't really see a massive internal redesign

01:08:51 ◼   ► of the phone layout inside where that space

01:08:54 ◼   ► would suddenly become space you could expand

01:08:56 ◼   ► the battery into.

01:08:57 ◼   ► It might, but I think it's unlikely.

01:08:59 ◼   ► - Well, I think it goes far enough in that

01:09:01 ◼   ► the space is significant, but I don't think it's huge.

01:09:03 ◼   ► I think the biggest space-saving argument

01:09:06 ◼   ► or three-dimensional, you know, this thing is just too big

01:09:09 ◼   ► or too thick or too long argument,

01:09:11 ◼   ► probably have to do with next year's new iPhone, which I believe, and as you know,

01:09:16 ◼   ► I mentioned it on the show and I know there's rumors about it too, that if it

01:09:20 ◼   ► goes to more of an edge-to-edge display, which would be like the top and bottom

01:09:24 ◼   ► of the display go to the edge as close as the sides do now, then I think it's a

01:09:29 ◼   ► problem because I don't, I think it's a lot harder to have the, the jack

01:09:33 ◼   ► would therefore have to be underneath the display. Yeah, so remove it then. Well,

01:09:38 ◼   ► Well, that's what I'm saying.

01:09:39 ◼   ► It is a good point.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Why now?

01:09:41 ◼   ► That doesn't count for why now, unless they just possibly

01:09:46 ◼   ► just want to eat the shit sandwich now of putting up

01:09:50 ◼   ► with people's complaints about this a year in advance

01:09:53 ◼   ► of unveiling that phone so that people don't complain about it

01:09:56 ◼   ► when the amazing new industrial design is unveiled.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And that might be the reason, but that's a crappy reason.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I don't think that's the reason, though.

01:10:03 ◼   ► I do think that there is a reason.

01:10:05 ◼   ► All I'm saying-- and this is the secondary thrust

01:10:07 ◼   ► my argument, which is, "Well, we don't know. How about we just wait and find out what the story is before we complain?"

01:10:14 ◼   ► Like, it's to me that it's too soon to say this is user hostile and stupid.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Right, although it's also too late to change it.

01:10:22 ◼   ► Right. But we don't have proof that it's not user hostile and stupid. It might be.

01:10:25 ◼   ► I guess that, if there's anything that I wish I would have emphasized more, it's like, "Okay, maybe it is."

01:10:30 ◼   ► But we certainly don't know that yet, and it may well not be.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I'm wondering and you know you definitely know more about headphones than I do is I'm wondering about

01:10:38 ◼   ► If it switches to lightning something digital

01:10:43 ◼   ► How much better could the input be not just the output right right now you think of a headphones

01:10:49 ◼   ► Output you put them in and you listen right but like the whole input stuff like voice

01:10:55 ◼   ► You know through the microphone and the little clicks like when you you know what there's like play/pause and fast forward and stuff like that

01:11:01 ◼   ► I mean, you know, you write a podcast player.

01:11:04 ◼   ► That stuff is all, that's just like a serious hack.

01:11:07 ◼   ► - It is a hack, but it also works.

01:11:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, but maybe-- - And it is,

01:11:11 ◼   ► the main thing that you can say from that point of view

01:11:13 ◼   ► is that it's limiting.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Like, for example, you can only have mono input right now,

01:11:17 ◼   ► 'cause there's only one pin for the microphone return.

01:11:20 ◼   ► So like, you can only have one channel.

01:11:22 ◼   ► So if you wanted to have like a nicer microphone setup,

01:11:25 ◼   ► maybe if you wanted to podcast or record something

01:11:27 ◼   ► from your device, you can, if you're using that port,

01:11:30 ◼   ► you can only record in mono.

01:11:32 ◼   ► And lightning adapter, you know,

01:11:33 ◼   ► lightning devices can add much more than that.

01:11:36 ◼   ► They can have all sorts of inputs and outputs,

01:11:38 ◼   ► and especially if they have custom apps to deal with them,

01:11:41 ◼   ► then they can do a lot, and most of them do.

01:11:43 ◼   ► But that also isn't a good argument,

01:11:44 ◼   ► because like, well, we already have that now.

01:11:46 ◼   ► Like, you don't have to remove the headphone port

01:11:49 ◼   ► to have lightning audio.

