ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We're gonna have this exact same conversation about the goddamn Mac Pro whenever that gets refreshed.

00:00:04 ◼   ► We have much more conversation.

00:00:06 ◼   ► It's not gonna be a new Mac Pro, it's just gonna be a fancier iMac, it'll be a short conversation.

00:00:10 ◼   ► It'll be fine, and we'll buy one anyway, and that'll be that.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I agree with most of what you just said, except it'll be a short conversation.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah, thank you, Marco. Completely agree.

00:00:19 ◼   ► It'll last a show or two, I'm just saying, it's not like we're gonna be obsessing over it.

00:00:22 ◼   ► A show or two? It'll last a month or two!

00:00:24 ◼   ► Well, I guess what we'll do is we'll go back to talking about the Mac Pro and they're like, okay fine

00:00:28 ◼   ► So they did this iMac thing

00:00:30 ◼   ► But now let's complain more about why they should actually do a real Mac Pro remember when they used to sell a professional computer

00:00:35 ◼   ► 15 shows later. So I think we finally wrap that up

00:00:39 ◼   ► But we won't be talking about the iMac the iMac Pro will be will take care of in a show or two

00:00:45 ◼   ► That's true. And then and then one more show when we all get ours, but then mostly we'll go back to complaining about it

00:00:50 ◼   ► Seriously, you're not really making the Mac Pro anymore, especially if they don't say they're not making and they keep selling the old one

00:00:55 ◼   ► That'll be awesome. They come up with the new iMac at WWDC

00:00:57 ◼   ► It's got a Z on it, but they keep selling the old Mac Pro. It'll be like, what are you doing?

00:01:01 ◼   ► What is it going through your head? Here's a question. Do you think on?

00:01:05 ◼   ► January 1st 2018 the 2013 Mac Pro will still be for sale. No, absolutely not. I vote yes. I

00:01:15 ◼   ► I would, if I had to pick I would vote no, but it's not as big of a, it's not as sure

00:01:20 ◼   ► of a thing as I would hope it would be as I think about it.

00:01:22 ◼   ► You want to bet five bucks?

00:01:24 ◼   ► I'm not betting you any money.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I'm guessing January 1st, 2018 it's still for sale.

00:01:30 ◼   ► I'll take your five dollar bet.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah, all right, it's a deal.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Because I think it's close.

00:01:35 ◼   ► That's why it's an interesting bet.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Because I think they'll introduce an iMac Pro and they'll be like, "And this is the

00:01:40 ◼   ► replacement for the Mac Pro."

00:01:42 ◼   ► That's how I think it will be positioned,

00:01:43 ◼   ► and it will finally give them cover

00:01:45 ◼   ► to can that stupid machine, to can the can.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - So my primary bet is that this is still for sale,

00:01:52 ◼   ► that the 2013 Trash Can Mac Pro is still for sale

00:01:55 ◼   ► on January 1st.

00:01:57 ◼   ► My secondary bet, which I guess I probably

00:01:59 ◼   ► won't put money on, but my secondary bet

00:02:02 ◼   ► is that during the entire year of 2017,

00:02:04 ◼   ► they won't actually address this issue publicly.

00:02:07 ◼   ► They won't even say anything of substance

00:02:10 ◼   ► about any kind of future Pro desktop hardware.

00:02:13 ◼   ► That basically, this year will come and go

00:02:16 ◼   ► with no changes to the Mac Pro

00:02:18 ◼   ► in either the product line or in announcements.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - But what if they make an iMac Pro,

00:02:22 ◼   ► does that count as them saying something?

00:02:25 ◼   ► - I think only if they discontinue the Mac Pro.

00:02:27 ◼   ► - But what if they say, "This is our new version

00:02:29 ◼   ► "for Pro hardware blah blah blah,"

00:02:30 ◼   ► but then also keep selling it for the same reason

00:02:31 ◼   ► they keep selling everything

00:02:32 ◼   ► 'cause someone new somewhere wants to buy it?

00:02:34 ◼   ► - Well, I'd still win the primary bet in that case.

00:02:36 ◼   ► The secondary bet of whether they have done this,

00:02:38 ◼   ► I guess would depend on like, it'd be a little bit vague,

00:02:41 ◼   ► it'd be like, is it just like the same processor lines,

00:02:44 ◼   ► like the Intel 6700K, whatever.

00:02:47 ◼   ► - If it has the word pro in the name,

00:02:49 ◼   ► like it's clear what they're talking about is, you know.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - But if it's still pretty much an iMac,

00:02:54 ◼   ► it would need like a Xeon, and not an E3.

00:02:58 ◼   ► The E3 does not count as a Xeon.

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Is there an eight core non-Xeon Intel thing?

00:03:03 ◼   ► - No, in the future, I think Tipster said a while,

00:03:06 ◼   ► but like one of the various lakes, coffee or whatever,

00:03:08 ◼   ► one of those, they're supposed to be a six core variant

00:03:11 ◼   ► in the series, but if there is like a quote iMac Pro,

00:03:15 ◼   ► but it still has the same consumer processor line,

00:03:18 ◼   ► that doesn't count to me, that's just an iMac.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And yet, 'cause the iMac is fine, the iMac is great,

00:03:23 ◼   ► I'm using one now, like there's a lot of reasons

00:03:24 ◼   ► to have an iMac, but they can tack Pro on the end

00:03:28 ◼   ► and sell it in space gray and charge more,

00:03:31 ◼   ► but if it doesn't have a Xeon E5 in there,

00:03:33 ◼   ► that's not a Mac Pro.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I will argue about it later, but I'm going to bed.

00:03:37 ◼   ► - You Mac Pro'd him out, that's it.

00:03:39 ◼   ► - Yep, I am tuckered out on the Mac Pro.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - It doesn't take much to be fair.

00:03:43 ◼   ► - No, it doesn't.

00:03:44 ◼   ► (electronic music)

00:03:46 ◼   ► So as always, we start with follow up,

00:03:47 ◼   ► and Lucas Goosen, I need to look these up before I record.

00:03:52 ◼   ► That's okay though.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Lucas G., right?

00:03:54 ◼   ► He cited an existing app,

00:03:57 ◼   ► and we are not going to name that app,

00:03:59 ◼   ► that is currently on the iOS App Store,

00:04:02 ◼   ► that actually has overlapping windows,

00:04:04 ◼   ► Colin Allen also wrote in to say that when he was working at Blackboard, they shipped a multi-window

00:04:10 ◼   ► iPad app with gestures. Now, this is a long time ago, from what I can tell. So in Allen's defense,

00:04:16 ◼   ► this UI was was modern at the time. Looking at it now is mildly alarming. But there are things that

00:04:25 ◼   ► are multi-window on the iPad that exist either in the past or today. So does that change how you

00:04:33 ◼   ► feel about things in any way shape or form, Jon?

00:04:36 ◼   ► No, because everyone knows there's always things on the App Store that violate guidelines.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Like, that's the whole point of the App Store guidelines. If you try to do the little kid thing,

00:04:44 ◼   ► "Why does my sister get to have a lollipop?" Yes, there are going to be applications that

00:04:51 ◼   ► somehow got by that didn't get flagged and yours gets flagged. Your argument is always with the

00:04:56 ◼   ► rule system and not with people who happen to have skated by. I mean, pick a guideline. I guarantee

00:05:01 ◼   ► you can find multiple applications on the App Star that violate that guideline.

00:05:05 ◼   ► That's just the way it is.

00:05:06 ◼   ► But anyway, I like seeing these examples of applications that actually shipped in this

00:05:09 ◼   ► way and the world didn't come to an end and also apparently it was not a UI paradigm that

00:05:15 ◼   ► was copied by lots of other applications.

00:05:16 ◼   ► So I'm not quite sure how successful it was, but I like the idea that a few of them snuck

00:05:20 ◼   ► through.

00:05:21 ◼   ► I like this better than the idea of millions of apps that send you spam push notifications

00:05:27 ◼   ► sneaking through, quote unquote.

00:05:29 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:05:31 ◼   ► - All right, and then a friend of the show,

00:05:33 ◼   ► Stephen Tran Smith, has put together a Swift playground

00:05:37 ◼   ► that will let you try the floating keyboard on an iPad.

00:05:42 ◼   ► So you would use the Swift playgrounds app on the iPad

00:05:46 ◼   ► and run the code that he has put on GitHub, I believe.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I intended to try this and then completely forgot about it.

00:05:53 ◼   ► But anyway, you can download this,

00:05:54 ◼   ► drop it in Swift playgrounds and give it a shot.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Have either of you tried this?

00:05:59 ◼   ► >> See, I really wish I had, but it slipped my mind.

00:06:02 ◼   ► John?

00:06:03 ◼   ► >> This is what they get for adding anything resembling a programming environment to iOS,

00:06:07 ◼   ► because someone's like, "You know what you can do with a programming language?

00:06:10 ◼   ► You can write programs."

00:06:12 ◼   ► And you know what those programs do?

00:06:13 ◼   ► They execute on your device without going app review, just as if I had uploaded them

00:06:16 ◼   ► from Xcode.

00:06:17 ◼   ► But I don't have to do that, because I don't have Xcode.

00:06:18 ◼   ► I just run this playgrounds file, and so this is all of Apple's worst fears coming true.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Oh, no, selector swizzling and private APIs.

00:06:26 ◼   ► What will happen?

00:06:27 ◼   ► Nothing will happen is the answer.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Although I suppose you could probably, you think you could probably, you know, trigger

00:06:33 ◼   ► a bug to, you know, I guess you could crash the app obviously, but crashing playgrounds

00:06:39 ◼   ► may not be such an achievement.

00:06:40 ◼   ► But could you bring down the whole OS by finding some kind of bug or doing something nasty

00:06:47 ◼   ► to it?

00:06:48 ◼   ► Anyway, that's what programming is, and this is a fun way for people to try it to see if

00:06:52 ◼   ► this little keyboard is worth anything.

00:06:54 ◼   ► It's kind of weird because you'd want to use it with thumbs like you would on a phone,

00:06:58 ◼   ► But you can't reach it with both your thumbs on an iPad.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Like that's the whole deal.

00:07:02 ◼   ► That it is a tiny little floating keyboard that you can move where you want it to, where

00:07:05 ◼   ► you want to put it so it can be out of the way and not take up so much screen space.

00:07:09 ◼   ► But you can't type on it with two thumbs.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Maybe if you put it in the corner.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:07:15 ◼   ► There's no way to use it like you use it on your phone.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Although I know a lot of people, myself included, who frequently type with a single thumb on

00:07:22 ◼   ► their phones.

00:07:23 ◼   ► You ever do that?

00:07:24 ◼   ► Where like your one hand is occupied and you're texting something with a single thumb?

00:07:28 ◼   ► I'm okay at it.

00:07:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I wish I was.

00:07:31 ◼   ► The swipe keyboards, I haven't used one in a while.

00:07:33 ◼   ► In fact, I just took that keyboard off my phone because I use it so rarely.

00:07:36 ◼   ► But the swipe style keyboards, and I think Google's keyboard, Gboard or whatever it's

00:07:41 ◼   ► called, supports this.

00:07:42 ◼   ► The swipe style keyboards are very good for one-handed use, but I find that I don't use

00:07:47 ◼   ► it often enough that I just made it go away.

00:07:50 ◼   ► I think I have inappropriate thumb friction for a swipe keyboard because every time I

00:07:55 ◼   ► I try them I can't I can't find the right balance of enough pressure to be swiping correctly

00:08:01 ◼   ► but not too much pressure that I'm like scrubbing my thumb against like it just I

00:08:06 ◼   ► Need to tap item. I'm not a swiper. I remember seeing demos of those keyboard like wow. This is awesome

00:08:11 ◼   ► Look at that little line darting from key to key

00:08:13 ◼   ► But then when it comes time for my big meaty thumb to do that at this it's it's hopeless

00:08:18 ◼   ► So more power to you if it works for you, but I cannot get the swiping to work for me

00:08:22 ◼   ► Oh my word. I don't even know what to make about this.

00:08:26 ◼   ► We should just move on. Jon, can you tell us about Apple in Education?

00:08:29 ◼   ► Got a lot of feedback from people, basically people in education, people who are either

00:08:33 ◼   ► teachers or school administrators or people who do IT in education. I tried to pull a

00:08:41 ◼   ► few salient points out because a lot of people had very complicated detailed stories about

00:08:45 ◼   ► their one situation, but I'm trying to generalize here. So one theme I saw in a lot of the email

00:08:50 ◼   ► was the recent, in recent years, push for one device per student, which was not a thing

00:08:55 ◼   ► when any of us were in school, like that, not just in the super rich schools, but then

00:08:59 ◼   ► in all schools, the ideal is when we're going to buy any kind of computing hardware for

00:09:04 ◼   ► students, we want to have one for every single student, which was just not an option in our

00:09:08 ◼   ► days because you'd have a computer lab and like each classroom would have like one iMac

00:09:12 ◼   ► or two iMacs or something like that, you know, one computer for every student.

00:09:15 ◼   ► That wasn't really feasible when computers came with gigantic CRTs and took up a huge

00:09:20 ◼   ► amount of room, but now that they're all really small and portable and cheaper, you can pull

00:09:25 ◼   ► that off.

00:09:26 ◼   ► So the one device per student accounts for an increase in overall volume of computing

00:09:31 ◼   ► things that schools buy, which is good for Google in this case because they're selling

00:09:36 ◼   ► most of them.

00:09:37 ◼   ► We had one report of technology getting more funding than less sexy areas like music and

00:09:45 ◼   ► arts which are you know perennially underfunded because tech is sexy.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I think one of you brought this up in the last show like the idea that there's money

00:09:53 ◼   ► to buy computer stuff because everyone agrees that computers are the future and our kids

00:09:58 ◼   ► need computers and like I mean obviously they're the present now but when we were kids it was

00:10:02 ◼   ► like oh everyone's gonna learn computers because it's the future and if we get computers in

00:10:05 ◼   ► our school everyone feels good about it even though we're not entirely sure if these computers

00:10:09 ◼   ► make education better in any possible way but hey at least kids will know computers.

00:10:13 ◼   ► There's still some of that in there and it's exciting for all the kids in your school to,

00:10:17 ◼   ► you know, get iPads or get laptops or anything like that.

00:10:22 ◼   ► And we had a couple of people tell us that although Apple no longer makes education-only

00:10:28 ◼   ► models like the big ugly tooth and the EMAC and stuff like that, they do have special

00:10:36 ◼   ► configurations of existing devices that like you can't buy in the store but only available

00:10:41 ◼   ► for education.

00:10:42 ◼   ► also do a thing where they continue to sell devices in education even after they're no

00:10:47 ◼   ► longer for sale to consumers. I think the last time I remember them doing that in a

00:10:50 ◼   ► big way was the iPad 2 that was like gone for everybody but education could still buy

00:10:54 ◼   ► it. So they're still trying to do what they can to give education, there's no real nice

00:10:59 ◼   ► way to say this, but like the cheaper, crappier models because every, even the education only

00:11:06 ◼   ► models, like how are they different from the regular ones? They were cheaper, which is

00:11:09 ◼   ► important, but they were also crappier because how do you get them cheaper? You make them

00:11:12 ◼   ► crappier and it always struck me as like a weird bargain because

00:11:16 ◼   ► do you want to give a ram starved computer to a school is a school the best equipped to

00:11:24 ◼   ► wrangle a computer that is constantly running out of RAM especially in the bad old days without it without even any virtual memory on on max or

00:11:31 ◼   ► Without a good virtual memory system anyway, that's less of a concern these days

00:11:35 ◼   ► But just to down spec so badly and then put those machines into an environment

00:11:39 ◼   ► where

00:11:41 ◼   ► The people available to like baby them and coax every ounce of performance out of them

00:11:47 ◼   ► like it's not that they don't have time for that.

00:11:49 ◼   ► It's much better to give them a computer that sort of works without anyone having to

00:11:54 ◼   ► mess with it and if you de-content a computer to use car parlance that's a bad situation.

00:12:00 ◼   ► But that's what they want.

00:12:01 ◼   ► They want it to be as cheap as possible so Apple will make them very cheap models and

00:12:05 ◼   ► now Apple will keep selling you devices long after no person should ever be using them

00:12:09 ◼   ► but I guess schools will.

00:12:10 ◼   ► I mean, again, I look at the laptop cart into my kid's elementary school, filled with ice

00:12:15 ◼   ► books.

00:12:16 ◼   ► How old are those?

00:12:17 ◼   ► How old is the white plastic iBook?

00:12:19 ◼   ► That's an old machine.

00:12:20 ◼   ► Like, it was a great machine when it was available, and apparently it was good for education because

00:12:24 ◼   ► they aren't all dead, right?

00:12:25 ◼   ► I don't know how sturdy.

00:12:26 ◼   ► I mean, I'm assuming they're all, like, terribly yellowed and stained and gross from, you know,

00:12:30 ◼   ► kids touching them because it was plastic, but, you know, computers last as long as...

00:12:38 ◼   ► Until they break, because why would you get rid of them?

00:12:39 ◼   ► and they could just continue to try to find something useful to do with them.

00:12:42 ◼   ► And on that front, by the way, in terms of tech funding and everything, I live in a place

00:12:48 ◼   ► full of rich people, and we have high taxes and we vote ourselves.

00:12:52 ◼   ► We have laws in the books that say we can't raise taxes more than X percent per year,

00:12:56 ◼   ► and every year they have a vote to say, "If you really want to raise taxes on yourself,

00:13:00 ◼   ► vote for this," and every year we vote for it, to bypass the thing, to raise our taxes

00:13:04 ◼   ► even more.

00:13:05 ◼   ► And despite all that, our public schools, you go into them and from the standards of

00:13:10 ◼   ► my own childhood, they're woefully underfunded in every single aspect.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Large class sizes, facilities all falling apart, and the vast majority of the computing

00:13:20 ◼   ► technology that arrives in the school on a yearly basis is paid for entirely out of the

00:13:23 ◼   ► pocket of parents giving money to the school, like voluntarily themselves, just funding

00:13:29 ◼   ► like that.

00:13:30 ◼   ► That says more about the state of public education funding in our country than it does about

00:13:37 ◼   ► things in tech.

