ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► It is currently 5 past 9 on Thursday night.

00:00:02 ◼   ► The Apple event was earlier today.

00:00:04 ◼   ► My beloved Virginia Tech Hokies are presently losing to the University of Pittsburgh.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I am watching it out of the corner of my eye on my iPad on the Watch ESPN app, which is

00:00:13 ◼   ► actually very nice.

00:00:15 ◼   ► And I am trying desperately to pay attention to what you guys are saying rather than watch

00:00:20 ◼   ► my beloved Hokies.

00:00:22 ◼   ► And so if I accidentally let out a cheer, maybe given that we're losing 2116, a not

00:00:29 ◼   ► happy cheer that Marco may have to bleep. My apologies, but this is what I do for you

00:00:34 ◼   ► listeners. That's how much I do.

00:00:35 ◼   ► It would be kind of incredible though to be like perfectly well timed. Like we're talking

00:00:38 ◼   ► about like, you know this new touch bar and Casey's like, "F***." You know, like that,

00:00:41 ◼   ► come on, that would be kind of amazing.

00:00:45 ◼   ► I wouldn't put it past me. So no promises.

00:00:49 ◼   ► All right. So we do have an infinitesimally small bit of follow up. Get—yes! All right,

00:00:56 ◼   ► - Within 10 yards, that's a good deal.

00:00:58 ◼   ► So we have an infinitesimally small amount to follow up.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - So for joke reference,

00:01:02 ◼   ► this is a football team you're watching?

00:01:04 ◼   ► - Yes, this is a football team I'm watching.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - I have to know which sport to make terrible jokes about.

00:01:08 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Oh, and isn't the World Series tonight as well,

00:01:12 ◼   ► actually, come to think of it?

00:01:13 ◼   ► One of the games, I mean.

00:01:14 ◼   ► - Probably.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Isn't it like every night?

00:01:17 ◼   ► I mean, that's the thing, baseball's like a DDoS attack.

00:01:20 ◼   ► It's just like every night there's baseball.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Like, you can't get away from baseball.

00:01:24 ◼   ► There's constantly games everywhere, every day.

00:01:27 ◼   ► That is amazing.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Well done, sir.

00:01:29 ◼   ► So we do have a bit of follow-up, and for the first time in like two or three weeks,

00:01:33 ◼   ► it's not me.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Jon, what have you been up to lately?

00:01:36 ◼   ► I did actually make it to an Apple store to check out the phones that were there.

00:01:40 ◼   ► It was a dedicated trip.

00:01:42 ◼   ► The only reason I went was to check out the phones.

00:01:45 ◼   ► We're going to start by talking about the iPhones.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it'll be quick.

00:01:49 ◼   ► It'll be quick.

00:01:50 ◼   ► We'll have plenty of time.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Here's a picture you took with one.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Here's another picture you took with one.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Uh-huh. Yeah. I was gonna send it to Tim, but I decided not to. And I was hoping it would clarify,

00:02:00 ◼   ► he had plenty, would clarify which one I wanted to get. It didn't really help me that much because...

00:02:05 ◼   ► Really?

00:02:06 ◼   ► Yeah, because I know I have a dilemma. I think I've kind of decided what I'm gonna do,

00:02:10 ◼   ► but you know, yeah. So the jet black one is grippier. It would look better if people didn't

00:02:16 ◼   ► touch it, but people touch it so it looks gross. It has little scratches on it, like,

00:02:19 ◼   ► But we already covered all of this ground.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I think what's going to end up happening is I'm going to experience the worst of all possible

00:02:27 ◼   ► worlds because what I think I'm going to do is buy a JetBlack one and try using it without

00:02:32 ◼   ► a case and then eventually decide that I can't handle it without a case because it looks

00:02:35 ◼   ► too ugly and you can't scratch too much and then buy a case for it later after it's already

00:02:39 ◼   ► damaged and scratched up and put a leather case on my scratched up JetBlack iPhone 7.

00:02:45 ◼   ► At least it wouldn't be a lie.

00:02:46 ◼   ► At least you wouldn't have this pristine phone under there that you think is totally unscratched,

00:02:51 ◼   ► but there's actually one scratch on the side.

00:02:53 ◼   ► I think I can keep it pretty well, but the thing is, I've never, all of my iPod touches

00:02:58 ◼   ► I've had cases for and my one iPhone I had a case for, so I'm just going to give it a

00:03:01 ◼   ► try without a case, because this one is grippy enough that I feel like, alright, let's give

00:03:05 ◼   ► it a try and can I handle the damage that is inevitably going to happen to this?

00:03:10 ◼   ► So I think I'm going to give it a try.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I almost bought one when I was there, but then I remembered that I'm not supposed to

00:03:14 ◼   ► to buy one until I can renegotiate some Verizon thing in like 10 days or something.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And they only had 256 gig models anyway, so I didn't get one.

00:03:22 ◼   ► But I think that's what I'm going to do.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Get a Jet Black one, try it without a case, see how long I last.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I predict that will not last long.

00:03:29 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Now are you planning to get AppleCare?

00:03:32 ◼   ► Oh yes, yes, I always do.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I bought myself this matte black iPhone 7, which I stand by a few weeks later is the

00:03:41 ◼   ► prettiest iPhone I think I've ever owned.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I really genuinely believe it's great looking.

00:03:46 ◼   ► It is slicker than anything you can imagine,

00:03:50 ◼   ► but it's really darn good looking.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Yes!

00:03:53 ◼   ► All right, field goal, that's a good sign.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Only down by two.

00:03:56 ◼   ► So anyway, so I got this, excuse me, this matte black iPhone.

00:04:01 ◼   ► - This is all staying in the show, you know.

00:04:04 ◼   ► - Oh, that's fine.

00:04:06 ◼   ► The listeners will take this journey with me.

00:04:08 ◼   ► So I got AppleCare.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I got this AppleCare+ for the very first time, I never got an AppleCare on anything before

00:04:15 ◼   ► to the best of my recollection, and I feel okay about this.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Meanwhile, later that same launch day, I order Erin an iPhone 7, no AppleCare+, because she

00:04:29 ◼   ► always uses a case.

00:04:30 ◼   ► We go to a football game this past weekend, and her phone falls out of her pocket because,

00:04:37 ◼   ► why wouldn't it?

00:04:38 ◼   ► slick as a bar of soap and

00:04:40 ◼   ► She didn't have her case on it yet. Ask me what happened to Erin's phone her three-week-old phone

00:04:46 ◼   ► Did you spill water on it? No, that would actually be kind of okay

00:04:50 ◼   ► Why did not have a case on it yet? How long does it take for the case installation process after after it is?

00:04:55 ◼   ► Purchased this is like you have to bring it to the dealer to put the case on you just take out of the box

00:05:00 ◼   ► You put it in the case

00:05:01 ◼   ► Well, the rust proof coating on the undercarriage is really expensive and it takes a long time now

00:05:06 ◼   ► What ended up happening was we had gotten an Apple case, but even the silicone cases are ridiculously expensive. Just wait

00:05:12 ◼   ► Just wait, the silicone cases are like 30 or 40 bucks

00:05:15 ◼   ► And so we had had one but we were thinking oh

00:05:17 ◼   ► Maybe we can find something that's effectively the same on Amazon hadn't opened up the Apple one in case we could return it

00:05:22 ◼   ► So what ended up happening was in order to attempt to save the $40

00:05:26 ◼   ► I think it was for the the silicone case that we had already purchased

00:05:31 ◼   ► We ended up now having $130 worth of damage that is yet to be fixed because it's like when your UPS was sitting next to

00:05:37 ◼   ► Your computer during the thunderstorm not plugged into it. Yes

00:05:39 ◼   ► The case sitting at home and in the box while you drop your phone. Mm-hmm. That's true. That's absolutely accurate. So

00:05:47 ◼   ► So get Apple cares really the moral of the story here or put the darn phone in a case and don't be like me

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00:07:15 ◼   ► I'm all fired up, ready to go. It's the Mac day. I'm so happy, but yet asterisks. But other for the most part, I'm happy.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It's Mac Day. We should start by talking about TV then. We should. To give an accurate simulation

00:07:31 ◼   ► of the experience of watching this presentation. Well, you know that with Jon on the phone,

00:07:35 ◼   ► we cannot skip anywhere. We're going to have to go chronologically. So let's start with the TV.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Things have happened for the Apple TV. And in fact, things have happened for more than just

00:07:45 ◼   ► the Apple TV. They've happened for iOS as well. The Mac, well, I mean, who cares about the Mac?

00:07:50 ◼   ► It's just a Mac event, so.

00:07:52 ◼   ► But yeah, there's an Apple TV app, or TV app, I should say, for iOS.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Not for the Mac, but for iOS.

00:07:58 ◼   ► And as well for the TV, of course.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And it's all things to all people, as long as you don't care about Netflix or Amazon.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's weird, kind of weird that they did TV stuff in this thing, although we kind

00:08:08 ◼   ► of knew that they were going to, you know, just off our features, no hardware features,

00:08:12 ◼   ► they haven't fixed the Apple TV remote or anything like that.

00:08:15 ◼   ► But they did want to talk about their new, you know, making the experience of actually

00:08:20 ◼   ► watching TV on your Apple TV better, which is, hey, a good thing to do.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Maybe don't spend so long on it in front of an event that's supposed to be about Mix,

00:08:26 ◼   ► but whatever.

00:08:27 ◼   ► But I think it's worth talking about because this presentation kind of showed that Apple

00:08:32 ◼   ► is still chipping away at Apple TV, making steady progress.

00:08:36 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I think it also highlighted all the ways that they're behind.

00:08:41 ◼   ► And I had a couple of thoughts in my head while watching this.

00:08:43 ◼   ► was that everything they were showing you,

00:08:46 ◼   ► like the unified interface TV,

00:08:49 ◼   ► convenient place to watch all your stuff,

00:08:51 ◼   ► easier than going to find like what app

00:08:53 ◼   ► was I watching that thing in or whatever,

00:08:54 ◼   ► you know, having a unified TV thing

00:08:56 ◼   ► keeps track of what you're watching,

00:08:57 ◼   ► even if you're using another app to watch it,

00:08:59 ◼   ► trying to bring everything together,

00:09:01 ◼   ► like their goal of, you know,

00:09:02 ◼   ► I forget what the words were,

00:09:04 ◼   ► I'll try to scrub to it in the video here,

00:09:06 ◼   ► but like a unified TV experience or whatever,

00:09:08 ◼   ► you can't, oh, what is it?

00:09:10 ◼   ► Unified TV experience, there you go.

00:09:12 ◼   ► you can't actually deliver on that

00:09:15 ◼   ► until you hit some critical mass of content.

00:09:18 ◼   ► And it's debatable what that critical mass of content is,

00:09:21 ◼   ► but obviously we would agree that if you just had HBO,

00:09:25 ◼   ► it's never gonna be a unified interface,

00:09:27 ◼   ► or if you didn't have some of the major sports,

00:09:29 ◼   ► it wouldn't be unified interface.

00:09:30 ◼   ► But like, I'm not quite sure what that is,

00:09:32 ◼   ► but I think Apple TV does not yet have

00:09:35 ◼   ► a critical mass of content.

00:09:37 ◼   ► And you may say that's based solely on Netflix

00:09:40 ◼   ► not participating in this.

00:09:41 ◼   ► That is enough at this point to say no,

00:09:44 ◼   ► because people want their Netflix,

00:09:46 ◼   ► they have exclusive content, people like it.

00:09:48 ◼   ► If that's not part of this experience, so much for Unified.

00:09:51 ◼   ► It's already bifurcated and it's just gonna splendor

00:09:53 ◼   ► even more for things like local sports that you can't get.

00:09:55 ◼   ► So the gold Unified experience is fine,

00:09:58 ◼   ► but as discussed many, many times in the past,

00:10:01 ◼   ► if you're not gonna do the omnivorous box thing,

00:10:03 ◼   ► you can never present a Unified interface

00:10:05 ◼   ► unless you literally contain all the content

00:10:08 ◼   ► someone wants to watch on TV.

00:10:10 ◼   ► And I don't think they're close to that for most people,

00:10:14 ◼   ► because there's always gonna be something

00:10:15 ◼   ► that's not in Apple TV

00:10:17 ◼   ► or not in the TV app and Apple TV for most people.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Few people who only watch the things that are in there,

00:10:22 ◼   ► fine, but like, if that's their goal,

00:10:24 ◼   ► they need to work on the business side of this

00:10:27 ◼   ► to figure out if we had these content providers,

00:10:32 ◼   ► we could get, you know,

00:10:33 ◼   ► we would cover 80% of the viewing public's needs

00:10:35 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And I'm sure that changes from country to country

00:10:37 ◼   ► and region to region,

00:10:38 ◼   ► but I don't think they're close now.

00:10:39 ◼   ► So that's depressing, but that's nothing to do with technology,

00:10:42 ◼   ► it has to do entirely with business deals.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And the next thing is the TV button,

00:10:47 ◼   ► the icon on the remote for the TV button,

00:10:51 ◼   ► like it's kind of the home button,

00:10:53 ◼   ► which when you press it, you go back to the screen

00:10:56 ◼   ► with all the little rectangles

00:10:57 ◼   ► where all your different apps are, right?

00:10:59 ◼   ► But that icon that's printed on the remote

00:11:02 ◼   ► is also the little glyph that's on the TV app.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And so in the demo they showed,

00:11:08 ◼   ► If you go to the TV app, launch it, and there's a bunch of things you're watching, and you

00:11:12 ◼   ► click on one of them like Game of Thrones, and you're chucked off into the HBO app where

00:11:15 ◼   ► you're watching Game of Thrones, and then you hit the TV icon, it takes you back to

00:11:20 ◼   ► the TV application, not back to the screen with a bunch of little rectangles.

00:11:23 ◼   ► And it's kind of like this button and this thing go together, and it should have been

00:11:30 ◼   ► there from the beginning, but it could be retconned in, but either way, it kind of changes

00:11:34 ◼   ► the fundamental experience, I think for the better, kind of in the same way that the Apple

00:11:38 ◼   ► watch experience was changed, it's like, look, people don't want to go back to basically

00:11:41 ◼   ► springboard on their Apple TV all the time. It's supposed to be a television watching

00:11:44 ◼   ► device and if you're watching television, the television watching should be the central

00:11:48 ◼   ► thing. Like when you hit the TiVo button, you go back to, well, that's not a good example

00:11:52 ◼   ► because it always takes you back to the stupid main TiVo central, whatever. Anyway, re-centering

00:11:58 ◼   ► the center of gravity of Apple TV on television I think is a good idea. But then, now all

00:12:04 ◼   ► All of a sudden the Apple TV reframed in this way less as a like humongous iPad that you

00:12:09 ◼   ► don't touch.

00:12:10 ◼   ► You know, like it's just like a big iPad, you know, less like a, Oh, springboard is

00:12:12 ◼   ► the heart of everything, right?

00:12:15 ◼   ► Springboard is not the heart of everything.

00:12:17 ◼   ► The TV app is the heart of Apple TV because it's all about watching TV.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And sometimes you might want to play games or whatever, but really you want to be using

00:12:22 ◼   ► the TV app and reframed like that.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Then again, you see how far behind on there, where are the user profiles?

00:12:29 ◼   ► How can I switch to like my kids thing where all their apps are going?

00:12:32 ◼   ► Oh, there's like up next or whatever.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Yeah, fine, if you live alone and only one person ever watches TV shows at the same time, that's great.

00:12:37 ◼   ► How do I switch to, you know, a different account with a different Apple ID or with the same Apple ID?

00:12:42 ◼   ► All these things that Netflix has long since figured out, because when you launch a Netflix app,

00:12:45 ◼   ► you can pick who you want to be and you have your own queue of stuff and you have your own thing that you've watched last,

00:12:49 ◼   ► and I'm not going to go up to it and find out the next thing that's up next for me is like, you know,

00:12:54 ◼   ► some Disney Channel show that my daughter was watching that I don't want to watch, right?

00:12:58 ◼   ► they're so far behind just the Netflix app,

00:13:01 ◼   ► let alone other full television experience,

00:13:05 ◼   ► you know, attempts to be a unified thing.

00:13:07 ◼   ► So I'm glad Apple TV is making progress.

00:13:10 ◼   ► I think they're moving in the right direction,

00:13:12 ◼   ► but they're still behind and the remote sucks.

00:13:15 ◼   ► - Well, how do you really feel?

00:13:17 ◼   ► You know, I was really excited to see the live sports stuff

00:13:21 ◼   ► and granted, as we've already discussed,

00:13:23 ◼   ► I am not at all watching college football right now,

00:13:27 ◼   ► But being able to just say to Siri,

00:13:30 ◼   ► put on the Virginia Tech game or what have you,

00:13:33 ◼   ► that's really powerful and really awesome.