01:11:50 ◼   ► We have lightning audio already,

01:11:52 ◼   ► and we also have the headphone port.

01:11:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, but, uh. (laughs)

01:11:58 ◼   ► - You know?

01:11:59 ◼   ► And there's also, by the way, while we're on this topic,

01:12:01 ◼   ► there's a huge argument going around

01:12:05 ◼   ► with the pro side of this,

01:12:06 ◼   ► that this could enable better audio quality.

01:12:10 ◼   ► And let me tell you, as an audio file,

01:12:12 ◼   ► that is complete garbage.

01:12:14 ◼   ► First of all, you have the same problem of like,

01:12:18 ◼   ► well, if lightning headphones can be better,

01:12:20 ◼   ► great, we can have that now.

01:12:22 ◼   ► We don't need to remove the headphone jack

01:12:23 ◼   ► to make that happen.

01:12:24 ◼   ► And the way iOS handles audio devices,

01:12:27 ◼   ► if any other device is connected via Lightning or USB

01:12:30 ◼   ► or whatever, that device just takes over

01:12:33 ◼   ► from the built-in microphone and speakers

01:12:35 ◼   ► and headphones and everything else.

01:12:36 ◼   ► So you don't even have to,

01:12:38 ◼   ► the software doesn't have to do anything

01:12:39 ◼   ► to take advantage of Lightning connected audio devices.

01:12:41 ◼   ► It just works.

01:12:42 ◼   ► So there's basically no downside from that point of view

01:12:45 ◼   ► to keeping the headphone jack around.

01:12:48 ◼   ► And the idea that some people have

01:12:50 ◼   ► that a Lightning connected headphone

01:12:52 ◼   ► would have better audio quality

01:12:53 ◼   ► because you could have a really nice DAC and amp

01:12:56 ◼   ► that DAC is the DAC digital audio converter

01:12:59 ◼   ► that converts, literally converts the digital signal

01:13:01 ◼   ► to the sound that you hear, and then of course

01:13:03 ◼   ► the amp amplifies that to different volumes for you.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - At some point it has to go to analog.

01:13:08 ◼   ► There's no-- - Right.

01:13:09 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's actually going to put sound waves

01:13:12 ◼   ► into your ear.

01:13:13 ◼   ► - Right, and so I wouldn't worry about the DRM angle

01:13:15 ◼   ► like Nilay did, because it would be trivial to,

01:13:18 ◼   ► if you're actually relying on analog output

01:13:21 ◼   ► to capture, to re-record, to pirate something,

01:13:24 ◼   ► it would be trivial to just take apart the headphones

01:13:26 ◼   ► and connect a couple things to the wires

01:13:28 ◼   ► that go to the drivers and that'd be it.

01:13:30 ◼   ► So that part of the DRM is not a concern.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Licensing the connector is, but I'll get to that.

01:13:36 ◼   ► But the idea that you get better audio quality

01:13:38 ◼   ► out of having separate premium headphones

01:13:42 ◼   ► that have premium DACs and amps in them, that is possible.

01:13:46 ◼   ► However, it's extremely unlikely in reality.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Because in reality, it is very difficult

01:13:52 ◼   ► to distinguish differences between DACs and amps,

01:13:56 ◼   ► especially once you've crossed a minimum threshold.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And people who make this argument are often talking

01:14:01 ◼   ► about how DACs and computers are always crappy.

01:14:03 ◼   ► And the fact is they were really crappy in the 90s.

01:14:07 ◼   ► That's when they were crappy.

01:14:08 ◼   ► And most built-in headphone jacks and sound cards

01:14:12 ◼   ► that are in computers and our phones and tablets today

01:14:16 ◼   ► are pretty decent, they're fine.

01:14:17 ◼   ► And the limiting factor to how good they can sound

01:14:21 ◼   ► is not the quality of the DAC and the amp in the phone.

01:14:24 ◼   ► it's almost always limiting factor is the headphones

01:14:28 ◼   ► that you're using and the environment you're listening in.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Like that's it, like when you're listening on your phone,

01:14:33 ◼   ► like you might be commuting, you might be outside,

01:14:35 ◼   ► you might be in a loud shared office,

01:14:37 ◼   ► and you're probably listening on headphones

01:14:38 ◼   ► that are like, you know, at best decent,

01:14:42 ◼   ► probably not amazing, probably not like the big,

01:14:44 ◼   ► full-sized, open-backed ones that audio files

01:14:47 ◼   ► like to listen critically with.

