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154: A Rich Toddler’s Toy

 

00:00:00   I hate looking at text manipulation in JavaScript.

00:00:02   It just makes me sad.

00:00:03   Of course.

00:00:04   We've got a for loop with an iterator.

00:00:06   That's great.

00:00:07   Good.

00:00:08   Nice language.

00:00:09   For var i equals zero, i less than words dot length, i plus plus.

00:00:12   Seriously?

00:00:13   That's every C-based language, John.

00:00:15   Come on.

00:00:16   No, wait.

00:00:17   No, no, no.

00:00:18   Not necessarily.

00:00:19   Iterating.

00:00:20   Even Objective-C has been iterating over collections without an explicit iterator for many, many

00:00:24   years now.

00:00:25   In fact, there's been like seven different versions of iterating over collections.

00:00:28   Even PHP has that.

00:00:29   - It's just depressing.

00:00:30   Every single JavaScript library

00:00:31   implements their own each thing, you know,

00:00:33   and all the ES6 and all the other, you know,

00:00:37   maybe even the later versions of ES5 have stuff like this,

00:00:41   but then you gotta go back down to just the very bottom.

00:00:44   - JavaScript is the new PHP.

00:00:46   - I'm saying it.

00:00:47   - Don't forget to use triple equals.

00:00:48   Avoid those cautions.

00:00:50   - We should probably do some follow up.

00:00:53   So Chris Adamson wrote in to tell us about audio bus.

00:00:57   Do you wanna talk to us about that, John?

00:00:59   Sure, I think it was Marco who misled us in the last program.

00:01:02   Yep, that was me.

00:01:03   About Audiobus being a network thing.

00:01:07   Chris says, "Audiobus never relied on network loopback

00:01:09   for inter-process communication."

00:01:11   There was a blog post by Michael Tyson,

00:01:12   who I think is one of the creators.

00:01:14   We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:01:15   And it explains that the earliest versions of Autobus

00:01:18   used MIDI SYSX messages, which allow

00:01:20   for arbitrary buffers of data to be sent across the MIDI bus.

00:01:22   Later, he migrated to MachPorts--

00:01:23   I know what those are--

00:01:25   which Apple's MIDI messaging is built on top of.

00:01:27   So there's Audiobus.

00:01:28   audio boss who is getting a bad rap on the last episode.

00:01:32   It is not as crazy as we made it sound.

00:01:35   And how about the interapp audio framework?

00:01:37   Yeah, and so last episode we were also talking about supported, better supported APIs rather

00:01:42   than, not that the random third-party thing is bad necessarily, especially since it's

00:01:46   building on top of existing facilities like the MIDI thing and mock ports which are part

00:01:50   of the kernel that's underneath the iOS and OS X and Apple TV OS and the watch OS and

00:01:57   and so on and so forth.

00:01:59   Well, there is, added in iOS 7 to the audio unit framework,

00:02:04   something called InterAppAudio, IAA,

00:02:07   that enables the ability to send MIDI commands

00:02:10   and stream audio between apps on the same device.

00:02:12   And so if there are a bunch of applications

00:02:15   that support this mechanism,

00:02:17   as I imagine there are after iOS 7,

00:02:19   things like virtual effects pedals for audio applications

00:02:24   that you can send audio from one app to the other,

00:02:26   But of course, as Marker pointed out last time,

00:02:29   Skype doesn't support these type of things,

00:02:30   probably is never going to support these type of things.

00:02:32   So there's still a place for,

00:02:34   and officially supported by the OS way

00:02:36   to route audio arbitrarily,

00:02:38   because all the audio is going through,

00:02:40   or the OS is aware that it's happening.

00:02:43   And the routing capabilities are probably in there,

00:02:46   which is how tools like Loopback and AudioHijack

00:02:48   work their magic.

00:02:50   But the fact that they're using private APIs

00:02:53   makes them a little bit dangerous

00:02:56   to support over the longterm.

00:03:00   So it would be better if Apple,

00:03:02   instead of forcing every single application developer

00:03:05   on an entire system to write to a new API,

00:03:09   especially if those applications

00:03:10   don't consider themselves audio apps,

00:03:12   like most of these APIs are for people

00:03:14   who are making music applications to work together,

00:03:17   I think it would still be nice for the OS

00:03:19   to expose the mechanisms that are so clearly there

00:03:22   to control the audio routing at the OS level

00:03:26   rather than just the individual app level

00:03:28   cooperating with each other through the OS.

00:03:31   - So Marco, tell us about lightning only headphones

00:03:33   as John Casey asked about.

00:03:35   - Yes, this is not confusing at all.

00:03:36   So John Casey asked about something, John and Casey,

00:03:39   and I will be talking about it.

00:03:40   So basically, he threw out an interesting idea

00:03:44   regarding the future of the iPhone 7

00:03:47   not having a headphone jack probably

00:03:49   and a future in which headphones are lightning only,

00:03:54   he said, "Many headphones come with detachable

00:03:56   "and replaceable cables.

00:03:58   "Any chance Apple might make a replacement cable,

00:04:00   "not just an adapter dongle?"

00:04:02   So the idea there would be that Apple sells you

00:04:05   just a straight replacement cable for your legacy headphones.

00:04:09   So one end has lightning, the other end has

00:04:12   a little skinny thing that plugs into headphones

00:04:13   at the top end instead of just being

00:04:15   this clunky adapter on the bottom.

00:04:16   This, and of course in the middle,

00:04:18   they could put a really good clicker,

00:04:19   which would be great.

00:04:20   So this is a great idea in theory.

00:04:23   In practice, it would probably not work very well

00:04:26   because the problem is the end of the cable

00:04:29   at the headphone, at the ear cup end of it,

00:04:32   that end is not standard.

00:04:34   Now usually it is either another three and a half inch jack

00:04:38   just like the end by the phone.

00:04:40   Or it could be a smaller one, the two and a half inch

00:04:42   version or the two and a half millimeter.

00:04:45   And then around it, you have a similar problem

00:04:48   to the very, very first iPhone where it had that big plastic surround and you couldn't

00:04:53   fit every kind of headphone plug into it. Sometimes the plug would be too wide, like

00:04:58   the plastic around the plug would be too wide and it just wouldn't fit around the housing

00:05:03   around the port. That problem exists big time on headphones with replaceable cables where

00:05:10   so often, I'd say most of the time, a headphone can't actually, even a headphone that has

00:05:15   that has a detachable cable usually can't use

00:05:18   another cable made for a different headphone.

00:05:20   Usually something about it doesn't fit

00:05:22   or it doesn't click in right if there's some kind

00:05:24   of locking mechanism or something like that.

00:05:26   So in practice, the end of the headphone cable

00:05:29   on the headphone, on the ear cup,

00:05:32   is not standardized enough even among the ones

00:05:35   with removable cables to make it possible

00:05:37   for somebody to make like a general purpose

00:05:39   aftermarket replacement that fits a lot of them.

00:05:42   That being said, Apple could of course make,

00:05:45   like one that works for all Beats,

00:05:47   or at least the most, I mean,

00:05:48   Beats doesn't have that many popular models.

00:05:50   They could cover those and cover a large portion

00:05:53   of the Apple headphone using population.

00:05:56   That is not saying it's likely they would do this.

00:05:59   I think the most likely answer is

00:06:00   they wouldn't address it at all,

00:06:02   and the answer would just be, well, buy new headphones,

00:06:04   or use our adapter.

00:06:05   - Do all Beats have detachable cables?

00:06:08   - I don't know enough about them to say if all do.

00:06:11   I know many of them do.

00:06:13   And generally speaking, detachable cables are something

00:06:16   I always hope that headphones have,

00:06:18   and I always ding them if they don't in the review,

00:06:21   because especially for desk headphones,

00:06:24   it's not as necessary,

00:06:25   because you tend not to wear those out.

00:06:27   Portable headphones, they're constantly being wrapped up

00:06:30   and unwrapped and put in bags and taken out and everything,

00:06:33   and so there's a lot of stress on the cables,

00:06:34   and usually what makes headphones die,

00:06:38   what makes headphones go bad or stop being usable,

00:06:40   is usually one of two things.

00:06:42   usually either the wire frays near one of the ends,

00:06:45   usually the phone end, but if it's a permanent cable

00:06:48   it can also fray at the place where it meets the ear cup.

00:06:50   Or if they're beats, they literally break in half.

00:06:54   Because the head, literally, because if you're on,

00:06:57   if you have a plastic headband,

00:07:00   when you put headphones on,

00:07:02   the headband has to stretch out a little bit,

00:07:03   and so it's constantly being stretched and un-stretched,

00:07:06   and stretched and un-stretched.

00:07:07   So the stress of that, if you have an all plastic headband,

00:07:10   very often results in the headband cracking

00:07:13   right in the middle.

00:07:14   That is usually how bad headphones break.

00:07:16   Good headphones usually eventually break

00:07:17   'cause the cables go bad somewhere along the way.

00:07:20   - All right. - Anyway.

00:07:21   - We have some super important follow-up.

00:07:25   The internet, possibly the country

00:07:28   or maybe even the world would like to know, John,

00:07:32   what's going on with your Destiny HUD?

00:07:35   - We talked about when I had to move my PlayStation 4

00:07:39   off of my plasma television onto a separate gaming monitor because I was playing Destiny

00:07:43   a lot and I noticed that the HUD that is up on the screen while playing Destiny was burning

00:07:47   into my plasma screen.

00:07:49   So I had to evict the entire console from the television, which was kind of a shame

00:07:52   because it looked way better on my TV than it does on this terrible little monitor that

00:07:55   I'm using right now.

00:07:57   But when I moved it away, I also set a calendar reminder for a year in the future to say,

00:08:05   me to check whether the destiny hud had finally uh worn off of my television because what i had

00:08:11   heard from people who had uh people who had the same model as me is that yes image retention is a

00:08:15   problem but in most cases it's not actually permanent it just takes forever to go away so

00:08:21   i said fine i'll put a thing for a year some people say it took many months some people say

00:08:24   it took multiple years so i figure i'll put a reminder for a year and it's not like i've

00:08:27   forgotten about it i've been watching tv and i've been looking at it in fact i'm always looking at

00:08:31   my television i was noticing that the you know the cartoon network logo that i've complained about

00:08:35   and past shows was burning in. But anyway, this is the year anniversary. To the day, I think?

00:08:40   Probably to the day. So I took a look on my television in the various ways that you can do,

00:08:45   the way you're putting solid colors behind it and a pure white screen and stuff like that.

00:08:49   And I can say that from a normal sitting distance, if I didn't know where the HUD was supposed to be,

00:08:57   I wouldn't be able to see it. I think a normal person would not be able to see it.

00:09:01   Can barely see only the super bar the big bar that fills with with color as your super gets charged up and

00:09:09   Turns the other one. It's fully charged

00:09:11   I can barely

00:09:13   Kind of make out where that used to be no other part of the hud is visible and that even like I got up really close

00:09:18   To television like am I just imagining that it's there because I remember where it was

00:09:22   I'll love to see this so I it's it is almost entirely gone

00:09:27   You can totally see the big C and a little bit of the end in Cartoon Network

00:09:31   Network so that's a good you know thing to compare it to like I can see the CN

00:09:34   And Cartoon Network has been banned from this television as well now

00:09:37   But so I say that the the destiny had experiment destiny's not coming back to my TV

00:09:42   My ps4 is not coming back to TV of I I might move it back for an individual game or two

00:09:47   But I wouldn't play destiny over there

00:09:50   But anyway, it has faded substantially so what looked like a permanent image retention was not actually permanent

00:09:56   It just took a really really long time to go away

00:09:57   So I suppose I'll put another calendar in for a year from now

00:10:01   I'm gonna revisit for a second year to see if it's really really gone

00:10:04   But at some point I just want to replace this TV with a fancy old lead one

00:10:06   So people who need to start making better televisions

00:10:08   The theme of every episode people need to start making better televisions they do John Syracuse

00:10:15   This is a bad time for TVs. I'm trying to wait it out. I I bought I felt like I bought at the right time

00:10:21   I bought the peak of the previous generation of televisions and now just

00:10:26   to endure this until we come out the other side.

00:10:28   - Yeah, it does seem like you bought probably

00:10:30   the best 1080p plasma that will ever exist

00:10:33   and probably the best plasma that will ever exist.

00:10:36   And now you just kind of have to wait for like

00:10:38   when 4K gets non-stupid.

00:10:41   - Well, yeah, they got to work out all the HDR stuff

00:10:44   and work out their standards there

00:10:45   and get the OLED kinks worked out.

00:10:47   Like there was a fancier model than the one I got

00:10:49   but it had slightly lower brightness and so I sacrificed

00:10:52   and it was also more money and I was like,

00:10:54   It's very similar, it's really too close to call,

00:10:57   and I think the extra brightness will be what I wanted.

00:10:59   But yeah, I bought pretty much at the right time,

00:11:02   and I lucked out with the fan noise and everything,

00:11:04   which I was afraid of.