00:13:36 ◼   ► - When it works.

00:13:37 ◼   ► - When it works, which I mean, well,

00:13:39 ◼   ► I'm going on faith that it generally does.

00:13:41 ◼   ► But that's really exciting.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And that's, like you said,

00:13:45 ◼   ► it's movements in the right direction.

00:13:48 ◼   ► But I just have a hard time thinking that for me,

00:13:52 ◼   ► this is going to be much of an improvement

00:13:54 ◼   ► because generally speaking, when I'm using the Apple TV,

00:13:57 ◼   ► which I do darn near daily, I'm using Plex,

00:14:02 ◼   ► or I'm using Netflix, or occasionally I'm using

00:14:05 ◼   ► the standard music app.

00:14:07 ◼   ► It's very rare I am doing anything else.

00:14:10 ◼   ► So having to go, I guess how this would work

00:14:14 ◼   ► is I would hit the TV what was once the home button

00:14:17 ◼   ► to go to the TV app, and then I guess hit it again

00:14:19 ◼   ► to go to Springboard, maybe?

00:14:21 ◼   ► - I don't know if it, it might take you back

00:14:23 ◼   ► the Springboard thing if you haven't first launched Apple TV. I have no idea where. We

00:14:26 ◼   ► saw a demo with two seconds worth of interaction. We'll find out when we get the OS update,

00:14:30 ◼   ► I suppose.

00:14:31 ◼   ► But anyway, if going back to Springboard is via the Apple TV app, or I'm sorry, the TV

00:14:37 ◼   ► app always, that's actually going to be a disappointing change for me. But I hope, I

00:14:43 ◼   ► really, really hope that in the future the Netflix and Amazon stuff gets squared away

00:14:48 ◼   ► so that they can be included because

00:14:50 ◼   ► Amazon is going to be important to me soon because of the Grand Tour

00:14:54 ◼   ► Like I said, Netflix is where we watch pretty much any TV that isn't on, you know, terrestrial television

00:15:00 ◼   ► and Plexus for movies and other things so I

00:15:04 ◼   ► Feel like this is step in the right direction, but it's not there yet. And man, I'm hopeful though

00:15:09 ◼   ► I'm super hopeful even though I don't expect anything to actually happen

00:15:12 ◼   ► And Apple has a lot of work to do if it wants to

00:15:15 ◼   ► get these things in like get Netflix on board if this is the unified TV experience you need to have Netflix in there get Amazon to

00:15:21 ◼   ► Have a thing like integrate make sure the people who should be integrating do make sure Plex is integrated

00:15:27 ◼   ► Like if you really want to be unified you have to reach out and it's really hard to get Netflix on board when Apple keeps

00:15:32 ◼   ► Making emotions about oh, we're gonna be our make our own content like they're doing that reality show and Tim Cook keeps talking about

00:15:37 ◼   ► Well, you know, we're looking into funding content

00:15:40 ◼   ► to be like making your own content is directly competing with Netflix and

00:15:44 ◼   ► Amazon who are also making their own content and I I think it's easier to

00:15:50 ◼   ► work with something like HBO which also makes its own content because HBO has no

00:15:52 ◼   ► pretensions to make a digital platform for television watching like they're not

00:15:56 ◼   ► selling little pucks that you connect to your TV they don't sell network services

00:15:59 ◼   ► they're all about the content so that is a little bit more of a straightforward

00:16:02 ◼   ► thing but anyway if this is their plan they they got a lot of work to do so

00:16:06 ◼   ► So while we're waiting for the new Apple TV with a non-crappy remote to come out, hopefully

00:16:11 ◼   ► all of Apple's little business people are scurrying around trying to get these deals

00:16:15 ◼   ► to happen, doing whatever it takes.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Or just don't be a TV platform.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Like if you're going to play in this game and try to provide a unified interface, then

00:16:21 ◼   ► provide a unified interface.

00:16:22 ◼   ► I don't want to see, you know, ten years from now three or four islands of content with

00:16:27 ◼   ► their own apps and their own ecosystems totally separate from each other.

00:16:30 ◼   ► It's annoying.

00:16:31 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Anything else about the TV?

00:16:33 ◼   ► - Oh, I know Marco, you are really excited

00:16:35 ◼   ► to talk about it some more, but.

00:16:37 ◼   ► - Oh yes, I care so much about television.

00:16:40 ◼   ► - You know, you say that, and I know to some degree

00:16:42 ◼   ► you're being silly, but don't you watch all of your TV

00:16:45 ◼   ► through the Apple TV?

00:16:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't care about it whatsoever.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Like, to me, the Apple TV is something that I,

00:16:53 ◼   ► I kinda treat the Apple TV the way a lot of our friends

00:16:56 ◼   ► who love iPads so much treat the Mac.

00:16:59 ◼   ► It's a thing that I use, I choose it as the best

00:17:02 ◼   ► of a whole bunch of tools I don't care about.

00:17:05 ◼   ► And I use it and I don't really think about it.

00:17:07 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of passion for TV or TV related things

00:17:11 ◼   ► or TV related boxes.

00:17:13 ◼   ► The Apple TV, the new Apple TV box is largely fine.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It could be better in a lot of ways.

00:17:20 ◼   ► I think it will always just be fine.

00:17:23 ◼   ► The old one was always just fine also.

00:17:26 ◼   ► The Apple TV as a product line has been around

00:17:27 ◼   ► for quite some time and it has always been fine.

00:17:31 ◼   ► so I expect it to continue to be fine,

00:17:33 ◼   ► for me to continue to use it on a regular basis,

00:17:36 ◼   ► but really just never think about it at all,

00:17:38 ◼   ► except when I'm using it and it doesn't work.

00:17:40 ◼   ► - I think you'll appreciate the up next thing,

00:17:41 ◼   ► because if you actually use that TV app,

00:17:43 ◼   ► it's an easier way to get back,

00:17:44 ◼   ► what was I doing before on the Apple TV

00:17:46 ◼   ► if it hasn't retained state on the thing,

00:17:48 ◼   ► to be able to just go to that.

00:17:50 ◼   ► - Except that the things that I watch most often

00:17:52 ◼   ► are Netflix and Plex, which I'm pretty sure

00:17:55 ◼   ► will probably never be in it.

00:17:57 ◼   ► - Will not be in the, yeah.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - I hear ya.

00:17:59 ◼   ► You know, it's the kind of thing,

00:18:01 ◼   ► like I don't have cable, so I don't have a cable login,

00:18:03 ◼   ► so I don't use any apps that require a cable login.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I do have HBO Go now, whichever one.

00:18:09 ◼   ► I have one of the HBOs.

00:18:11 ◼   ► - Now.

00:18:11 ◼   ► - But I've actually been, thank you,

00:18:13 ◼   ► I've actually been thinking about canceling it,

00:18:14 ◼   ► 'cause we hardly ever watch anything there.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Like we watch stuff in bursts,

00:18:17 ◼   ► and you can always just turn it off and turn it on again.

00:18:19 ◼   ► - Touchdown, oh no, nevermind, damn.

00:18:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Regardless, I don't think I'm going to possibly

00:18:27 ◼   ► see this TV app or if I do it'll be

00:18:29 ◼   ► Something that gets in my way that that you know

00:18:32 ◼   ► I have to like click the the fake home button one more time out of to get to what I really want to watch

00:18:36 ◼   ► Alright, anything else on the Apple TV is your team losing it?

00:18:40 ◼   ► They are losing I thought we had a touchdown which would have put us somewhat comfortably in the lead, but I was mistaken. Mmm

00:18:46 ◼   ► Riveting, you know, we forgot to mention something

00:18:49 ◼   ► They Apple opened the keynote with a really lovely video on accessibility. Yeah, I mean that genuinely

00:18:55 ◼   ► I completely forgot to mention that. I thought that was really cool. And they said that they're going to

00:19:01 ◼   ► Or I guess I think it's already there. I just haven't looked at it yet there. They're going to have like a top-level

00:19:06 ◼   ► so to speak accessibility page on their website, which we should check out and we'll find it and put a link in the show notes

00:19:13 ◼   ► But I thought that was a really great video and and in many ways

00:19:17 ◼   ► I think that's Apple at its best and and I just wanted to applaud them for it because I thought that that was really good stuff

00:19:25 ◼   ► Apple has always been really good with accessibility stuff.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Like, you know, they haven't been perfect, by all means,

00:19:31 ◼   ► and anybody who uses these technologies will tell you

00:19:33 ◼   ► the various times they haven't been perfect,

00:19:34 ◼   ► but compared to what almost everyone else

00:19:37 ◼   ► in the industry does, Apple's accessibility support

00:19:39 ◼   ► is just world class, it's so good.

00:19:43 ◼   ► And what you get out of the box with Apple products

00:19:45 ◼   ► for things like screen readers and click control,

00:19:48 ◼   ► you know, all sorts of various technologies,

00:19:51 ◼   ► a lot of times this kind of stuff is available

00:19:53 ◼   ► on other platforms, but only if you buy additional software

00:19:56 ◼   ► or have additional hardware even.

00:19:58 ◼   ► What you get with Apple out of the box

00:20:03 ◼   ► with all their products accessibility-wise

00:20:05 ◼   ► is just ridiculously good compared

00:20:07 ◼   ► to everything else in the market.

00:20:08 ◼   ► - I think the most important feature of these videos

00:20:10 ◼   ► is aside from making people think Apple is a nice company

00:20:14 ◼   ► and doing all the PR effect that specifically

00:20:16 ◼   ► we're like, oh, you go to these video shows,

00:20:18 ◼   ► you're such a nice company.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Well, A, they are a nice company,

00:20:20 ◼   ► and B, the other side effect of this is that it exposes people who don't use these features,

00:20:27 ◼   ► people like me, don't use these features for the most part, to the fact that they exist

00:20:31 ◼   ► and how they work. I had no idea that the camera on the iPhone will speak to you about

00:20:36 ◼   ► who's in the frame and whether it finds a face and how big the face is so a person who

00:20:41 ◼   ► can't see can take pictures with the camera. When do regular people experience these features?

00:20:45 ◼   ► I don't think most people go into accessibility and turn on accessibility features created

00:20:49 ◼   ► for people who have bad or no vision or can't hear or so on and so forth, just experiment

00:20:53 ◼   ► with it, right? Most people don't see these features at all. And so when you say accessibility,

00:20:58 ◼   ► maybe people don't even know what you mean. You're like, "Well, what do you mean? How

00:21:01 ◼   ► can a blind person use an iPhone? You got to see the screen, right?" People just don't

00:21:03 ◼   ► know, right? And these things, I think, show what marketers said, how far these products

00:21:11 ◼   ► go to be usable in situations that regular people don't consider because they don't have

00:21:15 ◼   ► if you don't have these limitations, you don't know what affordances are there to help you with them until you need them.

00:21:23 ◼   ► As we all get old, for example, I'm sure most of us will be cranking up the text size, and all of a sudden we'll appreciate that feature that we never touched before.

00:21:32 ◼   ► My parents used their iPhone 6-size device in the big mode, where I forget what it's called, but everything is bigger.

00:21:39 ◼   ► It's like zoomed in, it's a non-native res.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And that feature is meaningless to me now, but eventually as my vision gets worse, suddenly

00:21:47 ◼   ► it'll be like, "Oh, I'm glad that's there."

00:21:49 ◼   ► These videos do a good job of highlighting to both users and developers that this stuff

00:21:53 ◼   ► is actually there, so that when they do eventually get older and start, you know, their sensory

00:22:00 ◼   ► perception starts changing, they'll know to go and find those, and they'll feel good about,

00:22:05 ◼   ► you know, using a product line that offers these features.

00:22:08 ◼   ► And for developers, it's reminding them it's not just about putting labels on your things.

00:22:12 ◼   ► There's other, you know, go the extra mile.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Like, see what we did with the camera app.

00:22:16 ◼   ► If you have a camera app, you could do something like this too.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Your application would be more accessible.

00:22:21 ◼   ► All right.

00:22:22 ◼   ► What else was spoken about pre-Mac stuff?

00:22:26 ◼   ► There was nothing that pertinent, right?

00:22:29 ◼   ► Didn't they talk about iPhones briefly?

00:22:30 ◼   ► They talked about how well the Apple Watch is selling but not giving any numbers, I don't

00:22:34 ◼   ► think.

00:22:35 ◼   ► And, yeah, I mean, who cares?

00:22:36 ◼   ► Let's talk about Macs.

00:22:37 ◼   ► about Macs. It's Mac Day. They talk about iOS penetration of iOS 10 versus the latest

00:22:44 ◼   ► version of Android or whatever. Let's be honest, they were killing time. I don't know why they

00:22:48 ◼   ► were killing time. They didn't have, like, it's not as if... There's one thing to have

00:22:52 ◼   ► filler. And the second thing to just make what should have been a much shorter presentation

00:22:56 ◼   ► way too long. But they did. We forgot to mention something about the Apple TV. Minecraft is

00:23:01 ◼   ► on the Apple TV. Is that... I'm not trying to be snarky. Is that something we care about?

00:23:06 ◼   ► Is that a big deal or do you think no one will use that?

00:23:08 ◼   ► I don't know squat about Minecraft.

00:23:10 ◼   ► - I don't think that's that.

00:23:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's a big deal in that Minecraft is super popular

00:23:15 ◼   ► and tons of people will buy it and play it.

00:23:17 ◼   ► But Minecraft is available

00:23:19 ◼   ► on like every platform in the universe.

00:23:21 ◼   ► So the fact that it's on Apple TV now,

00:23:23 ◼   ► yeah, you have parody, good.

00:23:24 ◼   ► But, you know.

00:23:26 ◼   ► - All right, so I guess I've run out of reasons to stall

00:23:28 ◼   ► other than to say that tech is up 2221 over pit.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Let's talk about the Mac.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Overall, I feel like this is okay.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I think this was good.

00:23:41 ◼   ► I certainly have been left,

00:23:42 ◼   ► there's certain things that I'm disappointed by.

00:23:45 ◼   ► But in the grand scheme of things,

00:23:48 ◼   ► these new MacBook Pros look really darn good.

00:23:51 ◼   ► Really, really good.

00:23:52 ◼   ► I'm amped about the, what do they call it, the touch bar.

00:23:55 ◼   ► I don't know if I'll like it,

00:23:59 ◼   ► but tentatively, it looks good.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I'm excited, I'm excited to try it,

00:24:03 ◼   ► even though I don't plan on buying one and I'm not going to get one from work for two

00:24:07 ◼   ► years. But anyway, I'm excited to try it. I am sad, although completely unsurprised,

00:24:13 ◼   ► that they don't have a Magic Keyboard update that included it. I understand that leaving

00:24:19 ◼   ► that screen on would surely take a not insignificant amount of battery power, but the Magic Keyboard

00:24:25 ◼   ► is rechargeable now, so who really cares? If I have to charge it once...

00:24:28 ◼   ► You connect it with a wire and then you wouldn't have that problem.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I wouldn't want to be an animal, but I could be.

00:24:35 ◼   ► But no, I mean, I would love to see a Magic Keyboard that had this touch bar on it.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I don't expect it'll happen, but it would be neat.

00:24:42 ◼   ► And I say that in part because at home I use a desktop, I use an iMac.

00:24:46 ◼   ► And certainly today there was no real talk about anything for the desktop, but I can't

00:24:52 ◼   ► say I'm surprised by that either.

00:24:54 ◼   ► I mean, what are they really going to do to the iMac?

00:24:56 ◼   ► There's not really any new chips, are there?

00:24:58 ◼   ► And outside of maybe a new fancy keyboard, wired or wireless, or maybe I guess you could

00:25:03 ◼   ► put different ports on it, you could put USB-C ports on it, but that's not that remarkable

00:25:09 ◼   ► to me.

00:25:10 ◼   ► So I'm not too surprised that there's not a lot of desktop activity.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Nobody really thought the Mac Pro would be updated, am I right?

00:25:16 ◼   ► I mean, come on.

00:25:17 ◼   ► We were talking about this last week, Marco said the same thing.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Like, if we're going to update the iMac at all, it's just USB-C ports, and we didn't

00:25:23 ◼   ► mention another fancy keyboard, but...

00:25:25 ◼   ► Well, that's not entirely true.

00:25:27 ◼   ► I believe the Kaby Lake CPUs are available,

00:25:30 ◼   ► roughly, for the iMac.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I'm not sure if they're in volume, really, yet,

00:25:33 ◼   ► but technically, new CPUs are basically available

00:25:36 ◼   ► for the iMac now.

