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334: Mechanical Disadvantage

 

00:00:00   Before we do anything else, the rules of Syracuse Involved Podcasting state dictate,

00:00:06   even, that you shall start with all--did you ever--did we talk about that on this show,

00:00:11   the shall versus will versus whatever? When I was doing government contracting, whenever

00:00:15   we wrote requirements documents, you knew a requirement because it said, you know, the

00:00:22   software shall do x, y, or z. If will is not enough, the software shall do x, y, and z,

00:00:27   and that's how you knew.

00:00:28   Well, I guess that makes sense because will means like a prediction of what it will do,

00:00:32   where a shall is like a dictation of what it needs to do. But what--

00:00:35   I guess, yeah.

00:00:36   Can you not just substitute the word must for the word shall? Like, how are those different?

00:00:41   Maybe.

00:00:42   You got to look at the internet, RFCs, you know, those things, those big documents, right?

00:00:46   I believe they have a formal definition of will, shall, and must and all that stuff.

00:00:51   I don't know if it's the same as the ones that you had to deal with, Casey, but it's

00:00:54   definitely a thing.

00:00:55   Well, I probably was. This was when I was working at a big, big, big government contractor.

00:01:00   We were doing stuff for the Navy, so it was all of that happy horse manure. But anyway,

00:01:07   I digress.

00:01:08   So I just searched for must versus shall. The first result is a page on the FAA website,

00:01:14   weirdly, but basically it says must and must not are words of obligation. Must imposes

00:01:22   a legal obligation that something is mandatory. Must not is prohibited. But apparently, shall

00:01:28   used to mean must, but these days shall is kind of understood now to mean may.

00:01:36   Oh, interesting.

00:01:37   And they advise that you go through and replace shall with must wherever you use shall to

00:01:42   mean that, because must is unambiguous.

00:01:45   I put a link in the show. It's the IETF one, the RFC one. It's got must, must not, should,

00:01:51   should not, may, required, recommended, optional. It makes more sense than the one you were

00:01:57   just reading, but it is the place where programmers are most likely to come across these particular

00:02:04   important words because you'll be looking up something in some spec like the HTTP spec

00:02:08   or the TCP spec or something, and you'll run across one of these documents and it will

00:02:11   have these words in all caps and this is what they mean.

00:02:15   I read the show notes several days ago as I was looking at something and the very first

00:02:20   item of follow up, our show notes read as follows, "John's cheese grater broke." And

00:02:27   because I'm a turd, I saw this and just cackled in excitement because I was like, "Oh, man,

00:02:32   it finally..." Oh, wait, this literally means a cheese grater, doesn't it? So, John, tell

00:02:36   us about your 10-year-old computer that's still chugging along and your silly cheese

00:02:41   grater that I have used once and got shamed for it, by the way. I'm assuming this is the

00:02:46   same one. Tell me about your cheese grater.

00:02:47   It's a little learning curve for the cheese grater. My computer's fine. We talked about

00:02:52   my kitchen stuff last show and I said, "Oh, it was like my cheese grater was on its last

00:02:55   leg that I didn't know how many I had in reserve." It really was on its last legs because between

00:03:00   that show and now, it finally did. The last little bit of plastic that was holding the

00:03:04   little flappy thing on broke and it just came off. It's the same way they always fail. They

00:03:08   fail, you know, like a crack starts forming. It just creeps its way up. I nursed this one

00:03:12   for a really long time being very careful with the cracked plastic, but eventually it

00:03:16   was dead. So now I know how many I have left. I unboxed a new one and I'm using that one

00:03:21   now and I have one in reserve. So I had two left before this one broke. Now I'm on my

00:03:25   second to last one.

00:03:27   Oh, no.

00:03:28   Yeah, and I think I'm going to put a thing on the calendar. I guess recording this podcast

00:03:33   is one way to do it because I want to know how long do they last. I don't really pay

00:03:36   attention, but now I have a recorded version. So when this next one breaks, I'll be able

00:03:39   to do the date math between now and then and know roughly how long these things last.

00:03:44   The real question that everyone wants to know is did you purchase for $75 a replacement

00:03:49   to your favorite spatula?

00:03:50   I did not. It was black only. I couldn't overcome that. I don't think I would have gotten it.

00:03:56   Like I said, unlike the cheese grater, the spatulas continue to function seemingly perfectly

00:04:01   like there is nothing wrong with them other than slight discoloration from food sticking

00:04:06   to it. But other than that, I don't foresee them breaking in any way. So I don't need

00:04:11   to have a giant supply. Unlike, for example, Apple Extended Keyboard 2 or whatever, if

00:04:16   you're using something that's going to wear out, keyboards wear out, albeit slowly. These

00:04:21   cheese graters wear out way too quickly. Spatulas, they just last forever, kind of like this

00:04:25   Mac Pro.

00:04:26   They just slowly leach plastic into your food forever.

00:04:29   It's not leaching plastic. We established this.

00:04:33   I found the post on Instagram that I put up 289 weeks ago on December 21st of 2013 where

00:04:40   I attempted to shred some mozzarella, which I'm sure I butchered that pronunciation. I

00:04:45   tried to be Italian. But anyway, I shredded some mozzarella and John absolutely mercilessly

00:04:50   shamed me for it.

00:04:52   This is a different cheese grater. This is the box grater. This is like pizza cheese.

00:04:56   Jeez, Casey, what are you doing?

00:04:58   My mistake.

00:04:59   Totally different. How would I break that thing? That one we still have. And again,

00:05:05   unlike the cheese grater I'm talking about, I don't foresee it breaking.

00:05:10   What cheese grater did I use for this then, if not a box grater?

00:05:12   A box grater, a metal box grater.

00:05:14   So what are you talking about then?

00:05:15   I'm talking about the thing I use to grate Parmesan cheese, which I do frequently because

00:05:19   it's a staple in the household. And it is an Oxo.

00:05:22   Is that like a sword?

00:05:23   No, it's an Oxo model they don't make anymore, probably because it has a failed flaw and

00:05:28   it breaks that for a couple of years. But it's so much better than the model they

00:05:32   ship now. The model they ship now is like, I don't know, just Google for like Oxo rotary

00:05:37   cheese grater. You'll see the current model and the current model is terrible. This old

00:05:42   model is genius other than the fact that it breaks eventually.

00:05:45   Oh, is this, oh, this is the thing that they bring around at like Olive Garden, isn't it?

00:05:49   No, not quite. I mean, are you looking at the current one? I mean, put a link in the

00:05:53   chat.

00:05:54   This is one of the options and this looks to me like what I would find at an Olive Garden.

00:05:58   Yeah. So that is, that is the current model and it is no good because if you try, if you

00:06:02   grate a lot of cheese and you try using that, your hands will hurt. It is not good. You

00:06:06   don't have good mechanical advantage because as you squeeze that handle, the, the pressure

00:06:12   on the part that is pressing down on the cheese is less than your, than your hand. Like you're

00:06:17   using a lever, but in reverse, right? It's like squeezing way down at the end, the force

00:06:22   at the tip of that lever is less than you're squeezing down there. So it is mechanical

00:06:26   disadvantage. No good.

00:06:29   So and what is yours? Can you link to yours?

00:06:31   I just put something in the chat. Is that the correct thing?

00:06:34   Yep. So that's mine. So that one, you can't really see in the picture, but so that cylinder,

00:06:40   like it opens up along that hinge. Do you see the hinge thing there? It opens along

00:06:44   the hinge and the thing that is, you know, it's got a very, very thin curve piece of

00:06:49   plastic that sort of keeps the cheese in. So you open it up and then you can slide the

00:06:53   cheese down. Like the metal cylinder is going up and down. You, you slide the cheese down

00:06:57   next to the metal cylinder and you squeeze the cheese against the cylinder with your

00:07:02   entire hand. Like you are directly pressing it against the cylinder and then you rotate

00:07:06   the thing. So you basically, you put one hand around the cylinder and then the crank on

00:07:10   top, you turn. It's still kind of difficult to do, but it is pretty much as good as you

00:07:15   can get in terms of, I mean, there's no mechanical advantage to squeezing, but there's no mechanical

00:07:20   disadvantage and the turning thing is good. Inside it is a cylinder with very, very small,

00:07:26   widely spaced holes to get a good, you know, part of cheese grade going there.

00:07:32   So why couldn't you find like a reasonable facsimile of this? So for example, I put a

00:07:36   $13 item in the show, in the chat room, which seems to me like it is roughly the same thing

00:07:42   you're discussing.

00:07:43   It's totally different. What are you talking about?

00:07:44   Why is it totally different? It's a vertical thing.

00:07:45   Look at this little knob. Look at this little plastic, uncomfortable knob. It has to be

00:07:49   big, round, you know, grippy, oxo, rubberized, like that's the whole point of the thing.

00:07:56   And I don't even know how, where the cheese goes in this thing or how the gripping would

00:08:00   be and like that big protrusion coming out of it. You can't grip it from multiple angles.

00:08:03   Look at the second picture. It shows exactly what happens.

00:08:05   Yeah, no, that's no good. Like I don't understand what that big orange thing is sticking out

00:08:10   there. Now you can't grip it, like you can't grip it from any angle because it's not a

00:08:14   cylinder. It's a big protrusion thing. And also the holes, that's not the right, the

00:08:18   metal cylinder, that's not the right shape for the grading. The holes in this thing are

00:08:22   very small.

00:08:23   I just buy pre-graded Parmesan cheese and it's awesome.

00:08:26   That is the most Marco answer I've ever heard.

00:08:28   Also, pre-graded costs even more money, first of all. But second of all, whatever machine

00:08:34   they have, like in Whole Foods that grades it for you, grades it too fine for my taste.

00:08:38   It's like tiny pieces of hair. It's too wispy. I want one step up from that. I like the texture

00:08:45   the OXO makes. I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean technically when I'm saving

00:08:49   the bodies of these things, so when they all die, in theory, I will have the raw materials

00:08:56   to make some kind of Frankenstein cordless drill powered. I want an electric one. I don't

00:09:02   know how to do this by hand at all. I like just an electric one. All I need is something

00:09:06   that can turn with lots of torque but not too quickly and then I can just shove the

00:09:10   cheese down into. I might go all steampunk on this eventually.

00:09:17   What is it? We have the technology. We can build it? Something like that?

00:09:19   Yeah, for the next, let's say, three and a half to six years, I think I'm good on

00:09:23   my – I'm assuming these last like maybe three years. Maybe I'm really wrong about

00:09:27   that. Anyway, we'll find out.

00:09:29   Can you commission somebody to like custom mold you a replacement?

00:09:33   Yeah, like 3D print it. You can do anything with a 3D printer.

00:09:36   Yeah, can you hire like a maker?

00:09:38   No. I mean, I should show you this. I look at it. It's amazing how unrepairable it

00:09:42   is because it's a tiny flat piece of plastic connected. It's like glued in. You can't

00:09:50   fasten it any other way because for the cheese grater to work, it has to close completely.

00:09:56   You have to be able to close that thing down completely. For like the last little bit of

00:09:58   cheese, you have to basically get that cylinder so that it is basically the plastic is basically

00:10:02   touching the metal thing. Otherwise, you end up with that part of cheese that you can never

00:10:06   press against the grater, right? It has to close completely, completely, which means

00:10:10   that it has to be like a perfect – it has to be just the little C-shaped thing with

00:10:15   a flat plastic flap coming directly out of it. If you tried to attach it with any kind

00:10:20   of glue or fastener or anything to strengthen it, it wouldn't close all the way and now

00:10:24   you've got basically a non-functional grater where you can never grate that last little

00:10:28   bit of cheese.

00:10:29   It's not a good design. They kind of messed up, but what they replaced it with is worse.

00:10:35   I might just have to go and look on eBay and see if I can find some more of these.

00:10:39   I just didn't. I didn't come up with anything in first research.

00:10:42   I think I bought like five or six back when I bought them and maybe that wasn't enough.

00:10:48   You cornered the market.

00:10:49   Yeah. And none of them were $75. Let me tell you, they were all like $12 each.

00:10:54   I just can't wait for some listener of this show either now or in like four years goes

00:10:59   digging through their junk pile and realizing they too have a cache of vertically oriented

00:11:04   OXO cheese.

00:11:05   They're going to have a cache. They're going to have one and it'll be broken because they

00:11:08   break.

00:11:10   Oh, man. I am very happy that I am not this particular about my tools. Remember this when

00:11:18   we have a two-hour conversation about my computer.

00:11:20   I'm sure I wouldn't be as particular, A, if I didn't have RSI and B, if I didn't eat quite

00:11:24   so much Parmesan cheese, but unfortunately, both of those things I'm afflicted with.

00:11:30   I'm so sorry.

00:11:31   Can you get a mechanical grater or an electric grater of some kind? Do those exist for home

00:11:37   use?

00:11:38   That's what I'm saying. I would like to get something that is not powered by something

00:11:42   other than my hands, but I haven't found one that does the job. Lots of people recommend

00:11:46   food processors. I have many food processors. I have big ones and small ones. The problem

00:11:49   with most electric things is they go too fast and/or the holes are the wrong size. Going

00:11:54   too fast is bad because then you get heat and friction. You can't have any heat. You

00:11:57   have to basically turn it like at hand speed. You don't want to produce any heat. You just

00:12:01   want to grate the cheese slowly.

00:12:05   And then the hole size. The holes on this thing are very, very small. Smaller than the

00:12:10   smallest side of a box grater, but the same shape as the big side of a box grater, like

00:12:15   the little inverted grater.

00:12:18   What do places like Whole Foods use? Just a big thing?

00:12:22   They must have a machine. Obviously, it's probably not someone back there doing it by

00:12:25   hand. Or if they do have a machine, it's probably with a really big crank, like a meat grinder

00:12:29   size machine. I don't know what they use, but it's way too fine for me. They might use

00:12:32   like, you know the puckered side of a box grater, where it's like a cross is cut in

00:12:39   the metal and then the four triangles are pushed out a little bit?

00:12:41   I think so. Where it's like a slicing edge?

00:12:44   No, it's like I said, make a picture of a piece of metal and now cut a plus sign in

00:12:50   it. And now press on the plus sign from the inside so that the four little triangles formed

00:12:57   by the plus sign bend outward into a little pyramid?

00:13:00   I've never seen this.

00:13:02   Oh, oh, are you talking about the handheld, sortie looking thing?

00:13:05   Oh my god. Chat room, tell me I did not describe this exactly correctly.

