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352: ‘I’ve Kissed That Mouse’, With Marco Arment

 

00:00:00   Well, speaking of COVID, I fucking had it.

00:00:02   Yeah.

00:00:02   So how'd that go?

00:00:04   Yeah.

00:00:04   How are you feeling now?

00:00:04   I feel great now.

00:00:05   So there we go.

00:00:06   That's the long story short.

00:00:08   I'm fine.

00:00:08   And I attribute my the rapidity of my recovery to being vaccinated and

00:00:13   boosted and all that good stuff.

00:00:15   But long story short, my wife got it first.

00:00:17   She thought she had a real bad sore throat one night.

00:00:20   Next day took a test negative.

00:00:22   Next day took a test positive.

00:00:24   Next day, my son and I both took a test.

00:00:28   Jonas and I took a test.

00:00:29   He was positive and I was still negative.

00:00:32   And I thought, Hey, I'm going to be the one who sails through this without getting it.

00:00:35   He had, Amy had nothing but a headache, a mild headache for one night.

00:00:41   And then ever since she's been sleeping like a couple hours extra.

00:00:44   I mean, now this is like two weeks later, she's still sleeping more, but never

00:00:48   really had any other symptoms other than a sore throat two nights before she tested

00:00:52   positive Jonas, the worst he ever got was some sniffles blew his nose.

00:00:57   Like three, not like used up a box of tissues, but like used four tissues

00:01:00   throughout the day to blow his nose.

00:01:01   That's it.

00:01:02   And then me, the one who tested positive last, I had two days where I just sort of

00:01:06   felt, eh, not that good, but I still thought, Hey, if this is as bad as it gets,

00:01:11   not too bad.

00:01:12   And then two more days of the most excruciating sore throat I've

00:01:18   ever had in my adult life.

00:01:19   I had my tonsils out, I think in like third grade I had repeated strep infections.

00:01:24   And I don't know what they do for kids today.

00:01:26   I don't think they, they just, I don't think they just hack people's tonsils and

00:01:31   adenoids out like they did in the early eighties and late seventies.

00:01:34   But back then you got like two or three cases of strep in the air.

00:01:37   They're like, ah, we'll just take tonsils out.

00:01:38   That was a bad sore throat, including, I remember when I had the tonsillectomy, it

00:01:43   was a pretty bad sore throat for a day or two.

00:01:45   Worst part about that, as I continue to, I did not like ice cream when I was a kid.

00:01:50   Oh no, no, I did not like ice cream.

00:01:53   The best thing about having stuff like that is that you get to have a bunch of ice

00:01:56   cream.

00:01:56   Yeah, I like popsicles.

00:01:58   I did not like ice cream.

00:01:59   And so I had popsicles, but every, it was like a nonstop as you're like a 10 year

00:02:05   old getting your tonsils out there, like, well, you can eat all the ice cream you

00:02:07   want.

00:02:08   And I was like, well, I don't like ice cream.

00:02:09   Now, of course I eat my weight in ice cream whenever I get the chance, but, and

00:02:14   including when I had this damn sore throat from COVID, it was like the only thing I

00:02:17   could bear to get down.

00:02:18   But I had two nights of just absolutely horrendous sore throat.

00:02:22   I mean, just excruciating and that sort of sore throat that connects to a nerve to my

00:02:26   left ear.

00:02:27   So every time I swallowed, every time I swallowed, and it kind of helped alleviate

00:02:33   when I swallowed, if I put like my pinky finger in my left ear, like as though I was

00:02:38   clearing out water from being in the pool or something.

00:02:41   So it looked like, I don't know, like nonstop, like I was like a newscaster checking

00:02:46   an earpiece.

00:02:46   Like, Hey, the people in the control room tell me we got breaking news.

00:02:49   I, Advil helped a little with the sore throat, like made it so I could bear to

00:02:54   actually like drink some water, cold, cold, cold water.

00:02:57   Two nights of that.

00:02:59   Oh, and here's the, here's the bonus point.

00:03:01   Here's the icing on the cake.

00:03:02   The other bad thing I had was nonstop phlegm in my throat that I absolutely needed to

00:03:09   clear.

00:03:10   And of course, clearing your throat of phlegm while you have an excruciating sore

00:03:16   throat is, is like a catch 22 of symptoms.

00:03:19   I wouldn't wish them to a monkey on a rock.

00:03:21   I mean, that was, it was two days.

00:03:22   And then the next day, next morning I woke up, it was all gone.

00:03:25   Just, just like that.

00:03:26   Snap your fingers.

00:03:27   How, so I was curious, like, how did you like at this point, it's almost weird if

00:03:34   you have never had it in the sense that that was us as far as we know, right.

00:03:38   But like, it's, it's so common now with, with the new, the BA five and so on

00:03:43   variants, it is just so common.

00:03:46   I mean, I know so many people who have gotten it just in the last month or two.

00:03:50   And people who are fully vaccinated or, I mean, some of which aren't unfortunately,

00:03:55   but I live near long Island, so a lot of that, but even fully vaccinated people,

00:03:59   they're getting it.

00:03:59   They're just not having it bad.

00:04:01   Like you, like they'll have like mild sickness.

00:04:02   If, if they even notice it, they'll have a mild sickness for a few days and that'll

00:04:05   be it.

00:04:06   But it is just everywhere.

00:04:09   Like it is.

00:04:09   And I think this is kind of a preview of what I think the next few years are going

00:04:15   to be like, where we've, we've heard it.

00:04:18   We're never going to eradicate this.

00:04:19   It is just going to become endemic and that it's going to be kind of like the

00:04:22   cold and the flu where it just kind of goes around and there'll be flareups here

00:04:25   and there.

00:04:26   And it'll just kind of go around and mutate forever.

00:04:28   And I pictured that being a little more like the cold and the flu where you don't

00:04:35   really ever hear about it.

00:04:36   Like no one really says, yep, tested positive for the cold today.

00:04:39   We're going to stay home from work for a week.

00:04:40   Like no one treats those viruses that way.

00:04:43   But I kind of assumed that COVID would get there, but now I kind of think we're

00:04:47   going to be in for a bit, like a bit more of a severe version of that kind of like

00:04:52   what we have now where most people have like gone back to their their pre COVID

00:04:57   lifestyle, but we're still testing for it.

00:05:00   We're still requiring tests for it for certain activities or events or, or

00:05:04   conditions of work.

00:05:05   We're still reacting a little more severely to it than we would any other kind of

00:05:08   sickness.

00:05:09   And I think, I think this is going to be the way it is for a while.

00:05:13   Like not, not a few months, probably a few years at least.

00:05:16   And maybe, I mean, maybe 10 years.

00:05:18   I don't know.

00:05:18   I mean, I don't know how this stuff usually works, but it seems like we are nowhere

00:05:23   near getting a handle on it.

00:05:24   Yeah, it's, it's, and again, I had lots of time on my hands to read, although when I

00:05:29   was at my sickest, I couldn't even bear to like read.

00:05:31   I was just, I just like laid in bed cause it was so, I was so miserable and I, I will

00:05:35   also add, I'm a big baby when I get a regular cold.

00:05:38   I think that I really do.

00:05:39   This was a bad sore throat and it just, just the hellish combination of needing to go

00:05:44   nonstop with, with, with that being excruciatingly painful.

00:05:51   And again, I just woke up the next morning and it was just gone, just gone.

00:05:55   Now I was, was I back to a hundred percent when I woke up?

00:05:58   No, it's just that I had no congestion, no pain in my throat.

00:06:02   The pain in my throat was gone, but like my throat felt like it had been ravaged.

00:06:07   It's like when a hurricane blows through and it's horrible, horrible, horrible, and

00:06:11   then it's gone and it's like all the trees are, all the leaves are off the trees.

00:06:15   That was the inside of my throat.

00:06:16   It was like ravaging and I had a bit of a cough, but it wasn't like, cause I had to

00:06:20   cough.

00:06:20   It was just, I just felt like my throat had been ravaged.

00:06:24   So I did do a lot of reading afterwards.

00:06:27   I feel like, yeah.

00:06:29   And it's like, you look at the rates, it's like the rates, like the hospitalization

00:06:33   rate is up about 20% in the US with the SBA five goes, but the death rate isn't gone

00:06:40   up at all.

00:06:40   It sort of feels like we've worked through that.

00:06:42   I mean, I don't mean to be flippant about it, but everybody's either vaccinated or if

00:06:48   they're unvaccinated, they've almost certainly had it.

00:06:50   I think there are very few unvaccinated people who, who are not agoraphobes who

00:06:57   haven't had it.

00:06:57   So there's, I don't think there's very many people left with no antibodies at all.

00:07:02   And it just seems like the way these strains are mutating is they're mutating to get

00:07:07   more transmissible.

00:07:09   I mean, there's no dispute about it.

00:07:11   BA five is by far the most contagious variant yet of an entire series of variants that

00:07:18   are infamous for being from the get go, incredibly contagious, right?

00:07:22   Like that's the whole foundation of the whole pandemic is that this virus is incredibly

00:07:29   contagious.

00:07:31   So to have a new variant that is, oh yeah, blows away all the contagiousness, but as it

00:07:35   gets more contagious, it's less severe.

00:07:37   And it seems to want to stick in your nose and throat because that's, that's what works

00:07:43   if you're vaccinated as opposed to getting into your lungs and which is all great news

00:07:48   overall.

00:07:49   But I feel like we're going to be in this until and if we get all new vaccines that

00:07:56   actually target there's endeavors over way, underway to develop vaccines that just blanket

00:08:02   attack all coronaviruses, which would be fantastic.

00:08:05   And Omicron variant specific ones that they're working on.

00:08:10   It seems like as I've read, the downside to this is like vaccine approval takes years

00:08:16   and years typically.

00:08:18   And the reason we got the vaccines that we have that we all started getting a year ago

00:08:24   was that they accelerated it because we were in an unprecedented worldwide pandemic.

00:08:29   And it's unfortunately seems like the, hey, let's open up some of these bureaucratic

00:08:36   check marks along the way of approving a vaccine.

00:08:41   They're not doing that for the ones that we need the next batch.

00:08:45   Like they're sort of going at the old school pace and it's sort of like, I get it.

00:08:50   And I think that for decades, the approval process we had was fine.

00:08:54   I mean, who knows, like did our kids, your and my kids get like an updated measles vaccine

00:08:59   compared to the one I got in 1974?

00:09:02   I don't know.

00:09:03   I mean, if they did and it went through a seven year approval process, it all worked out

00:09:08   and nobody really thought, hey, this measles thing is still a huge pain in the ass in the

00:09:13   meantime.

00:09:13   Whereas I feel like any and all work on COVID vaccines should all be getting, let's remove

00:09:21   as many bureaucratic hurdles as possible.

00:09:23   We want to make sure it's safe and do some sort of controlled testing to make sure there

00:09:28   aren't adverse side effects.

00:09:30   But I think until and if we get those, it's going to be like this going forward.

00:09:33   Yeah.

00:09:34   And I think ultimately this is just going to be every part of COVID has taken longer to

00:09:40   work out than we originally thought when it started.

00:09:43   Every single part of it.

00:09:44   Yeah.

00:09:44   And I think this is like now we're in this phase where everyone who has the opportunity

00:09:51   to get a vaccine and the will to get a vaccine has generally gotten one now, at least one.

00:09:55   And we still have a lot of the world to cover there.

00:09:58   Most of the first world who is willing to get vaccinated is vaccinated.

00:10:02   And yet we're still seeing this rip through just with fewer severe effects and we're

00:10:06   getting better at treatments and things like that.

00:10:08   So I think this is just going to be how it is for a while.

00:10:12   And hopefully we'll eventually, I mean, as you mentioned, there are these vaccines that

00:10:16   might target like all current viruses or all similar viruses in the family.

00:10:20   And that would be amazing if we ever get those working and approved and safe and distributed.

00:10:23   That'd be great.

00:10:24   But until then, I don't know how imminent any of those are.

00:10:28   Until then, this is just our reality for a while.

00:10:30   I also think, I think I've mentioned this on the show a long time ago.

00:10:33   I don't know.

00:10:34   But it's just a total spitball theory on my part, but I would bet on it.

00:10:39   I know that there's this whole weird, again, I don't want to get into the political aspect

00:10:45   of it, amongst people who like to wear red ball caps.

00:10:49   I'm still mad they ruined red hats.

00:10:51   I used to wear red hats before 2016.

00:10:54   I loved red hats.

00:10:55   Before 2016, my whole color was red.

00:10:58   My office was painted red.

00:11:00   I drive a red car.

00:11:02   I loved red everything.

00:11:03   Like that was like my color for everything.

00:11:06   And I feel kind of, now I feel like I kind of can't do that.

00:11:10   Like, I've been transitioning over to blue.

00:11:12   You gotta fight back.

00:11:13   Because I live in a city where everybody who loves the baseball team wears a red cap.

00:11:17   So everybody, Philly, St. Louis, teams places where the ball clubs wear red baseball caps.

00:11:22   Yeah, I mean, we can take red caps back.

00:11:24   But the politics of vaccine resistance aside, I sincerely think that it doesn't show up

00:11:31   in polls because the people who this is true about don't want to admit it even anonymously

00:11:38   to a pollster.

00:11:39   But I think that there are a surprising number of adults who really don't like needles.

00:11:44   And I think evolutionarily, that is actually a completely understandable, downright phobia.

00:11:54   Because throughout the history of mankind, up until literally like one generation ago

00:12:03   when antibiotics were invented, having your skin punctured was a very good way to get

00:12:08   an infection that would kill you.

00:12:10   And so having a profound fear of any puncture to your skin, even with a hypodermic needle,

00:12:20   which often doesn't, like I've gotten a bunch of these shots and boosters.

00:12:25   I don't even think I ever bled.

00:12:27   And I was a kid, I had, did you have allergy shots?

00:12:30   I know you had allergies.

00:12:30   I sure did.

00:12:31   I even had allergy shots as an adult just a few years ago.

00:12:34   I, when I was a kid, I had to get allergy shots every Saturday for a while.

00:12:38   And then it was like every two weeks.

00:12:41   So I've had like, seriously.

00:12:42   I was a Wednesday kid.

00:12:44   Yeah, no exaggeration.

00:12:45   Well, I was, hey, what's a better way to spend your Saturday morning than going out to the

00:12:50   pediatrician and getting two allergy shots, one in each arm.

00:12:54   And it's like, and I always knew one of them made my arm hurt and the other one didn't.

00:12:57   And if I was playing sports, I would kind of try to get the, the one that hurt in my

00:13:01   right arm, even if I was due, I mean, in my left arm, because I'm right handed.

00:13:04   Yeah.

00:13:05   You've ruined your non-dominant arm with the allergy shot.

00:13:07   Yeah.

00:13:08   But so I've, I've literally had hundreds of shots in my lifetime.

00:13:12   And when you get allergy shots every Saturday morning, you quickly lose any sort of, you

00:13:18   might as well be sticking it into an orange or something like they do when they're training

00:13:22   nurses how to give shots.

00:13:23   It doesn't, doesn't bother me at all, but I totally understand why people have a phobia

00:13:27   about it.

00:13:27   It's, it is evolutionarily, it is totally natural to be like, screw that.

00:13:32   I don't want my skin punctured.

00:13:33   I hate it.

00:13:34   So I think, and where I'm going with this is there's, they are doing accelerated work

00:13:39   on getting nasal vaccines where you just, it's just like taking nose spray.

00:13:43   You just shoot, shoot right up your nostrils.

00:13:45   And I think amongst the as yet unvaccinated, I think that could be a huge boost.

00:13:50   I really do.

00:13:51   That's interesting.

00:13:52   Yeah.

00:13:52   Cause I, I think if you go back to what our friend Merlin has said a number of times on

00:13:56   podcasts, that if you, if you don't know why someone is, is doing something or, you know,

00:14:01   why not doing something, oftentimes the answer is either fear or money or both.

00:14:06   Because those are things that people often don't want to talk about or even don't want

00:14:09   to admit to themselves might be the reason that's it's often fear or, or usually a lack

00:14:14   of money.

00:14:15   And in the case of anti-vaccine sentiment, I think a ton of that is the fear of getting

00:14:20   shots because most adults don't routinely get shots and haven't gotten a shot in a long

00:14:25   time.

00:14:25   And so the idea of it, and when you're a kid, you're kind of forced to by your parents.

00:14:29   Once you're an adult, you don't really have to unless something, unless you have some

00:14:32   health thing that requires it, but for the most part, you don't usually have to get shots.

00:14:35   And so, so much of it is just the fear.

00:14:38   And when somebody has a fear and something provides them an out of some political ideologies,

00:14:45   whatever it is, when, when they're provided with an out, they'll take it.

00:14:48   So all those people who were just afraid of getting a shot when their politics tell them,

00:14:56   Oh, this is bad.

00:14:57   You don't have to do this.

00:14:58   You shouldn't do this.

00:14:58   It's, it's not what our tribe does or whatever.

00:15:01   They will take that answer and they'll, then they'll run with it and you will not win against

00:15:05   that.

00:15:06   Anyway, that's a long, anyway, I'm happy to talk about it.

00:15:08   And anybody has questions, you can feel free to hit me up.

00:15:10   I'll tell you what I know, but having gone through it, but it put a real kink in my intended

00:15:16   podcasting schedule because the other side effect of coming out of it was I had no voice,

00:15:22   none from my ravaged throat.

00:15:24   I did dithering last week.

00:15:25   And the first time we did it, I mean, it was like, I think we recorded about 16 minutes

00:15:29   to get 15 minutes to put out there.

00:15:31   And when we were done, it was, it was like, my throat felt like I had finished a marathon.

00:15:37   It felt like I had finished like an episode of this show.

00:15:40   There was no way I could do this show until this week.

00:15:42   So sorry for the lack of talk shows, although I usually don't have to apologize for that

00:15:46   here.

00:15:46   Let me take a first break and thank our first sponsor.

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00:18:03   We've got new products to talk about.

00:18:05   We sure do.

00:18:06   I want to talk the first and the one that everybody's waiting to hear about.

00:18:10   So I want to get it over with first so we can spend as much time as possible.

00:18:13   Hop water?

00:18:15   Hop water.

00:18:16   Really?

00:18:16   I've got two cans of it right here.

00:18:20   Me too.

00:18:20   In front of me.

00:18:21   This is a product.

00:18:24   This is...

00:18:25   While I was at Casa del Armet, you introduced me to a competing product.

00:18:36   What's it called?

00:18:36   Hop Lark, right?

00:18:37   Yeah, it's basically hop flavored seltzer.

00:18:41   So it tastes kind of like beer, but is non-alcoholic and is otherwise just no calories,

00:18:46   no alcohol.

00:18:47   It's flavored seltzer, like many of our other flavored seltzer things we're fans of, like

00:18:51   Hal's, but the flavor is hops, which is what makes beer bitter, and so it tastes kind of

00:18:55   like an IPA.

00:18:56   Or it has like it...

00:18:58   Vaguely.

00:18:59   It's like the...

00:19:01   Like a hint of it, a suggestion of it.

00:19:04   Like, oh, if you like beer, you might like this seltzer water.

00:19:07   It is not non-alcoholic beer, right?

00:19:11   That's made with greens and stuff still.

00:19:12   Yeah, like, and in that...

00:19:16   Of those non-alcoholic beers, I'm actually... I have another growing...

00:19:21   Not addiction, because it's non-alcoholic, but a growing habit of the Heineken Zero.

00:19:26   They call it Heineken 0.0.

00:19:29   It is 0% alcohol Heineken.

00:19:32   Tastes like a regular Heineken, which is not my favorite type of beer, but I kind of...

00:19:37   It's kind of uncanny how it tastes like a Heineken, but that stuff has like 69 calories,

00:19:42   70 calories or something like that, because they make it like beer, and it tastes...

00:19:45   It's supposed to taste like a beer, but it just doesn't have alcohol.

00:19:48   Hop water and hop lark, but this stuff hop water, which you turned me on to,

00:19:53   I have to agree, it's better than the hop lark.

00:19:55   This is a superior tasting product.

00:19:58   It does not taste like non-alcoholic beer.

00:20:01   It tastes like seltzer water infused with hops.

00:20:04   So it's like...

00:20:04   If you just like Heineken Pilsner style beer and you don't like IPAs,

00:20:10   you're definitely not going to like hop water.

00:20:12   You got to like the over-hopped hoppy beers.

00:20:15   But it doesn't taste like...

00:20:16   I don't know how to explain it.

00:20:17   It is very difficult to explain.

00:20:19   Yeah, it just tastes like flavored seltzer, flavored like hops,

00:20:24   which is something that most people will probably find very strange.

00:20:28   But if you happen to like flavored seltzer and you happen to like beer, it's pretty good.

00:20:32   Now my wife Amy, she does not care for hoppy beers, has never cared for them.

00:20:39   I let her have a sip of a hop water.

00:20:40   She said it tastes like licking the tray on an airplane.

00:20:46   Has she frequently done this?

00:20:48   No, I immediately asked.

00:20:50   And she said, well, it tastes how I imagine it would taste.

00:20:52   Right.

00:20:53   To lick the tray.

00:20:54   It's the obvious retort.

00:20:55   Like it's so it's like some kind of industrial strength sanitizing cleanser that they hurriedly

00:21:02   wipe on the tray in the five minutes between allowing the old passengers to get off and

00:21:09   the new passengers on.

00:21:10   So she's not a fan, but man, I love this stuff.

00:21:12   And they've got a couple of different flavors.

00:21:14   I think my favorite is just their classic.

00:21:16   It's just it's just hop infused seltzer water.

00:21:19   I will say like the reason I started going for this stuff is I wanted to like still have

00:21:23   some beer flavors that I like so much, but I haven't been drinking as much because I'm

00:21:27   getting older and the hangovers hit me worse to the point where like now if I have two

00:21:32   beers at dinner one night, the next morning I'll feel more tired.

00:21:36   I'll feel like a little bit worse even with just that.

00:21:39   And so I've been trying to cut back and and this is nice.

00:21:42   The one thing about this kind of odd though is it because it still tastes like something

00:21:46   from the beer family.

00:21:47   It still feels something I should only have like at night.

00:21:51   Like it would feel wrong to have this with lunch for some reason.

