00:00:00 ◼ ► All right, well, Godspeed with your move back to reality. I'm sorry, your summer of fun is over.
00:00:05 ◼ ► We're just discussing. I was discussing today when we were out getting dinner, the two people I know who do these weird end-of-August, beginning-of-September, quote-unquote, summer vacations. Summer is over.
00:00:16 ◼ ► Well, but it's still hot, and if you can get there right after the peak time ends when no one else is there, it's kind of nice.
00:00:23 ◼ ► It just doesn't feel like summer anymore for me. Once we get into this time, the grass is all yellow and the tomatoes are gone through. You've been past that part. Sometimes it actually is cool.
00:00:36 ◼ ► When I want a summer vacation, I want it to be like, I even get kind of annoyed when my Long Island vacation ends up creeping into August. I'm like, "July, man. July 4th. The heart of summer. Ridiculous heat. Barbecues. Constant blazing sun." That's what I want.
00:00:54 ◼ ► August is the dog days of summer. Yeah, I think it's fine, but I want it to be in the nicest, middlest part of summer, the summeriest part of summer. August is the dog days and June is early when it's still cold, and September is practically fall.
00:01:08 ◼ ► Remember, for me, we do have preschool that kind of delineates the end of summer, but we don't have a regular all-day school school. So next year...
00:01:21 ◼ ► Then you'll be stuck with the rest of the suckers who have kids and the school schedules.
00:01:27 ◼ ► At 11 o'clock, the next Friday night concert series for the Dave Matthews Band will be aired on Sirius XM. And so what that means is I would like to record said concert because, unlike Fish, who gets it in this capacity anyway, the only way to get good recordings of Dave Matthews is by acquiring them when Sirius XM airs them.
00:01:52 ◼ ► Does Sirius broadcast it over the web? Is it better quality than Sirius Radio, which is like recording a concert over a telephone?
00:02:02 ◼ ► A fair question, and I want to argue with you in order to defend my honor, but your point is 100% fair that Sirius XM... I actually like the programming a fair bit, which is weird because I really hate traditional radio. It's the same six songs over and over again, but I think because you can have 305 channels or whatever.
00:02:22 ◼ ► I actually do like the programming on XM, but holy smokes, the audio quality over the air is terrible. Oh my god, it's terrible. And the only reason that we as in the List family can even stream from the web is because they had a pretty darn good deal a month or two ago where you can get a year's worth of service for something like five or six bucks a month.
00:02:47 ◼ ► And I've heard that you can get them cheaper from time to time, but that was the cheapest that I had seen. Now, Marco's Horror Stories, I believe it was Marco, maybe it was you, John. It's always John, so I'll just... Okay, let me rephrase. John's Horror Stories...
00:03:11 ◼ ► Oh yeah, in an accord made like this century? Yeah, I mean, I got my first XM standalone radio at the end of college, and then I had it for a while after that.
00:03:22 ◼ ► And I haven't had it in probably, geez, probably about 10 years now, but I was big into satellite radio at the time.
00:03:28 ◼ ► This was before cell phones and data streaming became as easy and widespread as they are now.
00:03:40 ◼ ► So here's the thing. I do like the programming. I have zero defense for the audio quality.
00:03:45 ◼ ► And I've never actually listened, like, I've never paid attention to the couple of recordings I've made like this to see if the audio quality is better over the web.
00:04:01 ◼ ► And like I was starting to say, the only reason we paid for it is because Aaron really likes it.
00:04:04 ◼ ► And so as like an early, I mean, it was either a anniversary gift or an early birthday gift, one or the other, I got her a year's worth of service in her car.
00:04:18 ◼ ► And also because of Marco's horror stories, and again, I'll attribute John because it's always John, even in this time it wasn't John.
00:04:45 ◼ ► And they just make it as hard as possible to cancel. And of course you can't do it online.
00:04:49 ◼ ► And then after you cancel, they end up sending you solicitations in the mail for like three years later.
00:05:08 ◼ ► And right now they should be more like a radio streaming service now, which I think, I mean,
00:05:12 ◼ ► Sirius has always had really terrible adoption of actual technology, like modern web stuff, apps, streaming.
00:05:24 ◼ ► They are very much not a tech company, which is a shame because they are, whether they like it or not,
00:05:46 ◼ ► But whatever codec they are using, it was like whatever they launched the satellites with,
00:05:53 ◼ ► And it was both XM's and Sirius' satellites and they were different and they merged them, I don't know.
00:05:57 ◼ ► But anyway, the codecs that they use for the satellite broadcast are very low bit rate.
00:06:02 ◼ ► And they realize that they only have a finite amount of satellite bandwidth that they can use,
00:06:08 ◼ ► but they realized years ago that if they added more and more channels with certain celebrity tie-ins
00:06:13 ◼ ► and various things like that, they would have more to market and more to get more subscribers in.
00:06:18 ◼ ► So they just would compress channels more and more and more and allocate fewer and fewer bits to each channel.
00:06:27 ◼ ► So it's actually, not only is the over the air quality not very good, but it's actually gotten worse over time.
00:06:35 ◼ ► So whatever you're streaming online, modern devices and web browsers probably aren't even capable of built in decoding
00:06:47 ◼ ► So if they're just streaming AAC or MP3 streams, it's got to be better than whenever they're broadcasting.
00:06:52 ◼ ► I would assume so. I haven't looked into it. I totally understand what you're saying. I haven't looked into it.
00:07:00 ◼ ► I thought to myself, you know what you should do is you should use one of those custom credit card numbers with an expiration.
00:07:08 ◼ ► So that this way, if you have problems canceling in a year, the credit card that you gave them, it's going to disappear in a year.
00:07:17 ◼ ► No problem. And I was talking to somebody, maybe it was Marco, maybe it was somebody else, who quickly pointed out to me,
00:07:23 ◼ ► What they'll end up doing is throwing you to collections and taking all of your money if at all possible
00:07:29 ◼ ► because just because you have an expired credit card is not a good enough reason to not charge you tons of money and interest,
00:07:35 ◼ ► which I didn't think of. So here it was. I thought I was really smart. It turns out I'm not so smart.
00:07:39 ◼ ► Nope. You cannot get away from them. I'm telling you, they will hound you with junk mail for the next decade.
00:07:45 ◼ ► Well, that was happening already because when we bought the cars, our mailing address was sent to them,
00:07:50 ◼ ► but they didn't have an email address at the time. They didn't have a phone number at the time.
00:07:57 ◼ ► Yeah, now they at least have an email. I don't recall if they have a phone number. But yes, you are absolutely right.
00:08:00 ◼ ► We would get weekly or fortnightly at best mailings from them in snail mail saying, "Please, please, by the love of God, come back, please."
00:08:10 ◼ ► This time it was cheap enough that we did. And again, it was for Aaron, and I have some perks.
00:08:15 ◼ ► The funny thing about all this is, just between the three of us, my car's birthday, or adoption anniversary, if you will, is today, actually.
00:08:31 ◼ ► Apparently, it's kind of a known secret. Don't tell anyone. This is just for the two of you.
00:08:36 ◼ ► It's apparently a known secret that some to all Volkswagens just kind of ignore the cancellation signal, the Sirius X.
00:08:45 ◼ ► And so I haven't necessarily called attention to this, although I am now a paying subscriber anyway.
00:08:52 ◼ ► But my car is still getting Sirius XM a year on, and I think I was only supposed to get it for three months.
00:08:57 ◼ ► So I'm in the Honda build your Accord thing, and I don't see any satellite radio options.
00:09:03 ◼ ► I go to the Sirius site and say, "Check if it's available in your car," and I put in the make/model of your car.
00:09:08 ◼ ► And then their helpful website says, "The following services may be available for the vehicle listed above."
00:09:18 ◼ ► So I don't see it in the sources list. I see Pandora, of all things, in the sources list on my car.
00:09:24 ◼ ► But I do not see Sirius or any other stuff, and I don't see it as an option. Maybe it's just standard?
00:09:33 ◼ ► Pretty much any car built in the last 10 to 15 years I thought had the equipment, whether or not it had a subscription come with it or anything.
00:09:48 ◼ ► You go to an activation thing. You navigate on the radio to some screen that gives a serial number or something, and then you tell them over the phone.
00:09:58 ◼ ► Well, I did not have to call them in order to register Aaron's car, but I will have to call them in 11 months or however long it is when the good deal I have expires.
00:10:09 ◼ ► And then they ratchet it up to like $15 or $20 a month. Whatever the standard price is, is absurd for how awful the service is.
00:10:18 ◼ ► But at $5 a month for something that makes my wife happy, I feel like I'm good with that.
00:10:23 ◼ ► Well, and I do feel like if there's ever a place for it, cars are always the strongest place for it.
00:10:29 ◼ ► I would actually get little home radios and little docking stations and have these little antennas.
00:10:35 ◼ ► I had this whole setup, but that was 19 years ago. Now things are a little bit different now.
00:10:44 ◼ ► And I think it wouldn't surprise me if maybe John's issue might be maybe Honda stopped even offering it.
00:10:59 ◼ ► Tesla doesn't offer it at all, which doesn't surprise me. They also don't offer cassette decks.
00:11:04 ◼ ► That's not an option. Because you need to have an antenna. There has to be a satellite antenna on the car to receive the signal.
00:11:10 ◼ ► Well yeah, but there's more hardware required on the car to be able to receive and tune that signal.
00:11:21 ◼ ► And I have a feeling, I would guess, it's probably more popular with older people than younger people.
00:11:28 ◼ ► So if you have a car that sells mostly to tech-forward young people, like a Tesla might, then I would imagine your uptake rate would be so low, it is even worth building the hardware in the first place.
00:11:40 ◼ ► Because now, streaming music services on smartphones removes most of the need for satellite radio.
00:11:47 ◼ ► So I'm still Googling for questions like, "Can Honda Accord use SiriusXM?" That's like, I'm typing in Google.
00:11:53 ◼ ► First of all, as I'm typing it in autocomplete, it's "Can Honda Accord..." What do you think the autocomplete was before I typed the rest of it?
00:12:03 ◼ ► No, seriously, don't make joke answers. Like, "Can Honda Accord..." What are people Googling for? Like, it was the number one autocompletion in the address bar of Chrome.
00:12:12 ◼ ► CarPlay? I would not have guessed this, but CarPlay was a good guess. But it was "Can Honda Accord tow?"
00:12:20 ◼ ► Anyway, so, you know, "Can Honda Accord use SiriusXM?" Number one hit. Someone asking basically that question.
00:12:30 ◼ ► First reply. So, not judging. I mean, you want what you want, but do you have a smartphone?
00:12:44 ◼ ► I would be stunned if your car didn't support it, John, but again, I don't think you're really missing much in the grand scheme of things.
00:12:49 ◼ ► I don't know. I'm never going to get it. I'm just curious. Because I didn't see the logos.
00:12:53 ◼ ► And like I said, I see Pandora, of all things. So there's obviously some kind of deal with it.
00:12:58 ◼ ► And I'm looking at the 2019 Accord, which they say supports Android Auto and CarPlay and all this other good stuff, but I did not see Sirius anywhere.
00:13:09 ◼ ► I honestly, I would assume because it's over the web that they wouldn't send the signal to the satellite and then catch it from the satellite and then broadcast it on a website that you'd be getting a better quality feed.
00:13:22 ◼ ► If I were a person who would ever download a bootleg of something that broadcasts on SiriusXM, I might know already that the rip broadcasts that people tend to post to various truck depots are higher quality than what is broadcast over the air.
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00:15:22 ◼ ► Let's move on to follow up first and foremost. By the time this posts, it's probably going to be too late, but happy birthday Erin because her birthday as we record this is tomorrow, the last day of August.
00:15:33 ◼ ► Moving on, Apple privacy opt-in drawbacks. We had talked last episode about how Apple was going to have you opt in to certain things and how we wish you could instead of having to opt out, be able to opt into other things.
00:15:50 ◼ ► Some people pointed out some drawbacks to this whole approach that we had asked for. So John, can you perhaps re-summarize and then tell me what this is all about?
00:16:00 ◼ ► Yeah, lots of people were saying, "Here are a bunch of reasons why they wouldn't make something opt in. You'd be opted in by default and you can just opt out."
00:16:12 ◼ ► Yes, because the new Siri policy thing is that you need to now opt in for audio grading, but that transcripts are always available for grading by Apple employees and there is no opt out.
00:16:28 ◼ ► Anyway, what we were asking for is for everything to be opt in and most of the people were getting is like, "Here is why everything can't be opt in. Here is why they have to default opt you into at least the transcripts or something."
00:16:39 ◼ ► Some of the reasons were like, self-selection bias of the people who choose to actually opt in, they're not representative of the whole.
