catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

107: We Get the Most Boring Tips

Car follow-up, Spring Forward event expectations, and an anonymous tip perfectly suited for our show.

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ John The snow is destroying my house. We’ll see if it remains standing. I keep thinking this house has been here since 1932. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not going to fall down this year. But it’s got to fall down some year, and I’ll probably be in it when it does.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if you want to know how to polarize our audience, and we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talked about some controversial things in the past. We’ve talked about all sorts of things, not really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever politics or religion, but we’ve come as close as one can get. And it’s not the abuse of women in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the technology industry. That is actually not very controversial to our audience, which is good. But man,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if we talk about cars, holy hell do people get upset. And then some people love it, and then people

⏹️ ▶️ Casey get upset. And then other people love it, and then people get really upset.

⏹️ ▶️ John Who’s getting upset? People yelling at you about stuff? Most people are in a joking way

⏹️ ▶️ John about, oh, talking about cars. Ha ha. But they seem pretty OK

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I don’t know about you, Marco, but I’ve seen some pretty angry either tweets or emails about the car talk.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t really feel a lot of anger. There were a couple of tweets that were like, oh, I guess I’ll skip this one. But it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were pretty mellow. I mean compared to what we got when we did neutral. You know neutral had like 200 really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco upset people and 100 people who liked it and that was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And this seemed to I was surprised actually. I was very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprised how many people enjoyed my Tesla review because I thought I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very nervous about even including that because I was afraid people would think that I’m some elitist

⏹️ ▶️ Marco asshole.

⏹️ ▶️ John Should have just made a blog post, see? It would have been

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco fine. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would have been worse. No, no, no. I would never put that on my blog because I would have had so many… People who listen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this tend to like us more, I think, than the average blog reader.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I post something on my blog, I get a whole bunch of hate from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive-bys. Whereas with podcasts, you don’t really have drive-by readers or listeners to a podcast.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco People who are here tend to like you. I mean with the exception of like MTW everybody else tends to like us

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m not like it you can you can say like more possibly controversial things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a podcast And you can expect the audience will give you the benefit of the doubt or will know you a little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit better Or will understand you a little bit better, you know So it’s I feel way more comfortable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying things on podcasts that I do and especially on our podcast Then I do writing it on my blog

⏹️ ▶️ John You need to go on analog with Casey and talk through these issues that you

⏹️ ▶️ John Feeling bad about buying nice things with your money Actually, that is a very interesting point and an alternate

⏹️ ▶️ John solution If you find that to owners is to give all your money to me. I have no such problems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The funny thing about you John is that even if I gave you all the money in the world to go like buy Ferraris

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Stuff you still

⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t do it. I have different priorities than you So the ranking of what do we what’s the first thing you buy

⏹️ ▶️ John a second thing you buy someone may be different But I would have no problem like blogging about the expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John thing that I bought being afraid, you know, whatever like that’s that’s me That’s you we’re different people. That’s why I said you need to

⏹️ ▶️ John you need to get rid of all that nasty

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco money. It’s bothering you Go on to Casey’s feeling show and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different for you people

⏹️ ▶️ Casey believe you Oh, that’s funny though, because I of the three of us I would peg

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you as the least willing to talk about all the fancy crap That you bought.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no way. I’ve talked about my TV for hours. It’s like the fanciest thing I own. That’s all I talk about

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m totally willing to talk about the fancy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that I have I also forget that you talking about things that you like Really amounts to you preaching

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and moaning about those things rather than being like look at me and how awesome my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Tesla I don’t have complaints about a Ferrari. I mean, it’s like an exotic car. There’s probably like all

⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of ergonomic issues and everything like, but I would talk about the good things too. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was just looking at the screen, the screenshots, looking at

⏹️ ▶️ John the pictures in that Verge article. Someone had the 488, a bunch of pictures, like the first non-press, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John non like glamor shots that Ferrari takes of the car. And so you get to see it from different angles and

⏹️ ▶️ John see the awkward parts or whatever. And they had a shot of the interior showing like the seat controls on the side of the seat. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John was like, boy, when that door closes, It’s tough to get your fingers down there to feel those seat controls. And it’s like, Ferrari

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t care about the ergonomics of how easy it is to reach the seat controls. That’s not what this car is about.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know what we gotta do? So I mean, you know, there are companies like, I forget the names of them, but there are some companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in New York and LA and stuff that will rent super cars to you for like a few thousand dollars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a day.

⏹️ ▶️ John My wife tried to do that once and I turned it down. Yeah, because they’re like, can you imagine something worse?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, Marco, you can relate to this when you’re owning cars. Like someone else’s expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John car you are renting like… And especially the one she was looking at was like in a

⏹️ ▶️ John city? Like having a Ferrari in the city of Boston, like it was pointless. Like why not just take it

⏹️ ▶️ John and rub it upside down on top of some gravel? Like… You’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not driving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, it’s just abuse. We have to get a sponsor to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make this happen, to pay for a one-day rental of whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your chosen Ferrari is that’s currently available through these rental places, a one-day rental for you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just to have you evaluate it the way you evaluate things. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, maybe if it was a sponsored thing, who knows? I just,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I would feel very nervous driving someone else’s car.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it would have to be during the summer for crying out loud. No, it’d be even better now. Yeah, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, Ferraris are not allowed on the street. I still, I see occasionally, I have seen in my life

⏹️ ▶️ John in the Boston metro area a completely blasted road salt covered

⏹️ ▶️ John slush Destroyed red Ferrari out in the winter. So somebody’s doing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it that person. I have I have immense respect for whoever that is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seriously, this this 48 is pretty I’m looking at this verge article. It’s nice

⏹️ ▶️ John All right, we should get the follow-up before we turn this into neutral again

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to like

⏹️ ▶️ John Now it’s like now when I’m doing the show I’m thinking, where is Marco gonna put the car opening and closing sounds?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco To

⏹️ ▶️ John get back to what you were pointing about, the people with the feedback about the car stuff, I mean, most people I think are just bemused

⏹️ ▶️ John by it and joking about it and like I think they’re joking, like, look, if there’s a rumor

⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple’s gonna make a car, we’re gonna talk about it on a tech podcast that’s focused a lot on Apple. Like blame

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple. We didn’t tell them to make a car, you know? nine to five

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac and the Wall Street Journal.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if we were making if they have rumors of them making a boat, we’d be talking about boats.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right. So now that we’ve wasted 10 minutes, Steve,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey would you like to do some follow up? Yeah, guess what

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. Sorry, guys. Oh, God, this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the best. All right. So let’s talk about cars.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, first one is from William Faraday or Faraday. It’s better for Faraday because I

⏹️ ▶️ John think he works for Tesla. And he says that Tesla reports margins. We were

⏹️ ▶️ John saying like, what do we think the margins are on Tesla’s cars versus what they imagine that might be an Apple’s cars.

⏹️ ▶️ John And he says the margins are about 25%. The goal is 30%. And then he says, Thanks for

⏹️ ▶️ John believing in us. Model S is bonkers awesome. So by saying believing in us, I assume he works for Tesla.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I wouldn’t actually assume that for a second there. Tesla fans are crazy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like and we’ve had and I will probably count myself among those you know in a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco year or two whatever but Tesla fan I’ve never I’ve never encountered fans that were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as devoted and incredibly loud and overprotective as they are you know it’s kind of you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know Elon Musk himself has his you could tell he’s extremely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oversensitive, much to a fault, actually. Whenever anybody says anything he perceives

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be unfair or incorrect about Tesla’s in news or in reviews,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s that whole scandal with Top Gear, then the scandal with the New York Times, and all this stuff. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, I would say Elon reacts poorly. I would say

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s necessary to react to these things. It’s necessary to issue statements and stuff if you disagree,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the way he does it I think is not beneficial overall.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the fans have seemingly taken that on themselves, like the owners

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have taken that like kind of like the scrappy upstart underdog attitude

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on themselves, and boy, they… there is no woodwork

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can hold them back. I mean, it is… if you say anything,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they jump all over you, good or bad. And so it was very helpful to me when I was honestly looking into this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and giving this a fair shot. I got tons of amazing information from Tesla owners,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of how you take road trips, what are the good things, what are the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad things about these cars. Everybody is willing to share this information. Everybody has tons of things to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say. And everyone’s like, please, I will never buy an internal combustion engine, which they all abbreviate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ICE. I will never buy an ICE car again. You have to come over. It’s amazing, you’ll never

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go back, etc. It is it is the most devoted,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearly rabid fan base I’ve ever seen of anything. It’s really something.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny, because I don’t mean this to be funny at all. It reminds me of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way I perceived Apple fans before I became one of them. You know, like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just ravenously excited about their company. And I also thought

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was quite funny that more than a couple of people tweeted at Elon Musk saying, Oh my God, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to listen to this M5 owner. Talk about how wonderful the P85D is. Check out this podcast,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I thought was quite funny. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John sure he’ll work that into his schedule in between launching rockets into space.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the reasons why I’m interested in the Tesla now is that, you know, Elon Musk

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has some and maybe many of the qualities Steve Jobs had in the sense that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to some degree Jeff Bezos has, but I think Steve and Elon do a better job of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This kind of like crazy billionaire with really high standards and pretty high product

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ambitions. I kind of miss that from Apple. And we still get great stuff from Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m sure we’ll talk about next week’s event now and then when it happens, and I’m sure we’ll say, Oh, this stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is great. But that spirit of like the charismatic, kind of crazy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco leader who pushes everyone to do pretty crazy stuff. That’s rare

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Elon I think is one of those and I’m kind of interested in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco joining one of those product fan bases again, you know?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the reason Tesla fans are as rabid as you say they are and

⏹️ ▶️ John why Casey perceived Apple fans to be like that before coming on is I think you need to have

⏹️ ▶️ John a company that you recognize or or that the fans recognize as having a superior

⏹️ ▶️ John product, but that the world does not recognize yet. So you have to be an underdog. So like

⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac was just so much better than Windows 3.1. It was like it was ridiculous. It was

⏹️ ▶️ John even worse than Tesla versus other cars. And yet the entire world considered the Mac a silly toy and not a real computer. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John breeds rabid fans. Same thing with the Amiga. Like you think, guys, don’t you see this is so awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why is it only me and my seven nerdy friends who see that this is awesome? the world has to

⏹️ ▶️ John know and they’ll defend it and so on and so forth. Once you stop being the over, the underdog and become

