PodSearch

ATP

108: Zero is Better Than One

 

00:00:00   What is that background? Right? It's from Last Exile, which is an anime series that neither one of you has heard of, let alone seen.

00:00:06   I've seen it. It's really good. You have not. Yeah, what makes you think I haven't seen it?

00:00:11   Tell me about it without googling. I know nothing about it. I've never seen it. All the great shows.

00:00:16   Exactly.

00:00:19   So, Jon, why don't you tell us about how Crossy Road is doing financially?

00:00:22   Why would I do that when it says in the notes that we already talked about this?

00:00:26   Alright, let's not talk about this because everyone has keep sending us the same everyone keeps sending us the same link

00:00:30   And I'm tired of getting it. Well. Here's here's what happens everybody has a bad memory

00:00:33   What we talked about cross your was finances on at least two episodes

00:00:38   Maybe three in the first one it was before they did one

00:00:41   They did a major update and in the first one I was looking at the top grossing charts

00:00:46   And I was saying given their position on the top downloading chart because they were like you know one of the top handful of apps

00:00:52   On the top free chart, but they weren't very high on the top grossing chart

00:00:55   So what I said was at that position on top three they should be making more money and so maybe they can monetize better

00:01:02   because you know there's not really much reason to ever pay them when you play the game and then they they did an update a

00:01:08   Few days after the episode came out and then they they very quickly jumped up the top grossing chart and the following week

00:01:15   We talked about that where we said hey

00:01:17   Looks like they fixed it. They're making a good money now great good for them and

00:01:22   so tons of people now have only heard that first part and

00:01:27   Or only remember the first part and are telling us look you are so wrong because look they made all this money

00:01:33   When in fact we did already talk about this the following week when we said now they are making tons of money

00:01:39   I think we read an interview with them where they said they were there were now didn't have to work again

00:01:43   And it made enough money to be set for life and so on and so forth

00:01:47   That's why I felt like we covered already, but this is actually a new story right with updated updated financials

00:01:52   But the story the week after we first discussed this basically the developer said we never have to work again, so

00:01:57   Reiterating that they still don't have to work again even less or more. I don't know whatever they really don't have to work again

00:02:05   Anyway, we'll put the link in the show notes for people who want to read the numbers, but it's like

00:02:09   I'm just reading what's in the show notes here ten million dollars on 50 million downloads cross your road is a good game

00:02:14   They deserve to make a lot of money because they made a really good game

00:02:17   Exactly. Yep. Now I the main reason I wanted to bring this up again is because the of that new interview or piece on it

00:02:24   That was on polygon. Is that right? Yes polygon and we've gotten that link a thousand times, which I appreciate

00:02:30   Everyone is trying to keep us informed which is very nice of them

00:02:32   But we have seen it and it's pretty much the same thing. We already knew so thank you

00:02:36   In other news we should talk about our anonymous tipster

00:02:41   Who sort of came through and yet sort of didn't on?

00:02:46   the Apple event and obviously we'll talk about Monday's event a little bit later, but

00:02:50   There were there was a win and there were some not so win. We have not not so good results for this tipster

00:02:56   Do do you want to take us through that John and where he where he or she did well and where they did poorly?

00:03:02   Yeah, we kind of fell down on the previous show because at one point in the previous show

00:03:06   I was trying to nail down how we will know whether

00:03:11   this whether these tips panned out because it was kind of vague and there was some bit like what are the criteria for success and

00:03:18   then we kind of wandered off onto some other topic and we didn't really

00:03:20   pin it down if we had it would have helped because as

00:03:23   The keynote was going on and I'm reading people's tweets and stuff

00:03:26   About 50/50 people were saying oh my god that tipster was a hundred percent white right or

00:03:33   Haha that tipster didn't know anything nothing. He said was in here like

00:03:38   Obviously different people saying that one set of people like the same

00:03:41   we're all watching the same presentation and some people are getting the impression and tweeting to the

00:03:45   The to that effect that they think this tipster was either right or wrong

00:03:50   and

00:03:52   That's because we didn't really nail down success criteria if we had like a bingo card or a checkbox

00:03:56   Like I think Casey you tweeted a little checkmark of like things that we would check off as the tipster was right or wrong

00:04:01   Yeah

00:04:03   But as it turns out the tipster himself or herself

00:04:07   yourself gave some--

00:04:09   their own analysis of the success of their things.

00:04:16   Now, when we were talking about the hub,

00:04:19   and people pointed me to the link for that AV adapter thing--

00:04:23   what is it, HDMI video output using USB-C, DVI, digital AV,

00:04:28   multi-port adapter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:04:30   Right.

00:04:30   There's two of them, actually.

00:04:31   Yeah.

00:04:32   That is not what the Tipster was talking about.

00:04:34   The Tipster explicitly said, that's

00:04:36   not what I was talking about.

00:04:37   So if you think the Tipster was right

00:04:38   because you saw that adapter,

00:04:40   the Tipster him or herself says,

00:04:42   nope, that's not it, right?

00:04:44   The Force Touch thing was in the keynote

00:04:48   with those exact words,

00:04:49   the trackpad, the Force Touch trackpad.

00:04:51   So you gotta give that one, right?

00:04:53   So it's like at least, there was only two predictions,

00:04:55   one Force Touch, two this hub thing.

00:04:58   - Right, and the Force Touch thing,

00:05:00   I don't wanna minimize that.

00:05:01   That was pretty significant.

00:05:03   That, from what everybody's saying,

00:05:05   Yeah, I mean, like, nobody guessed the new key switches.

00:05:08   Like nobody, Mark Erman didn't say anything

00:05:10   about new key switches.

00:05:11   He did mention a newer layout,

00:05:12   but he also said the whole thing would be narrower,

00:05:14   and I think it's not.

00:05:15   We have to double check on that,

00:05:16   but I think it's actually,

00:05:17   I think it's the same width total,

00:05:19   or at least it's very close.

00:05:20   Just the keys themselves have like less padding

00:05:23   between them, so the keys themselves have gotten larger,

00:05:26   but I think the overall width of the keyboard

00:05:27   is about the same.

00:05:28   But nobody said anything about the new key switch type,

00:05:31   the very low travel of the keys,

00:05:33   which will be controversial,

00:05:35   and but the Force Touch trackpad,

00:05:38   I think that's significant.

00:05:40   I think this tipster has proven himself

00:05:42   to be somebody in the know.

00:05:44   Even if the second hub never comes out,

00:05:47   I think he or she has proven themselves

00:05:50   to be well informed.

00:05:53   - I don't know about that,

00:05:54   because the Force Touch was super guessable.

00:05:56   I would be impressed by Force Touch

00:05:59   if the phrase Force Touch had never appeared

00:06:01   in a previous Apple keynote, you know what I mean?

00:06:03   But because they use "For Such" to describe the thing on the watch,

00:06:06   and because the Germin rumor said that the trackpad wasn't going to move but would be pressure sensitive,

00:06:11   you can put that together without any actual knowledge. You know what I'm saying?

00:06:14   Yeah, that's a fair point.

00:06:16   Like, I mean, you still have to be lucky. You still have to, you know...

00:06:19   That's still... That was correct. Like, those things matched up, I'm not saying...

00:06:23   But it's the type of thing that was guessable with not too much, you know...

00:06:28   If you had to come up with a rumor that was plausible, you could have staked your reputation on that

00:06:32   and say, "Well, I feel pretty good about it.

00:06:35   They'll probably use the same term if they don't. Oh, well."

00:06:38   And the second thing about the hub that wasn't announced,

00:06:42   the idea that there's going to --

00:06:44   if the Germin removers were right, which they were,

00:06:47   and this thing's just going to have one port on it,

00:06:48   the idea that there will be a whole bunch

00:06:50   of different adapters that you can plug into that,

00:06:52   some of which will have multiple USB ports,

00:06:54   kind of like hub, is also kind of a gimme,

00:06:56   but Apple didn't announce that.

00:06:58   And as we discussed, it's very rare

00:07:00   that anyone who's going to leak knows when products are going to be announced.

00:07:08   So it doesn't mean this product doesn't exist, but it does mean that this product was not

00:07:12   announced at that keynote, and that was specifically this tipster's prediction.

00:07:18   So I guess I'm gonna give like a...

00:07:21   I'm gonna give a less than 50% grade, because it's like two predictions, one came true,

00:07:25   but the one that came true was guessable, and the one that didn't was the quote-unquote

00:07:29   most interesting one.

00:07:30   We'll just put this in the back burner for now

00:07:33   and see if that however comes out,

00:07:34   but it just goes to show, even when you get boring rumors,

00:07:37   you can't count on them being right.

00:07:39   - Yeah, I would give a little bit better grade.

00:07:41   I would say more like, you know, 67%.

00:07:44   'Cause I don't wanna deal with competing numbers.

00:07:46   (laughing)

00:07:47   - You know, what was interesting to me

00:07:49   about the follow-up email we got from this tipster

00:07:52   was that this individual seemed utterly convinced

00:07:55   that it was a thing because it was something

00:07:57   that they claim to have seen at work. And I'm, maybe they've worked on it, maybe they haven't.

00:08:04   But you know, it's something that they're so confident in existing that they said,

00:08:08   it's going to happen. It's just a matter of when and those are my words, but that was kind of the

00:08:12   message we got. And so I thought that was interesting. And it's kind of, granted, if,

00:08:18   if you were fabricating all this and wanted to string us along, that's exactly what you would

00:08:22   say. However, I thought it was interesting. And the way they talked about things, I'm not going

00:08:27   I'm not gonna read this verbatim,

00:08:28   but the way they talked about things,

00:08:30   it certainly sounded like,

00:08:31   it sounded to me like it was genuine,

00:08:34   but how can you really tell?

00:08:35   It's an email.

00:08:36   So I'm curious to see what happens

00:08:38   over the next six months or so

00:08:40   to see if maybe this hub thing is the real deal or not.

00:08:43   - I think even if this tipster is 100% authentic,

00:08:46   I think they don't understand how products get released.

00:08:50   Like say we 100% believe them,

00:08:52   and they've seen this,

00:08:54   tons of people inside Apple have it,

00:08:56   it's all over the place.

00:08:56   until the day they ship it, at any point,

00:08:58   Apple could say, you know what, now,

00:09:00   we're not gonna do this one, right?

00:09:01   And so how can you say, you know,

00:09:04   this definitely will be shipping.

00:09:05   You don't know it will be shipping

00:09:06   unless you're the one who makes the decision

00:09:08   for it to ship, right?

00:09:10   Like, even if everyone inside Apple has this hub

00:09:12   and has been testing it for months and months,

00:09:14   does not mean it's ever going to ship, right?

00:09:16   So that, I feel like, you know,

00:09:19   if you have this information, you shouldn't,

00:09:22   like, how can you so confidently assert,

00:09:24   unless you're trying to snow somebody,

00:09:25   that it's definitely gonna ship, it's gonna be a thing.

00:09:28   Until something ships, it's not gonna ship.

00:09:30   I mean, Apple can put it up on their website

00:09:33   and tell us that Snow Leopard's gonna have ZFS support,

00:09:35   but until it ships, it hasn't shipped, right?

00:09:38   - That's true, I don't know.

00:09:39   - How funny is the adapter that did ship?

00:09:43   - Oh, I mean, $80 makes me stop laughing real fast.

00:09:47   - That makes me laugh more, 'cause it's so audacious.

00:09:50   I mean, this is amazing.

00:09:53   - Yeah, so I think this is, I mean,

00:09:55   we don't wanna spend too much time on tips and tipsters,

00:09:57   but this was our experiment with tips.

00:09:59   I would call it a bust.

00:10:00   It was a boring tip that didn't come 100% true.

00:10:03   We left in a situation where we're like,

00:10:04   well, they might know something, they might not.

00:10:07   Tips are boring.

00:10:08   We probably won't do this again, oh well.

00:10:11   - Oh, I like this so much more than you do.

00:10:13   So here's what I would love.

00:10:15   - All right, so please email Marco your tips.

00:10:17   - Maybe, okay, so I think there's some kind of law

00:10:20   in California against soliciting people to break NDA, so I don't want to do that.

00:10:26   However, I think it would be really funny if we got if it just became a thing that

00:10:31   we got fairly accurate tips about the most boring Apple stuff possible about

00:10:36   the packaging yeah like material with the packaging be how many USB ports the

00:10:42   next Mac Mini will have like just like the most boring like I and I'm sure

00:10:47   there's far more boring stuff than that. Like, you know, what if the airport express gets

00:10:51   gigabit? Like, there's like all sorts of like stupid little things. I would love it if we

00:10:56   became like the place where people sent those tips to our show. You know, you can send Mark

00:11:02   Germin all like the actual stuff anybody cares about. And you can send us the stuff that

00:11:06   is so boring that you might not even get fired for sending it to us because it's that boring.

00:11:11   Well, to be fair, if anyone is going to really get off on some sort of boring, god-awful,

00:11:16   ridiculous tip, it's probably the three of us.

00:11:18   - Yeah, that's a fair point.

00:11:20   (laughing)

00:11:21   - So play to your audience, Tipsters.

00:11:23   - Our first sponsor this week is Casper.

00:11:26   Casper is an online retailer of premium mattresses

00:11:29   for a fraction of the price.

00:11:31   When I've gone to buy a mattress,

00:11:32   and I've done that a few times now,

00:11:33   'cause we have a house, so we had to furnish a guest room

00:11:36   and all sorts of stuff, so I buy mattresses

00:11:38   maybe every 10 years for some reason or five years,

00:11:41   and every time, it's like a high-pressure salesman,

00:11:45   just like a car dealership. It's hilarious like how high pressure they are and kind of

00:11:50   you know wheeling and dealing and you know you always feel like you're overpaying because

00:11:53   the prices are like extremely flexible and oh well we can't discount this but we can

00:11:58   throw in a free pillow or something like there's all this like wheeling and dealing you have

00:12:01   to do to negotiate the various things and it's just a it's a crappy experience from

00:12:06   everybody's point of view and that's not even to mention the actual trying of the mattresses

00:12:09   which is you lie on this plastic covered mattress in a store for a few seconds and like okay

00:12:14   It's soft I guess.

00:12:16   You go along the next one, this is soft too I guess.

00:12:20   Do I want pillow topping?

00:12:22   Do I want it to be tall pillow topping?

00:12:25   It's so hard to know and to choose.

00:12:28   Casper you order it online.

00:12:30   And this sounds at first kind of crazy.

00:12:33   You can't try it.

00:12:34   They have a risk free trial policy.

00:12:36   You can try it in your home for up to 100 days.

00:12:40   And if you don't like it after that, that's more than 3 months.

00:12:41   If you don't like it after more than three months, you can call them and they will arrange

00:12:45   to have it picked up and give you a refund.

00:12:47   It's that easy.

00:12:48   Now, Casper mattresses, they're pretty sure you're going to like them because they provide

00:12:52   resilience, long-lasting support of comfort.

00:12:54   It's one of a kind because what they did was, you know, memory foam by itself, pure memory

00:12:59   foam is polarizing.

00:13:00   A lot of people think it's like too hot or not bouncy enough or whatever.

00:13:04   And you know, pure other foams and pure springs can also be, you know, there's like pluses

00:13:09   and minuses.

00:13:10   done. They have a hybrid approach that combines the best.

00:13:13   It combines premium latex foam with memory foam to really

00:13:17   give you the best of both worlds. So they call it just

00:13:20   the right sink, just the right bounce. So you have a lot of

00:13:23   the same benefits of pure memory foam, but without like

00:13:26   that hotness that you get from it sometimes, you know, and all

00:13:29   this stuff, this is all made in America. So I've heard from a

00:13:34   rumor mill that John Siracusa has a Casper. Is that true,

00:13:37   Yeah, I didn't get one when we had our code, so I had to wait around until we had another

00:13:41   code to buy it with, and I did.

00:13:44   And I just have one tidbit to add.

00:13:46   We all talked about the little box that it comes in and how it expands and all that cool

00:13:49   stuff.

00:13:50   The box they send it in has a label on top of it that says different sizes, like twin,

00:13:55   queen, king, whatever it is, right?

00:13:58   And like with checkboxes, and you know, we got a small one, so whatever it was, it was

00:14:02   twin, twin was checked off, right?

00:14:04   My question is, if you get a king size one, does it come in that same box and they just

00:14:09   check off king?

00:14:11   Because that would be even cooler.

00:14:12   Because mine, it's a twin size bed, and it's a small box, you think, wow, I can't imagine

00:14:15   twin size bed in there.

00:14:16   And you open it up, you follow the instructions, they give you like a little letter opener

00:14:19   tool to open the thing, and it expands and it's really cool.

00:14:22   But all I can think about is how much cooler it would be is if in that same box they sent

00:14:25   you a king size one, and how much that would expand, and how much that would be compressed.

00:14:30   Anyway, it's exciting, unfortunately.

00:14:32   You only get to do it once, and then it's inflated.

00:14:34   And then it just becomes a really nice bed. And I was impressed. It's really nice. I don't like,

00:14:37   I don't typically like memory foam mattresses because I feel like they, they like grip me too

00:14:42   much. This one does not do that. So if you've tried pure memory foam mattresses and don't like them,

00:14:46   this mattress is not like that. It's a nice kind of like hybrid between.

00:14:49   Yep, I agree. So all this is available at shockingly reasonable prices. So normally,

00:14:55   you know, a good mattress, usually if you want something high quality, it's going to last like

00:14:59   a decade or more and be good the whole time. You're usually paying like 1500, 2000 bucks for

00:15:04   something like that Casper mattresses cost between five

00:15:07   hundred dollars for a twin all the way up to nine fifty for a

00:15:11   king now come on I mean that's ridiculously cheap nine fifty

00:15:14   for a premium quality king size mattress and that it's delivered

00:15:18   to your house I mean that's crazy talk they also if you go

00:15:21   to casper dot com slash ATP and use code ATP at checkout you

00:15:26   also get fifty bucks off so that way you can have a king for

00:15:28   nine hundred you can have a queen for eight hundred full

00:15:32   size for $700. I mean, these are incredibly good prices for high quality mattresses. So

00:15:37   check it out. Casper.com/ATP. Thanks a lot once again to Casper. You really should check

00:15:43   these out. It's an incredible deal. Free trial for 100 days, made in America. Just the right

00:15:47   sync, just the right bounce. Thanks a lot to Casper.

00:15:50   So we should talk about the Apple event for Monday. And I don't know how you guys want

00:15:55   to go through this. I don't know if you want to do it in chronological order, which would

00:15:59   require one of us remembering what the order of the events were.

00:16:02   Who cares? New MacBook.

00:16:04   Alright, new MacBook. So, what do we think?

00:16:07   John, you're the least likely one of us to buy one.

00:16:09   [laughter]

00:16:11   I don't know if I'm the least likely. Casey's probably the least likely.

00:16:14   Why do you say that?

00:16:15   You've got the oldest Mac, and the one most in need of replacement, right?

00:16:19   I love that we're arguing about this.

00:16:21   Well, I probably do need to replace my personal Mac,

00:16:25   and I know that I'm getting a new work Mac because it's been three years now,

00:16:28   and that's apparently the cycle we're on.

00:16:31   But no, I don't suspect that I'm going to be buying a new MacBook.

00:16:37   Sitting here now today, I use USB often enough that I would want to have at least one if

00:16:46   not a couple of ports.

00:16:48   That being said, I only ever really use one USB port at a time.

00:16:53   So there's really no reason why I couldn't get one of these absurd $80 adapters or the

00:16:57   phantom hub that doesn't exist that will exist that may not exist that our tipster talked

00:17:01   about which would provide you with two USB right exactly in theory that would be enough

00:17:07   but I don't know I just I think if nothing else I'd want something with a little more

00:17:14   horsepower I know a lot of people have been lamenting that apparently the the performance

00:17:19   characteristics are roughly on par with a 2012 MacBook Air which what with it being

00:17:24   2015, that's a little bit on the old side. And as I'm one to buy computers every three to four years,

00:17:32   usually, I would want a computer that's basically more than I would ever need today,

00:17:38   so that in three or four years, it's exactly what I need.

00:17:43   **Matt Stauffer** Yeah, that's what I was saying, that I'm not the least likely to get one. You

00:17:46   probably are. Whereas I have an old MacBook Air and I can replace it with this new one. And if it

00:17:51   If it only just eliminated the scream of the fan as my kids play Minecraft incessantly

00:17:55   on it, it would be an upgrade.

00:17:57   It does.

00:17:58   It has no fan.

00:17:59   Exactly.

00:18:00   But anyway, the thing about this laptop, first of all, the Germin rumor was 100% right.

00:18:05   This is what they mocked up.

00:18:06   I don't think they got anything wrong.

00:18:08   Trackpad doesn't move.

00:18:09   It's got one port on the other side of his headphones.

00:18:11   The keyboard was laid out just like they said it was.

00:18:13   It's retina, like 100% on the nose.

00:18:15   And I have to think that it would have been a cooler keynote if we didn't know all that.

00:18:20   Don't you think it would have been more exciting?

00:18:22   It's the same thing.

00:18:23   Like, you know, we got spoiled.

00:18:24   And it's not like Star Wars where

00:18:25   you have a fighting chance.

00:18:26   I've been trying to avoid Star Wars Episode VII spoilers.

