0:00:00Oh, John's here.
0:00:01I missed the beginning of the story.
0:00:02It was really funny. You missed it.
0:00:04Yeah, it was the funniest thing ever, and you missed it because your Skype isn't updated.
0:00:08I'm told from half of the internet—I've measured it, it is exactly half—that there is
0:00:17a reduced motion option in Beta 2. Not only is there a reduced option in Beta 2,
0:00:26I'm told it works. I'm told it works the way John wants it to work. So if you'll follow along, I have
0:00:31a little bit of cash. I will...
0:00:34Didn't you bet like one or five dollars?
0:00:36One dollar. So here, this is my one dollar. And now, listeners, I will take this box
0:00:43of envelopes and I will extract... That was not nearly as loud as I hoped it would be.
0:00:49I will extract one envelope and I will place this dollar in said envelope.
0:00:53[laughter]
0:00:56And I will address it to Mr. John Siracusa, Payne in my hindquarters, 123 Main Street,
0:01:02somewhere outside Boston, Massachusetts.
0:01:05And I will send it along.
0:01:06That'll work.
0:01:07Because, John, you are correct.
0:01:09In our gentleman's bet, where we bet one American dollar, you have proved victorious, and from
0:01:15everything I am told—I have not witnessed this myself, so I'm going on faith—but
0:01:18I am told that your reduced motion plus super ridiculous motion and messages is a thing.
0:01:26So congratulations, sir.
0:01:27I was going to say you could wait until it ships, because who knows?
0:01:29They could pull it before the update.
0:01:31Eh, that's true.
0:01:32But yeah, I'm going to say most likely, like, if they've got this far, even if they
0:01:36don't ship it in this update, it'll be in the next one or the one after.
0:01:39Indeed.
0:01:40Yeah, I'm kind of trying not to let this newfound power go to my head, but I always
0:01:45like that I should perhaps exercise the magic, the magical phrasing. If I can remember the
0:01:52magic words that I said, I should try something like, you know, talking about how they haven't
0:01:56updated the Mac Pro in a really long time and say, "This cannot stand!" and then see
0:02:00what happens.
0:02:01But...
0:02:02John, I'll bet you a dollar they don't update the Mac Pro next week.
0:02:05No, no, I think, I don't think it was the betting. I think it was the indignity. And
0:02:11I think I said this cannot stand. I seem to recall saying something incredibly pompous like that.
0:02:17You know, the funny—all kidding aside—the funny thing about this whole argument was I listened to
0:02:24the last, I don't know, 15 episodes of Reconcilable Differences where you talked about this,
0:02:28and listening to you and Merlin talk about it, I actually think I was on your side. And I don't
0:02:34know what was so different about the way you described it then and the way you described it
0:02:37now or you know when on this show I don't know if I was in a punch
0:02:41play Marco he's an instigator I think I was instigating more than him on this
0:02:45one although you are correct Marco is in fact an instigator but anyway in my
0:02:48defense I I was kind of not arguing against John's position of like wanting
0:02:53this wanting this feature really I was I was more kind of exploring and poking
0:02:58and be like hey you know why do you think that an instigator does poking
0:03:02- Well, but it wasn't like an inflammatory matter.
0:03:06I mean, like to me, I view almost every one of these
0:03:10little accessibility additions that were added
0:03:12like post iOS 7, I view almost all of them
0:03:15as just design failures.
0:03:17'Cause like if the system wasn't so incredibly heavy
0:03:20with unnecessary motion animations,
0:03:22this option wouldn't need to be there,
0:03:23just like it wasn't before iOS 7.
0:03:25Nobody was complaining about motion sickness before iOS 7.
0:03:28And then that came out and rather than fix the design,
0:03:32they have to add these options.
0:03:33Just like the text was too thin,
0:03:35and rather than fix the text,
0:03:36they just made a bold text option.
0:03:38Buttons didn't like buttons anymore,
0:03:39and rather than make buttons look like buttons again,
0:03:41they just made an option.
0:03:42So these are all kind of just papering over design flaws,
0:03:46really, or poor design choices.
0:03:49So I'm with you in the sense that,
0:03:51A, obviously anybody who needs these
0:03:53for what most people would consider an accessibility reason,
0:03:57that's kind of a broad definition,
0:03:59but more power to you.
0:04:00it's great that we had these options,
0:04:02but B, I think we shouldn't even need these options
0:04:06'cause the system should be designed in a way
0:04:08to be more inclusive and usable to begin with.
0:04:10And the fact that it keeps going away from that
0:04:13is kind of a design flaw, in my opinion.
0:04:16- But yeah, it was funny listening
0:04:17to "Reconsolable Differences" 'cause I had been
0:04:18a couple episodes behind when you and I
0:04:22were getting into it, Jon, and then I caught up
0:04:26and I was listening to you on rec diffs
0:04:28and I was like, wow, actually that makes a lot more sense.
0:04:30And I wish I could, I should have taken notes or something and tried to pinpoint what about
0:04:34your description made more sense to me then.
0:04:37But I remember leaving that thinking, "Wow, I think I'm on his side.
0:04:41That's weird."
0:04:42You're succumbing to peer pressure because I had someone on the show who agreed with
0:04:45me.
0:04:46So you heard two people who believe the same way.
0:04:47And you're like, "Well, the crowd is doing it.
0:04:49I'm swayed by this."
0:04:50And we recorded that first.
0:04:52That was the—
0:04:53Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:04:54—that was Merlin pointed out this week.
0:04:55That was the first episode.
0:04:56And then I talked about it on ATP.
0:04:57It's just because of the release schedules are different.
0:04:58So I think I was also less worked up with it.
0:05:00But in general, on our show, when YouTube both not only disagreed with me, but seemed
0:05:05to think what I was saying was ridiculous.
0:05:07I couldn't believe that you didn't see how this was like just an incredible gap, like
0:05:12this cannot stand.
0:05:14I said it and I'll say it again.
0:05:15Like it just seemed like a thing.
0:05:17That's why I was willing to do the $1 bet.
0:05:18I mean, you know me, I'm not a big like gambler, right?
0:05:23It seemed like, you know, first of all, $1 is not that big a deal, but it was just like
0:05:27Like they just have to change it, they just have to.
0:05:30It's not just like, well maybe it just seemed like it had to be done.
0:05:33And they're doing it so good.
0:05:35And I wish I had the beta now, but not enough to actually install a beta.
0:05:38So hopefully the point release will be out soon.
0:05:41And I've been using my phone with reduced motion still off.
0:05:44Every time I want to send an effect, I go to settings, turn it back on, send the effect,
0:05:48turn it off.
0:05:49Wow.
0:05:50All right, so John, tell me about Compubler.
0:05:52This is one more data point in the ongoing discussion of the iPhone 7 Plus's
0:05:59fake background blur thing that it does. Last show we talked about the confirmation that it was not
0:06:07taking like a fuzzy picture from one camera and combining it with another one but was
0:06:11instead taking the background, finding it, and then blurring it with a particular algorithm.
0:06:16And we're talking about how that didn't quite look like the same way an optical blur looks,
0:06:21but most people can be able to tell and blah blah blah. Anyway, a couple people wrote in with a blog
0:06:27post exploring the various ways you can blur things to try to make them look like an out-of-focus
0:06:32picture from a lens. So we'll link to that blog post. I think that's Stu, how do you pronounce his
0:06:38last name? Mashaewicz? Yeah, I think so. He's a filmmaker and a photographer, so he knows some
0:06:44stuff about this. And we had someone named Ben Gunzberger write in to say that he has worked on
0:06:51tools that do this for computer animation like that make the blur the background that wasn't
0:06:55actually blurred in the camera but they want to make it look like it was and he says that to do
0:06:59it properly is very CPU intensive they have situations where they take multiple minutes
0:07:04per frame to calculate the blur so obviously that's a non-starter if it takes multiple minutes on what
0:07:08i assume is pretty beefy hardware in the visual effects world to do the blur the quote unquote
0:07:12right way if apple's got to do it and they do it in real time right don't you get like a preview of
0:07:17the blur in the camera thing. So anyway, multiple minutes per frame is not going to happen there. So
0:07:23Apple may be currently constrained not only by the fact that they're faking it, but by the fact they
0:07:27have to fake it and do it in real time. I mean the the uh the A10 is fast but it's not fast enough
0:07:33to take an operation that takes multiple minutes. Never mind it's also multiple minutes on uh well
0:07:37I don't know what the resolution is but how many megapixels is the uh 12 to 7 camera? 8? 12? 12.
0:07:44Yeah, that's is that higher res than the like 4k film probably higher than 2k right? It's higher than 4k. No
0:07:50Yeah, 4k is just over eight megapixels
0:07:53Anyway, the whole point is that doing it faking it the right way is is expensive
0:07:59So that would explain a little bit of the crappiness also some more
0:08:02Funny pictures of the blur messing up were posted at various places wasn't it somewhere in the slack where you saw a picture of a person?
0:08:09Shot from like the knees up standing in front of something with his arms at his side
0:08:14and the background was blurred, but the gap between his arms and his body, the camera just didn't find.
0:08:19And so the background was pin sharp, and when you look between his arms and his body,
0:08:23but the whole rest of the background was blurred, it looks really weird.
0:08:26Yeah, that was Stephen Hackett, wasn't it?
0:08:27It was his brother, and yeah, imagine your arms are at your side, but there's a gap between your arms and your body.
0:08:33And at a glance, especially not like blown up full size, I didn't notice a thing wrong with it.
0:08:39But then as I looked closer, and I think because somebody pointed it out,
0:08:43It turns out that, like John said, the area between his brother's arm and his torso was super sharp,
0:08:51whereas all the area around his brother was blurred like you would have expected.
0:08:57So, it was kind of funny to see, and I mean this is to be expected, and to be fair, it's portrait mode, not entire body mode.
0:09:05And so, you know, it's not really being used as designed, but it was still a funny thing to see,
0:09:10and a great example of where it kind of falls on its face today anyway.
0:09:14All right, moving on.
0:09:17Let's talk about the ceramic iPhone 8.
0:09:20There's been a, maybe not in the last week or two, but right when the Apple Watch Edition
0:09:26came out, there was a lot of talk of, "Well, if this works for a watch, why wouldn't this
0:09:32work for a phone?"
0:09:34And I think there's a lot of different conversations about this and a lot of different ways this
0:09:37can go.
0:09:38I for one am very concerned about dropability.
0:09:42Not to say these phones are terribly droppable as it is,
0:09:44but you know, would a ceramic case shatter?
0:09:47How would that work?
0:09:48So where do we see this going
0:09:51for a potential ceramic iPhone 8?
0:09:53- Well, I mean, it depends.
0:09:55You know, some of the possible reasons
0:09:58why they would do this.
0:09:59There was this one big Quora post
0:10:01that I think kind of got this started
0:10:03or from somebody who knows about material sciences
0:10:05much more than we do,
0:10:06so forgive me for the details here.
0:10:08I mean, ceramic, it has a lot of advantages over aluminum.
0:10:11One of them is that it's radio transparent,
0:10:13so that gets rid of a lot of antenna problems.
0:10:16It's also, it's incredibly, you know,
0:10:18the kinds of ceramics that you'd use in a phone,
0:10:21it can be incredibly scratch resistant and fairly strong.
0:10:25You can shatter it.
0:10:27It's kinda like Sapphire.
0:10:28Like, you can shatter it with a very strong impact,
0:10:31but it takes a pretty strong impact to do that.
0:10:34and anything less than that is basically invulnerable too.
0:10:36Ceramic can be very, very tough.
0:10:38And you can mold it in different shapes and everything.
0:10:42There's lots of manufacturing details
0:10:44of how you would do it,
0:10:44and Apple has some interesting patents in that area,
0:10:46but that they appear to not have really used
0:10:48for anything yet.
0:10:49They probably could do it.
0:10:51I don't think any of us know enough about manufacturing
0:10:53to know any of the details beyond that
0:10:54of that they could do it.
0:10:56For durability though,
0:10:57we also heard a rumor recently
0:10:59that they're going back to the steel band
0:11:02around the outside design,
0:11:04like what we had with the 4 and 4S.
0:11:05You know, they'd have glass on both sides.
0:11:07Glass has many of those same properties as ceramic,
0:11:09as you know, you can make it radio transparent,
0:11:11and you can make it glossy,
0:11:12and you can make it pretty scratch resistant.
0:11:14Obviously there's some durability questions there.
0:11:18But I don't, I mean, I think Apple's solution right now
0:11:22to phone durability to impacts, to drops and everything,
0:11:25I think their solution right now is cases and AppleCare.
0:11:28Like that's basically it.
0:11:30It's like try not to drop your phone.
0:11:31If you're the kind of person
0:11:32who drops your phone frequently,
0:11:33get a really strong case for it.
0:11:35And if you break it, hopefully you bought AppleCare,
0:11:37'cause we're gonna make that easy for you.
0:11:39So I'm honestly not sure that they really need
0:11:42to do that much more work in the durability department
0:11:45if it's going to make the phone hard to manufacture
0:11:48or less desirable or ugly or grows from plastic-y.
0:11:52I don't know, do you think cases in AppleCare are enough?
0:11:56- It's a hack.
0:11:57- I think they do need to work on durability.
0:11:59It's just like you said, they're not willing
0:12:02to make the compromises that would require.
0:12:03I mean, they can make the phone incredibly durable.
0:12:05They just made the whole freaking thing out of plastic,
0:12:07but plastic feels gross as a screen.
0:12:09Like we all want to move our hands across a glass screen
0:12:12because it feels better.
0:12:13And so they keep trying to make the glass tougher,
0:12:15but there's only so much they can do.
0:12:16And they spent a long time moving away from glass.
0:12:21Like they did the 4 and the 4S, and they're like,
0:12:23we're taking a break from that for a while
0:12:24because the 4 and the 4S had two sides that could break.
0:12:27The screen could break on the front and the back,
0:12:29you know, and two parts that could shatter.
0:12:31at least when it was all the aluminum designs, the 5, the 5s, the 6s, and the 7, that's a
0:12:35lot of phones, the front could shatter, backs never shattered.
0:12:39Bent a little sometimes, didn't shatter.
0:12:41Scratch, didn't shatter.
0:12:42So the rumor for the next iPhone is it's going to be all glass.
0:12:46As you said, have they worked on the shattering thing?
0:12:49Do they have stronger, more shatter resistant glass?
0:12:53I'm not sure.
