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162: iPhone Sorry Erin

 

00:00:00   Are we talking about that amazing thing we were just talking about in the pre-show?

00:00:03   Are we talking about that anymore now, or are we done?

00:00:05   Wait, what? The thing we were just talking about in the pre-show? The iPad Pro 9.7, whatever, whatever?

00:00:11   Stop, stop. No, the thing that's happening next week. Are we talking about that? What's happening next week?

00:00:16   Oh my god, Marco. How are we gonna have anything to say about that until it happens? Yeah, I guess not.

00:00:21   I'll just be that jerk that's teasing. And then it'll just be like, "Oh, it's fine."

00:00:26   That's how it's gonna go.

00:00:28   [laughter]

00:00:29   >> MATT: Something Marcos turned into John O'Rourke's father.

00:00:32   >> JONATHAN [mocking voice] "I'm fine. I thought he was fine."

00:00:34   >> MATT [normal voice] "I still--oh, oh, the ta--"

00:00:36   [beep]

00:00:37   >> MATT [normal voice] "Oi, you know what we need in our lives? We need some follow-up.

00:00:40   We don't have that much this week, so it'll last about three hours.

00:00:43   Why don't you tell us about anonymous former Apple employee, Jon?"

00:00:46   >> JONATHAN Oh, who doesn't love anonymous former Apple employees?

00:00:49   Last week, we discussed some more "Why don't we have cellular?" on the Mac.

00:00:55   Mac, and have lots of different theories.

00:01:00   There's one, this is one data point, this is a three year old data point from, again,

00:01:04   an anonymous Apple employee, and he or she says, "A significant number of iPad owners

00:01:09   do not have an iPhone.

00:01:10   An insignificant number of MacBook owners do not have an iPhone."

00:01:15   As of three years ago, anyway.

00:01:16   So the idea there is, why don't you have cellular, you have cellular on the iPad, but you don't

00:01:20   have it on a Mac.

00:01:21   Why?

00:01:22   Because lots of iPad owners don't have phones, but all the Mac users do

00:01:25   That's an interesting data point may have contributed to their decision

00:01:29   But as we talked about last show

00:01:31   Just because you have a phone doesn't mean you want to waste its battery tethering and deal with all the tethering stuff when it's built in

00:01:36   It's much nicer. But but anyway, that's an interesting number

00:01:39   I probably would not have guessed that that like the the Mac well, I suppose so if you have a Mac

00:01:45   Maybe you're like an old-school Apple user and you're like everybody who's got a MacBook's got an iPhone

00:01:49   but the iPad is sold to a much wider audience.

00:01:51   Anyway, there you have it.

00:01:53   Take that for what it's worth from an anonymous

00:01:55   Apple employee from three-year-old data.

00:01:57   (laughing)

00:01:59   - Fair enough.

00:02:00   Scott Williams wrote in sometime over the last week

00:02:03   and asked a question,

00:02:05   which I thought was actually very interesting.

00:02:06   He asked, "Why not use CloudKit

00:02:09   for file uploads and overcast?"

00:02:10   And unbeknownst to Marco, I replied to Scott,

00:02:13   just the two of us, I didn't copy Marco and John,

00:02:16   and I said, "I bet you anything

00:02:18   it's just because S3 is what Marco knew,

00:02:21   and he didn't feel like learning something different.

00:02:24   But I'm not 100% sure is what I said to Scott.

00:02:28   And then you did reply to everyone,

00:02:30   and that is not the answer you had,

00:02:31   which I was very surprised by.

00:02:32   So why don't you answer the question, Marco?

00:02:34   Why not use CloudKit?

00:02:35   - Right, and actually, I mean,

00:02:36   I've heard from a number of people on why don't I use X?

00:02:40   One of the other Xs was Backblaze's new S3-like service

00:02:43   that I believe is called B2.

00:02:45   So the reason why I built this on S3 rather than all these other options is first, that

00:02:51   Swilliams was right, that it was the thing I knew the best, but second, that I wrote

00:02:56   that entire feature in 2014. That's the big reason. So that was before CloudKit and

00:03:02   before Backblaze B2. And the reality is that the biggest cost of it, I don't actually

00:03:09   know yet, but the biggest cost of it is more likely to be bandwidth than storage, because

00:03:14   Bandwidth transfer is a lot more expensive on S3 than storages.

00:03:20   Storages is something like 3 cents per gig month, something like that.

00:03:24   And transfer in is free, transfer out, so when you re-download or play the file, that

00:03:29   I have to pay for.

00:03:30   And it's, you know, in large quantity, it's actually a non-trivial cost.

00:03:35   And the bandwidth fees are actually fairly similar on almost every provider.

00:03:40   CloudKit would be interesting because CloudKit is like free with a whole bunch of asterisks

00:03:43   after it. One of the hold ups with that is simply that I'm not familiar with how it

00:03:50   works yet and another big one is that I believe not all of those asterisks after it actually

00:03:56   have definitions at the bottom of the page. Many of them are like, "You just don't

00:04:00   know what will happen with this asterisk." You know, like if you go over all your quotas,

00:04:05   it's kind of undefined and stuff like that. So like CloudKit is a bit of a risk. If I

00:04:12   If I were writing all of this stuff from scratch today,

00:04:14   I would probably first try to do all of it,

00:04:17   the sync, everything, on CloudKit first.

00:04:20   But because I wrote all this stuff before CloudKit existed,

00:04:23   that's the main reason why it is the way it is.

00:04:26   And so far, I mean, looking at how much space

00:04:30   I'm actually using on S3 so far,

00:04:31   I'm up to over 300 gigs now,

00:04:34   but that's still something like 60 bucks a month in storage.

00:04:37   So it really just, the question wound up being

00:04:40   how much do I end up using in bandwidth costs?

00:04:43   And if this cost does not end up being ridiculous,

00:04:48   then I can of course raise the limit.

00:04:50   Right now it's two gigs, but why not offer 10 gigs?

00:04:54   I don't know, I could offer more if the costs stay

00:04:57   reasonable, so I'm just gonna basically see

00:04:59   what ends up being the average cost of it,

00:05:01   and then I'll decide from there what to do.

00:05:03   - Fair enough.

00:05:05   John, why don't you tell us about why it may not be

00:05:06   your fault that your poor iPod Touch walked on you?

00:05:10   No, it's my fault a lot of people sent me links to various stories about

00:05:14   Technology to break into cars

00:05:18   particularly this one with keyless entry where you just have a little your key fob in your pocket and you just walk up to

00:05:24   Your car and it unlocks and you get in and you drive away. I think you guys probably have that on your fancy cars

00:05:29   Yep. Yep, and the way to

00:05:31   the way you break into these well the way the system works obviously you walk up to the car and

00:05:38   The car knows you're nearby because it sends a signal to your key fob and your key fob says oh

00:05:45   I should open the door and sends a signal back and tells the car to open the door

00:05:49   The way these break-in things work is if you're in a restaurant and your car is parked outside

00:05:56   Your car is sending out a signal. Hey key fob. Are you there? Hey key fob

00:06:01   Are you there but your key fobs not there the signal is very weak

00:06:03   The signal only reaches when you're right next to your car essentially.

00:06:06   These amplifiers take the car's signal, amplify it massively so your key fob in your pocket inside the restaurant can hear the car asking.

00:06:14   And then the key fob thinks, "Oh, the car has asked me something. Here you go, car. Open your doors, please."

00:06:21   And it sends a signal which can reach the car apparently from the key fob, because I guess they work from really far away in case you hit the button, you know.

00:06:28   And then the door opens and the thief gets in.

00:06:31   So it's an amplifier and what it's amplifying is the car's signal reaching out to your key

00:06:35   fob and then your key fob just answers and opens the car door.

00:06:39   I'm pretty sure no one used that on my car because I don't have one of those things.

00:06:42   My car does not send out a signal to my key fob.

00:06:45   I have the old fashioned kind of key fob where the way it works is you press a button on

00:06:48   the key fob and it sends a signal to the car.

00:06:50   Me getting close to my car with my key in my pocket does nothing.

00:06:52   It does not open the doors for me.

00:06:55   left it unlocked just that one time. anyway, car's locked now, got a new iPod in there,

00:07:01   i'm fine. there are other, by the way, there are other things that you can use to break

00:07:07   into cars like mine that just send a whole bunch of different signals to the car and

00:07:10   all sorts of other hacks and things, but just all of that just sounds way, even the amplifier

00:07:14   thing just sounds way too sophisticated for the crime that this seems to be, which is

00:07:19   just wander down the street in the neighborhood and try every single car handle and if it's

00:07:22   locked go on to the next one.

00:07:24   I mean, you could also just use like a rock to break the window.

00:07:27   I mean, it's like...

00:07:28   Yeah, well, they don't want to break the window.

00:07:30   They don't want to...

00:07:31   The whole idea about this crime is you keep it low enough level that no one really gets

00:07:35   upset about it because they didn't break anything on your car.

00:07:38   You know what I mean?

00:07:39   You're right.

00:07:40   They could just break the window and get in there, however they want, or they can use

00:07:43   some other way to break into the car.

00:07:44   This is totally about, "I don't want to be bothered by that.

00:07:47   If they leave the door open, there's enough people to leave the door open, why should

00:07:50   I bother doing something that can make more noise, that can get me caught, that can get

00:07:53   me in trouble that can make the police take notice, right? So this is totally a crime

00:07:57   of opportunity. Just looking for the day I forget to lock my car door again.

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00:09:58   - All right, so this past Monday,

00:10:01   we had our first Apple event of the year,

00:10:03   and we did not get new Macs.

00:10:06   Sad times.

00:10:07   - We spent a lot of time talking about 'em last week,

00:10:09   and then nothing.

00:10:10   - I mean, it's a bummer, but a lot of people are saying

00:10:14   that oh, well this is a sign that Apple doesn't care

00:10:17   about the Mac as much anymore.

00:10:19   And I think it's true that Apple doesn't care

00:10:22   that much about the Mac anymore,

00:10:23   but I don't think this is a sign of that.

00:10:25   I basically think like, if you give Apple

00:10:28   the benefit of the doubt on this one,

00:10:29   we know that releases of Macs are tied very heavily

00:10:34   to availability of the CPUs we're going to use from Intel.

00:10:39   And Intel, over the last few years,

00:10:41   as they face a lot of challenges

00:10:43   with all their chip manufacturing changes

00:10:46   and progress over time, they have missed a lot

00:10:49   of their target chip dates, maybe even all of them.

00:10:52   They have just been very delayed and very late

00:10:55   getting stuff out the door for a lot

00:10:57   of the recent chip generations.

00:10:58   And Skylake, of course, is no exception.

00:11:01   It was one of the biggest ones, actually,

00:11:03   that just, Skylake, the newest generation of their chips,

00:11:07   has taken a very long time to come out.

00:11:09   I think it was total, what, like a year late or something?

00:11:12   It's very, it is definitely behind schedule.

00:11:15   So the type of Skylake chips that go into MacBooks

00:11:20   and MacBook Pros are usually the ones

00:11:21   that have Intel's Iris Pro graphics in them.

00:11:24   And so you can look around the industry

00:11:25   and you can see like certain Skylake chips are out

00:11:28   and you can buy certain ones in PCs

00:11:31   for like months or recently.

00:11:34   But the ones with Iris Pro that would go

00:11:36   into the MacBook Pro, those as far as I know

00:11:40   are not really out in quantity yet.

00:11:43   So that is much more likely to be the reason here

00:11:46   that we didn't see Macs.

00:11:48   It's not necessarily that Apple is snubbing the Mac,

00:11:50   it's way more likely that those chips,

00:11:53   Apple just can't get enough of them yet from Intel,

00:11:56   so they can't really release this thing yet.

00:11:58   That's a way more likely explanation.

00:12:01   Again, I do think that there are lots of signs

00:12:03   all over the place that the Mac has kind of taken

00:12:05   a backseat at Apple in recent years,

00:12:07   but I don't think the absence of Max at this event

00:12:11   is a sign of that necessarily.

00:12:13   - And we'll talk about Intel's abandonment

00:12:15   of their TikTok strategy probably on the next show

00:12:18   unless we get through all the Apple event stuff,

00:12:21   in which case we'll talk about it later,

00:12:22   but anyway, suffice it to say that Intel is now formally

00:12:25   acknowledging what Marco just said

00:12:27   and we've all known for a long time,

00:12:28   is that they make a lot of promises

00:12:30   about when things will be ready,

00:12:31   and they usually kind of are within their promise window,

00:12:34   but at the very tail edge,

00:12:35   excluding the models that Apple wants

00:12:37   caveat, caveat, asterisk, asterisk,

00:12:39   so it's nice to see them acknowledging the reality

00:12:42   and changing their game plan.

00:12:43   And I guess we'll talk more about why,

00:12:46   what this means, blah, blah, blah,

00:12:48   if and when we get to that topic, maybe next show.

00:12:50   - And the other thing is, though,

00:12:51   it is worth pointing out that Apple has contributed

00:12:56   from their end to the long list between Cern Max.

00:12:59   And the main way that this is not all Intel's fault

00:13:02   is that Apple often, for their lower priority products,

00:13:06   things like the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro especially.

00:13:09   They often skip Intel generations.

00:13:12   So Intel will often make them a new CPU

00:13:14   and Apple will be like,

00:13:15   "Eh, we just updated this product last year.

00:13:18   "We don't need to do another one this year."

