298: Protective Sandwich

0:00:00Hey everyone, just me for a second here recording from after we recorded the episode.

0:00:04We are starting a merchandise sale starting about the day that you're going to hear this.

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0:00:26Also, we forgot to mention in our wonderful extravaganza covering the Apple event that you're about to hear,

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0:01:03[Music]

0:01:04[Music]

0:01:05Marc, where are you right now?

0:01:06I am in my house in New York.

0:01:09And Jon, where are you?

0:01:11I'm in my house not in New York.

0:01:13Okay, and I'm also in my house, but that doesn't make sense because I hugged you like five hours ago.

0:01:19Why is your voice so hoarse, Casey?

0:01:21Anytime I speak at more than normal speaking voice for more than like ten minutes, I sound like a chain smoker.

0:01:28It's been a long day. Marco and I worked together. It is currently nine o'clock in the evening on Tuesday, Halloween Eve.

0:01:35And I last saw Marco at about one, I think, or thereabouts.

0:01:41Yeah, something like that. Yeah, right around lunchtime.

0:01:43Since the last episode was recorded, we got invited to go to the Apple event today.

0:01:51And because Marco and I don't have jobs, we were able to do that.

0:01:55And so this morning I woke up a little before four, flew to LaGuardia, went to the event, and got home about an hour ago.

0:02:04So it's been a bit of a day.

0:02:07And I was listening to last week's episode, actually just yesterday or today or whatever, and I made a snarky comment about how, "Oh, we all got our invites to the event, right?"

0:02:17Well, actually, we did get invites to the event.

0:02:20Thank you to Apple for inviting podcasters to Apple events.

0:02:25And thank you for having them on the East Coast, even though I couldn't make this one, unfortunately, because of my day job.

0:02:30I appreciate the fact that it was on the East Coast, and my ability to make it was, you know, made it much greater by the location.

0:02:36So I would encourage this. In fact, all Apple events should be on the East Coast.

0:02:39And if Apple would like to make them in Boston, that would be super convenient for me, too.

0:02:42But anyway, it's awesome, it's exciting that we got invited, and it's exciting that you two got to attend.

0:02:47You know, and I would like to reiterate what Jon said, because I was particularly curmudgeonly/whiny about the fact that podcasters do not exist according to Apple PR.

0:02:59And I honestly don't know how or why we got invited, and if a little birdie wants to tell me, I'd be curious to hear how that happened.

0:03:07But I ain't complaining! I don't know how it happened, but it happened.

0:03:10And so I am extremely thankful, and well, we are extremely thankful, and it was super cool.

0:03:18And we'll talk a lot about the event, of course, because I think that's what the people tuned in for, but I'm sure we'll be a little inside baseball about what it was like for us to be there.

0:03:26Jon, I am genuinely sorry you couldn't make it, but I'm glad that even one of us, let alone two of the three of us, could go. So it was very cool.

0:03:35I'm actually kind of relieved that there was nothing related to the Mac Pro at the event.

0:03:39It would have been amazing.

0:03:41It was hard enough for me not to be there, right? But I'm like, "Well, but at least there probably won't be any Mac Pro stuff," right?

0:03:47And there wasn't, so great relief for selfish reasons.

0:03:50So how do we want to do this? Do you want to try to go chronologically?

0:03:54I think we'll go through it as usual in show order, in presentation order, but I do have an opening statement that I was going to make more forcefully, and now I'm waffling, huh?

0:04:04Waffling on it a little bit.

0:04:06[laughter]

0:04:08I'm sure we'll talk about this in the event, and this is not what the event was about, but it's something that a lot of people on Twitter were talking about, and something that I was thinking when I watched the video of the event.

0:04:20That aside from everything that was announced at the event, the subtext that I was getting, right or wrong from this event, is this is Apple whispering slightly louder to the world, not to tech nerds who have already been talking about this for literally years, but to the world, saying, "We're going to make our Macs."

0:04:43And I think that signal is less hidden than it was.

0:04:50Now, the reason I'm waffling is I'm like, "Oh, sure, they could be saying that publicly in subtext as a negotiating tactic for the company whose name was not uttered or shown to the degree that it normally is in this presentation, Intel."

0:05:07So if you are trying to get the upper hand on Intel in any sort of future negotiations about whatever they might negotiate about, one way to increase the power of your position is to stop really talking about their products so much.

0:05:23Stop really bragging about them. In fact, don't mention their name at all, but just sort of use generic terms, like the number generation they're on and maybe the word "core."

0:05:31And then spend a long time talking about how awesome the CPUs that you, Apple, make.

0:05:39So that's my one meta comment on the whole thing, and that is not what this presentation was about. It was about iPads and all the products we're going to talk about, right?

0:05:47But I felt that signal coming through to me through the video. You guys can tell me what it was like to be there in the room if this was really about Apple today, and I'm just wrong because I was watching it by video.

0:05:58So what makes you waffle on it now, though?

0:06:01It's potentially a negotiating tactic, right? I was going to boldly predict, like, this is it. Because I was coming out of this like that, Apple just basically said, "We're making RMX."

0:06:11Like, "Hello, everybody. To the public, tech nerds have been talking about this for years. Now we're saying to the public, 'We are making RMX.' If you can't figure it out by now, it's going to happen. You want it to happen. Everyone knows it's going to happen. We're making RMX."

0:06:23But if you were trying to negotiate with Intel about anything, this would be the way to increase the power of your position. To get the public on your side to say, "Oh, the public wants us to make RMX. Everyone agrees our ARM chips are better than everything you have. So what have you got to offer us?"

0:06:42That ship may have already sailed. We don't know, right? And no negotiating can change the fact that Intel is behind on process, which Apple emphasized in this presentation.

0:06:537nm. Did you know that nobody on a laptop or a phone or, no, I think it's a laptop or desktop market has that. Did you know that? Apple knew that, and they mentioned it.

0:07:04It was just like, it was hit after hit. Anyway, that's it. That's my opening statement. If I'm out of commentary, we'll go back to it when we get to that section.

0:07:11Just to answer that question that you posed, I don't think this is a negotiation tactic. I think Apple has made the decision already that Intel is being phased out over time. It's only a question of how and when that happens.

0:07:24It's like when a job is really horrible and you decide to quit the job. If you go into your boss's office and they're like, "Well, how about we pay you 10% more?" That's not going to change your decision. You already made the decision. It's just an issue of executing it.

0:07:36That's how Apple's decision is. I think Apple decided probably over the last few years to break up with Intel, and they're just slowly doing that.

0:07:47I guess I have to add at this point because we probably won't talk about the Mac Pro. I'm kidding. We will. Anyway, this is also making me think that I may be in a position, personally, and many other people may be in a position of buying the last great Intel Mac, assuming the Mac Pro comes out next year and is Intel-based.

0:08:09What is it going to be like to buy an $8,000 Intel-based Mac the year before all Macs go ARM and the processors are amazing? The other fantasy that's going around is, as everyone has said, "But what if the new Mac Pro is taking so long because it is ARM?" That would also blow my mind.

0:08:26I feel like I'm in an uncomfortable Mac Pro position right now, but as we'll get to later, Apple is kicking some major CPU butt.

0:08:36All right. It starts with the MacBook Air. We are talking about the Mac right up front. We spent a fair bit of time talking about the Mac. I didn't time it or anything, but I expected the Mac to take up three minutes at the top of the show. It was a while.

0:08:56Yeah, because this is major updates. Before we get into the Air, I do want to talk one second about the black and white video about creative people using the Macs that came right before the Air segment.

0:09:08I thought it was very interesting that almost every Mac laptop that was in that video had the glowing white Apple logo on the back, which means it was pre-2016 models.

0:09:20You pointed that out to me when we were in the show. There were definitely some that did not have a glowing Apple logo, but you were right. The majority to my eye, or at least once I started paying attention when you said something, the majority were absolutely older ones, which is definitely interesting.

0:09:35And we also got a number. Tim said that the active Mac installed base is 100 million. That's a number that I don't think we get very often, if ever.

0:09:45We also don't know how they measure that, so it's like, okay, I guess. What does that even mean? There's many different ways to slice that. It's a round number and it's a section on the Mac, so they've got to look for some number to brag about, I guess.

0:09:57I wonder if it's connections to XProtect or connections to other software update mechanisms or the App Store.

0:10:04Yeah, there's definitely ways you can measure that to come up with a bigger number or a smaller number. If you just measured the ones that are supported by Mojave, for example, that number is way smaller, right? Because they actually started cutting people off.

0:10:16If you measure hardware that you could take from an Apple store and get repaired, like not in Apple's obsolete list, I wonder if that number shrinks as well. Anyway, they're selling a lot of Macs.

0:10:26Indeed. So they start by discussing how everyone loves the MacBook Air, which was true, if not anymore. And we got a new MacBook Air, which up until just a few minutes ago as we record, I think we all kind of assumed, and Marco, you had reached this conclusion almost immediately, assumed that it was a MacBook Escape, but not.

0:10:50But it sounds like that is actually not true. So can you tell me a little more about this, Marco?

0:10:54Yeah, so this, I've been kind of like on a research rollercoaster all day trying to figure out the MacBook Air. Like, so here's, you know, it was introduced, like, you know, we've all in the Mac community and especially Apple users, we love the MacBook Air.

0:11:11We have loved the MacBook Air for a very long time. And they capitalized very much on that in this presentation. They, like, Tim called out the MacBook Air as the most loved Mac, which I think that was probably an accurate description.

0:11:26They even, he even brought up the, he called back the envelope reference, which was really nice. And so, like, it referred back to all the MacBook Air history and really capitalize on the MacBook Air love that it has built up over time as, like, one of Apple's most valuable product names and brands and icons, right?

0:11:49The funny thing is, if you look at what they actually have shipped as the new MacBook Air, it looks a lot like a middle point between two computers they've been shipping for two years now.

0:12:03The MacBook Escape, which they've been shipping since 2016. And it also now we're learning that it actually has a lot of similarities to the 12-inch MacBook, which shipped in 2015.

0:12:14When the MacBook Escape was unveiled in 2016, Phil Schiller, during the presentation, actually called out this configuration of the MacBook Pro without the touch bar as an Air successor.

0:12:28He mentioned the Air and he said, he said they created this new configuration of it to, you know, to appeal to Air buyers or to, something like that, right? I forget the exact words.

0:12:37And so they were positioning, oh, and it made sense, like, technically, because it had the same processor class as the Air, the same approximate guts as the Air.

0:12:46It was totally different from the touch bar models. Like, all the guts were different, like the components, the CPU and everything.

0:12:51- Similar size and weight too, importantly.

0:12:53- Yeah, it was 3.0 pounds, 13-inch screen, like, it was very, very similar to the MacBook Air in many, many ways.

0:12:59It was positioned as such, it was engineered as such.

0:13:01Clearly, the MacBook Escape was supposed to be the MacBook Air replacement and the market basically said no, for lots of reasons.

0:13:10I mean, up front, the price was even worse.

0:13:12Like, there was, since a price drop in the Escape, that brought it down a little bit further, but, you know, in 2016, it was much more expensive than the Air and people didn't like the new keyboard, which also kept dying.

0:13:25People didn't like the fewer ports and, you know, the loss of the legacy ports and the fewer total ports, you know, because it only had the two, plus the headphone jack.

0:13:34That has been on sale for two years and the market has spoken very loudly that, no, that is not the MacBook Air replacement we were looking for.

0:13:43- One thing I'll throw in there, obviously the price, I think, is the number one concern in everything you brought up, but I actually think, and I can say this more confidently now that Apple probably agrees with me,

0:13:53that the taper, the lack of a taper, was like the third place factor, which sounds stupid and I've railed against the taper before saying you can fit more battery if you don't taper it.

0:14:02But it's clear that Apple considers, as I think I mentioned a couple shows back, the taper to be an important part of the MacBook Air's branding.

0:14:13They put it on the 12-inch MacBook, the MacBook One, that tapers, and the new Air has the taper as well, and the Escape didn't.

0:14:22And so, obviously the price, I think, was the number one, and number two was probably lack of ports and MagSafe and all that other stuff, but number three, I think, was the taper.

0:14:30Because if you love the MacBook Air and it's your most loved thing, what you want more than anything is a replacement for the MacBook Air that is like your MacBook Air, but better.

0:14:39And like your MacBook Air, like I was talking about this when we were talking about the rumors, what does it mean to make a new MacBook Air?

0:14:44Like the MacBook Air means, essentially, it has to be wedge-shaped, because that's the MacBook Air.

0:14:48And I think it feels thinner because of the skinny edge, and I think it makes people think, "Oh, I had an old MacBook Air that I loved, and now here's a new MacBook Air," which we'll see whether we love or not, but it's clearly a MacBook Air, whereas the new MacBook Escape was not a MacBook Air as much as Phil Schiller may have wanted it to be.

0:15:02It was the MacBook Escape. It was the MacBook without Touch Bar with a really big Escape key. That's what it was, and it cost a bazillion dollars, and it was not a new Air.

0:15:11See, I agree it was not a new Air, but to me, what it looks like they have done here is basically renamed the MacBook Escape, the new MacBook Air, I made it wedge-shaped, and now it still has almost all of the same drawbacks as the Escape did to Air buyers.

0:15:30It's got more, right? Because it's 5-watt CPU.

0:15:32Right, yeah, okay, I'll get to that in a second. But now that they call it the Air, now everyone's like, "Oh, finally, they made the computer I wanted," but it appears as though they really have done a marketing jujitsu here.

0:15:44It really is basically a halfway point between the 12-inch MacBook and the Escape, and it does not have the things that MacBook Air people want, but it's called a MacBook Air.

0:15:57And it's wedge-shaped.

0:15:58And it's wedge-shaped, and it's three pounds, and it's 13 inches, but they've already been selling a computer that is almost exactly that for two years that nobody has bought, basically.

0:16:07So I don't, to me, everyone's really happy today because this is the day the event happened, everyone is very excited about everything, it looks really cool and everything, but if you enumerate the reasons why you weren't buying the Escape for the last two years, all of those reasons apply to this.

0:16:25And more. And I remember a couple shows ago, I was saying, when we were in our umpteenth iteration of gnashing our teeth about the laptop line, it was like, something like, "Imagine if Apple shipped this computer, how much would you like?"

0:16:38And I said, "Imagine a MacBook Air, but that's retina." And it's like, that's what people want, right? And so isn't that exactly what you got? Isn't it a retina MacBook Air?

0:16:46Nope.

0:16:47And I look at this machine, and I say to you, "If I took this machine, and I put a 15W CPU instead of a 5W in it, and I put a USB-A and an SD card slot on it, and I put a different keyboard on, would you like it more or less than the computer here?"

0:17:00And I would be hard-pressed to find somebody who would say they would like it less. Because those things I just changed about it, they would probably make it more expensive, but to the point that you're going to get to soon,

0:17:13there already is a bunch of other laptops in Apple's line that are like this. There's a bunch of other products that are sort of spreading out along the line here.

0:17:26If you wanted to make a new computer that fills a new role, the reason people don't like the escape, like you said, if you knew about all those reasons, if you want to counteract them, make a retina MacBook Air.

0:17:36Which is, take the MacBook Air and put a retina screen on it and update the USB ports or whatever, but don't take away things that people love, which is the keyboard that they like that's more reliable, maybe an SD card slot, maybe a USB-A slot.

0:17:48There's things that you could do, there's small things that everyone would say, "Oh, that's better. That's even better than what we got." But they haven't done that.

0:17:55So I think when people look at this computer, I think they may actually go pretty far on the fact that it's called MacBook Air, but if you had that sort of Pepsi challenge where I said, "Do you want this one or the one with the single USB-A port?"

0:18:09And they'd be like, "Oh, I'll take that one. Why wouldn't I take the one with the big chunky port? Because I have some stuff that's shaped like that that goes in that hole. Do you want this one or the one that has MagSafe?"

0:18:17"Oh, well, I love the MacBook Air. It's the most loved Mac ever. And I love MagSafe. And first of all, I'll take the one with MagSafe." Those two changes right there wouldn't actually cost that much more money.

0:18:26Obviously, Apple is on the outs about MagSafe for reasons that I don't think have been fully articulated to the public, but may actually be valid. We just don't know. Maybe it was starting fires or causing reliability concerns.

0:18:35But a USB-A port? That doesn't cost that much money. They could find room to fit it, and people would love it, but Apple says no.

0:18:42So it has the same two USB-C ports as the Escape, which...

0:18:48Two Thunderbolt ports, to their credit.

0:18:50Yeah, okay, yeah, fair. But what that really means, though, is one port if you have it plugged in, plus the headphone port, which is on the wrong side.

0:18:57No, having one more port sounds like paradise. Don't you knock it, my friend. That would be amazing.

0:19:03And I'll get to that in a second, too. But anyway, so you have the same ports as the Escape, which I had for a while and decided were not enough, but okay, we'll move on from that. This is a low-end product, after all.

0:19:13You have the same keyboard. It's the same keyboard as this year's 2018 MacBook Pros.

