84: The Load-Bearing Finger
26 Sep 2014Upgradeable watches, Steve Jobs fan fiction, and of course, what three nerds think of the new iPhones.
Episode Description:
- Follow-Up:
- Jason Snell on iPhone 6 CPUs
- Upgradeable Apple Watches
- How do you sell a $10,000+ watch in an Apple Store?
- Apple Watch Edition's special box
- Apple Pay and banking
- The hidden meanings of Apple "tv"/"WATCH" text styling
- Trade names and the NFL
- If Steve were alive...
- Tim Cook's Charlie Rose interview
- Part 1
- Part 2
- Apple's diversity report
- iPhone 6/6+ impressions
- Post-show:
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Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ John You guys are so sleepy. Casey’s got to work on the whole getting ready to not have any sleep
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. But lately, Marco’s been the one saying he’s all sleepy. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, my well, my kids in school now. So now I’m waking up like an hour earlier. So I’m closer to Casey’s schedule.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know you already
⏹️ ▶️ John complained about your your early wake up time. It’s so bad. It is. It is hard. Then you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home. It’s funny to me that when I complained and moaned for the first year and a a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this show. It was, oh, get over it. You’re fine. Now that the king is having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get up early, suddenly we all have to go to bed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s like we should, we should have a month where not only does he have to get up early, but like get dressed up in nice clothes
⏹️ ▶️ John and not come back to his house after he drops his son off. Go to another, go to another building
⏹️ ▶️ John where you have to like not smell bad and have already eaten and be dressed nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John And go to a parking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot. and then talk about parking lots afterwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do you wear to work, John? Do you have to wear khakis or can you wear
⏹️ ▶️ John jeans? I only have one set of clothes and you’ve seen them all. That’s what I wear.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not as bad as Marco yet, or not as good as Marco yet, I should say, because he has already achieved my ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ John goal, which is to not have to worry about clothes and just have an outfit. I have not achieved that, but I would like to. But basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a small set of clothes and you’ve seen them all. That’s what I wear to work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so jeans and a polo shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a polo shirt. You know what they are? Horizontal stripe rugby shirts. That’s all I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever. Same difference. They’re James May shirts.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess they kind of are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, I will not dispute the value of having a uniform. It doesn’t really matter what the uniform is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. No, I envy you. I kind of do have a uniform. It just has more variety. But the problem is all my uniforms,
⏹️ ▶️ John the sleeves shrink. And then I have to, like, that’s, otherwise I would use them until they disintegrated. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like my running shirts that are 15 years old that I still have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just I feel like I I mean I am NOT a fashion conscious kind of guy but I feel like I would get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bored wearing the same
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone agrees that you’re the best dressed of all of us Casey so
⏹️ ▶️ John looking to hear then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not fishing for compliments they may be true but I’m not fishing for compliments I’m just saying that I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think of myself as having any fashion sense yet
⏹️ ▶️ John everything’s relative among me and Marco you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of fashion sense oh yeah well I guess that’s true but I mean regardless of fashion sense I just feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like looking down and seeing the exact same uniform every day would get really
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t look down and Marco doesn’t care what he’s wearing. I don’t care what I’m wearing. Yeah, that’s exactly it. We just want we just want
⏹️ ▶️ John not to be pointed out and laughed at. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we find something that lets us ignore this for the rest of our lives,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or at least for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shirts are disintegrate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, yeah, Casey, you definitely represent humanity in this show.
⏹️ ▶️ John Normal, normal humanity. And let’s not let’s not talk of normal humanity too much. Normal humanity has lots of downsides.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did either one of you two actually read any of the follow up before we begin?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I at least skimmed all of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Great. All right. Well, so I’ve also skimmed it. We should just publish
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes in the chat room and they can do follow up. Because none of us have looked at it. I put most of it there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. Would we like to start with a friend of the show, Jason Snell’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey correction about the iPhone 6’s CPUs. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so basically we said last show, I said last show, someone said, I think it was me, someone said last show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the iPhone 6 Plus had a slightly higher clocked CPU than the 6.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Similar to the difference between the iPad Air and the Retina iPad Mini, where the Air is like, like 10%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco faster or something like that. Turns out, that is, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, completely wrong, or at least, like, people have, we’ve seen things all over the place here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve seen some benchmarks showing that the six is faster than the six plus by some little amount like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve seen some benchmarks saying they’re the same. We’ve seen some benchmarks saying the six plus is faster than the six.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Jason Snell posted a follow-up thing. He had originally said the six plus was faster. He,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, then has corrected it and said actually that was, you know, mismeasured or whatever and it’s wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we know quite what’s going on here yet, do we? But I mean, there’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things it could be. There’s things like dynamic clock speeds happening where, you know, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be throttling for thermal reasons. Apple said it shouldn’t happen, that it can maintain the full speed all the time, but we don’t actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we don’t know what kind of conditions some of these benchmarks were done in. So maybe it’s like, you know, extreme conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in warm environments, who knows. But regardless, there doesn’t appear to be a clear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference between the two that’s actually reliable. So there’s occasionally a small difference, but it kind of flip-flops as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to which direction it goes. And so I think it’s more likely to be chalked up to testing conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or benchmarks mismeasuring things than actual differences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the CPU clock speeds. Wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it be nice if Apple just published them? Or at the very least, if there was like, you can have like an Intel CPU read off some registers
⏹️ ▶️ John and find out the clock speed. Or like, this is all guesswork, because it’s all kind of, benchmark app to run and
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, does this benchmark app accurately test the speed of this particular CPU?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or, yeah, I don’t like this guesswork business. But anyway, last show, I had mentioned that
⏹️ ▶️ John Jason had said conclusively the exact clock speeds and he’s now recanted. And so we’re back to just not knowing and
⏹️ ▶️ John we as far as anyone knows, they look like they’re probably about the same, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then we of course, have a ton of follow up about the Apple Watch. And one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the most popular bits of follow up, let me back up, actually, there are two popular bits of follow up people saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either we are insane or we’re right on the money for saying that the watches will be expensive and we’ll talk about that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more in a moment and people theorizing how you can justify the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey purchase procedure of buying a 10 or 20 or $30,000 Apple watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what you would do once that piece of electronics gets sold. And the really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frustrating thing about the what you would do is that a lot of people have sent in feedback saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, if you have 18 karat gold, it stands to reason you could melt that down or otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recycle it. And so perhaps you’ll lease the Apple Watch, or maybe there’ll be a trade-in program or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. And this is really annoying because during the last episode, I thought to myself, you know, I wonder if you could just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like trade in your watch and then you could get a new one. And then during the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you two were talking and I was reasoning through this in my head, I decided, no, that’s a stupid idea. I shouldn’t share
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And like 20 people sent it in. So the moral of the story is I should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trust my instincts.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought one of us actually said it. In fact, I thought all the ideas that had been sent to us by email and Twitter were actually mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John offhand in the show. But it’s obvious that the audience wants to hear more discussion of these things, because many people
⏹️ ▶️ John offered elaborate theories of how Apple was going to make this work. So we
⏹️ ▶️ John just mentioned one or two things offhand. But people want to hear expansions on these. So I figure it’s worth discussing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although you skipped the actually the first item to follow up right before this is, someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who has worked in the jewelry industry for 20 years says that over 5x markups
⏹️ ▶️ John on fashion and jewelry is normal. So in case people wanted to put a number on, what are these
⏹️ ▶️ John crazy margins that we’re talking about? What kind of complete disconnect between the cost of goods
⏹️ ▶️ John and the products? More than 5x is routine. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so one of the examples of these theories regarding how you could handle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upgrading or whatever, This was sent in by Phil Compton. Apple could have two easy ways
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to handle the rapid obsolescence of the Apple Watch, one, upgradeability, and two, trade-ins.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The upgradeability would, of course, need to be done in an Apple store, but they should be able to keep movements within a set of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey specifications that could allow easy upgrading of the internals of one generation to a newer one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I assume they would always be making the watch smaller, so although the same adapter may be needed to fill the space, each new gen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should fit in the next. And actually, the genesis of my theory last episode that I never shared,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so now it sounds like I fabricated it in order to sound smart. It was they made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot, well, relatively speaking, a lot of mention of what is it the S1? What is powering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the S1 is their marketing name for the entire computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a little tiny case. Exactly. It isn’t all on one chip, but it’s a whole bunch of components in some kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of case that is most likely more for water resistance than anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but it made me think, you know, if you keep the pinouts of that case and the physical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shape of that case the same, even if the internals get considerably better,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe that’s the way you upgrade it. Is there some mechanism by which they can get in there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and replace the S1 and put in an S2 that externally looks identical and operates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey identical from an interface perspective, but internally is twice the clock speed or what have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you? This all falls down, though, if displays get a lot better and have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different sizes or different pinouts. And John, I’m waiting for you to blow a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hole in my theory.
⏹️ ▶️ John So here’s the deal with the upgradeability. This is definitely one of the things that many different people
⏹️ ▶️ John suggested. They suggested that there was a part of the watch that would become obsolete, and there was a part that would not
⏹️ ▶️ John become obsolete. They said the gold case or whatever, that should be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And presumably, that’s where most of the cost is. could swap out those internal stuff they probably cost less than the band they’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ John you know 50 bucks for the little s1 or whatever it is here’s the thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John that in in Apple’s history and we’ll get to this if we actually do get to the iPhone 6 plus bending
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has always chosen when they had a choice between keep it the same thickness increase battery life or make it thinner they
⏹️ ▶️ John always choose make it thinner and that’s where we’re mentioning I’m ready for the the iPhone 4s form
⏹️ ▶️ John factor of this watch we all assume that this is the first Apple Watch and just like
⏹️ ▶️ John the first Apple phone. Yeah, I’m gonna call it the Apple phone, I’m gonna switch it around. Instead of mistakenly
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Apple Watch, I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ John to say Apple phone from now on. Thanks a lot guys. Apple touch. We all assume that they’re gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ John the watch thinner when they can. They’re not going to say, you know what, let’s keep the Apple watch case exactly the
⏹️ ▶️ John same size and every year just make the battery a little bit bigger and
⏹️ ▶️ John make the other components smaller or something or have the S1 be swappable in and out and that’s the way
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll do upgrades or whatever like that. This gets back to the product cycles
⏹️ ▶️ John on the watch. Do we think they’re gonna come up with a new watch every year? Every two years, every five years? I think they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John do a new one every year. If they do a new one every year, will they try to make it thinner or will they keep it the same size and make the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John thicker? Like this all goes towards upgradability. Nevermind that Apple really is not big on upgradability
⏹️ ▶️ John period. Not with their Macs, not with their iPhones, not with their iPods. Those days have long gone. Like my first
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac that I ever got was motherboard upgraded from a Mac 128K to a Mac Plus, something
⏹️ ▶️ John officially Apple used to sell and do. The current Apple is a long way away from that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a hard time believing, unless there’s some really good financial reason having to do with the way
⏹️ ▶️ John watches are normally sold, that Apple would ever do something like this, both
⏹️ ▶️ John because I just cannot see them keeping the case the same over
⏹️ ▶️ John long periods, and because they just want you to buy a new one. Now, I’m not willing to rule it out entirely simply because
⏹️ ▶️ John everything we know about how Apple sells technology has to be reevaluated in terms of, well, this isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really technology, this is fashion, so maybe they need a new plan. And I don’t know enough about fashion to know if there’s any precedent for this in like the
⏹️ ▶️ John watch world of replacing the movements inside your thing and keeping the gold ban or something like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John right now, it seems to me that the upgrading thing is one of those things that
⏹️ ▶️ John nerds would like Apple to do, kind of like replaceable batteries, or can you just motherboard
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrade my Mac Pro to a new Mac Pro instead of having me buy a new one? And the answer from Apple is no, we
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot, we will not. You’ll just buy a new one or just use this one. So I’m giving the
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrading thing, technically feasible, yes, 100% technically feasible, but I don’t think it’s something that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is going to do. I’m giving that a maybe like a thumbs down if I had to pick
⏹️ ▶️ John one and I’ve had to put a percentage by it, I’m gonna go like 80% against. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also bet strongly against it, not only for all the reasons you mentioned, but even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you ignore the fact that they would probably, almost certainly make less money over time doing it that way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they would want to constrain themselves and their future changes to the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by a commitment, whether they said it or whether it’s just been implied by past performance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep the upgrades available. So, look at the massive poop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit that the world threw when they changed the dock connector the lightning connector.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that was like 10 years, right? Yeah. 10 years with the same connector, I think it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And people are still insanely upset and thinking Apple did it just to make more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. That is a common, a very, very common opinion of that change is Apple just did it to make more money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make everyone buy new cables and accessories. If they ever made the watch upgradable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the expectation to keep it upgradable in the future would be so high that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would suffer such severe reputation damage and have so many angry people every time they made a backwards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incompatible change. And so that would either cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of poop fits from their customers on a regular basis, like every few years whenever they make a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco breaking change, or it would constrain them from, oh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’d like to make this change in next year’s version, but that would break compatibility with upgrades.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we kind of can’t or shouldn’t do that. And I don’t see Apple ever wanting to be constrained that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way in the the design of such an important product in their lineup.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what who what who does upgradeability benefit? That’s the real question. You’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what are the benefits of upgradability? Is it a benefit to Apple? Is it a benefit to consumers who like I think most people
⏹️ ▶️ John coming in from the consumers perspective is hey, if I spend their imagining for for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the case of for sake of argument that they have enough money to buy the super expensive Apple Watch,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they’re further imagining that despite having all that money, they also don’t want to spend that money again anytime
⏹️ ▶️ John soon. So they would like to protect their investment in this Apple Watch by saying I spent 1200 bucks on the stainless
⏹️ ▶️ John steel Apple Watch with stainless steel band. Now the new one is out and has a faster processor or
⏹️ ▶️ John it uses less power. I don’t want to spend all that money again. And then it’s the same thing. People
⏹️ ▶️ John want to upgrade prices for everything. And if I told you how much my upgrade for my 128 K that I didn’t pay, obviously my parents
⏹️ ▶️ John did to a plus was you probably die. And today’s money is probably like three grand or something. But anyway, they assume that the upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John will will cost less money than buying the entire thing outright again. So that is a consumer benefit to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought this thing once. The better thing is out. But I don’t want to buy the better thing. I want you to take
⏹️ ▶️ John as much as you can from my current thing and just swap out the parts that are not good for the better parts to save
⏹️ ▶️ John money. That doesn’t benefit Apple at all. Just like I was saying before. Is this going to make Apple more money? No. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to make Apple more money. Overall, the average
⏹️ ▶️ John selling price of their watches will go down if people can do these upgrades. It does benefit
⏹️ ▶️ John consumers, but does it benefit consumers in a way that Apple feels like we should do this because it will make the experience better
⏹️ ▶️ John for consumers? I don’t even think, like, if you had to pretend you’re a magnanimous Apple and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we’d like to do that, but we feel replacing the parts does not give the cohesive experience of the,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve designed the Apple Watch 2 as an entire device. And it’s a balanced system where everything works
⏹️ ▶️ John together. And if you would just take the insides out of the Apple, you know, there’s all sorts of crazy BS reasons you come,
⏹️ ▶️ John but some of them have some merit and like, Look, are they designing a product or are they designing serious parts that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John assemble into a product? Like, can you just take the S1 out and put the S2 in and suddenly your watch gets
⏹️ ▶️ John faster and it takes less power? Yeah, maybe for a generation or two, but like Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John said, at a certain point you have to have a breaking design change. Or you just want to. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can do things in fashion and just make it the same all the time. Fashion has to change, so…