00:13:20   And the Mac Pro tends to,

00:13:22   I think for most of the recent generations,

00:13:24   the Mac Pro has skipped roughly every other generation.

00:13:28   So it is definitely partly Apple's fault.

00:13:31   Also, Intel has been rolling out Skylake slowly

00:13:34   over the last few months.

00:13:36   You know, like the chip that is in the MacBook One,

00:13:40   that's a different line than the chips

00:13:42   that would be used in the MacBook Air,

00:13:44   and those are a different line than the chips

00:13:45   that would be used in the MacBook Pro.

00:13:46   And the 13 and the 15 are also, I think, slightly different,

00:13:49   like the quad versus the dual core there.

00:13:53   But these chips are all released at different times.

00:13:56   It's kind of like a rolling schedule usually

00:13:57   in recent years with Intel.

00:13:58   And so Apple could release MacBooks at a staggered schedule.

00:14:05   And in fact, last year they did.

00:14:07   If you remember last year, there were,

00:14:10   I think the MacBook One came out first,

00:14:12   then the Airs, and then the 13, and then the 15, right?

00:14:15   Something like that?

00:14:16   - Something like that.

00:14:17   - They were staggered out among a few months.

00:14:18   So, you know, Apple could have some of these chips,

00:14:21   like the MacBook One's chip maybe,

00:14:23   and just not have released it yet

00:14:24   because they're waiting to do it all at once.

00:14:26   So that's also kinda on Apple.

00:14:29   But the main thing is the skipping of generations.

00:14:31   That is the big one.

00:14:32   Like, these, the chip that's in the 15 inch right now

00:14:35   is, I think like three years old or something.

00:14:38   I mean, it's like, it's pretty rough.

00:14:41   The Mac Pro is also, again, in really bad shape.

00:14:43   'Cause like, once you start skipping Intel generations

00:14:47   now, nowadays, like where the Intel generation itself

00:14:49   is being extended because of various delays

00:14:52   in getting to the next stage,

00:14:54   when you start skipping generations,

00:14:56   like Apple often does now,

00:14:57   that could mean you're buying a three year old CPU

00:15:01   when you go into the store today.

00:15:02   And that just sucks.

00:15:04   So I think if Apple wants to at least partially alleviate

00:15:08   the notion that they're abandoning or neglecting the Mac,

00:15:13   I think they gotta stop skipping these generations.

00:15:14   'Cause if the generation's gonna go from nine months long

00:15:18   to two years long, that's a much bigger thing

00:15:21   that, you know, stop skipping them already.

00:15:22   'Cause they also tie everything else to it.

00:15:25   So for instance, like if you buy,

00:15:27   this came up in the Oculus Rift comments

00:15:29   from a couple weeks ago.

00:15:31   - That's still a topic down there, by the way.

00:15:32   - I know.

00:15:33   If you buy a Mac Pro today,

00:15:35   you're getting something like a three year old

00:15:36   or four year old class GPU.

00:15:38   Like you're getting a really old GPU by modern standards,

00:15:43   even if you opt for the highest one.

00:15:44   - Can you believe people out there

00:15:45   are using three year old Mac Pros?

00:15:48   Isn't that sad?

00:15:48   - Well, they're not buying them, well they are,

00:15:52   but ideally you wouldn't buy a three year old Mac Pro today.

00:15:56   - The one you can buy today is three years old,

00:15:59   that's what I'm getting at.

00:16:00   - I know, right?

00:16:01   So anyway, so like, you know, it sucks that because Apple

00:16:06   skips these generations of CPUs on the lesser

00:16:09   mainstream products, and these generations

00:16:12   keep getting longer, by tying themselves to Intel's calendar

00:16:16   they end up shipping a whole bunch of other old stuff too.

00:16:19   Like, you know, the GPUs are grossly outdated

00:16:21   usually on these products.

00:16:24   The configuration options, things like SSD pricing

00:16:27   for higher capacities, that tends to stay very high

00:16:31   for very long because it's just hardly ever updated.

00:16:34   You know, when you're updating every two to three years,

00:16:36   and you're doing significant updates,

00:16:37   then it's kinda hard to keep that stuff competitive.

00:16:40   So that all is kind of, you know, that does all contribute.

00:16:43   And all those things are within Apple's control of change,

00:16:46   and I hope they do at some point.

00:16:48   And all this is kind of to lead into

00:16:50   the final conclusion here, which is,

00:16:52   now that we're seeing quite how much Apple depends on Intel

00:16:57   progress the Mac line forward.

00:16:59   Assuming Apple fixes all their other stuff

00:17:01   and starts, and doesn't skip any more CPU generation

00:17:04   that Intel gives them, and maybe keeps things

00:17:06   a little bit more up to date,

00:17:08   which that's a big if, honestly,

00:17:09   and I don't see it happening.

00:17:10   But if they would do that, you can kinda see

00:17:14   why Apple might someday want to move to R Max,

00:17:18   because Apple could make their own CPUs that are Mac class,

00:17:22   and if they could be at all competitive with Intel,

00:17:24   which they, honestly, they might not even need to be.

00:17:27   I mean, look at the MacBook One, an incredibly slow computer that seems to be selling pretty

00:17:30   well anyway because nobody cares.

00:17:32   So if Apple made their own ARM chips for Macs, for OS X, they would own this part of the

00:17:41   pipeline that right now they depend on this partner who keeps delaying them.

00:17:48   And that isn't necessarily to say that Apple would always do better, but it is exactly

00:17:52   the same situation they were in back when they were on PowerPC waiting for IBM to do

00:17:56   anything with PowerPC, you know, it's very similar to that situation, and Apple made

00:18:01   a change, because they were tired of being dependent on this slow partner. They could

00:18:05   do the same thing here with Intel at some point by saying, "You know what? We are

00:18:10   done dealing with Intel holdups and Intel delays, we're going to try taking this on

00:18:14   our own, and we're going to make Mac chips and just have like an A15X for the Mac or

00:18:19   something." So this is all kind of big long-term stuff, and all this requires a lot more thought

00:18:25   an effort into the Mac than what Apple might be giving recently, but I do think it's within

00:18:33   the realm of reason.

00:18:34   Anyway, new laptops will be out in a couple months.

00:18:38   The answer is we don't know when they'll be out. Again, it depends on Intel. They could

00:18:43   be out, I'd say at this point since they missed this event, the most likely release

00:18:47   is June at WWDC, but it also could be any time before then or after then. With Intel's

00:18:53   ship dates, we don't really know. It could be just like a press release and maybe some

00:18:59   briefings sometime between now and June without an event. It could be another tiny event,

00:19:04   although I doubt that. Or, you know, it could just be announced in WBC in June. So really

00:19:10   it could be any of these things and we don't really know and probably only Apple and Intel

00:19:14   know this.

00:19:15   Steven McLaughlin All right, so we should probably cover the

00:19:17   rest of the event chronologically.

00:19:18   Steven McLaughlin The things that were actually in the event.

00:19:20   - Right, so why don't we start how it started

00:19:24   with the brief, what was it, 40 years and 40 seconds video?

00:19:29   I don't have a lot to say about it.

00:19:30   Other than that, I really enjoyed it,

00:19:31   and I also really enjoyed Stephen Hackett and Jason Snell's,

00:19:36   like, "We Didn't Start the Fire" style recap

00:19:39   of everything that was in it.

00:19:41   - Tim Cook did the little thing of like,

00:19:42   "We at Apple don't usually like to look backwards,

00:19:44   but it seems kinda like the new Apple

00:19:47   kinda likes to look backwards sometimes,

00:19:48   like a little bit more than they used to."

00:19:50   'cause Steve Jobs was famously against ever doing anything

00:19:53   remotely nostalgic, so it was just forward, new, new.

00:19:56   Of course he did do things like with the 1984 iPod ad

00:19:59   and stuff like that, but it seemed more rare back then.

00:20:02   This was small and it's just a bunch of words on a screen

00:20:04   and it was fun and cute or whatever,

00:20:06   but it's like, I don't know,

00:20:07   maybe Apple's just getting to that age

00:20:09   where there's like a lot of round number anniversaries

00:20:11   and birthdays, the 25th anniversary

00:20:13   or the 30th anniversary of the Mac,

00:20:15   the 40th anniversary of the company, you know,

00:20:18   the last town hall thing,

00:20:20   just seems to me that the new Apple seems

00:20:22   ever so slightly more sentimental than it used to be.

00:20:26   I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

00:20:28   I mean, I'm more sentimental. - I agree.

00:20:30   - I'm old too, you know.

00:20:31   (laughing)

00:20:33   The text name video, it was cute,

00:20:35   but I like the fact that it was 40 seconds,

00:20:38   but it wasn't anything too wonderful.

00:20:41   - I mean, I enjoyed it,

00:20:42   and I didn't think it was overly self-indulgent,

00:20:46   like the thousand no's for every yes or whatever it was.

00:20:50   I also liked that video,

00:20:51   but it kind of ran for a long time and got a little bit.

00:20:53   - But that was forward-looking though.

00:20:55   That was like, this is the new Apple.

00:20:56   This is what we're doing going forward.

00:20:57   And I give them lots of leeway

00:20:59   to sort of set a new direction.

00:21:00   This is purely like, hey, it's an anniversary.

00:21:03   We did a bunch of cool things in the first 40 years.

00:21:05   - Yeah, yeah.

00:21:06   And I liked it and I liked it because it was quick,

00:21:08   it was funny, and it didn't take things too seriously.

00:21:13   So I quite liked the video.

00:21:15   - I didn't like that it wasn't chronological though.

00:21:18   - Of course. - That bothered me.

00:21:19   'Cause if you're trying to match up,

00:21:21   it's kind of chronological, but then it jumps back

00:21:23   and it goes all over the place.

00:21:24   And like, just do it chronological.

00:21:26   (laughing)

00:21:28   - Sorry, John.

00:21:28   After that, we heard about privacy.

00:21:31   And even since we're recording this on Wednesday evening,

00:21:35   the conference or whatever you wanna call it,

00:21:38   the keynote took place Monday afternoon, proper time.

00:21:42   So even 24 hours later, there's been new developments in this whole privacy battle with the FBI.

00:21:49   And I don't know which one of you guys put this link to the New York Times in here, but

00:21:51   perhaps you can talk about that a little bit more.

00:21:53   Well, I mean, so he, Tim Cook was on stage and being kind of like very assertive and

00:21:59   determined, you know, as you all know in the audience, because you're a bunch of tech reporters,

00:22:03   here's the thing that we've been battling the FBI and Department of Justice over and

00:22:07   Apple's committed to privacy and we're going to fight this fight and so on and so forth.

00:22:11   and then the audience applauds and is like, yay.

00:22:13   And then like one or two days later,

00:22:15   the Department of Justice is like,

00:22:17   actually it turns out we might have another way

00:22:18   into this phone, nevermind about that hearing

00:22:20   we were gonna have Apple.

00:22:21   Like someone else approached the FBI

00:22:23   and said they can get us into the phone.

00:22:24   So nevermind for now.

00:22:25   So they postponed the hearing, perhaps indefinitely,

00:22:29   and the government is going off and do something else.

00:22:31   And everyone's trying to read the tea leaves.

00:22:33   Could they always have gotten into it?

00:22:34   Do they get cold feet?

00:22:35   Is this actually someone new saying,

00:22:37   hey, here's like a box you can buy in China

00:22:39   that will unlock this phone?

00:22:41   FBI, you should have known about it, but you're a bunch of dunces. It's so hard to tell what's

00:22:44   actually going on, but the bottom line for Apple is they were all stealing for a fight,

00:22:48   and that fight has been either postponed or canceled. So it's like, "Oh, all right, well,

00:22:53   I guess we'll wait to see if the government comes back and says, 'No, seriously, we want

00:22:58   you to do this.'" But for now, it seems like a stay of execution for Apple.

00:23:02   Which is excellent. I think it's most likely to be a combination

00:23:08   of all those possibilities that you outlined, John? Like, I think if you looked at the way

00:23:13   the legal briefs were going back and forth, the FBI really did not have much of a leg

00:23:18   to stand on legally, according to what most lawyers, which we are not, seem to think about,

00:23:24   you know, these briefs and these arguments. It seems like the FBI was very likely to lose,

00:23:30   basically. And so, they're bailing out. And that's very smart from their point of

00:23:36   view because we all suspect or know that this is very much about setting precedent and they

00:23:44   wanted to set precedent that would allow them to compel Apple to break into any phone they

00:23:50   demanded, secretly probably, all the wonderful stuff our government does now in the name

00:23:55   of freedom. There was an equal chance if they lost to set a bad precedent for the FBI, which

00:24:01   which should be like if Apple successfully defended against this and courts ruled in

00:24:07   Apple's favor saying, "No, you can't make Apple do this," then that hurts the FBI's

00:24:12   cause for themselves. So if they were pretty sure they were going to lose, the best thing

00:24:17   to do is say, "Yeah, never mind, we'll fight this again later," and that's basically

00:24:21   what they've done.

