197: Life by a Thousand Hugs
25 Nov 2016Marco buys something, John buys something else, and Casey watches a car show instead.
Episode Description:
- John's Energy Star sticker
- Casey and John visit an Apple Store
- Marco buys a thing
- John's new phone
- Comparing color gamuts (via @auniverseaway)
- Jony Ive on used iPhones
- Penny Arcade and the Surface Studio
- Microsoft to enable x86 emulation on ARM64
- Apple to discontinue AirPort and Time Capsule wireless routers
- Brent Simmons and the "Reverse Halo Effect"
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show Neutral: The Grand Tour
- Casey's post
- Analog #94: It Was Eye Watering (to be released Sunday, 27 November)
Sponsored by:
- Warby Parker: Boutique-quality, vintage-inspired glasses at a revolutionary price. Try up to five pairs at home for free.
- Pingdom: Uptime and performance monitoring made easy. Use code ATP for 20% off.
- Automatic: Your smart driving assistant. Get $20 off with this link.
Chapters
- Closing John’s sticker loop
- Apple Store queue management
- MacBook Pro impressions
- Sponsor: Pingdom (code ATP)
- MacBook Pro impressions, cont’d.
- Sponsor: Automatic (code ATP)
- John’s new phone
- Visualizing color spaces
- Beat-up iPhones
- Penny Arcade & Surface Studio
- x86 emulation on ARM64
- Sponsor: Warby Parker
- Farewell, AirPort routers
- The Reverse Halo Effect
- Ending theme
- Post-show: The Grand Tour 🖼️
Closing John’s sticker loop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should start tonight by closing the loop. I can’t believe I just said that out loud.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate myself so hard. Let me try that again. Come out of the parking lot. The sad thing is, this is going to go on the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah. This is going to go on the show and I hate myself so hard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so we should start tonight by putting a period at the end of the sentence, and that sentence
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being, John, what happened with your energy star sticker?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was encouraged by lots of stories and pictures posted by people on the internet saying I have removed
⏹️ ▶️ John my energy star stinger from my LG monitor and it went okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Didn’t I tell you that during the episode?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, lots of people, lots of people sent me stick, uh, you know, images of them doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. It’s not until the other people tell you that you believe them. You don’t believe me, your cohost, your good friend, but you believe the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey randos on the internet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I need like a certain, you know, it helps to have more people say it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Some people,
⏹️ ▶️ John one poor person was like, boy, I’m glad I don’t have an Energy Star sticker on my monitor. And then he looked and he found it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So is this, can you, now that we’re on this topic, can you please explain the phrase trust but verify to me?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s from the Cold War, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Reagan era thing of like, trying to make it sound like
⏹️ ▶️ John he is cooperating with the USSR in disarmament talks, but by the same token,
⏹️ ▶️ John he is also still a strong cowboy who will bang bang USA cheeseburger cheeseburger so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so how is that different from just not trusting people and just verifying everything anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John I told you how it’s different is different because it sounds like you’re being trusting and cooperative but at the same time you
⏹️ ▶️ John speak out of the other side of your mouth and say but I’m still a manly man who can beat up people so it’s trust but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay so it’s not really trusting
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like your dishes are virtually spotless means your dishes have spots on them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard this phrase I never I didn’t know that was the origin of it. Thank you for the history lesson. I honestly don’t know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that makes sense that it was like a political double speak thing, but I hear people use the phrase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a seeming as a seemingly non sarcastic directive. So are they just using it wrong?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you what is the context of how is this connect energy star sticker?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s almost like security well because you didn’t trust Casey telling you that you had to like get verification from
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody else. Oh no no it’s just like I mean that’s just one data point it just helps to have more data points. It’s not as if I
⏹️ ▶️ John needed to trust Casey but verify like I needed more people because his monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is not the same
⏹️ ▶️ John as mine his sticker is not
⏹️ ▶️ John mine you know there are many different possibilities here and maybe he’s not as picky about sticky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trust but verify really just means don’t trust anybody and verify everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Either that or just don’t trust me that’s what it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco really boils down to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It means don’t trust Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah and I don’t even know if the Reagan USSR thing is the origin of it, but that’s what I know it from.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, emboldened by the internet. And
⏹️ ▶️ John friend Casey-less. You’re part of the internet. I removed the sticker and everything went fine
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s no residue and thumbs up. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t trust your friend Casey, but trust random strangers on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Right. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Casey had waited,
⏹️ ▶️ John if Casey had waited until seven other people sent me pictures and then had said he would
⏹️ ▶️ John have been you know not the straw that broke the camel’s back whatever the good version of that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is not getting any better john this is just getting worse oh god all right so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s just move on while we still can i went to the apple store today I hope I’m over still friends. Right?
Apple Store queue management
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went to the Apple store today. First and most importantly, it infuriates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me the fact that there is no obvious place to line up or queue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to pay for something. I know we’ve spoken about this in the past. Maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an East Coast thing. Maybe this is—maybe I’m the problem here, but it drives me bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The store is the problem. It drives me bananas that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t just go somewhere and be in an obvious line to pay for things. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that not a thing? It drives me nuts.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we’ve covered it before. It’s like, well, you know, that may bother you, but for other people
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s more convenient. But I think the key issue here is the one that all five-year-olds have,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is the tiny child’s version of a conception of fairness, which is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I come in the store before somebody or if I decide to I’m ready to check out if I make that decision
⏹️ ▶️ John before somebody else I should be served before somebody else and the way that’s usually solved is by a line
⏹️ ▶️ John and yes there can be multiple lines and you feel like you pick the wrong line and there’s all those little silly things that make you know they make you
⏹️ ▶️ John notice when you feel like you’re getting cheated again more five-year-old versions of fairness
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but when it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John a big giant crowd and you come to a decision I know what I want to get it’s this
⏹️ ▶️ John now I need to give someone money for it and then you are just wandering aimlessly
⏹️ ▶️ John with the feeling that people who made the decision after you are getting served before you because they happen to be closer to someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who is ready to serve them. And then there’s the application that makes you feel like you’re stealing where you can check yourself out.
⏹️ ▶️ John And just overall, we want to go back to the system that we know and love, which is a line.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Because I know I’ll get 1000 tweets and emails. I didn’t use the Apple Store app because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was buying a gift certificate or gift card or whatever it’s called, where I was doing an arbitrary sum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of money on that gift card, which maybe there’s a way to do it through the Apple Store app, but I didn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to leave any doubt that it would work. So I wanted to wait for a human being to help me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so anyway, so I just loitered. And the worst part is, so there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was an employee working with a customer who was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting like, from the looks of it, possibly a new phone, possibly a new watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly a new watch band. So this is like a fairly intense process and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m, I’m in that like. Uncomfortable space where I, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to make it clear that I’m kind of forming my own line because I believe in order because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m from the East coast and I want, I want to make it obvious I’m waiting for this person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this employees help yet at the same time, there’s that like ATM buffer zone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you don’t want to get too close to the customer’s business, cause that’s not really appropriate. And so I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of standing around in the middle of the store looking lost because basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what I am And so I get my wallet
⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t want to be tied to that person to love is you’re also on the lookout for anybody else who might be able to Help you sooner. And again, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John problem that we’ve solved with the magic of lines It’s called the Express Lane if you’re behind someone who’s you know, doing all their Thanksgiving
⏹️ ▶️ John shopping And you know in a way you just want to buy two things you can in theory go to the Express Lane
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I totally agree
⏹️ ▶️ John is the app that makes you feel like you’re stealing But anyway, lines do have their drawbacks. But you were in the situation
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re like, I’m going to claim my spot by this guy just in case no one else is available. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that someone else just finished checking someone out, giving them their iPod socks or whatever, and they’re ready
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to serve someone immediately. And then someone
⏹️ ▶️ John will wander over to them and you’ll be like, but I was ready five minutes ago, but I’m not over there, but I was waiting by this guy.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like lines, lines,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people. Yep. This fixes everything. And so that’s exactly what happened. So my eyes are darting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so fast. I must’ve looked like I was learning something from, you know, getting a download from the Matrix or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that, because my eyes are darting all over the place. Maybe they’re ready. No, they’re not ready. That guy’s ready. No, that guy isn’t ready. That woman is ready. No, that woman
⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t ready. It was insane. And so anyway, so I did the like social cue of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got my wallet out and not only did I get my wallet in my hand, so I have merchandise in one hand, I have a wallet in the other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand. I actually removed my credit card from my wallet in part because I will always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slightly be a New Yorker and I want to take up as little time as possible in part because I just want to give the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey social cue of I’m ready to pay for this please anyway
MacBook Pro impressions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bring all this up to say I tried the Touch Bar. **Matt Stauffer and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Steve Lahan laugh** **Matt
⏹️ ▶️ John Stauffer** I tried it too. I was in, I was on an Apple store. I was in there and I, when I was in there, I forgot that the Touch Bar Max
⏹️ ▶️ John would actually be there until I noticed one. I’m like, oh yeah, I should try that. So I did that as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Joseph Lanier I also did it. Joseph Lanier Today or just recently? Joseph Lanier For the last few days since I bought one. **Joseph
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lanier** Oh, of course you did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco You are the, oh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m the worst. Joseph Lanier I can’t, I’m just the worst. I let the record show I stopped myself from finishing that sentence. Anyway, so I tried
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the touch bar. I only tried it for about two or three minutes. Initial impressions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I liked it. Um, I don’t like the presentation in the Apple store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the reason I say that is I feel like, and maybe it’s my height and I don’t feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m a remarkably tall person. I’m, I’m roughly six feet, give or take an inch or two, maybe five 11.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, and I don’t know what that is in meters because I’m American. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that the Apple Store’s tables are a bit too low.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so the angle in which I’m looking at the touch bar is, I think, a bit too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much. In other words, I think, generally speaking, my head would be lower as compared to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the laptop if I was working at, say, a desk or something. And so it looked like—I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t describe it, but it looked as though I was at the wrong viewing angle for the touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bar. That being said, I really liked it. I think I can totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understand why someone would say, oh, it’s a gimmick because it very well may be, but I thought it was clever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was well done. There’s things that I don’t love about it. Um, for example, I want to say it was maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason Snell. I might have that wrong, but somebody was saying on one of the podcasts I was listening to lately that in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Safari, there are previews of your different tabs that are open. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that seems kind of silly to me. I think titles would have perhaps been better. Maybe not. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. I only used it for a couple of minutes. The escape key, I didn’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem mashing it by habit, but it was disconcerting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I didn’t feel a button press when I did it. And a couple of times I caught the tilde
⏹️ ▶️ Casey key, which is on an American keyboard, directly below escape. I caught that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey key instead of escape, which was frustrating. And I also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spent a little time typing on the keyboard. And in case for some reason you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weren’t aware, because I don’t know how much I’ve talked about it on the show, but I’ve talked about it on like Twitter and my website incessantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I freaking love the Magic Keyboard, the external keyboard that Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey currently selling for say iMacs and whatnot. I love that keyboard. To me, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is my favorite keyboard ever, ever, ever, bar none. And the keyboard on the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro to me, And I’m curious to hear both your thoughts here in a moment. To me, the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro keyboard was 80-ish percent of the way there, but I felt like the key travel wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough and that was very frustrating. I think I could get past it, but I really, really wanted just a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little bit more key travel, and I think it would have made a world of difference to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s start with John, since Marco, you own one. John, what did you think? I presume you at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey typed on it for a few minutes. What did you think of the key travel and also the touch bar?