00:13:38 ◼   ► But comparing it to my childhood when there was a computer lab with a small number of

00:13:42 ◼   ► computers and my kids' experience in school where there are more computers but that all

00:13:48 ◼   ► of them had to be bought by the rich parents of the students who go to the school, it certainly

00:13:53 ◼   ► doesn't seem like we are in an age where it is accepted that schools will all have one

00:13:58 ◼   ► device per student everyone will have, at least in elementary school, will have computers

00:14:01 ◼   ► for everyone available. It's like, "Oh, you'll have computers if you live in a place where

00:14:04 ◼   ► all the parents have enough disposable income to each give hundreds of dollars to the school

00:14:07 ◼   ► each year." It's the same way we got a new playground, by the way. "Oh, collect money

00:14:11 ◼   ► from all the rich parents." And, you know, we're glad to do it because our kids are going

00:14:14 ◼   ► there and we have the money and we pay for it, but it seems like the wrong way to fund

00:14:18 ◼   ► public education. Anyway, that's really off topic.

00:14:23 ◼   ► It's funny. I probably have told this story once before, but to just reiterate how terrible

00:14:26 ◼   ► public education is even in relatively affluent areas. I grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut,

00:14:33 ◼   ► which at the time, because of other areas of the county, was I believe the most affluent

00:14:38 ◼   ► county in the entire country. I lived in a very unremarkable part of it, so it was not

00:14:44 ◼   ► quite the same for me, but certainly it was a fairly homogeneous, relatively affluent

00:14:51 ◼   ► area. And every year, probably about three quarters of the way through the year, our

00:14:56 ◼   ► copier paper, our Xerox paper, was perforated in a very weird way. And curiously, every

00:15:01 ◼   ► single page we got said Danbury Hospital Radiology Department on the bottom of it. And that's

00:15:07 ◼   ► because the only way we could have copier paper, the only way we could afford it is

00:15:10 ◼   ► if the local hospital donated it to us. And it was, I guess, their leftover that they

00:15:16 ◼   ► had had perforated in a particular way for their particular use. But we just rolled with

00:15:20 ◼   ► it because what other choice did we have? And unlike you guys who are, I guess, better

00:15:24 ◼   ► than we were at the time, we would beg to raise taxes just the teeniest, littlest bit

00:15:30 ◼   ► to give the schools a little breathing room and every time it was shot down. And even

00:15:33 ◼   ► as a kid, it drove me bananas. I don't know. Marco, you're only like a year away from dealing

00:15:39 ◼   ► with this, right?

00:15:40 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, kindergarten starts this fall for our kid. So here we go. Have you, for

00:15:45 ◼   ► For preschool or for daycare, have you, have they, probably not because that's like privately

00:15:49 ◼   ► funded but kindergarten, to see if this is like a nationwide thing or just in certain

00:15:54 ◼   ► areas, I was surprised when I first could enter kindergarten that one of the things

00:15:58 ◼   ► that teachers would ask for is paper towels and tissues and things like that.

00:16:04 ◼   ► It seemed like staples of the classroom, like, "Hey parents," like when I was a kid, when

00:16:08 ◼   ► the teachers asked the parents for anything, it was, "Hey parents, have your kids bring

00:16:12 ◼   ► in some canned food for a food drive for the needy, right?

00:16:16 ◼   ► Instead, my experience with my own children is, "Hey, parents, please bring in boxes

00:16:20 ◼   ► of tissues because if you don't, there will be no tissues in the classroom because we

00:16:23 ◼   ► have no money for them."

00:16:25 ◼   ► Which is like, "Seriously?"

00:16:26 ◼   ► These are not frills.

00:16:27 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, we want to buy a fancy new iMac every year."

00:16:30 ◼   ► It's like, we need literal tissues for kids with boogery noses in kindergarten and there

00:16:35 ◼   ► is no money to pay for them.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Like, we can put a building that keeps the rain out and we can keep the temperature vaguely

00:16:41 ◼   ► within human habitable range, but beyond that, you know, you're on your own, so it's time

00:16:46 ◼   ► for everyone to pitch in and make sure that we have tissues and paper towels for kids

00:16:50 ◼   ► in the class.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Yeah, that's, teachers still buy a lot more than most people know or expect. Teachers

00:16:57 ◼   ► still buy these kind of supplies out of their own pocket. It's kind of horrible. You know,

00:17:02 ◼   ► teachers all know this, and families of teachers all know this, but most people don't, and

00:17:07 ◼   ► kind of sad and you know because it's not like teachers are paid a lot to begin with

00:17:11 ◼   ► so like you have these jobs that are already not paid you know what they're worth and then

00:17:16 ◼   ► you have the teachers having to buy like basic supplies for their classroom out of their

00:17:19 ◼   ► own pockets that that seems so incredibly wrong to me.

00:17:23 ◼   ► Yeah, but yeah for those that don't know Erin was a high school teacher in a reasonably

00:17:29 ◼   ► affluent area of Richmond until she had Declan and it was expected that at all grade levels

00:17:36 ◼   ► every single teacher, and so this is every high school teacher you have, will send home

00:17:41 ◼   ► a list, and there was a term for it, and for the life of me I can't remember what the name

00:17:45 ◼   ► of it was, but they would send home a list of supplies that every student was expected

00:17:49 ◼   ► to get. So every student was expected to bring Aaron like one pack of tissues and one set

00:17:56 ◼   ► of like whiteboard markers, because they didn't have blackboards, they had whiteboards, and

00:18:01 ◼   ► like a handful of other things. And this was not unusual. This was expected. And our schools,

00:18:06 ◼   ► far as I can tell, are reasonably well-funded. I mean, it's not the utter disaster that

00:18:12 ◼   ► is happening in many, many, many parts of the country, but even still, there's so

00:18:18 ◼   ► big a discrepancy between what teachers need and what teachers can provide and what the

00:18:23 ◼   ► schools can provide that they would have the parents bring all this stuff in, too. It was

00:18:27 ◼   ► totally bananas, but it's what they had to do.

00:18:32 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Eero.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Visit eero.com for more info.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Eero is the solution to mediocre home Wi-Fi coverage.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Because let's face it,

00:18:42 ◼   ► we have so many Wi-Fi devices these days.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Now we have, beyond our computers and phones,

00:18:48 ◼   ► we have speakers, thermostats, light bulbs,

00:18:50 ◼   ► everything all over our smart homes now.

00:18:52 ◼   ► And Wi-Fi just doesn't reach most of your home

00:18:56 ◼   ► if you only have one regular router.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Eero is designed to change all of this.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Eero manufactures a single device, it's a small box,

00:19:03 ◼   ► about the size of an Apple TV,

00:19:05 ◼   ► and it serves as a wireless router.

00:19:07 ◼   ► And with a dead simple app,

00:19:08 ◼   ► you can put multiple Eeros throughout your home.

00:19:11 ◼   ► They sell them in sets.

00:19:12 ◼   ► You can just buy one if you want to,

00:19:14 ◼   ► but you're really getting the biggest benefit

00:19:15 ◼   ► if you have two or three.

00:19:17 ◼   ► The first one replaces your existing router.

00:19:19 ◼   ► You just plug your ethernet wiring into it

00:19:21 ◼   ► from your DSL modem or your cable modem.

00:19:23 ◼   ► And additional Eeros, you just plug 'em in

00:19:25 ◼   ► for a standard power outlet.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And then they connect wirelessly to each other

00:19:29 ◼   ► to form a mesh network that blankets your home

00:19:31 ◼   ► in fast, reliable WiFi.

00:19:34 ◼   ► A distributed system like this is way better

00:19:36 ◼   ► than just having one router with a whole bunch

00:19:38 ◼   ► of antennas on top of it.

00:19:40 ◼   ► Or any kind of traditional range extenders,

00:19:42 ◼   ► Eero's actually better because it creates

00:19:44 ◼   ► a separate network to talk to the other Eero routers on,

00:19:48 ◼   ► which is way faster, and it doesn't have nearly

00:19:51 ◼   ► as much of a speed hit as a typical range extender.

00:19:55 ◼   ► They recommend one Eero per roughly every thousand

00:19:58 ◼   ► square feet of your house.

00:19:59 ◼   ► So the average US home, you need probably two or three

00:20:01 ◼   ► of them, a three pack is a great starting point.

00:20:04 ◼   ► Check it out today, there's a 30 day money back guarantee.

00:20:07 ◼   ► So if you end up having too many, if you don't need,

00:20:10 ◼   ► let's say you buy the three pack, you only need two,

00:20:12 ◼   ► within 30 days you can just return the extra one

00:20:13 ◼   ► and you'll get part of your money back.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Eero has been reviewed and seen on tons of press outlets,

00:20:19 ◼   ► Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Verge, TechCrunch,

00:20:21 ◼   ► everywhere, they have a massively great star rating

00:20:23 ◼   ► on Amazon right now, it's like four and a half stars

00:20:25 ◼   ► on Amazon, you will see for yourself.

00:20:28 ◼   ► And they did something cool here.

00:20:29 ◼   ► They know that if I just tell you to go to their site

00:20:32 ◼   ► and enter a promo code, there's a good chance

00:20:34 ◼   ► you're gonna buy it from Amazon or something anyway.

00:20:36 ◼   ► So there's no more promo code.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Everyone gets the same low prices now.

00:20:39 ◼   ► The three pack is now $100 off, permanently lowered,

00:20:43 ◼   ► from $49 to $399.

00:20:45 ◼   ► So now for just 400 bucks, you get a three pack of these.

00:20:48 ◼   ► If you only need two of them, that's just 300 bucks now,

00:20:50 ◼   ► 50 bucks less than it was before.

00:20:52 ◼   ► To get Eero at this new low price,

00:20:53 ◼   ► you can visit eero.com, that's E-E-R-O.com,

00:20:56 ◼   ► or you can just go to Best Buyer Amazon

00:20:57 ◼   ► if you wanna do that too and buy them there.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Check it out today, Eero, E-E-R-O.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Eero

00:21:02 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show once again.

00:21:04 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:21:07 ◼   ► - There was a video that came out, I don't know,

00:21:10 ◼   ► at this point it was probably almost a month ago,

00:21:12 ◼   ► maybe it was a couple weeks ago at the very least.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And it's--

00:21:14 ◼   ► - ATP, bringing you cutting edge news.

00:21:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:17 ◼   ► - As we always do.

00:21:19 ◼   ► And this is at apple.com/ios/home.

00:21:22 ◼   ► There'll be a link in the show notes.

00:21:23 ◼   ► this is the HomeKit demo promo commercially video thing. And I watched it once when it first came out

00:21:31 ◼   ► and I haven't seen it since, but the general gist of it was there's a young woman who wakes up and

00:21:36 ◼   ► has her breakfast, which is all automated, and leaves the house, which is all automated,

00:21:40 ◼   ► and then eventually comes home, which is all automated, and watches a movie, which is all

00:21:43 ◼   ► automated, and reads in bed, which is, I guess, reading in bed, and then turns off her lights,

00:21:47 ◼   ► which is automated. And it's all amazing and perfect in every way. And as someone who

00:21:53 ◼   ► doesn't really do any of the robots in a cylinder sort of thing.

00:21:59 ◼   ► This looked pretty impressive to me.

00:22:01 ◼   ► It looked cool.

00:22:02 ◼   ► I can't say that I have the fate.

00:22:04 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know where I would even get a HomeKit powered thing.

00:22:07 ◼   ► As far as I'm concerned, they're still all but vaporware.

00:22:10 ◼   ► But apparently they exist because they're all in this lady's house.

00:22:13 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:22:15 ◼   ► There's been a little bit of chatter about this.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Do you want to tell us about it, Jon?

00:22:19 ◼   ► This is a tweet from Scott McNulty on Twitter.

00:22:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure if he has all these devices. I know he's got a million Kindles, but I'm

00:22:26 ◼   ► not sure if he has all this other stuff. But anyway, he tweeted about it, about this new

00:22:29 ◼   ► website that Apple has to promote HomeKit. It was a nice website, but the film just showcases

00:22:33 ◼   ► to me how much easier it is to tell Alexa to do all the same things. Because the video

00:22:38 ◼   ► shows, for the most part, the person touching big rounded rectangles on iOS devices, whether

00:22:46 ◼   ► they be iPads or phone, to do things. There is, hey, see, good morning at the very beginning,

00:22:52 ◼   ► speaking to your phone that's on your nightstand and having it set your thing up for the morning,

00:22:56 ◼   ► and also later speaking directly into the tiny, horrible Apple TV remote to say, "Okay,

00:23:02 ◼   ► it's movie time to start a movie." Although I'm not quite sure what it does if you just

00:23:05 ◼   ► say it's movie time to pick a random movie. Anyway, those are both examples of speaking

00:23:12 ◼   ► –

00:23:13 ◼   ► Good morning. It's 9.27 PM.

00:23:15 ◼   ► What – I knew I shouldn't have activated that thing that I just said, but I did activate

00:23:22 ◼   ► on my phone. I have never had a hoy telephone enabled until very, very recently, and now

00:23:29 ◼   ► I'm going to turn –

00:23:32 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:23:33 ◼   ► This is all stayed in, by the way. This is totally stayed in.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely.

00:23:35 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:23:36 ◼   ► Anyway –

00:23:37 ◼   ► Why do you turn that on?

00:23:39 ◼   ► I turned it on to see if – I turned it on – as an aside, I turned it on like a week

00:23:43 ◼   ► or so ago because I'm like, "Look, everyone else has this on on their phone," and I've

00:23:46 ◼   ► had it off for exactly the reason you would think you would have it off because I never

00:23:50 ◼   ► wanted to accidentally activate, but very frequently, this gets to the point of this

00:23:54 ◼   ► thing. I have a cylinder that listens to me in my home now, and I like the idea that I

00:24:00 ◼   ► can just say things into the air, and I'm like, you know what, maybe that kind of relationship

00:24:04 ◼   ► with my phone is just there waiting for me, and I've been too stubborn by keeping this

00:24:07 ◼   ► feature off since it was introduced, and like literally never turning it on, never even

00:24:10 ◼   ► trying it because it just sounded awful to me. So I should really give it a chance. And

00:24:15 ◼   ► In this week or two that I've had it on, I have used it consciously about once, and now

00:24:20 ◼   ► I have triggered it accidentally once.

00:24:22 ◼   ► That's the first time I've ever accidentally triggered it, because what occasion do I have

00:24:24 ◼   ► to say that with my phone nearby?

00:24:28 ◼   ► But for this video, speaking not to the air, but to a device that you know is nearby, whether

00:24:36 ◼   ► it's your remote in your hand or a phone on your nightstand, is to me different than just

00:24:44 ◼   ► yelling into the air, not yelling, or just speaking into the air the way you do with

00:24:48 ◼   ► the cylinders. And all the other things that are in this video, like a lot of using the

00:24:52 ◼   ► home kit thing on control center, the third screen over, whatever the hell it is, maybe

00:24:57 ◼   ► it's the second, I don't know, and pressing those rectangles to say, "I'm here, I'm doing

00:25:02 ◼   ► this, I want to do that, change to this mode," which is fine, like it's good to have buttons

00:25:05 ◼   ► for all this stuff. But like Scott McDulty says in his tweet, anybody who has cylinders

00:25:12 ◼   ► it listens to you when you talk in the air, like that is the killer feature. To be able

00:25:15 ◼   ► to just stroll around and just say something and have it do things, whether it's asking

00:25:19 ◼   ► it to set a timer, or asking it what the weather's going to be tomorrow, or telling it to turn

00:25:24 ◼   ► lights on or off, or whatever phrases you enter into the thing, like just getting used

00:25:28 ◼   ► to being able to say that, and even for our thing, like the stupid stuff of asking it

00:25:32 ◼   ► how to spell things and multiply and divide numbers, like, or define things or say something

00:25:37 ◼   ► in a particular language, I don't have to wonder, is my phone in this room? Will it

00:25:42 ◼   ► hear me from that distance? Will I be able to hear it? Or if multiple phones in the room

00:25:47 ◼   ► and they all have that feature, who's they are not going to say activated on it, will

00:25:50 ◼   ► they all wake up and start trying to answer at the same time and everything like that?

00:25:53 ◼   ► The cylinders simplify all of this. And so this video, I kind of feel the same way. This

00:25:57 ◼   ► video basically says, "Hey, we at Apple have home automation. It's massively less convenient

00:26:03 ◼   ► than the cylinders you talk to, but it exists, and if you like tapping buttons, boy, is this

00:26:07 ◼   ► a thing for you.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And I feel like they're really missing the boat on this type of home automation.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And it makes me think once again that as silly as these little cylinders are, everyone who

00:26:18 ◼   ► gets one ends up liking it for something.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Like they end up liking it more than they thought they would, because it certainly seems

00:26:26 ◼   ► pretty dumb.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And even if they only use one tiny corner of the functionality, that tiny corner functionality

00:26:32 ◼   ► becomes an important part of their life. And that, I think, shows a successful product.

00:26:37 ◼   ► So I think Apple not having something like this for such a long time, either because

00:26:42 ◼   ► they're coming up with the super duper uber awesome one that's going to be way better

00:26:45 ◼   ► than everybody else's and cost twice as much, or because they just think it's a dumb idea,

00:26:50 ◼   ► I think they're missing the boat. And this website is like a giant advertisement for

00:26:53 ◼   ► them missing the boat.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Yeah, because like, you know, as more people get these devices too, like, timing to the

00:26:59 ◼   ► the market is kind of important here.

00:27:01 ◼   ► There is a significant first mover advantage

00:27:03 ◼   ► because once you have a couple of these cylinders

00:27:06 ◼   ► in your house from one of the brands that sells them,

00:27:09 ◼   ► if Apple's comes out and is just a little bit better,

00:27:13 ◼   ► no one's gonna buy it.

00:27:14 ◼   ► It has to be massively better to get people

00:27:18 ◼   ► who have already bought into these systems to convert over.

00:27:21 ◼   ► And right now, I have the Amazon ecosystem.

00:27:25 ◼   ► I have a short cylinder in my office

00:27:27 ◼   ► and a tall cylinder in the kitchen.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And when the Google Home came out,

00:27:31 ◼   ► I heard what most people said about it,

00:27:33 ◼   ► and I was initially interested,

00:27:36 ◼   ► but then once all the reviews came out

00:27:38 ◼   ► and basically said, "Yeah, it's fine.