00:21:57   I have I have the exact same psychological reluctance to drink it before five.

00:22:04   Yeah, like if I'm like going to go to my computer to get some coding work done, I would

00:22:11   not grab one of these even though like I'll grab the you know, it's like a house black

00:22:14   cherry or something even though like there's no there's no difference.

00:22:17   There's no reason why I shouldn't grab this.

00:22:19   And so I feel the same way.

00:22:20   It's just a psychological.

00:22:21   It's just an association between it's funny because it's obviously doesn't taste like

00:22:26   alcohol.

00:22:26   It's it's because there is none it's a hop type thing and I've never had hop type tastes

00:22:34   anything on the spectrum other than drinking beer.

00:22:39   And so I just have this association of a wait.

00:22:42   I want to I'm hoping to get a lot of work done this afternoon.

00:22:44   I shouldn't be shouldn't be drinking this stuff.

00:22:46   I'll just have a house fizzy water.

00:22:48   Anyway, this stuff is fantastic and they spell it.

00:22:51   HOPWTR.

00:22:53   Hop water.

00:22:54   I've only ever found it on Amazon.

00:22:56   I haven't found it in stores yet.

00:22:57   And it's when you get it from Amazon, of course, they they put it in basically a paper bag.

00:23:03   And so it comes like the thinnest box possible.

00:23:06   So you get it's so beaten up but so and every can I've gotten so far has been at least slightly

00:23:12   dented because it's all Amazon.

00:23:13   But it's has survived so far.

00:23:16   They haven't had any ruptures yet.

00:23:17   My corner bodega where I buy actual beer and I was there just the other day and I bought

00:23:23   a six pack of the of the Heineken Zero.

00:23:26   I mentioned it.

00:23:27   I'm like a regular there.

00:23:28   I mentioned it to the guy because I was buying the Heineken Zero and he was like, oh, you

00:23:33   should try this other stuff.

00:23:34   And he pointed to it and it was hop water.

00:23:36   They have it.

00:23:37   Oh, yeah.

00:23:37   Right right at my corner store.

00:23:39   Don't even have to cross the street.

00:23:40   Anyway, I'm giving a big thumbs up to that.

00:23:44   That's my product recommendation today.

00:23:46   I don't think I have it.

00:23:47   Do we have any other products to talk about?

00:23:48   I don't think I mean, we usually talk about computers, but have there been any recent

00:23:52   computers that are running?

00:23:53   You know what I actually do, though, I want to tell you a tech support story.

00:23:58   Before we get to the MacBook Air, which you have you do.

00:24:03   I didn't I should have right here.

00:24:04   I should have checked before before we recorded.

00:24:07   Yeah, I have it right here sitting on top of my my 14 inch MacBook Pro, which I have

00:24:11   for comparison.

00:24:12   But you know what I've because because my schedule with COVID threw off my schedule.

00:24:17   I've got more sponsors than usual for this show.

00:24:21   So let me talk.

00:24:22   Toss one in here.

00:24:23   Tossing was hot water, not one hot water was not a sponsorship.

00:24:27   That was a completely serendipitous.

00:24:29   I just because you're the one who introduced me to this whole category.

00:24:33   But speaking of beverages that I'm addicted to, I want to tell you about Trade Coffee.

00:24:38   Look, Trade Coffee is you subscribe, they send you fresh beans from local roasters all

00:24:46   around the country to your house.

00:24:49   But here's the thing.

00:24:49   They have all sorts of coffees to choose from.

00:24:51   I forget how many.

00:24:52   It's just dozens and dozens, maybe like 100 different coffees.

00:24:56   Sounds crazy.

00:24:57   How are you going to choose?

00:24:58   What you do is you go to a Drink Trade.

00:25:01   That's their website, drinktrade.com/thetalkshow.

00:25:04   And they have a quiz and the quiz takes like a minute and a half, maybe less.

00:25:09   They just sort of ask you what type of coffees you like.

00:25:12   And you answer a couple questions and then they make some recommendations and then they

00:25:16   send you coffee.

00:25:16   That's going to be what you like.

00:25:18   I did this.

00:25:19   I did the quiz.

00:25:20   They sent me coffee.

00:25:21   I like the coffee they sent me and I'm kind of picky about coffee.

00:25:25   Worked pretty well for me.

00:25:26   But they've got like a guarantee if they send you coffee and you don't like it, you can

00:25:30   get, go back and talk to a chat with a consultant at Trade and they'll send you another batch

00:25:36   of different coffee just to get you something you like.

00:25:38   Here, here.

00:25:39   I'm looking at the talking point.

00:25:40   They've personally taste tested over 450 roasts.

00:25:44   So these guys, they have a lot of stuff to choose from.

00:25:47   But what they do is they get you freshly roasted beans from 60 of the country's best craft

00:25:53   roasters, small businesses who pay farmers, coffee farmers, fair prices to sustainably

00:26:00   source the greatest beans from around the world.

00:26:02   And the truth is, and I know Marco, you're going to agree with me.

00:26:05   Coffee is a perishable item.

00:26:08   As soon as it's roasted, it starts going bad.

00:26:11   If you're buying stuff off the shelf at like a supermarket or something like that, it's

00:26:16   probably already half bad.

00:26:18   It really is.

00:26:19   It makes a huge difference.

00:26:20   What Trade does is they roast it and as soon as it's roasted, they seal it up, send it

00:26:25   to you, and you get it like two days later, something like that.

00:26:29   Very quick, very fresh, and then you just drink it right away.

00:26:33   And when you subscribe, you have so much flexibility on how frequently you want more coffee to

00:26:39   come.

00:26:39   Do you want it every week?

00:26:40   Do you want it every 10 days?

00:26:42   Do you want it every two weeks?

00:26:43   Do you just want it once a month?

00:26:45   Do you need more?

00:26:46   Are you trying to get coffee for a whole office?

00:26:48   Get tons of it every week?

00:26:50   Whatever you want, you can get it.

00:26:52   Really good coffee from really good roasters, really fresh, sent to you.

00:27:00   It is a really good product.

00:27:01   I recommend it.

00:27:02   It's really good.

00:27:03   I've drunk too much of it today, for sure.

00:27:06   Here's the deal.

00:27:06   They are offering new subscribers a total of $30 off your first order plus free shipping.

00:27:15   When you go to www.drinktrade.com/thetalkshow, that's more than 40 cups of coffee for

00:27:20   free.

00:27:20   So you can get started by taking that quiz I told you about it.

00:27:23   www.drinktrade.com/thetalkshow.

00:27:26   Let trade find you a coffee you love.

00:27:29   That's www.drinktrade.com/thetalkshow.

00:27:32   Get 30 bucks off.

00:27:35   All right, here's my story before we get to the MacBook Air.

00:27:38   So on April 14th, I'm keenly aware now of all these dates after having spent quite some

00:27:45   time on the phone today.

00:27:47   April 14th, I ordered a studio display with nano texture glass and an adjustable stand.

00:27:52   Oh, yeah.

00:27:52   And it did not, it was not set to arrive.

00:27:56   It did not arrive late, but it was not set to arrive until I forget what the window was,

00:28:02   but it was like pretty much the month of June and it did not arrive until the end of June.

00:28:07   But we, my family went on vacation at the very beginning of July.

00:28:11   And so I didn't set it up before we went on vacation.

00:28:14   I waited till after and then I came home and I had COVID and I just didn't feel like doing

00:28:21   it and I didn't set it up until today and took it out of the box and put it on my desk.

00:28:29   And I love it before I've even turned it on because it's, I still set it up.

00:28:35   It was sunny after a really sunny afternoon and the, I still have the review unit of the

00:28:40   regular studio display, which I moved aside and I put this nano texture one there.

00:28:46   And I really just keenly observed with, without the display on just black, how much reflection

00:28:52   was on the regular one.

00:28:54   And then how much was on the nano texture, which was not none, but it's not, it's, it's

00:28:59   almost, it's so diffused.

00:29:00   It's not a reflection.

00:29:01   Like I can't see my, my own self.

00:29:03   There's no mirrorness to it.

00:29:05   Like it's, it's like, Oh, this is going to be just what the doctor ordered for me.

00:29:08   I plug in the power and I get those three little dots.

00:29:12   Do you have a studio display yet?

00:29:13   No.

00:29:14   All right.

00:29:14   So when you plug in the studio display, because you know how it's an iOS, I know it has to

00:29:20   boot up, right?

00:29:21   Yeah.

00:29:21   That's the boot and it's an iOS computer.

00:29:23   So what it does is as soon as it gets power, the screen comes on, it's still black, but

00:29:28   you could tell it's on because it's no longer the richest, inkiest black, black of an off

00:29:34   display.

00:29:34   It is now a display that is powered on showing black, but they have three dots and they,

00:29:40   they animate a little bit like one, two, three, one, two, three.

00:29:43   When I plugged in my review unit originally, I wasn't paying attention.

00:29:47   I was like, cause I have to go under my desk to plug it in and I'm plugging it in and I

00:29:51   wasn't really looking and I wasn't thinking about it.

00:29:53   And I missed the whole thing when I plugged the first one in, but then I've since had

00:29:57   to unplug and replug it a few times because that's, it's the only way to restart the

00:30:01   thing.

00:30:02   And I still can't believe like the, just the idea of you have a monitor that you have

00:30:08   to occasionally reboot.

00:30:09   I still can't get behind that.

00:30:11   I'm okay with that.

00:30:13   I am okay.

00:30:14   I am okay with it.

00:30:15   What I'm not okay with is that the only way to reboot it is to literally yank the plug

00:30:21   out of the power, which I think for most people naturally is going to be under their desk,

00:30:26   which I don't think anybody should ever have to do.

00:30:29   And as, as I'm becoming older, it just feels more beneath me.

00:30:34   I'm not as flexible as I used to be.

00:30:37   You know, like when I was in college and I got jobs as a young kid who knows how to deal

00:30:42   with computers, I spent half my day under desks, right?

00:30:44   You're always down there plugging ethernet cables and getting covered in dust.

00:30:48   Yeah.

00:30:49   All the time.

00:30:50   Half your day, half your workday is underneath that.

00:30:52   It's just what you do when you're 23 years old and you're good with computers.

00:30:56   You're climbing under desks and stuff like that.

00:30:58   When you're 49, it's not so fun.

00:31:01   And if they just had a goddamn button, just a button, something that make it a long press,

00:31:06   even what if you really want to make it one of those little pinhole buttons that you have

00:31:11   to stick like a SIM card ejector or a paperclip in, and that's how you restart it.

00:31:16   But something, something so that you could restart the damn thing without yanking the

00:31:22   power out, which honestly feels wrong, right?

00:31:27   Everything that I've ever learned about computers that don't have batteries is that

00:31:32   you shouldn't just yank the power out.

00:31:33   But that's, you can like look at apple.support.apple.com, how to restart a studio display, and they're

00:31:39   like, they don't, I was going to lie, it's a lie.

00:31:42   They don't say yank the power out, but they do say remove it from power.

00:31:48   Anyway, I plugged this new one in, I get the three dots, but they're only up there like

00:31:52   two or three seconds.

00:31:54   And then it's black again, and then I connect my MacBook Pro, and the display doesn't turn

00:32:01   on, and it's just black.

00:32:03   And I thought, damn, I thought when I hooked the other one up, as soon as I plugged in

00:32:05   the Thunderbolt cable, it just came on.

00:32:08   I'm like, what the hell do I do?

00:32:10   And if there, and I was thinking the same discussion, but there are no buttons, right?

00:32:14   It's not like the brightness is too low.

00:32:16   There's no brightness button on the side that I was like shipped from the factory at

00:32:21   zero, and I'm sitting there like, what the hell do I do?

00:32:25   And I unplugged the Thunderbolt cable, plugged it back in, didn't come on.

00:32:30   I took the Thunderbolt cable around, out, flipped it around, put the side that was in

00:32:37   the display into the MacBook, and the side that was in the MacBook into the display,

00:32:41   and it didn't turn on.

00:32:42   And I'm like, what the hell did I do the last time?

00:32:46   This is weird.

00:32:46   I should be able to figure this out.

00:32:49   And I'm thinking like, am I still like clouded in the head from COVID?

00:32:53   And I'm like, I don't think so.

00:32:54   I wrote a good, I think a good article about the MacBook Air last week.

00:32:58   I'm not stupid.

00:32:59   But then I took the paperwork out, the getting started, and I'm like, there's got to be

00:33:06   something stupid I'm not thinking of, like the most obvious thing in the world.

00:33:10   And I look at it and it just says, plug it into power, plug it into your Mac, and it'll

00:33:14   just turn on.

00:33:15   I'm like, what the hell is going on?

00:33:18   And I saw the three dots.

00:33:19   It definitely was on.

00:33:20   And then I thought, well, let me, I did something to make a noise on my Mac, and it played through

00:33:28   the studio display speakers.

00:33:29   And I went to system preferences, displays, and it had nothing but the built-in MacBook

00:33:35   Pro display.

00:33:36   No, no, it didn't see the studio display.

00:33:39   But I went to sound, and sound was set to studio display speakers.

00:33:44   So I opened up FaceTime and I went to the menu, I forget what it's called, but you

00:33:49   can choose which camera to use.

00:33:51   And I chose studio display camera, and I got the wonderfully crisp, high resolution image

00:34:00   of the studio display camera.

00:34:03   And the green light to show that the camera was in use came on.

00:34:09   So the webcam worked, the speakers were playing my audio, but there was no picture.

00:34:15   And I thought, what the hell is going on?

00:34:18   So under the desk, I went, pulled, yanked, that's the technical term, yanked the power

00:34:23   out of the wall, waited a little bit, plugged it back in, same thing, no difference.

00:34:29   I thought, son of a bitch, I got a lemon, right?

00:34:36   I mean, I got a bad studio display, which is a pain in the ass.

00:34:41   It's been so long since I've gotten a lemon product from Apple.

00:34:44   I mean, seriously, like decades.

00:34:46   In fact, I can't even remember.

00:34:48   I don't think I've ever gotten a significant product from Apple that was a lemon, or even

00:34:54   an insignificant one, now that I'm talking about it here.

00:34:57   I can't remember ever buying a single thing, and I've, shocker here, I've bought a lot

00:35:02   of products from Apple.

00:35:04   And further, oh, I did get a lemon once.

00:35:06   The one and only lemon I've ever gotten from Apple, one and only, was my first Series Zero

00:35:14   Apple Watch review unit.

00:35:16   Do you remember this?

00:35:17   I think I wrote about it.

00:35:17   Yeah, yeah, the bad Taptic Engine, right?

00:35:19   Yeah, it had a bad Taptic Engine.

00:35:20   It was like really, really weak.

00:35:22   And I thought, this is weird.

00:35:24   I thought when I was at the event, it was much stronger.

00:35:28   And then as the day, like the hour went on, it got weaker and weaker.

00:35:31   And by like an hour into it, it didn't tap at all.

00:35:34   And I contacted Apple, and they sent someone like a courier over with a replacement, and

00:35:39   it was fine.

00:35:39   So that's the one time I ever got a lemon from Apple.

00:35:41   I didn't even pay for it.

00:35:42   And somebody from Apple came in an hour later to my door, rang the doorbell with a replacement,

00:35:48   because it was a review unit.

00:35:50   But I thought, son of a bitch, this expensive display, which is going to be such a pain

00:35:57   in the ass to send back, what am I going to do?

00:36:00   What am I going to do?

00:36:00   Do I ship it back?

00:36:01   Do I run it to the Apple Store here in Philadelphia?

00:36:05   But then I thought, ah, Jesus Christ, it took three months for this thing to show up, or

00:36:10   two months, right?

00:36:10   It felt like three.

00:36:11   I'm going to have to wait another couple months for the replacement.

00:36:14   And of course, poor, poor me.

00:36:16   Oh, poor John Gruber.

00:36:18   I've got the review unit studio display.

00:36:20   Yeah.

00:36:21   And it's still on my desk.

00:36:23   I was smart enough not to have packaged it back up to send yet, right?

00:36:27   Because I thought I'd like to have it side by side to compare the reflective display

00:36:32   versus non-reflective.

00:36:34   So poor, poor me, I was going to have to suffer and keep my review unit for another two months

00:36:39   while.

00:36:39   But I was so looking forward to having the nanotexture, because my office is so filled

00:36:44   with sun, and it really is the perfect scenario for a matte-style finished display.

00:36:50   But it's just like, what a pain in the ass.

00:36:52   What a run of bad luck.

00:36:54   But then I thought, what if it's the cable, what if it's the Thunderbolt cable?

00:36:58   So I took the Thunderbolt cable, the Apple one, from the review unit display, used that

00:37:05   cable.

00:37:06   Second I plugged it in, the display turned on.

00:37:07   Huh.

00:37:09   Second it instantly just worked exactly as I thought it was going to work all along.

00:37:14   I took the cable that I just opened today, plugged it into my review unit, which I've

00:37:19   been using for months, plugged that into my MacBook, and it was the same story.

00:37:23   No picture at all.

00:37:24   Sound work, video worked.

00:37:26   This was the cable that came with it?

00:37:29   It came with it.

00:37:30   So you did get a lemon.

00:37:31   You got a lemon Thunderbolt cable.

00:37:32   I got a lemon Thunderbolt cable.

00:37:34   Oh, wow.

00:37:35   So I didn't know what to do.

00:37:37   What do I do about that?

00:37:38   Now, if it was like a, you know, like a lightning cable or something like that, I'd just throw

00:37:41   it in the garbage and buy a new one.

00:37:43   But these are--

00:37:44   Yeah, the cable's like $400.

00:37:46   These are like shockingly expensive cables.

00:37:49   Although I went to their website.

00:37:50   So what they ship, and for those who don't know, it is a black Thunderbolt.

00:37:55   I think it's a Thunderbolt 4 cable.

00:37:56   Yeah, I think Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 cables are the same.

00:38:01   I'm not positive on that.

00:38:02   Yeah.

00:38:02   I think Thunderbolt 4 just means that it's also guaranteed to also carry USB at maximum

00:38:06   speed, but I could be wrong about that detail.

00:38:08   But yeah.

00:38:09   Part of the joy of the entire universe of cables that look like quote unquote USB-C.

00:38:18   If it looks like USB-C on the end, oh boy.

00:38:22   Glenn Fleischmann has written like a 700-page book explaining all these cables, and he's

00:38:28   a concise writer who duplicated no information.

00:38:33   But yeah, I don't know if a Thunderbolt 3 USB-C cable is actually different from Thunderbolt

00:38:38   4.

00:38:38   But anyway, if you go to Apple's website, it seems--

00:38:41   I don't know if they're out of stock or what, but the one that ships with the studio

00:38:46   display is one meter, which sounds--

00:38:49   eh, that sounds long enough.

00:38:50   In real life, it's not quite that long if you really want--

00:38:56   depending on where you want to set up your Mac compared to the studio display.

00:39:00   It's-- for me, using a MacBook Pro with it, it's kind of tight where I like to set my

00:39:06   MacBook Pro up next to the studio display.

00:39:08   I typically run it with the MacBook closed.

00:39:11   I don't like having a little tiny MacBook display and a big stand-in on display.

00:39:16   If I have two displays, I want them to be the exact same size.

00:39:20   That's just me.

00:39:21   But the way I run my MacBook closed, the one meter--

00:39:24   it's not stretched.

00:39:25   It's just-- luckily, if it were 0.8 meters instead of one meter, it would be too short

00:39:30   for me.

00:39:30   But they don't seem to sell this one-meter cable, so I don't know how much it would cost

00:39:34   to buy a new one.

00:39:35   If you go to apple.com, it seems like the only ones they sell are 1.8 meters and 3 meters.

00:39:42   And the 1.8-meter cable is 130 bucks, and the 3-meter one is like 170 or something like

00:39:47   that, or 160.

00:39:48   Expensive cables.

00:39:51   So I got on the phone, and I haven't spoken to Apple because I haven't had a lemon.

00:39:57   I haven't spoken to 1-800-APPLE or whatever the hell the number is in years, years and

00:40:02   years and years, but I talked to some very nice people there.

00:40:06   How long was I on the phone?

00:40:08   31 minutes.

00:40:09   No, that's not bad.

00:40:10   They answered the phone very quickly, and it's like they somehow-- because I called

00:40:14   from my iPhone, they recognized the number, and then they sent an alert to all my devices

00:40:19   to confirm it's me.

00:40:20   And then they could look up my order details and stuff.

00:40:24   I was unfortunately-- most of my time was on hold.

00:40:26   When I explained my problem to the woman who answered, she-- I actually-- I think I did

00:40:32   a more concise version than I just did talking here on the show, but explained that I have

00:40:38   another studio display.

00:40:39   I just bought one.

00:40:40   I just opened it.

00:40:41   Well, I bought it in April.

00:40:42   Just opened it.

00:40:43   The new cable, no picture, but sound works, webcam works.

00:40:48   I happen to have another studio display.

00:40:50   That's all I said.

00:40:51   That one's cable.

00:40:52   Everything works with the new display.

00:40:54   So I'm 99% sure that it's a bum cable.

00:40:58   And then she asked the very insightful question, "Did I try the new cable on the old studio

00:41:02   display?"

00:41:03   And I said, "Yes, I did."

00:41:04   And it was the same problem.

00:41:07   No picture, even though sound worked and the webcam worked.

00:41:10   And she said, "OK, sounds like we need to send you a new cable.

00:41:13   Let me put you on hold.

00:41:14   I'll get somebody else."

00:41:15   That's where I had to wait, like, I don't know.

00:41:18   I spent, like, two minutes talking to her, 25 minutes on hold, and then I got to talk

00:41:22   to somebody else who agreed to send me a new cable in two days.

00:41:25   So we'll see how that goes.

00:41:27   Well, best of luck.

00:41:30   I will say, like, if you, like, the Thunderbolt 4 cables that are on the market, there aren't

00:41:36   many of them.

00:41:36   My preferred one is the CalDigit one, which sells, it sells for $30 for a 1-meter one

00:41:43   or $75 for a 2-meter one.

00:41:46   But it is a Thunderbolt 4 cable, and what that means is you plug it into any USB-C hole,

00:41:53   and you plug the other end into any other USB-C hole, and it will do what you want it

00:41:57   to do.

