ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We should start tonight with all the exciting announcements from Google I/O.

00:00:05 ◼   ► So tonight, tonight is a, is an interesting and peculiar night.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm looking at the follow-up section of our show notes, and there's only one entry.

00:00:13 ◼   ► So listeners, look at the timestamp on your podcast player of choice right now, and we'll

00:00:18 ◼   ► see how long this one follow-up entry lasts, because in theory it should be quick.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Calamity Jan was the first of many to write in and point out the error in our ways in

00:00:29 ◼   ► last episode when when sarah kusa had us do that quiz i don't i don't remember if john pitched it

00:00:35 ◼   ► to us improperly if we interpreted it wrong after john pitched it to us but one way or another we as

00:00:39 ◼   ► a collective unit screwed it up and the way the quiz was actually written is that um it was not

00:00:49 ◼   ► if we if um it's not if the companies could disappear it was that if we couldn't use them

00:00:55 ◼   ► anymore. So we couldn't use Google, but the rest of the planet is still YouTube and like it's their

00:01:01 ◼   ► job. And we totally screwed that up and several people written to us. And I don't know that we

00:01:07 ◼   ► necessarily need to redo the quiz all over again, but it certainly would make me think long and hard

00:01:13 ◼   ► about my answers. That's for sure. Yeah, I think what we did was an interesting question, but it

00:01:18 ◼   ► was not what was asked. And by the way, since having just recently listened to the episode,

00:01:21 ◼   ► What happened was that we all correctly read what the quiz was about, but then immediately

00:01:25 ◼   ► forgot about it and did something different.

00:01:27 ◼   ► Wait, you listened to the show?

00:01:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I always listen to the show.

00:01:31 ◼   ► So you can hear my edits?

00:01:32 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:01:36 ◼   ► It's not a secretly published show.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Other people can get it.

00:01:39 ◼   ► It's like, it's there.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Anyone can download it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► No, this might change some things.

00:01:43 ◼   ► How is this news to you?

00:01:44 ◼   ► How is this news?

00:01:45 ◼   ► I know I listen to all of the podcasts that I'm on.

00:01:48 ◼   ► In any case.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So how would I change things?

00:01:52 ◼   ► Although I don't feel like I'm reliant on YouTube, I think I did not appropriately weigh

00:01:58 ◼   ► access to YouTube.

00:02:00 ◼   ► So I think Google may have risen a little bit.

00:02:05 ◼   ► I don't think I would change my opinion of like Instagram, although man do I love Instagram.

00:02:09 ◼   ► I was thinking about that earlier today.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Instagram always makes me happy.

00:02:12 ◼   ► You know what sometimes makes me happy?

00:02:13 ◼   ► Twitter.

00:02:14 ◼   ► You know what I'm totally addicted to?

00:02:15 ◼   ► Twitter.

00:02:16 ◼   ► But you know what always makes me happy?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Instagram.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know. I don't think I would change Microsoft. Oh, that's the other thing.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Like AWS just disappearing? That would be tough, because half the darn internet runs on AWS,

00:02:28 ◼   ► so that would be very tough. But in broad strokes, I don't think my answers would be too different.

00:02:33 ◼   ► Well, the difference is that it means our whole discussion of like, "Oh, well, if we got rid of

00:02:37 ◼   ► that, something else would come along to replace it." That's not true if the service remains and

00:02:42 ◼   ► we are just choosing not to use it. So if we just choose not to use Instagram, don't hold your

00:02:47 ◼   ► your breath for an Instagram replacement to come along.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Same thing, we just don't use YouTube.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It's not like a YouTube competitor,

00:02:52 ◼   ► it's not like gonna spring up

00:02:53 ◼   ► because we're not using it, right?

00:02:55 ◼   ► So that makes it, I think that changes my opinion

00:02:59 ◼   ► a little bit about sort of my faith

00:03:01 ◼   ► that if I get rid of Facebook,

00:03:02 ◼   ► an Instagram replacement will come along.

00:03:05 ◼   ► I still think I would ditch Facebook first,

00:03:06 ◼   ► but I would feel worse about it because I do use Instagram

00:03:09 ◼   ► and knowing that I couldn't use it

00:03:11 ◼   ► and that there's not gonna be an alternative

00:03:13 ◼   ► would make that decision harder.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And Amazon, kind of similar.

00:03:19 ◼   ► If I don't use Amazon, but everyone else still gets to use it,

00:03:21 ◼   ► and you're waiting for something to come and replace Amazon,

00:03:23 ◼   ► it's not gonna come along anytime soon.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I think my rankings would probably stay the same,

00:03:27 ◼   ► but I think I'd feel worse about all of them.

00:03:30 ◼   ► - Wow, we did well.

00:03:31 ◼   ► That was like five minutes.

00:03:33 ◼   ► I don't even know what to do with this.

00:03:34 ◼   ► This is a weird night.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I don't know if I can even handle the rest of the show.

00:03:38 ◼   ► So I get, how does this work?

00:03:39 ◼   ► Do we just immediately move on to topics?

00:03:41 ◼   ► Is that what happens?

00:03:42 ◼   ► - I guess. - I'm so confused.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - It just, it feels wrong somehow.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I was thinking about it like when we have, you know when we have the follow-up list shows?

00:03:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:50 ◼   ► The WWDC ones always have no follow-up.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Our one interview show had no follow-up.

00:03:54 ◼   ► When that happens, we seem to handle it.

00:03:55 ◼   ► So I feel like we're prepared for this.

00:03:59 ◼   ► All right, so let's move on.

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00:05:17 ◼   ► Betterment -- investing made better.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Marco dropped some knowledge on the internet this week and talked about how MP3 is or isn't

00:05:28 ◼   ► dead.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And I don't know, I can summarize this if you'd like, Marco, or since you're here, maybe

00:05:33 ◼   ► it would be better if you just kind of talk us through this.

00:05:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, so basically the Fraunhofer Institute

00:05:40 ◼   ► for something for science, I think, it's a big--

00:05:43 ◼   ► - I love their chocolate chip cookies.

00:05:45 ◼   ► - Yes, it's a big German research, I don't know,

00:05:50 ◼   ► organization, I don't honestly know that much about it,

00:05:52 ◼   ► but they invent a lot of technological compression formats

00:05:57 ◼   ► and signal processing things and everything

00:06:00 ◼   ► and then they patent them and one of the things

00:06:03 ◼   ► invented was I think most or all of the MP3 format, of MP3 audio compression. The MP3

00:06:11 ◼   ► patents have all expired. The last one expired in mid-April, so a few weeks ago. Until then,

00:06:20 ◼   ► they were running an MP3 licensing program where if you made any kind of MP3 hardware

00:06:24 ◼   ► or software, you had to pay them for a license to the patents. And they also would sell you

00:06:29 ◼   ► reference implementations of MP3 encoder and decoder

00:06:33 ◼   ► if you wanted them for an additional fee.

00:06:35 ◼   ► Basically what happened was when the patent expired

00:06:38 ◼   ► about a week later in late April,

00:06:41 ◼   ► Fraunhofer published an update announcement to their site

00:06:45 ◼   ► basically saying we are terminating

00:06:49 ◼   ► the license program for MP3.

00:06:50 ◼   ► We will no longer license MP3 technology.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Pretty much everyone has moved on to AAC

00:06:56 ◼   ► and all of you should too.

00:06:57 ◼   ► And this was picked up by a lot of low-value news sites around the tech sphere as an announcement

00:07:06 ◼   ► by the MP3 creator that the MP3 is dead and that we should all just, it's time to move

00:07:11 ◼   ► on, it's time to move on to AAC.

00:07:14 ◼   ► The reality of course is all that patent stuff and this actually means, you know, they had

00:07:19 ◼   ► to terminate the license program because there were no more patents left to license and I'm

00:07:24 ◼   ► And I'm guessing they decided at that point,

00:07:25 ◼   ► well, why even bother licensing our encoder software

00:07:29 ◼   ► since it doesn't have that many users

00:07:31 ◼   ► and if we're not gonna make any more money from the patent,

00:07:33 ◼   ► that's where the big money is,

00:07:34 ◼   ► so why even bother administering this program at all?

00:07:37 ◼   ► That's my guess of their logic here.

00:07:39 ◼   ► - I'm kinda surprised they didn't continue the program

00:07:41 ◼   ► anyway just as a bluff because there's so many people

00:07:43 ◼   ► who will just like sign up for it anyway

00:07:46 ◼   ► because like they'll just have heard

00:07:48 ◼   ► that's the thing you have to do

00:07:49 ◼   ► and it'll be years before word of mouth gets around

00:07:51 ◼   ► among people who are not clued in.

00:07:53 ◼   ► You don't have to license anything on there,

00:07:54 ◼   ► you can just use it.

00:07:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, the real story here

00:07:59 ◼   ► is that MP3 is now patent free.

00:08:02 ◼   ► It was patent free in Europe, I think, since 2012.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Wikipedia has a whole list of all the things

00:08:07 ◼   ► and when they expired and everything.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And it is now patent free in the US

00:08:11 ◼   ► and to the best of my knowledge,

00:08:13 ◼   ► it is effectively patent free

00:08:15 ◼   ► or totally patent free worldwide now.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And so this means that, you know,

00:08:21 ◼   ► There have been a couple of little irritating things

00:08:24 ◼   ► that we've had to do over the years

00:08:26 ◼   ► to work around MP3 being patented.

00:08:28 ◼   ► We as computing users or as software developers,

00:08:31 ◼   ► so for example, open source OSs and projects

00:08:36 ◼   ► like browsers like Firefox, open source things

00:08:39 ◼   ► would almost never support MP3

00:08:42 ◼   ► or would require you to do some kind of weird

00:08:44 ◼   ► jumping through hoops like, all right,

00:08:46 ◼   ► go download the lame MP3 encoder,

00:08:48 ◼   ► which is an open source encoder.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Go download that and get the compiled binary library for it

00:08:54 ◼   ► and place it in this directory.

00:08:56 ◼   ► We won't distribute the MP3 code

00:08:58 ◼   ► 'cause that would be breaking this patent,

00:09:00 ◼   ► but if you have this encoder on your own,

00:09:02 ◼   ► you can put it in this location

00:09:04 ◼   ► and we will support MP3s in our software.

00:09:06 ◼   ► And that was done by things like the Audacity

00:09:09 ◼   ► free open source audio editor.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Does Handbrake ever do that?

00:09:14 ◼   ► It might, I forget.

00:09:16 ◼   ► But basically, open source tools

00:09:18 ◼   ► that would support MP3 in some way

00:09:20 ◼   ► would have to usually do things like that.

00:09:23 ◼   ► There was also a debate back when the HTML5 audio

00:09:26 ◼   ► and video tags started coming out,

00:09:29 ◼   ► and there was a debate about codec support,

00:09:31 ◼   ► about what audio and video formats

00:09:33 ◼   ► would the browsers all support.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And there was a big debate when Firefox announced

00:09:37 ◼   ► that they would only support free open source things,

00:09:39 ◼   ► which at the time was only Ogg Vorbis for audio

00:09:42 ◼   ► and Ogg Fiora for video, I think.

00:09:44 ◼   ► I don't think there were any other ones.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And the problem with the Vorbis and Theora formats

00:09:50 ◼   ► is that they're just not very widely supported.

00:09:54 ◼   ► But Firefox being an open source project said,

00:09:57 ◼   ► well, we can't support the patented ones

00:09:59 ◼   ► because of open source and we don't believe in it

00:10:01 ◼   ► and everything else.

00:10:02 ◼   ► There's lots of practical reasons why patented stuff

00:10:05 ◼   ► is a problem in open source projects.

00:10:07 ◼   ► So basically it was this big problem

00:10:10 ◼   ► that we always had to keep jumping around like,

00:10:11 ◼   ► well, if we want this to play,

00:10:13 ◼   ► we have to encode this file in two different formats,

00:10:18 ◼   ► use MP3 for everybody else or use AAC maybe,

00:10:21 ◼   ► and then also use Ogg or WebM or whatever else

00:10:25 ◼   ► for the open source/open standards friendly holdouts.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It was just a big annoyance, a big tax on everything.

00:10:35 ◼   ► It just made everything more complicated and suck

00:10:38 ◼   ► because that's what patents do.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And so this is great because for the first time ever,

00:10:44 ◼   ► we now have an audio format that is supported everywhere

00:10:49 ◼   ► by everything.

00:10:50 ◼   ► I mean, MP3, like I wrote in my post

00:10:53 ◼   ► that it's the most widely supported audio format

00:10:56 ◼   ► of all time and I really do think that's true.

00:10:59 ◼   ► One reader, and I figured this would come up,

00:11:02 ◼   ► emailed me, hi Chris Pepper, to say,

00:11:04 ◼   ► what about WAV/AIF?

00:11:07 ◼   ► I thought of that when I wrote that sentence.

00:11:09 ◼   ► I think WAV is actually less widely supported than MP3.

00:11:13 ◼   ► If you look at all the hardware and software

00:11:16 ◼   ► that's out there, all the little audio players,

00:11:18 ◼   ► car audio players, home stereo deck things,

00:11:22 ◼   ► so many things can play MP3 files off of either

00:11:27 ◼   ► a memory card or a USB stick or a CD full of files

00:11:32 ◼   ► that I bet there's a good number of those things

00:11:35 ◼   ► that will ignore a .wav file but will play an MP3 file.

00:11:39 ◼   ► - I think you mean wah-v, right?

00:11:40 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:11:41 ◼   ► - I was gonna say the same thing, you beat me to it.

00:11:44 ◼   ► - Nice. (laughs)

00:11:45 ◼   ► Anyway, so I really do think MP3 is the most

00:11:49 ◼   ► widely supported audio format of all time,

00:11:52 ◼   ► and it's now patent free.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Now the story from a lot of the stories

00:11:57 ◼   ► that talked about this said we should all move to AAC

00:12:00 ◼   ► because it's better, it's more efficient,

00:12:02 ◼   ► and MP3 is lower quality and everything else.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And that is technically true.

00:12:07 ◼   ► AAC is better.

00:12:09 ◼   ► There are a couple of flaws in MP3 that very, very well trained people are able to reliably

00:12:15 ◼   ► hear. Allegedly. I don't know, I've never met one, but they claim to exist and for the

00:12:19 ◼   ► purpose of this discussion I'll believe that they exist. This is all true, but most of

00:12:24 ◼   ► the benefits of AAC are at very low bit rates. Things like below 64K or below 48K where you're

00:12:31 ◼   ► trying to get acceptable quality at an extremely low bit rate. It's not going to sound great,

00:12:37 ◼   ► but you wanted to sound okay at like 32K or something like that. This is not what people

00:12:43 ◼   ► are using for music and it's not even what people are using for podcasts anymore because

00:12:46 ◼   ► the standards for podcasts have gone up. People now expect podcasts to sound effectively perfect

00:12:53 ◼   ► or at least very professional. And so, you know, nobody wants super highly compressed

00:12:56 ◼   ► voice stuff in distribution of podcasts or music. And so, the advantages of AAC, while

00:13:03 ◼   ► they exist, and there are newer formats as well, things like the Opus format, it's

00:13:12 ◼   ► basically the new hotness from the people who made Ogg Vorbis, and they're super smart

00:13:16 ◼   ► over there. Anyway, so there are newer formats like that that improve low bitrate quality,

00:13:23 ◼   ► but once you get to about 128K or higher, the differences between these formats are

00:13:28 ◼   ► are really small.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And none of them can really represent music

00:13:34 ◼   ► like transparently well enough for most people

00:13:37 ◼   ► at bit rates below that.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So it's not like you're gonna have your music collection,

00:13:41 ◼   ► which is currently probably 256K on average.

00:13:44 ◼   ► You're not gonna have that suddenly be encoded

00:13:46 ◼   ► into a 128K AAC and think that's okay,

00:13:50 ◼   ► or a 64K Opus file.