00:27:40 ◼   ► "It's just about as good as the Amazon Echo.

00:27:42 ◼   ► "It's not massively better or worse.

00:27:44 ◼   ► "It's about the same.

00:27:46 ◼   ► "Better in some ways, worse in others,

00:27:47 ◼   ► "but about the same overall."

00:27:49 ◼   ► Then I immediately lost any interest in ever trying it,

00:27:52 ◼   ► because I thought, "Well, I already have one.

00:27:54 ◼   ► "It's all set up.

00:27:55 ◼   ► "I have all my integration set up.

00:27:57 ◼   ► I'm habituated to saying its commands and using it to control stuff in my house and

00:28:03 ◼   ► play music and stuff. So why would I switch if the other thing is not massively better?

00:28:08 ◼   ► And so if Apple comes out with their version of the Amazon Echo or Google Home or whatever

00:28:12 ◼   ► else and it's, you know, Siri in a can, like, then it has to be way, way better for me to

00:28:19 ◼   ► care and for anyone who's bought any of these devices to care. And I think the chances of

00:28:24 ◼   ► that are just not that great. Seeing how Siri actually is and has been today in the competitive

00:28:29 ◼   ► landscape and seeing Apple's recent kind of accessory hardware in the $200 range like

00:28:38 ◼   ► the Apple TV or them killing the airport base stations. Like seeing their efforts in this

00:28:43 ◼   ► kind of area recently, it just doesn't fill me with confidence that if they do one of

00:28:50 ◼   ► of these things that it's going to be massively better than what we already have. So it's

00:28:55 ◼   ► probably just going to be roughly the same if not worse and as you said twice as expensive

00:29:01 ◼   ► probably. So I don't really see that going anywhere. I think the typical Apple, you know,

00:29:08 ◼   ► the pattern of sitting back and kind of waiting until everyone has like version 2 and then

00:29:12 ◼   ► rolling out the amazing Apple one, that might not work here. I think that might just be

00:29:18 ◼   ► more like what we've seen with the Apple TV, which is some people buy it, you know,

00:29:23 ◼   ► the really devoted Apple fans buy it, but it doesn't have mass market success because

00:29:30 ◼   ► it's just, you know, more expensive than everything else but not better enough, and

00:29:35 ◼   ► possibly even not better.

00:29:36 ◼   ► The one thing by all accounts that Apple is doing better than its competitors is security.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Like being very careful about who they partner with and having very strict requirements on

00:29:45 ◼   ► security and privacy. Surely they're better on privacy than Google and Amazon are. Although

00:29:50 ◼   ► there was that case where some law enforcement agency was trying to subpoena audio recordings

00:29:56 ◼   ► from Amazon Echo or something and Amazon, I think this was Amazon, did fight them on it and said no

00:30:01 ◼   ► you can't have our stuff and they're trying to like get that audio classified in a way that it

00:30:05 ◼   ► makes it not available without a warrant and all these other things right. So but there are a lot

00:30:10 ◼   ► of security implications to all these devices which at this point you just have to accept that

00:30:13 ◼   ► you are compromising security in some way by using any of these things. And Apple with HomeKit

00:30:20 ◼   ► seems to be trying to avoid silly situations where a vendor integrates with you and does something

00:30:28 ◼   ► extremely lax when it comes to security and has some obvious flaw that either makes devices in

00:30:35 ◼   ► your houses into botnets or into spy devices and stuff like that. And that's good. Like,

00:30:41 ◼   ► good in general is Apple tends to be good on security and privacy, but so far consumers have

00:30:47 ◼   ► shown no willingness to value privacy in their purchase decisions. That is not a differentiating,

00:30:54 ◼   ► not enough of a differentiating factor. Even in the phone space, Apple is very good on privacy

00:31:01 ◼   ► and security with its phones, but I don't think that's why people are buying iPhones. They're

00:31:04 ◼   ► buying them because they like iPhones and it's a nice to have and it's a perk or whatever, but

00:31:09 ◼   ► people are voting with their wallets by buying, you name it, light bulbs, televisions, cylinders

00:31:14 ◼   ► that you talk to with terrible security and privacy that like literally intentionally spy

00:31:19 ◼   ► and you record everything you say and do and then sell it to people and everyone's like,

00:31:23 ◼   ► "Oh well, whatever, TV works, looks nice." You know, like so it's not that that's how the market

00:31:29 ◼   ► is working right now and what can you do if people don't value it? Do we need to change something for

00:31:34 ◼   ► people to value it? Do we need a new generation of people in the aftermath of some terrible privacy

00:31:38 ◼   ► related thing to deal with this? Are we just happy to leave it to the legal system to say

00:31:43 ◼   ► like, "Well, people get hacked and hacking is illegal and if it happens, you know, someone

00:31:48 ◼   ► will stop them, someone, someone, but blah, blah, blah, big sky theory, no one cares about

00:31:52 ◼   ► what I'm doing anyway, so I'll just buy this Vizio TV and get spied on," or whatever it

00:31:56 ◼   ► is, you know? And it's true, it's true of the Google cylinder that I have, it's probably

00:31:59 ◼   ► true of the Amazon ones, and it's, you know, we accept it for the trade-offs. Even Marco,

00:32:05 ◼   ► famous paranoid privacy advocate who won't put

00:32:08 ◼   ► precompiled binaries into his application,

00:32:10 ◼   ► is willing to trade devices in his house

00:32:13 ◼   ► constantly recording him for the convenience

00:32:15 ◼   ► of saying something and have his lights go out at night.

00:32:16 ◼   ► - Well, and to be fair, I'm risking my own personal privacy

00:32:21 ◼   ► with that one, and then it's very different

00:32:23 ◼   ► from risking the privacy of my entire

00:32:26 ◼   ► customer base of my app.

00:32:27 ◼   ► - You're trading the thing that you can trade,

00:32:29 ◼   ► which seems like a fair trade to you.

00:32:31 ◼   ► You're like, well, no one really cares about me,

00:32:32 ◼   ► and whatever, and I get this convenience,

00:32:35 ◼   ► And you weigh them and you're like, well, convenience wins in this case, right?

00:32:39 ◼   ► You know, I don't have any of these devices in the house, like I said earlier, and I've

00:32:44 ◼   ► only interacted with them a couple of times, and I don't think I get it.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Like, it's neat, I suppose, but I don't know.

00:32:56 ◼   ► This is like the old man portion of the show, and I'm surprised it took us this long to

00:32:58 ◼   ► get here, but I don't really see how getting up and walking a few paces to turn a light

00:33:03 ◼   ► So terrible like and I know I know that makes me an old man. I know that makes me backwards and ridiculous

00:33:08 ◼   ► I understand you can't write a letter on a piece of paper and walk to the mailbox is the mailbox too far away

00:33:14 ◼   ► You gotta have those electronic messages. I

00:33:16 ◼   ► Completely agree with you and if and if the roles were reversed I would be saying the exact same thing to you like it's just

00:33:23 ◼   ► This I know I say this a lot and I'm always wrong and so I'm sure this is another time

00:33:27 ◼   ► But this fills a need that I don't feel like I have fast forward to six months from now

00:33:31 ◼   ► I'm gonna have probably an Amazon cylinder, a Google cylinder, and maybe even an Apple cylinder,

00:33:36 ◼   ► and I'll love all of them in their own special way. There'll be my children at that point. But

00:33:41 ◼   ► sitting here now, there's no integration, there's no thing that I can see today that makes me want

00:33:52 ◼   ► one of them. And I bet you anything if one showed up at the house, I would end up loving it. But

00:33:56 ◼   ► But it's just, even this video, I watched it and thought, "Well, yeah, that's cool."

00:34:01 ◼   ► But I don't, it's solving problems I don't think I have.

00:34:06 ◼   ► It's like any of those things where you don't know you have the need until you have it.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And it's not going to be like a life-changing thing like the iPhone was.

00:34:13 ◼   ► But I feel like everyone who has one, like we use ours less than I thought I would because

00:34:17 ◼   ► basically I was betting on Google making their product better, faster than they actually

00:34:21 ◼   ► are.

00:34:22 ◼   ► So, oh well, better me.

00:34:23 ◼   ► If only you had friends who told you beforehand to pick the other one.

00:34:26 ◼   ► I don't think I would use the other one anymore, because I think it's basically a

00:34:30 ◼   ► wash at this point.

00:34:32 ◼   ► But anyway, apparently not.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Here's, you know, because it does, it is really good at the things that it does do.

00:34:39 ◼   ► But eventually, once you realize these things are there and start to get into the mindset,

00:34:44 ◼   ► what was it?

00:34:45 ◼   ► Like we're sitting down, ours is within earshot when we sit down to dinner, and we're

00:34:50 ◼   ► sitting down at dinner trying to think of, talking about some songs that someone heard,

00:34:54 ◼   ► and because I subscribe to Google Play Music, another reason, by the way, that I wouldn't

00:34:57 ◼   ► want an Apple one is that it would make me have to subscribe to Apple Music to do what

00:35:02 ◼   ► I'm about to describe. We were having some discussion about a song, and I can just say

00:35:06 ◼   ► into the air, I can just request into the air for that song to be played, almost any

00:35:10 ◼   ► song to be played, and it just starts playing it. Because we were having a discussion of

00:35:15 ◼   ► what the lyrics were and how it sounds, and the kids wanted to hear it, and no one has

00:35:18 ◼   ► to get up from the table or pull out their phone and try to search for the song, I just

00:35:22 ◼   ► say something into the air before you can even get your phone out of your pocket and

00:35:25 ◼   ► the song is playing. And that is a weird future world thing that I think is awesome. And is

00:35:31 ◼   ► it a big deal? And is it a need? No, it's not. But for the $110 or whatever I pay for

00:35:36 ◼   ► this stupid cylinder to be able to say words into the air and have the song that I requested

00:35:39 ◼   ► play immediately, I think that's like worth the price of entry. Even if I only do that

00:35:45 ◼   ► once every week and a half and the rest of the time my kids are just asking how to say

00:35:48 ◼   ► things in foreign languages like this is all bonus.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Now, again, it's not a life-changing thing, but once you get used to the idea that something

00:35:56 ◼   ► is constantly listening in your house and can conceivably do things that you find useful,

00:36:01 ◼   ► it's hard to go back to the idea that nothing is listening and you have to actually pick

00:36:05 ◼   ► something up and hit it with your fingers because there is a big difference in how it

00:36:10 ◼   ► feels to do something.

00:36:12 ◼   ► It's kind of like the difference between how it feels to pull out your phone and look something

00:36:14 ◼   ► up versus how it would feel to get in your car and drive to the library and look something

00:36:17 ◼   ► up. And now this is, you know, it's like, you know, it's an exponential type thing where

00:36:23 ◼   ► like obviously the library is way longer than the looking on the phone. But now, like how

00:36:28 ◼   ► much how much longer is saying something into the air to your phone? It's probably a couple

00:36:33 ◼   ► seconds, a couple minutes, but man, it feels it feels so different. And you just can't

00:36:38 ◼   ► go back to the other way. And if you wanted to go whole full home automation, everything

00:36:42 ◼   ► and hook stuff up to it and do all stuff like that, that feel like you're starting to get

00:36:46 ◼   ► into tech gadget land at that point.

00:36:48 ◼   ► But that can be awesome too, especially if it's like a hobby,

00:36:50 ◼   ► to have a house where you can just say things

00:36:52 ◼   ► and have it do stuff and work with your rhythms.

00:36:54 ◼   ► There's, I think these devices can be enjoyed

00:36:57 ◼   ► at many levels and as we said last time we discussed this,

00:36:59 ◼   ► most importantly, they're all freaking cheap

00:37:02 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Like they're not $3, but they're also not $2,000

00:37:06 ◼   ► like a new MacBook, right?

00:37:07 ◼   ► You can get one of these, you can buy all of these,

00:37:10 ◼   ► you can put them, what is the dot one,

00:37:11 ◼   ► what is the short cylinder, Marco?

00:37:13 ◼   ► - It's like 40 bucks.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - 40 bucks?

00:37:16 ◼   ► It's really cheap.

00:37:17 ◼   ► - You can get one of these things on a whim

00:37:20 ◼   ► just to see if you might like it and throw it somewhere.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And if you never use it, you're like,

00:37:24 ◼   ► "Oh well, it's $40.

00:37:25 ◼   ► "It's like a nice meal for one person."

00:37:27 ◼   ► Like, whatever.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - You know, to answer your earlier question, Case,

00:37:30 ◼   ► like you don't see why it would be a big deal

00:37:33 ◼   ► to have faster light switches or something.

00:37:36 ◼   ► The answer is that there's like one thing

00:37:39 ◼   ► that gets most owners in the door.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And for most people I've talked to and been around

00:37:45 ◼   ► and seen be converted, including myself,

00:37:48 ◼   ► that one thing is music.

00:37:49 ◼   ► You know, it's like what John said,

00:37:50 ◼   ► like it really is awesome to be able to just say,

00:37:53 ◼   ► Alexa, play fish, and have that just work

00:37:57 ◼   ► for all of our listeners. - You did that on purpose.

00:37:58 ◼   ► You terrible, terrible troll.

00:38:00 ◼   ► - Not the first time.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Or, you know, and you can say, you know,

00:38:03 ◼   ► hey Cylinder, play rock music from the '90s.

00:38:06 ◼   ► It's just really, really nice to have that.

00:38:12 ◼   ► There's a reason why places like Sonos

00:38:15 ◼   ► having trouble now. Like anything that is involved in the high end audio scene for tech

00:38:21 ◼   ► geeks that is not voice controlled is having problems right now because it's once you get

00:38:27 ◼   ► into the voice controlled music it is so awesome. Especially like when you know if you're having

00:38:31 ◼   ► like friends over for dinner or something else and you just have it playing and you

00:38:35 ◼   ► can just and anybody can just say you know next song or pause or volume up or whatever

00:38:39 ◼   ► else or people can call out their own request. Like it's fun. It becomes a cool a pretty

00:38:44 ◼   ► cool thing. The Echo is not a great speaker. It's only an okay speaker. Literally, like

00:38:49 ◼   ► in my house, it is sitting right next to a Sonos speaker that is way, way better sounding.

00:38:55 ◼   ► And the Sonos speaker almost never gets used anymore because it is just so much more convenient

00:38:59 ◼   ► to use the Echo for music purposes. And so anyway, you know, what gets someone in is

00:39:04 ◼   ► usually one cool thing that they like see or hear about and they're like, "Oh my

00:39:09 ◼   ► god, I want it for that." But then once you already have the cylinder in your house

00:39:13 ◼   ► and set up and everything.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Then when Black Friday comes around

00:39:16 ◼   ► and the switchable outlets go on sale for like 20 bucks,

00:39:19 ◼   ► you're like, "Hey, let me try one of those."

00:39:22 ◼   ► And then you try one and you're like,

00:39:24 ◼   ► "Oh, that ends up, there's that one lamp,

00:39:26 ◼   ► "it's the total other side of the room,

00:39:29 ◼   ► "and I turn it off every night,

00:39:30 ◼   ► "and every night I have to walk over there and turn it off,

00:39:32 ◼   ► "and what if I didn't have to walk over there?

00:39:34 ◼   ► "I'd save like five seconds a night, and that could add up."

00:39:37 ◼   ► And then next time they're on sale,

00:39:38 ◼   ► you get three or four more of them,

00:39:39 ◼   ► 'cause you realize how useful they are,

00:39:41 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden you can say,

00:39:42 ◼   ► "Hey, look, turn off everything,"

00:39:44 ◼   ► and all of your lights turn off.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And when you're going up to bed,

00:39:47 ◼   ► and you have a glass of water in one hand,

00:39:49 ◼   ► and maybe some laundry, or a dog in the other hand,

00:39:52 ◼   ► and you don't have any hands to go hit all the light switches

00:39:54 ◼   ► before you go upstairs, you can just say,

00:39:55 ◼   ► "Hey, turn off everything,"

00:39:56 ◼   ► and five things turn off at once,

00:39:59 ◼   ► and you just walk upstairs.

00:40:00 ◼   ► And it becomes pretty cool.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And so that's how you get into this.

00:40:05 ◼   ► It is not that you can't walk over and hit a light switch,

00:40:08 ◼   ► but once you have one of these technologies

00:40:11 ◼   ► for some other reason, like music,

00:40:13 ◼   ► then it's, and as all the home automation things

00:40:18 ◼   ► just start getting really cheaper,

00:40:19 ◼   ► you know, when you can go and get these switch blouts

00:40:22 ◼   ► for like 20 bucks, whatever,

00:40:24 ◼   ► or you can have other integration through web services,

00:40:26 ◼   ► through like IFTTT and various services like that,

00:40:29 ◼   ► and you know, warm up your car, or you can,

00:40:31 ◼   ► you, Casey, you have your garage door thing.

00:40:33 ◼   ► You can like open and close your garage door by voice.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Like, once you are in the system

00:40:38 ◼   ► for some other compelling reason, like music,

00:40:41 ◼   ► you will start having these other things trickle in

00:40:43 ◼   ► and you'll be like, wait a minute, this is kind of awesome.

00:40:46 ◼   ► And none of it's necessary.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Like you could operate your house without these things.

00:40:50 ◼   ► But once you have a taste of this, it's just really nice.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Again, it's not a must have.

00:40:58 ◼   ► We can all send letters to the post office if we want to.

00:41:01 ◼   ► But once you have something nicer, it is pretty great.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's funny you bring up,

00:41:08 ◼   ► both of you bring up the music thing

00:41:10 ◼   ► because when I tried Apple Music during the free trial when it first came out, the one

00:41:16 ◼   ► thing I deeply missed about Apple Music was being able to say to Siri, you know, "play

00:41:24 ◼   ► mute math" or whatever the case may be, and just have it happen.

00:41:27 ◼   ► And that was super cool, and it was almost enough to get me to pay for Apple Music rather

00:41:33 ◼   ► than Spotify, which I prefer for reasons that are irrelevant.

00:41:36 ◼   ► But all the other things that I preferred about Spotify were enough to keep me away

00:41:40 ◼   ► from Apple Music.