00:41:57   It supports all the power, all the data transfer, Thunderbolt and USB modes at full speed on

00:42:03   both.

00:42:04   The only downside is it is a very expensive cable.

00:42:07   But if you want all of your problem solved with the Thunderbolt cables, you can get these

00:42:12   Thunderbolt 4 certified cables.

00:42:14   Again, my favorite is the CalDigit ones.

00:42:16   OWC also makes one that I think is just as good, and they're all about the same price,

00:42:20   look about the same, they're a little bit thick.

00:42:21   They're not super flexible because there's a whole bunch of cables in there, but they

00:42:24   are, they will solve your problem if you just burn money.

00:42:28   I happen to have at least one other true Thunderbolt, I don't know even, again, I guess, no, the

00:42:36   other one I have is I think from Monoprice.

00:42:39   It's black.

00:42:39   I bought it for use doing like migration assistant, which we can get to in a minute as I talk

00:42:46   about setting up the MacBook Air.

00:42:48   But because that's what I knew I wanted to use it for, I bought the short one, which

00:42:52   again, saves you a lot of money.

00:42:55   But my Monoprice one has the little lightning logo on it, but it also says three, so it

00:43:03   sort of speaks to the idea that a Thunderbolt 3 cable still can do everything.

00:43:08   And for the purposes of connecting an Apple display, I think that's all you need.

00:43:11   Like I know with the XDR, I mean, XDR is a little bit different in the sense that the

00:43:15   studio display has all these USB, I assume it's USB, but these devices in it, like the

00:43:20   camera, the microphones and all that stuff, whereas the XDR, the only reason it has USB

00:43:25   is for the USB ports on the back.

00:43:28   So I think it might be a little bit different, but I could be wrong.

00:43:30   But I can tell you the XDR works fine with any Thunderbolt 3 cable.

00:43:34   But if you happen to have the four, the four is what guarantees that we'll also have the

00:43:38   full speed for USB transfers in USB mode, I think.

00:43:41   Well, I tried this Monoprice Thunderbolt 3 cable and it worked too with both studio

00:43:47   displays, so just taking me from 99.9% to 99.99% that what I got was a bum Thunderbolt

00:43:56   cable from Apple.

00:43:57   And all I can think is, how many other, I don't know how common this is, hopefully

00:44:02   I'm like the one person who's ever bought a studio display who got a bad cable, but

00:44:06   I kind of suspect that may not be the case.

00:44:11   How many people you think have actually received their studio displays so far?

00:44:15   Yeah, I know.

00:44:15   It's probably not a huge number.

00:44:18   The reason I, well, number one, it's just when you have a podcast, it's your right

00:44:22   to complain about anything that goes wrong with your purchase.

00:44:25   But I thought, and I guess I should write about this too, because as I Googled the

00:44:30   problem, it didn't seem like anybody, this does not seem to be a common problem, at

00:44:36   least in terms of searching with the web for people with a studio display that just

00:44:42   won't show any picture, but does show the three dots.

00:44:45   I did find one support thread at Apple where some people were describing what seems to

00:44:50   be the same problem, but they were all from back in like April, and it was one of those

00:44:54   like unsatisfying threads where nobody seemed to know what to do, other than to send the

00:44:59   whole thing back.

00:44:59   It seemed like most of the people on the thread solved the problem by sending the whole

00:45:04   display back to Apple and getting a new one.

00:45:06   So I'm tossing this out there because getting a new cable is a hell of a lot easier than

00:45:11   getting a new display, and in fact, if you get your display and have the bum cable like

00:45:16   I did, you might be, as the type of person who A, listens to the show and B, bought a

00:45:21   studio display, you might have a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 cable or 2 or 3 or drawer full of them

00:45:26   already.

00:45:27   Just try a different cable.

00:45:29   Anyway, were you guessing bad cable?

00:45:32   No, I would never.

00:45:34   That would have taken me, like, I think it would have taken me a very long time to figure

00:45:37   that out because I would never, I always assume that cables work.

00:45:42   They might be the wrong cable, but I always assume like if I have the right cable that

00:45:46   it is like this infallible thing.

00:45:48   It cannot break.

00:45:49   It will not break.

00:45:49   That it can't be the cable's fault.

00:45:51   It's like, when you're a programmer and you're running into a bug, you never want to blame

00:45:55   the compiler because chances are it's like blaming the controller when you lose when

00:46:01   you're playing video games with your friend when you're a kid.

00:46:03   It's the controller!

00:46:03   Like, no, you just lost.

00:46:06   It's never the compiler's fault, except like maybe once in your career, it might actually

00:46:10   be.

00:46:10   Like, it's not a very common thing.

00:46:13   It's very unlikely for any given bug is the compiler's fault.

00:46:17   But compilers do occasionally have bugs that occasionally bite you.

00:46:21   But it's just it's so extremely unlikely to actually be the reason that you should

00:46:26   never assume that.

00:46:26   And that's how I feel about cables.

00:46:28   Like, chances are, like this, especially a brand new cable from Apple, like, what are

00:46:32   the odds that would be bad?

00:46:34   I would never assume that.

00:46:36   It does.

00:46:36   I have this.

00:46:37   I have the bum cable right here with me.

00:46:40   Right.

00:46:40   It feels wonderful.

00:46:42   Yeah, it's a very nice feeling.

00:46:44   And the other thing, too, is like sometimes and I know you guys on ATP have talked about

00:46:49   this phenomenon many times.

00:46:51   Everybody who's been using iPhones for the last decade knows it.

00:46:56   Sometimes lightning cables develop like either, A, they fray, like because the way Apple makes

00:47:03   its lightning cables, it seems like a problem they've sort of licked.

00:47:07   But especially like in the early years of lightning, like where it flexes towards the

00:47:12   connector, the actual rubber, whatever you call the substance that wraps the cable would

00:47:18   fray.

00:47:19   Like if it looks frayed, if you can actually see the copper from a hole in the wire and

00:47:23   then the cable doesn't work, you're like, oh, yeah, I should throw this cable out.

00:47:28   I probably should have thrown it out as soon as it got frayed.

00:47:30   Or when the little, I don't know what you call them, the little copper things, the little

00:47:34   metallic things on the end of the lightning start building up that black char.

00:47:39   Yeah, the pins get that like that carbonized.

00:47:41   Yeah.

00:47:41   Yeah, and it makes it not charge anymore, basically.

00:47:44   Yeah, and then if that cable doesn't work, you're like, yeah, because it looks like

00:47:48   shit, right?

00:47:49   It looks defective.

00:47:51   If the cable is brand new, I never, I'm actually sort of pleased with myself that it even occurred

00:47:56   to me to try the other cable.

00:47:59   That can be your victory for well, but I wonder if I would have tried my Monoprice Thunderbolt

00:48:05   cable if I didn't have happened to be a weirdo product reviewer who had another studio display

00:48:12   right next to him on his desk and had literally the exact same cable right next to it.

00:48:18   I don't know.

00:48:19   What a weird, what a weird problem.

00:48:21   So anyway, MacBook Air.

00:48:23   Yeah, so I have my CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 cable over there right on the floor because

00:48:29   I literally just migration assistant did myself over to it yesterday when I got it.

00:48:33   I have to say I am very pleased by it.

00:48:36   So I got it partly partly because my 14 inch is having a lot of weird problems and I think

00:48:41   I have to send it back to Apple for service soon and I ooh, what kind of problems?

00:48:45   One of them you actually witnessed while you were here where it just refused to accept

00:48:50   charging input from either magsafe or USB C until I rebooted it like until I shut it

00:48:57   down and powered it back up and that has happened three times so far.

00:49:01   I mentioned this briefly on ATP a couple episodes ago and I've heard from a couple of people

00:49:07   already who say their 14 inch MacBook Pro has the same problem, which is very concerning

00:49:12   to me.

00:49:12   Like if it was just mine, I think, okay, well, maybe it's some weird fluke.

00:49:15   I'll send it back.

00:49:16   The fact that it's multiple people seeing this issue now I'm like, oh, I don't like

00:49:21   that.

00:49:21   I don't like that feeling, but we'll see how that how that turns out.

00:49:24   And even ever since I got it from day one, it's just been really weird about certain

00:49:30   things like it doesn't really hold on to my iCloud login very well.

00:49:35   Certain things like like they don't they just don't sync properly to it.

00:49:39   It had it will like deregister itself from certain things for some reason.

00:49:43   Like I just I don't it's just been weird and so I have to at minimum like reformat

00:49:49   it and reinstall everything and do it do it all from scratch at minimum.

00:49:52   But I think there may also be a hardware component here, so I don't know what's going on.

00:49:55   Oh, and I have to like reboot it regularly in order for FaceTime calls to come in, because

00:50:01   if I don't reboot it, like right before I expect a FaceTime call, it probably won't

00:50:04   ring on it.

00:50:05   It sounds haunted.

00:50:07   Yeah, it's weird.

00:50:08   And and this has been since day one that I and it was weird.

00:50:11   So I I got when the M1 Max and Pro laptops came out last fall, I replaced my whole setup

00:50:17   with two of them.

00:50:18   I got a 16 inch to be my desktop, basically.

00:50:20   And then I got this 14 inch to be my portable and everything else.

00:50:23   And I and I haven't done a clean install for a while because Migration Assistant is really

00:50:28   good.

00:50:28   And so you can you can carry forward a Migration Assistant installation of your computer for

00:50:33   years and years and years.

00:50:34   And it's usually fine.

00:50:35   Like it almost never has any problems.

00:50:37   But I decided I had done that for a while.

00:50:39   I decided I wanted to start clean new architecture with the new M1 stuff.

00:50:44   I wanted a whole clean slate.

00:50:45   I do everything clean.

00:50:46   And so I literally on my desk when I set these up, I had the 14 inch and the 16 inch right

00:50:52   next to each other on my desk.

00:50:54   And because I have gotten myself used to using a trackpad with my left hand at my desk, I

00:51:00   right mouse left trackpad, I was able to operate the trackpad of both of them at the same time

00:51:05   with one with each hand.

00:51:06   And as I was setting them up, I was doing everything in parallel, setting them both

00:51:11   up the exact same way so that they would be so all the settings would be the same.

00:51:15   The trackpad speed, the mouse pointer settings, like everything would be the same.

00:51:20   All the software I installed, it was all the same.

00:51:22   Everything was the same.

00:51:23   And yet my 16 inch is perfect.

00:51:27   It is so like my 16 inch is amazing.

00:51:29   Everything works perfectly on it.

00:51:30   I've never had a problem with it.

00:51:32   My 14 inch constant problems, like constant little paper cut problems.

00:51:36   So I don't know what it is.

00:51:37   Anyway, so I got to do I got to figure out what's going on there and have something there.

00:51:43   Also, when the M1 Max came out, and there was the capability for them to run iPad apps

00:51:50   unmodified, even from developers that hadn't used catalyst.

00:51:54   I'm one of those developers, I hadn't used catalyst.

00:51:57   There's a bunch of reasons why I didn't ever port overcast using catalyst.

00:52:01   I might do it in the future.

00:52:02   I don't know yet.

00:52:02   But there are a bunch of reasons why it was it didn't really make sense for me to do that

00:52:05   when it first came out.

00:52:06   But with this, this was literally just like, if if I do nothing, if I don't opt out, if

00:52:12   I just do nothing, my app will become available on M1 Max.

00:52:15   And it mostly works.

00:52:16   So I thought, well, great, I will not opt out, I will do nothing.

00:52:21   And I'll just kind of get free Mac users.

00:52:23   And that'll be that'll be good for the handful of people who want to do that.

00:52:26   And it isn't the best experience by any means.

00:52:29   I mean, using overcast in the Mac is terrible, in my opinion, usually you're using it, not

00:52:33   because it's the best way to play podcasts ever made on a Mac.

00:52:37   But because you want overcast on your Mac for some reason.

00:52:40   And this is better than the website, because websites even worse than the Mac app.

00:52:42   I admit this freely, the website's terrible.

00:52:44   I hate working on it.

00:52:45   Oh, well.

00:52:46   So anyway, and I thought, Okay, well, I just I just don't opt out.

00:52:51   And I will get it as I said, free Mac app.

00:52:54   Well, there are some asterisks on that.

00:52:57   So it turns out the free Mac app was mostly correct.

00:53:00   The app mostly works on the Mac.

00:53:01   However, occasionally, there's some weird bug in either like that layer, like the whatever

00:53:08   the catalyst like layer is that makes these apps run on the Mac, or a bug in Xcode, where

00:53:12   building things will like build something on the Mac that shouldn't be built for the

00:53:16   Mac or enable some SDK that doesn't exist in the Mac.

00:53:18   And then when somebody in the Mac goes to run it, it crashes.

00:53:21   So there's there's occasional problems that cause crashing bugs in the Mac app that is

00:53:26   supposed to run unmodified, but doesn't quite.

00:53:28   And so I occasionally have to work around those because if I don't, I'll get one star

00:53:33   reviews from people who now expect this to be a thing because it's been a thing.

00:53:37   And secondly, people start reporting bugs about beta version of the Mac OS.

00:53:45   That's I knew this was going to beta versions.

00:53:47   Yep.

00:53:48   And so now like, okay, now I have to actually so and then thirdly, I am also working in

00:53:55   Xcode doing a lot of new Swift UI work trying to kind of build like the the found the next

00:54:00   foundation of the apps interface.

00:54:02   So just like the big structural pieces, the split view for the iPad, the three column

00:54:06   views on Mac and iPad that collapses down to the iPhone single column view stuff like

00:54:11   that.

00:54:11   And a lot of this stuff has just changed in this beta series.

00:54:16   There's a whole bunch of new Swift UI stuff that makes a lot of this a lot better.

00:54:20   And it only works on iOS 16 and Mac OS, whatever the new one is.

00:54:24   And so I've never run the Mac betas ever because I'm not I haven't been a Mac developer

00:54:30   like of Mac apps that matter except me forecast but that's that's not a big app and that

00:54:33   doesn't seem that doesn't really get broken in betas.

00:54:35   So I'm not really a Mac developer before this.

00:54:38   And I wouldn't want to run the betas on my own machines because I need my Macs to be

00:54:43   rocks like I need them to be stable and 100% reliable.

00:54:47   I'm also a podcaster and most audio software either won't run on the betas or shouldn't

00:54:55   at least be run on the betas because you can't quite count on it because it's a beta.

00:54:58   Right.

00:54:58   So that makes sense.

00:54:59   So I can't I can't put the beta on any machine that I actually need to use to record

00:55:03   podcasts ever because my software won't run correctly or reliably on it.

00:55:07   So I have to if I'm going to put the beta on something it has to be something else.

00:55:13   And my laptop is having lots of problems.

00:55:16   So I decided let me buy an air and I will use it for betas and a couple other little

00:55:23   accessory rolls around the house.

00:55:24   And then I then once I have it I can also then figure out what's going on with my 14

00:55:28   and maybe send it in for service or if I have to do something there.

00:55:31   So here I am long story short with the MacBook Air and I was fortunate enough to be at WWDC

00:55:38   and to see them all in person at the press hands-on area.

00:55:42   And I that that broke me like as soon as I picked one up I was like, oh, oh, this feels

00:55:51   really good.

00:55:53   I did the same thing where I got to the hands-on area after the event and I had number one

00:56:00   and I would like you to tell the story again.

00:56:03   I know you told it on ATP but for the two listeners who don't listen to both our shows

00:56:07   it's a good story while you were waiting for the midnight one.

00:56:11   But everybody wanted to see midnight.

00:56:13   And so I went and found a starlight and there was nobody in line for it yet.

00:56:21   And I had no interest in clicking around Mac OS on this or doing anything on the computer

00:56:30   because the display is nice and it is an upgrade for the Air.

00:56:33   But I'm familiar with the notch so I don't need to look at that because I've had the

00:56:38   MacBook Pro with the notch and it's not the ProMotion one with the higher resolution and

00:56:44   whatever other the technical differences are that the MacBook Pro display.

00:56:48   So I don't really care.

00:56:49   I looked at the display, it looked fine, it's what I expected.

00:56:51   I don't need to use Mac OS X at all.

00:56:54   All I wanted to do was pick it up and I wanted to close the lid, open the lid, close the

00:57:00   lid, open the lid, pick it up while the lid was open, pick it up while the lid was closed,

00:57:04   sort of give it a feel.

00:57:06   And I was like, "God damn that's thin."

00:57:09   And whoever it was from product marketing was like, "Isn't that nice?"

00:57:12   And I was like, "Yes, that is very nice."

00:57:14   And I was like, "I'm glad you're not selling them here on the spot."

00:57:18   And he just laughed and then I walked away and let somebody else have a turn with it.

00:57:21   But all I wanted to do, the thing could not have even been powered on and I would have

00:57:25   gotten everything I wanted out of the hands-on.

00:57:28   Michael: Yeah, me too.

00:57:29   The first thing I did was close it and pick it.

00:57:31   [Laughter]

00:57:32   Michael; Well, my thing was I really wanted to see if when it was closed, if when you

00:57:36   lifted the lid, if the whole thing would lift up because it's so...

00:57:39   At some point that's...

00:57:40   Right.

00:57:41   Well, in fact, I'm sure I threw out like a shout out to Apple's hinge team in my review

00:57:47   because I don't feel like they're getting enough credit.

00:57:48   The hinges, even through the butterfly keyboard era of bad MacBooks of the last six years,

00:57:56   the hinges have continued to get nothing but better, nothing but better on Apple's laptops.

00:58:03   The hinges, their hinge game is...

00:58:05   Nobody else in the industry touches them.

00:58:09   They're just phenomenal and these newer ones are better than ever.

00:58:13   And the hinge does indeed, it does indeed lift the screen without lifting the bottom part.

00:58:19   It's so light though, the danger you get into is it does, it does sort of slide around the

00:58:25   desk depending on how much friction your desk surface has with the rubber feet.

00:58:29   And there's, I don't see how there's anything they can do about that as they continue to get lighter.

00:58:33   Yeah, remember in some of the early rumors of these redesigns, there was a rumor that

00:58:38   the feet would be like these long rectangles?

00:58:41   Oh yeah.

00:58:42   Or ovals rather?

00:58:43   Yeah, it was...

00:58:43   They're like long strips along the whole length of the body.

00:58:46   Like that actually would be hideously ugly, but would be more functional.

00:58:51   Because it would add friction.

00:58:52   I see why they didn't do it.

00:58:53   Yeah, I mean that would be pretty rough looking.

00:58:55   So I understand why they didn't do it.

00:58:56   But yeah, this thing feels fantastic.

00:58:59   And it is, it's interesting because it is in many ways a low-end product and that's part of

00:59:06   why some of its limitations are the way they are.

00:59:07   Like I noticed with the screen, one big difference with the screen is that

00:59:13   it is what, before the current 14 and 16 inch laptops, all of the 2016 forward models, I believe,

00:59:23   they all shipped by default in a scaling mode.

00:59:25   So the pixels were not exactly 2x retina.

00:59:29   It was the old resolution that like the 15 inch originally shipped in with its retina.

00:59:35   And they bumped up the effective resolution and made everything a little bit smaller,

00:59:39   but it didn't actually have the pixels to back that up.

00:59:41   So they were just running it in a scaled mode that was like very slightly soft looking.

00:59:46   And the 14 and 16 inch released last year finally fixed that.

00:59:50   They finally made it so that it was exactly 2x pixels natively to its default settings.

00:59:55   The MacBook Air, the new one, does not do that.

00:59:58   It is in a scaled mode the way they all used to be for since 2016.

01:00:02   And frankly, I'm starting to lose close-up vision a little bit.

01:00:05   I'm probably going to get glasses soon.

01:00:07   But frankly, I don't see that difference as far as I can tell.

01:00:10   I might I was trying to compare side by side earlier with like, you know,

01:00:14   it's text sharper and everything.

01:00:15   And I think it is sharper on the new 14 and 16s.

01:00:19   But it's a small enough difference that I wouldn't make the decision based solely upon that.

01:00:24   Do you see that difference?

01:00:25   No, my eyes.

01:00:26   I mean, I'm 49.

01:00:28   So I'm ahead of I'm a decade ahead of you on the aging aspect.

01:00:31   And I have other vision.

01:00:33   I mean, my vision is good.

01:00:34   I just actually just was at the eye doctor the other day.

01:00:36   And it's effective 20/20 vision when I have my glasses on.

01:00:40   So it's good.

01:00:42   But I do not see fine details like that anymore.

01:00:44   I cannot even I could take my glasses off.

01:00:47   I can get as close to the screen as I can.

01:00:49   I can't really see that.

01:00:51   But I'm 100% convinced that me from 15 years ago or earlier absolutely would have been

01:00:58   able to see the difference.

01:01:00   Yeah, I think five years ago, I because five years ago, when they did make this change,

01:01:03   I did notice it and I hated it.

01:01:04   And I actually would run my laptops at the larger scaled mode, just so it would be native

01:01:09   because it actually looked better to me back then.

01:01:11   But yeah, now I think I've lost that ability, fortunately.

01:01:14   But the one thing I do notice about the display, fortunately,

01:01:17   Yeah, I think the same thing.

01:01:18   I'm like, thank God my eyes have gone to shit.

01:01:20   And I can look at this and it doesn't bug me.

01:01:23   Yeah, it's like I have enough things that bug me.

01:01:25   Let's let's knock this one out.

01:01:26   Wait until your ears go and you can start buying cheap headphones.

01:01:29   One thing I did notice, though, is that and it was just instantly, the bezel around the

01:01:37   screen is significantly wider than the bezel on the 14 and 16 inch.

01:01:42   And so it looks less nice.

01:01:45   Now it's still overall, this is still a very nice looking machine.

01:01:48   However, when you compare it directly to the 14 inch, it is the 14 inch looks higher end

01:01:54   and more modern, in part because that bezel is narrower on the 14 inch.

01:01:59   And that's true with the iPad pros and the iPad Air.

01:02:04   Yes, that's right.

01:02:04   Except I think that with the MacBook Air to the MacBook Pros, it's even more of a difference.

01:02:09   I believe you're right.

01:02:10   Because the iPad Pro and iPad Air is a very small difference.

01:02:12   Yeah, but it's it's it is noticeable.

01:02:15   Yeah, especially when you look at them side by side.