01:14:49 ◼   ► And those headphones you're listening on,

01:14:52 ◼   ► Like there's so much room for improvement in the sound,

01:14:55 ◼   ► just by better headphones, better drivers,

01:14:57 ◼   ► better tuning of the sound to make it, you know,

01:15:00 ◼   ► less trying to imitate beats badly

01:15:02 ◼   ► and more just trying to sound good.

01:15:04 ◼   ► You know, like that is where improvement comes from.

01:15:07 ◼   ► It does not come from in the portable realm,

01:15:09 ◼   ► but does not usually come from different DACs and amps.

01:15:12 ◼   ► DACs and amps are just a really nice way

01:15:14 ◼   ► to sell overpriced stuff to people who want better sound,

01:15:17 ◼   ► but never consider the fact

01:15:19 ◼   ► that they should just buy better headphones.

01:15:21 ◼   ► I saw somebody today and I don't remember who.

01:15:24 ◼   ► No, that's okay, this is good.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Somebody today was speculating that maybe they will switch,

01:15:30 ◼   ► they'll do like a noise canceling thing

01:15:32 ◼   ► and they'll have the stuff on the phone doing it.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Like right now when you buy noise canceling headphones,

01:15:38 ◼   ► you have to put batteries in the actual headphones,

01:15:40 ◼   ► like when you buy them from Bose or whatever,

01:15:41 ◼   ► 'cause it takes power to actually do the noise canceling.

01:15:46 ◼   ► So the phone could do it.

01:15:48 ◼   ► But I find that unlikely.

01:15:51 ◼   ► Like it sounds good when you think, oh, noise canceling.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Some people like noise canceling headphones.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And in certain scenarios, like being on an airplane,

01:15:57 ◼   ► it really is very useful.

01:16:00 ◼   ► But that sounds very unlikely to me

01:16:02 ◼   ► that anybody is gonna find it a good idea

01:16:05 ◼   ► to have headphones that draw power from your iPhone.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Like when you're using the headphones,

01:16:11 ◼   ► you'll get worse battery life.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Like that doesn't sound like something

01:16:15 ◼   ► people are gonna sign up for.

01:16:16 ◼   ► like there is a like one of Eli's things was...

01:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean in reality like it isn't that much power but it's still you know it's

01:16:26 ◼   ► still not trivial but the reality is like the high-end headphones like noise

01:16:31 ◼   ► cancelling and everything those are all moving to Bluetooth now and I believe I

01:16:35 ◼   ► have things to say about Bluetooth as well but I think like a whole other side of this

01:16:39 ◼   ► argument is like oh well lightning headphones would be great but you know

01:16:42 ◼   ► what lightning headphones are very expensive like their premium price right

01:16:45 ◼   ► Right now there's very few of them,

01:16:47 ◼   ► and the few of these are very expensive.

01:16:48 ◼   ► They will always be more expensive than other headphones

01:16:51 ◼   ► because they're gonna have the Apple licensing,

01:16:53 ◼   ► the MFI stuff, and then they're gonna wanna be sold

01:16:56 ◼   ► on Apple retail stores.

01:16:57 ◼   ► They're gonna have these, you know,

01:16:58 ◼   ► I'm guessing most lighting headphones

01:17:00 ◼   ► are gonna be above $300 in all likelihood.

01:17:03 ◼   ► And so you're gonna have this stuff,

01:17:05 ◼   ► but the problem is if you look at the headphone market,

01:17:07 ◼   ► everyone's kinda freaking out

01:17:08 ◼   ► and trying to rush out Bluetooth models

01:17:10 ◼   ► in the last couple years

01:17:10 ◼   ► because everybody wants noise canceling and Bluetooth

01:17:15 ◼   ► the high end. Like if you're looking at high end headphones like headphones that cost more

01:17:19 ◼   ► than 200 bucks that are for iPhones or for portable use like everybody wants Bluetooth

01:17:26 ◼   ► and noise canceling. And so that is, you know, in many ways that's an argument for the headphone

01:17:33 ◼   ► jack removal because you can say well, you know, if everyone's going Bluetooth then,

01:17:37 ◼   ► you know, we don't need this, right? And this is why I think like, you know, Bluetooth is

01:17:44 ◼   ► In many ways it is worse than wired headphones.

