ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I just for the first time in a while picked up my iPhone 5s.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I had it out for overcast testing.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Mistake.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - It's waffle time.

00:00:09 ◼   ► (beeping)

00:00:10 ◼   ► - It's so good.

00:00:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:13 ◼   ► - See, but try accomplishing anything on it.

00:00:16 ◼   ► - You are like someone who we're trying not to mention

00:00:18 ◼   ► and whatever the last thing that you've done

00:00:21 ◼   ► is like that has the most impression on you.

00:00:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:24 ◼   ► Oh God, oh God.

00:00:26 ◼   ► No, I mean, it's the kind of thing,

00:00:28 ◼   ► Like I saw, I was doing some testing a few days ago

00:00:30 ◼   ► and that's why I just picked it up,

00:00:32 ◼   ► now I'm moving it out of the way so we can do the show.

00:00:34 ◼   ► It just feels so good when I pick it up

00:00:36 ◼   ► and I'm like, man, it looks so good.

00:00:38 ◼   ► I wish phones could still look that good

00:00:39 ◼   ► and would still feel good in my hand.

00:00:42 ◼   ► But then when I actually use it to do my tests,

00:00:44 ◼   ► I'm just like, man, this is such a toy.

00:00:47 ◼   ► This is so small.

00:00:49 ◼   ► This is so, I've actually, I've honestly been thinking like,

00:00:52 ◼   ► okay, so my phone is continuing to not be able

00:00:56 ◼   ► to make phone calls reliably.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Since day one, both mine and TIFF's iPhone 7s

00:01:02 ◼   ► have been very frequently exhibiting the exact same problem

00:01:06 ◼   ► of the microphone cuts out during phone calls

00:01:09 ◼   ► so that the other person can't hear us

00:01:10 ◼   ► for like 10 seconds or 15 seconds at a time,

00:01:13 ◼   ► often resulting in them saying hello, hello, hello

00:01:15 ◼   ► until they hang up, and we're screaming,

00:01:16 ◼   ► we're here, we're here, we're here,

00:01:18 ◼   ► and they just hang up after a while

00:01:19 ◼   ► 'cause usually it doesn't recover.

00:01:22 ◼   ► And it's, you know, you say you might think

00:01:25 ◼   ► you're never on the phone.

00:01:27 ◼   ► "Oh, I never take phone calls.

00:01:29 ◼   ► "I use apps on my phone all the time."

00:01:31 ◼   ► You'd be surprised how many times

00:01:33 ◼   ► a phone call becomes something important,

00:01:36 ◼   ► even in a lifestyle like this.

00:01:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:40 ◼   ► Simple things like when your credit card gets flagged

00:01:42 ◼   ► for fraud and you have to call them and explain it,

00:01:45 ◼   ► and they hang up on you in the middle

00:01:46 ◼   ► 'cause they say, "I'm sorry, it seems like

00:01:48 ◼   ► "no one's here anymore, we have to hang up."

00:01:50 ◼   ► Anyway, so I've been thinking about maybe

00:01:54 ◼   ► trying a plus while I get this phone fixed.

00:01:58 ◼   ► - Oh, boo.

00:02:00 ◼   ► - But I don't know.

00:02:01 ◼   ► I just keep waffling 'cause the camera on it is so good,

00:02:04 ◼   ► even though it's not that great in low light,

00:02:06 ◼   ► but I don't know.

00:02:08 ◼   ► 'Cause I use my phone so much,

00:02:10 ◼   ► and so often I wish the screen was bigger,

00:02:13 ◼   ► but when I do have the plus for a week here or there,

00:02:16 ◼   ► I'm just like, oh, this is so unwieldy in my hand.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I hate holding it.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I hate it so it's-- - Yep.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Anyway, that's the current waffle,

00:02:24 ◼   ► but it's not a very serious waffle yet.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Maybe Mike will work on it for another couple of weeks

00:02:27 ◼   ► and we'll see, but probably not.

00:02:28 ◼   ► I'll probably just wait till the next one.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - Can we not put this in the show?

00:02:31 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't wanna hear Mike's lip

00:02:32 ◼   ► after it's inevitably released

00:02:34 ◼   ► and then he starts celebrating on you waffling again.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Also, I take issue with something you said a minute ago.

00:02:40 ◼   ► The 5S unquestionably feels amazing in the hand.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Oh my God, it feels so good in the hand.

00:02:47 ◼   ► But I actually stand by my earlier assessment

00:02:51 ◼   ► that this iPhone 7 matte black that I have in my hands,

00:02:56 ◼   ► while unquestionably slippier than the most slippy soap

00:03:01 ◼   ► that you've ever held,

00:03:02 ◼   ► it is aesthetically my favorite iPhone I've ever used,

00:03:05 ◼   ► which is unfortunate because it is like holding a bar of soap

00:03:08 ◼   ► but God, I think this thing is beautiful.

00:03:10 ◼   ► And that doesn't mean you have to agree,

00:03:11 ◼   ► but this is my favorite phone

00:03:13 ◼   ► of all the iPhones I've owned purely visually.

00:03:16 ◼   ► - On the phone size thing,

00:03:19 ◼   ► the AirPods are giving me a little bit of relief from the excessive size of the 6, which

00:03:27 ◼   ► is the only size of iPhone I've had, but it's obviously bigger than the Plus, or not the

00:03:31 ◼   ► Plus, the iPod Touches I used to use. Remember I said when I first got the AirPods that the

00:03:36 ◼   ► clicker thing on my wired headphones was beating them in the kitchen? Well, the AirPods have

00:03:41 ◼   ► made a comeback because they allow me to put my phone down someplace else and not have

00:03:47 ◼   ► it in my pocket, which you wouldn't think would make a difference when I'm going around

00:03:49 ◼   ► the kitchen and cooking.

00:03:51 ◼   ► But when you're cooking in the kitchen, occasionally you have to bend down to get like a pot out

00:03:54 ◼   ► of a low thing or whatever.

00:03:56 ◼   ► And no matter which pocket I put my phone in, it's just big enough to be uncomfortable

00:04:01 ◼   ► when I bend down that I feel like I'm either bending my phone or it's just, you know, I

00:04:04 ◼   ► don't know, it's just nice not to have it there.

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's just, anyway, I feel better when I put my phone down, you know, on a side table in

00:04:14 ◼   ► the other room and then just walk around the kitchen with my AirPods.

00:04:16 ◼   ► The AirPods are back in the house now.

00:04:18 ◼   ► And it just goes to show that I would never trade down this for the smaller size, no matter

00:04:23 ◼   ► how good it feels in the hand because, like Marco said, you don't just hold the thing.

00:04:28 ◼   ► It's not a worry stone that you just rub in your hand.

00:04:30 ◼   ► You actually look at it and touch the screen.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And for looking and touching the screen, I want a bigger screen, so I have one.

00:04:35 ◼   ► But I do like that the AirPods are letting me keep my phone away from myself while listening

00:04:40 ◼   ► to audio.

00:04:41 ◼   ► I'm just, I'm so torn because whenever I am using it,

00:04:45 ◼   ► I want a bigger screen, but whenever I'm holding it,

00:04:47 ◼   ► I want a smaller phone.

00:04:49 ◼   ► - You're talking about the 5S?

00:04:50 ◼   ► - No, I'm talking about the middle one,

00:04:51 ◼   ► the 4.7 inch size.

00:04:53 ◼   ► - Oh, oh, oh, oh.

00:04:54 ◼   ► - I'm never happy with this size,

00:04:57 ◼   ► but I'm also not happy with any of the other ones.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So I picked the one in the middle

00:05:01 ◼   ► that's kind of mediocre at everything,

00:05:03 ◼   ► and I'm, I guess, least unhappy with it,

00:05:07 ◼   ► but I don't know, this is why I'm hoping so much

00:05:10 ◼   ► that the next industrial design of the phone

00:05:12 ◼   ► puts a larger screen in smaller bodies.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I would love so much to have the size screen

00:05:19 ◼   ► the Plus has, but in something that isn't quite

00:05:21 ◼   ► as much bigger than the Plus.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Any reduction in size would probably be enough

00:05:27 ◼   ► to push me over the edge, even if it's a small reduction,

00:05:30 ◼   ► just like fine.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And I'm not talking about thickness.

00:05:33 ◼   ► As you know from ever listening to me complain

00:05:36 ◼   ► about anything ever, I don't care that much about thickness.

00:05:39 ◼   ► In the iPhone's case, it's more about the footprint,

00:05:42 ◼   ► the dimensions, 'cause that's what makes it awkward

00:05:44 ◼   ► in the hand and awkward in my pocket.

00:05:47 ◼   ► The thickness itself is not that important to me.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So I'm really, really hoping the next one

00:05:53 ◼   ► does something like that, but I don't know.

00:05:55 ◼   ► They keep selling so many of these,

00:05:56 ◼   ► I don't know if they're ever gonna change it.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Speaking of topical things.

00:06:00 ◼   ► - So I have a question.

00:06:02 ◼   ► If the next iPhone, let's just assume

00:06:06 ◼   ► it's called an iPhone 8.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I'm not saying that's what I expect.

00:06:08 ◼   ► Let's just assume for this conversation that the next iPhone is the iPhone 8.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And let's assume for the sake of conversation that it is approximately the same size as

00:06:17 ◼   ► an iPhone 7, physically speaking, but the screen, because of smaller bezels or John

00:06:22 ◼   ► Bezels, however, is now roughly the size of a 7 Plus.

00:06:28 ◼   ► I don't even care if that's like possible physically, just for the sake of discussion.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Is Mike right if we all get these iPhone 8s that are physically the size that we've always

00:06:40 ◼   ► used, but the screen size is the size of a Plus?

00:06:44 ◼   ► Is Mike right?

00:06:45 ◼   ► Yes or no?

00:06:46 ◼   ► Is it like the TARDIS where it's bigger on the inside?

00:06:48 ◼   ► The math doesn't work out on that.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Just go with it.

00:06:51 ◼   ► No, I mean, just go with it.

00:06:52 ◼   ► It's like, what if you could have a bus, but it was the size of a Matchbox car, but it

00:06:56 ◼   ► fit your whole family.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Precisely.

00:06:58 ◼   ► You get it, John.

00:06:59 ◼   ► You get it.

00:07:00 ◼   ► For reference, so I have all three phones that we're talking about right here on my

00:07:02 ◼   ► I've been doing this testing,

00:07:03 ◼   ► and if you place the iPhone 7 on top of a Plus phone,

00:07:08 ◼   ► you can still see the size of the Plus phone screen

00:07:12 ◼   ► sticking out of the left and right.

00:07:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:15 ◼   ► - I don't think Casey knows how big a Plus is.

00:07:17 ◼   ► It's way bigger.

00:07:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a lot bigger.

00:07:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:20 ◼   ► So yeah, it's not possible to shove the massive screen

00:07:23 ◼   ► into the mid-sized body.

00:07:24 ◼   ► It is possible to put the massive screen

00:07:27 ◼   ► into a phone that is less massive.

00:07:29 ◼   ► It would still be a very large phone,

00:07:32 ◼   ► but it would be possible.

00:07:34 ◼   ► It would be more pleasant in the hand.

00:07:36 ◼   ► It would be a little bit smaller.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And honestly, I mean, none of the three of us

00:07:41 ◼   ► have ever, to the best of my knowledge,

00:07:42 ◼   ► correct me if I'm wrong, spent any time

00:07:44 ◼   ► with one of these Android curved screen edge phones.

00:07:47 ◼   ► But you can look at other phones on the market

00:07:51 ◼   ► and they have creative ways to shove large screens

00:07:56 ◼   ► into at least narrower phones and maybe also shorter,

00:07:59 ◼   ► but narrower is usually the more important one.

00:08:02 ◼   ► And I think I would agree with that in the hand,

00:08:04 ◼   ► narrower is kind of more important

00:08:05 ◼   ► for whether you can reach things with your hand

00:08:07 ◼   ► and how it fits, how you hold it.

00:08:09 ◼   ► But man, I just, again, any, like,

00:08:12 ◼   ► the very slightest improvement in size of the big one,

00:08:17 ◼   ► I'm getting it.

00:08:18 ◼   ► - You won't be swayed by what they're probably gonna do,

00:08:21 ◼   ► which is keep the seven form factor

00:08:24 ◼   ► but pulling the margins on that.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Like, so same size screen as the seven,

00:08:28 ◼   ► but smaller surround.

00:08:29 ◼   ► So basically it's making it in your hand feel closer

00:08:32 ◼   ► to the five size.

00:08:34 ◼   ► You'd still go for the big giant phone

00:08:36 ◼   ► with its margins pulled in as opposed to the middle phone

00:08:39 ◼   ► with the margins pulled in.

00:08:40 ◼   ► - So you're probably right that that is probably

00:08:43 ◼   ► the kind of thing they would do.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Like if they do one, they would probably do both

00:08:46 ◼   ► with the same kind of treatment.

00:08:48 ◼   ► So the phone you just described,

00:08:51 ◼   ► which is basically like the iPhone 8 minus,

00:08:54 ◼   ► it would be really, really great feeling in my hand.

00:08:57 ◼   ► However, I would have the same problems I have

00:09:00 ◼   ► with the current six, which is, or seven, this design,

00:09:03 ◼   ► which is that I just keep wanting more screen space

00:09:06 ◼   ► and all the biggest battery and the biggest camera.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Although honestly, truth be told,

00:09:12 ◼   ► I have been totally fine with the battery on the seven.

00:09:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, agreed.

00:09:16 ◼   ► - And part of that's 'cause I'm doing

00:09:17 ◼   ► a lot of iOS development,

00:09:18 ◼   ► so it's plugged in a lot during the day.

00:09:21 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:09:22 ◼   ► But overall, the battery life on the seven

00:09:24 ◼   ► is noticeably better than it was in the 6S for me

00:09:28 ◼   ► in my real world use.

00:09:29 ◼   ► It is a substantial difference.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And it's to the point now where,

00:09:33 ◼   ► like Tiff and I, a few years ago,

00:09:36 ◼   ► I ran a lightning cable between two segments of our couch

00:09:40 ◼   ► so that we would just always be able to pull,

00:09:42 ◼   ► between two of the cushions,

00:09:43 ◼   ► we would just be able to pull up a cable

00:09:45 ◼   ► and plug our phone in.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Called a charger couch, it's a great idea.

00:09:48 ◼   ► And we recently had to replace the couch

00:09:50 ◼   ► and I haven't even set up the new one yet

00:09:52 ◼   ► with the charger cable,

00:09:53 ◼   ► 'cause I realized we never really use it anymore.

00:09:56 ◼   ► 'Cause Tiff's phone always has

00:09:57 ◼   ► the giant battery backpack on it,

00:09:58 ◼   ► and mine is always plugged into my computer all day,

00:10:01 ◼   ► and when I'm actually using it throughout their outside world

00:10:04 ◼   ► the battery is actually better enough in the 7,

00:10:07 ◼   ► the regular size 7.

00:10:08 ◼   ► So that is good for them.

00:10:10 ◼   ► I'm really happy about that in practice.

00:10:13 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons why overall

00:10:16 ◼   ► I am happier than I thought I would be with the 7.

00:10:19 ◼   ► That being said, I still want the bigger screen

00:10:21 ◼   ► and whatever the best camera is.

00:10:23 ◼   ► Hopefully in the next one they can fit

00:10:24 ◼   ► two image stabilized cameras,

00:10:26 ◼   ► and hopefully the zoomed in one is both stabilized

00:10:29 ◼   ► and not a meaningfully smaller aperture.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So that would be nice, but I still do want

00:10:35 ◼   ► the best, best, best of all that stuff,

00:10:37 ◼   ► because I use my phone so heavily

00:10:39 ◼   ► for so many things throughout the day.