0:19:19So, obviously, with the change of there being Touch ID without a Touch Bar, which, by the way, is awesome. I love that. I love that you can get Touch ID without the Touch Bar. That is a great option, and I hope that option moves across the line.

0:19:32Well, you hope that just because you're begging for scraps. I hope Face ID moves across the line, but we're not there yet.

0:19:39Fair enough, yeah. I'd say if we're going to keep having that giant top bezel on the screen, might as well make Face ID in there. But anyway, so it is the same keyboard, though.

0:19:48So anybody hoping for a different keyboard, myself included, we are disappointed because it is the same.

0:19:54Now, it does have that silicone membrane that the 2018 update brought to that keyboard to make it quieter, but we also know that there are still reports of these keys flaking out and dying, so it's not fixed.

0:20:06The problem is not gone. It just seems to be maybe reduced. So it still has an unreliable, expensive, hard-to-service keyboard, which I still assert is a terrible choice, not only for anybody, but especially for a low-end model, where these have to last a long time.

0:20:23They're sold to very value-conscious buyers. They need to withstand things like schools and heavy use. So specs of dust are going to be a problem, I think.

0:20:33They're going to keep pushing this. I was hoping that this new MacBook Air would be the first model to show off a new industrial design that would spread across the line.

0:20:42Obviously, that was wrong. That was not in the cards for this year. That is not going to happen yet. We're not ready for it yet. I'm disappointed by that, but oh well.

0:20:51And your new hope should be that this is the last laptop in the old design language. So you were hoping this would be the first of the new generation.

0:21:00Right.

0:21:01Now we all switch to saying, "I really hope this is the last of this generation." Meaning this generation means, starting with the 2015 MacBook, of the butterfly keyboard generation of no ports, this keyboard, we should all pray that this is the last one.

0:21:16That whatever the new generation is coming in the future, it wasn't in time for this. So this is the capstone. They've now converted their entire laptop line to this style and this generation.

0:21:28And all the trade-offs that are made on pretty much every single one of these models are the same. It's not like they perhaps couldn't revisit the trade-offs. The best they could do was put some membranes on the keyboard.

0:21:39But all the trade-offs that were present across the entire line, they're still there for every one of these computers.

0:21:44And we're three years into this, almost three and a half years into this generation of natural design for the laptops. Typically these generations last like four to five years at most.

0:21:56Obviously Apple slows down over time with Mac updates seemingly, so that might extend. But I'm guessing we still have another year of this left, unfortunately.

0:22:05But anyway, besides it being not what I wanted, this does look like a good computer, but what's really interesting is this article that came out on MacRumors tonight.

0:22:15They're doing some investigation of what processor is in this thing. They really didn't mention it very much. All they said was that it was 8th generation and we know it's like 1.6 GHz base.

0:22:25There's only one processor option. There's no build to order upgraded processors. I noticed when I was looking through the tech specs that this computer only has a 30 watt power brick.

0:22:36Which is the same wattage as the 12 inch MacBook. The escape, which has what used to be the Air Class 15 watt CPUs, ships with a 60 watt power brick.

0:22:47So it seems like this computer uses way less power. So sure enough there's this MacRumors article tonight that seems correct that the processor based on just like model numbers existing in Intel's system and everything.

0:23:00It is the MacBook class of power consumption and performance, not the MacBook Air and MacBook Escape class.

0:23:08What this computer appears to be is a 13 inch MacBook, not a wedge shaped escape after all.

0:23:17Once you learn this about it, a whole lot of things make more sense and a whole lot of things are kind of disappointing or weird.

0:23:25It is tech forward. It's way more tech forward than the 12 inch MacBook. And by the way, the 12 inch MacBook didn't get an update this year, which is weird.

0:23:33It should theoretically have gotten updated today with this. If this is basically a 13 inch MacBook, the 12 inch should have been updated with it.

0:23:43I don't know why it wasn't, but oh well. We'll get there. Maybe it's some weird Intel thing, who knows.

0:23:47But it is tech forward in the sense that the new MacBook Air has the T2, the T2 architecture with the SSD controller and everything. That's great.

0:23:55It has the modern speaker system and microphones. It has touch ID, which is awesome. I did find it kind of funny that they were talking about things like retina screens and the force touch trackpad being new.

0:24:10Because even though, it was basically like re-celebrating all the innovations they had for the last few years, but the Air never had them.

0:24:19So to the Air, they were new, but it's like here's why a force touch trackpad is good. And it's like yeah, that was introduced to the MacBook line in 2015.

0:24:28So thanks. But anyway, it does look like a really interesting product if you can tolerate that keyboard and if the pricing works for you.

0:24:39But it's more, I'm really curious to see the performance of it and to see whether it throttles really badly because the MacBook has some issues like that sometimes.

0:24:49But it sure does seem like it's actually a 13 inch MacBook, not a replacement for the Air directly. And it's actually going to be probably a performance hit.

0:24:58I think the only reason it compares well to the Air is because the Air is so old.

0:25:02Yeah, this was weird for me to watch because I'm not dying to upgrade my MacBook, but I would like to.

0:25:11I got it, I think I placed the order during WWDC 2017, so I got it sometime in June of that year.

0:25:18And I love my MacBook adorable, but it's not fast and the one port is kind of annoying.

0:25:26Generally speaking, I don't mind it, but there are definitely times that it's kind of annoying.

0:25:30And not having Thunderbolt is also kind of annoying because if I wanted to get a dock, I have to be super careful that it's a USB-C dock.

0:25:39And that could potentially limit me, although it doesn't seem like I need anything that Thunderbolt gives me.

0:25:45So I'm sitting in the presentation, I'm watching it, and I'm like, "Oh, there's two ports. Oh, they're Thunderbolt ports. This is all sounding great.

0:25:53Everything's coming up Casey." And then we learn that it's basically the same CPU and that really puts a damper on things.

0:26:02Because I want something quicker, like a lot quicker. And so I'm not desperate to upgrade my laptop, and thus I probably won't,

0:26:11especially because the new iPads look so hot. But I don't know what I would do if I were to buy a laptop today.

0:26:19And my personal priorities are something that is very small and very light, but preferably not quite as slow as my current MacBook.

0:26:28I guess I would get the escape? I'm not even sure what I would do.

0:26:36And also I should add that when I was in the hands-on area, which it is so cool to be able to say that, but anyway, when I was in the hands-on area,

0:26:42I had forgotten that I actually don't love the feel of the third generation butterfly keyboards. They feel a little bit mushier to me.

0:26:54Now, I would probably get used to it, and it's probably for the best because they're all so quieter, allegedly.

0:27:00But yes, I understand they touted the stability of the keys, but it just felt a little squishier to me.

0:27:07And one of the things I love about my adorable keyboard is how crisp it is.

0:27:12And yeah, I can totally see how that may not be your Royal You and your, specifically Marco Armin's, cup of tea, but for me, I really like it.

0:27:21And I'm not sure I like the new one quite as much, although if I had to sacrifice the stability of it in order to get,

0:27:29or the crispness of it in order to get something that's more reliable, I would totally make that trade.

0:27:33I'm really curious, especially if you look at, think about this too, the way this fits in with the lineup,

0:27:39the 12-inch costs $100 more to start. Now, that's partly because there is no 12-inch configuration that only has 128 gig SSD,

0:27:49which by the way, should be illegal. But if you actually configure these to be equally spec'd,

0:27:53where basically you give the Air 256, then the 13-inch new Air is $100 more than the 12-inch at the same spec.

0:28:04So what would actually finally make sense here, that would finally resolve this, would be if the 12-inch gets a 128 gig configuration

0:28:15that is $100 less to start, so like $1,099 basically to start. Then you have the two MacBooks basically,

0:28:24the 12 and 13-inch at $1,100 and $1,200 to start. And if you look at the pricing, like as you scale up,

0:28:31like the Escape I think is like $200 more than them, the Touch Bar is another $200 more than that,

0:28:37something like that, right? So like, the lineup would make so much more sense, except for the one hilarious difference

0:28:43that these two very similar low-end computers, the larger of them would be called the Air.

0:28:50I think I was just carrying along the branding. The more I think about this, the more it just looks like a 13-inch MacBook One

0:28:56with Thunderbolt, right? Which is an okay computer to have, but it adds granularity to their line in a weird place.

0:29:04I feel like there's still a gap. And incidentally, speaking of gaps, they're still selling the old MacBook Air.

0:29:10That was a question we had going into this. As far as I can tell, they're still selling it. Maybe they're just clearing the inventory.

0:29:15Maybe they won't. But if some people, somewhat snarkily saying, or people who are disappointed that this isn't the first of a new generation of MacBooks,

0:29:23saying that if pressed, they might still buy the old non-retina MacBook Air for the keyboard, for the USB-A ports, for the, you know, whatever.

0:29:33Especially if the main thing you're doing on it is typing. Maybe retina doesn't mean anything. You're not doing image editing or whatever.

0:29:39And so if the main thing you do is, you know, go around with your computer and type words and maybe use a web browser and like plug in USB sticks and an SD card from your camera,

0:29:51the old MacBook still is the better, quote-unquote, "better computer" for you.

0:29:55But if you were someone who loved the MacBook One, the 12-inch MacBook, but you just wish it had Thunderbolt and maybe a little bit bigger screen and was slightly faster,

0:30:03this is the computer for you. But I'm not sure if it's going to appeal to MacBook Air owners.

0:30:09Like that was the pitch during the presentation. Tim Cook was like, "Everyone loves the MacBook Air, so now we've got a new MacBook Air."

0:30:14And it's, again, it's hard to tell when I'm not there in the room, but the video was like, "And the crowd goes wild." Like who doesn't want--

0:30:21The crowd did go wild. It was like thunderous applause. Because people love the MacBook Air.

0:30:27So I'm saying like they really are like really capitalizing on that. They're really pushing the marketing on this product hard.

0:30:35They really want people to accept this as the new MacBook Air.

0:30:39And they might, because if they just want a wedge-shaped computer that is not the tiny, tiny MacBook One, this fills that role.

0:30:47But as time wears on, if people replace their MacBook Airs with this computer, will they miss MagSafe and USB-A and SD?

0:30:58Or will they just be like, "Oh, shrug. It's the new MacBook Air. It's a little bit weird, but I'll get used to it." Time will tell.

0:31:04And again, still selling the old one is--that's not a shock because that's the thing that Apple does now.

0:31:11And still selling it to schools makes some kind of sense. But having it in the line, making tech nerds--like not out of spite.

0:31:19Not like, "Well, if you're not going to make exactly the computer I want, then I'm going to buy the old one forever." Like a Marco move.

0:31:24I didn't say forever. I know. But I don't think it's actually a spite move.

0:31:30I think it is really saying, "Let's really think about what do I actually want out of my computer, and am I willing to trade these things that I'm used to?"

0:31:39I'm used to having MagSafe if you're just really obsessed with that and can't stomach the idea of not having it.

0:31:46They will still sell you a computer with that, and you can decide whether typing your password every time you unlock your computer, or having a slow computer, or having a non-retin computer, or having terrible viewing angles are worth it to you.

0:31:57All that said, I mentioned I was in the market for a new homework laptop, and I did the comparison after everything was announced to say, "Okay, so they've made their announcement.

0:32:05Let me spec out the new MacBook Air that I would get, and now let me compare it." And I did the comparison. I compared it to the MacBook Escape, and the configurations I wanted, the pricing was frighteningly close.

0:32:17And I'm like, "Well, then why would I get the Retina Air instead of the MacBook Escape?" And I said, "Oh, yeah, Touch ID." So for me, that puts it over the top.

0:32:25Also, oh yeah, the MacBook Escape still has the more dust-prone keyboard. It has not been updated to the third gen.

0:32:31I'm not entirely convinced that that's a material difference with the Memrines. But anyway, Touch ID was the big deal breaker. I'm like, "Oh yeah, I've forgotten that the Escape doesn't have Touch ID. Forget about that."

0:32:42So I have been to the Escape, even though they're very similar in price, and the Escape is faster, surely, right? But I don't care about that for a homework computer.

0:32:51And it's better in a whole bunch of ways. Touch ID makes the new Air much more attractive to me than the Escape. And then the 12-inch, when I compared the pricing there, surprisingly, if you start specing up the 12-inch to be close to the configuration I wanted from the Air, the pricing isn't that far apart there either.

0:33:10But again, the MacBook One, no Touch ID, right? Am I wrong about that?

0:33:15That's correct.

0:33:16That's correct.

0:33:17All right, I forget what's on the thing. No Touch ID.

0:33:19Also no membrane on the MacBook One.

0:33:21Yeah, and then you've got the other different keyboard, and it's only got the one port.

0:33:24So within Apple's lineup, the new Air, at least for my purposes, is the most desirable product for a sort of low-end laptop, because I don't want to get the non-retin-it because I just can't stomach it.

0:33:35And because I just had one of those, I feel like I'd be buying the same computer, right?

0:33:39And the two sibling computers that are around the same price range with different trade-offs in terms of size and power, neither of them have Touch ID.

0:33:49And as much as I want Face ID, Touch ID on a laptop, especially one that multiple kids log into and parents and everything going back and forth, not typing your password is a big quality of life improvement.

0:33:59So for all of our complaining about this computer, we can't buy what Apple doesn't offer, and among what Apple offers for a cheap laptop, as far as my specific use case is concerned, this is the most attractive model.

0:34:12You know, like I'd said earlier, it was a rollercoaster for me, and what I was thinking about just a moment ago is that for my MacBook Adorable, generally speaking, the only real peripherals I ever plug in is an SD card reader, which I do a lot.

0:34:32Occasionally Ethernet, which I actually use an old USB-A Ethernet adapter just because it works. Oh, that was why. Because I need it to be a plug-in. I need to be able to plug it into the dongle that has power input because I only have one port. That's what it was.

0:34:49So, shut up Marco. So I was thinking about it though, like my SD card reader, which is a USB-C SD card reader, is physically way wider than these two ports directly next to each other will allow.

0:35:06That's actually been a problem since all the 2016s. The ports are so close together that some peripherals will block the other ports next to them.

0:35:14Right. So if we tunnel vision, and I'm tunnel visioning on purpose to make my point, but if we tunnel vision on the only reason Casey wants a second port is for an SD card reader, which is not the truth but is not far from the truth, this is still a one-port laptop because they're directly friggin' next to each other.

0:35:31I couldn't plug in a power port at the same time, or I couldn't plug in power at the same time I'm using an SD card reader unless I get like a USB-C extension. I don't even know if that thing, does that exist? Is that a thing?

0:35:43I wouldn't, I don't think that exists and I wouldn't trust one. But can't you just get a different dongle that has a built-in power pass-through and Ethernet and SD card reader? Like I have one that does that.

0:35:51Yeah, fair. Yeah, you could do that.

0:35:53And they have adapters, like we have them at work. They're kind of terrible, but they go into both ports. Like they go, both of the USB-C ports and on them they have SD card and HDMI and USB-A and you know, a bunch of other stuff.

0:36:05I'm always afraid those are gonna like snap off. Like the ones that have little short cables I think are way better.

0:36:10I haven't broken one yet, but they're definitely ungainly. I noticed some things when I was going through the video. I think, I believe this is the first time that I can recall seeing an Apple promotional video that shows someone using an Apple product with an obvious white dongle poking out of the back.

0:36:26I think it was when they were showing like Mac Minis or something and a bunch of kids were using them to do some, you know, video project or whatever and you could see the back of the computer and it jumped out at me.

0:36:34It was like a sore thumb because you've got all these sleek little computers and the telltale white dongle poking out of the back, which is what real Macs look like in the world.

0:36:40There's white dongles poking out of the sides of all of them, but very rarely do you see that. Like if you look at all of the, well at least from the pictures I saw, in the hands-on area, not a lot of white dongles poking out of the back of all those Mac Minis.

0:36:52Just smooth, carefully arranged, like color matched cables to show how awesome and cool and sleek the Mac Mini is. Although we'll get to that in a second. That's the reason for that.

0:37:00But yeah, they showed a dongle poking out of it and I continue to think that like until and unless the world catches up with Apple's vision of connectivity on laptops, the reality for all of us will be dongle town and dongle town is not a fun place to be.

0:37:16I mean, it's not the end of the world. We're all doing it. It's a thing that works and it has advantages in terms of docking stations and everything, but it also has disadvantages.

0:37:23So thus far, Apple seems either unwilling to compromise on this or they've compromised on it, but we haven't seen the fruits of that compromise yet. It's difficult to tell which is which. I feel like you two could have asked Johnny about that when you were there and maybe Marco did, but we'll get to that later.

0:37:39I actually, I have a better idea for how they can solve this problem. Space gray dongles.

0:37:46Then they'll still look pro and Apple can sell us a whole bunch of new copies of the same things we already bought. So everyone wins.

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0:39:42[Music]

0:39:45I mean it's interesting. I feel like this is going to sell well because people are going to say, "Oh, this is the new version of the thing I loved."

0:39:52And I just want a more modern version of the thing I loved. But it is certainly not without compromise, which is something we're kind of getting used to at this point unfortunately.