01:02:17   And I will add that in the hands on area, of course, why would they have 14 inch or 16

01:02:23   inch MacBook Pros which aren't new?

01:02:25   But when you don't have them side by side to like look at them, it didn't occur to me

01:02:29   a month ago at WWDC that the bezel was thicker because I had nothing to compare it against.

01:02:34   But now that I'm at my house, I have one right there.

01:02:37   I'm like, oh, the bezel sticker.

01:02:38   I should have I should have made a note.

01:02:40   I'm going to make a note.

01:02:40   I should have added that to my things that could be nicer about the MacBook Air.

01:02:44   Yeah.

01:02:45   But overall, though, like I as soon as like I've been carried around the house doing various

01:02:50   little tasks and stuff for the last couple of days.

01:02:52   It is so nice to pick up and carry around.

01:02:56   And I never thought the 14 inch was particularly heavy.

01:03:01   But in comparison, it's a massive difference, like psychologically, like when you pick it

01:03:06   up both the thinness and the weight difference, it is significant.

01:03:11   You notice it.

01:03:12   And I wish they would make a 12 inch or or, you know, 11 inch one of these.

01:03:16   I think that would be incredible if they could do it without major compromises.

01:03:20   Like the old 12 inch MacBook was full of compromises.

01:03:24   The old 11 inch Air really wasn't.

01:03:28   No, it wasn't.

01:03:28   I had one for years, possibly my second favorite Mac of all time.

01:03:34   Yeah.

01:03:34   Like they were able to do that old 11 inch Air.

01:03:36   The only major compromise for that was that the screen was very small.

01:03:39   And that was part just the technology of the time.

01:03:42   I mean, that was a long time ago.

01:03:43   That machine came out, I believe, in 2010 or 2008.

01:03:46   Was it?

01:03:46   So 2010, I think.

01:03:49   But the other downside to it, because I just I looked it up while writing my review last

01:03:53   week.

01:03:53   The other downside is it was quite thick at the thick end of the wedge, like the wedge

01:04:00   shape, the iconic wedge shape of MacBook Airs until now used to be a lot more wedgie.

01:04:06   To put it another way, it always tapered to a nice thin point at the opening where you

01:04:10   open the hinge.

01:04:11   But the that's where the 11 it's like, how did the 11 inch Air do that?

01:04:15   And it's like, oh, it was really thick in the back.

01:04:17   Yeah, I have next to me here.

01:04:19   I have an 11 inch iPad Pro with the keyboard case, not the old kind of keyboard case, not

01:04:24   the magic one with the trackpad, but the old Apple Folio thing.

01:04:27   And if I compare these two, like they feel very they both feel similarly like bulky.

01:04:33   But the 11 inch MacBook or the 11 inch iPad is significantly lighter and significantly

01:04:38   smaller.

01:04:39   If they could make the MacBook Air closer to that 11 inch iPad Pro form factor, and

01:04:46   I bet they could, that would be a heck of a product, assuming there weren't again assuming

01:04:50   there weren't major compromises, but I bet they could do it.

01:04:54   I mean, I think the biggest challenge would be how the design integrates the keyboard

01:05:00   with that, that I think is the main trick, you know, assuming that it would just basically

01:05:04   be what we have now with this 13 inch Air, just kind of like shaving off the edges next

01:05:10   to the keyboard and just kind of shrinking it down that way.

01:05:12   I think that could be incredible.

01:05:14   And if they could get it closer to that two pound target that the 12 inch MacBook was,

01:05:17   what a computer that would be for portability.

01:05:20   But I understand like for most people, this is fine.

01:05:24   Like for most people, this is as small as they need it to be.

01:05:26   And I guarantee you this would always sell way, way, way more than a smaller one would.

01:05:31   But I think there is an appetite for a smaller MacBook ever since they discontinued the 12

01:05:36   inch.

01:05:37   And this gets very close to solving that need, but it doesn't quite get there in certain

01:05:42   ways. And man, that would be incredible.

01:05:45   And the iPad just sitting there showing us like, look, you can run this exact same hardware

01:05:49   and an iPad and it's fine.

01:05:50   Like just make a Mac version of it.

01:05:52   I think the only downside I really do believe that the one and only downside is it would

01:05:58   get some, but however, whatever proportion it would be smaller by volume compared to

01:06:04   this one, the 13 inch MacBook Air, it would get that proportion less battery life.

01:06:10   And that would be the one and only downside.

01:06:12   I suspect it would have the exact same ports, MagSafe, two USB-C Thunderbolt ports.

01:06:18   The new MacBook Air, the one that we're talking about, the M2 MacBook Air doesn't, even though

01:06:24   it has aluminum to the left and right of the keyboard, that's not where the speakers are.

01:06:30   The speakers are underneath the keyboard or behind the keyboard.

01:06:33   I guess, I don't know where else they put that.

01:06:35   Are they firing into the hinge?

01:06:36   I think there's four speakers and I think some are under the keyboard and some are firing

01:06:42   into the hinge or maybe they're all firing into the hinge.

01:06:44   I don't know, but it sounds just great for a MacBook Air.

01:06:48   Well, you don't disagree.

01:06:51   All right.

01:06:51   All right.

01:06:52   You have better ears than me.

01:06:53   I did a side by side speaker comparison with the 14 inch MacBook Pro.

01:06:56   Oh no, no.

01:06:56   That's the more MacBook Pro.

01:06:57   And yeah, it's, I mean, the speaker, I'd say the speakers are pretty okay.

01:07:03   Relative to the PC world, they're great.

01:07:06   Relative to other current Macs, they're awful, but I see why they did it the way they did

01:07:11   for this product.

01:07:11   I mean, part of the reason why, you know, this product, not only is it very small and

01:07:15   light, it's also inexpensive.

01:07:17   We're all specific to those stuff.

01:07:18   So to move up to the much more complicated speaker setup that the 14 inch has, it takes

01:07:23   space and cost and weight.

01:07:25   And so I see why they did what they did for this model.

01:07:29   I think it makes sense for this model.

01:07:30   However, that is one thing I definitely miss when using it compared to the 14 inch.

01:07:35   The speakers are significantly less loud at max volume and are substantially worse quality.

01:07:41   Yeah, but that's compared to the MacBook Pro, which starts at $2,000 compared to the older

01:07:46   MacBook Airs.

01:07:47   I think the new MacBook Air actually sounds better.

01:07:49   I don't think it's like night and day better.

01:07:50   The MacBook Pros for a couple of years now, but the 14 and the current 14 and 16 inch

01:07:56   are sort of, to me, wow, I can't believe this is laptops built in speakers.

01:08:01   I, it's kind of shocking to me.

01:08:03   It just phenomenally good sound for built into a laptop speakers.

01:08:08   The new MacBook Air is not like that at all, but I'm convinced I could Pepsi challenge

01:08:13   it with the old MacBook Air.

01:08:14   I think that they've made it sound better than ever for a MacBook Air.

01:08:18   And I just, the fact that it doesn't use speaker grills to the side makes me think whatever

01:08:22   they're doing, they could do on an 11 inch or 12 inch, whatever they want to call it

01:08:26   too.

01:08:26   I think they would call it 11 inch though to give it two inches of marketing separation,

01:08:31   11, 13, 15, because everybody seems to think rumor wise, they're working on a 15 inch

01:08:38   MacBook Air, which we could talk about too.

01:08:39   And then to me, that's a cohesive lineup, 11, 13, 15 MacBook Airs and 14, 16 MacBook

01:08:46   Pros.

01:08:47   The speakers, no comparison, just the same way that the 14 and 16 have promotion, the

01:08:52   variable refresh rate up to 120.

01:08:55   My eyes, I mean, you really have to have like vision problems not to see that difference

01:08:59   when you're scrolling.

01:09:00   It's that's super visible.

01:09:02   I see it side by side, but when I don't have it, I don't miss it.

01:09:05   Yeah, same thing.

01:09:06   That's the same thing I thought as I use the MacBook Air for a week to write my review.

01:09:10   I didn't see it.

01:09:11   It stopped being an issue.

01:09:13   Let's pick this up.

01:09:14   I've got to get through these sponsors.

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01:12:20   Before we move off the size thing, the 15-inch, the lack of a bigger container, the

01:12:27   consumer.

01:12:27   I mentioned this in my review, and I kind of felt guilty about it because I was looking

01:12:31   at it.

01:12:31   I felt like my review was so effusive.

01:12:33   I was like, "It's got to be some kind of butt section."

01:12:37   The lack of a small one, that's a thing.

01:12:41   And it's like if Apple never makes a smaller than 13-inch MacBook again, I think that's

01:12:46   all right.

01:12:46   I think for people who travel a lot, having a small one is huge.

01:12:51   People who actually work to go back to airplane trays.

01:12:55   I also think there's a lot of people, I know this, it's not me, right?

01:12:59   It's not you, Marco.

01:13:01   But there's a lot of people who the nature of their work is they are, they're not in

01:13:06   an office all the time.

01:13:08   They're on their feet, right?

01:13:09   Like a couple of years ago before COVID, I was on a, I don't really volunteer for much

01:13:14   of anything really, but I volunteered to be on sort of an alumni group at Drexel University

01:13:19   here in Philadelphia for a period of time.

01:13:21   We had a couple meetings and this is when the 12-inch MacBook was still, I think it

01:13:26   was still on sale.

01:13:27   So maybe four years ago, something like that.

01:13:28   And somebody who was a professor at Drexel was on the same committee type thing I was

01:13:32   on.

01:13:32   And he was using it.

01:13:34   I was there a couple minutes early and he was pounding out some emails on it.

01:13:38   And he seemed to know basically who I was and we got to talking about Macs.

01:13:43   And I asked him how he likes the 12-inch MacBook and he said he loved it.

01:13:47   Absolutely loved it because he has an office, but he's never there.

01:13:52   He's all over campus, all over Philadelphia, all day, every day, taking his MacBook with

01:13:59   him.

01:13:59   He's either using it or it is weight on his shoulders.

01:14:03   It's either one of two things all day, every day.

01:14:07   That's how he lives.

01:14:08   The smaller and lighter, the better.

01:14:10   Can't make a MacBook small enough and light enough to please this person.

01:14:14   And that makes all the sense in the world, right?

01:14:18   I think there's a huge market for it.

01:14:19   I don't think it's as big as the 13-inch.

01:14:21   And again, is it going to end up being like the iPhone mini, right?

01:14:26   Where it's like some of us absolutely love the damn thing, but it doesn't sell well

01:14:30   enough for Apple to keep it around?

01:14:32   I don't know.

01:14:32   But I can't help but think that the reason they stopped making, the only reason they

01:14:36   stopped making the 12-inch MacBook was the Intel processor sucked, right?

01:14:41   And the butterfly keyboard.

01:14:44   They stopped making it around the same time that they started moving away from the butterfly

01:14:48   keyboard, finally.

01:14:49   And I think that machine would have been the hardest one to move away from it, just because

01:14:54   there was the least amount of extra space in there.

01:14:56   I wonder, though, does the fixed keyboard, the one that they use now, does it actually

01:15:02   have more depth?

01:15:03   It does, but I think it's a small difference.

01:15:07   When they went around and removed all the butterflies and replaced them with the new

01:15:10   Magic Keyboard, the models that they were going into did not get thicker.

01:15:14   They were able to do a direct swap, and the rest of the machine did not change noticeably.

01:15:20   I think it might have changed very slightly, but officially, if you'd measured it with

01:15:25   the calipers, I think it was very slightly thicker machines, but it was not anything

01:15:28   people noticed.

01:15:29   And so it didn't seem like it's that much thicker, which just makes the butterfly keyboard

01:15:33   all the more baffling and infuriating.

01:15:35   But again, we're going to leave that behind with the Trump administration.

01:15:39   That's in the past now.

01:15:40   We're not going to dwell on that.

01:15:42   But I think, obviously, things are very different now, architecturally, and the power and heat

01:15:46   needs and the space needs are so much more improved now with Apple Silicon.

01:15:50   And I think when they were doing this transition to Apple Silicon, I predicted on ATP, and

01:15:57   I think like many people did, that whatever the first batch of machines was that came

01:16:02   out with their chips would include some kind of radically tiny laptop.

01:16:06   That now they could show off what they could really make with these awesome new chips that

01:16:11   had such low power needs, and they were going to really flex what they could do and have

01:16:16   like a statement machine that was the new 11 or 12 inch laptop that is so small and so

01:16:23   light and gets great battery life and has great performance.

01:16:26   And they didn't do that.

01:16:28   And I think this new MacBook Air kind of is that, or at least it is the most, it's the

01:16:35   closest to that that we've gotten yet.

01:16:37   But I can't help but wonder if their plans might have been different if not for COVID

01:16:42   and supply chain changes.

01:16:44   Apple has done a very good job of keeping continuous updates and continuous manufacturing

01:16:51   and continuous service through what has to have been a ridiculously challenging time for

01:16:56   their operations.

01:16:58   And they've mostly shielded us from that, like almost every other company that you need

01:17:01   to buy stuff from.

01:17:03   You try to order stuff anytime in the last year, and it's been a challenge, right?

01:17:06   And you've had everything's weirdly out of stock and things are delayed weirdly and they

01:17:11   can't get parts for certain things.

01:17:12   Apple has done a very good job of hiding any of that from really coming out, like for their

01:17:18   products.

01:17:18   They really seem like we can get Apple stuff reliably.

01:17:22   And I'm sure behind the scenes, people are running around with their heads cut off.

01:17:26   Like it's crazy, I'm sure, behind the scenes, but they've done a very good job of preventing

01:17:30   that from being visible to their customers.

01:17:32   But maybe this is some of the effects of that.

01:17:35   Like maybe they wanted to do more product releases or different product releases, more

01:17:39   adventurous product releases, and they had to delay or cancel or change them over the

01:17:44   last couple of years because of all this.

01:17:46   So maybe that's the reason.

01:17:47   Or maybe the reason was that they just aren't ready to do it yet and they were focusing

01:17:50   on their highest volume products first.

01:17:52   But I still, whatever the reason has been, I really hope that they make that statement

01:17:58   laptop again.

01:17:59   Because this new MacBook Air is very good and it's very close to that.

01:18:04   But it's not that.

01:18:05   It is not that groundbreaking, amazing statement.

01:18:09   Like this is like the one that you marry.

01:18:14   Like this.

01:18:15   I hate to make it another.

01:18:16   This is like, this machine is the most fantastic all-arounder for almost everybody.

01:18:22   Like this is an amazing machine.

01:18:25   There's basically no downside except the speakers kind of suck.

01:18:28   There's basically no downside otherwise.

01:18:30   Like this machine is great.

01:18:32   It's great for everyone for almost everything.

01:18:34   However, it's not that like bombshell.

01:18:39   Right.

01:18:40   Like that when you first picked up a 12 inch MacBook, it was like, you couldn't believe

01:18:46   it was real.

01:18:46   And this, you believe it's real, but you're still very impressed by it.

01:18:50   This one is impressive when you pick it up and close it and you just sort of carry it

01:18:56   around like a dealing only with the depth or whatever you want to call it.

01:19:00   The height, I guess the height they call it the thickness, right?

01:19:03   When you're only thinking about the thickness, you're like, damn, this is something.

01:19:06   But the footprint is exactly the same.

01:19:09   It is like you put it on top of the old M1 MacBook Air and it's effectively the same

01:19:16   footprint.

01:19:16   So the footprint isn't a wow.

01:19:19   Whereas a hypothetical 11 inch version of this could be a total wow for every dimension,

01:19:27   height, width, depth, whatever.

01:19:29   And I had the same thought as you where for that stretch of years where we all knew, even

01:19:35   though we didn't know, no, but it's like, come on.

01:19:38   It was kind of obvious that they were going to move the Macs to Apple's own chips.

01:19:42   Once the iPhone started beating high-end MacBook Pros in single threaded benchmarks,

01:19:50   it's like, of course, they're going to move the Mac to their own chips, not the actual

01:19:55   iPhone chips, but they'll just do what they effectively did is take their iPhone chip

01:20:00   technology and then just because they're going to go into Macs, put more cores in them

01:20:04   and make them appropriate for Macs and they're going to be great.

01:20:07   I thought the same thing as you that they'll start with the, wow, look how tiny this thing

01:20:13   is.

01:20:13   And instead they did the total opposite, which is that they put all of the original M1 Macs

01:20:19   were literally put into the exact same form factors of the previous generation, last generation

01:20:25   Intel versions of the MacBook Air, the MacBook 13 inch MacBook Pro and the Mac Mini.

01:20:30   And in hindsight, it makes all the sense in the world.

01:20:34   I've been told by numerous people, I've written about it, that part of it was that

01:20:37   they wanted to keep it as secret as possible for as long as possible, just in case so that

01:20:43   they, whatever, however permanently damaged their relationship with Intel would be once

01:20:48   this was official, they wanted to delay that as long as possible, keep competitors from

01:20:53   knowing when they were going to do it.

01:20:55   And then secondarily, it's exactly like when you were making that analogy to debugging

01:21:01   a program and you don't think it's going to be the compiler.

01:21:04   It's like one of the things when you're doing something radically new in software is

01:21:10   you want to minimize any changes elsewhere in the whole project.

01:21:15   Like if you're going to switch from this database server to that database server, don't

01:21:22   make any changes other than database stuff, right?

01:21:25   That's enough.

01:21:25   Keep everything else the same.

01:21:27   And then once you're sure that the new database is every bit as good, or hopefully why else

01:21:33   are you switching better?

01:21:34   Okay, now we can go back to making changes, right?

01:21:37   And that they had that sort of mindset with the Macs of let's just not change anything.

01:21:42   We finally fixed the fucking keyboards.

01:21:44   Let's not take any chances of something like somebody who has a bright idea of let's put

01:21:50   an all new trackpad technology in.

01:21:52   Nope, nope, nope.

01:21:53   We're not going to change a goddamn thing.

01:21:55   Same camera, everything.

01:21:58   Let's just change the chip.

01:22:00   And then if that goes well, then we'll start building new Mac form factors around Apple

01:22:06   Silicon afterwards.

01:22:07   Makes all the sense in the world, but yeah, it would be nice to have the small footprint.

01:22:13   Now the big footprint MacBook Air, 15 inches.

01:22:16   The Apple has, in my opinion, has never made a large laptop.

01:22:21   I think laptops fairly can be very simplified.

01:22:25   Let's say there's three sizes, small, medium, large.

01:22:28   And medium is where most people are going to be.

01:22:31   And medium is about the size footprint wise, display size wise of this MacBook Air.

01:22:38   13 inch display, call it a 14 inch display now that the bezels are shrinking, right?

01:22:44   Like we've gone like the MacBook Pro went from 13 to 14 inches, not by making it bigger,

01:22:50   but by shrinking the bezel.

01:22:52   And now you can say it's 14.2 inches instead of 13.6 inches.

01:22:56   Call it 14.

01:22:57   Well, it is also bigger.

01:22:58   I mean, like I have the new MacBook Air on top of the 14 inch on my desk right now.

01:23:03   And the footprint of the 14 inch is noticeably bigger.

01:23:05   It's, I'd say like a half inch bigger in both dimensions.

01:23:08   Yeah, but that did that rough, but that size class is regular, right?

01:23:12   Large is bigger and some people like a larger laptop.

01:23:15   You own a 16 inch MacBook Pro.

01:23:19   My wife is a fan of the 16 inch MacBook Pro and was one of the fans of the 17 inch MacBook

01:23:27   Pro back when they made it, or a power...

01:23:29   She has a downgrade for her.

01:23:30   Yeah, she still misses the old lunch tray 17 inch power book because she likes having

01:23:34   a MacBook so that she can fold it up, put it away.

01:23:39   She likes to use it in the kitchen, does not want to have an iMac in the kitchen all the

01:23:43   time, likes having a Mac that she can close, put away, have it disappear from sight.

01:23:49   But when she's using it once, the biggest display possible.

01:23:52   Lots of people like that, but Apple's never made one.

01:23:55   Now, I said this in my review and some people pointed out that back when they had the iBooks,

01:24:01   the G4 iBooks, they sold, I think they called 12 inch and 14 inch and that the 14 inch arguably

01:24:08   was a big one.

01:24:09   But I'm going to say no because both of both the 12 inch G4 iBook and the 14 inch G4 iBook

01:24:18   had 1024 by 768 displays.

01:24:21   So you didn't get more pixels, you just got bigger pixels.

01:24:26   And sure, some people like that, right?

01:24:28   Especially your...

01:24:28   My mom had one.

01:24:29   Yeah.

01:24:30   And those machines came out at a time when my eyes were really, really sharp and the

01:24:37   hubris of youth, I thought, why would anybody voluntarily buy a bigger, heavier one that

01:24:42   gives you the same number of pixels?

01:24:44   And now that I'm older, I'm like, oh, I know why.

01:24:48   Because you can read and everything looks bigger, better.

01:24:53   And it's nicer to be able to read it or read it more comfortably than not be able to read

01:24:59   it or read it uncomfortably.

01:25:00   But I would say that that was a different two size option than what I'm talking about.

01:25:07   What I'm talking about is a bigger display that actually shows you more content at the

01:25:11   default resolution.

01:25:12   Apple's never made that at a consumer price.

01:25:14   And one of the reasons, I guess the reason is that Apple likes to sell expensive products.

01:25:21   And I know there's a lot of people who probably they're going to leave some money on the

01:25:27   table for some number of customers who currently just buy the MacBook Pro with the 16

01:25:35   inch display because they want the 16 inch display, even though that's the one and only

01:25:40   feature of the 16 inch MacBook Pro that they care about compared to the MacBook Air.

01:25:45   They just want the bigger display, but they're spending like literally twice the money,

01:25:51   like a new MacBook Air starts at $1200 and the 16 inch MacBook Pro starts at $2500.

01:25:58   It's double the money.

01:26:01   Now you're getting so much more.

01:26:02   But if you don't care about any of that other stuff, all you want is a large laptop that

01:26:07   shows you more stuff.

01:26:08   It's absolutely it's kind of absurd and sort of one of the single it exemplifies the

01:26:16   limitations of being in the Mac ecosystem where you get to choose any hardware you want

01:26:23   as long as it's something Apple sells you compared to the PC world where you can find

01:26:28   two inch thick laptops with gaming GPUs in them.

