The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► And did you actually need the eye patch or was that just for, you know, if you wanted to look like Will Feldman?

00:00:04 ◼   ► I needed it not like because it was like a gross hole in my eye that needed to be covered up,

00:00:13 ◼   ► although it was kind of red, but it was never like gross to look at. So it wasn't cosmetic

00:00:17 ◼   ► and it wasn't for the cool look. I needed it because the vision out of that eye was so

00:00:24 ◼   ► weird

00:00:25 ◼   ► that there I

00:00:27 ◼   ► There was no other way that I could see like to read or watch TV because my brain couldn't saw such you

00:00:33 ◼   ► Yeah, too disruptive. It was way too disruptive

00:00:36 ◼   ► So I used an eyepatch for at least a month for stuff like reading and watching TV

00:00:41 ◼   ► And then I started by like not using it for TV

00:00:44 ◼   ► And now I don't use it for anything but it's weird though

00:00:49 ◼   ► So if I close my good eye, I can't read my computer at all.

00:00:52 ◼   ► But that's partly because of the eye is just not good.

00:00:57 ◼   ► But it's also the case that my prescription is no longer valid.

00:01:01 ◼   ► So I actually have an appointment.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I'm going soon to get a new prescription for the bad eye.

00:01:07 ◼   ► But right now, as we record the show, I'm wearing my glasses.

00:01:10 ◼   ► And the lens in my glasses is-- is this interesting?

00:01:17 ◼   ► lens in my glasses is, I don't even know, is this interesting?

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's fascinating. I think, I mean, we can, or we can talk about baseball. Or our kids.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Long story short, what started the whole saga for me was that last year the vision of my left eye

00:01:38 ◼   ► started getting, I thought blurry, and I just thought it meant that I needed a new prescription.

00:01:43 ◼   ► and I was also having trouble reading with my left eye which I attributed to

00:01:47 ◼   ► being 41 and I thought well I'm getting presbyopia I need you know reading

00:01:52 ◼   ► glasses but only for my left eye and I talked to my regular optometrist and the

00:01:57 ◼   ► gist was that you really can't go for like bifocals or whatever you know you

00:02:02 ◼   ► want to call them until both eyes need them that your brain doesn't really

00:02:05 ◼   ► process it right if one eye doesn't and my right eye still didn't so he said

00:02:10 ◼   ► really, I know it's a pain, but this is getting older. You'd be better off just reading, letting

00:02:15 ◼   ► your right eye dominate as you read. And so I did. And then for distance viewing, I got

00:02:19 ◼   ► a new prescription, and it was a lot stronger. And for years and years and years, I mean,

00:02:24 ◼   ► really, I mean, honestly, since I started wearing glasses, my left and right eyes had

00:02:27 ◼   ► more or less the same prescription. Usually my right eye was a little bit better, meaning

00:02:33 ◼   ► it didn't need quite as strong a prescription. But for most of my 30s, they were identical.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I wore contact lenses, I didn't even have to keep track of left and right. I had the

00:02:43 ◼   ► exact same lens for both eyes. That's good. That's the sweet spot.

00:02:48 ◼   ► It was. Those were the golden years of me being able to see.

00:02:51 ◼   ► I had that for a while, but not anymore. So last year, my left eye prescription got

00:02:58 ◼   ► a lot stronger. My right eye actually even got better. He said that sometimes happens

00:03:02 ◼   ► when you get to be 40. So I actually got a new prescription where the lens in my right

00:03:06 ◼   ► eye was actually a weaker prescription than what I'd been using, but the left eye got

00:03:10 ◼   ► stronger.

00:03:13 ◼   ► And then the months went on, and I realized, just a few months after having been to him

00:03:18 ◼   ► and being kind of pleased with the corrected vision, that by December, my left eye, everything

00:03:25 ◼   ► was blurry again.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Distance was blurry, close-up was blurry, it just wasn't good.

00:03:30 ◼   ► And so it just seemed like a mystery, and nobody couldn't figure it out.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I got a new stronger prescription and it was really strong like worry seemingly strong

00:03:39 ◼   ► because it had gotten so much worse since July and turns out I had a cataract which

00:03:46 ◼   ► was really hard to diagnose because they couldn't really see it and 41 is super crazy duper

00:03:53 ◼   ► young to have a cataract so it wasn't even on the list of things that they suspected.

00:04:00 ◼   ► But like Indiana Jones it's not the years it's the mileage.

00:04:04 ◼   ► But my right eye has no signs of a cataract, which is also--

00:04:09 ◼   ► most people don't get cataracts until they're

00:04:11 ◼   ► in their 60s or 70s.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And like 55 is considered young for cataracts.

00:04:16 ◼   ► But the younger you are when you get a cataract,

00:04:18 ◼   ► the faster it worsens.

00:04:21 ◼   ► So being super crazy young, 41, to have a cataract,

00:04:25 ◼   ► which is why my vision went from, hmm, this kind of is a--

00:04:28 ◼   ► maybe I need a new glasses to, wow, I

00:04:31 ◼   ► don't see so good in the course of a year.

00:04:33 ◼   ► Cataract surgery is routine.

00:04:35 ◼   ► It is like going to the dentist supposedly,

00:04:37 ◼   ► although it was terrifying to me.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And the retina detachment wasn't like a botched surgery

00:04:43 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:04:44 ◼   ► It happened like a week later.

00:04:45 ◼   ► But it's like a one in 1,000 complication

00:04:47 ◼   ► from any sort of eye surgery that once anything goes in--

00:04:50 ◼   ► because the cataract stuff is all at the front of your eye.

00:04:52 ◼   ► It's stuff at the lens in the very front.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And the retina obviously is all the way in the back.

00:04:56 ◼   ► But anytime anything gets swished around in there,

00:04:59 ◼   ► there's a small chance that a little bit of the fluid

00:05:01 ◼   ► can get behind the retina.

00:05:02 ◼   ► and then it makes it come off the eye.

00:05:05 ◼   ► So I had-- - It seems,

00:05:06 ◼   ► the stuff that they do with eyes just seems insane to me.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's crazy.

00:05:10 ◼   ► It seems like to me you have to be a psychopath to like,

00:05:12 ◼   ► I think all surgeons sorta have to be a little bit

00:05:14 ◼   ► like a psychopath, like a little bit, sort of,

00:05:17 ◼   ► I do, I mean it, you have to be a little bit detached

00:05:19 ◼   ► from humanity to have that,

00:05:24 ◼   ► not be repulsed by the idea of cutting open somebody,

00:05:27 ◼   ► even though you know, you have to have this rigorous,

00:05:29 ◼   ► logical mind where you know you're doing good for the person

00:05:32 ◼   ► by doing this thing that your instincts tell you is not good.

00:05:37 ◼   ► So anyway, that's for people who've

00:05:39 ◼   ► been wondering how in the world I had the retina detachment.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I had cataract surgery, which was, in fact, successful.

00:05:46 ◼   ► The lens implant they put in to replace the cloudy cataract

00:05:48 ◼   ► lens is in perfect shape.

00:05:51 ◼   ► It's just that 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 500 or some really, really

00:05:56 ◼   ► 99% small number of people who have cataract surgery

00:06:00 ◼   ► then have a retina detachment.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And it turns out I was one of them.

00:06:04 ◼   ► So anyway, that is also why my glasses from my left eye

00:06:08 ◼   ► are so weird, because they were really, really strong,

00:06:11 ◼   ► because at the time we were trying to counteract the cataract.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So anyway, I don't really see so good out of the left eye.

00:06:19 ◼   ► But--

00:06:20 ◼   ► I have been nearsighted since grade school, basically.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And then now, in the last five years,

00:06:26 ◼   ► I've started to lose that, too.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So not only am I going to need--

00:06:30 ◼   ► you know, I was pretty soon probably need to have some sort of,

00:06:34 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean,

00:06:35 ◼   ► I don't know if they make bifocal contact lenses.

00:06:37 ◼   ► They do. I think they do. They don't work so good, but they're kind of weird.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I'll just have reading classes. Yeah.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And you do weird things. They do weird things where they,

00:06:47 ◼   ► they will give you like two different contacts,

00:06:49 ◼   ► one for each eye and let one eye be kind of one I see close on one I see far and

00:06:54 ◼   ► you leave the office and you think, Oh, this is never going to work.

00:06:57 ◼   ► This is horrible. But if you give it a week,

00:06:58 ◼   ► your brain kind of kicks in.

00:07:01 ◼   ► But it's like the long story short is that nothing--

00:07:04 ◼   ► once you get into this--

00:07:05 ◼   ► forget the retina detachment.

00:07:06 ◼   ► But once you're in that situation where

00:07:08 ◼   ► you're doing stuff like that, you just never just see

00:07:11 ◼   ► like you used to do.

00:07:13 ◼   ► No.

00:07:14 ◼   ► Even though I've been nearsighted--

00:07:15 ◼   ► Those days are over.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Even though I've been nearsighted since teenage years

00:07:19 ◼   ► too, with contacts, to me, contact lenses

00:07:21 ◼   ► were magical up until I was 41 years old, where I would--

00:07:25 ◼   ► I never had any discomfort with them.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I always found them to be like, you spend 30 seconds

00:07:31 ◼   ► in the morning and 30 seconds at night,

00:07:33 ◼   ► and all of a sudden your eyes are just perfect.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And I could see everything close and everything far.

00:07:37 ◼   ► And it was like I had 20/20 vision in both eyes.

00:07:40 ◼   ► - But they didn't, but they didn't used to be so good

00:07:45 ◼   ► until they came up with disposable ones.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Before that, I had originally had hard contact lenses,

00:07:51 ◼   ► which were a goddamn nightmare.

00:07:53 ◼   ► And then after that, they came up with the plastic,

00:07:56 ◼   ► the soft plastic ones.

00:07:58 ◼   ► But you were supposed to just-- you got one pair.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And you were supposed to keep them.

00:08:02 ◼   ► And you were supposed to do this crazy, complicated

00:08:06 ◼   ► maintenance stuff with it.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And they never got completely clean.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And I was always getting eye infections.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And my eye was--

00:08:16 ◼   ► when I had hard lenses, one eye was just watering all the time.

00:08:19 ◼   ► So I would do that thing where I would just take one out.

00:08:22 ◼   ► And so I would walk around.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I would spend most of my day with just one contact lens.

00:08:26 ◼   ► I see really well out of one eye and crap out of the other one.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:30 ◼   ► That's probably like you being just ever so slightly older

00:08:33 ◼   ► than me.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Because I miss the hard ones.

00:08:34 ◼   ► But when I first started wearing them as a teenager,

00:08:37 ◼   ► I believe I used to have to wear them for like six months

00:08:39 ◼   ► at a time.

00:08:40 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And at the end of the cycle, then I

00:08:44 ◼   ► should say it was a little bit uncomfortable.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But anyway, it's-- and the other thing, too,

00:08:51 ◼   ► about the retina detachment is it seems to be like a serious--

00:08:54 ◼   ► It's a sports injury.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Like, it takes-- it literally takes like six months to a year

00:09:00 ◼   ► to completely recover.

00:09:01 ◼   ► And it's only been, I'm going to say, two months for me.

00:09:07 ◼   ► And it is getting better.

00:09:10 ◼   ► It definitely is improving, but it's like very, very slow

00:09:13 ◼   ► and gradual.

00:09:14 ◼   ► We should start a pool on what's going to happen to you next

00:09:17 ◼   ► year.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Because you've had your thumb, and now your eye.

00:09:21 ◼   ► No, it wasn't my thumb.

00:09:22 ◼   ► my middle finger. Was your thumb? No, it was my middle finger. What? It was your middle finger?

00:09:29 ◼   ► Yeah. Really? Oh, I thought it was your thumb. Maybe it was just because the bandage was the

00:09:33 ◼   ► brace. The brace made it look like it was your thumb. Yeah, because my thumb was sticking up.

00:09:37 ◼   ► I thought you were late, like they had taken your thumbs. Like someone had

00:09:39 ◼   ► tried to cut your thumbs off. No, I had a bad winner. I really did.

00:09:43 ◼   ► So, I'll talk to Kefasis. We'll see what, we'll get a pool going.

00:09:51 ◼   ► I know.

00:09:52 ◼   ► It's got to be something, right?

00:09:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:56 ◼   ► I went to a doctor, though, and I had a full checkup because I thought this is—well,

00:10:02 ◼   ► actually, I think I had to because I think they weren't going to do—there was some

00:10:06 ◼   ► kind of surgery I was going to have where they said they needed it.

00:10:10 ◼   ► But I've got my heart checked and everything, so it looks like I'm good in that regard.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I was all—I had such a bad run.

00:10:16 ◼   ► I was like, "I bet I'm going to have a heart attack, too."

00:10:20 ◼   ► Well, now you have the watch.

00:10:22 ◼   ► That'll keep track of your heart for you.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:28 ◼   ► It's weird.

00:10:29 ◼   ► It's hard for me to explain.

00:10:30 ◼   ► People ask about my eye, and I know that they mean well, and I don't want to bring everybody

00:10:33 ◼   ► down and complain, but it just requires a long explanation.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And the problems with my vision are actually very hard to explain too, because I've always

00:10:41 ◼   ► just assumed that when you have bad vision, everything is either cloudy or not cloudy

00:10:44 ◼   ► or blurry or not blurry.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And it's not blurriness.

00:10:49 ◼   ► It's like it's so hard to explain that the vision out of my left eye is like

00:10:54 ◼   ► Distorted is the word but the way it's distorted is sort of like

00:10:59 ◼   ► I

00:11:02 ◼   ► Do I need corrective lenses to help focus to get the picture, right?

00:11:06 ◼   ► But like if I take my glasses off have no lens on it at all

00:11:09 ◼   ► I can see at a certain close distance because I'm near-sighted I can see in focus

00:11:13 ◼   ► but the image is

00:11:17 ◼   ► Distorted in weird ways like the best I can the best analogy I can think of is think of a movie projector

00:11:21 ◼   ► That's in focus, but it's projecting on to stucco wall. Oh

00:11:26 ◼   ► Yeah

00:11:29 ◼   ► Like a really stucco II stuck out wall. So like, you know circles don't look perfectly round there

00:11:35 ◼   ► They look like hand drawn like by somebody with like a very sharp pen like a scratchy pen

00:11:41 ◼   ► There's like there's an image editing filter like that, right?

00:11:44 ◼   ► I mean, there's some, like in Photoshop and in Pixelmator, there's like something where you can

00:11:48 ◼   ► do to, like almost like stained glass or something. Yeah. But it is definitely improving, but it is

00:11:57 ◼   ► improving at such a very slow pace that it's hard to tell on a day-to-day basis. It's like,

00:12:03 ◼   ► I imagine that it's sort of like if you have like Adam, as Adam Wainwright, the picture of the,

00:12:11 ◼   ► one guy for the St. Louis Cardinals, Wainwright, tore his Achilles tendon in his ankle the other

00:12:18 ◼   ► day, which is a terrible injury, terrible, terrible injury. So his Achilles is torn,

00:12:22 ◼   ► like a full year to recover. I'm sure that he's probably already had the surgery. And it's like,

00:12:28 ◼   ► I'm sure like two months from now, he's still going to be 10 months away from being recovered.

00:12:32 ◼   ► So his ankle is still going to feel like shit. And a week later, it's going to be improved,

00:12:39 ◼   ► but it's still gonna feel like shit, you know, and I feel like that's what my vision is like at this point, but

00:12:43 ◼   ► Also though like if you have an Achilles tendon, you know, he's gonna he's expected to be able to pitch again like the

00:12:49 ◼   ► Unfortunate truth. I don't want to bring it down. But the unfortunate truth is I'm never really gonna see right out of my left eye again

00:12:56 ◼   ► Yeah, but on the other hand

00:12:59 ◼   ► On the other hand, I am right eye dominant

00:13:03 ◼   ► I do I I wasn't going to talk about this

00:13:06 ◼   ► But it's funny because I do but I do have ever since I brought it up and made it public at all

00:13:10 ◼   ► I've been inundated with emails and stuff like that from readers and listeners who are all of them very very

00:13:15 ◼   ► Genuinely concerned and wishing me the best

00:13:18 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of having

00:13:21 ◼   ► serious vision issues, I'm

00:13:24 ◼   ► Incredibly lucky because I'm right eye dominant and my right eye is

00:13:28 ◼   ► still 20/20 with corrected vision and

00:13:33 ◼   ► Shows no sign of cataract their best explanation for why I got a cataract

00:13:37 ◼   ► So young is probably that I had some kind of injury could have they said it could have even been like as a teenager like

00:13:41 ◼   ► Playing basketball or something

00:13:43 ◼   ► Some kind of trauma that damaged the tissue around the lens and it just you know

00:13:47 ◼   ► Takes a long time but it the fact that I was so young means it probably wasn't like age-related

00:13:52 ◼   ► And so it's you know, very unlikely

00:13:55 ◼   ► Even if I do eventually get a cataract in the right eye, you know, I can go to a specialist, you know

00:14:02 ◼   ► Who would be like super duper extra careful with the cataract surgery?