00:13:11   Are there just one of those on the side or are there like a whole bunch?

00:13:14   A whole bunch.

00:13:15   I think I know what you mean, but I've never used that before.

00:13:18   Anyway, I think they might be using something like that, but whatever they use, it makes

00:13:20   it incredibly fine. I mean, you know, it's very wispy. It's not bad, it's just not particularly

00:13:25   to my taste, so I prefer it a little bit bigger than that.

00:13:29   Just use more.

00:13:30   It's not, that's not, it's a texture thing. A microplane, that's what I'm thinking of.

00:13:35   I'm thinking of a microplane.

00:13:36   Microplanes are awesome.

00:13:37   No, it's not a microplane. The cost of like pre-grated parmesan cheese is so expensive.

00:13:42   Like pre-cut anything at Whole Foods.

00:13:43   Well, yeah. So since everyone will tell us, is there a reason you don't use a microplane

00:13:48   style grater?

00:13:50   It doesn't make the right shavings. I have a microplane grater. It doesn't make it the

00:13:55   right, it's not how I like it.

00:13:57   I guess you're stuck.

00:13:58   Yeah, I'll say. I've got a couple years on the clock yet.

00:14:02   We hope.

00:14:03   Yeah.

00:14:04   Oh, man. You know, just earlier today, I think it was, I listened to 99 PI and they were talking

00:14:11   about how we're going to eventually run out of sand. And I don't think that I personally

00:14:17   have to worry about that, but I am very worried, Jon, about when you run out of cheese graters.

00:14:23   Speaking of the ambiguity, this cheese grater computer has outlived many of those plastic

00:14:29   actual cheese graters. So it's clearly the king of all cheese graters.

00:14:35   Something like that. All right. Also in the show notes for follow-up, deviation from the

00:14:39   Ive design philosophy. This sounds like a Jon thing to me. Tell me what's going on here.

00:14:45   I was thinking more about our discussion of Jonny Ive from last week and with his sort

00:14:51   of philosophy potentially exiting the company with him. We'll see what changes in the design

00:14:58   of stuff that comes out. But one way his design has made itself known is it extends everywhere.

00:15:09   So I was thinking of the Apple mouse that I think Marco is using right now, or maybe

00:15:13   you too, Casey. The mouse that should. And I was thinking about it because of the magic

00:15:16   mouse.

00:15:17   The magic mouse?

00:15:18   Yeah, because I was having dark thoughts about like, who is it? It was because Marco, someone

00:15:22   sent both of us that third-party monitor.

00:15:25   Yeah, the planar IX, whatever. Yeah, we've seen it before. I don't think Macs can easily

00:15:30   drive it. It has those giant bezels and everything. Who cares?

00:15:34   Yeah, someone was saying it's basically like a 5K display right from an iMac, complete

00:15:39   with the little hole for the camera, but there's no actual camera there in the glass bonnet

00:15:43   surface. Anyway, I was having dark thoughts about it like, "I can't believe Apple is going

00:15:47   to sell you a computer and then the only option is the $7,000 monitor or whatever, and they

00:15:52   don't sell monitors." It would be like if they didn't sell a mouse and a keyboard. But

00:15:55   they do sell mice and keyboards, and you can buy them with your computer. You can even

00:15:59   pick which one you want. And they continue to make them, despite the fact that it's much

00:16:03   easier to find a reasonable replacement mouse or keyboard than it is to find a reasonable

00:16:08   replacement monitor.

00:16:10   And so I was thinking about their peripherals. Obviously, the keyboard at this point, all

00:16:15   of the margins are tucked in on the thing. It's basically just a bunch of keys floating

00:16:20   in space. How are those keys even there? Is there any space around them and between them?

00:16:25   It's just keys. It's really boiled down to its essence again, the Johnny Ive philosophy.

00:16:30   But the mouse I was thinking about, it fits with the Johnny Ive era design aesthetic.

00:16:41   Because there are different ways a mouse could be designed. I think we had a show on the

00:16:45   past where we had that diagram of all different ways people can hold a mouse. And it's not

00:16:49   like the Apple mouse is designed badly, but it is designed for a particular way of using

00:16:55   it. It's a very low mouse. And some people like a low-profile mouse, and some people

00:17:00   like a bigger thing that fills your palm. Microsoft has always made very large mice,

00:17:07   not just for that matter, they're made for you to grip under your entire hand and it's

00:17:12   going to be pressing up against the back of your palm, gripping. Whereas the Apple one

00:17:16   is very slim and very low, very minimalist. If you put it next to Apple's computer, it

00:17:21   looks like it fits. It's next to that keyboard, it makes sense. Obviously, there's no cord

00:17:25   on it. It's almost featureless, looks like a flattened piece of sushi. You look at it

00:17:31   and it looks like a little piece of art. And I was thinking with I've gone, if Apple's

00:17:37   design philosophy changes a little bit, how far would be too far? And I was thinking even

00:17:43   in terms of the mouse, because if Apple came out with a new mouse, which they do once every

00:17:49   – what are they on a decade plan now? Once every decade and a half they come out with

00:17:52   a new mouse, which is not unheard of. Apple does occasionally come out with new mice.

00:17:57   Imagine if it was more of the shape of a Microsoft mouse or a logic mouse. Not in terms of the

00:18:05   details but in terms of it's no longer a super low profile mouse. I would say for my

00:18:11   style of mousing, it would be more ergonomic for me. I don't like them to be that low

00:18:14   because that's not how I hold the mouse. If you make a low one, the people who want

00:18:18   a high mouse aren't going to like it and vice versa. So it's not like it's an incorrect

00:18:21   or correct choice. But say Apple did make one, it was still beautiful and Apple detailed

00:18:26   and it still looked like an elegant piece of art. But it was basically fatter. It was

00:18:31   the fat mouse to go with the fat man. It was bigger and fatter and it filled your hand.

00:18:36   It would be less elegant and less minimalist and less simple because if you could make

00:18:41   a mouse slim and low, why would you make it big and fat? Kind of the same way with the

00:18:46   remote. If I can make a remote the size of a piece of chewing gum, why would I make it

00:18:49   bigger? And the answer is obviously because human hands are big and chewing gum is small.

00:18:55   Anyway, setting aside the remote for now. There's an argument to be made in the mouse

00:18:59   that if you made it bigger, it might be easier for people to grip and find and use and manipulate,

00:19:04   blah, blah, blah. But if Apple did that, people would look at that fat mouse kind of like

00:19:09   the fat man and go, "Boy, Apple really needed Johnny Ive because he left and they made this

00:19:14   disgusting mouse that looks like a Microsoft mouse. It looks like a Logitech mouse. It

00:19:19   doesn't look like an Apple mouse at all." What I'm driving at is the design philosophy

00:19:27   evidenced by Apple's product during the Johnny Ive era has become so synonymous with Apple

00:19:32   because he's been here so long and has such an important influence on so many important

00:19:36   products, that that's what people think of as Apple-like. So even if Apple, the company,

00:19:41   makes a Microsoft-style mouse and even if it's a great mouse and people love it, they're

00:19:46   going to look at it and say, "Ugh, that's not like it was better when Johnny Ive was

00:19:51   here because look how inelegant this looks. Look how bloated it looks. Look how silly

00:19:57   and comically large it looks. The Ive mouse was elegant and this is not."

00:20:05   And I think that would be a shame because although the design philosophy embodied by

00:20:10   Apple's current products and its past products for many years is a great one, it is not the

00:20:14   only one, the only reasonable design philosophy, especially when it comes to peripherals. So

00:20:19   I feel like our hope for the remote and maybe external keyboards and possibly mice, depending

00:20:26   on how you feel about the current one, hinges on the public's willingness to accept anything

00:20:32   that is not in line with the Johnny Ive minimalist essentialism design aesthetic. And I'm afraid

00:20:38   that even if Apple makes a great product but it's not a sort of a Zen garden sculpture

00:20:47   beautiful Ive-style thing that they're going to get backlash for it and I think that would

00:20:51   be a shame.

00:20:52   Well, we do see bits and pieces of pragmatism over appearance peeking through here and there.

00:21:00   One of the great examples in recent years are the iPhone smart battery cases, which

00:21:05   by all objective accounts are kind of ugly. They have that weird hump on the back. The

00:21:10   first generation had the weird centered mid-hump and the current generation has the weird bottom

00:21:16   hump, which I think is even uglier. But they do that for a few highly functional reasons.

00:21:23   And we all did make fun of it when it came out, but it's actually a pretty reasonably

00:21:29   successful product as far as I can tell. We've owned a couple in our household and they're

00:21:34   good products. And Apple, it seems, was willing to make that trade-off. Like, look, we can't

00:21:39   make this beautiful and have it still function the way it needs to function. So they just

00:21:44   didn't make it beautiful. They kind of did the best they could with what they had to

00:21:47   work with and it came out. And it's a very useful utilitarian product.

00:21:52   I think looking at the new Mac Pro case, it is not attractive. It's worse in pictures

00:21:59   but it's also not attractive in person. It's very much a utilitarian design. This is a

00:22:04   big tower with a bunch of weird holes in the front. It's giant, it's heavy, it's bulky,

00:22:09   it's weird looking. But it's all those things for utilitarian reasons. And for the customers

00:22:14   who need that and who buy that, the utility of it is more important than the aesthetics.

00:22:19   And so clearly, like Apple, even before I've officially left, Apple is able to occasionally

00:22:27   let that peak through. And it seems like maybe in recent years they're regaining their, what

00:22:34   I would describe as, confidence to ship something that doesn't look incredibly pretty but is

00:22:39   that way for functional reasons. It takes a certain degree of confidence to do that.

00:22:44   Like they have to be able to ship something like with a straight face that they know many

00:22:50   of us are going to say, "Ew, that's ugly." Because they have to be competent enough in

00:22:53   their design to be like, "No, look, we know it's ugly but it is this way for reasons.

00:22:58   It was a trade-off and this is what came out." And so I don't think it's that unreasonable

00:23:05   to predict that maybe they'll be doing more of that. Maybe they have kind of seen the

00:23:11   light and have gotten enough customer feedback and enough sales data and everything over

00:23:15   the last few years to be able to revert certain decisions. Clearly the Mac Pro is one of the

00:23:20   biggest examples of that. We'll see and we'll talk about later what might be happening with

00:23:24   laptops in that department. But I think Apple had a really rough period where a whole lot

00:23:34   of decisions were being made for aesthetics over utility. And we told them about it over

00:23:39   and over and over again and their customers told them about it over and over and over

00:23:43   again in some of these cases. Their repair data told them about it. And I think there

00:23:49   was a bad period that we are clearly on our way out of, that we're already partially out

00:23:53   of it and it seems like there's more to come. So I don't think it's that unreasonable to

00:23:57   expect that we actually would have a chance of something like a more ergonomic mouse.

00:24:02   Honestly I like the mouse just fine but I recognize a lot of people don't. So I think

00:24:07   we do have a chance of stuff like that. I think we do have a chance that the next Apple TV

00:24:09   remote might be more ergonomic for instance. I think we were in a dark period but Apple

00:24:17   has clearly shown recently that they are willing to put utility first with some of their new

00:24:23   designs sometimes.

00:24:24   That's why I was entertaining the possibility because it seems like it is a possibility

00:24:28   but I think they'll get backlash. And I guess now that I think about it, it actually is

00:24:32   mostly focused on, you know, if you're thinking of cheese graters and OXO and all this stuff,

00:24:38   on things that you grab with your hand. There aren't many of them. Obviously the phone

00:24:42   itself is a thing that you grab but there are limitations there where you can't really

00:24:46   make it strange and knobbly because it does have to fit in pockets and there are other

00:24:49   concerns about it. But for peripherals, like for remote controls, for keyboards and for

00:24:55   mice, for things that, like it's your interface to the computer, you know, indirect controls

00:25:00   that you grab. Kind of like controls in cars, the steering wheel, the shift lever, the turn

00:25:05   socks, all that other stuff. Anything that you manipulate with your hands to make the

00:25:09   stuff work, it's the place of highest tension between making something look beautiful, so

00:25:17   it looks nice in your product shots, and so when it's in a museum 50 years from now,

00:25:20   everyone oohs and aahs. And making something that's good to use with your hands. And there's

00:25:25   not much of an intersection there. Like it's why OXO products tend to look so ugly, right?

00:25:31   Because you know, the things that are easy and good to grip and manipulate tend not to

00:25:39   be beautiful minimalist sculptures. Like those are slippery or slim or pointy or don't, you

00:25:45   know, don't match the negative space created by a gripping hand, because the negative space

00:25:50   created by a gripping hand is ugly, as you know if you grab a lump of clay and squeeze

00:25:53   it real hard and then open your hand and look what's left. It's not a beautiful sculpture,

00:25:57   but that's the inside of your hand. So I'm not saying a mouse has to look like a giant

00:26:03   snail turd like many of them do, but there are multiple styles of mice. You could make

00:26:09   a fairly elegant mouse in a different style that is more of the hand-filling kind, but

00:26:14   I feel like if Apple did that, there would be a surprising amount of backlash, especially

00:26:19   given that like people would get used to it and everyone used mice like that and it would

00:26:22   be fine. It would be better for the half of the population likes it one way and worse

00:26:26   so that people like it the other way. But all you would hear about is how Apple made

00:26:29   an ugly mouse.

00:26:31   I do think it's worth noting though that, and I think I speak for both of you, that

00:26:35   we're not going to see, you know, like a pendulum swing dramatically the other direction. I

00:26:39   mean this design department has certainly been under Ive's leadership for what, 20 years

00:26:45   or something like that? A long time. And so I would certainly not expect, and I don't

00:26:49   think you guys are trying to imply that you do expect, I don't think any of us expect

00:26:53   that there's going to be some dramatic turn where you're going to see like the back of

00:26:57   a snail for a mouse and things like that. But I do concur that it is certainly going

00:27:03   to be interesting watching how often we see function over form going forward because one

00:27:10   of the things that I think the three of us agree on is especially when it comes to things

00:27:13   like the thickness of devices, it seemed that it was form over function and so I'm curious

00:27:21   to see how that changes going forward.

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00:29:21   [music]

00:29:24   You have somehow fallen upon, it just happened to you Marco, you have fallen upon a new iPhone

00:29:31   and a new watch question, Mark? What's going on here?