00:11:06   That turned out not to be an issue,

00:11:07   especially compared to my previous television.

00:11:08   But right now, I finally did read up on all the TVs

00:11:12   at CES and everything, and now it's like,

00:11:14   just a battle over the high dynamic range standards,

00:11:18   and all those different standards,

00:11:20   and which channels are gonna support what

00:11:23   broadcast and will Netflix support it and what things the ultra HD blu-rays are supporting and

00:11:29   what television manufacturers are and it's just it's a big mess I really want that to just be

00:11:34   settled and then and then of course OLEDs you have to make you have to make a few generations

00:11:39   of OLEDs before they get that all worked out so there's a long way to go here I mean a lot of the

00:11:43   HDR standards are being supported by televisions that can't actually display the entire range of

00:11:47   of the HDR stuff yet.

00:11:49   So yeah, two or three years probably.

00:11:52   - Now, just to prevent us from getting a crud load of email,

00:11:55   would you mind reminding the listeners

00:11:56   what TV you ended up buying?

00:11:58   - Oh, I don't remember the name for it.

00:12:00   It's Panasonic VT60.

00:12:03   - Excellent.

00:12:04   - The ZT60 was the fancy, the slightly fancier one.

00:12:07   - All right, thank you very much.

00:12:09   Now, do you wanna tell us about pirate eye patches?

00:12:11   Because we got a surprising amount of feedback

00:12:15   about pirate eye patches.

00:12:16   Never in my life did I think we would be getting this serious about pirate eye patches on the

00:12:20   Accidental Tech podcast, but here we are.

00:12:23   I opened the door on the pirate eye patch, so I might as well finish closing in here.

00:12:26   So the first thing to point out, which is not something we discussed last time, is not

00:12:30   whether or not the things we said about pirate eye patches helping you see in the dark were

00:12:35   actual, you know, it was actually true, does it actually help you see in the dark?

00:12:38   Because we did link to the Mythbusters episode about that.

00:12:41   But the larger issue of did lots of pirates have eye patches?

00:12:46   And the consensus on that seems to be probably not, like there's no evidence of that.

00:12:51   The only reason we think that is because, you know, Hollywood and various movies and

00:12:55   stories and famous pirates and Blackbeard and all that other business or whatever, but

00:12:58   historical records of pirates, like were there a lot of one-eyed pirates?

00:13:01   Were all the pirates wearing eye patches so they could see better under decks?

00:13:05   There's no evidence for that.

00:13:06   So that is basically probably completely apocryphal, you know, and not really basinating.

00:13:11   But the other part that we were talking about is, does that actually help you see under

00:13:15   decks?

00:13:16   And this, I think, is a great example of what I would call testing versus explaining.

00:13:22   Somebody sent us a link to this other podcast that had, I forget what it's called, but it's

00:13:27   a Q&A type podcast where they ask questions they had an expert on to answer, and the question

00:13:31   was like, "Hey, if you put an eye patch over your eye, would that help you see better?

00:13:35   one eye will be adjusted to the dark or whatever and the person on this show said their answer

00:13:40   contained all correct information but didn't really lead to the correct conclusion and

00:13:44   the idea was that you keep one eye under an eye patch and the other eye out of it, it's

00:13:49   not as if the eye under the eye patch, the pupil is going to dilate massively and the

00:13:53   eye that's out of the eye patch the pupil is not going to because in general if one

00:13:57   of your pupils is way bigger than the other you probably just got hit in the head really

00:14:00   hard and you should see a doctor like they they tend to be the same size, what is called

00:14:03   like consensual response or whatever,

00:14:05   like that your pupils are basically,

00:14:07   you've heard it on all the television shows,

00:14:08   you know, equal and reactive

00:14:10   when they do the little light thing in your eyes

00:14:12   to make sure that A, your eyes respond to light

00:14:14   by, you know, your pupils getting smaller,

00:14:17   and B, that they're equal.

00:14:18   If one of them stays open,

00:14:20   they want you to go to the doctor really quickly, right?

00:14:23   And so they said, therefore,

00:14:25   the whole idea of a pirate eye patch is silly

00:14:28   because it's not as if the one under the eye patch

00:14:30   is gonna have a really dilated pupil

00:14:32   just waiting for you to go under decks and flip up the eyepatch, right?

00:14:35   Now what the Mythbusters did instead was rather than trying to think of a theory of why it

00:14:38   wouldn't work, they said, "Well, this is easy enough to test.

00:14:40   Why don't we just make a dark place and put an eyepatch in someone's eye and give them

00:14:43   some silly task, like see how fast" -- I forget they were doing it on the episode, but -- "see

00:14:47   how fast they can accomplish a bunch of tasks in this really dark room."

00:14:49   And they tried it without the eyepatch, and the eyepatch just crushed the non-eyepatch

00:14:53   one.

00:14:54   It was an extremely efficient way to see better in the dark.

00:14:58   And so how do you square this circle?

00:15:01   the explaining thing went wrong is the idea that the size of your pupil is the only thing

00:15:06   that determines how well you see in the dark. That is one aspect of it, your pupil opens

00:15:10   up to let more light in, but the other aspect of it is how sensitive the little things in

00:15:15   the back of your eye are. And someone sent us a link to a thing about astronomy, red

00:15:19   lights in astronomy, and why you want to use red lights when you're looking over the stars.

00:15:24   And that contains another theory of what helps you see in the dark, and it's the sensitivity

00:15:29   of the rods at the back of your eye that help you see in the dark from this article.

00:15:35   During daylight hours, your rods are overexposed and so they're less efficient.

00:15:37   As light gets dimmer, a chemical change allows them to become even more sensitive and your

00:15:41   eyes become dark adapted.

00:15:43   It only takes brief exposure to bright light for the rods to overexpose.

00:15:47   Once that happens, you have a half an hour or more to regain dark sensitivity.

00:15:51   So you really want it to be under the eye patch not to change the size of your pupil,

00:15:54   but to get the rods in that eye, which are not consensual with the rods in the other

00:15:57   right on like your iris dilation, to get them to be more sensitive to light.

00:16:02   And it's important because if you expose them just for a short period of time, it's going

00:16:05   to take like half an hour for them to get back to that super dark sensitive way because

00:16:08   it's a chemical change in the eye and not just a physical change in, you know, essentially

00:16:12   adjusting the aperture of your eyeball.

00:16:15   It's ISO versus aperture basically.

00:16:16   Yeah.

00:16:17   So there you go.

00:16:19   Everything you ever wanted to know about pirate eye?

00:16:21   Probably not because people are still going to want to know why the hell do we think pirates

00:16:24   have eye patches.

00:16:25   particular pop culture thing caused us to think that. But regardless of whether or not

00:16:30   they had eye patches, if they did, they could use them just like they did in Mythbusters

00:16:33   and it would help them see in the dark better.

00:16:36   Fair enough. And do you want to talk about how this relates to programming?

00:16:42   Well, I don't know how. Like, the testing versus explaining, I guess, like, one of my

00:16:46   pet peeves as an old cranky programmer is if you hear... Whether it's going on between

00:16:52   you and another programmer or you hear two other programmers sitting near you talking

00:16:56   to each other about -- it's usually some silly corner of the language thing because people

00:17:01   love talking about language. But even it could be an API or whatever. Well, if you do this,

00:17:05   it does that. And well, you know, if you call it in this way, that will happen. And this

00:17:10   thing doesn't have blah, blah, blah. And they'll just go back and forth for what seems like

00:17:13   a really long time, especially if they're sitting near you and talking and you're trying

00:17:15   to get work done. And trying to come up with --

00:17:19   Yeah, trying to come up with like, you know, explaining to each other.

00:17:23   No, actually, language works this way.

00:17:24   Oh, you're not accounting for this, blah, blah, blah, where there's no reason to have

00:17:28   this discussion because in 20 seconds of typing, you can find the answer definitively.

00:17:32   Like you don't have to speculate about what this language feature is like.

00:17:35   So is that a syntax error or how would you do the expression?

00:17:38   Is this the correct way to do references or whatever?

00:17:40   Don't speculate.

00:17:41   Don't debate it for 10 minutes.

00:17:42   Just type it in.

00:17:43   There's your answer.

00:17:46   And then you can talk about why that's the answer or whatever, but you don't have to

00:17:49   Google search, you don't do anything, like especially if you're in a language with a

00:17:51   REPL, just find out. So it's testing versus explaining. Explaining and theorizing and

00:17:56   thought experience are a good idea, but when it's really really easy or you know simple or

00:18:01   very readily available to test it, just testing is faster and better and will lead you wrong

00:18:07   in its own type of ways if you do your testing badly, but sometimes things are just very simple.

00:18:11   So the eyepatch thing is like we have a theory, we think eyepatches help you see better in the dark,

00:18:15   Is that true? So easy to test. You could spend all day talking to doctors and neurologists

00:18:22   and theorizing about it, and they'll probably get the right answer. But if you get off on the wrong

00:18:26   track and think about, "Oh, dilation, that's not going to help you there," it's just so much easier

00:18:31   to test it. So I don't think most of us here knows or cares why it works. They just tested it,

00:18:35   and assuming their test is reasonably sound, they come to a useful conclusion in much less time.

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00:20:30   Now, the incredibly interesting follow-up

00:20:32   that we've been holding off on this whole time.

00:20:35   - Yes, this is riveting and really important.

00:20:38   Actually, I joke because it is kind of silly,

00:20:40   but I was really interested to know

00:20:42   where the crap is the serial code,

00:20:45   or the serial number on a Visa mount iMac.

00:20:50   - As soon as we discovered last week

00:20:52   that the serial number for a regular iMac with the big foot

00:20:55   is on the bottom of the foot.

00:20:57   - Right.

00:20:58   - And so the question was,

00:20:59   if you get one with the Visa mount,

00:21:01   that is, you know, like that custom monitor mount

00:21:03   in the back that doesn't have the foot,

00:21:05   doesn't come with the foot,

00:21:06   where would they put the serial number?

00:21:08   - Right, and so we figured, you know,

00:21:10   probably would be somewhere on the mount or what have you,

00:21:13   because where else would it be?

00:21:15   And sure enough, James McCain has written in

00:21:17   and included a picture,

00:21:19   this is professional level follow-up right here,

00:21:21   included a picture of exactly where the serial number is

00:21:25   on his Visa mount iMac.

00:21:28   And so it turns out it is, if you flip the entire machine upside down, it's kind of printed in there right by the fan.

00:21:35   Is that the exhaust or intake in the back?

00:21:37   That is exhaust. The intake is the big ridge in the bottom.

00:21:40   Fair enough. So anyway, so that's where it is as it turns out.

00:21:43   I was waiting for Jason Snell to let us know, but apparently he's not caught up on the show.

00:21:47   I'm very upset at him. But James McCain has saved the day. So thank you, James.

00:21:51   I remember back in the day, speaking of serial numbers, that if you got certain repairs done to, say, your laptop Mac,

00:21:56   the serial number would change because they give you a full motherboard swap or whatever.

00:22:01   And if that's still the case, especially that's why I was asking if this was a sticker or

00:22:04   etched onto the thing, you could end up with, if they replace the guts of your iMac, with

00:22:10   a machine that has a different serial number than the one that is actually etched into

00:22:13   the metal on the device, which could be very confusing to all involved if you're not aware

00:22:16   of that.

00:22:17   I think I remember we actually had a repair done like that maybe to a white iBook, maybe

00:22:20   like my mom's white iBook or something, we had some repair and they said just so you

00:22:24   know your serial number will be changing but even though you have the same external case.

00:22:28   Anyway, I don't know if that's still an issue but it always struck me as weird that they would

00:22:32   attach the serial number to the physical device but it's really connected to the innards of the

00:22:40   device so you could end up in these scenarios where things are wrong. I think they can also,

00:22:43   like, I don't know, there's another thing for genius as a consensus, I think they used to be

00:22:47   able to change the serial number of your motherboard by like flashing it back to the old

00:22:51   value but I don't know if that's a thing that they did.

00:22:53   Yeah, so a friend of the show, Steven Hackett in the chat, is saying, crap I lost it, oh

00:22:59   they have to re-serialize the boards and usually that comes with a sticker you put over the

00:23:03   etch serial number.

00:23:05   Also the tipster in the chat is saying when the serial is changed for laptops they will

00:23:08   often swap the bottom cover with one that has no serial.

00:23:12   They have to give you a sticker?

00:23:14   Oh, the indignities.

00:23:16   We fixed your Mac, but by the way,

00:23:18   here's a sticker to put over the beautiful

00:23:21   laser etched in serial number that's there.

00:23:23   No thanks.

00:23:24   - Yeah, I would, I mean, the good thing is that there,

00:23:26   I mean, on laptops it's a problem.

00:23:28   On the desktops, at least they're like hidden away

00:23:29   in places that you'd never see it.

00:23:31   But if it's on your laptop, like now with the modern ones,

00:23:34   that's on the outside, on the bottom.

00:23:36   Like you would totally see that.

