392: ‘Halos and Harps’, With Casey Liss

0:00:00I cannot believe the work that you put into the show notes. This is clearly why you're on ATP,

0:00:05because now I've seen the power of the Casey list. Well, truth be told, I did get to listen to Sir

0:00:11Cusis' episode, which was very good, as expected, and he was not lying. Generally speaking, my

0:00:16Wednesday mornings are about trying to make sure I've read all the links that, generally speaking,

0:00:22he has added. Now, of course, I add stuff, Marco adds stuff from time to time. You can tell who's

0:00:26who, because John has copious notes, exactly as you would expect John to have. I'll have enough

0:00:32that I can jog my piss-poor memory, and then Marco will have something like "Marco's stuff here,"

0:00:37which I think is on-brand for all three of us. So anyway, so yeah, so John's characterization was

0:00:45not unfair. He does add the lion's share of stuff, but like I said to you via text, if I didn't go

0:00:51through ATP and during Fireball, I would have forgotten every damn thing, and I figured,

0:00:55worst case, we ignore it. It's not going to hurt anything if we ignore it, as long as something's

0:00:59down and I've jogged my memory, then mission accomplished. Well, the idea is this is the

0:01:03talk show year in review for Apple, and you compounded, I would consider it, so it's more

0:01:10than just like a list of stuff. It's like the index to a book, the book of 2023, which is excellent.

0:01:15It blows my notes. We have competing show notes and Apple notes. We're not competing, but two

0:01:22sets. Before we get started, I just wanted to say, while we're talking about the Syracuse episode of

0:01:27the show, I'm glad you listened, but there was a funny thing that I cut from it. It was sort of,

0:01:34would have been the equivalent of an after show, which was John brought up the segment on the most

0:01:41recent ATP where he asked you and Marco, "Do you guys remember the code names for all of the Mac

0:01:48OS X releases?" And so I guess what had happened, I guess you guys do 52 episodes a year, but you

0:01:56don't record 52 weeks a year. So you guys recorded this 52nd show of 2023 a week early. It was this

0:02:05past Thursday. A week ago yesterday, I believe. I think that's right. So, and then I recorded with

0:02:12John a week ago from today. So I did better than you and Marco. So he quizzed you as well?

0:02:20Yeah. So it's me trying to name those releases. And, but I didn't want to include it in the show

0:02:28because I didn't feel it would, you know, he didn't say don't do it, but it was clearly

0:02:31the after show. I'd already thanked the sponsors and I didn't want to spoil the segment on ATP,

0:02:36which he told me was going to be very funny. And I agree was very funny. So I didn't.

0:02:42But I've always, I said to John when I was doing it, I've never been a fan of Apple's use of these

0:02:48names for the Mac OS X releases. I know it was, his blog is gone, so I don't have a link to it, but

0:02:54remember Wolf Wrench? He had the blog was like Red Shed Software or something like that. Or at least

0:03:02I don't know, I forget where his blog was, but I remember at one point he blogged that he hated the

0:03:06name and this was like, I don't know, 2006, 2007, maybe 2008. I don't know. But it was like Obama's

0:03:13presidency still or like first term or like maybe Obama had just been elected. I don't know. But he

0:03:19said he couldn't, he hates those names because he can't keep them in order. So he always uses the

0:03:24numbers and I always do too. It's like my daring fireball style is to say Mac OS 14 Sonoma. So I'll

0:03:30use the name, but I always include the number too. Cause if I don't include the number, then

0:03:36if I go back and look at the article one year from now, I'll be like, I don't remember.

0:03:41Why does Apple name Mac OS releases, but not any of the others?

0:03:45I don't know. I would assume it's momentum more than anything else. I mean, it seems,

0:03:50cause remember that I came to the Mac in, I want to say it was Tiger? It would have been 2008 ish.

0:03:58And as we learned on ATP, I really have no idea what version.

0:04:01No, that's 2008 is way too late. That's way, that's like Lion or something.

0:04:05Is it? Okay. Maybe it was Lion. I don't remember. No, I think you are right. I think it might've

0:04:08been Lion. Whatever it was, whatever big cat it was. My point is I wasn't there early enough for

0:04:13like 10-0 or anything like that. So I don't have any particular recollection or knowledge as to

0:04:18how that went, but I think it was just a bunch of momentum. And then, when was it? I guess it was

0:04:23when they switched to California names. I feel like they were in the peak or valley, depending

0:04:28on your perspective of dad jokes at Apple, particularly Apple keynotes. And if you remember,

0:04:33Craig leaned way into our crack sleuths or whatever he called them. And implied if not said,

0:04:39yeah, crack marketing team and implied if not said that they were all getting high and getting

0:04:42into Volkswagen bus and driving around California, which I mean, I thought it was funny, but I could

0:04:47understand the argument that it was garbage. Anyways, I think this was like the peak of them

0:04:51leaning into the dad joke. And so how could you not have the dad joke of us all getting high and

0:04:56going on a Volkswagen bus or what have you, but it is odd. I know there's internal code names for

0:05:01everything, obviously, but it does seem a little weird to me that nothing but Mac OS gets public

0:05:08marketing names that there are at least nothing that I can think of. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you

0:05:14said momentum, I guess I'm thinking the same thing. It's tradition and they don't want to

0:05:18break it. And it seems like there's a little nostalgia for the Steve jobs years. And it was

0:05:27probably like a Steve thing to give the Mac OS and the cat names and they kind of don't want to break

0:05:33it. But it is a little weird because it's the Mac. And clearly the crown jewel of their operating

0:05:38systems is iOS, not Mac OS by nature of the iPhone being so absurdly, ridiculously billion user

0:05:46popular around the world. But it gets just gets numbers. I don't know the names. I don't know. I'd

0:05:52rather skip them. But well, if I was the most popular now, but we've got what two months until

0:05:57vision pro takes over. That's what we're being told, right? Possible. I can't imagine any

0:06:02scenario where vision OS anything I can't imagine where anything would be as popular as iOS because

0:06:07but then again, I just lack the imagination to imagine a world post phone, right where the phone

0:06:13isn't. Well, you use a laptop or an iPad or a laptop and an iPad and a headset and whatever,

0:06:22and a watch and you have a TV box hooked up to your TV. But everybody has a phone, right? I just

0:06:28can't imagine moving past that with the names. I do remember the one I remembered. I got tripped up

0:06:34already by Jaguar, which was 10.2. But the thing I remember and I guess because it was new. I

0:06:42remember cheetah and panther being the first two. But the reason cheetah really stuck out is it

0:06:49seemed so clear and obvious that the reason they named 10.0 cheetah was some combination of

0:06:59wishful thinking, projection, and Steve Jobs attempt at the Jedi mind trick.

0:07:06Because the single biggest problem with Mac OS 10.0 was it was absurdly profoundly slow

0:07:16because it was so skating to where what's the Gretzky's getting to where the puck is going,

0:07:24not where it's right. Yeah, not where it is or where it's been and the graphic system with the

0:07:30shadows and the transparency layers and everything was so far ahead of the hardware that everything

0:07:37was slow. It was slow just to drop down a menu from the menu bar. I mean, you could just feel

0:07:42it and those machines all dual booted in the Mac OS classic, which say what you will about it.

0:07:49The problem with classic was it had all of these computer science, architectural problems,

0:07:56because it wasn't a modern quote unquote modern at the time operating system. But one of the nice

0:08:03things about it was because it had its roots going back to the 80s when it was had to be to even

0:08:10function so close to the hardware. It was extremely fast at things like updating, you'd click the mouse

0:08:17and the menu would just draw instantly. I mean, it was fast even by today's standards. You could

0:08:22boot up like Steven Hackett or something, boot up an old Mac that's 25 years old and certain

0:08:30things like that are super duper fast. And so the same machine that would feel so slow running Mac

0:08:35OS 10, you could just reboot and I forget what it was like, hold down option or something like that,

0:08:41boot into classic instead and it would be super fast. Or you could run the classic apps in Mac OS

0:08:4810 and these apps that looked old because they weren't anti-alias, didn't use the modern aqua

0:08:54graphics. Everything was super fast. So of course they named it Cheetah naturally. How could you not?

0:09:00Right. What was it? Cheetah, then Panther, then Jaguar. I've already forgotten them.

0:09:06Tiger 10, no, but I'm forgetting 10.3. I don't know. I've already, I did better when

0:09:14Syracuse was on. And then there's certain TikTok things that I remember over the years. Like once

0:09:19you know which one's lion, you can remember the next one was mountain lion. Leopard and

0:09:25snow leopard and stuff like that. But the California ones forget it. I honest to God,

0:09:31and it's like, I've been writing about this stuff nonstop over the years, completely. Not that I

0:09:36didn't recognize the name, but I could have sat there for an hour and not come up with Sierra and

0:09:42High Sierra, even though there's that's two years where they were sort of a TikTok pair. I could have

0:09:4990 minutes to give me two hours all day. I never would have thought of Sierra and High Sierra.

0:09:53Yeah, I was totally riding on Marco's efforts for that because I couldn't remember a darn thing. And

0:09:59I think the way John had put it in the show notes was John's question as the third Ask ATP. And that

0:10:05is literally all we knew. And I had seen this question come by via email and I, you know,

0:10:09chuckled and thought to myself, oh, there's no way I could do that. And then I moved on with my life.

0:10:13But John being John, and this is why I love him, he just said, John's question and sprung it on us.

0:10:18And Marco and I were such a train wreck. It made for a hilarious segment. And so I am glad that

0:10:24John handled it that way and that we did it and that everyone was a good sport about it,

0:10:27especially John. But it was a total train wreck. I would say maybe as a New Year's gift to your

0:10:31listeners or something like that, maybe you could put somewhere your segment with Syracuse and see

0:10:37it as like a little bonus or something like that, because I think it'll be quite funny.

0:10:40JS I'll have to see if we kept it. I don't know. I'm not in charge of keeping.

0:10:46The other thing I want to do a little differently is ordinarily,

0:10:49like you've got something I want to mention, I should have had you on when Call Sheet came out,

0:10:53but you released an app this year. And ordinarily when I do this show, there's not a lot of

0:10:58structure to the talk show. But like the sort of self promotion of the thing from the guest would

0:11:04come at the end. But if we're going to do a year in review, I definitely don't want to save Call

0:11:08Sheet to the end. I want to do Call Sheet upfront, because year in review can go way too long.

0:11:13JS With us, surely not.

0:11:16JS Well, so I don't want to try to squeeze

0:11:18Call Sheet into 30 seconds. JS

0:11:21Oh, yeah, you did the thing, right? Oh, yeah, it was great. Okay, we'll see you later.

0:11:24JS Yeah. So tell for people who don't know,

0:11:26tell people right now, let's get it to do it. What is Call Sheet? Where did the idea come from?

0:11:31JS Yeah. So Call Sheet in short is my take on how to search for actors, directors, movies, TV shows,

0:11:39stuff like that, all the things you would use the IMDb app for, but done by somebody who actually

0:11:44respects their users. And so the IMDb app, while an absolute treasure trove of information, and I

0:11:50say that without sarcasm, like the amount of information they have is bananas. But using the

0:11:55app is just terrible. It's just an exercise in frustration, because there's banners everywhere,

0:12:01there's autoplay videos, every time you load the darn thing, it asks you if you want to log in.

0:12:05And it's just a mess. And for those of us who are not in the industry, and perhaps don't have

0:12:10a login for IMDb, or don't see any need to associate your Amazon login with IMDb,

0:12:15or what have you, it's just not a fun app to use. It's valuable, but it's not fun.

0:12:21And it was early this year, I think it was in January, maybe it was December of this past year,

0:12:27one way or another, at the beginning of the year, I thought to myself, you know what,

0:12:29I know that there's a thing called the Movie Database, which is a completely Wikipedia-style,

0:12:36you know, all the contributions are from regular people. And it's really cheap, if not free,

0:12:40to use, because I know a lot of open source projects use it. I wonder if I could put

0:12:44together like my own take on IMDb, and what would that look like? And of course, I started by doing

0:12:50the nerdy stuff, like seeing if I could talk to the Movie Database and see if that worked. And I

0:12:54started building a UI over time, and fast forward to August, and I released CallSheet, is what it's

0:13:01now called, after going through a truly terrible codename. What was the code? Wait, what? I forget

0:13:06it already. It was a portmanteau of film lookup, so it ended up as Flookup, which was, in true Casey

0:13:12fashion, a truly terrible codename. But yeah, so it eventually landed on CallSheet. And yeah,

0:13:17so I released it in August, and it's free to try, you get a week for free, and you also get,

0:13:23well, I'm getting ahead of myself, you get 20 searches for free, then once you subscribe,

0:13:26you get a week for free, and then after that you can go either monthly or yearly.

0:13:30And I like to think it's a pretty solid app. It has a lot of touches that I think are unique.

0:13:35It's more of a playground than I expected it to be. When I started writing the app,

0:13:38I thought it would be a very vanilla replacement for IMDb that, again, is respectable of your time

0:13:43and of my users. But as I got using it, I realized there's some fun things you can do here. And I

0:13:49don't mean like animations and stuff like that, which I have a little bit of, and they're fine.

0:13:52But what I really mean is you can do some fun things like, I remember when I watched

0:13:57the absolutely incredible David--what is it--David Lindelof miniseries Watchmen,

0:14:01which would have been about two years ago now, if I remember correctly, I got spoiled--I won't

0:14:05spoil it now--but I got spoiled that one of the main characters in the show had a double identity

0:14:09that you don't know until episode, you know, five or six or something like that, halfway through

0:14:13the run of the miniseries. And I got spoiled on that because on IMDb, it said Joe Smith,

0:14:20it plays character A/character B, and I was very upset by this. I'm still a bit triggered by it.

0:14:26And so it occurred to me what I can do is, particularly for TV shows where there's more

0:14:31of a progression over time, I can have affordances to hide spoilers. So you could hide episode

0:14:37thumbnails if you want, you can hide episode titles if you want, you can hide character names,

0:14:41you can hide how many episodes of characters in. So if you have an occasion where, I don't know,

0:14:45some superstar is on some show, but they're only on for one episode, then clearly they're

0:14:49just trying to get attention or whatever, and you obviously know that character was just killed off

0:14:53immediately or whatever the case may be. And so that became a lot of fun trying to figure out the

0:14:57right way to handle spoilers and things like that. And then after it was released, one of my other

0:15:02favorite features of Call Sheet is that--and I don't think I'm a weirdo, maybe I'm a weirdo,

0:15:07but I've heard a lot of people do the same thing--when I'm looking at, particularly a film,

0:15:11I often want to know how old were these actors when this was filmed? So, I'm trying to think

0:15:18of a great example, but say Dark Knight, how old was Gary Oldman when this was filmed? How old

0:15:22was Heath Ledger when this was filmed? And it occurred to me, well, holy cow, I've got a really

0:15:28fast computer that this is running on, and I know when the film was released, and I know when all

0:15:33these people were born, so I can just compute that and just drop it right there on the cast list.

0:15:37And so if you look through The Dark Knight, you'll see Heath Ledger was such and such years old,

0:15:40and Gary Oldman was such and such years old, and so on and so forth. And little things like that,

0:15:44I found, have become far more of an interesting playground than I ever would have expected,

0:15:48kind of in the spirit of to-do apps or Twitter or, well, now Mastodon clients, what have you,

0:15:52not to the same degree, but still in a similar spirit. And that's been super-duper fun. And

0:15:58I'm still--obviously I've been slowed down over the last couple of weeks on account of the holidays,

0:16:02but I've been dabbling with doing other sorts of things along those lines. And I think that's,

0:16:07to me, the real selling point to Call Sheet. Not only is it incredibly fast, not only does it not

0:16:12have ads or pop-ups or anything like that, but it has a lot of these features that someone who

0:16:18really, really, really cares about this sort of experience would have. And that, to me, is kind

0:16:23of the selling point. And is it better--is it worth it to you, the listener, to pay money for

0:16:28something that you could get for free with IMDb? I don't know, but I presume that the people who

0:16:32listen to this program, they're probably going to want a better experience than the IMDb app.

0:16:37So that's the tip. Keep selling them, Casey. I mean, I think it's worth it. I really do.

0:16:42But you need it to be a discerning kind of individual, and not everyone is.

0:16:45I think you need two things, though. You need to be discerning. But that qualifies sort of the

0:16:51nice app version of all these things, right? And you mentioned the Twitter and Mastodon clients

0:16:57and stuff like that. And even if you don't pay for it, even if it's not like Ivory, I know there's a

0:17:01couple of good third-party Mastodon clients that are free, but it's just to go through the effort

0:17:06to try something that's not named Mastodon in the app store. And in Mastodon's particular case,

0:17:14the actual Mastodon is pretty good, right? It's actually definitely not garbage. It's actually

0:17:21pretty good. So you have to be discerning. But clearly, that's my audience. It's ATP's audience.

0:17:26Exactly. But then the other thing is you also have to be the sort of person who, when you're

0:17:30watching TV shows and movies, think of things like, "Oh my God, where did I see this actress

0:17:37before? I know her, but God, I can't think of where." I need to get the answer to that.

0:17:43So I've had, and I told you this when I was beta testing CallSheet, but I've had,

0:17:49I forget when, I don't know, but at some point fairly recently before CallSheet, within the last,

0:17:57I'm going to say 18 months before CallSheet was usable at beta and I stopped. But I've had,

0:18:04on my main favorites on my phone, I had a link to the movie database. And prior to that,

0:18:12it was a link to IMDb. So some point a year, year and a half before CallSheet, I did the same,

0:18:19at least as a website, I was like, "Hey, they've got the same information and it's way better

0:18:24lower noise experience." So I had it on my phone. And CallSheet is better than the movie database

0:18:32website. It just is. It's nicer. I forget if you already had, maybe you had it under a different

0:18:37name. I know that one of my contributions, A, was telling you Fluke Up was terrible as a name,

0:18:42which I guess you didn't mean. And I think, didn't I suggest either renaming the feature

0:18:49or something about the pinning feature? I was like, I want to be able to-

0:18:52Yes. Yes. Your two major contributions to my recollection were both search history,

0:18:56which you can see in the upper right-hand corner, which I believe I lifted from

0:19:01Catoba. Do I have that right? Is that right? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. The dictionary app

0:19:06that I do with Hockenberry and Will Haynes. So I lifted search history at your suggestion from

0:19:12there. And yeah, you had, I'm pretty sure it was you, had suggested moving from hearts or favorites

0:19:16or what have you to pins. And I think that that was a very clever idea in what I ended up doing.

0:19:22And one of the things on the docket for 2024 is to build that out to be more than just a single

0:19:28list of pinned items. And maybe there'll be a queue of things you want to watch or your

0:19:32favorites or whatever. I haven't started that yet, but it's on the list. And another thing that's on

0:19:37the list that I have started is a lot of people have asked for, and I had also the same idea.

0:19:43Well, I know that there was a movie that had Heath Ledger and Gary Oldman. What was that?

0:19:50And there should be a way and there will be a way to plug into people and say, okay,

0:19:55what properties or what films and TV shows were these two people in together? And I think that'll

0:20:01be super duper useful. That's on the docket for hopefully early this coming year as we record this

0:20:06anyway. So that, that I think will be really powerful. Yeah. The use case for pinning isn't

0:20:11so important to me for movies. Sometimes I'll just pin a movie to know that I want to watch it going

0:20:17forward. I have a couple here, but for the most part, I just use pinning for the shows I'm

0:20:22currently watching. So literally as I'm talking to you right now, I'm looking at it here on my iPad.

0:20:27I'm going to unpin slow horses because I just finished season three. And then I will add it

0:20:32again when season four comes out. But for the shows you're watching, either you're just,

0:20:37if it's Netflix or if it's like an old show, that's already all the episodes are out,

0:20:42but you're still not. Binging all of them at once, but for shows that are like, oh,

0:20:47it's one episode a week, like the, for all mankind and what else I have here, a monarch,

0:20:52which isn't bad. That's the Godzilla show. Apple TV has it's about as good as a Godzilla show could

0:20:57be, but I just pin those. And then I know that I can go back to them and it, I mean, it's not

0:21:04just cause you're on the show. It's an app I use almost every day because I all I always watch TV

0:21:10late at night. And I always think of stupid things like who is this? Where else have I seen them?

0:21:16What else have they been in or how old are they? Or I don't know, something like that. And I love

0:21:21having it on my phone. Used to do it on the web and now I've got it in an app and it's, it's

0:21:27terrific. And it seems from your recent discussion on ATP that it's doing pretty well. Yeah. Yeah,

0:21:32I mean, certainly my most successful app and admittedly the stuff that predated it a couple,

0:21:38there were a couple of kind of toy apps and then there was one called vignette that was pretty

0:21:42popular, but it was a flash in the pan because it relied on a bunch of social networks to not close

0:21:47down some publicly facing data, which as I expected, they pretty much immediately did.

0:21:52I don't think it was because of me, but it was concurrent. But yeah, I mean, I think

0:21:55call sheets done is at least as well, if not better than I had hoped. Obviously more is always

0:22:00better when it comes to these sorts of things, but it's been doing really, really well. I've been

0:22:04very thankful for it. And if call sheet is kind of funny, cause it's one of those apps that if I've

0:22:07done my job right, you spend very little time within it. You go in, you figure out what you

0:22:12want to figure out, and then you bounce right back out. And that means I've done my job well.

0:22:17And my interest is doing exactly that as opposed to an IMDB where Amazon just wants to sell you

0:22:23junk, be it streaming stuff or DVDs or Blu-rays or what have you. I don't think that Amazon's

0:22:29interests and most of their users' interests are aligned. Whereas I like to think that

0:22:33my interests and my users' interests are very much aligned. Another great example of something

0:22:37that I get to do that I don't think Amazon would ever do is it's not really possible with the just

0:22:42basic Apple TV stuff. But if you're watching something within Plex or within another app

0:22:48that I really love called Channels, which is kind of a computer-based DVR, you can optionally in

0:22:52call sheet turn on like a sync with them such that you don't have to log into anything. It will ask

0:22:59on your network, "Hey, are there any Plex players or any Channels players playing things right now?"