01:26:31   You can find totally totally ones that are the size of a Field Notes notebook.

01:26:36   I mean, you can find anything, right?

01:26:38   I think that it's it's borderline.

01:26:42   I was going to say criminal, but criminal with a lowercase C that Apple Apple forces

01:26:50   somebody who otherwise would be completely satisfied technically with a MacBook Air to

01:26:55   upgrade all the way to a starts at $2500 16 inch MacBook Pro just to get a large laptop.

01:27:01   So yeah, and I I think if you if you look at what Apple how they price the existing lineup

01:27:08   and now there's no more Intel everything's a lot more under their control.

01:27:12   And if you compare spec for spec, they actually don't charge that much more for screen

01:27:20   size now.

01:27:21   So for instance, if you look if you if you match the specs between them, a 14 inch to

01:27:28   a 16 inch MacBook Pro is only about a $200 increase depends on I think it depends on

01:27:32   certain figures, but like the way I the way I buy things like the minimum I would buy

01:27:36   is 16 gigs one terabyte.

01:27:38   And that's a $200 difference right now 14 to 16.

01:27:42   And if you do the same thing with the air, it's I think from the air to the 14 inch,

01:27:49   it's about $600.

01:27:50   Now that's not exactly the spec for spec match because the 14 inch has the M1 Pro and

01:27:56   the air has the M2 non pro.

01:27:57   So the the 14 inch is going to outperform it and stuff like that.

01:28:00   And there's a nicer screen, the nicer speakers like there's the other the different port

01:28:06   situation.

01:28:07   So there's other differences between the air and the 14.

01:28:09   But when you compare them spec for spec, roughly you're looking at 600 bucks to go from

01:28:14   air to 14 and 200 bucks to go from 14 to 16.

01:28:17   And so you figure like where in this lineup would a 15 inch air fit in?

01:28:24   If it's only going to be a couple hundred bucks more than the regular air, then that

01:28:32   may that would be the most logical looking at the way they've done this.

01:28:34   That's most likely most likely what would happen.

01:28:36   It would be two or $300 more than the regular air spec for spec matched, but they would

01:28:40   probably also not have it be available in as low of a configuration just so that it's

01:28:46   starting price would then be higher.

01:28:47   So maybe it would start at $1600 or whatever.

01:28:50   Right.

01:28:51   But there would still like once you look at like where it would start, there would still

01:28:55   be probably like a $600 gap between it and the MacBook Pro 16 inch.

01:29:03   I know I think it would be an $800 gap because it's $2500 for the cheapest 16 inch MacBook

01:29:08   Pro you can buy is $2500.

01:29:10   I think I think they could do it for $1700.

01:29:13   I sort of botched this.

01:29:14   This is one of the mistakes I've got to correct in an update or not an update, but like a

01:29:18   follow up piece on my MacBook Air.

01:29:20   I just looked at base models and said the 14 inch to 16 inches, a $500 upgrade.

01:29:26   But what I forgot about is that the $2000 base 14 inch MacBook Pro is chip in two ways.

01:29:34   It only has an eight core CPU instead of 10 and only has a 14 core only quote unquote

01:29:41   only has a 14 core GPU instead of instead of 16.

01:29:45   So if you if you and the 16 inch MacBook Pro has no eight cores GPU or CPU or 14 core CPU

01:29:55   options, you can only get the the true unbend and M1 Pro and M1 Max that have 10 core and

01:30:05   better and 16 core and better.

01:30:07   So once you move the 14 inch MacBook Pro to 10 core CPU, 16 core GPU, it's it's exactly

01:30:17   what you said.

01:30:17   It's only $200 difference.

01:30:19   So the display alone is really only a $200 upgrade.

01:30:23   So that would mean let's assume that a 15 inch MacBook Air would also not have any chip

01:30:28   bend discount options.

01:30:30   That would be the $1500 MacBook Air with the how many GPUs I forget.

01:30:38   Well, whatever it is.

01:30:39   No, no chip in.

01:30:40   Yeah, eight core CPU, 10 core GPU, which I didn't even get when I for the there I just

01:30:45   bought.

01:30:45   I got the bin GPU because I don't care about GPU stuff.

01:30:48   Yep.

01:30:48   Like I will always buy all the CPU cores I can get, but I couldn't care less about GPU.

01:30:53   So I will minimize that if I can.

01:30:54   Yeah, I would do that personally, too, because I don't know.

01:30:58   I don't know when the last time I've maxed out a GPU is, but it's supposed to have any

01:31:01   gray hairs at the time.

01:31:02   So if it's only a $200 upgrade, but they don't have bend discount options, that would be

01:31:08   $1700.

01:31:09   And yeah, that's right to me, man.

01:31:11   Doesn't that when you just look at the the starting prices of isn't that seem like a

01:31:16   gaping hole in the whole MacBook family lineup?

01:31:20   A $1700 product.

01:31:22   Oh, my God, that's and the rumors are that this fall that they're going to have a consumer

01:31:28   level.

01:31:28   It's all relative, but the consumer level iPhone family is also going to have a large

01:31:33   size to date to get the biggest iPhone you had to get the pro Max or whatever.

01:31:37   And so if that's if that's true, and all the rumors seem pretty solid on that, and iPhone

01:31:42   rumors like crazy by this point, so they're they can almost be treated as fact.

01:31:46   If that's the case, then I think Apple has realized it is worth covering the market for

01:31:51   lower priced items, even when they go into larger screens, because what they've also

01:31:55   been doing in the meantime is pushing the pro prices up.

01:31:58   But it used to be the 15 inch laptops used to start at like 1800 $2,000.

01:32:02   And and slowly they've crept up over time.

01:32:05   And part of that is inflation.

01:32:06   But also part of that is Apple is pushing their pro products up market as the as they

01:32:12   are expanding their their quote consumer level products.

01:32:15   And so I think that's a smart move.

01:32:17   I mean, I'm not an analyst by any means, but they are increasingly taking market share

01:32:20   from fortunately, the PC market sells a whole bunch of 13 inch laptops, and also a whole

01:32:26   bunch of 15 inch laptops.

01:32:27   And there is clearly a market for a bit bigger screen, but still don't care about pro stuff,

01:32:35   pro specs, pro quality stuff like there's there's a big market for that.

01:32:39   And it makes total sense for Apple to start addressing that market.

01:32:42   And there is some risk of cannibalization of the higher end stuff.

01:32:47   But I don't think it's going to be that big of a risk.

01:32:50   I think the extra volume they're going to get from attacking this lower end market is

01:32:54   going to make up for that.

01:32:55   Right.

01:32:56   Like the spreadsheet Tim Cook's got to be looking at is take the estimated number of

01:33:03   people who otherwise would have bought a 16 inch MacBook Pro that they don't need, except

01:33:09   they just want a big display.

01:33:10   Yeah.

01:33:12   And compare it to the number of people who look at those options and think, boy, I wish

01:33:16   I could get a bigger one, but I'm not spending more than $1,500 or $1,500.

01:33:22   But then they see that they could just spend $200 more and get a 15 inch.

01:33:25   And they're like, OK, you got me.

01:33:27   Here's my extra $200.

01:33:28   I'll do it.

01:33:30   But they weren't going to upgrade from $1,500 to $2,500.

01:33:33   And I think you do the math.

01:33:36   I think that Tim Cook is very happy with this solution because I think they make they they

01:33:42   make more revenue per MacBook sold because of the vast number of people who would have

01:33:47   just bought the 13 inch MacBook Air that they kind of feel is too small for what they really

01:33:53   wanted.

01:33:53   But oh, for $200?

01:33:55   Yeah.

01:33:56   Yeah.

01:33:57   Give me give me give me the 15 inch.

01:33:58   Yeah, totally.

01:34:00   They're going to sell if they if they actually make this product, they will sell a ton of

01:34:04   them.

01:34:04   Like I have no doubt in my mind that will be a very big seller.

01:34:08   Probably not as big as 13 inch for lots of reasons.

01:34:11   Because it's regular, right?

01:34:12   13 inches is the regular size that most people want.

01:34:14   But man, I think there's a lot of people who would who would go 15.

01:34:18   Yeah.

01:34:18   Look again, just look at when you when you do like back before COVID, you'd like look

01:34:22   around an airplane or look around in an office or look around in a coffee shop.

01:34:25   What are people using?

01:34:26   A lot of people use 15 inch laptops.

01:34:30   It is so they're so common and many of them are PC laptops now.

01:34:34   And that's that's all market just waiting to be taken.

01:34:37   Yeah.

01:34:37   Here, let me take another break.

01:34:38   We still didn't get the colors, but yeah, we got to get to it.

01:34:40   But let me take another break here.

01:34:42   Thanks.

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01:38:28   All right.

01:38:28   Let's talk colors of MacBook Airs.

01:38:30   What color did you get?

01:38:31   So begrudgingly, I got silver and I'll tell you why begrudgingly.

01:38:37   So having what look when those rumors came out a year or two ago that they were going

01:38:43   to do the iMac colors basically, and they were going to have the rumor was they were

01:38:46   going to have a white keyboard, a white screen bezel, and then all the all the light aluminum

01:38:53   colors that we have on the current iMacs that also kind of follow that white and white and

01:38:57   light colors theme.

01:38:59   And I thought, oh, my God, they're going to sell a billion of those.

01:39:02   That's going to be amazing.

01:39:04   It's going to be so fun and colorful and trendy, and it's going to be awesome.

01:39:08   And instead, we got these Johnny Ive colors.

01:39:11   It sounded like it was really going to fit our collective mood coming out of the pandemic.

01:39:17   Yes.

01:39:17   Right?

01:39:18   We're finally going to break out.

01:39:19   We're going to let's buy a rainbow of computers, and it would be this great groundbreaking

01:39:23   new design, and it would be awesome and light and happy, and it would be great.

01:39:28   And I and I think and you said this before, and I think that what probably happened is

01:39:35   a combination of Apple, I think conservatism with larger products, even though they like

01:39:40   they make the iPad Air, which is almost as big as these.

01:39:45   The iPad Air comes in way better colors than these.

01:39:48   Wait, like that nice, like kind of pale blue.

01:39:50   The iPad Air comes in.

01:39:51   Imagine if they offer that on this computer.

01:39:53   It would be it would be looking it look amazing.

01:39:55   And anyway, that's my review. My iPad Air review unit, which I still have, is that color blue,

01:40:02   which is what I had in mind as I wrote my MacBook Air review of.

01:40:06   Hmm.

01:40:07   Well, here's a color that does seem to me like it would look pretty good.

01:40:10   Yeah, I mean, I even I don't know if I think I don't know if it's the same as the iPad Air.

01:40:15   The current iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 13 has a really nice blue as well.

01:40:21   I have one of those right here.

01:40:21   The the blue on the side of those, the aluminum blue is really nice.

01:40:26   It's a very medium blue.

01:40:27   It's not super light, not super dark, a nice medium blue.

01:40:30   And it looks so nice in person.

01:40:33   And even that I think would be great on an Air.

01:40:36   But I think a combination of their conservatism with larger products, colors.

01:40:40   And I think when they added the notch, whatever part of the product development,

01:40:44   whenever they decided to go with the notch, the notch can't be white.

01:40:47   It just can't like it would look terrible in white.

01:40:50   And so I understand why they so and if the notch is going to be black,

01:40:55   then that means the whole screen bezel has to be black.

01:40:57   And if the whole screen bezel has to be black, that means the keyboard has to be black.

01:41:01   And so I see like how the how the design then falls out from that.

01:41:06   However, I would argue that the iPad has a notch.

01:41:11   It has these fun colors.

01:41:13   Every one of the phones has a notch and they have these fun colors.

01:41:17   They also have the black bezel, the black front.

01:41:20   So I think all of that.

01:41:22   I don't think that precludes it from having nicer, lighter, more colorful colors.

01:41:28   So what we have instead is kind of the three colors we already had.

01:41:34   So silver and space gray.

01:41:36   Yeah, they're the exact same silver and space gray we've had for a long time.

01:41:39   No change there.

01:41:40   Starlight is a very pale gold.

01:41:43   It is way more pale than the outgoing MacBook Air, the M1 and prior ones where

01:41:48   that gold was almost orange.

01:41:50   It was like kind of pinky orange.

01:41:52   That's when I when I got the M1 MacBook Air, I got that gold because I wanted something new.

01:41:57   Like it was a brand new architecture, radically different computer from the ones that came

01:42:00   before in its guts and performance characteristics and everything like that.

01:42:03   So I'm like, I don't want to just get the same old color that I've had forever.

01:42:06   I want something new.

01:42:07   So I got I got the weird like pink orange kind of gold.

01:42:10   And it was kind of fun to have that for for a year or whatever.

01:42:13   And and with this, I saw Starlight at the briefing.

01:42:17   And I just didn't I couldn't I didn't like it enough.

01:42:21   Like Starlight is like, it's fine.

01:42:24   It's not for me.

01:42:24   And space gray is not for me.

01:42:27   I I've I went through my phase as a nerd of buying everything black and like everything

01:42:33   must be black.

01:42:34   All my t-shirts were black.

01:42:35   Every piece of hardware I bought that came in black was black.

01:42:38   I was through all that.

01:42:39   And now I'm I live on the beach.

01:42:42   I'm more colorful.

01:42:42   I'm brighter.

01:42:43   Okay, so so now like I don't want I don't want like dark things anymore.

01:42:47   Like I want nice light things colorful things.

01:42:48   Now, let's get some color in the world.

01:42:50   We need it and and so silver looks awesome and it looks silver is the most neutral.

01:42:57   It matches everything.

01:42:58   I never had that problem with mismatched magsafe connectors with the M1 or the M1 Pro and Max

01:43:03   laptops because I had silver so it matched matched everything.

01:43:07   So that was great, but I wanted something new for the air.

01:43:09   But then midnight midnight looks amazing until you see it in person.

01:43:16   And when you see it in person, it looks first of all way darker than you think it is.

01:43:22   It is almost black and in many in many lighting conditions.

01:43:25   It basically looks black.

01:43:27   So if you want a black laptop great if you want a blue laptop, it is barely that and

01:43:36   secondly even in the demo area right in the hands-on area.

01:43:39   Even the one that Tim Cook was handling is covered in fingerprints and it is a fingerprint

01:43:45   magnet and I noticed that instantly and and they try to keep things pretty clean and they

01:43:50   like wipe down the hands-on area units like between each person usually and even then

01:43:54   you could still see fingerprint marks on it very quickly and you look at every single

01:43:59   like review video of the blue one.

01:44:01   You're going to see fingerprint marks and they might be subtle, but you will see them.

01:44:05   And so I I remember back when they had the black plastic MacBook in like 2006.

01:44:10   I remember that had the same problem.

01:44:12   It was and that was a totally different finish.

01:44:14   That was more of like a like a like a tacky plastic finish on that one.

01:44:16   But again, very similar problem of like it.

01:44:20   It looks great until you touch it and then it's covered in fingerprints and that's how

01:44:23   the midnight one looks to me.

01:44:24   So a combination of me not wanting a black laptop and just wanting something a little

01:44:29   brighter and seeing the fingerprint magnet problem on that that made me say no way am

01:44:33   I getting midnight tell your tell your story of seeing the midnight.

01:44:37   Oh, yeah hands-on area.

01:44:39   I could never put my fingerprints on it.

01:44:43   So, you know again in the hands-on area.

01:44:44   So it's being mobbed by all the people who are trying to shoot videos and that makes

01:44:47   sense.

01:44:48   When you're when you're a video publication, you got to get video footage of the new product.

01:44:51   And of course the the midnight one is the only really new color here.

01:44:56   Starlight technically is new but it's it's kind of boring and it's kind of in the ballpark

01:45:00   of what we had before.

01:45:01   So midnight is the one that everybody wants footage of everyone wants a nice good video

01:45:06   clean shot of themselves handling the midnight one.

01:45:08   So there's the biggest line for that.

01:45:10   Finally the line started to die down. So I got over and got in line.

01:45:14   There was one guy ahead of me and he's handling it.

01:45:17   I'm great.

01:45:17   I'm next.

01:45:18   All right, and then he goes away and the handler says hold on.

01:45:21   And they wouldn't let me come handle it and like, all right, I'll wait no problem.

01:45:27   And then I see the mob like shifting towards this one window.

01:45:34   Oh, Tim Cook is coming.

01:45:36   Oh great.

01:45:37   Okay, and they start clearing the area around this one that I've been waiting for that.

01:45:42   I finally have just reached the front of the line for this is the one that Tim Cook is

01:45:46   going to handle for a photo shoot.

01:45:48   It's so from the entrance to the right and I because I was there and I remember you could

01:45:53   have gone to the left if you had gone to the left you would have been able to get to a

01:45:56   midnight because Tim Cook went to the right.

01:45:59   See now I know like go far away from the entrance next to it.

01:46:03   Yeah, but I don't think they had any midnight far away from the entrance.

01:46:06   I don't know.

01:46:07   Yeah, there weren't that many.

01:46:08   I think there were only like two or three.

01:46:08   Yeah, there were not well and the ones that they had the all the ones they had were the

01:46:12   ones on the display where they showed it was sort of like a Pac-Man mouth slowly closing.

01:46:17   They had like yeah, like the big like parallax effect.

01:46:20   It was cool, right?

01:46:20   It was a very cool thing, but it's like hey, can you take some of those down and let us

01:46:24   play with them?

01:46:25   Yeah, and no you can't touch those.

01:46:27   So yeah, so I had to wait and I just and I was like, you know what?

01:46:30   I'm going to stand right here and everyone as everyone figures out that this is where

01:46:34   Tim Cook is coming everyone starts mobbing this area because they want a chance to talk

01:46:39   to or get a picture with or touch Tim Cook and frankly, I don't care that much about

01:46:43   Tim.

01:46:43   I find him very boring.

01:46:46   And so I don't I don't want to talk to Tim Cook.

01:46:48   What am I going to say to him?

01:46:49   So he's coming up and I couldn't care less, but I didn't want to lose my place in line.

01:46:53   So I just stood right there and I'm in so many like weird little like b-roll shots of

01:46:58   people's YouTube videos like it.

01:47:00   I'm just standing there like just waiting for my chance.

01:47:04   I never got my chance because that mob never dissipated and eventually I just gave up.

01:47:07   I'm like, so Tim Cook he comes and he does this and it's creepy.

01:47:10   Like when when he comes up, he's he's being shot by a photographer across the room with

01:47:16   a long lens.

01:47:17   And so he comes up and starts handling the laptop very slowly and he starts moving the

01:47:22   cursor in a circle on the trackpad doing nothing and he starts typing random letters on the

01:47:27   keyboard.

01:47:27   But like there isn't even a notes window open. He's just typing letters with the desktop

01:47:31   open.

01:47:31   So it just it looks and he's just staring and telling me because you know, he's done

01:47:36   this before.

01:47:36   He's a pro.

01:47:37   He knows he's being photographed and he has to look like he's using it.

01:47:40   And when you see the other side of it when you're actually seeing what he's doing, it's

01:47:43   just it's so weird and it's like inhuman almost you're like what like this is so weirdly

01:47:49   faked like it's a very uncomfortable thing to watch.

01:47:52   And he's he's very he's always very controlled.

01:47:55   He's he never is off script.

01:47:57   He he's never seemingly like improving anything.

01:48:01   He is always very controlled and seemingly planned out how he's going to be.

01:48:06   And so he he is a machine when he's doing this thing.

01:48:08   He you can't get him to crack a smile.

01:48:10   You can't get him to break whatever character he wants to be like he is doing his thing

01:48:15   and everyone's yelling to him.

01:48:16   Hey, Tim, they're yelling questions at him and stuff.

01:48:18   And he is just doing and it's it's very strange.

01:48:22   Somebody I forget if I if I heard it personally.

01:48:26   Or if I got this from ATP when you told the story there, somebody some kook yelled, Tim,

01:48:33   are we living in a simulation?

01:48:35   Oh, yeah, that was yeah, that was I told you that.

01:48:37   Yeah, but I mean, it was I've been going to these things for a long time now.

01:48:42   I think I can call myself a veteran of these hands on areas.

01:48:45   I mean, because my time doing them goes all the way back to the end of the Steve Jobs

01:48:49   era.

01:48:49   It's gotten weird though this one and I don't know.

01:48:53   I don't know if it's because the hands on area was in that upstairs atrium at the Steve

01:48:58   Jobs theater as opposed to the downstairs area, which is meant for hands on areas.

01:49:05   But I think it was a sort of a COVID type thing.

01:49:08   It's like, let's keep it closer to the open air.

01:49:10   Because you didn't even get to go downstairs, right?

01:49:13   No, it was only upstairs.

01:49:15   Yeah, so you like some of the those of us who had like briefings went downstairs for

01:49:19   the briefings, but that even when I did go downstairs for the briefing, they had like

01:49:24   coffee and water and stuff not crowded at all.

01:49:27   And they had no products at all in the mingling area.

01:49:30   That was the biggest sort of celebrity paparazzi scrum around Tim Cook I've ever seen.

01:49:38   It honestly felt a little dangerous.

01:49:41   I really wonder whether his in hindsight, I don't know how much like, what does Apple

01:49:49   capture?

01:49:49   What do their photographers?

01:49:51   Are they just shooting stills?

01:49:52   Do they shoot video of the whole thing?

01:49:54   Do they have security footage?

01:49:55   I bet they have security cameras.

01:49:57   I wouldn't be surprised if the security people around Tim Cook look at that and think we

01:50:02   have to do this differently the next time because it well, I don't know because one

01:50:06   of the reasons this was so amusing to me is that almost the exact same thing happened

01:50:10   in 2019 in San Jose, WBC when they were when they had like the new Mac Pro.

01:50:15   And the moment I was looking at the new Mac Pro happened to be the moment that Johnny

01:50:22   Ive and Tim Cook came in for their photo shoot where Johnny was like explaining the design

01:50:27   of the holes in the front of the case to Tim Cook and like and they were doing that photo

01:50:31   shoot and that was also similarly awkward and weird to be very close for and again,

01:50:35   I mean, I know these people have fans.

01:50:39   I think it's super ironic that these people who I don't really care for I keep getting

01:50:42   very close to as everyone else is trying to mob and I'm just like standing there where

01:50:46   they happen to be going.