00:23:37   - Well that's why I was saying giving a bottom thing

00:23:39   that has no serial numbers, then you can be like

00:23:40   Steve Jobs with no license plates on his car.

00:23:42   - Yeah, totally off the grid.

00:23:44   untracked by Apple's serial number readers.

00:23:46   - Untraceable except every other aspect of my computer.

00:23:50   - Traceable except by all the software on the computer.

00:23:53   - I just love how deeply offended you guys are

00:23:56   about the thought of having a sticker on your computer.

00:23:58   - Well look, either you're a sticker person or you're not.

00:24:00   If you're not, the idea of any sticker on there

00:24:03   is horrible, the whole reason we buy Macs

00:24:05   is we wouldn't have Intel inside, Nvidia powered,

00:24:08   all these, powered by invention, by Asus,

00:24:11   like all this stupid stuff they put on their computers,

00:24:14   and on the PC world, and here we don't have that.

00:24:17   If you are a sticker person,

00:24:19   you probably want better stickers

00:24:21   than stupid Apple serial number one.

00:24:24   - All right, so moving out of follow-up,

00:24:27   Apple earnings were as we record last night.

00:24:30   It turns out they made a lot of money, go figure.

00:24:33   But there's a couple things that I think are interesting.

00:24:36   First of all, their guidance for iPhone sales

00:24:41   is down a bit, so they haven't said,

00:24:43   if I understood things correctly,

00:24:45   they haven't said that they've sold less iPhones already,

00:24:48   but they are expecting to sell less iPhones

00:24:50   in the next quarter, is that accurate?

00:24:52   - That's compared to the year ago quarter, right?

00:24:55   - 'Cause last year there were a number of reasons,

00:24:57   and last year there were some overflow

00:24:59   from the holiday quarter that was very strong,

00:25:00   so some of those happened in the next quarter,

00:25:04   and so we're not gonna have that this year,

00:25:06   and then also last year there was tons of pent-up demand

00:25:08   for the bigger screen phones,

00:25:10   and this year that has been alleviated,

00:25:12   and then there's currency fluctuations

00:25:14   and economy fluctuations and everything else.

00:25:17   I don't know, do we care?

00:25:18   Does it matter?

00:25:20   - Well, I mean, I don't think we care about the details

00:25:22   in the way that the people on the financial call do.

00:25:24   Like, tell us exactly why this quarter

00:25:26   will be weaker than they were, but like,

00:25:29   I'm looking at Jason Stell's six college post

00:25:31   with all the pretty graphs and everything.

00:25:32   If you just look at the four quarter moving average graphs

00:25:36   and try to get a shape of the lines

00:25:38   the various products and how they're doing.

00:25:42   It's still kind of hard to help because a lot of it is revenue instead of units in these

00:25:44   graphs but you can get a kind of idea of where the company is at with its various product

00:25:50   lines.

00:25:51   Are you guys looking at this page?

00:25:52   Like look at Apple revenue, four quarter moving average showing the total and the iPhone,

00:25:57   iPad, and the Mac.

00:25:59   Right, so you get a picture of the company here.

00:26:02   The total line shows you that the company is still going, you know, from the lower left

00:26:06   to the upper right, more or less,

00:26:08   if you're gonna draw a trend line.

00:26:09   Growth, right, good.

00:26:11   And then where does that growth come from?

00:26:12   You see this iPhone line that is going up,

00:26:15   but it's starting to get a little hump at the top of it.

00:26:17   Not, you know, it's not going hockey stick upwards.

00:26:20   Now it's starting to go more like, you know, ski mogul.

00:26:25   Mump, I don't know, whatever you wanna call it.

00:26:28   It's a mound, right?

00:26:29   The slope is decreasing, right?

00:26:31   Along the bottom you have the Mac,

00:26:33   which always on these graphs looks like just a flat line,

00:26:35   because the fluctuations, the Mac is so low below the iPhone that the fluctuations are

00:26:39   barely visible.

00:26:40   And then you've got the iPad, which like starts off around the same as the Mac, makes a tentative

00:26:45   bid to go to the higher parts of the chart, and then says, "Nah, never mind," and actually

00:26:49   dips below the Mac in the most recent year.

00:26:52   Yeah, this was not a good report for the iPad.

00:26:55   No.

00:26:56   Yeah, so look at the iPad one.

00:26:58   Look at iPad units, four-quarter moving average.

00:27:00   Now it looks like it's like, you know, it's a hump.

00:27:03   It's an upside-down U.

00:27:04   It starts at the bottom, goes up to the top,

00:27:05   and starts going down again.

00:27:07   And now we're getting an actual proper hump.

00:27:09   I think there's a better one later on

00:27:10   if you ever see the iPod graph.

00:27:13   Have you ever seen a graph with the iPod on it too?

00:27:15   The iPod just looks like it comes out of nowhere,

00:27:17   makes this big lump, and goes back down to basically zero.

00:27:20   It makes a nice mound in the graph.

00:27:21   Like, here I am in the iPod, oh, nevermind.

00:27:23   (laughing)

00:27:25   - It had a good run.

00:27:26   - Yeah, that's over the course of many, many years,

00:27:28   but I wish I could find that graph.

00:27:30   The thing that's striking about looking at the iPod

00:27:32   is like that the iPod is like,

00:27:34   its hump is even smaller than the iPad's hump

00:27:37   or similar size to the iPad's hump.

00:27:38   We thought the iPod was this whole big world changing

00:27:40   Apple's the iPod company kind of thing.

00:27:42   It is nothing compared to the iPhone.

00:27:44   The problem with all these graphs is

00:27:45   as soon as you put the iPhone on the graph,

00:27:46   it totally blows the y-axis

00:27:48   and you can't read anything anymore

00:27:49   because the iPhone is so ridiculously huge,

00:27:52   makes so much money, sells so many units

00:27:55   that everything else starts to kind of even out.

00:27:57   But anyway, the one thing I put in the show notes about this

00:28:00   I think the iPad is the real story that I'm interested in at least in these earnings results.

00:28:05   Yeah, well and also one thing before we move on to the iPad is obviously the iPhone is

00:28:12   the company. The iPhone is the most important thing in the company by numbers and by many

00:28:18   other metrics by a long shot. It's not even close. Like it says down here on this chart

00:28:23   it's the iPhone made 68% of the revenue

00:28:28   in the entire company.

00:28:30   The average selling price of the iPhone

00:28:32   is incredibly important to the company's financial outlook.

00:28:37   And this is why, when I make predictions

00:28:40   or when I try to explain things

00:28:42   that use the iPhone average selling price

00:28:45   as a justification for why Apple did or might do something,

00:28:50   this kind of shows you why that might override decisions from Apple about things like what's

00:28:56   actually best for the customer or what actually might be the best product. Because everything's

00:29:02   in balance with Apple, with any company, everything's in balance. No company is like pure good or

00:29:07   pure evil. Everything's always these contending factors that are trying to reach equilibrium

00:29:13   but there's always this contention between them. I don't know if contending is a word

00:29:17   but it is now anyway.

00:29:19   So with Apple, they're always kind of fighting

00:29:21   between what they can make, what's possible to make,

00:29:23   what they can ship on time, what's profitable,

00:29:26   and what's best for the customer.

00:29:27   In the case of the iPhone average selling price,

00:29:30   I think they are definitely willing to do moves

00:29:33   that will raise the average selling price

00:29:35   by a substantial amount, even if it's kind of crappy

00:29:38   for the customer.

00:29:39   And I think you can look at the 16 gig base size

00:29:42   of the phones as one of the biggest examples of this.

00:29:46   that there is almost no other justification for that.

00:29:49   You can look at almost every other reason

00:29:51   people gave for that back when we all,

00:29:53   you know, discussed it two years ago or whatever.

00:29:56   And you can rule almost all of them out

00:29:58   by other supporting reasons.

00:30:00   Like people say, "Well, oh, well,

00:30:01   "we buy all these phones in our company

00:30:03   "and no one ever uses more than 16 gigs."

00:30:05   Well, you could also say a lot of phones

00:30:06   don't use the ear pods that are in the box,

00:30:08   but they still include them.

00:30:09   Like, or, you know, your company doesn't use,

00:30:11   necessarily, like 3D Touch,

00:30:13   but that thing's in every phone, too.

00:30:15   So you can look at any part of it and you can say,

00:30:17   a lot of people don't use this,

00:30:19   that's not necessarily a reason why the 16 gig thing

00:30:22   has to be there and be sucking and be problematic

00:30:23   for so many people.

00:30:24   Anyway, so Apple is willing and possibly,

00:30:28   I wouldn't say forced to, but there's strong pressure

00:30:32   for Apple to keep that iPhone ASP up and growing.

00:30:36   And so for them to do things that will increase

00:30:39   the average selling price by even a little bit,

00:30:42   it matters enough and there's huge motivation

00:30:44   to do it. And so you look at something like the headphone jack thing. And we are all saying

00:30:48   Apple always includes headphones in the box. Well what if this fall the iPhone 7 comes

00:30:52   out with no headphone jack and they don't include headphones in the box. Then a huge

00:30:57   portion of iPhone buyers are going to go spend 30 more dollars when they buy that phone.

00:31:02   That's going to be an attachment sale that counts towards the average selling price I

00:31:04   think of the phone itself. Anyway however they count for that they're going to make

00:31:08   a lot more money if they do that. You know you can look at this cynically and you can

00:31:12   You can say Apple will do this for sure

00:31:14   'cause it'll make them more money and it sucks for us.

00:31:16   Or you can look at it the opposite way

00:31:18   and you can say Apple always wants to do

00:31:19   what's best for customers, they would never do that

00:31:21   for that reason.

00:31:22   I think the truth is somewhere in the middle there.

00:31:24   So we have to consider that when we look at

00:31:27   what Apple does with the product line,

00:31:29   especially in regards to the iPhone

00:31:31   and how that impacts their profitability

00:31:33   even if it kinda sucks for us.

00:31:34   And all this financial stuff that comes out every quarter

00:31:38   is a perfect reason why they have very strong reasons

00:31:41   to have some contention there.

00:31:43   - I don't feel like they're so wed

00:31:44   to average selling price,

00:31:46   because in the past they've done things

00:31:47   that have hurt their average selling price

00:31:49   on their products to, you know,

00:31:50   like the iPad mini is a great example.

00:31:52   But margins, I feel like a lot of those decisions

00:31:55   are just as easily explained,

00:31:57   if not better explained by margins.

00:31:59   Because like the 16 gig thing,

00:32:00   the average selling price argument

00:32:02   is this is gonna push people up to the bigger model

00:32:04   'cause they don't feel like they can fit in 16.

00:32:06   But it could also just result in more people buying 16s,

00:32:08   you don't quite know,

00:32:09   'cause Apple doesn't break it down like that for us, right?

00:32:11   But surely one thing it does is increase margins, because it's like, 64 already had good margins,

00:32:16   and by keeping the lower one in 16, and keeping the prices basically the same, that 16 gigs

00:32:22   that they've been including on their phone for years and years, it's just got to be getting

00:32:25   cheaper for them, and yet the phone price hasn't been dropping year over year over year,

00:32:29   so their margins go up.

00:32:30   And I think they are really sensitive to their margins, and their margins are, I think it's

00:32:34   like 40% or something across the board on all of their stuff.

00:32:38   So even if they have to drop the average selling price by selling the iPad mini, I bet they're

00:32:42   very sensitive about what are the margins on the iPad mini.

00:32:45   How can we bring that down by putting crappier stuff in it?

00:32:47   You know, that's kind of always what they're looking for.

00:32:51   Can we sell you something with last year's technology in it in some aspect because it

00:32:55   saves us money?

00:32:56   Whether it's like putting the credit of your camera in the iPod Touch that's not subsidized

00:33:00   and they have to maintain their margins or, you know, whatever they put in their low-end

00:33:04   phones or even on their highest-end phones will keep the prices more or less the same,

00:33:08   but we'll give you 16 gigs for years and years

00:33:10   because every year that gives us a little bit more

00:33:12   on the margins.

00:33:13   And like you said, Marco,

00:33:14   anything to do, whether it's average selling price

00:33:16   or margins multiplied by the number of phones they sell

00:33:18   is a tremendous amount of money.

00:33:20   And that's a lot of what this call was about

00:33:22   was like foreign exchange rates

00:33:25   and various other quote unquote headwinds,

00:33:29   these fluctuations in how the dollar is valued

00:33:31   against the other currencies in the world has,

00:33:34   it seems like it's not that big a deal.

00:33:36   It's not like we're in some financial meltdown

00:33:38   the dollar is like worthless or worth 10 times more than all the currencies in the world,

00:33:42   right?

00:33:43   But even minute movement in the foreign exchange rates multiplied by Apple's revenue equals

00:33:49   these tremendous numbers.

00:33:50   So a lot of the things I saw getting thrown around on Twitter are like, "The amount of

00:33:53   money Apple lost due to currency fluctuations is larger than the amount of money Facebook

00:33:58   made in the entire year," or something like that.

