PodSearch

ATP

447: Lunchbox on Your Face

 

00:00:00   Big day for me, big day for Richmond. We took down the last of the monuments on Monument Avenue.

00:00:04   There's an avenue that runs through Richmond called Monument Avenue. Guess what? There's a

00:00:07   bunch of monuments that used to be on it. Last one, Robert E. Lee, traitor, came down today.

00:00:11   I'm very excited about that. So no more Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue, which is very good

00:00:15   news. Progress. So big day, big day. We should put up new ones, because it's still called Monument

00:00:20   Avenue. You can put monuments there, just don't put crappy ones. No argument, absolutely no argument

00:00:26   at all. And if I say that, knowing that, they'll probably do sports team stuff, which is great.

00:00:30   I don't know. What does a hokey look like? Well, you know, as a former tour guide, as the former

00:00:38   president of the hokey ambassadors, thank you very much. I can tell you that a hokey is me. I'm a

00:00:46   hokey because I am an alumni of Virginia Tech. You sound like a hokey. Are you petitioning for a

00:00:50   monument? Yeah, no, I'm not petitioning for a monument for me. Although I can tell you that the

00:00:54   War Memorial Chapel has eight pylons above it at Virginia Tech, and the eight pylons stand for the

00:00:59   eight virtues of Virginia Tech, which are brotherhood, Ut Prosim, which is our Latin, which

00:01:04   is our school motto, which is that I may serve, leadership, loyalty, service, sacrifice, honor, and duty.

00:01:08   Still got it, baby! All right. You said duty. This is a very useful skill. I can walk backwards like

00:01:15   the best of them, let me tell you. Oh my god. I guess we can't make fun of being called hokey,

00:01:20   while Marco can't, because he lives in a place with a town called Hicksville.

00:01:24   I don't live on that island. That's your island, sir. Yes, you do! You live on Long Island, oh my god.

00:01:30   No, I don't. It's a very different place. No, go find a map of Long Island that does not include

00:01:36   Fire Island. Go ahead, find me one. It's a very different place. I know, I was there this morning,

00:01:42   I had to drive through it. It's a very different place. I know it's hard to wrap your mind around

00:01:46   the idea that there's a place called Long Island that could itself have many sub-islands, and one

00:01:50   of which you live on, but you do indeed live on Long Island. It's not called Long Islands. I'm not

00:01:56   arguing that, but I'm telling you there are a bunch of islands, and they're all part of a place

00:02:00   called Long Island, and if you get a map of Long Island, it will include all those other little

00:02:04   islands. There's a bunch of islands in a place called New York, and I happen to be in New York.

00:02:08   No, no, no. Are you on Long Island? No, I'm on Fire Island. Yeah, that's on Long Island, right?

00:02:14   No, no, it's not. It's a different island. It is! Okay, different island. Here's the thing.

00:02:18   Strictly speaking, Marco is correct. However, however... He's not correct in any form. No,

00:02:24   no, no. I think colloquially or in any reasonable measure, John is correct, because yeah, you live

00:02:29   on Long Island. Of course you do. Like, yes, strictly speaking, it's a different island,

00:02:32   whatever. It's like... That's not how geography works. Like, the name of the place because it has

00:02:36   the word island, and it doesn't suddenly exclude other things that are islands. That's not how

00:02:40   geography works at all. It's just, it's just a place name. Shouldn't the person who lives here

00:02:44   be able to be the authority on what this is called? Tiff would agree with me because she was born

00:02:50   there, and she will agree. All right, I have an important question. Do we live on Long Island?

00:02:57   No, it's a different island. It's a different island. It has a different name. They're two

00:03:04   different islands, and they're islands, so they're surrounded by water, so they're distinctly

00:03:07   different from each other. We live adjacent to Long Island. And for the record, where are you from?

00:03:14   I'm from Long Island. Thank you so much. I mean, Manhattan's not Long Island. It's an island next

00:03:19   to Long Island. That's what I said. Suck it, Syracuse. How could I not know?

00:03:31   Did you know the Dave Matthews Band is a jam band? Hey, so anyway, something that we can all agree

00:03:38   on. It is September, which means it is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And for the month of

00:03:44   September, the three of us who are all members of Relay FM, we try to join in with Relay and do a

00:03:51   lot of fundraising for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. What is St. Jude? Hey, well,

00:03:55   if you live in a backwards ass country like we do, you have to pay for healthcare, like a lot.

00:04:00   And if you have a really sick kid, that can be, well, first of all, having a sick kid is ruinous

00:04:05   to begin with. But if you have a kid that's been stricken with cancer, you can take them to St.

00:04:10   Jude. And if St. Jude treats them, not only will they treat your kid for free, they will help you

00:04:17   travel and pay for it. They will give you your food for free. They will do all of these amazing

00:04:22   things. And they will do it at no cost to you. Well, how do they do that? It's because of people

00:04:26   like us, listeners and hosts of this very program. And it's because of the generosity and donations

00:04:34   of all of you that are listening to my voice right now, that kids are getting healthy and not dying

00:04:39   due to childhood cancer. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood

00:04:43   cancer survival rate to 20, excuse me, from 20% to more than 80% since St. Jude opened. With one

00:04:50   in five children not surviving, St. Jude won't stop until no child dies from cancer, but they

00:04:54   need our support. Now, let me tell you a quick story. Last episode, a week ahead of schedule,

00:05:00   John decided to do his donation, which meant the two of us needed to do our donations because we

00:05:04   tried to do this as a unit. We each donated, well, two slackers donated $7,000 and the one true host

00:05:11   donated $7,001 to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. However, since then, there have been

00:05:17   two extremely noteworthy donations I'd like to call out. I have not heard from either of these

00:05:20   people, but if you would like to reach out, please reach out to me. The first was an anonymous donor

00:05:26   who left the message asterisk trolling asterisk Casey asterisk for asterisk the asterisk kids

00:05:31   asterisk who donated $10,001, which is genuinely, as much as I'm being silly right now, that is

00:05:39   genuinely an immense amount of money and I am extremely thankful for that. And that happened

00:05:43   within like 24 hours, I think, of us releasing the last show. Truly a sticker worthy amount.

00:05:49   Oh, absolutely. Five digits worth of stickers. Yep, absolutely. So please, I'm really being

00:05:55   serious. Reach out to me. caseylist.com/contact. Please reach out to me and let me know if that is

00:06:00   you. Send me a picture of your donation receipt or what have you. Because remember, Casey said,

00:06:05   like whoever the, anyone who beats are the top amount, not, you know, whatever the top amount is

00:06:10   at the time. So the time this was done, the top amount was $7,001. So $10,001 handily beats it.

00:06:16   And that means it is eligible for stickers. And anybody who beats the current top score,

00:06:21   according to Casey's rules this year, will get stickers if they write him. Yep, that is correct.

00:06:26   And then not too long after this $10,001 donation, which again, is amazing. Then apparently, not only

00:06:35   can humans donate, but canines can as well because Gus the dog donated $15,000. That's like eight of

00:06:45   John's first Honda Civic. $15,000 Gus the dog donated and even typed out as a message

00:06:51   asterisk a asterisk t asterisk p asterisk space ampersand ampersand. So Gus the dog, I know you

00:06:58   probably can't understand me, although, hey, you donated 15 grand. So you must understand more than

00:07:01   I expect. If you or anonymous want to send me a picture of your receipt and reach out, I will send

00:07:07   stickers. I don't care where you are in the world. I will find a way to get them to you. And if you're

00:07:11   not Gus the dog and you're not the anonymous person trolling Casey for the kids, please,

00:07:16   please, if you have even but a few dollars to scrape together stjude.org/ATP,

00:07:22   S-T-J-U-D-E.org/ATP. Marco, this is your cue to give the spiel since it is next week that we might be

00:07:29   having all of this become very relevant. Yes, this is look, this is the season of Apple nerds spending

00:07:35   absurd amounts of money on new gear, some of which we might need most of which we probably don't need.

00:07:41   And when we buy our new gear, we have this, you know, a purchase attachment thing that happens

00:07:49   as you know, this is the whole idea of like extended warranties and accessories for your new

00:07:53   car and the fancy floor mats all this stuff. When you buy something expensive, you're more likely

00:07:57   to throw away additional chunks of money on things for your expensive thing, whether it's upgrades to

00:08:02   the next storage size or a nice new, you know, Apple silicone or leather case, or you know,

00:08:08   buying the Apple care for your new phone or watch or whatever, maybe getting the steel watch,

00:08:12   getting a cool band for it or something like that. There's all these opportunities to not only spend

00:08:17   a lot of money on the thing, but spend even more money to make yourself feel even better about the

00:08:21   thing or make the thing accessorize in a certain way or whatever. And what I ask every year of our

00:08:26   listeners is, I know not all of you, not even most of you can do these amazing, you know,

00:08:33   multi-thousand dollar donations like that's an amazing thing. And I'm glad we have any of our

00:08:37   listeners who can do that. But you know, obviously I don't expect everyone to be able to do that.

00:08:41   I do know though, that you're all going to go out and drop like a hundred bucks for the next

00:08:48   storage size up, or you're going to drop 150 bucks for the next Apple care or whatever, or drop 70

00:08:54   bucks on a new case without even thinking about it. You're probably going to pay a hundred bucks

00:08:58   in tax on sales tax when you buy anything from Apple these days. So what I ask you is,

00:09:04   take that size chunk of money, if you can't do the bigger chunks of money, I understand,

00:09:08   but I bet you can do one of those chunks of money. Throw in a hundred bucks, throw in 70 bucks,

00:09:13   whatever you can do, donate that to St. Jude. It makes a huge difference. Even donations of that

00:09:19   size, even smaller, if that's all you can, if you can only throw in 30 bucks, fine. Do whatever you

00:09:25   can do, be generous if you can, because this is an amazing cause. And you know, it's hard,

00:09:32   sometimes it's hard to know, like what's a good charity to donate money to? Like what, you know,

00:09:35   where, who can really make a difference? You know, who's actually using the money well and everything?

00:09:40   It's really hard to beat St. Jude for the amount of impact you can have and how important it is

00:09:46   to people who are really in a tough spot in their life. You know, like having a child with cancer,

00:09:51   both for the child and for their family is just a really tough thing in so many ways,

00:09:59   so many levels, I don't even have the words to describe it. So if you can help make that better

00:10:04   in some way, you're helping pay for treatment, you're helping people, you're helping fund research

00:10:10   to help more kids survive cancer. That's a huge deal to so many people. And you can just like,

00:10:16   crap out a donation from what you were going to pay on sales tax on your iPhone case or whatever,

00:10:20   like, it's such a small deal to you and it can make such a big deal to someone else.

00:10:24   So this is a really great way to spend, donate away your guilt about your Apple purchases,

00:10:31   by also sending a chunk of money, in addition to sending a lot of chunks of money to Apple,

00:10:35   also send a chunk of money to St. Jude, because they're doing really important work,

00:10:38   that money will be put to very good use and it makes a very big impact on people's lives.

00:10:42   And then you can, guilt-free, get your new phone that you don't really necessarily need,

00:10:48   or get the steel watch because it's a little bit nicer, you know, as long as you also kicked over

00:10:52   similar to St. Jude, that will absolve you of your guilt. That is true. So again, stjude.org/atp,

00:11:00   S-T-J-U-D-E.org/atp. And just to do a quick situation report, we are at $215,674.11. That

00:11:09   is over a million raised in three years, within three years, which is amazing. And, hey, one of

00:11:16   the perks, which I will now announce since it's been made public, at $300,001, I will publish,

00:11:24   or maybe not publish, but at least stream via Twitch one time, the Lost Casey on Cars episode

00:11:30   of the Tesla Model 3 versus Tesla Model S. So get us there. We are only 75-ish, excuse me, what is

00:11:37   that, 85? I can't do math. It's late. $85-ish away. Let's get us there to $300,001. At St.

00:11:46   Jude.org/atp. Moving right along. Let's start with some follow-up. As always, I've had a request,

00:11:52   which I normally would absolutely ignore, but in this case, I am allowing it. An Australian

00:11:57   listener reached out to me and said, "Hey, Australians are going through a real tough

00:12:02   spot right now with COVID. Vaccines seem to be getting to the point that they're pretty readily

00:12:07   available. So would you mind just encouraging Australians to get your shot?" Hey, I would not

00:12:11   acquiesce to these sort of requests in any normal situation, but when it comes to vaccinations, yes,

00:12:15   all of you Americans, Australians, and anyone else who has a shot available, now's the time.

00:12:20   Maybe you could imagine, just imagine with me for a second. Close your eyes if you're not driving.

00:12:25   Imagine with me you're sitting there waiting to get a vaccine, not just for yourself, but for your

00:12:30   fellow country people. And as you're sitting there, you're using your information phone to go to

00:12:35   stjude.org/atp to donate to St. Jude. Imagine two birds in one stone. Does life get better than that?

00:12:42   So Australians, Americans, and anyone else who can, please do all the above. Moving right along,

00:12:47   I have some important real-time follow-up as well. Thanks to listener Nnnn in the chat for

00:12:53   linking to the Wikipedia article on Long Island. You'll notice that the map of Long Island colors

00:12:59   Long Island geographically in red. And you'll also notice if you click on that and make the map even

00:13:04   bigger, that Fire Island, which is one of those skinnyshirts below Long Island, is not colored in

00:13:08   red. So Fire Island is not part of Long Island. I'm going for a low resolution bitmap image on

00:13:15   Wikipedia as a deciding factor here. No, it's clearly not colored in. You could see some of the

00:13:22   white. Uh-huh, sure. I mean, there's also other things that aren't colored in that are also part

00:13:27   of Long Island, as you see those little white blobs there. I mean, those are different islands.

00:13:31   Uh-huh, right. To think of the absurdity of it says, "Hey, what's your favorite Long Island

00:13:36   beach?" And you say, "I really love Robert Mosey." You say, "Sorry, that's not a Long Island beach."

00:13:40   It's not. That's the absurdity of where you are right now. John, just hold on. Since we're

00:13:45   appealing to Wikipedia as the authority and arbiter, arbitrator, whatever. No, just hold on.

00:13:51   Since we are appealing to them as the adjudicator, that's what I was looking for of all these things,

00:13:55   let me read to you the beginning of the second paragraph of the entry for Long Island.

00:13:58   "Broadly speaking, Long Island may refer both to the main island and the surrounding outer

00:14:03   barrier islands, which includes, ladies and gentlemen, Fire Island." Yeah, I mean,

00:14:07   I understand getting hung up on the word island. This is like an episode of Robot or Not,

00:14:11   but don't get hung up on that. It's not just the island that is long and anything that is not that

00:14:15   island is not Long Island. It's the name of an entire place. I mean, just look at anything having

00:14:20   to do with Long Island. When they put a map of Long Island, they don't remove all the little

00:14:23   other things around it. Those are all parts of the umbrella term Long Island. I'm sorry,

00:14:26   it doesn't make a lot of sense. That's just the way place names work. No, this is like,

00:14:31   they include that because these are the best parts of the area. So they include, it's like when real

00:14:36   estate listings, when you have like a good neighborhood and then the like the neighborhood

00:14:40   next to it, they'll call it like, you know, West Park Slope or whatever. Like they'll give like a,

00:14:44   like they'll try to use the name of the nicer one for the less nice one because it increases

00:14:49   the value of the houses there. So John, since we're going down this rabbit hole and we're just

00:14:54   going to keep digging, what is the city? What portion of New York City do you qualify as

00:15:00   the city? All New York City, all five boroughs. Okay, so it's not just Manhattan, it is all five

00:15:04   boroughs. But even just going by the boroughs, a lot of people are upset by the idea that a lot of

00:15:11   New York City is on Long Island. And I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. So when, so people in

00:15:16   Brooklyn, should they say that they live on Long Island? They do. That's where they live. I mean,

00:15:20   they live in Brooklyn too and they also live in New York City. So, so people from Brooklyn are

00:15:24   called, so somebody from Brooklyn, they could say they're a Long Islander? Sure. And you'd be okay

00:15:28   with that? Yeah, I'm surprised. I mean, but I bet they would probably say they were from Brooklyn

00:15:33   because there's a primacy of pride of place that, you know, the sort of a hierarchy of where you

00:15:38   want to say you're from, but it'd be technically accurate. I mean, they could say they're from New

00:15:41   York too, but that would be true. They're also from New York, but they probably wouldn't lead

00:15:45   with that unless they're, you know, we've gone over those before. Like when you say you're from

00:15:48   New York versus the United States versus Brooklyn versus Long Island. So somebody in Brooklyn

00:15:53   shouldn't say they're from Long Island because Brooklyn is like a nicer place name, but they

00:15:57   would be legitimately on the geographic feature of Long Island. So there the geographic feature

00:16:03   boundary matters, but when defining Fire Island, the geographic feature boundary doesn't matter.

00:16:07   I know I'm saying that the geography of Long Island as the thing that Casey just read is the

00:16:12   entire, the whole conglomeration of crap. Like I know it says island in the name and you're just

00:16:16   dying to make it one island. It says in quotes, the phrase Long Island may refer to that whole

00:16:21   area. It doesn't say it is. And it does refer to. Obviously you are referring to it, so it may,

00:16:26   but that doesn't make it correct. Actually, at least we can all just agree to like dump on

00:16:32   Staten Island, which is not part of Long Island. And really people wish it was really should be

00:16:36   part of New Jersey. I mean, it's, it's, if you look at the map, it's kind of ridiculous. Staten

00:16:40   Island is part of New York. I don't, I think Staten Island gets a lot of crap and a lot of

00:16:46   garbage from New York city literally. But yeah, it's kind of the, the, the outlier in many ways.