00:29:35   As you know, I'm running the betas on my main devices. I'm also working on a good mid-cycle

00:29:42   update for Overcast for iOS 12 and watchOS 5, the existing non-beta versions. There's

00:29:49   been a bug that I've been trying to replicate that people keep reporting where when you're

00:29:54   doing watch local playback, sometimes the seek back or seek forward buttons will skip

00:30:01   instead to the next episode and will lose your position in the one you were in. Which

00:30:05   is a pretty serious bug and I was trying to replicate it on my beta devices and I just

00:30:11   couldn't. Now, it is impossible to downgrade an Apple

00:30:16   watch from the beta. Theoretically, I could bring it to an Apple store and have them send

00:30:20   it out and have them do it but I'm nowhere near an Apple store, that would be a big pain,

00:30:24   etc. So that wasn't really an option for me. I also didn't want to go that long without

00:30:29   it for various testing reasons. I also have this other problem that I only

00:30:35   have my one iPhone here with me at the beach and I'm doing a lot of development and I don't

00:30:40   have an iOS 12 test device. So I briefly decided to borrow Tiff's phone and Tiff's Apple watch

00:30:48   to try to run a test. She did not appreciate this at all. So I really needed something,

00:30:56   I needed test devices that I could test the regular GM version and the beta. So I have

00:31:02   my regular ones that I could test the betas on but I really needed another test device.

00:31:07   I needed another Apple watch running watchOS 5 that I wouldn't put on the beta and I needed

00:31:13   a phone running iOS 12 to pair it to. But what do you do in this situation?

00:31:17   Well, what I would do because I'm cheap is that I would go back to my house and go get

00:31:22   ones that I already had but I'm cheap. If I'm Marco, I would next day air myself some

00:31:28   new devices. I think that's what most developers do is

00:31:31   they keep their old phones to use as test devices instead of immediately selling them.

00:31:35   I do keep a lot of my old phones, not all of them but a lot of them. I, however, didn't

00:31:40   keep any old Apple watches. Like I have my series zero for just like nostalgia's sake

00:31:44   in a drawer that I haven't powered on and the battery is probably deeply discharged

00:31:47   and totally unusable now. It probably won't even boot anymore. But that happens with Apple

00:31:52   watches. If you leave them in a drawer for a few years and don't charge them, you will

00:31:55   never be able to charge them again. They'll never power on again in all likelihood. The

00:31:58   battery totally dies. I also have this other problem. I never got

00:32:02   an iPhone SE. For the last few years, my 4 inch test device was my old iPhone 5S and

00:32:08   that worked fine except that now the 5S no longer works on the new version of the OS.

00:32:13   So my 4 inch test device, which I left at home, I didn't bring to the beach, my 4 inch

00:32:18   test device is no longer going to be a useful test device once iOS 13 ships and I have to

00:32:23   run that on it. So I actually kind of wanted an iPhone SE. So I know it's discontinued

00:32:29   but I went on Amazon and I'm like, "You know what? What do they actually cost?" And it turns

00:32:34   out you can get an iPhone SE, not refurbished because that means more, but renewed, which

00:32:40   means very little, it's basically very used. You can get a renewed iPhone SE unlocked on

00:32:48   Amazon for about $120. And that's really pretty good I thought. So I put one of those in my

00:32:56   cart and I thought, "Okay, now I got to have an Apple Watch to pair to it. What do used

00:33:01   Apple Watches cost?" And I didn't want to go super low end for the Apple Watch because

00:33:05   the build and run cycle on Apple Watches improves drastically as you go more and more recent.

00:33:12   But I thought, you know, I'm probably going to have to, if I want something cheap, I'm

00:33:15   probably going to have to go Series 2. But it turns out you can get Series 3 Apple Watches,

00:33:22   which is only last year's model basically, you can get a Series 3 Apple Watch. I got

00:33:28   Series 3 42mm cellular in stainless steel for $240. Wow, that's pretty cheap. The only

00:33:39   reason I got the stainless steel in the cellular was it was only $20 more to get steel in the

00:33:43   cellular. I'm like, "Alright, sure." And so I got both these in. They came in, you know

00:33:49   the kind of packaging if you sell your phone or watch to Apple or Gazelle or one of those

00:33:55   companies, they send you basically a sheet of cardboard with shrink wrap over it and

00:33:59   you kind of shove your device into that. You know those things?

00:34:02   Yeah, yeah. Amazon ships a lot of stuff in that. It's like when you're injured and they

00:34:06   put you on one of those stiff backboard things and then just like wrap you with surround

00:34:10   wrap so you're stuck to it. That's how your products come.

00:34:13   Exactly. So both the watch and the phone, which came from different companies, they

00:34:17   both came in those kind of just like, you know, plastic hold it like sticking it to

00:34:21   a piece of cardboard. That's how Apple intended them to be presented to the customers, I believe.

00:34:25   They spent a lot of time working on that presentation. Yeah, exactly.

00:34:27   It's a piece of brown corrugated cardboard and then surround wrap.

00:34:31   Yeah, yeah. When you have an entire iPhone for $120, you don't get such luxuries as genuine

00:34:37   Apple chargers. Like it was shipped with like a generic, definitely not MFI lightning cable

00:34:44   and little USB power brick. It comes with a wire coat hanger that's already

00:34:49   been unwound for you. So you can just shove one end to the lightning connector and you

00:34:52   shove the other end into an outlet. Right, exactly. And the Apple watch has clearly

00:34:56   been put on a generic knockoff sport band. It looks very similar to the Apple white sport

00:35:02   band and how, if I didn't own many white Apple sport bands, I wouldn't be able to tell the

00:35:08   difference maybe, but because I own them and I have one right here, right next to it, I

00:35:11   can tell there's very much a difference. You would tell when it starts to melt on your

00:35:15   wrist. Yeah. But still, you know, it's still an Apple

00:35:20   watch and the Apple watch did appear to come with a genuine Apple charging cable because

00:35:25   I don't think it's as easy to come by generic Apple charging cables as it is for other things.

00:35:29   Did you look on the back of the Apple watch to make sure it doesn't say APPEL or anything

00:35:34   like that? I mean, no, like it's real. It's, it's, and

00:35:36   it's stainless steel. Is it filled with sawdust? Does it turn on?

00:35:39   Like the thing is like it works. Like, so both of these things, I plugged them in and they

00:35:44   both work fine. Like there's a few dings on the cases. Like there's, you know, like the,

00:35:49   the iPhone especially has like a corner dent on one corner. Uh, but like everything works

00:35:54   at, you know, there were no scratches on the screens. Everything is fine. They charge up.

00:35:58   The battery seemed to be totally fine. There were a couple of interesting takeaways for

00:36:01   me using this phone for the last couple of days. I haven't been using it full time. I

00:36:05   didn't put my SIM in it, but I had been playing with it a lot, like in the house, like leaving

00:36:08   my big iPhone 10 S behind, like on a countertop and just taking the SE with me and playing

00:36:13   with it for awhile. And a couple of things jump out at me from this thing. So number

00:36:17   one, first of all, I think it's hilarious that the Apple watch costs a lot more than

00:36:20   the phone. Um, but, but I still think that, you know, $240 for last year's model of stainless

00:36:26   steel cellular 42 millimeter Apple watch is a really good deal. Um, and it kind of struck

00:36:31   me like if you're willing to not have the latest and greatest and if you're willing

00:36:35   to go used, you can get surprising discounts on Apple stuff. Like I, if you would've just

00:36:41   asked me before I looked like how much I thought these things would cost, I would've guessed

00:36:45   substantially higher than what they actually do. Uh, so that's, you know, number one, like

00:36:49   that's, it's kind of cool that this is available and like for 120 bucks, this is a lot of phone

00:36:54   actually like it's, it's not a bad deal at all. I would imagine like if, if I was, if

00:36:59   I really wanted to get something a little more versatile, I would probably go for an

00:37:02   old iPhone seven, which probably isn't that much, you know, maybe those are maybe like

00:37:05   200 bucks. I mean, I don't know. I haven't looked at that, looked it up, but like I was

00:37:08   surprised like how nice it was for that price and the watch, especially, you know, $240

00:37:14   to get what was a year ago, I think a $700 configuration is pretty awesome. So a few

00:37:22   other things you should add to me just for fun discussion sake. Um, the w when you've

00:37:26   had a series for Apple watch and you've had then the pulled in corners, like the more

00:37:31   rounded corners, the, the, the shrunk bezels and the Apple watch faces that go more edge

00:37:38   to edge. The old Apple watch looks incredibly old when you see the screen turn on. Thanks

00:37:44   buddy. You're welcome. Still on the series three, but you want, but see you want, you

00:37:47   haven't gotten used to it. Like when you go to the series four, I would feel the same

00:37:50   way. It really is like, especially like using my favorite face, the utility one, you know,

00:37:54   like the basic round clock with all the good stuff. That face looks comical on the old

00:37:58   one when you're used to the new one because it just gets this massive black border around

00:38:02   it. So series four was actually a surprising upgrade in a lot of ways. Um, but I will say

00:38:08   otherwise, you know, it's fine. It performs well and it's just as buggy as the Apple watch

00:38:12   always is. Um, the iPhone se has actually been pleasantly nice. I haven't used this

00:38:19   size phone for more than five minutes of testing, uh, in, since it was new since the, since

00:38:25   I owned the iPhone five S and it's actually a really good size for a lot in a lot of ways.

00:38:32   I'm surprised how well certain things still work on it. Like I'm surprised certain things,

00:38:38   you know, not, first of all, you pick it up, it looks awesome and it feels awesome. And

00:38:42   I heard on one of our friends, I forget which one I apologize, but I heard recently there

00:38:46   was a discussion of like, what do you think is Johnny Ives? Like what do you think are

00:38:50   Johnny Ives like greatest designs? And I would put very high on the list, the iPhone five

00:38:55   S. Yeah, it is such like, I remember when, when John Gruber reviewed the iPhone five,

00:39:01   he said in his review that it was such a nice object. It was like the nicest object he owned.

00:39:06   The iPhone five S I think refined a lot of it. And the se took away the polished chamfered

00:39:11   edge, which made it less nice. Um, but so, but like, so that's why I think like from

00:39:15   a time project, the iPhone five S was kind of the peak of it and it is just such a great

00:39:19   device. It is timeless looking. I still think it looks good. Even, you know, holding this,

00:39:24   this se in my hand, it's an old phone now, very old now and it's based on the even older

00:39:28   five S, but it is a, this, this wonderful, like the space gray with the black, you know,

00:39:34   little cellular windows on top and bottom. This is a fantastic, timeless, really nice

00:39:39   design. And if you consider design to be the combination of how it looks and how it works,

00:39:46   I think the iPhone five S really was the peak of a lot of that entire class of iPhone before

00:39:54   they got big. I really, really enjoy this, this device as a physical object. And secondly,

00:39:59   the using it now when I'm, you know, I'm accustomed to the bigger phones now. So certain things

00:40:05   like typing are really hard. Once you're accustomed to the big phone, it's really hard to go down

00:40:09   a size for typing it. Like I made so many errors, just like typing my passcode and stuff.

00:40:14   But once you get past that, or once you get accustomed to that, the interface actually

00:40:18   scales down fairly well on most things. There were a few screens here and there that like

00:40:24   something would fall off the bottom because nobody tested it. But it actually scales very

00:40:28   well. And certain things like deleting a mail message by swiping, I know it's a stupid thing,

00:40:35   but it's something I do all day long. It feels much smoother and better on the, on the five

00:40:41   S than it does on my 10 S or I'm sorry, on the SE that doesn't on my tennis. And I don't

00:40:47   know if it's just because it has fewer pixels, maybe it's running things at a higher frame

00:40:51   rate because it has so many, so many fewer pixels to drive. Or if it's something about

00:40:55   the digitizer with different or that it's just my fingers moving less distance because

00:40:58   it's a smaller screen, who knows? But certain things about the size just feel really good.

00:41:04   And it's like feelings that I've missed since I use this to the size on a regular basis.

00:41:08   So I don't really have any conclusion here. I'm not suggesting anybody go back and use

00:41:12   this because it is, you know, it's, it's an iPhone six S internals. So it is kind of the

00:41:16   bottom of what's supported by iOS 13 and I would expect iOS 14 probably won't support

00:41:21   it, but it was kind of nice going back to the size just to play around with and to see

00:41:25   like in certain ways it feels like the past. Like when you, when you view certain things

00:41:30   and you see quite how narrow your text column is or like, you know, Instagram looks hilarious

00:41:35   by comparison, but like it is actually a really nice feeling phone and for 120 bucks, surprisingly

00:41:43   usable. So that's it. That's all I had on this segment.

00:41:46   I feel like this we've talked so much about phone sizes on this show, but it's, it's an

00:41:52   issue that's never going to go away. If phones continue to be things with screens and then

00:41:56   that you hold in your hands because there's always that tension between there's the size

00:42:01   of your hand and the motions that are most comfortable for adult hands and fingers to

00:42:05   make. And there's a range there obviously because people have different size hands,

00:42:08   but still it's, you know, you could define that range. And then there's the screen where

00:42:13   we want to see more stuff all the time. And you have to find the sweet spot between how

00:42:20   much stuff do you want to see and how comfortable is it to hold in your hand, to manipulate,

00:42:24   to stick in your pocket. And those two things will never meet. There is no perfect compromise.

00:42:30   So we'll always kind of be oscillating depending on your, so if at any point, if we're in a

00:42:34   big phone error or a small phone error or somewhere in between, you pick another extreme,

00:42:38   you will find things about it that are better than whatever size phone you're using because

00:42:43   those two things are always in conflict with each other. There is no point where they'll,

00:42:47   you know, find each other exactly in the middle and we'll be like, I will never notice any

00:42:51   benefit by going smaller or larger. You will notice benefits going larger and you'll notice

00:42:55   benefits going smaller and disadvantages. And you know, it's, it's a constant compromise

00:42:58   until we get Apple glasses or whatever where we can sort of divorce the, go back to an

00:43:04   indirect interface, divorce the, I want to see as much information as possible, but I

00:43:09   don't want to have something the size of a brick in my pocket. And you know, I can't

00:43:12   put an iPad in my inside jacket pocket because I'm not David Smith.

00:43:16   That's another thing. Like it feels, this thing feels like nothing in my pocket because

00:43:20   now I'm, now I'm, because I'm used to the 10 S and before that the 10, the five or the

00:43:26   S E feels like nothing. It feels like it's smaller than my wallet. I mean, it's like,

00:43:31   it's really very small and it's, it's very lightweight compared, you know, the new phones

00:43:35   are surprisingly heavy. Like when you feel the old ones, you realize quite how light

00:43:38   the old ones were. And the five generation was an especially light generation of phone

00:43:43   because it didn't have the glass back. And it's just, it's, it feels so good in so many

00:43:48   ways. Like the sleep wake buttons in a good spot. There's a headphone Jack on the bottom.