00:14:06 ◼   ► Knowing that I have a you know, obviously have some kind of tendency towards the retina issue

00:14:12 ◼   ► And there's no reason to expect that I would you know

00:14:15 ◼   ► suffered another

00:14:17 ◼   ► 99.9% chance of success

00:14:19 ◼   ► You know that I'd be on the wrong side of that again

00:14:22 ◼   ► So yeah, you know and so being 20/20 in the dominant eye

00:14:26 ◼   ► It's it's funny because that's the other thing too about my vision as I recover from the thing like two months later

00:14:31 ◼   ► My brain is clearly getting way way better at

00:14:34 ◼   ► Just sort of ignoring mr. Left eye

00:14:40 ◼   ► You know what I mean like he's like

00:14:44 ◼   ► You know, it's no longer he's no longer part of the team yeah, it's like there well no he is but it's like

00:14:53 ◼   ► It's okay that he's not so not really contributing so much, you know

00:14:59 ◼   ► I'll tell you it was weird it see that's the thing though. It's like

00:15:02 ◼   ► And it is a sign that I'm getting better and it's this combination of the eye getting better

00:15:07 ◼   ► And and again my surgeon I was just there like a week and a half ago or two weeks for like a my eight-week

00:15:12 ◼   ► Follow-up and he said he was very pleased and doctor. He's been sort of a he's great

00:15:18 ◼   ► He's I think literally like maybe one of the best retina surgeons in the world

00:15:26 ◼   ► So I'm super lucky to have him but he's also very very clinical like he's you know

00:15:30 ◼   ► You like before I even went into surgery. He was like

00:15:32 ◼   ► Because it is like, you know your division is never gonna be the same again

00:15:36 ◼   ► He's been very very he's like set realistic very under-promised over over delivers sort of doctor all along and he said he's very

00:15:45 ◼   ► Very pleased with you know what I wear. Well, that's what you want to do

00:15:49 ◼   ► I mean you want to go in like telling people they'll be they'll be good as new and

00:15:55 ◼   ► And then they come out and they're not.

00:15:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:58 ◼   ► - It's like if you come out and it's better

00:15:59 ◼   ► than you expected, that's great.

00:16:01 ◼   ► But if it's worse, then that's not so good.

00:16:03 ◼   ► - But it's been weird.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Like I said, it's a relatively slow pace of improvement,

00:16:08 ◼   ► but it's still only been eight weeks.

00:16:10 ◼   ► And it's been this weird graph of like, what's better?

00:16:14 ◼   ► Just keeping the eye patch over the left eye

00:16:17 ◼   ► and just being one-eyed with a 20/20 eye

00:16:21 ◼   ► or trying to make the best out of this mixed picture.

00:16:24 ◼   ► And it's been weird because at first,

00:16:26 ◼   ► I was using the eye patch for almost everything.

00:16:28 ◼   ► I even took it when I went to the supermarket and stuff.

00:16:32 ◼   ► 'Cause it was just, the vision out of the left eye

00:16:34 ◼   ► was just, it was just not, it was, you know,

00:16:37 ◼   ► the gas bubble made it, just made it completely useless.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I mean, it was effectively blind.

00:16:42 ◼   ► It's like when you, I finally understood

00:16:44 ◼   ► what it meant to be, where you're not blind

00:16:46 ◼   ► like everything looks black, you see color

00:16:48 ◼   ► and stuff like that, but it's completely

00:16:50 ◼   ► and utterly useless at any distance.

00:16:53 ◼   ► But having that being monocular, only having one eye,

00:16:57 ◼   ► that you know-- everybody knows that you

00:16:59 ◼   ► don't have any depth perception without both eyes.

00:17:02 ◼   ► But experiencing it all day was crazy.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I would just bump into things.

00:17:09 ◼   ► I had to be super--

00:17:10 ◼   ► it really turned me into an old man,

00:17:12 ◼   ► because I had to be super careful every time I

00:17:14 ◼   ► put a glass down on a table, stuff like that.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I was constantly spilling stuff.

00:17:19 ◼   ► I would go and take a pitcher of orange juice

00:17:23 ◼   ► and try to pour myself orange juice.

00:17:24 ◼   ► And if I wasn't completely concentrating on it, boom,

00:17:27 ◼   ► it just splashed all over the counter.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I'd be like, oh, it's crazy.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And it's gotten better, though.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And now I don't wear the iPad for anything,

00:17:35 ◼   ► even though the left eye isn't helping me read.

00:17:40 ◼   ► But even though the vision is bad,

00:17:41 ◼   ► your depth perception is OK.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the thing, is that having the left eye contri--

00:17:45 ◼   ► the left eye is absolute-- so it is contributing.

00:17:48 ◼   ► So it's doing something.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:17:50 ◼   ► and I can do things like if I throw something up in the air,

00:17:53 ◼   ► I can catch it and stuff.

00:17:54 ◼   ► I can see, I can get that sort of depth perception.

00:17:59 ◼   ► So your juggling career is not over?

00:18:02 ◼   ► No.

00:18:04 ◼   ► Babies and chainsaws, back at it.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Good thing there's nothing going on in the world of stuff

00:18:11 ◼   ► we usually talk about.

00:18:12 ◼   ► I guess this is better than having you on and talk

00:18:13 ◼   ► about baseball, though, right?

00:18:14 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Nobody likes hearing us talk about baseball.

00:18:17 ◼   ► But anyway, everybody out there has been wishing me good

00:18:19 ◼   ► thoughts.

00:18:19 ◼   ► Thank you, thank you so much.

00:18:20 ◼   ► really do appreciate it. I don't mean to be too down about it. You know, it's, it's, you

00:18:25 ◼   ► know, it's not a good situation, but could be so much worse. And I really do still have

00:18:31 ◼   ► tremendously good vision out of my dominant eye. So it's all things considered, it's not

00:18:34 ◼   ► bad and it is getting better.

00:18:36 ◼   ► It's good.

00:18:37 ◼   ► At this point, as of this week, and this is sort of new, this would be the last thing

00:18:40 ◼   ► I say about it. It's the effect of my combined both eyes open vision is sort of as though

00:18:50 ◼   ► There's like vapors in the air.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Maybe like what it would look like.

00:18:57 ◼   ► Maybe not what it would look like in real life because I guess like when you have like

00:19:00 ◼   ► a gas oven and you know, it's like what it would look like in a cartoon if there was

00:19:05 ◼   ► a gas leak, right?

00:19:08 ◼   ► Like everything is clear and I can see stuff, but it just looks like if I was within like

00:19:13 ◼   ► three feet of you, it would just look to me like there's just a little bit of waviness

00:19:18 ◼   ► in the air between us.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Yeah, like you you look normal, but it looks like there's wavy vapors in the air

00:19:25 ◼   ► Living in the desert. Yeah. Well on that up note. Why don't I thank our first sponsor?

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00:20:30 ◼   ► Trust me, this is a great gift.

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00:20:33 ◼   ► I know from last year it goes over great.

00:20:36 ◼   ► It is just, it's a surefire can't miss Mother's Day gift.

00:20:41 ◼   ► They have all sorts of sizes.

00:20:42 ◼   ► They have little ones, big ones.

00:20:46 ◼   ► It's just a tremendous, tremendous product.

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00:20:50 ◼   ► And obviously, if it's like a gift,

00:20:52 ◼   ► it's the most important thing is what the picture is of.

00:20:55 ◼   ► But I'm telling you firsthand,

00:20:56 ◼   ► I know from having given these to my mom, to Amy's mom,

00:21:01 ◼   ► that it's also a talking point where they see it,

00:21:04 ◼   ► they thank you, they love the picture,

00:21:05 ◼   ► and then they immediately ask,

00:21:06 ◼   ► "Wait, how did you make this?

00:21:08 ◼   ► "This is amazing."

00:21:08 ◼   ► Because even people who aren't geeks or nerds,

00:21:11 ◼   ► they look at these things and they're like,

00:21:12 ◼   ► "You could just tell this is not

00:21:14 ◼   ► "like a regular printed photo."

00:21:15 ◼   ► What Fracture does is they print the photos directly

00:21:19 ◼   ► on the glass.

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00:21:23 ◼   ► like a retina screen.

00:21:24 ◼   ► There's no frame around it.

00:21:27 ◼   ► You can just hang it right on the wall as an edge to edge,

00:21:30 ◼   ► no bezel thing that just hangs there.

00:21:34 ◼   ► The packaging comes with everything you need

00:21:37 ◼   ► to put a thing on the back so you can hang it on the wall

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00:21:45 ◼   ► or something like that depending on the size.

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00:22:13 ◼   ► Go there right now, pause the podcast and get your mom a gift or your wife or whoever

00:22:18 ◼   ► you need to get for Mother's Day.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Not a bad idea.

00:22:23 ◼   ► No.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I might do that myself.

00:22:25 ◼   ► No.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Me, I'll wait till Sunday morning.

00:22:27 ◼   ► Sure.

00:22:28 ◼   ► You laugh.

00:22:29 ◼   ► You laugh.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I'm laughing.

00:22:31 ◼   ► What's open?

00:22:32 ◼   ► What's open?

00:22:33 ◼   ► I got you breakfast.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Well, honey, what do you say we start going to bed?

00:22:35 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:36 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:37 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:38 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:39 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:41 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:42 ◼   ► I'm going to bed.

00:22:43 ◼   ► going to church. I got us in.

00:22:48 ◼   ► - Good seats too.

00:22:49 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:22:50 ◼   ► - Right next to God.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - I even buttered it for you.

00:22:57 ◼   ► - Don't get up.

00:23:00 ◼   ► - Oh man, so what's going on this week?

00:23:03 ◼   ► - Well, I just got my watch.

00:23:06 ◼   ► - Ah.

00:23:07 ◼   ► - Yesterday.

00:23:09 ◼   ► - So that's interesting.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I feel like right now the topic du jour isn't really the watch itself,

00:23:14 ◼   ► but it's almost like when people are getting them and when they were promised them.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Yeah. So mine came, well, you know, early. But I mean, my wife ordered it for me because

00:23:22 ◼   ► I was at fifth grade camp with my son. So which is a whole other story. But she ordered it for

00:23:31 ◼   ► me and she ordered it like seriously, like four minutes after 12 is when she pushed the button.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And my date, my initial date range was between May

00:23:44 ◼   ► 13th and the 24th.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Based on that purchase time,

00:23:50 ◼   ► which to me seems ludicrous, but that's I guess that was what the

00:23:55 ◼   ► the level of availability was, particularly for the.

00:23:58 ◼   ► So I got the space gray sport one,

00:24:02 ◼   ► which I think was a fairly heavily purchased.

00:24:05 ◼   ► And it was forty two.

00:24:08 ◼   ► 42.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:10 ◼   ► So we, clearly, again, Apple isn't talking about this and they never will, but it seems

00:24:15 ◼   ► very clear by looking at like Twitter and any kind of forum or like MacRumors or whatever

00:24:21 ◼   ► where people are talking about this, that there's a definite pattern to which watch

00:24:26 ◼   ► you ordered, which strap it has, and which ones are being made and shipping out.

00:24:33 ◼   ► So we did, we bought three.

00:24:35 ◼   ► One for Amy, one for me, one for Jonas.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Which I, again, it's ridiculous buying a kid

00:24:42 ◼   ► in fifth grade a goddamn Apple Watch.

00:24:43 ◼   ► But he's a good kid and he hasn't gotten anything new

00:24:46 ◼   ► in a while and I write it off to a work expense.

00:24:51 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm fascinated by the fact

00:24:52 ◼   ► that he's fascinated by it.

00:24:54 ◼   ► So I ordered the expensive black link bracelet one.

00:25:02 ◼   ► the space black.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Oh, the space-- oh, OK.

00:25:05 ◼   ► OK.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Amy got 38 millimeter Milanese, and the one for Jonas

00:25:14 ◼   ► is the 38 millimeter space black.

00:25:16 ◼   ► As far as I can tell-- and we ordered them boom, boom, boom.

00:25:20 ◼   ► For us, it was 3 AM, but it was right when the store went live,

00:25:24 ◼   ► and we used the iPhone app.

00:25:27 ◼   ► People who are smart, really smart,

00:25:29 ◼   ► if you really thought that it made a difference to be, like,

00:25:32 ◼   ► like 30 seconds in instead of a minute in the smartest way to do it which I wasn't smart enough to do was to

00:25:36 ◼   ► save a favorite and

00:25:39 ◼   ► You you were like three it was like three taps. It was like three taps and a

00:25:43 ◼   ► And a what's it called touch ID and you're you're done for me it was you know, it was like four taps

00:25:50 ◼   ► It was like I want this

00:25:52 ◼   ► So I greedily or ordered my own first so my

00:25:58 ◼   ► Mine was ordered at like, of course you did one minute in within 45 seconds

00:26:03 ◼   ► Then I ordered Amy's and then I got Jonas's but all three orders were placed within three minutes

00:26:08 ◼   ► It was like 303 and all three orders were in and I also got myself a sport

00:26:14 ◼   ► Don't band the black sport band 42 millimeters and Amy wanted a black sport band 38 millimeters

00:26:21 ◼   ► So I got those two and that I think those orders replaced, you know, I don't know by within five minutes

00:26:27 ◼   ► was done with all of it. But I ordered those bands separately. The only thing that shipped

00:26:31 ◼   ► for us so far is Amy's 38 millimeter Milanese, none of the individual I thought the bands

00:26:36 ◼   ► would just come, you know, because that seems like the tease, right? You know,

00:26:40 ◼   ► Yeah, right. You'd get the bands first and then you didn't get your. And I know that

00:26:45 ◼   ► people definitely got the chargers first people who ordered a second charger definitely got

00:26:49 ◼   ► them like, yeah, I saw those on Twitter. Because that's what torments people. And again, it's

00:26:54 ◼   ► It's easy for me to say that it's tormenting because I've got the review unit from Apple,

00:26:58 ◼   ► so it's not like I'm watchless.

00:27:01 ◼   ► But it seems like, as a basic rule, the black sport band is somehow in low production across

00:27:07 ◼   ► the board, whether you bought standalone bands or whether you bought a watch with a black

00:27:11 ◼   ► band.

00:27:12 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:27:13 ◼   ► It's odd.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And I, you know, obviously, and yours is black, right?

00:27:17 ◼   ► But yours didn't ship yet, right?

00:27:18 ◼   ► No, I got it.

00:27:19 ◼   ► I mean, I got it yesterday.

00:27:20 ◼   ► So it came a lot earlier than they said it was going to come.

00:27:23 ◼   ► well at least two weeks earlier. But I didn't get it until five days after they were supposed

00:27:33 ◼   ► to be delivered.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Yeah. And I saw somebody else. I saw a couple of people on Twitter who got the steel watch

00:27:38 ◼   ► but with the black band built as the built-in configuration who got theirs yesterday or

00:27:44 ◼   ► today. And it seems like they were the exact same boat as you where they were promised

00:27:50 ◼   ► May 13th or something like that.

00:27:52 ◼   ► And here it is, it came.

00:27:53 ◼   ► But no word on any of our other ones.

00:27:56 ◼   ► I think I checked earlier today, but no, you know.

00:27:59 ◼   ► But it seems as though it isn't even,

00:28:01 ◼   ► it's hardly even worth checking,

00:28:02 ◼   ► because it's like, by the time the status changes

00:28:05 ◼   ► on the order, it's like on a truck from FedEx,

00:28:09 ◼   ► you know, and your doorbell.

00:28:10 ◼   ► - That's about what happened to me.

