ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Oh, John's here.

00:00:01 ◼   ► I missed the beginning of the story.

00:00:02 ◼   ► It was really funny. You missed it.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it was the funniest thing ever, and you missed it because your Skype isn't updated.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm told from half of the internet—I've measured it, it is exactly half—that there is

00:00:17 ◼   ► a reduced motion option in Beta 2. Not only is there a reduced option in Beta 2,

00:00:26 ◼   ► I'm told it works. I'm told it works the way John wants it to work. So if you'll follow along, I have

00:00:31 ◼   ► a little bit of cash. I will...

00:00:34 ◼   ► Didn't you bet like one or five dollars?

00:00:36 ◼   ► One dollar. So here, this is my one dollar. And now, listeners, I will take this box

00:00:43 ◼   ► of envelopes and I will extract... That was not nearly as loud as I hoped it would be.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I will extract one envelope and I will place this dollar in said envelope.

00:00:53 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:00:56 ◼   ► And I will address it to Mr. John Siracusa, Payne in my hindquarters, 123 Main Street,

00:01:02 ◼   ► somewhere outside Boston, Massachusetts.

00:01:05 ◼   ► And I will send it along.

00:01:06 ◼   ► That'll work.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Because, John, you are correct.

00:01:09 ◼   ► In our gentleman's bet, where we bet one American dollar, you have proved victorious, and from

00:01:15 ◼   ► everything I am told—I have not witnessed this myself, so I'm going on faith—but

00:01:18 ◼   ► I am told that your reduced motion plus super ridiculous motion and messages is a thing.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So congratulations, sir.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I was going to say you could wait until it ships, because who knows?

00:01:29 ◼   ► They could pull it before the update.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Eh, that's true.

00:01:32 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm going to say most likely, like, if they've got this far, even if they

00:01:36 ◼   ► don't ship it in this update, it'll be in the next one or the one after.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm kind of trying not to let this newfound power go to my head, but I always

00:01:45 ◼   ► like that I should perhaps exercise the magic, the magical phrasing. If I can remember the

00:01:52 ◼   ► magic words that I said, I should try something like, you know, talking about how they haven't

00:01:56 ◼   ► updated the Mac Pro in a really long time and say, "This cannot stand!" and then see

00:02:00 ◼   ► what happens.

00:02:01 ◼   ► But...

00:02:02 ◼   ► John, I'll bet you a dollar they don't update the Mac Pro next week.

00:02:05 ◼   ► No, no, I think, I don't think it was the betting. I think it was the indignity. And

00:02:11 ◼   ► I think I said this cannot stand. I seem to recall saying something incredibly pompous like that.

00:02:17 ◼   ► You know, the funny—all kidding aside—the funny thing about this whole argument was I listened to

00:02:24 ◼   ► the last, I don't know, 15 episodes of Reconcilable Differences where you talked about this,

00:02:28 ◼   ► and listening to you and Merlin talk about it, I actually think I was on your side. And I don't

00:02:34 ◼   ► know what was so different about the way you described it then and the way you described it

00:02:37 ◼   ► now or you know when on this show I don't know if I was in a punch

00:02:41 ◼   ► play Marco he's an instigator I think I was instigating more than him on this

00:02:45 ◼   ► one although you are correct Marco is in fact an instigator but anyway in my

00:02:48 ◼   ► defense I I was kind of not arguing against John's position of like wanting

00:02:53 ◼   ► this wanting this feature really I was I was more kind of exploring and poking

00:02:58 ◼   ► and be like hey you know why do you think that an instigator does poking

00:03:02 ◼   ► - Well, but it wasn't like an inflammatory matter.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I mean, like to me, I view almost every one of these

00:03:10 ◼   ► little accessibility additions that were added

00:03:12 ◼   ► like post iOS 7, I view almost all of them

00:03:15 ◼   ► as just design failures.

00:03:17 ◼   ► 'Cause like if the system wasn't so incredibly heavy

00:03:20 ◼   ► with unnecessary motion animations,

00:03:22 ◼   ► this option wouldn't need to be there,

00:03:23 ◼   ► just like it wasn't before iOS 7.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Nobody was complaining about motion sickness before iOS 7.

00:03:28 ◼   ► And then that came out and rather than fix the design,

00:03:32 ◼   ► they have to add these options.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Just like the text was too thin,

00:03:35 ◼   ► and rather than fix the text,

00:03:36 ◼   ► they just made a bold text option.

00:03:38 ◼   ► Buttons didn't like buttons anymore,

00:03:39 ◼   ► and rather than make buttons look like buttons again,

00:03:41 ◼   ► they just made an option.

00:03:42 ◼   ► So these are all kind of just papering over design flaws,

00:03:46 ◼   ► really, or poor design choices.

00:03:49 ◼   ► So I'm with you in the sense that,

00:03:51 ◼   ► A, obviously anybody who needs these

00:03:53 ◼   ► for what most people would consider an accessibility reason,

00:03:57 ◼   ► that's kind of a broad definition,

00:03:59 ◼   ► but more power to you.

00:04:00 ◼   ► it's great that we had these options,

00:04:02 ◼   ► but B, I think we shouldn't even need these options

00:04:06 ◼   ► 'cause the system should be designed in a way

00:04:08 ◼   ► to be more inclusive and usable to begin with.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And the fact that it keeps going away from that

00:04:13 ◼   ► is kind of a design flaw, in my opinion.

00:04:16 ◼   ► - But yeah, it was funny listening

00:04:17 ◼   ► to "Reconsolable Differences" 'cause I had been

00:04:18 ◼   ► a couple episodes behind when you and I

00:04:22 ◼   ► were getting into it, Jon, and then I caught up

00:04:26 ◼   ► and I was listening to you on rec diffs

00:04:28 ◼   ► and I was like, wow, actually that makes a lot more sense.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And I wish I could, I should have taken notes or something and tried to pinpoint what about

00:04:34 ◼   ► your description made more sense to me then.

00:04:37 ◼   ► But I remember leaving that thinking, "Wow, I think I'm on his side.

00:04:41 ◼   ► That's weird."

00:04:42 ◼   ► You're succumbing to peer pressure because I had someone on the show who agreed with

00:04:45 ◼   ► me.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So you heard two people who believe the same way.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And you're like, "Well, the crowd is doing it.

00:04:49 ◼   ► I'm swayed by this."

00:04:50 ◼   ► And we recorded that first.

00:04:52 ◼   ► That was the—

00:04:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:04:54 ◼   ► —that was Merlin pointed out this week.

00:04:55 ◼   ► That was the first episode.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And then I talked about it on ATP.

00:04:57 ◼   ► It's just because of the release schedules are different.

00:04:58 ◼   ► So I think I was also less worked up with it.

00:05:00 ◼   ► But in general, on our show, when YouTube both not only disagreed with me, but seemed

00:05:05 ◼   ► to think what I was saying was ridiculous.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I couldn't believe that you didn't see how this was like just an incredible gap, like

00:05:12 ◼   ► this cannot stand.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I said it and I'll say it again.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Like it just seemed like a thing.

00:05:17 ◼   ► That's why I was willing to do the $1 bet.

00:05:18 ◼   ► I mean, you know me, I'm not a big like gambler, right?

00:05:23 ◼   ► It seemed like, you know, first of all, $1 is not that big a deal, but it was just like

00:05:27 ◼   ► Like they just have to change it, they just have to.

00:05:30 ◼   ► It's not just like, well maybe it just seemed like it had to be done.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And they're doing it so good.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And I wish I had the beta now, but not enough to actually install a beta.

00:05:38 ◼   ► So hopefully the point release will be out soon.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And I've been using my phone with reduced motion still off.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Every time I want to send an effect, I go to settings, turn it back on, send the effect,

00:05:48 ◼   ► turn it off.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Wow.

00:05:50 ◼   ► All right, so John, tell me about Compubler.

00:05:52 ◼   ► This is one more data point in the ongoing discussion of the iPhone 7 Plus's

00:05:59 ◼   ► fake background blur thing that it does. Last show we talked about the confirmation that it was not

00:06:07 ◼   ► taking like a fuzzy picture from one camera and combining it with another one but was

00:06:11 ◼   ► instead taking the background, finding it, and then blurring it with a particular algorithm.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And we're talking about how that didn't quite look like the same way an optical blur looks,

00:06:21 ◼   ► but most people can be able to tell and blah blah blah. Anyway, a couple people wrote in with a blog

00:06:27 ◼   ► post exploring the various ways you can blur things to try to make them look like an out-of-focus

00:06:32 ◼   ► picture from a lens. So we'll link to that blog post. I think that's Stu, how do you pronounce his

00:06:38 ◼   ► last name? Mashaewicz? Yeah, I think so. He's a filmmaker and a photographer, so he knows some

00:06:44 ◼   ► stuff about this. And we had someone named Ben Gunzberger write in to say that he has worked on

00:06:51 ◼   ► tools that do this for computer animation like that make the blur the background that wasn't

00:06:55 ◼   ► actually blurred in the camera but they want to make it look like it was and he says that to do

00:06:59 ◼   ► it properly is very CPU intensive they have situations where they take multiple minutes

00:07:04 ◼   ► per frame to calculate the blur so obviously that's a non-starter if it takes multiple minutes on what

00:07:08 ◼   ► i assume is pretty beefy hardware in the visual effects world to do the blur the quote unquote

00:07:12 ◼   ► right way if apple's got to do it and they do it in real time right don't you get like a preview of

00:07:17 ◼   ► the blur in the camera thing. So anyway, multiple minutes per frame is not going to happen there. So

00:07:23 ◼   ► Apple may be currently constrained not only by the fact that they're faking it, but by the fact they

00:07:27 ◼   ► have to fake it and do it in real time. I mean the the uh the A10 is fast but it's not fast enough

00:07:33 ◼   ► to take an operation that takes multiple minutes. Never mind it's also multiple minutes on uh well

00:07:37 ◼   ► I don't know what the resolution is but how many megapixels is the uh 12 to 7 camera? 8? 12? 12.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that's is that higher res than the like 4k film probably higher than 2k right? It's higher than 4k. No

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah, 4k is just over eight megapixels

00:07:53 ◼   ► Anyway, the whole point is that doing it faking it the right way is is expensive

00:07:59 ◼   ► So that would explain a little bit of the crappiness also some more

00:08:02 ◼   ► Funny 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?

00:08:09 ◼   ► Shot from like the knees up standing in front of something with his arms at his side

00:08:14 ◼   ► and the background was blurred, but the gap between his arms and his body, the camera just didn't find.

00:08:19 ◼   ► And so the background was pin sharp, and when you look between his arms and his body,

00:08:23 ◼   ► but the whole rest of the background was blurred, it looks really weird.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Yeah, that was Stephen Hackett, wasn't it?

00:08:27 ◼   ► It was his brother, and yeah, imagine your arms are at your side, but there's a gap between your arms and your body.

00:08:33 ◼   ► And at a glance, especially not like blown up full size, I didn't notice a thing wrong with it.

00:08:39 ◼   ► But then as I looked closer, and I think because somebody pointed it out,

00:08:43 ◼   ► It turns out that, like John said, the area between his brother's arm and his torso was super sharp,

00:08:51 ◼   ► whereas all the area around his brother was blurred like you would have expected.

00:08:57 ◼   ► So, 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.

00:09:05 ◼   ► And so, you know, it's not really being used as designed, but it was still a funny thing to see,

00:09:10 ◼   ► and a great example of where it kind of falls on its face today anyway.

00:09:14 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Let's talk about the ceramic iPhone 8.

00:09:20 ◼   ► There's been a, maybe not in the last week or two, but right when the Apple Watch Edition

00:09:26 ◼   ► came out, there was a lot of talk of, "Well, if this works for a watch, why wouldn't this

00:09:32 ◼   ► work for a phone?"

00:09:34 ◼   ► And I think there's a lot of different conversations about this and a lot of different ways this

00:09:37 ◼   ► can go.

00:09:38 ◼   ► I for one am very concerned about dropability.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Not to say these phones are terribly droppable as it is,

00:09:44 ◼   ► but you know, would a ceramic case shatter?

00:09:47 ◼   ► How would that work?

00:09:48 ◼   ► So where do we see this going

00:09:51 ◼   ► for a potential ceramic iPhone 8?

00:09:53 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, it depends.

00:09:55 ◼   ► You know, some of the possible reasons

00:09:58 ◼   ► why they would do this.

00:09:59 ◼   ► There was this one big Quora post

00:10:01 ◼   ► that I think kind of got this started

00:10:03 ◼   ► or from somebody who knows about material sciences

00:10:05 ◼   ► much more than we do,

00:10:06 ◼   ► so forgive me for the details here.

00:10:08 ◼   ► I mean, ceramic, it has a lot of advantages over aluminum.

00:10:11 ◼   ► One of them is that it's radio transparent,

00:10:13 ◼   ► so that gets rid of a lot of antenna problems.

00:10:16 ◼   ► It's also, it's incredibly, you know,

00:10:18 ◼   ► the kinds of ceramics that you'd use in a phone,

00:10:21 ◼   ► it can be incredibly scratch resistant and fairly strong.

00:10:25 ◼   ► You can shatter it.

00:10:27 ◼   ► It's kinda like Sapphire.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Like, you can shatter it with a very strong impact,

00:10:31 ◼   ► but it takes a pretty strong impact to do that.

00:10:34 ◼   ► and anything less than that is basically invulnerable too.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Ceramic can be very, very tough.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And you can mold it in different shapes and everything.

00:10:42 ◼   ► There's lots of manufacturing details

00:10:44 ◼   ► of how you would do it,

00:10:44 ◼   ► and Apple has some interesting patents in that area,

00:10:46 ◼   ► but that they appear to not have really used

00:10:48 ◼   ► for anything yet.

00:10:49 ◼   ► They probably could do it.

00:10:51 ◼   ► I don't think any of us know enough about manufacturing

00:10:53 ◼   ► to know any of the details beyond that

00:10:54 ◼   ► of that they could do it.

00:10:56 ◼   ► For durability though,

00:10:57 ◼   ► we also heard a rumor recently

00:10:59 ◼   ► that they're going back to the steel band

00:11:02 ◼   ► around the outside design,

00:11:04 ◼   ► like what we had with the 4 and 4S.

00:11:05 ◼   ► You know, they'd have glass on both sides.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Glass has many of those same properties as ceramic,

00:11:09 ◼   ► as you know, you can make it radio transparent,

00:11:11 ◼   ► and you can make it glossy,

00:11:12 ◼   ► and you can make it pretty scratch resistant.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Obviously there's some durability questions there.

00:11:18 ◼   ► But I don't, I mean, I think Apple's solution right now

00:11:22 ◼   ► to phone durability to impacts, to drops and everything,

00:11:25 ◼   ► I think their solution right now is cases and AppleCare.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Like that's basically it.

00:11:30 ◼   ► It's like try not to drop your phone.

00:11:31 ◼   ► If you're the kind of person

00:11:32 ◼   ► who drops your phone frequently,

00:11:33 ◼   ► get a really strong case for it.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And if you break it, hopefully you bought AppleCare,

00:11:37 ◼   ► 'cause we're gonna make that easy for you.

00:11:39 ◼   ► So I'm honestly not sure that they really need

00:11:42 ◼   ► to do that much more work in the durability department

00:11:45 ◼   ► if it's going to make the phone hard to manufacture

00:11:48 ◼   ► or less desirable or ugly or grows from plastic-y.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I don't know, do you think cases in AppleCare are enough?