0:40:01Well, it's something we get used to on the Macs and especially the laptop Macs.

0:40:06It's the laptop specifically.

0:40:08Yeah, because if you look at the desktops, we'll talk about the Mac Mini in a second. The Mac Mini update is awesome. It's fantastic.

0:40:16And the iMac Pro, as I mentioned every show, is awesome. I love the iMac Pro.

0:40:22It's just the laptops that have been in such a weird place the last few years.

0:40:27And it seems like they can't ship a laptop that doesn't have severe compromises in some way.

0:40:32Even if you like the keyboard that I hate, it seems like there's severe compromises on all these laptops.

0:40:39Whether that's if you don't like the keyboard or if you need it to work reliably, or whether it's heat and thermal issues, whether it's simply that they just cost way more than they used to and the upgrades for them are very expensive and less and less is serviceable.

0:40:53And you have to buy all these dongles for everything.

0:40:56Or if you want any port other than USB-C and maybe headphones.

0:41:00Right, exactly. So it seems like the laptop updates are just compromise after compromise after compromise.

0:41:08Whereas the desktops and the iOS line, the hardware is so good and the updates are almost all positive. They're so strong.

0:41:18And we'll get to that for the rest of the show, fortunately. I think our one downside thing is over because the Mac Mini update was fantastic.

0:41:26Alright, so let's dive in. There is a new Mac Mini and that also made a lot of people very happy in the room and justifiably so because it had been how long? 18 years?

0:41:38Something like that. Can I just say too, I loved the intro video.

0:41:41It was the most dramatic Mac Mini intro video ever.

0:41:43I know, and it was kind of tongue in cheek.

0:41:45It was totally tongue in cheek. That's why it was funny.

0:41:48I love Tim's sly little, "There's another small but mighty Mac our users have been waiting for." Even Tim's making fun of it. This video makes fun of it.

0:41:58I just love that they just kind of owned that we've all been waiting for the Mac Mini and it's super unimportant for the most part.

0:42:06But they're going to make it seem really important for this one presentation for the next four years.

0:42:10And I love the way they did the video. This totally over the top thing that makes it look like a giant spaceship. It made it look huge, right?

0:42:20I just love that style so much. Apple spends a lot of money on these videos and many of them I think are way less successful than this. This was a lot of fun. I think it really worked.

0:42:30It undercuts itself at the end when the audio switches to being whatever the movie making terms for this. Todd Vizzier would tell me. Music that you're hearing as background to the music of the video to music that is emanating from the computer that's distant in the video.

0:42:43It's big, dramatic, and then it's like, "Oh, here it is. It's a Mac Mini hooked up to a display." And it's playing this video.

0:42:49Yeah, that was a fun video.

0:42:52So we had this big discussion about the Mac Mini a while back and we were like, "What are they going to do with it?" Our main concerns were size and ports. And the answer to the question is size is the same and the answer to the port question is they didn't screw it up.

0:43:04The only things they removed from the ports are the audio input, the SD reader, and the optical capability on the output. Which for an Apple update in 2018 after four years, that's really good.

0:43:18It could have been way worse. In the grand scheme of things, they adjusted the ports in ways that may or may not be, but it's clear there's not a new philosophy for the ports of the Mac Mini as there were in the laptops.

0:43:31There's not a philosophy that like, "Well, you know what? We think all small Macs should only have USB-C Thunderbolt ports on them." The philosophy is the same as it's ever been.

0:43:40Let's put a ton of ports on the back because we don't know what people are going to use these little guys for. And if we have room for HDMI, yeah, it's a weird old connector, but put it there because people hook us up with TVs.

0:43:49USB-A, is there room for that? Sure, throw it on. Thunderbolt, that's cool too. Let's put one of those two. Let's put four of them on there. It's the same port philosophy as it was before.

0:43:58Which is an incredible relief because as we discussed, that's what people use these things for, all sorts of random stuff, and it becomes massively less useful if you have some sort of overarching, very narrow philosophy of the ports that are "allowed" on the back of a computer.

0:44:14Incredible relief. So, thumbs up on the ports. Yeah, which by the way, is the same position they took with the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro has all of the USB ports. It has 4C, 4A, plus Ethernet and everything else.

0:44:28It also lost its audio input and its optical output, unfortunately. But the iMac Pro showed even a brand new design, they still believe we should give all the ports on a desktop because there's room and people need them.

0:44:42Yeah, or not like every single port in the universe, but the philosophy is there should be a variety of ports. Even if we think that some of them are old or weird or we're not sure how many people can use them, if there's room for them and it's reasonable, we should put them on there. And they did.

0:44:56Exactly. And I love, they even called it out, they said, "Customers love having lots of ports." Which, that was hilarious because the laptops and the iOS devices are the complete opposite direction. But I agree, customers love having lots of ports. I wish you could tell the rest of the company then.

0:45:16This customer does.

0:45:18Yeah, this Mac Mini, I saw, and there were so many things, like I love that you can spec it up really high if you want to basically make it, like it's basically like a mini iMac Pro. It is space grey of course. It starts out at a really crappy low power chip. The 4-core i3, which I think this is the first time Apple has shipped an i3 branded chip.

0:45:42i3s are pretty low end. I don't even know much about them but I think they don't have hyper-threading or turbo, is that right?

0:45:48But it's still faster than the old Mac Mini because it's so ancient. That's the beauty of this update.

0:45:52Yeah, it's so ancient and the old one was 2-cores and this one was 4-cores. So even though it's an i3, it still has enough other benefits and recency to boost it up. But I would, to me, that actually makes some sense because Mac Minis are often used, mine for instance, mine is used in a capability where I don't need a lot of CPU power. Mine is mostly used as a file server and a low needs, low roll provider for the household.

0:46:20The Mac Mini is sometimes used in rolls like that or it's used in rolls where it needs a bunch of power. It needs to churn CPU things for running tests or doing builds or who knows what else.

0:46:32And so it does make sense to have a low power CPU option and I'm really happy they can also offer a 6-core high power one.

0:46:40One of my big question marks on this is I don't know what the thermal situation is here. Can it sustain a heavy load for a while without throttling like a desktop should? I don't know. I don't know how the fan noise is. I don't know how the enclosure treats that.

0:46:53Their enclosure design recently in this area has been really good though. I'm pretty confident. It's probably, like the iMac Pro is fantastic for fan noise. The laptops are okay. So I'm assuming this is going to be pretty cool.

0:47:07I'm really looking forward to hearing more about it. Maybe testing one out or something. I don't know. It's great that the RAM is up to 64 gigs. And the biggest surprise of the day, upgradeable RAM on standard RAM So-Dim sticks.

0:47:23Oh my god. This is the first time I think ever that Apple has taken a computer that they made less upgradeable and made it more upgradeable. Has that ever happened?

0:47:33It's on Dim's, right? I've been reading conflicting reports about, so it is upgradeable as in one can upgrade it, but it is not meant to be user serviceable as in you, the person who bought the computer, are not meant to crack it open and do that.

0:47:47Surely you can because iFixit will help you get the tools and the ability to do that, but I'm not entirely sure they recommend that you do it.

0:47:56I think mainly it's like, look, if you have a whole bunch of these in a build farm or your Mac Stadium or you have a server or whatever, and the RAM goes bad on it, it's nice to be able to just swap out the RAM at a repair center or wherever you're supposed to do a quote unquote.

0:48:10But yeah, they mentioned that specifically and it's not in the direction of trying to make this flexible and repairable.

0:48:17This is also the dawn, as I think our friend Todd Vaziri has pointed out, the dawn of the $4,200 Mac Mini, which is slightly hilarious, but not that.

0:48:26I mean, it's only hilarious when you compare it to PC pricing because as many people point out, oh, so you spec up this $4,000 Mac Mini? Yeah, it's a $1,500 PC.

0:48:33As we went to the Intel NUC things, the Mac Mini has not suddenly become a performance bargain, but we're mainly relieved that they didn't mess up the things that people like about the Mac Mini.

0:48:44They increased the power all around. They let you spec it to a ridiculous degree, which is good because if you have some application that needs a huge amount of RAM, but doesn't need a giant SSD, you can adjust those two things.

0:48:55Or you need just a little bit of RAM but a really fast CPU. It's configurable for people.

0:49:00And since we're a captive audience and we don't have a choice of a lot of desktop Macs, having a choice in the small, headless desktop Mac market that we can adjust in some way to our specific needs, even though it is still very, very expensive in the grand scheme of things and way more expensive than an equivalent PowerPC, we're still happy because we're Mac users and we like Macs.

0:49:20And this option will keep us happy for at least like a year and a half, two years until we start grumbling again.

0:49:27And just the range of, you mentioned that you can figure it up to like $4,000. And yes, the base model is more expensive than before, but again, I think the era of people buying cheap Mac Minis to be their new desktops as new Mac converts is long over.

0:49:43And these are much more often used for things like servers and other specialized roles. So I think the price change here is fine.

0:49:51And the new base model is better specced than the old one was. The old one had a hard drive at its base price and a really slow CPU. And the second you touched any of those specs, you were spending $1,000.

0:50:02So like it was, I think the pricing is fine. Obviously, like all of Apple's modern pricing, it isn't ideal and everything's kind of creeping up gradually over time, but it's fine.

0:50:12And I love how it has this massive range where you can spec it out to be that low end server, or you can do things like 10 gig ethernet. Like who would have guessed that?

0:50:22Yeah, that was amazing to me. I mean, they charge you $100. But still, having that as an option, like if you decide what you need is a huge SSD and 10 gig ethernet, but a wimpy CPU, like it's amazingly flexible in ways that pretty much no other machine is.

0:50:38Even the iMac Pro, which is basically like they just expect you want everything awesome, right? You can get some weaker stuff and some stronger specs on this and mix and match to the degree that you generally can't elsewhere.

0:50:48And I thought it was interesting also in the hands-on area that they were showing the Mac Mini in all sorts of different scenarios that I assume that they believe it's really used in.

0:50:58So they showed it as like a compiler farm for like Xcode or running your test suite or whatever. They showed it in the videos hooked up to a television, which is a thing that a lot of people do with their Mac Minis, right?

0:51:10They also showed it in the video, actually used it as desktop computer, but I doubt many people use it in that way. Like the mixing and matching and the stacking of them and showing them in racks, which is like, it was not, you know, when Apple introduced the Mac Mini and even when they introduced this latest form factor of it,

0:51:26I don't think they had in mind like, "Oh, people are going to be putting these in server racks." But MacStadium exists and Apple knows they exist and it's a thing that people do because it's a headless Mac and it's small and compact and you can actually stack them.

0:51:36So Apple, you know, went with that saying, "We're going to show them stacked. We're going to show them stack sideways." Because it's a thing people do and we want to say, "Yes, we Apple recognize that this is the thing you might want to do with your Mac Minis."

0:51:49And it's not like they're designing it for that, but they have that use case in mind. They're not going to ruin it for you. They're not going to, say, make it cylindrical, which makes it really hard to rack.

0:51:57It's, you know, it's Apple embracing what people actually use their computers for rather than what they imagine or would like people to use them for.

0:52:08We were so worried that we would have to use Ethernet through a dongle. The fact that we can get 10 giga Ethernet built in and they didn't take the power supply and make it external to make the box smaller.

0:52:20Stuff like that. It's just a good update. If you would have asked, well, I was going to say, if you would have asked me to predict a Mac Mini update, then I realize, "Oh yeah, we have done that for the last few episodes."

0:52:31But I never would have guessed that a Mac Mini update in 2018 would be this good. And I'm really, really happy that they did it.

0:52:40Even though I'm probably not going to buy one for a while because my Mac Mini that I use for my home server is fine. Once it flakes out, I will gladly buy one of these.

0:52:47Real time follow up from Tom Vaziri, the phrases I was looking for. I actually wasn't looking for them. I knew what they were, but I didn't know what order they went in, so it's kind of important.

0:52:54Diagetic versus non-diagetic. I could not remember which one was the one where the sound is coming from an object on screen and which one is instrumental.

0:53:01And apparently, "diagetic" means it's coming from an object on screen and "non-diagetic" means it's part of the movie soundtrack. So thank you, Todd.

0:53:08That was actually Jelly.

0:53:10Oh, was it?

0:53:11Yes, which I said in the second.

0:53:13Sorry. Thank you, Todd. Todd, you knew the answer too. I believe in you. But thank you, Jelly, for actually giving us the answer.

0:53:19One more thing that I wanted to cover before we left the Mac section is they mentioned with the Air and the Mac Mini as well that they're now being made from 100% recycled aluminum.

0:53:30And that got a massive applause in the room. And I think that's totally deserved. Like, that's a really cool thing.

0:53:36I have some questions about some of the details of that, and as a few people on Twitter have pointed out, they did later kind of basically say that Macs are now made from the shavings off of iOS devices.

0:53:47That is the worst. Like, that's the first thing I thought of. And then they said it in the presentation. I'm like, "Don't highlight that. We're all thinking it, but don't say it."

0:53:55It's like, we spend lots of money on the highest quality aluminum for the products that we care about. And the shavings that come off, we make Macs out of those.

0:54:03Like, it's such a painful metaphor for all of the Macs' issues.

0:54:08It is.

0:54:09It's interesting, though, the way they phrased it. Like, and I'm not that I'm concerned about this, but I'm, like, you're curious about it.

0:54:15They said that basically they make a new alloy out of the aluminum shavings. It's not like they're saying we take recycled aluminum and what we end up with is exactly the same as if we had started with fresh aluminum.

0:54:27Right. And it's not post-consumer recycled. It's post-Apple manufacturing.

0:54:31Right. But it's interesting that they're saying that, like, that basically I'm imagining if you gave a material scientist two chunks, one of the recycled and one of the regular, they could tell they were different. Like, the Apple phrased it as they're making a different alloy.

0:54:46So I'm slightly wondering what, you know, is it actually the same? Is it softer, harder, bendier, more brittle, more prone to scratching?

0:54:57Like, I mean, you saw them in person. I'm assuming they just felt like Apple aluminum laptops, right? That's probably not any variance that we can tell.

0:55:03Yeah. I mean, like, when you feel them for, like, two seconds, it's kind of hard to get a good idea of that kind of thing.

0:55:08Yeah. So hopefully, like, and the reason I, I mean, I guess it is a concern. The reason I have a mild concern about this is, you know, it's 100 percent the right thing to do.

0:55:17And I applaud Apple for doing it, and they should do it for all their products. But historically, as Apple has attempted to decrease the environmental footprint of their products, they've occasionally had struggles with matching the characteristics of the worst for the environment materials.

0:55:32Think about all the different plastics used for power cords. Think about when they went to lid-free solder and everything.

0:55:37It takes a little while to get the kinks worked out and to come up with, hopefully, a more environmentally friendly product that is also as durable and as pleasing and has the same performance characteristics as the worst for the environment thing that it replaces.

0:55:54So hopefully the aluminum is not such a case, and they've nailed it on the first try, I imagine. It's probably closer because, you know, it's a big hunk of metal, and it's not as perhaps as finicky as the, you know, something as delicate as the kind of plastic they use for their cords or whatever.

0:56:11Although arguably, some would say that no, that no plastic they've ever used for any of their power cords or lightning cables or whatever has ever been durable enough, and that's a separate issue.

0:56:21So for the MacBook Air on a typical academic rating scale of A through F, how do we feel like that is? Because I went from this is great to this is garbage to eh, it's fine.

0:56:38So I guess I would rate it like a C plus B minus, and then for the Mac Mini, I think this is an A. This is a good update. Marco, how do you feel about these two so far?

0:56:52Mac Mini, I'm with you. It's an A. The only thing that keeps from being an A plus is that the pricing gets pretty steep pretty fast, but it's an A.

0:56:59The MacBook Air, there's still too many unknowns. I think we need to see how these perform in real life. We need to see how things like the battery life should be pretty good actually, given the size of the battery it has.

0:57:12It's only about 10% smaller than the Escape's battery, but if it has a processor that uses half the power, that's going to be noticeable.

0:57:20So it should have really good battery life, but performance might be questionable. The keyboard is eh, so I'm going to say based on John's logic of the MacBook Air being the least crappy option of what Apple actually is willing to sell us right now, it's kind of like it gets maybe a B or a C, but at a crappy school.

0:57:41This grading system is getting more complex by the moment. I give the MacBook Air a B minus, mostly because despite all the complaints we had about it, I think it offers something that its siblings in the lineup don't offer.

0:58:02The advantage of being a 13-inch MacBook One is that if you use the 7-watt CPU, you can get a lot of battery life when your thing is bigger. I give the mini an A minus, mostly because the pricing is just, I mean it's always been bananas, but it's really bananas for this particular machine.

0:58:24And I was mostly considering A the top of the scale, but yeah, I'm going to give it an A minus.

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1:00:31So we had a retail update, and then iPad. I gotta tell you, I'm gonna cut to the end and give my concluding statement up front, which is not exactly what Jon wanted to do, but that's okay.

1:00:42I wanted an iPad for the first time in a long time. And if you recall, I had a RetinaPad Mini, fourth generation, which they're still selling?

