ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► The snow is destroying my house.

00:00:01 ◼   ► We'll see if it remains standing.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I keep thinking this house has been here since 1932.

00:00:05 ◼   ► It's not gonna fall down this year,

00:00:06 ◼   ► but it's gotta fall down some year,

00:00:07 ◼   ► and I'll probably be in it when it does.

00:00:09 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:00:10 ◼   ► - So if you wanna know how to polarize our audience,

00:00:15 ◼   ► and we've talked about some controversial things

00:00:17 ◼   ► in the past, we've talked about all sorts of things,

00:00:20 ◼   ► not really ever politics or religion,

00:00:22 ◼   ► but we've come as close as one can get,

00:00:23 ◼   ► and it's not the abuse of women in the technology industry.

00:00:27 ◼   ► That is actually not very controversial to our audience,

00:00:29 ◼   ► which is good.

00:00:30 ◼   ► But man, if we talk about cars,

00:00:32 ◼   ► holy hell do people get upset.

00:00:34 ◼   ► And then some people love it, and then people get upset.

00:00:36 ◼   ► And then other people love it,

00:00:37 ◼   ► and then people get really upset.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Who's getting upset?

00:00:40 ◼   ► Are people yelling at you about stuff?

00:00:42 ◼   ► Most people are in a joking way about,

00:00:44 ◼   ► "Oh, talking about cars, ha ha."

00:00:46 ◼   ► But they seem pretty okay with it.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - I don't know about you, Marco,

00:00:49 ◼   ► but I've seen some pretty angry,

00:00:50 ◼   ► either tweets or emails about the car talk.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - I didn't really feel a lot of anger.

00:00:55 ◼   ► There were a couple of tweets that were like,

00:00:56 ◼   ► "Oh, I guess I'll skip this one."

00:00:57 ◼   ► but they were pretty mellow.

00:00:59 ◼   ► I mean, compared to what we got when we did "Neutral,"

00:01:01 ◼   ► you know, "Neutral" had like 200 really upset people

00:01:05 ◼   ► and 100 people who liked it, and that was it.

00:01:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:08 ◼   ► And this seemed to, I was surprised, actually,

00:01:12 ◼   ► I was very surprised how many people enjoyed

00:01:15 ◼   ► my Tesla review, 'cause I thought,

00:01:16 ◼   ► I was very nervous about even including that,

00:01:21 ◼   ► because I was afraid people would think

00:01:22 ◼   ► that I'm some elitist asshole.

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Should've just made a blog post, see?

00:01:26 ◼   ► It would've been fine.

00:01:27 ◼   ► That would have been worse. No, no, no. I would never put that on my blog because I

00:01:30 ◼   ► would have had so many, you know, people who listen to this tend to like us more, I think,

00:01:36 ◼   ► than the average blog reader. If I post something on my blog, I get a whole bunch of hate from

00:01:42 ◼   ► like drive-bys. Whereas with podcasts, you don't really have drive-by readers or listeners

00:01:47 ◼   ► to a podcast, you know? Like, people who are here tend to like you. I mean, with the exception

00:01:52 ◼   ► of like MTW, everybody else tends to like us.

00:01:58 ◼   ► You can say more possibly controversial things on a podcast and you can expect that the audience

00:02:04 ◼   ► will give you the benefit of the doubt or will know you a little bit better or will

00:02:08 ◼   ► understand you a little bit better.

00:02:09 ◼   ► So I feel way more comfortable saying things on podcasts than I do, and especially on our

00:02:15 ◼   ► podcast, than I do writing it on my blog.

00:02:18 ◼   ► need to go on analog with Casey and talk through these issues that you have about feeling bad

00:02:24 ◼   ► about buying nice things with your money. Actually that is a very interesting point.

00:02:28 ◼   ► An alternate solution if you find that to owners is to give all your money to me. I

00:02:32 ◼   ► have no problems. The funny thing about you, Jha, is that even if I gave you all the money

00:02:38 ◼   ► in the world to go buy Ferraris and stuff, you still wouldn't do it. I have different

00:02:42 ◼   ► priorities than you, so the ranking of what's the first thing you buy, the second thing

00:02:46 ◼   ► you buy something may be different but I would have no problem like blogging about the expensive

00:02:51 ◼   ► thing that I bought, being afraid, you know, whatever, like that's me, that's you, we're

00:02:54 ◼   ► different people. That's why I said you need to get rid of all that nasty money that's

00:02:58 ◼   ► bothering you or go on to Casey's Feeling Show and talk about cheese food.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it's different for you. People believe you.

00:03:08 ◼   ► That's funny though because of the three of us, I would peg you as the least willing to

00:03:14 ◼   ► talk about all the fancy crap that you bought.

00:03:16 ◼   ► - Oh, no way.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I've talked about my TV for hours.

00:03:19 ◼   ► It's like the fanciest thing I own.

00:03:21 ◼   ► That's all I talk about.

00:03:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:24 ◼   ► I'm totally willing to talk about the fancy things

00:03:26 ◼   ► that I have.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - I also forget that you talking about things

00:03:28 ◼   ► that you like really amounts to you

00:03:30 ◼   ► bitching and moaning about those things

00:03:32 ◼   ► rather than being like,

00:03:33 ◼   ► look at me and how awesome my Tesla is.

00:03:34 ◼   ► - I would have complaints about a Ferrari.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I mean, it's like an exotic car.

00:03:37 ◼   ► There's probably like all sorts of ergonomic issues

00:03:38 ◼   ► and everything like,

00:03:39 ◼   ► but I would talk about the good things too.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I was just looking at the screen shots,

00:03:45 ◼   ► Looking at the pictures in that Verge article,

00:03:47 ◼   ► someone had the 488, a bunch of pictures,

00:03:49 ◼   ► like the first non-press, you know,

00:03:52 ◼   ► non-glamorous shots that Ferrari takes of the car.

00:03:55 ◼   ► And so you get to see it from different angles

00:03:56 ◼   ► and see the awkward parts or whatever.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And they had a shot of the interior

00:03:59 ◼   ► showing the seat controls on the side of the seat.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And I was like, "Boy, when that door closes,

00:04:04 ◼   ► "it's tough to get your fingers down there

00:04:05 ◼   ► "to feel those seat controls."

00:04:06 ◼   ► And I was like, "The Ferrari doesn't care.

00:04:08 ◼   ► "With the ergonomics of how easy it is

00:04:09 ◼   ► "to reuse the seat controls,

00:04:10 ◼   ► "that's not what this car is about."

00:04:11 ◼   ► - You know what we gotta do?

00:04:13 ◼   ► So I mean, there are companies like,

00:04:15 ◼   ► I forget the names of them,

00:04:16 ◼   ► but there are some companies like in New York and LA

00:04:18 ◼   ► and stuff that will rent supercars to you

00:04:21 ◼   ► for like a few thousand dollars a day.

00:04:22 ◼   ► - My wife tried to do that once and I turned it down.

00:04:25 ◼   ► Yeah, 'cause they're like,

00:04:26 ◼   ► can you imagine something worse?

00:04:27 ◼   ► I mean, Marco, you can relate to this when you're owning cars

00:04:30 ◼   ► like someone else's expensive car that you are renting,

00:04:34 ◼   ► like, ooh, and especially the one she was looking at

00:04:37 ◼   ► was like in a city,

00:04:38 ◼   ► like having a Ferrari in the city of Boston,

00:04:40 ◼   ► like it was pointless.

00:04:41 ◼   ► like why not just take it and rub it upside down

00:04:44 ◼   ► on top of some gravel?

00:04:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:48 ◼   ► You're not driving it, it's abuse.

00:04:50 ◼   ► - We have to get a sponsor to make this happen,

00:04:55 ◼   ► to pay for a one day rental of whatever your chosen Ferrari

00:05:00 ◼   ► is that's currently available through these rental places,

00:05:03 ◼   ► a one day rental for you just to have you evaluate it

00:05:06 ◼   ► the way you evaluate things.

00:05:08 ◼   ► - I don't know, maybe if it was a sponsor thing, who knows?

00:05:11 ◼   ► I just, I would feel very nervous driving someone else's car.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And it would have to be during the summer for crying out loud.

00:05:19 ◼   ► No, it'd be even better now.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Yeah, right?

00:05:22 ◼   ► No, they don't, Ferraris are not allowed on the street.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I see occasionally, I have seen in my life in the Boston metro area, a completely blasted

00:05:31 ◼   ► road salt covered slush destroyed red Ferrari out in the winter.

00:05:37 ◼   ► So somebody's doing it.

00:05:38 ◼   ► person I have immense respect for, whoever that is.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously, this 48 is pretty. I'm looking at the Surge article, it's nice.

00:05:45 ◼   ► All right, we should get the follow-up before we turn this into neutral again.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Too late.

00:05:49 ◼   ► Too late.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Now it's like, now when we're doing the show, I'm thinking, "Where is Marco going

00:05:54 ◼   ► to put the car opening and closing sounds?"

00:05:56 ◼   ► Oh, goodness.

00:05:57 ◼   ► To get back to what you were talking about, the people, the feedback about the car stuff,

00:06:02 ◼   ► I mean, most people I think are just bemused by it and joking about it, and I think they're

00:06:07 ◼   ► and freaks, it's like, look, if there's a rumor

00:06:09 ◼   ► that Apple's gonna make a car,

00:06:11 ◼   ► we're gonna talk about it on a tech podcast

00:06:12 ◼   ► that's focused a lot on Apple.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Like, blame Apple.

00:06:15 ◼   ► We didn't tell them to make a car, you know?

00:06:17 ◼   ► - Blame 9to5Mac and the Wall Street Journal.

00:06:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, if they have rumors of them making a boat,

00:06:22 ◼   ► we'd be talking about boats. (laughs)

00:06:24 ◼   ► - Aye, aye, aye.

00:06:26 ◼   ► All right, so now that we've wasted 10 minutes,

00:06:30 ◼   ► would you like to do some follow-up?

00:06:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, guess what it's about.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Sorry, guys. (laughs)

00:06:35 ◼   ► Oh, God, this is the best.

00:06:39 ◼   ► All right, so let's talk about cars.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Yeah, first one is from William Faraday, or Faraday.

00:06:45 ◼   ► It's better for Faraday because I think he works for Tesla, and he says that Tesla reports

00:06:51 ◼   ► margins.

00:06:52 ◼   ► We were saying, like, what do we think the margins are on Tesla's cars versus what they

00:06:55 ◼   ► imagine that might be on Apple's cars.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And he says the margins are about 25 percent, the goal is 30 percent.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And then he says, "Thanks for believing in us.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Model S is bonkers awesome."

00:07:06 ◼   ► So by saying "believing in us," I assume he works for Tesla.

00:07:09 ◼   ► No, I wouldn't actually assume that.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Let me remember for a second there.

00:07:13 ◼   ► Tesla fans are crazy.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Like we've had, and I will probably count myself among those in a year or two, whatever,

00:07:21 ◼   ► but Tesla fans, I've never encountered fans that were as devoted and incredibly loud and

00:07:28 ◼   ► overprotective as they are.

00:07:30 ◼   ► You know, Elon Musk himself has, you can tell he's extremely oversensitive, much to a fault

00:07:39 ◼   ► actually.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Whenever anybody says anything he perceives to be unfair or incorrect about Tesla's in

00:07:45 ◼   ► news or in reviews, there's that whole scandal with Top Gear, then the scandal with the New

00:07:49 ◼   ► York Times and like all this stuff.

00:07:52 ◼   ► And I think, I would say Elon reacts poorly.

00:07:56 ◼   ► I would say it's necessary to react to these things.

00:07:59 ◼   ► It's necessary to issue statements and stuff

00:08:02 ◼   ► if you disagree, but the way he does it,

00:08:04 ◼   ► I think is not beneficial overall.

00:08:08 ◼   ► But the fans have seemingly taken that on themselves.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Like the owners have taken that,

00:08:15 ◼   ► kind of like the scrappy upstart underdog attitude

00:08:18 ◼   ► on themselves and boy, there is no woodwork

00:08:23 ◼   ► that can hold them back.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I mean, it is, if you say anything,

00:08:28 ◼   ► they jump all over you, good or bad.

00:08:30 ◼   ► And so it was very helpful to me

00:08:31 ◼   ► when I was honestly looking into this

00:08:33 ◼   ► and giving this a fair shot.

00:08:35 ◼   ► I got tons of amazing information from Tesla owners,

00:08:39 ◼   ► tons of how you take road trips,

00:08:42 ◼   ► what are the good things,

00:08:44 ◼   ► what are the bad things about these cars.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Everybody is willing to share this information.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Everybody has tons of things to say,

00:08:49 ◼   ► and everyone's like,

00:08:50 ◼   ► "Please, I will never buy an internal combustion engine,"

00:08:53 ◼   ► because they all abbreviate ICE.

00:08:55 ◼   ► I will never buy an ICE car again.

00:08:57 ◼   ► You have to come over, it's amazing,

00:08:59 ◼   ► you'll never go back, et cetera.

00:09:01 ◼   ► It is the most devoted, nearly rabid fan base

00:09:06 ◼   ► I've ever seen of anything.

00:09:07 ◼   ► It's really something.

00:09:08 ◼   ► - It's funny because,

00:09:10 ◼   ► and I don't mean this to be funny at all,

00:09:12 ◼   ► it reminds me of the way I perceived Apple fans

00:09:15 ◼   ► before I became one of them, you know?

00:09:18 ◼   ► like just ravenously excited about their company.

00:09:23 ◼   ► And I also thought it was quite funny

00:09:25 ◼   ► that more than a couple of people tweeted at Elon Musk

00:09:28 ◼   ► saying, "Oh my God, you have to listen to this M5 owner

00:09:31 ◼   ► talk about how wonderful the P85D is.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Check out this podcast," which I thought was quite funny.

00:09:35 ◼   ► - I'm sure he'll work that into his schedule

00:09:37 ◼   ► in between launching rockets into space.

00:09:39 ◼   ► - One of the reasons why I'm interested in the Tesla now

00:09:42 ◼   ► is that Elon Musk has some,

00:09:47 ◼   ► maybe many of the qualities Steve Jobs had in the sense that, and to some degree Jeff

00:09:51 ◼   ► Bezos has, but I think Steve and Elon do a better job of it, this kind of like crazy

00:09:58 ◼   ► billionaire with really high standards and pretty high product ambitions. I kind of miss

00:10:03 ◼   ► that from Apple, and we still get great stuff from Apple, and we'll talk about next week's

00:10:08 ◼   ► event now and then when it happens and I'm sure we'll say, "Oh, this stuff is great,"

00:10:11 ◼   ► But that spirit of the charismatic, kind of crazy leader who pushes everyone to do pretty

00:10:19 ◼   ► crazy stuff, that's rare.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And Elon, I think, is one of those.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And I'm kind of interested in joining one of those product fan bases again, you know?