00:11:56 ◼   ► - It's a hack.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - I think they do need to work on durability.

00:11:59 ◼   ► It's just like you said, they're not willing

00:12:02 ◼   ► to make the compromises that would require.

00:12:03 ◼   ► I mean, they can make the phone incredibly durable.

00:12:05 ◼   ► They just made the whole freaking thing out of plastic,

00:12:07 ◼   ► but plastic feels gross as a screen.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Like we all want to move our hands across a glass screen

00:12:12 ◼   ► because it feels better.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And so they keep trying to make the glass tougher,

00:12:15 ◼   ► but there's only so much they can do.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And they spent a long time moving away from glass.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Like they did the 4 and the 4S, and they're like,

00:12:23 ◼   ► we're taking a break from that for a while

00:12:24 ◼   ► because the 4 and the 4S had two sides that could break.

00:12:27 ◼   ► The screen could break on the front and the back,

00:12:29 ◼   ► you know, and two parts that could shatter.

00:12:31 ◼   ► at least when it was all the aluminum designs, the 5, the 5s, the 6s, and the 7, that's a

00:12:35 ◼   ► lot of phones, the front could shatter, backs never shattered.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Bent a little sometimes, didn't shatter.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Scratch, didn't shatter.

00:12:42 ◼   ► So the rumor for the next iPhone is it's going to be all glass.

00:12:46 ◼   ► As you said, have they worked on the shattering thing?

00:12:49 ◼   ► Do they have stronger, more shatter resistant glass?

00:12:53 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:12:54 ◼   ► One other property of glass that's potentially problematic is that it's not a particularly

00:12:59 ◼   ► good conductor of heat compared to say aluminum and so you've got a hot little

00:13:04 ◼   ► system on a chip in there you have to get the heat out somewhere maybe it'll

00:13:08 ◼   ► be radiating out of the the steel bands or something I don't know but it's

00:13:12 ◼   ► tougher for it to go through glass than it is an aluminum back the ceramics we're

00:13:16 ◼   ► talking about for the iPhones that's why it's difficult to talk about this and

00:13:19 ◼   ► you can read that quora post if we can find a link for it what do you mean by

00:13:23 ◼   ► ceramic ceramic is not just one thing especially with all of Apple's patents

00:13:26 ◼   ► with like, well, ceramic mixed with a bunch of other stuff

00:13:29 ◼   ► with like fibers between it or reinforcing materials

00:13:32 ◼   ► or polymers or laminates or other things

00:13:34 ◼   ► to try to make it not be quite so much like ceramic

00:13:37 ◼   ► because ceramic has, I think the main problem ceramic has

00:13:40 ◼   ► is that it is heavy if you make it thick enough to be sturdy.

00:13:43 ◼   ► If you make it light, then it's thin

00:13:45 ◼   ► and it has, like glass, catastrophic failure mode.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Really good, right up to the point

00:13:50 ◼   ► where it totally goes kablooey.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Anyway, we see the watch,

00:13:54 ◼   ► We see that they've done the watch in ceramic.

00:13:57 ◼   ► The watch is an easier situation

00:13:59 ◼   ► because people aren't dropping their watches

00:14:01 ◼   ► for the most part, but they are banging them into things,

00:14:04 ◼   ► but it's smaller and it's able to be more sturdy

00:14:06 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't have any long continuous flat areas

00:14:08 ◼   ► like the back of the phone.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Anyway, I think a ceramic iPhone is totally plausible

00:14:14 ◼   ► that as a thing that Apple will experiment with.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I don't know if they're gonna get it to the point

00:14:20 ◼   ► where they can ship something.

00:14:23 ◼   ► There are so many material choices.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Remember, we heard all the rumors about carbon fiber

00:14:26 ◼   ► for so many years, both about Macs and about iOS devices?

00:14:29 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:14:30 ◼   ► - I think that's another situation where,

00:14:31 ◼   ► oh, carbon fiber is even better than plastic.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Very light, very strong.

00:14:37 ◼   ► Its failure modes are probably not as good as aluminum,

00:14:42 ◼   ► but not as bad as ceramic or glass.

00:14:44 ◼   ► But I think a lot of these decisions come down to

00:14:46 ◼   ► how much does it cost to manufacture this?

00:14:48 ◼   ► Can we manufacture it consistently?

00:14:50 ◼   ► And how ugly is it?

00:14:52 ◼   ► 'Cause again, I think like what's stopping Apple

00:14:55 ◼   ► from making the back of all their phones plastic?

00:14:58 ◼   ► It's like, it's not gonna say stubbornness,

00:15:01 ◼   ► but it's a desire not to ship a product

00:15:04 ◼   ► that has plastic on the back because it's seen as

00:15:06 ◼   ► and feels to be, you know,

00:15:08 ◼   ► because it has so much plastic back phone,

00:15:10 ◼   ► radio transparent, maybe not good for you conduction.

00:15:12 ◼   ► All right, very light, very sturdy,

00:15:15 ◼   ► really good failure modes, right?

00:15:17 ◼   ► Maybe a little bit scratchy,

00:15:18 ◼   ► but like talk to someone who has a 5C.

00:15:21 ◼   ► I think it holds up pretty well.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It's just not as sort of premium an experience

00:15:25 ◼   ► as glass or aluminum or ceramic would be.

00:15:29 ◼   ► And so I think they just keep looking for new materials,

00:15:31 ◼   ► looking for different materials.

00:15:32 ◼   ► The same reason you got glasses on the front.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Can we put plastic on the front?

00:15:35 ◼   ► Sure, it'd be so sturdy.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Can you imagine a completely plastic screen,

00:15:38 ◼   ► iPhone with plastic on the back,

00:15:40 ◼   ► lightweight, sturdy, drop it, no problem,

00:15:43 ◼   ► but it would not feel like an iPhone.

00:15:45 ◼   ► So that's their struggle.

00:15:47 ◼   ► So I'm gonna look out for ceramic,

00:15:48 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure the next one's that,

00:15:51 ◼   ► I buy all the glass rumors just because the 4 and the 4S design was the one they wanted

00:15:55 ◼   ► to make, or at least the one that, I don't know if Johnny specifically, but it was one

00:15:59 ◼   ► of the early designs for like, that's what the first iPhone was supposed to be and they

00:16:02 ◼   ► couldn't pull it off.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And it took them a really long time until they could pull it off.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Then they did pull it off and everyone dropped their phones and they shattered front and

00:16:07 ◼   ► back and they said, all right, let's take a break.

00:16:10 ◼   ► Let's take a break from that.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Take another run at it.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And how many years was it?

00:16:14 ◼   ► I counted it off before.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Five, five S, six, six, seven, five years they waited.

00:16:18 ◼   ► So now after five years of non-glass ones,

00:16:20 ◼   ► they're gonna try it again and I'm ready to see

00:16:22 ◼   ► how much they've improved it.

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00:18:33 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:18:36 ◼   ► - One more thing on the ceramic phone

00:18:39 ◼   ► before we start talking about it.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Casey's internet woes.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Help person in the chat room has posted a link to the little booklet that comes if you buy the ceramic Apple watch edition

00:18:49 ◼   ► That talks about their process

00:18:51 ◼   ► I'm I'm not following all of it because I'm trying to read it here on the air

00:18:55 ◼   ► but it seems like it describes the process whereby they

00:18:57 ◼   ► Take a ceramic thing and bake it and then machine it after it's baked to make it into the watch

00:19:03 ◼   ► Case thing. I don't know

00:19:05 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the channel as people can read it and see for themselves

00:19:07 ◼   ► but 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

00:19:13 ◼   ► this watch for all the people who are true believers in the

00:19:17 ◼   ► Future ceramic iPhone rumor this watch looks to all the world like the original MacBook Air

00:19:22 ◼   ► Which was the trial run of the unibody construction that would eventually go across the entire product line

00:19:26 ◼   ► so if this watch thing works out and

00:19:29 ◼   ► They master this process by selling a small number of these very expensive watches to people

00:19:35 ◼   ► Then maybe it will be for the follow-up phone after the all glass one

00:19:39 ◼   ► But you know if this is their trial run it's too late for this to be the manufacturing technique

00:19:43 ◼   ► tapped for next year's iPhone which

00:19:46 ◼   ► Already has to be much farther along well and also like

00:19:50 ◼   ► manufacturing a this one

00:19:53 ◼   ► fairly high-end fairly you know small market Apple watch model out of this material is

00:20:01 ◼   ► incredibly 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

00:20:08 ◼   ► This is a good enough test

00:20:08 ◼   ► I 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

00:20:13 ◼   ► But obviously not gonna do that yet, so we'll see

00:20:16 ◼   ► You know also building off of this I saw a video that was linked to by a friend of the show Ryan Jones

00:20:23 ◼   ► that is

00:20:26 ◼   ► entitled the iPhone 7 I've been waiting for in the whole video is two and a half minutes and

00:20:31 ◼   ► If you want to see it in its full glory just pause us for two and a half minutes and go watch

00:20:36 ◼   ► You don't need audio on the on the video there if you're listening to me now presumably that's not a problem

00:20:40 ◼   ► So 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

00:20:48 ◼   ► Instead of rounded and then sands them down and whatever I want this

00:20:52 ◼   ► I want this a lot because this matte black iPhone 7 that I have I love it

00:20:57 ◼   ► I really, really do. The more I use it, the more I like it. And I think aesthetically,

00:21:01 ◼   ► it's my favorite iPhone yet, but this thing is a darn bar of soap. And I would love, I

00:21:06 ◼   ► mean, obviously I've never handled this particular gentleman's phone, but it stands to reason

00:21:12 ◼   ► it would be much easier to grip with the flat sides. I would love to have an iPhone like

00:21:17 ◼   ► this, but in black, not silver. So yeah, I want this, please. Can I have one?

00:21:23 ◼   ► I think you only want it because you haven't seen it up close.

00:21:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you notice the video was kind of quick

00:21:28 ◼   ► to show the phone once it was all done.

00:21:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a mess, it's gotta be a mess.

00:21:32 ◼   ► 'Cause this is not a precision operation,

00:21:34 ◼   ► it's just gotta look like a phone

00:21:35 ◼   ► that has been just messed up.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it didn't look good if you tried to look closely.

00:21:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:42 ◼   ► The shape looked good, but the finish did not.

00:21:44 ◼   ► - Right, that's the thing.

00:21:45 ◼   ► Like if this was officially done,

00:21:47 ◼   ► I think it would be pretty impressive, so.

00:21:48 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:21:49 ◼   ► - I think that would be neat.

00:21:51 ◼   ► - All right, so I've talked to my phone

00:21:54 ◼   ► many past episodes and my wife's going on a cruise, a Mediterranean cruise, and she

00:22:01 ◼   ► was going to bring the fancy camera and rented lenses and we talked all about that. Anyway,

00:22:04 ◼   ► she went, she's back, she brought the camera back in one piece, did not drop it into the

00:22:08 ◼   ► ocean, took a bunch of pictures with it, and when I was going through her pictures, getting

00:22:12 ◼   ► them sorted into the photos library, after her return, I noticed a bunch of them and

00:22:17 ◼   ► she noticed too, she said, "Just wait, there's something in a bunch of the pictures, you'll

00:22:21 ◼   ► see it soon, a dark line that appears in a bunch of pictures and the line kind of looks

00:22:29 ◼   ► semi-circular so I'm like is that like a shadow of a lens or something but then I noticed

00:22:34 ◼   ► some other ones the line is not perfectly curved like a circle sometimes it changes

00:22:40 ◼   ► the angle and I'm like well okay a lens aberration wouldn't do that because the lenses are all

00:22:44 ◼   ► round or you know spherical they're not they're not oddly shaped like that and then sometimes

00:22:48 ◼   ► it would curve in the opposite direction and it would move around.

00:22:51 ◼   ► And so I posted on Twitter, "Can anyone tell me what's causing the vertical curve shadow

00:22:55 ◼   ► lines in these pictures?" and posted a bunch of sample pictures.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And then everyone commented about where the pictures are from and whether they've been

00:23:01 ◼   ► there or not.

00:23:02 ◼   ► But in addition to that, a bunch of people did have guesses as to what it might be.

00:23:11 ◼   ► My guess was that it was maybe something on the lens because it was in so many pictures

00:23:15 ◼   ► in so many different environments.

00:23:16 ◼   ► I didn't think it was what it looks like, which is a hair in front of the lens or something,

00:23:20 ◼   ► because you know, your hair is under control. It wouldn't constantly be in front of the lens.

00:23:23 ◼   ► The lens was zoom lens, it was pretty far away. I inspected the lenses and there was nothing on them.

00:23:29 ◼   ► I knew there was stuff on my sensor. I could see there, like you can see in the same pictures,

00:23:35 ◼   ► some dots and I could see on the sensor there was some dust that I needed to get rid of,

00:23:39 ◼   ► but I'm like, what the hell is this line? And a lot of people have theories and one theory was

00:23:44 ◼   ► was

00:24:03 ◼   ► it snags or otherwise grabs the hair in the channel

00:24:06 ◼   ► and briefly flicks it in front of the sensor

00:24:08 ◼   ► as it moves up and down.

00:24:10 ◼   ► And it appears, and it only appears in pictures

00:24:13 ◼   ► with a very small aperture,

00:24:14 ◼   ► because with wide aperture,

00:24:15 ◼   ► light's coming in from too many angles

00:24:16 ◼   ► and it just illuminates all behind it, you don't see it.

00:24:18 ◼   ► So you see it in pictures of the sky

00:24:21 ◼   ► or another thing with lots of light

00:24:23 ◼   ► where the aperture has to squeeze down really small.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And then most of the incident light rays

00:24:27 ◼   ► are traveling in the same direction.

00:24:28 ◼   ► Then you get a shadow, this one little hair.

00:24:30 ◼   ► And the way I found it, after having this theory,

00:24:32 ◼   ► looked in the channel and way down in the corner of the channel just kind of peeking

00:24:38 ◼   ► out like on an angle like cutting off the corner of like the edge, you know, here's

00:24:42 ◼   ► the channel, here's the bottom, was little tiny hair and so I went in there super duper

00:24:46 ◼   ► carefully with a pair of tweezers and pulled it out and it was about like a centimeter

00:24:51 ◼   ► and a half long, very fine, non-human, doesn't look like a human hair, looks like a hair

00:24:57 ◼   ► from like a rabbit or a squirrel or something, really small and I got that out of there.

00:25:02 ◼   ► So I was like, thank God because so many other theories are like, oh, there's something wrong

00:25:05 ◼   ► with your shutter and it's dragging something on the thing or whatever, or you just have

00:25:09 ◼   ► to bring your camera back.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I was so happy to be able to actually extract a hair.

00:25:12 ◼   ► I'm like, yes, this is the thing.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And then, you know, of course I had to go through the rest of the process to get rid

00:25:19 ◼   ► of the dust.

00:25:20 ◼   ► So I brought one of those sensor cleaning kits.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And the way you do this is you take a picture of a blue sky and intentionally crank the

00:25:26 ◼   ► aperture down to a very tiny opening.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Or you can just put an auto if the sky is bright enough.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Then you take a picture of what you think is blank blue sky, then you bring it back

00:25:34 ◼   ► into your favorite photo application and you fiddle with the contrast and see if you can

00:25:37 ◼   ► see anything that looks like a dot.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And if you do see something like that, there's still dust on it.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And so I use the sensor cleaning kit, which is a little scary.

00:25:45 ◼   ► You know, like people say, "Oh, you can damage your sensor, be super careful."