0:23:04And if any of them respond, it'll drop those properties right there on that first screen

0:23:09peer to your pinned items. And so if you're watching, I don't know, For All Mankind on,

0:23:14it wouldn't be on Channels, but for the, I don't know, or maybe like Hollywood Squares or something

0:23:18like that, Jeopardy. It could wind up on Plex eventually. It could. One could figure out a way

0:23:25to put it on Plex. That is a good point. But yeah, so it would pop up right there and you would even

0:23:30need to bother pinning those things if you didn't want to. And it's those touches that

0:23:34as an indie developer or a small team, and this is the same story with Ivory,

0:23:38with Ice Cubes, with a bunch of note-taking apps. It was true of Vesper, you know, RIP. You get to

0:23:44do these sorts of fun things that a bigger corporation will never ever tackle. That to me

0:23:48is where the fun is, both for users and for me. Right. Because there's no way. I'm glad to hear

0:23:54CallSheet is pretty popular and there's obviously room to grow, right? Oh yeah, definitely. You

0:24:00know, there's more people who haven't heard of it than have heard of it yet. And you've got tons of

0:24:06runway for features you want to add, right? It's always a good sign. But it's clearly never going

0:24:12to be an app with a billion users, right? It's just not. And it's so much of our whole racket,

0:24:21I think, over the last, maybe the iPhone era, I don't know. I don't think indie development

0:24:28is dying, but I don't think indie development is as thriving as it once was. Even though there's

0:24:34more people using more devices and it's like, I just a sort of too many people thinking only about

0:24:42billion user ideas as opposed to just how well you can do as a very smaller one person operation with

0:24:51tens of thousands of users or something on several orders of magnitude lower scale. And

0:24:58Apple's not going to do this, right? They're not going to make something this integrated.

0:25:02And it is kind of, if they were, right? Like to me, one of the danger zones for you would be,

0:25:10and I don't think it's ever going to happen because everything is spread across so many apps.

0:25:14And I just complained this week about what a terrible app Prime Video is overall.

0:25:20I don't know. Do you subscribe to Prime?

0:25:22We do have it, but I can't think of anything that I've ever watched within Prime Video or

0:25:28oh, no, that's not true. There was the three guys that did Top Gear did a show called the Grand Tour

0:25:32some of us back. I love that show. Yep. And I did watch that, but that was the only thing I

0:25:37think I've ever watched on Prime Video. I know that there's, I don't want to go off on a tangent

0:25:41on it, but I, my son and I love the Grand Tour. I know that there's a lot of people who think that

0:25:46their best shows were behind them. And what was the, I even forget the Top Gear era, but I, we,

0:25:54my son and I absolutely loved, or still do, because they do specials. Like they sort of

0:26:00stopped doing the regular thing, but they do specials. And I kind of, in addition to the fact

0:26:04that I just liked it myself, it actually occupies a special place in my heart because it's like from

0:26:09Jonas's teenage years, it's one of our favorite shared shows that just the two of us watch. Amy

0:26:16has zero interest in that show. I had a friend, you remember the park 55 in San Francisco, which

0:26:23I forget if that closed or not. I don't know. I believe it was bought. I don't remember what

0:26:28it's called now, but I think it was bought and it was somebody else. Park 55 is such a hilarious,

0:26:32I mean, speaking of tangents, it was such a hilarious situation because it was where all

0:26:36of our kind of crowd ended up staying for the San Franciscan WWDCs. And it was one of those things

0:26:41where like it was the best balance of hilariously, but not exorbitantly expensive and yet sort of

0:26:48nice and sort of proximal to or close to Moscone, but any other, in any other scenario, it would be

0:26:56a total crap hole for way too much money. And yet somehow we all kind of converged onto it.

0:27:00And it had a giant lobby slash extended bar area. So in those scenarios, like at a Mac world or WWDC

0:27:13where somebody could put on Twitter, Hey, we're all hanging out at the park 55. And all of a

0:27:18sudden 15 more people come in. There was room and you could just, you know, there was room for

0:27:23something like that. And very, very few hotels had anything like that. But our friend Scott Simpson,

0:27:29I'll never forget it. His description of it was like, it was the nicest hotel in communist Poland.

0:27:36Trenton Larkin Sounds like something Scott would say.

0:27:41Scott Simpson Like, architecturally,

0:27:44it was this concrete or it is this concrete brutalist exterior. It's like the communist era's

0:27:53idea of a nice Western hotel, but they've never been to one. So they get lots of little things

0:27:58wrong, but they actually do try. And so it is nice. But it's just so weird. It was just so weird.

0:28:05That's what the Prime Video app is like. It's like the nicest streaming app in Russia right now. And

0:28:10they have no access to the actual good apps like Netflix and Macs and TV Plus. They hear about how

0:28:18they're arranged and how they put elements on screen. But it's all flat. And it all looks like

0:28:25placeholder elements like the developer, even to the splash screen when you just launch the app,

0:28:31it doesn't look like it was made by a graphic designer. It looks like something that was just

0:28:35the developer just stubbed in. And you can practically see how the file name would be like

0:28:43realarttocome.png. But the one thing that the Prime app does that nobody else even tries to do is,

0:28:52and it's the same sort of thing Amazon does with the Kindle, I think, where they have,

0:28:56I forget what they call it, it's called X-ray or something like that. And you can pause a show or

0:29:03a movie and they make it so hard on Apple TV. It's like you have to go up and into a thing, but you

0:29:10can just pause a movie and the X-ray will tell you which actors are in the frame you just paused on.

0:29:17C.J.P. Which is incredible. It's absolutely incredible.

0:29:19B.B. And I guess, because does Amazon still own the internet movie database?

0:29:23C.J.P. As far as I know, yeah.

0:29:24B.B. I know they bought it way back in the '90s or prehistory of the internet, but they have this

0:29:31data source for this stuff. It's sort of like an accessibility feature, making sure you have closed

0:29:36captions for everything and in a bunch of languages and somebody goes through and marks every scene

0:29:44with, I got them, maybe it's not the frame, but the scene, so that if there's like a two-shot

0:29:49that's cutting between people, it'll still have both actors listed. It's a nice idea,

0:29:55which scratches the same itch as call sheet. Like, who is this? Who are these people? But the

0:30:00interface is so bad that it actually, even when I'm watching something on Prime Video, it is way

0:30:05easier to just take my phone off. Because of call sheet and for this, I don't even put my phone back

0:30:11in my pocket watching TV. I just keep it next to me on the couch. It's so much easier to just pick

0:30:15up my phone and look it up there than to actually go through and try to do it in Prime. That would

0:30:21be the place to do it, would be in app. But also, it would add clutter. I don't think Apple's going

0:30:28to do that with TV+ and add an X-ray feature to it. So I feel like it's a good idea, but also

0:30:36sort of Sherlock-proof. You know? I hope so. Don't jinx me. Well, I hope not to jinx you. But anyway,

0:30:42so what's the price again? It's very, very reasonable price. I wasn't, oh gosh, I didn't

0:30:46even think about this in months. I think it's nine, I don't even know. I think it's $9 a year

0:30:51or something like that. And a dollar a month, I believe, if memory serves. It's been so long

0:30:56since I've thought about any of this. So I think that's really, extremely reasonably priced. I

0:31:01would say it's a steal. So yeah, well, for the record, if one of your listeners is just,

0:31:06their socks are blown off by how good CallSheet is, which should be every one of your listeners.

0:31:10But nevertheless, you can, there's an option in there labeled more purchase options. And as you're

0:31:16going through the purchasing flow, and you can optionally give me more than $9 a year, and you

0:31:21can choose to give me, I think it's $20 or $50 a year, which buys you nothing but my undying love.

0:31:27And that is the only thing you get. You get no other perks. That's it. But a surprising number,

0:31:31I don't have numbers in front of me, but a surprising number of people have actually

0:31:34opted into doing that. It's kind of sort of like a recurring tip jar. And it's the same thing,

0:31:38we were exploring something similar in ATP with our membership there. People ask us,

0:31:42can I pay you more? And it's extraordinarily kind, just impossibly kind of these people. And

0:31:48who am I to stand in the way? So there's that option as well, if you're so inclined. But yeah,

0:31:52CallSheet's a pretty darn good app. I think I feel comfortable saying so now, an award winning app,

0:31:57I just won an upgradey. Sorry if I'm spoiling, but I won the upgradey this year for best newcomer iOS

0:32:02app, which I was extremely flattered by. So it is an award winning iOS app. Thank you very much.

0:32:07So you can check that out. I also think one last thing about it that I think makes it really

0:32:11suitable as an idea for you as a one person development operation is there's really no need

0:32:19for it to become a Mac app, or like an Apple TV app or a watch app, right? You've got the iPhone

0:32:26version, which to me is primary, because it's an idea that you most want to use on your phone.

0:32:31And I don't think you've done a lot of work for the iPad layout. It's sort of just scaled up,

0:32:37but it's almost none at first. Now I've done more than none, but your characterization of

0:32:42not a lot is pretty good. But the concept suits what you've done for the iPad. If I had my iPad

0:32:51next to me because my phone ran out of batteries or wasn't with me or whatever, I'm looking at the

0:32:56iPad app right now as I speak to you. And it's great. It really is, the idea is suitable to a

0:33:03not much work to fit the iPad instead of the phone layout. There's so many ideas where you really,

0:33:09I mean, Vesper is a perfect example where one of the reasons the app failed was it really needed

0:33:14a great Mac app alongside the iPhone app and syncing between all of them. And we just ran out

0:33:21of time before we ran out of money before we got to it. And this is an app that it's just great as

0:33:30an iPhone and iPad app. And you've got syncing, I guess you use cloud kit or something.

0:33:34JS And it's actually so far, knock on wood, it's been pretty reliable for me. So yeah,

0:33:40your spoiler settings should sync, your pins should sync. I forget what I think some basic

0:33:45other settings should sync.

0:33:46JS History, search history syncs. Because I've never conducted, I've never done a search on my

0:33:51iPad and call sheet before. And yet here's my whole searches history.

0:33:54JS Yep. So it turns out maybe I kind of know what I'm talking about. So yeah,

0:33:58it's, I tried, I've tried real hard to make it fit for all the sorts of use cases that I can think

0:34:04of. And yeah, I think it's primarily to me a phone app, because typically I'm on the couch. And yeah,

0:34:09I'll often have an iPad next to me. But typically I'm watching my TV, I have my phone in my hand,

0:34:12and it's an iPhone app first. There's the iPad version, like you said, I did flip on

0:34:16Apple Silicon support, I don't know, a month or two after it had come out. And that's fine. Like,

0:34:22I personally don't see it as a particularly great Mac app. But a lot of people have asked for it,

0:34:26and a lot of people seem pleased with it. So hey, if you want it, it's there.

0:34:29Dave Yeah, maybe like people who watch lots of

0:34:31TV shows on their Macs. Yeah, fair enough. If you're watching it on your laptop, as you're

0:34:36watching device in a dorm or for whatever reason, then yeah, you want it on the Mac. But it's and

0:34:41again, it's fine for that, like a, it's just the iPad app running auto, or just flipping the bit

0:34:47that says you're allowed to do it. It really is a concept where you don't really need the stuff that

0:34:51makes a true Mac app. Mac asked to use. Yeah, I mean, it is not a Mac asked Mac app, but I don't

0:34:57think it's but it doesn't need to be. Right? No, and I say this as a staunch a proponent of Mac

0:35:03asked Mac apps as there is, but it to me, it's exactly the sort of concept that catalyst was made

0:35:09for right. And it's better than a website. I think that's why you're getting requests for it. Yep,

0:35:14exactly. I mean, over time, I will probably make you know, iPad better and Mac better. And you

0:35:19certainly have started work on the vision pro thing, because I can envision a world where you've

0:35:24got your screen within the vision pro and you have this like hanging off to the side or whatever the

0:35:29case may be. And I think it does suit itself to that. And I've done a bit of work with that

0:35:34against the simulator and so on and so forth. But we'll see it's the good news is I have enough

0:35:39ideas in enough different things I want to do with the app that I'm kind of nervous about figuring out

0:35:45the correct order of operations and being able to land all of it in the time I want. I mean,

0:35:49that's a wonderful problem to have. But it's still a problem. I got to figure out what's

0:35:54number one priority and when how quickly can I get all this done? Because it is just me,

0:35:58I can. And I know that I, it's funny, I didn't think about vision. But it makes sense. Because

0:36:02obviously, out of the gate next year, one of the primary things people are going to do with vision

0:36:09pro is watch TV and movies. I mean, it's I've never watched a full show. I'm because I've never

0:36:15had enough time to do it in the demos. But it is super, super compelling as a movie and TV thing.

0:36:21It's, I mean, it's you can imagine anybody who even somebody who's never tried any of these

0:36:27headsets can imagine how having a virtual movie theater size screen in front of you,

0:36:32that blows away any TV you could possibly buy or fit in the house would be super compelling.

0:36:40But it's also the case that I think once you're in it, you're not it'd be like you can I know from my

0:36:48demo time, you can look down and read your watch and you can look at your phone. But it seems like

0:36:54the immersiveness of vision OS is that such that if you are watching a movie and you'd want to do

0:37:00something like look up something in call sheet, having call sheet in the virtual environment would

0:37:04be important. So I would say it's probably the second most important platform for you going

0:37:09forward. I know you said you know this and you've been working. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of

0:37:14questions to whether or not you can put a third party app in an immersive environment because

0:37:19the way the API's are set. And I haven't looked at this in a couple of months. But my recollection is

0:37:24there's basically 2d stuff where it's all shared and you have this virtual world of 2d things all

0:37:29around you. There's 3d stuff, which is still in the virtual world. And there's terms that Apple has

0:37:35for these. I think it's I forget what the 2d stuff is. And it's volumes, I believe is what they call

0:37:40the 3d stuff. And then there's immersive experiences, which is the way I suspect they've

0:37:45implemented watching TV and stuff like that. And I don't know if I can put vision pro or excuse me,

0:37:51I don't know if I can put a call sheet in an immersive experience, because generally speaking,

0:37:54immersive experiences are kind of Singleton's, if you will, in that that is the only thing you're

0:38:00doing at the time, but it's worth investigating. And even if that's true, you would want to be

0:38:04able to just hop down out of your pretend movie theater and have call sheet waiting and look good

0:38:09right then and there. Yeah. I also it occurred to me thinking about this as we wrap it up that

0:38:16it is everybody. It's like the Louis C.K. bit about complaining about air airplane Wi Fi. And

0:38:28it's you're flying across the country at 400 miles an hour, 40,000 feet up with a computer in your

0:38:36hand and you're getting the internet in your hand. And yet you want to complain about how bad things

0:38:42are. And it's like, I, I'm old enough, you're younger than me, but you I'm sure you remember

0:38:47from childhood where if you wanted to know who an actor was tough luck, if you didn't know, right?

0:38:53What were you going to do? Right? You there weren't even books, you know, like I remember

0:38:58I have I still love it. I don't really refer to it, but it was a great book. But Roger Ebert had

0:39:04Roger Ebert's great movies and he'd updated I don't know if it was every year, but every

0:39:08couple years. And it was like super thick, hundreds and hundreds of pages with like short versions of

0:39:15his reviews from all of these movies. And when you had like a decades long movie reviewing career,

0:39:22just Roger E one, one critic whose taste I mostly agreed with his reviews of, I guess,

0:39:29thousands of movies, but even there, it didn't list it would list like the stars,

0:39:33right? Cary Grant and Ingrid Berg. But that didn't list like who played the bartender.

0:39:40You know what I mean? You'd have to fast forward to the credits and ask your parents, but

0:39:44that means you'd have to sit there and listen to the tape. You'd have to figure out how to get

0:39:49back to where you were. Yeah. Never just jump ahead to the credits with the tape. No, it was

0:39:53impossible. You you're just out of luck. You'd never know. Yep. And then the funny thing is my

0:39:58dad was an audio file or is an audio file and he was a very technical technologically forward guy.

0:40:03And we had a laser disc player in the house and that's all well and good because then you could

0:40:08skip forward unless you're on the first half of the movie and the read head had to go and flip

0:40:14over to the other side of the laser disc, which literally took 30 seconds. So you're watching a

0:40:18movie halfway through the movie. It says the switching sides and the whole read apparatus

0:40:23internal to the laser disc player has to go from the bottom to the top. It was a completely cockamamie

0:40:28technology, but it was amazing. My uncle Jack, my mom's brother was, or it is, I should, again,

0:40:33I shouldn't put him in the past yet, but he was the gadget head had, I forget what it was. It was

0:40:38like a video game. I was so young. I mean, this would be like 1976 or seven or something. It was

0:40:44before Atari 2,600 came out, but he had a video game that just played Pong, but you could play a

0:40:50video game on my uncle Jack's TV. I was blown away. I mean, I'm like, Oh my God, how is this

0:40:55possible? I'm controlling a rectangle on the TV. He had a laser disc player and I of course was

0:41:03blown away by the quality, but it was so frustrating because my uncle Jack did not live

0:41:10like he lived like, I don't know, an hour and a half away or something. So I'd see him a couple

0:41:14times a year, but it wasn't like I got to live with his gadgetry. So I would get a taste of this

0:41:20amazing stuff, video games on your TV, laser disc quality movies, and then go back home. And we

0:41:25didn't even have a VCR yet. It was so funny with lasers player too, because it was such an unusual

0:41:31gadget. And so my dad's favorite thing would, you know, when people would come over would be to hand

0:41:35them the remote control and the remote control, the top three quarters of it looked like any other

0:41:40remote control you'd find in the mid nineties or whatever it was early to mid nineties. But the

0:41:43bottom had a full jog wheel on it, like a whole, almost like iPod style wheel. One of the cool

0:41:49things about lasers, yeah, you could go frame by frame. So you could like seek forward and back,

0:41:55and it would just blow people's minds when that happened. And I remember he always used to like

0:42:00zoom to one of the fight scenes in Top Gun where the plane comes from behind and comes over you.

0:42:05And you would hear the surround sound. This was like the world's crappiest surround sound in our

0:42:09setup was not terribly remarkable, but nobody had their first round sound set up in the early 90s.

0:42:13And so you would hear this plane come over your head and then you would go and like freeze frame

0:42:18it. And it was such a dorky thing to do, but you know, this is how I come by and I come by it very

0:42:22honestly. Yeah. My taste for the latest in technology began at birth, but I, my budget

0:42:29didn't start until I got out of college. Right. All right. Let me take a break here and thank our

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0:45:13All right, here we are 40 minutes in. Time to get to the year in review. I told you we should do,

0:45:17told you I was right. Good thing we did. Good thing that we did call sheet first. I don't know

0:45:24which way to do it. I don't know if we should go chronologically. I guess we usually go by month,

0:45:30but I was thinking we could go by product. I guess it makes the most sense to just go through

0:45:33the year and just mostly sticking to Apple stuff just because there's enough to cover.

0:45:41Well, let me ask you sitting here now, not having gone through the litany of links that you and I

0:45:46have pulled together, what is your overall like vibe check on 2023 for Apple? Like,

0:45:51do you think this was a good year for them or do you think it was kind of meh? Where do you sit?

0:45:55But then actually maybe we should revisit this at the end of the episode and see if you change your

0:45:59mind. But where are you sitting now? That's a good question. I would say thumbs up. Let me say this.

0:46:07I thought about this too. I mentioned Ebert in his book and I just read an article the other day. I

0:46:12guess I should try to find it and put it in show notes, but it was something about how we collectively

0:46:17miss Siskel and Ebert. Can you name any movie critics right now? No, absolutely not. I can't

0:46:24off the top of my head either. And it's not to besmirch any working film critics. It's just that

0:46:31Siskel and Ebert were so exceptional and just so famous. I mean, they were on like the Carson

0:46:38show and Letterman all the time. Supposedly, I mean, I don't know if it's apocryphal or not,

0:46:42but it's supposedly it's because of Siskel and Ebert that the Letterman set had two chairs next

0:46:47to the desk instead of just one. Carson had a couch because Ed McMahon was always at the end

0:46:53of the couch. And in his show, in the earlier years, the guests would stay on for the whole,

0:46:58like the first guest would stay and you just slide down the couch and the new guests would come out.

0:47:02But Letterman show didn't work like that. But supposedly he had two chairs because Siskel and

0:47:07Ebert were on all the time. So they just- I did not know that. I don't know if that's true or not,

0:47:10but it's a fun story. But unquestionably, they were an institution. If there was ever a use case

0:47:15or case study in that turn of phrase that somebody is an in-s- or a group is an institution, I think

0:47:20it's Siskel and Ebert 100%. I mean, they were an institution for sure. And they had the gist of the

0:47:26article I'm thinking about. Again, I'm jotting this down to put it in the show notes. But that

0:47:31they took movies seriously and they were astute film critics, but they also were not highfalutin

0:47:38or literary. They knew why Steven Spielberg's movies were incredibly popular. And they weren't

0:47:45to compare and contrast with Pauline Kael, who was the famed New Yorker film critic of the '70s. This

0:47:53era when the Coppola and Scorsese and I guess Spielberg and Lucas first were in their 20s,

0:47:59but becoming a name. I've read some of her reviews going back. And I guess Quentin Tarantino's a huge

0:48:06fan. Supposedly his next, supposedly last movie, the film critic is sort of a Romana clef about her.