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is mostly a tech nerd fantasy having to do with people who Probably
⏹️ ▶️ John would never drop that much money on a watch anyway even if they could afford it because they would feel like it’s a waste but then can put themselves
⏹️ ▶️ John into that position and say But if I did do that, I would still have my instincts that think it’s a ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John expense And but I would want the new thing anyway, but I wouldn’t want to pay for it. And it’s a weird I Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think this actual character. Yeah, Casey can bring up the user story index cards.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think This actual character that that needs upgrade ability for the watch to be a viable
⏹️ ▶️ John thing exists I think it’s just a sort of a fantasy we’re spinning out right now. Now, the second item on this thing, trade
⏹️ ▶️ John ins is an entirely different thing. And I think that is way more plausible because Apple already does that with with stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John they have now. They will, you know, take your old stuff, most of that is taken and recycle it. But like, give me
⏹️ ▶️ John your old thing for a discount on the new thing that I entirely see as being plausible,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if it’s made of precious metals. That’s different than upgradability.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think the the like recycling or trade in approach is way more likely because they already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it for certain for certain things. You’re right about that. And they already do it. And it just makes more sense. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it avoids all of the issues of the upgradability, kind of like constraining their options and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people’s expectations thereof. Like it avoids all of that. And it sounds environmentally friendly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it seems economically somewhat responsible if you’re if you want to upgrade and you can get a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of money for, you know, your stainless steel one or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The gold one, you’re going to serious money for because that’s, you know, But the metal itself is
⏹️ ▶️ John innately valuable. Apple can take it and melt it down and recycle it into new Apple watches. And they will give you
⏹️ ▶️ John good money. They won’t just give you like 50 bucks or like save you the recycling cost. They will give you good money for a gold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what I’m thinking about? And this is taking just a half step backwards is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of us will spend somewhere between 500 and a thousand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollars every year or every other year on a new phone. Just for the sake of conversation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s say it’s every year and let’s say it’s an even $1,000 to make the math easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s say an average salary in the US is $50,000. Again, just for the sake of making the math easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you get a new phone, which is $1,000 and you have a $50,000 salary, that’s 2% of your gross
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you make $1.5 million, which granted is an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unbelievable shed load of money, then $30,000 is 2% of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so what I’m driving at is even if an Apple Watch is 30K,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re making a million and a half as probably more people in at least the United
⏹️ ▶️ Casey States do than I care to admit to myself, then getting a new $30,000 watch every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple of years, it’s the same as one of us getting a new iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every year or two. It’s everything is relative. And although the market is surely smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than the millions upon millions, upon millions of iPhones that are sold annually, it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a bad setup, especially since I would assume it, the markup, as we spoke about earlier is
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. It’s worth reiterating again, that we keep concentrating on the high end just because this type of product is
⏹️ ▶️ John different for Apple, this type of fashion product where the price is so crazily out of whack. But they’re,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, volume-wise, they’re gonna sell, Apple hopes, tons of the cheap one.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so, such a small, it’ll be like the Mac Pro, such a small number of these expensive watches
⏹️ ▶️ John are gonna be sold, that I doubt, first of all, I doubt Apple will break it down for us, because they never do. But,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we can probably, you know, Horace DeDue or somebody will do the math and try to say it’s reasonable to assume that, percentage-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, 90% of Apple watches sold were the cheap one. And then 10% were the super expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John super expensive one. And then, yeah, you do make a lot of money off of it, but like, really, this is, that’s the thing about this type of
⏹️ ▶️ John market is, Apple wants to go all the way up to the top, and the top is really high.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s, I, maybe it’s about exactly, I would love to see the breakdown of like, how many Mac Pros are sold
⏹️ ▶️ John versus how many, you know, of the reasonably priced Macs. I think it’ll be even more extreme
⏹️ ▶️ John with this expensive watch. We’re just obsessing over it because it’s just such a novelty and we just can’t figure out how it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to work within Apple’s current business and customers and the way they sell things
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our first sponsor this week is a new sponsor, but they aren’t new to me. It is Mobilux.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, all right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, M-O-B-E-L-U-X, Mobilux. Mobilux is a product team for Hire.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Since 2008, they’ve been designing and building apps for iOS, Android, and the web, with an emphasis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on shipping awesome mobile experiences. So I’ve actually known these guys for a while, so let me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give you some of the stuff they’ve done here. MobileLux developed the Precision iOS 8 interface for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Circa News 3, which just shipped today. Circa, you guys know this app, right? The Circa app, it’s really popular.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve heard of it, I have not tried it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s very, very popular. Well, anyway, MobileLux did their new interface for the version that just shipped today, which is huge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They also designed and built the responsive web platform, logo, and identity for our friends at Need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The, you know, Neededition.com, those people, Need. MobileLux built a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that for them. They built the logo, the identity, the web platform, whole bunch of stuff for need. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also make their own products. They just shipped one called Best Dish, which is an ongoing user judged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competition that celebrates and rewards the best dishes around town and across the country. They just launched it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in DC, you can see that too. Mobile Lux can help with everything from identity design to building
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full stack iOS social networks. They also have one of their own products called Elixir,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco E-L-I-X-R, and it’s kind of like Instagram for drinks. That’s pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I could that’s like my very quick description of it mobile X, you know, so they have their own products. You can hire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in the hiring capacity. They’ve worked with many great companies, including I home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unique low Marvel and even Tumblr, which is where I know them from. Initially, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built everything from firmware delivery systems to award winning recipe apps. They do everything top to bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, the reason I know them from Tumblr is because the original Tumblr app for iPhone. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t actually have an iPhone app for a while. At Tumblr, we were too busy to make one and we didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough staff to, you know, just hire or just have someone else do it. Mobile Lux actually made one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was called Tumblrette and it was… there were a few out there by other people, but theirs was by far the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, Tumblr just bought it and we paid them for years to maintain it for us and upgrade it and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they were great. So, that’s how I know them. And then when it came time for me to need someone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to build my Instapaper app for Android, I I went directly to them because I knew them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew them for a while. I knew they were good people because they really are like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not have trusted that app to just anybody. You know how much I love working with other people. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I went to MobileLux knowing that it would be a good fit because I already had worked with them before. I knew they were very good people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both easy to deal with and nice and also really talented. Like I can’t say enough good things about their work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re just really good and really easy to work with. with. So they built the Instapaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app for Android and it was just I had to do almost nothing. I didn’t even give them source code.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t even give them assets. They even just pulled assets out of the out of my iPhone app for me when they needed stuff or they made their own because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have designers there. I gave them almost nothing to work with except some very loose API
⏹️ ▶️ Marco documentation and they made the whole app and they didn’t have to bug me for anything. It’s so easy to work with them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, for more info about MobileLux or to get them involved with your next product, check them out at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MobileLux.com. mobelux.com. Thanks a lot to our friends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Mobile Lux for sponsoring. Really, I cannot recommend them enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s keep talking about Apple Watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, we do. It isn’t even out yet. I know, but that doesn’t stop us. I mean, come on. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got several more months
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. We have months of follow up. It’s never going to end. Another thing that we had a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey discussion about out was how do you sell a 10, 20, $30,000 watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in an existing Apple store? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an anonymous Apple employee wrote in to say, many existing Apple stores have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey private business briefing rooms with the entire product line not tethered to tables. They exist as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a space for Apple to meet with businesses and discuss deals and how to integrate Apple. These spaces are a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey place to showcase high-end watches to customers who would like a private area away from the crowds. All I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to know is how do I get that kind of access? Because you got to buy Mac pros, Casey. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are evil. It’s all about you are evil. Well played, but you’re evil. Uh, because our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple store, our local Apple store, um, just moved a few spots down in the local mall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now it’s actually about the right size for the area in which we live. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goodness, before it moved, it was like a locker room in there, no matter what time of day you went in. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not know this was a thing, but apparently this is a thing. And I’m assuming if you’re coming in looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the kind of gentleman or woman who is going to buy a $30,000 watch. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not about how you look, it’s what you just asked, I would like to see the Apple Watch Edition. They say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, you’ll have to come to the back of this. As Marco said last show,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s clear that Apple’s stores are due for a redesign or an overhaul
⏹️ ▶️ John and presumably someplace where you could sell really expensive gold watches would be part of that overhaul.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the meantime, whenever that happens to land, in the meantime, the fact that these rooms apparently exist that we don’t know about
⏹️ ▶️ John because none of us except for Marco would ever be invited into them. It’s nice to know
⏹️ ▶️ John that they have an out for some existing stores at least. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. There was a tweet from Scott McIntyre. He noted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that something that I had not realized that the Apple Watch Edition, which is a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey name but it’s the expensive Apple Watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which do you think is worse, the Apple Watch Edition edition or the Ferrari LaFerrari?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The LaFerrari but only by a shade.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I think the Apple Watch Edition is worse because the Ferrari is way better than that watch and you can forgive a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can forgive a lot for a Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it isn’t just a Camry with a gold coating. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s just a Fiat with a gold coating, right? Do they still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John own Fiat? Oh no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or Fiat. Federico’s going to kill me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Anyway, so…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, while we’re on the topic of Federico, sorry to interrupt. That’s alright. I thought it was interesting. So there’s these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rumors that there’s going to be a 12-inch, quote, iPad Pro coming out, like possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next spring or something. And I’m not sure I believe that, but assuming that even if it does,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a recent episode of… What’s the new prompt? It’s called Connected? I always forget the names.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the new prompt called Connected. A recent episode of that Federico mentioned in passing. He’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he said he wouldn’t buy that iPad Pro and I was thinking like if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is real, if Federico Vatici does not want to buy an iPad Pro, who
⏹️ ▶️ John I would really iPad Pro is my thing. How long I’ve been talking about iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad was released. Yeah, that was me saying all that stuff. Those are the past episodes.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes, I will buy a gigantic iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco got to be right now, obviously. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the way I use my iPad is not as a,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I use it like a magazine. I like large format magazines. I didn’t like it when edge magazines shrunk to the
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller format. I think next gen also shrunk. I always know a magazine’s going downhill when they shrink to the
⏹️ ▶️ John wired magazine. I like that big format too. I want big, not 27
⏹️ ▶️ John inch, you know, but like a 12 inch, I think that’s fine. And I want it to be faster and have multitasking and do split
⏹️ ▶️ John screen and do all sorts of awesome stuff like that. We talked about this, don’t you remember? I do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it just, I think I’ve tried to force myself to forget that you want an iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in almost no way resembles an iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s still a big screen that you hold in your hand and it resembles an iPad in all ways except it’s slightly bigger, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course it’s faster inside and you know, has more RAM and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it totally resembles an iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm. Anyway, did we even finish this tweet? I didn’t even get through finishing
⏹️ ▶️ John Dan. No, Scott McIntyre was saying the digital crown matches the strap. And yes, I knew that. I thought everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John knew that, but he was offering it as an idea of saying, well, that means maybe the
⏹️ ▶️ John straps aren’t interchangeable. They showed in the video the straps coming in and out. It’s a major selling point of the watch. I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t believe some people are still going, well, you can’t swap it now because the little digital crown is color coded. So what? So what?
⏹️ ▶️ John If the little crown is red, can you only get red bands? No. You use black ones, you can use white ones. I don’t know anything
⏹️ ▶️ John about fashion, but I know that. It’s all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Look at the cases for the iPhone 5C. half the point of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all these different colors was that you can mix and match them. Remember, I think it was Schiller had talked about, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can have, you know, a blue phone with a red case for this mood and a, and a white case for that mood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. I forget exactly what he said, but, but you’re exactly right that it would, they were talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flipping things up and don’t, and deliberately getting clashing colors to be in. So everyone can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be their own special snowflake.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you don’t want that, buy it, get one with a neutral color, get one with a black crown because I’m sure that all for that. They have, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the only color crowns I I saw was like a maroonish red that went with like the dark red band and then a black
⏹️ ▶️ John one But yeah, the fact that the crowns match does not mean that these straps are not going to be interchangeable. They’re totally interchangeable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. This was my addition to the follow-up Speaking of a friend of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show Jason Snell. I was reading his Apple watch edition review.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Should we just call this the Apple? Watch Apple like the Ferrari LaFerrari Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyways, he said in his review, yes, there’s a special box. It’s covered in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leather inside is a magnetic charging cradle. And on the back of the box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey base is a slot into which you plug a lightning connector. That’s right. The Apple watch edition is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so fancy that the box is its own accessory. And I bring that up for a couple of reasons. Firstly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t know that that was a thing. And secondly, how,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what, how is that, how is that something that Apple considers the right thing to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do? And if you’re gonna stand here and tell me that, oh, a $10,000 watch is way too expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look at what they’re doing for the freaking
⏹️ ▶️ John box. I wonder, does that mean it doesn’t come with a charging cable? Is it, yeah, I can understand. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John basically a dock. Like, you know, remember when the iPhones used to come with docks? I think the original came with a dock, did it? I don’t remember.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, anyway, they used to sell docks. But this seems like if you buy the Apple Watch Edition, it comes with essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John a dock, which also happens to be the box, which is a nice place for you to put the watch when you’re not using it, which also charges
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But I’m sure Apple will sell the little charging doohickey thing for all the regular people
⏹️ ▶️ John who don’t buy the Edition Edition. And so it’s all the same charging
⏹️ ▶️ John amongst all the boxes. But yeah, this type of luxury thing of like, how can we make this
⏹️ ▶️ John as fancy as possible? And they do that with all their products, like the boxes are so beautiful and you open them up.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s all disposable stuff. You throw away the cardboard box. You throw away the little plastic pieces that you peel off and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John This, I assume, you won’t throw away because it’s an actual accessory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What else is in here? Oh, a lot of feedback about chip and pin. You want to cover
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, John? Because I’m going to stumble all over it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t. I still don’t understand it all. So we are getting glimpses of what payment is like in the rest of the world
⏹️ ▶️ John from individual people’s emails. So if these people are wrong, I’m sure people will write in and tell us. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Martin Gordon wrote in to say that he thinks it’s worth clarifying that the US won’t be getting chip and PIN anytime soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Instead, we’re moving over to the nastier chip and signature. Our credit cards will come with chips, but we won’t be issued a PIN,
⏹️ ▶️ John nor will we be required to enter a PIN during a transaction. So that’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John crappy. We’ll have chips in our cards, but we’ll still have to sign our name on a piece of paper for transactions
⏹️ ▶️ John that require that type of thing. It doesn’t surprise me, but if this is true, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is disappointing. Tom Phillips says, chip and pin is so 2004, over the last
⏹️ ▶️ John year or so in the UK, we’ve had the introduction of contactless debit and credit cards, colloquially called just contactless.