00:10:32 ◼   ► I think the reason Tesla fans are as rabid as you say they are, and why Casey perceived

00:10:39 ◼   ► Apple fans to be like that before coming on is I think you need to have a company that

00:10:45 ◼   ► you recognize or that the fans recognize as having a superior product but that the world

00:10:49 ◼   ► does not recognize yet.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So you have to be an underdog.

00:10:53 ◼   ► So like the Mac was just so much better than Windows 3.1.

00:10:56 ◼   ► It was like it was ridiculous.

00:10:58 ◼   ► It was even worse than Tesla versus other cars and yet the entire world considered the

00:11:02 ◼   ► Mac a silly toy and not a real computer and that breeds rabid fans.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Same thing with the Amiga.

00:11:07 ◼   ► You think, "Guys, don't you see this is so awesome? Why is it only me and my seven nerdy friends who see that this is awesome?"

00:11:14 ◼   ► The world has to know and it'll defend it and so on and so forth.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Once you stop being the underdog and become the overdog and just like the entire world knows that Apple is really good and everything, then you tend to chill out more.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So Casey, your perception could have been right back when Apple was beleaguered and on the ropes and so on and so forth.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Or maybe it was just like, you know, it takes a while for that perception of the fans to turn around.

00:11:36 ◼   ► but Tesla is definitely the underdog at this point because

00:11:38 ◼   ► well because they make super expensive cars and

00:11:41 ◼   ► Not many people can buy them and the people who own them think they're great

00:11:45 ◼   ► But other people think either a they're too expensive and I can't afford one or be

00:11:50 ◼   ► You know, they'll run out of batteries or whatever other FUD is out there about

00:11:55 ◼   ► Electric cars and that's what they're combating

00:11:58 ◼   ► But anyway, like so so you think this tweet William Faraday, he should tweet us back and say thanks for believing in us

00:12:04 ◼   ► You think he's saying us as in we Tesla owners?

00:12:09 ◼   ► I mean, I totally read that as him saying

00:12:11 ◼   ► that he works for Tesla.

00:12:12 ◼   ► - Well, and I did hear from a couple of people

00:12:14 ◼   ► who work for Tesla and nobody whose names anybody

00:12:19 ◼   ► would recognize as far as I know,

00:12:21 ◼   ► but just people who like they listed their employer

00:12:23 ◼   ► and their Twitter bio as Tesla.

00:12:25 ◼   ► And one of them was wearing a Tesla jacket in his picture.

00:12:27 ◼   ► So it's like pretty obvious.

00:12:29 ◼   ► So yeah, they're out there.

00:12:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I clicked on this Twitter thing

00:12:34 ◼   ► and looked at the bot to see if he worked for Tesla

00:12:35 ◼   ► and didn't come up with anything.

00:12:37 ◼   ► But anyway, there's one Tesla fan/employee's opinion.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - All right, and what else do we have

00:12:44 ◼   ► with relation to cars, perhaps self-driving cars?

00:12:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, we talked about that.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I said, could have something like that at Disneyland

00:12:50 ◼   ► or some confined area where the routes are well known,

00:12:55 ◼   ► sort of basically like self-driving buses or whatever.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And Michael Lewis or Luis Brown are running to say

00:13:01 ◼   ► that Heathrow Airport has self-driving car-like pod things that take you to and from the parking

00:13:07 ◼   ► lot.

00:13:08 ◼   ► I'll put a link in the show notes so you can see what they look like.

00:13:11 ◼   ► It shows them going in a little road that's barely big enough to fit the thing.

00:13:15 ◼   ► So anyway, it's a driverless thing that people go in that goes on something that resembles

00:13:21 ◼   ► roads.

00:13:22 ◼   ► It's not on rails, it's not on tracks, they're actually wheeled vehicles in a confined place.

00:13:28 ◼   ► So that's already a thing.

00:13:30 ◼   ► And I think someone also said that in Disney World they have something like that as well

00:13:34 ◼   ► as part of some ride or something.

00:13:36 ◼   ► And like I said they have this stuff like this in factories.

00:13:38 ◼   ► So yeah, the tech to do it in limited circumstances has been with us for a while and now it is

00:13:43 ◼   ► slowly spreading.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Well, now are these actually self-controlled?

00:13:46 ◼   ► I did not read this article, but because this looks a lot like—and actually it's labeled,

00:13:53 ◼   ► the caption on this picture is PRT, which is Personal Rapid Transit.

00:13:56 ◼   ► I have a friend that went to Virginia Tech for his undergraduate degree like I did, and

00:14:02 ◼   ► that's where we met.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And then he went to West Virginia University for his law degree.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And in West Virginia, they have, or at WVU, they have these things they call the PERT,

00:14:12 ◼   ► Personal Rapid Transit.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And it's straight out of like '65 or something like that.

00:14:15 ◼   ► But they're these little orbs that don't look too dissimilar from what I'm looking at here.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And as you walk in, you push a button on this console that's clearly straight from like

00:14:24 ◼   ► 1973 or whenever this thing started and that tells the computer system where you'd like to go and then you wait and the computer system

00:14:32 ◼   ► dispatches a driverless orb thing

00:14:35 ◼   ► And then you wait until it shows up. It says that

00:14:40 ◼   ► you know, I'm going to the engineering building or whatever and

00:14:43 ◼   ► Then you step in and it magically takes to the engineering building and it's on like a kind of

00:14:48 ◼   ► Elevated track that doesn't look too dissimilar from this road in this picture from Heathrow

00:14:53 ◼   ► It is ancient and kind of busted and beaten down and it was awesome. And I kind of wish I had one nearby.

00:15:00 ◼   ► I bring all this up to say that this is not new technology and this has been around for a long time.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Now perhaps the difference though is that these Heathrow ones may genuinely be self-driving,

00:15:11 ◼   ► whereas the ones at WVU are clearly operated by a computer based out of like 92 or something like that.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Well yeah, well it doesn't really matter whether they're centrally controlled by a computer or

00:15:22 ◼   ► controlled by a computer that's on board the thing for the purposes of, you know, shuttling

00:15:26 ◼   ► to and from two places. Like, a computer is controlling it. It's deciding when to accelerate,

00:15:30 ◼   ► when to break, when to turn, you know, like it's... I'm sure the road itself has sensors

00:15:34 ◼   ► in it to keep it on track or whatever. It's limited controlled circumstances, you know.

00:15:37 ◼   ► It's not out on the open road. But this is where all these things start. And then, you

00:15:40 ◼   ► know, you get those DARPA challenges and things that Google is doing to work out the problems

00:15:46 ◼   ► in the real world.

00:15:47 ◼   ► All right, now this same individual, Michael also had some other feedback for us.

00:15:54 ◼   ► About the 16 biggest transport ships in the world pollute as much as all the cars, internet

00:16:00 ◼   ► meme story thing or whatever, our intrepid listeners track that down to its source, which

00:16:05 ◼   ► looks like a presentation in 2009 from something called the DK group.

00:16:12 ◼   ► It's all about pollution.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It is a slide show thing, we'll put a link in the show

00:16:17 ◼   ► so you can go through the 55 slides they have

00:16:20 ◼   ► on this presentation and see that it is kind of

00:16:23 ◼   ► Game of Telephone morphed into X number of ships

00:16:26 ◼   ► polluting more than all the cars in the world.

00:16:28 ◼   ► If you look at the presentation, it gets into specifics.

00:16:31 ◼   ► They're not, like they have stats about CO2,

00:16:34 ◼   ► they have it about, what, sulfur oxide compounds as well,

00:16:38 ◼   ► and the sulfur ones is what they're focusing on

00:16:41 ◼   ► for the 15, 16 ships things,

00:16:43 ◼   ► but they also talk about the CO2 levels

00:16:45 ◼   ► and there's no bite size.

00:16:48 ◼   ► This has been distilled down

00:16:49 ◼   ► into an impressive sounding stat.

00:16:51 ◼   ► There are actually equally impressive stats in here

00:16:53 ◼   ► that just don't boil down as nicely.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And you can find echoes of it in like,

00:16:57 ◼   ► there's a story in the Guardian

00:17:00 ◼   ► from a similar amount of time.

00:17:01 ◼   ► There's a TED Talk that cites it.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And every time it gets cited,

00:17:04 ◼   ► it becomes more kind of like vague.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Like even in 2009, when the Guardian's citing it,

00:17:08 ◼   ► says, "Confidential data from the maritime industry

00:17:11 ◼   ► "inside our space on engine size and the quality of fuel

00:17:13 ◼   ► "typically used by ships and cars shows that 15 of the

00:17:15 ◼   ► "world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution

00:17:18 ◼   ► "as all the world's, like, as much pollution?"

00:17:21 ◼   ► Well, is that exactly what they said?

00:17:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, this is why it was so confusing,

00:17:26 ◼   ► 'cause when you mentioned this last week,

00:17:28 ◼   ► I, in my head, assumed that you were talking about

00:17:30 ◼   ► just like fossil fuel consumption,

00:17:32 ◼   ► not emissions of certain chemicals.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And so that makes complete sense,

00:17:37 ◼   ► which is like, who knows if this is true,

00:17:40 ◼   ► but it's at least plausible,

00:17:42 ◼   ► because there's so much regulation

00:17:43 ◼   ► on how much of certain chemical pollutants

00:17:46 ◼   ► that cars are allowed to emit all over the world.

00:17:49 ◼   ► And ships are presumably pretty much unregulated,

00:17:52 ◼   ► 'cause they're in the ocean

00:17:53 ◼   ► in the middle of nowhere most of the time.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And so it does make sense that they could throw enough crap

00:17:59 ◼   ► in the air that cars would have to use filters

00:18:03 ◼   ► and converters to not emit.

00:18:06 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, and I had originally had it in my head as CO2,

00:18:09 ◼   ► which is like all the greenhouse gases,

00:18:10 ◼   ► like if you wanna combat global warming and everything,

00:18:13 ◼   ► that you wanna get rid of the cars,

00:18:15 ◼   ► and I've talked about the farting cows,

00:18:17 ◼   ► which are a big thing,

00:18:18 ◼   ► 'cause methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.

00:18:21 ◼   ► But it's not, like you said,

00:18:24 ◼   ► it's not so much about the CO2 of these ships,

00:18:26 ◼   ► which is significant,

00:18:26 ◼   ► but the other things that are in the fuel,

00:18:29 ◼   ► because they use the cheapest, crappiest fuel possible,

00:18:32 ◼   ► and they don't care anything about

00:18:33 ◼   ► what's being spewed out of their pipes.

00:18:35 ◼   ► And so it's not like they use more fuel than all,

00:18:39 ◼   ► the 15 ships use more fuel than all the cars in the world.

00:18:41 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - It's that when they burn that fuel,

00:18:44 ◼   ► the, and this calls it the pollution.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Well, a CO2 pollution, I think they're mostly talking

00:18:48 ◼   ► about the other crap that's in the fuel, not the CO2,

00:18:51 ◼   ► but the other stuff that cars have been regulated down

00:18:54 ◼   ► to not, or have catalytic converters and other things

00:18:56 ◼   ► to stop the stuff from going out.

00:18:57 ◼   ► Anyway, that's why we'll link to the actual presentation

00:19:00 ◼   ► in the show notes so you can look at it.

00:19:02 ◼   ► But every time it gets repeated, it sort of morphs.

00:19:04 ◼   ► And like this pollution summary, it's not inaccurate.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It just depends like once someone says pollution,

00:19:10 ◼   ► then the next person to decide it's gonna say CO2

00:19:12 ◼   ► or CO2 and other gases, or, you know,

00:19:15 ◼   ► like you can phrase it in a way that is still correct,

00:19:17 ◼   ► but it's slowly drifting away from the meaning.

00:19:19 ◼   ► So if you care, check out the presentation.

00:19:21 ◼   ► It's interesting.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, we should,

00:19:23 ◼   ► ship should answer that.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Elon Musk will do that next.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Make container ships that work entirely on battery.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Of course, a lithium-ion battery big enough

00:19:31 ◼   ► to move a container ship

00:19:33 ◼   ► would probably produce more pollution

00:19:35 ◼   ► in the generation of that battery than the ship ever would.

00:19:38 ◼   ► - Or charging it.

00:19:39 ◼   ► - Ah, shipping's pretty easy.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Like energy consumption-wise,

00:19:44 ◼   ► it's pretty efficient to float things across the ocean.

00:19:46 ◼   ► - Well, you say that, but in a prior life, so to speak--

00:19:49 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, you know this stuff.

00:19:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually worked on navigation systems

00:19:52 ◼   ► for big, big, big ships.

00:19:54 ◼   ► And at one point, I actually took a business trip

00:19:57 ◼   ► to Helsinki, Finland to talk to a company

00:19:59 ◼   ► that would take hyper, hyper accurate models

00:20:02 ◼   ► ocean currents. And they would say, okay, if you're, I don't know, maybe carrying an

00:20:06 ◼   ► M five or many M fives, as the case may be, and you're leaving Germany, and you're going

00:20:10 ◼   ► to New York, and you you know, the most direct route will be and I'm completely making this

00:20:18 ◼   ► up 2000 nautical miles. Well, if you are willing to go one or 200 nautical miles out of your

00:20:26 ◼   ► way, you can catch this awesome current that will save you 50% on fuel. And granted, I'm

00:20:32 ◼   ► these numbers up, but the difference was tremendous. And when you're talking about a vehicle that big,

00:20:37 ◼   ► it was a trip, just an indescribably large amount of fuel, like measured in hundreds of thousands,

00:20:42 ◼   ► if not millions of dollars worth of fuel. And so this was all based on hugely accurate predictions

00:20:48 ◼   ► of ocean currents. It was the most fascinating technology in the world. And I kind of wish that I

00:20:53 ◼   ► was still privy to what's going on with that company because I thought it was amazing.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Fracture.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Fracture prints photos in vivid color directly on glass.

00:21:04 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com.

00:21:07 ◼   ► So, Fracture, these pictures are great.

00:21:09 ◼   ► I have them all over my office, but I just hung up a new one.

00:21:12 ◼   ► The one that I sent you guys of us podcasting in the Macworld

00:21:14 ◼   ► studio, just hung that up.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I have Fractures everywhere.

00:21:17 ◼   ► They're great.

00:21:18 ◼   ► It is a rectangle or square with a photo printed right on it.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And it's nice.

00:21:23 ◼   ► It's like a nice, thin, lightweight piece of glass,

00:21:26 ◼   ► photo printed on the backside of it,

00:21:27 ◼   ► but it's thin so it doesn't look like it's deep, you know, and then a little foam board piece behind it that you can mount screws

00:21:33 ◼   ► onto to hang it up on the wall.

00:21:34 ◼   ► And so it's just this all in one thing that it's not too heavy,

00:21:38 ◼   ► you don't have to worry about it like ripping out of the wall and shattering.

00:21:40 ◼   ► It's not too heavy. It looks amazing. You don't need a frame, you know, big heavy glass frame around it.

00:21:46 ◼   ► It is its own frame. It is its own self-contained thing and the prints look great. It's really it's great for gifts,

00:21:52 ◼   ► it's great for decorating your house,

00:21:54 ◼   ► great for decorating your office. I love them.