00:28:12 ◼   ► I think I got an email before, I was checking,

00:28:15 ◼   ► I was checking fairly regularly,

00:28:17 ◼   ► But I got an email before I noticed it on the website.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Noticed that it changed on the website.

00:28:24 ◼   ► And it said it would be here the next day.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:28 ◼   ► For Amy's, it was--

00:28:31 ◼   ► because I've got my Amex on Apple Pay.

00:28:35 ◼   ► And I'm not really a notifica-- we can even talk about, like,

00:28:38 ◼   ► how many notifications you get and for what.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And I feel like the watch is really

00:28:42 ◼   ► making people think about what notifications

00:28:45 ◼   ► they get for what.

00:28:48 ◼   ► But one of my favorite features is

00:28:50 ◼   ► if you have your Amex in Apple Pay on your phone,

00:28:55 ◼   ► every time your Amex gets charged,

00:28:56 ◼   ► you get a notification telling you who charged it

00:28:59 ◼   ► and for how much.

00:29:01 ◼   ► And I don't know why, but I really enjoy that.

00:29:05 ◼   ► And 99% of the time, it's like 10 seconds

00:29:09 ◼   ► after I just charged something.

00:29:12 ◼   ► But I kind of find it reassuring.

00:29:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:17 ◼   ► It's like I don't know that I've ever

00:29:19 ◼   ► been ripped off at a restaurant where I've

00:29:21 ◼   ► signed a bill for $87 and been charged more than that.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Because you just hand-- you put a tip down, and you hand it,

00:29:32 ◼   ► and you go.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And I never go back at the end of the month

00:29:35 ◼   ► and look at my bill.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I used to do that.

00:29:38 ◼   ► I don't do that anymore.

00:29:39 ◼   ► It became too-- it just became too much to do.

00:29:41 ◼   ► And I was never finding anything.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Right, but I love the fact that I'll go outside,

00:29:46 ◼   ► and maybe we're walking home.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And then I get a buzz, and I look down,

00:29:49 ◼   ► and it says that the restaurant just charged me $87.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And it's fresh in my head because I just signed the bill,

00:29:54 ◼   ► and I know that that's right.

00:29:55 ◼   ► You know exactly what it should be.

00:29:59 ◼   ► And with Amy's watch, it was late at night.

00:30:02 ◼   ► It was like, I don't know, 11 o'clock at night.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And it was like, you've been billed $600.

00:30:06 ◼   ► And it's like the next morning at 10 o'clock, ding dong.

00:30:10 ◼   ► There it is.

00:30:11 ◼   ► So I guess, I don't really have to check,

00:30:12 ◼   ► I guess I'll just get the Amex alert, you know,

00:30:15 ◼   ► when the next watch ships.

00:30:17 ◼   ► But it does seem like, it seems like,

00:30:20 ◼   ► I mean, I guess there's some people who haven't gotten

00:30:23 ◼   ► theirs at the beginning of their promised window,

00:30:26 ◼   ► but as far as I can tell,

00:30:27 ◼   ► nobody has missed their promised window?

00:30:30 ◼   ► - Well, what about those ones, the developer ones?

00:30:36 ◼   ► Weren't the developer ones?

00:30:38 ◼   ► - That's a weird story.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought I yeah, that was kind of weird to begin with but I thought I saw some of them say that they had not

00:30:44 ◼   ► gotten

00:30:45 ◼   ► Despite ordering them, but did they get him yesterday? I don't know

00:30:50 ◼   ► As I don't remember who I don't know who it was

00:30:52 ◼   ► Whiskas ordered one of those and I can't remember what they what the promise was

00:30:57 ◼   ► The promise was promised delivery by the 28th or promise shipping by the 28th

00:31:01 ◼   ► But whiskers didn't get his on the 28th, but he did get it on the 29th

00:31:05 ◼   ► Okay, okay. I don't know if there's anybody

00:31:08 ◼   ► But it's the whole story of those watches seems crazy though because there's obviously so resource constrained and after they knew that they

00:31:17 ◼   ► you know that they were so constrained on these was when they made the offer and

00:31:21 ◼   ► It included like I think that they I don't know if they must they must have just made a mess of those

00:31:28 ◼   ► Silver ones with blue straps because that was what that was all you could get right?

00:31:33 ◼   ► But for the developer one, right and that to me contributes to the idea that that whatever the reason whether you know

00:31:40 ◼   ► it's like

00:31:43 ◼   ► Factory a is supposed to be making black sport bands Factory B is making blue ones and green ones and you know Factory a

00:31:51 ◼   ► labor problems or an electrical shortage or you know

00:31:55 ◼   ► Maybe like whatever the chemicals are they mix to make the black they couldn't get enough of them

00:31:59 ◼   ► but they could get plenty of the ones for blue or white or whatever.

00:32:03 ◼   ► But it definitely seemed to me like they could not make those bands in equal numbers.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And the fact that they only offered the developer ones

00:32:11 ◼   ► in blue, yeah, exactly. It must seem to be that

00:32:15 ◼   ► they could make as many of the blue ones as they wanted. It also makes me think

00:32:19 ◼   ► that the bands in particular might be

00:32:23 ◼   ► part of the constraints. You know, because

00:32:27 ◼   ► It's-- no matter which sport watch you go to buy,

00:32:32 ◼   ► it's like you can't just get one.

00:32:37 ◼   ► There's no color combination where you can just

00:32:39 ◼   ► go to apple.com and get one sent to you tomorrow.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Everybody says June, no matter what you want to buy right now,

00:32:46 ◼   ► today, it says June.

00:32:47 ◼   ► But I'm looking at the-- well, at least the black sport

00:32:53 ◼   ► ban says you can get it in May.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Well, it says available to ship in May. Oh, it doesn't say anything more including the watch or just the sport

00:33:03 ◼   ► No, just the sport band, huh?

00:33:05 ◼   ► Yeah, so I don't know. Yeah, I don't know and Tim Cook mentioned, you know, he said something about like

00:33:11 ◼   ► The fact that they were able to catch up a little bit

00:33:14 ◼   ► Over the weekend. Yeah, they were able to ship more than they thought that they you know, they found some under a table or something

00:33:24 ◼   ► and were able to ship some faster than what the date said initially indicated.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Yeah. And I know that a lot of it is for competitive reasons, and I think part of

00:33:34 ◼   ► it is for pride reasons that they just don't want to talk about the problems. I mean, for example,

00:33:39 ◼   ► remember the first white iPhone that didn't ship for nine months?

00:33:45 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was weird. That was like a manufacturing thing, right? I mean, they...

00:33:51 ◼   ► Clearly.

00:33:52 ◼   ► It was like something was bleeding through.

00:33:55 ◼   ► The camera was affected because light was bleeding

00:33:59 ◼   ► through the white plastic.

00:34:01 ◼   ► It was like somehow they could make them--

00:34:04 ◼   ► obviously, they could make them not at scale

00:34:06 ◼   ► because they had demo units that people saw.

00:34:08 ◼   ► And people knew people who worked at Apple who had them.

00:34:10 ◼   ► But for some reason, they could not

00:34:12 ◼   ► produce the white ones at scale, the scale

00:34:15 ◼   ► they needed to sell them.

00:34:17 ◼   ► But it was seriously like nine months.

00:34:19 ◼   ► It was close to being like--

00:34:21 ◼   ► because I know I mentioned this on the show years ago,

00:34:24 ◼   ► but Amy ordered that phone because she

00:34:28 ◼   ► wanted to get a white one.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And it got to the point where I actually

00:34:32 ◼   ► don't even remember if we canceled it or what we did,

00:34:34 ◼   ► because it got to the point where it was like, even if she

00:34:37 ◼   ► got it, it was clearly going to be close to the next iPhone.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I think that's what she did.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I think she canceled and just said,

00:34:44 ◼   ► I'm actually just going to wait and get the next one,

00:34:46 ◼   ► because it's ridiculous to wait nine months.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:51 ◼   ► So I think there's all sorts of little problems like that.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And at the scale of the first month, it's to be expected.

00:34:57 ◼   ► That there's going to be some kind of weird problem like,

00:35:00 ◼   ► we didn't expect it, but the black sport band

00:35:02 ◼   ► is really hard to make.

00:35:03 ◼   ► They keep coming out really dark gray.

00:35:05 ◼   ► And that's not acceptable.

00:35:07 ◼   ► They're supposed to be black.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Or they're not bendy enough or something, supple enough.

00:35:15 ◼   ► They're nice.

00:35:17 ◼   ► Did you feel good?

00:35:19 ◼   ► And I haven't worn--

00:35:20 ◼   ► I mean, I've worn leather bands.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Well, actually, my last one was nylon.

00:35:24 ◼   ► But I've mostly worn leather bands for forever.

00:35:29 ◼   ► So I was slightly concerned about how it would feel.

00:35:33 ◼   ► But it's pretty good.

00:35:35 ◼   ► That's maybe the single most common thing tweeted at me

00:35:39 ◼   ► as people open their watches.

00:35:41 ◼   ► They're like, wow, you were right.

00:35:43 ◼   ► the sport band really is nice. Or my favorite version is, wow, I thought you were full of

00:35:50 ◼   ► shit when you talked about how nice the sport band is. But you're right. It's really, really great.

00:35:54 ◼   ► I heard from people that went to the try-ons too who said the same thing. They were like,

00:36:00 ◼   ► I really-- I could not believe that you were going on and on and on about the sport band in

00:36:04 ◼   ► your review. And then I went to the Apple store, and I thought it was the nicest feeling one of all

00:36:09 ◼   ► of them including you know like the super expensive ones have you have you had watches with metal

00:36:14 ◼   ► bands before yeah i've been wearing a watch with a metal bracelet for years a few years okay all

00:36:20 ◼   ► right all right because i did that i did that for a while like when i first started wearing like a

00:36:25 ◼   ► nice watch not like a kid's watch and i just know i found the hair i found the hair to be a problem

00:36:33 ◼   ► It's not really the hair the hair snagging to be a problem

00:36:36 ◼   ► Yeah, my wrists are not hairless, but they're not like there's no way i'm not. Yeah, but not i'm no i'm no paul kafasas, but

00:36:43 ◼   ► I don't know there must be part of the design though. It must be like the gross part of being a

00:36:52 ◼   ► link bracelet designer when you go and test the

00:36:56 ◼   ► The hair boy they must have they must have like a a stable of

00:37:01 ◼   ► extremely here suit men that they work with to give it a try.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Come on over and try this.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And then they start measuring how many hairs come out or something like that.

00:37:10 ◼   ► We get a kid like Paul Neven-Mergen and Adam Lissagore together.

00:37:15 ◼   ► And those guys, they should just run their own watch band business

00:37:20 ◼   ► testing watch bands.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:23 ◼   ► So the other thing, before we move on, just talking about the watches shipping,

00:37:27 ◼   ► the story that broke yesterday, the Wall Street Journal

00:37:30 ◼   ► had a report that I think to summarize that Apple has discovered a serious production problem with

00:37:37 ◼   ► the Taptic Engine and that behind the scenes they had commissioned two different factories to make

00:37:42 ◼   ► them one in China and one in Japan and that the ones from the company in China had a defect or not

00:37:51 ◼   ► all I don't think it was all of them but that too many of them way too many of them had a defect

00:37:55 ◼   ► such that after some amount of use, it would stop working.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And the ones from Japan don't have this problem,

00:38:03 ◼   ► but that means they only have half as many Taptic engines as--

00:38:07 ◼   ► and I guess they didn't say half.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Because they didn't say what percentage of the mix--

00:38:13 ◼   ► They can only get them from one source reliably.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Right, and now they've had to shift their plans

00:38:18 ◼   ► so that they're going to get all of them from the company

00:38:21 ◼   ► in Japan.

00:38:21 ◼   ► But it's going to take a while because the Japanese maker

00:38:25 ◼   ► wasn't prepared to make that many.

00:38:29 ◼   ► And the Wall Street Journal story

00:38:31 ◼   ► made it sound as though that's the answer to why

00:38:35 ◼   ► the watch is seemingly taking a while for supply

00:38:41 ◼   ► to meet demand.

00:38:43 ◼   ► I think they're right about the Taptic Engine thing.

00:38:46 ◼   ► I mean, it seems pretty clear that they've got a source,

00:38:48 ◼   ► at least a source, at the Chinese company,

00:38:53 ◼   ► probably the Japanese one too. I don't think that came from Apple. I'm almost certain it did not,

00:38:59 ◼   ► because I don't think Apple wants anything like that to come out.

00:39:01 ◼   ► I think it came from the supply chain. But I don't know that it's the only one.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Because I don't understand, for example, why haven't my standalone bands shipped yet? I think

00:39:16 ◼   ► there's, that even the bands are taking a while. I think, and I'm guessing if you're Jeff Williams

00:39:21 ◼   ► or Tim Cook and that you read the story in the journal that says, well, there's one problem.

00:39:26 ◼   ► It's the taptic engine. And it's this one thing like that, that they're just rolling their eyes,

00:39:31 ◼   ► like, Oh God, if only, if only that was the only problem, you know,

00:39:36 ◼   ► So you say, you said that you got one that had a bad taptic initially, right?

00:39:43 ◼   ► Your review unit, right? The review unit that I got the first day, I thought when at first

00:39:51 ◼   ► I tried it on and you know, just a little bit of a briefing with Apple people and they

00:39:58 ◼   ► make sure everything's all right.

00:40:00 ◼   ► And everything was working and it definitely was getting taps.

00:40:03 ◼   ► But I remember thinking at first, wow, the taps don't seem strong enough.

00:40:07 ◼   ► I'll have to play with the settings on that because that doesn't feel like I remember

00:40:11 ◼   ► it feeling.

00:40:12 ◼   ► Now, I didn't go to the event in March because of the I-thin.

00:40:15 ◼   ► But back in September when I tried one of the things on that was playing the demo loop,

00:40:20 ◼   ► is either identical or very close to the demo loop on the ones in the stores, I remember

00:40:25 ◼   ► the taps feeling a lot stronger. But I thought, "Well, I'll play with the settings." And I

00:40:30 ◼   ► played with the settings, and it never really seemed strong enough. And I thought, "Hmm,

00:40:33 ◼   ► this is a little disappointing." And then by the nighttime, it seemed to me like it

00:40:37 ◼   ► was like, "I don't know that this is working right. I may have to, you know, it's already

00:40:40 ◼   ► too late, but in the morning, I'm going to have to look into this because I suspect I

00:40:44 ◼   ► really…" And it made me think I was crazy because I always, in the back of my head,

00:40:48 ◼   ► I always thought that maybe the review units

00:40:50 ◼   ► that they give people were super units that they like.

00:40:55 ◼   ► I wouldn't put it past Apple, that they would go--

00:40:57 ◼   ► when they give you someone like me or Pogue or anybody who

00:41:02 ◼   ► gets these review units, that they cherry pick--

00:41:06 ◼   ► they open up the phone, and they're like, this is perfect.

00:41:09 ◼   ► This is beyond our measures of quality

00:41:13 ◼   ► for what we ship out to everybody.

00:41:15 ◼   ► But this is the best of the best.

00:41:16 ◼   ► But apparently, you know, it's not.

00:41:18 ◼   ► And I do remember when I got my review unit watch

00:41:21 ◼   ► that it was sealed, like the box and everything

00:41:24 ◼   ► was all sealed up, which doesn't mean that they didn't reseal

00:41:27 ◼   ► it, you know what I mean?

00:41:28 ◼   ► But it was definitely sealed.

00:41:30 ◼   ► But I think it was just like a watch that came out

00:41:32 ◼   ► of the early production runs.

00:41:35 ◼   ► And it sounds exactly like what the journal described,

00:41:38 ◼   ► where it worked.

00:41:40 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure.

00:41:41 ◼   ► I could be misremembering that it was too weak the first day.

00:41:43 ◼   ► That may or may not just be me not being used to it

00:41:46 ◼   ► or not having the link bracelet tight enough.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Because eventually I took out one extra link of the link

00:41:51 ◼   ► bracelet than what I had the first day.

00:41:53 ◼   ► And I think that was part of it.

00:41:54 ◼   ► It's a lot more comfortable to me.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I think it was too loose the first day too.