0:48:13But it's- and I like the New Yorker. I subscribed to the New Yorker. But her approach to film

0:48:22criticism was a little New Yorkery. If you know what I mean. Whereas Siskel and Ebert were like,

0:48:27"Get some popcorn. Let's get some popcorn and a soda and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not,

0:48:32let's watch a Scandinavian art film that's black and white." Well, Das Boot is a pretty good action

0:48:40movie. Did you say that? Is that what you said? Yeah, that is what I said. I actually haven't seen

0:48:44it, which is funny because I'm such a complete dedicated fan of Hunt for October. And I actually

0:48:49really like Crimson Tide as well. But I've never seen Das Boot. I think I watched a bit of it when

0:48:53I was way too young to be able to put up with the subtitles and whatnot. I should give it another

0:48:57shot. I used that. That should be your homework. I just tried. I just told you. I just was- I haven't

0:49:01seen it in a long time. But Jonas was talking to me about the movie where Harrison Ford's the

0:49:07president- Air Force One. Yes. Well, there's also Harrison Ford's sub movie. Was it like K19,

0:49:12The Widowmaker or something like that? I forget what it was called. But yes, Air Force One was

0:49:15actually with Gary Oldman that we were talking about earlier. Yes. But the director is Wolfgang

0:49:19Peterson. And Jonas was like, "That movie was so much better than I thought it would be." And I

0:49:24say, "It is a good movie." I haven't seen that one in a while either. I said, "Wolfgang Peterson's

0:49:29masterpiece is Das Boot." I didn't realize it was him. Okay, fair enough. It is in German,

0:49:35so you have to be able to put up with subtitles. And I love the- You've got the Hunt for Red October

0:49:40as an Easter egg on the icon for Call Sheet. I'm a huge fan of that movie too. But I think Das Boot

0:49:45is the submarine. That's fair. I think most people would agree with you. Yeah. But I don't know. But

0:49:50where I'm going with the Cisco and the Ebert thing though is I think one under remarked upon aspect

0:49:58of their phenomenal success with their TV show was their thumbs up, thumbs down system. Not five

0:50:07stars, four stars, three stars, or letter grades like A, B, C, D. Just thumbs up, thumbs down. And

0:50:16they didn't even have a thing in the middle like a wishy washy. It was okay. There was no okay.

0:50:22They forced themselves to just say thumbs up or thumbs down. And then the best a movie could do

0:50:28was if both of them gave it a thumbs up, it was two thumbs up. But if they disagreed,

0:50:34the one who liked it couldn't overrule and say, "Well, I'm giving it both of my thumbs." So,

0:50:39right? So, that's what I was thinking with Apple's year is instead of giving letter grades,

0:50:47which I'll save for Jason Snell's report card. There's a place for that too for fine-grained,

0:50:52pretty good, but not great. We just do thumbs up, thumbs down. I would say overall for Apple,

0:50:58I would give it a thumbs up for the year, but I don't know why. So, it's funny. I'm looking at

0:51:04the list of links that you had amassed and looking at it, I feel like I agree that the year is a

0:51:11thumbs up. And I would probably say this without reservation, but I would have to think about it.

0:51:17But what I will say is I think it becomes an emphatic thumbs up in the bottom half of the

0:51:22year for me. Come iPhone 15, come a new MacBook Pros, M3 processor. I think I was still leaning

0:51:29thumbs up even before all that, but particularly the bottom half to third or third to half of the

0:51:35year is where it becomes an emphatic thumbs up. And I think it was a great year for Apple.

0:51:39But up until, I think the first half of the year was kind of a snooze and we'll convince ourselves

0:51:44we're wrong in the next few minutes. But I'm not that impressed with the beginning of the year.

0:51:48And then WWDC and the Vision Pro announcement, okay, now we're starting to get somewhere. And

0:51:52then the hardware that actually did launch in the tail end of the year, I think was excellent. I

0:51:55mean, I'm talking to you on a M3 MacBook Pro and I am in love with this computer. I freaking adore

0:52:00it. And same story with my iPhone. It's a great phone. And so I think bottom half of the year gets

0:52:04me comfortably into a thumbs up, but I'd probably still do it even for the top half of the year too.

0:52:09Ted

0:52:25Except that the M2 MacBook Pros shipped in January. So technically, and I think that,

0:52:32so we can just start in January and say Apple's January started with the M2 Pro and Mac's MacBook

0:52:40Pros and what the Mac mini, I think, which I guess is still the current Mac mini. I believe

0:52:45that's right. Yeah. Yeah. That was Apple's January. And I think in hindsight, I think we can just

0:52:54sort of say, well, it's sort of downwind effects of COVID really and the lockdown and everything

0:53:01else. Like in hindsight, it doesn't make any sense at all that they introduced M2 MacBook Pros in

0:53:11January and then M3 MacBook Pros a full generation ahead in October, except that to think that those

0:53:20M2 models were supposed to ship at least three or four months earlier, and it should have been a

0:53:262022 thing, not a 2023 thing, but they weren't going to scrap them. Right. Surely once Apple knew

0:53:35that those machines weren't going to ship at the end of last year, they were going to ship early

0:53:422023. They also surely by that time knew that the M3 models were on scheduled to ship later this

0:53:50year. And all things considered, it kind of sucks to buy a brand new MacBook Pro in January and have

0:53:58it be a generation behind 10 months later. That almost harks back to the '80s and '90s of the PC

0:54:06era, right? It was like infamous. And it was one thing that was true on the Mac and PC side. It

0:54:13didn't matter which computer you bought. Six months later, it was slow. Right?

0:54:18It's 100% accurate. I mean, that was when I was cutting my teeth and all this, and it was

0:54:22absolutely true. It was instant. The moment you bought something, it was out of date and a piece

0:54:26of crap. And it was exciting. It was a phenomenal time to be a fan of this sort of thing, but it was

0:54:32also somewhat depressing because no matter what, you feel like a little bit of buyer's remorse

0:54:36within a month of buying whatever it is you just bought. Yeah. You break the bank to get a computer

0:54:41with a 40 megabyte hard disk. And six months later, it was cheaper to get an 80 megabyte hard

0:54:48disk. And even 80 was so little. You can laugh, especially if you're younger, and think that

0:54:56megabytes is a ridiculous number for a drive size. But it was all of us, everybody who was a computer

0:55:03enthusiast, didn't matter which size drive you had, your drive was always 98% full because you

0:55:11wished you'd have like today's size drives that are measured in terabytes instead of just skip

0:55:17the gigabytes, just go right to terabyte. But it sort of harks back to that where it's like,

0:55:22oh, you'd like to think you get a full year of being on the king of the hill. But I think those

0:55:29M2 MacBook Pros were just downwind of delays from COVID and they weren't going to skip the whole

0:55:35generation, but they wound up because they were late and the M3s, I guess, arrived on time,

0:55:41they didn't have all that long in the sun. But the only other hardware Apple released in the first

0:55:48half of the year were the yellow iPhone 14s. I mean, that's it, I think. It was slow. I can't

0:55:53hope to go back a step just for a moment. I can't help but wonder, and this is based on no inside or

0:55:59anything. If I were in Apple shoes and I'm looking at the three nanometer process for the M3 and

0:56:04thinking, is this really going to land, especially since I'm beholden to TSMC to land it, I can't

0:56:11help but wonder if they were looking in January and said, well, we could wait and just skip the

0:56:16M2 for the MacBook Pro and roll the dice and just see how it works out for the M3. But knowing what

0:56:22seems to have bled out from the supply chain, particularly around three nanometer, it seemed

0:56:27like it was a very dodgy, not at all guarantee to land in this year, especially land not only for

0:56:33Macs, but for iPhones too. So it wouldn't surprise me if they were like, well, let's get this out the

0:56:37door just to play it safe, even though in a perfect world where we know exactly without a doubt when

0:56:41the M3 lands, maybe we would just shelve it and wait. I don't know. It's just a guess, but it's

0:56:46the end of reason. And maybe the other thing that the whole COVID experience taught all of us is

0:56:54reminded us that unexpected things can always happen. And you know that it's all true. It's

0:57:00the reason you buy life insurance is the reason you buy car insurance, reason you have homeowners

0:57:04insurance or renters insurance. Everybody knows, well, bad things can happen. There could be

0:57:09anything from weather to pandemic or war or something. I mean, people who listen to the show

0:57:15in Ukraine, I'm sure, who four years ago did not expect to be where they are today.

0:57:21Unexpected things happen. So you ship when you can, right? You don't do things like skip a

0:57:27generation because, well, it's going to be late and we'll probably have these three nanometer ones,

0:57:31which are actually, it's kind of a really significant update, right? It's an M2 to M3

0:57:36is a bigger update than M2 was from M1. But it's not worth skipping, but sort of a dry first half

0:57:43of the year. I mean, what else? Well, you know what? I think we both forgot something probably

0:57:47because I've never owned one. And because you might actually be one of the few people left that

0:57:51care. And I don't mean that to be a turd. I'm just saying the HomePod, the second gen HomePod was

0:57:56end of January. I completely forgot about that, but that was also a thing.

0:57:59I did not get to, I do own them. I ran out of time before we started recording, before I got to

0:58:07other. All right. HomePod 2. So that's actually pretty good. I'll give that a thumbs up, right?

0:58:13They're better than HomePod 1 in every single way. And resolved. It is funny that I did forget

0:58:23about it. Because until then we were living in a sort of mystery world of did Apple abandon the

0:58:31regular HomePods, right? There was the pretty long stretch when they discontinued the originals.

0:58:36But then they did have a HomePod mini, but there was nothing, the only HomePods. So that alone

0:58:45seemed to suggest that they would bring back the HomePod. But on the other hand,

0:58:51they did introduce the HomePod mini before they canceled the regular HomePod. And so what were

0:58:57they going to do? Rename it? Even if their plan actually was, we're never going to make a full

0:59:02size HomePod again, it's these minis all the way. I still, there's no way they were going to rename

0:59:08the product in the middle of the generation. I'm glad they're still making HomePods. I think

0:59:13they're very good under underrated products. Then the second generation is nothing but better than

0:59:19the first in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I've never actually owned any of them.

0:59:24And my exposure and experience to them is mostly through Marco and he has gone back and forth on

0:59:30loving them, hating and loving them, hating them. I think we're currently in a hate valley if you

0:59:34will, for him at the moment. But yeah, cause he just bought like thousands of dollars worth of

0:59:40Sonos shit. Yeah. That's my people. That's where I am now is I'm all in on the Sonos ecosystem.

0:59:45But no, I mean, I agree with you though, even if it's not for me, I still think it's a cool and

0:59:50good product for Apple to have. And I like when they have these sort of hobby products. And I

0:59:56think even though I don't personally want them to think of the Apple TV that way, I think maybe they

1:00:00do, but I think it's nice for them to kind of experiment a little bit in a responsible way,

1:00:05as opposed to Google experiments in a very irresponsible way.

1:00:09Yeah. I still, I have them as my home theater hooked up to my TV. I care much more about the

1:00:16picture quality. I'm more of, I don't know. I don't think I have garbage ears. I like,

1:00:21and whenever I take hearing tests at my annual physical, I do fine. I hear all the beeps and I

1:00:27hate those tests. Oh my God. Those, you know what I mean? Like where they put the headset on you and

1:00:31they're like raise the hand of the ear. You hear it in I'm like, was there a beep there? I don't

1:00:35know. Oh, geez. Well, and I've still, I was always the type of student who never did any studying

1:00:46and never tried to do as little homework as possible. But yet also once the test started,

1:00:54wanted to get the highest score in the class, right? So a very strange combination of

1:01:01factors, but I feel that same way with things like eye exams and hearing tests, whereas I want to

1:01:08score a hundred, not because I I'm going to get a sticker or something, but I don't know. I don't

1:01:13want to lose. I don't want to lose my hearing, but you give me a test. I want to ACE it. I don't

1:01:18care what the test is. It doesn't matter. It's like an instinctual. I hate that, but we've got

1:01:24the home pods and it's a very, I think they sound very good to me. And I'm sure that even I could

1:01:30hear much better sound from a bigger, more speaker system, but they absolutely sound like more than

1:01:38two speakers. It's pretty good. And anything truly exorbitant isn't going to fly with the designer

1:01:48in chief of our living room. Right? And so the visual minimalism of two white home pods in our

1:01:57mostly white and light gray living room gets a two thumbs up from the designer in chief

1:02:04of our living room. Anything more, probably not. And a lot more like I remember asking

1:02:11when we first got our living room designed and did all this, I was, I asked Marco for some

1:02:18suggestions on speakers and didn't, the price wasn't the factor. It was what they looked like

1:02:25was like, no, no way. He sent me like something four feet tall and it's no, that's yeah. I mean,

1:02:31my wife thought that I was joking and I was like, no, Marco, Marco says it sounds awesome. So

1:02:37anyway, the home pods, I liked them as, and I know some people have terrible problems keeping them

1:02:42from falling out of pair or whatever. For me, they really do just work knock on wood,

1:02:50but it's been great. And it's also the fact that I watch TV pretty late. I mean,

1:02:57it's almost all of my TV watching is later at night and Amy typically our routine is that she

1:03:03falls asleep on the couch next to me. So there's a maximum limit to the volume that I can use and

1:03:08the base, right? Like I'm not going to be able to get away with kick ass movie theater, THX quality

1:03:16base rumbling. So for what I do, it's pretty good. So I'm, I was very happy that they did that. I'm

1:03:21glad you remembered that, that they announced it. I give them a thumbs up for sticking with it.

1:03:25Now there's rumors as we look ahead, there's rumors that they're going to do like a screen

1:03:30or something. That has no appeal. I get it because why not have a screen and so, you know, like in a

1:03:40kitchen or something. And we have them in our kitchen too, but I don't know. I never look at

1:03:44it. That to me seems like it has to be a brand new product because there are certain cases where you

1:03:50want a home pod, a screen would be a complete waste of money. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. I've never

1:03:55had any of like the echo shows or I forget what the Google equivalent is, but it's never been for

1:04:01me. And I'm not to say that, I mean, I can fathom why it would be nice, but I don't think I personally

1:04:08want a glowing screen in my kitchen always on all the time. That's just not my cup of tea. I

1:04:14obviously, I think Apple would do a good job of it. And I think that they could be very clever

1:04:18about it, but it's just, I agree with you. That's not a, that's solving a problem I don't think I

1:04:23have, but then again, Apple often solves problems that I didn't realize I had. So we'll see. But

1:04:29yeah, I agree with you. I don't really have much else from the pre WWDC. Do you?

1:04:34It was in March when who was it? Was it Joanna and Nicole? They dropped the shoulder surfing

1:04:43passcode stealing phones thing that happened in March and 10 years of ATP was in March just to

1:04:49plug us for a moment. So that was a big accomplishment, but yeah, other than that,

1:04:53so the announcement of final cut pro and logic pro for our new, I still think of ATP is your new

1:04:58podcast. I know. Right. Isn't that wild? It's 10 years. I mean, I had zero children when ATP

1:05:03started. Now I have two, but anyways, final cut pro and logic pro for iPad were announced in May.

1:05:09So there's that. So that's a good one. And right. I mean, that's worth taking a pause to talk about

1:05:15because to me, it's not because I use either app. I don't edit the show, so I don't use logic and I

1:05:23don't edit videos. So I don't use final cut, but it's symbolic in terms of those two apps really

1:05:31stuck out as the canonical examples of the whole debate is it does that is Apple doing right by the

1:05:41iPad as a serious platform for professionals to use as their main computer. One of the arguments

1:05:48against it was, well, for God's sake, even Apple doesn't put their pro apps on the iPad. Right. I

1:05:53mean, it really was. It was how is this a pro computer if even Apple doesn't make pro apps for

1:05:59it? Well, now they do. And by all accounts of people who do use them and know what the hell

1:06:03they're talking about, they're pretty good. Yeah. Everything I've understood is that they

1:06:08are pretty good. I think I've never used logic. I don't edit any of the shows I'm on,

1:06:12but I've used final cut pro reasonable amount on the desktop. I've never, I never played with it

1:06:17on the iPad because it's not really a need. I have to me, if I'm going to do any sort of video

1:06:22editing, I'm going to be on a computer. I'm going to be with as much screen real estate as I can get.

1:06:27That being said, I really appreciate the fact that they finally clipped off this low hanging fruit.

1:06:33They've muted all of these arguments. Like you were saying that, Oh, well,

1:06:36Apple clearly doesn't care because they're not even doing their own stuff.

1:06:38And I've understood that final cut pro is good. It's certainly not full featured. It's not a one

1:06:44to one equivalent. I forget which way you can go, but you can go like from the, from the iPad to the

1:06:49desktop, but you can't go desktop to iPad, I think, or something along those lines, which is

1:06:53a bit of a bummer, but I can understand it, especially when you start talking plugins and

1:06:56this and that and the other thing, but just the fact that it's there does to your point show a

1:07:01renewed or perhaps new found interest from Apple in trying to show that the iPad can be more than

1:07:08just a toy. And I, I, I love my iPad, but I do personally consider it more toy than not.

1:07:15And I would really love, especially with vision pro coming down the line and vision pro to my eyes,

1:07:20being very much based on iPadOS. I would love to see them take iPad more seriously. And this

1:07:26is a step in the right direction for sure. Yeah. I don't think they, I don't think it was easy.

1:07:31Right. It's it's not, I mean, I know it wasn't right. There's no way that it was easy to take

1:07:36two Mac apps because there is no, there's no reverse catalyst. Right. There's no,

1:07:41you know, but in theory, you know, some kind of, you know, in theory, Apple could do some kind of

1:07:48app kit on iPadOS, but they're not going to for reasons. I don't think anybody expects them to,

1:07:56I think more people are worried that app kit has a long-term future, even on the Mac then vice versa.

1:08:03So there was no porting toolkit. There wasn't any kind of, Oh, they, they made a new version of X

1:08:10code that could take a serious long-standing professional app kit, Mac app, and get it onto

1:08:17the iPad. It was all work, actual work. Jonas uses final cut because he he's into video as I would be

1:08:25if I were his age. I, when I was his age, I thought maybe I would make movies or something.

1:08:30I was very interested in filmmaking in college. So I don't blame him. They are not done that. They

1:08:35don't blame him, but I see his interest, but he uses it on both and I've asked him. And so for him

1:08:42and his use of final cut, I don't think he runs into the superset. Like he can go back and forth

1:08:49between his iPad pro and his MacBook pro and doesn't run into whatever the limits are where

1:08:56the Mac is a superset. But yeah, I would say that honestly, the other thing we might as well just

1:09:03say it's the highlight of the iPad for the year. Right? I mean, cause the only other thing there,

1:09:09oddly there was no iPad hardware, right? Yeah, that's true. Not even the mini or anything like

1:09:14that. I don't know. Nothing. Nope, nothing. Everything. Hold on, John. Let's not besmirch

1:09:20the Apple pencil with USB-C. I mean, come on, man. That is the exception is yet another Apple pencil

1:09:26with USB-C, which I'm making fun of in tone, but I understand, I guess the only thing I don't

1:09:34understand is why last year's 10th generation iPad was that what's the one that used the Apple

1:09:44pencil one and they had to make a new, they had to make a new adapter for it. So they didn't make

1:09:50a new pencil. They made a new adapter because the iPad had USB-C built for the future, but the Apple

1:09:57pencil one charges and pairs as a lightning that you just stick into the side of the iPad,

1:10:05sort of like a popsicle stick. I understand why it is that way, but I don't understand why they,

1:10:10how they painted themselves. It clearly painted themselves into a pencil corner. Right? I mean,

1:10:16it's so true. Anyway, I've been ahead of ourselves though, cause that was like October or something

1:10:21like that. So yeah, well, just to go by product category though, there wasn't really much else

1:10:26for iPad for the year. I mean, that was it. Anything else from your list for the pre June

1:10:32WWDC? This was in April GM said, Oh, we're not going to do carplay anymore. And we're still

1:10:38seeing a little bit of the ripples from that now. That was that long ago. Geez. Yeah, I know. I

1:10:43didn't realize either. I think this is bananas. I think this is utterly bananas and I'm a devout car

1:10:48play person for me. I would not buy a car without carplay because no matter how great, and I think

1:10:55there are some exceptions here, like modern electric cars, like Teslas and Rivians, you

1:11:00could make an argument that they'll continue to be updated and continually get better and so on and

1:11:05so forth. But the thing that you run into is even if the software gets better, the hardware is the

1:11:09hardware in a car, right? My wife's car, she's a Volvo SUV. And I like actually like her infotainment

1:11:16leaving aside the car play parts. Her infotainment is good, but the processor in her car is clearly

1:11:21underpowered and it's never going to get better. It's never ever going to get better. And one of

1:11:26the great things about carplay is not only does the software get better, but as you change phones,

1:11:31the hardware gets better too. And so for me, I wouldn't even consider a car without carplay.

1:11:36I mean, I didn't when we bought our cars in the late tens because we bought hers in 17,

1:11:40mine in 18. And I still wouldn't consider a car without carplay. I personally, for me,

1:11:45that's bananas. And so for GM to say, we're not going to support carplay anymore. Well,

1:11:49guess what? I'm not supporting GM. Well, I mean, I wasn't already, but you know what I mean? Like,

1:11:53I'm not supporting GM anymore. Cause even though like my parents have a Chevy Bolt EV,

1:11:57which is great. It's genuinely a very great car. It's not fancy, but it's a great car.

1:12:01And if I needed an EV right now, I would think about it, except they just canceled it. But even

1:12:06still, I wouldn't get one without carplay. The whole thing sort of exemplifies like the weird

1:12:11current status of GM, right? Like the Bolt, I I've never driven one either, but I have heard

1:12:18nothing but good things about the Bolt. Right. It is. And GM is overall ahead of most car brands on

1:12:28electric vehicles, which is clearly the future, right? I mean, isn't it the case that like even

1:12:33Honda who I love as a company, I, my beloved 2006 Accurate TL does not have carplay being from 2006,

1:12:43but Honda had to go to GM to like get electric vehicles. So there's rebranded GM vehicles with

1:12:49the Honda badge, but like a GM interior, Syracuse was talking about it on ATP reasons. Yeah. Maybe

1:12:55all the Japanese marks. I don't think because Lexus is in a similar boat. Right. And no Nissan

1:13:00did the leaf. So Nissan complete disaster, but Subaru, same story. I think that's a re rebranded

1:13:06something else. It's utterly bananas to me that the Japanese were caught. So flat or the Japanese

1:13:10car companies were caught so flat footed with EVs and they don't seem to be catching up that

1:13:15quickly. It's great. And they had Toyota had the Prius, which was ahead of its time. It's like,

1:13:20but also really was kind of goofy looking. Right. I mean, it was like very much so. I don't know.