00:10:41 ◼   ► - Sorry, Apple doesn't make best, best, best

00:10:43 ◼   ► of anything anymore.

00:10:44 ◼   ► - I know, that's kind of the problem, right?

00:10:46 ◼   ► Yeah, you gotta decide what asterisks

00:10:49 ◼   ► you're willing to tolerate.

00:10:51 ◼   ► But anyway, so to answer your question, Jon,

00:10:53 ◼   ► I should probably just go ahead and get the big one

00:10:56 ◼   ► next time, assuming it is a little bit smaller.

00:10:58 ◼   ► But the whole time I would have it,

00:11:00 ◼   ► I would be waffling in the other direction.

00:11:02 ◼   ► So you'll hear about it, just wait about,

00:11:04 ◼   ► what, about nine months, and you'll start hearing me--

00:11:06 ◼   ► - I'm gonna say this is like, you will buy the bigger one,

00:11:09 ◼   ► you will receive it, you will use it for a week,

00:11:11 ◼   ► and then you will keep it for testing purposes

00:11:13 ◼   ► but buy a smaller one and use it as your phone.

00:11:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:16 ◼   ► - Maybe.

00:11:17 ◼   ► No, I just want my wonderful seven

00:11:19 ◼   ► that I'm unreasonably happy with in other ways,

00:11:22 ◼   ► I just want it to be able to make phone calls.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It's kind of important.

00:11:26 ◼   ► - Do you think that's related to the Intel,

00:11:28 ◼   ► do you have the Intel chip instead of the Qualcomm one,

00:11:30 ◼   ► the radio?

00:11:31 ◼   ► - I do, that's another thing.

00:11:33 ◼   ► So I do have, every, I think AT&T sold phone.

00:11:38 ◼   ► I think all of them except, in the US,

00:11:41 ◼   ► I think all of them except the Verizon one

00:11:43 ◼   ► have the Intel one. - Except my phone, yeah.

00:11:44 ◼   ► That I never make phone calls from.

00:11:46 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:11:47 ◼   ► So that was also one of my theories is,

00:11:50 ◼   ► if I send this in to get fixed

00:11:51 ◼   ► and I buy a new phone in the meantime,

00:11:53 ◼   ► I would buy a Verizon unlocked one.

00:11:54 ◼   ► And then just maybe, you know,

00:11:56 ◼   ► if I get the old one back, then sell it or something,

00:12:00 ◼   ► I don't know, I just don't wanna deal with it.

00:12:02 ◼   ► This is why I haven't gotten it fixed yet.

00:12:03 ◼   ► It hasn't been able to make phone calls reliably

00:12:04 ◼   ► since day one.

00:12:05 ◼   ► But I just, like, I need my phone all the time.

00:12:08 ◼   ► And so there hasn't been a time where I've wanted to like,

00:12:12 ◼   ► you know, ship it back and be without it

00:12:13 ◼   ► for probably at least a few days

00:12:15 ◼   ► while Apple does whatever to it.

00:12:17 ◼   ► and then it comes back and maybe isn't fixed.

00:12:19 ◼   ► - Mine has been completely fine,

00:12:21 ◼   ► and Aaron's to the best of my knowledge

00:12:23 ◼   ► have both been completely fine since we've gotten them.

00:12:24 ◼   ► We're both on AT&T, both on iPhone 7s,

00:12:27 ◼   ► and they've both been no problem at all.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Which, I'm not to say that you're wrong or anything,

00:12:33 ◼   ► obviously your experience is your experience,

00:12:35 ◼   ► but it's not a systemic issue

00:12:38 ◼   ► with all the Intel chips it would seem.

00:12:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I was wondering

00:12:41 ◼   ► if it was like an OS bug or something.

00:12:43 ◼   ► By the way, speaking of like how often we use our phones,

00:12:45 ◼   ► I have my phone right here and I can pull up

00:12:47 ◼   ► How often I...

00:12:49 ◼   ► Does all calls do sent and received or just sent? I'm going on the recent call section in the all tab.

00:12:55 ◼   ► That's everything right? I would think so. So this is 2017 phone calls for me.

00:12:59 ◼   ► One on the fifth

00:13:02 ◼   ► from my house

00:13:04 ◼   ► Spam call on the 12th, spam call on the 18th,

00:13:07 ◼   ► one on Thursday, spam call on Thursday, and then one today.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So that's everything in 20 one two three spam calls and three legit calls in 2017 so far

00:13:19 ◼   ► It's February don't use my phone a lot. I have 52 calls in 2017

00:13:25 ◼   ► Yeah, so you're you're feeling the pain of a weird microphone a lot more than I am yes

00:13:30 ◼   ► 32 33

00:13:32 ◼   ► 8 for screens

00:13:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's somewhere between 40 and 50 and and I'm using that no more robo thing to like I don't it's I mean it

00:13:41 ◼   ► I'm using it and I like the fact that it has caught some but I don't like that if you still get through

00:13:47 ◼   ► Yeah, so iPhone 7 overall thumbs up, but for God's sake I want to make phone calls reliably and Noma Robo also thumbs up

00:13:55 ◼   ► Big big supporter of that now. I tried a lot of the call blocking things Noma Robo was the best

00:14:01 ◼   ► I think it's like two bucks a month some kind of subscription price, but it's worth it

00:14:05 ◼   ► Do it. Oh, yeah. Well, I would I would pay more if it worked better

00:14:09 ◼   ► Although I still have Haya on here,

00:14:11 ◼   ► which was the one I was using before,

00:14:12 ◼   ► which as you pointed out Marco doesn't work

00:14:13 ◼   ► and is annoying and is slightly evil.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Because Haya lets you look up numbers,

00:14:17 ◼   ► so when one of them gets through and I don't answer it,

00:14:21 ◼   ► 'cause why would I, I wanna know is this a spam caller?

00:14:24 ◼   ► And I can just go to Haya and paste in the number

00:14:26 ◼   ► and it says oh, nine out of 10 people

00:14:28 ◼   ► reported this as spam and I know.

00:14:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean I've had Nomorobo miss spam calls

00:14:35 ◼   ► a couple of times in the last few days,

00:14:37 ◼   ► but overall it's been very solid.

00:14:39 ◼   ► 'Cause when I'm not running a blocker of some sort,

00:14:42 ◼   ► I get roughly one a day maybe.

00:14:46 ◼   ► - Really?

00:14:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, for the last couple years I've gotten

00:14:48 ◼   ► almost one a day.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Maybe it's more like four or five a week,

00:14:51 ◼   ► so it's not quite one a day, but in that ballpark.

00:14:54 ◼   ► And I had a high block zero of them ever.

00:14:57 ◼   ► I ran it for two months.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And then I've had no more robo now for a couple of weeks

00:15:01 ◼   ► and I have gotten I think one or two in two weeks or so.

00:15:06 ◼   ► weeks or so.

00:15:07 ◼   ► We'll put a link to Marco's article about this in the show notes because it's hard

00:15:11 ◼   ► to understand the name of these things.

00:15:13 ◼   ► We're saying "Hiya" as in the word "Hi" and then "Yuh" is short for "You".

00:15:18 ◼   ► H-I-Y-A.

00:15:19 ◼   ► And then "No-Mo-Robo" is "No more robo calls" but it's N-O-M-O-R-O-B-O all one

00:15:24 ◼   ► word.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll link to the blog post.

00:15:27 ◼   ► All this stuff is linked.

00:15:28 ◼   ► It just sounds like we're saying made up words but these are real apps.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Welcome to the app naming.

00:15:33 ◼   ► It's like, you know, Web 2.0 site naming where you had to like spell everything because it's

00:15:37 ◼   ► like, "Oh, well, it's like Flickr without the 'e'."

00:15:41 ◼   ► I don't know who else would name sites like that.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Yeah, who would that be?

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00:17:56 ◼   ► All right, so let's start with some follow-up,

00:17:58 ◼   ► if you can claim starting this late.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Most important piece of follow-up that I think we have,

00:18:04 ◼   ► which is not in the list, which makes Jon oh so happy

00:18:07 ◼   ► when I go off schedule like this,

00:18:09 ◼   ► I have heard a lot of feedback about my shower habits,

00:18:12 ◼   ► and I have heard one or two pieces of feedback

00:18:16 ◼   ► that has disagreed with me and said,

00:18:19 ◼   ► I am a barbarian for showering at night.

00:18:21 ◼   ► And overwhelming amounts of feedback,

00:18:24 ◼   ► probably because we've been hiding in the shadows for all these years, ashamed at our

00:18:29 ◼   ► peculiar ways.

00:18:30 ◼   ► David Eagleman Dozens of us.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Dozens.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Steven McLaughlin Dozens of us, I tell you.

00:18:34 ◼   ► An overwhelming amount of feedback, including many people making that same reference, have

00:18:38 ◼   ► said it is absolutely the only way to go.

00:18:41 ◼   ► You must shower at night.

00:18:42 ◼   ► It is disgusting to shower during the morning time.

00:18:47 ◼   ► And many people wrote in to say, I want to—I should have kept notes, but I believe it was

00:18:52 ◼   ► Japan.

00:18:53 ◼   ► culturally the way they do it is to shower at night. Forgive me. It was like every country

00:18:58 ◼   ► outside of the United States. Like, Howard characterized the feedback was, well, first of all,

00:19:03 ◼   ► still the vast majority of the entire United States is against Casey, and they didn't write

00:19:06 ◼   ► in because they have a silent majority. That's probably true. But basically every other person

00:19:10 ◼   ► wrote in and said, "In insert country that's not the United States, everybody either showers at

00:19:16 ◼   ► night or showers twice a day." Nobody wrote in from other countries and said, "Oh, we all shower in

00:19:19 ◼   ► in the morning because maybe there's some majority too but lots of people from many

00:19:23 ◼   ► different countries in Europe, South America, Asia, everywhere they're all like oh we totally

00:19:27 ◼   ► shower at night but United States nothing from them because we all know Casey's crazy

00:19:31 ◼   ► and so they just let him be.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Michael Scott There also were clear trends where hotter countries

00:19:37 ◼   ► would more often do it and also it seemed more prevalent in Asia than other places.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Michael Scott Yeah and some people point out the farther

00:19:43 ◼   ► you get from Europe the more showers people take.

00:19:48 ◼   ► who lived in South America, but yeah. Although I didn't pick this up because I didn't

00:19:53 ◼   ► think there was anything to follow up on. I thought we covered all the bases. But since

00:19:56 ◼   ► Casey insists on bringing it back up, one point that nobody brought up the last time

00:20:01 ◼   ► is like what I think is the obvious reason, which again wasn't stated because we all

00:20:05 ◼   ► know Casey's the outlier here, that people shower in the morning gets back to the Dilbert

00:20:10 ◼   ► comic strip with after you shower you're the cleanest object in your house, right?

00:20:13 ◼   ► So after you shower, that's the cleanest you're going to get and you're just going

00:20:15 ◼   ► to get sweatier during the day. If you shower in the morning, your interactions with other

00:20:20 ◼   ► people for your day, for your nine to five day, present you at the cleanest because you

00:20:24 ◼   ► go from maximal cleanness slowly degrading until five o'clock, right? Those are the best

00:20:28 ◼   ► hours you give or the hours you're with, you know, you're at work and with other people.

00:20:32 ◼   ► If you shower at night, you've got a good solid eight hours of sweating in your bed

00:20:36 ◼   ► before you meet the first person the next day for work. So that's the obvious morning

00:20:39 ◼   ► shower thing. And I'm assuming that's why everybody in America showers in the morning.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I know, Jon, there's these magical devices. They're called air conditioners.

00:20:47 ◼   ► And you can turn them on, and it conditions the air.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Because no one sweats at night if the room is the right temperature.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I have some bad news for you, slash your wife, as you age about night sweats.

00:21:01 ◼   ► [laughs]

00:21:04 ◼   ► Oh, Jon, I love having the old man on the show to keep us in check.

00:21:08 ◼   ► I love how like this week like everyone else is talking about Apple earnings and we're talking about showers again

00:21:14 ◼   ► We'll get there. This is just follow up and Casey added this. I didn't have it in the notes

00:21:19 ◼   ► Casey wanted to bring it up. He's digging his own grave. John loves it when I just throw something in at the last second

00:21:24 ◼   ► It's his favorite

00:21:26 ◼   ► Also, I'm gonna rearrange the show notes aspartame is the artificial sweetener and diet coke not sucralose. I don't personally care

00:21:33 ◼   ► Whatever it is. It's freaking delicious. It was it was Marco who got it wrong. I got complaining about our first sweeteners

00:21:38 ◼   ► I knew that already, but it doesn't really matter. It's like the concept of an artificial

00:21:44 ◼   ► sweetener, I made some reference to it causing cancer, and of course we heard from everybody

00:21:49 ◼   ► about how it does or doesn't cause cancer, which chemical does or doesn't.

00:21:53 ◼   ► It doesn't, but you were making a joke. I took it as a joke, but other people took it

00:21:56 ◼   ► seriously which is worth pointing out.

00:21:57 ◼   ► I was making a joke, yes.

00:21:59 ◼   ► That's not a real thing, don't be afraid. You should be afraid perhaps of weight gain

00:22:05 ◼   ► and some relation to diabetes from drinking diet soda.

00:22:08 ◼   ► But there's lots of studies in that of like,

00:22:09 ◼   ► how could diet soda cause you to gain weight?

00:22:11 ◼   ► It's zero calories and how does it have anything

00:22:13 ◼   ► to do with diabetes?

00:22:14 ◼   ► But there's lots of studies around that

00:22:15 ◼   ► that do indicate there might be something

00:22:17 ◼   ► to be concerned about, but cancer not so much.

00:22:19 ◼   ► - I mean, in general, training yourself and your palate

00:22:23 ◼   ► to not need all of your drinks to be sweetened

00:22:26 ◼   ► is always a good thing.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Because like, basically, for purposes of like calorie

00:22:32 ◼   ► and sugar control, the stupidest thing you could possibly do

00:22:35 ◼   ► is drink a lot of calories.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Like, it's just, it works so much against you.

00:22:39 ◼   ► It is so incredibly bad for you.

00:22:40 ◼   ► So like, anything that conditions you

00:22:42 ◼   ► to still want all your drinks to be sweet

00:22:44 ◼   ► probably works against you in that way,

00:22:47 ◼   ► even if one of the things you drink

00:22:49 ◼   ► has a zero calorie sweetener.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:22:52 ◼   ► It still tastes delicious and I'm good with that.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Remco Vandenbosch writes in to say,

00:22:57 ◼   ► "Once iOS 10.3 comes out,

00:23:00 ◼   ► "do you think it will be worth restoring my iPhone

00:23:02 ◼   ► from scratch to get more APFS benefits.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And then he or she, they, talk for a little while about the HFS to APFS conversion.

00:23:14 ◼   ► Is that good?

00:23:15 ◼   ► Is that bad?

00:23:16 ◼   ► John, as our resident file system expert, what do you think?

00:23:20 ◼   ► So what he's asking about, I think, is if you leave all the data where it is and just

00:23:24 ◼   ► write all the metadata to new places, maybe you have files that are fragmented and other

00:23:28 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:23:29 ◼   ► if by the way, HFS+ on iOS does the auto-defragmenting stuff that they added to HFS+ years ago, like

00:23:36 ◼   ► where it will find files below a certain size that are overly fragmented in its spare time,

00:23:40 ◼   ► defragment them and stuff.

00:23:43 ◼   ► But so, basically it's asking like, would it be better, ideally speaking, to wipe your

00:23:48 ◼   ► whole phone, reformat it as APFS and refill it with your data so that you'd have fewer

00:23:54 ◼   ► fragmented files?