00:41:58 ◼   ► But without question, the second day,

00:42:01 ◼   ► by like 11 o'clock in the morning,

00:42:03 ◼   ► it just wasn't tapping at all.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And it sounds an awful lot like what they're describing,

00:42:10 ◼   ► which is, I think, hard to test.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Because it seems like the sort of failure

00:42:14 ◼   ► where any kind of test you did that's just like hook it up,

00:42:17 ◼   ► see if it taps, see if, you know, get a notification,

00:42:20 ◼   ► see if it taps, okay, good to go,

00:42:22 ◼   ► then it's, you know, that's a problem.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Like it wasn't like a dead unit,

00:42:25 ◼   ► it was a unit that failed very quickly.

00:42:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Well, that's interesting to know, I mean, to see if that,

00:42:33 ◼   ► because that to me implies like maybe there'll be issues

00:42:37 ◼   ► over the longer term.

00:42:38 ◼   ► - Right, like how, like are there any that are gonna fail

00:42:41 ◼   ► after 30 days or 60 days or something like that?

00:42:44 ◼   ► or a year, I mean, you know, six months to a year.

00:42:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I heard from at least one reader who I know,

00:42:51 ◼   ► definitely trust, whose Apple Sport watch

00:42:55 ◼   ► definitely had a dead Taptic unit,

00:42:57 ◼   ► took it in the Apple store and the genius was,

00:42:59 ◼   ► you know, knew, you know, hadn't heard it.

00:43:02 ◼   ► And he said, like he emphasized, you know,

00:43:04 ◼   ► they were like, wow, that was the first one,

00:43:05 ◼   ► you know, first time they've heard of this problem.

00:43:07 ◼   ► But they verified definitely wasn't tapping

00:43:11 ◼   ► and gave him a replacement unit.

00:43:13 ◼   ► replacement unit, which I thought was interesting too. Like how did they do that? It was just the

00:43:17 ◼   ► watch. So they took his straps off, just gave him a new watch and put it in, which I think,

00:43:22 ◼   ► I mean, who knows what they're going to do once supply isn't so constrained, but that makes a lot

00:43:27 ◼   ► of sense to me that each store got delivered a certain number of just plain watches without any

00:43:31 ◼   ► straps for anybody who has problems. And you know, like I wrote yesterday, it seems like nobody's

00:43:37 ◼   ► blowing this out of control other than the Drudge Report, but I don't think it's true,

00:43:44 ◼   ► the line that a couple people put out, like Recode and a few others, that none of the units left the

00:43:50 ◼   ► factory, because it seems pretty clear that I got one as a review unit. And somebody else did.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Right, and somebody else did too. But it seems incredibly rare, because it does not,

00:44:01 ◼   ► it seems to me like the sort of thing where even if like one out of 100 people had the problem,

00:44:05 ◼   ► you know, it would be like the Ben Gate thing. Yeah, like I don't think one out of 100 iPhone six is

00:44:10 ◼   ► bent. I think it was way less than that. And you can see that even if it's like a half of 1% or,

00:44:15 ◼   ► you know, whatever, one in 1000, how quickly something like that can escalate. So I think

00:44:21 ◼   ► it was crazy, like a crazy odd coincidence that I got one as a review unit. Except maybe it's not

00:44:27 ◼   ► so crazy, because the review units went out so much earlier. And so maybe they weren't, they

00:44:33 ◼   ► They hadn't caught it then.

00:44:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:37 ◼   ► You know.

00:44:39 ◼   ► But it's interesting, I didn't realize that they would,

00:44:42 ◼   ► I mean, I just assumed that all this stuff

00:44:44 ◼   ► comes from China now.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And I was kind of surprised that they're getting

00:44:50 ◼   ► a lot of some of these parts from Japan too.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I did think that was interesting too.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Although I guess I'm not surprised though,

00:44:55 ◼   ► 'cause I know that the Japanese still make

00:44:57 ◼   ► an awful lot of stuff, you know, that they're,

00:45:00 ◼   ► it's made in Japan is still a big thing

00:45:03 ◼   ► for a lot of their consumer electronics.

00:45:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Although I guess I just didn't know how much of that

00:45:09 ◼   ► was really that--

00:45:11 ◼   ► like we do, like Apple made in Cupertino,

00:45:14 ◼   ► but when it's really made in China.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:19 ◼   ► I'm assuming the Japanese stores from China as well.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:45:23 ◼   ► It's interesting.

00:45:24 ◼   ► But I thought--

00:45:25 ◼   ► Particularly for components.

00:45:26 ◼   ► See, that's the thing.

00:45:26 ◼   ► I would have think that maybe they're

00:45:28 ◼   ► doing the final assembly in Japan,

00:45:30 ◼   ► They're getting most of their components from

00:45:32 ◼   ► Chinese China, but yeah, who knows I don't know. But yeah, yeah taptic engines coming from Japan at least for now

00:45:38 ◼   ► I

00:45:41 ◼   ► Don't know what anything else on the shipping

00:45:44 ◼   ► You know, I mean they have it's funny that the UPS guy asked me what color I got oh, yeah

00:45:52 ◼   ► I always like that when they know they know what's going on. They've got their

00:45:57 ◼   ► finger on the pulse of

00:45:59 ◼   ► products coming out.

00:46:01 ◼   ► - You know what?

00:46:02 ◼   ► I guess the other thing I wanted to make on that

00:46:04 ◼   ► was with Tim Cook's comments on the analyst call

00:46:07 ◼   ► about the demand.

00:46:10 ◼   ► I do think, I always say this,

00:46:12 ◼   ► and I think people just don't give them enough credit.

00:46:15 ◼   ► They're tight-lipped Apple, famously.

00:46:19 ◼   ► But what they do say is usually very true.

00:46:22 ◼   ► Like, they don't, you know,

00:46:25 ◼   ► it's worth listening to the words

00:46:27 ◼   ► even if you think it's a little vapid.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And I feel like Tim Cook's comments about anytime you make,

00:46:32 ◼   ► I mean, this isn't a quote, it's a paraphrase,

00:46:34 ◼   ► but anytime you make the first generation of a new product,

00:46:37 ◼   ► you expect things like this.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And I think things, plural, is important,

00:46:43 ◼   ► 'cause I really don't think it's just the Taptic Engine.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I think it's just a nightmare

00:46:47 ◼   ► shipping these things the first time.

00:46:50 ◼   ► But it really does make you wonder

00:46:52 ◼   ► at how good they've gotten at making phones

00:46:56 ◼   ► because of the ridiculous number of iPhone 6 and 6 pluses

00:47:00 ◼   ► that they shipped right away, like immediately on day one.

00:47:05 ◼   ► How many of them went out?

00:47:06 ◼   ► Yeah, it spoiled me.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And that's why I was so surprised

00:47:09 ◼   ► that when my wife ordered it at four minutes past midnight

00:47:12 ◼   ► that it still was going to be like a month.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:47:14 ◼   ► It seemed like it was going to be a month away.

00:47:16 ◼   ► And I think you're not alone.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And I think, John Mulch, you're a reasonable man and a patient

00:47:21 ◼   ► man.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And I think some of our friends out there on the internet

00:47:24 ◼   ► not as reasonable inpatient. But I do think that that has fueled the frustration that

00:47:33 ◼   ► people have that they don't have their watch yet. I'm sure that there's parts of iPhone

00:47:41 ◼   ► 6 and 6 Plus that obviously the cameras are new and Touch ID has improved. It's a new

00:47:46 ◼   ► Touch ID sensor even compared to the 5S. So there's new components, but it's like components,

00:47:53 ◼   ► Even if they're new, they're the type of thing that they know how to make, and they know

00:47:57 ◼   ► how to source, and they know how to get big quantity.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Whereas, I mean, who even knows?

00:48:02 ◼   ► I mean, like the digital crown.

00:48:03 ◼   ► There's no other dingus in the universe like the Apple Watch digital crown, right?

00:48:08 ◼   ► Maybe that thing's hard to make, but it's like nothing else.

00:48:12 ◼   ► The haptics are relatively new.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Well, it's unlike anything else, right?

00:48:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:19 ◼   ► So it seems like that would stand a reason.

00:48:21 ◼   ► And I think you kind of have to take him at his word that this is really to be expected,

00:48:25 ◼   ► you know, and if there's anything that they blew, it was the same emphasizing that April 24 date.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Right. Right. Because I think a lot of people thought that they would be able to line up if

00:48:38 ◼   ► they didn't get one pre-order, they would line up with the store and get one instead.

00:48:42 ◼   ► It is possible. It's possible that that was their plan at the time. And maybe this Taptic Engine

00:48:48 ◼   ► thing. I mean, because the Taptic thing really does sound like maybe they, for at least a while,

00:48:51 ◼   ► they're only going to be able to make half as many as they expected to. And, you know, and that they,

00:48:57 ◼   ► just as a rough ballpark, maybe the half that they decided to make all went to the preorders.

00:49:07 ◼   ► And the half that they were maybe going to put in retail stores were the ones like, well, sorry,

00:49:12 ◼   ► Angela, you know, we're gonna you know

00:49:14 ◼   ► Well, you know what? I mean, there's just a lot of people blaming Angela aren't for this which is baffling to know it's yeah, right

00:49:21 ◼   ► It's baffling to me too. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. It's that I mean if you have anybody you should blame Jeff Williams

00:49:25 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. I

00:49:27 ◼   ► Honestly, I hate to say it

00:49:28 ◼   ► I really do because I know there's got to be somebody out there listens to the show who's got the blame Angela angle

00:49:34 ◼   ► but I really do think it's sort of a like a

00:49:38 ◼   ► misogynist now

00:49:39 ◼   ► Misogyny might be the wrong word but a bias against women like I don't I

00:49:42 ◼   ► Really do think that there's some some of the tweets I've seen like calling for her to be like held responsible

00:49:48 ◼   ► I've seen people seriously like not like

00:49:50 ◼   ► Spit coming out of their mouths raging mad but like seemingly dead serious who say that she should be fired over this

00:49:55 ◼   ► Which is crazy to me and I really do I hate to say it because I don't like to I try not to like

00:50:02 ◼   ► knee-jerk see biases like that, but I really don't think they'd be doing that if, you know,

00:50:06 ◼   ► Ron Johnson was still on the job. Yeah. And I don't quite think it's just because she's a woman.

00:50:12 ◼   ► I think it's this combination of her being a woman from the fashion world and that the people

00:50:18 ◼   ► who were blaming her are the people who also think that Apple is making a misstep by stepping away

00:50:24 ◼   ► from being a more technological company and more of a fashion company. Well, it's also just like

00:50:31 ◼   ► she's new and it's the first launch, right? From her first big product launch that she's involved.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Right. But it's like, I don't think that the problem was no, that problem is not,

00:50:43 ◼   ► it's not the setup in the stores. It's not the training of the retail employees or that she

00:50:47 ◼   ► forgot to fill out a form, you know, and then like, you know, Tim Cook, you know, is like,

00:50:53 ◼   ► I guess, Oh, she doesn't want any for the retail stores. I guess she thinks there's no time. And

00:50:57 ◼   ► So she knows, I guess she knows what she's doing.

00:51:01 ◼   ► She was CEO of Burberry.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:02 ◼   ► So I guess, you know, I just let that go.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And then, whoopsie, there's no watches in the stores on April 24th.

00:51:08 ◼   ► No, I don't know.

00:51:12 ◼   ► I can't believe that there are people who blame her.

00:51:14 ◼   ► I mean, there are no watches for them to put in the stores.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And they can't even fulfill the online orders.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:51:25 ◼   ► They can't fulfill the orders and there are no watches for the store. So I'm not quite sure what what's what's it?

00:51:30 ◼   ► What exactly is she supposed to be doing right and it's entirely and I've seen people say well

00:51:34 ◼   ► Then she never they never should have said April 24

00:51:36 ◼   ► but it's entirely possible that when they said April 24 back on March 9th that they

00:51:41 ◼   ► Thought they could do it and that it changed

00:51:44 ◼   ► So yeah, you know, she's not responsible for testing the taptic engine, right?

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00:52:49 ◼   ► And it uses one good mattress style.

00:52:53 ◼   ► and it uses two technologies, latex foam and memory foam.

00:52:57 ◼   ► And they combine it to give you just the right amount

00:52:59 ◼   ► of what one is good for and what the other's good for.

00:53:02 ◼   ► They come together and you get better nights, brighter days.

00:53:05 ◼   ► You feel great when you wake up

00:53:06 ◼   ► because you get a good night's sleep.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Here's the thing, I know it sounds so crazy

00:53:11 ◼   ► to buy a mattress online because you don't even get

00:53:14 ◼   ► to touch it or whatever, let alone jump on it

00:53:17 ◼   ► or whatever you do in the stores.

00:53:19 ◼   ► They have a risk-free trial and return policy.

00:53:22 ◼   ► They give you 100 days.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So you go there, buy the size you want.

00:53:26 ◼   ► It shows up at your house in this crazy compressed,

00:53:30 ◼   ► like vacuum sealed box, which is a big box.

00:53:33 ◼   ► It's probably the biggest package

00:53:35 ◼   ► that I've gotten delivered to my house in a long time,

00:53:37 ◼   ► but crazy small for a mattress.

00:53:42 ◼   ► You take it to the room, and again, listen to me.

00:53:44 ◼   ► You take it to the room where you want it,

00:53:47 ◼   ► and then you open the box according to their instructions,

00:53:50 ◼   ► and all of a sudden you have a mattress.

00:53:53 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:53:54 ◼   ► - It is crazy.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Their mattresses are made in America.

00:53:57 ◼   ► They are American made, really, really high quality stuff.

00:54:00 ◼   ► And the prices are so much lower than the stuff you see

00:54:03 ◼   ► in the mattress retail stores,

00:54:05 ◼   ► which is really, really a cartel.

00:54:07 ◼   ► If you haven't shopped for a mattress in years,

00:54:11 ◼   ► it is so crazy, 'cause you go to store A,

00:54:13 ◼   ► and even if you're looking at the same brand,

00:54:14 ◼   ► like Sealy or whatever, and you write down prices

00:54:18 ◼   ► and you say, "Well, I think I like that one."

00:54:19 ◼   ► and you write down the name of the model,

00:54:21 ◼   ► then you go to the next store so you can see what the price is.

00:54:24 ◼   ► There is no model with the same name.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Each store that they sell mattresses to,

00:54:27 ◼   ► they give custom names to the mattresses so that you can't--

00:54:31 ◼   ► like, they specifically-- the whole product line

00:54:33 ◼   ► of all the major mattresses are made

00:54:36 ◼   ► so that you can't price compare.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And then there's all these websites, of course,

00:54:40 ◼   ► third-party websites that help you product compare.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And they're like the Posturepedic, Flippity Bee,

00:54:46 ◼   ► is like the Rubik's Cube dingus C from this store,

00:54:52 ◼   ► or whatever the names are.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I'm not really good at naming mattresses,

00:54:55 ◼   ► but it makes it impossible.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Here's the deal.

00:54:57 ◼   ► You go to Casper, and it's just simple.

00:54:59 ◼   ► One style of mattress, you pick the size,

00:55:01 ◼   ► and the prices are great.

00:55:02 ◼   ► 500 bucks for a twin size mattress,

00:55:06 ◼   ► 950 bucks for king size mattress.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Now you compare that to the industry prices for a good

00:55:12 ◼   ► mattress, and it's just outstanding.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Way under.

00:55:15 ◼   ► You cannot buy a good king size mattress for under a thousand bucks.

00:55:17 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more www dot Casper sleep.com C A S P E R Casper

00:55:24 ◼   ► sleep.com/talk show. No the just slash talk show.

00:55:31 ◼   ► Use that URL and you'll save 50 bucks and I will not tell your mom that you use

00:55:36 ◼   ► the coupon code to get her her mother's day mattress, but go there.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Check it out if you need a mattress or a really interesting mother's day gift

00:55:44 ◼   ► That box is crazy small.

00:55:46 ◼   ► It's crazy small.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Well, it's big.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's a big box, but it's not, you know,

00:55:51 ◼   ► it's not the size of a mattress.

00:55:53 ◼   ► When we got ours, the funny thing when we got ours,

00:55:56 ◼   ► we weren't home.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And, 'cause it was, and I wouldn't have ordered it

00:56:02 ◼   ► if I was ordering it.

