ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We should do some of that, I have some things to say about that.

00:00:02 ◼   ► So write it in a document somewhere, please.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I don't have the authority to do that.

00:00:07 ◼   ► You do. You can do it. To add a top-level topic?

00:00:10 ◼   ► I hope you-- I think you're just f**king around, but I hope you're just f**king around, because of course he is.

00:00:15 ◼   ► He is, 'cause he adds stuff all the time.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I mean, I wouldn't feel bad editing the document when John's not looking, but like, at the same time John is editing it, I can't--

00:00:23 ◼   ► Right. Oh, no no no. In that sense, I'm right there with you. I completely agree.

00:00:28 ◼   ► A lot has happened since we last spoke. I feel like it's been a month since I've spoken to you fine gentlemen.

00:00:33 ◼   ► And we're gonna go through things in probably random and weird order, but here we go.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Let's start out with "I will not be seeing you guys in a few months." That makes me sad.

00:00:41 ◼   ► It's for the best, but it makes me sad. WWDC. Entirely online this year.

00:00:46 ◼   ► You won't be seeing anybody. Well, you'll be seeing them from a distance, I suppose. From a safe distance.

00:00:51 ◼   ► You'll be seeing videos.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Yeah. But I won't be-- I won't be onstage with you guys. I know that John looks forward to that every single year.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Officially, WWDC has gone online only for this year. No statements about future years, as you'd expect.

00:01:06 ◼   ► This is not a surprise. In fact, I think having it in person would have been a huge surprise, given the state of everything right now.

00:01:13 ◼   ► In the middle of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic and everything, there's no reason anybody should be holding giant in-person conferences in the next few months.

00:01:22 ◼   ► This is the world we're in right now. It's rough for a lot of reasons, but we're getting through it, and Apple did what they had to do here.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And compared to our speculation last week that they would probably cancel it, we actually don't have any additional information than what we had last time, really?

00:01:38 ◼   ► Like, we were wondering last time, like, what are they going to do about things like labs where you have access to the engineers?

00:01:43 ◼   ► And the press release that includes the cancellation changes and everything, it does vaguely mention something like--

00:01:51 ◼   ► they're trying to find new ways to give people access to the engineers that work on this stuff, so it does sound like they're working on something like that,

00:01:59 ◼   ► but we don't know what that is yet, presumably because they just have been scrambling to get all this together, and it's just not ready to be announced yet.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Among other details that are lacking, we also don't even know the dates that they're going to do the online conference, or what the online conference will even really be.

00:02:16 ◼   ► All they said was June, but June is 30 days long, so we'll find out.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Ultimately, though, since nobody has to make travel plans to be there, with the exception of possibly if they have a media-only keynote in their Steve Jobs theater,

00:02:31 ◼   ► which even that, I think, is a big question mark, whether that would be appropriate to do, but that only takes a short notice to plan.

00:02:39 ◼   ► It takes a couple of weeks, maybe, to set up, so they can hold off on that, but in the meantime, all they say is June,

00:02:46 ◼   ► and I think that gives them the flexibility to not necessarily have to rush that beta one as hard to hit this early June target travel time,

00:02:57 ◼   ► and booking this big conference, and everything like that.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Now, it can be mid-June or late June, and they can do it whenever the software is ready for that beta one.

00:03:05 ◼   ► I've always heard, as you have, I'm sure, that the rush to get that beta one is a really big push,

00:03:10 ◼   ► and it's massively overworking everybody to get that beta one there in time for day one of WWDC.

00:03:18 ◼   ► So now that this is free-floating within the whole month of June, maybe it'll help that.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Maybe it'll help software quality a bit.

00:03:26 ◼   ► We can be optimistic, but either way, we don't know most of the details yet, but they did the right thing.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Flip-flop to that, presumably, like everyone else, their productivity is going way down,

00:03:35 ◼   ► so maybe they will have to pull even more things from the OS to even hit the vague June date.

00:03:41 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:03:42 ◼   ► And you characterize this as like, they announced the cancellation.

00:03:46 ◼   ► They didn't announce the cancellation.

00:03:48 ◼   ► They announced the conference.

00:03:49 ◼   ► They announced WWDC Online 2020.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Nothing was canceled.

00:03:53 ◼   ► What could possibly have been canceled because nothing was announced?

00:03:55 ◼   ► They had an announcement.

00:03:56 ◼   ► This is another example of Apple's typical PR.

00:03:59 ◼   ► It'll be interesting to see how their PR strategy holds up or evolves in the crucible that is the coronavirus situation.

00:04:08 ◼   ► So they did a press release and a website and all that stuff.

00:04:11 ◼   ► "Hey, announcing the WWDC. It's online."

00:04:14 ◼   ► Their press release managed to go for a page and a half without mentioning corona or COVID-19 a single time.

00:04:22 ◼   ► An amazing exercise.

00:04:25 ◼   ► I mean, it's weird because we all know they said health reasons or whatever, some vague phrase or whatever,

00:04:32 ◼   ► but they still didn't want to put the word in there.

00:04:35 ◼   ► It's like, does that imbue it with some power if you name it?

00:04:39 ◼   ► Or is it the opposite by not naming it like Voldemort?

00:04:44 ◼   ► It's fine, typically understated thing.

00:04:46 ◼   ► It makes sense that we are announcing an online thing.

00:04:48 ◼   ► And you're right, Margo, they had vague notions of how they're going to do things about it, but they don't know yet.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I mean, how long could they possibly have had?

00:04:56 ◼   ► We know when this thing came to the awareness of the public.

00:05:00 ◼   ► It's only a couple of months, and so it's very difficult to formulate a plan, to change what your plan was before,

00:05:07 ◼   ► and to formulate an entirely new plan even in a couple of months is quite a scramble to figure out what to do.

00:05:14 ◼   ► But I'm sure it'll be fine.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I'm not actually expecting them to call a bunch of press there, but June is a ways away.

00:05:20 ◼   ► So who knows what will happen?

00:05:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing it, and we'll get to this in a little while.

00:05:25 ◼   ► This morning they released a bunch of new products, and there had been this rumored March or spring event for this year,

00:05:32 ◼   ► and that didn't happen.

00:05:33 ◼   ► They're kind of releasing products now without having press events, or without having big press events.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And they're probably shipping people review units, or maybe, I don't know if they're going to have small briefings with certain journalists.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:05:46 ◼   ► The releases that came out today, which we'll get to in a little while, they were not big flashy releases.

00:05:51 ◼   ► There was not a lot to necessarily demo, with the exception of maybe that mouse stuff.

00:05:55 ◼   ► But again, we'll get to that.

00:05:57 ◼   ► But this wouldn't have made an event all by itself, like what we saw today.

00:06:03 ◼   ► So maybe they still haven't figured out how to do something like W3C, which usually it's all software,

00:06:11 ◼   ► and usually that's a lot of things that need to be demoed.

00:06:14 ◼   ► It's a lot.

00:06:15 ◼   ► It's like a big presentation telling the story of why certain features are there,

00:06:20 ◼   ► certain needs they tried to solve.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And you can do all that with a pre-recorded video with no audience.

00:06:27 ◼   ► You can do that.

00:06:28 ◼   ► But will they do that?

00:06:29 ◼   ► It's not really something they've done before, but it doesn't mean they can't.

00:06:32 ◼   ► So yeah, we'll see.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Also, I do love, before we move on, I do love the writing of this press release.

00:06:40 ◼   ► As Jon said, very like, P-R-E's.

00:06:42 ◼   ► My favorite thing is that it's actually fairly hard to tell for a while as you read it.

00:06:48 ◼   ► Like the in-person part has been canceled and that it is online only.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Because they're using such optimistic P-R speak the whole time that it almost sounds like

00:06:56 ◼   ► they're announcing the conference is going to take place normally.

00:06:58 ◼   ► You really have to kind of read between the lines for a little while before you realize,

00:07:03 ◼   ► "Oh, this is online only."

00:07:04 ◼   ► But you kind of have to dig for it.

00:07:06 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't say anything negative.

00:07:07 ◼   ► You don't say what's not there.

00:07:08 ◼   ► You say W3C is back with a new online, you know, what's good about it?

00:07:13 ◼   ► It's back.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It's here.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's online.

00:07:14 ◼   ► It's new.

00:07:15 ◼   ► It's cool.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And you never mentioned what it is not.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Look at all these USB-C ports.

00:07:19 ◼   ► I also thought it was interesting that this line from the press release, Apple also

00:07:26 ◼   ► announced it will commit $1 million to local San Jose organizations to offset associated

00:07:30 ◼   ► revenue loss as a result of WWDC 2020's new online format.

00:07:35 ◼   ► I mean, obviously, we're never going to really know what that means.

00:07:37 ◼   ► Does that mean they're writing checks to businesses?

00:07:39 ◼   ► Like, what do you guys reckon?

00:07:40 ◼   ► I do think it's a good idea.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Like, I think that that's the kind and appropriate thing to do, although a million dollars seems

00:07:45 ◼   ► a little bit cheap, but that's OK.

00:07:48 ◼   ► But who is going to be receiving this money, do you reckon?

00:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know how those mechanics work.

00:07:54 ◼   ► That's a huge question mark, because like, a million dollars, if it's going to like every

00:07:58 ◼   ► business, if it's going to offset like the amount of commerce that would have been generated

00:08:03 ◼   ► by 5,000 nerds living there for a week, that probably isn't enough money.

00:08:07 ◼   ► But it depends.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Is it including things like the hotels, which is probably everyone's largest expense to

00:08:12 ◼   ► be there?

00:08:13 ◼   ► I think they'll be OK without the money.

00:08:15 ◼   ► You know, the rates they've been charging there consistently for the last few years,

00:08:19 ◼   ► I think they'll be all right if they don't have this one somewhere with that.

00:08:23 ◼   ► But you know, the way it's worded and with the amount that it is, it's probably, I would

00:08:28 ◼   ► assume the intention is going to things like bars and restaurants and event venues and

00:08:33 ◼   ► stuff like that, that would be much more strongly affected by this.

00:08:37 ◼   ► But how do they determine who gets what?

00:08:39 ◼   ► Like, where do they draw these lines of, OK, we're going to have like, what, a radius around

00:08:45 ◼   ► the conference center and like every restaurant within this?

00:08:47 ◼   ► Like that's, it's just a weird, it's a great intention, but I'm really curious how the

00:08:52 ◼   ► heck the details work on that.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know anything about this and knowing Apple, they could do something weird.

00:08:57 ◼   ► But when I read it, my assumption was that they're giving it to the city, giving to some

00:09:01 ◼   ► form of government, and then the government will decide how to spend it.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And honestly, at this point, like even back when they announced it, which was so long

00:09:07 ◼   ► ago, like several days, it seems so long ago, so much has changed that it's like any money,

00:09:12 ◼   ► if they did just give it to the government, any of that money, like the best place to

00:09:18 ◼   ► use that money is changing all the time.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Like right now, it's like, oh, it should go to workers who are laid off like, oh, so Marriott

00:09:25 ◼   ► will be fine.

00:09:26 ◼   ► But what about all of the staff that runs it and they're getting laid off because nobody

00:09:29 ◼   ► is booking hotels, right?

00:09:31 ◼   ► So they need support so they can continue to live, right?

00:09:35 ◼   ► Getting the line from getting it to them, they seem the right thing to do.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Five days from now, the right thing to do may be fund the manufacturer of new ventilators.

00:09:44 ◼   ► We don't know what the best place to do that money is, but in the triage, it starts off

00:09:49 ◼   ► as like, oh, let's offset lost business.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Oh, let's give money to people who have no job.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Oh, let's try to keep people alive.

00:09:54 ◼   ► I don't know what comes after that last one, but I don't think we want to find out.

00:09:58 ◼   ► But anyway, a million dollars is nothing.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Basically, trying to do a token gesture in the direction of we're taking economic activity

00:10:07 ◼   ► away.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Again, it's a three days ago gesture or four days ago gesture.

00:10:11 ◼   ► Like we're less worried about the economic impact of Apple not holding a conference.

00:10:15 ◼   ► We're more worried about the economic impact of people no longer moving about society.

00:10:20 ◼   ► It's a bigger concern.

00:10:22 ◼   ► So again, five days from now, we'll see what it is.

00:10:24 ◼   ► Well, either way, I am very, very sad.

00:10:27 ◼   ► You know, WWDC and seeing all of my friends and colleagues there, it's a highlight of

00:10:33 ◼   ► my year and I'm really sad to miss out on it.

00:10:36 ◼   ► But I absolutely unequivocally think this is the right call.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And who knows?

00:10:41 ◼   ► It may be better and probably will be better in at least a handful of ways, maybe even

00:10:45 ◼   ► in a lot of ways.

00:10:46 ◼   ► So I am very excited to see how this happens.

00:10:50 ◼   ► What comes of it?

00:10:51 ◼   ► Are there labs?

00:10:52 ◼   ► How does that work?

00:10:53 ◼   ► How is the keynote?

00:10:54 ◼   ► Is it really, is it just a prerecorded thing?

00:10:57 ◼   ► Is it something that's done live with like a handful of people in the audience?

00:10:59 ◼   ► I don't have the faintest idea and none of us do.

00:11:02 ◼   ► But I do think it'll be a very fascinating and interesting thing to see.

00:11:06 ◼   ► And certainly, as I think we've talked about on this show, and certainly other shows have

00:11:09 ◼   ► also talked about, you know, WWDC is a very, like actually attending the conference itself

00:11:14 ◼   ► is an extremely exclusive club.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And just going to San Jose is a very exclusive club because of the absolute ridiculous cost

00:11:23 ◼   ► of it.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And even assuming you can travel there, you know, like Marko said earlier, I mean, to

00:11:28 ◼   ► put things in perspective, it is usually a couple of thousand dollars to have a reasonably

00:11:34 ◼   ► decent hotel room reasonably close to the conference.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Now, certainly you can go much further away, especially now that the scooters are everywhere

00:11:42 ◼   ► or were everywhere anyway.

00:11:43 ◼   ► But it is a lot of money.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And the conference itself is, you know, $1,700, $1,600, something like that.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And it's very expensive.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And so I am happy not to be spending all that money this year.

00:11:57 ◼   ► But I'm sad to be missing out on so much of it because so much of it is so great and so

00:12:00 ◼   ► much fun too.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And as much as I joke about how, you know, Jon doesn't really love doing the live shows,

00:12:06 ◼   ► I really enjoy, and I think Jon does too, even though I'll never admit it, I think we

00:12:10 ◼   ► all really enjoy doing the live shows and getting to meet listeners.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And I'm bummed that we're not gonna be able to do that this year.

00:12:15 ◼   ► So hopefully next year, maybe, possibly, we'll see.

00:12:19 ◼   ► But next year is like 15 years from now, or at least that's the way it feels.

00:12:23 ◼   ► So we'll see what happens.

00:12:24 ◼   ► But all in all, I do think this is a good call, and I am curious and excited to see

00:12:28 ◼   ► how it ends up.

00:12:29 ◼   ► - Don't forget the plane flight.

00:12:31 ◼   ► I hate that part too.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - Ah, yeah, that's right.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I forgot how much you love being in the plane too, staring out the window for six hours

00:12:37 ◼   ► straight.

00:12:38 ◼   ► - You know what I'm really gonna miss though?

00:12:39 ◼   ► The box lunches.

00:12:40 ◼   ► - Oh, I should have known.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - You didn't even have one last year, did you?

00:12:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I did.

00:12:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, he ate one with us.

00:12:45 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:12:46 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:48 ◼   ► - I'm definitely gonna miss the beer in Salzberg's place too though.

00:12:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, Original Gravity is very good.

00:12:53 ◼   ► - I hope they don't go out of business.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Honestly, I don't know what their finances are.

00:12:57 ◼   ► They probably won't, 'cause they are the best place in that entire area.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I hope they don't.

00:13:01 ◼   ► But I think one of the challenges of the COVID-19 economic fallout is gonna be, I think we're

00:13:08 ◼   ► gonna lose a lot of restaurants.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Because restaurants are mostly having to shut down, or entirely having to shut down.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And restaurants are not high-profit businesses.

00:13:20 ◼   ► They don't have a lot of slack in their finances usually.

00:13:22 ◼   ► So I'm very concerned about just the entire restaurant economy.

00:13:28 ◼   ► How many people work in it, how many people are directly related to working in it or supplying

00:13:34 ◼   ► it.

00:13:35 ◼   ► And same thing with travel and tourism.

00:13:38 ◼   ► There's all sorts of industry that are gonna be hit very hard by this.

00:13:41 ◼   ► One of the lasting economic problems that we're gonna have from this is we're probably

00:13:46 ◼   ► gonna lose a lot of restaurants that we like.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And in addition to all the people who are gonna be directly affected by losing their

00:13:52 ◼   ► jobs, which is itself a huge problem, even if you think this won't affect me, I bet it

00:13:57 ◼   ► will affect something in your town.