⏹️ ▶️ John You pay at chip-enabled terminals or dedicated contactless points for anything under 20 pounds.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have no idea how much that is in real money. So he’s saying, if Apple Pay were to arrive
⏹️ ▶️ John in the UK or Europe, I do wonder whether it would succeed. Our payment system isn’t as archaic as the US. With contactless
⏹️ ▶️ John becoming relatively well-established and popular, are the benefits of Apple Pay abstracted enough to get people to switch? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John leaning towards no. So this gets back to Tim Cook’s big thing about, it’s not just that you get to wave a doohickey in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of a thing to pay for your stuff, it’s that you get to not have to bring your wallet with you. You don’t have to bring, oh, I gotta remember to bring my
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, my car keys, and my wallet. If you wanna go out and you wanna have
⏹️ ▶️ John a way to pay for things, you can just bring your phone, and I guess you just hope the battery doesn’t run out before the bar tab
⏹️ ▶️ John comes at the end of the night. Anyway, he’s right. Apple Pay is
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot easier to sell at sort of the dawning of contactless payment here in the US than it is in other
⏹️ ▶️ John countries where contactless is already well-established. Yeah, I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s going to do there. It seemed like all the deals Apple announced with the people who are accepting payments, with the exception
⏹️ ▶️ John of like McDonald’s and stuff, was international. But a lot of the other stores looked like they were US only.
⏹️ ▶️ John So since we live in the US, we’d probably be fine if it just revolutionized payment
⏹️ ▶️ John in the US, because everything here is so horrible. But yeah, I don’t know how well it’s do in other countries.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some more Apple Pay. Dave Copeland wrote in to say, in the US, the fraud policy of the banks
⏹️ ▶️ John heavily favor the cardholder. A cardholder can pretty easily have charges removed
⏹️ ▶️ John by calling the bank who issued the charge. In the UK and Europe, the banks are not so lenient with the cardholders, and it’s much
⏹️ ▶️ John more difficult to have charges removed. That’s why chip and pin is so prevalent across the pond, and that’s why waiter brings the
⏹️ ▶️ John charging device to you, rather than whisking your card away to the back. So that’s another, you know, differences
⏹️ ▶️ John in the different payment environments of who who accepts the who
⏹️ ▶️ John deals with Fraud if if something goes wrong who has to pay for it in the u.s We’re all used
⏹️ ▶️ John to this is one good thing about the u.s I guess from a consumer’s perspective Sort of kind of is that if someone steals your credit
⏹️ ▶️ John card and makes a bunch of bogus charges with it or some sort of Fraud happens we all just assume I’ll call the credit card
⏹️ ▶️ John company They’ll just take care of it Like the credit card company just eats all that because they make so much more money money, having
⏹️ ▶️ John huge interest rates on everyone who doesn’t pay their bills on time, which is why they still make tons of money in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so they’re totally willing to eat all those other charges. We just had yet another one of our credit cards stolen online
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple weeks back, and we’re just like, oh, no big deal. Yeah, they bought a bunch of stuff, but we know we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to have to pay for that. Well, apparently in other countries it’s not that way, and so there is a demand
⏹️ ▶️ John to be more secure and not just have, oh, here you go, waiter, take my credit card, walk away with it, I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ John if you skim it or buy something with it online or whatever, I’m just going to have those charges reversed and they’ll send
⏹️ ▶️ John me a new card and I won’t have to pay for any of it. But that’s not true in other countries, so they have much more secure payment systems. That’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And his final point is something I’ve learned firsthand at one of the first e commerce sites I made,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess, about 10 years ago now, 12 years ago, a long time ago, is that a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of these things you see on websites and in payment processing things like the CVV code where where
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to enter those little three digit number to pay for something with the credit card or signatures or
⏹️ ▶️ John anything like that, that’s entirely at the discretion of the person of the company
⏹️ ▶️ John selling something. So when you do credit card transactions online, you send the information to the payment processor
⏹️ ▶️ John and they send you back a score that says here’s how trustworthy this is and you can decide I’m gonna go forward
⏹️ ▶️ John with scores of you know above whatever value. So well they’ll send you back something
⏹️ ▶️ John well the you know the the card has a middle name, but they didn’t enter middle name. And the street
⏹️ ▶️ John address doesn’t quite match, but everything else in the address matches. Do you want to proceed with this transaction? If you
⏹️ ▶️ John say yes, the relationship between the business and the credit card processor, there’s some relationship there over
⏹️ ▶️ John who covers what percent of fraud or whatever. So it’s up to the merchant, basically, to
⏹️ ▶️ John decide how flexible do you want to be. And I could say, as
⏹️ ▶️ John someone who’s implemented this, you tend to be motivated highly to be very flexible, believe it or
⏹️ ▶️ John not. Because if you are super picky and like, well, their address says 123 Main Street,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the credit card address on file has 123 Main ST. And ST is not the same as
⏹️ ▶️ John street, and our processor is too stupid to figure that out. And so it doesn’t give it a perfect score or match on that. Do we want
⏹️ ▶️ John to go forward? If you only went forward on the highest possible score, you would never make any money
⏹️ ▶️ John because you would never accept anyone’s credit cards. They got the zip code
⏹️ ▶️ John almost right, or they got it right, but they didn’t add the plus 4 on the end of it. you want to go forward. Everything lowers
⏹️ ▶️ John your score if you’re not exactly right. And so you have to decide what risk you’re willing to tolerate. And
⏹️ ▶️ John usually, you’re willing to go forward, even if they miss tons of stuff. Like if they’re slightly off on their address, don’t quite
⏹️ ▶️ John get the name right, didn’t enter the zip code, but the card number is right, and don’t have a CVV,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, just go forward. Because 99% of the time, it’ll be fine. And the other percentage of the time, you’ll just eat that,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’ll work out. So that’s something else to keep in mind with all of this secure payment type stuff. Individual,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I imagine, I don’t know this to be the case, but that’s why I imagine a lot of places now don’t require you to sign your name
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore is because the risk environment has changed. They said, look, we’re not getting any additional security from
⏹️ ▶️ John having somebody scribble something on a piece of paper for their $5 credit card purchase. We’ll just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John swipe the card and let’s go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Do you want to tell me about streamlined Apple Watch shape ideas?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was in there from last week. I’m trying to remember what I was thinking of. I know
⏹️ ▶️ John the broad topic was, remember the first Apple Watch show saying I was disappointed that it looked like a little lunchbox on your
⏹️ ▶️ John wrist just like a little rectangle with straps coming out of it and I was hoping that they would
⏹️ ▶️ John do something to blend the the strap into the the main
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the watch in a way that was like forward-thinking like well now it’s got to be a big chunky thing in your wrist but
⏹️ ▶️ John five years from now won’t be quite as chunky and it’s best to go with an aesthetic that will
⏹️ ▶️ John seem natural then but they didn’t they didn’t try to mask that at all and
⏹️ ▶️ John there were lots of ideas about from listeners about what they could do with the more streamlined shape.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they had a sort of a taper from the big thick part with the battery in the screen to the strap they
⏹️ ▶️ John could still have removable straps, the straps would just have to incorporate that taper somehow or whatever, but people
⏹️ ▶️ John were full of ideas of what they could do with that extra volume. One of the most popular ideas is why don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John they fill that place with battery? Why don’t those little wedges that lead from the fat part to the thin part, that’s just another
⏹️ ▶️ John opportunity to shove battery in there. I don’t like that idea because one I don’t like the idea of having battery
⏹️ ▶️ John wrapped around my wrist because lithium-ion batteries can get very hot and catch fire and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. And I guess that’s also true of the one that’s inside the watch, but that’s inside metal and I feel a little bit better about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And two, I don’t think lithium-ion batteries take very kindly to being bent, which means that the
⏹️ ▶️ John taper would have to be stiff. And once you make the taper stiff, then
⏹️ ▶️ John the number of different wrists that it can fit on is drastically altered. It’s like you do not want, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s bad enough that you’ve got the stiff little rectangular part right if you made little wings hanging
⏹️ ▶️ John off of the thing that were also stiff because they contain battery then they would sit very awkwardly on people with either
⏹️ ▶️ John make it so it sits okay on people with very large wrists but then it looks ridiculous on people with small or vice versa so
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think is a non-starter if they made the taper it would have to I don’t think there’s anything useful you can do with that taper
⏹️ ▶️ John other than maybe put some sensors in it if you wanted to have like the pulse sensors off centered or something else in there
⏹️ ▶️ John or like shove an accelerometer in there but I don’t think you can use it for battery and I don’t think you can make it stiff
⏹️ ▶️ John and anyway that’s not the direction Apple went in but I think that’s all I was thinking of with this one line follow-up item.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so we got a lot of feedback. Well, I thought about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the casing of the text watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we still talking about the watch? Yes, I Hey, john insists that we got to do all this
⏹️ ▶️ John That long. It was a quickies Robert Thompson brought up something that that was funny. Like, are we talking about the the
⏹️ ▶️ John small caps thing with the watch? And I said, Well, you know, with the little Apple logo in front of it and it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John silly, you know, we just write it out Apple Watch but they always use the little symbol and when they do it in slides, like, well, we’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John a precedent with Apple TV where they show the little Apple logo and I’m like, well, of course, TV is always capitalized, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, short for television or whatever. But Robert Thompson points out that when they do Apple TV, and I’d forgotten about this, they do lowercase
⏹️ ▶️ John TV. So so much for that theory, they do the little Apple, and then the lowercase T with a little curl on
⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom. And anyway, there’s no rhyme or reason to this. Or so we thought until
⏹️ ▶️ John Jim sent us something that said, uh, references a classic vocabulary
⏹️ ▶️ John with the all caps like Omega Rolex tag or tag. I don’t know. And then other things, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John the B that I’m not going to pronounce. Apparently they do all uppercase in their, uh, name brand things
⏹️ ▶️ John on their watches as well. So maybe Apple is trying to go with that. And again, I think it’s crazy to do that and just use
⏹️ ▶️ John the word watch. It is like a silly parody of like Rolex Omega also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Let me explain this to everybody. Apple TV is lowercased
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the marketing logo, where it’s the Apple logo followed by lowercase TV because somebody thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looked good at the time. Apple watch when it’s spelled in the marketing way with the Apple logo, followed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the all small caps watch, is that way because somebody thought it looked good that way, most likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s printed very small on the watch. And it’s very small lettering looks great when it’s in small caps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is why it’s that way. It is marketing reasons only. It doesn’t matter. You
⏹️ ▶️ John think they’re gonna put the little Apple logo on the watch next to the word watch? Like Apple logo watch?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t they already show
⏹️ ▶️ John that they are doing that? I don’t know. I know they put it up on the slide when they introduced it, but that’s, I
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t know they were gonna have it on the watch itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve seen pictures of the back in the video and stuff. I’m pretty sure that does, it doesn’t matter. Either way, it doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They thought it looked good, that’s why it’s there. There was not, I guarantee you, there was no thought put into,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh well, it’s different from the way we capitalize Apple TV. I guarantee you no one brought that up and no one cares.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can change the capitalization and you can change whether you put a little Apple logo, but it’s gonna be hard to change the
⏹️ ▶️ John name and the name is still watch. And I guess the name is still TV too.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV somehow sounds better to me than Apple. Maybe I’ll just get used to it, but I feel like I still have
⏹️ ▶️ John not gotten used to MacBook. So I think I’m gonna hold a grudge against this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook is permanently awkward, I’ll give you that. PowerBook was such a great name and MacBook was so awkward.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also, for whatever it’s worth, I did think Apple TV at first was extremely awkward, and then I got used to it and didn’t care anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I also don’t talk about it that much because who cares, it’s the Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right. And then John, would you like to defend yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I keep making that mistake. I’m not doing it on purpose. I’m trying to get better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in the follow-up, Nathan Watkins Jr. sent us that Microsoft paid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the NFL 400 million to use the Surface, and a couple of commentators still called them iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I assumed that you had placed that in the follow-up strictly to defend your erroneous.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no. That’s an interesting story. We’re talking about watch being a generic term.