1:00:53They even named it twice!

1:00:55Yeah, why?

1:00:56And they put it on screen. That was the thing that blew me away. Speaking of things that were on screen, at the very beginning of the presentation, they showed...

1:01:04All the rumors had leaked to the point, especially in the hours before the presentation, we more or less knew what was gonna be announced.

1:01:11But they had a big product shot that showed their lineup of Macs. And it was the iMac Pro in the background, and it was the 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

1:01:21And then it was all arranged in a nice little family portrait, and off to the left was the only computer with a big silver face pointing you, the MacBook Air.

1:01:30And the Mac Mini was in a picture! Since when do they ever show the Mac Mini in a keynote presentation alongside other products?

1:01:38It was clear that what they were gonna do is take the two things in this picture that are silver and replace them with ones that now fit in with the family.

1:01:45Now the Mac Mini is space gray, and now the MacBook Air has the same black screen face. So that's how you could tell, early in the presentation, if you didn't already know, that they were gonna replace the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini.

1:01:54In the iPad presentation, I believe they showed the iPad Mini on screen briefly.

1:02:00They did.

1:02:01When they were saying, "Here is our iPad lineup. We have the iPad Mini and the iPad, and then we have the two Pro models."

1:02:07And for a moment I was like, "By showing the iPad Mini, are they telling me they're..." No, of course. And they didn't. They didn't do anything with it.

1:02:13It's still there. It slid off the left side of the slide, never to be seen again. Mentioned one more time in the presentation is the iPad Mini 4, and anyway, it remains a product in their lineup.

1:02:22So yeah, so I have an iPad Mini 4 that actually, hand on heart, I'm not sure where it is, because I haven't seen it in a while.

1:02:30I'm sure it's here somewhere, but darn if I know where.

1:02:33It's too small. You need a bigger one.

1:02:35Yeah, maybe that's the problem. But these new iPads, they feel like modern Apple... I'm going to say computers, which kind of makes me feel a little weird, but modern Apple computers more than the iPads that preceded them do.

1:02:52They ditched the home button, which looks archaic now. They're edge-to-edge screen, for the most part. No real big bezel, for the most part. So they look and felt like modern Apple devices in a way that I don't think the iPad has.

1:03:09But even the iPad Pro just didn't look as modern to me once the iPhone X came into existence. All the iPads looked old and busted to me, and these do not. These look great, they feel great, they're super thin.

1:03:23I love the flat edges around the outside. I'm trying to figure out an excuse, trying to convince myself that I need a 10-inch or 11-inch iPad Pro. But I was very impressed. These things look great and make me want an iPad again.

1:03:42Here's the problem with this iPad Pro announcement and my problem with my feelings about it. I look at their presentation of what they chose to emphasize, what they spent time on, what they bragged about, and what the reality of these products is.

1:03:57And as excited as I'm getting about it, my suspicion, and we'll find out shortly, is that the new iPad Pros are essentially faster in all meaningful ways than every single laptop Apple sells.

1:04:12Which is, again, if you look at this thing, an 8-core A12, 120Hz screen, pencil support, we would kill to get these kind of specs and these kind of capabilities in any kind of thing that runs Mac OS.

1:04:32I believe someone was saying this has 6GB of RAM, which is double what the previous ones did. The iPad Pros are tickling all of the "be dazzled by Pro hardware" stuff. They used to be a staple of Apple's presentations. Sometimes they tell you about the amazing thing you can get at a great price, and sometimes they say, "This is going to cost you an arm and a leg." But it's amazing.

1:04:55It is incredibly powerful, it has new capabilities, everything about it is incredibly fast, we're going to brag to you about how fast it is and what it can do, and it's in a cool new form factor. It was pushing all of those buttons.

1:05:06And certainly I want one, right? But also I'm thinking, how amazing would an Apple laptop be with these internals? And Apple would say, "What the hell do you need a laptop for? We got a cool keyboard for this? It's practically a laptop already."

1:05:22But you know, me with the OS thing and all the rumors about what iOS 13 will have that got kicked out of iOS 12 that may make this an even more amazing computer.

1:05:32But yeah, setting aside my uncomfortable feelings about how I wish the laptop line was as powerful as these iPads, consider it an isolation, these are amazing iPads.

1:05:42This is what we've come to expect from Apple in the phone line, and now I feel like this is the first iPad that has received as much attention as the phones do.

1:05:52This new iPad is so much better in every possible way than all of its already pretty good predecessors. That's the feeling we get very often in phones, like the iPhone 10 just makes the iPhone 7 look like junk.

1:06:05Look at this and you look at the old iPads, you just fling them out the window. It's slower, it's uglier, I don't know where to put the pencil, it doesn't have a USB-C port, the speakers are worse, the screen is worse, everything is just like these totally eclipse all the previous iPads.

1:06:22And they're lust objects, they're things that if you're into iPads, and even if you're not that into iPads like Casey, you see this and you want one because they press all the nerd buttons.

1:06:33And if you can't figure out, like to Marco's point that he was saying before in Slack, maybe you're not that into iPads but you're like "I wish I was because this thing is awesome."

1:06:40That's exactly it.

1:06:42Is this faster than every single laptop Apple sells? Maybe. We'll find out soon. Certainly it's faster than a hell of a lot of them.

1:06:50Yeah, I mean you cannot miss the contrast between the excitement and the energy and the mood around the laptop updates versus the iPad updates. Like, the Macs, the laptops seem like they are updated inconsistently, really incrementally, and almost begrudgingly.

1:07:12Like it seems like Apple doesn't even want to update the laptops and the updates they do to them have very often come with significant regressions or as I said earlier, significant compromises.

1:07:24Whereas the iPad updates are just blowing out the water like to the one before. The iPad updates are just like all good and every year they're like these massive, awesome, major new upgrades to the iPad.

1:07:38And it's kind of sad as a Mac preferring portable person, but as you said John, it makes me want to use the iPad for more things.

1:07:49And it's hard because the software still isn't there for a lot of the stuff I do and a lot of the ways I prefer to work.

1:07:54And a lot of those I don't think are going to change anytime soon.

1:07:58And it's unwise to buy an iPad now thinking that oh well in the future this iPad will get much better in the ways I care about. Like, you know, buy it now for what it is now.

1:08:09Don't be relying on iOS 13 to maybe make it into a Mac for you.

1:08:14But it is striking, like the massive difference. And like wow, these iPads, every iPad update for the last forever has been just a ridiculously awesome update with huge advances, no regressions, no compromises.

1:08:31And then you have the Mac line which is full of regressions and compromises in some really, you know, kind of tepid updates.

1:08:39Like the Mac line almost feels like they're punishing you for being a customer.

1:08:42The laptop line is too big.

1:08:44Yes, the Mac laptop line feels like they're punishing you for being a customer.

1:08:47And the iOS line is just like full of love and like the most amazing work that, and it's just like I want so badly to move more of my portable needs to the iPad.

1:08:59I just don't, I don't think I can yet. Like I don't think, like Stephen Hackett made a great argument for this on, there's a, if you're a Relay FM member, there's a show that members get to hear called Fusion.

1:09:11And they did an episode today about this event and reacting to it. And you should be a Relay FM member to hear this episode.

1:09:18Just go become a Relay FM member because it's worth it.

1:09:21And the analogy Stephen made, which I think is excellent that I'm going to rip off now, is that it's almost like you have like a supercar that has just an incredible engine performance but like can't put the power down on the road.

1:09:35You know, like it just doesn't have like the tires or whatever to put that power down. That's how I feel about the iPad.

1:09:41Whereas like the iPads have incredible capabilities, incredible hardware, incredibly sophisticated frameworks and everything.

1:09:49But there's still fundamental parts of the software, fundamental limitations of the OS and the way work has to get done, the limitations it has, the apps that are available,

1:09:59that just make it really hard for a lot of us to take advantage of all that power that they have.

1:10:05And over time that line is moving, you know, it's moving down, like we are able to do more things with the iPad over time,

1:10:13but it still is very far from what you can do with a Mac in certain industries for certain needs.

1:10:19And a lot of people have at least one of those needs.

1:10:22So I hope so badly that iOS on the iPad catches up more to where the Mac is because there's no question that if you can get done on the iPad what you need to get done,

1:10:34it is the way better portable computer than any Mac laptops.

1:10:39To tweak Steven's analogy a little bit, I don't think it's so much that you can't get the power down.

1:10:46I run those car analogies like that you just end up spinning the wheels or whatever.

1:10:50Because it does, it takes that power and it uses it.

1:10:54It's just that, this is getting worse, I hate car analogies, the road doesn't go where we want to go.

1:10:59It can get the power down.

1:11:01Because when it's showing Photoshop it's using all of its power to do that Photoshop demo.

1:11:05It's just that the road doesn't go where we want it to go.

1:11:07Where we want it to go is a particular work style, a particular application.

1:11:11Even Photoshop, I was thinking about this when I was watching the demos,

1:11:15there are tons of people out there who use Photoshop professionally right now.

1:11:20Let's say those people came of age in their profession at a time before iPads,

1:11:27or for whatever reason they do their work not on an iPad.

1:11:30They use Photoshop but they do work not on an iPad.

1:11:32Chances are really good that those people, the way they use Photoshop,

1:11:36and you've seen lots of people using Photoshop or use it professionally,

1:11:39is they either have a tablet with a bunch of buttons and/or use a keyboard

1:11:44and so they're looking at a desktop computer, they're hitting keys on a keyboard or a tablet,

1:11:47and they're using a stylus.

1:11:49And that's a lot of input.

1:11:51They know all the single-letter shortcuts for all the Photoshop stuff,

1:11:54they have customized their tablets to have these hardware buttons that do what they want.

1:11:59There's just way more input variability.

1:12:01And as nice as it looks to be able to sketch on an iPad Pro or whatever,

1:12:05and even with that touch thing on the screen,

1:12:07that is an efficiency downgrade for people who are experts at hitting the 17 keys they need to hit

1:12:12to do Photoshop quickly on desktop PC.

1:12:15So if you told those people, "Hey, we're going to take away your desktop PC,"

1:12:18whether it be a Mac or a Windows PC or whatever,

1:12:20"We're going to take that away and we're going to replace it with an iPad."

1:12:22They're going to say, "Well, the screen is smaller."

1:12:24"Oh, you're going to hook up an external screen."

1:12:26"Well, but then going to hook up a keyboard?"

1:12:27"Well, then so you've got an iPad with a keyboard and an external screen attached

1:12:30and it's like you're just trying to recreate a PC."

1:12:32So that's an example of a lot of power, but this thing,

1:12:38this road doesn't go exactly where they want it to go.

1:12:40Now there's a whole new generation of people who are growing up right now

1:12:43who use Photoshop who never got used to a Wacom tablet and a keyboard and a desktop display,

1:12:47and that just seems like a crazy Rube Goldberg machine.

1:12:49Why wouldn't I just draw directly on the screen?

1:12:51And they're going to be used to the iPad,

1:12:52and they still probably want a bigger iPad at some point or whatever.

1:12:55But I think there's still this bifurcation in, for lack of a better word,

1:13:00workflows or ways of working.

1:13:03We know from our own friends who are into the iPad lifestyle,

1:13:06and they have workflows entirely built around iOS.

1:13:08So it's just setting aside the things which exist where you just can't do on an iPad still for a variety of reasons.

1:13:16Even if you could do it on an iPad, like again, Photoshop, it's available on both now or will it be next year.

1:13:21You can do it on both. Why would you prefer doing it on a desktop?

1:13:24It's like, "Well, watch me use Photoshop and see how much my hand is hitting these keys on the keyboard

1:13:28and see how I use my tablet and see how I use my gigantic screen."

1:13:31That's why I'm still doing it here, and someone else is saying,

1:13:33"Oh, I never got used to those things. I'm just doing it entirely on my iPad."

1:13:36So I think we still have a ways to go for the iPad revolution Apple wants.

1:13:41And regardless of how the lines stack up against each other,

1:13:44it's not as if iPads have to compete with Mac stuff for people doing creative stuff.

1:13:49They have to compete against Windows PCs too.

1:13:50It's like if you're going to do audio editing,

1:13:52unless they have an awesome audio editing application on the iPad with awesome keyboard support

1:13:57that supports a bigger screen and actually gives you a better experience than using a Windows PC

1:14:01with your favorite audio editing application or a Mac for that matter,

1:14:05it's still not going to win that race.

1:14:07So we're still awaiting the changeover, I suppose,

1:14:13when the people who prefer to work the old way and travel those old roads are retired or dead,

1:14:19and the new way is all there is, and maybe they don't know about the old way,

1:14:25so a giant iPad is fine for them.

1:14:28Speaking of audio editing, Jason Snell was 95% ecstatic about these new iPads

1:14:36and 5% devastated because he often uses, what is it, Ferrite to edit podcasts on the go,

1:14:43and there is no headphone jack in the new iPads.

1:14:47And so he is really annoyed because he wants to be able to do podcast editing with no latency whatsoever,

1:14:55and I guess his experience with AirPods is that there's enough latency there that it becomes frustrating for him,

1:15:00and so now he's going to have to use a USB-C set of headphones or a USB-C to headphone dongle.

1:15:07Nine dollars from Apple.

1:15:09Yeah, and the headphone jack thing, this is the one downside besides the incredible price on these.

1:15:15Oh my God.

1:15:17It's only incredible if you think of it as an iPad.

1:15:19If you think of it as a laptop with no keyboard, it starts to make more sense.

1:15:22Yeah, the configuration that I would probably get, which is the 11-inch with keyboard and pencil, 256, was $1400.

1:15:33Yeah, but you cannot buy a $1400 Apple laptop that's anywhere near this performance.

1:15:38That's true.

1:15:39Again, I haven't seen benchmarks, but go try to find, give Apple $1400 and try to get a laptop that comes close to the specs and performance of the thing you just described.

1:15:46Yeah, that's true.

1:15:47Granted, it's better as a laptop than having a floppy keyboard and all those other things, but it's no contest in terms of the power and capabilities.

1:15:55Like, Face ID, 120Hz, True Tone, all this amazing light weight and everything, this thing is an absolute monster.

1:16:03A better keyboard? The smart keyboard on the iPads is significantly nicer to type on, in my opinion, than the ones in the MacBook Pro.

1:16:11Yeah, I wouldn't go that far. I know you like it better, but I like the laptop ones.

1:16:15I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying it's better. Although, I wish it was backlit, but otherwise...

1:16:20I'm with Casey that I like the feel of the laptops, which they're reliable.

1:16:24Getting back to our earlier topic about how these compare to how the Mac is treated, one of the most important things about the iPad line in general is, you know, in this update, and basically all the updates before that in recent memory,

1:16:37every update shows me that Apple has learned from their past products, which were themselves good. I mean, I have the original 9.7" Pro, which I think was a fantastic iPad.

1:16:47Remember when it came out, we were like, "Well, this is the pinnacle. This is just the ultimate iPad. It's great."

1:16:52Every new one that comes out, there's something about it that shows, "Well, we made this awesome product last time, and people loved it, but there were a few things that we could tweak."

1:17:01And then they tweak them. And so this one, like, "There's no place to put the pencil." No, there's a place to put the pencil. "The stupid cap is annoying." Don't worry about it. There's no cap anymore.

1:17:09"It rolls off the table. It's got a flat side." "The keyboard." "The smart connector." "It's kind of awkward to use at certain angles."

1:17:15Well, now we have two angles, one for when you're looking down and one for when something...

1:17:18It's like, everything in their new product shows, "We heard you about the last product, and in a timely fashion, we give you a new product that does some amazing stuff you maybe never even thought of,

1:17:28but also, all the feedback you had about the old one, we incorporate that." I'm amazed at the physical characteristics in terms of how many iterations they do of the back case and the front case,

1:17:39and dealing with the pencil and the connectors and where the speakers are and where the camera is and orientations. Every single iPad, they get slightly better.

1:17:46There are minor regressions here and there where, like, "Oh, this case is bad," or, "They only put the front case and not the back," or, "This sleeve was awkward," and, you know.

1:17:53But they learn from their mistakes. That's what you want to see. Forward progress. There's a new set of mistakes. Maybe the headphone jack is not a great idea.

1:18:01Maybe there are other issues about this, which I think we'll get to in a bit when I talk about the physical form factor of the thing, but that kind of progress is so heartening to see.

1:18:10And I feel like the same thing with the iMac, right? Assuming the iMac Pro was their new Pro computer, that they listened to Pros and said, "We're not going to slim it down or whatever."

1:18:23The laptop line, which we were constantly harping on, seems either not to learn from the mistakes or to learn on a much longer timeline, right?

1:18:31Because it wasn't that long ago that we got iPads with the pencil and it had all those complaints about it, and it seems like only a couple years later, we have an entirely new iPad, totally reimagined, which addresses a whole bunch of the problems we have with the old one, including very, you know, picky and things like the, "Oh, well, I'm not really happy with the angle of the smart keyboard," or, "The magnets in the smart keyboard, like, sometimes they're, you know, it gets loose," or whatever.