00:13:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:14:01 ◼   ► It's that kind of fallout that is freaking me out.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And I'm trying not to think too much about it because there's nothing I can do to stop

00:14:06 ◼   ► it.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So you just gotta move on.

00:14:08 ◼   ► So speaking of moving on, let's do that.

00:14:10 ◼   ► You know, I gotta tell you gentlemen, I am becoming ever older and ever more curmudgeonly.

00:14:16 ◼   ► And so I really do not care for the thing on Twitter where you make some sort of cutesy

00:14:21 ◼   ► name particularly around the holidays.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I find it to be very gross.

00:14:26 ◼   ► But I have to say that if you're gonna choose a cutesy name, you gotta go all in.

00:14:29 ◼   ► And so we have the following tweet from @incoherenttoots.

00:14:33 ◼   ► You can rebind those Xcode commands, John, in Xcode settings, not in system preferences.

00:14:38 ◼   ► Can you tell me about the context here if you don't mind?

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is me talking about control six for the function pop-up thingy and I couldn't

00:14:45 ◼   ► find the menu command.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Or two points here.

00:14:47 ◼   ► One, there actually is a menu command.

00:14:48 ◼   ► It's buried in the view menu somewhere.

00:14:49 ◼   ► It's like a submenu.

00:14:50 ◼   ► So I could have found it if I had searches.

00:14:51 ◼   ► It's just not called what I thought it would call.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I forget what it's called.

00:14:54 ◼   ► It's like show document items or something.

00:14:56 ◼   ► It is a name that I never would have guessed.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And two, Xcode, like BB Edit and like lots of fancy apps, has in within itself a way

00:15:04 ◼   ► for you to change key bindings for stuff.

00:15:06 ◼   ► So you don't need to go to system preferences and mess with it that way.

00:15:09 ◼   ► You can actually go to the Xcode preferences and there you can set all the key bindings.

00:15:13 ◼   ► And I did and now it's control F and I feel better.

00:15:17 ◼   ► - It's view editor show document items as you suspected a moment ago.

00:15:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, the one complaint I have is that it does give you a warning, like a little yellow

00:15:25 ◼   ► triangle or something if you bind it because control F was bound to something else.

00:15:29 ◼   ► But it lets you bind it.

00:15:30 ◼   ► And then if you don't notice that little warning, now it's bound to two things and I have no

00:15:33 ◼   ► idea how it resolves that.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And when it bound, like I would expect it to say, like BB Edit does, hey, you can't use

00:15:38 ◼   ► control F. It's used for Watchamoozie.

00:15:41 ◼   ► And then even better would say it's used for Watchamoozie.

00:15:43 ◼   ► Do you want to steal it from Watchamoozie?

00:15:45 ◼   ► And then I would say yes and I'm done.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Instead, it let me bind it, showed me a little icon that I had to click on and then track

00:15:50 ◼   ► down the other one and erase it.

00:15:52 ◼   ► So still a little bit of work could be done.

00:15:54 ◼   ► But it's a pretty good interface if you want to customize things in Xcode, I encourage

00:15:58 ◼   ► that.

00:15:59 ◼   ► - Well, I approve Incoherent Tutes.

00:16:00 ◼   ► It's a great name.

00:16:02 ◼   ► We had a couple of very, very cranky people perturbed at the way in which I had ordered

00:16:08 ◼   ► the different modifiers for shortcut keys.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And I don't remember what I did, but it was very, very wrong.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And it was made clear by the cranky people that I was very wrong.

00:16:17 ◼   ► And it turns out, a couple of people pointed out to us that actually Apple has a print

00:16:22 ◼   ► style guide that explains exactly how this is supposed to work.

00:16:25 ◼   ► And it reads, "Keyboard shortcuts using combination keystrokes.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And combination keystrokes use hyphens to signify that the user should hold down the

00:16:31 ◼   ► first key or keys while pressing the last key.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Don't use a hyphen if each key should be pressed and released separately.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Be sure to explain this convention in first use."

00:16:39 ◼   ► So for example, Control-Shift-N versus Escape-N.

00:16:45 ◼   ► "Capitalize but don't italicize or use code font for letters used as key names."

00:16:50 ◼   ► So for example, capital C Command, hyphen C, or capital C Command, hyphen X.

00:16:56 ◼   ► If there's more than one modifier key, use this order, Function-Control-Option-Shift-Command.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Again, Function-Control-Option-Shift-Command.

00:17:04 ◼   ► When a keyboard shortcut includes a mouse or trackpad action, use the lowercase for

00:17:09 ◼   ► the mouse or trackpad action.

00:17:11 ◼   ► So for example, capital O option, hyphen lowercase C, click.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Or option swipe, which capital O, lowercase S, with three fingers.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And this is from the Apple style guide, which we will link in the show notes.

00:17:25 ◼   ► We forgot about the effing key, Marco's favorite key, as a modifier, which I think is mostly

00:17:30 ◼   ► bogus because honestly, you're not using the effing key in keyboard modifiers unless you're

00:17:36 ◼   ► trying to get at something in one of the effing keys.

00:17:38 ◼   ► But yeah, so last show we talked about adjective order and the way these modifiers should go

00:17:43 ◼   ► when you're talking about them, Command-Shift-3, Command-Shift-4.

00:17:47 ◼   ► And then we also talked about the order that the symbols appear in the menus, which was

00:17:50 ◼   ► a different order.

00:17:51 ◼   ► There wasn't a reverse of the order that you talk about them.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Here is a third order.

00:17:54 ◼   ► And people saying this is like, oh, you're wrong about the spoken order.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Apple says this.

00:17:58 ◼   ► No, this is for print.

00:18:00 ◼   ► So we weren't writing it.

00:18:01 ◼   ► If you're writing stuff and you want to conform to the Apple style guide, yes, use the Apple

00:18:05 ◼   ► style guide.

00:18:06 ◼   ► But if you're speaking, it's Command-Shift-3.

00:18:08 ◼   ► And if you do not say Command-Shift-3, if you do it in this order, you will sound weird

00:18:12 ◼   ► and you're basically saying brown big bear.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So it's great that they have this guide.

00:18:19 ◼   ► I'm not sure why the order is different in their print style guide.

00:18:21 ◼   ► If you look through Apple's print style guide, they do a lot of things that seem strange

00:18:25 ◼   ► in there.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I'm sure the print style guide has evolved over time.

00:18:28 ◼   ► But trust me when I tell you, Command-Shift-3.

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00:20:28 ◼   ► our show.

00:20:33 ◼   ► Apple dropped some new stuff on us.

00:20:35 ◼   ► We should probably take this from least interesting to most interesting.

00:20:39 ◼   ► So let's start with the Mac Mini.

00:20:41 ◼   ► It's new.

00:20:42 ◼   ► It's got better stuff.

00:20:43 ◼   ► That's good.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I like that.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Is it new?

00:20:46 ◼   ► I thought they just changed the storage options.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I haven't even had time to look at all the details.

00:20:48 ◼   ► I should say it's refreshed a little bit.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Well, I wouldn't even call it that.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Fine.

00:20:53 ◼   ► All right.

00:20:54 ◼   ► The Mac Mini had things happen.

00:20:55 ◼   ► They've given you more capacity and stuff for the same price as before.

00:20:59 ◼   ► So that's nice.

00:21:01 ◼   ► That's better than no change at all.

00:21:03 ◼   ► This Mac Mini was introduced at the exact same time, the exact same event as the last

00:21:10 ◼   ► generation MacBook Air and although not the latest MacBook Air, but this MacBook Air and

00:21:14 ◼   ► the current or any now outgoing iPad Pro.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Yeah, so this Mac Mini is a year and a half old now and it got no change, but I maintain

00:21:23 ◼   ► that we are still just kind of lucky to have this Mac Mini existing in the world at all.

00:21:29 ◼   ► It wasn't especially like price competitive when it came out.

00:21:34 ◼   ► It still isn't, but that's not really what it's for.

00:21:38 ◼   ► It is continuing to quietly and unglamorously serve the market it is for and the market it

00:21:45 ◼   ► is for doesn't really need aggressive frequent updates and they sure as hell don't get them.

00:21:51 ◼   ► So I guess it's fine.

00:21:53 ◼   ► I always wonder when they do, and we'll talk about this more on the MacBook Air, when they

00:21:57 ◼   ► do things like storage adjustments, "Oh, now for the same amount of money, you get more

00:22:02 ◼   ► storage."

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's always like makes me unreasonably angry.

00:22:05 ◼   ► It's like, so do you care about the economics of storage or do you not?

00:22:10 ◼   ► Because your prices seem so disconnected from reality.

00:22:13 ◼   ► If you want to do that, it's like, "Oh, well, there's no connection."

00:22:15 ◼   ► It's just that's how they do things and that's how they price them and just deal with it.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Like all their profit margin is in the flash.

00:22:21 ◼   ► But then when they adjust it, it's like, "What do you think you're doing?"

00:22:24 ◼   ► Like it's obviously, "Shouldn't you be happy they adjusted?

00:22:27 ◼   ► You thought it was too expensive and now you get twice as much for the same price."

00:22:29 ◼   ► It's like, "Yeah, but it's still so far off of competitive market prices that it doesn't

00:22:38 ◼   ► seem to make any sense.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Why adjust it at all?

00:22:43 ◼   ► Do you think it makes it more attractive or do you think it just makes it less embarrassing?"

00:22:47 ◼   ► I don't think it makes it more attractive and I don't think it makes it less embarrassing.

00:22:51 ◼   ► I mean, it's less embarrassing than if you didn't change it, but only barely.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Only barely is it less.

00:22:57 ◼   ► It's like, "Look, if you want to get one of these with any reasonable amount of storage,

00:23:00 ◼   ► you're going to be paying a whole bunch more memory.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Do we really care that you even double the capacity because you're overcharging so much

00:23:07 ◼   ► for the storage?"

00:23:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:23:09 ◼   ► This is my new thing that I'm annoyed about.

00:23:11 ◼   ► It used to be known about RAM when Apple would ship Macs with just way too little RAM and

00:23:14 ◼   ► we'd have to buy third-party RAM because Apple's RAM prices were crazy and we'd be like, "Why

00:23:17 ◼   ► are you offering this machine with so little RAM?

00:23:19 ◼   ► It's criminal."

00:23:20 ◼   ► They don't do that anymore, mostly because the RAM's soldered to the motherboard and

00:23:23 ◼   ► you really can't upgrade it on most of the machines, so they give reasonable amounts

00:23:26 ◼   ► of RAM when we celebrate that.

00:23:28 ◼   ► But Flash is soldered to the motherboard or in an M.2 card or whatever.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Flash is almost as integral as RAM and still the pricing is not great.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Setting aside, like Margot said, the whole rest of the mini and how expensive it is for

00:23:42 ◼   ► the power you're getting, yada, yada.

00:23:44 ◼   ► We probably shouldn't complain.

00:23:45 ◼   ► We should applaud them for making any adjustments at all, but as I said, it makes me unreasonably

00:23:49 ◼   ► upset when they make these adjustments because it breaks my mental model and just makes me

00:23:53 ◼   ► angry all over again about the very uncompetitive prices they offer for internal Flash storage

00:23:59 ◼   ► on Macs.

00:24:00 ◼   ► No argument here.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Moving on from not very interesting to slightly interesting, we have a new MacBook Air, which

00:24:05 ◼   ► is exciting.

00:24:06 ◼   ► Slightly interesting?

00:24:07 ◼   ► This is the most interesting announcement.

00:24:08 ◼   ► No.

00:24:09 ◼   ► No, you're going to use anger on the iPad, people.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I know.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I'm just trying to anger the iPad, people.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Well, obviously, I like Macs better than iPads, but I don't like laptops.

00:24:17 ◼   ► But I've always been a fan of the MacBook Air and the "return" of the MacBook Air with

00:24:23 ◼   ► the butterfly keyboard, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:25 ◼   ► The computer that's sitting five feet away from me over here never felt like a proper

00:24:30 ◼   ► sequel to what was one of the best Macs ever made, which is its predecessor, the non-RATNA

00:24:34 ◼   ► one, back when it was not embarrassingly non-RATNA.

00:24:37 ◼   ► That was a great machine, a great balance of size and features.

00:24:40 ◼   ► It was the one where the Mac didn't recommend that everybody get.

00:24:42 ◼   ► It was just, you know, had a great balance of portability and power and utility, and

00:24:46 ◼   ► it was sturdy, and boy, it was great.

00:24:49 ◼   ► And then this in-betweeny one, which is nice form factor-wise, but not that great, and

00:24:55 ◼   ► had the bad keyboard, and it was just kind of like, "It's good, but..."

00:25:00 ◼   ► And then, of course, they replaced the 16-inch with the one with the good keyboard, and now

00:25:03 ◼   ► we're just staring at every other laptop saying, "Okay, well, when is it your turn?"

00:25:06 ◼   ► And I'm super pleasantly surprised that the MacBook Air didn't have to wait at the end

00:25:12 ◼   ► of the line, right?

00:25:13 ◼   ► It came, it got, it's the first one to get updated after the fancy one, and now I feel

00:25:18 ◼   ► like, especially with the speed bump and everything they put, and the price drop, you know, there's

00:25:22 ◼   ► a model under $1,000, which isn't that great of a model, again, because of the meager rest

00:25:26 ◼   ► of the space, but anyway, there's a model under $1,000, it has a good keyboard, it still

00:25:30 ◼   ► has a great balance of size and weight and functionality.

00:25:33 ◼   ► I think this is a really good laptop now, whereas the old one was like, "It's okay,

00:25:38 ◼   ► and if you don't want a big MacBook Pro, you should consider it."

00:25:42 ◼   ► Now I feel comfortable recommending this computer, based on the price, the features, and the

00:25:48 ◼   ► good keyboard.

00:25:49 ◼   ► So I'm excited about this.

00:25:50 ◼   ► This is the announcement that I am the most happy about, because the other announcements

00:25:53 ◼   ► that we'll talk about, you know, obviously the iPad Pros are really cool, and there's

00:25:56 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff we'll talk about there, but they've always been hitting it out of the

00:25:59 ◼   ► park with the iPads, right?

00:26:00 ◼   ► Not so much in the laptop line, so I feel like it's worth celebrating this MacBook Air

00:26:04 ◼   ► much more so than the iPad Pros, even though they're probably, you know, more impressive

00:26:08 ◼   ► technically.

00:26:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, like in many ways, the iPad, or the MacBook Air was more badly needed.

00:26:14 ◼   ► The iPad Pro has been fine.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Yes, it is a year and a half old going into today, but it's been great.

00:26:20 ◼   ► You know, I use mine every day for various stuff around the house, and it's totally fine,

00:26:24 ◼   ► and in fact, which we'll get to, I actually am not that motivated by the new one.

00:26:28 ◼   ► That's how fine the old one is.

00:26:31 ◼   ► It's great.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Whereas the Air, it had the stupid butterfly keyboard.

00:26:35 ◼   ► The Air, I think, it was most surprising to me that the Air got updated with seemingly

00:26:40 ◼   ► almost no other major case changes.

00:26:43 ◼   ► So it actually did, I looked at the numbers, it did get slightly thicker and heavier, but

00:26:49 ◼   ► to give you some idea, the thickest part went from 15.6 to 16.1 millimeters, so it gained

00:26:57 ◼   ► half a millimeter, or 3.2%, at the thickest part of thickness, because you know, it's

00:27:03 ◼   ► wedge-shaped, and then the weight also gained 3.2%, coincidentally, so it got 40 grams heavier,

00:27:13 ◼   ► and it gained half a millimeter of thickness at the thickest part.

00:27:17 ◼   ► The battery is the same size as the 2019 model.

00:27:21 ◼   ► The kind of the most, like, galling thing about this is we've always been assuming that

00:27:26 ◼   ► the butterfly keyboard was necessary to achieve certain size goals for the 12-inch, and then

00:27:32 ◼   ► later the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and I think what this shows to kind of like my great joy,

00:27:39 ◼   ► and also frustration, is that it was totally unnecessary.

00:27:43 ◼   ► That it is clearly 100% possible to design this size computer.

00:27:50 ◼   ► Like, it got 3% thicker and 3% heavier, and it completely and vastly fixed its greatest

00:27:59 ◼   ► problem.

00:28:00 ◼   ► - I mean, you don't have to do that much complicated math.

00:28:02 ◼   ► The old keyboard was whatever it was, .56 millimeters of travel, and the new one was

00:28:06 ◼   ► one millimeter, so you gotta make it about a half a millimeter thicker at minimum, and

00:28:10 ◼   ► they basically made it a little bit, you know, they made it, what, almost a millimeter thicker,

00:28:13 ◼   ► but either way, like, you know, you factor in--

00:28:15 ◼   ► - No, they made it exactly half a millimeter thicker at the thickest part, but the thinnest

00:28:18 ◼   ► part's the same.

00:28:20 ◼   ► And no one's gonna notice that, and no one's gonna care, but they are, everyone's going

00:28:23 ◼   ► to appreciate the better keyboard, and I've always liked this one because it's got the

00:28:26 ◼   ► real function keys, but it still has touch ID, not a big fan of the touch bar.