00:25:38 ◼   ► - I know, but none of us expected the iMac to come,

00:25:40 ◼   ► or the Mac Pro, or the Mac Mini.

00:25:42 ◼   ► You expected the iMac, really?

00:25:43 ◼   ► - The iMac has been updated the last two falls.

00:25:46 ◼   ► It made sense.

00:25:47 ◼   ► It is right on schedule for the iMac to be updated.

00:25:49 ◼   ► I'm guessing it probably is not far off.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I mean, I wouldn't expect it next week,

00:25:54 ◼   ► but I'm guessing it's not gonna be another year

00:25:56 ◼   ► until the next iMac update.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's probably gonna be a few months, maybe.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:26:00 ◼   ► You're more optimistic than I am.

00:26:01 ◼   ► Like I said in the last show,

00:26:03 ◼   ► I think they should keep updating iMac,

00:26:05 ◼   ► but I have dim hopes that they will.

00:26:07 ◼   ► 'Cause I mean, I don't understand the reasoning

00:26:11 ◼   ► behind the cadence of doing iMac updates so faithfully

00:26:14 ◼   ► and then just dropping it,

00:26:15 ◼   ► but I totally expected not to have any desktop Macs

00:26:18 ◼   ► at this thing at all.

00:26:19 ◼   ► - Well, the thing is, doing an update

00:26:22 ◼   ► when it's a fairly minor processor

00:26:25 ◼   ► and motherboard chipset update, it is not that hard.

00:26:28 ◼   ► It doesn't take that much engineering work for Apple.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Not anymore engineering work than any other update is.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And it used to be, not that long ago,

00:26:37 ◼   ► that every time there was a new chipset out

00:26:40 ◼   ► for either the MacBook, the MacBook Pro,

00:26:42 ◼   ► the MacBook Air, or the iMac, it got updated

00:26:45 ◼   ► within a month of that new chip coming out.

00:26:47 ◼   ► So it's only been in these recent years

00:26:49 ◼   ► where there's been Apple skipping generations

00:26:52 ◼   ► and Intel having weird delays.

00:26:54 ◼   ► It's only been in those years that we started having

00:26:56 ◼   ► these things where Apple is kind of like deciding

00:26:59 ◼   ► whether they wanna bother updating things.

00:27:01 ◼   ► I mean, it used to just be assumed, of course,

00:27:02 ◼   ► they would update their main computers

00:27:04 ◼   ► with the new chips that came out.

00:27:06 ◼   ► And so the iMac line of chips has not had those problems

00:27:09 ◼   ► that all the mobile ones have had with Intel.

00:27:12 ◼   ► So the iMacs have actually been updated

00:27:13 ◼   ► on a regular basis until right now,

00:27:16 ◼   ► and it's a little questionable why it wasn't there now,

00:27:19 ◼   ► and I guess the answer will not be apparent

00:27:22 ◼   ► until whenever it is updated next,

00:27:23 ◼   ► then we'll figure out like, you know, why did it not get updated now, I guess?

00:27:27 ◼   ► Well, I think I have an answer, though, because if you look at Wikipedia, which is clearly

00:27:31 ◼   ► the source of all human knowledge and never incorrect, the Kaby Lake Wikipedia entry says

00:27:36 ◼   ► that it began shipping to manufacturers and OEMs in the second quarter of this year. Mobile

00:27:40 ◼   ► chips have started shipping with more of Kaby Lake desktop chips to be released in the coming

00:27:44 ◼   ► months or early next year. So what makes you think that they're available for the iMac

00:27:48 ◼   ► right now?

00:27:49 ◼   ► I don't know. Random people on Twitter told me. I could be wrong.

00:27:52 ◼   ► - You want random people in the chat room

00:27:53 ◼   ► who are pointing out that if they are available,

00:27:55 ◼   ► it's almost certainly not the ones

00:27:56 ◼   ► with the fancy Iris graphics that Apple always likes.

00:27:59 ◼   ► - Fair enough, all right, so that could be the reason then.

00:28:01 ◼   ► So it could be as simple as that.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Also, I think it's worth pointing out,

00:28:05 ◼   ► like we heard from a lot of people,

00:28:07 ◼   ► because like Intel officially quote launched Kaby Lake,

00:28:09 ◼   ► like a month or two ago or whatever it was,

00:28:11 ◼   ► and we immediately heard from everybody on Twitter saying,

00:28:14 ◼   ► "How could Apple release Skylake laptops now

00:28:17 ◼   ► "and not Kaby Lake?"

00:28:18 ◼   ► And of course the reason why is 'cause when Intel

00:28:19 ◼   ► announces a launch, it means nothing.

00:28:21 ◼   ► It's like Intel's basically saying,

00:28:23 ◼   ► "These chips will be available sometime,

00:28:25 ◼   ► "maybe in the future."

00:28:27 ◼   ► And the actual time that you can ship computers

00:28:29 ◼   ► with the right ones for those computers

00:28:31 ◼   ► might be two to 12 months away from that time period.

00:28:36 ◼   ► But anyway, Kaby Lake I don't think is a big deal.

00:28:39 ◼   ► From everything that we've read about it,

00:28:41 ◼   ► from what we know about it so far,

00:28:42 ◼   ► it seems like it is not really something

00:28:45 ◼   ► that you should be really waiting up for.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Sky Lake was a big deal, Kaby Lake really isn't.

00:28:49 ◼   ► I also have another important update for you.

00:28:52 ◼   ► It's 2921 Tech.

00:28:53 ◼   ► The good guys are winning.

00:28:55 ◼   ► - Is this a basketball game you're watching?

00:28:57 ◼   ► There's a lot of scoring going on here.

00:28:59 ◼   ► - Well, you know, football,

00:29:00 ◼   ► sometimes it's a more offensive than defensive game.

00:29:03 ◼   ► - Are you voting for the hoodies or what are you doing?

00:29:06 ◼   ► - Hokies, H-O-K-I-E-S.

00:29:07 ◼   ► - It was like that ringer of an Auburn game they had

00:29:11 ◼   ► where Auburn was up like 50 something.

00:29:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:15 ◼   ► - If only. - You get to do that

00:29:16 ◼   ► when you're CEO, I guess.

00:29:17 ◼   ► - Right.

00:29:18 ◼   ► - Okay, so no desktop, so no iMac updates.

00:29:22 ◼   ► It's unclear whether or not Kaby Lake is available.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Tipster's saying yes, I'm seeing no.

00:29:27 ◼   ► - I mean, it doesn't matter if it's available.

00:29:29 ◼   ► It's those lead times to getting it into computers.

00:29:31 ◼   ► And Apple recently has not been that spry

00:29:33 ◼   ► about like, "As soon as the chips are ready,

00:29:35 ◼   ► "we're gonna be ready to go."

00:29:36 ◼   ► Like that's kind of more of the old Apple

00:29:38 ◼   ► and this new one is like,

00:29:39 ◼   ► "Don't even wake me up until they're available in volume

00:29:42 ◼   ► "and the next generation is about to come out."

00:29:45 ◼   ► Yeah, then maybe we'll incorporate them

00:29:46 ◼   ► into a computer of some kind.

00:29:48 ◼   ► When Apple delays on things, and this is probably Intel delay here, but when Apple delays on

00:29:54 ◼   ► things, what I'm saying is we don't really have to make excuses for Apple anymore. They

00:30:00 ◼   ► are the biggest corporation in the world most of the time. They have tons of resources that

00:30:04 ◼   ► they can choose to devote to updating their computers to new components that come out

00:30:07 ◼   ► for them. It isn't that hard. It doesn't take a lot of time or money relative to what

00:30:11 ◼   ► they make from them and what they have as a company. So we don't need to excuse them.

00:30:15 ◼   ► It is up to them to update things, and it is my opinion they should not be slackers

00:30:21 ◼   ► about that or skip generation simply because they don't feel like it.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:30:25 ◼   ► So sadness about, well maybe not sadness about the iMac, I think we can all agree that's

00:30:29 ◼   ► reasonably expected.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Sadness but not surprised about the, what is that little Mac called that doesn't come

00:30:37 ◼   ► with any devices attached to it, it's not got a display.

00:30:40 ◼   ► It's like a little one.

00:30:41 ◼   ► It's like a tiny Mac.

00:30:42 ◼   ► The Mac Pro.

00:30:43 ◼   ► No, no, no, not the circular one.

00:30:45 ◼   ► not the circular one it's like more of a rounded rect it's a Mac Pro

00:30:49 ◼   ► Apple TV you're thinking. Ah shoot I can't remember the name Mac

00:30:53 ◼   ► Small? Mac Small maybe? No it's much smaller than that

00:30:56 ◼   ► Ah man it'll come to me. Oh I think it's the Mac Air. The Power Mac G4 Cube

00:31:00 ◼   ► yes that's it. Oh is that it okay yeah so no Power Mac G4 Cube updates

00:31:04 ◼   ► no trash can updates thank God

00:31:08 ◼   ► because I wouldn't even pay attention to this show anymore I'd just be watching my

00:31:12 ◼   ► football game

00:31:12 ◼   ► Actually, maybe they should have updated the Mac Pro.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Isn't that what you're doing?

00:31:16 ◼   ► Speaking of the Mac Pro, I was surprised at how many random angry people there were on

00:31:22 ◼   ► Twitter about there being no Mac Pro update, which shows that there's this weird Venn diagram

00:31:27 ◼   ► between people who understand that the Mac Pro hasn't been updated in forever, but don't

00:31:32 ◼   ► follow the stuff enough to know that there was no way in hell a new Mac Pro was coming

00:31:35 ◼   ► out in this thing.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So it's kind of weird that the anger has spread beyond the people who were ever actually going

00:31:40 ◼   ► to buy one to just the general public being embarrassed for Apple for having this quote

00:31:43 ◼   ► unquote "pro computer" that pretty soon the watch will be faster then.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Well because you know even if you're not about to buy a Mac Pro the fact that they have this

00:31:52 ◼   ► high-end that the highest end computer in their lineup that has been so neglected.

00:31:56 ◼   ► High-end air super air quotes.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Yes.

00:31:59 ◼   ► But well it's still I mean if you do parallel stuff it's still the fastest it's fast it's

00:32:03 ◼   ► on no other benchmark but on that.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Barely barely or you get like five iPads.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Yes.

00:32:09 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:32:10 ◼   ► Probably not even that many.

00:32:11 ◼   ► But the reason this matters is what you argue, John,

00:32:14 ◼   ► in your super car, halo car thing.

00:32:17 ◼   ► That like, it matters whether Apple is treating

00:32:20 ◼   ► its high-end well if you are a Mac user at all.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Because if Apple is neglecting significant portions

00:32:28 ◼   ► of its user base for the Mac lineup,

00:32:30 ◼   ► and you are a Mac user, or you are heavily invested

00:32:33 ◼   ► in the Mac as a platform,

00:32:35 ◼   ► that should be a warning sign for you.

00:32:36 ◼   ► That, like, that should set off warning bells

00:32:38 ◼   ► say like, wait a minute, maybe the health of my platform,

00:32:41 ◼   ► or the future of my platform is not as healthy

00:32:44 ◼   ► or guaranteed as I would like.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Because if they're neglecting this whole big area of it,

00:32:49 ◼   ► maybe there are worse things to come,

00:32:51 ◼   ► or maybe they aren't putting the right resources into it.

00:32:54 ◼   ► So it is totally relevant, whether you buy a Mac Pro or not,

00:32:57 ◼   ► how Apple treats their pro customers.

00:33:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm just saying they crossed over the point now

00:33:02 ◼   ► where it has moved beyond and now is affecting

00:33:06 ◼   ► a broader base of people. It's kind of like as if they were still selling the original Dodge Viper,

00:33:12 ◼   ► like the original original Dodge Viper. It had not changed in any way. And it would be like,

00:33:17 ◼   ► "Well, it's a great halo car for Dodge or Chrysler." But eventually it becomes an embarrassment,

00:33:22 ◼   ► because the original Viper was a terrible car in so many ways. And it just can't compete with today's

00:33:27 ◼   ► supercars. It would be like, "Oh, your halo car for Dodge can be beaten off the line by a Volkswagen

00:33:35 ◼   ► GTI now. I mean, it's just be—or even a lesser car. It stops being a halo car when

00:33:42 ◼   ► it loses in single-threaded performance to the two run-of-the-mill computers.

00:33:47 ◼   ► So anyway, so no Mac Pro, not surprising. No Mac Mini, not surprising. No iMac, almost

00:33:55 ◼   ► entirely not surprising. That leaves us with the portable Macs. So the MacBook Pro, as

00:34:02 ◼   ► I was talking about a few minutes ago, MacBook Pros looking really good. Aesthetically it's

00:34:08 ◼   ► looking really good. I think what they've done is really cool. The touch bar looks great.

00:34:14 ◼   ► We can go through this line by line. But man, it's to the point that between this external

00:34:21 ◼   ► display, which actually we should talk about as well, that I have at work, the 4K display

00:34:25 ◼   ► I have at work, and these new MacBook Pros, I'm starting to doubt my newfound love for

00:34:33 ◼   ► my desktop iMac existence, because I love this 5K iMac.

00:34:36 ◼   ► I love it to death.

00:34:37 ◼   ► But I just can't help but think to myself, "Well, you know, I could get one of these

00:34:40 ◼   ► 4K or maybe the fancy 5K LG display.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I could get one of these new MacBook Pros."

00:34:46 ◼   ► Life could be pretty good that way.

00:34:48 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:34:49 ◼   ► One of you guys is probably upset about this, so talk me out of spending money I don't have

00:34:54 ◼   ► on a computer I don't need.

00:34:56 ◼   ► - I'm probably the most upset,

00:34:57 ◼   ► but Marco can go first and say why he likes them.

00:34:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:00 ◼   ► - So I will go back to your earlier point,

00:35:03 ◼   ► which I will, I'm probably not done talking

00:35:04 ◼   ► about this point yet,

00:35:06 ◼   ► but basically the touch bar looks really cool.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I'm sure it's going to be a really big deal

00:35:11 ◼   ► for people when they are working on their laptops,

00:35:13 ◼   ► and no doubt that is a lot of people a lot of the time.

00:35:17 ◼   ► However, it is not on every laptop.

00:35:20 ◼   ► Apple sells a lot of the MacBook Air class computers.

00:35:25 ◼   ► And so for everyone who bought the MacBook

00:35:27 ◼   ► adorable slash MacBook One,

00:35:29 ◼   ► or for everyone who buys the old,

00:35:32 ◼   ► or kind of still for sale but old MacBook Air,

00:35:35 ◼   ► or the new, whatever we're gonna call

00:35:38 ◼   ► the low end configuration of the MacBook.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Names in the chat that I liked a lot so far

00:35:43 ◼   ► are MacBook Escape, or the Effinbook.

00:35:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:47 ◼   ► I think MacBook Escape is part of my favorite one.

00:35:50 ◼   ► but oh, the Air Pro and the F and Pro were also very good.

00:35:55 ◼   ► But MacBook escape is really good.

00:35:56 ◼   ► Anyway, so all those people, that's a lot of Mac buyers,

00:36:01 ◼   ► not to mention all the desktop buyers.

00:36:02 ◼   ► And granted, I know laptops are more popular than desktops,

00:36:04 ◼   ► so I know the desktop buyers don't count for as much,

00:36:06 ◼   ► but all those people and the entire Mac user base

00:36:11 ◼   ► that has a computer already before today

00:36:14 ◼   ► does not have a touch bar.

00:36:17 ◼   ► And even if you are one of the people

00:36:20 ◼   ► who has one of the new MacBook Pros with the touch bar

00:36:24 ◼   ► that is only actually accessible to you

00:36:27 ◼   ► when you are using it in its regular mode.

00:36:29 ◼   ► So not in clamshell mode at a desk,

00:36:32 ◼   ► not as a second screen with a main screen

00:36:35 ◼   ► and an external keyboard and mouse.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Only when you're using those particular models of computer

00:36:39 ◼   ► and only when you're using them right on them

00:36:41 ◼   ► in normal quote laptop mode.

00:36:45 ◼   ► That is when the touch bar can be used.

00:36:48 ◼   ► It is going to be a really great convenience

00:36:51 ◼   ► for the people who use it in that way,

00:36:53 ◼   ► but I don't think it's going to radically take over

00:36:56 ◼   ► the Mac experience yet and become like a must-have accessory

00:37:00 ◼   ► until it is available across the entire lineup,

00:37:03 ◼   ► laptops and desktops in some form.

00:37:06 ◼   ► That might become more interesting then,

00:37:08 ◼   ► when you can kind of assume that all modern Macs have it,

00:37:11 ◼   ► but you can't assume that today

00:37:13 ◼   ► as either a user or a developer.