00:41:42 ◼   ► And I guess that's the difference is with the garage door opener as an example, I immediately

00:41:47 ◼   ► understood why having an internet-connected garage door opener could immediately improve

00:41:53 ◼   ► or improve may be a strong word, but I can't think of a better one, improve my life.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Whereas the cylinders, I don't doubt that they would make things better in all the ways

00:42:03 ◼   ► you described, but there's less of a visceral, tangible need that I can see sitting here now.

00:42:09 ◼   ► And I'm sure the time will come that I will get one, and I'm sure I'll be on this show saying,

00:42:12 ◼   ► "By God, what was I thinking? Of course I wanted this." But sitting here now, ignorance is less.

00:42:18 ◼   ► [crickets chirping]

00:42:20 ◼   ► Wow. You know, it does take some time to actually figure out what you think is going to be good for

00:42:25 ◼   ► after you just play with it and find the limits of the thing. And I think it really is situational.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Like it's not as if you have to like, "Every day I'm going to do this thing and I'm going

00:42:36 ◼   ► to use this thing to do the thing."

00:42:37 ◼   ► Like getting a new device into your life and incorporating it into some tasks you have

00:42:41 ◼   ► to do.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Like for me that's not my experience of having this thing.

00:42:45 ◼   ► It's more like developing an awareness that this thing is there so that when a need comes

00:42:49 ◼   ► up that you reflexively satisfy in other ways, eventually you come to remember, "I don't

00:42:56 ◼   ► have to do that.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I can just say this question into the air and get an answer."

00:43:00 ◼   ► Even if it's like dividing two numbers or converting like teaspoons into cups or whatever,

00:43:07 ◼   ► all those things are things I've done my whole life and I go, "I don't remember the converters,

00:43:11 ◼   ► let me check," or whatever.

00:43:12 ◼   ► And you can always pick up your phone or ask someone in the house who you think knows the

00:43:16 ◼   ► conversion or all these other ways you have to solve this problem.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Eventually, the most important thing you need to have is a deep-grained instinctive awareness

00:43:27 ◼   ► that I can say this thing into the air and get an answer, right? And that's the hardest

00:43:32 ◼   ► part because you will find yourself pulling out your phone and typing into Google, you

00:43:36 ◼   ► know, "How many teaspoons in a cup?" And you'll do that and maybe do that without

00:43:41 ◼   ► even realizing you could have just asked that question, but eventually it sinks in. It sinks

00:43:45 ◼   ► in after some incidents of like arguing about the lyrics to the song over dinner and realizing,

00:43:49 ◼   ► we can settle this in 30 seconds. I can just request that song by title. It will immediately

00:43:52 ◼   ► start playing and we can all listen to it together, right? Or not remembering what year

00:43:58 ◼   ► someone was born or what album this thing was on or whatever. We can all take out our

00:44:03 ◼   ► phones and look it up. We all know how to do that. It's like, you could do that. Or

00:44:06 ◼   ► you could just put a little trigger phrase that I'm not going to say in front of that

00:44:10 ◼   ► same question you were just asking each other and instantly get some kind of answer. And

00:44:16 ◼   ► it can go too far where we have the recent rash of the Google, what is it, the Google

00:44:20 ◼   ► answer thing where it tries to answer the question definitively at the top of search

00:44:23 ◼   ► results and it just throws out bogus stuff that has no foundation and truth, right? And

00:44:28 ◼   ► all these devices, again, there are security concerns and privacy concerns and everything,

00:44:31 ◼   ► but it is a glimpse of the as-yet-unperfected, unrealized future. And like all gadget tech

00:44:39 ◼   ► geeks, we all like to sort of see what that future is going to be like and try living

00:44:43 ◼   ► it even if it is pretty rough at this point, just because we think there's value in it

00:44:48 ◼   ► and whatever form it takes in the future, I think this type of interface has proved

00:44:53 ◼   ► its worth that it has to be part of the various ways we interact with technology and networks,

00:44:59 ◼   ► right?

00:45:00 ◼   ► All the other ones have proved their worth, and they're not going to go away and be

00:45:02 ◼   ► completely replaced with this, but this, I feel like, has definitively proved its worth.

00:45:07 ◼   ► It's just a question of how it fits in with all the other ways that we use computing devices

00:45:12 ◼   ► and connect networks and stuff.

00:45:15 ◼   ► We're brought to you this week by Squarespace.

00:45:18 ◼   ► Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.

00:45:21 ◼   ► Enter offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off.

00:45:25 ◼   ► Squarespace lets you build websites.

00:45:28 ◼   ► Beautiful professional designed websites full of functionality.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Everything from a simple content site to a blog to a gallery to a portfolio to even a

00:45:36 ◼   ► full blown store where you sell physical or digital goods.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Squarespace can do all of that.

00:45:41 ◼   ► And it does it while looking amazing for you.

00:45:45 ◼   ► So with the interface you use and the interface everyone else sees, first of all it looks

00:45:48 ◼   ► almost the same because it's really like a what you see is what you get environment.

00:45:52 ◼   ► But then your site just looks so good with their professionally designed templates that

00:45:56 ◼   ► you can very, very easily customize if you want to.

00:45:59 ◼   ► All this drag and drop stuff and little live previews and what you see is what you get.

00:46:04 ◼   ► It is so nice to make websites with Squarespace and it's so easy.

00:46:07 ◼   ► It is so much easier than how it used to be to do any of this stuff.

00:46:12 ◼   ► it's making a simple blog or a podcast or setting up a whole store. With Squarespace

00:46:16 ◼   ► you should click a few buttons and it's basically done. They support it if you need any help.

00:46:21 ◼   ► They have rock solid hosting. I highly recommend that you check out Squarespace for your next

00:46:26 ◼   ► project. It is so easy to do. You will wonder why you ever did anything else to make a website.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Go to squarespace.com. Start a free trial site today with no credit card required. See

00:46:37 ◼   ► how far you get. I say try it for an hour. Next time you need to make a site for you

00:46:41 ◼   ► or someone else, try it for an hour, see how far you get, and I bet by the end of that

00:46:46 ◼   ► hour you will love Squarespace so much you'll sign up. And when you do sign up, use offer

00:46:50 ◼   ► code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase. Thank you very much to Squarespace for supporting

00:46:54 ◼   ► this show. Make your next move with Squarespace.

00:47:00 ◼   ► So YouTube also, almost a month ago now, has announced YouTube TV, which means for $35

00:47:09 ◼   ► a month. Subscribers get all four major networks, ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC, and around 30 of the

00:47:14 ◼   ► biggest cable channels. And that price covers six accounts, so each member of the house

00:47:19 ◼   ► can have a personalized account that offers recommendations tuned to their taste. I'm

00:47:23 ◼   ► reading mostly from The Verge's coverage of this. It will be missing channels from Viacom,

00:47:28 ◼   ► including big names like Comedy Central and MTV. It also won't have programming from Turner,

00:47:32 ◼   ► which means you won't get CNN, TV, STNT, AMC, Discovery, and A&E.

00:47:37 ◼   ► But this, as someone who is not really looking to cut the cord, this does sound pretty compelling

00:47:42 ◼   ► to me.

00:47:43 ◼   ► I don't really have a good feel for what the landscape is for cord cutters, because I'm

00:47:49 ◼   ► not even really considering it at the moment.

00:47:51 ◼   ► But this sounds really good.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Marco, I know you're not really that into broadcast TV, but I believe you've cut the

00:47:57 ◼   ► cord, so are you interested in this at all?

00:48:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the last time I had cable

00:48:02 ◼   ► was about 10 years ago, and I don't say that's to like,

00:48:05 ◼   ► to super brag in the hipster way possible, just a fact.

00:48:09 ◼   ► I've, you know, since then, I've gotten into the habit

00:48:14 ◼   ► of just not having these TV channels.

00:48:16 ◼   ► I do get and buy TV content in other ways,

00:48:21 ◼   ► like through iTunes and stuff, although honestly,

00:48:23 ◼   ► I cannot leave Apple TV purchasing fast enough.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Like, as Top Chef wrapped up on one more season,

00:48:33 ◼   ► I still can't believe how bad buying TV series

00:48:37 ◼   ► on Apple TV is and then watching them

00:48:39 ◼   ► and all the different things that don't work

00:48:41 ◼   ► or that work poorly or that actually spoil the show,

00:48:45 ◼   ► like the auto-generated thumbnails

00:48:46 ◼   ► of the Last Chance Kitchen.

00:48:48 ◼   ► But, you know, I've kinda gotten into the world now

00:48:52 ◼   ► of not having cable, and so to buy access

00:48:56 ◼   ► to all these channels to me, it doesn't really sound

00:49:00 ◼   ► that appealing 'cause I kinda don't need them anymore,

00:49:02 ◼   ► or I've trained myself not to have them anymore.

00:49:06 ◼   ► So the idea of buying access to all these things

00:49:09 ◼   ► so I can watch broadcast TV and sports,

00:49:12 ◼   ► not although with a bunch of asterisks and stuff like that,

00:49:14 ◼   ► it is advertising a collection of services

00:49:18 ◼   ► that I have gone without for 10 years,

00:49:20 ◼   ► that I have already, this is not something

00:49:23 ◼   ► I really am that excited about for myself.

00:49:26 ◼   ► I do think it is a good idea for people who have been

00:49:29 ◼   ► maintaining a cable subscription all this time

00:49:31 ◼   ► for one of these things or for multiple of these things.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Like lots of people that have, for example, sports fans.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Like a lot of sports fans or people who just like to watch

00:49:42 ◼   ► like live news or who like to watch some shows

00:49:45 ◼   ► that are on one of these networks that just aren't

00:49:47 ◼   ► available easily or affordably elsewhere online,

00:49:51 ◼   ► at least legally.

00:49:53 ◼   ► So for those people, this is a great, this is a good idea.

00:49:56 ◼   ► it seems like a pretty reasonable price.

00:49:58 ◼   ► They say 35 bucks a month for all this stuff.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Now, I'm curious, what form does this take?

00:50:03 ◼   ► Is it like just a TV stream,

00:50:06 ◼   ► and therefore you have to skip commercials and crap,

00:50:08 ◼   ► or is it more like on demand,

00:50:09 ◼   ► where you just pick what you wanna watch

00:50:10 ◼   ► and there's no commercials?

00:50:12 ◼   ► - I'm not sure.

00:50:13 ◼   ► The way I read this was,

00:50:15 ◼   ► it's that it would basically exist within YouTube,

00:50:19 ◼   ► but I could have that dreadfully wrong.

00:50:21 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure.

00:50:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause they make mention of things

00:50:24 ◼   ► like a DVR style recording with unlimited storage space

00:50:28 ◼   ► in Google's cloud and the ability to skip over ads.

00:50:31 ◼   ► So that kind of sounds like it's more like

00:50:32 ◼   ► watching a broadcast and you just,

00:50:35 ◼   ► it's kind of like a broadcast with DVR style controls,

00:50:38 ◼   ► but you'd still have to fast forward through the ads.

00:50:41 ◼   ► - So it's kind of weird to see YouTube as the company,

00:50:45 ◼   ► sort of, I don't know if they're very first out of the gate,

00:50:47 ◼   ► but one of the first of the big names to do

00:50:49 ◼   ► what everyone's been referring to was,

00:50:52 ◼   ► This is the skinny bundle thing where it's a subset of the stuff that you can buy in

00:50:57 ◼   ► cable with the idea that people who pay for cable, nobody wants all those channels.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Like everyone just wants a subset of it.

00:51:04 ◼   ► So if we could sell you a subset of it for a cheaper price, then that would be a more

00:51:09 ◼   ► desirable product for you and we could get you onto our platform and stop you paying

00:51:13 ◼   ► for cable.

00:51:14 ◼   ► Or stop you paying for cable.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Stop you paying for television programming for cable because once again the whole cord

00:51:19 ◼   ► cord cutter thing makes about as much sense as debating which parts of a game engine are

00:51:24 ◼   ► done in software and in hardware. It doesn't really mean anything when you look at the

00:51:27 ◼   ► phrasing because "Oh, I'm cutting the cord, I'm going to get all of my video content over

00:51:31 ◼   ► a cable that comes to my house that delivers data." But it doesn't count because it's internet

00:51:36 ◼   ► and not cable television. And, oh, it's a totally different thing. Anyway, Comcast would

00:51:41 ◼   ► still sell you your internet access, or Verizon or whoever would sell you your internet access,

00:51:45 ◼   ► but you were just like "No thanks, I don't want to pay for your cable television bundle,

00:51:49 ◼   ► I just want the internet.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I'll pay you for that."

00:51:52 ◼   ► And then over the internet,

00:51:54 ◼   ► I will get things like YouTube TV.

00:51:55 ◼   ► But anyway, it's ironic that YouTube is doing it

00:51:57 ◼   ► because as far as my children are concerned,

00:52:00 ◼   ► YouTube is television.

00:52:03 ◼   ► They barely watch television anymore.

00:52:05 ◼   ► They watch YouTube on their iOS devices

00:52:08 ◼   ► because that's what they have.

00:52:09 ◼   ► If they didn't, they would watch it on anything else.

00:52:11 ◼   ► Television, like I don't think they know

00:52:14 ◼   ► what ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC are.

00:52:17 ◼   ► I don't think they recognize

00:52:18 ◼   ► those sequence of three letters.

00:52:19 ◼   ► we put them in sequence and say, "What are these three letters?" they would not be able

00:52:22 ◼   ► to identify. They have no idea. They watch enough television. They've never seen enough

00:52:27 ◼   ► television shows in their life, but their entire interface with television, A, is through

00:52:30 ◼   ► my Tivo, so there is no, again, trying to explain to them or your young children the

00:52:35 ◼   ► concept of live television is extremely difficult. The task of modern parenting, right, to explain

00:52:41 ◼   ► to your toddler what live television is and why you can't fast-forward or pause or anything

00:52:47 ◼   ► like that, like, no, this is happening now. This is live, like, or we can't watch this

00:52:51 ◼   ► because it hasn't aired yet. Like, it's going to come on at seven. It's like, what are you

00:52:55 ◼   ► even saying that I don't understand? Like, I don't understand these words. Like, and

00:52:59 ◼   ► they know that let me explain it to you. You just go like this and you tap over here. And

00:53:04 ◼   ► but just why isn't it working? I think it's broken. Like, no, it hasn't hasn't aired yet.

00:53:08 ◼   ► It's difficult. Anyway, this is a difficult thing to explain, right? So YouTube, it seems

00:53:14 ◼   ► has the future locked up and yet they are the ones out of the gate to say we're going

00:53:17 ◼   ► to try to get the olds by giving them something that makes them feel more comfortable and

00:53:21 ◼   ► you pay us $35 a month and we will resell you this content with a nice kind of interface

00:53:25 ◼   ► that makes it look like you have a TiVo but you don't and you know some fashion of on-demand

00:53:31 ◼   ► type stuff and also with ad skipping and so on and so forth.

00:53:34 ◼   ► But like all these deals, the reason it has always been said that Apple hasn't had this

00:53:39 ◼   ► deal, hasn't had a deal like this despite them pursuing it for many years now is that

00:53:43 ◼   ► They could never get, presumably according to Apple satisfaction, an arrangement of content

00:53:51 ◼   ► and price that Apple liked, that Apple said yes, that's what we want to go to market with.

00:53:55 ◼   ► So they've come to market with nothing.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And all these things, if you look at them, it's like, oh, well, you got all this stuff,

00:54:01 ◼   ► but you don't have all that stuff.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Is this the right price and the combination of content?

00:54:06 ◼   ► If you got this and you'd be like, I'm going to replace cable, and then you just realize,

00:54:10 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of a show that's on AMC, like Mad Men used to be.

00:54:13 ◼   ► What's on AMC now?

00:54:15 ◼   ► The Americans, is The Americans FX?

00:54:17 ◼   ► Anyway, if you get this and you're like, "This will be just like cable.

00:54:20 ◼   ► We can just pick the channels we want," but you realize you can't get some of these things

00:54:24 ◼   ► at any price?

00:54:25 ◼   ► Oh, The Walking Dead is on AMC, Better Call Saul.

00:54:29 ◼   ► You realize you can't get them at any price?

00:54:31 ◼   ► That can be a deal breaker.

00:54:32 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, I guess we'll just stick with cable," because cable, despite the fact

00:54:36 ◼   ► the cable is making you pay like, you know, $3 a month for ESPN that you never watch or

00:54:40 ◼   ► whatever the hell the number is these days. You have access to everything essentially.

00:54:44 ◼   ► The cable is a mature industry and everything is resold through cable subscriptions and

00:54:48 ◼   ► if you're willing to pay enough money you can get everything. To get a skinny bundle

00:54:53 ◼   ► like, "Okay, well, I'll skinny bundle for this and then I will just pay on iTunes for

00:54:58 ◼   ► The Walking Dead the day after it comes out or I'll watch Game of Thrones on HBO Go or

00:55:02 ◼   ► now and hope that it doesn't get overwhelmed by people and like that's the other thing

00:55:06 ◼   ► with these skinny bundles you can be really sad if Game of Thrones premieres and you can't

00:55:10 ◼   ► watch it because of some networking thing whereas if you had cable it would have quote

00:55:12 ◼   ► unquote just worked right because it's broadcast versus you know database television which

00:55:18 ◼   ► has all the problems of any you know database solution so I don't know if they're striking

00:55:25 ◼   ► the right balance and honestly I think YouTube shouldn't care that much if they're striking

00:55:28 ◼   ► the right balance because they sure as heck seem to be the future of television as far

00:55:32 ◼   ► as any of my children are concerned. And honestly, I'm watching more YouTube than I used to.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Like as in subscribing to channels and looking for content to come on them. So I think this

00:55:46 ◼   ► is a good move for YouTube. It's like we are already at the forefront of this new thing

00:55:49 ◼   ► and you know what, we can scrape up some of those old things and they're not so picky

00:55:52 ◼   ► about oh we can't go to market with this skinny bundle because not enough people will buy

00:55:56 ◼   ► it because it doesn't have CNN and TBS or A&E and AMC or whatever. They're just like whatever,

00:56:01 ◼   ► We'll go for it. We'll see how it goes. If it doesn't, whatever, we're the future.