00:16:45 ◼ ► Insufficient populations, if you're in a very small country and not a lot of people are speaking your language, maybe not enough people from your country would opt in.
00:16:52 ◼ ► You also need positive results, so you can't just send them the mistakes, you need to send them the good ones and people would be more inclined to send them the times when Siri messed up.
00:17:01 ◼ ► I listed a bunch of these to say there are a bunch of options, but I feel like the larger point is that in any situation where there are privacy concerns, there is very likely going to be trade-offs.
00:17:16 ◼ ► The wrong attitude is to say, "Well, we would make it friendly for privacy, but Apple can't do that because there are some drawbacks."
00:17:24 ◼ ► Yeah, there's going to be some drawbacks. This is the balance. We're not saying you should just make it opt in and it will be a universal good.
00:17:30 ◼ ► You will lose out on things. We talked about this in the past, about how it may be more difficult for Apple to do certain features because they don't collect every single thing and put it in a big server and grind over it with these giant processes.
00:17:41 ◼ ► Privacy does make their job more difficult, and I think this is the case as well. That's their pitch. Their pitch is that we protect your privacy to the maximum degree possible.
00:17:52 ◼ ► There are drawbacks to it, and there will be drawbacks to it. That's my position anyway. It's their job to make the trade-off that the other companies won't.
00:18:04 ◼ ► The consumer attitude that if you can think of any possible reason why it would be better for them to just universally collect it, then obviously they can't and shouldn't or won't do it.
00:18:13 ◼ ► All of those things, can't, shouldn't, and won't, are wrong for the wrong reason. Can't as in, "Oh, it's an impossibility."
00:18:19 ◼ ► We're really lost when people think, "Well, they can't do it. They need everyone to submit to it without any bias because otherwise the sample set would be biased. They just can't."
00:18:29 ◼ ► Won't is, "I wish they would, but they won't because they want all our data," and shouldn't, I don't even know the attitude. It's like they should collect their paper, paper, paper information.
00:18:39 ◼ ► But all of them are sort of either cynical or giving in to the status quo as the only way things can possibly be.
00:18:49 ◼ ► So, yep, there are drawbacks, and Apple should eat them to preserve our privacy to a larger degree.
00:18:56 ◼ ► Frank Hertz writes in, "The same day that I heard you all talk about credit card weight, this came in the mail. And this is an advertisement for a MasterCard Black Card.
00:19:05 ◼ ► And the kind of hero phrase, the title of the advertisement is 'Heavyweight Champ.' And it literally has a graph.
00:19:12 ◼ ► Card weight versus the competition. MasterCard Black Card, which is what it's advertising, 22 grams.
00:19:17 ◼ ► American Express Platinum Card, 18 grams. Chase Sapphire Reserve, 13 grams. And City Prestige Card, 12 grams." That is kind of preposterous.
00:19:26 ◼ ► So, not only, as we said in the last show, is weight the dominant factor in their focus groups, it's like they're saying the quiet part loud.
00:19:35 ◼ ► They're sending you an actual advertisement, pitching you on the thing. I mean, I guess they make some sense.
00:19:41 ◼ ► If they do a focus group and they decide the most important thing about cars is reliability, of course they would advertise their reliability.
00:19:46 ◼ ► But usually when it turns out that the most important things to consumers is, I don't know, irrational or strange or quirky or not really connected in any way with any of the ostensible performance characteristics of the product,
00:20:00 ◼ ► it seems weird to advertise it to people. It's a bar chart for crying out loud. Is this like an arms race? Are they going to make them out of tungsten?
00:20:09 ◼ ► Are they going to be tiny black holes that is pushed into a card shape? I don't understand. I don't want to see how this race continues, sort of the Gillette Five Blade style. Like, what do we end up with?
00:20:19 ◼ ► Alrighty. And then finally, late breaking news from my friend who runs the YouTube channel Cavalier with a K. Jon writes in that you can get a bespoke case, other Jon, you Jon, for your Apple card. And this is a company called Kerf, K-E-R-F.
00:20:39 ◼ ► And they have four different wood species and engraving options for your Apple card case that will run you $40 to $50 to $100 to $120 for Figured Walnut.
00:20:53 ◼ ► So if you would like a $120 sleeve for your beloved titanium Apple card, you freaking nerd, then I am happy to report Kerf has you covered.
00:21:02 ◼ ► Can you imagine being behind somebody in line at a checkout and you see them take this object, this wonderful $50 or whatever wood case sleeve, and they pull out of it, their fine, untouched, unblemished white Apple card. You would probably not think kind things about that person.
00:21:22 ◼ ► Well, here's the thing. Would it be untouched and beautiful? Because wood is not, I mean, I wouldn't want the card rubbing against or rattling against wood. I'm sure it's not rough. I'm sure it's smooth wood. But if you're going to try to protect the card, I'm not sure wood is doing that job.
00:21:36 ◼ ► And as many people pointed out and as we discussed, like, we don't actually know what the wear and tear on this card will be. But, like someone said, I got my Apple, my physical Apple card, and its beauty lasted until its first swipe through a gas station card reader.
00:21:51 ◼ ► And then it came out with a bunch of black streaks on it. It has a mag stripe on the back. It has a chip in it. At some point, presumably with this physical card with literally no numbers printed on it, you're going to have to shove it into some filthy slot or, you know, whatever reader that a million other cards have been through that has never been cleaned and it's going to mess up your card.
00:22:14 ◼ ► So no matter how carefully you preserve it in a case, unless you don't ever use it, it's probably going to look gross. And the question is how gross? Is it going to look any grosser than your other cards? I looked at my other cards on my wallet, by the way, and I'm pretty amazed at how, like, my one other metal card, it's very dark.
00:22:29 ◼ ► Like, I don't know if it's black, but it's a very dark color. It's held up pretty well. Like, if there's crap all over it, I can't see it because it's so dark. And then my other cards just, you know, mostly look like a mess.
00:22:39 ◼ ► Also, just to avoid some notable follow up, the popular vinyl skin company dbrand did announce a couple days ago, Apple Card skins for, I think, like, five bucks or something like that.
00:22:55 ◼ ► I wouldn't want to, like, stick that in one of those chip readers and have it, like, get stuck because they don't expect your card to be, like, a millimeter thicker.
00:23:07 ◼ ► Or just use the card like you would use any other card and you know it's going to get banged up and it's fine. Like, the credit cards get banged up. It's no big deal.
00:23:14 ◼ ► Yeah. Although, like, the thing about metal cards, like, the reason I've always thought plastic cards were smarter is, like, it's harder to crimp plastic.
00:23:21 ◼ ► I don't know how hard it is to crimp titanium, but the other metals, like, have, you know, whatever, my aluminum card, I'm always like, "I could crimp this."
00:23:27 ◼ ► If I actually step on it or something, like, it will stay bent, whereas the plastic card will spring back from a lot.
00:23:34 ◼ ► I can't believe how much we've ended up talking about a credit card. It's so boring. I'm sorry to the world.
00:23:40 ◼ ► I mean, as far as credit cards go, it's, I mean, I'm not going to say it's about as exciting as they can get, but it's close.
00:23:47 ◼ ► I mean, how could it be more exciting? I suppose it could be made of a precious metal or have gemstones in it, but, like, it's a credit card.
00:23:54 ◼ ► Like, there's not a lot of, it's such a standardized size and shape and function, there's not a lot they can actually do with it.
00:24:00 ◼ ► But I think this is, I mean, it's the most interesting credit card I own. Maybe you have fancier cards than me.
00:24:09 ◼ ► All right, let's move on. The story of the last 24 hours as we record this is the Apple Event invite, as expected.
00:24:18 ◼ ► It is going to be September 10th. That is a Tuesday, is that right? That we will be learning about the new iPhones and maybe some other things, maybe not.
00:24:29 ◼ ► This will be at 10 o'clock, Bananas West Coast time, which is one o'clock, one true time zone.
00:24:34 ◼ ► And this is, of course, by invitation only, and because we are a podcast and not a print publication, none of us got invites, not that I'm bitter.
00:24:41 ◼ ► However, what is interesting is the logo that was shown on the invites. This is almost a six colors logo.
00:24:54 ◼ ► So these images on these logos, regardless of whether they have anything to do with what's announced, one thing we can say about them is that Apple has over the many, many years, so very free to indulge its creativity.
00:25:09 ◼ ► You see very creative stuff in these invites. Like they're not precious. They're not carefully controlled.
00:25:15 ◼ ► Very often the images are very interesting ideas or twists on either the Apple logo or just abstract artwork or various blobs.
00:25:24 ◼ ► There was that one time where they sent like 60 or 80 or maybe it was 200 different images to people so that not everyone got the same invitation image.
00:25:34 ◼ ► So they must have people doing this artwork and saying, "Do whatever you want. It's fun. It's a one time invitation.
00:25:40 ◼ ► You're not defining our corporate branding for the next 20 years. Just do something fun."
00:25:51 ◼ ► And it is playful in that it's not, first of all, it's not like the colored Apple logo as in stripes.
00:25:59 ◼ ► It's kind of like vaguely tinted water or ice or plastic kind of flowing into these slishy sloshy shapes.
00:26:10 ◼ ► They're not hard stripes. They're not all the same size. Remember the wavy blue background like a Mac OS X public beta and like 10.0 and stuff?
00:26:23 ◼ ► Kati and I weren't alive back then. Yeah. But anyway, it's like that. It's not all the colors of the Apple logo and they're not in the right order.
00:26:33 ◼ ► So it's playful in that way. It's like, "Hey, we're evoking the rainbow logo, but obviously it's very playful and abstract and weird with this flowy stuff.
00:26:43 ◼ ► And we're not even keeping the colors or the order the same or even omitting a color entirely."
00:26:48 ◼ ► So it could just be a fun thing. But if we're going to say that this logo gives the hint of anything, the impression that I got upon seeing this,
00:26:59 ◼ ► and say if this thing has any connection to what they announced, I didn't even think, "Aha, this means they're going to have rainbow Apple logos on the phones."
00:27:08 ◼ ► What it made me think is they aren't going to introduce at least one model of phone that you will be able to get in green, blue, yellow, red and purple.
00:27:16 ◼ ► That's what it made me think. Doesn't mean that. It could just be someone having fun with an Apple logo.
00:27:21 ◼ ► Because like I said, they do all sorts of wacky things. If you go back through the invites, you say, "Did this invite image have anything to do with the announcement?"
00:27:27 ◼ ► And you're like, "Other than it obviously saying that it's an Apple event, no, it had absolutely nothing to do with it."
00:27:33 ◼ ► But given all the rumors, and of course Apple knows about the rumors too, they could just be tweaking us or being like, "Ah, we're going to trick you into thinking there's a rainbow thing."
00:27:42 ◼ ► But they could also introduce phones in all these colors. I think it's super weird that they omitted a color. That's something I can't get over.
00:27:47 ◼ ► Because if you're going to do an arty thing, and maybe you want to rearrange them. As I said, whatever when we talked about the Apple logo, part of it is that it's the rainbow color is in the wrong order.
00:27:56 ◼ ► So it's kind of like a, it's on message to take the colors and put them even in a different order. Now that like the old Apple logo order is now the new orthodox and we're defying that.
00:28:05 ◼ ► But to omit a color? Omitting a color makes me think they just decided they weren't going to make an orange phone. And they're going to make phones that one of the phones may be like the 10R successor in all these colors.
00:28:15 ◼ ► But those are my thoughts. What do you think? Does this have anything to do with what they announced? Or did you just look at this and think another silly Apple invite logo?
00:28:24 ◼ ► I don't think it has anything to do with it. As you said, the Apple invitation artwork and logos and themes and even the phrasing they use every single time, we all try to read into them whatever we want to read into them from the latest rumors or the latest wish list of what we want them to announce.
00:28:41 ◼ ► And the reality is they almost never have any significant connection to what gets announced.
00:28:47 ◼ ► And sometimes they do just enough to keep us going, right? Just barely enough to say, "Well, you can't just miss that out of hand because one or two times it did."
00:28:56 ◼ ► Yeah, but it's so rare that it's not even worth really thinking about. It's almost like gambling. The wins are so rare that we probably shouldn't focus on them.
00:29:07 ◼ ► And the other thing is, like I said, Apple knows what all the rumors are. And Apple knows probably what it will be making people think. And it can have fun with that and just tweak us to say, "If we send this, they're totally going to think we're doing rainbow Apple logos on our phones, but we're not, but send it anyway."
00:29:22 ◼ ► It's not made in a vacuum, right? Casey, do you think we're getting phones in these colors?
00:29:28 ◼ ► So my job on the show seems to be to hedge about everything. And that has the advantage of, you know, when I hedge, well, you know, I wasn't sure. There's no frickin' way we're getting all these colors on this phone, which means, of course, that now this will be the one time when I didn't hedge that I should have.