00:13:52 ◼   ► It's gonna sound worse.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And it's gonna be amazing for the size,

00:13:57 ◼   ► but it's still not gonna be as good.

00:13:58 ◼   ► So basically, there's not a lot of reason

00:14:01 ◼   ► to dump MP3 as a format.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Now that being said, if you're acquiring new music,

00:14:07 ◼   ► if you're buying from iTunes,

00:14:09 ◼   ► if anybody still does this anymore,

00:14:10 ◼   ► buying from iTunes or anything else,

00:14:12 ◼   ► sure, buy AAC, because it is better in that context.

00:14:15 ◼   ► But basically, if you already have MP3s,

00:14:17 ◼   ► there's no reason to put any effort

00:14:19 ◼   ► into replacing them or upgrading them

00:14:21 ◼   ► to AAC or anything else.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And if you are choosing a format to distribute files in,

00:14:27 ◼   ► like what podcasters have to do,

00:14:29 ◼   ► or just to encode your music in.

00:14:30 ◼   ► It's not that different basically is what I'm saying.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And AAC is still patented.

00:14:36 ◼   ► I honestly should have but didn't look up

00:14:39 ◼   ► for how much longer AAC is still patented.

00:14:41 ◼   ► I think it's a while because MP3 is really old

00:14:45 ◼   ► and AAC is only kind of old.

00:14:47 ◼   ► So I think it wouldn't surprise me

00:14:49 ◼   ► if it was another 10 years.

00:14:50 ◼   ► There might have been that big of a space between them.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Basically AAC is good and in some ways it is better,

00:14:56 ◼   ► but it is still patented and it's not better enough

00:15:00 ◼   ► for that to be a big issue for most people

00:15:02 ◼   ► who are considering using MP3.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And MP3 is still more widely supported.

00:15:08 ◼   ► AAC, it's kinda like the year of desktop Linux,

00:15:10 ◼   ► AAC is always about to be supported everywhere.

00:15:12 ◼   ► It's always like on the horizon, oh, next year,

00:15:15 ◼   ► or in the next few years, everything will support AAC.

00:15:19 ◼   ► And that just never comes.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And we are really close, lots of stuff does support AAC.

00:15:23 ◼   ► But when you go into the More Education,

00:15:25 ◼   ► like I was saying earlier, things like car stereos

00:15:27 ◼   ► and stuff like that, the support for AC is much more spotty

00:15:30 ◼   ► and everything supports MP3.

00:15:32 ◼   ► So when you're distributing files like podcasters,

00:15:36 ◼   ► for instance, MP3 is still the safest choice.

00:15:40 ◼   ► And I actually ran some numbers to see if I was just nuts.

00:15:42 ◼   ► And I probably am nuts, but maybe not for this reason.

00:15:46 ◼   ► In Overcast's entire database, this is every feed

00:15:50 ◼   ► I know about, every feed anybody has ever searched for,

00:15:53 ◼   ► every feed anybody has ever added.

00:15:55 ◼   ► I crawl all of these feeds.

00:15:56 ◼   ► I have a database that has 50 million episodes in it

00:16:00 ◼   ► from over half a million podcasts.

00:16:03 ◼   ► The entire database was, I think I said 92% of them

00:16:07 ◼   ► reported themselves as MP3s.

00:16:09 ◼   ► 99% of the top 500 were MP3.

00:16:13 ◼   ► So basically all podcasts use it.

00:16:16 ◼   ► There are some holdouts that use AAC, but very, very few.

00:16:20 ◼   ► The vast majority use MP3.

00:16:22 ◼   ► for this reason basically, that if you're gonna distribute

00:16:25 ◼   ► a file that you're only gonna make one file

00:16:28 ◼   ► for most of these contexts, so you might as well

00:16:30 ◼   ► distribute the one that can play on by far the most devices,

00:16:33 ◼   ► and that's MP3.

00:16:35 ◼   ► So basically, going back to the original point,

00:16:38 ◼   ► MP3 was declared dead, but it's very much not dead

00:16:42 ◼   ► in a lot of areas, and in fact, I would now say

00:16:45 ◼   ► that if you're debating which audio format to use

00:16:49 ◼   ► For almost anything, MP3 should be very high in your list

00:16:53 ◼   ► and is probably the right choice

00:16:55 ◼   ► because it is pretty efficient,

00:16:59 ◼   ► you know, not as efficient at the low bit rates

00:17:01 ◼   ► as the newer ones, but close relative to like a WAV file,

00:17:05 ◼   ► supported by everything, and now totally patent free

00:17:10 ◼   ► to encode and decode and distribute.

00:17:12 ◼   ► Well, you can do anything with MP3 now,

00:17:14 ◼   ► it's totally patent free.

00:17:15 ◼   ► There's lots of great software that supports it,

00:17:17 ◼   ► there's lots of great tooling around creating

00:17:19 ◼   ► and editing MP3s, so basically,

00:17:22 ◼   ► I don't see it as an argument of like,

00:17:24 ◼   ► you gotta justify using this old format.

00:17:27 ◼   ► I see it as an argument of these new formats

00:17:30 ◼   ► have to justify to me why I should give up the freedom

00:17:34 ◼   ► that MP3 now has and the widespread support that it has.

00:17:37 ◼   ► - I don't understand how this MP3 is Dead thing

00:17:40 ◼   ► even got started.

00:17:41 ◼   ► Was it just one really dumb website that people picked up on

00:17:45 ◼   ► because it was so easy to show how dumb they were?

00:17:47 ◼   ► or did multiple people report it?

00:17:50 ◼   ► It's so nonsensical.

00:17:52 ◼   ► The obvious story is MP3 is finally free.

00:17:54 ◼   ► It's like MP3's birth, it's not its death, it's its birth.

00:17:59 ◼   ► Finally, you can use it without having to worry

00:18:01 ◼   ► about any of the crap.

00:18:02 ◼   ► We wanted it for a long time,

00:18:04 ◼   ► it's been annoying us for a while,

00:18:05 ◼   ► and now it's open to everybody.

00:18:07 ◼   ► That's the obvious story to make out of this,

00:18:09 ◼   ► regardless of what someone's press release does.

00:18:10 ◼   ► But the fact that it got picked up so much

00:18:13 ◼   ► and passed around with a dead thing,

00:18:14 ◼   ► even if it was just a bunch of articles refuting

00:18:16 ◼   ► The fact that it was dead is disappointing or like some amazing PR triumph by somebody

00:18:22 ◼   ► who's like, "I see if I can convince the world that when MP3 is finally free for everybody,

00:18:25 ◼   ► we'll call it dead."

00:18:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's just a really tempting tech headline to proclaim things dead that

00:18:32 ◼   ► either are or were once popular.

00:18:35 ◼   ► This is dead or this is the ex-killer.

00:18:38 ◼   ► And in tech, that doesn't usually happen.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Very few things in tech ever really get killed or die.

00:18:44 ◼   ► they just kind of fade more into obscurity or they lose the dominant market share they

00:18:50 ◼   ► once had, but they still continue to be used or to exist.

00:18:55 ◼   ► The things that do die don't get stories declaring their death. They just get fewer and fewer

00:18:59 ◼   ► stories progressively and then they get a retrospective. I mean, just think of RIM as

00:19:03 ◼   ► RIM slowly died. I think I said on an old Hypercritical episode when I was going through

00:19:09 ◼   ► things it was like, "WebOS dead. RIM dead soon." But no one even cares enough to complain

00:19:16 ◼   ► about that, and the way it dies is you just see fewer and fewer stories about it, and

00:19:19 ◼   ► then you wait three years and someone posts a story about, "Hey, I didn't remember RIM."

00:19:24 ◼   ► It becomes a nostalgia story, but it's not worth talking about while it is actually dying.

00:19:31 ◼   ► That's what death means. No one wants to talk about you anymore.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And there are lots of places where MP3 either was never used or is no longer used, and these

00:19:39 ◼   ► and new codecs are used.

00:19:41 ◼   ► For example, if you're making a streaming service

00:19:44 ◼   ► and you wanna offer moderate quality

00:19:47 ◼   ► at a cellular-friendly bit rate

00:19:49 ◼   ► and you wanna save money on your bandwidth costs,

00:19:52 ◼   ► it makes total sense for you to send a 128K AAC

00:19:56 ◼   ► or something even better like Opus

00:19:58 ◼   ► because you're gonna get more quality

00:20:00 ◼   ► out of those bits than MP3

00:20:02 ◼   ► and you're not gonna have to worry about support

00:20:04 ◼   ► because it's only going to your app.

00:20:07 ◼   ► So it's like from your servers to your app,

00:20:09 ◼   ► you can do whatever you want.

00:20:11 ◼   ► If there's gonna be patent issues,

00:20:12 ◼   ► you're probably gonna have to pay a license fee for that.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And I heard, I haven't verified this,

00:20:16 ◼   ► I heard Spotify actually uses Vorbis

00:20:18 ◼   ► so that they don't have to pay

00:20:19 ◼   ► the patent licensing fees to anybody,

00:20:21 ◼   ► which is interesting if true.

00:20:23 ◼   ► But again, the fact that very little hardware

00:20:26 ◼   ► and software supports Vorbis out there,

00:20:28 ◼   ► for Spotify, they don't care.

00:20:30 ◼   ► All they need to support it is their app,

00:20:31 ◼   ► which they control, and their servers,

00:20:33 ◼   ► which they also control.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So for them, it's a no-brainer.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So anyway, this is great news that we finally have

00:20:42 ◼   ► this awesome everything everywhere format

00:20:45 ◼   ► that is patent-free.

00:20:47 ◼   ► And so many little barriers in technology

00:20:49 ◼   ► now no longer need to be there.

00:20:51 ◼   ► And I don't expect this to revolutionize the world

00:20:56 ◼   ► or anything, I mean, heck, there aren't that many people

00:20:58 ◼   ► encoding their own audio files anymore to begin with,

00:21:01 ◼   ► with the exception of content producers.

00:21:03 ◼   ► and most of them are not doing it directly anyway.

00:21:05 ◼   ► They're doing it through like software services

00:21:07 ◼   ► that supports multiple things and everything else.

00:21:09 ◼   ► But for the people who do still work on audio files

00:21:14 ◼   ► and who do still distribute files to be played

00:21:16 ◼   ► like every podcaster, this is a big deal.

00:21:19 ◼   ► And it's not gonna be noticed by a lot of people,

00:21:22 ◼   ► but it does greatly improve things in a lot of ways

00:21:26 ◼   ► that it might take a few years for them to be deployed,

00:21:32 ◼   ► maybe, like as software slowly drops restrictions on MP3,

00:21:36 ◼   ► maybe Apple builds in MP3 encoding support

00:21:39 ◼   ► to the core audio APIs, which they've never had it.

00:21:41 ◼   ► They've only ever had AAC encoding,

00:21:43 ◼   ► 'cause Apple pays a license to use the AAC patents.

00:21:47 ◼   ► But they never wanted to also pay one for MP3,

00:21:50 ◼   ► except in their Pro Tools,

00:21:51 ◼   ► which they sell separately anyway.

00:21:53 ◼   ► So, just things like that.

00:21:55 ◼   ► Now, maybe you'll be able to encode MP3s

00:21:58 ◼   ► from all the system apps in the next Mac OS,

00:22:02 ◼   ► and maybe an iOS might get that support too now.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Now lots of people, myself included,

00:22:06 ◼   ► can ship apps that make or use MP3s in some way

00:22:09 ◼   ► without worrying about getting hit by massive patent fees

00:22:13 ◼   ► and lawsuits or worse.

00:22:15 ◼   ► - So two quick pieces of real-time follow-up.

00:22:17 ◼   ► First of all, In the Arena in the chat gives us a link

00:22:21 ◼   ► to what bitrate does Spotify use for streaming?

00:22:25 ◼   ► This is on Spotify's website.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Spotify uses three quality ratings for streaming

00:22:28 ◼   ► on the Ogg Vorbis format, 96K, 160K, or 320K,

00:22:33 ◼   ► which is only for premium subscribers.

00:22:35 ◼   ► So I believe that's what you said, Marco,

00:22:36 ◼   ► and your theory is correct.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Additionally, you said a moment ago that, you know,

00:22:40 ◼   ► it seems to your recollection that only paid apps

00:22:43 ◼   ► support MP3, but you can actually encode something

00:22:46 ◼   ► as an MP3 in iTunes, and that's effectively a system app.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So-- - That's true.

00:22:49 ◼   ► I forgot about that.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, yeah, 'cause I used to do that all the time,

00:22:53 ◼   ► back when I used iTunes, well, really, ever.

00:22:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it was never in the QuickTime APIs

00:22:58 ◼   ► that everything else you used.

00:22:59 ◼   ► - Sure, sure, sure.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:23:01 ◼   ► - It is not available in the low level

00:23:02 ◼   ► core audio stuff either.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - That I didn't know, but either way.

00:23:05 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't make your point wrong,

00:23:07 ◼   ► but it's just an interesting counterpoint.

00:23:09 ◼   ► - You can decode MP3, but you can't encode it.

00:23:11 ◼   ► - I gotcha, okay.

00:23:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you're right, iTunes does include that,

00:23:14 ◼   ► and I forgot about iTunes.

00:23:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm just trying to save you a thousand

00:23:17 ◼   ► well actuallys, so instead I will actually do.

00:23:20 ◼   ► That's okay though.

00:23:22 ◼   ► Anyway, no, this is fascinating,

00:23:23 ◼   ► And this really is the happiest possible ending to MP3, right?

00:23:27 ◼   ► Which is to say it's a brand new beginning, or nothing else, a continuation.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And that's really fantastic, that this format that is not perfect, but is pretty darn good,

00:23:39 ◼   ► that to your point, freaking everyone knows how to read,

00:23:43 ◼   ► that it's pretty much unencumbered at this point, which is fantastic.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I wonder if we're, I keep wondering if we're gonna get into a similar but perhaps even worse, much worse, situation with video.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Like with audio I think it's fine because like Marco said, like, MP3 does the job and it does it in a reasonable way

00:24:02 ◼   ► and the ones that are better are not that much better and all of them are kind of within the limits of normal person human hearing.

00:24:09 ◼   ► Like you don't, you don't care about the quality. Like only super duper audio files even care about the bitrate and most normal people like it's just fine, right?

00:24:17 ◼   ► But for video, H.264 is the most popular sort of proprietary one that's out there now.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Similar thing with the WebM and everything and web browsers don't want to include H.264

00:24:32 ◼   ► support.

00:24:33 ◼   ► In some cases, the free open ones aren't even as good as H.264.

00:24:38 ◼   ► But H.264 has been around for a long time.

00:24:40 ◼   ► There's a lot of hardware that knows how to decode it, but whether dedicated hardware

00:24:45 ◼   ► or hardware designed to be good at decoding it in a low power way in our phones and other

00:24:50 ◼   ► sorts of devices and dedicated chips for like embedded things.

00:24:54 ◼   ► And it takes a long time for that support to come up.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Kind of similar the way Apple was kind of gung-ho about how awesome their AAC decoders

00:25:04 ◼   ► were, encoders and decoders.

00:25:07 ◼   ► And you know, I bet even today it wouldn't surprise me if an iPhone is more energy efficient

00:25:13 ◼   ► when decoding AAC files than when decoding MP3 files

00:25:16 ◼   ► just because it's Apple's preferred format

00:25:18 ◼   ► and they sell stuff in that format and stuff like that?

00:25:21 ◼   ► - Well, there actually, there used to be,

00:25:23 ◼   ► in older generations of iOS hardware,

00:25:26 ◼   ► there used to be hardware encoders and decoders

00:25:30 ◼   ► for AAC and I think maybe even H.264, but at least for AAC.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And as far as I know, in all the recent hardware,

00:25:39 ◼   ► and not even that recent,

00:25:41 ◼   ► there's no longer hardware encoders

00:25:42 ◼   ► because the CPU just got so fast.