00:56:04 ◼   ► We'll be fine. Whereas Apple is still waiting for this beautiful perfect deal that has extremely low

00:56:10 ◼   ► prices and the right amount of control for Apple and can provide the right experience.

00:56:14 ◼   ► So they just have nothing. They just have nothing to offer. They have this TV app that looks like

00:56:18 ◼   ► it's a ghost town. And you can kind of see a glimmer of what it was supposed to be. But what

00:56:22 ◼   ► it is now is nothing compared to YouTube, nothing compared to YouTube TV. So Apple is not doing well

00:56:29 ◼   ► here and Netflix and Amazon and YouTube definitely seem to be the future of video content for

00:56:35 ◼   ► an entire generation of people, whether they be young children or millennials or whatever

00:56:40 ◼   ► who just accept that the content they want probably isn't on TV, unless it's live news

00:56:49 ◼   ► or sports or something like that.

00:56:51 ◼   ► Even that, those will be the last ones to come over, but the future looks dim for the

00:56:55 ◼   ► the old model of television in all aspects.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And these skinny bundles entirely seem like

00:57:00 ◼   ► a transitional thing to get people over the hump

00:57:03 ◼   ► to the new system.

00:57:05 ◼   ► And the more of them that are out there,

00:57:07 ◼   ► the more people they'll pull over.

00:57:08 ◼   ► And like Marco, eventually, like once you do it

00:57:11 ◼   ► and realize the world doesn't come to an end

00:57:13 ◼   ► and you just get used to that kind of lifestyle

00:57:14 ◼   ► and accept whatever the limitations may be

00:57:16 ◼   ► during the transitional period, it's hard to go back.

00:57:19 ◼   ► Like you rarely hear about people who cut the cord,

00:57:22 ◼   ► try it for a year, and then immediately go back.

00:57:24 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they do if there's a disagreement in the house about how important local live

00:57:29 ◼   ► sports are and a misprediction of what a blackout would really mean to your life.

00:57:34 ◼   ► But beyond that, I feel like the people who unsubscribe from cable television, especially

00:57:40 ◼   ► in tech nerd circles, they find alternate arrangements and are happy with it eventually.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Like that it is a successful transition.

00:57:48 ◼   ► It's kind of like the people by the cylinders.

00:57:50 ◼   ► You're not quite sure what's going to work out, but you get it, and in the end, it's

00:57:53 ◼   ► better than you thought it would be.

00:57:55 ◼   ► - One thing that is somewhat appealing to me

00:57:57 ◼   ► about these new digital-based services, though,

00:58:00 ◼   ► is that there's no equipment,

00:58:03 ◼   ► and that you could probably pretty easily

00:58:06 ◼   ► start and stop your service.

00:58:08 ◼   ► In the past, if there was a big event of some kind,

00:58:12 ◼   ► like watching a presidential election return,

00:58:15 ◼   ► or a really important news event,

00:58:18 ◼   ► or a really important TV show that I was super into

00:58:20 ◼   ► that I couldn't get any other way,

00:58:22 ◼   ► it would be kind of a bummer to not have cable

00:58:25 ◼   ► for brief periods in my life.

00:58:27 ◼   ► And I would occasionally think,

00:58:28 ◼   ► maybe we should just get it again and just never use it.

00:58:31 ◼   ► But the idea of having to call up a local cable company

00:58:36 ◼   ► or whatever and have them schedule an appointment

00:58:40 ◼   ► and have them come to the house during this eight hour window

00:58:42 ◼   ► that usually becomes more than that,

00:58:44 ◼   ► and they come at the very end of it,

00:58:45 ◼   ► except for that one time where they came early,

00:58:47 ◼   ► so you can't really plan for it.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And then they install this giant box

00:58:50 ◼   ► that may or may not work.

00:58:52 ◼   ► If you want any kind of DVR functionality,

00:58:54 ◼   ► you need to deal with either another giant box

00:58:56 ◼   ► like the Syracuse method,

00:58:57 ◼   ► or you just deal with their crappy giant box

00:59:00 ◼   ► with their crappy DVR.

00:59:01 ◼   ► You gotta learn all the controls all over again.

00:59:03 ◼   ► You got another remote hanging around the house,

00:59:04 ◼   ► this giant box, and all this overhead

00:59:08 ◼   ► of starting and then later stopping that service.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Like if you wanna stop that service,

00:59:12 ◼   ► you gotta call them on the phone,

00:59:14 ◼   ► which I will do quite a lot to avoid.

00:59:16 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:59:17 ◼   ► Call them on the phone,

00:59:18 ◼   ► talk to some customer service rep,

00:59:20 ◼   ► In the case of some of these morally bankrupt companies

00:59:24 ◼   ► like Comcast, convince them to please for the love of God

00:59:27 ◼   ► let you cancel your service,

00:59:29 ◼   ► which you may or may not succeed at.

00:59:31 ◼   ► That may or may not take a very long time to convince them.

00:59:34 ◼   ► Then have that whole process in reverse.

00:59:37 ◼   ► Scheduling, dealing with the equipment,

00:59:40 ◼   ► whether you gotta drop it off somewhere

00:59:41 ◼   ► or have them come pick it up and disconnect the wire.

00:59:44 ◼   ► It's a big pain in the butt.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And then they probably have restrictions

00:59:47 ◼   ► on how often you can sign up

00:59:49 ◼   ► or disconnect your service again,

00:59:51 ◼   ► or like, you know, and then,

00:59:53 ◼   ► there's all this basically BS involved

00:59:57 ◼   ► in starting and stopping cable TV service.

01:00:00 ◼   ► So to have these internet-based ones

01:00:03 ◼   ► where it's probably just like, you know,

01:00:05 ◼   ► clicking a few buttons and entering a credit card

01:00:07 ◼   ► into the YouTube app, and then when you wanna stop it,

01:00:10 ◼   ► you, you know, go through some screens

01:00:12 ◼   ► and there's probably an all-digital way to do it

01:00:15 ◼   ► where you probably don't have to talk

01:00:15 ◼   ► to anybody on the phone.

01:00:17 ◼   ► That is actually probably a really good thing

01:00:19 ◼   ► for the cable industry.

01:00:21 ◼   ► It's not good in the sense that it becomes easier

01:00:23 ◼   ► to stop your service, but I think it is good

01:00:26 ◼   ► in that for people like me who don't have it

01:00:28 ◼   ► most of the time, but occasionally have some reason

01:00:31 ◼   ► where we might want it, I think you're more likely

01:00:33 ◼   ► to win people like us over because the barrier to entry

01:00:36 ◼   ► is now lower than it was before.

01:00:38 ◼   ► So that, I think, is a big new good feature of this.

01:00:42 ◼   ► However, that being said, what Jon said

01:00:46 ◼   ► about the channel availability is a big deal.

01:00:48 ◼   ► It includes the big rockers and roars,

01:00:50 ◼   ► but for 35 bucks a month, that's like a basic cable plan.

01:00:53 ◼   ► And it does not include Comedy Central, MTV, CNN,

01:00:57 ◼   ► TBS, TNT, AMC, A&E, Discovery.

01:01:00 ◼   ► It's like this huge list of channels that come

01:01:04 ◼   ► in pretty much every standard cable bundle in the US

01:01:07 ◼   ► for like 20 years, and they don't come with this.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And that kind of thing, in the regular cable market,

01:01:16 ◼   ► When you're choosing between one of the various satellite

01:01:20 ◼   ► companies like DirecTV or Dish or whatever,

01:01:22 ◼   ► if you choose between that or Comcast or Phios

01:01:26 ◼   ► or whatever your local cable thing is,

01:01:28 ◼   ► oftentimes one of these networks will be missing

01:01:32 ◼   ► from one of these services and that'll be enough

01:01:34 ◼   ► to get people to choose the other one.

01:01:36 ◼   ► So to have this many things missing,

01:01:39 ◼   ► that's really a pretty big problem, I think.

01:01:43 ◼   ► So this specific service at this specific time

01:01:46 ◼   ► with this specific set of deals that they made,

01:01:49 ◼   ► having such limited channel options,

01:01:51 ◼   ► that's gonna really hurt them, I think.

01:01:53 ◼   ► But the idea of this kind of bundle, I think, is strong,

01:01:58 ◼   ► if anybody can get all the deals in place,

01:02:00 ◼   ► or even just some of the deals,

01:02:02 ◼   ► so just get more than what YouTube got.

01:02:04 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Betterment,

01:02:08 ◼   ► investing made better.

01:02:10 ◼   ► To learn more, visit Betterment.com/ATP.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Betterment is the world's largest automated investing service.

01:02:18 ◼   ► What this means is, unlike traditional financial services where you often pay high commissions,

01:02:24 ◼   ► Betterment is focused on bringing lower fees to everyone.

01:02:27 ◼   ► They make investing easier and available at a lower cost.

01:02:30 ◼   ► These are the same strategies that financial advisors use with clients who have millions

01:02:35 ◼   ► of dollars and now Betterment makes us available to everyone at much lower cost than traditional

01:02:40 ◼   ► financial services. Betterment cares about its clients. This is shown through how transparent

01:02:45 ◼   ► the investing process is, which is unlike much of the investment world that just have

01:02:48 ◼   ► to make more money, often recommending investments that they make hidden commissions and fees

01:02:52 ◼   ► from. You might have heard about Betterment in the press such as in the Wall Street Journal,

01:02:56 ◼   ► Bloomberg and TechCrunch. They are so good that they've won awards for their customer

01:03:00 ◼   ► experience. Investing involves risk. For a limited time, sign up for Betterment and you

01:03:05 ◼   ► may qualify for a free Canary home security system to help secure your home. For terms

01:03:10 ◼   ► and conditions, visit betterment.com/ATP. Betterment. Investing made better.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Now we enter the hardware portion of the program. So I don't know which one of you wants to

01:03:26 ◼   ► to kick this off, but Intel is going 14 nanometers

01:03:30 ◼   ► one more time apparently.

01:03:32 ◼   ► - Remember when they had the TikTok strategy

01:03:34 ◼   ► and we talked about that,

01:03:34 ◼   ► and it became TikTok thud or whatever?

01:03:37 ◼   ► - They changed it to this TikTok,

01:03:41 ◼   ► well, I forget what they're thinking,

01:03:41 ◼   ► like it's not TikTok anymore,

01:03:43 ◼   ► it's like, I gotta find a diagram.

01:03:44 ◼   ► - Like a PAO or something,

01:03:45 ◼   ► Process Architecture Optimization?

01:03:48 ◼   ► - Right, and it was because basically like,

01:03:50 ◼   ► oh, we used to, you know, we'd do a process shrink,

01:03:53 ◼   ► then we'd do an architecture,

01:03:54 ◼   ► and then we'd do a process shrink,

01:03:55 ◼   ► do no architecture and it was kind of on a yearly basis but either way that was their cadence right

01:03:59 ◼   ► and they're like oh we can't we can't sustain that anymore because every time we try to do a

01:04:03 ◼   ► new process is taking longer and longer so to try to get from 14 nanometer to 10 or whatever the

01:04:07 ◼   ► next one is it's taking longer than we thought so we're going to do a process shrink we're going to

01:04:10 ◼   ► architecture and then we're going to optimize that architecture so basically give us another year to

01:04:14 ◼   ► get to the shrink the new strategy is process architecture optimize and you know what let's

01:04:21 ◼   ► Let's optimize again because we don't have the new process size ready to go.

01:04:28 ◼   ► And it's kind of comical to see them change their TikTok strategy to a three-step strategy

01:04:32 ◼   ► to a four-step strategy.

01:04:34 ◼   ► It's like a little kid stalling on getting their assignment done.

01:04:38 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, my new strategy is let's wait another year."

01:04:43 ◼   ► And you try to look and see what like – so, you know, Kaby Lake is not that big of a deal

01:04:49 ◼   ► of an enhancement, as we've discussed in the past, things like some video DRM stuff in

01:04:54 ◼   ► there and some minor tweaks, but it's not, you know, like it is technically an optimization

01:04:59 ◼   ► of a pre-existing thing.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And maybe the next one they will optimize more, but we're kind of used to, even in this

01:05:07 ◼   ► age of the dwindling returns on Moore's Law, used to the idea that we will get a bigger

01:05:17 ◼   ► jump in CPU capabilities and with with a process shrink and if that process shrink

01:05:23 ◼   ► just never seems to come it's like well what can we really do like we did a

01:05:27 ◼   ► really good job as architecture to begin with this process size the biggest bang

01:05:31 ◼   ► for the buck historically has been you know how can we decrease power and get

01:05:36 ◼   ► more transistors to do stuff with and you know like make different choices the

01:05:40 ◼   ► shrink gives you that headroom to do it provided you can figure out how to make

01:05:43 ◼   ► it work. In lieu of a shrink, you are left with the same power budget and the same number

01:05:49 ◼   ► of transistors, and just making different trade-offs, basically, or just being a little

01:05:52 ◼   ► bit smarter about a few components. And you can make things better that way, but you can't

01:05:56 ◼   ► make them better in the—not that they're giant leaps—but, you know, to get a double-digit

01:06:01 ◼   ► percent increase in almost anything is a very big effort within a given process size, especially

01:06:07 ◼   ► in an architecture that's already pretty well optimized, right? So this—I'm not going

01:06:11 ◼   ► I'm not going to say this is disappointing, but it is further evidence of the slowing

01:06:16 ◼   ► rate of advancement at the edges of hardware, on cutting edge hardware. What is the best

01:06:23 ◼   ► process size you can get in a sophisticated processor for any amount of money? And for

01:06:30 ◼   ► another year in a row, it's going to be 14 nanometers.

01:06:33 ◼   ► I mean, really, these days, an Intel delay is not news. When Intel delays the next big

01:06:39 ◼   ► for a year that used to shake the industry.

01:06:43 ◼   ► These days it's kind of more surprising when they don't.

01:06:46 ◼   ► - And I think, I'm pretty sure they're still ahead

01:06:48 ◼   ► of most other people because other people are like,

01:06:50 ◼   ► yeah, we're excited we have a 14 nanometer process.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Like this Intel's gonna be on its third year of 14 nanometer.

01:06:55 ◼   ► It's like, well, welcome to the club, right?

01:06:57 ◼   ► And I guess that lead only counts if they get

01:06:59 ◼   ► to the next size before everyone else too.

01:07:02 ◼   ► But I'm guessing they will.

01:07:04 ◼   ► I'm guessing this is not like Intel incompetence.

01:07:07 ◼   ► it is merely that it is getting much, much harder as the sizes get much smaller, as we

01:07:12 ◼   ► discussed on past shows. Moore's law cannot continue forever as far as our understanding

01:07:17 ◼   ► of the physical world is aware, because you cannot subdivide matter into ever-smaller

01:07:20 ◼   ► pieces at a certain point. You reach a size where you can't break it into any smaller

01:07:26 ◼   ► sizes without super high-energy physics and stuff. So inevitably, eventually, everyone's

01:07:31 ◼   ► favorite infinite timeline argument, Moore's law cannot continue, right? Because if you

01:07:35 ◼   ► keep halving the size of things and you're down to like quarks and stuff, like no. Even

01:07:40 ◼   ► getting down just the size of individual atoms, the whole functioning of the way we manufacture

01:07:45 ◼   ► transistors stops working and we're already getting into all sorts of problems on the

01:07:49 ◼   ► future sizes we're doing. So it will end. It's just a question of what does the slope

01:07:53 ◼   ► look like as we slide down into the doomsday scenario of CPUs that never get any better

01:08:00 ◼   ► and wait for quantum computing to save us all with an entirely new paradigm. But either

01:08:05 ◼   ► Anyway, this is not the type of story that I want to read.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I guess another old man story I'll be able to tell is like when I was a kid, computers

01:08:11 ◼   ► would get massively faster every year and it was amazing.

01:08:17 ◼   ► I remember those days.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Not anymore.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Doom on a Pentium.

01:08:21 ◼   ► It was like, "Can any computer be this fast?

01:08:24 ◼   ► How is it possible?

01:08:27 ◼   ► Last year this game was barely usable and now it goes faster than my eyeballs."

01:08:33 ◼   ► And that would happen every year.

01:08:35 ◼   ► That's true.

01:08:36 ◼   ► All right, tell me about AMD Ryzen.

01:08:39 ◼   ► So I wish I had more time to read up on this, but we haven't really talked much about AMD

01:08:44 ◼   ► on the show.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Occasionally we mention them, but in the context of Intel alternatives, but we've been doing

01:08:49 ◼   ► even less of that.

01:08:50 ◼   ► And it's mostly because despite doing very well in the glory part of PC CPUs back in

01:08:58 ◼   ► the day, the Athlon days, remember those? When AMD was actually giving Intel a run for

01:09:05 ◼   ► their money and was taking a lot of the crowns in those type of speeds and feed measurements

01:09:12 ◼   ► contests that were so popular back in the 90s. What is the best CPU for gaming or for

01:09:20 ◼   ► whatever? And look at these benchmarks and the highest end and so on and so forth. AMD

01:09:24 ◼   ► doing really well. And they were an important player and it was great to see the competition

01:09:29 ◼   ► and it forced Intel, I think, to get off of the Netburst architecture in Pentium 4 and come up

01:09:34 ◼   ► with the Core series, which was awesome. And then it was like, Intel took the lead back and

01:09:40 ◼   ► wiped AMD off the face of the earth. They came out with the Bulldozer architecture that was not

01:09:46 ◼   ► particularly successful and it was a bad choice. And they've always had sort of, you know,

01:09:50 ◼   ► financial problems as compared to the behemoth that is Intel and have never been competitive

01:09:58 ◼   ► with Intel's fabbing abilities.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And so we haven't heard anything about them for a long time.

01:10:02 ◼   ► And this seems like their comeback.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Like, "Hey, we're AMD.

01:10:05 ◼   ► We still know how to make good CPUs."

01:10:08 ◼   ► And so they have a line of CPUs that are competitive.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Like they're not the best in the world.

01:10:14 ◼   ► They're not like, "Oh, these are 10 times better than everything Intel has."

01:10:17 ◼   ► But it's a comeback story and people like a comeback story.