00:25:49 ◼   ► But like I bought a thing specifically for that purpose.

00:25:52 ◼   ► The big like square on a stick kind of thing?

00:25:54 ◼   ► Yeah, there's like disposable single-use swabs.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Yep, yep.

00:25:58 ◼   ► specifically sized for the sensor, so you just one swipe only and then you throw the

00:26:02 ◼   ► thing in the garbage which is incredibly wasteful but whatever.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Yep.

00:26:05 ◼   ► And you have to use two of them, one with the little spritz of the stuff on it and one

00:26:07 ◼   ► without the spritz of the stuff.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Anyway, and a little blower to get most of it.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I hope to just use the blower because I didn't want to touch it at all.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Yeah, a little rocket blower.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I hope to just use the blower to get all this stuff.

00:26:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:15 ◼   ► But the blower didn't dislodge a couple of stubborn things so I used the thing, took

00:26:20 ◼   ► a bunch of pictures of the sky, now my sensor is clean.

00:26:22 ◼   ► all of which made me think that camera manufacturers could really really help

00:26:28 ◼   ► with this problem by just putting something, I mean I've never had a DSLR

00:26:32 ◼   ► but I assume that the mirror doesn't actually seal up and I know it covers

00:26:36 ◼   ► the sensor but doesn't actually like cover it as in keep dust out right? No.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Alright so A they should and B mirrorless cameras should have a little

00:26:46 ◼   ► door kind of like the shutter but not the shutter that closes before you can

00:26:49 ◼   ► take the lens off. Like why not do that? You know, I mean you'd still have to

00:26:53 ◼   ► clean the sensor sometimes. You still have to have a mechanism like you do on

00:26:56 ◼   ► an SLR to flip the lens up so you can clean the sensor, right? But why

00:27:00 ◼   ► expose it to the air at all when you're changing lenses? Just put it, maybe

00:27:04 ◼   ► there's not enough room for a door or whatever, not the shutter, the shutter is

00:27:07 ◼   ► the shutter, fine, I understand it has to be high speed and fancy and so on and so

00:27:10 ◼   ► forth. There's a plain old boring reasonably sealed door that closes and

00:27:14 ◼   ► covers the sensor when you change lenses. That would be a good idea camera

00:27:18 ◼   ► manufacturers. Anyway, moral of the story is I did not correctly convey to my wife exactly

00:27:27 ◼   ► how careful you have to be when changing lenses. Not that she even changed them. She just changed

00:27:32 ◼   ► it once. And all it takes is once for a little dust. But every time I did it on my Long Island

00:27:37 ◼   ► vacation it was like the lens can only be off the camera for the shortest possible time.

00:27:42 ◼   ► I'd have it staged and set up and never pointed upwards and just like, "Lens off. Cap on the

00:27:47 ◼   ► capability, you know, it was like trying to diffuse a bomb and again, never do it in a still

00:27:53 ◼   ► environment with still air, never point the lenses or the camera, like just, it's, you know, it's

00:28:00 ◼   ► nerve wracking. And, you know, she spent a lot of time on her vacation with this hair traveling up

00:28:06 ◼   ► and down the channel on the shutter, which is kind of disappointing. It's, I mean, it didn't ruin all

00:28:11 ◼   ► her pictures, but enough of them have a big dark line in them that's kind of disappointing. Luckily,

00:28:17 ◼   ► almost everything indoors doesn't have this problem because the the aperture is too big.

00:28:20 ◼   ► That stinks. I'm sorry to hear that. But what a weird problem. And you know, I don't have the

00:28:25 ◼   ► person's name handy, but and gosh, I only know this is true or not, but I'm taking them at face

00:28:29 ◼   ► value. Somebody told me that the Micro Four Thirds cameras, which is what I have, they all have

00:28:34 ◼   ► optical image stabilization or a lot of them, if not all of them, on the body rather than in the

00:28:39 ◼   ► lens. And they were saying that this person was saying that when you turn the camera on, it will

00:28:45 ◼   ► will actually use the OIS to shake off any dust

00:28:49 ◼   ► that might be on the lens.

00:28:50 ◼   ► I have no idea if that's true or not,

00:28:51 ◼   ► but what a cool idea, even if it isn't true.

00:28:53 ◼   ► - It's a pretty common feature.

00:28:55 ◼   ► It doesn't actually work perfectly, but like our--

00:28:58 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Yeah, like the 5D Mark IIs

00:29:00 ◼   ► that we had, it didn't have stabilization,

00:29:01 ◼   ► but it just had some kind of sensor vibrator thing

00:29:03 ◼   ► that would try to buzz off the dust

00:29:05 ◼   ► every time you turn the camera off.

00:29:06 ◼   ► And so to have that just constantly going,

00:29:08 ◼   ► like every time the camera turns off,

00:29:10 ◼   ► we did occasionally have to blow something off the sensor

00:29:13 ◼   ► with the 5Ds, but very rarely.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I think in the eight years we used them,

00:29:18 ◼   ► I think maybe three or four times total.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Whereas with my Sony, when I got it last year,

00:29:25 ◼   ► literally the first week I had it, I got dust on the sensor.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And similar story, just less severe.

00:29:30 ◼   ► It was last year we were at the beach house.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Lots of my pictures had this one big spot,

00:29:35 ◼   ► and eventually I took the lens off

00:29:36 ◼   ► and spotted it on the lens, on the sensor.

00:29:38 ◼   ► I was on vacation, so I couldn't really,

00:29:40 ◼   ► I didn't have any of the cleaning things,

00:29:41 ◼   ► so I just kind of tolerated it and just edited it out.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It wasn't too bad to edit out of everything.

00:29:47 ◼   ► But yeah, the camera was like a week old.

00:29:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:50 ◼   ► It happened immediately.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And yeah, you don't realize how good

00:29:54 ◼   ► those automatically vibrate the sensor things are

00:29:57 ◼   ► until you have a camera that doesn't do it

00:29:59 ◼   ► or doesn't have it.

00:30:00 ◼   ► But the Sony's, it has that feature,

00:30:02 ◼   ► but it doesn't do it every time.

00:30:04 ◼   ► It does it only on demand, and it only partially works.

00:30:07 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:30:08 ◼   ► - I think that feature could help a little bit,

00:30:10 ◼   ► But in my case, first of all, it wouldn't have gotten the hair, because the hair is

00:30:13 ◼   ► not even on the sensor.

00:30:14 ◼   ► So you should make the sensor all you want.

00:30:15 ◼   ► It's not going to help.

00:30:16 ◼   ► That would have been there.

00:30:17 ◼   ► And for the dust, the pieces that I had to eventually use the mechanical method of actually

00:30:23 ◼   ► swabbing them off, the blower, the little, you know, hurricane blower, you know, shoots

00:30:29 ◼   ► a very concentrated thing, that couldn't even remove them.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Like, they were on there good.

00:30:33 ◼   ► It wasn't just like instant little dust that happened to float it on there.

00:30:35 ◼   ► They were so wedged on there that very forcible,

00:30:40 ◼   ► very concentrated stream of air could not dislodge them.

00:30:42 ◼   ► They actually had to swipe them away.

00:30:44 ◼   ► So I have a little faith in a sensor shake

00:30:46 ◼   ► would have shaken them off too.

00:30:48 ◼   ► But again, a door with some kind of reasonable ceiling

00:30:52 ◼   ► better than nothing would go a long way

00:30:55 ◼   ► towards making changing lenses less nerve wracking.

00:30:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do it the same way you do it.

00:30:59 ◼   ► I'm sure Marco is the same as well

00:31:00 ◼   ► where everything is staged, ready to go.

00:31:02 ◼   ► The camera's always upside down.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I'm not as intent on it being still air, but you know, we do what we can.

00:31:08 ◼   ► Um, and the whole thought of this happening to me is terrifying.

00:31:12 ◼   ► So I'm very impressed.

00:31:14 ◼   ► You were able to get this done without destroying the lens or the, the sensor,

00:31:17 ◼   ► which is what I surely somehow would have done knowing the I'd poured

00:31:21 ◼   ► water on it somehow by accident.

00:31:23 ◼   ► I don't know how you could like people say, oh, it's so

00:31:24 ◼   ► delicate.

00:31:25 ◼   ► You have to be careful.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Like it looks pretty sturdy down there.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I mean, you're swapping it.

00:31:28 ◼   ► It, when I swabbed across it, it felt like a smooth surface, but the

00:31:33 ◼   ► swab it's not like it has little snake like I don't understand how you go about

00:31:36 ◼   ► breaking it I suppose you could scratch it in some way but only thing I'm

00:31:39 ◼   ► touching it with these microfiber swabby things that I assume are safe and yeah I

00:31:45 ◼   ► hope you don't have to do that again but like taking pictures of an empty blue

00:31:48 ◼   ► sky and checking for any little splotches on it you'll see them like you

00:31:53 ◼   ► don't have to be an expert to be especially if you start filling with a

00:31:55 ◼   ► contrast control you will find the spots that are there because I swabbed it and I

00:31:59 ◼   ► I could see where the spot used to be.

00:32:02 ◼   ► It was still a little, you know,

00:32:03 ◼   ► I had actually removed the material.

00:32:05 ◼   ► I couldn't see it with my eyeballs anymore,

00:32:07 ◼   ► but on the sensor, I could see a little spot

00:32:08 ◼   ► and that's when I had to use like the cleaning stuff.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And then that got rid of it for good.

00:32:12 ◼   ► And now I'm just messing with the controls,

00:32:14 ◼   ► trying to find any little speck.

00:32:16 ◼   ► And now it's like, oh, that's JPEG compression.

00:32:17 ◼   ► Nevermind, I should do RAWs, I guess.

00:32:19 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm pretty sure I didn't destroy my camera.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Still seems to work.

00:32:23 ◼   ► No more hair, no more spots.

00:32:24 ◼   ► - All right, so I have a brief tale of woe

00:32:28 ◼   ► and a plea for help.

00:32:30 ◼   ► On my work computer, I typically use a pair of headphones,

00:32:35 ◼   ► Bluetooth headphones I bought literally five years ago.

00:32:39 ◼   ► I bought it--

00:32:40 ◼   ► - And they're perfect in every way, as we've always heard.

00:32:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, about that.

00:32:44 ◼   ► So I bought them on August 15, 2011.

00:32:47 ◼   ► And they're Arctic Sound P311s.

00:32:50 ◼   ► I've espoused them numerous times

00:32:51 ◼   ► because while they are not perfect,

00:32:53 ◼   ► they accomplish everything satisfactorily

00:32:57 ◼   ► in a satisfactory way.

00:32:58 ◼   ► So they are sufficient.

00:33:01 ◼   ► How much horsepower does a Rolls-Royce have?

00:33:03 ◼   ► Sufficient amounts of horsepower.

00:33:05 ◼   ► I upgraded to Sierra on my work Mac,

00:33:09 ◼   ► and suddenly they are not sufficient anymore.

00:33:14 ◼   ► For whatever reason, and I don't know why,

00:33:17 ◼   ► they sound like hugely, hugely, hugely compressed.

00:33:22 ◼   ► And I ran into this once years ago,

00:33:26 ◼   ► And it ended up that there was like a bit value or something like that that you could

00:33:29 ◼   ► change in the Bluetooth Explorer app, which you have to get via Xcode tools now.

00:33:35 ◼   ► And that fixed my problem.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Like years ago, I'd noticed that when this first happened, the symbols were terrible

00:33:41 ◼   ► and super compressed, and it was just awful, and I was able to fix it.

00:33:44 ◼   ► Tried doing the same thing this time, and it didn't make a difference.

00:33:50 ◼   ► So I unpair/repair.

00:33:51 ◼   ► I've done all sorts of things.

00:33:53 ◼   ► I haven't tried again after having cleared my PRAM just for grins and giggles.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I've done everything except that, and I thought, well, maybe just something weird is going

00:34:03 ◼   ► on.

00:34:04 ◼   ► They're ancient headphones at this point.

00:34:07 ◼   ► Let me just get a new set.

00:34:08 ◼   ► So I got the equivalent set that's newer.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And so they came in today, and they're also Arctic Sound, but these are P253, and we will

00:34:17 ◼   ► have links to these in the show notes.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And good news, bad news.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Good news is they sound great.

00:34:22 ◼   ► well, as great as a $30 set of Bluetooth headphones can sound,

00:34:27 ◼   ► but every time there's any audio playing of any sort,

00:34:32 ◼   ► the right channel has a buzzing in them,

00:34:35 ◼   ► which in the span of about 45 seconds

00:34:38 ◼   ► drove me absolutely crazy.

00:34:40 ◼   ► - It took that long?

00:34:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:34:42 ◼   ► - How did this review possibly start out in any positive way?

00:34:45 ◼   ► - So I'm returning these headphones,

00:34:48 ◼   ► because did you know, like hand on heart,

00:34:49 ◼   ► I did not know this,

00:34:51 ◼   ► For some, if not all things,

00:34:52 ◼   ► you could return it to Amazon for free.

00:34:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, usually you have to return shipping.

00:34:57 ◼   ► They'll leave you like six bucks

00:34:58 ◼   ► from your return or something.

00:35:01 ◼   ► - Oh, is that what it does?

00:35:02 ◼   ► Okay, 'cause according to them,

00:35:03 ◼   ► they were like, "Here's your shipping label."

00:35:04 ◼   ► And I didn't cross compare how much the cost of the item was

00:35:09 ◼   ► versus how much they were saying they were gonna refund me,

00:35:11 ◼   ► so maybe that's what it is.

00:35:12 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:35:13 ◼   ► - No, it's super awesome.

00:35:14 ◼   ► If you ever have to return it to Amazon,

00:35:15 ◼   ► they make it incredibly easy on you.

00:35:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I am going to return them,

00:35:20 ◼   ► But here's my predicament.

00:35:22 ◼   ► I want, for better or worse, Bluetooth headphones.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I understand that not everyone wants them.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I do.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I prefer Bluetooth headphones.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And I think the reason I prefer them is because convenience is a bigger priority to me than

00:35:36 ◼   ► perfect sound fidelity.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Well then in that case, just wait for the AirPods.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Well, so here's the thing.

00:35:43 ◼   ► I agree that that's probably going to be the best answer, but they supposedly only run

00:35:47 ◼   ► for five hours before they need a charge.

00:35:49 ◼   ► and 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.

00:35:56 ◼   ► These ancient headphones with their five-year-old battery that I loved so much

00:36:01 ◼   ► used to go like two, two and a half days between charges easily and with meetings during the day and whatnot,

00:36:08 ◼   ► so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but you get my point.

00:36:11 ◼   ► I think the answer is going to be get AirPods.

00:36:14 ◼   ► But is there any and this is kind of rhetorical kind of not especially for you Marco

00:36:20 ◼   ► Is there any set of Bluetooth headphones that whether or not they are?

00:36:25 ◼   ► Perfect audio fidelity because again, I don't care for Marco's purposes

00:36:30 ◼   ► Let's just assume I never listen to music on them, which is a complete and utter lie

00:36:34 ◼   ► But let's just for your purposes if you are satisfied with podcast fidelity

00:36:39 ◼   ► that will probably be sufficient for my music fidelity for this use case.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Are there any headphones, Bluetooth headphones, that have batteries that last about 10 hours,

00:36:49 ◼   ► let's say, that don't suck?

00:36:52 ◼   ► And here's the kicker though, that have a bar that goes behind the back of your neck

00:36:59 ◼   ► rather than over your head.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Why, ladies and gentlemen?