⏹️ ▶️ John the overdog and just like the entire world knows that Apple is really good and everything, then

⏹️ ▶️ John you tend to chill out more. So Casey, your perception could have been right back when Apple was beleaguered and

⏹️ ▶️ John on the ropes and so on and so forth. Or maybe it was just like, you know, it’s it takes a while for that perception of the fans to turn

⏹️ ▶️ John around. But Tesla is definitely the underdog at this point because, well, because they make super expensive cars

⏹️ ▶️ John and and not many people can buy them and the people who own them think they’re great

⏹️ ▶️ John but other people think either A they’re too expensive and I can’t afford one or B

⏹️ ▶️ John you know they’ll run out of batteries or whatever other fud is out there about electric cars and that’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re combating but anyway so you think this tweet William Faraday he should tweet us back

⏹️ ▶️ John and say thanks for believing in us you think he’s saying us as in

⏹️ ▶️ John we Tesla owners I mean, I totally read that as him saying that he works for Tesla.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I did hear from a couple of people who work for Tesla. And, you know, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know anybody whose names anybody would recognize as far as I know. But, you know, just people who, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they listed their employer in their Twitter bio as Tesla. And one of them was wearing a Tesla jacket in his picture. So it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like pretty obvious. So yeah, they’re out there.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think I clicked on this Twitter thing and looked at the bio to see if he worked for Tesla and didn’t come up with anything. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, there’s one Tesla fan slash employees opinion.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. And, uh, what else do we have with relation to cars, perhaps self-driving cars?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we talked about that. I said, uh, could have something like that at Disneyland or, or, you know, some

⏹️ ▶️ John confined area where the routes are well known, sort of basically like self-driving buses or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John And, uh, uh, Michael Lewis or or Louise Brown, are going to say that Heathrow

⏹️ ▶️ John Airport has self-driving car-like pod things that take you to and from the parking lot.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll put a link in the show notes. You can take a look, see what they look like. It shows them going in a little

⏹️ ▶️ John road that’s barely big enough to fit the thing. So anyway, it’s a self-drive, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a driverless thing that people go in that goes on something that resembles roads. It’s not on rails. It’s not on tracks.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s actually wheeled vehicles in a confined place. So that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that’s already a thing. And I think someone also said that in Disney World, they have something like that as well,

⏹️ ▶️ John as part of some ride or something. And like I said, they have this stuff like this in factories. So yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John the tech to do it in limited circumstances has been with us for a while, and now it is slowly spreading.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, now are these actually self-controlled? I did not read this article, but because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this looks a lot like, and actually it’s labeled, the caption on this picture is PRT,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which which is personal rapid transit. I have a friend that went to Virginia Tech for his

⏹️ ▶️ Casey undergraduate degree, like I did, and that’s where we met. And then he went to West Virginia University for his law degree.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in West Virginia, they have, or at WVU, they have these things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they call the PERT, personal rapid transit. And it’s straight out of like 65 or something like that. But there are these little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey orbs that don’t look too dissimilar from what I’m looking at here. And as you walk in,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you push a button this console that’s clearly straight from like 73 or whenever this thing started.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that tells the computer system where you’d like to go. And then you wait and the computer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey system dispatches a driverless orb thing. And then you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wait until it shows up. It says that, you know, I’m going to the engineering

⏹️ ▶️ Casey building or whatever. And then you step in and it magically takes you to the engineering building. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on like a kind of elevated track that doesn’t look too dissimilar from this road in this picture from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Heathrow. It is ancient and kind of busted and beaten down, and it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was awesome. And I kind of wish I had one nearby. I bring all this up to say that this is not new technology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and this has been around for a long time. Now, perhaps the difference though is that these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Heathrow ones may genuinely be self-driving, whereas the ones at WVU are clearly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey operated by a computer based out of like 92 or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, it doesn’t really matter whether they’re centrally controlled by a computer or controlled by a computer

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s on board the thing for the purposes of, you know, shuttling to and from two places. Like a computer

⏹️ ▶️ John is controlling it. It’s deciding when to accelerate, when to brake, when to turn, you know, like it’s, I’m sure the road itself has

⏹️ ▶️ John sensors in it to keep it on track or whatever. It’s, you know, it’s limited controlled circumstances, you know, it’s not out on the open

⏹️ ▶️ John road, but this is where all these things start and then, you know, get all those DARPA challenges and

⏹️ ▶️ John and things that Google’s doing to work out the problems in the real world.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Now, this same individual, Michael, also had some other feedback for us.

⏹️ ▶️ John About the 16 biggest transport ships in the world pollute as much as all the cars.

⏹️ ▶️ John Internet meme story thing or whatever, our intrepid listeners track that down to

⏹️ ▶️ John its source, which looks like a presentation in 2009 from something called

⏹️ ▶️ John the DK Group. It’s all about pollution. It is a slide

⏹️ ▶️ John show thing. We’ll put a link in the show so you can go through the 55 slides they have on this presentation and

⏹️ ▶️ John see that it is kind of game of telephoned morphed into X number

⏹️ ▶️ John of ships polluting more than all the cars in the world. If you look at the presentation, it gets into specifics.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not like they have stats about CO2. They have it about what sulfur, sulfur oxide

⏹️ ▶️ John compounds as well. And the sulfur ones is what they’re focusing on for the 15, 16 ships things. They

⏹️ ▶️ John also talk about the CO2 levels. And there’s no bite size. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John this has been distilled down into an impressive sounding stat. There are actually equally impressive stats in here

⏹️ ▶️ John that just don’t boil down as nicely. And you can find echoes of it in like, there’s a story

⏹️ ▶️ John in the Guardian from a similar amount of time. There’s a TED Talk that cites it. And every time it gets

⏹️ ▶️ John cited, it becomes more kind of like vague. Like even in 2009, when the Guardian citing it, it says,

⏹️ ▶️ John what confidential data from the maritime industry and citers based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars

⏹️ ▶️ John shows that 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s six seven like

⏹️ ▶️ John as much pollution well is that exactly what they said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes see this is why it was so confusing because you know because when you mentioned this last week I in my head assumed that you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were talking about just like fossil fuel consumption it not not emissions of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain chemicals and so that makes complete sense which is like it’s it’s who knows

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if this is true but it’s at least plausible because there’s so much regulation on how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of certain chemical pollutants that cars are allowed to emit in all you know all over the world and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ships are presumably pretty much unregulated because they’re in the ocean in the middle of nowhere most of the time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so it does make sense that like you know they could they could throw enough crap in the air that that cars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have to use you know filters and converters to to not emit

⏹️ ▶️ John well yeah and I had originally had it in my head as co2 which is like all the greenhouse gases like we

⏹️ ▶️ John want to combat global warming and everything that you want to get rid of the cars. And I’ve talked

⏹️ ▶️ John about the farting cows, which are a big thing

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because

⏹️ ▶️ John methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. But it’s not like you said,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not so much about the CO2 of these ships, which is significant, but the other things that are in the fuel.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because they use the cheapest, crappiest fuel possible, and they don’t care anything about what’s being spewed

⏹️ ▶️ John out of their pipes. And so it’s not like they use more fuel than all.

⏹️ ▶️ John the 15 ships use more fuel than all the cars in the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey world. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John That when they burn that fuel, the, you know, and this calls it the pollution. Well, is CO2 pollution?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re mostly talking about the other crap that’s in the fuel, not the CO2, but the other stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, cars have been regulated down to not, you know, or have catalytic converters and other things to stop the stuff from going

⏹️ ▶️ John out. Anyway, that’s why we’ll link to the actual presentation in the show notes so you can look at it. But every time

⏹️ ▶️ John it gets repeated, it sort of morphs. And like this pollution summary, it’s not inaccurate.

⏹️ ▶️ John It just depends, like once someone says pollution, then the next person to decide it’s gonna say CO2 or

⏹️ ▶️ John CO2 and other gases, or you know, like you can phrase it in a way that is still correct, but it’s slowly drifting

⏹️ ▶️ John away from the meaning. So if you care, check out the presentation. It’s interesting. Anyway, yeah, we should, ships

⏹️ ▶️ John should, Elon Musk will do that next. Make container ships that work entirely

⏹️ ▶️ John on battery. Of course, a lithium ion battery big enough to move a container ship would probably produce

⏹️ ▶️ John more pollution in the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey generation

⏹️ ▶️ John of that battery the ship ever would. Or charging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I don’t know. Shipping’s pretty easy. You know, like energy consumption-wise, it’s pretty efficient

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to float things across the ocean.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you say that, but in a prior life, so to speak, I actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked on navigation systems for big, big, big ships. And at one point, I actually took

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a business trip to Helsinki, Finland, to talk to a company that would take hyper, hyper accurate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey models of ocean currents. And they would say, okay, if you’re, I don’t know, maybe carrying an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey M5 or many M5s as the case may be, and you’re leaving Germany and you’re going to New York.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, the most direct route will be, and I’m completely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey making this up, 2,000 nautical miles. Well, if you are willing to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go one or 200 nautical miles out of your way, you can catch this awesome

⏹️ ▶️ Casey current that will save you 50% on fuel. And granted, I’m making these numbers up, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the difference was tremendous. And when you’re talking about a vehicle that big, it was a trip

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just an indescribably large amount of fuel like measured in hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars worth

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of fuel. And so this was all based on hugely accurate predictions of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ocean currents. It was the most fascinating technology in the world. And and I kind of wish that I was still

⏹️ ▶️ Casey privy to what’s going on with that company because I thought it was amazing. Our

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excellent. All right, so we are chipping away at the follow up. What else do we have?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, we have a answer to my question about who supplies Tesla. That’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Sam, oh god, Abwelsamid, I’m so sorry, Sam,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrote in to say, Tesla designs and builds their own electric motors and power electronics, the part that does

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the DC to AC conversion, just as most automakers design and build their own engines. Transmissions

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tend to be a mixed bag of in-house and supplier produced for automakers today. The Model S

⏹️ ▶️ Casey brakes are supplied by Brembo, one of the few suppliers that are typically highlighted by automakers. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s an excellent point. Other suppliers are highlighted on a chart, which we’ll put on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes. Tesla designs and builds their own battery packs, but the 6,000 to the 8,000 lithium ion

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cells in each pack are supplied by Panasonic. The Gigafactory, which we were talking about last

⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode, is actually a joint venture between Tesla, Panasonic, and a few other suppliers. So a little bit of information