00:21:57 ◼   ► As I said, we have them everywhere.

00:21:59 ◼   ► We keep ordering more, they are great.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Prices start at just 15 bucks for a five by five square

00:22:05 ◼   ► and they are very reasonable after that.

00:22:06 ◼   ► I have a couple of like, I don't know,

00:22:09 ◼   ► it's probably like 11 by 17 ish ones.

00:22:11 ◼   ► I forgot how much they were, but they,

00:22:12 ◼   ► it was like a no brainer to just get them.

00:22:14 ◼   ► It's really very good prices.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Every fracture is handmade and checked for quality

00:22:19 ◼   ► by real people in Gainesville, Florida.

00:22:22 ◼   ► It is the thinnest, lightest and most elegant way

00:22:23 ◼   ► to display your favorite photo.

00:22:25 ◼   ► Now, I mentioned in previous sponsorships that one thing I did with Fracture is I would

00:22:30 ◼   ► take that small 5x5 $15 size and I would print out my app icons with it.

00:22:35 ◼   ► It's great for Instagram photos and stuff, you know, it's a small square.

00:22:38 ◼   ► But I would use it to make icons of the apps that I've made as kind of like a trophy to

00:22:43 ◼   ► show these are the apps I've made.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And so I have this row of three of them up on my windows here and they look great.

00:22:50 ◼   ► Well ever since I've been talking about this a few other people have started doing it.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And Fracture is now, they're actually trying to collect pictures of all these things out

00:22:58 ◼   ► there in the world.

00:22:59 ◼   ► So they are hoping to build a gallery of these on their site.

00:23:03 ◼   ► So here's what you do.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Post if you have one of these things.

00:23:06 ◼   ► First of all, if you don't have one, order one for any apps you make or have worked on,

00:23:09 ◼   ► it's great.

00:23:10 ◼   ► Also, good size for podcast artwork, because it's also square.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Any kind of square artwork or rectangles, they can do rectangles, no big deal.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Take a picture of your app icon Fracture Print and then post it on Twitter or Instagram with

00:23:23 ◼   ► a photo of your app icon with the hashtag #FracturedApp, all one word, #FracturedApp

00:23:28 ◼   ► on Twitter or Instagram, and then they will contact you to try to get your app in their

00:23:32 ◼   ► gallery. So check it out, this is a cool idea because tell you what, it looks great and

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00:23:43 ◼   ► use coupon code ATP15 to get 15% off your first order. So go to fractureme.com, coupon

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00:23:55 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring our show once again.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:23:59 ◼   ► All right, so we are chipping away at the follow up.

00:24:03 ◼   ► What else do we have?

00:24:04 ◼   ► Ah, we have a answer to my question

00:24:07 ◼   ► about who supplies Tesla.

00:24:09 ◼   ► That's right.

00:24:10 ◼   ► So Sam-- oh, god--

00:24:13 ◼   ► Welsimid-- I'm so sorry, Sam--

00:24:15 ◼   ► wrote in to say, "Tesla designs and builds

00:24:17 ◼   ► their own electric motors and power electronics,

00:24:20 ◼   ► the part that does the DC to AC conversion, just as most automakers design and build their

00:24:25 ◼   ► own engines transmissions tend to be a mixed bag of in house and suppliers supplier produced for

00:24:30 ◼   ► automakers today. The model S brakes are supplied by Brembo one of the few suppliers that are

00:24:34 ◼   ► typically highlighted by automakers and I think that's an excellent point. Other suppliers are

00:24:40 ◼   ► highlighted on a chart which we'll put on the show notes Tesla designs and builds their own battery

00:24:44 ◼   ► packs but the six to 8000 lithium ion cells in each pack are supplied by Panasonic. The

00:24:49 ◼   ► The Gigafactory, which we were talking about last episode,

00:24:52 ◼   ► is actually a joint venture between Tesla, Panasonic,

00:24:54 ◼   ► and a few other suppliers.

00:24:56 ◼   ► So a little bit of information about that.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - I like how it says that Tesla makes the battery packs,

00:25:00 ◼   ► well, but Panasonic makes the batteries,

00:25:02 ◼   ► so I guess they make the pack part.

00:25:03 ◼   ► I mean, I know it's, you know, the electronics

00:25:05 ◼   ► and the complicated things that are there,

00:25:06 ◼   ► but that just goes to show, even it's like,

00:25:07 ◼   ► oh, well, Tesla makes their own batteries,

00:25:09 ◼   ► they're really good at, they're still outsourcing

00:25:11 ◼   ► the actual, like, bazillion little lithium ion cells

00:25:13 ◼   ► that they wire together.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Did you look at the big picture that I linked there?

00:25:18 ◼   ► - I did not.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I did my homework.

00:25:20 ◼   ► All right.

00:25:21 ◼   ► I mean, just look at it.

00:25:22 ◼   ► I mean, and every car is like this.

00:25:24 ◼   ► So it just shows that Tesla is more or less typical.

00:25:26 ◼   ► You can go down the suppliers and see--

00:25:28 ◼   ► I mean, this is not every single part in the car.

00:25:29 ◼   ► It's just kind of like a sample of things.

00:25:31 ◼   ► You can see also the front grille surround

00:25:34 ◼   ► by our friends at Magna.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Electric power steering, ZF.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Brembo brakes is a good point that when something comes

00:25:41 ◼   ► with Brembo brakes, you tend to see-- well, I don't know.

00:25:44 ◼   ► I see it in car magazines, but car magazines also tell you

00:25:47 ◼   ► who makes the transmissions.

00:25:48 ◼   ► and the tires as well.

00:25:50 ◼   ► But yeah, I guess they'll sometimes just advertise

00:25:53 ◼   ► carbon ceramic brakes or whatever.

00:25:54 ◼   ► I don't even think they offer carbon ceramic.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Anyway, yes, it takes a village to make a car,

00:26:00 ◼   ► including the Tesla.

00:26:02 ◼   ► - Yep, all right, so further car feedback,

00:26:06 ◼   ► this time from Yuba.

00:26:07 ◼   ► I had made mention of a bus that specifically

00:26:11 ◼   ► was in Volkswagens in the context of the conversation

00:26:13 ◼   ► we were having an episode or two ago.

00:26:15 ◼   ► But Yuba had said in the US CAN, which is the CAN bus,

00:26:20 ◼   ► has been the standard protocol

00:26:21 ◼   ► for all car computer communications since 2008,

00:26:25 ◼   ► not just German cars.

00:26:27 ◼   ► Some messages on the bus are standard and well-documented,

00:26:29 ◼   ► such as speed, air intake, temperature, et cetera,

00:26:31 ◼   ► but most are OEM-specific and undocumented,

00:26:34 ◼   ► although they are unencrypted.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Lots of people have reverse engineered those messages

00:26:38 ◼   ► to do things like lock or unlock their car doors,

00:26:40 ◼   ► kind of the way universal TV remote makers

00:26:42 ◼   ► have to reverse engineer infrared comms

00:26:44 ◼   ► each TV manufacturer. This kind of work is finicky and potentially harmful to your car.

00:26:49 ◼   ► So you want to be careful. And this is interesting. And Yuba continues, what's cool though, is

00:26:54 ◼   ► that car manufacturers aren't interested in locking down the CAN bus, or at least they

00:26:58 ◼   ► can't because of a long legal tradition of people's right to repair their own cars.

00:27:03 ◼   ► I thought that was really interesting and a very good point. And Yuba continues

00:27:07 ◼   ► and says that this is what opens the door for companies like automatic, which is a previous

00:27:12 ◼   ► and as it turns out, this individual is one of the co-founders

00:27:15 ◼   ► to build awesome stuff using events read from the CAN bus.

00:27:18 ◼   ► So I just thought that was really, really interesting

00:27:20 ◼   ► and a little more information than I was aware of about all of that.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I have the idea of it just, you know, having the bus be documented

00:27:28 ◼   ► but then they not earn any obligation to document the things they send over the bus

00:27:33 ◼   ► so it's just a bunch of data going back and forth that you can kind of figure out

00:27:37 ◼   ► and it's like, that's like the worst of all possible words,

00:27:41 ◼   ► like, well, we have an open bus,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but we're gonna send messages over there

00:27:45 ◼   ► I'm not talking about what they are.

00:27:46 ◼   ► So you can try to figure out what they are

00:27:47 ◼   ► and I hope you get it right.

00:27:49 ◼   ► And we might change it in the next version.

00:27:51 ◼   ► I mean, I know it's not really like safety related things

00:27:53 ◼   ► where they're gonna turn off the power steering

00:27:56 ◼   ► or power brakes accidentally or something,

00:27:57 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like an ideal situation, you know?

00:28:01 ◼   ► Like, and again, the whole reason to automatically exist

00:28:04 ◼   ► is because car manufacturers are so terrible.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Like there should not, this market need should not exist

00:28:09 ◼   ► if car manufacturers had any idea what they were doing

00:28:11 ◼   ► because by the time a third party gets around to doing it,

00:28:14 ◼   ► you could have done it as the car maker like a decade ago

00:28:17 ◼   ► and didn't because you're terrible.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's funny because I'm assuming it's the CAN bus

00:28:23 ◼   ► that allowed me to do something that BMW owners

00:28:26 ◼   ► called code the car, which is to say you get this like dongle

00:28:31 ◼   ► that is similar to automatic,

00:28:32 ◼   ► but serves a different purpose,

00:28:33 ◼   ► but it's either a Bluetooth or a wifi dongle

00:28:35 ◼   ► that you plug into your OBD2 port.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - Nice. - Thank you.

00:28:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:28:42 ◼   ► And so-- - Mine's ethernet.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's right.

00:28:44 ◼   ► - It's called an e-net cable,

00:28:46 ◼   ► and it's literally like ethernet on one end

00:28:50 ◼   ► and OBD2 on the other.

00:28:52 ◼   ► - Which is really weird.

00:28:53 ◼   ► - I've never used it.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Like I try, 'cause in order to use it,

00:28:56 ◼   ► you have to like pirate all this software

00:28:58 ◼   ► and all these like ROMs for the car

00:29:00 ◼   ► and all this crazy stuff,

00:29:01 ◼   ► and once I realized all the stuff I'd have to do

00:29:05 ◼   ► in order to make little customizations to my car,

00:29:07 ◼   ► I'm like, you know what, forget it.

00:29:08 ◼   ► It's not worth it.

00:29:10 ◼   ► that's what you get for buying a new car. But me, I bought an old and busted car. And what's nice

00:29:14 ◼   ► about buying, it's not actually busted, but anyway, by buying a slightly older car, I was able to

00:29:19 ◼   ► take one of these OBD2 to Wi Fi converters, bridges, whatever. And then my uncle who also has

00:29:28 ◼   ► a BMW has this $50 iPhone app, and you thought $10 was expensive, has this $50 iPhone app that

00:29:33 ◼   ► connects to this thing. And we'll let you make like Marco said some customizations to your car.

00:29:38 ◼   ► So as a silly example, I'm able to open my windows from the little key fob

00:29:43 ◼   ► But I was not previously able to close them. I had to

00:29:46 ◼   ► travesty of travesties

00:29:49 ◼   ► I had to stand outside the car and put my finger on the door handle in order to close all the windows

00:29:54 ◼   ► You're an even bigger jerk than me. It was so terrible Marco. You have no idea

00:29:57 ◼   ► Well, all I wanted to do was it was gay because like every time you start up the car like most modern cars and navigation

00:30:03 ◼   ► You have to like hit the confirm or I agree button on a EULA on the license on the nav screen before it will do anything

00:30:09 ◼   ► And there's like a little you know

00:30:10 ◼   ► Checkbox flag and these hack programs that you can turn that off that was mainly what I wanted to do was just disable that

00:30:16 ◼   ► right, so what I did was I I

00:30:18 ◼   ► coded my car such that I

00:30:21 ◼   ► Can hit though I can hold the lock button on my key fob and all the windows will go up and the only other thing

00:30:27 ◼   ► I was interested in but apparently it was a lot more fiddly is

00:30:29 ◼   ► On BMWs and a lot of car makes the mirrors the external mirrors can fold in if you push a little button

00:30:35 ◼   ► I think on most Mercedes. They're actually automatic well

00:30:38 ◼   ► I wanted it to be automatic so that every time I parked the car the mirrors would fold in

00:30:42 ◼   ► But that was like many many many switches, and I got scared and I didn't do it

00:30:46 ◼   ► But I can roll up my windows from a distance, and that's awesome the only analogous story

00:30:51 ◼   ► I have for my cars is that uh?

00:30:53 ◼   ► Like many people who have had stick shift cars

00:30:57 ◼   ► Before the time you guys are probably driving I was forced to master the art of

00:31:00 ◼   ► paying a toll with physical cash and then pulling away from the toll booth while rolling up the window as in rolling up the

00:31:08 ◼   ► In a stick shift car which basically leaves maybe thighs to steer with but normally it's straight

00:31:14 ◼   ► So you gotta give cash roll up first gear pull away roll roll roll and then hopefully the yeah

00:31:21 ◼   ► That's that's my equivalent. I would just complete the roll up before going like just sitting there with the gate open

00:31:26 ◼   ► No, you got that's because I'm from New York.

00:31:28 ◼   ► You don't sit there and the, okay,

00:31:30 ◼   ► now let me close up my purse and let me put it back down

00:31:32 ◼   ► over here and let me roll up the window.

00:31:34 ◼   ► And now let me shift into gear.

00:31:36 ◼   ► No, it's not how it works.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Soon as soon as they get the money,

00:31:39 ◼   ► soon as that arm goes up, you've got to go.

00:31:41 ◼   ► Yep. I know that feeling.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Oh, there's, there's a,

00:31:43 ◼   ► there's a related link by the way, on this,

00:31:45 ◼   ► this can bus thing.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Well now we're, hang on,

00:31:48 ◼   ► people are going to drift back into Apple

00:31:49 ◼   ► and something else that is not car related.

00:31:52 ◼   ► So this is our transition.

00:31:54 ◼   ► The story that was going around at this,

00:31:55 ◼   ► was this Telegraph interview with Tim Cook,

00:31:58 ◼   ► where he says that the Apple Watch

00:32:00 ◼   ► is designed to replace your car keys,

00:32:02 ◼   ► which is an interesting statement,

00:32:04 ◼   ► and it could be related to CAN bus,

00:32:05 ◼   ► because it's like, all right, well,

00:32:06 ◼   ► so that doesn't mean Apple's making a car.

00:32:08 ◼   ► Designed to replace your car keys just means

00:32:10 ◼   ► it has some way to signal to whatever fancy car

00:32:13 ◼   ► is that Apple Watch, you know, like,

00:32:15 ◼   ► does it work with the CAN bus?