00:37:02 ◼   ► Because I am weird, and my hair kind of sticks up a little bit and poofs.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And if I put a bar across the top of my head for eight hours, it'll have that imprint in

00:37:15 ◼   ► my head always, which is not advisable.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So...

00:37:19 ◼   ► Why, ladies and gentlemen, you could have just said vanity.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Yes.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Yes, actually, that was an easier summary.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Why?

00:37:26 ◼   ► You don't want to mess up your hair.

00:37:27 ◼   ► That's why.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:29 ◼   ► It's a hand on heart, no argument, absolutely, absolutely true.

00:37:32 ◼   ► There are some advantages to baldness.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Anyway...

00:37:35 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:37:36 ◼   ► So I'm making fun of myself, but I really honestly am asking, and maybe we don't answer it during the show, but I

00:37:42 ◼   ► don't have anything against earbuds,

00:37:46 ◼   ► but I'd rather have an over ear or like the the ones that I had kind of dangled on your ear,

00:37:52 ◼   ► which I understand makes most people crazy. But for me, I like it. It works for me.

00:37:57 ◼   ► So is--and we'll put the links to the ones I'm talking about in the show notes--

00:38:00 ◼   ► is there any set of Bluetooth headphones that's even vaguely like this?

00:38:05 ◼   ► That is not a total piece of garbage that I would not have to charge in the middle of the day.

00:38:11 ◼   ► If I have to charge them every night, fine, no big deal.

00:38:13 ◼   ► But I don't have to charge in the middle of the day.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I think, Marco, you're absolutely right.

00:38:17 ◼   ► What's going to end up happening is I'm going to spend way more money than I want to,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and I'm going to get the EarPods, and I'll probably love them, and it'll probably be fine,

00:38:22 ◼   ► and I'll put them in the little Tic Tac case during meetings, and I'll never know the difference.

00:38:26 ◼   ► I suspect that's going to be the winner.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But is there any other option, preferably not Buds,

00:38:33 ◼   ► but, Buds, I would maybe entertain.

00:38:35 ◼   ► Is there anything else that you can think of

00:38:37 ◼   ► that doesn't go over the head?

00:38:39 ◼   ► - So, I'm going to fill you with hope,

00:38:41 ◼   ► but ultimately provide no value whatsoever.

00:38:44 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:38:47 ◼   ► So, the problem, and this is honestly,

00:38:49 ◼   ► I've been considering just stopping reviewing headphones.

00:38:52 ◼   ► - Oh no, because I want you to review

00:38:54 ◼   ► the Bluetooth headphones now that

00:38:55 ◼   ► Bluetooth is in vogue-ish, kind of.

00:38:57 ◼   ► - Here's the thing.

00:38:58 ◼   ► So, basically, like, you know, right now,

00:39:00 ◼   ► everyone keeps asking me, you know,

00:39:01 ◼   ► what they should get for Bluetooth and everything.

00:39:03 ◼   ► And with Bluetooth, there are so,

00:39:05 ◼   ► I mean, the headphone market has grown a lot

00:39:07 ◼   ► in the last couple years since I started my big review.

00:39:10 ◼   ► There's so many models now,

00:39:13 ◼   ► and people have so many different needs.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And the fact is, it takes a lot of time and a lot of money

00:39:20 ◼   ► to buy or somehow acquire all these headphones

00:39:24 ◼   ► and test them properly in a useful way.

00:39:27 ◼   ► That's why when the Wirecutter does it,

00:39:29 ◼   ► they have a whole team of people doing it,

00:39:31 ◼   ► and it takes a long time, and that's like,

00:39:32 ◼   ► their full-time job is to work on stuff like this.

00:39:34 ◼   ► And also, the headphone market has gotten,

00:39:38 ◼   ► basically like, as Beats came around a few years ago,

00:39:43 ◼   ► a lot of people took notice of,

00:39:44 ◼   ► here's a place we can make a lot of money.

00:39:47 ◼   ► So now there are tons of headphone brands

00:39:50 ◼   ► and tons of like, allegedly awesome new headphones

00:39:54 ◼   ► coming out on the market all the time.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And many of them are very expensive.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Many of them are like, you know, $400 and up.

00:40:01 ◼   ► basically, which is, you know, for an audio file,

00:40:04 ◼   ► that's kind of normal, but for a regular person,

00:40:06 ◼   ► it's a very expensive pair of headphones.

00:40:08 ◼   ► So, there are so many now that almost nobody,

00:40:13 ◼   ► including the Wirecutter, actually reviews

00:40:16 ◼   ► a meaningful number of them to be able to give you

00:40:19 ◼   ► a useful blanket recommendation.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Like, if you read the Wirecutter, they always go through,

00:40:24 ◼   ► and one of the things they'll spend a few paragraphs doing

00:40:26 ◼   ► is saying, like, here's the ones we tested,

00:40:28 ◼   ► and here's a whole bunch we didn't even test

00:40:30 ◼   ► because the reviews didn't look good on Amazon

00:40:32 ◼   ► or whatever other reasons they have.

00:40:34 ◼   ► 'Cause you basically have to rule out large swaths

00:40:37 ◼   ► of what's out there just to have a possible number to review.

00:40:42 ◼   ► And with Bluetooth, everything is even worse now

00:40:44 ◼   ► because now there's even more factors that matter

00:40:47 ◼   ► that before you didn't have to worry about as much.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Things like latency, whether you compare it

00:40:53 ◼   ► to multiple devices or not,

00:40:55 ◼   ► whether it has decent reception to the phone,

00:40:57 ◼   ► whether it supports all these different codecs

00:40:58 ◼   ► that are now out there.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And then the useful things like how you control,

00:41:03 ◼   ► whether there's buttons on it

00:41:04 ◼   ► or some kind of touch gesture controls

00:41:06 ◼   ► to control pausing and volume and stuff.

00:41:08 ◼   ► It is so complicated now.

00:41:10 ◼   ► There are so many models from $30 to $1,000.

00:41:15 ◼   ► No reviewer can meaningfully try a good number.

00:41:18 ◼   ► So here's what's going to happen now.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Right now, as I speak, as people listen to this,

00:41:22 ◼   ► they are writing you emails telling you what they bought

00:41:26 ◼   ► and saying these are the best.

00:41:28 ◼   ► But all they can tell you is that's what they bought

00:41:30 ◼   ► 'cause they probably have tried between zero

00:41:32 ◼   ► and five other pairs out of a market

00:41:33 ◼   ► with like hundreds of entries.

00:41:35 ◼   ► There's really nothing that most people can tell you

00:41:37 ◼   ► that will be very helpful.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Even on Amazon, half the reviews on Amazon these days

00:41:42 ◼   ► are fake, they're paid, they're fraud.

00:41:45 ◼   ► It's so hard to find good information

00:41:47 ◼   ► about this kind of stuff.

00:41:47 ◼   ► So basically, how did you find the ones you have now?

00:41:51 ◼   ► Was it just browse online a bit,

00:41:52 ◼   ► look at some reviews and just buy 'em?

00:41:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, pretty much.

00:41:55 ◼   ► - That's what you're gonna have to do again.

00:41:57 ◼   ► When you're buying headphones, that's basically,

00:41:59 ◼   ► And not to mention, even if you found a place

00:42:02 ◼   ► that reviewed a bunch of headphones

00:42:03 ◼   ► in a way that was useful to you,

00:42:05 ◼   ► people have such wildly different taste in headphones.

00:42:08 ◼   ► People have very different preferences.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Like the whole list that I made disagreed substantially

00:42:13 ◼   ► a lot of times with the wire cutter and places like that.

00:42:17 ◼   ► There are a few big headphone reviewers out there

00:42:19 ◼   ► in the world that I disagree strongly with

00:42:21 ◼   ► and some that I agree strongly with

00:42:22 ◼   ► and you just kind of never know

00:42:23 ◼   ► like what you're gonna find out there

00:42:24 ◼   ► 'cause it's so subjective.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Like there is no, like people always think

00:42:29 ◼   ► that there's like some ideal of how headphones should sound,

00:42:32 ◼   ► but there isn't one that everyone agrees on.

00:42:34 ◼   ► There's a whole bunch of argument about that,

00:42:36 ◼   ► but basically there is no such thing as like

00:42:38 ◼   ► the best way a headphone should sound.

00:42:41 ◼   ► That's widely agreed upon.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Basically, no one's gonna tell you anything

00:42:45 ◼   ► that is going to be more useful than what you're gonna find

00:42:47 ◼   ► by just searching places like Amazon,

00:42:49 ◼   ► reading a few user reviews, and just picking one.

00:42:51 ◼   ► And if it sucks, return it.

00:42:53 ◼   ► Otherwise, keep it until it dies.

00:42:55 ◼   ► So all that being said, this is probably a bad time

00:42:59 ◼   ► to invest in a pair of Bluetooth headphones

00:43:01 ◼   ► because the AirPods aren't out yet

00:43:03 ◼   ► and even though I expect them to sound really mediocre

00:43:07 ◼   ► at best because Apple has not made a pair of headphones

00:43:11 ◼   ► that sounds good, including all the ones by Beats,

00:43:14 ◼   ► they have not made one that sounds good.

00:43:17 ◼   ► They can achieve practical, they can achieve good enough

00:43:21 ◼   ► for many people or for many roles.

00:43:23 ◼   ► As I mentioned, I listen on my pair of Bluetooth Sennheiser

00:43:28 ◼   ► PX210BTs that sound horrible.

00:43:31 ◼   ► They have the worst sound in the world,

00:43:32 ◼   ► but I listen on them because they're incredibly practical.

00:43:35 ◼   ► That I think is going to be the appeal of AirPods,

00:43:38 ◼   ► that they are going to be incredibly practical

00:43:41 ◼   ► and nice to use.

00:43:42 ◼   ► Although I do have a very strong concern

00:43:46 ◼   ► about the real world annoyance of not being able to have

00:43:51 ◼   ► clicker and volume controls on them,

00:43:52 ◼   ► as we discussed previously.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Like to only have Siri or to only be able to map

00:43:57 ◼   ► the tap on the thing to like play pause

00:43:59 ◼   ► at no other commands, that I think is going to be annoying.

00:44:03 ◼   ► But that being said, I think in all other ways,

00:44:07 ◼   ► AirPods are probably gonna be pretty great

00:44:09 ◼   ► if what you're valuing is convenience over sound quality.

00:44:13 ◼   ► - Which all jokes aside,

00:44:15 ◼   ► that is absolutely what I am valuing.

00:44:17 ◼   ► For this use case, I would much rather have convenience

00:44:20 ◼   ► over sound quality.

00:44:21 ◼   ► Now I have a really great set of Bear Dynamics

00:44:24 ◼   ► that I'm listening to right now.

00:44:25 ◼   ► I have a really great set of open-air Sennheisers

00:44:27 ◼   ► that admittedly are ancient, but still sound phenomenal.

00:44:30 ◼   ► - They're still great. - And I have a set

00:44:31 ◼   ► of Ultimate Ears in-ear earbuds that also sound great.

00:44:35 ◼   ► So I understand what good headphones sound like.

00:44:39 ◼   ► I get it.

00:44:40 ◼   ► It's just for me, this is not a time where I am worrying

00:44:43 ◼   ► about perfect audio fidelity.

00:44:45 ◼   ► And I think, to your point, Marco,

00:44:48 ◼   ► the answer's either going to be the Beats X,

00:44:50 ◼   ► which is the kind of sporty ones, that it's two earbuds tied together by a loop that goes

00:44:56 ◼   ► behind your neck, which is 150 bucks, or more likely, if I'm already in for 150, well crap,

00:45:02 ◼   ► why not do 160, 170, whatever it is, for the AirPods.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And I suspect that even though I am sitting here telling you, "Oh, I'm worried about making

00:45:10 ◼   ► it a whole day at work," I have enough meetings and general mucking about talking to people

00:45:15 ◼   ► during the day that I'm sure I can get through the day with just a little bit of charging

00:45:20 ◼   ► in the case here and there. And Matt Bischoff in the chat had asked me, "Well, don't you go to lunch

00:45:24 ◼   ► at any point?" And sometimes yes, but oftentimes I just bring a sandwich and just eat at my desk.

00:45:29 ◼   ► And so that's not, it's not, there's no guaranteed time when I'm going to get up and be able to

00:45:34 ◼   ► charge, but I suspect that I will be able to make it work with AirPods. And for convenience,

00:45:40 ◼   ► that's probably the best option that I have. But internet, if you have a really good idea,

00:45:48 ◼   ► Preferably on or over ear preferably that doesn't go over the top of your head because you're a vain petty idiot

00:45:54 ◼   ► Let me know that would be useful morning air pods and afternoon air pods there you go

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00:48:09 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:48:12 ◼   ► So Google had an event. They announced the Google Pixel phones. There's a Pixel

00:48:18 ◼   ► and Pixel XL, I believe it is, which are effectively the equivalent of the iPhone

00:48:23 ◼   ► 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The phones look good, I guess. I mean, they look kind of iPhone-ish.

00:48:29 ◼   ► They look kind of like somebody described the way an iPhone 6 looks, like,

00:48:34 ◼   ► over the phone to someone else, and then this is what came out. Yeah, that's a

00:48:40 ◼   ► relatively fair characterization. I think they look very fairly iPhone-ish,

00:48:45 ◼   ► but the one thing I will say is the back of them, oh does that look rough? Because

00:48:51 ◼   ► there's like some areas that looks like it's plastic, some that looks like it's

00:48:54 ◼   ► glass, and it's just woof, no thank you. But generally speaking, outside of that,

00:49:00 ◼   ► they seem like they're good devices. There's no camera bump, which they made a

00:49:04 ◼   ► snarky comment about, and I don't really blame them because the camera bump kind

00:49:07 ◼   ► of stinks. Well I mean to be fair like they can't be making snarky remarks

00:49:12 ◼   ► about good design when they're presenting that as their phone. Well I

00:49:16 ◼   ► don't think the design is bad with the exception of the back but I mean

00:49:21 ◼   ► whatever. It does have a headphone jack which that of course they were super

00:49:25 ◼   ► snarky about which I'm not surprised but kind of disappointed because it would be

00:49:28 ◼   ► really neat if there was a unified front on this issue but whatever. No optical

00:49:34 ◼   ► no physical optical image stabilization,

00:49:37 ◼   ► which I thought there was when I was watching the keynote,

00:49:40 ◼   ► but it turns out there was not.

00:49:42 ◼   ► It's all in software, which on the one side,

00:49:44 ◼   ► I'm like, "Ha, like they'll get that right."

00:49:46 ◼   ► But then again, I've seen the Google app

00:49:49 ◼   ► that does the live, what is it,

00:49:51 ◼   ► motion stills, I think they call it?

00:49:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:49:53 ◼   ► - Which is the live photo stabilization thing,

00:49:55 ◼   ► and by God, that's the work of magic.

00:49:58 ◼   ► So it's possible they'll get that right.

00:50:02 ◼   ► Overall, I mean, it looks like it's decent hardware, all told.

00:50:07 ◼   ► The presentation was OK.

00:50:11 ◼   ► It was Apple-ish in some good ways and some bad ways.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Way better than Apple in terms of diversity,

00:50:17 ◼   ► I do want to call that out.

00:50:18 ◼   ► I think they did a much better job with that.

00:50:21 ◼   ► That being said, the presenters were kind of OK.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think any of them were great.