0:12:54One other property of glass that's potentially problematic is that it's not a particularly
0:12:59good conductor of heat compared to say aluminum and so you've got a hot little
0:13:04system on a chip in there you have to get the heat out somewhere maybe it'll
0:13:08be radiating out of the the steel bands or something I don't know but it's
0:13:12tougher for it to go through glass than it is an aluminum back the ceramics we're
0:13:16talking about for the iPhones that's why it's difficult to talk about this and
0:13:19you can read that quora post if we can find a link for it what do you mean by
0:13:23ceramic ceramic is not just one thing especially with all of Apple's patents
0:13:26with like, well, ceramic mixed with a bunch of other stuff
0:13:29with like fibers between it or reinforcing materials
0:13:32or polymers or laminates or other things
0:13:34to try to make it not be quite so much like ceramic
0:13:37because ceramic has, I think the main problem ceramic has
0:13:40is that it is heavy if you make it thick enough to be sturdy.
0:13:43If you make it light, then it's thin
0:13:45and it has, like glass, catastrophic failure mode.
0:13:48Really good, right up to the point
0:13:50where it totally goes kablooey.
0:13:52Anyway, we see the watch,
0:13:54We see that they've done the watch in ceramic.
0:13:57The watch is an easier situation
0:13:59because people aren't dropping their watches
0:14:01for the most part, but they are banging them into things,
0:14:04but it's smaller and it's able to be more sturdy
0:14:06'cause it doesn't have any long continuous flat areas
0:14:08like the back of the phone.
0:14:09Anyway, I think a ceramic iPhone is totally plausible
0:14:14that as a thing that Apple will experiment with.
0:14:18I don't know if they're gonna get it to the point
0:14:20where they can ship something.
0:14:23There are so many material choices.
0:14:24Remember, we heard all the rumors about carbon fiber
0:14:26for so many years, both about Macs and about iOS devices?
0:14:29- Oh yeah.
0:14:30- I think that's another situation where,
0:14:31oh, carbon fiber is even better than plastic.
0:14:36Very light, very strong.
0:14:37Its failure modes are probably not as good as aluminum,
0:14:42but not as bad as ceramic or glass.
0:14:44But I think a lot of these decisions come down to
0:14:46how much does it cost to manufacture this?
0:14:48Can we manufacture it consistently?
0:14:50And how ugly is it?
0:14:52'Cause again, I think like what's stopping Apple
0:14:55from making the back of all their phones plastic?
0:14:58It's like, it's not gonna say stubbornness,
0:15:01but it's a desire not to ship a product
0:15:04that has plastic on the back because it's seen as
0:15:06and feels to be, you know,
0:15:08because it has so much plastic back phone,
0:15:10radio transparent, maybe not good for you conduction.
0:15:12All right, very light, very sturdy,
0:15:15really good failure modes, right?
0:15:17Maybe a little bit scratchy,
0:15:18but like talk to someone who has a 5C.
0:15:21I think it holds up pretty well.
0:15:22It's just not as sort of premium an experience
0:15:25as glass or aluminum or ceramic would be.
0:15:29And so I think they just keep looking for new materials,
0:15:31looking for different materials.
0:15:32The same reason you got glasses on the front.
0:15:33Can we put plastic on the front?
0:15:35Sure, it'd be so sturdy.
0:15:36Can you imagine a completely plastic screen,
0:15:38iPhone with plastic on the back,
0:15:40lightweight, sturdy, drop it, no problem,
0:15:43but it would not feel like an iPhone.
0:15:45So that's their struggle.
0:15:47So I'm gonna look out for ceramic,
0:15:48but I'm pretty sure the next one's that,
0:15:51I buy all the glass rumors just because the 4 and the 4S design was the one they wanted
0:15:55to make, or at least the one that, I don't know if Johnny specifically, but it was one
0:15:59of the early designs for like, that's what the first iPhone was supposed to be and they
0:16:02couldn't pull it off.
0:16:03And it took them a really long time until they could pull it off.
0:16:05Then they did pull it off and everyone dropped their phones and they shattered front and
0:16:07back and they said, all right, let's take a break.
0:16:10Let's take a break from that.
0:16:12Take another run at it.
0:16:13And how many years was it?
0:16:14I counted it off before.
0:16:15Five, five S, six, six, seven, five years they waited.
0:16:18So now after five years of non-glass ones,
0:16:20they're gonna try it again and I'm ready to see
0:16:22how much they've improved it.
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0:18:33(upbeat music)
0:18:36- One more thing on the ceramic phone
0:18:39before we start talking about it.
0:18:40Casey's internet woes.
0:18:41Help person in the chat room has posted a link to the little booklet that comes if you buy the ceramic Apple watch edition
0:18:49That talks about their process
0:18:51I'm I'm not following all of it because I'm trying to read it here on the air
0:18:55but it seems like it describes the process whereby they
0:18:57Take a ceramic thing and bake it and then machine it after it's baked to make it into the watch
0:19:03Case thing. I don't know
0:19:05We'll put a link in the channel as people can read it and see for themselves
0:19:07but there is a reference to baking it and how much it shrinks during baking and then the reference to machining and polishing and so anyway
0:19:13this watch for all the people who are true believers in the
0:19:17Future ceramic iPhone rumor this watch looks to all the world like the original MacBook Air
0:19:22Which was the trial run of the unibody construction that would eventually go across the entire product line
0:19:26so if this watch thing works out and
0:19:29They master this process by selling a small number of these very expensive watches to people
0:19:35Then maybe it will be for the follow-up phone after the all glass one
0:19:39But you know if this is their trial run it's too late for this to be the manufacturing technique
0:19:43tapped for next year's iPhone which
0:19:46Already has to be much farther along well and also like
0:19:50manufacturing a this one
0:19:53fairly high-end fairly you know small market Apple watch model out of this material is
0:20:01incredibly different from making the back of every iPhone with it like this the difference in scale there is immense like I don't even think
0:20:08This is a good enough test
0:20:08I think they'd have to make all the Apple watches out of ceramic to have it be even close to the right kind of test
0:20:13But obviously not gonna do that yet, so we'll see
0:20:16You know also building off of this I saw a video that was linked to by a friend of the show Ryan Jones
0:20:23that is
0:20:26entitled the iPhone 7 I've been waiting for in the whole video is two and a half minutes and
0:20:31If you want to see it in its full glory just pause us for two and a half minutes and go watch
0:20:36You don't need audio on the on the video there if you're listening to me now presumably that's not a problem
0:20:40So what happens is this this person takes an iPhone 7 and like saws off all the sides of it such that they're all flat
0:20:48Instead of rounded and then sands them down and whatever I want this
0:20:52I want this a lot because this matte black iPhone 7 that I have I love it
0:20:57I really, really do. The more I use it, the more I like it. And I think aesthetically,
0:21:01it's my favorite iPhone yet, but this thing is a darn bar of soap. And I would love, I
0:21:06mean, obviously I've never handled this particular gentleman's phone, but it stands to reason
0:21:12it would be much easier to grip with the flat sides. I would love to have an iPhone like
0:21:17this, but in black, not silver. So yeah, I want this, please. Can I have one?
0:21:23I think you only want it because you haven't seen it up close.
0:21:26- Yeah, if you notice the video was kind of quick
0:21:28to show the phone once it was all done.
0:21:30- Yeah, it's a mess, it's gotta be a mess.
0:21:32'Cause this is not a precision operation,
0:21:34it's just gotta look like a phone
0:21:35that has been just messed up.
0:21:38- Yeah, it didn't look good if you tried to look closely.
0:21:41(laughing)
0:21:42The shape looked good, but the finish did not.
0:21:44- Right, that's the thing.
0:21:45Like if this was officially done,
0:21:47I think it would be pretty impressive, so.
0:21:48- Oh yeah.
0:21:49- I think that would be neat.
0:21:51- All right, so I've talked to my phone
0:21:54many past episodes and my wife's going on a cruise, a Mediterranean cruise, and she
0:22:01was going to bring the fancy camera and rented lenses and we talked all about that. Anyway,
0:22:04she went, she's back, she brought the camera back in one piece, did not drop it into the
0:22:08ocean, took a bunch of pictures with it, and when I was going through her pictures, getting
0:22:12them sorted into the photos library, after her return, I noticed a bunch of them and
0:22:17she noticed too, she said, "Just wait, there's something in a bunch of the pictures, you'll
0:22:21see it soon, a dark line that appears in a bunch of pictures and the line kind of looks
0:22:29semi-circular so I'm like is that like a shadow of a lens or something but then I noticed
0:22:34some other ones the line is not perfectly curved like a circle sometimes it changes
0:22:40the angle and I'm like well okay a lens aberration wouldn't do that because the lenses are all
0:22:44round or you know spherical they're not they're not oddly shaped like that and then sometimes
0:22:48it would curve in the opposite direction and it would move around.
0:22:51And so I posted on Twitter, "Can anyone tell me what's causing the vertical curve shadow
0:22:55lines in these pictures?" and posted a bunch of sample pictures.
0:22:58And then everyone commented about where the pictures are from and whether they've been
0:23:01there or not.
0:23:02But in addition to that, a bunch of people did have guesses as to what it might be.
0:23:11My guess was that it was maybe something on the lens because it was in so many pictures
0:23:15in so many different environments.
0:23:16I didn't think it was what it looks like, which is a hair in front of the lens or something,
0:23:20because you know, your hair is under control. It wouldn't constantly be in front of the lens.
0:23:23The lens was zoom lens, it was pretty far away. I inspected the lenses and there was nothing on them.
0:23:29I knew there was stuff on my sensor. I could see there, like you can see in the same pictures,
0:23:35some dots and I could see on the sensor there was some dust that I needed to get rid of,
0:23:39but I'm like, what the hell is this line? And a lot of people have theories and one theory was
0:23:44was
0:24:03it snags or otherwise grabs the hair in the channel
0:24:06and briefly flicks it in front of the sensor
0:24:08as it moves up and down.
0:24:10And it appears, and it only appears in pictures
0:24:13with a very small aperture,
0:24:14because with wide aperture,
0:24:15light's coming in from too many angles
0:24:16and it just illuminates all behind it, you don't see it.
0:24:18So you see it in pictures of the sky
0:24:21or another thing with lots of light
0:24:23where the aperture has to squeeze down really small.
0:24:25And then most of the incident light rays
0:24:27are traveling in the same direction.
0:24:28Then you get a shadow, this one little hair.
0:24:30And the way I found it, after having this theory,
0:24:32looked in the channel and way down in the corner of the channel just kind of peeking
0:24:38out like on an angle like cutting off the corner of like the edge, you know, here's
0:24:42the channel, here's the bottom, was little tiny hair and so I went in there super duper
0:24:46carefully with a pair of tweezers and pulled it out and it was about like a centimeter
0:24:51and a half long, very fine, non-human, doesn't look like a human hair, looks like a hair
0:24:57from like a rabbit or a squirrel or something, really small and I got that out of there.
0:25:02So I was like, thank God because so many other theories are like, oh, there's something wrong
0:25:05with your shutter and it's dragging something on the thing or whatever, or you just have
0:25:09to bring your camera back.
0:25:10I was so happy to be able to actually extract a hair.
0:25:12I'm like, yes, this is the thing.
0:25:15And then, you know, of course I had to go through the rest of the process to get rid
0:25:19of the dust.
0:25:20So I brought one of those sensor cleaning kits.
0:25:21And the way you do this is you take a picture of a blue sky and intentionally crank the
0:25:26aperture down to a very tiny opening.
0:25:28Or you can just put an auto if the sky is bright enough.
0:25:31Then you take a picture of what you think is blank blue sky, then you bring it back
0:25:34into your favorite photo application and you fiddle with the contrast and see if you can
0:25:37see anything that looks like a dot.
0:25:40And if you do see something like that, there's still dust on it.
0:25:43And so I use the sensor cleaning kit, which is a little scary.
0:25:45You know, like people say, "Oh, you can damage your sensor, be super careful."
0:25:49But like I bought a thing specifically for that purpose.
0:25:52The big like square on a stick kind of thing?
0:25:54Yeah, there's like disposable single-use swabs.
0:25:57Yep, yep.
0:25:58specifically sized for the sensor, so you just one swipe only and then you throw the
0:26:02thing in the garbage which is incredibly wasteful but whatever.
0:26:04Yep.
0:26:05And you have to use two of them, one with the little spritz of the stuff on it and one
0:26:07without the spritz of the stuff.
0:26:09Anyway, and a little blower to get most of it.
0:26:10I hope to just use the blower because I didn't want to touch it at all.
0:26:12Yeah, a little rocket blower.
0:26:13I hope to just use the blower to get all this stuff.
0:26:14Yeah.
0:26:15But the blower didn't dislodge a couple of stubborn things so I used the thing, took
0:26:20a bunch of pictures of the sky, now my sensor is clean.
0:26:22all of which made me think that camera manufacturers could really really help
0:26:28with this problem by just putting something, I mean I've never had a DSLR
0:26:32but I assume that the mirror doesn't actually seal up and I know it covers
0:26:36the sensor but doesn't actually like cover it as in keep dust out right? No.
0:26:39Alright so A they should and B mirrorless cameras should have a little
0:26:46door kind of like the shutter but not the shutter that closes before you can
0:26:49take the lens off. Like why not do that? You know, I mean you'd still have to
0:26:53clean the sensor sometimes. You still have to have a mechanism like you do on
0:26:56an SLR to flip the lens up so you can clean the sensor, right? But why
0:27:00expose it to the air at all when you're changing lenses? Just put it, maybe
0:27:04there's not enough room for a door or whatever, not the shutter, the shutter is
0:27:07the shutter, fine, I understand it has to be high speed and fancy and so on and so
0:27:10forth. There's a plain old boring reasonably sealed door that closes and
0:27:14covers the sensor when you change lenses. That would be a good idea camera
0:27:18manufacturers. Anyway, moral of the story is I did not correctly convey to my wife exactly
0:27:27how careful you have to be when changing lenses. Not that she even changed them. She just changed
0:27:32it once. And all it takes is once for a little dust. But every time I did it on my Long Island
0:27:37vacation it was like the lens can only be off the camera for the shortest possible time.
0:27:42I'd have it staged and set up and never pointed upwards and just like, "Lens off. Cap on the
0:27:47capability, you know, it was like trying to diffuse a bomb and again, never do it in a still
0:27:53environment with still air, never point the lenses or the camera, like just, it's, you know, it's
0:28:00nerve wracking. And, you know, she spent a lot of time on her vacation with this hair traveling up
0:28:06and down the channel on the shutter, which is kind of disappointing. It's, I mean, it didn't ruin all
0:28:11her pictures, but enough of them have a big dark line in them that's kind of disappointing. Luckily,
0:28:17almost everything indoors doesn't have this problem because the the aperture is too big.