00:18:29   And just by not going to movie sites,

00:18:30   and like, you can pretty much do that.

00:18:32   But--

00:18:32   I was going to say, I've had zero spoilers from Star Wars

00:18:35   because I don't care.

00:18:36   Right, but I mean, I get--

00:18:37   if I had--

00:18:38   I don't think it would have been possible for me to avoid this.

00:18:41   You know?

00:18:42   It's just tweeted at me too much.

00:18:44   Like, you know, I don't mind.

00:18:46   I wasn't trying to avoid it.

00:18:46   I went to it.

00:18:47   But it does take away from the event

00:18:49   and the glamour of the event.

00:18:51   But this is exactly what they said it was going to be.

00:18:53   We talked about this at length, about if it

00:18:55   does come with one port, why would it only have one port?

00:18:59   What do I get with one port that I don't get with two ports?

00:19:02   And we speculated a lot about it.

00:19:04   As it turns out, Apple felt no reason

00:19:07   to try to justify the decision to have one port.

00:19:10   They barely even emphasized the fact that it has one port.

00:19:13   They talked all about the attributes of the port,

00:19:15   which we talked about as well.

00:19:16   you know, the USB 3 and with the Type-C connector that can be reversible, which we all like,

00:19:21   and you can put display over it. You know, we talked about all this stuff before, that was all there,

00:19:25   but they did not even... they didn't even... they weren't defensive at all about the fact that there was one of them.

00:19:30   They didn't even emphasize it that there was one of them. Like, if you weren't paying attention,

00:19:34   you would just assume... might assume there was one on the other side.

00:19:36   They didn't emphasize the fact that they took away MagSafe. They didn't say anything about,

00:19:42   you know magsafe was great but it's just too big to fit on the like they didn't

00:19:45   they didn't give a reason or an explanation or talk about magsafe at all

00:19:49   like it was just this is the thing they didn't even say how the thing would be

00:19:54   charged obviously through the one port but they didn't they didn't emphasize

00:19:57   that they didn't they didn't show it being plugged in they didn't show the

00:20:01   power adapter as far as i can recall they certainly didn't they didn't show

00:20:05   you plugging that adapter into it like as far as apple's presentation and

00:20:09   marketing materials are concerned, this is a disembodied notebook that never needs to

00:20:13   be connected to anything.

00:20:14   We all know it plugs into charge, but all the things that we talked about, if this product

00:20:19   had not leaked and we hadn't talked about it amongst ourselves for a long time, I think

00:20:25   we would have watched an introvert video and said, "Wait a second, how do you power it?"

00:20:30   Because they did not emphasize the things that are different about this notebook in

00:20:35   terms of how it's powered, how many ports it has or anything like that.

00:20:38   All they did was talk about the benefits of USB Type-C with no discussion of the drawbacks,

00:20:43   which I thought was interesting because in the jobs era, very frequently they felt the

00:20:47   need to be preemptively defensive about large changes.

00:20:53   Even when they took away the floppy drive or anything, there'd be some kind of statement

00:20:56   about you think you need it but you don't, trust us, none of that here.

00:20:59   It was just like, this is what it is.

00:21:02   It's the new MacBook.

00:21:03   Yeah, I have a couple more thoughts when you guys asked you know what I buy one of these the chat room got particularly

00:21:10   Grumbly because they said oh this isn't the computer for me. Well. Yes, I know that but

00:21:15   The whole point of this little thought exercise was would I buy one or would it serve my needs just yes or no

00:21:22   And I don't think the answer. I think the answer is no additionally

00:21:25   You know people in the chat are saying well CPU performance isn't the issue I wouldn't be so sure

00:21:31   Obviously if you were if you were compiling large projects, then that could be CPU bound

00:21:36   Although not necessarily but either way especially for work specifically less so for home, but for work

00:21:41   when you're living in a VM all day any

00:21:45   extra bit of CPU power certainly helpful and

00:21:48   Furthermore probably the biggest issue I have with this machine is that 8 gigs of RAM?

00:21:53   I don't think is sufficient for the sorts of things that I do on a regular basis, especially at work

00:21:59   especially running a Windows VM all the time.

00:22:01   And there's no way to get more

00:22:03   because there's no build to order option.

00:22:05   So no matter how you slice it,

00:22:06   I don't really think this is for me.

00:22:07   Additionally, if you've ever transcoded in Handbrake,

00:22:11   you're obviously going to want something

00:22:13   that has a little bit more CPU performance

00:22:14   than a 2012 MacBook Air.

00:22:16   Not that I do that every day,

00:22:17   but I do it often enough that I'm going to want

00:22:20   to have more CPU performance.

00:22:21   Do I need it?

00:22:22   Maybe not, but I want to.

00:22:24   - Right, I mean, I think you can look at this machine

00:22:26   And very obviously, you can know,

00:22:30   if you're listening to this show,

00:22:32   the chances are this is not gonna be your main machine.

00:22:35   Like anyone listening to this show,

00:22:36   if you're enough into computers,

00:22:38   if there's a good chance a lot of our listeners

00:22:41   are developers, anyone listening to this show,

00:22:44   this is probably not your main machine, period.

00:22:46   Like that's it.

00:22:47   This machine is for a lot of the same reasons

00:22:51   people bought 11 inch MacBook Air so far.

00:22:53   And the 11 inch MacBook Air was actually,

00:22:55   in some ways more capable because it had like, you know,

00:22:58   full thunderbolt expansion and everything and more,

00:23:00   you know, more ports.

00:23:01   But for the most part, it had similar issues

00:23:03   and similar limitations.

00:23:05   People buy 11 inch air mostly because either they're

00:23:09   carrying it a lot every day, like on their shoulder

00:23:11   or on their back and they really need like the smallest

00:23:13   weight possible and/or they fly a lot,

00:23:16   especially if they're flying coach,

00:23:18   where the tray tables are so small

00:23:19   and if the person ahead of you like leans back an inch,

00:23:23   which everybody sitting in front of me always does the

00:23:26   second the plane is like the second the wheels are off the

00:23:28   ground boom the seats in your face and if that's the case and

00:23:32   if you want to work on a plane pretty much the only laptop you

00:23:35   can really get is the elevenings like the thirteens

00:23:37   even have trouble the fifteens. I know because I

00:23:40   usually have a fifteen. There's pretty much no hope of using a

00:23:43   fifteen on a on a coach tray table. So if you are if you're

00:23:49   flying a lot or if if the weight if the carry weight is

00:23:52   extremely important to you, then this is a really good machine as a travel machine or

00:23:58   as a portable machine. If you're going to be doing coding work on it though, then it's

00:24:04   really probably not for you because coding, you have a number of issues. For me the biggest

00:24:11   issue is actually not the CPU speed, it's the screen space. It has a scaling mode that

00:24:17   to go up to 1440 wide simulated, which is the native res of the 15, but all the 15 goes

00:24:25   higher and I use it higher. But it has a scale that goes up to that. I don't know how useful

00:24:30   that'll be. I mean, the 15 can scale up to 1920 wide, but it's too tiny for me to use

00:24:35   comfortably. And I have 20/20 vision so far. I mean, not for long probably, but right now

00:24:40   I still have good vision and I can't use it at that size.

00:24:43   People asked about that in Twitter. Someone asked, "Do you think you could do development

00:24:47   And what I said is, yeah, probably.

00:24:51   The answer to the question wasn't whether Marco

00:24:53   could do development on it.

00:24:54   Like, can one do development on this?

00:24:56   And I think that the CPU, the RAM, the screen space,

00:25:00   everything about it is sufficient to develop

00:25:04   an iOS or a Mac app.

00:25:06   If you don't know any better, and if you don't know

00:25:08   how much faster it is on a faster Mac, it's fine.

00:25:11   Like, it will get the job done.

00:25:12   You'll wait longer for compiles.

00:25:14   Your Windows will be more compressed.

00:25:16   You won't be able to have the kind of layouts

00:25:18   that you may be accustomed to, but you will be able to do it.

00:25:21   This is as opposed to like, is this a good machine

00:25:24   for doing web development where you

00:25:26   have to have five Windows VMs running all the time?

00:25:28   No, it is not.

00:25:30   Because that is like-- that's a capability thing.

00:25:33   It's just a no-go.

00:25:34   And by the way, someone--

00:25:35   JohnL2112-- Rushfan, I guess-- in the chat

00:25:40   says, "SSD swap makes RAM limits less important."

00:25:43   I'm sure that there are people at Apple that think that,

00:25:45   but they are not thinking clearly or are not engineers.

00:25:48   Because yes, technically it makes it less important

00:25:53   than it was, but it is still super duper important.

00:25:56   The difference in speed between disk and SSD is huge.

00:26:00   The difference in speed between RAM and SSD

00:26:03   also still remains huge.

00:26:06   So having only 8 gigs of RAM, don't assume,

00:26:09   well, it's 8 gigs of RAM, but it's all SSD,

00:26:12   and the SSDs are really fast, so it's not so bad.

00:26:16   You cannot run five Windows 7 VMs for different versions

00:26:21   of IE all at the same time in this and not suffer.

00:26:24   - Yeah. - Right?

00:26:24   It's just not going to happen for you, right?

00:26:27   So I think you can do iOS development.

00:26:29   You can't do anything that really, really, really needs

00:26:32   more than eight gigs.

00:26:33   I just picked VMs 'cause that's something

00:26:34   from my work life where I'm constantly running

00:26:36   tons of VMs and no matter how small you make 'em,

00:26:39   they can tend to be very big.

00:26:42   and disk space similar.

00:26:43   Like, you try to keep the VM small,

00:26:45   but as they proliferate, they start to fill up your disk

00:26:48   and you realize you're spending half your disk

00:26:49   on stupid Windows VMs.

00:26:51   And if you put them on external disks,

00:26:52   where are you gonna plug the external disk in?

00:26:53   Now you gotta dongle, blah, blah, blah.

00:26:55   So it's not a great machine for development,

00:26:58   but you can get it done.

00:26:59   And I really think that there are a lot of people who,

00:27:02   like I bet a lot of the most amazing apps

00:27:05   that we all use were developed,

00:27:07   especially if it's like a developer's first app,

00:27:08   were developed on Macs that we would all consider

00:27:10   like insufficient to do development.

00:27:12   Oh, I need a really fancy fast computer.

00:27:14   It's like, yeah, you really want

00:27:16   a really fancy fast computer,

00:27:17   but sometimes you just gotta make do with what you have

00:27:20   and you can actually get it done.

00:27:21   You will just wait longer for compiles

00:27:23   and go make yourself coffee, you know?

00:27:24   - Right, and also, I mean, you know,

00:27:26   keep in mind that things do move forward.

00:27:28   Like Xcode now running on hardware from seven years ago

00:27:33   is not gonna be as good as Xcode seven years ago

00:27:35   was running on that hardware.

00:27:36   You know, like Xcode has gotten bigger

00:27:38   and the compiler has gotten bigger if you use any Swift.

00:27:42   Swift is much slower to compile than Objective-C so far.

00:27:45   And I don't know if they fixed that entirely

00:27:47   with the incremental compilation.

00:27:48   Anyway, it at least was.

00:27:50   The simulators are larger.

00:27:52   Like they need more screen space

00:27:54   to show an accurate simulator

00:27:56   because the iOS devices have gotten larger.

00:27:58   And now you have possibly the watch simulator

00:28:02   next to the iOS simulator.

00:28:04   And so you have all these windows that have to be open.

00:28:07   God help you if you want a documentation window also.

00:28:09   I mean, you have the organizer,

00:28:11   and you're submitting things to iTunes Connect.

00:28:13   I mean, there's a lot of screen space needs

00:28:17   when you're doing modern iOS development,

00:28:19   and they keep increasing as the hardware gets bigger,

00:28:22   and the simulators get bigger,

00:28:23   and you have more things you need to do.

00:28:25   So, again, you're right, Jon.

00:28:27   If you want to do development,

00:28:28   whenever you say, oh, well, this kind of computer

00:28:32   is not suitable for development,

00:28:33   you'll instantly get tons of replies from people saying,

00:28:35   I have one of those and I develop on it just fine.

00:28:38   Yes, you can do it, but it's all,

00:28:42   you can do it, but it's a lot nicer

00:28:44   if you have more screen space, more RAM, and a faster CPU.

00:28:48   - And it's best not to know how much faster things are

00:28:50   on a faster computer, because once you know,

00:28:53   and then you go back to the other one,

00:28:54   you're like, oh, I can't do this.

00:28:56   Whereas if you just don't know,

00:28:57   I know a lot of people back in the day,

00:28:59   they got their very first Mac,

00:29:00   and whatever they were doing was it,

00:29:02   they were just super happy, 'cause it's like,

00:29:03   wow, I really like it, it's shiny,

00:29:05   It's neat, it can do something,

00:29:06   I can do something with it I couldn't do before.

00:29:09   And they have no other Mac to compare it to speed wise.

00:29:12   Like they're doing an all new thing.

00:29:13   Like how do they compare how long it takes

00:29:15   to make a DVD and iDVD if they've never made a DVD before.

00:29:18   And little do they know that that same task

00:29:21   of like making the DVD at the end

00:29:23   could be like five X faster on a big fancy Mac.

00:29:26   It's like, oh, you can't use that to make DVDs.

00:29:27   They don't know, they can't let,

00:29:29   as far as they're concerned,

00:29:30   this is just how long it takes.

00:29:31   So if you've never built an iOS app

00:29:33   and you click build and run

00:29:35   and it takes a certain amount of time,

00:29:36   you're just like, I guess that's the amount of time it takes

00:29:38   and honestly, it probably takes way longer

00:29:40   than you would think it would ever take on any computer.

00:29:41   'Cause if you've never compiled anything before,

00:29:44   like wow, I guess compiling takes a long time.

00:29:46   But whatever time your first Mac takes,

00:29:48   you're like, all right.

00:29:49   And this is like a 2012 MacBook Air,

00:29:53   which is not particularly fast to begin with,

00:29:55   but just people just deal with it.

00:29:57   - Right, I mean, like I've mentioned before,

00:30:00   I had one of the very first generation

00:30:02   base model MacBook Airs in 2008.

00:30:04   and that was the 1.6 gigahertz really, really slow processor

00:30:08   that would overheat for a lot of people.

00:30:10   I had that.

00:30:11   I developed Instapaper partly on that.

00:30:13   When I was on the train going to and from Tumblr,

00:30:15   I would be working on Instapaper in Xcode

00:30:17   on that MacBook Air, the first gen that everybody hated.

00:30:20   I did it.

00:30:21   It sucked, but I did it, and I knew it sucked

00:30:24   'cause I was going home to the computer

00:30:26   that Jon is still using today.

00:30:28   I was going home to that awesome Mac Pro, so I knew.

00:30:31   But mainly the issue that I've always had

00:30:34   with doing development work on laptops,

00:30:35   it's always screen space first.

00:30:37   Performance is inconvenient when it's really bad,

00:30:40   like the MacBook Air, but for the most part,

00:30:43   screen space is always my limiting factor.

00:30:45   And so from that point of view, look, this machine,

00:30:48   if you're worried about screen space,

00:30:52   if you're worried about performance,

00:30:53   and if you're worried about the number of ports,

00:30:55   this is not the machine for you, period.

00:30:57   That's it.

00:30:58   You can get it if you really want it,

00:31:00   'cause it's really sexy and light, you can get it,

00:31:02   but it's not the best choice for you. I would say, you know,

00:31:05   a lot of people have not really given this a lot of a lot of

00:31:09   credit, but the the update to the thirteen inch retina MacBook

00:31:13   Pro at the same time, which is already available. People

00:31:16   already disassembled it. The update to that, I think, is is

00:31:20   really interesting as well because, you know, it is not

00:31:23   like a noteworthy computer. It is not like they don't they

00:31:26   don't replace that and everyone goes who it's so it's so great.

00:31:29   I want I want to buy one of those immediately like no one

00:31:31   on CNN is talking about the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.

00:31:34   - I was excited about it.

00:31:35   I've always thought that it's been a great machine.

00:31:36   Like, just a great compromise between, you know,

00:31:39   it's gotten so thin over the years.

00:31:41   Once the 13 started to get as thin as,

00:31:43   almost as thin as an Air, and then the fact

00:31:45   that they gave it the new track pad

00:31:46   and the screen has always been good.

00:31:47   I've always said that that's a great machine,

00:31:49   but you're right, it's not, it doesn't make headlines.

00:31:51   - Right, but it is like the middle of the line.

00:31:54   Like, to me, there's three MacBooks worth getting, really.

00:31:56   Like, these days.

00:31:57   I used to say the 13-inch Retina,

00:31:59   I mean the 13 inch Air was like the default one to get.

00:32:02   These days I'm not so sure.

00:32:04   I think I would say 13 inch Retina.

00:32:06   It would be like the default one,

00:32:08   like if you don't have any specific needs,

00:32:09   you just kind of general purpose all things,

00:32:12   okay, get 13 inch Retina.

00:32:13   - I would say the 13 inch Retina or this one,

00:32:16   depending on who's buying it.

00:32:18   - Well, maybe, okay.

00:32:19   But so this one, like, this one I think,

00:32:22   as I said, I think this one directly replaces

00:32:24   the 11 inch MacBook Air, and I think the 13 inch Retina

00:32:28   Kind of already replaced the 13 inch MacBook Air and then the 15 inch retina

00:32:32   You know, that's I think those are the three laptops that are worth getting this new one for those super portable

00:32:37   13 inch retina for normal 15 inch retina for Pro

00:32:40   That's like if you have if you need the the pro things which is the more screen space the more horsepower then

00:32:46   You know the some different ports, but for the most part you're talking about screen space and horsepower

00:32:49   I did say last time I was thinking about buying one of these things now. I'm not so what changed you I started thinking about

00:32:57   when I actually use my laptop. And what I had said last time was I find that I'm not frequently

00:33:05   getting coding work done every year or whenever I go on trips. I'm not getting coding work done

00:33:11   as much as I want to and therefore I can go with a smaller screen space. I started thinking,

00:33:16   you know, the times I do go on trips where I do need to get significant work done,

00:33:21   like one of the biggest ones is WWDC every year, where I often need to do coding work

00:33:27   for labs and stuff, or installing new betas and testing stuff. And in the last few years,

00:33:33   I've edited this show. And so I have like podcast editing, which I love having tons

00:33:38   of screen space for, because Logic is a massive screen space hog. So I have podcast editing,

00:33:42   and I have Xcode on this one trip I take every year. And I don't take that many trips. And

00:33:48   This is one where if I had the small screen,

00:33:51   I could do those things on it,

00:33:53   but I would really regret not having the 15

00:33:56   during those times.

00:33:58   I'm going to wait until Broadwell come to the 15 inch

00:34:01   and probably just buy one of those

00:34:02   because it would kill me if I spent those trips

00:34:07   in the next few years using this tiny little screen

00:34:09   and just kicking myself saying,

00:34:10   "Man, I wish I would've just gotten the 15

00:34:12   "because when I'm doing these few important things,

00:34:15   "I really, really need it."

00:34:17   What I would like to know is who is this computer for?

00:34:20   What is the target audience for this computer and I'm thinking about it, and I'm thinking well, why would I buy?

00:34:27   This who would I buy it for and why would I buy it?

00:34:31   the first person that comes to mind of course is Erin and I

00:34:35   Got her a MacBook Air or for her birthday last year, so

00:34:43   Then I thought to myself, okay. Well, what would stop her from using this would the CPU performance?

00:34:48   Absolutely not would the disk space absolutely not she stores nothing on her computer

00:34:52   but what she does have

00:34:55   Hanging off of her MacBook Air is a couple of Fitbit adapters one to charge with and one that is like the general communication

00:35:03   little

00:35:05   Nubbin thing that's a technical term

00:35:07   and obviously

00:35:10   She could charge the Fitbit by way of say an iPhone charger or something like that

00:35:15   But if she wanted the Fitbit to communicate with her computer or not with her phone, which I believe is an option as well

00:35:22   I don't have a Fitbit. So I'm talking a little bit out of my comfort zone

00:35:25   She would still need at least one

00:35:28   traditional

00:35:30   USB port and

00:35:32   That would require one of these ridiculous $80

00:35:35   $80 dongles and

00:35:39   That's kind of unfortunate, but if it wasn't for her Fitbit say hypothetically if she had an Apple watch

00:35:45   She would pretty much never plug in any

00:35:48   USB device for any reason whatsoever

00:35:52   Now the other obvious thought I had was well, what about students and people in the chat are saying that as well

00:35:57   well, that makes sense too and granted I haven't been student in over a decade but

00:36:04   Last time I was anywhere near students USB drives

00:36:08   You know thumb drives whatever you would like to call them. We're a big thing and people were using them a lot now

00:36:14   That doesn't mean that'll continue tomorrow. It doesn't mean that it'll be that way forever, but today

00:36:20   Not being able to use a thumb drive without a freaking $80 adapter. That's

00:36:25   kind of crummy, so

00:36:28   You know who is this for is it for these quote-unquote business people at my job?

00:36:33   You know the project managers and and the other business consultants, maybe

00:36:37   but again, I mean thumb drives are a thing and

00:36:40   I'm I don't see that going away soon. So who is this machine really for? Well again, I think it's

00:36:49   People who fly a lot in coach, you know or or who fly a lot anywhere

00:36:53   But it's it's it's mostly valuable compared to the other laptops in coach

00:36:56   So people who fly a lot in coach and also if you're carrying it around so like if you're the kind of person who?