1:18:56So now the magnets are stronger, and now there's multiple angles, and it attaches in a different way. It's just, you know, this is not to say that their solutions to this one are perfect.

1:19:04I'm sure there'll be specific issues and complaints, and a lot of it owes, you know, if you look at this, it looks a lot like the Microsoft Surface in many aspects, right?

1:19:11Because, you know, it's not like Apple solving these for the first time, but they're listening to their customers. They're looking at their products and thinking about how they could be better, and they've come up with a new product that improves upon all that stuff.

1:19:21That's so heartening to see, and it's, again, making me jealous for the Mac line.

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1:21:15[music]

1:21:18Casey and I got a chance to play with these new iPads briefly in the hands-on area and they're just so good.

1:21:23I get to play with the pencil, the keyboard. I spent a lot of time with the 11-inch, only a little bit of time with the 12.9.

1:21:29I couldn't get too much with it because there was this beautiful Italian man in front of me, but I didn't want to interrupt.

1:21:34But the 11-inch was fantastic. And I think one of the dilemmas that I think a lot of people will have now,

1:21:44the 12.9 didn't feel as ridiculous as the previous one. It didn't feel too big. It didn't feel too crazy.

1:21:51Now maybe that's just size inflation over time in the sense that maybe we just figure,

1:21:57like when the 12.9 first came out, it was like when the iPhone 6 Plus first came out

1:22:03and it was the first giant iPhone most people had ever held and it just felt ridiculous.

1:22:07And now that feels normal. I feel like that's part of how the 12.9 felt.

1:22:12But also the original 12.9 was really big and it was kind of hard to hold for a while and everything.

1:22:17The new 12.9 is not small, but the difference is smaller between that and the 11.

1:22:24And it is noticeably smaller than it was before. And it no longer feels or looks extreme or crazy.

1:22:31Now it feels like a big iPad. And I would be surprised, we have a number of friends who are like real iPad power users,

1:22:38like Mike and Federico and Jason and a whole bunch of people.

1:22:42And a lot of them will have, they'll either alternate between the two or they'll actually own both the 12.9 and the 10.5 or some other smaller one.

1:22:52Because the 12.9 is someone we'll do for like travel or whatever else.

1:22:55I bet this generation a lot of these people just get the 12.9 and are happy with just that because it is,

1:23:03like if you're going to have a 12.9 at all, I think the justification for also having a smaller iPad is greatly reduced now.

1:23:11Not to mention the fact that these cost $1400 when you spec them up.

1:23:15But the 12.9 is actually I think a much more accessible and reasonable option to a lot more people than it was before.

1:23:24I would even maybe consider, like if I was an iPad power user, which I'm not,

1:23:28but if I got to the point where I could do a lot of my work on the iPad, I would get a 12.9 because it is that much better.

1:23:35Yeah, I'm considering it too. Just because who doesn't want a bigger screen and if it's, I have to see what it's like.

1:23:42And also the keyboard, if you have a keyboard with it, is also going to be a little bit roomier.

1:23:46Because it can be because the thing is longer. It's definitely, I'm going to have to check them out in the store.

1:23:50Not that I'm, I'm not planning to buy a new iPad, but of course I want one. Like who wouldn't want one? It's awesome.

1:23:55One of the things about this design, it's the edges are straight.

1:24:00It's like an iPhone 5. People can keep going to the iPhone 4, but it's more like the iPhone 5.

1:24:05Like it is like an aluminum bathtub with right angle sides.

1:24:08And a lot of times, if you look at the laptops, like take the MacBook escape, or any of the MacBooks you've seen lately,

1:24:19very often, I mean part of the thing to make them seem thinner is that the edge, the flat edge that you see on Apple laptops,

1:24:26is thinner than the height of the entire laptop. Right? It's not like, you know, whatever that flat portion is,

1:24:32like, oh that's how thick it is. Well it's not. There's a curved section that goes underneath.

1:24:36And part of that is to make it seem thinner than it is. Because if you had flat slab sides, it would look thicker,

1:24:41even though it would actually be the same thickness. But there's another super important reason that tons of products,

1:24:47including almost all of Apple's historically, that sit flat on a table, don't have right angle sides,

1:24:52just straight up right angle sides that go all the way down. That they have that curve.

1:24:56And that's so you can pick the freaking things up. Because if you made an Apple laptop, or any other device that had,

1:25:01that was made of aluminum, perfectly machined, flat, blah blah blah, where the sides were straight all the way down,

1:25:07you'd go to try to pick it up, and you wouldn't realize that you do this, but you'd go to try to pick it up with one hand,

1:25:11you have an expectation that you can get your fingertips under the edge of the device.

1:25:15And if it went straight down to the table, you couldn't do that. You'd try to grab it,

1:25:20and you'd just be pinching at this little right angle corner on the top of the thing.

1:25:24You can't pick up a laptop that way. Like, you have to get your fingers underneath it somehow.

1:25:28So maybe you'd push it sideways, or maybe you'd hope that it had rubber feet that elevated enough,

1:25:32and you'd get your fingernails underneath it or whatever. It would be awkward.

1:25:36The fact that you never have to think about this with Apple laptops, that's called good design.

1:25:40Like, they make them that way on purpose. Not just for ventilation, not just to make it look thinner on the side,

1:25:45but because it's really important you can't freaking pick the things up if they didn't do that.

1:25:49So, when they made a phone like that, how did the iPhone 5 or 4 work?

1:25:53Those work because you can pinch it. You can have one finger on one side and a thumb on the other,

1:25:57and you can pick the whole thing up. You're never trying to pick it up from one edge. Try that.

1:26:01Put an iPhone 5 down on the table and try to pick it up without having fingers on opposing sides anywhere.

1:26:06Like, just from one edge. It's not a fun game to play.

1:26:09The only thing that might help you, not in the iPhone 5's case, but in the case of this thing,

1:26:14I made a joke on Twitter that the whole reason they had that gigantic camera bump

1:26:17is so that you finally have some fighting chance of getting your fingernails underneath the thing

1:26:21to pull it off the table. But Casey, who was there, tells me that actually,

1:26:25despite the huge size of the camera bump, it doesn't really help that much,

1:26:28and it still is kind of difficult to get off on the table.

1:26:30So, Casey, can you fill me in on exactly how difficult it's going to be

1:26:33for me to pick up a caseless new iPad Pro from a table?

1:26:37Well, you know, one of the things about going today was that

1:26:41it is clear that I was wholly unprepared for being there.

1:26:45Because once I got to the hands-on area, I didn't know what to do with myself.

1:26:50Obviously I went to play with all the things, but I didn't...

1:26:53You take your hands and you put them on the products.

1:26:56That's right, which is what I did.

1:26:58It's right there on the name.

1:26:59Yeah, it's exactly what it says on the tin.

1:27:02But no, it was funny because...

1:27:04Marco gives you that advice, to put your hands on it, but if you recall,

1:27:07the last time I did that at the WWC and iMac Pros,

1:27:11I went straight to the iMac Pro and I grabbed the mouse and keyboard

1:27:15and an Apple person practically slapped the back of my hand and said,

1:27:18"I'm sorry, you're not allowed to touch these devices."

1:27:20So don't be fooled.

1:27:21I actually had a moment like that.

1:27:23My very first thing, I went up to the MacBook Air,

1:27:25because all the iPads were mobbed when we first got in there,

1:27:27and no one was at the Air, so I went over to the Airs.

1:27:30And the first thing I wanted to do was pick it up.

1:27:33And so I picked it up and I was able to do that.

1:27:35But then what I do when I'm in an Apple store,

1:27:37when I want to see a new laptop and experience it for the first time,

1:27:40is I pick it up and I close it.

1:27:42And then I see how it feels when it's closed.

1:27:44So I picked it up, I'm looking around,

1:27:46and Apple person's fine with that.

1:27:47As soon as I close it, they're like, "Oh no, you can't do that!"

1:27:49And I'm like, "Oh, sorry, jeez!"

1:27:51They open it back up and nothing happened.

1:27:53They didn't have to log back in or anything.

1:27:55I don't know why I wasn't allowed to close it,

1:27:57but I know they're very particular about things like this.

1:27:59I didn't push any more boundaries while I was there.

1:28:03Yeah, but to more directly answer your question, John,

1:28:06or really to answer your question at all, John,

1:28:08at one point I was using, I believe it was the 12-inch,

1:28:11and I took it out of the keyboard folio case, whatever it's called,

1:28:16and I put it on the table up to--

1:28:18The smart keyboard folio.

1:28:19Thank you.

1:28:20And I think it might have been upside down, so maybe I lied to you.

1:28:22I can't remember if it was upside down or right side up,

1:28:24so maybe the camera bump would have helped.

1:28:25But one way or another, I put the thing down on either its belly or its back,

1:28:30and I went to grab it, not thinking anything.

1:28:31I'm like, "I'll just grab it, pick it up."

1:28:33And then I was struggling.

1:28:35It wasn't the sort of thing where it took a couple of tries to get it.

1:28:39I had to actually deliberately try to dig it up off of the table.

1:28:46It was really surprising.

1:28:48Now, maybe I'm making a mountain out of nothing.

1:28:50Maybe it was just I was being a klutz that one moment.

1:28:53But it was striking to me in that moment

1:28:55that it was actually very difficult to get it up off the table,

1:28:58and I couldn't really figure out why until you had said,

1:29:02"Oh, well, typically these things are curved, so you have something to pinch at."

1:29:05And again, maybe you'll get this in your hands,

1:29:08and maybe it won't be that bad at all.

1:29:10But it was surprising to me that it was fairly difficult to pick it up.

1:29:14Now, in the grand scheme of things, I would expect if I were to have one of these,

1:29:18it would always be in the Smart Keyboard Folio, whatever it's called.

1:29:22And so it wouldn't be a problem.

1:29:25But it was surprising how difficult it was to pick up.

1:29:30But that being said, it felt amazing in the hand.

1:29:33Every time I look at a 12-5, 12-9, whatever the hell it is,

1:29:37iPad from before today, every time I see one, I think to myself,

1:29:42"My word, that is a large iPad."

1:29:46It's like when I used to see the Plus Club.

1:29:49Like, that is a big phone. Well, here, that is a big iPad.

1:29:52But granted, I was walking between different stations.

1:29:56It wasn't like I was going next door between these different stations.

1:29:59But when I walked across this little room from an 11-inch to a 12-inch,

1:30:03it was surprising how little difference I saw between them.

1:30:08And the 12-inch looked much closer to the 11 than I would have expected.

1:30:13And additionally, they felt great in the hand.

1:30:16It didn't feel particularly heavy.

1:30:17I mean, admittedly, I was not holding these for more than a few moments.

1:30:20But it didn't feel terribly heavy.

1:30:22They looked great, felt great.

1:30:25The keyboard cover felt particularly good.

1:30:29I've never owned an iPad Pro. I've only played with them a handful of times.

1:30:33But the way I recall the iPad Pro, and jump in when you're ready, fellas,

1:30:36is that the keyboard cover was lumpy because part of it had two folds

1:30:40and the rest had one or something along those lines.

1:30:42Definitely true.

1:30:43And that did not appear to be the case here, which I loved.

1:30:47The magnets were incredible everywhere.

1:30:51For the pencil, they were extremely strong.

1:30:53For the keyboard cover, I would almost say for the keyboard cover,

1:30:55they might have even been too strong.

1:30:57So when you sit it in one of the two different positions,

1:30:59you know, the two different angles, I was struggling,

1:31:01again, probably just because I'd never done it before,

1:31:03but I was struggling to pull it up enough to move it to the other position,

1:31:07which actually is, I think, a good problem because this way you know it's stable.

1:31:12But everything about these iPads just felt great.

1:31:15The display looked great.

1:31:16Now, I don't have your eye, Jon.

1:31:18I'm not as discerning as you when it comes to these things.

1:31:20But the display looked great.

1:31:22Face ID seemed to work real well, even in this super crowded room

1:31:26where everyone was like, you know, shoulder to shoulder with each other.

1:31:29I mean, obviously it got confused from time to time

1:31:31because it would look at the wrong face or whatever,

1:31:33but it worked really well.

1:31:34As people have pointed out, it actually says to you

1:31:37when you're holding your finger over the sensor array.

1:31:41I forget exactly what the phrasing is, but it basically says your camera is covered.

1:31:44There you go.

1:31:45And I did not notice at the time,

1:31:47but I've since seen that they actually point at the sensor array.

1:31:51Like, there's an arrow on screen pointing at the sensor array

1:31:53to let you know that's the finger that's covering everything up.

1:31:56I also liked, I think they showed this on the keynote, but maybe I'm wrong.

1:32:01When you take the pencil to a locked iPad,

1:32:04as long as it can scan your face, it will jump directly into notes

1:32:08to let you sketch a note or whatever the case may be.

1:32:10The little double tap on the pencil to swap between different tools

1:32:16worked really well.

1:32:17In settings, you can choose between different things that that does.

1:32:21I guess just for notes, you can toggle to eraser,

1:32:24toggle to the last tool you used,

1:32:25toggle a color palette, which was interesting.

1:32:27Everything about these iPads looked great,

1:32:29and I forget if it was you or Marco.

1:32:31I think it was Marco that said,

1:32:32"I just wish more of the things I did on a computer worked on an iPad."

1:32:38And I bet I could make a lot of them work,

1:32:41but man, I really want an iPad for the first time in a very, very long time.

1:32:46The other thing you mentioned about the keyboard doubling up,

1:32:48yet another example of the past.

1:32:51It was great that we had the cool keyboard that people really liked

1:32:53for the old iPad, but that was a slight war.

1:32:55It was like, "That's kind of funny when you put the keyboard case

1:32:57on this one side as lumpier."

1:32:58Solved in this generation.

1:33:00They addressed it.

1:33:01And actually getting back to the camera bump briefly,

1:33:05I think the folio case thing, with or without the keyboard,

1:33:11the fact that there is a front and a back surface.

1:33:14The back surface is important because that's where the smart connector is now,

1:33:17as all the rumors said.

1:33:18It's kind of in the middle.

1:33:19It's kind of weird how the keyboard thing connects.

1:33:21It's not on the edge.

1:33:22It's in the middle, like dorsally.

1:33:25It's like the spine, right?

1:33:26But it just so happens that the keyboard cover goes down that far enough

1:33:28to catch the connector and charge it.

1:33:30It's covered on the back and on the front with a single layer.

1:33:35The fact that the covers are made of that squishy kind of whatever-that-is material

1:33:39with a little thin edge means that if you put it on its back

1:33:43or on its front with the cover or the keyboard on it,

1:33:47even though it flattens out the camera bump,

1:33:50I suspect you will have an easier time getting your fingers underneath it.

1:33:54Because that's what you want.

1:33:55You just need just enough leverage to lift it up enough

1:33:57for you to shove your fingers underneath it,

1:33:59because then you can grab it with fingers underneath and thumb on top

1:34:02with a single hand.

1:34:03That's what you do with laptops and all sorts of other things

1:34:05when you pick it up with one hand off the table.

1:34:07So it is a surface that evens out the camera bump,

1:34:12makes it easier to pick up off the table potentially

1:34:15than a bare thing even with the camera bump,

1:34:18because you have that squishier area and that little fin

1:34:20that you can put your fingers under.

1:34:21It doesn't make it lumpy on the top if you have a keyboard

1:34:24because it's uniform thickness all the way through.

1:34:26And also, I think this is also important,

1:34:28it doesn't go around the edges.

1:34:30So it's not like your iPad is inside a tub of any kind.

1:34:34It's like a sandwich.

1:34:35The edges are still just the bare aluminum.

1:34:38So it doesn't make your iPad wider.

1:34:40You know, you've all had experience if you put an iPad in a case

1:34:43and this beautiful, svelte thing that you bought suddenly feels chunkier,

1:34:46which, by the way, is what you want if you have it for kids.

1:34:48You want to put it in the world's craziest, chunky case.

1:34:50But for an adult who can take care of things,

1:34:54it's nice to be able to have all the benefits of the protection.

1:34:57Oh, you don't have to worry about putting it down.

1:34:58It's not going to scratch.

1:35:00It's evened out with the camera bump.

1:35:01It's made easier to pick up.

1:35:03Maybe you get a keyboard as part of the bargain,

1:35:05but it doesn't make it any wider or taller.

1:35:07And so I think it will make it not feel as bulky

1:35:10and make you not feel that this beautiful, naked robotic core

1:35:13that you got is suddenly buried inside this rubberized tomb.

1:35:17It's more like you're just putting this beautiful neoprene sandwich,

1:35:21protective sandwich, around your thing.

1:35:23And it's a sandwich that potentially gives you a keyboard.

1:35:26I really, again, having not seen or touched this in person,

1:35:30in the abstract, I am in love with the new -- what did you call it?

1:35:33The new wardrobe for the iPads?

1:35:35Not to mention the fact that there's a place to put the pencil

1:35:37and the flat pencil and everything.

1:35:38I'm in love with the iPad wardrobe.