0:28:20That stinks. I'm sorry to hear that. But what a weird problem. And you know, I don't have the
0:28:25person's name handy, but and gosh, I only know this is true or not, but I'm taking them at face
0:28:29value. Somebody told me that the Micro Four Thirds cameras, which is what I have, they all have
0:28:34optical image stabilization or a lot of them, if not all of them, on the body rather than in the
0:28:39lens. And they were saying that this person was saying that when you turn the camera on, it will
0:28:45will actually use the OIS to shake off any dust
0:28:49that might be on the lens.
0:28:50I have no idea if that's true or not,
0:28:51but what a cool idea, even if it isn't true.
0:28:53- It's a pretty common feature.
0:28:55It doesn't actually work perfectly, but like our--
0:28:58- Exactly. - Yeah, like the 5D Mark IIs
0:29:00that we had, it didn't have stabilization,
0:29:01but it just had some kind of sensor vibrator thing
0:29:03that would try to buzz off the dust
0:29:05every time you turn the camera off.
0:29:06And so to have that just constantly going,
0:29:08like every time the camera turns off,
0:29:10we did occasionally have to blow something off the sensor
0:29:13with the 5Ds, but very rarely.
0:29:15I think in the eight years we used them,
0:29:18I think maybe three or four times total.
0:29:22Whereas with my Sony, when I got it last year,
0:29:25literally the first week I had it, I got dust on the sensor.
0:29:28And similar story, just less severe.
0:29:30It was last year we were at the beach house.
0:29:33Lots of my pictures had this one big spot,
0:29:35and eventually I took the lens off
0:29:36and spotted it on the lens, on the sensor.
0:29:38I was on vacation, so I couldn't really,
0:29:40I didn't have any of the cleaning things,
0:29:41so I just kind of tolerated it and just edited it out.
0:29:44It wasn't too bad to edit out of everything.
0:29:47But yeah, the camera was like a week old.
0:29:49(laughing)
0:29:50It happened immediately.
0:29:52And yeah, you don't realize how good
0:29:54those automatically vibrate the sensor things are
0:29:57until you have a camera that doesn't do it
0:29:59or doesn't have it.
0:30:00But the Sony's, it has that feature,
0:30:02but it doesn't do it every time.
0:30:04It does it only on demand, and it only partially works.
0:30:07But I don't know.
0:30:08- I think that feature could help a little bit,
0:30:10But in my case, first of all, it wouldn't have gotten the hair, because the hair is
0:30:13not even on the sensor.
0:30:14So you should make the sensor all you want.
0:30:15It's not going to help.
0:30:16That would have been there.
0:30:17And for the dust, the pieces that I had to eventually use the mechanical method of actually
0:30:23swabbing them off, the blower, the little, you know, hurricane blower, you know, shoots
0:30:29a very concentrated thing, that couldn't even remove them.
0:30:31Like, they were on there good.
0:30:33It wasn't just like instant little dust that happened to float it on there.
0:30:35They were so wedged on there that very forcible,
0:30:40very concentrated stream of air could not dislodge them.
0:30:42They actually had to swipe them away.
0:30:44So I have a little faith in a sensor shake
0:30:46would have shaken them off too.
0:30:48But again, a door with some kind of reasonable ceiling
0:30:52better than nothing would go a long way
0:30:55towards making changing lenses less nerve wracking.
0:30:58- Yeah, I do it the same way you do it.
0:30:59I'm sure Marco is the same as well
0:31:00where everything is staged, ready to go.
0:31:02The camera's always upside down.
0:31:04I'm not as intent on it being still air, but you know, we do what we can.
0:31:08Um, and the whole thought of this happening to me is terrifying.
0:31:12So I'm very impressed.
0:31:14You were able to get this done without destroying the lens or the, the sensor,
0:31:17which is what I surely somehow would have done knowing the I'd poured
0:31:21water on it somehow by accident.
0:31:23I don't know how you could like people say, oh, it's so
0:31:24delicate.
0:31:25You have to be careful.
0:31:25Like it looks pretty sturdy down there.
0:31:27I mean, you're swapping it.
0:31:28It, when I swabbed across it, it felt like a smooth surface, but the
0:31:33swab it's not like it has little snake like I don't understand how you go about
0:31:36breaking it I suppose you could scratch it in some way but only thing I'm
0:31:39touching it with these microfiber swabby things that I assume are safe and yeah I
0:31:45hope you don't have to do that again but like taking pictures of an empty blue
0:31:48sky and checking for any little splotches on it you'll see them like you
0:31:53don't have to be an expert to be especially if you start filling with a
0:31:55contrast control you will find the spots that are there because I swabbed it and I
0:31:59I could see where the spot used to be.
0:32:02It was still a little, you know,
0:32:03I had actually removed the material.
0:32:05I couldn't see it with my eyeballs anymore,
0:32:07but on the sensor, I could see a little spot
0:32:08and that's when I had to use like the cleaning stuff.
0:32:11And then that got rid of it for good.
0:32:12And now I'm just messing with the controls,
0:32:14trying to find any little speck.
0:32:16And now it's like, oh, that's JPEG compression.
0:32:17Nevermind, I should do RAWs, I guess.
0:32:19But anyway, I'm pretty sure I didn't destroy my camera.
0:32:21Still seems to work.
0:32:23No more hair, no more spots.
0:32:24- All right, so I have a brief tale of woe
0:32:28and a plea for help.
0:32:30On my work computer, I typically use a pair of headphones,
0:32:35Bluetooth headphones I bought literally five years ago.
0:32:39I bought it--
0:32:40- And they're perfect in every way, as we've always heard.
0:32:43- Yeah, about that.
0:32:44So I bought them on August 15, 2011.
0:32:47And they're Arctic Sound P311s.
0:32:50I've espoused them numerous times
0:32:51because while they are not perfect,
0:32:53they accomplish everything satisfactorily
0:32:57in a satisfactory way.
0:32:58So they are sufficient.
0:33:01How much horsepower does a Rolls-Royce have?
0:33:03Sufficient amounts of horsepower.
0:33:05I upgraded to Sierra on my work Mac,
0:33:09and suddenly they are not sufficient anymore.
0:33:14For whatever reason, and I don't know why,
0:33:17they sound like hugely, hugely, hugely compressed.
0:33:22And I ran into this once years ago,
0:33:26And it ended up that there was like a bit value or something like that that you could
0:33:29change in the Bluetooth Explorer app, which you have to get via Xcode tools now.
0:33:35And that fixed my problem.
0:33:36Like years ago, I'd noticed that when this first happened, the symbols were terrible
0:33:41and super compressed, and it was just awful, and I was able to fix it.
0:33:44Tried doing the same thing this time, and it didn't make a difference.
0:33:50So I unpair/repair.
0:33:51I've done all sorts of things.
0:33:53I haven't tried again after having cleared my PRAM just for grins and giggles.
0:33:59I've done everything except that, and I thought, well, maybe just something weird is going
0:34:03on.
0:34:04They're ancient headphones at this point.
0:34:07Let me just get a new set.
0:34:08So I got the equivalent set that's newer.
0:34:11And so they came in today, and they're also Arctic Sound, but these are P253, and we will
0:34:17have links to these in the show notes.
0:34:20And good news, bad news.
0:34:21Good news is they sound great.
0:34:22well, as great as a $30 set of Bluetooth headphones can sound,
0:34:27but every time there's any audio playing of any sort,
0:34:32the right channel has a buzzing in them,
0:34:35which in the span of about 45 seconds
0:34:38drove me absolutely crazy.
0:34:40- It took that long?
0:34:42- Yeah.
0:34:42- How did this review possibly start out in any positive way?
0:34:45- So I'm returning these headphones,
0:34:48because did you know, like hand on heart,
0:34:49I did not know this,
0:34:51For some, if not all things,
0:34:52you could return it to Amazon for free.
0:34:54- Yeah, usually you have to return shipping.
0:34:57They'll leave you like six bucks
0:34:58from your return or something.
0:35:01- Oh, is that what it does?
0:35:02Okay, 'cause according to them,
0:35:03they were like, "Here's your shipping label."
0:35:04And I didn't cross compare how much the cost of the item was
0:35:09versus how much they were saying they were gonna refund me,
0:35:11so maybe that's what it is.
0:35:12But anyway.
0:35:13- No, it's super awesome.
0:35:14If you ever have to return it to Amazon,
0:35:15they make it incredibly easy on you.
0:35:17- Yeah, so I am going to return them,
0:35:20But here's my predicament.
0:35:22I want, for better or worse, Bluetooth headphones.
0:35:26I understand that not everyone wants them.
0:35:29I do.
0:35:29I prefer Bluetooth headphones.
0:35:31And I think the reason I prefer them is because convenience is a bigger priority to me than
0:35:36perfect sound fidelity.
0:35:38Well then in that case, just wait for the AirPods.
0:35:40Well, so here's the thing.
0:35:43I agree that that's probably going to be the best answer, but they supposedly only run
0:35:47for five hours before they need a charge.
0:35:49and I know that it will charge quickly, but I typically sit at my desk, meetings aside, for eight to eight and a half hours in a day.
0:35:56These ancient headphones with their five-year-old battery that I loved so much
0:36:01used to go like two, two and a half days between charges easily and with meetings during the day and whatnot,
0:36:08so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but you get my point.
0:36:11I think the answer is going to be get AirPods.
0:36:14But is there any and this is kind of rhetorical kind of not especially for you Marco
0:36:20Is there any set of Bluetooth headphones that whether or not they are?
0:36:25Perfect audio fidelity because again, I don't care for Marco's purposes
0:36:30Let's just assume I never listen to music on them, which is a complete and utter lie
0:36:34But let's just for your purposes if you are satisfied with podcast fidelity
0:36:39that will probably be sufficient for my music fidelity for this use case.
0:36:44Are there any headphones, Bluetooth headphones, that have batteries that last about 10 hours,
0:36:49let's say, that don't suck?
0:36:52And here's the kicker though, that have a bar that goes behind the back of your neck
0:36:59rather than over your head.
0:37:01Why, ladies and gentlemen?
0:37:02Because I am weird, and my hair kind of sticks up a little bit and poofs.
0:37:07And if I put a bar across the top of my head for eight hours, it'll have that imprint in
0:37:15my head always, which is not advisable.
0:37:18So...
0:37:19Why, ladies and gentlemen, you could have just said vanity.
0:37:22Yes.
0:37:23Yes, actually, that was an easier summary.
0:37:25Why?
0:37:26You don't want to mess up your hair.
0:37:27That's why.
0:37:28Right.
0:37:29It's a hand on heart, no argument, absolutely, absolutely true.
0:37:32There are some advantages to baldness.
0:37:34Anyway...
0:37:35[laughter]
0:37:36So I'm making fun of myself, but I really honestly am asking, and maybe we don't answer it during the show, but I
0:37:42don't have anything against earbuds,
0:37:46but I'd rather have an over ear or like the the ones that I had kind of dangled on your ear,
0:37:52which I understand makes most people crazy. But for me, I like it. It works for me.
0:37:57So is--and we'll put the links to the ones I'm talking about in the show notes--
0:38:00is there any set of Bluetooth headphones that's even vaguely like this?
0:38:05That is not a total piece of garbage that I would not have to charge in the middle of the day.
0:38:11If I have to charge them every night, fine, no big deal.
0:38:13But I don't have to charge in the middle of the day.
0:38:15I think, Marco, you're absolutely right.
0:38:17What's going to end up happening is I'm going to spend way more money than I want to,
0:38:19and I'm going to get the EarPods, and I'll probably love them, and it'll probably be fine,
0:38:22and I'll put them in the little Tic Tac case during meetings, and I'll never know the difference.
0:38:26I suspect that's going to be the winner.
0:38:28But is there any other option, preferably not Buds,
0:38:33but, Buds, I would maybe entertain.
0:38:35Is there anything else that you can think of
0:38:37that doesn't go over the head?
0:38:39- So, I'm going to fill you with hope,
0:38:41but ultimately provide no value whatsoever.
0:38:44(laughing)
0:38:47So, the problem, and this is honestly,
0:38:49I've been considering just stopping reviewing headphones.
0:38:52- Oh no, because I want you to review
0:38:54the Bluetooth headphones now that
0:38:55Bluetooth is in vogue-ish, kind of.
0:38:57- Here's the thing.
0:38:58So, basically, like, you know, right now,
0:39:00everyone keeps asking me, you know,
0:39:01what they should get for Bluetooth and everything.
0:39:03And with Bluetooth, there are so,
0:39:05I mean, the headphone market has grown a lot
0:39:07in the last couple years since I started my big review.
0:39:10There's so many models now,
0:39:13and people have so many different needs.
0:39:15And the fact is, it takes a lot of time and a lot of money
0:39:20to buy or somehow acquire all these headphones
0:39:24and test them properly in a useful way.
0:39:27That's why when the Wirecutter does it,
0:39:29they have a whole team of people doing it,
0:39:31and it takes a long time, and that's like,
0:39:32their full-time job is to work on stuff like this.
0:39:34And also, the headphone market has gotten,
0:39:38basically like, as Beats came around a few years ago,
0:39:43a lot of people took notice of,
0:39:44here's a place we can make a lot of money.
0:39:47So now there are tons of headphone brands
0:39:50and tons of like, allegedly awesome new headphones
0:39:54coming out on the market all the time.
0:39:56And many of them are very expensive.
0:39:58Many of them are like, you know, $400 and up.
0:40:01basically, which is, you know, for an audio file,
0:40:04that's kind of normal, but for a regular person,
0:40:06it's a very expensive pair of headphones.
0:40:08So, there are so many now that almost nobody,
0:40:13including the Wirecutter, actually reviews
0:40:16a meaningful number of them to be able to give you
0:40:19a useful blanket recommendation.
0:40:21Like, if you read the Wirecutter, they always go through,
0:40:24and one of the things they'll spend a few paragraphs doing
0:40:26is saying, like, here's the ones we tested,
0:40:28and here's a whole bunch we didn't even test
0:40:30because the reviews didn't look good on Amazon
0:40:32or whatever other reasons they have.
0:40:34'Cause you basically have to rule out large swaths
0:40:37of what's out there just to have a possible number to review.
0:40:42And with Bluetooth, everything is even worse now
0:40:44because now there's even more factors that matter
0:40:47that before you didn't have to worry about as much.
0:40:49Things like latency, whether you compare it
0:40:53to multiple devices or not,
0:40:55whether it has decent reception to the phone,
0:40:57whether it supports all these different codecs
0:40:58that are now out there.
0:41:00And then the useful things like how you control,
0:41:03whether there's buttons on it
0:41:04or some kind of touch gesture controls
0:41:06to control pausing and volume and stuff.