00:34:00   The numbers are so mind-bogglingly huge that any – like, the fluctuations in the chart

00:34:04   look like nothing.

00:34:05   You know it's a few pixels lower or whatever, but like those pixels are billions and billions and billions of dollars

00:34:10   So it's it's it's mind-boggling to even consider this and that's why I'm so glad I'm not a financial world because

00:34:16   Trying to judge Apple as a from a financial perspective

00:34:21   It's just so so weird because of the way

00:34:23   The things they value seem so out of whack with the things that like a regular person would value about a company

00:34:29   Oh, they're making a lot of money. They're profitable they have a lot of money in the bank boy

00:34:32   That must be a good stock like no. Where's the growth?

00:34:34   - Growth.

00:34:35   (laughing)

00:34:36   - Yeah, this is like, when something like this happens,

00:34:38   I am so happy that I no longer buy or sell individual stocks

00:34:43   like, you know, I have mutual funds

00:34:46   that include some of these things, I'm sure,

00:34:47   but I don't manage that myself

00:34:50   and I don't buy and sell stock anymore.

00:34:52   I'm so glad because I would think of things

00:34:55   like, you know, the way you would,

00:34:56   like I would think of things like, you know,

00:34:57   Apple's doing great, they have great prospects,

00:34:59   they're making a lot of money,

00:35:00   why did their stock just take a dive?

00:35:02   And it would frustrate me like crazy

00:35:04   And of course, that isn't how the market works at all.

00:35:06   Like the market, everyone says the market is stupid

00:35:09   and doesn't understand Apple.

00:35:10   No, the market is doing its own thing.

00:35:11   It's not stupid.

00:35:12   There's a lot to be said about it that's bad,

00:35:15   but it's not stupid.

00:35:16   - There's some stupid.

00:35:17   - Well.

00:35:18   - Usually the stupid manifests in the other way

00:35:19   where companies are overvalued for,

00:35:23   like because anyway, it's just another form of gambling.

00:35:25   Buy low, sell high.

00:35:26   How do I know what's low?

00:35:27   Well, low is something that's gonna be high later.

00:35:30   And so people, a bunch of people will get together

00:35:32   and say, look at that company.

00:35:33   That's gonna be super high later.

00:35:35   And you know, bid it up and have astronomical valuation

00:35:39   because it's based on the potential.

00:35:40   This could be really high later.

00:35:41   Boy, if everybody decides to buy this person's thing,

00:35:45   this'll be great.

00:35:46   But you know, it's just basically speculation.

00:35:48   What do you think is gonna be high next year?

00:35:51   Is it gonna be Apple?

00:35:51   Is Apple gonna go up by 50% by next year?

00:35:54   Or is this a little company you never heard of?

00:35:55   You can buy the stock for pennies, you know?

00:35:57   So that's, yeah, it's not, it's kind of a sucker's bet.

00:36:00   Not really because you can, in theory,

00:36:03   have some knowledge that will help you do better.

00:36:05   Witness people like Warren Buffett and everything

00:36:07   are pretty sure not cheating.

00:36:09   They're just a little bit better at playing

00:36:11   this particular game of poker than other people.

00:36:14   So there is a, it's not all luck,

00:36:15   there is a skill-based aspect, but for the most part,

00:36:18   like I don't get too mad about the way Apple is treated

00:36:22   by the market because I have to think,

00:36:23   like I mean this is what everyone's been thinking

00:36:24   for years and years, you're like,

00:36:25   well, there's nowhere for them to go but down,

00:36:27   they're at the top.

00:36:28   If you had thought that five years ago

00:36:30   and five years before that and five years,

00:36:31   you just put them in wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,

00:36:32   That's what all the analysts always point out.

00:36:34   It's like every time someone says that Apple's at the top

00:36:36   and they can only go down, you just wait five years

00:36:38   and you make fun of those people, right?

00:36:39   But at some point they'll be right,

00:36:41   because if not, Apple will have all the money in the world

00:36:43   and we will literally have no money

00:36:44   because Apple will have it all.

00:36:45   And it's just like Moore's Law.

00:36:46   You can't keep doubling forever

00:36:48   because eventually you will have all the monies.

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00:38:45   Squarespace, build it beautiful.

00:38:47   - What I found interesting about this

00:38:50   is that the iPads are down and down fairly big,

00:38:56   Which, in and of itself, I know we have already covered that, but having just gotten a new

00:39:00   iPad, and now being able to unlock, if you will, all the multitasking features in iOS

00:39:07   9, I have fallen in love with my iPad again.

00:39:12   And I know that a lot of our friends, even ones like Mike Hurley, who were kind of aggressively

00:39:20   anti-iPad very recently, are now falling in love with their iPad Pros.

00:39:26   So what gives?

00:39:27   Am I weird in that I really love my iPad Mini?

00:39:31   And is Mike weird in that he really loves his iPad Pro?

00:39:35   What is going on that apparently a lot of people have fallen out of love with the iPad?

00:39:39   I'm going to answer the easy questions first.

00:39:41   Yes, you're both weird.

00:39:42   But that's not here, neither here nor there.

00:39:44   That is a separate thing entirely.

00:39:45   Thanks, Bobby.

00:39:46   I was thinking about this, and I think like now that we have a nice shape to this graph,

00:39:49   and now that we can clearly see that it's like this, enough time has passed where we

00:39:53   We could be like, it's not replacement cycle.

00:39:56   It's not some other thing that we like.

00:39:57   It's just basically like this is starting to take the shape

00:40:00   of the other type of devices.

00:40:01   And I, although I still am totally signed up

00:40:04   with the idea of the interface that we all know

00:40:07   and love in our phones being eventually being the thing

00:40:10   that supplants what we currently know as the PC,

00:40:12   whether or not the iPad does it, I'm not sure.

00:40:14   But the way I'm conceptualizing the iPad now,

00:40:18   which I think kind of explains like your, Casey,

00:40:20   your attitude towards it and Mike's and everything,

00:40:22   is that currently, for now, the iPad is a specific product,

00:40:26   not like the tablet in general,

00:40:28   but the iPad is a specific product

00:40:29   I'd see as filling two main roles.

00:40:33   First, it is a rich toddler's toy.

00:40:37   (laughing)

00:40:40   Because, I mean, and I'm lumping myself in that,

00:40:42   my kids have iPads, they're the kids of rich people, right?

00:40:45   In general, like most of the people I know

00:40:48   who live in a similar place that I do,

00:40:50   have suburban lives, professional jobs, they have iPads they give to their kids.

00:40:55   Sometimes they're hand-me-down iPads or whatever, but just like I see a lot of

00:40:59   iPads that are used by kids, right? So it is and I say toddlers because once the

00:41:03   kids get older they want a phone, right? Yep. And that's obviously, you know,

00:41:07   that's everything. And the other thing the iPad is, is to use Steve Jobs

00:41:12   parlance, it's a truck. The iPad is the truck of the world of, you know, iOS and

00:41:18   touch devices or whatever. Most people don't need a truck. Most people get away

00:41:22   with the car, which is called their phone. It does everything they could possibly

00:41:25   need, but some people, the weird people, need a truck. Not just the iPad Pros the

00:41:30   truck, but the entire iPad line is now revealing itself as a truck, because

00:41:33   everyone else is saying, "You know what? The phone is fine. The phone is all I

00:41:36   need. Phone does everything I want." And then in the other realm that you could

00:41:40   say, "If it's not a Rich Toddlers toy, what about the non-Rich Toddlers?" I think

00:41:45   tablets still have a role for everybody,

00:41:49   for little kids in particular,

00:41:50   because it's a great little child's toy,

00:41:52   but they just buy cheap Android tablets

00:41:54   so they can watch YouTube.

00:41:54   I think if I replace my kids' iPads

00:41:57   with $99 Android tablets just played YouTube,

00:42:00   they would be mostly satisfied.

00:42:02   That's mostly what they do with it,

00:42:03   is they use it to watch YouTube.

00:42:04   It doesn't take too much to run YouTube.

00:42:06   So in the current life of the iPad product line,

00:42:10   they seem like a product that has a much,

00:42:15   much narrower appeal than the phone.

00:42:17   And that's what they're really competing with,

00:42:19   is the phone, not the laptop at this point or whatever.

00:42:21   So in that light, I think it's a good move

00:42:24   for Apple to have finally gotten off its butt

00:42:25   and done the iPad Pro, which by the way,

00:42:27   doesn't factor at all into these results.

00:42:29   And I wouldn't expect them to move.

00:42:31   I mean, they're factored some,

00:42:32   but like the iPad Pro came at the tail end

00:42:34   of the results that we're looking at right here.

00:42:36   But that's not a mainstream product, right?

00:42:39   So anyway, if the iPad's going to be a truck,

00:42:41   make a better truck for crying out loud, right?

00:42:44   - I mean, in the original analogy,

00:42:47   the PC or the computer was the truck,

00:42:51   and the iOS devices were the cars.

00:42:54   And I think the PC still is the truck,

00:42:58   and the iPad is like maybe the El Camino,

00:43:02   or like the, what's that Subaru half-truck thing?

00:43:06   - Oh god, I know exactly what you're thinking about,

00:43:07   but I can't place it.

00:43:08   - The Baja, that's it.

00:43:09   The Subaru Baja.

00:43:11   It's like, it's not even, it's neither a great car

00:43:14   nor a great truck.

00:43:16   It's kind of in the middle there.

00:43:17   Maybe there's a reason why the El Camino is not made anymore

00:43:21   and the Subaru Baja is not the most popular car.

00:43:25   Nobody looked at the Subaru Baja and said,

00:43:28   "This is the future of cars."

00:43:30   You know, the same way, like, everyone looks at the iPad

00:43:32   and says, "This is the future of computing."

00:43:34   - But it is, but it is, like it totally is.

00:43:36   - Is it? - Yeah, no, it totally is.

00:43:38   I mean, we have it born out, when they say that,

00:43:40   They mean like a thing that is not a PC,

00:43:43   'cause it's totally not a PC, right?

00:43:45   That you interact with mostly by touching.

00:43:47   And it is the future of computing

00:43:48   because that's what everybody does,

00:43:49   but it's also, but they do it on their phone.

00:43:51   It's like, oh, well, is the tablet

00:43:52   a separate thing for the phone

00:43:53   or is it just the same exact thing

00:43:54   as the phone at a bigger size?

00:43:56   And it is, but it's like,

00:43:57   why would you need that bigger size?

00:43:58   Well, most people don't.

00:43:59   Most people, especially with their big honking phones,

00:44:01   most people, that's all they're ever gonna need.

00:44:03   Like the PC is still this separate, separate thing.

00:44:05   But if you just set aside the PC entirely

00:44:07   and just look at the computers that most people use

00:44:10   where their personal computers are their smartphones

00:44:13   at this point.

00:44:14   And why would you ever need one that's bigger

00:44:16   than your big phone?

00:44:17   Well, that's kind of like the truck of the phone

00:44:19   where like if you pretend PCs don't exist,

00:44:21   which basically as far as my kids are concerned,

00:44:22   they might as well not exist.

00:44:23   Like so many kids, like your parents have a computer,

00:44:27   but why would you like, I'm waiting to see

00:44:29   if my kids will ever ask to have their own computer.

00:44:31   They asked to have their own iOS devices and phones

00:44:34   without any prompting very, very early.

00:44:36   None of them even said,

00:44:37   "Hey, I'd like to have my own computer."

00:44:39   the computer is something that your parents use. So it's categorically different. That's why I'm

00:44:42   refocusing and saying, "Now, forget about that crap that your parents use that you don't understand

00:44:46   that's in some other room that has this thing attached to it with or without a wire."

00:44:50   And think about your world of computing, which is a bunch of these screens. Most of them are like,

00:44:57   "I just want a phone. I can talk to my friends. I can watch YouTube videos. I can listen to music.

00:45:01   I'm good to go." Right? And maybe I'll go into my parents' room to type the papers or whatever,

00:45:06   But sometimes they might want something bigger to do more truck-like things, and I'm not entirely sure that this upcoming generation

00:45:12   It's going to occur to them immediately to say well now I need a PC rather they might say

00:45:17   I have weird needs so I want one of those big fancy iPads now the the Subaru is the Baja

00:45:23   I thought it was the Brat, but anyway, but they're they're both true

00:45:26   The Brat is the very old one which is actually what I was thinking of and the Baja is the newer one

00:45:30   It was actually called the Brat. Yes. They had it written on the side of it. It was great

00:45:36   Wow, the little like a c-pillar equivalent on the pickup truck hybrid thing can't imagine why they changed it. Yeah

00:45:42   But like the reason that I think is apt is because we all recognize that the iPad is not a great truck

00:45:48   And yeah, the iPad Pro is a step in the right direction to say give us an even bigger screen

00:45:53   Give us a stylus make more room for the multitasking stuff that you've added

00:45:57   Right as a baby step in the right direction to really being like if you're gonna go truck go all the way

00:46:02   But even if they succeed in that endeavor even if they say oh now the iPad is the truck of the new family of computing

00:46:08   Devices because this entire family collectively is the future of computing and some people need to do fancy stuff like say run Xcode on

00:46:13   Their iPad or wherever the hell they're gonna be doing 10 years from now, right?