00:29:47 ◼ ► I am taking the bold, brave stance that no, we will not be getting these colors on the new phones. I will be both embarrassed and find it quite funny if I'm wrong about this. But no, I agree with Marco. It has almost never been even a vaguely defined line between the event artwork and what's being presented.
00:30:07 ◼ ► At best, it's like a circuitous route that really doesn't make sense unless you have a tinfoil hat on where you can get from A to B. And I will be flabbergasted if this actually is an indication of, like, available colors or something like that.
00:30:21 ◼ ► The only thing that gives me pause is that it is five colors and not six, like you said, Jon. But, like, that seems an odd omission, but I still don't think that this is going, that this is indicating colors.
00:30:34 ◼ ► At most, maybe a material like this, this smells a little bit like the IMAX of way back when, you know, like the Bondi, Bondi, I don't care which one it is.
00:30:47 ◼ ► You're thinking of the Lifesavers Max, probably were the first multicolored ones. And what were the ones after that? Fall colors. Yeah, there was the fall colors ones like Sage and my memory's gone bad, but there was, yeah, the only one that was Bondi was the very first one.
00:31:05 ◼ ► The Australians want us to say Bondi. We all say Bondi because we're not Australian and we don't know how to say things.
00:31:14 ◼ ► Either way, they call McDonald's Maccas and breakfast brekkie. They have no room to talk.
00:31:19 ◼ ► Yeah, but like their country mostly functions and they have like healthcare and stuff, so we can't really talk right now.
00:31:26 ◼ ► Yeah, see, so here's the thing. They have a lot of poisonous spiders, but they don't have 17 guns per person. So I think I'd still take that.
00:31:33 ◼ ► Yeah, no, I'm not saying it's the wrong trade-off. Anyway, an Australian in the chat room says that I'm right and they want us to say Bondi.
00:31:40 ◼ ► But the problem is we're not going to because we're a bunch of ignorant Americans who imprinted on Bondi before we knew how to pronounce it.
00:31:54 ◼ ► Anyway, I don't think that this is the case, but I think it could be interesting if for some reason Apple decided to ditch glass or somehow like tint glass.
00:32:05 ◼ ► Again, I don't think that would happen, but it would be kind of interesting. Like, leaving aside the likelihood of it, I think it would be kind of cool to have like a tinted glass, whether it's these colors or other colors.
00:32:14 ◼ ► I think it would be neat to see some sort of playfulness or whimsy, as we've been banging on about on the show for several months now, some whimsy come to the iPhone.
00:32:25 ◼ ► And, you know, something I've been thinking about is what, and I guess I'm kind of jumping into the next subject, but what do we expect from this event?
00:32:33 ◼ ► And I ask that not only is it the obvious question, but what I mean by that is we seem to be getting ever closer to the naked robotic core, copyright 20-something John Siracusa, wherein we really don't have that many physical changes left to be made.
00:32:50 ◼ ► I mean, the obvious things are like a smaller notch or perhaps, you know, cribbing from Android where they put the little like hole in the corner of the display or what have you. Maybe, maybe ditch lightning for USB-C, maybe?
00:33:08 ◼ ► But, I mean, what else is left from a purely physical sense? What is left to be done to the iPhone? I mean, yeah, you can obviously rejigger sizes, you can rejigger screen resolutions, you could even, you know, go from LCD to OLED as we had in the last couple of years.
00:33:26 ◼ ► But in terms of like the look, the external look and shape of the phone, like what else is left to be done, fellas?
00:33:33 ◼ ► Getting rid of the sensor bar, as they call it, like that's somewhere on the roadmap, right?
00:33:40 ◼ ► And then part of that is, depending on how they get rid of it, either they get rid of it by shrinking the stuff so small that it can fit inside the little curve that goes off to the edge, or that means camera under the screen and other various technology like that.
00:33:52 ◼ ► And I would lump into that the possibility of other sensors under the screen, whether it be a fingerprint sensor or otherwise, unlikely, but once you're putting stuff under the screen, like the camera and the IR blaster and all that stuff that comes up, I don't know that, I don't think that's even possible yet for some of those things.
00:34:10 ◼ ► I see a lot of Android phones with the camera cutouts and the screen around them, I don't think Apple would go that route.
00:34:15 ◼ ► I think they're waiting for it completely under, Android phones do have fingerprint sensors under the screen, but they're not as good as the ones that are out of the screen, so.
00:34:21 ◼ ► I feel like that's the one obvious thing I can think of is finishing the job of making the all-screen phone, but I'm not holding my breath to that anytime soon.
00:34:32 ◼ ► The cameras on the back, at this rate, speaking of a Gillette 5 Blade problem, how many cameras are gonna be on the back of it?
00:34:40 ◼ ► We're creeping up on the light field cameras that have like a million cameras and they make this giant composite picture of it, but sort of the computational photography and multiple different cameras combining to give a picture that won, like, the physical limitations of how much light you can put through those tiny little lenses and how deep the phone is aren't going to change or get any better, but the computational photography stuff seems to get better and better, so is there some future where a much larger portion of the back of the phone is used for photography to do some amazing computational photography?
00:35:09 ◼ ► I can kind of see that happening. And then after that, I mean, maybe at that point, we'll, depending on how the whole glasses business goes, at a certain point, holding a thing in your hand and looking at it will be, to quote Back to the Future 2, like a baby's toy.
00:35:24 ◼ ► Maybe we'll all be alive for that. Maybe we won't. Again, it depends on how the glasses stuff goes. If it doesn't catch on, if the tech isn't there, if the only person wearing weird electronic glasses is Marco with his Bose stereo things, then.
00:35:38 ◼ ► Yeah, your AR glasses, that's right. You're an early adopter. Yeah, that's my roadmap for the next 10 to 15 years. That's what comes to mind for me anyway.
00:35:50 ◼ ► Everything I want from the iPhone seems to be things that everyone keeps saying are not going to happen anytime soon.
00:36:02 ◼ ► Yeah, USB-C and in-screen fingerprint sensor in addition to Face ID because I want to be able to say whichever one recognizes me first, just go.
00:36:11 ◼ ► Yeah, that's why I was suggesting a fingerprint on the screen, not replacing Face ID, but assuming they can get Face ID on the screen and also having fingerprint stuff.
00:36:19 ◼ ► Yeah, and of course, I would always welcome any kind of camera improvement that could get it closer to what bigger standalone cameras can do. So things like any kind of optical zoom, I really appreciate.
00:36:33 ◼ ► Unfortunately, the remuneration of this new third lens being a wide angle lens instead of a bigger telephoto, seemed like they're going in the opposite direction for now, but that's fine. There's value to that as well.
00:36:43 ◼ ► But yeah, anything like giving the camera a further reach in the telephoto area, giving it better low light performance, that's all very welcome improvements for me.
00:36:53 ◼ ► But otherwise, if we're kind of doing our exit interview of the iPhone XS, as usual, I'm pretty happy with the phone where it is.
00:37:07 ◼ ► I started using Instagram a lot more this summer, and so my battery life is destroyed. The battery is just terrible if you use Instagram regularly.
00:37:25 ◼ ► That too, but you're capturing video for a story for at most 15 seconds, that isn't a big draw.
00:37:36 ◼ ► Yeah, but still, compared to just fetching all the video over the network that you're watching and keeping the screen on as you scroll through stuff.
00:37:48 ◼ ► So the reality is, I finally realized why people who use Instagram, their phones are always at 20%.
00:37:58 ◼ ► But also, going in the complete opposite direction, right after I wish for things that would make it heavier, the iPhone XS is too heavy.
00:38:10 ◼ ► It's a very dense, heavy phone. As I mentioned earlier this summer when I did my iPhone SE experiment, the iPhone SE feels fantastic not only because it's smaller, but also it's a lot less dense because it doesn't have the glass on both sides.
00:38:29 ◼ ► The same thing happened with the iPhone 4, which was the first one with the glass on both sides.
00:38:32 ◼ ► The 4 felt very dense, very heavy. And I remember when the 5 came out thinking, "Wow, this thing is light!"
00:38:38 ◼ ► Like the 5 was a larger phone than the 4, but it was significantly lighter and I think a big part of that was that they dropped the glass in the back in favor for a metal back.
00:38:47 ◼ ► And then, once we went further into the line with the X series, we returned two glass backs and they got really heavy again. And they did also get bigger.
00:38:57 ◼ ► I don't know if that's because of the glass back, though. I Googled this while you were talking and trying to figure out, "Is glass more or less dense than aluminum?"
00:39:07 ◼ ► Google's inconclusive. The density of glass varies with each type and it can be less dense than aluminum or more dense than iron.
00:39:21 ◼ ► And how thick it is and what particular glass they use. But there's no arguing that the XS and X are heavy phones.
00:39:29 ◼ ► That much is clear. But the density could be, I mean, it has a much larger battery than the 5S.
00:39:35 ◼ ► And I feel like of all the things on the phone that weigh a lot, I guess there's the case and number two is probably the battery, right? Because it's mostly battery in there.
00:39:44 ◼ ► I would imagine, yeah, by weight allocation, the screen and the battery are probably the two heaviest things in there.
00:39:55 ◼ ► Alright, yeah, alright. But then, what is it? Is it stainless steel around the rim? Like, it's a big stainless steel?
00:39:59 ◼ ► Yes, and stainless steel is obviously heavier than aluminum or titanium could be, but I don't think that's enough metal to make a big weight difference there.
00:40:07 ◼ ► I could be wrong. But anyway, I would like the phone to get lighter. Anything that can make it lighter.
00:40:12 ◼ ► And then finally, another thing that I don't think they're going to do, I would love to make it more grippable in my hand.
00:40:18 ◼ ► So whether that's something like adopting the straight sides, like the old SE and 5 series, like the new iPad Pros, you know, some kind of like case shape or materials change.
00:40:29 ◼ ► Like, with the Jet Black iPhone 7, I actually have it right here, I never used a case with it because the Jet Black finish was a little bit tacky, like it gripped in a better way than what the regular bar of soap metal did from the other finishes.
00:40:44 ◼ ► And I never got, like that feeling never returned with the 10 migration, and I would love to have some kind of materials or shape change to the case to make it just feel better in your hand if you choose not to use a case on it.
00:41:00 ◼ ► Because right now I use a case because I don't like the way the phone feels without one anymore, and it just makes it even bigger and even bulkier and even heavier, and it just makes it even worse in the pocket and everything.
00:41:10 ◼ ► So just something to make the phone a little more grippy, hopefully a little bit lighter weight, but yet also please give me more battery life and give me more heavy camera stuff. And USB-C.
00:41:22 ◼ ► The weight stuff, we've talked about that before with Apple hardware, usually when we're doing some show we're speculating like future hardware for insert Apple product here, and carbon fiber almost always comes up as a thing that we talk about.
00:41:34 ◼ ► But it never actually appears in any Apple products. I'm guessing, especially for things like the phone, it's about manufacturability because all I hear from the audio industry is what a pain in the butt it is to deal with carbon fiber in any form whatsoever except for fake dash inserts.
00:41:47 ◼ ► If you want it to be actually structural or whatever, it's either expensive or time consuming or error prone to manufacture, and if you're making a bazillion of things like the iPhone, machining aluminum or stainless steel or something that Apple is really, really good at is easier.
00:42:01 ◼ ► But if you're looking to save weight, and if you want to keep that big heavy battery that we all want after you just complained about battery life, and you got to shave weight somewhere, you're not going to make the screen plastic.
00:42:12 ◼ ► So it's like, well, all the other stuff, can you make it out of carbon fiber? Would it be lighter than stainless steel? Yes. The answer is yes, it would be lighter than stainless steel for sure.
00:42:21 ◼ ► So I always have to have that out there as like, make the whole back and the rim of the case out of stainless steel, keep the screen glass and keep the giant battery. I think that would be a lighter phone, but it would also be more expensive and difficult and error prone to manufacture and maybe not as good as what they're currently doing in some way.
00:42:37 ◼ ► But I would throw that in the 10 to 15 year timeline that a new material for the iPhone, which is a very conservative product, may eventually be something like carbon fiber. Unfortunately, kind of like the old thing with the battery life and thinness, if they use carbon fiber, it may not be to get a lighter phone, it may be to allow them to keep the weight the same while increasing something else, whether it be size or like, you know, making their battery out of tungsten or whatever the hell I'm talking about.
00:43:06 ◼ ► Whatever the hell I end up making it heavier. And they've got to like make that weight back because I think you're right that it is a heavy phone and should be lighter, but I'm not sure how phone weight rates.