00:37:14 ◼   ► So I think it's gonna take a while

00:37:16 ◼   ► before that becomes a must-have thing.

00:37:18 ◼   ► It will be a convenience from day one,

00:37:20 ◼   ► and surely, Apple's apps having it built in is nice.

00:37:24 ◼   ► That's a lot of apps that people use on the Mac,

00:37:28 ◼   ► are Apple's built-in apps, so that's good.

00:37:30 ◼   ► But it's gonna take a while.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Like when the first Retina MacBooks came out in 2012,

00:37:36 ◼   ► it took a long time for most of what you saw on screen

00:37:40 ◼   ► to be Retina.

00:37:41 ◼   ► It took a couple years at least for apps and websites

00:37:43 ◼   ► and everything to update.

00:37:45 ◼   ► For the touch bar, it's gonna take a while

00:37:47 ◼   ► before you can really get into using it

00:37:49 ◼   ► with many of your apps and everything.

00:37:50 ◼   ► So I would say, for you Casey, looking at these today

00:37:53 ◼   ► and feeling bad you don't have one,

00:37:55 ◼   ► it's the kind of thing where if you're buying a new laptop,

00:37:58 ◼   ► if you were buying one anyway,

00:38:00 ◼   ► then I think you should consider the touch bar

00:38:03 ◼   ► as an important thing to have, probably.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And all this should be prefaced by saying

00:38:09 ◼   ► that none of the three of us were at the event,

00:38:11 ◼   ► none of the three of us have review units,

00:38:13 ◼   ► So none of the three of us have ever touched these

00:38:15 ◼   ► or handled these or seen these in real life.

00:38:17 ◼   ► So all this could be out the window the first time

00:38:20 ◼   ► that the world kind of gets more experience with these

00:38:23 ◼   ► and we know more about them and how they work in reality.

00:38:25 ◼   ► But I would say probably that if you're buying today

00:38:29 ◼   ► or if you recently bought something

00:38:30 ◼   ► and you don't want to buy another thing,

00:38:32 ◼   ► you don't really have to feel bad yet

00:38:34 ◼   ► that you don't have this touch bar

00:38:35 ◼   ► because it's gonna be a while before apps can assume

00:38:38 ◼   ► that a lot of people have it and it's gonna be a while

00:38:40 ◼   ► before a lot of apps take advantage of it.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And we still don't know how much of a must-have thing

00:38:45 ◼   ► it will be in practice until these things are out

00:38:48 ◼   ► for a while and we can kind of look more objectively

00:38:49 ◼   ► after it's kind of, after the cool has kind of rubbed off

00:38:52 ◼   ► and we've either used them ourselves

00:38:54 ◼   ► or we know people who have used them

00:38:55 ◼   ► and we've gotten some long-term opinions

00:38:57 ◼   ► from ourselves or others about how useful

00:38:59 ◼   ► this actually is in practice.

00:39:01 ◼   ► So for now, you don't need to feel bad.

00:39:03 ◼   ► - You should feel bad not because you don't have

00:39:05 ◼   ► a touch bar, but because you don't have a MacBook Pro

00:39:09 ◼   ► with like modern internals, it's way faster than the one you have now. So that bad feeling remains.

00:39:15 ◼   ► So question for both of you, and I'll start with Marco, do you think that a keyboard with a touch

00:39:22 ◼   ► bar will ever exist for a desktop Mac? Or do you think it will always, always, always be for

00:39:30 ◼   ► laptops? And if yes, if you think it will one day exist for desktop Mac, would Apple just completely

00:39:38 ◼   ► Go bananas and make it wired only or do you think it would be just basically a revision of the smart keyboard as it is

00:39:43 ◼   ► today I

00:39:44 ◼   ► Honestly don't know

00:39:46 ◼   ► I'm leaning towards no and and no one's gonna like the reason why but I'm leaning towards no and

00:39:53 ◼   ► You probably do we all know the reason I'm leaning towards no because you know a I think

00:40:01 ◼   ► putting the Touch Bar as it exists today into something the size and price of the Magic Keyboard

00:40:08 ◼   ► I think would be very challenging and there's probably a lot of constraints there many of which are self-imposed by Apple

00:40:15 ◼   ► But I basically don't like I don't see them wanting to make their keyboard bigger

00:40:19 ◼   ► I don't see the market having much tolerance for them making their keyboard more expensive

00:40:23 ◼   ► It's already pretty expensive, and I don't really see them

00:40:26 ◼   ► You know wanting to have multiple models of keyboard that they sell

00:40:30 ◼   ► I mean they can barely sell peripherals at all anymore.

00:40:33 ◼   ► So, you know, I don't see that happening.

00:40:35 ◼   ► But ultimately the biggest reason why I don't honestly see this happening,

00:40:39 ◼   ► even if they could get over the technical stuff,

00:40:41 ◼   ► - Here it comes. - is that I just don't think Apple

00:40:43 ◼   ► gives a damn about desktops anymore.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And that's not to say they're never gonna make one again.

00:40:48 ◼   ► But I just think the focus, I mean, look,

00:40:51 ◼   ► you can barely get Tim Cook to pretend to care about the Mac.

00:40:55 ◼   ► At all. All Macs.

00:40:57 ◼   ► You know, there's a reason why Tim didn't say a lot today about the Mac.

00:41:01 ◼   ► You know, that was delegated to Phil and Craig because they, I'm pretty sure, care deeply

00:41:06 ◼   ► about the Mac.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Like, they seem like they're really, like, Mac champions inside the company at the very

00:41:11 ◼   ► high level.

00:41:12 ◼   ► But Tim, I don't think is, I don't think Tim cares.

00:41:16 ◼   ► I don't think he even hides that very well.

00:41:18 ◼   ► Like, I don't think he even honestly tries.

00:41:20 ◼   ► I don't think Tim cares.

00:41:23 ◼   ► And so as long as the company is led by Tim,

00:41:26 ◼   ► I don't see the Max making substantial advances.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And what I see instead is what we see today,

00:41:34 ◼   ► which is they're gonna keep doing what they can do

00:41:39 ◼   ► to move things along occasionally

00:41:41 ◼   ► to be thinner, lighter, better, faster, right?

00:41:44 ◼   ► That's what they do.

00:41:46 ◼   ► But I don't see a time under Tim Cook's rule,

00:41:49 ◼   ► which is probably gonna be long,

00:41:51 ◼   ► I don't see a time of this happening here

00:41:55 ◼   ► where Tim is going to decide that the Mac

00:41:58 ◼   ► really needs a lot of effort put into it

00:42:00 ◼   ► and it needs major resources and major prioritization.

00:42:04 ◼   ► I just don't see that happening.

00:42:06 ◼   ► So I don't think they're going to put in

00:42:10 ◼   ► the lots of work that it would take

00:42:12 ◼   ► and possible profit cannibalization of other products

00:42:16 ◼   ► to meaningfully enable this on desktops.

00:42:19 ◼   ► I just don't see it happening. I wish it would, but I just don't.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Let's assume for just one moment that you're right, that Tim either doesn't care about

00:42:29 ◼   ► the Mac, or let's even go so far as to say he freaking hates the Mac.

00:42:33 ◼   ► I'm not saying he hates it. What I'm saying is, he's obviously not a Mac person. I'm pretty

00:42:40 ◼   ► sure he has said on the record multiple times that he does his work on iPads anyway. So

00:42:44 ◼   ► So I basically, I don't think he uses Macs very often,

00:42:46 ◼   ► if at all, and I think he is very much profit focused,

00:42:51 ◼   ► and he looks at where Apple can make the most profit

00:42:54 ◼   ► and diverts resources there,

00:42:56 ◼   ► and things that make still good profit but just less

00:43:00 ◼   ► are kind of out of his field of vision,

00:43:03 ◼   ► I think, most of the time.

00:43:04 ◼   ► So basically, I just don't think Tim gives a lot of thought

00:43:07 ◼   ► to the Mac, and I don't think it's a priority for him.

00:43:10 ◼   ► - All right, so let's assume that's true.

00:43:11 ◼   ► in any degree of aggressiveness. He hates the Mac or maybe he just doesn't really care.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Maybe it's just another line item, like you said. Let's assume any one of those is true.

00:43:21 ◼   ► He's a pretty smart man from everything we can tell. Don't you think he would trust in

00:43:28 ◼   ► his lieutenants and those who do care for the Mac to carry it forward? Like, I don't view Tim

00:43:35 ◼   ► as the thing standing in the way of the Mac being this perfect device that you're excited to

00:43:41 ◼   ► buy a new one every six months or what have you.

00:43:44 ◼   ► I really don't think Tim's the problem here.

00:43:46 ◼   ► I think it's just that Apple is doing what they think is best.

00:43:51 ◼   ► I think you had said, Marco, laptops are the max that everyone buys.

00:43:57 ◼   ► We're weird buying desktops, and super weird for YouTube buying cheese graters and trash

00:44:02 ◼   ► cans.

00:44:03 ◼   ► So I don't think Tim is the problem.

00:44:05 ◼   ► I think it's just that this is where the users are, so why not cater to the 90%?

00:44:10 ◼   ► - Well, it's debatable that there's even a problem.

00:44:13 ◼   ► I mean, the job of the CEO is to be forward-looking.

00:44:15 ◼   ► It's like, is this a product line

00:44:16 ◼   ► that's in ascension or in decline?

00:44:18 ◼   ► And clearly, desktop PCs and laptop PCs

00:44:20 ◼   ► in that whole market are in decline

00:44:22 ◼   ► compared to smartphones and possibly even tablets.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And so he's trying to be forward-looking.

00:44:26 ◼   ► - But not for Apple.

00:44:28 ◼   ► That's the thing.

00:44:29 ◼   ► They're not in decline for Apple.

00:44:30 ◼   ► They're in decline for everyone else,

00:44:32 ◼   ► but until Apple stopped updating them for three years,

00:44:34 ◼   ► they weren't in decline for Apple.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Like, Apple has this entire market

00:44:37 ◼   ► that it could keep taking share from.

00:44:39 ◼   ► It's a big market.

00:44:40 ◼   ► it was declined relative to the rest of their business,

00:44:42 ◼   ► 'cause the rest of their business was growing much faster.

00:44:43 ◼   ► At this point, service revenue is more than Mac revenue,

00:44:46 ◼   ► right, because service revenue is growing,

00:44:47 ◼   ► and guess what, it just passed Mac revenue, right?

00:44:49 ◼   ► So if you are looking where the next big,

00:44:51 ◼   ► where is the next big product that's gonna go

00:44:54 ◼   ► on a big growth trajectory gonna come from,

00:44:57 ◼   ► it's not the PC, it's not the Mac,

00:44:59 ◼   ► that's what Apple currently thinks.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And so, again, it's debatable whether long-term,

00:45:03 ◼   ► this is an incorrect choice.

00:45:04 ◼   ► I think we're in the painful period now where it's like,

00:45:06 ◼   ► well, look, are you gonna do Macs

00:45:07 ◼   ► or you're not gonna do Macs?

00:45:08 ◼   ► Apple's like, "Oh no, we're gonna do Macs."

00:45:11 ◼   ► But they're doing them not with the gusto,

00:45:13 ◼   ► meaning not with the investment that they used to do them.

00:45:16 ◼   ► And to get back to Casey's question,

00:45:18 ◼   ► do I think they're gonna do a keyboard

00:45:21 ◼   ► with a touch bar on it?

00:45:24 ◼   ► The Apple that was still investing heavily in the Mac,

00:45:28 ◼   ► where the Mac was like super important and central,

00:45:31 ◼   ► even as the iPhone was growing and the iPod

00:45:34 ◼   ► and all these other businesses

00:45:35 ◼   ► were obviously where the big growth was,

00:45:38 ◼   ► not too many years ago, Apple was still heavily investing

00:45:41 ◼   ► in the Mac because those growing ones started off small

00:45:44 ◼   ► and the iPod one did a hump and went back down, right?

00:45:47 ◼   ► And so it was like, well, the Mac, you know,

00:45:48 ◼   ► we gotta keep investing in the Mac

00:45:50 ◼   ► 'cause the iPod looks great

00:45:51 ◼   ► and it's this big business for us,

00:45:52 ◼   ► but actually we could see it's on the way back down.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Oh, the iPhone's looking great

00:45:55 ◼   ► and it's on its way back up.

00:45:56 ◼   ► But if you were to look at those line graphs,

00:45:58 ◼   ► the Mac was still in the mix.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Certain point, the phone just took off

00:46:03 ◼   ► and now every single graph is like,

00:46:05 ◼   ► here's the iPhone company

00:46:06 ◼   ► And then there's some lines down there

00:46:09 ◼   ► near the horizontal axis.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And those lines are like service revenue, Macintosh,

00:46:13 ◼   ► like just crap like that.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And once that happens, it's hard to justify.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Is it the right thing for the CEO to do

00:46:21 ◼   ► to continue to invest that much proportionally

00:46:24 ◼   ► in the Mac as you used to?

00:46:25 ◼   ► And it's clear that they're not, right?

00:46:27 ◼   ► And so the old Apple, now I'm saying like good old days,

00:46:29 ◼   ► but the old Apple with the old Apple mix of products

00:46:31 ◼   ► and revenue and profits, right?

00:46:33 ◼   ► that Apple would have had touch bar keyboards

00:46:36 ◼   ► in this presentation today, like guaranteed.

00:46:39 ◼   ► Because like Marco said,

00:46:41 ◼   ► what the hell is the point of this thing?

00:46:42 ◼   ► Even people who have laptops,

00:46:43 ◼   ► when they sit them at their desk,

00:46:45 ◼   ► you know, you're not like,

00:46:47 ◼   ► laptops are bad ergonomically to sit in front of all day.

00:46:50 ◼   ► The keyboard should not be touching the display.

00:46:52 ◼   ► Like it's like that because it's a portable device.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And you know, when you use it portably,

00:46:55 ◼   ► that's what you got to go with.

00:46:55 ◼   ► But if you're sitting at a desk,

00:46:57 ◼   ► your laptop is off to the side,

00:46:59 ◼   ► you have a second monitor or your laptop is up on a stand,

00:47:01 ◼   ► but then you can't use that keyboard

00:47:02 ◼   ► and you're using a big keyboard.

00:47:03 ◼   ► like the touch bar can't be part of the quote unquote Mac experience if the only

00:47:07 ◼   ► place that exists is on a keyboard attached to a laptop period.

00:47:10 ◼   ► So the old Apple would have had it because the old Apple was investing in the Mac

00:47:13 ◼   ► much more for comprehensible reasons, not like out of spite or meanness or

00:47:18 ◼   ► whatever. Now, if you were to have this discussion with Tim Cook and try to

00:47:22 ◼   ► convince him that it is important to continue to invest in the Mac, you can't

00:47:25 ◼   ► say it's because the Mac is going to be proportionally a larger percentage of

00:47:29 ◼   ► Apple's profit and revenue in the future because it probably isn't.

00:47:31 ◼   ► but you could make the argument that even though it looks small, and the argument I

00:47:34 ◼   ► think we've made, even though it looks small and it's not going to come out of nowhere

00:47:38 ◼   ► and become a big thing, it is, as many people have pointed out on Twitter and said it with

00:47:42 ◼   ► various metaphors or whatever, the foundation of so many other things that Apple does. You've

00:47:46 ◼   ► got the HaloCar factor for having the highest performance computing device. You've got the

00:47:51 ◼   ► fact that the development for the platform that's most important to your company is done

00:47:55 ◼   ► on Macs, right? You've got the historical loyalty and fan base. You've got the alpha

00:48:01 ◼   ► geeks creatives type angle, which we can talk about when we talk about the Microsoft Studio.

00:48:06 ◼   ► There are lots of reasons not having to do with how much they sell or how much their

00:48:10 ◼   ► profit is that the Mac is really important. And I could make that argument pretty strongly

00:48:14 ◼   ► to Tim Cook. And I bet people are trying to make that argument. But that argument relies

00:48:18 ◼   ► on a lot of assumptions, or you have to be convinced that if this and this and this,

00:48:21 ◼   ► therefore this, you can't back it up by saying, look, I don't even need to convince you of

00:48:25 ◼   ► like human psychology or customer loyalty or other things like that.

00:48:30 ◼   ► I can just show you the lines on a graph with dollar signs attached to them and you can

00:48:33 ◼   ► be convinced.