01:17:48 ◼   ► In many ways it's a lot worse than wired headphones.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Like the sound quality is usually pretty rough.

01:17:54 ◼   ► By the way, the reason the sound quality is pretty rough

01:17:56 ◼   ► is not usually because of lossy compression over Bluetooth.

01:18:00 ◼   ► It is usually because the headphones

01:18:03 ◼   ► are kind of mediocre or garbagey.

01:18:06 ◼   ► And they have, guess what?

01:18:08 ◼   ► They have a built in DAC and amp

01:18:10 ◼   ► in every Bluetooth headphone because it has to,

01:18:12 ◼   ► because it is not powered by your phone,

01:18:14 ◼   ► and the signal's transmitted digitally from your phone.

01:18:16 ◼   ► So we already have a world full of aftermarket

01:18:19 ◼   ► DACs and amps in headphones, and they're all garbage.

01:18:24 ◼   ► And the most sophisticated things they do

01:18:27 ◼   ► are they tweak the audio, they tweak the EQ curve

01:18:31 ◼   ► of the audio coming out of the headphones

01:18:32 ◼   ► to make up for crappy headphone drivers.

01:18:35 ◼   ► So if you have headphones that say,

01:18:37 ◼   ► suppose they have really weak bass,

01:18:40 ◼   ► and they know that everybody wants strong bass,

01:18:43 ◼   ► they'll just use the DAC amp chip in the Bluetooth headphone.

01:18:48 ◼   ► They will tweak the sound before they send it out

01:18:50 ◼   ► to the driver to just artificially boost the bass.

01:18:54 ◼   ► And these are like cheap components doing things

01:18:57 ◼   ► in a very basic way.

01:19:01 ◼   ► And it sounds pretty rough.

01:19:02 ◼   ► And you can hear this yourself.

01:19:04 ◼   ► If you have like noise canceling headphones,

01:19:06 ◼   ► like any Bose headphones that also can operate

01:19:09 ◼   ► with a wire passively, if you can turn off

01:19:12 ◼   ► the noise canceling and use them with the wire,

01:19:15 ◼   ► turn it off and listen to how much worse everything sounds.

01:19:18 ◼   ► That, what you're hearing when it's off,

01:19:20 ◼   ► that's what the headphones in an app actually sound like.

01:19:23 ◼   ► And when you turn it on, they're applying this big EQ curve

01:19:26 ◼   ► to try to boost it and make it sound better artificially,

01:19:28 ◼   ► but it's never quite right,

01:19:30 ◼   ► it never sounds great or natural.

01:19:33 ◼   ► That's the world we're going towards.

01:19:34 ◼   ► If we're going towards more Bluetooth, more lightning,

01:19:39 ◼   ► headphones that are not just passive analog devices

01:19:41 ◼   ► but actually have active circuitry in them,

01:19:43 ◼   ► it's not going towards a world of like amazing dacs and amps

01:19:46 ◼   ► in portable headphones,

01:19:47 ◼   ► it's going towards a world of mediocre headphones

01:19:49 ◼   ► that have their flaws papered over

01:19:51 ◼   ► by kind of these DSP hacks.

01:19:55 ◼   ► - So what are they gonna do?

01:19:55 ◼   ► I feel like if they switch,

01:19:57 ◼   ► if Apple's story is, okay, buy this new iPhone

01:20:00 ◼   ► and when you open it up,

01:20:01 ◼   ► you get a pair of our new Bluetooth AirPods

01:20:05 ◼   ► or whatever they're gonna call them.

01:20:07 ◼   ► somebody had a there was like a trademark filing on the word AirPod oh

01:20:10 ◼   ► there's no way that's that's in the package you know I'm thinking in the

01:20:14 ◼   ► package you get like you get the the cable adapted version of them just like

01:20:18 ◼   ► today and then they will tell you with a lightning port in some form you know

01:20:23 ◼   ► whether it's like a dongle and then head no headphones there's no way there's

01:20:27 ◼   ► probably not go no way probably they'll definitely sell you one but they might

01:20:31 ◼   ► put one in the box I don't know no probably not well not either way they

01:20:35 ◼   ► They might give you a dongle so that you can use your existing headphones if you'd prefer

01:20:40 ◼   ► not to, but the headphones they give in the box have to just plug right in.