00:32:16 ◼   ► Is it some kind of wireless thing,

00:32:17 ◼   ► or reverse engineered thing,

00:32:19 ◼   ► where you can run an application

00:32:20 ◼   ► that they can figure out that, you know, like, car keys,

00:32:24 ◼   ► this statement confused me,

00:32:25 ◼   ► because my understanding is that the silly proximity key stuff that every car maker has

00:32:29 ◼   ► is all proprietary and crazy and how could the Apple Watch replace your, like...

00:32:34 ◼   ► Well, I'm sure all it is is just using an app.

00:32:37 ◼   ► It's like the Watch is using a WatchKit app on the phone to, you know, because some of

00:32:41 ◼   ► these car makers will have apps that can remotely unlock their cars.

00:32:44 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure BMW does, I know Tesla does, I'm sure many of the car makers do this sort

00:32:49 ◼   ► of thing now.

00:32:50 ◼   ► So is it Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or what is the...

00:32:52 ◼   ► No, it's neither.

00:32:53 ◼   ► telling the phone, then the phone using the data network

00:32:55 ◼   ► to go tell some data center to tell the car to unlock.

00:32:59 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a hell of a long way to go.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It's like the Rube Goldberg machine for, you know,

00:33:03 ◼   ► I was gonna bounce a signal off a satellite

00:33:04 ◼   ► and go to a fiber optic cable under the sea,

00:33:06 ◼   ► do a server, and then come back to the car

00:33:08 ◼   ► that's two feet in front of me.

00:33:09 ◼   ► - I bet that's what it is, though.

00:33:10 ◼   ► I would almost guarantee that's what it is.

00:33:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I didn't think of that,

00:33:14 ◼   ► but you mentioned it, that sounds very plausible.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - No, that is absolutely how the BMW app works.

00:33:19 ◼   ► There's a BMW remote, which used to be okay,

00:33:22 ◼   ► and now is a piece of crap.

00:33:24 ◼   ► But anyways, what that used to do is it would phone home

00:33:27 ◼   ► to BMW, presumably in Munich, and say,

00:33:30 ◼   ► "I would like to unlock my car, please."

00:33:31 ◼   ► Then Munich would phone the car

00:33:34 ◼   ► because the car has a cellular connection

00:33:36 ◼   ► for the quote unquote on star,

00:33:38 ◼   ► although in BMW's case, it's something proprietary.

00:33:41 ◼   ► And then it would tell the car

00:33:42 ◼   ► via the car's onboard cell connection,

00:33:44 ◼   ► "Okay, unlock the door, please."

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00:36:58 ◼   ► - All right.

00:36:59 ◼   ► So that's it for follow-up, right?

00:37:01 ◼   ► Anything else, John?

00:37:01 ◼   ► - I was gonna complain about, well,

00:37:03 ◼   ► Tim Cook's statement with the car keys,

00:37:05 ◼   ► but now that I read the actual article on Telegraph,

00:37:08 ◼   ► it says, "The watch is designed to be able

00:37:10 ◼   ► to replace car keys and the clumsy large fobs

00:37:12 ◼   ► that are now used by many vehicles,

00:37:14 ◼   ► comma, Cook told the Telegraph.

00:37:16 ◼   ► So it's not a quote, there's no quotation marks there,

00:37:18 ◼   ► I'm just relying on their summary.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But what the hell does it mean

00:37:21 ◼   ► to be designed to replace car keys?

00:37:24 ◼   ► And so like, what he, maybe,

00:37:27 ◼   ► I can't imagine Tim Cook ever saying that,

00:37:29 ◼   ► or like, it's just terrible.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Like it's the type of thing that you would expect

00:37:33 ◼   ► the CEO of a company,

00:37:34 ◼   ► a CEO that doesn't actually know what their products are

00:37:37 ◼   ► or do to say, not something that Tim Cook would say.

00:37:39 ◼   ► But again, this is not a quote,

00:37:40 ◼   ► this is just a summary.

00:37:40 ◼   ► But anyway, your clarification about the pervasiveness

00:37:44 ◼   ► of basically internet connections

00:37:47 ◼   ► for dealing with car stuff leads me to believe

00:37:50 ◼   ► that that's probably what it is.

00:37:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, it has to be.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - That's kind of boring.

00:37:53 ◼   ► But anyway, the read on it,

00:37:55 ◼   ► it's almost like Tim Cook is winking at us.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Why mention that at all?

00:37:59 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:38:00 ◼   ► Why mention anything having to do with design

00:38:03 ◼   ► to replace your car?

00:38:03 ◼   ► The same kind of thing of like,

00:38:05 ◼   ► he said, "I use it to control my Apple TV."

00:38:07 ◼   ► Well, that's a product they have at least.

00:38:09 ◼   ► But why mention any, oh by the way,

00:38:10 ◼   ► it could replace car keys.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Have you heard anything about cars lately?

00:38:13 ◼   ► Anyway, moving on.

00:38:15 ◼   ► - I mean, it also, because it wasn't a direct quote,

00:38:18 ◼   ► we aren't seeing the context.

00:38:20 ◼   ► He could have just thrown that out there

00:38:21 ◼   ► like in a list of things that could be done with it

00:38:23 ◼   ► in software.

00:38:24 ◼   ► - It could have been a leading question, yeah.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Like could it be used to replace car keys?

00:38:27 ◼   ► And Tim says, yeah, sure, yeah, well.

00:38:29 ◼   ► - Exactly, I mean, it means nothing.

00:38:32 ◼   ► It just means nothing.

00:38:33 ◼   ► - But it could be him winking at us, we don't know.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - Probably not.

00:38:36 ◼   ► - He's not a winker.

00:38:38 ◼   ► So, maybe he'll be winking or not winking at us during the Apple event that's coming

00:38:44 ◼   ► up on the 9th, which is Monday, is that correct?

00:38:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it's Daylight Savings Day.

00:38:50 ◼   ► Yeah, someone in marketing was excited to pick that date.

00:38:53 ◼   ► It's all about time, because we're going to talk about a watch.

00:38:57 ◼   ► It's about time, do you get it?

00:38:58 ◼   ► The slogan on the invitation is "Spring Forward."

00:39:00 ◼   ► I know, do you get it?

00:39:01 ◼   ► Because watches used to have springs and a Daylight Savings Time joke, and it's a watch!

00:39:05 ◼   ► Oh my god!

00:39:06 ◼   ► And it's springtime, sort of, somewhere maybe.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:39:10 ◼   ► They announced this, when did they announce it?

00:39:13 ◼   ► Like, last month, but we didn't get a chance to talk about it

00:39:15 ◼   ► because we were swamped with car stuff.

00:39:17 ◼   ► But yeah, so, what do we think about this event?

00:39:20 ◼   ► I mean, the consensus is that there will be more information

00:39:24 ◼   ► about watches, and what do you think, that's it?

00:39:27 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, we actually got a really interesting

00:39:29 ◼   ► anonymous email about this that kind of hinted to us

00:39:33 ◼   ► that maybe this will involve some sort of MacBook Air,

00:39:37 ◼   ► a Retina MacBook Air perhaps.

00:39:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Mark Gurman Retina MacBook Air, basically.

00:39:42 ◼   ► The 9to5Mac, like, perfect, you know,

00:39:44 ◼   ► nearly perfect outing of this thing.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that's allegedly, if this tip is to be believed,

00:39:52 ◼   ► you know, I never really know what we're supposed to do

00:39:54 ◼   ► when people email us tips.

00:39:55 ◼   ► - I know, it's so true.

00:39:57 ◼   ► - That's why I think talking about the tip

00:39:59 ◼   ► is not as interesting as talking about the,

00:40:01 ◼   ► like why are we being sent tips and what's the point?

00:40:04 ◼   ► And by the way, just on the substance of this,

00:40:08 ◼   ► did it actually say that this stuff would be announced

00:40:11 ◼   ► in the event on the ninth?

00:40:12 ◼   ► I don't think it-- - Yes, it did.

00:40:13 ◼   ► - Yes, it did. - Where is that?

00:40:14 ◼   ► Where does it say that?

00:40:15 ◼   ► - In the email.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I just went over it, John.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - I know, I read it when it came in.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Where in the email, though?

00:40:20 ◼   ► - Here's a brief preview of what's happening on Watch Day.

00:40:23 ◼   ► - Oh, on Watch Day, all right.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I mean, I suppose there's enough room in the event

00:40:28 ◼   ► to talk about new MacBook Air,

00:40:31 ◼   ► because it's not that they're announcing the watch.

00:40:32 ◼   ► Even when they announced the watch,

00:40:33 ◼   ► they had other stuff announced.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Here, they're just gonna fill us in with details,

00:40:36 ◼   ► we assume, like any changes they might have,

00:40:39 ◼   ► hopefully pricing info.

00:40:40 ◼   ► They already gave us availability, right?

00:40:42 ◼   ► We know the launch date, don't we?

00:40:44 ◼   ► - Well, we just know the launch month of April.

00:40:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess they could pin it down to a day,

00:40:49 ◼   ► but you don't have a whole event.

00:40:51 ◼   ► They're gonna fill out the rest of the missing pieces

00:40:54 ◼   ► and maybe announce when pre-orders are available

00:40:56 ◼   ► and maybe show off the new redesigned Apple stores,

00:40:59 ◼   ► where you're gonna be able to try these things on

00:41:01 ◼   ► and buy them and do all that business.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And I think there's enough room in a presentation

00:41:04 ◼   ► that contains that to also talk about

00:41:06 ◼   ► whatever new Mac thing they have to launch.

00:41:08 ◼   ► And this supposed tip is telling us that

00:41:11 ◼   ► the other thing they have to launch is a MacBook Air

00:41:15 ◼   ► that we have discussed at length

00:41:16 ◼   ► based on the nine to five Mac rumors

00:41:19 ◼   ► and has a few extra tidbits data.

00:41:22 ◼   ► Before we talk about the actual substance,

00:41:24 ◼   ► the idea that people send us an anonymous tip,

00:41:28 ◼   ► Why would somebody do that?

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like assume it's real, assume this person actually knows.

00:41:34 ◼   ► They're in a position to know or think they know

00:41:35 ◼   ► because they are second hand or third hand

00:41:37 ◼   ► and they totally believe all their sources.

00:41:38 ◼   ► So as far as they're concerned,

00:41:39 ◼   ► they are in possession of super secret information

00:41:41 ◼   ► about what is shipping.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Why send it to anybody?

00:41:44 ◼   ► Why send it to Gruber?

00:41:45 ◼   ► Why send it to us?

00:41:46 ◼   ► Why send it to, you know, why do the people,

00:41:48 ◼   ► why do Mark Gurman's sources at 9to5Mac

00:41:51 ◼   ► send him information?

00:41:53 ◼   ► That is mysterious to me.

00:41:54 ◼   ► It's not like they're disgruntled employees

00:41:57 ◼   ► trying to leak information to hurt their employer.

00:41:59 ◼   ► - Well sometimes, I mean, you should,

00:42:00 ◼   ► there's a good discussion about this on Upgrade this week

00:42:02 ◼   ► with Jason Snell and Mike Hurley,

00:42:04 ◼   ► where they talked exactly about this,

00:42:06 ◼   ► and Jason had a lot to say about, you know,

00:42:08 ◼   ► why these sources say the things they say,

00:42:11 ◼   ► you know, where their information might come from,

00:42:13 ◼   ► why they're motivated to share it with somebody,

00:42:16 ◼   ► you know, why you're motivated to publish it or to tell it.

00:42:20 ◼   ► It's very interesting, so just go listen to that,

00:42:21 ◼   ► 'cause Jason knows a lot more about this than we do.

00:42:22 ◼   ► - But I didn't listen to that one yet,

00:42:23 ◼   ► so I don't know what he said, so you should tell me.

00:42:25 ◼   ► 'Cause I might know. (laughing)

00:42:26 ◼   ► - Well, the gist of his point is that

00:42:30 ◼   ► when you know this kind of secret information,

00:42:32 ◼   ► a lot of people are very motivated.

00:42:35 ◼   ► - It's like burning a hole in your pocket,

00:42:37 ◼   ► you just gotta tell somebody 'cause you're excited to know.

00:42:39 ◼   ► See, that's the worst kind of source, though,

00:42:40 ◼   ► because if you're super excited to know this information,

00:42:43 ◼   ► then it's not a matter of course.

00:42:45 ◼   ► For the people who work at Apple on these projects,

00:42:49 ◼   ► that's just part of their life,

00:42:50 ◼   ► is you're gonna know stuff that other people

00:42:52 ◼   ► would like to know that you're never gonna tell anybody.

00:42:54 ◼   ► So the leaks would never come from there

00:42:55 ◼   ► You're not like, oh my goodness, I know, I know about this thing.

00:42:57 ◼   ► I got to tell some, no, that's your whole job.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Like you get used to it or you get fired.

00:43:01 ◼   ► Like it doesn't, you have to, it has to be somebody who is not usually in the

00:43:04 ◼   ► position to know what the super secret Apple product is.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And then also be like, oh, I got to tell somebody.

00:43:09 ◼   ► And there's a separation inside Apple.

00:43:11 ◼   ► It's like, well, every Apple employee doesn't know there's something in the

00:43:14 ◼   ► company that every Apple employee doesn't know about because the only people who

00:43:17 ◼   ► know about like this supposedly car project or the people who are working on

00:43:19 ◼   ► there to everyone else, it could be like, oh, I'm not usually, but you know, but

00:43:23 ◼   ► you always know about your project.

00:43:24 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And so I guess that might kind of get old.

00:43:26 ◼   ► So, but anyway, second or third tier people

00:43:29 ◼   ► who I've heard from someone who heard from someone

00:43:30 ◼   ► and are super excited to know this,

00:43:32 ◼   ► it's depressing to think that like,

00:43:34 ◼   ► they're just excited to tell somebody

00:43:36 ◼   ► because obviously if they're excited,

00:43:38 ◼   ► they're probably an Apple fan.

00:43:40 ◼   ► And in general, you know Apple doesn't want

00:43:42 ◼   ► people knowing these things, so.

00:43:44 ◼   ► - Right, and it kind of spoils the surprise too.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Like for the rest of the fans,

00:43:47 ◼   ► like it's kind of ruins the fun

00:43:49 ◼   ► if you know everything that's gonna happen

00:43:51 ◼   ► before it's out.

00:43:53 ◼   ► - And Apple wouldn't like it.

00:43:54 ◼   ► It's like, they're such Apple fans,

00:43:55 ◼   ► back when Steve Jobs was alive,

00:43:57 ◼   ► if you had to put a person's name on it,

00:43:58 ◼   ► it was like, what would Steve think

00:43:59 ◼   ► about you telling these sites this information?

00:44:02 ◼   ► Like, have you ever met him?

00:44:03 ◼   ► He's like, "Oh my God, I'm a big fan.

00:44:04 ◼   ► "In fact, I leaked this information."

00:44:05 ◼   ► Like, no, he would shoot you with his lasers

00:44:07 ◼   ► out of his eyes and you would melt.