00:43:18 ◼ ► You know, we just got off the credit card thing. What if unfortunately, most people associate a heavy dense phone with one that feels expensive and good and they're actually advertising how much their phone weighs. I don't think it's going to happen, but stranger things have happened.
00:43:29 ◼ ► I mean, stereo equipment in the 70s where they put, you know, lead weights inside them to make things seem more expensive. And apparently now it's happening with credit cards. So, yeah, right. Don't think our phones are immune.
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00:45:31 ◼ ► If you were designing the iPhone that we'll see in a little over a week, and you only had the ability to change one thing, so you could either make the camera better or you can make it USB-C or you can make the battery life better.
00:45:51 ◼ ► And this is a magical world where you can just wave your magic wand and one thing will get better with no drawbacks anywhere else. I can already tell this question is driving John nuts. But anyway, you wave your magic wand, you can make one thing better, what would it be? And I'm torn.
00:46:05 ◼ ► My initial reaction is I think I really would like USB-C because I don't feel like my battery is that terrible. But then again, I'm two years on my iPhone 10. It does get charged on and off throughout the day. And it is sometimes a little bit rough at the end of the day. Again, two years on.
00:46:22 ◼ ► So I think in top four style, my answer would be a better, a longer lasting battery with my honorable mention being USB-C. Marco, because I'm not prepared for John to belittle my question here, what would you say?
00:46:39 ◼ ► I know this might seem really stupid. I'm going to say USB-C. Because if I think about what difference will this make in my life over the next year, if I'm having the new iPhone every year, what will actually make a really big difference in my life?
00:46:57 ◼ ► And if the phone still is the same shape and still feels like butter and still is the same density, it's just going to feel exactly the same as it has for the last year. It's not making my life any worse if I don't get that.
00:47:11 ◼ ► But USB-C would solve a really big annoyance for me. Right now, I have gone USB-C on as much as I possibly can for the cables and the chargers and the batteries and the devices that I carry with me when I travel and that are going around our house, with the one big exception that I still need frickin' lightning cables everywhere.
00:47:30 ◼ ► So I have to have two different cable types everywhere and two different charger type things. I just want USB-C everywhere and I'm almost there and the biggest holdout for devices in my house are lightning devices.
00:47:44 ◼ ► And I already got my iPad converted over, so that's one family gone. Next, we need the iPhone to go and that would be a big one.
00:47:51 ◼ ► If I can get my iPhone to no longer need lightning, and presumably I'd also upgrade Tiff's iPhone, and so the only lightning device left would be like Adam's iPad Mini. I can deal with that.
00:48:02 ◼ ► But to have none of the phones need lightning anymore, I could just have USB-C everywhere, I could simplify my travel setup, I would never have the wrong cable in my hand. That would actually be a pretty substantial everyday life improvement.
00:48:15 ◼ ► Now, what is your current charging strategy both on the go and at home? And I'm asking this genuinely because, for example, I use a Qi charger at the bedside table and generally speaking that's the only place my phone gets charged when I'm in the house.
00:48:31 ◼ ► But when I travel, I don't bother bringing a Qi charger with me and I use lightning. And I agree that that alone is enough for me to give USB-C an honorable mention because I would really love my travel setup to be more heavily dedicated around USB-C.
00:48:47 ◼ ► So what is your home and travel situation for how do you charge your phone? Are you using Qi at all or is it all lightning all the time?
00:48:54 ◼ ► I'm using Qi at the bedside table as you do. And actually, and TIFF isn't. One of the problems that we have, we've gone through a whole bunch of different setups and one of the problems with Qi obviously is like you have these big nice pad kind of things.
00:49:08 ◼ ► But if you miss by a little bit or if your phone gets knocked a little bit off center, then you wake up in the morning and your phone's not charged. And that's no good.
00:49:18 ◼ ► So we've gone back and forth. So right now, she has a dock. And docks are their own set of annoyances and limitations and everything. There's no great solution here.
00:49:27 ◼ ► But either way, Qi is going to be there regardless and a dock can be easily modified to be a USB-C dock if there was a need for that. So that wouldn't change that.
00:49:38 ◼ ► What it would really help is like around the house, we have a few charging stations. I have a charging cable between two couch cushions. You can reach in and pull out a charging cable and plug in your phone.
00:49:49 ◼ ► And so charging couch, great innovation by the way. I strongly recommend it. We have by the kitchen counter, there's an area where we can plug in all of our stuff.
00:49:56 ◼ ► And then when I travel, obviously I bring a couple of USB-C bricks. And right now I use C to lightning cables, but I have to swap them out to have a C to C cable. And I'm using C on the source end so I can get fast charging.
00:50:11 ◼ ► And I also have one of those multi-head cables so I can charge the handful of micro-USB devices. But then those are slow and you've got to have those little duck head things on the end of it that are clumsy.
00:50:22 ◼ ► And so I could just get rid of so much garbage and crap and annoyance if I could go USB-C everywhere. And the iPhone is the biggest holdout for me.
00:50:30 ◼ ► Everything else now. My headphones are now USB-C. Everything else is USB-C now except freaking iPhones.
00:50:41 ◼ ► First about your question, I think it was all things being a pretty good Casey question because you removed a bunch of ambiguity. When you first phrased it, I'm like, "That doesn't make any sense. There's too many different ways to go." But then you clarified and you said, "Other things aren't modified. It's a waving magic wand." The intent of the question was clear. The parameters were clear. So good job.
00:51:06 ◼ ► If you want to get picky about it, you can say, "Sure." I'm going to do it anyway. "Sure, I approved of a question, but by doing so, I'm still contradicting Casey who predicted that I would say it was a bad question. So I'm still being contrary."
00:51:21 ◼ ► Well, 342 episodes in, I am pleased to report, listeners, that I finally asked a question in such a way that Jon can't belittle me but so much. Jon.
00:51:35 ◼ ► On the USB-C thing, aside from me not being as uniformity obsessed as Marco clearly is about his life and connectors, I actually kind of like the tininess and lightweightness of lightning, despite the fact that my children destroy every one of my lightning cables because they're monsters.
00:51:53 ◼ ► I can't have a single nice thing. They use my lightning cable next to my bedside. They come into my room, they sit on my bed, they connect their iPad to one of my bedside perfect lightning cables, and then they stretch it out and use their device while it's plugged in and bend it at a 90-degree angle and put tension on it.
00:52:09 ◼ ► And then I come back and I'm like, "Why are my cables all mangled and crimped?" Children, they're monsters.
00:52:13 ◼ ► Anyway, I still like lightning. I still like the little – I like that the connector is small, I like that the cables are lightweight.
00:52:20 ◼ ► So that's not going to be my choice, although I'm still all on board for USB-C 3, but of all the things that I could pick, I'm not going to pick that one.
00:52:27 ◼ ► Battery life-wise, I use Instagram obviously not just Marco, I guess, but I use it regularly every day as one of my social apps that I launch periodically to see what has gone on.
00:52:40 ◼ ► And my battery life in my XS is ridiculously good. Like very often it will be the end of the day and I'm plugged in at night after what I think is a full day of using the phone a lot.
00:52:52 ◼ ► Like looking at Instagram and Twitter and taking calls and using Slack on my phone, who knows what that's doing.
00:53:00 ◼ ► I'm not leaving my phone on my desk all day. I'm picking it up and using it, and it has more than half charge at the end of the day.
00:53:06 ◼ ► So obviously I'm a light user, but I've been very impressed with the battery life, so I'm not picking that as my thing.
00:53:12 ◼ ► What I'm going to pick is the camera, because I feel like even if I was having – well, in the battery life, if I had problems with that, I would have picked it.
00:53:19 ◼ ► But things like connector uniformity and other things that are sort of quality of life surrounding influences, two years from now, I'm not going to care that my life was slightly more convenient because of the connectors.
00:53:30 ◼ ► But when I look at the pictures that I took then, if I could have less noise in the dark ones or get a shot that otherwise I wouldn't be able to get, that's my choice.
00:53:38 ◼ ► I mean, that is what Apple's doing in addition to a bunch of other stuff, but camera is my pick.
00:53:43 ◼ ► Yeah, I think that's fair. I think the problem for me with the cameras is that the thing I want most is to be able to not carry a proper camera with me when I really care about the pictures.
00:53:57 ◼ ► And for me, what I want to be able to see, because I'm still obsessed with it five years on, is bokeh-bokeh, however you pronounce it, that background blurriness.
00:54:06 ◼ ► And yes, I'm aware that portrait mode exists, but even to me, a not terribly discerning individual who frequents Taco Bell from time to time, just to emphasize how not discerning I can be, I still can see some of the issues with portrait mode.
00:54:21 ◼ ► Now, I'm no Joe Steele. I can't pick out every little pixel-by-pixel problem, but I can see problems with it.
00:54:27 ◼ ► And it's actually, in my experience, and I guess because I just don't do it very often, I find it kind of difficult to frame a shot in such a way that I'm the correct distance from the subject and that it is able to figure out the background, or the portions of the background that I want to be blurred.
00:54:42 ◼ ► Yes, I'm aware I can go in after the fact and fiddle with that, but the whole idea of having the iPhone and having this computational photography is that I shouldn't have to think about that.
00:54:52 ◼ ► And yes, I'm aware it's early on. But I guess all of that is to say, I feel like my phone, my X, takes pretty darn good pictures.
00:55:01 ◼ ► I would certainly like better nighttime performance, but I don't think that the X is a bad camera.
00:55:07 ◼ ► And from all reports, the XS was considerably better. But the thing that I really, really want from the camera is something that physics says I can't have.
00:55:20 ◼ ► But if there was a mechanism by which I could have that tomorrow, like if I could have actual legitimate real bokeh, but I had to go to the XS 11 Max, which no part of me wants the big canned phone.
00:55:41 ◼ ► But if I could get like legitimate actual in-lens bokeh, shallow depth of field, etc., which I know is probably impossible.
00:55:49 ◼ ► But if I could, that would be enough to entice me to do the unthinkable, which is go big phone.
00:55:55 ◼ ► And so that's all, again, I mean, I would welcome an improved camera, but I don't feel like I'm dying for it as much as I'm dying for like the days of yore when we had five day long batteries.
00:56:07 ◼ ► Anything else about the event? Is that all we're expecting? We're going to see watches, gentlemen?
00:56:20 ◼ ► Yeah, this is just your question of like what one thing would we add. We have one more show before the event, right?
00:56:29 ◼ ► Oh, goodness. All right. Well, then we should talk about any other predictions and expectations for the event.
00:56:37 ◼ ► I mean, to clear these out, basically, like the I'm assuming we're all more or less on the same page in terms of the widely rumored things that we agree that they'll probably be there.
00:56:48 ◼ ► You know, the phone with two cameras, a successor model to the XS and XR, the pro name, like all the highly rumored things seem.
00:57:00 ◼ ► I mean, I feel like the camera thing is basically confirmed by parts leaks at this point.
00:57:08 ◼ ► Yeah, pretty much. I mean, like any kind of like hardware feature like that, like it seems pretty sure from all the leaks.
00:57:14 ◼ ► And the fact that the size and shape of the phone is the same, it's not, you know, wider or thinner or smaller.
00:57:19 ◼ ► It's basically like more or less the same as our current XS's, at least for that matter.
00:57:24 ◼ ► I haven't seen the rumors of the XR replacement. What do we think of the names, the rumor that the expensive ones will be, will have pro in the name and maybe the non-expensive ones will just be called iPhone 11 or something?
00:57:45 ◼ ► For the high-end ones, I'm going with iPhone 11 Pro for both sizes and then just having like a screen size modifier, you know, on certain documentation.
00:57:55 ◼ ► So like the same way the iPad Pro, like the iPad Pro is not named iPad Pro and iPad Pro Max.
00:58:03 ◼ ► That's what I think is going to happen here. iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro and the Pro happens to have two screen sizes.
00:58:14 ◼ ► It makes too much sense and it is like, it is logical, it is reasonable, it's a way out of their naming jam and then like, well that means they won't do it.
00:58:23 ◼ ► They definitely won't do it. They never name things the way that we think they will or should.
00:58:28 ◼ ► I mean, if I had to modify that and say, well how will Apple screw that up? I'm going to say like, I think that's what they should do and I think there's a high chance they will do it.
00:58:37 ◼ ► But I think the way they could screw it up enough to make it more plausible for modern Apple is to call the big one the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which is a terrible name.
00:58:45 ◼ ► And I'm like, well that maybe means they'll do it. But no, I'm going to agree with Marco.
00:58:48 ◼ ► They could go even crazier than that. For modern Apple, they could call the big one iPhone 12 Pro.
00:59:00 ◼ ► But anyway, I agree with Marco. If I had to pick one naming scheme, that's the one I'm going to pick.