01:50:47   I'm going to look it up and I swear to God I'll put it in the show right now for this

01:50:53   chapter.

01:50:54   I'm 96% sure that I personally have a photo from that event of you, Tim and Johnny in

01:51:01   the frame.

01:51:02   I was right there like it and I think I have my own photo so I don't have to license

01:51:07   it from Getty or anything.

01:51:08   I've got one and it is amusing because you're just bemused and Johnny and Tim are playing

01:51:16   and again, it's funny and we're laughing at them, but I don't blame them because what

01:51:20   else are they going to do but their shtick for that whole era was okay now Johnny Ive

01:51:27   shows this to Tim as though it's the first time Tim Cook has ever seen it.

01:51:32   He's explaining oh here's how we drill out these holes.

01:51:36   But Tim Cook, a Tim Cook obviously, I mean again he's famously not a product designer

01:51:43   he doesn't pretend to be but he is obviously he's not a hands-off CEO right?

01:51:49   He's not a micromanager who pretends that he can design these products or that he's

01:51:54   going to put input into how big the holes should be drilled or what color the aluminum

01:51:58   should be.

01:51:58   And it's damn well that he's aware of everything about these products and 60 minutes prior

01:52:08   to the moment of Johnny showing him, you know, look at here is where we put here's where

01:52:12   we put the camera.

01:52:13   Tim Cook was literally on stage introducing the damn thing.

01:52:17   Right.

01:52:19   He was the emcee of the show.

01:52:21   I do think it's kind of funny though like when they are when you know and Tim to his

01:52:27   credit like even though he is extremely controlled when he's actually doing like whatever the

01:52:32   little skit or interaction is that he's doing for the photo op on his way in he is very

01:52:38   generous with giving people selfies and stuff like that.

01:52:41   He he will he will answer random questions that are shouted to him.

01:52:45   He will stop and take selfies with almost everybody who who attempts it with him like

01:52:50   he and that's one of the reasons it takes him forever to actually get to the place he's

01:52:53   going because he is stopping and talking to everybody who wants to talk to him.

01:52:56   He he is very generous in that way and I have to give him credit for that.

01:52:59   That being said, I mean look, I know maybe I'm more critical of the guy but like he's

01:53:05   not that charismatic like who is that big of a thing Tim Cook like he's a business guy

01:53:11   doing business guy things.

01:53:12   Do people like why do people why are people that excited to see him like I understand

01:53:19   like when Steve was in charge Steve's a very charismatic guy like that was it that was

01:53:22   a whole different ballgame Tim is is not that kind of public person.

01:53:27   What what is the appeal of people have they want to like mob him?

01:53:31   I don't know it is interesting.

01:53:33   I will say this though that the Steve Jobs I mean Apple was a different company when

01:53:38   Steve Jobs was still alive and it's just much much smaller and yes the tail end of Steve

01:53:45   Jobs life was the beginning of the iPhone era and the iPhone era was like a big bang

01:53:51   explosion of increased popularity and interest in the company right but the Steve Jobs era

01:53:58   hands on things were so chill and there were just fewer media whether it was because of

01:54:05   the interest was lower or whether they just kept a tighter list of how many people got

01:54:10   invited the video era hadn't really started and there were far far far fewer people trying

01:54:16   to shoot video in the hands on areas.

01:54:18   I mean there were photographers but it was much more it felt like most of the photographers

01:54:25   were from major publications like just a handful like the New York Times would send a photographer

01:54:31   but that most of the people shooting photos were just people like me or the like the staff

01:54:39   from the verge it's it's neil i patel shooting photos not a photographer and it just jobs

01:54:48   never ever got mobbed like that and he never did the pantomime i'm going to pretend to see

01:54:52   the device for the first time he would just walk through the hands-on era area and spent

01:54:57   no time playing with the products none all he would do it was him and always of course

01:55:02   katie cotton and katie cotton just sort of i i i didn't i tried not to be creepy i don't

01:55:10   think i got creepy but i got i was like fascinated by the dynamic of how steve jobs would work

01:55:15   this room and the way it always worked was he'd come through if he saw someone who he

01:55:20   knew and wanted to talk to well katie would pick up on that and just let him go whether

01:55:26   it was somebody else from apple like hey there's scott forestall and steve has something to

01:55:30   say to scott forestall he'd just go over and talk to him or steve sees walt mosberg he'd

01:55:35   just go over and start talking to walt because he knew him but for the most part then he'd

01:55:40   wander around and and as he'd approach somebody katie would know who katie cotton would know

01:55:45   who she wanted him to talk to and she would say this is so-and-so from the new york times

01:55:50   whispered in his ear and then he then he he wouldn't he'd know know the name and then

01:55:55   he would just always say the same thing which tim cook does too if you do talk to him which

01:55:59   i've done a handful of times just the same question every time so what do you think which

01:56:05   is great if you think about it right so yeah steve jobs knows what the fuck he thinks of

01:56:10   the new iphone 3g8 4 or whatever the hell was coming out he knows what he thinks he knows what

01:56:14   you think right but so what do you think and then there's the opener and then the person would say

01:56:18   it and then and then very quickly katie cotton would be the bad bad bad guy and say we've got

01:56:24   we have to move and then she say hey here's so-and-so from usa today and that's how he'd

01:56:28   worked the room just talk to some press and then i don't know i never saw him leave it was one of

01:56:33   those it was like a magician it's like i don't know yeah he was there he was walking around

01:56:36   everybody was like oh there's steve but the other thing is that steve jobs had sort of a

01:56:40   darth vader ishness to him like he's scary right like people yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't just

01:56:46   like run up to no no walt mosberg might but he wouldn't have to run right he would just

01:56:51   he's fucking walt mosberg and they know each other and maybe yeah a walt what'd you think

01:56:55   if i saw steve walk if i was in one of those areas which i never was when he was alive but if i when

01:56:59   i was in one of those areas if steve walked by the last thing i would do would be to walk towards him

01:57:04   i would be like oh my god like i am i it'd be like like do you like there's the protocol you don't

01:57:08   touch the queen like right like what what's the protocol with steve do i do i look at him do i

01:57:13   pretend like he's not there do it like do i say hello do i wait for him like he must talk to me

01:57:18   i don't talk to him like that's that's how it would feel you'd know it without even seeing him

01:57:23   you'd feel it like the force so you'd be like whoa whoa why the hairs on my neck standing up holy

01:57:27   shit steve jobs is coming towards me and like you said you'd be like i better i better move further

01:57:31   away right yeah it is a very different era i mean and i don't know like in the alternate world where

01:57:38   steve jobs never got sick or stayed stayed ahead of the cancer and and had been around for a decade

01:57:43   longer or wouldn't it be wonderful if he was still here what would he do i don't know i i i

01:57:51   refuse to believe he ever would have played the game where johnny i've pretends to show him the

01:57:55   thing for the first time but maybe maybe they would never would have taken a selfie with random

01:58:00   people in the in the area i don't know i don't think so i i really don't like it yeah i don't

01:58:04   think so because he he got in and got out and i don't think he i don't i just don't think he had

01:58:09   patience like tim cook does i think tim cook one of you know his many many many genius level gifts

01:58:15   is i think he has a genius level of patience because i i don't know if i were tim cook there's

01:58:20   no freaking way that when i visit a random apple store because i'm in new york or atlanta or

01:58:25   wherever i am that i would spend 90 minutes greeting people and taking selfies and stuff

01:58:30   like that i don't know i mean i love meeting people don't don't get me wrong but like when

01:58:35   i meet people at wwdc it takes me five minutes it's not tim cook well in all fairness we have

01:58:40   fewer people who want to meet us in that way well right right it's like if i had the level of

01:58:45   attention and and the number of people who wanted to get take a selfie with me that tim cook did i

01:58:50   would have to have somebody say you got to get me away from these people it's it's unbelievable

01:58:54   i have not seen midnight again because i haven't been to an apple store i only i've so the last

01:58:59   time i saw it was wwdc i love it because i wish apple made a black or near black macbook pro i the

01:59:07   one thing that makes me jealous when i go on airplanes is the way people with high-end think

01:59:11   pads and it's always been the case i i think they look great i thought that the last time

01:59:17   apple's mac laptops look great was when the power books were black and you know that i mean that's

01:59:23   ancient history at this point oh wow i think that's a great look i just i'm boring i like

01:59:28   dark stuff my favorite iphone color of all time was the i forget what color they called it just

01:59:35   the black of the iphone 7 no the one it was the iphone 5 where they had the bezel and it wore off

01:59:41   over the course of the year right because it's like in the way that like blue jeans look better

01:59:46   after you've washed them a couple times people complained about the black wearing off where you

01:59:51   touched it on like the iphone 5 but i thought it looked awesome i thought it was like the millennium

01:59:56   falcon looking aged in a cool way but i did also like the black iphone 7s i had a devil of it that

02:00:04   was the only time i've ever had a really hard time picking what to buy jet black remember they had

02:00:08   jet black and regular black yeah and yeah and phil schiller was just black yeah very odd but i could

02:00:13   see why they had both which seems really odd because they both looked awesome i so i would

02:00:18   jet black was amazing i i still have it it's right here in the drawer over here i still have it and

02:00:21   this is i finally have to retire it as my testing phone because i was 16 doesn't work on it yeah

02:00:25   it was a hell of a thing so i like that but i have to admit with i have to agree with your assessment

02:00:31   midnight on the macbook air looks like black or near black with a slightly oh yeah it is sort of

02:00:40   bluish in certain light from certain angles it is way more black or near black with a slight blue

02:00:48   tint than blue than like a dark blue or something like that i also think i like in my review because

02:00:53   i got starlight as my review unit which seemed like a weird some kind of weird backstory where

02:00:58   i i'm not picky with review units i i sometimes would rather be surprised and and i also with

02:01:05   review units like to get colors that i know i don't want myself to buy but they were like what color

02:01:10   would you like and i said well as always you know whatever you want to send me you can send me but

02:01:15   if you want my order i would pick midnight then starlight then silver then space gray space gray

02:01:23   last because i've i've been buying space gray macbooks for a year ever since they've had them

02:01:28   now so what do i need to see that for and then they said okay and i was supposed to get midnight

02:01:32   and then like a day before it was supposed to ship they're like ah you know what we can't send

02:01:36   midnight is that okay and i'm like yeah yeah and they're like we'll send you starlight i'm like

02:01:40   okay that's cool so i got starlight so i i don't know maybe they had like some kind of fewer

02:01:46   midnights available for reviewers than they expected and they sent them to people like

02:01:50   ijustine and mkbhd yeah video people yeah where it matters a lot more color they have i would do

02:01:56   the same thing i didn't yeah the only photo i've published in my review was the one showing how

02:02:02   with the lids closed side by side with the 14-inch macbook pro that the entire new macbook air is the

02:02:10   the same height as the just the the bottom part of the macbook pro like if you just snap the lid off

02:02:15   the 14-inch macbook pro now they're the same thickness that's one photo obviously i i just

02:02:21   seen an mkbhd combined ran up like 20 million views or more of their reviews with super

02:02:28   high quality professional video so yeah send them the the midnight my take on starlight using it is

02:02:34   i kept forgetting it's so to me i kept forgetting it was starlight i i kept thinking as i was using

02:02:40   it with no other devices side by side i kept thinking it it was sort of like ambient warm

02:02:46   color temperature like yeah oh the sun went down now i'm looking at incandescent light in my house

02:02:53   oh yeah no no this is starlight this is actually gold the problem with starlight is that it is

02:03:00   it is kind of a slightly white balanced to warm version of silver and the problem is then it won't

02:03:07   match anything else on your desk that's silver it won't it definitely won't because but it's close

02:03:13   so it doesn't look like a choice it looks like a mismatch it looks like like a mistake so like you

02:03:18   know i have other stuff you know i have the protos play xdr it's it's foot of its stand is silver

02:03:23   i have next to it a headphone amp it's silver like if you have any other apple products in your life

02:03:28   chances are they're silver and my keyboard is black and it's like if you have any other silver

02:03:33   aluminum any other any other aluminum that is not colored in some way so it's a silver it will not

02:03:39   match the starlight and that's very frustrating because it's like it's close so it just looks like

02:03:44   a mistake whereas if it's a color like like more colorful color and more saturated blue red or

02:03:50   whatever like that would look like an intentional difference whereas starlight looks like just oh i

02:03:56   forgot to white balance this one thing yeah and it's not like apple hasn't done bolder colors

02:04:02   before i would say that the older gold ones that they called gold definitely were more gold but

02:04:07   they were also because they were called gold and looked gold were more striking and the rose gold

02:04:12   ones particularly so i would say the closest they've ever gotten to a fun aluminum macbook

02:04:18   color would be the rose gold not yeah not for me i i wouldn't buy rose gold but it was a very

02:04:25   striking color and people i know who bought them loved it and way more fun than any of the colors

02:04:31   they're offering now i mean one thing i think you'd probably agree with me every programmer

02:04:35   i've ever known sort of gets annoyed when they get bug reports that include the solution right or

02:04:43   why don't you just yeah why don't you just say i think it would be easy to blank oh boy that's

02:04:50   most of the programmers a lot of my good friends and your friends too are programmers and it's

02:04:56   i'm a nerd i have a computer science degree i invented markdown a long time ago and wrote

02:05:01   wrote the reference implementation i understand programming can't call myself a programmer now

02:05:07   other than like as a hobbyist but i get it but every programmer i know and in addition to me

02:05:13   liking them being logical people they're also good nat they just tend to be in my experience

02:05:18   good-natured people they're because it it's just the way their brains work it it matches with me

02:05:24   but if you want to set them off tell them something is going to be easy when you don't have

02:05:31   the source code right i think it would be easy if you just add blank right oh boy you could oh you

02:05:38   could really set off an even-keeled pro i bet you could even piss off underscore if you told him

02:05:43   something was easy you maybe well not him maybe he's a rock but no you if i had if i had to try

02:05:50   to piss off david underscore smith by somehow that would be my try i would try to tell him

02:05:56   that something was easy i it probably would fail you're right but it's the best guess i have but

02:06:01   in that vein rather than tell apple what color they should make laptops like they should make

02:06:07   a product red bright red macbook air where they should make the the blue from the the the ipad air

02:06:15   i don't even if i don't even go there i would just say if i had to you want to take my face i'll just

02:06:21   describe my problem or the problem i perceive you figure it out i think the problem is there should

02:06:27   be fun colors yes and you figure out what colors would be fun that would work on a laptop and work

02:06:36   with a black keyboard and a black notch and therefore a black bezel you figure it out but

02:06:41   i think they should be fun none of these colors are fun yeah and if you look like if you look at

02:06:46   again the ipad air is a great counter example like the ipad air has the same materials the same black

02:06:53   bezel like you could see how you get a rough idea of how things would look if you look at the ipad

02:06:58   air that's the closest we have and the ipad air colors are just barely fun like in absolute terms

02:07:04   the ipad air colors are like we had boring silver and somebody spilled a bit of fun into the mix

02:07:10   but it was more of an accident like that's the ipad air colors and they look pretty great even

02:07:15   considering that the extremely restrained amount of fun that apple barely showed here the the

02:07:21   macbook air is bought by so many different types of people and i think they would really appreciate

02:07:28   a fun option and i think like in the same way like when the when the new imac 24 inch came out

02:07:34   with all of its fun colors that computer was probably before that was probably the most

02:07:40   boring computer in apple's lineup who ever talked about the small screened imac before that no one

02:07:47   ever like maybe in the 90s when it first came out when it was the only one ever since there's been

02:07:51   like two sizes of imac who ever talked about the low end mid-sized or small one no one it was the

02:07:57   most boring product in the lineup who buys small desktops not that many people anymore who buys

02:08:03   desktops not that many people anymore but they came out the door with this nice new redesign that

02:08:09   had radical new color options and everyone was talking about it and it became the cool thing and

02:08:15   everyone was saying hey i wonder if i can fit a desktop into my life again because this is just

02:08:19   so cool i want to buy one because it looks so cool like i i hope at some point they do that for the

02:08:25   laptop line because even though the laptop line doesn't need the help in sales it's obvious it's

02:08:29   going to sell it crazy even if it looks even if it continues to look very very boring but i think

02:08:34   people want that fun and so maybe that's maybe that's something they do to help drive sales of

02:08:39   the smaller one if they ever make it or the bigger one if they ever make it who knows but i think i

02:08:44   really hope they do this at some point and again maybe maybe it's a covid thing maybe this is a

02:08:50   next year's update kind of thing as you've been speculating i think that's those are all great

02:08:53   theories i just hope they do it because we've had silver and gray and black computers for a long

02:09:02   time now and we don't need more of those as the only options it's great to have those for all the

02:09:07   people who who want a neutral boring or dark looking computer like we it's good to have those

02:09:14   options a lot of people want that but that's not everybody and apple is the only company that would

02:09:19   that would do a good job of colorful options and i really hope that they sometimes do i wonder if

02:09:26   it's a covid type thing i i spitballed in my review that maybe it's just i do expect i expect

02:09:31   this form factor i mean maybe not the exact dimensions but the basic idea of how it looks

02:09:37   to be the i would expect at least 10 years i mean that's how long i think this will be what the

02:09:42   macbook air looks like because that's how long that the the wedge was and that's a long time and

02:09:47   when you're thinking we don't think about we're all thinking like this right now it's brand new

02:09:51   i just had i've only had it for like two weeks or you've only had it for like 48 hours and it's new

02:09:56   and exciting and oh i wish i had other colors whereas the people at apple who are planning this

02:10:01   out know they may not think for sure this will be the same in eight years but they might think that's

02:10:06   probably going to be and they're all definitely already thinking one two maybe even three years

02:10:11   ahead and so maybe all the people at apple who know such things or if they're listening they're

02:10:17   like oh my god if you only knew the fun colors we have coming it's sort of like the way the m1

02:10:22   rolled out in the most boring form factors possible machines that look exactly like the intel ones now

02:10:28   they've got the new form factor which in it of itself is exciting so why burn up exciting colors

02:10:34   and then next year we start seeing exciting colors maybe i hope i don't know maybe i'm just talking

02:10:40   myself into believing that but i also do wonder if there's a covid supply chain thing to it because

02:10:47   in some sense it doesn't make any sense that they have more colors of the 24-inch imac than they do

02:10:54   the macbook air when we know the macbook air is by far and away the most popular mac they make

02:10:59   it it seems like if any of them was going to get the most color options it would be the macbook air

02:11:05   whatever those colors are so i don't know i wonder if too like lending credence to supply chain

02:11:11   theory this macbook air was originally a rumor to come out this past spring and instead it came out

02:11:17   in mid-july yep and and also we we know that this is a very important product for back to school

02:11:24   yeah and tons of people buy these to send their kids off to college yep i wonder if like maybe

02:11:31   part of the way maybe supply chain stuff or other delays happened that made it very challenging to

02:11:36   get this product out on time and that one of the ways they could get it out on time was just

02:11:40   to make the colors very boring i think it's it's almost uncomfortably late for back to school and

02:11:46   i didn't understand this until i was a parent because if you're not you might think well why

02:11:51   in the world would early july be late for back to school but john syracuse's son just like mine

02:11:57   heading off to college in the fall his son was due for a new one so he john syracuse was waiting

02:12:03   for them to go on sale and as soon as they went on sale bought right it's it is time now's the time

02:12:08   for kids who are going to college to get their it was june was the time for them to get them right

02:12:14   and so july is actually late my son jonas doesn't need a new macbook he got a macbook pro a year ago

02:12:22   the m1 13 inch so he it doesn't need one but all of it i have never been more popular amongst my

02:12:29   son's friends for what i do then this summer on the hey my friends some somebody else is wondering

02:12:35   wondering what whether they should wait for the macbook air because they need a machine for a new

02:12:40   they're getting a new laptop for college and i'm like yes i don't have it yet but this is me weeks

02:12:44   ago i don't have it yet i can't vouch for it but i would say yes wait and i will let you know as

02:12:49   soon as i have it i'll give it the thumbs up but his friends are wait we're waiting for the macbook

02:12:55   air to come out and if it had been out earlier they would have bought it earlier yeah yeah so

02:13:01   hopefully hopefully this is one of the things like when you when you look back into past years with

02:13:06   the knowledge of future products you can kind of figure out like okay well this is why this happened

02:13:10   or oh this this was clearly waiting for this so hopefully in whatever whenever the next version

02:13:15   of the mapbook air is updated maybe if there's an m3 version in a year and a half or something

02:13:20   hopefully that we it'll become more obvious what the what the strategy here is with the colors and

02:13:25   and i and i hope there's more of them and they aren't just different shades of gray and a very

02:13:32   very very dark blue so it's almost black i just changed the color temperature on silver and now

02:13:37   it's now it's yeah right now it's champagne or whatever they're going to call the next version

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02:15:45   pleasure when i do somebody else's podcast it's like hey that is a lot easier yeah right before

02:15:49   we leave the macbook air there's the mini scandal over the read write performance of the ssd in the

02:15:57   low end configuration the long story short if you get the cheapest macbook air it has 256 gigabytes

02:16:05   of storage and the way they do the storage and all these is with 256 gigabyte nand storage units so

02:16:13   the 256 total model only has one actual ssd chip all the other ones like if you get a 512 it has

02:16:23   two 256 ssd chips and therefore can read and write to them in parallel and you get higher performance

02:16:31   because there's two chips and i guess with the m1 macbook air even the low end configuration

02:16:38   at 256 was actually two 128 gigabyte chips so all of them worked in parallel and there was

02:16:46   apparently no read write hit with the m1 macbook air to me this is like oh that sounds interesting

02:16:54   is this really a thing and then i actually looked at the numbers i don't have a 256 gigabyte model

02:17:00   my review unit is one terabyte but i've read a bunch about this i honestly i think that this is

02:17:07   way overblown and i think that the claims that it's like a 50 reduction in read speeds i that's

02:17:15   nonsense i don't think that adds up in the real world i think it's one benchmark app the black

02:17:22   magic whatever whatever suggests it's 50 but i everything i've seen people try to do with them

02:17:29   in the real world like exporting video and stuff there's like 20 slower or something like that

02:17:35   which makes sense and it's still faster i think than the m1 or um not in all ways but i mean the