00:50:27 ◼   ► I mean, not that every Apple presenter is amazing,

00:50:30 ◼   ► But I think by and large, Apple presenters do a pretty darn good job.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And even some first-time presenters like Boseman St. John did an amazing job.

00:50:38 ◼   ► So there is a high bar in that regard.

00:50:41 ◼   ► But all in all, this isn't bad.

00:50:43 ◼   ► The back is no good.

00:50:45 ◼   ► The name of the colors, there's very silver, quite black, and really blue.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Seriously?

00:50:52 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I can't even.

00:50:57 ◼   ► The prices are the same as equivalent iPhones, which is cool.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I mean, I guess that means that that's apparently the price to hit.

00:51:05 ◼   ► They only come in 32 gigs and 128 gigs.

00:51:08 ◼   ► There's no 256 gig option like you can find on an iPhone.

00:51:14 ◼   ► It's pre-orderable now.

00:51:15 ◼   ► I think it ships in a couple of weeks.

00:51:17 ◼   ► It looks good.

00:51:19 ◼   ► But the thing that was most impressive to me about the entire presentation, which is

00:51:23 ◼   ► both good and bad, was any Google Photos user,

00:51:28 ◼   ► which is presumably anyone who will have this phone,

00:51:30 ◼   ► gets free unlimited storage for all the photos and video

00:51:34 ◼   ► that come off of their Pixel phone.

00:51:37 ◼   ► And as someone who is a devout Google Photos user,

00:51:40 ◼   ► that is amazing, and I am super duper jealous.

00:51:44 ◼   ► - We haven't yet seen why we need to care

00:51:48 ◼   ► about Google's phone releases.

00:51:50 ◼   ► Because they've made phones for a while

00:51:52 ◼   ► under the Nexus brand, and we haven't needed to care about those yet, because historically

00:51:57 ◼   ► they've been pretty rough with any kind of retail presence, any kind of deals with the

00:52:02 ◼   ► carriers to get their phones promoted and into stores and everything. It's been not

00:52:07 ◼   ► one of their strong points. You know, the Android marketplace has really just been,

00:52:11 ◼   ► for the most part, the Samsung marketplace in recent years. The timing of this is interesting,

00:52:15 ◼   ► with Samsung having a pretty bad time right now

00:52:19 ◼   ► with this Note 7 disaster, and Google coming in,

00:52:23 ◼   ► "Hey, we have an alternative for you

00:52:25 ◼   ► "if you wanna keep with Android."

00:52:26 ◼   ► And maybe going to the carriers now and saying,

00:52:29 ◼   ► "Hey, you can integrate with us now,

00:52:30 ◼   ► "we'll put all your bloatware crap on there."

00:52:31 ◼   ► I saw a story earlier that's saying they're doing that.

00:52:34 ◼   ► So the timing is opportune for Google

00:52:37 ◼   ► to take back some of the Android inertia

00:52:40 ◼   ► from Samsung a little bit, but I do think

00:52:43 ◼   ► we still have not seen Google really show the world yet

00:52:47 ◼   ► that their first party hardware products

00:52:51 ◼   ► can actually get any traction in retail

00:52:53 ◼   ► and in the marketplace.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So if they do, then great.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Then we have another strong competitor,

00:52:59 ◼   ► the industry will be better off,

00:53:00 ◼   ► customers will be better off,

00:53:02 ◼   ► but I just don't see why we need to care about this yet,

00:53:06 ◼   ► because based on their past,

00:53:09 ◼   ► the chances of this really taking off,

00:53:11 ◼   ► I don't think are guaranteed.

00:53:14 ◼   ► - Well, I think for the first time they have

00:53:16 ◼   ► a couple of pitches and an ad campaign

00:53:18 ◼   ► that have a chance of resonating with iOS users.

00:53:23 ◼   ► We mentioned on a couple of shows ago

00:53:24 ◼   ► the whole thing of like making fun of the iPhone

00:53:26 ◼   ► where you take a picture and it shows you're out of storage

00:53:28 ◼   ► touting the whole, you know, Google,

00:53:30 ◼   ► we take your pictures and throw them up to the cloud

00:53:32 ◼   ► and our crap actually works type of angle.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And then this is just one step further along

00:53:37 ◼   ► the same lines for saying, you get this phone,

00:53:39 ◼   ► not only does our stuff work to put your stuff in the cloud,

00:53:43 ◼   ► but we don't charge you some big monthly fee for your storage.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Get this phone.

00:53:48 ◼   ► Don't worry about storage anymore.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Really don't worry about it.

00:53:51 ◼   ► You have unlimited storage in our cloud,

00:53:53 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And there's an article on The Verge talking about this,

00:53:57 ◼   ► saying, see, Apple, see what you have to do.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Why don't you give people cloud storage

00:54:01 ◼   ► equal to the size of their phone,

00:54:02 ◼   ► which was the other thing we used to talk about.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Why doesn't Apple just do this?

00:54:05 ◼   ► And I mean, the answer is obvious,

00:54:06 ◼   ► because Google monetizes the stuff

00:54:09 ◼   ► that you upload into the cloud.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Google anonymizes and looks at your crap

00:54:14 ◼   ► and uses it for machine learning or advertising,

00:54:17 ◼   ► but they're not as privacy focused as Apple is.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - Well, but that's, see that's kind of a bad example though,

00:54:23 ◼   ► because people say like, Google can afford to do this

00:54:26 ◼   ► because they're making money off your privacy.

00:54:28 ◼   ► Apple can't do this.

00:54:30 ◼   ► But that's not true.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Apple makes money too.

00:54:31 ◼   ► They make tons of money off the hardware.

00:54:33 ◼   ► I would bet Apple's making more per phone than Google will.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, but it's the same business though.

00:54:38 ◼   ► They're both, like you can say which company

00:54:41 ◼   ► is able to make more money off things,

00:54:43 ◼   ► but in the end, there's Apple to Apple.

00:54:46 ◼   ► They're both making phones somehow.

00:54:48 ◼   ► They're both making the operating system somehow.

00:54:51 ◼   ► They're both running the cloud services,

00:54:52 ◼   ► stores your photos somehow, right?

00:54:54 ◼   ► And if Apple's able to make more money on hardware

00:54:57 ◼   ► and less money on services and Google's reverse,

00:54:59 ◼   ► that's all well and good,

00:55:00 ◼   ► but Google has one big thing that Apple doesn't have,

00:55:03 ◼   ► that there's no apples to apples comparison for,

00:55:05 ◼   ► which is we have a search engine

00:55:07 ◼   ► that brings us huge amounts of money through advertising

00:55:10 ◼   ► and huge amounts of data to feed into our analytical engine

00:55:14 ◼   ► to figure out like, you know,

00:55:15 ◼   ► anything you can imagine wanting to do

00:55:17 ◼   ► with machine learning,

00:55:18 ◼   ► Google has so many inputs into that system

00:55:22 ◼   ► that Apple has no, you know, no comparison to.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Even if Apple wanted to do everything that Google does

00:55:27 ◼   ► in terms of monetizing your data,

00:55:29 ◼   ► they can't because they don't have

00:55:31 ◼   ► as much input into the system.

00:55:33 ◼   ► It's not as valuable to them.

00:55:34 ◼   ► So what, we have your pictures.

00:55:35 ◼   ► What can we do with that?

00:55:36 ◼   ► Well, you can use it to feed your engines

00:55:38 ◼   ► to figure out how to sell search ads.

00:55:39 ◼   ► What do you mean search ads?

00:55:40 ◼   ► We don't have a search engine, right?

00:55:41 ◼   ► So Google still has that big strength

00:55:43 ◼   ► in terms of monetizing your stuff.

00:55:45 ◼   ► And you're right that you're saying,

00:55:46 ◼   ► well, Apple's got a lot of money in the bank.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Apple could get free, unlimited cloud and video storage

00:55:51 ◼   ► to all of its customers for the next 150 years

00:55:54 ◼   ► and only cut like a tiny sliver off

00:55:57 ◼   ► the mountain of cash they have, right?

00:55:59 ◼   ► That is all true.

00:56:00 ◼   ► - No, no, I'm not even talking about like cash,

00:56:02 ◼   ► like cash reserves.

00:56:03 ◼   ► - I know, using the profit margins on the hardware, right?

00:56:05 ◼   ► They make more money on the hardware than Google does.

00:56:06 ◼   ► - Right, like the Google model is,

00:56:09 ◼   ► we're gonna somehow get you this phone

00:56:11 ◼   ► and then we're gonna make money on you over time

00:56:13 ◼   ► as you use our stuff with ads.

00:56:15 ◼   ► Apple model is, we're gonna make money

00:56:17 ◼   ► on this phone up front.

00:56:18 ◼   ► And by the way, they're still gonna make money off everybody

00:56:20 ◼   ► with their 30% cut from the App Store and everything else,

00:56:23 ◼   ► but you know, even if they only make money

00:56:26 ◼   ► from the phone hardware from somebody,

00:56:28 ◼   ► and then after that point,

00:56:30 ◼   ► that person is just a cost center

00:56:32 ◼   ► as they get all their iCloud stuff hosted for free

00:56:34 ◼   ► or whatever else if they launch a plan like this,

00:56:36 ◼   ► you're still making money somewhere

00:56:38 ◼   ► and there's plenty of profit on a phone

00:56:40 ◼   ► that's priced the way these phones are priced,

00:56:42 ◼   ► they could, if they wanted to,

00:56:45 ◼   ► just give people cloud storage

00:56:47 ◼   ► in a way that would probably not have

00:56:50 ◼   ► that significant of an impact on their margins.

00:56:52 ◼   ► They just don't do it because they like making

00:56:55 ◼   ► that extra little five bucks a month

00:56:57 ◼   ► from the very small number of people

00:56:58 ◼   ► who are gonna buy iCloud storage or whatever,

00:57:00 ◼   ► But it's setting aside how you pay for it

00:57:03 ◼   ► because again, both companies can pay for it

00:57:06 ◼   ► in their own ways.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Apple doesn't have to become this crazy ad company

00:57:10 ◼   ► that invades all your privacy

00:57:12 ◼   ► to have enough profit margin on an iPhone

00:57:13 ◼   ► to host your photos for a couple years.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Google does that anyway,

00:57:16 ◼   ► but even if they're selling their hardware now,

00:57:19 ◼   ► even they don't need to necessarily do that

00:57:20 ◼   ► if they didn't want to.

00:57:22 ◼   ► So assuming both companies have ways to pay for it

00:57:25 ◼   ► because they both do without changing their business models,

00:57:27 ◼   ► they both have ways to pay for it,

00:57:29 ◼   ► then I think Google's approach of giving you more of that

00:57:32 ◼   ► like hosting, that is a much more customer-friendly approach.

00:57:37 ◼   ► It is a much more likely approach to succeed

00:57:41 ◼   ► in terms of getting people to use all these photo uploads,

00:57:43 ◼   ► getting people to actually have their photos

00:57:46 ◼   ► backed up to the cloud somehow.

00:57:47 ◼   ► And I wish Apple would do it.

00:57:49 ◼   ► That being said, that isn't today's Apple style.

00:57:52 ◼   ► That's not like a Tim Cook or even a Steve Jobs Apple style.

00:57:56 ◼   ► I don't see them doing that anytime

00:57:58 ◼   ► for the foreseeable future.

00:57:59 ◼   ► But I think that's a shame, because I think

00:58:01 ◼   ► not only could they afford to do it

00:58:02 ◼   ► without becoming a privacy invasive company,

00:58:04 ◼   ► just using the margins they already have,

00:58:06 ◼   ► but I think it makes for a way better customer experience

00:58:10 ◼   ► to just know that whatever photos you take on your phone,

00:58:12 ◼   ► they're just backed up.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Because storage is really, really cheap these days,

00:58:16 ◼   ► especially at the kind of scale that Apple and Google

00:58:18 ◼   ► are working out with their data centers and everything

00:58:20 ◼   ► and their web services contracts.

00:58:21 ◼   ► So it's not like they can't afford it,

00:58:23 ◼   ► it's not like it's even a big cost.

00:58:24 ◼   ► It's just Apple is using that additional photo storage

00:58:28 ◼   ► as a potential center for profit from service revenue.

00:58:32 ◼   ► And Google is saying, for these people who buy our phone,

00:58:35 ◼   ► we're just not gonna have that as a way to make money.

00:58:38 ◼   ► We're gonna do it some other way.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And it's a difference of opinion,

00:58:42 ◼   ► of what is a reasonable place to make money from people,

00:58:45 ◼   ► where do you want to nickel and dime them,

00:58:46 ◼   ► versus give them a bunch of stuff for free.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And again, both companies can do this,

00:58:50 ◼   ► but only one of them is doing it.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - Well, Apple has been breaking down its margins.

00:58:58 ◼   ► out services separately. So if Apple was to do this, it would take the one part of

00:59:03 ◼   ► their business that they keep using to try to distract you from the fact that

00:59:06 ◼   ► their phone business isn't growing like it used to. The services part, hey look at

00:59:10 ◼   ► our year-over-year service growth, and it will take a bite out of it. And even

00:59:14 ◼   ► though you say, oh well they'll just pay for that with the hardware margins. The

00:59:18 ◼   ► way that becomes visible in an earnings call is service revenue was up you know

00:59:22 ◼   ► 40% year-over-year but oh now we did this free storage for everyone plan and

00:59:26 ◼   ► and service revenue is only up 5% this year, or it's down 5%, or something like that. And it's

00:59:31 ◼   ► like, "Oh, that was supposed to be the bright spot in your earnings call because your other

00:59:35 ◼   ► businesses are stagnant or not growing as fast as they used to be." And now even your services

00:59:40 ◼   ► want us taking a hit. That would not be good because like, you know, it's like, "Oh, well,

00:59:45 ◼   ► the same thing with the cash. We just said, 'Oh, we're giving away storage and the way we're going

00:59:48 ◼   ► to pay for it is we're just going to burn cash to do it.'" Like, these are all things that are

00:59:53 ◼   ► possible numerically but don't look good to the outside world of like do you have

00:59:58 ◼   ► a sustainable business whereas Google you know all of its cost centers are

01:00:03 ◼   ► running all that stuff it's like it's all under the same umbrella of get more

01:00:07 ◼   ► people get more of those people's information that feeds the beast that

01:00:10 ◼   ► you know that we make money off of and the complaint about Google is you're not

01:00:13 ◼   ► making enough money off of your users you have so many users you have all this

01:00:16 ◼   ► data Apple makes so much more money off of every one of its users than you do

01:00:20 ◼   ► you need to find a way to monetize them better.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And that's a persistent complaint about Google,

01:00:26 ◼   ► but this is just more of the same with them.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I was saying, okay, well, we heard your complaint,

01:00:29 ◼   ► but we're gonna keep doing that thing we do,

01:00:31 ◼   ► which would be try to get everyone's data

01:00:32 ◼   ► as much as possible and getting to use all our services.

01:00:35 ◼   ► And the more data we have and the more users we have,

01:00:37 ◼   ► the more money we make,

01:00:38 ◼   ► even if our margins aren't that big.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And in theory, like Casey said,

01:00:43 ◼   ► these phones are the same price as iPhones.

01:00:46 ◼   ► They're made of the same materials.