00:25:44 ◼   ► I mean, I actually do, I use AAC encoding

00:25:48 ◼   ► in Overcast for the watch transfers,

00:25:51 ◼   ► 'cause I mentioned I transcode the files

00:25:53 ◼   ► to lower bit rates to save transfer time

00:25:55 ◼   ► to make them super small.

00:25:56 ◼   ► It encodes, it reads the MP3 or whatever the source file is,

00:26:00 ◼   ► and encodes a new AAC at like 110x on an iPhone 7,

00:26:05 ◼   ► like 110 times as quickly as playback on an iPhone 7,

00:26:10 ◼   ► which is incredibly fast.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And that is using the software only decoders

00:26:16 ◼   ► because the hardware ones, they used to have lots of

00:26:17 ◼   ► problems where like only one thing could use it at once.

00:26:20 ◼   ► If your app was backgrounded, it would not necessarily

00:26:22 ◼   ► be guaranteed to be there, and it was really weird.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And I actually encode things in parallel

00:26:27 ◼   ► because every modern iPhone is dual core,

00:26:30 ◼   ► and you couldn't do that with the hardware encoder either.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Only one thing could be using it.

00:26:33 ◼   ► So anyway, all this is to say that the software,

00:26:36 ◼   ► basically everything's done in software now,

00:26:38 ◼   ► and it's so fast it doesn't even matter

00:26:40 ◼   ► between the formats, but there was a time when you were correct.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Well, so no, there's still hardware support.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Like I said, even if it's not a literal dedicated separate little area on the dive with the

00:26:49 ◼   ► hardware H.264 encoder or decoder or both, the hardware in these chips in many ways is

00:26:55 ◼   ► designed around these particular difficult problems, whether it's encryption for SSL

00:27:00 ◼   ► or for just basic other kinds of encryption.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Like the SIMD instruction sets and specific instructions that you know are going to be

00:27:07 ◼   ► in a linchpin or a critical path along particular algorithms.

00:27:11 ◼   ► So it's not dedicated hardware just for this purpose, but it is hardware designed around

00:27:15 ◼   ► a set of problems that they know the things they need to solve.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And even if it's just, again, adding a special instruction, it's more energy efficient to

00:27:22 ◼   ► do that than to sort of manually implement that special instruction by a series of other

00:27:27 ◼   ► instructions.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And they test these things to say, this needs to be low power, not use a lot of power, when

00:27:32 ◼   ► showing H.264 video.

00:27:34 ◼   ► If you're going to do that with a dedicated H.264 decoder on a system-on-a-chip on the

00:27:37 ◼   ► iPhone 3G, fine.

00:27:39 ◼   ► If by the time the iPhone 7 comes along, you can get that same job done with less die area

00:27:43 ◼   ► by using special instructions and the extended instruction set of the new ARM whatever thing,

00:27:49 ◼   ► or using your GPU or like a shader on the GPU to do it or whatever the hell, you know.

00:27:54 ◼   ► That's fine too, but this is a known problem set.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And I don't think for the formats that are, I don't think they're doing that same test

00:28:02 ◼   ► for WebM, in other words.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Maybe the hardware is just as good for WebM,

00:28:05 ◼   ► but it's not an important use case for them,

00:28:07 ◼   ► because as far as Apple's concerned,

00:28:09 ◼   ► H.264 video is kind of the standard for the stuff

00:28:12 ◼   ► that they're expecting you to play on iOS devices

00:28:15 ◼   ► to the degree that I don't even know

00:28:17 ◼   ► what kind of support there is

00:28:18 ◼   ► for any other kind of video playback on iOS devices

00:28:21 ◼   ► if it's not H.264.

00:28:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I should clarify too,

00:28:24 ◼   ► my statement earlier about there being

00:28:25 ◼   ► no more hardware stuff, I was only talking about audio.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Video, I don't know.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I'm guessing there probably still is hardware acceleration

00:28:32 ◼   ► for video just because it's so much more complicated. And I think you might be right

00:28:35 ◼   ► that it might be at the GPU level instead, but we'll see.

00:28:38 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL Yeah, I know these system on chips are big

00:28:40 ◼   ► and complicated, but the point is like that's the use case. And like I said, H64 is the

00:28:44 ◼   ► proprietary one. It's the one that is patent encumbered that would be annoying for people

00:28:47 ◼   ► to use that is very widely supported, but only because like this big industry effort

00:28:52 ◼   ► to get everyone to pay these patent fees, you know, and just like it's part of the

00:28:55 ◼   ► MPEG consortium. And historically, they have had good success getting their standards implemented

00:28:59 ◼   ► in everything from DVDs to Blu-rays to, you know, the iTunes Music Store and YouTube and

00:29:05 ◼   ► everything, right?

00:29:07 ◼   ► Now, I don't know when the patents run out in H.264, probably a long time from now, but

00:29:12 ◼   ► H.265 is already here.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And H.265 is better than H.264 in a more significant way than AEC is better than an MP3 in terms

00:29:23 ◼   ► of how small the files can be and at a very high quality.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Like, H.265 is essentially required for reasonable streaming 4K video over connections that are

00:29:35 ◼   ► not massively bigger than they were before, so on and so forth.

00:29:38 ◼   ► H.265 support in hardware and the decoders and everything is not great right now, which

00:29:45 ◼   ► you know if you ever encounter some H.265 hardware and try to play it on like your dinky

00:29:49 ◼   ► little Mac laptop that had no problem playing giant full-screen H.264 files, and all of

00:29:53 ◼   ► a sudden the fans are spinning up.

00:29:54 ◼   ► And you're like, "Why the hell are the fans spinning up?

00:29:55 ◼   ► This is just 1080 video."

00:29:56 ◼   ► Oh, it's h.265 and my computer doesn't know what the hell to do with that.

00:30:00 ◼   ► And so it's doing it the slow way with a plain old algorithm running on, you know, the no

00:30:06 ◼   ► special purpose hardware, instructions not tuned to, a decoder not tuned to my specific

00:30:11 ◼   ► system.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Like it's not like Apple has, I don't know, maybe they have, but as far as I'm aware,

00:30:15 ◼   ► Apple has not written the hand-tuned perfectly designed for a Mac hardware h.265 decoder,

00:30:21 ◼   ► let alone having dedicated H.265 decoders

00:30:24 ◼   ► in your old Mac laptop.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Again, maybe it's in new ones.

00:30:28 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of DRM crap in there, I'm sure too.

00:30:31 ◼   ► - I mean, it's basically what Kaby Lake is for.

00:30:33 ◼   ► It's, Kaby Lake is basically to add like H.265 support

00:30:37 ◼   ► in various places and also lots of DRM for 4K.

00:30:40 ◼   ► - And the HDCP crap.

00:30:42 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I know.

00:30:43 ◼   ► All right, so, this long road for me to get to this analogy.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Say H.264, you know, it's patents run out

00:30:51 ◼   ► like, yay, this video format that's massively popular, that has wide support.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Again, like every phone can view H.264 video in an energy efficient way, and it's supported

00:31:00 ◼   ► in all sorts of set-top boxes, and you know, it's very popular, right?

00:31:04 ◼   ► That becomes patent-free.

00:31:05 ◼   ► They're like, I wouldn't want to be stuck with that.

00:31:09 ◼   ► What I want to happen is the industry to move on to a format that is better than H.264.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Now maybe that's H.265, which has all the same downsides of being proprietary and having

00:31:19 ◼   ► all these patents associated with it, but it is better enough that I'm saying like,

00:31:22 ◼   ► I want that.

00:31:23 ◼   ► I don't want to be stuck with H.264 for the next 20 years, right?

00:31:26 ◼   ► That seems like a bad scenario, whereas I'm okay to be, you know, quote unquote, stuck

00:31:29 ◼   ► with MP3s.

00:31:30 ◼   ► I think it's fine.

00:31:31 ◼   ► But H.265 is a big step up.

00:31:34 ◼   ► And if there is a free and open source alternative, like the next version, whatever, not VP9 is

00:31:40 ◼   ► the next thing, but whatever the sibling open equivalent of H.265 is, ideally we would move

00:31:48 ◼   ► to that, but the problem with all those open ones, which I didn't mention, but it came

00:31:51 ◼   ► up with the whole Ag theory thing and everything, it's like, "Oh, these are free and open and

00:31:55 ◼   ► there's no patent licensing."

00:31:57 ◼   ► People get a little scared for, maybe it's just FUD or it's founded in some reality,

00:32:06 ◼   ► that just because the thing is free and open doesn't mean that someone will find that it

00:32:11 ◼   ► actually infringes on some patents anyway, right?

00:32:14 ◼   ► And so the creators say, "Here, it's for you to use and you can use it and don't have to

00:32:18 ◼   ► pay me anything. But if it became widely used, it could be that a bunch of people with a

00:32:23 ◼   ► bunch of super dumb patents come wandering by and say, "Oh, the whole world is using

00:32:27 ◼   ► this Ag theory format. Well, it turns out Ag theory is infringing on my patent on ones

00:32:34 ◼   ► because it uses both ones and zeros. And so now I'm going to collect money from everybody

00:32:37 ◼   ► who has Ag theory support and it's spread over the whole industry, so I'm going to be

00:32:41 ◼   ► rich." And so people worry about that. And in some ways, the format backed by some giant

00:32:47 ◼   ► consortium of companies. Like basically if all the companies that would sue you

00:32:50 ◼   ► with their superdumb patents or all the companies that could support a lawsuit

00:32:53 ◼   ► against them from people with even dumber patents, it's safer to buy from

00:32:57 ◼   ► them to say "well I'll license your patents and I'm legally covered and if

00:33:01 ◼   ► someone decides to sue they're gonna sue you and you're a consortium of all these

00:33:04 ◼   ► rich companies and you can handle it yourself" or whatever. I think it's one of

00:33:08 ◼   ► the things that also keeps people away from the open formats is the fear that

00:33:11 ◼   ► maybe they're not as open as they think they are because lots of patents are out

00:33:14 ◼   ► there and lots of patents are really dumb.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - Exactly, because they haven't really been challenged.

00:33:19 ◼   ► They are not usually used widely enough

00:33:22 ◼   ► for any submarine patents to actually surface.

00:33:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, they want to wait until it becomes popular

00:33:29 ◼   ► and then collect the money.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Even if someone knows,

00:33:31 ◼   ► "Oh, that totally infringes my patent,"

00:33:32 ◼   ► they're not gonna challenge it now when nobody uses it

00:33:34 ◼   ► 'cause you can't get blood from a stone, right?

00:33:36 ◼   ► They were just like, "Go ahead, spread that everywhere,"

00:33:38 ◼   ► and then they'll attack and get all the money.

00:33:41 ◼   ► So anyway, all this is to say

00:33:43 ◼   ► is that I hope, it's kind of weird to hope this,

00:33:45 ◼   ► but I kind of hope that we, the video industry at least,

00:33:49 ◼   ► is not, does not settle down and say,

00:33:51 ◼   ► once H.264 is free of all of its patents,

00:33:55 ◼   ► we'll just settle down into an H.264-only future,

00:33:58 ◼   ► and we'll all have royalty-free, beautiful video everywhere.

00:34:01 ◼   ► 'Cause I think video still needs to improve,

00:34:03 ◼   ► and things like color depth and frame rate,

00:34:05 ◼   ► and you know, resolution and size, and you know, HDR,

00:34:09 ◼   ► and also see those areas that I think are perceptible

00:34:12 ◼   ► regular people and important, especially if internet bandwidth doesn't improve at the

00:34:17 ◼   ► same rate as our demand for all those neat things that I just listed, which I think it's

00:34:20 ◼   ► not in the US anyway.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I basically hope we move to H.265 and I hope hardware support for H.265 comes and I hope

00:34:26 ◼   ► it doesn't make the fans on my Mac spin up anymore and I hope we leave H.265 behind,

00:34:31 ◼   ► but all that really does is reset the patent clock.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So maybe when H.265 patents run out when we're all 87 years old, then we can say, "This

00:34:38 ◼   ► This is good enough for human eyes.

00:34:40 ◼   ► It's fine for 2D video, but by then we'll be arguing about proprietary patent encumbered

00:34:45 ◼   ► things for VR or whatever.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So probably in about five years, I think we might be allowed to use DivX patent free.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Oh man, I haven't heard that in forever.

00:34:56 ◼   ► God, that was so amazing when it first came out.

00:34:59 ◼   ► Holy crap, I remember thinking this looks phenomenal.

00:35:04 ◼   ► - It did at the time, and I love that it was just

00:35:06 ◼   ► like a stolen MPEG-4 codec basically.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Like that's all, it's just MPEG-4.

00:35:11 ◼   ► And like, but before H.264,

00:35:13 ◼   ► like the first version of MPEG-4.

00:35:15 ◼   ► That was just, that's what DivX was.

00:35:17 ◼   ► - It was also that terrible disk format

00:35:19 ◼   ► where you would get the disk and then

00:35:21 ◼   ► it would have to destroy it or something,

00:35:22 ◼   ► the disk would self-destruct or some terrible thing.

00:35:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like a rental thing,

00:35:26 ◼   ► but yeah, like the disk would like,

00:35:28 ◼   ► it just had like an expiration on the DRM,

00:35:31 ◼   ► and it would like check in with the service I guess

00:35:33 ◼   ► to activate or deactivate.

00:35:34 ◼   ► And so you would like quote rent a movie

00:35:37 ◼   ► and then a few days later it would stop playing

00:35:39 ◼   ► so you just have to throw it away.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Surprisingly consumers were not that into that.

00:35:44 ◼   ► - What a great idea.

00:35:45 ◼   ► It wasn't like Best Buy or something that was back in the--

00:35:47 ◼   ► - It was Circuit City.

00:35:48 ◼   ► - Yep, Circuit City even worse.

00:35:49 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:35:50 ◼   ► - Which by the way, fun fact,

00:35:52 ◼   ► Circuit City used to have its headquarters, guess where?

00:35:55 ◼   ► Richmond, Virginia.

00:35:56 ◼   ► - That's quite something to brag about.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:36:00 ◼   ► - Yep, and CarMax is still here though.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Carmax was spun off of Circuit City.

00:36:04 ◼   ► They're still around, anyway.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Any other thoughts about file formats, MP3s, et cetera?

00:36:10 ◼   ► I'm pretty amped to see if this changes things

00:36:12 ◼   ► for the better, and I think it will in some minor ways.

00:36:15 ◼   ► We'll see if it really makes any empirical difference

00:36:17 ◼   ► in major ways, but for nerds like us

00:36:20 ◼   ► that occasionally encode things,

00:36:21 ◼   ► I think it'll be a lot better.

00:36:22 ◼   ► - Well, and the reality is the problems

00:36:24 ◼   ► that Jon is citing with video formats,

00:36:26 ◼   ► which are very real problems,

00:36:27 ◼   ► and we're lucky in the audio world that audio is,

00:36:32 ◼   ► not necessarily a solved problem,

00:36:35 ◼   ► but it's a lot closer to, it's solved well enough

00:36:37 ◼   ► for the most part with MP3,

00:36:39 ◼   ► which is like a 25 year old format.

00:36:41 ◼   ► It's, we've basically solved this problem.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Well, the bandwidth of ears is so much less

00:36:45 ◼   ► than the bandwidth of eyes,

00:36:46 ◼   ► and ears are so much better,

00:36:47 ◼   ► more tractable as sort of simple sensing machines

00:36:50 ◼   ► than eyeballs and the perception of vision is,

00:36:52 ◼   ► which is way more complicated.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And so, once we have a format that fits over our wires

00:36:57 ◼   ► with the bandwidth most people have,

00:36:59 ◼   ► that it sounds as good as any normal person can hear,

00:37:02 ◼   ► you're more or less done,

00:37:04 ◼   ► plus or minus like dynamic range

00:37:07 ◼   ► and like multi sound field crap

00:37:10 ◼   ► and stereo imaging and stuff like that.