1:13:27And I honestly, in a way that in the sort of in the inverse of the way that Tesla moved electric

1:13:34vehicles forward. I mean, say what you want about the owner of the company. There's no doubt that

1:13:39the existence of and success and popularity of Tesla and the fact that the people who buy them

1:13:45overall seem very happy with them, even though they're like, ah, who cares about the panel gaps?

1:13:49It's blank. There's other things that they love about them. I think the Prius set electric vehicles

1:13:54back because people who were skeptical were like thinking that they were like little putt putt

1:14:01golf cars. Well, then here's the one, the most famous one. It kind of was a putt putt golf car.

1:14:07Right. And it's no, the truth is electric vehicles go like hell, like the entry model Tesla, you put

1:14:14the pedal down and it, you know, it's bananas. It's bananas. They're crazy how fast they go.

1:14:19So like if you're sort of a red meat and beer American, you know, I want my car to go real fast,

1:14:27which I am. I love driving fast. Same, same electric vehicles are what you want,

1:14:31but the Prius kind of set it back. I don't know. But then you hear GM has this car that was renowned

1:14:36the bolt and then they canceled it. Yep. It's just bananas. And the bolt actually from zero to

1:14:4130 miles an hour is fairly quick to your point. Now, once you get above 30, it's real slow,

1:14:46real fast, but, but, but you know, that buying a bolt, right? It's zero to 30 is more important

1:14:51than 30 to 60. Exactly. Exactly. I agree. I agree. So yeah, I don't know. We don't need to

1:14:57persevere on it, but it's just, it's bananas to me that this is the direction GM is going. And to

1:15:00your point, they were doing pretty well and had a lead over a lot of these other, especially foreign

1:15:07manufacturers. And I feel like they're just shooting themselves in the foot left and right.

1:15:10It's just bananas. I do. I don't know. I think the most telling aspect and again, Joanna Stern,

1:15:16she had the, I forget his name, the CEO of Ford and she asked him and it was so,

1:15:20it made me like the guy. Cause you just don't see CEOs do stuff like this. He laughed.

1:15:25And he was like, yeah, we're not getting rid of CarPlay. Our, our owners love CarPlay. And

1:15:30you know, this, I know this, everybody knows it. And I'm sure GM is hearing it right. Like the

1:15:34nature, the nature of everybody other than Tesla who sells direct is that the real customers for

1:15:40GM are their dealers and the dealers sell to the customers. And it's the dealers who know how many

1:15:47people come in. And as Apple loves to quote the percentage of new car buyers in the U S who

1:15:53consider CarPlay a must have is astonishing. It's I don't know, it's 80% or something like that.

1:15:59And it's bananas compared to iPhone ownership, which is like 51% because it's new car buyers

1:16:06and new cars are more expensive and iPhone owners tend to have more money. And so yes,

1:16:10there's 80% of new car buyers consider CarPlay a must have. I saw, I still wouldn't be surprised.

1:16:17I wouldn't be surprised if GM backtracks on this. Cause it's not like they're not Apple,

1:16:21right? Apple would just start shipping cars without X. They wouldn't pre-announce it.

1:16:27GM announced it. I wouldn't be surprised if this never actually comes to pass.

1:16:30Trenton Larkin No, I agree. And I mean,

1:16:32I think the thing of it is, is that it could work for GM if they become a software company

1:16:36really freaking fast. Cause there's an argument that Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, they're just software

1:16:41companies that happen to have a car to run their software. And I don't see a company as old as GM

1:16:48being to pivot that quickly to becoming a software company. I mean, anything is possible, but man,

1:16:53I'd eat my shoe cause I don't think it's going to happen.

1:16:55Trenton Larkin Anything else from before WWDC?

1:16:59Trenton Larkin One final thing that means nothing to me,

1:17:01and I don't mean that to be snarky, but I suspect will mean something to you. A marathon was

1:17:05announced in May. And I presume that that means something for you because this is way before my

1:17:10Mac time. Trenton Larkin

1:17:12Yeah, but it's like a new marathon and I don't play games anymore, but I'm glad the franchise still

1:17:17is being resuscitated because I do love the franchise. I would consider as an old school

1:17:23Mac user, consider it the marathon cinematic universe, not the Halo cinematic universe.

1:17:31But I, and I had an Xbox, this is where Syracuse and I overlap in so many ways, but then when we

1:17:39depart significantly. So like I bought the first generation Xbox cause I was still playing video

1:17:45games like in the very late nineties, early two thousands and liked it a lot. And you know, one

1:17:51of the deciding factors for me to buy the Xbox instead of whatever the PlayStation of that era

1:17:56was, was knowing that I wanted to play Halo because I liked marathon so much. And at the

1:18:04time it was a recent memory and I was exactly right. I, you know, and I've since gotten out

1:18:09of all games, so I don't know how much the modern versions of Halo still feel the same, but as a

1:18:14diehard marathon user from the mid to end of the nineties on the Mac, Halo on Xbox was like, Oh,

1:18:21I understand all of this. And it sorta takes place in the same universe. I forget if it's like in a

1:18:26different century or it's definitely a different planet and I maybe destiny is, I don't know. I

1:18:31don't, I that's again, this is where Syracuse and I diverge. He still plays video games seriously and

1:18:38I don't. So I don't know, but the new marathon is sort of different, I guess. I don't know,

1:18:42but it's not out yet. So it was only announced. Yeah. I don't even know if it's like a 2024 thing.

1:18:47I think it was like Grand Theft Auto where whatever the date was, it was far. Yeah. I

1:18:51saw that too recently where the Grand Theft Auto is, man, this looks amazing. And then at the end,

1:18:55they're like coming in 2029 or something. I'm like, what are you talking about? It was nuts.

1:19:01All right. Then WWDC time. All right. So hardware is the 15 inch M2 MacBook Air.

1:19:09I guess that was the only hardware of WWDC. Well, in vision pro ish. I mean, obviously

1:19:14right now launch launch, but in right one released one announced, do we get, do we get a finally on

1:19:19either of those? I ask kind of snarkily snarky kind of not, I would say definitely a finally on

1:19:26the big consumer laptop, right? It was as big, I guess it doesn't appeal to as many people,

1:19:32but it was the two things Apple never made were big screen laptops in the consumer range and a

1:19:40big screen phone in the consumer range, right? The big screen and the iPhone pro era was always

1:19:47the max models are only at, and they're super expensive. They start at like $1,100.

1:19:51You don't have to look at the spreadsheets in front of Tim Cook's desk to guess why, right? It

1:19:58was because they knew some people would buy the biggest screen because people, some people love

1:20:04big devices and having the Mac book with big screen start at $2,500 was good for Apple. But

1:20:13it's kind of crazy comparing the Mac market to the PC market in that regard, where if your budget is

1:20:21lower and you don't, you know, or even if it's not about budget, but just your needs, if you're like,

1:20:25I'm not a professional Mac user, I just need something good and reliable. The fact that you

1:20:32could only get 13 inch laptops in the non-pro Mac books was conspicuous. So I would say finally,

1:20:39yeah, I think they should have done it long ago. I don't, and the only explanation for it

1:20:44is that they thought they made more money by keeping them as pro models, but there's rumors,

1:20:51you know, we never know how much each particular model sells. I guess the consensus is that the M2

1:20:57Mac book air isn't that big a seller, but I don't know. I find that hard. I don't think it's going

1:21:04to be like the iPhone mini where they try it for a year or two and they're like, ah, this didn't sell

1:21:09that well. We're going to abandon the form factor. I think it's here to stay. And I don't think it's

1:21:14surprising that it doesn't sell as well as the 13 inch models. Cause I think that's what most

1:21:19consumers want in a laptop is value, the portability, the weight, the backpack size,

1:21:25but I can't help but think it might do, it might be doing better than the general consensus thinks

1:21:30it is. Yeah, I agree with you top to bottom. And this to me feels like very much in the spirit of

1:21:35Final Cut Pro and Logic for the iPad where whether or not this is a real profit center for Apple,

1:21:41it makes sense as a product to have. And even though I think a lot of their products,

1:21:45like the pencil, like the iPad have gotten a little bit too diverse at this point. I still

1:21:50think having a big consumer laptop that is reasonably affordable just makes sense. And

1:21:56there's so many people like my dad, as we spoke about earlier, still kicking, still with it,

1:22:01still likes technology. And he recently, instead of getting a MacBook pro, he recently got a MacBook

1:22:07Air. And although he did get the 13 inch, he is the kind of buyer that I think this would be good

1:22:13for, especially as his eyes get worse at 70 plus years old, that he doesn't need a MacBook Pro. He

1:22:18used to get it because the consumer laptops were fairly well neutered, particularly in the Intel

1:22:22era. At this point, he doesn't have any need for a MacBook Pro, but there may come a time he might

1:22:28want a bigger screen if nothing else. So he can crank the font size on everything up a little bit.

1:22:32And so on account of that, I could totally see him the next time he gets a laptop getting a,

1:22:36you know, 15 inch MacBook Air. And I think that's just one of many different examples that prove the

1:22:40same thing that, yeah, maybe it isn't selling gangbusters, but I think it definitely has a

1:22:45place in the lineup. And I think it makes sense more so, I would argue, than the iPhone mini. And

1:22:50I know that will offend a lot of iPhone mini people, but I think it makes a lot more sense

1:22:53than the mini. Yeah, and I didn't buy a mini, but I was so close. And that was the year,

1:23:00I regret that I didn't buy one because I bought the non-pro iPhone. I bought the iPhone 12

1:23:06regular size in black because I thought it looked better. I just, I still think it looked better.

1:23:11And I liked the glossy backside. And it was the year when buying the iPhone was mid lockdown

1:23:20and vaccines weren't out. And I thought, well, if there's ever a year where I place less value

1:23:26on the quality of the camera system, it's this year when for the rest-

1:23:31I've been staring at his four walls.

1:23:33Right.

1:23:33Four walls all year long.

1:23:34You know, and I was hopeful and I was correct that by the next summertime,

1:23:39vacations and travel would be a thing again. I thought, well, but by that time, I'll only have

1:23:46months to go before next year's models. And it was true. So I didn't regret it, but I wish I would

1:23:50have bought the mini just so I could say I had one. But I agree if Apple, well, they are going

1:23:57to do this. There's no if about it, but their whole- we're the only company that makes the

1:24:02products for our platforms. All of our OSs only run on our hardware and our hardware

1:24:08only runs our OSs. We make the whole shebang. I think they're sort of obligated to sort of

1:24:15fill in the gaps. I think it was a failure of some sorts that they never offered consumer level

1:24:22MacBooks in a bigger than 13 inch size. And every time I say that, somebody will say that there was

1:24:27a 14 inch iBook back in the day. But that didn't really qualify as a big laptop. I guess it's the

1:24:36closest they came though. So there was, it was like a 12 inch iBook and a 14 inch iBook. So there

1:24:41was a brief stretch where the iBooks came in two sizes, but they never had one 15 or 16 inches

1:24:47before. And now they do. And I think they should, if they're going to be the only company that makes

1:24:51Mac laptops, there should be more than one size. I mean, I don't think that's too much to ask.

1:24:56- Nope, I completely agree. - What else? Vision Pro and WWDC.

1:25:02- Before we get to Vision Pro, was the M2 Max and Ultra, that was June, but was that WWDC?

1:25:08- Oh yeah, that was WWDC too. So what am I talking about? Yeah, that was the other hardware WWDC. I'm

1:25:13sure that there are people listening to this who've been going nuts for the last five minutes that I

1:25:18insinuated that there was no other hardware. No, speaking of finalies, we finally got the Mac Pro.

1:25:24Yeah, here we go, June. So the M2 Max and Ultra, Mac Studio and Mac Pro, finally. So that's even

1:25:32more of a finally than a 15 inch. Well, no, maybe not, because they did make Mac Pros.

1:25:37They never made a 15 inch MacBook Air. Kind of a disappointment, right? I mean,

1:25:43I know you guys covered this to extraordinary length, to your everlasting pleasure on ATP.

1:25:49- Yes, yes, that's it. No, it is a disappointment. I don't know. It's funny because I don't

1:25:54care. I don't ever see myself as a buyer of a Mac Pro, but I do subscribe to Syracuse's

1:26:03Halo car point of view that it makes sense for Apple to have this Halo car that they can point

1:26:11to and say, "Look what we can do." And you guys were talking about this actually on the episode

1:26:15that you recorded, that the Mac Pro today, I don't think they're really flexing all their muscles.

1:26:22And I think if they let themselves really go hog wild, it could and would be a truly competitive

1:26:29computer. And it's just not right now. It's a Mac Studio with a bunch of space for IO, which,

1:26:34sure, for a small group of people, that's important, perhaps do or die sort of scenario,

1:26:39but it's not a lot of people. And although I'm in support of them having done the whole lineup,

1:26:43and I'm glad they did it so Jon can stop fretting constantly about what's going to happen,

1:26:47it was a disappointment, I think, even to me. And I'm never going to buy one of these.

1:26:52Yeah, I don't want to rehash it because Syracuse and I talked about it last week, but it really is,

1:26:56I mean, there's no denying it. It's the same because the system on a chip so defines the modern

1:27:01Apple Silicon Macs that having the exact same systems on a chip as the Mac Studio,

1:27:05I don't think it's unfair at all to say that it is exactly what you just said. It is a Mac Studio

1:27:11in a 10 times bigger case that really that extra space is really only used for IO. So if your needs

1:27:18are IO and the Mac Studio, you're bursting at the seams on a Mac Studio with IO needs, then yes,

1:27:27you're happy. But that's the whole Mac Pro market, let's say, like from the last generation Intel

1:27:34ones, or a hypothetical future Mac Pro that really does far exceed the Mac Studio in numerous ways.

1:27:43That market is always going to be a niche, right? But based on price, based on how many people really

1:27:51need the Halo car of computers, it's a small segment of the Mac user base. And then to say

1:27:58that this one really only exceeds the Mac Studio in the one regard of IO is a niche within a niche,

1:28:05right? The fact that they still released it though, to me, is a sign that it's like putting a

1:28:15flag in the ground and they're saying, they weren't going to say, okay, yeah, this is a

1:28:20disappointment. But to me, my Cupertino-ology reading between the lines is we had to ship

1:28:29something just to show that the Mac Pro isn't dead and we're serious about it.

1:28:34Standby for future generations. Whether that's going to be this next year or the year after,

1:28:39who knows? But assuming they plan to have a Mac Pro that's worthy of the name,

1:28:48meaning it far exceeds the capabilities in more than one direction than a Mac Studio,

1:28:53it was untenable to keep selling the last generation Intel one, right? So what were they

1:29:00going to do? Keep selling the Intel one? Take it off the market? Get rid of the Mac Pro for

1:29:05a gap of a few years? This to me is the best way forward to at least make some users happy.

1:29:11And again, for the serious video pros who are pushing enormous amounts of 8K video around and

1:29:18need the IO, they're happy, right? So make somebody happy. I think the best case scenario is a bespoke

1:29:25chip for it. But if that is not in the cards and not on the table, then yes, I agree with you. At

1:29:29least showing you care enough to do something is a good sign. Yeah, I think that's it other than

1:29:34Vision Pro. So I mean, you've got way more time with the Vision Pro than me. So what do you think?

1:29:39Tom Scott (01:01): I'm still excited, but at this point, it's like,

1:29:44let's get on with it, right? You, you are actually, you are just talked before that you're already

1:29:50working on call sheet for Vision OS and you and Marco together went to the developer labs. I know

1:29:56you and I both have a bunch of developer friends. I know others who've done it. When it's a new

1:30:01platform like the watch or whatever, there is no Osborne effect to worry about. Apple can

1:30:07pre-announce a headset and the only sales they might hurt because people are waiting for it are

1:30:12from companies like Meta, who I'm sure it breaks Apple's heart if Meta sold fewer Quest 3s than

1:30:20they would have otherwise, even though it's, you know, price-wise it's sort of by definition,

1:30:25a different market, but it's sort of like, how much can we say? I don't know. I think Apple,

1:30:28by calling it spatial computing and sort of presenting it as being on the level

1:30:36to this new concept of spatial computing, what the 1984 Mac was to GUI, graphical user interface

1:30:46computing or desktop computing. I don't know what meant, what they would call it. That's

1:30:50where they're positioning it and the way that they would position at the time in 2007. And I think in

1:30:57hindsight, the iPhone is the first modern cell phone. They're presenting this as that level of

1:31:04platform, right? It is not like the HomePod or AirPods. It's not an other, like a wearable.

1:31:11It is a, in their mind, a computing platform for the future. And this is only the first one.

1:31:20Having used it three times, WWDC and then two demos in New York in recent months for the spatial

1:31:27video where I got to see some of theirs, and then I went back up and got to see my own video

1:31:32that I shot over Thanksgiving and in the weeks afterwards. The demos I've gotten have been more

1:31:39like entertainment oriented, right? Using it as an entertainment device. They haven't let me do

1:31:44things like work, right? Which would be weird to do in a controlled demo anyway.

1:31:49Sure.

1:31:50But I see the potential. I really, really do. But it's just hard to speculate going at this point,

1:31:56how serious it would be and whether can I personally envision going to WWDC 2027 and

1:32:03only taking my Vision Pro and a keyboard instead of my MacBook? Probably not, but I could imagine

1:32:11some people would, right? It's sort of in a way that I don't, I can't imagine only using my iPad

1:32:18or taking my iPad on a trip like that where I plan to work just because my personal workflow is so

1:32:25Mac specific. But I could imagine that for the many millions of people who do use their iPads

1:32:30like that, I think the Vision Pro could be super compelling in that way.

1:32:35Yeah, I agree. And I mean, we were under extraordinarily strict NDAs, not to discuss

1:32:40the time that we spent in lab, but even before that event, I can tell you that as someone who

1:32:47likes going to like a library or a cafe or what have you in order to get work done from time to

1:32:52time, the thought of having a 4K screen that is physically the size of a headset, that's extremely

1:33:00compelling. And if I can suck my Mac into the Vision Pro, and then perhaps I'm using the Vision

1:33:06Pro or effectively iPadOS versions of Slack and Safari and whatnot, and all this is scattered

1:33:11around my laptop screen, leaving aside the fact that it'll look like a total doofus being at the

1:33:15library with this thing on my face. I can see how it would be extremely cooler in a plane.

1:33:20I got to imagine that if you were able to watch a movie in relative isolation between your AirPods

1:33:28and the Vision Pro, I mean, what better way to pass the time on a plane if you're not going to

1:33:33get work done than watching a 400-foot or whatever screen with spatial audio in your ears and noise

1:33:39canceling? I mean, I can imagine how it would be extremely compelling, but my word is it expensive.

1:33:44I mean, starting at $3,500, oof. That's a lot of money.

1:33:46Yeah. Do you think it's going to be the sort of product where they're going to have good,

1:33:52better, and best? They've only said... The only thing they've said is starting at $3,500. And

1:33:58they haven't talked about anything like storage, because that's how Apple typically tears pricing.

1:34:06There's, "Oh, entry level as 256 gigabytes of storage or five... I don't know. For $3,500,

1:34:13I better have more than 256." But it's Apple, right? I say that, but would you be shocked if

1:34:19it was actually only 128? No, I would not.

1:34:22You had to pay $4,000 to get it a terabyte? I would not.

1:34:27My gut reaction is that it'll be like the Apple TV where there's two or maybe three storage tiers

1:34:34and they call it a day. My brain, as I reason through it intellectually, I think it would be

1:34:39more akin to an iPad where... Not to say that it'll have cellular, but maybe you have a couple of

1:34:45different storage tiers. Maybe not the first generation, but at some point maybe you have

1:34:51an M3 Pro or M3 Max. I mean, if this really is going to be a work computer, it could stand to

1:34:59reason that you would want to delineate and differentiate the different processors. I

1:35:03certainly don't think that'll be the case in a couple of months or whenever it is it comes out.

1:35:06But I could see a future where that's a thing. I could also imagine them maybe doing not a bundle,

1:35:13because that seems beneath Apple, but I can't think of a better word for it. But maybe you get

1:35:17a Vision Pro or you can get a Vision Pro and a couple of battery packs or what have you,

1:35:20or something like that. Or a couple of light shields if... I don't know. I guess I don't know

1:35:24why you would need more than one. But maybe some sort of bundle-like thing where you get a small

1:35:30deal. I don't know. I guess it's not really Apple's shtick giving a deal for anything.

1:35:35But... No, it's not.

1:35:36No. So I take that all back, I guess. But I don't know. I do think some sort of good, better, best,

1:35:41or better, best, perfect, or what have you. I do think that will be in the future. I think they're

1:35:46certainly leaving the space for it now. But it also would not surprise me at all if they said,

1:35:50"Hey, it's $3,500. You get a terabyte of space and that's that. Be happy."

1:35:54Yeah. I kind of hope they do. I think that would be neat for the first generation and let that

1:35:59different price ranges for different models happen as they expand. I mean,

1:36:03calling it Vision Pro... Again, you don't even have to be an expert Cupertino-ologist to read

1:36:09between the lines that they're saying, "In the future, there will be non-Pro Vision headsets."