⏹️ ▶️ John But no name that you pick can be defended against whatever the term is for Kleenex,
⏹️ ▶️ John where the name brand becomes genericized into, do you have a Kleenex for me? Or,
⏹️ ▶️ John God forbid, if you live in the South and someone says, do you want a Coke? And I say, yeah, what kind? Oh, give me a Sprite.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. Anyway, anything can be genericized, anything. You are not defended against that by picking
⏹️ ▶️ John watch, by picking iPad. Little tably things are so defined by the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John product in the same way, I guess, tissues are so defined by the Kleenex brand that the commentators
⏹️ ▶️ John in these NFL programs couldn’t help but say, oh, look at those guys in the sidelines holding iPads. They’re not, they’re Microsoft Surface
⏹️ ▶️ John tablets. But iPad is the word that is the placeholder in lots of people’s minds
⏹️ ▶️ John for a tablet thing, even more so than I think iPhone is for a smartphone, because that I think
⏹️ ▶️ John this, you know, Android sells more than the iPhone and it wasn’t that far behind, but Apple was so far ahead in the tablets,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they were the only company that made any tablet that anyone cared about at all, that was worth a damn at all for so
⏹️ ▶️ John long. Like it was a year, two years, before I guess the Amazon tablets came out or whatever, that
⏹️ ▶️ John in the public consciousness, if you were holding a thing that looked like a disembodied screen, it was an iPad. So now
⏹️ ▶️ John poor Microsoft pays $400 million to get Surface into the hands of all these NFL people, and the commentators just
⏹️ ▶️ John call them iPads, in the same way they might call a tissue Kleenex, even though it’s not Kleenex brand.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel bad for Microsoft here, but my main point in putting this in is that no name you pick, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s a name that you totally make up like iPad or Kleenex or anything else,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re always at risk of being genericized.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed, and then another piece of follow-up that I put in a while back. There’s more? I know. No, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was trying to curb it, but-
⏹️ ▶️ John almost done. We have plenty of time for other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff. The king told us, he decreed, we will do all of the FU.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, so I, like everyone else, hate the if Steve were alive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t think of the word I’m looking for, but retort, I guess for lack of a better word. True. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trope, thank you. That is a much better word for it. But somebody posted a little while ago, a really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really great write-up about how the Apple keynote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey announcing the 6, the 6 Plus, the watch, perhaps would have gone differently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had Steve done it in the typical Steve style. And if the whole, if Steve were alive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing also really turns you off, just forget that and just read this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey page, which we’ll put in the show notes, just as a general alternative approach
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the keynote. And there were certainly some like, maybe not factual things, but there were some little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey idiosyncrasies about this that I didn’t totally care for. But overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do think that this approach to the keynote just sounded better in principle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me than the keynote we got. And I don’t know if either of you two read this or had any thoughts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it, but I definitely think it’s worth those of you listening to read it at your convenience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it was very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I read it. It’s on jiggity.com. And apparently, this is written by a person named
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jong Moon Kim. And I apologize if I mispronounced that. I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this being spread around and I thought, as probably many listeners thought when he first saw this, I thought, Oh, God, it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody complaining that Tim isn’t Steve, basically. And for some reason, I eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco read it against my better judgment. And it really did surprise me with it. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought for sure, again, like I said, I thought it was going to be just complaints that Tim is not Steve. And because Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t be Steve, and he’s not trying to be Steve. He’s trying to be Tim, and that’s, I think, for the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think we’ve seen over time from other tech companies, people who try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to imitate Steve Jobs’ presentation style always fail and it’s really painful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’ve seen when Zuckerberg did it, Jeff Bezos tries to do it, God knows everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Samsung tries to do it. It’s painful. And if you just try to be yourself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a much better idea. Anyway, so I Read this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I there was a lot in there that I was like, you know, actually that’s a really good point why didn’t they do it that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or yeah, that would have actually been better like and they plausibly could have done that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and I’d you know, the main focus of it I think is like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ve heard that we’ve seen other people talk about this to our friend Ben Thompson talked about this a lot as well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know we’ve seen In the presentation, Tim basically introduces the watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not by saying, here’s why this is necessary, but just by showing it. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being like, here’s this thing we built, it’s really cool, look! And there it is, and there’s the planet, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sun rises above the planet, and then this watch comes in, and it’s like a watch spaceship,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you see all the cool light reflecting off of it, and then you see watches spinning around for five minutes, and then Johnny Ives and his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white world talking about it, and it’s it just really, it assumes, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the presumption of the video was this is really cool and you need to buy it and here’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so cool and this is going to be really big as opposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the way Steve would usually introduce new product categories like the way he did with first the iPod and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone of course and the iPad he would introduce it kind of first by saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why it needs to exist why we need to want it and then showing it to us and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying you know here given all of the things I just said on why you should want this and why this device needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to exist, here it is. And Tim really didn’t do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Apple Watch introduction. I almost said I watch. Tim didn’t really do that. He just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco showed it and said, here it is. And we’re kind of left to our own devices to figure out, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, this thing is cool and it looks cool. But why do we want to wear a watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially for the many of us for whom we haven’t been wearing watches since we got cell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones because cell phones made watches unnecessary for almost everybody except for fashion reasons and even then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not that common and especially among younger people. So he didn’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think there is a lot of valid criticism to be made about the way this was introduced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the presentation and and this article on Jiggity.com was really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought it was you know at parts it was like a little bit over the top a little bit contrived but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall I’d say it was very good and way better than I expected from the premise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely agree.
⏹️ ▶️ John really like this article. Uh, I think I think what it leaned on a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John is two things. One, the fact that we all miss Steve Jobs and leaned on that. It’s like, Hey, wouldn’t it be great with this
⏹️ ▶️ John guy was still alive. Yes, it would. And two, it played fast
⏹️ ▶️ John and loose with the actual things that they were announcing. It made Apple announce things that Apple didn’t actually announce. And boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t it be cool if Apple had said X, Y, and Z and did X, Y, and Z. I agree that
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs would have presented this better than Tim Cook. I don’t think anyone would disagree that Steve Jobs was a better presenter.
⏹️ ▶️ John The root of it is most likely in the particularity of the person, in that Steve Jobs was excited
⏹️ ▶️ John about different things than Tim Cook is excited about for the product. I think Tim Cook really is excited
⏹️ ▶️ John about the watch. He’s putting his two hands in the air and shaking his fist. I really believe he is excited, but he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John excited about different aspects of the product. And Steve Jobs was excited about the same aspects of the product that we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John excited about cool technology, ways to change your life with technology,
⏹️ ▶️ John particular small features, the little genie going in and out of the dock, like all the
⏹️ ▶️ John things we want about Steve Jobs also would not. But Tim is excited about different stuff. So Tim is a less relatable
⏹️ ▶️ John presenter. The main value of this article is providing is what Marco got at is
⏹️ ▶️ John there was no one there explaining to us in the way that Steve Jobs felt like it was necessary to explain to us
⏹️ ▶️ John why we’re doing this. Tim tries to explain why or has other people come on stage to do it, but they speak in,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s more kind of like they speak in generalities or in sort of corporate speak or in big picture speak, where Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John would break it down at a much more primal level and say, here’s the problem, here’s what we thought about this,
⏹️ ▶️ John we thought about that, and here’s our solution, and we think you’re gonna use it for this. And there’s been good Steve Jobs presentations and
⏹️ ▶️ John bad ones. So the reason I like this article is like, wouldn’t it be great if this guy you really love was still alive and
⏹️ ▶️ John he announced things in a super dramatic way and also announced some cooler things than were announced. And that I feel like is just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s cheating. You know, this is not, this article is not a guideline for how Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John can do better presentations unless they can do cooler things and resurrect Steve Jobs. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have rather seen this article be, I mean, I have yet to see
⏹️ ▶️ John the article that says, if Steve Jobs was alive, X, Y, and Z that I’ve liked. And this continues that trend. This article would
⏹️ ▶️ John have been better explaining what was wrong with Tim Cook’s presentation. And you can compare it to successful presentations
⏹️ ▶️ John by Steve Jobs. I think if this actual presentation happened the way they said it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John overblown for what they actually announced. You know, our personal universe company, Apple, if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John said that on stage, even if it was Steve Jobs, it would be ridiculous. So yeah, I did not like it as much as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you know, it was not perfect, but I think it did. It did make a lot of very good points. And it did. It did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show a lot of things that Apple could have done plausibly and differently. And and they chose not to.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it also depends on, like, the context. Like I think the couple I mean, it was this most recent probably like
⏹️ ▶️ John this most recent WWDC I thought was not a Steve Jobs style presentation, but
⏹️ ▶️ John was really good. Like this is the type of stuff that Steve Jobs wouldn’t have known how to describe
⏹️ ▶️ John in an interesting way. All the new language, the development tools,
⏹️ ▶️ John the showing the new versions of the OS, all that software and developer tool stuff was presented by
⏹️ ▶️ John people who knew about it in a style that is different than Steve Jobs’s style. and I thought it was one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John better WWDC keynotes for the audience that it was given to, maybe not to the press or whatever, but for room
⏹️ ▶️ John full of developers, everybody was just, you know, was jazzed. Everyone had something to be jazzed about
⏹️ ▶️ John in that WWDC presentation. I think I’ve only been to what, four of them in person or whatever. I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John was extremely successful, compared to the last Jobs WWDC. Obviously, he was in
⏹️ ▶️ John very bad health there, but he just didn’t have the type of stuff to announce that he likes to announce. So the watch one was definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John in Steve Jobs’s wheelhouse, but there are other presentations that are in the current Apple’s wheelhouse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was very clear. Steve Jobs was always very bad at hiding when he didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel that strongly about something. He was very bad at hiding that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Tim Cook has kind of a different problem, which is Tim Cook is really excited about certain things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he doesn’t understand that he needs to kind of lead us to that point before just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling us how excited he is, or he doesn’t know how to lead us to that point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or he’s excited about things that we’re not. I bet if he presented to the organization
⏹️ ▶️ John of people who manage supply chains, whatever their name is, he would be super excited about the details of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s excited about different things. I don’t want to say he wants to talk about finance or supply chains
⏹️ ▶️ John or making deals or like, I mean, to give an example if we ever get to it,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Charlie Rose interview and the interviews that Tim Cook has given show the things that he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John excited about. They just don’t happen to be the same things as Steve Jobs excited about. He’s just a different
⏹️ ▶️ John person. Like Pavon in the chat room said that that article struck him as Steve Jobs fan fiction.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that is a reasonable approximation of what it is. And if you like Steve Jobs fan fiction, then that’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ John example of it. But I was not in the mood for Steve Jobs fan fiction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say that. Let’s let’s jump to the Tim Cook Charlie Rose interview because we’re talking about it anyway. That was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all very good. It took me a second. I ended up downloading it from somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and watching it with QuickTimePlayer at like 1.5x because Tim Cook is not a fast speaker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it got a little bit slow at times. So I had to get through it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco twice before I really appreciated it because the first time I just kept zoning out. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I switched to other tabs and doing things and oh that’s right that’s playing in the background. Anyway so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once I paid attention to it, But it really is quite good. It does show, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it shows Tim getting slightly at ease here and there. And you could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell, like, the real Tim is coming out when he’s slightly off the cuff. And you can tell he doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go off the cuff ever. And this is probably as far as he ever gets. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, because he’s a very controlled person in public. You could tell he says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things very deliberately, very thoughtfully. But just seeing that little bit more of his personality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this was, I think, extremely positive and interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I want to see more of the Tim Cook that we saw on Charlie Rose. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he should let more of that come out because what we saw there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim really caring very strongly about certain things like privacy. He
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out so hard on privacy, and we’ll talk about that too, I guess. Tim is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not just some boring paper pusher. He is a very strongly principled guy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he feels very strongly about certain things and I feel like so far he has not let
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of that out. Possibly because he didn’t think it was the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right time, because there were so many eyes on him, everyone looking for him to mess
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up or do something to indicate that he’s not fit for the job or whatever. So maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s been going into it slowly. But the Tim Cook that we saw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Charlie Rose, I would like to see more from.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you read that, was it a Bloomberg interview? There’s some lengthy interview with him.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t gotten to it yet. What was with those covers, by the way? What
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was that? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like those are real?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I thought they were fake for the first several tweets too. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a series of tweets
⏹️ ▶️ John came in, whoever I’m being flabbergasted. They was real and I joined them in their surprise
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about their flabbergastedness.