00:37:12 ◼   ► But that's why we get to the limits of sound sooner

00:37:15 ◼   ► and vision is gonna be a while

00:37:17 ◼   ► because even when you've exhausted all the 2D things,

00:37:22 ◼   ► then you have like,

00:37:23 ◼   ► well, what about actual depth perception

00:37:25 ◼   ► and being able to focus on the background and the foreground

00:37:27 ◼   ► and then you're like, oh no, you gotta start all over

00:37:29 ◼   ► and the bandwidth gets even worse.

00:37:31 ◼   ► - Right, and so not only have we reached the limits

00:37:34 ◼   ► of what people can hear, but even if you try to go,

00:37:37 ◼   ► video is gonna have higher density resolutions and stuff,

00:37:41 ◼   ► or higher bit rates or higher bit depths

00:37:44 ◼   ► for things like HDR for a while to come.

00:37:47 ◼   ► You know, we're not at the limit of our vision yet,

00:37:49 ◼   ► as you said, but audio, like CD audio, 44K,

00:37:55 ◼   ► back in, whenever that was introduced, like the mid 80s,

00:37:59 ◼   ► that's basically as good as it gets for our ears.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And there's lots of people who say,

00:38:02 ◼   ► oh, I can hear up to 24, 192 or whatever,

00:38:06 ◼   ► and if they think they can, good for them.

00:38:09 ◼   ► - We have the bandwidth of that too, it's not a problem.

00:38:10 ◼   ► It's like, fine, go ahead. - That's exactly the thing.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Like, with audio, we're talking about such smaller files

00:38:16 ◼   ► that if you care that much about the quality of them,

00:38:20 ◼   ► you can just get lossless.

00:38:21 ◼   ► And the file sizes are not that prohibitive

00:38:23 ◼   ► in modern technology.

00:38:24 ◼   ► Like, you can get a massive hard drive from Amazon

00:38:27 ◼   ► for like 100 bucks that can hold as much audio

00:38:29 ◼   ► as you're likely to have ever,

00:38:31 ◼   ► even if you store it losslessly.

00:38:33 ◼   ► So like, it's not really, like,

00:38:36 ◼   ► we don't really need so badly to move on

00:38:39 ◼   ► to better and better audio compression standards

00:38:41 ◼   ► every five years like we do with video,

00:38:42 ◼   ► because the need just isn't there.

00:38:44 ◼   ► Like, we're already pretty good.

00:38:45 ◼   ► - Well, we already accept the size hit,

00:38:47 ◼   ► 'cause I remember every time I rip one of my Blu-rays

00:38:49 ◼   ► and I decide to put like one of my anime Blu-rays

00:38:51 ◼   ► and I put multiple languages on it,

00:38:52 ◼   ► those 5.1 tracks, you know, DTS HD,

00:38:55 ◼   ► the size of that stuff adds up.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Pretty soon, the vast majority of the data

00:38:59 ◼   ► in this file that I'm ripping is audio.

00:39:01 ◼   ► So even though they are small,

00:39:03 ◼   ► if it's two hours of audio and it's six channels

00:39:07 ◼   ► and multiplied by three languages,

00:39:09 ◼   ► suddenly you're talking some real bytes.

00:39:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I would say that's not a major case.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Anyway, and also, you know, the whole patent issue is,

00:39:19 ◼   ► I think more of a problem in many ways in audio,

00:39:22 ◼   ► and I guess not anymore,

00:39:23 ◼   ► but it was more of a problem in audio,

00:39:25 ◼   ► because the world of audio distribution,

00:39:28 ◼   ► especially in the form of podcasts,

00:39:30 ◼   ► which is close to my heart, obviously, is decentralized.

00:39:34 ◼   ► And so you don't have to worry.

00:39:36 ◼   ► If you produce video, you produce one thing

00:39:40 ◼   ► in whatever format you want, and you upload it to YouTube,

00:39:44 ◼   ► and then YouTube worries about what format it serves,

00:39:47 ◼   ► And all it has to serve is what its own website and apps

00:39:50 ◼   ► and various integration deals can play.

00:39:53 ◼   ► So YouTube can buy one giant license for these formats

00:39:58 ◼   ► and basically be done with it.

00:40:00 ◼   ► And video creators aren't needing to worry about that

00:40:04 ◼   ► themselves or making a whole bunch of other services

00:40:07 ◼   ► because the world of video is so concentrated

00:40:10 ◼   ► in this very small number of proprietary places.

00:40:13 ◼   ► YouTube, Facebook, that's basically it.

00:40:16 ◼   ► But audio is different, audio didn't get that centralized

00:40:20 ◼   ► for the most part and so the formats

00:40:23 ◼   ► and the patents around them and the support still matters.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Like if you're gonna embed a video on a webpage,

00:40:30 ◼   ► you're probably not gonna have to encode the files yourself

00:40:32 ◼   ► and put them on your server,

00:40:33 ◼   ► you're probably gonna embed a YouTube embed

00:40:35 ◼   ► and you don't have to worry about any of this stuff.

00:40:37 ◼   ► But you can plausibly and people often do embed audio files

00:40:41 ◼   ► on their page, that like direct served audio files

00:40:44 ◼   ► from your own hosting.

00:40:46 ◼   ► And then you do have to worry about encoding,

00:40:48 ◼   ► and you do have to figure out these formats

00:40:50 ◼   ► and play or things like that.

00:40:52 ◼   ► In more proprietary worlds, like what video is,

00:40:55 ◼   ► like what you were saying earlier about big companies

00:40:57 ◼   ► like to license the other major formats,

00:41:00 ◼   ► this is less of a problem in practice for the producers.

00:41:03 ◼   ► But in audio, because it's so open and decentralized

00:41:07 ◼   ► and way simpler, it actually matters.

00:41:10 ◼   ► So that's why, it's another reason why

00:41:13 ◼   ► the video formats being patented probably forever, practically speaking, is I think

00:41:20 ◼   ► less of an issue in practice, or rather it's less avoidable in practice than the freedom

00:41:27 ◼   ► that we now have with MP3 and the need for that in the first place in audio.

00:41:32 ◼   ► The only other thing that occurs to me is on video formats. Because we don't need

00:41:37 ◼   ► to know what format things are. Very often a video codec will get embedded in a context

00:41:44 ◼   ► where it will just stay, will overstay its welcome. Arguably DVDs kind of did that with

00:41:49 ◼   ► MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is a bad compression format by modern standards. It makes files that are

00:41:55 ◼   ► big that don't look that good. If you take a DVD, and if you take the same source material

00:42:00 ◼   ► and clean code at H.264, it will embarrass the MPEG-2. As well it should because it's

00:42:04 ◼   ► It's an old codec, right?

00:42:06 ◼   ► But for a long time, and I bet probably today still somewhere, cable television that you

00:42:12 ◼   ► got over your coaxial cable, after they switched to digital cable from analog, right, whereas

00:42:18 ◼   ► a lot of those channels were using MPEG-2, which was state of the art at the time that

00:42:21 ◼   ► they decided to do that.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And a lot of them kept using MPEG-2 for a long time, delivering you substandard video

00:42:29 ◼   ► quality using more bandwidth.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And to some degree, that's the cable company's problem, not your problem.

00:42:34 ◼   ► What do you care as long as you see the picture on your TV?

00:42:37 ◼   ► I think over the air still does that.

00:42:39 ◼   ► I think over the air HD is still MPEG-2.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And the other thing is, the other side of the coin is like, I wish you would use more

00:42:46 ◼   ► modern codecs like H.264, but very often your telco in the US anyway provider will say,

00:42:52 ◼   ► "Great, this lets us jam more channels into the same bandwidth, let's massively compress

00:42:55 ◼   ► these things and produce tons of artifacts, because look how small you can make H.264!"

00:42:59 ◼   ► And it still looks kind of good.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I remember watching Mad Men and AMC and watching the incredible banding in the background of

00:43:05 ◼   ► like dark scenes.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Oh, all those dark rooms.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and they were just, I don't know how, it's like they discovered, it's either they

00:43:12 ◼   ► had discovered H-264 and managed to jam the show down to a tiny little size or they were

00:43:17 ◼   ► still using MPEG-2 and using tons of bandwidth to give me a substandard quality image.

00:43:22 ◼   ► So in those embedded contexts, I still favor advancing the codec to keep up with the times,

00:43:30 ◼   ► there's very little incentive to do that, especially if they have their own dedicated

00:43:34 ◼   ► lines and they're the ones who decide how to chop up the bandwidth.

00:43:37 ◼   ► I saw something else recently with terrible banding in it and I was super angry about

00:43:41 ◼   ► it because it didn't seem like... maybe it was... I don't know. I wish I could remember

00:43:45 ◼   ► what it was. But when I see banding like that, especially if it's in some piece of media,

00:43:49 ◼   ► like if it's on a Blu-ray that I paid a lot of money for to get the highest quality of

00:43:53 ◼   ► an image and it's just like a bad choice in coding or something. Down with banding.

00:43:58 ◼   ► - Don't forget all the blocking, like the famous example

00:44:00 ◼   ► of the HBO intro with the static.

00:44:02 ◼   ► - The worst, that seems like trolling at this point,

00:44:05 ◼   ► doesn't it?

00:44:05 ◼   ► Like change your logo, come on.

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00:45:56 ◼   ► So we are coming up on WWDC time.

00:45:59 ◼   ► What is it, two weeks away, three weeks away?

00:46:01 ◼   ► I can't even keep it straight.

00:46:02 ◼   ► - Something like that.

00:46:04 ◼   ► - And there's a couple of rumors

00:46:05 ◼   ► that are starting to come out,

00:46:07 ◼   ► which may or may not even relate to WWDC.

00:46:09 ◼   ► But the first one is, and I'm sad you guys,

00:46:14 ◼   ► Apple is supposed to be phasing out the iPad mini,

00:46:17 ◼   ► so says 9to5Mac.

00:46:18 ◼   ► And truth be told, this makes me sad,

00:46:21 ◼   ► but at the same time,

00:46:23 ◼   ► As I've been telling the two of you guys for a while now, really I am just waiting for

00:46:29 ◼   ► the MacBook to get a refresh so I can replace my iPad Mini with the MacBook.

00:46:34 ◼   ► So this doesn't make me as sad as it used to.

00:46:36 ◼   ► But this would be a real bummer.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And my dad was really thinking about getting a new iPad Mini, and I told him, "Well, you

00:46:41 ◼   ► might as well wait to see when the new one is presumably coming out any day now."

00:46:47 ◼   ► And according to Zach Hall on 9to5Mac, maybe not.

00:46:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, obviously the iPad line is in the middle

00:46:54 ◼   ► of a transition right now, because if you look

00:46:57 ◼   ► at the prices, the new iPad, whatever they're calling

00:47:00 ◼   ► the new low-end 10-inch iPad, is 329.

00:47:05 ◼   ► If you leave out the mini for a moment,

00:47:08 ◼   ► the next one up is 599 for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And for almost twice the money, you don't,

00:47:18 ◼   ► I would not say you get twice the iPad.

00:47:22 ◼   ► And I love the 9.7 inch iPad Pro,

00:47:24 ◼   ► but that's a massive price jump for what you get for that.

00:47:29 ◼   ► Not to mention the fact that if you actually use it

00:47:31 ◼   ► like a Pro and get either a pencil or a keyboard

00:47:34 ◼   ► or something, you're adding even then a lot more

00:47:36 ◼   ► to the cost. (laughs)

00:47:38 ◼   ► But anyway, that's that huge price hole

00:47:41 ◼   ► in the middle of 329 to 600.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Obviously this is the beginning of some kind of move

00:47:50 ◼   ► and it's not complete yet because that just makes no sense.

00:47:53 ◼   ► Like that is obviously like, you know,

00:47:55 ◼   ► something else is going to change in this lineup

00:47:57 ◼   ► because that is ridiculous.

00:47:58 ◼   ► 'Cause that's not a very strong selling proposition

00:48:02 ◼   ► for the 9.7 Pro to be twice as much as the next model down

00:48:07 ◼   ► and be not that different from it.

00:48:11 ◼   ► I'm guessing there's another shoe to drop here.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And if the Mini goes away, and the Mini right now,

00:48:17 ◼   ► they reduced it to only the 128 gig model, right,

00:48:20 ◼   ► and it's 400 bucks, is that right?

00:48:22 ◼   ► - I think that's right.

00:48:23 ◼   ► - It is a significantly worse deal for what you get

00:48:26 ◼   ► than the new cheap iPad.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And it's significantly old by this point,

00:48:32 ◼   ► and the Mini was never updated that well

00:48:34 ◼   ► with the exception of the Mini 2.

00:48:36 ◼   ► That was the only time it was ever updated well,

00:48:39 ◼   ► in line with the rest of the lineup,

00:48:40 ◼   ► but otherwise, that was it.

00:48:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, to that end, to put things in perspective,

00:48:45 ◼   ► Aaron got me a then brand new iPad Mini

00:48:49 ◼   ► for not this past Christmas of 2016, but Christmas of 2015.

00:48:53 ◼   ► And if I'm not mistaken, that is effectively

00:48:57 ◼   ► the brand new iPad Mini you could buy today.

00:48:59 ◼   ► - That's right, yeah.

00:49:00 ◼   ► - And so you're right also, by the way,

00:49:02 ◼   ► that it's 128 for $400, or what you didn't mention

00:49:06 ◼   ► is LTE, also 128 gigs for $530,

00:49:10 ◼   ► but that's kind of off to the side.

00:49:11 ◼   ► You are correct about that. - Right,

00:49:12 ◼   ► - And they all kind of--

00:49:13 ◼   ► - Right, right, you're correct about 128 at $400.

00:49:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so basically,

00:49:17 ◼   ► by introducing the new cheap 9.7,

00:49:23 ◼   ► and not touching the Mini,

00:49:24 ◼   ► actually reducing the amount of Mini configurations

00:49:26 ◼   ► you can get at the same time,

00:49:28 ◼   ► I think it's plausible this rumor is correct.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Regardless of whether they're gonna end it

00:49:32 ◼   ► or do something else, I think this is very clear, though,

00:49:36 ◼   ► that they do not intend for you to buy the Mini right now.

00:49:40 ◼   ► because no one's gonna look at that price.

00:49:42 ◼   ► And if people were buying it before,

00:49:45 ◼   ► which is, that's worth asking,

00:49:47 ◼   ► were people still buying minis in meaningful numbers?

00:49:49 ◼   ► And for most of what we've heard

00:49:51 ◼   ► are from various analysts and stuff, the answer is no.

00:49:54 ◼   ► But if anyone was thinking about buying a mini,

00:49:57 ◼   ► they would look at this lineup now

00:49:58 ◼   ► and they would have serious second thoughts.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Because why would you?

00:50:03 ◼   ► I think that the new cheap 9.7 is probably better

00:50:06 ◼   ► in pretty much every way except size.

00:50:09 ◼   ► and maybe screen quality with the laminating method

00:50:13 ◼   ► and stuff, but basically there's no reason to buy it now.

00:50:18 ◼   ► And there's been lots of speculation about why the Mini

00:50:21 ◼   ► is not doing that well, assuming that's true,

00:50:25 ◼   ► assuming it's not selling very well,

00:50:26 ◼   ► which I think it's based on what people have been able

00:50:29 ◼   ► to derive from earnings and stuff like that,

00:50:31 ◼   ► it does seem like that's probably the case,

00:50:34 ◼   ► that it's not really selling well at all.

00:50:36 ◼   ► And there's lots of reasons why that might be.