00:59:06 ◼ ► Both as the one I think they should do and as the one I think they have a slightly higher chance of actually doing.
00:59:11 ◼ ► But the larger point, I think the Pro modifier, it's smart to bring that to the phone just as you're kind of running out of numbers.
00:59:19 ◼ ► I agree with everything you both said. I don't think I really care for Pro in this context.
00:59:29 ◼ ► But I don't know. I just feel like Pro when it comes to a computer, and I'll even include the iPad in this.
00:59:44 ◼ ► But given the world in which we're playing here, I completely agree that Pro is the right answer in this case.
00:59:50 ◼ ► And I'm not even sure what I would use if not Pro, to be honest with you. But I don't know. Pro feels a little weird.
00:59:57 ◼ ► I get what you're saying, Casey, because it doesn't feel right to me either, but it feels right for Apple.
01:00:01 ◼ ► Because Apple does in the recent past half decade or so have a tiny little bit of a consistency pop goblin going on there.
01:00:12 ◼ ► They made all the OS names conform to the same ugly thing. And I agree Pro doesn't seem right, but they're so obsessed with it.
01:00:31 ◼ ► Even though I think Pro in the larger world is not a good modifier for a phone, in the Apple world it is the obvious modifier for the most expensive phone.
01:00:41 ◼ ► And given that they're going to cost like $1600 or whatever, it seems weird to me as well, but I feel like it is the irresistible force of Pro.
01:00:53 ◼ ► I feel like the iMac Pro really sealed the deal. Because it's like, alright, they're doing Pro everywhere. There's no escaping Pro.
01:00:59 ◼ ► I think also, if you look at the way they use Pro on the other products, it fits perfectly with what they did when they introduced the iPhone X.
01:01:15 ◼ ► It's about the Pro models are the bigger, best, and most expensive models that have the most features.
01:01:25 ◼ ► Kind of, yeah. Exactly. And so, with the iPad Pro, they introduced higher end features that helped it skyrocket in price above the regular line.
01:01:35 ◼ ► Then they kind of brought the regular line down a little bit. But anyway, that kind of happened with the iPad line.
01:01:39 ◼ ► And with the iPhone X, they basically did that. They introduced this new, higher tier iPhone at a significantly higher price than previous iPhones.
01:01:54 ◼ ► But if you look at what they did, it's exactly the same thing that would have earned it that name based on their previous patterns.
01:02:01 ◼ ► And so, they could just now have realized, okay, actually, we do want to call this the Pro.
01:02:14 ◼ ► It's just like, how they use Pro to indicate the high end models that are more expensive and have all the best features.
01:02:20 ◼ ► Yeah, that's a really good way of looking at it. I don't know. I just wish there was a better name for it.
01:02:25 ◼ ► Somebody mentioned in the chat, iPhone Air. I really kind of want that to be a thing. I don't know what I want it to look like other than to be...
01:02:39 ◼ ► Now, ultimately, I think I'd hate it because it would probably be underpowered. It would probably have a five minute long battery.
01:02:48 ◼ ► I loved the Motorola Razr. I thought that thing was the coolest phone in the entire world.
01:02:56 ◼ ► And I feel like we have one floating around the house. And every time I pick it up, I still think to myself, "Man, that's a cool phone."
01:03:12 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't think they have... They have not yet diversified the iPhone line to that degree. The iPhone line has become more and more diverse over time.
01:03:19 ◼ ► But I feel like there's not... They haven't done that next expansion. If there was a next expansion, I think there would be room for either an Air variant or a big chunky super battery one that we've talked about on past shows.
01:03:32 ◼ ► Because they have the different sizes, they have the new model and the old model, they have the Pro and non-Pro.
01:03:37 ◼ ► The next expansion would be the really, really skinny light one and the really, really fat chunky big one. Either one or the other or both.
01:03:44 ◼ ► But honestly, I feel like the diversity they have in the iPhone line now, with the exception of them not having any good answers for the smaller phone, they may not ever go beyond the current diversity.
01:03:55 ◼ ► Like, I can see them having the X, the big one, the XR, and an SE sized phone that isn't crappy that they update.
01:04:15 ◼ ► Yeah, like, it's funny, when I look at overcast stats for, like, I report back as part of my totally in-house analytics, I report back a handful of device stats, like screen resolution and stuff like that.
01:04:29 ◼ ► And what's interesting is that the combination of 4.7 inch phones is still more in use among overcast people than the combination of 10S Max and 10R screen sizes.
01:04:47 ◼ ► It seems, and if you read into some of Apple's marketing recently, it kind of seems like maybe the new phones aren't taking off as much as Apple thought they would.
01:04:56 ◼ ► That's why they keep having to run commercials about how good Face ID is compared to Touch ID.
01:05:01 ◼ ► Because, like, they shouldn't have to run this now as we're on the eve of the third Face ID generation of phones coming out.
01:05:09 ◼ ► But I think a lot of people really like the old size and shape and mechanics of having the home button, having Touch ID.
01:05:17 ◼ ► A lot of people hold onto those phones and didn't upgrade to the 10R, which is what Apple wanted them to do this past year.
01:05:24 ◼ ► And there is still a large contingent of people who use that 4.7 size and the 5.5, you know, previous Max size to some degree also.
01:05:33 ◼ ► But the 4.7 is really sticking around strongly. Like, a lot of the previous Plus phone, the 5.5, a lot of those people moved up to the 10 series.
01:05:47 ◼ ► I think part of the reason of their popularity is that the, and I know this from my own family, a lot of those phones from that era,
01:05:56 ◼ ► because, you know, if you were to graph the curve of, like, phone performance and features and usability,
01:06:02 ◼ ► we passed some threshold where now the one or two or even three year old iPhones are still actually pretty good phones.
01:06:08 ◼ ► I mean, my son is using an iPhone 6, and he's fine with it, right? I have family members.
01:06:17 ◼ ► Yeah, I know. But I'm saying, like, the thing that's attractive about those phones is the fact that they're older and you can get them cheap used.
01:06:28 ◼ ► Obviously it's not as good as the new ones, but assuming that people haven't, like, upgraded the OS too far, you know, especially if it's on an older version of the OS,
01:06:35 ◼ ► they're surprisingly good. Like, we passed the point. That wasn't true in the beginning of the iPhone.
01:06:39 ◼ ► If you had a three year old iPhone, it was just unusable garbage, right? But now, a two or three year old phone that is much,
01:06:45 ◼ ► it's like the cheapest way to get into an iPhone, and I think people buy them and have good experiences with them.
01:06:55 ◼ ► Like, you can get an older one for a lot less money that is better than its price would suggest.
01:07:01 ◼ ► And I think that's a big motivator for why you're seeing the usage of all sorts of old phones,
01:07:06 ◼ ► because if you want to get an iPhone and don't want to pay the honestly ridiculous prices that we all pay for the brand new ones,
01:07:12 ◼ ► you can get an okay iPhone and be okay with it and feel like you are living the iPhone life without having to spend $1500 bucks.
01:07:19 ◼ ► Yeah, that is fair. I mean, like, I'm still blown away by the fact that I was able to get this iPhone SE for, it was like $116.
01:07:38 ◼ ► I could still, I mean, it's off right now because I didn't want to buzz in during the show, but like,
01:07:41 ◼ ► I could still just pick it up and switch to it, and the only major things I noticed after, you know,
01:07:46 ◼ ► I feel cramped screen-wise and typing-wise for the first hour of using it, but then I get used to it,
01:07:52 ◼ ► and the only thing I noticed after that is, like, wow, this camera is kind of old and horrible,
01:08:03 ◼ ► it was a really good buy, and it is very hard to justify the, you know, the brand new ones.
01:08:14 ◼ ► That's the comparison point there, is like, $50 Android phone, do I want to pay three times as much for a used iPhone?
01:08:20 ◼ ► Boy, that's a hard sell, but when you get one, you're like, oh, I do kind of like this new iPhone.
01:08:24 ◼ ► I paid three times as much. It was $150, but it's actually pretty nice, and that, I think, is the,
01:08:29 ◼ ► whereas before, A, you either couldn't get one for $150, or B, if you got one for $150,
01:08:41 ◼ ► I'm still rooting strongly for colors, not because of the advertisement thing or the invitation thing,
01:08:47 ◼ ► but just in general, because, I mean, the XR comes in colors, and I hope they continue that trend.
01:08:51 ◼ ► I would love to see fancy colors on the, quote-unquote, "pro models" or whatever they end up calling them,
01:08:56 ◼ ► but at the very least, I really hope they continue with the R equivalent series to do colors,
01:09:01 ◼ ► because I think colors on phone are a great idea, and I think the prevalence of clear cases shows that there's a,
01:09:07 ◼ ► it's a viable way to sell people colored phones that will actually be visible to the world in some way.
01:09:18 ◼ ► but I'm sad that I don't get the option by having a X or XS or an 11 Pro or whatever we're going to call the next one.
01:09:32 ◼ ► Like, this blue XR looks real nice on screen. I don't recall having seen one in person, but on screen it looks great.
01:09:43 ◼ ► and I always regret that, or I always rather, I'm sad that the high-end phone doesn't come in fun colors anymore.
01:09:52 ◼ ► I mean, it kind of never did, I guess, but like, the couple of times that Apple introduced fun colors,
01:09:57 ◼ ► you know, the 5C and then the XR, and all the iPod touch and all the iPod lens before it,
01:10:02 ◼ ► like, Apple introduces awesome fun colors all the time, but it's never on the high-end phone,
01:10:10 ◼ ► I wish they would give us that option. Like, I understand various marketing reasons why they might not,
01:10:16 ◼ ► but like, doesn't it make sense that if we're willing to pay the most, we should have the most options?
01:10:26 ◼ ► and if we're finally going to get that in some way this year, whether it's through a rainbow logo or color options or whatever,
01:10:35 ◼ ► Yeah, you gotta wait for the iPhone Pro edition, which will be like very expensive cars where you essentially get to choose every material and color on the interior of your Rolls-Royce, right?
01:10:44 ◼ ► So you go into a special room and they'll be like, "What color would you like this part to be?"
01:10:55 ◼ ► Look at the, right after I bought my car, just barely, or just exactly a year ago, actually,
01:11:00 ◼ ► right after I bought my car, Volkswagen announced their Spectrum program, which apparently was a total disaster,
01:11:14 ◼ ► Now, as I understand it, actually getting a dealer to be able to get one for you apparently was impossible because Volkswagen, I guess, made it difficult,
01:11:22 ◼ ► but in theory, I could have gotten a really hideous pink for my car instead of the really lovely blue I ended up with.
01:11:32 ◼ ► Out of curiosity, do you think that the reason we don't get colors in the pro phones, for lack of a better term for it,
01:11:50 ◼ ► or even days one through 20 in the quantities that the iPhone 11 Pro or whatever it will be are expected to ship on day one.
01:12:10 ◼ ► If they're going to have two to three options, which they have done in the past and apparently they're okay with,
01:12:51 ◼ ► But within the limits of the cosmetic choices they offer, being more fun with them wouldn't induce any new --
01:13:03 ◼ ► I may be wrong because it could be because the colors are also similar that people will settle for a different color,
01:13:14 ◼ ► I'll just come back later versus, oh, you don't have the black one and I'll get the silver one.
01:13:26 ◼ ► The current year it's like -- and we discovered this retroactively, rediscovered this when we were looking at our phone capacities,
01:13:32 ◼ ► that they just offered it in 64 and 256. To go along with the -- if they do the Pro branding or similar,
01:13:38 ◼ ► what do we think about only offering it in the biggest size, like not even offering a 64, again, as another way to drive up the price?
01:13:46 ◼ ► I don't think they would do that because they already have driven up the base price to whatever it is, like $1300, whatever it is.
01:13:54 ◼ ► If they only had it like in the 512, say, or whatever, whatever the biggest one would be,
01:14:00 ◼ ► they would have to either take a lower margin on that one or raise that base price even further to like $1500, $1600, or $1700.
01:14:11 ◼ ► I'm guessing they keep it in as the function it serves today of having multiple storage,
01:14:21 ◼ ► but that it still keeps the entry price only slightly incredibly ridiculous instead of truly incredibly ridiculous.
01:14:29 ◼ ► Well, and let's refresh our memory. So the 10S, it's 64 gigs for $1000. It's 256 gigs for $1150 and $512 for $1350.
01:14:41 ◼ ► So there are actually three -- I think you had said, Jon, two, but there are three different storage capacities.
01:14:46 ◼ ► Oh, that's right. I forgot about the 512. I didn't even realize they went up that high.
01:14:50 ◼ ► Yeah, so that makes me think they're definitely not going to. I mean, they could consolidate to two maybe.