⏹️ ▶️ John I had forgot that was a paper magazine that had a cover. I thought it was just online anyway. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was Bloomberg. I’ll try to find the link for the show notes. There was an interview that was like a condensed version of what
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought were the most revealing parts of the Charlie Rose interview. And it gets at what Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook really cares about beyond the things, beyond obviously his
⏹️ ▶️ John job, which is managing a big company. And CEOs usually tend not to talk to the public about
⏹️ ▶️ John aspects of their job, because who cares about other, except for other CEOs. That’s why I was saying if Tim Cook was talking to a group of other CEOs
⏹️ ▶️ John or other people who have similar jobs managing large organizations, he would have a lot of interesting things to say to them, but not to consumers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then there’s a technology part which Tim Cook appreciates and understands, but is not a geek about
⏹️ ▶️ John like Steve Jobs was, right? He’s not obsessed with one particular software feature or one particular hardware feature
⏹️ ▶️ John and just marveling over it and everything. You can tell that. When you’re the CEO, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can imbue the company with some aspects of your personality. And like Mark was saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook has been hesitant to do that thus far, kind of like just being the sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of guy behind the scenes like he has been for so long. But I think maybe in the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John WCK, what was that, 2011 or 2012, that’s when his personality started to come out a little bit more,
⏹️ ▶️ John where he was starting to become willing to use Apple, the company, as a vehicle
⏹️ ▶️ John to achieve goals that are personally important to him. And those goals,
⏹️ ▶️ John as expressed on Charlie Rosen in his interviews, are about the environment, privacy,
⏹️ ▶️ John and human rights and diversity, topics that have very little to do with Apple Watches
⏹️ ▶️ John or iMacs or anything like that. But now he is finally
⏹️ ▶️ John coming out and saying, I’m the leader of the biggest company in the United States, maybe the biggest company in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have tremendous power. I want to use that power to achieve things that
⏹️ ▶️ John are important to me because I think they’re good ideas. They’re not the goals of the company. Apple is not turning into
⏹️ ▶️ John an organization that just deals with the environment and human rights and privacy. But in the course
⏹️ ▶️ John of doing the things that Apple does, making great products that make people’s lives better, that they really love, and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can also do these things. And part of that is him going on shows and saying, here’s what we really
⏹️ ▶️ John care about. Like the diversity report. I was talking in the text interview about that diversity report they put
⏹️ ▶️ John up, I think we mentioned on the show, what percentage of Apple’s employees are what age,
⏹️ ▶️ John what race, what gender, all this other stuff. And Tim Cook saying that internally there
⏹️ ▶️ John was friction about like, should we publish this? Because we look terrible. Like our diversity numbers are not good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Should we even publish this? And Tim Cook made the decision apparently over the objections of other people
⏹️ ▶️ John like, no, we have to walk the walk. I care about diversity. If we’re not doing a good job, we
⏹️ ▶️ John want to be transparent about that. We’re going to put out this thing and write in the in the thing that they published. Tim Cook’s saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John a little text in the thing, says, we are not happy with these numbers. How often do you see a gigantic company
⏹️ ▶️ John publish something that they know will essentially make them look bad and admit in plain language right
⏹️ ▶️ John in the thing, this report shows that we are not achieving our goal as well
⏹️ ▶️ John as I want to. We’re not happy with this. We’re going to try to do better, but here’s what it is anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s what’s fascinating to me, is that now the biggest company in the world is being
⏹️ ▶️ John run by somebody who cares about things and is willing to put his money and his company
⏹️ ▶️ John where his mouth is on them, like with their whole data center, trying to run an entire data center off renewable energy, despite
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it adds tremendous complication and cost, I’m sure. And they’re doing the same thing with a crazy spaceship
⏹️ ▶️ John type of thing. Like, yeah, we have enough money. We can just throw a data center up there, and we can just pay for electricity. We’ll be fine. But can we build
⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic solar farms in North Carolina to do it? You’re just making it harder for yourself. It doesn’t make business sense,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s like when those people come up in the shareholder meeting, and Tim Cook practically shouted the guy down and said, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re looking for someone who’s just going to make decisions based on return on investment, get out of the stock.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tough luck, right? That’s the real Tim Cook. And we don’t relate to it as much
⏹️ ▶️ John because, oh, I like the Steve Jobs. He was totally into the pixels and the cool edges and the designs. And Johnny Ive
⏹️ ▶️ John likes carving things with diamonds or whatever. Well, Tim Cook cares about privacy, human rights, and the environment, and
⏹️ ▶️ John overall health. And those topics, although they may not be tech nerdy,
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s refreshing to see them sort of bravely and boldly both express and acted
⏹️ ▶️ John on by someone with as much power and money as Tim Cook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I think what Tim is doing is not only like, you know, interesting and progressive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from like a social environmental perspective. It’s also good business.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like he he’s not going to do anything that’s going to like really damage Apple’s business. He’s smarter than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything he does is is is carefully measured. he knows what he’s getting into and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s doing it because he has probably decided it’s worth it and that it will be a net gain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the company. Like you know when you’re as big as Apple as they know, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we all know, you get people attacking you for all sorts of crazy stuff. You know and some of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is fair and some of it isn’t. And it is very important for Apple to maintain its reputation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially going into fashion. But you know it’s very important for them to not be known as the company that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has all these labor abuses in China and not be known as the company that’s destroying the environment with all the data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco centers and everything else, and not be known as the company that sells all your data to advertisers. It is very important for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple to maintain these images, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco address the issues that are coming up in technology. So a few years ago, those issues were environmental. Today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re diversity. These issues are coming up and they’re being talked about and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accusations are being thrown around. What are you doing about it? What are you doing about it? company is the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook is getting ahead of these things when he can, or at least responding to them when he needs to. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, I think, serves Apple well overall. Releasing a diversity report and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not happy with this and we’re trying to do better than this. That is smart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is both socially responsible and good business. And I think that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, is what we’re seeing from Tim Cook all over the place. He does things that are are smart and good business.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And he, you know, because, you know, the ROI thing on the stock, like he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was addressing a question about environmental stuff and making things accessible by the blind and everything. And it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is not costing Apple a meaningful amount. Like it is not making them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a severely less profitable company. And it certainly is not making them an unprofitable company to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care about things like this. So like, it isn’t harming their business meaningfully like and shouting down some guy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a shareholder meeting probably helped their business because that was reported everywhere as look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how good this guy is. He has things under control and he’s principled like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he does things that help.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I was trying to find the exact thing in that interview with him, but it was a similar question
⏹️ ▶️ John from the interviewer about whether there’s some tension between you and the other of the people
⏹️ ▶️ John in the organization about what the company should do. And the question put Tim Cook in the
⏹️ ▶️ John role of someone who wanted to just go ahead with something. I think it was maybe like, what if Johnny Ives said it’s not good enough? But
⏹️ ▶️ John you said, well, we’ve got to ship something now. And Tim Cook, maybe it was a different question. But anyway, Tim Cook’s answer
⏹️ ▶️ John made the point that he’s not a short-term CEO. He’s not looking for we’ve got to make our
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers next quarter. And that’s what you were getting at, Marco, with like, these things look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you’re being so brave or whatever. But they also happen to be, in the long run, better for the company, better
⏹️ ▶️ John for the planet, better for everybody. It’s just that there’s so much thinking, especially in large corporations. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care what’s good in the long run. Just make your money now. Get it while the getting’s good. And forget about long-term
⏹️ ▶️ John consequences. And the right decision, if your time window is longer than a year or two, the right decision
⏹️ ▶️ John is to care about renewable energy, to care about diversity, to care about the working conditions in China
⏹️ ▶️ John and all that other stuff, right? Those are actually not only the right thing to do, but better for the company. In the
⏹️ ▶️ John same way that Apple has proven, We just care if we pay attention to the products, we don’t make a million products to try
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell into every little market category. Some people want a hardware keyboard, some people don’t. Some people want a big computer, some people want a small
⏹️ ▶️ John we like we have to fill every single little thing. No, they have a small number of products that make them as good as they can, they diversify
⏹️ ▶️ John as needed, but they’re not like all those other companies that like HP, you just will make a product for every single person, every single purpose,
⏹️ ▶️ John we just got to get the money now get to get to get it. Long term, that’s not good. Long term apples focus on the product, make
⏹️ ▶️ John a few products really awesome. Don’t get into businesses where just for the hell of it, like one of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re talking about is all the different kinds of products that Apple research and decided not to make. Short-term that looks dumb,
⏹️ ▶️ John it like seems like a waste of money. Long-term Apple has proven that it’s a winning strategy. So
⏹️ ▶️ John all these things that Tim Cook does and that the Apple the company does are always focused on the long term and
⏹️ ▶️ John to to people so focused on the short term it seems like they’re making the
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong call but it is actually the the right thing to do and also the thing that will make Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John successful years and years down the line You know, whether investors care about
⏹️ ▶️ John that because they want to get in and out of the stock because the average was the average time a stock is held now these days is like less than a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know, a few
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, we’re not talking about high frequency trading.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, it’s just a different mindset. And it is the correct mindset. And it’s kind of a that’s nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s fine for Merlin type of situation was like, well, if you’re Apple, you can afford to have that thing. But it’s the reverse.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have that attitude, that’s your only chance of ever becoming a company like Apple.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and I both received our new iPhone sixes on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this past Friday. We are recording on Wednesday night. I’ve had a couple of work days
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the iPhone six that I ordered. To recap, I ordered a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone six space gray 64 gig like pretty much everyone on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t know what to think. It is too big.
⏹️ ▶️ John What, the 4.7 is too big? It’s too big.
⏹️ ▶️ John played with one this week. I gotta say, I disagree. I was pleasantly surprised at how not big the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think the problem is, is that I like using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iPhone one-handed quite a lot. You could make a legitimate argument
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t need to most times, but nevertheless, I tend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use my phone one-handed. And so because of that, when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hold my phone the way I’m used to, which is my pinky covering the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, lightning port as kind of like the weight bearing the load bearing finger,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will, my, uh, ring and middle fingers on the left. This is my right hand ring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and fiddle minger middle fingers on the left-hand side of the phone. my pointer finger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically on the Apple logo and then my right thumb doing all the operating,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can only get about two thirds up the screen. You’re holding it wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey. You’re totally, I don’t know how you’re doing that. Because it’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m used to. I actually gotta watch you more closely the next time I see you. That seems like the most precarious way to hold
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing. Like, I don’t have my iPod touch with me, but I did the reach test on the iPhone 6 to see
⏹️ ▶️ John what I could reach with my normal grip. And I thought this was everybody’s normal grip, but hearing you just describe that, That is not the
⏹️ ▶️ John way I hold the phone. I have with the corner sort of nestled in the palm of my hand. I can reach everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John across the face of the six with my thumb, except for the farthest corner. And the farthest corner,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just like maybe half an inch at most I’m missing from it. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John without me shimmying or moving my palm at all. Just palm anchored in my all four fingers
⏹️ ▶️ John wrapped on one side of the phone. The other corner of the phone nestled into my palm and my thumb sweeping the thing. I can reach
⏹️ ▶️ John the top right corner. I can reach the bottom left corner. I can reach the bottom right corner. Top left, I can’t quite
⏹️ ▶️ John reach. I would have to adjust my grip. But that’s more than I thought I would be able to reach. I was envisioning
⏹️ ▶️ John me not be able to reach any corners except for the one closest to my palm. You, with the balancing on the pinky with your
⏹️ ▶️ John pointer finger on the Apple logo, I don’t know what you’re doing. Put all four fingers on the side of the, especially now that they have the power button on the side,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can hit it with your thumb.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and to be honest, I think you’re probably right, that I just need to give up several years of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey habit and adjust. And that’s reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ John But It’ll be more secure. I’m saying this other grip, even with the five size
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, that grip is better for that one because you’re less likely to drop it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m less likely to drop it because I have my pinky blocking it from being dropped.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you’re just making this little balance cradle. Someone jostles your hand, it’ll go flipping out of the thing because you’re not actually gripping
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You’re just sort of balancing it on. It’s like sheet music sitting on one of those sheet music stands. Someone
⏹️ ▶️ John bumps into it, it’s going to go tumbling off. Mine I’m actually holding in my hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, in Casey’s defense, I hold it. It sounds like the same way as Casey, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a quite secure hold. If you just hold it with your thumb pad, whatever that’s called, on one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side, and then all four fingers on the other side across
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the middle, then it can slide up and down. Whereas if you just take the pinky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you bring it down on the bottom, then you’re anchoring the bottom right corner.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not moving. All right, I got my iPod Touch. It’s not moving anywhere. It can’t go down because it’s literally in the palm of my hand. It can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John go up because I’m gripping with all four fingers and the side of my hand. I have it in a vice
⏹️ ▶️ John grip. I don’t have to daintily hold it and have it nestled in a holster shaped like
⏹️ ▶️ John my hand. I’m actually holding it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure I’m also causing antennae issues as well because I’m holding it wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do like if you leave aside the one handed use, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still haven’t come to grips with, be that my fault, be it the phone’s fault, one way or another, I haven’t come to that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pun. I haven’t come to grips with one handed use. But nevertheless, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen itself, I do like I do like it being a little bigger. I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it looks better. Although I don’t I think that must be in my head because the 4.7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inch screen is pretty much identical to the 5S screen, isn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, it has better viewing angles, better color depth. And what about that
⏹️ ▶️ John curved glass? I love the curved edges and the curved glass. Love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. So here’s the thing about the curved glass. When I first got my phone and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not have a case for it yet, I really liked the curved glass. And the most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awesome part about the curved glass to me was the swipe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the left edge to the right, which is a back gesture and also an unlock gesture, although obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t use that too terribly often with touch ID. Um, it makes that gesture so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much nicer than it was on the, um, squared off five S. But.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had a Apple leather case for my five S and it was far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and away the best case I’ve ever used on any phone. I had had bumpers before. I occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would use like battery cases if I’m at a conference and I loved the leather case in the five S. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got one for the six. And the problem with the Apple weather case for the six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that the way it mounts it, it kind of covers up the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice bit of the edge of the of the curved edge of the glass and just kind of ruins
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I am. I am worried about cases on the curve thing. That’s what I was thinking about when I was holding it. How are you going to put a case
⏹️ ▶️ John on this and preserve the things that are good about it? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t really work like I actually got to hold Casey’s phone and I had the exact same problem with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. that it’s like once you have the case on it, it really does ruin that curve.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I don’t know what to do because I am enough of a klutz that I often bang
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my phone into things because I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing. Knock on, well, there’s no wood nearby,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but knock on glass. Knock on bent aluminum. Yeah, exactly, knock on bent aluminum. I haven’t dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a phone ever to the point that the screen shatters, but I’m so scared, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since the back and the sides of this thing so darn slippery or slippy or whatever. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so scared I’m going to drop it, especially since I can’t anchor it on my pinky. I am.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just grip it. You won’t drop it if you grip it. Yeah. Did you buy the did you buy the extra insurance? I did
⏹️ ▶️ John Like 50 bucks, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s 70 or 80, isn’t it? Now?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll probably buy it just because it’s still cheaper than getting like, I don’t trust myself not to drop it. We’ve got it
⏹️ ▶️ John on my wife’s phones. Of course, that means she hasn’t dropped them, but I just feel better buying it in the grand scheme of things. I
⏹️ ▶️ John worry less about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, my policy on that is I stopped buying AppleCare and various protection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plans and warranties a few years ago. And my current policy is the first time I really need one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and regret not having bought one, I’ll start buying them again. So far, it hasn’t happened. I’m coming out way ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I tend to agree with you, but remind me of that when I take the case off this thing and drop it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t buy it on on my Macs. I’ve never really bought it on my Macs because I always assume like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not going to be in a harsh environment. once I’m carrying something around. I have dropped my iPod Touch many, many times.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just so happens that it hasn’t broken. I do have a case on it. If I can find a case
⏹️ ▶️ John that I like for the 6, assuming I buy one, that is like this TPU
⏹️ ▶️ John Belkin case I have on my iPod Touches, I really like this case. And this case
⏹️ ▶️ John totally annihilates the curve, but if the edges feel like this iPod Touch case does,
⏹️ ▶️ John it feels like the 5C. It’s like a little bathtub, like a squared off bathtub. I would
⏹️ ▶️ John be fine. I would be fine with that. I like the how the five C feels as well. I think the six is great
⏹️ ▶️ John without a case. I’ll have to see what it’s like with cases that aside. But anyway, like the result of my trying
⏹️ ▶️ John the six in person is that I think the six is not too ridiculous. And now all I’m doing is just waiting for the October
⏹️ ▶️ John event to see if there’s any iPod touch action happening there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So are you implying that if there is no new iPod touch, you’re going to finally get an iPhone?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow, this is big. I’m so happy. I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if there’s a new iPod Touch, it would not have these bigger screens. I’m guessing it would be basically a 5S or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less. I think we discussed this already, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the bigger screens really require that hardware display scaler, which is probably only in the
⏹️ ▶️ John A8. I don’t mean the Plus, I just mean the 6 size. No, I know, same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It also has a scaler.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It doesn’t have a scaler in the shirt does
⏹️ ▶️ John it? Yep, sure does. It’s not scaling up anything. It’s just a higher resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It scales up the apps when they aren’t made for the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah, but the display that’s only for apps that aren’t updated for the six, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but either way, I’m pretty sure the scaler is there and I’m pretty sure that they would not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a device with that size screen in this day and age without that scaler, which probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means and they also probably wouldn’t make like a custom part for the iPod touch since nobody buys them.