01:20:43 ◼   ► And that means it has to be plugged in.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that's probably right.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:46 ◼   ► So I'm guessing that they will gladly sell you a set of AirPods, if that's going to be

01:20:51 ◼   ► a real product name, they will sell you a Bluetooth version of those headphones for,

01:20:54 ◼   ► I don't know, $150, $100 maybe.

01:20:57 ◼   ► That's going to be an add-on.

01:20:58 ◼   ► That's not going to be in the box.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Because let's not forget that Apple's really good at making you spend a little bit more

01:21:04 ◼   ► money at the point of sale and get all those attachment sales like they've

01:21:07 ◼   ► mastered this now I think both of these both of these ideas qualify as of course

01:21:12 ◼   ► that's what they're going to do their Apple of course Apple isn't gonna make

01:21:15 ◼   ► you use a dongle their Apple there's no way they're gonna make you use a dongle

01:21:19 ◼   ► and of course of course the air wireless ones are gonna be a expensive upsell

01:21:25 ◼   ► because they're out exactly so that's sold and and the idea of like moving

01:21:31 ◼   ► towards the world of Bluetooth,

01:21:33 ◼   ► 'cause let's be honest, it's gonna be mostly Bluetooth.

01:21:35 ◼   ► It's not gonna be mostly lightning headphones,

01:21:37 ◼   ► except for the ones that come in the box.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Those will be very popular,

01:21:39 ◼   ► but aftermarket headphones, I think,

01:21:42 ◼   ► are gonna be way more often Bluetooth than not

01:21:45 ◼   ► in the near future.

01:21:47 ◼   ► We're almost there now.

01:21:49 ◼   ► - If the story is go with Bluetooth,

01:21:53 ◼   ► it solves some of the problems

01:21:55 ◼   ► in terms of why would they get rid of the headphone jack?

01:21:58 ◼   ► Well, we got rid of it because the future's wireless.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And it also solves the how do I listen to music

01:22:04 ◼   ► while I charge my phone problem, which is a real problem.

01:22:08 ◼   ► I mean, and I--

01:22:09 ◼   ► - The solution is you discharge the other device

01:22:11 ◼   ► that you're wearing on your head at the same time.

01:22:13 ◼   ► - Well, how would you do that?

01:22:15 ◼   ► - No, you're right.

01:22:16 ◼   ► I mean, the solution is either they ship

01:22:17 ◼   ► and kind of pass through adapter,

01:22:19 ◼   ► which would be pretty clunky.

01:22:21 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:22 ◼   ► - Or you just use Bluetooth.

01:22:24 ◼   ► And when you're using Bluetooth,

01:22:26 ◼   ► the iPhone is not concerned with the battery level

01:22:29 ◼   ► of your headphones.

01:22:30 ◼   ► problem.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and it does seem it seems weird to me.

01:22:35 ◼   ► I have to admit, I mean, this is one of these things ever since the thing started.

01:22:38 ◼   ► I don't see how they're going to sell this.

01:22:41 ◼   ► And you know, what's the story going to be?

01:22:43 ◼   ► Because I totally acknowledge like I see Jonas doing it all the time where he's got like

01:22:47 ◼   ► an iPad at 3% and he's charging it while he's still listening to the YouTube stuff that

01:22:53 ◼   ► is on it while he plays the PlayStation.

01:22:56 ◼   ► I totally recognize that.

01:22:58 ◼   ► I know lots and lots of people, they do it on airplanes.

01:23:00 ◼   ► If you're lucky enough to fly on an airline that has USB or power adapters,

01:23:04 ◼   ► people charge their phone while they listen to music on the flight.

01:23:08 ◼   ► I know people do it at their desks.

01:23:09 ◼   ► People will charge their phone while they're listening to music on it.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I understand it and if there's just one lightning port,

01:23:19 ◼   ► and of course they're not going to put two lightning ports on the thing,

01:23:22 ◼   ► how do you listen with lightning headphones?