00:24:22   I don't know if their handicapping of their chances of losing changed that much after

00:24:26   seeing Apple's argument. It's so hard to tell when there's the possibility that one

00:24:30   of the the parties to this lawsuit is incredibly incompetent and doesn't know anything about the

00:24:34   tech stuff because if you if you believe that being like well maybe maybe FBI really did think

00:24:38   they had a strong case but then when the facts came to light and Apple got to respond like oh

00:24:43   maybe we don't have a strong case but then you would think seriously would they not know all

00:24:47   these things and so it's so hard to tell like are they super devious and just like bluffing or did

00:24:53   they really not know that it seemed like they didn't have a good case and the other possibility

00:24:56   the even more cynical one is they just decided you know what if it's a lot easier if we just

00:25:01   get laws passed that make it make that force apple to do what we want so we will retreat

00:25:06   and uh you know go through government channels to try to uh you know influence the congress to pass

00:25:13   the terrible laws that we want them to pass and we'll secretly pass them tonight while no one's

00:25:16   watching because we have enough people who vote for them because they have lobbyists from you know

00:25:20   whatever like the typical way the government passes laws that don't have popular support, right?

00:25:26   Right, in the name of fighting this war that somehow never ends and is vaguely defined.

00:25:31   Right, right, exactly. It is like, "terrorism, blah, blah, blah, you know,

00:25:34   Apple being mean, blah, blah, blah, encryption is going to kill your children," whatever.

00:25:37   Anyway, so that's another possibility that they decided, "this is too much of a hassle,

00:25:42   even if we're going to win, it's so much better if we can just get terrible laws passed." And

00:25:45   that has worked really well for lots of terrible laws that involve warrantless wiretapping and the

00:25:50   the Patriot Act and all the other things they've done. It's like that's a proven strategy.

00:25:53   This whole battling a company in court, especially a company that has a lot of money for lawyers,

00:25:57   that seems like a lot of work. So who knows? Who knows what's going on? But either way,

00:26:01   Apple was all sort of grim and determined and committed. And that determination has

00:26:06   fizzled because now they had nothing to be determined about. And they can just going

00:26:09   back to suspecting that the NSA is putting secret chips into all their servers.

00:26:13   Delightful. So there was that speech about privacy, the aftermath thereof, and then we

00:26:20   got to talk about the environment. And I was very pleased to see that the first not-Tim person on

00:26:27   stage was a woman, Lisa Jackson, a woman of color, no less, which is excellent. And she was up there

00:26:32   for quite a while. And this is the first time I can recall seeing her on stage. Is that fair to

00:26:36   say, or am I forgetting one? She might have been up there before, I think, for talking about

00:26:40   environment but but yeah like the this is something that that people are

00:26:45   watching now Apple watchers are watching now because Apple itself has tried to do

00:26:51   better about diversity and is giving these diversity reports to say how are

00:26:55   we doing how far do we have to go Apple itself has given itself a bad grade on

00:27:00   diversity and continues to give itself a bad grade on diversity because it

00:27:03   deserves a bad grade on diversity like but yeah but now when we when we watch

00:27:08   these keynotes especially as compared to some other companies for example Google

00:27:10   Google has historically done much better in terms of who is on stage talking, right?

00:27:15   And it's not just who's on stage talking.

00:27:17   Like, you can just, you know, we'll just pick someone up there and try to put a diverse

00:27:20   face on things.

00:27:21   Who's on stage talking always necessarily reflects who's in charge of things.

00:27:25   And that is the type of problem where you can't fix it overnight unless you fire everybody

00:27:30   and start over.

00:27:31   And that's usually people don't like to do that.

00:27:33   People are like, "We're cleaning house.

00:27:35   The whole top five layers of the org chart, everybody's fired and we're starting over."

00:27:40   So it's going to take Apple a long time to undo…

00:27:42   That would be interesting.

00:27:43   Yeah.

00:27:44   It's going to take Apple… well, Steve Jobs kind of did that, but he just replaced

00:27:47   all the white dudes with white dudes.

00:27:48   It's going to take a long time for Apple to undo the decades and decades of promoting

00:27:54   white dudes, essentially.

00:27:55   All right?

00:27:56   So you can't, you know, you can't just… you can't fix it overnight, which isn't

00:28:00   an excuse, but it's just showing how difficult it is to make this change and how deep this

00:28:05   stuff goes, right?

00:28:06   So trying to, at the very least, do a little bit better on each successive keynote is,

00:28:13   I think, important.

00:28:14   But every time they do it, it almost highlights how far they have to go.

00:28:18   You know what I mean?

00:28:20   This is literally the best you can do, and you've got to dig all the way down to your

00:28:23   vice president of environment to come up with a female speaker.

00:28:26   No one who's in charge of iOS or the Mac or Apple TV or anything like that is any more

00:28:32   diverse than just a million other white guys.

00:28:34   So it's difficult to know how, like, I mean, I know how I feel about this, but like, what

00:28:40   kind of feedback would you give to Apple?

00:28:43   Because it's clear that they're trying to do something, but it's also clear that they're

00:28:47   like, that it's almost an un-independent wall.

00:28:49   And you wouldn't tell them, "You need to fire everybody and start over."

00:28:52   You would hope that they're working internally to try to hire and promote more equitably

00:28:59   than they have been.

00:29:01   But for you to see results of that, it's going to take years and years and years, simply

00:29:05   because like I said, you just can't fire everybody.

00:29:09   And it doesn't necessarily have to start at the bottom.

00:29:10   You can hire women into the top like they did for their head of retail and stuff too.

00:29:14   But it's a long road.

00:29:18   To that credit, I mean, we'll talk about the environment in a second, but it seems like

00:29:21   Apple at least knows that they have a problem and is trying to do something about it.

00:29:27   But it's difficult to tell whether Apple is being ineffectual in their efforts or they're

00:29:33   being as effective as they possibly can and it's just going to take for friggin' ever.

00:29:37   All right, so let's talk about the environment a little bit.

00:29:41   Apple cares.

00:29:42   And they had said a couple of years ago, which I don't recall when that was, that they wanted

00:29:46   to be 100% based on renewable energy.

00:29:52   And they aren't there yet, but they're 93% worldwide, and apparently 100% renewable in

00:29:58   23 countries, including the States, if I'm not mistaken.

00:30:01   Their environment, this aspect of their environment, the energy aspect of their environment, I

00:30:04   think is one of the best things Apple is doing, simply because they are so well positioned

00:30:09   to do what they're doing.

00:30:10   So it's a win-win for Apple.

00:30:14   So obviously they get the PR advantage of saying, "Look how environmentally green we

00:30:17   are, and we're setting an example for everybody else, and blah, blah, blah."

00:30:21   But it also costs them less money, not in the short term, but in the long run.

00:30:28   And why does every company not do this?

00:30:31   Why doesn't every single company in the entire United States use all renewable energy and

00:30:36   do all this stuff?

00:30:37   Well, because it costs tons of money up front.

00:30:38   They build solar panels.

00:30:40   They buy, you know, they build wind farms.

00:30:42   They invest money in these.

00:30:43   Like, they're paying to put all those solar panels on top of the buildings in wherever

00:30:47   that was, Singapore or whatever.

00:30:49   And they're building a huge solar arrays outside of, you know, there's a huge capital investment.

00:30:54   Who can afford to make these gigantic capital investments so you can make it back slowly

00:30:57   over the next 20 years?

00:30:59   Apple, that's it, because they got tons of money.

00:31:01   Like that's not their problem.

00:31:03   They have the capital.

00:31:04   So this is exactly what Apple should be doing.

00:31:07   Hey, we have a huge amount of money.

00:31:09   Cash flow is not our problem.

00:31:11   We are committed to having these data centers or these stores or whatever for a long, long

00:31:15   time.

00:31:16   all the money that we have, put it up front to build, you know, if there's not renewable

00:31:20   energy, we'll build it. If there is, we'll try to subsidize it or buy it or, you know,

00:31:23   pay for it, whatever it is that, you know, that other companies can't do because like,

00:31:26   that's great, but I don't have no two billion dollars to put all these solar panels up,

00:31:29   right? Let's invest that money and then let's slowly make it back over years and years of

00:31:34   saying, oh, now our data center is powered half by the sun and half by these other renewable

00:31:38   things, whatever. They will make it back eventually. And even if they don't, it's such a drop in

00:31:44   the bucket compared to their other expenses and the other things they spend money on.

00:31:47   It's just a smart thing to do.

00:31:50   So especially when I saw them putting solar panels on the roof of skyscrapers and stuff,

00:31:54   seriously, you're going to try to power your retail stores with renewable energy?

00:31:58   As far as Apple is concerned, it's like, sure, why the hell not?

00:32:00   I mean, it's just a smart investment.

00:32:04   And if you are a company that has short-term thinking or doesn't have as much cash as Apple

00:32:09   or is sort of like pinching pennies, like if you're like the Walmarts of the world or

00:32:13   or whatever, where every razor thin margins

00:32:15   and pressuring your suppliers

00:32:16   and not giving your employees healthcare

00:32:18   and doing everything you possibly can

00:32:19   to save every penny,

00:32:20   it's not as likely to occur to you that,

00:32:23   hey, we should put solar panels

00:32:24   on top of every single Walmart

00:32:25   and make them carbon neutral

00:32:30   or putting energy back on the grid

00:32:32   or whatever it is that you wanna be doing

00:32:33   because that just seems like a lot of capital investment

00:32:35   for like a silly PR win.

00:32:37   But I truly think the people in charge of Apple

00:32:39   don't see it as a silly PR win.

00:32:40   They see it as like a strategic advantage,

00:32:44   as in we are self-sufficient, another type of thing like,

00:32:46   oh, we don't rely on Intel for our CPUs

00:32:48   and we don't rely on the stupid power companies for our power

00:32:50   but we'll do all that ourselves.

00:32:52   And they, like so many other things

00:32:54   that Tim Cook is Apple has been behind,

00:32:57   they really seem to believe in this

00:32:58   as having an environmental impact,

00:33:00   even though Apple is one small company

00:33:01   and really it's a drop in the bucket.

00:33:03   I think the most important thing they do is set an example.

00:33:05   So I don't know if it deserved as much time

00:33:08   as they gave it in the keynote.

00:33:10   I feel like they just need to mention this,

00:33:12   keep mentioning this over and over again,

00:33:13   kind of like they do with like the, you know,

00:33:15   lead-free, PVC-free check boxes

00:33:17   they put in every single product.

00:33:19   Like we've seen that a million times now,

00:33:20   but eventually, hopefully it goes,

00:33:22   you know, it gets through everybody's head,

00:33:24   and when they don't see it for someone else's product,

00:33:26   they say, "So I guess your product contains lead?"

00:33:28   You know, so eventually I hope that Apple keeps showing

00:33:32   these environmental things,

00:33:33   and when other companies have big presentations

00:33:35   about new data centers, infrastructures,

00:33:37   The press can ask, are you powering this with renewable energy?

00:33:41   If not, why not?

00:33:42   Excellent.

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00:35:28   - All right, so then ResearchKit and CareKit.

00:35:31   ResearchKit was introduced, I think they said

00:35:33   about a year ago, is that right?

00:35:34   and Care Kit is a new kind of extension of that.

00:35:38   I don't really have that much to say about this.

00:35:41   Other than that, I very much applaud it,

00:35:42   and I think they're doing great work here.

00:35:43   - Yep, that's another example of an initiative

00:35:47   that other companies probably wouldn't do anything about,

00:35:50   'cause it's not gonna be a big moneymaker.

00:35:52   The number of people who are medical researchers

00:35:54   who are also their customers is small.

00:35:56   I don't know if that's a big market,

00:35:57   but it's not as big as the consumer market,

00:35:59   so why do they bother doing it?

00:36:01   It's another one of those things that Apple does

00:36:02   because they think it's the right thing to do and they're in a position to use their

00:36:06   technology to make this stuff better.

00:36:08   They're always bragging about a research kit.

00:36:10   These companies that use it to collect these programs, they use it to collect data, like

00:36:14   within 24 hours became the biggest Parkinson's study just because it's, you know, they could

00:36:18   distribute their app to all these people and gather data.

00:36:20   And CareKit is the extension to say, you're not part of a medical research program, you're

00:36:24   just a patient.

00:36:26   And CareKit is something you can use to communicate your status back to your doctor and they can

00:36:31   can send you updates to your plan of care

00:36:35   after being released from the hospital after surgery

00:36:37   or just keep tracking chronic conditions

00:36:39   and stuff like that.

00:36:40   And this stuff is all open source.

00:36:42   It's an admirable effort.

00:36:46   It got a lot of time in this thing.

00:36:48   CareKit is a natural extension of ResearchKit

00:36:50   and this is exactly the type of thing

00:36:51   that we would hope a company like Apple would do.

00:36:54   So thumbs up.

00:36:55   - Yep, I would also refer everybody

00:36:57   to this week's episode of Connected over at Relay FM,

00:37:00   episode number 83.

00:37:02   They have a lot more knowledge about the healthcare system

00:37:06   and its needs, and they had a great discussion

00:37:09   about this this week.

00:37:10   Plus, it's a great episode otherwise.

00:37:12   So I recommend you check out Connected in number 83

00:37:14   for a more extended discussion on this research initiative

00:37:18   for health and stuff.

00:37:21   - Awesome.

00:37:22   Moving on, we have the brand new Apple Watch.

00:37:26   It's lighter, it's thinner, it's faster.

00:37:29   - Oh wait, nevermind.

00:37:30   No, but we did get new bands.

00:37:31   - Oh, I'm so sad for the Apple Watch.

00:37:34   - I am, but I'm not.

00:37:35   I didn't actually expect to get a new watch this time,

00:37:37   and I'm not really disappointed that we didn't.

00:37:39   - Well, why not though?