00:44:09 ◼   ► If you admire the company

00:44:10 ◼   ► and admire the people who work there,

00:44:12 ◼   ► that seems like it's the reason

00:44:14 ◼   ► that people who don't leak,

00:44:15 ◼   ► the people who work there, don't leak,

00:44:16 ◼   ► because it's out of respect for the company

00:44:18 ◼   ► and for what they do.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I don't know, it's weird.

00:44:22 ◼   ► I've had these I've had like people send me tips like ever since I started writing my site forever ago

00:44:27 ◼   ► I've had tips come in here and there by email and I

00:44:29 ◼   ► Get the most boring tips like it is hilarious. It's like yeah. Well, you know next year. They might update the cinema display

00:44:37 ◼   ► Wow, that would be a good tip if you get that one tell me I have it for a long time actually

00:44:42 ◼   ► Every year it's like I should send you the same tip. No new monitor this year. Go back to sleep

00:44:47 ◼   ► yeah, but like, you know, but I don't like

00:44:51 ◼   ► In the tips I've gotten I have not mentioned almost any of them because it's like,

00:44:57 ◼   ► "What am I supposed to do with this information?"

00:44:59 ◼   ► Like, if I just publish it on my site, like, there's lots of rumor sites that just publish any tips they get.

00:45:04 ◼   ► They're usually the worst rumor sites because most of, like, if I look back at the tips I've gotten,

00:45:09 ◼   ► I would say at least half of them have not panned out or have turned out to be just flat-out wrong.

00:45:15 ◼   ► If I had published anything or based anything, anything I'd said on that information, I would have looked stupid.

00:45:23 ◼   ► I would have looked bad. And I'm happy to say that of all the crazy tips, of all the crazy predictions I've made on my site over the years,

00:45:30 ◼   ► that have turned out to be wrong, like blatantly, embarrassingly wrong, almost none of them were based on any tips I've gotten.

00:45:35 ◼   ► I just am that bad at predicting things. But at least that's me screwing up, and with my own guesses, and not like,

00:45:43 ◼   ► "Oh, I got this crazy tip, I better rush and report on it

00:45:45 ◼   ► on my site," 'cause like, no one's coming to my site

00:45:48 ◼   ► for that anyway, like I stand to gain nothing from that.

00:45:51 ◼   ► And the chances that any tip I get are actually

00:45:55 ◼   ► gonna be true are so low that it's just not really

00:45:59 ◼   ► worth discussing, like it's not worth even taking the risk.

00:46:03 ◼   ► - I think when Mark Gurman was on the talk show,

00:46:05 ◼   ► I think what he mentioned is that his,

00:46:07 ◼   ► I may be misremembering this, but his best sources

00:46:10 ◼   ► were people that he actually knew, like anonymous sources,

00:46:13 ◼   ► This is this time even we get someone went to our web form and typed a bunch of stuff

00:46:16 ◼   ► Anybody could just go to that web form and type stuff

00:46:18 ◼   ► You know, all you got to do is just sound confident and say look this is what they're gonna do

00:46:21 ◼   ► There's this there's that you know, you say whatever you want

00:46:23 ◼   ► Anybody can go to that form like that

00:46:25 ◼   ► You know anybody who listens to the show now could come up with a plausible rumor and type it in confidently into our web form

00:46:31 ◼   ► That's the type of source that like it's basically useless because you don't know who that person is and anybody could we're about to discuss

00:46:36 ◼   ► What this person emailed us, but anybody could I could have written this email like it's only

00:46:42 ◼   ► Impressive after the fact if what Apple announces is exactly what was in this email, then we will retroactively know

00:46:47 ◼   ► Oh that one anonymous email that guy was exactly right

00:46:49 ◼   ► but that doesn't help us when the next anonymous email comes in because we don't know if it's from the same guy like it's

00:46:54 ◼   ► You know

00:46:55 ◼   ► I think you really have to have

00:46:57 ◼   ► You have to know who you're talking to and and you have to know how they know the things they know and how it's plausible

00:47:02 ◼   ► And have like a track record with them so that you know this one guy

00:47:06 ◼   ► I'm talking to is right three times in a row and the fourth thing that he says

00:47:09 ◼   ► maybe I'll believe and even then they could still be gaming you and try to suss out leaks or who the hell knows what but

00:47:14 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like it's confusing to me when someone says something like this because the only kind of inside information

00:47:20 ◼   ► I'm ever comfortable receiving now that I really receive any to speak of is the type of information told to me with the understanding that

00:47:27 ◼   ► I will never tell anyone and then I do never tell anyone and that's it

00:47:31 ◼   ► That's where it ends and this is like for the purposes of the outside world. It is useless

00:47:35 ◼   ► It's exciting to me because now I know something that very few people know

00:47:37 ◼   ► But then I never tell anyone else and then you know like oh well

00:47:41 ◼   ► You know I mean it helped it. I guess it helps me sometimes. I get told things in

00:47:44 ◼   ► confidence sort of for the purposes of background information for my OS 10 reviews and stuff like that and that informs my reviews and

00:47:53 ◼   ► Occasionally helps me to be right about things that I had no right to be exactly right about that

00:48:00 ◼   ► Just happened to actually know

00:48:01 ◼   ► But I never phrase it as I'm 100% sure about this even when I am 100% sure about it because that's not the point

00:48:07 ◼   ► I'm not trying to like reveal secrets or show how much inside knowledge I have

00:48:12 ◼   ► even if I know for sure something I'm going to phrase it as

00:48:16 ◼   ► This is this is something that is plausible and I say the same thing about other things that I have no inside information about

00:48:22 ◼   ► Equally phrased with the same amount of confidence. This is plausible like technically feasible plausible could be blah blah blah

00:48:27 ◼   ► Half of the could be's are just like Marco or I'm just making stuff up and thinking well this could happen

00:48:32 ◼   ► We'll see and the other half are like I know for sure this is exactly what it is

00:48:37 ◼   ► But I'm never gonna tell you that or how I know that so just you know and anyone reading it

00:48:41 ◼   ► It's not a secret code. You can't decode it

00:48:43 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of things that could be plausible some of them turn out to be true some turn out to be false

00:48:47 ◼   ► But that's the only thing I can understand because those people would talk to you because they want an

00:48:53 ◼   ► Accurate picture of like their product or their technology or whatever to be out there in the world in a way that doesn't

00:48:58 ◼   ► Impinj secrecy I can't imagine

00:49:01 ◼   ► Someone telling me something and saying now you're free to go write that about this on your blog

00:49:06 ◼   ► Like that dynamic is weird to me,

00:49:09 ◼   ► especially in an ongoing basis,

00:49:10 ◼   ► that there would be someone inside information

00:49:12 ◼   ► that routinely gives information to someone who they know

00:49:15 ◼   ► and consent to publish that information on their blog

00:49:19 ◼   ► as confidently asserting this is information

00:49:22 ◼   ► we have from inside Apple.

00:49:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I would say, like we said,

00:49:26 ◼   ► when we are told things in confidence

00:49:29 ◼   ► that we are expected to really not share

00:49:32 ◼   ► because it would put somebody in a bad spot

00:49:35 ◼   ► that we might know, that I actually feel,

00:49:38 ◼   ► that's kind of more fun to me.

00:49:40 ◼   ► To have a secret that I'm not expected to do anything with,

00:49:44 ◼   ► that I'm actually really expected

00:49:45 ◼   ► not to write about or share.

00:49:48 ◼   ► - 'Cause that's why they told you,

00:49:49 ◼   ► the understanding that you're never going to tell anybody.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And maybe they tell you, for example, for you,

00:49:53 ◼   ► someone might tell you something that influences

00:49:55 ◼   ► which API you choose to use or something,

00:49:57 ◼   ► because it helps you with your job, right?

00:49:59 ◼   ► But it's not something you're gonna go on your blog and go,

00:50:01 ◼   ► hey guys, guess what, you should use this API,

00:50:03 ◼   ► not this one, because reasons X, Y, Z.

00:50:05 ◼   ► The only reason the person told you is because they're telling you, not so, like they understand

00:50:09 ◼   ► that you are not going to post it on your site because your site is not a clearinghouse

00:50:12 ◼   ► for inside information that you got from Apple.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Right, and you know, when people tell me things that may or may not be true, usually I have

00:50:21 ◼   ► no way to know, but when people tell me things that may or may not be true, you know, you're

00:50:25 ◼   ► right, the best thing it can do really is to inform my future thoughts and actions and

00:50:32 ◼   ► discussions on the show or on my blog like that like it's it's really better in that way because then like you avoid all the

00:50:38 ◼   ► risks of

00:50:40 ◼   ► Of what if you're wrong or what if you get somebody in trouble or burn some trust?

00:50:44 ◼   ► but you you can benefit from like, you know, if you heard from somebody an apple that that this thing that you're that you were

00:50:51 ◼   ► Saying before actually is wrong. You can stop saying it or or like, you know

00:50:57 ◼   ► You can next time you comment on an issue

00:50:59 ◼   ► you can be better informed about it. Or, as you said, when you're trying to make a decision between

00:51:05 ◼   ► the product and the lineup, like, "Oh, should I buy a Mac Mini right now?" or "No, no, wait!"

00:51:10 ◼   ► Stuff like that. Or, "Should I use Core Data for this? Should I use iCloud, Cloud Sync,

00:51:16 ◼   ► or whatever?" And you can make those kinds of decisions. That is better than just spewing out

00:51:21 ◼   ► a secret for whatever brief value it might have to you that might backfire. And we're more likely

00:51:28 ◼   ► to get information from people who are sort of the leaf nodes in the organizational graph

00:51:32 ◼   ► at Apple. And those people only know what they know, but none of those people know what

00:51:38 ◼   ► products Apple is going to ship, what those products are going to be called, when they're

00:51:42 ◼   ► going to be released, how much they're going to cost. Like nothing. All they know is what

00:51:46 ◼   ► they see from their perspective on their project. And nobody, not even inside the Apple, knows

00:51:51 ◼   ► the future. Projects are canned, projects are canceled, projects are delayed, things

00:51:55 ◼   ► So even that information,

00:51:57 ◼   ► even though it could be 100% reliable,

00:51:59 ◼   ► that's what the entire company thought

00:52:01 ◼   ► at the time you got that information.

00:52:02 ◼   ► But it turns out they changed priorities

00:52:03 ◼   ► and did this and did that,

00:52:04 ◼   ► and this thing got moved to there,

00:52:05 ◼   ► and this project was canceled,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and this person left the company.

00:52:07 ◼   ► And then it turns out that nothing they told you

00:52:09 ◼   ► comes true, not because they were wrong,

00:52:11 ◼   ► or just because that was the plan at the time,

00:52:14 ◼   ► but plans change.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And so that's why when I look at these rumor sites,

00:52:18 ◼   ► even if this is 100% true,

00:52:19 ◼   ► it still doesn't predict the future in a way that is useful

00:52:22 ◼   ► because things change so much on whatever detail

00:52:24 ◼   ► they've just put out here.

00:52:27 ◼   ► - I don't know, I feel like I can understand a perspective

00:52:32 ◼   ► where what if this person or a person is an Apple employee

00:52:37 ◼   ► but happens to like our show,

00:52:39 ◼   ► and maybe they admire any one or all three of us,

00:52:42 ◼   ► and maybe they want to kind of participate

00:52:45 ◼   ► in the show a little bit

00:52:47 ◼   ► without necessarily doing so by name.

00:52:50 ◼   ► So they have a little bit of pertinent

00:52:52 ◼   ► perhaps interesting information, and they could give it to the three of us and probably steer the

00:52:58 ◼   ► show in the direction of that information, such as what this person has done in getting us to

00:53:04 ◼   ► talk about secrets in general. And then you can sit back and you can know, "I did that. I was the

00:53:11 ◼   ► one who got the three of them to talk about that. And look at me, I am an informant now. I'm special

00:53:16 ◼   ► to people I think are special." I think it's more likely to be excited by the fact that I just made

00:53:21 ◼   ► made up a bunch of BS and they talked about it on the show as if it was real.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Because that is what I think when I see an honesty about it.

00:53:27 ◼   ► It's like, oh, if we talk about this on the show, the guy's going to be like, "I can't

00:53:30 ◼   ► believe they talked about that.

00:53:31 ◼   ► Me and my friends just made this up and typed it in a web form."

00:53:33 ◼   ► Because again, it's all plausible.

00:53:35 ◼   ► It's all 100 percent plausible.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Anybody can make up a plausible room.

00:53:38 ◼   ► You just got to assert it confidently and then you just wait.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And so this is why I wanted to talk about it because this will be allowing – bringing

00:53:44 ◼   ► the audience in on what this is like on a micro scale where we're going to talk about

00:53:48 ◼   ► what they say in this prediction,

00:53:49 ◼   ► and then we can all find out.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Was this just totally bogus stuff that somebody made up,

00:53:53 ◼   ► and haha we're suckers for talking about it?

00:53:55 ◼   ► Or was it, my God, we didn't know it at the time,

00:53:58 ◼   ► but it's 100% accurate, and we'll all find out together.

00:54:01 ◼   ► - The really funny thing about this is that

00:54:04 ◼   ► the extra info that we allegedly have,

00:54:07 ◼   ► that no one else allegedly has, is so boring.

00:54:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:11 ◼   ► - But it's all stuff that we talked about.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Like when we talked about this stuff,

00:54:14 ◼   ► we talked about pretty much all of these possibilities,

00:54:16 ◼   ► but we just talked about them as a sea of possibilities.

00:54:18 ◼   ► They could do this or they could do that.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Let's talk about the pros and cons of this

00:54:21 ◼   ► or what if they did that?

00:54:22 ◼   ► Like we've covered all of these bases before.

00:54:25 ◼   ► What this rumor, what this supposed tip is doing

00:54:27 ◼   ► is saying all those possibilities you listed,

00:54:29 ◼   ► this is the one that's real

00:54:31 ◼   ► and this is the one that's happening and here's why.

00:54:33 ◼   ► Then I guess there's a little bit of a here's why angle here

00:54:35 ◼   ► so we'll find out together.

00:54:37 ◼   ► But first, our final sponsor.

00:54:39 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:40 ◼   ► Nicely done.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Our final sponsor this week,

00:54:43 ◼   ► after if you will tell you our top secret information.

00:54:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:46 ◼   ► I'm laughing at what it is, 'cause I know it like,

00:54:50 ◼   ► it's so great.

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00:57:32 ◼   ► Okay, so before we talk about the contents of this, maybe it's real, maybe it's not rumor/tip.

00:57:38 ◼   ► Get excited, everyone!

00:57:40 ◼   ► We should probably talk about what the original rumor was that Mark Gurman and

00:57:46 ◼   ► crew posted at 9to5Mac.

00:57:47 ◼   ► Yeah, we didn't talk about this enough when it came out.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Well, just a very quick recap. So they had said that there's going to be a radically new

00:57:56 ◼   ► 12 inch MacBook air. And more importantly than almost anything that it was going to do away,

00:58:03 ◼   ► let me read a radically new design that jettison standards such as full sized USB ports, mag safe

00:58:08 ◼   ► connectors and SD card slots in favor of a markedly mark markedly marked Lee anyway,

00:58:14 ◼   ► a thinner and lighter body with a higher resolution display. So that's that was the

00:58:19 ◼   ► basis of all of these rumors. So with that in mind, john, would you like to take us through

00:58:24 ◼   ► what this individual has said to us.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a couple of pieces here.