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it says that Tesla makes the battery packs. Well, but Panasonic makes the batteries. So I guess they make the pack part. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John I know it’s, you know, the electronics and the complicated things over that, but that goes to show even it’s like, Oh, well, Tesla makes their own batteries.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re really good at, they’re still outsourcing the actual like bazillion little lithium ion cells that they wired

⏹️ ▶️ John together. Um, did you look at the big picture that I linked there? I did not. I did my

⏹️ ▶️ John homework. Oh, right. I mean, just look at it. I mean, it’s in every car is like this. So it just shows

⏹️ ▶️ John that Tesla is more or less typical. You can go down the suppliers and see. I mean, this is not every single part in the car.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just kind of like a sample of things. You can see also the front grill surround by our

⏹️ ▶️ John friends at Magna, electric power steering, ZF. Brembo brakes

⏹️ ▶️ John is a good point that like when, when something comes with Brembo brakes, you tend to see, well, I don’t know. I see it in car magazines, but car magazines

⏹️ ▶️ John also tell you who makes the transmission and the tires as well. But

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I guess they’ll sometimes just advertise ceramic brakes or whatever. I don’t even think they offer carbon ceramic.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, yes, it takes a village to make a car, including the Tesla.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. All right, so further car feedback, this time from Yuba. I’d

⏹️ ▶️ Casey made mention of a bus that specifically was in Volkswagens

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the context of the conversation we were having an episode or two ago. But Yuba had said, in the US,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey CAN, which is the CAN bus, has been the standard protocol for all car computer communications

⏹️ ▶️ Casey since 2008, not just German cars. Some messages on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the bus are standard and well-documented, such as speed, air intake, temperature, et cetera. But most are OEM-specific and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey undocumented, although they are unencrypted. Lots of people have reversed-engineered those messages to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do things like lock or unlock their car doors, kind of the way universal TV remote makers have to reverse-engineer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey infrared comms for each TV manufacturer. This kind of work is finicky and potentially harmful to your car,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you want to be careful. And this is interesting. And Yuba continues, what’s cool

⏹️ ▶️ Casey though, is that car manufacturers aren’t interested in locking down the CAN bus, or at least they can’t because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a long legal tradition of people’s right to repair their own cars. I thought that was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really interesting and a very good point. And Yuba continues and says that this is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what opens the door for companies like Automatic, which is a previous sponsor. And as it turns out, this individual

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is one of the co-founders to build awesome stuff using events read from the CAN bus. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just thought that was really, really interesting. and a little more information than I was aware of about all of that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the idea of it just having the bus be documented, but then they not

⏹️ ▶️ John under any obligation to document the things they send over the bus. So it’s just a bunch of data

⏹️ ▶️ John going back and forth that you can kind of figure out. And that’s like the worst of

⏹️ ▶️ John all possible words. Like, well, we have an open bus, but we’re going to send messages over there. I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John talking about what they are. So you can try to figure out what they are. And I hope you get it right. And we might change it in the next version.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I know it’s not really like safety related things where they’re going to turn off the power steering

⏹️ ▶️ John or power brakes accidentally or something, but it’s not, it doesn’t seem like an ideal situation, you know?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, and again, the whole reason automatic exists is because car manufacturers are so terrible. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John there should not, this market need should not exist if car manufacturers had any idea what they were doing, because

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, by the time a third party gets around to doing it, you could have done it as the car maker like a decade ago and

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t because you’re terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and it’s funny because I’m assuming it’s the CAN bus that that allowed me to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do something that BMW owners called code the car, which is to say you get this like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dongle that is similar to automatic but serves a different purpose, but it’s a either a Bluetooth or Wi Fi dongle that you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey plug into your O B D two port. Nice. Thank you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so mine’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ethernet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, here’s that’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s called an E net cable. And it’s it’s it’s It’s like, it’s literally like Ethernet on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one end and OBD2 on the other.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is really weird.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never used it. I try because like in order to use it, you have to like pirate all this software and all these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like ROMs for the car and all this crazy stuff. And I just once I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco realized all the stuff I’d have to do in order to make little customizations to my car, I’m like, you know what, forget it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not worth it. See that’s what you get for buying a new car. But me, I bought an old and busted car. And what’s nice about buying,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not actually busted. But anyway, by buying a slightly older car, I was able to take

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of these OBD2 to Wi-Fi converters,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bridges, whatever. And then my uncle, who also has a BMW, has this $50 iPhone app. And you thought $10

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was expensive. Has this $50 iPhone app that connects to this thing and will let you make, like Marco said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey some customizations to your car. So as a silly example, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey able to open my windows from the little key fob, but I was not previously able to close them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had to, oh travesty of travesties, I had to stand outside the car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and put my finger on the door handle in order to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco close all the windows. Oh my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey god, you’re an even bigger jerk than me. It was so terrible, Marco, you have no

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco idea. This is great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, all I wanted to do was get, because like every time you start up the car, like most modern cars with navigation systems, you have to like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit the confirm or I agree button on a EULA, on the nav screen before it will do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything, and there’s like a little you know checkbox flag and these hack programs that you can turn that off. That was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mainly me what I wanted to do was just disable that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So what I did was I coded my car such that I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can hold the lock button on my key fob and all the windows will go up. And the only other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing I was interested in, but apparently it was a lot more fiddly, is on BMWs and a lot of car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes, the mirrors, the external mirrors, can fold in if you push a little button. I think on most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mercedes they’re actually automatic. Well, I wanted it to be automatic so that every time I parked the car, the mirrors would fold

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in. But that was like many, many, many switches, and I got scared and I didn’t do it. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can roll up my windows from a distance, and that’s awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John The only analogous story I have for my cars is that like many people

⏹️ ▶️ John who have had stick shift cars before the time you guys are probably driving, I was forced to master the

⏹️ ▶️ John art of paying a toll with physical cash and then pulling away from the toll booth

⏹️ ▶️ John while rolling up the window, as in rolling up the window in a stick shift

⏹️ ▶️ John car, which basically leaves maybe thighs to steer with, but normally it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey straight. So you gotta

⏹️ ▶️ John give cash, roll up, first gear, pull away, roll, roll, roll, and then hopefully,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s my equivalent.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would just complete the roll up before going, like just sitting there with the gate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John open.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you got that, because I’m from New York, you don’t sit there and go, okay, now let me close up my purse and let me put

⏹️ ▶️ John it back down over here and let me roll up the window and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco now let me shift into gear. No,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not how it works. As soon as they get the money, as soon as that arm goes up, you’ve gotta go. Yep, I know that

⏹️ ▶️ John feeling. Oh, there’s a related link, by the way, on this Canbus thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, now

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re, hang on, people, we’re going to drift back into Apple and something else that is not car related.

⏹️ ▶️ John So this is our transition. The story that was going around, this telegraph interview with

⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook, where he says that the Apple Watch is designed to replace your car keys,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is an interesting statement. And it could be related to Canbus, because it’s like, all right, well, so that doesn’t mean Apple’s making

⏹️ ▶️ John a car. Designed to replace your car keys just means it has some way to signal to whatever fancy

⏹️ ▶️ John cars that Apple watch, you know, like, is it is does it work with the can bus? Is it some kind of wireless thing or

⏹️ ▶️ John reverse engineered thing where you can run an application that they can figure out that, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John like car keys? This statement confused me, because my understanding is that the silly proximity key

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that every car maker has is all proprietary and crazy. And how could the Apple watch replace

⏹️ ▶️ John your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, well, I’m sure I’m sure all the all it is is just using an app. It’s like the watch is using a watch kit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app on the phone to you know, because some of these car makers will have apps that can remotely unlock their cars. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty sure BMW does. I know Tesla does. I know I’m sure many of the car makers do do this sort

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thing now. So is it Bluetooth or Wi-Fi or what is the no, it’s neither. It’s the watch telling the phone and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone using the data network to go tell some tell some data center to tell the car to unlock.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’s a hell of a long way to go. It’s like the long Rube Goldberg machine for you know, I think I bounce a signal off

⏹️ ▶️ John a satellite and go to a fiber

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco optic cable under the

⏹️ ▶️ John sea to a server and then come back to the car that’s two feet in front of me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet that’s what it is, though. I would I would almost guarantee that’s what it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I didn’t think of that. But you mentioned that that sounds very plausible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that is that is absolutely how the BMW app works. There’s a BMW remote, which used to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be okay and now is a piece of crap. But anyways, what that used to do is it would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone home to BMW, presumably in Munich, and say, I would like to unlock my car, please,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Munich would phone the car because the car has a cellular connection for the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote unquote OnStar, although in BMW’s case, it’s something proprietary. And then it would tell

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the car via the car’s onboard cell connection, okay, unlock the door, please.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So that’s it for follow up, right? Anything else, John? I was gonna complain about

⏹️ ▶️ John well, Tim Cook’s statement with the car keys. But now that I read the actual article and telegraph, it says,

⏹️ ▶️ John the watch is designed to be able to replace car keys and the clumsy large fobs that are now used by many vehicles,

⏹️ ▶️ John comma, Cook told the telegraph. So it’s not a quote, there’s no quotation marks there. I’m just relying on their summary.

⏹️ ▶️ John But what the hell does it mean to be designed to replace car keys?

⏹️ ▶️ John And so like what he maybe I can’t imagine Tim Cook ever saying that or like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just terrible like it’s the type of thing that you would expect the CEO of a company CEO that doesn’t actually know what their products

⏹️ ▶️ John are or do to say not something that Tim Cook would say but again this is not a quote this is just a summary anyway

⏹️ ▶️ John your clarification about the the pervasiveness of basically internet connections for

⏹️ ▶️ John for dealing with car stuff leads me to believe that’s probably what it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, it has to be.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of boring. But anyway, you know, the read on it, like, it’s almost like Tim Cook

⏹️ ▶️ John is winking at us. Why mention that at all? You know what I mean? Why? Why mention anything having to do

⏹️ ▶️ John with design to replace your car? Same kind of thing of like, you know, he said, I used to control my Apple TV. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John my, you know, that’s a product they have at least. But why mention any? Oh, by the way, it could replace car keys. If you heard

⏹️ ▶️ John anything about cars lately, anyway, moving on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it also, you know, because, you know, it wasn’t a direct quote, but we aren’t seeing the context. He could have just thrown that out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there like in a list of things that could be done with it in software. It

⏹️ ▶️ John could have been a leading question. Yeah, like could it be used to replace car keys? And Tim says, yeah, sure. Yeah, well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. I mean, it doesn’t, it means nothing. It just means nothing. I know, but it could be him winking at us. We don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know. Probably not. He’s not a winker.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So maybe he’ll be winking or not winking at us during the Apple event that’s coming up on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 9th, which is Monday, is that correct?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s a Daylight Savings Day. Yeah, someone

⏹️ ▶️ John in marketing was excited to pick that date.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all about time! Because we’re going to talk about

⏹️ ▶️ John a watch! It’s about time, you get it? The slogan on the invitation is Spring Forward.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, do you get it? Because watches used to have springs and it’s a Daylight Savings Time joke and it’s a watch! Oh my god!