⏹️ ▶️ John They made a big deal about the scaler but my iPad 3 you can run you run double the iPhone apps on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John for years it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing they’re not going to do it until they can put an A8 in it. Well
⏹️ ▶️ John all I’m saying is like this not the big size because that one that’s I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John would need the A8 in there to do that but for the other size that make a great iPod touch like
⏹️ ▶️ John that size screen for you know for a kid for the kids thing where you don’t want to give your kid a phone but you
⏹️ ▶️ John want them to be able to play iOS games, it’s thin, it’s got a bigger screen, it’s a total win for
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPod. If they still feel like an iPod Touch is the thing they want to make, I think that size is a natural fit. The bigger size,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s an interesting point. I agree with you. To come back to the iPhones and to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get toward the 6 Plus, a couple other quick thoughts about the 6. The Apple leather case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no longer covers the bottom of the phone, which looks a little jankier,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but is actually kind of of convenient because there’s no real headphone cutout anymore that you have to worry about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And additionally, there’s no lightning port cutout anymore because I found that I think it was the Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightning cables were too thick at the head in order to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the little cutout for the lightning port on the 5S case. So I do kind of like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I do love the feel of the Apple leather cases, and it makes the protruding lens not be an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue anymore. But I don’t know, sitting here now, I love,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the phone looks good. I like having a little bit more real estate, more than I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would in fact. However, every time I pick up Erin’s phone, and she’s staying with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5S by her own choice, I think to myself, well the first thought is, holy crap,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is tiny. The second thought I have is, my goodness, it feels so much better in my hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now what do you think, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, first of all, let me address the cosmetic angle. Both of our friends,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CGP Grey, on the most recent episode of Hello Internet, which I highly recommend, it’s a fantastic podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll put that in the show notes, CGP Grey went on a nice rant in the last episode of Hello Internet where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he basically said he can’t believe how unbelievably ugly the iPhone 6 is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also our friend Virginia Roberts, I wrote a blog post, I believe it was, the other day, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put that in the show notes as well, making some similar complaints about the appearance of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, so CGP Grey’s main complaints were the the rounded glass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all and I think Virginia complained about it too. The rounded glass I think, I think they are right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t, it doesn’t look as good. Like if you see the way the light reflects off of it, it does almost look like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a plastic covering. It, it does not look as good. However, I think it feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much better that it’s, I think it’s worth it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it looks good too. Like the ugliest phone design is the 5 and 5S design. If
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to, maybe the 3GS comes close, but I really didn’t like the 5, 5S design.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it was just terrible in all ways. It could be just super boring, sharp edges,
⏹️ ▶️ John no interest. Whereas the curved glass, like the whole thing is that it’s curved, but it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ John made of glass. You know, I mean, Apple’s not the first one to do this. Tons, tons, so the Android people don’t write in. Yes, we
⏹️ ▶️ John are aware of that. Many, many Android phones have had curved glass and all sorts of curves in every different direction. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is the first Apple one, fine. I’m just saying, I like it. I liked it when it was on the Android phones. I like it when it was on other phones. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like it when it’s on Apple’s phones. It’s because it’s glass and it’s hard and it’s not some squishy little thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And especially the joint that it makes with the rest of the thing, tight panel
⏹️ ▶️ John gaps, Lexus, the relentless pursuit of perfection, ball bearings,
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental neutral. Anyway, all that stuff. I think it all, it reflects well in the device.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can understand some people being annoyed by the antenna lines on the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that was that was the other thing like and both gray definitely play that I think Virginia does did as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the antenna lines are indeed ugly. I think the backs of these phones are a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ugly. I wouldn’t say it’s as severe as as what gray seem to think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think though those antenna bands are indeed ugly, and I wish it didn’t have them. However, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will also say that I have noticed significantly improved Wi-Fi reception from the 5s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are a number of areas in and around my house where I used to be like right on the edge and sometimes would drop the connection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Wi-Fi and the with every previous phone up to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5s and then the 6 that I’ve had for the last few days has not had that problem. Like in those same areas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has like two arcs of Wi-Fi reception and holds connections just fine and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is able to transfer data just fine. So whatever it’s worth the Wi-Fi is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better reception in this current design and whether it’s due to something that requires the bands,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knows? I don’t like the bands, but if that’s what it takes to get good Wi-Fi reception
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on edge areas of my house, I’ll take them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, see, with the bands, they have the same decision. Like, first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John metal is not radio transparent, and they wanna have metal for it. Like, they have the plastic one. The 5C, I think, is great, it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John great, but they obviously wanna have a metal one, but you can’t have the antennas. You have to have something that, plastic,
⏹️ ▶️ John or some other material that the radio waves can get out of. So they decided, we know we have to have a plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John part, we don’t want to make plastic panels top and bottom, we don’t want to make glass panels top and bottom, we don’t want to do
⏹️ ▶️ John all those other things we’ve done before, we can’t shovel it all through a little glass Apple logo. We have to have these plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John parts, what can we do to make them attractive? And what they’ve done with them is,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the curved glass interfacing with the aluminum, they’re showing off their ability to manufacture to tolerances
⏹️ ▶️ John by making the plastic exactly flush with the metal behind it. If those
⏹️ ▶️ John stripes were like slightly indented or you could catch your fingernails on them or if they ever become that way,
⏹️ ▶️ John like after a month or two months or a year of use, if they start to get all uneven and they expand and
⏹️ ▶️ John contract at different rates or become warped or whatever, that will ruin the effect. But these iPhone 6s
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’ve all seen that are brand new from the factory, I think them showing off again like panel gaps. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, look, it is like one seamless material. Isn’t that amazing? I agree that from a distance looking at it, it’s like, why are those
⏹️ ▶️ John ugly stripes all over it? But in the details close up, I appreciate the craftsmanship demonstrated.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s kind of like when you do, I forget what it’s called, like wood inlays, where you, someone, and we don’t have woodworkers in
⏹️ ▶️ John the chat room anyway. Like, where you do, where you cut out pieces of wood to precisely fit
⏹️ ▶️ John inside, next to other pieces of wood, and you polish it all together so it looks like one continuous piece of wood.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of what they’ve done. They’ve got antenna inlays. They’re not ornamental, they’re fairly straightforward,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think that it’s a, I think it’s a nice look for a necessary evil.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would again I think the 4s design is still the best one because it took necessarily evil and Incorporated
⏹️ ▶️ John into the design by making the entire back glass the entire front glass We all know what the problems with that were but as
⏹️ ▶️ John a piece of sculpture the 4s wins But as something I hold in my hand and probably won’t ever see the back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, honestly, I think you know I I totally agree with with some of the concerns that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is indeed harder to reach things on the six like I You know going from the forest to the five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certain things on screen were hard to reach, especially if you hold it on the bottom, and most of us do, the upper corners became much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco harder to reach. With the new one, the 4.7 and the 5.5, it takes it in bigger directions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even more things are now harder to reach without an awkward re-grip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or reach-over kind of thing. No question that part is worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, I think overall, the 6 feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better in the hand, even with the awkward reaching needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, have you noticed improved battery life? Because granted, these are new devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Stephen Hackett took me to task on that. And naturally, any new battery is going to feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little better, or feel like it lasts longer than an older battery. But that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being said, I’m making up numbers here, but when I got done with an average work day with my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5S, I would be at something around 30 or 40%. I don’t have the battery percentage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my status bars. This is all just visually, but I feel like I’m coming home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from an average day at work with 10 or 20% more battery power remaining
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my 6 than I ever did on my 5S. And I was curious, Marco, if you seem to have noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey similar results or if perhaps I’m just crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess it’s better. I don’t have a regular schedule, so like every day I treat my phone weirdly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differently. Yeah, I don’t know. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s close enough, like you know, you’re not talking about twice as long. No, no, no, no, no. You’re talking about maybe 20%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco longer. So like it’s, I think it’s close enough that it’s within the realm of like everyday variances
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how it’s being used. Or the age of the battery being one year newer, things like that. Like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think we can draw a big conclusion from that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Fair enough. That’s the biggest one with batteries is
⏹️ ▶️ John you get a new device, your old one has at least a one-year-old battery. That it’s always,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you had just simply gotten a new version of the phone you already had, you’d be like, wow, this battery is better. That’s just a fact
⏹️ ▶️ John of life with lithium ion batteries.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s even more severe in laptops when you only get a new one like every four years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And it’s even bigger than the, hey, I just installed a new version of the OS and it feels
⏹️ ▶️ John faster but it’s just because I rebooted. Because the battery thing is real measurable difference, even just
⏹️ ▶️ John from a year old battery. your phone every day. Yes, the new battery is always such a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John big win. I mean, I see it even we got my son an iPod touch and like, how old is this iPod touch now? Three years old. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got two years old, whatever it is. When he got a brand new one, his battery is way better than mine. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I should have just given him my old one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t. All right. So let’s well, any other thoughts about the six and then I’d like to talk about the six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, well, I think something that might bridge the two is, um, software thoughts, like what it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like to use apps that are just bigger. So, you know, Casey, you and I have used the six now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for about a week or whatever, a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a week. It’s weird because, you know, obviously a lot of apps aren’t updated yet, which is unfortunate because they really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do look awful when they’re not updated. And I really, I hope developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listening to this, if you thought that an update was something that you had to like maybe kinda casually get to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you haven’t even submitted it yet, I know there’s a long submission queue, so if you’re stuck in the submission queue,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this does not apply to you. But if you’re a developer who’s like, oh well, we’ll get to it sometime soon,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you should reconsider that position. You should really get on that because non-updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps really do look awful. And most importantly, they don’t work very well if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you ever bring up the keyboard because the keyboard is scaled also, which means that everything on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard is slightly differently sized than the native keyboards in every other app on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone. And so you make tons of typos because it’s slightly off from what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re used to. So definitely get your apps updated as soon as you can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, for apps that have been updated, including all the built-in ones and a handful of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco third-party ones, I think it’s kind of like, you know, so on iOS, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every window’s always maximized, or whatever OS X calls zoomed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, it’s different. On iOS, it’s like every window’s always maximized the way maximized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means on Windows. everything’s always full screen, edge to edge. Unless we get that crazy iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resizing apps thing, but we’ll see about that. And so when you get a bigger screen, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have more room to put apps side by side or anything, all the apps just get larger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They get more space. And so some of the apps I think are suffering from not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowing how to use the space very well. It’s, you know, like even looking at something like mail, like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even, this isn’t even, I’m not even talking about the 6 Plus, even just on the six, I’m having this problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with mail, where it just kind of looks like they don’t know what to do with the space yet. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like you’ve maximized a window on a new, bigger monitor, and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just spread out more, and it doesn’t, it isn’t proportionally scaled.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like your accidental overcast app for iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. You know, it’s a little less severe than that, but it is that same kind of effect, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like, this was clearly designed for a differently sized screen and it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being scaled up uh… to to this new one but it was obviously designed for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a smaller screen and it it kinda looks ridiculous to an extent i’m i’m getting that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feeling all over the place with with this with the six the six plus i would imagine is probably worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i i i didn’t getting both my six plus just arrived a few hours ago so i haven’t had a lot of time to spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it the reason i got both is for developer purposes you know i i think We developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been lucky in all previous years for developing for the iPhone or iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that we’ve never really had to buy extra ones. Forgive me if I gave this rant last week, I forgot,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I at least gave it on Twitter. You know, we’ve never had to buy extra phones. If you’re an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Android developer, this sounds ridiculous because Android developers generally have to buy extra phones beyond the ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would normally get for themselves just because you need more stuff to test on. iOS people, if you just bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new iPhone every year or two, you were mostly okay. This was the first time I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really felt like I had to buy an extra one because the 6 and 6 Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are very different from each other, not to mention all previous iPhones. I think if you’re a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very clear, both from just looking at the sales numbers, even though they’re combined,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking around, seeing what is selling. I even asked the guy in the Apple store today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what roughly is the sales mix between the two? And he said, well, they’re getting a lot fewer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the six pluses. So they’re selling more sixes. But if they had them both in stock,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’d probably be selling about equally because there’s so many people asking for the six plus. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is very clear. We’re not going to have one of these being the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive majority winner over the other one. I think both of these are going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be major selling devices. It’s important for developers to be able to test on both of them because they’re different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 6 Plus is not just the 6 but bigger. It has different size classes, it displays miniature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad interfaces and landscape, it has a scaler and it runs at 3x and the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen runs differently and the way you hold it is different, the ergonomics are different,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you should put controls might be different. These are very different devices from each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other and from past ones, and so I think it’s important for developers to have both. So what I did was I got my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular AT&T one for the small one, and the big one I got an unlocked one at full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price in the same capacity, same color, black 64, so that I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco swap the sim into it. And so what I’m going to actually do is I’m going to switch to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big one for like a week or two here or there, just so I can get a feel for what it’s like to use one, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I So I have some idea of what I should be developing on it. Like where should controls go?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How should things work? Like I think it’s important for developers to familiarize ourselves with both of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices because they’re huge. Not in size, well that too, but they’re going to be huge in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales and influence. Anyway, all that being said, I think the 6 Plus is going to have this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem even more of having apps just kind of be scaled up and not like in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old unupdated way, but even after you update your apps, like, okay, you make your app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run in this bounding rectangle. It’s still not really redesigned for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it until you do something special for it. And I think it’s going to be a while before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers and Apple with its own apps really know how to use this space well enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think… And so in combination with what I said last week, where I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a world where the Apple watch is commonplace. I think the 5 plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the 6 plus will make more sense because a bigger phone is harder to take in and out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your pocket or wherever it happens to be stored. If you have a watch to check notifications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to do minor actions on you don’t need to take it out of your pocket as much. So I think next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year and in future years the 5 plus or the 6 plus line or the large size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line will be more compelling for more people because it’s mostly sitting in your pocket and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just glancing to watch all day and then you’re using it when you have two hands available.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This year I think it’ll be very successful, but a lot of geeks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us won’t be switching to it. That being said, again, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be big. And I think it’s going to take us a year or two to even figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out how to use the space.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re right. We actually saw each other, Marco and I, this past weekend.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had gotten a few friends together over the weekend, and one of my friends,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Phil, actually had gotten his 6 Plus that Friday, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past Friday. I got to play with this iPhone 6 Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a little while. My initial impressions about it were, firstly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh my god, enormous. Secondly, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just felt to me a little bit wrong. Like, the 6 still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feels like a phone to me. Granted, I just spent a little while earlier telling you I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it’s a little too big, but maybe over time I’ll adjust. The 6 Plus is indisputably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking huge. And huge to the point that I almost,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, mentally associate it more as a very small iPad than I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very large iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, I think if the iPad was the better selling device,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might have called this the iPad Nano.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree. I agree completely. I did briefly use it in landscape mode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in mail where it had the split view going on, and I actually really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey liked that, and I really thought that was really nice to have that extra bit of context
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you’re going through your email. And so presumably that would apply to many other apps that will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eventually support these split views. But overall, it just felt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely wrong to me. And even if I was bumping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into battery issues constantly, like Mike Hurley is, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be hard-pressed to want to carry something that large all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To me, I have my phone when I’m on the go, and I have my iPad when I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t need to create a lot of things, but I want something with a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more breathing room. I have the iPad mini, I should say, and I have my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I really need to sit down and do work. I don’t personally see where a 6 Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fits in my life, but I mean, apparently a bunch of people do think so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But man, it’s just so big.
⏹️ ▶️ John The more I think about the 6+, which I still haven’t even seen in person, but the more I think about it in the abstract,
⏹️ ▶️ John the more I relate it to my beloved still, but
⏹️ ▶️ John similarly troubled iPad 3, in that it just seems like a compromised device.