00:58:29 ◼   ► The first part is about the trackpad that I think it's in that article that we discussed

00:58:33 ◼   ► that like, you know, the thing's going to be so thin that the trackpad has no place

00:58:36 ◼   ► to sort of click down into.

00:58:38 ◼   ► So the idea was that the trackpad will not actually move when you click it, and we discussed

00:58:43 ◼   ► like how are they going to handle that, how is it going to feel to press something that

00:58:46 ◼   ► doesn't actually move.

00:58:47 ◼   ► This anonymous tip person—and again, I would say we're not going to make a habit of reading

00:58:50 ◼   ► anonymous tips but I think it's fun just to do it in this one place so we could all find

00:58:54 ◼   ► out together was this totally bogus made up stuff or was it all 100% accurate and I imagine

00:58:59 ◼   ► that it's going to be one of the other extreme and not anywhere in the middle. Anyway, it

00:59:03 ◼   ► always is. Yeah, this tip says that what they're actually using is the same thing we use for

00:59:08 ◼   ► the force touch. No, not the Star Wars thing. But on the Apple Watch, that's a reference

00:59:12 ◼   ► Casey. Oh, I got it where you press really hard on the Apple Watch and it can tell the

00:59:17 ◼   ► the difference between that and like a regular tap,

00:59:21 ◼   ► that, you know, what this person says,

00:59:22 ◼   ► force touch technology,

00:59:23 ◼   ► I guess it's probably a branding thing or whatever,

00:59:26 ◼   ► to tell the difference between a tap and a deep press.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And the idea- - Sounds kind of creepy.

00:59:30 ◼   ► - The idea that is that it will be better than like,

00:59:32 ◼   ► I know a lot of people who are devotees to tap to touch,

00:59:35 ◼   ► tap to click on the track pads,

00:59:37 ◼   ► but the people who don't like it usually don't like it

00:59:39 ◼   ► because it's easy to accidentally tap sometimes

00:59:42 ◼   ► because you know, just sort of any finger brushing

00:59:44 ◼   ► against the track pad counts as a click

00:59:46 ◼   ► and you don't want that to happen.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Well this supposedly would make it much less ambiguous

00:59:51 ◼   ► when you were clicking and when you were not.

00:59:53 ◼   ► Still without a trackpad that actually moves,

00:59:54 ◼   ► but so that the trackpad can tell a difference

00:59:56 ◼   ► between you just sort of tapped your finger lightly

00:59:59 ◼   ► on the pad and you were actually pressing,

01:00:00 ◼   ► even though the thing doesn't move.

01:00:02 ◼   ► - See this, I'm a little skeptical.

01:00:04 ◼   ► If they, I mean, it makes sense, you know,

01:00:06 ◼   ► like it's plausible that this is what they might be doing.

01:00:09 ◼   ► But because none of us have actually done force touch

01:00:12 ◼   ► on a watch yet, like I don't know,

01:00:14 ◼   ► like if you have to push hard at all,

01:00:16 ◼   ► it's gonna be really tedious and ergonomically questionable.

01:00:20 ◼   ► - I don't think you have to press hard.

01:00:21 ◼   ► I think the thing is a misnomer.

01:00:23 ◼   ► My guess is that it's figuring out

01:00:25 ◼   ► how much your finger squishes,

01:00:26 ◼   ► so like the contact patch changes size,

01:00:28 ◼   ► and I would assume that that's what the track pad is using

01:00:31 ◼   ► to determine the force, not like actual pressure,

01:00:34 ◼   ► or maybe it's a combination of both,

01:00:35 ◼   ► but I don't think it's gonna be like,

01:00:38 ◼   ► you'll be able to tell, I guess,

01:00:39 ◼   ► if you take something that does not

01:00:41 ◼   ► make a larger contact patch when you press

01:00:43 ◼   ► and see if you can force touch with that.

01:00:45 ◼   ► I don't know what that would be,

01:00:46 ◼   ► maybe some kind of cylindrical hot dog in a sleeve

01:00:49 ◼   ► or something that is like water.

01:00:52 ◼   ► You know, you need something that's filled with water

01:00:54 ◼   ► like a human finger and press with it in a way

01:00:57 ◼   ► that the contact patch does not change size.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And maybe it's a combination, but you're right.

01:01:02 ◼   ► None of us have tried the Force Touch on the watch.

01:01:03 ◼   ► So telling us that the trackpad is gonna be

01:01:05 ◼   ► just like the watch almost tells us nothing at this point.

01:01:07 ◼   ► - By the way, for whatever it's worth,

01:01:09 ◼   ► I actually, when the Apple Watch was announced

01:01:12 ◼   ► six months ago and they talked about Force Touch,

01:01:14 ◼   ► I had speculated on the show, they were probably just measuring the radius of the touch capacitively,

01:01:21 ◼   ► not actually measuring force.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And I think we got a couple of people who sent it, I'm not remembering exactly, but

01:01:27 ◼   ► I think we got a couple of people telling us there actually were pressure sensors as

01:01:32 ◼   ► well.

01:01:33 ◼   ► So I think there's something there.

01:01:34 ◼   ► But either way, we'll see how this pans out in practice.

01:01:38 ◼   ► I was very skeptical of the current kind of tripads we have, the quote button list where

01:01:43 ◼   ► like kind of the whole thing is a button,

01:01:45 ◼   ► it just hinges on the top.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I was very skeptical of that when it came out

01:01:48 ◼   ► and it turned out to be just fine and normal.

01:01:50 ◼   ► So, you know, this sounds really weird,

01:01:52 ◼   ► but it might be awesome.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I guess we'll find out.

01:01:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there is a thing on the Apple Watch page,

01:01:59 ◼   ► where the Apple Watch technology page at apple.com,

01:02:01 ◼   ► where you can see an explanation of Force Touch

01:02:03 ◼   ► and that's what we're being pointed to see.

01:02:05 ◼   ► That explanation also applies to the thing.

01:02:07 ◼   ► Again, with branding, Apple can apply the Force Touch,

01:02:11 ◼   ► you know, once they have a sort of a branded name

01:02:12 ◼   ► with a capital F and a capital T,

01:02:15 ◼   ► then they can just apply that same name

01:02:17 ◼   ► to anything remotely like that in their product line

01:02:18 ◼   ► regardless of whether it actually uses the same technology.

01:02:21 ◼   ► - Retina.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - Retina's not, what's a good example they've done that?

01:02:24 ◼   ► I mean, FileVault and FileVault2,

01:02:25 ◼   ► which are totally unrelated technologies,

01:02:27 ◼   ► other than the fact that they both attempt

01:02:29 ◼   ► to encrypt your data, implementation-wise,

01:02:32 ◼   ► they share nothing, but they do share the same branding.

01:02:35 ◼   ► So the next bit is about like, what are they gonna do

01:02:39 ◼   ► if they have just a single port,

01:02:40 ◼   ► how do they deal with that?

01:02:42 ◼   ► - This is a big one guys, this is it.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - The answer-- - Are you ready?

01:02:45 ◼   ► - The answer is super exciting.

01:02:47 ◼   ► A USB hub, I know you're super excited about a USB hub.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Now the interesting part about this is not so much--

01:02:52 ◼   ► - This is our tip, a USB hub.

01:02:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, not so much the fact that they have a hub,

01:02:56 ◼   ► but this tipster provides motivation behind this.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And the motivation and a little story behind it

01:03:02 ◼   ► is with the original Retina MacBook Pro

01:03:05 ◼   ► that didn't have an ethernet port,

01:03:06 ◼   ► apparently doing market research

01:03:09 ◼   ► let Apple determine that people really want

01:03:11 ◼   ► high-speed networking if they're gonna buy

01:03:12 ◼   ► a big expensive laptop.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And so they made the, what do you call it,

01:03:17 ◼   ► Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter or whatever.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And according to the Stipster, that was made,

01:03:23 ◼   ► the sole reason that product existed

01:03:24 ◼   ► was because of a customer demand

01:03:26 ◼   ► that they discovered through market research

01:03:29 ◼   ► and that they were selling it either at cost or below cost

01:03:32 ◼   ► when it was initially made, because at that point,

01:03:34 ◼   ► I assume Thunderbolt chips were expensive or whatever,

01:03:37 ◼   ► because it was important for them to have that product.

01:03:39 ◼   ► So the $29 adapter, unlike so many other Apple products,

01:03:43 ◼   ► did not have a big margin,

01:03:44 ◼   ► and in fact may have been sold at a slight loss

01:03:45 ◼   ► when it was brand new.

01:03:46 ◼   ► Now I'm sure the margins are better on it or whatever.

01:03:49 ◼   ► So that same idea is with this adapter,

01:03:52 ◼   ► like that they, you know, why does this hub exist?

01:03:55 ◼   ► Well, because based on market research or whatever,

01:03:59 ◼   ► determined that one port is not enough for people

01:04:02 ◼   ► and they need some way to have other ports.

01:04:04 ◼   ► And as Marco was talking about in past shows,

01:04:06 ◼   ► third-party USB hubs are flaky

01:04:08 ◼   ► and Apple probably doesn't want them to be attached

01:04:10 ◼   ► to have to deal with like sleep wake problems

01:04:12 ◼   ► and things tickling the bus and stuff like that.

01:04:15 ◼   ► So, and as I suggested, it would be nice

01:04:17 ◼   ► if Apple made a really nice sturdy port

01:04:20 ◼   ► that they are sturdy USB hub

01:04:22 ◼   ► that they knew worked with their stuff

01:04:23 ◼   ► that like maybe this is like a taller order

01:04:26 ◼   ► if you currently have some Apple branded hardware

01:04:27 ◼   ► that's driving you insane.

01:04:28 ◼   ► It didn't help that it's made by Apple.

01:04:30 ◼   ► It's still driving me nuts,

01:04:31 ◼   ► like a time capsule that's flaky or something.

01:04:32 ◼   ► But anyway, in theory, Apple can make one of these,

01:04:35 ◼   ► qualify it for use in all its OS's

01:04:37 ◼   ► and make sure it's sturdy and good and all that good stuff.

01:04:40 ◼   ► So according to this tipster,

01:04:41 ◼   ► that is exactly what they're doing.

01:04:42 ◼   ► They're making a hub.

01:04:43 ◼   ► There's two USB type A ports, two type C ports.

01:04:47 ◼   ► It's supposedly small and fairly heavy

01:04:51 ◼   ► so that it doesn't get pulled off the table

01:04:52 ◼   ► by the thing that you plug it in

01:04:54 ◼   ► 'cause I assume it will be a powered hub.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - See, that part sounded weird to me.

01:04:57 ◼   ► A number of things about this sound weird to me.

01:04:59 ◼   ► The fact that it's a small USB hub that's going to be heavy,

01:05:02 ◼   ► that, I don't buy that.

01:05:04 ◼   ► And also, how funny is it?

01:05:06 ◼   ► and it is very Apple-like really,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but how funny is it to make a USB hub

01:05:09 ◼   ► that only has like four ports

01:05:10 ◼   ► and only two of them are actually normal?

01:05:13 ◼   ► - Well, when I'm thinking of heavy,

01:05:14 ◼   ► I'm thinking kind of like,

01:05:16 ◼   ► I guess kind of like the Apple TV,

01:05:18 ◼   ► like where it's dense for its size.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Like not that you think it's gonna be a big,

01:05:21 ◼   ► but it's small, but it feels dense when you pick it up

01:05:23 ◼   ► and it's probably like a grippy rubber thing on the bottom.

01:05:25 ◼   ► I'm picturing something that looks like

01:05:27 ◼   ► a little miniature white Apple TV when I see this.

01:05:30 ◼   ► What do they say about this?

01:05:32 ◼   ► Something about it having a short, stubby, stiff cable?

01:05:34 ◼   ► Where is that bit?

01:05:35 ◼   ► The hub is small, the cable connecting it to the Mac

01:05:38 ◼   ► is stiff and very short.

01:05:39 ◼   ► It has a significant weight to it,

01:05:40 ◼   ► so it doesn't get ripped off your desk

01:05:41 ◼   ► or out of the port by the power brick.

01:05:43 ◼   ► - See, power brick makes me feel bad.

01:05:45 ◼   ► I don't like power bricks.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Like, that's one of the annoying things about hubs

01:05:48 ◼   ► is the stupid power brick, you know,

01:05:50 ◼   ► the AC/DC converter and little DC thing plugs in the back.

01:05:52 ◼   ► That's one of the awesome things about the,

01:05:54 ◼   ► the amazing things about the Apple TV.

01:05:56 ◼   ► This is the one that has this, right?

01:05:57 ◼   ► No internal power supply, right?

01:05:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:06:00 ◼   ► - That's a little puck,

01:06:01 ◼   ► and it does not have a power brick at all.

01:06:04 ◼   ► It just has a plug that goes into the outlet.

01:06:07 ◼   ► The power supply is internal, which is an amazing feat

01:06:10 ◼   ► for such a tiny little thing.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And I like that.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And that's sort of a premium experience.

01:06:14 ◼   ► I don't know if the other Pucks are like that.

01:06:16 ◼   ► You've got the Amazon Fire TV now, right, Marco?

01:06:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it has a brick.

01:06:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, and isn't it bigger than the Apple TV too?

01:06:22 ◼   ► Close enough.

01:06:23 ◼   ► - I think it has a bigger footprint, but it's pretty short.

01:06:27 ◼   ► I think it's shorter, but wider.

01:06:28 ◼   ► - Right, and so if you took what's in that brick

01:06:30 ◼   ► and added it to the volume of the Amazon thing,

01:06:32 ◼   ► suddenly it would be huge.

01:06:32 ◼   ► which just goes to show what Apple has done with their puck.

01:06:35 ◼   ► Despite the fact that everything else about their puck

01:06:37 ◼   ► is completely outdated and outclassed

01:06:38 ◼   ► by every other product in the category,

01:06:40 ◼   ► they do have a really nice internal power supply.

01:06:42 ◼   ► You gotta give them that, right?

01:06:43 ◼   ► - And no fan.

01:06:45 ◼   ► - Yes, no fan, love it.

01:06:45 ◼   ► But the Amazon doesn't have a fan either, right?

01:06:48 ◼   ► - As far as I know, it doesn't.

01:06:49 ◼   ► - That's not a no.

01:06:51 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - I don't think it has any ventilation holes.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think it has.

01:06:55 ◼   ► - It's just got a fan, but no ventilation holes.

01:06:57 ◼   ► It just spins in there.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Turns around the warm air.

01:07:00 ◼   ► - Oh, Jeff Bezos is a little bit crazy.