00:37:02   Walks around your office all day going in and out of meetings in and out of conference rooms

00:37:07   And you're constantly carrying a laptop with you during that time to take notes on or check email or whatever people do in meetings

00:37:12   I really have no idea

00:37:14   It's like that is what this is for. This is not for

00:37:18   Sitting on a desk being plugged in all day

00:37:21   I mean you can even tell like I think one of the one of the reasons why the lack of

00:37:25   Magsafe is less of a problem or that Apple maybe thought it was worth or it was okay to get rid of it

00:37:31   is because this really obviously isn't made to be used at a desk all day.

00:37:36   It doesn't have the connectivity or the horsepower or the screen space really to do that very well.

00:37:40   I think this is really, this is made to be used out and about while traveling, walking around, whatever the case may be.

00:37:47   And so this to me, it's like,

00:37:50   the reason why it charges through a USB port and not something that can be torn off is because iPads and iPhones charge that way

00:37:58   and this is meant to be used the same way. This is meant to be like you charge it up

00:38:03   at night, you plug it in when you're done at the end of the day, and when you're using

00:38:09   it, you're moving around somewhere. You're picking it up off a table, you're in an airplane,

00:38:13   whatever. It's not plugged in, just like an iPad. Whether that's going to pan out to be

00:38:18   useful that way, whether the battery life is going to be that good, like when a CPU

00:38:23   is very underpowered for the task you're asking it to do, it's going to be hitting 100% a

00:38:28   and it's gonna stay at 100% for longer

00:38:30   as it's going through those tasks.

00:38:31   And so the battery life might end up being really bad

00:38:34   if you're hitting it very hard at all.

00:38:36   We'll see if that's the case with this.

00:38:38   Modern chips are pretty good about that kind of stuff,

00:38:40   so it might be less of an issue.

00:38:42   But for the most part, I think that's probably

00:38:44   what Apple was at least thinking,

00:38:45   and it's probably what most usage will bear out.

00:38:47   If you're using this just like for notes

00:38:48   and web and email and stuff,

00:38:50   you're not gonna really be hitting anything that hard,

00:38:52   especially if you don't install Flash.

00:38:54   I think it's meant to be used like an iPad,

00:38:57   which is away from its cable all day, plugged in at night.

00:39:01   And time will tell whether that ends up being realistic.

00:39:04   - Yeah, you know, I think you're probably right.

00:39:05   And more real-time follow-up,

00:39:07   I'm getting from Robert Thomas on Twitter.

00:39:10   I've been a university student for six years.

00:39:12   I think the last time he used a thumb drive

00:39:13   was four years ago, so guess what, I'm old.

00:39:16   And who was it in the chat?

00:39:18   Somebody in the chat, I've lost your name, I apologize.

00:39:20   Dave Wood pointed out that there is a straight USB,

00:39:23   traditional USB adapter for only $20.

00:39:26   - Yeah, but then you can't power it though.

00:39:28   - That's true, but as you just said,

00:39:30   it does theoretically have all day power.

00:39:32   So maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here

00:39:36   and it's certainly possible, but I don't know, it's just--

00:39:39   - Well, thumb drives are gonna come

00:39:41   with Type-C connectors soon enough

00:39:44   'cause Type-C will rapidly replace the old USB,

00:39:46   I think, on basically everything.

00:39:48   - Yeah, in the same way HDMI is replacing VGA.

00:39:50   - I would say mini display board,

00:39:53   I mean, like on all the Macs, you know what I mean?

00:39:54   And anyway.

00:39:55   you can't have on this.

00:39:57   - So I wanna talk about the limitations of this device

00:39:59   and by talking about the limitations,

00:40:01   I think we'll get to the heart of who this machine is for.

00:40:06   And I'm gonna try to talk about the limitations

00:40:10   and it's usually, you shouldn't speak in a defensive way

00:40:14   about things I'm going to try to preempt the tweets

00:40:16   that I know are already being typed about this thing

00:40:20   based on past comments, because I keep getting people

00:40:22   trying to explain to me why this thing has one port

00:40:24   I already said that in the keynote, Apple did not feel the need to talk about why this

00:40:28   thing only has one port at all.

00:40:30   No justification for it.

00:40:34   The key sort of preemptive defensive point I want to get to is that I'm okay with this

00:40:41   thing only having USB type C. I expect the things to only have USB type C, certainly

00:40:46   like the errors or anything error-sized, right?

00:40:49   I'm okay with everything about the machine getting rid of MagSafe, getting rid of all

00:40:54   the other ports, not having dedicated video out, like, because this is the super thin

00:40:58   skinny machine.

00:40:59   The promise of USB-C is you don't have to have 50 different ports.

00:41:02   Like, it is better to just have one type of port than to have a million different ports.

00:41:07   I'm okay with everything about this, except I want—the only point was I wanted an explanation

00:41:13   of what do I get with one that I don't get with two.

00:41:15   A lot of people are saying there's not room for two in here.

00:41:18   Well, it's not as if the case is imposed on them by another manufacturer.

00:41:21   They choose the size of the case.

00:41:23   They can make any dimension of this one or two or three millimeters wider to make room

00:41:27   for another one.

00:41:28   Even within the existing case, it's possible that they could have wedged another one in

00:41:32   the other side and moved the headphone port or whatever, but even if they couldn't, they

00:41:35   make the case.

00:41:36   They can decide whether there should be two.

00:41:39   Also doesn't mean that there isn't a reason.

00:41:41   There isn't some advantage you get with one.

00:41:43   People have still suggested power things, that maybe powering two ports would cause

00:41:49   a problem.

00:41:50   Maybe the circuitry to handle two ports, like you'd want to be able to charge from both

00:41:53   ports, right? Maybe the circuit should be able to handle that, it makes things too big.

00:41:56   If you look at the inside, you look at how much they shrunk down the motherboard, there's

00:41:59   not a lot of room in there, right? Again, Apple chooses the size of these things, so

00:42:03   it's not, you know, if Apple decided they wanted to have two USB Type-C ports, they

00:42:06   could have. The fact that this serves as power as well, which means that you can't use this

00:42:11   thing to sort of charge your devices, which many people who have laptops do, like they

00:42:15   sit down at their desk, they plug the thing in, they charge the devices, now you need

00:42:17   to have a dongle for it or whatever. So, my only issue with the ports on this is that

00:42:22   that no one has, Apple has not given an official explanation

00:42:26   for why there is only one and not two, right?

00:42:28   And I don't see any advantage

00:42:29   to having only one port and not two.

00:42:31   I see tons of advantages for not having any other ports.

00:42:35   Like I understand that direction.

00:42:36   I understand that eventually this thing

00:42:38   will probably have no ports,

00:42:39   except for some kind of magnetic snap

00:42:41   on inductive charging thing when we get to that point, right?

00:42:43   I understand this is forward-looking.

00:42:44   I understand all this stuff about it.

00:42:46   The people are gonna tell me, you don't understand.

00:42:47   It's just like the original MacBook Air.

00:42:48   Yes, yes, totally agree 100%.

00:42:50   The question is, why couldn't they fit another one of these?

00:42:53   'Cause they're so small, they're so tiny.

00:42:56   You could surely find someplace for another one

00:42:58   unless there's some reason that you not have one.

00:43:00   So right now I'm going with

00:43:02   that it's a philosophical statement

00:43:04   and that merely having one port

00:43:05   will look like a backwards thing in the future

00:43:08   if we just think of it as like a power type thing.

00:43:10   In fact, the thing that's gonna look the oldest in this

00:43:12   is a stupid headphone port,

00:43:13   which we don't seem to be able to get rid of

00:43:14   because that is the most like old school archaic,

00:43:17   you know, round, like soon it will be the biggest port.

00:43:20   It's already the widest port, I think.

00:43:22   I mean, like, the highest port, you know what I mean?

00:43:25   I think it's higher than USB Type-C, but it's not as wide or whatever.

00:43:29   Anyway, my complaint about it having one of these still stands, mostly because I don't

00:43:34   see what you would have lost by putting another single USB Type-C port somewhere else on the

00:43:40   machine on the other side or something.

00:43:41   So that's one limitation, we can put that one aside.

00:43:44   Second limitation, key travel.

00:43:45   Marco already talked about it, they showed it in the video, they tried to spin it as

00:43:48   a positive.

00:43:50   at this cool switch mechanism, the keys don't bounce, I like that video, I thought that

00:43:53   was good marketing, like the slow-mo with the fingers and the wobbling and everything,

00:43:57   like even if it doesn't matter, like it's just the old one looks old and busted and

00:44:00   this one looks new and shiny. But that's not a lot of travel. Apple did not feel the

00:44:05   need to emphasize the fact that there's less travel here and it might take getting some

00:44:09   use and I also feel like that's something that in the past, the past Apple might have

00:44:12   felt some need to say, there's less travel and it might feel weird at first but you get

00:44:16   used to it and actually you'll type faster on this.

00:44:19   And I've heard people say, who have typed on this at the event, that it does feel weird,

00:44:25   but they're surprised at how fast they go.

00:44:26   I think Jason Sneller, maybe it was Jason or someone else said that it was kind of like

00:44:29   a hybrid between a physical keyboard and typing on the iPad keyboard where nothing actually

00:44:33   moves.

00:44:35   I don't know if this is a good limitation or like, is it actually a positive or a negative?

00:44:42   But at the very least it's something where people are probably going to want to go to

00:44:45   to an Apple store and type on one

00:44:46   and see how you feel about it.

00:44:48   - Oh, definitely.

00:44:49   I would not pre-order one of these things

00:44:51   without typing on it.

00:44:52   - Yeah, I agree.

00:44:53   - The spacing looks okay.

00:44:54   Like Marco said, the rumor that the spacing is tighter,

00:44:57   I can't tell, but I bet if you're a super good touch typist,

00:45:01   you'll go into the Apple store and you'll be able

00:45:02   to kind of feel if like the keys feel a little bit off

00:45:04   for you or whatever.

00:45:05   But I have some confidence that this will be okay,

00:45:09   but I'm, I don't know, I'm definitely gonna go

00:45:11   into the Apple store and try it.

00:45:13   We talked about the arrow keys in the past,

00:45:16   based on the rumors, the mock-up rumors,

00:45:18   which are exactly right.

00:45:19   The left and the right arrow keys are full-size keys

00:45:21   and only the up and down are half-sized.

00:45:23   And I once again complained about

00:45:24   why can't I get full-size up, down,

00:45:26   and left and right arrow keys?

00:45:28   The answer is kind of battery-related,

00:45:31   which is another limitation I'll get to in a second.

00:45:33   But also, as I said, it's Johnny Ive,

00:45:35   does not want an asymmetrical cutout for the keyboard.

00:45:37   Like, he's big on symmetry.

00:45:39   I like the full-size left and right arrow keys.

00:45:42   That's better than nothing.

00:45:43   but I was excited by the fact,

00:45:45   if you look at this keyboard,

00:45:46   do either one of you have like a screenshot

00:45:47   of this keyboard up right now?

00:45:48   Go to Apple site and take a look at it.

00:45:50   I was excited by the fact,

00:45:53   maybe excited in an evil way,

00:45:55   that somehow somebody forced Johnny Ive

00:45:58   to put something asymmetrical on this keyboard.

00:46:01   Do you see what it is?

00:46:03   - Oh, I see what you mean.

00:46:04   The space bar is not centered.

00:46:05   - Yes, the space bar is not centered on the track pad.

00:46:07   Now, of course, keyboards have tons of things

00:46:09   that are asymmetrical for historical reasons

00:46:10   and you know, like the tab key is not the same

00:46:12   with is the slot, like the keyboards are not entirely symmetrical, but putting the space,

00:46:17   the off-center space bar right next to the exactly centered trackpad really emphasizes

00:46:22   the fact that one of these things is asymmetrical.

00:46:24   Now the outline is still a perfect rectangle, and again for battery reasons more than anything

00:46:28   else on this particular machine you can't do that, but I still long for on the 15 inch

00:46:32   full size arrow keys that are bumped, I know it would be uglier, I understand that it would

00:46:37   break up the symmetry of the design, but like the fact that like, you know, form over function,

00:46:42   it's more important for it to be aesthetically pleasing

00:46:44   than it is for me to have full-size up and down arrow keys

00:46:46   means that I will never wanna do programming

00:46:48   on a laptop keyboard.

00:46:50   Not that I really want to anyway, but no.

00:46:53   The half-size arrow keys drive me nuts.

00:46:54   I mean, maybe people don't use the arrow keys

00:46:56   as much as programmers do.

00:46:57   - I've never, I mean, you know I will nitpick anything.

00:47:00   I've never had a problem with that.

00:47:01   - I can't stand it.

00:47:02   I miss hit them, I hit them, it's just,

00:47:06   I don't like it at all.

00:47:07   And you know, if you use VI keys,

00:47:09   who needs the arrow keys?

00:47:10   If you use Emacs key bindings, who use the arrow keys?

00:47:11   but I use the arrows in combination with modifiers

00:47:16   to move around documents.

00:47:17   And so I don't like the half-size hour.

00:47:19   It's not a deal breaker.

00:47:20   It's not anything new with this thing.

00:47:22   And in fact, this machine has more excuse

00:47:23   than any other machine to not move those things down

00:47:25   because of the incredible shallowness of the enclosure.

00:47:30   If you move them down, you would be cutting into batteries,

00:47:33   precious battery space.

00:47:34   And that brings me to the final, well, not the final,

00:47:37   we'll talk about the track bed, I guess, too,

00:47:38   but the final limitation I really want to emphasize here,

00:47:41   Battery where they Phil shows up there telling us about the scallop to the terraced battery thing

00:47:46   We're like look if we tried to fit a regular battery would stop here

00:47:49   But we made it layered batteries and we can fill up more of the space and as I tweeted at the time

00:47:54   I saw that you know, what else would give you more room for battery fill?

00:47:57   Stop

00:48:00   Tapering the damn thing if you just make it perfectly it's barely tapered as it is

00:48:05   You're just torturing yourself the original one the wedge shape the wedge shape was part of the aesthetic, right?

00:48:10   The original one is like it's you know, oh, it's a wedge or whatever. It is barely a wedge

00:48:15   All you're doing is making your own life worse if you made this thing the same thickness from front to back

00:48:20   Think of how much more battery it's not like an insignificant amount of battery

00:48:23   The batteries in this are so slim and so skinny and so tiny

00:48:27   like that not tapering it could give you like 30 40 percent more battery and

00:48:33   Here's the thing about this chipset, which everybody's using there was like, you know, this PC laptops out with this

00:48:38   what is it, the Core M, whatever it is?

00:48:41   - You see that Dell, the 13 inch borderless Dell?

00:48:44   That one actually looks really nice.

00:48:45   I wish they would have done that here.

00:48:47   - And some of them have 18 hours of battery life.

00:48:50   And again, Apple taking credit.

00:48:52   We've done this without a fan.

00:48:53   I'm like, well, Intel kind of did that for you.

00:48:55   You cannot, if you did not have this chip,

00:48:57   you cannot make it fanless.

00:48:58   Yes, it is a feat to make it fanless,

00:48:59   but there are lots of PC makers using the same chipset,

00:49:02   getting insane battery lives,

00:49:03   literally 18 hour battery lives.

00:49:06   People were hoping let's see what Apple can get out of this Apple instead went for thinness

00:49:10   They're like the the MacBook Air's like they get like, you know

00:49:15   13 to 15 hours of battery life out of them easy

00:49:17   This one gets less it gets nine hours about your life with the super low-powered chipset

00:49:21   Why because it's so damn thin they don't have enough room to put any battery in they they're going backwards

00:49:27   They're going to the sort of the the iPad philosophy of like what is an acceptable level of battery?

00:49:31   We think nine hours is acceptable, right?

00:49:34   Therefore, make it as thin as you can

00:49:36   and keep nine hours, right?

00:49:37   And they did, which is fine, it's a particular trade-off,

00:49:39   but the taper, that's what kills me.

00:49:43   The taper is no longer, I think,

00:49:44   a strong aesthetic for this.

00:49:46   I don't see what advantage the taper gives for carrying it,

00:49:48   'cause I find it less comfortable to hold

00:49:51   by that skinny edge.

00:49:52   You always have to turn it with the fat edge down.

00:49:54   - It also, by the way, it makes it harder to open the lid.

00:49:57   Like, you need two hands.

00:49:58   I mean, I haven't tried one of these yet,

00:49:59   but usually with the skinny little ears,

00:50:01   you need two hands to open the lid

00:50:03   because it's so fiddly and thin on the end

00:50:05   and so light it pulls both sides up.

00:50:08   - I mean, that may be true,

00:50:09   even if you made it the same thickness all the way through.

00:50:13   In the first computer, to use this super duper

00:50:18   low power five watt chipset,

00:50:20   to have it not be at least comparable

00:50:22   to the old ears is disappointing.

00:50:24   It is a reasonable trade off

00:50:26   and I agree with making things thinner,

00:50:28   I agree with everything they're doing,

00:50:29   just that once it gets down to this thickness, I feel like the wedge shape is no longer giving

00:50:34   you the aesthetic boost needed to justify the battery that it is shaving away from you.

00:50:39   Yeah, and the chat room is pointing out that, you know, obviously batteries add weight.

00:50:44   And so if they didn't tape rate and fill the extra space with batteries, it would make

00:50:48   a heavier laptop. But I'm thinking at this size, two point one pounds, two point two.

00:50:52   Yeah. I mean, most of the way you're talking about like the enclosure and stuff at the

00:50:56   screen. I don't think the difference in battery there would be a significant weight increase.

00:51:01   - It could be less, not less weight, but it could be comparable weight because if you look at this

00:51:05   machine, I kept seeing this all on a story, it's like, "Wow, look how much battery is," because

00:51:09   they made the motherboard super small, so it's like all trackpad and battery, right?

00:51:13   This machine, I'm going to guess, this machine volume-wise has more aluminum than battery.

00:51:20   You know what I mean? Because they can't make the aluminum too thin, or you're going to have

00:51:25   of Ben Gate with the new MacBook, right?

00:51:29   Especially as it tapers, if you look at the cross section,

00:51:31   they showed that is in any way accurate.

00:51:34   There, I think there is more volume of aluminum

00:51:36   in this device, even just in the bottom part,

00:51:37   more volume of aluminum than volume of battery, maybe.

00:51:40   I don't know, that may be pushing it,

00:51:41   but the sidewalls can't be that thin.

00:51:44   They have to be certain thickness for structural integrity.

00:51:46   There is very little room left in these things for battery.

00:51:50   And that taper could be cutting your battery room in half

00:51:54   by the time you get to that tapered edge of the thing.

00:51:57   So I think it's okay for there to be a machine

00:52:00   with these compromises.

00:52:01   I would just also like to see a,

00:52:04   I mean that's why I talk about the 13 inch.

00:52:06   The 13 inch is basically the non-tapered air,

00:52:08   but like twice or three times as thick.

00:52:11   - And that's why I think it's important

00:52:12   because what we're saying basically,

00:52:15   like Apple already makes a computer that's not tapered,

00:52:18   but still really small

00:52:19   and has a full travel depth keyboard.

00:52:21   It's a 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro.

00:52:23   - Right, but it's not like, I feel like,

00:52:26   if you made a non-tapered version of the new MacBook,

00:52:29   it would still feel like a different class of machine

00:52:31   from the 13, because it would have the weak CPU.

00:52:33   It would have like, that's more limitations, right?

00:52:35   So what is the name of that chipset?

00:52:37   I keep getting it wrong.

00:52:38   Is it the Core M?

00:52:40   - I believe so.

00:52:41   - Whatever it is, the five watt integrated,

00:52:43   really small low power chipset

00:52:44   that turbos up to 2.9 gigahertz, but starts out at 1.1.

00:52:47   Like it's five watts, that's what you're getting.

00:52:50   That's how you can have a fanless thing, right?

00:52:51   That is a limitation of this machine.

00:52:55   And you get dividends for that limitation.

00:52:56   Fanlessness, I am all aboard for that.

00:52:58   Like, I love it.

00:52:59   I love the fact that, I even love the fact

00:53:01   that they tried to hide the antenna internally.

00:53:02   If the performance of that antenna is great,

00:53:03   no big black, you know, plastic thing.

00:53:05   The fact that it's all metal,

00:53:07   the fact that it's all sealed up,

00:53:08   I almost wish they could make it waterproof

00:53:09   at this point, right?

00:53:10   I love all that about this machine.

00:53:12   And I feel like if you made this exact machine,

00:53:14   but with no taper,

00:53:15   it would still feel like an entirely different class

00:53:17   of machine than the 13 inch.

00:53:19   Even though the 13 inch is only like, you know,

00:53:21   six millimeter sticker or something like that.

00:53:23   But the 13 inch, like you said, full key travel,

00:53:25   real chip set, you know what I mean?

00:53:27   Fans, right?

00:53:28   - Ports.

00:53:29   - Right, ports, like, it would still feel

00:53:31   like a different class of machine.

00:53:33   And so, you know, so let's get to who this machine is for.