00:56:02 ◼   ► We were on vacation over the summer,

00:56:04 ◼   ► and, but it was like they wanted to send one to me

00:56:08 ◼   ► because, you know, they wanted me to have one

00:56:10 ◼   ► because if I'm gonna be talking about it,

00:56:11 ◼   ► it's, you know, a lot more genuine

00:56:13 ◼   ► I've actually I can vouch that the thing is actually a good mattress

00:56:15 ◼   ► So they sent it while we were on vacation and my neighbor signed for it not knowing we were on vacation and

00:56:24 ◼   ► Had to hold that box for ten days

00:56:28 ◼   ► It was like the worst possible timing

00:56:31 ◼   ► It's a big box for a yeah, but I got it

00:56:36 ◼   ► We had a pressure washer delivered the other day and it was the box was about the same size. Yeah crazy

00:56:42 ◼   ► Which is you know, that's not a big pressure washer. Yeah

00:56:44 ◼   ► What else is going on do you see this thing where another thing going back to the earnings report where

00:56:52 ◼   ► Tim Cook said something about you know that he had never never seen one of those component breakdowns

00:57:00 ◼   ► You know where that these guys they break open the Apple product and then they itemize

00:57:05 ◼   ► Everything they see inside and then they tell you that it costs

00:57:08 ◼   ► You know sixty seven dollars to make an iPhone and that Apple's profit margins are you know four hundred percent?

00:57:15 ◼   ► He said he's never seen one that was accurate

00:57:18 ◼   ► And I believe again. Yeah, which I wouldn't be again. I take him at his word that they're not they're not

00:57:24 ◼   ► Believable and I quit on daring fireball countdown to I supply saying the Apple watch cost

00:57:31 ◼   ► $67 in three two one and lo and behold today

00:57:36 ◼   ► I supply came out with the thing that said Apple watch I was off by a little they said it costs

00:57:42 ◼   ► $83 to make and that is that is is that what IHS technology is is that ice? I think so. I believe that is I

00:57:50 ◼   ► supply

00:57:51 ◼   ► So even though on the analyst conference call

00:57:55 ◼   ► Which I believe you know, there are like like like the things that Tim Cook and the the CFO. What's the new CFO's name?

00:58:02 ◼   ► Luca Luca

00:58:05 ◼   ► I would want to say Luca Brazzi. No, it's not Luca Brazzi. I can't pronounce his name.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Yeah, well, Luca, I'll just call him on first name.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Luca, sure. You know, I'm pretty sure that they are like, literally, like on the hook for the things that they say, like, those are like, you know, like, there's SEC guidelines, you know, regarding what they say. And so usually they're evasive. And if they say something that's true, it's like, it sort of has to legally be true. And they even said that the margins on the SEC guidelines are not going to be the same.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Margins on Apple watch at least next quarter. They're only guiding for the next quarter

00:58:39 ◼   ► And so it could be you know, this could be steered by first-generation initial product runs

00:58:44 ◼   ► They emphasize first connect this coming quarter the profit margins on Apple watch will be lower than usual

00:58:51 ◼   ► You know the rest of the companies and the rest of the product line and that includes all Apple watches including you know

00:58:56 ◼   ► Let's let's just assume the addition is gonna sell in this relatively small numbers that we assume but even you know

00:59:03 ◼   ► like the the eight nine hundred a thousand dollar stainless steel ones which presumably are gonna have higher margins than the

00:59:10 ◼   ► 350 and $400 sport models

00:59:12 ◼   ► That the margins are gonna be lower. Well, I supply says that

00:59:16 ◼   ► No, it's gonna be the most profitable the highest markup of any Apple product

00:59:21 ◼   ► $81 $81 and 20 cents they say and but the stupid thing is off the top the face of it

00:59:28 ◼   ► I mean they admit that it does not include logistics amortized capital expenses overhead

00:59:32 ◼   ► SG&A, selling general administration expenses, R&D, software, IP licensing, and other variables

00:59:39 ◼   ► through the supply chain, such as electronics manufacturing services provider. So I mean,

00:59:46 ◼   ► our off, you know, it's basically it's the it's like to like those things where you know,

00:59:51 ◼   ► the human body is made up of like $5 of chemicals. It's Yeah, technically, that's true. But you cannot

00:59:58 ◼   ► make a human body if you go up by five dollars a chemical I've seen some

01:00:06 ◼   ► websites over they claim that you can that's not a real human no it's not oh

01:00:15 ◼   ► but there's also oh I see if you read down the story a little bit that eighty

01:00:19 ◼   ► one dollars and twenty cents they also add in they say it the total cost to

01:00:24 ◼   ► produce the watch is $83.70 when the $2.50 per unit manufacturing expense is added in.

01:00:33 ◼   ► So according to them, it costs $2.50 to manufacture an Apple Watch.

01:00:40 ◼   ► So the thing I do that, but they do this all the time. I mean, they do this for practice.

01:00:43 ◼   ► I mean, for many products. Yeah, but it's only I always find them kind of uninteresting.

01:00:52 ◼   ► I but I can't help but think that with the Apple products in particular they they know that there's like a

01:00:57 ◼   ► What's the word a

01:01:02 ◼   ► The public has a sense that Apple is

01:01:06 ◼   ► Ripping us off and and again I've you and I think I've talked about this several times that like they play into it sometimes

01:01:13 ◼   ► Like when they charge $80 for the USB dongle for the new Mac, right? Isn't that 80 bucks?

01:01:19 ◼   ► Like that play because that's actually true. Yes is not an $80 component like there that you know

01:01:25 ◼   ► Oh, and they're there RAM prices and like if you want to upgrade the hard drive on a you know on a new MacBook

01:01:31 ◼   ► Something like that. Yeah, all that all those all that stuff is nowhere near although they've gotten better

01:01:36 ◼   ► I know they've gotten a lot better on the hard drive

01:01:38 ◼   ► They've gotten better, but they've also at the same time they've locked down the fed like you

01:01:41 ◼   ► You know, you can't do it yourself anymore, you know, whereas you used to like I used to you know

01:01:46 ◼   ► be able to get on iMac and say, OK, well, I'm just

01:01:48 ◼   ► going to skimp on the RAM and the hard drive.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And a couple of years from now, I can upgrade the RAM

01:01:53 ◼   ► and upgrade the hard drive.

01:01:53 ◼   ► No, I can't do that anymore.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I've always been a little lazy.

01:01:56 ◼   ► And I've never liked snapping RAM into place,

01:02:00 ◼   ► because it never, ever, ever has felt to me

01:02:02 ◼   ► as though I wasn't breaking it.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Every time I've ever done it, it's

01:02:06 ◼   ► always felt like I'm breaking it.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And I don't do it--

01:02:08 ◼   ► I never did it enough to really get good at it.

01:02:11 ◼   ► I know that there's some people who--

01:02:14 ◼   ► Like if you work in IT, and you work at a company,

01:02:16 ◼   ► and you set up a lot of new PCs, and you always

01:02:19 ◼   ► buy the RAM separate or something like that,

01:02:21 ◼   ► well, then you get good at snapping RAM in and out,

01:02:24 ◼   ► and you know what it feels like.

01:02:25 ◼   ► But every time I bought a new Mac and then would buy the RAM

01:02:29 ◼   ► separately, which I would do because the prices were

01:02:31 ◼   ► so ridiculously better, and you never

01:02:34 ◼   ► got enough RAM in the default configuration from Apple,

01:02:36 ◼   ► I did it.

01:02:37 ◼   ► But it always-- every single time I buy a new Mac,

01:02:40 ◼   ► I think, well, maybe this time I'll let Apple give me the RAM.

01:02:42 ◼   ► And then I'd go there and compare the prices.

01:02:44 ◼   ► I'd be like, whew, no way.

01:02:47 ◼   ► It's gotten better.

01:02:48 ◼   ► But it's not good.

01:02:49 ◼   ► But so they do play into it.

01:02:51 ◼   ► And I remember you and I talking about it.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And we even said, look, it's easy for us

01:02:55 ◼   ► to spend Apple's money and say they should just

01:02:59 ◼   ► give people things.

01:03:01 ◼   ► But it's like when they had the lightning adapter thing.

01:03:03 ◼   ► They should have just had buckets of those lightning

01:03:05 ◼   ► to 30 pin things and just given them to people in the store.

01:03:09 ◼   ► People come in and say, hey, my husband

01:03:11 ◼   ► has the old phone and I've got the new phone and now our cables don't work here. Take a

01:03:15 ◼   ► couple, here have a couple of these. Just something cheap, something cheap, very cheap

01:03:18 ◼   ► for Goodwill. Right. Whereas their answer was, well, give us $29 and we'll sell you

01:03:22 ◼   ► one. Or maybe it was 19, but either way it just, it made people feel like, so people

01:03:27 ◼   ► have that sense and Apple does do certain things that play into it. And I feel like

01:03:31 ◼   ► iSupply's whole thing with these press releases is just catered to hit that perception, you

01:03:38 ◼   ► know that Apple is ripping us off.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And it's like I definitely think that the USB adapter for the MacBook.

01:03:46 ◼   ► It does not cost $80 or even close to it.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Uh, I think there's a pretty stiff markup on that.

01:03:50 ◼   ► Um, I, I do not think that the Apple watch sport costs $83 to make.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And this, yeah, the other thing that bugged me in this, this venture

01:04:05 ◼   ► be piece that you will send me the link to is that this part

01:04:10 ◼   ► perhaps the most interesting component price is the analysis

01:04:13 ◼   ► in this and the analysis is that of the battery 80 cents. IHS

01:04:19 ◼   ► estimate is correct. It seems that Apple spent a laughably

01:04:22 ◼   ► small amount of money on the one component that seems to hinder

01:04:25 ◼   ► the capabilities of the watch the most. Okay, well, that says

01:04:29 ◼   ► nothing about what the other options were. Right? It's just

01:04:32 ◼   ► like assuming that if they had spent more on the battery, then they would have gotten

01:04:36 ◼   ► more battery. Well, there may not be another option. And there certainly may not be another

01:04:41 ◼   ► option in that, that size.

01:04:45 ◼   ► I right. It's just, it appeals to it's, it's just jokingly written, right? Like the, even

01:04:52 ◼   ► the people who bite and then write a story about it are then, you know, the only people

01:04:56 ◼   ► who even buy into it are people who are such facile thinkers that they're subject to like

01:05:02 ◼   ► Analysis like that like who knows you know, and I don't know anything

01:05:05 ◼   ► Maybe maybe it literally is an 80 to 80 cent component to put that battery in there. But there's

01:05:11 ◼   ► it doesn't mean that it's

01:05:13 ◼   ► It's not like there's empty space that they've left

01:05:16 ◼   ► Go

01:05:18 ◼   ► You know, it's not like if they had spent a buck sixty instead that you get two days of battery life

01:05:23 ◼   ► right like

01:05:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I just died out that that was I mean given they're already that you know, they already seem concerned about the battery life

01:05:34 ◼   ► Initially, you know from the from the beginning it was they wouldn't mention it and then they were saying okay, we aren't we know we're

01:05:40 ◼   ► Carefully saying that they're setting this watch up so that'll give you a day's worth of battery

01:05:46 ◼   ► I think if they had an option for a bigger battery, they probably would have gone for it

01:05:53 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely think so or a better battery. So the extra extra 20 cents, right? Like

01:05:58 ◼   ► Hey, I still know I do find it like I

01:06:03 ◼   ► Find it unlikely that it's an 80 cent component because I've bought watch batteries before and like

01:06:10 ◼   ► regular watch batteries the ones that like you put in a Casio or

01:06:15 ◼   ► Like a timex cost a couple bucks, you know

01:06:19 ◼   ► And I know that when you're buying at scale you could get like, you know

01:06:23 ◼   ► It's different than going into the hardware store and buying one watch battery

01:06:28 ◼   ► but that's a watch battery that runs like a

01:06:31 ◼   ► Totally low powered machine and this is a battery that runs like an iOS computer

01:06:37 ◼   ► So I really doubt that it's 80 cents

01:06:40 ◼   ► It just gets me

01:06:42 ◼   ► It gets me is that the I supply thing is like such a pet peeve of mine and I know that I should just let it

01:06:47 ◼   ► Go, but I can't

01:06:49 ◼   ► I'm trying to see if the Taptic Engine is on here someplace.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Touch controller other.

01:07:01 ◼   ► I mean, because there's a, I mean, I'm assuming that that piece is that's not a standard component

01:07:09 ◼   ► you can just pick up, you know, there aren't just like buckets of those.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Obviously there are not buckets of those things lying around someplace because their supply

01:07:18 ◼   ► is constrained because they got a bunch of bad ones. So how do you estimate something

01:07:24 ◼   ► that was probably built pretty much specifically for this watch? I honestly have no idea. I

01:07:31 ◼   ► think that they don't even try. I think that they just don't even. Well, it's like I can't

01:07:35 ◼   ► pick it out here anyway. All right. Oh, capacitive touch. No, that because that's the screen.

01:07:40 ◼   ► I don't know. I and every time I write about this and it's been a hobby horse of mine for years,

01:07:48 ◼   ► And if I write about it or podcast about it, I always get some amount of feedback

01:07:52 ◼   ► Let me try to preemptively cut you off

01:07:54 ◼   ► Hopefully those of you who are doing this of haven't started emailing me already

01:07:58 ◼   ► Like the response is usually from people who like read my site or listen to the show

01:08:02 ◼   ► Nuanced and it's not just knee-jerk. Oh, I know that it only cost $40 make an iPhone in every meal

01:08:09 ◼   ► Like my readers and listeners are smarter than that, but they they always emphasize the well

01:08:14 ◼   ► They're not they're not trying to say that it takes into account

01:08:17 ◼   ► You know the the factory to build these things or assemble it and you know

01:08:23 ◼   ► They're just saying they're literally just saying what the components cost

01:08:26 ◼   ► And they're not trying to you know to put research and development into it and they're not you know

01:08:32 ◼   ► That it is fair, but I think even if you take all that under consideration

01:08:38 ◼   ► It still clearly isn't right

01:08:40 ◼   ► Because I just there's no way to mesh the fact that they're saying that this is the highest margin product Apple makes with

01:08:47 ◼   ► Apple saying on a public

01:08:49 ◼   ► Analyst call that it's going to have a lower that not not the lowest they didn't say that they just said lower than the company's average

01:08:56 ◼   ► So it cannot be true that the low and they're saying that the low it that's the lowest priced Apple watch

01:09:02 ◼   ► Well, it could be I mean, I guess it could be true if you factor in those things that they are

01:09:09 ◼   ► You know obviously not factoring in the logistics and the capital expenses and things like that

01:09:14 ◼   ► I just don't see how this is useful to anybody in any way, right? Right exactly other than people not trying to you know

01:09:21 ◼   ► Muck what's it called? Muck rake, you know and and you know seed this perception and

01:09:27 ◼   ► Nobody ever talks about like the I supply breakdown of the Samsung Galaxy s6. Yeah

01:09:35 ◼   ► I don't see I do not see the tactic thing called out anywhere here

01:09:39 ◼   ► So it must be embedded in one of these categories, which is just to me

01:09:43 ◼   ► I mean for him because it's a brand new thing. You can't write you can't you can't I mean

01:09:48 ◼   ► You're obviously just making an estimate right but then then you obviously don't know

01:09:52 ◼   ► I didn't link to them yet. Hopefully I will before the episode airs but I

01:10:00 ◼   ► Saw two stories and I guess I'll put up minutia notes, but that probably means I won't because every time I say that I

01:10:06 ◼   ► But I did write a note down here

01:10:09 ◼   ► Speaking of components. I saw a thing that and the verge had it Sony reported their results and they're there

01:10:16 ◼   ► You know looks like the company's doing pretty good and they're expecting the year to be really good

01:10:20 ◼   ► But the thing that's holding them back they're losing money on phones and the gist of the verge story is maybe it's time for Sony to

01:10:29 ◼   ► Stop making cell phones because they're losing money on it and that the company you know the things where they're succeeding

01:10:33 ◼   ► Like Playstations doing pretty well

01:10:35 ◼   ► You know and they're just not you know time to give up the ghost on phones

01:10:42 ◼   ► And I thought it was interesting because the other story I saw was that part of their results is that they are making

01:10:50 ◼   ► Sony's making like 20 bucks a unit on iPhone 6 and the galaxy s6 because both of them are using Sony cameras

01:10:58 ◼   ► And I'm not quite sure if it's the whole thing, the lens and the center.

01:11:04 ◼   ► But some part of these phones that have these super great high-end camera phones are all

01:11:11 ◼   ► using Sony optics.