00:23:56 ◼   ► And in theory, I think you could potentially get a nicer, less fragmented layout, but I

00:24:08 ◼   ► don't think it would be anything that you would notice and I think it would actually

00:24:11 ◼   ► even be hard to measure.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Because Flash is not a spinning disk and Random Access is faster on Flash than it is on spinning

00:24:19 ◼   ► disks and fragmentation, even if they don't have the auto-defragment stuff that's part

00:24:25 ◼   ► of HFS Plus. It's probably not that big of a concern. So I don't, I think you would get

00:24:32 ◼   ► some benefit that maybe if you took great pains to measure it and had a really thrashed

00:24:36 ◼   ► phone and compared it with a fresh one you would see, but it's definitely not worth people

00:24:40 ◼   ► doing. So just let it convert in place and it'll be fine. So that's my advice.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Cool.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Oh, and there's also a question about whether APFS will be open source, like HFS Plus is

00:24:52 ◼   ► is kinda, sorta.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And what Apple has said about that is they're going to document the, what did they say,

00:25:02 ◼   ► the volume format?

00:25:03 ◼   ► Yeah, the volume specification.

00:25:05 ◼   ► So they're gonna put a document out for that.

00:25:07 ◼   ► But that's not the source code, but that's just like telling you, "Hey, here's how the

00:25:09 ◼   ► bits are on disk."

00:25:10 ◼   ► And all they say is, "An open source implementation is not available at this time."

00:25:15 ◼   ► Doesn't say anything about the future, but who knows?

00:25:17 ◼   ► So basically somebody else could theoretically make a third-party tool or driver to at least

00:25:24 ◼   ► read APFS volumes and probably also write them, but you probably wouldn't want to rely

00:25:29 ◼   ► on it.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Kind of like the whole Mac on Windows and NTFS on Mac kind of things, right?

00:25:33 ◼   ► Yeah, and you can see the HFS Plus code, which was very helpful for all my OS X reviews.

00:25:39 ◼   ► It's all in the Darwin source repository.

00:25:42 ◼   ► But APFS, I'm not sure there's a big benefit to them open sourcing it because it's not

00:25:46 ◼   ► like, unlike Swift, I don't think they want APFS to take over the world. Instead, I think

00:25:49 ◼   ► they want it to be a custom tailored operating system just for their devices that they're

00:25:53 ◼   ► free to change in any way they want, and I bet they will. And I don't know if anybody

00:25:58 ◼   ► else has the exact needs that Apple has. Like, if you look at the features of APFS, they

00:26:02 ◼   ► are excluding the ones that are, you know, fancy new features. All the other features,

00:26:08 ◼   ► like having like per file encryption keys and foregoing a lot of these ZFS data integrity

00:26:13 ◼   ► features and stuff are so tailored to Apple's specific needs because it needs that encryption

00:26:17 ◼   ► stuff for what it already does on iOS outside the file system now and it can't have the

00:26:21 ◼   ► heavyweight stuff because it has to run on a watch and like I don't know if anyone else

00:26:25 ◼   ► has those exact needs so it's not really a general purpose PC or server file system.

00:26:30 ◼   ► It is a specific purpose Apple file system as its name awkwardly implies.

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00:28:03 ◼   ► So just, was it yesterday as we record?

00:28:06 ◼   ► Apple announced their first quarter earnings, if I get this right.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I believe that's right.

00:28:13 ◼   ► So things are going well, as it turns out.

00:28:17 ◼   ► We'll link to a summary by Jason Snell at Six Colors.

00:28:22 ◼   ► And as long as you don't like the iPad, things are mostly okay.

00:28:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:28:30 ◼   ► I don't really have a lot to add on this.

00:28:31 ◼   ► I've been really busy so I haven't dug into this deeply.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Marco, any thoughts on this?

00:28:36 ◼   ► - I mean, I think it's probably best

00:28:38 ◼   ► that we leave most of the discussion of this

00:28:40 ◼   ► to other podcasts with people who do this kind of like

00:28:43 ◼   ► businessy type of reporting more often.

00:28:45 ◼   ► But for the most part, it is useful to just see

00:28:50 ◼   ► general trends of how things are going for Apple,

00:28:53 ◼   ► even if we aren't directly investing in it ourselves

00:28:56 ◼   ► or care about the stock price.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And I used to have Apple stock a couple years ago at least,

00:29:02 ◼   ► if not more, but I have since stopped buying

00:29:06 ◼   ► and selling any individual stocks

00:29:07 ◼   ► and I sold off all the ones I had.

00:29:09 ◼   ► And now I just invest through like mutual funds

00:29:11 ◼   ► and things like that that might have it,

00:29:12 ◼   ► but I'm not directly investing,

00:29:14 ◼   ► so that's a disclosure there.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And honestly I think, just friend to friend here,

00:29:18 ◼   ► this is not investment advice, whatever, whatever.

00:29:20 ◼   ► However, I think investing in individual stocks

00:29:22 ◼   ► with a substantial portion of your money is a fool's game.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Anyway, I think looking at it as general trends for Apple

00:29:30 ◼   ► and as Apple watchers and Apple fans,

00:29:32 ◼   ► it is useful to see these kind of numbers

00:29:35 ◼   ► are what Tim Cook is graded on by the board

00:29:38 ◼   ► and by investors.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And so optimizing for these numbers

00:29:42 ◼   ► is a large part of Cook's goals.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Whether he has other goals for product quality

00:29:50 ◼   ► and new initiatives and things like that,

00:29:52 ◼   ► That's all vague and unknowable as to the balance there.

00:29:56 ◼   ► However, we do know for sure that it is very important

00:29:59 ◼   ► that Tim Cook keeps these numbers looking healthy

00:30:01 ◼   ► for the board and for investors.

00:30:03 ◼   ► And that does drive product decisions on some level.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Again, whether it's a high priority in his mind,

00:30:09 ◼   ► we can't know, that's up to him.

00:30:11 ◼   ► But it is useful to pay attention to what's going on here,

00:30:15 ◼   ► to see trends in what's working for Apple

00:30:19 ◼   ► and what's not working for Apple

00:30:21 ◼   ► and where they need growth, and that can help inform

00:30:26 ◼   ► our predictions and our opinions

00:30:28 ◼   ► and our interpretations of what Apple does.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So in these earnings, the iPhone's doing great.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It seems like it has kind of recovered

00:30:37 ◼   ► from the weird boost and then slight dip

00:30:40 ◼   ► that it had with the seemingly related

00:30:44 ◼   ► to the massive success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

00:30:47 ◼   ► It seems like it's kind of back on a regular track now

00:30:49 ◼   ► of steady growth, so that's good for the iPhone.

00:30:52 ◼   ► The iPhone seems like it's fine, so that's good for it.

00:30:56 ◼   ► The Mac division is probably the least interesting.

00:30:59 ◼   ► It's up a little bit, but it's within normal realm,

00:31:02 ◼   ► so Mac seems like steady, healthy,

00:31:04 ◼   ► not setting the road on fire, and that's to be expected

00:31:07 ◼   ► after a year of having very few Mac releases.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Then in this quarter is when the new MacBook Pros

00:31:12 ◼   ► became available, so that helped boost those for sure.

00:31:14 ◼   ► You can see that in the graphs,

00:31:15 ◼   ► and things like average selling price and everything.

00:31:18 ◼   ► You can see average selling price for the Mac

00:31:20 ◼   ► took a big hike upwards.

00:31:22 ◼   ► That's not a coincidence in the quarter

00:31:24 ◼   ► in which they release a whole bunch

00:31:25 ◼   ► of more expensive laptops that were significantly

00:31:28 ◼   ► more expensive than what they replaced.

00:31:30 ◼   ► That is probably one of the reasons why

00:31:32 ◼   ► to make that boost up a little bit.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Services are doing really well.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Their services revenue is up by a good amount.

00:31:40 ◼   ► That's interesting 'cause like,

00:31:41 ◼   ► it seems like that is a major part of their future growth

00:31:47 ◼   ► that they're gonna want to boost up.

00:31:48 ◼   ► So that might include things like, you know,

00:31:51 ◼   ► maybe we're not gonna see a whole bunch

00:31:53 ◼   ► of cheaper iCloud storage this coming fall

00:31:56 ◼   ► or summer or whatever else.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Maybe we are gonna see more ways

00:31:59 ◼   ► that we can give Apple money every month,

00:32:00 ◼   ► more services, more premium tiers, things like that.

00:32:04 ◼   ► This plays into things like what Apple Music is doing

00:32:06 ◼   ► and their possible video efforts that they're hinting at

00:32:09 ◼   ► or saying very little about, things like that.

00:32:12 ◼   ► So expect to see Apple, because services

00:32:14 ◼   ► is a line that's going up and is now a decent number,

00:32:17 ◼   ► expect to see Apple putting more into services

00:32:21 ◼   ► and trying to make more from us from services.

00:32:25 ◼   ► So, you know, Tim Cook is really good at this.

00:32:26 ◼   ► He's really good at taking an existing market

00:32:29 ◼   ► that's doing pretty well and turning the screws

00:32:31 ◼   ► so that they make more from each person.

00:32:33 ◼   ► That's why the iPhones now have two sizes

00:32:35 ◼   ► and one of them costs 100 bucks more than the other one

00:32:37 ◼   ► and all the base storage has sucked for so long

00:32:40 ◼   ► because Tim Cook is really good

00:32:41 ◼   ► at pushing those average selling prices up, up, up

00:32:44 ◼   ► to try to make more money from each new person.

00:32:46 ◼   ► That's why things like iPad cases are so much more expensive

00:32:50 ◼   ► than they were in the other two parts and all this stuff.

00:32:52 ◼   ► You have the $100 battery backpack for the iPhone now

00:32:55 ◼   ► and all these different things.

00:32:56 ◼   ► This is why, this is not an accident.

00:33:00 ◼   ► And this is definitely why the new MacBook Pros

00:33:02 ◼   ► cost so much more than the old ones.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Anyway, so expect to see tightening of the screws

00:33:07 ◼   ► and boosts in the services area.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So we're probably gonna see again,

00:33:11 ◼   ► more ways we can spend money on Apple every month

00:33:14 ◼   ► coming this fall or summer, whatever else.

00:33:16 ◼   ► And then the other thing is the iPad.

00:33:19 ◼   ► And the iPad is down again,

00:33:23 ◼   ► and not by a small amount either.

00:33:25 ◼   ► It's still going significantly down.

00:33:28 ◼   ► It's kinda hard to explain.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Everyone has their own theories.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Everyone has, you know, some people say

00:33:35 ◼   ► Apple is not telling the right story, whatever that means.

00:33:38 ◼   ► I honestly don't really get that argument, to be fair.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Some people say that iPads just last so long,

00:33:46 ◼   ► and therefore people don't replace them very often.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Some people think that the iPad is a flop in some way,

00:33:54 ◼   ► and that nobody likes tablets anymore.

00:33:56 ◼   ► I think the truth is probably a combination

00:33:59 ◼   ► of all of these things.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And I guess we're probably gonna talk more about that

00:34:03 ◼   ► for the rest of the show,

00:34:04 ◼   ► so I will move on from that for now.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And then the watch is kind of buried somewhere in other,

00:34:10 ◼   ► And we don't have any numbers about the watch,

00:34:12 ◼   ► except Tim Cook says it was the best quarter ever

00:34:14 ◼   ► for the watch, so good.

00:34:16 ◼   ► On a Bezos chart, that is now the highest bar

00:34:20 ◼   ► on an axis that has no label.

00:34:22 ◼   ► So good for the Apple Watch.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Their quote, other revenue that the Apple Watch

00:34:27 ◼   ► is buried in didn't take a huge jump,

00:34:30 ◼   ► so it doesn't seem like it's moving the needle much

00:34:32 ◼   ► on revenue for the company, but oh well.

00:34:34 ◼   ► We are an analyst, maybe I'm missing something there.

00:34:36 ◼   ► But you know, it's probably doing fine.

00:34:38 ◼   ► What do you guys think?

00:34:40 ◼   ► So the services thing, I saw some doom and gloom about like,

00:34:42 ◼   ► oh, look there, services are growing,

00:34:44 ◼   ► therefore Apple's not gonna lower prices on iCloud storage.

00:34:46 ◼   ► I don't make that connection at all.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Like services is all about getting more people to pay Apple

00:34:50 ◼   ► on a recurring basis for something, anything.

00:34:53 ◼   ► One way to do that is to lower the price,

00:34:55 ◼   ► because if you can lower the price by half

00:34:57 ◼   ► but get more than double the number of people

00:34:58 ◼   ► to sign up for it, then it works out.

00:35:00 ◼   ► And there's a lot of things buried in services.

00:35:03 ◼   ► It's not just, you know, when you say services,

00:35:04 ◼   ► a lot of people think you just mean iCloud

00:35:06 ◼   ► or like the app store is in there,

00:35:07 ◼   ► which is one of the reasons everything is going up.

00:35:09 ◼   ► And Apple Music, which has been backfilling for the iTunes Music store downloads that

00:35:17 ◼   ► sort of disappeared many years ago and now Apple's finally getting to streaming.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And the idea that Apple has all these customers, surely there's some way Apple can monetize

00:35:25 ◼   ► them by making them pay some small amount for each one of these little things.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And trying to—it's kind of like the original video content they're doing.

00:35:34 ◼   ► By attaching the original video content to Apple Music, they're basically just trying

00:35:38 ◼   ► to get more people to sign up for Apple Music. Why? Because I think once they get you on

00:35:41 ◼   ► the Apple Music thing, you're just used to having all the music available to you, you'll

00:35:44 ◼   ► just keep paying this month after month. And I think to entice more people to like, you

00:35:50 ◼   ► know, how many people pay for iCloud storage, whatever the percentage is now, if it's not

00:35:54 ◼   ► really, really high, like in a 90%, Apple must be thinking, we can get more people to

00:35:58 ◼   ► pay for iCloud storage. Let me look at what the numbers are. Actually, we've been overcharging

00:36:02 ◼   ► by a ridiculous amount, as everybody knows when compared to other cloud vendors. Why

00:36:06 ◼   ► don't we just bump that or lower the price or both and then we'll get more people on

00:36:10 ◼   ► board. And by the way, let's attach some original video content to iCloud storage.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And you know, like that, the things they're willing to do to get to entice people to sign

00:36:19 ◼   ► up for in a Roderick on the Line parlance, another eel are boundless and seemingly don't

00:36:25 ◼   ► have to be that well related because the idea of offering exclusive, like essentially television

00:36:31 ◼   ► video content to get people to sign up for Apple music doesn't make any sense except

00:36:36 ◼   ► that, hey, if there's something you want and the only way to get it is to do this, you'll

00:36:40 ◼   ► do it. Like it's the whole reason people sign up for Amazon Prime so they can watch Ben

00:36:44 ◼   ► in the High Castle. What does Man in the High Castle have to do with getting free shipping

00:36:47 ◼   ► from Amazon.com for rolls of toilet paper? Nothing. But you'll do what it takes to get

00:36:52 ◼   ► the content, right? And this is a weird deal, but people have shown that it works. If you

00:36:57 ◼   ► give them something they want, they will sign up for something they don't want just to get

00:37:00 ◼   ► the thing they want. Hell, I did it. I signed up for YouTube Red just so I could, or I signed

00:37:03 ◼   ► for Google Play Music just so I could get YouTube read on a family plan. I don't use

00:37:07 ◼   ► Google Play Music. It's sitting on my phone, but I never actually launch it. It's just

00:37:11 ◼   ► so I don't have to see ads on YouTube. It's a tried and true technique, which is not ideal

00:37:15 ◼   ► from a consumer's perspective, but people love recurring revenue.