00:50:37 ◼   ► I mean, we talked years ago about how the iPad in general

00:50:41 ◼   ► was being squeezed on both sides by Macbooks

00:50:45 ◼   ► and MacBook Airs and stuff getting smaller

00:50:47 ◼   ► and better and lighter, maybe taking away

00:50:49 ◼   ► some of the high end of iPad size-wise,

00:50:52 ◼   ► and then phones getting bigger and even more awesome

00:50:55 ◼   ► and big enough that you would often just not want

00:50:58 ◼   ► to have a separate device for a tablet anymore.

00:51:00 ◼   ► You would just have a phone,

00:51:01 ◼   ► and that would take your tablet roll close enough.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And I think that the market has kind of supported this theory

00:51:08 ◼   ► that indeed tablets are getting squeezed

00:51:10 ◼   ► by both of those sides.

00:51:12 ◼   ► And if you look at the iPad lineup, I feel like the mini

00:51:15 ◼   ► is the one that is most likely to get squeezed out first,

00:51:20 ◼   ► if that makes sense, by these forces.

00:51:22 ◼   ► Because if you have the bigger iPads,

00:51:26 ◼   ► there's probably something you do on them

00:51:29 ◼   ► or something you like about the bigger screen size

00:51:30 ◼   ► or whatever else that maybe your phone can't do.

00:51:33 ◼   ► The Mini though is, I mean it's still a lot bigger

00:51:36 ◼   ► than even the biggest phones,

00:51:38 ◼   ► but it's a smaller difference, you know?

00:51:41 ◼   ► And so that's why I feel like it probably

00:51:44 ◼   ► wasn't selling well because most people who buy it

00:51:48 ◼   ► were either looking for like basically a bigger device

00:51:52 ◼   ► that's still somewhat small,

00:51:55 ◼   ► which now big phones do better,

00:51:57 ◼   ► or were buying it because it was the cheapest iPad,

00:52:01 ◼   ► and now it isn't.

00:52:02 ◼   ► I think it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy to not update the iPad Mini for two years

00:52:06 ◼   ► and say, "Well, it's not selling that well."

00:52:08 ◼   ► I know that's not the only reason.

00:52:09 ◼   ► I think everything you said is true, especially about price, because when the Mini first came

00:52:13 ◼   ► out its big selling point was like, "Hey, it's the cheapest way you can get into an

00:52:15 ◼   ► iPad."

00:52:16 ◼   ► But there is, like, you know, Apple always does these photos, and other people will compose

00:52:21 ◼   ► them as well.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Line up all of the glass and aluminum rectangles that run iOS that Apple sells, and you expect

00:52:28 ◼   ► to see some kind of reasonable gradation from the smallest to the biggest.

00:52:32 ◼   ► at various points there have been weird jumps in the size of it and if you put prices along

00:52:36 ◼   ► with them too then so there's weird jumps and they're like okay well these ones are

00:52:39 ◼   ► phones and these ones aren't technically phones but you can get them with LTE but you can't

00:52:43 ◼   ► make phone calls on them unless you FaceTime audio it's like it's this weird differentiation

00:52:48 ◼   ► but that continuum you know that the plus size phones have to have hurt the mini size

00:52:54 ◼   ► factor now with the possible size reshuffling of this rumors of the bigger than 9.7 inch

00:53:01 ◼   ► but smaller than 12 point whatever inch iPod or iPad Pro whatever it'll be like 10 and a half inch

00:53:08 ◼   ► or something like that that in other words that the quote unquote normal iPad size will get bigger

00:53:13 ◼   ► or at least the screen will get bigger and maybe the margins will pull in again or whatever.

00:53:16 ◼   ► If that happens does that open up a big enough gap for something that is not as big as that new iPad

00:53:25 ◼   ► size but not as small as an iPhone 7 plus? Does that does that open up that gap enough for them

00:53:30 ◼   ► them to put one in there because I think there are customers who want that entire range.

00:53:36 ◼   ► If the spacing in the range is right, if it's not too close to the phone, if it's not too

00:53:40 ◼   ► close to the, you know, the next size of a viapad, and if the pricing is right, if for

00:53:45 ◼   ► the smaller thing you spend less money, which is a perception that customers have, and there

00:53:50 ◼   ► is some vague reality because bigger screens are slightly more expensive than smaller screens.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Unfortunately for Apple, the internal guts don't get cheaper unless you give them crappier

00:53:58 ◼   ► guts and that really hurts the product. What people want, same thing the iPhone SE people

00:54:03 ◼   ► want is like, "Give me the best insides, just a smaller outside." And Apple's like, "Eh,

00:54:08 ◼   ► that doesn't, it's not great for us. We'd rather give you the same insides with a slightly

00:54:14 ◼   ► more expensive screen and charge you a hundred extra bucks for it and call it the iPhone

00:54:17 ◼   ► 7 Plus." Like, they like that end of it as opposed to, "Shrink the screen by some percentage.

00:54:22 ◼   ► You save a few bucks on the screen, but all the rest of the insides, I want them to be

00:54:25 ◼   ► just as good as the iPad Pro.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Well, then I can't really price that.

00:54:30 ◼   ► People want to look at the rectangle and say the smaller rectangles cost less money than

00:54:34 ◼   ► the bigger rectangles, but it gets totally messed up by this iPhone 7 Plus, which is

00:54:39 ◼   ► super expensive, and then to go back down to a lower price for the in-between iPad is

00:54:45 ◼   ► a difficult problem.

00:54:46 ◼   ► But I think there is a place in Apple's lineup for something around the size of the

00:54:54 ◼   ► But it totally could be that this particular mini is the wrong size in the new lineup and obviously it's currently the wrong price

00:55:00 ◼   ► So we'll see how this shakes out

00:55:03 ◼   ► but if it disappears for a while and

00:55:04 ◼   ► Like makes a comeback as like an 8-inch iPad or something in a few years when they're filling in the gaps

00:55:10 ◼   ► I won't be super surprised at that because you know, I

00:55:13 ◼   ► We learned anything from the big phone thing. Is it different people have

00:55:18 ◼   ► different size

00:55:21 ◼   ► holes in their life to put

00:55:23 ◼   ► rectangles with screens whether it is your pocket or your purse or your backpack or your end table or your nightstand or whatever

00:55:30 ◼   ► There you know we all find the size of the device that fits into our lives

00:55:35 ◼   ► You know or whatever

00:55:36 ◼   ► Maybe it's just like the first one you got you get used to it you build your habits around it

00:55:39 ◼   ► And if the mini goes away entirely I bet there's a bunch of people still running around with minis who?

00:55:44 ◼   ► won't be enthusiastic about buying something bigger and

00:55:47 ◼   ► Won't be enthusiastic about you know replacing you with a big phone because maybe they don't want a big phone like maybe they're

00:55:53 ◼   ► iPhone SE users. So now they have this role that's just not being filled and they're going

00:55:57 ◼   ► to end up getting like a seven-inch Android tablet or something and be sad. So I await

00:56:03 ◼   ► the iPad Mini's glorious comeback, even if it never actually goes away, because at this

00:56:07 ◼   ► point it needs to come back, even though it's still for sale. They're selling one model

00:56:11 ◼   ► that's really old for a crappy price, it needs to come back now. So if it wants to take a

00:56:15 ◼   ► break and then come back, I'm fine. Or if they just want to replace the W2C, I'm fine

00:56:20 ◼   ► for that too.

00:56:21 ◼   ► I feel like almost all of this could have been said

00:56:23 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro, and I don't mean that to be silly.

00:56:25 ◼   ► I mean, it's a model that's kind of been on life support.

00:56:29 ◼   ► They're kind of making sure everyone stops buying it

00:56:32 ◼   ► because they won't update it.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Like so much of this is, I don't know,

00:56:35 ◼   ► I don't wanna say it's becoming the Apple norm,

00:56:37 ◼   ► but certainly we're seeing more than one data point

00:56:39 ◼   ► of this strategy of just kind of making it

00:56:42 ◼   ► fade into the distance.

00:56:43 ◼   ► - It's more like the Mac Mini because the role

00:56:46 ◼   ► of the iPad Mini, and the Mac's right there in the name,

00:56:48 ◼   ► the role of both the iPad Mini and the Mac Mini

00:56:50 ◼   ► is not to be the fastest, most awesome computer for its most demanding users.

00:56:54 ◼   ► That's always a thorn in the side about the Mac Pro, is that particular role.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Other devices you could say, you know, well, it's always been the most boring,

00:57:03 ◼   ► least popular, with the least attention paid to it.

00:57:06 ◼   ► That's not really true of the iPad Mini.

00:57:08 ◼   ► When it came out, it was the darling.

00:57:09 ◼   ► It's like, wow, they finally made a smaller tablet.

00:57:11 ◼   ► And wow, look how well it's selling.

00:57:12 ◼   ► And then the next, you know, Ernie's call, like, wow, look at the iPad ASPs.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:57:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and also, like, the iPad Mini

00:57:22 ◼   ► competes now against areas in which Apple

00:57:25 ◼   ► is doing worse and worse over time,

00:57:27 ◼   ► namely very cheap tablets.

00:57:29 ◼   ► Like, it was always the budget option, the value option,

00:57:33 ◼   ► the option that maybe you'd get for kids.

00:57:35 ◼   ► And actually, on my kid, his iPad is a Mini,

00:57:37 ◼   ► an old one that I had collecting dust in a drawer

00:57:40 ◼   ► for a while, and he loves it, it's great.

00:57:42 ◼   ► Like, it's a really good kid size.

00:57:44 ◼   ► So it is a nice size to offer.

00:57:46 ◼   ► However, in that market, in the market for smaller,

00:57:50 ◼   ► ideally as cheap as possible tablets,

00:57:53 ◼   ► Apple has not done well in a very long time.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Basically since there have been other tablets,

00:57:58 ◼   ► besides the iPad, that were at all competitive.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Now there are so many other options

00:58:03 ◼   ► and I think the market research has supported this idea

00:58:07 ◼   ► that there's basically two tablet markets.

00:58:09 ◼   ► There's tablets that are basically used as screens

00:58:14 ◼   ► video playback and not much else. And then there's like computing tablets that people

00:58:19 ◼   ► use like for computing tasks and stuff like that. And the iPad does very well in the latter

00:58:24 ◼   ► category and if you restrict what you're looking at to tablets priced above a certain

00:58:31 ◼   ► level, maybe it's like priced above $300 or whatever, Apple does great by share in

00:58:35 ◼   ► that market. But the total tablet market, most of the tablets being sold are these cheap

00:58:41 ◼   ► that are being sold for very simple purposes

00:58:44 ◼   ► where the OS and the quality of the tablet

00:58:46 ◼   ► matter a lot less.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And so Apple doesn't do well there.

00:58:50 ◼   ► And the iPad mini might have served that role

00:58:53 ◼   ► for a few years in the middle there

00:58:55 ◼   ► before the rest of the world kind of caught up to that.

00:58:58 ◼   ► But now anyone looking for a super cheap tablet

00:59:02 ◼   ► for some like, you know, embedded use

00:59:03 ◼   ► or some kind of disposable use is not going iPad at all.

00:59:07 ◼   ► They're going with something very cheap

00:59:08 ◼   ► from Amazon or something.

00:59:09 ◼   ► So I think maybe Apple decided to bow out of that market

00:59:13 ◼   ► because it just isn't, you know,

00:59:16 ◼   ► it isn't, not only was it not profitable per unit

00:59:19 ◼   ► for them maybe, but maybe in order to succeed

00:59:23 ◼   ► at selling into that market at a very good rate,

00:59:26 ◼   ► they would have to lower the price even further

00:59:28 ◼   ► to the point where they don't even,

00:59:29 ◼   ► it's not even worth them competing at all.

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01:01:02 ◼   ► Speaking of other rumors, suddenly there's new laptops coming. And my best, or my favorite

01:01:13 ◼   ► part of this is not only are there new laptops coming, but they're to take on Microsoft,

01:01:20 ◼   ► which is kind of interesting.

01:01:22 ◼   ► This is in Bloomberg by Mark Ehrman and Alex Webb,

01:01:25 ◼   ► and basically they're saying,

01:01:27 ◼   ► "Well, Microsoft is really doing well these days

01:01:31 ◼   ► "with all their fancy new laptops and tablets

01:01:34 ◼   ► "and whatever they are, Surfaces,

01:01:36 ◼   ► "so maybe Apple will update some stuff after all,

01:01:41 ◼   ► "especially the MacBook, which would make me very happy."

01:01:44 ◼   ► And interestingly, they're saying

01:01:45 ◼   ► that this might happen at WWDC,

01:01:47 ◼   ► which, I mean, certainly computers have been unveiled

01:01:49 ◼   ► WWDC, but it's not a terribly common occurrence.

01:01:55 ◼   ► So I'm very intrigued by this, I'm super skeptical, but it would make me very happy, if nothing

01:02:02 ◼   ► else, if I could finally buy a MacBook that I've wanted for like six months now.

01:02:06 ◼   ► So I think what we want out of revised MacBooks is more like what they hinted at at the MacPro

01:02:12 ◼   ► event, where people, you know, the people who were there were asking, "Hey, what about

01:02:16 ◼   ► the MacBooks and were you surprised by the reactions and blah blah blah and they vaguely

01:02:20 ◼   ► hinted that they're looking into the idea of making a new version of the MacBook Pros

01:02:26 ◼   ► that is more satisfying to the people who are upset with the current ones for whatever

01:02:31 ◼   ► reason.

01:02:32 ◼   ► Obviously they don't go into any details, but it makes everyone who's reading about

01:02:34 ◼   ► that say, "Ooh, maybe they'll add more ports!" or, you know, "Maybe they'll think about the

01:02:41 ◼   ► Touch Bar some more!" or, you know, if you're KC, "Maybe they'll actually update the 12-inch

01:02:46 ◼   ► MacBook to have faster insides because it totally needs them.

01:02:49 ◼   ► And everyone's dreams just attach to the vague idea that they're going to revise them with

01:02:53 ◼   ► -- which, of course, they always do.

01:02:55 ◼   ► This rumor seems suspect on the whole to take on a Microsoft angle because Microsoft may

01:03:01 ◼   ► be introducing hardware that's causing people to write stories about it, but their surface

01:03:05 ◼   ► sales numbers are not particularly indicative of a world-conquering product line, at least

01:03:12 ◼   ► not yet.

01:03:13 ◼   ► And the things they're talking about even just in this rumor seem like, I mean, fine,

01:03:17 ◼   ► it's a good speed bump, especially for the 12-inch MacBook that needs it.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And the other ones, you know, couldn't hurt.

01:03:22 ◼   ► We all like speed bumps like they're good.

01:03:24 ◼   ► But it doesn't seem like in a WWDC timeframe they could have the newly rethought revised

01:03:31 ◼   ► different in ways that will make people who didn't like the first ones happy about them

01:03:36 ◼   ► sort of MacBook Pros.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Like if you're expecting a new MacBook Pro with an SD card slot and maybe more different

01:03:45 ◼   ► ports on the other side of the thing to arrive at WWC, that seems highly unlikely to me.

01:03:50 ◼   ► There's also mixed in with this rumor the idea that they would update the 13-inch MacBook

01:03:55 ◼   ► Air with new processors, which at this point, we all love speed bumps, and if you want to

01:04:01 ◼   ► update the internals, that's fine, but they cannot update the MacBook Air again with leaving

01:04:05 ◼   ► that screen.

01:04:06 ◼   ► It is an embarrassment.

01:04:07 ◼   ► It is just, it's not even just that it's non-retina, it's that it's non-retina and it's not even

01:04:12 ◼   ► a good non-retina screen.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And it has not been a good non, I don't think it was ever a good non-retina screen, but

01:04:17 ◼   ► it was acceptable for the price point at one point, but now it's just embarrassing.