1:36:15Right? It's Apple's way of saying just in the name of the product alone, "We know this is crazy

1:36:20expensive, but this is the first one. And in the future, there will be non-Pro ones at obviously

1:36:28lower prices." And I think the other things... I mean, it's an exciting time and I'm super excited

1:36:36for it to come out and to see more. And I do think it's interesting. My whole spiel about,

1:36:43"Well, my workflow is so Mac-centric," ties into the fact that you can, and you said,

1:36:50get a virtual 4K display in the Vision headset with your Mac. When I travel though, and I use

1:36:58my MacBook Pro as a laptop with the screen open, I kind of miss my studio display, but I don't miss

1:37:06it so much that I'd want to put a headset on. But I have talked to people at Apple,

1:37:12little birdies who've used it that way, who say it really is compelling. I mean, and there's a reason

1:37:17they added the feature and that engineers at Apple who've had access to it really do use it and enjoy

1:37:23using the virtual Mac screen within the headset. So it is a weird place that the iPhone and the iPad

1:37:31have never had anything like that. So if you miss, "Oh, there's this certain app that only works on

1:37:36the Mac. I do stuff at the terminal command line that I need." And you don't have that on iPad or

1:37:43iPhone. Vision with this integration of a virtual Mac screen pairs with a Mac in a way that nothing

1:37:49else ever has before. So I'm interested to see how that plays out. But the other things I'm interested

1:37:54to see how they play out are sort of at the meta level, not capital M, the company. But there's so

1:38:02many people who are skeptical that, "Well, at $3,500, nobody's going to buy this thing." But

1:38:09I think it's going to be back ordered the whole year because I think they're not going to be...

1:38:15And again, I could be wrong. I'm just going by the rumor mill, but the rumor mill says that these

1:38:22Sony displays of which you need one in front of both eyes in each headset, Sony can only make

1:38:30two million of them a year. So there's like a cap of like a million of these things that Apple can

1:38:36theoretically make in the next year. And all other components aside that if they can't get more than

1:38:41two million displays from Sony, they literally can't make more than a million Vision Pro headsets.

1:38:47And by Apple's scale today, that's not that much, right? They sold a million iPhones in the first

1:38:53year in 2007. The goal, Steve Jobs' goal was to get to 10 million like in the first 18 months,

1:38:59which they hit. So the iPhone was much more of Apple was such a smaller company then with so

1:39:06many fewer customers because the iPhone is the product that turned them from having millions

1:39:13of users or tens of millions of users to a billion plus users. So if they can only make a million of

1:39:20them, I honestly think it'll be back ordered all year. I mean, because developers are going to want

1:39:25to buy them. I think for business travelers, the first class of airplanes is always filled up. I

1:39:31mean, and I know some people get upgrades and I know that like business travelers who get first

1:39:36class seats, the company pays for it, but the company might buy their Vision Pro headset too.

1:39:41But if you have the sort of job where you travel all the time, buying fancy headphones has always

1:39:49been a thing, right? Noise canceling headphones used to be considered super expensive too,

1:39:54but who bought them? Business travelers. Being able to watch an immersive big screen movie

1:40:00while you're flying it, that alone put aside all the computing parts, it just as an entertainment

1:40:07device, there's plenty of people who would spend $3,500 for it if it's compelling.

1:40:11- No, I couldn't agree more. And the other thing bringing up business travelers is what if you work

1:40:16in something that is of high secrecy or confidential or whatever. A lot of people do

1:40:21those things where they put the screen on top of your screen so you can only see it directly ahead.

1:40:26It's going to be hard for somebody to see something that's literally attached to your face,

1:40:30right? So I could see from like a privacy point of view, a corporate secrecy point of view,

1:40:35how you can make a compelling argument for, well, my computer screen will be literally black,

1:40:41or maybe it'll say I'm being used in the Vision Pro or what have you. And the screen that you're

1:40:45actually looking at is touching your face. There's no one going to be shoulder surfing you if that's

1:40:50the case. - Yeah. So maybe your work requires it, or maybe you're just that private/facial.

1:40:56- Yeah. - I mean, I've seen it when traveling where there's... And I think there's all sorts

1:41:00of different ways people can do it. There's like screen protectors you can put over the laptop.

1:41:04- Right, right, right. - Sort of make it so you can only see it from a perfect angle.

1:41:08I'm nosy. And when I go to the bathroom on a plane, I like to see... Not that I'm trying to

1:41:14read their stuff, but I'm curious which devices people use, who's using a laptop, how many Macs

1:41:20are there, how many people are still using Windows laptops, who's using an iPad for work, who's using

1:41:24an iPad... And sometimes you walk past somebody's laptop and it's like, it looks like they're typing

1:41:29on a black screen and you're like, "What the hell is... What are they doing?" Pretending to compute

1:41:33and you realize, "Oh, they've got one of those screens that keeps people from looking at it."

1:41:37Again, large scale, like the iPhone or just Macs in general, no, that's not a huge market,

1:41:45but it is a market and that's the sort of people who have the budget to buy it.

1:41:48But I'm also curious if I'm right that it's going to be backordered all year.

1:41:53That means there'll be a secondary market on eBay and I'm curious how expensive they'll get.

1:41:58If Apple says, "You don't place your order in the first five minutes after they go on sale in

1:42:06January or February or whenever it's going to be." And in March, you've read the reviews, you're like,

1:42:12"I want to get one of these." And you go to apple.com and it says, "12 weeks. What's the

1:42:16price on eBay going to be?" And is that even going to be possible with the light shields and stuff?

1:42:22That's exactly what I was going to say.

1:42:23Right. I think my impression is that the light shields are sort of more like

1:42:29Apple Watch bands where there's only a couple of sizes, but when I've asked them in my demos,

1:42:36they're very cagey about it. How many of these are there? How many will be included?

1:42:41You probably did this. I don't want to put you on the spot because I know you're not supposed to

1:42:45talk about any of it, but I can say, I'm allowed to say that you use an iPhone when you first get

1:42:51started to use a vision pro. I guess it's going to be an app or maybe it'll be in settings. I don't

1:42:58know. They also don't tell me where this app was, but it's like setting up face ID though. You just

1:43:03look at the phone in front of your face and it says, "Move your face in a circle," just like

1:43:08setting up face ID. And it's them scanning your face or the phone scanning your face to get a

1:43:14light shield guess. And how many of them are there? I don't know. And are you going to have

1:43:19to pay for extras? And how's the whole thing going to work with a husband and wife or a family?

1:43:25Oh, that's a very interesting point too. Yeah.

1:43:26Right. Like you buy one for $3,500 and you get one light shield that doesn't fit your spouse or your

1:43:33kids. And with the corrective lenses, how many... Are we just going to show up to the Apple store

1:43:41with a piece of paper from your eye doctor that says plus four in this eye plus three,

1:43:46seven, five in the other eye, "Here, give me these things." That's what it was like for me the last

1:43:52two times in New York when I tried the vision where I just gave them my prescription from my

1:44:00eye doctor. And then they had one set up for me with the right lenses in there. But back in June,

1:44:07I actually visit... When there was like a guy who almost like going to the eye doctor,

1:44:14which I think is more the experience you'll have in the store. They're saying nobody knows yet,

1:44:18but it's going to be a process to buy one of these. And I think you'll buy... I don't even

1:44:24know. Are they just going to sell them to people online and let you enter your prescription on

1:44:28apple.com? I have so many questions like this. Yeah, I agree. I think the rollout is going to be

1:44:32absolutely fascinating, particularly for talking heads like you and me. But I think it'll be

1:44:36fascinating in general because they've all but said without actually saying that it's going to be

1:44:41in store only. And that's all well and good, but I know that Apple stores are in population centers.

1:44:48But looking at Virginia, Virginia definitely has some rural spots, no argument about it. But

1:44:52a lot of Virginia, like the closest Apple store to a lot of Virginia, parts of Virginia that are

1:44:59two or three, four hours by car, here in Richmond, I have the closest Apple store to areas in

1:45:05Southwest Virginia that are like three hours by car. They're choosing between going to Raleigh,

1:45:09North Carolina, or Richmond. And how's that going to work? You're going to drive three hours to pick

1:45:14up your Vision Pro? That's not a particularly enjoyable first run experience. But I get it.

1:45:19On the other side of the token is you need to be able to scan your face and pick out what

1:45:23light shield you need. You need to be able to get the Zeiss prescription lenses and so on and so

1:45:27forth. So I don't know. It's going to be very interesting. And like you were saying earlier,

1:45:31the secondhand market will be fascinating too, because what are you going to do? You're going to

1:45:34go, you're going to get the light shield for your face, and maybe you'll get the prescription lenses

1:45:38for your face. And then you go to put that on eBay, and I guess you just hope for the best if

1:45:42you buy it. You hope that light shield isn't a piece of garbage on your face. I mean, I am very

1:45:46well endowed in the nose section, so I might need a very different light shield than someone who has

1:45:51a little pixie nose. So I mean, it's just, I don't know how it's going to work. And obviously,

1:45:55Apple doesn't care about the secondhand market. But even still, it's a fascinating thing to think

1:46:00about. And also they've said the rollout is US only. So are people going to be coming flying into

1:46:05the States and going to like the Times Square store or something like that in order to pick

1:46:08up a vision pro? Could be, you never know, especially if you're a developer from overseas,

1:46:12like look at James Thompson with Pecan. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he comes to New York.

1:46:17Tom Scott It's easy for us, we Americans, to overlook it. But it was a huge thing for

1:46:21the first few years of the iPhone, where it was debuted, not just US only, but on one carrier in

1:46:28the US. But there was a huge gray market for iPhones around the globe, especially once they had

1:46:35the version. Oh, no, I guess it was the other way around where Verizon was the weird one on CBMA.

1:46:41So yeah, so actually, it was because it was GSM, you put SIM cards in around the world and just,

1:46:47how big is the gray market going to be? It's weird. I don't know. It's exciting. But that's

1:46:53all next year. So let's get back to this year. What else? Anything else from WWDC? I mean,

1:47:00I guess we could save talk about the operating systems for when they actually shipped. But

1:47:04Yeah, I think that was it. I mean, obviously talk show live, which was live for the first time. Is

1:47:10that right? It was no, it was COVID. No, no, no second because I had the weird one on campus

1:47:18in the development center. Right, right, right, right, right, right. The sort of one step in

1:47:23COVID land, one step back to the real world. Yeah, boy, that seems like a long time.

1:47:28I was just, I just watched it here at home and it seems like forever ago for me as well.

1:47:34But yeah, I think that's it for June. Holy cow, does that seem like a long time. The summer months

1:47:38were bare as usual for news while Apple was heads down on the operating systems. We did get threads

1:47:44for what it's worth. That was in July. I know that's not Apple specific, but threads were long.

1:47:50And Twitter continued to fall apart. Indeed. Oh, and now Apple almost bought

1:47:56Disney for five minutes. No, what was the story there? Somebody-

1:48:00I don't remember. It was Disney's, I forget what it was. Was that Iger coming back or what was it?

1:48:06Disney was trying to load half their streaming services. I don't know. You have a post about it

1:48:09in August, Disney and Apple sitting in a tree. I forget the specifics behind it, but there was,

1:48:14if you squinted just right, it looked like there was a vague possibility that Apple would do it.

1:48:19And if you looked with your eyes open, it was pretty clear it would never happen. But if you

1:48:22squinted just properly, you could almost see it. It was, now that I think about it, it was more or

1:48:27less prompted by Disney stock continuing to slide and grumpy investors wanting somebody,

1:48:35if you want- If you want to save the day.

1:48:37Well, and the only way to fix a depressed stock price immediately is for somebody to come in with

1:48:45an acquisition offer at current price times 1.2. Right. And so boom, instant 20% gain in the stock.

1:48:53It worked out very well for Elon and Twitter with his goofy, what was it? What's the joke? I always

1:49:01forget the number. He was going to buy it at like 420 or something like that.

1:49:05Yeah, whatever. 42, whatever. But you don't use threads much. I looked before.

1:49:12It seems clear to me, it was always kind of, it was always apparent that this is quickly becoming

1:49:18what we all thought of as Twitter. Maybe not in our little nerd circle, but broadly, like societally,

1:49:23what was once Twitter to my eyes seems to be moving to threads. And in the last couple of

1:49:29weeks to my eyes, it seems clear that's where it is. And actually I was thinking about this

1:49:34just a few days ago, that after tweetbot died, my wife Erin who would browse Twitter and use it for

1:49:42news, but not ever really post or anything like that. Well, when tweetbot died, she didn't enjoy

1:49:48the official app. And I don't know many people that do to be honest with you. And so she just

1:49:52stopped looking at Twitter, but she said to me many times, you know, Oh, this news that I used

1:49:55to get via Twitter. I don't really have a source for that anymore. And a couple of days ago,

1:49:59I thought to myself, you know what? I think threads has got that critical mass now that if one,

1:50:04like Erin is looking for a Twitter replacement that isn't the garbage fire that Twitter is,

1:50:10I think threads is there. And so I've been telling myself recently, I need to start paying more

1:50:15attention and really ramping up my usage because I think that's where the people are these days. And

1:50:19not to say that I have a whole lot that I need or want to broadcast, but certainly I want to be

1:50:25a part of the conversation or privy to aware of the conversation if nothing else. And so

1:50:29yeah, I think threads is certainly where it seems to be. And I think that from what I can tell you

1:50:33and I treat threads and mastodon kind of inversely in that I am way in on mastodon. I occasionally

1:50:39look at threads and it seems to me, don't let me put words in your mouth, but it seems to me that

1:50:42you're kind of the opposite. Maybe a little, but I don't know. It's hard. I do. I find it far harder

1:50:51than I would have even expected to try to split my time across even more than one, let alone three

1:50:57or four of these things. And it's unfortunately, even though I like the product very much,

1:51:02blue sky has been as the fourth one has fallen through the cracks for me. Like I still have it

1:51:08on my second home screen. I still look at it once in a while. And, but it's like, I just don't have

1:51:14time for it. It's debatable whether I should spend any time on any of these things, to be honest. I

1:51:20think everybody has thought the same thing about Twitter over the years, but it's in hindsight,

1:51:26now that I've sort of spent time across three of them. Twitter is a legacy product, which I don't

1:51:32avoid. And I understand the people who are like, fuck this guy. I'm just, I'm out. I'm never posting

1:51:38her again. I totally get it. I don't sort of suspect that all things considered, they're

1:51:44probably more right than me to act that way. I'm sort of more, well, I'll go where the audience is.

1:51:51And I still do have a lot of people who use Twitter. And I get it. So I check in and I check

1:51:58my mentions, but it's like the app is so broken. Forget about the fact that Tweetbot and third-party

1:52:02clients don't work anymore. It's been true all year. My, when I go to twitter.com or use the

1:52:09Twitter app on my phone and I go to notifications, my mentions aren't there. They're just broken.

1:52:17This has been true for, I think a full year at this point here. Let me look. So I have to,

1:52:21I can like search for my name and then they all come up, but it's like, oh, it's a pain in the

1:52:26ass. So I do, I check in, I check the Daring Fireball account. My bot has been broke. My

1:52:31Daring Fireball bot has been broken for months. I'm going to fix, I hope I'm going to fix it over

1:52:35the holiday break, but it's, that's sort of my little protest politically. It's in years past,

1:52:42I would have, if my auto posting bot to the Daring Fireball account broke for some reason,

1:52:48my fault or an API change or whatever, that would be like, ah, I better drop everything and fix it

1:52:54in the next day. Whereas my little protest has been letting it sit broken for months.

1:52:59But here, if I go to notifications and Twitter, yeah, it mentions my mentions. I have one December

1:53:0627th, December 18, 18, 18, but they're all from the same guy.

1:53:11Trenton Larkin Hard to believe. I would suspect that you're missing a bunch.

1:53:13Dave Asprey They're all from the same guy. Yeah. And then it goes to December 6th, December 5th,

1:53:18and that's Ben Thompson. So somehow some of the people who you might think algorithmically would

1:53:23be promoted. So I've only got like, I don't know, 15 mentions in all of December. That's not

1:53:28accurate at all. It's just broken. I find it very hard to split my attention between, but-

1:53:34Trenton Larkin I do too.

1:53:34Dave Asprey The two, but with Mastodon and Threads are so different that I actually find if I could

1:53:40just abandon Twitter completely, only using Mastodon and Threads to me, pairs in a very

1:53:48different way. Sort of like having a bicycle and a car where I use them for totally different

1:53:53purposes. And I'm never confused which one is which as opposed to like a motorcycle and a car.

1:53:59Right? It's like, well, then you're both sort of motor vehicles as you know, it's very clear.

1:54:04And Mastodon to me is much more like Twitter of the original years, no algorithmic timeline.

1:54:11And I'm there to follow people. And even when it's just my mentions and I get feedback from random

1:54:20daring fireball readers, I know I'm seeing all my mentions in chronological order. And I can

1:54:26just scroll down, see it and oh, there's one that I remember seeing yesterday or the day before. So

1:54:31I'm done. I'm caught up and I'm done. Whereas the Reds is more like tuning into TV, right? It's like,

1:54:38ah, I've got I'm bored. Let me see what's on Threads. And I know that you can tap a button and

1:54:43get the following timeline where it shows you a chronological timeline of the people you follow.

1:54:49I never even use it. It's not even the fact that it's a tap or two away and they sort of like

1:54:54Instagram stubbornly insist on going back to the algorithmic timeline when you relaunch the app.

1:55:01It's just a pure time waster or or like catching up on news, right? Something happens in the news

1:55:08and I'll go and they do a good job of surfacing that. And my timeline in Threads is and I did

1:55:15funny because it seems like since the EU joined a couple of weeks ago, there's a bunch of new users

1:55:21and it seems like some people suddenly or within the last week or two have started getting more

1:55:29stuff that makes them angry in their Threads timeline. I'm not seeing that at all.

1:55:34I'm seeing like halos and harps playing like it's all dead. I don't see any right wing nuts

1:55:42and there's no fights. It's just, you know, it's pretty nice, but it is sort of just like,

1:55:48let me go there, scroll for a while, see if I see anything new. I often find stuff that's worth it

1:55:53and I'll go to my mentions there, but it's different than Mastodon. So it pairs well where

1:55:58to me it's almost like two different experiences. Yeah, I think that's fair. And I think I don't

1:56:04know that I would recommend Mastodon as like a mass market social network. If you're a nerd or

1:56:09enjoy nerdy things, then yeah, it makes sense. But you know, the cost of entry, not in a financial

1:56:15sense, but like I know they've made it easier to understand what an instance is and what one you

1:56:20would want to choose and so on, but it's just not designed for regular people. Whereas Threads,

1:56:26I think very much is, and you see a lot more regular people on Threads and that comes with

1:56:31some bad, but I think it's mostly a good thing. And so yeah, I don't use Threads much at the moment,

1:56:36but I plan to do my best to increase my usage, even though Mastodon I think will forever be my

1:56:41primary, well, maybe not forever, I shouldn't say that, but it will be my primary social network.

1:56:47But I think more and more over time, I'll be paying attention to Threads and it wouldn't

1:56:50surprise me if it ends up that I just stopped paying quite as much attention to Mastodon.

1:56:54Right now it's 90/10, I think eventually it'll be 60/40 or something like that,

1:56:59but it wouldn't surprise me if that 90/10 ends up floating the other way so that it's 10/90,

1:57:03if you will. But we'll see what happens. But anyway, that was July. We got off on a little

1:57:06bit of a tangent there, but that was July. Yeah, but it's worth it. I do think it's significant

1:57:10and it is fascinating and it is kind of, I've said this, I think to Ben on dithering, but

1:57:17I do see it. Threads has single-handedly changed my mind about Meta as a company in ways that I've

1:57:24had to backtrack on certain assumptions. It is a much better product at a design and engineering

1:57:30level than I'd given them credit for their abilities and their taste. And I get it,

1:57:36my eyes are wide open. I know Instagram used to be like that back when Instagram debuted,

1:57:41and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if 10 years from now Threads is as convoluted as

1:57:48Instagram is today. Instagram is still extremely popular and I still do check in on Instagram,

1:57:55but I don't use Instagram nearly as much as I used to just because I don't enjoy it.

1:57:59But I get why more people do, right? It's become more of a mass market product and the things

1:58:04they've added to Instagram that I don't really care about. I get it that like Reels and the

1:58:10thing at the top, whatever they call it, are what other people like and spend more time with. And

1:58:17God knows they measure it all, so they know what's engaging. It's just not engaging to me, right?

1:58:23Instagram of 2011 was way more engaging to me. So I get it. Threads might get junked up and

1:58:30Zuckerberg's been pretty clear, you know, like they have no ads now. Again, that was true for

1:58:34Instagram for years. And for some reason, my account was blessed and I got ads. I was like

1:58:40the last person on Instagram to get ads. And now I get ads like everybody else, every three posts

1:58:46as I scroll the timeline. And I'm sure Threads might be like that someday too, but maybe not,

1:58:52right? Because it is. Do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm? No, I don't. But you know the general

1:58:57premise and you know Larry David's thing. Is that right? Yeah. He plays himself in the show.

1:59:04And so he is like in the show, he's the Larry David who co-created Seinfeld back in the 90s

1:59:12and is a mega millionaire because of it and is famous because he was a creator of Seinfeld.

1:59:17The difference is he doesn't have Curb Your Enthusiasm in the Curb Your Enthusiasm world,

1:59:21but he's rich. But he's rich and he's spiteful. And two seasons ago, he was in a coffee shop and

1:59:31he likes his coffee piping hot. And he thought the coffee he was served was not hot enough. And

1:59:37the owner came over and said, "Ah, that's hot as everybody else gets it. It's plenty hot."