00:37:41   Because the watch came out a year ago,

00:37:44   and it was unveiled like 18 months ago.

00:37:46   So why didn't you expect to get a new one?

00:37:49   'Cause usually after a year of a new product,

00:37:51   Apple ships a much improved second version.

00:37:54   - 'Cause it was in the town hall, that's why.

00:37:56   - Well, okay, but like, is there a great reason

00:38:00   why we don't have new watch hardware yet?

00:38:02   Because here's what I see about the watch.

00:38:05   The problem with the watch is a combination

00:38:07   of incredibly slow first gen hardware

00:38:12   and fairly young and limited and kind of confusing software.

00:38:17   And they have made some software advances

00:38:22   since the release, but most of them

00:38:24   have not been very significant in terms of what the user

00:38:27   actually experiences with the watch on a regular basis.

00:38:30   For the most part, it's like, same stuff,

00:38:33   running at the same speed, roughly,

00:38:34   just a few minor improvements here and there,

00:38:37   but not a whole lot.

00:38:38   There's still tons of limits.

00:38:40   There's still not a lot of customization

00:38:42   of the watch faces, stuff like that.

00:38:44   It's like, as our friend Steve Tratt and Smith pointed out,

00:38:47   there are more colors of the sport band

00:38:49   than there are watch faces that you can configure

00:38:52   in software.

00:38:53   (laughs)

00:38:54   (laughing)

00:38:56   It seems like what the watch desperately needs

00:38:59   is faster hardware, number one,

00:39:01   and then a lot more work on the software, number two.

00:39:05   What we have now a year later

00:39:06   is really neither of those things,

00:39:09   at least from what we can see.

00:39:11   Instead, we have the same hardware now a year later

00:39:16   that will presumably be here for at least another,

00:39:19   I don't know, six months?

00:39:20   Maybe this fall we'll get new watches, I don't know.

00:39:21   Maybe it'll be next spring, who knows?

00:39:23   but we have now pretty old, pretty creaky hardware.

00:39:27   And we have tons of variation that we can get

00:39:30   in the case material, in the bands that we attach to it,

00:39:33   in the colors of those bands.

00:39:34   We have so much variation of all those things,

00:39:37   but the actual watch experience is barely changed

00:39:42   in the last year and needs a lot of help.

00:39:44   So I kind of feel like, I don't know,

00:39:47   I have this kind of larger concern with Apple

00:39:50   that they are fighting a lot of battles on a lot of fronts.

00:39:55   And we've talked in the past about how, you know,

00:39:58   I'm concerned about them being stretched too thin,

00:40:00   but I think we're kind of seeing what that means here.

00:40:03   You know, we see, as I mentioned a half hour ago,

00:40:05   like the Macs get like generations skipped of hardware

00:40:08   and just kind of ignored, you know, some models

00:40:10   like the Mini just get kind of neglected for years.

00:40:13   It seems like the watch is possibly

00:40:17   like a low priority for them,

00:40:18   because now we have year number two of it

00:40:22   and no new hardware yet and minimal change to the software.

00:40:25   Again, we'll see what happens to WDC.

00:40:27   Maybe they will unveil a significant update to the software.

00:40:31   I hope they would, that that would be the place

00:40:33   to do it in the time.

00:40:34   But I just feel like, I feel like the watch has not

00:40:39   gotten enough attention and has not improved enough

00:40:42   for being in the point in its life cycle where it is.

00:40:47   We didn't blink an eye when Apple let the iPad Air 2

00:40:51   continue to be the flagship iPad for more than a year.

00:40:55   We didn't blink an eye at that because that was like,

00:40:57   okay, well, this is like the iPad's,

00:40:58   it was like the iPad's fifth year and it was a great model.

00:41:01   Nobody really had any complaints about it, so great.

00:41:03   But the watch hasn't reached that point yet

00:41:05   or shouldn't have reached that point yet.

00:41:06   The watch, this is a brand new product.

00:41:09   It's first year and it seems like it's already

00:41:12   getting on a slow cycle and I'm worried about it

00:41:14   because it seems like if Apple was really

00:41:17   putting their weight behind this product,

00:41:19   it seems like we should have seen more by now.

00:41:21   It almost feels to me like Apple kinda lacks hustle

00:41:26   the way they used to have it.

00:41:28   They used to really put their weight behind new things

00:41:31   and really try to make them work.

00:41:32   I mean, not everything they were paying,

00:41:33   but most things, major new products,

00:41:37   they would really put their weight behind

00:41:38   and really back them up for a while and drive them forward.

00:41:41   I mean, it just seems, you know, we'll see what happens

00:41:43   with the TV going into this fall.

00:41:45   Like, will the TV get updated on a regular basis,

00:41:48   or will it get neglected?

00:41:49   We'll see what happens with the iPad, you know,

00:41:51   as, for a while the iPad was neglected pretty badly,

00:41:54   and, you know, software-wise at least.

00:41:56   And, you know, it got a lot of attention recently,

00:41:58   which we'll get to, but we'll see how that plays out,

00:42:02   you know, over the next couple of years.

00:42:03   I hope they keep the attention level up for iPad users,

00:42:05   but I don't know that they will.

00:42:07   I feel like they're fighting on so many fronts

00:42:10   that they're obviously having trouble staying competitive

00:42:14   in certain areas.

00:42:15   Like I recently got an Amazon Echo.

00:42:17   The Echo is really good.

00:42:19   And it kind of highlights what Siri should be

00:42:23   and maybe an area of hardware Apple should consider being in

00:42:27   that they're just not in,

00:42:29   and that Siri is not this advanced

00:42:33   or is not this well integrated with other products

00:42:36   and doesn't have any kind of developer story yet.

00:42:39   So you look at a lot of Apple projects now,

00:42:42   and it just seems like they lack that hustle

00:42:45   that Apple stuff used to have.

00:42:46   And I think a big part of that is just they're doing so much

00:42:49   and they're fighting so many battles now.

00:42:51   And I don't think the company's resources

00:42:53   have grown to match that.

00:42:56   I don't know, I don't know, what do you think?

00:42:58   - So a few things here.

00:43:01   First, I don't know why I didn't expect a watch update,

00:43:05   but it just, the watch never felt to me

00:43:08   that it was going to be an annual update sort of thing.

00:43:13   And if--maybe that's because I buy--or I used to buy wristwatches once every, like, five or six years.

00:43:20   And I think that we're running a little bit into this with the iPad as well,

00:43:24   because the iPad isn't really an annual update kind of device either, in terms of consumers.

00:43:29   But I didn't really think we were going to get an update quite yet.

00:43:32   And honestly, I'm not sure when we will. I couldn't even wager a guess.

00:43:35   But I also don't think that...

00:43:39   I like my watch a lot, although I like it for a lot less than I thought I would.

00:43:45   I thought I would like to use all sorts of third-party apps, and I thought I would like

00:43:49   to use it almost not as a replacement for my phone, but I would turn to my watch more

00:43:54   often than I would turn to my phone.

00:43:56   And I've found that, for me, my watch is a great notification, like triage device.

00:44:02   It's great for the weather, it's great for my schedule, and it's great for health, and

00:44:06   that's about it.

00:44:07   I don't use it for pretty much any third-party apps outside of things that I stick on my

00:44:11   watch face as complications, which basically is Carrot Weather and Fantastical.

00:44:16   We didn't talk about this, I think, last time, but Apple's practice over the last several

00:44:23   years with most of its products is they want to keep making a physical design for at least

00:44:29   two years and they usually do that by keeping the the old models around right for the phones or with

00:44:34   with the 5 SE even longer than two years. So even if Apple revises the watch wouldn't you think they

00:44:43   would want to keep making this this size and shape watch for two years and so that two years isn't up

00:44:50   and so it's not so much that I didn't think this watch would still be around it's just that there's

00:44:54   There's no replacement for it.

00:44:56   And that's the thing I have thinking about seeing all these new bands and everything

00:45:00   is that like if and when a new watch comes out, first of all what can they even do?

00:45:05   Well, they can put a slightly lower power CPU that's slightly faster with, you know,

00:45:09   new process technology or whatever and that will presumably let them get more battery

00:45:12   life and maybe they can use a smaller battery and make it thinner and try to fix all the

00:45:16   things that we think they should fix hardware-wise just incrementally get a little bit better.

00:45:20   But then would they keep selling the Apple Watch 1 right alongside it for say a reduced

00:45:26   price, not just the sport model but all of them a reduced price, just because they have

00:45:31   all the tooling to build these watches and they would just say, "Well, we feel like we

00:45:34   want to make every size and shape for at least two years to recoup the costs on the tooling

00:45:39   and the process."

00:45:40   If that's the case, I don't, I mean, I'm kind of like in the same boat as Casey.

00:45:47   Why didn't I expect it?

00:45:48   other than the town hall thing, why didn't I expect new watches?

00:45:50   It just doesn't seem like, I don't know, even if they had a new one, I wasn't confident

00:45:55   that the new one would advance to such a degree.

00:46:00   Basically Apple's treatment of this product has so clearly put it as a fashion accessory

00:46:05   and not a tech accessory and fashion accessories, they have been changing it.

00:46:09   The fashion parts of it, new colors, you can get a rose gold one, you can get a lunar gold

00:46:14   one, you get a million different bands, they have been doing that.

00:46:17   for a fashion-focused product, that is hustle, kind of, you know what I mean?

00:46:23   And Marco, you're thinking of it as if it's a tiny computer and they have to advance the

00:46:25   computing inside because the problems you see with the product have to do with like

00:46:28   software, the sort of functionality of the software and the focus of the product and

00:46:33   the speed of the hardware.

00:46:34   But as a fashion accessory, it's gotten more updates than any product app has ever sold.

00:46:39   And so, I don't know, I feel mostly okay with waiting two years for a hardware update

00:46:47   on this product if in the meantime every six months they give new bands and new colors

00:46:51   and everything because that seems like a cadence and a treatment of this product that is in

00:46:57   keeping with the supposed theme of the product. And I agree with you that they do have problems

00:47:01   that they need to address on the software side and better hardware is always better.

00:47:05   But I don't know, I'm not too broken up about it.

00:47:08   Well I think most of what, I agree with most of what you just said. You know, I am very

00:47:14   happy they're keeping the fashion angle up and they are doing a really impressive job

00:47:17   cranking out tons of new bands.

00:47:19   And I'm very happy to see all these new bands,

00:47:21   'cause if I go back to my Apple Watch on a regular basis,

00:47:24   you bet I'm gonna rock something like the red leather band

00:47:26   or something crazy, and I'm gonna love having these

00:47:28   new options come out all the time.

00:47:30   That's great, and I'm glad they're doing that.

00:47:33   But that stuff is relatively easy.

00:47:36   Relative to everything else the watch needs to be better,

00:47:39   they're doing the easy stuff and the stuff

00:47:41   that gets them a lot of profit.

00:47:43   What the watch needs to be good is both.

00:47:45   that it needs both the fashion angle to keep being up,

00:47:50   and honestly, I'm not entirely sure

00:47:53   that's incredibly well-guided of them

00:47:56   because the Apple Watch itself, the watch part of it,

00:48:01   if you really wanna keep up with fashion,

00:48:02   that part needs to change on a regular basis too.

00:48:05   - Well, they did change it.

00:48:06   They have new colors and everything.

00:48:07   - Well, yeah, they changed it a little bit.

00:48:09   That's a minor change for fashion.

00:48:11   Ultimately, I don't think a smartwatch

00:48:13   will be a fashion object for that reason.

00:48:15   they kind of can't change the body of it

00:48:18   in dramatic ways frequently,

00:48:20   because of all the software environment

00:48:22   that has to run on it and everything.

00:48:23   So I wouldn't expect this to be a fashion item really ever

00:48:28   if it ever was, but if it is now,

00:48:32   I wouldn't expect that to last forever,

00:48:34   and treating it only as a fashion item I think is a mistake

00:48:37   because that's not how fashion works.

00:48:39   Fashion does not support the same rectangle

00:48:41   with different bands indefinitely.

00:48:44   So putting that fashion angle aside for a second,

00:48:47   what the watch needs is to be really good,

00:48:50   even at those basic functions.

00:48:51   So I'm not saying it needs a faster CPU

00:48:53   to play games on it or to run more advanced apps.

00:48:57   I'm saying it needs faster CPU and better software,

00:49:01   even just to do the basics.

00:49:03   And even simple things like the Bluetooth communication

00:49:07   to the phone is still unreliable.

00:49:09   And I don't know whether that's the fault of Bluetooth,

00:49:12   the big scary ghost of Bluetooth or what,

00:49:15   but I have lots of other Bluetooth things that work great,

00:49:17   so probably not just that,

00:49:19   it's probably other reasons also.

00:49:20   There's so much the watch could do,

00:49:23   either that it can't do today,

00:49:25   or that it does poorly today,

00:49:27   that is all dependent on the hardware being very slow,

00:49:31   and the software being very limited to conserve power.

00:49:34   So if they would do something like

00:49:35   increase the CPU performance by 25%,

00:49:38   which, based on their mobile chips from their phones

00:49:41   in the progression, those have made that is not unreasonable

00:49:43   or unrealistic at all, in all likelihood.

00:49:46   'Cause again, this hardware was shown to us

00:49:49   in a nearly finished state 18 months ago.

00:49:51   So they can probably release a new one

00:49:52   that's pretty good now if they wanted to,

00:49:54   if they put the resources behind it.