01:04:21 ◼   ► So if they want to update the, here's their problem.

01:04:24 ◼   ► If they updated the internals of the 13-inch MacBook Air and put a retina screen on it,

01:04:28 ◼   ► it would suddenly become their best-selling portable again.

01:04:30 ◼   ► And I don't know if Apple really wants that.

01:04:32 ◼   ► - That's so true.

01:04:34 ◼   ► - Oh, that's so true.

01:04:35 ◼   ► I don't know, Marco, thoughts?

01:04:37 ◼   ► - It's unlikely that people are gonna get what they want,

01:04:40 ◼   ► because it has been such a short time.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Everyone has a wish list for what they wish

01:04:45 ◼   ► the new MacBooks did, myself included,

01:04:47 ◼   ► or changes they wish for them.

01:04:49 ◼   ► And ever since I switched to the Escape,

01:04:52 ◼   ► I love the MacBook Escape so, so much in almost every way.

01:04:57 ◼   ► But of course I have a wish list too.

01:05:00 ◼   ► My key, I got a stuck key the other day.

01:05:02 ◼   ► my O key doesn't work anymore.

01:05:04 ◼   ► And then I kind of jiggled around

01:05:06 ◼   ► and then started working again.

01:05:06 ◼   ► So maybe there's something stuck under there.

01:05:08 ◼   ► And I tweeted about it and I heard from so many people

01:05:12 ◼   ► who have had multiple keyboard failures.

01:05:15 ◼   ► And key, like the new keyboard,

01:05:18 ◼   ► in addition to all of its other problems

01:05:20 ◼   ► of having very low travel, being hard to feel,

01:05:25 ◼   ► being very weirdly loud in a very unpleasant way,

01:05:29 ◼   ► all the different problems the new keyboard has.

01:05:32 ◼   ► the arrow keys being the way they are.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Another problem that it seems like is possibly

01:05:38 ◼   ► a pretty big problem with them

01:05:39 ◼   ► is that they fail all the time.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Like, it seems like this is a big thing.

01:05:44 ◼   ► You know, we heard from 12-inch MacBook owners

01:05:48 ◼   ► for the last couple of years

01:05:49 ◼   ► that it was a big problem on that.

01:05:50 ◼   ► And it seems like whatever the revision was

01:05:53 ◼   ► that they did to make it a little bit clickier and louder

01:05:54 ◼   ► for the new MacBook Pros last year,

01:05:57 ◼   ► it seems like that didn't get fixed.

01:05:59 ◼   ► It seems like they still fail all the time.

01:06:02 ◼   ► - I have a theory on this.

01:06:04 ◼   ► Not having owned any one of these keyboards,

01:06:05 ◼   ► but having seen the previous ones,

01:06:08 ◼   ► I have a theory on what the failure mode might be,

01:06:10 ◼   ► and maybe you can check your O-key

01:06:12 ◼   ► to see if this is the case.

01:06:13 ◼   ► In addition to having less travel,

01:06:16 ◼   ► and having a slightly different activation mechanism

01:06:19 ◼   ► underneath the keycaps,

01:06:21 ◼   ► another thing that distinguishes to my eyes anyway,

01:06:23 ◼   ► the new crop of very low profile keyboards

01:06:26 ◼   ► on these portables,

01:06:27 ◼   ► is that the gap between the top case and the key

01:06:32 ◼   ► is smaller than it used to be,

01:06:34 ◼   ► which is great for like this looks fancy and expensive

01:06:37 ◼   ► and it's precision engineering

01:06:39 ◼   ► to just cut out the hole just big enough

01:06:42 ◼   ► for the key cap to slide up and down.

01:06:44 ◼   ► But if anything manages to wiggle its way through that gap,

01:06:49 ◼   ► A, it's not coming back out the way it came in

01:06:51 ◼   ► because the gap is really, really small,

01:06:53 ◼   ► and B, if it gets itself underneath the key cap

01:06:56 ◼   ► to enough of a degree that it causes the thing

01:06:58 ◼   ► not to activate.

01:06:59 ◼   ► I've seen this exact problem with my keyboard

01:07:02 ◼   ► and the old laptop keyboards,

01:07:04 ◼   ► the old Apple flat key cap ones,

01:07:07 ◼   ► because the gap was big enough for lots of junk

01:07:09 ◼   ► to fall under there, but it was easier also to get it out,

01:07:12 ◼   ► even without prying the key cap off,

01:07:13 ◼   ► and it would sort of jiggle loose.

01:07:15 ◼   ► I'm wondering if the new ones are kind of like

01:07:17 ◼   ► a one-way trap for mice or whatever,

01:07:20 ◼   ► that is a really, really skinny opening,

01:07:22 ◼   ► and small bits of dust or food crumbs

01:07:26 ◼   ► or whatever the heck else is floating around

01:07:27 ◼   ► can get in there, but there's no way in hell

01:07:29 ◼   ► they can get back out and stuff builds up

01:07:30 ◼   ► and it causes them to fail.

01:07:31 ◼   ► That's just a theory.

01:07:32 ◼   ► If people have failing keyboards and they say,

01:07:34 ◼   ► "No, it's actually the key switch."

01:07:35 ◼   ► I don't know what the actual problem is.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And I'm assuming you don't know either

01:07:38 ◼   ► 'cause all you're doing is kinda poking at it like an ape

01:07:41 ◼   ► and wiggling the O key.

01:07:41 ◼   ► "Oh, work now key, okay, key work now."

01:07:44 ◼   ► Like what can you do?

01:07:46 ◼   ► Have you pried off the key cap yet?

01:07:48 ◼   ► - I haven't and I don't think you can on these.

01:07:50 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure, I have to verify this,

01:07:52 ◼   ► maybe I'm sure people will email us.

01:07:54 ◼   ► - I fix it, probably not.

01:07:55 ◼   ► - But I think somebody told me that

01:07:58 ◼   ► with this new butterfly switch type

01:08:01 ◼   ► that they use in these new keyboards,

01:08:02 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure you can't actually pop them off

01:08:05 ◼   ► for service or cleaning.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And whenever people say that,

01:08:09 ◼   ► when people were telling me all their stories on Twitter

01:08:11 ◼   ► about getting these keyboards replaced,

01:08:13 ◼   ► by the way, this laptop line has been out

01:08:15 ◼   ► for six months or something, like seven months,

01:08:17 ◼   ► it's not that long.

01:08:18 ◼   ► So to have a whole bunch of keyboard failures this soon

01:08:20 ◼   ► is not good.

01:08:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, like it could be, you know,

01:08:23 ◼   ► it could be a design flaw.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Like if it turns out that that little gap

01:08:25 ◼   ► is great for looking cool in photos

01:08:27 ◼   ► but terrible for actual use, then that's your problem.

01:08:29 ◼   ► And getting a new keyboard is not gonna solve it,

01:08:30 ◼   ► it's just gonna reset your timer.

01:08:32 ◼   ► - I mean, I would argue that's the failure mode

01:08:33 ◼   ► of almost every decision on this keyboard.

01:08:35 ◼   ► It's designed for product photos,

01:08:37 ◼   ► but not good in actual use.

01:08:38 ◼   ► - Some people like typing on it, some people like it.

01:08:40 ◼   ► - I mean, some people like Dell PCs, you know?

01:08:44 ◼   ► Some people like Dave Matthews Band.

01:08:45 ◼   ► - Is there a quota?

01:08:49 ◼   ► Is there a frickin' quota at this point?

01:08:50 ◼   ► What the hell is this?

01:08:52 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, I'm super skeptical of the timing.

01:08:57 ◼   ► I'm super skeptical that Microsoft is the reason why.

01:09:00 ◼   ► - Oh, Microsoft is definitely not the reason why.

01:09:03 ◼   ► If they're gonna change anything,

01:09:04 ◼   ► it's gonna be because of feedback from Apple's customers

01:09:08 ◼   ► or performance of the sales that are maybe not doing

01:09:11 ◼   ► what Apple wants them to do or things like that.

01:09:13 ◼   ► It's not gonna be about what Microsoft is doing

01:09:16 ◼   ► in their laptop line because--

01:09:17 ◼   ► - Or because the 12-inch MacBook really needs an update.

01:09:21 ◼   ► Right? - Yeah.

01:09:22 ◼   ► - Like that's the other reason to do it.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Well, it's been a kind of a long time.

01:09:25 ◼   ► - Does Apple care about that though?

01:09:26 ◼   ► Really?

01:09:27 ◼   ► I think they've shown that they mostly don't.

01:09:29 ◼   ► - Maybe we're hoping that like one of the lessons

01:09:31 ◼   ► it learns from the Mac Pro fiasco

01:09:33 ◼   ► is that if you want people to think that you care

01:09:37 ◼   ► and to not be afraid to buy your computers

01:09:39 ◼   ► and to not be angry when they buy them,

01:09:40 ◼   ► that like update them on it.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Not me, you know, there'll always be ones

01:09:43 ◼   ► that are the least favorite child,

01:09:45 ◼   ► like the Mac Mini or whatever.

01:09:46 ◼   ► But the MacBook, the new MacBook, the MacBook One,

01:09:49 ◼   ► the 12-inch MacBook, the MacBook Adorable,

01:09:53 ◼   ► that's not supposed to be a forgotten child.

01:09:55 ◼   ► That was one of your flagship, we're so excited,

01:09:57 ◼   ► look at this amazing new thin computer.

01:09:58 ◼   ► And then a couple of revisions later,

01:10:00 ◼   ► it's like, eh, 18 months, two years,

01:10:03 ◼   ► do we really need to update it that often?

01:10:05 ◼   ► And that's bad, that's a bad look.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Like someone has to be the favorite child in that lineup,

01:10:09 ◼   ► it can't just be the MacBook Pros.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And even those went a long time

01:10:12 ◼   ► before the touch bars appeared.

01:10:14 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I mean, that's why I like,

01:10:16 ◼   ► I think if Apple's going to change anything else

01:10:20 ◼   ► with the Kaby Lake revisions of these laptops,

01:10:23 ◼   ► if they're gonna make any other edits to the design,

01:10:26 ◼   ► it's probably not gonna be anything large,

01:10:29 ◼   ► it's probably not gonna be anything that would require

01:10:31 ◼   ► like new cases or anything like that.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I think it's most likely to be price changes

01:10:36 ◼   ► or new low end configurations to hit new lower price points

01:10:40 ◼   ► because I think much of the criticism has correctly

01:10:45 ◼   ► been about the increased prices of these new laptops

01:10:48 ◼   ► compared to the old ones.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And so if Apple just dropped some prices a few hundred bucks

01:10:52 ◼   ► on a couple of models here and there,

01:10:54 ◼   ► or makes like a new low-end 15 inch

01:10:57 ◼   ► that doesn't have the discrete GPU,

01:10:58 ◼   ► and prices that-- - That's time

01:10:59 ◼   ► to come up eventually. - Of course.

01:11:00 ◼   ► - It's the Marco's wishes.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Just a 15 inch with real keys,

01:11:03 ◼   ► but also with touch ID, but with no discrete GPU.

01:11:05 ◼   ► That's the Marco computer.

01:11:06 ◼   ► - A 15 inch escape, basically.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Like that-- - With touch ID, don't forget.

01:11:10 ◼   ► - Oh, that would be great,

01:11:11 ◼   ► but I'm not holding my breath on that one yet.

01:11:13 ◼   ► But like-- - I feel like

01:11:14 ◼   ► I think that's a change they could do for even for, I'm hoping that Touch ID proliferates,

01:11:20 ◼   ► that it spreads across the Mac line slowly but surely because it is like a universal

01:11:25 ◼   ► good.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Like as long as you can find a place somewhere to put it, who doesn't want that to authenticate

01:11:31 ◼   ► and do all sorts of things?

01:11:32 ◼   ► I think it would be very popular just like it's popular on phones.

01:11:36 ◼   ► But if it has to come with a touch bar, then suddenly at least Marco is less interested

01:11:39 ◼   ► in it and it's more difficult to implement.

01:11:42 ◼   ► And so I'm hoping that it's more expensive.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm hoping a touch ID on, well, you have to end up putting like the secure enclave

01:11:48 ◼   ► and everything in there anyway, so once you have all that it's like, well, we basically

01:11:51 ◼   ► have the guts for the touch bar, why don't we add it?

01:11:53 ◼   ► But anyway, touch ID spreading to like the escape lineup does not seem out of the question

01:12:01 ◼   ► for me.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Unfortunately for you, Marco, I think the even more likely scenario is the escape disappears

01:12:05 ◼   ► as the touch bar proliferates across the entire line as it comes down in price and so on.

01:12:10 ◼   ► that is definitely a big risk to the escape line.

01:12:13 ◼   ► But I think it's more likely that it would just

01:12:16 ◼   ► replace the MacBook Air eventually as the cheap one.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And so they would keep this configuration around,

01:12:22 ◼   ► basically just like the Air is now,

01:12:24 ◼   ► they would update it occasionally,

01:12:26 ◼   ► but probably not even as often as the rest of them.

01:12:28 ◼   ► And they would push it slowly towards $1,000.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Right now it starts at $1,500,

01:12:32 ◼   ► so there's a long way to go.

01:12:34 ◼   ► - The iPhone SE of the Mac laptop line.

01:12:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it really might be, honestly.

01:12:39 ◼   ► because again, it's an awesome computer.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Really, my biggest complaint about it

01:12:43 ◼   ► is that it's not a very good value,

01:12:45 ◼   ► and then my second biggest complaint about it

01:12:47 ◼   ► is the keyboard sucking.

01:12:50 ◼   ► But other than those two things, it is quite awesome.

01:12:55 ◼   ► And yeah, I would love another USB port,

01:12:58 ◼   ► I would love an SD card reader,

01:13:00 ◼   ► but those aren't massive problems for me.

01:13:03 ◼   ► It's just a really nice computer.

01:13:06 ◼   ► I really enjoy the MacBook escape.

01:13:08 ◼   ► and I enjoy it more and more the more I use it,

01:13:11 ◼   ► which is the opposite direction my opinion took

01:13:12 ◼   ► of the 15 inch Touch Bar model.

01:13:15 ◼   ► I think that one of the more interesting questions is

01:13:18 ◼   ► what do they do with the Touch Bar?

01:13:20 ◼   ► Because I think it's pretty clear by this point,

01:13:22 ◼   ► now we've had seven months or whatever,

01:13:25 ◼   ► we've had enough time for everyone's keyboards to die,

01:13:29 ◼   ► so I think it's enough time to judge the Touch Bar

01:13:32 ◼   ► a little more objectively than when it first came out.

01:13:36 ◼   ► And I've heard a few other podcasts talking like,

01:13:38 ◼   ► "So hey, how are you using the touch bar these days?

01:13:40 ◼   ► "Are you getting into it?

01:13:41 ◼   ► "What do you think of it now?"

01:13:42 ◼   ► And the universal opinion from nearly everybody

01:13:46 ◼   ► seems to be either negative or kind of middling.

01:13:50 ◼   ► I haven't heard from anybody who loves the touch bar.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I haven't heard from anybody who's like,

01:13:56 ◼   ► "Man, I use it all the time.

01:13:57 ◼   ► "I'm so glad of all the new capabilities it offers,"

01:13:59 ◼   ► or whatever else.

01:14:01 ◼   ► I haven't heard of any interesting app uses for it.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And I think it'll be interesting to see

01:14:06 ◼   ► what Apple does with that?

01:14:08 ◼   ► 'Cause I think they've kind of felt this too,

01:14:10 ◼   ► that the touch bar did not land as well

01:14:13 ◼   ► as they hoped it would.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Will we see more options in the future,

01:14:17 ◼   ► such as a 15-inch escape?

01:14:19 ◼   ► More options without the touch bar

01:14:21 ◼   ► for people who don't want the touch bar itself

01:14:23 ◼   ► or don't wanna pay the premium for it?