0:41:08It is so complicated now.
0:41:10There are so many models from $30 to $1,000.
0:41:15No reviewer can meaningfully try a good number.
0:41:18So here's what's going to happen now.
0:41:20Right now, as I speak, as people listen to this,
0:41:22they are writing you emails telling you what they bought
0:41:26and saying these are the best.
0:41:28But all they can tell you is that's what they bought
0:41:30'cause they probably have tried between zero
0:41:32and five other pairs out of a market
0:41:33with like hundreds of entries.
0:41:35There's really nothing that most people can tell you
0:41:37that will be very helpful.
0:41:39Even on Amazon, half the reviews on Amazon these days
0:41:42are fake, they're paid, they're fraud.
0:41:45It's so hard to find good information
0:41:47about this kind of stuff.
0:41:47So basically, how did you find the ones you have now?
0:41:51Was it just browse online a bit,
0:41:52look at some reviews and just buy 'em?
0:41:54- Yeah, pretty much.
0:41:55- That's what you're gonna have to do again.
0:41:57When you're buying headphones, that's basically,
0:41:59And not to mention, even if you found a place
0:42:02that reviewed a bunch of headphones
0:42:03in a way that was useful to you,
0:42:05people have such wildly different taste in headphones.
0:42:08People have very different preferences.
0:42:10Like the whole list that I made disagreed substantially
0:42:13a lot of times with the wire cutter and places like that.
0:42:17There are a few big headphone reviewers out there
0:42:19in the world that I disagree strongly with
0:42:21and some that I agree strongly with
0:42:22and you just kind of never know
0:42:23like what you're gonna find out there
0:42:24'cause it's so subjective.
0:42:26Like there is no, like people always think
0:42:29that there's like some ideal of how headphones should sound,
0:42:32but there isn't one that everyone agrees on.
0:42:34There's a whole bunch of argument about that,
0:42:36but basically there is no such thing as like
0:42:38the best way a headphone should sound.
0:42:41That's widely agreed upon.
0:42:42Basically, no one's gonna tell you anything
0:42:45that is going to be more useful than what you're gonna find
0:42:47by just searching places like Amazon,
0:42:49reading a few user reviews, and just picking one.
0:42:51And if it sucks, return it.
0:42:53Otherwise, keep it until it dies.
0:42:55So all that being said, this is probably a bad time
0:42:59to invest in a pair of Bluetooth headphones
0:43:01because the AirPods aren't out yet
0:43:03and even though I expect them to sound really mediocre
0:43:07at best because Apple has not made a pair of headphones
0:43:11that sounds good, including all the ones by Beats,
0:43:14they have not made one that sounds good.
0:43:17They can achieve practical, they can achieve good enough
0:43:21for many people or for many roles.
0:43:23As I mentioned, I listen on my pair of Bluetooth Sennheiser
0:43:28PX210BTs that sound horrible.
0:43:31They have the worst sound in the world,
0:43:32but I listen on them because they're incredibly practical.
0:43:35That I think is going to be the appeal of AirPods,
0:43:38that they are going to be incredibly practical
0:43:41and nice to use.
0:43:42Although I do have a very strong concern
0:43:46about the real world annoyance of not being able to have
0:43:51clicker and volume controls on them,
0:43:52as we discussed previously.
0:43:54Like to only have Siri or to only be able to map
0:43:57the tap on the thing to like play pause
0:43:59at no other commands, that I think is going to be annoying.
0:44:03But that being said, I think in all other ways,
0:44:07AirPods are probably gonna be pretty great
0:44:09if what you're valuing is convenience over sound quality.
0:44:13- Which all jokes aside,
0:44:15that is absolutely what I am valuing.
0:44:17For this use case, I would much rather have convenience
0:44:20over sound quality.
0:44:21Now I have a really great set of Bear Dynamics
0:44:24that I'm listening to right now.
0:44:25I have a really great set of open-air Sennheisers
0:44:27that admittedly are ancient, but still sound phenomenal.
0:44:30- They're still great. - And I have a set
0:44:31of Ultimate Ears in-ear earbuds that also sound great.
0:44:35So I understand what good headphones sound like.
0:44:39I get it.
0:44:40It's just for me, this is not a time where I am worrying
0:44:43about perfect audio fidelity.
0:44:45And I think, to your point, Marco,
0:44:48the answer's either going to be the Beats X,
0:44:50which is the kind of sporty ones, that it's two earbuds tied together by a loop that goes
0:44:56behind your neck, which is 150 bucks, or more likely, if I'm already in for 150, well crap,
0:45:02why not do 160, 170, whatever it is, for the AirPods.
0:45:06And I suspect that even though I am sitting here telling you, "Oh, I'm worried about making
0:45:10it a whole day at work," I have enough meetings and general mucking about talking to people
0:45:15during the day that I'm sure I can get through the day with just a little bit of charging
0:45:20in the case here and there. And Matt Bischoff in the chat had asked me, "Well, don't you go to lunch
0:45:24at any point?" And sometimes yes, but oftentimes I just bring a sandwich and just eat at my desk.
0:45:29And so that's not, it's not, there's no guaranteed time when I'm going to get up and be able to
0:45:34charge, but I suspect that I will be able to make it work with AirPods. And for convenience,
0:45:40that's probably the best option that I have. But internet, if you have a really good idea,
0:45:48Preferably on or over ear preferably that doesn't go over the top of your head because you're a vain petty idiot
0:45:54Let me know that would be useful morning air pods and afternoon air pods there you go
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0:48:09(upbeat music)
0:48:12So Google had an event. They announced the Google Pixel phones. There's a Pixel
0:48:18and Pixel XL, I believe it is, which are effectively the equivalent of the iPhone
0:48:237 and iPhone 7 Plus. The phones look good, I guess. I mean, they look kind of iPhone-ish.
0:48:29They look kind of like somebody described the way an iPhone 6 looks, like,
0:48:34over the phone to someone else, and then this is what came out. Yeah, that's a
0:48:40relatively fair characterization. I think they look very fairly iPhone-ish,
0:48:45but the one thing I will say is the back of them, oh does that look rough? Because
0:48:51there's like some areas that looks like it's plastic, some that looks like it's
0:48:54glass, and it's just woof, no thank you. But generally speaking, outside of that,
0:49:00they seem like they're good devices. There's no camera bump, which they made a
0:49:04snarky comment about, and I don't really blame them because the camera bump kind
0:49:07of stinks. Well I mean to be fair like they can't be making snarky remarks
0:49:12about good design when they're presenting that as their phone. Well I
0:49:16don't think the design is bad with the exception of the back but I mean
0:49:21whatever. It does have a headphone jack which that of course they were super
0:49:25snarky about which I'm not surprised but kind of disappointed because it would be
0:49:28really neat if there was a unified front on this issue but whatever. No optical
0:49:34no physical optical image stabilization,
0:49:37which I thought there was when I was watching the keynote,
0:49:40but it turns out there was not.
0:49:42It's all in software, which on the one side,
0:49:44I'm like, "Ha, like they'll get that right."
0:49:46But then again, I've seen the Google app
0:49:49that does the live, what is it,
0:49:51motion stills, I think they call it?
0:49:52- Yeah.
0:49:53- Which is the live photo stabilization thing,
0:49:55and by God, that's the work of magic.
0:49:58So it's possible they'll get that right.
0:50:02Overall, I mean, it looks like it's decent hardware, all told.
0:50:07The presentation was OK.
0:50:11It was Apple-ish in some good ways and some bad ways.
0:50:15Way better than Apple in terms of diversity,
0:50:17I do want to call that out.
0:50:18I think they did a much better job with that.
0:50:21That being said, the presenters were kind of OK.
0:50:24I mean, I don't think any of them were great.
0:50:27I mean, not that every Apple presenter is amazing,
0:50:30But I think by and large, Apple presenters do a pretty darn good job.
0:50:34And even some first-time presenters like Boseman St. John did an amazing job.
0:50:38So there is a high bar in that regard.
0:50:41But all in all, this isn't bad.
0:50:43The back is no good.
0:50:45The name of the colors, there's very silver, quite black, and really blue.
0:50:51Seriously?
0:50:52Whatever.
0:50:53Yeah, I can't even.
0:50:57The prices are the same as equivalent iPhones, which is cool.
0:51:02I mean, I guess that means that that's apparently the price to hit.
0:51:05They only come in 32 gigs and 128 gigs.
0:51:08There's no 256 gig option like you can find on an iPhone.
0:51:14It's pre-orderable now.
0:51:15I think it ships in a couple of weeks.
0:51:17It looks good.
0:51:19But the thing that was most impressive to me about the entire presentation, which is
0:51:23both good and bad, was any Google Photos user,
0:51:28which is presumably anyone who will have this phone,
0:51:30gets free unlimited storage for all the photos and video
0:51:34that come off of their Pixel phone.
0:51:37And as someone who is a devout Google Photos user,
0:51:40that is amazing, and I am super duper jealous.
0:51:44- We haven't yet seen why we need to care
0:51:48about Google's phone releases.
0:51:50Because they've made phones for a while
0:51:52under the Nexus brand, and we haven't needed to care about those yet, because historically
0:51:57they've been pretty rough with any kind of retail presence, any kind of deals with the
0:52:02carriers to get their phones promoted and into stores and everything. It's been not
0:52:07one of their strong points. You know, the Android marketplace has really just been,
0:52:11for the most part, the Samsung marketplace in recent years. The timing of this is interesting,
0:52:15with Samsung having a pretty bad time right now
0:52:19with this Note 7 disaster, and Google coming in,
0:52:23"Hey, we have an alternative for you
0:52:25"if you wanna keep with Android."
0:52:26And maybe going to the carriers now and saying,
0:52:29"Hey, you can integrate with us now,
0:52:30"we'll put all your bloatware crap on there."
0:52:31I saw a story earlier that's saying they're doing that.
0:52:34So the timing is opportune for Google
0:52:37to take back some of the Android inertia
0:52:40from Samsung a little bit, but I do think
0:52:43we still have not seen Google really show the world yet
0:52:47that their first party hardware products
0:52:51can actually get any traction in retail
0:52:53and in the marketplace.
0:52:54So if they do, then great.
0:52:57Then we have another strong competitor,
0:52:59the industry will be better off,
0:53:00customers will be better off,
0:53:02but I just don't see why we need to care about this yet,
0:53:06because based on their past,
0:53:09the chances of this really taking off,
0:53:11I don't think are guaranteed.
0:53:14- Well, I think for the first time they have
0:53:16a couple of pitches and an ad campaign
0:53:18that have a chance of resonating with iOS users.
0:53:23We mentioned on a couple of shows ago
0:53:24the whole thing of like making fun of the iPhone
0:53:26where you take a picture and it shows you're out of storage
0:53:28touting the whole, you know, Google,
0:53:30we take your pictures and throw them up to the cloud
0:53:32and our crap actually works type of angle.
0:53:35And then this is just one step further along
0:53:37the same lines for saying, you get this phone,
0:53:39not only does our stuff work to put your stuff in the cloud,
0:53:43but we don't charge you some big monthly fee for your storage.
0:53:47Get this phone.
0:53:48Don't worry about storage anymore.
0:53:50Really don't worry about it.
0:53:51You have unlimited storage in our cloud,
0:53:53and so on and so forth.
0:53:53And there's an article on The Verge talking about this,
0:53:57saying, see, Apple, see what you have to do.
0:53:59Why don't you give people cloud storage
0:54:01equal to the size of their phone,
0:54:02which was the other thing we used to talk about.
0:54:03Why doesn't Apple just do this?
0:54:05And I mean, the answer is obvious,
0:54:06because Google monetizes the stuff
0:54:09that you upload into the cloud.
0:54:10Google anonymizes and looks at your crap
0:54:14and uses it for machine learning or advertising,
0:54:17but they're not as privacy focused as Apple is.
0:54:21- Well, but that's, see that's kind of a bad example though,
0:54:23because people say like, Google can afford to do this
0:54:26because they're making money off your privacy.
0:54:28Apple can't do this.
0:54:30But that's not true.
0:54:31Apple makes money too.
0:54:31They make tons of money off the hardware.
0:54:33I would bet Apple's making more per phone than Google will.
0:54:37- Yeah, I know, but it's the same business though.
0:54:38They're both, like you can say which company
0:54:41is able to make more money off things,
0:54:43but in the end, there's Apple to Apple.
0:54:46They're both making phones somehow.
0:54:48They're both making the operating system somehow.
0:54:51They're both running the cloud services,
0:54:52stores your photos somehow, right?
0:54:54And if Apple's able to make more money on hardware
0:54:57and less money on services and Google's reverse,
0:54:59that's all well and good,
0:55:00but Google has one big thing that Apple doesn't have,
0:55:03that there's no apples to apples comparison for,
0:55:05which is we have a search engine
0:55:07that brings us huge amounts of money through advertising
0:55:10and huge amounts of data to feed into our analytical engine
0:55:14to figure out like, you know,
0:55:15anything you can imagine wanting to do
0:55:17with machine learning,
0:55:18Google has so many inputs into that system
0:55:22that Apple has no, you know, no comparison to.
0:55:25Even if Apple wanted to do everything that Google does
0:55:27in terms of monetizing your data,
0:55:29they can't because they don't have
0:55:31as much input into the system.
0:55:33It's not as valuable to them.
0:55:34So what, we have your pictures.
0:55:35What can we do with that?
0:55:36Well, you can use it to feed your engines
0:55:38to figure out how to sell search ads.
0:55:39What do you mean search ads?
0:55:40We don't have a search engine, right?
0:55:41So Google still has that big strength
0:55:43in terms of monetizing your stuff.
0:55:45And you're right that you're saying,
0:55:46well, Apple's got a lot of money in the bank.
0:55:48Apple could get free, unlimited cloud and video storage
0:55:51to all of its customers for the next 150 years
0:55:54and only cut like a tiny sliver off
0:55:57the mountain of cash they have, right?
0:55:59That is all true.
0:56:00- No, no, I'm not even talking about like cash,
0:56:02like cash reserves.
0:56:03- I know, using the profit margins on the hardware, right?
0:56:05They make more money on the hardware than Google does.
0:56:06- Right, like the Google model is,
0:56:09we're gonna somehow get you this phone
0:56:11and then we're gonna make money on you over time
0:56:13as you use our stuff with ads.
0:56:15Apple model is, we're gonna make money
0:56:17on this phone up front.