00:53:37   I'm, you know, I'm always trying to get my parents

00:53:41   to buy better computers 'cause I hate supporting them

00:53:43   on their ancient, like, white iBooks

00:53:45   or whatever the hell they're using.

00:53:46   I don't human.

00:53:47   Anyway, I get tired thinking about it.

00:53:49   I think this would be a great machine for my parents

00:53:52   because they don't do anything that's so demanding

00:53:56   that this machine couldn't do well for them.

00:53:58   And they don't need like 18 hour battery life,

00:54:01   nine hours is plenty for them.

00:54:03   It has fewer things that can go wrong.

00:54:05   It has fewer moving parts.

00:54:06   It has no fans, so I don't have to worry about them

00:54:08   suffocating it with like puffy pillows

00:54:10   when they have it on their lap on the couch or something.

00:54:12   And it's so small that they could move around

00:54:14   like it's a manila envelope.

00:54:16   I think this would be a good machine for them.

00:54:18   if they can tolerate the keyboard

00:54:19   and if they're not freaked out

00:54:20   by the haptic force touch tap thing.

00:54:22   - And by the way, all the people who were at the event

00:54:26   who tried the keyboard and force touch,

00:54:28   the keyboard everybody was a little polarized on,

00:54:30   but the trackpad, everyone seemed to love.

00:54:33   I mean, I didn't hear a single bad thing

00:54:35   about the trackpad.

00:54:37   - I'm fully willing to believe that it's awesome.

00:54:38   In fact, I'm hoping that, again,

00:54:40   this is another reason I'm gonna recommend this

00:54:41   to my parents, my mom likes tap to click.

00:54:43   I can't stand tap to click to do that,

00:54:45   but she uses tap to click, right?

00:54:46   And so this is gonna be awesome

00:54:47   because it's basically like adjustable tap to click, right?

00:54:50   Where it's, she's not going to accidentally hit it

00:54:53   and you can adjust how much force I think it requires

00:54:55   to like to do the thing.

00:54:57   I think this trackpad is gonna be great.

00:54:58   And you know, that's why I'm excited

00:55:00   to see it on the 13 inch.

00:55:01   I think the non moving trackpad could be a real win.

00:55:04   'Cause honestly, I don't, I've never liked,

00:55:06   I don't like trackpads period.

00:55:07   I didn't like the ones with the button on it

00:55:09   when they got rid of the button.

00:55:10   I didn't really like the whole idea

00:55:11   that the whole thing slanted,

00:55:12   including the part that I was tracing my finger over.

00:55:15   So like you said, all the reviews of this have been great.

00:55:17   and I'm totally willing to believe that they've nailed it

00:55:19   on this trackpad and that, you know,

00:55:22   in the same way that like trackpads replace trackballs

00:55:25   and they were kind of weird in the beginning

00:55:26   and they settled down, like once Apple goes

00:55:28   to this kind of trackpad everywhere,

00:55:29   once they inevitably add force touch to all the iOS devices,

00:55:33   it'll be like, how did we ever live without this?

00:55:35   - Ben Thompson's in the chat saying

00:55:37   that he has tried the keyboard

00:55:40   and it does take some getting used to,

00:55:42   but you absolutely will.

00:55:43   And he also said that the trackpad is,

00:55:47   and now I'm quoting, "mind blowing."

00:55:49   So just like you said, Jon, everyone seems to love it.

00:55:52   The other question I had, which I only want a very quick,

00:55:56   to put in a very quick thought about,

00:55:57   is if the headphone jack is really that big

00:56:00   and really causing that much extra thickness,

00:56:04   I mean, we have Bluetooth headphones, that's a thing,

00:56:07   but yet we don't seem to have embraced it yet.

00:56:10   Do you guys see a future when A,

00:56:13   they take away the headphone jack and say,

00:56:15   if you really wanna listen to your computer,

00:56:17   get Bluetooth headphones, and B,

00:56:19   that Marco is finally thus compelled

00:56:21   to embrace Bluetooth headphones?

00:56:23   - Well, this is a big topic, hold on.

00:56:25   Our second sponsor, (laughing)

00:56:28   I'm gonna go off a long time on this, all right.

00:56:30   Warby Parker is our second sponsor this week.

00:56:32   Warby Parker believes that prescription glasses

00:56:34   simply should not cost $300 or more.

00:56:36   They bypass all the traditional eyewear channels,

00:56:39   they sell them direct, the glasses,

00:56:41   they make 'em, they sell 'em higher quality,

00:56:43   better looking prescription eyeglasses

00:56:44   a fraction of the usual retail prices, starting at just $95. Go to warbyparker.com/atp. These

00:56:53   are vintage inspired designs with a contemporary twist. Every Warby Parker pair is custom fit

00:56:59   with anti-reflective anti-glare polycarbonate prescription lenses, and every pair comes

00:57:04   with a very nice hard case and cleaning cloth, so there's no need for accessories and extras

00:57:08   that drive the price up. They also now offer progressive lenses, starting at just $295,

00:57:13   including frames, and this is digital freeform progressive lenses, the most advanced progressive

00:57:18   technology with higher precision and a larger field of vision than traditional progressive

00:57:22   lenses.

00:57:23   Now, buying glasses online sounds like it would be risky.

00:57:26   How would you know whether they will fit or how they will look on you?

00:57:28   Warby Parker has you covered here, so they have a couple things.

00:57:31   First of all, their website has a tool that will use your webcam and you can preview how

00:57:35   they'll look on your face.

00:57:36   You can also use your webcam to help you take your measurements.

00:57:39   So if you don't have your prescription handy, or if you don't have the measurements exactly,

00:57:44   you want to verify your measurements, you can check, you can preview everything right

00:57:47   there on their website through your webcam.

00:57:50   You know, it'll measure your face, it's really great, and we actually did that for my wife,

00:57:53   and it worked out very, very well.

00:57:55   But the best part is their Home Try-On Program.

00:57:58   Now you can borrow up to five pairs of glasses risk-free, and they'll ship you the empty

00:58:03   frames so you can try them.

00:58:05   And it's all free.

00:58:06   Risk-free, shipping to you for free.

00:58:09   You try them on, you can keep them for a few days, up to five days, and then when you're

00:58:13   done you can send them back.

00:58:14   And there's a prepaid return label, you haven't paid a cent for any of this.

00:58:19   Prepaid return label, you send them right back and you can choose to buy some afterwards

00:58:22   or not.

00:58:23   No pressure, no obligation.

00:58:25   It's great.

00:58:26   And if you don't even pick all five of these, let's say you only pick three, they'll pick

00:58:29   the other two for you.

00:58:30   And usually they pick pretty well.

00:58:32   It is great.

00:58:33   So you can really see on your face.

00:58:35   A lot of times you'll be surprised.

00:58:36   I know Casey, you said you were surprised by your results.

00:58:38   I know my wife was surprised with hers.

00:58:41   I got sunglasses from them and I did the same thing and I was like the ones I thought I

00:58:45   was going to like the best.

00:58:46   I ended up liking another pair of the best from the home try on kit.

00:58:49   It's a fantastic program.

00:58:51   Check it out Warby Parker.

00:58:53   As I mentioned, I got sunglasses.

00:58:55   They have prescription and non-prescription sunglasses.

00:58:57   So it's great and they're polarized, really high quality.

00:59:00   I love good polarized sunglasses.

00:59:03   If you've never had good polarized sunglasses, you don't know you're missing.

00:59:06   Seriously try them.

00:59:07   They're amazing.

00:59:08   believe in giving back to the world. For every pair of glasses Warby Parker sells, they give

00:59:12   another pair to somebody in need through various vision charities around the world. Check this

00:59:16   out. Go to WarbyParker.com/ATP. Look at their great selection of premium quality, affordable

00:59:22   eyewear. Get a home try-on kit risk-free and really make sure you go to that link WarbyParker.com/ATP

00:59:28   and I believe you'll get like a free faster shipping, something like that. Check it out.

00:59:32   Thanks to Warby Parker for sponsoring our show once again.

00:59:34   - Okay, so I'd asked you right before the sponsor break

00:59:38   whether or not you think that the headphone port

00:59:41   will eventually go away on these MacBooks,

00:59:43   or perhaps even iOS devices, and if they do,

00:59:47   does that mean you'll finally be compelled

00:59:49   to embrace Bluetooth headphones?

00:59:51   - So I should start this by saying

00:59:53   I have embraced Bluetooth headphones.

00:59:55   - For travel/mobile purposes, but not for your desk.

01:00:00   - Correct, and I think many people would find

01:00:03   similar trade-off because they have batteries and they need to be charged.

01:00:07   And so if you're sitting at a desk all day long and you're not moving around,

01:00:09   you're plugging into a computer on the desk, you know, just go wired. It's

01:00:13   easier and they're lighter, they're more comfortable because they are

01:00:17   lighter, you know, there's no big batteries or anything. So then you don't

01:00:20   have to charge them because, you know, Bluetooth headphones, battery lives and

01:00:23   use range from a few hours to a lot of hours but you're not talking months, you

01:00:28   know, you're talking... If you actually use Bluetooth headphones full-time

01:00:31   listening to music most of the day every day.

01:00:34   - As I do.

01:00:35   - How often do you need to recharge them?

01:00:36   - Every other day, two days maybe.

01:00:38   - Yeah, exactly.

01:00:39   So you're talking a substantial annoyance

01:00:42   that if you can get similar benefits from wired,

01:00:44   might as well, right?

01:00:45   So Bluetooth headphones though,

01:00:48   where I love them is like when I'm walking.

01:00:50   So if I'm commuting or if I'm walking the dog,

01:00:52   well commuting like on a train, which I hardly ever do,

01:00:54   but if I'm doing that, I'll bring them.

01:00:55   If I'm walking the dog, I bring them on dog walks,

01:00:57   they're great.

01:00:58   We are moving in a direction

01:00:59   where they're gonna become more common.

01:01:03   Most of that's because of the Apple Watch, in my opinion.

01:01:06   MacBooks possibly losing headphone ports in the future,

01:01:09   that's a distant secondary concern, I think.

01:01:12   I think the issue that we have,

01:01:14   and what will hold Apple back here,

01:01:17   is that Bluetooth headphones by nature

01:01:19   are complicated devices.

01:01:21   They have some kind of pairing interface, they have RF.

01:01:25   - They have batteries.

01:01:26   - Exactly, and they have batteries.

01:01:28   And so if you look at the kind of headphones Apple makes,

01:01:31   and the kind of headphones most people use

01:01:33   with their Apple devices,

01:01:35   they're those little tiny white earbuds.

01:01:37   And you can't make Bluetooth headphones that small.

01:01:39   They do have Bluetooth earbuds, they do exist,

01:01:41   but none of them are as small and sleek

01:01:44   as the Apple earbuds because they can't be,

01:01:46   because they need somewhere to put a battery.

01:01:48   And if the battery is that incredibly tiny,

01:01:51   it will last like an hour.

01:01:53   And I don't think Apple would deal with that very well.

01:01:56   You also need to have some kind of port on them to charge them.

01:02:00   I mean, maybe inductive blah blah blah someday, maybe, probably not.

01:02:04   Here's how they'll do it when they actually do it, because I think it will come eventually.

01:02:07   There'll be tiny little earbuds, they'll have tiny little batteries in them, there'll be

01:02:10   no ports on them at all, they'll last about an hour or something close to that, and you'll

01:02:16   stick them magnetically to some little recesses inside your tiny little MacBook when you're

01:02:19   not using them.

01:02:23   Even if that was possible, I would question all that.

01:02:25   I would say they would not do that because that sounds really clunky.

01:02:28   Remember when they stuck the remote to the side of the iMac with magnets?

01:02:31   Do you remember that?

01:02:32   Oh yeah, that's true.

01:02:33   That was a long time ago.

01:02:34   I'm saying that would be the Apple way to do it.

01:02:37   You don't plug these little turdy things in.

01:02:39   You don't lose them because they're always stuck to your laptop.

01:02:44   Because there is something very inelegant about even just the white earbuds and the

01:02:47   short cord and plugging it in, it sticks out the side of your thing and you accidentally

01:02:51   bend it.

01:02:53   Bluetooth earbuds are more elegant, but like Marco said, the battery problem, batteries

01:02:57   don't get better that fast, and so you can't fit a big battery in there, you can only fit

01:03:02   a small one, and then you're stuck with the recharging problem, and you don't want to

01:03:05   plug anything into recharging because that's clunky, so you could do inductive charge,

01:03:08   those tiny batteries would inductively charge really fast off of your MacBook, you just

01:03:12   gotta find some place to stick them on or in there, right?

01:03:15   But that's not in the near future, I'm just thinking like future world stuff.

01:03:17   Yeah, I mean this this is the problem like I think if I think Apple has run through the same calculus if they could

01:03:24   Reasonably get rid of the headphone port they would have already and maybe in the distant future they will but I think I don't think

01:03:31   That's that time is like imminent everyone thought every single iPhone release that comes out everyone predicts

01:03:36   This is the one we're gonna get rid of the headphone port and they haven't yet and you have to ask yourself

01:03:40   Why yeah, these are like the lightning port headphones

01:03:43   I mean they could be the use the USB port for headphones like that's how they'll get that

01:03:47   before they go wireless, they'll probably end up

01:03:49   whatever single port is left on the thing

01:03:51   that will do everything, including headphones,

01:03:53   and hopefully their earbuds will have those little

01:03:55   connectors or whatever, I don't know.

01:03:57   - Right, and so you have, there are so many issues

01:04:01   with trying to get this now, like trying to get Apple to,

01:04:05   'cause that's what they would have to do.

01:04:07   If they get rid of headphone ports,

01:04:08   they would have to basically replace their earbuds

01:04:11   with something else, and whether you have to,

01:04:13   you know, if they have to buy it separately, that sucks,

01:04:15   then all of a sudden, you gotta spend like, you know,

01:04:17   forty more dollars or fifty more whatever they would charge for it probably more than forty but

01:04:21   you know have to spend eighty more dollars on bluetooth headphones that uh you know just to

01:04:25   use your iphone with a headset you know it it's not it's it's not great so this is the problem is

01:04:32   the the bluetooth headphone situation just by nature of needing batteries and and you know

01:04:38   bluetooth headphones they are they have like a certain minimum size and a certain minimum level

01:04:42   level of clunkiness with and you know they need like a

01:04:45   button and a switch somewhere to turn them on and pair them

01:04:48   and everything like it's there's there's a minimum

01:04:50   level of clunkiness up to them that I don't see Apple

01:04:55   wanting to address so badly to get rid of the headphone port

01:05:01   and that's not to say they won't eventually try this. I

01:05:04   just I don't see this in the near future and if they do

01:05:08   release bluetooth headphones, I think that would come before

01:05:12   are a headphone port is removed from a prominent device,

01:05:16   like to have them like first have the hardware tested out a

01:05:19   little bit, see if anybody buys them, see if anybody likes

01:05:22   them, because if they release an iphone that can't plug into

01:05:25   any existing headsets, people are going to freak out and and

01:05:29   much more so than having to buy new lightning cables like

01:05:32   people are going to freak out and not to say that it doesn't

01:05:35   you know that doesn't keep apple from doing things

01:05:37   sometimes, but there's different degrees and different

01:05:41   products and getting rid of a headphone jack on on on their

01:05:45   most important product that that would not be taken lightly.

01:05:50   So again, not saying this will never happen, but I don't see

01:05:54   it happening soon now going back to the Mac book. I don't

01:05:58   know. I'm sure Apple has done some kind of research to know

01:06:01   like how important this is. I mean, they there's nothing

01:06:04   stopping them from putting a USB type C port on the other

01:06:07   side and just selling, you know, just like they have a

01:06:08   $20 adapter to plug in USB devices, sell a $20 adapter that is a USB sound interface.

01:06:14   I think that's more of a "I would not recommend that."

01:06:17   Why not?

01:06:18   Because I think the use case for this, everyone has the little earbuds from their iPhone or

01:06:23   their iPod, and a lot of times you're working on a laptop in an environment where you want

01:06:27   to watch some silly YouTube video that someone sent you but you don't want the sound coming

01:06:30   out of the speakers.

01:06:31   So you're plugging your little white earbuds, or even if you're just listening to music

01:06:35   while you're, you know, typing away or doing your homework or whatever, like,

01:06:38   you gotta be able to just quickly plug in earbuds with no adapter.

01:06:42   Or have a wireless solution of those magical things that just, you know,

01:06:46   click onto the side of your thing or something. I feel like that use case is

01:06:49   more important than

01:06:51   a second port. I would never give up the headphone port for a second USB

01:06:55   C on this thing. That would be a bad trade. Because I see people do it all the time.

01:06:58   All the time I see people with any kind of laptop, not just skinny little light

01:07:01   ones, but any kind of laptop sitting in front of it,

01:07:04   plugging in their headphones.

01:07:05   - Right, I mean, it's common,

01:07:07   but you also see people plugging in a lot of USB things.

01:07:08   So it's common enough, I agree,

01:07:10   but I think one of two things is the case here.

01:07:14   Either they did enough research

01:07:17   and they know that way too many people

01:07:19   plug in their headsets and make Skype calls,

01:07:22   listen to music, 'cause it's a microphone too

01:07:24   if you use the headset.

01:07:24   - But there's no replacement.

01:07:25   Like with the whole USB thing,

01:07:27   with people plugging in USB stuff,

01:07:28   there's always a replacement, but there's no replacement.

01:07:30   You have to have some way to make your computer

01:07:32   stop making noise, but let you hear the noises

01:07:35   your computer makes.

01:07:36   - Oh, I see what you mean.

01:07:36   - Whereas everything else, everything else,

01:07:38   it's like, well, I don't have a thumb drive,

01:07:40   but I can use Dropbox.

01:07:41   Well, I can't plug it in and power something,

01:07:43   but I can buy this dongle adapter.

01:07:44   You need something.

01:07:45   - Right, you want automatic disconnection

01:07:46   of the built-in speakers.

01:07:47   - Yeah.

01:07:48   - But if Apple made their own official USB Type-C

01:07:51   sound thing for 25, 30 bucks or whatever,

01:07:53   well, knowing that I'm 40 bucks,

01:07:55   if they made that, they're stopping them

01:07:57   from coding that into the OS where it automates,

01:07:59   'cause right now, it's two different sound devices

01:08:01   and it auto switches logically in software.

01:08:04   You know, it already does that.

01:08:06   So they could do that if they wanted to.

01:08:07   I think the more likely explanation

01:08:09   for the headphone jack being there

01:08:11   is that for other reasons,

01:08:14   they only wanted to have one USB-C port

01:08:16   and they figure, well, symmetry,

01:08:18   we have the space over here for a port.

01:08:20   What single port in this size restriction can we put here

01:08:24   that would make some kind of logical sense

01:08:26   that would benefit some people?

01:08:28   And they added that one.

01:08:29   I would think the iOS devices would ditch the head of them for before the Mac books too and whatever the iOS devices do to

01:08:34   Deal with that. That's just what the max would do eventually anyway. Yeah

01:08:38   Apparently I did not do enough

01:08:41   Pre-explaining and preempting of stuff because Ben Thompson in the chat room is getting all feisty

01:08:46   He's tweeting while he's listening to the show. Well an earlier tweet geeks are just unqualified to explain the new MacBook

01:08:51   They are anti qualified. They're saying that Syracuse is way off base

01:08:55   So I will try one more time to explain what I feel about this particular computer.

01:09:01   Our final sponsor this week is Hover.

01:09:03   Hover is the best way to buy a Maniac's domain names.

01:09:06   Use coupon code "1PORT" this week.

01:09:09   Spell out the word "1".

01:09:11   Coupon code "1PORT" to save 10% off your first order at Hover.

01:09:15   When you have a great idea, you want a great domain name that's catchy and memorable.

01:09:18   Hover gives you exactly what you need to find the perfect domain for your idea so you can

01:09:21   get started actually working on it.

01:09:23   Hover gives you easy to use powerful tools

01:09:25   to buy and manage domains so anybody can do it.

01:09:28   And the support team is always ready if you need a hand.

01:09:30   Hover is known for their no-wait, no-hold,

01:09:32   no-transfer phone service.

01:09:34   So when you call, a real-life human being is ready to help.

01:09:38   Plus, they have all sorts of online help if you need that,

01:09:40   if you don't wanna, you know, call people.

01:09:42   In less than five minutes, you can find the domain name

01:09:45   that you want and get it up and running.

01:09:47   All you gotta do is search for a few keywords,

01:09:48   and Hover will show you the best available options

01:09:50   across all domain extensions that exist out there

01:09:53   that they can register, which is pretty much all of them.

01:09:55   If you've ever registered or made a name anywhere else,

01:09:57   you know it's kind of a crappy business.

01:09:59   You know it's kind of a crappy experience.

01:10:01   You know that it can be really unpleasant.

01:10:03   Hover makes it very, very simple to buy only what you need,

01:10:07   to buy exactly what you need,

01:10:09   and to make you feel good along the way.

01:10:10   So they don't try to upsell you

01:10:12   with all sorts of stuff you don't need.

01:10:14   They don't overcomplicate things

01:10:16   and make you uncheck a bunch of boxes

01:10:17   if you don't want these things.