01:23:24 ◼   ► I mean, and that's the one idea that people were

01:23:27 ◼   ► kicking around when the rumors were that the new iPhones were going to have the

01:23:30 ◼   ► smart connector type thing on the back that maybe there'd be like a Apple watch

01:23:35 ◼   ► style magnetic charger but I don't know it doesn't seem right

01:23:40 ◼   ► especially like you know we already got like you know the as they as they ship

01:23:45 ◼   ► more and more other things that charge via lightning it's pretty clear like we

01:23:50 ◼   ► have now a world where lightning is like the universal Apple charger for all

01:23:55 ◼   ► Apple products except the watch annoyingly but everything else it's like

01:23:59 ◼   ► everything charges by lightning and I don't I don't see them throwing that

01:24:03 ◼   ► away so soon yeah like the pencil charges by it the

01:24:07 ◼   ► rumored that I forget if somebody just pulled this out of their ass or if it

01:24:12 ◼   ► was a real leak that the air pods would have like a little some kind of little

01:24:15 ◼   ► lightning thing that comes out or goes I don't know Bluetooth I'm lucky that I

01:24:20 ◼   ► don't I don't actually use earbuds or in-ear monitors that I just can't wear

01:24:24 ◼   ► them like pain-wise I can't wear them Bluetooth is you know it's annoying for

01:24:30 ◼   ► full-size headphones but it's not that bad Bluetooth for earbuds has a whole

01:24:35 ◼   ► bunch of challenges like well where do you put the battery and how do they

01:24:39 ◼   ► connect to each other and like there's all sorts of like weird hacks that

01:24:42 ◼   ► people have devised like well you have this like thing behind your neck or

01:24:45 ◼   ► something you know like there there's always some some kind of trick but it's

01:24:48 ◼   ► tricky to get Bluetooth into you into earbuds in a way that doesn't suck but

01:24:53 ◼   ► But overall, moving towards the world of Bluetooth headphones,

01:24:58 ◼   ► in so many ways, it's worse.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Number one problem is, of course, this

01:25:03 ◼   ► is one more thing you have to charge.

01:25:05 ◼   ► And if you're traveling, that might mean one more cable

01:25:07 ◼   ► to bring or something, and one more battery that could just

01:25:09 ◼   ► die at inopportune times.

01:25:11 ◼   ► And it's just kind of annoying.

01:25:13 ◼   ► They tend to be substantially more expensive

01:25:15 ◼   ► than other headphones of similar quality and attributes.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And Bluetooth is slightly unreliable.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Like it works most of the time,

01:25:24 ◼   ► but like every time I'm walking with my Bluetooth,

01:25:28 ◼   ► you know, little portable headphones

01:25:29 ◼   ► for walking and listening to podcasts,

01:25:31 ◼   ► every time I have like a little clip out of the audio

01:25:33 ◼   ► during some part of the walk,

01:25:34 ◼   ► if I like turn, if I like put my hand in the wrong spot,

01:25:37 ◼   ► like in my pocket or something,

01:25:39 ◼   ► like it like blocks the signal just enough

01:25:41 ◼   ► that oh, can't quite make it, I get a little static

01:25:43 ◼   ► and I gotta move my hand.

01:25:43 ◼   ► Like, and I've tested so many pairs of Bluetooth headphones,

01:25:46 ◼   ► they all have that problem.

01:25:47 ◼   ► It's always, some of them are better than others,

01:25:49 ◼   ► but they all have that problem to some degree.

01:25:51 ◼   ► And then there's the big problem of using

01:25:53 ◼   ► whatever headphones you come up with,

01:25:54 ◼   ► Bluetooth and lightning,

01:25:56 ◼   ► this would actually be substantially worse,

01:25:58 ◼   ► using the same headphones for multiple devices.

01:26:01 ◼   ► So suppose, like when I'm on a plane,

01:26:04 ◼   ► I'm always switching my headphones

01:26:06 ◼   ► to whatever device I'm using.

01:26:07 ◼   ► So if we're like, you know, taking off or whatever,

01:26:09 ◼   ► I'm just gonna try to sleep,

01:26:10 ◼   ► I'll have my iPhone in my pocket.