01:14:54 ◼ ► Anchoring only works if you have more than one point, right? So the whole price anchoring thing.
01:15:00 ◼ ► I can see them dropping to two, but I mean, I think the thing is it's kind of like 64, as we discussed,
01:15:09 ◼ ► passes that threshold for current everything current, the current camera capabilities, the current usage of our phones,
01:15:23 ◼ ► I wonder, I would love to see how well their upsells work because obviously I'm sure they got a lot of upsells to 256
01:15:28 ◼ ► because for all the people who know 64 is too small for them, they get 256, which apparently is a lot, right?
01:15:34 ◼ ► But the 512 upsell, how well did that work? I mean, like how many people are buying -- like what would you --
01:15:40 ◼ ► I guess if you took tons and tons of 4K video, maybe they sell it to vloggers or something? I don't even know.
01:15:48 ◼ ► Yeah, it was just a thought. I think they'll probably keep the things the same. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought it down to two options,
01:15:54 ◼ ► but maintaining three is about the same. I think in the context of our earlier discussion many months or weeks ago about
01:16:00 ◼ ► configurability of Macs, like how many different options you have and if they're removing the RAM option
01:16:06 ◼ ► and what if there was only one hard drive option, what if there was only one CPU option, just sort of to the point of decreasing the number of possible variants
01:16:13 ◼ ► and making Apple's lives easier and making the choice for the consumer easier if there was some sort of sweet spot where they can remove a choice
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01:18:26 ◼ ► Alright, are we gonna see watches at this event? My gut says yes, but I'm not terribly confident that that's the case and honestly, I'll be darned what to expect from it.
01:18:43 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean with the exception of that marketing that makes it leak last year, that shirt like the new watch with the infograph face.
01:18:48 ◼ ► With the exception of that, I don't think watches have really ever leaked in meaningful ways.
01:18:53 ◼ ► I guess it's a smaller teams, probably smaller production volumes and fewer chances to leak I guess.
01:18:59 ◼ ► But yeah, so we've heard, as far as I can tell, we've heard nothing credible about watches this year.
01:19:04 ◼ ► I will say that same analytics mechanism I have, as many app developers do, you'll start seeing devices like iPhone 12, 1, iPhone 12, 2.
01:19:16 ◼ ► You start seeing those being reported in your analytics and so you kind of realize like, oh, assuming these are real, somebody's testing new devices, they're probably coming soon.
01:19:25 ◼ ► And I have been seeing the new iPhone model numbers being reported. I have also started seeing Apple Watch model numbers being reported.
01:19:34 ◼ ► Interestingly, I have not seen any iPad new models being reported in my analytics. I guess we'll get to that in a few minutes.
01:19:43 ◼ ► But there have been no iPad reports. There have been regular frequent watch and phone reports for the last couple of months.
01:19:57 ◼ ► And it seems like they're on a pretty good cycle. As far as I would guess, it seems like the watches sell a lot around holidays.
01:20:05 ◼ ► And so it would be wise and make total sense for Apple to make sure they have a new watch going into the holiday season if at all possible.
01:20:14 ◼ ► Because they've done it the last couple of years and it's worked out very well for them as far as we can tell.
01:20:18 ◼ ► So I do think they're going to up the watch. I don't know what else they could add to it that would be like substantially significantly awesome that they're also likely to do.
01:20:28 ◼ ► We actually did an episode of Under the Radar a couple of weeks ago where David and I basically were like, assuming that Apple has a year worth of progress and they can choose to spend this technological progress somehow.
01:20:41 ◼ ► Do they make the battery bigger? Do they make the screen stay always on? Do they let apps run in the background? What do they do?
01:20:52 ◼ ► With the watch, it's such a young platform that even just boring year to year updates actually could be pretty significant to it.
01:21:01 ◼ ► So things like if they actually can update the system on a chip and make it a little bit faster and a little bit more power efficient.
01:21:09 ◼ ► It's such a young thing that one year upgrade could make that 30% more power efficient or 50% faster. You're still seeing those multi digit percentages of gains being had here every single year as they develop new technology.
01:21:25 ◼ ► So even just a "boring" update to the watch would actually probably be significant enough to be interesting.
01:21:34 ◼ ► I expect a Series 5 as well. I haven't been following any of this, but I'm just, you know, and I don't have any statistics, haven't looked at any rumors, but I believe what Mark was saying and I think there will totally be a Series 5.
01:21:43 ◼ ► I think a boring update is perfectly fine. If I had to spend the technological progress, I think this is not the year that we get always on display.
01:21:57 ◼ ► I would probably spend it thinking of like, I don't wear a watch, but lots of people in my family do, and the thing that I wish was improved about them was just the general sort of power and reliability of their wireless communication.
01:22:10 ◼ ► Like very often, one of my kids will be wearing a watch as their only smart device and I want to get their location or I want to be able to call them or they'll want to text or something like that.
01:22:18 ◼ ► And it works, like they have some of the cellular watches, it mostly works, but in many situations where the phone would be able to do whatever we're trying to do, whether it be, you know, do a voice call or send a text message or get GPS location and the watch struggles, takes a long time or can't get a signal at all.
01:22:37 ◼ ► Because it's a smaller device, it has less power, its transmitter is less powerful than the phone's, I assume.
01:22:42 ◼ ► I mean, that's what it certainly seems like to me and it stands to reason given the size of the battery.
01:22:46 ◼ ► So, if I had to spend some of that, they get a faster SOC that takes less power, I would hope that the faster SOC would let the thing do race to sleep so it could preserve power further by doing whatever the watch has to do faster.
01:22:59 ◼ ► I wouldn't spend that on letting the watch do more stuff in the background, I would spend it on, you know, be better about being a phone or a Wi-Fi thing or use Wi-Fi more often or be more powerfully send signals because that's what I want out of the watch.
01:23:12 ◼ ► I want it to be a reliable tag on my children so I can find where they are and stay and communicate with me.
01:23:18 ◼ ► That's actually really good though. I like that reasoning because ultimately, like many of my problems with the watch, both as a user and especially as a developer, are that it can do a lot of things.
01:23:30 ◼ ► It can do tons of things but it's so aggressive about power management that it does a lot of those things pretty poorly or has extremely small limits on what apps can do, what the hardware can do.
01:23:44 ◼ ► As you mentioned, like, you know, how long it stays connected to Wi-Fi or especially cellular. It's incredibly unreliable on cellular because it just tries to turn that radio off as fast as possible and stay connected as little as possible.
01:23:55 ◼ ► And if they can get enough power savings to raise that budget for all that stuff, it could make the whole watch experience significantly better in a number of areas, both at the API level, like what apps are allowed to do and for how long and how frequently, and just things like it'll stay connected to your Wi-Fi better.
01:24:13 ◼ ► So I'm assuming we also all saw the rumors about the titanium model and what was the other material?
01:24:17 ◼ ► Titanium and ceramic. Yeah, they had ceramic before in the series, I believe, two and three, right?
01:24:27 ◼ ► There was first it was just white, I think that was the series two, and then when the series three came out, I believe that's when they added, in addition to the white, they had a dark gray option.
01:24:37 ◼ ► Which I actually, I don't think I ever saw the dark gray in person. It didn't look great in pictures.
01:24:41 ◼ ► I actually owned the white one briefly, and it was awesome. It was a really cool, I love the look of, my standard Apple watch is the stainless steel model with the white sport band, aka the Stephen Hackett setup, or at least the former Stephen Hackett setup.
01:24:57 ◼ ► I really enjoy that look. I think it's a very nice, clean look. And the white ceramic kind of just took it to the next level. It was really cool. The only problem is that the white ceramic comes with an off-white strap.
01:25:11 ◼ ► So, ceramic is an awesome watch material. People worry about, they think it's like a dinner plate, and they worry about it shattering. And ceramic that is used for watches can and does shatter, but it takes a hell of an impact to do it. You basically would have to drop it from full height onto a concrete floor to actually chip it or crack it meaningfully.
01:25:33 ◼ ► You have to really abuse it hard to break it in most reasonable use. And the advantage of ceramic is that it is very hard to scratch. So it ends up looking really nice the whole time. It's a very nice material to make watches out of.
01:25:47 ◼ ► Titanium is in most ways similar to steel in how it can be worked to make a watch. Lots of watches are made out of titanium at all price points. And it's a really nice material. It's very lightweight. And if you're thinking about the old Power Books that worked with titanium, it's a totally different beast because not only was that a long time ago and we know how to work it better now, and there's different grades, different alloys, but also the old Power Books were painted and the paint flaking off was the problem.
01:26:15 ◼ ► When you use titanium in jewelry like in a watch, you don't paint it, you polish it. And so it wouldn't be doing that kind of thing at all. So those are both really nice options. I don't know what the heck they're going to charge for them.
01:26:28 ◼ ► But for the ceramic, it was I believe $1200 for the ceramic version of the Apple Watch at a time when the steel one was like $600 or $700. So it's probably going to be in that ballpark again. Somewhere around I would guess $1200 to $1500 for both of those options.
01:26:48 ◼ ► My expectation is that the Series 5 will look pretty much exactly like the Series 4 other than the materials changes, which makes me think that they will definitely, I mean, I'm sure we all agree that they'll keep the Series 4 around in some way, maybe with reduced options in the normal way that they do where they keep the old model around, but then you can't get all the different options that you could.
01:27:08 ◼ ► Mostly because the Series 4 will still be a really good watch because I don't expect the Series 5 to be radically different in any way that is immediately detectable, like between the 3 and the 4 there was like a huge difference in terms of the screen with the rounded corners and all the other stuff.
01:27:21 ◼ ► So I feel like this is kind of like the S generation. I know they don't do that on watches, but this feels like the S generation of watch. And my wife has the 4 and I see her use it all the time and I think she's still happy with it and I still think it's a really good watch.
01:27:34 ◼ ► So the 5, I'm wondering how they're going to sort of induce demand on the 5. I suppose the new materials help and the fact that if you're shopping for a present, you're just going to get the most recent watch, right?
01:27:46 ◼ ► But other than that, I guess it's the same with the S phones. Like why would I get this instead of the old one? Well, this one's a little bit better. That's apparently reason enough, but that's what I think the 5 is going to be. I'll be surprised if the 5 is a shocking watch in some way.
01:28:01 ◼ ► No new sensors of any kind that you can think of. Again, I haven't been keeping up with the rumors, but I don't think so. I mean, I don't think so either. I was just curious if you had any thoughts or expectations or anything.
01:28:13 ◼ ► I mean, it could be a really boring update in most ways, but if the series 5 is just like faster, better materials, new colors, whatever else, then maybe they keep the series 4 around for less money because the series 4 raised the price noticeably. And this is the kind of market where it would be significantly beneficial to their sales if they could achieve lower price points with older models than they've done it before. So that kind of thing would help them tremendously.
01:28:40 ◼ ► Yeah, fair point. All right, so we agree no iPads then? Marco, you had said that. I agree with you, Marco. John, any thoughts on iPads this event?
01:28:49 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know. iPads are weird in that for whatever reason I can never keep it in my mind what kind of cadence they're on. Perhaps it's because they're not on a regular cadence. I honestly don't know. But phone and watch seems like more than enough for an event. iPads in October, if they were going to come at all, seems reasonable to me.
01:29:12 ◼ ► But on the other hand, I look at the existing iPad line and I think, aren't we due for an iPad refresh? Again, I'm so bad at keeping up with the timeline of the iPads. It's not because I'm not interested, by the way. I'm very interested in new iPads.
01:29:24 ◼ ► I just can't get -- the cadence doesn't sort of settle in in my mind of when I actually should expect iPads. I actually have to go to the internet and Google for things and try to find the release dates. Am I right in thinking that they've been oddly spaced or am I just not able to get them?
01:29:40 ◼ ► Yeah, so the last iPads came out last October at the Brooklyn event that Kacie and I were at. The one before that was the 10.5 and that had come out at WWDC the year before. So it was like 14 or 15 months, something like that. And I think before that it was like 18 months. So they're not quite every year.
01:30:00 ◼ ► So it wouldn't surprise me. At the soonest I think we would see it at maybe an October event. Because this September event, in recent years there hasn't been just one event in the fall. There's been two.
01:30:12 ◼ ► And so this event is probably, if I had to guess, probably going to be focused only on iOS 13, new iPhones and new watches. And then I'm guessing sometime later in the fall there is a second event that will be for the MacBook Pro and maybe -- and the Mac Pro would ship, the MacBook Pro.
01:30:31 ◼ ► And then maybe iPads if they're ready. Or if it's just MacBook Pros, they might not even do it at an event. They might just have -- like if it's just the 16 inch and they don't have anything else ready yet, maybe that would just be like a press demo kind of thing. Who knows?
