162: iPhone Sorry Erin
25 Mar 2016Our timely coverage of this week’s Apple’s event.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- How many iPad and Mac users also carry iPhones?
- Why not use CloudKit or BackBlaze B2 for Overcast file uploads?
- Car break-ins via keyless entry amplifiers
- Apple's "Loop You In" Event
- Sad times for the Mac
- 40 Years in 40 Seconds Recap
- FBI stops hassling Apple (for now)
- Apple and the Environment
- ResearchKit & CareKit
- Apple Watch bands
- Apple TV
- iPhone SE
- iPad Pro 9.7"
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show:
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Chapters
- Pre-show
- Follow-up: Cellular MacBooks
- CloudKit for Overcast uploads?
- Hacking John’s keyless entry
- Sponsor: Harry’s (code ATP)
- No Macs at the Apple event
- 40 Years in 40 Seconds
- Apple/FBI update
- Lisa Jackson’s environmental update
- Sponsor: Igloo
- ResearchKit, CareKit
- New Apple Watch… bands!
- tvOS update
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- iPhone SE
- The New 9.7-Inch iPad Pro
- Lightning USB Camera Adapter
- Wrapping up the event
- Ending theme
- Post-show: iPad SIM
- Post-show: People using old PCs
Pre-show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are we talking about that amazing thing we were just talking about in the pre-show? Are we talking about that anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, or are we done?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing we were just talking about in the pre-show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPad Pro 9.7. Whatever whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stop stop No, that’s the thing that’s happening next week. Are we talking about that? What’s happening next week?
⏹️ ▶️ John How are we gonna have anything to say about that until it happens?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I guess not I’ll just be that jerk that’s teasing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then it’ll just be like, oh it’s fine. That’s how it’s gonna go.
⏹️ ▶️ John Suddenly Marco has turned into John Roderick’s father. I was fine. I thought he was fine.
Follow-up: Cellular MacBooks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, you know we need in our lives. We need some follow-up. We don’t have that much this week So it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last about three hours. Why don’t you tell us about an anonymous former Apple employee John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Who doesn’t love anonymous former Apple employees? Last week we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John some more. Why don’t we have cellular on the Mac? and
⏹️ ▶️ John Have lots of different theories. There’s one. This is one data point this is a three-year-old data point
⏹️ ▶️ John from again an anonymous Apple employee and And he or she says a significant number of iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John owners do not have an iPhone an insignificant number of MacBook owners do not have an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John As of three years ago anyway, so the idea there is why don’t you have cellular you have cellular on the iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ John But you don’t have on a Mac why it’s like well Because lots of iPad owners don’t have phones, but all the Mac users
⏹️ ▶️ John do That’s an interesting data point may have contributed to their decision But
⏹️ ▶️ John as we talked about last show Just because you have a phone doesn’t mean you want to waste its battery tethering and deal with all
⏹️ ▶️ John the tethering stuff when it’s built In it’s much nicer, but but anyway, that’s an interesting number I probably would not have
⏹️ ▶️ John guessed that that like the the Mac well I guess suppose so if you have a Mac maybe like an old-school
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple user and you’re like everybody who’s got a MacBook’s got an iPhone, but the iPad is sold to a much wider audience
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, there you have it take that for what it’s worth from an anonymous Apple employee from a three-year-old
CloudKit for Overcast uploads?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Scott Williams wrote in sometime over the last week and asked a question,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I thought was actually very interesting. He asked, why not use CloudKit for file uploads and overcast?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And unbeknownst to Marco, I replied to Scott, just the two of us, I didn’t copy Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and John. And I said, I bet you anything, it’s just because S3 is what Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knew and he didn’t feel like learning something different. But I’m not 100% sure is what I said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Scott. And then you did reply to everyone, and that is not the answer you had, which I was very surprised by. So why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t you answer the question, Marco? Why not use CloudKit? Right, and actually, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard from a number of people on why don’t I use X. One of the other Xs was Backblaze’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new S3-like service that I believe is called B2. So the reason why I built this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on S3 rather than all these other options is first, that Swilliams was right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it was the thing I knew the best, but second, that I wrote that entire feature in 2014.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the big reason. So that was before CloudKit and before Backblades B2.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reality is that the biggest cost of it, I don’t actually know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet, but the biggest cost of it is more likely to be bandwidth than storage, because bandwidth, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, transfer, is a lot more expensive on S3 than storage is. Storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, something like three cents per gig month, something like that. and transfer in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is free, transfer out, so when you re-download or play the file, that I have to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for. And it’s, you know, in large quantity, that’s actually a non-trivial cost. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bandwidth fees are actually fairly similar on almost every provider. CloudKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be interesting because CloudKit is like, free with a whole bunch of asterisks after it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the holdups with that is simply that I’m not familiar with how it works yet, and another big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is that I believe Not all of those asterisks actually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitions at the bottom of the page. Many of them are like, you just don’t know what will happen with this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asterisk. If you go over all your quotas, it’s kind of undefined.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Stuff like that. So CloudKit is a bit of a risk. If I were writing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of this stuff from scratch today, I would probably first try to do all of it, the sync, everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on CloudKit first. But because I wrote all this stuff before CloudKit existed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the main reason why it is the way it is. And so far, looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much space I’m actually using on S3 so far, I’m up to over 300 gigs now, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s still something like $60 a month in storage. So the question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will end up being, how much do I end up using in bandwidth costs? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if this cost does not end up being ridiculous, then I can of course
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raise the limit. Right now it’s 2 gigs, but why not offer 10 gigs? I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could offer more if the cost stays reasonable. So I’m just going to basically see what ends up being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the average cost of it, and then decide from there what to do.
Hacking John’s keyless entry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. John, why don’t you tell us about why it may not be your fault that your poor iPod touch
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s my fault. A lot of people sent me links to various stories about
⏹️ ▶️ John technology to break into cars, particularly this one with keyless entry, where you just
⏹️ ▶️ John have a little your key fob in your pocket and you just walk up to your car and it unlocks and you get in and you drive
⏹️ ▶️ John away. I think you guys probably have that on your fancy cars. Yep. Yep. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John way to the way you break into these, well the way the system works is obviously you walk up to the car
⏹️ ▶️ John and the car knows you’re nearby because it sends a signal to your key
⏹️ ▶️ John fob and your key fob says oh I should open the door and sends a signal
⏹️ ▶️ John back and tells the car to open the door. The way these break-in things work
⏹️ ▶️ John is if you’re in a restaurant and your car is parked outside your car
⏹️ ▶️ John is sending out a signal hey key fob are you there? Hey key fob are you there? But your key fob’s not there. The signal
⏹️ ▶️ John is very weak. The signal only reaches when you’re really, when you’re right next to your car, essentially. These amplifiers take the car’s
⏹️ ▶️ John signal, amplify it massively so your key fob in your pocket inside the restaurant can hear the car
⏹️ ▶️ John asking, and then the key fob thinks, oh, the car has asked me something.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here you go, car. Open your doors, please. And it sends a signal which can reach the car,
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently, from the key fob, because I guess they work from really far away in case you hit the button, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the door opens and the thief gets in. So it’s an amplifier and what it’s amplifying is the car’s signal reaching
⏹️ ▶️ John out to your key fob and then your key fob just answers and opens the car door. I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John sure no one used that on my car because I don’t have one of those things. My car does not send out a signal to my key
⏹️ ▶️ John fob. I have the old fashioned kind of key fob where the way it works is you press a button on the key fob and it sends a
⏹️ ▶️ John signal to the car. Me getting close to my car with my key in my pocket does nothing. It does not open the doors for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just left it unlocked just that one time. Anyway, the car’s locked now got
⏹️ ▶️ John a new iPod in there I’m fine there are other but by the way there are other things that do
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can use to break into cars like mine that just send a whole bunch of different signals to the car and all sorts of other
⏹️ ▶️ John hacks and things but just all that just sounds way even the amplifier thing just sounds way too sophisticated for
⏹️ ▶️ John the the crime that seems to be which is just wander down the street in the neighborhood and try every single car handle
⏹️ ▶️ John and if it’s locked go on to the next one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean you could also just use like a rock to break the window. I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they don’t want to break the window. They don’t want to… The whole idea about this crime is you keep it
⏹️ ▶️ John low enough level that no one really gets upset about it because like they didn’t break anything on your car, you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you’re right, they could just break, you know, break the window and get in there however they want or they can, you know, use some other way to
⏹️ ▶️ John break into the car. This is totally about… I don’t want to be bothered by that. If they leave the door open, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John enough people to leave the door open, why should I bother doing something that can make more noise, that can get me caught, that can get me in they can make the
⏹️ ▶️ John police take notice, right? So this is totally a crime of opportunity. Just looking for the day I
⏹️ ▶️ John forget to lock my car door again.
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No Macs at the Apple event
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so this past Monday, we had our first Apple event of the year,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we did not get new Macs. Sad times.
⏹️ ▶️ John We spent a lot of time talking about them last week, and then nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s a bummer, but a lot of people are saying that, oh, well, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a sign that Apple doesn’t care about the Mac as much anymore. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s true that Apple doesn’t care that much about the Mac anymore, but I don’t think this is a sign of that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically think like if you give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one, we know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco releases of Macs are tied very heavily to availability of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPUs are going to use from Intel and Intel over the last few years as they face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of challenges with all their chip manufacturing changes and progress over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have missed a lot of their target ship dates, maybe even all of them. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just been very delayed and very late getting stuff out the door for a lot of the recent chip generations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Skylake, of course, is no exception. It’s one of the biggest ones, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The newest generation of their chips has taken a very long time to come out. I think it was a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco late or something. It is definitely behind schedule. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the type of Skylake chips that go into MacBooks and MacBook Pros are usually the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones that have Intel’s Iris Pro graphics in them. And so you can look around the industry and you can see like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain Skylake chips are out and you can buy certain ones in PCs for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months or recently, but the ones with Iris Pro that would go into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Pro, those as far as I know are not really out in quantity yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that is much more likely to be the reason here that we didn’t see Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not necessarily that Apple is snubbing the Mac, it’s way more likely that those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chips just Apple just can’t get enough of them yet from Intel. So they can’t really release this thing yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a way more likely explanation. Again, I do think that there are lots of signs all over the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place that the Mac has kind of taken a backseat at Apple in recent years, but I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the absence of Max at this event is a sign of that necessarily.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’ll talk about Intel’s abandonment of their tech talk strategy probably on the next
⏹️ ▶️ John show unless we get through all the Apple event stuff in which case we’ll talk about it later but anyway suffice it to say that
⏹️ ▶️ John Intel is now formally acknowledging what Marco just said and we’ve all known for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John is that they make a lot of promises about when things will be ready and they usually kind of are within their promise
⏹️ ▶️ John window but at the very tail edge excluding the models that Apple wants and caveat caveat asterix
⏹️ ▶️ John asterix so it’s nice to see them acknowledging the reality in changing their game plan.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll talk more about why, what this means, blah blah blah, if and when we get to that topic, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the other thing is, though, it is worth pointing out that Apple has contributed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from their end to the long delay between certain Macs. And the main way that this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not all Intel’s fault is that Apple often, for their lower priority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products, things like the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, especially. They often skip Intel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generations. So Intel will often make them a new CPU and Apple will be like, yeah, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John product last year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t need to do another one this year. And the Mac Pro tends to, I think for most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the recent generations, the Mac Pro has skipped roughly every other generation. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is definitely partly Apple’s fault. Also, Intel has been rolling out Skylake slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last few months, you know, like the chip that is in the MacBook One,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a different line than the chip than the chips that would be used in the MacBook Air. And those are different lines
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the chips that would be used in the MacBook Pro. And the 13 and 15 are also, I think, slightly different, like the quad versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the dual core there. But these chips are all released at different times. It’s kind of like a rolling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco schedule, usually in recent years with Intel. And so, so Apple could release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBooks at a staggered staggered schedule and in fact last year they did if you remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last year there were I think the the MacBook one came out first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the airs and then the 13 and the 15 right something like that something like that they were staggered out among
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few months so you know Apple could have some of these chips like the map of one’s chip maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just not have released it yet because they’re waiting to do it all at once so that’s also kind of on Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the main thing is like is the skipping of generations that that that is the big one like these The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chip that’s in the 15-inch right now is, I think, like three years old or something? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s pretty rough. The Mac Pro is also, again, in really bad shape because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you start skipping Intel generations now, nowadays, where the Intel generation itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is being extended because of various delays and getting to the next stage,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you start skipping generations, like Apple often does now, that could mean you’re buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a three-year-old CPU when you go into the store today. And that’s That just sucks. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if Apple wants to at least partially alleviate the notion that they’re abandoning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or neglecting the Mac, I think they’ve got to stop skipping these generations. Because if the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation is going to go from nine months long to two years long, that’s a much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bigger thing that, you know, stop skipping them already. Because they also tie everything else to it. So for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instance, if you buy it… This came up in the Oculus Rift comments from a couple weeks ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still a topic down there by the way I know if you buy a Mac Pro today you’re getting something like a three-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or four-year-old class GPU like you’re getting a really old GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by modern standards even if you opt for the highest one can
⏹️ ▶️ John you believe people out there are using three-year-old Mac Pros isn’t that sad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well they’re not buying that well they are but you know like ideally you wouldn’t buy a three-year-old Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro today right so the one you can buy today is three years old so I’m getting it I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know right So anyway, so like, you know, it sucks that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple skips these generations of CPUs on the lesser mainstream products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and these generations keep getting longer, by tying themselves to Intel’s calendar,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they end up shipping a whole bunch of other old stuff too. Like, you know, the GPUs are grossly outdated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually on these products. The configuration options, things like SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pricing for higher capacities, that tends to stay very high for very long because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just hardly ever updated. You know, when you’re updating every two to three years and you’re doing significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates, then it’s kind of hard to keep that stuff competitive. So that all is kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, that does all contribute and that all those things are within Apple’s control to change and I hope they do at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some point. And all this is kind of to lead into the final conclusion here, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now that we’re seeing quite how much Apple depends on Intel to progress the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac line forward. Assuming Apple fixes all their other stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t skip any more CPU generation than Intel gives them and maybe keeps things a little bit more up to date,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which that’s a big if, honestly, and I don’t see it happening. But if they would do that, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can kind of see why Apple might someday want to move to our Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because Apple could make their own CPUs that are Mac-class, and if they could be at all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive with Intel, which they They might not even need to be. Look at the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One, an incredibly slow computer that seems to be selling pretty well anyway because nobody cares. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple made their own ARM chips for Macs, for OS X,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would own this part of the pipeline that right now they depend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this partner who keeps delaying them. That isn’t necessarily to say that Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always do better, but it is exactly the same situation they were in back when they were on PowerPC, waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for IBM to do anything with PowerPC. It’s very similar to that situation. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple made a change because they were tired of being dependent on this slow partner.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could do the same thing here with Intel at some point by saying, you know what? We are done dealing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Intel holdups and Intel delays. We’re going to try taking this on our own. And we’re going to make Mac chips and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just have an A15X for the Mac or something. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is all kind of big, long-term stuff. And all this requires a lot more thought and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effort into the Mac than what Apple might be giving recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I do think it’s within the realm of reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, new laptops will be out in a couple months.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The answer is, we don’t know when they’ll be out. Again, it depends on Intel. They could be out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d say at this point since they missed this event the most likely release is June at WBDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it also could be anytime before then or after that you know because with Intel’s ship dates we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really know it could be just like a press release and maybe some briefings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometime between now and June without an event it could be another tiny event although I doubt that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you know it could just be announced in WBC in June so really it could be these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and we don’t really know and probably only Apple and Intel know this.
40 Years in 40 Seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we should probably cover the rest of the event chronologically. You mean the things that were actually in the event. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why don’t we start how it started with the brief, what was it, 40
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years and 40 seconds video. I don’t have a lot to say about it other than that I really enjoyed it and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also really enjoyed Stephen Hackett and Jason Snell’s, like, We Didn’t Start the Fire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey style recap of everything that was in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook did the little thing of like, we here at Apple don’t usually like to look backwards, But it seems kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like the new Apple kind of likes to look backwards sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John than they used to. Because Steve Jobs was famously against ever doing anything remotely nostalgic.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was just forward, new, new. Of course he did do things like with the 1984 iPod ad and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it seemed more rare back then. And this was small and it’s just a bunch of words on a screen and it was fun and cute or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. But it’s like, I don’t know, maybe Apple’s just getting to that age where there’s like a lot of round number
⏹️ ▶️ John anniversaries and birthdays. the 25th anniversary or the 30th anniversary of the Mac, the 40th anniversary
⏹️ ▶️ John of the company, you know, the last town hall thing. It just seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to me that the new Apple seems ever so slightly more sentimental than
⏹️ ▶️ John it used to be. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sentimental. I’m old too, you know. The text name
⏹️ ▶️ John video, it was cute, but I like the fact that it was 40 seconds, but it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John anything too wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I enjoyed it. And I didn’t think it was overly self indulgent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the thousand no’s for every yes or whatever it was. I also like that video, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of ran for a long time and got a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that was that was forward looking, though. That was like, this is the new Apple. This is what we’re doing going forward. And I give them lots of leeway
⏹️ ▶️ John to sort of set a new direction. This is purely like, hey, it’s an anniversary. We did a bunch of cool things in
⏹️ ▶️ John the first 40 years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. And I liked it. And I liked it because it was quick, it was funny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it didn’t take things too seriously. So I quite like the video.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t like that it wasn’t chronological, though. Of course. That bothered me, because if you’re trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John match up, it’s kind of chronological, but then it jumps back and it goes all over the place, and like, just do it chronological.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Sorry, John.
Apple/FBI update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey After that we heard about privacy and even since that we’re recording this on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wednesday evening the the Conference or whatever you want to call it the keynote took place Monday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey afternoon proper time so even in 24 hours later
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s been new developments in this whole privacy battle with the FBI and I don’t know which one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you guys put this link To the New York Times in here, but perhaps you can talk about that a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, so he Tim Cook was on stage and being kind of like very assertive and
⏹️ ▶️ John determined, you know, as you all know, in the audience, because you’re a bunch of tech reporters. Here’s the thing that we’ve been battling
⏹️ ▶️ John the FBI and Department of Justice over and Apple’s committed to privacy and we’re going to fight this fight
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. And then the audience applauds and it’s like, yeah. And then like one or two days later,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Department of Justice is like, actually, it turns out we might have another way into this phone. Never mind about that hearing. We’re going to have Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John like someone else approached the FBI and said they can get a to the phone so uh never mind for now so they postpone the
⏹️ ▶️ John hearing perhaps indefinitely and they’re the government is going off and do something else
⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone’s trying to read the tea leaves did could they always have gotten into it do they get cold feet is this actually someone
⏹️ ▶️ John new saying hey here’s like a a box you can buy in china that will unlock this phone and fbi you should
⏹️ ▶️ John have known about it but you’re a bunch of dunces it’s so hard to tell what’s actually going on but the bottom line for apple is they were all
⏹️ ▶️ John stealing for a fight and that And that fight has been either postponed or canceled. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, all right, well, I guess we’ll wait to see if the government
⏹️ ▶️ John comes back and says, no, seriously, we want you to do this. But for now, it seems like a stay of execution for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which is excellent. I think it’s most likely to be a combination of all those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibilities that you outlined, John. I think if you looked at the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the legal briefs were going back and forth, the FBI really did not have much of a leg to stand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on legally, according to what most lawyers, which we are not, seem to think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these briefs and these arguments. It seems like the FBI was very likely to lose,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically. And so they’re bailing out. And that’s very smart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from their point of view, because we all, I think, suspect or know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this is very much about setting precedent. And they wanted to set precedent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would allow them to compel Apple to break into any phone they demanded,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco secretly, probably. You know, all the wonderful stuff our government does now in the name of freedom. There
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was an equal chance if they lost to set a bad precedent for the FBI, which should be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if Apple successfully defended against this and courts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ruled in Apple’s favor saying, no, you can’t make Apple do this, then that hurts the FBI’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cause for themselves. So if they were pretty sure they’re going to lose, the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing to do is say, never mind, we’ll fight this again later. And that’s basically what they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John done. I don’t know if they’re if they’re handicapping of their chances of losing change that much after seeing Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John argument. It’s so hard to tell when there’s the possibility that one of the parties to this lawsuit
⏹️ ▶️ John is incredibly incompetent and doesn’t know anything about the tech stuff. Because if you if you believe that being like, well, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe FBI really did think they had a strong case. But then when the facts came to light and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John got to respond like oh maybe we don’t have a strong case but then you would think seriously would they not know all these things
⏹️ ▶️ John and so it’s so hard to tell like are they super devious and just like bluffing
⏹️ ▶️ John or did they really not know that it seemed like they didn’t have a good case and the other possibility the even more cynical one is
⏹️ ▶️ John they just decided you know what it’s a lot easier if we just get laws passed that make it that
⏹️ ▶️ John force Apple to do what we want so we will retreat and you know go
⏹️ ▶️ John through government channels to try to, you know, influence Congress to pass the
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible laws that we want them to pass and we’ll secretly pass them the night while no one’s watching because we have enough people who will vote for them because they
⏹️ ▶️ John have lobbyists from, you know, whatever. Like the typical way the government passes laws
⏹️ ▶️ John that don’t have popular support,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Right. In the name of fighting this war that somehow never ends and is vainly defined.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, right. Exactly. It is like terrorism, blah, blah, blah, you know, Apple being mean, blah, blah, blah, encryption’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna kill your children, whatever. Like, Anyway, so that’s another possibility that they decided,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is too much of a hassle. Even if we were going to win, it’s so much better if we can just get terrible laws passed. And that has worked really well
⏹️ ▶️ John for lots of terrible laws that involve like warrantless wiretapping and the Patriot Act and all the other things they’ve done.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, that’s a proven strategy. This whole battling a company in court, especially a company that has a lot of money
⏹️ ▶️ John for lawyers, that seems like a lot of work. So who knows? Who knows what’s going on? But either way, Apple was
⏹️ ▶️ John all sort of grim and determined and committed. And that determination has fizzled
⏹️ ▶️ John because now they have nothing to be determined about and they can just go back to suspecting that the NSA is putting
⏹️ ▶️ John secret chips into all their servers.
Lisa Jackson’s environmental update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there was that speech about privacy, the aftermath thereof, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we got to talk about the environment. And I was very pleased to see that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first not-Tim person on stage was a woman, Lisa Jackson,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a woman of color, no less, which is excellent. And she was up there for quite a while. And this is the first time I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recall seeing her on stage. Is that fair to say or am I forgetting one?
⏹️ ▶️ John She might have been up there before, I think, for talking about environment. But yeah, like the this is something that
⏹️ ▶️ John people are watching now. Apple watchers are watching now because Apple itself has
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to do better about diversity and is giving these diversity reports to say, how are we doing?
⏹️ ▶️ John How far do we have to go? Apple itself has given itself a bad grade on diversity
⏹️ ▶️ John and continues to give itself a bad grade on diversity because it deserves a bad grade on diversity. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John but but now when we when we watch these keynotes, especially as compared to some other For example, Google has historically
⏹️ ▶️ John done much better in terms of who is on stage talking, right? And it’s not just who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John on stage talking like you can just, you know, we’ll just pick someone up there and try to put a diverse face on things who’s on stage talking
⏹️ ▶️ John always necessarily reflects who’s in charge of things. And that is the type
⏹️ ▶️ John of problem where you can’t fix it overnight unless you fire everybody and start over. Right? And that’s usually
⏹️ ▶️ John people don’t like to do that. We would like that we’re clean in house, the whole top five layers of the
⏹️ ▶️ John org chart, everybody’s fired and we’re starting over. Um, so it’s going to take Apple a long
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey time to be interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s going to take Apple. Well, Steve Jobs kind of did that, but he just replaced all the white dudes with white dudes. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a long time for Apple to undo the decades and decades of promoting white dudes essentially.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? So you can’t, you know, you can’t just, you can’t fix it overnight, which isn’t an excuse,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s just saying how, how difficult it is to make this change and how deep this, this stuff goes. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John So trying to at the very least do a little bit better
⏹️ ▶️ John on each successive keynote is I think important. But every time they do it, it almost highlights
⏹️ ▶️ John how far they have to go. You know what I mean? Like this is literally the best you can do and you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got to dig all the way down to like your vice president of environment to come up with a female speaker. No one who’s in
⏹️ ▶️ John charge of like iOS or the Mac or Apple TV or anything like that is
⏹️ ▶️ John any more diverse than just a million other white guys. So it’s difficult to know how, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I know how I feel about this, but like what what kind of feedback would you give
⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple? Because it’s clear that they’re trying to do something, but it’s also clear that they’re like that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John almost an impenetrable wall. And you wouldn’t tell them you need to fire everybody and start over. You would
⏹️ ▶️ John hope that they’re working internally to try to hire and promote more equitably
⏹️ ▶️ John than they have been. But for you to see results of that, it’s going to take years
⏹️ ▶️ John and years and years, simply because like I said, you just can’t fire everybody. It doesn’t, you know, and it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John necessarily have to start at the bottom. You can hire women into the top like they did for their head of retail and stuff too. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just like, it’s a long road. I mean, to that credit, I mean, we’ll talk about the environment in a second, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like Apple at least knows that they have a problem and is trying to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. But it’s difficult to tell whether Apple is being ineffectual
⏹️ ▶️ John in their efforts or they’re being as effective as they possibly can and it’s just going to take for freaking ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So let’s talk about the environment a little bit. Apple cares. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they had said a couple of years ago, which I don’t recall when that was, that they wanted to be 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based on renewable energy. And they aren’t there yet, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re 93% worldwide and apparently 100% renewable in 23 countries, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the States, if I’m not mistaken.
⏹️ ▶️ John Their environment, this aspect of their environment, the energy aspect of the environment, I think is one of the best things Apple is doing
⏹️ ▶️ John simply because they are so well positioned to do what they’re doing. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a win-win for Apple. So obviously they get the PR advantage of saying, look how environmentally green
⏹️ ▶️ John we are and we’re setting an example for everybody else and blah, blah, blah. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it also costs them less money, not in the short term, but in the long run.
⏹️ ▶️ John And why does not? Why does every company not do this? Why doesn’t every single company in the entire United States
⏹️ ▶️ John to use all renewable energy and do all this stuff? Well, because it costs tons of money up front, they build solar
⏹️ ▶️ John panels, they buy, you know, they build wind farms, they invest money in like, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John paying to put all those solar panels on top of the buildings in wherever that was Singapore or whatever. And they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John building a huge solar arrays outside of you know, there’s a huge capital investment, who can afford to
⏹️ ▶️ John make these gigantic capital investments. So you can make it back slowly over the next 20 years. Apple that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it because they got tons of money like that’s not their problem. They have the capital. So
⏹️ ▶️ John this is exactly what Apple should be doing. Hey, we have a huge amount of money. Cash flow is not our problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John We are committed to having these data centers or these stores or whatever for a long, long time. Let’s take
⏹️ ▶️ John all the money that we have, put it up front to build, you know, if there’s not renewable energy, we’ll build it. If there is, we’ll try to subsidize
⏹️ ▶️ John it or buy it or, you know, pay for whatever it is that you know, that other companies can’t do because like, that’s great, but I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John enough $2 billion to put all these solar panels up, right? Let’s invest that money. And then let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John slowly make it back over years and years of saying, Oh, now our data center is powered half by the sun
⏹️ ▶️ John and half by these other renewable things, whatever. They will make it back eventually. And even
⏹️ ▶️ John if they don’t, it’s such a drop in the bucket compared to their other expenses and the other things they spend money on is just
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just a smart thing to do. So like, especially when I saw I’m putting solar panels on the roof of skyscrapers
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like seriously, you’re gonna try to power your retail stores with renewable energy. As far as apples
⏹️ ▶️ John and turns like, sure, why the hell not? I mean, it’s just, it’s just a smart investment.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you are a company that’s like has short term thinking or doesn’t have as much cash as
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple or sort of like pinching pennies, like if you’re like the Walmart, so the world or whatever, wherever, you know, razor
⏹️ ▶️ John thin margins and pressuring your suppliers and not giving your employees health care and doing everything you possibly can to
⏹️ ▶️ John save every penny. It’s not as likely to occur to you that, hey, we should put solar
⏹️ ▶️ John panels on top of every single Walmart and make them, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John carbon neutral or putting energy back on the grid or whatever it is that you want to be doing, because that just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of capital investment for like a silly PR win. But I really think the people in charge and Apple don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John it as a silly PR when they see it as like a strategic advantage as in we are
⏹️ ▶️ John self sufficient another type of thing like oh we don’t rely on Intel for our CPUs and we don’t rely on stupid power companies
⏹️ ▶️ John for our power but we’ll do all that ourselves. And they you know, like so many other things that
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook is Apple has been behind. They really seem to believe in this as having an environmental impact
⏹️ ▶️ John even though Apple’s one small company and really, it’s a drop in the bucket. I think the most important thing they do is set an
⏹️ ▶️ John example. So I don’t know if it deserved as much time as they gave it in the keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they just need to mention this, keep mentioning this over and over again, kind of like they do with like the, you know, lead free PVC
⏹️ ▶️ John free check boxes they put in every single product. Like we’ve seen that a million times now, but eventually, hopefully it
⏹️ ▶️ John goes, you know, it gets through everybody’s head. And when they don’t see for someone else’s product, so I guess your product
⏹️ ▶️ John contains lead, you know, so eventually, I hope that Apple keeps
⏹️ ▶️ John showing these environmental things. And when other companies have big presentations about new data centers, infrastructures,
⏹️ ▶️ John the press can ask, are you powering this with renewable energy? If not, why not?
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our second sponsor this week is Igloo. Go to igloosoftware.com.atp
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ResearchKit, CareKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco igloo software dot com slash ATP. Thanks to igloo for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so then ResearchKit and CareKit. ResearchKit was introduced, I think they said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about a year ago, is that right? And CareKit is a new kind of extension of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really have that much to say about this. Other than that, I very much applaud it and I think they’re doing great work here. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s another example of an initiative that other companies probably
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t do anything about because it’s not going to be a big moneymaker. The number of people who are medical researchers who are also
⏹️ ▶️ John their customers is small. I don’t know if that’s a big market, but you know, it’s not as big as like the consumer market. So why did they bother
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it? It’s another one of those things that Apple does because they think it’s the right thing to do. And they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in a position to use their technology to make this stuff better. They’re always bragging about a research kit.
⏹️ ▶️ John These companies that use it to collect these programs, they use it to collect data like within 24
⏹️ ▶️ John hours became the biggest Parkinson’s study just because it’s, you know, they could distribute their app to all these people and gather data
⏹️ ▶️ John and care kit is the extension to say you’re not part of a medical research program you’re just a patient
⏹️ ▶️ John and care kit is something you can use to communicate your status back to your doctor
⏹️ ▶️ John and they can send you updates to your like you know your plan of care after being released from the
⏹️ ▶️ John hospital after surgery or just keep tracking chronic conditions and stuff like that and this stuff is all
⏹️ ▶️ John open source it’s you know it’s an admiral effort
⏹️ ▶️ John it got a lot of time in this thing care kit is a natural extension of research kit and this is exactly the type of thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John we would hope a company like Apple would do. So thumbs up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. I would also refer everybody to this week’s episode of Connected over at RelayFM, episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number 83. They have a lot more knowledge about the healthcare
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system and its needs, and they had a great discussion about this this week. Plus, it’s a great episode otherwise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I recommend you check out Connected in number 83 for a more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extended discussion on this research initiative for health and stuff.
New Apple Watch… bands!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, we have the brand new Apple Watch. It’s lighter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s thinner, it’s faster. Oh wait, never mind. No, but we did get new bands. Oh, I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sad for the Apple Watch. I am, but I’m not. I didn’t actually expect to get a new watch this time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m not really disappointed that we didn’t. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why not though? Because the watch came out a year ago, and it was unveiled like 18
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months ago. So why didn’t you expect to get a new one? Because usually after a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a new product, Apple chips a much improved second version. Because it was in the town hall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, okay, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is there a great reason why we don’t have new watch hardware yet? Because here’s what I see about the watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem with the watch is a combination of incredibly slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first-gen hardware and fairly young and limited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of confusing software. And they have made some software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advances since the release. But most of them have not been very significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of what the user actually experiences with the watch on a regular basis. For the most part, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same stuff running at the same speed, roughly, just a few minor improvements here and there, but not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole lot. There’s still tons of limits. There’s still not a lot of customization of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the watch faces, stuff like that. It’s like, as our friend Steve Tratton-Smith pointed out, there are more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco colors of the sport band than there are watch faces that you can configure in software.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like what the watch desperately needs is faster hardware, number one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then a lot more work on the software, number two. What we have now, a year later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really neither of those things, at least from what we can see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Instead, we have the same hardware now, a year later, that will presumably be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here for at least another, I don’t know, six months. Maybe this fall we’ll get new watches. I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spring. Who knows? But we have now pretty old, pretty creaky hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we have tons of variation that we can get in the case material, in the bands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we attach to it, in the colors of those bands. We have so much variation on all those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the actual watch experience is barely changed in the last year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and needs a lot of help. So I kind of feel like, I don’t know, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of larger concern with Apple that they are fighting a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of battles on a lot of fronts. And we’ve talked in the past about how I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concerned about them being stretched too thin, but I think we’re kind of seeing what that means here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We see, as I mentioned a half hour ago, the Macs get generations skipped of hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just kind of ignored. Some models, like the Mini, just get kind have neglected for years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like the watch is possibly like a low priority for them because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we have, you know, year number two of it and no new hardware yet and minimal change to the software.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, we’ll see what happens to WBDC, you know, maybe they will unveil, you know, a significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update to the software. I hope they would, that would be the place to do it in the time, but I just feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the watch has not gotten enough attention and has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not improved enough for being in the point in its life cycle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it is. We didn’t blink an eye when Apple let the iPad Air 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continue to be the flagship iPad for more than a year. We didn’t blink an eye at that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that was like, okay, well, this is like the iPad. It was like the iPad’s fifth year and it was a great model. Nobody really had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any complaints about it, so great, but the watch hasn’t reached that point yet or shouldn’t have reached that point yet. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch, this is a brand new product. first year and it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s already getting on a slow cycle and I’m worried about it because it seems like if Apple was really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco putting their weight behind this product, it seems like we should have seen more by now. It almost feels to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Apple kind of lacks hustle the way they used to have it. They used to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really put their weight behind new things and really try to make them work. I mean, not everything they were paying, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most things, like major new products, they would really put their weight behind and really back them up for a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and drive them forward. We’ll see what happens with the TV going into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this fall. Will the TV get updated on a regular basis or will it get neglected? We’ll see what happens with the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For a while, the iPad was neglected pretty badly, software-wise at least. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got a lot of attention recently, which we’ll get to, but we’ll see how that plays out over the next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple of years. I hope they keep the attention level up for iPad users, but I don’t know that they will. I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they’re fighting on so many fronts that they’re obviously having trouble
⏹️ ▶️ Marco staying competitive in certain areas. Like I recently got an Amazon Echo. The Echo is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good and it kind of highlights what Siri should be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe an area of hardware Apple should consider being in that they’re just not in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that Siri is not this advanced or is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this well integrated with other products and doesn’t have any kind of developer story yet. And so, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at a lot of Apple projects now, and it just seems like they lack that hustle that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple stuff used to have. And I think a big part of that is just they’re doing so much and they’re fighting so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battles now, and I don’t think the company’s resources have grown to match
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I don’t know. I don’t know. What do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A few things here. First, I don’t know why I didn’t expect a watch update,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it just, the watch never felt to me that it was going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, an annual update sort of thing. And if maybe that’s because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I buy, or I used to buy wristwatches once every like five or six years. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that we’re running a little bit into this with the iPad as well, because the iPad isn’t really an annual update kind of device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either. in terms of consumers, but I didn’t really think we were going to get an update quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. And honestly, I’m not sure when we will, I couldn’t even wager a guess, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also don’t think that. I like my watch a lot, although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like it for a lot less than I thought it was, than I thought I would. I thought I would like to use all sorts of third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apps. And I thought I would like to use it almost not as a replacement for my phone, but I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey turn to my watch more often than I would turn to my phone. And I’ve found that for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, my watch is a great notifications, like triage device. It’s a great for the weather. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great for my schedule and it’s great for health. And that’s about it. I don’t use it for pretty much any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey third party apps. Um, outside of things that I stick on my watch faces complications, which basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, um, carrot weather and fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ John We didn’t talk about this, I think last time, but, uh, Apple’s practice
⏹️ ▶️ John over the last several years with most of its products is they want to keep making
⏹️ ▶️ John a physical design for at least two years and they usually do that by keeping the the old
⏹️ ▶️ John models around right for the phones or with with the 5se even longer than two years
⏹️ ▶️ John um so even if apple revises the watch wouldn’t you think they
⏹️ ▶️ John would want to keep making this this size and shape watch for
⏹️ ▶️ John two years and so that two years isn’t up and so it’s not so much that I didn’t think this watch would still be around
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just that there’s no there’s no replacement for it and and that’s that’s the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I have thinking about seeing all these new bands and everything is it like if and when a new watch comes out
⏹️ ▶️ John first of all what can they even do well they can put a slightly lower power cpu that slightly be faster with you know
⏹️ ▶️ John new process technology or whatever and that will presumably let them get more battery life and maybe they can use a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John battery and make it thinner and try to fix all the things that we think they should fix hardware-wise just incrementally get
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit better but then would they keep selling the i don’t know the apple watch one right
⏹️ ▶️ John alongside it for say a reduced price uh not just the sport model but all of them uh reduced price
⏹️ ▶️ John just because they have all the tooling to build these watches and they would just say well we feel like we want to make every
⏹️ ▶️ John size and shape for at least two years to recoup the costs on the the tooling in the process
⏹️ ▶️ John um if that’s the case i don’t i mean i’m I’m kind of like in the same boat as Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John like I Why didn’t I expect it other than the town hall thing? Why didn’t I expect new watches?
⏹️ ▶️ John It just doesn’t seem like I don’t know like even if they had a new one I wasn’t confident that the
⏹️ ▶️ John new one would advance to such a degree like I like Basically Apple’s treatment
⏹️ ▶️ John of this of this product has so clearly Put it as a fashion accessory and not a tech accessory
⏹️ ▶️ John and fashion accessories like They have been changing it the fashion parts of it new colors and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can get a rose gold one you can get aluminum gold one you get a million different bands like they have been doing that
⏹️ ▶️ John and for a fashion focused product that is hustle kind of you know
⏹️ ▶️ John what i mean and marco you’re thinking of it as if it’s a tiny computer and they have to advance the computing insights because the problems you
⏹️ ▶️ John see with the product have to do with like software uh the sort of functionality of the software and the
⏹️ ▶️ John focus of the product and the speed of the hardware but as a fashion accessory it’s gotten more more updates than
⏹️ ▶️ John any product Appar has ever sold. And so I don’t know, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly okay with waiting two years for a hardware update on
⏹️ ▶️ John this product if in the meantime, every six months, they give new bands and new colors and everything, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John seems like a cadence and a treatment of this product that is in keeping with
⏹️ ▶️ John the supposed theme of the product. And I agree with you that they do have problems that they need to address on the software side
⏹️ ▶️ John and better hardware is always better. But I don’t know, I’m not too broken up about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think most of… I agree with most of what you just said. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am very happy they’re keeping the fashion angle up, and they are doing a really impressive job of cranking out tons of new bands.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m very happy to see all these new bands, because if I go back to my Apple Watch on a regular basis,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you bet I’m going to rock something like the Red Leather Band or something crazy and I’m going to love having these new options come out all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s great, and I’m glad they’re doing that. But that stuff is relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy. Relative to everything else the watch needs to be better, they’re doing the easy stuff and the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that gets them a lot of profit. What the watch needs to be good is both. It needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both the fashion angle to keep being up, and honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not entirely sure that’s incredibly well guided of them because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple Watch itself, the watch part of it, if you really want to keep up with fashion, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part needs to change on a regular basis too.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they did change it. They have new colors and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they changed it a little bit. That’s a minor change for fashion. Ultimately, I don’t think a smartwatch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be a fashion object for that reason, that they kind of can’t change the body of it in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dramatic ways frequently, you know, because of all the software environment that has to run it and everything. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t expect this to be a fashion item really ever, if it ever was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if it is now, I wouldn’t expect that to last forever. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco treating it only as a fashion item, I think, is a mistake because that’s not how fashion works. Fashion does not support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same rectangle with different bands indefinitely. So putting that fashion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco angle aside for a second, what the watch needs is to be really good even at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those basic functions. So I’m not saying it needs a faster CPU to play games on it or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to run more advanced apps, I’m saying it needs faster CPU and better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software even just to do the basics. Even simple things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Bluetooth communication to the phone is still unreliable. And I don’t know whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the fault of Bluetooth, the big scary ghost of Bluetooth or what, but I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of other Bluetooth things that work great, so probably not just that. There’s probably other reasons also.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much the watch could do, either that it can’t do today, or that it does poorly today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is all dependent on the hardware being very slow and the software being very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limited to conserve power. So if they would do something like increase the CPU performance by 25%, which,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, based on their mobile chips from their phones and the progression, those have made that is not unreasonable or unrealistic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, you know, in all likelihood. Because again, this hardware was shown to us in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearly finished state 18 months ago. So they can probably release a new one that’s pretty good now if they wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they put the resources behind it. And so a 20% 25% gain in CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco performance would help tremendously. And suppose they could reduce power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco draw by 20-25%. Well then maybe they could increase the frequency that complications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update by which can enable stuff to work better and can enable new kinds of apps. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not saying they have to make massive advances in like making this watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to replace your phone or run really complicated apps or anything, I’m talking about just improving the basics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by enough that you can really, really dramatically improve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the core functionality. If you just improve the speed of the hardware and the power efficiency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by you don’t even have to quadruple them, just improve them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by a double-digit percentage and that can translate to real gain.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not say that you can look at this object and say Oh, you know what this is good enough for two years. We don’t need to update it. No, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not good enough yet and Maybe in a few years we’ll get there, but we’re not there yet And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really needs a lot of help to be a really good object Besides just having cool bands
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway a new watch in six months with the FaceTime camera, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God I hope not I don’t know I we need to move on But I don’t know if it’s really fair to just say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that oh this design can’t work for two years I mean how long has Rolex looked about the same to someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like me who doesn’t really tell the minute differences between them all panerais I’ve ever seen look the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me every 911 is the same Since the beginning of time the 911s are not the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Apple’s not Rolex and Panerai and Porsche and also There’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Rolexes and Panerais and they have gone in and out of fashion over time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I’m not saying that this should be the forever look But I think to say that it would that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it it will absolutely time out so to speak in the next two years I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if that’s really fair It may end up that you’re right But I don’t know if it’s if we can really see that now and in having these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bands changing constantly is a good thing Like you said and I wanted to also quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say that I’ve been very impressed with the web presence for the watch since the beginning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The way they did the bands like the kind of animations of them clasping and unclasping or whatever you call it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I really like this new gallery that they have where you can select what case you would like to look at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by kind of scrolling left and right and then You can scroll left and right to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what band you like and then they have all three faces as well But I really do like this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new web presence I wish they had prices on here, but I think it’s the new gallery is really well done And there’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be said for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, no I mean I think they are nailing it on the bands the bands are awesome and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they continue to be awesome and they always have been awesome from day one. Like, Apple’s bands are awesome,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the rest of the watch also needs a lot of help. And so far we’ve seen almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none. They could just be a band seller for other watches.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow, it did get a price cut, so there’s that.
tvOS update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, what did they talk about next? Uh, TVOS got an update.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, I don’t really have a lot to say about that. I don’t know. Do you guys have anything?
⏹️ ▶️ John We get to the highlights. It’ll be quick. So they put up the future of TV is apps. If you keep saying that, maybe it’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ John true. It would be nice if they got a subscription plan. No subscription streaming plan this time. 5,000 TV apps
⏹️ ▶️ John they have. I wonder how many of those are games. That’s fine. Um, you can do folders,
⏹️ ▶️ John which seems weird, but I, I suppose, you know, it’s, I wish, I kind of wish there was a nicer way to rearrange icons
⏹️ ▶️ John on the screen than having to use a silly remote. Uh, Siri expanded to do all the things that we thought it should have done in
⏹️ ▶️ John the beginning as in letting you dictate. Um, although it’s weird, like you can dictate your passwords, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to dictate my passwords in, in the, in the same room like that my kids are in because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll just like memorize it and buy things or something, you know? Um, but anyway, that’s good.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they expanded Siri to search more applications. So these are all, you know, it’s nice to see that the Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John at least on the software front is getting steady updates. There’s still a team working on it that is not sitting there
⏹️ ▶️ John and languishing iCloud photo library. Again, we all thought that should have been there in the beginning and we’re sad that it wasn’t. And now
⏹️ ▶️ John it is, I have to say having tried it, the performance is not great. I enabled that I
⏹️ ▶️ John logged in with my Apple ID. And then I went to my favorites album and looked at a bunch of blank thumbnails for a really
⏹️ ▶️ John long time. I tried to scroll around as the thumbnail started to appear. And I saw a cute picture that I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John to show. Every time I scrolled around to it with my remote and press the button.
⏹️ ▶️ John When that picture was totally highlighted, it was like the one that was big and coming out at you, it would open a different picture.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was driving me nuts. So their
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey collection view is,
⏹️ ▶️ John is weird and buggy. And to this day, when I go to iCloud photos and go into my favorites collection,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just a bunch of blank thumbnails with a couple of random ones filled in. So like, how long do I have to wait for it to appear?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not looking great, but I’m glad it’s getting updates.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I really have come to love my new Apple TV. Now admittedly I use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically Plex, Netflix, and music on it, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple Music app. I would kill for a native Spotify app, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even for those very few limited uses, it’s actually kind of the same story I had with my watch earlier, for those limited uses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really love it. And I’m happy with the way it is today. So I mean, improvements
⏹️ ▶️ John Of those 5,000 apps, I feel like I’ve used about 10 of them to try to stream video.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I mean, I guess it’s good that I have options. I just go through all of them and find out in what ways they fail to fulfill
⏹️ ▶️ John my, you know, silly, lossless playback of blu ray things. But there’s such variety in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John like, what I was using infused DS video, some other video one plex itself,
⏹️ ▶️ John like all these different apps to try to see how will you be able to play this? Will you play it back? Will you try to
⏹️ ▶️ John transcode or what audio will be available? All this one only exposes stereo. This one exposes the AC three Bit converts it to PCM
⏹️ ▶️ John this one will send the AC 3 directly to my thing and of course none of them do 24 frames per second
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway videos the one
⏹️ ▶️ John going through the wraps the apps that are there But it’s sad when I still can’t find one to fulfill my needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m so happy I don’t care about video as much as you do it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ah, stereo forever. All right, our final sponsor. Ha ha ha!
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco you put your stuff in there and then you’re just done. If you’re making it for somebody else that’s even better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because then you don’t have to support it. Squarespace supports it. I love it. I’ve used it for that. I use it for my own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. And it’s great because the last thing I want to do is really just spend time making a website
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days. And Squarespace lets me make an incredibly nice looking website with almost no effort, and especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no ongoing effort. You get a free domain name if you sign up for a year. Start your free trial site right now.
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iPhone SE
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Apple did something mean during this event.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They came out with a new four-inch phone. And that’s mean because-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It was awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As I think we discussed last time, I really do like my 6S.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I really have come to like all the screen real estate that it has. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time I pick up my 5S that we use as a noise maker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Declan, I just think to myself, oh, this feels so much better in the hand. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, I wish my success was more like this. And so now I’m torn. Like, what,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what would I do? What would I do in, if there’s a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four inch phone in addition to the others in this October or thereabouts, we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we get there, but. The new SC, the iPhone SC, it’s a new four inch phone with the guts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the 6s for the most part in what looks to be a damn near identical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case to the 5s Looks really good And I haven’t had the time to catch up on a lot of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reactions from this But I did see that a friend of the show John Gruber sounds like he might be switching.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not identical case That’s that’s why Johnny I wasn’t there because he was so in love with his
⏹️ ▶️ John machine Chamfered as he said edges. I think that’s what he said Anyway, the little
⏹️ ▶️ John edge that they shave off, the chamfered edge on the outside of the case used to be like polished. It’s pronounced Bazzell.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So it would be like, I assume the manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John process was they would make the case anodized or not anodized, it was stainless steel or aluminum,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Yeah, it’s aluminum, right? The 5S case? I think so. Anyway, it would have that sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John matte finish. And then as a final step, they would shave down the edge and that would be all shiny and
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty. thought that detail looks really good when it’s close up but when
⏹️ ▶️ John I see the phone in front of me it’s too small to read as anything particularly impressive it would also
⏹️ ▶️ John nick up you could notice nicks on it more than other places and the new phone
⏹️ ▶️ John this may seem like a subtle thing like oh it’s exactly the same case as the 5s but it isn’t they they mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John that the edge was different now it is just merely another shaped piece of aluminum that is completely
⏹️ ▶️ John anodized on all edges and all surfaces exactly the same way which has It’s gotta be much
⏹️ ▶️ John easier to manufacture and probably more durable. And it comes in all the usual colors we expect,
⏹️ ▶️ John silver, space gray, rose gold, and gold, which is now like that set of four kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John pale looking pastel colors is now like the Apple color scheme for all of their products. That’s why we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John fully expecting to have a rose gold MacBook Pro, but who knows if that will
⏹️ ▶️ John come to pass. But anyway, it looks… Does it look less fancy than
⏹️ ▶️ John the 5S did? if you could see that shiny edge. I mean, maybe it is less fancy. On the
⏹️ ▶️ John other hand, it’s kind of more uniform in appearance.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, I think that little shiny edge is a great example of how this is like
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly like the 5s and 6s internals, except not quite. And the not
⏹️ ▶️ John quite parts of it are the only few dings against it if you were really truly hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John for 100% of of the power of the 6s in merely a smaller package. You got really close
⏹️ ▶️ John to it, closer than I thought that we would, because really this does have all the parts that count from
⏹️ ▶️ John the 6s, but it’s not 100% of the way there. So no one is going to confuse this
⏹️ ▶️ John as a flagship phone, but for a lot of people, I think the SE shows
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple learned the lessons of the 5c and that people probably do want a four inch phone, but they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want to feel like they’re getting the cheap or crabby phone, because the number of people who will make that trade-off
⏹️ ▶️ John is much smaller. They’re like, oh, but I really want a white phone that I don’t have to get a case with
⏹️ ▶️ John and the 5G feels so good, but oh, but it’s slow and it’s slower than the other one, right? And so this one
⏹️ ▶️ John takes away most of the excuses. If I was a small screen
⏹️ ▶️ John phone person, the one missing feature that I would be most upset about is the new Touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John sensor because I think it’s really cool that it’s faster and maybe secondarily missing 3D Touch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I totally understand why those are missing. And if they’re gonna skimp on anything, those are exactly what I would have skimped on.
⏹️ ▶️ John But overall, I think everyone who’s seen this phone was pleasantly surprised about
⏹️ ▶️ John how much that it, hey, you want a small screen phone? This is a really, really good small screen iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you will not feel bad about getting this phone for the most part, unless you’re obsessed with like Touch ID or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As we were talking about this, I pulled out my 5S and I started using it and I started trying transcribe what you were saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into notes, like I said, typing on it and everything. And oh man, it’s just so nice to hold. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so nice to hit the sleep button in the right spot. It’s so nice to reach everything on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen. And I honestly, I know a lot of people are saying that they’re disappointed that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design really didn’t change. I think that’s a valid criticism. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really like the design. Like I like this design a lot more than I like the 6s design and the 6
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design. I just think this is a great phone and it’s honestly very tempting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to attempt to go back. I don’t think I will because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is really hard for me to type on it, but man, I do love the way it feels and I love being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to reach everything. So I totally get the appeal.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is a lower price phone too, like, I mean, ignoring the fact that it’s still 16 gigs gag,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this is the cheapest, this is the new cheapest way to get an iPhone, right? Like to
⏹️ ▶️ John get the, in their current lineup of phones, this is the cheapest one. And what
⏹️ ▶️ John you get for that amount of money, for the cheapest amount that you get, is a phone that’s essentially as fast
⏹️ ▶️ John as their flagship phone. Yeah. Which that’s a hell of a deal. Like again, ignoring the 16 gigs,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, cause you have the same, like, it’s a good deal on an iPhone. You get an iPhone with
⏹️ ▶️ John probably really good battery life. It’s really comfortable, it’s super fast, it’s got a really
⏹️ ▶️ John good camera, comes in all the variety of colors, and you get it for way cheaper than the 6S, but it’s the same speed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a really impressive offering.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s such a good value for what you’re getting. I mean, really, I think they’re gonna sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ton of these things. And we might not hear about it very much, because they might be selling a lot more like outside the US,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think it’s a great product release. You know, if not a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half-butted in the design department, but because I like this design, I don’t consider that a bad thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 16 gig part is unfortunate, but this is kind of a strategy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tax. Like, it’s like they stuck with the 16 gigs so long for all their other stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the high end especially, what are they gonna do? Release this new, way cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the only one with decent storage and it’s the cheapest one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release this one at 32 gigs at $400 and then like the $700 6S doesn’t have 32 gigs? like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Like they can’t, they’re not going to do that. Uh, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if they wanted to finally fix the incredibly bad, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, customer sat debt, they build up by the 16 gig phones. Uh, they can’t fix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it with this. They got to wait till the seven in the fall and fix it. Then
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the other minor thing. Like this one, this goes 16, what is it? 1664 and that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe that’s right. There’s no one 28, right? Yes. So that’s another area where like, you know, that
⏹️ ▶️ John list all the areas where this falls down as you know, no, no, no latest touch ID sensor, no 3d touch,
⏹️ ▶️ John no 128 gig model. What else is it missing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I bet it doesn’t support reachability.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, no camera bump. If you’re looking for that, sorry, you’ll have to get a different model.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. And as a lot of people have noted, because it will most likely work with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the same accessories as the five s, you can probably get not only a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of really nice cases and batteries and stuff that were made for it forever ago, but they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost anything anymore. Try to buy accessories for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today’s iPhone or iPad, and they’re $50. Try to buy them for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that’s two years old, and they’re like a dollar on Amazon. Everything costs nothing because everyone’s trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear them out because these phones are no longer being sold in the US or no longer popular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now here’s a brand new phone where you can get a ton of effectively free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessories for it. So, again, adding to the value aspect. It’s a great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey value. Steven Connelly Yeah, I’m really impressed with this. I think this is a great job. I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like John said, the places where they skimped, they did it at the right spots,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the spots you would expect. I don’t think I’m going to switch back because I like the screen real estate enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the slightly larger phone that I think I’m going to stick with it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also really do like 3D Touch a lot. I might be the only one, but I really use it quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot. I use it quite a lot in TweetBot. I don’t use the shortcuts very often, um, from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Springboard, but I use 3D Touch a ton in TweetBot if nowhere else. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that sense, I would miss 3D Touch a lot. Um, this does, the SE does get live photos, which are also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey important to me now. So, it’s a tough call, because God do I love this design. I agree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with you, Marco. But I think I would probably stick with the, what is it, 4.7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inch phone, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey success size is. I’ll probably stick with that in the future, but I would not begrudge anyone who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decided that this was the phone for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John This feels so good. The cheaper front-facing camera, too. The 6S has a 5 megapixel front-facing
⏹️ ▶️ John camera, f2.2 aperture, and this one has a 1.2 megapixel f2.4 aperture.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, they skimped in all the only there is they skimped are all Exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the areas that I would have picked because again if you’re gonna skimp on a camera skimp on the front one because nobody cares
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t skip on the back one So yeah so the the expectation is that This will sell a lot better
⏹️ ▶️ John than the 5c did because it’s just such a much a much better phone than the 5c that people Won’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John Disappointed or embarrassed to buy it or own it that it is a fully a fully fledged iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s what it’s a good reason they changed the name like I don’t know they didn’t say what the SE Stood for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did say special edition. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the best joke Explanation I heard is that it stands for sorry everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John For taking away the 4-inch phone and then for resurrecting it with the 5c which was an awesome-looking product in every way
⏹️ ▶️ John except for the Stuff that was inside it. You know, it was slow and old and creaky and small I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John what the storage limits on the 5c were but they’re even worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they didn’t they didn’t take away the 5s. They took away the 5. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know but like it’s that was this is the equivalent Of hey, we’re going to make it cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom-end phone for people and we’ll make it fun And I think the 5c was a great product except that it was you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it was not it was not as good It didn’t have the same innards as they didn’t have any Yeah Small phone that
⏹️ ▶️ John had the same innards as the flagship phone like their small phone had worse innards than their flagship phone this
⏹️ ▶️ John That I mean it’s it’s almost shocking to like six months after the success comes out or whatever is it six months, something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John that there is a new small phone that is just as fast as the flagship phone in most of the
⏹️ ▶️ John ways that matter to people, which is totally weird and has not happened. It’s not like a two year old phone. It’s not like, oh, we just move
⏹️ ▶️ John the innards down. We’re still selling the old models. Um, so yeah, I like
⏹️ ▶️ John this trend. And I think this is a good phone. And I would totally recommend that if people want a small phone
⏹️ ▶️ John that they get this, I wouldn’t hesitate at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Although the only thing is, I do think for people like us who are happy with the 6
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least have been happy until now with the 6 size, I think it’s wise to at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait until we see the 7 before, oh I’m going to jump back right now. So I personally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am incredibly tempted by both sizes of iPhone I don’t have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m incredibly tempted by this nice awesome small one because as I feel this 5S, it just looks and feels amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s so easy to hold and use. I love the sleep button on top still.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I you know now 18 months into owning the six line of phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half my screenshots contain the volume overlay and the other half of them didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen because I actually put the phone to sleep
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’m getting worse at the screenshot gesture I don’t understand how this is possible but somehow I’m getting worse at it me
⏹️ ▶️ John too like I used to have a much higher hit rate of being successfully able to take screenshots
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I think most people are not on the cadence that you just like people don’t know like oh the seven is coming they just
⏹️ ▶️ John wander into an Apple store when their contract is up or whatever and they get whatever phone is for sale
⏹️ ▶️ John then and so I think it’s fine like it is it is a weird from our perspective like if you’re one
⏹️ ▶️ John of those people who’s ever who lives and dies by the the cycle of Apple releasing new phones and always gets the
⏹️ ▶️ John latest one when it comes out it’s like the six month thing is putting me in a weird position because even
⏹️ ▶️ John if I wanted this phone would I buy it now because wouldn’t I just want like Marcus I wait until see what the seven is like and what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen then, but regular people just go into the store and it’s so much better for them to go in and to see this lineup
⏹️ ▶️ John of phones. And there really is something for everybody now, except for the people who want a really
⏹️ ▶️ John big battery and a really small phone. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I feel bad. There’s got to be a lot of people like me. So when Aaron Aaron’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the S cycle, she doesn’t want to have a phone every year. And when it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time for her to get a 6S, I said to her basically, look, you can keep your old phone, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is getting a little bit long in the tooth now, or you can just understand that Apple will never release a new 4-inch phone and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just get on board now. So okay, fine. And so she got on board with the 6S. And I think by and large, she likes it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But then fast forward a few months, and sure enough, there’s Apple’s brand new 4-inch phone in rose gold,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no less. And I feel terrible for that. So sorry, Aaron. My bad. Bye.
The New 9.7-Inch iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, iPad Pro 9.7 inch. Is that what it’s called? Something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. I don’t even know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple calls it on their site. The new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Not a lot of surprises here overall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Definitely some surprises, but looks good. I’m not a big iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of guy. I like my mini. I love my mini in fact. But it’s a little bit tempting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even for me to go big, especially because from everything I’ve understood,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this thing is tiny. It’s thin, it’s very light, they said under a pound, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s gotta be super portable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s exactly the same physical dimensions and weight as the Air 2 within like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 0.001, something like that. It is effectively identical to the Air 2 in size and weight.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was so excited about this iPad during the announcement because if you watch the event,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything they say about it is like, Yes, yes that, yes, like just everything, you know, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s what we all talked about, basically a shrunken down version of
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPad Pro, exactly as the name implies, with all the features of the iPad Pro. And on top of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does some things better than the iPad Pro, which of course are the things that highlight in the keynote with the whole True Tone display
⏹️ ▶️ John and the, well, they talked about the USB 3 speed thing, but we’ll get to that in a second.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that it’s small and thin and it uses a stylus, It’s got a smart connector, it’s got a keyboard cover, that fits the thing, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole nine yards. And it’s only after the keynote did I find out all the things that kind of broke my heart. I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like this iPad Pro is my Fredo.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, we all know, they’re not big. It’s not that big of a deal. The
⏹️ ▶️ John killer one for me is I really wanted this to have four gigs of RAM. It’s got Pro in the name for crying out loud. I know
⏹️ ▶️ John it probably doesn’t need four gigs of RAM, maybe because the screen is smaller or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a pro, like it does multitasking. I would love it if it had four gigs
⏹️ ▶️ John of RAM. That is the one that really, really broke my heart. The other stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John only getting USB 2 speeds. I don’t know if that’s just for the camera adapter or if it’s just for
⏹️ ▶️ John everything having to do with that lighting port. I don’t know the answer to that, but definitely the new camera adapter thing
⏹️ ▶️ John says the iPad Pro, the big iPad Pro gets USB 3 speeds and the little one gets USB 2
⏹️ ▶️ John speeds. Not that I use the camera connector, that like I want I want if you get this
⏹️ ▶️ John device with this much storage maybe you say you get the 128 gig model I would like it to have USB 3 speeds through
⏹️ ▶️ John that because I like the weird tech nerd that I am still
⏹️ ▶️ John doing encrypted back into my Mac and it takes her friggin ever to copy everything at USB 2 speeds from like
⏹️ ▶️ John a 128 gig thing but yeah the the
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM the RAM complement is the one that is the most disappointing and everything else is is minor
⏹️ ▶️ John after that but I guess you would expect that because like shouldn’t the bigger one be more powerful or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever I just had this vision in my mind that this would be exactly like the big iPad Pro better
⏹️ ▶️ John in a couple of ways and worse than none and that is not exactly the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overall I think it’s a solid release and I think I think it’s going to really really help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPad lineup in general as as much as any release can you know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again it’s not going going to save the iPad if the iPad sales are going to continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to stagnate. This release is not going to meaningfully change that. But for the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are buying iPads, this is an awesome iPad. This is a great, I think the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing about this product that’s weird is that it was released afterwards. Like if you imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the process flipped and if you imagine them, either either the 9.7 and the 12.9 released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same time or in the opposite order, I think it makes a lot more sense. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right now there’s a bunch of weird stuff around the way they did this. You know, weird, weird perceptions like, wait, this is kind of sucks if I just bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 12 inch and now I don’t have the weird color display or whatever. And you can,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can excuse some of it with like, well, you know, the camera is better on the small one cause it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re taking it around. You don’t really need a better camera on the big one. Like you can excuse a lot of it. Uh, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple fact is the staggering of these things and the difference between them are kind of odd, but it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Doesn’t really matter. It’ll, and we’ll all forget about it in a year. So, ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very solid release, I think. Very solid. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if anyone is a heavy iPad user, this is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth looking at. And I’m really glad they’re making this, even though I probably won’t use one, but a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very solid release, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I largely agree with you. It’s like I said earlier, it’s enough that it’s tempting me to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go back to the mid-size iPad from my mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a question for the two of you guys, though. What’s the flagship iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m genuinely asking because my immediate answer, if I were to ask myself that is the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the big iPad pro almost said the iPad pro is the bigger iPad pro, but it doesn’t have some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really nice features like the true tone display. And, and so I wonder what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the flagship iPad these days?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think that’s just because of the cadence that Marco mentioned, the weird Cadence that like they seem
⏹️ ▶️ John like they could have been released together but wouldn’t it be weird that the small one has the color sensors on it and the big
⏹️ ▶️ John one doesn’t and it’s almost like they got out of sync at some point
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know whatever so I think because of the Cadence the the
⏹️ ▶️ John flagship one has to be the the the latest released one
⏹️ ▶️ John because it has more better stuff and you can excuse the smaller RAM and stuff because oh this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a smaller bottle but you would imagine that when the new big one comes out it will have all the same
⏹️ ▶️ John features the other one then it will be the flagship I mean what’s the flagship Mac the
⏹️ ▶️ John other 5k iMac because it’s faster in some games what’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flagship laptop I would argue it’s a MacBook one
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John what you know what flagship means we have weird definitions of it it used to be the old days it was the fastest computer
⏹️ ▶️ John but that it really hasn’t been true in a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the context of what we’re saying, I would argue that it’s basically like the high profile one that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lust over that is like the defining one that kind of defines the image of the whole range. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to me on the iPad, that’s the air or now the pro mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever we call it. And in the Max, I’d say it’s the MacBook one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Like I can’t really tell on the iPad. It depends on if the iPad makes this transition into
⏹️ ▶️ John more a more capable platform because if you stop thinking of an iPad as a
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger version of the phone and start thinking of it as it’s my more portable laptop replacement than the big pro
⏹️ ▶️ John becomes the flagship because it is better able to replace laptops and the other ones but it really really depends for
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to tell in this period and I don’t think the the weird differences in features like
⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s basically what it comes down to is what hardware does the big one have the small one doesn’t it has the same quality
⏹️ ▶️ John screen but it doesn’t have the light sensors so it can’t have the true tone display like that’s not gonna come in a software
⏹️ ▶️ John update it just doesn’t have the sensors for it but it does have more RAM I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t I only sleep thinking about it and a couple people were asking the chat room if I’m gonna get this laptop I have an iPad 3
⏹️ ▶️ John I waited a really long time to get that because I wanted a retina iPad and I got a retina iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m still using it at this point it’s pretty much at the end of this it’s like not because there’s anything wrong with it and it
⏹️ ▶️ John still looks very new and it’s in good condition it only has a small dent on the corner from when I put down my backpack
⏹️ ▶️ John too hard at WWDC two or three years ago or whatever it has served me very well I still use it
⏹️ ▶️ John every day this new iPad Pro 9.7 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John does almost there it’s almost exactly what I want like the reason it broke my heart because it was so close to being like
⏹️ ▶️ John everything that I could have asked for and more instead it’s almost everything that I could have asked for it is so much
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the one I have now I’m definitely getting one 100% I’m glad they come in all sorts of different colors
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sad only one of them has a black front and the only reason I’m sad not because I don’t I don’t dislike the color
⏹️ ▶️ John of the back because I’m always afraid that someday there’ll be none of them with a black front and then I’ll be really sad so anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John I am getting this one and I will enjoy it and hopefully it will last me at least
⏹️ ▶️ John as long as my iPad 3 lasted me.
Lightning USB Camera Adapter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A couple other very, very quick thoughts. First of all, the camera adapter, there was the callout for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcasters that it’s now, you can power it with one of the bricks, which is exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason Snell wrote a post about that earlier today, which we’ll link to in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s significant though, because, you know, for a while, ever since the very first iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that had the camera connection kit, and then later on there’s lightning version of it when they switched to lightning, there was always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this $30 adapter that you could get that would let you plug in a USB device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to an iOS device. And this has always been, you know, it was officially for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras and it would officially work with only iPads. However, this for years has worked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for other things and it was always kind of undocumented and you were never really sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, does Apple, is this going to be supported in the future? Is this going to work? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like sound equipment was a big one. Also like network, like USB network
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface and stuff like that. Like these things that like, you know, USB devices that you would think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t work with iOS devices that often just did through like standard USB profiles and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through this port. But there were always two major problems with this. Number one was that there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was not enough power on the port to power a device that had high power needs, which does include
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of USB devices. So like you could do a hack where you could like buy a powered hub and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plug the upstream into this adapter for the iPad and have the powered hub power the other devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So then that was kind of an issue. And then the second issue was always that while you were using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this adapter, your iOS device it was plugged into itself could not be charged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or charging. So you could only use this adapter effectively on battery power. So you couldn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like kind of permanently installed like at a station or something like that. So there were always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these two problems. This new adapter they’re selling now for 40 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the exact same adapter but has a lightning port inbound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next to the USB port so you can plug in an iPad class power brick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into that and not only charge the iOS device that this adapter is plugged into and keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it charged but then also power a USB device that needs a decent amount of power like an audio interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they’ve solved both of these problems with that one stupid little port with this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even bigger, Phil Schiller called out on stage this kind of usage. He said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for podcasters, he even mentioned network devices, like things that again we thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these years, like the handful of people who were playing with this thing, we thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this was like this unsupported, undocumented thing that was gonna break at any time and now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s Phil Schiller on stage advertising this as functionality and releasing this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome new adapter that makes it a lot better than it was before. So this allows things like iOS devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have like audio interfaces like in real production use here like where you can have everything plugged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and have everything be reliable and have everything be fully powered. You can do things like like like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a network adapter and have Ethernet on you know on the on an iOS device for the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time ever because the Apple TV like all this stuff that was really just difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or tricky or impossible to do before or would suck in other ways. Now with this one adapter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now sucks a lot less and now can be it opens up new doors for iOS devices. And that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think is pretty big.
Wrapping up the event
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I completely agree. I’m really pleased with this event as a whole,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually. I mean, there’s some things that bum me out. I’m sad there’s no new Macs. I understand your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sadness about the watch, even though I’m not entirely sad about it. This iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SE, which someone in the chat earlier said, it stands for Sorry Aaron, which I thought was pretty funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That also, I mean, it makes me happy in the grand scheme of things, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s making me second guess my choices, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all in all, I thought this was a really good event. I didn’t leave the event thinking, oh my God, I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to buy everything like I often do at Apple events, but I rewatched it earlier tonight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and in talking with you guys about it and thinking more about it, I think it was a really solid event. So John, thumbs up, thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it was, I mean, it was exactly the scale of event you expect from town hall. And despite the RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John breaking my heart, I am really happy with that new iPad. I expect to be really happy with it as a product. I’m not so happy about
⏹️ ▶️ John paying a bajillion dollars for a front and back case for it, which
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I would remind
⏹️ ▶️ John I would remind people who are listening to this you don’t have to buy Apple cases Lots of people are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell cases for the iPad I know it’s hard to believe but you do not have to pay Apple’s prices for their cases lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of people will sell you much cheaper cases, but if you are a Sucker slash stickler
⏹️ ▶️ John like me. I’m gonna end up buying the Apple ones cuz whatever But anyway, you don’t have to but I will
⏹️ ▶️ John and I might even buy that stupid keyboard too because whatever anyway I buy an iPad like once every three years So
⏹️ ▶️ John I saved my pennies and and that’s what I’m going to do But you but you listener out there you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy all those cases because it’s like $70 for the front case and $60 for the back and you’re adding
⏹️ ▶️ John so much money to the cost and Anyway, and I’m probably gonna get the 128 gig model just because I fill every iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John device I have I should probably get the 256 if I was smart, but I don’t know if I can stomach that price increase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, do you fill iPads though? Because like a lot of times people will fill an iPhone because a little homebook and music onto it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but an iPad, not necessarily. No, I fill
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I fill it with video and I just, they always get filled up. Yeah. They fill it, even just
⏹️ ▶️ John photos. Even at this point. Yeah. I really should buy the 256. I don’t know if I can, can handle paying like $1,200 all
⏹️ ▶️ John in for whatever this iPad, but anyway, it’s going to be awesome. I’m going to love it. And, uh, that alone may. And I, and I,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though I’m not going to buy the iPhone SE, I think it’s really good. And so this This was a fitting end to
⏹️ ▶️ John the town hall room venue for Apple events.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Harry’s Igloo and Squarespace, and we will see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at ATP.FM And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Auntie Marco Harmon,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to. Accidental, tech podcasts so long.
Post-show: iPad SIM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forgot to mention something in the iPad section very quickly Embedded Apple sim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird right like not bad weird not bad weird. It’s good weird, but it’s weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I can maybe weird is the right way to describe it Or maybe it’s not the same that’s weird, but the way the American carriers are treating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is well They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John carriers carriers are gonna be carriers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s as weird as it always is really with with how they lock it and everything Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple is helping Apple’s acknowledging. Look carriers are gonna be annoying But we’re gonna help you out here by not
⏹️ ▶️ John hogging the one sim slot on this device with our thing We’re just gonna build our thing in and if carriers are
⏹️ ▶️ John saying everything’s great But we know they’re not gonna be so our sim is there for when you need
⏹️ ▶️ John it and for those annoying Carriers, you can swap sims and do all that crap and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rabbit except wasn’t it? Was it Verizon where if you 18
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey things? well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wasn’t one of them where if you if you activated with them, it would actually lock the Apple sim Also, I’m almost
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but you can always get that stuff unlocked. Yeah, there is there is a whole bunch We’ll link to Panzerinos
⏹️ ▶️ John article and tech crunch Explaining all the different ins and outs like Apple has done everything it could to make this less slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John less annoying for you And as you know what’s going on with it you you will have the most options possible I think even
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones where they lock it don’t doesn’t every carry have to unlock it if you ask for at this point So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just more of a hassle, but but at least they’re not hogging a slot So like again, if you and I think you even do like you
⏹️ ▶️ John could have I assume you can have like T-Mobile or something using the Apple SIM But then also have like a Verizon
⏹️ ▶️ John SIM for when you travel and stick that one in and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s exactly that’s exactly what I do With my iPad mini, which I know it’s not using an embedded Apple SIM, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the physical Apple SIM that I have for it I typically have connected to T-Mobile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although I can swap between a couple with that and then I have a Verizon physical SIM that I’ll pop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in if I’m in one of the many places that does not have T-Mobile coverage
⏹️ ▶️ John So they’re doing the best they can and I like it and it’ll be great when the entire, at least
⏹️ ▶️ John in the US world, is standardized on the built-in Apple SIM and we don’t have to deal with it anymore but who knows when the hell that’ll happen.
Post-show: People using old PCs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any other thoughts that we didn’t cover during the main part of the show? There was that kind of dig from Schiller,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was a little weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, people using a five-year-old PC is like, I understand what he’s getting at, but that was
⏹️ ▶️ John badly considered for multiple reasons. First, it’s like kind of like a, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John some people can’t afford to buy a new PC all the time, so you’re taking a dig at the, you know, people who have less money
⏹️ ▶️ John than you. And that’s the type of thing where it’s just, he’s maybe not even thinking as, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John someone like the rest of us who you know can buy hardware whenever they want to buy hardware it’s sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to forget that that’s not something that everybody can do and it’s insensitive to say oh
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re using a let’s let’s all laugh the people using five-year-old computers of course i’m sitting here next to like an eight-year-old computer
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway yeah i could have bought a new one if i wanted to um so it’s insensitive in that way
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s kind of a bet even ignoring that entirely apple
⏹️ ▶️ John as we just pointed out sells computers with essentially multi-year-old internals in them because they don’t update them so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s highlighting something that Apple should be embarrassed about the fact that they will sell you a Mac Mini with these ancient innards
⏹️ ▶️ John and the fact they haven’t updated laptops at this particular event and the fact that the Mac Pros insides have skipped a generation
⏹️ ▶️ John like those are all things that Apple should not be drawing attention to and shouldn’t you know so
⏹️ ▶️ John that was probably not a good idea that line I think if he could take it back he probably would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well also positioning the iPad as like the inevitable replacement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for other people with Windows PCs, or the best replacement for other people with Windows PCs, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really optimistic for a number of reasons, price being a big one. But also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS is not Windows and is not macOS. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we’ve discussed at length, there’s a lot of things that are great in iOS, and a lot of people can get where they’re working on iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, you can’t do a lot of things on iOS that you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on PCs and Macs. And a lot of people need to do those things, especially for their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jobs that are using these old PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have a five-year-old Windows machine, aren’t you going to probably be more likely to have your
⏹️ ▶️ John needs served by an iPad than not? Like I get what they’re getting at.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not necessarily. It depends on what your needs are. If your needs are like checking email and browsing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the web, sure, you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be better off. That’s most people’s things, and video conferencing, and sending people instant messages,
⏹️ ▶️ John and like the iPad does fulfill all the computing needs for a lot of people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But once you get into shuffling files back and forth, once you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into files and dealing with files, which a lot of people do, it starts getting a little bit dicey on iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where things start being like, well, you can do that, but it’s awkward, or you have to know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these power user tricks or things like that. And of course, there’s a lot of limitations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a lot of changes to the way the system works and what it does and doesn’t do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know you’d be surprised in the real world like how many people need like one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those Weird hacks that you can’t do on iOS or they need one app that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple would never approve for the App Store that just you know things like call recorder like that You know it’s like a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need like one or two of those things And that’s enough of a deal killer that they just can’t do their work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS or It’s incredibly clunky for them to do their work on iOS yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re gonna pitch this the iPad is a PC replacement the people you want to pitch it to
⏹️ ▶️ John are the least demanding users and least demanding users are going to have the oldest computers and they’re also
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna have max because if they Were demanding they would be annoyed by their credit Windows PC, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John In the Apple frames that is like this is our audience if you don’t really care enough about computers
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy a new one very frequently and If you don’t even use a Mac because you don’t see any big difference and
⏹️ ▶️ John it just seems like well a PC is a PC You are the type of person we think is most likely to,
⏹️ ▶️ John if we gave you an iPad, after a little while, even if it doesn’t do everything that your five-year-old PC did, to be
⏹️ ▶️ John like, yeah, but this is kind of nicer. Like I have less stuff to worry about, don’t have to worry about viruses, it’s nice that
⏹️ ▶️ John I can carry it around with me. You know, so they’re making the pitches they
⏹️ ▶️ John can make. It doesn’t mean that it is truly the PC replacement they were, you know, but obviously that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the angle they’re going for and they are, to their credit, finally at least
⏹️ ▶️ John modifying both the hardware and software to try to fulfill that goal. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so this is like stage 1.1. The iPad Pro was the big first step and you know the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John with the split screen and everything and then 1.1 is take some of that technology and move it down so now you’ve got a stylus
⏹️ ▶️ John and more power and the four speakers and everything like is the new iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John The iPad Air 3 essentially is a much more compelling PC replacement
⏹️ ▶️ John tablet than even just the air to was even if only because of the possibility of the
⏹️ ▶️ John the stylus right ignoring everything else like just because I mean I know Apple doesn’t want to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John this and it’s maybe why they didn’t do all the navigation stuff but like the stylus kind of does make
⏹️ ▶️ John it possible to have smaller touch targets on devices that support a pencil I know Apple doesn’t want to talk about it but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s there you know and it opens the door to for developers because there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no I don’t think app review is going to reject you if You don’t have a 44 point high touch. I mean, I know now
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s tons of iOS apps out there, right? So these are baby steps in that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I kind of understand the pitch they were making, but it wasn’t that great. I think the only other point that I wanted to make
⏹️ ▶️ John about the thing was this, but the presentation was this tweet by, I think it was a tweet by Zach
⏹️ ▶️ John Sitchy, I think his last name is, that the entry level costs to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John computing ecosystem is the lowest it’s ever been. You can get into a flagship, really good,
⏹️ ▶️ John well-performing not cruddy three-year-old model iPhone for 400 bucks. You can get into an
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad for 270. You can get a Mac mini, which is cruddy and old, for 500 bucks if you don’t want that
⏹️ ▶️ John one because it’s really bad. And you can get a MacBook Air for 900 bucks. So these are all three-digit prices
⏹️ ▶️ John spanning a pretty big range from mid-200s to 900 bucks. And historically
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking, I think it’s probably never been cheaper to get into an Apple product. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John The complaint we always have is, would you recommend someone you actually cared about buy one of these cheapest models? In the case
⏹️ ▶️ John of the iPhone, sure, yeah. I mean, even with the 16 gigs, you’re like, as long as you’re sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that that’s going to be okay. I mean, I don’t know, maybe I wouldn’t be able to recommend a 16 gig to someone
⏹️ ▶️ John I really cared about, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they could convince me that they’re not going to fill 16 gigs, sure. And the iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John which one is 270? Is that the, do they still
⏹️ ▶️ John the, yeah, which mini though? What are the insides? A7?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point I’m not sure to be honest with you I see your point now
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I don’t know if I could recommend that iPad I definitely can’t recommend the mini the air if you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to get the cheapest Mac it’s not a bad Mac right that’s the 13 inch air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait a minute it’s is it is it 13 of the 11 and also is it 4 gigs of RAM in that one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like no storage all
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah yeah so that that’s always with Apple’s difficulty, but there, it does seem
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple is trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John lower, maybe it’s just the on-ramp they’re trying to lower, get you into the store, get you to consider the products
⏹️ ▶️ John and then sell you the better one for slightly better prices. But I think the iPhone SE is, of course, is the most recent
⏹️ ▶️ John one of these products that we all listed here. And the iPhone SE definitely has far fewer compromises
⏹️ ▶️ John than all the other ones we listed. So if only every other product line they have could have a lowest end model
⏹️ ▶️ John that is as admirable and sort of solid as the iPhone line does. And I hope I hope they do
⏹️ ▶️ John do that eventually with all their other models and maybe they will once they ditch the MacBook Air and they only have the old retina
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook one MacBook Pro line. Those will all be pretty solid models once you get the second generation MacBook one in there