00:37:19 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:37:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I'm slightly surprised—well, I guess I'll stick with it. I'm slightly

00:37:27 ◼   ► surprised that things are going overall as well as they are. I mean, obviously on this show we've

00:37:35 ◼   ► talked a lot about how we feel like things are not the way they once were, and I think the three

00:37:42 ◼   ► of us have varying degrees of how dire everything may be, but I mean this was their best quarter

00:37:49 ◼   ► ever. I mean, I'm looking at the very first chart on Jason Snell's post, and the most recent quarter

00:37:57 ◼   ► was 78.4 billion and the nearest one was the prior holiday quarter or first quarter I guess

00:38:05 ◼   ► which is over the holidays which was 75.9 billion. So I mean that's what two and a half billion

00:38:11 ◼   ► dollars difference something like that I mean that's a big difference and things are

00:38:14 ◼   ► clear. But percentage wise like look at the slopes on this graph like Apple's growth is still slowed

00:38:18 ◼   ► especially if you look at the year over year change in revenue like the reason this is a big

00:38:21 ◼   ► deal is because they're coming out of three consecutive negative year over year revenue

00:38:25 ◼   ► growth quarters. It's like, "Hey, we're back in the black. We're back positive. We made

00:38:29 ◼   ► more money in this quarter this year than we did last year." But you can kind of see

00:38:33 ◼   ► if you look at those, if you look at like especially the big holiday quarters, 46, 54,

00:38:37 ◼   ► 57, the slope of that line versus 74, 75, 78, right?

00:38:40 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true. Growth is still slowing at Apple, right? And

00:38:45 ◼   ► that's something they have to deal with. But I mean, I think this is in line with everything

00:38:48 ◼   ► that we said on the show. We've just been disproportionately focused on our dissatisfaction

00:38:52 ◼   ► with the Mac, but when we all were asked to pick what is your favorite Apple product this

00:38:56 ◼   ► year, didn't we all pick the iPhone 7?

00:38:59 ◼   ► I think so.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Although now I would say AirPods, but at the time when like...

00:39:04 ◼   ► Or maybe you did say AirPods, I don't know, but I think Marco and I at the very least

00:39:07 ◼   ► with the iPhone 7.

00:39:08 ◼   ► iPhone 7 is a great phone and it doesn't surprise me that it sold well.

00:39:12 ◼   ► You know, headphone jack, whatever, it is a good phone.

00:39:15 ◼   ► It is a tried and true thing.

00:39:16 ◼   ► It's their third attempt at the same form factor.

00:39:18 ◼   ► It has better battery life.

00:39:20 ◼   ► They worked out all these shoes they could possibly work out.

00:39:23 ◼   ► The weird home button and the waterproofing and the whole--

00:39:26 ◼   ► like everything comes-- it is a good phone.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And I've always said that they're doing very well

00:39:31 ◼   ► in the phone space.

00:39:32 ◼   ► And because if you look at the giant Pac-Man chart

00:39:34 ◼   ► and you see the little Pac-Man-shaped wedge that

00:39:36 ◼   ► is the iPhone eating the rest of Apple's products,

00:39:39 ◼   ► if the phone does well, Apple does well.

00:39:42 ◼   ► And that totally dwarfs any--

00:39:43 ◼   ► whatever, iPad, some sort of problems there.

00:39:46 ◼   ► That's lost in the noise.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Service revenue keeps going up.

00:39:49 ◼   ► and the Mac continues doing what it does.

00:39:51 ◼   ► And the little hike in the graph,

00:39:52 ◼   ► like Mac ASP is going up

00:39:54 ◼   ► because they cranked up the price of their Macs.

00:39:56 ◼   ► It's like, it's the old Mac,

00:39:57 ◼   ► for the past few years it's been like,

00:40:00 ◼   ► produce pent up demand by not releasing any new computers,

00:40:03 ◼   ► and then whatever the hell you release, people will buy,

00:40:05 ◼   ► and if what you release is 500 bucks more

00:40:08 ◼   ► than it used to be, your ASPs will go up.

00:40:10 ◼   ► So it's not, I don't think that's a healthy situation,

00:40:12 ◼   ► but that's what happened.

00:40:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:40:15 ◼   ► I don't know, like Marco said,

00:40:16 ◼   ► I don't know how much more analysis

00:40:17 ◼   ► we should really be doing on this,

00:40:18 ◼   ► But I'm sad about the iPad.

00:40:20 ◼   ► It's funny, I don't know if we've talked about this

00:40:23 ◼   ► on the show, I don't think so,

00:40:25 ◼   ► but I've been flirting with the idea

00:40:28 ◼   ► of getting a MacBook adorable

00:40:32 ◼   ► whenever the presumably pending refresh happens,

00:40:35 ◼   ► although with the way Apple is these days,

00:40:37 ◼   ► I guess I should never assume a refresh is coming.

00:40:39 ◼   ► But I don't know, I really love my iPad Mini,

00:40:44 ◼   ► and I have the most modern one,

00:40:47 ◼   ► which was brand new or nearly brand new,

00:40:50 ◼   ► not this past Christmas, but the Christmas prior.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I really love my iPad mini.

00:40:55 ◼   ► I really like that form factor.

00:40:56 ◼   ► I know a lot of people don't, that's fine.

00:40:59 ◼   ► But I can't help personally,

00:41:03 ◼   ► but feel like anytime I wanna do anything,

00:41:06 ◼   ► but like look at Twitter,

00:41:07 ◼   ► and I don't wanna get into like the consumption

00:41:09 ◼   ► versus creation debate,

00:41:10 ◼   ► but anytime I wanna do anything other than like glance

00:41:12 ◼   ► at Twitter or RSS or something like that,

00:41:14 ◼   ► I feel like I'm fighting the device.

00:41:16 ◼   ► I feel like I'm fighting iOS.

00:41:18 ◼   ► And so I've really been debating, you know,

00:41:21 ◼   ► maybe a MacBook Adorable would be a better fix

00:41:25 ◼   ► for this problem, because it would also be very portable.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Not as portable, but very portable.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And it would do everything a Mac could do.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Maybe not as fast as other Macs,

00:41:38 ◼   ► but that's why I have a 5K that I'm speaking on right now.

00:41:41 ◼   ► And it would probably be a really good compromise.

00:41:45 ◼   ► And somebody tweeted, I think earlier today, and I don't recall who it was, but, or somebody

00:41:49 ◼   ► had said earlier today anyway, that, you know, if you think about it, the Macs are getting

00:41:54 ◼   ► more and more and more portable.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And the iPads aren't that different than they were a few years ago.

00:42:04 ◼   ► The software's a lot better, multitasking is a lot better, even my iPad mini can do

00:42:07 ◼   ► the multitasking.

00:42:10 ◼   ► But I feel like the change in portability of the most portable Macs is dramatically

00:42:17 ◼   ► better as compared to the change in ability of iOS on an iPad.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And so that's led me to wonder, you know, maybe I should just get a MacBook Adorable

00:42:27 ◼   ► as a super portable travel machine, because that might fit my needs even better.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And so I use this all, and the reason I bring this up is because it's a case study of why

00:42:37 ◼   ► maybe the iPad isn't doing that great. And as Marco alluded to, there's probably a billion other reasons.

00:42:42 ◼   ► But any immediate thoughts on that before we get too far down the rabbit hole?

00:42:47 ◼   ► I don't think a Mac could replace my iPad usage for me, and I think that's probably true of most people.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Maybe you're using an iPad because no Mac was portable enough,

00:42:57 ◼   ► but for people who are using iPads for iPad type purposes, like, there is no Mac.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Even if there was a Mac exactly the same size and weight as my iPad,

00:43:04 ◼   ► I still wouldn't use it because I don't want to use a trackpad. I want to touch a screen

00:43:09 ◼   ► I don't want to deal with the keyboard like I want an iPad for what for when I do iPad stuff

00:43:13 ◼   ► which is you know browsing the web or

00:43:15 ◼   ► Reading Twitter or watching video. I want an iPad right so there's no substitute for

00:43:20 ◼   ► the Mac for that

00:43:22 ◼   ► the iPad sales stuff like

00:43:24 ◼   ► You know that we shouldn't just rattle off the reasons that we've talked about all the other things

00:43:29 ◼   ► things. Marco talked about them in his post about the iPad. One of the most

00:43:34 ◼   ► compelling ones aside from iPads lasting forever is if people just use the iPads

00:43:39 ◼   ► to watch video you don't have to spend $800 to watch video on a little square

00:43:43 ◼   ► that's a screen, right? That's a loser market. Apple can't stake out the

00:43:47 ◼   ► high end of square screens that play video because there is no high end of it.

00:43:51 ◼   ► That is doomed to a low end thing. All you need is some basic Wi-Fi

00:43:55 ◼   ► a reasonable CPU with some video decoding hardware,

00:43:59 ◼   ► and the ability to run the Amazon Prime and Netflix apps.

00:44:03 ◼   ► They're Amazon tablets for that,

00:44:04 ◼   ► they're Android tablets that you do not need an iPad

00:44:06 ◼   ► to watch Netflix, I promise you, right?

00:44:09 ◼   ► And so if that's what you're doing with your iPad,

00:44:11 ◼   ► I think people like tablets for that purpose,

00:44:13 ◼   ► but you don't need an iPad for that.

00:44:15 ◼   ► And the other thrust of,

00:44:18 ◼   ► what was the title of your article, Marco?

00:44:20 ◼   ► - The Future of Computing.

00:44:22 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, so we've gone over this on the show before,

00:44:24 ◼   ► We've gone over this on the show before and I must remind Marco once again because apparently

00:44:28 ◼   ► I wasn't there to remind him before he wrote this post.

00:44:31 ◼   ► But every time we discuss that, I take great pains to emphasize the idea that the iPad

00:44:36 ◼   ► as a specific product as made by Apple as it exists now may not necessarily be the product

00:44:42 ◼   ► that sweeps across the market and becomes the most important thing.

00:44:45 ◼   ► But when I specifically talk about the future of a computer with a capital F, capital C,

00:44:49 ◼   ► What I'm talking about is post PC computing, which means computing without as many of the

00:44:56 ◼   ► concerns that have necessarily come with PCs, which includes dealing with Windows menus,

00:45:01 ◼   ► pointers, file systems, like all that stuff.

00:45:04 ◼   ► And as compared to iOS, which swept all that stuff off the table and abstracted and hid

00:45:10 ◼   ► so much of it.

00:45:11 ◼   ► That is the future of computing because people can't handle PCs in general and dealing with

00:45:16 ◼   ► file systems and their files and Windows.

00:45:19 ◼   ► It's too much, the iOS or smartphone or whatever interface where they take away almost all

00:45:23 ◼   ► that complexity and massively simplify it and protect you from yourself, that is the

00:45:27 ◼   ► future of computing.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Unquestionably, the question is, okay, how does that manifest?

00:45:32 ◼   ► Does it manifest by Mac OS slowly removing all that functionality?

00:45:36 ◼   ► Does it manifest by Windows becoming this mutant hybrid thing?

00:45:38 ◼   ► Does it manifest by Android taking over the world?

00:45:41 ◼   ► Or does it manifest by Apple introducing the iPad?

00:45:43 ◼   ► It's incumbent upon each one of those products to figure out how they get there.

00:45:47 ◼   ► But it's like saying, "Well, the Mac isn't successful, so let's all go back to DOS."

00:45:53 ◼   ► Nope, that's not the answer at all.

00:45:56 ◼   ► You can see with the future is because we've all lived our entire lives of seeing how badly

00:46:02 ◼   ► humans are at dealing with PCs with all the stuff they come with.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And then iOS showed us a way to get a computing platform with almost all that stuff gone.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And now we're just figuring out, "Yeah, but what about the stuff you can't do?"

00:46:14 ◼   ► the iPad thus far has been doing, as Marco points out,

00:46:17 ◼   ► not a great job of showing you how you're gonna get

00:46:19 ◼   ► that same stuff done without the complications.

00:46:21 ◼   ► But it's very clear that without the complications,

00:46:23 ◼   ► it is so much more accessible

00:46:24 ◼   ► because everybody has smartphones

00:46:26 ◼   ► and nobody deals with any of that weird PC crap

00:46:28 ◼   ► on their smartphones.

00:46:29 ◼   ► Like everything is just so much simpler and easier

00:46:32 ◼   ► and easy to use, which is why smartphones

00:46:34 ◼   ► have raced across the entire world.

00:46:35 ◼   ► And a tablet is just basically a bigger smartphone

00:46:38 ◼   ► in terms of how hard it is to use at this point.

00:46:40 ◼   ► That has to change if you ever want

00:46:43 ◼   ► the capital F, capital C, future of computing

00:46:45 ◼   ► to actually marginalize the PC,

00:46:48 ◼   ► to push it down to the specific realms

00:46:50 ◼   ► where it will have to remain, right?

00:46:52 ◼   ► But that hasn't happened yet.

00:46:54 ◼   ► Microsoft's trying to do it with Surface Studio,

00:46:56 ◼   ► Apple's sort of trying to do it with the iPad Pro,

00:46:58 ◼   ► but halfheartedly, is Android doing anything in this space?

00:47:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:47:02 ◼   ► I mean, maybe you can count Chromebooks

00:47:03 ◼   ► as an attempt to get away from some of the dangers of PCs,

00:47:08 ◼   ► but I don't think they're doing a very good job.

00:47:10 ◼   ► But anyway, that's the future of computing.

00:47:13 ◼   ► we all believe in and what we should be grading an apple on is like you're blowing it.

00:47:19 ◼   ► You are not achieving that.

00:47:20 ◼   ► You want to have your cake but you don't want to eat it.

00:47:23 ◼   ► That's a terrible one.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Anyway, they want to say, "Look, it's the iPad and it's simple like your phone."

00:47:29 ◼   ► It's like, "Yes, it is."

00:47:30 ◼   ► And you use it to replace your PC.

00:47:31 ◼   ► It's like, "Well, can we?"

00:47:35 ◼   ► And Apple has to show us how to do that because there are things we need to do and we need

00:47:40 ◼   ► to be able to do them and they need to be pleasant, just like web browsing.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Previously, we were not able to do web browsing on our phones or it was incredibly unpleasant.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And Apple said, "No, actually you can do web browsing on a tablet and on a phone."

00:47:52 ◼   ► And I think we would all agree that browsing the web on a tablet is super pleasant.

00:47:56 ◼   ► In many, many ways nicer than doing it on a PC, if only because you can be sitting on

00:48:00 ◼   ► the couch and leaning back and using your finger and it's more like flipping through

00:48:03 ◼   ► a magazine.

00:48:04 ◼   ► Web browsing, you've nailed it, iPad, but as Marco would point out, a million other

00:48:08 ◼   ► things like whether it be from editing a podcast or using Photoshop or dealing with complicated

00:48:15 ◼   ► projects that span lots of different applications and share data, you know, of the typical PC

00:48:19 ◼   ► site stuff, it hasn't yet been demonstrated that we're able to do all those things in

00:48:25 ◼   ► the same way. So everyone else is a contender. The Mac is still a contender for the future

00:48:29 ◼   ► of computing, provided Apple was willing to remove all the functionality that we know

00:48:33 ◼   ► and love about the Mac, which I hope they never do. But that's one way you could try

00:48:37 ◼   ► to get there. You could try to get there like Microsoft by weirdly morphing your desktop

00:48:41 ◼   ► OS into a hybrid OS that does both things at once. And who knows how we could get there,

00:48:47 ◼   ► but iOS is such a stake in the ground to say it's obvious that in the future no one wants

00:48:52 ◼   ► to deal with the crap that we deal with on Macs and PCs today. That is not the future

00:48:56 ◼   ► of computing. We have to leave that behind. But so far, the iPad has not been a compelling

00:49:03 ◼   ► argument for that.

00:49:04 ◼   ► And there was one other graph that's not in Jason Snell's page that we're looking at here

00:49:09 ◼   ► on sixcolors.com, which we'll put in the show notes that has tons and tons of pretty graphs.