00:16:54   We are sponsored this week by things, the award-winning to do app. I love things. I use

00:17:02   things and I can't say that about a lot of apps. There's a lot of apps like, you know, I try,

00:17:06   I kind of bounce off of them after an hour or a day or a week. Things has stuck with me. It's so

00:17:11   good. It is my favorite task management app. Now they've also just added a fantastic new set of

00:17:17   features. Things now supports markdown inside of your notes, actual markdown. This is not just some

00:17:24   small subset. It's the real deal. Headings, bold, italics, highlights, code, code blocks, you name

00:17:29   it. All the markdown syntax is detected and rendered in a beautiful style inside your to-dos

00:17:34   and project notes. I mean, things as an app is already an amazing looking app. It's beautifully

00:17:39   designed and this just makes it even better. Now you might be surprised to think of markdown as

00:17:44   a feature inside of a to-do item, but that's because in most to-do apps, the notes field is

00:17:48   kind of a second class citizen, whether it's, you know, a tiny little super small font below to-do,

00:17:52   or it's tucked away inside of like a detail or inspector pane, not so in things. In things,

00:17:57   your notes take center stage. When you open it to-do, you have plenty of room to write. You can

00:18:02   add whatever details you need, detailed plans, reference material, brainstorms. This is how I

00:18:06   actually use things myself. I put tons of notes on each to-do. Like if it's a link I want to refer to

00:18:11   or, you know, notes or little sub bullets, you can do all of that in things and you can keep it

00:18:16   simple if you want to and just have nice simple stuff. Thanks to markdown, even your longest notes

00:18:21   look and feel fantastic. So if you haven't tried things, check it out, especially now with this new

00:18:27   version. Just search for things on the app store or go to thingsapp.com. You can download a free

00:18:33   trial for your Mac and try the new markdown feature for yourself. And there's many other

00:18:37   great features to love as well. So whatever it is you want to accomplish in life, things can help

00:18:42   you get there. Go to thingsapp.com and try the app today. Thank you so much to things, my favorite

00:18:48   to-do app for sponsoring our show. All right, let's move on. Apple delayed controversial child

00:18:55   protection features after privacy outcry. This is an article from the verge. Apple has a quote,

00:19:01   "Last month, we announced plans for features intended to help protect children from predators

00:19:04   who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them and limit the spread of child sexual abuse

00:19:09   material. Based on feedback from customers, advocacy groups, researchers, and others,

00:19:13   we have decided to take additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements

00:19:16   before releasing these critically important child safety features." I think that's good. I don't

00:19:21   have extremely strong feelings about this other than to say, "Hey, Apple, do you know what?

00:19:25   Sometimes doing things in public out loud is helpful. Who knew?" Maybe you should consider

00:19:32   it sometime. I'm kind of thankful that this has been delayed just so we can finally stop talking

00:19:38   about it. But also, one question, do you think this is ever going to actually ship or is this

00:19:45   just going to be one of those air power delays where eventually it'll just stop being talked

00:19:49   about and it will never… This is actually more of a cancellation, but they don't want to really

00:19:53   quite say that yet. I think they're going to do something, right? Just because all their competitors

00:19:58   and everyone else does something does a lot more than Apple does, as evidenced by how much of this

00:20:03   stuff they catch. So Apple has to eventually do something. Do they have to do any of the

00:20:07   specific things that they described here? No, but I don't think they're just going to say, "Eh,

00:20:12   never mind. We're fine the way we are. We don't need to do anything." So what it is that they do

00:20:17   eventually will be interesting. I hope one of the things they took away from this, as we discussed

00:20:22   on many past episodes, is that their notion of the most privacy-preserving approach to solving

00:20:29   this problem does not match with the opinion of their customers' notion of what is the most

00:20:34   privacy-preserving. I don't think, especially within the technical communities, there's any

00:20:38   debate about what they're doing or the specifics of it, but Apple seems to think… Everyone

00:20:42   agrees all about the facts, but Apple says, "And this way preserves your privacy the best." And

00:20:47   the customers are saying, "Doesn't feel that way to us." But at least everyone agrees on what the

00:20:52   thing is doing. So I think this is more of a sort of customer fit type of thing of like, "Okay,

00:20:57   well we have our opinion and you have your opinion, but we don't want to do something

00:21:01   that you feel like doesn't preserve your privacy because that's what our goal is." And so they kind

00:21:05   of have to figure out something that everybody can agree is privacy-preserving. Or they could…

00:21:10   The version of Pundit and this is like, "Ah, we'll just scan everything server-side."

00:21:13   And not really make a big deal out of it because, "Hey, did we have any stories about this when

00:21:19   all the other companies started scanning server-side? We don't even know when that

00:21:22   was." They just do it and it's not a big deal and that's that. But Apple wants to do it better

00:21:28   in a "more privacy-preserving way" and that's kind of how they got themselves into trouble.

00:21:32   Yeah, but I mean, ultimately, I think the scanning on your device and therefore kind of having your

00:21:39   device be like a police force or surveillance force, even though it's like your hardware

00:21:45   that you own, I think that is one of the biggest parts that offended a lot of people. And so if

00:21:49   they switch to a server-side model, that would obviously preclude end-to-end encryption. But

00:21:56   I think a lot of people would be okay with that trade-off.

00:21:59   Yeah, I mean, like it doesn't make it like… I think from a technical perspective,

00:22:02   that doesn't make any sense. But I think that's what Apple is learning is that it might not

00:22:05   actually make any sense, but really you are, and when it comes to things like this, you are in some

00:22:10   ways beholden to what customers think about it, right? Like, you know, and again, no customers

00:22:18   are flipping out about the fact that their phones are scanning and categorizing all their photos to

00:22:22   identify dogs, airplanes, you know, dinner plates, potatoes, like, you know, there's this open-ended

00:22:28   machine learning powered thing that is literally scanning and categorizing every single one of

00:22:33   their photos. And everyone's fine with that because it's missing that one little part of like,

00:22:37   "Oh, we'll report back when we find a picture of a dog." Like, you know, the whole thing of like,

00:22:40   if we find pictures of a particular politician, we'll report you. They could totally be finding

00:22:45   those pictures of the politician right now. The only little bit they don't have an ad is,

00:22:49   "Oh, by the way, if you find pictures of that politician, send a ping to the server," or

00:22:53   something like that, right? So all the people who are upset about, "I don't want them to build

00:22:57   this capability," they already did and nobody cared, right? It's just, it's… Anyway, I don't

00:23:01   want to rehash it all, but like, yeah, I think they, I think they need to do something and I

00:23:06   would actually prefer that they do enable end-to-end encryption everywhere and do something

00:23:10   like this tweaked such that there is like more broad agreement, as I said, with like advocacy

00:23:16   groups, researchers, and, you know, customers, I suppose, and whoever the others are, that before

00:23:22   they come out with an announcement, they've come up with something that has, has more features that

00:23:28   make people feel more comfortable because, you know, Apple thought they had all the features they

00:23:31   needed to make everybody feel comfortable and they were wrong, right? People didn't feel comfortable.

00:23:34   So they, I think, engaging in more dialogue with everybody who complained about this, now that they

00:23:40   know who all those people are, to come up with something where they can say, "Okay, if we

00:23:44   announce this, now all these other people who we didn't talk to at all or enough before our first

00:23:49   announcement, do we all agree that this is going to be better?" And I think, for example, you'd have

00:23:53   to pair it with end-to-end encryption because what's the point, again, what's the point of

00:23:56   doing this thing if you have access to everything server-side anyway? I think that kind of pitch,

00:24:00   which is like, from this point on, Apple literally can't look at any of your pictures, but we want to

00:24:05   catch these things, so we're going to use this system and it has these safeguards that are much

00:24:09   better than our previous safeguards and, you know, there'll be no automatic reporting and like,

00:24:13   I don't know, like something to make people feel comfortable. I think that is the best possible

00:24:17   outcome of this. I think one of the worst outcomes is for them to just get frustrated and do server-side

00:24:21   scanning. Even though people would mostly be okay with that, I would prefer to live in a world where

00:24:26   Apple can't see my photos. Yeah, I agree with that. I would be willing to make the trade of them

00:24:32   scanning server-side if, well, I guess I'm sorry, them scanning device-side is what I meant to say,

00:24:37   if I could have end-to-end encryption. I think that's a trade I'm willing to make,

00:24:41   although not everyone necessarily would. Right, but you need, like, I think people need more

00:24:47   features, more stop gaps, more hedges against the, you know, false positives and stuff like that,

00:24:52   because what they had, what they rolled out before, like I said, if you look at it in light of the app,

00:24:56   their performance of the app store, it is not reassuring to you in any way that humans are

00:24:59   going to review it. That makes you feel like I still might get swept up in this, so there

00:25:03   obviously needs to be something sturdier than that to avoid false positives. Yeah, the 1Password 8

00:25:11   beta is still a thing. I'm still running it. I'm still not in love, but it's not actively making me

00:25:17   angry for the most part, but I am happy to report this is a glowing review. This is a tweet from

00:25:23   Dave, is it Tierre? I hope I pronounced that right. I'm sorry, Dave. He tweeted earlier today,

00:25:28   or it was yesterday, "By popular demand, today's update includes a cute little animation when

00:25:32   entering an incorrect password. I think you'll enjoy it, Casey Liss." And so this is me

00:25:35   kvetching about how the, in 1Password 7, the entire window would shake, you know, side to side a

00:25:41   little bit when you entered an incorrect password, and I use that as a silly example of what not going

00:25:46   native does. And so the good news is the shake is back. The bad news is it's not the whole window,

00:25:53   it's just the little password entry field, but nevertheless, small victories, my friends, and

00:25:57   actually somebody, I think it was Christian Selig of Apollo Reddit client fame, challenged Dave on

00:26:03   the fact that it wasn't the whole window, and there was a reasonable justification for that. That was

00:26:06   not technical. Just in short, they thought it was less, I guess, less loud, for lack of a better

00:26:13   word, to do just the input field. But anyway, progress is being made, which is good. I haven't

00:26:17   done any testing with some of my other complaints yet, but I can tell you I did see the little shake

00:26:21   earlier, which made me happy. Does this count as you being served? No, I don't think so. Well,

00:26:26   served in the sense that I have requested something and it has been served to me. No,

00:26:30   I'm thinking more of like the, like, you know, dance contest meeting. I don't think so. I don't

00:26:35   think so. Oh, you certainly got better responsiveness than you get from filing

00:26:39   feedbacks with Apple. That's very true. Well, slow down. No, no, no. I think that's an incorrect

00:26:44   statement. I got a response. Right. Yeah. That's that alone. That is table stakes for most people.

00:26:51   And I did get that much. A timely response. And yeah, first, if like, it's the, you know,

00:26:56   communication pyramid we talked about on analog, right? So first level is I got a response. The

00:27:01   second level was it was timely. Third level was it was actually slightly f***ing relevant to what I

00:27:08   was trying to say. And where am I? The fourth level now? Fourth level was it actually did what

00:27:12   I wanted it to do. So this is like a pure freaking victory for me. I would like to point out that I

00:27:17   have filed two feedbacks this summer, both of them in early June and neither of them have gotten a

00:27:23   response. So business as usual, same as it ever was. Uh, yeah. Yeah. I moved right along home kit

00:27:30   camera TV, picture and picture can be enabled or disabled per camera. Which one of you was this

00:27:35   Marco complaining about this? Is that right? I was asking whether it was, it was a thing. I was

00:27:39   saying it would be annoying if it happened to me. And is that a thing that you can turn off? And

00:27:42   this is the answer. I was saying it was an anti feature to have your, like your homekit camera

00:27:46   alert you on your TV. If you couldn't turn it off because it's John is very protective of his TV

00:27:52   watching time. And nobody wants that you're watching a show and all of a sudden a picture

00:27:56   of a bloop's on top of it. I absolutely would like to know that if somebody is at my front door,

00:27:59   are you kidding? I would too, because I don't. So through, through two flu suit construction,

00:28:04   uh, we don't have a doorbell and we haven't had a doorbell for like 10 years. We do have a dog.

00:28:08   And so we always joke that hops. His job is to be our doorbell. The problem. And he's very good at

00:28:14   it. The problem is that he's only working for a certain part of the day and then he's off for the

00:28:20   night. You know, he stops, he's usually his shift ends around like eight or nine o'clock at night.

00:28:26   And so if somebody comes to the door and knocks, we don't necessarily know if we can't hear the

00:28:32   knock. Like if we're in another room, far away from the door and hops is off for the night, like,

00:28:36   you know, that's it. So something like this would actually be useful. I can't think of a time

00:28:40   when I'm watching TV where I wouldn't want to know if somebody was at the door.

00:28:44   Well, I was thinking more of like, because you were to head security cameras,

00:28:47   like if someone walks by your house and trips one of your motion lights,

00:28:49   I don't want a little square popping up in the show that I'm watching.

00:28:52   Our camera philosophy here, and I said this last week, but just to reiterate a very important part

00:28:56   of my camera philosophy, when you're walking past my house, like on the public sidewalk, I don't

00:29:02   want you to be able to see a camera. I don't want there to be any sign that I have cameras. You

00:29:06   shouldn't even know that I have cameras until you are somewhere that you really shouldn't be.

00:29:11   Then I want my cameras to make themselves known in some way. But nothing is looking like at the

00:29:16   public sidewalk or at the public street. So that wouldn't be an issue unless somebody was like

00:29:20   under my house, like doing weird things. In which case I do want to know about it.

00:29:25   Yep, that's fair. So anyway, Pankaj Rupani writes, "Activity notifications are turned off by default

00:29:30   on Apple TV. What they showed in the keynote was doorbell notification, which is turned on by

00:29:34   default and has actually come in handy when you have a movie night and you get delivery,

00:29:37   for example." Additionally, Jonathan Rogers writes, "The doorbell actually rings my home

00:29:42   pods and can identify faces using people I've ID'd in the Photos app." That's very cool. I dig that.

00:29:46   Yeah. Whenever like announces that, it's like, so-and-so is at the door based on facial

00:29:51   recognition. That's a good Apple integration of tech. And you know, announcing it through

00:29:55   the home pods as opposed to like, I don't know, like the little dingy thing on your wall. That's

00:29:59   kind of neat. We are sponsored this week by ExpressVPN. Now using a VPN is a really,

00:30:06   really useful tool. One of the reasons I use VPNs is if I'm traveling and I have to use some

00:30:12   untrusted Wi-Fi network, like at a hotel or an airport or something, I won't do that without

00:30:17   a VPN because to me, even though I know a lot of my stuff is encrypted, like at the client level,

00:30:21   like, you know, HTTPS, I know it's on a hundred percent and there's all sorts of weird, creepy

00:30:26   stuff that network providers can do like at the local or ISP level that I just don't trust

00:30:32   other people's connections. So if I have to use someone else's Wi-Fi, I'm using a VPN.

00:30:36   Another good use of VPNs is if you want to use, say your streaming service that you're paying for

00:30:41   when you are traveling outside of your country. I've actually done this and I used ExpressVPN to

00:30:47   do it. We wanted to watch a show on Netflix while we were traveling in Mexico a couple of years back.

00:30:52   It was amazing to be able to just click and say, I'm now in the US officially,

00:30:56   according to this VPN service. And I was able to watch my US subscription while I was outside of

00:31:01   the US and it was fantastic. This works on tons of different streaming services. ExpressVPN is by far

00:31:07   the best VPN to use for this. You can change your location to wherever you need to be. They have

00:31:13   almost a hundred different locations. You can gain access to whatever you need to get access to,

00:31:16   and you have blazing fast speed with ExpressVPN. There's no, you know, weird dropouts or stuttering

00:31:23   or buffering. You stream the full video quality and you don't even realize you're going through

00:31:26   a VPN. That's how good it is. And ExpressVPN is very easy to use. Their apps are just one click

00:31:31   to connect, super easy to use, can work on your phone, laptop, media console, smart TVs, so much

00:31:38   more. So when you need a VPN, choose the one that's top rated, performs well, has easy apps to use,

00:31:44   go with ExpressVPN. You can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free with a one year

00:31:50   package at expressvpn.com/atp. Once again, it's expressvpn.com/atp to get an extra three months

00:31:59   free with a one year package. Thank you so much to ExpressVPN for sponsoring our show.

00:32:03   Can you tell me about your crappy mouse pad, please?

00:32:09   Yeah. Remember, remember this whole thing about like one side of my mouse pad, it wasn't working,

00:32:14   right? Yeah. Oh yeah. And I like rotated the mouse pad and people said, well, maybe it's the cord,

00:32:18   maybe it's the desk surface, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, maybe your mouse has gone bad.

00:32:22   And I did all these experiments and I was like, it just seems to be that part of the mouse pad.

00:32:27   And that part of the mouse pad was more worn than the other ones and had like a slightly different

00:32:30   sheen to it. And like, wow, it's really weird that this is a tracking. And for a while now,

00:32:34   I've been like, I really need to, because my mouse pad is like cut from a larger mouse pad. You know,

00:32:38   he carved himself from a larger spoon. I don't know if either one of you get that reference.

00:32:43   That was from the Simpsons. Is that the chili cook-off? That's right. Hey,

00:32:46   look at you. Good job. I haven't even gotten to that episode yet in our rewatch.

00:32:50   He carved it himself from a larger spoon. That's, I think Lenny says that. I don't remember. Anyway,

00:32:56   I wanted to cut myself a new mouse pad. And that, because I have another sheet of mouse pad stuff

00:33:02   up in the attic and I kept meaning to do it. And every time I sat down at my computer and my mouse

00:33:06   skipped around, I'm like, I really need to do this. So finally I got a chance to do it. I go,

00:33:10   I cut my new, I brought my old mouse pad and put it down on top of the new one, cut myself a new

00:33:14   mouse pad, brought it in, set it up, put it down on my mouse, broke up my computer, plugged

00:33:18   everything back in. My mouse wouldn't move at all on the new mouse pad. Cursor would not move at all.