01:14:25 ◼   ► Or will Apple kinda double down on it

01:14:27 ◼   ► and kinda force it into the market as much as possible,

01:14:31 ◼   ► even more so than they do now,

01:14:32 ◼   ► and eliminate all the options that don't have it anymore?

01:14:35 ◼   ► I think it's way too soon to judge the success of the touch bar in no small part because

01:14:42 ◼   ► for a lot of people they

01:14:45 ◼   ► often don't buy

01:14:47 ◼   ► Laptops for themselves. They just use whatever laptop work issues them and I can assure you that

01:14:53 ◼   ► Most workplaces that I've ever worked are on two to three year

01:14:58 ◼   ► refresh cycles and a lot of workplaces aren't really buying touch bars yet in part because they don't have to and

01:15:05 ◼   ► And so I think it's--I would say it's not worth judging the touch bar as a success or

01:15:12 ◼   ► a failure for at least another year, if not another two years.

01:15:17 ◼   ► So for me, this job and the last job I was at, I was on a three-year cycle.

01:15:22 ◼   ► So every three years I get a new computer, which means I'm not getting a new computer

01:15:26 ◼   ► for two more years, and I've been at my job over a year now.

01:15:30 ◼   ► So I mean, we are two years removed from me getting a new computer, which if history tells

01:15:36 ◼   ► us anything, it means I'll be getting the exact Touch Bar model that's out right now.

01:15:41 ◼   ► But you see what I'm driving at.

01:15:42 ◼   ► It's a long time for a lot of people to get into the Touch Bar.

01:15:48 ◼   ► I think we're judging it way prematurely.

01:15:51 ◼   ► One of the things—my work made some judgment on the Touch Bar model, because I am due to

01:15:55 ◼   ► get a new computer, but my work refuses to buy the Touch Bar models because they perceive

01:16:00 ◼   ► them to not be a good enough value upgrade over the old ones.

01:16:06 ◼   ► So work I have, I guess it's the 2015 MacBook Pro, whatever.

01:16:10 ◼   ► I don't know the specific model that I have.

01:16:11 ◼   ► But anyway, the pre-Touch Bar MacBook Pros.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Does it have a force click track pad?

01:16:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Then it's 2015.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I'm wondering if I have a 2015.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Was that literally the last one before the Touch Bar?

01:16:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:24 ◼   ► If it's a 15 inch and if it has force touch, then it's 2015.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Yep, that's what I have.

01:16:29 ◼   ► And I think that's what you probably have too, Jon.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Yeah, but anyway, this is not just a company saying, "Oh, we're on this upgrade cycle

01:16:35 ◼   ► and we're not thinking about buying one."

01:16:38 ◼   ► I was waiting to get the Touch Bar ones, like, "Well, the Touch Bar ones are out and you

01:16:42 ◼   ► have no more laptops in stock, so you're going to have to buy a new one.

01:16:46 ◼   ► And when you buy a new one, obviously you're going to buy the Touch Bar ones."

01:16:49 ◼   ► And they were like, "No, they still sell the old ones.

01:16:52 ◼   ► We're not buying the Touch Bar ones.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Why not?"

01:16:54 ◼   ► "Well, they're expensive and get worse battery life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

01:16:57 ◼   ► And so that's a judgment call.

01:16:59 ◼   ► They're not making it based upon the touch bar, but the company is deciding that these

01:17:02 ◼   ► are not better enough and are worse in enough ways that they don't want to deal with it.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Now eventually they'll have to be – if this touch bar spreads everywhere, eventually they'll

01:17:10 ◼   ► have to buy them because they'll have no choice.

01:17:11 ◼   ► But that is not a – I'm sure Apple doesn't like the idea that a corporation decided not

01:17:18 ◼   ► to buy their new laptops and continues to buy the old ones.

01:17:21 ◼   ► I mean maybe that happens all the time in enterprise, I don't know.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Meanwhile my computer at work is eight years old.

01:17:27 ◼   ► - It's great pairing with my home computer.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - But that's what I'm saying,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I think Apple could solve a lot of this need

01:17:33 ◼   ► by just making a couple of low-end configurations

01:17:35 ◼   ► and making them cheaper.

01:17:37 ◼   ► And then that would get people like your company

01:17:40 ◼   ► to at least get their foot in the door

01:17:42 ◼   ► for new upgrades and the new line,

01:17:43 ◼   ► because now instead of starting at 2,300

01:17:46 ◼   ► or whatever it starts at,

01:17:47 ◼   ► now it might start at 1,900 or something like that.

01:17:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know, we'll see.

01:17:52 ◼   ► It's just such a hard thing,

01:17:53 ◼   ► but the only thing I feel like I know for sure

01:17:56 ◼   ► that it's way too early to judge.

01:17:57 ◼   ► And we need a little time to kind of figure out

01:18:01 ◼   ► whether or not this is for real.

01:18:03 ◼   ► And I think one way for Apple to compel adoption

01:18:07 ◼   ► or to compel people to take the touch bar more seriously,

01:18:11 ◼   ► well, I guess two ways.

01:18:12 ◼   ► One is to make them cheaper or a better value

01:18:14 ◼   ► by whatever metric that may be.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And two is to just force it across the entire line.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see.

01:18:21 ◼   ► It'd be cool to have some hardware at WWDC though.

01:18:23 ◼   ► That'd be neat.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I doubt it'll happen, but it would be neat.

01:18:26 ◼   ► One thing that Marco can be optimistic about, by the way, speaking of his complaints with laptops,

01:18:30 ◼   ► is that Apple has shown that it is willing to revise the new weird keyboard that he hates,

01:18:37 ◼   ► because it was released on one model of computer, and then when the new MacBook Pros came out,

01:18:42 ◼   ► one of the things that was emphasized was that they had made a revision to what appears to be

01:18:49 ◼   ► the same keyboard, presumably in response to people using the MacBook One and not being happy

01:18:54 ◼   ► with the keyboard. Now this has a different set of problems of being noisy and maybe they both

01:18:58 ◼   ► have the problem of the keys dying or whatever, but I was encouraged by the fact that they didn't

01:19:04 ◼   ► say "well let's just ship this keyboard for five more years and see how things work out."

01:19:08 ◼   ► They immediately revised it and attempted to improve it and so it's not inconceivable that

01:19:13 ◼   ► the next major revision, maybe not this kind of speed bumpy thing, but the next major revision

01:19:17 ◼   ► of the laptop line will have yet a third iteration of the keyboard Margo Hates, which presumably will

01:19:23 ◼   ► make a different set of trade-offs

01:19:24 ◼   ► and maybe be better overall.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So that's something to watch for

01:19:28 ◼   ► and potentially look forward to.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - I mean, it's possible.

01:19:31 ◼   ► I just think that they went into the original MacBook 12

01:19:35 ◼   ► inch one baby, whatever, keyboard design,

01:19:38 ◼   ► and the goal of that was make this keyboard

01:19:41 ◼   ► as thin as humans will tolerate.

01:19:44 ◼   ► And they did, and they made other design decisions

01:19:46 ◼   ► around that, but that was like the invariant.

01:19:48 ◼   ► You could not, like, number one had to be thin,

01:19:52 ◼   ► and all other parts of its usability

01:19:54 ◼   ► were numbers two through N.

01:19:56 ◼   ► And with this, I think when they carried this over

01:20:00 ◼   ► into the entire MacBook Pro line,

01:20:03 ◼   ► I think that invariant held.

01:20:05 ◼   ► I think that was, again, it's like,

01:20:06 ◼   ► you can do whatever else you want to it,

01:20:08 ◼   ► but it must remain super thin.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Again, at all other costs.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Make it less reliable,

01:20:15 ◼   ► make us spend a fortune on warranty repairs,

01:20:17 ◼   ► make people hate this keyboard at a large scale.

01:20:20 ◼   ► - Well, I don't think the reliability was a factor.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Reliability may have been a result of that,

01:20:25 ◼   ► but I don't think they factored in.

01:20:26 ◼   ► I think that they expected the reliability

01:20:28 ◼   ► to be about the same as the old ones.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And only they know for sure whether it really is,

01:20:32 ◼   ► how big the scope of the problem is.

01:20:34 ◼   ► But I don't think they traded the reliability.

01:20:35 ◼   ► It just turned out perhaps to be,

01:20:37 ◼   ► oh, surprise, you made that trade off

01:20:39 ◼   ► and you didn't realize it when you made

01:20:40 ◼   ► the gaps really tight.

01:20:41 ◼   ► Which really has nothing to do with the thinness,

01:20:43 ◼   ► because that's like lateral width and stuff.

01:20:45 ◼   ► Like they could have made the gaps around the keys,

01:20:47 ◼   ► changed the size of the keycaps and make the gaps bigger.

01:20:49 ◼   ► it wouldn't have looked as nice.

01:20:50 ◼   ► It's almost like a design decision as an aesthetic design,

01:20:54 ◼   ► more than it is a functionality decision

01:20:56 ◼   ► because that gap has no influence on,

01:20:59 ◼   ► and again, assuming that gap has anything to do

01:21:01 ◼   ► with this problem, probably know it's something

01:21:02 ◼   ► entirely unrelated, but if it is that gap,

01:21:04 ◼   ► they can fix that while keeping all the thinness benefits.

01:21:07 ◼   ► - Right, but anyways, the point is,

01:21:09 ◼   ► thinness was number one priority.

01:21:12 ◼   ► Everything else was secondary to thinness.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And so it's like when they made the revision

01:21:17 ◼   ► between the 12 inch original keyboard

01:21:19 ◼   ► and the new MacBook Pro keyboard,

01:21:20 ◼   ► they said, okay, we can improve these other areas,

01:21:22 ◼   ► but you cannot make it thicker.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Whatever you do, we are using this keyboard, dammit,

01:21:29 ◼   ► and just make it tolerable a little bit more if you can.

01:21:32 ◼   ► - You know how they love to use the same keyboard everywhere.

01:21:35 ◼   ► - I don't expect any revisions of this computer

01:21:38 ◼   ► to make the keyboard significantly better

01:21:40 ◼   ► because I think, I'm not a keyboard engineer,

01:21:44 ◼   ► but just seeing the performance of this,

01:21:46 ◼   ► the original MacBook One and every other keyboard

01:21:48 ◼   ► in the world, I think in order to make it better,

01:21:51 ◼   ► in order to fix the problems with it,

01:21:53 ◼   ► they're probably gonna have to go back to a scissor switch

01:21:56 ◼   ► instead of these weird butterfly switches.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And I don't think you can get scissor switches

01:22:00 ◼   ► that are this thin that are any good.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I think that's the reason they went to this switch

01:22:03 ◼   ► in the first place.

01:22:04 ◼   ► So I don't think they're able to fix this keyboard's

01:22:08 ◼   ► biggest shortcomings without making it thicker,

01:22:11 ◼   ► which is something that I just think there is no way

01:22:15 ◼   ► that modern Apple would ever ship a laptop

01:22:18 ◼   ► that was thicker than the one that came before it,

01:22:20 ◼   ► even if it made it a lot better in a lot of different ways.

01:22:23 ◼   ► I don't see that happening.

01:22:24 ◼   ► - You could change the switching mechanism

01:22:25 ◼   ► underneath it yet again,

01:22:26 ◼   ► 'cause that's what they did with the thing

01:22:28 ◼   ► that revised the little switchy thingy,

01:22:30 ◼   ► like to have different feel and different sound,

01:22:33 ◼   ► as it turns out.

01:22:34 ◼   ► They could revise that little switchy thing again,

01:22:35 ◼   ► keeping it the same size to try to find a different balance.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Again, maybe that will or won't help reliability,

01:22:41 ◼   ► depending on what the heck the problem is,

01:22:42 ◼   ► or if it really is, you know, how big the problem is at all.

01:22:47 ◼   ► But you know, if you wait long enough,

01:22:48 ◼   ► it'll be as we talked about

01:22:49 ◼   ► when the touch bar first came out.

01:22:51 ◼   ► The other possibility is that touch bar slowly expands

01:22:53 ◼   ► to fill the entire bottom of your screen,

01:22:55 ◼   ► and now you've just got two screens

01:22:56 ◼   ► that close like a clamshell,

01:22:57 ◼   ► and you don't have to worry about key travel anymore.

01:22:58 ◼   ► Ha ha. - The MacBook DS.

01:23:00 ◼   ► - Yep. - Wow.

01:23:01 ◼   ► I don't know, I, it's hard to say what's going on in Apple,

01:23:06 ◼   ► and Marco, it almost sounded as though,

01:23:10 ◼   ► And I think I am taking this a half step further than you

01:23:13 ◼   ► intended, but it almost sounds as though you're attributing

01:23:15 ◼   ► this to malice or just unbelievable hubris.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And maybe you're right.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:23:20 ◼   ► But I think if I were to wager a guess, I think what's

01:23:23 ◼   ► really happening is Apple is saying, hey, lighter computers

01:23:27 ◼   ► and thinner computers as well-- let's leave lighter out

01:23:29 ◼   ► of it, I shouldn't have brought that up-- thinner

01:23:31 ◼   ► computers, generally speaking, are better for everyone.

01:23:34 ◼   ► I would like a thinner computer.

01:23:36 ◼   ► Now granted, I may not want to make a bunch of the trade-offs

01:23:38 ◼   ► necessary to get it thinner, but if you said to me, "You know, you don't have to make any

01:23:43 ◼   ► trade-offs, but would you like your computer thinner?" Well, yes. Yes, I would. And everyone

01:23:48 ◼   ► likes thinner computers. Part of the reason I want this MacBook so bad is because it's

01:23:51 ◼   ► so portable and so thin. And, I don't know, I just, I don't think it's that they're like,

01:23:58 ◼   ► "Screw it, this is the new design, and if anyone else doesn't like it, tough nuggies

01:24:02 ◼   ► for them." It's just, I think that they're marching toward as thin and as light a laptop

01:24:06 ◼   ► as they can possibly get, and one of the things that stands in their way in making that is

01:24:12 ◼   ► these big switches that they've used classically, and so now they have these new switches that

01:24:16 ◼   ► they're trying, and they'll iterate on it, and they'll make it better, but obviously

01:24:19 ◼   ► there are trade-offs.

01:24:20 ◼   ► And I don't know, I haven't used one of these new laptops with these new switches, but the

01:24:29 ◼   ► brief—well, I haven't used them for a long period of time—but the brief times I've

01:24:32 ◼   ► used it, I didn't find them that offensive.

01:24:34 ◼   ► And I think that all the nerds, the same kinds of nerds that often but not always like mechanical

01:24:40 ◼   ► keyboards, all them kvetching and whining about the feel of this keyboard, yeah, okay,

01:24:45 ◼   ► that's to be expected.

01:24:46 ◼   ► But I cannot remember a single time I've spoken to someone that's in the "real world" that

01:24:52 ◼   ► has been so upset about this keyboard.

01:24:54 ◼   ► I'm sure those people exist.

01:24:56 ◼   ► But I certainly personally have never noticed that.

01:24:59 ◼   ► And I would think it would make the rounds as like, "Oh, these Apple keyboards are garbage!

01:25:05 ◼   ► Everyone agrees!" if they really were that bad.

01:25:08 ◼   ► Well, it's, again, I want to be clear.

01:25:11 ◼   ► First of all, I don't think this is malice.

01:25:12 ◼   ► I think this is bad design decisions, or bad design priorities.

01:25:17 ◼   ► It's not that everyone hates the new keyboard.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Maybe even most people can tolerate it.