00:46:15   Does that suddenly mean that this iPad sales curve that we see making a big hump and going to Allen Hill is gonna reverse?

00:46:22   No, because most people don't need trucks like nothing. Nothing can save the truck from being the truck

00:46:27   Nothing can save the computer that most people don't need

00:46:30   Nothing is ever gonna make the Mac Pro like sell like the iPhone

00:46:34   Nothing is ever gonna hockey stick any of these things up and so for now for the iPad product specifically just use hockey stick as a verb

00:46:40   It's a well-established verb on the show my god

00:46:44   Yeah, nothing is going to change the the inherent nature of of that and even even the PC

00:46:51   It's like well, what if iPads replace all the PCs go look at the PC trend lines. Those aren't great either

00:46:55   The only thing that is going that has been going upward

00:46:57   Like a hockey stick has been the phone and even the phone is loving off a little bit

00:47:01   At a certain point and the reason the phone is leveling off. I feel like not with Apple specifically, but eventually with everybody

00:47:07   Eventually, there's only a certain number of phones you can sell in the world once every single human every single human alive babies adults

00:47:14   Everybody has a smartphone then you're just fighting over how many you know

00:47:18   Then you're just fighting of who gets to sell them, right?

00:47:20   So you can have 100% market share I sell a phone to every single human alive in the planet

00:47:24   But you're never gonna get more than that, right?

00:47:26   So eventually all these curves have to level off and smartphone really is the type of product that can have that kind of penetration

00:47:31   so I

00:47:32   When I look at the iPad

00:47:34   Curve and I see it going down and I see the phone leveling off

00:47:38   The phone is like well Apple you got to compete with the other phones that are out there to make sure you

00:47:42   maintain your market share and the iPad I just feel like it has

00:47:45   Slowly growing into its destiny as the truck of the new world of computing

00:47:51   but I just I just think it should be a better truck I

00:47:54   I agree with some of what you've just said, but I see a better future for the PC than

00:47:59   I think you do, and that a lot of people do. And again, I think you're right, it's not

00:48:05   going to really go up from where it has been. I think it's going to go down a little bit

00:48:10   and then just kind of level off at some point where the PC really is the general utility

00:48:16   computing device, and that is incredibly powerful. And there are so many things that, you know,

00:48:23   we can all call them edge cases.

00:48:24   We can say, you know, you look at so much

00:48:28   of what iOS devices can't do, and so many of them

00:48:32   seem like, well, almost no one needs that, and that's true.

00:48:35   But almost everyone needs one of those things.

00:48:39   And it's kind of like, the world of people

00:48:43   who need computing tasks or abilities

00:48:47   that the iOS devices and that world view of computing

00:48:51   can't address is a pretty big group of people.

00:48:55   So I think the computer will always be relevant

00:48:57   in the same way like Microsoft has always been relevant.

00:49:00   They used to be dominant and the only game in town

00:49:03   and now Microsoft is this kind of like mostly ignored

00:49:08   boring company that no one talks about

00:49:11   but that still has a great business

00:49:12   and is still very useful to a lot of people.

00:49:15   No one really talks about Microsoft

00:49:17   but their stuff is still very, very popular,

00:49:21   it's financially seemingly okay,

00:49:23   and a lot of people rely on their stuff

00:49:26   to get their work done.

00:49:27   And I think that the PC in general,

00:49:29   whether it's Windows or Mac,

00:49:30   I don't make that distinction right now,

00:49:33   the PC in general is so general purpose,

00:49:37   it is so capable, it is so unbounded

00:49:40   by so many of the restrictions

00:49:42   that modern mobile devices have,

00:49:44   both physical and software restrictions.

00:49:46   There is always going to be a market

00:49:48   for a more customizable, more open architecture,

00:49:52   more hardware diversity kind of platform

00:49:55   because there's always gonna be edge cases.

00:49:58   And as these mobile devices get smaller, simpler,

00:50:01   more locked down, fewer ports, everybody come on,

00:50:05   you know, all the stuff that we celebrate as consumers

00:50:09   as like, oh wow, this is great,

00:50:10   it's getting thinner and lighter

00:50:12   and everything's even more locked down

00:50:13   than it was before, thanks a lot.

00:50:15   All of that is very powerful in certain ways

00:50:18   And if you're making something that's gonna sell

00:50:20   as many units as possible to as many people

00:50:22   in the world as possible, that is a good way to do it.

00:50:24   And that's going to keep working.

00:50:26   I always say it, never bet against the smartphone,

00:50:27   it's very powerful.

00:50:29   But I don't think that has to come at the expense

00:50:33   of the entire PC business.

00:50:34   It will come at the expense of some of the PC business.

00:50:37   But again, I don't think, like not a lot of people

00:50:40   are saying, you know what, I don't even need

00:50:43   a computer anymore, I'm just gonna use my phone

00:50:45   for everything.

00:50:46   Some people say that with the iPad.

00:50:48   And so the iPad is certainly more of a threat

00:50:50   than the phone is, but I think it's much more likely

00:50:53   that the people who are still using PCs today,

00:50:58   even when good tablets are available,

00:51:01   I don't see a whole ton of them making that jump

00:51:04   if they haven't already.

00:51:06   - No, but those people all die.

00:51:07   I guess that's the way it works.

00:51:08   Those people all die, and the people who are formerly

00:51:10   using PCs, what we're waiting for,

00:51:12   maybe not the iPad specifically, but tablets in general,

00:51:15   The idea that something without the paradigms and the complexities that we currently associate

00:51:21   with personal computers, that tablets can eventually replace them, and that maybe eventually

00:51:28   the things that we think of as tablets now will eventually be called PCs to distinguish

00:51:32   them from the phones.

00:51:33   But they won't, because they won't be running Windows, they won't be running OS X, they

00:51:36   won't have disks that you mount and volumes and exposed file systems and all the things

00:51:43   that we associate with personal computing now,

00:51:46   that's why I'm talking, it's important to differentiate

00:51:48   between the iPad as a product,

00:51:49   which Apple may never get their act together on, right?

00:51:52   And the tablet as a whole,

00:51:54   the idea that a future computing device

00:51:57   should be more appliance-like and probably also mobile,

00:52:00   because again, with the Moore's Law stuff,

00:52:01   like having lots of headroom to put powerful,

00:52:03   heat-hungry things in there is fine,

00:52:04   but at a certain point, you can't,

00:52:07   like at a certain point,

00:52:08   we need another technological breakthrough

00:52:10   to increase compute.

00:52:12   If we can't do that then you just basically say well

00:52:14   the fastest CPU in the entire world fits in a battery-powered device and we haven't figured out how to make faster because we haven't figured out

00:52:20   How to do quantum computers or optical computing or anything yet? So in the meantime

00:52:24   Enjoy your quote-unquote PC

00:52:26   Which is basically a big honking tablet because that's what two generations of children know how to use and they have no idea what the hell

00:52:33   You're doing with that freaking mouse. They just want to touch the screen, right?

00:52:35   So whether Apple is the one that does that or somebody else long term after we're all dead

00:52:40   I think the the total market for people who need to do computing besides using the appliances in their home and their phone

00:52:45   Will probably be about the similar size of the quote-unquote PC market today

00:52:50   But I would expect tablets to slowly cannibalize that well

00:52:55   Maybe the whole line on the graph stays about the same while above it floats all the other mass-market devices

00:52:59   But that's that's where the tablets are battling down there with the PCs who is going to who is going to to

00:53:06   Get these people who need more than a phone to do their job who who's going to serve them and right now

00:53:12   It's the Mac versus Windows computers versus a whole panoply of tablets versus surface versus Chromebooks versus you know

00:53:19   All these things that are like PCs and post PCs battling and I just have to give the edge to the ones

00:53:24   With less legacy crap that are more understandable for people to use even if right now

00:53:30   They're just not powerful enough as we talked about the last show to actually replace those

00:53:33   I think we'll all be gone by the time it happens, but I just look at my kids and my kids' kids.

00:53:37   Having a television is going to be, I can't even think of a good analogy,

00:53:41   but it's just, it's going to seem like having like a plow in your backyard to till the fields. I don't know.

00:53:46   It's going to seem weird.

00:53:48   Well, you know, I agree with you,

00:53:50   Jon, more than I do Marco, that I think that the PC as we know it, again, like Marco said, Mac or PC,

00:53:55   the personal computers we know it is not terribly long for this world, for almost everyone.

00:54:01   And I agree John that the future is going to be touch the futures or you know something after touch or VR or VR

00:54:07   Oh, I think the future is not the this beautiful new iMac that I just bought myself

00:54:13   But what I'm where I'm having trouble is why then is the iPad so sharply down like I understand what you're saying

00:54:22   It's not powerful enough. It's not doing enough right now, but

00:54:24   Jeez, if the iPad really is the future's truck, don't you think it would at least maintain or not have such a stark

00:54:32   downward slope?

00:54:33   Yeah, because I think they misfired on the iPad.

00:54:36   I think they thought things were further along than they were, and so there was the initial burst of like,

00:54:41   "Hey, this is the future, everyone's gonna love it!"

00:54:43   And then everyone realized, "You know what? I can do all the same stuff on my phone."

00:54:46   Especially when the phones got bigger and more powerful, then it was like, "Oh, well, never mind.

00:54:50   Just give those ones to the kids."

00:54:51   It's like a burst of enthusiasm

00:54:54   followed by the realization that

00:54:56   it does not provide enough additional value

00:54:58   and so that's why I feel like it's tapering off.

00:55:00   - Well, I think there's a number of factors here.

00:55:02   First of all, I think that the value of a tablet in general,

00:55:07   if you use it for productivity tasks,

00:55:11   then the iPad is very competitive.

00:55:14   But I think what most people use tablets for

00:55:16   is entertainment and I think, I'm not saying,

00:55:20   you know, you can't do work on an iPad,

00:55:21   but I think a lot of people,

00:55:22   I think the market bears that out,

00:55:24   that a lot of people use their tablets primarily

00:55:25   for entertainment purposes.

00:55:27   And if you're doing that, there's a lot less reason

00:55:31   to get specifically an iPad over any other tablet out there.

00:55:35   And there's tablets, you know, that cost nothing.

00:55:38   Tablets are cheaper than like gas.

00:55:41   - If you can play Flappy Bird

00:55:44   and you can watch YouTube videos,

00:55:46   like that cover, you know,

00:55:47   you can play a couple of really simple games

00:55:49   and watch YouTube, as far as my kids are concerned,

00:55:52   it would be like indistinguishable from an iPad,

00:55:54   'cause they are not using any of the iPad-y-ness

00:55:56   of the iPad, they are just literally watching YouTube

00:55:58   forever and then playing a couple games.

00:56:00   - Exactly, so that's problem number one the iPad has,

00:56:03   is that like in phones, I think what people tend

00:56:05   to use phones for, kids are a different story,

00:56:08   and I do wanna separately address that.

00:56:11   John, you and many other people make predictions

00:56:15   about the future of PCs being dead,

00:56:18   because their kids don't ever want to use a PC.

00:56:20   But a lot of people are making that assumption

00:56:23   based on kids who are, I think, too young

00:56:28   to make that determination.

00:56:29   Because if you think about the kind of things

00:56:31   that an iPad's really good at,

00:56:32   and the kind of things that computers are really good at

00:56:33   that an iPad isn't very good at,

00:56:35   the overlap between what most kids used to use computers for,

00:56:39   which is a lot of entertainment stuff,

00:56:41   and some very light browsing and light work,

00:56:44   that kind of stuff you can do on an iPad much better.

00:56:46   But that's not to say, like, what if your kid

00:56:49   starts wanting to be productive in multitasking

00:56:53   kind of ways, things that you can do on the iPad,

00:56:57   but it's easier or better on a computer.

00:56:59   Or if they develop a hobby of like,

00:57:01   you know what, I wanna try programming.

00:57:03   That's hard to do on an iPad.

00:57:04   Again, not impossible, but hard.

00:57:06   And some kinds aren't possible so far, but you know.

00:57:09   There are things that like, as kids get older,

00:57:12   if they wanna type a paper for school or whatever,

00:57:15   Like, yes, you can do it on an iPad,

00:57:18   but in many ways it's easier on a computer.

00:57:20   - You haven't met any kids who prefer

00:57:22   using the keyboard on a screen than a physical one?

00:57:24   Have you met those kids yet?

00:57:25   'Cause they exist.

00:57:26   - Yeah, no, I know they exist, but--

00:57:28   - They're terrifying.

00:57:29   - What I'm saying is, I don't think we can make the call

00:57:32   to say kids these days aren't gonna ever use computers,

00:57:35   because I think kids these days are too young

00:57:36   to know that they're never gonna use computers,

00:57:38   and for us to know that.