00:28:31 ◼   ► The other thing that I enjoy about the MacBook Air is it's a computer, it's a size and weight

00:28:37 ◼   ► where the fact that it only has two ports is somewhat more excusable, right?

00:28:42 ◼   ► I get angry about the ports on the big, fancy, super expensive ones, but if you're gonna

00:28:46 ◼   ► have a limited number of ports on a MacBook Air-sized machine, I can say, "Okay, fine."

00:28:52 ◼   ► Like honestly, you should have four on it, but the fact that you have two, you're only

00:28:55 ◼   ► half off, right?

00:28:56 ◼   ► Whenever you, you missed it by 100%, which is better than, you know, Casey's computer,

00:29:02 ◼   ► which missed it by like two or 300%.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So I feel like, you know, this is, I'm happy that there is a cheap, good laptop from Apple

00:29:12 ◼   ► that I can feel comfortable recommending to people, because that's always been the problem

00:29:15 ◼   ► with the laptops.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Like the longest time, people would say, "Hey, I'm thinking of getting a Mac.

00:29:18 ◼   ► Which one should I get?

00:29:19 ◼   ► I'm into," you know, they don't have to say they're into laptops.

00:29:21 ◼   ► You know when they say that they mean the laptop because nobody buys laptops.

00:29:24 ◼   ► And I've always had to be like, "Oh, the current laptops aren't that good."

00:29:28 ◼   ► But I was like, "You should probably wait," but like especially years into the butterfly,

00:29:32 ◼   ► I was like, "I can't tell people to wait.

00:29:33 ◼   ► I have no idea if and when this is gonna resolve."

00:29:35 ◼   ► And I'd have to give this sort of sad answer, and they'd be like, "Oh, well, what were the

00:29:40 ◼   ► ones you think?

00:29:41 ◼   ► Which one?"

00:29:42 ◼   ► It was just a depressing conversation.

00:29:43 ◼   ► And even with the 16-inch, if they wanted a super duper fancy one, I'm like, "Oh, the

00:29:47 ◼   ► 16-inch is good."

00:29:48 ◼   ► And they'd be like, "Oh, I don't want something that big.

00:29:50 ◼   ► That's gigantic and super expensive.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I want just a regular Mac laptop."

00:29:53 ◼   ► And then I'd have to have the sad conversation again.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Now I can have a much nicer conversation and say, "Look, there's $100,000, which gets people

00:30:02 ◼   ► in the door.

00:30:03 ◼   ► They won't actually buy that one.

00:30:04 ◼   ► If they follow my advice, they'll get one with more."

00:30:05 ◼   ► But like it's a good, cheap laptop.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And I think the reason they did this, you know, did this one second, we worried about,

00:30:12 ◼   ► "Oh, they're going to leave this one at the end because I think the butterfly is fine."

00:30:15 ◼   ► As we pointed out many times, every time we talk about this, this is surely their best-selling,

00:30:19 ◼   ► you know, this slot in their lineup is always their best-selling computer because it's cheap

00:30:23 ◼   ► and Macs are expensive and people like laptops.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Therefore, people who want a Mac, they go in there and say, "How can I get a Mac laptop

00:30:30 ◼   ► without breaking the bank?"

00:30:31 ◼   ► The answer is always whatever machine is in this slot.

00:30:33 ◼   ► So I'm really happy to see them dropping below 1,000.

00:30:35 ◼   ► I'm really happy to see this computer getting better, and I will be able to have a happy

00:30:39 ◼   ► conversation if someone says, "Hey, I want a new Mac."

00:30:41 ◼   ► I'll just be like, "Macbook Air, done."

00:30:43 ◼   ► And then we can talk about how to spec it, but you will be happy with that computer.

00:30:47 ◼   ► That's what we've been missing for all these years in the interim.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Ever since the old Air got kind of embarrassingly out of date with the retina situation and then

00:30:56 ◼   ► when the new one came out that was okay but had this terrible keyboard.

00:31:00 ◼   ► It's funny, actually, my mother just needed a new computer.

00:31:03 ◼   ► What she's been using is first a 2010 MacBook Air that I bought for her in 2010 when it

00:31:12 ◼   ► was new.

00:31:14 ◼   ► And then at some point a few years back something about it died and her friend gave her the

00:31:19 ◼   ► MD-101.

00:31:21 ◼   ► And so she's been using the 101, that old non-retina 13-inch MacBook Pro, that last

00:31:26 ◼   ► one that was for sale forever.

00:31:28 ◼   ► She's been using that for a few years.

00:31:30 ◼   ► That has finally had some fatal problem.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And she just asked me what to get and I'm like, "Look, it's kind of a bad time."

00:31:38 ◼   ► What you should have is a new Air that has these things, but that doesn't exist right

00:31:45 ◼   ► now and I don't know if it's coming next week or next month or never.

00:31:50 ◼   ► We didn't know until today, until this new Air came out with this keyboard, we didn't

00:31:55 ◼   ► know if the Air would ever get this keyboard because we didn't know.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Will it fit?

00:32:00 ◼   ► Will they be able to do it?

00:32:01 ◼   ► Or will they give the good keyboard to the Pro line and then leave the Air with this

00:32:08 ◼   ► butterfly keyboard as a compromise for its size and thinness?

00:32:11 ◼   ► We didn't know that this would even be possible.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And yet now this is resolved.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Now here we are, we have a new Air.

00:32:19 ◼   ► We are still not back to where we were with the Air, in terms of how great it is.

00:32:25 ◼   ► We are closer.

00:32:27 ◼   ► We just took a big step closer by getting rid of that terrible keyboard.

00:32:30 ◼   ► But keep in mind, the previous 2010 to 2015 MacBook Air, that had all the ports.

00:32:40 ◼   ► There were basically no compromises to it except a little bit of performance compromise

00:32:44 ◼   ► compared to the higher end machines.

00:32:46 ◼   ► But it was still a very, very strong option for almost everybody, almost all the time,

00:32:53 ◼   ► including a lot of Pros who chose it just because it was smaller and the performance

00:32:57 ◼   ► was good enough for a lot of development work and stuff like that.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Maybe not if you're doing high end video stuff, but I know a lot of developers who

00:33:04 ◼   ► used 13 inch Airs for a long time, or even the 11 inch.

00:33:08 ◼   ► And the 11 inch was even greater.

00:33:09 ◼   ► It was like all those exact same ports and power and versatility and there were almost

00:33:17 ◼   ► no compromises for the 11 down from the 13 and it was super tiny.

00:33:22 ◼   ► And then we entered this era where you got less for more.

00:33:27 ◼   ► The 12 inch MacBook came out replacing the 11 inch MacBook Air and it was a way worse

00:33:33 ◼   ► computer than the 11 inch MacBook Air.

00:33:35 ◼   ► It had way fewer ports, it had way worse performance, it had worse battery life even.

00:33:39 ◼   ► It was not, I know everyone loved it, Casey, but it was in many ways a step down.

00:33:47 ◼   ► The only real step up was that it was a little bit smaller and lighter and it was retina.

00:33:50 ◼   ► But if they would have just done a retina 12 inch or retina 11 inch Air instead, I think

00:33:54 ◼   ► people would have liked it better.

00:33:57 ◼   ► And then we moved into the 13 inch Air replacement eventually through the escape jungle.

00:34:02 ◼   ► But eventually we got to the 13 inch Air replacement and it wasn't a direct replacement for the

00:34:09 ◼   ► old 13 inch Air.

00:34:10 ◼   ► It had this controversial and very breakage prone, expensive repair prone keyboard.

00:34:15 ◼   ► It only has these two ports.

00:34:17 ◼   ► It had not great performance because they actually reduced the thermal class of processor

00:34:22 ◼   ► that went into it compared to the old Airs.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And so it actually didn't have the same performance category as the old ones.

00:34:31 ◼   ► But it still cost the same, or it was still in the same cost ballpark.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And it had this retina screen, that was nice.

00:34:38 ◼   ► But even the screen was a pretty big compromise.

00:34:40 ◼   ► It was a lot dimmer than the other screens.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Actually I forgot to look if that's changed.

00:34:44 ◼   ► But anyway, it wasn't the be all, must recommend this computer, this is a great favorite of

00:34:48 ◼   ► everything.

00:34:49 ◼   ► There were all these asterisks on it.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And all these ways in which it was newer than what it replaced, but it wasn't necessarily

00:34:56 ◼   ► better.

00:34:58 ◼   ► The new one still has a lot of those aspects.

00:35:01 ◼   ► But this gets it a lot closer to where it should have been all this time.

00:35:05 ◼   ► It gets it way closer because it totally solves the keyboard problem.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Like the Magic Keyboard is, I wouldn't call it an amazing keyboard.

00:35:14 ◼   ► It isn't an amazing keyboard.

00:35:15 ◼   ► It's a totally fine keyboard.

00:35:16 ◼   ► The way laptop keyboards work forever.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Like it is a laptop keyboard that works.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And that's the way they have been throughout most of laptop history.

00:35:24 ◼   ► We haven't had to think about them.

00:35:26 ◼   ► They work.

00:35:27 ◼   ► They aren't as nice as using a big desktop keyboard.

00:35:29 ◼   ► But we don't care because they're convenient and they're on laptops.

00:35:31 ◼   ► Okay, so it's one of those again.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Great.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Just like the old one basically.

00:35:36 ◼   ► So that's wonderful.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It still only has those two ports, which is still not enough.

00:35:42 ◼   ► And I maintain that they can fit more because they could at least put a USB-C next to the

00:35:46 ◼   ► headphone jack.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Because the way the ports were arranged physically, you could see they could at least do that.

00:35:51 ◼   ► But otherwise, with a few nitpicks that I have with it, things like the port situation,

00:35:59 ◼   ► overall it's close enough now to being that generalist, all-purpose computer that for

00:36:07 ◼   ► most buyers, I would recommend this now.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And that's something I haven't been able to say about any Mac since probably 2014,

00:36:16 ◼   ► 2013.

00:36:18 ◼   ► Like, how long has it been since there's been one Mac in the lineup where we can say

00:36:24 ◼   ► most people should buy this one without qualification?

00:36:27 ◼   ► I think that was the 2010 MacBook Air.

00:36:31 ◼   ► And that lasted until Retina became a thing that we decided everyone should have.

00:36:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like the things that are deficits in this are now cultural deficits.

00:36:42 ◼   ► The lack of ports is now not just like, oh, an oversight in this model.

00:36:45 ◼   ► It is a, at least within the Apple world, a pervasive cultural thing.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Like it's an expectation.

00:36:50 ◼   ► Like, yes, we assume that they won't have enough ports.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Every single model won't have enough ports.

00:36:54 ◼   ► Again, if you're going to have a small number of ports, a tiny model is easier to excuse

00:36:58 ◼   ► than the big honking one.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Because what's the point of having a big honking one if you're still going to star

00:37:02 ◼   ► for ports?

00:37:03 ◼   ► So it's more excusable, but in general, it's just like a cultural thing.

00:37:06 ◼   ► And if you think about the 13 that we all loved, try to forget that it had an SD card

00:37:11 ◼   ► slot because that's just a thing we don't even talk about anymore because it's a culture.

00:37:14 ◼   ► I didn't forget.

00:37:15 ◼   ► It's a cultural thing.

00:37:16 ◼   ► It's like, oh, well, Apple's laptops just don't come with that anymore.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Why?

00:37:20 ◼   ► It's just they don't.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Like, they think it's not worth the space and expense for the number of people who use

00:37:26 ◼   ► it.

00:37:27 ◼   ► That's their calculation.

00:37:28 ◼   ► And, you know, right or wrong, it is a cultural thing in the Apple world.

00:37:32 ◼   ► So that's why I feel like this is, you know, this is a right up the middle, like within

00:37:37 ◼   ► the constraints of the current culture, which we may or may not rail against, this fixes

00:37:42 ◼   ► all the problems with this computer and it is a great price and it's the one we recommend

00:37:45 ◼   ► to everybody.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But if you're still angry about the cultural constraints, especially say someone's upgrading

00:37:49 ◼   ► from the old 13 inch and they say, oh, you should get this new one.

00:37:52 ◼   ► It's a good computer.

00:37:53 ◼   ► And they get it and they bring it home.

00:37:54 ◼   ► They're like, where do I plug in my thumb drive and where did the SD card slot?

00:37:57 ◼   ► You still have to have that conversation.

00:37:58 ◼   ► But at least that conversation is like, look, none of them come with it anymore.

00:38:02 ◼   ► You have no choices.

00:38:04 ◼   ► It's not just a small, you didn't get a bad model.

00:38:06 ◼   ► You didn't make a bad choice.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And then the recommendation discussions, that's what we're saying is if you are going to get

00:38:11 ◼   ► a Mac, which setting aside, like, oh, let's look at PCs or let's look at iPads or whatever.

00:38:16 ◼   ► If you're going to get a Mac, this is an easy recommend.

00:38:19 ◼   ► You know, like we all give it a thumbs up or whatever, because what other choices do

00:38:22 ◼   ► you have?

00:38:23 ◼   ► If you're not set on a Mac, then we can talk about iPads.

00:38:25 ◼   ► We can talk about PC laptops, whatever it is that you're doing.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But, you know, so that's, that's why I still mostly feel good about this.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Even though I still feel slightly bad about the pervasive cultural thing, because as I

00:38:36 ◼   ► said, when the 16 inch came out and everyone was excited by that and I was still a little

00:38:40 ◼   ► bit cranky, like imagine if this thing came out with three USB C ports and an SD card

00:38:46 ◼   ► slot, everybody would buy this.

00:38:48 ◼   ► People would be ditching their 16 inches to buy this thing.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Like it would be, it would be nerd.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I say everybody would buy this, but just stupid.

00:38:54 ◼   ► For tech nerds and people who have tech podcasts and who love Macs, we would all flip out about

00:38:59 ◼   ► it.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Would Apple sell better than this model with two ports?

00:39:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:39:04 ◼   ► And again, maybe that's why Apple's calculus is right, but we tech enthusiasts would love

00:39:08 ◼   ► it a lot better.

00:39:09 ◼   ► And we tech enthusiasts would be considering ditching our 16 inches to get this model because

00:39:14 ◼   ► it just has one fewer port, but has an SD card slot and it's so much smaller and cheaper,

00:39:18 ◼   ► yada, yada.

00:39:19 ◼   ► So I continued to think that if Apple really wants to please the super nerds, which is a

00:39:23 ◼   ► thing that it does, because this Mac Pro that I'm sitting next to is a stupid computer and

00:39:28 ◼   ► the only people it pleases are the tiny sliver of professionals who need it and super nerds.

00:39:33 ◼   ► So I feel like pleasing super nerds is a viable strategy that Apple sometimes does.

00:39:39 ◼   ► The whole laptop line is waiting there for them with one model to say, "You know what?

00:39:43 ◼   ► We're going to please the super nerds with this model.

00:39:46 ◼   ► We're going to add more ports.

00:39:47 ◼   ► We're going to add an SD card slot."

00:39:49 ◼   ► Whatever that is you're going to do to, you know what we want, make one model that does

00:39:53 ◼   ► it.

00:39:54 ◼   ► So the desktop Mac's still waiting for the Pro line, but for it to be the MacBook Air,

00:39:59 ◼   ► it's very unexpected.

00:40:00 ◼   ► I would expect it to be the big Pro laptop that they do this on.

00:40:04 ◼   ► So again, that's why I am at peace with this computer and I recommend it and I'm happy

00:40:08 ◼   ► about it.

00:40:09 ◼   ► One thing that I'm also really curious about is the new one has moved to quad core for

00:40:16 ◼   ► two of its CPU options.

00:40:19 ◼   ► And I believe that's new for this thermal class.

00:40:21 ◼   ► And these are, as far as I can tell, I think these are the first 10 nanometer Intel chips

00:40:27 ◼   ► in Macs.

00:40:28 ◼   ► I didn't know that.

00:40:29 ◼   ► Yeah, like the performance numbers on this are good, the price is good.

00:40:32 ◼   ► Like this is now a computer that, again, we can all feel comfortable recommending.

00:40:36 ◼   ► But is the performance good?

00:40:38 ◼   ► And I'm not trying to snark.

00:40:39 ◼   ► I'm genuinely asking because I was looking at this and I was thinking to myself, you

00:40:43 ◼   ► know, I plan to replace my beloved Adorable that is slower than dirt now.

00:40:47 ◼   ► And I mean, it's relatively old, so it's not entirely unreasonable that it's slower than

00:40:51 ◼   ► dirt.

00:40:52 ◼   ► But looking at the MacBook Air, and if I go whole hog and get the most expensive one in

00:40:58 ◼   ► terms of processor and RAM and stuff that I can, it's still under two grand, which is,

00:41:03 ◼   ► I mean, it's a lot of money, don't get me wrong.

00:41:05 ◼   ► For what you're getting, it's not a bad deal at all.