01:25:24 ◼   ► My dislike of it—I'll try to be brief because we talk about this so often—but my

01:25:29 ◼   ► My dislike of it, I think, boils down to that it's an unforced error. That they have taken

01:25:34 ◼   ► this, what used to be fairly ignorable. Like, no one talked about the keyboards on Apple

01:25:40 ◼   ► laptops for years. It was just never a thing that mattered because every laptop had a keyboard

01:25:46 ◼   ► that was pretty good and it was fine and no one cared. And once the MacBook 12 inch, one

01:25:52 ◼   ► baby came out, now all of a sudden there's this extremely controversial keyboard that

01:25:57 ◼   ► a lot of people are okay with, but a lot of people were like,

01:26:00 ◼   ► "Oh my god, I hate this."

01:26:02 ◼   ► And so they took something that was not controversial

01:26:05 ◼   ► and made an extreme version of it

01:26:07 ◼   ► that was very controversial.

01:26:09 ◼   ► And that was probably okay if it was only ever on that model

01:26:14 ◼   ► and which was the assumption that we all had

01:26:15 ◼   ► when it came out.

01:26:17 ◼   ► But now it's on all the key,

01:26:18 ◼   ► now it's basically the same keyboard everywhere.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Now it's on every laptop that you buy that is new,

01:26:22 ◼   ► that has been updated in the last 20 years,

01:26:25 ◼   ► now has this keyboard on it.

01:26:27 ◼   ► And so it's like now there's no more choice.

01:26:29 ◼   ► This extreme polarizing thing in this category

01:26:33 ◼   ► that used to not be polarizing,

01:26:35 ◼   ► now this is your only choice.

01:26:36 ◼   ► So if you wanna keep buying modern Mac laptops,

01:26:39 ◼   ► you now have to accept this keyboard

01:26:41 ◼   ► whether you like it or not.

01:26:43 ◼   ► And there's a lot of people who don't.

01:26:45 ◼   ► And nobody was really begging for

01:26:49 ◼   ► the previous generation laptops to get thinner.

01:26:51 ◼   ► They do love lighter.

01:26:53 ◼   ► And thinner does feel great in the store and sell well.

01:26:57 ◼   ► But there's also a balance to be struck with.

01:27:00 ◼   ► How many people find this appealing?

01:27:02 ◼   ► Do people make more errors?

01:27:03 ◼   ► Does it break more often?

01:27:05 ◼   ► 'Cause you know what, here's the thing.

01:27:06 ◼   ► Apple might not care about the warranty costs so far

01:27:10 ◼   ► of replacing all these dying key caps

01:27:11 ◼   ► and dead keyboards on all these laptops.

01:27:14 ◼   ► But you know what, I as a user care quite a bit.

01:27:17 ◼   ► I have bought something like, geez, I don't know,

01:27:20 ◼   ► 10 Apple laptops in my life so far,

01:27:22 ◼   ► something in that ballpark, I've never had a key problem.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I've never had a key break.

01:27:27 ◼   ► That seems ridiculous to me.

01:27:29 ◼   ► And now I have this MacBook escape

01:27:31 ◼   ► that's like two months old,

01:27:32 ◼   ► and I already have a key problem.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And so even if Apple fixes it for free,

01:27:36 ◼   ► which they damn well will,

01:27:39 ◼   ► I still have to now go get it serviced,

01:27:42 ◼   ► I have to be without it for a certain amount of time,

01:27:43 ◼   ► I have to go through the process of getting it serviced,

01:27:45 ◼   ► which is its own pain now with Apple

01:27:47 ◼   ► 'cause they're so crowded now with everything.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And so I as a user, now I feel like I've bought

01:27:54 ◼   ► this fragile thing.

01:27:55 ◼   ► Now I'm thinking, you know, I should probably buy

01:27:57 ◼   ► AppleCare on this, another $300 or whatever it is,

01:28:01 ◼   ► because if it's gonna be this fragile and have a key break

01:28:03 ◼   ► after a very light use for two months,

01:28:06 ◼   ► obviously this is not a well-built machine.

01:28:10 ◼   ► And all of this is an unforced error,

01:28:13 ◼   ► because they didn't have to make the machines this thin.

01:28:18 ◼   ► they could have just made them this light

01:28:20 ◼   ► and made them almost this thin

01:28:23 ◼   ► and given like an extra millimeter

01:28:25 ◼   ► or whatever it would have been

01:28:26 ◼   ► to have a less controversial,

01:28:29 ◼   ► more durable keyboard in there.

01:28:31 ◼   ► But they didn't.

01:28:32 ◼   ► And they made that choice now for the entire product line.

01:28:36 ◼   ► So if you disagree with that choice,

01:28:38 ◼   ► you now have no more options.

01:28:40 ◼   ► - I'd like to respond to that very quickly in two ways.

01:28:43 ◼   ► One, you said unforced error, which is a sports reference,

01:28:46 ◼   ► and I don't think we appropriately

01:28:47 ◼   ► Congratulated you for that so well done. I actually didn't know that I I've only heard John say it. Oh

01:28:52 ◼   ► Can you guess which sport it's from then since you heard me say it I know baseball has errors

01:28:58 ◼   ► So I'm gonna say baseball. No, good try. No, is it exceptions in baseball tennis?

01:29:03 ◼   ► Come on, let's pour to know stuff about this exceptions

01:29:08 ◼   ► The other thing I want to say is you've you've said a couple times Marco that you know

01:29:12 ◼   ► Not a lot of people seem to care about thinness or why would why would people care about them? So I disagree

01:29:17 ◼   ► I think thin really matters. Well. No I didn't say that I

01:29:19 ◼   ► Said it. I said it does sell well it feels great in stores, and it sells well, but ultimately weight is much more important

01:29:26 ◼   ► And the laptops were already really thin before so it like it people weren't crying out

01:29:33 ◼   ► I see, but weights more important to you if I carried a purse every day thinness would be pretty darn important to me

01:29:38 ◼   ► I don't think that I think you're underselling the importance of thinness. I do agree full of Foley

01:29:44 ◼   ► I completely and utterly agree that weight is more important.

01:29:48 ◼   ► But I think a lot of times, or I would wager a lot of times that people conflate weight

01:29:53 ◼   ► with thinness.

01:29:54 ◼   ► And, you know, especially if you're carrying something a lot.

01:29:58 ◼   ► It's not just going in like a backpack, it's not just going, I don't know, in a laptop

01:30:03 ◼   ► bag.

01:30:04 ◼   ► You're carrying it like on your personal lot, like in a purse, or in the same way you would

01:30:09 ◼   ► carry an iPad.

01:30:10 ◼   ► That's exactly why I want the MacBook.

01:30:12 ◼   ► In many ways I want the MacBook not only because it's light, but also expressly because it's

01:30:19 ◼   ► so thin, because it feels like nothing.

01:30:21 ◼   ► That's why the air was so cool the very first time we saw it, because it fit in that damn

01:30:24 ◼   ► envelope that Steve had.

01:30:26 ◼   ► I think, maybe not for you and maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people, I think

01:30:30 ◼   ► thinness is certainly important.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it is, but we're talking about such small numbers.

01:30:36 ◼   ► We're talking about single millimeters or fractional millimeters, and it's like, yes,

01:30:42 ◼   ► thickness and thinness do matter, but as the absolute values of these numbers get smaller

01:30:48 ◼   ► and smaller, the relative differences matter a lot less. Because we're talking about,

01:30:52 ◼   ► like, every laptop that Apple sells is ridiculously thin. Every laptop Apple sold before these

01:30:59 ◼   ► came out, the entire, like, 2012 Retina generation, was also really thin. Like, and the MacBook

01:31:05 ◼   ► Air generation before that, also really thin. Like, Apple doesn't really sell a thick

01:31:10 ◼   ► computer anymore. Right, but that's a competitive advantage. Yeah, but I'm saying, like, you're

01:31:14 ◼   ► talking about the difference between – it's literally talking about the difference of,

01:31:17 ◼   ► like, a millimeter for different keyboard types. Like, that's the scale of what we're

01:31:22 ◼   ► talking about here. So I don't think – and, like, look at the 11-inch Air before this.

01:31:28 ◼   ► The 11-inch Air had a regular scissor switch keyboard, and it was a really small, thin

01:31:34 ◼   ► computer that is of similar dimensions, although again slightly larger, as the 12-inch MacBook.

01:31:42 ◼   ► But it was still like, it was really close to those dimensions and that thickness. And

01:31:46 ◼   ► so it's like I just don't think they needed to make this decision for the entire lineup

01:31:52 ◼   ► and that has consequences. And what I'm saying is it was a poor design decision to go with

01:31:57 ◼   ► this extreme polarizing option when going with something that was a little more mainstream

01:32:03 ◼   ► acceptable like your beloved Magic Keyboard 3 or whatever it is like the

01:32:06 ◼   ► the current Magic Keyboard. Yeah, yeah. That has scissor switches and if they put

01:32:11 ◼   ► that in the laptop that would be great. Wait, I thought it didn't. I thought it

01:32:15 ◼   ► didn't have so I originally thought it okay so I almost said that and then I

01:32:19 ◼   ► could have sworn I was wrong so okay then I agree with you if if this thing

01:32:23 ◼   ► was in a laptop oh my god I would be in heaven. Right, but they didn't do that and

01:32:26 ◼   ► and to do that would not have made the laptops that much thicker it would have

01:32:30 ◼   ► a really small difference in thickness,

01:32:32 ◼   ► it would have been probably zero noticeable difference

01:32:35 ◼   ► in weight, 'cause keyboards are mostly empty space,

01:32:37 ◼   ► they're pretty light.

01:32:38 ◼   ► So it would only have made it a little bit thicker, probably.

01:32:43 ◼   ► But they didn't do that, because they made this decision

01:32:45 ◼   ► for everybody now that I think was a bad decision.

01:32:48 ◼   ► But that's it, we don't need to keep talking about this,

01:32:50 ◼   ► we don't want to.

01:32:50 ◼   ► - You're losing sight of the real crime,

01:32:52 ◼   ► the real multi-decade crime, which is using

01:32:54 ◼   ► the same keyboard no matter how big the laptop is.

01:32:57 ◼   ► You have all this room for other keys,

01:32:58 ◼   ► but they cannot handle the asymmetry.

01:33:00 ◼   ► They just cannot handle it.

01:33:02 ◼   ► They can't give us an inverted T, home and end,

01:33:05 ◼   ► and like, nope, they just not gonna happen.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Same keyboard, exact same keyboard constrained

01:33:10 ◼   ► to its little rectangle, no matter how big,

01:33:13 ◼   ► how much aluminum there is around it,

01:33:15 ◼   ► just sitting there with tiny little holes

01:33:16 ◼   ► that look like speaker grills, but aren't really.

01:33:18 ◼   ► That is the real crime,

01:33:19 ◼   ► and that is a multi-generational, multi-decade crime

01:33:23 ◼   ► instead of this very recent,

01:33:24 ◼   ► really shallow key travel thing.

01:33:26 ◼   ► - Real quick, real-time follow-up.

01:33:28 ◼   ► The 13-inch MacBook Pro, I think I'm looking at the 13,

01:33:31 ◼   ► one of the MacBook Pros, it doesn't matter,

01:33:33 ◼   ► is 1.49 centimeters height.

01:33:36 ◼   ► The MacBook is a maximum of 1.31 centimeters height.

01:33:41 ◼   ► So that's a difference of, what is that, 18 millimeters?

01:33:44 ◼   ► Is that right?

01:33:45 ◼   ► I can do math, it's late, I don't know.

01:33:47 ◼   ► But it's not that much to your point, Marco.

01:33:49 ◼   ► - 1.8. - It's certainly,

01:33:51 ◼   ► yeah, that too, whatever.

01:33:52 ◼   ► Anyway, point is, it's not a lot, no matter how you slice it.

01:33:54 ◼   ► And that is absolutely true.

01:33:56 ◼   ► But, you know, one of the benefits of this march to thinness is that a person who maybe

01:34:02 ◼   ► always carries their computer with them, be it somebody with a purse or somebody who just

01:34:07 ◼   ► always has a laptop bag on them, maybe they always, always, always have to have a computer

01:34:12 ◼   ► with them, and for whatever reason, and they might have been forced to in the past use

01:34:19 ◼   ► either the underpowered MacBook or the slightly less underpowered MacBook Air, now because

01:34:25 ◼   ► of Apple's general march of thinness and toward thinness, now they can, to your point, Marco,

01:34:30 ◼   ► use a MacBook Pro because really the delta isn't that big in the grand scheme of things.

01:34:34 ◼   ► So again, I think thinness does matter to everyone in ways that may not be obvious,

01:34:40 ◼   ► even though I completely and utterly agree, I'll say it again, that weight is the ultimate

01:34:43 ◼   ► number one issue.

01:34:46 ◼   ► In better real-time follow-up, chatroom user Jobius says, "Baseball errors are not called

01:34:50 ◼   ► exceptions even though they are a failure that occurs in the try catch block.

01:34:55 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:34:56 ◼   ► Well done.

01:34:58 ◼   ► Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Betterment, Audible, and Fracture.

01:35:03 ◼   ► And we will see you next week.

01:35:05 ◼   ► [Music]

01:35:06 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:35:14 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:35:15 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:35:16 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:35:17 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:35:23 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental

01:35:28 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:35:33 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:35:38 ◼   ► M A R C O A R M

01:35:45 ◼   ► A N T M A R C O A R M

01:35:50 ◼   ► S I R A C U S A C R A C U S A

01:35:55 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:35:58 ◼   ► They didn't mean to (accidental, accidental)

01:36:03 ◼   ► ♪ The Tech Podcast ♪

01:36:05 ◼   ► ♪ So long ♪

01:36:08 ◼   ► - I'm excited for WWDC.

01:36:09 ◼   ► It's gonna be weird this year.

01:36:10 ◼   ► It's gonna be super weird being in a new place.

01:36:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's gonna be really weird,

01:36:14 ◼   ► but I'm also really excited about it,

01:36:15 ◼   ► because A, it's new, it's different.

01:36:19 ◼   ► B, we're doing a live show,

01:36:21 ◼   ► and I'm super excited about that.

01:36:22 ◼   ► I got to buy a whole bunch of cool stuff to do.

01:36:23 ◼   ► - Me too.

01:36:24 ◼   ► That's not why I'm excited, but I am still excited.

01:36:27 ◼   ► - And C, if any of the rumors are correct

01:36:31 ◼   ► about either hardware or software,

01:36:34 ◼   ► it's gonna be a big one, and I'm looking forward to that.

01:36:37 ◼   ► I'm excited, you know?

01:36:38 ◼   ► As much as I seem skeptical of a lot of things

01:36:41 ◼   ► that Apple does in recent times,

01:36:45 ◼   ► they also do a whole bunch of stuff

01:36:46 ◼   ► I'm really excited about,

01:36:47 ◼   ► and this is one of the biggest events of the year.

01:36:51 ◼   ► I would say probably the second biggest.

01:36:53 ◼   ► You know, I think the biggest is probably

01:36:54 ◼   ► like the fall event where they announced new iPhones

01:36:56 ◼   ► and stuff, but this is probably the second biggest event

01:36:58 ◼   ► of the year and lots of stuff is gonna probably

01:37:03 ◼   ► be mentioned that's gonna be really cool.

01:37:04 ◼   ► And I'm just looking forward to that.

01:37:05 ◼   ► We might even, like Tipster says, we might even get

01:37:08 ◼   ► the new Mac Pro teased, who knows if that's the case.

01:37:10 ◼   ► But I'm just really excited about whatever it is

01:37:14 ◼   ► because even if they only deliver on a quarter

01:37:18 ◼   ► of the rumored things, that's still gonna be really cool.

01:37:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with you.

01:37:23 ◼   ► I will be incredibly surprised if there's anything

01:37:26 ◼   ► that they could even tease about for the Mac Pro.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Like even a logo with words on it.

01:37:32 ◼   ► It's not even a glimpse of the computer

01:37:35 ◼   ► or anything about it, but I was surprised