0:56:18And by the way, they're still gonna make money off everybody
0:56:20with their 30% cut from the App Store and everything else,
0:56:23but you know, even if they only make money
0:56:26from the phone hardware from somebody,
0:56:28and then after that point,
0:56:30that person is just a cost center
0:56:32as they get all their iCloud stuff hosted for free
0:56:34or whatever else if they launch a plan like this,
0:56:36you're still making money somewhere
0:56:38and there's plenty of profit on a phone
0:56:40that's priced the way these phones are priced,
0:56:42they could, if they wanted to,
0:56:45just give people cloud storage
0:56:47in a way that would probably not have
0:56:50that significant of an impact on their margins.
0:56:52They just don't do it because they like making
0:56:55that extra little five bucks a month
0:56:57from the very small number of people
0:56:58who are gonna buy iCloud storage or whatever,
0:57:00But it's setting aside how you pay for it
0:57:03because again, both companies can pay for it
0:57:06in their own ways.
0:57:08Apple doesn't have to become this crazy ad company
0:57:10that invades all your privacy
0:57:12to have enough profit margin on an iPhone
0:57:13to host your photos for a couple years.
0:57:15Google does that anyway,
0:57:16but even if they're selling their hardware now,
0:57:19even they don't need to necessarily do that
0:57:20if they didn't want to.
0:57:22So assuming both companies have ways to pay for it
0:57:25because they both do without changing their business models,
0:57:27they both have ways to pay for it,
0:57:29then I think Google's approach of giving you more of that
0:57:32like hosting, that is a much more customer-friendly approach.
0:57:37It is a much more likely approach to succeed
0:57:41in terms of getting people to use all these photo uploads,
0:57:43getting people to actually have their photos
0:57:46backed up to the cloud somehow.
0:57:47And I wish Apple would do it.
0:57:49That being said, that isn't today's Apple style.
0:57:52That's not like a Tim Cook or even a Steve Jobs Apple style.
0:57:56I don't see them doing that anytime
0:57:58for the foreseeable future.
0:57:59But I think that's a shame, because I think
0:58:01not only could they afford to do it
0:58:02without becoming a privacy invasive company,
0:58:04just using the margins they already have,
0:58:06but I think it makes for a way better customer experience
0:58:10to just know that whatever photos you take on your phone,
0:58:12they're just backed up.
0:58:13Because storage is really, really cheap these days,
0:58:16especially at the kind of scale that Apple and Google
0:58:18are working out with their data centers and everything
0:58:20and their web services contracts.
0:58:21So it's not like they can't afford it,
0:58:23it's not like it's even a big cost.
0:58:24It's just Apple is using that additional photo storage
0:58:28as a potential center for profit from service revenue.
0:58:32And Google is saying, for these people who buy our phone,
0:58:35we're just not gonna have that as a way to make money.
0:58:38We're gonna do it some other way.
0:58:38And it's a difference of opinion,
0:58:42of what is a reasonable place to make money from people,
0:58:45where do you want to nickel and dime them,
0:58:46versus give them a bunch of stuff for free.
0:58:48And again, both companies can do this,
0:58:50but only one of them is doing it.
0:58:53- Well, Apple has been breaking down its margins.
0:58:58out services separately. So if Apple was to do this, it would take the one part of
0:59:03their business that they keep using to try to distract you from the fact that
0:59:06their phone business isn't growing like it used to. The services part, hey look at
0:59:10our year-over-year service growth, and it will take a bite out of it. And even
0:59:14though you say, oh well they'll just pay for that with the hardware margins. The
0:59:18way that becomes visible in an earnings call is service revenue was up you know
0:59:2240% year-over-year but oh now we did this free storage for everyone plan and
0:59:26and service revenue is only up 5% this year, or it's down 5%, or something like that. And it's
0:59:31like, "Oh, that was supposed to be the bright spot in your earnings call because your other
0:59:35businesses are stagnant or not growing as fast as they used to be." And now even your services
0:59:40want us taking a hit. That would not be good because like, you know, it's like, "Oh, well,
0:59:45the same thing with the cash. We just said, 'Oh, we're giving away storage and the way we're going
0:59:48to pay for it is we're just going to burn cash to do it.'" Like, these are all things that are
0:59:53possible numerically but don't look good to the outside world of like do you have
0:59:58a sustainable business whereas Google you know all of its cost centers are
1:00:03running all that stuff it's like it's all under the same umbrella of get more
1:00:07people get more of those people's information that feeds the beast that
1:00:10you know that we make money off of and the complaint about Google is you're not
1:00:13making enough money off of your users you have so many users you have all this
1:00:16data Apple makes so much more money off of every one of its users than you do
1:00:20you need to find a way to monetize them better.
1:00:22And that's a persistent complaint about Google,
1:00:26but this is just more of the same with them.
1:00:28I was saying, okay, well, we heard your complaint,
1:00:29but we're gonna keep doing that thing we do,
1:00:31which would be try to get everyone's data
1:00:32as much as possible and getting to use all our services.
1:00:35And the more data we have and the more users we have,
1:00:37the more money we make,
1:00:38even if our margins aren't that big.
1:00:40And in theory, like Casey said,
1:00:43these phones are the same price as iPhones.
1:00:46They're made of the same materials.
1:00:47They're, you know, like they're probably cheaper,
1:00:50materials in the grand scheme of things,
1:00:51'cause Google is not as obsessive about manufacturing
1:00:54and tolerances, and they didn't have to design
1:00:56their own chips, they're buying it off the shelf
1:00:57from Qualcomm, which means they have to pay
1:00:58Qualcomm a margin, but on the other hand,
1:01:00they didn't have to pay for all the R&D
1:01:01to develop the chip and the, you know, anyway,
1:01:04in theory, Google could be making similar margins to Apple,
1:01:07they're just not as good at this business.
1:01:09They don't make enough phones, they're not as good
1:01:11at it as Apple, so they don't make as big a margins.
1:01:13And similarly, for the server-side component,
1:01:16Apple's not as good at Google as this.
1:01:17I'm sure Apple's stuff costs more to them,
1:01:20because they're not as good at doing service-sized stuff.
1:01:22It's less reliable, less performant, less scalable,
1:01:25and it probably costs Apple more than it costs Google
1:01:27because Google is really good at this stuff
1:01:28and has a much bigger scale.
1:01:30And they have a much bigger scale
1:01:31because they don't just run a service
1:01:33that stores people's photos.
1:01:34They run the world's biggest search engine
1:01:35and tons of other crap,
1:01:37and they have a lot of servers and a lot of storage
1:01:38and a lot of in-house hardware and software
1:01:41and know-how to make this work.
1:01:44So this is definitely asymmetrical warfare here,
1:01:47and anything having to do with cloud services,
1:01:49Google is just so much better at than Apple.
1:01:51This is a perfect move.
1:01:52This is, I mean, when I started this thing,
1:01:53this is a perfect move to try to actually get people
1:01:57who were iPhone users to look at the other side
1:02:00of the fence.
1:02:00It's not even so much like, oh, don't buy a Samsung,
1:02:04'cause they catch on fire, buy our phones.
1:02:06It's like, what about iOS people?
1:02:08All those things that you hate at iOS,
1:02:10those are the things we're great about.
1:02:12And of course, they're not gonna talk in the commercials
1:02:13about the things that Apple is better at,
1:02:14but like, we'll give you cloud storage,
1:02:17ours will work, ours will be fast,
1:02:18and arts will be free.
1:02:20And I honestly think that A, Apple should respond,
1:02:23but B, Apple doesn't have a really good way to respond.
1:02:26Like, again, if they just did it and say,
1:02:27we're paying for it out of our hardware margins,
1:02:29that would be good for consumers,
1:02:31but that would be bad for Apple.
1:02:34Like, those would be some tough earning calls.
1:02:36- Would it?
1:02:37What do you think is worse for Apple?
1:02:39Losing a potential iPhone customer to the Google phone
1:02:42or paying for that customer's photo storage?
1:02:44Like, they make way more money selling another iPhone
1:02:47than they do selling a couple of iCloud storage accounts
1:02:50for somebody for a couple of years.
1:02:51Like, if they offered unlimited storage for photos
1:02:54and videos just like Google does,
1:02:56that would remove one of the Google Pixel's
1:02:58largest selling points.
1:02:59It would just totally evaporate.
1:03:01I bet right now Apple probably thinks,
1:03:03like I said at the beginning of this segment,
1:03:05that Google's first party hardware
1:03:07has never gone anywhere really,
1:03:08so we probably don't have to worry about it, right?
1:03:10But what if it does?
1:03:12- Well, I don't think these are gonna,
1:03:14again, it's a trailing indicator.
1:03:15You have to wait to see, oh, are we actually losing customers
1:03:18because of this thing?
1:03:19Or is it just a thing that makes people look elsewhere,
1:03:21but they never actually switch because they're
1:03:23too trapped into the Apple ecosystem or whatever?
1:03:25If Apple was to offer this immediately, rather than just,
1:03:29say, just lowering the prices, which they've done already
1:03:31a couple of times, offer free for everything,
1:03:35that would be seen as like, why are you reacting to this?
1:03:38Why are you reacting to a phone that
1:03:40sells in such small volumes?
1:03:41Why do you even care about the phone?
1:03:42Do you really think it's going to pull away customers?
1:03:44wait until it actually does start to pull away customers
1:03:46and then react to it,
1:03:48rather than giving away a bunch of money, right?
1:03:51From the services division that is your growth darling
1:03:54in the absence of anything else.
1:03:55We've talked about storage sizes for phones
1:03:59and storage sizes for cloud
1:04:00and how Apple has not historically
1:04:02been very competitive there
1:04:03and they've been adjusting their prices
1:04:04to try to be more competitive.
1:04:06Google is doing the thing that Google is able to do.
1:04:09Enough about how much your storage tiers cost,
1:04:11enough about Dropbox costs this much
1:04:12and iCloud drive costs that much,
1:04:14and you have to pay for this, and your photos don't count,
1:04:16but then your iCloud backups count, enough of that.
1:04:19Everything free for everybody.
1:04:20Like they're, they're saving beyond a back place
1:04:22where it's $5 unlimited.
1:04:23They're just like everything unlimited free, because,
1:04:25and I feel like Google,
1:04:27the reason Google is offering it on these phones
1:04:29is because they are selling them for iPhone prices.
1:04:31I think a lot of the storage is being subsidized
1:04:34by the fact that you bought this really expensive phone.
1:04:36You know, as far as I'm aware,
1:04:38this deal is not being offered generically
1:04:41on the cheapest Android phone you can find,
1:04:44you have to buy the Pixel, right?
1:04:46- Yeah, it isn't any Android phone,
1:04:48it's specifically the Pixel phones.
1:04:50- Right, which is a super expensive phone,
1:04:51so I think Google is actually funding this
1:04:54with a little bit of the margins from,
1:04:56and granted, probably not as high as Apple,
1:04:57but a little bit of the margins
1:04:58from this very expensive phone.
1:04:59And as we've all learned painfully, unlimited,
1:05:03I mean, it's unlimited as long as it's unlimited
1:05:05until it's not unlimited anymore,
1:05:06usually by terms in the contract that say
1:05:09we can end this deal at any time or the company going out of business as in picture life or
1:05:14the one whose name I've already forgotten. Everpix. Everpix, yeah, it wasn't very ever,
1:05:19was it? No. I don't think people really care about like, you know, "Oh, it's not really
1:05:25unlimited." Like, get while the getting's good. Like, by all means, you know, if anyone
1:05:29offers this, I'm not going to turn up my nose at it and say, "Oh, I don't want it on your
1:05:33limited storage because I know it's not unlimited forever." Who cares? If it's not limited for
1:05:36a year, it's worthwhile. If it's not limited for two years or three years, you just take
1:05:39while you can get it. Don't be like, "I refuse to commit to this free product unless I'm guaranteed
1:05:44that it will outlast me and my descendants." Like, whatever. Just, you know, nothing is forever.
1:05:50Just take the deal. Anyway, I'm not sure Apple will react to this. Apple needs to get better
1:06:00at doing cloud services. They need to have their photo storage work better. In theory,
1:06:04iCloud Photo Library, with plenty of room, should do all the things that Google Photos does,
1:06:08but it doesn't and people are frustrated by it. So they need to get better at it, they need to be able to do it cheaper,
1:06:12they need to adjust their pricing because whether Google sells a lot of these phones or not,
1:06:16they are, you know, they're moving the market. They're saying this is the new bar.
1:06:21If you can't meet this bar, you will forever be seen as more competitive than if I just bought a Google Pixel,
1:06:26or more expensive than if I just bought a Google Pixel.
1:06:28So does Apple lower their prices? Do they go free?
1:06:31History has shown that it will take Apple a long time
1:06:35to be able to
1:06:37go free on its storage, considering how long it's taken them to offer new storage tiers and to lower
1:06:43their prices. They seem pretty stubborn about that. Can we all blame us on that? You again?
1:06:47Sure. Why not? Let's do that. It's fun pastime. Either way, this is this, in theory, this phone
1:06:56is hitting Apple where it hurts. And hopefully someone at Apple is paying attention.
1:07:01- Yeah. I also love that they mentioned during the keynote and it's on the site,
1:07:06if you scroll down a ways, about halfway down the page, that they include a section that's
1:07:12"Switch in three simple steps. Connect, sign in, and transfer. Connect to your old iPhone or Android
1:07:17device, or connect your old iPhone or Android device to your new Pixel with the quick switch
1:07:21adapter," which apparently is USB-B, whatever the normal USB receptacle is, to USB-C, which is what
1:07:28the phone uses. "Sign into your Google account on your Pixel or create a new one and then transfer.
1:07:33Choose what you want to move, like contacts, calendar events,
1:07:36photos, videos, music, SMS messages, iMessages--
1:07:39I'm not really sure how that's working-- and more.
1:07:41Then sit back and let the Pixel do the work.
1:07:42And there's little adapters in every single box.
1:07:44So they're getting aggressive.
1:07:46And I think that's good.
1:07:48And I think it was Stephen Hackett, amongst others,
1:07:50that said, this is healthy for both companies.
1:07:52When Apple is doing well-- which hopefully they are.
1:07:56I mean, I guess it depends on when you ask us.
1:07:58And if Google's doing well, then that's a good thing,
1:08:02because this competition makes both of our products better.
1:08:06But I'm curious to see if this really sells in any volume.
1:08:09I can tell you that of the four developers on the Android team--
1:08:13five developers on the Android team at my office,
1:08:15two of them bought the phone while they were in the keynote,
1:08:18or while we were watching the keynote, which, by the way,
1:08:21was at like 1230, 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
1:08:25They sat there and mashed on the refresh button
1:08:28for like a minute and a half.
1:08:29I was super jealous.
1:08:31And yes, I tweeted about this.