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s springtime, sort of, somewhere, maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, right.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They

⏹️ ▶️ John announced this date. When did they announce it? Like, last month, but we didn’t get a chance to talk about it

⏹️ ▶️ John swamp with car stuff. But yeah, so what do we think about this event? I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John the consensus is that it will be more information about watches. And what do you think? That’s it?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, we actually got a really interesting anonymous email about this that kind of hinted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to us that maybe this will involve some sort of MacBook Air, a retina MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Air, perhaps. And yeah, the Mark

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Gurman and retina MacBook Air, right? The nine to five Mac, like perfect, know nearly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfect outing of this thing yeah that’s allegedly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if this tip is to be believed you know I never really know what we’re supposed to do when people email

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us tips

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I think I’m talking about the tip is not as interesting as talking about the like why why

⏹️ ▶️ John are we being sent tips and what’s the point and by the way yeah just on the

⏹️ ▶️ John the substance of this did it actually say that this stuff would be announced in the event on the 9th I I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John think it did. Yes, it did. Where is that? Where does it say that? In the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco email.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I did my homework, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I read it when it came in. Where in the email, though?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here’s a brief preview of what’s happening on watch day.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, on watch day. All right. Yeah, I mean, I suppose, like, there’s enough room in the event to talk

⏹️ ▶️ John about new MacBook Air and because, like, it’s not that, like, they’re announcing the watch. Even when they announced the watch, they had

⏹️ ▶️ John other stuff to announce. Here, they’re just going to fill us in with details. We assume, like, any changes they might have,

⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully pricing info. They already gave us availability, right? we know the launch date, don’t we?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, we just know the launch month of April.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I guess they could pin it down to a day, but you don’t have a whole event. They’re gonna fill out the rest

⏹️ ▶️ John of the missing pieces and maybe announce when pre-orders are available and maybe show off the new

⏹️ ▶️ John redesigned Apple stores where you’re gonna be able to try these things on and buy them and do all that business. And I think there’s enough

⏹️ ▶️ John room in a presentation that contains that to also talk about whatever new Mac thing they have to launch.

⏹️ ▶️ John And this supposed tip is telling us that the other thing they had to launch is

⏹️ ▶️ John a MacBook Air that we have discussed at length based on the 9to5Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John rumors and has a few extra tidbits to add. And before we talk

⏹️ ▶️ John about the actual substance, the idea that people, you know, send us an anonymous tip, why

⏹️ ▶️ John would somebody do that? Like, assume it’s real, assume this person actually knows.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re in a position to know or think they know because they are secondhand or thirdhand and they totally believe all their sources. So as far as they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John concerned, in possession of super secret information about what is shipping. Why send it to anybody?

⏹️ ▶️ John Why send it to Gruber? Why send it to us? Why send it to, you know, why do the people, why do

⏹️ ▶️ John Mark Gurman’s sources at 95Mac send him information? That is mysterious to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like they’re disgruntled employees trying to leak information to hurt their employer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well sometimes, I mean, you should, there was a good discussion about this on Upgrade this week with Jason Snell and Mike Hurley,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they talked exactly about this. And and Jason had a lot to say about, you know, why these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sources say the things they say, you know, where their information might come from, why they’re motivated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to share it with somebody, you know, why you’re motivated to publish it or to tell it. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very interesting, so just go listen to that, because Jason knows a lot more about this than we do.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I didn’t listen to that one yet, so I don’t know what he said, so you should tell me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I might know. Well, the gist of his point is that, like, when you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of secret information, like, a lot of people are very motivated, like- It’s like burning a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hole in your

⏹️ ▶️ John pocket. You just gotta tell somebody because you’re excited to know. But see, that’s the worst kind of source though, because if you’re super excited

⏹️ ▶️ John to know this information, then it’s not like a matter of course. Like for the people who work

⏹️ ▶️ John at Apple on these projects, that’s just part of their life, is you’re gonna know stuff that other

⏹️ ▶️ John people would like to know that you’re never gonna tell anybody. So the leaks would never come from there because you’re not like, oh my goodness, I know,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know about

⏹️ ▶️ John this

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John I gotta tell some, no, that’s your whole job. Like you get used to it, or you get fired. Like it doesn’t, you have to,

⏹️ ▶️ John it has to be somebody who is not usually in the position know what the super secret Apple product is. And then

⏹️ ▶️ John also be like, I got to tell somebody and there’s a separation inside Apple. It’s like, well, every Apple employee doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know there’s something in the company that every Apple employee doesn’t know about because the only people who know about like this supposed car

⏹️ ▶️ John project are the people who are working on there to everyone else, it could be like, Oh, I’m not usually but you know, but you always know about your

⏹️ ▶️ John project, right? And so I guess that might kind of get old. So but anyway, second or third tier

⏹️ ▶️ John people who like heard from someone who heard from someone super excited to know this. It’s depressing to think that

⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re just excited to tell somebody because obviously if they’re excited they’re probably an Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John fan and in general you know Apple doesn’t want people knowing these things so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it kind of spoils the surprise too like for the rest of the fans like it’s kind of it’s it’s kind of kind of ruins the fun

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you know everything that’s gonna happen before it’s before it’s out

⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple wouldn’t like it it’s like there’s such Apple fans you know back when Steve Jobs was alive if you have to put a person’s name on I was

⏹️ ▶️ John like what would Steve think about you telling these of the sites this information that you know. Like if you ever met him, you go, oh yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a big fan, in fact I leak this information. Like no,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco he would shoot you with his lasers

⏹️ ▶️ John out of his eyes and you would melt. Like if you admire the company and admire the people who work there

⏹️ ▶️ John that seems like it’s the reason the people who don’t leak, the people who work there don’t leak because they it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John out of respect for the company and for what they do and you know like I don’t know it it’s weird.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had these I’ve had like people send me tips like ever since I started writing my site forever ago. I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had tips come in here and there by email and I get the most boring tips.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it is hilarious. It’s like, yeah well you know next year they might update the cinema display. Wow!

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would be a good tip if you get that one. Tell me. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a

⏹️ ▶️ John long time actually. Every year it’s like I should send you the same tip. No new monitor this year.

⏹️ ▶️ John Go back to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sleep.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah but like you know but I don’t like in the tips I’ve gotten

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have I have not mentioned almost any of them because it’s like what am

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I supposed to do this information like if I just publish it on my site like there’s lots of rumor sites that just publish

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any tips they get they’re usually the worst rumor sites because most of like if I look back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the tips I’ve gotten, I would say at least half of them have not panned out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or have turned out to be just flat out wrong. If I had published anything or based anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything I’d said on that information, I would have looked stupid. I would have looked bad and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m happy to say that of all the crazy tips of all the crazy predictions I’ve made on my side over

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the years that it turned out to be wrong like blatantly embarrassingly wrong almost none of them were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on any tips I’ve gotten I I just am that bad at predicting things but but I at least that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me screwing up and you know with my own guesses and not like oh I got this crazy tip I better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rush and report on it on my site cuz like no one’s coming to my site for that anyway what like I stand to gain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing from that and the chances that that any tip I get are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually gonna be true are so low that it’s it’s just not really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth discussing like it’s not worth even taking the risk.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think when Mark German was on the talk show I think what he mentioned is that his I may be misremembering this

⏹️ ▶️ John but his best sources were people that he actually knew like anonymous sources this is

⏹️ ▶️ John not even what we get someone went to our web form and typed a bunch of stuff anybody could just go to that web form and type stuff you know all you got

⏹️ ▶️ John to do is just sound confident and say look this is what they’re gonna do there’s this there’s that you know you say whatever you want anybody

⏹️ ▶️ John can go to that form. Like, you know, anybody who listens to the show now could come up with a plausible rumor

⏹️ ▶️ John and type it in confidently into our web form. That’s the type of source that like it’s basically useless because

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t know who that person is. And anybody can we’re about to discuss what this person emailed us but anybody could I

⏹️ ▶️ John could have written his email like, it’s only impressive after the fact if what Apple announces

⏹️ ▶️ John is exactly what was in his email, then we will retroactively know, oh, that one anonymous email, that guy was exactly right.

⏹️ ▶️ John But that doesn’t help us when the next anonymous email comes in because we don’t know if it’s from the same guy. Like, it’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I think you really have to have, you have to know who you’re talking to. And you have

⏹️ ▶️ John to know how they know the things they know, and how it’s plausible and have like a track record with them. So that you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John this one guy I’m talking to is right three times in a row. And the fourth thing that he says, maybe I’ll believe and even then they could

⏹️ ▶️ John still be gaming you and try to suss out leaks or who the hell knows what but yeah, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, it’s confusing to me when someone says something like this, because the only kind of inside information

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m ever comfortable receiving, not that I really receive any to speak of, is the type of information told to

⏹️ ▶️ John me with the understanding that I will never tell anyone. And then I do never tell anyone. And that’s it. That’s where it

⏹️ ▶️ John ends. And this is like, for the purposes of the outside world, it is useless. It’s exciting to me because now I

⏹️ ▶️ John know something that very few people know, but then I never tell anyone else. And then, you know, like, oh, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I mean, it helps. I guess it helps me sometimes I I get told things in confidence sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John for the purposes of background information for my OS 10 reviews and stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that informs my reviews, and occasionally helps me to be right

⏹️ ▶️ John about things that I had no right to be exactly right about that just happened to actually know, but I never phrase it

⏹️ ▶️ John as I’m 100% sure about this, even when I am 100% sure about it, because that’s not the point. I’m not trying

⏹️ ▶️ John to like reveal secrets or show how much inside knowledge I have,

⏹️ ▶️ John even if I know for sure something, I’m going to phrase it as, this is something that is plausible.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I say the same thing about other things that I have no inside information about, equally phrased with the same amount of confidence. This is plausible,

⏹️ ▶️ John like technically feasible, plausible, could be, blah, blah, blah. Half of the could-bes are just like Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ John where I’m just making stuff up and thinking, well, this could happen, we’ll see. And the other half are like, I

⏹️ ▶️ John know for sure this is exactly what it is, but I’m never going to tell you that or how I know that. So just,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and anyone reading it, it’s not a secret code, you can’t decode it, it’s just a bunch of things that could be

⏹️ ▶️ John plausible. Some of them turn out to be true, some turn out to be false. But that’s the only thing I can

⏹️ ▶️ John understand, because those people would talk to you because they want an accurate picture of like their product

⏹️ ▶️ John or their technology or whatever to be out there in the world in a way that doesn’t impinge secrecy.

⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t imagine someone telling me something and saying, now you’re free to go write that about this on

⏹️ ▶️ John your blog. Like, that dynamic is weird to me, especially in an ongoing basis, that there would be someone

⏹️ ▶️ John inside information that routinely gives information to someone who they know and consent to

⏹️ ▶️ John publish that information on their blog as confidently asserting this is information

⏹️ ▶️ John we have from inside Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I would say, you know, like, like we said, like, when when we are told things in confidence,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we are expected to really not share because it would, you you know, put somebody in a bad spot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we might know that I actually feel like that’s kind of more fun to me,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like to have to have a secret that I’m not expected to do to do anything with that I’m actually really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco expected not to write about or share.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s, that’s why they told you the understanding that you’re never going to tell anybody and maybe they tell you like, for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John for you, someone might tell you something that influences which API you choose to use or something because it helps you with it

⏹️ ▶️ John helps you with your job, right? But it’s not something you’re going to go on your blog hey, guys, guess what? You should use this API,

⏹️ ▶️ John not this one, because reasons x, y, z. The only reason the person told you is because they’re telling you.

⏹️ ▶️ John They understand that you are not going to post it on your site, because your site is not a clearinghouse for inside information

⏹️ ▶️ John that you got from Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And when people tell me things that may or may not be true,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually I have no way to know. But when people tell me things that may or may or may not be true. You’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. The best thing it can do, really, is to inform my future

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thoughts and actions and discussions on the show or on my blog. It’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better in that way because then you avoid all the risks of what if you’re wrong

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or what if you get somebody in trouble or burn some trust. But you can benefit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from, like, if you heard from somebody in Apple that this thing that were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying before actually is wrong, you can stop saying it. Or, like, you know, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can… Next time you comment on an issue, you can be better informed about it. Or, as you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco said, like, you know, when you’re trying to make a decision between, you know, the product and the lineup, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, should I buy a Mac Mini right now? No, no, wait, like, you know, stuff like that. Or should I use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Core Data for this? Should I use iCloud, Cloud Sync or whatever? And you can make those kinds

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of decisions. That is better than just spewing out a secret for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever brief value it might have to you that might backfire.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we’re more likely to get information from people who are sort of the leaf nodes in the organizational

⏹️ ▶️ John graph at Apple. And those people only know what they know. But none of those people

⏹️ ▶️ John know what products Apple is going to ship, what those products are going to be called, when they’re going to be released,

⏹️ ▶️ John how much they’re going to cost like nothing, you know, all they know is like what they see it there from

⏹️ ▶️ John their perspective on their project. And nobody not even inside the Apple knows the future products are canned, products are

⏹️ ▶️ John canceled, projects are delayed, things change, like so even that information, even though it could be 100% reliable,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what the entire company thought at the time you got that information. But it turns out they changed priorities

⏹️ ▶️ John and did this and did that. And this thing got moved to there. And this project was canceled, this person left the company. And then it turns out that

⏹️ ▶️ John nothing they told you comes true, not because they were wrong, or, you know, just because like, that was the plan at the time.

⏹️ ▶️ John But plans change. And so, like, That’s why when I look at these rumor sites, even if this is 100% true, it still

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t predict the future in a way that is useful, because things change so much on whatever detail that they’ve just

⏹️ ▶️ John put out here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I can understand a perspective

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where, what if this person or a person is an Apple employee but happens to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like our show? And maybe they admire any one or all three of us. and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they want to kind of participate in the show a little bit without necessarily

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing so by name. So they have a little bit of pertinent and perhaps interesting information,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they could give it to the three of us and probably steer the show in the direction of that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey information, such as what this person has done in getting us to talk about secrets

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in general. And then you can sit back and you can know, I did that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was the one who got the three of them to talk about that. And look at me, I am an informant

⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. I’m special to people I think are special.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s more likely to be excited by the fact that I just made up a bunch of BS and they talked about it on the show as if

⏹️ ▶️ John it was real.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because that is

⏹️ ▶️ John what I think when I see an honesty about like, oh, if we talk about this on the show, the guy’s going to be like, I can’t believe they talked about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Me and my friends just made this up and typed it in a web form. Because again, it’s all plausible. It’s all 100% plausible.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anybody can make up a plausible rumor. just got to assert it confidently and then you just wait. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John this is why I wanted to talk about it because this will be allowing bringing the audience in on what this is like on a micro scale

⏹️ ▶️ John where we’re going to talk about what they say in this prediction and then we can all find out was this just totally bogus

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that somebody made up and haha we’re suckers for talking about it or was it by God we didn’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John at the time but it’s a hundred percent accurate and we’ll all find out together. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the really funny thing about this is that the extra info that we allegedly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that no one else allegedly has is so boring.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s all stuff that we talked about. Like when we talked about this stuff, we talked about pretty much all of these possibilities,

⏹️ ▶️ John but we just talked about them as a sea of possibilities. They can do this or they can do that. Let’s talk about the pros and cons

⏹️ ▶️ John of this or what if they did that. Like we’ve covered all these bases before. What this rumor, what this

⏹️ ▶️ John supposed tip is doing is saying all those possibilities you listed, this is the one that’s real and this is the one that’s happening

⏹️ ▶️ John and here’s why. And I guess there’s a little bit of a here’s why angle here. So we’ll find out together.

⏹️ ▶️ John But first, our

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco like… It’s

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, so before we talk about the contents of this, maybe it’s real, maybe it’s not rumor slash

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tip. Get excited, everyone. We should probably talk about what the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey original rumor was that Mark Gurman and crew posted at nine to five Mac. Yeah, we didn’t talk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this enough when it came out. Well, just a very quick recap. So they had said that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s going to be a radically new 12-inch MacBook Air, and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more importantly than almost anything, that it was going to do away, well, let me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey read, radically new design that jettisoned standards such as full-sized USB ports, MagSafe connectors,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and SD card slots in favor of a markedly, markedly, markedly, anyway, a thinner

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and lighter body with a higher resolution display. So that’s, that was the basis

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of all of these rumors. So with that in mind, John, would you like to take us through what this individual

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has said to us?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s a couple of pieces here. Uh, the first part is about the track pad that

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s in that article that we discussed that like, you know, the thing’s going to be so thin that the track pad has no place to

⏹️ ▶️ John sort of click down into. So the idea was that the track pad will not actually move when you

⏹️ ▶️ John click it. And we discussed like, how are they going to handle that? How is it going to feel to press something that doesn’t actually move

⏹️ ▶️ John this anonymous tip person? And again, I would say we’re not going to make a habit of reading anonymous tips But I think it’s fun just to

⏹️ ▶️ John do it in this one Place so we could all find out together was this totally bogus made-up stuff or was it

⏹️ ▶️ John all 100% accurate? And I imagine that it’s gonna be one of the other extreme and not anywhere in the middle. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John it always is Yeah, this tip says that what they’re actually using is the same thing we use

⏹️ ▶️ John for the force touch No, not the Star Wars thing, but on the Apple watch. That’s a reference Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh Oh, I got it. Well, you press really hard on the Apple watch and it can tell the difference between that

⏹️ ▶️ John and like a regular tap That you know what this person says force touch technology I guess

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s probably a branding thing or whatever To tell the difference between a tap and a deep press and the idea sounds

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of creepy The the idea that is that will be better than like I know a lot of people who devote to use to

⏹️ ▶️ John tap to touch Tap to click on the trackpads But the people who don’t like it usually don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John like it because it’s easy to accidentally tap sometimes because you know just sort of any finger brushing against

⏹️ ▶️ John the trackpad counts as a click and you don’t want that to happen well this supposedly would

⏹️ ▶️ John make it much less ambiguous when you were clicking and when you’re not still without a trackpad that actually moves

⏹️ ▶️ John but so that the trackpad can tell a difference between you just sort of tapped your finger lightly on the pad and you are

⏹️ ▶️ John actually pressing even though the thing doesn’t move

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see this I’m a little skeptical if they I mean it makes sense you know like it’s plausible that this is what they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be doing but because none of us have actually done force touch on a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch yet like I don’t like if you have to push hard at all it’s gonna be really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tedious and ergonomically questionable

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you have to press hard I think I think it’s the thing it’s a misnomer my guess is that it’s figuring out how

⏹️ ▶️ John much your finger squishes so like the contact patch changes size and I would assume that that’s what the trackpad

⏹️ ▶️ John is using to determine the force not like actual pressure or maybe it’s a combination of both

⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t think it’s gonna be like you’ll be able to tell I guess if you take something that does not

⏹️ ▶️ John make a larger contact patch when you press and see if you can force touch with that I don’t know what that would be maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of like cylindrical hot dog and a sleeve or something that is like water

⏹️ ▶️ John you know you need something that’s filled with water like the human finger and press with it

⏹️ ▶️ John in a way that the contact patch does not change size and maybe it’s a combination but you’re right we’d none of us

⏹️ ▶️ John have tried the force touch in the watch. So telling us that the trackpad is going to be just like the watch almost tells us nothing at this

⏹️ ▶️ John point.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, for whatever it’s worth, I actually, when the Apple Watch was announced six months ago,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they talked about force touch, I had speculated on the show, they were probably just measuring the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco radius of the touch, you know, like capacitively, not actually measuring force. And I think we got

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of people who sent it. I’m not remembering exactly, but I think we got a couple of people telling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us they actually there actually were pressure sensor sensors as well. So I think there’s something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there but but either way you know we’ll see how this has pans out in practice. I was very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco skeptical of the current kind of tripods we have the the quote buttonless for like kind of the whole thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a button and just hinges on the top. I was very skeptical of that when it came out and it turned out to be just fine and normal.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you know this sounds really weird but it might be awesome. I guess we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco find out.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah and there is a thing on the Apple Watch page, the Apple Watch technology page at apple.com,