00:43:52   The volume up and down buttons feel great. I really like, there was that rumor that came

00:43:57   out, I think last week, we didn't have time to cover it in our show, but there was a rumor,

00:44:00   I think for Min-Chu Kuo that, that either this year's or I think next year's iPhones,

00:44:04   the one that I use, the 10 S line, the screen was gonna get a little bit smaller and in

00:44:08   the max line, the screen was gonna get a little bit bigger. And at first I thought, who, that's

00:44:13   such a slap in the face for 10 S owners. Like here, you get to either have a smaller thing

00:44:17   or pay even more and get a much bigger thing. But actually I think I might take that trade

00:44:23   off because it turns out like if you can take what you already have and get most of that

00:44:28   for a little bit smaller, that's kind of nice. I really like the way this tiny phone feels

00:44:34   and you know what? The 10 S is a little bit big. So I think maybe I would enjoy going

00:44:39   a little bit smaller than that.

00:44:40   That, that sort of the bouncing around I was talking about where, you know, you're, you're

00:44:43   sort of, there are, there are extremes and you're trying to find a sweet spot, but you're,

00:44:46   you're always oscillating back and forth. Those oscillations let you from generation

00:44:51   to generation or maybe two year or three year gap or whatever, let you get a phone and no

00:44:56   matter which direction you're going, you'd be like, Oh, there's some aspect of this that

00:44:59   I find agreeable. There is like the other screen felt too cramped or this feels better

00:45:03   in my pocket. There's always an advantage for you, but then also a disadvantage so that

00:45:06   when they oscillate slightly back, you know, maybe, maybe the oscillations are getting

00:45:10   smaller or narrowing down on a compromise. That's reasonable. But I think the oscillations

00:45:14   are an important part of the product line. Like there should never come a time where

00:45:17   Apple feels like they have exactly correctly struck the balance between size, weight, screen,

00:45:24   real estate, all of those things. Like they always, they should always oscillate because

00:45:28   the oscillation will make a, any new phone in any, any oscillation, any direction feel

00:45:35   good and interesting and make people not regret their purchase. And then, you know, eventually

00:45:39   when what the negative aspects get annoying in two years, they'll buy another phone.

00:45:43   Uh, Declan, well, both the kids use a, some iPhone app. I don't even remember what it's

00:45:50   called as like a little noise machine, um, while they're sleeping and Declan's using

00:45:55   a five S as his noise machine has for like four years now or whatever it's been. And,

00:46:00   um, and I don't often pick it up. Usually I just, you know, leave it on his bedside

00:46:04   table and just interact with it on the, on the table. But when I do pick it up, every

00:46:10   time I do, I'm just gobsmacked by how perfectly it fits in my hand. And maybe your hand is

00:46:16   bigger than mine. Maybe your hand is smaller than mine. But for me, the, the five almost

00:46:20   at the S E the five S just fits perfectly in my hand. And so for a fleeting moment,

00:46:26   I think to myself, why the hell am I carrying this tremendous like fablet, which it really

00:46:32   isn't, but it feels like a fablet by comparison of an iPhone 10 in my pocket every day. But

00:46:37   then if I ever open any app, but the sleep machine app or the noise maker app, I can

00:46:42   see like six words of text on screen. Then suddenly I remember why I have this comparatively

00:46:47   enormous phone in my pocket. And, and yeah, I think you're right, John, that, you know,

00:46:51   I don't think we've struck the exact right balance. I do think the 10 is a little bit

00:46:55   big for my taste, but you know, at least I'm not one of those, you know, plus or max monsters,

00:47:00   you know, like, like Mike Hurley is. I don't know how that guy survives. It's funny. Like,

00:47:04   you know, when I, when I first started using it, I think I think the same thing like, wow,

00:47:08   what a tiny little window that I'm seeing all this content in. But like, as I play with

00:47:12   it, it's so damn fast. Like it for, for the phone that is the lowest end supported phone

00:47:20   for the new OS, it sure is fast on iOS 12. Like it, it is surprising how fast it is. And

00:47:28   it just not, I'm not, you know, benchmarking, but just like just the way it feels to do

00:47:32   things. Like I mentioned the mail thing earlier, like, and again, I don't know whether it's

00:47:36   just that my fingers need to travel less distance. So like, it's, it's just like faster and wall

00:47:40   clock time to do certain things or not. But it just feels, it's almost like I've been

00:47:45   driving an SUV for the last five years and then I get into a Miata. It's just like, it

00:47:50   just feels so nimble because you can just fly around it so fast because you're not spending

00:47:54   any time adjusting your grip at all or reaching across long distances at all. It's just really,

00:48:01   really nice and surprisingly fast in basic operation for such an old device. So I actually

00:48:07   like, I mean, you know, I don't think I could ever switch to one, you know, that's this

00:48:12   small full time again, just cause I do so often use things that really want a bigger

00:48:16   screen. But boy, is it nice to play around with this sometime.

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00:49:47   So you have new toys. I want a new toy, guys. What was it, yesterday? That Apple announced

00:49:54   that they have done me some good things and they have done me some bad things. So Apple

00:50:01   has refreshed the MacBook Air and the 13 inch MacBook Pro.

00:50:06   Sort of.

00:50:08   Sort of. But they have killed my beloved adorable. The MacBook One, also known as the MacBook

00:50:15   Adorable, also known as just plain MacBook.

00:50:17   The 12 inch MacBook.

00:50:19   It's dead, you guys. Mine is fine. I mean, it's still slower than shit, but it's dead.

00:50:23   Officially, it's dead. And so I don't know what to do. I would like to talk about what

00:50:30   I should do from here, but before we get to that, we should probably run through the changes

00:50:35   that have come from Apple over the last 24 hours. So the MacBook Air now has True Tone.

00:50:40   It is now down $100. So instead of being $1200, it is now $1100 and importantly $999 for students.

00:50:51   So that's a big deal.

00:50:52   The 13 inch MacBook Pro is now on 8th generation quad core CPUs. It is $1299, $1300, which

00:51:00   is the same price as the Escape once was. And like I said, the MacBook Adorable is dead.

00:51:05   The MacBook Escape also dead.

00:51:07   Apparently, Apple just really hates our nicknames, almost as much as Steven Hackett does.

00:51:11   I will say though, there is a significant reframing going on here about what happened

00:51:18   to the Escape. The Escape is not dead. There are still two very different 13 inch MacBook

00:51:24   Pro models, one of which uses 15 watt TDP CPUs, one of which uses 28 watt CPUs. The

00:51:31   15 watt one still has only two ports. The 28 watt has four ports. What happened is not

00:51:38   that the Escape went away. What happened is that the Escape got a touch bar.

00:51:41   Well, it's not the Escape anymore.

00:51:42   Exactly.

00:51:43   You lost the Escape. The Escape is definitely dead. The MacBook Escape was, yes, the computer

00:51:48   with all the slow stuff inside it, but it was the one with the Escape key. And so that

00:51:52   one's dead.

00:51:53   I know. Well, the name is dead, but the computer lives on. They're still selling two very

00:51:59   different computers as kind of the same thing. It just had two different price points, but

00:52:06   it's like, oh, this one has only two ports and this one has four ports. And the CPU clock

00:52:10   speeds are very different. The internals are completely differently laid out. It's a very

00:52:15   different machine. So the Escape is not dead. We just can't call it that anymore because

00:52:20   it got a touch bar. But it is still...

00:52:22   What do we call it? The touch bar Escape?

00:52:27   Our names are getting as unwieldy as Apple's actual names.

00:52:30   I know, right?

00:52:31   Touch bar Escape late 2019.

00:52:33   I like what StyleDash suggested in the chat, which is MacBook unescaped.

00:52:38   Actually, I'll get to that later during escape2p. But anyway, so these are some really odd updates.

00:52:46   So first of all, the MacBook Air got "updated," but the only changes are the display got True

00:52:55   Tone, which is very minor, the price got lowered, and I've also heard that the SSD is slower,

00:53:02   which might accommodate for the price lowering.

00:53:04   Oh, interesting. I mean, the MacBook Air is a pretty recent computer. It's not overdue

00:53:10   for an update, so I'm surprised it got any updates at all.

00:53:13   Right. And what's extra weird about this is that there is the Mingshe Quo thing last week.

00:53:18   He says that the MacBook Air with the new scissor keyboard is coming out this fall.

00:53:24   So this, to me, I hesitate to call this an update. I think this is more like when last

00:53:33   fall or last winter, whenever it was, like December, whenever it was, when Apple slightly

00:53:38   revised the 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro by simply adding a new Vega GPU option to it.

00:53:46   So it wasn't really a full-blown update. It was just like a new, a slight adjustment to

00:53:51   what was available for it. I think this is kind of like that. I think they've taken the

00:53:54   2018 MacBook Air and they've finally given it, by default, the new revised third-gen

00:54:02   butterfly keyboard with the new materials. So that's one change that has definitely happened

00:54:06   here. We've got that confirmed somewhere. It has True Tone, which is very, very minor,

00:54:12   and it has apparently possibly a slower SSD, which probably allowed it to drop that price

00:54:16   down a little bit. It seems more like a slight revision that was timed specifically to capture

00:54:23   the back-to-school market, which for the MacBook Air is a pretty substantial buying period.

00:54:27   I think they saw a whole lot of these for students in the summertime. So I think this

00:54:32   is being presented, PR-wise, as a refresh to the MacBook Air, but it really, I don't think

00:54:39   it really is one. I think it's a very slight mid-cycle tweak that is mostly a price drop

00:54:44   and a few very small modifications to achieve that. But I think that's about it. The Escape

00:54:51   change is more substantial because that one got completely new CPUs that are now quad-core

00:54:56   before it was dual-core at the 15-watt level. So the Escape now got the quad-core CPUs,

00:55:01   a T2, and the Touch Bar. It didn't have any of those things before. And it got the new

00:55:05   keyboard, the new old keyboard before. The Escape before this had the 2017 keyboard.

00:55:13   It didn't even have the membrane from summer 2018. It missed that cycle completely. So

00:55:19   the Escape, or what is now, the artist formerly known as the Escape, got an actual real genuine

00:55:26   update. It is like a real nice 12-18 month style update. But the Air, I wouldn't call

00:55:34   what happened to the Air an update. And that's why I think that the Ming-Shi Kuo rumor about

00:55:39   a new Air coming out this fall with the new keyboard, I don't think this quote update

00:55:46   invalidates that or makes that much less likely. I think these can both be true. That the MacBook

00:55:53   Air got this small revision this summer to make it a little bit cheaper, but that it

00:55:57   might also be getting replaced this fall. Because Apple's been updating things more

00:56:01   frequently. They went through the bad period of the 2016 era, updating things on a various

00:56:08   low cycle and making everything worse with every update that they did do. But now, in

00:56:14   the last couple years, they have shown a pattern of updating the laptops whenever, or at least

00:56:20   updating the laptops that matter to them. I should definitely have had that. Updating

00:56:24   the laptops that matter to them whenever they can. Basically whenever there is something

00:56:29   new to update to, they do it. They did the mid-cycle GPU update. They did this 2018 revision

00:56:35   like this spring. And you know, like brand new things as soon as they could. So I'm guessing

00:56:42   that whatever rumor stuff is coming out with the new keyboard this fall/this winter/next

00:56:46   spring, whenever all that stuff happens, I think that's still going to happen. I don't

00:56:50   think these updates necessarily preclude that. Simply because that would only be like six

00:56:56   months from now.

00:56:57   I'm not the biggest laptop fan, but I continue to look at these various revisions, new materials,

00:57:06   reshuffling of the line. It's just like, who cares until they get a new keyboard? My brain

00:57:11   is just turned off to the notion of Apple laptops until they deal with the keyboard.

00:57:16   It's kind of like with the Mac Pro. It's like, are you going to come out with the Mac Pro?

00:57:21   Until it comes out, I don't care. They keep shipping products. I'm like, I don't like

00:57:26   the Mac Pro, which was never actually updated. They keep shipping products, but it's like,

00:57:31   okay, fine. But you know, I can't recommend these to people without a big long explanation

00:57:37   about the keyboards. Like we're still kind of in that halting pattern. So I think it's

00:57:40   great that they're updating them and simplifying the line and all that other stuff. But it's

00:57:45   like, it doesn't matter. Like it's not deck chairs on the Titanic because it's not going

00:57:49   down. Like they are going to make computers with the new keyboard that presumably will

00:57:52   be better. And honestly, we haven't even heard, at least I haven't, whether the new materials

00:57:57   have solved the problem. Maybe they have. Maybe the new materials actually solved the

00:58:00   reliability problem and we're just left with the key layout and typing feel, which is a

00:58:05   thing that some people may like and some people may not like. But I just, I've just given

00:58:10   up on this whole line. It was like, revise them all you want. Make new, just, I'm just

00:58:14   waiting for the new laptops and it'll be great if they come up with the Air and the other

00:58:18   one, but then we'll be like, okay, well who's left? Who's left still with the old keyboard,

00:58:22   right? Until we can wholeheartedly recommend it. Because I would almost wholeheartedly

00:58:26   recommend the new Air if it had a different keyboard. And you know, a couple minor tweaks

00:58:31   here and there, but like, I can't get excited about these revisions and you know, getting

00:58:38   rid of the escape makes sense to me because that computer never really made much sense.