1:59:41And he says, "If it was so hot, if it's hot, why could I can do this?" And he puts his nose into

1:59:46the coffee and he's like, "It didn't burn me. Now, if this was hot coffee, my nose, I'd have

1:59:50to take it out." And the guy, he gets in a fight with the coffee shop owner about whether the

1:59:54coffee, just one cup of coffee is hot enough. And so what does he do? He finds out that right next

1:59:59to the coffee shop, it's like in a strip mall in LA, there's a vacancy. And so he leases the

2:00:04building and opens a coffee shop just to spite the guy right next to it and undercut his prices,

2:00:10a spite store. That's incredible. That is incredible. It's like a season-long plot.

2:00:16It's not an episode. It's like sort of like a 10 season-long story of him offering opening a spite

2:00:22store. That's what Threads is, right? Threads doesn't exist if Elon doesn't buy Twitter and

2:00:30Zuckerberg doesn't hate Elon. I don't know that they're in it to make money. I feel like they're

2:00:35sort of like, "We make all the money we need from Instagram and the blue app and whatever else.

2:00:41We're just going to build a spite network just to spite Twitter." I find that fascinating because I

2:00:49don't like Elon Musk at a personal level. I actually don't. And so it's nice to root against

2:00:55him and to see a rich company do this. I mean, I guess the difference from Curb Your Enthusiasm is

2:01:03in the show, you kind of think Larry David's being a dick about the whole thing and the coffee shop

2:01:07owner, maybe he was having a bad day. You got one cup of lukewarm coffee. In this case, it's nice to

2:01:13root against Twitter, right? And it's really interesting to me as somebody who's been a

2:01:20Twitter user since the very, very early days to see Meta flex their engineering muscles on this and go

2:01:27from zero to 100 million users and not have the thing fall down overnight and to open up to the

2:01:33whole EU and it just works. And they're adding features and improving it at like an indie

2:01:40developer pace. They really are. It's astonishing. It really is interesting to just sort of observe

2:01:46as a sports fan, right? No, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. And I think what's also fun

2:01:53and fascinating is that when you're Elon Musk and you have effectively infinite money, who's really

2:01:59going to stop you in any capacity? Like, yes, there are laws, kind of. And so there are ways

2:02:04that you can be stopped. But the only person that will really stop him is someone with also infinite

2:02:11money and a team of clearly very talented engineers that who knew can do things other than

2:02:15sell ads. Like they actually, to your point, they brought this from nothing to an incredibly popular

2:02:22social network in the span of effectively zero time. It's utterly fascinating. And

2:02:26and Zuckerberg has said, we'll worry about making money when we get to a billion users.

2:02:32I think he means it. That's sort of what they did with Instagram. It's sort of his formula is,

2:02:37build a thing that you think has the room to grow to a billion users, stick with it. And this to me

2:02:45is where I do see a similarity to Apple, right? Where they're like, yeah, we'll ship this headset

2:02:51that we know is going to sell in very low quantities. And we're just, we have a 10 year

2:02:55plan for this, right? They had a 10. They're so good at the long game, like Apple pay, right?

2:03:00I remember like when Apple pay first came out and it was like, oh, there's only like 13% of

2:03:05US retail places even accept Apple pay. It's a failure or whatever. Now it's everywhere, right?

2:03:10And it's the iPhone. It's like, it's one phone on one carrier in one country. It's not going to be

2:03:14a big hit. Look at it now, right? Meta has sort of has that discipline with threads where they're

2:03:20just like, we're just going to stick with this. And I I'm here for it. That's amazing. Yeah.

2:03:26I, and as you said earlier, it's really changed my opinion of meta for the better. You know, I was

2:03:30snarking a moment ago that they can do things other than sell ads, but that kind of was my

2:03:34opinion for a long time was that's all they really did. That was all the real innovation they ever

2:03:38did leaving aside the Oculus, Oculus is and things of that nature, but the traditional like Facebook,

2:03:42as we always knew it, all they seem to do is sell ads and in shitify Instagram, because to your

2:03:48point, Instagram was amazing in the late aughts and now it's, or maybe it was the early tens. I

2:03:54don't know. I think it was, I think it did be debuted in 2010. Lord only knows how I remember

2:04:00that, but it was, but now it's such a mess using Instagram and I still do like Instagram even

2:04:05despite Instagram, but yeah, I'm very curious to see what the next few months and few years of

2:04:10threads looks like, because I think there's a lot of potential there. I absolutely am here for Elon

2:04:16getting his ass handed to him. I am here for that in any capacity. So I think I'm grabbing my

2:04:21popcorn and I'm watching what's going down to tie it with Apple. The interesting thing is to watch

2:04:26Apple sort of pretend threads isn't there. Right. And there's, there's the whole controversy that's

2:04:33seemingly ended a few weeks or months ago at this point with the I forget what I have at this point,

2:04:42I forget what line Elon Musk crossed that, that had everybody. What was it? It was something like

2:04:48retweet something deeply anti-Semitic or something. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. It was like

2:04:52something like somebody tweeted something about the terribly anti-Semitic great replacement theory

2:04:57and he was like, interesting, whatever. And everybody was like, yeah. And like Disney and

2:05:01GM and Procter and Gamble and all these Coca-Cola and Apple and Nike, it all just stopped advertising

2:05:08on Twitter. But Tim Cook will still post on Twitter for Martin Luther King day or wish

2:05:15everybody had Merry Christmas. I don't know if he did. I don't check Twitter enough to see it

2:05:18anymore, but Tim Cook's not on threads. Every other major CEO is Andy Jassy from Amazon and

2:05:26Satya Nadella and Sundar Puchai from Google. All the other CEOs are on threads and they're like,

2:05:33hey, nice to be here. And you kind of read between them. Apple's not. Only Phil Schiller personally

2:05:38is pretty active on threads, but now Schiller's in a weird sort of half in half out. Well,

2:05:45it's like, yeah, he's not really half in or half out. He's just Phil Schiller now. Right?

2:05:50Right. He's still very much engaged at Apple, I know, but he's unique. Right. And there's

2:06:00Apple accounts for certain things, but they're not very active. You don't have to wonder why that is.

2:06:05Apple and Meta have a very contentious relationship. Right? Very much so. Yeah.

2:06:10Actually of the rank and file Apple employees that I know, the regular engineers, there seems to be a

2:06:18fairly deep, hatred is a strong word, but a very deep dislike of Meta in most of the things they

2:06:25stand for. And this is just rank and file. I'm not even talking about the C-suite. Just the rank and

2:06:28file engineers seem to really dislike Meta a lot. And conversely, now that I'm a little

2:06:35more in touch with Meta and their engineering and stuff, you can see that Meta has resentment

2:06:40towards Apple with the whole app tracking transparency and sort of, I think taking it

2:06:45personally, the whole sort of, I forget, there was a question about something with Zuckerberg

2:06:51and they asked him cook what he would do. And he was like, I've never would have gotten in that

2:06:55problem in the first place. It's definitely personal, even at the rank and file level,

2:07:00not just the executive level. I would say there's more animosity between Meta and Apple than between

2:07:06any of the other, the diagram of all the other big five companies. They all are suspicious of

2:07:13each other in certain ways, but the two that seem to have the most personal dislike is Apple and

2:07:19Meta. Which is funny because you would think it would be Google and Apple. And I think early on,

2:07:23you could make an argument that maybe there was, when Android was pivoted from what it was.

2:07:28It was like more black. Well, I mean, yeah, it was the end of Steve Jobs's life was him declaring

2:07:33they're going to go to war over Android copying iPhone. On the other hand, I think Apple was a

2:07:39little late to embrace YouTube and eventually came around. And now the Apple channel on YouTube has

2:07:46everything you'd think. They put their keynotes on it live because they know that there's, for however

2:07:53many of us watch it, you know, the keynotes remotely on Apple TV or on apple.com, there's

2:07:58a lot of people who are going to watch on YouTube and they put their commercials on YouTube and they

2:08:03put the behind the scenes thing on YouTube for the iPhone. So I would guess that they'll do the same

2:08:10with Threads, but it's sort of a wait and see. We'll be the last company to embrace Threads the

2:08:15way that they were active on Twitter. But I think they're going to eventually because I think it's

2:08:20sort of inevitable in a way that putting your stuff on YouTube was inevitable. I mean, and even

2:08:26Microsoft who again, doesn't really have animosity towards Google, but Microsoft, you know, is very

2:08:32much like Apple sort of a do our own thing. We don't use other people's stack. Microsoft puts

2:08:38everything on YouTube. Everybody, if you have like a keynote and it's not on YouTube, it might as

2:08:42well not exist to some segment of the population. No, it's true. It really is. I mean, I tried it

2:08:47with, you know, even my own goofy live shows. I used to have them on Vimeo. I'd rather in theory,

2:08:53put them on Vimeo than YouTube because I don't need YouTube's ads. I don't want their ads. I mean,

2:08:58I have my own sponsors, but when I had my live talk shows on Vimeo, it was constant whack-a-mole

2:09:05with people putting them on YouTube. All right. I was irritated, but when they'd show up on YouTube,

2:09:12it was always people who liked my show. There's a great, great live show from WWDC. Here it is

2:09:17on YouTube. I couldn't find it on YouTube. So here it is. And it's at some point you got to stop

2:09:23trying to get water to run uphill. Yep. It's very true. Oh, all right. We're halfway through the

2:09:28year. We're going to have to cut it short. We spent so much time on the half of the year where

2:09:33Apple didn't release stuff that I know. God, yeah, this is big ATP energy right now. Well,

2:09:37let me, let me just take a break here. I thank our second and final sponsor of the show, our final

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2:11:19I always say, Marco always says on the other show, you, the listener of this show, you're the nerd in

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2:11:36doesn't even know which is which, comes to you and says, what should I do with a new website?

2:11:41Send them to Squarespace. It'll make them happy. It'll keep them out of your hair. They'll be able

2:11:45to do it themselves. That's how approachable it is to the lay person. And give them my URL.

2:11:51Send them to squarespace.com/talkshow. Or if you prefer, if you want to, I'll be magnanimous. You

2:11:57could go to squarespace.com/ATP. Why not both, Jon? Why not both?

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2:12:29Indeed. All right. Speed run.

2:12:32I mean, at this point, do we just go for broke? I mean, where are we at this point?

2:12:37It's pretty long.

2:12:38So iPhone event in September?

2:12:40Yeah. So what do we think in hindsight? I would say the thumbs up if we go thumbs up,

2:12:45thumbs down. iPhone 15, I think, are super successful. I just picked up, I dropped in

2:12:52my bathroom, my uncased iPhone 15 Pro. Didn't break anything, didn't shatter anything, but it

2:12:59has the tiniest little, it's like a dent in the titanium. It's the right kind of damage where it's

2:13:07sort of personalized. It's all counted as patina rather than a damage.

2:13:12Yeah. It's patina more than... And it landed face down. So I had that moment where I was like,

2:13:18oh God. And I turned it around and it's nothing. And I was like, ooh. And I didn't even notice

2:13:23the little dent until like the next day. So I've got one more. Titanium total win, action button,

2:13:29total win.

2:13:31Let me ask, are you using the action button a lot? And what do you have it set to?

2:13:36I still have it set to the shortcut I wrote about when I've customized a shortcut where

2:13:42if the phone is face down or pointing down, like in my pocket, it toggles mute on and off

2:13:50and otherwise launches the camera app. I do use it, but I honestly, I thought I

2:13:57toggled the mute switch more than when it was a switch, more than I turn out doing.

2:14:01And so I've sort of been leaning towards just changing it back to just launching the camera app

2:14:09because some, but I know overall it, it mostly just works for me. My shortcut where I just sort

2:14:16of point it like I'm going to point a camera. And when I hold the button down, it launches the camera

2:14:20app. So pretty happy with it. Yeah. I have mine set for camera and I definitely like having it.

2:14:26And I know that you can do the little swipe from right to left to get to the camera, but

2:14:31I don't know what my deal is, but I feel like half the time I go to do that,

2:14:33it doesn't freaking work. And it's probably, I'm not saying it's Apple. I think it's me not

2:14:36swiping accurately or something like that, but having a physical button in order to just grab

2:14:41the phone, mash down on it, and then you're in the camera. And then certainly if you leave it

2:14:45set to the stock camera position, if you will, then you can also use it as a shutter, which is

2:14:50super great. And I, I really enjoy having it. It's not make or break, do or die, but especially

2:14:56since I, as an Apple watch person, my phone hasn't been off silent in, since 2014 when I got my first

2:15:02Apple watch. And so the ring silent switch was the world's most expensive and worst idea of a

2:15:08fidget spinner that I ever had, but that's what I used it for. I would just click it incessantly

2:15:11and it's a miracle and never broke any of them. But having the action button is way better in

2:15:15my opinion. And I'm glad that it's there, even though I don't think it's the sort of thing

2:15:21that I would buy a new phone just to get that. No, I, I, I, I would never recommend somebody

2:15:26buy it just for that, but it's nice overall. And I, I get it, I guess. And I loved the mute switch

2:15:34and I still sometimes miss it. I forget what app I was using the other day. It was, I don't know

2:15:40what it was, but I was watching video. Maybe it was threads. I don't know, but I wasn't getting

2:15:44any audio in the video I was playing. And it turns out the problem is it was on silent mode. And I,

2:15:50most of the time video bursts through that or sometimes it does. I'm always a little confused,

2:15:56but in the old days, when it was a switch, I wouldn't even have to look, I would just

2:16:00guess that's the problem and just move the mute switch while I'm still playing the video. And then

2:16:06if the sound kicks in, I'm like, Oh, that was the problem. And you don't get to do that anymore.

2:16:11I guess I would, if I set the action button to only always toggle mute, but it's not enough

2:16:17that I miss it. You know, and the other thing is I'm the sicko who loves the key click sounds.

2:16:22Oh, that's right. It's been so long since we've been around each other. I completely forgot about

2:16:27that. I do like the key click sounds, but I like them, or I think I like them a little bit less now

2:16:34that the iPhone finally has haptic feedback on the keyboard, which is very subtle, but that's what I

2:16:40like and still do like about the key clicks is it is a form. It's like you're getting, it's not haptic,

2:16:47but you're involving more of your senses. And I can't, I think I type better with my thumbs when

2:16:53the clicks are on, but you know, there are times when I know it's inappropriate to do it. And one

2:16:59of them is certainly when I'm in bed with my wife, that is an instant I might get shoved out of the

2:17:06bed. And so I have found with this phone, I just, I kind of becoming more like most normal people

2:17:14where my phone is in silent mode all the time and okay, fine. There's the rumor. I just wrote about

2:17:20it today. In fact, that the next year's iPhones are going to add another button, a dedicated,

2:17:25they're calling it a capture button, which I can't help but think will be, and Gurman has said,

2:17:30it'll be for capturing video, but I have heard no little birdies talk about this button at all. So I

2:17:35don't know, but just knowing Apple, somebody at Apple who blabbed to Gurman said that it maybe by

2:17:41default it goes to video, but surely if they add that button, you'll be able to configure it. Even

2:17:47if it only does camera related things, you'll be able to say, oh, always go to video, go to still

2:17:54photos, use it to take still, you know, you'll be able to do more than one thing, shoot video with

2:17:59it. I'm sure that would be kind of, it would almost be silly to add a button that only shoots video

2:18:04or that only shoots stills, but I'm here for that. I've, as a dedicated hardware camera fan over the

2:18:11decades, I do miss having a hardware shutter button and it would, that would then free up

2:18:17my action button to just go back to toggling silent mode. That's true. Yeah. I'm holding my

2:18:22phone now and it occurs to me like in principle, if you hold it in such a way that the action

2:18:28button is on top, there's no, you know, the shutter is the action is where a shutter button would be.

2:18:34But then my natural inclination is to put my finger in front of the lenses and that's no good.

2:18:39So if you flip it the other way, such that you have a button on the other side, on the same side

2:18:44as the lock switch or lock button or whatever they call it, then it makes a lot more sense because

2:18:49your natural place to put your finger is no longer in the way of the lens array. So I get it. I mean,

2:18:54it does make sense. And again, I do have a micro four thirds camera and although I use it increasingly

2:18:59rarely these days, I still do love having a physical camera. And I agree with you having a

2:19:03physical shutter button is pretty great. I just told you I like it with the action button and it

2:19:06would be even better positioned more like a physical shutter in a big camera. Yeah. And I

2:19:12will also say, I think year in year out for years now, a very long stretch ever since the camera app

2:19:21became more than utterly simplistic, right? Like the original first few years of the iPhone,

2:19:26it was, I mean, it didn't even have video originally. It was really just a button,

2:19:29right? It was like a shutter button. I think the camera UI team at Apple is their

2:19:34number one A team of interface designers. I think it is, if I had to do like a lecture on

2:19:42interface user interface design, I could imagine doing an entire lecture just on the interface

2:19:48design of the iPhone camera app. It is so good. I think it looks good. I think it's got such an

2:19:55incredible attention to detail. And a truly immense amount of complexity that has to be hidden. I mean,

2:20:01if you look at the camera app by default, there's a few buttons across the top and the slider of

2:20:06video, photo, et cetera, et cetera, and the lens selector, but there's not a lot of stuff here.

2:20:11And you can do the little dropy downy thing when that's when you get a lot more controls, but

2:20:15it is surprising how basic and safe it looks unless you want to go digging. And that's really important

2:20:24because you got to cater to everyone and a more amateur or perhaps even a professional photographer

2:20:29can get a lot of what they want in the camera app. But someone who doesn't really care about that

2:20:34stuff, they just have the big white button that's always been there and they can point and shoot and

2:20:37be fairly confident that it's going to work. Yeah. So I, with that team, I just anticipate,

2:20:43I guess it's wishful thinking, but I just think that team will think of clever ways to use a

2:20:48dedicated hardware button that I can't even imagine. And I can't wait to see it. And supposedly

2:20:53it's a force, you know, won't actually move button. It'll be like the old touch ID button

2:20:58that's that uses haptic feedback. My idiot idea is to just make it like a dedicated hardware camera

2:21:05where you half press to focus and like exposure lock and then full press to shoot. But I wouldn't

2:21:11be surprised if that camera team thinks of even more clever ways to just one simple button with

2:21:16force sensitivity, do really clever things. I can't wait. Yeah. I don't have much more to say

2:21:22though about the iPhones. I don't know. I mean, I mean, I really like them. I went big phone for

2:21:27the first time this year because I really wanted that five X camera. And I do like,

2:21:30I think for the most part, I do like it. I've turned into one of those dorks that has a pop

2:21:35socket on the back because this is not a one hand phone. It's just not, I mean, maybe if you have

2:21:39freakishly large, large hands, but I have normal person hands and it's just not a one handed phone.

2:21:44So I've seen that there are some rumblings that maybe next year, the pro, but not pro max would

2:21:50get the same zoom lens that the only the pro max got for the iPhone 15. And although I do love the

2:21:56real estates of the 15 pro max, I would probably think real hard and perhaps would even go back to

2:22:04the 15 pro because it's just so much nicer to have a phone that you can easily use in one hand.

2:22:09I stand by the decision I made. I think I would make it again today given the iPhone 15 lineup.

2:22:14But if the 16 gives me the option of having the big, deep zoom,

2:22:18even in the regular size phone, I'll probably go and do that.

2:22:22That was always the pattern. I mean, it's always a pattern until Apple breaks it, but in the

2:22:26like iPhone 6, 7, 8 era, or maybe not 8, there would be years when the plus camera would have

2:22:34features that the regular one like optical image stabilization debuted in, I don't know,

2:22:40like the 6s plus or I don't know what it is. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. I don't remember.

2:22:47I know optical image stabilization was because it was physical, right? It's the ones.

2:22:51I'm thinking portrait mode wasn't it's it was always, it was always things that made sense

2:22:57would take some extra physical space in the actual hardware. But every time they did it,

2:23:04and back then I never once to come to buying the plus phone, even though every time it hurt me that

2:23:09I was no longer having the best camera on my iPhone. Same, but every time they did it the next

2:23:14year, that feature would come to the regular sized iPhone. And that would, you know, if the rumor is

2:23:20true, and it's not just people speculating, it seems to be coming from the supply chain,

2:23:24that's going to happen with the 5x zoom next year. So I guess that's good. I say I guess because

2:23:31I get and I just today was shooting something outside our window across the street,

2:23:35I sort of wanted to zoom in. Amy has a Pro Max and I was looking for her phone. I was going to

2:23:41use her phone to shoot the picture, but I couldn't find her phone. She had it like upstairs or

2:23:46something. So I, you know, I guess more often than I want 3x, I do want as much reach as possible,

2:23:54right? The conundrum is if you do want like a 3x zoom for the framing purposes, the Pro Max is

2:24:03worse because it has to upscale the 2x camera to the 3x range or 4x range. But that trade-off

2:24:11overall, I think you want the most reach possible more often than you really want the highest

2:24:17possible 3x accuracy. Yeah, it could be more, especially in my point in life when we have two

2:24:22kids in elementary school and elementary school performances are a thing and things of that nature.

2:24:27And so reach matters. Reach matters. Reach matters big time. I'm surprised if you were looking for

2:24:33Amy's phone, you didn't do the find my friends thing with the ultra wide band. You know what

2:24:37I'm talking about? Because I've tried that a handful of times with Aaron and I in like a store

2:24:41or whatever, and it isn't perfect, but my goodness, when it works, it is magic. I've not used that yet

2:24:49because we just don't go out that much. But it wasn't important enough to spend more than 10

2:24:56seconds looking for the phone. And it wasn't a fleeting moment per se. It was a guy on a cherry

2:25:03picker across the street doing something on the roof of somebody's building. He was going to be

2:25:06in the cherry picker for a while, but I didn't feel like hunting for the phone. But what else?

2:25:10iOS 17, I guess that's, I'd give it part of my overall thumbs up for the year is a general idea

2:25:18that Apple has, as all of their platforms have stabilized, they've taken a sort of, if it ain't

2:25:25broke, don't fix it approach. I don't have, it's not just that we're two hours and 40 minutes into

2:25:32this and I want to rush, but I don't have much to say about iOS 17 other than overall, then pretty

2:25:39solid year. And it was, there were no, ooh, don't upgrade yet moments. They sort of have done a good

2:25:46job. I think they've done an ever better job each year taking not fully cooked features and just

2:25:53waiting to put them in 17.2 or 17.3 or something like that. Yeah, I totally agree with you.