01:26:12 ◼   ► But then if I'm gonna like take out my laptop or an iPad

01:26:15 ◼   ► to try to get something done on the tray,

01:26:16 ◼   ► I'm gonna switch the headphones to that.

01:26:18 ◼   ► And a lot of people, they use the same headphones

01:26:22 ◼   ► between work and home at their work computer

01:26:24 ◼   ► or either work and iPod, like, excuse me,

01:26:27 ◼   ► iPhone, iPods are ancient.

01:26:29 ◼   ► So with Bluetooth, because of Bluetooth pairing

01:26:33 ◼   ► and everything, it's just such a pain

01:26:36 ◼   ► to share Bluetooth headphones between multiple devices

01:26:40 ◼   ► that in practice, nobody really does it.

01:26:42 ◼   ► You can't, some of them have a multiple pairing memory,

01:26:46 ◼   ► but they're always weird and hard to use.

01:26:48 ◼   ► Effectively, Bluetooth headphones, in practice,

01:26:51 ◼   ► they just kinda get locked to their primary device.

01:26:53 ◼   ► So nobody ever really changes it.

01:26:54 ◼   ► So that sucks.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Lightning would be even worse,

01:26:57 ◼   ► because yes, you could swap Lightning

01:26:59 ◼   ► between your iPhone and your iPad,

01:27:01 ◼   ► but then what are you gonna do when you go to your Mac?

01:27:03 ◼   ► Like, you can't plug your Lightning headphones

01:27:05 ◼   ► into your Mac.

01:27:06 ◼   ► - And that seems crazy.

01:27:08 ◼   ► I mean, I threw it out there as a spitball this week

01:27:11 ◼   ► that what if that's the reason the MacBook Pros

01:27:13 ◼   ► are being delayed, 'cause they're gonna put

01:27:15 ◼   ► lightning port on them just so that you can plug your headphones in but it

01:27:20 ◼   ► doesn't you know in every other way other than the idea that I would like to

01:27:24 ◼   ► be able to use the headphones the same headphones with my iPhone and my Mac

01:27:29 ◼   ► which is a very reasonable desire other than that it doesn't make any sense to

01:27:33 ◼   ► put a lightning port on a Mac but I'd you know I I don't know maybe I don't I

01:27:39 ◼   ► mean it doesn't seem I wouldn't I wouldn't faint if that was announced but

01:27:43 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem right.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Again, the only thing that really makes sense is Bluetooth,

01:27:48 ◼   ► but like you said, Bluetooth sharing between devices

01:27:50 ◼   ► is really weird, you gotta like,

01:27:52 ◼   ► I mean it's just like click, click, click,

01:27:54 ◼   ► or tap, tap, you know, settings, Bluetooth,

01:27:56 ◼   ► unpair, pair, type this code.

01:27:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's crappy.

01:28:00 ◼   ► And like, on the Android side,

01:28:02 ◼   ► they have this whole NFC system

01:28:03 ◼   ► to make pairing faster and easier.

01:28:06 ◼   ► It's possible Apple could add that to the next iPhone,

01:28:08 ◼   ► they already have the NFC antenna for Apple Pay.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I don't know much about NFC,

01:28:11 ◼   ► but it's probably the same antenna.

01:28:13 ◼   ► so it's possible they could do something like that,

01:28:14 ◼   ► but honestly, I don't see that.

01:28:17 ◼   ► - It's hard to beat the pairing process

01:28:21 ◼   ► of headphones as we know them.

01:28:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, you plug 'em in.

01:28:24 ◼   ► - And when it clicks, you're done.

01:28:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then if you wanna all of a sudden

01:28:29 ◼   ► have the headphones be playing output

01:28:31 ◼   ► from a different device, you know what you do?

01:28:32 ◼   ► You just unplug it and you plug it into the other device

01:28:35 ◼   ► and because they all have the same port.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Even the MacBook One has no other ports

01:28:40 ◼   ► except it has a headphone port.

01:28:41 ◼   ► - Right.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - Besides the USB-C, that's like the one other port

01:28:46 ◼   ► they deemed worthy of including on that computer

01:28:48 ◼   ► was a headphone port.