00:58:42   And you know, sort of folding it in to be a sheep in wolf's clothing, so to speak. It's

00:58:47   got a touch bar and everything, but it's half the ports and half the number of cores and

00:58:52   everything. I think the only, the only part of this that I'm interested in is the MacBook

00:59:00   One getting canned because I kind of loved that machine that it existed. I didn't love

00:59:07   that it was slow. I always hoped that it would travel the same path as the original Air where

00:59:12   it started off as an oddity, pushing the boundaries of technology and then eventually got its

00:59:16   feet under it and it became a really great computer. And it seems like the MacBook One

00:59:20   never really got that chance. Like it was an oddity and it pushed the boundaries of

00:59:24   technology and it got like one foot under it and then it just was thrown in the garbage

00:59:29   can. So I mean, obviously it is the most awesome and obvious candidate for a revision to have

00:59:37   an ARM CPU to have even better battery life and even less power. I do wonder if there's

00:59:43   room in that form factor for the scissor switch keyboards with double travel. Maybe with,

00:59:48   again, maybe with an ARM CPU there'll be more room inside there. Shout everything out of

00:59:52   the way of the keyboard and there'll still be enough room for the battery for that tiny

00:59:55   little ARM CPU. So if when the ARM Macs come out, I'll really be looking forward to the

00:59:59   resurrection of, we're gonna have to call it the adorable. That was a CGP Grey who came

01:00:04   up with the adorable. Yep. Yeah. I think we're gonna have to call it that because I really

01:00:08   hope that if they do resurrect this computer as an ARM computer, it will have more than

01:00:12   one port, but who knows? Apple is stubborn. They could stick to one port. But yeah, it

01:00:18   just seems like the MacBook ones was too thin to live. I would imagine you can't put in

01:00:26   the current MacBook one, you can't swap out that keyboard for one with more travel because

01:00:30   of all the computers Apple sells, this is the one where you need a low travel keyboard

01:00:33   because it is so thin. And I really think that what would have made that product great

01:00:41   is to have a really, really good powerful CPU in there. And there's nothing from Intel

01:00:45   apparently that fits the bill to be able to fit in a fanless enclosure that is way faster,

01:00:50   but there are a bunch of CPUs in fanless enclosures and products made by Apple that are really

01:00:55   fast, much faster than the MacBook one that would really make that machine kick butt.

01:01:00   So I really hope it comes back to us later in the ARM era. But yeah, until then, wake

01:01:07   me up when there's a new keyboard. Yeah. And I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that.

01:01:13   I mean, I think that pretty much everybody in this racket would guess like, yeah, if

01:01:17   anything's going to come out with an ARM version, the tiniest little 12-inch MacBook was one

01:01:23   of the top candidates to have it first. But I think in general, I was very surprised that

01:01:29   it was canceled. I have since heard from a number of different people, apparently sales

01:01:33   of it were very low, that it didn't sell well. And I can't say I'm surprised by that. I think

01:01:38   what we've seen in the laptop line over the last while now, remember the MD whatever,

01:01:45   whatever 101? It was the 13-inch non-retina MacBook Pro with the DVD drive that was kept

01:01:53   in the lineup forever. I think it was a 2011 model, I think, or a 2012 model maybe, and

01:01:59   it was kept in the lineup until like 2016 or something because people just kept buying

01:02:04   the thing. Like no matter what else Apple released, they sold a ton of those MD 101s

01:02:11   because it was a roughly $1100 computer. So it was like an inexpensive, by Apple standards,

01:02:18   an inexpensive laptop. You could replace the hard drive and the RAM easily down the road.

01:02:24   So it was serviceable long-term. It was cheap to spec up. You could put a spinning disk

01:02:28   in there. Back when everything else Apple sold used SSDs only. So it was like it was

01:02:32   much cheaper to spec up. It had a DVD drive so that was like one less thing people had

01:02:36   to worry about, like one less limitation that they had with the computer. And yeah, it was

01:02:40   non-retina but everyone mostly didn't care. And so they sold a ton of those 101s because

01:02:48   it was just like a very practical, cheap, very versatile computer as long as you were

01:02:52   willing to take something that wasn't particularly new. And when they eventually discontinued

01:02:58   that, what replaced it in that role was the 13" MacBook Air, the old one. Again, by that

01:03:04   time that was actually a pretty old computer as well. It was also like non-retina, also

01:03:10   13", also about $1100. You can see a lot of parallels here. It didn't have the replaceable

01:03:18   RAM or hard drive or it didn't have the DVD drive but it was a very similar thing

01:03:21   of like Apple had lots of other computers that were nicer and newer and above it in

01:03:26   the line but people kept buying that thing in droves because it was a great value and

01:03:33   it was highly versatile. It would satisfy almost anyone's needs. So if you look at

01:03:38   the 12" in this context, it never could reach that point. It was not anywhere near

01:03:46   versatile enough and they either couldn't or wouldn't make it cheap enough to ever

01:03:52   take that role. And so if you were a person going into an Apple store wanting to buy a

01:03:56   laptop for yourself and you wanted something at the lower end, why would you get the 12"

01:04:02   when you could get, until recently, the crappy old 13" MacBook Air which was actually a

01:04:08   pretty great computer if you didn't care about retina. You could get that for the same

01:04:12   or less money and have better specs as long as you didn't care about retina. And it

01:04:18   was bigger and heavier but most people didn't care that much compared to what they got for

01:04:24   that money. And so really what Apple needs in that range of the lineup is better value

01:04:34   and more versatility and that's something that the 12" MacBook just couldn't get.

01:04:40   The 12" had a lot of fans. Well, it had no fan but you know what I mean. It had a lot

01:04:46   of satisfied or it had a lot of customers. Almost everyone I knew who had one, you included

01:04:51   Casey, almost everyone I knew who had one had a bit of a love-hate relationship with

01:04:54   it. I know very few people who bought only one. Usually you'd buy one and it was slow

01:05:02   as hell and then they would revise it and it would be 5% faster and you'd be like,

01:05:05   "Okay, take my money. I need every drop of performance I can get because it's still

01:05:09   so slow. I'll take the 5% faster." And it was just so slow and so limited and using

01:05:17   that one port was so annoying because if you wanted to plug in power and anything else

01:05:25   you would need a dongle. So it was like laughably annoying to own this computer. But a lot of

01:05:33   people did enjoy it anyway because it was so damn small and so damn light. And so I

01:05:39   see there is a role for that but I think what this probably confirms, first the going almost

01:05:47   two years without an update and then being quietly killed, I think what this kind of

01:05:52   confirms is just not enough people are willing to tolerate all those trade-offs. A lot of

01:05:58   people try to compare it to the MacBook Air but it really is a very different computer

01:06:02   because it takes way more trade-offs to get it to where it is than the MacBook Air did.

01:06:10   Even the old 11-inch MacBook Air needed fewer trade-offs than what the 12-inch MacBook needed.

01:06:15   The 12-inch MacBook was a massive pile of massive trade-offs to get a little bit smaller,

01:06:22   a little bit lighter and most people just weren't willing to make those trade-offs.

01:06:26   Like the original Air, like I said, a huge amount of trade-offs to get a little bit thinner,

01:06:31   it can fit them in an envelope but honestly it was basically just like taking an existing

01:06:34   Apple laptop and make it have a taper. But if the Air had not, imagine if the original

01:06:40   Air, the next one that came out was 5% better. You needed that big jump with the 2011 model

01:06:47   or whatever when they did the revised one. It's like finally this is a really good computer

01:06:51   now. And so suddenly all the attractive attributes are still attractive and they got rid of all

01:06:58   the downsides and I just felt like they couldn't do that with the One. If they could have made

01:07:02   the MacBook One, they could have taken it in two directions. One is it could have become

01:07:04   like the Air where it's the computer that's good enough for everybody and it's inexpensive

01:07:09   and super light. And the other direction they could have taken it if they couldn't do that

01:07:11   is make it the luxury model. If they could have made the MacBook One three times faster

01:07:18   and add hundreds of dollars to the price, it would have been like, "Oh, if you have

01:07:20   tons of money, you can get this amazing computer. It's super fast and it's incredibly small."

01:07:25   But there was no option to do that. Like there is no CPU they could put in there that could

01:07:28   do that, right? So with Arm, I feel like they have both options on the table. They can make

01:07:33   this a good enough for everybody computer that also happens to be ridiculously thin,

01:07:38   maybe a resurrection of the 2011 MacBook Air, the one we say, "Why would you not get this

01:07:41   one? Unless you need more than three ports," I'm getting greedy here, "more than two ports

01:07:47   maybe, get this model because it's fast enough for you and it's so thin and it's got a new

01:07:53   keyboard and you'll love it and it's great." Or they could put the fastest of the fast

01:07:59   iPad CPU in there and say like, "This is expensive, but boy is it thin and it's super fast and

01:08:05   it's got four ports on it or something." So I think we'll be seeing a computer like this

01:08:11   again in our future, but it could never get out of its own way. It spent its entire time

01:08:17   with the, what the hell was that, the spinning disk in the original MacBook Air, like 120

01:08:22   gig or 80 gig. It was like the iPod hard drive in there, right?

01:08:25   Yeah, it was literally an iPod hard drive. It's no good.

01:08:29   So as someone who has lived with one and only one MacBook Adorable/Macbook One, I did only

01:08:35   purchase one. I think that's because I got the most recent one and then they killed it.

01:08:41   So I agree with what you had said earlier, Marco. I would have taken the underscore approach

01:08:45   where if they had revved this today, I probably would have already placed an order. Not definitely,

01:08:53   but probably. And having lived with this computer for two years, especially when I was in my

01:08:59   anti-iPad days, which was basically up until the new iPad Pros last fall, it was amazing.

01:09:06   Yeah, it was a little bit slow, but it was rare, usually, up until vignette, it was rare

01:09:12   that I was doing anything that really required a whole lot of oomph on it. And so it was

01:09:16   this, it was basically an iPad that was an actual computer. Ha ha, yes, I know. I'm not

01:09:21   trying to start that fight. I'm just saying like, it was an iPad that ran OS X or Mac

01:09:26   OS. And that was amazing. That was so amazing. And I loved that so much. And I still do love

01:09:37   this computer, but as I'm doing ever more development on it, I'm finding that I am ever

01:09:42   more annoyed with how slow it really is. And so, a couple people lit me up on Twitter saying,

01:09:50   "How could you need to replace a two-year-old computer? I haven't needed to replace a two-year-old

01:09:54   computer in a decade," or something like that. And yeah, that's true.

01:09:58   They weren't buying the 12-inch.

01:10:00   But yeah, buy the 12-inch MacBook, which was underpowered the moment I bought it. And I

01:10:03   knew that. I knew it, and I did it anyway. And the reason I did it anyway was because

01:10:07   I wanted something ultra-hyper portable. And that was the number one priority to me. And

01:10:12   in that, this thing has succeeded tremendously because it is unbelievably portable. However,

01:10:22   it is dog-slow. And the other problem I have with it is that it only has one port. And

01:10:27   it is not often that I want to plug in two things, but it is also not rare. And so, just

01:10:35   earlier tonight, it has decided that the time machine backup on my Synology is somehow corrupt,

01:10:41   and it would like to start over and make a new one. And so, I thought, "Okay, I'm probably

01:10:45   going to have to plug in Ethernet." And you should remember the days when Ethernet was

01:10:48   just in the computer. But anyway, I'm going to have to plug in an Ethernet adapter. Oh,

01:10:52   wait, that means I need to go get my dongle. Oh, and the Ethernet adapter and the dongler

01:10:55   across the room, and I'm recording right now, so I guess I'm not doing that, am I? And that

01:11:00   just gets frustrating. Or, hey, I would really like to plug in my phone to debug and also

01:11:05   be plugged into power. Yes, it's dongle time. It's just--stuff like that is very frustrating.

01:11:10   And so, I really wonder--and I'm based on zero empirical evidence other than my own

01:11:14   experience--but I can't help but wonder, if this thing had two ports, would it have sold

01:11:21   twice as well, or considerably better? And there's no way for us to know. But the one

01:11:27   port thing was very, very frustrating, particularly once I started developing with it, when I

01:11:35   really would want to plug in a phone and not have to do it via a dongle. So, you know,

01:11:39   I have a USB-C to Lightning cable, which works great, but then I can't power the thing. And

01:11:46   so then, especially now, I'm asking this dog-slow CPU to do something that requires a lot of

01:11:52   CPU power, so now I'm murdering my battery, and I'm charging my phone off of the laptop

01:11:57   battery, so I'm murdering it twice over. And it's getting hot, because it's fanless. Exactly.

01:12:03   So it's like the perfect storm of awful for this computer. And I still love this computer,

01:12:09   and I will always love this computer, because it is such an unbelievably cool piece of technology.

01:12:16   But I don't think it's the right one for me anymore. And so that's why I said I would

01:12:20   have probably bought a revved version earlier today, if such a thing existed. But I've gotten

01:12:27   to the point that I really think that I need more power. And we are skipping a little bit

01:12:34   ahead, but this is a perfect segue to the field trip I took today to the Apple Store.

01:12:39   And I went to the Apple Store today because I thought to myself, we're going to talk about

01:12:42   this tonight. And I want to handle a 13-inch Air and a 13-inch MacBook Pro, because the

01:12:49   last 13-inch Air I've handled is Aaron's, which not only has it been underwater several times,

01:12:55   but... Yeah, you're still allowed to handle it? Yeah, well, that's true. But I don't even

01:12:58   remember how old that thing is, but it's easily four or five years old. It is not young at

01:13:04   this point. It might even be older than that, I don't recall. I don't even know what version

01:13:08   of Mac OS is on it. It might even be a version of OS X, that's how old it is. But anyway,

01:13:13   you get my point. And that thing is big and it's heavy compared to my Adorable. It is

01:13:18   enormous compared to my Adorable. And I don't really have experiences with 13-inch Pros

01:13:26   or 13-inch Airs other than that one. So I went to the Apple Store today and I went looking

01:13:30   at the Escape, because it was still an Escape in my store at this point. And I went looking

01:13:35   at the Pro and then I went looking at the Air as well. And as it turns out, these things

01:13:43   have gotten crazy light over the last few years. Who knew? So I was looking at them...

01:13:48   You've been working out. And I'm looking at these things and I actually brought my computer

01:13:54   bag with me with my laptop in it. And of course, I feel like I'm looking as though I'm preparing

01:13:58   to steal these things. But be that as it may, I'm trying to look confident. And if you look

01:14:01   confident, that's halfway to getting away with anything. So I pull my Adorable out of

01:14:05   my laptop bag and I have that in my right hand and I'm closing and picking up these

01:14:09   display units in my left hand. And I went and did a little bit of research, because

01:14:14   my name is not John Siracusa and I'm allowed to. And in 2017, I paid $1,744.82 for my loaded

01:14:25   MacBook Adorable. It was as loaded as I could get it. Which, by the way, I thought I paid

01:14:29   like over $2,000 for that. So it was cheaper than I remember it being. But anyway, it is

01:14:35   listed as 2.03 pounds. So for all intents and purposes, 2 pounds. The 13-inch Air, as

01:14:42   I looked at Apple's website earlier tonight, is 2.75 pounds. So that's effectively three

01:14:48   quarters of a pound heavier. It is also, the way I would have configured it, it is $1,900.