00:49:13 ◼   ► One page that I think maybe Horace tweeted or something.

00:49:17 ◼   ► It's showing graphs of days of the week, like average days of the week usage time for, what

00:49:25 ◼   ► was it, for smartphones and PCs.

00:49:27 ◼   ► And the smartphone line is like this little lumpy thing that goes along, right?

00:49:30 ◼   ► You don't see any particularly large trends there.

00:49:33 ◼   ► And the PC thing goes Monday through Friday, huge dip Saturday and Sunday.

00:49:39 ◼   ► And back up from Monday through Friday, huge dip Saturday and Sunday.

00:49:41 ◼   ► We're just saying that people don't use PCs on the weekends.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And what are they not on the weekends?

00:49:46 ◼   ► They're not at work.

00:49:47 ◼   ► So maybe they're using PCs at work, or maybe they only consider PC as a work-like thing,

00:49:50 ◼   ► but the phones they use all the time.

00:49:52 ◼   ► I feel like if the iPad curve was shown, it would look more like the phone curve and less

00:49:57 ◼   ► like the PC curve.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Because people aren't, for the most part, doing work on their iPad.

00:50:02 ◼   ► The iPad curve would just be like,

00:50:03 ◼   ► ah, use it the same amount pretty much every day.

00:50:05 ◼   ► It wouldn't be like, oh, the weekend's here,

00:50:06 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be on my iPad because he used my iPad

00:50:08 ◼   ► for work.

00:50:09 ◼   ► You'll know that the iPad or any other PC replacement device

00:50:13 ◼   ► or post-PC device is finally useful

00:50:15 ◼   ► for all the same things PCs are

00:50:16 ◼   ► when it starts to get the same curve,

00:50:18 ◼   ► because everyone's gotta do some work,

00:50:19 ◼   ► and a lot of people do work involving some kind of task

00:50:22 ◼   ► with computing.

00:50:24 ◼   ► And if they're still doing that

00:50:26 ◼   ► on personal computer type devices,

00:50:27 ◼   ► I mean, it could be a lagging indicator,

00:50:29 ◼   ► so maybe we have to wait a few more years.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But right now, think of the number of people you know

00:50:33 ◼   ► who every day go to work and just use a tablet of any kind

00:50:37 ◼   ► as opposed to a PC.

00:50:38 ◼   ► I know way more PC users,

00:50:39 ◼   ► maybe it's because all my friends are old,

00:50:41 ◼   ► but we'll keep an eye on that.

00:50:44 ◼   ► - I mean, I think what we're seeing,

00:50:47 ◼   ► I think the right way to interpret the iPad

00:50:50 ◼   ► and the future of computing and everything else

00:50:53 ◼   ► is probably something between the crazy blog post I made

00:50:57 ◼   ► and the argument that Jon is making

00:50:59 ◼   ► and the argument that Jason Snell made

00:51:01 ◼   ► on upgrade this week.

00:51:03 ◼   ► You know, the future of computing is not going to be

00:51:06 ◼   ► just one of these types of things.

00:51:08 ◼   ► It's not gonna be just tablets,

00:51:09 ◼   ► and it's not gonna be just computers.

00:51:12 ◼   ► My argument is not that the iPad is failing as a thing,

00:51:15 ◼   ► or that it's going away, or that it's useless to everybody.

00:51:19 ◼   ► My argument is simply that when people say

00:51:21 ◼   ► this is the future of computing,

00:51:23 ◼   ► what they usually mean by that is going to replace

00:51:25 ◼   ► the PC style computer.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Again, I mean PCs and Macs in that.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I basically mean, for the most part, I mean laptops

00:51:33 ◼   ► and other desktops and things that run Windows or Mac OS

00:51:38 ◼   ► or Linux even, like PC style OSs.

00:51:41 ◼   ► And I think the most likely outcome here is that,

00:51:46 ◼   ► as the tablets of all sorts are not going to replace PCs,

00:51:51 ◼   ► they are going to do what they've been doing,

00:51:53 ◼   ► which is add to them, augment them.

00:51:55 ◼   ► There are going to be some people who only primarily like tablets, and there's going

00:51:59 ◼   ► to be some people that only primarily like PCs.

00:52:02 ◼   ► They're not going to actually replace each other in either direction.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Well, the only way that'll happen, I don't think you can do that.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I don't think you can have them not replace them unless PCs essentially adopt all the

00:52:15 ◼   ► attributes that I was just discussing of iOS-style computing.

00:52:19 ◼   ► Like in other words, PCs would have to abandon all the weird-ass crap that regular people

00:52:24 ◼   ► don't like and can't handle about PCs.

00:52:26 ◼   ► Like, because they can't stay in their current state of like,

00:52:31 ◼   ► with all the legacy stuff that PCOSs have to deal with.

00:52:33 ◼   ► It's an untenable situation because people can't use them and people can use phones.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And so something is going to marginalize current style PCs,

00:52:43 ◼   ► whether it's the PCs themselves changing, because it totally could be.

00:52:46 ◼   ► Like you could take any of those PC style operating systems you listed and slowly,

00:52:51 ◼   ► basically iOS-ify them while leaving enough of the functionality still there, you know,

00:52:56 ◼   ► showing through so you can get more stuff done than you can on an iPad, for example.

00:52:59 ◼   ► But you just can't leave it there. It's again, it's like going back to DOS, like saying, "Well,

00:53:03 ◼   ► I can't do everything on this Mac that I can do on my PC with DOS, therefore it's a dead end and

00:53:08 ◼   ► people just keep using DOS forever." They won't. Like, the capabilities of the GUI will eventually

00:53:12 ◼   ► expand to do enough of the things, you know. So I don't think there is any situation where the PC

00:53:19 ◼   ► as it exists today with all of its legacy concerns does not become marginalized in the

00:53:24 ◼   ► future. It's just a question of what will marginalize it. Like not disappear, but marginalized.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Like in the same way that, you know, people use in the command line. Still tons of people

00:53:32 ◼   ► use in the command line today. I use it every day, but it's marginalized.

00:53:35 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure that your premises are sound here. So premise number one is that

00:53:41 ◼   ► you said people can't figure out how to use PCs, but they can use their phones. Do we

00:53:45 ◼   ► Do we actually know that?

00:53:46 ◼   ► Is that actually a thing?

00:53:47 ◼   ► Like are PCs really as hard as we think they are to use

00:53:52 ◼   ► and then are phones as easy as we think they are to use?

00:53:54 ◼   ► Or is that cap actually smaller than what we might think?

00:53:57 ◼   ► - Oh, it's big.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Go find someone who has a PC,

00:54:01 ◼   ► whether at work or at home even, and just look at it.

00:54:03 ◼   ► That's all I ask, just look at it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Watch them use it and see what's on it

00:54:07 ◼   ► and see what state it's in

00:54:08 ◼   ► and ask them to use it to do something.

00:54:10 ◼   ► And yes, people have trouble with phones too.

00:54:12 ◼   ► It's a relative thing,

00:54:13 ◼   ► one is so much easier than the other.

00:54:15 ◼   ► One is not infinitely easy and one is not infinitely hard,

00:54:18 ◼   ► and yes, you can learn to use anything,

00:54:20 ◼   ► but you have to get rid of those things

00:54:23 ◼   ► that people don't like to be concerned about.

00:54:25 ◼   ► It's the reason people love the phone so much.

00:54:27 ◼   ► They took away so many things

00:54:28 ◼   ► that they have to worry about.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Maybe less so on Android.

00:54:32 ◼   ► - I don't know about this at all, Jon.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - I think the bigger reason is that it's always

00:54:35 ◼   ► in your pocket and it has these awesome cameras

00:54:38 ◼   ► and sensors and always data connections.

00:54:41 ◼   ► There's a lot about phones to love

00:54:42 ◼   ► that don't have to do with the usability paradigm of their software.

00:54:46 ◼   ► But people can do things with their phones that PCs could also do, but they never did

00:54:51 ◼   ► with the PCs because it was too much of a pain. Even just down to like installing software.

00:54:55 ◼   ► So easy on phones, hard enough on personal computers and so fraught on personal computers

00:55:00 ◼   ► because of lack of the App Store and viruses and all sorts of stuff like that, that people

00:55:03 ◼   ► didn't attempt it or accidentally attempted it by accidentally clicking on things that

00:55:07 ◼   ► install browser toolbars and crap like that. All the crap of the PC world makes it so people,

00:55:12 ◼   ► Even if they were equally easy to use,

00:55:14 ◼   ► it would say, well, this feels safer.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Suddenly, I'm installing software.

00:55:17 ◼   ► Oh, there's a cool new app, I'm gonna try it.

00:55:19 ◼   ► No one, regular people were not discussing cool new apps

00:55:22 ◼   ► for their PCs, only nerds were.

00:55:24 ◼   ► That alone is such a huge--

00:55:26 ◼   ► - I think you're describing Android.

00:55:28 ◼   ► - Maybe less so on Android, but even Android,

00:55:31 ◼   ► I feel like the disposability of phone is like,

00:55:33 ◼   ► well, if my phone is hosed, I'll like,

00:55:35 ◼   ► the fact that it normalized backups into thing,

00:55:37 ◼   ► and the thing that nobody, essentially nobody did

00:55:39 ◼   ► to their personal computers, but because of cloud backups

00:55:41 ◼   ► with phone stuff built in, more people have a shot

00:55:44 ◼   ► at having some kind of backup of something somewhere

00:55:48 ◼   ► on their phones, whereas PCs, it was like forget it.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Backups might as well not exist as far

00:55:52 ◼   ► as the non-nerd world is concerned.

00:55:54 ◼   ► - Well, and so I think there's this continuum here.

00:55:58 ◼   ► You know, like you mentioned, like, you know,

00:55:59 ◼   ► command line all the way up to like, GUI and phone.

00:56:02 ◼   ► When you're in the more command line side of it,

00:56:04 ◼   ► the more difficult side of it, getting like productivity

00:56:09 ◼   ► and power user type tasks done is possibly easier

00:56:14 ◼   ► than on the easy devices, but casual use is harder.

00:56:18 ◼   ► And then on the devices like phones and iPads,

00:56:21 ◼   ► getting productivity and power use type things done

00:56:24 ◼   ► is actually harder to figure out,

00:56:26 ◼   ► but casual use is easier.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Somewhere in the middle there is the PC style OS.

00:56:31 ◼   ► PC style OSs are, they kind of try to be everything.

00:56:36 ◼   ► I think we are generally much better at using them

00:56:39 ◼   ► for productivity type things and power user type things

00:56:41 ◼   ► and that's partially because most productivity

00:56:44 ◼   ► and power user people have grown up with computers

00:56:46 ◼   ► to some degree or have a certain number of years using them

00:56:49 ◼   ► so there's already a lot of what people are used to,

00:56:51 ◼   ► people are already trained on how to use computers

00:56:53 ◼   ► for the most part.

00:56:54 ◼   ► But also part of that is just the design of them

00:56:56 ◼   ► is with these kind of file centric paradigms

00:57:00 ◼   ► of the desktops and everything and all this drag and drop,

00:57:02 ◼   ► multiple windows kind of stuff,

00:57:04 ◼   ► it's just a lot easier to do a lot of tasks,

00:57:07 ◼   ► a lot of productivity and power user-type tasks

00:57:09 ◼   ► on a PC-style OS.

00:57:11 ◼   ► That's not to say that iPads and stuff

00:57:13 ◼   ► can't get some of those features,

00:57:16 ◼   ► but also you can't say that PCs can't get

00:57:21 ◼   ► some of the better ease of use and security features

00:57:23 ◼   ► that iPads and phones have.

00:57:25 ◼   ► - Well, that's all I'm saying.

00:57:27 ◼   ► If you do do that to the PC-style operating system,

00:57:30 ◼   ► if you start hiding the file system

00:57:32 ◼   ► on PC-style operating systems, it's the same argument.

00:57:35 ◼   ► It's just like, it's the question of venue.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Where is that going to happen?

00:57:38 ◼   ► It's going to happen because people don't like the old way

00:57:40 ◼   ► and they like the new way better.

00:57:42 ◼   ► - Do they?

00:57:43 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that sales curve

00:57:44 ◼   ► is showing you something else.

00:57:45 ◼   ► - Yes, they're proving it by what they wanna buy.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I mean, so here's the thing, with the complexity of tasks,

00:57:53 ◼   ► it's about marginalizing the users.

00:57:54 ◼   ► It's about chasing them farther into the corner.

00:57:56 ◼   ► So people who use the command line

00:57:59 ◼   ► and who do sophisticated things for their computers

00:58:01 ◼   ► will still need PCs, but all those people

00:58:03 ◼   ► who just do email, word processing, calendaring,

00:58:06 ◼   ► web browsing, they don't need PCs now.

00:58:09 ◼   ► They have them because basically it's the only way

00:58:12 ◼   ► to get Outlook and to be able to see PDFs

00:58:14 ◼   ► and to do all the other stuff.

00:58:15 ◼   ► But increasingly, if your company uses Google Docs

00:58:19 ◼   ► and Slack and so on, there's no reason

00:58:22 ◼   ► those people need a full-fledged PC.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Not because they're not doing command line stuff,

00:58:27 ◼   ► but they're not even doing anything complicated enough

00:58:29 ◼   ► to require them to use the non-command line

00:58:33 ◼   ► portions of a GUI.

00:58:34 ◼   ► They don't have multiple files that they're assembling

00:58:36 ◼   ► into a large project, they're not doing, development is also kind of a command line

00:58:43 ◼   ► thing, but it's a matter of slowly making the people who need PCs a smaller and smaller

00:58:49 ◼   ► subset of people, in the same way that people who need command lines have become a smaller

00:58:52 ◼   ► and smaller subset of people.

00:58:53 ◼   ► It stops at some point.

00:58:54 ◼   ► It's not as if, if the command line, marginalizing the command line has really stalled out, because

00:58:59 ◼   ► so many people do software development or do stuff involving servers and so on, where

00:59:05 ◼   ► command line is important and is not going away anytime soon, right? So it's

00:59:08 ◼   ► not like you chase command lines away until there's only three people in the

00:59:11 ◼   ► world using it, but it shrinks way down from where it was the DOS thing. Like, to

00:59:15 ◼   ► do your regular business stuff you don't need a command line. You can get that all

00:59:20 ◼   ► done with a GUI, which was an argument at one point. It's like, well, if I want to get

00:59:23 ◼   ► real work done I need DOS, but if I want to do this one silly thing like draw a

00:59:25 ◼   ► silly digital painting maybe I can use a GUI. Eventually you can do everything

00:59:30 ◼   ► from GUI. You can do your fancy business spreadsheets, you can write your word

00:59:32 ◼   ► processing things. Email hadn't been invented, but you could do that too. You can do all

00:59:36 ◼   ► that stuff from the GUI. It's just a question of marginalizing that stuff. And if that stuff

00:59:41 ◼   ► gets marginalized by old-style PC operating system and new-style one that hides all that

00:59:47 ◼   ► crap or modes within one, it really depends on the particular company that ends up figuring

00:59:52 ◼   ► this out, whether it be Apple with its whole different OS/iPad approach or Microsoft with

00:59:56 ◼   ► its hybrid approach or Android with its Phone OS Everywhere/Chrome OS whatever hybrid-esque

01:00:01 ◼   ► thing or even just with the web stuff like can you get everything done with the web browser

01:00:04 ◼   ► and use a Chromebook for regular people so you have nothing locally and it's just everything

01:00:08 ◼   ► is on the web. Maybe you can do that. In that case you definitely don't need a PC style

01:00:12 ◼   ► operating system to do that you just need something that can run all the web apps and

01:00:16 ◼   ► that's not so far fetched especially if like there's a slack client and stuff like that.