01:11:13 ◼   ► And I thought that was really, really interesting.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And to me, it's Sony at its best.

01:11:19 ◼   ► And I've always been like a fan of Sony.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And I know Steve Jobs was, and I know a lot of Apple people are, just because to me, Sony

01:11:25 ◼   ► Sony's one of those companies that appeals in the same way that Apple does where they

01:11:28 ◼   ► sweat the details and stuff like that.

01:11:32 ◼   ► And I think it's so interesting because I saw also that Canon had some really bad results,

01:11:37 ◼   ► like quarterly results, you know, because camera sales are so down.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And I thought, you know, it's really interesting because Sony, even though they make their

01:11:43 ◼   ► own phones, was interested in making camera parts for would-be competitors like Apple

01:11:53 ◼   ► and Samsung.

01:11:54 ◼   ► It's canon, which doesn't make phones, doesn't have any kind of business like that.

01:12:01 ◼   ► And I know that maybe that's not really a sign of Sony having the, you know, a bill

01:12:10 ◼   ► – Sony executives having the foresight to be like that.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Maybe it's just a sign of how divided Sony is as a conglomerate, that maybe the people

01:12:19 ◼   ► who make the phones at Sony are pissed that the imaging side of – are making them for

01:12:23 ◼   ► the phone. But either way, it's good for the company or at some point, you know, you know,

01:12:29 ◼   ► the buck stops here and and Sony as a company is doing something pretty smart to stay relevant

01:12:34 ◼   ► in a world where people aren't buying Sony phones. And people are using the phones they

01:12:41 ◼   ► are buying from Samsung and Apple to take their pictures that they're getting a piece

01:12:45 ◼   ► of it. Yeah.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I don't really remember them making cameras.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Well, they do now though.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Or do they have a separate brand name?

01:12:55 ◼   ► They bought Minolta.

01:12:56 ◼   ► So Minolta doesn't exist anymore.

01:13:00 ◼   ► A couple of years ago, they bought Minolta.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And they actually make-- the Sony cameras are actually excellent.

01:13:07 ◼   ► Some of the really cutting edge stuff.

01:13:09 ◼   ► They make good SLRs.

01:13:12 ◼   ► And they're mirrorless ones.

01:13:14 ◼   ► new ones that are like basically like in layman's terms a really good camera that

01:13:19 ◼   ► doesn't work anything like an SLR doesn't have any kind of clacking mirror

01:13:23 ◼   ► so it's silent some of theirs are just amazing really really groundbreaking

01:13:28 ◼   ► stuff okay I can't think of the last Sony product but I owned frankly it's

01:13:37 ◼   ► it's so funny because you know after owning them throughout the 80s and you

01:13:41 ◼   ► It's well into the 90s.

01:13:44 ◼   ► It's so funny because I feel like one

01:13:46 ◼   ► of those anachronisms that it's getting ready to pop

01:13:49 ◼   ► are mirrored SLR cameras, digital SLRs,

01:13:56 ◼   ► like in the way that smoking in a restaurant,

01:13:58 ◼   ► you just can't even imagine anymore.

01:14:00 ◼   ► It stands out to me.

01:14:01 ◼   ► You see it, the only people who really use them anymore--

01:14:04 ◼   ► I shouldn't say only, but where I really notice it is news

01:14:07 ◼   ► media, like super professional, high-end news media.

01:14:10 ◼   ► So like President Obama comes out in a rose garden to talk about, you know, the news of

01:14:16 ◼   ► the day.

01:14:17 ◼   ► What do you hear?

01:14:18 ◼   ► You hear this like machine gun fire of photos.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And you never heard it in the old days pre-digital because there was no point when you were only

01:14:28 ◼   ► could put 36 images on a roll of film of shooting all 36 images in a second, right?

01:14:35 ◼   ► Like you know, the, you know, the old way of shooting.

01:14:39 ◼   ► I'm sure they shot a lot of film.

01:14:41 ◼   ► I'm sure that like the, you know,

01:14:42 ◼   ► the newspaper reporters for the major newspapers,

01:14:45 ◼   ► the photographers, I'm sure they shot,

01:14:47 ◼   ► not the reporters, the photographers shot a lot of images

01:14:50 ◼   ► compared to like what a consumer would do,

01:14:52 ◼   ► but they wouldn't just hold the button down

01:14:53 ◼   ► and let it shoot as fast as it could.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Whereas now they do, they just shoot and shoot

01:14:57 ◼   ► and shoot and shoot to get whatever image they want.

01:14:59 ◼   ► - Just that one, yeah, that one special image.

01:15:01 ◼   ► - The noise really started to bother me

01:15:04 ◼   ► because like nobody else in the world uses these cameras

01:15:07 ◼   ► that make noise anymore.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Like you go to school events,

01:15:09 ◼   ► don't hear people's cameras clicking anymore. Everybody's cameras are drop dead silent.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Do you know where else I noticed it? I noticed it when I watched that weird baseball game yesterday.

01:15:19 ◼   ► Oh yeah, the Orioles game?

01:15:22 ◼   ► Yeah. So anybody who didn't see me linked to it on Daring Fireball,

01:15:25 ◼   ► the city of Baltimore is having a lot of protests over the police treatment

01:15:32 ◼   ► of the citizens of Baltimore. Is that a good summary?

01:15:36 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:37 ◼   ► So protests in the streets, the protests got a little ugly over the weekend. And there was a

01:15:43 ◼   ► baseball game in Baltimore where the fans had a hard time getting out of the stadium because

01:15:48 ◼   ► the fans exiting the ballpark were right there where the protests were. And it was nighttime

01:15:52 ◼   ► and it was a little scary. And- Well, the police had also, I don't know if they had, if this was

01:15:58 ◼   ► going on at the same time as that, but they had also, they several times they shut down the public

01:16:02 ◼   ► transportation. Hmm. Yeah, I saw that too, which is-

01:16:05 ◼   ► So, yeah, if you're leaving a ballgame and there's no public transportation,

01:16:10 ◼   ► might be a little difficult to get around.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Yeah, well, in Philly, it would be that. I mean, there's thousands and thousands of people who

01:16:16 ◼   ► come to the game in their cars in Philly, but I, some huge proportion of every game

01:16:22 ◼   ► is taking the subway home. If they shut down the subway, it would be a nightmare.

01:16:26 ◼   ► And Camden Yards is probably better located in Philly. We keep our ballparks way down

01:16:32 ◼   ► at the end of the city, like everybody has to go somewhere. Like, you know, I don't know, it would

01:16:37 ◼   ► be if public transportation had to be shut down for whatever reason, like a flood or a protest

01:16:44 ◼   ► or a strike, even if it was just like a, you know, a public transportation worker strike,

01:16:49 ◼   ► I could see, I don't know, maybe they wouldn't, if they had enough notice, they wouldn't cancel

01:16:53 ◼   ► the game, but I could see how they might have to. So I could see that. Anyway, whether it's

01:16:59 ◼   ► well-intentioned or not. They played a professional baseball game yesterday

01:17:03 ◼   ► without the public in the stadium. So there was nobody there except for the team and a couple of

01:17:09 ◼   ► employees. And I guess scouts from other teams were allowed to show up. So there was an empty

01:17:14 ◼   ► a ballpark that fits 50 some 51,000 people had nobody in it. And I watched the game for an

01:17:22 ◼   ► inning or two just to see how weird it was. And it was super weird. And you could hear this

01:17:26 ◼   ► is.

01:17:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:28 ◼   ► That's gotta be it.

01:17:34 ◼   ► I can't imagine what it's like playing that game.

01:17:36 ◼   ► I can't either.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I mean, not only is there you're losing the enthusiasm of the crowd, but then you have

01:17:45 ◼   ► all these noises that you've never heard before.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I never really paid attention to anyway, right?

01:17:51 ◼   ► Like it'd be, you know, I don't know.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Like you're-- it must have-- I don't know.

01:17:57 ◼   ► I haven't seen enough.

01:17:58 ◼   ► I saw a lot of people writing about how weird it was.

01:18:00 ◼   ► But I didn't see a lot of quotes from the players talking

01:18:02 ◼   ► about whether it was tough to keep their concentrate--

01:18:05 ◼   ► like, did it feel real?

01:18:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:18:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I would think that it wouldn't.

01:18:10 ◼   ► But it seems like a practice.

01:18:12 ◼   ► But I just remember thinking, in a regular stadium,

01:18:15 ◼   ► even if you're not a popular team--

01:18:17 ◼   ► but the Baltimore Orioles are pretty popular.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I usually have a really good crowd, great fans.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Doesn't matter what brand camera you have,

01:18:25 ◼   ► if you're a professional photographer,

01:18:27 ◼   ► your camera isn't making noise that bothers people.

01:18:30 ◼   ► But in that game, it definitely was.

01:18:32 ◼   ► And I think if you're a professional photographer

01:18:35 ◼   ► and if you're a sports photographer,

01:18:36 ◼   ► you've kind of got to be an extrovert to some degree,

01:18:40 ◼   ► where you're walking around with this big camera

01:18:42 ◼   ► and a big obtrusive lens, and you're taking people's pictures,

01:18:45 ◼   ► and you're used to asking their name so you can get their name

01:18:49 ◼   ► or whatever and the rights to use the image.

01:18:51 ◼   ► You know, and I'm a little bit more of an introvert.

01:18:53 ◼   ► I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna be noticed.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I would have, it would have been unbearable to me

01:18:59 ◼   ► to be like behind home plate, clacking my camera,

01:19:02 ◼   ► knowing that like the pitcher and hitter

01:19:04 ◼   ► could hear you. - The pitcher can hear you.

01:19:05 ◼   ► - It would have driven me nuts.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And it didn't matter.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And it's like, that's just baseball, right?

01:19:10 ◼   ► Because something bad is going to happen for one of them.

01:19:12 ◼   ► You know, either the guy's gonna make an out

01:19:14 ◼   ► and it's bad for the hitter or the guy is-

01:19:16 ◼   ► - So someone can blame you.

01:19:18 ◼   ► But no matter what happened in every at bat,

01:19:19 ◼   ► I would be like, oh, that was me, right?

01:19:21 ◼   ► Like I made the guy throw a bad pitch,

01:19:25 ◼   ► or I made the guy strike out.

01:19:27 ◼   ► I would have, I wouldn't have been able to stand it.

01:19:32 ◼   ► And it's getting to a point where there's no technical

01:19:34 ◼   ► reason why these guys couldn't use mirrorless cameras,

01:19:37 ◼   ► that you just push the button like your iPhone

01:19:39 ◼   ► and it doesn't make a noise.

01:19:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:19:42 ◼   ► We actually had film developed recently for the first time

01:19:47 ◼   ► 15 years probably something you know 12 years because uh one of

01:19:53 ◼   ► the things that they suggested taking to this fifth grade camp

01:19:55 ◼   ► that I went with my son to is uh was waterproof cameras. Um

01:20:02 ◼   ► so, Karen bought a couple of disposable waterproof cameras

01:20:06 ◼   ► which are still, you know, film based. So, you know, and then,

01:20:12 ◼   ► and it's funny getting pictures back and particularly pictures

01:20:15 ◼   ► pictures that were taken by an 11 year old and the results that you get.

01:20:20 ◼   ► There's a couple of good there's a couple of good ones, but, you know,

01:20:22 ◼   ► you shot two rolls of film and a lot of them are just like, you know,

01:20:25 ◼   ► up in the air,

01:20:27 ◼   ► the ground.

01:20:29 ◼   ► There's a tree.

01:20:31 ◼   ► I've said this for did your family take a lot of photos growing up?

01:20:34 ◼   ► No, I wouldn't.

01:20:36 ◼   ► No, I wouldn't say a lot.

01:20:37 ◼   ► I mean, we took we took a fair number, but nobody was.

01:20:40 ◼   ► I got into I got into cameras in junior high school.

01:20:45 ◼   ► I wish that was probably I wish I had I don't know why I didn't I honest to God don't know why I didn't I even

01:20:51 ◼   ► Got super involved at the student newspaper at Drexel in the 90s and never got involved in photography

01:20:57 ◼   ► And I have no idea why I didn't because I then I would have had a dark room

01:21:00 ◼   ► I would have had my own dark room and I could I could have blown that papers funds on development and for film

01:21:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I did that as I did we I mean I took a class in junior high school for

01:21:14 ◼   ► Forget I think it was over the sun. It was a summer thing and

01:21:16 ◼   ► Yeah, we did so we did develop we developed black and white

01:21:19 ◼   ► I got it was pretty cool. I shot film then for a couple year

01:21:23 ◼   ► I got it

01:21:23 ◼   ► I did get my first like SLR and I did

01:21:25 ◼   ► Start getting into photography right after college and I immediately thought why the hell didn't I do this when I was at student newspaper?

01:21:31 ◼   ► They needed me

01:21:33 ◼   ► we always always were desperate in need of

01:21:36 ◼   ► decent photographs

01:21:39 ◼   ► I'm not I'm not any good though. I mean I just I don't have a very good eye

01:21:43 ◼   ► And like my wife has just as a much better eyes

01:21:46 ◼   ► She she can take better pictures than I can but you know

01:21:49 ◼   ► I think I learned I learned a lot and it was kind of was cool to be able to do that at the time

01:21:52 ◼   ► Boy, I missed my Pentax key 1000 though. Oh

01:21:55 ◼   ► What was that? That was a sweet that was a fully manual camera. Yeah

01:22:00 ◼   ► What was the model name got stolen Pentax K 1000? Oh, I've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it got stolen

01:22:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and for a long time, those were highly coveted because they were used a lot in photography

01:22:15 ◼   ► classes because they were fully manual.

01:22:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And that thing was a brick too.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I mean, it was built like a brick shit house.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Pentax always had a...

01:22:24 ◼   ► Maybe they still have.

01:22:25 ◼   ► I shouldn't talk about them in the past tense, but although I can't remember the last time

01:22:27 ◼   ► I heard of somebody buying a Pentax, but I remember Pentax always had a good reputation

01:22:31 ◼   ► for that the controls were nice.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Like a photographer's photographer.

01:22:36 ◼   ► you'd want. Like if you if you wanted to change the aperture,

01:22:40 ◼   ► you'd wanna do it this way and that's how they did it and then

01:22:43 ◼   ► you know the things that you turned out a good feel and

01:22:45 ◼   ► stuff like that. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I still have that when I

01:22:48 ◼   ► got his replacement, which was an ME with a couple of lenses.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Just sitting on a shelf. Someplace. My family was not a

01:22:55 ◼   ► photography family, which is probably why I just didn't get

01:22:57 ◼   ► the interest in it like we and and we joke like Amy's family

01:23:00 ◼   ► was sort of the same way and we joke and it's really no

01:23:03 ◼   ► exaggeration that there are rolls of film from like the early 80s that that's under undeveloped.

01:23:10 ◼   ► No, but that the, you know, like 24 exposures and they start at the Jersey Shore on a summer

01:23:17 ◼   ► vacation and then they end with me and my sister opening Christmas presents.

01:23:20 ◼   ► You know, it was like they would, we would take the camera on vacation and then, you know,

01:23:29 ◼   ► shoot a couple photos at the beach. But we don't want to waste the whole roll.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And then next thing you know, it's Christmas morning and Santa came and it's like, "Hey,

01:23:37 ◼   ► get the camera." Someplace I have a roll of film that's undeveloped. I think it's in my dresser or

01:23:45 ◼   ► something like that. But you used to, because the films would come in different speeds and

01:23:48 ◼   ► then sometimes they would shoot black and white in color. And so you would sometimes take out

01:23:56 ◼   ► a roll of film that was not finished, roll it back up into the

01:23:59 ◼   ► end of the thing without rolling it in all the way.

01:24:02 ◼   ► Remember, right on it, how many pictures you had taken.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And then you you could put it back in later and go past that

01:24:09 ◼   ► to to use up the rest of the role.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And so I have one of those that's it's I'm sure it's been lying around.

01:24:16 ◼   ► I think it I think it had even been lying around like long before

01:24:20 ◼   ► I switched to digital.

01:24:22 ◼   ► So it's probably from like the early 90s or something like that. I have no idea what's on it.