1:35:40Yeah, so I, as a full-time smart keyboard user,

1:35:44and as I mentioned last time,

1:35:45the smart keyboard transformed the iPad into something

1:35:49that I actually use on a regular basis,

1:35:51because it is always -- not only does it help text input greatly

1:35:56and dramatically improve my ability to use an iPad,

1:35:58but also it is a really good stand to have it on the counter in my kitchen

1:36:03where it spends most of its time, or on the dining room table,

1:36:05or on the couch at night.

1:36:06Like, it's just really, really good.

1:36:08And so I've used the 10.5 smart keyboard for a year now,

1:36:12or a year and a half, used the 9.7 before that.

1:36:15They're wonderful.

1:36:16I did have a chance to play with the smart keyboard folio today

1:36:21on the new iPads, and in some ways it's worse.

1:36:24I think in most ways it's probably better.

1:36:26It's the kind of thing that I'm going to need just more time with it.

1:36:28I'm going to do things like sit down with it on my lap,

1:36:32because that's one area where the old one kind of fell over,

1:36:34literally sometimes.

1:36:35And I didn't feel like they would probably let me sit on the floor,

1:36:41cross-legged with the iPad in the hands-on area, so I didn't try that.

1:36:45But there's a lot about the old one that it wasn't very good on laps.

1:36:50It would tip over.

1:36:51It would tip back or forward, depending on how you were sitting.

1:36:53It was very good on counters, but that was about it.

1:36:56The new one has these two angles.

1:36:58The steeper of the two angles, which is the new one,

1:37:01that didn't exist on the previous one, is very steep.

1:37:04That did not work for me at all at table height,

1:37:08but it wasn't designed for that.

1:37:09It was designed for lap use, so I'll have to try that sometime

1:37:12and see how that actually works, if I get one of these.

1:37:14As Jon mentioned, the smart keyboard folio does cover both sides fully.

1:37:19Before, the previous one would only cover a little bit of the back

1:37:24when it was open, and when it was closed, it would cover none of the back.

1:37:27It was basically just a big front side cover that unfolded.

1:37:30The magnets are pretty strong.

1:37:33The one thing I didn't like about it that I made immediate note of

1:37:37is that sometimes, I keep the smart keyboard on my iPad almost always,

1:37:42and sometimes, if I'm sitting on the couch just browsing the web at night,

1:37:46I will flip it back and just hold the iPad like a regular iPad

1:37:49with no keyboard attached, as if it was smart cover that you flipped back.

1:37:52You can do this with the new smart keyboard, but it's worse.

1:37:56Not only was it kind of a clumsy move to flip it back,

1:37:59but also the keys, when it's flipped back, now face outward,

1:38:04so that when you're holding it, your hands are on the keys.

1:38:09Now, it's smart enough not to activate the keys when it's in this mode,

1:38:12so you don't have to worry about accidental input,

1:38:14but it just feels weird to me to be holding the front of a keyboard

1:38:18with the back of my hands as I'm holding my iPad.

1:38:20That's kind of like--and I know these kinds of things are really tricky to design,

1:38:25because no matter how you design it, you come up with some kind of downside,

1:38:28like what Jon was saying about whether it's lopsided or whatever.

1:38:32There's always some kind of downside to these things,

1:38:35but that was one that I thought was a little bit weird with this,

1:38:38that when you flip it back, you're touching the keys with your hands

1:38:41when not using it, and that's kind of odd.

1:38:43But otherwise, I really am curious to spend time with this.

1:38:47I'm a little curious.

1:38:48I didn't get an idea about the weight of the keyboard,

1:38:51and as far as I can find, the site doesn't specify the weight anywhere,

1:38:55so I would love to know if anybody knows how much these smart keyboards weigh,

1:38:59because one of the issues with the old one is that when you have the smart keyboard cover

1:39:03on the old iPad Pro, it does noticeably increase the weight of the iPad.

1:39:08It's made of tungsten. I'm always amazed by this.

1:39:10My wife has a smart keyboard, and I pick up her iPad,

1:39:12which is ostensibly the same iPad as mine,

1:39:14and it feels like it is just the world's most dense object.

1:39:16I'm like, holy cow, what is in this?

1:39:19Do you have fishing weights hiding somewhere?

1:39:21It's not that much heavier. It feels so heavy, it makes me angry.

1:39:24So I'm hoping this one is lighter.

1:39:26I weighed mine earlier.

1:39:28So the 10.5 inch smart keyboard is just a little over half a pound.

1:39:32It's 0.54 pounds.

1:39:34Now, the iPad itself is one pound, so it increases the weight of the iPad by 50%.

1:39:39So that's a significant increase, and that's why,

1:39:42whenever I take it off for any reason, which is rare,

1:39:46I'm always shocked at how light the iPad is by comparison.

1:39:50But I would love, like, if, I'm a little concerned given how much more material there is,

1:39:56seemingly, in the new keyboard cover.

1:39:58I'm a little concerned it might be heavier.

1:40:00I at least, I hope they're at least not heavier.

1:40:03I would love if they could find a way to make them lighter without ruining the keyboard,

1:40:06but I don't know that that's possible.

1:40:08So I think we should talk about USB-C a little bit.

1:40:10Yeah.

1:40:11That rumor was true. There is no lighting port.

1:40:14There is instead a USB-C port, and I, you know,

1:40:17watching the presentations, despite all the rumors and everything,

1:40:19I found myself thinking, especially as they went through this thing, like,

1:40:22"Well, of course, because laptops have USB-C ports, not lighting ports on them,

1:40:26and this thing is so much closer in the spectrum between, like, phone and laptop."

1:40:30Like, it is, you know, it is an amazing laptop that's not a laptop.

1:40:34There's no reason it should have the same connector as the phone.

1:40:36I think it should have more USB-C ports. What the hell else is new?

1:40:39But I am totally on board with USB-C, setting aside all the external, you know,

1:40:46connectors and connecting up to a camera and a 5K display.

1:40:50Remember when we were back, like, "Oh, I wonder when the new Mac Pro

1:40:53will be able to connect to a 5K display." Now the iPad can do it.

1:40:56It is entirely the right connector. There should be more of them.

1:41:00Goodbye, Lightning on the iPad. I won't miss you.

1:41:05And I really hope -- so, you know, the iPad is showing off a brand-new industrial design style.

1:41:11I hope we get that on the iPhone in the future, and hopefully in the near future.

1:41:15Maybe next year.

1:41:16We already did. It was called the iPhone 5. Everyone loved it.

1:41:18Right, exactly. Like, yeah, like, the new iPads basically look like the iPhone 5,

1:41:22which is awesome. I love the iPhone 5 and the SE.

1:41:25Like, that and the 5S, like, they look like the 5S, really,

1:41:28like with the space gray and the straight edges and everything being just nice in your hand.

1:41:33So I would love for the iPhones to return to that.

1:41:37I don't think that's incredibly likely, because the iPhones, I think --

1:41:41I think the thickness matters a lot more on the phone,

1:41:43and I can't see them going thicker to add USB-C, which they would have to probably do.

1:41:48But, boy, I would love that. That would be so cool.

1:41:51It is a little bit weird now, because now that we have USB-C,

1:41:54it's a little weird that you -- if you're traveling with an iPhone and an iPad,

1:41:59you now need two power cables. It is kind of cool --

1:42:03You just need one. You just need a USB-C or Lightning, and they both charge each other.

1:42:05That's how it works.

1:42:06Yeah, right. Yeah, like, that -- it is kind of cool --

1:42:08Perpetual motion machine.

1:42:09-- that the iPad can now charge the phone, which is pretty awesome.

1:42:12Yeah, no, I think that, you know, if you happen to have those cables,

1:42:15it doesn't come with the phone, but, yeah, I think it makes sense,

1:42:17although, like, everyone has habits, weird habits.

1:42:21Like, I have a Lightning cable by my nightstand, but I just have one of them,

1:42:24because I'm never finding my -- basically, I charge my phone at night

1:42:26and my iPad during the day, and everything works out.

1:42:28But now I would need two cables if I got this thing.

1:42:30I would need one USB-C for the -- or I can have an adapter or something.

1:42:34But, you know, it's the right connector for this product.

1:42:37But as many people have been pointing out, oh, now the phone is the odd one out, right?

1:42:41Now it's -- now it's one of these things that's not like the other.

1:42:44But Apple sells so many more phones than every other product

1:42:48that we're talking about combined.

1:42:49It's not even funny, right?

1:42:50So I don't think there's any peer pressure from Apple's product line

1:42:54for the phone to immediately change to USB-C.

1:42:57And, you know, people tend -- people -- I was going to say people tend to freak out

1:43:03when you change the connector on the phone, but it's happened so rarely.

1:43:06The problem is that just so many people have the phone.

1:43:10So if and when Apple does either change the connector on the phone

1:43:14or get rid of the connector and go all wireless or inductive or whatever,

1:43:17a little based on their AirPod success -- their AirPower success,

1:43:20I don't see that happening anytime soon,

1:43:22I don't think there's any pressure from the rest of the line.

1:43:26Because the phone -- the phone is the thing.

1:43:28The phone is the product everyone cares about.

1:43:30There are so many of them.

1:43:31You know, 100 million Macs is there installed.

1:43:33They sell 100 million iPhones like in a quarter or something.

1:43:35No, not in a quarter.

1:43:36I don't know.

1:43:37But there's a lot of iPhones out there.

1:43:39So I think iPhones can cruise along with lighting for a while longer.

1:43:44Certainly it would make some kind of unifying sense for them to be USB-C,

1:43:48but as we've discussed a lot in the past when we talked about

1:43:51whether the iPhone X would have USB-C,

1:43:53I wish I could remember that show number, there are advantages to lightning.

1:43:56Those advantages continue to exist.

1:43:58And at this point, there's a lot of lightning stuff out there for phones.

1:44:04It's not like 30-pin where they're in hotel rooms, at least I haven't seen them.

1:44:08But it's close.

1:44:10So I think we've got to ride out this lightning thing on the phone

1:44:14for at least a few more years.

1:44:15But iPad, USB-C, or Thunderbolt or anything like that,

1:44:20basically any connector you can imagine on a laptop,

1:44:23those connectors are right at home on the iPad Pros

1:44:26because iPad Pros are basically amazing laptops without keyboards.

1:44:30I think a good counterargument to the lightning is everywhere thing, though,

1:44:34is that Android phones use USB-C now.

1:44:36So anybody who's looking to have a cable at a clock radio at a hotel or something like that,

1:44:41if you just put USB-C cables there,

1:44:43you'd be able to cover all phones in this future where iPhones have USB-C.

1:44:47I feel like they were burned by 30-pin.

1:44:49Have you seen any USB-C ones?

1:44:51Have you seen--maybe they decided, you know what,

1:44:53let's not chase computer connectors with our hotel peripherals because that's going to--

1:44:57Not only have I not seen any USB-C ones, I still see 30-pin ones sometimes.

1:45:02And if you think about this, what do you see everywhere in terms of computer connectors?

1:45:07USB-A. USB-A is on airplanes, USB-A is on every charging station,

1:45:11USB-A is still everywhere.

1:45:14And that's the other end of all of our cables, right?

1:45:18It's USB-A to USB-C, USB-A to lightning.

1:45:21So if we can dislodge USB-A, that'll be progress.

1:45:25I can totally see Apple going to USB-C. If the current situation is sustained for a long period of time,

1:45:34they just probably won't be able to avoid it despite the fact that it's thicker and not proprietary

1:45:37and all the other things or whatever.

1:45:39But I don't see a reason for them to rush to it now.

1:45:42I'm perfectly happy with lightning on my phone and for all subsequent phones,

1:45:45but on an iPad, love the USB-C.

1:45:47Let me give you one small counterargument, which is something that we can easily get past,

1:45:52but is another expenditure.

1:45:54If I were to have an iPad--

1:45:57If I take my iPad now, which I don't know where it is, like I said,

1:46:00but let's just assume I knew where it was and I was using it,

1:46:03and I'm out and about, I don't know, at an Apple event because we're cool like that.

1:46:07Well, maybe.

1:46:09If I was using it and I ran out of juice and I didn't have an outlet nearby,

1:46:15I would take one of the, say, batteries out of my away suitcase, which is exactly what I did today.

1:46:21I traveled without a suitcase, but I took the battery out of my away.

1:46:24They're not a sponsor this week, but they're a past sponsor.

1:46:26I took the battery pack and I used the USB-A port on that battery pack to charge my phone,

1:46:31or I could have charged an iPad.

1:46:33That's not going to be quite so easy, is it, with USB-C?

1:46:36I know you can go USB-A to USB-C, but is that going to be enough power to actually power one of these iPads?

1:46:42So are you going to have to get--

1:46:43Yeah, it is.

1:46:44It will be okay?

1:46:45Not at full speed.

1:46:46There are A to C cables now.

1:46:49And in fact, the Nintendo Switch charges controllers with those. It comes with them.

1:46:52But it's limited to a certain wattage.

1:46:55I think it's going to be about 12 or 15 watts, maybe, something like that.

1:46:59But it's--so you can do it. It would just maybe be slow.

1:47:03And also, one new little tidbit, the iPads now come with a new and seemingly unbuyable, separately,

1:47:1018-watt USB-C power brick.

1:47:13So that's cool.

1:47:14I look forward to being able to buy more of those, because it seems like that's everything I've been wanting.

1:47:19There's also now a few other new USB-C peripherals, so the aforementioned USB-C to headphone adapter dongle, $9.

1:47:26There's also a USB-C SD card reader now, to work with the new iPads.

1:47:30There's a new one-meter charge cable that comes with it, because it's--

1:47:34I think it's the same charge cable as that comes with the new laptops, but those all come with two-meter cables.

1:47:39This has a one-meter cable, and you can buy those separately.

1:47:41And also, a fun little tidbit, you can now get an Apple Watch charging cable that has a USB-C end.

1:47:48Oh, interesting.

1:47:49And it's only one foot, too.

1:47:50So it's clearly meant for travel, which is great, because one thing I've been doing,

1:47:54even though I don't usually travel with the Apple Watch, but one thing I've been doing is

1:47:58I've been simplifying my travel setup to try to just be all USB-C for everything.

1:48:03The power bricks, all the cables, the battery, everything.

1:48:07Everything I travel with is USB-C.

1:48:09Okay, Gray.

1:48:10No, there's a reason for that, because carrying two copies of all your cables sucks.

1:48:14So I've been trying to do this over the last few months.

1:48:17Any time I can find a way to eliminate a USB-A cable from my travel setup, I do,

1:48:21because if I can make everything the same, which today that has to mean USB-C,

1:48:25because otherwise you have dongles on that end, good.

1:48:29And apparently, in the last week or something, Apple released an Apple Watch charging cable with USB-C on the end,

1:48:36and that was perfect, because that's the one thing I always felt like if I had to travel with my Apple Watch,

1:48:41I would have to bring some kind of USB-A power brick to charge just that,

1:48:46because it had that one cable, and that was your only option, so now you have two options.

1:48:50That's nice.

1:48:51But yeah, I'm looking forward to, we are slowly moving to this USB-C world,

1:48:59where you can actually go all in on it, but we're still not there yet.

1:49:04There's still huge missing parts, like the hub situation is still terrible,

1:49:08but we are taking these baby steps, we're slowly working our way towards there.

1:49:14Hopefully we'll get there before USB-D comes out and we'll have to throw all these cables away.

1:49:19One thing that I think is a minor regression from going Lightning to USB-C has nothing to do with the port,

1:49:26and not even that much to do with the connector, but in my experience,

1:49:30the cables, the cables that are attached to USB-C connectors,

1:49:35at the length of the stiff part of the connector, the thickness and bendiness of the cable,

1:49:41even the ones that are just power, like the one that you connect to the one that comes with laptops,

1:49:46I think that's not a full USB-C data cable, it's mostly just for power.

1:49:50It's USB 2.0, not 3.0, that's why.

1:49:53It is thinner than it would be if it had the USB 3.0 speed,

1:49:57but it is power and USB 2.0 data.

1:50:00Right, and it's because it's so long that even for a USB 2.0 it has to be a little thicker, right?

1:50:04But Lightning cables are very thin. The stiff part of the connector is very short.

1:50:09And it's just generally like, it feels less like there is a stiff twig poking out of the side of your thing,

1:50:19and then a fairly stubborn garden hose-sized cable coming out.

1:50:23It feels more like there's a light string with a little stiff nub, right?

1:50:27And that's going to be a downgrade, because the thicker the cable and the longer the stiff part,

1:50:34the more unwieldy it is to plug stuff like this in.

1:50:38And that's just the nature of USB-C, I think.

1:50:40Even Apple's cables exhibit that pattern.

1:50:44It's also one of the advantages of Lightning for the phone,

1:50:47because the phone is a small, dainty device compared to an iPad or a laptop,

1:50:50and it should have a small, dainty connector with a small, dainty cable.

1:50:53That's exactly what we have with Lightning, and I enjoy that.

1:50:55And it will be a slight downgrade to go away from that with the iPad.

1:50:59But again, I think it's the appropriate connector for this device.