⏹️ ▶️ John It didn’t feel that different to me than the regular MacBook one And I did notice
⏹️ ▶️ John the I did notice the noise surprisingly Maybe it’s because I’ve read all the stories about and I was primed for it But
⏹️ ▶️ John I noticed anyway that it was noisier and it did feel like Stiffer and
⏹️ ▶️ John clackier but not so much. I do I do think I liked it better than the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John one keyboard I hate laptop keyboards in general. So it’s hard for me to say like, you know, I think I
⏹️ ▶️ John said this about the Mac one I just I just don’t like typing on them ever like in the best case Just because the keys
⏹️ ▶️ John are you know it’s all wedged into a little shape and it doesn’t have the keys that I want and I just I don’t like the controls not in the corner
⏹️ ▶️ John yes I know I should wrap it to a caps lock whatever anyway I don’t like them as far as this
⏹️ ▶️ John one goes I’m glad it’s an improvement over the MacBook one I’m gonna eventually have one of these for
⏹️ ▶️ John work but I honestly doubt I will ever type on it it work like I guess maybe if I’m in a meeting
⏹️ ▶️ John or something briefly but like I don’t I don’t use laptops I don’t find myself I’ve using laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that will change once I have this one for work, and I’m bringing it home And maybe I’ll just find myself using it. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John see but for now I don’t know the same thing with a touch bar seem fine. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What keyboard do you currently use at work, or what do you expect to be using at work
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple extended aluminum? That’s what I’ve been using for many years now And and I and I
⏹️ ▶️ John was Apple extended To for many many years I had to give that up for RSI reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John because the keys require more force to press and I find keys that require less force to press are easier
⏹️ ▶️ John on my hands. That’s why I like the Apple aluminum extended because the keys
⏹️ ▶️ John seem very easy to hit. That was one of the things about the both the MacBook one and
⏹️ ▶️ John this one like the low travel, maybe I’m pressing harder than I need to but
⏹️ ▶️ John it feels almost like banging your hands against just like the desk that doesn’t move right like that feels like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s more the more of the force I’m putting in is bouncing back at me or maybe it’s bouncing back quicker
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know I would have to type on it for a long period of time to see if this is actually a thing But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, and then so the touch bar It’s alright. I mean, it’s basically what I thought it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John it was cute. It looks nice. I think the escape key Activation
⏹️ ▶️ John is reasonable I would still prefer a regular key, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I would I would be excited to have a laptop with this on it versus one without like
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a net plus to me in my mind having you know again having using it for five minutes like whatever the negatives
⏹️ ▶️ John are in there I think the positives overwhelm it so I think this is a good addition to Apple’s laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco so regarding the keyboard it doesn’t feel that different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the MacBook one keyboard honestly if you get a chance did either of you actually try them side by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side of the store because a lot of a lot of the stores will have them like literally like there will be like an escape next to the MacBook ones I did not
⏹️ ▶️ John yep I did I run right right from one to the other and like you could I could tell you
⏹️ ▶️ John the difference I could probably tell you difference with my ears plugged but definitely with my ears open I can tell that they felt
⏹️ ▶️ John different but they both felt like that little keyboard that doesn’t move too much that has a little cup keys they both felt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that exactly like I would say the MacBook one keyboard kind of feels like what you’d expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new MacBook Pro keyboard to feel like after five years of heavy use like it almost feels like it’s worn out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know because like it it kind of lacks that kind of kickback the way the way the new MacBook Pro does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the way Apple described it actually is a pretty good, accurate description, which is like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the same key travel, but it has more feedback. It feels better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s still a very, very shallow keyboard. I still don’t like it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after a few days with it so far, and I traveled with it, and I did a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coding on the plane and everything, and I took a lot of notes about the computer on the computer, so lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of typing, it’s fine. I think this is one of many areas where Jason Snell is right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s fine. I can use it, but I don’t like it. It’s better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough than the MacBook one keyboard that I would not, not get this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer just for that. If that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s a big, one of the biggest improvements over the MacBook one keyboard, not so much in like how it feels and touchy feely stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John but just practically speaking again, for the brief time I was typing my problem with the MacBook one keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John was often because there’s so little travel and because the keys are so sunken in, it wasn’t always
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to be sure that I have successfully activated a key, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because sometimes you go to hit it and you can’t tell you hit it because your finger goes up and down, but it goes up and down like
⏹️ ▶️ John too little. And the new one has such a much more positive like you have pressed this
⏹️ ▶️ John key and you’ll know it because ka-clack, right? Whereas if you go for it and don’t quite hit
⏹️ ▶️ John it because you didn’t apply enough force, you won’t get the ka-clack. And so I felt on a new one, maybe is just psychological,
⏹️ ▶️ John that I could tell when I hit a key, and I could tell when I didn’t successfully hit a key in a way that was harder for me to
⏹️ ▶️ John tell on the MacBook One keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I agree with that. It is totally fine. I will also point out, though, while we’re on the subject of the noise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Pro keyboard is not only loud, like noticeably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loud, like Tiff noticed it even in the same room, like, wow, that is loud. But I also think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the sound it makes is particularly ungraceful. It almost sounds like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tapping your fingers on a plastic tub. It’s like it’s really a like I would do it now but I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I’m probably not gonna convey it but it’s like. Stephen Hackett already did it. It really does not sound good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sounds very cheap and doesn’t sound like something that’s working the way it should be working.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it sounds cheap. I think it sounds sharp. Like I think it sounds like a precision piece of machinery going
⏹️ ▶️ John like I don’t think it’s that it doesn’t sound or feel cheap. In fact that’s one of the things a lot of people said about
⏹️ ▶️ John it and I agree that this keyboard feels solid like it doesn’t the keycaps don’t wiggle around like they do on the one and my apple
⏹️ ▶️ John extended aluminum or any of those other ones like it feels very solid and when you type it’s like it’s like a sharp
⏹️ ▶️ John little punch right like a little metal punch uh which is not a pleasant sound if you’re in the room
⏹️ ▶️ John but i think it doesn’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheap yeah it doesn’t feel cheap it sounds cheap it feels like a mediocre keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John i mean people will get used to it like the the problem with any of these things with volume is like no matter of what sound it makes. If
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s if it’s more sound than your other one was, uh, that’s a problem because
⏹️ ▶️ John people kind of develop their habits around. I remember when I was on the apple extended to like
⏹️ ▶️ John I would be typing, you know, two rooms away and it would be like you, you know, my wife would be trying to sleep. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you can’t do that. I can’t sleep because we’re in a nine inch of square foot apartment. You can’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John typing right now because it’s just too much like it’s super loud. Um, and so in this situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re used to sitting there on the couch and typing while someone watches TV. And this one cranks up the volume just a little bit. It’s like, all right, I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t watch TV while you’re doing that. Just stop typing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s also it’s much louder the way this kind of resonates on a desk. If it’s in your lap, it is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weirdly loud, but it is less so on a desk, it becomes substantially louder. I could definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see like, if you share an office with people and you have a laptop on a desk and you’re typing all day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to be very noticeable. So you just better hope that you upgrade everyone in the office at the same time to these things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way nobody can blame just you.