00:49:56   And so a 20%, 25% gain in CPU performance

00:50:01   would help tremendously.

00:50:02   And suppose they could reduce power draw by 20, 25%.

00:50:07   Well then maybe they could increase the frequency

00:50:09   the complications update by, which can enable stuff

00:50:12   to work better and can enable new kinds of apps.

00:50:15   So I'm not saying they have to make massive advances

00:50:18   in making this watch able to replace your phone

00:50:22   or run really complicated apps or anything.

00:50:24   I'm talking about just improving the basics by enough

00:50:27   that you can really, really dramatically improve

00:50:31   the core functionality.

00:50:32   Like if you just improve the speed of the hardware

00:50:35   and the power efficiency by, you know,

00:50:38   not even like, you know, you don't even have to like

00:50:40   quadruple them, just like, you know,

00:50:41   improve them by a double digit percentage,

00:50:44   and that can translate to real gain.

00:50:47   I would not say that you can look at this object and say,

00:50:49   "Oh, you know what, this is good enough for two years,

00:50:51   "we don't need to update it."

00:50:52   No, it's not good enough yet,

00:50:53   and maybe in a few years we'll get there,

00:50:56   but we're not there yet, and it really needs a lot of help

00:50:59   to be a really good object besides just having cool bands.

00:51:03   - Anyway, new watch in six months

00:51:04   with the FaceTime camera, right?

00:51:07   - Something like that.

00:51:07   - Oh God, I hope not.

00:51:09   - I don't know, we need to move on,

00:51:10   but I don't know if it's really fair to just say that,

00:51:13   oh, this design can't work for two years.

00:51:14   I mean, how long has Rolex looked about the same

00:51:17   to someone like me who doesn't really tell

00:51:19   the minute differences between them?

00:51:21   All Panerais I've ever seen look the same to me.

00:51:23   Every 911 is the same since the beginning of time.

00:51:27   - The 911s are not the same.

00:51:28   - They're the same.

00:51:29   - Yeah, Apple's not Rolex and Panerai and Porsche,

00:51:32   also there's a lot of Rolexes and Panerais, and they have gone in and out of fashion over

00:51:37   time.

00:51:38   Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that this should be the forever look, but I think to say that

00:51:43   it will absolutely time out, so to speak, in the next two years, I don't know if that's

00:51:48   really fair. It may end up that you're right, but I don't know if we can really see that

00:51:52   now. And having these bands changing constantly is a good thing, like you said. And I wanted

00:51:58   to also quickly say that I've been very impressed with the web presence for the watch since

00:52:03   the beginning. The way they did the bands, like the kind of animations of them clasping

00:52:07   and unclasping or whatever you call it. And I really like this new gallery that they have

00:52:11   where you can select what case you would like to look at by kind of scrolling left and right.

00:52:16   And then you can scroll left and right to figure out what band you like, and then they

00:52:20   have all three faces as well. But I really do like this new web presence. I wish they

00:52:25   had prices on here but I think it's the new gallery is really well done and

00:52:29   there's something to be said for that. Yeah no I mean I think they are nailing

00:52:33   it on the bands the bands are awesome and they continue to be awesome and they

00:52:38   always have been awesome from day one like Apple's bands are awesome but the

00:52:42   rest of the watch also needs a lot of help and it so far we've seen almost

00:52:47   none. They could just be a band seller for other watches. Wow it did get a price

00:52:53   So there's that. What did they talk about next?

00:52:57   TVOS got an update. I don't really have a lot to say about that.

00:53:01   I don't know. Do you guys have anything?

00:53:03   We can do the highlights. It'll be quick. So they put up the "The future of TV is apps."

00:53:07   If you keep saying that, maybe it'll be true. It would be nice if they got a subscription plan.

00:53:10   No subscription streaming plan this time.

00:53:12   5,000 TV apps they have. I wonder how many of those are games.

00:53:16   It's fine. You can do folders, which seems weird, but I suppose, you know,

00:53:21   You know, it's I wish I kind of wish there was a nicer way to rearrange icons on the screen than having to use that

00:53:25   silly remote

00:53:26   Siri expanded to do all the things that we thought it should have done in the beginning as in letting you dictate

00:53:30   Although it's weird like you can dictate your passwords

00:53:33   But I don't want to dictate my passwords and in the were in the same room

00:53:38   I'd like that my kids are in because they'll just like memorize it and buy things or something, you know

00:53:42   But anyway, that's good and they expanded Siri to search more applications

00:53:47   So these are all, you know, it's nice to see that the Apple TV, at least on the software front, is

00:53:51   getting steady updates. There's still a team working on it that is not just sitting there

00:53:55   and languishing. iCloud Photo Library, again, we all thought that should have been there in

00:53:57   the beginning and we were sad that it wasn't, and now it is. I have to say, having tried it,

00:54:02   the performance is not great. I enabled it, I logged in with my Apple ID, and then I went to

00:54:07   my favorites album and looked at a bunch of blank thumbnails for a really long time. I tried to

00:54:12   scroll around as the thumbnail started to appear, and I saw a cute picture that I wanted to show.

00:54:16   every time I scrolled around to it with my remote and pressed the button,

00:54:20   when that picture was totally highlighted, it was like the one that was big and coming out at you,

00:54:24   it would open a different picture. It was driving me nuts. So their collection view is weird and

00:54:29   buggy. And to this day, when I go to iCloud photos and go into my favorites collection,

00:54:33   it's just a bunch of blank thumbnails with a couple of random ones filled in. So like,

00:54:36   how long do I have to wait for it to appear? It's not looking great, but I'm glad it's getting updates.

00:54:41   Yeah, and I really have come to love my new Apple TV. Now, admittedly, I use basically

00:54:48   Plex Netflix and music on it, like the Apple Music app. I would kill for a native Spotify

00:54:57   app, but even for those very few limited uses, it's actually kind of the same story I had

00:55:01   with my watch earlier. For those limited uses, I really, really love it, and I'm happy with

00:55:07   the way it is today. So, I mean, improvements are good.

00:55:09   Of those 5,000 apps, I feel like I've used about 10 of them to try to stream video.

00:55:15   I guess it's good that I have options, I just go through all of them and find out in what

00:55:18   ways they fail to fulfill my silly, lossless playback of blu-ray things.

00:55:23   But there's such variety in terms of like, I was using Infused, DS Video, some other

00:55:29   video one, Plex itself.

00:55:32   All these different apps to try to see, how will you be able to play this?

00:55:35   Will you play it back?

00:55:36   Will you try to transcode it?

00:55:37   What audio will be available?

00:55:38   "Oh, this one only exposes stereo.

00:55:39   "This one exposes the AC3 but converts it to PCM.

00:55:42   "This one will send the AC3 directly to my thing."

00:55:44   And of course none of them do 24 frames per second cadence.

00:55:47   Anyway.

00:55:48   - Video's the worst.

00:55:49   - It's fun going through the apps that are there,

00:55:51   but it's sad when I still can't find one to fulfill my needs.

00:55:54   - I'm so happy I don't care about video as much as you do.

00:55:57   - It's such a pain in the ass.

00:55:58   - Amen.

00:55:59   (laughing)

00:56:00   Amen.

00:56:00   - Stereo forever.

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00:58:03   - So Apple did something mean during this event.

00:58:06   They came out with a new four-inch phone,

00:58:10   and that's mean because--

00:58:12   - It was awesome.

00:58:12   - As I think we discussed last time,

00:58:16   I really do like my 6S,

00:58:18   and I really have come to like

00:58:21   all the screen real estate that it has,

00:58:24   but every time I pick up my 5S

00:58:26   that we use as a noise maker for Declan,

00:58:30   just think to myself, "Oh, this feels so much better in the hand, and oh, I wish my 6S was

00:58:36   more like this."

00:58:38   And so now I'm torn.

00:58:39   Like, what would I do?

00:58:42   What would I do if there's a new 4-inch phone in addition to the others in this October

00:58:48   or thereabouts?

00:58:49   We'll see when we get there.

00:58:51   But the new SE, the iPhone SE, it's a new 4-inch phone with the guts of the 6S for the

00:58:57   the most part in what looks to be a damn near identical case to the 5S looks really good.

00:59:04   And I haven't had the time to catch up on a lot of the reactions from this, but I did

00:59:07   see that a friend of the show, John Gruber, sounds like he might be switching.

00:59:11   It's not an identical case. That's why Johnny Ive wasn't there, because he was

00:59:15   so in love with his machine chamfered, as he said, edges. I think that's how he said

00:59:20   it. Anyway, the little edge that they shave off, the chamfered edge on the outside of

00:59:25   the case used to be like polished. It's pronounced bezel. Yeah. So it would be like, I assume

00:59:32   the manufacturing process was they would make the case anodized or not anodized, was it

00:59:37   stainless steel or aluminum? I don't know. Yeah, it's aluminum, right? The 5S case? I

00:59:41   think so. Anyway, it would have that sort of matte finish and then as a final step,

00:59:46   they would shave down the edge and that would be all shiny and pretty. And I always thought

00:59:49   that detail looks really good when it's close up, but when I see the phone in front of me,

00:59:55   too small to read as anything particularly impressive. It would also nick up, you could

01:00:00   notice nicks on it more than other places, and the new phone, this may seem like a subtle

01:00:05   thing like "oh it's exactly the same case as the 5S" but it isn't. They mentioned that

01:00:09   the edge was different, now it is just merely another shaped piece of aluminum that is completely

01:00:14   anodized on all edges and all surfaces exactly the same way. Which has got to be much easier

01:00:19   to manufacture and probably more durable, and it comes in all the usual colors we expect,

01:00:24   Silver Space Gray, Rose Gold and Gold, which is now like that set of four kind of pale

01:00:30   looking pastel colors is now like the Apple color scheme for all of their products.

01:00:34   That's why we're fully expecting to have a Rose Gold MacBook Pro, but who knows if that

01:00:40   will come to pass.

01:00:41   But anyway, it looks, does it look less fancy than the 5S did?

01:00:47   Maybe if you could see that shiny edge, I mean, maybe it is less fancy.

01:00:50   and the other hand, it's kind of more uniform in appearance.

01:00:55   But yeah, I think that little shiny edge

01:01:00   is a great example of how this is like exactly

01:01:03   like the 5S and 6S internals, except not quite.

01:01:06   And the not quite parts of it

01:01:09   are the only few dings against it

01:01:11   if you were really truly hoping for a 100%

01:01:14   of the power of the 6S in merely a smaller package.

01:01:17   You got really close to it,

01:01:18   closer than I thought that we would,

01:01:19   because really this does have all the parts that count

01:01:22   from the 6S, but it's not 100% of the way there.

01:01:27   So no one is going to confuse this as a flagship phone,

01:01:30   but for a lot of people, I think the SE shows

01:01:34   that Apple learned the lessons of the 5C

01:01:36   and that people probably do want a four inch phone,

01:01:39   but they don't wanna feel like they're getting

01:01:41   the cheap or crappy phone, because the number of people

01:01:43   who will make that trade off is much smaller.

01:01:45   They're like, "Oh, but I really want a white phone

01:01:48   that I don't have to get a case with and the 5c feels so good but oh but it's slow

01:01:52   and it's slower than the other one right and so this one takes away most of the excuses.

01:01:56   If I was a small screen phone person the one missing feature that I would be most upset

01:02:04   about is the new touch id sensor because I think it's really cool that it's faster and maybe

01:02:08   secondarily missing 3d touch and I totally understand why those are missing and if they're

01:02:13   If they're gonna skimp on anything,

01:02:14   those are exactly what I would have skimped on.

01:02:16   But overall, I think everyone who's seen this phone

01:02:21   is pleasantly surprised about how much that if,

01:02:24   hey, you want a small screen phone?

01:02:26   This is a really, really good small screen iPhone.

01:02:29   Like you will not feel bad about getting this phone

01:02:31   for the most part, unless you're obsessed

01:02:33   with like Touch ID or 3D Touch.

01:02:35   - As we were talking about this, I pulled out my 5S

01:02:38   and I started using it and I started trying to transcribe

01:02:40   what you were saying into notes,

01:02:41   like I said, typing on it and everything.

01:02:42   Oh man, it's just so nice to hold, it's so nice to hit the sleep button in the right

01:02:47   spot, it's so nice to reach everything on screen, and I honestly, I know a lot of people

01:02:53   are saying that they're disappointed that the design really didn't change.

01:02:58   I think that's a valid criticism, however, I really like the design.

01:03:02   Like I like this design a lot more than I like the 6S design, and the 6 design.

01:03:07   I just think this is a great phone and it's honestly very tempting to attempt to go back.

01:03:14   I don't think I will because it is really hard for me to type on it but man I do love

01:03:20   the way it feels and I love being able to reach everything so I totally get the appeal.

01:03:25   And this is a lower priced phone too like I mean ignoring the fact that it's still 16

01:03:30   gigs gag but this is the cheapest this is the new cheapest way to get an iPhone right

01:03:35   like to get the, in their current lineup of phones,

01:03:39   this is the cheapest one.

01:03:40   And what you get for that amount of money,

01:03:43   for the cheapest amount that you get,

01:03:44   is a phone that's essentially as fast

01:03:46   as their flagship phone.

01:03:47   - Yeah.

01:03:48   - Which that's a hell of a deal.

01:03:49   Like again, ignoring the 16 gigs, you know,

01:03:51   'cause you have the same, like,

01:03:53   it's a good deal on an iPhone.

01:03:55   You get an iPhone with probably really good battery life.