01:10:18   It's just really simple, well-designed,

01:10:20   respectful of you and your time and your money. So they even have free valley

01:10:25   transfer service if you want. You don't have to do this but if you want you can

01:10:29   give them your login information to your old registrar and they will log into it

01:10:33   and move your domain names for you and do all the proper transfer stuff. They'll

01:10:37   move, you know, they'll do the authorizations to transfer the names and

01:10:40   everything. They'll also make sure your DNS doesn't break. They will copy it

01:10:43   properly. A professional who does this all the time will copy it over properly

01:10:46   and import everything over so that all your web hosting stuff doesn't break.

01:10:49   there's no downtime, they do it right, they do it, you know, these are pros.

01:10:53   Hover overall, they're great. I use them for, I think now the majority, yeah, the

01:10:58   majority of my domains are now at Hover and more will be going there in the

01:11:00   future. They really are great. They also have great solutions for getting your

01:11:04   own custom email address on your domain name. So 20 bucks a year gets you

01:11:09   a fully functional email account at your domain with 10 gigs of storage. 29 bucks

01:11:14   a year gets you the big mailbox which gives you a terabyte of email storage

01:11:17   storage. Plus a few of them little bonuses. I can't even imagine what a terabyte of email

01:11:23   would look like, but I really hope I never find out. You also have email forwarding if

01:11:27   you want, just five bucks a year. If you already have an email host, you can add forwarding

01:11:31   to any domain for just five bucks a year. All this is great. You get 10% off your first

01:11:36   purchase by going to hover.com and using the promo code oneport. All one spelled out O-N-E,

01:11:42   oneport. Go to hover.com, use code oneport. Check it out today. Thank you very much to

01:11:46   for sponsoring our show once again.

01:11:49   So John, why is Ben Thompson wrong?

01:11:52   - He's not wrong in sentiment,

01:11:53   he's wrong about what he thinks my position is.

01:11:55   So I will try to emphasize again

01:11:57   that the thing that is messed up about this machine

01:12:02   with one port, like the reason it's gonna look weird

01:12:05   and look back on as like an oddity and like a mistake

01:12:09   is not because it has one port instead of two,

01:12:12   it's gonna be looked back on as an oddity

01:12:14   and sort of a mistake because it has one port instead of zero.

01:12:18   I totally agree that basically the main thing that's wrong with this is like, iPads don't

01:12:24   have ports in them.

01:12:25   They never had ports in them.

01:12:26   People complained in the beginning, but by the lack of, you know what I mean, the 30

01:12:29   pin connector, it doesn't count.

01:12:31   Well they do have one port that can charge it and you can plug in devices.

01:12:36   I know, but you know, like no USB port for like an SD card slot or expansion, all the

01:12:40   things that people would want.

01:12:41   That's not true.

01:12:42   The camera connection kit.

01:12:43   I know, but they don't have a port.

01:12:45   They just have one plug that you plug the thing into.

01:12:47   Like there's no, there's no plugging in a USB keyboard.

01:12:50   There's no plugging in it.

01:12:51   There's no SD card slot.

01:12:52   - There is actually.

01:12:53   - Actually, yeah, you can.

01:12:54   - With the camera connection kit,

01:12:55   you can plug in lots of things.

01:12:56   - I know, but that's an extra thing.

01:12:58   You know what I'm saying?

01:12:59   - So, so is the hub for this?

01:13:01   - No, it's a proprietary port.

01:13:03   It is not something that is a standard type of port.

01:13:05   You know what I mean?

01:13:06   What is gonna look weird about this in the future

01:13:09   is that it has one.

01:13:09   - I still don't follow this argument.

01:13:11   - It's that it has one USB port and not two.

01:13:13   What I'm trying to say is I'm entirely on board

01:13:15   with the idea that the ports go away on this thing,

01:13:17   that we go down to one kind of port

01:13:18   and then eventually there's no kinds of port

01:13:20   except for some proprietary thing

01:13:21   that Apple makes up for charging or whatever.

01:13:23   Like, that plugging things into your laptop

01:13:26   would not be a thing in the same way

01:13:28   that plugging things into your iPad isn't a thing.

01:13:29   You say, "Oh, well what about the camera thing

01:13:31   "and what about all the stuff you can plug in?"

01:13:34   When you see people using an iPad,

01:13:36   how many of them do you see

01:13:37   that have anything plugged into that port?

01:13:40   Almost 0% of them, right?

01:13:42   I've never seen anyone with a camera connection kit

01:13:44   in the wild.

01:13:45   I've never seen anyone with anything plugged into that

01:13:47   as a peripheral or whatever.

01:13:48   Even when I see people using keyboards in keyboard cases,

01:13:50   they're Bluetooth.

01:13:51   30 inches from my head is a picture of the three of us

01:13:55   at a table, on the table is an iPad

01:13:58   with a camera connection kit plugged into it.

01:14:00   (laughing)

01:14:00   - Yeah, well you're using it to stream a podcast.

01:14:02   This is not a common use case.

01:14:04   - The point is you saw it.

01:14:06   Take iPhones as another example.

01:14:07   Other than Mophie, you know, things plugged in battery cases,

01:14:10   Do you ever see anyone with something plugged into their iPhone that's reading an SD card

01:14:14   from it, that's using a USB thumb drive on it, that's doing anything like that with it?

01:14:18   You just don't see it.

01:14:19   The devices are telling you, "I am not expandable.

01:14:23   There is one proprietary port used for charging and all data transfer, but most of the time

01:14:27   you're going to be using me without something plugged into it."

01:14:29   You see what I'm getting at?

01:14:30   Well, but I think this laptop is exactly the same way.

01:14:33   That's what you're going to see.

01:14:34   Most people who buy this laptop, I bet, are not going to buy that stupid little adapter.

01:14:38   But it has a USB port and it does not have a lightning connector on it.

01:14:41   It does not have magsafe on it.

01:14:43   It does not have a proprietary Apple thing that is not a generic port.

01:14:46   But it's a USB port that nobody has any devices for yet.

01:14:49   Anyway, ignoring this analogy, which is trying to show that you're trying to pick up this

01:14:53   analogy was not the main point.

01:14:55   My point is that I don't like I understand that ports are going away.

01:14:58   I am all for that.

01:14:59   I'm not saying let's hold back the tide, bring back the floppy drive.

01:15:02   Like I don't know how much I can emphasize this.

01:15:04   "Yes, get rid of all the freaking parts eventually!"

01:15:08   Right?

01:15:09   - On an infinite time scale, they're all good.

01:15:10   - All I wanted to know was,

01:15:12   what am I getting for having one USB Type-C instead of two?

01:15:16   And nobody's been able to tell me anything

01:15:18   other than saying that one is less than two

01:15:20   and eventually we're gonna get a zero.

01:15:21   And I feel like zero is better than one.

01:15:23   You know what I mean?

01:15:24   Like, not practically speaking for this particular machine,

01:15:27   but that is a statement.

01:15:29   That is where we're going.

01:15:30   There is a, it's a step change of like,

01:15:32   well you have zero or you have one.

01:15:34   If you have one, everybody's gonna try to cram everything

01:15:36   through the one with a series of crazy adapters, right?

01:15:39   Because you're like, well, you've got the one

01:15:40   and it can do video out and it can do all these things.

01:15:43   Like it is a stand-in for all the other ports.

01:15:45   Because you have one,

01:15:47   everything is gonna funnel into that one spot.

01:15:48   Whereas if you had zero or you had lightning connector

01:15:51   or something like that, it would be like,

01:15:52   well, this is obviously not a machine

01:15:54   that I plug things into.

01:15:55   Like, yeah, you can plug your iPad into your Mac

01:15:58   and use it as a separate monitor

01:15:59   and you can do all these sorts of things with it,

01:16:01   but no one is taking an iPad and like,

01:16:02   Well, I'm gonna get that and I'm gonna plug something in,

01:16:04   it's gonna charge it and it's gonna give my iPad

01:16:06   a second display and it's gonna give me SD card storage

01:16:09   for my iPad, nobody does that.

01:16:11   But they will do that with this because it has the one port.

01:16:14   So what I'm saying is like, if you're gonna do one port,

01:16:17   if you put on two, then what happens?

01:16:19   Well, it's a trade off, well, you have this,

01:16:20   well, you have that.

01:16:21   I'm perfectly willing to believe it's a trade off,

01:16:23   all I'm saying is that no one has told me what I'm trading.

01:16:25   And if you just tell me that I'm trading space on the case,

01:16:27   that one I don't buy because I feel like you can make

01:16:29   the case big enough to fit the second port on there.

01:16:31   All right, now putting aside the second port thing,

01:16:34   I am also totally on board with the idea

01:16:36   that no one cares about the second port

01:16:38   except for nerdy people.

01:16:39   Totally, and thinking about use cases,

01:16:40   but as I mentioned to my mom,

01:16:41   just like as a actual example,

01:16:43   but I think for basically everybody

01:16:46   who isn't into computers,

01:16:48   who wants to have a laptop computer in their house,

01:16:50   this is the one to get because it's so small,

01:16:52   you'll just put it with like the stack of magazines

01:16:54   next to your couch.

01:16:56   Like everyone should have, like I said, with the iPads,

01:16:58   I feel like this is the type of thing

01:16:59   that should just be laying around your house

01:17:00   if you are a rich person in every room at your house, right?

01:17:03   It's like picking up a magazine.

01:17:05   Oh, I'll just pick up this iPad, like the iPad Air 2.

01:17:07   Like you just wanna have a device

01:17:09   that you can do web browsing on.

01:17:10   You can look stuff up while you're watching TV.

01:17:12   You can read your email or whatever.

01:17:15   That's what these things are perfect for.

01:17:17   These are computers for the masses.

01:17:19   I totally agree with that.

01:17:20   Like this is more for the masses than the 13-inch Pro is.

01:17:24   This is more for the masses than any of the Airs are, right?

01:17:27   This is the laptop for the masses.

01:17:28   Getting rid of everything, getting rid of the fan,

01:17:30   getting rid of ports they don't understand,

01:17:32   making it super small and light.

01:17:33   Nine hours is fine for the masses.

01:17:35   The reason this is called the MacBook

01:17:37   and not the MacBook Air 2, the MacBook Vapor,

01:17:39   the MacBook Prelude, any of these other things,

01:17:41   is because this is the Mac for the masses.

01:17:45   People don't need all that other stuff

01:17:48   that we're talking about.

01:17:49   This is the one that they should sell the most of.

01:17:51   It's priced fairly low, like 12, 1300 bucks.

01:17:53   It's not like a $2,000 type of thing.

01:17:56   I totally agree with that.

01:17:57   I can agree with all of that

01:17:59   and also complain about if they had made it not tapered,

01:18:03   would it stop being the MacBook for the masses?

01:18:04   No, it would not.

01:18:05   If they had put two USB Type-C things,

01:18:07   would it stop being the MacBook for the masses?

01:18:09   No, I feel like the masses would also not notice

01:18:11   that those two things were there

01:18:13   and it would make it more capable with a trade-off

01:18:17   that I think the masses wouldn't care about,

01:18:19   but the nerdy people like us would really appreciate

01:18:22   because we're not at the point of going to zero things

01:18:24   and we are, you know, and I think that the taper

01:18:28   is something that actually people would appreciate

01:18:29   because I think it would make it easier to hold

01:18:31   by that sharp edge because the sharp edge

01:18:32   would be less sharp.

01:18:34   So I don't know, like if I continue to get tweets

01:18:37   from people telling me you don't get it

01:18:38   'cause you're a geek, this is gonna be rather good

01:18:39   for other people, I don't know how many other ways

01:18:41   I can express it.

01:18:42   I totally agree with you.

01:18:44   I'm just saying that they could change these few things

01:18:48   and unless someone explains to me the trade-off,

01:18:49   I'm totally willing to believe that it's like,

01:18:50   oh, you couldn't do this

01:18:51   because the chipset doesn't support it

01:18:53   because there's no way to do the circuitry,

01:18:55   you know, the circuitry for controlling

01:18:56   different power ports, would have made the motherboard too big, so on and so forth, but

01:19:00   I haven't gotten any explanation.

01:19:02   As far as I'm concerned, you can make the same machine, a few millimeters different

01:19:05   in a few dimensions, get rid of the taper, put two USB type C ports on it, keep the price

01:19:10   pretty much the same, have better battery life, and the masses would still love it,

01:19:15   and we would love it even more.

01:19:16   And as things stand, I still think it's kind of a great machine, and I would be perfectly

01:19:19   willing to replace the 13 inch air I have with this one, because the screens on the

01:19:22   error terrible and this one's just as fast and it has no fan. You see I I can't

01:19:28   agree with you there because if the if the priority is to make as freaking tiny

01:19:37   laptop as you can and I understand that you don't like that priority but the

01:19:41   fact of the matter is I do like it I wrote a whole article about how I like

01:19:44   it remember that article that was me. Well you're saying well why don't they

01:19:48   why don't they add a couple millimeters here there blah blah blah I don't but

01:19:51   they don't want to. So not thickness, length and width to make room for the port. You know what I mean?

01:19:56   Okay, so they want this case. This case is what they wanted.

01:20:01   That's not good design though, don't you agree? You don't design a car by designing the body first

01:20:05   and figure out how you can fit the insides in there. I think that's a really shaky analogy.

01:20:10   But I think the thing is they wanted a case to look like this because that makes a lot more sense

01:20:17   in computers than it does in a car. I think they said, well, we want this case to look like this.

01:20:21   And then I think they said, well, we only have room for one thing on the left hand side. We don't

01:20:27   have any room on the right hand side, because we want to do a headphone jack for all the reasons we

01:20:31   just discussed. We only have one thing on the left hand side, we could either make that a traditional

01:20:37   MagSafe, a MagSafe 2, or we can embrace this new USB Type-C. Is that right? I already forgot what

01:20:44   what it's called the USB-C and we could make it dual power and peripherals. And because

01:20:52   people are slow and dimwitted myself included, because I just earlier in the show talked

01:20:57   about how I have to have my USB ports and then couldn't figure out exactly which ones

01:21:00   I needed or what I needed them for because people are slow and dimwitted. They need to

01:21:05   know that they have some sort of parachute and they have some sort of escape hatch that

01:21:10   allows them to plug something in. It may not be something that is worthwhile to you or

01:21:18   to Ben Thompson or to whoever, but at least people know that they have, even if it's by

01:21:24   way of a $20 adapter, they have a means of plugging in a USB device if the need arises.

01:21:31   And so that to me is a much better choice than straight up MagSafe 2 because at least

01:21:36   it gives options. Now granted, Apple doesn't always like to give options. But as they're

01:21:42   dragging people into the future, and they refuse to stop thinking about tomorrow, john,

01:21:48   they're trying to give some people the option of plugging in these legacy devices for the

01:21:52   little bit of time they have to in order to move the world forward in the same way that

01:21:57   they use that they did, and I think still do support using another computer's optical

01:22:01   drive. If for some crazy reason, you're on a MacBook Air and must use an optical drive,

01:22:06   arguing against zero ports and not for one port like you're saying you're saying is if well they

01:22:10   need to have a port so people feel this safe yeah i agree i'm not saying now is the time to go with

01:22:14   zero but you're not arguing against two like what is the argument like everything you said applies

01:22:18   to two parts just as well as one you know what i mean yes i do and and i think the only answer i

01:22:23   have is the answer that you're not going to allow which is this is the size case they wanted this is

01:22:28   what they wanted to do if that was their philosophy if they actually did uh design the case first and

01:22:33   figure out how to fit the insides in it, which seems like a not a great philosophy for it,

01:22:38   because I mean you get the realities are like they didn't know how small they can make the

01:22:41   motherboard. They didn't like they just I don't maybe they do design it from the outside and if

01:22:45   that's the way they do it I don't know that's fine. I just think that's a bad way to design

01:22:48   things because the insides have such an effect on the outside that if you are dead set on some

01:22:54   particular dimensions like how would you even come up with those dimensions? Why not make it half

01:22:57   this thickness? Well you know the reality of you know what the realities of the insides there has

01:23:02   to be some key travel you have to find battery you have to put batteries somewhere like if

01:23:06   you at a certain point you can't have moving keys with batteries underneath them because

01:23:11   it's not thick enough so I feel like the insides do have some effect on the outside but regardless

01:23:16   even if Apple totally designs the case first and figure out how they can fit everything

01:23:19   in it I think that's a bad philosophy and they should design them together as one working

01:23:26   in a single unit and that there should be some form of decision of what kind of product

01:23:33   you're going to make.

01:23:34   Is this going to be the one that has no ports?

01:23:35   No, it's going to be the one that has some ports.

01:23:36   How many ports is it going to have?

01:23:37   Where are they going to go?

01:23:40   Design that into it.

01:23:42   Someone in the chat room says that, again, missing the idea that I think it's perfectly

01:23:46   fine for this to have one and nobody will care about geeks, which I will keep repeating

01:23:49   but people will keep telling me that I don't understand that because I totally do.

01:23:53   This is like when they on their head, no floppy drive.

01:23:55   And I would say it's more like the iMac,

01:23:57   if the iMac only had one floppy drive

01:23:58   instead of two floppy drives like the Mac SE had,

01:24:01   that's what it's like.

01:24:02   It's like, we're getting rid of floppy drives.

01:24:03   They didn't get rid of the ports.

01:24:04   They're still ports.

01:24:05   They just have one of them instead of two, right?

01:24:08   And can you get away with one of the ports instead of two?

01:24:10   Yeah, you can, but what am I getting?

01:24:12   Floppy drives are much larger

01:24:13   than these tiny USB ports.

01:24:14   What am I getting with one port

01:24:15   that I'm not getting with two?

01:24:16   And other than making some kind of philosophical statement

01:24:19   and maybe saving a few millimeters here and there

01:24:22   not on thickness, but on width and height, maybe somewhere,

01:24:25   I just don't see what it is that I'm getting

01:24:28   with one USB port instead of two.

01:24:30   Even if you just pick it,

01:24:32   it wouldn't be great to be able to put the power

01:24:33   in both sides, depending on how you arrange your stuff

01:24:35   on your desk.

01:24:36   That's another thing you'd be getting

01:24:37   with two ports instead of one.

01:24:39   - Sure, but you would have a thicker computer,

01:24:41   which is not what Apple wants.

01:24:42   - Would it be thicker?

01:24:42   I don't think it would be thicker.

01:24:43   It would be like length and width.

01:24:45   If you just shift the keyboard down two millimeters,

01:24:48   make the case longer two millimeters there,

01:24:50   Maybe we'll fit in the existing case for all we know I'm still not entirely convinced that that wouldn't fit there some people said because

01:24:55   It fits on one side and you have the headphone port on the other

01:24:58   I'm not quite sure if you if you couldn't get it to fit like that

01:25:01   I just you know they designed the case they can make it would not be appreciably bigger of an add two of them

01:25:05   I feel like

01:25:06   But it would be bigger

01:25:07   It would be bigger than it absolutely has to be it would get slightly longer battery life too because the bigger case would be

01:25:12   You know what? I mean? Like it's just but then it'll be heavier and and the weight like that

01:25:17   It would be the 13 inch retina

01:25:19   But it wouldn't be like it again. Do you think this machine with no taper would still be extremely distinct from the 13-inch?

01:25:26   Extremely it would be it would be way lighter way thinner right and and again all these things are saying

01:25:31   I'm not saying this is a reason this machine is no good or whatever

01:25:34   It's perfectly fine for everybody all I'm arguing about is for my specific needs or the needs of the geek people

01:25:39   Where this computer could be a changed in a way to broaden its appeal?

01:25:44   broaden it without narrowing the appeal without making it worse for those people because they are not going to notice the

01:25:49   You know even just lessen the taper like they're not going to notice that they don't they're not going to that such connoisseurs

01:25:54   They can say oh this one is tapered slightly less than the other one or wasn't the other one tapered a lot

01:25:57   This one's only tapered a little or not at all like they don't care. It would be 2.1 pounds instead of 2 pounds

01:26:02   They don't care. They don't notice those things next year's one would be 2 pounds

01:26:06   Like they'll they'll eventually get there when the CPU takes 2 watts instead of 5, you know what I mean? Like

01:26:10   There are very few drawbacks for the additions that I'm suggesting

01:26:13   But there are a few drawbacks to you or you don't think the drawbacks are big.

01:26:19   So who would notice these drawbacks? Who?

01:26:21   See, I don't know that a regular person or even I would notice them, but the thing is,

01:26:27   I'm not the one designing this computer and regular people aren't the ones designing this

01:26:31   computer. This is all about what Apple wants and Apple wants the thinnest freaking computer

01:26:36   they can get and the small…

01:26:37   Yeah, Apple wanted a round mouse too and they were wrong on that one too and they still say

01:26:40   they were right on that, so…

01:26:41   But that's the thing is that they still think they were right the Apple does what Apple wants to do and that's the end of

01:26:46   The frickin meeting and yes, I understand what you're saying that for an almost imperceptibly small addition in volume and in surface area

01:26:54   We could have another port and that unequivocally I am not arguing would be hugely useful

01:27:01   But in the end of the day the design goal from this machine seems very clearly to be make it as frickin tiny as you can

01:27:08   And that's what they've done. Oh, that was true. You get rid of the USB port

01:27:11   and make it a tiny inductive charging thing that slaps onto it like a little lamp ray and then we make it even thinner.

01:27:16   It's not as thin as possible. You could make this thing thinner. You could reduce the key travel further.