01:00:47 ◼   ► They're, you know, like they're probably cheaper,

01:00:50 ◼   ► materials in the grand scheme of things,

01:00:51 ◼   ► 'cause Google is not as obsessive about manufacturing

01:00:54 ◼   ► and tolerances, and they didn't have to design

01:00:56 ◼   ► their own chips, they're buying it off the shelf

01:00:57 ◼   ► from Qualcomm, which means they have to pay

01:00:58 ◼   ► Qualcomm a margin, but on the other hand,

01:01:00 ◼   ► they didn't have to pay for all the R&D

01:01:01 ◼   ► to develop the chip and the, you know, anyway,

01:01:04 ◼   ► in theory, Google could be making similar margins to Apple,

01:01:07 ◼   ► they're just not as good at this business.

01:01:09 ◼   ► They don't make enough phones, they're not as good

01:01:11 ◼   ► at it as Apple, so they don't make as big a margins.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And similarly, for the server-side component,

01:01:16 ◼   ► Apple's not as good at Google as this.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple's stuff costs more to them,

01:01:20 ◼   ► because they're not as good at doing service-sized stuff.

01:01:22 ◼   ► It's less reliable, less performant, less scalable,

01:01:25 ◼   ► and it probably costs Apple more than it costs Google

01:01:27 ◼   ► because Google is really good at this stuff

01:01:28 ◼   ► and has a much bigger scale.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And they have a much bigger scale

01:01:31 ◼   ► because they don't just run a service

01:01:33 ◼   ► that stores people's photos.

01:01:34 ◼   ► They run the world's biggest search engine

01:01:35 ◼   ► and tons of other crap,

01:01:37 ◼   ► and they have a lot of servers and a lot of storage

01:01:38 ◼   ► and a lot of in-house hardware and software

01:01:41 ◼   ► and know-how to make this work.

01:01:44 ◼   ► So this is definitely asymmetrical warfare here,

01:01:47 ◼   ► and anything having to do with cloud services,

01:01:49 ◼   ► Google is just so much better at than Apple.

01:01:51 ◼   ► This is a perfect move.

01:01:52 ◼   ► This is, I mean, when I started this thing,

01:01:53 ◼   ► this is a perfect move to try to actually get people

01:01:57 ◼   ► who were iPhone users to look at the other side

01:02:00 ◼   ► of the fence.

01:02:00 ◼   ► It's not even so much like, oh, don't buy a Samsung,

01:02:04 ◼   ► 'cause they catch on fire, buy our phones.

01:02:06 ◼   ► It's like, what about iOS people?

01:02:08 ◼   ► All those things that you hate at iOS,

01:02:10 ◼   ► those are the things we're great about.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And of course, they're not gonna talk in the commercials

01:02:13 ◼   ► about the things that Apple is better at,

01:02:14 ◼   ► but like, we'll give you cloud storage,

01:02:17 ◼   ► ours will work, ours will be fast,

01:02:18 ◼   ► and arts will be free.

01:02:20 ◼   ► And I honestly think that A, Apple should respond,

01:02:23 ◼   ► but B, Apple doesn't have a really good way to respond.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Like, again, if they just did it and say,

01:02:27 ◼   ► we're paying for it out of our hardware margins,

01:02:29 ◼   ► that would be good for consumers,

01:02:31 ◼   ► but that would be bad for Apple.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Like, those would be some tough earning calls.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - Would it?

01:02:37 ◼   ► What do you think is worse for Apple?

01:02:39 ◼   ► Losing a potential iPhone customer to the Google phone

01:02:42 ◼   ► or paying for that customer's photo storage?

01:02:44 ◼   ► Like, they make way more money selling another iPhone

01:02:47 ◼   ► than they do selling a couple of iCloud storage accounts

01:02:50 ◼   ► for somebody for a couple of years.

01:02:51 ◼   ► Like, if they offered unlimited storage for photos

01:02:54 ◼   ► and videos just like Google does,

01:02:56 ◼   ► that would remove one of the Google Pixel's

01:02:58 ◼   ► largest selling points.

01:02:59 ◼   ► It would just totally evaporate.

01:03:01 ◼   ► I bet right now Apple probably thinks,

01:03:03 ◼   ► like I said at the beginning of this segment,

01:03:05 ◼   ► that Google's first party hardware

01:03:07 ◼   ► has never gone anywhere really,

01:03:08 ◼   ► so we probably don't have to worry about it, right?

01:03:10 ◼   ► But what if it does?

01:03:12 ◼   ► - Well, I don't think these are gonna,

01:03:14 ◼   ► again, it's a trailing indicator.

01:03:15 ◼   ► You have to wait to see, oh, are we actually losing customers

01:03:18 ◼   ► because of this thing?

01:03:19 ◼   ► Or is it just a thing that makes people look elsewhere,

01:03:21 ◼   ► but they never actually switch because they're

01:03:23 ◼   ► too trapped into the Apple ecosystem or whatever?

01:03:25 ◼   ► If Apple was to offer this immediately, rather than just,

01:03:29 ◼   ► say, just lowering the prices, which they've done already

01:03:31 ◼   ► a couple of times, offer free for everything,

01:03:35 ◼   ► that would be seen as like, why are you reacting to this?

01:03:38 ◼   ► Why are you reacting to a phone that

01:03:40 ◼   ► sells in such small volumes?

01:03:41 ◼   ► Why do you even care about the phone?

01:03:42 ◼   ► Do you really think it's going to pull away customers?

01:03:44 ◼   ► wait until it actually does start to pull away customers

01:03:46 ◼   ► and then react to it,

01:03:48 ◼   ► rather than giving away a bunch of money, right?

01:03:51 ◼   ► From the services division that is your growth darling

01:03:54 ◼   ► in the absence of anything else.

01:03:55 ◼   ► We've talked about storage sizes for phones

01:03:59 ◼   ► and storage sizes for cloud

01:04:00 ◼   ► and how Apple has not historically

01:04:02 ◼   ► been very competitive there

01:04:03 ◼   ► and they've been adjusting their prices

01:04:04 ◼   ► to try to be more competitive.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Google is doing the thing that Google is able to do.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Enough about how much your storage tiers cost,

01:04:11 ◼   ► enough about Dropbox costs this much

01:04:12 ◼   ► and iCloud drive costs that much,

01:04:14 ◼   ► and you have to pay for this, and your photos don't count,

01:04:16 ◼   ► but then your iCloud backups count, enough of that.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Everything free for everybody.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Like they're, they're saving beyond a back place

01:04:22 ◼   ► where it's $5 unlimited.

01:04:23 ◼   ► They're just like everything unlimited free, because,

01:04:25 ◼   ► and I feel like Google,

01:04:27 ◼   ► the reason Google is offering it on these phones

01:04:29 ◼   ► is because they are selling them for iPhone prices.

01:04:31 ◼   ► I think a lot of the storage is being subsidized

01:04:34 ◼   ► by the fact that you bought this really expensive phone.

01:04:36 ◼   ► You know, as far as I'm aware,

01:04:38 ◼   ► this deal is not being offered generically

01:04:41 ◼   ► on the cheapest Android phone you can find,

01:04:44 ◼   ► you have to buy the Pixel, right?

01:04:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it isn't any Android phone,

01:04:48 ◼   ► it's specifically the Pixel phones.

01:04:50 ◼   ► - Right, which is a super expensive phone,

01:04:51 ◼   ► so I think Google is actually funding this

01:04:54 ◼   ► with a little bit of the margins from,

01:04:56 ◼   ► and granted, probably not as high as Apple,

01:04:57 ◼   ► but a little bit of the margins

01:04:58 ◼   ► from this very expensive phone.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And as we've all learned painfully, unlimited,

01:05:03 ◼   ► I mean, it's unlimited as long as it's unlimited

01:05:05 ◼   ► until it's not unlimited anymore,

01:05:06 ◼   ► usually by terms in the contract that say

01:05:09 ◼   ► we can end this deal at any time or the company going out of business as in picture life or

01:05:14 ◼   ► the one whose name I've already forgotten. Everpix. Everpix, yeah, it wasn't very ever,

01:05:19 ◼   ► was it? No. I don't think people really care about like, you know, "Oh, it's not really

01:05:25 ◼   ► unlimited." Like, get while the getting's good. Like, by all means, you know, if anyone

01:05:29 ◼   ► offers this, I'm not going to turn up my nose at it and say, "Oh, I don't want it on your

01:05:33 ◼   ► limited storage because I know it's not unlimited forever." Who cares? If it's not limited for

01:05:36 ◼   ► a year, it's worthwhile. If it's not limited for two years or three years, you just take

01:05:39 ◼   ► while you can get it. Don't be like, "I refuse to commit to this free product unless I'm guaranteed

01:05:44 ◼   ► that it will outlast me and my descendants." Like, whatever. Just, you know, nothing is forever.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Just take the deal. Anyway, I'm not sure Apple will react to this. Apple needs to get better

01:06:00 ◼   ► at doing cloud services. They need to have their photo storage work better. In theory,

01:06:04 ◼   ► iCloud Photo Library, with plenty of room, should do all the things that Google Photos does,

01:06:08 ◼   ► but 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,

01:06:12 ◼   ► they need to adjust their pricing because whether Google sells a lot of these phones or not,

01:06:16 ◼   ► they are, you know, they're moving the market. They're saying this is the new bar.

01:06:21 ◼   ► If you can't meet this bar, you will forever be seen as more competitive than if I just bought a Google Pixel,

01:06:26 ◼   ► or more expensive than if I just bought a Google Pixel.

01:06:28 ◼   ► So does Apple lower their prices? Do they go free?

01:06:31 ◼   ► History has shown that it will take Apple a long time

01:06:35 ◼   ► to be able to

01:06:37 ◼   ► go free on its storage, considering how long it's taken them to offer new storage tiers and to lower

01:06:43 ◼   ► their prices. They seem pretty stubborn about that. Can we all blame us on that? You again?

01:06:47 ◼   ► Sure. Why not? Let's do that. It's fun pastime. Either way, this is this, in theory, this phone

01:06:56 ◼   ► is hitting Apple where it hurts. And hopefully someone at Apple is paying attention.

01:07:01 ◼   ► - Yeah. I also love that they mentioned during the keynote and it's on the site,

01:07:06 ◼   ► if you scroll down a ways, about halfway down the page, that they include a section that's

01:07:12 ◼   ► "Switch in three simple steps. Connect, sign in, and transfer. Connect to your old iPhone or Android

01:07:17 ◼   ► device, or connect your old iPhone or Android device to your new Pixel with the quick switch

01:07:21 ◼   ► adapter," which apparently is USB-B, whatever the normal USB receptacle is, to USB-C, which is what

01:07:28 ◼   ► the phone uses. "Sign into your Google account on your Pixel or create a new one and then transfer.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Choose what you want to move, like contacts, calendar events,

01:07:36 ◼   ► photos, videos, music, SMS messages, iMessages--

01:07:39 ◼   ► I'm not really sure how that's working-- and more.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Then sit back and let the Pixel do the work.

01:07:42 ◼   ► And there's little adapters in every single box.

01:07:44 ◼   ► So they're getting aggressive.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And I think that's good.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And I think it was Stephen Hackett, amongst others,

01:07:50 ◼   ► that said, this is healthy for both companies.

01:07:52 ◼   ► When Apple is doing well-- which hopefully they are.

01:07:56 ◼   ► I mean, I guess it depends on when you ask us.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And if Google's doing well, then that's a good thing,

01:08:02 ◼   ► because this competition makes both of our products better.

01:08:06 ◼   ► But I'm curious to see if this really sells in any volume.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I can tell you that of the four developers on the Android team--

01:08:13 ◼   ► five developers on the Android team at my office,

01:08:15 ◼   ► two of them bought the phone while they were in the keynote,

01:08:18 ◼   ► or while we were watching the keynote, which, by the way,

01:08:21 ◼   ► was at like 1230, 1 o'clock in the afternoon.

01:08:25 ◼   ► They sat there and mashed on the refresh button

01:08:28 ◼   ► for like a minute and a half.

01:08:29 ◼   ► I was super jealous.

01:08:31 ◼   ► And yes, I tweeted about this.

01:08:32 ◼   ► And yes, most people were like,

01:08:34 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, well, you know,

01:08:35 ◼   ► they have five people buying these phones."

01:08:36 ◼   ► Well, I don't care.

01:08:37 ◼   ► It's still not in the middle of the night.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And so I'm very jealous of that.

01:08:42 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:08:42 ◼   ► I'm anxious to see these devices

01:08:44 ◼   ► when they come in to my coworkers

01:08:45 ◼   ► so I can see what I think of them.

01:08:47 ◼   ► But I'm cautiously optimistic.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Like this isn't a phone for me,

01:08:53 ◼   ► but it could be if I wanted to jump

01:08:56 ◼   ► to the other side of the fence.

01:08:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, one more thing on the Pixel.

01:09:01 ◼   ► I didn't see the entire video presentation

01:09:03 ◼   ► where I saw parts of it.

01:09:04 ◼   ► And one part that I was particularly interested in

01:09:05 ◼   ► is the daydream VR thing that they're doing.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Another one of these situations where you take your phone

01:09:12 ◼   ► and you shove it into a headset

01:09:13 ◼   ► and then half the phone screen shows

01:09:15 ◼   ► what your left eye is supposed to see

01:09:16 ◼   ► and half the phone screen shows

01:09:17 ◼   ► what your right eye is supposed to see.

01:09:18 ◼   ► You wear a pair of goggles that makes that all focus

01:09:21 ◼   ► and work out reasonably well.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And you try to have a little miniature

01:09:25 ◼   ► portable VR experience.

01:09:26 ◼   ► Which is, boy, it's something considering, you know,

01:09:30 ◼   ► No serious VR development involves Macs in any way,

01:09:34 ◼   ► and yet we're able to do it on these crappy phones

01:09:36 ◼   ► that are not as powerful as Apple's.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Obviously, the VR experience compared to a PC

01:09:41 ◼   ► is very different on a phone.

01:09:42 ◼   ► You are not gonna have the same type of thing you have

01:09:44 ◼   ► on HTC, Vive, or Vive, depending on how you wanna say it,

01:09:48 ◼   ► or Oculus Rift, or even the PS4 VR.

01:09:52 ◼   ► But this is the thing they're doing,

01:09:55 ◼   ► and I think the most interesting part of this

01:09:58 ◼   ► is their headset, which there have been a lot of these headsets, including like the

01:10:01 ◼   ► Google cardboard thing, which is the most primitive, but this is another set of goggles

01:10:05 ◼   ► that you strap to your head that you shove your phone into. And they spent a while trying

01:10:09 ◼   ► to talk about the design of it, like the external design. They've made it out of fabric. I don't

01:10:15 ◼   ► think they mentioned this specifically. They mostly just said, "Oh, what do we wear on

01:10:18 ◼   ► our bodies?" Well, we wear soft things and fabrics, right? So instead of making it out

01:10:22 ◼   ► of shiny black plastic so you look all nerdy, you know, how are you going to make a VR headset

01:10:27 ◼   ► not look nerdy. We made it out of fabric because that's what you wear. And when I look at it,

01:10:30 ◼   ► I always thought of those sleep masks, you know, if you put like those, one of those

01:10:34 ◼   ► things to help you sleep at night, it's not made out of like velvety material, but it's

01:10:37 ◼   ► just made of fabric. It looks like a sleep mask, but I think this is a smart thing to

01:10:42 ◼   ► do. And I think other VR goggle vendors should take note. You don't have to always look like

01:10:49 ◼   ► a giant robot when you wear the thing. It doesn't have to be all angles and hard shiny

01:10:54 ◼   ► plastic doesn't have to look like one of those droid ads you know those original

01:10:57 ◼   ► droid ads where everything is a transformer you are putting it on your

01:11:01 ◼   ► body and around your head and why not make it something soft and comfortable

01:11:04 ◼   ► it's not like for example headphones they're not made out of pointy angular

01:11:09 ◼   ► plastic unless maybe they're made by Sony so are you right like the ear cup

01:11:14 ◼   ► if they have they have patty things on the ears like a squishy things because

01:11:17 ◼   ► they go on your head and you don't want something it's not squishy so these

01:11:20 ◼   ► goggles granted the the outside of it doesn't touch you but they're trying to

01:11:23 ◼   ► they're trying to convey like these are squishy and comfortable and not like

01:11:29 ◼   ► welding a laptop to your forehead right and I think that's a really good idea

01:11:34 ◼   ► and this type of casual VR where it's like low resolution low frame rate

01:11:38 ◼   ► probably not even that good right it's I think this is a good place to get a

01:11:44 ◼   ► foothold into the idea of like a few people will try it cuz hey everyone's

01:11:48 ◼   ► got a phone and you know these guys probably cost too much but you know

01:11:51 ◼   ► people who are interested, who wouldn't buy a full-fledged gaming PC in the whole setup

01:11:55 ◼   ► and the whole gear, will buy maybe this thing that you shove your phone into and try it

01:12:00 ◼   ► out and have a pleasant experience and start to associate Google with VR or whatever.