01:03:59   It's really comfortable, it's super fast,

01:04:01   it's got a really good camera,

01:04:02   comes in all the variety of colors,

01:04:04   and you get it for way cheaper than the 6S,

01:04:06   but it's the same speed as the 6S.

01:04:08   - Yeah, it's a really impressive offering.

01:04:10   - Yeah, it's such a good value for what you're getting.

01:04:13   I mean, really, I think they're gonna sell

01:04:16   a ton of these things, and we might not hear

01:04:17   about it very much, 'cause they might be selling

01:04:19   a lot more outside the US, but I think

01:04:22   it's a great product release, if not a little bit

01:04:26   half-butted in the design department,

01:04:28   but because I like this design,

01:04:29   I don't consider that a bad thing.

01:04:31   The 16 gig part is unfortunate,

01:04:34   but this is kind of a strategy tax.

01:04:37   Like, it's like they stuck with the 16 gig so long

01:04:41   for all their other stuff, for the high end especially.

01:04:44   What are they gonna do?

01:04:45   Release this new, way cheaper phone?

01:04:48   - This is the only one with decent storage

01:04:50   and it's the cheapest one.

01:04:51   - Yeah, release this one at 32 gigs at $400

01:04:55   and then like the $700 6S doesn't have 32 gigs.

01:04:58   Like, they can't, they're not gonna do that.

01:05:01   So even if they wanted to finally fix the incredibly bad,

01:05:06   customer sat debt they build up by these 16 gig phones,

01:05:12   they can't fix it with this.

01:05:13   They gotta wait till the seven in the fall

01:05:15   and fix it then.

01:05:16   - That's the other minor thing.

01:05:17   Like this one, this goes 16, what is it?

01:05:19   1664 and that's it?

01:05:22   - I believe that's right.

01:05:22   - There's no 128, right?

01:05:24   Yeah, so that's another area where,

01:05:26   like to list all the areas where this falls down

01:05:28   No latest Touch ID sensor, no 3D Touch,

01:05:32   no 128 gig model, what else is it missing?

01:05:36   - You know what, I bet it doesn't support reachability.

01:05:39   - Yeah, no camera bump if you're looking for that, sorry.

01:05:42   You'll have to get a different model.

01:05:44   - Yep, and as a lot of people have noted,

01:05:47   because it will most likely work with all the same

01:05:50   accessories as the 5S, you can probably get

01:05:54   not only a bunch of really nice cases and batteries

01:05:58   and stuff that were made for it forever ago,

01:05:59   but they don't cost anything anymore.

01:06:01   Because like, you know, you look at,

01:06:03   try to buy accessories for today's iPhone or iPad,

01:06:07   and they're, you know, 50 bucks.

01:06:09   Try to buy them for the one that's two years old,

01:06:11   and they're like a dollar on Amazon.

01:06:13   Like everything costs nothing,

01:06:14   'cause everyone's trying to clear them out,

01:06:16   'cause these phones are no longer being sold in the US,

01:06:18   or no longer popular.

01:06:20   Now here's a brand new phone where you can get a ton

01:06:23   of effectively free accessories for it.

01:06:27   So again, adding to the value aspect, it's a great value.

01:06:31   - Yeah, I'm really impressed with this.

01:06:32   I think this was a great, this is a great job.

01:06:35   I think, like Jon said, the places where they,

01:06:38   you know, skimped, they did it the right spots,

01:06:41   the spots you would expect.

01:06:42   I don't think I'm gonna switch back

01:06:43   because I like the screen real estate enough

01:06:46   on the slightly larger phone

01:06:48   that I think I'm gonna stick with it.

01:06:51   I also really do like 3D Touch a lot.

01:06:53   I might be the only one, but I really use,

01:06:55   I use it quite a lot. - I think you are.

01:06:56   I use it quite a lot in Tweetbot.

01:06:58   I don't use the shortcuts very often from Springboard,

01:07:02   but I use 3D Touch a ton in Tweetbot, if nowhere else.

01:07:06   And in that sense, I would miss 3D Touch a lot.

01:07:09   This does, the SE does get live photos,

01:07:11   which are also important to me now.

01:07:13   So it's a tough call, 'cause God, do I love this design.

01:07:17   I agree with you, Marco.

01:07:18   But I think I would probably stick with the,

01:07:22   what is it, 4.7-inch film, whatever the success size is.

01:07:25   I'll probably stick with that in the future, but I would not begrudge anyone who decided

01:07:29   that this was the phone for them.

01:07:31   This feels so good!

01:07:33   The cheaper front-facing camera, too.

01:07:34   The 6S 5 megapixel front-facing camera, f/2.2 aperture, and this one has a 1.2 megapixel

01:07:40   f/2.4 aperture.

01:07:42   So yeah, they skimped and all the areas they skimped are all exactly the areas that I would

01:07:47   have picked, because again, if you're going to skip on the camera, skip on the front one,

01:07:50   because nobody cares.

01:07:52   Don't skip on the back one.

01:07:53   So the expectation is that this will sell a lot better than the 5C did because it's

01:07:58   just such a much better phone than the 5C that people won't be disappointed or embarrassed

01:08:03   to buy it or own it.

01:08:05   That it is a fully-fledged iPhone.

01:08:08   That's a good reason they changed the name.

01:08:10   Like I don't know, they didn't say what the SE stood for.

01:08:14   I think they did say special edition.

01:08:15   I'm pretty sure.

01:08:16   Anyway, the best joke explanation I heard is that it stands for "sorry everyone."

01:08:22   [LAUGHTER]

01:08:24   For taking away the 4-inch phone and then

01:08:26   for resurrecting it with the 5C, which

01:08:27   was an awesome-looking product in every way

01:08:29   except for the stuff that was inside it.

01:08:30   It was slow and old and creaky and small.

01:08:34   I forget what the storage limits on the 5C were,

01:08:36   but they were even worse.

01:08:37   Well, they didn't take away the 5S.

01:08:39   They took away the 5.

01:08:40   Yeah, I know.

01:08:43   This is the equivalent of, hey, we're

01:08:45   going to make a cheap bottom-end phone for people,

01:08:48   and we'll make it fun.

01:08:49   And I think the 5C was a great product,

01:08:50   that it was, you know, it was not, it was not as good. It didn't have the same innards as, they didn't have any

01:08:55   small phone that had the same innards as the flagship phone. Like, their small phone had worse innards than their flagship phone. This,

01:09:01   I mean, it's almost shocking that like six months after the 6s comes out, or whatever, is it six months? Something like that,

01:09:06   that there is a new small phone that is just as fast as the flagship phone in most of the ways that matter to people,

01:09:13   which is totally weird and has not happened. It's not like a two-year-old phone. It's not like, "Oh, we just moved the innards down,

01:09:17   we're still selling the old models."

01:09:20   So, yeah, I like this trend, and I think this is a good phone, and I would totally recommend

01:09:26   that if people want a small phone that they get this, I wouldn't hesitate at all.

01:09:29   - Yeah, although the only thing is, I do think for people like us who are happy with the

01:09:34   6, or at least have been happy until now with the 6 size, I think it's wise to at least

01:09:39   wait until we see the 7 before the, "Oh, I'm gonna jump back right now."

01:09:44   So I personally, I am incredibly tempted

01:09:47   by both sizes of iPhone I don't have.

01:09:50   (laughs)

01:09:51   - Of course.

01:09:52   - I'm incredibly tempted by this nice, awesome small one

01:09:54   'cause I feel this 5S, it just looks and feels amazing

01:09:57   and it's so easy to hold and use.

01:09:59   And I love the sleep button on top.

01:10:00   Still, now 18 months into owning the six line of phones,

01:10:06   half my screenshots contain the volume overlay

01:10:11   and the other half of them didn't happen

01:10:13   because I accidentally put the phone to sleep.

01:10:15   - So I'm getting worse at the screenshot gesture.

01:10:18   I don't understand how this is possible,

01:10:19   but somehow I'm getting worse at it.

01:10:21   - Me too.

01:10:21   - Like I used to have a much higher hit rate

01:10:23   of being successfully able to take screenshots.

01:10:26   Yeah, I think most people are not on the cadence

01:10:28   that you just, like people don't know,

01:10:29   like, oh, the seven is coming.

01:10:31   They just wander into an Apple store

01:10:33   when their contract is up or whatever,

01:10:35   and they get whatever phone is for sale then.

01:10:37   And so I think it's fine.

01:10:38   Like it is weird from our perspective,

01:10:40   like if you're one of those people

01:10:42   who lives and dies by the cycle of Apple releasing new phones and always gets the latest one

01:10:47   when it comes out.

01:10:48   It's like, this six-month thing is putting me in a weird position, because even if I

01:10:52   wanted this phone, would I buy it now?

01:10:53   Because wouldn't I just want to, like, mark and say, wait until I see what the 7 is like

01:10:56   and what's going to happen then?

01:10:58   But regular people just go into the store, and it's so much better for them to go in

01:11:01   and to see this lineup of phones.

01:11:03   And there really is something for everybody now, except for the people who want a really

01:11:07   big battery and a really small phone.

01:11:09   But you know, can't have everything.

01:11:11   Yeah, I feel bad. There's got to be a lot of people like me. So when Erin's on the S

01:11:17   cycle, she doesn't want to have a phone every year. And when it was time for her to get

01:11:23   a 6S, I said to her basically, "Look, you can keep your old phone, which is getting

01:11:27   a little bit long in the tooth now, or you can just understand that Apple will never

01:11:30   release a new 4-inch phone and just get on board now." So, okay, fine. And so she got

01:11:35   on board with the 6S. And I think, by and large, she likes it. But then fast forward

01:11:38   a few months and sure enough there's Apple's brand new 4-inch phone in rose gold no less

01:11:42   and I feel terrible for that so sorry Aaron.

01:11:46   My bad.

01:11:47   All right iPad Pro 9.7 inch.

01:11:50   Is that what it's called?

01:11:52   Something like that.

01:11:54   I don't even know.

01:11:55   I think that's what Apple calls it on their site.

01:11:56   The new iPad Pro.

01:11:59   Yep.

01:12:01   Not a lot of surprises here overall.

01:12:05   Definitely some surprises, but looks good.

01:12:08   I'm not a big iPad kind of guy.

01:12:11   I like my Mini.

01:12:12   I love my Mini, in fact.

01:12:13   But it's a little bit tempting even for me to go big, especially because from everything

01:12:18   I've understood, this thing is tiny.

01:12:23   It's thin, it's very light, they said under a pound, right?

01:12:26   I mean, it's got to be super portable.

01:12:28   Well, it's exactly the same physical dimensions and weight as the Air 2 within like a .001,

01:12:34   something like that.

01:12:35   It is effectively identical to the Air 2 in size and weight.

01:12:39   I was so excited about this iPad during the announcement because if you watch the event,

01:12:44   everything they say about it is like, "Yes!

01:12:46   Yes that!

01:12:47   Yes!"

01:12:48   Like just everything, you know, because it's what we all talked about, basically a shrunken

01:12:53   down version of the iPad Pro, exactly as the name implies, with all the features of the

01:12:58   the iPad Pro and on top of that it does some things better than the iPad Pro which of course

01:13:02   are the things that highlight in the keynote with the whole true tone display and the well

01:13:08   that they talked about the USB 3 speed thing but we'll get to that in a second and that

01:13:13   it's small and thin and it uses the stylus got a smart connector it's got a keyboard

01:13:16   cover that fits the thing you know all the whole nine yards and it's only after the keynote

01:13:21   did I find out all the things that kind of broke my heart I feel like this this iPad

01:13:27   Pro is my Fredo.

01:13:28   I mean, we all know they're not big.

01:13:33   It's not that big of a deal.

01:13:34   The killer one for me is I really wanted this

01:13:37   to have four gigs of RAM.

01:13:38   It's got Pro in the name for crying out loud.

01:13:40   I know it probably doesn't need four gigs of RAM

01:13:42   maybe 'cause the screen is smaller or whatever,

01:13:44   but it's a Pro, like it does multitasking.

01:13:49   I would love it if it had four gigs of RAM.

01:13:51   That is the one that really, really broke my heart.

01:13:55   The other stuff, only getting USB 2 speeds,

01:13:58   I don't know if that's just for the camera adapter

01:14:00   or if it's just, you know,

01:14:01   for everything having to do with that lighting port.

01:14:03   I don't know the answer to that,

01:14:04   but definitely the new camera adapter thing says

01:14:08   the iPad Pro, the big iPad Pro gets USB 3 speeds

01:14:11   and the little one gets USB 2 speeds.

01:14:12   Not that I use the camera connector,

01:14:14   it's just that like, I want,

01:14:16   I want, if you get this device with this much storage,

01:14:18   maybe you say you get the 128 gig model,

01:14:20   I would like it to have USB 3 speeds through that

01:14:22   because I like the weird tech nerd that I am,

01:14:26   still doing encrypted back into my Mac

01:14:28   and it takes for frigging ever to copy everything

01:14:30   at USB two speeds from like a 128 gig thing.

01:14:34   But yeah, the RAM, the RAM compliment is the one

01:14:39   that is the most disappointing

01:14:41   and everything else is minor after that.

01:14:43   But I guess you would expect that

01:14:45   'cause like shouldn't the bigger one be more powerful

01:14:47   or whatever, I just had this vision in my mind

01:14:49   that this would be exactly like the big iPad Pro,

01:14:52   better in a couple of ways and worse in none,

01:14:55   and that is not exactly the case.