01:30:46 ◼ ► I really hope they do an event for that. I mean I can understand why they might not, but it's so important to us. I think it deserves an event.
01:30:52 ◼ ► Well, plus couldn't they just staple it on the side of a media event? And by media I mean like their Apple TV or whatever it's called. It's called the Apple video thing.
01:31:04 ◼ ► Oh, I forgot about all the streaming services. Oh no, that's going to mess everything up.
01:31:08 ◼ ► Services they could do in September. Like they're just announcing pricing or something.
01:31:13 ◼ ► They just decide. Like Disney -- everyone else is already gone, right? If they were waiting for everyone else to go so they could find out like what they're up against, which apparently they're up against a lot with Disney who is offering deep discounts.
01:31:22 ◼ ► Then it's time -- but anyway, that can be an end event. But it would feel really weird to have an event that was like Apple TV Plus announcements plus MacBook Pros plus iPads.
01:31:33 ◼ ► Like I don't know how you do that second fall event. I agree with Marco that I think this first fall event, phones and watches, sounds like it.
01:31:45 ◼ ► But like the reason I'm getting a little antsy about the iPads, now that you tell me that this spacing was weird, it makes me feel better that I'm not, you know, misremembering things.
01:31:54 ◼ ► But like once the A13 comes out in all the fancy new iPhones, now we're into another like non-updated Pro situation.
01:32:03 ◼ ► Like if you're serious about these iPads being iPad Pros, you can't let them languish for six months not getting the A13.
01:32:09 ◼ ► They've got to get the A13. Otherwise, like what's the point in having a Pro if you're not going to update it?
01:32:14 ◼ ► Well, there have been iPad updates in recent years in the spring. And it's been the lower end models.
01:32:21 ◼ ► But maybe they're not afraid to just like delay this one a little bit, push it into the spring, and then they could have one event where they update a bunch of the iPads.
01:32:29 ◼ ► Especially since we expect, or at least I expect, the new iPads to be again an S generation type thing where it'll be another one in the current case design with the flat edges and everything.
01:32:39 ◼ ► And then they'll just have the A13 and it'll be better in various ways. But otherwise, it's not going to be the big radical change like the current iPad Pros were.
01:32:46 ◼ ► So it's all the more reason I think, well, come on, get on with it. Just, you know, upgrade the internals and give us the one with the A13 sooner rather than later.
01:32:53 ◼ ► So that's, you know, we all agree it's not this event apparently, but I hope that we don't have to wait for the spring court.
01:32:59 ◼ ► Yeah, I agree with you. Are we getting a lot of services chatter since I brought it up? Are we getting a lot of services chatter at this event?
01:33:06 ◼ ► Oh, I forgot about that. You know they're going to hammer that in like crazy. It's going to be really obnoxious probably.
01:33:13 ◼ ► Like, we still have the other shoe that still needs to drop here. You know, we talked about Apple TV Plus and how everyone else has announced their pricing, or you know, a lot of people have.
01:33:21 ◼ ► But there's also the other lingering thing that's out there, and it's also part of the whole stuff that Disney's done, is will they, won't they unbundle stuff?
01:33:29 ◼ ► We talked about it forever. Apple Prime, blah, blah, blah. Other competitors are doing it. Apple has a lot of services. At a certain point when you get a certain number of services, the opportunity to bundle them in a package for less than they would cost individually comes up.
01:33:42 ◼ ► And thus far, Apple has not announced anything about that. So I'm, in any kind of services stuff, I'm not just looking for, "Oh, I wonder what Apple TV Plus is going to cost." I'm looking for bundle.
01:33:54 ◼ ► I want that sweet bundle. I mean, did you see what Disney said? That Disney's doing a thing where if you sign up for three years, like basically if you do a contract, if you're willing to pay for three years, you get it at a lower rate, which is exactly how the cable companies do all this stuff. Like everything old is new again.
01:34:10 ◼ ► Yeah, I expect bundles to be coming back. I think Apple should have one. And since pricing stuff, you can, you know, wait until like the last minute because it's just, you know, a number on a spreadsheet somewhere or whatever. I get it. I really hope whenever Apple starts announcing more stuff about services, a bundle is mentioned.
01:34:28 ◼ ► I would love to see that, but I don't think we will because Apple for all their wonderful qualities, they really don't care ever to compete on price with anybody ever. Like the last time Apple competed well on price against its competitors, I think, was the iPod line.
01:34:51 ◼ ► They just don't seem to care. And it seems like as time goes on, they care even less and less and less. They only serve the high end and they just lose the low end willingly. And I don't think that's going to be any different here. You know, we've been, you know, bugging them for years to do things like, you know, raise the free iCloud storage and stuff like that. And they just don't because they just don't care.
01:35:17 ◼ ► It's not that they don't care. Like they obviously care a lot about like they're very aware of what their competitors are priced at. But like the formula that that all goes through, like the machine that the inputs go through, like they're very I think all the inputs are there.
01:35:29 ◼ ► They know what everyone else charges. They know what all the high end Android phones cost. They know what all the competing PCs and stuff cost. But the machine they go into includes as one of its inputs, the fact that pricing is a signal and Apple wants to send the signal that they are the best and they're the most premium brand.
01:35:45 ◼ ► So what comes out the other end is continued high prices because that is part of Apple's signal. But I don't think they're entirely ignorant because they do adjust prices to reflect changes in the market.
01:35:57 ◼ ► It's just that they're never going to be well because they did this, we have to do it. But like, notice that when I was saying bundle, I wasn't saying a bundle that has a price close to Disney's bundle. Just a bundle period.
01:36:09 ◼ ► And I feel like if everyone else is doing a bundle, and like, here's the thing, it in the same way that that they find ways to get you to step up to the next model, a bundle is a way for you to actually pay more than you would before because you wouldn't have bought like you're interested in one maybe one and a half services.
01:36:26 ◼ ► But the bundle makes it seem like such a deal to get three and you never would have bought three individually. So I feel like they could do that math and end up with a bundle that is not as cheap as other people's bundles, but nevertheless drives Apple customers to actually pay more than they would have otherwise.
01:36:40 ◼ ► That's the magic of bundling. So that's what I'm looking for. Not for them to be price competitive, but for them to find to them to use that tool as a way to get us to pay even more money than we would have for their services.
01:36:51 ◼ ► And I completely agree. I'm not saying that they won't be price competitive individually. I know they won't. That's a fore conclusion. But I think even the idea to create a bundle is the kind of admitting defeat in a certain way or admitting...
01:37:12 ◼ ► Yeah, in a certain way that I don't think they're going to do or at least they won't do it until it's way too late. It's not their style to come out with something very price competitive in 2019.
01:37:24 ◼ ► But like I said, the bundle doesn't have to be price competitive. The bundle can continue to be not price competitive, but it will still be a bundle. It will be a discount over buying them individually, which still ends up being more than everybody else.
01:37:35 ◼ ► I think even creating a bundle is kind of like acknowledging that they have a weakness in the market, that they need to use a bundle to get around. I don't think they're even going to do that.
01:37:44 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, like I said, the other way to frame it is it's a way like giving you a 64 and a 256 tier to get more money out of than you would otherwise spend.
01:37:53 ◼ ► Because you don't want the 64 because it's too small, but you see the other option for a 256 and now you end up spending more than you would have otherwise.
01:37:59 ◼ ► That's the way I'm seeing it. I see your perspective as well, that it is a way to say, oh, other people have bundles, therefore we have to have one.
01:38:05 ◼ ► We don't want to be even a follower in that way, despite the fact that our numbers are different.
01:38:09 ◼ ► But the other way is, is this actually a way to get people to pay more money, just like the 64 to 256 jump on the phone storage?
01:38:17 ◼ ► What's interesting as I hear you guys kind of theorize what's going to happen, I started thinking to myself, well, what are we going to see services-wise next week? And the more I think about it, I don't know if I were Apple, if I would feel terribly confident going into this event.
01:38:38 ◼ ► Just hear me out for a second. If these iPhone 11s look about the same as the iPhone XS, and if they act about the same as the XS, so I'm thinking, you know, we were probably going to get another lens in the camera.
01:38:52 ◼ ► We're going to have a faster processor. But by and large, there's no like really marquee feature. I mean, okay, yeah, the camera could be, but just hear me out on this.
01:39:03 ◼ ► There's no marquee feature that says, oh my gosh, this is a big change, like, you know, touch ID to face ID kind of change. And, you know, the press is going to just shrug and say, oh, it looks like the iPhone from the last two years, who cares?
01:39:15 ◼ ► I don't know if I were Apple. If I'm feeling terribly confident about this iPhone 11, this evolutionary rather than revolutionary iPhone 11, and then I can't imagine coming in that same event and saying, oh, by the way, we're going to charge at least as much, if not more than Disney for less stuff.
01:39:37 ◼ ► So the more I think about it, the more I think they're going to build up the services stuff, like I think Marco had said, you know, they're absolutely going to talk about it for sure, but I don't think we're going to see pricing yet.
01:39:48 ◼ ► I think there'll be a separate event in October or thereabouts when we hear about pricing and get more details about the services. Maybe a bundle, I'd be surprised. I think I come close to Marco's perspective on this and John's, but again, I see both sides.
01:40:01 ◼ ► I don't think we're going to see a whole lot about services in this event. The only ace in the hole, though, is what if there's some sort of hardware on the phone that's specifically good for games, and then we could maybe lean heavily into Apple Arcade.
01:40:24 ◼ ► You know that camera on the back that's a big square? It's actually a D-pad too. It tilts.
01:40:35 ◼ ► Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't see them letting this event go by without talking services, and I'm not trying to say that that's what you guys were saying, but I really think they're just going to try to spark the hype machine one more time and kind of leave it at that.
01:40:54 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, that's probably the more likely option because I think the phone and the watches and iOS 13 are plenty for this event because the phone event is called the phone event because it's like, who cares? It's the phone and then some other stuff.
01:41:06 ◼ ► So I think that'll be fine. But, you know, I don't know. The main thing arguing against a bundle, if you're like, is what are you going to bundle it with?
01:41:14 ◼ ► I'm not sure they have enough stuff that are desirable that a bundle actually works as designed because Apple Music plus Apple TV plus, is that attractive enough to do a bundle? Just two things?
01:41:26 ◼ ► Yeah, but no, that's just us talking. Of course, we can think of things that we'd like to bundle. We want Apple Prime, bundle all the things. They're not going to do that.
01:41:35 ◼ ► I feel like if they're going to do a bundle at all, it would have to be like three media-ish services that make sense together that are already desirable enough to make it work.
01:41:47 ◼ ► Despite the fact that we don't want them to bundle everything because we're all in an Apple and it'd be like, I want to have one bill for all the Apple things.
01:41:59 ◼ ► I would be fine with them, in case he's right about the bad PR, the inevitable bad PR of their pricing unless they shock us all by undercutting Disney, which they won't.
01:42:10 ◼ ► So, yeah, do the other announcements, talk about this stuff, and maybe talk up one of the other services like Apple Arcade or something. They could do a long segment on that and not mention anything about Apple TV plus and just continue to have that lurking out there for a future fall event or something.
01:42:26 ◼ ► So, first of all, I think you guys are nuts. I think there's no way that they don't use the draw of the iPhone event to push the services. There's no way.
01:42:35 ◼ ► Right, but we're saying that they can announce a price. We're all agreeing that they're going to hype it up and be like, everybody loves services. They're great. Apple TV plus is coming and look at this new trailer for the shows. But what is the price?
01:42:46 ◼ ► Exactly. To refine my previous statement, what I'm trying to say is there will be hype, for sure, but I don't think we're going to get any more actionable, is not the right word, but tangible information from this event.
01:43:00 ◼ ► We'll see trailers, we'll get hype, but we're not going to have any more information about pricing, I don't think. Maybe we'll get specific release dates because we don't have a specific release date, right?
01:43:11 ◼ ► But I don't think we're going to get a lot in the sense of, this is the exact lineup for Apple TV plus, this is exactly when it will launch, and this is exactly how much it's going to cost.
01:43:20 ◼ ► Well, yeah, I mean, you're probably right about that because it does seem like a lot of this stuff is launching in like, you know, November or like, you know, later in the fall.
01:43:27 ◼ ► So I guess I could see that, but the reality is, like, they are pushing so hard on services now. It is so important to them. They are pushing for so much growth and so much revenue and so much success in that area and launching all these new services that, you know, service promos are going to be the new game demos in Apple events.
01:43:47 ◼ ► Like, there's going to be too many of them. We're all going to be like, oh my god, kill me. You know, it's going to be everyone's bathroom break time during the keynote because it's just going to be like, so just dragging on with more and more services push and services, you know, promotion.