Sponsor: Pingdom (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best monitoring service I’ve ever used. Start monitoring your websites and service today at pingdom.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. You get a 14 day free trial and use code ATP at checkout for 20% off your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first invoice. Pingdom makes the web faster and more reliable for everyone by offering powerful, easy to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use monitoring tools and services for anybody with a website or web service. You can, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor availability and performance of your server database or website for more than 70 global test servers that Pingdom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco runs. You know, as developers, that websites are becoming more and more sophisticated and often have several
⏹️ ▶️ Marco layers of dependencies and different complex interactions. And of course, you want to monitor all of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because if any one of those goes down or is slow or anything else, it can cause problems for you. So Pingdom allows you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to monitor any URL, any interaction you want to, of course, things like cookies that can log
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in for you and everything else. You can monitor e commerce checkout forms, you can monitor logging in search functionality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a whole lot more. And they know stuff breaks all the time. Every month, Pingdom detects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than 13 million outages. It’s more than $400,000 per day. So whether you’re big or small,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this can affect you and you need Pingdom to help you know when things go wrong so you can fix them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve used Pingdom personally. I’ve used them for something ridiculous like eight years. I used them back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Tumblr and everything since then I’ve used them because they’re just fantastic, long before they were a sponsor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I keep using them for all my stuff because I want to know when my stuff goes down. I don’t want to be hearing from people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Twitter that it’s down. I want to know before they do so I can fix it before too many people see it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want that kind of thing too, which I highly recommend for anybody who runs a site or web service.
MacBook Pro impressions, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pingdom.com slash ATP 14 day free trial 20% off your first invoice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with offer code ATP. Thanks to ping them for sponsoring our show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now Marco last I heard if I recall correctly you had ordered and then canceled one But it appears
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have now bought a new MacBook Pro. So are you no longer a professional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or you just slumming it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well I had I had ordered the MacBook Escape and then canceled it because I wasn’t that comfortable with how much I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about to pay for the benefit it was going to get. And I kind of got like 15 inch regret, like what if I end up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanting more power or more screen space?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Because- Sure, that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In summary, not to go over this too much again, but in summary basically, I use an iMac for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of my stuff. I don’t travel very often. When I do travel, my needs are either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost nothing, like if it’s not like a working trip, my needs are either almost nothing, in which case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just need a Mac just in case the server goes down and I want to like SSH in and fix some stuff, or I might like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do like light email and Twitter work, you know, or it’s a trip where I intend to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work done or edit photos, in which case I want the biggest, most powerful screen I can get,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s just like, not like even a 15 inch, like it feels like I’m cramped, you know, just I want the biggest, most powerful thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can. And so my idea was, well, I’ll just like, you know, leave those needs aside and get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cheapo 13 inch one, which is not that cheap, especially once you add any options to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And I decided to chicken out and instead the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco local business rep gave me a good deal on the 15 inch so I got the 15 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I got the high end in store configuration so the 2.7 GHz and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 512 and the Radeon whatever 455. The reason I went with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, first of all I was about to go on a kind of spur of the moment trip and I wanted to test it out and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to get some work done so I figured this will be a good time to test it. And if I really hate it, I could return it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I figured this would be good to test and to talk about, because really, the 15-inch MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the workhorse of so many industries, especially software developers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and especially people who listen to this show. I would, exactly, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such the workhorse. If you look around at WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost every computer you see is a 15-inch MacBook Pro. It is so, they’re so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco common. If you look around the office of any tech company, look around what computers people are actually using,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge portion of them are 15-inch MacBook Pros. It is just an incredibly popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop among people who do the things I do and people who listen to this show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and read my site that I figured it would be useful for my personal brand to be able to talk about this computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intelligently. And I kind of wanted one just to see for myself to test out the touch bar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just get some idea of where the Mac is going. I also, it was very painful for me to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continue using my old one because I was constantly running out of disk space. Because I had made the mistake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of getting the base model before. And the base model 15 inch, in general, the base model 15 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best deal in all of Apple computers. By far, it is the best deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is like for what you get for the price. It is not cheap, but for what you get, you get an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing computer for that price. and if you, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the price of the 15 inch base model, if you end up specking up a 13 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be comparable, it actually is almost the same price. Like if you spec it up to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comparable in RAM and performance, it is really about the same price. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have relatively moderate to high end needs and you can afford the price of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 15 inch line, I strongly suggest you go for the 15 inch line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it is just that good. Anyway, so I went for it, and yeah, I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying it for a few days now, little under a week now, and I traveled with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, I worked with it, and it’s pretty good. It’s not perfect,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s pretty good, and I would say, I’ve actually considered maybe doing a YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video about it, I don’t know. It’s hard to make videos, so I might not, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s too long to go over all my impressions here, but, it’s funny, it’s too long to go over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all my impressions in our two-hour podcast, so I’m going to try to make a five-minute YouTube video about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Naturally. Okay, so a couple of quick hits, maybe just the first one or two things that jump to mind. What do you really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like about it, or perhaps what do you like about it that you didn’t expect to like about it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They seem to have made substantial progress in making it quieter under moderate load.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is something that I haven’t seen any reviews talk about, but the fan noise, both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the actual noise the fans make and how loud the volume is, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is substantially quieter and less noticeable of a noise, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re maxing out all the CPU cores for a few minutes. Now after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few minutes, if you’re doing something like a handbrake or a video encode where you’re maxing them out for a long time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you will notice it. They will spin up to an audible level then, but it seems like whatever the thresholds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve made with the new thermal system, the new fans, whatever, however they’ve designed this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t hear the fan if it’s just being stressed for a minute or two.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And things like if one core is being maxed out by some rogue process that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not working right, Apple Photos Library, for instance, or Dropbox, or iCloud,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or iSecurity, iCloud Keychain, all these different things where you’ll find one process hogging up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of your cores at 100%. In the old model, that would usually cause the fan to spin up audibly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In this one, it doesn’t. Like if only one core is being saturated, you generally don’t hear it. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of them are being saturated, you only hear it after a few minutes. So overall, like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprisingly quiet. Even quieter if you can keep it only using the integrated GPU, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t force it to, like Cody Krieger’s little utility graphics card status.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can’t force this computer to only use integrated, at least not yet, but it can tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you which one it’s using and which, like if it switches over to the discrete GPU, it can tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly which app or process is demanding that and why it’s doing that. So you can, if you can go quit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that app, for instance, then you can eliminate the need for that. And it can also notify you with little, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, standard system notifications when the switches take place, if you want to. So anyway, it’s nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get an idea of like what’s going on and why. But anyway, huge improvement to the cooling system,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. It does still run very hot to the touch when it’s loaded heavily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s not like it’s running at lower temperatures. But just whatever the cooling algorithms and designs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are, maybe because, and there is a whole new fan design, so that could have something to do with it. But they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really made substantial progress there, and I’m very happy to see that, because I really hate when laptops get all loud and annoying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the fan when you touch them, you know, when you do anything to the CPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, it sucks is a strong word,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John but I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s really disappointing is battery life. It’s really disappointing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’ve heard that from a few people and I haven’t like pestered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone who I’ve seen say this to ask, you know, is this just day one, you know, just like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you say on a new iOS device or, you know, when you upgrade iOS on an iOS device,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first couple of days are gonna be rough as it’s churning through all the things it needs to churn through. So you said you’ve had this machine for nearly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a week or about a week, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is interesting. I’ve had it, yeah, I’ve had it for about a week, a little under a week. There’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few system processes that will tend to load a Mac that’s fairly new. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old ones, as old as time itself, at least Time Machine, is MDS and various Time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine, or various Spotlight indexers. That finishes pretty quickly, like in the first day, and so that’s pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much done. And I use the wonderful utility iStatMenus to monitor this kind of stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I can always see, like in my menu bar, I have like a little CPU core graph so I can notice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very apparent when a process is using too much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power. You see it and then you can go see what that process is and you can kill it if you want to. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iStep menus. What kind of animal wouldn’t use iStep menus? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, most of the hosts on this show use iStep menus.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what I’ve had problems with is the Photos app The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos app where you know in in Sierra and I assume it added that the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know search for objects in photos kind of like what Google photos does but slightly worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That process it’s there’s no indicator on like what it’s doing when it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it there’s no way to tell it to pause or to finish at a certain time or whatever else like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no control over when it does that. You will just see things like photo library D and photo analysis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco D in your activity list. I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get this laptop to finish. There’s only one place you can even see the progress of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that is if you go to the photos tab in the app, it’ll show you, like, you know, we’ve scanned 9,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of 25,000 photos. I cannot get that to progress. Like it says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’ll do it, you know, when you’re plugged into power and when you’re not using the app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know whether that means whether the app is quit or whether it’s just running and hidden, whether the computer has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be idle or not. I’ve experimented with all the different things and I cannot get it to advance very far, but yet I still see photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco library or photo analysis D often popping up in the activity list. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it tends to not do that on battery. I watched for that, like when I was doing battery testing, you know, taking these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long flights, I watched for that and I don’t think that was the problem. So basically, I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was anything in my usage when I was judging the battery. There didn’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be anything out of the ordinary that was unfairly draining the CPU and keeping in a higher powered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco state that would that would you know otherwise not be there during regular use. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you notice the reviews for the battery some of them say oh yeah Apple’s spot-on 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours we we did our like you know light web browsing loop and it’s 10 hours okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the ones that actually try real world use seem to all agree that it’s about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five hours and if you drive it heavily it can be even shorter than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That matches up with my experience exactly. I’m consistently seeing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I’m only doing really casual web browsing, nothing else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no slack, no Twitter, no mail, if I’m only doing web browsing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Wi-Fi connection is great and I’m not browsing any pages that turn on the discrete GPU because some of them do for some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason. Maybe it’s CSS animations, I don’t know. But if you can give it very, very light use in a web browser,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get about 10 hours. But even if you’re bouncing between Twitter, Slack,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and web, my typical light workload, even that, it goes down to about six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours, maybe. Maybe seven if I’m lucky. If I’m using Xcode to build an iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app and do build and run cycles with the simulator and change some stuff, and just typical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS development work in Xcode. Nothing like incredibly heavy, not like constantly cleaning and rebuilding the whole thing, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just typical work in an iOS Xcode development, five hours.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s been pretty consistent for me so far. So that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not great. And that’s with like, you know, relatively modest brightness settings. The good thing is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen brightness level doesn’t appear to have as big of an effect as it used to. It really does seem like whatever advances
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s made in getting the screen to be very low power, those have paid off. The screen really is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly pretty low power. I don’t know the exact numbers on it, but it seems like the battery life I’m getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not that related to the screen brightness the way it used to be. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem is that you have these computers where the big advances in Skylake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processors that let them make the battery smaller almost all came at the bottom end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we’ve discussed about like when the computer is doing almost nothing when you’re being very gentle on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and the processor can be mostly idle most of the time then now it is using less power than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it did before but as soon as that processor is doing anything as soon as you’re giving it even a moderate load