01:14:57   - Overall, I think it's a solid release,

01:15:00   and I think it's going to really, really help

01:15:03   the iPad lineup in general as much as any release can.

01:15:08   Again, it's not going to save the iPad

01:15:10   if the iPad sales are going to continue to stagnate.

01:15:14   This release is not going to meaningfully change that,

01:15:17   but for the people who are buying iPads,

01:15:20   this is an awesome iPad.

01:15:22   This is a great, I think the only thing about this product

01:15:24   that's weird is that it was released afterwards.

01:15:27   Like, if you imagine the process flipped

01:15:30   and if you imagine them either the 9.7 and the 12.9

01:15:33   released at the same time or in the opposite order,

01:15:36   I think it makes a lot more sense.

01:15:39   Right now there's a bunch of weird stuff

01:15:40   around the way they did this, you know,

01:15:41   weird perceptions like, wait, this kinda sucks

01:15:43   if I just bought the 12 inch and now I don't have

01:15:46   the weird color display or whatever and you can,

01:15:49   you can excuse some of it with like,

01:15:50   well, you know, the camera is better on the small one

01:15:53   'cause you're taking it around,

01:15:55   you don't really need a better camera on the big one.

01:15:57   You can excuse a lot of it.

01:15:59   The simple fact is the staggering of these things

01:16:01   and the difference between them are kind of odd,

01:16:03   but it's fine, doesn't really matter.

01:16:05   And we'll all forget about it in a year.

01:16:08   So ultimately, a very solid release, I think, very solid.

01:16:13   And I think if anyone is a heavy iPad user,

01:16:18   this is definitely worth looking at.

01:16:20   and I'm really glad they're making this,

01:16:21   even though I probably won't use one,

01:16:24   but very solid release, I think.

01:16:27   - Yeah, I largely agree with you.

01:16:29   It's like I said earlier,

01:16:31   it's enough that it's tempting me to go back

01:16:32   to the mid-size iPad from my Mini.

01:16:37   I have a question for the two of you guys, though.

01:16:40   What's the flagship iPad?

01:16:43   And I'm genuinely asking, because my immediate answer,

01:16:46   if I were to ask myself that, is the big iPad Pro,

01:16:49   I almost said the iPad Pro.

01:16:50   is the bigger iPad Pro,

01:16:52   but it doesn't have some really nice features

01:16:54   like the True Tone display.

01:16:55   And so I wonder what is the flagship iPad these days?

01:17:00   - Yeah, I think that's just because of the cadence

01:17:03   that Marco mentioned, the weird cadence that like,

01:17:06   they seem like they could have been released together,

01:17:07   but wouldn't it be weird that the small one

01:17:09   has the color sensors on it and the big one doesn't?

01:17:12   And it's almost like they got out of sync at some point

01:17:16   and you know, whatever.

01:17:17   So I think because of the cadence, the flagship one has to be the latest released one, because

01:17:27   it has more better stuff, and you can excuse the smaller RAM and stuff because, oh, this

01:17:31   is the smaller model, but you would imagine that when the new big one comes out, it will

01:17:36   have all the same features as the other one, and then it will be the flagship.

01:17:39   I mean, what's the flagship Mac?

01:17:41   The 5K iMac, because it's faster in some games than the Pro, the D700.

01:17:47   What's going on Apple?

01:17:48   - What's the flagship laptop?

01:17:50   I would argue it's the MacBook One.

01:17:52   - Yeah, I don't know.

01:17:54   It depends on what you know what flagship means.

01:17:56   I mean, we have weird definitions of it.

01:17:57   It used to be the old days it was the fastest computer,

01:17:59   but that really hasn't been true in a long time.

01:18:02   - In the context of what we're saying,

01:18:03   I would argue that it's basically like

01:18:05   the high profile one that people lust over

01:18:08   that is like the defining one that kind of defines

01:18:10   the image of the whole range, right?

01:18:12   And to me, on the iPad, that's the Air,

01:18:16   or now the pro mini, whatever we call it.

01:18:19   And in the Max, I'd say it's the MacBook One.

01:18:22   - I don't know, like I can't really tell on the iPad.

01:18:24   It depends on if the iPad makes this transition

01:18:26   into a more capable platform,

01:18:29   because if you stop thinking of an iPad

01:18:32   as a bigger version of the phone

01:18:34   and start thinking of it as,

01:18:35   it's my more portable laptop replacement,

01:18:37   then the big pro becomes the flagship

01:18:39   because it is better able to replace laptops

01:18:41   than the other ones.

01:18:42   But it really, really depends.

01:18:43   It's hard to tell in this period.

01:18:45   And I don't think the weird differences in features like,

01:18:48   'cause that's basically what it comes down to is

01:18:50   what hardware does the big one have

01:18:52   and the small one doesn't.

01:18:53   It has the same quality screen,

01:18:55   but it doesn't have the light sensors.

01:18:56   So it can't have the True Tone display.

01:18:58   Like that's not gonna come in a software update.

01:19:00   It just doesn't have the sensors for it,

01:19:01   but it does have more RAM.

01:19:04   I don't know.

01:19:05   I don't at least sleep thinking about it.

01:19:06   And a couple of people were asking in the chat room

01:19:07   if I'm gonna get this laptop.

01:19:09   I have an iPad 3.

01:19:11   I waited a really long time to get that

01:19:13   because I wanted a retina iPad

01:19:15   and I got a Retina iPad and I'm still using it.

01:19:17   At this point, it's pretty much at the end of its life,

01:19:19   not because there's anything wrong with it.

01:19:21   It still looks very new and it's in good condition.

01:19:24   It only has a small dent in the corner

01:19:25   from when I put down my backpack too hard at WFDC

01:19:28   three years ago or whatever.

01:19:30   It has served me very well.

01:19:31   I still use it every day.

01:19:32   This new iPad Pro 9.7 inch does almost,

01:19:38   it's almost exactly what I wanted.

01:19:39   Like the reason it broke my heart

01:19:41   because it was so close to being like everything

01:19:42   that I could have asked for and more.

01:19:44   Instead, it's almost everything that I could have asked for.

01:19:47   It is so much better than the one I have now.

01:19:48   I'm definitely getting one, 100%.

01:19:51   I'm glad they come in all sorts of different colors.

01:19:52   I'm sad only one of them has a black front.

01:19:54   And the only reason I'm sad,

01:19:56   not because I don't dislike the color of the back,

01:19:58   but because I'm always afraid that someday

01:19:59   there'll be none of them with a black front

01:20:01   and then I'll be really sad.

01:20:02   So anyway, I am getting this one and I will enjoy it.

01:20:06   And hopefully it will last me at least as long

01:20:08   as my iPad 3 lasted me.

01:20:12   - A couple other very, very quick thoughts.

01:20:14   First of all, the camera adapter,

01:20:16   there was the call out for podcasters that it's now,

01:20:19   you can power it with one of the bricks, which is exciting.

01:20:22   Jason Snell wrote a post about that earlier today,

01:20:26   which we'll link to in the show notes.

01:20:27   - And that's significant though,

01:20:29   because ever since the very first iPad

01:20:33   that had the camera connection kit,

01:20:34   and then later on there's lightning version of it

01:20:36   when they switched to lightning,

01:20:37   there was always this $30 adapter that you could get

01:20:40   that would let you plug in a USB device to an iOS device.

01:20:45   And this has always been, you know,

01:20:47   it was officially for cameras,

01:20:48   and it would officially work with only iPads.

01:20:51   However, this for years has worked for other things,

01:20:55   and it was always kind of undocumented,

01:20:57   and you were never really sure, like,

01:21:00   does Apple, is this gonna be supported in the future?

01:21:02   Is this going to work?

01:21:04   And things like sound equipment was a big one.

01:21:07   Also, like, network, like, USB network interface

01:21:09   and stuff like that, these things that USB devices

01:21:13   that you would think wouldn't work with iOS devices

01:21:16   that often just did through standard USB profiles

01:21:19   and everything through this port.

01:21:21   But there were always two major problems with this.

01:21:23   Number one was that there was not enough power on the port

01:21:26   to power a device that had high power needs,

01:21:29   which does include a lot of USB devices.

01:21:31   So you could do a hack where you could buy a powered hub

01:21:35   and plug the upstream into this adapter for the iPad

01:21:37   and have the powered hub power the other devices.

01:21:40   So then that was kind of an issue.

01:21:42   And then the second issue was always that

01:21:44   while you were using this adapter,

01:21:47   your iOS device it was plugged into

01:21:49   itself could not be charged or charging.

01:21:51   So you could only use this adapter

01:21:53   effectively on battery power.

01:21:55   So you couldn't have something like kind of

01:21:56   permanently installed like at a station

01:21:58   or something like that.

01:21:59   So there were always these two problems.

01:22:02   This new adapter they're selling now for 40 bucks

01:22:06   is the exact same adapter, but has a lightning port inbound next to the USB port. So you

01:22:13   can plug in an iPad class power brick into that and not only charge the iOS device that

01:22:20   this adapter is plugged into and keep it charged, but then also power a USB device that needs

01:22:25   a decent amount of power like an audio interface. So they've solved both of these problems

01:22:28   with that one stupid little port with this, and even bigger, Phil Schiller called out

01:22:35   on stage this kind of music. He said for podcasters, he even mentioned network devices, like things

01:22:41   that again, we thought all these years, like the handful of people who were playing with

01:22:46   this thing, we thought that this was like this unsupported, undocumented thing that

01:22:51   was going to break at any time, and now here's Phil Schiller on stage advertising this as

01:22:56   functionality and releasing this awesome new adapter that makes it a lot better than it

01:23:00   was before.

01:23:01   So this allows things like iOS devices to have audio interfaces in real production use

01:23:06   here where you can have everything plugged in and have everything be reliable and have

01:23:10   everything be fully powered.

01:23:11   You can do things like a network adapter and have Ethernet on an iOS device for the first

01:23:18   time ever besides the Apple TV.

01:23:21   All this stuff that was really just difficult or tricky

01:23:24   or impossible to do before or would suck in other ways,

01:23:27   now with this one adapter, now sucks a lot less,

01:23:30   and now it opens up new doors for iOS devices.

01:23:33   And that I think is pretty big.

01:23:36   - Yeah, I completely agree.

01:23:37   I'm really pleased with this event as a whole, actually.

01:23:41   I mean, there's some things that bum me out.

01:23:42   I'm sad there's no new Macs.

01:23:45   I understand your sadness about the watch,

01:23:47   even though I'm not entirely sad about it.

01:23:50   this iPhone SE, which someone in the chat earlier said,

01:23:53   it stands for Sorry, Aaron,

01:23:55   which I thought was pretty funny.

01:23:56   (laughing)

01:23:57   That also, I mean, it makes me happy

01:24:00   in the grand scheme of things,

01:24:01   but it's making me second guess my choices.

01:24:04   But all in all, I thought this was a really good event.

01:24:10   I didn't leave the event thinking,

01:24:11   "Oh my God, I wanna buy everything,"

01:24:13   like I often do at Apple events,

01:24:15   but I rewatched it earlier tonight,

01:24:17   and in talking with you guys about it

01:24:19   and thinking more about it,

01:24:20   I think it was a really solid event.

01:24:21   So, Jon, thumbs up, thumbs down overall.

01:24:24   - I thought it was, I mean, it was exactly the scale event

01:24:26   you expect from Town Hall,

01:24:27   and despite the RAM breaking my heart,

01:24:30   I am really happy with that new iPad.

01:24:31   I expect to be really happy with it as a product.

01:24:33   I'm not so happy about paying a bajillion dollars

01:24:36   for a front and back case for it,

01:24:38   which I would remind people who are listening to this,

01:24:42   you don't have to buy Apple cases.

01:24:44   Lots of people are going to sell cases for the iPad.

01:24:46   I know it's hard to believe,

01:24:47   but you do not have to pay Apple's prices for their cases.

01:24:50   Lots of people will sell you much cheaper cases, but if you are a sucker/stickler like

01:24:56   me, I'm going to end up buying the Apple ones, because whatever.

01:24:59   But anyway, you don't have to, but I will.

01:25:01   And I might even buy that stupid keyboard too, because whatever.

01:25:03   Anyway, I buy an iPad like once every three years, so I save my pennies and that's what

01:25:08   I'm going to do.

01:25:09   But you, listener out there, you don't have to buy all those cases, because it's like

01:25:12   $70 for the current case and $60 for the back, and you're adding so much money to the cost.

01:25:17   Anyway, and I'm probably going to get the 128GB model just because I fill every iOS

01:25:21   device I have.

01:25:22   I should probably get the 256 if I was smart, but I don't know if I can stomach that price

01:25:25   increase.

01:25:26   Well, do you fill iPads, though?

01:25:27   Because a lot of times people will fill an iPhone because they'll load a whole bunch

01:25:30   of music onto it, but an iPad not necessarily.

01:25:32   No, I fill it.

01:25:33   I fill it with video, and they always get filled up.

01:25:38   Even just photos.

01:25:39   At this point, I really should buy the 256.

01:25:41   I don't know if I can handle paying $1200 all in for whatever this iPad.

01:25:45   But anyway, it's going to be awesome.

01:25:46   I'm gonna love it and that alone,

01:25:48   and even though I'm not going to buy the iPhone SE,

01:25:51   I think it's really good and so this was a fitting end

01:25:54   to the town hall room venue for Apple events.