01:07:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so the summary of this is that

01:07:03 ◼   ► basically the Germin report is completely accurate

01:07:06 ◼   ► and the only things that he didn't have

01:07:07 ◼   ► was he didn't have the hub and he didn't know

01:07:10 ◼   ► whether it would be retina.

01:07:11 ◼   ► And the answer is yes, it will be retina, right?

01:07:13 ◼   ► - And by the way, Mark Germin in a podcast

01:07:15 ◼   ► like a few days after this did say,

01:07:18 ◼   ► of course it'll be retina.

01:07:19 ◼   ► I don't know why he left that out of the article.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Maybe he wasn't positive.

01:07:22 ◼   ► - Well, he said high resolution.

01:07:24 ◼   ► - But he specifically said like a few days later,

01:07:26 ◼   ► like yeah, of course it'll be retina.

01:07:28 ◼   ► - You know, he does run the website

01:07:30 ◼   ► Like, can't he just go change it in the article?

01:07:32 ◼   ► He could've like, once everybody said,

01:07:34 ◼   ► "You didn't even say it would be retina.

01:07:35 ◼   ► "You can just go right up to the thing and do update."

01:07:37 ◼   ► Yes, it will be retina, close.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:07:39 ◼   ► - Maybe he didn't know it for sure

01:07:40 ◼   ► at the time that he published it

01:07:41 ◼   ► and wanted everything in it to be correct

01:07:44 ◼   ► so that people would look back and say,

01:07:45 ◼   ► "Wow, you got everything correct?"

01:07:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, so how could you have come up with this fake rumor

01:07:49 ◼   ► if you had no information

01:07:50 ◼   ► other than reading that Germin article?

01:07:52 ◼   ► It's pretty easy because you could say,

01:07:54 ◼   ► "That article is 100% correct,

01:07:56 ◼   ► "but there's two bits of information you don't know.

01:07:58 ◼   ► "One, I'm gonna take that Force Touch thing

01:07:59 ◼   ► that they already talked about for the watch

01:08:01 ◼   ► and tell you that's how they're doing the track pad.

01:08:02 ◼   ► And two, everyone has been saying that

01:08:04 ◼   ► if it only has one port, it'll be a problem,

01:08:06 ◼   ► maybe they'll have some kind of hub or something.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Well, actually Apple is making a hub

01:08:09 ◼   ► and here's how many ports will be on it

01:08:10 ◼   ► and here are a few attributes of it.

01:08:12 ◼   ► - By the way, real time follow up

01:08:13 ◼   ► on that Apple Watch technology page,

01:08:15 ◼   ► Apple says right there that ForceTux

01:08:17 ◼   ► uses tiny electrodes around the flexible retina display

01:08:21 ◼   ► to distinguish between a light tap and a deep press.

01:08:23 ◼   ► So yeah, apparently there are actually hardware sensors

01:08:27 ◼   ► that will attempt to detect a pressured press there,

01:08:30 ◼   ► rather than just measuring the size of your fingertip

01:08:32 ◼   ► growing bigger.

01:08:33 ◼   ► - Or if it does that at all,

01:08:34 ◼   ► maybe it doesn't do the fingertip radius at all,

01:08:36 ◼   ► we don't know, right?

01:08:37 ◼   ► - Exactly, yeah.

01:08:38 ◼   ► - All right, well, we will find out, I suppose.

01:08:42 ◼   ► I mean, how will we know whether this person was right?

01:08:44 ◼   ► Well, first, Apple's gotta have a USB hub, right?

01:08:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the USB hub that this email described,

01:08:49 ◼   ► you know, that was a pretty thorough description.

01:08:53 ◼   ► So like, it's gonna be pretty obvious

01:08:54 ◼   ► whether this was credible or not,

01:08:56 ◼   ► Because it's not like this event is five days from now.

01:09:01 ◼   ► It's too late for something like this to be canceled.

01:09:06 ◼   ► If this person wrote to us, I think this morning, right?

01:09:09 ◼   ► So chances are this is either gonna be 100% right

01:09:13 ◼   ► or 100% wrong.

01:09:14 ◼   ► There's not gonna be some last minute change

01:09:15 ◼   ► that, "Oh, well, I was right,

01:09:16 ◼   ► "but they delayed the iPad Pro, so..."

01:09:19 ◼   ► No, it's not gonna be like that.

01:09:21 ◼   ► This is gonna either be all right or all wrong.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And I think it's hilarious that if it's all right

01:09:26 ◼   ► that we got this amazing tip about a USB hub.

01:09:30 ◼   ► - And so the Force Touch thing,

01:09:31 ◼   ► we have no way to tell whether that's right

01:09:33 ◼   ► because even if they don't use the phrase Force Touch,

01:09:36 ◼   ► this doesn't tell us that they're going to use

01:09:38 ◼   ► the marketing term Force Touch.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Like basically, it's relying entirely

01:09:42 ◼   ► on the Germin article being right

01:09:43 ◼   ► because the Germin article said,

01:09:44 ◼   ► "Trackpad that doesn't move."

01:09:46 ◼   ► "If it has a trackpad that doesn't move,

01:09:47 ◼   ► "was this one right?"

01:09:48 ◼   ► "No, all it was doing was repeating."

01:09:49 ◼   ► Like the only additional information it's providing is

01:09:52 ◼   ► it's using the same thing as Force Touch.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And we can't tell that when they announce it

01:09:55 ◼   ► because unless Apple specifically brands it

01:09:58 ◼   ► with Force Touch, it's like, oh, well,

01:10:00 ◼   ► Trackpad doesn't move.

01:10:01 ◼   ► That's what Mark Gurman already said.

01:10:03 ◼   ► - Wait, guys, I have breaking news.

01:10:05 ◼   ► I've just gotten a tip from an anonymous source

01:10:09 ◼   ► that Apple's about to announce during this event

01:10:12 ◼   ► an update to the AA battery charger.

01:10:14 ◼   ► - Good God.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Oh, you're the worst.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Yeah, if this is real, and I'm not saying it is,

01:10:22 ◼   ► But if it is real, and this person was genuinely excited

01:10:26 ◼   ► to kind of quietly get credit for some,

01:10:29 ◼   ► well, I think it's at least mildly interesting

01:10:31 ◼   ► piece of information that nobody else really knew up front,

01:10:35 ◼   ► I feel bad for this person,

01:10:36 ◼   ► 'cause we've now spent the last half an hour

01:10:39 ◼   ► eviscerating this poor person.

01:10:41 ◼   ► - No, I mean, like, you know,

01:10:43 ◼   ► like if they're making it up, they deserve to be ridiculed,

01:10:46 ◼   ► and if they're not making it up,

01:10:47 ◼   ► they will be vindicated by history.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Like, so that's why I'm trying to figure out

01:10:51 ◼   ► how we'll tell whether they're right.

01:10:53 ◼   ► The most interesting thing, if this is true,

01:10:55 ◼   ► the thing that I'm most interested about

01:10:58 ◼   ► is the idea that Apple makes products

01:11:01 ◼   ► and then does market research to figure out

01:11:02 ◼   ► if the products are palatable and then scrambles

01:11:04 ◼   ► to make adapters when they're not.

01:11:06 ◼   ► That is, like if that is actually true,

01:11:08 ◼   ► that sort of, you know, and we don't have a good way

01:11:10 ◼   ► to tell that, but like if that,

01:11:12 ◼   ► if inside Apple that's how things are working,

01:11:15 ◼   ► that is not a healthy situation,

01:11:16 ◼   ► because that's what, it gets back to my thing

01:11:17 ◼   ► with the whole one port, like what advantage

01:11:19 ◼   ► one port provided, two port does not.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And I haven't got a satisfactory answer.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And if the answer is someone designed and says this is the product we're making, no

01:11:27 ◼   ► it's going to be thin, no ethernet, no single port blah blah blah.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And then some other department gets in and says our customers are saying basically it's

01:11:33 ◼   ► a no go so we've got to give them some solution.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Oh I guess we'll make some adapters, slap it on, sell it at a loss.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Like that's terrible.

01:11:39 ◼   ► It shows you're not making, like it shows your product design is not fitting the market.

01:11:43 ◼   ► And it would explain a lot of the things where they make something and then the next version

01:11:47 ◼   ► like has more of a different kind of port or rearranges things or adjusts, you know, like

01:11:52 ◼   ► it's better to find this out ahead of time. You know, if you're going to do something like either

01:11:58 ◼   ► stick to it or don't stick to it, don't make a product and then slap a bunch of ugly adapters

01:12:01 ◼   ► on it because that is not an elegant, simple, clean, blah, blah, blah, whatever, Johnny Ive

01:12:05 ◼   ► White World solution, right? It's so true because every time I go to give a presentation at work or

01:12:13 ◼   ► plug my computer into the projector for any reason whatsoever. Anytime I do that and have

01:12:18 ◼   ► to get out the little Thunderbolt to VGA adapter, every PC user around the table just kind of shakes

01:12:25 ◼   ► their head in snickers. Because every single one of them has this antiquated VGA port, which is very

01:12:31 ◼   ► useful, built into their computers and has since the beginning of time. Yeah, well, they're wrong

01:12:37 ◼   ► on that thing because no one should have a VGA port on their computer. If they have HDMI directly

01:12:42 ◼   ► into their computer or like, you know, like, VGA is ridiculous. Give me a break. That should

01:12:47 ◼   ► not be it. But yeah, sometimes you have to have an adapter, right? But for things like

01:12:51 ◼   ► this it's not like when you have to interact with some cruddy old third party thing, use

01:12:55 ◼   ► this adapter. This is like when you want to use your computer for something that requires

01:12:59 ◼   ► more than one port, use this hub that we're selling you. Or I know that you buy a Retina

01:13:04 ◼   ► MacBook Pro and you're going to be using it on Ethernet every second you can because you

01:13:07 ◼   ► need high speed networking. Use this dongle, you know, because we couldn't fit an ether

01:13:12 ◼   ► And sometimes, you know, they're limited by the size of the ports, so the Ethernet just doesn't fit, we want to make it thinner.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Like, there are reasons for it, but

01:13:18 ◼   ► especially with the single USB Type-C, like the whole port of Type-C is it's super small, now you can fit more of them.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Don't give me fewer.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Unless giving me fewer provides some advantage, as we talked about at length in the previous shows, like, oh,

01:13:31 ◼   ► you can use fewer PCI Express lanes, or you get more battery life because you can use a chipset that doesn't include this thing.

01:13:37 ◼   ► I would like a reason and based on random spy shots

01:13:41 ◼   ► We don't have any kind of reasoning and of course Apple's not gonna give you any reasoning

01:13:44 ◼   ► Probably unless they're feeling super defensive like if they're feeling defensive

01:13:47 ◼   ► They'll say and have look at this feature like Steve Jobs would say it's just got one port now people would say

01:13:52 ◼   ► Why one port well it turns out and then he would say something that may or may not be true

01:13:56 ◼   ► But at least it would be a reason

01:13:58 ◼   ► We just do one port we can make an even lower power

01:14:01 ◼   ► And then you know other people with this using the same Intel chipset are already released laptops

01:14:06 ◼   ► They get insane battery life, and I bet they don't have one port on them

01:14:09 ◼   ► So I'm going to be skeptical of any sort of

01:14:11 ◼   ► Power related explanations of why this thing has one port if it indeed does have one port. I mean yeah, I think

01:14:17 ◼   ► The the most clear explanation or the most plausible explanation knowing modern Apple and seeing the renderings of this thing from Mark Gurman

01:14:25 ◼   ► I think it's just thinness. That's it like there was room for one

01:14:28 ◼   ► But that's all I need to see the I fix it teardown to prove to me that there was really only room for one

01:14:34 ◼   ► - Right, and nobody asked him to make it that thin.

01:14:37 ◼   ► You know, like this is a self-imposed problem.

01:14:39 ◼   ► - It's not because it's too thin.

01:14:40 ◼   ► It's not like, well, there's only one part of the case

01:14:42 ◼   ► that's thick enough.

01:14:43 ◼   ► At minimum, there's two places on the case

01:14:45 ◼   ► where it's thick enough, one on one side

01:14:46 ◼   ► and one on the other, you know what I mean?

01:14:47 ◼   ► - Right, well, they use the other one

01:14:48 ◼   ► for the headphone jack.

01:14:49 ◼   ► - I know, but the headphone jack is, you could move,

01:14:51 ◼   ► like, the headphone jack doesn't have a lot of width,

01:14:53 ◼   ► so you could have the USB.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Anyway, I feel like there's room.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Not because, you know, within the case that they have now,

01:15:00 ◼   ► when they open this thing up,

01:15:01 ◼   ► I feel like you're gonna be able to find

01:15:02 ◼   ► that yes, there was room.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Again, get back to the puck thing

01:15:04 ◼   ► where they put an internal power supply.

01:15:06 ◼   ► There's gotta be room in there for more than one port.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Gotta be.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And so there's gotta be some other reason

01:15:11 ◼   ► and it could be philosophical and stupid or whatever.

01:15:13 ◼   ► But anyway, the idea that they would subsequently

01:15:16 ◼   ► do market research and determine this product

01:15:18 ◼   ► is not as viable as they want it to be without an adapter.

01:15:22 ◼   ► Therefore, we have to make a hub.

01:15:24 ◼   ► Ugh.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Like, when that happens, it had to happen early on, right?

01:15:28 ◼   ► Because you have to make this whole hub product.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Like, shouldn't they go back and say,

01:15:32 ◼   ► Should we make a hub or can you just put another damn port

01:15:34 ◼   ► on this thing, guys?

01:15:35 ◼   ► I mean, come on.

01:15:36 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:37 ◼   ► I mean, and for whatever it's worth,

01:15:39 ◼   ► now I'm considering buying one of these things

01:15:41 ◼   ► 'cause as I keep realizing that whenever I travel,

01:15:46 ◼   ► I hardly ever actually get coding work done

01:15:49 ◼   ► that actually needs a big screen real estate,

01:15:52 ◼   ► and I actually would like smaller travel weight.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Anyway, so I'm considering getting one of these things,

01:15:56 ◼   ► and because I've had such terrible experiences

01:15:59 ◼   ► with hubs and third party adapters and everything,

01:16:02 ◼   ► knowing that Apple is going to make an adapter,

01:16:06 ◼   ► if this proves to be true,

01:16:08 ◼   ► this would make me more comfortable buying a laptop.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Like if the rationale that this person stated

01:16:13 ◼   ► about making people more comfortable buying it

01:16:15 ◼   ► being the reason these things exist,

01:16:17 ◼   ► that is plausible to me because I am one of those people

01:16:19 ◼   ► who that is the case for.

01:16:21 ◼   ► - Is there anything that's new

01:16:23 ◼   ► that you cannot justify buying?

01:16:25 ◼   ► - No.

01:16:26 ◼   ► No, there's a lot.

01:16:27 ◼   ► I mean, you know, like I,

01:16:29 ◼   ► I'm sure I can think of something eventually.

01:16:32 ◼   ► - I got one, I've got one, he can, it's an easy one.