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the high end of the power envelope there is the same as it’s always been so as soon as you give it even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a moderate load it’s just going back to how much power it used to use in the previous generation of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processors but because the idle power dropped so much Apple considers that typical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use and so they were able to drop the battery size by 25%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So basically, we have computers that have 25% smaller batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and processors that did get efficient enough to compensate for that when they’re doing very little.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But as soon as you make them do anything, really, now we just have a 25% less battery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That definitely is a pain. I have to ask, even though I’m already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regretting doing so, What was your dongle—I’m sorry, adapter situation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while you were traveling? What did you buy? What did you need? What did you miss, etc.? Michael Morgan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, on the plane, this might have been my first long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plane flight with the iPhone 7. And wow, does it suck to not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a headphone jack on the phone and to not be able to charge the phone while using headphones. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really does suck. I know it’s been a while. I know we’re not talking about the with a headphone jack anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but wow does that suck in practice. In my regular day to day life I use Bluetooth headphones for walking around, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my big plane headphones are wired because there are very few big plane headphones that are good that are Bluetooth.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, iPhone 7, big thumbs down for listening to music on a plane.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, that aside, the computer itself, for doing occasional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deployments to the iPhone I used the Apple official USB-C BC to lightning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable that was fine. I brought my other dongles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it didn’t really matter. I didn’t really need them. I have the ones I discussed last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week. I have a couple of USB A to C’s or C to A. I have a Thunderbolt 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 2 which I only used for this one audio interface and which I didn’t need the strips. I didn’t bring it. And I have a card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader which I didn’t use because I didn’t bring a camera. But otherwise, the dongle situation is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. You know what really does drive me nuts though is the lack of cable management on the power brick. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John last week. I thought it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a problem and it is a problem. It’s really annoying to have this big thick cable with no flip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out arms, no more MagSafe. The Apple power adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the previous one with MagSafe and with the cable management built in and everything, that was really an awesome design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We had that for a very long time. And before MagSafe, those flip-out arms we had for even longer than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This has been around for quite some time. Like my very first Mac, my 2006 PowerBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had, no, my 2004 PowerBook, excuse me, had those flip-out arms on the power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brick. And it’s great. And the little clip to hold the excess at the very end of the cable, a little clip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can clip it on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All the fine technology that’s been around like in every vacuum cleaner cable forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, we don’t have any of those anymore. Now it’s just like an iPhone cable. It’s just bigger and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s thick because it’s big like, you know, I think it’s like an 85 watt or something cable. So it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like the thickest lightning cable you’ve ever seen. And it’s so it’s kind of stiff. It’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it’s long enough to be a laptop cable-ish. So, you know, so it’s long, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not very flexible. There’s no cable management whatsoever. So basically you have to carry a cable tie
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with you all the time and keep doing it and undoing it or do some kind of crazy wrapping scheme, which takes more time, it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hassle. And I have some hope here that if Apple can start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designing things to be useful again, they can fix this just by making a new power adapter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or even a new power cable. This is not the kind of thing, like the USB-C design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not dictate the power cable has to suck. It can be any cable they want, it can be any adapter they want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can still have MagSafe that’s just like a little bit away from the end of the computer or possibly on the plug end or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can still do all those things. They didn’t, and that kind of annoys me because it really does make the product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less convenient and less nice to use. And Apple has been always all about things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are nice, things that are delightful, premium products. And the switch to the power cable here is such a big step backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It goes against all of that. So it sounds minor, but if you’re traveling around,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moving around with a laptop, you know you deal with the power cable all the time. And the battery life is not yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good enough that you don’t need to think about that. So you know you still very much need to be concerned with the power cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you do anything on your pro computer besides very light web browsing you still need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be plugged in often and So to have the power cable be so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really crappy is unfortunate, and so I really hope Apple Fixes this at some point soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just updates the frickin power cable and the power adapter Just give us that give us one with cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco management and MagSafe that is very very easy to do they could totally do it Third parties
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do it. That is an advantage here of the USB-C ecosystem. Third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parties can do it and Griffin has a MagSafe thing but the max wattage on it is only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the 60s somewhere so you can’t use it on the 15-inch and relying on third parties
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not a great solution to something like this. Like Apple can make a power cable. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can make a really nice one. They have for a decade and more than that actually. They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been doing it for over a decade and it just stopped for some reason and I wish they’d go back. And
⏹️ ▶️ John You can use the Griffin one, it just won’t charge as fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but honestly, this episode is not sponsored by Griffin. I have not had great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco luck with Griffin products in the past. They make a lot of stuff that only, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fill a lot of gaps in the Apple product lineup, and that’s part of the reason why I’ve bought so many things from them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the past, where a lot of times they are the only maker of something that solves problem X, Y, or Z.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s great, I’m glad they do, but I’ve had very mixed luck with their products. So I try to avoid needing them if I can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so the idea of relying on them for my power cable, I don’t feel great about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s this kind of little thing, like as I complained last week about the loss of humanity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and as John clarified maybe as being whimsy in the product, a luxury product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of a collection of small delights. And Apple has gotten rid of a lot of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small delights in the laptop line in the last few generations. like you know, used to be able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push a little button on either the battery or the side after the battery was not removable and little green
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lights would light up telling you how much the battery was charged. That’s really nice, you don’t have to open up the laptop. If it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been in a bag for a while, you can just see how much it’s charged without opening it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MagSafe connectors, of course, that’s a huge one. Having a little light on the plug so you could see without opening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up or anything. You could see, is it charging? Is it fully charged? Like, it’s just little useful things like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course, the light-up apple on the back, the startup chime. A lot of these things have been removed over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And some of them— Steven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Connelly Well, you’re forgetting one of my favorites that I miss all the time, the little pulsating,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey breathing light to let you know that the machine was on. Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I need to. I agree. Paul Morgan Exactly. I love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That was so cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of that, I think, has died with Scott Forstall. I mean, he’s alive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Steven Connelly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can call that living. But like you know they’re like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we when we bought Max Casey and I at least John you bought Max in the Stone Age but when Casey and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought Max for the first time it was still this era of whimsy like where we we would be able to go into a computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store back when those still existed and another thing we go into like a you know like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a circuit city all these dead computer stores and and you’d be able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go over to the Mac area and you’d be able to like play with the dock and see all the cheesy zoom animations and the scaling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the minimizing. You’d be able to see all the cheesy crap and you’d be like, whoa, it’s so cool. When you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought your first Mac back then, all those cool little things just seemed amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The pulsing sleep light, all the cool little lights and battery things and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was just cool. It made you feel nice about your luxury product purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it made you love this platform. When things like the niceties
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the power cable just get removed for seemingly very little reason,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really does kind of erode that nice feeling and the feeling of this being a premium
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product that you love.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Yeah. I think it’s been relatively obvious that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t always agreed with you on some of the things that you’ve been grumbly about over the last, I don’t know, couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of months about dongles and this and that and the other thing. I could not possibly agree with everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you just said more. I think, and I think you nailed it on the head with, and I forget how you phrased it, so I apologize,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but a luxury product being a series of small delights. I think that’s absolutely true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that that used to, and to a large degree still is, but even more so used
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be the case with Apple products. And obviously I don’t have a new MacBook Pro yet, but eventually I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get one for work, if not for myself. And not having those little flip out hooks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or arms, whatever you call them on the brick in order to wrap up the cord, that’s gonna drive me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey batty. Not having the pulsating light, I still miss that to this day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not having MagSafe, that has saved my computer on numerous occasions. I mean, how many in aggregate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the way, about MagSafe, USB-C holds on tight. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a really secure connector. Which generally is good. Yeah, except you could, especially now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with these laptops being lighter, you can very easily kick it off a table with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John on the iFixit teardown, though, that they were smart enough to make the board that connects on the inside of the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John a separate replaceable part. So when you inevitably knock the thing over, assuming it survives,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can just replace the part that it plugs into. It won’t kill your whole motherboard, at least on one of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sorry, logic board in Apple parlance.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco At least on one of the models that did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Yeah, but that’s not a great solution. That is both incomplete and inferior to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but anyway, I just wanted to say that I completely agree with you. And I think this, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t a, this isn’t absolutely whimsy or humanity, but it’s, it’s tangentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey related, I think, or it’s in this kind of same universe in that it’s these little things in the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way that, that in my personal estimation, Windows is death by a thousand paper cuts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple products. And again, for the most part still are, but especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a few years ago, tended to be whatever the opposite of that is. I don’t know what the opposite of death
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by a thousand paper cuts is, but the opposite of that is what Apple products were, and to some degree still are. Marc Thiessen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John There you go. David Yeah, there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you go. But no, I couldn’t agree with you more, Marco. Little stuff like that is just, it’s frustrating. And I do think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, as we’ve talked about in the past, like this dongle situation, it sounds like for you it wasn’t that bad for this particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trip. And I do think in the future it’ll get a lot better. But there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no obvious answer for not having the little cable management arms on the power supply.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess you could get a third-party power supply. I guess those might exist at some point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But there’s no obvious answer for that. There’s no way you’re going to get the little pulsing sleep light on a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro. It’s just not going to happen. And all of this little stuff, it just adds up and is kind of frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and like some of it. Things like the glowing LED on the, like the glowing Apple logo on the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apparently that was due to thinness reasons on the new displays or something like that. Things like that, like the sleep, the sleep LED,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could blame that on power or it, you know, being too bright
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in people’s, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some people’s rooms or whatever. Like, but certainly, you know, things like the power brick getting worse,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like there’s kind of no reason for that, you know, and that’s kind of what drives me nuts. It’s like the unnecessary,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, shaving off of all the personality and delight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And losing the the extendo cable. I forget the term for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, I’m talking about that’s now $19 You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can’t throw that in come
⏹️ ▶️ John on You’re getting at the reasons like it’s uh, like in the car industry They called it decontenting and when
⏹️ ▶️ John it struck hondas, I was very upset Uh, that was many many years ago. I think we talked about it on neutral at
⏹️ ▶️ John but uh, When I bought uh, my first honda civic which was in 1992 uh The
⏹️ ▶️ John honda civic is the low-end model I got the lowest of the low-end model didn’t even have a side mirror on the passenger side
⏹️ ▶️ John could get And yet when you open the very very tiny trunk on the back of that car
⏹️ ▶️ John There were no struts that intruded into the trunk area It had a series of struts so that when you closed it there weren’t and
⏹️ ▶️ John there wasn’t anything poking in you could put a suitcase In there so it just like filled the entire opening and then closed the lid
⏹️ ▶️ John and you wouldn’t have to worry Oh, but now when I try to close it the hinge will bang into you know The gooseneck type hinge will bang into the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those are more expensive to make the little struts They’re more complicated. They’re more prone to break They
⏹️ ▶️ John cost a lot more than taking a bent piece of metal and bending into a gooseneck shape and welding it
⏹️ ▶️ John on and then When decontenting struck the Japanese car industry, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John because of exchange rates or some other thing or whatever I don’t remember what it was But anyway, it came to Honda
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of a sudden the Civic got gooseneck struts And in fact the Accord got gooseneck struts and you
⏹️ ▶️ John know what to this day if you go buy an Accord No matter how much money you pay for an accord, gooseneck on the trunk.