⏹️ ▶️ John The 3x resolution, scaled down, I know some people say
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can’t tell and it doesn’t matter and it looks great and blah blah blah, but I’m pretty sure I will be able to tell,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if I can’t tell it’s just such an awkward like what am I gaining out of that like 400 dpi fine
⏹️ ▶️ John but rendering at 3x and scaling down that’s not gaining me anything right that is not
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s making the hardware work harder render at a higher resolution and then taking
⏹️ ▶️ John away it’s throwing away a lot of that information when it scales it down I don’t know if they
⏹️ ▶️ John just couldn’t hit the target you know they couldn’t get screens at the actual resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John 3x bothers me because I don’t care if the screen resolutions are multiples of 16, but I do care
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re evenly divisible And I guess like well You’re supposed to moving away from pixel perfect design who cares or whatever like
⏹️ ▶️ John why why make that compromise if you don’t have to? Because they can’t do it a 4x. That’s why it’s 3x because
⏹️ ▶️ John 4x is too much they can’t even do native 3x so they do 3x and scale down just the whole thing seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like a transition point towards something else because we had 1x and we had
⏹️ ▶️ John 2x and it was a clear like we waited a while to Get 2x when we got it. It was a clean win 3x scaled
⏹️ ▶️ John down is not a clean win. Bigger 2x, fine. 4x, which we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John there yet, fine. But this just seems like a way station in between where we are now and where
⏹️ ▶️ John we might like to be. Or maybe we could just decide that the 2x is enough and there’s not any
⏹️ ▶️ John benefit to going to 4x or 3x scaled down. But just the plus as a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John device, mostly defined by its screen, because it’s mostly just one big screen, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I think your opinion might change if you see one you know academically I get your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco points about how the scaling is kind of gross no question but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in person it doesn’t really matter and the screen just looks really really good
⏹️ ▶️ John you know you don’t see the hairline shimmering when you scroll single single native pixel lines
⏹️ ▶️ John basically hairlines scroll with them what you can see them shimmer I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco think yeah I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check I don’t so far I haven’t noticed that um no I brought it your attention.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, there it is. Very. You have to be scrolling a table view extremely slowly to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and looking for
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I mean, it’s not so much it’s it’s really in the like in the idea that this this hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John is a is compromised like it’s because they couldn’t do 4x but they didn’t want to just do 2x
⏹️ ▶️ John that size. So they want because they wanted to get higher DPI. And so this is all this is the compromise and I’m only
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the same way that I sit there and just wait and don’t buy any new hardware until the hardware comes out that I want, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is often never.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, with the iPad, I waited until they had a Retina model. And even that, I got compromised because this is the very first Retina
⏹️ ▶️ John one. And if I cared about 3D performance or whatever, I would be, which I don’t. But even just things like scrolling
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, like wait for the thing that you want. And I didn’t buy an iPad, despite the fact that I knew I would love one, until
⏹️ ▶️ John it went Retina. And I don’t regret that decision. I’m sitting here with this 2008 Mac Pro, not buying a new one until
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just the right thing. And in that sort of mindset, the plus is not
⏹️ ▶️ John the one. Like, you know, I know where they’re going. They’re not there yet. This is a transitional fossil.
⏹️ ▶️ John It will come and go. We will forget that it ever existed. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John correct one that is a better fit between CPU, GPU, screen, and resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ John 3X, just I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t. Well, the 3X itself, if it was native to the panel, I don’t think that would be a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I mean, first of all, I think you’re holding it to too high of a standard. You know, like the way…
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, the regular people don’t care. This is just me personally. No one else has these values, but I totally understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if your phone is subsidized by your carrier and you can get a new one every year for, or every two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years for like 300 bucks, you don’t have to worry about, like, you know, your Mac Pro decision is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am I gonna be okay using this computer for the next five years? Your phone decision is, am I gonna be okay using this computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the next one to two years?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s esoteric, like I just have specific demands of the heart. Very good people can’t even tell retina versus not right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco This is totally
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just not, I’m talking about me personally. When I look at the arc of the hardware, if you are a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John aficionado, there are certain machines that are just like, that was just the right time, just the right combination
⏹️ ▶️ John of all the parts were in harmony. No part was unnecessarily compromised by being in a transition between
⏹️ ▶️ John an old one and a new one. Like the retina screen, they didn’t do much with the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t change the resolution. They didn’t change the size until they could go retina. And that was just such a big leap,
⏹️ ▶️ John such a clean win. And they could have done compromises in between by tweaking the resolution, increasing the DPI, but they didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John This 3X one just smells to me like we couldn’t do 4X.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, we had to do 3X, but we couldn’t even get a screen that did that. So we had to do 3X scaled
⏹️ ▶️ John down, and here’s your device. And maybe the only hope this gives me is that maybe it means a plus
⏹️ ▶️ John size iPod Touch actually is in the works. because if you’re gonna give a kid something to play games
⏹️ ▶️ John on or watch video on in the back of the car and you don’t wanna give them an iPad, a plus size iPod touch would
⏹️ ▶️ John be great. And maybe it’s like, well, we could have had the super high end screen on the iPhone 6 Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John if we added another 50 bucks, but we knew we were gonna use the exact same screen in the plus size iPod touch and so
⏹️ ▶️ John we had to go with this crazy compromise. But I don’t know, I’m just making excuses for them now. It does not,
⏹️ ▶️ John it offends me on a tech nerd hardware level. None of this has anything to do how successful
⏹️ ▶️ John the product will be in the market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think also, you’re calling this a compromise device, similar to the iPad 3.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think by that, let me know if this is fair, I think you’re saying design compromises
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to result in something mediocre. Is that a fair characterization?
⏹️ ▶️ John Not just mediocre, but like Gruber said, again, this is all academic because I haven’t seen it, but he said he saw a couple of animations
⏹️ ▶️ John that looked like they might have stuttered a little more on the plus. That’s something that a consumer could notice, that
⏹️ ▶️ John it is smoother on the six, but even though this is the more expensive model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I think the compromises on this are a lot less significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and less obvious than what you might be thinking. Like the 3x divide,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, I think you’re, I see what you’re saying about how it’s offending you like on a nerd level, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get. I think the overall device, looking at it, I’m holding one in my hand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, looking at this device, Like. I think this is rather than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying it’s a compromised device, I would say it’s more like the 17 inch PowerBook. Remember that or a MacBook Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was also compromised by the ridiculous keyboard floating in the giant sea of aluminum.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course, you’d have a
⏹️ ▶️ John that. It’s the same keyboard on the 13 inch Mac, a PowerBook and
⏹️ ▶️ John the 12 inch power. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that was they call it a feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I call it a feature, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But no, look, anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll get a feature because part sharing. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it was ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But oh, it was nice to be consistent with, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John your finger feel anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Consistently. Let’s let’s standardize on the worst keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, John, are you ever happy
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway? We like the six plus does benefit from having, I would assume, the exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same fit and finish and cool design and curve corners and everything like all the things that I said I like about the six.
⏹️ ▶️ John This has them do. It’s just bigger. Like I’m not saying the hard is just the balance of the the internals and
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen seems off to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think like the 17-inch power book people are going to love this thing and not maybe not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all people Maybe not even the majority. We’ll see I think the majority I How do they might go for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this either way? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Regular people don’t care about any of these things. I just said that this is totally immaterial I might as well just been babbling all they care is
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a bigger screen and for them its price You know do I want $100 more for the bigger one
⏹️ ▶️ John as I said, I think the six will be the more popular model It’s so hard to tell now because the six pluses are so incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John supply constrained that they’re always sold out everywhere And that could fool people into thinking that they are the more popular model,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re not it’s like the gold iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure yeah, but I think like you know if if they made a retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 17 inch MacBook Pro today For my next for my next laptop I might buy that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m almost always limited on what I can do on my laptop by the screen space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yes, it has the scaling modes, but they make things really tiny and it’s hard to see. I would almost certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a 17-inch Retina MacBook Pro if one was available. The 17-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old MacBook Pro and PowerBook, it didn’t sell well as far as I know, but it sold because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that was your only computer and you only had a laptop and you were a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power user and portability was a little bit less important than screen space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and being able to you know use as much screen space as you could in one thing because you had to be very productive on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just the laptop screen with no external monitor. If those were your needs that was a fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer and those were granted edge case needs but that was a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great solution to it. Now I think there’s a parallel to draw between that and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your iPhone being your only mobile device if you don’t have a tablet and possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your primary or only computer If you don’t even have a PC or you don’t use one anymore or you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardly ever use one, so many people use their phones as their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only or primary computer these days. It does make sense to have a big screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to basically have as big of a screen as you can tolerate carrying around and using in your hand, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many things on a computer are better on big screens. And so I think, from that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point of view, this actually isn’t a compromised device. It’s simply another option for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people for whom this is their primary computer
⏹️ ▶️ John I think is a compromise implementation of a device that everyone knows that there’s a demand for which
⏹️ ▶️ John is a big honking phone I’m saying except that a big honking phone. It’s two levels of compromise
⏹️ ▶️ John one category is big honking phone You’re consciously choosing a happy medium
⏹️ ▶️ John between all the other devices that you’re not gonna get you’re just gonna have one phone fine Once you establish that that’s the type of thing we want to make
⏹️ ▶️ John how do you make a really good big honking phone? And the answer is not Render it 3x and scale down to HD
⏹️ ▶️ John With the GPU that can barely handle it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know honestly. I’m I’m I think in the back of my mind. There’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 40% chance or so that I’m actually during my trial of this thing I’m actually gonna like it better and switch to it full-time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because like I’m exactly the kind of user Who would like this like I
⏹️ ▶️ John know I’m something if you like a big phone You’re like I’m not saying that you know again that category of thing if it turns out that
⏹️ ▶️ John you want a big phone this is the only big iPhone, so a really big iPhone, so this is your only
⏹️ ▶️ John choice, and it’s fine. Like, it’s just not, it just bothers me. Like, what it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John is something that, if they had their choice, they would have done it differently, but couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John for reasons of parts availability, or, you know, just like something didn’t work
⏹️ ▶️ John out, is what it seems like to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and again, that’s fair. I just think in real world use, it doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, it doesn’t. It just bothers me. I mean, my iPad 3 is exactly the same deal. It gets too hot, it’s big
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s thick, it’s got the 30-pin connector, the GPU can barely handle the screen res. I mean, I was happy with it
⏹️ ▶️ John because I was holding out for as long as I possibly could to get a Retina screen, and Retina versus non-Retina, it was totally worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I also recognized that of all the Retina iPads, this one is the bad
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco one, right? This is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you can just
⏹️ ▶️ John barely do Retina. The 4 came out so quickly after, the 4 has lightning port, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Anyway, that’s many, many parallels. And I say this as like, I’m still
⏹️ ▶️ John using my iPad 3 and this is part of Apple’s curse that like I have not seen a reason so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna get replaced with an Air eventually too, but I’ve watched generations of iPads come and go. And every time I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John said, you know what, my iPad is still pretty darn good. That screen looks good. I use it when I’m on my couch and in my
⏹️ ▶️ John bed and it’s just fine. And I can go two, three years without getting a new iPad. And I bet
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple hates that, but that is a testament to the longevity of even the worst retina iPad they have
⏹️ ▶️ John ever made. That was a compromised device.
⏹️ ▶️ John I actually kind of like it when it gets warm because my hands are always cold. So maybe that’s why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, like to me, like on a personal level for a minute, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say now in retrospect, now, you know, having seen both the iPad Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now big phones, I would say the iPad mini is kind of a compromised device.
⏹️ ▶️ John The non retina one, let’s just get rid of that entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that one, yeah. I wish, oh God, I hope they stop selling that next month so we can stop supporting A5 chips anytime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. The iPad Mini doesn’t fit in most pockets, unless you carry a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significantly larger bag or a big jacket. You know, the iPad Mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not always with you like a phone. It is also not as spacious and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel as the full-size iPad, even though I know it’s the same resolution, but the full-size iPad is just much nicer. And also, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full-size iPad is just a higher-end device. You know, the Retina Mini, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s unsubsidized like all the iPads, it really is a very low-end device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is similar to the iPod Touch in the quality of components that it will probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually end up getting. I think the current one was a fluke in that it had the same A7 as the big one, and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same capabilities, and the same, I think it even had the same cameras and everything, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was just slightly clocked lower and a lower quality screen. Well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at the iPad Air now, and having owned now the Retina Mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if I buy another iPad, well of course I’m going to buy another iPad at some point, whatever iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I buy next, I’m almost certain I’m going to get the full-sized one. Because I think the full-sized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad is a better iPad. Like to serve an iPad-like role
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the kind of things I would use it for, which is not bring it around as my portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device anymore, but as like a small tablet in the house. a small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tablet to be next to my bed or next to the couch, you know, browse the internet at, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on, on furniture. It’s great for that. Um, I think for portable use,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big phones are just going to eat its lunch because they’re just so much better at portable use. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much smaller. They are always with you. They have better cameras and their higher end devices. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, way more profit in them so they can afford to have better components, better cameras, like all this stuff like there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re always going to be higher-end devices and they’re always going to have cell plans because you already have a cell plan like you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to worry about getting the cellular iPad and having a separate plan or pulling it with your existing one like it’s just such a more compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argument for portable use to have just a little bit bigger phone and then to have no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad and then have the iPad if you’re gonna have an iPad at all have it be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-your-house portable casual tablet in which case the tending size I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better than the mini
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you You know, my brain knows that you’re right, but God, do I love my,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, my retina iPad mini and I having had a third generation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad and that’s Aaron’s iPad now, I just don’t see myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever wanting to go to a big iPad again, but you know, to each their own. That’s what makes the world go round.
⏹️ ▶️ John When the 12 inch comes out, the 10 inch one will be the smallest. That’s what you’ll get.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can we bend some iPhones now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god, we’re over two hours. Are we really going to keep going?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll do it in the after show. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Mobilux, Harry’s and Hover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will see you next week.