⏹️ ▶️ John where you can see an explanation of force touch. And that’s what we’re being pointed to see that explanation also

⏹️ ▶️ John applies to the thing again, with branding, Apple can apply the force touch, you know, once they have a sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John a branded name with a capital F and a capital T, then they can just apply that same name

⏹️ ▶️ John to anything remotely like that in their product line, regardless of whether it actually uses the same technology retina

⏹️ ▶️ John retina is not what’s what’s a good example they’ve done that. I mean, FileVault and FileVault 2, which are totally unrelated technologies,

⏹️ ▶️ John other than the fact that they both attempt to encrypt your data. Implementation-wise, they share nothing,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they do share the same branding. So the next bit is about, like,

⏹️ ▶️ John what are they going to do if they have just a single port? How do they deal with that?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco This is the big one, guys. This is

⏹️ ▶️ John it. The answer… Are you ready? The answer is super exciting. A USB hub. I know you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John super excited about a USB hub. Now, the interesting part about this is not so

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco much… This

⏹️ ▶️ John is our tip a USB hub. Yeah, not so much the fact that they have a hub but the this

⏹️ ▶️ John tipster provides motivation behind this and the motivation and a little story behind it

⏹️ ▶️ John is with it with the original retina MacBook Pro that didn’t have an Ethernet port. Apparently

⏹️ ▶️ John doing market research let Apple determine that people really want high speed networking if they’re going to buy a big expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John laptop. And so they made the you know the what do Thunderbolt, the ethernet adapter

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And according to this tipster that that was made, the

⏹️ ▶️ John sole reason that product existed was because of a customer demand that they discovered through market research,

⏹️ ▶️ John and that they were selling it either at cost or below cost when it was initially made. Because at that

⏹️ ▶️ John point, I assume Thunderbolt chips were expensive or whatever, because it was important for them to have that product.

⏹️ ▶️ John So the $29 adapter, unlike so many other Apple products did not have a big margin, in fact,

⏹️ ▶️ John may have been sold at a slight loss when it was was brand new. Now I’m sure the margins are better on it or whatever. Um,

⏹️ ▶️ John so that same idea is with this adapter, like that they, you know, why, why does this,

⏹️ ▶️ John why does this hub exist? Well, because based on market research or whatever, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John determined that one, one port is not enough for people and they need some way to have other ports. And as Marco was talking about in

⏹️ ▶️ John past shows, third party USB hubs are flaky and Apple probably doesn’t want them to be attached to

⏹️ ▶️ John have to deal with like sleep wake problems and things, you know, tickling the bus and stuff like that. So

⏹️ ▶️ John and as I suggested, like it would be nice if Apple made a really nice sturdy port that they are

⏹️ ▶️ John sturdy USB hub that they knew worked with their stuff that like, maybe this is like a taller order if you

⏹️ ▶️ John currently have some Apple branded hardware that’s driving you insane. It didn’t help that it’s made by Apple, it’s still driving me nuts, like

⏹️ ▶️ John a time capsule that’s flaky or something. But anyway, in theory, Apple can make one of these qualify it for use in

⏹️ ▶️ John all its OS’s and make sure it’s sturdy and good and all that good stuff. So according to this tipster, that is exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re doing. They’re making a hub. There’s two USB type A ports to type C ports.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s supposedly small and fairly heavy so that it doesn’t get pulled off the table

⏹️ ▶️ John by the thing that you plug it in because I assume it will be a powered hub. See

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that part sounded weird to me a number of things about this sound weird to me. The fact that it’s a small USB hub

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s going to be heavy that I don’t buy that and also how funny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it and it is very Apple like really but how funny is it to make a USB hub that only has like four ports and only two

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them are actually normal.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, like, when I’m thinking of heavy, I’m thinking kind of like, I guess, kind of like the Apple TV,

⏹️ ▶️ John like where it’s dense for its size. Like, not that you think it’s going to be a big, but it’s small, but it feels dense when

⏹️ ▶️ John you pick it up. And it’s probably like a grippy rubber thing on the bottom. I’m picturing something that looks like a little miniature white Apple TV

⏹️ ▶️ John when I see this. What do they say about this? Something about it having a short, stubby, stiff

⏹️ ▶️ John cable? Where is that bit?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The hub is small. The cable connecting it to the Mac is stiff and very short. It has a significant weight to it so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t get ripped off your desk or out of the port by the power brick.

⏹️ ▶️ John Power brick makes me feel bad. I don’t like power bricks like that’s one of the annoying things about hubs is the

⏹️ ▶️ John stupid power brick, you know, the AC DC converter and little DC thing plugs in the back. That’s one of the awesome things

⏹️ ▶️ John about the the amazing things about the Apple TV. This is the one that has this right no internal power supply, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s a little puck and it does not have a power brick at all. It It just

⏹️ ▶️ John has a plug that goes into, you know, the outlet. No, all the power supply is internal, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is an amazing feat for such a tiny little thing. And I like that. And that’s sort of like a sort of a premium experience.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if the other Pucks are like that, but like you’ve got the Amazon Fire TV now, right Marco? Yeah, it has a brick.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and isn’t it bigger than the Apple TV too?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it has a bigger footprint, but it’s pretty short. It’s, I think it’s shorter, but wider.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, and so if you took what’s in that brick and added it to the volume of the Amazon thing, suddenly it would be huge. just goes to show what

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has done with their puck. Despite the fact that everything else about their puck is completely outdated and outclassed by every

⏹️ ▶️ John other product in the category, they do have a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco really nice internal

⏹️ ▶️ John power supply. You gotta give them that, right? And no fan. Yes, no fan, love it. But Amazon doesn’t have a fan

⏹️ ▶️ John either, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I know, it doesn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not a no. Oh, God.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it has any ventilation holes. Yeah, I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there are any. It’s just got

⏹️ ▶️ John a fan, but no ventilation holes. It just spins in there. Turns around the warm air. Oh, Jeff Bezos is a little

⏹️ ▶️ John bit crazy. Yeah and so the summary of this is that basically the German floor report is completely accurate

⏹️ ▶️ John and the only things that he didn’t have was he didn’t have the hub and he didn’t know whether it would be retina

⏹️ ▶️ John and the answer is yes it will be right now right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and by the way Mark Gurman in a podcast like like a few days after this did say

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course it’ll be retina I don’t know why he left that out of the article maybe he wasn’t positive well he said

⏹️ ▶️ Marco high resolution but he specifically said like a few days later like yeah of course it’ll be retina.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know he does run that website or like can’t he just go change it in the article? Like once once everybody

⏹️ ▶️ John said you didn’t even say it’ll be retina you can just go right up to the thing and do update yes it’ll be retina close anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe he didn’t know it for sure at the time that he published it and wanted everything in it to be correct

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that people would look back and say wow you got everything correct.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah so how could you have come up with this fake rumor if you if you had no information other than reading that German

⏹️ ▶️ John article? It’s pretty easy because you could say that article is a 100% correct, but there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John two bits of information you don’t know. One, I’m gonna take that force touch thing that they already talked about for the watch and tell you that’s how they’re doing the trackpad.

⏹️ ▶️ John And two, everyone has been saying that if it only has one port it’ll be a problem, maybe they’ll have some kind of hub or something.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, actually Apple is making a hub and here’s how many ports will be on it and here are a few attributes of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, real-time follow-up on that Apple Watch technology page, Apple says right there that force touch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses tiny electrodes around the flexible retina display to distinguish between a light tap and a deep press.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that so yeah, apparently they there are actually hardware sensors that will that will attempt to detect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pressured press there Rather than just measuring the size of your fingertip growing bigger

⏹️ ▶️ John or if it does that at all Maybe it doesn’t do the fingertip radius at all. We don’t know right? Exactly. Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Well, we will find out I suppose I mean, how will we know whether this person was right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well first Apple’s got to have a USB hub, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean the USB hub that this email described, but you know, that was a pretty pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thorough description. So it’s going to be pretty obvious whether this was credible or not, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not like this event is five days from now. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too late for something like this to be canceled. If this person wrote to us, I think this morning,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? So chances are this is either going to be 100% right or 100% wrong. There’s not going to be some last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco minute change that, oh, well, I was right, but they delayed the iPad Pro. So it’s not to be like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like they’re this is going to either be all right or all wrong. And I think it’s hilarious that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s all right that we got this amazing tip about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John a USB hub.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ John so the force touch thing we have no way to tell whether that’s right because even if they don’t use the phrase

⏹️ ▶️ John force touch this doesn’t tell us that they’re going to use the phrase the marketing term for such like basically

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s relying entirely on the German article being right because the German article said trackpad that doesn’t move if it has

⏹️ ▶️ John the trackpad doesn’t move. Was this one right? No, all it was doing is repeating like the only additional information is providing

⏹️ ▶️ John is it’s using the same thing as force touch and we can’t tell that when they announce it because and you know unless Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John specifically brands it with force touch it’s like oh well trackpad doesn’t move

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what Mark Gurman already said. Wait

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guys I have breaking news I’ve just gotten a tip from an anonymous source

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple’s about to announce during this event an update to the double-a battery charger

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Good God. Oh, you’re the worst. Yeah, if this is real,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m not saying it is, but if it is real, and this person was genuinely excited to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of quietly get credit for some, well, I think it’s at least mildly interesting piece of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey information that nobody else really knew up front. I feel bad for this person because we’ve now

⏹️ ▶️ Casey spent the last half an hour eviscerating this poor person.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I mean like you know like it like if they’re making it up They deserve to be ridiculed and if they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ John making up they will be vindicated by history like that’s why Figure out how

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll tell whether they’re right the most interesting thing if this is true the thing that I’m most interested

⏹️ ▶️ John about Is the idea that? Apple makes products and then does market research

⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out if the products are palatable and then scrambles to make adapters run there now That is like

⏹️ ▶️ John if that is actually true that sort of you know and we don’t have a good way to tell that but like if that

⏹️ ▶️ John if inside Apple, that’s how things are working That is not a healthy situation because that’s what it gets back to my

⏹️ ▶️ John thing with the whole one port Like what advantage is one port provide that two port does not and I haven’t got a

⏹️ ▶️ John satisfactory answer And if the answer is someone design says this is the product we’re making no, it’s gonna be thin

⏹️ ▶️ John No Ethernet, no single port blah blah and then some other department gets in and says our customers are

⏹️ ▶️ John saying basically It’s a no-go. So we got to give them some solution oh, I guess we’ll make some adapters, slap it on,