01:14:53   That is not the base config, as we've said before. This is the way I would configure

01:14:56   it, which is the 1.6 gigahertz Core i5, the 16 gigs of memory, one terabyte SSD, and that,

01:15:04   of course, has two Thunderbolt 3 ports. How amazing would that be, ladies and gentlemen?

01:15:09   It has two ports. Imagine that. And so I'm handling this MacBook Air and I'm handling

01:15:14   my MacBook Adorable and I realize there's really not a lot of difference here. There

01:15:21   is certainly a difference in surface area. There's certainly a difference in weight.

01:15:25   But there's really not that much difference here. I could do the Air. So then I go over

01:15:28   to the 13-inch MacBook Pro and I start looking at the Escape and then I'm boinging back and

01:15:33   forth between the Escape and the real, quote-unquote, "real" MacBook Pro. Come to find out that's

01:15:38   three pounds, 3.02 pounds. So it is almost exactly one pound heavier than my Adorable.

01:15:45   I got to tell you, I understand that that's another 150% heavier than my Adorable. But

01:15:55   it doesn't feel like it, man. It really doesn't feel like it.

01:15:59   You're saving three-quarters of a pound of dongles.

01:16:01   Yeah, right, exactly. So I couldn't believe how small and light that felt in my hand.

01:16:07   And maybe I'm just trying to convince myself. Maybe I'm just trying to justify a purchase

01:16:11   Marco style. But it really felt unbelievably small and light. And the way I think I would

01:16:17   configure it is $2,400. So it is nearly $1,000 more than I spent on my MacBook Adorable, which

01:16:23   again, $1,700 versus $2,400. But I think the way I would configure it is a 2.4 gigahertz

01:16:29   Core i5, a 16 gigs of RAM, a terabyte hard drive. And then I would think about going

01:16:36   up to the next CPU, which is $300 more. And I would think about-- and I think that's an

01:16:41   i7, if I'm not mistaken. And I would think about going to an additional terabyte, so

01:16:46   a total of two terabytes, for an additional $400 more. So if I did both of those things,

01:16:51   it would be just over $3,000, which is more than I'd like to spend. But I'd at least consider

01:16:55   it. But if I were to buy a new computer today, I really think I would get the 13-inch MacBook

01:17:02   Pro, because it really isn't that much heavier. And I don't think I need the ultimate in portability

01:17:09   anymore, because if I do, that's why I have my iPad Pro, which I also really, really love.

01:17:14   Well, it's too bad you're forbidden from buying a new computer until they have new keyboards,

01:17:18   so we don't have to worry about this.

01:17:19   That's the thing. Hearing you talk earlier, I was like, "Oh, Jon's right. I really do

01:17:24   have to wait a little bit longer."

01:17:25   This is the wrong time to be buying your laptop.

01:17:27   Yeah, it really is.

01:17:28   Just wait. Just wait.

01:17:30   And I'm going to say the exact same thing. If your MacBook 12-inch was totally dead,

01:17:36   and you really needed a laptop very badly, then I would say, "All right, do what you

01:17:39   got to do. If you need one that badly--"

01:17:42   Marco would tell you you could get a stainless steel MacBook along with cellular for like

01:17:45   $300 on Amazon.

01:17:48   It's been refreshed.

01:17:49   It comes wrapped in Styrofoam peanuts, but it's fine.

01:17:52   Yeah, so if you really were in a bind, you had to get something today, I agree with you,

01:17:57   the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and I would say get the one with four ports. It's nicer. You've

01:18:03   served your time in one port purgatory. Just get the one with all the ports next. You've

01:18:11   earned it.

01:18:12   Yeah, that's the right move if you had to buy today. But because you don't have to buy

01:18:17   today, you are looking at right now, the ones that were updated now and the ones that were

01:18:23   updated in May, you are looking at what are likely to be the very last butterfly keyboard

01:18:30   laptops.

01:18:31   Chances are the butterfly keyboard era will come to an end within the next year, possibly

01:18:40   even faster than that. But I bet one year from now in July 2020, mark my words, I bet

01:18:49   that in July 2020 there will either be zero butterfly keyboards for sale from Apple or

01:18:55   it'll only be like old models they're still selling, but like all the new ones will have

01:19:00   scissor keyboards. That's my guess. And I think that's one of the reasons why they killed

01:19:03   the 12-inch because they can't do it for that one. It won't fit. But I think there's enough

01:19:08   room in the other ones, especially if they're willing to revise them slightly or make them

01:19:12   slightly thicker or slightly change the taper or whatever else. I think there's enough room

01:19:16   in the other ones where they probably could do it in all the other, including the 13-inch

01:19:20   air. But I bet a year from now you will be able to get a range of multiple Apple laptops

01:19:26   with scissor cues. And if you get the very last butterfly laptop just out of impatience

01:19:35   or out of, you know, fancyness because it's new, as soon as the new ones come out, you

01:19:39   know, six months later, you're going to regret that decision.

01:19:43   So I'm sorry. So state your bet one more time. So you're saying that there will be no new

01:19:48   models with scissor, with butterfly switches? My bet is, is in one year, the vast majority

01:19:56   of laptops Apple sells, like model wise, not like, you know, volume wise, like the vast

01:20:00   majority of models they sell, possibly all of them, but I'm not that confident in that.

01:20:05   I think within a year that most of the models for sale will have scissor keys.

01:20:10   Got it. It is in D-U-E. I'm not willing to like bet any money on that. I'm not that confident

01:20:15   in this, but it's just a feeling I have. Like, I just think, I think this is the end of the

01:20:19   butterfly. This is such a weak bet. You're not even willing to say they'll all have it.

01:20:23   You're just the vast majority. Are you willing, are you willing to bet that Apple doesn't

01:20:27   sell an old model laptop for a long time these days? No. You're sounding so confident. Then

01:20:32   you're like, I think there'll be some models with new keyboards. Of course there will be

01:20:35   models with new keyboards. But not like, not just the 16 inch. Like I think it's going

01:20:39   to be all of them or most of them at least. You said the vast majority. So there's only

01:20:44   like four models. So that means you'd have to have like three of them. Well, cause like

01:20:48   what they might do is like, you know, make the new Mac book air that Ming Chi Kuo predicted

01:20:53   and have that be $200 more and keep this old one around at $999 for a while. Like it could

01:20:59   be something like that. Right. So that's why I don't want to say all of them, but I think

01:21:03   most of them a year from now will have scissor keys. I think maybe you could, you could have

01:21:08   a, would you agree that they're not going to make any new computers with butterfly keyboards

01:21:14   as in it's a new case design, a new form factor. Like that's the easier bet to say. Like these

01:21:20   are the last ones definitely they're going to make with, with butterfly. I would even

01:21:24   go as far as to say that the computers that they revised yesterday are the last revisions

01:21:30   even that I think will have butterfly keyboards. You just think they might, they might keep

01:21:33   selling them. Yes. Tim Cook. Like, like I, yeah, I think like the air that they slightly

01:21:39   touched, like they're probably going to keep selling that as their cheapest computer for

01:21:45   a while because that's just how they do things. But I bet, I bet all revisions that will occur

01:21:52   after yesterday will be scissor keys. I don't think you're wrong, but I am interested to

01:21:58   see how this turns out. And you're going to be, you're going to so regret it if you bought

01:22:02   the last, but not even I bought the last butterfly. I haven't bought one since last year, but,

01:22:08   but remember that I actually do like the butterfly keyboard and truth be told, I have not yet

01:22:14   had a bigger issue than something that I needed compressed air for with my adorable in two

01:22:19   years. Hold on. Didn't, didn't you have to bring your computer to your dad's like automotive

01:22:23   power air compressor? No, no, no, no. I didn't have to. It just so happened. I know what

01:22:29   you're thinking of. It just so happened that I was at it. It happened to me, Marco. It

01:22:33   just so happened that I was at his house when I had an issue and I was like, Hey, do you

01:22:37   have any compressed air? And he just like looked at me. It was about the same look I

01:22:40   got when I once asked a friend of mine from college if his twin sister was identical or

01:22:44   not. But anyway, um, he did. My dad just kind of looked at me and said, yes, yes, I have

01:22:50   compressed hair. And so we went out to the garage just because it was easy. I don't have

01:22:53   compressed air. I do have this jet engine. Just put your laptop behind this. You've met

01:22:58   my dad. That would be his style. But, um, but no, I've never had to have the thing serviced

01:23:03   more seriously than me or dad taking compressed air to it. But yet I fear the thought that

01:23:11   if I were to get another one that I would not be so lucky. And so when, like I said,

01:23:17   when John was talking earlier saying, how could you possibly buy a laptop right now

01:23:20   if you don't need to? Yeah, yeah, you're right. Why would I be buying a laptop right now?

01:23:25   I feel like we're so close. Yeah. You know, it's like there have been, there are multiple

01:23:29   rumors from multiple directions that the scissor keyboards are coming this fall or this winter.

01:23:35   That's not that far away. And imagine if the new air is made with the design philosophy

01:23:42   embodied by the iMac Pro, the Mac mini and the Mac Pro, and it comes out and it's, it's

01:23:46   got four ports on the side of it and a better CPU and a new keyboard and an SD card slot

01:23:52   that you buy that instantly. You'd be like, thank God I didn't buy another laptop. This

01:23:55   is finally a good MacBook Air again. You know, that's not going to have an SD card slot, but

01:24:00   anyway, like just, just imagine that it has more ports. Like imagine that I don't even

01:24:04   think it'll have four ports. Honestly, there is some embodiment of more boards. I probably

01:24:08   won't have more ports too, but I'm just saying, well, this is what I'm thinking. Like again,

01:24:10   with the design philosophy, if they just took the existing MacBook Air and just put a fricking

01:24:15   scissor keyboard in it, like that would be a great computer. It's better, but like, honestly,

01:24:20   I'm done with the bargaining. It's like, okay, why don't you just make your laptops good

01:24:24   again? All right. So they're all going to have just USB-C. Can you put more of those

01:24:27   on? The answer is yes, you could, but don't stubbornly refuse to like, don't go for that

01:24:32   minimalism. Make a MacBook Air with more than two ports. You can do it. It will work. People

01:24:38   will like it. They'll buy it. They'll like it better than if it just had two or put an

01:24:44   SD card slot, two, two ports and SD card slot or more than two ports. This is the line I'm

01:24:48   drawing for the MacBook Air that was finished being designed a year and a half ago, which

01:24:52   is the other problem with expecting something new to come out of Apple. We have to wait.

01:24:57   You know, anyway, yeah, don't buy these. They have bad keyboards.

01:25:01   So one other thing we do have to cover quickly is that Apple is fairly dramatically lowered

01:25:05   their SSD prices. And so from 9 to 5 Mac, the four terabyte SSD of the 512 gig, 15 inch

01:25:13   MacBook Pro used to cost $2,800, $2,800. Now it costs half that at $1,400.

01:25:21   And that is the price, the amount that you add to the price of your computer. It's not

01:25:25   the price of the computer with that. It's like, take the price of your computer that

01:25:28   comes with an SSD of some size that is less than four terabytes, throw out that SSD and

01:25:33   then add $2,800 more dollars. And now it's half price at merely $1,400.

01:25:38   Yep. And I think that's actually really great. And I haven't been quite as bitter at Apple

01:25:45   RAM and SSD pricing as I was probably five to 10 years ago, maybe less than 10, but a

01:25:51   while ago. It used to be that they would absolutely gouge you on, well, at that time it was spinning

01:25:56   disks and also RAM. But I feel like this is to me within the realm of, okay, yeah, you

01:26:03   have to make your money and it's convenient, blah, blah, blah. And okay, that makes sense.

01:26:07   You know, $2,800, that does not make sense. $1,400 doesn't make sense to me, but I feel

01:26:12   like it's at least reasonable. The reality is this isn't just Apple. If you

01:26:18   spec up a machine from anyone else who sells you complete computers, from Dell, from HP,

01:26:25   from Alienware, like whatever it is, whoever you're buying from, any kind of like RAM or

01:26:30   hard drive upgrade at the time of purchase from the OEM is always more expensive than

01:26:35   what you can go to Amazon or Newegg or whatever and buy your own for. It's always done that

01:26:40   way. It's a profit center for them. That's just the business. That's the reality.

01:26:44   So I know that SSD storage can be had way more cheaply outside of Apple than it can

01:26:51   from Apple. SSD storage has gone through a massive price collapse over the last few months.

01:26:56   It's awesome. You can get cheap, very, very cheap third party SSDs now from other companies

01:27:02   that are very big and very inexpensive compared to where they were even one year ago, let

01:27:06   alone before that. So it's great to be in the market for storage. And you know what?

01:27:11   Apple did lower these by a large amount. And yeah, they are still way more expensive than

01:27:16   what you can buy for an Amazon or whatever. But the fact is like in this business, like

01:27:20   you're never going to get that price from the OEMs, from Apple, from Dell, from HP.

01:27:25   So the fact that they lowered the prices is great news, even though they are not the bargain

01:27:31   basement that we always want them to be. It just shows how out of whack they were. It's

01:27:36   not like they reduced them by 10% or something. Like cutting the price in half and still having

01:27:40   it be ridiculous. Ben Holmes tweeted like the prices have gone from absurd to ridiculous.

01:27:44   Although I guess this is saying absurd is worse than ridiculous. I'm not sure I agree

01:27:48   with that. Anyway, like so this another example is on the MacBook Air with a one terabyte

01:27:55   SSD, you know, add $400, right? And this is the thing people notice in another one of

01:28:00   the, that's why I highlighted when I described that thing. Another one of the effects of

01:28:05   a configurator is you're like, oh, if you want the terabyte one, it's $400. It's like,

01:28:09   no, what you're doing is you're removing 512 gigabyte SSD and then you're replacing it

01:28:17   with a one terabyte and you're paying $400 for that additional 512. Like it's not like

01:28:22   a $400 one terabyte, you know, SSD costs $400 like, oh, well I can buy a one terabyte. You're

01:28:28   not buying a one terabyte. You're buying half of a one terabyte because you threw away a

01:28:31   512, right? So their prices are still completely out of whack. Like Ben Holmes cites a price

01:28:37   of $100 for a one terabyte NVMe SSD stick. I'm not sure where he's getting that price

01:28:42   from. But yeah, like it's because you are removing an existing part or replacing it

01:28:48   with a better part and then looking at the price as if you're just buying the better

01:28:52   part, not accounting for the price that you should be gaining by removing the other one.