00:41:08 ◼   ► But I'm looking at it and the most fancy processor, unless I miss something, is a 1.2 gigahertz

00:41:13 ◼   ► quad core, quad core 10th generation i7, which can boost up to 3.8 gigahertz.

00:41:19 ◼   ► And as I stall for time and look over at my Adorable, it has a 1.4 gigahertz.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Now admittedly, it's dual core, but it's an i7 and it has the same amount of RAM.

00:41:29 ◼   ► So it's two more cores, which definitely makes a big difference, don't get me wrong.

00:41:31 ◼   ► But like, would I be gaining that much by going to this computer?

00:41:35 ◼   ► Yes, you would.

00:41:36 ◼   ► They're not really the same cores, even though Apple has been stuck on, God, I can't remember.

00:41:40 ◼   ► What is the architecture that they've been stuck on?

00:41:41 ◼   ► Not 14 versus 10.

00:41:43 ◼   ► No, not the process size, the last major architectural change.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Was it like Kaby Lake or something?

00:41:48 ◼   ► I forget.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Oh yeah, right, because the new one is Ice Lake.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Yeah, back when they were doing TikTok, the last big architectural change they've been

00:41:55 ◼   ► tweaking over the years.

00:41:56 ◼   ► So anyway, the cores are better per clock than yours are for sure, and I think the turbo

00:42:01 ◼   ► boost is higher.

00:42:02 ◼   ► But like, none of us have used this computer, but I have the previous generation MacBook

00:42:07 ◼   ► Air and it is for sure slower than this thing.

00:42:11 ◼   ► And when I use it, it doesn't feel particularly slow.

00:42:13 ◼   ► It doesn't feel fast, but I think it's fine, which makes me think that doubling the number

00:42:17 ◼   ► of cores and having the cores themselves be less power because it's a better process and

00:42:23 ◼   ► a little bit faster, I think the performance of this will be fine for this class of computer.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Because I think the performance of my computer is mostly fine, and this is a huge step up

00:42:33 ◼   ► from that.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Because you say, "Oh, two more cores, but what if I don't have multi-threaded work?"

00:42:38 ◼   ► Just doing stuff on your computer, going from two to four is significant.

00:42:42 ◼   ► There's enough going on that you're going to use four cores.

00:42:44 ◼   ► It's not like you have 28 cores and you have to have some special application to take advantage

00:42:47 ◼   ► of it.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Going from two to four is a big bonus.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah, because one goes to Dropbox, one goes to Photos Agent.

00:42:55 ◼   ► None of those are on any of my computers, thank you very much.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Although, if you want to, we'll get to this in a second, but if you want to feel good

00:43:03 ◼   ► about the performance of saying, "It's going to be way better than the old MacBook Air,"

00:43:06 ◼   ► do not look at the iPad Pro performance numbers.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Just pretend they don't exist because you will be depressed about the Mac in general.

00:43:13 ◼   ► That's so true.

00:43:14 ◼   ► That's so true.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you can't compare the base clocks.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Not only are these different architectures, but also it's weird turbo boost stuff.

00:43:25 ◼   ► So whenever any of the power classes have gone up in core count, usually the base clocks

00:43:32 ◼   ► have gone down as a result, and you're still coming out way ahead.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Because usually, for single core stuff, they usually can turbo boost up to the same levels

00:43:41 ◼   ► or similar levels as the lower core count or predecessors could.

00:43:46 ◼   ► And then, in almost every case, you're coming out way ahead performance-wise, or at least

00:43:50 ◼   ► tying where it was before.

00:43:51 ◼   ► So in this case, yeah, this would be a massive upgrade from your terrible MacBook One.

00:43:57 ◼   ► And also, in many other ways, it's just so much better for just general day-to-day usability.

00:44:05 ◼   ► First of all, you have more screen space.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Like, yes, it is bigger and heavier.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Not by that much.

00:44:10 ◼   ► It goes from two pounds to 2.8.

00:44:13 ◼   ► I know that's, percentage-wise, a big increase.

00:44:16 ◼   ► But in absolute terms, that's not a lot of difference.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And when you put it in a bag, it's not going to make a huge difference in how the bag feels,

00:44:24 ◼   ► whether it has a two-pound or a 2.8-pound laptop in it.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Unless the bag itself is made of nothing and there's nothing else in it, I don't think

00:44:32 ◼   ► you're going to notice that difference.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And just having two ports instead of one is going to be a massive convenience for you.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Like you know this.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Oh, I know, I know.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Having to live with the one in your torture chamber.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Like it's just, you'll be able to actually power it while plugging in a peripheral.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Oh, imagine that.

00:44:50 ◼   ► Without having to use like dongles or weird flaky adapters that might work and might not,

00:44:55 ◼   ► and that you might not want to run like audio stuff through and everything.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a world of difference, believe me.

00:45:00 ◼   ► I mean, ultimately, I'd like to wait for the Mythical Phantom 14-inch MacBook Pro, because

00:45:07 ◼   ► I think that's probably going to be a better fit.

00:45:08 ◼   ► Now with that said, I don't know where it is.

00:45:09 ◼   ► I think I'm using this computer because I can't leave the house for weeks.

00:45:12 ◼   ► But in this hypothetical world that will eventually come back to some sort of new normal, I would

00:45:17 ◼   ► like a new laptop.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And I think it's worth holding out to see whether the 14-inch, if it ever exists, is

00:45:23 ◼   ► going to be a better fit for me.

00:45:26 ◼   ► And I think it might be, but this is a very compelling computer.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And I think the broader point that the both of you are trying to make is absolutely true,

00:45:32 ◼   ► which is almost without reservation for almost anyone.

00:45:35 ◼   ► I mean, I'm looking at using this for Xcode and iOS development and things that are, you

00:45:38 ◼   ► know, they're not video editing, but they're not exactly easy.

00:45:42 ◼   ► I'm looking to use it for that.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And it's a legitimate contender, which I think is a big improvement.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I would like to state for the record that I think that the olds, and I'm halfway including

00:45:52 ◼   ► myself in this, I think the olds need to get over the SD card slot, boys.

00:45:57 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

00:45:58 ◼   ► SD cards are not some past technology that has been replaced.

00:46:03 ◼   ► That's why this is different.

00:46:05 ◼   ► You can't like...

00:46:06 ◼   ► But they are.

00:46:07 ◼   ► But I don't agree with that at all.

00:46:09 ◼   ► If you buy a modern, the fanciest modern camera, like the fancy super fancy, oh I can't use

00:46:13 ◼   ► an iPhone because I don't want to...

00:46:14 ◼   ► But who does that?

00:46:15 ◼   ► Well, that's what I'm saying.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Like, it's a high-end choice.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Like, so again, on the MacBook Pro, the high-end computer, who's buying fancy multi-thousand

00:46:23 ◼   ► dollar cameras?

00:46:26 ◼   ► People buy them, professionals buy them and use them to shoot pictures, and if they buy

00:46:30 ◼   ► a professional laptop, they've got this professional camera, the current model, that takes this

00:46:34 ◼   ► supposedly obsolete piece of media, and it's faster to transfer it when you can take the

00:46:39 ◼   ► card and stick it into the thing than it is to try to do it wirelessly, or even over dealing

00:46:43 ◼   ► with cables and stuff like that.

00:46:44 ◼   ► So it may be gone for most of the world, but on the high-end, for that one weird model

00:46:51 ◼   ► that's 16 inches and has got all this room along the side, those are the people who are

00:46:55 ◼   ► going to buy an expensive camera.

00:46:56 ◼   ► When it disappears from cameras, we'll say, okay, well then there's no point in this,

00:47:00 ◼   ► you know, when the new cameras come out and they no longer have removable media in the

00:47:04 ◼   ► form of an SD card, then we can say, fine, then the time has come and we need to get

00:47:09 ◼   ► rid of that.

00:47:10 ◼   ► But until that happens, I think it is still a reasonable thing for Apple to consider for

00:47:14 ◼   ► their one highest-end model.

00:47:17 ◼   ► It isn't even just about cameras.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And yes, I know, to stave off some of the emails, I know there's like these, you know,

00:47:22 ◼   ► XQD or whatever, there has been a successor to the SD card that is in some high-end models,

00:47:28 ◼   ► but it's still not mainstream.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Yeah, replace SD card with whatever the current high-end camera little flash storage thing

00:47:36 ◼   ► is.

00:47:37 ◼   ► You know, CF had a big thing in the Canon world as well, but what I'm saying is that

00:47:40 ◼   ► removable media in cameras is still a thing.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Whatever the most popular removable media in cameras is, it is reasonable to consider

00:47:46 ◼   ► Apple putting that on their highest-end laptop.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Right, and it isn't only cameras.

00:47:49 ◼   ► So cameras, that's a big one, that's a huge one.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And in fact, almost, it's funny, like the way that Apple markets these laptops and,

00:47:57 ◼   ► you know, the way they have this pro workflow group, I bet most of the people who are demonstrating

00:48:03 ◼   ► workflows and things and Apple marketing materials and most of the people in the pro workflow

00:48:08 ◼   ► group, probably could use an SD card reader in their MacBook Pro.

00:48:13 ◼   ► And like, so all these use cases that they demonstrate as like, this is who they want

00:48:18 ◼   ► us to believe is using these computers and who largely is using these computers.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Those people, those workflows, those awesome demo-able like, cool people making videos,

00:48:27 ◼   ► they use SD cards.

00:48:29 ◼   ► Not only them, of course, pro photographers, as you said, amateur photographers, anybody

00:48:34 ◼   ► who still has a standalone camera that is not their phone, chances are that camera uses

00:48:38 ◼   ► an SD card.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Also audio, there's tons of audio recorders.

00:48:44 ◼   ► There's also tons of specialty equipment that is stuff that doesn't usually make it

00:48:48 ◼   ► into marketing presentations.

00:48:49 ◼   ► But a lot of equipment and peripherals and, you know, devices have SD cards for data for

00:48:56 ◼   ► some kind of use.

00:48:58 ◼   ► Hobbyists use it for things like Raspberry Pis.

00:49:01 ◼   ► There's all sorts of uses for SD cards that many people who use an SD card as some part

00:49:08 ◼   ► of their job use a nice computer as well.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And it's nice to have a slot.

00:49:11 ◼   ► There's a reason why it was on there for so long.

00:49:14 ◼   ► And certainly while it has become a little more specialized than it used to be, not that

00:49:20 ◼   ► much more specialized.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Not as much as you would think.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Just the fact that like, quote, most buyers may not use it, which I don't necessarily

00:49:28 ◼   ► believe, but if quote, most buyers may not use it, that doesn't mean that there's no

00:49:33 ◼   ► place for it.

00:49:34 ◼   ► There's all sorts of stuff that they put in their computers that's nice to have for some

00:49:38 ◼   ► people some of the time.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And most people might not use it all.

00:49:42 ◼   ► But like, you know, as I said, there's stuff in every Apple laptop that I don't use, that

00:49:48 ◼   ► I'm happy never to use.

00:49:50 ◼   ► I almost never use HDMI ports when those were there.

00:49:53 ◼   ► People still miss those.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Because HDMI dongles suck.

00:49:56 ◼   ► For a long time there were things like FireWire ports.

00:49:58 ◼   ► I almost never use those.

00:50:00 ◼   ► USB-C even.

00:50:01 ◼   ► I have very few devices that are USB-C. I have a lot of devices.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Very few of them are USB-C. I have, I think, almost nothing that is Thunderbolt.

00:50:11 ◼   ► The last thing I need is all four ports to have all this Thunderbolt bandwidth, but it's

00:50:16 ◼   ► there.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Because sometimes people need these things.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Some people need them.

00:50:22 ◼   ► And it's nice to have it when it's there.

00:50:23 ◼   ► So any argument that's like, well, most people don't need this so we can remove it, no, that's

00:50:27 ◼   ► not a valid argument.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Do some people need it some of the time?

00:50:31 ◼   ► Yes?

00:50:32 ◼   ► Okay.

00:50:33 ◼   ► What does it cost to leave it in?

00:50:34 ◼   ► Is it really that bad?

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's not an expensive part.

00:50:37 ◼   ► You know, it's not, it's, it takes up some space, but it's not a lot in like a large

00:50:41 ◼   ► laptop.

00:50:42 ◼   ► The thought process has to change from, well, do you really need this anymore?

00:50:46 ◼   ► To what are we gaining by removing it?

00:50:49 ◼   ► And is that going to be worth it to all the people who still do use it and need it?

00:50:53 ◼   ► And finally, one more use case to consider.

00:50:55 ◼   ► These laptops are very expensive.

00:50:58 ◼   ► The storage on them is very expensive.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And you cannot upgrade the storage later.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And many people use the SD card slot on the previous generation, the 2012 Retina Mappa

00:51:09 ◼   ► Pro generation.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Many people ended up using those as add-on storage down the line.

00:51:14 ◼   ► There's a whole, there's all those like flush mount micro SD things that like stick in there

00:51:19 ◼   ► and match the metal.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Remember those things?

00:51:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I had one.

00:51:23 ◼   ► Those are very popular and things like that are very popular.

00:51:24 ◼   ► It's a very good way to temporarily or kind of semi permanently expand your storage inexpensively

00:51:31 ◼   ► late down the road or even up front on a laptop where it's very expensive to buy storage built

00:51:36 ◼   ► in and you can never update it.

00:51:37 ◼   ► So it's good for economy.

00:51:39 ◼   ► It's good for longevity, upgradability, in addition to all those pro use cases.

00:51:44 ◼   ► So the SD card slot, man, nothing has replaced it.

00:51:48 ◼   ► It is not like you can't apply the same things and the same logic as like when people did

00:51:53 ◼   ► the, when they removed the USB from the iMac, that was moving the industry forward.

00:51:58 ◼   ► And no, that's different.

00:52:00 ◼   ► This is a different thing.

00:52:01 ◼   ► This isn't like going from one type of port to another.

00:52:04 ◼   ► This is going from having a complete type of ability to not having it.

00:52:08 ◼   ► But that role still exists in the world.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Now it's just being, you know, now you should have to use it.

00:52:12 ◼   ► You have to use a dongle to use it for people frightened by that.

00:52:15 ◼   ► They have not removed USB from the iMac.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Margo just misspoke.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Don't be scared.

00:52:19 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:52:21 ◼   ► Yeah, whatever.

00:52:22 ◼   ► They have not removed USB yet.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:52:24 ◼   ► No, the iMac still has the desktops are still full of ports.

00:52:26 ◼   ► The Mac mini, the iMac, the Mac Pro even, although less for some reason.

00:52:29 ◼   ► But like these are full of ports.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Like they're, they're fine on ports on the, on the big ones.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It's just the laptops where they, they rationalize away.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And they, both Apple and Apple fans rationalize away that, oh, it's okay to remove this stuff

00:52:41 ◼   ► because people don't use it anymore.

00:52:42 ◼   ► But no, no, they do.

00:52:44 ◼   ► It's still, still a thing.

00:52:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:46 ◼   ► I just, I feel like, I feel like what you're asking for is, well, I'm a developer, so I

00:52:51 ◼   ► need that special developer key on my keyboard.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And if other people don't need it, fine, whatever.

00:52:56 ◼   ► It doesn't cost them anything.

00:52:57 ◼   ► It's just one more key.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:52:59 ◼   ► They can just ignore the special developer key on the keyboard.

00:53:01 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:53:02 ◼   ► Don't worry about it.

00:53:03 ◼   ► But I need it.

00:53:04 ◼   ► So that, so it better be there because I need it.

00:53:06 ◼   ► And I feel like the SD card slot is the same thing.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Like I look at the regular people in my life.

00:53:10 ◼   ► I'm not talking about the people in this racket.

00:53:11 ◼   ► I'm not talking about YouTube.

00:53:12 ◼   ► I'm not talking about the people at Relay.

00:53:13 ◼   ► I'm talking about regular people.

00:53:15 ◼   ► I am sure I know a couple of people with DSLRs, but I'm struggling to come up with it.

00:53:21 ◼   ► And I don't think for a regular human, they're looking at whether or not this thing has an

00:53:25 ◼   ► SD card slot and saying, oh, well, screw that.

00:53:27 ◼   ► It doesn't have an SD card slot.

00:53:28 ◼   ► In fact, I'm glad you brought up the HDMI port because I was going to bring it up myself.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I think that makes way more sense than an SD card slot because it is far more likely,

00:53:37 ◼   ► in my opinion, that the millions of these devices that are used in a workplace back

00:53:41 ◼   ► before, you know, back before workplaces weren't a thing or back when workplaces were a thing,

00:53:46 ◼   ► all those people want to plug into projectors and things of that nature.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And they would do that with HDMI.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And so I don't disagree with your final thesis, you know, that especially on the bigger devices,

00:53:58 ◼   ► as John has been saying on like a 16, why not throw it all in?

00:54:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree with you there.