00:57:39   - Well, it takes multiple generations.

00:57:41   Let's see what you're saying.

00:57:42   It takes multiple generations for it to turn over.

00:57:44   Like I said, we're all gonna be dead.

00:57:45   Maybe our kids will be dead because it's the same way that like you still do things that your parents do just because your parents

00:57:49   did them like it takes a while to turn over but

00:57:51   The options available like you said the options available to them

00:57:56   Let like my kids are all in a house with plenty of Macs and plenty of iOS devices and the only reason they ever

00:58:02   Touch the Macs is to play Minecraft on a bigger screen and maybe that's a valid use case

00:58:08   It's like well see they're like they like the big screen

00:58:10   But if I had my PlayStation attached to the television, they'd probably play it there with the controller

00:58:14   I don't know. Anyway, as we can see from the iPad curve, I think the current crop of tablets,

00:58:20   iPad and all others included, are not yet up to the task of doing things to the kids. So when the

00:58:25   kids have to type papers, they do end up using it or like using Chromebooks in school or something

00:58:29   like that. And the Microsoft service is another take on this. Like, "Hey, we're both things at

00:58:32   one. We're the old computer and the new computer at the same time." That definitely seems like a

00:58:36   transitional fossil to me. But what I'm looking at long term is like, we're not there yet, but that

00:58:42   seems the direction things are going. And it only takes a couple of generations of people dying

00:58:47   before all these concerns that we have. When someone listens to this podcast, like,

00:58:51   a hundred years from now, it will seem ridiculous that we're even debating this. In the same way,

00:58:55   they would seem ridiculous if you were listening to people debate about whether, you know, people

00:59:00   will actually be able to use a computer with a mouse to do real work. I mean, I was alive for

00:59:03   that debate, and it was fierce, and people were like, you could have done the same thing. It's

00:59:09   It's like, "Well, my kid's been born into a world with mice, and they're gonna only use mice."

00:59:13   Like, "Well, when they get a job, they'll have to use a computer without a mouse to do actual work,

00:59:17   because the only computers that have mice are toy computers."

00:59:19   That's just the way things go.

00:59:21   Like, so maybe it's a pointless thing to even talk about, because if we're all dead, do we really care that much?

00:59:26   But I think it's interesting in light of this iPad graph, because it's like,

00:59:30   it's the future that we think is coming, but the graph shows that it's not here yet.

00:59:36   and what the graph may also show is that Apple may not be the company to nail it, because

00:59:42   this was their shot and either they were too early or they just fumbled the ball and didn't

00:59:47   hit the mark with their first attempt at this type of product and, as we keep saying,

00:59:53   were basically totally outplayed by their Starark product, the iPhone, which everyone has basically

01:00:00   voted with their wallets and their feet to say, "This is what we want right now. iPads,

01:00:05   you know, convince us later maybe."

01:00:07   - Right, well because like at the same time that the iPad has been, you know, going along

01:00:12   and getting, you know, improving every generation, the iPhone has gotten better and bigger, and

01:00:19   the Mac has gotten smaller and lighter. And so it really is being squeezed on both ends.

01:00:26   If you're willing to carry something now,

01:00:29   especially with the MacBook One,

01:00:30   only a little bit bigger than an iPad,

01:00:33   then if you need keyboard and touch input

01:00:37   and a PC style OS, the MacBook One is going to be better

01:00:40   for you than an iPad, even an iPad Pro,

01:00:43   at that kind of task.

01:00:45   On the small end, if you need a portable entertainment

01:00:49   and consumption and communication kind of device,

01:00:54   And iPhone is now able to take a lot of that,

01:00:58   and especially with the six plus line,

01:01:01   it's taking even more of it potentially,

01:01:02   'cause that has the benefit of it's always in your pocket,

01:01:05   it's always with you, and you probably paid less

01:01:06   for it up front than you would have for an iPad,

01:01:08   and all these different benefits.

01:01:10   So it's being squeezed on both sides.

01:01:12   Then it's being squeezed from the low end,

01:01:14   because all these cheaper tablets that also can play YouTube

01:01:18   and play some games and browse the web,

01:01:21   all those cheaper tablets are coming

01:01:23   eating the whole bottom end of it. So it's being attacked on so many fronts. And the

01:01:29   good thing is two of those fronts are owned by Apple. And so it's being cannibalized

01:01:33   by other parts of Apple, so it's not necessarily a horrible thing for Apple. But I think, I

01:01:38   don't see a way out of this for the iPad anytime soon. Maybe long term, maybe you're

01:01:44   right, you might be right long term, I'll give you that. But in the near term, the things

01:01:48   that tend to improve quickly, relatively in computing, is the basic hardware specs, the

01:01:54   speed, the quality of the screen and stuff like that. That stuff improves in the short

01:02:01   term. The biggest challenges to the iPad, I think, are pretty deeply rooted software

01:02:08   architecture and software limitations and input, both of which are not solved so quickly

01:02:14   and easily. So I don't think, you know, you talk about how iOS could get better for productivity

01:02:21   use and it's things like rethink multitasking and files. Those are big things. Those take

01:02:29   years to possibly develop or to realize that you need to rethink if you do. That's a very

01:02:37   slow moving thing. And then input is often times not solvable. Like there just isn't

01:02:44   a way to make like a nine inch laptop with a keyboard that humans can use comfortably.

01:02:49   You know like there's like there's like there's limitations like that where you're just fighting

01:02:54   physics and you know the physical world and you just can't win those fights a lot of times.

01:02:59   And tablets certainly are challenging in regards to how to how to fix input, how to make input

01:03:05   that is good for both casual lean-back-on-the-couch use

01:03:08   and also productivity use, and that is a very hard problem.

01:03:12   It might not be possible to solve,

01:03:14   and it's the kind of thing where progress

01:03:15   is made very slowly, if at all.

01:03:18   - Yeah, you're talking about cannibalization,

01:03:19   and that's the other takeaway of this thing,

01:03:21   is when you look at these little lines,

01:03:23   you look at that iPod hump that's like,

01:03:25   here comes the iPod, and then it arcs over,

01:03:27   and then you look at the Mac.

01:03:29   I tried to find this graph,

01:03:30   'cause I think someone tweeted it, and I can't find it,

01:03:32   but it was a graph over many, many years,

01:03:34   just like the last five or ten years but like from the 90s all the way up to the current time

01:03:38   and you look at the products and it's like little fireworks like the ipod launches up into the sky

01:03:43   not too high then it's the ground again right and the ipad launches up into the sky and is arcing

01:03:48   over to starting to be on its way down again you look at the phone and the iphone goes like into

01:03:52   the stratosphere but then eventually starts leveling off right and so you can't see the

01:03:56   other side of that things aren't the only line on the entire graph that is basically has any kind of

01:04:02   you know, uphill slope for the entire length of it is the Mac and it's like way down at the bottom kind of blending with

01:04:08   With the x-axis you can barely see it, but you can see it is a little bit higher

01:04:12   it does go up over your viewer a tiny little bit and it's insignificant or whatever, but

01:04:17   It's interesting that that trend line because it because it started off as like the loser in the PC market

01:04:23   So it never had a lot of markets never had a high height to come down from and it has been steadily gaining

01:04:27   You know, it has been gaining market share while Windows loses it or whatever

01:04:30   So it does have a good graph, you know an uphill climb even though it's insignificant

01:04:34   But when you look at all those other things what what Apple is hoping for when you mentioned is

01:04:38   Alright, so Apple makes products that make these little arcs right every product has a lifetime

01:04:42   The iPhone arc doesn't seem like it's even half over or maybe it's exactly half over right?

01:04:46   If you would extend that graph out, however optimistic and pessimistic you want to be about the iPhone arc

01:04:51   You draw that what you need is another lump. You need another big arch in that thing

01:04:57   So what is the new product that is going to come like the watch isn't even visible because it's too new

01:05:01   so who knows what that's gonna be like but

01:05:03   Apple's whole thing is

01:05:06   What is the next big thing? What is the next line that's gonna be on our graph?

01:05:09   Maybe the line will never go up as high as the phone or whatever. Maybe it will maybe there's some VR thing out there

01:05:14   Maybe it's the car if you want to do revenue because a lot of people have cars and they cost a lot more than a Mac

01:05:19   Or a phone so the ASPs are really good on cars

01:05:23   But the margins are much lower, you know, so I don't know what it is

01:05:26   But like that's that's one of the reasons that investors are

01:05:29   Cranky about Apple because they look at all these lines and they see all these little arcs and they're like, all right

01:05:33   Well, I think we've played this out and we feel pessimistically that the iPhone is at its peak and now it's gonna go down

01:05:38   So where is the next arc Apple and right now there is no

01:05:43   convincing answer and it's Apple's job to come up with that like and I agree with you that the iPad Pro is not going to turn

01:05:47   The iPad thing around because even if professionals love the iPad Pro. There's not a lot of them, right?

01:05:52   So you have to either let the iPad arc follow its course down to the baseline and then start again with another tablet-ish product,

01:05:59   or you need to somehow transform the Mac into a tablet-ish product.

01:06:04   I don't know how you do that, like, just, you know, semantically how you could ever get there.

01:06:09   That's why I still feel like the iPad must rise again in a new form at some point in the future.

01:06:14   Or if not, then maybe Apple loses that and someone else does it, right?

01:06:17   Maybe, you know, who knows what ends up winning in this, but I just feel confident that the

01:06:22   PC is the past and we are the last great PC generation is already alive.

01:06:29   Of people, I mean.

01:06:30   Well, it also, you know, a lot of people, like in our walk of life here, and by that

01:06:36   I mean geeks like us, a lot of geeks just deny the role of fashion and trends in things.

01:06:46   and we try to make everything more logical,

01:06:48   we try to justify things, and we don't understand fashions.

01:06:53   Or fads, really.

01:06:55   What if tablets have been a fad?

01:06:59   I know this is crazy, I know this sounds like

01:07:02   the champion of the computer trying to

01:07:04   optimistically say that, oh, tablets are just a fad

01:07:08   and computers are gonna come back.

01:07:09   So I know this sounds crazy,

01:07:11   and I'm not even saying I believe this.

01:07:14   But I think it's worth thinking about.

01:07:15   You're not saying computers are gonna come back though,

01:07:17   you're just saying tablets are a fad,

01:07:18   it's two separate things, right?

01:07:19   - Right, so I think it's worth considering though,

01:07:22   what if the entire idea of tablets had their peak already?

01:07:27   And that in the future, the kind of casual,

01:07:32   the future of computing was already here earlier than that,

01:07:36   it's the mobile phone, it's the smartphone,

01:07:38   and that what if that is really the future?

01:07:43   And that tablets were just kind of this thing

01:07:44   that for a brief time the whole world was kind of

01:07:47   like in love with, kind of infatuated with,

01:07:49   but it was actually just a fad,

01:07:51   and now we're kind of realizing, eh, you know what,

01:07:54   I think I'd rather just have a good phone

01:07:55   and then maybe a good laptop also.

01:07:57   - All right, I've considered it and I reject it.

01:07:59   - That's fair, but I think a lot of people

01:08:01   are not considering that as a possibility,

01:08:03   but I think the data actually,

01:08:05   like if you look at this iPad sales graph,

01:08:07   that looks exactly like what's going on.

01:08:09   - But that's just the iPad though,

01:08:11   that's why I keep differentiating,

01:08:12   like there's the iPad, which may be Apple Bluadon,

01:08:15   and then there's the concept of a screen

01:08:17   about the size of a piece of paper

01:08:19   or bigger that you hold in your hands.

01:08:20   And I would even include in tablets

01:08:21   a screen that's much bigger than a piece of paper,

01:08:23   like the iPad Pro that you hold in your hand, right?

01:08:26   Or even a bigger thing that sits on your desk.

01:08:28   I would say it's basically a big piece of glass

01:08:29   that you touch that extends down to the portable range,

01:08:33   but as I've always said,

01:08:34   I can imagine a desktop replacement

01:08:36   that is more like a drafting table.

01:08:38   And just the utility of essentially having

01:08:40   magic piece of paper that can show anything that is a piece of paper size.

01:08:44   Like once that becomes like 99 cents, like the computing part of that is so, you know,

01:08:49   again, as the price of compute drops to zero, of course people are going to want to have

01:08:52   that because people want to hold things in their hand and read them and look at them

01:08:55   and watch a video.

01:08:56   And maybe that won't be an iPad anymore.

01:08:59   Maybe it'll be something that comes in your cereal box that you unroll and it's like,

01:09:03   there's no, and you can say, oh, that's not a tablet.

01:09:04   It is though.

01:09:05   It's like basically a screen that you hold in your hand that is way bigger than a phone.

01:09:08   And that is absolutely not going to die.

01:09:10   whether Apple has any role at all in that product line remains to be seen, which is

01:09:14   why I say the iPad is an open question.

01:09:16   But there's a reason everyone was all gaga.

01:09:18   Like the fad part that I think you're sensing about tablets was like, "Oh, this is like

01:09:22   those science fiction books I read.