00:48:34 ◼   ► You have to go to a more touchy feely argument to convince Tim Cook to invest more in the

00:48:38 ◼   ► Mac than they are currently investing.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And I'm hoping the people who are making that argument inside Apple are winning and that

00:48:45 ◼   ► what we're just seeing here is a course correction that they haven't quite corrected all the

00:48:50 ◼   ► way and a couple of the Intel delays mess things up and they'll be re-certainted in

00:48:54 ◼   ► next year when they've inevitably produced these Skylake Mac Pros someday, maybe, possibly.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Is it inevitable?

00:49:01 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know. I backtracked from the inevitable saying the potential Mac Pro that we

00:49:08 ◼   ► might—you know, they could still turn this around and sort of get back on an even keel, but

00:49:12 ◼   ► the lack of a touch bar external keyboard is a perfect example of how Apple is just not

00:49:19 ◼   ► investing as much in the Mac as they used to. And it's, I think it is an argument to be had of whether that is

00:49:25 ◼   ► smart or not smart. But as fans of Macs, as all of us on this podcast are friends of Macs,

00:49:30 ◼   ► it is painful to see the product that used to be

00:49:32 ◼   ► so important to the company being so much less important now.

00:49:37 ◼   ► I don't know if I would go that far at all. Just because

00:49:42 ◼   ► they're not updating desktop Macs with the speed or efficacy that you two approve of doesn't mean they don't care about

00:49:49 ◼   ► the Mac. Or any Mac. The laptops weren't updated forever either. Well, yeah, but I

00:49:54 ◼   ► think a lot of that was, obviously none of us know, but if I were to wager a

00:49:59 ◼   ► guess, that was relying on Intel to give them a decent reason to make an update,

00:50:04 ◼   ► or perhaps, let's assume that wasn't the issue, maybe they were just trying to get

00:50:09 ◼   ► this pretty darn fancy Touch Bar tech and the fancy Touch ID tech, which

00:50:15 ◼   ► apparently is basically a mini Apple watch within the device, within the MacBook Pro.

00:50:21 ◼   ► That can't have been easy. So I don't think it's fair to characterize Apple as not caring

00:50:29 ◼   ► about the Mac or caring that much less about the Mac.

00:50:32 ◼   ► It's not about caring. It's investment. It's not care. It's not personify the company.

00:50:37 ◼   ► It's like, how much money and resources do you put into this? It's investment. It's not

00:50:41 ◼   ► like we max feelings are hurt or whatever it's a choice of out resource

00:50:44 ◼   ► allocation right and that's the that's the argument you're making towards us

00:50:47 ◼   ► and I feel like like the perfect example is like even if we buy everything you're

00:50:51 ◼   ► saying about the touch bar and and being difficult or whatever it's apparently

00:50:55 ◼   ► ready to announce now they could have announced keyboards right alongside it

00:50:58 ◼   ► but you know if they felt that was important part of the Mac experience and

00:51:01 ◼   ► I have and speaking of the touch bar I want to the next topic on a move to is

00:51:04 ◼   ► specifically about touch bar but if we can get done gnashing our teeth over the

00:51:08 ◼   ► Mac investment. Well, but that's the thing is I really don't, I guess there's no way

00:51:13 ◼   ► that I'm going to convince you that you're wrong and there's certainly no way you're

00:51:16 ◼   ► going to convince me that I'm wrong, but I just, for the record, there's one of the three

00:51:20 ◼   ► of us that thinks that there are investments happening to the Macs. I am, as it sits right

00:51:25 ◼   ► now, I feel like I'm more desktop Mac guy than a portable Mac guy, but I am really excited

00:51:32 ◼   ► about the MacBook Pros, and that is what most Mac users use. Almost everyone uses MacBook

00:51:39 ◼   ► Pros. Or perhaps the Airs, which at this point are nears makes no difference to the Pros,

00:51:43 ◼   ► I mean the Pro is effectively an Air. I don't think it's fair to characterize this as a

00:51:47 ◼   ► lack of investment. I don't think it's fair of the three of us to say, "Oh, putting a

00:51:52 ◼   ► mini Apple Watch next to a mini Retina display on a box that's physically smaller, that has

00:51:58 ◼   ► better battery life, that is quicker. These are all worthwhile investments. And I don't

00:52:04 ◼   ► think it's fair that a bunch of nerds are getting butthurt about the fact that this

00:52:08 ◼   ► isn't the thing that they wanted Apple to invest in.

00:52:11 ◼   ► No, that's not what this is about at all. Even if we ignore all of what we think Apple's

00:52:15 ◼   ► philosophy is and how they choose to invest because we don't know where their money goes

00:52:18 ◼   ► because we don't have that level of granularity. Ignore all that and just treat Apple as a

00:52:21 ◼   ► black box and look at the products they release and when they release them. The release cadence

00:52:26 ◼   ► of Macs has changed. They release them less often, which means that the existing ones

00:52:31 ◼   ► that you can buy are worse relative to other things, and they also keep selling the old

00:52:35 ◼   ► ones for much longer. That is arguably a fact. You could say that's not because they're not

00:52:40 ◼   ► investing as much. In fact, they're investing even more, but that dictates that they have

00:52:44 ◼   ► to have bigger gaps between products. That is probably the only argument you can make,

00:52:47 ◼   ► because it actually costs so much more money to do the Touch Bar than the other things

00:52:50 ◼   ► they did with Macs. But I don't really buy that either. The MacBook Pros that were out

00:52:53 ◼   ► there on the market were behind. The 15 inch MacBook Pro was an embarrassing product to

00:52:58 ◼   ► sell us like this used to be the best like in the presentation like the best MacBook

00:53:01 ◼   ► Pro now we made it even better. They used to be able to do that pitch because when they

00:53:04 ◼   ► replaced them the old one was still pretty good. The old one was a piece of crap. What

00:53:08 ◼   ► the hell was it? Ivy Bridge or Haswell whatever the hell it had in it?

00:53:11 ◼   ► It was Haswell. Like it's ridiculous like that's not and that's we can't we can argue

00:53:16 ◼   ► about what the cause of that was but on the outside we can see that's the case. That 15

00:53:20 ◼   ► inch MacBook Pro was not a pro product was not the worth the price they were buying for

00:53:23 ◼   ► It wasn't Mac Pro levels of bad, but it was bad.

00:53:26 ◼   ► And this is their flagship product.

00:53:27 ◼   ► And so of course when they make a new one,

00:53:28 ◼   ► it's thinner, faster, better.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Like, yeah, that's great.

00:53:31 ◼   ► It's thinner, faster, better.

00:53:32 ◼   ► We totally agree with all that.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Of course, when they compare it to the old models,

00:53:35 ◼   ► it's like, oh, come on.

00:53:36 ◼   ► Look how much faster it is than our old Mac Pro Pro.

00:53:38 ◼   ► You know why?

00:53:38 ◼   ► 'Cause your old Mac Pro Pro sucked.

00:53:39 ◼   ► That's why it's so much better.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Like, of course, like, we know, like, and again,

00:53:44 ◼   ► I know this is sounding negative,

00:53:46 ◼   ► I'm gonna get even more negative in a little bit.

00:53:48 ◼   ► These are good machines, right?

00:53:51 ◼   ► But what I'm arguing against Casey is,

00:53:53 ◼   ► I'm trying to convince you that regardless of what we think about these machines, which

00:53:56 ◼   ► I think they're pretty darn good, and we'll talk about that eventually, I promise.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I don't think you can say that Apple is putting the same amount of resources into the Mac

00:54:07 ◼   ► as they used to, because the proof is in the products that they release and when they release

00:54:11 ◼   ► them.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And we can argue about what the causes are and stuff like that, but I don't think there's

00:54:14 ◼   ► an argument to be had that they're doing the same as they used to.

00:54:17 ◼   ► It's not fair to say that they're putting the same amount of investment in as they used

00:54:22 ◼   ► I concur. But what I'm hearing, which maybe is a misinterpretation on my part, is what I'm hearing is,

00:54:29 ◼   ► "Oh, they're ignoring the Mac. The Mac is on life support. Nobody cares about the Mac. Tim Cook hates the Mac."

00:54:34 ◼   ► Like, I don't see that.

00:54:36 ◼   ► You said all those things, not us.

00:54:38 ◼   ► That's true.

00:54:40 ◼   ► I don't know. I feel like you're crapping all over the You collective, you, and not just you two.

00:54:46 ◼   ► I mean, I saw a lot of just grumbling going on today

00:54:50 ◼   ► on Twitter, like I feel like everyone's just getting grumpy

00:54:53 ◼   ► about, oh, touchdown tech.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Everyone's getting grumpy about the Mac.

00:54:57 ◼   ► And now I'm back, I'm back, I'm back.

00:54:59 ◼   ► - Wait, tech's the one that you like, right?

00:55:01 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:55:02 ◼   ► - Or is it the two Ds or whatever?

00:55:04 ◼   ► - That's exactly right, yeah.

00:55:06 ◼   ► So everyone's getting so upset about,

00:55:09 ◼   ► oh, they're not investing enough in the Mac.

00:55:11 ◼   ► And I just, personally, I don't see it that way at all.

00:55:14 ◼   ► I agree, Jon, that certainly there was a dark period.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Perhaps I shouldn't be sweeping the dark period under the rug as quickly or as emphatically

00:55:23 ◼   ► as I am right now.

00:55:25 ◼   ► But to me, this is a clear sign that the Mac matters.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And I mean, this has got to have been—like this Touch Bar, which I really need to shut

00:55:34 ◼   ► up so we can move on to that—the Touch Bar has got to be an unbelievably cool piece of

00:55:38 ◼   ► technology.

00:55:39 ◼   ► and Touch ID as well, that's got to have been hard to create.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And again, Touch ID apparently is being controlled by a mini watchOS.

00:55:48 ◼   ► And I can't imagine getting an ARM chip that's controlling the Touch ID to cooperate

00:55:54 ◼   ► and behave nicely with the Intel chip that's controlling the rest of the Mac.

00:55:58 ◼   ► That can't have been terribly easy.

00:56:00 ◼   ► That must have been difficult to do.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Can they not have a little bit of time to do that?

00:56:06 ◼   ► - They can if they just release other Macs in between.

00:56:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and here's the thing, by the way, Casey,

00:56:11 ◼   ► it's worth pointing out here,

00:56:13 ◼   ► there's this kind of distortion here

00:56:14 ◼   ► that I see a lot in corporate culture,

00:56:16 ◼   ► especially in Tim Cook's Apple,

00:56:19 ◼   ► that it is indeed a lot of work what they did.

00:56:23 ◼   ► The team worked really hard on this, they did.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And they should be commended in some kind of prize ceremony

00:56:29 ◼   ► for how hard they worked on a technical level.

00:56:30 ◼   ► That's very impressive.

00:56:31 ◼   ► However, that doesn't either A, absolve them

00:56:35 ◼   ► of the rest of the neglect of the Mac line

00:56:38 ◼   ► and the neglect of this line in the meantime,

00:56:40 ◼   ► that was clearly bad management of the lineup

00:56:43 ◼   ► and of the whatever the supply chain,

00:56:45 ◼   ► whatever led to these long spans

00:56:47 ◼   ► where these things haven't updated

00:56:48 ◼   ► and whatever's leading to the Mac Pro and Mac Mini

00:56:50 ◼   ► and iMac still not being updated.

00:56:53 ◼   ► So it doesn't absolve that.

00:56:56 ◼   ► And also, you don't get automatic reward

00:56:59 ◼   ► just for trying something difficult,

00:57:01 ◼   ► just for trying something complicated and new.

00:57:03 ◼   ► it might well be that the touch bar

00:57:06 ◼   ► might end up being awesome.

00:57:08 ◼   ► We might look back on this time and say,

00:57:09 ◼   ► "Man, we can't believe that we ever lived without this.

00:57:12 ◼   ► "This was such a revolution."

00:57:14 ◼   ► First of all, we don't know that yet.

00:57:15 ◼   ► It might and it might not,

00:57:17 ◼   ► and it doesn't absolve them of the other problems.

00:57:20 ◼   ► Like, there are some downsides to these new releases,

00:57:22 ◼   ► which we'll get to, but one of the biggest ones

00:57:24 ◼   ► that people are upset about is that these cost

00:57:25 ◼   ► a lot more than they used to, and that's not insignificant.

00:57:29 ◼   ► And things were taken away.

00:57:31 ◼   ► So, you know, certainly there's going to be people

00:57:34 ◼   ► who are upset because in certain ways,

00:57:37 ◼   ► they got worse for them.

00:57:39 ◼   ► And it doesn't matter.

00:57:40 ◼   ► Like, if you were buying these things,

00:57:42 ◼   ► if you were buying MacBook Airs in bulk

00:57:45 ◼   ► and you had to have them hit a certain price point

00:57:47 ◼   ► and now you can't do that anymore, then the fact that--

00:57:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can 'cause they're still selling them.

00:57:51 ◼   ► - Well, but you know, basically everyone has,

00:57:56 ◼   ► whenever Apple releases something new,

00:57:58 ◼   ► these days especially, but this is not that new.

00:58:01 ◼   ► There's always pluses and minuses, right?

00:58:04 ◼   ► There's like, you move mostly steps forward,

00:58:07 ◼   ► but usually a couple steps back or sideways.

00:58:10 ◼   ► And in this release, there is a lot of cool new stuff.

00:58:13 ◼   ► They did get seemingly really impressively thin and light.

00:58:17 ◼   ► The battery is still a question mark,

00:58:21 ◼   ► but their reported specs are still reasonable.

00:58:24 ◼   ► So I assume the battery life won't be terrible.

00:58:26 ◼   ► I assume it'll be pretty good.

00:58:27 ◼   ► And so if they're able to achieve this thin and lightness with those battery gains, then

00:58:32 ◼   ► that's great.

00:58:33 ◼   ► So that's great improvement, right?

00:58:35 ◼   ► The touch bar is mostly great.

00:58:37 ◼   ► It is probably going to be bad to lose escape keys for a lot of people.

00:58:41 ◼   ► I think the idea that only nerds use the escape key I think is wrong.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I think lots of people –

00:58:47 ◼   ► But it's still there.

00:58:48 ◼   ► It's just not – oh my God.

00:58:49 ◼   ► We'll get there.

00:58:50 ◼   ► We'll get there.

00:58:51 ◼   ► And I think also a lot of people were simply asking Apple, "Can you please put modern

00:58:55 ◼   ► guts inside your laptops and make them, you know, faster and everything, and Apple delivered

00:59:00 ◼   ► this thing that they weren't asking for and then raised the prices. Even if you are

00:59:06 ◼   ► impressed by the Touch Bar, and I think for the most part it probably will end up being

00:59:09 ◼   ► a good thing, the reason why so many people are mad, like people have good reasons to

00:59:14 ◼   ► be upset with this update because not every product that needs an update got one, and

00:59:20 ◼   ► the update to these products that did get updated

00:59:23 ◼   ► came with additional costs and a couple of new downsides.

00:59:27 ◼   ► Like, what if you actually used the SD card slot

00:59:30 ◼   ► or the HDMI port or things,

00:59:32 ◼   ► like there are a lot of things were removed too.

00:59:35 ◼   ► So you have ports that were removed,

00:59:37 ◼   ► you have a higher price, and you lost some keys

00:59:41 ◼   ► that you might have preferred to be hardware.

00:59:42 ◼   ► So basically, even though it made advances,

00:59:46 ◼   ► that doesn't make it invalid or unreasonable

00:59:49 ◼   ► for people to complain about the ways

00:59:50 ◼   ► and wish it got worse for them.

00:59:53 ◼   ► - No, it doesn't, but I feel like what I'm hearing,

00:59:57 ◼   ► and it's not just from you guys,

00:59:59 ◼   ► but you're the only two on the phone,

01:00:00 ◼   ► and so that's why I'm busting your butts so hard,

01:00:04 ◼   ► is what I feel like I'm hearing is,

01:00:06 ◼   ► well, what we really wanted was a new processor,

01:00:10 ◼   ► maybe more RAM, maybe more hard drive space,

01:00:12 ◼   ► and then don't touch anything else for the love of God.

01:00:16 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, no.

01:00:17 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think anyone said,

01:00:19 ◼   ► Like, I think Marco talked around it before, but basically, I said it last week, if you're

01:00:25 ◼   ► going to have this line of products, and I think, who was it who had their webpage that

01:00:30 ◼   ► listed all of the, Stephen Hackett, listed all of the laptops, sort of in order of the

01:00:36 ◼   ► lines, if you're going to have all these laptops from like under a thousand all the way up

01:00:39 ◼   ► to like big bucks for the big one, right?

01:00:42 ◼   ► And they do have a pretty good spread of prices, right?