01:43:59 ◼ ► So there's no way that they're going to be light on it. They are going to hammer it into us until we are so tired of hearing about it, even if their services aren't ready yet.
01:44:06 ◼ ► I did, though, just have a crazy thought. You know, as John was saying, like, you know, what would they bundle in? It isn't just Apple Music and Apple TV. Like, you know, not only do we also have Apple Arcade and Apple News Plus, whatever their weird magazine thing is, you know, there's already like those core services right there of just the new things they launched.
01:44:21 ◼ ► But what if they did something even crazier? What if they, you know, whether they bundle in iCloud storage or not, I think they should. What if they tied it into the iPhone upgrade program?
01:44:31 ◼ ► And you could actually just like pay a slightly higher iPhone upgrade program rate and you get all these Apple services. Like, the fact is, like, they are they're pushing so hard on services that tying it in a strong way to the iPhone, which is like their biggest asset, is not out of the question.
01:44:49 ◼ ► In fact, I fully expect them to do it. I think they're going to push way harder on services than any of us would predict. The only thing holding them back, I think, is that it seems like their back end systems for like billing and subscription management and everything are so primitive and archaic.
01:45:06 ◼ ► I don't even know if their back end is capable of selling a bundle. But if it is, and that's a really big if, I fully expect them to do all sorts of crazy stuff. Things that we would never have predicted. Things like, you know, tying it into an iPhone purchase at the time of purchase, stuff like that. They're going to push really hard on this.
01:45:27 ◼ ► Yeah, that does make sense. So no Macs. Just just to clarify. No Macs on September 10th. They should announce the price of the wheels in the Mac Pro.
01:45:37 ◼ ► The only thing is like waiting until later in the fall, like if they don't have Macs at this event and if they are debuting a brand new design with the 16 inch this fall, I don't think they would have an event just for that. But it also doesn't seem like iPads are ready yet.
01:45:57 ◼ ► I can't see them having an event that is later in the fall of like, we're going to tell you again about a few TV shows and here's a MacBook Pro. It just seems like a weird combo.
01:46:07 ◼ ► I thought we'd seen the latest rumors on the 16 inch, like the date was later than we thought and it wasn't going to be until 2020. I forget what the losing track was.
01:46:15 ◼ ► They've gone back and forth a lot. It's been all over the map. But I think the most recent rumors are sooner rather than later. Like this fall.
01:46:22 ◼ ► If you had Overcast out for the Mac, you'd have all sorts of stats on weird Macs showing up.
01:46:28 ◼ ► All right. Well, thank you to our sponsors this week. Hover, Eero, Away and we will talk to you next week.
01:46:44 ◼ ► Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
01:46:55 ◼ ► It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
01:47:12 ◼ ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A. It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental.
01:47:44 ◼ ► You had been in before. The last time we discussed that you had described various experiences and what you did and didn't like about being in the ocean.
01:47:50 ◼ ► So what threshold have you crossed? What sort of metric for yourself had you set that you have now achieved?
01:47:55 ◼ ► So previous to today, I had been in the ocean only in the sense of like waiting kind of like up to maybe like my chest.
01:48:05 ◼ ► But never like getting past the breakers, never, you know, swimming off my feet, you know, stuff like that.
01:48:18 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. We haven't gone to the beach that much this summer. Our rental this year had...
01:48:30 ◼ ► Yeah, I'm going to swim in the ocean with, you know, in the dark with no lifeguards. Yeah, that's not going to happen.
01:48:39 ◼ ► Yes. Not only were there tons of people and lifeguards around, but it was also finally a green flag day, which means like the lowest level of waves.
01:49:01 ◼ ► You're not going to hold it. Someone else will be holding and filming you. Filming. I'm so old.
01:49:10 ◼ ► Yeah, all right. We needed a more dramatic battery. It's not up to Tiff's standards. Anyway, continue.
01:49:14 ◼ ► Yeah, so there's not much to say. You know, this was a big, you know, fear for me for a long time.
01:49:21 ◼ ► And, you know, this year as I learned to swim finally, like as an adult, this was kind of like the one of the last big things to do.
01:49:28 ◼ ► We didn't have a lot of beach days this summer because the rental this year had a pool. So we just kept going to the pool instead.
01:49:34 ◼ ► So we didn't have and like I hate putting on like the full body sunscreen and everything. I just I don't like that at all.
01:49:40 ◼ ► So I tend to avoid beach days, but I did finally do it. And it was fine. It was terrifying.
01:49:47 ◼ ► I knew you would laugh at me, John, because I wore goggles during it and I quickly learned that you can't see anything.
01:50:00 ◼ ► I thought I'd be able to see the surface. So I'd at least have some orientation. But turns out, nope. Can't see crap in the Atlantic.
01:50:06 ◼ ► I'm going to tell you what I tell my kids, one of whom still is like you and wants to wear the goggles.
01:50:13 ◼ ► The other one does not. Your eyes are waterproof. Yeah. But are they salt and sand proof? Yeah, it's fine.
01:50:19 ◼ ► Oh, I mean, it's way better than chlorine. This is a problem. It's actually a problem for me.
01:50:23 ◼ ► Speaking of ocean stuff, I instinctively open my eyes underwater. I've always opened my eyes underwater from the time I learned to swim in the Long Island Sound.
01:50:35 ◼ ► when I was learning how to swim in the sound was she would give me the task to go under the water and find rocks of various colors.
01:50:41 ◼ ► So she'd say, get me a black rock, get me a gray rock, get me a green rock. So I always open my eyes and never wear goggles.
01:50:48 ◼ ► This is bad if you're wearing contacts. I wear contacts at the beach just because it's you know, it's better.
01:50:57 ◼ ► And also, if you're putting your eye up to the electronic viewfinder of your camera, it's better not to have glasses getting in the way of everything.
01:51:03 ◼ ► So I wear contacts and then I go in the ocean and I open my eyes and they wash out of my eyes.
01:51:07 ◼ ► So just find their daily wear. They're disposable. But anyway, the ocean claimed a contact this year.
01:51:12 ◼ ► But yeah, you can open your eyes underwater and it's better than opening them with chlorine because your eyes won't sting of chlorine when you're done.
01:51:18 ◼ ► Salt water is very much like your tears. Different salinity, I'm sure, but it's actually fairly friendly.
01:51:24 ◼ ► And yeah, you actually can see things, but no, don't expect to like, it's not going to be like a pool. Don't expect to see things to that degree.
01:51:31 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, I couldn't even see the surface. Like the few times I went under, like I couldn't even see like which, I mean, I knew which direction was up because the waves weren't that big.
01:51:38 ◼ ► I just kind of, you know, felt and kept track of it. But like it was very hard to see anything.
01:51:44 ◼ ► So did you, did you have this experience, which is I think one of the sort of key experiences of swimming in the ocean, going past the breakers, although it is more pronounced when the waves are big,
01:51:56 ◼ ► is that the intimidating surf that you've been dealing with and worried about, once you get past it, you're like, oh, once you're past it, nothing doing out here.
01:52:06 ◼ ► It's calm. And yeah, my feet are off the ground, but I don't have to worry about a wave squishing me anymore.
01:52:11 ◼ ► And in general, I can hang out here basically indefinitely and have conversations while looking in at the shore as the breakers crush the other plebes who are out in front of them.
01:52:23 ◼ ► I think I came fairly close to what you're saying. I did get past, I mean, the waves were very low today.
01:52:28 ◼ ► There was like, in the previous attempts, one of the ways that I had gotten my butt handed to me was on taller wave days, not going under a wave that I was supposed to go under.
01:52:41 ◼ ► So this time, there were no waves that were so big that you were supposed to go under them.
01:52:45 ◼ ► I went under a couple anyway just to see what it was like, but like that's when I couldn't see anything. But it was fine.
01:52:50 ◼ ► So I was able to get past them fairly easily. They were just the kind that make you bob up and down.
01:52:57 ◼ ► And this, since I've learned, you know, I started taking swimming lessons this past spring.
01:53:03 ◼ ► This was the first time I had been in water I couldn't stand in because the swimming lesson pool didn't have a deep end.
01:53:22 ◼ ► Well, that's, I would not have let you, if I knew this fact, I would not have cleared you to do it for today.
01:53:30 ◼ ► Well, even if you can technically stand, you can lift your feet off the ground and practice treading water, which I'm assuming you did, right?
01:53:37 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, I've been doing that in the pool for, you know, all summer, but like it's like four and a half feet deep.
01:53:43 ◼ ► Right, like, but all right, so that's the, you need to be able to tread water and in particular, if you want to crank your way up in this, it would be nice to be able to tread water without using your legs.
01:53:52 ◼ ► Well, actually, so I don't know how much this matters. Naturally, I did Wikipedia research on treading water before actually trying it.
01:53:59 ◼ ► And apparently there's this like egg beater technique where you only use your legs and it is apparently like the most efficient way to do it.
01:54:07 ◼ ► Yeah, no, either one. Like I'm just saying, like, get to the point where you don't need every single one of your limbs at full capacity to successfully tread water because that means you're on this hairline between death and treading water.
01:54:18 ◼ ► Right. I mean, the good thing is like you were right that there is noticeably increased buoyancy in the ocean.
01:54:26 ◼ ► But ultimately, like, yeah, like I was able to go out there and kind of float around for a few minutes until I got tired and then I went back in.
01:54:34 ◼ ► And then, you know, I went I went I did a second pass a little while later back in. It was I mean, it was really cold.
01:54:41 ◼ ► So that's another problem. But was it really cold? It's August. It had to be 68 degrees.
01:54:55 ◼ ► And then like similar to how like a couple of years ago, I went on my first ski trip since high school and I went down like one giant hill one time and I stopped because I could feel like my knees were getting a little bit shaky.
01:55:13 ◼ ► And I'm like, if I go again, I'm probably going to hurt myself very badly. Similarly, after like two passes of floating in the ocean for a little while, I stopped because I could feel myself getting weak.
01:55:23 ◼ ► And I'm like, you know what? This is going to be a problem. Like it was pretty hard to walk out of the ocean the second time.
01:55:28 ◼ ► So I'm like, yeah, I think my legs are done for now because like kind of similar to the first time I played golf, which was so far the only time I played golf.
01:55:36 ◼ ► When you're really bad at playing golf, it takes you a lot more physical effort than the people who are good at playing golf because you have to make a lot more swings and do a lot more walking because you're terrible at golf.
01:55:47 ◼ ► So similarly, when you are pretty bad at treading water, it takes a lot of effort to do it because you're very inefficient compared to people who are more experienced.
01:55:57 ◼ ► So I was out there for a total between the two times of maybe 10 minutes. And that was enough for me. I was done. I considered it, you know, checkmark thing I did. I'm proud of myself and I'll do it again sometime.
01:56:09 ◼ ► Well, that's good. I mean, yeah, in addition to being inefficient is also the stress, right? You mean you just end up expending more energy and just end up getting so best to get up before you're tired.
01:56:19 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, it was a very like terrifying experience to begin this process because it was so new and foreign and intimidating for me.
01:56:25 ◼ ► So certainly there was some like, you know, adrenaline come down happening as well. And I never got to the point where you keep telling me that I'm supposed to be very relaxed.
01:56:33 ◼ ► None of it was relaxing, but it was interesting. And I did eventually reach like an equilibrium for a little while. So that was fine.
01:56:43 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, the part of the treading water thing and like they're doing with only feet or only hands is to get to the point where like at least half of your body is relaxed when you're doing it to sort of get in that place where you're not flailing for your life constantly.
01:56:56 ◼ ► And like you realize, oh, I actually can expend less effort in a slightly more efficient way and I'll stay up, especially again with the increased buoyancy. The only other thing I would have suggested that you would have tried instead of going out there and hanging out for a long time is to do a short lap parallel to the beach once or twice.
01:57:11 ◼ ► Because that's what you're doing in the pool, right? Swimming a little bit, even though it's not quite big enough for laps, like just swim a little bit sideways just to see that's the thing that you can do that you can sort of travel places without going parallel to the shore.
01:57:22 ◼ ► That's right. It is like a big infinite pool. You know, you said your pool's not big enough. Well, this is plenty big. You don't even have to turn around. You can just do one long lap the length of the beach from one flag to the other wherever the lifeguards say there's a lifeguard zone and then come in, which is a skill that you need when there's a rip tide anyway because you won't be able to come straight back in. But well, baby steps.
01:57:42 ◼ ► Yeah, right. Yeah. It's like, you know, as I as I do this more, that's the kind of thing I would attempt.
01:57:49 ◼ ► All right. Well, this I think this has been a successful summer of Marco Summer of fun, summer of not drowning, summer of ocean. I don't know what is the summer of it. It's summer of something. Yeah, this is worth celebrating. This is good news.