01:00:20 ◼   ► So you know I don't I wouldn't focus on one single product I wouldn't even focus on what

01:00:26 ◼   ► we call PCs because it's possible for them to be the future of computing as well.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Just have to look for where and how the people who really do continue to need a GUI end up

01:00:37 ◼   ► getting...

01:00:38 ◼   ► Where do they get chased?

01:00:40 ◼   ► What corner do they get chased into?

01:00:41 ◼   ► And they'll be hanging out there with the command line people because the command line

01:00:43 ◼   ► people are not going anywhere and very often they're the same people.

01:00:47 ◼   ► And soon eventually they'll be joined by the people who need to use full PC operating systems.

01:00:51 ◼   ► and then everyone else will be trying to book rooms in Outlook, futilely, on their future

01:00:59 ◼   ► of computing devices. Because that's what they do all day, is send people emails and

01:01:03 ◼   ► mess with calendars and waste time in Slack.

01:01:06 ◼   ► So I don't disagree with much of what you said. I think we're kind of arguing two different

01:01:12 ◼   ► points here. Basically my theory is that the PC style operating system and the iPad style

01:01:22 ◼   ► operating system have this kind of common ground between the two that they're both kind

01:01:28 ◼   ► of aiming for or should be aiming for to solve their problems. But I'm not sure that either

01:01:35 ◼   ► product can get to the other one's common ground. If they actually meet in the middle

01:01:40 ◼   ► successfully, I'm not sure that would be a good product

01:01:43 ◼   ► for either of them.

01:01:44 ◼   ► But I do think-- - They're not gonna meet

01:01:45 ◼   ► in the middle from the same company,

01:01:46 ◼   ► because the same company would be foolish

01:01:48 ◼   ► to make their two products meet in the middle.

01:01:51 ◼   ► But they could be like the iPad meets Windows 10

01:01:53 ◼   ► in the middle, you know what I mean?

01:01:54 ◼   ► - Right.

01:01:55 ◼   ► - Windows 10 goes tablet-y, and the iPad goes PC,

01:01:59 ◼   ► but the Mac would still be hanging out there

01:02:00 ◼   ► in full-fledged PC area.

01:02:02 ◼   ► - Right, however, I do think though that we are judging this

01:02:06 ◼   ► for the most part from what Apple's doing,

01:02:09 ◼   ► 'cause Microsoft does crazy things,

01:02:10 ◼   ► they're kind of on drugs, sometimes they work,

01:02:13 ◼   ► sometimes they don't, who knows what they're doing

01:02:14 ◼   ► over there, sometimes they're pretty cool.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Microsoft is showing that there is still a lot

01:02:20 ◼   ► that can maybe be done in PC style OS's,

01:02:23 ◼   ► and also there is a possibility of making

01:02:27 ◼   ► more productivity focused tablets.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Like, Microsoft is doing a bunch of stuff in that area,

01:02:32 ◼   ► and it's all wacky, and some of it is cool,

01:02:34 ◼   ► most of it is weird, and sometimes it works,

01:02:36 ◼   ► sometimes it does it okay.

01:02:37 ◼   ► but they actually are moving,

01:02:38 ◼   ► and they're actually seeing some progress there,

01:02:40 ◼   ► and some success with their server stuff,

01:02:43 ◼   ► and various Windows 10 stuff and everything.

01:02:45 ◼   ► We make fun of it,

01:02:46 ◼   ► but it actually is starting to actually succeed.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Anyway, we are looking at Apple for this,

01:02:51 ◼   ► because we know Apple, if they put their mind to it,

01:02:54 ◼   ► would do a better job at both sides of this.

01:02:57 ◼   ► However, I think it's very clear from recent years

01:03:02 ◼   ► that Apple's not really stepping on the gas too hard

01:03:05 ◼   ► on either side of this.

01:03:07 ◼   ► they're devoting their resources elsewhere.

01:03:09 ◼   ► They're focusing on things like the iPhone and services

01:03:12 ◼   ► and the watch and maybe occasionally the TV

01:03:14 ◼   ► and pouring God knows how much effort into this car thing.

01:03:18 ◼   ► They're not really stepping on the gas

01:03:22 ◼   ► on trying to improve Mac OS,

01:03:23 ◼   ► which seems like it's almost in maintenance mode.

01:03:26 ◼   ► And iPad OS/iOS seem like in these productivity style

01:03:33 ◼   ► or power user style ways, it jumps forward

01:03:38 ◼   ► like every two years in some interesting way.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Like they have multitasking or split screen

01:03:43 ◼   ► or extensions or whatever else.

01:03:44 ◼   ► But then that kind of just sits there for a while.

01:03:46 ◼   ► They're not really driving quickly

01:03:49 ◼   ► towards either of these goals.

01:03:51 ◼   ► And it's kind of unclear as to whether they even intend to.

01:03:54 ◼   ► So I think it's kind of a bad example.

01:03:57 ◼   ► Like we are trying to argue whether these things

01:03:59 ◼   ► are possible or whether convergence is possible

01:04:01 ◼   ► or which one of these is like quote the right

01:04:03 ◼   ► or the inevitable or the future approach.

01:04:05 ◼   ► But we're basing that on only what Apple's doing here.

01:04:08 ◼   ► And I think that's kind of blinding us

01:04:10 ◼   ► to what might be possible.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Because if a company was,

01:04:15 ◼   ► if a company had these platforms

01:04:16 ◼   ► that really cared a lot about these particular things,

01:04:19 ◼   ► enough to prioritize them higher than what Apple does,

01:04:22 ◼   ► I think we might see more answers more quickly.

01:04:25 ◼   ► And I think we might see ideas tried

01:04:27 ◼   ► that we wouldn't have considered.

01:04:28 ◼   ► And Microsoft is almost doing that.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Like, again, they're doing a lot of crazy stuff.

01:04:33 ◼   ► They're just not doing it very well most of the time

01:04:34 ◼   ► because they're not that great at it.

01:04:36 ◼   ► But we are seeing, it is possible if you invest heavily

01:04:41 ◼   ► in these areas and you really step on the gas

01:04:43 ◼   ► in these areas, it is possible to both have interesting

01:04:47 ◼   ► tablets that could be easy to use and also run

01:04:50 ◼   ► productivity software pretty well, and it's also possible

01:04:54 ◼   ► to do interesting new things with desktops to bring them

01:04:57 ◼   ► closer to the tablet world in ways that make

01:05:00 ◼   ► the tablet world good.

01:05:01 ◼   ► I think it's only a matter of, for Apple specifically,

01:05:05 ◼   ► do they care enough about macOS to make major changes

01:05:09 ◼   ► to the OS and to the way it works?

01:05:11 ◼   ► And we just saw the touch bar and everything,

01:05:13 ◼   ► and that's cool, that's not a major change

01:05:15 ◼   ► to the interaction model or the application model of the OS.

01:05:19 ◼   ► That's a hardware feature that sells new hardware

01:05:21 ◼   ► and has some software integration,

01:05:23 ◼   ► and it's really cool the way it integrates

01:05:24 ◼   ► with the hardware and everything,

01:05:25 ◼   ► but that's not fundamentally changing macOS

01:05:27 ◼   ► in any meaningful way.

01:05:29 ◼   ► So it doesn't-- - Yeah, today.

01:05:31 ◼   ► - Well, okay, fair.

01:05:32 ◼   ► - It's not, it's additive.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I think Mark is right, it's purely additive.

01:05:36 ◼   ► It's not taking away any complexity from the Mac,

01:05:38 ◼   ► put it that way.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Any of the weird stuff on the Mac,

01:05:40 ◼   ► like the touch bar doesn't alter that at all.

01:05:42 ◼   ► It's just an additive, cool thing, right?

01:05:44 ◼   ► But it does not allow you to avoid or otherwise hide

01:05:47 ◼   ► or make moot any of the complexity involved

01:05:50 ◼   ► in all the things that iOS does better than the Mac.

01:05:52 ◼   ► - Exactly, and then on the other side,

01:05:54 ◼   ► iOS on the phone, the phone is making great strides,

01:05:58 ◼   ► of course, 'cause that's where Apple focuses a lot,

01:05:59 ◼   ► because that's good, they should,

01:06:00 ◼   ► That's where all the action is, that makes sense.

01:06:03 ◼   ► But on the iPad, what we see,

01:06:05 ◼   ► we've seen the same pattern from them over and over again,

01:06:08 ◼   ► which is they give the iPad a little bit of attention,

01:06:11 ◼   ► and then they kinda just let it sit for a year or two,

01:06:13 ◼   ► and then they give it a little bit more attention,

01:06:15 ◼   ► and let it sit for a year or two.

01:06:16 ◼   ► But ultimately, the iPad always is playing

01:06:19 ◼   ► second fiddle to the iPhone,

01:06:21 ◼   ► and that's true of both Apple's attention

01:06:23 ◼   ► and also just the design of the OS.

01:06:26 ◼   ► In so many ways, the iPad is just a blown up iPhone,

01:06:30 ◼   ► and it seems like that's mostly okay with everybody.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And that's fine, there are a lot of advantages

01:06:35 ◼   ► to doing it that way, but if you keep doing it that way,

01:06:38 ◼   ► I don't see how it ever replaces more PCs meaningfully

01:06:42 ◼   ► than what it's replacing now.

01:06:44 ◼   ► - You just go to the screen thing,

01:06:45 ◼   ► which is the thing I always bring up.

01:06:46 ◼   ► People don't use PCs with 12-inch screens on their desk

01:06:49 ◼   ► if they can help it.

01:06:51 ◼   ► Maybe in laptops, but even then,

01:06:52 ◼   ► if they wanna work all day,

01:06:53 ◼   ► they'd hook it up to a bigger screen.

01:06:55 ◼   ► There's a reason for that.

01:06:56 ◼   ► Bigger screen lets you see more stuff,

01:06:58 ◼   ► it makes you more productive.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Remember back in the 80s, all the studies about how worker productivity increases when

01:07:04 ◼   ► you have bigger CRT on your desk and employees would use that as an excuse to demand a massive

01:07:09 ◼   ► 21-inch CRT, which actually they were massive.

01:07:12 ◼   ► They're really huge and heavy and people don't understand exactly how big those things were.

01:07:16 ◼   ► But yeah, both the iPad and on the Mac, one of the things that I always attribute to the

01:07:24 ◼   ► fictional person of Apple Computer, which is not a person but a collection of people,

01:07:28 ◼   ► you know, sort of turning it into a person.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Like, Apple is hoping that people don't have to do

01:07:35 ◼   ► such complicated things.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Can't you do all of your stuff with the iPad apps

01:07:39 ◼   ► that we give you?

01:07:40 ◼   ► Look how simple they are.

01:07:41 ◼   ► You just need these simple functions.

01:07:42 ◼   ► You just need to be able to crop your images in this way.

01:07:45 ◼   ► No, you don't need to be able to crop

01:07:47 ◼   ► with fixed proportions, but also in landscape and portrait.

01:07:50 ◼   ► You only need to do that on Mac.

01:07:51 ◼   ► On the iPhone, do you really need to do that?

01:07:53 ◼   ► When you edit video, do you really need that fine control

01:07:56 ◼   ► of how the audio comes in?

01:07:57 ◼   ► or can you just drag the slider

01:07:58 ◼   ► and we'll pick the curve for you?

01:08:00 ◼   ► Like, do you really need that much?

01:08:01 ◼   ► All right, how about the precision editor?

01:08:04 ◼   ► Is that precise enough?

01:08:05 ◼   ► Couldn't you get your work done just with these simple,

01:08:07 ◼   ► 'cause it's so much easier with the simple,

01:08:08 ◼   ► 'cause we don't have dialogues

01:08:09 ◼   ► with all these numbers in them,

01:08:11 ◼   ► we don't have all these palettes that you have to rearrange

01:08:13 ◼   ► and there's so many palettes,

01:08:14 ◼   ► you can't even have them all on the screen at the same time,

01:08:16 ◼   ► you have to pick which ones you want.

01:08:17 ◼   ► That's just too much.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Look how much simple it is.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Guys, right, can't you get your work done?

01:08:20 ◼   ► And people say, sometimes, but other times, no.

01:08:26 ◼   ► And Apple really doesn't want to give you either.

01:08:28 ◼   ► Like for the Mac, it's like,

01:08:29 ◼   ► can't you get your work done with one CPU?

01:08:31 ◼   ► Most of the time, yeah, but maybe I want,

01:08:34 ◼   ► if I had two of them and they both had 12 cores,

01:08:36 ◼   ► I could cut this portion of my work down in half

01:08:39 ◼   ► and it would make me more productive.

01:08:41 ◼   ► But can't you get, isn't this okay?

01:08:43 ◼   ► We just buy this one.

01:08:44 ◼   ► It's like wishful thinking that the massive simplification

01:08:48 ◼   ► that is so good for everybody, doesn't that fit,

01:08:51 ◼   ► they seem to be thinking that it'll fit more people into it

01:08:53 ◼   ► than it does.

01:08:54 ◼   ► And as Mark was always with,

01:08:55 ◼   ► because people are just getting shaved off the top.

01:08:57 ◼   ► And Apple has shown that they're essentially

01:09:00 ◼   ► a captive audience.

01:09:00 ◼   ► When you come up with the new laptops,

01:09:01 ◼   ► and they're $500 more expensive,

01:09:03 ◼   ► and they don't have all the ports and features

01:09:05 ◼   ► that you may have wanted, you're gonna buy them anyway.

01:09:07 ◼   ► What choice do you have?

01:09:08 ◼   ► What are you gonna do?

01:09:10 ◼   ► Vote for a third party candidate?

01:09:11 ◼   ► Go ahead, throw your vote away.

01:09:14 ◼   ► - I finally get the reference.

01:09:16 ◼   ► - Yay.

01:09:16 ◼   ► So yeah, that I feel like is where Apple

01:09:21 ◼   ► is dropping the ball.

01:09:22 ◼   ► And they have been too optimistic, too hopeful

01:09:27 ◼   ► that every new thing they make,

01:09:29 ◼   ► whether it's like the new version of iMovie

01:09:30 ◼   ► where they had to keep the old one around

01:09:32 ◼   ► or that really old kerfuffle from many, many years ago,

01:09:35 ◼   ► all the way up to the hopes

01:09:39 ◼   ► that the iOS versions of their apps,

01:09:41 ◼   ► like the iOS versions of photo editing

01:09:43 ◼   ► and so on and so forth, would be enough for anybody,

01:09:46 ◼   ► so much so that we can even just port them to the Mac

01:09:48 ◼   ► and there'd be enough for everybody there too.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Like, that is probably a good strategy

01:09:52 ◼   ► for trying to simplify this for most people,

01:09:54 ◼   ► but it is slowly like torturing the people

01:09:58 ◼   ► who really do have demanding needs.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't wanna complexify the software,

01:10:04 ◼   ► and Apple doesn't seem to want to make it

01:10:06 ◼   ► so that other people can make similarly complicated software

01:10:09 ◼   ► if only because they refuse to make an iPad

01:10:10 ◼   ► with a bigger screen,

01:10:12 ◼   ► 'cause you can't fit all of Lightroom's palettes in there.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Marco was playing with Lightroom on a 28-inch Surface Studio.

01:10:17 ◼   ► That gives you enough room

01:10:18 ◼   ► for all of Lightroom's crazy palettes.

01:10:19 ◼   ► oh, do you really need all those controls in Lightroom?

01:10:21 ◼   ► Can't you get away with just the controls

01:10:22 ◼   ► that are in like an okay iOS app?

01:10:24 ◼   ► No, you actually can't.

01:10:26 ◼   ► For a certain section of the market, you can't.