01:00:45 ◼   ► If you decide you're going to do that, and you're going to sell one of them with an on-retina

01:00:47 ◼   ► display with old guts and old ports and you're going to sell some of them with the fancy

01:00:51 ◼   ► new ports and the new guts and the whole deal. The way to do it is not to leave ancient computers

01:00:58 ◼   ► around and just be like, "Well, this one's never going to get USB-C because it's not

01:01:01 ◼   ► worth updating. We're just going to keep selling the MacBook Air forever and ever and ever.

01:01:04 ◼   ► We'll update the guts every once in a while, but it's never going to be an overhaul."

01:01:08 ◼   ► The way with more investment, which I'm not going to say again, I don't like to say the

01:01:12 ◼   ► old Apple the old way because it makes it like, in the olden days, it's just a question

01:01:15 ◼   ► of how much investment.

01:01:16 ◼   ► The old way with more investment is fine,

01:01:19 ◼   ► you're gonna sell this lot of computers

01:01:20 ◼   ► from a thousand bucks to 4,000.

01:01:22 ◼   ► All of them get some minimum set of new features

01:01:26 ◼   ► rolled out together.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Like it's a rising tide lifts all boats.

01:01:29 ◼   ► If you're gonna keep selling,

01:01:30 ◼   ► same thing with the 101 MacBook,

01:01:31 ◼   ► which I think is gone now,

01:01:32 ◼   ► or is it still alive?

01:01:33 ◼   ► I forget. - It is finally gone.

01:01:35 ◼   ► - Anyway, like I said last week,

01:01:36 ◼   ► if you're gonna sell a super cheap laptop

01:01:39 ◼   ► with really low specs with an optical drive,

01:01:41 ◼   ► you also have to occasionally update that one.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Like you can't just say we're gonna keep selling

01:01:46 ◼   ► the old computer unmodified for a long, long time.

01:01:48 ◼   ► You should move the line up together,

01:01:50 ◼   ► which means you have a gradation of features

01:01:52 ◼   ► like the touch bar isn't gonna be on all of them.

01:01:53 ◼   ► I understand it's expensive, right?

01:01:55 ◼   ► And same thing with all the other features

01:01:56 ◼   ► and all the different things you bring out.

01:01:58 ◼   ► They're not all gonna have the P3 screen, right?

01:02:00 ◼   ► But the fact that retina still hasn't trickled down

01:02:04 ◼   ► to the lowest end model

01:02:05 ◼   ► because they wanna keep selling the old model,

01:02:07 ◼   ► like the really, really old crappy one,

01:02:09 ◼   ► mostly unmodified with only minor tweaks,

01:02:12 ◼   ► That does not speak well to the investment in the product line.

01:02:14 ◼   ► It's better to keep selling the cheaper computer, but continue to update them all

01:02:20 ◼   ► together in some cadence.

01:02:21 ◼   ► They get away with it on the phones because they only do like, you know, last year's

01:02:25 ◼   ► phone and then it kind of trails off at the end.

01:02:26 ◼   ► But even there, I think it's a problem.

01:02:28 ◼   ► That's where the strategy came from.

01:02:29 ◼   ► But with the Macs, like how many years has essentially that same quote unquote, same

01:02:34 ◼   ► MacBook Air with different guts been sold?

01:02:37 ◼   ► I mean, they even made the point now, which I look at the 13 inch MacBook Pro is now,

01:02:41 ◼   ► It's now more of an error than an error.

01:02:43 ◼   ► Isn't that amazing?

01:02:45 ◼   ► And yet we'll still sell that error

01:02:46 ◼   ► because the new MacBook Pro is $500 more expensive.

01:02:49 ◼   ► It would be better to have a cheaper, better MacBook Air.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Even if they wanna keep it non-retina,

01:02:57 ◼   ► make the screen better than it is.

01:02:58 ◼   ► It's a crappy screen.

01:03:00 ◼   ► I'm just trying to say, I'm trying to give them an out.

01:03:02 ◼   ► I'm not saying every product has to be awesome,

01:03:04 ◼   ► but you have to bring the products up together.

01:03:06 ◼   ► You can't have these two classes of like,

01:03:08 ◼   ► "Here are the good computers,

01:03:09 ◼   ► And here are the ones we've been selling for years that are pieces of crap.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And there's these weird--

01:03:12 ◼   ► But that's not the case, though.

01:03:15 ◼   ► What they're saying is, here's the brand new good computers that, quite frankly, aren't cheap.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And as one of you just said, they're less cheap now than they used to be.

01:03:24 ◼   ► And then if you want something that's more affordable, guess what?

01:03:28 ◼   ► It's probably going to be a little older on the inside.

01:03:30 ◼   ► It's like the difference between--

01:03:31 ◼   ► But it should be newer than it is, because the pricing doesn't make sense.

01:03:36 ◼   ► It's like the Mac Pro.

01:03:37 ◼   ► We understand the Mac Pro is an expensive computer,

01:03:39 ◼   ► but if you don't update the internals for three years,

01:03:40 ◼   ► it becomes embarrassing.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Now, the MacBook Air's internals have been updated

01:03:43 ◼   ► more than the Mac Pro's.

01:03:44 ◼   ► We have to give them that,

01:03:45 ◼   ► but it's still basically the same form factor,

01:03:47 ◼   ► and the internals are pretty old and slowish

01:03:49 ◼   ► compared to everything else.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Like, I mean, this to me, like this,

01:03:53 ◼   ► this is my fundamental just friction that I have

01:03:57 ◼   ► with the Tim Cook way of running Apple.

01:04:00 ◼   ► You know what would take real courage?

01:04:02 ◼   ► They talk about courage in the head-to-head suit

01:04:04 ◼   ► of a headphone jack.

01:04:05 ◼   ► What would take real courage

01:04:06 ◼   ► would be to take a temporary margin hit to make all of your products great.

01:04:11 ◼   ► As someone in the chat room is pointing out, like, it's hard to, I'm trying to give

01:04:16 ◼   ► the MacBook Air more credit than it probably deserves in terms of the specs and the money

01:04:19 ◼   ► because again, they have updated more than the Mac Pro, which is a low bar.

01:04:22 ◼   ► But if you, if you look at the PC internals you can get for the similar price, and again,

01:04:28 ◼   ► granted, the MacBook Air is a better computer, has nicer, you know, industrial design, so

01:04:31 ◼   ► on and so forth, it's just, it's just not keeping up with the rest of the line.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And the line just feels like have and have-nots.

01:04:37 ◼   ► It's like, you know, the iPad Air and the iPad Pros.

01:04:43 ◼   ► This gap exists everywhere, and it's a gap that reflects a level of desired investment,

01:04:50 ◼   ► because it's so much easier to keep selling the old models, or even just bumping the internals

01:04:55 ◼   ► of the old models, without fundamentally changing them.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Like, oh, well, we can bump the internals a little bit, but if we change to USB-C, that's

01:05:00 ◼   ► It's like a whole new thing and it requires more investment and all that other stuff.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And I don't want to put value judgments on it and like moral things and be like, "Tim

01:05:09 ◼   ► Cook doesn't care.

01:05:10 ◼   ► He's being mean to us."

01:05:11 ◼   ► I think it's just investment.

01:05:12 ◼   ► And again, I think the investment is justified by all of the tangible attributes of the MAC

01:05:17 ◼   ► line as compared to everything else.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Mostly the reason you hear me upset anyway is because I like the MAC, right?

01:05:26 ◼   ► And I can argue for why you should do this, not just because I like the MacBook, because

01:05:31 ◼   ► here's why it's actually important for Apple as a company.

01:05:33 ◼   ► Like I can make that argument too.

01:05:35 ◼   ► But personally speaking, it's because I like this product that's now getting less investment

01:05:38 ◼   ► and that's why I find it frustrating.

01:05:40 ◼   ► And it didn't help that they said hello again on the invitation, but as I said last week,

01:05:45 ◼   ► I was overhyped.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So you're taking one admittedly quite long data point, which is not updating the MacBook

01:05:52 ◼   ► Pro's effectively for like two or three years. Full stop. That was BS. That was terrible.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Shouldn't have happened. But you're taking that one data point as a line that says,

01:06:02 ◼   ► though the line with a huge downward slope that says, yeah, we don't care about the Mac.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Well, you've got the Mac Pro 2, you've got the Mac Mini, which has always been like that. And

01:06:09 ◼   ► we just excuse because it's always been like that. Right. Like, even the iMac has gone through

01:06:15 ◼   ► droughts. It's just it's on a good cycle now. Right. Even if you just want to pick like things

01:06:19 ◼   ► like peripherals and stuff, not making a new extended keyboard when they made the new

01:06:22 ◼   ► new key switches, stuff like that.

01:06:25 ◼   ► That's harder to make an argument for it

01:06:26 ◼   ► than everything else.

01:06:27 ◼   ► But anyway, I want to get off of this

01:06:28 ◼   ► 'cause I think we're mostly just arguing,

01:06:30 ◼   ► the two of us arguing with you.

01:06:32 ◼   ► And I think the larger,

01:06:34 ◼   ► the larger, like this doesn't matter to most people.

01:06:37 ◼   ► There was the biggest outcry on Twitter

01:06:41 ◼   ► was from people who expect desktop Macs to come,

01:06:43 ◼   ► which is, you know,

01:06:45 ◼   ► like just because we didn't expect them to come

01:06:47 ◼   ► or definitely didn't expect them all

01:06:48 ◼   ► to be updated or anything,

01:06:50 ◼   ► doesn't mean it's not kind of like,

01:06:53 ◼   ► doesn't mean we're not tired of waiting for them as well.

01:06:56 ◼   ► And what you saw were people who like desktop Macs

01:06:59 ◼   ► complaining there weren't people,

01:06:59 ◼   ► people who don't like desktop Macs don't care.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Like who cares, who doesn't know?

01:07:01 ◼   ► They don't even know desktop Macs exists

01:07:03 ◼   ► as far as they're concerned, Macs are laptops

01:07:05 ◼   ► and they think the MacBook Airs are fine

01:07:06 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

01:07:07 ◼   ► But we're computer enthusiasts and Mac fans

01:07:11 ◼   ► and desktop Mac fans and so of course we're upset about it.

01:07:14 ◼   ► It's separate argument of whether just because we're upset

01:07:17 ◼   ► that the products we like aren't getting updated,

01:07:19 ◼   ► Does that mean that Apple should update them more often?

01:07:23 ◼   ► But that explains the upset in this.

01:07:24 ◼   ► And I think the upset in this is not,

01:07:26 ◼   ► for the most part, for people who are thinking clearly,

01:07:28 ◼   ► the same as saying Apple should do what I want, right?

01:07:32 ◼   ► Because that's what you were getting at before.

01:07:34 ◼   ► We would like it if Apple did something different.

01:07:37 ◼   ► But you should just allow us to be upset that Apple is not

01:07:40 ◼   ► doing what we want.

01:07:41 ◼   ► And then we can have a separate discussion

01:07:42 ◼   ► about whether Apple should do this thing that we want,

01:07:45 ◼   ► whether it's good for Apple or good for computing or whatever.

01:07:47 ◼   ► I think I can turn that into a vague segue

01:07:51 ◼   ► into what I wanted to get into, which is the touch bar.

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01:09:13 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:09:16 ◼   ► So many years ago, one of my early--

01:09:19 ◼   ► maybe my first, but one of my early articles

01:09:22 ◼   ► for MacWorld Magazine, the back page article,

01:09:26 ◼   ► was about this fairly fanciful idea.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Again, I have this history to the back page of MacWorld

01:09:33 ◼   ► and MacUser Magazine that made me think of writing something

01:09:36 ◼   ► that I probably wouldn't even write in a blog post today,

01:09:38 ◼   ► in a print article back then, about the idea of a Mac laptop that you could use as a Mac,

01:09:48 ◼   ► but then you could somehow fold it over on itself, kind of like all those convertible,

01:09:53 ◼   ► like a lot of convertible PC laptops are like this.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Remember when they were making all those?

01:09:56 ◼   ► I bet they're still making them.

01:09:57 ◼   ► But you can fold it over and it turns into a tablet, basically.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And when you turn it into a tablet, however you want to do it, twisting the screen and

01:10:04 ◼   ► going down or folding it all the way backwards, when it's in tablet mode, it's basically an

01:10:08 ◼   ► an iPad, and when it's in Mac mode, it's a Mac.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And it was like, well, you've already got iOS running

01:10:13 ◼   ► on Intel and the simulator, and the conversion

01:10:18 ◼   ► would be kind of a neat thing.

01:10:19 ◼   ► We've seen lots of PC makers do it.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Apple could do a good job on the hinge mechanism

01:10:23 ◼   ► and make it very interesting and sturdy

01:10:26 ◼   ► and good to use in all these different scenarios.

01:10:28 ◼   ► And wouldn't that be an interesting kind of computer,

01:10:30 ◼   ► because that would deal with the dichotomy

01:10:33 ◼   ► that was then a hot topic, and it's still kind of a hot topic

01:10:36 ◼   ► between iOS and the Mac OS and all this other stuff.

01:10:40 ◼   ► And obviously, nothing came of that.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Windows continues to sell those convertibles.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Windows has converted its OS to be one unified OS for both

01:10:49 ◼   ► touch interface and everything else.

01:10:50 ◼   ► And again, we might talk about that later on a different show.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But setting that aside now, the idea

01:10:56 ◼   ► that you could run both iOS and what was then OS X or Mac OS X

01:11:01 ◼   ► at that time on the same computer

01:11:03 ◼   ► because iOS also runs on Intel.

01:11:05 ◼   ► What we have today with these things,

01:11:08 ◼   ► as you pointed out Casey,

01:11:09 ◼   ► is a Mac that runs macOS on its Intel processor.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And then off to the side, this little T1 processor

01:11:17 ◼   ► that is presumably ARM

01:11:19 ◼   ► and presumably runs something like iOS.

01:11:21 ◼   ► I mean, again, the core OS of both iOS 10

01:11:23 ◼   ► and both macOS and iOS is Darwin anyway.

01:11:26 ◼   ► But anyway, presumably that little chip is running in iOS,

01:11:28 ◼   ► that's running the touch bar and doing all this stuff.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Here we have a Mac that's essentially running two OSes on two different screens.

01:11:37 ◼   ► The only difference is the tablet mode is just this little skinny strip that goes along

01:11:42 ◼   ► the top of the thing, and then the Mac part gets the big thing at the top.

01:11:47 ◼   ► You look at this, and I joked, I was teasing Marco about this a couple of shows ago, just

01:11:51 ◼   ► you wait until the entire keyboard is one big screen for the people who don't mind

01:11:55 ◼   ► typing on glass.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Look at the evolution of the keyboards on these Macs going from big honking giant keys

01:12:01 ◼   ► that are like on the Apple extended 2 keyboard on the Mac portable, like big giant mechanical

01:12:05 ◼   ► key switch, pa-chunk, pa-chunk, pa-chunk.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And they just got squished and squished, and the plungers became butterfly hinges, became

01:12:12 ◼   ► dome switches.

01:12:13 ◼   ► They've just – the keys have just been descending into the thing, becoming like comically thinner

01:12:18 ◼   ► and smaller, like they've been rolled over by a steamroller year after year.

01:12:22 ◼   ► And now all of a sudden, one of the "keys" is a big flat screen that looks like the keys.

01:12:27 ◼   ► They did a really good job, by the way, of pattern matching them, so it's the same kind

01:12:30 ◼   ► of matte finish on both the screen and the keys, so it looks like it's a big key.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Anyway, and now all of a sudden one of them turns into a screen, and it's run by this

01:12:37 ◼   ► little processor that has an OS.

01:12:39 ◼   ► And someone did an animated GIF that I retweeted that was like, "Next year the number keys

01:12:43 ◼   ► are a screen.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Next year the top row of the QWERTY keyboard is keys.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Next year the next row of keys.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Next year the next row is the keys."

01:12:48 ◼   ► And eventually the whole bottom of the keys, then eventually the top screen goes away,

01:12:52 ◼   ► and you just have an iPad, right?

01:12:54 ◼   ► They're slowly, slowly making the Nintendo DS,

01:12:58 ◼   ► a dual screen thing, you know, by converting the keyboard.

01:13:01 ◼   ► And I'm not saying this is the inevitable direction they're going to go,

01:13:04 ◼   ► but it's hard to look at that touchpad, or the touch bar,

01:13:08 ◼   ► and if this touch bar has any legs at all, as a thing that people might want to do,

01:13:12 ◼   ► not to see this as like a weird transitional fossil,

01:13:15 ◼   ► and again, I don't want to totally get into the Microsoft Surface Studio thing,

01:13:20 ◼   ► But like this weird transition, possibly weird transitional fossil held up against

01:13:26 ◼   ► this, the surface studio where the whole freaking thing is one giant touch display.