01:25:58   - All right, thanks to our three sponsors this week,

01:26:02   Harry's, Igloo, and Squarespace,

01:26:04   and we will see you next week.

01:26:06   (upbeat music)

01:26:08   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:26:10   ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:26:13   ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:26:16   Oh it was accidental.

01:26:18   John didn't do any research.

01:26:21   Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:26:24   Cause it was accidental.

01:26:26   It was accidental.

01:26:29   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:26:34   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.

01:26:39   @CASEYLISS, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

01:26:48   Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA, Syracuse.

01:26:55   It's accidental.

01:26:58   They didn't mean to.

01:27:01   Accidental.

01:27:03   Tech podcast so long.

01:27:08   I forgot to mention something in the iPad section very quickly.

01:27:12   Embedded Apple SIM.

01:27:13   Weird, right?

01:27:14   Like, not bad weird.

01:27:15   Not bad weird.

01:27:16   It's good weird, but it's weird.

01:27:17   Why is it weird?

01:27:18   Well, maybe weird is the right way to describe it.

01:27:21   Maybe it's not the SIM that's weird, but the way the American carriers are treating

01:27:24   it is...

01:27:25   Well, carriers are going to be carriers or whatever that thing is.

01:27:29   Yeah, it's as weird as it always is, really, with how they lock it and everything.

01:27:34   But Apple is helping.

01:27:35   Apple is acknowledging, "Look, carriers are going to be annoying, but we're going to

01:27:38   to help you out here by not hogging the one SIM slot

01:27:41   on this device with our thing.

01:27:42   We're just gonna build our thing in,

01:27:44   and if carriers are sane, everything's great,

01:27:46   but we know they're not gonna be.

01:27:47   So our SIM is there for when you need it,

01:27:50   and for those annoying carriers,

01:27:51   you can swap SIMs and do all this other crap.

01:27:53   - Right, but except, was it Verizon where if you--

01:27:56   - AT&T.

01:27:57   - Well, wasn't one of them where if you activated

01:28:00   with them, it would actually lock the Apple SIM also?

01:28:03   - I'm almost sure that's AT&T.

01:28:05   - Yeah, but you can always get that stuff unlocked.

01:28:07   There is there is a whole bunch of will link to a panzerinos article and tech crunch

01:28:11   Explaining all the different ins and outs like Apple has done everything it could to make this less slightly less annoying for you

01:28:16   And as you know what's going on with it you you will have the most options possible

01:28:20   I think even the ones where they lock it doesn't every carry have to unlock it if you ask for at this point, so

01:28:25   It's just more of a hassle, but but at least they're not hogging a slot

01:28:29   So like again if you and I think you even do like you could have I assume you can have like t-mobile or something using

01:28:34   Apple SIM, but then also have a Verizon SIM for when you travel and stick that one in.

01:28:38   That's exactly what I do with my iPad Mini, which I know is not using an embedded Apple

01:28:42   SIM, but the physical Apple SIM that I have for it, I typically have connected to T-Mobile,

01:28:48   although I can swap between a couple with that. And then I have a Verizon physical SIM

01:28:53   that I'll pop in if I'm in one of the many places that does not have T-Mobile coverage.

01:28:58   So they're doing the best they can, and I like it, and it'll be great when the entire

01:29:02   are, at least in the US world, standardized on the built-in Apple Sim and we don't have

01:29:06   to deal with that anymore, but who knows when the hell that'll happen.

01:29:10   Yeah, seriously. Any other thoughts that we didn't cover during the main part of the show?

01:29:14   There was that kind of dig from Schiller, which is a little weird.

01:29:17   Yeah, the people using a five-year-old PC is like, I understand what he's getting at,

01:29:22   but that was badly considered for multiple reasons. First, it's like kind of like a,

01:29:27   you know, some people can't afford to buy a new PC all the time, so you're taking a

01:29:30   dig at the, you know, people who have less money than you and that's the type of thing

01:29:34   where it's just, he's maybe not even thinking as, as some, you know, as someone like the

01:29:39   rest of us who, you know, can buy hardware whenever they want to buy hardware, it's sometimes

01:29:44   easy to forget that that's not something that everybody can do. And it's insensitive to

01:29:49   say, Oh, you're using a let's let's all laugh the people using five year old computers.

01:29:52   Of course, I'm sitting here next to like an eight year old computer. But anyway, yeah,

01:29:55   I could have bought a new one if I wanted to. So it's insensitive in that way. And it's

01:30:00   It's kind of, even ignoring that entirely, Apple, as we just pointed out, sells computers

01:30:06   with essentially multi-year old internals in them because they don't update them.

01:30:09   So it's highlighting something that Apple should be embarrassed about, the fact that

01:30:12   they will sell you a Mac menu with these ancient innards and the fact that they haven't updated

01:30:16   laptops at this particular event and the fact that the Mac Pro's insides have skipped a

01:30:19   generation like, those are all things that Apple should not be drawing attention to and

01:30:23   shouldn't, you know.

01:30:24   So that was probably not a good idea.

01:30:26   line, I think if he could take it back he probably would.

01:30:31   - Well also positioning the iPad as like the inevitable

01:30:36   replacement for all the people with Windows PCs,

01:30:38   or the best replacement for all the people with

01:30:39   Windows PCs, I think is really optimistic,

01:30:43   for a number of reasons, you know, price being a big one.

01:30:46   But also just like, iOS is not Windows and is not Mac OS.

01:30:51   And there are, you know, as we've discussed at length,

01:30:53   there's a lot of things that are great in iOS,

01:30:55   and a lot of people can get where they're working on iOS.

01:30:57   However, you can't do a lot of things on iOS

01:31:01   that you can do on PCs and Macs,

01:31:04   and a lot of people need to do those things,

01:31:06   especially for their jobs that are using these old PCs.

01:31:09   - If you have a five-year-old Windows machine,

01:31:12   aren't you going to probably be more likely

01:31:14   to have your needs served by an iPad than not?

01:31:17   Like, I get what they're getting at.

01:31:18   - No, not necessarily.

01:31:19   It depends on what your needs are.

01:31:20   If your needs are like checking email and browsing the web,

01:31:24   sure, you're gonna be better off.

01:31:26   - That's most people's things,

01:31:27   and video conferencing, and sending people instant messages,

01:31:30   and the iPad does fulfill all the computing needs

01:31:34   for a lot of people.

01:31:35   - Well, but once you get into shuffling files

01:31:37   back and forth, and once you get into files

01:31:41   and dealing with files, which a lot of people do,

01:31:43   it starts getting a little bit dicey on iOS,

01:31:45   where things start being like,

01:31:46   well, you can do that, but it's awkward,

01:31:49   or you have to know these power user tricks,

01:31:51   or things like that.

01:31:52   And of course there's a lot of limitations

01:31:56   and a lot of changes to the way the system works

01:31:58   and what it does and doesn't do.

01:32:00   And you'd be surprised in the real world

01:32:03   like how many people need like one of those weird hacks

01:32:07   that you can't do on iOS.

01:32:09   Or they need one app that Apple would never approve

01:32:12   for the app store, things like Call Recorder.

01:32:14   Like a lot of people need like one or two of those things

01:32:18   and that's enough of a deal killer

01:32:19   that they just can't do their work on iOS.

01:32:22   or it's incredibly clunky for them to do their work on iOS.

01:32:26   - Yeah, but if you're gonna pitch the iPad

01:32:28   as a PC replacement, the people you wanna pitch it to

01:32:31   are the least demanding users,

01:32:33   and the least demanding users are going to have

01:32:35   the oldest computers, and they're also not gonna have Macs

01:32:37   because if they were demanding,

01:32:38   they would be annoyed by their cruddy Windows PC, right?

01:32:40   So like, you know, in the Apple frames,

01:32:43   that is like, this is our audience.

01:32:45   If you don't really care enough about computers

01:32:47   to buy a new one very frequently,

01:32:49   and if you don't even use a Mac

01:32:51   'cause you don't see any big difference

01:32:52   and it just seems like, well, a PC is a PC.

01:32:54   You are the type of person who we think is most likely to,

01:32:58   if we gave you an iPad, after a little while,

01:33:00   even if it doesn't do everything

01:33:01   that your five-year-old PC did, to be like,

01:33:04   yeah, but this is kind of nicer.

01:33:05   Like I have less stuff to worry about,

01:33:06   don't have to worry about viruses.

01:33:08   It's nice that I can carry it around with me.

01:33:10   So they're making the pitch that they can make.

01:33:13   It doesn't mean that it is truly the PC replacements

01:33:16   they were, you know,

01:33:17   but obviously that's the angle they're going for

01:33:20   and they are to their credit finally at least modifying

01:33:24   both the hardware and software to try to fulfill that goal.

01:33:28   And so this is like stage 1.1,

01:33:30   the iPad Pro was the big first step

01:33:32   and the iOS with the split screen and everything.

01:33:35   And then 1.1 is take some of that technology

01:33:37   and move it down so now you've got a stylus

01:33:39   and more power and the four speakers and everything like.

01:33:43   Is the new iPad, the iPad Air 3 essentially,

01:33:46   is a much more compelling PC replacement tablet

01:33:51   than even just the Air 2 was,

01:33:53   even if only because of the possibility of the stylus,

01:33:58   ignoring everything else.

01:34:00   Just because, I mean, I know Apple doesn't want

01:34:01   to talk about this, and it's maybe why they didn't

01:34:03   do all the navigation stuff,

01:34:04   but the stylus kind of does make it possible

01:34:07   to have smaller touch targets on devices

01:34:10   that support a pencil.

01:34:11   I know Apple doesn't want to talk about it,

01:34:12   but it's there, you know?

01:34:14   And it opens the door to, for developers,

01:34:17   because there's no, I don't think App Review

01:34:19   is gonna reject you if you don't have a 44 point high

01:34:21   touch, I mean, I know that because there's tons

01:34:23   of iOS apps out there, right?

01:34:24   So these are baby steps in that direction.

01:34:28   So I can't understand the pitch they were making,

01:34:30   but it wasn't that great.

01:34:31   I think the only other point that I wanted to make

01:34:33   about the thing was this,

01:34:34   but the presentation was this tweet by,

01:34:36   I think it was a tweet by Zach Cichy,

01:34:39   I think his last name is,

01:34:40   that the entry level cost to Apple computing ecosystem

01:34:44   is the lowest it's ever been.

01:34:46   You can get into a flagship, really good, well-performing,

01:34:50   not cruddy three-year-old model iPhone for 400 bucks.

01:34:53   You can get into an iPad for 270.

01:34:55   You can get a Mac mini, which is cruddy and old,

01:34:57   for 500 bucks, and you don't want that one

01:34:59   'cause it's really bad.

01:35:00   And you can get a MacBook Air for 900 bucks.

01:35:03   So these are all three-digit prices

01:35:05   at spanning a pretty big range from mid-200s to 900 bucks.

01:35:10   And historically speaking,

01:35:12   I think it's probably never been cheaper

01:35:14   to get into an Apple product.

01:35:16   Now, the complaint we always have is,

01:35:18   would you recommend someone you actually cared about

01:35:20   buy one of these cheapest models?

01:35:21   In the case of the iPhone, sure, yeah.

01:35:25   I mean, even with the 16 gigs,

01:35:26   you're like, as long as you're sure

01:35:27   that that's gonna be okay,

01:35:28   I mean, I don't know, maybe I wouldn't be able

01:35:31   to recommend a 16 gig to someone I really cared about,

01:35:33   but if they could convince me

01:35:34   that they're not gonna fill 16 gigs, sure.

01:35:37   And the iPad, which one is 270?

01:35:40   Is that the, do they still sell the,

01:35:43   yeah, which Mini though?

01:35:44   What are the insides, the A7?

01:35:46   - Oh, I see your point.

01:35:47   I'm not sure, to be honest with you.

01:35:49   I see your point now.

01:35:50   - Yeah, I don't know if I could recommend that iPad.

01:35:51   I definitely can't recommend the Mini.

01:35:53   The Air, if you wanna get the cheapest Mac,

01:35:56   it's not a bad Mac, right?

01:35:57   That's the 13-inch Air.

01:35:58   - Wait a minute.

01:36:00   Is it the 13 or the 11?

01:36:02   And also, is it four gigs of RAM in that one?

01:36:04   And like no storage, right?

01:36:06   - Yeah.

01:36:07   Yeah, so that's always Apple's difficulty,

01:36:09   but it does seem that Apple is trying to lower,

01:36:14   maybe it's just the on-ramp they're trying to lower,

01:36:19   get you into the store, get you to consider the products

01:36:21   and then sell you the better one for slightly better prices.

01:36:24   But I think the iPhone SE is, of course,

01:36:26   is the most recent one of these products

01:36:27   that we all listed here.

01:36:29   And the iPhone SE definitely has far fewer compromises

01:36:32   than all the other ones that we listed.

01:36:33   So if only every other product line they have

01:36:36   could have a lowest end model that is as admirable

01:36:39   and sort of solid as the iPhone line does.

01:36:42   And I hope they do do that eventually

01:36:44   with all their other models.

01:36:44   And maybe they will once they ditch the MacBook Air

01:36:46   and they only have the old Retina,

01:36:49   MacBook One, MacBook Pro line.

01:36:50   Those will all be pretty solid models

01:36:52   once you get the second generation MacBook One in there.

01:36:54   And the Mac Mini, I don't know.

01:36:57   (beep)