01:10:28 ◼   ► And if Apple doesn't care about them,

01:10:30 ◼   ► they are seeding that entire market,

01:10:32 ◼   ► both on the PC and on the Mac to other people.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Now, to bring Microsoft into it,

01:10:36 ◼   ► the thing about Microsoft,

01:10:37 ◼   ► they're kind of in the Apple position,

01:10:38 ◼   ► and I kind of feel bad for them,

01:10:39 ◼   ► but kind of not because, you know, history.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Where even if Microsoft has the right product,

01:10:46 ◼   ► and even if their product is awesome,

01:10:48 ◼   ► Sometimes you're just not in the right market position

01:10:50 ◼   ► or you have the wrong reputation.

01:10:52 ◼   ► Forces independent of the quality of your product

01:10:55 ◼   ► can cause your thing to fail.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Look at Apple in the 90s.

01:10:59 ◼   ► The best operating system, the best GUI,

01:11:01 ◼   ► but it was too late.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Microsoft had already won.

01:11:04 ◼   ► - Wait, hang on.

01:11:05 ◼   ► You're saying OS, like classic OS,

01:11:07 ◼   ► was the best operating system in the 90s?

01:11:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:11:11 ◼   ► - I'll give you the 80s and maybe the first part

01:11:13 ◼   ► of the 90s, first few years maybe, but like--

01:11:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:11:17 ◼   ► - Until Windows 2000.

01:11:19 ◼   ► When Windows 2000 was what, '99-ish?

01:11:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, '99.

01:11:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, trust me.

01:11:24 ◼   ► - Maybe.

01:11:25 ◼   ► - I mean, certainly on the GUI,

01:11:26 ◼   ► and then on the tech things, it's borderline.

01:11:29 ◼   ► But anyway, certainly back when it was like

01:11:32 ◼   ► the Macintosh versus DOS, and Windows 1.0,

01:11:35 ◼   ► but anyway, not to rehash that,

01:11:37 ◼   ► sometimes you don't win with the best product, right?

01:11:39 ◼   ► And so even if Microsoft gets it right,

01:11:41 ◼   ► or gets it righter than Apple,

01:11:44 ◼   ► We are at the whim of the companies that exist and their entrenched legacies and their customer

01:11:49 ◼   ► bases and where they make them like, it's not a perfect system where once someone comes up with

01:11:54 ◼   ► the right answer, it will just, you know, we are stuck with the companies that we have or the new

01:11:59 ◼   ► companies that will have to grow to replace them. And that is a ugly, messy, slow process.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And so it's really hard to tell if Microsoft actually has the right answer. Like for example,

01:12:07 ◼   ► if Apple had done what Microsoft's doing with its OS strategy, they would probably be farther along,

01:12:12 ◼   ► because Apple has been in a stronger position

01:12:14 ◼   ► because of a little thing called the iPhone,

01:12:16 ◼   ► and they could have made a lot of headway there,

01:12:18 ◼   ► whereas Microsoft was coming away from behind,

01:12:21 ◼   ► having really gotten, you know,

01:12:22 ◼   ► really missed the boat on the mobile thing,

01:12:24 ◼   ► and having all sorts of problems

01:12:25 ◼   ► with their traditional sources of revenue,

01:12:27 ◼   ► switching around and trying to change

01:12:29 ◼   ► into a services company, like,

01:12:31 ◼   ► so it's really hard to tell

01:12:32 ◼   ► if they've got the right answer either, but.

01:12:34 ◼   ► - I love that Microsoft has the luxury

01:12:36 ◼   ► of having a completely failed smartphone effort

01:12:38 ◼   ► so they have no legacy in smartphones to worry about.

01:12:41 ◼   ► - Well, it's tough like now that iOS and Android

01:12:45 ◼   ► have like sort of run the table,

01:12:46 ◼   ► what room is there for like Tizen

01:12:49 ◼   ► or whatever the hell that thing is called

01:12:50 ◼   ► or you know, Windows Phone, right?

01:12:53 ◼   ► And it's tough, like it again,

01:12:55 ◼   ► even if Microsoft had the best smartphone operating system,

01:12:58 ◼   ► technically, aesthetically, user-friendliness or whatever,

01:13:01 ◼   ► it's so hard to go up against entrenched interests.

01:13:03 ◼   ► But again, we always talk about Apple

01:13:05 ◼   ► 'cause we know more about it.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And I feel like Apple's mistake is actually one of

01:13:10 ◼   ► naive optimism or wishful thinking.

01:13:12 ◼   ► And they keep plugging away at it.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Like they plugged away at you don't need access

01:13:15 ◼   ► to the file system for how many years

01:13:17 ◼   ► before they did iCloud Drive?

01:13:18 ◼   ► Like that's all just wasted time.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Like if they were gonna come up with a better answer,

01:13:21 ◼   ► that's fine.

01:13:22 ◼   ► If you can't come up with a better answer,

01:13:23 ◼   ► not really good to wait six years

01:13:25 ◼   ► or whatever the hell it was before iCloud Drive comes out.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Because by that point, everybody's already using Dropbox

01:13:31 ◼   ► or OneDrive or whatever the heck they're using.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And you know, iCloud Drive because it's entrenched

01:13:35 ◼   ► and it's from the platform vendor, it's gonna do okay.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Same thing with Apple Music streaming.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Like there is an advantage to being the platform owner, but that's not a strong move to take

01:13:48 ◼   ► away the file system and all the functionality it provides while hiding the complexity and

01:13:52 ◼   ► then not come up with the suitable replacement and then just bail a couple years later and

01:13:56 ◼   ► say, "Okay, here's Dropbox."

01:13:57 ◼   ► - This is always the struggle of the iPad and iOS in general also, but I think more

01:14:05 ◼   ► for the iPad that in order to enable these power uses,

01:14:09 ◼   ► you have to give a little on the simplicity.

01:14:13 ◼   ► And there's always the question of whether you're actually

01:14:15 ◼   ► just slowly re-implementing the Mac poorly,

01:14:20 ◼   ► like the whole Lisp joke.

01:14:22 ◼   ► And I don't think that the industry has shown yet

01:14:26 ◼   ► that anybody has a really good idea

01:14:28 ◼   ► of how to balance those things between power usability

01:14:31 ◼   ► and multitasking and file access and things like that,

01:14:35 ◼   ► and simplicity of tablet use.

01:14:37 ◼   ► I think almost everybody just kind of punts

01:14:39 ◼   ► the answer to that question of,

01:14:40 ◼   ► oh well, Apple will figure it out, they're smart,

01:14:44 ◼   ► or some answer like that that's really not an answer,

01:14:46 ◼   ► and it's like, usually Apple doesn't figure things out

01:14:50 ◼   ► that we can't figure out a solution to ourselves.

01:14:53 ◼   ► 'Cause usually Apple's made up for the same kind of people

01:14:55 ◼   ► as outside of Apple, and if we can't figure out

01:14:59 ◼   ► whether a solution to a problem can even exist,

01:15:02 ◼   ► they usually can't either.

01:15:03 ◼   ► They usually just punt and say,

01:15:04 ◼   ► well, yep, this is a problem, deal with it, and we do.

01:15:07 ◼   ► And it's fine.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Like when the iPad was first being rumored,

01:15:12 ◼   ► we were all like, well, what are they gonna do

01:15:14 ◼   ► for text input?

01:15:15 ◼   ► Because on-screen keyboards are pretty limited,

01:15:19 ◼   ► but you can't have like a physical keyboard on a tablet,

01:15:22 ◼   ► that doesn't work either.

01:15:23 ◼   ► What are they gonna do?

01:15:25 ◼   ► And they punted.

01:15:26 ◼   ► They said, all right, well, here's an on-screen keyboard,

01:15:28 ◼   ► it's limited but deal with it and we'll sell you

01:15:30 ◼   ► this external one that was really bizarre.

01:15:33 ◼   ► Sometimes these are just kind of unsolvable design problems

01:15:40 ◼   ► that you just have to pick one or the other

01:15:42 ◼   ► and neither are great.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And I think the balance between the file system access

01:15:47 ◼   ► and windowing and multitasking and everything like that

01:15:50 ◼   ► and the simplicity of what iOS offers today,

01:15:55 ◼   ► I just don't think there is a good balance

01:15:57 ◼   ► between those two.

01:15:58 ◼   ► There might be ways to do it better

01:16:00 ◼   ► than what the Mac and what Windows do,

01:16:04 ◼   ► but I still think that if you add that power,

01:16:08 ◼   ► you are going to ruin the simplicity,

01:16:09 ◼   ► you're going to add complexity.

01:16:11 ◼   ► It is just gonna be one of those design punts.

01:16:14 ◼   ► And I'm not sure that this is necessarily avoidable,

01:16:19 ◼   ► but I do think it might be an unsolvable problem,

01:16:23 ◼   ► because tablets have been around for a while now,

01:16:26 ◼   ► and we still haven't figured out a solution to this problem.

01:16:28 ◼   ► - You know, I keep coming back to,

01:16:31 ◼   ► as I'm listening to you guys,

01:16:32 ◼   ► I think about what Chris Latner had said

01:16:35 ◼   ► a couple episodes ago.

01:16:36 ◼   ► God, it's cool that we can say that.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Anyway, what he had said about Swift having,

01:16:41 ◼   ► and I forget the term he used,

01:16:43 ◼   ► maybe one of you remembers, but like--

01:16:44 ◼   ► - Progressive disclosure. - Progressive disclosure.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Yep, exactly, you knew where I was going with this.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Where I think, by and large, Marco,

01:16:50 ◼   ► I actually agree with you in that

01:16:52 ◼   ► I personally don't see a way to square this circle.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And in order to make an iPad more usable for more people in a professional capacity, I

01:17:04 ◼   ► think it would have to take away a lot of the things that make the iPad so great today.

01:17:09 ◼   ► But progressive disclosure is the thing that's already happening.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Like if you don't do a swipe from the right side of the screen toward the center of the

01:17:16 ◼   ► screen, would you ever really know about multitasking?

01:17:20 ◼   ► If you don't hit that little...

01:17:22 ◼   ► I know about it when I accidentally do it playing a game all the time.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And that's fair. But you know what I'm driving at. You know what I'm driving at.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Actually, I think that's actually relevant. Like, it sounds like a side thing. Like, "Oh, you accidentally do gesture, so what?"

01:17:33 ◼   ► That's one of the things that is more troublesome on touch devices and less on PCs,

01:17:39 ◼   ► where like progressive disclosure is easier on a desktop operating system because you're less likely to accidentally trigger something because the input is more precise, right?

01:17:48 ◼   ► And there's more mechanisms, right? You have an entire keyboard and then you have all the hotkeys and you have a pointing device and two

01:17:53 ◼   ► buttons on you can have like alternate clicks and modifier and they're not afraid to put

01:17:58 ◼   ► Preferences in like hey if you want to disable dashboard and disable all hot corners

01:18:01 ◼   ► You can iOS has you know disabled multitasking gestures and stuff

01:18:04 ◼   ► But some things you just can't turn off on iOS because they're always there like actually control center

01:18:08 ◼   ► I think you can there's a preference for that too. But

01:18:10 ◼   ► Yeah, that type of that type of thing of like how do you do progressive disclosure disclosure?

01:18:14 ◼   ► well on a device where you've already used up like every possible Morse code click combination

01:18:19 ◼   ► on the home button and 50 million gestures and there's no keyboard.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Like, they're kind of already painted themselves into a corner in their ability, in their eagerness

01:18:28 ◼   ► to gild the lily of iOS touch interface.

01:18:32 ◼   ► It's not leaving a lot of room for them to wedge in the more complicated stuff in a nice

01:18:35 ◼   ► progressive disclosure way.

01:18:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:38 ◼   ► And I agree with you.

01:18:39 ◼   ► I just can't help but wonder, is there something that I'm not seeing today that would lend

01:18:46 ◼   ► itself to having the iPad feel like a more—I'm going to use the word professional, but I

01:18:51 ◼   ► can't think of a better word for it—but a more professional device?

01:18:54 ◼   ► And I think about, if you had told me during the iOS 6 or 7 days, "Oh, there's going to

01:19:01 ◼   ► come a time that you can have this floating window that plays video that you can shimmy

01:19:04 ◼   ► around the screen and enlarge and shrink and swipe off to the side to kind of hide it for

01:19:09 ◼   ► for a minute, I would have thought you were bonkers.

01:19:11 ◼   ► And I would have wondered, how do you activate that?

01:19:13 ◼   ► Well, how do you make it go away?

01:19:14 ◼   ► What do you do with this thing?

01:19:16 ◼   ► And as it turns out, picture-in-picture

01:19:17 ◼   ► on the iPad is awesome.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And similarly, multitasking is pretty awesome.

01:19:22 ◼   ► It's pretty crappy switching between apps

01:19:24 ◼   ► in the little multitasking app switcher,

01:19:26 ◼   ► but by and large, it's pretty awesome.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And I don't know that I would have seen a way to do that

01:19:31 ◼   ► prior to having actually seen the way it was implemented.

01:19:34 ◼   ► So I do agree with the both of you,

01:19:37 ◼   ► but I can't help but wonder,

01:19:39 ◼   ► what is it that we are not thinking of

01:19:41 ◼   ► that would make something in the spirit

01:19:43 ◼   ► of progressive disclosure possible?

01:19:46 ◼   ► And I don't know, I have no specifics,

01:19:47 ◼   ► but it makes me wonder what's coming.

01:19:50 ◼   ► You know, what's coming in June?

01:19:51 ◼   ► - You're not thinking of it,

01:19:52 ◼   ► but I totally am thinking of it.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Like, that's what I was getting at with Apple being wishful

01:19:57 ◼   ► in hoping that the simple applications

01:19:59 ◼   ► and the limited form factors and interface venues

01:20:02 ◼   ► that they have provided on the iPad

01:20:03 ◼   ► and increasingly on the Mac

01:20:05 ◼   ► will be sufficient for everybody's needs.

01:20:08 ◼   ► They are intentionally not doing a bunch of obvious things.

01:20:11 ◼   ► For a long time, they intentionally didn't do

01:20:13 ◼   ► the obvious thing of giving you a pencil,

01:20:16 ◼   ► basically, the Apple Pencil.

01:20:17 ◼   ► For a long time, they avoided that,

01:20:18 ◼   ► because it's like, that's an additional complication,

01:20:21 ◼   ► and most people don't need it.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Maybe people can get along without it.

01:20:24 ◼   ► And we had to endure many, many years

01:20:27 ◼   ► of people selling hot dogs on a stick

01:20:29 ◼   ► that you used to draw on your iPad,

01:20:32 ◼   ► this big, stubby, artificial finger thing.

01:20:34 ◼   ► and it took so long for them to get through their skulls.

01:20:36 ◼   ► People wanna draw on these things.

01:20:38 ◼   ► They're buying these terrible devices to do it,

01:20:40 ◼   ► for God's sake, make a pencil.

01:20:41 ◼   ► And they did, finally.

01:20:42 ◼   ► There's so many obvious things they can do.

01:20:44 ◼   ► They can make a much bigger form factor.

01:20:46 ◼   ► If you wanna see, Microsoft's already gone

01:20:48 ◼   ► and done a whole product that you can rip off ideas from

01:20:50 ◼   ► or get inspired from.

01:20:52 ◼   ► You can do more things with multitasking

01:20:54 ◼   ► than simply splitting the screen.

01:20:56 ◼   ► You can do more things with hotkeys

01:20:58 ◼   ► and with the little floating windows.

01:21:00 ◼   ► There's tons of obvious things they can do.

01:21:03 ◼   ► And the thing that Marco was talking about,

01:21:05 ◼   ► something I talk about in the first OS X reviews

01:21:08 ◼   ► that I did just after iOS came out,

01:21:10 ◼   ► I think it was maybe the very first one

01:21:11 ◼   ► after it was clear there was some crossover between them.

01:21:13 ◼   ► It was like, is it easier to make the Mac more like iOS

01:21:17 ◼   ► or to make iOS more like the Mac?