1:08:32And yes, most people were like,
1:08:34"Oh yeah, well, you know,
1:08:35they have five people buying these phones."
1:08:36Well, I don't care.
1:08:37It's still not in the middle of the night.
1:08:40And so I'm very jealous of that.
1:08:42But we'll see.
1:08:42I'm anxious to see these devices
1:08:44when they come in to my coworkers
1:08:45so I can see what I think of them.
1:08:47But I'm cautiously optimistic.
1:08:52Like this isn't a phone for me,
1:08:53but it could be if I wanted to jump
1:08:56to the other side of the fence.
1:08:58- Yeah, one more thing on the Pixel.
1:09:01I didn't see the entire video presentation
1:09:03where I saw parts of it.
1:09:04And one part that I was particularly interested in
1:09:05is the daydream VR thing that they're doing.
1:09:09Another one of these situations where you take your phone
1:09:12and you shove it into a headset
1:09:13and then half the phone screen shows
1:09:15what your left eye is supposed to see
1:09:16and half the phone screen shows
1:09:17what your right eye is supposed to see.
1:09:18You wear a pair of goggles that makes that all focus
1:09:21and work out reasonably well.
1:09:23And you try to have a little miniature
1:09:25portable VR experience.
1:09:26Which is, boy, it's something considering, you know,
1:09:30No serious VR development involves Macs in any way,
1:09:34and yet we're able to do it on these crappy phones
1:09:36that are not as powerful as Apple's.
1:09:38Obviously, the VR experience compared to a PC
1:09:41is very different on a phone.
1:09:42You are not gonna have the same type of thing you have
1:09:44on HTC, Vive, or Vive, depending on how you wanna say it,
1:09:48or Oculus Rift, or even the PS4 VR.
1:09:52But this is the thing they're doing,
1:09:55and I think the most interesting part of this
1:09:58is their headset, which there have been a lot of these headsets, including like the
1:10:01Google cardboard thing, which is the most primitive, but this is another set of goggles
1:10:05that you strap to your head that you shove your phone into. And they spent a while trying
1:10:09to talk about the design of it, like the external design. They've made it out of fabric. I don't
1:10:15think they mentioned this specifically. They mostly just said, "Oh, what do we wear on
1:10:18our bodies?" Well, we wear soft things and fabrics, right? So instead of making it out
1:10:22of shiny black plastic so you look all nerdy, you know, how are you going to make a VR headset
1:10:27not look nerdy. We made it out of fabric because that's what you wear. And when I look at it,
1:10:30I always thought of those sleep masks, you know, if you put like those, one of those
1:10:34things to help you sleep at night, it's not made out of like velvety material, but it's
1:10:37just made of fabric. It looks like a sleep mask, but I think this is a smart thing to
1:10:42do. And I think other VR goggle vendors should take note. You don't have to always look like
1:10:49a giant robot when you wear the thing. It doesn't have to be all angles and hard shiny
1:10:54plastic doesn't have to look like one of those droid ads you know those original
1:10:57droid ads where everything is a transformer you are putting it on your
1:11:01body and around your head and why not make it something soft and comfortable
1:11:04it's not like for example headphones they're not made out of pointy angular
1:11:09plastic unless maybe they're made by Sony so are you right like the ear cup
1:11:14if they have they have patty things on the ears like a squishy things because
1:11:17they go on your head and you don't want something it's not squishy so these
1:11:20goggles granted the the outside of it doesn't touch you but they're trying to
1:11:23they're trying to convey like these are squishy and comfortable and not like
1:11:29welding a laptop to your forehead right and I think that's a really good idea
1:11:34and this type of casual VR where it's like low resolution low frame rate
1:11:38probably not even that good right it's I think this is a good place to get a
1:11:44foothold into the idea of like a few people will try it cuz hey everyone's
1:11:48got a phone and you know these guys probably cost too much but you know
1:11:51people who are interested, who wouldn't buy a full-fledged gaming PC in the whole setup
1:11:55and the whole gear, will buy maybe this thing that you shove your phone into and try it
1:12:00out and have a pleasant experience and start to associate Google with VR or whatever.
1:12:05I don't give this thing great hopes of doing anything, especially since who's going to
1:12:10develop software for this thing?
1:12:13It's a market within a market within a market?
1:12:14I don't know.
1:12:16But as someone who still has yet to even try VR, I find it intriguing that Google is plowing
1:12:22bravely forward with some interesting ideas, whereas Google, Apple is still sitting this
1:12:27one out and Tim Cook is talking about augmented reality rather than VR.
1:12:32All the while leaving its own customers without either one of those things, except for that
1:12:37app that you hold up and translate signs in is really cool.
1:12:39But anyway, I think these goggles are neat.
1:12:42I have no idea how good they actually are,
1:12:44but I'm encouraged by the steady advancement
1:12:47in the world of VR.
1:12:48- So if they're anything like Google Cardboard,
1:12:51which it looks like they're very, very similar actually,
1:12:54you should not try them.
1:12:55- All right, 'cause low resolution and motion sickness?
1:12:57- Yeah, I got to try one of those actually twice now,
1:13:01and wow, not good.
1:13:06I mean, well, I also got to try a Vive,
1:13:09and that was substantially better
1:13:14for motion sickness purposes.
1:13:15- It better be for like the tremendous extra cost
1:13:18that that is.
1:13:19- Yeah.
1:13:20- Just need a gaming PC and this and a room
1:13:22and these things you can hold and walk around in, yeah.
1:13:24- No, I mean the problem with the Vive
1:13:26is that you just have wires everywhere.
1:13:27It's just wires as far as I can see.
1:13:29Tripping over wires, having to move the wires.
1:13:31It's kind of unfortunate, but I'm sure over time
1:13:34we will work these things out.
1:13:36- I'm thinking even for these headphones,
1:13:37even if you just use them to watch video,
1:13:39which sounds like, why would I ever do that?
1:13:40Why wouldn't I just hold my phone in front of my face?
1:13:43Like, this is generation zero type products here.
1:13:47It's gonna get better, the resolution will get better.
1:13:50Eventually a phone will have enough power
1:13:51to not be embarrassing in VR.
1:13:53I'm not looking on this as like, wow, this is a game changer.
1:13:58I'm looking on this as this could potentially be a way
1:14:03many years down the line,
1:14:04an accepted way to just veg out and watch some video
1:14:09or play some casual games, not like "I'm in a full immersive VR experience and I feel like I'm really there!"
1:14:14Maybe that's gonna be longer or still require a gaming PC or whatever, but...
1:14:18Um...
1:14:20I don't know, it just seems like...
1:14:22I guess I'm gonna say "Why doesn't Apple do this?" You know why Apple doesn't do it.
1:14:25They're not gonna release a half-assed product like this and say "Well, it's kinda neat, why don't you try it guys, tell us what you think," right?
1:14:30That's not gonna happen.
1:14:31Um...
1:14:32But...
1:14:33If...
1:14:34Apple doesn't...
1:14:36figure out what his play is here soon,
1:14:38it's just gonna pass them by.
1:14:39It's kind of like Microsoft trying to figure out
1:14:40what its play was in the world of mobile
1:14:42and then just everyone else went out ahead of them.
1:14:44They said, "Wait up!"
1:14:45And they never did catch up.
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1:16:07- I don't have an Amazon Echo Alexa,
1:16:16whatever it's called, thing.
1:16:18Friend of the show, iMike, just got one
1:16:19and he is pretty much in love with it.
1:16:22Marco, you guys have at least one, at last I heard,
1:16:25and it's last I heard you guys really like it.
1:16:28I grew up with a dad who was big into home automation
1:16:33in the late 90s, which is to say controlling your lights
1:16:36from all over the place.
1:16:38This was X10 at the time,
1:16:39which was a home automation protocol.
1:16:41I actually put an X10 receiver in my dorm room
1:16:45and had rope lights wired to it.
1:16:47And I even had a movie mode that I set up.
1:16:49No, no, it gets better.
1:16:50I even had a movie mode set up,
1:16:51so it would like dim the rope lights
1:16:53and turn on the TV and whatnot,
1:16:54which would have been awesome for the girl
1:16:56that never ever came over.
1:16:58- This is worse than my car pewter.
1:17:00- Yeah, it's pretty bad.
1:17:01- 'Cause that's what girls are impressed by.
1:17:03Automatically controlled lights, they're just like,
1:17:05this is the man for me.
1:17:07- Right? - Oh my God.
1:17:08- I mean, how can you go wrong?
1:17:09It's perfect.
1:17:10No, but anyway, I like the idea of home automation,
1:17:15although I've only barely dipped my toes into it.
1:17:19And like I said, I don't have any of these
1:17:21like automated assistant things outside of Siri
1:17:23when she decides to work properly.
1:17:25So I am not that jazzed by Google Home.
1:17:30I'm not that jazzed by Alexa.
1:17:32I'm not that jazzed by these rumors about Apple's home
1:17:36automation hub.
1:17:37I suspect that most of that is my own ignorance.
1:17:40And once I see a really nice setup, or once I see one of
1:17:44these things in use, then the light bulb will go off and I'll
1:17:47say, by god, I need this in my life.
1:17:48But I guess, do either of you care about these home
1:17:52automation hub rumors?
1:17:54Like, is this interesting to you?
1:17:55What are you looking for from this?
1:17:57What do you think?
1:17:58I care about the actual announced one.
1:18:00I know that you're reading the next item and the things about this, the home automation
1:18:03hub remote from Apple, but Google is following through on its original announcement of this
1:18:07whatever Google Home little weebl thing that they'll sell you, which looks like a squat
1:18:11little counterpart to the tube-shaped thing that keeps calling to the whales in Star Trek
1:18:184 that Amazon makes.
1:18:22And the reason I didn't buy Echo, I know a lot of people with Echo, I've tried them,
1:18:26like I understand the value proposition there, but I never quite wanted to get one, mostly
1:18:29because I figured, well, you know, that's fine and all, but Amazon is not really that
1:18:35good at this type of stuff.
1:18:36I mean, they're not bad, but it's not really their strength.
1:18:40So let me wait until see what Apple or Google have.
1:18:43And the knock against Amazon is like, oh, you can get all these skills and they're good
1:18:47at integrating with third parties, but it's so specific and it's so primitive and it's
1:18:50It's like you gotta know what you can have it do and you gotta know the specific skills
1:18:55and it's very fixed, whereas Apple is always tagging with Siri, "Oh, we're intelligent
1:18:59machine learning, we'll figure out what you mean" or whatever, but of course we know when
1:19:02you actually use Siri it's embarrassingly bad a lot of the time.
1:19:06Google, when I think of the company that I can just sort of throw words at, written or
1:19:12otherwise and have it do what I mean, is the best at that.
1:19:16Very often I want to do something and you can try it in Siri and you can try asking
1:19:20Amazon Echo about it and you can try whatever things you have to think of to find something,
1:19:26but very often the answer is write your actual question into a text box on Google.com.
1:19:32Like don't overthink it, don't try to write it into query language, just do the simplest
1:19:37thing.
1:19:38One of my favorite activities is like in chat rooms and stuff like that where someone will
1:19:40ask, sometimes even a fairly technical person, "How do you do the blah blah blah blah blah
1:19:45blah blah blah?"
1:19:46Like ask some very complicated, involved question.
1:19:48And then they'll say, "I tried googling, but I couldn't find anything."
1:19:52Then what you do is you take their original question that they typed to you in the message,
1:19:56you copy it, you paste it into the Google search box, and the number one hit is the
1:19:59thing they were looking for.
1:20:00Because what they were doing is thinking like a programmer and going like, you know, whatever
1:20:04it is, like, node file sync not working, like, they're just typing, they're using a query
1:20:12engine whereas the sentence that they just sent you gets them the number one hit because
1:20:16that's what people put into Google.
1:20:18So when I think about, is there some cylinder in my house that I can talk into the air and
1:20:21have the cylinder do what I want?
1:20:23I think the highest chance of it understanding what I mean and doing something useful is
1:20:28for that cylinder to be made by and connected to everything having to do with Google.
1:20:32So when they announce the home thing, I'm like, that's the first thing I think I might
1:20:36buy to try because I'm assuming it will be better than the Amazon Echo.
1:20:42Better at like, you know, understanding what I mean and doing useful things.
1:20:46Maybe not better audio-wise or whatever, maybe Amazon I/O would be better at ordering paper
1:20:50towels than the Google thing is, but maybe the Google thing would be better at answering
1:20:54complicated questions.
1:20:56Or maybe the Google thing would be better about projecting things on my TV if I buy
1:21:00a little dinky Chromecast and shove it into one of my side HDMI ports that I'm not currently
1:21:03using, right?
1:21:06Versus Amazon trying to integrate with their Fire puck and all that other stuff.
1:21:10Anyway, and Apple just continuing to be a non-combatant in this entire market despite
1:21:14the rumors.
1:21:15I am very interested in this home device. The only caveat for most people that I don't really mind
1:21:19that much is yes, of course, everything that I say will be uploaded to Google and all my
1:21:23information will belong to Google, but I already have all my mail on Google. I'm willing to give
1:21:26Google this information in exchange for extra convenience in my life. I'm willing to give this
1:21:31a try. So I think I might actually get one of these. I'm very curious to hear what you think
1:21:37of it when that comes in. I don't know. I'm not sure what I would pick between Amazon and,
1:21:42theoretically Apple and Google, but I mean my mail is Google Apps, my photos are in Google,
1:21:49my music is Spotify, which I'm sure will not jive well with Apple stuff. Jive well, whatever
1:21:56the word is I'm looking for. I don't know, we'll see. Marco, what's your intention, just
1:22:01going all in on Amazon?
1:22:02Well, I mean, I'm not really committed. You know, we have the Echo in the kitchen. It's
1:22:08It's good at a lot of things.
1:22:10A lot of times I will ask it a question
1:22:13that I don't think it'll answer just to see like,
1:22:15you know, can it do this, can it find this information?
1:22:17And a lot of times it does.
1:22:19And if I ask Siri the same question,
1:22:21I get, I can search the web for, you know,
1:22:23so I get a useless answer from Siri
1:22:26for many of these same questions.
1:22:27But a lot of people have said the opposite.
1:22:29You know, a lot of people have the opposite reaction
1:22:31where like the things they ask Siri work out well
1:22:33and the things they ask the Amazon Assistant don't.
1:22:36It's not really consistent between
1:22:38or the other, whether you can say like this one is
1:22:40universally the best one or this one is universally not.
1:22:43It really depends on how you're using it,
1:22:44what you're using it for,
1:22:45how it integrates with various things.
1:22:47I will say though that this is the kind of problem
1:22:51that I don't expect Apple's product to be very good at.