00:33:23   I'm like, all right, but what's going on here? Like no motion, zero, zero motion. I was like,

00:33:29   how is this the mouse broken? It's not the mouse pad. Like it's just a black, you know, felt fabric,

00:33:35   it's mouse pad material. There's nothing wrong with it. So I went through this whole debugging

00:33:40   procedure. What, what, what is the debugging procedure for this? Well, I mean, not moving at

00:33:45   all. I was like, okay, this isn't a tracking problem. Right. And I tried it on different

00:33:49   surfaces, put it on the, the, you know, the other parts of the keyboard tray, put it on the desk,

00:33:53   put it on my leg, but it was just not moving at all. Um, and so I'm like, well, let's start

00:33:59   eliminating these things here. So first thing I did was I unplugged the mouse from the cord and

00:34:04   connected it through Bluetooth. And that worked. I mean, my Bluetooth signal is crappy, but anyway,

00:34:08   the mouse over Bluetooth works, but I don't want that. I want it to be plugged in cause the blue,

00:34:12   again, my Bluetooth signal from my distant towers is crappy. So I'm like, well, the mouse isn't

00:34:16   entirely broken, but maybe just the wire connection is broken. So I unplugged it from

00:34:20   this cord and I got a shorter cord and plugged it into the same USB hub that this cord is in.

00:34:25   And then the mouse worked perfectly. I'm like, well, maybe the cord is dead. Maybe it kinked,

00:34:29   maybe it got cut, maybe, you know, a mouse chewed through it. Like maybe the cord is bad. Um,

00:34:36   and you know, I mean, I tried a shorter cord and it worked. I mean, I'm kind of giving away by

00:34:40   saying shorter, but I tried another cord, which happened to be shorter and it worked fine. So

00:34:44   before I realized the length was potentially an issue, I was like, well, I got another one of

00:34:48   these, uh, mice in the attic. I will go and get the long cord because it comes with this really

00:34:53   long, really thin USB cord. That's more like a mouse cord and not like a cord that you'd use to

00:34:57   like, I don't know, charge your camera or whatever, like big, thick USB cord. So I got that cord down.

00:35:05   I plugged it into the USB hub, plugged it into my mouse. Same problem. Like it would, it would,

00:35:11   well, I have to turn out the same problem. It would move a little bit, but it was like,

00:35:14   it's very sporadic. Like I moved the mouse and maybe the mouse would Twitch on the screen or

00:35:19   whatever. I'm like, okay, this is a brand new cord fresh out of the box, never been used.

00:35:23   So it's gotta be the USB hub. Right. So then I took it and plugged that, the cord, the long cord

00:35:32   directly into the back of my computer and that worked. So I'm like, this cord is good. The hub

00:35:36   is bad. And that's where I ended up after this process of elimination of trying all different

00:35:42   combinations that my USB hub, which granted I've had since I had my cheese grater, Mac Pro,

00:35:46   I don't know how old it is, but it's pretty old. Apparently it can't supply enough signal strength

00:35:53   for a very long USB cord anymore. It can supply enough signal strength for like a three foot cord,

00:35:58   but not for like the six foot cord that I have. That's so weird. Yeah. Now the question is,

00:36:04   why did I think it was part of my mouse pad? Because all the experiments I had done before

00:36:08   is like, if I do it on the right side of my mouse pad, it jumps and doing the left side, it's good.

00:36:11   And the best thing I can come up with is every time I did this test, I don't even know which

00:36:16   order I did, but I probably always tested the bad area first and the good area second.

00:36:21   And there was probably some kind of like voltage ramp up or some kind of like,

00:36:25   like the first thing that you try it on, it's jumpy. But then when I moved to the second area,

00:36:29   it's, it's fine because like, I don't know, it's like whatever thing needed to get, whatever thing

00:36:34   is dying inside my USB hub. And it's super weird that the thing that was dying, like

00:36:39   went totally dead. Uh, you know, the time I cut out the mouse pad and put the new one down because

00:36:44   it wasn't moving at all. Right. So a new USB hub it's on its way to me. I just wanted to

00:36:50   finish up that story to say, it turns out it was not the mouse pad, although now I have a nice new

00:36:54   mouse pad. I saved the old one too, because, you know, of course you did rotate it back down.

00:36:58   Now I have a nice new mouse pad. Uh, I'm currently using, uh, my Logitech mouse with the little RF

00:37:05   dongle, which I have sticking up out of the top of my Mac pro, uh, with a, uh, with a USB-C to

00:37:11   a dongle, like a little antenna, because if you stick that little dongle, we went on it before.

00:37:15   If you stick that little dongle on the back of my computer, it's too far away and too close to the

00:37:18   other USB ports. It gets terrible signal, but now I have my little antenna work. So I'm using the

00:37:21   Logitech one while I wait. Logitech works great on the new mouse pad. And when my new USB hub gets

00:37:27   here, which by the way, I had to end up buying didn't have to, but I did end up buying literally

00:37:31   the exact same USB hub because since the time I bought that many years ago, there has been no

00:37:35   advance in USB hub technology or availability. So I hope the new one, uh, solves all my problems.

00:37:43   I'll keep you updated. I wouldn't hold your breath. So, uh, oftentimes one of my

00:37:49   beloved co-hosts will put just a very, very curious line item in the show notes.

00:37:53   And I feel like it's happening more and more as we all get older. But nevertheless,

00:37:57   the next line item is as follows. John's favorite percentage, colon 9.6%.

00:38:03   What the hell are you talking about? I don't think so. I was trying to, I saw the earlier

00:38:12   too, and I was trying to think, what could that be? And it seems vaguely familiar, but I, I

00:38:17   couldn't place it. So we're entering the photos section of the followup here. These are grouped

00:38:22   items. Um, this was, I was talking about like how to organize your photos in an ask ATP a couple

00:38:26   weeks ago and I said, fave everything and you can't like fave all your photos, but don't fave

00:38:30   like one in a million. And I was trying to think of like, I wonder what my percentages.

00:38:34   Oh, apparently I fave 9.6% of my photos. I love that you thought we would know that.

00:38:41   Yeah. This is a very good turn of phrase. I thought you just meant that you really liked

00:38:44   the percentage 9.6%. Very well done. But I see now percentage of favorites,

00:38:49   which is probably a little high. Like I have like 13,000 faves and 140,000 library thing,

00:38:56   but still 13,000 photos over like a lifetime is way more manageable than 140,000. It really

00:39:01   cuts down the, uh, the size of the library of photos you're dealing with. So I would,

00:39:06   I would aim maybe a little bit lower than that, but you know, it is what it is.

00:39:09   All right. And then tell me about Google drive for desktop, which is something that I really don't

00:39:13   think I'm interested in, but maybe I am. Well, so remember last time I talked about my photos

00:39:18   backup strategy, I was saying how Google's backup and sync thing had just like become unable to

00:39:23   upload my photos anymore. Uh, recall that I had, I had it pointed at my photo library and I had

00:39:27   it uploading to Google photos as like a fifth level backup photo library, just because I'm

00:39:33   already paying for that space in Google and you know, like might as well do it right. Um,

00:39:38   but it had gotten to the point where you'd run it and it would like say, okay, I'm looking at all

00:39:44   these files and I'm trying to figure out which ones I've got and which ones I need to upload.

00:39:47   And it would just spend forever with like some huge number and saying, looking at, you know,

00:39:52   700,000 files, looking at 500,000, it would never complete. It would never get to the point where

00:39:58   it would upload new photos. And so I was months and months behind in Google photos. If you went

00:40:02   onto the web and looked at my Google photo library, you see the latest photo was from ages ago

00:40:05   because it couldn't, it couldn't figure out what it uploaded or not from my thing. I'm like,

00:40:11   I don't know what to do with that. I basically just stopped running, uh, Google backup and sync.

00:40:15   And I think the story I told last time is that I had forgotten that I had stopped running it.

00:40:18   I'm like, Oh, why haven't I been running this? And I launched it and I was like, Oh yeah,

00:40:20   this is why. Cause it never actually uploads anything. Um, I don't know why, but I ended up

00:40:26   looking at something on the web and it was like, Hey, try Google drive for desktop.

00:40:31   And some piece of copy somewhere said, this is the replacement for Google's backup and sync.

00:40:36   Like, Hmm. Well, I get, you know, I was wondering why Google backup and sync basically didn't work

00:40:40   and, you know, it would make the fans spin off my wife's computer and never actually do any

00:40:43   useful work. And it was terrible. Apparently it's been replaced. So I'm like, all right,

00:40:47   I'll try the replacement. So I tried the replacement. It's called Google drive for desktop.

00:40:50   We'll put a link in the show notes. Um, I didn't, maybe I would have avoiding it because I don't

00:40:54   want Google drive like Google, you know, it mounts a little, it makes a little volume. That is your

00:40:58   Google drive. I don't want that. All I wanted to do is look at my photo library and take the photos

00:41:02   and upload them to Google photos. Like that's all I wanted for, but this thing does both. And it

00:41:06   will import your settings from Google backup and sync. So I launched the thing and it said, Hey,

00:41:10   I see you've run back up and sync. Do you want me to import your settings? I said, sure, go for it.

00:41:13   And it imported the settings. And it's like, now I'm just trying to figure out what I need to back

00:41:17   up. And it ran for about 36 hours. And then it said, okay, I figured out what I want to back up.

00:41:24   I'm going to start backing up stuff. And it showed a bunch of progress and a number and that number

00:41:28   counted down to zero. And then it said, okay, I've uploaded everything. Do you want me to uninstall

00:41:32   the Google backup and sync? And I said, yes, please do that. And so it uninstalled backup

00:41:36   and sync, and now I have Google drive running on my wife's computer. Yes. It has a little Google

00:41:42   drive icon mounted as volume that I never look at. Um, it's just, it's just like a network share

00:41:46   volume. It doesn't actually copy anything to computer, although that is an option. Um, but

00:41:50   yeah, it takes like zero CPU. It sits there and when new photos appear, uh, it uploads them and

00:41:56   says, I am uploading, you know, I have 500 photos to upload and that number counts down to zero.

00:42:01   And then it says I'm done and it's a miracle. I love it. We have such low standards for Google's

00:42:07   client software. Well, no, but I'm struggling to understand you're saying you have feedback,

00:42:12   reliable feedback as to the pros and progress of something uploading. It's, I mean, everything's

00:42:18   relative. So it does occasionally say some errors have occurred to you. Like, would you like to view

00:42:22   them? And you're like, sure, I'll view them. Then the other back up and sync had this feature as

00:42:25   well. And what it would show me is usually a list of like five or seven files. And it says,

00:42:29   these files fall below the minimum size, but I would love to do. And what any good Mac app

00:42:33   would do is I should be able to right click on those and say, reveal and find her to show me

00:42:36   where this file is. But I'm pretty sure when it says they're below the minimum size, that means

00:42:40   there's zero size because they don't exist, but it insists on showing me those lists of,

00:42:45   of a handful of photos that it said it couldn't upload because they're too small. And it's weird

00:42:48   because I think it's always skips over like the thumbnails, you know, the thumbnail letters that

00:42:52   are just too darn small that are in the photo library. Anyway, it seems to understand that it

00:42:56   is uploading an Apple photo system library because in the settings that says you would like me to

00:43:00   upload everything from your system photos library. I'm like, yes, nice that you figured that out.

00:43:04   Cause I pointed it at the, you know, the photos library bundle folder thing, but it knows that

00:43:09   that's the system library. And when new pictures appear, it finds them, grabs them and uploads them.

00:43:15   Despite the weird errors of it occasionally telling me that these files were below the minimum size

00:43:20   and the fact that there's no way to clear that error, it just constantly has this little

00:43:23   notification that says these five files were under the minimum size. Like, okay, I don't care.

00:43:27   As long as you're making progress. And as long as you are, when there's nothing happening,

00:43:31   you are idle and you're like 0.01% CPU. When I go look for an activity monitor, thumbs up.

00:43:36   Yeah, I just, I'm so jealous of any system wherein you have a easily findable and,

00:43:43   and actually useful progress meter. Like amazing. Who do, who do you think that that's not a progress

00:43:48   bar. It's just a number. And like, if you watch the little thing, like occasionally it will do

00:43:52   a thing. It just shows the file name. It's not a great app. It's like one of the file names that

00:43:56   shows it's called full-size render dot JPEG, which I think is just like the file name that Apple,

00:44:00   that photos makes when it like renders out, like a thing that you've done an external editor.

00:44:04   And for the longest time, it just said full-size render dot JPEG. And it would never seem to

00:44:08   complete, but I think it was just replacing the, like essentially the table row with another full

00:44:12   size render to JPEG table row that had the same progress indicator on it. And I was afraid it

00:44:17   wouldn't terminate, but it did. It did eventually terminate the number. It said uploading this

00:44:20   number. The number did eventually count down to zero. And then it was idle. This is all I could

00:44:24   ask for. So I guess I get a few years out of this before Google abandons Google driver desktop and

00:44:28   replaces it with something else. And speaking of progress meters, Chris Steckler writes the obscure

00:44:34   method to force your photos library to download everything to your Mac is to create a slideshow

00:44:38   that includes all of your photos. So in photos library, all photos hit command day to select all,

00:44:45   and then choose file play slideshow. I kid you not writes Chris, I kid you not that you will get an

00:44:51   actual progress bar and it actually moves and provides you with an actual status update. Why

00:44:56   Apple couldn't hide a sink or refresh button in a menu somewhere like they include in the Mac app

00:45:01   store is beyond me and me too, Chris, me too. I don't get it. That's amazing. And remember this

00:45:07   is the alternative to going into preferences and saying, please put the originals on this Mac. In

00:45:12   theory, that's the way Apple wants you to do this. If you want all your photos to be on the hard drive

00:45:17   of your Mac, that's what that setting is for download all originals. But the problem is if you

00:45:21   click that radio button and preferences, you have no indication whether it's doing anything about

00:45:25   it or when it might complete. Whereas this method, this is with it, with that thing not checked with

00:45:30   just saying like, Oh, you know, optimize storage or whatever. If you want to force it to download

00:45:35   them, try to make a slide show with all the photos that it play. And then it will pull down all the,

00:45:40   apparently all the files and that thing and give you a progress bar. And I assume as soon as it

00:45:43   completes that you should rush into preferences and click originals on this Mac. And then I guess

00:45:48   you have to hope that it's not like purging all that stuff before it downloads them. It's

00:45:51   stupid. Like I know Apple just wants it to be like, you just check this box and you're done,

00:45:56   but people want to know like, so A, are you doing anything? And B, how long is it actually

00:46:01   going to take? And photos is bad at answering those questions. We are sponsored this week by

00:46:07   earnest times are tough and worrying about student loan payments doesn't make things any easier.

00:46:12   This is where refinancing with earnest can help you. Earnest offers low rate student loan

00:46:18   refinancing, and you can check your rate risk-free in just two minutes with earnest, you get radically

00:46:23   flexible payments and you can pick your loan term by refinancing. You can reduce your loan term,

00:46:29   save money, or combine multiple loans into one single monthly payment. And if you have

00:46:34   any questions, you can even talk to a real live human at earnest for help. So isn't it time you

00:46:40   stopped feeling overwhelmed by your student debt. Earnest is offering you $100 cash bonus,

00:46:46   refinance your student debt at earnest.com/ATP terms and conditions apply. Once again,

00:46:54   earnest.com/ATP to get a $100 cash bonus to refinance your student loan. Not available in

00:47:02   all states terms and conditions apply. Visit earnest.com/ATP for more details. Earnest student

00:47:09   loan refinancing made by earnest operations LLC and MLS number 1204917 California financing law

00:47:16   license number 605-4788 535 mission street, San Francisco, California 94105. Visit earnest.com/

00:47:24   licenses for a full list of licenses. Thanks to earnest for sponsoring our show.

00:47:28   So yesterday today, sometime in the last 24 hours, the time is a flat circle y'all.

00:47:37   Sometime last 24 hours, we have learned that the next Apple event, which presumably will be the

00:47:42   iPhone event is this upcoming Tuesday, the 14th of September at 1 PM Eastern. So as always, we need

00:47:50   to spend some time talking about what's going to happen. And I don't know, man, I'm not really,

00:47:58   I'm not that jazzed about this. I just, maybe it hasn't sank in for me yet. I'm sure I'm going to

00:48:04   love whatever's presented. I'm sure I'm going to get whatever silly phone they tell me to buy.

00:48:09   I don't know. I I'm there's nothing other than MacBook pros, which I don't think we're going

00:48:13   to get that. I'm like super duper. Oh, and actually now on, now that I'm talking, maybe there

00:48:16   are things I'm excited for. So what do I really want to see? I want to see MacBook pros and new

00:48:20   AirPods. Next week, Casey has ordered a phone, a watch, AirPods, at least I want, I want Apple

00:48:28   to take all my money, but, uh, I don't know if they're gonna. So, uh, yeah, I, I would love to

00:48:32   see, um, obviously a phone, but more importantly to me, anyway, I would love to see new AirPod pros

00:48:38   cause I'm in the market and I have been for like a year. Uh, and, and I want to wait until there's

00:48:42   a new set and I'd love a new MacBook pro I'd love for one of my machines to be on Apple Silicon. And,

00:48:48   and at this rate, it's never going to happen, but I digress. How do you want to handle this,

00:48:53   John? How do you, do you want to walk through the rumors or the first item I put up there?

00:48:57   I think we can like dispense with this early is MacBook pros, question mark, sad face emoji.

00:49:04   I really want that emoji. That's an emoticon. All right. You're right. Um, the member at

00:49:09   WWC, we were like, Hey, maybe there can be a, maybe there'll be MacBook pros at W2C. Oh,

00:49:13   I guess they're not ready yet. And now we just forget about them. And the next event comes along

00:49:16   and nobody's talking about Mac Pro pros. I'm going to get that. The rumor mill seems to say like,

00:49:20   this is, I mean, it's the iPhone event. We all know it's the iPhone event, right? Fine.

00:49:24   But there's no reason you can't also put out macro pros. Like I really, I'm dying for M1X stuff.

00:49:29   That's the Apple announcement that I am most anticipating. And it just doesn't seem like

00:49:34   it's in the cards for this event. So I'm kind of sad about that, but that, I mean, I set that

00:49:39   aside because I think there's lots of stuff that is rumored for this event that is good and

00:49:42   interesting. And this is the iPhone event and I get it. You don't want to distract or whatever.

00:49:46   I really hope though, that those like maybe an October event for, you know,

00:49:51   Monterey and the new MacBook pros, I'm ready for that thing to happen. I just wanted to

00:49:55   get that out there. I know we're weird on the show. Tend to like the Mac announcements. I'm

00:49:59   more excited about the Mac tech. Obviously the Macs going to Apple Silicon has been a big story. And

00:50:05   so far the Apple Silicon Macs they put out have been amazing. They just haven't been the high

00:50:10   end ones. So I'm really hungry for the high end stuff, but it seems like I'm gonna have to wait

00:50:14   a little longer. Yeah, I agree. It seems based on all the rumors and stuff, it does seem like

00:50:20   this is not the MacBook pro event. This is not the M1X Mac event. And it's, it doesn't seem like

00:50:27   we're going to actually be getting any Mac news at this event, which is unfortunate from those of us,

00:50:33   like the three of us who tend to care more about that. But also not that unexpected. You know,

00:50:39   yes, we were expecting M1Xs in June, but the rumors even then kind of suggested later in the year.

00:50:45   And the iPhone event almost never contains any Mac news. It's almost always the iPhone and usually

00:50:53   the Apple watch as well. And that's, that's usually like the big headlining features and then they'll

00:50:57   shove in like whatever they want to promote with those, but it's usually not the Mac event. So I'm

00:51:03   not that surprised that the rumors seem to be indicating this is probably not going to be any

00:51:07   Mac stuff here. That being said, I am as excited as you and as impatient as you for whenever the

00:51:12   Mac event actually happens, because I love my M1 Mac mini that I'm using as my desktop right now.

00:51:20   But I really want more RAM and I really want more cores. And as soon as I can get more RAM and more

00:51:27   cores, I will get it. And if I have to buy three small Macs this year, if it's like, if you know,

00:51:34   I got the Mac mini in like January, February, if I have to buy the M1X Mac mini because the

00:51:39   Mac mini pro isn't out yet, and then a few months later buy the Mac mini pro and that comes out,

00:51:45   I'll do it. Cause I need more cores so badly, but I'm so happy with this thing right now. And it was

00:51:51   so inexpensive, like relative to other high-end Mac desktops that I'm not going to feel bad replacing

00:51:56   it soon, but I really want more cores and I really want more RAM. You really don't need to convince

00:52:02   any listener to this program that, that you will be buying more Macs as soon as possible. This is,

00:52:07   there's been a large, large amount of, of past circumstance and evidence that that is exactly

00:52:14   what's going to happen. So I don't doubt it, but yeah, I'm going to similar boat, like both of my

00:52:18   computers. So I have a, what is a year old, uh, MacBook pro 13 inch MacBook pro, uh, four port

00:52:25   with touch bar. And I have an iMac pro and because I don't have any Apple Silicon computers that I

00:52:33   use ever, neither of the, neither of my existing computers feels bad, but I know from the reports

00:52:39   of every human who's ever touched an Apple Silicon Mac that both of them are actually dog slow. And

00:52:44   I just don't realize it. So my, my thought process and assumption is that, well, I wouldn't say the

00:52:51   Intel Macs are slow compared to the M1 Macs. I will say like, as I just said, I am desperate for

00:52:58   more cores and more RAM because every time I do a bill now that I'm using Swift and Swift UI,

00:53:03   Oh my God, I, it murders my computer to do a bill of my app. That's true. It's, it's, it's a

00:53:10   never ending cycle. Like it'll chew up whatever it'll give, whatever you give to it. Oh sure.

00:53:14   But because I run iStat menus, I can see in the menu bar, I can see like here it's, it's maximizing

00:53:20   all my performance scores for, you know, this pretty big chunk of this build process. So I

00:53:24   know what it's doing. Um, but what I would say that the main difference like here we are, you know,

00:53:30   almost a year in the main difference between the feeling of the M1 Macs and a feeling of Intel Macs

00:53:36   is that the M1 Macs raise the floor way up. Like stuff like common stuff that is not pushing

00:53:45   everything to the Macs is faster and feels faster and is way more responsive. But when you want to

00:53:51   push everything to the Macs, when you want to like do a massive video encoder or a massive build,

00:53:55   Intel still wins on that front just because it has so many cores in many workloads, not all workloads,

00:54:02   but many. So it's like we've raised the floor. We've made the low end of performance really,

00:54:06   really high and fast and responsive, but we haven't yet lifted the ceiling very much to make

00:54:12   the high end much higher. So that's what I'm waiting for for the new, you know, upcoming

00:54:17   higher end Apple Silicon Macs. That's what I'm looking forward to. What can we do now? We, we're

00:54:22   doing some crazy stuff now with four performance cores. What can we do with 12 or 40 or whatever,

00:54:28   you know, whatever we can get? Like that's what I want to see. What's the line, you know,

00:54:32   it's cooler than a million bucks, a billion bucks. You know, it's cooler than four cores,

00:54:37   a hundred cores. I hear you. And so my thought, like I said, was, or like I was starting to say,

00:54:42   my thought was I would replace the laptop first, even though it is newer, but I don't expect to

00:54:47   have an Apple Silicon equivalent of the iMac Pro anytime soon. So I figured I'd replace the laptop

00:54:54   and then we'll see what I think after that, maybe I'll just get a external monitor for it if it

00:54:59   really is that great. I don't know. But, uh, I don't want to get a two port MacBook Pro. I really

00:55:05   want to replace what I've got, which is a four port MacBook Pro. I can take a leave the touch

00:55:09   bar. It doesn't bother me one way or the other, but I really want four ports. And, and I don't

00:55:13   think that that exists right now. And, and I want to wait for this Phantom one that's coming

00:55:18   eventually. So we probably spent too much time on this already, but I I'm right there with you guys.

00:55:22   Well, I was going to say like, I think it's funny that we spent this much time talking about Macs

00:55:26   in our predictions for the event that we said is not going to get, not going to stay in Macs, but

00:55:30   at least listeners that we, this will mean that we won't have to talk about all this Mac stuff

00:55:34   next week when this stuff has been announced. And we can actually talk about the iPhones that

00:55:38   were presumably announced instead of talking about the Mac stuff. Unless they announce Mac stuff,

00:55:41   who knows, but like looking at the list of things that looking at a list of things that are,

00:55:44   that are probably a good bet for our announcement. And we'll go through them in order, but it's,

00:55:49   it's iPhone, new Apple watch, new AirPods and the new iPad mini and the cheap iPad.

00:55:54   And that is plenty for an event, especially as we'll go through them, we'll see that, you know,

00:55:59   the watch is all new in theory this year, the AirPods are all new. The mini is making its

00:56:04   triumphant return with an all new design. So that's, that's a full event there. There's not

00:56:08   really, you know, if they announce all that stuff that I just listed, this is a pretty good Apple

00:56:12   event, right? I guess we can start with the iPhone, which presumably will be called iPhone 13, but

00:56:17   maybe not, but I feel like the big story here based on the rumors, I put it as the first bullet

00:56:22   item here is that supposedly Apple ordered 100 million A15 chips from TSMC, which apparently is

00:56:29   a bigger than normal initial order for like the launch of a phone. And I mean, I guess you can

00:56:36   read into that and say, Apple thinks they're going to sell a lot of these. There are also

00:56:39   other explanations and that maybe the A15 is going to be used in things other than just the iPhone 13.

00:56:44   Maybe it's going to be used in the iPad mini. Maybe there's confusion about what things the

00:56:50   A15 might go in. Maybe they're announcing AR goggles that these will go in. Like, we don't

00:56:55   know. We don't know what that 100 million means. Maybe TSMC just wanted Apple to make a big order

00:56:58   to lock in a low price. It's very difficult to know, but either way, it shows that Apple is A,

00:57:04   tying up a lot of chip manufacturing capacity and B, they seem fairly confident that they're

00:57:09   going to sell a lot of things with A15s in them. And one of those will presumably be the iPhone

00:57:14   13, which otherwise seems like a, not a boring year, but like, you know, the outward design looks

00:57:20   about the same. It's got the flat size, just like the 12. The notch is supposedly going to be smaller

00:57:25   this year because they combined a bunch of sensors. Larger wireless charging coils for better heat

00:57:31   dissipation. Stronger mag safe magnets, a bigger battery, faster wired charging going from 20 watts

00:57:38   to 25 watts. Can we just, can we pause real quick right here? I would love to see better battery

00:57:45   life for both my watch and my phone. I, again, we talked about this last episode. Maybe this is a

00:57:51   self-created problem because I very rarely charge many mechanisms other than Qi charging, but I don't

00:57:57   know. I feel like my phone's battery, and I have a 12 Pro, a regular size 12 Pro, I feel like my

00:58:02   battery is not great, which means Marcos must be abysmal at this point, given that you have a much

00:58:07   smaller battery. But I would love to see an increase in battery life in both my watch and my

00:58:14   phone. I tend to charge my watch for about half an hour to an hour in the middle of the day, not

00:58:19   because I have to, but because I just have an opportunity to. And if I don't do that, the watch

00:58:24   typically dies not too long after dinner time. Now again, I have the smaller of the watches. It is

00:58:28   cellular, although it rarely has the occasion to be on a cellular, or to have the cellular radio on.

00:58:33   But I don't know, I feel like I would really love, we're back in that position after a couple of years

00:58:39   off where I really would love more battery life. And we're going to talk about it in a minute, but

00:58:43   if we're getting some new display technology, I'm really, really concerned that that's going to be

00:58:47   even worse for battery life, and I am not on board with that.

00:58:52   No, I think you're going to get, so the reasons you're going to get better battery life on the

00:58:55   iPhone are physically bigger battery, according to rumors, right? So there's more capacity in there.

00:59:02   I remember last year was the first set of 5G phones, and the 5G modems were not particularly

00:59:06   good with power. One of the rumors this year is that it will have an improved 5G cellular modem,

00:59:12   still from Qualcomm, Apple's isn't ready yet. And so those two things combined is that it's not the

00:59:17   first generation 5G product with the big power hungry 5G radio in it, and the battery is bigger.

00:59:23   And then I guess you could throw in there, the A15 is 5 nanometer, the A14 was 7 nanometer, I think.

00:59:29   Anyway, all those combined to make me think that the 13 is going to have better battery life than

00:59:35   12, because that was one of the knocks against the 12 when it came out. It's like, do you really

00:59:39   want the first 5G phone? Everyone knows it's a little bit battery hungry. It's why we talked

00:59:43   about on the past shows, if you would disable 5G, you can get more battery life out of it,

00:59:46   just because you don't have it do the 5G stuff in it, in its cell modem. So I think you'll be happy

00:59:52   there. And the display, that's one of the rumors, is the display is finally going to be 120 Hertz.

00:59:56   But the key part about the display, assuming it is still just the same OLED tech that we have now,

01:00:00   is not the 120 Hertz thing, which is kind of a battery sucker, but it's the variable refresh

01:00:06   rate, which I think does the current OLED screen have that? I don't remember the current one.

01:00:10   No, the watch has it, the phone does not.

01:00:13   Right. But anyway, a variable refresh is that it can change the refresh rate of the display,

01:00:17   and if nothing is happening on the display, it can go down to one Hertz, like one update per

01:00:21   second, which is super slow. And this is also part of the rumor of potentially having an always on

01:00:25   display on the phone where it will just show like the time or something. That's what the watch does

01:00:29   is sit battery is it goes into, you know, how can you afford to keep the display on all the time?

01:00:33   Well, OLED, you only pay for the pixels you're lighting up. And if the pixels you're lighting up,

01:00:37   like rarely change, like if it's basically a static image, like the time with the minutes,

01:00:40   and you can crank down the refresh rate to one Hertz, that saves battery. It also saves battery

01:00:45   when you're staring at your phone and nothing is moving on the screen. Like you're not scrolling,

01:00:50   the variable refresh can crank down the refresh rate to not be 120 Hertz, but to be less than

01:00:55   the 60 Hertz that your phone is doing right now when you're staring at the screen, right? So

01:00:58   I know it might look scary that 120 Hertz is going to eat your battery, but I think

01:01:02   net net, unless you're constantly playing a game, it won't actually be updating at 120 Hertz. In

01:01:08   fact, it should be updating it much less than your current phone 60 Hertz. So I think the phone

01:01:12   screen is probably going to be a wash, especially if there's an option to just do 60 Hertz, like

01:01:18   lots of Android phones have that. Like, do you want 120 Hertz on or do you want it to just be 60?

01:01:22   I wonder if that setting will be in there. Well, and I bet there will be such an option because

01:01:26   when the 10.5 iPad came out with its 120 Hertz screen, they added an accessibility option to

01:01:31   limit it to 60 Hertz. Promotion, sorry, we should use Apple's marketing terms.

01:01:34   Yes. Well, I'm sure we'll hear all about it next week. But yeah, when the iPad got 120 Hertz,

01:01:41   they had an accessibility option added to limit it to 60. And so I would expect to see that same

01:01:44   option show up on any phone that has that capability. Yeah. And this year's crop of camera

01:01:48   stuff, one of them is what has been described as portrait mode and video, essentially like

01:01:52   the real time effects that you can do for like blurring the background and finding objects and

01:01:56   stuff. Apparently that the A15 is faster than if you do that in video. The rumored name for it is

01:02:01   cinematic video, possibly using LIDAR to better do object detection. That'll be interesting.

01:02:06   The astrophotography mode rumor that we talked about for a while, taking pictures of the night

01:02:09   sky. Portrait mode using LIDAR, apparently currently portrait mode doesn't use the LIDAR,

01:02:14   but the new one will. Object detection photo filters, where it can find objects in the photo

01:02:19   and apply filters just to them, just to the person or just to an object or whatever.

01:02:23   Alice, you could have those pictures that have the red fruit inside of the black and white picture.

01:02:28   Right, right, right. These are all just rumors. Maybe this is all founded on the same underlying

01:02:33   technology of, hey, now it's going to use LIDAR to pick out objects in the scene and you can do

01:02:36   stuff with it. A better wide angle camera with autofocus. I guess the current wide angles don't

01:02:41   have, they're just like a fixed focal distance or something. I don't know what this rumor is about,

01:02:45   but anyway, better wide angle camera. The rumored new color is, it's been described as sunset gold.

01:02:52   I don't know if that's what they'll call it, but it's like the pictures, it doesn't look like rose

01:02:56   gold, but it looks more like a bronzy type thing. Anyway, that's a rumor of a potential new color.

01:03:01   There's the fun rumors about satellite connectivity for emergencies. This is one that is very

01:03:07   confused. On the one hand, you have the people saying, oh, the iPhones have FCC registration

01:03:14   or whatever for these radio bands that are used for satellites, but it'll only be used for

01:03:18   emergencies. If you're out of cell range and you want to do an SOS, you can connect to a satellite

01:03:22   to do an SOS so someone can find you or whatever. Then other people are saying, no, no, no, you don't

01:03:27   understand. There's just a bunch of radio bands that were previously licensed to satellite makers

01:03:31   that are now being repurposed for cell phones and this radio has the capacity to use those. So

01:03:36   there's no satellite thing at all and it's really just 5G with more bands or something. We'll find

01:03:41   out which one of those is true, if any. Maybe they just won't mention it all and then we'll know this

01:03:45   is a non-issue. But that crop of features right there, it makes for what we used to call an S

01:03:51   generation. It's the same case on the outside. In this case, it's a little bit different because the

01:03:54   notch will be smaller. So for all the people who did the clever jokes where they hid something

01:03:58   behind the notch in their apps, you got to make sure you detect you're on the iPhone 13 and make

01:04:04   it narrower to fit inside there. Oh yeah, one more thing about the narrow notch. The rumors and the

01:04:08   little parts leaks and everything show the notch being not as wide on the phone. But to do that,

01:04:12   they had to take the speaker that you would hold up to your ear when you talk on the phone,

01:04:16   if anyone ever talks on the phone like that anymore and doesn't talk into the end of their

01:04:20   phone like I see everybody doing. Anyway, that little speaker thing, it used to be,

01:04:24   it's like a hard, you look on your phone now if you have one of the newer phones, it's like

01:04:27   a horizontal slit kind of in the middle of the notch, the middle vertically speaking. The rumors

01:04:33   are that they shoved that speaker towards the top of the phone to make room for like all the sensors

01:04:38   and stuff that is kind of crammed together. And the reason I'm a little bit concerned about that

01:04:43   is I bet a lot of cases have like a lip, right? That goes over, that overlaps the front of the

01:04:48   phone a little bit. And it doesn't take much to sort of blunt the volume of that little speaker

01:04:54   if you have like say an iPhone 12 case that had a lip that didn't anticipate that the speaker

01:04:59   would be like right up against the edge of the phone. So that's a thing to watch for.

01:05:03   Obviously Apple's new cases won't have that problem and they won't block the speaker.

01:05:06   But if you have an existing iPhone 12 case, assuming they're compatible,

01:05:09   or you're buying one, be aware that the lip might block the speaker.

01:05:13   I mean, the rumors were already that the camera bump block was going to get bigger

01:05:18   this generation. So chances are existing cases won't fit anyway.

01:05:22   Like taller or like width and height wise bigger?

01:05:25   I thought the rumor was width and height, but I honestly haven't been paying that much attention

01:05:28   to the rumors. So I could be wrong. It looked a similar size. I think most of what I saw was

01:05:32   that it was going to be like taller, like skyscrapers coming out of the back of your phone,

01:05:35   that they would all be taller. The plateau would be taller and the lenses would be taller,

01:05:38   but we'll see. But anyway, like it looks more or less like the 12, which I think, you know,

01:05:42   I've had 12 for a year. I like it. It's a good design. I'm not getting this phone anyway, but

01:05:46   like for an S generation, if this was called the 12 S or if it ends up being called the 13 for

01:05:53   a revision of the previous design, if it has all these features as in better cameras,

01:05:58   better software features, faster CPU, better battery life, better display.

01:06:02   That's a good S generation. So I think thumbs up on this phone. Like we talk about this every year,

01:06:06   it gets kind of boring, but it's like Apple makes good iPhones like, and setting aside the Pro ones,

01:06:11   like everything we talk about here, a lot of these are going to be Pro only features like the plane

01:06:14   13. If the plane 13 is to the 13 Pro, the way the 12 was to the 12 Pro also a great phone. The 12 is

01:06:21   a great phone, right? I mean the 12 Pro, it's honestly hard to justify the 12 Pro, except if

01:06:27   you just want the best of the best or you like the colors or finishes better. Just because the 12 was

01:06:32   so great, same CPU, same great features. So, you know, Apple continues to make really good iPhones,

01:06:38   not a big story, kind of a dog bites man story, but you know, there's something to be said for

01:06:43   consistency. Like it's not easy every year to come out with a really good phone and Apple keeps doing

01:06:49   it. Yeah. I mean this, this list of features or, you know, rumored features, I mean, and honestly,

01:06:55   these all sound fairly plausible. Like I don't think, I don't think anything here is a massive

01:07:00   reach. Like I think these all, this all sounds like in the realm of plausible. Maybe the satellite

01:07:04   stuff is. Yes, exactly. So I have a friend who, who does a lot of work on telecommunication stuff and

01:07:10   he had, and probably still has a satellite phone that he uses in very, very rare circumstances.

01:07:17   And again, I haven't, I haven't handled one of these phones in probably five years,

01:07:21   but the antennas on those things were massive. They were enormous. And obviously with the March

01:07:27   of Progress and March of Time, everything gets smaller and smaller, but I'd be very surprised if

01:07:32   true honest to goodness satellite connectivity in the, in the way that people are saying about it

01:07:36   being for emergencies, when you're out of cell coverage, I'd be stunned if that really landed.

01:07:41   I would absolutely buy it's a, it's a bandwidth thing or not bandwidth, what's a frequency thing

01:07:47   where it's like you said, John, the frequencies are retired now we're using new frequencies, but

01:07:51   this satellite thing I'm super skeptical about everything else. I agree with you, Marco. Yeah,

01:07:55   it's definitely plausible. Yeah. And if all of this, or I mean, heck, even if half of this stuff

01:08:00   happens and the other half is BS, that's still a good, that's still a solid update. You know,

01:08:06   as John was saying, like, this is like a, you know, kind of like an S year maybe, but I don't

01:08:09   know some of these things, I mean, every year you want better battery life, you want better cameras,

01:08:15   you want it to be a little bit faster and whatever else that's, that's like, you know, every year

01:08:19   gets those things for the most part. Um, but yeah, this sounds like a pretty big upgrade to the

01:08:24   display. Like if, if there is 120 Hertz and variable refresh rate, and especially if there's

01:08:31   the always on option to put like, you know, a clock or the now playing controls, whatever,

01:08:35   that's a big deal that, that like significantly changes how the phone looks and feels.

01:08:40   So that's actually, I'm looking forward to this. I think this could be a bigger year than we think.

01:08:46   And any, and you know, the, if the other stuff is true, if we actually get like

01:08:50   stronger mag safe, faster charging, like that's all just little quality of life stuff that just

01:08:56   makes everything a little bit nicer. So this sounds like a pretty good upgrade and we'll see

01:09:00   what happens and, you know, we'll see what they're actually released. But even if the satellite thing

01:09:04   is BS or misinterpreted or wrong in some way, the rest of this is a solid update. If the, if the

01:09:10   satellite thing is real, then I can see that being a pretty nice, you know, pretty big deal because

01:09:16   even if people never end up needing satellite connectivity, like if they're, if you're never

01:09:22   in the middle of nowhere and you need to be rescued, great. But a lot of people might buy it

01:09:27   just in case they might say, you know, occasionally we go somewhere with no cell coverage

01:09:33   and what if we get stuck on the side of a mountain and need to be rescued? Like I can see that being

01:09:37   an amazing thing for not only for, you know, the obvious humanitarian reason of maybe this could

01:09:43   save a life. But also that could be good for sales because I think a lot of people would

01:09:47   buy it on that just in case notion of like, Hey, I might need this for my doomsday prep or for my

01:09:54   weird hikes I do once every decade or whatever. Like I think people would actually buy it in, in

01:09:59   large numbers for that. Oh, I absolutely agree with you there because you know, for the longest

01:10:03   time I was buying a cellular Apple watches, which I don't plan to do anymore. And we'll probably talk

01:10:08   about that later, but I was doing that because when I would go for a run on the off chance that

01:10:13   I like slipped and broke a leg or something, I wanted to be able to call for help. And,

01:10:17   and I was paying $15 a month as I whined and complained about many years ago on this very

01:10:22   program, I think $15 a month for that privilege of, of, of just in case. And so, yeah, it's,

01:10:29   not only does it fit with, you know, what people might want to pay for and spend their money on,

01:10:35   but in a place like California where weather doesn't exist, it was particularly in LA,

01:10:40   but to a smaller degree in the Bay area, you know, all those annoying people are constantly out

01:10:46   taking pictures of the beautiful landscape there. And it wouldn't surprise me if Apple,

01:10:51   a very California centric company decides, Oh, we should do something about this when we're off the

01:10:54   beaten path. So yeah, I think it is, if you look at the technology not being plausible, which I do

01:11:01   look at the technology as not being plausible, but nevertheless, I, I think the desire is absolutely

01:11:08   there. Anything else on the phones? I mean, I I'm almost certainly going to get one because I'm a

01:11:13   sucker and I do whatever Apple tells me to do, but, uh, I mean, I, I'm looking forward to it

01:11:18   tentatively. I would love better battery life and I would love actually, I would love better glass.

01:11:23   As I've said to you, I'm never going caseless, caseless again, but I would love to have more

01:11:28   robust glass. This, this 12 pro I have the front has been scratched absolute smithereens. And I

01:11:35   somehow dropped the back on like the wood floor in my kitchen and, and lightly shattered the back of

01:11:41   mine. Aaron's looks like it's been through a trash compactor. I would love to have stronger glass,

01:11:48   even despite the fact that both of us are definitely in Iraq cases this year. So

01:11:52   better gorilla glass, please. Maybe orangutan glass. Is that an improvement? I don't even know

01:11:55   moving on Apple watch seven. This sounds very interesting to me, flat sides and flat display

01:12:02   closer to the cover glass I'm in that that sounds excellent. Part of that is also a larger display.

01:12:08   So the flat side, it's obvious to say like, okay, this is a family resemblance. The phones have flat

01:12:13   sides. The iPad's got some a while ago. If you put them on the watch now Apple's devices kind of look,

01:12:17   you know, Hey, it's a flat sided rounded rectangle must be an Apple device. And I see that angle.

01:12:22   But I think probably the more important factor is the, the existing watch design, the way it curves,

01:12:29   you know, the Airstream trailer look leaves less area, less flat area for the display. Like you're

01:12:36   wasting a lot on the, essentially the bezels, like the curved part. And I know there are, you know,

01:12:40   phones that have displays in the curve parts. I forget which manufacturer was picking that. Maybe

01:12:44   with Samsung. Yeah. Um, but that's, I, I've never really liked that because that part of the display,

01:12:50   like it curving away from you, it doesn't quite look right. Right. So, and your other choice is

01:12:54   to extend the display, like out underneath that by moving it farther away from the surface glass.

01:13:00   And that doesn't feel good either. So this is the solution. The solution is you make the top flat

01:13:03   and the sides flat. You can have a larger display in the same width and height because the display

01:13:08   goes closer to the edge and the top is very flat. And then you can also get the display closer to

01:13:13   the glass that it's on. So it feels like it less like it's sunken down in there. And that I think

01:13:17   is the, is the real benefit. The family resemblance is nice and makes sense, but the real benefit is

01:13:22   you get to have a bigger display with the same size watch. That said, the sizes are supposed to

01:13:26   be 41 millimeters and 45 millimeters. I don't know how watch sizes work, but I think our current,

01:13:31   the current ones are 40 and 44. Is that correct? I believe that's right. I don't know what they're

01:13:35   measuring there. Does that mean the watch will be physically larger by a couple of millimeters or

01:13:39   are they talking about the display? It's confusing to me. Based on the rumors, the rumors are that

01:13:45   the body will be roughly the same size, but that the screens will be getting larger because they're

01:13:50   shrinking the bezel effectively. So that I don't know, you know, we'll, we'll find out what happens.

01:13:56   Frankly, I, so this is, this is what I'm most curious about is like, what is the new Apple

01:14:02   watch design? How does it look? What kind of materials are they offering? What kind of finishes

01:14:07   and colors? Because the like the little like, you know, basic renders that we saw from the

01:14:12   rumor mill did not look good to me. Really? I thought they looked great. Well, that's the

01:14:17   other, that's the other thing as, as a fashion accessory, the Airstream trailer look for,

01:14:21   you know, take it or leave it. It is the iconic Apple watch look because the Apple watch has

01:14:25   always looked like a rounded curve. I mean, it's, it's physically changed many times, but the,

01:14:30   the overall design has been, you know, a pillowy round thing of various thicknesses. And this is

01:14:35   the first time it's changed. I'm I think the pillowy round thing doesn't look great as a

01:14:41   watch, but it's like, Oh, it's an Apple watch. The square sided one. I think similar things. Like,

01:14:46   I don't, I don't have any particular tastes in watches, but either one of those I look at and

01:14:49   say, yeah, they look like smartwatches because that's what they are. They don't, neither one

01:14:53   of them looks any better or worse as a quote unquote watch to me, just because I see it

01:14:57   entirely as a little computer on your wrist. And I think having a bigger screen is a feature of a

01:15:03   little computer on your wrist, but aesthetically speaking. Yeah. Well, we'll see what it looks like

01:15:07   on people's when you're wearing it. Obviously it is flat sided. It will be more prominent. Like the

01:15:13   curves are minimizing in some ways, but on the other hand, it, depending on how thin it is,

01:15:18   it could be like more formal looking and less dorky. Maybe. I don't know. It's very, I agree

01:15:25   that the renders look a little bit like you have an iPad strapped to your wrist, which is kind of

01:15:28   what you do, but I think I'd have to see these in person to see how they actually come off.

01:15:31   Having straight sides is not, does not make a watch like a bad watch. Most watches have

01:15:38   straight sides like that is by far the most common case shape. You have the case band around the

01:15:43   outside that, and it's straight and then you have some kind of, you know, bevel up to the crystal,

01:15:50   which is like the cover glass or Sapphire on top. That's very common for watch design. It's like the

01:15:55   most common shape. Obviously, you know, it looks better when it's thinner. It doesn't look good if

01:15:59   it's too thick, but like overall that's common. The reason why the Apple watch has been rounded

01:16:04   like this, I think was twofold. I think number one, that was the shape of iPhones at the time

01:16:08   it was launched. So that was like their design language. And number two, a straight sided watch

01:16:13   of the thickness that most Apple watches are is it looks really chunky. It looks bad. Like you don't

01:16:19   want a straight sided watch to be thicker than maybe about 12 millimeters, depending on the

01:16:25   design. Like that's, that's about as thick as you want. And the Apple watches I think are all

01:16:28   thicker than that or at least are in the ballpark. So if they can make it noticeably thinner and give

01:16:34   it straight sides, it might look good, but there's also some challenges about that. Like how will the

01:16:41   materials wear, especially on the corner? That's really tough. On the current like, you know,

01:16:47   slopey sided ones, because the whole surface is curved, it hides scratches a little bit better.

01:16:54   If the surface is flat, you see every single scratch. And if there, if anything happens to the,

01:17:00   to the beveled edge, I mean, remember back, back with like the iPhone 5s and 5, those beveled edges

01:17:07   got nicked up really easily. That's where you're going to see all the wear. So I'm really curious

01:17:12   to see how this plays out in practice, both with, with wear and with maybe this might alter the

01:17:18   materials choices. Like maybe we might not get certain materials or colors that we had with,

01:17:23   with the outgoing design, because it doesn't work or doesn't look as good with this new design,

01:17:27   who knows. But that's, I'm very, very curious to see like materials, visual design, whether they're

01:17:33   going to like polish the bevel or the bevel or not. And then, and then what the heck they're

01:17:38   doing with the screens, that all sounds probably good, but I think they're also going to have a

01:17:43   hard time making the low end models not look cheap. The flat sided cases are easier to

01:17:50   manufacture. And that's why almost every other smartwatch maker uses flat sided cases. And as a

01:17:57   result, a flat sided round wrecked watch from, from like our current brains of consumers,

01:18:06   looks like an Android watch or something like it looks like something else. It doesn't look

01:18:10   like an Apple watch. So when, when Apple moving into this, they're kind of redefining what an

01:18:15   Apple watch looks like. I hope they can do it in a way that makes it look good. And I think they

01:18:19   probably can. Their history with making the Apple watch look good is pretty strong. They've had a

01:18:25   pretty good track record there, especially with the use of good materials and everything. So I

01:18:28   hope they continue that. But I am really like, I'm kind of nervous for them on this because it

01:18:34   looks like they're tackling a pretty significant challenge in making a new design language for the

01:18:41   Apple watch that both looks good and wears well and looks like Apple as opposed to some other

01:18:49   cheap thing. I think they're probably leaning on the watch bands a lot because like, I mean,

01:18:52   the majority of the surface area of the watch is the band and Apple has done a good job sort

01:18:56   of branding the bands. And you know, if you, when you see someone with an Apple watch band,

01:19:00   even a ripoff Apple watch band, it's not actually made by Apple. That's as much an identity as like

01:19:05   white AirPods are like the white headphones on an iPod were back in the day. Like this design

01:19:11   almost says like, just ignore the watch body. Like it's all screen when viewed from the front,

01:19:16   when viewed from the side, it's just a flat surface that we can put a color on. But really,

01:19:20   it's all about the bands. And that's going to be your fashion statement. And the watch sort of

01:19:24   disappears into, I mean, that's, that's one way this might pull off. I'm mostly nervous about the

01:19:29   thickness. Because like you said, if it would just slab sides with flat sides, if it's too thick,

01:19:33   if it's, it can start to look like, you know, just a giant wall on your wrist, you know, like the

01:19:38   curves are slimming. But if you get it down thin enough, maybe this generation won't be quite thin

01:19:42   enough. But if you get it down thin enough, the watch really does start to disappear and let the

01:19:46   band do most of the talking again, especially when viewed like the way you look at the watch when

01:19:50   you're looking at the time. I don't think you'll see anything except for the screen with which will

01:19:54   go almost edge to edge, you won't be able to see the sides at all. Maybe you'll see the little rim

01:19:58   around it, the little the chamfered edge that was polished on the the original five or whatever,

01:20:03   that maybe they'll end up the part that might Nick to your point, like, they have to do something

01:20:07   with that edge to make it durable and attractive. And in that respect, I think that even though my

01:20:13   my iPhone 12 Pro is in a case, I tried to use it without without a case for I think, like two days

01:20:18   or however long I lasted. The stainless steel rounded over edge of the edge of the iPhone 12

01:20:26   Pro, I think looks very attractive and would look great as this that same edge on a watch, right.

01:20:32   And I don't know how durable it was, maybe Casey can tell me if he's nicked up that part of it.

01:20:36   But I could seem pretty seem pretty sturdy with the surgical stainless steel and the rounded edge,

01:20:40   like there were unlike the chamfered edge, which was flat with sharp, like transitions to the

01:20:45   other part. That was easy. And it was two toned materials easy to Nick up the stainless steel

01:20:50   seems like it's rounded. So there's no sort of corner to Nick. And it was sort of uniformly

01:20:55   colored throughout. So I'm hoping they can also do something good with that edge. But yeah,

01:20:59   like these renders, they get the gist of it, the gist of the rumors or the parts leaks or whatever.

01:21:04   But you got to wait to see, you know, let's do things when you have to wait to see Apple's

01:21:09   glamour shots, which only sometimes have any resemblance to reality. And the second thing

01:21:14   is you have to actually see the product that they ship in a store somewhere and see how it is on your

01:21:17   wrist. Yeah, one other thing before we leave the design of this, I one thing I'm actually also

01:21:23   concerned about is I like the thick, curved edge sapphire crystal. It looks good. And in the watch

01:21:32   world thick, they're called box crystals. Usually that shape or like a kind of comes up on the edges

01:21:38   like a rounds up before it's like a flat top that's in fashion in watch design and has been for some

01:21:43   time, like many decades for many types of watches because it looks good. And it's also highly

01:21:51   functional. You know, if with the crystal being very thick, the crystal will therefore take a lot

01:21:56   of the impact that would otherwise scratch the sides because some of those impacts will hit the

01:22:01   crystal instead. And you know, the glass is pretty strong on the glass models, the sapphire super

01:22:06   strong on the steel models. And so it's actually a pretty, not only, you know, attractive, you know,

01:22:11   kind of a retro look in some ways, but like, it's also a very pragmatic design to have a thick,

01:22:16   curved edge crystal. So if you know, like the rumor renders of the new watch design show it with

01:22:23   basically a flat crystal that has very little to no thickness. And if they're extending the screen

01:22:28   outwards and reducing the margins of the, you know, of the bevel here, bezel, I guess now it's

01:22:33   a bezel. I was talking about the bevel before. It's hard to keep these things straight, Jon.

01:22:37   But anyway, I worry that they're going to like thin out and flatten the crystal. And that will

01:22:45   be another thing that might make it end up looking cheap. So I really, this is a very tricky design

01:22:51   line they're walking here. I have faith that they tend to pull off these things well. But

01:22:57   I'm really nervous for them on this one because they're taking on a pretty big challenge on this.

01:23:01   Jon Moffitt It's so fascinating listening to you talk about all these things because I

01:23:04   basically disagree with everything you just said, but I come from a position of not really

01:23:10   understanding what is quote unquote correct amongst watch people because I am not a traditional watch

01:23:16   person. But like, I'm looking at renders of this new Series 7 watch and it looks frickin' great to

01:23:22   me. I love the way it looks. I love the flat sides. Now I agree, like if it's a skyscraper on my wrist,

01:23:26   that's different. But assuming it doesn't look absolutely absurd in terms of how tall the watch

01:23:31   is, I love the way this looks. I would prefer to have a much flatter like glass on top because I'm

01:23:38   too cheap to get the fancy sapphire ones. I think this looks excellent and I'm super pumped for it,

01:23:44   even though I got a watch last year. But again, it's kind of my job and I'm definitely a sucker.

01:23:49   So I'm not saying you're wrong. Like again, I'm not trying to argue with what the fancy watch

01:23:54   people believe and think is best, but to my eyes, to my silly, dumb consumer eyes, it looks great.

01:24:00   See, one of the reasons why I'm concerned about like by having like the potential thinner crystal

01:24:06   and straight ties and everything, to me, if it looks like a tiny iPhone on my wrist,

01:24:10   that's a downside. That's not good for fashion or elegance or looking nice. It shouldn't look

01:24:18   like a tiny iPhone. It should look like a nice smartwatch. It's never going to look like a nice

01:24:22   watch period because it can't, but it should look like a nice smartwatch. And the Apple watch,

01:24:28   not every model of Apple watch has always looked like that, but every generation of Apple watch has

01:24:33   offered configurations that look nice. So I hope with this new design language, they continue to

01:24:40   offer that. Like I've been very happy. Yes, you make fun of me for buying the expensive thing.

01:24:43   I've always gotten the steel watch. I love the steel watch. I love the, you know, the high

01:24:48   polished edges, even though it gets scratched to hell. My current one from just last fall is indeed

01:24:54   scratched to hell because I've worn it a lot this year, but I love like the polished steel,

01:24:59   the black top and the, and like a white sport band. I love that look with the Sapphire. It's

01:25:04   a really, really nice smartwatch. And it's a, it's actually a pretty decent watch. One, if you can

01:25:10   figure it right and don't mind it being a digital watch because the analog faces are all terrible,

01:25:15   but the digital faces can be decent. So anyway, once you, once you're accustomed to that,

01:25:20   and now that we have the old on screen, it can be a decent looking watch. I am fine wearing this

01:25:25   watch most of the time now because it's decent looking. I hope with the new design language that

01:25:32   I hope they're able to still have configurations that look both nice and not like you have a phone

01:25:40   strapped to your wrist. And that's going to be the biggest challenge. I think like seeing it,

01:25:43   like seeing the rumor renders that to me just looks like iPhones. I really hope that the actual

01:25:48   final design differs enough from that in practice. Like I hope it doesn't just look, I have a phone

01:25:53   strapped to my wrist because that's not a look that I want. And I don't find that elegance at all.

01:25:58   Yeah. I always liked the shiny stainless steel too. And then one Apple watch that I got, I

01:26:02   paid more for the stainless steel one because it's a look that I like. And that's why we call it an

01:26:05   Airstream trailer because they're kind of shiny while they're, they're more of a matte finish

01:26:09   stainless steel. But anyway if you made this new design and that thing, I guess it would be

01:26:13   a sardine can like a rounded rectangle with shiny sides. We'll see. I still kind of like the idea of

01:26:20   a phone with the same finish that my iPhone has around it. In terms of battery life for KC,

01:26:25   if he gets one of these, improved battery life is part of the rumors. Part of what makes that

01:26:29   possible is supposedly it has wifi 6e and Bluetooth 5.2 possibly. There's also vague

01:26:36   rumors of the possibility of 5g, which would hurt battery life, which makes me think it's not going

01:26:39   to be in this watch. But then of course the system on a chip, the S7 is going to be at 5 nanometers,

01:26:44   which will help it sip battery power as compared to its 7 nanometer. I'm assuming the current

01:26:50   system on a chip is 7 nanometer. And there's also rumors that it might have 2 gigs of RAM,

01:26:55   which I suppose would help developers be, maybe would help them be less constrained depending on

01:26:59   how Apple changes the rules. And the final thing that helps battery life is straight sides make

01:27:05   easy for easier packaging. Like there's more volume and it is easier to put components inside

01:27:10   something that doesn't have curves all over it. Right. It's just easy, you know, so they can fit

01:27:13   a bigger battery. You know, the, the, the S7 system on a chip is supposedly the double layer design.

01:27:18   So it'll take up a less area within height wise in exchange for being a little bit thicker. And

01:27:23   maybe there's room for a bigger battery. So I have high hopes for that Apple watch seven will have

01:27:28   improved battery life over the six, just because of all those things combined, you know, smaller

01:27:32   system on a chip, easier packaging, bigger, bigger watches period 41 millimeters, 45. When you're

01:27:38   talking about the watch battery, every millimeter helps. So I think this will be for people who

01:27:42   aren't people who like the aesthetic or, or don't care about it, or just mostly about the watch

01:27:47   bands. I think the Apple watch seven will be a really good watch for people who like the Apple

01:27:51   watch for it being an Apple watch, having a bigger display with less area. And you know, some fun new

01:27:57   watch spaces. That's another rumor, like watch faces that can let you have more complications.

01:28:01   Now that there's more screen space. I think for people who love the Apple watch, the Apple watch

01:28:06   seven sounds like a hit all around longer battery life, bigger screen, uh, you know, faster. Not

01:28:12   that anyone cares about that. I think it will be extremely popular. Probably then apparently

01:28:19   AirPods three are rumored, uh, the rumors being that they would be stubby kind of like the pros,

01:28:23   but no in-ear soft tips, no noise canceling in a wide case. I currently have, uh, the AirPods

01:28:30   that have the Qi case, you know, it didn't have an add on a Qi charger. It has the, the Qi case that

01:28:36   came with it. And my left AirPod is really hurting in terms of battery life. My right one, even

01:28:41   though I use it more seems to be fine. I am ready to try for the very first time AirPod pros. I want

01:28:47   to do it, but, uh, like I said earlier, I don't want to do it until there's new ones. And it sounds

01:28:51   like maybe not new ones this event, but man, can you imagine new watch, new phone, new AirPods?

01:28:56   This could be very new MacBook pro. This could be, this could be real ugly for me. So, uh, with that

01:29:01   in mind, atp.fm/join. I gave to St. Jude. Hey, I gave to St. Jude. So everyone else,

01:29:06   after you give to St. Jude atp.fm/join please. And thank you. Yeah. These AirPods, uh, I've been

01:29:12   talking about this before of like how I might have to panic by the previous ones when the new ones

01:29:16   come out. It seems like the rumors are pretty clear that these won't be, I didn't want to call

01:29:19   them in-ear, but you know, the ones with the little, the little AirPods pro, the little soft

01:29:23   squishy thing that goes into your canal. I don't like how that feels. My wife has them. I don't

01:29:27   prefer it. Um, which is kind of a shame because I think I would enjoy the noise canceling, but I

01:29:31   just don't like that sensation and the current regular AirPods fit me great. I've used them

01:29:37   since they were introduced. I've bought a couple of pairs as the batteries have gone bad or they've

01:29:40   been passed down to kids or whatever. I love them. They're great. My only problem is they do have a

01:29:46   limited lifetime. Like my current ones, they're doing this weird thing where when I pick up my

01:29:49   iPhone, it shows the little rounded rectangle white thing from the top that comes down and says,

01:29:54   AirPods connected, you know, that little thing, but boom, you know, it shows that. And then I hit

01:29:58   play and overcast and it starts coming out of my speaker. Nice. Uh, and why? And then I have to go

01:30:03   to like the little, you know, control center, little circle thingy and tap on AirPods again.

01:30:07   And now it goes through them. And this is just a recent thing that's been happening. Like they're

01:30:11   taking longer to connect to my phone and this is like my AirPods telling me we're getting old.

01:30:15   Yeah. And the batteries aren't that great. In all fairness, like almost every release of iOS,

01:30:22   including point releases, messes with the way like AirPods connect in some way. I don't know

01:30:28   why they mess with it so often, but they do. Also, I would recommend to anybody out there with

01:30:33   AirPods, turn off the auto switching. It is such a big quality of life improvement to have that

01:30:40   turned off. And it's frustrating because you have to turn it off on every device that your AirPods

01:30:46   pair with and for every pair of AirPods, but it is, it's trust me manually switch. It's so much

01:30:54   nicer. You, I use the auto switching though when I'm in bed watching my iPad and then I switched

01:30:59   to my phone. I love the fact that whichever device I'm using gets the AirPods and it happens

01:31:03   transparently. It's the one of the few features that actually works like the, Oh, this is,

01:31:07   they'll just automatically switch. It really does work when I do that. And I kind of like it. I'll

01:31:10   think about it though. If it's still, you're an auto switching unicorn. Yeah. I mean, well,

01:31:14   I don't think I am because half the time when my things aren't connecting, I think they're

01:31:17   connecting like to the upstairs iPad. Right. So I'm not really a unicorn. I think it is

01:31:21   messing me up a little bit. Like you said, like if I just did it manually, I wouldn't have these

01:31:24   problems, but when it does work, I appreciate it. And when it doesn't work, it's not that

01:31:28   bad to manually fix it. But anyway, my, my issue with these is they aren't shaped like the classic

01:31:34   AirPods shape has been. And I don't know if this new shape will feel comfortable. My ear will

01:31:38   fall out of my ear. Like, you know, I just don't know. Right. It's not shaped exactly the same as

01:31:42   the AirPods pro and it's, it doesn't have the soft tip. And so what would an AirPods pro feel like

01:31:48   without the soft tip, but it's not quite that shape either. If you yank the tips off the AirPods pro

01:31:51   and you look at it, that's not quite the same shape as the rumors too. And I think these have

01:31:55   the stubby tails that you have to squeeze instead of the tapping. I've been tapping my ears for

01:31:59   years now. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel about the squeezy stubs. Right. So these are a

01:32:05   mystery to me. Like I'm probably almost certainly going to buy them to find out, but it's almost

01:32:10   like I should order these and quickly also order one more pair of the old ones just in case I hate

01:32:14   them, but that's a waste of money. So I'm probably just going to order these. And I really, really

01:32:17   hope I like them because if I don't, then I'm going to be trolling eBay for like, you know, a,

01:32:22   a new inbox, old AirPods or whatever. So I'm a little bit nervous about these. Like I don't,

01:32:27   I don't be grudge apple like this, this, the shape of the current AirPods. How many years has that

01:32:32   been out? Like they're due for redesign. I can find with the only other thing is the case,

01:32:36   the wide case. I don't like the wide case. My case is slimmer and smaller and fits in

01:32:40   my pockets better. And the, the fat case just looks huge to me. I understand why it has to

01:32:45   be bigger because you know, it's a different shape or all that stuff. And I think it also

01:32:48   has a bigger battery than my case, but I'm going to miss the original AirPods design. It's one of

01:32:53   the it's lasted so long because it truly is one of Apple's great group. We've talked about this

01:32:57   many times. That's one of Apple's great products. Like it totally changed the way we all relate to

01:33:01   headphones with these turdy little things and their little magnetic case, poor Marco. They

01:33:06   didn't fit in his ears. That's a bummer, but maybe I'm going to be in that camp with these new ones,

01:33:11   but I feel like this it'll be a bummer. Yeah. Well, you know, if that's the case, I, you know,

01:33:16   I'll just have to buy the other ones like the used ones. I'll be like my cheese grater. I'll just have

01:33:20   a stock of old, old design AirPods in my attic and just go through them as the batteries get

01:33:25   exhausted. But yeah, it was, I really think these are great products and I hope the AirPods 3 can

01:33:29   live up to the legacy of their predecessor because again, I feel like the pros, I know they have pro

01:33:34   in the name, but they're really a different kind of product. It's like they have features that

01:33:37   these can't have because they seal in your ear canal. And if you don't like a little thing shoved

01:33:41   into your ear canal, but it's not the product for you. So I'm glad Apple continues to make the other

01:33:44   one instead of saying, we've just decided everybody needs to shove these things in their ear canals.

01:33:48   New cheap iPad nine with laminated display thinner and an A 13.

01:33:54   Cool. Good. I mean, it's kind of a shame that that hasn't had the laminated display for so long,

01:34:00   cause that's just kind of, you know, I don't know. It just seems like cheaping out or whatever,

01:34:05   but yeah, I think it's important for them to continue to have a cheap one. It's still kind

01:34:09   of disappointing that this is still going to be like the touch ID thing with the whole, you know,

01:34:13   big bezel and all that other stuff. Like when I guess maybe next year, the cheap iPad 10 will

01:34:19   finally get updated. It'll be the ugly duckling because we're going to see in a second, like

01:34:22   basically all the iPads will be on the new design except for this one. But at the same time, like

01:34:27   they, like they update this iPad pretty much on schedule every year now and they sell an absolute

01:34:34   ton of them and we never have to know about them. We never talk about them like, and they're good

01:34:40   products. Like an A 13 is a good iPad. Right? You can do all the things on it. I would, I would say

01:34:44   they're fine. They're fine products. They're not, they're not great, but it was like, if you want,

01:34:48   if you need an iPad and your needs aren't that high and price is very important. Yeah, just get

01:34:53   it. It's fine. And it'll run all the things like an A 13 you'll be able, it's not like, oh, I can't

01:34:57   play games in this cause it's only A 13. A 13 is fine. You'll be able to play the games. Right. And

01:35:01   the screen is fine. And like, you know, touch ID versus face ID is not a big deal for an iPad. Like

01:35:06   it, you know, with the exception of having to use the crappy old Apple pencil, but at least it does

01:35:10   support that. And, and, you know, again, if you want the pencil, maybe this isn't the product for

01:35:14   you, but yeah, I think it's a good product. And I think it's important for them to keep having this

01:35:18   cheap one. It'll just be nicer maybe next year when there's uniformity across the line.

01:35:22   And finally, iPad mini six with the iPad air design, a flat sides touch ID, power button,

01:35:29   magnetic Apple pencil, et cetera, a 14 or a 15, you know, as an, as a former Apple, uh,

01:35:36   iPad mini apologist, this makes me happy that they're still making them from time to time.

01:35:41   And I hope they continue to, but I don't know, it's not something that I personally care about

01:35:45   anymore. It's something that my kid cares very much about. It's nice. That's getting the update,

01:35:50   like the iPad air design is so weird. Like, remember they came out, it's like, well,

01:35:53   it's going to have touch ID, but it's in the new design. Oh, they put touch ID in the power button.

01:35:57   And it's like, yeah, I guess, I mean, it's working out and you get the new pencil with it. And,

01:36:01   you know, especially if this comes with an eight 15, which is again, is the new chip. That's going

01:36:06   to be in the iPhones. That would be amazing. It's kind of like getting the iPhone mini with the same

01:36:12   system on a chip as the, you know, the iPhone 12 pro right. Like it's a little one, but it's,

01:36:18   you know, you don't compromise on the computing power. You get the same may 15. That's,

01:36:21   that's just one of the rumors is probably going to be an a 14 since it's the mini, but yeah,

01:36:25   it's nice to see the mini getting updated. Uh, because I think they need to have, just like they

01:36:29   need to have the cheap one. They also kind of need to have a slightly smaller one because sometimes

01:36:33   that's what people want. So obviously it doesn't get updated that frequently. Uh, and it's long

01:36:38   overdue, but yeah, updated. Uh, and if you're going to update it, having basically the iPad

01:36:42   air design is a great compromise in terms of the family resemblance features, uh, and price.

01:36:48   Also, I would love for it to be USB-C which the iPad air is. And so, you know, if the iPad mini

01:36:54   adopts the iPad air, uh, design and every other way I would expect it would probably be USB-C as

01:36:59   well. And that would just be nice from like a family charging perspective, just to have more

01:37:04   things on USB-C. That's always a welcome change for us. Yeah. That leaves the poor iPad nine,

01:37:08   the cheap iPad as the last iPad with lightning on it. It's kind of, kind of sad. You just to be

01:37:15   clear new iPhone still lightning. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I would love to have a go USB-C,

01:37:22   but I don't, I don't see it happening anytime soon. If ever. No, that's not the type of thing

01:37:26   they're going to do in like an S generation of like, it's the same case. You know what I mean?

01:37:29   But yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. All right. And then, uh, AR goggles. Right. Okay, good. I didn't think

01:37:35   so either. People are going to have, we didn't talk about the invitation, but it was California

01:37:39   streaming, which is a play on California dreaming the song from the sixties. It's a reference,

01:37:44   John. Yeah. In some respects, uh, it is like the most generic title because it's like, Hey,

01:37:50   we're not inviting you in person. We're going to stream it just like we did all those pastimes.

01:37:53   Right. And so, great. You're not saying anything about the title, but then of course people always

01:37:57   want to read into it. So there was, you know, the little AR thing that, that shows the little Apple

01:38:02   logo. And if you go inside the Apple logo, it plays a little song or whatever, but Apple has

01:38:05   done little AR gimmicks for its events for a long time. Now doesn't necessarily mean that this is

01:38:11   going to be the air goggles one, but still people want to hang onto it. And they said, yeah, but this

01:38:14   AR gimmick for their event is cooler than the past ones, which I agree it is cooler, but I don't know,

01:38:21   like everything we just read out, that's a full event. There's no reason you need anything more

01:38:26   than that in an event. This is the iPhone event. The iPhone is Apple's biggest product. And there's

01:38:30   a bunch of other cool stuff in this as well. The Apple watch getting its first complete redesign

01:38:33   and a totally new form factor new AirPods that haven't been, you know, regular AirPods that

01:38:37   haven't been updated in forever. And some iPad stuff, you don't need anything else in this event.

01:38:42   And I don't think that Apple would want to distract from the new iPhone by talking about AR goggles,

01:38:50   like assuming the product was even ready. And to be clear, what we're talking about here is a big,

01:38:55   ugly thing that you strap to the front of your face. We're not talking about like,

01:38:58   oh, Superman style glasses that just magically show you like, no, we're talking about actual

01:39:02   goggles that like, like a gamer would wear, right? It's not, it's the type of product that really

01:39:08   needs dedicated explanation to explain to somebody why they would want to strap this

01:39:12   plastic thing to the front of their face. I don't know what Apple's pitch is going to be for that

01:39:18   product. But the rumor is that they have, you know, they have multiple things in flight. And one of

01:39:21   them is in fact, the thing that looks kind of like an Oculus Quest or whatever, like,

01:39:25   I don't know if you've ever seen one of these things, but like a big plastic thing that you

01:39:28   strapped to your face, it does not look like a pair of glasses, it does not even look like a

01:39:31   pair of ski goggles. It looks like an existing VR thing. But apparently it's, you know, AR work and

01:39:37   has cameras where you can see what's in front of you. Anyway, that's the rumor. And the other

01:39:40   rumor is, oh, an actual thing that looks like glasses that is farther off into the distance.

01:39:44   Either one of those things seems like it would need a new event or the verily is it would need

01:39:48   an event that does not include a bunch of iPad crap, AirPods and all the other stuff. So I think

01:39:54   this is not the event for AR goggles, or if it is going to be like a three hour event and the

01:40:00   messaging is going to be very muddled based on like Apple's recent history. See the Casey's topic

01:40:06   from a show or two ago, maybe our assumptions about how good Apple is at forming a coherent

01:40:13   message about its products. Maybe we should modify our assumption that Apple would never do something

01:40:17   so muddled, but I'm just going to still say that this is not, if the stuff that we listed as

01:40:23   possibly coming actually does come, this is not the event to try jamming the AR goggles. And yeah,

01:40:31   I think, I think of this by this point with less than a week to go, if the air goggles were coming

01:40:35   out, there would be much more rumors. Cause it's not like this is an unknown. We've seen,

01:40:39   you know, renders based on descriptions of the device. We've seen leaks of pieces of software

01:40:44   of the starboard thing that they use for internal testing and all sorts of like, you know, code

01:40:49   snippets and frameworks and libraries. And of course we all know about AR kit and all the stuff

01:40:52   that they've been doing over the years and reality kit. Like, so the AR stuff is an open secret,

01:40:57   but we just don't know if and when any product will appear. And it just doesn't seem like it's

01:41:01   imminent for this event. Yeah. And I think it would be, you know, first of all, again,

01:41:06   you're right that I think the rumor mill would be much stronger, you know, pinpointing it to this

01:41:11   time. Um, but also based on the, the, the current rumors, which you went over of like,

01:41:18   that they're not going to just come out, out of the gate with like glasses, the way we think of

01:41:24   glasses, that, that it would be like the, the, the most recent rumors were like, it's going to be

01:41:27   this multi-stage approach where first they're going to roll out basically a developer device.

01:41:32   That's going to be like the quest, you know, like this big virtual reality looking headset thing.

01:41:36   And then later down the road, maybe the next year or two years later, then maybe they,

01:41:40   they release, you know, smaller things that are more like glasses. If that's what they end up

01:41:45   doing, I wouldn't expect them to want to put it out at a very high profile event. I would expect

01:41:52   them to actually like slow play it as much as possible because what you don't want to happen

01:41:56   from a PR perspective is you don't want this massive, you know, big project that's been going

01:42:01   on for years that they've been slowly building to for years. You don't want to put it out there

01:42:05   in a really big fanfare way. If it's not ready for that yet, if it's, if it's going to be something

01:42:12   that's going to be like kind of not really for public consumption yet, or much more like

01:42:16   specialized and early and rough and, and like kind of big and clunky. And then later on, you're going

01:42:21   to have something better. You want to put that out there in the quietest way possible, basically,

01:42:27   like put it out to developers, like don't even hold a massive, you know, big fanfare event for it.

01:42:33   And to put it in the biggest, most massive, highest fanfare event every year, which is the iPhone

01:42:38   event would be literally the last place you want to put something like that. So that's again, as

01:42:43   John said, that's not to say they won't do it, but they probably won't do it. And they, they at least

01:42:48   shouldn't do it unless they're at a point where this is where this would like totally blow you

01:42:54   away and we're, and we're totally wrong about where they are in this. But that seems very unlikely.

01:42:58   Yeah. WWC seems like the natural place. If you're going to pitch it as developers who want you to

01:43:03   start figuring out how to make UIs and AR and this product, like that's the whole difficulty

01:43:07   of this product. Like they could pitch it as like, you know, like they do for a dev, dev kits for

01:43:11   game consoles where it's like the console is not done yet, but game developers who want you to start

01:43:15   working on games for it. So here is the, some monstrosity, some loud, you know, multi-fanned

01:43:22   giant monstrosity that has specs similar to what we're planning for the console, but we're not

01:43:27   entirely sure yet, but maybe this one has more RAM and is actually clocked a little bit lower,

01:43:32   but gets hotter because it's using an earlier version of the chip. And it's just for you to

01:43:36   get started on your game development. And then you have to develop against that based on what you

01:43:41   think the eventual product will be. Right. And you know, as time goes on and you develop in the years

01:43:46   leading up to the console, you adjust for, okay, we think the console is going to have less RAM

01:43:50   than the dev kit or more RAM, or we think the console is going to, you know, have a higher

01:43:54   clock speed or lower, have more graphics course. And you just sort of work around that. Right.

01:43:58   So that's one way they could go with the AR things. The problem is you have to know when

01:44:02   you're going to ship the quote unquote real consumer product with game consoles. They

01:44:05   pretty much know like we have a dev kit, it's going to be X number of years. Then we're going

01:44:08   to at least a real console and we've done it year after year or generation after generation. So it's

01:44:13   somewhat predictable, but nobody knows how to make a pair of attractive looking glasses that double as

01:44:19   a high resolution screen for AR. Like that doesn't exist. Like you see things like the magic leap

01:44:23   thing or whatever those don't look like it's a pair of glasses. Like they look like computer

01:44:28   things in your face or Google glass or whatever. No one has cracked this problem yet. So it's not

01:44:31   like, you know, when you're going to be done with this right years in advance, you know,

01:44:35   you don't know until you've actually done it and things that you strapped to your face that look

01:44:41   like Oculus type things or whatever those exist as products right now. And people buy them mostly

01:44:45   for playing games. So the question is, does Apple try to ship an actual product, a narrow interest

01:44:51   product, but an actual product to consumers that doesn't look like a pair of glasses, an actual

01:44:56   product that is used like the Oculus Quest. And then they could, they could pitch it as a gaming

01:45:00   thing and Apple's not great at gaming, but like if they don't pitch it a gaming, it's like,

01:45:03   so why would a consumer buy this ugly thing that they strap on their face? They're not going to wear

01:45:08   it in public. Why would they wear it in their house? Like what is the, what is the pitch to

01:45:12   consumers for this device? Cause that I feel like is easier than trying to give something to

01:45:17   developers and say, develop something against this. And someday we'll have something that's not this

01:45:25   that you can ship yourself. When will that day be? Well, a, we can't tell you cause we're Apple,

01:45:28   but b, we actually don't know because that's a really hard problem. Like, so maybe that's the

01:45:32   reason nothing has come to this, but I, I feel like the most likely scenario is that Apple is

01:45:37   going to ship an actual product that looks like a big ugly thing that you strapped to your face

01:45:43   and it will be narrow interest. It's not like they're going to say, this is the new iPhone

01:45:46   and everyone's going to own one. It'll be narrow interest in the watch. It'll be narrower interest

01:45:50   than any of their Macs because all those products are things that in theory, anyone can buy and find

01:45:54   useful. But this product, I don't think you can pitch that to the broader public and say,

01:46:00   everybody should buy this lunchbox that you put on your forehead. No. And so the question is,

01:46:04   if it's not for everybody, who is it for? The answer so far has been it's for gamers and here

01:46:09   are some games on it. And Apple is perhaps uniquely ill equipped to, to pitch any product that can

01:46:15   see the Apple Pippin and many other past attempts to make gaming. Right. Cause like, if you look at

01:46:21   like, you know, what is an Oculus quest? You know, the hardware, it's basically smartphone hardware

01:46:26   with some specialized displays in like, you know, a nice plastic enclosure with some batteries,

01:46:32   like Apple can do all of that. Like hardware wise, I have no doubt that Apple could make a

01:46:38   really good competitor to the Oculus quest. It would kick its butt in like, you know,

01:46:42   graphics performance and CPU performance and everything like it. Cause it's all it's,

01:46:45   it's phone hardware. This is what they specialize in. So that the hardware side would be fine,

01:46:50   but we know what Apple's relationship is to, to gaming. And while they do have a lot of game

01:46:59   playing going on on their platforms, uh, that's, that kind of happens to them. It happens despite

01:47:05   them. Not because of the casino casino games for children that could be in it. It'd be like,

01:47:10   you're in the casino for children. Right. Yeah. You can, you can see the gems flying out of your

01:47:15   pocket to do everything in the game. Like I can't imagine that they would be good at, at shipping

01:47:22   something that is basically their first second game console. We saw what happened with the Apple

01:47:27   TVs attempt at gaming. Like I just, I don't think they have it in them. And we saw this before. So

01:47:32   that being said, going back a little bit higher level here, I wouldn't actually assume that

01:47:40   anything will ever ship from the AR project. Like we're all kind of assuming like in the rumor mill

01:47:44   and the press that it's inevitable, like, Oh yeah, you know, when the goggles come out or, you know,

01:47:48   whenever this thing about it's, it's, it's stated as a when instead of an if, but the AR project,

01:47:54   I think has a significant chance of never actually shipping. I think the same thing about the car

01:48:00   project. I think the car has an even higher chance of never shipping. I think a much higher chance. I

01:48:04   would say I'd be shocked if the car project ever produces anything to, to, to the market.

01:48:09   Yeah. The reason they are a thing of the higher chances like AR kit exists,

01:48:13   reality kit exists. They've iterated on these frameworks, these, these necessary frameworks

01:48:17   for AR for years and years. And you know, they have us all holding their iPads in front of tables

01:48:21   and stuff. And it's like, see, isn't this stuff great? It's like, yeah, but we all know it's great

01:48:27   that they're working with technology, but like they're shipping it. Right. So it's, it would

01:48:30   seem really weird to work for literal years on AR VR tech framework, software applications, and

01:48:36   never ship hardware that does it justice. And the rumors are that they do have

01:48:42   a product ish looking Oculus quest kind of thing. You're right. They could still choose not to ship

01:48:47   it, but like, unlike the car where they've shipped nothing. Right. I mean, carplay doesn't count.

01:48:51   Like there's nothing related to the car that has shipped. Like it's not like, Hey, self-driving for

01:48:55   your iPhone and put it pointed out the window of your car. And it will say where it would steer if

01:48:59   it was controlling the car. No, that doesn't exist, but we have that for AR. It seems like the car

01:49:04   project only exists to just churn through a whole bunch of people on money. Yeah. Well, I mean,

01:49:09   obviously someone somewhere thinks that they're on some track to something, but I think we saw

01:49:15   recently suggestion that the there's a lot of things like, Oh, don't you realize AR on the

01:49:19   car project are combined because there's obvious synergies with like in terms of heads up displays

01:49:22   and stuff in the car. But as far as I know, the AR project and the car project are not

01:49:29   like working together on anything, which, you know, it would make sense if they were,

01:49:34   but I have not heard any confirmation of that. You know, like if you know, like when, when Steve

01:49:39   famously came back to the company and he cut all like the advanced research projects that were like

01:49:43   just burning money, if that happened today, AR and the car will be the first things to get cut.

01:49:49   Yep. Well, I mean, AR might be one of those would probably end up being the iMac where he comes back

01:49:54   to the company and realizes there's this industrial design group that everyone's ignoring. That's

01:49:58   actually doing some cool stuff. I'm just not sure which one of whether it would be, he would come

01:50:02   back to the company and say, Oh, actually I'm going to cut a bunch of stuff, but these people

01:50:05   working on the car are doing great work or these people working on AR are doing great work and

01:50:09   that's the future. But yeah, the idea of them both continuing to exist and not ship anything for

01:50:14   many years under a belt tightening regime. But that's, that's a different Apple. Like that was

01:50:18   an Apple that was, that was going bankrupt in 90 days and needed to cut to save money. Current Apple

01:50:22   does not need to cut programs to save money to say the least. I mean, how they, the car thing

01:50:26   has probably gone through like three lifetimes worth of company money, right? I can't even keep

01:50:31   track of what iteration they're on. The head of the project just got poached by Ford and

01:50:35   apparently he was like, everybody liked him and he was doing a good job. So that's not good. So

01:50:39   are we on the fifth iteration now? I don't know. Anyway, no car at this event. Bold prediction.

01:50:46   Wow. Yeah. Bold prediction. No car ever. And maybe no AR goggles ever.

01:50:52   Yeah. I'm, I'm pretty close to your opinion on that. Marco. I see. I feel like they,

01:50:56   they have to eventually ship what they've got for the AR thing. It's just a question of

01:51:00   how to position it. And you know, the reason we keep talking about like, oh,

01:51:04   why are you worried about Apple and gaming? The phones are great with games again, despite Apple,

01:51:08   you know, if not because of it, the problem is that like Apple TV, iPad, iPhone,

01:51:14   the way you make a game for those platforms is not that different. The way you make a game for AR VR

01:51:21   is totally different and mostly doesn't make sense on the other platforms. That's right. You might,

01:51:27   you could say, oh, well, I don't touch my TV. Does that not make sense? There's whole classes of games

01:51:32   where you play them on the phone and yeah, you're using your fingers to touch a screen,

01:51:35   but actually it would be better with a controller, but AR VR, like the rules are entirely different.

01:51:41   Like the controls, you know, you're, you're looking around with your head in a virtual space

01:51:46   and you can't map that onto a controller very easily, unless you really narrow the genre. Like

01:51:51   you could pay maybe a half like Alex with, with a regular controller, but lots of other VR

01:51:56   experiences, like even things like Beat Saber or whatever, if you narrow that to not be a VR type

01:52:02   game, it would still work, but it would be like a really boring version of a guitar hero versus what

01:52:08   it really is when you actually play Beat Saber is it feels very different than Guitar Hero because

01:52:12   things are actually coming at you and you're moving your arms. I mean, I'm pretty sure I

01:52:15   could play Beat Saber with the Sega activator. Well, the fishing rod, right? No, it's the

01:52:20   octagon you put on the floor and you punch through it. Yeah. But like the thing, the game becomes

01:52:25   boring at that point, like, because in terms of a rhythm game, it doesn't have the complexity of

01:52:30   like even Guitar Hero with different frets and strings or whatever. The complexity comes from

01:52:34   the fact that you're there in 3d space and you're moving your actual arms to hit the thingies. That

01:52:39   is what makes that game. Take that away. And it's the world's most boring rhythm game. So,

01:52:43   you know, developing for AR would have to be, you know, the same thing. So the quest or whatever you

01:52:49   have to cultivate the development of games that take advantage of your hardware. It is not a

01:52:56   success to say, look, it's cut the rope in VR. Nope, nobody cares. It's just, you know, you

01:53:02   cannot keep selling threes to people. Like it's just, you have to, you have to actually make games.

01:53:06   It's like saying, oh, Nintendo 64 and here's Super Mario Brothers on it in 2d. No, you need Mario 64.

01:53:12   You need something that demonstrates why do I care about this new hardware? And even the just in the

01:53:16   realm of gaming that is definitely needed. And I'm hard pressed to think of an application other

01:53:21   than gaming for Apple to pitch a product like the Quest, unless you pitch it to businesses or

01:53:27   something. But that's, Apple doesn't care about that. Right. And they wouldn't be good at it. You

01:53:30   know, like that's like, that's a Microsoft thing, you know, let them do their HoloLens. And I don't

01:53:34   think, yeah, I don't think HoloLens has been too successful in that realm either. Maybe like a

01:53:37   creative fields, but just, it just seems like gaming is the only possible application of that

01:53:42   because you're not going to wear that out of the house. Right. It's not like, oh, I'll be able to

01:53:45   see directions when I walk through the city with a lunchbox in my face. Nope, not going to happen.

01:53:49   Right. So, well, and even gaming, I think what we've seen from VR so far is that there, it's kind

01:53:57   of like the Wii. You get some fun novelty time with it, but I don't think we're seeing a lot of

01:54:03   lasting, like must have games yet. And it's not like VR is super new. It's like, we've had decent

01:54:10   widespread VR hardware now for a number of years and we still are not getting a ton of like must

01:54:17   have VR games. And it's possible maybe the appeal of it is just not that, not as wide of an appeals

01:54:23   we originally thought. Don't you think we haven't gotten over the threshold of minimum viability

01:54:28   though? Because like, I mean, no, I think, I think the Quest and the Quest 2 are that because that,

01:54:34   that those are the first ones that didn't require a cable running out of your, your head to some

01:54:40   PC somewhere or a PlayStation or something like that is what, like the Quest series made VR easy

01:54:48   and palatable to consumers. I don't, I think you're underestimating the motion sickness factor,

01:54:53   right? The fact that if there's even the smallest amount of lag, which there still is, especially

01:54:58   on the Quest, which is not powerful hardware, that a whole section of the population, it's a

01:55:02   torture device. Like it's not, nothing is ever going to be fun. Well, yeah, but you're over indexing

01:55:06   on it though. No, but like if you, if you, if you get motion sick at all after like 30 minutes,

01:55:12   that's not a product you're going to want to buy or spend time with. Like nobody wants to feel that

01:55:17   ever, right? Let alone in something that you spent money on, right? It's not a fun experience. You

01:55:22   have to actually solve that problem. And it just flat out hasn't been solved because we just don't

01:55:26   have hardware that's fast enough and responsive enough not to induce motion sickness. Granted,

01:55:30   not in all people, but you're further narrowing the group. Like I think that it has been,

01:55:35   it's reached minimum viability for gamers, for a subset of gamers, but it has not reached minimum

01:55:40   viability for everyone who might enjoy an AR VR experience. It feels kind of like touchscreens,

01:55:44   where yeah, touchscreens existed for years and touchscreens didn't cause people to vomit,

01:55:48   right? Like literally didn't make them sick to their stomach, but they just weren't pleasing

01:55:53   to use. And the threshold, we didn't know it, but the threshold was essentially the iPhone.

01:55:56   And before the iPhone, if you said, are touchscreens so bad that they make people sick to

01:56:01   their stomach? No. Are they, you know, do you not like using touch screen ATMs? It's fine. Like,

01:56:06   whatever. But we didn't until we saw the, okay, now we pass the threshold. Like, I think it,

01:56:10   I think it'll only be obvious when we get there. And I feel like VR, if you have to make excuses

01:56:15   or caveats or some people just plain can't do it because they get sick to their stomach,

01:56:19   which I think is an incredibly debilitating, again, you know, an unpleasing touch screen

01:56:25   is much less offensive for someone to use than use this thing. And you're going to feel like you

01:56:30   want to puke in 30 minutes, right? That, that is, that is a barrier that has to be overcome. And we

01:56:36   more or less know what's needed to overcome it. It's just that it's too expensive and hasn't really

01:56:40   been solved for the general case. So I think the quest to solve the problem of like, Oh,

01:56:44   I don't want to set up all this crap in my house and it's too annoying, but at the cost of low

01:56:49   resolution and lag, which causes motion sickness in a fairly large subset of the population. And

01:56:53   then also you have a lunchbox on your face. So I'm, I'm looking forward to the day when the only

01:57:00   excuses for not using VR are lunchbox on your face and too expensive, right? But there are many more

01:57:07   excuses that it's lunchbox on your face, too expensive wires. If it doesn't have lag and makes

01:57:12   me want to puke. Anyway, going back to AR for a moment, I don't think Apple has to ship something

01:57:22   to pay off all the investment they've, they've put into it. I don't think all the investment they put

01:57:27   into it necessarily suggest they will ever ship something. All of the effort they put into it and,

01:57:34   and the hardware and the software and everything, I think they have found ways to make that improve

01:57:41   their other products. So like in the case of, of, you know, AR you have sensors, you know, things

01:57:47   like obviously cameras need to be very good. You have things like LIDAR being involved potentially,

01:57:52   you know, distance measuring and stuff like that. Well, they put all that in the iPhone and the

01:57:56   iPad and, and that has improved those products and those products have AR features. I think the,

01:58:02   the adoption of those features justifies their inclusion in those products, but it does not

01:58:10   justify an entire separate product line focused entirely on AR. Because what we've seen from those

01:58:15   features so far, and yeah, it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem in the sense that yes, I know

01:58:19   the AR features would be more compelling on glasses than they are on a phone or an iPad.

01:58:23   But what we've seen from these features so far, as they've been on the iPhone and iPad for quite

01:58:28   some time now, is that they enable some pretty cool use cases or some additional side features

01:58:35   like assisting the camera in autofocus or something like that. But they're not like taking over the

01:58:40   world. We're not seeing like massive must have things that, wow, this thing I can do in AR on my

01:58:45   phone is amazing. If only I could have the glasses strapped to my face to do this full time in the

01:58:49   world. Like we're not seeing that kind of thing come out of it. So if the AR project, you know,

01:58:55   in all of its different forms, only ever results in things that make iPhones and iPads better,

01:59:02   that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like I wouldn't consider that a failure at all. I

01:59:08   consider that just, well, we did all the, all the R and D, we developed all this stuff. This is where

01:59:13   it was most useful in our other products, not as a standalone thing. I mean, that makes it hurt less,

01:59:18   but like, I think everyone agrees that if you could get something that looked like a pair of

01:59:23   regular reading glasses, they could put a name over everyone's head. So you didn't forget their

01:59:26   names. That product sells a billion copies, right? So I know that's distant future, but like,

01:59:32   you know, it's an infinite timeline argument here. Like, yeah, the lunchbox may never ship because

01:59:36   they can just never find a use case for it other than gaming, but all this AR tech that, yes, it is

01:59:40   helping in their existing products or whatever. And it makes it hurt less that you're not shipping

01:59:44   the AR thing. And I think actually I've said on the past shows, it's super important that they're

01:59:48   actually shipping AR kit and all this VR stuff and refining it and making it better because that is

01:59:53   progress. That's going to help when you do finally get the glass, but eventually technology sometime,

01:59:58   probably in our lifetime technology comes where you can get a pair of glasses that has a screen

02:00:01   in them and just the name over people's heads feature alone, plus walking directions in a city

02:00:07   that thing sells as much as the Apple watch easy, right? Because then you've cracked it. We just

02:00:11   don't know when that time is. And that time definitely doesn't seem like September 14th.

02:00:15   Yeah. I think your, your point Marco, about all of this, all kind of off shooting of tech of the

02:00:22   technology is, is valid and important, like getting, you know, LIDAR, which is ostensibly

02:00:29   or presumably from an AR thing, but having it actually show up in iPads and then iPhones.

02:00:35   But I still think that having the driving force B if, and we're all three of us making huge

02:00:41   assumptions here, but having the driving force being an AR headset, I still think that's

02:00:46   important. It's not that they're looking at existing technology or even inventing new

02:00:50   technology and saying, Oh, you know what? We could try that on. We could try that on an AR thing.

02:00:54   It really feels to me knowing Apple the way I do that, that this is trickled down from AR to their

02:01:02   current stuff. And it really feels like they are still trying to make AR stick and they're still

02:01:06   throwing things against the wall and they're not going to sleep on the stuff that they've come up

02:01:10   with. They're not going to sleep on LIDAR and they're not going to sleep on any of these other

02:01:13   technologies, but nevertheless, they're still pushing toward that ultimate goal. You snarked

02:01:18   earlier and I'm, I semi agree with you that they're never going to release an AR headset. And I don't,

02:01:22   I don't think I would say never. And I don't think I would say infinite timeline, but I think it's

02:01:26   going to be years. And I think it's going to be very unimpressive at first. I do think the car

02:01:30   will never ever ship and I will, I will be stupefied if anything that even vaguely resembles a car does.

02:01:36   But I do think there will be an AR headset or glasses or what have you at some point. And I

02:01:41   think it's easy for all three of us to kind of poo poo it and say, Oh, it's not that interesting

02:01:45   or not that exciting. Cause it's one of those things, inventing the future. Like I remember

02:01:48   thinking, why would you want an all screen phone? That seems dumb, but you know, fast forward to

02:01:54   after the iPhone and it's clearly the way of the future. So I, maybe I'm just not as, as good at

02:02:00   envisioning the future as others, but I could totally see where, even though I agree with a

02:02:05   lot of the things you said that, Oh, this isn't that impressive. It isn't that exciting. What,

02:02:08   I mean, who cares if you have an arrow on the street instead, or an arrow in front of your face,

02:02:12   I should say, instead of like watching your phone as you're, as you're driving or walking or what

02:02:17   have you. But I can imagine experiencing it would, would lead me to a very different conclusion.

02:02:22   Yeah. The Mercedes with the heads up display that has little AR arrows that shipping now,

02:02:27   like it makes it me think that like the air team should actually talk to the car team because

02:02:32   they can never ship any goggles. Like Apple has better tech than Mercedes for doing AR,

02:02:39   I would assume based on all their experience with ARKit and everything, and certainly better

02:02:42   Silicon experience. And if they actually do make a car of any kind, it better have a heads up

02:02:48   display that does ARKit crap all over the city. Like that's it better have that cause the Apple's

02:02:52   got the technology, same company guys like work together. And if they never do ship a car, then

02:02:56   maybe they should just license that out to Mercedes or whatever. That will also never happen. Thanks

02:03:02   to our sponsors this week, Earnest things and ExpressVPN. And thanks to our members who support

02:03:07   us directly. You can join atp.fm/join. We'll talk to you next week. Now the show is over.

02:03:18   They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't

02:03:27   do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental. It was accidental.

02:03:35   And you can find the show notes at atp.fm. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

02:03:47   @caseyliss. So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T-Marco-Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-E-R-A-Q-S-A.

02:04:03   It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Tech podcast so long.

02:04:16   So we never got the chance to do Ask ATP during the main show, and we thought we'd pull a relevant

02:04:21   one into the after show. So Doug MacArthur writes, "Do you think the iPhone will ever drop the number

02:04:26   from its naming convention? What would cause Apple to do it? And what would be your ideal

02:04:31   new naming scheme? Maybe the crack marketing team at Apple will take notes." I think it's gonna have

02:04:37   to happen. We're not gonna have an iPhone 37, but I don't know. I can't think of a better scheme. I

02:04:43   mean, we could just have iPhone 2021, which is fine. It works for the laptops, but I don't know,

02:04:50   it's not great. What would cause Apple to do it? Maybe iPhone 13, maybe. Actually, what are the

02:04:57   unlucky numbers in Chinese or in China? Do we already passed it? Okay, nevermind.

02:05:03   Apple doesn't care about superstitions, so they're not afraid of 13.

02:05:07   Well, yes, but they care a lot about China.

02:05:10   Didn't they launch the iPhone? Was the iPhone 4 in China?

02:05:12   I mean, certainly China wouldn't have been as important of a market back then as it is now.

02:05:16   That's also true, yeah.

02:05:17   Yeah. So here's the thing with the number. I think we talked about this before with video cards,

02:05:20   right? Everyone thinks like, "Oh, well, it's not gonna be like iPhone 765. That's silly. It's not

02:05:26   a good product name." Video cards have the same problem because they name their cards with numbers

02:05:30   and they keep making the numbers higher for better cards. And eventually, the numbers get too big and

02:05:34   they do what they call in the M&O world, they do a stat crunch and they say, "Okay, well, the numbers

02:05:38   is too big, so let's just make all the numbers lower." And they basically start over. I can't

02:05:43   remember. I think AMD did that. AMD/ATI did that. They were up to like the 9,000s and then they

02:05:50   started over at like the 1,000s. Now they're up to like 6,900 again. You can just go back down and

02:05:55   you say like, "Oh, they're gonna have another iPhone 4?" Well, you just put a number in front of it.

02:06:00   You call the N4 or the iPhone A4 or the 4A. Like there's all sorts of ways where it could technically

02:06:05   not be exactly the same product name, but the point is by the time you get numbers big enough,

02:06:09   no one remembers the iPhone 4 or it's ancient history. So you can literally just do iPhone 4

02:06:13   again. As for dropping the number, I know they did that with the iPad, but I feel like with the

02:06:17   iPhone, don't mess up a good thing. They finally got off of the stupid S thing. The number just

02:06:21   goes up every year. It's really easy. People say, "What kind of iPhone do you have?" I have a 12. I

02:06:26   have 11. 11 Pro. 11 is a little bit precious, but either way, it's fine. Every year, like last year,

02:06:31   was the 12 year. There was 12 Pros, there was 12 Minis, and there was plain old 12s. Don't screw

02:06:36   that up. Just keep going. You can go easily into the 20s or even the 30s and you're fine. I feel

02:06:40   like you only get into a problem when you get to 99 because you don't want to go 100 101. It's too

02:06:45   much of a mouthful. By that point, start over again with iPhone 1 or 2 or I don't know. There's

02:06:53   so many options you have because it's so many years in the future. I really hope they don't

02:06:58   drop it because if they do, it's going to be so hard to talk about. We have the same problem like,

02:07:03   "I have an iPad Pro. Which iPad Pro? Oh, the flat sided one. No, no, the original iPad Pro. No,

02:07:07   the 10.5 inch iPad Pro." It's exhausting and annoying. People do upgrade their phones on a

02:07:14   more regular schedule than they update their iPhones. I think the numbering is a feature.

02:07:18   I think Apple will keep it. I think Apple should keep it. I think I agree. They had a chance to

02:07:26   reset it when the 10 came out. It's obviously written iPhone X. They could have pronounced it

02:07:34   X like everyone else does. They could have had, "Okay, we have the iPhone X this year and the

02:07:38   next year we have the iPhone X2 and then iPhone X3 and so on." They could have done that. They didn't.

02:07:44   I think the time of the numbers being clumsy is going to start I think before 99.

02:07:53   I don't think we really want, "Oh, I got the iPhone 41." That just seems a little bit clumsy.

02:07:59   It seems weird but it's distinguishable from iPhone 40. It's one more than the 40.

02:08:04   Yeah. They could always go with years if they really wanted to. It's a little corporate

02:08:10   thanks to Microsoft. I don't know if they would actually end up doing that. There are other

02:08:14   options. Or they could just drop the number completely as Doug asks. I don't think they

02:08:20   would drop it completely because people know how old their phones are based on the numbers.

02:08:26   Most people don't even realize that the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X are the same age because

02:08:33   they don't realize that was a wonderful bit of marketing they did there.

02:08:38   But people who have iPhone 8's think they're really old. Whereas people with iPhone X's

02:08:43   don't quite yet. Anyway, I think they have a little while longer before they have to change anything.

02:08:50   I think they can go through most of the teens but maybe past 17, 18, I think they're going to want

02:08:58   to switch by then. Well, 20 will be cool. The iPhone 20 will be like a celebration. Same thing

02:09:02   with 25. It'll be an exciting number like the Super Bowl when it's a nice round number. Everyone

02:09:07   gets excited about it. I think we've got many more years where the numbers will be just fine.

02:09:11   It doesn't mean they'll keep them but they should keep them I think because it's a system people

02:09:15   know and understand. In some respects because they have a new iPhone every year, a yearly thing would

02:09:19   make a lot of sense. In that case, they should sync it up with the last two digits. So this year

02:09:23   would be iPhone 21 and they've suddenly jumped a bunch of digits. The problem with the yearly

02:09:28   approach though is that they tend to keep around the old models for a few years to sell them for

02:09:34   cheaper. So I think that might discourage, I mean maybe they want to discourage it. That's why they

02:09:38   don't do 2021. They just call it 21. Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, maybe. But then they'd be

02:09:44   skipping from 13 to 21 and that's burning a lot of numbers they want. I think they'll just do a

02:09:48   stat crunch. Like you said, you can put a number, a letter or a number in front of it or just go

02:09:52   back because by the time they're up into the mid-20s and they go back to 4, no one's gonna be,

02:09:57   "The iPhone 4? I already own that iPhone 4. What year, grandpa?" Like it's so long ago,

02:10:01   no one cares, right? Yeah. The real question as people putting in the chat is did they change the

02:10:06   little comma separated number like iPhone 20 comma 1, 21 comma 1 or whatever, right? That's the

02:10:12   developer nerd question. Same thing we have with like 10.15 versus 10.16 versus 11 and all that

02:10:18   crap. There is actually a kind of annoying problem of like internally what representation do we have

02:10:25   for device names and numbers. It's worse with version numbers because people do version

02:10:28   comparisons. Although I think Apple has good macros for most of that now. But yeah, that's

02:10:33   not a concern for consumers. This is mostly a consumer question, but it will be interesting

02:10:37   if they ever do a stat crunch if the numbers internally just keep going up.

02:10:44   All right, so I'm doing a survey for the Accidental Tech Podcast. I was wondering where do you live?

02:10:51   I live in Ocean Beach, New York. Would you say that's on Long Island? That is not on Long Island,

02:10:59   it's on Fire Island. All right, and for the record, where'd you grow up? On Long Island.

02:11:05   Okay, thank you. Where do you live? Ocean Bay Park. Would you say that you live on Long Island?

02:11:12   I do live on Long Island, yeah. Part of Long Island. Thank you very much.

02:11:16   So is Fire Island part of Long Island? No. No. Municipality, yes, but it's not connected to.

02:11:26   It's an island of another island. So would you say we are on Long Island right now?

02:11:31   No, we're on Fire Island. No, it's completely different. Where are you guys from? I'm from

02:11:37   Bayport, New York, or Bayport, Long Island. East side of Long Island. Thank you very much.

02:11:43   All right, so what I'm trying to find out is, first of all,

02:11:50   where would you say we are right now? The albatross in Ocean Beach. Would you say we are on

02:11:57   Long Island? No. No, we're in Fire Island. In Fire Island. No, I wouldn't call this Long Island.

02:12:06   And where are you from? From Long Island. Long Island, Seyville. And would you say we are on

02:12:14   Long Island right now? No, I guess I wouldn't say Long Island. No, I would say Fire Island.

02:12:21   And then if someone who didn't know the area was like, "Well, where is Fire Island?" I'd be like,

02:12:25   "It's off of Long Island." Like, I think that's how I would word it. So it's not on Long Island?

02:12:31   No, it's not on Long Island. Would you consider it part of Long Island? No, I like to think that

02:12:38   I'm better than everybody on Long Island, so no. I try to remove myself as much as I can.

02:12:43   Thank you very much.

02:12:45   Are we gonna be on the air? I thought it was a debate about podcasts. I was like, "That's bad."

02:12:50   We're gonna be on the podcast. Word. What's your podcast?

02:12:53   [BLANK_AUDIO]