00:54:02 ◼   ► But for something like a MacBook Air, like I don't want to have a developer key on the

00:54:05 ◼   ► MacBook Air.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I want it to be flexible.

00:54:08 ◼   ► I almost feel like we're arguing for a hardware keyboard on our BlackBerrys still.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Like, yeah, yeah, OK, we could do the software keyboard.

00:54:14 ◼   ► No, it's not even close.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Oh, you're making so many bad arguments.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Oh.

00:54:18 ◼   ► I mean, I wasn't really arguing it for-- or beyond-- I'm just saying if it was on there,

00:54:21 ◼   ► people would--

00:54:22 ◼   ► All right, we made it seven years.

00:54:23 ◼   ► The show's over.

00:54:24 ◼   ► People would flip if it was on there because they would be excited by it.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And the reason of-- you know, HDMI is another one.

00:54:29 ◼   ► But like this is a really skinny laptop.

00:54:30 ◼   ► SD card slot is a really skinny slot.

00:54:33 ◼   ► It would fit, physically speaking, and sort of in the spirit of this machine.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Is this the machine that's big and has tons of room on the side of reports?

00:54:39 ◼   ► No, it's not.

00:54:40 ◼   ► It's the second smallest one they made-- or no, it's currently the smallest because they

00:54:43 ◼   ► don't make the super skinny MacBook anymore, right?

00:54:46 ◼   ► So this is not the one to put tons of stuff in it.

00:54:48 ◼   ► So if you're going to fit anything, more little USB-C holes.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And then if you really wanted to go nuts, SD card.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Obviously, I feel like that's a stretch, and I still advocate for it on the bigger computers

00:54:59 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:55:00 ◼   ► But HDMI, I would have a hard time arguing for it just because, physically speaking,

00:55:05 ◼   ► it's very difficult to wedge that in here just because this is the super slim laptop.

00:55:09 ◼   ► You can totally fit it on the bigger ones.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I'm all for that.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I agree with you.

00:55:13 ◼   ► My point that I'm making poorly is just that I feel like we are arguing for things that

00:55:20 ◼   ► we personally want and not just understanding that by removing all of these things, you're

00:55:25 ◼   ► leaving the ultimate amount of flexibility.

00:55:26 ◼   ► Yes, you have to use a dongle, and yes, dongles suck.

00:55:28 ◼   ► I'm not arguing those points.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And candidly, I would like an SD card slot in my laptop.

00:55:33 ◼   ► But I feel like I'm acknowledging the fact that I'm a weirdo, and I'm not sure that everyone

00:55:38 ◼   ► on the show right now is acknowledging that.

00:55:40 ◼   ► You're not gaining any flexibility from removing them.

00:55:43 ◼   ► By removing them, you gain flexibility.

00:55:45 ◼   ► No, you don't.

00:55:46 ◼   ► We're not saying remove the USB-C ports.

00:55:47 ◼   ► We're not saying make them any less flexible.

00:55:48 ◼   ► You would have all the same flexibility plus also an SD card slot.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Fair, fair, fair.

00:55:53 ◼   ► That's fair.

00:55:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Your example of having a developer key on the keyboard, I mean, first of all, there

00:55:58 ◼   ► are lots of keys in the keyboard that confuse regular people.

00:56:00 ◼   ► But that aside, that could be maybe getting in people's way.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:56:05 ◼   ► Again, I think it's a stretch.

00:56:06 ◼   ► I think people are already confused or not by certain keys.

00:56:09 ◼   ► But oh well.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But ultimately, having something like an SD card slot or an HDMI port on the bigger models,

00:56:16 ◼   ► that doesn't take away anything.

00:56:17 ◼   ► That doesn't cost the user anything.

00:56:20 ◼   ► No one is like, oh, I'm so confused by this hole on the side of my computer.

00:56:24 ◼   ► I'm not going to buy this computer now.

00:56:26 ◼   ► It's not a thing that gets in anybody's way.

00:56:27 ◼   ► It isn't a thing that's really a problem for anybody.

00:56:30 ◼   ► But then the flip side, think about all the people who need to plug something into their

00:56:35 ◼   ► computer and they go to do it and they realize, oh crap, I can't.

00:56:40 ◼   ► This thing doesn't fit in this hole or I lost that hole or I lost that slot.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Now I have to go buy and then carry with me a dongle, an adapter, a different cable, whatever

00:56:49 ◼   ► it is.

00:56:51 ◼   ► That is such a negative customer experience that I feel like for some of these decisions,

00:56:57 ◼   ► maybe you make the laptop thinner and lighter and you have to cut some things and people

00:57:00 ◼   ► like it.

00:57:01 ◼   ► That's kind of a net win for a lot of cases.

00:57:03 ◼   ► But some of these things like reducing the amount of ports that it has or dropping things

00:57:08 ◼   ► like the SD card, some of those things seem to have no real upside or very little real

00:57:14 ◼   ► upside and then for the people who need it, a significant downside.

00:57:20 ◼   ► There's stuff in my laptop I don't use.

00:57:22 ◼   ► They spend a lot of time talking about the speakers and the microphone.

00:57:26 ◼   ► I don't use those that much.

00:57:27 ◼   ► They spend a lot of time, they're always demoing like FaceTime and everything, using the camera

00:57:32 ◼   ► on the front.

00:57:33 ◼   ► I hardly ever use that either.

00:57:36 ◼   ► There's all sorts of stuff that modern Macs include and can do that I never use.

00:57:42 ◼   ► In case you give the example of using video out, I almost never do that.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And in fact, I would say for people who don't connect to Office projectors, I bet video

00:57:53 ◼   ► out is incredibly rarely used on laptops.

00:57:57 ◼   ► So it wouldn't surprise me if the percentage of people who use video out might actually

00:58:01 ◼   ► be similar to the percentage of people who use the SD card slot.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Oh, come on.

00:58:05 ◼   ► It's probably at least the same order of magnitude.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Please, I obviously will never be able to arbitrate this, but I would take that bet

00:58:12 ◼   ► any day of the week.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Absolutely, I would take that bet.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I don't think that's true either.

00:58:16 ◼   ► I think it's just like the SD card slot where a lot of people never use it and some people

00:58:21 ◼   ► use it all the time.

00:58:22 ◼   ► And so for the people who use it all the time, you think, well, what do you mean there's

00:58:27 ◼   ► part of the world that doesn't do this?

00:58:29 ◼   ► But I haven't used video out on a laptop on a regular basis since I owned a desktop, so

00:58:35 ◼   ► since 2008.

00:58:37 ◼   ► The part of the world that uses video out is all office workers who are issued Macs,

00:58:41 ◼   ► which is a larger group than professional photographers, so people use the SD card slot.

00:58:45 ◼   ► That's neither here nor there.

00:58:46 ◼   ► We don't need to argue the details of this thing.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Right, but that's ruling out all people who mostly just have it for home.

00:58:51 ◼   ► It's also ruling out people who don't present things in their workplace but happen to also

00:58:55 ◼   ► have a laptop.

00:58:56 ◼   ► Like, that's a pretty big group of people, I think.

00:59:02 ◼   ► I think workers with laptops who have to project is a bigger group.

00:59:05 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter.

00:59:06 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:59:07 ◼   ► It's a moot point for the details of this particular computer.

00:59:10 ◼   ► I just threw in the SD card.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Does it remember the 13HAB one?

00:59:12 ◼   ► And I thought it would be super appealing to geeks, and I think it would be, and I understand

00:59:17 ◼   ► why it's not on this computer.

00:59:18 ◼   ► But Marco mentioned something that I think we should touch on before we finally move

00:59:20 ◼   ► on from this eternal laptop debate, which is the microphones and speakers.

00:59:26 ◼   ► I didn't see all the details, but it seems like they're pitching this one.

00:59:29 ◼   ► It's similar.

00:59:30 ◼   ► They did it in the 16-inch.

00:59:31 ◼   ► Hey, we improved the laptop speakers and microphone.

00:59:35 ◼   ► I think they even, did they say they improved the camera?

00:59:37 ◼   ► Or is that too much to ask?

00:59:38 ◼   ► But either way, I think they definitely improved the audio, which is good.

00:59:42 ◼   ► To see the benefits that they did on the 16-inch, they spent a lot of time saying you could

00:59:47 ◼   ► use the 16-inch to record podcasts, and we had the sample recordings of it.

00:59:51 ◼   ► It's a big step up, a thing that no one was asking for that we were excited that we got,

00:59:56 ◼   ► because it is an incremental improvement in a subsystem that definitely needed some improvement.

01:00:00 ◼   ► So yay for better microphones, yay for better speakers.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Even on laptops, making that stuff better is important.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Camera, does anyone have time to look to see if that's better?

01:00:09 ◼   ► 720p FaceTime HD camera.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So that does not sound like it has changed.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Same old garbage front facing camera that's basically only used for FaceTime and Skype

01:00:18 ◼   ► and Zoom, and that's it.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Again, perhaps excusable on their very smallest, very cheapest laptops, so I'm not going to

01:00:25 ◼   ► ding them for that.

01:00:26 ◼   ► I'm glad the speakers on the mic got better.

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01:02:35 ◼   ► Let's talk about what I personally think is the most interesting thing that happened today,

01:02:40 ◼   ► which is not even the new iPad Pros, but the new keyboard.

01:02:45 ◼   ► I guess we should start quickly with the Pros.

01:02:47 ◼   ► They look about the same as the, I don't know if I should say outgoing ones, but the ones

01:02:52 ◼   ► they replace.

01:02:54 ◼   ► The camera array is a little bit different in the sense that it's an array of two cameras,

01:02:58 ◼   ► wide and ultra wide, and a LIDAR sensor, which is kind of weird but also fascinating.

01:03:05 ◼   ► But otherwise they are physically about the same.

01:03:09 ◼   ► The internals, we've heard reports earlier today that all models get six gigs of RAM,

01:03:14 ◼   ► which is very impressive.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I think storage remains the same.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Did the base go up?

01:03:19 ◼   ► No, the base went up, didn't it?

01:03:20 ◼   ► Yeah, base is now 128.

01:03:21 ◼   ► It was 64 before, right?

01:03:23 ◼   ► I believe that's right, yeah.

01:03:24 ◼   ► So 128.256x12, or one terabyte for storage, starting at 800 bucks for the 11 inch.

01:03:31 ◼   ► The cellular is still, I believe, 150 bucks extra.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Correct.

01:03:36 ◼   ► But I would kind of like to move on from the iPads themselves as quickly as possible, but

01:03:41 ◼   ► I'd certainly like to give you guys a chance to weigh in.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I have the 11 inch that came out when Marco and I were together in October of, what was

01:03:49 ◼   ► that, 2018.

01:03:50 ◼   ► That was when the iPad Pro was brand new.

01:03:52 ◼   ► I have the 11 inch.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I can't say I long for a new one in terms of hardware.

01:03:57 ◼   ► Maybe I'll change my tune once new AR stuff lands that uses this fancy pants LIDAR sensor,

01:04:02 ◼   ► but in terms of my hardware, my iPad itself, I'm pretty happy with it.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Sitting here now, I don't plan to replace it, but I really am anxious, or excited about

01:04:11 ◼   ► that keyboard, which we'll talk about in a minute.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Marco, thoughts on the iPad hardware itself, and we'll talk about the keyboard in a moment.

01:04:19 ◼   ► As I touched on earlier, I am so incredibly happy with my 11 inch iPad Pro from 2018.

01:04:26 ◼   ► The iPad itself, we'll get to the keyboard in a minute, but the iPad itself is seemingly

01:04:30 ◼   ► a fairly minor speed bump revision.

01:04:34 ◼   ► It's kind of funny to think of iPads as having speed bump revisions now, but I think we're

01:04:37 ◼   ► to that point.

01:04:38 ◼   ► I think the hardware is mature and advanced enough now that in many ways it's almost like

01:04:42 ◼   ► a Mac where you have some big years and some kind of just basic speed bump years.

01:04:48 ◼   ► That's what we know so far.

01:04:51 ◼   ► Again, this is still very early.

01:04:53 ◼   ► No one has these yet.

01:04:54 ◼   ► It appears that this is pretty much a speed bump upgrade.

01:04:58 ◼   ► The camera got a little bit better in some ways, a lot better in others, but again, this

01:05:02 ◼   ► is one of the things, how many people use their iPad camera?

01:05:05 ◼   ► It's not zero.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's a good number.

01:05:07 ◼   ► I use mine occasionally.

01:05:10 ◼   ► If I happen to be chatting with someone on my iPad and I want to show them a picture

01:05:14 ◼   ► of something that I happen to be looking at, I'll stick it in that way.

01:05:17 ◼   ► But otherwise, and FaceTime I will use it if I'm facing them on the iPad, I want to

01:05:22 ◼   ► turn the camera around and show them somebody else in the room or whatever.

01:05:25 ◼   ► But I'm not tempted by this camera technology on the iPad because it's just such a low usage

01:05:30 ◼   ► camera for me.

01:05:33 ◼   ► It's a speed bump and a fun camera thing that appears to be it, what has actually changed

01:05:39 ◼   ► here, at least the big headlining features of what has changed.

01:05:45 ◼   ► From that point of view, I'm actually fine with my current one.

01:05:49 ◼   ► It isn't to say that anything's wrong with this, but just like when a max speed bump

01:05:53 ◼   ► comes out, you don't buy every one of them.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Even people like me who are totally ridiculous and try to find excuses to buy everything

01:06:02 ◼   ► Apple makes, I don't buy every revision of every computer of theirs that I use.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Max have speed bump revisions and they go a few years before things get interesting again.

01:06:14 ◼   ► I think that's happening with this one.

01:06:16 ◼   ► If you have an 11 inch from 2018, you probably don't need this one.

01:06:21 ◼   ► But if you have an old one and you are looking to upgrade and you are waiting for something

01:06:26 ◼   ► to change, this is a good time to buy it because it's great.

01:06:29 ◼   ► I'm sure it's going to be just as great as the 11, better in some ways, great, good for

01:06:33 ◼   ► them.

01:06:34 ◼   ► But certainly at this price point, this is not an every year kind of upgrade for most

01:06:37 ◼   ► people.

01:06:38 ◼   ► It's exciting advance in nomenclature because we used to have the X chips where there would

01:06:44 ◼   ► be an A something and then the iPad would have the A something X.

01:06:47 ◼   ► I think this is our first year with an A something Z.

01:06:50 ◼   ► Skip right over Y, go right to Z.

01:06:52 ◼   ► This is the A12Z.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Most notably it's not an A13 variant.

01:06:56 ◼   ► It is still an A12 variant but instead of the X it's a Z.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Oh, I was trying to figure out, I was trying to look up what the actual differences are.

01:07:04 ◼   ► I don't think the CPU core count changed.

01:07:07 ◼   ► I think it's still fast, for fast and for quote unquote energy efficient, don't call

01:07:12 ◼   ► them slow cores.

01:07:13 ◼   ► I think the GPU is 8 instead of 7 cores.

01:07:18 ◼   ► I do wonder if that's, I don't know, I don't have the dies in front of me.

01:07:22 ◼   ► In the world of consoles they often ship architectures where they allow one or more cores to be duds

01:07:30 ◼   ► so their yields go up.

01:07:32 ◼   ► So I wonder if the A12X is actually 8 core where one is allowed to be bad but Apple being

01:07:36 ◼   ► Apple I'm thinking that's not the case.

01:07:37 ◼   ► But anyway I think that's the only difference I can find in this 5 seconds of frantic Googling

01:07:42 ◼   ► for a thing that was announced today.

01:07:44 ◼   ► The A12Z might have one more core on the CPU.

01:07:46 ◼   ► We'll have to look at the performance numbers.

01:07:48 ◼   ► As I said in the Mac section, if you own a Mac, especially a laptop, do not look at iPad

01:07:53 ◼   ► performance numbers because they will make you weep.

01:07:56 ◼   ► The iPad hardware is so much better than Mac hardware in the wearable space.

01:08:02 ◼   ► It's not even funny.

01:08:04 ◼   ► It's so much faster in single core than any Mac that Apple sells at any price including

01:08:08 ◼   ► my ridiculous computer sitting next to me here.

01:08:11 ◼   ► The multi-core numbers are getting very frightening very fast as the core counts go up.

01:08:16 ◼   ► This new iPad Pro is so much faster than the new MacBook Air we were just talking about.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Just try not to think about it and just wait patiently for those ARM Macs to appear.

01:08:26 ◼   ► So I think this hardware wasn't broken.

01:08:29 ◼   ► There was nothing bad about the previous iPad Pro.

01:08:33 ◼   ► They gave it better specs, gave it a better CPU and GPU by how much we're not sure until

01:08:39 ◼   ► we start seeing benchmarks of these things.

01:08:41 ◼   ► The camera on the back, it's got two cameras now before it.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Yours just has one, right Marco?

01:08:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:47 ◼   ► Yeah, so this has the wide angle.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Now the LiDAR thing makes perfect sense because Apple's been pushing AR and one of the things

01:08:54 ◼   ► that makes AR better is a better sense of what your surroundings are.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So now they have LiDAR which is a better class of sensor than just trying to do depth sensing

01:09:05 ◼   ► with multiple cameras.