01:09:23   This is like those movies I saw.

01:09:24   It's like the future.

01:09:25   Like how many movies had, oh, you just hold this magic."

01:09:27   Even before flat screens existed when everything was all CRTs.

01:09:31   Every science fiction story, you know, back hundreds of years, like, "Oh, I just hold

01:09:34   something that looks like a piece of paper, but it can show any image anywhere, and I

01:09:37   can see anywhere in the world, and I can watch moving pictures on it."

01:09:40   That idea is never going away because it has an amazing utility for people like us who

01:09:43   have eyeballs in the front of our head and hands that we can hold things up with.

01:09:48   Unless VR retinal imaging or any sort of interior mind type thing happens or strapped to your

01:09:54   eyes thing, until that comes and wipes all of this away, having something big that you

01:10:00   hold in your hand that is a screen, that idea will never die because it has an amazing utility.

01:10:06   It just could be that Apple is not the company that either brings that to us, benefits from

01:10:10   it or like it gets it right because if you just play out current trends eventually what

01:10:16   will it take to have something to give your toddler to watch whatever the equivalent of

01:10:21   YouTube is right maybe that'll be a dollar ninety nine in a drugstore that's a rolled

01:10:25   up piece of plastic that the kid can just do anything they want to and when it gets

01:10:30   destroyed you just throw it away right because seriously the the electronics the cost of

01:10:35   of the electronics and everything to sort of get internet access and play video and

01:10:39   stuff, that's going to, in our lifetimes, be so incredibly trivial that it'll be nothing.

01:10:45   You know, I was going to ask you, Jon, what would make the iPad, you know, cross that

01:10:50   hump and be the thing, or any tablet, but, and I think you just covered it in a lot of

01:10:56   ways, but I was thinking, you know, when I got my first iPad mini, so this is two years

01:11:01   ago now, the iPad mini with Retina display, I had given Erin my iPad 3, so the first full-size

01:11:09   iPad with a Retina display.

01:11:11   And I'd given it to her and I'd set it up with her iCloud account and iMessage account

01:11:15   and some of the apps I thought she would use a lot.

01:11:18   And I gave it to her and I think in those two years she has used that iPad 5 or 10 times

01:11:26   Because it always ends up that she's either, well, she starts with her phone almost always.

01:11:33   Everything she does is on her phone. And then if for some reason something she's working on

01:11:37   is easier or just better suited for the truck, for her Mac, then she'll go to her MacBook Air

01:11:45   and do that thing there. But generally speaking, for Erin, it's her phone and the iPad isn't even

01:11:52   a thought. In fact, most of the last two years, the battery has been dead because neither of us

01:11:55   ever touches it. And granted this is only one data point, that doesn't exactly make

01:12:00   a line by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly bears what Apple's results

01:12:07   are seeing, which is that the iPhone is going crazy, the Mac isn't doing bad, and the iPad

01:12:13   is just not even there.

01:12:14   Well, I mean, like, but you know, by, to be fair, by like, unit sales, the iPad and the

01:12:20   Mac are kind of neck and neck right now, but the trend line is very clear that the iPad

01:12:24   is on its way down while the Mac is still on its way up.

01:12:27   >> BRIAN KARDELL Yeah, barely on its way up.

01:12:30   Kieran Healy in the chat tried to give a bunch of charts, but it's not the one I was thinking.

01:12:34   One is showing all the lines together, all different colors, and you just saw the only

01:12:37   one that was steadily climbing uphill like a snail over the course of decades was the

01:12:41   Mac and it was just hugging the bottom of the graph.

01:12:44   Totally insignificant volumes compared to the other Firecracker products, but it's like,

01:12:48   we're still here.

01:12:49   We're still clawing our way up.

01:12:53   It's both sad and heartening at the same time.

01:12:56   But yeah, when I think about the car, and there were some rumors about the car this

01:13:00   weekend, I think like, is that the next thing that's going to?

01:13:04   I try to imagine what a car line would look like on this draft.

01:13:06   Like imagine they do as well as Tesla, and they sell some piddling amount of really expensive

01:13:11   cars to people with a lot of money, and the self-driving stuff doesn't work yet because

01:13:16   it's not ready.

01:13:18   But cars are really expensive, and so the revenues will be high, but the margins will

01:13:21   necessarily be lower and it's like what does that line look like? does does the car line look like

01:13:26   the ipod line? does it look certainly doesn't look like the iphone line does it look like the mac

01:13:30   line where it closets way up or do they just can the car and it's a bad idea and they should really

01:13:34   concentrate on something else like and then the lines we can't even think of though vr is the

01:13:39   current question mark in the world of like is this a thing people are going to want to do because at

01:13:43   this point the number of people who've done vr stuff is just a bunch of gaming enthusiasts and

01:13:47   and that will be the case for a long time.

01:13:50   I don't know what the next big thing,

01:13:53   I remember several years ago when we were talking

01:13:54   on the show, maybe the watch is the next big thing.

01:13:58   Maybe it is, but if it is, it's definitely got

01:13:59   a slower ramp up as far as we can tell.

01:14:01   Well, you know, at this point it's still early, right?

01:14:05   - The watch is the next iPod, in the sense that,

01:14:08   not in the sense that the iPod, it was gone now,

01:14:10   but in the sense that it's an accessory.

01:14:12   It's something that serves a narrow range of roles

01:14:16   very well, but that not everybody needs a device

01:14:19   to serve that narrow range of rules,

01:14:20   and also that is not going to replace your phone.

01:14:23   - Yeah, I mean, or maybe just wearables in general.

01:14:26   Like, it's just, it's very difficult to think of something

01:14:29   that is ever going to be like the next iPhone,

01:14:32   because the great thing about a phone

01:14:33   is that literally every adult in the world

01:14:37   probably could conceivably use one, right?

01:14:39   And that's a big market.

01:14:40   How many products can you say that about?

01:14:42   Maybe cars, not really, because most people

01:14:45   have cars in the world, they have bicycles and motorcycles if they're lucky, you know, whatever.

01:14:49   Like you're just trying to think of something that everybody could find some utility for,

01:14:55   for some values of everybody, and it's very difficult to think of that. A watch is one,

01:14:58   like, well, sure, something you hold on your wrist that tells you the time, that seems like a

01:15:02   broadly useful thing you could sell a lot of, but you can't sell them for that much money, and

01:15:06   I don't know if you're ever going to be able to sell everybody in the world a $691, which I think

01:15:12   I think was their ASP on iPhone $691 watch

01:15:15   to everyone in the world.

01:15:16   No, like somebody just get the high end of the watch market

01:15:19   just like they have the high end of the phone market.

01:15:20   I don't know.

01:15:21   I don't know what the next thing for Apple is.

01:15:25   But when I look at these graphs,

01:15:27   if I was to continue the x-axis and go from 2016

01:15:30   and extend that out for another 50 years,

01:15:33   and let me just continue drawing the lines

01:15:35   of all their current product lines,

01:15:38   I see like, how optimistic can you be with the iPhone line?

01:15:42   Like if you continue to draw the iPhone line,

01:15:43   you know what it looks like.

01:15:44   It's a big thing, goes up, up, up,

01:15:45   and the slopes are a level off.

01:15:46   How do you draw that line?

01:15:47   Do you just draw a straight line out into the future

01:15:49   and say, well, smartphones will continue

01:15:50   for the next 50 years pretty much as is?

01:15:53   Or do you make it go up more?

01:15:54   Or do you make it slowly go down

01:15:56   like the rest of the things?

01:15:56   I don't know.

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01:17:30   - All right, Marco.

01:17:31   Is the iPhone 7 going to be waterproof?

01:17:33   We're running a bit long,

01:17:34   so let's keep it to just that question.

01:17:36   Is it gonna be waterproof?

01:17:38   - Why?

01:17:38   I mean, why are we talking about this now?

01:17:40   I mean, I think the answer is probably,

01:17:44   it'll probably be very close.

01:17:47   Just like the iPhone 6S is very water resistant.

01:17:53   It is not waterproof, but if it happens to get wet,

01:17:56   by most people's estimations

01:17:58   and some little tests here and there,

01:17:59   it seems to fare better than the other ones.

01:18:02   - It gives water a stern talking to.

01:18:04   - Yeah.

01:18:05   (laughing)

01:18:06   It has extra seals, it has these extra little seals

01:18:09   like all over all the things on the board and everything.

01:18:11   And so it is certainly water resistant to some degree.

01:18:15   It's unadvertised this way,

01:18:16   but that is how they seem to do it.

01:18:18   If they drop the headphone jack,

01:18:20   that might be a reason to make waterproofness

01:18:24   a headlining feature, because that might help tame

01:18:28   some of the anger that will result

01:18:30   from losing the headphone jack from customers.

01:18:32   So I think it's possible.

01:18:34   I think the 6S and the watch both show that Apple,

01:18:38   and the watch I think is a more interesting example of this

01:18:43   because the watch has openings.

01:18:45   It has a speaker, it has a microphone.

01:18:49   - It has the crown too.

01:18:51   - Oh yeah, right, yeah.

01:18:52   And actually in traditional watches,

01:18:54   the crown is usually the hardest part to waterproof.

01:18:56   It's opening with a moving part in it and everything.

01:18:58   Anyway, so you know, you have,

01:19:00   they clearly have the ability to make things

01:19:02   that are very water-resistant, possibly waterproof.

01:19:04   The only question I think is how waterproof will it be

01:19:08   and whether they will advertise this as a feature

01:19:11   or whether it will just be quietly water resistant

01:19:13   the way the 6S is.

01:19:14   - Yes, that was the question.

01:19:15   (laughing)

01:19:17   So what's your answer?

01:19:18   - I would say probably.

01:19:22   - To which one of those, like the advertising

01:19:23   or the fact that it will actually be?

01:19:26   - I would say it is very likely that it will be

01:19:29   more water resistant than the 6S,

01:19:30   which is already pretty good.

01:19:31   So I say the chances of it getting more water resistant

01:19:36   are very good.

01:19:36   The chances of them advertising that,

01:19:38   I would give it maybe like a 60% chance.

01:19:41   They probably will advertise it, but not necessarily.

01:19:44   But I do think if they do actually delete the headphone jack

01:19:48   then that would make it more likely

01:19:50   that they would advertise that as a feature

01:19:52   because that would help justify that decision.

01:19:54   - Yeah, I think I mostly agree.

01:19:56   Like the reason I put this in there is because

01:19:58   electronic devices don't become more water resistant

01:20:01   by accident.

01:20:02   So the past phones that have been,

01:20:05   that Apple seems to have been making more of an effort

01:20:08   to seal them up.

01:20:09   Again, totally not advertised as,

01:20:11   you probably shouldn't put your phone in water.

01:20:13   Many people kill their phones by putting them in water.

01:20:16   But some part of the engineering process for these phones

01:20:19   is, even if it's not about water,

01:20:21   maybe it's just about dust or whatever,

01:20:23   like they're making an effort to seal these phones up tighter.

01:20:26   I don't see any reason that effort trend would diminish,

01:20:31   especially since many of their competitors

01:20:34   do try to advertise their phones as waterproof

01:20:37   and Apple knows better than anybody

01:20:38   how many people drop their phones in the toilet

01:20:40   and come into the store and are sad about it

01:20:41   and all the whole water resistance for their warranties.

01:20:44   They have this info, they are trying to make their phones

01:20:46   more order-resistant.

01:20:47   So I think the only question is,

01:20:50   do they start advertising,

01:20:52   have they crossed the threshold

01:20:53   at which they can start advertising?

01:20:54   'Cause obviously they know,

01:20:56   they're not gonna advertise until they can be very sure

01:20:58   like they are with the watch,

01:20:59   to spec it out and say,

01:21:00   here's how we think it will perform and blah, blah, blah.

01:21:02   - By the way, even the watch,

01:21:04   they barely advertise that it's water resistant.

01:21:07   - But there's expectations with the watch.

01:21:08   Like they under promise and over deliver the watch

01:21:10   'cause it's like,

01:21:11   you totally shouldn't put this in the water,

01:21:12   but realistically speaking, it's like,

01:21:14   I mean, Craig Hockenberry swimming in the ocean with his,

01:21:16   like every single week for God knows how long.

01:21:19   Like if, when he tells us that his watch

01:21:21   has been killed by the water,

01:21:22   then we'll maybe know that the limits are,

01:21:25   but seriously, like it's basically, you know,

01:21:29   waterproof enough, but they don't say like you're right, they don't say much about it because like they have the specs and it's like it's

01:21:33   Like watch specs you can go in and you can see what the little numbers are and they have all these standards or whatever

01:21:37   But the phone they don't say anything about they're like do not bring your phone near water in any way

01:21:42   Alright, and so at some point they'll be able to say something about the phone with respect to water

01:21:47   So I think that is coming

01:21:49   I just don't know if it's the iPhone 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever and if I had to put a percentage on it

01:21:55   for the 7 I

01:21:56   would say

01:21:58   I so, the reason I put it in is I so want this to be an advertised feature of the iPhone

01:22:05   7, but I just feel like that even if they ditch the headphone port, they need one more

01:22:09   generation to really go full waterproof, but I hope I'm wrong.