01:12:05 ◼   ► I don't give this thing great hopes of doing anything, especially since who's going to

01:12:10 ◼   ► develop software for this thing?

01:12:13 ◼   ► It's a market within a market within a market?

01:12:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:12:16 ◼   ► But as someone who still has yet to even try VR, I find it intriguing that Google is plowing

01:12:22 ◼   ► bravely forward with some interesting ideas, whereas Google, Apple is still sitting this

01:12:27 ◼   ► one out and Tim Cook is talking about augmented reality rather than VR.

01:12:32 ◼   ► All the while leaving its own customers without either one of those things, except for that

01:12:37 ◼   ► app that you hold up and translate signs in is really cool.

01:12:39 ◼   ► But anyway, I think these goggles are neat.

01:12:42 ◼   ► I have no idea how good they actually are,

01:12:44 ◼   ► but I'm encouraged by the steady advancement

01:12:47 ◼   ► in the world of VR.

01:12:48 ◼   ► - So if they're anything like Google Cardboard,

01:12:51 ◼   ► which it looks like they're very, very similar actually,

01:12:54 ◼   ► you should not try them.

01:12:55 ◼   ► - All right, 'cause low resolution and motion sickness?

01:12:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got to try one of those actually twice now,

01:13:01 ◼   ► and wow, not good.

01:13:06 ◼   ► I mean, well, I also got to try a Vive,

01:13:09 ◼   ► and that was substantially better

01:13:14 ◼   ► for motion sickness purposes.

01:13:15 ◼   ► - It better be for like the tremendous extra cost

01:13:18 ◼   ► that that is.

01:13:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:13:20 ◼   ► - Just need a gaming PC and this and a room

01:13:22 ◼   ► and these things you can hold and walk around in, yeah.

01:13:24 ◼   ► - No, I mean the problem with the Vive

01:13:26 ◼   ► is that you just have wires everywhere.

01:13:27 ◼   ► It's just wires as far as I can see.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Tripping over wires, having to move the wires.

01:13:31 ◼   ► It's kind of unfortunate, but I'm sure over time

01:13:34 ◼   ► we will work these things out.

01:13:36 ◼   ► - I'm thinking even for these headphones,

01:13:37 ◼   ► even if you just use them to watch video,

01:13:39 ◼   ► which sounds like, why would I ever do that?

01:13:40 ◼   ► Why wouldn't I just hold my phone in front of my face?

01:13:43 ◼   ► Like, this is generation zero type products here.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's gonna get better, the resolution will get better.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Eventually a phone will have enough power

01:13:51 ◼   ► to not be embarrassing in VR.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I'm not looking on this as like, wow, this is a game changer.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I'm looking on this as this could potentially be a way

01:14:03 ◼   ► many years down the line,

01:14:04 ◼   ► an accepted way to just veg out and watch some video

01:14:09 ◼   ► or play some casual games, not like "I'm in a full immersive VR experience and I feel like I'm really there!"

01:14:14 ◼   ► Maybe that's gonna be longer or still require a gaming PC or whatever, but...

01:14:18 ◼   ► Um...

01:14:20 ◼   ► I don't know, it just seems like...

01:14:22 ◼   ► I guess I'm gonna say "Why doesn't Apple do this?" You know why Apple doesn't do it.

01:14:25 ◼   ► They'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?

01:14:30 ◼   ► That's not gonna happen.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Um...

01:14:32 ◼   ► But...

01:14:33 ◼   ► If...

01:14:34 ◼   ► Apple doesn't...

01:14:36 ◼   ► figure out what his play is here soon,

01:14:38 ◼   ► it's just gonna pass them by.

01:14:39 ◼   ► It's kind of like Microsoft trying to figure out

01:14:40 ◼   ► what its play was in the world of mobile

01:14:42 ◼   ► and then just everyone else went out ahead of them.

01:14:44 ◼   ► They said, "Wait up!"

01:14:45 ◼   ► And they never did catch up.

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01:16:07 ◼   ► - I don't have an Amazon Echo Alexa,

01:16:16 ◼   ► whatever it's called, thing.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Friend of the show, iMike, just got one

01:16:19 ◼   ► and he is pretty much in love with it.

01:16:22 ◼   ► Marco, you guys have at least one, at last I heard,

01:16:25 ◼   ► and it's last I heard you guys really like it.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I grew up with a dad who was big into home automation

01:16:33 ◼   ► in the late 90s, which is to say controlling your lights

01:16:36 ◼   ► from all over the place.

01:16:38 ◼   ► This was X10 at the time,

01:16:39 ◼   ► which was a home automation protocol.

01:16:41 ◼   ► I actually put an X10 receiver in my dorm room

01:16:45 ◼   ► and had rope lights wired to it.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And I even had a movie mode that I set up.

01:16:49 ◼   ► No, no, it gets better.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I even had a movie mode set up,

01:16:51 ◼   ► so it would like dim the rope lights

01:16:53 ◼   ► and turn on the TV and whatnot,

01:16:54 ◼   ► which would have been awesome for the girl

01:16:56 ◼   ► that never ever came over.

01:16:58 ◼   ► - This is worse than my car pewter.

01:17:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's pretty bad.

01:17:01 ◼   ► - 'Cause that's what girls are impressed by.

01:17:03 ◼   ► Automatically controlled lights, they're just like,

01:17:05 ◼   ► this is the man for me.

01:17:07 ◼   ► - Right? - Oh my God.

01:17:08 ◼   ► - I mean, how can you go wrong?

01:17:09 ◼   ► It's perfect.

01:17:10 ◼   ► No, but anyway, I like the idea of home automation,

01:17:15 ◼   ► although I've only barely dipped my toes into it.

01:17:19 ◼   ► And like I said, I don't have any of these

01:17:21 ◼   ► like automated assistant things outside of Siri

01:17:23 ◼   ► when she decides to work properly.

01:17:25 ◼   ► So I am not that jazzed by Google Home.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I'm not that jazzed by Alexa.

01:17:32 ◼   ► I'm not that jazzed by these rumors about Apple's home

01:17:36 ◼   ► automation hub.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I suspect that most of that is my own ignorance.

01:17:40 ◼   ► And once I see a really nice setup, or once I see one of

01:17:44 ◼   ► these things in use, then the light bulb will go off and I'll

01:17:47 ◼   ► say, by god, I need this in my life.

01:17:48 ◼   ► But I guess, do either of you care about these home

01:17:52 ◼   ► automation hub rumors?

01:17:54 ◼   ► Like, is this interesting to you?

01:17:55 ◼   ► What are you looking for from this?

01:17:57 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:17:58 ◼   ► I care about the actual announced one.

01:18:00 ◼   ► I know that you're reading the next item and the things about this, the home automation

01:18:03 ◼   ► hub remote from Apple, but Google is following through on its original announcement of this

01:18:07 ◼   ► whatever Google Home little weebl thing that they'll sell you, which looks like a squat

01:18:11 ◼   ► little counterpart to the tube-shaped thing that keeps calling to the whales in Star Trek

01:18:18 ◼   ► 4 that Amazon makes.

01:18:22 ◼   ► And the reason I didn't buy Echo, I know a lot of people with Echo, I've tried them,

01:18:26 ◼   ► like I understand the value proposition there, but I never quite wanted to get one, mostly

01:18:29 ◼   ► because I figured, well, you know, that's fine and all, but Amazon is not really that

01:18:35 ◼   ► good at this type of stuff.

01:18:36 ◼   ► I mean, they're not bad, but it's not really their strength.

01:18:40 ◼   ► So let me wait until see what Apple or Google have.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And the knock against Amazon is like, oh, you can get all these skills and they're good

01:18:47 ◼   ► at integrating with third parties, but it's so specific and it's so primitive and it's

01:18:50 ◼   ► It's like you gotta know what you can have it do and you gotta know the specific skills

01:18:55 ◼   ► and it's very fixed, whereas Apple is always tagging with Siri, "Oh, we're intelligent

01:18:59 ◼   ► machine learning, we'll figure out what you mean" or whatever, but of course we know when

01:19:02 ◼   ► you actually use Siri it's embarrassingly bad a lot of the time.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Google, when I think of the company that I can just sort of throw words at, written or

01:19:12 ◼   ► otherwise and have it do what I mean, is the best at that.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Very often I want to do something and you can try it in Siri and you can try asking

01:19:20 ◼   ► Amazon Echo about it and you can try whatever things you have to think of to find something,

01:19:26 ◼   ► but very often the answer is write your actual question into a text box on Google.com.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Like don't overthink it, don't try to write it into query language, just do the simplest

01:19:37 ◼   ► thing.

01:19:38 ◼   ► One of my favorite activities is like in chat rooms and stuff like that where someone will

01:19:40 ◼   ► ask, sometimes even a fairly technical person, "How do you do the blah blah blah blah blah

01:19:45 ◼   ► blah blah blah?"

01:19:46 ◼   ► Like ask some very complicated, involved question.

01:19:48 ◼   ► And then they'll say, "I tried googling, but I couldn't find anything."

01:19:52 ◼   ► Then what you do is you take their original question that they typed to you in the message,

01:19:56 ◼   ► you copy it, you paste it into the Google search box, and the number one hit is the

01:19:59 ◼   ► thing they were looking for.

01:20:00 ◼   ► Because what they were doing is thinking like a programmer and going like, you know, whatever

01:20:04 ◼   ► it is, like, node file sync not working, like, they're just typing, they're using a query

01:20:12 ◼   ► engine whereas the sentence that they just sent you gets them the number one hit because

01:20:16 ◼   ► that's what people put into Google.

01:20:18 ◼   ► So when I think about, is there some cylinder in my house that I can talk into the air and

01:20:21 ◼   ► have the cylinder do what I want?

01:20:23 ◼   ► I think the highest chance of it understanding what I mean and doing something useful is

01:20:28 ◼   ► for that cylinder to be made by and connected to everything having to do with Google.

01:20:32 ◼   ► So when they announce the home thing, I'm like, that's the first thing I think I might

01:20:36 ◼   ► buy to try because I'm assuming it will be better than the Amazon Echo.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Better at like, you know, understanding what I mean and doing useful things.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Maybe not better audio-wise or whatever, maybe Amazon I/O would be better at ordering paper

01:20:50 ◼   ► towels than the Google thing is, but maybe the Google thing would be better at answering

01:20:54 ◼   ► complicated questions.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Or maybe the Google thing would be better about projecting things on my TV if I buy

01:21:00 ◼   ► a little dinky Chromecast and shove it into one of my side HDMI ports that I'm not currently

01:21:03 ◼   ► using, right?

01:21:06 ◼   ► Versus Amazon trying to integrate with their Fire puck and all that other stuff.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Anyway, and Apple just continuing to be a non-combatant in this entire market despite

01:21:14 ◼   ► the rumors.

01:21:15 ◼   ► I am very interested in this home device. The only caveat for most people that I don't really mind

01:21:19 ◼   ► that much is yes, of course, everything that I say will be uploaded to Google and all my

01:21:23 ◼   ► information will belong to Google, but I already have all my mail on Google. I'm willing to give

01:21:26 ◼   ► Google this information in exchange for extra convenience in my life. I'm willing to give this

01:21:31 ◼   ► a try. So I think I might actually get one of these. I'm very curious to hear what you think

01:21:37 ◼   ► of it when that comes in. I don't know. I'm not sure what I would pick between Amazon and,

01:21:42 ◼   ► theoretically Apple and Google, but I mean my mail is Google Apps, my photos are in Google,

01:21:49 ◼   ► my music is Spotify, which I'm sure will not jive well with Apple stuff. Jive well, whatever

01:21:56 ◼   ► the word is I'm looking for. I don't know, we'll see. Marco, what's your intention, just

01:22:01 ◼   ► going all in on Amazon?

01:22:02 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I'm not really committed. You know, we have the Echo in the kitchen. It's

01:22:08 ◼   ► It's good at a lot of things.

01:22:10 ◼   ► A lot of times I will ask it a question

01:22:13 ◼   ► that I don't think it'll answer just to see like,

01:22:15 ◼   ► you know, can it do this, can it find this information?

01:22:17 ◼   ► And a lot of times it does.

01:22:19 ◼   ► And if I ask Siri the same question,

01:22:21 ◼   ► I get, I can search the web for, you know,

01:22:23 ◼   ► so I get a useless answer from Siri

01:22:26 ◼   ► for many of these same questions.

01:22:27 ◼   ► But a lot of people have said the opposite.

01:22:29 ◼   ► You know, a lot of people have the opposite reaction

01:22:31 ◼   ► where like the things they ask Siri work out well

01:22:33 ◼   ► and the things they ask the Amazon Assistant don't.

01:22:36 ◼   ► It's not really consistent between

01:22:38 ◼   ► or the other, whether you can say like this one is

01:22:40 ◼   ► universally the best one or this one is universally not.

01:22:43 ◼   ► It really depends on how you're using it,

01:22:44 ◼   ► what you're using it for,

01:22:45 ◼   ► how it integrates with various things.

01:22:47 ◼   ► I will say though that this is the kind of problem

01:22:51 ◼   ► that I don't expect Apple's product to be very good at.

01:22:54 ◼   ► To make a product like this really good,

01:22:56 ◼   ► you need incredibly strong AI skills,

01:22:59 ◼   ► you need a huge data set to be developing that from,

01:23:02 ◼   ► you need constant updates, constant add-ons

01:23:06 ◼   ► and new abilities and refinements to that data set.

01:23:09 ◼   ► So you basically need a really massive,

01:23:11 ◼   ► solid AI web service behind it.

01:23:13 ◼   ► Apple's not good at those things.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Apple can do big web services,

01:23:16 ◼   ► they can do minor AI things,

01:23:18 ◼   ► but they so far are still not good

01:23:21 ◼   ► at large scale advanced AI service kind of things.

01:23:24 ◼   ► And then secondarily, you need the ability

01:23:27 ◼   ► to really be able to connect to lots of different things.

01:23:30 ◼   ► This is where the Echo does really well.