01:09:06 ◼   ► It's better depth sensing than FaceTime IR sprayer which is very close range.

01:09:10 ◼   ► LiDAR is much bigger.

01:09:11 ◼   ► So the iPad is the platform they've been pushing this on because until and unless Apple gets

01:09:16 ◼   ► something you can strap on your face, if you're going to look through a magic window that

01:09:20 ◼   ► makes things that aren't really there appear to be there, looking through a bigger window

01:09:24 ◼   ► is better than smaller.

01:09:25 ◼   ► I had that same thought today when I was pulling up the, incidentally, the new iPad in AR.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Apple on their product pages often has this thing that if you're on an iOS device, there'll

01:09:35 ◼   ► be a little thing that says view this in AR and if you tap it, it will let you put whatever

01:09:38 ◼   ► it is you're talking about, whether it's the new Mac Pro like that at WWDC or this new

01:09:41 ◼   ► iPad and place it on a surface.

01:09:44 ◼   ► And I did that so I could take a look at it and see how the AR was and look at the different

01:09:47 ◼   ► aspects of it.

01:09:48 ◼   ► But I'm looking through my phone which is like looking through a very small skinny portal

01:09:53 ◼   ► into a magical world where there is a new iPad sitting on my bed.

01:09:57 ◼   ► Would have been better with a bigger screen.

01:10:01 ◼   ► And so I understand why this doesn't make sense as the first platform for LiDAR to appear

01:10:06 ◼   ► on because it's big, they have the room for the sensor.

01:10:09 ◼   ► It's not so important for it to have the third camera like the phone, which is a much more

01:10:12 ◼   ► important camera system.

01:10:14 ◼   ► And yeah, Apple is plowing bravely ahead with the AR stuff as they have been for many, many

01:10:20 ◼   ► years.

01:10:21 ◼   ► I expect this to make what is already a very good AR experience even better.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Like I said, I did it on my phone.

01:10:27 ◼   ► I'm always amazed how good it is.

01:10:29 ◼   ► How stable, how good it looks because they have really good shaders and graphic technologies

01:10:35 ◼   ► to make it sit in the environment and match the lighting and everything.

01:10:40 ◼   ► How stable it is, I was doing it on my bedspread which is just a rumply surface and I'm going

01:10:46 ◼   ► real close to it.

01:10:47 ◼   ► I'm looking at the side and the little ports and I'm looking all over this 3D model.

01:10:52 ◼   ► It was incredibly solid.

01:10:53 ◼   ► This is with no LiDAR.

01:10:54 ◼   ► This is with not even a current iPhone.

01:10:57 ◼   ► This is the year ago model of iPhone.

01:10:59 ◼   ► So Apple is doing really well in the AR space and I think this will be a fairly amazing

01:11:05 ◼   ► tool.

01:11:06 ◼   ► The LiDAR I think brings it up to the next level of precision where it can be used in

01:11:10 ◼   ► even more professional context like an interior designer or an architect trying to walk people

01:11:15 ◼   ► through a space and how it's going to look.

01:11:18 ◼   ► People are doing that today with much worse hardware on some ancient PC running Windows

01:11:23 ◼   ► XP that they're doing a fly through of some architectural thing.

01:11:26 ◼   ► At the very top cutting edge, being able to have this technology to spray it around the

01:11:31 ◼   ► room and place a bunch of furniture will just be amazing.

01:11:34 ◼   ► We're not there where it's going to be useful enough that it's a game changer because we

01:11:38 ◼   ► have glasses on our face but we are, as I've said every time we talk about this, Apple

01:11:43 ◼   ► is doing what it didn't do for many years when it came to many other technical areas

01:11:48 ◼   ► like having a modern operating system with memory protection and preemptive multitasking

01:11:53 ◼   ► or having a modern computer programming language.

01:11:55 ◼   ► They are laying the groundwork way ahead of time so that if and when the time comes that

01:12:00 ◼   ► you can put all this magic into a pair of glasses, they will have an extremely mature

01:12:06 ◼   ► hardware and software stack ready to plug into that, as opposed to saying, "Oh, it's

01:12:11 ◼   ► suddenly technically possible to put a cool little camera in glasses.

01:12:14 ◼   ► How are we going to take advantage of that?"

01:12:17 ◼   ► They'll be perfectly positioned to do that.

01:12:19 ◼   ► So I continue to look forward to that day.

01:12:21 ◼   ► John, what kind of iPad are you rocking these days, I don't recall.

01:12:25 ◼   ► The original iPad Pro, I thought about upgrading to one of these fancy ones.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Mainly the thing that kept me away, this is a good transition to our next topic, is the

01:12:33 ◼   ► stuff that you stick to the iPad.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Having looked at the new iPad in person, I love the hardware itself.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I love the new pencil but I didn't love the ice cream sandwich case.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I really love, what I have on my iPad Pro is the rubbery, whatever it is, the thing

01:12:53 ◼   ► that goes around the back and the smart cover on the front.

01:12:57 ◼   ► They match and meet up, like the back cover wraps all the way around and makes it very

01:13:00 ◼   ► grippy and not that much thicker.

01:13:03 ◼   ► The front smart cover just goes in the front.

01:13:05 ◼   ► I don't need or use a keyboard, right?

01:13:07 ◼   ► So I just want basically an iPad that I hold in my hand that I can use to prop it up in

01:13:11 ◼   ► landscape mode to watch TV shows on and that I can hold in portrait.

01:13:16 ◼   ► The new one just seemed, I don't know, had sharper edges or just didn't feel comfortable.

01:13:22 ◼   ► I wasn't a big fan of the clothes, the accessories, even though the new iPad is amazing and so

01:13:28 ◼   ► much faster than mine and better and has a bigger screen, yada, yada, yada.

01:13:30 ◼   ► So that had me holed off.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Now this new iPad has some new outfits.

01:13:36 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it changes the equation for me but it certainly changes the equation for

01:13:41 ◼   ► a lot of other people because this new outfit looks pretty snazzy.

01:13:44 ◼   ► >> Yeah, so the thing that John is talking about, usually I'm the one that goes all in

01:13:50 ◼   ► on these ridiculous analogies.

01:13:51 ◼   ► I'm glad that it was you this time.

01:13:53 ◼   ► The thing that John is talking about is the new keyboard which is the new, what are they

01:13:58 ◼   ► calling it?

01:13:59 ◼   ► Magic keyboard, is that right?

01:14:00 ◼   ► >> Yeah, magic keyboard for iPad Pro.

01:14:01 ◼   ► >> Thank you.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Oh my goodness, I want this.

01:14:05 ◼   ► I want this in my life right now if you please.

01:14:09 ◼   ► So what is this?

01:14:10 ◼   ► So the iPad Pro, what is it, the Smart Keyboard Folio?

01:14:15 ◼   ► I forget what their ridiculous names are for these things.

01:14:17 ◼   ► So Smart Keyboard Folio, I actually do really like it a lot.

01:14:21 ◼   ► So I'm talking about the one that existed, well it still does exist but existed yesterday

01:14:25 ◼   ► and was as of yesterday the coolest thing in the world.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Now it's not the coolest thing in the world anymore.

01:14:31 ◼   ► But anyway, unlike the Home Button iPad Pros where if I understood it right, it did like

01:14:38 ◼   ► some sort of like John's, the keyboard for his would do some sort of like fold up on

01:14:43 ◼   ► itself and then fold on top of the iPad so it was like this three layer dip sort of ridiculous

01:14:48 ◼   ► thing.

01:14:49 ◼   ► Is that a reasonable explanation Marco?

01:14:50 ◼   ► Do you want to kind of help me out here?

01:14:51 ◼   ► >> Yep, yeah, because on that one, on the 9.7 and the 10.5, the keyboard accessory attached

01:14:57 ◼   ► via the smart connector on the edge of the iPad.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And so it would like magnetically stick on that one edge and you have to like fold the

01:15:05 ◼   ► case into this little triangle thing.

01:15:07 ◼   ► I have it right over there actually.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Yeah, you fold into this little triangle thing and stand it up and the triangle angle was

01:15:13 ◼   ► a little bit floppy but it was, overall it was fine if not a little fiddly to get set

01:15:18 ◼   ► up and to get used to.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And then the 11 inch and 12.9 that came out last fall with the new flat edge design and

01:15:25 ◼   ► everything and then the face ID and everything, that changed, it moved the smart connector

01:15:29 ◼   ► from the side of the iPad to the back.

01:15:32 ◼   ► And then those mounted by basically having the entire back rectangle of the case stick

01:15:38 ◼   ► to the iPad with magnets and it happened to stick up at one point for the connector.

01:15:45 ◼   ► And so it was, it just totally changed and moved the smart connector but made it much

01:15:48 ◼   ► simpler of just like now you have this whole plane attaching to it and mounting to it and

01:15:53 ◼   ► for the keyboard.

01:15:54 ◼   ► It made it way, way, way simpler to operate and more stable in one dimension and it was

01:15:59 ◼   ► fine.

01:16:00 ◼   ► So that's what I've been using.

01:16:01 ◼   ► I use it, again that's how I use it every day.

01:16:03 ◼   ► For me, I'm a very heavy iPad keyboard user.

01:16:07 ◼   ► I almost never use an iPad without the keyboard.

01:16:11 ◼   ► And all those years that iPads didn't have good keyboards from Apple, I mostly just didn't

01:16:15 ◼   ► use them.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Like I would buy them telling myself every time I'm gonna use this thing more.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And inputting text was always so cumbersome that I would just not end up using it.

01:16:23 ◼   ► It would sit in a drawer or it would, you know, discharge somewhere and I would forget

01:16:27 ◼   ► about it for weeks on end.

01:16:28 ◼   ► But the keyboard really made me an iPad user.

01:16:31 ◼   ► I keep it in the keyboard full time, all the time.

01:16:34 ◼   ► It is my kitchen and dining room computer for the most part.

01:16:38 ◼   ► And I really enjoy it for that.

01:16:40 ◼   ► That being said, I'm actually less excited about the new Magic Keyboard because of certain

01:16:46 ◼   ► details of how it works, which we'll get into I think in a second.

01:16:49 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm very curious to hear that but let me kind of finish explaining what this

01:16:53 ◼   ► is.

01:16:54 ◼   ► I'll also point out that the Smart Keyboard Folio will charge or provide power to the

01:17:02 ◼   ► keyboard that's attached to it.

01:17:04 ◼   ► So you never have to worry about like charging.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So take that in contrast to say the Logitech like, you know, turn my iPad into a laptop

01:17:11 ◼   ► things or the Bridge is the other one that I'm thinking of that, you know, the Mike Hurleys

01:17:17 ◼   ► of the world love.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And reasonably so.

01:17:19 ◼   ► I'm not trying to take away from them.

01:17:20 ◼   ► But one of the things that they have to do is because the keyboard, or at least I'm pretty

01:17:24 ◼   ► sure this is accurate, the keyboard works via Bluetooth and you have to charge the keyboard

01:17:27 ◼   ► periodically and that's not a big deal, but it's a nuisance and the Smart Keyboard Folio

01:17:31 ◼   ► and for the record, I do think I think there might have existed or might still exist some

01:17:36 ◼   ► keyboards that plug into the USB port on the iPad Pro, but I think those are those are

01:17:41 ◼   ► fairly unusual.

01:17:43 ◼   ► And you're right that the keyboard, the Smart Keyboard is self powered by the iPad and pretty

01:17:48 ◼   ► much everything else out there is Bluetooth.

01:17:49 ◼   ► And in fact, like what I actually have direct experience with this currently in my household

01:17:53 ◼   ► because my son, he's small enough that an iPad Mini is still the size that makes sense

01:17:57 ◼   ► for him and there is no iPad Mini Smart Keyboard from Apple.

01:18:03 ◼   ► And he really wanted a keyboard for his iPad and so I actually got him one for Christmas.

01:18:06 ◼   ► It was this like, you know, no name cheap one from Amazon and it's Bluetooth and yeah,

01:18:12 ◼   ► I mean, he loves it, but he doesn't know any better.

01:18:15 ◼   ► The experience of using it kind of sucks because it is separately charged.

01:18:19 ◼   ► Sometimes it's just out of power.

01:18:20 ◼   ► You have to like get like a little micro USB thing to plug inside of the keyboard and charge

01:18:25 ◼   ► it up separately.

01:18:26 ◼   ► It does have like a power switch.

01:18:28 ◼   ► You have to worry about like having on or off if you leave it on all the time.

01:18:31 ◼   ► It does stay active and drain the battery sometimes.

01:18:34 ◼   ► And if you want to use it without the keyboard, not only is it hard to, you know, detach and

01:18:38 ◼   ► reattach it much harder than Apple's case, but you have to make sure that it's off when

01:18:43 ◼   ► you when you move away.

01:18:44 ◼   ► Otherwise, the Bluetooth connection will stay active and the OS will still behave as though

01:18:49 ◼   ► you have an extra keyboard.

01:18:50 ◼   ► So like it won't show the on-stream keyboard by default and stuff like that.

01:18:53 ◼   ► So like the experience of using the Apple keyboard compared to any other keyboard is

01:18:57 ◼   ► just so much nicer because it is powered by the iPad.

01:19:02 ◼   ► It is easy to attach and remove.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And when you remove it, the keyboard is off.

01:19:05 ◼   ► The keyboard does not have its own separate power switch.

01:19:08 ◼   ► It is just it's there unless you detach it and then it's gone.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And it's just so much simpler to deal with.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Yep.

01:19:14 ◼   ► Couldn't agree more.

01:19:15 ◼   ► So the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro, it's spiritually the same, but in execution a fair

01:19:22 ◼   ► bit different.

01:19:23 ◼   ► So first of all, it includes a trackpad.

01:19:26 ◼   ► I'm just going to put that aside for a moment.

01:19:27 ◼   ► We're going to come back to that for sure.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But it includes a small trackpad on it, which is very interesting.

01:19:32 ◼   ► But what I am almost more jazzed about is the way in which you can mount the iPad and

01:19:39 ◼   ► use the iPad.

01:19:40 ◼   ► So the one big problem I have with the smart keyboard folio, whatever the hell it's called,

01:19:45 ◼   ► is that you have two different positions that you can sit the iPad in and both of them stink,

01:19:49 ◼   ► if you ask me.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Like there are some occasions when one of them is just perfect, but almost always they're

01:19:56 ◼   ► not where I want them to be.

01:19:58 ◼   ► And you have literally only two choices.

01:20:00 ◼   ► The way it works is all powered by magnets and divots.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And there is literally no other way to use it other than these two positions, short of

01:20:08 ◼   ► like building an erector set around it or something.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Well, with the Magic Keyboard, if I understand things right, it uses this crazy cantilever

01:20:18 ◼   ► system that looks like it should not possibly work.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Or if anything, it would be extremely unstable from the looks of it.

01:20:26 ◼   ► But from what we have understood as we record on the 18th, before any reviewers have these

01:20:30 ◼   ► in their hands, it's supposed to work, from what we're told from Apple.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And you can pitch the iPad at a varying range of angles, which is amazing.

01:20:42 ◼   ► I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's amazing and dramatically increases the usefulness

01:20:48 ◼   ► of this device.

01:20:49 ◼   ► And while we're increasing the usefulness of this device, it has its own USB-C port.

01:20:55 ◼   ► Now, mind you, that's not because you need to charge the keyboard.

01:20:59 ◼   ► The USB-C port is pass-through charging for the friggin' iPad.

01:21:04 ◼   ► How cool is that?

01:21:05 ◼   ► You plug in power to the keyboard.

01:21:10 ◼   ► The keyboard is empowering the iPad via the smart connector instead of the other way around,

01:21:16 ◼   ► and then that leaves you a port to do things with on your iPad.

01:21:20 ◼   ► So now, if I get one of these keyboards, my iPad has more ports than my frickin' computer

01:21:25 ◼   ► does, which is both ridiculous and awesome.

01:21:29 ◼   ► But Casey, most people who use an iPad don't need the port for anything other than charging.

01:21:33 ◼   ► They should just remove it.

01:21:34 ◼   ► You know, you're right.

01:21:35 ◼   ► They probably should.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Wireless charging all the way.

01:21:37 ◼   ► You're asking for a developer port, basically.

01:21:39 ◼   ► I am asking for a developer port.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Why should they ruin my iPad with a developer port I'm never going to use?

01:21:44 ◼   ► The funny thing about it is, I actually don't feel...

01:21:46 ◼   ► I totally take your point.

01:21:48 ◼   ► I actually don't think that this is going to provide any real utility for me, because

01:21:52 ◼   ► the amount of times I've plugged other things into this iPad is almost zero.

01:21:56 ◼   ► But I do like the fact that it's at least giving me the option to do this, and it makes

01:22:00 ◼   ► it more useful, including for other things like SD card dongle.