01:22:12   So I'm going to put it at slightly under 50%, but I hope I'm wrong.

01:22:14   So even if they ditch the headphone port, there's still a lightning port, right?

01:22:19   Unless we go full inductive.

01:22:20   Yeah, I mean, like this, there's always going to be openings.

01:22:23   I don't think the headphone, it's what Marco said, like it's not so much that getting the

01:22:27   headphone something makes it possible to be waterproof, it's a nice thing to be able to

01:22:31   say when telling people that you took away their headphone port.

01:22:34   Yeah, because there are ways to waterproof certain ports and the design of the port can

01:22:40   make it easier or harder. I'm sure Lightning was probably designed with that in mind, to

01:22:47   have future devices be more water resistant in order to make it easier to do it. All that

01:22:52   being said, one thing that I find promising about this is that one of my common criticisms

01:22:57   of Apple design, especially recently, that I think seems to be getting worse, honestly,

01:23:03   it seems like the newer products that come out oftentimes seem to ignore what customers

01:23:08   actually need, like the problems that we face in the real world and what we actually want

01:23:12   on our devices, and instead give us things that we weren't really asking for, even though

01:23:18   they might be nice, but just things we weren't really asking for, like increased thinness

01:23:21   and lightness is one of the most common things.

01:23:23   So you know, you get things like the MacBook One

01:23:27   with its really controversial keyboard,

01:23:30   I'll be nice to it tonight,

01:23:31   well a really controversial keyboard

01:23:32   that was made in the name of thinness.

01:23:35   It's like, well we didn't need it

01:23:36   to be that thin necessarily.

01:23:37   Things like the iPhone, the best example

01:23:40   that I can give on the phone is battery life,

01:23:42   where so many people would love for their phone

01:23:44   to get better battery life.

01:23:46   And most people don't say, I wish my phone was thinner.

01:23:49   In general, I see this happening at Apple,

01:23:52   and I'm a little saddened by some of this.

01:23:54   However, if you look at what else people really want

01:23:58   out of their iPhones, very high on the list

01:24:01   is resistance to damage.

01:24:03   And the two kinds of damage that happen most to phones

01:24:05   is water damage and dropping damage.

01:24:08   And so if they can make it more durable

01:24:11   and more resistant to shattering or scratching

01:24:16   or cracking of the glass surfaces,

01:24:18   and if they can make it more water resistant.

01:24:21   That will seriously benefit a large number of customers.

01:24:25   That is very promising in that Apple is clearly trying

01:24:29   not only to make things super thin,

01:24:30   so John and I can be proud of them,

01:24:32   because it seems like they don't really know

01:24:34   what else to do with the physical designs,

01:24:35   but they can also at least solve real customer problems,

01:24:39   things that are really big,

01:24:41   that really affect a lot of people.

01:24:41   So that I think is great.

01:24:43   And if they're doing stuff like this,

01:24:46   If they're improving waterproofness and shockproofness at all, those will pay off big time and actual

01:24:52   customer benefit.

01:24:53   So Casey, what's your answer?

01:24:55   I think that if the headphone port goes, absolutely.

01:24:59   I think it might even be so far as, "Hey, we made it waterproof, but oops, we had to

01:25:04   make the headphone port go away.

01:25:05   It's just the way it had to be."

01:25:07   I think it's probably going to be, I don't know if it'll be advertised as full-on waterproof,

01:25:11   But I do think we will hear something advertised about significantly increased water protection,

01:25:19   for lack of a better way of phrasing it, or water resistance, I guess.

01:25:22   I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around how this would work while still having a lightning

01:25:27   port.

01:25:28   And I can't help but wonder, could we do not only inductive charging, but inductive data?

01:25:34   I believe that's called Wi-Fi.

01:25:35   Well, touche.

01:25:36   Fair point.

01:25:37   Yeah.

01:25:38   But I don't think you'd...

01:25:39   I think they're gonna still have a lightning port.

01:25:41   And I think lighting port, probably, because it's their own port and they can do whatever

01:25:45   the hell they want with it and it has always been kind of like a non-traditional sort of

01:25:49   software controlled port where it's not as if you're making a spec for the whole world

01:25:52   to build and you tell them what the pin outs are and you have no control of what's at the

01:25:55   other end of those pins because they're all like hardwired pins for different voltage

01:25:59   levels or whatever, like it is entirely up to Apple so I feel like the lighting port

01:26:02   is the least of their concerns.

01:26:03   Probably the trickiest parts are like the baffles around the speakers and microphones

01:26:08   and stuff because I mean they've done it on the watch already.

01:26:10   But to do that and still have a reasonably high quality speaker and microphone assembly,

01:26:15   which they seem to be concentrating on in recent iOS devices, it all seems within their

01:26:19   own possibility.

01:26:20   And that's why I think in the past few years of devices, they've been slowly but surely

01:26:24   gaining expertise in how to do this, all the while not telling anyone any about it at all.

01:26:29   And the only reason we're finding out about it is because people on YouTube are dropping

01:26:32   their phones into water and then filming it and seeing what happens.

01:26:34   At least they finally stopped blending them, I think.

01:26:36   I think that phase is probably over.

01:26:38   Did you hear all the things like the best the best waterproof electronics things they just use distilled water or something without any like free

01:26:44   Ions or whatever so they can't conduct electricity you can put basically any electronics in that or so the theory goes

01:26:49   Whereas if you use tap water or something with minerals or impurities or whatever that it'll short out your phone

01:26:54   Uh-huh. Yeah, do not put your phone in water

01:26:58   It's the lesson like even when if they make this water-resistant one don't make it

01:27:02   I think Margot was never trying to keep this just a waterproof but like

01:27:05   smart to bring up the dropping thing because

01:27:08   Apple is kind of stuck on that one until some kind of materials

01:27:13   Change because they pick glass for a reason and they try to keep making tougher glass the glass that is

01:27:19   That's more resistant to breaking and bending like that super gorilla whatever glass and trying sap like

01:27:24   But the bottom line is if they just put plastic on it would be super durable, but it would be terrible

01:27:30   You think Johnny I've can't handle things now with the camera protruding although I don't entirely agree with that

01:27:35   But uh forget it then they want glass because it is it feels nice it feels expensive

01:27:41   It doesn't get all scratched up and gross like all of the great qualities of glass that we love the reason why glass is the right

01:27:47   Choice of the phone the one thing it has against it is does tend to shatter if you drop it on to asphalt just the right

01:27:52   way

01:27:53   So I don't know how they get out of that bind because if the whole if the goal was

01:27:57   Make it so I can take this phone and throw it on the ground like I'm spiking a football and it survives make the whole

01:28:03   thing out of Fisher Price plastic. Like it's not as if there's a hard drive disk head to

01:28:07   crash inside there. It's extremely durable, all except for the fact that it would feel

01:28:11   terrible if we made it out of Fisher Price plastic and it would get scratched up and

01:28:13   it would look gross and it would be a worse product. So at least Waterproof is something

01:28:17   they can do. With dropping, not quite sure what they can do there.

01:28:22   And instead we all just cover our phones in cases that look like big Fisher Price plastic.

01:28:27   Well some people do. I mean my case is not saving my phone. Did I tell you that my wife

01:28:31   dropped her her big plus no success that was a while ago it was like a week after

01:28:37   she got it and it just like slipped out of her pocket or whatever from basically

01:28:40   waist-height on to the cement sidewalk completely shattered oh that's why you

01:28:45   get Apple care plus yeah well in her defense the plus was really easy to drop

01:28:50   yeah well it was her first like she's getting used it was in the silicone case

01:28:53   but that didn't save it but yeah no and shattered we all see shattered runs all

01:28:57   the time I just I felt there's no way out of that other than to keep leaning

01:29:01   on your glass manufacturers to make it stronger and better but the you know

01:29:05   until we get transparent aluminum I guess from the Star Trek movie would

01:29:10   that be worth something to you and we're done all right thanks let's about three

01:29:14   sponsors this week Harry's Squarespace and fracture and we will see you next

01:29:19   week

01:29:21   now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental

01:29:29   Oh it was accidental.

01:29:31   John didn't do any research.

01:29:34   Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:29:37   Cause it was accidental.

01:29:39   It was accidental.

01:29:42   And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:29:47   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at

01:29:53   at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M. Anti-Marco Arment. S-I-R-A-C.

01:30:07   U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A. It's accidental. They didn't mean too accidental. Tech podcast so long.

01:30:22   Why do we still have a lightning port?

01:30:23   Why not go inductive charging and just say the hell with it

01:30:26   to having a port at all?

01:30:27   - My friend has one of those things.

01:30:28   I forget what it's called, like the key charger

01:30:30   or something, QI or whatever.

01:30:32   He uses it with his iOS devices.

01:30:34   It's a case that you basically put on your phone

01:30:36   and it plugs into your lightning port.

01:30:37   And then it's a very thin case

01:30:38   'cause all it really has to do is have a big like

01:30:40   sort of inductive contact thing.

01:30:42   And you just put it on, he likes it.

01:30:43   You just put it on these little stands and it charges it,

01:30:46   I would assume slightly slower than the other things.

01:30:49   But yeah, why did they not have that?

01:30:52   - I don't know, I'm not entirely sure it is a clean win.

01:30:56   You're like, isn't that better in all ways than a wire?

01:30:59   Setting aside performance entirely, is it better?

01:31:02   I don't think it's better in all ways than a wire

01:31:05   because the charging then takes up more room.

01:31:07   - Yeah, 'cause imagine if you're traveling with your phone,

01:31:10   you go to plug it in like in a hotel or something,

01:31:12   look at what it is with the watch today

01:31:14   and imagine the watch but bigger basically.

01:31:17   Bringing the watch with you is kind of a pain in the butt

01:31:19   'cause of that big cable and it doesn't really stick

01:31:22   very well to it and when you're traveling somewhere

01:31:25   that kinda sucks, whereas the phone,

01:31:27   you plug in this thing and it holds,

01:31:28   you can swing the phone around like a rope from the cord

01:31:33   and it holds it, I mean you shouldn't,

01:31:36   but you probably can and it will probably hold.

01:31:38   The cords are just really, really practical

01:31:42   in the real world, even though they are totally unsexy

01:31:46   and they offend the sensibilities of geeks like us

01:31:49   like why can't everything be wireless?

01:31:51   But the reality is like in practice they are

01:31:54   just really good, really simple, really cheap

01:31:58   and they suffer from very few of the downsides

01:32:02   of inductive charging for like,

01:32:03   like I know speed is actually a big issue.

01:32:06   How much current you can get through an inductive charger

01:32:09   at once safely in that kind of situation.

01:32:13   I'm pretty sure that the cord still wins

01:32:17   at a pretty big margin.

01:32:18   And looking forward to the future,

01:32:20   it would be ideal if our phones charged even faster,

01:32:23   especially if the batteries keep getting smaller.

01:32:26   It would be ideal if they could charge faster,

01:32:28   which means more current,

01:32:30   which means the cable will still win.

01:32:31   - Super capacitors, that's all you need.

01:32:33   We haven't talked about that, super capacitors.

01:32:34   That's the current five to 10 year technology

01:32:36   that's gonna make our phones charge in 15 seconds.

01:32:39   - Well, you still need to get all that current across,

01:32:40   though.

01:32:41   - But you were mostly addressing inductive,

01:32:42   but I think the other thing out there is the whole

01:32:46   try not to cook the people in the room

01:32:47   by carefully directing microwaves

01:32:49   to exactly where your phone is sitting.

01:32:51   And in that case, you would go to the hotel,

01:32:52   you would have all your devices with you,

01:32:54   and all you do is plug one wall or into the wall

01:32:56   and it would charge every device in the room at the same time

01:32:58   hopefully not cooking your insides when it doesn't.

01:33:01   - Yeah, and you'd be sleeping five inches away

01:33:03   from one of them, yeah.

01:33:04   - Well, you know, like technically you can do that.

01:33:07   It's kind of, sort of, I don't know if that would be legal,

01:33:09   but like, I'm trying to think of things that would be

01:33:13   with, that would be a clean win.

01:33:14   'Cause I think we would all agree that if that

01:33:16   work and not cook people, you know, using whatever technology you want to make up about

01:33:21   some future technology, that would be a win, because it's better than plugging things in,

01:33:25   you don't have to have a bunch of pads with you, it does all of them at once, and it's

01:33:28   just, it's fire and forget.

01:33:29   Like, the same way that Wi-Fi is like, oh, now, you know, for most people, I don't have

01:33:33   to wire my whole house up, I just put this one thing in the corner of my house, and then

01:33:36   internet is everywhere.

01:33:37   If you put this one thing in the corner of my house, and charging is everywhere, that

01:33:41   would be cool, I would buy that.

01:33:42   If it didn't cook me.