1:22:54To make a product like this really good,
1:22:56you need incredibly strong AI skills,
1:22:59you need a huge data set to be developing that from,
1:23:02you need constant updates, constant add-ons
1:23:06and new abilities and refinements to that data set.
1:23:09So you basically need a really massive,
1:23:11solid AI web service behind it.
1:23:13Apple's not good at those things.
1:23:14Apple can do big web services,
1:23:16they can do minor AI things,
1:23:18but they so far are still not good
1:23:21at large scale advanced AI service kind of things.
1:23:24And then secondarily, you need the ability
1:23:27to really be able to connect to lots of different things.
1:23:30This is where the Echo does really well.
1:23:32They have tons of integrations with all sorts of services,
1:23:36hardware, developer stuff through their API, tons of integrations. For Apple to do that,
1:23:42they would basically have to relax the requirements for HomeKit and they would have to really
1:23:46be a lot more open and permissive with developers than they are now and do things like open
1:23:51up the Siri API much further than it is right now. And I just don't see them doing that.
1:23:57So they could prove me wrong, who knows, but if I look at what these companies are good
1:24:01at now and the way they seem to be going, I'm guessing Apple's version of this, if it
1:24:06exists whenever it would ship, I'm guessing it's not going to be as good as the other
1:24:11two. I think Amazon's going to own this market for the market share wise, but I think the
1:24:17Google one's probably going to end up being the best one.
1:24:19Well, the Google one could be cancelled. Like, then they have a previous one called OnHub
1:24:23or something, and then they have it sphere-shaped entertainment thing that never went anywhere.
1:24:28Google has tried many in-home products that have not gone anywhere.
1:24:32Maybe this one will be a flop too, but what they have going for them, like you said, is
1:24:36they have the back end.
1:24:37Like when Apple does stuff with Siri, if they don't know exactly what to do, they're passing
1:24:43it on to another service, whether it be Wolfram Alpha or Bing or Google.
1:24:47That's not them.
1:24:48They're like, "Well, we can't make heads or tails of this, so we're going to send it to
1:24:51a different company that's good at this stuff, and maybe they can figure out what to do with
1:24:55which is not really a strong move. The other factor about all these cylinders in your home
1:25:01that you talk to that apparently from everyone who I've ever spoken to in my own personal experience
1:25:05got right and that I can imagine both Apple and Google perhaps forgetting about is the Echo is
1:25:12surprisingly good at hearing you and understanding what the hell you said. Now after that, maybe they
1:25:18can't do anything with your words. Maybe they're bad. You know, they don't have good, you know,
1:25:21you have to phrase things in a certain way,
1:25:23whatever, forget about that.
1:25:24But they're good at hearing you and getting your words.
1:25:27And that is so important.
1:25:28How often have we tried to speak into our phones
1:25:30an inch from our face and how to get a word wrong?
1:25:32Whereas Amazon Echo, again,
1:25:34because probably because of constrained vocabulary,
1:25:36like those phone trees that you do,
1:25:38but also because they have tons of microphones
1:25:39and good like noise cancellation and beamforming,
1:25:42whatever the hell they're doing,
1:25:44I think a lot of the time for that stupid cylinder
1:25:46was spent figuring out how to hear people
1:25:48separate their voice from the background noise
1:25:50and understand what they said.
1:25:52And that is incredibly important.
1:25:54It's like responsiveness on the original iPhone.
1:25:56It's like, oh yeah, and you can tap things
1:25:57and they move around, it's fine.
1:25:58It's like, yeah, but you don't understand.
1:25:59The difference between you can tap things
1:26:01and slide it around and it's fine,
1:26:02and it really feels like it's sticking to my finger.
1:26:05You may think you've checked the same check boxes.
1:26:07Yep, we have a touchscreen.
1:26:08Yep, you move things around by scrolling your finger.
1:26:10Yep, you tap buttons.
1:26:12It's not check boxes.
1:26:13It's like, yes, you both do the same thing,
1:26:15but this aspect of the product is so important
1:26:18that you really have to get it right.
1:26:19and Amazon has gotten it pretty right.
1:26:22Like who hasn't been in a house with an Echo
1:26:25and said something in a way that you think a human
1:26:27wouldn't have been able to understand you.
1:26:28You mumble it from a room away facing the wrong direction
1:26:31and the Echo still tells you like what the score of a game is
1:26:33or what the weather's gonna be.
1:26:34And you're like, how the hell did it hear that?
1:26:36Yeah, that's what you have to do with these things.
1:26:38So I hope the cylinder, you know, the Google Home thing
1:26:41does it as well.
1:26:42And if Apple ever comes up with a product,
1:26:43I hope they spend tons of time figuring out
1:26:46how the heck to hear everybody and don't be like,
1:26:47well, Johnny, I've said we don't have a lot of room
1:26:49for the microphone so we can only have these two here.
1:26:51- This is what I'm saying, like,
1:26:52it is, if Apple really devoted,
1:26:55like if they really set their minds to it,
1:26:56if they really prioritize these services
1:26:58and these product priorities and things,
1:27:01they could probably make a pretty good one,
1:27:03but I see this being like an accessory release.
1:27:06I don't see Apple taking this very seriously
1:27:09as a product category.
1:27:10So what it's probably gonna end up being
1:27:13is a relatively low priority,
1:27:15relatively low effort product if it exists.
1:27:18And because of that, it's gonna be like,
1:27:20it's gonna have no meaningful service changes
1:27:23behind it to Siri.
1:27:25Siri's not gonna become an order of magnitude better
1:27:27because of this product.
1:27:29If they're gonna do that, they're gonna do it
1:27:30for the phones, not for this.
1:27:31And they've had lots of reasons to do that recently,
1:27:33and they kind of haven't really done enough.
1:27:36And this is probably gonna be a product
1:27:38that's updated maybe every three years,
1:27:41hardware-wise, two or three years.
1:27:43- Like the Macs now.
1:27:44- Basically on an Apple TV kind of schedule
1:27:47Where Amazon Google would be updated in there's like every year or even more often. I mean Amazon is relentless every every 15 minutes
1:27:53Yeah, speaking of Apple TV. That's a great example of a
1:27:57Home device that people talk to granted they talking to the the remote and not the device and the rumors are that originally you were
1:28:03Supposed to just talk to the Apple TV, but the remote came with better sound which kind of makes sense
1:28:07And you got out of the remote or anyway
1:28:09the experience of
1:28:11Speaking to your Apple TV. This is exactly what I was saying like the phone trees. There's a fairly constrained vocabulary
1:28:17mostly you could, you know,
1:28:18you're mostly you're talking about video
1:28:20that you wanna watch.
1:28:20I mean, it's a little bit broader than that,
1:28:22but if they wanted to constrain it, they could say,
1:28:24look, we don't have to understand everything in the world.
1:28:27We have a limited problem domain.
1:28:29Let's use our machine learning
1:28:31and the idea that we think they're gonna watch a video
1:28:33and granted it's still a hard problem, right?
1:28:36And try to figure out what they mean.
1:28:38And if you've ever spoken to the remote of an Apple TV
1:28:41and tried to say something reasonable to it,
1:28:44you realize how badly the Apple TV falls down
1:28:46basic functionality, you know, like trying to get it to, you know, start, you know, watch episode five
1:28:54season two of some show or show me whatever and it's like, I'm sorry, I don't know any shows named
1:29:00Orange is the New Black and like on the screen behind it is Orange the New Black floating, you
1:29:04know what I mean? Like, we've all seen these Siri things like on the phone where it's great, makes
1:29:09great for great screenshots where it's like, try, you know, I'm sorry, I can't watch the App Store,
1:29:14Try looking for it in the app store.
1:29:15Like we've all seen that screenshot and stuff.
1:29:17Siri does weird stuff like that on the phone
1:29:19and it's funny because you can see it,
1:29:20but on the Apple TV, when it works,
1:29:22you feel like this is amazing.
1:29:23It's a little friend that I can talk to
1:29:24who shows me the video I want.
1:29:26And when it doesn't work, it's like,
1:29:27what was wrong with that?
1:29:28Especially since you see the text being translated,
1:29:31you're like, it is understanding every word I'm saying
1:29:32and there isn't really any ambiguity,
1:29:34but sometimes it's like, I can't do that for you.
1:29:37Is there something else I can help you with?
1:29:38Like, no, just do the thing.
1:29:39- Yeah, it's inconsistent.
1:29:41- Incred, yeah, that's incredibly frustrating.
1:29:42You don't know why it didn't do it. Did it fail on a server connection?
1:29:46Or is it just confused about something or has it lost context and it's not really that responsive whereas again Amazon echo
1:29:51Completely faceless no UI if it didn't work
1:29:54There's nothing you can do to fix it and yet when you say things to it it in pretty short order
1:29:59Does the thing that you said in a way that makes you think that's pretty neat and miraculous
1:30:03And yeah, it falls down sometimes too
1:30:05But that's why people are impressed by the cylinder because they you know, they thought the Amazon echo be funny gimmick
1:30:10but it'll be like Siri where it only works half the time and I'll never use it.
1:30:13But because it is responsive and hears you and generally does what you ask in a
1:30:18timely fashion, people start to trust it and appreciate the fact that it does
1:30:22work and Siri has not yet passed that bar. I don't think Siri or whatever
1:30:27branding Apple wants to put into a thing that you can talk to in any of its
1:30:30product has endeared itself to any way to the degree where they're like, "I am
1:30:36much more interested in buying this product because it comes with Siri and I
1:30:38I love Siri.
1:30:39I just haven't seen that yet.
1:30:40Whereas the stupid black plastic cylinder
1:30:43has done that for Amazon.
1:30:44- And the thing is, if you see over time,
1:30:47what's changing in this market over time?
1:30:49How's everyone getting better?
1:30:50How's everything gonna develop?
1:30:51Apple has had a very long time
1:30:54to make Siri reliable and better.
1:30:56And they have improved it over time,
1:30:58but just not enough.
1:31:00It is still very inconsistent.
1:31:03And you can ask it the same question two days in a row,
1:31:06and you'll get different answers,
1:31:07or one of them will fail,
1:31:08and the next day it'll succeed.
1:31:10It is so inconsistent and it's very frustrating
1:31:12when that happens to you.
1:31:14With the Echo, I don't use it constantly all day every day,
1:31:18but I use it, I tell it something every day.
1:31:21Usually it's controlling lights around the house.
1:31:24Every night when I go to bed,
1:31:25I tell it to turn off everything.
1:31:27It's usually stuff like that.
1:31:28Occasionally music queries or timers,
1:31:30tiff users turn off the time.
1:31:31I think we've had it for something like
1:31:33four or five months now.
1:31:35I think in that entire time we've had one time
1:31:38where it returns some kind of like server error response
1:31:41basically, like I can't figure that out right now
1:31:42or something like that.
1:31:43One time that happened in months of using it.
1:31:47With Siri that happens like every fourth or fifth time
1:31:50for like if you use it infrequently like I do.
1:31:52So where these things are going,
1:31:56I can see the market playing out
1:31:58in the most likely way already in my head.
1:32:00Apple, if they enter it, they're gonna enter it with,
1:32:02you know, again, some kind of like,
1:32:04too infrequently updated, probably too expensive,
1:32:08maybe too Johnny Ivey design-y product
1:32:10that won't be very competitive in the marketplace
1:32:13for things like capabilities, price, integrations,
1:32:16and they'll have it backed by the Siri service,
1:32:18which just won't be consistent enough,
1:32:20it won't be solid enough, it won't be smart enough.
1:32:23Then you'll have Google making theirs,
1:32:25selling Google hardware the way they always sell it,
1:32:27which is it's gonna have probably
1:32:28the most amazing AI behind it,
1:32:30the most amazing service behind it,
1:32:32but they're gonna have major problems getting it in,
1:32:35you know, getting it sold at retail, basically,
1:32:37getting it really into people's hands.
1:32:38They're gonna have major problems promoting it
1:32:40and selling it and supporting it.
1:32:42Amazon is gonna be relentless about pushing the crap
1:32:46out of the Echo line of products on their front page,
1:32:49all the holiday seasons, selling them relentlessly,
1:32:51not selling Apple's thing, not selling Google's thing.
1:32:54They're going to be relentless,
1:32:56and they are a massive retailer,
1:32:58and they have a huge head start with developers,
1:33:00with users, with the public.
1:33:02So I really think that Amazon's really gonna own this space
1:33:06and Google's, again, Google I think is gonna have
1:33:08what many geeks will consider the best product,
1:33:11but it won't be the most successful.
1:33:12I think the most successful is gonna be Amazon
1:33:14by a long shot with this.
1:33:15And Apple, if they enter this market at all,
1:33:18they will enter it with something that I don't see
1:33:21being very competitive really.
1:33:24I think people will buy it, some people will buy it,
1:33:26certainly, but I don't see it being nearly as good
1:33:29as the other two.
1:33:30I'm still waiting for the next minor advancement
1:33:34in what people call machine learning,
1:33:36which I don't like the sound of,
1:33:37but I like it better than AI, which is ridiculous,
1:33:39for the level of things that are going on here.
1:33:42But just, you know, these things
1:33:44are slightly context aware, but more of that.
1:33:46Like very often I'll be driving in the car
1:33:47and I'll hear my phone ding with a text message.
1:33:50You can't read the text message in the car,
1:33:52but I would like the phone to read me
1:33:54what the text message is,
1:33:55and there's probably some way to do that on the phone.
1:33:57- There is.
1:33:58- But I don't know the way,
1:33:59And I know enough about Siri to know that if I don't know the way,
1:34:03it will just be an exercise in frustration for me to try to guess.
1:34:06What I'd like to say is, can you read me that text message that just came in?
1:34:09But I know that won't work.
1:34:10>> That's close.
1:34:11It's close.
1:34:12It's ahoy telephone, read my messages.
1:34:15>> Right, but I don't know that.
1:34:16And so I'm just like, if I just start this conversation with the phone,
1:34:20it's going to try to do a Google search on having something to do with messages or
1:34:23get confused.
1:34:23This is based on my frustration with the one thing I try to use my,
1:34:27Siri works for simple things.
1:34:28But then what I, my stumbling block was,
1:34:31I kept trying to use it to add items to lists and reminders.
1:34:34And it was just frigging impossible
1:34:35because it's confused about which list I'm trying to add it
1:34:37to or whether it wants to create a list by that name.
1:34:39It's like, oh God, you don't understand me.
1:34:41You do not understand me.
1:34:42Like just a human would get this
1:34:44and it's not that complicated.
1:34:45It's a limited domain.
1:34:46I'm telling you about reminders and list items
1:34:48and don't ask me to create a list.