01:24:27 ◼   ► I'm not, it's still not developed. I should probably do it before all development goes away

01:24:32 ◼   ► completely. It was, it was the worst even. And when I got into shooting film it, you know, I wasn't,

01:24:38 ◼   ► you know, me, water, money runs through my hands like water. I mean, I was never afraid to, you

01:24:43 ◼   ► know, if the day's event that I wanted a photograph, I shot 20 exposures. I didn't give

01:24:49 ◼   ► too much of a care about, well, let's take four pictures of--

01:24:53 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:24:55 ◼   ► But you did have that sense, though,

01:24:57 ◼   ► that every time you pressed the shutter,

01:24:58 ◼   ► you were spending like $50.

01:24:59 ◼   ► You were spending money.

01:25:00 ◼   ► You were spending some kind of money, you know, like $0.25,

01:25:03 ◼   ► $0.25, $0.25.

01:25:04 ◼   ► And that's even if you're just getting them developed at, like,

01:25:06 ◼   ► the drugstore or whatever.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And you get them back into their crap, and you just be furious.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:11 ◼   ► And I remember I used to shoot Kodak--

01:25:14 ◼   ► I loved Kodak Tri-X. And I wasn't--

01:25:17 ◼   ► Again, I was super, super casually into film photography.

01:25:24 ◼   ► I mean, and there's so many people

01:25:25 ◼   ► who know way, way more about black and white film than me.

01:25:27 ◼   ► But Tri-X to me was neat because it was super friendly

01:25:31 ◼   ► to a not so good photographer.

01:25:32 ◼   ► It had a wide range.

01:25:33 ◼   ► It was ISO 400, so you could use it in pretty low light.

01:25:37 ◼   ► And it just tended to have this high contrast black and white

01:25:40 ◼   ► look that I really, really liked.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And it's so funny to me in the years since I think about it,

01:25:46 ◼   ► too, where I would just pop Tri-X into my camera

01:25:49 ◼   ► and go out and shoot photos.

01:25:51 ◼   ► And again, I don't really have a great eye.

01:25:53 ◼   ► I don't think there's any chance that I was ever

01:25:55 ◼   ► going to be a professional photographer in any sense.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I'm lucky if I got--

01:25:58 ◼   ► out of 24, if I got two or three interesting shots.

01:26:02 ◼   ► And never was really good at looking at the real world

01:26:05 ◼   ► around me in color and trying to figure out

01:26:06 ◼   ► what would look good in high contrast black and white.

01:26:09 ◼   ► But then you just take it to the place,

01:26:11 ◼   ► and then they give you your 24 things,

01:26:12 ◼   ► and it'd be like, man, these photos look so cool.

01:26:16 ◼   ► And people's faces, it would be like the right mix

01:26:20 ◼   ► of light and dark.

01:26:23 ◼   ► And then knowing in hindsight, when you take a color photograph

01:26:26 ◼   ► and go into Photoshop or anything,

01:26:27 ◼   ► how tricky it is to make a really cool high contrast

01:26:30 ◼   ► black and white mix.

01:26:32 ◼   ► Whereas the film, it just happened.

01:26:33 ◼   ► It just automatic.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:39 ◼   ► You're a black and white man, or did you shoot color?

01:26:42 ◼   ► I was.

01:26:43 ◼   ► I was black and white for a long time.

01:26:44 ◼   ► I mean, I mostly, well, for a long period,

01:26:47 ◼   ► I was shooting just black and white.

01:26:50 ◼   ► So from that point where I took that class

01:26:52 ◼   ► in junior high school through, probably through college,

01:26:56 ◼   ► I think I shot all in black and white.

01:26:57 ◼   ► And then when I went to Japan,

01:26:59 ◼   ► so I guess like in my junior year in college,

01:27:00 ◼   ► when I went to Japan,

01:27:01 ◼   ► I wanted to shoot in color while I was there.

01:27:06 ◼   ► So that's probably about when I switched.

01:27:09 ◼   ► But then I say, you know, on and off,

01:27:10 ◼   ► I would still shoot black and white.

01:27:13 ◼   ► - All right, let me take a break.

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01:29:29 ◼   ► to listen to and there's they always want the host of the show to pick a book which

01:29:34 ◼   ► I was gonna I was gonna ask I was gonna ask but this time it's such good timing I is no

01:29:38 ◼   ► No brainer, totally easy, no brainer, Becoming Steve Jobs, The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart

01:29:44 ◼   ► into a Visionary Leader.

01:29:45 ◼   ► That's the book that came out a few weeks ago, I think in March by Brent Schlender and

01:29:51 ◼   ► Rick Tedzelli.

01:29:54 ◼   ► And I've been writing about it on Daring Fireball a few times.

01:29:56 ◼   ► I interviewed those guys on stage in New York to talk about it last month.

01:30:02 ◼   ► I just think it's not a perfect book.

01:30:04 ◼   ► It is not.

01:30:05 ◼   ► And I know like Jason Snow and a few other people have brought up some of the things

01:30:08 ◼   ► And some of the things are just they could have been caught with like a technical editor

01:30:11 ◼   ► Because it's just stupid stuff like getting the name of certain Mac's wrong or certain technical details

01:30:16 ◼   ► Like because these guys are their business writers and they're writing about Apple as a business and they're not writing about it from the get

01:30:22 ◼   ► All the details right and I know

01:30:24 ◼   ► People like me it's annoying when you see a stupid technical error in there

01:30:27 ◼   ► I

01:30:29 ◼   ► Get annoyed when people don't you know capitalize Macworld right and I think that they capitalize macro

01:30:33 ◼   ► Yeah, they camel cased it.

01:30:35 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:37 ◼   ► I know.

01:30:38 ◼   ► I know.

01:30:38 ◼   ► But seriously, the book is like 99% great.

01:30:41 ◼   ► And it has some really, really good original stuff

01:30:45 ◼   ► that nobody else has ever had.

01:30:47 ◼   ► It has a really neat personal touch.

01:30:49 ◼   ► And it has a long-term view on Jobs's business life.

01:30:54 ◼   ► Because Brent Schlander had been writing about him

01:30:57 ◼   ► and talking about him and part of his life

01:30:59 ◼   ► and visit him in his home every couple of years for decades.

01:31:05 ◼   ► It's tremendous.

01:31:06 ◼   ► I think this is great, personally.

01:31:08 ◼   ► It's an unabridged audio book.

01:31:10 ◼   ► It's 16 hours, 21 minutes, so you're not

01:31:12 ◼   ► missing a damn thing.

01:31:13 ◼   ► So if you haven't read that book yet and you love books,

01:31:16 ◼   ► go there.

01:31:16 ◼   ► They've got it.

01:31:17 ◼   ► You could do this as your free with 30 day trial membership

01:31:22 ◼   ► book, Becoming Steve Jobs by Brent Schlender and Rick

01:31:26 ◼   ► Titzley.

01:31:27 ◼   ► So my thanks to Audible.

01:31:28 ◼   ► And again, the URL is audiblepodcast.com/thetalkshow.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I see on their homepage, on the main page, they have The Martian, which is a really good

01:31:40 ◼   ► book that I just finished reading with my son.

01:31:43 ◼   ► And he's, you know, he likes, he's not crazy about reading novels for some reason.

01:31:49 ◼   ► He really likes reading nonfiction and tends to do that.

01:31:53 ◼   ► So we were trying to get him into novels.

01:31:55 ◼   ► The way I got him into this was I told him there was a lot of swearing in it.

01:31:58 ◼   ► And there is there's a lot there's a fair amount of swearing in it and but it's very funny and there's no there's no

01:32:05 ◼   ► bad violence there's no

01:32:08 ◼   ► Crazy sexual situations in it. It's there's a lot of hard science fiction and

01:32:13 ◼   ► Some some swearing that he found quite amusing. So we plowed through that together and he really enjoyed that

01:32:20 ◼   ► Ah, so I think it's a really good book hard science fiction about a manned mission to Mars. Yes

01:32:25 ◼   ► Oh, it's got get stuck in it's becoming a movie. I think coming out in the fall. I'm not mistaken with Matt Damon

01:32:31 ◼   ► There you go. I saw Matt the Martian. I saw him stranded on a planet already

01:32:36 ◼   ► Well, I guess he's getting typecast. Yeah

01:32:40 ◼   ► He's a much nicer guy in this one

01:32:46 ◼   ► They've got the Game of Thrones stuff all that so anyway, thanks to audible. Yeah, I honestly got you could consume your entire life

01:32:52 ◼   ► listening to audible books

01:32:54 ◼   ► Sorry, what else is going on? What else we got?

01:32:56 ◼   ► We talked about earnings. What was the other?

01:32:59 ◼   ► What was the other did we do both the links that you sent me oh

01:33:03 ◼   ► That it goes into earnings where it's over the eye and the iPad so Apple reported earnings and

01:33:11 ◼   ► the iPhone is

01:33:14 ◼   ► gazinga, it's going nuts.

01:33:16 ◼   ► They're like the most, seriously, it's,

01:33:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's insane.

01:33:19 ◼   ► - How often can you say it, but it's seriously,

01:33:21 ◼   ► it's probably the single most popular

01:33:24 ◼   ► and successful product in the history

01:33:27 ◼   ► of like modern manufacturing.

01:33:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and some people kind of use that as a club

01:33:33 ◼   ► because they say that Apple's solely an iPhone company now

01:33:37 ◼   ► and that's their big problem because boy,

01:33:39 ◼   ► if something happens to the iPhone,

01:33:40 ◼   ► like something is just gonna happen to the iPhone,

01:33:43 ◼   ► then they'll be in big trouble.

01:33:44 ◼   ► So look out.

01:33:46 ◼   ► Well, I do-- and there was a New York Times--

01:33:49 ◼   ► sorry, I don't even want to put it in the show notes,

01:33:51 ◼   ► because it was so stupid.

01:33:52 ◼   ► It was like, can Apple stay on top forever?

01:33:55 ◼   ► Apple can't stay on top forever.

01:33:57 ◼   ► Just ask IBM.

01:33:58 ◼   ► And it was a stupid, stupid article,

01:34:00 ◼   ► because it didn't even say--

01:34:02 ◼   ► the whole article could have been replaced with what goes up,

01:34:05 ◼   ► must come down.

01:34:06 ◼   ► And I don't know that there's anybody

01:34:07 ◼   ► who's arguing that Apple will remain the biggest

01:34:10 ◼   ► company forever because I mean it's you know the heat death of the universe is

01:34:15 ◼   ► imminent right I mean something's gonna happen eventually like tell me give me

01:34:20 ◼   ► something it was like a lot of people pointed to me on Twitter and I can't

01:34:24 ◼   ► wait for the claim chowder on this but it's actually claimed chowder proof

01:34:26 ◼   ► because he didn't say anything that could ever be disproven he didn't say

01:34:29 ◼   ► five years from some day yeah five years from now Apple will not be the biggest

01:34:32 ◼   ► company or ten years like trip choudhury 60 days

01:34:39 ◼   ► That's true.

01:34:41 ◼   ► You know, that's a good point, though.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Let's hear it for Trip Choudry.

01:34:45 ◼   ► At least Trip Choudry--

01:34:46 ◼   ► Putting a line in the sand.

01:34:48 ◼   ► Right.

01:34:49 ◼   ► His Trip Choudry's thing was a year ago that Apple had to--

01:34:54 ◼   ► well, he has a lot of them, actually.

01:34:56 ◼   ► But I think the one that you're thinking of--

01:34:58 ◼   ► They needed to come out with a bigger phone within 60 days

01:35:00 ◼   ► or face irrelevancy.

01:35:02 ◼   ► Yes, they would go into permanent decline.

01:35:04 ◼   ► And they missed his 60-day period

01:35:07 ◼   ► by at least five or six months.

01:35:09 ◼   ► - And still seem to be doing okay.

01:35:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:35:14 ◼   ► But at least, again, give it to him.

01:35:16 ◼   ► He was incredibly wrong, terribly sensationalist,

01:35:19 ◼   ► shamelessly making a statement, in my opinion,

01:35:23 ◼   ► that he probably, he either has brain damage

01:35:26 ◼   ► or a substance problem, or he knew exactly what he was

01:35:31 ◼   ► saying and just knew that it would get quoted.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Which is my theory, is that a lot of these guys like him

01:35:36 ◼   ► and Rob Enderle, and everybody always asks me,

01:35:38 ◼   ► what is with these guys?

01:35:40 ◼   ► My answer is, I think the answer is, what they're good at,

01:35:42 ◼   ► is they're good at getting their name out there

01:35:44 ◼   ► and being quoted.

01:35:46 ◼   ► And then that leads to consulting work,

01:35:48 ◼   ► because people say, Rob Enderle, I've seen you on TV,

01:35:51 ◼   ► and I've seen you quoted in The New York Times.

01:35:53 ◼   ► You must be smart.

01:35:54 ◼   ► I will hire you.

01:35:55 ◼   ► And I think they ever in for a big surprise.

01:35:57 ◼   ► Never, yeah.

01:35:59 ◼   ► You know, I met him.

01:36:01 ◼   ► You met Enderle?

01:36:02 ◼   ► Yeah, almost.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Well, I--

01:36:04 ◼   ► Wait.

01:36:06 ◼   ► You met him almost?

01:36:07 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I chickened out.

01:36:08 ◼   ► OK.

01:36:10 ◼   ► I don't think I could do it either.

01:36:12 ◼   ► When I was in San Francisco-- I have not told this story.

01:36:14 ◼   ► It's a good story.

01:36:15 ◼   ► When I was in San Francisco last September for the iPhone event--

01:36:22 ◼   ► I believe it was the iPhone.

01:36:23 ◼   ► Might have been the iPad in October, but it was iPhone.

01:36:27 ◼   ► The next day, T-Mobile had an event right there

01:36:32 ◼   ► in San Francisco, right there on Market Street.

01:36:34 ◼   ► I think it's you and I have been there.

01:36:36 ◼   ► It's that the bar that looks like an old, it's supposed to be like an old newspaper.

01:36:41 ◼   ► You know, like five late edition or something like that early edition.

01:36:45 ◼   ► Oh, that sounds familiar.

01:36:47 ◼   ► I can't picture.

01:36:48 ◼   ► I can't picture it.

01:36:49 ◼   ► Let me see if there's a bar in San Francisco called early edition or maybe there was because

01:36:54 ◼   ► they bars in San Francisco tend to have this.

01:36:57 ◼   ► But they rented the whole place out early edition, local edition, local edition.

01:37:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:03 ◼   ► So anybody who's interested knows it's 691 Market Street.

01:37:08 ◼   ► So T-Mobile rented out Local Edition.

01:37:11 ◼   ► It's a pretty big bar for a cocktail bar.

01:37:14 ◼   ► And John Laguerre-- what's his last-- how do you say his name?

01:37:17 ◼   ► Legerre.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Legerre.

01:37:19 ◼   ► I did not know what that was.

01:37:20 ◼   ► You know, it was announcing, I think, I don't know,

01:37:22 ◼   ► like their new unlimited plan or something like that.

01:37:23 ◼   ► And they invited me.

01:37:24 ◼   ► And I never would have gone in 1,000 years,

01:37:26 ◼   ► except for the fact that I was already in San Francisco

01:37:28 ◼   ► and I didn't have to change any of my travel plans.

01:37:30 ◼   ► So I thought, screw it.

01:37:31 ◼   ► Why don't I act like a real, somebody who covers stuff like this and I'll go.

01:37:36 ◼   ► I had a fun time.

01:37:38 ◼   ► But while I was standing in line with Nuke Gwynn, I realized that Rob Enderle was right

01:37:41 ◼   ► behind me in line.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Like he was the person behind me.

01:37:43 ◼   ► I was talking to, I forget who I was talking to from The Verge.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Somebody from The Verge was right in front of me.

01:37:53 ◼   ► Dieter Bohn was right in front of me.

01:37:55 ◼   ► And I was talking to him.

01:37:56 ◼   ► We were talking about the phone, the iPhone.

01:37:58 ◼   ► And I realized Rob Enderle was right behind me.