2:26:00Although it occurs to me, I think iOS 17 could have alone gotten a thumbs up from me for the rest,

2:26:08even if the rest of the year was trash, iOS 17 could have gotten a thumbs up strictly because

2:26:13they finally fixed the fucking autocorrect that was driving me bananas on the last like three or

2:26:19four versions of iOS. And 17, every great once in a while, I'll have like a weird capitalization or

2:26:25it'll go from two words that genuinely belong together and then it'll go off into La La Land

2:26:32and replace with some other words. But that was happening always in iOS 16. And now it happens

2:26:38once a week at most. I mean, maybe your experience is different, but mine has been so much better.

2:26:43And that alone has made it okay to type on my phone again, because it was the worst in iOS 16.

2:26:49It was so bad and it was so infuriating. It's argued, I would put it up there as one of the most

2:26:56invisible features when it works, right? You really don't, it's good of you to call it out

2:27:00and think about it. But my, I have to think back, I'm like rolling my eyes in my head and thinking,

2:27:06yeah, I haven't had a complaint about autocorrect in a long time. So yeah, kudos to them. And it's

2:27:12sort of, to me, emblematic of Apple's approach to AI and machine learning and stuff where they're not

2:27:19doing, and I don't think it's just out of character for them to do wow, holy crap things like

2:27:28chat GPTs or the image generation things. They're just sort of make things nicer and do it in an

2:27:36invisible way that doesn't really stick out, right? It's pretty good. Although on the other hand,

2:27:42I guess the other thing in September, we can just roll right into Apple Watch discussion.

2:27:46WatchOS 10 is a huge upgrade, right? And I still, I kind of have mixed feelings about it.

2:27:55They did bring back in the last update, like a couple weeks ago, the swipe between watch faces

2:28:02thing, which to me was baffling that they got rid of. I say that, but I mean, cause I use it all the

2:28:08time. That's like the way I use my Apple Watch is I have like three faces that I swipe between

2:28:13with varying amounts of complications. But like my main one is just, it's very simple version of the

2:28:20utility face with the weather in the top left. I've got the date in that three o'clock marker

2:28:26inside the watch face on utility. And that's it. It's just a simple analog watch with hour,

2:28:32minute, second hands, no numbers, just a simple face, very minimal. But then, you know, like I

2:28:38swipe to the side and I have the exact same watch face, but with fantastic call underneath. So if I

2:28:43know I have events coming up, but then if I know I have nothing coming up, I just swipe over to the

2:28:48side and instead of saying no more events or something down there, just nothing, just blank.

2:28:53I thought it was crazy that they got rid of that, but they really sort of rejiggered the whole

2:28:59watchOS interface, right? Like notification center. They added this smart dock that comes

2:29:05up from the bottom, but that's where control center used to be. And now to get to control

2:29:10center, you have to hit the side button, but hitting the side button used to bring it to

2:29:13the app switcher. It's, I don't know. I don't, I just don't love Apple watch enough to really

2:29:19care that much. I don't know. I mean, I, but it is weird Apple watch, but I agree with you that

2:29:25it's not a platform that is so integral to my life that changes like this. I mean, some of them

2:29:30are weird. Some of them are not, but it doesn't totally shatter my world one way or the other.

2:29:35It did shatter Aaron's world when they killed swipe to change faces, which like you said,

2:29:40they brought back, but she uses a album face as her watch face, it's an album with the kids,

2:29:45and it has the time on it and basically nothing else. I think that's all they allow you to put

2:29:48on it. But then she would swipe over one to get to the complications for like fitness and stuff

2:29:53like that. She looks at several times a day, and now you can presumably swipe up and do that widget

2:29:59kind of like the Siri watch face used to be, but it was certainly a period of much consternation

2:30:05from her that she couldn't just swipe laterally like she was used to doing. But no, I think all

2:30:10in all, the changes are good. It looks good. Like Carrot Weather, although I don't typically

2:30:13use it outside of a complication on my watch face, on the occasions that I tap into Carrot Weather,

2:30:18it looks beautiful. The, what is it? Brian Muller, I believe, really did a good job embracing the new

2:30:24design paradigms and obviously Underscore has been doing a lot of great work with what he's got in on

2:30:28the watch. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't go so far as to say it was like a nothing burger because

2:30:33there was a lot of improvements, but nothing that I can look at and say, yep, that's the thing that

2:30:37really changed my life for the better. Yeah, it's, I guess I've just sort of procrastinated on

2:30:43reviewing watchOS 10 and there's just not much to say about the hardware, right? I mean, really,

2:30:49they just added the double tap feature. And I know it's a new system on a chip and they'd actually

2:30:54gone a couple of years without revving that. And with my review unit, the main thing I noticed was

2:31:01I do think the significantly increased battery life, which for a daily product is great. It's

2:31:08a big difference to go to day and a half battery life from day long battery life.

2:31:12Day long battery life, you're always going to be a little stressed about it, right? And day and a

2:31:16half, you're still going to need to charge it every night, but you don't need to stress about

2:31:20it. You never need to top it up in the middle of the day or anything like that.

2:31:23Right. But you can do something like if you're going on a two hour long walk, sure,

2:31:28I'll just say okay to letting you track it as a fitness event, even though you know that those

2:31:34fitness events really do drain the battery. Increasing battery life is great, but literally

2:31:39otherwise, like from the outside, indistinguishable from series eight and ultra one. It's the OS that

2:31:45changed. There's a rumor again, I think Gurman's on it. Other people have too, that next year they

2:31:51might even call it series 10 with an X like they did with iPhone 10 and finally change the strap

2:31:59adapters. You guys talked about it at length on ATP. No, I don't see how anybody can complain. I

2:32:04mean, people will complain because the watch straps are expensive, but 10 years is a long run. So

2:32:10if they do change it, that'd be interesting. But to me, the interesting difference is when they

2:32:16totally changed how the iPhone paradigm worked and got rid of the home button, went to a full screen,

2:32:21they had to change the OS to accommodate that, right? They went hand in hand. The weird thing,

2:32:30maybe not weird, but different is that this was the year with watchOS 10 where they rejiggered

2:32:35all of the way the interface works. So the side button does a different thing. You swipe up for

2:32:39a different thing. You swipe, you do this for a different thing. The navigation is totally

2:32:45different. They added the whole smart stack thing with the widgets, which was all new,

2:32:50with a watch that looked exactly like last year's, right? And if they change next year's watch to

2:32:56look different, like, oh, I can just tell at a glance on your wrist, you've got the new Apple

2:33:01Watch X. I don't think there's going to be any OS change accordingly, right? Because they already

2:33:08did that this year. But yeah, I think you're right. And with regard to the bands, just briefly,

2:33:14it'll bum me out if we lose compatibility because over the years, especially once

2:33:18Aaron and I landed on the same watch size, because early on I was on the bigger size,

2:33:23she was on the smaller, now I'm on the smaller size. It'll bum me out to lose our collection.

2:33:28Not that we have anything fancy or expensive. We're not rocking a black link bracelet or

2:33:32anything like that. But nevertheless- I still have mine, but it's from the Series Zero.

2:33:36Right, exactly. Oh, God, I coveted that so badly. I wanted one so bad, but I was

2:33:41too cheap to do it. But nevertheless, it'll bum me out if we do switch sizes. But to your point,

2:33:46I mean, 10 years is perfectly reasonable. And actually, just very briefly, not that we have

2:33:50any need to go on any longer, but I am surprised, speaking of nothing burgers, the USB-C transition

2:33:57in terms of complaining, that was a nothing burger. Like, I can't think of a single person

2:34:01that I heard, not even like a friend of a friend of a friend, that complained about it. Everyone

2:34:05seems completely copacetic with it, and nobody had any problems, which is good. I mean, I'm glad.

2:34:10I think that Apple- you could make an argument that Apple did it at the right time,

2:34:14specifically because nobody is complaining about it, and everyone seems happy with it.

2:34:18Yeah, Amy complained a little bit because of- oh, I know what it was. She still had AirPods Pro 1,

2:34:31so she had this one thing that required a lightning adapter. But because her phone

2:34:36was upgraded to this, I changed the little spare kitchen adapters to all be USB-C.

2:34:42But I fixed that at Christmas by getting her Apple AirPods Pro 2 with a USB-C case. So

2:34:48the complaint's gone. But that wasn't really a complaint about the iPhone switching to USB-C.

2:34:54It was the complaint about still having this one thing that still required lightning.

2:34:58I agree with you, though. It really was a nothing burger.

2:35:02With the exception of people were a little grumpy, and I do understand it, about track

2:35:06pads and keyboards still being lightning. And that doesn't bother me as much, since it's like

2:35:10a once a month or once every couple of weeks kind of situation. But it did strike me as a little

2:35:15weird that Apple couldn't find the time to update their peripherals. I mean, they even did- it took

2:35:20a few months, but they even did the case only for the AirPods Pro. You can get an AirPods Pro USB-C

2:35:27case without the actual earbuds, but we still haven't gotten new keyboards or track pads or

2:35:32mice or anything like that. Yeah, I think it kind of speaks to how important the iMac is.

2:35:37Well, really. But you're honest. Yeah, yeah.

2:35:41You know, I mean, is it a big deal that they just ship the exact same keyboards and track

2:35:46pads and mouse? No, but you know, surely that upgrade is coming. But you know, so what? It

2:35:52didn't come yet. I guess that leads us into October, which was the M3 series MacBook Pros.

2:36:01And I'm so glad I've got you on the show. I want to tell you that this is the one area where I feel

2:36:08most aligned with you on ATP, especially with Marco giving you shit about picking a 14-inch

2:36:14over a 16-inch, right? So for people who don't listen to ATP, Casey has a 14-inch new space

2:36:20black, right? You're not an animal. Marco got the 16-inch and the 16-inch basically has more thermal

2:36:29headroom for sustained performance. And Marco gives you a lot of grief about it. But I think

2:36:34that's ridiculous. I'm a 14-inch man myself. And I think your explanation that you don't run into

2:36:42the thermal limits of the 14, so why would you care? I honestly don't get it. I feel like it's

2:36:48sort of he doth protest too much. And I think Marco ribs you about it because he's the one

2:36:54lugging around a heavier, bigger laptop that he probably doesn't really need.

2:37:00That's very true. And I mean, obviously part of the shtick of ATP is to just give each other

2:37:05stick. But the only time it ever bothers me is when I'm doing some sort of transcode of some

2:37:10sort of video file, which honestly, 98% of the time I'm doing that when the computer's sitting

2:37:16at my desk and I'm somewhere else. I'll take it off and then I'll walk away.

2:37:19You're not doing it on an airplane on the train.

2:37:22Generally speaking, that is absolutely correct. I can't think of a time I did do it on an airplane.

2:37:26But either way, in one breath, I'll tell you that the M3 versus the M1, I have an M3 max and I had

2:37:32an M1 max. I wouldn't say that they're night and day different in terms of speed. I mean,

2:37:36this one feels faster, but it's not earth-shattering. Then again, I look at the

2:37:41speeds in which I can transcode stuff using FFmpeg on the command line and it is considerably faster

2:37:47from what I can tell. Like at the frame rate, it's not a frame rate, I'm doing like 10 to 15

2:37:51X sometimes doing an HEVC in code and that is pretty great. And additionally, I love that M1

2:37:57max to death. Like that computer was probably my favorite computer I've ever owned in my life.

2:38:02It was all of the great stuff from my iMac Pro, which I also adored, but I could take it up and

2:38:07bring it anywhere I wanted. And there was no compromise other than screen real estate.

2:38:11This one is that cranked to 11 and oh my, I am such a sucker for the space black. I am such a

2:38:18sucker for it. It looks so good. And I probably would have bought anything they sold me as long

2:38:25as it had that color because I'm a complete sucker. So what is Christina Warren has the

2:38:29rose gold? I think that's her like kryptonite. Well, for me, it's space black, just a blackish

2:38:34laptop. Get me more black if you can, I'll do it every time. Yeah. So I'm sticking with my M1 max

2:38:4114 inch MacBook Pro, which I bought when it was new two plus years ago and maxed out. I have the

2:38:47most storage I think is four terabytes. I have the most RAM you can get, which is 64 gigabytes. It

2:38:54was like $5,000. And when I was reviewing the M3 14 inch, I mean, the Apple sent me like literally

2:39:04the laptop I would buy, I guess it has less storage, but you know, I don't need storage on a

2:39:10review unit. Right. But it was maxed out at RAM, which is what is the max now? Is it 96 or 128?

2:39:16120. They gave me one with 120. I was so in there. I still think I think it's phenomenal.

2:39:21And I thought as I was using it for a week and a half to write my review, I'm like, I'm going to

2:39:27buy one of these because I just want it so bad. And it's like, I could just, I'll either say, I

2:39:32often don't sell my old stuff, but it's like, well, with an M1 max, you know, that I paid $5,000

2:39:38for I'll sell it. Or maybe, you know, I just like testing Jonas. Do you need a new laptop? How's

2:39:44your MacBook Air holding up? Please say yes. But then ultimately I went back to my M1 max,

2:39:52my personal one that's two years old. And I didn't notice a single thing different. I mean, like

2:39:58where the way I use a Mac and I don't even do anything like the transcoding things you do with

2:40:03that, I even think I'd run into it. I always notice going backwards to a slightly slower device more

2:40:11than I noticed getting the new review unit with the latest and greatest. But I mean, I literally

2:40:17could not tell anything was any, that's how fast my M1 max. So I was like, you know what, I'll just,

2:40:22I'm good. I'll just, I'm going to be a big boy. And I put that beautiful, beautiful space black

2:40:28thing back in the box so I wouldn't be able to see it. And I'm back to space gray and I'm like,

2:40:34I'll at least wait till the M4s. I just can't. It was a momentary bout of sensibility.

2:40:40I was going to say the world is turned upside down where I'm the one spending money like it's going

2:40:44out of style. And you're the one saying, no, no, no, no. I'll pause on this one.

2:40:48A momentary bout of sensibility. And I thought I can live with space gray. It's just,

2:40:52I just literally couldn't notice anything. It's that good. And for my needs, I have this terrible,

2:40:59terrible browser tab, have hundreds of browser tabs open. But I was 64 gigabytes in the 18 months

2:41:08to two years of all the times I've ever looked in activity monitor. I've only seen swap used once.

2:41:14And it was like two megabytes. I don't know. It was like ridiculous. It was like the tiniest amount

2:41:19of swap. And then I went over and typed uptime and it was like uptime 27 days. And I'm like,

2:41:24oh, I could just restart. Yep. That's why with this one, I did get more storage because I

2:41:31apparently really hate money, but you want to keep it for years, right? Well, that's the theory,

2:41:36but I upgraded in two years, Marco as well, kind of Marco style. But nevertheless, I stuck with 64

2:41:41gigs. I could have, like, I had told myself that, hey, you know, if you want to go all in on this,

2:41:47like I did with the prior one with the M1, then just go all in. It'll be fine. But I was in a

2:41:52similar boat where when it comes to RAM, especially since I'm not doing heavy GPU stuff, it just didn't

2:41:57seem worth it. And so I stuck with 64 gigs. I went eight terabytes because I don't ever want to have

2:42:01to think about running out of storage. And we were talking about this earlier. I'm long since done

2:42:05worrying about storage, but I stuck with 64 gigs because I don't think I need more than that. I

2:42:10mean, remind me of this in a year when I buy the M4 with 3000 gigs or three terabytes of RAM, but

2:42:16you know, sitting here now, I don't think I need it. Yeah. Going back to my personal M1 and

2:42:22realizing, you know, of course I'm not noticing any slowdowns because I never swap with 64.

2:42:27The last spec that I always thought I was enough of a power user that I could never get enough of

2:42:34was RAM. And I have to admit that even my browser habit, 64 gigabytes is good enough for me for now.

2:42:41Some paraphrasing of the Bill Gates, 640 kilobytes of memory should be enough for anyone. 64 gigabytes

2:42:48of RAM, at least in 2023 remains enough for me, which again is ridiculous. Syracuse and I,

2:42:57so we were talking about my old Power Mac 9600 350 desktop thing. And I was looking up the specs and

2:43:04honest to God, I was like confused. I got totally confused about megabytes and gigabytes. I was like,

2:43:09wait, I remember thinking, cause when I bought it, I remember thinking, oh my God, it has so

2:43:15much RAM. This is glorious. And it was like, I don't know, 64 megabytes of RAM. I mean,

2:43:21it's like ridiculous at the time it seemed luxurious, but then it very quickly it's only,

2:43:27this is the first, my M1 Macs MacBook Pro is the first time in my entire life where I feel like I

2:43:33have more RAM than I need. Yep. Yeah. I think that's probably true. I don't remember how much

2:43:37I had in my iMac Pro cause I think I had quite a bit, but I don't know. I think it was, I had 64

2:43:42gigs in the iMac Pro and that's why I went 64 in the M1 is cause I didn't want to go backwards,

2:43:47even though I knew it wasn't, you know, apples weren't exactly apples in this situation,

2:43:50but I didn't want to go backwards. And yeah, I think once I hit Apple Silicon, it's been

2:43:55plenty for me and I'm doing, you know, a fair bit with Xcode. I occasionally run Final Cut Pro

2:43:59and I never run into a problem. I'm now rocking three 5k screens and it's still not an issue.

2:44:05I will say, I think it's worth commenting on. I have it in the notes here, but I thought really

2:44:10interesting and worth commemorating in the year in review thing is the fact that Apple shot the

2:44:16scary fast event that announced these M3 MacBook Pros with iPhones as the camera.

2:44:23Yep. Yep. Yep. And I know that they announced it and the first reaction everybody had was,

2:44:28wow, they shot that with iPhone. I had no idea. And then the half a second later was, yeah,

2:44:33with a crew of 60 professional cinematographers and a drone and a crane and all of this stuff.

2:44:41And of course they did that. It's still though, both things can be true. They, yes, they still

2:44:47had a probably millions plus dollar budget to shoot the damn thing and used world-class crew,

2:44:55right? But they did. They shot the damn thing with iPhones. And I find that incredibly inspiring.

2:45:02And it's in the same way that I love iPhone photography contests, or I know this year he

2:45:09didn't do it, but a friend of the show, do you ever meet Austin Mann? If you know, I know who

2:45:14you're talking about, but I've never met him. I've met him a couple of times. You'd love him. He's

2:45:18just a genuinely aces person, but like for several years in a row, he would go to exotic places like

2:45:27shoot silverback gorillas in Africa or lions on the planes and test the new iPhone camera.

2:45:33And of course I can't shoot photographs a fraction as good as Austin Mann or anybody who's won

2:45:41iPhone photography contests or had their photos chosen by Apple for the decade plus long shot with

2:45:49iPhone billboard campaign. But I love them because they're inspiring to me. There's what I know is

2:45:56the bar for shooting with this camera that's right in my pocket right now. Somebody did that.

2:46:02It's like a stretch goal. I really admire them for doing it. And I think it's a genuine feather

2:46:09in their cap. And I think kind of shows, I know everybody wants to chalk up the switch to USB-C

2:46:16as being entirely forced by the EU regulations, but talking to people at Apple, and of course,

2:46:22some people at Apple are going to be prone to resist admitting that the EU forced their hand.

2:46:28But I really do think that even absent that regulation that the iPhone might've switched to

2:46:33US, the iPhone pro models, at least maybe they wouldn't have switched the non-pro ones, but

2:46:38they didn't just change the charging port. They added legitimately pro features where you can

2:46:44do these incredibly pro things and shoot your high-res video to an external SSD. In fact,

2:46:50you can shoot, I think 4K pro res, you can only shoot to an external storage device. It's a

2:46:58genuinely professional feature. And there's no way, I mean, I know from talking to people at

2:47:03Apple, that's the reason this was the first time they shot an event with iPhone cameras,

2:47:08because they needed that. They actually, it's not, I think optically they could have done it before.

2:47:14I think the video was good enough optical quality in some ways, but the actual technical reasons

2:47:20that they want USB-C out at a high speed to shoot to a storage device, I think it's tremendous and

2:47:28just inspiring. And sure, student filmmakers aren't going to have a budget like Apple does for this,

2:47:35but never underestimate how clever, talented young filmmakers can be. And the cameras right there,

2:47:43they already have it. Yep. Yeah. I don't know if you, are you familiar with Tyler Stahlman?

2:47:47Has he ever been on the show? I don't recall. Okay. No, he's not been on the show, but I

2:47:51am trying to think if I met him. I might've been introduced to him through Whiskas, I forget,

2:47:54but I know his work. It seems awful that I don't remember whether I met him in person.

2:48:00I mean, it's been a while since we've been around people, but he just-

2:48:03YouTuber extraordinaire.

2:48:04... for 48 hours. Yes, exactly. And he's a professional photographer,

2:48:08just really tremendous work. And just in the last 24 or 48 hours, he announced the Stahlman Clamp,

2:48:15which is a pro-level iPhone clamp that's designed for vertical video, which admittedly vertical

2:48:23video is not my thing because I'm an old, but the point is that it is, I think that this is

2:48:29indicative of kind of the ripple effect of the shot on iPhone thing from the keynote, because

2:48:35I think Tyler is smart enough that he would have landed here regardless, but it's proof that you

2:48:42can use an iPhone in a truly professional capacity. And I don't think Tyler would be

2:48:47designing and building the Stahlman Clamp to use in a professional context unless he wanted to use

2:48:53it, right? And so the fact that the iPhone can be used for real honest to goodness professional work,

2:48:58I mean, it's used for an Apple keynote for goodness sakes. Like, it's clear that it has

2:49:03arrived in that capacity, and I think that's incredibly cool. And as you said, deeply,

2:49:08deeply inspiring. Now, it will never look as good as an Apple keynote without having, you know,

2:49:12Tyler's experience and Apple's budget, but it can look pretty darn good. And knowing that you can

2:49:19get that quality from the phone that's already in your pocket is incredibly, incredibly inspiring.