⏹️ ▶️ John They never came back. Like they never said, okay, well, when things, when things change, we will,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we’ll, we’ll whatever the reverse of decontent thing is, they made the parts cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John and probably like, you know, simpler to build and more reliable. And so they don’t have to worry about it. But it’s worse in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of packing things into the back of your car, because now you have to worry about where the hinges land.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would say like, in general, I have, I have thought about the concept of decontent for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while with Apple products, and it really does seem that way with some of the more recent releases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s sad because so many of those little things are delightful, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they add up to this perception of this being a premium, nice product that makes you happy. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every one of these removals, it’s just eroding that feeling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are still nice computers, but they were nicer in many ways in the past. And that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, in general, like, you know, it’s hard to really complain too much, although we always find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way, but it’s hard to complain too much because overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say this is a better computer in many ways than the one it replaced, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it is not as good as it could be. And in areas that there is no excuse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that, you know, certain areas you can say, all right, well, if Mac is out at 16 gigs of RAM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these reasons with low power RAM and Intel limitations, etc. You know, you can say like, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, it couldn’t have a better keyboard because then it would have to be thicker. By
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, as for the way this computer feels with it being so much thinner and lighter, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a small improvement, not a substantial improvement. Like, I’ll take it, you know, I’ll take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it being lighter, I guess. I mean, I would prefer great battery life, but you know, if this is what is available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, okay, I’ll accept the weight reduction, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going from the Retina MacBook Pro, the 2012 design, to the 2016 design, does not feel that different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was severely diminishing returns here. It really does not feel like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive savings in weight or size or thickness. At no point, having used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 2012 15-inch design since 2012, at no point during these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four years did I ever think you know this is too thick you know like everybody could use their laptop being lighter because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you carry it it’s nice when it’s lighter everyone can use a smaller footprint for the same screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size to have less overhead because all that makes it easier to use on planes and tight areas and stuff that’s great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the thickness of these laptops especially in the 15 inch line is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco irrelevant and and they’re already they were already so thin in 2012 to make them lighter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very welcome but they you really didn’t need to get thinner. And they really didn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinner enough in ways that are actually noticeable in real world use. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do things like make a really controversial, weird new keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the name of only thinness and not lightness, because keyboards are mostly empty space, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to force yourself into that kind of design trade-off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems unnecessary when it was already so thin to begin with. So lightness, great. it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noticeably lighter. It’s not massively lighter. It isn’t like when you first, like the first time you picked up a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air and you were used to everything that wasn’t a MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey before that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was an amazing difference because that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it was something like going from like 4.5 or 5.0 pounds to 3.0. It was a huge difference. And also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the taper was totally, totally made a difference. Sure, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, going from 4.5 to 4.0 pounds is a much smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John You forgot about the biggest difference though with this model that I can’t believe you didn’t notice. Oh, maybe you don’t notice because you
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t get it. We never asked you. What color? I did get Space Gray. Oh, nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John And isn’t that a big difference? That to me, that was the biggest difference other than the touch bar, I guess. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you actually tied with the touch bar. What’s the biggest difference between this model and the old one? This one comes in gray and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit of a weird gray, but it totally looks different than the old one. What do you, do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it? And yeah, and honestly, I was not a huge fan of Space Gray on the MacBook One.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just didn’t seem quite right to me when I’ve seen it. It doesn’t look bad, but I just think, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Space Gray and the MacBook One, it just seems like that’s not really the best color. Like I would say the MacBook One is best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in probably golden pink. And I don’t love those colors myself, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just looks kind of odd in Space Gray. On the 15 inch, I’d say Space Gray looks awesome. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why, I think it’s the same, but it, for whatever reason, looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good to me. I’m very happy with it. So, you know, cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s good news. I do like it. I do worry a little bit. I know our friend Stephen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hackett. By the way, did you see his amazing video with the Apple Book and the real products? Oh, my God. We’ll put that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the show notes. It’s so good. Steven Buck I was upset
⏹️ ▶️ John about the part where he shoves his $300 book. All right, fine. I see what you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John for. But really, come on. It’s a $300 book. Let’s not just chuck it against the wall. You would. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would. Anyway, so, yeah, that video’s amazing. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space gray is good, but if it gets scratched or dented at all, it shows the silver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco color through, as he learned on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John his MacBook Escape.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh no, really? Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know how deep of a scratch is necessary to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make that happen, but it happened to Steven already with his MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Escape, so that could be bad. I was going
⏹️ ▶️ John to change my work order to be gray, but now that I heard that, no, I can’t have that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so anyway, though, overall, I would say it’s a good computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As for the touch bar, which I didn’t even talk about, the touch bar, I guess I’ll go into it more in the future once I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had more experience with it. So far, it seems fine. It seems kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like a sideways step. Again, there’s some pluses, there’s some minuses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll see over time how it develops. The escape key is really annoying to be up there, So I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started developing a habit of, I switched, I remapped Escape to Caps Lock.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve just been hitting, and I did that on both my iMac and my laptop, so I’ve just been training myself to hit Caps Lock instead of Escape. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best way to deal with the Escape key is to stop using it, because the new Escape zone is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine, but not great. The main problem is, when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about a key, not an area on a touch screen, but a key, you know exactly when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve hit it. You can rest your hand on it before you’re ready to hit it, and then you can push down and you know you hit it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can’t do that on the escape zone. You can’t rest your finger on it beforehand and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just trigger it. I did that a lot the first day or two I had it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t know when you’ve hit it or not or how many times you’ve hit it very reliably. So I don’t love that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So my solution there was to simply remap to Caps Lock, which is easily done with system preferences.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The trackpad is, being that huge, I do love having the big trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area. And when I went back to test to use my old MacBook Pro, one of the things that made it feel impossibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old was having this tiny little trackpad, which of course, when it came out it was huge, but it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having this old, this tiny trackpad now. I still hate the force touch trackpad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hate the way it clicks. I hate how weirdly the pressure is not quite right. I hate how it’s not 100% reliable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So instead I’ve been slowly transitioning to a tap to click wizard. If I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have my taps be only mostly reliable and not 100% reliable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d rather do it that way instead of having to feel their stupid weird click and push harder to get it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically my solution to the downsides of the Touch Bar and the Force Touch trackpad are to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco avoid using them. And the upsides of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the trackpad being so big are very welcome, and the upside of the Touch Touch Bar being this new functional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surface of weird things is basically a big we will see about that later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from me so far. But so far it seems it might be really cool. One more closing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought about this. I think looking at the specs and the pricing, to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me there’s two laptops worth getting in this lineup. The Macbook Escape and the 15 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 13 inch with Touch Bar is so expensive for what you get. It also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has, I think, the worst battery life of the three. I think if you have the need for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lower end or smaller or lower performing computer, get the MacBook Escape. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much cheaper and it has better battery life and everything else. If you want a strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco workhorse computer that has a little more power or that has the touch bar, get the 15-inch because it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much better spec’d per dollar than the 13. So to me, those are the two worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting. I don’t love the 13-inch. I tried it in the store and ran a bunch of numbers online, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t love the 13-inch with touch bar. I don’t think that product makes a ton of sense for maximizing your value.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brought to you this week by automatic.