01:10:20 ◼   ► this company that was not, didn't seem to even be in the race. Like, people suggesting

01:10:27 ◼   ► Apple should just use AMD processors. That suggestion stopped many years ago and started

01:10:31 ◼   ► to become Apple should get AMD to make a new processor that's better than all their crappy

01:10:37 ◼   ► ones, right? Or Apple should work with AMD or Apple should make its own X80, but all

01:10:42 ◼   ► but never like, no one's suggesting like, you know what, Mac laptops would be better

01:10:46 ◼   ► if they took out the Intel CPUs and used AMD ones instead.

01:10:50 ◼   ► And so they have these series of CPUs which are significant mostly because A) they have

01:10:54 ◼   ► to come back and they're actually competitive and good and B) for the most part they're

01:10:58 ◼   ► cheaper than the Intel alternatives.

01:11:01 ◼   ► I looked at them briefly to see is there anything that would be great for a Mac Pro.

01:11:05 ◼   ► No, they're not Mac Pro caliber things.

01:11:08 ◼   ► But they do have a lot of cores for a low price with a reasonable power envelope and

01:11:12 ◼   ► And I don't think this means Apple will look at them any more than they did in the past

01:11:16 ◼   ► because of ancillary issues and because who knows what Intel's roadmap looks like versus

01:11:21 ◼   ► AMD's roadmap.

01:11:22 ◼   ► But I'm excited to see AMD back in the mix because despite the fact that Intel seems

01:11:28 ◼   ► to be getting its butt kicked all over the map by ARM processors and mobile and everything

01:11:33 ◼   ► having to do with that because all of Intel's mobile efforts have not really gone anywhere

01:11:39 ◼   ► and they're not particularly competitive and they're just lucky to get like a radio chip

01:11:43 ◼   ► that in Apple's iPhones at this point and every day they must — I forget who did this,

01:11:49 ◼   ► maybe the CEO had already left — regret the sale of their arm holdings when they had

01:11:52 ◼   ► the X scale processor of the arm things, Intel got rid of that because they wanted to do

01:11:55 ◼   ► everything x86.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Anyway, I like seeing a competitor for Intel on the high end as well because competition

01:12:05 ◼   ► is good, and I hope this spurs Intel to redouble its efforts to stay ahead of the game and

01:12:14 ◼   ► to find ways to get more performance, and to find ways to get to the next process size,

01:12:17 ◼   ► and to widen that gap again between them and AMD. Not that I'm saying AMD's only purpose

01:12:22 ◼   ► in life is to make Intel stuff better, but for the foreseeable future I don't see Apple

01:12:26 ◼   ► switching to AMD unless they're asking them to make their very own custom chips. And so

01:12:31 ◼   ► for my purposes, AMD exists to give PC hobbyists

01:12:35 ◼   ► a cool alternative to build PCs with

01:12:37 ◼   ► and to make the processes that are gonna be in my Macs

01:12:40 ◼   ► hopefully better.

01:12:41 ◼   ► - Cool.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Sounds about right.

01:12:43 ◼   ► - Does it make you wanna build a PC?

01:12:45 ◼   ► - No. - No.

01:12:46 ◼   ► - What makes you wanna build a PC is Xeons.

01:12:49 ◼   ► If I ever, like, you know, a lot of people build PCs

01:12:54 ◼   ► and like a lot of the Hackintosh guides and stuff out there

01:12:57 ◼   ► and price comparisons are all about this class of hardware.

01:13:00 ◼   ► They're about like, you know, iMac class CPUs.

01:13:03 ◼   ► You know, the Intel like, you know,

01:13:05 ◼   ► 4000 series with the K on the end.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Like, those are really high powered CPUs for desktops.

01:13:11 ◼   ► They're really nice.

01:13:12 ◼   ► But Apple already makes those.

01:13:15 ◼   ► They already, you know, ship computers with those

01:13:18 ◼   ► and keep them reasonably up to date most of the time.

01:13:21 ◼   ► They're called iMacs.

01:13:22 ◼   ► And the iMac 5K is a wonderful computer.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I'm talking to you on it right now.

01:13:26 ◼   ► With the exception of my image retention issues

01:13:28 ◼   ► on the display, which everyone says

01:13:30 ◼   ► they're actually not solved in the most recent ones.

01:13:32 ◼   ► With the exception of that,

01:13:33 ◼   ► it's been a wonderful computer for me

01:13:35 ◼   ► and I expect it to serve me still for a while

01:13:39 ◼   ► until something faster comes out,

01:13:41 ◼   ► which barely, really hasn't happened.

01:13:43 ◼   ► The problem is I want something faster.

01:13:45 ◼   ► I want more than four cores.

01:13:47 ◼   ► I want higher performance

01:13:49 ◼   ► than what the consumer line can offer me.

01:13:53 ◼   ► So I've only ever been tempted to build a Hackintosh,

01:13:56 ◼   ► not to give myself a cheaper iMac,

01:13:59 ◼   ► which I understand why people do that, that makes sense.

01:14:03 ◼   ► But to give me basically a Mac

01:14:06 ◼   ► that Apple does not even sell,

01:14:10 ◼   ► and that is a modern Mac Pro.

01:14:13 ◼   ► - Well, you can get an eight-core Ryzen for $329.

01:14:16 ◼   ► - That, okay. - That is way cheaper

01:14:19 ◼   ► than the equivalent eight-core Intel chip.

01:14:21 ◼   ► - That is true.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I don't know, I guess I'd take a look at it,

01:14:25 ◼   ► if I was to build a Hackintosh.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I was thinking like for Apple's purposes, like for an iMac,

01:14:30 ◼   ► 'cause again, I don't think any of these are suitable

01:14:32 ◼   ► for as far as I'm aware for a laptop chips or whatever,

01:14:35 ◼   ► Intel still has that wrapped up,

01:14:36 ◼   ► but for kind of like the,

01:14:39 ◼   ► what we used to call desktop class CPU's

01:14:40 ◼   ► where it's not the Xeons,

01:14:41 ◼   ► but it's not in the power envelope.

01:14:43 ◼   ► But like the thing that you could stick in an iMac

01:14:44 ◼   ► 'cause it's big and has lots of fans

01:14:46 ◼   ► and what we currently have in the iMac,

01:14:48 ◼   ► I think you could get either a better processor

01:14:52 ◼   ► in the same envelope or an equally good processor

01:14:55 ◼   ► for hundreds less dollars going with AMD.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Again, not that I think Apple will do this

01:15:00 ◼   ► because of ancillary reasons and other chip sets

01:15:02 ◼   ► and Thunderbolt and just general relationships with them.

01:15:05 ◼   ► But it shows me that there is once again competition

01:15:08 ◼   ► in the market because before,

01:15:09 ◼   ► GNOME was like, oh, you shouldn't be using that.

01:15:11 ◼   ► If we were saying we shouldn't use

01:15:12 ◼   ► this particular Intel CPU and iMac,

01:15:14 ◼   ► we were saying you should use some other Intel CPU instead.

01:15:16 ◼   ► We weren't saying you should use something from AMD

01:15:19 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:15:20 ◼   ► And now you can say that.

01:15:21 ◼   ► There's products on the market to say,

01:15:25 ◼   ► Apple, here is an alternative for your iMacs.

01:15:28 ◼   ► And I know you're probably not gonna do it,

01:15:29 ◼   ► but what it does show is that Intel perhaps

01:15:31 ◼   ► is not serving your needs as well as they could

01:15:33 ◼   ► because clearly it is technically and financially possible

01:15:36 ◼   ► to make a chip that would make Marco happier.

01:15:38 ◼   ► So why don't you do that?

01:15:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean like most of my problems

01:15:42 ◼   ► don't lie with the processor companies.

01:15:44 ◼   ► Intel's good enough for me.

01:15:46 ◼   ► My problem lies in Apple's inability to ship hardware.

01:15:49 ◼   ► - So does that cover our Xeon Gold then or no?

01:15:53 ◼   ► - No, the Xeon Gold is the chip they're supposed to use,

01:15:56 ◼   ► but they won't.

01:15:57 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:15:59 ◼   ► - I have not read up on the Xeon Gold,

01:16:01 ◼   ► other than the part that I pasted into the show notes.

01:16:04 ◼   ► - It's Skylake EP, it's the Skylake EP Xeons,

01:16:06 ◼   ► which is the line of chips that would be most appropriate

01:16:10 ◼   ► to put in a new Mac Pro.

01:16:13 ◼   ► But they're probably not going to do that,

01:16:15 ◼   ► so therefore I have nothing to,

01:16:18 ◼   ► I haven't even looked too far into these,

01:16:20 ◼   ► because in the past I've looked into what Skylake E

01:16:23 ◼   ► was going to have, and it is truly awesome, it's wonderful.

01:16:28 ◼   ► But it's just, I don't know, to me it's kind of even,

01:16:32 ◼   ► it's almost sad or painful to even read about this processor

01:16:35 ◼   ► because I know that--

01:16:36 ◼   ► - To know this is out there,

01:16:37 ◼   ► but that you can't buy a machine with a minute.

01:16:39 ◼   ► - Exactly, like, I just,

01:16:42 ◼   ► whatever has been clogging up Apple, I hope it gets out,

01:16:47 ◼   ► and they start shipping hardware again,

01:16:49 ◼   ► because something's wrong.

01:16:52 ◼   ► Like something is deeply wrong at that company.

01:16:55 ◼   ► Where is all the effort going?

01:16:58 ◼   ► That's what I wanna know.

01:16:59 ◼   ► 'Cause it's sure not going into the Mac.

01:17:01 ◼   ► It's sure not going into the Apple TV.

01:17:04 ◼   ► It's sure not going into the iPad.

01:17:05 ◼   ► Some of it, but not much of it is going into the watch.

01:17:07 ◼   ► Like where is it going?

01:17:09 ◼   ► Some of it's gonna be the phone obviously,

01:17:11 ◼   ► but is the entire company only capable

01:17:13 ◼   ► of keeping the phone up to date at a reasonable pace?

01:17:15 ◼   ► Which even that is kind of questionable.

01:17:16 ◼   ► - I think a ton of it's going into the phone.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - Sure. - I think a huge amount

01:17:18 ◼   ► of it's going into the phone. - But they're a big company.

01:17:20 ◼   ► where the hell is everything else?

01:17:23 ◼   ► That's what I wanna know.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And until we get something-- - Self-driving car software.

01:17:27 ◼   ► - Even that, like, that's easily a separatable thing.

01:17:30 ◼   ► Like, where is the entire company going?

01:17:34 ◼   ► Something's wrong.

01:17:36 ◼   ► That's all I can say is something is deeply wrong

01:17:40 ◼   ► and needs to change.

01:17:41 ◼   ► But that's, I know that's not very helpful.

01:17:44 ◼   ► But when you have a year like 2016 in the product line,

01:17:48 ◼   ► something's really, really wrong.

01:17:50 ◼   ► 2017 has a lot of checks to cash,

01:17:53 ◼   ► and we'll see if they do.

01:17:55 ◼   ► I hope they do.

01:17:56 ◼   ► But we haven't heard a lot of promising info so far

01:17:59 ◼   ► to suggest that they will, except Tim Cook's vague promises.

01:18:01 ◼   ► - Did you see that thing I retweeted earlier today

01:18:04 ◼   ► of someone was doing Swift compilation benchmarks?

01:18:08 ◼   ► Like how long does it take to compile a bunch of Swift--

01:18:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was LinkedIn, yeah.

01:18:11 ◼   ► - And the two-core Mac Mini beat the highest-end

01:18:14 ◼   ► trashcan Mac Pro.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, granted, that's because of problems

01:18:18 ◼   ► in the Swift compiler, I think.

01:18:19 ◼   ► It's not like, that is not because the Mac Mini's faster.

01:18:22 ◼   ► - I know, but here's what this shows.

01:18:24 ◼   ► It doesn't show the quality of the hardware,

01:18:26 ◼   ► it shows support for the hardware.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Obviously there is something not allowing the compiler

01:18:32 ◼   ► to take advantage of this hardware.

01:18:33 ◼   ► In the same way that very often there were weird retina

01:18:36 ◼   ► issues with the Mac Pro because it is such a rare machine

01:18:39 ◼   ► and so few people have them, that OS support for it,

01:18:42 ◼   ► and just in general, the software, whether it's the OS

01:18:46 ◼   ► or the applications, have no expectation of ever running

01:18:49 ◼   ► of trashcan because there's so few of them.

01:18:50 ◼   ► So it's not, not only is it not optimized for it, but it doesn't even take advantage

01:18:53 ◼   ► of the hardware that's there.

01:18:55 ◼   ► It's like the worst case scenario of like, you know, you get weird PC hardware, but Windows

01:18:58 ◼   ► doesn't support it well, only this is Apple and this is, you know, they have a limited

01:19:01 ◼   ► line of hardware and like that's all I've ever heard from trashcan Mac Pro users is

01:19:06 ◼   ► that they feel left out of the rest of the Apple ecosystem because all of these software

01:19:13 ◼   ► updates and application updates and OS updates pretend that they don't exist.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So any weird problems they have don't go away, don't get fixed, and new software doesn't

01:19:22 ◼   ► take advantage of all the cores that they have and so on and so forth.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Which is sad because that's exactly how it's supposed to be.

01:19:28 ◼   ► You put out this exotic piece of hardware and don't worry about it because you make

01:19:31 ◼   ► the OS too and a bunch of the applications as well.

01:19:35 ◼   ► You can make sure that it is leveraged and that you take advantage of it.

01:19:37 ◼   ► And when that doesn't happen, you just have an exotic piece of hardware that gets worse

01:19:41 ◼   ► over time.

01:19:42 ◼   ► And eventually you've got Mac Minis beating you in a compilation benchmark and you're

01:19:45 ◼   ► and you're like, "Why?"

01:19:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:19:48 ◼   ► - No, again, I really think that's like Xcode

01:19:51 ◼   ► and the compiler having bad settings.

01:19:53 ◼   ► But the point, your larger point about maintenance

01:19:57 ◼   ► and support does stand.

01:19:58 ◼   ► I mean, people say, "Look at Apple,

01:20:01 ◼   ► "they have all the money in the world,

01:20:02 ◼   ► "why can't they do X?"

01:20:04 ◼   ► Well, it wasn't that long ago that Microsoft

01:20:06 ◼   ► sold all the money in the world,

01:20:07 ◼   ► and they had two decades where they did almost nothing.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Microsoft had a very, very long span

01:20:13 ◼   ► where they could not produce anything even good,

01:20:17 ◼   ► let alone great.

01:20:19 ◼   ► And it's arguable whether they've come out of that yet,

01:20:23 ◼   ► but they're trying, they're doing a lot better now.

01:20:26 ◼   ► They're doing a lot better than they were,

01:20:28 ◼   ► like in the Windows Vista era,

01:20:31 ◼   ► like first leading up to Vista and then Vista itself.

01:20:35 ◼   ► Microsoft had all the money in the world,

01:20:38 ◼   ► but simply could not manage to ship great things

01:20:43 ◼   ► because of other problems, because of mismanagement,

01:20:46 ◼   ► because of internal problems, whatever the case was,

01:20:50 ◼   ► Microsoft had just no ability to apply their money

01:20:54 ◼   ► into creating good products reliably.

01:20:57 ◼   ► And I think we are at that point now with Apple.

01:20:59 ◼   ► It is very, very hard to look at the output of Apple

01:21:02 ◼   ► over the last couple of years and say otherwise.

01:21:05 ◼   ► They're a company that can produce good things sometimes,

01:21:08 ◼   ► but increasingly that's the exception, not the norm.

01:21:11 ◼   ► And that's really, really worrisome to me.

01:21:14 ◼   ► One of the ways that Microsoft got out of it, or got out of their funk, aside from changing

01:21:18 ◼   ► management stuff, was they tried a lot of different things.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Most of which failed, but they tried a lot of them.

01:21:24 ◼   ► And I think, you know, if I look at what was the success story that was able to convince

01:21:31 ◼   ► Microsoft itself and the outside world that Microsoft could conceivably do good things

01:21:35 ◼   ► again, I feel like it was the Xbox.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Because that was a weird market.

01:21:39 ◼   ► the hell is Microsoft making a game console, right? And it, you know, it struggled and

01:21:45 ◼   ► they had to learn this new business in the same way that Apple kind of had to learn the

01:21:48 ◼   ► new business of cell phones and they didn't, you know, it's not comparable to the iPhone

01:21:52 ◼   ► obviously in terms of the scope of its success and how important it was to, you know, because

01:21:56 ◼   ► it was just another game console for the most part, although it had its own innovations.

01:21:59 ◼   ► But it, of all the things they did, they tried so many things, so many different mobile phone

01:22:04 ◼   ► strategies, so many different tablet and pen computing, like they were so close to so many

01:22:08 ◼   ► But because they kept trying all these different things,

01:22:11 ◼   ► you know, I don't even remember half the things they did,

01:22:13 ◼   ► that sidekick company that they bought

01:22:14 ◼   ► with little tardy smartphone thing that they sold.

01:22:17 ◼   ► But Xbox, of all things, like unquestionably,

01:22:22 ◼   ► was a success in its market, in a very difficult market

01:22:26 ◼   ► that has killed many a company

01:22:28 ◼   ► who have tried to enter it and be successful.

01:22:30 ◼   ► And so I think Apple probably continues to know

01:22:37 ◼   ► Continues to need to needs to continue to do what it seems to have been doing and like be willing to try it like the watch

01:22:43 ◼   ► Is a good example try a watch maybe it's gonna be awesome

01:22:46 ◼   ► Maybe you want or whatever but but do it like we don't need to be I don't think we need to be convinced that Apple

01:22:50 ◼   ► can still do great things because you know the Apple watch is

01:22:54 ◼   ► Successful as it may or may not be it's you know

01:22:58 ◼   ► I think it's a big step up for the the smartwatch market and in many ways has come to

01:23:04 ◼   ► not redefine that market, but sort of pin down what people expect from smart watches to the point where smart watches

01:23:10 ◼   ► are very much now

01:23:13 ◼   ► aping some of the looks and features of Apple's things if only to to capitalize on their you know their marketing cachet

01:23:20 ◼   ► But self-driving cars all sorts of things that we say why is Apple even doing that?