1:51:04And you know, speaking of this, when the iPad first came out,

1:51:09especially given Springboard and the lack of major interface changes to support the iPad,

1:51:15the slam against it, and you know, it was like, "Oh, it's just a big phone."

1:51:19Despite the fact that this looks like an iPhone 5,

1:51:23this is the farthest from a big iPhone that the iPad has ever been.

1:51:27They're huge, they're incredibly powerful, they're massively advertised with a keyboard,

1:51:34like it's so intrinsically built in, they have the pencil support.

1:51:38It doesn't feel like the iPad is in the shadow of the iPhone anymore.

1:51:43Like, they've diverged from each other so significantly,

1:51:46and the iPad continues to go so far up marketable.

1:51:49I guess the phone is chasing it, you can get a $1,400 phone too.

1:51:52But I just feel like there's a much more healthy separation.

1:51:55That separation will be even healthier if and when iOS 13 comes out with much more iPad-specific features,

1:52:00but even as things stand now, I think there's a comfortable distance between the two,

1:52:05and the slam that, "Oh, why would I want an iPad? It's just a big iPhone."

1:52:08I don't think anyone's saying that anymore when they look at these things.

1:52:11Try running Photoshop on your phone.

1:52:14We could probably run it, which is a sad thing, because the freaking CPU is insane.

1:52:18But not maybe the best screen to do serious Photoshop work.

1:52:22One interesting thing that I overheard was Marco talking to the developer of the DJ app.

1:52:29And it was hard for me to hear, because everyone was shouting,

1:52:33and even three feet from your face, Marco, it was hard to hear what you were saying.

1:52:37But it sounded like you had asked the developer,

1:52:41"Hey, can you do kind of whatever you want with the external display, or do you have to..."

1:52:45Is it something like the Apple Watch, where you can only put certain UI kit elements,

1:52:50or certain widgets, if you will, in certain places, et cetera,

1:52:53and jump in whenever you're ready?

1:52:55But it sounded like he said it's a free-for-all. You can do whatever the hell you want.

1:52:59Yeah, because I was wondering, one of the little oddities in the presentation

1:53:04was that the very first thing they showed doing an external monitor, it was letterboxed,

1:53:10because it was just mirroring the iPad screen,

1:53:13and the monitor was a different aspect ratio than the iPad.

1:53:16And I thought that was kind of odd.

1:53:18And then later on, they showed a different app using an external monitor that it was filled all the way.

1:53:23And so I was wondering, there has been external monitor support in the iOS SDK for a while now.

1:53:30But I have never used it for anything, because there aren't a lot of reasons to play podcasts on external monitors.

1:53:37And so I've never had a reason to use these APIs.

1:53:40So I was just basically asking them, can you just put whatever you want on that,

1:53:44or can it only do certain things like mirroring or whatever else?

1:53:47And yeah, he basically said, I was asking, can you just render to it as any kind of window or surface or whatever?

1:53:55And he basically said yes, you can just put whatever you want there.

1:53:58So it is not going to be-- like with Macs and PCs, the OS automatically expands itself

1:54:07and all applications to be usable in some form on whatever number of monitors you plug into them.

1:54:13That isn't the case on iOS.

1:54:15On iOS, each app has to implement its own support for whatever's going on externally.

1:54:20Or I think you can always just mirror the display, and that will always work.

1:54:23But that won't fill the screen, and that might have other weird effects,

1:54:26like not being able to interact with it and everything else.

1:54:28So it's always going to be a little bit different with iOS in the sense that you need each app

1:54:34to actually code support for external displays and for that support to actually be for something useful,

1:54:39for this kind of dream scenario where you're using an external monitor with your iPad.

1:54:43But at least that's now a little bit easier to do.

1:54:46It now requires fewer dongles, the thing's more powerful and can drive bigger screens.

1:54:50So that should probably happen more as the pro software market on the iPad arrives and matures.

1:54:58They were showing all these scenarios.

1:55:00I forget if some of them were in videos or some were on Apple sites.

1:55:02Maybe some of them were from the hands-on area where they'd show someone with an iPad Pro,

1:55:05and they'd have it hooked up to a camera but also to an external display.

1:55:10I guess it must have been a photo. You have the person posing.

1:55:13So OK, first of all, you have it hooked up to both a camera and an external display,

1:55:17which means there's some kind of dongle happening there.

1:55:19I don't see it in the picture, but we all know it's there,

1:55:21because you can't plug both those things into a single port.

1:55:23You've got to have some kind of adapter or dongle, which is fine.

1:55:26That's the beauty of the port.

1:55:28The good thing is that everyone in the Apple community is now very much familiar

1:55:33with how you multiply one USB-C port into multiple ports.

1:55:37Yeah, but they didn't show it in the picture.

1:55:40And then the next thing is, OK, on the big screen was a photo,

1:55:45and on the small screen was a photo application with a bunch of thumbnails.

1:55:48So my application decides it's going to use an external display.

1:55:53You can't touch the external display, as far as I know,

1:55:56although I think Steve Trout and Smith says basically there is OS support

1:55:59for external touch screens, just that as far as I know,

1:56:02that's not a thing that's possible with any current hardware or software.

1:56:05But in theory, there's nothing preventing it technologically speaking down the road.

1:56:09But right now, you can't touch it.

1:56:11There's no cursor, no mouse cursor,

1:56:13so it's not like you can use an input device, a touch input,

1:56:20while looking up at the external screen,

1:56:23because you wouldn't see what the heck you're doing.

1:56:25You have to look down or across or whatever at the iPad

1:56:29when you're doing anything interactive,

1:56:31because all of the interaction is happening on the iPad.

1:56:34That's where you touch, and you have to look at what you're touching.

1:56:36So I suppose you could do something on the iPad and then look up to the screen

1:56:41and then look down at the iPad and then look up at the screen.

1:56:45It just seemed like an uncomfortable scenario.

1:56:47I'm sure there's lots of clever uses that people can find for external displays,

1:56:50but as a general-purpose solution,

1:56:53as in desktops have general-purpose support for external displays

1:56:56and everything about their OS and input elements, every lens itself,

1:56:59saying hook up more displays, we just roll with it.

1:57:01It's just more of the same stuff.

1:57:03With iOS, it's like on the iPad, you've got your iPad.

1:57:08That's where you do your interaction,

1:57:10and you can hook up an external display, which is basically just like a bucket

1:57:13to throw pixels that occasionally you might want to look at.

1:57:15But you can't really be -- I suppose you could use the iPad

1:57:18as a giant game controller and project the game up onto there,

1:57:21but even that is a little bit weird.

1:57:22I don't know.

1:57:23I'm sure people will come up with clever scenarios,

1:57:25but it's a slightly uncomfortable hybrid,

1:57:28even more so than hooking up an external display to a laptop,

1:57:31because again, if you have an external display hooked to a laptop,

1:57:33you could be using the trackpad and the laptop

1:57:35while you stare at the giant 5K display.

1:57:37It's not ideal.

1:57:38You'd probably rather have a docking station

1:57:40and a real keyboard and a mouse, but it's a thing that you could do.

1:57:42But with the iPad, I don't know.

1:57:45Maybe Viticci knows how to use an external 5K display on his iPad,

1:57:49and it will tell us all the amazing productivity

1:57:51he gets from that arrangement right now.

1:57:53I'm wondering what the best use of that capability is for iPad power users.

1:57:59One other thing, keeping -- I mean, this is kind of good.

1:58:03Not that my kids were going to get new iPad Pros,

1:58:05but as I think I've mentioned in other podcasts,

1:58:07my children spend their entire life with an essential life support umbilical cord

1:58:11snaking from their ears down to an iPad which they carry in one hand,

1:58:14leaving them only one hand to live the entire rest of their life with.

1:58:17So they must live their life just with one hand.

1:58:20If they need to brush their teeth, one hand.

1:58:22If they need to eat, only one hand is available.

1:58:23If they need to take out milk and pour it in their cereal,

1:58:26they can only use one hand, because the other hand has an iPad in it.

1:58:30And by the way, there's a very precarious cord snaking from their ears to the iPad,

1:58:34which you can catch on things, so you have to be careful.

1:58:35So it's a very delicate dance, being my children.

1:58:37Anyway, these iPads have no headphone port.

1:58:43So I said, "Well, kids, you may think these new iPads are great,

1:58:46but if I got them for you, how would you live?

1:58:48You can't be connected to headphones anymore."

1:58:51And they said, "Wait, what? There's no headphone port?"

1:58:53I'm like, "Yes, children."

1:58:55I won't tell them about the adapter, but Apple has a hilarious picture on their iPad Pro page

1:59:00that shows -- it says "Accessories, Explore Cases, Headphones, Speakers, and More,"

1:59:04and it shows a picture of an iPad Pro with two AirPods floating in the air above it.

1:59:08This is Apple's way of saying, "Guess what? AirPods.

1:59:12Don't bother with that $9 connector. Buy $160 Bluetooth earbuds."

1:59:17And my kids, they know about AirPods, because I have them, my wife has them,

1:59:21but the thought of my children having AirPods, they'd have them for 15 minutes,

1:59:26and then we would never find them again. So that's not going to happen either.

1:59:29And honestly, they don't know the beauty of AirPods, so they don't even want them.

1:59:32They are a little bit frowny-faced about the lack of a headphone port.

1:59:36Myself, I can't remember the last time I plugged headphones into my iPad,

1:59:40because I am all in on the AirPod lifestyle, because I'm an adult who can keep track of AirPods.

1:59:44But kids, I guess they'll just have to stick with the old 10.5.

1:59:48See, to me, the headphone jack removal is the only real down --

1:59:51except the cost, as I said earlier -- but the headphone jack removal is like --

1:59:55I, too, as the adult using the iPad, I, too, have almost never plugged headphones into my iPad

2:00:02in the last couple of years. But why remove it?

2:00:06They didn't give a reason -- they didn't even mention it was removed --

2:00:08but if you think about it, the reasons that apply to the phone, which even they were shaky,

2:00:13but it's not for thinness, it's not for water resistance, it's not for a lack of internal volume.

2:00:21If you look at a teardown of a modern iPad, there's tons of empty space in there.

2:00:25It's not for cost reasons, because there's tons of profit on these.

2:00:29It's still on every Mac, so they're still important to "computers," and the iPad's a computer, right?

2:00:35So why was it removed?

2:00:38It's the one hardware change I would make to this. It's not a big deal, but if I had to say,

2:00:42"What would you change about this hardware?" "Headphone jack, easy."

2:00:44Even though I probably wouldn't use it, it just feels like it's another one of those philosophical changes.

2:00:50"Philosophically, it would be better if it just had one part. Wouldn't that be great?"

2:00:53"Mm, not really. I mean, throw it in there."

2:00:57I don't think it's a big deal.

2:00:59I think that if Apple really wants to show that they're learning, they could potentially bring it back in a future model, but they probably won't.

2:01:05This is, again, with the iPad being more like a laptop, and laptops, as you know, have a strict philosophical, orthodox adherence

2:01:15to the idea of reducing the number of holes that are in them, even if it makes them less useful.

2:01:19Hell, this thing could have an SD card slot.

2:01:22Once you get into a laptop size and power and price, there's lots of things that I can imagine being on the side of this thing, or even just another USB-C.

2:01:30But yeah, headphones, it feels like the one slightly punitive change to this.

2:01:36But as we both noted, it's probably not relevant for people who buy a $1,400 iPad, so I don't think there's going to be that much outcry.

2:01:44Yeah, but it does, as Jason pointed out, it does reduce the potential usability of this, or it makes it more annoying to use, for a lot of pro things.

2:01:56A lot of the things they demoed, things like DJs using it, or people doing live audio edits or mixing.

2:02:02There are things where you really need a wired headphone for avoiding latency at Bluetooth and everything.

2:02:07And now, you can do that now, but you need a dongle, which means that you can't charge the laptop while you do it.

2:02:13It's like burning a bigger dongle or a breakout box, and maybe that's what they're envisioning in the pro scenarios.

2:02:18Right, so you're relying on more and more dongles.

2:02:21If I'm using an iPad for something audio related, the last thing I want is to run my interface through a dongle.

2:02:29Because dongles are unreliable, especially if I'm doing some kind of live performance or live need, in which case I probably wouldn't be doing this on an iPad, honestly.

2:02:37But I would never want to run a critical audio interface to a live performance or live event through a dongle.

2:02:46That's a terrible idea, because dongles are just too unreliable.

2:02:51It's hard enough to get USB audio to be reliable in the first place.

2:02:55To also be running it through a dongle, doing its own USB translation stuff, is just stupid.

2:03:00And so, by requiring that port to be used for adapters and dongles and everything, and also power now,

2:03:09it just adds to the complexity and possibly reduces the reliability of using this in certain pro contexts.

2:03:15And that's kind of annoying when it doesn't seem like there was any obvious good reason to remove the headphone jack.

2:03:20Yeah, it's just purely philosophical.

2:03:22And people in the chat room said, "Well, you know, you don't have to buy $160 AirPods, there's tons of cheap Bluetooth headphones."

2:03:28That's true, but the advantage of cheap wired headphones is that you don't have to charge them, you don't have to worry about it.

2:03:37You can get them incredibly cheap, you can buy just the cheapest earbuds or whatever, you don't care if they break, you don't care if they bend.

2:03:43You can charge your iPad at the same time as you're doing that.

2:03:46There's no latency, they're just cruddy analog things.

2:03:50It makes it more useful. I can't wait for Apple's whole philosophical bent about holes in the sides of their portable products,

2:03:59wraps around to the point where they start bragging about and touting the dongles that you no longer need because here's the new hardware item.

2:04:09Buy the new Apple X and throw away those three adapters.

2:04:14I mean, it's kind of hard for them to make that full circle, they have to wait for it to become sort of the thing we're used to, for all of us to just accept it.

2:04:19And then they can say, "Look, if this was the only iPad and they introduced a new one and said, 'Now it has the headphone port, so you don't need to use that dongle to charge and listen to audio at the same time.'"

2:04:28People would say, "Yeah, that's great." They can come around on this and make it seem like they're solving a problem that they solved and we'll all be grateful for it.

2:04:36We're rapidly approaching the point where memories are short enough that people won't realize that they're solving a problem that they themselves solved.

2:04:44Once we all have accepted our residence in dongle town and we've developed our collection of these white, pasty white dongles, we will pay Apple money to make it so we have to carry one fewer dongle.

2:04:56I have to say that I haven't priced out the iPad that I'm going to try to resist buying, but if you wanted to get a top-of-the-line 12-inch iPad that's $1,900 with cellular is $130, a pencil is—oh, no, I'm sorry, that's $1,900 for the iPad with cellular, $130 for the pencil, $200 for the keyboard, $2,230.

2:05:22And yet it probably has a faster CPU and potentially a faster integrated GPU, or maybe faster than the discrete GPU, than any $2,000 Apple laptop.

2:05:33That's why I think the prices aren't that ridiculous anymore with these things, because it is so incredibly powerful. The screen is so good. It has so many things that no Apple laptop has.

2:05:43How much would you pay for an Apple laptop with Face ID?

2:05:46A billion dollars.

2:05:48Well, also, the use of the iPad. It's hard to mention enough how Apple's pricing is just going up and up and up.

2:06:02Everything Apple has released in the last couple years has been noticeably more expensive than what it replaced.

2:06:08Apple's pricing is really just tightening those screws, making us pay more and more and more every year for successive products.

2:06:18There's a new MacBook Air. The old MacBook Air is still for sale at the same price. The new one costs more.

2:06:25The price is one area where it's hard to feel good as an Apple customer when you price things out now and you see quite how expensive everything has gotten.

2:06:39Apple stuff was never cheap, but it used to be at least a respectable value for what you were getting.

2:06:46As the prices keep going up and up and up, that's a much harder rationalization to make.

2:06:52But at least with the price, you feel that pain only once. When you buy it, you feel that pain.

2:07:00But then once you have the product, you're able to move past what you paid for it, hopefully.

2:07:07Until the keyboard dies or whatever, you drop an iPhone device or whatever.

2:07:16The expense of these items is an upfront pain. The laptops, I feel like, punish you every time you use them.

2:07:25The laptops are just punitive. They just want you to hate yourself for having bought them.

2:07:31Whereas the iOS devices, once you get past the cost barrier upfront, they're just pleasure. They're just wonderful.

2:07:38Both the iPhones and the iPads are just so wonderful. They're so pleasing to use. This is why I wish I was more in the iPad ecosystem.

2:07:47Because every time I use my laptop, I just hate it more. And every time I use an iPad, I'm like, "Man, I wish I could do more with this thing."

2:07:55And a lot of that's on me. There is more I could do on it if I would invest the time into learning new tools and everything.

2:08:02There's also a lot of my work I still couldn't do on it that would bother me. But boy, these iPad Pros look really, really awesome.

2:08:09I'm much more excited about the prospect of spending $1,400 on an iPad Pro that I will use mostly to play overcast during breakfast than I am about any laptop I've bought from Apple in the last two years.

2:08:26Alright, thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Squarespace, and Eero. And our indirect sponsor, Apple. And we'll see you next week.