Sponsor: Automatic (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Automatic, the small adapter that turns your clunker car into a smarter connected car. Automatic has just launched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Automatic Pro, their new unlimited 3G car adapter with no monthly fees and no subscriptions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Always on 3G lets you know where your car is parked at any time and lets you track your vehicle in case of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theft. And of course, this always on 3G with again, no monthly fee, no subscription prices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just always on 3G. Kind of like when old Kindles would have 3G, it was just built into the price and they just had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some deal, you don’t pay it per month. Anyway you can also work with If This Then That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for endless customization to connect your car to the rest of your online life. You can link it to connected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices like a Nest thermostat or an Amazon Echo. Imagine, you can actually ask the Echo, hey name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Echo where did I park my car? And it can actually tell you. And of course by having that 3G
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connection it can do even better things, even safer things. It can get human help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a crash. Automatic Pro can detect severe accidents automatically and if you are unable to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call They can call train responders for you. It’s amazing. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Automatic is normally 130 bucks, but when you use our exclusive offer code ATP, you will save $20
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off that price. So go to automatic.com slash ATP for more information,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use offer code ATP to save 20 bucks off the regular purchase price. And again, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fees per month, no subscriptions, nothing like that. It comes with 3G, and it has all these cool services,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you only pay once up front for the device. once again.
John’s new phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to automatic.com slash ATP for more information. And use offer code ATP for $20 off the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular purchase price. Thanks to Automatic for sponsoring our show. ♪ Upbeat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey music ♪ John, do you have a new phone?
⏹️ ▶️ John I do, I got a new iPhone 7. It was the one that
⏹️ ▶️ John I said I was gonna get, which was Jet Black. And I wanted to try using it without a case, and I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just didn’t try it for very long.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Define not very long.
⏹️ ▶️ John Less than 24 hours?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The little birdie told me it was less than six, but I’ll let you decide. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, look, I wanted to try it. It is grippy, and I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John never had a iOS device without a case, a small iOS device without a case, so I always thought I was gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John just give it a go. And I was willing to take the scratches and whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s two reasons I had to stop. the first, which I kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of knew about from using in the store is like when I was playing with the store, I noticed that I could feel the seams on the SIM tray
⏹️ ▶️ John and I didn’t like that, you know, goodness on the outside of it
⏹️ ▶️ John it more in real life. I could also feel the seams around the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple logo on the back and I didn’t like that either. Like it’s not, it wasn’t, you know, it’s one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John things where my fingers feel compelled to like seek out that seam or whatever. And it’s just, it was bothering
⏹️ ▶️ John me. That alone wouldn’t have done it. The real problem I eventually realized was
⏹️ ▶️ John even though I said I’m just gonna let it get scratched like I’m gonna accept the grippiness and I’ll have a smaller shape and
⏹️ ▶️ John like I’ll just I accept that it’s gonna get scratched I found myself
⏹️ ▶️ John when I was placing it down like placing it down gently
⏹️ ▶️ John like I was trying to stop myself from placing it down gently but I realized no matter how like it was a battle
⏹️ ▶️ John within myself to treat it as cavalierly as I treated my thing with a case
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. And then the final little bit of the, you know, these three things combined, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I really think putting it down gently was the thing I just could not get over. The final little bit was doesn’t lay flat because it’s got a stupid bump
⏹️ ▶️ John in the back of it. When you have a case you don’t have that problem. And I find that I very often have my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John laying down and I very often press the button and do other things with it and I don’t like the fact that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John on an angle and could potentially wobble and stuff like that. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John got a leather case for it. It’s in the leather case. It’s much happier now. I think I got into the leather case before any major scratching
⏹️ ▶️ John set in, but who knows? I’m just happy to have the other case on it. And the new leather case is way better. The buttons that poke
⏹️ ▶️ John out through the case are better than they were. The leather case is slip feels slipperier to me than the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John by itself. So it’s not like I’m putting in a case to be grippier. But as soon
⏹️ ▶️ John as I got that case on it, like just like a weight lifted off my shoulders, and I can just go back to just having my regular phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And The only other thing to speak of about this, oh, two more things. One, the home button that doesn’t move.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was on board pretty quickly with that. It is different, but I kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of like the little little little kick as opposed to the button press. Like I’m I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much on board with that. I even don’t mind it when it’s laying flat on a table. It’d be like, oh, it feels so wrong. It does feel weird
⏹️ ▶️ John and different, but I’m pretty much on board with it. Like that’s about it. I mean, that much I did eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John go down to a setting of one on that button Because I can feel it. I don’t need it to
⏹️ ▶️ John be in my face that much. I think one is fine I’m definitely a one person for the
⏹️ ▶️ John for the home button and then the final thing the headphone port which Marco had talked about like
⏹️ ▶️ John coming back to Reassert its absence when he was on the plane.
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t had that experience yet Well, maybe I will but for now the one thing that I did
⏹️ ▶️ John no review prepared me for or that you know I didn’t think about beforehand and one of the things
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t know is that well two things one I knew this but didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John realize how how I would feel about it the lightning plug
⏹️ ▶️ John is bigger than the headphone jack maybe not in volume if you do the math on it because the headphone
⏹️ ▶️ John jack is longer but it’s just bigger around the headphone port is thinner
⏹️ ▶️ John circumference wise it is is closer to the diameter of the wire than the thing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it goes in and out a little bit easier, especially on this new thing. So this feels
⏹️ ▶️ John like plugging in a bigger plug than plugging in the headphone. And the second thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John the headphone, just the little thing that comes with the EarPods, which is what I use, I use the EarPods, and on all
⏹️ ▶️ John their peripherals that have this little, you know, DAC chip in them, the lightning port on those,
⏹️ ▶️ John including the adapter, by the way, including the headphone jack adapter, the lightning port on that is fatter. the little plastic,
⏹️ ▶️ John white plastic part that the lightning metal thing pokes out of is fatter than the plain old
⏹️ ▶️ John lightning cable one. Fatter enough that you’ll notice, fatter enough that if you hold them up, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John just slightly fatter, it is fatter. So I feel like I’m plugging a big,
⏹️ ▶️ John fat, clunky thing into my phone when I connect my headphones. And that is weird to me because
⏹️ ▶️ John this is supposed to be the modern, new, getting rid of the old clunky, you know, TTR, or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell that thing is called, like the headphone jack. supposed to feel the be the archaic thing we should
⏹️ ▶️ John be going to the sleek new and I feel like I went the opposite direction I feel like I just gave up USB C for scuzzy
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what it feels like
⏹️ ▶️ John not a good feeling I mean I’ll get over it like whatever it’s fine but I didn’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ John that at all and I had to actually say is it just me but you just hold it up just grab an old lightning
⏹️ ▶️ John cable and hold it up to your your you know headphones for your iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John 7 or for the headphone adapter it’s bigger it’s bigger around I really hope they can shrink that I think that would
⏹️ ▶️ John make a big difference so I’ll get over it I really like my new phone it’s super fast the screen is really awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John looking I kind of like the new home button now I have forced touch
⏹️ ▶️ John I overall I really like the new phone especially now that have a case on it but the it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the absence of the headphone port that bothers me so much it’s the presence of the big fat lightning thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah you know I noticed the big fat lightning thing, but I couldn’t put my finger on until you said something,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it was about it that kind of bothered me. And I think it’s, it’s exactly like you said, it’s that it feels bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and clunkier than just a headphone jack, which is definitely peculiar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I gotta say, I have also come around to the force touch home button. Um, although I am a three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person, I don’t know how you could do anything less than three, but, uh, I, you know, the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day I hated it. But after about that first day, now it feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco normal. The illusion has totally worked on me. I like it way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better than any Force Touch track pad I’ve ever used. It is substantially better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yeah, it’s good. I’m with you on that. The Jet Black
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though, I’m curious, I must know, in your six hours of having it caseless,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did you get any scratches on it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was saying like I think it’s mostly scratch free. I didn’t I didn’t go like hunting I’m sure there are some because I
⏹️ ▶️ John again I was trying to like be well Just don’t put it down gently like you know the whole thing you’re on board with getting a scratch
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d stop putting it down gently so I was trying to force myself to just be like stop thinking about just treat like your
⏹️ ▶️ John old Phone so I’m sure I like Half intentionally put it down with more force than I would normally
⏹️ ▶️ John and so I’m sure there are little scratches on the corners here And there but I didn’t go hunting for them I just wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John put it into the leather case It still looks pretty good like when I polish it up before I put it in the leather case
⏹️ ▶️ John It still basically looks new, but I’m sure if I got out there And you know look at the edges exactly you’d see these little
⏹️ ▶️ John hairline things whatever. It’s fine. It’ll it’ll be fine for the The museum slash although now
⏹️ ▶️ John now that I my iPhone 6 I took it out of its case It’s its case that is destroyed again,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it looks so nice and new in there And I’m like boy. This is a nice pristine phone, and then I realized
⏹️ ▶️ John wait. I’m hanging this down to my son aren’t I? The problem with phones
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe this maybe I won’t hand him down my seven Maybe I’ll preserve that one and not to get his own
⏹️ ▶️ John phone of some kind but yeah, I’m handing my six down to my son and so That’s kind of a bummer
⏹️ ▶️ John for the you know I did buy an Otterbox case for it and hopefully that will that will help it to survive and he hasn’t destroyed
⏹️ ▶️ John the 5s that He’s using now, which is also in the Otterbox case. So I have some hope that the six will
⏹️ ▶️ John make it out alive, but we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s amazing For the record, I am also a one person just like John on the home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey button I started I think I started it to if memory serves and then and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eventually moved my way down to one It works, or at least for me anyway.