01:16:34 ◼   ► He has a TV that really needs to be replaced

01:16:37 ◼   ► but he doesn't replace it.

01:16:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a great example, yeah,

01:16:39 ◼   ► because it still works and I don't care that strongly.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Like all the advantages of modern TVs

01:16:45 ◼   ► that have come out since my relatively ancient one,

01:16:48 ◼   ► you know, mine is still good, it's fine, you know?

01:16:54 ◼   ► And after seeing yours at your house, John,

01:16:56 ◼   ► like came home and mine looked really small

01:16:58 ◼   ► and really low contrast and, you know,

01:17:01 ◼   ► really crude by comparison, but it's still fine.

01:17:06 ◼   ► You know, there's lots of stuff.

01:17:06 ◼   ► I mean, look, this is gonna replace,

01:17:08 ◼   ► if I get this, this is going to replace

01:17:09 ◼   ► a three-year-old laptop, so it's not that ridiculous.

01:17:12 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't realize it was that old.

01:17:14 ◼   ► All right, I feel better.

01:17:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a first-gen 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro

01:17:17 ◼   ► with bad screen retention issues.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - So I've heard.

01:17:20 ◼   ► Okay, so before we end the show,

01:17:22 ◼   ► let's talk quickly about the post you made

01:17:24 ◼   ► with regard to Apple Watch pricing.

01:17:28 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - Listen to this guy. - Fratcher, Squarespace,

01:17:31 ◼   ► and Harry's, and we will see you next week.

01:17:33 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:17:35 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:17:38 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:17:40 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:17:42 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:17:43 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:17:45 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:17:46 ◼   ► ♪ John didn't do any research ♪

01:17:48 ◼   ► ♪ Marco and Casey wouldn't let him ♪

01:17:51 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:17:52 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:17:54 ◼   ► It was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:18:02 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:18:10 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:18:15 ◼   ► [Music]

01:18:35 ◼   ► Do you not read the damn Skype IMs? Two of the three parties in this podcast agreed to talk

01:18:42 ◼   ► about this and then end the show.

01:18:43 ◼   ► - We're still gonna talk about it,

01:18:44 ◼   ► he just wanted to be in the after show.

01:18:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm just, I'm so bored of Apple Watch price

01:18:49 ◼   ► discussion, which is why I wrote the big article

01:18:50 ◼   ► for some reason.

01:18:51 ◼   ► - Can we, yeah, can we complain about how,

01:18:53 ◼   ► I already complained about this to you privately,

01:18:54 ◼   ► complained about how, yeah, all right,

01:18:56 ◼   ► so this is, instead of complaining,

01:18:57 ◼   ► let's turn into a positive.

01:18:58 ◼   ► Listeners to this show, if you are a regular listener

01:19:01 ◼   ► to this show, I feel like that you are sometimes

01:19:05 ◼   ► several weeks ahead of the press cycle

01:19:10 ◼   ► on the Apple news sites because when, like for example,

01:19:14 ◼   ► when the Apple Watch was announced and talked about,

01:19:16 ◼   ► we spent like three freaking shows

01:19:18 ◼   ► talking about the price of the watch,

01:19:20 ◼   ► whether it would be upgradable,

01:19:21 ◼   ► how Apple's gonna sell it in the stores.

01:19:23 ◼   ► And then in the past two weeks,

01:19:25 ◼   ► all of those topics came back with a vengeance

01:19:27 ◼   ► on every single site where everyone's talking about,

01:19:29 ◼   ► will the watch be upgradable?

01:19:30 ◼   ► How much will it cost?

01:19:31 ◼   ► How are they gonna sell it in the stores?

01:19:33 ◼   ► Which I think is fine,

01:19:34 ◼   ► but it meant that like we weren't gonna talk about it

01:19:37 ◼   ► because we spent so long,

01:19:38 ◼   ► you think we spent a long time talking about the car,

01:19:39 ◼   ► go back and see how long we talk about

01:19:41 ◼   ► watch pricing and upgradeability.

01:19:42 ◼   ► It seemed like it was forever.

01:19:43 ◼   ► And we just covered it from every possible angle

01:19:46 ◼   ► and talked ourselves to death.

01:19:47 ◼   ► And there's no new information about it.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Like we haven't learned anything new about it.

01:19:51 ◼   ► But yeah, so to see all those things go back around the cycle

01:19:54 ◼   ► and feel like we're not participating in that.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I guess it's like the podcast cycle

01:19:58 ◼   ► is different than the blog cycle or whatever.

01:20:00 ◼   ► But yeah, Marco's pricing posts, like,

01:20:03 ◼   ► there's no, like, unless, correct me if I'm wrong,

01:20:05 ◼   ► where there's no new information, right?

01:20:06 ◼   ► You're just rehashing pricing stuff,

01:20:08 ◼   ► Like, and sort of, people are getting different feelings

01:20:11 ◼   ► as the date approaches.

01:20:12 ◼   ► Like, I know we talked about this before,

01:20:14 ◼   ► and I know before I said X, but now I'm feeling like Y.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And not based on any information, right?

01:20:20 ◼   ► Like, you don't have any new information about price.

01:20:22 ◼   ► - Oh, me, no, no, definitely not.

01:20:24 ◼   ► All I have, the few people I've talked to inside of Apple

01:20:28 ◼   ► have only provided their own speculation.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Like, they don't know either.

01:20:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, I mean, it's, you know,

01:20:34 ◼   ► as the date approaches, maybe you get a different feeling,

01:20:37 ◼   ► and maybe you want to hedge, or maybe you want to stick to it,

01:20:38 ◼   ► but we'll endeavor to find the links to the shows

01:20:42 ◼   ► many moons ago when we talked about these things

01:20:44 ◼   ► just forever, so people can go back to listen to them

01:20:47 ◼   ► and to see how right or wrong we were after the Apple event.

01:20:50 ◼   ► But we were right or wrong a long time ago.

01:20:52 ◼   ► But for the rediscussion of it,

01:20:54 ◼   ► I think the new angle that you had on it, Mark,

01:20:56 ◼   ► was the idea of, previously we were talking mostly about,

01:20:59 ◼   ► boy, can you believe how much these things are gonna cost?

01:21:01 ◼   ► Do we really think they're gonna sell something

01:21:03 ◼   ► for 10, 20, 30 grand at the top end or whatever?

01:21:05 ◼   ► and the new angle is how maybe they're gonna cost

01:21:09 ◼   ► way less than we thought.

01:21:11 ◼   ► And as I was messaging to Marco earlier today,

01:21:13 ◼   ► I think this is getting muddled up in the idea of like,

01:21:16 ◼   ► are you talking about how much will the most expensive

01:21:19 ◼   ► Apple Watch Edition cost?

01:21:21 ◼   ► Are you talking about what is the cheapest price

01:21:23 ◼   ► that you can get an Apple Watch Edition for?

01:21:26 ◼   ► And depending on what you're talking about,

01:21:28 ◼   ► like you could agree that the Apple's gonna sell one

01:21:31 ◼   ► for 10 grand or 20 grand,

01:21:32 ◼   ► and you can also agree that the cheapest one

01:21:34 ◼   ► be like $2,000, $3,000. Like those are not incompatible ideas because there can be a

01:21:37 ◼   ► wide range in the Apple Watch Edition thing. And so the new thing is like, oh, maybe we're

01:21:43 ◼   ► just all being crazy and maybe the Apple Watch Edition will only be like $1,200, $1,500,

01:21:47 ◼   ► $2,000, $3,000. I'm willing to believe that, but that won't mean that you still can't get

01:21:54 ◼   ► the most expensive Apple Watch Edition with a solid gold band and a solid gold watch and

01:21:58 ◼   ► and all this other stuff for 10, 15 grand,

01:22:01 ◼   ► even if you can also get one for five grand,

01:22:04 ◼   ► four grand, six grand, or something like that.

01:22:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that's a fair point.

01:22:07 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause we still don't know the variability

01:22:10 ◼   ► within each line, depending on the band choice

01:22:13 ◼   ► and everything else.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Like that's, well, there's everything else,

01:22:15 ◼   ► depending on the band choice and the size.

01:22:17 ◼   ► - Especially because if the band is solid gold itself,

01:22:21 ◼   ► the band could contain way more gold than the watch.

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Actually, yeah.

01:22:26 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know anything about watches,

01:22:28 ◼   ► but that makes logical sense to me.

01:22:30 ◼   ► - Like volume-wise, I mean, I guess,

01:22:32 ◼   ► I don't know how strong they're like,

01:22:34 ◼   ► whatever, super strong, gold, alloy, whatever.

01:22:37 ◼   ► Obviously we know nothing about watches,

01:22:38 ◼   ► but just looking volume-wise, it's conceivable to me

01:22:41 ◼   ► that having a gold band could more than double

01:22:44 ◼   ► the price of the watch versus just that same watch

01:22:46 ◼   ► with a leather one.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And as we talked about in the past shows,

01:22:49 ◼   ► again, I don't wanna rehash everything we did,

01:22:51 ◼   ► the price of the materials has very little bearing

01:22:54 ◼   ► when you're up in this type of classic product,

01:22:56 ◼   ► very little bearing on the price of the product.

01:22:57 ◼   ► the markup can be astronomical.

01:22:59 ◼   ► It's not like a 30% margin,

01:23:00 ◼   ► it's like hundreds of a percent margin.

01:23:02 ◼   ► How high can you possibly go?

01:23:06 ◼   ► The only thing stopping you is like,

01:23:08 ◼   ► it is basically like a social and economic signal,

01:23:12 ◼   ► not a reflection of the cost to manufacture

01:23:15 ◼   ► or acquire the materials to make.

01:23:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and keep in mind also,

01:23:21 ◼   ► the manufacturing of these things is a big deal.

01:23:24 ◼   ► They talked about on the description on the Apple Watch site,

01:23:28 ◼   ► and I don't know if it's on the site

01:23:29 ◼   ► or if it's in the video,

01:23:30 ◼   ► but somewhere in official Apple material,

01:23:32 ◼   ► they talk about how each link is like hand polished

01:23:35 ◼   ► and it takes like six hours to make one of these things.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Like if that has six hours of labor in it,

01:23:40 ◼   ► that's gonna cost significantly more

01:23:43 ◼   ► than the cost of the raw metal.

01:23:45 ◼   ► Not to mention the machining and any parts

01:23:47 ◼   ► that might have to be discarded and recycled.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Like there's gonna be a lot behind that.

01:23:52 ◼   ► So the fixed cost of the gold watch

01:23:56 ◼   ► is gonna be substantially high,

01:23:58 ◼   ► Apple's cost is gonna be substantially higher

01:24:00 ◼   ► than whatever X ounces of gold cost

01:24:03 ◼   ► in the free market today.

01:24:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I still don't think that the pricing has,

01:24:08 ◼   ► almost for the high-end models only,

01:24:10 ◼   ► has really anything to do with the cost

01:24:13 ◼   ► of manufacturing your goods.

01:24:15 ◼   ► It has everything to do with two parts.

01:24:17 ◼   ► One, how many of these do they think they can make,

01:24:19 ◼   ► which probably actually does hinge on material,

01:24:21 ◼   ► like how much gold do they can get at a reasonable price.

01:24:24 ◼   ► And two, who are they trying to sell it to?

01:24:27 ◼   ► Because like we said, the markups could be hundreds

01:24:29 ◼   ► of a percent, like that markup has nothing to do

01:24:31 ◼   ► with costs of manufacturing and how many little machines

01:24:34 ◼   ► have to polish the little things.

01:24:35 ◼   ► Like you're already like doing multiples of three,

01:24:38 ◼   ► four, five, six, whatever.

01:24:39 ◼   ► Like, and when you're picking those prices,

01:24:41 ◼   ► you're picking them basically to say,

01:24:43 ◼   ► this is now a status symbol.

01:24:44 ◼   ► And the fact that it costs a lot of money

01:24:46 ◼   ► is what makes it more valuable.

01:24:47 ◼   ► Like it's that, what is it?

01:24:48 ◼   ► The Veblen goods thing, which we'll be linking again.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Again, we discussed all these things on past shows

01:24:52 ◼   ► that we're just rehashing now.

01:24:53 ◼   ► But that's what we're looking for.

01:24:55 ◼   ► What signal is Apple selling?

01:24:57 ◼   ► And is Apple trying to send with this product?

01:25:00 ◼   ► And really, it's only about branding

01:25:06 ◼   ► and signaling and fashion.

01:25:08 ◼   ► And it's because no matter what the price,

01:25:11 ◼   ► most people don't own gold watches, right?

01:25:14 ◼   ► Millions of people own iPhones.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Like that is within the range of things that people can buy.

01:25:18 ◼   ► And we already know the entry-level price

01:25:19 ◼   ► is gonna be around iPhone price or actually less.

01:25:22 ◼   ► That's where the volume is, right?

01:25:24 ◼   ► And creep up and then it'll get more and more expensive

01:25:26 ◼   ► and then there'll be like this bend,

01:25:27 ◼   ► like a hockey stick somewhere that says,

01:25:29 ◼   ► and here's the rich people version, right?

01:25:32 ◼   ► And our question on all these past shows

01:25:34 ◼   ► is how much does Apple wanna bend that?

01:25:35 ◼   ► Do they wanna bend it a little bit

01:25:37 ◼   ► so you can get into an Apple Watch edition for $2,000?

01:25:40 ◼   ► Do they wanna bend it a lot

01:25:41 ◼   ► so the entry level model is five grand?

01:25:43 ◼   ► And what do they want the endpoint to be?

01:25:44 ◼   ► Is the endpoint 10 grand, 20 grand, 30 grand?

01:25:46 ◼   ► 'cause at that point, it can be anything you want.

01:25:50 ◼   ► And I think the reason people are getting cold feet

01:25:52 ◼   ► about the 20, 30 grand top end now even,

01:25:54 ◼   ► is that they're saying,

01:25:55 ◼   ► "Well, if Apple really wants to disrupt the market,

01:25:57 ◼   ► "the way they do it is by pricing it

01:26:00 ◼   ► "so that it makes the other ones look like a ripoff."

01:26:04 ◼   ► So they price it five grand,

01:26:06 ◼   ► and all of a sudden the 10 grand watches

01:26:07 ◼   ► look like a ripoff.

01:26:08 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, the most expensive Apple edition watch

01:26:09 ◼   ► "you can get is 599.99,

01:26:12 ◼   ► "and now why would I ever buy a 10 grand Rolex?"

01:26:15 ◼   ► But at the same time, if you do that,

01:26:16 ◼   ► then maybe people start to think of the Apple Watch as being cheap and that's what we

01:26:19 ◼   ► don't know because none of us buy watches that cost as much as cars.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Right, and I mean ultimately, yeah, I mean this, I barely even wanted to write the article

01:26:30 ◼   ► because, like, I think the price is going to be really boring because none of us are

01:26:34 ◼   ► going to actually buy it. But it would be interesting, like, if Apple priced it low

01:26:41 ◼   ► enough that it becomes more plausible for more people to buy it. Like, suppose it's