01:21:19 ◼   ► Like, is it easier to simplify Mac OS

01:21:22 ◼   ► or bring those capabilities of the Mac to iOS?

01:21:25 ◼   ► And I think it said then, and I think now,

01:21:27 ◼   ► it is much easier to add the capabilities of the Mac to iOS

01:21:31 ◼   ► without messing it up than it is due to the reverse.

01:21:33 ◼   ► Because as soon as you start trying to make the Mac

01:21:36 ◼   ► to be like iOS, you totally destroy its usefulness

01:21:39 ◼   ► for the people who want to use it for the current use cases.

01:21:41 ◼   ► And there's no replacement for that.

01:21:43 ◼   ► If on the other hand, you take iOS,

01:21:44 ◼   ► which is a cleaner slate,

01:21:45 ◼   ► and was much cleaner back then than it is now,

01:21:47 ◼   ► but a cleaner slate,

01:21:48 ◼   ► and try to let people do the more complicated stuff

01:21:52 ◼   ► with, like Casey said, progressive disclosures,

01:21:55 ◼   ► it is a much easier thing to do.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And you get a chance to do it in a different way over there.

01:21:59 ◼   ► And while you're doing that,

01:22:00 ◼   ► You're not screwing up professionals who presumably can still use your Macs.

01:22:03 ◼   ► And if you're doing a good job on iOS, you're also not screwing up people who never use

01:22:06 ◼   ► that functionality.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And arguably, that's what Apple has been doing by making the iPad Pro, by making the 12-point

01:22:12 ◼   ► whatever-inch iPad, by making the pencil, by adding multitasking.

01:22:15 ◼   ► But boy, did it take them a long time.

01:22:17 ◼   ► And they're still stubborn about, you know, about going all the way.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Like I don't know what they're holding out for.

01:22:25 ◼   ► I don't know what they're waiting for.

01:22:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Maybe they're waiting for people to die and habits to change.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I agree with Marco in that the use cases aren't going to change. People would like to do them

01:22:33 ◼   ► with less complications, but if they can't do them with less complications, they just want to do them,

01:22:36 ◼   ► period. They have to do them because it is part of their job. And if you don't give them a simpler

01:22:41 ◼   ► way to do it, they will limp along with the more complicated way until and unless somebody,

01:22:45 ◼   ► could be Microsoft, could be anybody else, gives them a way to literally do the same really

01:22:50 ◼   ► complicated jobs with less concerns, with less fighting with the machine. And Apple still seems

01:22:57 ◼   ► like like like marcus said like give them a little bit does this move the needle is the ipad really

01:23:02 ◼   ► a pro device now because we made a slightly bigger one and gave you a pencil it helps it doesn't hurt

01:23:07 ◼   ► right but microsoft service studio is like what are you even doing you know what was the uh the

01:23:12 ◼   ► meme you're like a little baby in the 28-inch microsoft service studio that's how apple apple

01:23:19 ◼   ► should feel but uh am i the impression i get from the personification of apple is they still really

01:23:24 ◼   ► I really wish people didn't have to do such complicated things with computers.

01:23:27 ◼   ► It's like they're almost put out by people's actual needs.

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01:25:10 ◼   ► you very much to HelloFresh for sponsoring our show. I think you are

01:25:17 ◼   ► right that it is easier to advance the iPad probably than to lock down or dumb down the

01:25:26 ◼   ► Mac. And that is, you know, your argument about like, you know, leaving Mac people behind,

01:25:30 ◼   ► you know, how bad that would be versus bringing along iPad people, that makes a lot of sense.

01:25:34 ◼   ► I still think it's going to be hard--we still don't really know if the iPad can do these

01:25:38 ◼   ► things well and we still don't see massive efforts from Apple in the software department.

01:25:46 ◼   ► we see interesting efforts in the hardware department.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Like I mentioned in past shows,

01:25:52 ◼   ► the iPad Pro 9.7 is amazing.

01:25:55 ◼   ► And the 12.9 is also amazing for people

01:25:57 ◼   ► who like even bigger ones.

01:25:58 ◼   ► But the 9.7 being the average mainstream iPad,

01:26:02 ◼   ► it is amazing hardware.

01:26:04 ◼   ► The hardware is better than ever, as is usually the case.

01:26:08 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:26:09 ◼   ► The hardware is better than ever.

01:26:11 ◼   ► They're doing fine on the hardware.

01:26:13 ◼   ► But the software is harder to do

01:26:15 ◼   ► because it's a more significant

01:26:17 ◼   ► and trickier design challenge

01:26:20 ◼   ► and it takes a lot of investment

01:26:22 ◼   ► to massively move software around.

01:26:25 ◼   ► And there's also, there's two more issues

01:26:27 ◼   ► I wanna mention here that are, I think,

01:26:30 ◼   ► problems, big problems for the iPad.

01:26:32 ◼   ► One is the application ecosystem.

01:26:36 ◼   ► Apps that are used by professionals or content creation,

01:26:40 ◼   ► or even just a lot of productivity apps,

01:26:42 ◼   ► are just really, really mature and stable

01:26:45 ◼   ► and usually much more financially healthy on the Mac.

01:26:49 ◼   ► And when these applications have tried to move to iPad,

01:26:52 ◼   ► they've had pretty mixed success.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Some of them work, many of them don't.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Many of them work like UI-wise to some degree

01:27:00 ◼   ► with a lot of work, but then fail business-wise.

01:27:02 ◼   ► They don't sell enough, they don't bring in enough money,

01:27:04 ◼   ► and so the companies aren't interested

01:27:06 ◼   ► in investing in them further or can't afford

01:27:08 ◼   ► to bring over more of their apps or whatever else.

01:27:10 ◼   ► That's a huge problem with the App Store

01:27:13 ◼   ► and with customer expectations for pricing for these things.

01:27:17 ◼   ► And that significantly hurts the iPad.

01:27:20 ◼   ► And there's no end in sight to that, really.

01:27:23 ◼   ► There's been a couple of things Apple has tried

01:27:26 ◼   ► to maybe help move Needle on that a little bit,

01:27:28 ◼   ► like, oh, now you can do subscriptions.

01:27:29 ◼   ► And that's cool, but it doesn't seem

01:27:31 ◼   ► like that's really helping a lot.

01:27:33 ◼   ► - They could totally tie up the entire market

01:27:36 ◼   ► for pro users who routinely spend their day

01:27:38 ◼   ► using a 12.5 inch screen.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Like those people are like, "Great, I can now switch my work to the iPad and get it

01:27:43 ◼   ► all..."

01:27:44 ◼   ► Nobody does that.

01:27:45 ◼   ► Nobody sits at a desk doing any complicated app on a 12.5-inch screen.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Like the screen size alone, I feel like, is a disqualification.

01:27:51 ◼   ► Even if you can get Lightroom, like exactly Lightroom, exactly how it is, like it's, you

01:27:55 ◼   ► know, OS X on your iPad, would you choose to use it on a 12.5-inch screen when you could

01:27:59 ◼   ► use it on a 5K?

01:28:00 ◼   ► I'm like, "Nobody would."

01:28:01 ◼   ► It doesn't...

01:28:02 ◼   ► No, I disagree.

01:28:03 ◼   ► I disagree.

01:28:04 ◼   ► Unless you had to be portable, obviously, like the whole use case is portability.

01:28:06 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, I have to use it on the go," or whatever.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Like yes, portability is a thing, but portability is only a concern for people who are not currently

01:28:14 ◼   ► sitting in a dark room at a desk, plugging away at their computers.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Working as Pixar or working on Photoshop all day or even if you're just doing big CAD drawings

01:28:24 ◼   ► or just assembling a big presentation.

01:28:27 ◼   ► Some people need to be on the go and portability is important, yada, yada, yada.

01:28:31 ◼   ► But everything Marco's talking about, all these applications with strong financial foundations

01:28:35 ◼   ► and they charge a lot of money and people routinely upgrade and stuff.

01:28:40 ◼   ► I feel like the only company that is straddling that line is maybe Microsoft with its Office

01:28:43 ◼   ► applications, which I have a feeling is still subsidized by the other businesses, and Omni,

01:28:47 ◼   ► which is still selling expensive Mac apps and still making partner apps that also work

01:28:52 ◼   ► on iOS for when you want to do the same stuff but portably.

01:28:56 ◼   ► But almost everybody else is like, "How are you going to get that guy off the desk when

01:29:00 ◼   ► you're only offering them a 12.5-inch screen?"

01:29:03 ◼   ► There's so many remaining hardware barriers

01:29:05 ◼   ► to success in this area that Apple,

01:29:07 ◼   ► just like Margo said, he doesn't see an end in sight

01:29:08 ◼   ► 'cause he's like, I don't see Apple coming out

01:29:10 ◼   ► with a 28-inch iPad, it doesn't even make any sense,

01:29:12 ◼   ► it's not an iPad anymore.

01:29:13 ◼   ► You're right, it's not, it's something else,

01:29:14 ◼   ► but you're never gonna get those people off their desks

01:29:17 ◼   ► if you force them to use a portable form factor

01:29:19 ◼   ► all the time.

01:29:20 ◼   ► - And there's also a lot to be said

01:29:22 ◼   ► for using the same application from a 12-inch laptop

01:29:26 ◼   ► all the way up to a 30-inch display on a desktop.

01:29:29 ◼   ► You can use the same app, you can write one app

01:29:33 ◼   ► for the PC operating system, you can have it show up for all those screen sizes, and

01:29:37 ◼   ► you can have people both portably and at their desks using this one app. So it's easier to

01:29:42 ◼   ► develop that app, it's easier to sell it, people who only have to buy one copy of it.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Like, that's a huge advantage.

01:29:49 ◼   ► Steven: That's true, but I think you guys are overemphasizing your own needs and not

01:29:56 ◼   ► considering the needs of other kinds of users. And there is a distinct advantage to being

01:30:02 ◼   ► a single machine person, and that machine could be a 13-inch iPad.

01:30:07 ◼   ► There is a distinct advantage to never having to rearrange your windows every time you plug

01:30:12 ◼   ► in an external.

01:30:14 ◼   ► There's a distinct advantage to having a simpler experience.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Just because CAD doesn't work on a 12-inch screen, which I bet it could, but it certainly

01:30:24 ◼   ► wouldn't be as easy as a 40-inch screen, just because CAD doesn't doesn't mean everything

01:30:29 ◼   ► doesn't.

01:30:30 ◼   ► A lot of people value having one machine that they can carry anywhere.

01:30:34 ◼   ► I mean, look at me.

01:30:36 ◼   ► I, generally speaking, for most of my life have had a single laptop that was my everything

01:30:43 ◼   ► computer.

01:30:44 ◼   ► And yes, there were compromises for sure, but I preferred having one machine that always

01:30:50 ◼   ► had all of my stuff.

01:30:53 ◼   ► Always.

01:30:54 ◼   ► Because that was better to me, and that was a trade-off I was willing to make.

01:30:58 ◼   ► And just because a CAD operator or designer or what have you doesn't necessarily want

01:31:03 ◼   ► to make that trade, that doesn't mean that everyone doesn't want to make that trade.

01:31:08 ◼   ► And I mean, look at all the people that have MacBook Airs that may or may not plug them

01:31:12 ◼   ► into external monitors all the time.

01:31:14 ◼   ► Like those are small displays, they aren't even a retina.

01:31:16 ◼   ► They may or may not be dry.

01:31:18 ◼   ► They may or may not be dry too, you never know.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Keep your liquids away from your computer's kids.

01:31:23 ◼   ► So I'm not trying to say that you're wrong, John or Marco, but I think that there is a spectrum here that you're not really giving credit.

01:31:34 ◼   ► Marco's context was specifically about pro applications that are expensive, that have a foundation on the Mac, that sell to people who use them for work.

01:31:43 ◼   ► And those are the people who you can't pry away from their desks with a 12.5 inch screen.

01:31:48 ◼   ► Obviously, there's tons of people who are, again, like I said, they're just messing around

01:31:52 ◼   ► with Outlook and sending emails and doing web browsing and writing stuff up and talking

01:31:56 ◼   ► with other people in chat applications.

01:31:57 ◼   ► By all means, it's just a question of whether you want a laptop or a hardware keyboard,

01:32:01 ◼   ► all sorts of stuff like that.

01:32:02 ◼   ► Even within the realm of your single machine being an iPad with a 2TB flash drive in it,

01:32:07 ◼   ► you can sit down at your desk and connect it up to a massive 28-inch touchscreen and

01:32:10 ◼   ► have Server Studio when you're sitting and when you pick it up on an iPad.

01:32:13 ◼   ► That gets back to what Marco was saying, the ability to sell one app that scales to different

01:32:17 ◼   ► screen sizes like you can if you buy Lightroom on a PC and you have a 5k iMac or a 5k external

01:32:23 ◼   ► screen assuming your Wi-Fi router isn't nearby.

01:32:25 ◼   ► And you connect it to your laptop, right?

01:32:30 ◼   ► But again, that is an experience that the iPad does not offer at all.

01:32:34 ◼   ► You've got a 12.5 inch screen and that's what you're stuck with whether you're at a desk

01:32:37 ◼   ► or not.

01:32:38 ◼   ► You can't sell one version of your application that you can use on all those different screens.

01:32:42 ◼   ► No matter how you want to do it, whether you want to do single machine, multiple machine

01:32:44 ◼   ► or whatever, the iPad does not address that at all

01:32:47 ◼   ► for hardware reasons.

01:32:48 ◼   ► And that's all we're saying.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Specifically talking about this high-end people,

01:32:53 ◼   ► you will never dislodge them until the AR/VR realm comes

01:32:58 ◼   ► and things are being projected

01:32:58 ◼   ► under their retinas or something,

01:32:59 ◼   ► and then we don't care how big screens are,

01:33:01 ◼   ► and this is all a moot point.

01:33:02 ◼   ► But for now, anyway, the hardware limitations

01:33:06 ◼   ► of the iPad and the software and the application ecosystems

01:33:10 ◼   ► that Apple has chosen for itself

01:33:12 ◼   ► are necessarily limiting that.

01:33:13 ◼   ► Microsoft has made different choices, but they have so many other challenges that are

01:33:17 ◼   ► unrelated to the quality or potential of their products.

01:33:20 ◼   ► So we're still just sitting here patiently waiting for Apple to make its next progression

01:33:25 ◼   ► of the iPad, but it just seems like Apple needs to be dragged kicking and screaming

01:33:29 ◼   ► into the future.

01:33:31 ◼   ► And in the meantime, they've been chopping out the legs from underneath the Mac and hoping

01:33:34 ◼   ► people can get all their work done in even simpler situations on the Mac, and if they

01:33:38 ◼   ► can't, have fun dealing with a third-party monitor.

01:33:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:33:41 ◼   ► - Well, and then the other problem,

01:33:43 ◼   ► so I mentioned the applications issue,

01:33:46 ◼   ► which is what got us on this big tangent,

01:33:48 ◼   ► but the other problem, Casey,

01:33:49 ◼   ► is what we were just talking about.

01:33:51 ◼   ► It is really nice to have one machine for lots of reasons.

01:33:55 ◼   ► Lots of people have one machine for price concerns alone.

01:33:59 ◼   ► That's a huge concern,

01:34:00 ◼   ► because a decent spec'd iPad is not cheap.

01:34:04 ◼   ► Like, if you buy an iPad that's any good,

01:34:07 ◼   ► you're lucky to be out of there for less than 600 bucks,

01:34:09 ◼   ► And that's without any accessories.

01:34:10 ◼   ► If you actually want like a keyboard or a cover

01:34:12 ◼   ► or anything, it's so easy to spend like eight, $900

01:34:16 ◼   ► and just to get what you consider like a mid-range iPad