Visualizing color spaces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got a tweet from Chris Millar who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did a short video comparing different color gamuts. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is just a couple of minutes long and it is definitely worth watching and it helped me understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little better what the differences are. So we’ll put a link to this in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s pretty good stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it gives you a 3D representation of the color space and so you can just compare the size like 3D shapes like here’s how
⏹️ ▶️ John big this color gamut is and now look the shape is bigger and it’s bigger in these dimensions and so it’s nice to visualize.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the app that he’s using to do that, I think that’s like a built-in OS X app, isn’t it? Yeah. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you can watch the video and then if you have a Mac, you can open the same app and do the same thing he’s doing and explore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, exactly right.
Beat-up iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Johnny Ive, speaking of beat up iPhones, commented on beat up iPhones in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, or I guess he didn’t comment in the book because the book has no words, but somehow commented in the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the, in context of the book. In the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John link that’s in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes. Oh, there you go. Sorry, I didn’t read far enough. So yeah, so Johnny said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s Evans Hankey’s phone who manages the design studio. Isn’t it cool? She destroys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey her objects, but I thought there was something so charming about that. I thought it was lovely to put that in. We designed tools to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used and she definitely uses them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I put that quote in there because it sounds so much like he does not like that phone being in the book. Now obviously that’s silly because he
⏹️ ▶️ John controls everything that’s in that book. Like why would he ever put anything in there that he didn’t want? But
⏹️ ▶️ John I read that and you know, I said this in the past talking about Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John products like Apple with very, very few exceptions does not show its products
⏹️ ▶️ John used like worn, scratched, dented, almost all of their product shots
⏹️ ▶️ John show them in the pristine, idealized, very often 3D rendered or at the very least, you know, photoshopped
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s that’s how their products and we know in the real world like it. Apple has been doing
⏹️ ▶️ John design wise has been trying to design products that stay as close as possible to that pristine
⏹️ ▶️ John look, which is an amazing feat. And you know, sometimes they get closer than other times. Like it sounds like the Darth
⏹️ ▶️ John Vader Apple watch with the DLC coating is very close to Whereas the
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the iPod nano with a scratchy thing was very far from that and all products in between and we’ll see How the space
⏹️ ▶️ John gray? 15 inch MacBook Pro turns out but that has been the trend for many many
⏹️ ▶️ John years now and This this whole let’s see
⏹️ ▶️ John what it looks like when it’s been used Flies in the face of that and is not common and the fact that they put
⏹️ ▶️ John that in there and as far as I’m aware That’s the only beat-up thing like they didn’t show here’s what here’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John a tangerine iMac looks like I’ve just been used by a bunch of kindergarten students for five years like they didn’t show that Because
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a thing and there is a look to that and it’s not a great look But they did show the original iPhone. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so this little passage almost sounds like he is Trying to convince himself that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John such a great thing I’m sure lots of other people tried to convince them. It was awesome. I’m sure he appreciates it, but I still
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like hit if he was a magical wizard a magical industrial design wizard
⏹️ ▶️ John and he said we said that you can create products that look like like your product shots and that no matter
⏹️ ▶️ John what users do to them they stay looking that way he would say yes do that because that’s exactly what i want
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you can make everything out of adamantium or vibranium or whatever your uh marvel universe
⏹️ ▶️ John magic metal or unobtainium if you want to go with the very stupid avatar um and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they never actually changed
⏹️ ▶️ John he would take that because that’s what he wants like as expressed by every product that he’s ever made and every
⏹️ ▶️ John ad that they’ve ever been in with the exception of like that one ad that shows a macbook with a bunch of stickers on it and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe one or two other exceptions and this one thing it’s so weird to me so hearing that quote i was
⏹️ ▶️ John just like like who who is it that convinced you to put that in the book obviously Obviously you agreed to it eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John but your heart doesn’t seem in it.
Penny Arcade & Surface Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, tell me about the Penny Arcade and the Microsoft Surface Studio. This link was in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes for the last episode, but we never got a chance to talk about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is just one example of, you know, we’re talking about who would want this computer. It’s obviously not
⏹️ ▶️ John just for everybody, because most people aren’t doing like digital art on their computer. But if you’re a digital artist, maybe it’s for
⏹️ ▶️ John you. And then we talked about, well, digital artists may be set in their ways, but for other people who are more flexible or have been
⏹️ ▶️ John looking for, you know, a new approach, this is great. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John Mike from Penny Arcade has been drawing comics for many
⏹️ ▶️ John years now digitally and he’s used tablet and then he switched from a tablet to a
⏹️ ▶️ John tablet that’s basically a screen, the Cintiq where instead of just looking at your screen and drawing
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re not looking, now you’re looking down at where you’re drawing because there’s an image there. And he wrote
⏹️ ▶️ John this big blog post about it. He’s also been connected with Microsoft, like they’ve been giving him preview hardware for a while with the old surface
⏹️ ▶️ John books and the, the, the, the, you know, he’s, he’s embedded with Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John on this, but he is pretty honest about what he likes and what he doesn’t like. Um, and a
⏹️ ▶️ John couple of quotes from his post about it that we’ll put a link to in the show notes, uh, his, his business
⏹️ ▶️ John partner, uh, Jerry asked him, uh, to compare it to his Cintiq. He says, and I told him that drawing on this Cintiq
⏹️ ▶️ John now felt like drawing on a piece of dirty plexiglass hovering over a CRT monitor from 1997. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a pretty, uh, you know, Cintiq is supposed to like the gold standard of you know
⏹️ ▶️ John or at least at least these sort of mainstream I want to draw on a screen but I can’t draw on my computer
⏹️ ▶️ John screen because my computer screen is just a monitor then I’ll get a Cintiq which by the way are very expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m assuming what he’s reacting to is basically the retina resolution of the the surface studio and to
⏹️ ▶️ John him that’s more important than perhaps what a Cintiq fan might say is yeah but the Cintiq is more responsive or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the Cintiq now feels like a CRT which is And this little passage where he tries to wrap
⏹️ ▶️ John things up, he says, when I first saw the device months ago in that secret room in Microsoft, he did get a preview of this, by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John they asked me what I thought. I said, well, I have no idea if anyone else will want it, but you have made my dream computer. I recognize
⏹️ ▶️ John that not everybody wants or needs a computer that they can draw on. Some people do, though, and I will tell you that the Surface Studios without
⏹️ ▶️ John a doubt the best digital drawing experience I’ve ever tried. I spend six to 10 hours a day drawing digitally, and I
⏹️ ▶️ John have for more than a decade. The Cintiq and the Surface, these are like my tools or my instruments. I am intimately
⏹️ ▶️ John familiar and how it feels to create things on these sorts of devices and the studio honestly feels like a generational leap
⏹️ ▶️ John forward. That sounds like ad copy from Microsoft, right? But I can tell you that Mike from Penny Arcade
⏹️ ▶️ John is not one to sugarcoat things, whatever, you know, so he really likes this. He’s an example
⏹️ ▶️ John of who might like this weird thing. This is the type of person that would like this. And the people who like it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it feels like I’ve been waiting all my life for this computer. I think again, I still think he’s in the minority
⏹️ ▶️ John because I think most people who have been drawing digitally for as long as he have are kind of set in their ways and are happy with the situation
⏹️ ▶️ John they have. And they just wish they could have an incrementally better Cintiq. But if you’ve been dreaming of this,
⏹️ ▶️ John this fulfills your dreams. And I really feel his enthusiasm for this device. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what makes me think that given enough turnover in the staff
⏹️ ▶️ John of professional artists, eventually some company is going to win out by letting these people draw on a big, giant, beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, whether it’s Microsoft or not.
x86 emulation on ARM64
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there was some talk on our show last week about ARM Max
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and there’s a great article by Jason Snell on ARM Max. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing we were going to talk about really quickly is that apparently Microsoft listens to ATP because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ve announced that they’re going to enable x86 emulation on top of ARM 64.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s part of their whole on-again off-again dalliance with trying to sell
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows on ARM and the ARM, you know, Surface computers and everything that haven’t been selling as well as
⏹️ ▶️ John the Intel versions and Microsoft’s analysis seems to be it’s because
⏹️ ▶️ John people have a lot of x86 software and if you buy the ARM one you can’t run the x86 software and it’s hard for us to get everyone to recompile
⏹️ ▶️ John it. The same old problem that you always have when you change architectures only Microsoft wasn’t changing architectures they wanted to have
⏹️ ▶️ John their cake and eat it too and say could you like make your apps build
⏹️ ▶️ John them for make your you know, surface apps also for arm and exit? No, you’re not No,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know that. Okay, well, maybe if you think about it, you know, you have to do what Apple does, but just say, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to stop making 68k applications, eventually just make you know, fat binaries, but eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re just going to sell power PC computers, we don’t sell 68k max anymore. So if you keep building for 68k,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna have to keep doing that for any number of years to support your old customers, but you know that the future is power PC
⏹️ ▶️ John only right. And Microsoft didn’t do that. And I don’t see them doing that with arm. So it’s been difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ John get them on board. So their stopgap, just like Apple during the transitions as well, let’s try to emulate it. And we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about that many times in the past that arm CPUs are not so much faster
⏹️ ▶️ John than x86 or faster at all, perhaps that you get emulation, you know, not for free,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like that you can emulate it at an acceptable speed. But Microsoft’s a company company filled with a lot of smart
⏹️ ▶️ John people. And if anybody can work out and x86 on arm emulator that
⏹️ ▶️ John has acceptable performance, maybe it’s them. Now, how does this factor into Apple? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John is Microsoft going to open sources? Does the work that Microsoft does making their emulator work help Apple at all?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe not, but maybe they can prove that it can be done. Maybe they can give a data point to say if
⏹️ ▶️ John to emulate x86 on arm, how would it work? Would it be okay? Or would it be dog slow? Or you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s nice to see somebody go first. And so we will have something more than speculation, eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John to see how feasible it is to do this emulation, because it’s important for compatibility
⏹️ ▶️ John for all Microsoft’s x86 apps. And if Apple ever wants to transition, surely as
⏹️ ▶️ John it has done in the other two transitions, it will need an emulation. So it’s something to watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponsored tonight by Warby Parker.