01:23:25 ◼   ► All you need is one or two of them to hit for it to be worthwhile

01:23:29 ◼   ► Thus far none of them have been big successes

01:23:32 ◼   ► But if Apple was in a Microsoft type situation, we would all be looking at the watch or the AirPods say see Apple can make

01:23:38 ◼   ► Great things again. Apple's not down that low when we see the AirPods were like, yes

01:23:41 ◼   ► That's what Apple should be doing and that's what we expected you right versus we are super surprised that you've made a successful good product

01:23:47 ◼   ► We're not surprised. It's what we expect. We still expect we still have high expectations of Apple

01:23:51 ◼   ► We still have we still hold them to high standards and I think that's good

01:23:54 ◼   ► But I also like that's why I don't want to be too down on all the weird stuff Apple is doing it

01:24:00 ◼   ► I know it's easy to do the trade-offs like, "Oh, you should just be making Macs better

01:24:03 ◼   ► because that's what I like," or whatever.

01:24:04 ◼   ► But as you pointed out, Marco, for all we know, those are entirely separate things,

01:24:08 ◼   ► and it's not like they lack the money.

01:24:09 ◼   ► So as long as it's not literally the people who are going to make the Mac Pro who are

01:24:12 ◼   ► now making self-driving car software, like, go for it.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Well, more power to you.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Eventually, we made it to be the point where we're looking for Apple's Xbox, and maybe

01:24:23 ◼   ► – I was going to say, maybe Apple should just make a gaming console, but they're

01:24:26 ◼   ► really terrible at gaming, so don't do that.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Once they buy Nintendo and the show finally comes to an end, because the apocalypse that

01:24:34 ◼   ► will happen if that comes to pass.

01:24:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not as down on Apple as you are, Marco.

01:24:43 ◼   ► I continue to believe that they can come out of it.

01:24:44 ◼   ► I think Microsoft is a great example that no matter how low you go, there's always something

01:24:48 ◼   ► great you can do.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And I would hold up Azure as an example of that too, and a lot of the DevTools stuff

01:24:52 ◼   ► that Microsoft has been doing.

01:24:53 ◼   ► They had a lot of smart people, they had a lot of great tech.

01:24:55 ◼   ► It was just a matter of finding a way to channel that in a productive way while also continuing

01:25:02 ◼   ► to milk the cash cow that is their terrible enterprise software.

01:25:09 ◼   ► My main concern here is that 2016 was a really bad year for Apple from the public point of

01:25:16 ◼   ► view.

01:25:17 ◼   ► And Tim can say stuff like, "Oh, we have stuff coming.

01:25:19 ◼   ► Don't worry.

01:25:20 ◼   ► Just because we don't see it doesn't mean we're not working on it."

01:25:21 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean anything.

01:25:24 ◼   ► And it just seems like there's these areas

01:25:26 ◼   ► of Apple product development that have stalled

01:25:28 ◼   ► or that have taken way too long.

01:25:31 ◼   ► And there seems to be not only no end in sight,

01:25:34 ◼   ► but no changes that would suggest that there would be

01:25:38 ◼   ► a change of policy or a change of results coming.

01:25:42 ◼   ► And so what I want is by the end of 2017,

01:25:45 ◼   ► I think there's a handful of big hotspot areas

01:25:51 ◼   ► that if they are still lacking,

01:25:54 ◼   ► I wanna see somebody get fired.

01:25:57 ◼   ► I know it's not cool to talk about Apple executives

01:25:59 ◼   ► and SVPs and talk about them personally

01:26:01 ◼   ► and say who should get fired,

01:26:02 ◼   ► but I think things are bad enough now

01:26:04 ◼   ► that heads have to roll if certain things don't get fixed.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And I would say maybe the list would be Mac desktops,

01:26:11 ◼   ► hardware, iPhone design,

01:26:14 ◼   ► like if that new iPhone does not come out this fall

01:26:17 ◼   ► and they have another year of the iPhone 6 design

01:26:20 ◼   ► and general form factor, that's a problem, right?

01:26:24 ◼   ► If Mac desktops do not get any kind of meaningful update

01:26:27 ◼   ► during this year, that's a big problem.

01:26:29 ◼   ► I would say iPad software, like multitasking on the iPad

01:26:34 ◼   ► is one of these areas where that needs to be improved

01:26:36 ◼   ► significantly in some way.

01:26:38 ◼   ► I would say Siri, the quality of Siri, the reliability,

01:26:41 ◼   ► the intelligence of Siri needs to be improved,

01:26:43 ◼   ► and maybe I'd throw in TV content deals,

01:26:45 ◼   ► as we talked about earlier, 'cause those have also

01:26:46 ◼   ► installed forever and the Apple TV is suffering greatly.

01:26:50 ◼   ► So those things, if all of those don't have

01:26:53 ◼   ► meaningful improvements by the end of 2017,

01:26:57 ◼   ► then that will be a very long time

01:26:59 ◼   ► during which these things have not improved

01:27:01 ◼   ► and desperately need to, and somebody high up

01:27:04 ◼   ► needs to get fired or resign at that point.

01:27:07 ◼   ► - Well, you would like that to happen,

01:27:09 ◼   ► but if the rest of the world says,

01:27:12 ◼   ► "Hey, record iPhone sales, here's a 10% bump

01:27:15 ◼   ► "to your stock price, Apple."

01:27:16 ◼   ► Apple is doing great from the perspective of investors and other people who have, you

01:27:22 ◼   ► know, the broader world that has expectations of what Apple is supposed to do, which is

01:27:25 ◼   ► sell a lot of iPhones for a high price.

01:27:27 ◼   ► They're doing that really, really well so far.

01:27:30 ◼   ► And everything we're talking about is tiny little slivers of the giant pie wedge that

01:27:35 ◼   ► is the revenue of Apple.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Well, no, it's not.

01:27:38 ◼   ► Because look, Microsoft did really well under Steve Ballmer financially for a long time.

01:27:44 ◼   ► He had record quarters, record sales,

01:27:46 ◼   ► as the product line just stagnated and crumbled,

01:27:50 ◼   ► and the quality, the foundation the company was built on

01:27:53 ◼   ► crumbled, and the world around it moved on

01:27:56 ◼   ► to this massive new world of mobile,

01:27:58 ◼   ► and they totally missed it

01:27:59 ◼   ► because they were not being managed properly.

01:28:02 ◼   ► So the fact that they keep selling record quarters

01:28:06 ◼   ► is not good enough for Apple.

01:28:08 ◼   ► - But what I'm saying is executives don't get fired

01:28:11 ◼   ► when your stock price goes up in general.

01:28:13 ◼   ► All right, so I'm saying like,

01:28:15 ◼   ► whether you think it's the right thing to do

01:28:17 ◼   ► or what you would do versus what is actually gonna happen.

01:28:20 ◼   ► 'Cause the only thing we've seen executives

01:28:21 ◼   ► get canned for at Apple is not getting along

01:28:23 ◼   ► with other executives, that's forestall,

01:28:25 ◼   ► not being like a cultural fit or like flailing

01:28:28 ◼   ► and not being a success like whatever Papermaster

01:28:30 ◼   ► and those people who were there for a very short time.

01:28:32 ◼   ► What would it take for a long timer to get fired?

01:28:36 ◼   ► I mean, I think we've seen with the reshuffling,

01:28:37 ◼   ► not firing, but like, we don't know what's going on

01:28:40 ◼   ► that reshuffling that they've done various times, but surely that reshuffling is elevating

01:28:45 ◼   ► some people and minimizing other people within the company enough so that they all stay there,

01:28:52 ◼   ► but still affecting them. You're not going to see a big name executive get fired when

01:29:04 ◼   ► every kind of metric you can put on the company is looking good, because that's just not how

01:29:08 ◼   ► big companies work. Now arguably, like you said, they're making a big mistake, sure you're

01:29:12 ◼   ► figuring out how to make more money out of the iPhone, but what about the future, blah

01:29:15 ◼   ► blah blah, but they have answers for all that. Well, in the future we have all these super

01:29:17 ◼   ► projects that you don't know about plus the car crap and stuff like that, and maybe they'll

01:29:20 ◼   ► hit it, maybe they won't, like it's not like they had their heads in the sand, right? But

01:29:25 ◼   ► I don't, what I'm saying is that don't get your hopes up for that to happen, right? Even

01:29:31 ◼   ► if none of the things you listed happen, but they still have like record iPhone sales again

01:29:36 ◼   ► and the ASP goes up again, no one's getting fired.

01:29:40 ◼   ► I mean, if whoever was responsible for getting a skinny-model TV deal hasn't been fired yet,

01:29:46 ◼   ► another year of not getting it is not going to make a difference, to give an example that's

01:29:49 ◼   ► relevant to the things we just talked about, because obviously it's not important enough

01:29:53 ◼   ► to the future of the company.

01:29:55 ◼   ► And in other areas like the phone—not the phone, the watch—it's hard to tell exactly

01:29:59 ◼   ► how the watch is doing because Apple's being cagey about it, but I feel like the watch

01:30:02 ◼   ► is on a slow burn, right?

01:30:05 ◼   ► It's not a super duper success like the iPhone was,

01:30:07 ◼   ► but even the iPhone wasn't a super duper success

01:30:09 ◼   ► in its first year or two, right,

01:30:10 ◼   ► or the iPod or anything like that.

01:30:12 ◼   ► But Apple is standing behind the watch and working on it,

01:30:14 ◼   ► and things seem like they're going

01:30:16 ◼   ► in the right direction with the watch.

01:30:17 ◼   ► It is getting better, people like it more,

01:30:19 ◼   ► it is finding a place in the market.

01:30:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually would agree with that.

01:30:23 ◼   ► There is a reason why the watch didn't make my hit list,

01:30:25 ◼   ► because it actually, it is not amazing on all terms.

01:30:30 ◼   ► It has lots of asterisks on it,

01:30:32 ◼   ► but overall it is healthy,

01:30:35 ◼   ► and it does seem to be on the right track.

01:30:37 ◼   ► - And so the Apple that is still willing to nurture

01:30:40 ◼   ► a product like that, even the iPad,

01:30:43 ◼   ► which arguably they're nurturing and helping along,

01:30:46 ◼   ► and they're trying to get it,

01:30:48 ◼   ► come on, come on little product, you can do it.

01:30:50 ◼   ► Maybe they're not quite doing the right things,

01:30:51 ◼   ► but the fact that they're standing behind those,

01:30:53 ◼   ► and all the rumblings we hear about AR and stuff like that,

01:30:57 ◼   ► I do see a lot of encouraging things of,

01:31:00 ◼   ► How is Apple fostering the development of what could be eventually big important businesses

01:31:08 ◼   ► and how patient they're being with it?

01:31:10 ◼   ► Most of our frustration is with pre-existing businesses that seem like they are neglected,

01:31:15 ◼   ► right?

01:31:16 ◼   ► And because we like those products.

01:31:17 ◼   ► But I don't know enough about the executives to say someone should be fired.

01:31:22 ◼   ► I think if I had to restructure/restaff a bunch of things, you know what?

01:31:29 ◼   ► MyPix is all server-side stuff.

01:31:32 ◼   ► That part of the company is obviously in the most need, and I don't know who's in charge

01:31:36 ◼   ► of that, and I don't know who needs to be in charge of it, but Apple should have bought

01:31:39 ◼   ► Google long ago and given all the responsibility to all their server-side stuff for Google

01:31:42 ◼   ► because they know what the hell they're doing, and Apple does not yet.

01:31:45 ◼   ► They're getting better, but not fast enough.

01:31:47 ◼   ► What's getting better faster, Apple at services or desktop Linux?

01:31:52 ◼   ► Apple at services because desktop Linux is going nowhere.

01:31:58 ◼   ► But I can't pin that to a particular group or executive.

01:32:01 ◼   ► And I think there has been restructuring this.

01:32:03 ◼   ► Seeing Apple present at like Mezos conferences and stuff

01:32:06 ◼   ► is showing that that is actually going

01:32:07 ◼   ► in the right direction.

01:32:08 ◼   ► They're just so far behind

01:32:09 ◼   ► that it's very difficult to catch up.

01:32:10 ◼   ► But for all the other things, like even the Mac things,

01:32:13 ◼   ► I don't feel like the people who are involved

01:32:15 ◼   ► in Mac hardware, like, I don't know.

01:32:19 ◼   ► I don't know where the blame lies for that.

01:32:21 ◼   ► It seems like priorities that would be set above the level

01:32:24 ◼   ► of people working on the Mac stuff, right?

01:32:25 ◼   ► Like I bet everyone who's working on the Mac

01:32:28 ◼   ► loves the Mac and wants it to be awesome.

01:32:29 ◼   ► And I bet a lot of people who are involved in the Mac

01:32:32 ◼   ► love the Mac and want it to be awesome,

01:32:33 ◼   ► but it's clear that the pace of product releases

01:32:38 ◼   ► and innovation and choices about the particular mixes

01:32:41 ◼   ► of the products are not satisfying

01:32:42 ◼   ► a certain class of Mac users,

01:32:43 ◼   ► and we find that unsatisfying.

01:32:46 ◼   ► And even for the people that is satisfying,

01:32:47 ◼   ► I feel like their releases are slower,

01:32:50 ◼   ► which is not good from anybody's perspective

01:32:52 ◼   ► that we wanna see new, better things faster.

01:32:56 ◼   ► But I wouldn't fire anyone involved in the Mac organization, right?

01:32:59 ◼   ► I feel like that's a priority set at a higher level.

01:33:01 ◼   ► And I wouldn't fire Tim Cook because of all the good things that we just listed, the phone

01:33:05 ◼   ► and the watch and trying to figure out how to make the iPad better.

01:33:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm -- I have -- too have hopes for this year, and I found last year disappointing.

01:33:17 ◼   ► But I think I'm more optimistic than you are that these are all eminently fixable problems,

01:33:23 ◼   ► and I am encouraged by efforts like the watch.

01:33:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, and furthermore, I don't entirely get

01:33:31 ◼   ► what firing somebody really accomplishes

01:33:33 ◼   ► other than making you feel better

01:33:35 ◼   ► that somebody's paying for what you don't like.

01:33:38 ◼   ► And it certainly would presumably change course of Apple,

01:33:43 ◼   ► at least slightly, if that executive was high enough.

01:33:48 ◼   ► But I mean, we don't know what's going on

01:33:51 ◼   ► behind the curtain.

01:33:52 ◼   ► We don't know if they're playing a long game that will revolutionize the Mac, or revolutionize something else,

01:33:59 ◼   ► or just create a whole new thing that we can't even fathom.

01:34:03 ◼   ► We don't know what they're doing behind closed doors, and I just feel like seeing a head roll, or demanding a head roll,

01:34:10 ◼   ► I don't know that that's necessarily going to really change anything.

01:34:13 ◼   ► I mean, just because one or even a couple people leave, or are told to leave,

01:34:18 ◼   ► You don't move a ship that big without moving the rudder a lot.

01:34:24 ◼   ► And one person can only move the rudder but so much, unless they're like Steve Jobs or

01:34:28 ◼   ► Tim Cook.

01:34:29 ◼   ► I think the reason why I want to see something change, if all these things still continue

01:34:33 ◼   ► to fail at the end of this year, is that if no heads roll, if no one changes jobs, if

01:34:40 ◼   ► nothing really suggests that anything went wrong, then that is Apple tacitly telling

01:34:46 ◼   ► in the world and possibly themselves internally, this is fine. This is how we wanted things

01:34:52 ◼   ► to go. It's one thing if the reason why all these things are in neglect right now is because

01:34:58 ◼   ► lots of things have gone wrong or somebody really messed up or somebody made a terrible

01:35:02 ◼   ► decision or took a bad risk or something like that. It's another thing if these things are

01:35:08 ◼   ► all this way in this state of neglect because that's considered okay. So if something,

01:35:17 ◼   ► if there's somebody who like, whose job changes, for instance, the role of the app

01:35:22 ◼   ► store recently got taken out of its previous organization and moved under Phil Schiller.

01:35:27 ◼   ► And in the like eight years or whatever it was that it was under the previous organization,

01:35:32 ◼   ► nothing happened. It was just stagnant and had lots of problems. And it's been under

01:35:36 ◼   ► Schiller for about a year now and lots of improvements have happened already and there's

01:35:41 ◼   ► you know they're at a great pace so obviously that was an area where something was really

01:35:46 ◼   ► not working right it was had a lot of problems it got moved to different executives so effectively

01:35:51 ◼   ► the old executive was like you know presumably like removed from it in some kind of action

01:35:55 ◼   ► you know or some kind of decision and then under the new executive things change because

01:36:01 ◼   ► something wasn't going right so that was the recognition internally to the company that

01:36:06 ◼   ► this is not working, this is not good enough,

01:36:09 ◼   ► we're gonna change it so it can be good enough.

01:36:12 ◼   ► And so if nothing changes in this list of things,

01:36:16 ◼   ► that you know, Mac desktops, iPhone, yes,

01:36:18 ◼   ► if nothing changes, and we end these things

01:36:22 ◼   ► are still being neglected almost a year from now,

01:36:25 ◼   ► after being neglected for the last few years,

01:36:28 ◼   ► then that to me is a sign that Tim Cook,

01:36:32 ◼   ► and everyone beneath him, believes that is good enough.

01:36:36 ◼   ► So that ultimately rests on Tim.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Whether the problem is Tim himself or somebody below him,

01:36:41 ◼   ► that is on Tim to manage, to supervise,

01:36:45 ◼   ► and to fix if there are problems.

01:36:47 ◼   ► You know, when there are problems between Forstall

01:36:50 ◼   ► and Ive and whoever, whatever the drama was there,

01:36:54 ◼   ► Tim saw there was a problem here and he fixed it.

01:36:57 ◼   ► And whether you like his solution or not,

01:36:59 ◼   ► he took an action because things were not good enough.

01:37:01 ◼   ► He fixed it.

01:37:03 ◼   ► If nothing changes in these areas,

01:37:07 ◼   ► and they're still being horribly neglected

01:37:09 ◼   ► in another year from now,

01:37:11 ◼   ► then that is Tim Cook implicitly saying,

01:37:13 ◼   ► "This is good enough."

01:37:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's a strategic choice though.

01:37:17 ◼   ► If he chooses to de-emphasize the Mac

01:37:19 ◼   ► or cancel the Mac entirely,

01:37:20 ◼   ► that is a strategic choice for the company.