2:49:24Pete: Yeah. Do you think they're going to keep shooting future keynotes always with iPhones?

2:49:29Jared. That's a great question. I would say, I would think they will. I'm not super convinced,

2:49:40but I think they will. Pete. I sort of, but I wonder, like with this one, because they wanted

2:49:47to be able to say it was entirely shot with iPhone, every single shot was shot with iPhone.

2:49:51I wonder if there'll be that dogmatic about it. Like if there are certain shots that it's like,

2:49:58oh, we could do this, but man, it would really be better if we used like a red camera,

2:50:02depth of focus or something. And then they could put in the credits,

2:50:06shot with iPhone and red cameras or something like that. But I kind of think they will. And I know

2:50:14that some people, it might have even been Tyler who did it. I know that there were some people

2:50:18who deconstructed that video after it came out. And sort of showed some of the telltale signs in

2:50:25hindsight. I mean, a big one is depth of field, where with a bigger sensor and bigger glass,

2:50:32you can get that natural bokeh effect. And because of the nature of a tiny little camera,

2:50:39you don't get that optical bokeh. And so you could see that in some of the shots in the keynote where

2:50:45everything's in focus from the foreground to the background or more in focus than it would have

2:50:50been with other ones. But I also think that's sort of the look of these keynote shows Apple

2:50:56produces anyway. They don't really go for a blurry background. You can kind of see it. So I kind of

2:51:04think they'll keep doing it. Because I think it's just literally going back like 20, 25 years where

2:51:10they made like little badges you could put on your website made on a Mac. It was like a thing. Apple

2:51:15had it on their website. It used to be a thing Mac users who made websites would do, made on a Mac.

2:51:21I think it is. It kind of lets them sort of advertise the iPhone in keynotes for anything.

2:51:30Yeah, absolutely.

2:51:31So it's like they've probably already shot it, I'm guessing, the Vision Pro keynote, or at least

2:51:36have shot much of it. So it can be this keynote that's all about the Vision Pro coming in a month

2:51:42or six weeks or something supposedly. But then it serves as an iPhone ad at the very end shot

2:51:47on iPhone.

2:51:48Yep. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it wouldn't surprise me if they were, I don't know if "negged"

2:51:52is really the word I'm looking for, but if they were "negged" on it. But like you said,

2:51:55a moment ago, it's a feather in the cap. So it is pretty cool to be able to say, "Look,

2:52:00this is why you get the latest and greatest Apple stuff. Because look what you can do with it,"

2:52:03leaving aside the $50,000 in lighting and the 15 people that are working in it. But nonetheless,

2:52:07it can be done. And you know how much they love shot on iPhone, how much they love talking about

2:52:12music videos and films that were shot on the iPhone. So yeah, I think they'll probably at

2:52:17least try. Or and certainly I think even if it's not every single one, I would suspect it's at

2:52:23least one every year is shot on iPhone.

2:52:26Yeah, but I kind of think it makes more sense to just do them all. Because then if they have one

2:52:30that doesn't have that credit, then everybody will be like, "Well, why?" And everybody will be like,

2:52:35"Deconstructing it." It's sort of a measure twice cut once sort of thing, I think, where they're

2:52:43like, "If we really are going to do this, we're going to have to commit to doing it henceforth."

2:52:46And I kind of think they did. Speaking of, we're getting towards the end, there's not much left

2:52:52to talk about. But speaking of shooting on iPhone, one of the new things that came out after October

2:52:58was the spatial video feature. Have you been shooting spatial video now that the feature's out?

2:53:04Yeah, multiple times. You know, Christmas just happened and it didn't even occur to me because

2:53:08I'm just not programmed for it yet. It didn't even occur to me to shoot any spatial video.

2:53:12I noticed I'm a really bad videographer in the sense that I don't think to take video often. And

2:53:18I have little kids and I should be taking way more video, but I just don't think about it. I think

2:53:22more in stills than I do in video. And I need to fix that. Aaron is much better at taking video

2:53:27than I am. And so I definitely need to take more video, period. And I think while the spatial video

2:53:35is kind of neutered a little bit, insofar as it's 1080 only, and I think it's what, 30 frames per

2:53:39second? I think what I'll probably do is try to alternate back and forth, or every second or third

2:53:44video I'll try to remember to do spatially. Because I suspect there will come a time that there will

2:53:48be some hardware in my life that can show me a spatial video. And I can only imagine how cool it

2:53:54would be, and I mean, jump in when you're ready, but how cool it would be to relive a moment like

2:53:58Christmas or something like that in 3D. That's got to be just mind-explodingly cool.

2:54:03Ted

2:54:24It was a beautiful day, Thanksgiving here, and the kids were all out in the yard playing,

2:54:31and it was just perfect. It was almost like an Apple commercial. It was a beautiful sunny day.

2:54:36So I shot tons of video knowing... I didn't know I was going to get to preview it at the time,

2:54:42but I knew that the headset's coming, so I figured, you know, and it was on my mind.

2:54:46And then I got to use those clips and see them. And it wasn't... I mean, maybe I'm too cold. I

2:54:53don't know. It didn't make me cry. But on the other hand, at the time, it was three weeks old,

2:54:59right? And so come back to me in 10 years when I look at those same clips. Maybe the

2:55:05waterworks will fire up. It's too fresh to be nostalgic, but it is immersive in a way that a

2:55:15regular video isn't. It's not super 3D. It is 3D. It is definitely not flat. But the other thing,

2:55:25the thing that made it very difficult to judge in detail is that I only got to see one video that

2:55:33was shot with the Vision Pro headset. And it was the same one that they've been showing to us in

2:55:39the media since June of a bunch of like 20-something young kids, what I call them kids,

2:55:46but 20-year-olds hanging out by a campfire. Right?

2:55:49Oh, yeah. I think I've seen a flat version of this.

2:55:52Yeah. The flat version is public somewhere. And that does look more 3D, but they didn't have any

2:55:59other clips with it for me to see other than that one again. And it makes sense that it's...

2:56:03You never saw the birthday cake one or whatever?

2:56:05I did, but only back in June. I haven't seen the birthday cake one since WWDC.

2:56:11And it makes sense that it would be more effective 3D because the cameras on the Vision headset are

2:56:18exactly eye-width apart, which is the most natural distance for the lenses to be apart to fake your

2:56:24brain into thinking you're seeing 3D. And the two cameras on the iPhone, obviously, even the most

2:56:30beady-eyed mofo out there doesn't have eyes that close to each other. But it's worth it enough for

2:56:37me that I did shoot more video at Christmas. It's like, yeah, I'm glad I shot that Thanksgiving video

2:56:43Spatial, even though it's only 1080, 30 frames per second. It's worth it. And I do think,

2:56:49man, that the 10 years down the line is just going to be wow.

2:56:54COREY I can also imagine that today's technology for spatial video... What is the thing that Disney

2:57:00came up with where it's layers of different pieces of animation and they kind of move? You know what

2:57:05I'm thinking of? They move like parallax? It wouldn't surprise me if today's technology

2:57:09of spatial video is sort of like that, where you do have some amount of depth, but it's not

2:57:13like a full z-axis, if you will. It's more there's a couple of stages or a couple of steps where you

2:57:19can tell that there's depth. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's the way it is.

2:57:23And maybe in the future, it would be more like a true infinite z-axis where it's clearer

2:57:28what is close and what isn't. But I mean, I don't know. We'll see how it lands when it comes out in

2:57:33the next couple of months. JOE ICONIS Right. It's fascinating. And it's been,

2:57:36it's true for me. I mean, my son is older than your kids are, but it's being a parent that really

2:57:43makes you think about the technology of cameras. And so I remember thinking when Jonas was a

2:57:49toddler, he was born in 2004, so like 2005, 2006. I remember there was a period, maybe it was around

2:57:56three or four when the flip cameras were the rage. And I had one. And there's like a two-year stretch

2:58:02where we've got way more video of Jonas than any other years, because it was the years where I had

2:58:08the flip with me all the time. And every time we'd go to the playground, I'd have it with me.

2:58:12And then the iPhone came out and I stopped carrying a flip camera, even though the iPhone

2:58:17didn't have a video feature at all. So there's like this burst of video and it's 640 by 480,

2:58:25I think. Flip was not HD even, I don't think. I don't know.

2:58:29JOE ICONIS I never had one. I thought there were some that were 720,

2:58:32but I don't think it ever got me better than that.

2:58:33JOE Yeah. Or maybe it was 720. I don't know. And they were so cheap at the time. It was a very fun

2:58:38little fad. And in hindsight, we look at them now and they look so crude. I mean, low light is

2:58:46garbage. The resolution is garbage. The optical quality isn't that great. And they do. They bring

2:58:51tears to me and Amy's eyes. And even Jonas enjoys them. And I'm so glad I have them. But it is such

2:58:57crude video. It's always going to, for the entire digital era, it has been so true that every four

2:59:06or five years you look back and you're like, I can't believe that's what we lived with then.

2:59:10And I'm sure it'll be the case with spatial video, right? Where the spatial video people like us are

2:59:15shooting now with iPhone 15 Pro, we'll be so glad to have it 10 years from now. But at that point,

2:59:23we'll have these devices that shoot 8K, 120 frames per second.

2:59:28JOE Right. In stereo.

2:59:28JOE Right. And looks like it has a refresh rate that's faster than your eye can track, right?

2:59:35In a way that a retina screen, you can't see pixels. There's a certain frame rate you can

2:59:40reach where it's indistinguishable from real life. And we'll be shooting video like that. And

2:59:45we'll still be so glad we have it, but it'll look so crude. But it's a great feature. I'm so glad

2:59:52Apple added it. And I'm happy to start shooting it. But it kind of breaks my heart. More than

2:59:58any other thing, going to 1080, going to better low light, going to 4K, all of those things have

3:00:06made me think, boy, I wish I had a camera that could do this when Jonas was little. Boy, I can

3:00:10wish it. But this is the one where I'm like, oh! [laughter]

3:00:15JOE I totally hear that. Very briefly, when you were there, you said you made mention of looking

3:00:20at panoramas. How was that? Because I can imagine a panorama when looked at on a phone screen is

3:00:25very high fidelity. But if you're looking at it on an effective 20-foot tall screen that's going

3:00:30all the way around your face, did that blow up okay? Or did that look like garbage?

3:00:35PAUL I don't think, well, you know I've got… JOE Well, you both have garbage eyes for different

3:00:41reasons. PAUL Yeah, but when I take an eye test, I can, with corrective lenses, I still get a 20/20.

3:00:48So my eyes aren't that bad. But I hesitate to criticize the detail that much. But I don't mind

3:00:55a little graininess. I mean, for example, 1080 video when you're in Vision Pro definitely looks

3:01:02grainy because 1080 isn't nearly enough resolution for how big videos look. And spatial video in

3:01:09particular is bigger in your field of view in the headset. But I find the graininess to be

3:01:15film-like in nature. I think Apple's doing something, and I asked if they are, and then

3:01:19I got like a sort of a smirk as an answer, like, you know, no comment. But I do think they're

3:01:26making the upscaling. They're doing… it's not just dumb upscaling. They're trying to make it

3:01:31look good. But to me it's like film grain, like looking at The Godfather or some movie from the

3:01:36'70s where the movies look different from the '70s and '80s, but the ones that are beautiful then,

3:01:42I find the grain to be beautiful. And I get it why modern movies don't go for that look,

3:01:47although I think this movie, The Holdovers, that's a Paul Giamatti movie that's new. But it takes

3:01:53place in the '80s, and apparently they've tried to make it look like it was shot in the '80s in

3:01:57ways. I don't know. I thought panoramic photos, I thought they were fantastic in the headset.

3:02:02It's astonishing to me that this feature that was created with iPhones long before the Vision Pro

3:02:11was even in their mind and certainly didn't know it. And when they… and they've… Jaws told me,

3:02:16I think, I forget if it was on stage or maybe off behind the scenes, but I don't think I'm betraying

3:02:21any off-the-record type thing. They… when they had the idea during the development of Vision Pro,

3:02:28and they knew they wanted to do the 3D video thing, and then somebody had the idea, "Well,

3:02:33what about panoramic photos? Can we do something with those?" And they're like, "Huh, maybe."

3:02:37And it was somebody just had this spitball idea, and they thought, "Well, let's see." And then

3:02:43they did it, and they were like, "Wow, this is amazing." And for me it is. The weird thing about

3:02:49it is it's been a feature in the iPhone since… I just was talking about it with somebody. I think

3:02:54the iPhone 5 or 5S. In fact, I know it was one of the two. It was either 5 or 5S introduced

3:03:00panoramic photos. And… or maybe I'm wrong, and it was a 4S. All right, 4S, 5, or 5S, but roughly

3:03:0710 years ago. I found them so… when am I ever going to look at these that I've shot a ridiculously

3:03:14few number of them in the decades since? Almost none, because they look terrible. I don't under…

3:03:20I was like, "It's a neat gimmick, but they look so weird and squished and unrealistic."

3:03:27And yet when I had this demo and I fished out a handful, most of them I shot when the feature was

3:03:34new. It was like with the first iPhone that did it. They're super compelling in the headset.

3:03:40And it's really, really good. I mean, do they look like they're lower resolution than the size? Yes,

3:03:47but I don't find the graininess… Off-putting.

3:03:50Off-putting, right. It doesn't look like you're really there. You can tell it's not real,

3:03:55but it is very compelling and engaging. And I don't know, until very recently, this is the sort

3:04:02of experience you'd expect at a Disney theme park that you paid $200 to get a ticket and waited in

3:04:08line for 45 minutes to get into the ride to see something like this. As a basic rule of thumb,

3:04:15if you're shooting people shoot spatial video and if you're trying to remember a place,

3:04:21shoot panoramic photos. I anticipate shooting panoramic photos a hundred times more often now

3:04:28than I did before, knowing that there's this remarkable way to view them. It really is super

3:04:33compelling. That's awesome. No, I'm glad to hear it, because I was a little worried that it would be

3:04:38off-puttingly grainy when blown up. No, it's not too off-puttingly grainy. And the stitching

3:04:43together or the decompressing of it into an actual panorama, it's just remarkable. It's just

3:04:48absolutely astonishing. It's really, really engaging. It just, it really, it seems like

3:04:54you're in like a multi $20 million Disney attraction. In some ways, because they're bigger

3:05:00and further from you than the spatial video. In some ways, it's more wow than the spatial video.

3:05:07The spatial video is like intimate and it's like very personal. And the panoramic photos are like,

3:05:14wow, this is a thing. I can't believe I shot this with my 10-year-old iPhone.

3:05:18Yep. I totally get that.

3:05:20What else? Was there one more thing that we had for the year? There was the spatial video,

3:05:24oh, journal, the journal app. That's the last news from Apple of the year. Are you using the

3:05:29journal app? Syracuse is not. No. So I am not using it, but I am on the beta for day one. And

3:05:37I don't know if I'm supposed to be discussing this, but here we are. In the beta there,

3:05:43no, I don't see it, but somewhere in the beta, there was a basically

3:05:45call up the thing that the journal app ends to app developers.

3:05:51Yeah. Well, because as far as I can tell, and I think you and John might've gotten this wrong,

3:05:56you and Syracuse might've gotten this wrong. I might be the one that's wrong. I'm not sure.

3:05:59But my understanding is you can't, as an app developer,

3:06:02vend events into the journaling app or not specifically anyway. I think it's just like

3:06:08general activities that you would have for like handoff and things like that. I think the

3:06:12journaling app picks up, but I don't think there's any explicit way to say to the journaling or

3:06:16journal app, here's something you should consider for the user later on. But what you can do,

3:06:22and now I can't find it in day one, but I swear it was in the beta for at least a minute,

3:06:26is you can call up a list of things that the journal app has pulled together as ways to start

3:06:35an entry in day one. Does that make sense? So you're looking at, you're looking at, here's all

3:06:40the things that the journal app thinks is interesting, or any of these things you want

3:06:44to put in day one. And I haven't used it, but a couple of times, and honestly, a lot of the

3:06:49things that came up with so far, I'm not that interested in, oh, I just did a walk around the

3:06:52neighborhood. Do you want to add that to day one? Like for me, no. But I like the principle of where

3:06:57this is going. I think it would be better if it was both directions, if I, as an app developer,

3:07:02could say, oh, this person just looked up The Dark Knight 15 times over a two-hour span. Perhaps they

3:07:07just watched The Dark Knight and then that into the journal system. But either way, I hope that

3:07:14this is a 1.0, both from the app perspective, because I think you and Sirkisa covered that

3:07:18well. The app is all right. But more importantly, I think, I hope the API is a 1.0 and that we see

3:07:24more of this over time. Yeah, I think it's more than all right. I think it's, I think it's really

3:07:29interesting to do it as a social media timeline that's just for yourself. But I also think that

3:07:35simplicity makes it one of the most gracious Sherlockings in Apple history, where like a

3:07:44full-featured 15-year and counting or however long, I mean, day one is, might have been around

3:07:51since like day one of the app store. It's a very long-standing app. I mean, I know you're a

3:07:55dedicated user. I mean, how long, you've probably got like over a decade in there, right?

3:08:00Well, I think actually, coincidentally, I'm pretty sure I landed on day one because of the trip that

3:08:05we went on with the armaments to Germany. And I wanted to be able to log what we were doing,

3:08:10where we were going, but I wasn't interested in blasting that out to the internet. And I think

3:08:13that's how I landed on day one originally, and that was 2013. So that was a decade ago to your point.

3:08:18Yeah. It's just a much richer full-featured app. I don't see, to me, that's like sort of

3:08:25Sherlocking at its best. And sometimes you can't avoid it, right? It's like, knock on wood,

3:08:30Overcast seems to be holding its own against Apple Podcasts, but Apple Podcasts has gained features

3:08:37and it's not trying to kill other apps, but it's podcasting. There's only so many features, right?

3:08:43I don't think it's surprising that the overall podcast market has shaken out and there's

3:08:48fewer actively developed podcast players than there used to be. It's just the nature of it.

3:08:54But Journal, to me, doesn't seem like it's going to kill day one or any of the other popular

3:09:03journaling apps. If anything, I almost feel like the benefit sometimes to Apple getting into

3:09:07something like this with a very basic simple app is it introduces more people to the basic idea of,

3:09:14"Oh, I kind of like entering my thoughts in whatever's every day or every couple days."

3:09:19But boy, I wish it had X, Y, and Z, and then you find out there's these long-standing,

3:09:24award-winning apps in the App Store that are meant for journaling that have X, Y, and Z, and then,

3:09:29"Oh, I'll try that." So I don't know. Kudos to them. I think it's pretty good. And the other thing,

3:09:35though, I think about Journal, and I wonder, I might be reading too much into it, but

3:09:40that instead of having a date-based interface, it's just this timeline of entries, and the entries

3:09:47can be anything. It's sort of, to me, just like a chronological timeline of things hints to a future

3:09:56where your iPhone can present to you a log of everything you've done in a private, on-device,

3:10:03not-creepy-at-all way. But man, I don't know, fast-forward 10, 20 years, do you want to have

3:10:09devices that can just remember everything you've done and seen? Kind of, right? It sounds creepy

3:10:14in a way, but I feel like once we have it, everybody will be like, "I can't believe I ever

3:10:18had to remember who people were." Whereas now I've got this device that, as soon as I see a face,

3:10:24tells me, "Oh, that's so-and-so. You last saw them at this place on this date."

3:10:29I have a truly terrible memory, and so part of the reason I'm so invested in day one is because

3:10:34it helps me remember the kind of minutiae of day-to-day stuff, and I try to put at least

3:10:40one entry in every single day. And most of these are pretty unremarkable, and they're not that

3:10:48interesting in and of themselves. But one of my favorite things to do when I do it first thing in

3:10:51the morning is I pick up my phone and I look at, "Okay, what did I do in today—what is today,

3:10:55the 28th, 29th? What did I do on the 29th in 2022, 2021, 2020?" And when you've got 10 years-ish of

3:11:03entries, it's such an incredible and wonderful walk down memory lane. And actually, to kind of

3:11:08bring this full circle, imagine if I had a whole bunch of spatial video in there going back 10

3:11:12years, you know, or whatever the case may be. So yeah, that's why I like it so much. And yeah,

3:11:16even though it would be a little creepy having my phone record everything, if I was convinced that

3:11:20it was a privacy-forward, privacy-first way, I think that'd be kind of nice.

3:11:25Yeah, I kind of feel like it's both horrifying and I can't wait to have it.

3:11:32Yeah, I agree. I agree on both counts.

3:11:33All right, that brings us to the end of the year, and I guess the end of the show. Boy,

3:11:37this is a good one. This might break some kind of record.

3:11:40I feel like you and Marco have some very long ones, but I think we're at least in the running now.

3:11:44Yeah, well, we've all developed our long podcast muscles. I don't have many muscles, but—

3:11:49[Laughter]

3:11:50That's the one that's strongest, right?

3:11:52That's the one that's strongest. Happy New Year, happy holidays.

3:11:55Happy New Year as well.

3:11:56I was just a lot of fun talking to you, Casey.

3:11:59Of course. Likewise. I am always happy to come on and spend three hours with you.

3:12:04Yeah.

3:12:05You tell me when.

3:12:07I will thank our sponsors, our good friends at Memberful, where you can monetize your passion

3:12:11with membership, and Squarespace, where you or anyone you know can build a website. And one last

3:12:16call out to CallSheet, Casey's excellent, excellent movie database app. And TV shows,

3:12:24and TV shows. All right. Happy New Year. All right. Finally, we're done. Thank you.