01:28:56   Yeah, they're like Porsche car options. They're just ridiculous and it makes sense that's

01:29:02   where they make their money. But if you price them too high, like no one will ever pick

01:29:07   that option. So honestly, Apple's probably not making as much profit as it could be to,

01:29:12   you know, just be reasonable. And the storage, it used to be like this in memory. Now Apple

01:29:17   is reasonable with memory. And in some respects, like maybe that's the better thing to do.

01:29:24   But in other respects, if Apple doesn't eventually get its iCloud act together, either in terms

01:29:29   of pricing or transparency or both, have it running out of storage on your Mac is one

01:29:35   of the things that hurts the user experience and the satisfaction with the computer the

01:29:41   most because it's the, it's the thing that users are least able to deal with. And rather

01:29:47   than motivating them to buy a new computer, it will just make them angry. Just be like,

01:29:51   I just bought this computer three and a half years ago. And now it's out of room and I

01:29:55   as user have no idea what to do about that. My computer is full. They just get angry,

01:30:01   right? And so if we could just get over, I think we're close. We're close to getting

01:30:05   over the hump of like having enough storage. I think we're probably there on phones. Like

01:30:09   I think most people's phones have close to enough storage now, maybe one more doubling

01:30:14   and we'll probably have like enough local storage that even Apple's cloud transparency

01:30:18   stuff is enough to paper over the difference. Right. But Apple laptops specifically, especially

01:30:24   lightweight ones are not anywhere near getting over the hump of they have enough storage

01:30:29   for most people, especially if you have a photo library and especially if you use iCloud

01:30:33   photo library, even if you do the quote unquote optimized storage, which is terrible, you

01:30:37   can fill a default configuration, Apple laptop SST because the default configs are way too

01:30:43   small and the step up configs are a lot of money and people see even a $400 upgrade to

01:30:48   one terabyte and they think it's not worth and they need some nerdy computer friend like

01:30:51   me to convince them. Trust me, you will be so happy three years from now when for that

01:30:58   $400 you spent because you'll still be able to use your computer as opposed to having

01:31:02   to chuck it in the ocean because it's full. Right. And there's nothing you can do about

01:31:06   it. Yeah, I've been there. Like I, there were, there were, there's a couple of laptops I've

01:31:11   owned where I just was impulsive. I just wanted to go to the Apple store and just buy one

01:31:14   like on day one. So I'd like, there wasn't time to do like a configured order option

01:31:19   and customize the storage. And in both of those cases, I ended up being a 256 gig SSD.

01:31:26   And in both cases that limited the useful life of the laptop severely because I just

01:31:30   slammed into that all the time. So now these days, no matter how impatient I want to be,

01:31:37   five 12 is the minimum I will buy. And what I actually aim for for a laptop is one terabyte.

01:31:42   Yeah. I feel like that's the thing that makes me like a computer the most is having it not

01:31:47   get full. Like the five K I Mac already, like I filled the one terabyte SSD. I bought a

01:31:53   big SSD. I thought I was buying a really big one back when they were really expensive.

01:31:56   I filled it and I had to, I had to move my entire photo library to an external SSD, which

01:32:00   isn't the end of the world, but it kind of annoys me. And one of the things I'm looking

01:32:04   forward to the most slash fearing the most is when I got my new Mac pro, I wanted to

01:32:09   have a lot of storage. I mean, it's less of an issue because as we discussed, you can

01:32:13   actually put quote unquote external drives inside the thing through various mechanisms,

01:32:18   but I would prefer it if the super fast internal storage was big enough to, you know, hold

01:32:25   all my stuff for five years without me hitting limits. So if I were to get four terabytes,

01:32:30   I think that would be fine because it'd be four times what I, you know, just barely able

01:32:34   to fit in these days. So yeah, it's, it's kind of still kind of a shame that that's

01:32:39   where Apple gets most of its money because, and especially on the laptops and most people

01:32:43   buy laptops, first of all. And second of all, like I don't laptops, you don't have all

01:32:49   the options of external drive and stuff because you just want to carry the laptop. And, you

01:32:54   know, we'll, if we ever talk about Catalina, we'll get into this some more, but the Mac

01:33:00   operating systems handling of a disc storage or whatever we want to call it these days.

01:33:08   I mean, in some respects it has new features, but in other respects, it's actually getting

01:33:12   worse in terms of how confusing it is. You know, related to the weirdness of ABFS, how

01:33:17   much space do I have? How do I free up new space? How do I deal with the disc full? How

01:33:22   does the operating system deal with the disc full? How do the applications that claim to

01:33:26   deal with the full disc actually deal with it? It's one of the biggest pain points I've

01:33:30   seen with Macs. Less so with phones and iPads, although there was still that ad campaign

01:33:35   from Samsung or whatever, or Google or whoever it was, making fun of Apple's phones filling

01:33:40   up with photos. But I feel like with the advent of what is the default config on the good

01:33:44   iPhone now? Is it 64 gigs?

01:33:46   I believe so, yeah. That really fixed it. Like that, that made it so that like we all

01:33:51   just completely stopped complaining about how the entry level storage was so bad before.

01:33:57   Like, you know, back when it was 16 gigs, that was terrible. And it stayed 16 gigs for

01:34:02   a very long time. And once they went up, they first went to 32, and I think some models

01:34:07   might still be in at 32, but for the most part they begin at 64 now. Huge improvement.

01:34:11   And it basically takes care of the problem.

01:34:12   Yeah, I mean, it's not like they don't get full. They still get full, but I feel like

01:34:15   when you have 64, there's enough time for even Apple's sort of iCloud stuff to shift

01:34:20   your iCloud, shift some of the photos off and to just have like the low quality ones.

01:34:25   Like Apple does need to keep up with this. It's not like 64 is enough forever. Like you

01:34:28   have to keep, you know, anyway, that's all we're talking about here is Apple keeping

01:34:32   pace with the increasing size and decreasing cost of storage. And they fell way behind,

01:34:38   embarrassingly behind even for Apple to the point where they're cutting their prices in

01:34:41   half and now they're slightly less embarrassingly. I don't know. Like it still annoys me, but

01:34:49   like, who is honestly, who besides businesses, what individual person was paying an additional

01:34:55   $2,800 for the biggest SSD? It's only businesses. Because no individual person could probably

01:35:01   justify that, even if they were like a freelance person or whatever and they thought they would

01:35:04   use this, they were like, honestly, I'll just buy an external drive because you really need

01:35:09   to be disconnected from the budget by a lot to pay $2,800. And then if you bought one

01:35:17   of those yesterday and saw the price cut, that's not going to feel good. I bet you could

01:35:20   get half that money back from Apple.

01:35:22   I paid it.

01:35:24   Well, I mean, talking about being disconnected from the value of money.

01:35:29   No, it's for the reasons you said. When I bought the Mi Pro, I weighed that decision

01:35:34   for a long time and I opted to do it because ultimately like I was juggling a lot of weird

01:35:40   externals with my previous iMac because when I ordered my previous iMac, the biggest it

01:35:46   got was one terabyte. That was the biggest option it had. And at the time I bought that.

01:35:50   And that was expensive, not that expensive, but that was expensive at the time, like in

01:35:53   2014 whenever I bought that. And so when I bought the Mi Pro, I got the four terabyte

01:35:58   because it was a pain in the butt juggling all these externals and I wanted to start,

01:36:03   I knew this was a computer I was going to have for a while, so I wanted to start at

01:36:06   the highest point I could start at knowing that over time I would be happy I did. And

01:36:11   sure enough, here I am about a year and a half into this computer and I 100% stand by

01:36:17   that decision. And even though it just got half the price, I've still gotten a year

01:36:21   and a half of use out of that four terabytes and I'm still happy I did. Yeah, it was

01:36:25   a ton of money, but so was the rest of the computer and I decided that was worth it.

01:36:30   This is the MacBook Pro we're talking about though. The iMac was exactly the same price?

01:36:35   $2800. That's why when you were saying earlier, no one knew what it was. I knew what it was.

01:36:40   If you didn't buy that iMac Pro yesterday, it might feel different if you did. That's

01:36:44   true, yeah. But anyway, and I will, before we leave this topic, which you really should

01:36:47   do, but before I leave this topic, I will reiterate a trick I learned that I've been

01:36:52   extremely happy with. One of the biggest problems when you have limited storage, like almost

01:36:58   every laptop, is the way photos doesn't really purge the purgeable space when you

01:37:05   have it in only keep small things mode. If you have it keep your whole photo library,

01:37:11   you're on your own. That's how I do my iMacs. I just have to keep everything because

01:37:15   I have the space for it. But if you're on a computer that's like a secondary one,

01:37:18   like your laptop or something, where you only have Apple Photos keep the small versions

01:37:23   and offload things to the cloud, it marks the space that it uses as purgeable, but as

01:37:28   John said, the OS doesn't deal with that the way you think it will. It doesn't provide

01:37:32   the controls that you need. A lot of times you try to use the space that is left and

01:37:37   it doesn't purge it and so you can't use the space or whatever. So it's a bit of a

01:37:41   mess. So what I did when I set up my most recent laptop last summer was I put the photos

01:37:47   library, which you can move where that is, I put it on a sparse disk image that has a

01:37:53   size cap. I think I made it like 30 gigs, something like that. So I had a size cap of

01:37:58   a sparse disk image, put it in login items so the sparse disk image always mounts on

01:38:03   login. That's where my Apple Photos library is and it obeys the disk quota of the sparse

01:38:09   image you put it on. So my photos library is capped on my laptop at 30 gigs. No matter

01:38:15   what I do, it will make space so it fits in at 30 gigs and then I don't have to deal

01:38:21   with it intruding on the rest of my drive. So that is by far the biggest quality of life

01:38:28   improvement that I've discovered for having a modern Apple laptop with limited SSD space.

01:38:34   I highly suggest everyone do that.

01:38:36   It's a little bit scary. I'm not even sure that's even a supported configuration.

01:38:40   I understand the application can't tell the difference but I'd be a little bit scared

01:38:44   of it. The other thing though is, I don't know if this is still true but I believe at

01:38:47   one point, and maybe this was just on iOS, the optimized storage thing, I'm doubting

01:38:55   whether this was actually true or not but my impression was that back in the day what

01:38:59   optimized storage would do is it would download lower quality, not thumbnails, but just lower

01:39:07   quality versions of photos to save space. The problem that you could run into with that

01:39:13   strategy is eventually if your phone fills with the lower quality ones, there is no other

01:39:20   strategy. It wasn't as if it would purge the photos entirely and download them on demand.

01:39:25   It always wanted to have a photo on disk so to speak. It would just be a lower quality

01:39:30   one. So if you have a very large library and you put it in a very small sparse disk image,

01:39:35   it is possible that by adding pictures and adding pictures, you may hit the limit of

01:39:38   your disk image and then you'd have to make a second disk image or expand it or copy your

01:39:41   stuff over or whatever, which is not the end of the world. But all this is to say I still

01:39:45   don't have much faith in the photo library's ability to actually manage the space available

01:39:53   to it. I feel like it's using very naive strategies and never goes sort of full on demand where

01:39:58   it's like I'll pull in images as needed and I will purge them as needed. It's more like

01:40:03   I have strategy A which is keep everything and strategy B which is keep everything but

01:40:06   if you run out of space, keep smaller versions of some things. And that strategy runs out

01:40:12   of space eventually, unlike the other one which is just I have a buffer to work with

01:40:15   and I will pull in the most recently used images in that buffer and purge them as needed.

01:40:19   And the second thing of course with the purgeable space, I think there's actually a way to make

01:40:22   it purge but the other thing that always gets people is local time machine backups. So I

01:40:27   mean this is a nerdy thing to do but if you are a nerdy person listening to this and you

01:40:30   frequently have space issues or you need to free up some space that you think should be

01:40:34   free but some part of the operating system or application thinks it's not and you're

01:40:37   running a modern version of Mac OS, man TMUTIL, TMUTIL and look at the local snapshot stuff.

01:40:44   You can list your local time machine snapshots and you can delete your local time machine

01:40:50   snapshots and that will save a surprising amount of space depending on what you've updated

01:40:54   recently on your Mac.

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01:42:55   Ron Olson would like to know, "What are your opinions on naming computers? Back when I

01:42:58   was in college and even through my first few tech jobs, whimsical names for computers were

01:43:02   ubiquitous. At my university they were named after 50s TV characters. But of late it seemed

01:43:07   standard for computers to have names as interesting as a barcode. I'm curious what everyone thinks

01:43:10   of giving more memorable names to their machines." I used to do this. I don't even remember the

01:43:15   like schemes that I used to use. But I cannot remember the last time I have changed the

01:43:22   name of a computer other than to maybe take my name out of it. So instead of like Casey's

01:43:26   MacBook it just says MacBook or something like that. And I'm not even sure I did that

01:43:30   much. So I haven't done this in forever and a day and I rarely pay attention to this sort

01:43:35   of thing. John, what do you think about this?

01:43:37   So this is going to be quick. I could go for 20 minutes and just on naming computers.

01:43:41   See? See?

01:43:42   I can just do one question. So I've been thinking about this. I'm not going to say I've always

01:43:51   named my computers because before the internet and before ubiquitous networking there was

01:43:57   not much reason to have a sort of computer world manifestation of what you call your

01:44:05   computer because it wasn't addressable by its name to other computer things. And for

01:44:14   me at least I never named my computer in the same way that like you'd name your car, right?

01:44:20   Like there's no reason for your car to have a name. Other people don't have like Apple's

01:44:25   glasses on and they look at your car and they see your car's name. Like there's no sort

01:44:28   of computerized reason for it to have a name. If you give your car a name it's just because

01:44:32   you want to give it a name.

01:44:33   So what I would do with all of my Macs though is I would name the hard drives. The hard

01:44:38   drive singular or the hard drives plural. Always my hard drives have, you know, the

01:44:44   Apple hard drives would come and it's called Macintosh HD. I think still to this day it

01:44:48   says Macintosh, the whole spelled out space, capital H, capital D, even though they're

01:44:53   not really hard drives anymore. I would rename the hard drive and that was basically like

01:44:58   the computer name especially when you just had one hard drive or it was your boot hard

01:45:02   drive or it was inside the computer. But I wasn't technically naming the computer. I

01:45:05   was naming the hard drive because if I had a second hard drive it would have a different

01:45:08   name. So I've always done that. Usually it's like cartoon characters and I would have a

01:45:11   matching icon and all this other stuff. I continue to do that to this day. But in the

01:45:17   modern era when your computers are networked, even if it was just Apple Talk and now a day

01:45:22   is like the rendezvous or whatever the hell it's called, zero conf networking and everything.