02:17:43   thing is like it's this is if you're looking at like this the speed of the ssd relative to total

02:17:48   system performance the differences we're talking about here are going to be pretty much unnoticeable

02:17:55   in almost every way almost all the time this is a very unimportant metric relative to the two

02:18:02   numbers that we're talking about here like whether you're comparing to the m1 where like it's a little

02:18:05   bit slower in certain ways a little bit faster in other ways or whether you're comparing the the

02:18:10   one chip 256 gig model to the two chip all other storage models yeah it is going to be slower on

02:18:16   certain benchmarks if you if you're actually going to notice that is that's a different question and

02:18:22   if you think you even might notice that you probably aren't getting the 256 gig gigabyte

02:18:28   gigabyte model in the first place because that is not a lot of space it is and anybody who is at all

02:18:34   concerned about the resource levels of these computers don't get 256 it is too small get at

02:18:41   least 512 yeah like and and anybody who is doing anything intensive that anything like a video

02:18:48   processing kind of workflow probably can't fit in 256 anyway so i think this is whenever apple

02:18:54   does anything there is a large industry of which we are both apart that benefits from the attention

02:19:01   that anybody can get if we can drum up some kind of problem with it if we can say oh there's a

02:19:05   scandal the keyboards break that's one thing if we remember the iphone's bending yeah god that was

02:19:11   so stupid but and almost all these scandals are rooted in something that is true but not important

02:19:18   like yes the iphone i believe it was the iphone 6 yeah the iphone 6 and 6 plus they actually could

02:19:24   bend more easily you might guess it wasn't great it was not good but but it also didn't matter for

02:19:30   almost any right and that's how this is this is a real thing the ssd is slower in certain benchmarks

02:19:36   in certain configurations than it was before whether anyone's going to actually ever notice

02:19:41   that and whether it matters is a very different question and the answer is pretty much no and and

02:19:47   again i urge you do not get 256 if you care like if you can at all get more get more if you if you

02:19:56   cannot in any way afford to upgrade to the 512 and the m2 map book air don't get the m2 map book air

02:20:02   get the m1 model and upgrade it to 512 for overall like the same or less because that that is how

02:20:08   much that matters you don't want 256 you want 512 so yeah it sucks they couldn't make this the same

02:20:14   across all the storage configurations but overall this doesn't really matter this is this is not a

02:20:18   thing yeah and i would say this even as me personally being a big fan of bumping up the ram

02:20:24   if you can if you can only bump one thing up you're way better off bumping the storage to 512

02:20:30   staying with the base eight gigabytes of ram and then with the 512 and this the full speed ssd and

02:20:37   the way the all of apple's ssd's including the 256 one are very fast high quality storage when when

02:20:43   your max swaps it'll it'll be fine and you won't notice i've tested the eight gigabyte one at some

02:20:50   point with one of the m1 ones and it's like i can't believe i'm going to use eight gigabytes

02:20:54   i have 100 safari tabs nope it was fine because the ssd is so fast but you want that ssd to be

02:21:00   fast and you want room for it to swap so yes if you can only upgrade one thing upgrade the storage

02:21:05   to fuck to 512 yeah like the swap swap profiling and everything like you don't realize how fast

02:21:11   the m1 is at things and it's not like swapping to hard drives back in the day like when when the m1s

02:21:16   first came out i i switched my desktop from an imac pro with 64 gigs of ram to a macbook air m1

02:21:24   with 16 gigs of ram and i used that like that for most of a year and i i noticed i like i wanted

02:21:32   more ram and i because i did notice like the amount i mean i'm driving yeah i was driving an xdr

02:21:38   off of this macbook air running xcode and photoshop and logic and all these all these big apps and i'm

02:21:44   i am not a good person at like i'm gonna do one thing in full screen mode and close all my other

02:21:50   apps and keep a minimal desktop nope that is not me at all i always have tons of crap running

02:21:56   tons of huge apps taking up tons of memory that i don't close i just hide them and move move on to

02:22:00   something else and i'll switch back in a few minutes so i have tons of stuff going on i use

02:22:04   a bunch of ram and so for a while i had the 16 gig which was really not enough for what i was doing

02:22:09   and i didn't really feel as much as i thought i would like when i got when i had the opportunity

02:22:15   to buy more when the m1 pro and max ones came out i did i'm back up to 64 now because i could

02:22:21   say these same here because i'm an idiot i but i love having too much ram 64 gigabytes of ram is

02:22:27   too much for me it's more than i need but that's what i want that's yeah i want to click right now

02:22:32   i want a car about 28. i want a car that can go way faster than i could possibly keep on the road

02:22:37   yeah exactly yeah like right now my desktop i'm using 28 gigs of ram i don't have xcode or logic

02:22:44   open this is just like my everything else crap stuff i recently did have all that stuff open i

02:22:48   have all these web browser tabs i have different apps to help me out doing different things so

02:22:52   i got a lot of stuff going on 28 gigs when i'm actually doing programming work it probably goes

02:22:56   up a little bit more than that but either way like 16 i was swapping with 16 and i i didn't notice it

02:23:04   a lot of the time i did notice it a little bit but it wasn't as much as i would have guessed based on

02:23:10   previous systems that didn't have enough ram like back in the intel days and especially if you go

02:23:15   back to the hard drive days that's a very different ballgame then obviously yeah that's like two

02:23:18   ballparks over oh at least that's a planet over ssd's now are so fast and the m1 and m2 subsystems

02:23:25   and and bandwidth in all the different parts of the chip and the io and everything it's just so

02:23:29   fast now that when you do have to swap it's not ideal obviously but you notice it a lot less than

02:23:36   you used to so yeah going back to the original point of this question i would say yeah if you

02:23:40   have to upgrade one thing upgrade the ssd before you upgrade the memory all right last topic johnny

02:23:46   i've so it's in the news it's not like out of the blue but it one of the bits of news from earlier

02:23:51   this month was a trick mickle scoop for the new york times which is fascinating to me because i

02:23:57   don't think anybody's either apple or johnny i've and love from are really pleased with his recent

02:24:03   book but he got the scoop that the johnny i've stepped down as chief design officer 2019 and is

02:24:10   immediately upon that announcement was also announced that he's forming a new design company

02:24:15   called love from and that love from's first customer would be apple and that apple looked

02:24:20   forward to two years of collaboration continuing collaboration with johnny i've now at love from

02:24:26   and now we're three years later and according to trip mickle and seems true because that was like

02:24:33   two weeks ago or a week and a half ago and we've heard nothing since to correct it so i i'm going

02:24:39   to say this is now considered factual even though to my knowledge neither apple nor love from

02:24:45   has confirmed it on the record that's that's over or is about to be over that's the story the

02:24:51   question is what does it mean right and i you you have strong opinions strong opinions on late era

02:24:58   johnny i've's influence on apple's products and i think i i don't think i i think i largely agree

02:25:05   with you but subtly disagree with you and that's fair i mean look i i was very happy to see him go

02:25:12   i i think he had an amazing run and did some amazing work there and i also think towards the

02:25:18   end it he he clearly both seemed burnt out and less interested in continuing there and also i

02:25:26   think in in the post steve era i think he lost an important editor and collaborator and and the work

02:25:32   showed that i think he he gained way more power in steve's absence than i think was good for him or

02:25:41   the products and it's hard not to compare it to leon and mccartney and when the beatles broke up

02:25:47   leon and mccartney i think we're still making some beatles-esque music i think imagine from john

02:25:56   leon you could easily no no pun intended imagine as a beatles song i think the band on the run from

02:26:03   paul mccartney at wings clearly to me sounds like a beatles song perhaps because paul sort of put

02:26:09   together the last album of the beatles and it was sort of going in that direction and then the longer

02:26:15   it went before john leon's unfortunate assassination the the less beatles like their music sounded and

02:26:22   i think there's some truth to that where like in the first five years after steve jobs died

02:26:27   johnny ives work still seemed more infused with the collaborative spirit of steve jobs and then

02:26:33   maybe in the second five years was more all johnny and was less for it you can't blame them for that

02:26:40   right i mean it's that that that ten years after steve jobs was dead that the designs were more

02:26:47   johnny than steve well of course they were he's been dead for 10 years right i mean that's that's

02:26:52   not a criticism but i do think i think you speak for a lot of people and this is why i don't want

02:26:58   to pick on you but i think it's perfect time for me to get this off my chest that i think i can take

02:27:04   it i think much of what you blame on johnny i've was not johnny ives fault i i think a lot of people

02:27:09   think the butterfly keyboard is fucking johnny i've and i don't think that's the case i think

02:27:15   clearly he has a taste for thinness that possibly exceeds where the taste for thinness in devices

02:27:24   the optimal level and clearly the overriding idea behind the butterfly keyboards was to make

02:27:30   the whole keyboard mechanism thinner so that the overall laptop could be thinner we talked about

02:27:35   the 12-inch macbook air or macbook no adjective which was the first device to have the butterfly

02:27:41   because perhaps it couldn't have been that thin without it but i think that the the sad sort of

02:27:49   head scratching saga of the butterfly keyboard like it isn't that they shipped it in the first

02:27:54   place or that it had problems if you never have any problems you're not trying hard enough right

02:28:02   like if you're really pushing the edges of what you can do whether it's keyboards or materials

02:28:06   or colors or anything and you never ever screw up maybe you're not pressing the testing the limits

02:28:14   of what you can do the the real head scratcher with the keyboards was why the fuck did it take so

02:28:21   long to to fix it right yeah and again i i say this with sympathy to anybody who bought one early

02:28:28   on even if they had said okay this isn't going to work let's get rid of it and come to the solution

02:28:33   they eventually did come to which is we're going to get rid of these butterfly mechanisms and invent

02:28:37   a new scissor mechanism that will that is thinner and and will feel the feel i think was always

02:28:45   subjective some people love the feel of the butterfly keyboards i think our friend mutual

02:28:49   friend casey lists like typing on the butterfly keyboards that's that's subjective and i could see

02:28:55   that my the guy i talked to at drexel years ago loved typing on his 12-inch macbook macbook and

02:29:01   and he typed thousands of words of emails every day he said and he it's the best keyboard he ever

02:29:06   used his fingers never felt better at the end of the day that's subjective the reliability is

02:29:12   objective and was absolutely ridiculous and horrible right like i as i wrote at times over

02:29:18   the saga i don't recall all the years i've ever been using computers i don't remember ever typing

02:29:23   the e key and not having an e appear on screen and whereas people with these butterfly keyboards

02:29:28   they type an e and sometimes they'd get no e or sometimes they'd get four e's from one press on

02:29:34   the e and sometimes they'd and if you wanted to repair it it was going to be like 800 or sometimes

02:29:39   you type a space and then the space key never came back up that's it it just was down and now it's

02:29:45   down and now you have to take it in and it's 800 fix or whatever why did it take so long i don't

02:29:51   think that was johnny i and this is me being me and having sources maybe the problem wasn't the

02:29:57   problem definitely was not johnny i've insisting no we're going to keep this keyboard because we

02:30:02   want these things to be thinner and i like the butterfly keyboard and fuck you we're going to

02:30:07   keep it that's definitely not what happened what happened to my understanding is that the engineers

02:30:12   in charge of the keyboard kept saying okay we can fix this and and they did they'd announced that

02:30:18   we've got now we have a membrane and now we've got this and they had like three three stabs at

02:30:24   the butterfly keyboard but that the engineers behind it really believed it that this time

02:30:30   we've got it this time we've got it we've got it we can fix it and somewhere up the chain somebody

02:30:36   had to make a decision do we believe these guys and let them take another crack at it or do we say

02:30:41   screw this we have to invent something all new it took too long to get to the point where they

02:30:47   said screw this we're going to do something all new if there's a role johnny i've had in that it's

02:30:52   that he was because he was checked out i don't think he was involved right like i i know for

02:30:57   a fact he was not insisting we keep the butterfly keyboard but if steve jobs were still around

02:31:03   would we would it have taken that long to say screw this look probably would have fired the

02:31:08   whole team but we're going to do something all new i'm sick of this right that's that's the part

02:31:14   of steve jobs that johnny i've i think never really took in because i don't think johnny

02:31:17   i've really loves using max the way steve jobs actually loved to use his max right yeah frankly

02:31:25   i can't see steve ever shipping the butterfly keyboard in the first place because it was so

02:31:28   compromised in metrics steve cared a lot about keyboards like that was one of the one of his

02:31:34   key innovations was when they started making the smaller laptops like when they made the first 12

02:31:38   inch power book like he he insisted no this is going to have a full-size keyboard and because

02:31:44   he was a mac nerd and using a smaller than full-size keyboard sucked and he knew that

02:31:49   and he and the pc industry was making all those netbooks remember all that and and and there was

02:31:54   a lot of pressure on apple when you're going to make a netbook you're going to lose to netbooks

02:31:58   and they were insistent like no that's actually not a thing we want to do because it's not a good

02:32:02   experience and part and one of the biggest parts of the of why it wasn't a good experience was

02:32:06   netbooks had these really cramped tiny little keyboards and steve i i think would not have

02:32:11   shipped a keyboard that had that many compromises and certainly he if he did ship it in the 12 inch

02:32:19   macbook where it seemed more necessary i don't think he would have also then moved it to all of

02:32:25   the other laptops which is what happened with what happened i i like i told you earlier when as part

02:32:29   of my research doing my macbook air review last week i looked up the 11 inch macbook air just to

02:32:35   get the size and weight and do some comparisons and i saw that i read reread the press release

02:32:40   from the first one and it wasn't a steve jobs quote it was a phil shiller quote you know there's

02:32:45   like a formula to apple's pr where it's like first paragraph tells you here's the new thing

02:32:49   here's the highlights of it and then the second paragraph is a quote from the most relevant apple

02:32:57   executive right like if it's a new thing about i work or something like that it's going to be

02:33:01   susan prescott and if it's something with apple music or something like that it might be eddie q

02:33:08   and if it was a product it's it was going to be phil shiller some if it wasn't going to be

02:33:12   steve jobs and it's a phil shiller quote about the macbook 11 inch macbook air and why it's awesome

02:33:17   and like one of the first things in this quote is that it has a full-size keyboard but like we're

02:33:22   only going to have this quote from phil shiller saying this that and the other and one of this

02:33:27   that and the other about why it's so awesome was that it has a full-size keyboard so i think you're

02:33:31   exactly right what else do you not like about late era johnny i've i mean it's hard to know how much

02:33:38   this was him versus other people who are possibly under him but i think that the two things i can

02:33:43   really point to are the the the over minimalism of the hardware so things like removing unnecessary

02:33:52   ports or lesser used ports that that whole that that was that was part of a whole industry-wide

02:33:57   trend towards overly obsessing over minimalism everywhere but it was certainly led by apple

02:34:03   and i think johnny i've where it less became more for everyone and everyone started deleting

02:34:09   features and deleting capabilities and conveniently it's cheaper and easier to make stuff with less

02:34:14   functionality and i think that that corrupted a lot of people's thinking processes but it was this

02:34:19   this obsession with give people less and that that played out in a lot of different ways it stripped

02:34:26   away a lot of the personality of the products we we lost a lot of niceties that actually serve

02:34:31   functions like old old macbook pros before this era used to be able to like push a button somewhere

02:34:37   on it to see the battery level as the lights that would light up you would you had magsafe and the

02:34:43   light on the magsafe plug that would tell you whether it was charging or charged you had the

02:34:47   light up apple logo on the back you had the sleep led you had all these little little niceties that

02:34:51   kind of made it a little more whimsical a little more humane and also usually provided important

02:34:58   functionality and the johnny i've ever stripped a whole bunch out of weight now that that i think

02:35:04   showed in many different ways the hardware etc but also it really became a problem and still is a

02:35:11   problem in the software when johnny i've inherited kind of the whole weight of all their design

02:35:17   after steve passed away tim put a lot on johnny as a result of of steve being gone and and including

02:35:26   making johnny in charge of all software design under his purview as well and then so he brings

02:35:32   in alan dai's team and it's a radical departure week at ios 7 and then later on we get big sur on

02:35:39   the mac and and i think the pendulum has swung the other direction now on the hardware side we're now

02:35:44   pro hardware even even consumer level even the new apple care hardware is now getting its ports

02:35:51   back it's getting its functionality back it's having a better balance of form over function

02:35:56   or form versus function rather whereas the johnny i've hardware peak i think was things were out of

02:36:01   balance there the software though hasn't been corrected because johnny left the software

02:36:07   organization that he set up for software design and and ui design is still there and still very

02:36:12   much in power and that's the other side of his leadership where i don't think johnny i've was

02:36:17   qualified to lead software design or to even choose who should lead it he was clearly not

02:36:24   qualified for that it was not his expertise tim shouldn't have put it on him but anyway he he got

02:36:28   that responsibility he he set up that team with alan dai and i think these the software design

02:36:35   still has not corrected its pendulum it is still out of whack it's still very much obsessed with

02:36:44   hiding as much as possible again over obsession with minimalism for its own sake to the point

02:36:49   where it actually harms functionality and usability of things and we see that all over

02:36:53   the place with it's it's worse i think on the mac because on the mac we gave alan dai the tool of

02:37:00   hover states i wish we never gave this to him hover states don't exist on touch screens which

02:37:04   is part of the reason why it's harder to expose what functionality is like on on desktops and

02:37:09   laptops you can like hover the mouse pointer over something and you can have a tool tip pop up or

02:37:13   something you can explain functionality you could have stuff slide in and out you don't really have

02:37:16   as much on touch screen so it's harder to expose that stuff but on the mac it's like this there's

02:37:23   the the the concept of a hover state now on the mac and it seems like the design team the software

02:37:28   design team now uses that as a method by which to hide everything by default and just take more and

02:37:35   more stuff away from the screen and the rationale they that they used to give whenever whenever the

02:37:41   interface would be able to minimize itself or hide in certain modes the rationale is always

02:37:46   we're making space for your content your content can shine we don't want to interfere with your

02:37:50   content and they've gone so far now that the content is starting to auto hide the stuff you

02:37:56   actually need to see is getting swept away and buried in drawers and swept under the rug and

02:38:02   hidden behind hover states and it's it's so far in that direction now that things are getting harder

02:38:08   and worse to use and i hope that correction of the pendulum swinging back the way it has for the

02:38:16   hardware i hope that happens on software i don't know if alan dai personally is responsible for

02:38:21   that he's just the name that we know because he's like at the top of the organization

02:38:24   i assume that if he is good enough to lead the organization of software design at apple

02:38:29   i assume he is capable of editing his style and correcting it and i i hope that he does and if he

02:38:37   can't or won't do that i hope they find another way to get it in there because that the software

02:38:42   is it's still way too far in that direction and the current you know what we have now with ios 16

02:38:50   and mac os ventura it's not correcting any of those problems in fact ios 16 hides even more

02:38:56   stuff under hover states and things like stuff like you know how like what's the how much time

02:39:02   is left in this podcast i'm listening to you look at control center it's like where where is this

02:39:05   countdown like things just everything just keeps getting hidden and buried and stuck under hover

02:39:09   states on the mac and it's just oh my god just please like i i don't need everything about my

02:39:15   computer to be swept away the content and the stuff i'm working with is why i'm using the

02:39:20   computer i want to see these things i don't need things to be overly minimal it like johnny i've

02:39:26   designed computer hardware as if it was somebody designing computers who hated computers it seems

02:39:32   like the current software design team designs computers for people who hate computers like

02:39:36   it seems like they they don't understand why we're using these things i that was a fantastic rant

02:39:43   number one and thoughtful and as kind as you could be number one for people who do not remember you

02:39:49   mentioned this and it is one of the coolest things i don't know how far back i think you have to go

02:39:54   back to a power book i'm almost certain but i do think it was true in the it was definitely true

02:40:00   in the aluminum era but the power button that you could press on the side of a power button there

02:40:06   was a little subtle button it was also aluminum just a little round circle yeah well it started

02:40:11   out it was on the battery when the battery was removable it was on the battery on the bottom

02:40:15   right and then when they switched to unibody and the batteries were all built in they moved the

02:40:18   button over the side but it for those of you who aren't old enough or long enough mac users to

02:40:23   remember this it was awesome just a little subtle button almost invisible but when you press the

02:40:29   button then there were like four green leds and amazingly when when i you didn't see the leds

02:40:39   when you weren't using it they were like somehow painted over like the aluminum it had like these

02:40:45   micro right yeah that's in it so yeah you could see it when they were on you'd see the light

02:40:49   shining through but when they were off it looked like nothing was there nothing was there so just

02:40:54   a little button but that meant like if your mac but you hadn't you hadn't opened your power book

02:41:01   in a while days something maybe you don't remember your but your you just take it out it's in your in

02:41:07   your your backpack you could just yeah that's what that's what it was when it's in a bag you could

02:41:12   just press the button yeah and say oh i've it's it's all four leds light up i don't even need to

02:41:17   charge like let's say you're at the airport and you've got 40 minutes to go for your flight and

02:41:21   you're like hey should i just charge my my my laptop while i have a last chance and you could

02:41:27   check the charge hit the button without opening it and at the time opening it and waking it took

02:41:34   longer than it does today right it was sort of a uh did i type a password wait wait wait okay now

02:41:41   it'll take my password type the password hit return wait wait wait there it is all right

02:41:46   batteries at 82 percent i'm fine you just hit the button saw the lights and you knew oh shit i

02:41:52   better charge it only got one light or oh all four lit up and when they weren't on they just

02:41:58   disappeared it was amazing but that's johnny i've right it's john that sort of shit of of

02:42:03   these little invisible micro holes in the aluminum johnny ives team and he loved stuff like that

02:42:11   where did that go i don't know i honestly see it like i said like i have some info from people i've

02:42:18   talked to over the years about the keyboard and i really don't think it's it's right to blame that

02:42:22   on him is the fact that stuff like that went away because johnny i've pushed it away or is it because

02:42:30   he didn't care right either way he was the chief design officer he's johnny fucking i've so it is

02:42:38   the buck stops there right it's it's his responsibility either way but i genuinely don't

02:42:44   know if it was him and his taste driving it away that i don't even want that little fucking button

02:42:51   i want nothing or was it that they got it was like ah but that would be a lot of work now because

02:42:57   they're saying and he's like ah all right whatever i don't know i don't know which way it is but