01:28:49 ◼   ► That just kind of shows how ubiquitous and important

01:28:53 ◼   ► and how compelling it is for this port to continue to exist.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Ultimately though, if this thing about the iPhone is true,

01:29:01 ◼   ► I think the world of lightning headphones

01:29:05 ◼   ► is generally a terrible idea

01:29:08 ◼   ► and is probably not gonna be very healthy.

01:29:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, but maybe-- - It's probably gonna be

01:29:12 ◼   ► mostly adapters to regular headphones or Bluetooth.

01:29:15 ◼   ► - Maybe though it'll kickstart it,

01:29:17 ◼   ► because it hasn't taken off to date, because why?

01:29:20 ◼   ► Why would you bother getting Lightning headphones

01:29:22 ◼   ► when you can get regular headphone jack headphones

01:29:25 ◼   ► that have the same audio quality and they're cheaper?

01:29:29 ◼   ► - Right, by the way, I should point out too,

01:29:30 ◼   ► I love this so much, the headphones that are pictured

01:29:33 ◼   ► in every article about Lightning headphones on the Verge

01:29:36 ◼   ► are the Audizay EL8 Titanium or Platinum or something.

01:29:41 ◼   ► They're $800 and they sound terrible.

01:29:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:29:45 ◼   ► Just putting that out there.

01:29:47 ◼   ► They look really cool.

01:29:48 ◼   ► We're gonna have lots of Lightning headphones

01:29:50 ◼   ► that look really cool and cost a lot of money,

01:29:53 ◼   ► but hopefully they'll sound better than the EL8.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Sorry, Audizay, there goes one sponsor

01:29:57 ◼   ► I'm never gonna get.

01:29:58 ◼   ► - Let's dispel the notion that maybe,

01:30:02 ◼   ► I've seen this kicked around,

01:30:03 ◼   ► and I think it is total nonsense, never gonna happen,

01:30:06 ◼   ► is that the solution, 'cause one of the problems

01:30:08 ◼   ► people have with Lightning,

01:30:10 ◼   ► The idea of using Lightning as the port for wired headphones

01:30:13 ◼   ► is that now you're stuck with an Apple proprietary solution

01:30:15 ◼   ► that has to get a licensing fee,

01:30:17 ◼   ► has to meet Apple's approval,

01:30:18 ◼   ► and therefore has to be more expensive

01:30:20 ◼   ► than it would be otherwise

01:30:21 ◼   ► because whatever the licensing fee is,

01:30:23 ◼   ► it's, if it's even a penny,

01:30:25 ◼   ► that means the thing's gonna cost a penny more.

01:30:27 ◼   ► And it's not gonna be a penny. (laughs)

01:30:30 ◼   ► - Right.

01:30:31 ◼   ► - Well, but-- - So the idea that people

01:30:32 ◼   ► are, I've seen kicking about is,

01:30:33 ◼   ► well, okay, well, if a headphone port is should be open

01:30:36 ◼   ► and everybody likes having an open standard,

01:30:39 ◼   ► why not USB-C?

01:30:41 ◼   ► Maybe that's the idea, is that the iPhone will switch to USB-C.

01:30:43 ◼   ► And guess what?

01:30:44 ◼   ► Headphone port aside, the iPhone is not going to switch to USB-C.

01:30:47 ◼   ► No, there's no chance of that.

01:30:49 ◼   ► No chance.

01:30:49 ◼   ► First of all, it's thicker than lightning.

01:30:51 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:51 ◼   ► Then that alone is a deal breaker.

01:30:53 ◼   ► And I'll put it in the show notes, hopefully.

01:30:55 ◼   ► But I got a good link.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Somebody did a really nice, precise diagram showing just

01:31:01 ◼   ► how much thicker it is.

01:31:02 ◼   ► And it actually would be pretty close to a gating factor

01:31:05 ◼   ► already on the iPhone 6.

01:31:07 ◼   ► and everybody knows Apple likes to make devices

01:31:10 ◼   ► thinner over time.

01:31:11 ◼   ► So like when you just eyeball them side by side,

01:31:13 ◼   ► you can say, oh yeah, they're like more or less the same.

01:31:15 ◼   ► But when you get right down to it

01:31:17 ◼   ► and start measuring the tenths of a millimeter,

01:31:21 ◼   ► it's too big of a difference.

01:31:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely.

01:31:23 ◼   ► - And strategically, Apple is not gonna give up