⏹️ ▶️ John sell it at a loss. Like that’s terrible. It shows you’re not making, like it shows your product design is not

⏹️ ▶️ John fitting the market and it would explain a lot of the things where they make something and then the next version like

⏹️ ▶️ John has more of a different kind of port or rearranges things or adjusts, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s better to find this out ahead of time. You know, if you’re gonna do something like either stick to it

⏹️ ▶️ John or don’t stick to it, don’t make a product and then slap a bunch of ugly adapters on it because that is not an elegant, simple,

⏹️ ▶️ John clean, blah, blah, blah, whatever Johnny Ive White World solution. Right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so true because every time I go to give a presentation at work or plug my computer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the projector for any reason whatsoever, anytime I do that and have to get out the little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thunderbolt to VGA adapter, every PC user around the table

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just kind of shakes their head and snickers. Because every single one of them has this antiquated

⏹️ ▶️ Casey VGA port, which is very useful, built into their computers and has since the beginning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, they’re they’re wrong on that thing because no

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey one should have a

⏹️ ▶️ John VGA port on their computer. Like if they have HDMI directly into their computer or like, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John VGA is ridiculous. Give me a break. I didn’t that should not be but but yeah, but like sometimes you have to have

⏹️ ▶️ John an adapter, right? But for things like this, it’s not like when you have to interact with some cruddy old third

⏹️ ▶️ John party thing, use this adapter. This is like when you want to use your computer for something that requires more than one

⏹️ ▶️ John port, use this hub that we’re selling you or I know that you buy a retina MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Pro and you’re going to be using an ethernet every second you can because you need high speed networking use this dongle.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, because we couldn’t fit an ethernet port and sometimes you know, they’re limited by the size of the ports, the ethernet just doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John fit. We want to make it thinner like there are reasons for it. But especially with the single

⏹️ ▶️ John USB type C like the whole point of type C is it’s super small now you can fit more of them don’t give me fewer,

⏹️ ▶️ John unless giving me fewer provides some advantage as we talked about at length in the previous shows, like you can use

⏹️ ▶️ John fewer PCI Express lanes or you get more battery life because you can use a chip set that doesn’t include this thing. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I would like a reason and based on random spy shots, we don’t have any kind of reasoning. And of course, Apple’s not gonna give you

⏹️ ▶️ John any reason, probably, unless they’re feeling super defensive. Like if they’re feeling defensive, they’ll say, and hey,

⏹️ ▶️ John look at this feature, like Steve Jobs would say, it’s just got one port. Now people would say, why one port? Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John it turns out, And then he would say something that may or may not be true, but at least it would be a reason. You know? Turns

⏹️ ▶️ John out that if we just do one port, we can make an even lower power. And then, you know, other people with this, using the same Intel chipset,

⏹️ ▶️ John have already released laptops. They get insane battery life, and I bet they don’t have one port on them. So I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John going to be skeptical of any sort of power-related explanations of why this thing has one port, if

⏹️ ▶️ John it indeed does have one port.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, yeah, I think the most clear explanation, or the most plausible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco explanation, knowing modern Apple and seeing the renderings this thing from Mark Gurman. I think it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinness. That’s it. Like there was room for one.

⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s all I need to see the iFixit tear down to prove to me that there was really only room

⏹️ ▶️ John for one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right? Right. And nobody asked him to make it that thin. You know, like this is a it’s a self-imposed

⏹️ ▶️ John problem. It’s not because it’s too thin. It’s not like, well, there’s only one part of the case that’s thick enough. At minimum,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s two places on the case where it’s thick enough. One on one side and one on the other. You know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but they use the other one for the headphone jack.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but the headphone jack is you could move like headphone jack doesn’t have a lot of width. that you could have the USB.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I feel like there’s room. Not because, you know, within the case that they have

⏹️ ▶️ John now, when they open this thing up, I feel like you’re gonna be able to find that yes, there was room. Again, get back to the puck thing where

⏹️ ▶️ John they put an internal power supply. There’s gotta be room in there for more than one port. Gotta be. And

⏹️ ▶️ John so there’s gotta be some other reason and it could be philosophical and stupid or whatever. But anyway, the idea that they

⏹️ ▶️ John would subsequently do market research and determine this product is not as viable as they

⏹️ ▶️ John want it to be without an adapter. Therefore, we have to make a hub. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco when that happens, it

⏹️ ▶️ John had to happen early on, right? Because you have to make this whole hub product. Like shouldn’t they go back

⏹️ ▶️ John and say, should we make a hub or can you just put another damn port on this thing, guys? I mean, come on. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, and for whatever it’s worth, like, you know, now, like I’m considering buying one of these things because I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I keep realizing that whenever I travel, I hardly ever actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get like coding work done that actually needs a big screen real estate, and I actually would would like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller travel weight. Anyway, so I’m considering getting one of these things. And because I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had such terrible experiences with hubs and third-party adapters and everything,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowing that Apple is going to make an adapter, you know, if this proves to be true, this would make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me more comfortable buying a laptop. Like, if the rationale that this person stated about, like, you know, making people more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco comfortable buying it being the reason these things exist, that is plausible to me because I am one of those people who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is the case for.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco anything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s new that you cannot justify buying no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, there’s a there’s a lot. I mean, you know, like I I’m sure I can think of something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually.

⏹️ ▶️ John I got one. I’ve got one. He can is easy one He has a TV that really needs to be replaced, but he doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John replace it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s a great example Yeah, because it’s it still works and I don’t care that strongly like all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the advantages are modern TVs that have come out since my relatively ancient one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s, mine is still good. It’s fine. You know, like, and after seeing yours

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at your house, John, like, came home and mine looked really small and really low contrast

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, you know, really crude by comparison, but it’s still fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, there’s lots of stuff. I mean, look, this is going to replace, if I get this, it’s going to replace a three-year-old laptop. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not that ridiculous. John Greenewald Oh, I didn’t realize it was that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey old. All right, I feel better.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a first gen 15 inch retina MacBook Pro with bad screen retention issues.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’ve heard. Okay, so before we end the show, let’s talk quickly about the post you made

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to Apple Watch pricing. Thanks a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our three sponsors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey this week. Listen to Fracture,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace and Harry’s and we will see you next week.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over. They didn’t even mean to begin.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because it was accidental. It was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research. Marco and

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him. Because it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was accidental. And you can find the show

⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm. And if you’re into

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. That’s Casey list and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a RCO a RM Anti-marco are men

⏹️ ▶️ Marco AC Do you not

⏹️ ▶️ John read the damn Skype IMs?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Two of the three parties in this podcast agreed to talk about this and then in the show.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’re still going to talk about it. He just wanted to be in the after show.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m just I’m so bored of Apple Watch price discussion, which is why I wrote this big article for some

⏹️ ▶️ John reason. Can we can we complain about how I already complained about this to you privately complain about how

⏹️ ▶️ John all right. So this is instead of complaining, let’s turn into a positive listeners to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the show.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey If you are a regular

⏹️ ▶️ John listener to the show, I feel like that you are sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John several weeks ahead of the press cycle on the Apple news sites because

⏹️ ▶️ John when like for example when the Apple Watch was announced and talked about we spent like three freaking

⏹️ ▶️ John shows talking about the price of the watch, whether it will be upgradable, how Apple’s going to sell it in

⏹️ ▶️ John the stores. And then in the past two weeks, all of those topics came back with a vengeance on every single

⏹️ ▶️ John site where everyone is talking about, will the watch be upgradable? How much will it cost? How are they going to sell it in the stores?

⏹️ ▶️ John Which I think is fine, but it meant that like we weren’t going to talk about it because we sent so long. You think

⏹️ ▶️ John we spent a long time talking about the car, go back and see how long we talk about watch pricing and upgradability. It seemed like there was forever

⏹️ ▶️ John and we just covered it from every possible angle and talk to ourselves to death. And there’s no new information about it. Like we haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ John learned anything new about it. But yeah, so to see all those things go back around a cycle

⏹️ ▶️ John and feel like we’re not participating in that I guess it’s like the podcast cycle is different than the blog cycle or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. But yeah, Marcos pricing posts like this. There’s no like,

⏹️ ▶️ John unless correct me if I’m wrong, right? There’s no new information, right? You’re just rehashing pricing stuff like and,

⏹️ ▶️ John and sort of people are getting different feelings as the date approaches. Like I know we talked about this before, and I know

⏹️ ▶️ John before I said X, but now I’m feeling like Y and not based on any information, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like you don’t have any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new information about price. Oh, me? No, no, definitely not. All I have. I the few people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve talked to inside of Apple have only provided their own speculation like they don’t they don’t know either.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s you know, as the date approaches, maybe you get a different feeling and maybe you want to hedge or maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John you want to stick to, but we’ll endeavor to find the links to the shows many moons ago when

⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about these things just forever. So people can go back to listen to them and to see how

⏹️ ▶️ John right or wrong we were after the Apple event. But we were right or wrong a long time ago. But for the

⏹️ ▶️ John rediscussion of it, I think the new angle that you had on a marker was the idea of previously

⏹️ ▶️ John we were talking mostly about boy, can you believe how much he seems to run a cost? Do we really think they’re going to sell something for 10 2030

⏹️ ▶️ John grand at the top end or whatever? And the new angle is Now maybe they’re going to cost

⏹️ ▶️ John way less than we thought. And as I was messaging to Marco earlier today, I think

⏹️ ▶️ John this is getting muddled up in the idea of like, are you talking about how much will the most expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Watch Edition cost? Are you talking about what is the cheapest price that you can get an Apple Watch Edition

⏹️ ▶️ John for? And depending on what you’re talking about, like you could

⏹️ ▶️ John agree that the Apple is going to sell one for 10 grand or 20 grand. And you can also agree that the cheapest one will be like 2000 3000.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like those are not incompatible ideas because there can be a wide range in the Apple Watch Edition thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so the new thing is like, oh, maybe we’re just all being crazy and maybe you’ll, maybe the Apple Watch Edition

⏹️ ▶️ John will only be like $12, $1500, $2000, $3000. I will, I’m willing to believe that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And but that won’t mean that you still can’t get the most expensive Apple Watch Edition with a gold,

⏹️ ▶️ John solid gold band and a solid gold watch and all this other stuff for 10, 15 grand,

⏹️ ▶️ John even if you can also get one for five grand, four grand, six grand or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that’s a fair point. I mean, because we don’t we still don’t know, like the variability within each line,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like depending on the band choice and everything else like that’s well, there’s everything else depending on the band choice and the size.