01:27:21   You could make the trackpad shallower. You could make this thing smaller and lighter. At some point

01:27:25   they, everything is a, you know, like this particular compromise is, there's nothing dictating this particular size.

01:27:30   You could make it even smaller and even thinner,

01:27:33   shaving even more of these things off, millimeter here, millimeter there. They decided to shop shaving at this point and

01:27:40   and they decided it wasn't important enough

01:27:42   to find room for the second port.

01:27:44   And it isn't important enough.

01:27:46   Like this machine is great, it's great for almost everybody.

01:27:49   I'm just nippling at this little tiny edge.

01:27:51   This is the problem that, you know,

01:27:52   it sounds like, oh, you're complaining about this

01:27:53   and you're being defensive about this one thing.

01:27:55   Machine is great, it's great for almost everybody.

01:27:57   I would recommend this machine more,

01:28:00   this, Mark was saying, you know,

01:28:01   who this replaces like the 13 inch Air is the one,

01:28:04   yes, totally, if someone says, I want a computer,

01:28:06   plus or minus the keyboard travel,

01:28:07   which I have to try myself

01:28:08   before I completely unequivocally recommend it

01:28:10   for everybody, this is the one to get.

01:28:12   Apple correctly named this MacBook and not MacBook Air

01:28:16   or any other variant.

01:28:17   This is the MacBook, this is the future of laptops.

01:28:21   Love everything about it.

01:28:22   Just have these few quibbles,

01:28:24   and then we keep arguing about it

01:28:25   because people think these quibbles

01:28:27   are not valid complaints in any way,

01:28:29   and I think they're totally valid complaints

01:28:31   about this machine that is the best laptop

01:28:33   Apple has ever made, that's probably the best laptop

01:28:35   for everybody except for people listening

01:28:37   to the show maybe.

01:28:38   - So John, when are you gonna buy one?

01:28:40   - I might get one to replace my wife's

01:28:42   'cause like I said, the 13 inch,

01:28:44   she's got a 13 inch air

01:28:45   and I hear those stupid fans running all the time

01:28:47   and the screen is terrible and you can't look at it.

01:28:50   And this one would probably be faster.

01:28:51   Like even though the CPU is probably slower,

01:28:53   the SSD in it is probably faster.

01:28:56   It really depends on, actually,

01:28:58   I can't really use it to replace that

01:28:59   until I see if they have a,

01:29:01   something to connect it to a monitor,

01:29:03   the equivalent of the Thunderbolt display

01:29:05   where you'll have some kind of adapter or power thing

01:29:07   'cause it sits in the desk, right?

01:29:08   - Yeah, well they do only for HDMI and VGA.

01:29:12   Notably, it can't connect to an Apple Thunderbolt display.

01:29:16   - Well I know, but like I'm assuming

01:29:17   they'll come out with a new display,

01:29:19   and it can't power the big Retina one,

01:29:20   so you can't power the 5K iMac sized display from this.

01:29:24   - And that's actually a good point.

01:29:25   I think if they're going to come out with a new display,

01:29:28   it's gonna be a 5K 27 inch.

01:29:30   But if they do that, this laptop can't drive that.

01:29:34   - Yeah, don't you think there's room in their lineup

01:29:35   for like a 24 inch retina type thing?

01:29:38   - No, no I don't.

01:29:41   I mean they haven't had one for years.

01:29:42   - Well I mean considering they don't seem

01:29:44   to want to make monitors at all anymore.

01:29:46   - That's, yeah, I think that's the big thing.

01:29:47   I think they're gonna, at some point they're going

01:29:50   to make a 5K Thunderbolt external display

01:29:53   for whatever version of Thunderbolt can support that.

01:29:57   Or maybe a future version of USB-C.

01:29:59   Maybe the current USB-C can support it

01:30:00   and we just don't know it.

01:30:01   But I think people ran the numbers on the actual,

01:30:04   like the GPU in this particular MacBook

01:30:07   and I think it can't do output at more than 4K.

01:30:10   But, you know, it wouldn't surprise me

01:30:14   if Apple's just gonna wait until whatever bus

01:30:16   can support it and whatever economics can support it

01:30:19   and just do it in like two years

01:30:21   and only the MacBook Pros from the previous year

01:30:24   can plug into it.

01:30:25   - I would like to have one of these, like I said,

01:30:26   sitting on a little, you know, the table next to my couch

01:30:29   or on like my bedside table, you know what I mean?

01:30:31   Like I don't, I tend not to like laptops,

01:30:33   but if I was gonna get one, it would be this type of thing.

01:30:35   Like super thin, super light,

01:30:37   all I'm doing it is web browsing and typing

01:30:38   because as much as I love my iPads,

01:30:41   if it comes time to bang out an email,

01:30:42   I don't wanna do it on my iPad.

01:30:43   I would much rather have this thing.

01:30:44   So yeah, I would totally buy this for myself

01:30:46   if I had money hanging around for a laptop, which I don't.

01:30:50   - Well, I think the unit though,

01:30:51   like this does have lots of great uses.

01:30:55   I mean, that's one of the things I've considered for years,

01:30:58   picking up like an old or refurb

01:31:01   for a very, very baseline 11-inch Air

01:31:04   to basically be my bedside laptop,

01:31:06   'cause I will so often want,

01:31:08   like we'll go up to bed and I'll be like,

01:31:10   "Oh, you know, I had an idea.

01:31:13   "Before we go to bed, I wanna type up an idea,"

01:31:15   or for a blog post, or type up an email or something,

01:31:19   or respond to some emails or something.

01:31:20   I wanna do things that involve typing,

01:31:23   and normally I just have an iPad up there,

01:31:24   and I don't like doing those things like you on an iPad.

01:31:28   I'd rather have a keyboard.

01:31:29   - Do you use dictation?

01:31:30   I've been doing that lately,

01:31:31   'cause dictation is actually pretty good in iOS,

01:31:33   and I don't wanna type,

01:31:34   so I will just use the dictation thing

01:31:36   on the keyboard in iOS to do longer things.

01:31:38   - I would very quickly be kicked out of bed

01:31:40   if I tried that.

01:31:42   - I mean, mostly, yeah.

01:31:44   You don't do it when someone is sleeping next to you,

01:31:46   obviously, but I find it more efficient than trying to type,

01:31:50   but I still would want a keyboard

01:31:51   for something longer, obviously.

01:31:52   - Yeah, and so if I use laptops a lot,

01:31:57   I would totally get one of these things

01:32:00   for my bedside laptop, but because I tend to only have one laptop and I don't use it

01:32:08   so often that I would be able to justify having a second one, I probably, you know, I'm probably

01:32:14   not going to do it. But I totally see that. I think you're going to sell a lot of these

01:32:18   things for a whole bunch of uses where people aren't really plugging anything into it except

01:32:22   power sometimes.

01:32:23   So I'm sorry, you're saying this would be your night laptop?

01:32:26   Yeah. My upstairs laptop and my downstairs laptop.

01:32:29   If you can afford to have one of these things in every room, you should have an iPad Air

01:32:33   2 in every room and one of these things in every room and you ask just for convenience,

01:32:36   you know?

01:32:37   Just so you can pick it up.

01:32:38   Well you can have three different colors now.

01:32:40   So you can have like, you know, my weekend one is the gold one, obviously.

01:32:44   Oh, well no, no, no, you gotta have one in every room and then as the seasons change

01:32:48   you rotate them out for ones that are different colors.

01:32:50   Tiff is totally on board with this plan, I can tell.

01:32:54   Two more tiny tidbits about this thing so we can move on.

01:32:56   more light up Apple logo on the back instead it's mirrored.

01:32:59   You know I'm actually surprised it took them this long to do that because there has to

01:33:03   you know to some degree that's that's leaking a non-trivial amount of light.

01:33:08   And it weakens the back of the case too. Yeah it weakens the back of the case it's leaking

01:33:12   light out so that you got to compensate for that so the screen is evenly lit and it's

01:33:16   and that and you know I'm sure it wastes power and I'm sure it's not a massive amount I mean

01:33:20   there's a there's a ton of light behind an LCD anyway but it's something and so as you

01:33:26   you get more and more power constrained

01:33:28   as you try to eek every little bit of battery life

01:33:31   out of something and every little bit of power

01:33:32   out of something, that starts to become significant.

01:33:36   And so, I mean, in this case, it was probably,

01:33:38   honestly, in this case, it was probably about thickness

01:33:41   and not any other reason, but--

01:33:42   - And I don't think it's kind of like that look,

01:33:44   not that it's tired or anything,

01:33:45   like it is still kind of a nice look, but--

01:33:47   - It's a little tired.

01:33:48   - It's old at this point, and adding mirror

01:33:51   gives a lot of the same effects,

01:33:52   but just with like kind of a different look

01:33:53   and they can show off like their precision polishing

01:33:56   machining of things. I think it's nice. Yeah. And the other one is the backlit keyboard,

01:34:00   which I kind of like backlit keyboards, but I never liked the kind of way, like the light

01:34:05   leakage around them. It just wasn't really like a clean look. And now, I mean, obviously

01:34:09   they emphasize this again as a feature, but it's a side effect of the fact that the keyboard

01:34:13   is so damn thin that you can't, there's no room for an entire layer of light underneath

01:34:17   the thing. Embedding tiny LEDs inside each thing actually probably saves space and is

01:34:22   is a nicer look and it's just better.

01:34:23   And all I could think of was,

01:34:25   can you imagine going up to the menu in your Mac menu bar

01:34:27   and hovering over a menu item

01:34:29   and seeing the keyboard shortcut highlighted

01:34:30   with LEDs on the laptop,

01:34:32   like if they just did that system wide?

01:34:34   - Oh yeah, I mean a lot of people were saying like,

01:34:35   wouldn't it be awesome if these things

01:34:37   were software controllable,

01:34:38   to be able to turn them on and off dynamically.

01:34:40   Now, the reality is, as like thinking through it,

01:34:43   that sounds incredible,

01:34:45   it's very unlikely that that's possible in this version

01:34:47   because that would require controller hardware

01:34:49   in the keyboard to be able to independently

01:34:51   turn them on and off, as opposed to just like,

01:34:53   turn on all of them and turn off all of them

01:34:55   at this brightness level, you know?

01:34:57   And that circuitry probably doesn't exist in this model.

01:35:00   - It would be a pretty thin wire.

01:35:01   Like, you could be done, if it's gonna show up,

01:35:04   and really, it's mostly just like a cool, nice to have thing

01:35:07   maybe it would be helpful for like, training purposes

01:35:11   of just like, reminding you what the keyboard shortcut is,

01:35:13   I don't really know, it just seems cool.

01:35:15   But it's, yeah, if it was gonna show up anywhere,

01:35:18   it would show up on one of the thicker computers first.

01:35:20   and honestly I'm not entirely convinced of the use case.

01:35:23   It's just as soon as you have individual lights,

01:35:26   you immediately start thinking of ways to control them.

01:35:28   - Well, I mean, the use case is just like the use case

01:35:31   of having a light-up keyboard at all.

01:35:32   It's cool.

01:35:33   - Yeah, well, some people who aren't touch typists

01:35:36   need to look at the key caps to see where the keys are,

01:35:39   and even people who are touch typists occasionally

01:35:41   need to look at what symbols on the FN key

01:35:43   'cause they don't remember where.

01:35:45   - Well, yeah, but even if you're in a pitch black room,

01:35:48   the reflected light from the screen is usually enough

01:35:50   to illuminate the keyboard enough.

01:35:51   I mean, like, it's totally,

01:35:53   illuminated keyboards are really nice.

01:35:55   Totally unnecessary, but really cool and really nice.

01:35:58   And that's why they do it.

01:35:59   - I know a lot of people who swear by

01:36:00   the backlight keyboard and will say that,

01:36:02   whether this is true or not, will say that they can't,

01:36:04   they can't type in the dark without the backlight

01:36:06   on the keyboard, you know?

01:36:07   And like, I agree with you about the screen light

01:36:09   and everything like that,

01:36:10   but many people are very attached to it.

01:36:12   And I've seen people not buy Macs

01:36:14   because they didn't have the backlight keyboard.

01:36:16   It just seems nice.

01:36:17   And this seems much nicer than, like I said,

01:36:19   in the old backlight that was always leaking from around the keys. This just looks like

01:36:22   what I would imagine it would be like. It's just like the little letters on the keys light

01:36:25   up. Like they do on a car dashboard, right? In the daytime it just looks like white letters,

01:36:29   in the nighttime white light comes out of the letters. They haven't done the reverse

01:36:31   one yet, but that'll maybe in a couple years. Exactly. Alright, well that's the whole event,

01:36:38   so thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Casper, Warby Parker, and Hover, and

01:36:42   We will see you next week.

01:37:11   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:37:16   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:37:21   So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:37:25   Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:37:30   U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:37:33   It's accidental (it's accidental)

01:37:36   ♪ They didn't mean to ♪

01:37:39   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:37:40   ♪ Accidental ♪

01:37:41   ♪ Tech broadcast ♪

01:37:43   ♪ So long ♪

01:37:46   - You're really gonna do the watch in the after show?

01:37:48   - We're almost two hours, what are we gonna do?

01:37:51   - Well, that's why I asked it in Skype like 20 minutes ago.

01:37:54   Are we just going for the whole thing or are we just gonna--

01:37:56   - I feel like I can go longer on that laptop.

01:37:58   And we're still gonna get angry email

01:38:00   from telling me that I don't get it,

01:38:01   that only, just because geeks don't like this, anyway.

01:38:03   We're gonna go longer 'cause we're gonna get feedback email

01:38:05   and we're gonna talk about it next week.

01:38:06   So we're gonna go, no question, we're gonna go longer on the laptop.

01:38:08   Yeah, I suppose.

01:38:10   No, I mean personally, I'm hoping, the reason that, like I'm waiting for the 15,

01:38:13   just even if I don't end up buying the 15, I want to wait to see what it is,

01:38:16   because it's possible, you know, at some point they're gonna bring some of the advances

01:38:21   they made in this laptop to the other laptops.

01:38:23   They always do that, right?

01:38:24   So at some point, there's gonna be a 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro of some sort

01:38:30   that has some of the advances of this.

01:38:31   Now, when they brought it to the 13 at the same time, it only got the trackpad

01:38:35   and Broadwell, no other changes.

01:38:37   Broadwell CPUs for the Retina 15 inch are due out

01:38:42   by Intel roughly this summer, and Intel's always late,

01:38:45   so we'll see, but maybe they will be able to see

01:38:47   they might have a new 15 inch Retina to show off.

01:38:50   - So you think it's gonna have the new keyboard

01:38:53   backlights in there, like what other parts

01:38:54   are you looking to see?

01:38:55   - So it might, you know, we don't know.

01:38:57   I mean, obviously it's gonna have the four-stock trackpad

01:39:00   'cause they brought that to the 13 inch,

01:39:02   we can tell that's an easy thing to just bring over,

01:39:04   so it'll obviously have four stocks trackpad. Maybe it'll be thinner and

01:39:07   lighter by a little bit who knows probably not because those four core

01:39:11   chips need a lot of power so probably not but maybe it'll have space gray gold

01:39:16   options you know maybe like we don't know it at some point some of these

01:39:21   benefits are gonna move up the line right so maybe it'll have the weird new

01:39:25   keyboard maybe not we don't know but we're gonna have six more months

01:39:29   roughly, or five, four more months between now and then

01:39:34   for them to have time for these technologies to move up.

01:39:37   So they might move up this year,

01:39:39   they might move up in two or three years, who knows?

01:39:41   - It might be nice to see the butterfly keyboard

01:39:43   but with longer travel, like the supposed stability

01:39:46   of the butterfly key switches.

01:39:47   - I mean, that's solving a problem

01:39:49   that nobody has actually had.

01:39:51   - I kind of agree that like,

01:39:52   as I've used the Apple aluminum keyboard for a while,

01:39:56   and I've broken several of them just from using them

01:39:58   where the key, some switches start to get sticky.

01:40:00   Like those little sister switches are not, yeah.

01:40:03   Like they'll get to the point where the,

01:40:04   I forget which key it was,

01:40:05   but one of them like will start sticking

01:40:07   and then I've disassembled them

01:40:08   and reassembled them enough times to like,

01:40:10   it's, they never quite come back to the way they were.

01:40:13   Like they do start to get a little wobbly

01:40:15   and one side of them will stick down

01:40:18   because it will, it doesn't go down straight.

01:40:19   It does go down tilted.

01:40:20   And then one start of it starts to stick.

01:40:22   It's probably because, you know,

01:40:23   I'm always hitting the edge of a particular key

01:40:25   instead of dead center.

01:40:26   So if you could get keys that go up and down

01:40:29   without tilting, maybe they'll last longer.

01:40:33   I don't think it's so much about feel,

01:40:34   it's just in terms of durability.

01:40:36   I think it worked on my third one of these keyboards.

01:40:38   Maybe I'm still pressing a little bit too hard,

01:40:40   but they're not as sturdy as they could be.

01:40:43   And it's fine trade off for a laptop,

01:40:44   but for a desktop keyboard, I feel like.

01:40:46   Anyway, I would like to see this mechanism

01:40:49   with longer travel just to see how it would be,

01:40:50   because like I said, I found that marketing video

01:40:52   showing the key moving up and down more straight

01:40:54   even when it's not hit dead center.

01:40:56   I found that fairly compelling.

01:40:59   - It makes me sad to hear you talk about

01:41:00   a butterfly keyboard and not be talking about a ThinkPad.

01:41:03   - I know about that one.

01:41:04   When Marco was talking about his disappointment,

01:41:07   if he got a smaller laptop and then he had the small screen,

01:41:09   he would be cursing, like,

01:41:10   why didn't I just get the bigger screen?

01:41:12   This is, I feel, so cramped.

01:41:13   All I could think of was a laptop that opens up

01:41:15   and the screen gets bigger when you unfold it.

01:41:17   You're like, it's a 15-inch screen.

01:41:18   You close it up and it's a 13-inch size.

01:41:20   - Well, I mean, and one thing I thought about,

01:41:22   now that there's all these apps

01:41:23   that use the USB lightning cable

01:41:25   to make an iPad a second screen.

01:41:27   I thought, well, what if I take out an iPad,

01:41:30   have that be my second monitor for a laptop, but--

01:41:33   - Take out your iPad Pro, that'll be like what,

01:41:36   that's 15 inches, right?

01:41:36   - Yeah, but that's, can you imagine,

01:41:39   you're sitting on a plane trying to just have any room

01:41:42   at all and the guy next to you is setting up

01:41:44   this multi-monitor setup.

01:41:46   - Can I use your tray table for my second monitor?

01:41:49   We're cool, right?

01:41:50   - Exactly.

01:41:51   Yeah, you're fighting over the armrest

01:41:52   taking out two iPads to be this triple monitor. Someone needs to, yeah, someone needs to go to the

01:41:57   bathroom. You just have to start disassembling the setup. Well, VR will take care of that. So,

01:42:02   all those things that are on tray tables will be strapped to your face and everyone will just be

01:42:06   sitting there and there. What is it? A fart tube full of long pigs? I'm mixing my Roderick references.

01:42:12   Wow. All right, so do we want to talk about this Apple Watch before everyone just quits the show?

01:42:19   Oh yeah, the watch. We can quickly, I think we can cover it in five minutes, right?

01:42:24   The only thing we need to do in a timely manner is, I think, address the pricing stuff.

01:42:27   I don't even remember what our predictions are. I remember saying, I think in the last show,

01:42:33   one of the essential questions was, "Will you be able to get into an Apple Watch edition for

01:42:37   four digits?" And I said that 9999 didn't count. The answer to that is no. You will not be able to

01:42:43   get an Apple Watch edition for four digits. They were close, though. They went 10k. Like,

01:42:47   Like they could have gone 9999, but that's unseemly for such an expensive item 10k. You cannot get into one for less

01:42:53   and

01:42:56   All the other predictions a Gruber was the most obsessive thing that I was reading about this kept revising his predictions

01:43:00   He had a predictions for every single possible combination of stuff. I haven't he hasn't posted his like big post-mortem follow-up

01:43:07   How did I do on pricing things? So maybe I'm wrong about this, but my impression was that

01:43:10   What Gruber mostly got wrong and what I was most surprised by?

01:43:15   Was the big gap that there's a bunch of fairly reasonable price watches and then a big gigantic gap and then 10k

01:43:23   Instead of like a smooth slope where you work your way up to 10k by increments going up and up with more expensive watches more

01:43:29   Expensive bandits, you know like a spread price range my recollection of Gruber's predictions, which I of course did not look at before the show

01:43:36   Were that it was a much more gradual slope

01:43:39   Like if you graft it whereas the actual prices were like, oh all the Apple watches are pretty reasonable prices

01:43:44   then there's a big empty space and then rich people.

01:43:47   - Yeah, I believe he was saying the link bracelet,

01:43:52   stainless steel one was gonna be like 1500

01:43:55   and possibly 2000, so like that's in that range.

01:43:58   And that's not, you know, he wasn't that far.

01:44:00   I mean, of most of the people making price predictions,

01:44:02   I think he was among the closest, if not the closest,

01:44:05   you know, notable person predicting these things.

01:44:07   I mean, you know, he was saying addition would be

01:44:09   10 to 20,000, which it is, exactly.

01:44:11   - Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much what everybody was saying.