01:37:22 ◼   ► They'll make all of us sad, but--

01:37:23 ◼   ► - Yup. - It's not saying

01:37:24 ◼   ► we think this is good enough, it's saying,

01:37:26 ◼   ► "Yeah, we're de-prioritizing that

01:37:28 ◼   ► "and shifting our efforts elsewhere

01:37:30 ◼   ► "because we don't think that's important

01:37:32 ◼   ► to the future growth of the company, right? Which we hate and we don't like, but it's not the same

01:37:37 ◼   ► as saying, "We're trying to put everything we had behind the Mac." That's the difference in

01:37:42 ◼   ► intention. We are trying to make the Mac the best it could possibly be, and this is our best effort.

01:37:48 ◼   ► I'm not even asking for that. I'm asking for basic maintenance.

01:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah, well, again, because if they were trying to say, "We are trying to maintain the Mac in

01:37:56 ◼   ► the fashion that it has been maintained in the past," and they think this is satisfactory,

01:38:00 ◼   ► you're right, that they're wrong on that. But if instead they're saying this is exactly the amount

01:38:05 ◼   ► of support for the Mac that we want, this is exactly how we want it to go, these are exactly

01:38:08 ◼   ► the products we want out of them, we're very happy with the results, this is our strategic direction,

01:38:12 ◼   ► we're all sad and mad about it, but from a company, you know, from the perspective of is Tim Cook

01:38:17 ◼   ► making the right decision for the company, it's arguable that he is because the Mac is clearly not

01:38:21 ◼   ► the future of Apple, right, it's just this thing that we all like and use, right, and if it means

01:38:25 ◼   ► means that more time and energy and money is available for whatever the actual future

01:38:32 ◼   ► level is going to be, whether it's going to be the watch or AR or self-driving car software

01:38:35 ◼   ► or who knows what, that is probably the correct strategic direction for the company despite

01:38:39 ◼   ► how angry it makes us.

01:38:41 ◼   ► I think it is entirely a question of what their intent is because it's like judging

01:38:46 ◼   ► whether it's a success or a failure, we see what the results are and if that is the intended

01:38:51 ◼   ► results then they're getting exactly what they want and then our quibble is just with

01:38:54 ◼   ► strategic direction. Whereas if the intended result is very different than what we're actually

01:38:58 ◼   ► getting, then that's the company failing to execute successfully on its own plan. And because

01:39:04 ◼   ► Apple doesn't really tell you what its own plans are in terms of how it emphasizes product lines

01:39:08 ◼   ► and stuff, other than the sort of the PR problem that we get about, you know, we love the Mac,

01:39:14 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, which really says nothing. It's very difficult to judge whether they are failing

01:39:19 ◼   ► or a successfully executing strategy we don't like. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

01:39:23 ◼   ► I concur that I am disappointed with the way the Mac has been treated, and I would like

01:39:30 ◼   ► to see it be different.

01:39:32 ◼   ► But just because my engine isn't revved by a touch bar doesn't mean the touch bar is

01:39:38 ◼   ► wrong.

01:39:39 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that it was a failure.

01:39:40 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that Apple isn't innovating.

01:39:42 ◼   ► It doesn't mean it's not a magical, awesome improvement.

01:39:46 ◼   ► All it means is it's not right for me.

01:39:49 ◼   ► And for me to hypothetically say, "Oh, that Apple's doing everything wrong," or that,

01:39:54 ◼   ► you know, "The head of Mac hardware should be fired strictly because of the touch bar,"

01:39:58 ◼   ► which is not what you're saying, Marco.

01:39:59 ◼   ► That's not at all what I'm saying.

01:40:00 ◼   ► No, that's not what I'm saying.

01:40:01 ◼   ► No, I know it's not.

01:40:02 ◼   ► I know it's not.

01:40:03 ◼   ► But I think what I'm trying—let me just rephrase and say that I think you're conflating

01:40:09 ◼   ► a disappointment with direction—this is what Jon was just alluding to—a difference

01:40:13 ◼   ► in direction, or disappointment in direction with a failure.

01:40:17 ◼   ► And that is not necessarily the case, just like Jon said.

01:40:20 ◼   ► I agree that I don't like the way things are going, but I think it's too strong to say

01:40:25 ◼   ► that it's a failure at this point.

01:40:28 ◼   ► It seems a little bit aggressive to me.

01:40:30 ◼   ► No, and I didn't say these things are all failures at this point.

01:40:33 ◼   ► I said that these are, you know, these are like, you know, checks that 2016 wrote for

01:40:37 ◼   ► 2017 to cash.

01:40:39 ◼   ► And if 2017 goes through and these things are all still a problem, something needs to

01:40:44 ◼   ► change big time.

01:40:46 ◼   ► is it isn't, I'm not saying that a company

01:40:50 ◼   ► that's trying to maximize its revenue

01:40:51 ◼   ► and make itself a solid growth potential in the future

01:40:54 ◼   ► shouldn't change strategy.

01:40:56 ◼   ► What I am saying is that Apple does not ship (bleep).

01:41:00 ◼   ► Apple's entire brand and the reputation they've built up

01:41:04 ◼   ► over years and years and years is that they don't ship (bleep)

01:41:08 ◼   ► That Apple products are good, they are great.

01:41:12 ◼   ► And for them to keep saying that

01:41:13 ◼   ► have major areas of the product line that are really embarrassing or really customer

01:41:20 ◼   ► hostile even for years on end. That they keep selling just to scrape a little bit more profit

01:41:27 ◼   ► off the pavement before they just totally kill them. That is not what Apple should be

01:41:32 ◼   ► doing. For Apple, for Corporation X, sure, let Steve Ballmer run it then. Why isn't

01:41:40 ◼   ► Steve Ballmer running it? That's what they want to do, that's the goal, let him do

01:41:42 ◼   ► He's great at that, but that's not Apple. That's not good enough for Apple. It never has been and it shouldn't be now

01:41:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean in the grand scheme of things even though I'm actively arguing with you right now. I do

01:41:54 ◼   ► Largely agree with you. I think that you're right that 2016 wrote a lot of checks that I've yet to see 2017 cash

01:42:00 ◼   ► I just

01:42:03 ◼   ► What concerns me is I?

01:42:05 ◼   ► Wonder if you're putting Apple on a pedestal and if they don't release the most perfect Mac Pro ever

01:42:10 ◼   ► that that you're gonna still be fiery about it if they don't you know version bump the MacBook MacBook adorable

01:42:17 ◼   ► You're gonna be fiery about it truth be told I will be too but don't tell Marco

01:42:19 ◼   ► The MacBook adorable is only one year old. That's fine. Bye-bye my standards. That's totally fine

01:42:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and I mean also remember we're only one

01:42:28 ◼   ► Calendar quarter into the year yet. I mean there's still plenty of time left now in your defense Marco

01:42:34 ◼   ► Typically there is a March event of some sort and we are already halfway through March and there's been not even a

01:42:40 ◼   ► peep of a confirmation about it, which means they'll surely confirm it tomorrow before we release the episode.

01:42:45 ◼   ► But nevertheless, we haven't heard a March event yet, and that's slightly alarming, but it's only March.

01:42:52 ◼   ► We don't know what's in store for the rest of the year. And who knows? Our socks could be blown off at WWDC.

01:42:57 ◼   ► And typically they're at least...

01:42:59 ◼   ► My socks are at least blown a little bit forward, if not entirely off my feet to beat this analogy to death.

01:43:06 ◼   ► And so you never know what'll happen.

01:43:08 ◼   ► But I think we shouldn't get too fiery yet.

01:43:14 ◼   ► If after WWDC and we've seen the software updates and we still haven't seen much in

01:43:20 ◼   ► the way of hardware updates, okay, maybe we should start getting fiery.

01:43:23 ◼   ► But at this point, I'm not too concerned yet.

01:43:26 ◼   ► On the topic of trying to figure out intent, like basically is it a successful execution

01:43:32 ◼   ► of a strategy we disagree with or a failed execution of a strategy that we would support,

01:43:36 ◼   ► that type of thing?

01:43:37 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is actually a good example because on the idea of Apple not shipping things that

01:43:43 ◼   ► they would be proud of, right, the Mac Pro I think is the best example of it.

01:43:48 ◼   ► It's not that it was a bad product when it was introduced, it's actually really cool

01:43:51 ◼   ► and interesting, it's that if you keep shipping it for three years it becomes an embarrassment,

01:43:56 ◼   ► right?

01:43:57 ◼   ► And it is the type of embarrassment that like, look, there is no strategy that makes sense

01:44:02 ◼   ► with the image that Apple previously had, unless the new idea is we don't want Apple

01:44:05 ◼   ► to have that reputation, which doesn't make any sense, because everything else Apple does

01:44:08 ◼   ► and everything they say and everything they've always done is like, yes, we want to be the

01:44:11 ◼   ► company that has the reputation of shipping good stuff.

01:44:13 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is, they shouldn't still be selling it.

01:44:18 ◼   ► And I understand why they're why.

01:44:20 ◼   ► If you were to get someone up on stage and talk to them in a WODC talk show type interview

01:44:24 ◼   ► and say, "Why are you still shipping the Mac Pro?"

01:44:25 ◼   ► I guarantee you what they will say, and it's probably true, is, "Some vague answer about

01:44:32 ◼   ► how they had it they didn't plan for this like there was a strategy to do to

01:44:36 ◼   ► do something better and it didn't work out so that I would say there were they

01:44:38 ◼   ► would they would vaguely admit to some kind of failure there and they would say

01:44:41 ◼   ► but then why are you even still selling it they would say well because we have

01:44:44 ◼   ► customers who need a computer like this and actually believe it or not in case

01:44:49 ◼   ► you could probably believe it not selling this now piece of crap overpriced

01:44:53 ◼   ► computer would actually be worse for those customers than continuing to sell

01:44:56 ◼   ► it and then the only recourse you have that it's like okay but do you have

01:45:00 ◼   ► I still have to sell it for like eight grand.

01:45:01 ◼   ► And they'd be like, well, people buy it.

01:45:04 ◼   ► And that, you know, whatever,

01:45:05 ◼   ► Apple has never been ashamed of selling people things

01:45:07 ◼   ► for way too much money, but that's the situation they're in.

01:45:10 ◼   ► So I feel like the Mac Pro, to figure out,

01:45:12 ◼   ► is this a strategy we don't agree with,

01:45:13 ◼   ► or is this a failure?

01:45:14 ◼   ► There has to be a failure in there.

01:45:16 ◼   ► They're not gonna come and tell you exactly

01:45:17 ◼   ► what the failures are, you know what I mean?

01:45:18 ◼   ► Like they're not gonna say,

01:45:19 ◼   ► oh, here's what went wrong or whatever.

01:45:21 ◼   ► But that seems very clear to me.

01:45:23 ◼   ► There is no conscious strategy that Apple says,

01:45:25 ◼   ► you know what, we're gonna make Pro hardware

01:45:27 ◼   ► and then we're not gonna update it

01:45:27 ◼   ► for three or four years.

01:45:28 ◼   ► I do not believe that was ever Apple's strategy.

01:45:32 ◼   ► That is evidence of a failure.

01:45:34 ◼   ► How big a failure is that in the grand scheme of things?

01:45:36 ◼   ► I don't know or whatever.

01:45:38 ◼   ► But that is the only thing that seems clear from the outset.

01:45:40 ◼   ► Everything else you can say,

01:45:42 ◼   ► is it a failure to like ship,

01:45:45 ◼   ► make all your laptops thin and light or is that a strategy?

01:45:48 ◼   ► Or is it a failure to have computers

01:45:50 ◼   ► that aren't really that much better

01:45:51 ◼   ► than the ones they replace but are more expensive?

01:45:54 ◼   ► Or is that part of a strategy?

01:45:55 ◼   ► Like almost everything else I look at and I squint and say,

01:45:57 ◼   ► seems a lot like a strategy. Maybe a strategy I don't agree with personally from my tastes

01:46:01 ◼   ► and products or whatever, but it seems like a strategy. But the Mac Pro does not seem

01:46:05 ◼   ► like a strategy. It seems like a failure.

01:46:07 ◼   ► - Counterargument. The Mac Mini. Mac Mini is totally fine. They could update it. It's

01:46:12 ◼   ► really easily updated. It uses cheap component parts.

01:46:15 ◼   ► - That's a strategy.

01:46:16 ◼   ► - Well, and so their strategy was, let's put this thing out there, but because it doesn't

01:46:20 ◼   ► sell on very high volumes, let's never update it basically. Why couldn't that have been

01:46:24 ◼   ► the same strategy for the Mac Pro?

01:46:25 ◼   ► No, because the Mac Pro, the whole point of the Mac Pro is the biggest, fastest computer

01:46:29 ◼   ► for the most demanding workloads.

01:46:31 ◼   ► And the rest of Apple's product line, like the 5K Mac, has passed it by.

01:46:35 ◼   ► Like its role in the product line is to be the biggest, fastest, and most expensive.

01:46:39 ◼   ► The role of the Mac Mini is to be the cheapest and crappiest.

01:46:42 ◼   ► Success.

01:46:43 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you never update it, it exactly fills its role of the cheapest and

01:46:47 ◼   ► crappiest and you're just like, "Oh, this is a product Apple doesn't care about and

01:46:50 ◼   ► doesn't really care about updating."

01:46:51 ◼   ► That, I feel like Mac Mini looks totally like strategy to me, but there is no world in which

01:46:55 ◼   ► which is a strategy of like,

01:46:56 ◼   ► we're gonna make the biggest, fastest computer

01:46:58 ◼   ► and then never make it any faster

01:46:59 ◼   ► and the whole rest of our product line,

01:47:01 ◼   ► including eventually our watches,

01:47:02 ◼   ► are gonna be faster than this friggin' trash can.

01:47:04 ◼   ► That's not a strategy because of the slot

01:47:07 ◼   ► that the product goes in.

01:47:08 ◼   ► So it's gotta be a failure.

01:47:09 ◼   ► - I don't think we have enough

01:47:15 ◼   ► Tim Cook Apple history to know that.

01:47:16 ◼   ► I think there is very plausibly,

01:47:19 ◼   ► I think it was probably a failure of some kind,

01:47:22 ◼   ► But I think it's very plausibly also just a strategy

01:47:26 ◼   ► of how today's Apple deals with low-volume products.

01:47:31 ◼   ► - We need to write all these things down

01:47:32 ◼   ► so that we can wait in 20 years for the tell-all book.

01:47:35 ◼   ► We need to track down these long-retired

01:47:37 ◼   ► millionaire Apple executives.

01:47:39 ◼   ► What the hell happened with the Mac Pro?

01:47:41 ◼   ► Tell us, 'cause from the outside, we can't tell.

01:47:44 ◼   ► Was it just an Intel thing that you didn't get,

01:47:47 ◼   ► or the sales volume, or there was something like,

01:47:49 ◼   ► I don't know, what happened?

01:47:51 ◼   ► or did you have it designed and they were fatal flaws with this little triangle design

01:47:54 ◼   ► and you're just eating the cost on these GPU replacements and the new one you had planned

01:47:58 ◼   ► didn't work?

01:47:59 ◼   ► Like, what happened?

01:48:00 ◼   ► Whereas the Mac Mini, I feel like you're interviewing me like, "Yeah, no one cares about that computer.

01:48:03 ◼   ► It's low end."

01:48:04 ◼   ► And it compiles faster than the Mac Pro anyway.

01:48:08 ◼   ► Wow.

01:48:09 ◼   ► Oh, is there any show that we can't eventually get to the Mac Pro about?

01:48:12 ◼   ► Casey loves it.

01:48:13 ◼   ► That's the best.

01:48:15 ◼   ► It makes me so happy.

01:48:16 ◼   ► Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Eero, Betterment, and Squarespace.

01:48:21 ◼   ► And we'll see you next week.

01:48:23 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:48:30 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:48:35 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:48:40 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:48:46 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:48:51 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:48:56 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:49:00 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:49:05 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:49:10 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse

01:49:12 ◼   ► It's accidental (it's accidental)

01:49:15 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental (accidental)

01:49:20 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:49:25 ◼   ► Can we can we please talk about something that'll make us happier, please?

01:49:28 ◼   ► Like the switch maybe hopefully possibly John. How do you like your switch?

01:49:32 ◼   ► It's hard to say how I like my switch because

01:49:36 ◼   ► This is supposed to be your happy place

01:49:40 ◼   ► Because as far as like I feel kind of bad because a lot of people who I know who are using the switch are all talking

01:49:46 ◼   ► about it and they're talking about the hardware and it's like

01:49:49 ◼   ► This is just a Zelda delivery device for me at this point kind of like it

01:49:53 ◼   ► You know my PlayStation 4 became my destiny delivery device

01:49:56 ◼   ► And in that capacity I wish as always that the hardware was faster because then I wouldn't have

01:50:04 ◼   ► Slowdowns in forested areas, and it's like I still find myself thinking can you imagine how?

01:50:11 ◼   ► You know how even better this game would be on the ps4, but in general

01:50:17 ◼   ► I don't spend much time dwelling in that because I'm really really loving Zelda. I think it's a great game. I enjoy it

01:50:23 ◼   ► I think about it when I'm not playing it. I can't wait to play it every time. I'm away from the game

01:50:27 ◼   ► And it's like watching a movie. I really don't think about the quality of my blu-ray player when I'm watching a good movie

01:50:32 ◼   ► I think about the movie so when I'm playing so I'm thinking about Zelda, and it's awesome, and it's great and my switch has

01:50:37 ◼   ► Literally never been held in my hands to play a game and has not left the dock since I got Zelda

01:50:43 ◼   ► So that's how I'm using my switch. It is I'm pretending that Nintendo is still releasing

01:50:48 ◼   ► TV connected consoles and not this hybrid portable thing and I'm perfectly happy with that eventually

01:50:54 ◼   ► I probably will take it out and try playing it handheld and see what that's like

01:50:57 ◼   ► But for now it is me a pro controller and Zelda and I'm loving it. No spoilers, please

01:51:04 ◼   ► you know, it's funny so I

01:51:06 ◼   ► played with two different people's switches my sister-in-law got one and she came over the evening of

01:51:13 ◼   ► of launch day. And then the following day I went to my friend Stee's house and played