01:45:27   There are reasons to give your computer a name that you can address it with. So all

01:45:30   the computers in my house, both their boot hard drive and their name of the computer

01:45:34   is whatever icon and name their boot hard drive gets. So again, it's video game characters

01:45:40   and all various other things. So yeah, the only thing I've done recently is as I've gotten

01:45:45   lots of computers, I got tired of coming up with new names. So I basically give my computer

01:45:49   the same name all the time. I don't give a Roman numerals. It doesn't become the second

01:45:53   or third. It just takes on the mantle of that name.

01:45:56   Yeah, it's like Air Force One. It's like whatever is your current computer has that name.

01:45:59   Yeah, more or less. And I do the same thing with my work computer across many different

01:46:02   work computers and many different jobs. I always give my work computer similar names

01:46:06   so I don't have to keep thinking of new names. And then the only other interesting story

01:46:11   about this is like the naming of the computer and not the hard drive or whatever began far

01:46:19   before I ever got into it in the world of servers that needed to have names, the internet,

01:46:24   DNS, all that other stuff, right? And at universities where you'd have labs full of computers that

01:46:29   weren't in the very old days, they weren't PCs or Macs. They were Unix machines. They

01:46:34   were on the internet via TCP/IP and had host names, right? And so there was a challenge.

01:46:40   How do you come up with host names for all these computers? And you could have boring

01:46:45   host names or you just call them lab one, lab two, lab three, or computer lab with all

01:46:49   these things, lab3.myschool.edu or whatever. That's very boring. And I'm sure I've told

01:46:56   the story in ATP before, but people don't listen to the whole back catalog. So I will

01:46:59   just reiterate my favorite naming scheme I ever saw was in the computer graphics lab

01:47:04   at Boston University. Whatever system came up with this one, I thought it was very clever

01:47:09   and interesting. The names of the machines were like, uh, scrutable, stinked, uh, I'm

01:47:16   giving it away by the way I pronounced them, like a pendant. Um, lots of things that you'd

01:47:21   look at them and you think they were as like pendant. Is that misspelled? Do they mean

01:47:24   like a thing that dangles around your neck? Scrutable? Do they mean inscrutable? Uh, or

01:47:29   no, scribable. Do they mean like able to be scribed or whatever? Anyway, it was like a

01:47:33   lab full of machines like this. Uh, and they were all, uh, Silicon graphics, indie machines.

01:47:40   So it was all words that began with indie, independent, indescribable. Uh, yeah, I don't

01:47:47   remember all the names, but you would think you couldn't come up with all the words that

01:47:49   begin with the sound indie, but they came up with like 12 of them. And I thought it

01:47:53   was very clever because if you looked at the names, it made no sense until you saw the

01:47:56   pattern. So kudos to the computer graphics lab at BU who were going up with that name

01:48:02   and yes, Silicon graphics. They w that was a modern thing when I was at school when they

01:48:06   did that, a Jurassic park thing where like she says, this is the unique system. I noticed

01:48:10   they have that weird thing where you're flying through all the buttons. That was a real thing

01:48:13   on SGI machines. And uh, when I saw the movie, I'm like, I do know that that's a real thing.

01:48:19   That was real. That wasn't just moving. It was like a demo. It was like a demo thing.

01:48:23   I don't, I don't think it would, they expected people to use it, but yeah, it came with SGIs.

01:48:26   It was like a way to navigate the file system through a bunch of weird rotating sort of

01:48:31   rectangular solid things. They didn't, you know, they didn't write the code for that

01:48:35   for the thing that you buy. You could buy an SGI for 20 grand in 1990, whatever. And

01:48:40   it would come with that. Uh, Marco, any thoughts? Um, not really. I have a similar air force

01:48:45   one situation where like my, like I named my computer forever ago and just whatever,

01:48:51   whenever I get a new one, it just inherits the old name. Uh, w with one notable exception

01:48:56   to our relevant to our conversation earlier. Uh, when I, when I got the MacBook escape,

01:49:00   I named it escape. And then when I later got the 15 inch touch bar to replace it, well,

01:49:09   I lost my escape key. So I called it no escape, which is kind of a play on, you know, not

01:49:16   only losing my escape key, but that now I have no escape from these horrible butterfly

01:49:21   keyboards. You're stuck with them forever. So my laptop became known as no escape. And

01:49:26   my laptop is still to this day, even though it's now two laptops later called no escape.

01:49:31   Only two? You sure you didn't drop a zero there? All right. Pedro, a star K writes,

01:49:37   hi, I'd love to hear John's take on the recent default shell change from bash to ZSH

01:49:43   and Catalina for new installs given license issues with bash. Why not fish since the guy

01:49:48   works at apple and GP, GPL version two seems uncontroversial. So I'm not a hundred percent

01:49:53   sure that's correct about, um, the, the creator of fish working, working at apple, but I think

01:49:58   that's correct. Uh, but either way, John, how do you feel about bash to ZSH? Cause you

01:50:04   usually use ZSH, don't you? Or did I make that up?

01:50:08   You are misremembering. Um, so we actually have a whole section about Catalina that if

01:50:12   we ever get to, we probably will some point when we have to do like three episodes a week

01:50:16   to deal with vacations in the summer. Anyway. Um, yeah, this is one, a minor point in it

01:50:21   that some of the Unix stuff in Catalina is changing. So we'll talk about the rest of

01:50:25   it later, but for now, for the shell stuff, what I heard is that it was a license issue.

01:50:30   I don't know if that's actually true. It's hard to get this type of answer from apple

01:50:36   because you can, if you're lucky, apple will tell you what they're doing, but they rarely

01:50:40   tell you why, especially for something like this. Um, I don't use bash or ZSH, so this

01:50:47   doesn't affect me. I use TCSH for legacy reasons because it's what the Unix system at my university

01:50:55   used and that's just what I got used to. I do not recommend it. Um, uh, fish. Uh, I believe

01:51:03   the person who writes fish does or did work at apple and he wrote fish. I'm not sure if

01:51:07   he still does work at apple. Uh, apple should not change their default shell to fish because

01:51:13   fish is a weird shell. Um, if like apple is not in a position to make something, the de

01:51:22   facto shell for Unix computers, like by shipping it, that it's not like the evermore follow

01:51:27   them. If the whole rest of like the Linux world essentially switched to fish, then yes,

01:51:31   by all means, apple should start shipping fish. But if apple is the only one doing it,

01:51:36   they shouldn't because then apples units will get the reputation of like, Oh, Apple's got

01:51:40   Unix, but it's got this weird shell. That's like only Unix nerds. No, you can change your

01:51:44   shell, right? But it won't matter. It'll just be like apple, uh, max have Unix, but the,

01:51:49   but the shell is weird, right? By going with bash because it's what everybody else uses.

01:51:54   Apple does not have a weird shell. ZSH is less weird than fish. It is, it is closer,

01:52:01   more closely aligned to bash is, has been around for much longer. It is less weird.

01:52:06   So if you have to change from bash to something, ZSH is a reasonable alternative. I don't care

01:52:11   cause I don't use either one of the shells. Fair enough. Marco, do you have any thoughts

01:52:14   on this? I do care quite a bit because I use bash heavily in, in my Mac usage. I have shell

01:52:22   scripts that use it. I use it directly on the, you know, in terminal a lot. So I do

01:52:26   care, but I don't know, I don't yet know enough about ZSH to know like how much of my stuff

01:52:32   is this going to break or require relearning. You don't have to use it. You can just use

01:52:37   bash. Like you can either build your own bash and install it. And I think they'll still

01:52:40   ship bash. They're just changing the default shell. It's a pain in the butt though. Yeah,

01:52:44   well, I mean, Hey, like I have, I have used the non default shell for basically the entire

01:52:49   life of Mac OS 10. Uh, it preserves it across install. So it's not like a thing you need

01:52:53   to do. Uh, it's just when you set up a brand new computer, if you don't do a migration

01:52:58   assistant or whatever, install type CHSH and you'll be off to the races. It's just fine.

01:53:02   Oh, all right. For what it's worth, I've used fish for years and I do not use very many

01:53:08   shell scripts. I've not written very many shell scripts, so I'm just using it for just

01:53:11   navigating around and doing basic operations. And I love it. Uh, I don't argue that it is

01:53:16   very weird though. Finally, Tyler Menard writes, how do you use and take care of your big camera

01:53:21   at the beach? Carefully. Uh, I don't really have any particularly good answers here. I

01:53:26   try to put it in like whatever backpack or bag or what have you that I brought it to

01:53:32   the beach in when I'm not actively using it. Uh, I also don't go like deep into the surf

01:53:37   like John does with his big camera. Uh, but generally speaking, just being careful and

01:53:42   trying to keep it away from anything that can hurt it, which yes, I recognize every

01:53:46   grain of sand on that entire beach can hurt it, but just doing my best to, you know, put

01:53:50   it inside a towel or put it in a backpack, like I said, and just keeping it as far away

01:53:54   from sand as I possibly can. Marco, you occasionally live outside of the beach, but generally live

01:54:01   on the beach. What do you do with this?

01:54:02   Marco: I don't. I don't bring my big camera to the beach almost ever. And, uh, so I kind

01:54:09   of avoid the issue.

01:54:10   Douglas Feingold- So I'm on now a 15 year run of bringing quote unquote big cameras

01:54:16   to the beach and haven't lost one yet, which means that I'm well overdue to drop my camera

01:54:21   in the ocean this summer. I know it's going to happen eventually. Um, my, my plan is basically

01:54:26   I have a separate bag that's just for the camera that I try to keep away from children

01:54:31   because children kick sand everywhere. Like you can't, you have to just keep a perimeter,

01:54:35   right? And the camera is either around my neck or it's in that bag. Um, it gets, it's

01:54:42   a fact of life. It gets sand and salt spray on it. I clean it between trips, try to get

01:54:48   the sand and salt spray off. The bottom line is some tiny minuscule speck of saltwater is

01:54:54   going to get inside your camera and it's going to slowly corrode some electrode and then,

01:54:58   uh, or some solder joint or something or the contacts on the SD card or like there's no

01:55:04   stopping it. Like, and my cameras that I've had are not particularly weatherproof, but

01:55:08   even if you get a quote unquote weatherproof one, unless it's in one of those things that

01:55:11   you use to take your camera, you know, deep sea diving in the beach versus camera beach

01:55:16   winds. So just be resigned to the fact that by taking your big fancy camera to the beach

01:55:21   frequently, you are killing your camera and eventually it will die. And as long as you

01:55:26   can be okay with that and get good pictures in the meantime, fine. But there is no real

01:55:30   strategy other than be careful and take as much care that you have that will stop eventually

01:55:36   the saltwater from winning. The ocean always wins. I would even go as far as to say like

01:55:40   that, that applies to pretty much everything that you bring near the ocean. It's a, it's

01:55:44   a highly corrosive environment. Uh, any, you know, it's full of salty air and moisture

01:55:50   and gritty sand and like all the, like everything about going near the ocean is amazing for

01:55:58   your mind and terrible for anything physical. So it's just, you know, anything that that

01:56:05   is going to be near or on a beach, you are limiting its lifespan and that's just part

01:56:10   of the deal. Anyway, thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode fracture and boosted boards,

01:56:17   and we will see you next week.

01:56:19   Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental. It was

01:56:30   accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was

01:56:37   accidental. It was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're

01:56:49   into Twitter, you can follow them at C A S E Y L I S S. So that's Casey Liss M A R C

01:56:59   O A R M N T. Marco Arman S I R A C U S A C. Rakuza. It's accidental. They didn't mean

01:57:14   to accidental. Tech Bar cast so long. You know how many tabs I have open in Safari right

01:57:24   now? I do not. What? Are you feeling okay? It's chrome. That's the issue is not dry.

01:57:30   Close them when I'm done and I haven't been doing any major web. Here's the thing. This

01:57:34   computer is getting far less use as it gets old. Right. I use it for podcast now and during

01:57:39   the day if I need to do something like Peter, I use the iMac. So everything here has been

01:57:43   closed except for like the tabs that I always leave open, you know, like Gmail and stats

01:57:48   pages. I get to assume you said three that it was like it was like one of those charts

01:57:52   that you see and at the bottom it says like millions. Just three. One window, three tabs.

01:58:02   Chrome is one window, one, two, three, four tabs, five tabs. Times are changing. I know.

01:58:09   It's not. If you go because if I go to the other computer, that is not true. If you go

01:58:13   to my work computer, very not true. It's just because I'm not using this way. I would use

01:58:18   it and close out the tabs that I would never open new ones. Like the biggest source of

01:58:22   new tabs is like, you know, shopping research. What are they trying to do? My dog's even

01:58:26   eating the coasters. So we're trying to find new coasters. That's a lot of tabs. I need

01:58:32   to find like a dog proof coaster. It has to be acceptable to me but also not attractive

01:58:38   for the dog. I've never had to solve that particular problem before. My dog is too low

01:58:43   to reach coasters. I know. It's tricky. Like, you know, you just get once like a lot of

01:58:49   ones that are not attractive for the dog or unacceptable to me. Like you get stone coasters

01:58:52   but I don't like that. I don't like the feeling of putting a glass on stone. The ones that

01:58:56   we have, which we got again, we got when we were married. We have a lot of things that

01:58:59   we got when we were married that had lasted until the kids and our pets destroyed them.

01:59:04   These have cork on them. Like you put the glass on cork and I love that feeling like

01:59:09   the glasses, yeah, a glass of water on a little cork coaster.

01:59:12   **Matt Stauffer** That is a nice feeling.

01:59:13   **Brian Stauffer** But the dog likes wood. So what I want is

01:59:16   like something that's like stone or metal with a cork insert for the glass but it like

01:59:21   has a rim around it because you also need like the condensation not to leak out onto

01:59:24   the thing. So it has to be slightly cup. You know, there has to be an indentation and in

01:59:28   the indentation I want cork but I want the material to be totally non-dog attractive

01:59:32   like a dog's not going to bite on a metal or stone thing. So I'm still working on it.

01:59:37   Anyway, a lot of tabs.

01:59:38   **Matt Stauffer** There are a lot of advantages to having a low

01:59:40   dog.

01:59:41   **Brian Stauffer** Low dog. A low dog that doesn't want to chew.

01:59:45   My dog wants to chew. She's good. She doesn't chew most things but she's got a lot of her

01:59:50   own chew toys. So every once in a while she'll be like, "Mmm, coaster."

01:59:52   [BEEPING]