01:44:12   That's why the question was,

01:44:14   will you be able to get an edition for like,

01:44:16   will there be like a super low end edition one

01:44:19   that you can just barely get in for like 7,999 or something?

01:44:22   And the answer is no.

01:44:24   But it was close.

01:44:25   We all knew they were gonna go into five digits.

01:44:27   And then the question is how high would they go?

01:44:28   And surprisingly they stopped before 20K, right?

01:44:30   'Cause the most expensive one you can get is 717.

01:44:33   And a lot of people were predicting 10, 20, 30K

01:44:36   in that range.

01:44:36   So it's like, there's like the reasonable price watches,

01:44:39   a big gap, and then the additions

01:44:41   pretty tightly clustered around 10K.

01:44:43   - Overall, I'm very happy with the pricing.

01:44:46   You know, I am not at all a gold person.

01:44:48   I don't want gold, even if it was similarly priced

01:44:52   as steel, I would choose steel because I just don't like

01:44:55   gold coloring stuff on me, you know, it's just not my thing.

01:44:58   So I was never considering it to begin with,

01:45:00   so the fact that it's $10,000 and up, I don't care.

01:45:04   That's fine, you know.

01:45:05   - Yeah, I find it kind of gaudy as well.

01:45:07   And I was afraid that the steel one was gonna be,

01:45:09   like the predictions were like steel,

01:45:11   like the steel one with a steel link bracelet.

01:45:13   If that was like 1500, 2000,

01:45:15   like there's no way in hell I'm gonna,

01:45:17   that's the one I would like to get

01:45:18   if I was going to get one, which I'm not,

01:45:20   'cause that one looks really good.

01:45:21   And I'm happy to see that one down around.

01:45:23   Like at this point, like all of the Apple watches,

01:45:26   just ignore the gold ones,

01:45:27   pretend they're not even there

01:45:28   because Apple kind of is too,

01:45:29   and maybe we'll talk about that next week.

01:45:30   But all the Apple watches are like,

01:45:32   look, every time I go buy an iPad,

01:45:35   I end up spending close to $1,000 on my iPad.

01:45:37   I feel bad about it at the time,

01:45:38   but I really like my iPads and I use them a lot.

01:45:40   You're gonna go into the store to get an Apple Watch,

01:45:42   it starts at 350, you're probably gonna walk out,

01:45:45   if you're like me, with an Apple Watch,

01:45:46   it's pushing up into $1,000,

01:45:48   and you'll feel bad about it when you buy it,

01:45:51   and you feel like you really didn't spend too much,

01:45:52   but you'll like it and it will be fine, because--

01:45:54   - Wait, wait, how are you getting to $1,000,

01:45:56   you personally, with an Apple Watch?

01:45:57   I know it can be done, but--

01:45:58   - Oh, well, because I would want the steel one

01:46:00   with the link bracelet.

01:46:01   - Okay.

01:46:02   - Right, that's pretty much the top of the,

01:46:04   top range of the normal watches.

01:46:06   And for the gold ones, I really like the gold

01:46:08   for the gold one with the red band in terms of the color

01:46:12   scheming, but I think that's more of a woman's look than a

01:46:14   man's look. But I definitely is. I think that is the place

01:46:17   that where the gold looks the best all the other gold ones

01:46:20   I've seen like you said Marco like just don't appeal to me

01:46:22   taste wise. I think in fact, I think the way the gold one

01:46:25   would look better is if they made a gold link bracelet was

01:46:27   like look just go all in. It's a gold watch. Like you know, it

01:46:30   is just gold the McGolderson like well, and I think the

01:46:34   reason they're not is I think they're really dipping their

01:46:38   toe in the water with this. Like I don't think they're, you know, the reason why

01:46:41   there's limited quantity isn't only gonna be in certain stores is partly for

01:46:45   exclusivity and partly for price reasons but it's also partly because, you know,

01:46:49   like I tweeted the other day during the event that it wouldn't surprise me if

01:46:53   there is no Apple Edition 2. Like if this is a one-off really and this is the

01:46:58   only time they ever do this. I saw you tweet that. What makes you, what makes you

01:47:01   think that? I'm not saying this will fail and I'm saying it wouldn't surprise me

01:47:06   if this happened because it does seem like Apple is kind of unsure whether this will

01:47:11   even work or not. And, you know, it seems very clear that that's an experiment. The

01:47:16   rest of the Apple Watch, they're serious about it. The addition, you can tell, is an experiment.

01:47:21   And it could go great and it could sell at gangbusters. It might prove to be not worth

01:47:27   it for them because, like, you know, selling at gangbusters, you know, for that is going

01:47:31   to be still a relatively small volume. It might just be that the complexity is not worth

01:47:36   that the divide in marketing isn't worth it, whatever.

01:47:40   Chances are this won't be the case.

01:47:43   Chances are they'll keep having it.

01:47:44   All I said was it wouldn't surprise me if this happened.

01:47:46   - Yeah, it would surprise me because I think

01:47:48   no matter how successful this is,

01:47:50   they're still gonna wanna sell a gold one of these.

01:47:52   And maybe they'll bring the prices down

01:47:54   if it wasn't successful.

01:47:55   I think it will be successful, so I think it's moot.

01:47:57   But yeah, I think there's pretty much no way

01:48:01   the addition line can fail

01:48:02   because the success criteria are so limited.

01:48:05   They don't expect to sell a lot of them.

01:48:07   But they seem committed to the idea

01:48:11   that if you're going to sell watches,

01:48:14   the watch market has this little part that's like this,

01:48:17   and if you're gonna sell watches, you have to be in it.

01:48:19   They don't feel like they have to do it on the low end,

01:48:21   but they feel like they always have,

01:48:22   there's kind of the same reason

01:48:23   they keep making the Mac Pro.

01:48:24   Computers go up to,

01:48:25   computers that, personal computers go up to this end.

01:48:28   And we sell, we don't sell low-end computers.

01:48:32   We sell, you know, we want the top part of the market

01:48:35   Computers do go up to this part

01:48:37   so we should have one in that spice and I think it's even more of an imperative to do that with watches because

01:48:41   like, you know

01:48:42   But you could argue that the whole Apple part of the watch thing is all sort of towards the addition and they're not really into

01:48:48   The swatch part it just so happens that their swatchy one is still 350 bucks, right?

01:48:52   Yeah, I mean, I I think you know a lot of people Gruber included as it has been doing very smart analysis

01:48:58   So has Jonathan Geller but you news report guy. He's been doing good stuff on like, you know, like the perspective of Apple watch

01:49:04   as a watch person, as the kind of person who is familiar with the existing high-end watch business.

01:49:10   I don't think Apple really cares that much about the existing high-end watch business and how they

01:49:15   fit into it because the reality is they're going to be selling these things mostly to people who

01:49:20   don't wear watches who aren't part of that high-end business. The edition may be more than people,

01:49:24   but I bet not. I bet the edition sells mostly to geeks like us and people who like technology

01:49:31   who are just a lot wealthier and who care a lot more

01:49:35   about this kind of stuff.

01:49:36   I'm not saying it's gonna be all geeks,

01:49:38   I'm saying it's gonna be like, you know,

01:49:39   not people who are, like, no one's gonna be price shopping

01:49:42   and saying, you know what, I could get a Rolex

01:49:45   or I could get the gold Apple Watch.

01:49:47   - No, no, I think you're thinking about it wrong.

01:49:48   This is not an iPhone you wear on your wrist.

01:49:51   That's where you're wrong about this.

01:49:52   There's a reason there's not a gold iPhone.

01:49:54   Apple doesn't make a gold iPhone.

01:49:55   And it's not just because phones don't go like,

01:49:58   'cause they do, like people make those,

01:49:59   that Virtu whatever encrusted phone thing, right?

01:50:02   Why doesn't Apple make a gold iPhone,

01:50:05   but they are making a gold watch?

01:50:06   It's because the watch is jewelry.

01:50:07   It's a thing that you wear.

01:50:09   It is a beautiful thing in and of itself.

01:50:11   It is a different class of product.

01:50:12   It is fashion.

01:50:13   It's where you cross that threshold,

01:50:14   as we talked about in many past shows.

01:50:15   Once you wear something, not carry it with you,

01:50:18   even when you carry it with you,

01:50:19   you're gonna have the fancy cases and everything,

01:50:20   but once you wear it and it's jewelry,

01:50:23   and it's an established piece of jewelry called a watch,

01:50:26   I think you have to address the market of people

01:50:28   like to wear gold jewelry. And it's not just rich people like I mean, I know the 10k one

01:50:34   is like that, but just in general, like, I think that it's a different nature of this

01:50:39   product is different. I think you have to address that market if you're going to be

01:50:42   in the high end. But I don't think you need to make a gold iPhone because I like I think,

01:50:46   you know, you're right about the most people who are gonna buy Apple watches are exactly

01:50:49   as you described. But I think the people who are going to buy gold ones are the people

01:50:53   who are buying it as a piece of jewelry. That also does cool stuff.

01:50:57   - No, I agree.

01:50:58   Look, I didn't say, I didn't word myself very well there,

01:51:01   so forgive me.

01:51:02   What I mean is that even the people who buy the gold one

01:51:07   are gonna be people who are not,

01:51:09   who were not otherwise wearing a gold watch necessarily.

01:51:12   Some of them will be, but I think even among the gold sales,

01:51:16   I bet most people who buy the gold watches--

01:51:18   - Don't have any other gold watches?

01:51:20   - First of all, I bet they're not gonna be

01:51:21   like white dudes on a podcast about computers, first of all.

01:51:23   (laughing)

01:51:25   But I think it's gonna be mostly people who are buying it

01:51:29   because it is the Apple Watch,

01:51:31   not because it is the newest gold watch in the world,

01:51:35   but because it is specifically the gold Apple Watch.

01:51:38   - Well, oh yeah, of course.

01:51:39   But those are gonna be people

01:51:41   who already own gold watches, I'm saying.

01:51:42   That's what I'm saying.

01:51:43   Like, they're buying it because they own gold watches,

01:51:47   they want a new gold watch,

01:51:49   this watch gives them something other watches don't.

01:51:51   Let me try that computer watch

01:51:52   that also happens to be gold, you know what I mean?

01:51:54   but I would imagine the number of people

01:51:56   who buy the gold Apple watches,

01:51:57   their first gold watch is very small.

01:51:59   - Well, I mean, we'll probably never know this information.

01:52:04   I would bet against that, but.

01:52:05   - Well, none of us own gold watches

01:52:07   and one of us can afford a gold watch,

01:52:09   but doesn't own one, you know what I mean?

01:52:10   So like, if you're going to buy a gold watch,

01:52:13   certainly you, Marco, if you were forced to buy a gold watch

01:52:16   that's the one you'd buy, right?

01:52:18   - All three of us could buy it, just to be fair.

01:52:19   We just wouldn't.

01:52:20   All three of us could.

01:52:21   - Yeah, well, I mean, it really depends on where you,

01:52:23   you know, you want to allocate your money.

01:52:25   If I want my kids to go to college,

01:52:26   (laughing)

01:52:28   I can't buy a go watch.

01:52:29   But anyway, yeah, like we are not watch people.

01:52:31   We don't buy expensive watches, like, you know,

01:52:34   so that's why we have difficulty talking about the whole,

01:52:36   you know, and we don't, none of us wear even,

01:52:37   do we even, any of us even wear jewelry at all?

01:52:40   - I wear a watch.

01:52:41   I don't know if you'd classify my watch,

01:52:43   my 20, $30 Timex watch as jewelry.

01:52:45   - Is it plastic?

01:52:46   'Cause I don't know if that counts as jewelry.

01:52:49   Oh, is it florilastomer?

01:52:50   - Yeah, right.

01:52:51   - Well, I mean, that kind of counts.

01:52:52   do wear a watch, do you think of it as like a fashion thing where you would like, where

01:52:57   you look at your outfit and decide whether the watch is appropriate to wear with your

01:53:01   outfit or no?

01:53:02   - Uh, ish. So I actually have two watches. One is my daily watch, which is my $30 Timex,

01:53:09   and the other is a Citizen that Aaron got me for Christmas a year or two ago.

01:53:14   - All right, so that counts. I mean, and I think all of our wives would agree that Casey

01:53:18   is the most fashionable out of all three of us. Not that that's a high bar at all.

01:53:22   JONATHAN KAPLAN And I'm not particularly fashionable.

01:53:24   Well, there's that. But all kidding aside, I do only wear the Citizen, generally speaking,

01:53:33   if I'm dressing up for something nice like a wedding or Christmas holiday party. If I were

01:53:39   to spend $10,000 on a watch today, which I can't and wouldn't, but if I were, I would

01:53:48   absolutely be getting something that does not say Apple on it. I would probably get

01:53:51   a Panerai if I could find one small enough for my little tiny wrist.

01:53:55   So you do have a little bit of, I don't know what that is. So it shows you are actually

01:53:58   know something about this whole world of watches.

01:54:01   Marginally. A friend of mine is...

01:54:02   It's like me with my Ferraris. You know about them, but...

01:54:05   Well, you know a lot more about Ferraris than I know about watches.

01:54:09   I have a friend who is really into watches and so I saw, or I have seen a lot of his

01:54:15   watches, so I've seen his Rolexes, his Panerais, and I forget what other ones, Omegas, there's

01:54:20   others that he has that I don't recall off the top of my head, but I always really fancy

01:54:25   to Panerais.

01:54:26   Now the thing with the Panerais, or any Panerai I've ever seen, is that they're freaking

01:54:30   huge and I have little teeny tiny wrists and so because of that I don't think I could actually

01:54:38   get one but in this hypothetical if I were to spend serious money on a watch I would

01:54:45   get something like that there is no chance I would get an Apple watch because I want

01:54:48   something that's going to age and age well and there's something classic about a traditional

01:54:55   analog watch that I don't think an Apple watch would hold up over time. I mean, look at any

01:55:01   movie you watch and you see flip phones or, you know, everyone makes fun of the Zach Morris

01:55:08   cell phone from Saved by the Bell. I mean— This might be close though because, I mean,

01:55:12   it might end up being like a class—because watches, because the trending watches is so

01:55:17   gargantuan, this watch is not the biggest gold watch you can get. Like, it's not like the pebble

01:55:24   where it's conspicuous in like, oh, that's got computer crap in it.

01:55:28   That's why it's so damn big.

01:55:29   Because it's actually smaller.

01:55:30   I hear from all the people who are there trying the watches on themselves, which I haven't

01:55:33   done, but that it is, when you try it on, it is smaller than you think it is.

01:55:39   Like in the pictures, it's always right up in our face.

01:55:40   It looks like it's the size of like the Hindenburg, right?

01:55:43   But when you actually put it on, it seems smaller.

01:55:45   So I think it is not out of step with the size of regular watches.

01:55:49   And it will be defined like, you know, it looks like a little Airstream trailer and

01:55:53   it will be defined by its look. And so when we see this watch like two decades from now

01:55:57   in a movie or something, it will evoke the time, but I don't think it will seem obsolete

01:56:03   in the way that flip phones do because I think it's about the size of a watch. Like it's

01:56:07   not the size of a computer watch, it's about the size of a watch watch, right? Well, it's

01:56:12   a fairly unusual shape for most fashionable watches. Well, I mean, if you look at the

01:56:17   Mark Neusens other watches that he's made that look also look like Airstream trailers

01:56:21   but don't have computers inside them.

01:56:24   But do have identical bands.

01:56:25   Right, like I said, it's going to look like a particular shape of a watch, and I think

01:56:29   that will evoke the time and the particulars of the Apple Watch, but I don't think it will

01:56:32   look dated in the way that phones the size of bricks that you hold to your head look

01:56:36   dated, you know what I mean?

01:56:37   Yeah, but you don't think these are going to get extremely thin?

01:56:40   I mean, they already have all the ports gone.

01:56:42   God, I couldn't say that with a straight face.

01:56:44   Yeah, they have the secret lightning port inside the band thing.

01:56:48   That is true, actually.

01:56:50   But all kidding aside, you don't think that these are gonna get considerably thinner over

01:56:54   time?

01:56:55   Yeah, no, I think they will go thinner, but like, what I'm saying is that I think they're

01:56:58   below the threshold of embarrassment and it will just look like a fashion choice like

01:57:02   bell-bottoms.

01:57:03   Like, you know, the pants did get thinner around the ankles.

01:57:06   Bell-bottoms do look silly, but we don't look at them and say that's back when they had

01:57:08   to make the bottom of pants really wide.

01:57:10   They didn't have to, it was a fashion thing.

01:57:12   And even though they kind of have to because of the battery and other concerns here, I

01:57:15   think it's within the boundaries of watch size.

01:57:18   since what like you said like that Panerai especially since the trend now is for these

01:57:21   gargantuan watches at least in men's watches that it won't look that crazy.

01:57:27   Of course I mean your point still stands about like you want to have something that will

01:57:31   stand a test of time whatever this thing's gonna go obsolete the battery's gonna die

01:57:34   the internals are gonna be terrible eventually you're not gonna be able to it won't even

01:57:37   be able to connect to your iPhone 17 anymore like it's gonna go away in a way that a ten

01:57:42   thousand dollar gold other watch won't go away simply because that one just does less

01:57:45   and it will be just as good when you hand it to your grandchild. You hand your grandchild

01:57:49   this, they're not going to turn their nose up at it because it's like a flip phone. They're

01:57:52   going to turn their nose up at it because A) the battery will probably be dead and B)

01:57:56   even if it's not, there'll be nothing they can do with it. All its functionality will

01:58:01   be gone because we'll be on to Bluetooth standard 17 or whatever. You know what I mean? It just

01:58:06   won't work anymore. It just won't do its job anymore, whereas the traditional watch will

01:58:10   continue to do its job exactly the same.

01:58:12   Well, and you know and Casey, you know, you're you're saying you you would treat a very expensive watch purchase like like an addition as

01:58:19   An investment, you know

01:58:21   Like you would want this to be a long-lasting

01:58:23   piece that you would probably have the rest of your life and probably hand down to your to your kids and grandkids like

01:58:28   Absolutely that that is completely not how people are gonna be thinking about this and Apple knows that and they're willing to take that risk

01:58:35   Because there are enough people in the world many of them not in North America

01:58:40   there are a lot of people in the world who are very happy to spend ten thousand dollars or

01:58:45   $17,000 to get themselves or their loved ones one of these there. I think it's no coincidence

01:58:52   that

01:58:55   The the red and gold one is probably the best-looking one in lineup

01:58:59   And that is one of the most expensive and that those are China's colors

01:59:01   And it's made for women

01:59:03   I think all those things are extremely deliberate and the demo to we chat on the thing instead of iMessage remember that

01:59:10   - Yeah, I mean, this is gonna sell

01:59:12   in ridiculous quantities in China.

01:59:15   Because we don't understand the culture there.

01:59:18   From what people who do understand it say,

01:59:21   what we've been able to learn is that

01:59:25   this is gonna sell like crazy to a lot of people.

01:59:28   - It's like the 80s there.

01:59:28   Ostentatious shows of wealth are not frowned upon

01:59:33   to the degree that they are in other,

01:59:36   I mean, everything's a continuum.

01:59:37   I think ostentatious shows of wealth

01:59:39   frowned upon more in some places and less than others. In the US in the 80s, for example,

01:59:44   everything was about gold and showing off your fancy things and wearing your, you know,

01:59:48   and then there was kind of a grunge was a reversal of that. And like, so we know the US trends,

01:59:52   but in up and coming China with a rising middle class, showing your status and how much wealth

01:59:57   you've gained seems to be more acceptable in that country right now than it is in ours,

02:00:01   to the point where like having gold and shiny things is like, you know, more popular there than

02:00:07   It is here. I I'm just not a fan of the whole gold color

02:00:10   I remember when Lexus first came out not to turn this in neutral again. They offered gold trim

02:00:14   I think this was a factory option if it wasn't tons of people were getting aftermarket where instead of having silver chrome like the word

02:00:21   Lexus all the little trim pieces the the chrome around the windows the grill you could get them with gold

02:00:27   I always thought it looked so awful and tacky, but it was everywhere

02:00:30   And these watches look a lot like that, but except for except for like say except for the red and gold one

02:00:34   I think that looks really good.

02:00:36   Like, you know, it goes together with the other ones, especially with the lack of a

02:00:40   gold pan, it doesn't clear.

02:00:42   And I think we're also going to see these on celebrities, on the red carpet.

02:00:46   Yeah.

02:00:47   We're going to see it.

02:00:48   Even if they're not theirs, they'll rent it for the day, just like they do the rest of

02:00:51   their jewelry.

02:00:52   Yeah, I mean, we're going to see these in places, just we're not going to own them ourselves,

02:00:56   but there's going to be a lot of people out there who do, just not us.

02:01:00   And as for the investment part of it, even though you said they're going to sell a lot

02:01:04   these in China. In the grand scheme of things they're going to sell a very small number of

02:01:08   these compared to the number of other watches they sell. Oh yeah, all I'm saying is they're

02:01:11   gonna is that among among the ones they do sell a large portion of those will be sold in China.