⏹️ ▶️ John Especially because the if the band is solid gold itself, that that’s the band

⏹️ ▶️ John is could contain way more gold than the watch.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually yeah, I mean, I don’t I don’t know that I don’t know anything about watches, but that that makes logical sense to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John Volume wise I mean, I guess I don’t know how strong they’re like whatever super strong gold

⏹️ ▶️ John alloy wherever we don’t know Obviously, we know nothing about watches, but just looking volume wise It’s conceivable to me

⏹️ ▶️ John that Having a gold band could more than double the price of the watch versus just that same

⏹️ ▶️ John watch with leather one And as we talked about in the past shows again I want to rehash everything we did the

⏹️ ▶️ John the price of the Materials has very little bearing when you’re up in this type of class of product very little bearing

⏹️ ▶️ John on the price of the product markup can be astronomical. It’s not like a 30% margin, it’s like hundreds of a

⏹️ ▶️ John percent margin. You know, how high can you possibly go? The only thing stopping

⏹️ ▶️ John you is like, it is basically like a social and economic signal,

⏹️ ▶️ John not a reflection of the cost to manufacture or acquire the, you know, the materials

⏹️ ▶️ John to make.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and you know, keep in mind also, like, the manufacturing of these things is a big deal. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they talked about on the description on the Apple Watch site, and I don’t know if it’s on the site or if it’s in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the video, but somewhere in official Apple material, they talk about how each link is like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hand polished, and it takes like six hours to make one of these things. Like, if that has six hours of labor in it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s going to cost significantly more than the cost of the raw metal, not to mention

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the machining and any parts that might have to be discarded and recycled. Like there’s there, you know, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be a lot behind that. So like, the fixed cost of the gold watch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to be substantially high, you know, Apple’s cost is going to be substantially higher than whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco x ounces of gold costs in the free market today.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but like, but I still don’t think that the pricing has almost with up to the

⏹️ ▶️ John high end models only has really anything to do with the cost of manufacturing your

⏹️ ▶️ John goods. It has everything to do with two parts. One, how many of these do they think they can make, which has probably

⏹️ ▶️ John probably actually does hinge on material, like how much gold do they who they can get at a reasonable price. And two,

⏹️ ▶️ John who are they trying to sell it to? Because like we said, the markups could be hundreds of a percent like that markup

⏹️ ▶️ John has nothing to do with costs of manufacturing and how many little machines have to polish the little things like

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re already like doing multiples of three, four, five, six, whatever, like, and when you’re picking those prices,

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re picking them basically to say this is now a status symbol. And the fact that it costs a lot of money is what makes

⏹️ ▶️ John it more valuable. Like it’s that what is it the Veblen goods thing, which we’ll link again, again, we discussed all these

⏹️ ▶️ John things on past shows that we’re just rehashing now. But that’s what we’re looking for. What signal is Apple selling

⏹️ ▶️ John and is Apple trying to send with this product? And

⏹️ ▶️ John really, it’s only about branding and signaling

⏹️ ▶️ John and fashion. And it’s because no matter what the price, most people don’t own gold watches,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? Most millions of people own iPhones like that is within the range of things that people can buy.

⏹️ ▶️ John And we already know the entry level price is going to be around iPhone price are actually less. That’s where

⏹️ ▶️ John the volume is right and creep up and then it’ll get more and more expensive and then there’ll be like this bend like a hockey

⏹️ ▶️ John stick somewhere that says and here’s the rich people version, right? And our question

⏹️ ▶️ John on all these past shows is how much does Apple want to bend that do they want to bend it a little bit so you can get into an Apple Watch edition

⏹️ ▶️ John for $2,000. They want to bend it a lot. So the entry level model is five grand. And what

⏹️ ▶️ John do they want the endpoint to be is the endpoint 10 grand 20 grand 30 grand because at that point, it can be anything

⏹️ ▶️ John you want. And I think the reason people are getting cold feet about the 2030 grand top end now even

⏹️ ▶️ John is that they’re saying, well, if Apple really wants to disrupt the market, the way they do it is

⏹️ ▶️ John by send it by pricing it so that like it makes the other ones look like a rip off, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So they price it at five grand and all of a sudden the 10 grand watches look like a rip off like oh, the most expensive Apple edition watch

⏹️ ▶️ John you can get is is 599 99. And now why would I ever buy 10 grand

⏹️ ▶️ John Rolex but at the same time if you do that, then maybe people start to think of the Apple Watch as being cheap. And that’s what we don’t know, because

⏹️ ▶️ John none of us buy watches that cost as much as cars.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And I mean, ultimately, yeah, I mean, this I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco barely even wanted to write the article because like, I think the price is going to be really boring because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of us are going to actually buy it. And but it would be interesting, like if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple priced it low enough that it becomes more plausible for more people to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy it. Like, suppose it’s $3,000 for the gold. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that is just as plausible as it being $15,000. Because there’s advantages to both sides. If it’s $15,000, it’s much more exclusive. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more profitable for Apple. If it’s $3,000, they’ll sell a lot more of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. And it’s still way more profitable than the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco steel one, I’m sure. It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John app store pricing, like, like, what do you want? What do you want to do? And that’s why I think like, you know, in addition to the signaling

⏹️ ▶️ John thing, it’s like, well, if they have any kind of supply constraints on the gold or some other precious metal or thing or whatever, you

⏹️ ▶️ John can control that by just raising the price a lot. And then you sell fewer of them, you make the same amount of revenue by just selling fewer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s been funny to me listening to various podcasts talk about what they expect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pricing to be. And I think a lot of the more traditional nerds, nerds have been very upset at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thought that there would be humongous markups like in the hundreds of percents or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey several hundred percent markup. And it’s and it seems like a lot of people think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple would never want to be seen as like, oh, a super expensive luxury good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And John, I couldn’t agree more with what you said earlier. I think that there will be just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey silly, ridiculous markups. And I don’t know. I mean, I would I would say, since I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s reasonable for me to hazard to guess that I think at least one of them will be north of $10,000.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’ll find something that’s more expensive than that. Um, but it strikes me as funny

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that all the nerds nerds seem, seem to think that anything more than a few thousand dollars is just inconceivable.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I wish I could say the voice. So you, so you would know I was talking about the princess bride, but anyway, that’s a reference,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John. Yep. It is. So, um, I don’t see how it makes any

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense for it not to be tremendous, tremendous money, just like you said, John, because it’s not about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a piece of electronics, it’s about a status symbol, and I think that’s spot-on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, what if it’s not? You know, because my point in my article was,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, what if Apple’s primary goal here is to sell a watch that anybody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is willing to wear? And so some people are only willing to wear a gold

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch, and so if Apple wants to get those people wearing an Apple Watch, they have to make one that’s really fancy.

⏹️ ▶️ John The people who are only willing to wear gold watches are also accustomed to paying ridiculous prices for them

⏹️ ▶️ John because I don’t think there’s anybody who makes gold watches but sells them at like a 50% markup over cost. Like is it,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, again I don’t know about watches maybe there’s such a thing that exists but it seems to me that as soon as you get

⏹️ ▶️ John into gold watches you get into the land of pricing is now just you know like based on

⏹️ ▶️ John the prestige of the brand not the not the amount of gold in the thing. Like we were just looking at the amount of gold to just basically

⏹️ ▶️ John say like no matter what we know it’s going to cost at least X because that’s just how much the materials and labor

⏹️ ▶️ John are going to cost. And that already pushes it up into four digits. And now we’re just saying like, do the do the addition start

⏹️ ▶️ John at four digits? Do they end in five digits? Do they? I don’t think anyone has said they’re going to start at five digits. I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ John anyone said you’re not going to be able to get an Apple Watch edition of any kind for less than $9,999.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like almost everyone thinks that the the addition ones are going to start in four digits. And the question

⏹️ ▶️ John is, do they go into five digits? And how far do they go into five digits. And that’s that this will this

⏹️ ▶️ John will tell us a lot about how Apple wants to be seen as a brand. It won’t tell us anything about

⏹️ ▶️ John how much money Apple wants to make or anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. We’ll see. Anything else on the Apple Watch? Any other predictions we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to make?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we have the real time follow up from the the tipster who sent us the tip about

⏹️ ▶️ John the USB hub and everything. Just to clarify that the brick they were talking about the brick they were talking about,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re really doubling down. The brick they were talking about is not the power brick on the USB hub, but the computer’s

⏹️ ▶️ John power brick.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our second

⏹️ ▶️ John most boring tip. Yeah. Well, no, I like real-time follow-up. Hey, it’s good.

⏹️ ▶️ John What that means is that I guess it means that the hub won’t have a power brick, but it may have power pass through that like

⏹️ ▶️ John the power from the brick will go into the hub and then from the hub’s short stubby cable into the computer because of course

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the power going through there. Should have just sent us like a picture of the thing. That would

⏹️ ▶️ John of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this is an amazing

⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand tradition of rumors you know that like blurry picture maybe put it on the floor of

⏹️ ▶️ John an elevator there’s a deep cut for the Mac rumors listeners no you got you two don’t even get that never

⏹️ ▶️ John mind someone someone in the audience will know about blurry pictures of things on elevator floors that’s for

⏹️ ▶️ John them what else I think the best thing the best sad trombone about this

⏹️ ▶️ John would be if the March 9th event comes and goes and they don’t mention anything about laptops that’ll be awesome

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, keep in mind, like, at the first Apple Watch event, they also released

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two iPhones.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, there’s plenty of time. That’s what I was saying in the beginning. This is a press event.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s going to be watch details. There’s room for something else, it seems like. What else is ready

⏹️ ▶️ John to be announced?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, according to the rumor mill, nothing else is ready to be announced. I mean, you know, unless like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s unless they talk about the other Mac, like the existing non retina MacBook airs are allegedly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about to get Broadwell. But that’s that’s boring. And I mean, they might mention that in passing while

⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about this one. But you know, that’s that’s not that’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco newsworthy.

⏹️ ▶️ John He’s like nothing’s ready to be announced. But that just shows how much we’ve all given up on the Apple TV, the things using a single

⏹️ ▶️ John core a five or whatever the hell it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco using. It’s like, geez, like, or the iPod touch. They

⏹️ ▶️ John could make a version of the Apple TV for the same price that’s like twice as fast And they could

⏹️ ▶️ John in theory make the software way better given that hardware, but they’re not for whatever reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah.