147: Here I Am, I'm a Battery
11 Dec 2015Did you hear that Apple released a battery case?
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- The iPhone Lightning Dock exists
- Benefits of Lightning headphones
- USB Type C supports analog audio
- Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader
- Remote.app for iOS now works with the new Apple TV
- Swift/Foundation bridging
- Apple iPhone 6S battery case
- Apple updated all of their OSes
- State of our Watch usage
- What the future may bring for Watch apps
- Post-show:
- Three nerds talk about fashion... again. We're sorry.
- Timex Weekender
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Chapters
- Intro: Comma; splice.
- Follow-up: Headphone ports
- Lightning SD-card reader
- Apple TV Remote app
- Toll-Free Bridging of Siracusa…
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Apple Smart Battery Case
- Sponsor: Casper
- Rationale for battery hump
- Sponsor: Squarespace
- Battery scraps
- iOS 9.2, OS X 10.11.2
- State of Apple Watch
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Dumbwatches
Intro: Comma; splice.
⏹️ ▶️ John is we’re gonna make Brent Simmons angry with the comma splice and here I am on my battery you can make it
⏹️ ▶️ John a semicolon you can make it a period if you leave it as a comma it’s a comma splice but I feel like it’s an informal
⏹️ ▶️ John and since it is a someone speaking you could consider it someone speaking sometimes people speak
⏹️ ▶️ John and things that are not sentences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I definitely would not do a semicolon because that’s just is wrong I mean I know it’s grammatically right but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on principle like ever I’m not never but it takes a lot for me to use a semicolon like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I need to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really really worth it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John what does it take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has to really be the right thing to use there and like there have to be no good alternatives like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why you buy I really rarely use semicolons cuz I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John so then so that’ll be period here I am period I’m but anyway I just leave it as a comma like well but it has to be two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco periods that’s me here I am period on a battery
⏹️ ▶️ John period yeah but we don’t put periods in the title so yeah so we’ll just leave the comment there we’ll just dare Brent to yell at us about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Go ahead, come and get us.
Follow-up: Headphone ports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The entire internet wrote in to tell us that there is already a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightning to headphone jack adapter, which is not at all useful if you’re anywhere other than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your desk. But in the defense of the entire internet, we were talking mostly about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using this sort of adapter at work as you listen to podcasts or music all day long. Apple sells
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lightning to headphone jack adapter with pass-through lightning for charging. It’s the $40
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightning dock, which I believe came out recently, didn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s got like a DAC in it and that’s for like the digital the headphones that take digital audio over the lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John port Like that’s not really relevant to what we were discussing Which was if they replaced the headphone jack with the lightning port and
⏹️ ▶️ John still wanted to support regular plain old analog headphones With it with an adapter that did
⏹️ ▶️ John not require, you know, any signal conversion or anything It would just you know be
⏹️ ▶️ John a metal pass-through to the the audio Pins of the headphone and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not what the lighting doc does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so How would you describe lightning doc instead then?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s I mean it is basically a Thing to let you both plug
⏹️ ▶️ John in the current crop of lightning compatible headphones and also a charger at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair enough One way or another this is not the sort of thing that we would expect one to take Running around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with them as they’re trying to use it to adapt lightning to a regular headphone jack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this would serve the purpose for desk use but not for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mobile use. And that’s mostly what we were talking about last episode, but yes, we wanted to publicly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey acknowledge on behalf of the entire Internet who wrote into us that we are aware that this exists.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Eric Michaels-Ober had a little bit of feedback with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to why else you would want to use the Lightning port for audio. He pointed out that noise-canceling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey headphones don’t need their own battery or any other charging mechanism because they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can just draw power right off the lightning port much like the Apple pencil does
⏹️ ▶️ John which you may or may not want like do you really want your Noise cancelling headphones sucking power from your phone. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, you know, we have all this extra battery power on the phones Might as well use it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John for other purposes.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m like it’s practically bursting out of the phone. There’s so much better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well played sir, we’ll get there. All right, and then I have no idea who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were attributing this to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, and he or she said that USB type C already supports analog audio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey check out appendix a in the spec And we will link to the spec in the show notes John I believe you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bolded some passages here. Would you like to share that with the group?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the spec by the way is a PDF like we’re linking to the page that has the PDF on it So you can just download the PDF and find this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, you will find out that
⏹️ ▶️ John The reason this comes up is because last time or like I said one of the advantages of lightning is that if Apple wants to?
⏹️ ▶️ John add Support for plain old analog audio Either by adding those two
⏹️ ▶️ John weird side contacts that I seem to remember seeing somewhere And I still can’t find or just by repurposing the pins because
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole deal with lightning is you can use the different pins for different purposes, it’s not sort of Hardwired
⏹️ ▶️ John so to speak to do a particular thing That Apple has the flexibility to they don’t have to wait for
⏹️ ▶️ John the USB committee or whatever to agree But it turns out USB C already supports analog audio. I should have figured
⏹️ ▶️ John that since it’s an old standard If you have your
⏹️ ▶️ John USB-C connector in audio adapter accessory mode, it just takes a certain number of pins
⏹️ ▶️ John in the USB and uses them for the same exact signals that go over 3.5 million or headphone jacks. So that’s already supported
⏹️ ▶️ John in USB-C. And by the way, the other thing I found out about USB-C relevant to our conversation last time about whether Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John was all in on Lightning or whether they were going to eventually switch to USB-C, USB-C is bigger than Lightning.
⏹️ ▶️ John This shows how many USB-C devices I have in my house. I’m pretty sure I have zero. Maybe I have
⏹️ ▶️ John one, I don’t know about it somewhere, but anyway, I don’t have an idea of what they’re like, but looking it up online afterwards,
⏹️ ▶️ John USB-C is slightly bigger, and that pretty much dooms Apple to ever switch to it because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re gonna be like, well, lightning is smaller, so why would we ever switch to that thing? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’re in it for the long haul for lightning, even though USB-C apparently already supports
⏹️ ▶️ John analog auto, and you could definitely make that passive connector thing for old style headphones if
⏹️ ▶️ John you were using USB-C.
Lightning SD-card reader
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of USB, and in this case USB 3, we are now getting USB 3
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speeds from the new Lightning Test SD card camera reader
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that came out just in the last couple of days as we record. And for the iPad Pro, you get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB 3 speeds on that. And that’s pretty exciting. I’ve never actually used one of these. Do you guys have one of them?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have the USB one, which I use for like audio purposes, which is actually, it’s like this totally undocumented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that it can do. You can plug in a lot of USB audio interfaces to it and have different sound inputs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or outputs for your iOS devices. And that actually has worked on iPhones and iPads basically forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But my father-in-law used the SD card one for a little while on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his iPad. It was fine. It was okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John The thing that interests me most about these USB 3 speeds and the iPad Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ John for people like me, maybe I’m rare in this, who still hook up their iOS devices to one of their big computers
⏹️ ▶️ John and do an encrypted local backup instead of just relying on the iCloud backup, it takes
⏹️ ▶️ John so long to do it or USB 2 speeds. So if I get USB 3 speeds when doing a local backup
⏹️ ▶️ John to my computer through iTunes, I would really appreciate that even for my dinky 32 and 64 gig devices,
⏹️ ▶️ John let alone if we got like a 128 gig iPad Pro. So I’m assuming you have one Marco, I’m assuming the
⏹️ ▶️ John if you were to hook it up to your Mac with the USB cable, it would still be USB 2 speeds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I know, because I think all the existing lightning to USB cables, I think are all USB 2 cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t think that’s doable yet, but hopefully over time that’ll be solved, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in time for people to stop ever syncing their things to their computers.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t know if you want to ever stop, because as people who have ever restored from iCloud can attest, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, I will still do it, and Tiff will still do it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are already in the extreme minority there. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the accessory they need to release. forget about this whole, you know, like the whole exciting thing was like, wow, the lightning port
⏹️ ▶️ John supports USB three speeds, but only on the iPad pro. And you know, surely that will trickle down and that’ll be great.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t want an SD card reader. I want a thing that plugs into my computer for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, for what it’s worth, I actually put this on my Christmas list for this year. I don’t know if I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would necessarily it you know, it’s a great gift, because it’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t necessarily buy for myself. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, if somebody handed it to me, that’d be pretty awesome. And the reason I want one is because there are probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to come times when I’m traveling with our micro four thirds camera, I didn’t decide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to bring a laptop with me and I only have my iPad and I could connect the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the iPad by way of Wi-Fi. But it’s actually surprisingly slow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do it that way. And so I think it would be a lot easier to just pull the SD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey card out of the camera and attach it to the iPad or phone for that matter and suck some pictures off of there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that way in order to post on Instagram or maybe just send to friends or family or what have you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m curious to see if I end up getting this for Christmas. And if I do, I’ll report back. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you, Marco, by and large, that it’s not a lot of people that would want this, but I kind of want one because I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of a testament to the crappiness of wireless. We talked about the last show about like is Wi-Fi above the level
⏹️ ▶️ John of flakiness, but how many people use Wi-Fi syncing to iTunes? Maybe that’s not you can’t blame Wi-Fi for that. You can just blame
⏹️ ▶️ John iTunes because there’s so much. But even like with cameras, you know, like so many cameras have
⏹️ ▶️ John Wi-Fi or remember that stupid iFi thing like it was the SD card with Wi-Fi built in or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever. And then it’s like desktop Linux like the next oh this one the new model we just made is finally the good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one and it never is.
⏹️ ▶️ John For the cameras, for the cameras that have built-in Wi-Fi support like that’s what you want. You want that and you also want
⏹️ ▶️ John you try it. Yeah, I know but like what’s the problem? Wi-Fi itself, technologically
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking, is okay technology like you know we all use wireless devices all our in our
⏹️ ▶️ John house and they more or less maintain the connection and we get reasonable speeds based on what we think the signal strength
⏹️ ▶️ John is and yet when we have a super expensive camera 30 inches away from
⏹️ ▶️ John a super expensive iPad the only way the best way we have to talk to them is to open up the camera and a little waterproof
⏹️ ▶️ John or water resistant compartment pull out this tiny little card plug this little thing into the lightning port shove the little it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just you’re right there guys you both have radios you both like what’s what’s the problem here is it because
⏹️ ▶️ John camera manufacturers don’t know how to do Wi-Fi stacks I don’t I don’t know what the deal is but it’s sad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well they all have their own apps basically it’s like like my camera has built-in Wi-Fi finally like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took me years to finally get one that had that and but in order to use it I have to install Sony’s dumb app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my phone yep which works about a third of the time and when you do finally get it to work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you kind of regret that you got it to work because it’s just so mediocre and and so slow. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually would have been faster to just take the car out of the camera and shove it into this thing than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is to do the Wi-Fi thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but that feels barbaric though, taking things apart and putting them together.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I’m using a VCR, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely agree. My Olympus, it isn’t… The app is relatively reliable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is astonishingly slow to transfer pictures between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the camera and the phone or the iPad. And it’s very, very frustrating. Now, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app is nice in that for general things, like it’ll let me geotag based on what the phone is doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’ll take a log of all the places I go and all the timestamps and whatnot, and then it’ll send those to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone and then geotag all the pictures on the phone, or excuse me, send those to the camera, and it’ll geotag all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pictures on the camera, which I really like on the occasions where I’m not just staying put somewhere. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it also lets you do like a remote viewfinder sort of thing. So much like you can with the watch and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the phone, it’ll let you take pictures remotely, which is really nice if you’re too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey socially awkward to say to somebody, hey, can you take our picture? But I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say enough how awfully slow it is to transfer pictures. And because of that, I agree with you, Marco, I just end up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taking the damn card out of the camera and putting it in a computer.
Apple TV Remote app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. And we have some good news this week. Our long national
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nightmare is over. And we now have an Apple remote app for iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that works with the new Apple TV, which would be more exciting to me if I had a new Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we don’t have a my understanding. I haven’t tested this. But my understanding is not as
⏹️ ▶️ John if they released a new is a new version of the remote app that works with Apple TV. It’s the opposite. They recent released a
⏹️ ▶️ John new version of the Apple TV OS that makes the existing remote app work with it. Is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ John Based on your understanding or experimentation? Oh, I didn’t try it. I thought that was correct.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think they did eventually release a new remote app as well. But I think before they even released a new
⏹️ ▶️ John remote app, what I read was that if you just updated the TV OS, your remote app
⏹️ ▶️ John would work with it even before they released the eventual remote app update. Yeah, that was the idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s too late for all of us for the setup stuff. And there’s still promises of of like the real remote app that’s gonna,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, let you swipe around on your phone like the touchpad and use the accelerometers and just basically be
⏹️ ▶️ John a full-fledged replacement for the new Apple TV remote rather than just,
⏹️ ▶️ John please, for the love of God, give us an on-screen keyboard that we can type on with our fingers instead of having to swipe back and forth on the
⏹️ ▶️ John number line or the letter line or whatever the hell we’re calling that thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So interestingly, for whatever it’s worth, we recently bought a PS4, meaning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yesterday. So I got a chance to try, you know, what is a current, well, recent-ish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effort at a regular on-screen keyboard by using Sony’s little dumb thing. Before I wrote that, you could just plug in a USB keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco About halfway through the process, I realized that. But for the first half of the process, I was just using their little built-in thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And just using the built-in keyboard with their controller and the D-pad and a couple of buttons on the shoulder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons to do like, you know, done and delete and stuff. My God, it’s so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. Like, I was able to enter text so much faster in this regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on-screen keyboard using a regular D-pad that I had never used before, than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still am today on the new Apple TV that I’ve been using now for like a month or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me give you a pro tip. Do not use the D-pad. I can’t believe you suffered through like
⏹️ ▶️ John a barbarian using the D-pad to pick from the keyboard. You get one finger or thumb on the touch
⏹️ ▶️ John pad on the PS4 controller, and one finger or thumb on the X button to select. Wait, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John way faster. my god is it so much faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait what is that is that the big gray rectangle in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah it’s the big it’s the big thing in the middle of the controller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i had no idea that was a touchpad
⏹️ ▶️ John it yeah you’ll find out in games that it is as well
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway no i won’t if might it is it is so much easier because like it’s not a great trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like the one on casey’s dell like you know it’s a crappy one but it’s so much better than going down down right right up
⏹️ ▶️ John up down down because you could basically just go mousing around to a tap tap tap tap it just feels so much more freeing
⏹️ ▶️ John than being constrained by like the grid like you’re in a tron game trying to play light cycles to get around the key.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, honestly, I mean, I think what made it so much faster for me it rather than the way the the Apple TV one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done besides the fact that it had more than one row Apple, but I think what made it so much faster is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can kind of just like when you have this digital input method of the D pad you can just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know all right go over for up to like you and you can just do it it’s so precise that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was able to flip through things really quickly on that and way more accurately I made I think I made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one mistake in the entire setup process on Apple TV. I constantly hit the wrong letter constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the other good thing is they they’re sort of, you know, smart auto suggestion stuff, kind of like the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the stuff from Android that Apple copied in iOS, like the above the keyboard, a series of words appears,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Or like, when I’m sending messages to people related to destiny, like I basically typed the first letter
⏹️ ▶️ John of a word, and it knows which word I’m trying to write. And then I just select it from the pre selected things
⏹️ ▶️ John and type the next verse letter, and then select it from the pre selected set up because I don’t send a lot of messages. I should just
⏹️ ▶️ John hook up a keyboard because it’s so painful to try to do it with the pad. But the audio correction
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, when you don’t say a lot through the interface, the seven words you do say are always the first suggestion. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good. But you definitely do check out the touchpad. It’s a little bit awkward to hold it so you’re like, wait, so I have my thumb on
⏹️ ▶️ John the touchpad and then my other thumb on the X button to select the key? Isn’t that kind of weird and how do I hit the shoulders? But
⏹️ ▶️ John Trust me, it’s really great.
Toll-Free Bridging of Siracusa…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. And then you have a correction, I believe, John, from last episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I made an offhand mark about Swift and Foundation and getting rid of the NS prefix,
⏹️ ▶️ John how currently you can, a lot of the APIs, you can use Swift strings
⏹️ ▶️ John and NS strings and they will convert between each other. And I referred to that as like a free bridging thing or toll-free
⏹️ ▶️ John bridging or zero-cost bridging or whatever. It’s not zero-cost. Swift and Foundation
⏹️ ▶️ John bridging is not toll-free. I was thinking of the toll free bridging between core foundation and foundation. Too
⏹️ ▶️ John many freaking words have foundation in them. But anyway, just to clear that up.
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Apple Smart Battery Case
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey excellent all right, so Apple released a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this week and Everyone’s upset about it. I kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am too I kind of am to you guys They have released the iPhone 6s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smart battery case Panamera
⏹️ ▶️ John This is unfair to the Panamera because the Panamera has a fairly continuous
⏹️ ▶️ John over the back of the car It’s it’s big and it’s awkwardly shaped in profile But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not as if this is a closer to the bangle trunk on the 7 series remember that one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s fair. That’s fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This looks like that you shipped an engineering prototype. Yeah, it kind of does they were assigned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey, can you make this like this weekend just make something that works and Somebody got the wrong memo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and shipped it as a real product
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so let’s describe this for people listening to the show far disconnected in time imagine an iPhone 6s
⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple silicone case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. With 20% battery life, because it’s three o’clock in the afternoon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Give it a chin, so take the battery case and extend it downwards a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so like that it’s got an extra chin hanging off it. Don’t worry about why for now. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John on the back of the phone, take like, I don’t know, maybe seven,
⏹️ ▶️ John eight, no, maybe 15 playing cards from a deck of cards, put it in there and then slather
⏹️ ▶️ John it with silicone again.
⏹️ ▶️ John other words there is a lump on the back of this phone shaped like a rectangle, like a rounded
⏹️ ▶️ John rectangle that is smaller than the back of the phone. It is both narrower than the phone and significantly
⏹️ ▶️ John shorter than the phone. So there are edges of what look like just a plain old iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John 6S in a silicone case with a chin poking out all around this thing. And it looks very
⏹️ ▶️ John strange because most other battery cases, most other third party battery cases that I’ve seen try to
⏹️ ▶️ John put like a sort of smooth hump on the back of the thing either they try to just make it to be really thin
⏹️ ▶️ John and make it look like is that actually a battery case or is that just like a really thick case and you can’t even tell or you can
⏹️ ▶️ John totally tell it looks like a bar of soap but it’s essentially a smooth curve over the entire back surface
⏹️ ▶️ John of the phone top to bottom left to right edge and this is the first battery case I can think of see
⏹️ ▶️ John that does not do that that does not try to make a big curve over the back and also doesn’t try to be so thin it looks like it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a battery case it looks like there’s there’s a rectangular thing hiding inside the
⏹️ ▶️ John back of your iPhone case
⏹️ ▶️ John so so when you guys say it’s bad what you’re saying is it’s ugly is that what you’re basically getting it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well yeah I mean yes if somebody would have told you ahead of time that hey Apple is gonna make a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery case what you would imagine in your head would be very different than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this you know because like we expect Apple stuff to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at minimum decent looking, oftentimes at the expense of functionality these days, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is unfortunate, but obviously you expect thinness, you expect, you know, it’s kind of smooth lines,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice curves, kind of minimal design aesthetic. And and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, this is none of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like, it doesn’t look anything like Apple designed it. If you would have seen this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a weird store window on the streets of Manhattan, you would have assumed it was a knockoff. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does not look like an Apple product. And in the world of battery cases, there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no option in a battery case that doesn’t look like crap in some way. They all look like
⏹️ ▶️ John What about the really thin ones? The ones that are like, you can’t even tell they’re a battery case practically. It just looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John it might just be a thick regular case. I think those look pretty good with one exception that I’ll get to in
⏹️ ▶️ John a second when I tell you about what I think of the aesthetics of this thing. But I think you can’t say that they’re they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all ugly. Like a lot of them do make the phone bigger, but the really thin ones that just give you like a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John battery, I think some of them look pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would agree with that. Right. And by the way, those usually give more battery than this. But anyway, there are some that look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay in Amazon pages. Like there’s an anchor ultra slim that like in if you look in the Wall Street Journal by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a review of this by Joanna Stern, there was a picture of three of next to each other. There was the Apple one, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was one from anchor and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mophie or there was some other one in the middle. And you would think that in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the review of the Apple battery case, in a comparison photo next to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these like way cheaper, way higher capacity cases from these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brands that are not known for great design, especially like Anker, known for being very utilitarian and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being good value but not exactly for stunningly good design, you would assume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Apple option in that photo should obviously be the best looking one. And you’d probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assume that it would be the most expensive, and you’d be right. You’d probably assume it wouldn’t have the best capacity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’d be right. But to see it not even be the best-looking one while also being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most expensive and having the worst capacity, I think is disappointing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say the least. And that’s not to say that you can’t—that isn’t to say that they could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have done a massively better job as a battery case with their goals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in mind. And we’ll talk about their goals in a minute, because we’ve gotten a little bit more information since it was released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it sure does seem like they I don’t know they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given a hard problem but it seems like a very disappointing output
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that hard problem and all of this is underscored by by my base level frustration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this shouldn’t even be necessary for most people like because the capacity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it has it’s I think it’s roughly 1800 milliamp hours so it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by most of the of use it can charge the phone about 80% of the way maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it isn’t a full additional charge, but it’s like you can drain the phone down most of the way and then you can charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it back up most of the way back up. Honestly, when I need an extra battery,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t usually need more than that. Like that is a good amount for me. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who buy battery cases today, that’s like the smallest you can get and there’s a lot of much bigger options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you can get like two to four times the battery capacity and in other battery cases. So it depends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on how you’re using the phone. If you’re doing like GPS all day as part of your job, then I could see you needing a lot more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But honestly, I like in my use, I complain a lot about the iPhone having not quite enough battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and being too thin and them seemingly prioritizing fitness and lightness over usable batteries.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the difference between what the six and the success has have as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the difference between what they have and what I need is not that big. I would be very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy if they took the battery of the success and just made it like 25 or 30 percent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bigger at most 50 percent bigger you know like that’s that’s all it needs it doesn’t need to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three times as large you know it needs almost what it has but just add like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know 25 to 50 percent more that’s what it that’s what it really needs for me and I from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from people I’ve seen in real life people I’ve talked to it seems like that would cover way more people’s needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than than getting anything giant or the status quo. Now obviously Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has way more data than I do, although honestly I question the metrics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they collect and how well that covers the real world usage. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a different discussion. I’m just very sad that Apple’s response to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 6S having clearly poor enough battery life for enough people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this was necessary to make and release, they take that indicator and they say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well the right answer here is that. Like that case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the right answer to this problem. Rather than, if you just put in a battery that’s like 25% bigger to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco begin with, then the additional mass and complexity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and efficiency of using that extra battery power is a tiny fraction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the bulk and the mass and the complexity of this case. Because you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an extra casing around it, you You don’t have extra framing for rigidity in the middle section. You don’t have whatever the heck that passive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco antenna thing is they’re talking about. I have no idea what that is. You don’t have that. You don’t have the charging circuitry, the discharging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco circuitry, like the reporting back to the phone of your battery level and then having two different battery bars and notification center
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to worry about. It’s so much simpler if you just make the battery 25% bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the phone and you cover so much more with that kind of approach. And I know they don’t do that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they want it to be thinner and lighter and they think they’re making the right decision, and maybe they are, but it’s frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be on my side of it when you think they’re not, and this is their solution to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Yeah, I completely agree. You know, I was thinking about it, and do you remember that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of cheesy but also sort of entertaining video they showed before WWDC 2013 with like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the dancing blobs of ink, and it was the Thousand Nose video?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I went and found a copy on YouTube, which we’ll link in the show notes. That video starts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as follows. If everyone is busy making everything, how can anyone perfect anything?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I have nothing more to say now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it is a mouthful, but I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spread thin we assume Apple to be these days. Now, I think we’re generally referring to software when we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about that, but there’s a lot more products in Apple’s portfolio today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than there were in 2013. And I feel like this is just an example
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of somebody just phoning it in. And maybe I’m missing the boat, but geez, this thing looks just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ugly. It’s just, it’s not smooth. I mean, it’s smooth, but it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s bulbous and it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ugh. I mean, honestly, if I were to get a battery case, I would consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this one simply because I like the feel of Apple’s first party cases. Especially the silicone ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like their feel over the buttons, the sleep wake and the volume buttons and everything. They do feel good over the buttons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they do fit well and all the other ones look pretty good this one not so much, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I appreciate the value of Apple’s cases most of the time, but for me honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you know especially when you look at cost like it the first time you buy one of these battery cases like oh yeah this will make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense. I’ll you know I’ll use it every other day and it’ll be great and then as soon as the next iPhone comes out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a different size and you can’t use it anymore you’re like like, why did I buy that $100 battery case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that now is worthless to me? And after that, you typically just buy the little USB blocks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or bricks or other ways to boost your battery after that, because you realize, oh, that was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great use of my money. So now I’ve moved on to these little battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bricks and thin little rectangles and stuff that have battery power in them. I’ll link to my favorite one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the show. It’s $25, It has more power than the Apple thing, but I think twice as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and fits in your pocket anyway I don’t know I just I feel like these things are just admitting failure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I also feel like if you look at them cynically It’s very easy to look at this and say you know I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they just made this To get $100 more out of people when they buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones that were previously going to third-party makers like like Mophie and anchor and everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like It seems like Apple just wants to capture more of the iPhone accessory revenue for themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what do you think of this?
⏹️ ▶️ John You guys are too new to the Apple world, I think, to get the obvious. Let’s go back
⏹️ ▶️ John and find something that Apple said in the past that makes them look foolish in the present. You were close when you were going back
⏹️ ▶️ John to the, you know, let’s not make too many things. But you have to go back farther to
⏹️ ▶️ John the, what I call the flower iMac, not the flower power one. But the one that was on the cover of Time
⏹️ ▶️ John magazine that had basically like it looks like a little hemisphere with like Metal arm poking out of it and the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John floating in the metal arm. You guys remember that one? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John All right so at the introduction to that Steve Jobs was like we wanted to make a flat panel iMac because
⏹️ ▶️ John Flat panels were cruel and they’re the future and we were trying to come up with designs I don’t know if this was in the keynote or
⏹️ ▶️ John an interview or whatever, but the story was basically We thought about taking a flat screen and shoving
⏹️ ▶️ John the guts of the iMac onto the back of it and That just seemed
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous because it was like this big lump and thing Jammed onto the back of the screen and it wasn’t elegant and
⏹️ ▶️ John so look at the solution we came up with This was I think maybe the first let every element be
⏹️ ▶️ John true to itself thing like the base is the base it hugs the ground It’s low to the ground. It’s a semicircle.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like boom there. You’re the base and the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John We like flat screens because they’re flat they’re thin and light so let the screen be true to itself be light
⏹️ ▶️ John and airy like floating in the air, you can reposition it because it’s on this cool arm. That arm totally was cool. I love that arm.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s super thin because I mean, not by today’s standards. Like if you look at the screen on a
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Pro, they didn’t even know what thin was. But anyway, this is a long time ago. Look how thin it is. And it doesn’t have all the gut strapped to the
⏹️ ▶️ John back of it. Of course, today, you know, when they eventually did like the iMac G5 and the big, the white flat
⏹️ ▶️ John screen thing, eventually it did shove the innards of the iMac to the back of the screen when they got to the point where they felt like they could shove the innards
⏹️ ▶️ John on the back and not have it look like like a big, you hunchback type thing right
⏹️ ▶️ John so here we are with the battery case and unfortunately there’s not really any place for the any place else
⏹️ ▶️ John for the battery to go you can’t put it on the front you can’t really put it on the sides or the bottom so it’s kind of got to go on the back
⏹️ ▶️ John but I when I first saw this but I tweeted about it was the the sort of Johnny Ives
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs explanation for this still kind of fits with the let each element be true to itself right so the phone is
⏹️ ▶️ John one element and the battery is the other and it’s like let’s not hide the fact that we’re jamming a battery on
⏹️ ▶️ John the back of a phone So the phone is this skinny little thing and We’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John put a battery on the back of it and the battery is other thing But it’s a separate thing so rather than trying to blend them
⏹️ ▶️ John together and make you think these are all one piece We’re going to it’s either you can decide it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like in script writing parlance hang a lantern on it or in the Johnny Ive Steve Jobs parlance let each element
⏹️ ▶️ John be true to itself so this Lithium-ion battery pack on the back of this this phone is being
⏹️ ▶️ John true to itself by going here. I am I’m a battery battery. I’m sticking out here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Say hi to me. And, you know, like, aesthetically, because that’s what it comes down to. Aesthetically speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can decide that that looks ugly. Maybe because it looks different. The other things maybe it’s just like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want you to declare yourself to be I don’t want you to be true to yourself battery. I want you to minimize yourself. I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to know you’re there. I want to pretend instead that I have Marcos phone that he talked about. There’s actually just an iPhone success
⏹️ ▶️ John that has a little more battery power. And by calling attention to itself in this way that some people find ugly it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like oh it’s really rubbing it in that I have this extra thing shoved to the back of my phone that we used to be
⏹️ ▶️ John nice and elegant and now it’s like you know a little hunchback thing that’s kind of gross but
⏹️ ▶️ John so I could see arguments on both sides of that but I my opinion of the this
⏹️ ▶️ John case started to fall two things one when I saw that it had a chin because I thought surely the company that
⏹️ ▶️ John can make this without a chin is Apple right because the chin the chin is really I find that substantially
⏹️ ▶️ John alters the feel of the phone more than making it thicker once you start making it longer and wider. I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John the chins. The chins come with compromises as people have found out if you buy a beats headphone
⏹️ ▶️ John you cannot plug it into the chin of this thing without an adapter because the little headphone jack is just too deep to go through the little
⏹️ ▶️ John adapter II things. It’s not just beats John there are other headphones. I know but I’m just saying I point out beats because it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple makes those right so it’s the worst it’s not like Oh third party head once nope for essentially first party headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John also don’t fit the ear pods fit right, but not, you know, headphones with longer jacks on. They
⏹️ ▶️ John had to make the little tunnel for the sound come out, which I’m glad they did that, and the little, you know, the little holes
⏹️ ▶️ John and tunnels they have to make to get the stuff that’s on the bottom of the phone to come out, but there are, I think there are third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John battery cases that don’t have chins. Am I wrong in thinking that? I feel like I’ve seen them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was able to find one when I looked for battery cases a few months ago, and there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, let me look it up. It’s, I forget the name, but I found it yesterday.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, like I feel like Apple not having a chance something Apple do, but the real
⏹️ ▶️ John kicker to me was all of all that story. I just gave you about the about the backpack being true to itself
⏹️ ▶️ John and having the extra capacity or whatever when I found out that Apple’s battery case actually has less
⏹️ ▶️ John battery capacity than the ones that try to hide the fact that there’s a battery that really killed it because it’s like if you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a big backpack and be true to itself and say here I am. I’m a battery at least
⏹️ ▶️ John make that battery really high capacity right at least say yeah it’s a little bit chunkier looking
⏹️ ▶️ John than other batteries but boy it’s got a lot of capacity but it doesn’t it has less capacity than those other ones it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like it should have more because it calls attention to itself it is prominent and yet the actual battery in there
⏹️ ▶️ John is smaller and so then I feel like you know the battery case that I would have liked
⏹️ ▶️ John another number in the market for battery case but the one that I would like is either one that was just had massive capacity
⏹️ ▶️ John and was really high quality or the one that had no chin and made the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John so thin that you don’t even know that it’s there they gave you only a little bit more maybe more than Marcos 25
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe 30% maybe 40% battery and that Apple can make a super thin one that’s like it
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t even know it’s a battery it doesn’t look like a little bit case but it gives your it gives your phone a boost right
⏹️ ▶️ John both of those products I think would be nicer products as far as I’m concerned now I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John the existence of a battery case means that either Apple is admitting the success
⏹️ ▶️ John has bad battery life and I actually don’t think the success has bad battery life. It really depends on for you individually.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it doesn’t have enough battery life for the way you use the phone then yes you need to have a battery pack but I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John the battery life and the success is reasonable but as we’ve discussed many many times I also think there is a place in Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John product line for a phone that is bigger and gets more battery life That is not the 6s
⏹️ ▶️ John plus because that’s forcing you to say hey if you want our battery life Apple makes a phone for you
⏹️ ▶️ John Also, it’s the size of a freaking tablet And I have feel like there’s a place in their line for to say and I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like the 6s is that place actually? I like if they come up with a 4-inch phone That one should be super thin
⏹️ ▶️ John and small and then the 6s should be a little bit thicker to have more battery and then the 6 Plus should be the way it is
⏹️ ▶️ John or or maybe add something between it like I think there’s a place somewhere in the lineup for A thick phone that is not gargantuan
⏹️ ▶️ John But they don’t want to make the phone. They want to keep making these skinny things. And if you need more capacity from it, you put this case on. And I see
⏹️ ▶️ John tons of people with battery cases in real life on all on, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John all sizes of iPhones, the five S size, the four S, the six, the success, lots and lots of battery
⏹️ ▶️ John cases, because those people know, like, I’m going to use my phone all day and I can’t use it without the battery. The battery case essentially becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the phone. I also don’t fault Apple for making a case. I don’t think they’re spreading themselves too
⏹️ ▶️ John thin. Marco was like, oh, they just want to get 100 more dollars out of people. Of course they do. not like are they somehow morally obligated
⏹️ ▶️ John not to make an accessory, which they should make access, you know, it’s weird to have a manufacturer not making accessories.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like Honda not making bras for your car. It’s not like they want you to put a bra on your car, but they’re sure as hell gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John make one because you want a broad like Honda’s like, we’ll sell you one. Here you go. Like, maybe that’s a bad example of a car bras,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m just going back to neutral days. But uh, but yeah, no, Apple should totally sell every accessory.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why allow only third parties to make an accessory that a huge number of people buy? What was the status on something like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, according to Apple’s own statistics or something like 70 something percent 78% of people put a case
⏹️ ▶️ John on their iPhones. Of course, Apple should sell cases. And if some of those people want better, of course, they should make them. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple should make three battery cases like I have no objection to them doing that. I think they
⏹️ ▶️ John absolutely should, if only like to raise the game of the third party manufacturers. So
⏹️ ▶️ John while this is a little bit of a disappointing product, there are some explanations for that we’ll get to in
⏹️ ▶️ John a second. But I think they should totally make a battery case.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can come up with a plausible explanation for the aesthetics of this case, even if you think it’s ugly, you think it’s ugly. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s your opinion is your opinion, right? I mean, we all see people with cases that we think are ugly, but somebody loves them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if anything, I wish Apple would just make more battery cases. So this I think this is a good first run at a battery case. And at
⏹️ ▶️ John the very least, it’s got us talking about it. And it’s interesting. It is not boring. Let’s give it that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, by the way, the case I was thinking of, and I couldn’t remember it before was the solar memo. I don’t think I’m pronouncing that right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, there’s, there’s a couple of them. There’s, there’s a new version and the old version on Amazon for like 50 bucks each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the old version, this is the only better case I’ve ever seen that, that has no chin and it basically has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an internal lightning port that plugs in, you know, kind of up the bottom of the phone and like moves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the real can enter down slightly and it uses its additional thickness of being a battery case to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give you a lightning port that’s just like down lower than like just below the real one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it really give you a lightning? Because that was I thought that was one of the claims of this. Like it wasn’t this from it was in the Mashable arab. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the first battery case to have a fully featured lightning connector. That’s what was a claim I read somewhere about
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple lighting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, yeah, but the key words there are fully featured because you’re both right. This does take a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightning connector, but it doesn’t put the battery status and notification center
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and stuff like that that only the first party case can do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, is that a fully featured lightning connector? That’s a feature that granted Apple can only do because they can. They’re only the ones who can change the OS.
⏹️ ▶️ John But is the lightning connector fully featured on that one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, like the first version of this one had had a big problem that according to the reviews of blocking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cell signals, because it had a metal frame, and everyone said that it blocked your signal. And this updated version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now says it’s updated now new design that absolutely will not interfere with your signal. So I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ordered one. I’m gonna try it. I’m gonna I’m gonna I’ll report back and see like, if that actually is true, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s extremely thin relative to most battery cases. And it has no chin. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bulk of it is significantly reduced. And if this is actually good and works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and doesn’t block the sell signal meaningfully, then I would say it’s kind of embarrassing for Apple. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing there’s going to be some problem with this. There has to be some reason why no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one else makes cases like this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there any other color besides white? I’m not trying to be funny. I’m really asking.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a black one. No, but the black one’s the old version. Oh, I thought you meant the Apple one. Yeah. The Apple one only comes
⏹️ ▶️ John in black and white, which is kind of boring, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s also true, but yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see if they actually sell. I mean, I’m sure they’re gonna sell. Also, one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing to consider that is even more cynical than they just made it to get accessory money.
⏹️ ▶️ John But why is that? Like, you always say that like, they just made it. Like, oh, that’s what they make products
⏹️ ▶️ John for. Like, I mean, they wanna make great products, blah, blah, but they just made it to make money? Like, how can
⏹️ ▶️ John you say that is a bad thing about like- Oh, I guess that’s true. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s, there’s one, I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to think, is there a situation where you could say this was just a money, like, I guess you could say it’s a money grab if they put out
⏹️ ▶️ John a product that they put minimal effort into just to get
⏹️ ▶️ John the money based on their name. And I don’t think that’s this, because you may think it’s ugly
⏹️ ▶️ John and may disagree with the compromises they made, but it looks like it’s up to the standards of all Apple first-party cases
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of fit and finish and the thoughtfulness of the features. Again, whether you disagree with them or
⏹️ ▶️ John not, it doesn’t look like a piece of junk. So I think maybe that’s how you could call it a money grab. If they put out something
⏹️ ▶️ John that would just look like a piece of junk, It didn’t feel good. It didn’t look good. It didn’t fit right. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John the only thing I can think of there is like the iPad one case. You could say that about like they just put this out to make money because
⏹️ ▶️ John because that looked like a piece of crap and it looked like it was slapped together because we might as well say they just made a small laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John as a money grab for people who want a small laptop. Well, yeah, it’s for people who want a laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know. No, that’s that’s all fair. But OK, so carry this on to its logical conclusion, then and then we have a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because now they now have an incentive to not improve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone and battery life to keep it to being almost sufficient for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough people, but just painful enough that a large portion of their customers will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to buy this additional $100 part. It’s just like the 16 gig problem. Yeah, I don’t know if a large portion of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are going to buy it. No, I’m saying like, but now they have the incentive to keep the status quo.
⏹️ ▶️ John Incentive to what? They’re already doing that. I think the 6 Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John has given them a little bit of cover on this to say, you always said you wanted a phone with more
⏹️ ▶️ John battery capacity? Well, we made one you’re like, yeah, but it’s so big. Oh, you want everything now it has to be exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the size you want with exactly the battery capacity, our testing shows the blah, blah, blah. I mean, as someone who
⏹️ ▶️ John uses a six all day and the battery, I mean, I don’t use it all day. But now I use it every day. And the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John is totally fine for me. But I also know people who can’t get through half a day with their six and we all
⏹️ ▶️ John have the same phone. It just depends on your usage pattern. So there’s such a variability in usage pattern. It’s very difficult to say
⏹️ ▶️ John whether they’ve over or undersized anything. If this battery case gives them cover, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think so, because battery cases existed already. So whatever cover that you think they’re getting by having a battery
⏹️ ▶️ John case, they already had that cover, because there’s this huge market for battery cases that I see everywhere for the people who torture their phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John who need to have a really long, you know, so I don’t think they needed to make this case to get that cover.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I think that’s fair, but I think this dramatically increases that cover for them, because now they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point to this and they can say, well, you know what, if you don’t battery life of your 6 or your, you know, whatever the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mainline iPhone is, if you don’t like the battery life of that, it isn’t our problem to fix. We offer you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these battery cases for an extra $99. Like, it would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was better when they could say, if you, we don’t like the battery life, it isn’t our problem, buy one of these less than $99
⏹️ ▶️ John battery cases that offer more capacity. If anything, this weakens their story because now they’re going to always be pitching theirs first, which has lower
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity and a higher price.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem here is that this, at least by having a first party option that they believe is good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this gives them permission internally when making these decisions to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no longer really think about giving more battery life to people built into the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’ll still think about it exactly the same amount. I mean, as I’ve said for many years back to the
⏹️ ▶️ John old Hypercritical episode about Naked Robotic Core, this seems to be the strategy they’ve been pursuing for a long time. A lot of people tweeted and said, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the Naked Robotic Core theory, it’s finally come. Not it’s finally come, it’s been here the whole time. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a new thing. The thing that they’ve been doing is make it as thin and light as possible as
⏹️ ▶️ John you can to be useful to you know to somebody to a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John and then allow people to add to it and as Marco has pointed out many times then you got out of seven extra layers of you
⏹️ ▶️ John know basically essentially filler between there because you got to have walls between your batteries and the batteries have to be inside cases
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s gonna be case on the outside and it’s inefficient so they’re gonna keep dancing around in that line
⏹️ ▶️ John I really think that we’d none of us would be discussing if they made a thicker iPhone 6.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe even also keep the thin one, make a thicker one for all-day use on the go. It’s all about diversifying the product line. They
⏹️ ▶️ John really have diversified it a lot. They just can keep going. Maybe they consider this a diversification,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think this is more of an accessorization.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re adding accessories, which is one way to go to make your line more diverse, but it is no
⏹️ ▶️ John substitute for actually making your line more diverse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It isn’t that ridiculous to think of them making another iPhone model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that still is the same size as their mid-range one that just has a bigger battery. Because this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their most important product. They make more of them than anything else, and they have all sorts of such customizations in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other product lines. So it wouldn’t be that ridiculous of a concept.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if the 4-inch phone comes back, then you’ll see it’s ripe for that. If a 4-inch phone comes back, it’s like, see,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is not afraid to make sure. is with the iPhone being such an important product.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s one thing where they want to have economies of scale. But the other thing is you want to make sure you get as much of the market
⏹️ ▶️ John as possible. The whole reason they made bigger phones, it was like, well, a lot of people do want bigger phones. So let’s make a bigger phone. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s not just make a bigger phone. Let’s make two bigger phones because we don’t even we if we make it one size, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be big enough for the people with a huge one, but we can make just a huge one people are going to flip out because they want the not so huge one.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, like I said, if they make the four inch that will show that like we understand that people want all different sizes
⏹️ ▶️ John and then maybe someday, like either they have to make a thicker phone someday or someday eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John the innards will take up so little power that this will be a moot point and we’ll just cross the 24 hour barrier and then we won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to worry about it again until people start wanting their phone to life to weaken instead of a day.
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⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna say we actually have some useful information here. Apple and other strange
⏹️ ▶️ John turn of events is actually talking to the press about about the of all things about the little
⏹️ ▶️ John lump on the back of their thing, which like when did this come out like earlier in the week, I guess yesterday, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And then Apple already is talking again talking to the tech press and saying, we would like to talk to
⏹️ ▶️ John you about the mean things people are saying about our battery case. They had, you know, I’m not gonna say some
⏹️ ▶️ John excuses. Let’s say some explanations about what is the deal with the case? Why the hell is it like that? Why doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John one question is that lump on the back? Fine, you want to have a lump on the back, you don’t want it to be smoothed over. That’s an aesthetic
⏹️ ▶️ John decision. Why doesn’t the lump on the back go all the way from the top to the bottom of the phone? Why does it look like a bandaid
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s like there’s the lumpy part in the middle and the flat part? And Marco already talked about this like and
⏹️ ▶️ John the their explanation is it’s about cellular reception. That if you put the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John over the top and the bottom of the, you know, over the whole thing, the antenna lines on the
⏹️ ▶️ John 6S are in the top and the bottom. You don’t want to block the antenna with a battery because it’s not radio transparent.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so they’re keeping the battery away from the radio parts and that gives better
⏹️ ▶️ John I can kind of understand. That’s something you have to deal with. If you really do coat the entire back of the phone with
⏹️ ▶️ John a battery, it’s gonna hurt reception. people who have battery cases that are not that do hurt their reception
⏹️ ▶️ John know that it happens and it can be annoying so they avoided it just by not putting the battery there did you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John stay so far away from the things could you made it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco again like i
⏹️ ▶️ John say if you if you’re gonna put the big lump why not make the lump thicker like when i go out and have more capacity it really is depressing
⏹️ ▶️ John to me taper it maybe yeah well i mean i guess it comes at a certain point it comes down to an aesthetic decision like you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John left the battery the same exact size and filled in the part with like essentially a radio transparent
⏹️ ▶️ John taper. It’s not battery that’s covering the things, it’s just taper, but I think the taper comes down to aesthetics.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other thing is, I don’t know if this is a legit complaint, but this is Apple’s story, that
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of the battery cases, like the Mophies and stuff, are two-piece things that are hard to get the phone in and out of, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple one, because the battery doesn’t extend all the way up to the top, the top is like bendy, and you could just bend the top
⏹️ ▶️ John back and then slide the phone. I don’t think Apple has a video of this. And they’re very excited
⏹️ ▶️ John and proud about the fact that it’s easy to get the phone in and out. I don’t know how many people are taking their phones in and out of
⏹️ ▶️ John battery cases a lot. Maybe it’s because they’re so hard to get in and out of like those really tight fitting battery cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John But is that, you know, I guess it’s okay to say, Hey, we made it really easy to get the phone in and out, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I just don’t see someone coming home every day and taking their phone out or putting it in. It doesn’t seem like a frequent activity
⏹️ ▶️ John to me. I, you know, and that’s true of any case, not just battery case. Like I never take my cases
⏹️ ▶️ John off my phone and you shouldn’t because you’ll find all the weird dust and stuff that collects up there and it’s gross.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well it’s funny you say that because I typically use the Apple leather case for my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone because like Marco was saying earlier, you know, I happen to like the feel of it. It is a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exorbitantly expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but… Not anymore. When we bought our 6th generation ones it was like 60 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now they’re 45. Oh is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that right? I didn’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. They dropped it with the S generation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t know that. So that’s not quite so bad. But anyway, the only time I use battery case though, which I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have. I have a Lenmar one, which I really liked until Marco showed me this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one that we were talking about a minute ago, which I kind of am blusting over now. But anyway—
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, let me get it first and I’ll tell you if it sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly. But I have this Lenmar battery case, which is just a cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knockoff of the Mophies, and it works really well and I really like it. But the only time I ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use it is either a conference or when I’m at a football game when I’m not going to be around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall power for hours and hours and hours and hours. Other than that, I never ever use this case. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so getting my phone out of the Apple leather case and into the Lenmar case is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey useful to have that easier, but I by and large agree with you that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not the sort of thing that I’m doing daily. I’m doing it like once a week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during the fall and then maybe daily during WWDC, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it. enough that I would say easy in and out would be good. Although I do have to wonder, especially with these things, like the more
⏹️ ▶️ John times you take the thing in and out, the more loose it kind of possibly get, and the more you could trap things between it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John another thing they talk about this on the Apple website, or like that they have the microfiber on the inside, that it’s cleaning your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John when you put it in there. It’s like, it’s no getting around the fact that if you happen to get like three pieces of sand in there and you shove your phone inside
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it’s microfiber or not, you’re gonna make scratches. The other things about the lump,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, Apple has talked about like grippability and stuff, and how it’s also better for that, and Gruber said he actually, rather than putting
⏹️ ▶️ John his thumb, his pinky on the bottom like you guys do, with the lump, you can put your pinky under
⏹️ ▶️ John the lump instead of under the very bottom of the phone, which probably helps because the chin is making the very bottom of the phone go even lower
⏹️ ▶️ John down. So resting your pinky underneath the lump could be a comfortable way to do it. Like, having never
⏹️ ▶️ John held one of these, I can’t really think about how it would feel. Would it feel awkward or would it feel better? Like giving you
⏹️ ▶️ John an extra place to grip, like a handhold, that lump on the back. But the silicone, Apple silicone case
⏹️ ▶️ John is nice. my wife has one on her iPhone and the lump thing I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John like what I keep coming back to is many of our discussions about past Apple products
⏹️ ▶️ John have been that they favor form over function I’ve talked about the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John one and the single port and how everything has to be so skinny and how the phones are skinny and everything has to be so you know like
⏹️ ▶️ John just made like a sculpture the Apple mouse the tiny keyboards the half-size arrow keys form over function form over
⏹️ ▶️ John function too much you know but they can’t make it ugly for one little bit of extra functionality. They just said, No,
⏹️ ▶️ John can we just make it beautiful and do the best we can with the masking constraints? And one thing you can say about this case is that it
⏹️ ▶️ John absolutely does not put form in front of function, right? Nope. Right. So because
⏹️ ▶️ John not because not necessarily because it’s ugly, but because like, look, it has a job to do. And it doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John spend a lot of time figuring out how to how to make it like it look like a beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John piece of sculpture, right? You know, and again, getting back to it being true to it. So I think that old IMAX,
⏹️ ▶️ John I love that IMAX design so much Like that I just I felt like that iMac design had both in that
⏹️ ▶️ John they said you know But let the function dictate the form we we Can’t figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out a way to get these internals on the back of the screen and have it look decent So don’t even try have the screen and have
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen be free by itself and have it you can move it anywhere you can Twist it around you can move it up you move it down it stays where you put it
⏹️ ▶️ John It was it was awesome right and the base it also looks beautiful, but it was also totally stable stays
⏹️ ▶️ John right there. It’s small small. The base of that iMac was actually a lower amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of volume, I believe, than the Power Mac G4 Cube, so it was actually smaller than you thought it was.
⏹️ ▶️ John What you want is a beautiful blending of it. But this one, when it came time to choose, should we
⏹️ ▶️ John smooth this thing over and try to hide all this stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ John make it look like a beautiful piece of sculpture, perhaps sacrificing something of utility, like maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John not having a good lightning passed through or maybe having ridiculously low battery capacity to make it
⏹️ ▶️ John completely invisible and not useful to people except for Marco who wanted more than an extra 20% they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t and they made a different choice and when they make a different choice what their reward is a million articles saying
⏹️ ▶️ John you have too much function and you should have paid more attention to form because I think what you made is ugly and I guess that’s because
⏹️ ▶️ John people think the ugliness is a result of them not paying enough attention to looks right
⏹️ ▶️ John if they just made something that was ugly, like say they made the MacBook one that had one port, and everyone’s pissed about one port,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was ugly. On top of that, you couldn’t say, well, you said you wanted former, you know, function
⏹️ ▶️ John over form. So you would say no, no, they screwed up both. It is both not useful because it has one stupid port, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s ugly as sin. Instead, they made this beautiful thing that has one port. And then you could simply say,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, they wanted to make it beautiful and thin and then making a statement with this one port, and the scalp batteries and
⏹️ ▶️ John all this other stuff like they spent so much all this technology and effort to make this beautiful thing and
⏹️ ▶️ John we agree that it’s beautiful so we say yes you did that but you did the wrong balance in this one we don’t agree that it’s beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John we feel like you have not made it beautiful so we’re going to say that you didn’t go for form instead
⏹️ ▶️ John you must have gone for function and you look at it functionally like well it’s easy to take in and out uh it has
⏹️ ▶️ John a battery in it has lightning pass through uh the only thing you could maybe ding them on is if you really wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John go the form of a function you would have made the chin even bigger so you could fit the long headphone jacks in it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John this this does feel to me like a different bounce than usual a form of a function from Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John if only because we all disagree about the form being beautiful. And I want to encourage
⏹️ ▶️ John that because half the time all we’re saying is don’t make your things beautiful sculptures, because then you end up in absurd situations
⏹️ ▶️ John like the harpoon turtle mouse think more about form and they think more about form and then we all yell at them. So I you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, Apple I can I can empathize with Apple feel like we can’t win with these these guys?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, the right answer here is to recognize that if it is truly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not possible to make a really good external battery case for an iPhone that also looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good and good looks are important to Apple, then the answer is to reduce or remove the need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for external battery cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like reducing it. That’s where it comes down to, like how much if you added 10% capacity, how much do
⏹️ ▶️ John you reduce the need 20% capacity? Like when do you get to the point where you’re actually reducing the need? Because I think the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John need like those big movies, their Apple should never make a phone as big as those big movies or like even
⏹️ ▶️ John like 80% is big, like say take one of the big movies cut out all the intermediary plastic and merge
⏹️ ▶️ John that that those milliamp hours into the phone. That’s too big for Apple to make, right? But people
⏹️ ▶️ John have those needs. And so there’s always going to be need for some battery packs. I just don’t know what the ratio
⏹️ ▶️ John is of like of all the people who need a battery packs, how many people could get away with just adding 20% 30% right.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s kind of what the third party battery manufacturers are doing. And if Apple is not privy to that information,
⏹️ ▶️ John because their surveys or focus groups don’t work, that is a motivation for Apple to make seven different sizes of battery
⏹️ ▶️ John packs. And then hey, Apple, you’ll have your own information about exactly how much more capacity people need. And you can use that to decide
⏹️ ▶️ John how thick to make the next phone or you know what target battery life or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But now it’s if you’re just incentive to ever do so because that’ll reduce the iPhone ASP.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think by making one case if they can make this will give them some information, some real
⏹️ ▶️ John first-hand information about what people want out of battery cases. And if they make more battery cases,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’ll give them even more information. Like they’re always making that calculus. How big do we make the battery in this phone? Should we be going for
⏹️ ▶️ John a target battery life like the iPad where we just go for 10 hours all the time? We think we’re okay with that? I don’t know. What do you think
⏹️ ▶️ John their target is for the iPhones? They seem to vary more. Someone did a chart recently. They seemed like it was kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John consistent, but a little bit lumpy. The iPads were more of a straight line and the iPhone history was a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit lumpy up and down here and there. But maybe they’re just holding their breath and saying, if we just wait
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit longer, and we get Intel to manufacture the A11 for us at whatever insane feature
⏹️ ▶️ John size that they’re up to at that point, and we make everything so low power,
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually this will just be a moot point and we just need to get across that finish line. It’s already a moot point on iPads. They’re already on
⏹️ ▶️ John iPads saying, let’s fill that space with empty spaces with speakers. Like 10 hours is fine. And we pretty much all
⏹️ ▶️ John agree, like for the most part, 10 hours so far is fine for the iPads. the phones they’re always
⏹️ ▶️ John on the ragged edge of we don’t want to make it really big and thick but we also want it to last
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of all day and we know we can’t really make it last all day because that would just be way too big so you know
⏹️ ▶️ John just I don’t know like every year I think they’re gonna get closer and every year they just put a more powerful CPU
⏹️ ▶️ John and GPU in there or make the screen bigger so that that sucks even more power and it just seems like we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John really making progress on on battery life but I have to think somewhere out there in the not-too-distant future
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna start crossing over like give me like one or two or three more hours and then all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John starts to fade into the background and just be applicable to people who need to be able to like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know play games on iOS for nine hours in a row and not lose their battery or whatever the hell people are doing
⏹️ ▶️ John to to use those giant Mophies all day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah a couple of quick notes about the positives to the battery case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the things that appeals to me about this is that it does have that lightning pass-through.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It sounds like there are other cases on the market that have this, like the one Marco just impulse-bought a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey few minutes ago. But having this landmark case that I do like, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also having to carry one micro USB port just for that, and I pretty much have no other devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use it, is kind of annoying. So I like that it has lightning pass-through. And then it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also has some phantom passive antenna help, which, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, if you guys have something to say about that, we can. But finally, the other thing that I think is appealing is when you drop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down a notification center to see what your battery life is on your phone and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possibly your watch, this will appear in notification center as well, which I think is really nice rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than having some stupid blinking lights on the back of the thing. Apparently there is a blinking light
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the inside of the thing for when you’re charging, but that’s obviously not terribly useful if the phone is in the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think those are all positive. I think that’s good. And actually, I’d never thought about putting your pinky there. I’ve not held one of these yet, but that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually sounds really appealing too, because maybe that can shimmy my pinky up a bit so I can actually reach
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the top of my already too big phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s another policy decision. Speaking of like OS integration, what are the policy? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have battery cases. I don’t know what better cases do this. But what is the policy in terms of if you plug
⏹️ ▶️ John either a terrible micro USB or lightning cable or something to the bottom of your phone that’s inside a battery
⏹️ ▶️ John case? Does it charge the battery case first? Does it charge the phone first? When you put a phone into a
⏹️ ▶️ John battery case, Does the battery case to immediately begin charging the phone up to 100% and then stop charging when it goes that
⏹️ ▶️ John or does the battery? case Charge the phone up to some percentage like 75 or 80 and just try to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John it there as you use the phone like how do You how does the software in the battery case I guess?
⏹️ ▶️ John Decide what to do with power And there is an argument to be made for
⏹️ ▶️ John the battery case Not charging the phone up to 100% and keeping it that way because keeping lithium-ion
⏹️ ▶️ John batteries at 100% charge all the time time shortens their life versus keeping them at like, I think optimal is like 40% or some
⏹️ ▶️ John crap like that. But at any rate, keeping it charged at max all the time is not great for battery life. Even though
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s 10 at this point, like does that thing where it like lets your battery drain down like 99 98 97% and then cranks you back up like it’s, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not good to keep it 100% all the time. And I’ve heard that some battery cases try
⏹️ ▶️ John to keep your phone around 75 or something to extend the battery life on or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But those are those type of decisions are things that can be adjusted, I guess in software, maybe in
⏹️ ▶️ John firmware does the battery case have firmware I don’t know some cooperation between the device with the software
⏹️ ▶️ John on it and the battery case would be good here and it’s a perfect opportunity to try to do
⏹️ ▶️ John something that you couldn’t do as a regular person because as a regular person without a battery case you have to charge 100
⏹️ ▶️ John before you leave the house you’re not going to charge your phone to 70 to preserve the battery life because you’re just going to maybe run out before the end of the
⏹️ ▶️ John day so you’re always charging to 100 people with battery cases can And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess maybe they’re frying their battery case, keeping it charged to 100%, but I’d be more comfortable doing that than
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that’s inside the phone because it’s probably still cheaper to get a new battery case than it is to replace a battery inside
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone. And certainly you don’t have to worry about opening up your phone and doing all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, if there is integration between the battery case and the phone, which in Apple’s case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is their software integration at the phone level and no one else will be able to get that. There’s one more thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can do that that’s smart that I that that is unfortunate. other cases can’t do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS has a number of changes that it does, behaviors that it does, heuristics that it does,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it thinks it’s plugged into AC power. It will more readily download things in the background, it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pull apps more often, it’ll use more power when it thinks it’s plugged into AC power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If Apple makes a case that integrates in the software, I think a smart thing to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be for the battery case to communicate to the phone, hey, I’m also a battery, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really AC power even though I’m charging you. And for the phone to continue operating as if it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was running on battery power. I don’t know if Apple’s case does that. I do know that third-party cases can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and don’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it might also be neat to see like what the policy decision is about low power mode.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess maybe you’d never get into low power mode if the battery case is always charging the phone and if you did reach it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would be legit to turn it on. But what if you had a battery case that was like withholding its charge from the phone until the phone dipped to a
⏹️ ▶️ John certain level and then it triggered the low power warning? I don’t know. This is yet another reason why
⏹️ ▶️ John actually increasing the capacity of the battery inside the phone removes all these complexities. You don’t have to make all these weird policy
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about how you
⏹️ ▶️ John share the battery and all that other stuff. But bottom line is, official support for everything we just discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John is a good idea. Because no matter how big you make the battery in the phone, someone’s always gonna need something that’s the size of a bar of ivory soap.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s gonna be battery cases exist. And if battery cases are going to exist, the OS should really have support
⏹️ ▶️ John for them. Like there should be a made for iPhone program to be compliant battery case to get all the features
⏹️ ▶️ John we just described, even if Apple’s the first one to do them. Like why? Why withhold that? I was
⏹️ ▶️ John surprised to learn that I read the same thing that like that as far as iPhones are concerned, I think they’re attached to AC power
⏹️ ▶️ John and attached to a battery case. These battery cases have been around for a really long time. And you would think by now Apple would have
⏹️ ▶️ John official support for, hey, if you’re making a battery case, do this and that and have these resistances
⏹️ ▶️ John on these pins and will let us know that you are a battery case and we’ll treat you the right way.
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⏹️ ▶️ John One more bit on the smart battery case. There was a story in The Verge about does
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s smart battery case look weird because Mophie has a ton of patents on battery cases? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John Mophie does have a ton of patents on battery cases, some of them involving a two-part case, which it snaps over the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and just tons of dumb patents. Is that why Apple’s case
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like this, Apple says no. In their strange communication
⏹️ ▶️ John with the tech press that they’re doing nowadays, they apparently have said through channels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s not entirely surprising since this Lenmar case that I have operates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the exact same way that the supposed Mophie patents would prohibit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But to be fair, Lenmar is a much smaller target than Apple would be. So I’m not sure anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple, like the reason I believe this story that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple says that they didn’t make the case they did because of patents is not because I think Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Apple could have made the case and not an infringement of Apple’s. I think if Apple made a case that infringement of Mophie’s
⏹️ ▶️ John patents, Apple wouldn’t care because they’ve got a bazillion dollars and Mophie doesn’t. Like if it
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed like Apple is about to lose the case, they would just buy Mophie. I mean, seriously,
⏹️ ▶️ John giant companies like Apple are not afraid of small companies like Mophie when it comes to infringing patents because they could just tie them up
⏹️ ▶️ John in litigation until the company goes out of business. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that they’re willfully
⏹️ ▶️ John infringing patents, but as I’ve said many times, everything is patented. There’s tons of dumb patents. There’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do in the technology sector that is not violating someone’s patents. So every single thing Apple does is violating
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody’s patents, and that’s true of every technology company. It’s just the cost, the stupid cost of doing business.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so Apple is not going to have some sort of meeting before deciding their iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John battery case and say, let’s take a survey of all the patents that are held by people who have patents on iPhone battery cases
⏹️ ▶️ John and make sure whatever we do doesn’t come close to one of those they’re just gonna make the case that they want to make like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John if they didn’t they would be paralyzed like it’s like you know we’re adding a feature to iOS please spend six months trying to search
⏹️ ▶️ John for every super dumb patent that applies to what we’re planning it they’re just gonna do it they’re just gonna do it and they’re gonna wait for
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody to sue them because that’s the way business works in the stupid world that we have here in the United States
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything else on the case I can’t believe we talked for so long about a battery case. Have you met us?
⏹️ ▶️ John Did anyone by the way did anyone order this? I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John six. Well actually I only have a six. They didn’t. Does this I assume it fits a six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? It does. Yes it does. Um not it doesn’t fit the pluses but it does fit the regulars. No I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can see why people would choose this one. You know it does have some integration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does feel probably pretty good if you if you want a rubberized silicone case feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for grip purposes. It is probably good for that although I don’t know whether the bulge in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the back would be more comfortable less comfortable I don’t know but I see why people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would choose this one but I think anybody who this sounds so stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody who really cares about their battery case I think would find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many better options
⏹️ ▶️ John it depends on what you care about like people this may look rugged to some people, I’m not sure how the aesthetics
⏹️ ▶️ John will will will be received by people who are not as obsessed
⏹️ ▶️ John with like the apple aesthetic as we are. And perhaps the people listening to this podcast are
⏹️ ▶️ John because Apple’s design is a particular aesthetic and it appeals to us obviously because we like Apple products and we buy them and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. But it’s not necessarily appealing to everybody. It’s kind of like, you know, the Aston
⏹️ ▶️ John Martin aesthetic versus the Corvette versus Ferrari, like just historically speaking, those are three very different
⏹️ ▶️ John styles. And some people really like Aston Martin and think Corvettes are ugly. And some people really like Corvettes and Mustangs
⏹️ ▶️ John and think Aston Martins don’t appeal to them. And you know, the same thing with Ferrari. Like not every
⏹️ ▶️ John style appeals to every person. And when I look at the style, I try to say, is this a style that would appeal to
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody? And I think what I think of is like power tools, you know, or maybe maybe a combination
⏹️ ▶️ John of like L. Bean and like DeWalt power tools or something like there is a sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John rugged rubbery gromit-y kind of aesthetic here that might actually
⏹️ ▶️ John be appealing to some people. And maybe there’s more of them than there are of the people who want everything. I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s in car manufacturer analogy is closest to like Aston Martin, but people do like Corvettes and Mustangs
⏹️ ▶️ John and they have bulges and flares and nostrils and all sorts of weird, rude things. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not entirely sure if this is actually, even though it is so different than
⏹️ ▶️ John the aesthetic that that we like from Apple? Is it really unappealing to everybody? I mean, at the very least, your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone will sit flat on the table.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, God. First of all, I think if Dewalt designed a battery case, they might have, I don’t even know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if they did, it would be way better looking than this. Secondly, I would far rather have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Corvette than this, and even though I don’t like the way Corvettes look usually.
⏹️ ▶️ John seen the back of the current one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s pretty rough, but have you seen this? I mean, have you seen the battery case?
⏹️ ▶️ John I like it. I have to say it’s growing on me. It’s growing on me. This one I look at the backless now I start thinking it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like I got the interior of a space station set from a 1970s movie.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. Wow. Like take a bunch of these. If you could do is in miniature like take a bunch of these erase the Apple logo and line them
⏹️ ▶️ John up to make like a hallway like these are the walls of the hallway. Yeah. I could see that that that is from
⏹️ ▶️ John a sci fi movie there like they’re like little bulging around and but what I’ve heard from I think This was an immeasurable article
⏹️ ▶️ John like don’t get the white one people I know you know we’ve already talked to Casey about this But like white looks
⏹️ ▶️ John good in some time some things but for something you’re gonna hold It’s gonna get dirty and gross
⏹️ ▶️ John really fast like there’s no avoiding it. We handle our phones all the time We put them in pockets and put them in purses
⏹️ ▶️ John who put them down on tables do not get the white one unless unless you’re okay With the fact that it’s that it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John not look like Apple’s product shots for more than like a week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, was it Christina’s who said like it was discoloring after like one day?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean how can it not like it is it is it is magical bright white You know Johnny Ives
⏹️ ▶️ John white world white nothing will stay if you touch it nothing will stay that color. Sorry
⏹️ ▶️ John Even like porcelain like even who’s made of fine China I feel like it would eventually get ugly, but this is this is
⏹️ ▶️ John silicone. It will not stay that color. Yeah
iOS 9.2, OS X 10.11.2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What else we have to talk about we had a lot of updates all the things got updated do we care?
⏹️ ▶️ John No we could Enumerate them and see everything to see about them. We got iOS 9.2.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there anything noteworthy there? I updated my devices and did not notice anything and didn’t recall
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing anything significant in the change notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Weren’t you was it you that was very upset about the done button and Safari view controller
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not upset like keep they keep moving stuff around like I don’t know if it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ John or worse than the other place It still hasn’t fixed the actual thing that drives me nuts about Safari view controllers
⏹️ ▶️ John is as soon as you scroll it scrunches up and hides And then you have to do something else to make it appear again before you
⏹️ ▶️ John can dismiss it. That is the maddening thing I don’t really care Where the button is because the argument can be made either side It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like depends on what hand you’re holding the thing with or whatever like there is no right position for the done button and
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe Like I was thinking why did they move it? Maybe they were like well That’s like where the back button is
⏹️ ▶️ John like on the left side And even though this isn’t a right-to-left navigation the thing that makes it go away should be
⏹️ ▶️ John in the left and not the right I don’t know what the thing was but the bottom line is that it still disappears as soon as
⏹️ ▶️ John you start scrolling a web page And that is the real the real criminal act of
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 8 and 9 and not the position of the done button, but you know, it’s the only thing I’ve noticed so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I Mean, I’ve heard from a couple Apple people here and there that these were all pretty pretty substantial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bug fix updates updates, and that’s good to hear. You know, like I kind of like when there’s a significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update that appears to contain nothing new, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that usually means a lot of bug fixes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have liked to see them to change notes, though, like that’s what I was looking for, like, yeah, show me all the bugs, but they didn’t show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it improves performance and stability. I mean, you know, they’re not going to tell you like here’s 500 bugs that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we fixed in these releases because they’re not going to make themselves look bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John They do say some things like they you know fix they I figure what changes us but like you know fix
⏹️ ▶️ John the bugs that could cause whatever and whatever application something really obscure it’s like if you’re gonna list that are
⏹️ ▶️ John you not listing the other things that are equal in obscurity I don’t quite understand the political
⏹️ ▶️ John machine that determines what makes things being released notes because I do see stuff that sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just like performance enhance bug fixes it is like some very specific things in there which makes me think
⏹️ ▶️ John is Is there nothing else of that same specificity that’s in this release? Surely there is, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it’s very PR massaged to be, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, first of all, very passive, like, you know, fixes an issue, in which certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people were affected by a certain weird behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They used worrying and freezing to be just very passive, very like, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of happened to us. You know, it wasn’t, like, it’s, yeah, it’s PR.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, yeah, I would agree, John. I didn’t notice anything. I’ve updated my iPad and my iPhone, and Aaron’s iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Updated my watch, haven’t noticed anything there. So yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John We got the OS X 10.11.2 update, which those release notes also, like, they were like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John we added some fix for some bug in mail or something, but I saw you, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John asking on Twitter and to The Void, did they fix like USB audio fix it? The
⏹️ ▶️ John USB stack specifically related to audio? And you got, did you get any answers about that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Tipster said that it, because like there are a lot of problems in El Cap so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regarding the USB stack and as it relates to audio devices. Where a lot of times, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve talked to a few other people, I know this happens to them too, it isn’t just me, where a lot of times I will have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my audio device that I’m like playing music through or whatever, just stop working completely. just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco music just stops playing if you hit play in iTunes the time doesn’t even advance like it’s not even getting to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point of sending the buffer out and then you try to like select different different sound output devices and like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fails or you can’t select one or just disappears for a while and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oftentimes it’s fixed by just waiting like 10 minutes oftentimes it’s fixed by rebooting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very very strange apparently the the you the USB stack had a lot of changes done on El Cap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so I’ve heard from various people including ATP tipster that that has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now fixed in the dot to release so I’m excited to try it out I haven’t actually installed yet but I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco install it after the show
⏹️ ▶️ John do you have these problems only on your computer which is festooned with German audio equipment
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and USB things like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wondering if it’s like them like it because you’re exercising both the USB subsystem
⏹️ ▶️ John and the audio component of that more than I am but I’ve had zero USB problems but I also do almost zero
⏹️ ▶️ John things involving USB. All I do is like a couple times a week I plug in my USB mic to this one Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s it. Everything else is not. I’m not unplugging and unplugging things. I don’t have any other USB audio
⏹️ ▶️ John gear except this mic and I’ve had no problem. So I’m wondering if it’s because like you feel like you’re actually
⏹️ ▶️ John using the USB stack in a much more thorough way than I am that you’re running
⏹️ ▶️ John into these problems. And I guess your control group would be like Tiff’s computer if she’s not messing with. Maybe she is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you got all those mics hooked up to her computer too. Like, can you tell if it’s because you are actually
⏹️ ▶️ John doing USB and audio stuff that’s causing this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem is the bugs aren’t easily reproducible. It just like kind of happens out of nowhere, you know, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once a week or every few days. So like it’s there’s never any one thing that seems to trigger it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have no idea, but hopefully it’s fixed and yeah, I’m looking forward to to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeing if it is fixed. Because other other than that, El Capistan very good for me. It has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not had any other real problems to speak of. But that’s been a pretty annoying one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’ve seen more people like every once in a while someone will come across my Twitter stream or something I’m blogging
⏹️ ▶️ John or I’m like Apple should do a snow leopard release where they just fix things or whatever. And it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t they just do that? Like 1011 is very as we talked about very snow leopardy
⏹️ ▶️ John where they didn’t spend a lot of time on big new features. They tried to do bug fixes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Discovery D kind of messed it up a little bit. But here we are at 1011 too. Not too long after 10.11
⏹️ ▶️ John by the time the.2 release comes to have dealt with the discovery he was granted which was
⏹️ ▶️ John a hangover from Yosemite see that one’s like oh they didn’t fix that one very quickly it took a long time for them
⏹️ ▶️ John to fix it but anyway by the time 10.11.2 comes down if we’re kind of saying that the major
⏹️ ▶️ John problems that were in 10.11.0 perhaps seem to have been addressed
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a reasonable timeline for OS X releases by the.2,.3 or.4 most of
⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff should be shaken out and the point for is like back in the day when it was 18 months or two years between
⏹️ ▶️ John releases but if if it turns out that 10 11 to got the really
⏹️ ▶️ John big issues aside from all the archive stuff which really has more to do with the server and the architecture
⏹️ ▶️ John and they can’t actually fix by updating the OS which is sad but anyway aside from that if they really have
⏹️ ▶️ John shaken everything out that I feel like that is fully on a snow
⏹️ ▶️ John leopard e type schedule people forget the snow leopard had some weird ass stuff in 10 1660 as well like
⏹️ ▶️ John every release does so I’m I’ve been very happy with El Cap so far I upgraded
⏹️ ▶️ John everything on the day. It was released. I immediately apply all the point updates. I haven’t regretted it I have experienced
⏹️ ▶️ John no weirdness anywhere Again, other than iCloud stuff, which I really like anything that
⏹️ ▶️ John involves servers I don’t blame the OS entirely for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and really I mean honestly like in For a while the Mac kind of felt neglected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because iOS was taking all the glory all the time and all the new stuff stuff. And then Apple started doing these like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive changes to the Mac, trying to make it more like iOS, like in the Lion era and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward from that. And it just started getting really weird and really bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you had like, I think Yosemite was kind of the peak of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only doing, having mediocre ideas on a lot of the Mac stuff, but also starting to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have really bad execution of a lot of it, where it’s just so buggy and so many problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that was… Leopard and Lion both had bad implementations of everything too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, that’s true. Fair enough. Okay. Maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John just the odd releases. Maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I feel like now we’re getting to the point where the neglect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in favor of working on iOS is actually helping the Mac most of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time. Because now it’s like, you can leave us alone and stop touching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and let us do our work on this pretty stable platform and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can go have your fun on ios
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only thing we have to wait we have to watch out for is when they do one of these like kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of drive by rewrites discovery d was one this usb subsystem and l cap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to have been one certainly like the disk utility and l cap is one like they kind of do these drive by rewrites
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they for some reason they decide something needs to be dramatically rewritten or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refactored or redesigned or whatever and they do like an eighty percent job of it and then they just move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on to other things and it leaves us this subsystem broken for a while as long as we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can minimize those times where that happens and they’re leaving us mostly alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Mac. I’m okay with that because like this is where we get our work done you know because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well those of us who aren’t using iPad pros, but this is what this is where we got our work done. Please don’t mess
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up. Please just leave us alone. Let it keep working. Please stop updating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it every year and please stop trying to do major like massive shifts on it. Just please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, like I said, they’re not doing those major rewrites for their health. Like they’re doing them for a reason. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the only difference is they just have to actually execute well on them. Like I,
⏹️ ▶️ John two examples, I gave launch D as an example in the past of like, why the hell are you replacing a knit? It’s perfectly fine. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John every Unix uses it. Why do you think you have to have your own thing? It’s like second system syndrome, you screw anything, but launch D is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And lunch he was buggy at first too. But they did it and they did it because the existing thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that filled that role didn’t have the features they needed launched he does they they executed it well
⏹️ ▶️ John enough that they didn’t have to roll it back. I know it’s a low bar, but it did it well enough that interval it back. Most
⏹️ ▶️ John people didn’t even notice it. Except for the fact that I wrote about it one of my old OS 10 reviews and we’re like, Oh, launch D what’s that?
⏹️ ▶️ John But I can tell you that the original version of launch D had tons of bugs. But they got it done well
⏹️ ▶️ John enough. And they move forward. Another example is Icon Services, which has had bugs,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, for how many freaking years. Like, they’re mostly cosmetic, and maybe that’s why they didn’t get fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Icon Services would like corrupt its caches in some weird way. And all your dock icons would show up all crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John and pixelated for just years and years and years. And it’s like, obviously, this isn’t a quick bug fix. Obviously, there is something
⏹️ ▶️ John architecturally wrong with Icon Services. And someone needs to go in there with a big wire brush and say, All right,
⏹️ ▶️ John what the hell is going on Icon Services? Let me deal with this. Let me fix it. And that took so many years to
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. And honestly, I wish they had tackled that sooner. Sometimes you have a subsystem. They did
⏹️ ▶️ John it because it’s super old and crusty, and it’s not even yours. And maybe it’s like BSD code leftover from God knows when, or because
⏹️ ▶️ John the first guy took a pass at it did a crappy job. And you know, you want to take another second run at it and do a better job.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what you have to do. That’s the job of basically the core OS group, I want them to continue doing that. I just want them to do
⏹️ ▶️ John a better job like and I think they do a good job almost all the time. And a lot of my old OS 10 reviews, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John applauded the core s group is a great example of see guys, core s is rewriting major components and
⏹️ ▶️ John doing a good job and improving things and fixing their bugs. And year over year making things better and adding features.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why doesn’t everybody else like say on the GUI team or whatever do that, you know, and the answer is like they have other
⏹️ ▶️ John other stakeholders, let’s say like people who care about aesthetics and marketing and branding, whereas people doing
⏹️ ▶️ John launch D have nobody worrying about aesthetics or branding or anything like that. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m totally in favor of them continuing to look at their OS, decide which subsystems
⏹️ ▶️ John are really due for either a really thorough spring cleaning or maybe a complete replacement
⏹️ ▶️ John with something new. You just have to do it well enough that you don’t have to roll it back when Vince Cerf complains
⏹️ ▶️ John about it six months later. I feel like that’s a low bar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that isn’t a given, though. I think modern Apple, with this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly relentless annual release schedule of everything, all these different product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lines that keep expanding into even more product lines and having the engineering resources spread incredibly thin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and constantly moving around between things, I feel like what we keep seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Apple is that they don’t seem to be incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good anymore at doing these big rewrites of subsystems or big new initiatives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their record is pretty bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John What have they screwed up besides Discovery, D?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Music is a big one.
⏹️ ▶️ John like the USB one, I would say is a success, especially at this point to like, if you have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a big refactoring and a big changes to a major subsystem, and you get all the kinks worked
⏹️ ▶️ John out of it by point two, like that’s probably pretty much all you can hope for like it’s that’s a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ John job. Like I still have faith in those groups to be able to do this and the yearly schedule,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can debate about that. But really, if they’re competent, I think they mostly are all yearly
⏹️ ▶️ John schedule does is push, push features that take more than one release
⏹️ ▶️ John out farther because every release has a certain amount of overhead associated with it and the more releases you have it’s like say you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to do a feature and it’s like i know this feature is too big to fit into one release i’m not going to say file system but you know you think of something
⏹️ ▶️ John this feature is too big to fit into one release how do i do this project at apple and
⏹️ ▶️ John apple would say you can do that project just fine you just have to have be on a multi-year plan if your thing takes
⏹️ ▶️ John a year and a half we’re not going to cut a release in a year and a half for you you’re just going to be on the two-year one so you know, there’s the overhead
⏹️ ▶️ John of each release that adds to just, you know, it’s just overhead just adds to the work everybody has to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then your schedules just get pushed out. Really yearly releases is simply a matter of,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, good management of software organization, what’s above the line, what’s below the line, what fits in this release, what what doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you do a good job about keeping things in and booting them out, I mean, you can even say discovery was the problem of that, not as
⏹️ ▶️ John if they did a bad job and discovery, but during the meetings when they say what’s in and what’s out for 1010.
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone should have said, we really wanted to do launch DNS discovery in this one, but it’s it’s not it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not up to snuff yet booted to 1011 booted to 1012. You just keep kicking it down the road like that is the exercise
⏹️ ▶️ John you could have until you get down to a certain point where the overhead dwarfs the amount of dev time you have, you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John six month releases if you wanted. It’s all just a matter of how you draw the line for you know, sort of project
⏹️ ▶️ John management parlance, what’s in and what’s out for this release, what’s what’s ready to go, what’s ready to go and what’s not ready to go.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think having an organization that is disciplined in that way, and I think like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if you contribute to Craig Federighi or whoever, like they went from the sort of loosey goosey artistic,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll release the OS when it’s ready, Steve Jobs kind of let’s figure it out type of thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John to a much more regimented, we’re gonna put ourselves on a yearly schedule, we’re gonna be disciplined about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. That is much more sort of, you know, business 101,
⏹️ ▶️ John like we should be able to do this. If we are an efficient, good organization, it shouldn’t be like, well, I don’t really know
⏹️ ▶️ John when the next OS is coming out. It’s whenever it’s done. And, you know, oh, well, the iPhone has taken some time away. So Leopard’s going to be a
⏹️ ▶️ John little later. It’s like, no, we’re doing a release every year. And if your stuff doesn’t make it, it doesn’t make it. But, you know, the train is leaving
⏹️ ▶️ John the station with or without you. I think doing that inside Apple was a really good decision.
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re just working on like what needs to fit in it and not fit in those releases.
State of Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What else got updated?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco WatchOS got updated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Big news. Actually, that is sort of big news. Real-time follow-up for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself. I didn’t notice any WatchOS updates except I went to kick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the workflow I have to tell Aaron I’m on my way home. So this is using the workflow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app and it will figure out the driving time from where I am to the house and then queue up a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey text message for Aaron saying I’ll be home in like 15 minutes or whatever. It used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the watch that I would kick off that workflow and then I would have to do handoff to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send the text message. But now I can run that workflow and it is capable of sending the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey text message from the watch, which is super exciting. I know you’re both really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy that that has changed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why did the watch updates take so long? That’s my question. It’s such a small device. It has such little storage. What is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I think it’s because the watch is just really slow. I mean, CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wise, it seems to be roughly on the level of an iPhone 3GS. And if you look,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at like Geekbench iOS benchmarks, by Geekbench standards, the iPhone 3GS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is about 16 times slower than iPhone 6S. So if you think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the kind of thing it’s doing, it’s running on a processor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s 16 times slower than what we’re accustomed to. Now, granted it’s a simpler OS. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure the patching process is simpler, etc. But keep that in mind as the baseline of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything that it does that has to patch with that CPU is going through something 16 times slower than an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John wonder if the storage has got to be slower too. I wonder what the bottleneck is. Is the bottleneck the CPU? Is the bottleneck storage?