02:01:16   Right, but so if you have an original Apple Watch Edition gold thing as an investment item long

02:01:26   after it stops functioning it may be, I'm not saying that it's going to gain and you know like

02:01:32   Ferrari's basically you buy them for a million dollars. They lose value you keep them for ten years and all of a sudden

02:01:37   They're worth twice what you're paid for them because they make like you know well

02:01:39   Okay, so they make like 500 a year, but it may be that how many of the law Ferrari's they're making maybe a hundred or something

02:01:44   And they're all sold or whatever like it doesn't matter nobody can test them right yeah the small

02:01:49   But the point is when people buy those and they put mileage on is like oh you're depreciating your 1.2 million dollar car

02:01:55   Just keep it for 20 years that thing will be worth 2.5 million dollars

02:01:58   Don't drive it.

02:01:59   Like if you want to make money with a Ferrari,

02:02:01   buy the most expensive one they make

02:02:03   and preserve it for 20 years and sell it for twice.

02:02:06   Would you be like, look at the McLaren F1, right?

02:02:08   You could have bought that for what was it?

02:02:09   250 grand?

02:02:11   You could sell them now for like what?

02:02:13   Million and a half, two million?

02:02:14   Like because there are a few of them.

02:02:16   And so I think if you have more so

02:02:20   than if you have the very first iPhone,

02:02:21   if you have the very first Apple watch edition

02:02:24   and you know, if they sell only a few thousand of those

02:02:27   and you have one of those in 20 years, it will be worth more than you paid for it.

02:02:31   Well, and especially if it's a one off that see this is this, I was part of the logic

02:02:36   and going into my thinking that, you know, what if this was a one off? What if there

02:02:40   is no Apple Watch Edition 2 next year? You know, like, because it makes this one even

02:02:44   more prestigious if they don't keep making them or if they only if they only release

02:02:49   a new one like every five years or something like that, you know, like if there's some

02:02:52   kind of limited availability, like, you know, the release windows, like the stupid Disney

02:02:56   vault and all that stuff. That stuff all plays into the exclusivity, the high fashion angle

02:03:01   here. Wouldn't surprise me at all. Anyway, you want to talk about the other ones, maybe?

02:03:06   Well, one quick note as well. One thing that I don't think has been talked about too much

02:03:11   with regard to the edition is, to go back to the Panerais and traditional watches, my

02:03:18   understanding of these really expensive traditional watches is that the secondhand market is extremely

02:03:26   vibrant. And when you said Marco, you're making an investment or I'd hypothetically be making

02:03:30   an investment. I meant that you meant that in more ways than perhaps you realized in

02:03:35   so far as you can trade these things like freakin stocks, if you so choose, insofar

02:03:40   as you can buy and sell them. And I know that my friend who was really into watches, he

02:03:44   would go through watches constantly. He was like a freaking day trader of watches because

02:03:50   He was constantly buying new ones, selling the ones he has, and that's a very, very vibrant market,

02:04:00   which I don't know how well that's going to work out for the edition. It doesn't have to work out

02:04:04   for the edition, but that's a piece of the more traditional watch market that Apple may not really

02:04:10   be getting into. And I'm curious to see what the fallout has a negative connotation to it,

02:04:15   but what the fallout is from that. Yeah, we talked about the tech angle on this.

02:04:19   this is just no way around it.

02:04:20   It's going to be eventually obsolete,

02:04:22   the battery is gonna eventually die,

02:04:23   fine, you can replace the battery.

02:04:25   Are they gonna have a swap of the guts?

02:04:27   Probably not, all this stuff.

02:04:29   And these are things, by the way,

02:04:30   all of our questions that we've discussed at length

02:04:32   about the upgradability and the pricing

02:04:33   and how they're gonna sell in the store,

02:04:35   Apple could not set minds at ease,

02:04:39   but just like, if Apple has decided,

02:04:41   which I'm not sure they entirely have,

02:04:43   but if they had decided,

02:04:44   if they had just got out ahead of it,

02:04:48   because they know all the questions people are asking,

02:04:49   and either said,

02:04:50   we are going to have an internals upgrade program,

02:04:52   we are gonna have a trade-in program,

02:04:53   or we are not going to do that, or whatever.

02:04:56   Leaving it unknown is, it's a very Apple move,

02:05:00   but it leaves uncertainty if people,

02:05:03   again, with the $10,000 market,

02:05:05   some people are gonna have that concern.

02:05:07   And the fact that there is no answer out there,

02:05:09   because people who buy 10,000 modules

02:05:10   have some expectations, like you said,

02:05:12   it'd be able to resell it and buy another one,

02:05:14   or to give it to their kids,

02:05:16   or how long is it going to last?

02:05:18   And Apple's current non-answer basically says, you know, don't buy this hoping that you know

02:05:23   it's going to become obsolete.

02:05:24   We don't even know, like I think Apple has said they will replace the battery for you,

02:05:27   they'll replace the battery in all their things if you pay them money, so that's fine.

02:05:31   But other than the battery, it's going to be obsolete.

02:05:33   And when that happens, are you going to be sad that you can't replace the internals on

02:05:37   it?

02:05:38   Because Apple's not saying that you can, so don't buy one thinking you can.

02:05:40   They could change their minds at any time, but clearly Apple doesn't think that it's

02:05:44   a deal breaker on this. They can go to market with this, with just leaving this as a completely,

02:05:49   you know, we haven't announced anything about replacing the inside of your watch, which

02:05:52   is exactly what everybody predicted who knew Apple, said Apple is not going to come out

02:05:55   there and tell you that you can upgrade the guts of this watch. That is a fantasy of people

02:05:59   who, you know, because I know it's technically possible and it would be cool, you should

02:06:02   do it. They could still change their mind if it turns out that no one wants to buy these

02:06:06   editions because they can't upgrade them or, you know, when they finally get obsolete,

02:06:10   then that happens. But I think the watches will be kind of like iPads even more so that

02:06:14   they'll last a really long time.

02:06:15   Like, eventually they'll become obsolete, but what reason, you know, they're going to

02:06:20   become obsolete because the protocols they talk to the iPhone with will change in a way

02:06:25   that's not backward compatible, or the new watches will be able to do so much more that

02:06:29   the whole class of really cool apps that you can run on your watch won't run on your old

02:06:33   one and you just feel bad and you'll be like, "Oh, now I have to get a new watch because

02:06:37   the cool video conferencing whatever app won't run on my original Apple Watch."

02:06:41   Don't forget the nose camera.

02:06:43   - Yeah, nose hair of cam, right.

02:06:44   I mean, that was kind of the sad part

02:06:46   when they showed the security camera

02:06:47   showing the garage door opening in the keynote.

02:06:49   It was super low frame rate.

02:06:50   That's because the camera,

02:06:52   it's one of those video surveillance cameras

02:06:57   that takes a picture every second or two to save space,

02:06:59   right, and it's all blurry.

02:07:01   If not, as far as I can tell,

02:07:02   a limitation of the watch,

02:07:03   or maybe Marco could tell me better,

02:07:04   could you display 30 frames per second video on the watch?

02:07:08   - Probably not with the watch kit,

02:07:10   because you have to stream,

02:07:11   you have to have the images on the iPhone extension

02:07:15   and then they stream over Bluetooth over to the watch.

02:07:18   Now, I haven't used a watch yet,

02:07:20   so I don't know how fast that connection is in practice,

02:07:23   but all the guidance on the SDK so far

02:07:25   is basically don't expect images to transfer quickly.

02:07:28   - Assuming you could get a H.264 or H.265

02:07:33   in the future video on there,

02:07:35   is there decoding hardware to playback,

02:07:38   is there a little H.264 decoder hardware on there?

02:07:41   can it play video?

02:07:42   Like that's my other question.

02:07:43   Ignoring the old limitations of like WatchKit, whatever,

02:07:45   like if Apple wanted to show video on its thing,

02:07:48   could it do that?

02:07:49   And I would guess yes, but I really don't know.

02:07:51   Like no one knows what's in that S1 thing, right?

02:07:53   - Well, how do they do the animated emoji?

02:07:55   So I'm being genuine, like that is animated.

02:07:58   - Yeah, that's like OpenGL.

02:08:01   Like I assume there's OpenGL stuff in there

02:08:03   or OpenGL ES or whatever it is, but-

02:08:05   - Yeah, that's a good point.

02:08:06   - Is there the dedicated hardware to decode

02:08:08   like whatever codec, you know, H.264 now,

02:08:10   Like is that on the S1 chip?

02:08:12   If there's not, that's another thing

02:08:14   that's gonna obsolete this original hardware

02:08:15   'cause eventually there will be,

02:08:16   because eventually there will be nose time face,

02:08:20   nose time, yeah, nose hair face timing from our things.

02:08:23   Not on this version, but like inevitably it will come.

02:08:25   - I suspect that's all there already.

02:08:27   I mean, it isn't exposed over WatchKit to developers,

02:08:31   but I would be very surprised if it wasn't there.

02:08:34   - Like why would you make,

02:08:37   it seems like that probably what the S1 is

02:08:39   is a couple generations old iPhone thing redesigned

02:08:43   and shrunken to be the S1.

02:08:45   - Yeah, I mean, like what other people are saying

02:08:47   that is basically an A5 performance level.

02:08:50   So it wouldn't surprise me at all if it actually is,

02:08:52   for the most part, A5 cores, just with some modifications

02:08:56   and some die shrinks over time,

02:08:57   which the A5 already had a few of them already.

02:08:59   So, you know, that's fine.

02:09:01   I really don't expect the CPU speed of the watch

02:09:06   to matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

02:09:08   that's why these are going to have a slow upgrade cycle,

02:09:11   probably, and that's not going to be that big of a deal

02:09:14   because, for the most part, you're talking limitations in

02:09:17   battery, and, you know, that's probably about like battery

02:09:22   life is going to be the limiting factor here. I think

02:09:25   I don't see them adding tons and tons of hardware

02:09:31   capabilities. I don't see them adding like cameras and

02:09:35   dedicated GPS and everything anytime soon, if ever. I mean,

02:09:38   We don't know yet again, but.

02:09:39   - The native apps are gonna push us.

02:09:41   We have to see what do people do with native apps?

02:09:43   'Cause the current functionality,

02:09:44   there's no reason for any more power.

02:09:46   The current functionality they expose

02:09:47   is plenty to do glances, plenty to do all this stuff,

02:09:49   the transfer files, everything's fine.

02:09:51   As soon as they have a native app SDK,

02:09:53   then it's like, okay, where are the edges

02:09:55   that apps are pushing against?

02:09:57   - It would surprise me if people had tons of apps

02:09:59   on their watch.

02:10:00   I mean, the watch might end up being

02:10:02   a lot like people's Today screens,

02:10:04   where you have five or six apps on there

02:10:08   that you use a lot, but you don't have 150 apps in your

02:10:12   watch. We don't know. I mean, I don't - the big thing is we

02:10:16   still don't know all the big killer apps for this thing yet.

02:10:19   We still don't know, like, what are people going to do with

02:10:22   the native watch SDK a year from now that we are not

02:10:26   foreseeing yet, that Apple isn't even foreseeing yet,

02:10:29   that's going to be, oh, my God, this is a great use of the

02:10:32   watch, right? Not just like shovelware from the iPhone with

02:10:37   little watch remote view, which is what I'm doing, not just that, like something

02:10:43   something that could only exist on the watch that that would not be a very good

02:10:47   iPhone app or would not be possible on the iPhone. We don't know that's that's

02:10:50   all future unknown stuff for the most part today. We really have no idea and I

02:10:54   think for the most part Apple still has no idea, so we'll see for the most part.

02:10:59   I would expect you know for upgrade cycle I would expect it to be like you

02:11:04   You know, for nerds like us, it might be two to three years.

02:11:09   - Nerds like us who don't buy the watch?

02:11:10   Oh, you're getting one, but I'm not.

02:11:12   Casey, are you getting one?

02:11:13   - Of course he is.

02:11:15   - Sitting here now. - That's a yes.

02:11:16   - Well, so, see, sitting here now--

02:11:17   - FastText, this is the killer app for FastText.

02:11:20   - Yes, yes, yes, yes.

02:11:21   - Unfortunately, it's kind of built in.

02:11:23   - Yeah, exactly.

02:11:24   So, sitting here now, no, I am not getting one,

02:11:27   but as I said on analog, that's really just claim chowder

02:11:30   for you guys and for Mike, because I suspect

02:11:33   sometime over the next two to three months,

02:11:36   I will probably get one.

02:11:37   And not to totally repeat analog,

02:11:39   but short, short version of what I said there was,

02:11:41   I felt the same way about,

02:11:42   or I feel the same way about the watch

02:11:44   as I did about the iPad.

02:11:47   Whatever, it doesn't really solve any problems that I have.

02:11:49   I don't really get it.

02:11:50   Fast forward a couple of years,

02:11:52   and now you can pry my iPad with retina and cellular

02:11:56   out of my cold, dead hands.

02:11:57   So I will probably end up getting one knowing me

02:12:01   because every time I'm like, meh, to one of your points,

02:12:03   I think it was Mario, or maybe both of you said,

02:12:05   and if any time I say, meh, that really means yes,

02:12:08   I just haven't realized it yet.

02:12:09   But I don't know, I, sitting here now, I'm not so sure.

02:12:13   And the other problem I'm having is,

02:12:14   the one I really want is the, you know,

02:12:16   10, or 1,050 or $1,100 space black, space gray,

02:12:21   whatever it is, with the link band,

02:12:23   which is I think what you guys said you wanted as well.

02:12:25   - Nope, not me.

02:12:26   Not in black, that one in the stainless steel.

02:12:29   Okay, okay, so what would you get Marco or what are you getting I?

02:12:32   Still want to see them in person before I judge originally originally. I wanted the

02:12:36   my goal with the bands was

02:12:40   Because I'm gonna be taking this on an awful lot and I haven't worn a watch since middle school. I

02:12:44   Know myself. I know I'm going to be annoyed at trying to match the same fit every time I attach the band

02:12:50   And so I wanted something that that released easily and had a fixed fit that I could set it to one to the right size

02:12:57   And just leave it there. I

02:12:58   Also, we're not crazy about the idea of a plastic band. Just doesn't doesn't make me feel or elastomer

02:13:04   Tim Cook pronounces that kind of the way

02:13:08   Underscore pronounces South Africa like there's like a syllable missing in the middle there florist amir

02:13:14   Yeah, you hear that like when he when he says it. I think I think I black out for a moment when he says that word

02:13:19   Anyway, so my goal was to get like a fixed-fit quick release on and off and to me the only two that really do that

02:13:27   the modern buckle and the link bracelet. Now, as I've said in the past, even though you

02:13:33   don't believe me, I don't like to be flashy. And because I haven't worn a watch in so long,

02:13:39   I fear that a metal watch band would be flashy on me. And maybe not, I'll have to see them

02:13:44   in person. I also was leaning towards the dark one before the event, and since the event,

02:13:49   well all the new photos and everything, the dark one looks really dark. Like way darker

02:13:53   darker than the original pictures that were on the

02:13:55   original site. I think it's too dark anyway, so I'll have

02:13:59   to see them in person, but originally I was going modern

02:14:01   buckle. I was a little a little upset that the colors

02:14:04   were all feminine before and then they had the black one,

02:14:06   which is great, but it's only thirty eight millimeter and I

02:14:11   tried on the paper prototypes that case you like to earlier.

02:14:14   Thank you Casey. Try those on and the the modern buckle,

02:14:18   even in the largest size, just barely fits around my wrist.

02:14:21   I'm guessing it's too small. Apple tries very hard not to call these men's and women's watches, which is admirable

02:14:26   but the way they size them and the fact that women on average have smaller wrists than men is basically like you may not be

02:14:33   calling them men's and women's, but by taking this like the modern buckle that you like, which does look very feminine to me

02:14:39   but you know whatever you want fine, right?

02:14:40   But by making it too small, you're basically dictating like we're not gonna say this is a women's watch

02:14:45   but we're gonna make it so small that even a small man is gonna have a hard time getting this around his wrist.

02:14:50   or just kind of like undercutting the whole sort of,

02:14:52   we're not making any judgments about gender

02:14:54   by whatever watch you want.

02:14:55   - Well, there are some exceptions.

02:14:57   Like the sport bands are the same.

02:14:59   There's the link bracelet, which is a pretty masculine thing.

02:15:01   I don't think women's watches tend to have

02:15:03   big silver link bracelets, do they?

02:15:05   - No, I've seen them.

02:15:06   They would just be skinnier.

02:15:07   Yeah, they would just be skinnier.

02:15:08   But they have the same type of thing.

02:15:10   - I don't think the Apple link bracelet is feminine really,

02:15:12   but they do make that one in both sizes, for example.

02:15:16   Anyway, so if you're a man with smaller wrists,

02:15:19   there are options for you.

02:15:20   but the modern buckle is little feminine. I know that I

02:15:22   see that I still would be attracted to it for for that

02:15:26   quick release and size locking thing, but it's just too small

02:15:29   for me. Well, like I said, all the ones that have a series of

02:15:31   holes, you always put it back in the same hole that you you

02:15:34   know you know what I mean yeah, but that's annoying. So I

02:15:37   think the one I want to try, I'm not sure I would be

02:15:40   confident enough to preorder it yet, but the one I'm most

02:15:43   looking at now is the black leather loop and I know it

02:15:47   doesn't it doesn't keep its size fixed, which is annoying. It's similar to the

02:15:51   Milanese loop. I don't I know I'm pressing that wrong. I'm sorry, but it's

02:15:54   even it's it has like the little like notches between each leather link, so it

02:16:00   should be somewhat lockable to certain sizes. I don't know, but so that's what

02:16:04   I'm looking at the black letter loop because I I again reducing flashiness,

02:16:08   so I'm a little scared about going going to link bracelet. I also I think the link

02:16:14   bracelet look is kind of too old for me. Like, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm just

02:16:19   not a watch guy and haven't been yet, but I feel like I'm the wrong generation to wear

02:16:25   a metal link bracelet. Again, could be totally wrong, but I think I'd have to buy a Mercedes

02:16:30   also if I did that.

02:16:33   I don't have fashion hang-ups for the watch. I'm actually intrigued by the watch and now

02:16:36   that I have an iPhone, the only reason I'm not getting one, it's not even because it's

02:16:40   too expensive, the only reason I'm not getting one is because I just don't wear a watch.

02:16:43   Like that's, it's the fact that this is a watch of any kind.

02:16:47   That it's a thing that I strap my wrist and that's not a habit that I do and I don't,

02:16:50   and I intentionally don't wear a watch.

02:16:52   Like I wore one, you know, like in middle school to try it out and I didn't like it.

02:16:54   I didn't like things on my wrist.

02:16:56   And that's the only thing stopping me from getting this.

02:16:58   There's many things making me want to get it.

02:17:00   It's like, look, even though you don't wear a watch, you should try it.

02:17:02   It might be cool.

02:17:03   I'm actually very interested in trying out the watch.

02:17:05   And if I actually did buy one, I probably wouldn't buy the one I just described just

02:17:08   because the reason I hate things on my wrist is I'm just so sensitive to like, I mean,

02:17:13   it would just get caught in my arm hair,

02:17:14   and it would be all pinchy, and it would just like,

02:17:17   I would want, I would probably wear the rubber one,

02:17:20   as Christy Turlington called it,

02:17:21   or I think she called it rubber, whatever it was.

02:17:22   - She did, yeah, she called it the rubber one.

02:17:24   - Tim's like, no!

02:17:26   Anyway.

02:17:27   - We rehearsed this, it's for a last time.

02:17:28   - Right, like, that, comfort would be,

02:17:32   I need the sweatpants of Apple watches

02:17:34   to go with the rest of my wardrobe, right?

02:17:37   Because that's the thing stopping me from wearing this,

02:17:38   it's just a comfort thing, but I think it might be cool

02:17:40   to have a cool little screen thing,

02:17:42   So I'm not gonna say, I don't think I'm gonna wait

02:17:44   for the iWatch 6 to get one of these, or to at least try one.

02:17:46   I may try it and regret it badly.

02:17:48   And really this is our use for me getting

02:17:49   this cheapest Apple Watch I possibly can,

02:17:51   just to see if, can you wear a watch?

02:17:53   But I'm definitely intrigued by this device

02:17:56   and would love to find out if it's a thing

02:17:59   that has any place in my life.

02:18:00   But yeah, as a piece of sculpture,

02:18:03   I like the stainless steel one with the link bracelet,

02:18:06   but it just seems like an arm hair trap.

02:18:09   I got a lot of arm hair.

02:18:10   (laughing)

02:18:12   - Yeah, well, and the comfort angle is big to me too,

02:18:14   and that's one of the reasons why

02:18:15   I'm considering the leather loop,

02:18:16   because I suspect of all the steel bands

02:18:19   that aren't the sport band,

02:18:20   I bet that's the most comfortable,

02:18:21   because there is no metal touching your skin,

02:18:23   and it's just this nice leather.

02:18:25   - Leather gets smelly though.

02:18:26   - I didn't think about that.

02:18:28   Well, I don't know, I'm not that smelly.

02:18:30   - My wife replaces her watch band

02:18:31   every whatever year or two,

02:18:33   and when she does, it smells bad.

02:18:36   - Interesting, well, 150 bucks for a new one.

02:18:38   It's not that crazy.

02:18:39   - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

02:18:40   like her watch bands cost like whatever 20 bucks. It's just leather soaks up stinks.

02:18:46   Well, I guess we'll find out.

02:18:48   [