02:43:01   either way it is his responsibility it the thing about magsafe you can't say it enough

02:43:08   magsafe going away and coming back half of it the obvious thing is that magsafe is kind of awesome

02:43:13   and it's easy to connect steven akino everybody's favorite writer about accessibility issues is

02:43:20   mentioned over and over and over again what a wonderful accessibility thing it is because you

02:43:25   don't have to it whether you prefer lightning or usb-c or whatever else when you have to put a male

02:43:33   plug into a female port you gotta line it up and it's even if you have no motor problems or vision

02:43:40   problems lining it up it's it's kind of hard magsafe literally connects itself it jumps out

02:43:46   of your fingers yeah and goes in and it's one it's like one of the best examples i can ever think of

02:43:51   the way that accessibility benefits everybody including the people who don't have like a motor

02:43:57   difficulty or a vision difficulty to line up the the usb-c thing but so and of course the the whole

02:44:05   thing that you could kick the cord or whatever and it just pops out rather than taking your mac with

02:44:08   it okay that's great magsafe's good but the other thing is you get another port right so you charge

02:44:13   with magsafe and now you've got two free usb-c ports it doubles the odds that you don't need a

02:44:19   dongle that's great whether johnny i've actually pushed that away or whether he was just like oh

02:44:27   all right whatever and and just let it happen either way it's his responsibility and and the

02:44:32   they were worse for it it magsafe is better so glad it came back the software thing that's that's

02:44:38   where i am in complete agreement with you except for the fact that it was not tim cook pushing it

02:44:44   on johnny i've johnny i've took it that and i can report that as a fact did johnny i've fire scott

02:44:51   forestall i don't know that i can say that i can't don't don't don't listen to this podcast and say

02:44:57   john grueber says on episode 352 or whatever the hell number we're up to that johnny i've had scott

02:45:03   forestall fired but it's what i mean whatever it is like they clearly did not get along together

02:45:09   they did not get along yeah i know for a fact that johnny i've thought and perhaps still thinks that

02:45:15   he could do a better job designing software than scott forestall and greg christie who used to head

02:45:20   up the who did not get forced out or fired but just retired but and there's all sorts of other

02:45:25   names like that don't come to mind but greg christie would be the one that comes to mind greg

02:45:30   christie probably isn't familiar as a name to a lot of people but was absolutely just brilliant

02:45:38   human interface designer of that steve jobs era of design ken kashenda who now at humane but of

02:45:47   most well known wrote the book creative selections was on this show a couple months ago was a great

02:45:53   guest but most well known as the the guy who was the directly responsible individual and engineer

02:45:59   for the iphone keyboard and in his book tells a great story where he was working on the iphone

02:46:05   touchscreen keyboard and was coming to where it ended up but at the time still had like let's say

02:46:13   like the a s and d if it was all the idea was well your thumb is so fat so you could push anywhere in

02:46:20   the area of a s and d and let this autocorrect figure out which one you meant but it was just

02:46:27   one big key on screen a button that's at asd and he was talked himself into knots over what do i do

02:46:34   and greg christie just said to him one day just make them all their own fucking buttons like on

02:46:38   a regular keyboard and greg christie is not a californian he was from new york and i've i've

02:46:44   met him and he definitely does not talk like someone who got california eyes talks like he'd

02:46:50   never left the bronx just said just make them all their own fucking buttons it doesn't matter

02:46:56   if the actual area you're looking reading the touches from is that big just draw them on the

02:47:02   screen as buttons and ken was like oh yeah that's right greg christie had that influence a thousand

02:47:10   different ways on all of apple systems but liked that sort of hey if this is a text field in a

02:47:19   dialogue box it should be distinct from the non-editable text area around it and it should

02:47:26   be very clear what is editable and what is not and if it's a button it should really look like

02:47:31   a button like a really beautiful button let's you think buttons are boring well let's prove them

02:47:36   wrong by making the button look really cool whereas the modern way is ah buttons are boring

02:47:42   so let's just get rid of making things look like buttons even though they act like buttons my least

02:47:46   favorite thing of our or the exemplification of the allen die era of graphic design style ui design

02:47:54   in all of systems is the search field in the toolbar like just mail right i search my mail

02:48:01   all the time there's the idea in an interface of whether a control is enabled or disabled

02:48:06   so like a button that is enabled looks like you can push it and if it's disabled because maybe

02:48:12   whatever the context of the software you're in you can't push the the submit button until you enter

02:48:18   both your name and your email right so you have to enter your name and your email and then there's

02:48:23   a button that says submit and if the email field is blank or doesn't look like a legit email address

02:48:31   this the submit button looks disabled and then you type an actual email address and the button lights

02:48:38   up because it's enabled and then you can tap it or click it whatever right everybody understands

02:48:43   this the text field is the same way can is it is it is it enabled can i click on it and start typing

02:48:50   or is it disabled and i'd it's at this point you can't search well the the search field in all the

02:48:56   toolbars in mac os starting two years ago whenever they redesigned it they look disabled all the time

02:49:04   they're just completely flat the background is exactly the same as the background of the

02:49:09   toolbar itself it's just just a rectangle with a very faint thing that says search and whether

02:49:15   it's clickable so you can type or not well click it and find out why why would you do that i i don't

02:49:22   understand that i i know for a fact johnny i've was not did not like the direction of apple's

02:49:28   software interfaces thought he could do a better job is that why scott forestall was shown the door

02:49:33   i don't think that was the only reason there were personality clashes but why people like

02:49:37   greg christie were the the old hi team was let go and dissolved it was outside johnny i've's

02:49:45   team and the new hi team which is still there under alan dai who was hired by johnny i've is

02:49:51   inside johnny i've's old team and i'm with you i don't like the direction they've gone i don't like

02:49:57   just i could go on and on and on i probably should go on and on and on more than i do

02:50:01   yeah please they actually listen to you on this stuff getting rid of scroll bars on the mac i

02:50:06   don't get it like on the i i get on the i always got right from the get-go i was like oh this is

02:50:10   really clever on this tiny little screen it's only three and a half inches they just don't show the

02:50:16   scroll bar and then while you're scrolling and it's all updated live then the scroll

02:50:21   bar appears temporarily to show you where you are and then it fades away because they just don't

02:50:26   have room why why would they adopt that on the mac because it's like you said they think it's clutter

02:50:32   but it's useful information how long is this document is this document 10 pages long and

02:50:38   i'm looking at one tenth of it because that's what's on screen or is it 1.1 pages long and 90

02:50:45   percent of it fits on screen well when you have scroll bars showing you see how long it is and

02:50:50   where you are all the time and there's plenty of room for it solved problems hover states i agree

02:50:55   with you the the the the proxy icons which i have written about a daring fireball disappearing from

02:51:02   the interface i i don't know the backstory on that of how that disappeared but when they first made

02:51:08   them disappear they would appear on hover but it was even worse than that because you had to wait

02:51:14   like a second it wasn't even like that was the worst so the proxy icon is like when you're in

02:51:20   the finder and you open a folder and you're in a window the folder up in the title bar with the

02:51:25   name of the current folder and it has a little folder icon you can click on it and drag it and

02:51:30   it's a proxy for the folder so if you or if it then you could drag it somewhere else and copy it

02:51:35   or or whatever you wanted to do you could do things with it because it was there they got rid

02:51:41   of the proxy icons and then it didn't even appear instantly when you hovered you had to like wait a

02:51:46   second my imagined again this is my imagination no little birdies but hmm it seems plausible was that

02:51:54   they were like the the the the alan die team was like what are these icons doing appearance it

02:51:59   looks ugly and then people other people were like whoa they're useful here's what you can do with

02:52:04   them you can do this you can do that you can do this there's all sorts of useful things we've

02:52:07   had them since like 1995 or something like that or 90 what's sometime back in the classic era in the

02:52:14   90s and people are used to them and they've had all these features they're very and then the alan

02:52:19   die team was like well we never do that that's that sounds like nerd shit to get rid of it and

02:52:23   then i sort of my my imagined backstory is that the people who liked them and knew they were useful

02:52:28   were like well maybe if we put them on hover state they won't notice and they'll let us keep them and

02:52:34   then they were like what is this should i move my mouse up there and the folder icon appeared i

02:52:37   thought we got rid of those and they're like i put in like a half second delay and then the alan die

02:52:42   team never noticed and it stayed and then there was there's like a secret default thing you can

02:52:46   type in terminal to make it appear instantly and i don't know yeah and eventually they had an

02:52:52   accessibility pref that always displays them and so accessibility preferences are often where good

02:52:57   designs become possible because it's like this is where this is where the teams that want this

02:53:03   design to be fixed can convince someone to let them put a checkbox for it so that's if we're

02:53:09   writing the the this is the end of the johnny ivira i'm much more effusive about his the entire

02:53:16   run of his hardware and yes there was some hiccups the butterfly keyboards and the disappearing ports

02:53:22   but i also think it's not that those things came back in the last three years because he's gone he

02:53:28   he's he was definitely involved while he was working at love from and i heard from somebody

02:53:33   who knew somebody source of a source who just like months ago had to have a serious design thing with

02:53:40   johnny iv about something i don't know what it is they were working on because my little birdies

02:53:45   always never tell me the actual things are working on but he's been he was involved as of just a few

02:53:50   months ago it's also the case that everybody who's still at the apple design team are all johnny

02:53:55   iv's disciples right so i don't know i i i i almost feel like he's doing a solid for his team

02:54:02   by allowing people like us to conjecture that hey everything's gotten better since he left even

02:54:11   though nothing's actually changed like if he had stayed another five years i think everything would

02:54:15   be pretty much what we have today but my come i don't i don't know i don't know either i don't

02:54:21   know that because you know politically it's even though these are people who were all working under

02:54:25   him for the most part it's still not him being there he had so much clout in the company so much

02:54:33   power that just him not being there i think allows other people and their ideas to shine through a

02:54:39   little bit more than they otherwise would have and and even suppose i mean i don't know how any of

02:54:44   this stuff works because people don't talk suppose that some of the laptop ports and things like that

02:54:50   maybe some of those decisions were being pushed by say product marketing and industrial design

02:54:56   said no you know that's the kind of thing like if johnny is there heading up industrial design

02:55:01   that kind of decision has a lot more sway yep and can probably it's probably harder to override

02:55:07   or argue with yep well and then when johnny's gone then maybe there's a better balance between the

02:55:12   different needs right and so the new head of the design team is evan tanki and she has a remarkably

02:55:18   low profile there's actually did you see the gq not gq america but gq uk had an interview with her

02:55:25   about the new macbook air which is kind of really kind of interesting and she she talks about the

02:55:29   fact that it's no longer has tapered edges because it doesn't need them there there was a wallpaper

02:55:35   had a thing with the design team last year which was really really interesting not for what they

02:55:40   said which was mostly the same sort of just sort of prepared canned statements but it was really

02:55:46   interesting because they showed where they work and you could see i thought it was really interesting

02:55:52   that was their actual iphones there was like an overhead shot of the design team at a big table

02:55:56   and you could see which people on the design team use iphone cases and which ones don't and how many

02:56:02   yeah and a bunch of them actually use the wallet and that was not for show and it was not well we

02:56:08   better put up onto these magsafe wallets on here because we're selling them i i verified with

02:56:13   somebody who would definitely know that no those are just their that was their phones and that's

02:56:18   the the ones who had wallets were the people who use the magsafe wallet they showed a bunch of

02:56:23   stuff on the wall from sf sf symbols which is sort of like a font but it's like a collection of how

02:56:30   many sf symbols are there now that's there about 3800 yeah so i was gonna say thousands yeah 3800

02:56:36   little icons for all sorts of things it's one of the neatest things apple has done in recent years

02:56:41   because they're available to all developers so if you need like a weird icon like a finger pointing

02:56:47   type thing or whatever they had all these things on the wall and they showed us the the return of

02:56:52   the dog cow which is coming back a little bit of whimsy coming back to mac os in the and apparently

02:56:57   in the ios too where the print dialogue is going to have claris the dog cow to show you whether

02:57:01   you're printing in landscape or portrait which is awesome and warms my heart and is fun and is both

02:57:09   pleasing to someone who knows where it comes from in the history but also as good as any way of

02:57:17   indicating whether the print is going to be portrait or landscape so why not it was hanging

02:57:21   on the wall in their design studio before it ever came out in software when has apple ever shown

02:57:27   stuff like that fun by all accounts evans hanky is a very keen manager but she's not a designer

02:57:33   herself really not like johnny i've so she's a very high profile person at apple who we know

02:57:40   almost nothing about because she has never appeared on stage doesn't do the videos like

02:57:45   johnny did i would love to meet her if anybody's listening could make that happen so it's hard to

02:57:51   know what her direct influence is but i don't think i don't think the apple's hardware would

02:57:56   be different at all or very different if johnny i've had stayed on as chief design officer but

02:58:01   the weird thing to me not weird i guess it's not surprising but the big change isn't johnny i've

02:58:07   himself it's the fact that when johnny was there he was the chief motherfucker in charge right he

02:58:12   actually got a c-level title chief design officer and when he left there was no replacement for the

02:58:18   chief design officer let's say jeff williams decides i'm going to spend the rest of my life

02:58:23   on the beach um i've had my good run i've got lots of money i'm done and he left they're going to name

02:58:28   a new coo right there's going to be another jaws leaves decides to go and again go to the beach or

02:58:36   whatever you do when you retire somebody else is going to become the senior vice president for

02:58:41   product marketing johnny i've left and there was no replacement as chief design officer is that good

02:58:46   or bad i don't know right like you're saying maybe it's best to let the product marketing and jaws

02:58:55   be in charge of the actual product design and the design team answers to product marketing and

02:59:01   the software wise answers to fedorigi and fedorii is in charge of software and the design team

02:59:08   answers to craig fedorigi on software but there's no longer and up until johnny i've was chief

02:59:16   design officer there was always a chief motherfucker in charge of apple design it was steve jobs

02:59:21   and then it was johnny by himself and now nobody is that what's the long-term effect of not having

02:59:30   a singular person's taste running the whole thing i mean in in large in large ways i think it's

02:59:38   probably better to have some degree of committee not obviously design by committee is is a is like

02:59:45   this well-known fallacy for a reason you don't want to be too outrageous but to have to have it be

02:59:51   a little bit more collaborative instead of just one person being able to dictate everything the

02:59:57   way they want i think is is a benefit and and and i don't know if that's exactly how he worked but

03:00:02   he definitely had that power if he wanted to and you know you can you can look at the designs now

03:00:06   and you can see like hardware wise it seems like they have a really coherent vision coming out

03:00:12   however it's happening it is and whether it's evan's hanky just being really good at managing

03:00:17   the design or doing doing some of those on herself i don't know i don't know what her background

03:00:21   managing egos yeah that's probably a lot of it when you're working with a bunch of really

03:00:26   talented people that's probably a huge part of the job but whatever it is she's doing a great job of

03:00:30   getting out there a coherent vision with the hardware that is both attractive and functional

03:00:37   and seems to be very well designed in almost every way that i can think of i mean really it's

03:00:43   like i i couldn't have done a better job with with again colors aside that's like my main complaint

03:00:48   otherwise like this is a these this is a pretty great series of hardware that they're that they

03:00:52   put out recently and and so the hardware design seems totally fine the software is a mess and and

03:00:59   it's continue i mean geez have you have you used the settings app yet in ventura how long how much

03:01:05   time it's so much time do we have left marco oh my god it's so like i i hadn't used it until

03:01:12   yesterday when i put the beta on this new map of air it's so much worse than i thought like it

03:01:17   i it still looks like the css hasn't loaded like i can't i can't believe this is what they're

03:01:23   shipping even if they're going to make small tweaks you can now release like we are so far

03:01:28   beyond what small tweaks can fix this is i i frankly i can't believe it it feels like such

03:01:34   a downgrade every like every it's every year i the same thing happens to me and i'm sure it'll

03:01:39   happen again next year and the year after is wwdc comes out in early june and they show us stuff and

03:01:45   some of the stuff is incomplete and i think well they have a lot of time until it's supposed to

03:01:49   ship right and every year i think that and then every year the summer goes on and it doesn't

03:01:54   change nearly as much as and then all of a sudden we get to like this point right even just mid july

03:02:00   just like six five six weeks after wwdc and then i start to remember all the times i've worked on

03:02:05   software projects and i'm like oh yeah everything takes way longer than you thought it would even

03:02:11   fixes and it's like holy shit it's going to be september soon this this stuff is going to be

03:02:15   locked down into a gm for ios soon and i don't know how long they think they can stretch it with

03:02:22   mac to come out in the fall maybe october at the latest i mean it's not going to be that like

03:02:27   and and major design changes don't happen at the last minute hey i'm opt to i'm the opt to i'd

03:02:32   wish them nothing but the best i'd love for settings to improve remarkably between today

03:02:38   when you and i are talking and whenever mac os ventura ships in october early november at the

03:02:45   latest but man that is coming really fast and boy i don't see it so yeah no i mean they haven't

03:02:53   fixed notifications on the mac yet since big sir yeah have you have they even touched them like

03:02:57   it's this clearly very flawed difficult design and yet it hasn't changed in almost now three major os

03:03:06   versions like it they clearly the software design team is not super responsive to complaints and

03:03:15   problems with their design everybody has blind spots right but it seems and i think they're

03:03:20   they're super not responsible and it seems like everybody who could really really make the needle

03:03:25   scratch and say stop stop stop we've got to fix this they've all got the same blind spots and

03:03:31   they've had them for years and i don't know i don't know how we get out of it no i mean the

03:03:37   the settings app on ventura looks like a prototype that you would show in like a design meeting and

03:03:44   say hey what if we go this direction yeah and somebody else would say oh yeah let's try that

03:03:48   let's start that now let's see it in a year right and then they would go back to shipping the old

03:03:53   version of settings because it's better for now and this isn't done at all yet like that that's

03:03:57   it looks like a prototype and it doesn't look it's like no it doesn't look better in any way it's

03:04:05   what you could say one thing about about some of apple software design you can say like well it

03:04:08   looks nicer even if it works even if it works worse right this doesn't even look nicer than

03:04:13   what you're placing like this looks worse and works works like i it looks again it looks like

03:04:19   the css failed to load it looks like an electron app it looks like everything that's like the the

03:04:23   opposite of good mac design and i'm not trying to stay in the past here i know stuff moves on

03:04:30   trends move on design moves on i'm not saying everything should look like aqua in 2003 but this

03:04:36   is this is just not good design in any way it's not good visual design or usability design no

03:04:40   it's and it's just weird it's just weird to have like the labels so far away from the thing that

03:04:47   you press to activate the label it's just it's just it's not good and there's so many hover

03:04:52   states on everything and the controls look wrong and it just and it's the settings app why not just

03:04:58   load it up you know everything's so low contrast it's just seas of light gray divided by other

03:05:05   light gray separated by slightly lighter gray it's like oh my god you have these amazing screens with

03:05:12   amazing contrast use some of it like come on what was the one there's one where you it's like when

03:05:18   you type the name of the it's like when you want to give your mac a name and it's like where the

03:05:22   hell do you do it and there's like an edit button but the edit button doesn't let you edit the name

03:05:26   and then it's like you just click where the name is and even though it doesn't look like editable

03:05:31   text it is like it literally doesn't doesn't even look like a text field it's like they've gone all

03:05:36   the way to now you just click on it and start typing and and it works and it's like i don't

03:05:41   even know where that i don't know it's there's a couple of things like that anyway i think we're

03:05:45   out of time we can't we get finally yeah us finally we cannot we we shouldn't have even

03:05:51   brought up the settings app except that we kind of had to let me thank the sponsors we had we had

03:05:57   fantastic sponsors for this episode i'll go in reverse order i think squarespace brand new

03:06:02   sponsor i think linode where you can host your website or your servers or your databases hover

03:06:08   where you can register domain names trade coffee where you can order coffee get shipped to home

03:06:14   fresh coffee and ship station oh man that that's another new one my thanks to them marco it's always

03:06:21   a pleasure to talk to you and i appreciate the bonus length time you you've devoted to this

03:06:26   episode but this was good yeah thanks there's a lot of fun three three and a half hours of fun

03:06:32   i hope you met it you sound a little sarcastic there no i actually i really enjoyed this all

03:06:37   right i have a real problem in my marriage where i it is years no but i say things and i'm almost

03:06:44   never ever ever sarcastic to my wife because i'm afraid of her but i often say things and i as soon

03:06:50   as they're out of my mouth i'm like oh that sounded like i didn't mean it like hey would you mind going

03:06:54   to get ice we're having people over like yeah sure i'll get ice and it's like oh that sounded like i

03:06:59   meant like she's putting me on yeah so i i don't know i'm getting sensitive to because i you know i

03:07:04   don't know if you know this i do have a sarcastic streak i just don't let it come out also no i i

03:07:10   love doing this for the un-eternity it's actually like this is the longest podcast i record every

03:07:15   year and it's fun let me tell you this speaking of my lovely wife amy i about an hour ago i was

03:07:21   out of hop water here and my throat i'd still i need more i've actually consumed more water than

03:07:27   i usually do during a podcast i texted her to bring me if she could or just send them send the

03:07:33   boy down send me send send somebody down here with another hop water and she texted me back and and

03:07:39   before she did and she's or right before she did it took her a while she said sorry she wasn't

03:07:45   wearing her watch and then this is what she texted me she's not listening we don't have a live thing

03:07:49   she hasn't been listening in this is her exact text so sorry not wearing my watch tell marco

03:07:55   that hops water tastes like an airplane toilet oh we've got we've got we've known now from now that

03:08:02   i think from the tray table to the table now that i think about it that's what she said all along

03:08:06   i actually misquoted her this is why i need to do the correction right here on the show she

03:08:10   actually said after taking a sip that it was she is how she imagined i hope god i hope because i've

03:08:15   kissed that mouse that she it's how she imagined an airplane toilet taste not an airplane tray so

03:08:21   your your mileage may vary with the hop water i love it i feel like if you like ipa's like if

03:08:29   you like strong hops flavor in beer then you have a chance of liking this if you if you are not an

03:08:36   ipa person yeah probably skip this lick a lick a toilet instead or just have some howls black

03:08:44   cherry it's much better all right thank you marco thank you