2:08:35Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.

2:08:47John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.

2:08:58And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.

2:09:08@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey, Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T, Margo, R-M-N, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A, Syracuse.

2:09:24It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Tech podcast so long.

2:09:37So I'm curious, Casey, I know my answer to this. Did you run into any Apple executives or other Apple celebrities?

2:09:46Run into just coincidentally. Well, cause, so at the hands-on area, there's a lot of the prominent people that we know from Apple events and stuff,

2:09:55and high up executives and stuff, will be walking around. And, you know, they tend to be mobbed with people trying to get selfies, but you can occasionally interact with them.

2:10:03I'm curious, I had a couple interactions. My first one, while Casey was playing with the iPad that I had just freed up, I noticed that right across the table was Johnny Ive having a big mob of people around him.

2:10:17I thought, like, you know, first of all, I'm like, you know, what am I going to say to Johnny Ive? Anything I say, I would probably be making an idiot of myself.

2:10:24And he doesn't know or care who I am. So like, what, what am I going to say? Like, and it was very clear also that Johnny was very uncomfortable in this setting.

2:10:33Like, it's clear, like there's a reason why he's usually only seen videos and he wasn't this time. Like it was interesting. Like the, the, the role that Johnny would have normally played, which has the voiceover in the video, was Phil Schiller this time.

2:10:46And for the iPad video. Who did a great job, by the way, I really thought he did a great job. I kind of miss seeing him. Like, cause normally Phil would present new IMAX or iPads or new Max or iPads.

2:10:56But I kind of miss seeing him on stage, but it was, it was interesting, like hearing, hearing a Phil voiceover in that video. That was pretty cool.

2:11:03But Johnny was nowhere in the event then, like, you know, he didn't have any voiceovers, but it's very clear, like why he normally does those.

2:11:10Cause like, you know, we've, we've heard here and there, like he doesn't like being on stage or doing that. And he clearly was not that comfortable in a mob room full of people who are mostly his fans trying to get selfish with him.

2:11:21Like this was not his scene. So I wasn't going to try to add to his crowd, but a few minutes later as he was leaving, he walked, he was going to walk past where I was standing.

2:11:33I figure like, I'm not going to like stop him or anything. Cause again, what would I say? But as he was walking by, I did think of something. I thought of one thing. I said, Hey Johnny, I missed you in the videos.

2:11:43And he was like, Oh, he laughed. He was like, thank you. And his wonderful British way. And I feel very proud of that, that I made Johnny Ive laugh.

2:11:53And he was clearly, you know, uncomfortable and wanting to get out of there as fast as possible. I didn't stop him or slow him down and I didn't make an ass of myself. So I'm very proud of myself for that. Cause normally in that kind of situation, I would say something really stupid and make a total ass of myself. And I didn't do that.

2:12:09I would still be thinking that Johnny thinks I'm a jerk for saying that. But anyway, I thought it was weird that he wasn't in the videos because this is an all new iPad design. And the time when you need Johnny to tell you about something is when it's an all new design.

2:12:26How did they go from the old iPad to the new one? And what is it about this new design that's so great and tell us the philosophy behind it and tell us all that. And he wasn't there to do that. And so, you know, they had that thing, that animation, like the finger running around the outside of the iPad, flattening out, which I thought was cute.

2:12:41And that video was awesome, by the way. Like the video of the finger editing the old iPad to become the new one. That was really cute.

2:12:57So I actually did miss him. You're right. Phil did a great job. But his voice and what he normally says in his scripts or whatever was slightly missing from explaining the thinking behind an all new design for a prominent Apple product. He doesn't need to explain me on Actbook Air or whatever, but I feel like the iPads he could have explained.

2:13:18Around the time that this, I guess it was right before this was happening. So Marco was using an iPad and I saw Johnny across from him. And I snapped a few pictures and you can see one of them in my Instagram. I'll put a link in the show notes. Then I started using that same iPad. And for a while there, nobody really noticed that he was there, I think.

2:13:35And then all of a sudden I noticed that people are shoving my back more and more aggressively. And then cameras are getting closer and closer to my ears to the point that there was a camera within like a half inch of each of my ears going click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, because everyone is like leaning in and basically pushing me out of the way to take a picture of Johnny's across the table.

2:13:55At some point I thought that Marco had left and I thought that Federico was either leaving or had left. And I didn't know what to do with myself because I wanted to stick around the two of them. But then I went outside and couldn't find them. And I thought, well, I'll go to that fancy new Apple store across the street.

2:14:12And I walk in there and I happen to meet a couple of listeners, which was lovely, and I'm talking to them. And then all of a sudden, guess who comes walking in? But Tim. Of course he gets mobbed immediately. And one of the listeners I was speaking with, Parker, had no shame in running directly to Tim and getting a selfie within like 30 seconds. I was deeply impressed.

2:14:36He said, Tim is trying to make his way to the back of the room and is being extremely gracious about it. And the Apple employees are pooping their pants because they want to get a picture with Tim more than anything. I'm pooping my pants but attempting to keep it under control because I would like to get a picture with Tim.

2:14:49And you only brought one pair of pants.

2:14:51Yeah, I only had the pants I was wearing. I didn't bring a change of clothes because it was a day trip. I am not the kind of person who would do that sort of thing, generally speaking. When Marco and I got a picture with Federici several years ago, it was basically because Marco said, "Oh my God, there's Craig!" and then disappeared, like, you know, with the outline of Marco in dust, like Looney Tunes style. And then next thing I knew, he was taking a picture with Craig and I got a picture with Craig as well.

2:15:15In this case, I required some amount of assertiveness on my part, which is not my strong suit. But sure enough, as he was walking by, I said, "Oh, you know, can I get a picture?" "Thank you." And I said, "You did a really good job today, you know. Thanks."

2:15:30And, you know, for someone who has fallen out of love with the iPad, I really, really want one. It looks really good. And at this point, my body language and I'm trying to indicate to him, like, "You can ditch me, dude. I understand that you need to keep moving to the back of the store.

2:15:44Just, you can walk away. I'm not gonna be offended." But when I said, you know, "The new iPad's really great, or look really great," you know, he fed me what was clearly, like, his standard canned answer of, "Oh yeah, you're really gonna love them. They're really beautiful."

2:15:56But he did it in such a way that made me feel like he was at least slightly paying attention to what I was saying, you know, more than I think he was obligated to have done.

2:16:05And the entire conversation between he and me probably lasted between 10 and 15 seconds, but it seemed like for those 10 or 15 seconds, he actually was trying to engage, which was very, very flattering and very cool.

2:16:18I did introduce myself by name. I did not see even a glimmer of recognition in him, which is exactly what I expected. But if he had, like, had his eye, like, flutter the littlest bit or something as though he had recognized me, I probably would have keeled over dead right there.

2:16:33But no, no such, no such a lock. But he was extremely nice, extremely gracious, and I got a picture, which is in that Instagram post I have in the show notes. It's, I think, the last picture because I did it chronologically, and then Mike justifiably yelled at me for not putting that first, but, you know, c'est la vie.

2:16:49Yeah, I was gonna say the same thing when I was paged at three in a picture. I was like, "You didn't really bury the lead on this one."

2:16:53Yeah, my bad. But, yeah, I wanted to do it chronologically. I wasn't thinking about it in terms of growth packing.

2:17:00Yeah, but the cover photo for this album should be you and Tim, obviously.

2:17:03Yeah, exactly. Yeah, in retrospect, that's what it should be.

2:17:05This is my buddy Tim. We hang out all the time, you know.

2:17:07Yeah, totally. But no, that was very cool. It was funny, though, as I was going through my pictures that I took of the day, because I did take my big camera and use it on and off.

2:17:16At one point, well, somebody actually on Twitter pointed out to me that behind Johnny, when he was talking to some woman who had sunglasses on and had the air of someone who thought that they were important, I don't know if she was important, but, you know...

2:17:29Probably a world famous celebrity who we all don't know.

2:17:31Oh, I'm sure. I have no idea who she was, though.

2:17:34Exactly, yeah. This is the kind of thing, like, I just assume that anybody in there who has even, like, two people trying to talk to them is probably somebody really important.

2:17:42Yeah. Well, you say all that, and I agree, but just behind Johnny, I'm almost sure was David Blaine. I had no idea until somebody pointed it out on Twitter. He's a magician, a relatively famous magician.

2:17:53Check inside your shoe, Casey.

2:17:54Yeah, exactly.

2:17:55Was that your card?

2:17:57Even worse, was that my card? Was it the six of diamonds? Even worse, as I'm going through my pictures later, when Federico and I had lunch, I realized I took, like, three pictures of Phil, had no idea he was standing there. None.

2:18:08Yeah, I didn't see Phil at all. Like, I was looking for him. I would have loved to say hi to Phil. I didn't see him at all.

2:18:14Yeah, I had no idea.

2:18:15That is not David Blaine behind Johnny live.

2:18:17You don't think so?

2:18:18It's just another man who hasn't shaved recently.

2:18:20I don't know. Maybe you're right. I believed it when somebody on Twitter said it was David Blaine, but maybe you're right.

2:18:26Maybe David Blaine has gotten older and puffier, and I don't know.

2:18:31Could be. Who knows? But one way or another, I did not post the picture of Phil, but I'm almost sure.

2:18:39Lana Del Rey was in the hands-on area, too. I saw a picture that she posted from there. Some Apple person.

2:18:44Oh, I did not see that.

2:18:45I like her music. I actually listened to her performance at the end of the video.

2:18:49Yeah, and you know, I gotta say, like, not only was that... First of all, not only was it really cool to see, like, you have this empty stage.

2:18:56Like, you... 'cause Apple events have an empty stage with an empty table for an arrow demo, of course, but otherwise an empty stage.

2:19:02And it's funny to see, like, right as Tim's introducing the musical guest, this team of stagehands in black shirts comes out and brings out, like, four stage monitor speakers,

2:19:14two microphone stands, and a piano, and rolls them all out, like, in, like, no time. And all of a sudden, this empty stage becomes a musical performance stage.

2:19:22And it was a really good performance, and I gotta say, Tim was not awkward with the celebrity.

2:19:28Good point.

2:19:29I think this is a first.

2:19:30Well, they did have the awkward live mic moments. Like, they still... This is one criticism for Apple's incredible crack AV crew is when someone is leaving stage and someone is coming on stage and they meet each other,

2:19:43I think both of them don't expect their mics still to be live. But very often, they are. Because we get to hear them speak to each other sort of in a non-stage voice.

2:19:52I think what Lana Del Rey said was, like, "Oh, when I do these things, I'm always so nervous." And Tim was like, "No, you did fine. I'm the one who's nervous." Like, they were conversing with each other in a way...

2:20:00Have you heard that? We couldn't hear that in the room. Yeah, we couldn't hear that at all.

2:20:03Right. But go watch the video, you can hear it. And I think, basically, they're not expecting their mics still to be live.

2:20:08So I feel like the AV crew needs to turn off their mics as soon as they start that transitional phase and only turn them back on once they're separate from each other.

2:20:15Although it's cute to hear that interaction. I thought it was very honest and real moment that briefly snuck through a very prepared presentation.

2:20:23Yeah, I gotta say, it was one of the better musical guests in a long time. And the way it was integrated in was pretty nice and it wasn't awkward or anything. It was just good.

2:20:32Yeah, Tim was... If you're watching the video, I'm sure it was obvious when you were there too, but the volume was fine in the video because obviously they're mixing that audio differently than it sounds in the room.

2:20:42But Tim was all full of beans, as they would say. Like, he was very enthusiastic, very expressive about everything.

2:20:48I don't know if he's gotten notes on his past performances that he seemed like he was a little bit sleepy, but he was not sleepy.

2:20:53He was very expressive about everything and seemed genuinely excited about it and was just really pumped about the stuff they had and introduced everything with enthusiasm.

2:21:04He didn't have his thoughtful Tim Cook moment, you know, the thoughtful moment that he has, making notes where he retails about only Apple or can do this.

2:21:13Let me give you a summary of why we're so awesome.

2:21:15Or just, you know, about why they care about the environment or helping people or it's all about the creativity. This was all just like rah rah, go-go type of stuff.

2:21:23And by the way, lots of new presenters. So they had Turnus. What's his name?

2:21:28Yeah, John Turnus, I think.

2:21:29Yeah, he was at the MacPro event back in 2014, right? So that was like his public introduction in one of these events and now he's on stage.

2:21:37He was pretty good. The marketing guy they had felt a little marketing-y, but it's the first time I've seen him on stage, so you got to kind of a break. It takes a little while to get the stuff all together.

2:21:48I thought all the presenters were pretty good and it was a lot of new faces. It was like a quarter women or something. It was better than just having one woman.

2:21:59But, you know, I did notice that it wasn't just a bunch of dudes the entire time, which was nice.

2:22:06I would say also it was fairly well-paced and it didn't, at no point, felt like it was dragging. Like they didn't get too down in the weeds at the demos or anything.

2:22:15It was short. It didn't even go two hours.

2:22:17Yeah, and it was a very dense hour and a half, whatever it was. The excitement levels were maintained for most of it. It only did it a little bit during the demos, but it was overall pretty cool.

2:22:30Even the demo people were excited. The person who was demoing Photoshop was excited about the fact that she was using Photoshop on an iPad.

2:22:36I think the only time it really got creepy was when they took that very long shot of the very detailed basketball player model.

2:22:42Yeah, because he wasn't blinking. "Guys, you can't do this. Uncanny Valley."

2:22:46Yeah, that was real creepy.

2:22:47The sweat beads.

2:22:48It felt kind of like, I really don't like wax museums because the people in wax museums, they just look a little bit too lifelike but still really creepy and fake and weird. Like, you know, Uncanny Valley kind of situation.

2:23:00And man, those basketball players in that game, those just freaked me out.

2:23:06And then to have that one long zoom in on every detail of this guy's sweat beads, and I'm like, "Okay, this should have ended like 20 seconds ago."

2:23:15Like this, oh my god.

2:23:16He should have had an idle animation. You know, when characters in games have idle animations, which they're like bouncing up and down or breathing or blinking or just doing something that shows that they're not a wax mannequin but are in fact a living thing.

2:23:27But anyway, the focus on gaming was interesting, especially when they compared the GPU power to the Xbox One.

2:23:34That's all well and good, Apple, but you're not convincing me. Like, oh Apple, you've got all the GPU power in the world, you are like 100 times more powerful than the Switch, but you do not have Breath of the Wild.

2:23:51Do you see the difference? Do you see the difference here, Apple? What's different?

2:23:55How is Nintendo able to make these amazing games with so much less power? And by the way, that thing costs so much less money. Maybe that's part of it too, but either way, like, yeah.

2:24:07I love the GPU, I love the fact they have gaming demos. Oh, look at this, it's in retina resolution. This game, you know, no console can do 120 frames per second, which is true, but PCs can.

2:24:16But anyway, that's not the problem. They're filling the wrong gap. People aren't saying, "I would love to use the iPad as my primary gaming system if only it did 120 frames per second."

2:24:29That's not what people are saying. People are saying, "I would love to use the iPad as my gaming system if only it had the games I want to play."

2:24:37That doesn't. Red Dead Redemption 2 did not come out on the iPad. The Last of Us 2 is not coming out on the iPad. Zelda didn't come out on the iPad. All these games, they're not coming out on the iPad.

2:24:48And it's not because the iPad isn't powerful enough. It's plenty powerful. Anyway, I don't want to go off on Apple gaming stuff, but they insist on bringing up gaming. They insist on comparing themselves to gaming consoles, and it's like, you don't see the differences that people care about. It's not the differences you think they are.

2:25:04One very small tidbit that I noticed that I might be the only person that finds interesting is that when the Adobe people were on stage, Chantal, I think, was the woman who demonstrated the AR app by actually using the iPad.

2:25:27When she came on stage, I believe she brought the iPad with her, it looked like, if memory serves. But when she exited the stage, she put the iPad in that cube that was on stage and walked off stage empty handed.

2:25:41There were three spare iPads. If you look at the shot of when she does the AR thing, you get the reverse angle, there were a bunch of spares there.

2:25:47That's not surprising. We couldn't see that from our seats, but it just struck me as weird that she would have brought it on stage. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I could have sworn she brought it on stage. But then deliberately, it looked like she pulled open a drawer and ditched it in the drawer before she walked off stage.

2:26:01I always get kind of, when I see someone come up for a demo and I realize they're standing in front of what we've come to know as an AR table. Why is there a giant AR table? So you know there's going to be an AR demo. When she was demoing, I was like, "She's demoing Photoshop." That's not going to be an AR demo, but sure enough, it's an AR demo.

2:26:23Of course it is. All of us have AR demo tables in our house, right? It's just a big, giant, flat, empty table that we use for AR demos to make sure there's a service that it can track well?

2:26:31Yeah, because obviously, no table in our house would just fill with crap and never be empty ever again.

2:26:37I think the crap doesn't actually interfere with it too much, but you do need a big table upon which to display things.

2:26:41Thanks.

2:26:41(beeping)