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you’re into twitter you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s that’s k-c-l-i-s-m-a-r-c-o-a-r-m anti-marco-armen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a-syracuse it’s accidental they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental accidental All right, so you’re bending
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your iPhone already?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You haven’t even gotten one yet. No, the bent
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones thing, this reminds me so much of our, you know, the quartz screen and testing it and scratching
⏹️ ▶️ John it with glass and stuff like that. And I’m only going to slam this one video because it’s the only one I saw, but it was the one featured
⏹️ ▶️ John on time.com that everyone linked to of the guy bending. Did you guys see this? guy bending his
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone 6 plus. Well, so it’s one part. If you’re going to make a video
⏹️ ▶️ John of this, obviously you’re sacrificing a piece of hardware. You’re like, I’m going to see what’s kind of like that guy was doing with the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. I’m going to stab it with a knife. I’m going to do this. It’s like a torture test to see what can this
⏹️ ▶️ John device stand up to. If you’re going to go through all this trouble and destroy a multi-hundred dollar device,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like the USB connector. Like, wouldn’t you spend some time, since it’s such
⏹️ ▶️ John a big deal, like this connector’s to be using a million devices. This video is going to cost me hundreds of dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me think for five minutes about how much value can I get out of this device, of bending
⏹️ ▶️ John this device? How much value can I get out of stabbing the screen with a knife? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you would have to say, you just bending the thing or submitting it to a stress test, or
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you had a really complicated Dr. Drang metal stressing machine, there
⏹️ ▶️ John would be digital readout showing how much force and where the fulcrum is and all this other Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to compare it to something, otherwise we have no idea if it’s better or worse than the other ones. You have to bend to
⏹️ ▶️ John 5S. You have to, you can’t just do it in isolation. So he takes the phone and he bends it and it’s really hard
⏹️ ▶️ John and it bends. So what does that tell me? You just bent your phone for hundreds of dollars. You didn’t tell me,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I’ve bent to 5S and it was harder, it was easier. It was like, we assume that maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John easier, you know. Again, Dr. Durand could tell us exactly the equations, you know, how much more leverage do you get
⏹️ ▶️ John on a longer phone and every extra millimeter gives you X amount of force because of depending on where you put the fulcrum
⏹️ ▶️ John also you have to compare you have to say stab this screen with a knife stab the old
⏹️ ▶️ John screen with a knife one is harder that it’s just it’s just basics I’m not asking them to be scientists here but
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re gonna destroy a phone the main thing we want to know is is this big giant phone more
⏹️ ▶️ John susceptible to bending than the old phones don’t just assume that because you can bend the new phone you
⏹️ ▶️ John have therefore imparted that information that like okay well we bent the new phone and the
⏹️ ▶️ John only the story is about the new phone therefore the new phone is worse no bend the old phone too like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just it’s so so incredibly painful but as for bending it the only
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting information out of the bending was one that looked really hard to bend and two it bent
⏹️ ▶️ John as the guy pointed out in the video it bent in the weak spot in the side where the volume buttons come through because that’s the part the little
⏹️ ▶️ John you know semicircular curve is the most weak because it’s got you know the it’s got holes in it or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John All that said, I completely believe the story that someone had an iPhone 6 plus
⏹️ ▶️ John in the front pocket of their pants and that they ended up bending it. And the reason I believe that is because
⏹️ ▶️ John cloth is very strong, surprisingly strong, especially to the strength of, you know, like pulling on it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to tear apart. That’s why we make pants out of cloth, right? They don’t fall out, rip apart when you
⏹️ ▶️ John wear them. So it can, and you know, big man’s thighs
⏹️ ▶️ John plus a bunch of really tight-fitting dress pants plus a phone in a pocket I can totally see them imparting
⏹️ ▶️ John enough force on a large phone to bend it. But it’s still, that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t, you know, that doesn’t answer any of my questions which are is this a problem unique to the 6 Plus or could,
⏹️ ▶️ John would he also have bent any of the past models? Would he also have bent an iPad Mini?
⏹️ ▶️ John Who knows? We don’t know. So I feel like this story is still an open question
⏹️ ▶️ John if the iPad is more susceptible of bending because it is larger and because you get more leverage on it
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe a little bit of this responsibility can go into Apple and that if you’re making
⏹️ ▶️ John a device slightly larger people still might try to use it like an old device by putting it in their pocket was a hair I put my
⏹️ ▶️ John old phone in my pocket this is a little bit bigger this fits in my pocket I’ll do that too whereas I think no one was ever trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to shove iPad minis into their pockets and if they did they would be just as bendy or even more
⏹️ ▶️ John bendy because you get even more leverage on it. Anyway I don’t think this is as big a non-story
⏹️ ▶️ John as everyone else does but I mean first of all don’t put your devices in your pockets. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think when Tiff was on the show I couldn’t believe that she put it in her pocket but even she said well I take it out before I sit down. Don’t sit on your
⏹️ ▶️ John devices, don’t put it on the front pocket of your pants because just because I think it is possible to put it in the front
⏹️ ▶️ John pocket of your pants and bend it you should still feel that like you still have feeling in your leg. The amount of
⏹️ ▶️ John force you need to impart on these metal things to bend them is substantial and when you feel that happening in your front pocket go oh
⏹️ ▶️ John my god I get like I put my tiny little iPod touch in my front pocket sometimes when I sit down
⏹️ ▶️ John on a couch I feel a little bit of tension in the pocket oh I get right back up you know just don’t do that don’t think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I disagree with your statement that people should not put their devices in their pockets.
⏹️ ▶️ John the 6 plus like it’s not so much that you put don’t put in your pocket but like like for your back pocket like no one’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no one’s putting like their their phone in their back pocket and sitting down on concrete right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my very limited understanding of these matters is that a lot of women do precisely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that because their front pockets simply aren’t large enough to handle even a 5s
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean but you’ll crack the screen like just from like plopping your butt down and something there’s not enough cushion between
⏹️ ▶️ John the glass screen especially if you have no case and the thin back pocket of your pants on the concrete you’ll end up chipping
⏹️ ▶️ John the glass on the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well you put you put the screen side towards the butt or the leg it’s screen side in.
⏹️ ▶️ John What kind of gadget owner are you? If you had well see here’s the thing with putting the screen side in if you try to do that your front pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John and you got that little fake pocket where the iPod Nano goes there’s a little metal thing poking out of that so if you put the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John in and when you go into that pocket you will be putting that metal thing against your screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well that’s why your left pocket is made for devices because the the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little change pocket thing is always only on the right side.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah but that’s only for I agree with John. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you guys are wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, anyway, like putting in your pocket is like you can have it in your pocket as long as you don’t get that feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh my God, I’m now crushing the thing that’s in my pocket, right? Because you know you that feeling when you sit down with
⏹️ ▶️ John it in your pocket the wrong way or it’s in your like when you’re standing up, it’s fine. When you start putting it under tension,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re going to feel that you if you put enough force with your pants pockets on a device to bend it,
⏹️ ▶️ John you will feel that happening. And if you feel it happening going, oh, it’s fine. I’m sure it’s indestructible. Nothing will happen to it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s on you. But this gets back to what we just talked about with the watch. If
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple had made the iPhone 6 plus two millimeters thicker and strengthened
⏹️ ▶️ John it so it was heavier and got better battery life, would people have thought that was a worse
⏹️ ▶️ John device or a better device?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think a better device, personally, but that’s not what Apple wants. As you’ve said several times.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, exactly. The other the other angle is, well, why do they keep making it thinner? Because you don’t get to radically
⏹️ ▶️ John thinner in one big jump. You have to get there by little increments. And if you don’t keep getting thinner every year, you’re never going to get
⏹️ ▶️ John to the end point and someone else will and you’ll be screwed. And so I understand Apple’s philosophy
⏹️ ▶️ John behind this. I just think there’s room in their product line for one device that doesn’t make the same trade offs. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think overall, they still need to keep going thinner because that’s that’s that’s making
⏹️ ▶️ John progress and I think that’s moving towards something that is radically better. But along that path,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are allowed to be bumps. And if I was going to make a bump, I would make it with the big honkin iPhone six plus.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are moving towards a world. This is the first year where there’s been more than one new iPhone. The 5C I don’t think counts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is the first year where there’s been more than one radically new iPhone. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, if there’s going to be, like, obviously the only new iPhone of the year is not going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some big, thick battery monster. But there is room in the lineup, as you said, for multiple entries.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if they had, say, a third entry, and it was a 6++99,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it had an extra battery in the back, that would be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That said, we all keep saying, oh yeah, we’d love if they made it a little thicker and had more battery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A battery twice as big or whatever. But I’m not entirely sure that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what we would actually want. We haven’t held a device like that. We don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Batteries are so freaking heavy that we don’t know how that would actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel. Apple has most likely tried this. They have labs, they try lots of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve probably tried that, you know, let’s see how big we can make the battery and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco balance the thickness and- I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think they’re balancing it that way. I think they have- their design goals are based on
⏹️ ▶️ John thinner than last year. As thin or thinner than last year. I think it killed them to do the three with the extra
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, and that’s- I agree. And I think Jason Snell also had a good point on his new show. What is it called?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey remember the name of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. Upgrade? Upgrade, yes. On Upgrade episode, I believe episode one. was talking about how like it seems like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has like a like a like a target battery life and they don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel the need to give more battery life than roughly what we have now.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s a minimum like it has to be as thin as last year or thinner and it has to get as good battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life or better and or better and or thinner always good. But if you can’t, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can’t meet those goals like it’s like a barrier you can’t be below that and again they had to compromise for the first retina
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad make it a little bit thicker than the two and that was all for them but you
⏹️ ▶️ John got to do what you got to do. The thickness is mostly has to do with battery life but the weight what you’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John at Margo is the key point as someone points out in the chat room the HTC One M8 is two millimeter thickers
⏹️ ▶️ John and he says that it still bends that’s why I mentioned not just making it thicker to put in more room for battery but also being willing to make it
⏹️ ▶️ John heavier and what do you do with the heavier? You put heavier strengthening materials in there but the bottom line is all
⏹️ ▶️ John these things are bendable they’re made of aluminum and glass, aluminum bends, it does not spring back like plastic does, plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John shatters or breaks apart, so like, you have to just
⏹️ ▶️ John enough force on these things to bend them. I could take my iPad, put half on half off the table, lean on one end of it and break it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you know, or bend it, or damage it in some way. And that’s why I think pockets and the pocketability
⏹️ ▶️ John of this becomes a factor, or at the very least, awareness of what’s in your pocket and what forces are being
⏹️ ▶️ John applied to it in your pocket. Just because it can kind of barely fit in your pocket, and then you sit down on concrete, you feel a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of clunks or you feel that stretching in your pockets, don’t ignore that feeling.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not made of adamantium or unobtainium or any other made up metal
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s indestructible. They can bend and they can break. I mean, we know they can break when they drop them.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just know we try to avoid dropping them. We know they can bend when you apply lots of force to them. Don’t put them in a pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s going to apply a lot of force to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it’s important to keep in mind two major factors whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone brings up a problem with the new iPhone, which happens every year. Number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is you have to ask yourself, does this happen to every phone? Is this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a problem with every cell phone that comes out and therefore it’s kind of probably unavoidable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least somewhat reasonable? Number two, you have to consider that when the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone comes out, if you can show a flaw with it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will get tons of attention, You will get tons of page views. You will get tons of ad money from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those page views. You have a lot to gain by pointing out a major flaw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the new iPhone. And this will happen every year, and people will always try to figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out what that flaw might be. First it was the antenna thing on the iPhone 4.
⏹️ ▶️ John The antenna was a much more solid case than bending though. Because the antenna was like, you don’t need a weird use
⏹️ ▶️ John case. I can just show you that like, and again it gets with like, well so that’s fine
⏹️ ▶️ John but show me with other phones. Which is essentially what Apple did when they did their video. They didn’t just say, hey, here’s this,
⏹️ ▶️ John because all the videos were, here’s my iPhone, then let me wrap my hands around it in a crazy way and look, it gets no signal.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, okay, well then show me either last year’s iPhone or previous ones. And some videos eventually did do
⏹️ ▶️ John that, but that’s the key. Like, if you can just do something and say, isn’t this bad? You have to compare it to something
⏹️ ▶️ John that we either are familiar with or find acceptable, which is why, you know, no one complained about bending with
⏹️ ▶️ John every single other iOS device before. Maybe all the previous iOS devices were
⏹️ ▶️ John more bendable than the current range. We don’t know, because that comparison hasn’t been made. All people care about is,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I can bend this one if I try real hard. Well, try to bend all the other ones, or don’t bother telling
⏹️ ▶️ John me anything. But bending is a crazy…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, find other giant phones, like try to bend the Samsung ones, try to bend the HTC
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. Yeah, a couple of the people, they built like, someone bent an S4, and you can see it sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of comes apart to the seams, because it’s not, you know, it’s just plastic, and then eventually the screen cracks, the plastic allows
⏹️ ▶️ John more bending than the aluminum does. And once you bend the glass a certain amount, it shatters.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, you’re right that it’s all just sensationalism is, you know, this is the from being
⏹️ ▶️ John the highest profile, not the most popular in terms of sale, but certainly the most popular in terms of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what people care about celebrity, essentially, the iPhone iOS devices are the celebrity devices. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re going to get a lot of interest in any story that shows something bad about them. But as a consumer, there is an
⏹️ ▶️ John actual consumer angle here and the consumers want to know, is this something I should care about or is it just one of those things? And the
⏹️ ▶️ John way you do that is by saying, how does it compare to products that I previously owned that I
⏹️ ▶️ John am familiar with? And the best way to do that is to compare it to previous iPhones or previous iPads
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that to say, is it better, worse or the same? Because that gives consumers actual information and
⏹️ ▶️ John then they can choose to ignore it or not, not based on the whole idea of like, oh, everyone always complains about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple stuff and so I should not pay attention to this or oh, that darn Apple, they’re always doing bad things So this is terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me know. Is it worse than a 5S, better than a 5S, or the same as a 5S? That gives me information. Then I can say,
⏹️ ▶️ John this person did this comprehensive test that compared it against all these other things. And it turns out that the iPhones are no
⏹️ ▶️ John worse or better than any of the other ones. Then I know I can ignore the story. But I haven’t seen that story yet. I can
⏹️ ▶️ John ignore it because I’m not going to stick these things in my pocket and sit down with them. But if that’s the type of thing that you do, you should be looking for a story that tells you whether
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a concern or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So titles. I like the load-bearing finger.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is pretty good, actually. Where’s that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I like your holding it wrong, Casey, better than load-bearing fingers, because I disagree with Casey’s whole holding technique.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think he’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny to me that both of you are the self-declared official arbiters of everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of all the things. You’re just realizing this now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, I’m not.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco We’re evaluating
⏹️ ▶️ John your holding technique based on the things that you would measure a holding technique on.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of them is comfort. One of them has to be security. Like there’s a criteria, we’re not just arbitrarily saying because
⏹️ ▶️ John you do it, it’s bad. We’re trying to, the way you evaluate anything, what qualities of a way
⏹️ ▶️ John that you hold a phone are important when considering which way of holding a phone is better than another. I don’t even know
⏹️ ▶️ John what to say right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is that the way you evaluate anything?
⏹️ ▶️ John It is! Clearly! Whether you know it or not, you do. Again, get back to the invisible spreadsheet, that should be the title
⏹️ ▶️ John of one of our episodes. There is a spreadsheet, it may be invisible to you, you may not have control over
⏹️ ▶️ John all the columns and numbers you may not be even aware that they exist but they do.