01:23:32 ◼   ► They have tons of integrations with all sorts of services,

01:23:36 ◼   ► hardware, developer stuff through their API, tons of integrations. For Apple to do that,

01:23:42 ◼   ► they would basically have to relax the requirements for HomeKit and they would have to really

01:23:46 ◼   ► be a lot more open and permissive with developers than they are now and do things like open

01:23:51 ◼   ► up the Siri API much further than it is right now. And I just don't see them doing that.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So they could prove me wrong, who knows, but if I look at what these companies are good

01:24:01 ◼   ► at now and the way they seem to be going, I'm guessing Apple's version of this, if it

01:24:06 ◼   ► exists whenever it would ship, I'm guessing it's not going to be as good as the other

01:24:11 ◼   ► two. I think Amazon's going to own this market for the market share wise, but I think the

01:24:17 ◼   ► Google one's probably going to end up being the best one.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Well, the Google one could be cancelled. Like, then they have a previous one called OnHub

01:24:23 ◼   ► or something, and then they have it sphere-shaped entertainment thing that never went anywhere.

01:24:28 ◼   ► Google has tried many in-home products that have not gone anywhere.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Maybe this one will be a flop too, but what they have going for them, like you said, is

01:24:36 ◼   ► they have the back end.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Like when Apple does stuff with Siri, if they don't know exactly what to do, they're passing

01:24:43 ◼   ► it on to another service, whether it be Wolfram Alpha or Bing or Google.

01:24:47 ◼   ► That's not them.

01:24:48 ◼   ► They're like, "Well, we can't make heads or tails of this, so we're going to send it to

01:24:51 ◼   ► a different company that's good at this stuff, and maybe they can figure out what to do with

01:24:55 ◼   ► which is not really a strong move. The other factor about all these cylinders in your home

01:25:01 ◼   ► that you talk to that apparently from everyone who I've ever spoken to in my own personal experience

01:25:05 ◼   ► got right and that I can imagine both Apple and Google perhaps forgetting about is the Echo is

01:25:12 ◼   ► surprisingly good at hearing you and understanding what the hell you said. Now after that, maybe they

01:25:18 ◼   ► can't do anything with your words. Maybe they're bad. You know, they don't have good, you know,

01:25:21 ◼   ► you have to phrase things in a certain way,

01:25:23 ◼   ► whatever, forget about that.

01:25:24 ◼   ► But they're good at hearing you and getting your words.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And that is so important.

01:25:28 ◼   ► How often have we tried to speak into our phones

01:25:30 ◼   ► an inch from our face and how to get a word wrong?

01:25:32 ◼   ► Whereas Amazon Echo, again,

01:25:34 ◼   ► because probably because of constrained vocabulary,

01:25:36 ◼   ► like those phone trees that you do,

01:25:38 ◼   ► but also because they have tons of microphones

01:25:39 ◼   ► and good like noise cancellation and beamforming,

01:25:42 ◼   ► whatever the hell they're doing,

01:25:44 ◼   ► I think a lot of the time for that stupid cylinder

01:25:46 ◼   ► was spent figuring out how to hear people

01:25:48 ◼   ► separate their voice from the background noise

01:25:50 ◼   ► and understand what they said.

01:25:52 ◼   ► And that is incredibly important.

01:25:54 ◼   ► It's like responsiveness on the original iPhone.

01:25:56 ◼   ► It's like, oh yeah, and you can tap things

01:25:57 ◼   ► and they move around, it's fine.

01:25:58 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, but you don't understand.

01:25:59 ◼   ► The difference between you can tap things

01:26:01 ◼   ► and slide it around and it's fine,

01:26:02 ◼   ► and it really feels like it's sticking to my finger.

01:26:05 ◼   ► You may think you've checked the same check boxes.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Yep, we have a touchscreen.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Yep, you move things around by scrolling your finger.

01:26:10 ◼   ► Yep, you tap buttons.

01:26:12 ◼   ► It's not check boxes.

01:26:13 ◼   ► It's like, yes, you both do the same thing,

01:26:15 ◼   ► but this aspect of the product is so important

01:26:18 ◼   ► that you really have to get it right.

01:26:19 ◼   ► and Amazon has gotten it pretty right.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Like who hasn't been in a house with an Echo

01:26:25 ◼   ► and said something in a way that you think a human

01:26:27 ◼   ► wouldn't have been able to understand you.

01:26:28 ◼   ► You mumble it from a room away facing the wrong direction

01:26:31 ◼   ► and the Echo still tells you like what the score of a game is

01:26:33 ◼   ► or what the weather's gonna be.

01:26:34 ◼   ► And you're like, how the hell did it hear that?

01:26:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what you have to do with these things.

01:26:38 ◼   ► So I hope the cylinder, you know, the Google Home thing

01:26:41 ◼   ► does it as well.

01:26:42 ◼   ► And if Apple ever comes up with a product,

01:26:43 ◼   ► I hope they spend tons of time figuring out

01:26:46 ◼   ► how the heck to hear everybody and don't be like,

01:26:47 ◼   ► well, Johnny, I've said we don't have a lot of room

01:26:49 ◼   ► for the microphone so we can only have these two here.

01:26:51 ◼   ► - This is what I'm saying, like,

01:26:52 ◼   ► it is, if Apple really devoted,

01:26:55 ◼   ► like if they really set their minds to it,

01:26:56 ◼   ► if they really prioritize these services

01:26:58 ◼   ► and these product priorities and things,

01:27:01 ◼   ► they could probably make a pretty good one,

01:27:03 ◼   ► but I see this being like an accessory release.

01:27:06 ◼   ► I don't see Apple taking this very seriously

01:27:09 ◼   ► as a product category.

01:27:10 ◼   ► So what it's probably gonna end up being

01:27:13 ◼   ► is a relatively low priority,

01:27:15 ◼   ► relatively low effort product if it exists.

01:27:18 ◼   ► And because of that, it's gonna be like,

01:27:20 ◼   ► it's gonna have no meaningful service changes

01:27:23 ◼   ► behind it to Siri.

01:27:25 ◼   ► Siri's not gonna become an order of magnitude better

01:27:27 ◼   ► because of this product.

01:27:29 ◼   ► If they're gonna do that, they're gonna do it

01:27:30 ◼   ► for the phones, not for this.

01:27:31 ◼   ► And they've had lots of reasons to do that recently,

01:27:33 ◼   ► and they kind of haven't really done enough.

01:27:36 ◼   ► And this is probably gonna be a product

01:27:38 ◼   ► that's updated maybe every three years,

01:27:41 ◼   ► hardware-wise, two or three years.

01:27:43 ◼   ► - Like the Macs now.

01:27:44 ◼   ► - Basically on an Apple TV kind of schedule

01:27:47 ◼   ► Where Amazon Google would be updated in there's like every year or even more often. I mean Amazon is relentless every every 15 minutes

01:27:53 ◼   ► Yeah, speaking of Apple TV. That's a great example of a

01:27:57 ◼   ► Home device that people talk to granted they talking to the the remote and not the device and the rumors are that originally you were

01:28:03 ◼   ► Supposed to just talk to the Apple TV, but the remote came with better sound which kind of makes sense

01:28:07 ◼   ► And you got out of the remote or anyway

01:28:09 ◼   ► the experience of

01:28:11 ◼   ► Speaking to your Apple TV. This is exactly what I was saying like the phone trees. There's a fairly constrained vocabulary

01:28:17 ◼   ► mostly you could, you know,

01:28:18 ◼   ► you're mostly you're talking about video

01:28:20 ◼   ► that you wanna watch.

01:28:20 ◼   ► I mean, it's a little bit broader than that,

01:28:22 ◼   ► but if they wanted to constrain it, they could say,

01:28:24 ◼   ► look, we don't have to understand everything in the world.

01:28:27 ◼   ► We have a limited problem domain.

01:28:29 ◼   ► Let's use our machine learning

01:28:31 ◼   ► and the idea that we think they're gonna watch a video

01:28:33 ◼   ► and granted it's still a hard problem, right?

01:28:36 ◼   ► And try to figure out what they mean.

01:28:38 ◼   ► And if you've ever spoken to the remote of an Apple TV

01:28:41 ◼   ► and tried to say something reasonable to it,

01:28:44 ◼   ► you realize how badly the Apple TV falls down

01:28:46 ◼   ► basic functionality, you know, like trying to get it to, you know, start, you know, watch episode five

01:28:54 ◼   ► season two of some show or show me whatever and it's like, I'm sorry, I don't know any shows named

01:29:00 ◼   ► Orange is the New Black and like on the screen behind it is Orange the New Black floating, you

01:29:04 ◼   ► know what I mean? Like, we've all seen these Siri things like on the phone where it's great, makes

01:29:09 ◼   ► great for great screenshots where it's like, try, you know, I'm sorry, I can't watch the App Store,

01:29:14 ◼   ► Try looking for it in the app store.

01:29:15 ◼   ► Like we've all seen that screenshot and stuff.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Siri does weird stuff like that on the phone

01:29:19 ◼   ► and it's funny because you can see it,

01:29:20 ◼   ► but on the Apple TV, when it works,

01:29:22 ◼   ► you feel like this is amazing.

01:29:23 ◼   ► It's a little friend that I can talk to

01:29:24 ◼   ► who shows me the video I want.

01:29:26 ◼   ► And when it doesn't work, it's like,

01:29:27 ◼   ► what was wrong with that?

01:29:28 ◼   ► Especially since you see the text being translated,

01:29:31 ◼   ► you're like, it is understanding every word I'm saying

01:29:32 ◼   ► and there isn't really any ambiguity,

01:29:34 ◼   ► but sometimes it's like, I can't do that for you.

01:29:37 ◼   ► Is there something else I can help you with?

01:29:38 ◼   ► Like, no, just do the thing.

01:29:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's inconsistent.

01:29:41 ◼   ► - Incred, yeah, that's incredibly frustrating.

01:29:42 ◼   ► You don't know why it didn't do it. Did it fail on a server connection?

01:29:46 ◼   ► Or is it just confused about something or has it lost context and it's not really that responsive whereas again Amazon echo

01:29:51 ◼   ► Completely faceless no UI if it didn't work

01:29:54 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do to fix it and yet when you say things to it it in pretty short order

01:29:59 ◼   ► Does the thing that you said in a way that makes you think that's pretty neat and miraculous

01:30:03 ◼   ► And yeah, it falls down sometimes too

01:30:05 ◼   ► But that's why people are impressed by the cylinder because they you know, they thought the Amazon echo be funny gimmick

01:30:10 ◼   ► but it'll be like Siri where it only works half the time and I'll never use it.

01:30:13 ◼   ► But because it is responsive and hears you and generally does what you ask in a

01:30:18 ◼   ► timely fashion, people start to trust it and appreciate the fact that it does

01:30:22 ◼   ► work and Siri has not yet passed that bar. I don't think Siri or whatever

01:30:27 ◼   ► branding Apple wants to put into a thing that you can talk to in any of its

01:30:30 ◼   ► product has endeared itself to any way to the degree where they're like, "I am

01:30:36 ◼   ► much more interested in buying this product because it comes with Siri and I

01:30:38 ◼   ► I love Siri.

01:30:39 ◼   ► I just haven't seen that yet.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Whereas the stupid black plastic cylinder

01:30:43 ◼   ► has done that for Amazon.

01:30:44 ◼   ► - And the thing is, if you see over time,

01:30:47 ◼   ► what's changing in this market over time?

01:30:49 ◼   ► How's everyone getting better?

01:30:50 ◼   ► How's everything gonna develop?

01:30:51 ◼   ► Apple has had a very long time

01:30:54 ◼   ► to make Siri reliable and better.

01:30:56 ◼   ► And they have improved it over time,

01:30:58 ◼   ► but just not enough.

01:31:00 ◼   ► It is still very inconsistent.

01:31:03 ◼   ► And you can ask it the same question two days in a row,

01:31:06 ◼   ► and you'll get different answers,

01:31:07 ◼   ► or one of them will fail,

01:31:08 ◼   ► and the next day it'll succeed.

01:31:10 ◼   ► It is so inconsistent and it's very frustrating

01:31:12 ◼   ► when that happens to you.

01:31:14 ◼   ► With the Echo, I don't use it constantly all day every day,

01:31:18 ◼   ► but I use it, I tell it something every day.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Usually it's controlling lights around the house.

01:31:24 ◼   ► Every night when I go to bed,

01:31:25 ◼   ► I tell it to turn off everything.

01:31:27 ◼   ► It's usually stuff like that.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Occasionally music queries or timers,

01:31:30 ◼   ► tiff users turn off the time.

01:31:31 ◼   ► I think we've had it for something like

01:31:33 ◼   ► four or five months now.

01:31:35 ◼   ► I think in that entire time we've had one time

01:31:38 ◼   ► where it returns some kind of like server error response

01:31:41 ◼   ► basically, like I can't figure that out right now

01:31:42 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:31:43 ◼   ► One time that happened in months of using it.

01:31:47 ◼   ► With Siri that happens like every fourth or fifth time

01:31:50 ◼   ► for like if you use it infrequently like I do.

01:31:52 ◼   ► So where these things are going,

01:31:56 ◼   ► I can see the market playing out

01:31:58 ◼   ► in the most likely way already in my head.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Apple, if they enter it, they're gonna enter it with,

01:32:02 ◼   ► you know, again, some kind of like,

01:32:04 ◼   ► too infrequently updated, probably too expensive,

01:32:08 ◼   ► maybe too Johnny Ivey design-y product

01:32:10 ◼   ► that won't be very competitive in the marketplace

01:32:13 ◼   ► for things like capabilities, price, integrations,

01:32:16 ◼   ► and they'll have it backed by the Siri service,

01:32:18 ◼   ► which just won't be consistent enough,

01:32:20 ◼   ► it won't be solid enough, it won't be smart enough.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Then you'll have Google making theirs,

01:32:25 ◼   ► selling Google hardware the way they always sell it,

01:32:27 ◼   ► which is it's gonna have probably

01:32:28 ◼   ► the most amazing AI behind it,

01:32:30 ◼   ► the most amazing service behind it,

01:32:32 ◼   ► but they're gonna have major problems getting it in,

01:32:35 ◼   ► you know, getting it sold at retail, basically,

01:32:37 ◼   ► getting it really into people's hands.

01:32:38 ◼   ► They're gonna have major problems promoting it

01:32:40 ◼   ► and selling it and supporting it.

01:32:42 ◼   ► Amazon is gonna be relentless about pushing the crap

01:32:46 ◼   ► out of the Echo line of products on their front page,

01:32:49 ◼   ► all the holiday seasons, selling them relentlessly,

01:32:51 ◼   ► not selling Apple's thing, not selling Google's thing.

01:32:54 ◼   ► They're going to be relentless,

01:32:56 ◼   ► and they are a massive retailer,

01:32:58 ◼   ► and they have a huge head start with developers,

01:33:00 ◼   ► with users, with the public.

01:33:02 ◼   ► So I really think that Amazon's really gonna own this space

01:33:06 ◼   ► and Google's, again, Google I think is gonna have

01:33:08 ◼   ► what many geeks will consider the best product,

01:33:11 ◼   ► but it won't be the most successful.

01:33:12 ◼   ► I think the most successful is gonna be Amazon

01:33:14 ◼   ► by a long shot with this.

01:33:15 ◼   ► And Apple, if they enter this market at all,

01:33:18 ◼   ► they will enter it with something that I don't see

01:33:21 ◼   ► being very competitive really.

01:33:24 ◼   ► I think people will buy it, some people will buy it,

01:33:26 ◼   ► certainly, but I don't see it being nearly as good

01:33:29 ◼   ► as the other two.