01:13:31 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, there's a keyboard when you need it.

01:13:33 ◼   ► One of those looks like they skipped to the end of this evolution.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Again, this may be a dead end in evolution.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Maybe they're wrong about this is the, you know, the future of computing or whatever.

01:13:41 ◼   ► Maybe they're wrong about the OS.

01:13:42 ◼   ► Maybe they're wrong about so many other things.

01:13:45 ◼   ► But for one of the first times in recent memory,

01:13:48 ◼   ► Apple looks to be making a more cautious bet

01:13:53 ◼   ► than Microsoft at least in this particular scenario.

01:13:56 ◼   ► And that's not necessarily bad

01:13:58 ◼   ► because I think the cautious bet,

01:13:59 ◼   ► like the odds, I think the odds of the touch bar

01:14:01 ◼   ► being interesting and useful

01:14:02 ◼   ► are higher than the odds of the Surface Studio

01:14:05 ◼   ► being a runaway smash hit that saves Microsoft, right?

01:14:07 ◼   ► Or whatever, 'cause like it's safer.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I think it has a higher chance of success,

01:14:12 ◼   ► but I look at that touch bar and it's hard not to start thinking about putting screens

01:14:19 ◼   ► for the keyboard. Why is the touchpad, the trackpad not entirely a screen? The keyboard

01:14:23 ◼   ► is not a screen but is, as Marker would say, getting progressively worse as a keyboard

01:14:27 ◼   ► but as other people might say, getting progressively less keyboard-y because people don't care

01:14:31 ◼   ► about keyboards anymore and why not just make the whole thing a screen and then when you

01:14:34 ◼   ► do that, why do you have two screens? Why not just make one screen and you've just reinvented

01:14:37 ◼   ► the iPad again, but with a different OS.

01:14:40 ◼   ► So I think this is all, this seems like it's all eventually going to come to a head, and

01:14:46 ◼   ► I think we'll look back at this and be able to see the progression, but right now the

01:14:49 ◼   ► progression that we can see from the past is the keys are getting flatter, the things

01:14:55 ◼   ► are getting thinner, and now the limitations of keys have gotten to the point where they're

01:15:00 ◼   ► bringing some screens down into that area, and I'm not quite sure where those will end,

01:15:05 ◼   ► But Apple looks like the more iterative, let's say.

01:15:09 ◼   ► I don't want to say cautious or careful, because this is an interesting move, but it's definitely

01:15:13 ◼   ► more iterative than sort of leapfroggy than we're used to, I think.

01:15:19 ◼   ► I don't think that's a bad thing.

01:15:23 ◼   ► I don't want to really turn this into a Surface Studio discussion, but it is a fascinating

01:15:27 ◼   ► — I don't know if case study is the right way of looking at it — but it's fascinating

01:15:32 ◼   ► to see Microsoft just tripling down on this hybrid OS idea,

01:15:39 ◼   ► which to me seems utterly preposterous.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And I actually have installed Windows 10 on my work laptop,

01:15:44 ◼   ► because I've been doing a little C# API work.

01:15:48 ◼   ► And I got to tell you, I was expecting Windows 10

01:15:51 ◼   ► to be really good, because everyone I know that has run it

01:15:54 ◼   ► has said, oh, it's great.

01:15:55 ◼   ► It's a lot better.

01:15:56 ◼   ► They fixed a lot of the problems.

01:15:57 ◼   ► It's really good.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And I could go on for hours about how awful

01:16:01 ◼   ► I found Windows 10 to be, and in no small part because high DPI support is a joke at

01:16:07 ◼   ► best and non-existent at worst.

01:16:11 ◼   ► But that being said, all of a sudden with the Surface Studio, I sort of understand what

01:16:17 ◼   ► Microsoft is going for with this hybrid world where touch and non-touch OSs are one and

01:16:23 ◼   ► the same.

01:16:25 ◼   ► I think that that is, the Surface Studio is kind of the ultimate realization, to some

01:16:32 ◼   ► degree kind of a naked robotic horror, of Microsoft's strategy that let's make a

01:16:36 ◼   ► machine with this huge, what is it, it's a 27-inch monitor I believe, something like

01:16:40 ◼   ► that, it does matter, a huge monitor.

01:16:41 ◼   ► >> 28 inch I think.

01:16:42 ◼   ► >> Okay.

01:16:43 ◼   ► >> And I believe it's taller, right, because it's a different aspect ratio than what

01:16:45 ◼   ► we have.

01:16:46 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it's three by two.

01:16:47 ◼   ► >> Yeah, which I would love, honestly.

01:16:50 ◼   ► So let's make this very large, kind of contrary device where it's not widescreen like everything

01:16:56 ◼   ► else on the market is, and let's make it touch sensitive everywhere.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And that is kind of the ultimate realization of Microsoft's strategy.

01:17:07 ◼   ► And although I would give almost anything not to run Windows, I can understand why this

01:17:14 ◼   ► would be appealing.

01:17:16 ◼   ► I don't think I would ever want to have a computer that is a drafting table, so to speak,

01:17:20 ◼   ► but I can see how it would be really, really cool.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Similarly, I think this touch bar is kind of the ultimate realization of what Apple

01:17:31 ◼   ► thinks is the best idea for a "hybrid world," which is not as much that the screen is a

01:17:37 ◼   ► touchscreen, but more, "Hey, we'll give you a little separate touchscreen that you can

01:17:42 ◼   ► interact with and you can do cool stuff with."

01:17:45 ◼   ► And by the way, it's more than just buttons.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Like when we had seen the preview,

01:17:49 ◼   ► or the renderings for this,

01:17:51 ◼   ► I don't recall anyway having seen

01:17:53 ◼   ► that there was gonna be anything on here really,

01:17:54 ◼   ► but a bunch of just programmable buttons, if you will.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of cool stuff that they show on this.

01:18:00 ◼   ► They show timelines in like Final Cut Pro,

01:18:02 ◼   ► or maybe it was a different app.

01:18:03 ◼   ► They showed kind of a cover flow version

01:18:07 ◼   ► of all the pictures that are in a folder

01:18:08 ◼   ► when you're looking in Finder.

01:18:09 ◼   ► Like there's some really trick, cool stuff.

01:18:12 ◼   ► - Cover flow will never die.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Was it, I forgot.

01:18:16 ◼   ► We always knew it was, well, the rumors were all an OLED screen.

01:18:19 ◼   ► So we kind of knew that there was going to be other stuff up there.

01:18:21 ◼   ► But like, I, to go back to what you said earlier, Casey, I think the key phrase

01:18:25 ◼   ► that I don't think is apt here is ultimate realization, because this is not

01:18:28 ◼   ► the ultimate realization of anything.

01:18:29 ◼   ► This is an iterative improvement and I think it's good.

01:18:32 ◼   ► And I think it's going to be really cool, but it's almost as if the more cool

01:18:37 ◼   ► this is, the more we will realize that limiting it to just a little strip is.

01:18:42 ◼   ► bad and that, you know, like, why is the whole trackpad not a screen? Why is the whole bottom

01:18:47 ◼   ► of the laptop not a screen? Why is the whole keyboard not a screen? And this is the point

01:18:50 ◼   ► we'll say, well, the whole keyboard is not a screen because typing on glass is terrible.

01:18:52 ◼   ► And then millions of millennials say, no, we love it. It's great. You know, and then it's like,

01:18:57 ◼   ► and then once you do that, it's like, well, then why is there a bottom screen and a top screen?

01:19:00 ◼   ► Why is it all one screen? And then you just like, it really feels, it's not the ultimate realization

01:19:04 ◼   ► or anything. The ultimate realization, if this idea turns out to be good of this computing idea,

01:19:09 ◼   ► not this laptop idea, but this computing idea,

01:19:12 ◼   ► using like the value system that is most in line

01:19:16 ◼   ► with probably mine and Marco's is the server studio,

01:19:20 ◼   ► which is just make the whole freaking thing

01:19:22 ◼   ► a big, giant, gorgeous touch screen,

01:19:24 ◼   ► but also give me a physical keyboard

01:19:25 ◼   ► for when I wanna type because I'm old

01:19:26 ◼   ► and I like to type on physical keyboards.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And when I'm not typing, I don't have to deal with that.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And there's no like separate region of the keyboard

01:19:33 ◼   ► that's also a screen and I can use seven hands

01:19:36 ◼   ► and 10 fingers and five elbows all at the same time

01:19:39 ◼   ► a little dial and like just, you know, that is the ultimate realization of idea.

01:19:42 ◼   ► Is it a good idea?

01:19:43 ◼   ► Does it work well?

01:19:44 ◼   ► Is the OS good?

01:19:45 ◼   ► Are there other intangibles that are stopping them?

01:19:47 ◼   ► Again, I think we do have to talk about the Surface Studio at some point, but the touch

01:19:50 ◼   ► bar is not the ultimate realization of any idea.

01:19:53 ◼   ► It is the next good iterative step along the lines of the idea that Apple is pursuing.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And I think it looks really cool and really awesome with some minor caveats, but it feels

01:20:06 ◼   ► like just one more step in it kind of it's transitional not that it makes me

01:20:10 ◼   ► feel not uncomfortable but like anticipatory like I like I'm waiting to

01:20:15 ◼   ► see what's next it's tantalizing in the like where does this all go where does

01:20:19 ◼   ► this lead because clearly this is not going to be the end this is clearly on

01:20:22 ◼   ► its way to something and you know it's like it's like a glimpse of the future

01:20:26 ◼   ► that is not yet here right the keyboards getting flatter we shoved a screen on it

01:20:31 ◼   ► but it's still kind of if you squint at this thing it's still kind of the shape

01:20:34 ◼   ► of the old computer and certainly the shape of Mac OS is still as separate from iOS as

01:20:39 ◼   ► it ever was.

01:20:40 ◼   ► And we don't, I don't know where it's going, but this is like, I feel like this is the

01:20:44 ◼   ► first step off of the path that the Mac has been going on to an acknowledgement that there

01:20:50 ◼   ► can be, not that they're, you know, merging the OSes or whatever, but just trying to reconcile

01:20:58 ◼   ► this world where we want to touch stuff and have touchscreen things with the world of

01:21:02 ◼   ► the Mac where we're not touching things, right? And how do we bring them together?

01:21:05 ◼   ► And this is honestly, this is the first Mac with a touchscreen, right? No other

01:21:09 ◼   ► Mac has had a screen that you touch. They've had touch pads and they've had

01:21:13 ◼   ► all the other hybrid things. "Hey, we want a touchscreen Mac, you got one!" Oh, by the

01:21:16 ◼   ► way, the screen is really thin and that just makes me think like where is this

01:21:19 ◼   ► going? What is the future of this? Like, surely this is not a holding

01:21:22 ◼   ► pattern that we stay in for another 15 years with a little strip on the

01:21:25 ◼   ► screen there. This has to lead to something and I'm excited to see where

01:21:29 ◼   ► that goes, but this machine makes me hunger to see what's next.

01:21:35 ◼   ► Quick aside about the Surface Studio, from everything I can tell it's using the exact

01:21:38 ◼   ► same processors as the iMac and it isn't out for another two months.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Yeah, no, that's not a super...

01:21:42 ◼   ► Like that machine, it's a separate topic.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Nintendo Switch, also, sorry if you're here to hear about Nintendo Switch, probably not

01:21:48 ◼   ► this week.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Surface Studio, they're on the list.

01:21:52 ◼   ► We will talk about them.

01:21:53 ◼   ► All right, so now you said nice things about the touchpad, a few minor annoying things

01:21:58 ◼   ► about the touchpad.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Now one fun thing about it, the customize thing, pure Apple feature, love that, you

01:22:04 ◼   ► can drag the little thing off the screen onto the touch bar, that's awesome, right?

01:22:08 ◼   ► That's like another one of those magical type of things, and they did, when you're in editing

01:22:12 ◼   ► mode where you want to edit the buttons to customize it, it's good that that's a feature

01:22:15 ◼   ► because customizing is great.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And they go into shaky mode, you know, like on iOS, when you're editing your springboard

01:22:23 ◼   ► icons, that's kind of like a UI idiom that Apple has coined and then now they use across

01:22:28 ◼   ► their product line to great effect.

01:22:30 ◼   ► When these things are in the mode where they're being edited, have them wiggle so it's clear

01:22:34 ◼   ► that you're in like editing mode and all the rules are different.

01:22:36 ◼   ► That's very clever, very good bit of UI that they've been smart to spread everywhere.

01:22:41 ◼   ► But the tricky bit on the little strip, the touch bar screen, is that they're using edge

01:22:47 ◼   ► to edge every single pixel of that thing to show the buttons because it's such a skinny

01:22:51 ◼   ► screen.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Like they're going all the way up from the top edge.

01:22:53 ◼   ► There's no margins they're leaving on it.

01:22:55 ◼   ► So they can't have the icons shake back and forth as if they're rotating like the

01:22:59 ◼   ► springboard icons do because they would be clipped on the top and bottom, and it would

01:23:06 ◼   ► break the illusion that they're keys when you saw them clipped by the screen edges.

01:23:09 ◼   ► So instead they shake, but only left and right.

01:23:13 ◼   ► Oh, is that right?

01:23:14 ◼   ► Okay, that's what I'm thinking of.

01:23:15 ◼   ► So they're in there and they're wiggling, and you don't know, it's something a little

01:23:18 ◼   ► off of it, but they're basically jostling up against each other like a bunch of peas

01:23:22 ◼   ► in a pod or whatever, but they can't wiggle up and down because the clip, which I thought

01:23:25 ◼   ► was a really clever way to solve that problem, because the problem is like we want to use

01:23:28 ◼   ► every pixel of this thing, but when we make them shake the other way, they clip top and

01:23:32 ◼   ► bottom and it destroys the illusion, so just make them shake side to side. I thought that

01:23:35 ◼   ► was super clever and adorable and they look cute when they do that and that's a great

01:23:38 ◼   ► feature.

01:23:39 ◼   ► And it's the same trick they use on the watch display too, because like on the watch, and

01:23:42 ◼   ► this is one of the things you could do with OLED, like one of the reasons OLED's so great

01:23:45 ◼   ► is that like black on OLED looks really black, and so you can more easily conceal the edges

01:23:52 ◼   ► of the actual screen, the actual pixels of the screen,

01:23:55 ◼   ► with the black margin around it.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So on the watch, interface elements go right up to the edge.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Like they tell you specifically in the interface guidelines

01:24:03 ◼   ► like you should design your screens that way,

01:24:04 ◼   ► don't leave any margin around your interface,

01:24:06 ◼   ► go right to the edges.

01:24:08 ◼   ► And then on the watch's physical hardware,

01:24:10 ◼   ► they just leave enough of a margin around the screen

01:24:12 ◼   ► to make that look right.

01:24:13 ◼   ► And so they're doing the same thing on the touch bar here,

01:24:15 ◼   ► which is one of the many parallels it has to the watch.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Because it appears to run a variant of watchOS,

01:24:22 ◼   ► and it's running on what appears to be a variant of the watch's S1 chip.

01:24:26 ◼   ► So…

01:24:27 ◼   ► It's totally different.

01:24:28 ◼   ► There's a T there instead of an S. Totally different price.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:32 ◼   ► And the W one is different.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Yes.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Anyway, so yeah, it's a similar move there.

01:24:35 ◼   ► It's a genius move.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Like, you know, just we don't need the screen to be any bigger than this because the buttons

01:24:39 ◼   ► are just going to be that big.

01:24:40 ◼   ► So just make it look like the screen has a healthy margin and don't waste any pixels

01:24:43 ◼   ► and power on anything that's not, you know, necessary.

01:24:47 ◼   ► So margins giveth and margins taketh away.

01:24:49 ◼   ► Let us now discuss the escape button.

01:24:51 ◼   ► By the way, all the people, like, I didn't want to respond to all this on Twitter for

01:24:54 ◼   ► the past week because it seemed tiring, but now I'm going to do it in the podcast.

01:24:59 ◼   ► The point that we made either on the show last week or on Twitter about the escape key

01:25:03 ◼   ► was all about the fact of it being a physical key.

01:25:06 ◼   ► None of us on the show were saying that there was not going to be a little gray square with

01:25:10 ◼   ► the letters ESC in it in the upper left corner of that little screen.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Well, almost the upper left corner.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Yes, yes, I'm getting to that.

01:25:17 ◼   ► We all knew it would be there.

01:25:20 ◼   ► It's just that we were asking for a key because in our line of work it is a key that we hit

01:25:24 ◼   ► more often than probably the average person and it's nice to be able to reach up and feel

01:25:27 ◼   ► for it and so on and so forth.

01:25:28 ◼   ► So that was it.

01:25:29 ◼   ► It was not about like, people were saying when they showed the key, "Look, there's an

01:25:32 ◼   ► escape key.

01:25:33 ◼   ► You got your escape key."

01:25:34 ◼   ► It's like, it's not a key.

01:25:35 ◼   ► It's just a picture on a screen and we knew that was going to be there.

01:25:37 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:25:38 ◼   ► It's an escape zone.

01:25:39 ◼   ► Yes.

01:25:40 ◼   ► As for margins, the escape zone, the escape zone on the touch bar is not in the corner.

01:25:46 ◼   ► So if we want to, it's like, well okay, so it's not a physical button, but it's still

01:25:50 ◼   ► on the corner, and you can reach for and feel the corner of the screen, right?

01:25:54 ◼   ► Unfortunately, if you touch just the corner of the screen, you won't hit the escape button,

01:25:59 ◼   ► because that first centimeter or so of the touch bar is as far as I'm able to determine

01:26:04 ◼   ► completely inert.

01:26:05 ◼   ► I know it doesn't have a screen underneath it, I'm pretty sure it also doesn't have touch

01:26:08 ◼   ► sensors underneath it, although I see those things that aren't necessarily connected,

01:26:11 ◼   ► they could have put touch sensors under there but no screen.

01:26:13 ◼   ► Anyway, no screen is under there, so they can't physically draw the escape button against

01:26:18 ◼   ► the left edge of the touch bar.

01:26:20 ◼   ► And I'm pretty sure you can't touch there, which makes it kind of a shame because if

01:26:25 ◼   ► you're feeling for something to reach out to the corner to find the thing, the one part

01:26:29 ◼   ► you can feel for on a completely smooth touch bar screen is you can feel for the top edges

01:26:34 ◼   ► and the sides.

01:26:35 ◼   ► So I would love to be able to reach up to that corner and hit the escape zone on the

01:26:39 ◼   ► screen.

01:26:40 ◼   ► Yes.

01:26:41 ◼   ► hit the zone slightly over to the right from the escape zone. And I'm not particularly

01:26:48 ◼   ► happy about that because it's like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because you

01:26:51 ◼   ► have like the one button I care about that's being replaced by a virtual button, the one

01:26:55 ◼   ► I hit the most often, at least it's in the corner and I'll be able to feel for it. But

01:26:59 ◼   ► now I can't feel for it. By the way, I'm probably getting one of these at work, which

01:27:01 ◼   ► is why I'm more invested in this at this point. And as I snarkily tweeted earlier,

01:27:07 ◼   ► Can we all guess why the screen doesn't go all the way to the edge on the left side?

01:27:12 ◼   ► Why doesn't the screen extend underneath that little bit?

01:27:15 ◼   ► So on the opposite side is the touch ID sensor. That's the same width as the margin on the left side.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Interesting. Exactly the same width or is it just close?

01:27:24 ◼   ► I think it's exactly the same. I haven't verified that though.

01:27:29 ◼   ► Yes, I think it is. I think you're right. It is exactly the same width.

01:27:32 ◼   ► Who do I know who likes margins to be exactly the same width on the right and left sides of

01:27:36 ◼   ► of things that they design.

01:27:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I mean, maybe it might be the same person who put the camera shutter/volume up button

01:27:44 ◼   ► directly opposite of the turn off the screen and go to sleep button on the iPhone.

01:27:49 ◼   ► Offsetting those wouldn't have helped that much.

01:27:50 ◼   ► But anyway, again, if you squint through this laptop, you see this is still a 15-inch laptop

01:27:55 ◼   ► with a tiny keyboard crammed in there.

01:27:57 ◼   ► And I know you want to have room for the speakers, and I know so and so are all I'm saying is

01:28:00 ◼   ► that keyboard could be bigger on a 15-inch model, but they want to be uniform.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Same thing with the inverted T. You could have full-size arrow keys if you didn't want

01:28:06 ◼   ► have a perfect rectangle.

01:28:07 ◼   ► Johnny Ive and the Apple designers like symmetry.

01:28:09 ◼   ► I like symmetry.

01:28:11 ◼   ► I like things to be uniform and centered and everything.

01:28:14 ◼   ► But everyone has their limits.

01:28:16 ◼   ► And this is it.

01:28:18 ◼   ► The touch ID being on the gap on the right,

01:28:20 ◼   ► I know it has to be there.

01:28:21 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:28:22 ◼   ► What I would have chosen if I was designing this

01:28:24 ◼   ► is that the screen would go all the way to the edge

01:28:27 ◼   ► on the left side, even though it's not symmetrical.

01:28:29 ◼   ► That's the choice I would have made.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Apple made a different choice.

01:28:32 ◼   ► All they have opened the door for

01:28:34 ◼   ► is the ability to sell a lefties model of this.

01:28:35 ◼   ► The Touch ID is on the left.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Do you want a lefty or a righty?

01:28:38 ◼   ► A 15-inch MacBook Pro.

01:28:39 ◼   ► Oh, I want Touch ID on the left.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Anyway, it's mostly silly.

01:28:42 ◼   ► I think it will probably be fine.

01:28:43 ◼   ► But it is another maddening case of-- some people would say

01:28:48 ◼   ► it's form over function.

01:28:50 ◼   ► I think that's a little far.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I think I'll probably still be able to find that escape key.

01:28:54 ◼   ► The arrow keys bother me more than this.

01:28:57 ◼   ► But boy, I am on a slightly different page

01:29:01 ◼   ► than Apple's designers when it comes to symmetry and ergonomics.

01:29:04 ◼   ► - Well, and also, you will probably be able to find it,

01:29:07 ◼   ► but you will probably have to look more often.

01:29:10 ◼   ► And we don't know yet, in practice,

01:29:12 ◼   ► how often this will be a problem

01:29:14 ◼   ► with all the buttons on the touch bar.

01:29:15 ◼   ► But I would say, for the most part,

01:29:17 ◼   ► I think most people who use Macs,

01:29:19 ◼   ► like on Windows, Windows assigns all sorts

01:29:21 ◼   ► of frequent shortcuts to the F keys.

01:29:24 ◼   ► Is the only way to close Windows still Alt + F4?

01:29:27 ◼   ► So Windows people might use those more often.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Mac people, for the most part,

01:29:30 ◼   ► you're not very heavily using almost anything

01:29:32 ◼   ► that function row, except the escape key,

01:29:35 ◼   ► where many people, and you know, we as geeks,

01:29:39 ◼   ► we often minimize or diminish or underestimate

01:29:43 ◼   ► everyone else who's not a computer geek

01:29:44 ◼   ► and their ability to use our computers

01:29:46 ◼   ► that we think are ours.

01:29:48 ◼   ► I even, even there, I slipped into right, anyway.

01:29:51 ◼   ► Sorry about that.

01:29:52 ◼   ► Other people who are not geeks, many of them know

01:29:56 ◼   ► that the escape key often performs a cancel shortcut

01:30:01 ◼   ► to lots of things in the OS, full screen things, dialogues,

01:30:05 ◼   ► I mean like there's so many things in using a computer

01:30:09 ◼   ► where the escape key is a useful shortcut

01:30:12 ◼   ► for literally escape, like cancel or escape what I'm doing.

01:30:15 ◼   ► And normal people in quotes, many of them know that.

01:30:20 ◼   ► This is not like a thing that only people who use Vim use.

01:30:23 ◼   ► A lot of people know this.

01:30:26 ◼   ► So this is not just like a thing that annoys geeks.

01:30:31 ◼   ► The loss of a hardware escape key

01:30:33 ◼   ► that you can hit without looking,

01:30:35 ◼   ► because we've all been taught to type

01:30:37 ◼   ► without looking at the keyboard,

01:30:39 ◼   ► and the more you use keyboards,

01:30:40 ◼   ► the more you kinda just get into the habit

01:30:42 ◼   ► of not looking at them.

01:30:43 ◼   ► The lack of the hardware escape key

01:30:45 ◼   ► is actually going to inconvenience a lot of people.

01:30:47 ◼   ► It is not just nerds.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Now, it might be worth it.

01:30:51 ◼   ► The whole rest of the benefits of this thing

01:30:52 ◼   ► might end up being worth it in the end,

01:30:54 ◼   ► but I don't like when people minimize this

01:30:56 ◼   ► as just a nerd thing, 'cause it really isn't.

01:30:59 ◼   ► I think more nerds don't look at the keyboards than regular people, but I know a lot of people,

01:31:03 ◼   ► if I gave this computer to you, would be annoyed by the fact that the escape is not a button,

01:31:07 ◼   ► but even if they're looking at the keyboard the whole time. I'm willing to say that the benefit

01:31:12 ◼   ► totally outweighs it because the features that are available on this thing are just

01:31:15 ◼   ► fantastically better than a row of keys, and I'm all on board with that. It's just like I said,

01:31:19 ◼   ► the one button that you can feel for if touch ID is in the right, the left corner is the easiest

01:31:25 ◼   ► place on that thing to find. And if the touch region extended all the way to the left, that

01:31:29 ◼   ► that would make it almost as easy to hit.

01:31:31 ◼   ► Because it's not like you're typing the escape key.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Every once in a while you're hitting it

01:31:34 ◼   ► if you're a normal person.

01:31:34 ◼   ► It's not like the E key where you're constantly typing it.

01:31:37 ◼   ► So the fact that it's not a button wouldn't be like,

01:31:39 ◼   ► oh, it feels weird when it's not a button.

01:31:40 ◼   ► It would be fine if it was over to left more.

01:31:42 ◼   ► By the way, the second most frequently used button

01:31:44 ◼   ► in that top row for me on my Apple extended keyboard

01:31:47 ◼   ► at work, can anyone guess what it is?

01:31:48 ◼   ► - Play pause.

01:31:49 ◼   ► - Volume.

01:31:50 ◼   ► - No, it's the eject button.

01:31:52 ◼   ► And I don't hit it on purpose.

01:31:53 ◼   ► I hit it accidentally when I tried to hit backspace.

01:31:56 ◼   ► and the CD tray of a Mac Pro comes sticking out

01:31:59 ◼   ► like a giant tongue.

01:32:00 ◼   ► And why do I accidentally hit the eject button

01:32:02 ◼   ► when I'm hitting backspace?

01:32:03 ◼   ► Well, I'm not a great typist,

01:32:05 ◼   ► but why do I accidentally hit the button?

01:32:06 ◼   ► Because the top row of keys is jammed right up

01:32:09 ◼   ► against the number row in the backspace keys.

01:32:11 ◼   ► You know why?

01:32:12 ◼   ► Because there's just not enough room

01:32:13 ◼   ► on my giant expansive desk to put an extra five millimeters

01:32:16 ◼   ► between those two rows of keys.

01:32:18 ◼   ► Even Microsoft has lost the technology

01:32:20 ◼   ► of separate sets of keys.

01:32:22 ◼   ► Remember the original Microsoft ergonomic keyboard?

01:32:24 ◼   ► It had the two halves of the keys

01:32:26 ◼   ► and then it had a space, and then it had the function keys,

01:32:28 ◼   ► and then it had a space, and it had the inverted T,

01:32:30 ◼   ► then it had a space, then it had the numpad.

01:32:32 ◼   ► Look at the one that they just introduced recently.

01:32:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then your mouse was in New Jersey.

01:32:36 ◼   ► - I know, but I'm just saying, you can solve that problem

01:32:38 ◼   ► by getting rid of the numeric key bed or whatever.

01:32:41 ◼   ► I'm not asking for seven inches of space

01:32:43 ◼   ► between these regions, right?

01:32:44 ◼   ► But if you look at the new Microsoft ergonomic keyboard,

01:32:47 ◼   ► they copied Apple down to the half-size function keys

01:32:50 ◼   ► that are jammed up against the numbers.

01:32:51 ◼   ► It's like vertical, and they have a huge wrist rest

01:32:55 ◼   ► on this thing, it's like a seven inch wrist rest,

01:32:57 ◼   ► and yet they couldn't spare five millimeters

01:32:59 ◼   ► to put a space between the top row function keys,

01:33:01 ◼   ► and they couldn't make the top row function keys full size.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Like, do you think we have room on our desk,

01:33:05 ◼   ► or do you not think we have room on our desk?

01:33:07 ◼   ► Because this keyboard is huge,

01:33:08 ◼   ► but all your keys are jammed together,

01:33:10 ◼   ► and the numeric keypad's jammed against it,

01:33:12 ◼   ► and home, end, and page up, page down are jammed together.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Like, I don't know who's designing these things,

01:33:16 ◼   ► or what they think is going on,

01:33:17 ◼   ► but like, spaces between different sets of keys

01:33:20 ◼   ► are a feature.

01:33:20 ◼   ► Being able to feel for the top edge of the backspace key

01:33:23 ◼   ► is a feature.

01:33:23 ◼   ► I hate hitting that freaking eject button

01:33:25 ◼   ► and seeing my CD tray eject,

01:33:26 ◼   ► and I can hit it without even looking to push it back in

01:33:29 ◼   ► once I hear the mechanism start going,

01:33:30 ◼   ► 'cause there's a delay.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Like, oh, I did it again.

01:33:32 ◼   ► I have to think.

01:33:33 ◼   ► - Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. - It's the worst.

01:33:34 ◼   ► - Hold on, hold on, wait.

01:33:35 ◼   ► Can you, I don't understand what you just said.

01:33:36 ◼   ► You said something about a tray in a what now?

01:33:39 ◼   ► - I know, it's hard to understand.

01:33:41 ◼   ► It's his cup holder, Casey.

01:33:42 ◼   ► - Oh, the cup holder.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I miss having one of those.

01:33:45 ◼   ► Oh man, that's a long time ago.

01:33:48 ◼   ► - And I would say again on a laptop,

01:33:50 ◼   ► could you fit a keyboard on the 15-inch MacBook Pro

01:33:53 ◼   ► that has a space between the number keys

01:33:55 ◼   ► and the little strip thing.

01:33:56 ◼   ► Maybe you would want to in this new scenario

01:33:57 ◼   ► because it's like a screen

01:33:58 ◼   ► and you want it to be able to reach a vote over there.

01:34:00 ◼   ► For traditional keyboards, I think the space is important.

01:34:03 ◼   ► I think having half size keys up there is dumb.

01:34:06 ◼   ► I think, you know, the little strip thing

01:34:08 ◼   ► is not the full height of a keys.

01:34:10 ◼   ► Why not make that little strip be taller than it is?

01:34:12 ◼   ► Maybe it's just the right height

01:34:13 ◼   ► for the proportions they wanted for the features.

01:34:15 ◼   ► But a lot of the times they show like in the Photoshop demo,

01:34:17 ◼   ► they were showing the history of the images,

01:34:19 ◼   ► but the images were either,

01:34:21 ◼   ► they were either cropped or squished

01:34:22 ◼   ► because if you show them proportionally,

01:34:25 ◼   ► they'll be really small.

01:34:26 ◼   ► So you wanna show more of it,

01:34:27 ◼   ► but you only have width to expand in.

01:34:28 ◼   ► Like why isn't the touch bar the height of a full height key?

01:34:32 ◼   ► Right, is it just because the keys that it's replacing

01:34:35 ◼   ► were half height?

01:34:36 ◼   ► Like maybe it's a cost concern, maybe it's a power concern.

01:34:39 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure,

01:34:40 ◼   ► but lots of decisions flow out of this

01:34:41 ◼   ► that I don't quite understand.

01:34:42 ◼   ► But as far as keys go,

01:34:44 ◼   ► I liked it better when I had full-size keys

01:34:46 ◼   ► with different regions separated from each other,

01:34:48 ◼   ► especially on a gigantic, expansive desktop keyboard.

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01:36:15 ◼   ► If I had to summarize the releases today, I am on the good side.

01:36:22 ◼   ► Overall, this was good.

01:36:23 ◼   ► As I said earlier, this does not come with, it isn't all roses.

01:36:27 ◼   ► There are some bitter pills to swallow here.

01:36:30 ◼   ► But overall, this was good.

01:36:33 ◼   ► And I'm really happy that they are still doing things like the Touch Bar, even though

01:36:39 ◼   ► I will probably not use one for quite some time, primarily because I get all my work

01:36:43 ◼   ► I worked on the desktop.

01:36:45 ◼   ► And as I mentioned earlier, I don't expect this

01:36:46 ◼   ► to come to desktops anytime soon, if ever.

01:36:51 ◼   ► And so this particular thing will probably not impact me

01:36:54 ◼   ► day to day for a while, if ever.

01:36:57 ◼   ► But they did make their laptops better, faster,

01:37:02 ◼   ► newer designs, thinner, lighter.

01:37:05 ◼   ► Overall, this was a really good day for Mac laptops.