1:34:50I want it to say, no, no, no.
1:34:52I know you misunderstood me the first time, but forget it.
1:34:54I'm not trying to create a list.
1:34:55Take that thing and put a reminder for it.
1:34:58because anyway, it's very frustrating
1:35:00and it makes me not want to use it
1:35:01for things that it can probably already do
1:35:04because I know that if I don't know how to do it,
1:35:06there's no way I can have a conversation with it
1:35:09and get it done.
1:35:10Whereas I think Google is at the point now,
1:35:12whereas in best case with this Google Home thing,
1:35:16I could ask it to do something, I'm hoping,
1:35:19and have it not understand what I mean,
1:35:21but have us work out through a back and forth,
1:35:23eventually come to an understanding
1:35:25about what I want to happen where.
1:35:27And that's like the next smaller step.
1:35:29Again, limited vocabulary, simpler things that you can do,
1:35:31but just limited context awareness to understand
1:35:35that we're trying to accomplish a goal here
1:35:37and to come closer to making it happen
1:35:40without requiring the user to know things.
1:35:43And that's just one more tiny baby step
1:35:45in making something that I can do with my fingers
1:35:49happen across the room with my voice.
1:35:51We're not asking it to be my pal
1:35:53or to be intelligent or any way
1:35:55or to really do anything useful
1:35:56other than let me do something I could do with a remote,
1:35:59but without a remote control.
1:36:01But even that step, no one has really gotten there.
1:36:04Not Amazon, not Google, not Apple.
1:36:05And I have hopes that Google will be the first one to do it.
1:36:09- Thanks to our three sponsors this week,
1:36:11Backblaze, Casper, and Betterment.
1:36:13We will see you next week.
1:36:14♪ Now the show is over ♪
1:36:20♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪
1:36:22♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪
1:36:24♪ Accidental ♪
1:36:25It was accidental John didn't do any research
1:36:30Marco and Casey wouldn't let him 'Cause it was accidental
1:36:34It was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:36:42And if you're into Twitter You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:36:52So that's Casey Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A.
1:37:04It's accidental.
1:37:06It's accidental.
1:37:07They didn't mean to.
1:37:10Accidental.
1:37:11Accidental.
1:37:12Tech podcast.
1:37:14So long.
1:37:17At work, I have two, I think they're 1080 monitors.
1:37:20They're Lenovo monitors.
1:37:21They're really super shitty.
1:37:24I have been begging for at least one 4K monitor.
1:37:29Finally, I have won the fight.
1:37:33The head of IT has said, "All right, we will get you the Dell 24 something something something
1:37:384K monitor."
1:37:39I forget the exact model name.
1:37:40But basically, this is the monitor that all the Mac users, all the Mac notebook users
1:37:44have said, "This is the one to get if you want 4K, and the equivalent Dell is the one
1:37:48you want to get if you want 5K."
1:37:50The 5K one is $1,500.
1:37:52The 4K one is like $400.
1:37:54So we get it in, speaking of Amazon and things,
1:37:58we get it in today.
1:37:59I take down my two Lenovo's to put this at my desk.
1:38:02I'm happy as a pig in shit.
1:38:04I turn it on and it turns right back off.
1:38:06So I unplug it, plug it back in, turn it on,
1:38:11turns on, turns right back off.
1:38:13It was DOA, sadness, so much sadness.
1:38:16So that is also getting returned to Amazon,
1:38:18although not by me 'cause I didn't pay for it.
1:38:20But we do have an LG 4K monitor that's 27 inches that I think is too big for the DPI
1:38:27that it is, but it's still super nice.
1:38:30And by the way, did you guys know that you can only get a 30 hertz refresh rate on an
1:38:35HDMI cable off a Mac laptop?
1:38:39At any resolution or just at the 4K resolution?
1:38:41At 4K, at 4K.
1:38:43So how do you get the higher ones?
1:38:44Is it just like through Thunderbolt/mini DisplayPort?
1:38:48Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort.
1:38:49Okay, yeah, don't connect don't connect monitors to computer with hdmi. That's the wrong tool for the job. Yeah, it just feels wrong
1:38:55So why do you well no, but why i'm not mad about this, but out of curiosity, why do you say that?
1:39:00That's a tv hdms for tv standard. It's not computer monitor thing that the connector is big
1:39:05It's made for television resolutions. Whereas computers you always want to have a higher resolution than that if you possibly can
1:39:11Uh, it's just not the right tool and you know and refresh rates. You just got you know, like television
1:39:17does not come in at 120 hertz or even 60 in most cases.
1:39:22So yeah, if you have an option, don't use it.
1:39:26The only thing I have connected to HDMI is my gaming monitor, because that's what the
1:39:28PlayStation puts out, and so I've got a monitor that takes that in because it's kind of like
1:39:31a little miniature TV and I'm fine with it.
1:39:34That's fair.
1:39:35I had no idea that that was a thing until today when we connected this LG, which is
1:39:39a very nice monitor.
1:39:40I really, really like it.
1:39:41Again, I think it's a few inches too big, but I like it all in all.
1:39:46And actually we're ordering a like 22 or 24 inch 4K equivalent LG monitor to replace the
1:39:52DOA Dell one.
1:39:54You know if only Apple had an external monitor.
1:39:58If only that would be amazing but no.
1:40:01So anyway so I had no idea that you couldn't get 60 hertz off HDMI coming off a Mac laptop.
1:40:07I think with the newer HDMI standards you can.
1:40:09Again your timing here is terrible.
1:40:12- It is very likely, I mean, you know, obviously,
1:40:15don't believe it 'til we see it,
1:40:16but I would say it is at least moderately likely
1:40:20that we're gonna have new laptops with a new monitor
1:40:23by the end of the month.
1:40:24Now that being said, you probably can't drive it
1:40:26with your current laptop.
1:40:28- Well, yeah, you can if it has a graphics card
1:40:31on the inside the monitor.
1:40:33But I mean, we'll get that right after we get
1:40:35to the USB hub, am I right?
1:40:37- Are you really expecting a monitor?
1:40:38Like, I don't even have that in my dimmest hopes.
1:40:40I'm like, just feel like it's the freaking laptops, please.
1:40:43Like that's it.
1:40:44- I would guess that the 5K monitor
1:40:47comes with the new laptops.
1:40:49I don't think they're gonna wait for the Mac Pro.
1:40:50- If there really is a 5K monitor without the Mac Pro,
1:40:54it's like, I guess you can hook these up to your laptop.
1:40:57- Do you think Apple gives a (beep)
1:40:58about the Mac Pro anymore?
1:40:59I think it's very clear they don't, right?
1:41:01I mean, come on.
1:41:02- It's just so absurd, so absurd.
1:41:04- I am not particularly convinced
1:41:06that we will get an external monitor this month.
1:41:09However, if we do get it, I absolutely agree with Marco
1:41:13that it will come with the laptops
1:41:14and the Mac Pro will be a fart in the wind.
1:41:16- I know, I'm just saying it's so weird.
1:41:21I mean, I guess that they're selling the GPU
1:41:22and it's like, "Oh, your wimpy laptop
1:41:24"can't drive this mighty monitor,
1:41:25"but it's got a GPU in it, so here's your solution."
1:41:28- I mean, it's a little bit of a hack,
1:41:30but I don't think it's weird to target the laptop
1:41:32as the primary consumer for this monitor,
1:41:34because nobody buys Mac Pros and those that did--
1:41:37It's weird to hook up such a massive monitor
1:41:39with such a high resolution to your laptop.
1:41:41Like, I don't know.
1:41:42- I don't know why you say that, because most people in,
1:41:45I haven't used a desktop computer at work since 2008-ish,
1:41:50seven-ish, something like that.
1:41:52- Right, but do you need a 5K monitor, right?
1:41:55It's so like a 4K, yeah, by all means.
1:41:57Like that's kind of the standard fancy monitor
1:41:59for your fancy laptop.
1:42:00And the big thing in my office anyway is multiple monitors,
1:42:04multiple smaller monitors, right?
1:42:07But just one big massive one, especially since this monitor is probably going to cost more
1:42:11than any of their laptops, the base price anyway, right?
1:42:14It's the most expensive thing on your desk, not the computer, but the display.
1:42:17It just seems like a display made for the highest of the high end, the most expensive,
1:42:22the biggest single screen instead of two slightly smaller screens.
1:42:26And that all says Mac Pro to me, but I'm old.
1:42:28Well, I think that what you're not realizing is that, like my entire company, nobody has
1:42:33a desktop.
1:42:34Everyone has laptops, either Lenovo's.
1:42:36Yeah, no, everyone has laptops in my work too.
1:42:38I'm the only desktop company.
1:42:39Except you.
1:42:40Yeah, it was great.
1:42:42My work was asking me about, I don't know, some of their terrible spyware stuff was not
1:42:48correctly reporting back or whatever.
1:42:51We have records that there is a Mac Mini with this serial number.
1:42:55Do you happen to have that?
1:42:57I'm like, "Mm, don't have a Mac Mini, but I'll check the serial number," and it was
1:43:02the serial number of my gigantic cheese grater. So apparently someone came to my desk to catalog
1:43:06this and to put the little stickers on it or whatever and wrote down my serial number
1:43:10and decided that this thing the size of a refrigerator is a Mac Mini.
1:43:13Nice.
1:43:14That's what I'm saying. They don't even know what it is. They don't even know what this
1:43:17is. They know it's a Mac because it's got a giant Apple logo on the side of it, but
1:43:20they have no idea what the hell it is because everything else is laptops.
1:43:23So the reason that this became relevant and the reason I was able to sell this to the
1:43:27IT department was because on these 1080 monitors, if I try to use the iPhone
1:43:34simulator full-size because it's all pixel doubled or whatever the term is,
1:43:38you know, it's retina, I can see like half of it on screen. I actually sent the
1:43:42IT guy a screenshot, admittedly it was of a plus, like a 6s+ simulator, and I could
1:43:48see like the dock on my 1080 monitor and that was about it. It's gonna run a non-native
1:43:53of res like those iPhone 6s users.
1:43:55So I mean that's what I used to do, or well still do right now, is I would run it at like
1:44:00half size or whatever.
1:44:01But then what ended up happening was, especially when doing UI work, it was a total pain in
1:44:05the butt because I would like drop the single pixel border between table view cells or things
1:44:12along those lines.
1:44:13And so I'm not even seeing like a terribly accurate representation of the screen.
1:44:17And so that's why I said, "Hey listen, I'd really like to get a retina external monitor."
1:44:22And eventually my complaining and moaning finally got heard/he didn't want to hear it
1:44:27anymore.
1:44:28And so that's when they ordered this Dell and unfortunately the thing was DOA.
1:44:32But yeah, I mean, I would love to have like a couple of 22 to 24 inch 4K monitors.
1:44:41And that's what I have now is a couple of 1080 monitors, but there's just not enough
1:44:45resolution these days.
1:44:46Do you have multi-monitor problems at your office? Is there like one person in the office
1:44:53who has like six monitors?
1:44:56No, but one of the reasons that I had to complain and moan a lot to get this monitor was because
1:45:02the IT dude knew full well that once I get this new hotness, people will start smelling
1:45:08blood in the water and everyone will start saying, "Well, I want that." And from his perspective,
1:45:13it makes perfect sense that he needs to be able to justify this added expenditure over
1:45:17the cost of a 1080 monitor.
1:45:19And so now he's going to have these people coming out of the woodwork saying, "Oh, me
1:45:23too, me too, me too."
1:45:25And in reality, the only people it really makes sense for is designers, possibly, most
1:45:30likely, and iOS developers.
1:45:32And I was actually talking to one of our Android developers about all this and he was like,
1:45:36"Yeah, I have no need for that whatsoever.
1:45:37I'd like it, but I have no need for it."
1:45:40crappy 17-inch non-retinodel monitors kind of litter our hallways. You step on them like
1:45:44leaves in the fall just walking around the office. And so some people who like, it's
1:45:49kind of like people who had, you know, materials were scarce during the Depression so they
1:45:53become older and they just always save their cans or whatever, right? These people must
1:45:57have lived through a monitor drought and so now they're in the land of a monitor plenty
1:46:02and they just, they just scoop up greedily all the crappy 17-inch Dell monitors and put
1:46:07them all on their desk. So I think the biggest one I've seen is someone who has an arrangement
1:46:12of six. I think it's three over three.
1:46:14Good grief.
1:46:15Or maybe it's two, but you know. Anyway, crazy monitor arms with six. And these are six of
1:46:21the worst monitors you've ever seen, right? These are not good monitors, not a good viewing
1:46:24angle, but there are six of them. I think someone might have broken that record before
1:46:27and had them in the more haphazard arrangement, but the six is the most impressive because
1:46:30it kind of curves around. And the thing that holds the six monitors is incredibly impressive
1:46:37I really I think it is three high that's why it looks you know because it's taller but
1:46:40Who would like that's for a computer that you see in the movies who would actually want to look at?
1:46:45six 17 inch Dell monitors craning your neck around and try it like especially since all these people use
1:46:51light text on a dark background and the terminal windows with with a
1:46:54Non IPS display with those viewing angles you can't read anything on those
1:46:59I don't you know like you'd have to like get a stool and
1:47:02You know get head-on to the upper left corner monitor to see anything on anyway
1:47:06Those people like are punishing themselves like it's a reverse kind of like monitors monitors everywhere. I have so many monitors
1:47:12I have to mark why I have three monitors. I'm a power user. I have four monitors
1:47:15Well, I have you know it's just it's a it's an art crazy arms race doesn't make any sense to me
1:47:19Here I am sitting with my single very small non-retina monitor, but I still think it looks better than those other things
1:47:26They just need a JP setup, and they'll be good to go
1:47:29That's a reference
1:47:31And speaking of work hardware. I've now broken my second keyboard
1:47:35I've been keeping track. This is a 2009 Mac Pro. I use the keyboard that came with it, which I like.
1:47:41It's the current keyboard that I use at home as well. It's the Apple aluminum extended keyboard. I like it because it has low
1:47:45key press
1:47:48effort required. It's good for my RSI. I don't like the half-size function keys, but it has real arrow keys.
1:47:53Anyway, I like this keyboard. I broke one of them
1:47:57three or four years into it, got a new replacement. Today, D-key stopped working, which is a surprisingly commonly used key.
1:48:04So for half the day today, I was copying and pasting a D
1:48:07I'm right. I'm writing variable names, and I'm getting good at like ready like product PR. Oh
1:48:15command V
1:48:17UCT
1:48:19That's how I spend my day, and I ordered a new keyboard
1:48:22keyboard.
1:48:24[ Silence ]