01:38:00 ◼   ► I really thought about introducing myself because I think I could pull it off

01:38:03 ◼   ► But my worry was that maybe he has no idea who I am

01:38:07 ◼   ► and I didn't know how to I didn't know how to do in it that it wasn't like I got real shy and and

01:38:13 ◼   ► Just totally chickened out and I got willing to face up for the number of times. I have called him a jackass

01:38:19 ◼   ► But it would I couldn't figure out a way to do it with

01:38:26 ◼   ► Playing both sides of the table of it's okay, right? Because you know, I mean like I'm always so for example

01:38:32 ◼   ► I always run into this when I go into an Apple retail store is

01:38:35 ◼   ► A lot of times I go in and the people who help me when they realize who I am

01:38:40 ◼   ► They they acknowledge it and like oh, I I love your site

01:38:44 ◼   ► Like they're obviously trained in the Apple stores and it's a funny thing. Like I'm not a celebrity but in an Apple store, I'm a celebrity

01:38:50 ◼   ► They're trained that if you recognize somebody don't make a deal out of it, you know

01:38:56 ◼   ► So like if a true like the mayor comes in they're supposed to treat the mayor like a regular customer

01:38:59 ◼   ► So they it's never uncomfortable, you know

01:39:02 ◼   ► But other times it is clear that the person who's checking me out at the Apple Store has no idea who I am

01:39:07 ◼   ► Which is totally cool. I don't care. I don't want to be right. It's better

01:39:11 ◼   ► But sometimes it comes up like I

01:39:17 ◼   ► I bought

01:39:21 ◼   ► Jonas's

01:39:22 ◼   ► Because again, I'm a procrastinator

01:39:25 ◼   ► Instead of ordering it online. I bought Jonas's

01:39:27 ◼   ► MacBook Air on in the retail store and

01:39:32 ◼   ► Because I was getting close to Christmas I couldn't trust the shipping so I went in to buy it and the guy I was like

01:39:42 ◼   ► this is what I want to buy I want to buy this and

01:39:44 ◼   ► Actually, it's a MacBook Pro. I should have corrected because he wants to play Minecraft

01:39:48 ◼   ► So anyway, I'm gonna buy MacBook Pro and I knew exactly what I wanted

01:39:52 ◼   ► And I knew they had it and I said this went on by and the guy started giving me well, what do you do?

01:39:56 ◼   ► What do you you know? What are you gonna use it for?

01:39:58 ◼   ► And I didn't want to tell him what I did just just just give me the black though because it was I

01:40:05 ◼   ► It's like well, I write a site where about Apple

01:40:09 ◼   ► It just seemed to me like, you know

01:40:11 ◼   ► If I said that then it would be like I'm implying you're supposed to know who I am

01:40:14 ◼   ► And I don't think you're supposed to know who I am

01:40:16 ◼   ► but anyway

01:40:17 ◼   ► I couldn't figure out how to do it with enderlay and

01:40:18 ◼   ► Play both sides of the street where it would be like, oh we finally meet

01:40:22 ◼   ► Yeah, right, right, right. Maybe I'll use not yet. He's not expecting to write to have that moment

01:40:28 ◼   ► Yeah, right, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be are you I wouldn't be surprised if he has no idea

01:40:32 ◼   ► Never heard of me never heard of anything because I think he's you know

01:40:34 ◼   ► He's so mono

01:40:35 ◼   ► maniac maniacally focused on getting quoted by like the New York Times and getting on CNN and

01:40:40 ◼   ► Stuff like that that you know, my little thing doesn't he also just lives he lives in a completely different world. Yes, exactly

01:40:46 ◼   ► He lives in a he lives in the PC world, so he's not you know he yeah, he probably does not keep up on

01:40:52 ◼   ► on our movements right like for example also have never met him but

01:40:59 ◼   ► What's his name Windows guy oh

01:41:05 ◼   ► Yeah, throughout yeah, throughout Paul throughout never met almost met him last year when I was out at Microsoft's build conference

01:41:16 ◼   ► I was at the same after party and I thought about going over, but it was real crowded

01:41:21 ◼   ► and he was talking to somebody.

01:41:23 ◼   ► I wouldn't hesitate to introduce myself to him.

01:41:26 ◼   ► And I've linked to him sometimes complimentary.

01:41:28 ◼   ► Sometimes I've agreed with him, but a lot of times over the years I've linked to him

01:41:31 ◼   ► in disagreement, let's say.

01:41:35 ◼   ► But I wouldn't hesitate to introduce myself to him, but I know that he knows who I am.

01:41:38 ◼   ► So at least the context is there.

01:41:41 ◼   ► least to me, you know, I don't think that every post that he makes shows this, but he at least

01:41:49 ◼   ► is a guy who I know is smart. Yes. Yeah, I totally agree. Whereas with Enderle, I didn't know. I know

01:41:54 ◼   ► generally, you know, like, I don't know what that guy's deal is.

01:41:57 ◼   ► I kind of regret it, though, in hindsight, I regret that I didn't figure I think the way to

01:42:02 ◼   ► play it in hindsight would have been to just overemphasize the humble part and just assume

01:42:07 ◼   ► that he has no idea and say, "Hey, my name's John Gruber. I write a site where I write about

01:42:11 ◼   ► technology." But then, why am I introducing me to you? That's the thing I couldn't get over is,

01:42:18 ◼   ► if I play it like that, as though I don't expect him to know who I am, then I don't see the point

01:42:23 ◼   ► of me introducing myself to him, because really the point would be...

01:42:26 ◼   ► Right. So, there's the solution that my wife and I have come up with in situations like that is just

01:42:31 ◼   ► just to touch the person.

01:42:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:42:35 ◼   ► So we went to Penn and Teller one time,

01:42:40 ◼   ► and in the intermission, they come out into the lobby,

01:42:44 ◼   ► at least they used to, this was a long time ago,

01:42:47 ◼   ► and they mill around in the lobby and talk to people.

01:42:49 ◼   ► And we were with a bunch of friends who were like,

01:42:54 ◼   ► well, should we go talk to them?

01:42:54 ◼   ► And we're like, I don't even know what to say.

01:42:56 ◼   ► What am I gonna say?

01:42:57 ◼   ► I don't have nothing to say to Penn Jillette.

01:43:01 ◼   ► Right.

01:43:01 ◼   ► And so my wife just goes, well, I'm just going to go touch him.

01:43:07 ◼   ► So she just walks up to him, and she just pokes him on the arm

01:43:10 ◼   ► and then just walks away.

01:43:12 ◼   ► He's talking to somebody.

01:43:13 ◼   ► He didn't even look at her.

01:43:15 ◼   ► He just kept talking to the person and walked away.

01:43:17 ◼   ► So years later, I'm at Macworld, the conference,

01:43:22 ◼   ► and I see Ron Johnson on the floor.

01:43:24 ◼   ► And I was like, hey, this is Ron Johnson.

01:43:26 ◼   ► He says, Apple executives.

01:43:29 ◼   ► I had a retail.

01:43:30 ◼   ► I was with a friend of mine and I'm like,

01:43:32 ◼   ► I'm gonna go touch him.

01:43:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:43:34 ◼   ► So I just walked up to Ron Johnson,

01:43:36 ◼   ► same thing, exact same thing.

01:43:37 ◼   ► He's talking to some guy, I poke him in the arm

01:43:39 ◼   ► and I walk away.

01:43:40 ◼   ► He doesn't look at me, nothing, just like,

01:43:43 ◼   ► I touched Ron Johnson.

01:43:46 ◼   ► - John, you've told me a lot of weird stories

01:43:47 ◼   ► over the years.

01:43:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:43:49 ◼   ► - I'm sure I told, I must have told you that before.

01:43:51 ◼   ► - No, that's crazy.

01:43:53 ◼   ► It's crazy that you walk away without expecting.

01:43:55 ◼   ► Like I really thought you were gonna say like,

01:43:57 ◼   ► you put your hand on the shoulder

01:43:58 ◼   ► and wait for them to look at you

01:43:59 ◼   ► And then--

01:44:00 ◼   ► No.

01:44:00 ◼   ► No, you just like--

01:44:02 ◼   ► because that's the thing, though.

01:44:03 ◼   ► It's like I've really got nothing--

01:44:05 ◼   ► I mean, I might be interested to talk to him for a while,

01:44:07 ◼   ► but I don't know how to broach that.

01:44:10 ◼   ► I don't know--

01:44:11 ◼   ► wait, what am I-- hi, I wrote a stupid website there.

01:44:14 ◼   ► I mean--

01:44:14 ◼   ► What's it called for a nice website?

01:44:16 ◼   ► I don't want to-- yeah, right.

01:44:19 ◼   ► Obviously, I'm an idiot.

01:44:21 ◼   ► He doesn't want to talk to me.

01:44:23 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:44:25 ◼   ► Plus, I probably wrote something on Carsey and the like.

01:44:29 ◼   ► So crazy though. But my second thought though is that it's a sign that you married right,

01:44:35 ◼   ► that you and your wife both agree that this is...

01:44:38 ◼   ► That's the method. That's what you do in those situations. You just touch the person.

01:44:42 ◼   ► You've made contact and that's it. That's all you needed.

01:44:45 ◼   ► Very, very funny.

01:44:50 ◼   ► I think more people should do that instead of making fools out of themselves.

01:44:54 ◼   ► Oh, where were we when we got sidetracked? We were talking about the iPad sales decline.

01:44:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

01:44:59 ◼   ► - So, alright, iPhone, most successful product in history.

01:45:06 ◼   ► Mac is doing better, but it's like a, you know,

01:45:11 ◼   ► it looks like a successful product

01:45:14 ◼   ► in a very established category,

01:45:15 ◼   ► which is exactly what it is,

01:45:17 ◼   ► where doing well is very, very stable,

01:45:19 ◼   ► and the growth, while sloping upward,

01:45:22 ◼   ► which is what a company wants to see,

01:45:24 ◼   ► it's sloping upward at a very, very gentle slope.

01:45:27 ◼   ► But while the rest of that category is going down.

01:45:31 ◼   ► Down.

01:45:31 ◼   ► So it's been going down.

01:45:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:45:33 ◼   ► And so, yeah, the most impressive thing, perhaps,

01:45:35 ◼   ► about the Mac is not its slope compared to zero,

01:45:39 ◼   ► but its slope compared to the PC industry as a whole.

01:45:43 ◼   ► Which always confuses me, too, because is that PC industry

01:45:45 ◼   ► as a whole, including Apple?

01:45:48 ◼   ► Or does it mean Windows PCs?

01:45:53 ◼   ► Because Apple sells enough Macs now where that actually

01:45:56 ◼   ► makes a difference.

01:45:57 ◼   ► fix the curve. Yeah, I don't know. But anyway, they sell, you know, the industry's in decline

01:46:02 ◼   ► and the Mac is in a gentle rut. So that's good. And then there's the iPad, which has

01:46:06 ◼   ► a very, very weird and quite, you know, frankly, if you like the iPad, or if you, you know,

01:46:14 ◼   ► own Apple stock or whatever, you know, it worrisome, perhaps, because it's in decline.

01:46:21 ◼   ► And I will put this in the show. And I just linked to it on during fireball before we

01:46:25 ◼   ► we started recording, but Dr. Drang had a really good post about how to visualize this,

01:46:31 ◼   ► you know, and he pointed out that the way every that the simple way of pointing it out

01:46:35 ◼   ► where you just show this quarter, that quarter, this quarter, that quarter, this quarter,

01:46:39 ◼   ► that quarter and unit sales is disguises the trends because it's so skewed by the holiday

01:46:46 ◼   ► quarters, which are even more skewed for the iPad the last few years because that's also

01:46:52 ◼   ► Also the quarter when the new ones come out.

01:46:54 ◼   ► There's two reasons for there to be a burst in iPad sales.

01:46:56 ◼   ► New iPads come out and people buy them for the holidays and ever since they switch to

01:47:02 ◼   ► unveiling them in October, that's the same quarter.

01:47:05 ◼   ► So that one quarter a year has a spike.

01:47:07 ◼   ► So he's using moving averages to show each quarter's trailing four quarters average.

01:47:16 ◼   ► Which is a common thing in financial modeling.

01:47:21 ◼   ► It's not a way to make it look good or bad.

01:47:23 ◼   ► It's a way to make the actual underlying trend visible.

01:47:28 ◼   ► I would say that the easy way of doing it isn't making it look good or bad.

01:47:33 ◼   ► It just is sort of noisy.

01:47:37 ◼   ► Apple's way, which he points out, which is to only show cumulative sales, is, let's face

01:47:41 ◼   ► it, sort of a euphemistic chart, because cumulative always goes up.

01:47:46 ◼   ► And this you know this moving average type thing you can really see that there is it's not just that that's flattened

01:47:54 ◼   ► But that they're actually in decline, right?

01:47:56 ◼   ► but

01:47:59 ◼   ► That said still it's a product that sold 13 million units last quarter

01:48:04 ◼   ► Not exactly a failure and is that well, so is the tablet market down as well? Yes the tablet market is down as well it is

01:48:12 ◼   ► And

01:48:16 ◼   ► There is a reader out. I'll just quote it because I thought it I've been trying to word it myself

01:48:20 ◼   ► And I can't say it any better than this, but his explanation was and I he didn't link to me

01:48:25 ◼   ► But I've had this thing that it's there's there's a sort of durability explanation that people have bought iPads

01:48:31 ◼   ► And they're still using the ones that they already had

01:48:33 ◼   ► And I'm not trying to justify I'm not trying to spin it in any way

01:48:38 ◼   ► But I'm just trying to you know

01:48:40 ◼   ► But I do think that's true and I know this firsthand from like family members who have

01:48:44 ◼   ► relatively old iPads everything other than the original iPad is a totally credible iPad today the the original which my dad still uses because he

01:48:52 ◼   ► Refuses to spend anything on anything

01:48:56 ◼   ► But suffers because of it it's really really hard to use and I forget the late

01:49:01 ◼   ► It's like I still run yes, I was five or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, my father-in-law has that too

01:49:05 ◼   ► But the iPad 2 which is a long time ago, that's a 2011 device is

01:49:13 ◼   ► is fundamentally the same internal specs

01:49:17 ◼   ► as the current $249 iPad Mini.

01:49:21 ◼   ► It's the non-retina screen, it's the same A4 processor,

01:49:25 ◼   ► or whatever it was, A6, A5, or whatever.

01:49:28 ◼   ► It's an old processor, same lower amount of RAM.

01:49:30 ◼   ► So it's effectively a 2011 iPad 2,

01:49:36 ◼   ► which was expensive, is the same as the $249 iPad Mini

01:49:40 ◼   ► you can go and buy today.

01:49:42 ◼   ► Now I'm not saying that's a great experience,

01:49:43 ◼   ► I'm guessing it's not a great experience with iOS 8,

01:49:46 ◼   ► but it's still there.

01:49:47 ◼   ► But anyway, Dr. Drang kind of--

01:49:52 ◼   ► - It depends on what you're using it for though,

01:49:54 ◼   ► because my wife has one that we bought when they came out,

01:49:58 ◼   ► and she mostly uses it for reading,

01:50:01 ◼   ► which of course, that's perfectly fine,

01:50:03 ◼   ► but she'll play all those adventures,

01:50:06 ◼   ► she plays a few simple games.

01:50:09 ◼   ► She's not playing Unreal Engine.

01:50:12 ◼   ► - Right.

01:50:13 ◼   ► She's not playing anything that's heavy-duty graphical.

01:50:16 ◼   ► - Can I tell you something?

01:50:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:50:18 ◼   ► - I have never even looked at Alto's adventure yet.

01:50:22 ◼   ► I came here and people,

01:50:23 ◼   ► this is like the third time on a podcast in the last week

01:50:26 ◼   ► that I've heard somebody mention it

01:50:27 ◼   ► as one of those things that you just assume everybody knows.

01:50:31 ◼   ► Like the ATP guys talk about it as, you know,

01:50:34 ◼   ► it's like all they talk about.

01:50:35 ◼   ► - It's a good game.

01:50:36 ◼   ► - What kind of a game is it?

01:50:38 ◼   ► - It's like, did you ever play,

01:50:41 ◼   ► what's the one with the, not Angry Birds,

01:50:43 ◼   ► The one with the flat and flappy wings, flappy bird flat.

01:50:47 ◼   ► Now the one is a flappy bird.

01:50:50 ◼   ► What is the flappy bird?

01:50:52 ◼   ► It's one of the birds like they go over hills.

01:50:54 ◼   ► Oh, I go down.

01:50:57 ◼   ► Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.

01:50:59 ◼   ► Because, yeah, I've got it.

01:51:00 ◼   ► It's a bit like it's a bit like that.

01:51:02 ◼   ► And except instead of pressing to go down, you press to make jumps.

01:51:06 ◼   ► So you're you're a snowboarder and you have to do all these different