⏹️ ▶️ John Hell, maybe the bottleneck’s RAM for all we know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean it could be and it could be the wireless connection of receiving the update from who knows what. It’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things, but I think primarily it’s because the CPU is just so incredibly slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it, but we’ll see. Honestly, like, you know, thinking about, like, there’s been rumors of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second watch coming out possibly even as soon as the spring. It shouldn’t be that ridiculous since the last one came out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last spring. And there’s been rumors about what it might be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The biggest one is that it might have a FaceTime camera, which sounds terrible to me, honestly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sounds like you wouldn’t want to be on either end of that conversation. But what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a little bit disappointing is that I haven’t heard anything about it being faster. All the rumors are about FaceTime cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Wi-Fi abilities. And I hope they can make it faster because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out how to really use the watch beyond the watch face.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anything involving apps or even glances on the watch I have gotten very little into.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And part of it is because it’s just so incredibly slow to do pretty much anything. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the watch gets a lot faster over the next few years. I think that will change what we can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it dramatically. I think it will really make it a lot more useful for a lot of different like third party app abilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where right now you do anything on the watch right now and it’s takes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so long that you’re like, well, I might as well taken out my phone for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s kind of sad that the watch like if the watch had come out in an era before like the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone six caliber devices that are just so much faster, maybe wouldn’t have as much to compare it to. But I was I was going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John the comparison of the iPhone one. Remember the iPhone one came out and it was so responsive, but was it really compared to I know people do these videos
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, here’s an iPhone one versus an iPhone six and what’s your response and they really did do an amazing job
⏹️ ▶️ John and keeping the iPhone one responsive, but it seems like they couldn’t they couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get that kind of percept, you know, perceived responsiveness in the watch, just because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John always constantly comparing it to your iPhone six, which is a bazillion times more powerful. And yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially watch kid in the first time doing like the remote app thing that just made it even worse. So you’re right, right, the watch does
⏹️ ▶️ John the watch feel slow. Although when I think of like, oh, the next version of the watch, I know we talked about this at length before,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, whereas the watch need to be as far as I’m concerned, other than software being faster, I want
⏹️ ▶️ John to be thinner. Like, I know, this seems like this should be an apples wheelhouse, like they’re good at making
⏹️ ▶️ John things thinner, right? And inevitably, it will be but as we’ve discussed many times, maybe not in the next version, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But eventually, it’ll be thinner. So we can look forward to the Apple Watch 4 that
⏹️ ▶️ John is thinner and faster. And now we’re really starting to talk. It still doesn’t necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, you know, having spent all this time with this watch and everything, I still am not entirely convinced
⏹️ ▶️ John that there is a way, you know, no matter how fast it was, that there is something useful you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John with the watch that is appy in the same way that phone things are appy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mostly think of it as I would like to go near a device or into a room
⏹️ ▶️ John or into a place or at a certain time and have the watch look
⏹️ ▶️ John and behave differently based on that so I don’t have to mess with it. Mostly the thing I do
⏹️ ▶️ John is look at the watch and when I look at it because of where I am or what time
⏹️ ▶️ John it is or what has happened somewhere else it shows me something that is useful right
⏹️ ▶️ John whether it’s I sit down in front of my TV and pick up my wrist and I can talk into it uses
⏹️ ▶️ John a Siri remote so I don’t have to find the remote or like when it’s time to go if I just look
⏹️ ▶️ John at my watch and it tells me the proactive traffic thing like I’m not what I’m getting is I’m not touching my watch
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not swiping on it I’m not using the digital crown I’m not pushing buttons or even if I’m just pushing buttons like you know
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said the one interaction that I really like with it is double tap and use it as the to do Apple pay because I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t really have to look at the watch then I can feel for the button double tap like half the time it’s still underneath the sleeve of my coat.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t even see it, but I still Apple pay with it. All right. So far, that is the most convincing interactions
⏹️ ▶️ John for the watch for me. And I like like you, Marco, I’m never like, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John never using that interface with like, as if it’s a tiny phone, even even for like three seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, to me, I agree with with everything you basically almost everything you said. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever I’m using the watch, it is mostly about quickly glancing at it for the watch to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me something. I am hardly ever touching the watch to interact with it on any level really and if I am it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe one tap or something it’s you know very little because if you’re gonna use the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for more than about three seconds to do anything it feels like a failure like it feels like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh I I kind of regret this I should have gone to my phone for this oftentimes you still need to I mean oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the things I like so much about the watch is getting notifications on it but a lot of times I I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take out my phone anyway to act on those notifications or to even like read the whole thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something. So it’s a little bit of a mixed bag. Like it is nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in theory and sometimes it really is really nice, but in practice I have to keep taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my phone out anyway. The more the watch can do faster for you without you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touching it or doing anything to it. And if you do need to touch it, the more it can do in very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast response to that touch, the better it is as a product. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t feel like an app platform in the traditional way at all. It feels like Apple tried to wedge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an app platform onto it and maybe they just didn’t realize how it wouldn’t really work.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you have to give it those capabilities even if those apps, like with all the things we’re talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ John could be powered by apps if those apps are given sufficient power. So I think it’s kind of like you just have to
⏹️ ▶️ John make the APIs and see if someone, they don’t know what’s going to be, it’s kind of like with the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone, you don’t know what kind of apps people are gonna make, could could Apple have predicted like an Angry Birds
⏹️ ▶️ John style game would be such a big hit because of touch controls and pulling back the little slingshot and everything you just have to kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of I think it’s smart to make it a platform because whether you can figure out what’s going to be the apps that
⏹️ ▶️ John work on it or not, the more capabilities you give people, you know, they’ll try everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that don’t work, like it’s no skin off your back. Someone tried it failed, like it’s good to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a big open space to experiment, it could be that it ends up that none of those things work. Or it could be that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t exposed the right capabilities to the apps. Like if you can imagine a much more powerful watch
⏹️ ▶️ John that gives apps awareness of like, where you are, if you’re near an Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John or like, sort of background type processing, so that third party apps could do any of those things that I just described,
⏹️ ▶️ John then third party apps would have the capability to figure out what people do and don’t want from it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, like, I think it, if you don’t make it a platform, then it’s incumbent
⏹️ ▶️ John on Apple to figure out every possible thing you could do with useful if you do make it a platform everybody can try all sorts of things most
⏹️ ▶️ John of which were fail and eventually we’ll figure out what it’s good for and I think so I think it was smart to make it a platform but
⏹️ ▶️ John so far everything people have tried including Apple it’s been like yeah no that’s not it keep keep trying
⏹️ ▶️ John the custom complications I think was a fairly big success because those are things that you know you glance
⏹️ ▶️ John at and they tell you stuff but that’s it’s a very small success so we’re still kind of waiting yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John my update on by the way not being a watch person I you know I just don’t things on my wrist
⏹️ ▶️ John and like winter has made it worse because now I have like a you know heavier coat that like kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John interferes with you know the heavier coat sleeves and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh yeah anything long-sleeved is not that pleasant with a watch to be honest
⏹️ ▶️ John and gloves and over it and like it’s just making it more annoying and so I had a couple of days over the past few weeks where I realized
⏹️ ▶️ John I never looked at my watch I put it on in the morning to go to work I took it off when I came home from work and during the entire time at work
⏹️ ▶️ John it never vibrated I never looked at it I guess I ignored the stand things
⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe I didn’t feel them or I don’t know and like why did you even put it on takes you didn’t look at it
⏹️ ▶️ John and so now I have it feels really uncomfortable with a winter jacket in my gloves and I know
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve had days where I haven’t looked at it at all so now a few days I’ve decided you know what I’m not wearing it today so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if I’m slowly like you know again it doesn’t take much to make me not want to wear it because I
⏹️ ▶️ John am so not a watch person so I may that’s my new thing now now instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of putting on every time I remember sometimes I remember to put it on and I choose not to so that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John you know I’m not gonna say it’s bad for the watch because again I was not a watch person and the Apple watch did not make me a watch person
⏹️ ▶️ John I still think it looks nice I still like wearing it sometimes if I was going to like go out out on the town
⏹️ ▶️ John or walk around the city or go I would definitely wear it because I think it would sort of earn its keep then
⏹️ ▶️ John but for days when I just commute into the office and sit in front of my computer all day and come home sometimes it doesn’t earn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m gonna see. I mentioned I’m getting a mechanical watch this Christmas and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna try wearing that day to day for a while and just see like you know am I…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do like having a watch a lot now but I don’t know if I like it just because I like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fashionability and time aspects of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The time aspects? You’re staring at like you’re looking the upper right of your screen all day the times there unless you’re hiding the
⏹️ ▶️ John menu bar in OS X you’re not doing that are you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no but I’m not always at my computer I wish I was but you aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow I think you’re I always picture you where is Marco right now sitting in front of his computer
⏹️ ▶️ John well you’re you’re in line for chicken salad sometimes I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s New York I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco online yeah that’s true yeah but no I mean it’s yeah the reality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is you know I have a life I’m up and around I have a family I have a house and I drive to get chickens out every day
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to know what time it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m out around a lot and I have been totally converted now. I love having the time on my
⏹️ ▶️ John What a great idea! We thought of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right? A totally new idea. Yeah, so I love that now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m going to see because there’s also a lot about the Apple Watch I don’t really care for, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m going to see like, you know, am I a watch person or am I an Apple Watch person?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’ll find out. Anyway, I don’t know. Is that it for this week? This has been a weird episode. Yeah, I think we’re good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Backblaze, Casper, and Squarespace, and we’ll see you next week!
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at ATP.FM And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John So accidental, tech broadcasts so
Post-show: Dumbwatches
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to assume Marco you did not get like a $40 timex. What is it Speedmaster?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever it is that I used to wear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know that would be the more intelligent thing to do if you wanted to just try out wearing a watch
⏹️ ▶️ John No, he likes the jewelry ass he’s shopping in like Tiffany’s For things you know
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s jewelry and it also or jewelry as people tell me I mispronounce it Maybe that’s the one I don’t think too. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know anyway Yeah, like you’re you’re mostly shopping for a lot of that you’re shopping for watches
⏹️ ▶️ John like I find these watches ugly You’re never gonna buy an ugly one. You’re gonna find one that looks nice to you and
⏹️ ▶️ John and then after that it’s like okay It looks nice, but is it terribly uncomfortable when I wear it and so on and so forth But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, and honestly I have found very few watches And like of most like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big the big brands like Rolex Amiga Like I there were very few of those that I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve thought I would like that like I Moat for whatever reason it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most well respected mechanical watches just their design aesthetic just does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not mesh with me at all like I just I don’t get it you know it doesn’t do anything for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of them see they seem like they’re like made for like diving it’s like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so many of these big one of these like well no mechanical watches that are just like made for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco racing and diving and stuff like that or boats not
⏹️ ▶️ John really made for that well but they all look like that made for people who would like to think of themselves as someone who might go racing
⏹️ ▶️ John or diving but never actually Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, but then they have all this garbage all over the face all these and it’s like I don’t I don’t want that Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want something that just like looks nice and simple.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the non-functional hood scoop on cars. Everything has a car Of course, it’s a hood scoop, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not connected to anything It was like if you had something that needed, you know to have fresh air forced into it
⏹️ ▶️ John That might make your engine more powerful. You don’t have one of those but we can put a hole in your hood Anyway, and you’ll feel cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the watch that I was referring to the cheapo watch that you should get is not the Speedmaster I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna get angry emails about that. It’s the Timex Weekender and I will put a link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the chat in the show notes This is what I used to wear not this exact bit not this band,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was the same face This is what I used to wear before I got my Apple watch. It’s a delightful simple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s honestly, that’s nice I like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s $25. I don’t like the band. Oh the band is no. No, the band is terrible I had a different band.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco face is nice. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you could try out your newfound love of something else that’s expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and frivolous with this $25 watch But no because it’s Marco you’re going to get something expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s right All those big expensive watches special ones Like you said Casey that like the style
⏹️ ▶️ John for men’s fancy watches has just been to like to be like Just giant hunks of
⏹️ ▶️ John metal like it’s like I already find anything I’m arrest uncomfortable and you’re just gonna make it worse by
⏹️ ▶️ John just being filled with really heavy heavy, like hard, jagged, lumpy metal. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John just, I can’t even think about it. And I have thin wrists and I have weird shaped
⏹️ ▶️ John wrists and yeah, watches are not for me. Sooner buy a pocket watch. You know what, I would buy a pocket watch
⏹️ ▶️ John shaped like the Omni, which is another reference you guys don’t get. I would buy that, but I would not buy a regular watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, we all have our vices and I guess Marco, you’re in need of another one. Did you figure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out headphones now? You figured out coffee, you figured out headphones. Now you need something else to work on.
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s still on the hunt for headphones never satisfied so he’s when a new one comes out he always thinks there’s promise maybe this will be the
⏹️ ▶️ John one that is lighter than my other headphone but also sounds as good but has a better chord that doesn’t flake
⏹️ ▶️ John out but this but that like it’s like me and toasters