01:22:04 ◼   ► Well, there's a utility for it for sure, because the port that is on the keyboard case is low

01:22:10 ◼   ► down next to the desk.

01:22:12 ◼   ► It's not in mid-air next to the thing.

01:22:14 ◼   ► You know, it kind of makes sense where the, you know, traditionally where the Lightning/USB-C

01:22:20 ◼   ► port is on iOS devices.

01:22:22 ◼   ► But having this thing down, it makes it...

01:22:25 ◼   ► This whole thing with the iPad, setting aside the whole cultural war of interface paradigms

01:22:31 ◼   ► and all the iOS 14 potential changes and multitasking and all that other stuff, this is a build-it-yourself

01:22:37 ◼   ► floppy laptop.

01:22:38 ◼   ► That's how Marco's using his computer.

01:22:40 ◼   ► That's how this is used.

01:22:41 ◼   ► It has advantages and disadvantages.

01:22:43 ◼   ► One of the disadvantages for a long time has been, yeah, but when you...

01:22:48 ◼   ► Is it really set up to be a laptop?

01:22:50 ◼   ► Lips don't have their power cord connect to the middle side of the display.

01:22:56 ◼   ► Because of the way iPads are, that's where the port is, the whole computer is in the

01:23:00 ◼   ► display, it's a different arrangement, it's a little bit top-heavy, yada yada.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Having this cord down at desk level is going to be a big upgrade for people who spend a

01:23:08 ◼   ► lot of their day at a desk with an iPad plugged in, right?

01:23:14 ◼   ► I think the position of this port is just as important, if not more important, than

01:23:19 ◼   ► the fact that now you have two of them.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Because this really is just charging, you can't use it for all your peripherals.

01:23:23 ◼   ► You still have to put your peripherals and dongles dangling off the side of the computer.

01:23:27 ◼   ► I get that, you can't route all that through the smart connector, it makes sense.

01:23:31 ◼   ► But that I think is the most exciting thing ergonomically.

01:23:34 ◼   ► I do really want to go to a store someday when this plague is over and play with this

01:23:40 ◼   ► thing to see how the cantilever stuff works.

01:23:43 ◼   ► One point I haven't seen anyone mention, although I'm super far behind on Twitter so I don't

01:23:46 ◼   ► know and this just came out today.

01:23:48 ◼   ► When you look at the design they showed in profile on Apple's site and they have the

01:23:52 ◼   ► strange handwriting font, "Smooth angle adjustment," the thing that Casey was just getting excited

01:23:56 ◼   ► about.

01:23:57 ◼   ► "Look, I can put it any angle I want."

01:23:58 ◼   ► By the way, my wife has the same keyboard as Marco, I barely use it and I have already

01:24:04 ◼   ► been frustrated by those two angles.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Casey's right, they're never quite right and it's very annoying.

01:24:10 ◼   ► So this smooth adjustment, you look at it and you're like, "Wow, it's smooth adjustment

01:24:13 ◼   ► because the whole iPad is hanging in midair.

01:24:16 ◼   ► How does it even work?

01:24:17 ◼   ► Look at this amazing thing that Apple has done, so daring, so light, so floating in

01:24:21 ◼   ► the air."

01:24:22 ◼   ► There's a reason it's floating in the air and that reason is not because it looks cool

01:24:29 ◼   ► and it's a daring thing to do.

01:24:31 ◼   ► It floats in the air because if it didn't, you wouldn't have at least one row of keys

01:24:35 ◼   ► in that keyboard.

01:24:36 ◼   ► If you look at how the angles work out, at the steepest of the angles, like the two angles

01:24:42 ◼   ► you have on the current keyboards, like at the 10 or 15 degrees off perfectly vertical

01:24:48 ◼   ► or whatever, if you extend the line of the iPad down, you will see that you would lose

01:24:54 ◼   ► whatever the top row of keys is on this thing.

01:24:57 ◼   ► To bring it back to what we mentioned before, the trackpad, how did they find room for a

01:25:00 ◼   ► trackpad?

01:25:01 ◼   ► Is this keyboard only available on the big giant iPad?

01:25:04 ◼   ► No, it's available on the 11-inch model.

01:25:06 ◼   ► How is that possible?

01:25:07 ◼   ► I look at the 11-inch model now and I see keys right from the edge of the iPad screen

01:25:10 ◼   ► all the way to the edge of this thing.

01:25:11 ◼   ► I just see keys, keys, keys.

01:25:14 ◼   ► How is there any more room?

01:25:15 ◼   ► How can you find room for an entire trackpad?

01:25:17 ◼   ► The answer is that the keyboard basically can now be sort of under the display.

01:25:22 ◼   ► The display is over your fingers in certain angles when you were touching that top row

01:25:26 ◼   ► of keys.

01:25:27 ◼   ► That's how they found room for all this stuff.

01:25:29 ◼   ► You can't get blood from a stone.

01:25:31 ◼   ► They didn't make the keys super duper tiny.

01:25:33 ◼   ► They found room for a very short trackpad by allowing the computer to hover over some

01:25:40 ◼   ► of the keyboard at certain angles, which I think is super clever and a perfect Apple

01:25:44 ◼   ► solution of like, "How do we do this?

01:25:47 ◼   ► Can we only do it on the big model?

01:25:49 ◼   ► Can we not have a trackpad at all?"

01:25:51 ◼   ► This solution, if it works, is genius.

01:25:53 ◼   ► If it doesn't work, then it's going to be an embarrassing thing that keeps falling over

01:25:56 ◼   ► on people's laps and gets people angry.

01:25:58 ◼   ► But considering none of us have seen it in person yet, I'm willing to believe right now

01:26:01 ◼   ► that it is genius.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that's so many unknowns.

01:26:06 ◼   ► This is why I'm hesitant to be excited about this for my own needs, just because I do wonder

01:26:13 ◼   ► about that.

01:26:14 ◼   ► That being said, you're right about the hinge angles.

01:26:17 ◼   ► That's a huge thing.

01:26:18 ◼   ► There's a reason why laptop hinges don't snap into only two preset angles.

01:26:24 ◼   ► It's much nicer to be able to adjust it freely within a reasonable range because your needs

01:26:29 ◼   ► and preferences and situations change, and that's nice.

01:26:32 ◼   ► So if you're going to push this thing to be more laptop-like, which is what the market

01:26:35 ◼   ► seems to want at the high end here, by all means, give it a real hinge.

01:26:40 ◼   ► And that is what they appear to have done here.

01:26:43 ◼   ► One concern I have, though, is with the current one, when I'm using the keyboard, which, as

01:26:48 ◼   ► you mentioned, the keys go pretty much all the way to the bottom of it.

01:26:51 ◼   ► What that creates, when you include where the back of the iPad is, it allows you to

01:26:57 ◼   ► place the iPad on a very short-depth surface.

01:27:01 ◼   ► In my case, where it usually lives is on a kitchen counter right against a cabinet, so

01:27:05 ◼   ► the current footprint of the previous 11-inch with the smart keyboard with it propped up

01:27:11 ◼   ► like that, that's about as much depth as will fit on that part of my counter.

01:27:16 ◼   ► I actually think this might not, because this is leaning the iPad back more at certain angles,

01:27:21 ◼   ► and I think even though the total size of the keyboard case obviously is going to be

01:27:25 ◼   ► the size of the iPad, which hasn't changed, I'm a little bit concerned that it won't fit

01:27:30 ◼   ► where I need it to go now.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Yeah, you can make this screen totally vertical.

01:27:34 ◼   ► It'll take a lesser room than your current one does.

01:27:36 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:27:37 ◼   ► I have to look at that.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I'm going to look at that.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Go look at the angle adjustment thing.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Do the stupid vertical scroll thing.

01:27:42 ◼   ► I got to hear my wife, whether she knew it or not, get frustrated with the vertical scroll

01:27:46 ◼   ► because I sent her to the iPad page to take a look at it, and she's like, "I just want

01:27:50 ◼   ► to see the thing," and I hear her mouse be going, "Shink, shrink, shrink, shrink, shrink,

01:27:53 ◼   ► shrink," because you just want to see the stuff, but you have to basically manually

01:27:57 ◼   ► -- it's like a jack-in-the-box, you're rotating the handle to go through all the animations

01:28:02 ◼   ► to get to the -- anyway, do that on the page.

01:28:04 ◼   ► Somewhere when your scroll thumb is somewhere in the middle, you can make it perfectly vertical,

01:28:08 ◼   ► so it is -- assuming it stays in that position, which you can't really tell from this animation,

01:28:13 ◼   ► I think you're probably fine.

01:28:15 ◼   ► That's interesting, yeah, because now that I'm looking at it -- yeah, you might be right.

01:28:18 ◼   ► I have to be able to see it, basically, and play with it.

01:28:20 ◼   ► And the other thing --

01:28:21 ◼   ► Look at the font, by the way, on that smooth angle adjustment, if you're on that thing,

01:28:24 ◼   ► see where it says "smooth angle adjustment"?

01:28:25 ◼   ► What is with that font?

01:28:27 ◼   ► It's an Apple Pencil ad.

01:28:28 ◼   ► Look, you can write with this.

01:28:29 ◼   ► It's creative.

01:28:30 ◼   ► It's fun.

01:28:31 ◼   ► I know, but among all handwriting fonts, it is an interesting choice.

01:28:34 ◼   ► An all-caps, very sort of aggressive marker.

01:28:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:28:37 ◼   ► I don't know enough fonts to complain about this.

01:28:38 ◼   ► It just strikes me as strange.

01:28:39 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a cute -- like, look, you could create this entire ad on your iPad Pro kind

01:28:44 ◼   ► of thing.

01:28:45 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:28:46 ◼   ► All right.

01:28:47 ◼   ► So I do have a couple other bonuses and a couple other concerns.

01:28:50 ◼   ► So my main other concern, besides -- so I am concerned about possible increased depth

01:28:56 ◼   ► of the footprint by having this mechanism and being able to do that and having the trackpad

01:29:00 ◼   ► push the keyboard up and everything.

01:29:01 ◼   ► I also -- you know, this is going to sound completely ridiculous.

01:29:06 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure the previous -- which is now still for sale, but we're going to call it

01:29:10 ◼   ► the previous smart keyboard -- I think that used butterfly keys.

01:29:14 ◼   ► It was this fabric-covered butterfly key thing.

01:29:17 ◼   ► I never had a single issue with those keyboards.

01:29:20 ◼   ► I had two of them.

01:29:21 ◼   ► First I had the -- or three.

01:29:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I had the 9.7, then the 10.5, then the 11X.

01:29:25 ◼   ► Those were three different ones of those keyboards.

01:29:27 ◼   ► Never had any problems with any of them.

01:29:28 ◼   ► I use them every day, and I actually don't hate them.

01:29:32 ◼   ► I don't love them, but I don't hate them.

01:29:34 ◼   ► They have a totally different feel and keycap design than the laptop butterfly keyboards,

01:29:40 ◼   ► and for whatever reason, those differences, I liked them.

01:29:42 ◼   ► They were fine.

01:29:43 ◼   ► And they seem totally necessary for this kind of, you know, super thin, super lightweight

01:29:48 ◼   ► thing.

01:29:49 ◼   ► So this is the only time that you will hear me defending what is -- I don't even know if

01:29:53 ◼   ► anybody has ever even confirmed that they are butterfly keys, but I think they're butterfly

01:29:57 ◼   ► keys in those.

01:29:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Assuming they are.

01:30:01 ◼   ► So I actually will defend that butterfly keyboard, because that butterfly keyboard was actually

01:30:06 ◼   ► very well sealed against the environment.

01:30:08 ◼   ► The keycaps were, like, you know, narrower and had lots of space between them, and it

01:30:13 ◼   ► was inexpensive to replace, relatively speaking, if anything ever went wrong, but nothing ever

01:30:18 ◼   ► did for me.

01:30:19 ◼   ► So that was fine.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Now going to the Magic Keyboard, I think I'm going to lose if I get this, which, bonus

01:30:26 ◼   ► feature, I'm able to without getting the new iPad, because this Magic Keyboard will also

01:30:32 ◼   ► work with the 2018 iPad Pro models.

01:30:35 ◼   ► So if you have the iPad Pros that look like this one, it will work with those, too.

01:30:41 ◼   ► The downside is it costs a lot of money, but we'll get to that.

01:30:45 ◼   ► But I actually think this actually might be worse for me.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Even if I can get past the angle issues, because I think I'd be a little bit more worried about

01:30:54 ◼   ► things like having food around it.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Because what if crumbs get under the Magic Keycap?

01:30:59 ◼   ► Scissor mechanisms, like the Magic Keyboard, are way more resilient to stuff getting under

01:31:03 ◼   ► them than the butterfly was.

01:31:04 ◼   ► But the previous butterfly keyboards for the iPad were sealed.

01:31:07 ◼   ► They had that, like, fabric-y kind of, you know, sealing layer on top of them.

01:31:11 ◼   ► And so they were basically immune to stuff like that happening.

01:31:14 ◼   ► Like, something that almost never happened.

01:31:16 ◼   ► And I had no qualms, no reservations, no nervousness about operating it while I'm cooking, or, you

01:31:23 ◼   ► know, just having it around food and stuff, having it around the kitchen.

01:31:27 ◼   ► I never was worried about, like, what might get into it and break the keyboard.

01:31:31 ◼   ► Whereas having a more advanced and, you know, regularly open scissor mechanism, like what

01:31:36 ◼   ► the Magic Keyboard has, might actually be worse for that.

01:31:40 ◼   ► It might at least give me more anxiety about that.

01:31:42 ◼   ► I think you should be more excited, because they'll feel better.

01:31:45 ◼   ► I mean, I would expect that they will.

01:31:47 ◼   ► I know you said you like the other one with the butterfly thing, but come on, these uncovered

01:31:50 ◼   ► scissor switch keys have to feel better, right?

01:31:53 ◼   ► They probably will feel better.

01:31:54 ◼   ► But I don't know that that'll be enough, like, to get me over the fear of stuff getting under

01:31:59 ◼   ► them.

01:32:00 ◼   ► I don't think you should be afraid, given how much I personally have eaten over scissor

01:32:03 ◼   ► switch keyboards at work, and how much I've seen other people in the office eat over the

01:32:07 ◼   ► keyboards, and the exact amount of food that I have shaken out of my scissor switch and

01:32:10 ◼   ► Apple keyboards.

01:32:11 ◼   ► I think you're right.

01:32:12 ◼   ► Alright, we'll see.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Gross.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Gross but true.

01:32:15 ◼   ► So, I think, you know, where the iPad has always been really, really nice for me, I

01:32:19 ◼   ► will use it in situations and places like the kitchen, or like, you know, certain things

01:32:23 ◼   ► when you're out and about, where I wouldn't take out a MacBook, because I wouldn't want

01:32:28 ◼   ► damage to occur to the MacBook, whereas the iPad seemed to be a little more better suited

01:32:33 ◼   ► to certain situations like that.

01:32:35 ◼   ► So I hope this maintains that, if I decide to go this route.

01:32:38 ◼   ► The other concern I have, besides price, which again is big, is it's probably going to be

01:32:43 ◼   ► significantly heavier.

01:32:45 ◼   ► I don't think anybody has weight specs on it yet, but already, when you feel an iPad

01:32:49 ◼   ► Pro by itself, it feels, "Wow, this is great," then you stick one of the Folio cases on a

01:32:54 ◼   ► keyboard or not, but especially the keyboard ones, it becomes significantly heavier and

01:33:00 ◼   ► bulkier, you know, just a bigger, it's a much bigger thing.

01:33:04 ◼   ► This is probably going to add yet more bulk and heft compared even to the regular or other

01:33:10 ◼   ► keyboard cover.

01:33:12 ◼   ► I worry, like, how big and chunky is the resulting combination going to be?

01:33:18 ◼   ► And at that point, like, are you in MacBook territory?

01:33:21 ◼   ► Probably, right?

01:33:22 ◼   ► You're probably very close to at least the MacBook Air territory at that point in both

01:33:24 ◼   ► price and size and weight.

01:33:28 ◼   ► So I don't know, I think, those are my two big concerns about this.

01:33:32 ◼   ► If I had to say, "I'm really concerned about size and weight, and I'm really concerned

01:33:36 ◼   ► about how high-end and fragile will this feel.

01:33:39 ◼   ► Will it feel like a laptop that I have to protect a little bit, or will it feel more

01:33:43 ◼   ► like the iPad keyboard cover before that I knew I could kind of abuse and it would be

01:33:48 ◼   ► fine?"

01:33:49 ◼   ► Yeah, you're definitely in big, floppy laptop territory for sure, and I think the extra

01:33:53 ◼   ► weight, I would also guess, is going to be extra weight if only because of whatever mechanism

01:33:56 ◼   ► is in that big, fat hinge.

01:33:58 ◼   ► That mechanism has got to be weighty, and the rest of it, I don't see how they saved

01:34:02 ◼   ► much weight on the rest of it.

01:34:03 ◼   ► This has backlights in it, too, by the way.

01:34:06 ◼   ► So I think the weight is going to be equal or greater than the other keyboard.

01:34:12 ◼   ► The good thing about it, though, is, again, in big, floppy laptop territory, having the

01:34:15 ◼   ► weight concentrated in that hinge down at the bottom is good in terms of trying to balance

01:34:21 ◼   ► the equation of the weird sort of reverse laptop where all the weight is in the "screen"

01:34:25 ◼   ► because that's where the whole computer is, and the keyboard is lighter.

01:34:29 ◼   ► So I think that could work out to aid stability.

01:34:32 ◼   ► Again, it's hard to tell without having to use one of these things.

01:34:35 ◼   ► So it being a laptop territory, what they're trying to do is get most of the benefits of

01:34:41 ◼   ► laptops, the sort of secure stability, the good keyboard, and now the trackpad, while

01:34:46 ◼   ► still maintaining all the benefits of an iPad.

01:34:49 ◼   ► And you mentioned that this is getting into laptop territory, it's getting there in terms

01:34:52 ◼   ► of price, and I would once again make the point that it is faster than all of Apple's

01:34:57 ◼   ► laptops.

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01:36:47 ◼   ► I am super amped about this keyboard and I have pretty much decided I'm going to get

01:36:51 ◼   ► one for my iPad.

01:36:53 ◼   ► And yeah, it is worth noting, like Marco said, it does work with the 2018 era iPad Pros.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Basically any iPad Pro that does not have a home button, it'll work with that.

01:37:04 ◼   ► I also wanted to quickly call out, you know, a lot of times we see or know that Apple has

01:37:11 ◼   ► been planning something for a long time.

01:37:14 ◼   ► And this is one of the occasions that it has been just so eminently obvious to me how far

01:37:20 ◼   ► ahead of us Apple is because if you look at the smart connector on my iPad Pro, to the

01:37:28 ◼   ► best of my knowledge, I have never nor could I put power into that connector up until today,

01:37:35 ◼   ► or really in May when these keyboards ship, which is a bummer.

01:37:38 ◼   ► I really wish I could get my hands on one immediately.

01:37:39 ◼   ► But that actually isn't entirely true.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Oh no?

01:37:43 ◼   ► Logitech made some weird charging like mount for it that almost nobody bought.

01:37:49 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't know that.

01:37:50 ◼   ► It charged it very slowly, I think.

01:37:52 ◼   ► And this actually might have the same issue.

01:37:54 ◼   ► I don't know what the specs are for the smart connector charging input, but it might not

01:38:01 ◼   ► be a very fast way to charge your iPad.

01:38:03 ◼   ► It might just kind of keep it topped off, right?

01:38:05 ◼   ► Or it might charge it very, very slowly.

01:38:07 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:38:08 ◼   ► Maybe they've raised the wattage for the new iPad, but maybe if you use it on the one that

01:38:13 ◼   ► you and I have, maybe it will be slow.

01:38:15 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:38:16 ◼   ► But it might not be a great charger.

01:38:19 ◼   ► But it has always been a charger.

01:38:20 ◼   ► Just almost no one ever used it.

01:38:21 ◼   ► And speaking of Logitech, by the way, Logitech has a keyboard with a trackpad in it announced

01:38:27 ◼   ► today as well.

01:38:28 ◼   ► So another one of those privileged partners that gets to announce similar products on

01:38:32 ◼   ► the same day as Apple that surely worked with Apple on that product.

01:38:35 ◼   ► And that's for the other iPads, the lesser iPads that Apple did not decide to make this

01:38:41 ◼   ► product for.

01:38:42 ◼   ► So if you've got an iPad with a home button and you want a keyboard for it that has a

01:38:45 ◼   ► trackpad, Logitech may have a model for you.

01:38:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:49 ◼   ► But I think Marco, you said this a minute ago.

01:38:51 ◼   ► I think it was John that said this a minute ago.

01:38:53 ◼   ► It is backlit, which is not something that I can say I've ever really wanted, but it's

01:38:57 ◼   ► additive and it's not going to hurt anything.

01:38:59 ◼   ► So why not?

01:39:01 ◼   ► But I cannot stress enough how excited I am about the way in which you can tilt this thing

01:39:07 ◼   ► to work at almost any angle.

01:39:09 ◼   ► And Marco, you've said this, I think you said it a fair bit last week.

01:39:12 ◼   ► I think you've said it tonight as well.

01:39:15 ◼   ► Having a physical keyboard attached to an iPad really dramatically changes and in my

01:39:20 ◼   ► personal opinion increases its utility.

01:39:24 ◼   ► It changes how you interact with and use the iPad.

01:39:27 ◼   ► And it wasn't until I got this iPad Pro late 2018 that I realized, because this is the

01:39:34 ◼   ► first one I had with a keyboard that was always attached, it wasn't until I got this one that

01:39:38 ◼   ► I realized the profound difference having a keyboard that is attached to the iPad makes.

01:39:44 ◼   ► And I can totally understand how the Jasons and Mics of the world would end up in the

01:39:48 ◼   ► bridge keyboard or what have you if they were going to be treating this more like a laptop.

01:39:53 ◼   ► I think this is workable with the SmartFolio as a laptop-like thing, but this Magic Keyboard

01:39:59 ◼   ► looks like it's going to be much, much better in that department.

01:40:03 ◼   ► And the other thing that I'm still evaluating but is very intriguing and I never would have

01:40:07 ◼   ► thought I wanted is mouse support in iPad OS.

01:40:12 ◼   ► And I think it's probably about time we talk about that.

01:40:14 ◼   ► So this Magic Keyboard includes, as has been briefly mentioned, a very, very small or short

01:40:19 ◼   ► squat trackpad on it.

01:40:22 ◼   ► And in iOS 13.4, which as we record was released today for developers and will be released

01:40:27 ◼   ► in like a week for regular people, it has mouse support everywhere.

01:40:34 ◼   ► It's not just an accessibility hack anymore.

01:40:37 ◼   ► It is full, honest to goodness, mouse support everywhere.

01:40:39 ◼   ► And so I put it on my iPad Pro earlier today and I connected it to a Magic Mouse.

01:40:44 ◼   ► I have not tried it with a trackpad yet, but I connected it to a Magic Mouse.

01:40:48 ◼   ► I think I like it.

01:40:50 ◼   ► I don't know that I'll use it a lot, but I think I like it.

01:40:54 ◼   ► And I'm very disturbed by the fact that I think I like it.

01:40:59 ◼   ► And one of the things that I find absolutely fascinating, but I'm not sure if I like, is

01:41:05 ◼   ► when you're mousing around, like let's take Safari.

01:41:08 ◼   ► So I have my mouse connected to my iPad right now and I'm looking at Safari.

01:41:13 ◼   ► And as I'm mousing across the toolbar, there's the bookmarks icon, which is like the little

01:41:17 ◼   ► open book.

01:41:18 ◼   ► As I mouse from left to right past the back and forward arrows, which are currently disabled

01:41:23 ◼   ► because I'm on a blank page, and then I hit the book and suddenly this circular mouse

01:41:28 ◼   ► cursor goes away because by the way, it's a circle, not an arrow.

01:41:32 ◼   ► The circular mouse cursor goes away and suddenly I've got like this blob that's highlighting

01:41:38 ◼   ► the book, the particular icon on the toolbar that I'm on.

01:41:42 ◼   ► And then as I continue swiping from left to right, I eventually like leave that toolbar

01:41:47 ◼   ► icon and now I'm back to a circle again.

01:41:49 ◼   ► And then I hit the address bar and suddenly I'm not an eyebar, but I'm like a pipe and

01:41:54 ◼   ► you know, it's this whole one and so forth.

01:41:55 ◼   ► But the key is that your cursor can optionally change to highlight the particular thing that

01:42:01 ◼   ► you're on.

01:42:02 ◼   ► Whether or not you, you two and you, the listener enjoy this, I think it is just such an unbelievably

01:42:08 ◼   ► clever and interesting way to adapt mousing to a touch first device.

01:42:14 ◼   ► And I just think it's extremely, extremely cool.

01:42:17 ◼   ► Now have either of you had any time to play with this?

01:42:19 ◼   ► Marco, have you played with this?

01:42:20 ◼   ► I've seen a video of it, two things.

01:42:22 ◼   ► One that experience that you're experiencing there, that's a preference.

01:42:26 ◼   ► You can change it so it doesn't do that so that the cursor is not subsumed.

01:42:30 ◼   ► But two, the second thing that made me think about when I saw, I bought a demo video up

01:42:35 ◼   ► demonstrating this.

01:42:36 ◼   ► I think Jason put it up on a Six Colors channel, it's on YouTube, we'll try to put a link for

01:42:40 ◼   ► the show notes.

01:42:41 ◼   ► It's not so much a cursor as a ghost finger.

01:42:45 ◼   ► That's how I'm conceptualizing what I see.

01:42:47 ◼   ► Because we know in the world of the Mac, you have a cursor that's on the screen, it's controlled

01:42:51 ◼   ► by your mouse or your trackpad or whatever.

01:42:53 ◼   ► The default cursor is the typical little arrow from the early days of the GUI and the Mac.

01:42:58 ◼   ► And it changes based on where you are.

01:43:00 ◼   ► If you're in a text field, it becomes a little insertion point, I-beam thing.

01:43:03 ◼   ► If you're over a link, it becomes a little Mickey Mouse hand with the pointing finger.

01:43:08 ◼   ► Other applications have different cursors and different modes, but it's always a cursor.

01:43:12 ◼   ► And on the iPad, in accessibility mode, before this new OS came out, it was like a circular

01:43:18 ◼   ► blob.

01:43:20 ◼   ► And you can conceptualize that circular blob as trying to say, look, iPad OS doesn't have

01:43:25 ◼   ► a cursor per se, but here is a proxy for your finger, especially if it's an accessibility

01:43:29 ◼   ► feature.

01:43:30 ◼   ► It's like, well, if you can't use your finger, you can use this other device and this is

01:43:32 ◼   ► your virtual finger, right?

01:43:34 ◼   ► This new mode where it's like, okay, we're adding cursor support.

01:43:37 ◼   ► I think some people thought, oh, there's going to be a little Mac OS arrow on my screen.

01:43:42 ◼   ► No.

01:43:43 ◼   ► The default cursor is still the ghost finger blob, right?

01:43:47 ◼   ► But it changes based on context.

01:43:48 ◼   ► Does it change to an I-beam?

01:43:50 ◼   ► Does it change to a finger with the hand pointing?

01:43:54 ◼   ► It changes to different ghostly shapes for sure.

01:43:58 ◼   ► Casey just talked about one of them that you'll see in the video when you go across the buttons,

01:44:01 ◼   ► it changes to the shape of the button.

01:44:03 ◼   ► In fact, that interaction sort of subsumes your ghost finger to becoming a new thing

01:44:07 ◼   ► if that preference is not set.

01:44:09 ◼   ► The I-beam, it's vertical, but it's not really an I.

01:44:13 ◼   ► It's more like a lowercase L or a capital I in a font with no serifs.

01:44:18 ◼   ► It's a long, skinny lozenge.

01:44:20 ◼   ► So it evokes the idea of an I-beam or a selection thing, but it is still a ghostly transparent

01:44:25 ◼   ► blob, a thing that would be absolutely impossible on a one-bit computer screen when the Mac

01:44:29 ◼   ► was introduced, right?

01:44:32 ◼   ► Can you tell me, Casey, if you go over a link in Safari what kind of ghost finger you get?

01:44:37 ◼   ► It is, well, that's a button.

01:44:39 ◼   ► Where's like a link?

01:44:40 ◼   ► Of course I choose a page that has like no traditional links on it.

01:44:42 ◼   ► No, it's still just the ghost finger.

01:44:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:44:44 ◼   ► So in the 10-minute video I saw where Craig Fettire demonstrates all these various features,

01:44:49 ◼   ► it always looked like a ghost finger to me.

01:44:51 ◼   ► So that I feel like is the mental model that Apple is, the sort of aesthetic and semantic

01:44:58 ◼   ► model for this interaction is it's more precise than a finger because you can't make your

01:45:03 ◼   ► finger into like a vertical bar that can cleanly split words and select text.

01:45:08 ◼   ► But the fact that it is dim and transparent, like it's ghostly.

01:45:12 ◼   ► It is fatter than the precise pointing devices on the Mac because the entire interface of

01:45:17 ◼   ► the iPad is fatter because of all our fat fingers, right?

01:45:23 ◼   ► But they want to give you more precision without saying the door is busted wide open, feel

01:45:27 ◼   ► free to make iPad apps that are absolutely impossible to use with your finger, right?

01:45:32 ◼   ► And the sort of way to nudge the world to say Apple doesn't want you to do that is even

01:45:38 ◼   ► the cursor is a little bit chunky.

01:45:40 ◼   ► Like the default cursor is the fat ghost finger.

01:45:43 ◼   ► The Eyebeam cursor is a lozenge of transparentness, right?

01:45:48 ◼   ► So cursor support, you know, it looks like it's going to do all the things that you would

01:45:53 ◼   ► like it to do, you got hover states, you've got all the different text selection, but

01:45:58 ◼   ► it's not the same as on the Mac.

01:46:00 ◼   ► Like when you select a thing, you can just click and drag the whole paragraph, which

01:46:03 ◼   ► is not the traditional Mac paradigm for moving text around because you can do it with your

01:46:08 ◼   ► finger and you can also do it with the mouse.

01:46:10 ◼   ► So kind of like when all of the multitasking stuff was introduced to iOS or iPhone OS,

01:46:18 ◼   ► like every time iOS has made an advancement, what Apple has done has made sense to me,

01:46:23 ◼   ► like in terms of the paradigm that, you know, like, oh, within the world of iOS, this way

01:46:29 ◼   ► of doing multitasking certainly makes sense.

01:46:31 ◼   ► It fits in like it looks, it's not just taking what was done on the Mac and shoving it on

01:46:36 ◼   ► their iOS devices.

01:46:37 ◼   ► It is purpose built for this context and it looks like it fits in.

01:46:41 ◼   ► The question is always, okay, it fits in and it's part of the model.

01:46:45 ◼   ► How does it compare in terms of efficiency and discoverability and ease of use and all

01:46:52 ◼   ► the things that we've talked about that you can judge and interface by?

01:46:56 ◼   ► Like this gives me a little bit more power, but how easy is it to use?

01:47:00 ◼   ► If I learn this set of rules about the Ghost Finger, can I apply them across the entire

01:47:04 ◼   ► operating system and that will give me a leg up in every application or is it custom for

01:47:08 ◼   ► each?

01:47:09 ◼   ► And the same questions we can ask about any aspect of a GUI.

01:47:12 ◼   ► Again, looking at a five minute video on the day that it was announced, I think the Ghost

01:47:16 ◼   ► Finger is probably going to be more widely applicable and more pleasing to use than let's

01:47:23 ◼   ► say iPad multitasking, which has already had a couple of revisions and is not really where

01:47:28 ◼   ► it should be as we've discussed on past shows.

01:47:31 ◼   ► But more importantly, it is not just the Mac cursor shoved on your iPad, which I think

01:47:37 ◼   ► is smart.

01:47:40 ◼   ► And I'm not going to say it's limiting what they can do because they can do whatever they

01:47:46 ◼   ► want to do, but initially it seems like they're intentionally limiting the functionality to

01:47:51 ◼   ► things that are reasonable to imagine might be part of a touch interface as opposed to

01:47:56 ◼   ► saying the door is wide open for you to make pixel precise interfaces on iPadOS.

01:48:03 ◼   ► This clearly has had a lot of thought and I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm sure there's

01:48:07 ◼   ► problems, but it's had a lot of thought.

01:48:10 ◼   ► And again, as I was just sitting on the couch using my iPad with a mouse attached to it

01:48:17 ◼   ► paired with it, I don't know that I would choose to do this.

01:48:21 ◼   ► Me personally, I don't know that I would choose to do it very often, but if I was someone like

01:48:24 ◼   ► a Jason or a Federico or a Mike, this would change my friggin life, man.

01:48:31 ◼   ► If I was using an iPad as my computer, as my professional device, having a trackpad

01:48:37 ◼   ► or mouse either paired or attached in the case of the Magic Keyboard would absolutely

01:48:43 ◼   ► change my relationship with the iPad.

01:48:45 ◼   ► Now for me, that just uses it as a recreational device for the most part.

01:48:49 ◼   ► I think it would be cool to have the trackpad for when you need it.

01:48:52 ◼   ► I can't say that I expect myself to be mousing around the iPad often, but I do think this

01:48:59 ◼   ► is a very welcome development and I'm glad that we didn't just get a pointer and we got

01:49:04 ◼   ► the ghost finger, as you said, Jon.

01:49:07 ◼   ► It seems, at a glance, having used it for just about an hour, it seems extremely well

01:49:11 ◼   ► thought out and very well done.

01:49:12 ◼   ► And I'm super excited to see what apps do with this over time.