Sponsor: Warby Parker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Head over to warbyparker.com to order your free home try-on pair of glasses today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Glasses should not cost as much as a phone. Warby Parker’s prescription eyeglasses start at just $95
⏹️ ▶️ Marco including prescription lenses. Warby Parker makes buying glasses online easy and risk-free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This sounds crazy, but they have these great tools including their wonderful Home Try-On
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Program. This allows you to order 5 pairs of glasses that get shipped directly to your door where You can try them on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the comfort of your own home and get feedback from friends, colleagues, family, whoever. And then you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try the frames on for these five days and you just send them back in a free prepaid box.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Free prepaid return label, everything else. No obligation to purchase. So you’ve spent nothing up to that point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you have no obligation to purchase. It’s 100% free. It is so easy. Anybody can do it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want to order some after that, of course they make it very easy, but you don’t have to. Warby Parker believes that glasses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be affordable enough that you can treat them like a fashion accessory. Just like bags, shoes, neckties,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hats, you can have multiple pairs if you want to. And of course, very, very affordably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker also distributes a pair of glasses to somebody in need through Worldwide Vision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Charities. They also have sunglasses starting at just $95 including polarized lenses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they also have those available with prescriptions starting at just $175. Just like eyeglasses, their sunglasses are available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through their home Tryon program. Warby Parker sunglasses feature premium polarized lenses that are scratch resistant and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco provide 100% UV protection. So go to Warby Parker dot com slash ATP today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve had Warby Parker products in our house. My wife wears glasses. She has some other glasses. I have some of those sunglasses. They are fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We highly recommend them if you can check it out. They make it so easy. So so accessible, so affordable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The home trying program is really amazing. Again, you get five pairs of glasses shipped to you for free. No obligation to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy. You try them on, keep them up to five days, send them back also for free and then decide whether to purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them after that. It’s really great. Their stuff is top-notch. Highly recommended. Check it out, go to warbyparker.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to begin your free home try-on experience today.
Farewell, AirPort routers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot, Torrey Parker, for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So speaking of people who listen to the show, apparently we’ve reminded Apple that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make Wi-Fi routers, or they did anyway, because now they don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was Marco who did that, right? Wasn’t Marco who said they should just discontinue the routers? And I said, shh, they’ll hear you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t even arguing they should discontinue, but we were talking, and it was literally like last week or the one before that, saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they exit the monitor business, and one One of the arguments was that, well, they don’t need to focus on monitors. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said, well, look, they still make Wi-Fi routers, and some of them even have hard drives in them. Obviously, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in businesses that are less glorious, but they stay in these supporting roles for the rest of their product line.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the airport routers really support the Mac and the various
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iDevices in this supporting role. The time capsule ones, in particular, are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very useful appliances to get people who otherwise probably wouldn’t back up to a drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a time machine drive or to have any backup whatsoever who don’t who don’t listen to our backblaze sponsorships
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or we can’t use it for whatever reason maybe they have really crappy internet connection so like that those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are now major roles that are going now unserved that being said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple routers were never as far as I could tell they were never that popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you know the the idea of every other router being not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good enough but like 10 times cheaper that has been the case for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time now like cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John and better usually like better in terms of Wi-Fi signal like I don’t think Apple has ever had
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe the very first one but I don’t think Apple has ever had a Wi-Fi router whose Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ John performance in terms of range and throughput has been you know
⏹️ ▶️ John the tops they just they just have never done that but I will say you know as a fan of Apple’s Wi-Fi routers.
⏹️ ▶️ John One thing in my experience that Apple has done with its Wi-Fi products is that they have been
⏹️ ▶️ John in my experience at the top of the consumer brands in terms of reliability like they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t reboot, they don’t flake out. My experience with them has been very, very solid. So I always felt
⏹️ ▶️ John comfortable spending the ridiculous amount of money for these things, uh, both for
⏹️ ▶️ John the integration reasons, because there is actually a surprising amount of crap integrated with them. You mentioned time machine, but there’s also
⏹️ ▶️ John the bonjour sleep wake thing and the little app that comes with your Mac and iOS devices
⏹️ ▶️ John to control them like there are you know Apple specific technologies
⏹️ ▶️ John and nice integration with the Apple ecosystem that goes along with them and they were just always dead reliable for me. I
⏹️ ▶️ John was willing to accept the crappy Wi-Fi performance for those two things because there’s nothing worse
⏹️ ▶️ John than being in a house with flaky Wi-Fi right yeah first world problems but uh but But
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they fit into the old Apple model of
⏹️ ▶️ John giving you a product that may not be the best but integrates with the Apple ecosystem and we charge you through the nose
⏹️ ▶️ John for it and it’s actually pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but unfortunately, I don’t think it’s ever been a large business.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the thing is, as you get further away from the devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you get in these supporting roles, whether you’re using an Apple product or not matters a lot less.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So a monitor, that matters somewhat, not as much as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might think, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it matters— Matthew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Trenton Unless you’re John. Steven Looter Unless you’re John, but if you’re anybody else, the monitor you’re using, the brand of the monitor, whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it matches your computer or not, or whether it’s an official Apple monitor or not, for the most part, it doesn’t affect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your experience that badly if it’s not. There’s a few things that don’t work quite right or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have as nice of an experience as they could, integrations that might not work for you, like brightness control on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the keyboard, stuff like that. But for the most part, it’s mostly fine. With
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your Wi-Fi router, if that’s not being made by Apple, for the most part, you won’t even notice until you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John go to change something.
⏹️ ▶️ John So same people who are cranky about monitors like me. I had this experience recently because a lot of people,
⏹️ ▶️ John after this announcement, have been like, oh, great, well, I got to shop for a bunch of Wi-Fi things. What should I get? And
⏹️ ▶️ John people have been throwing around links to lots of different things. of the ones that was shown to be like, Oh, this has the best performance
⏹️ ▶️ John by like 5%. You should get this one. I forget what it was. It was like a net gear
⏹️ ▶️ John or B or something like that. Anyway, I’m like, okay, well look at these benchmarks. Then I go look at the product and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Nope, sorry, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like I can’t have three of those sitting around in open spaces in my house because from from wifi
⏹️ ▶️ John that is in multiple places like to get whole house coverage, you know, then it’s not just one like in the computer room
⏹️ ▶️ John or or whatever, there’s one in my hall, there’s one in my bedroom, and there’s one in
⏹️ ▶️ John the computer room. And I want them to be small, unobtrusive, and reasonable looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John And these, knit gear, whatever the thing, they were tall, ugly,
⏹️ ▶️ John looked computery, and I didn’t want them in my house. And so, it’s not to say the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ones are great, because the stupid Apple tower thingy is also big and ugly, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still shopping based on how these things will look. Like this is one of the reasons that the euros have stayed in my
⏹️ ▶️ John house is that they are small and generally unobtrusive. If they were
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger and uglier, I would have a harder time, you know, like I like this is this is a shopping criteria.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it is. I mean, the Apple Airport Express was also small and unobtrusive,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was so crappy that you wouldn’t want. So Apple, Apple has gotten itself out of this business by
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, in Mac Pro style by not updating their products for three years and never having them be particularly good.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like we’re getting out of the wife of is so many people replied you’ve been out of the wi-fi business for so
⏹️ ▶️ John like in case you haven’t noticed everyone else has been doing these mesh networks and you just have been selling this crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John overpriced thing for three years so some some people might say good riddance but my my
⏹️ ▶️ John reaction to it was to tweet apple out of everywhere which is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a reference to the usa
⏹️ ▶️ John out of everywhere which is not that i’m endorsing this it was a snark
⏹️ ▶️ John because that kind of seems on the same on the decontent front the idea like that that Apple should get
⏹️ ▶️ John out of every single business that is not the iPhone and that is not a potentially multi-billion dollar thing. Like stop
⏹️ ▶️ John selling everything. Stop selling, you know, stop selling USB cables.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stop selling lightning cables. Stop selling power adapters. Just stop selling everything. Like, you know, the bean
⏹️ ▶️ John counter kind of philosophy of just isolationist, concentrate everything on the iPhone, get out of all these
⏹️ ▶️ John other businesses. And we kind of feel like we’re in this contraction
⏹️ ▶️ John period right now where they are getting out of other businesses. I keep bringing this up from past shows. They got out of the printer
⏹️ ▶️ John business, and at the time that was a pretty big deal because Apple’s printers were similar to
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s wifi routers. There were some really good ones in the beginning. The Apple laser routers were actually pretty cool,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the very early ones. There weren’t really any competitive products that were as cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John They had a good integration with Apple’s products, better than third party things. Eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the bad days, when they were just taking Canon inkjet things and wrapping them up with
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple outsides, they at least look nicer than traditional printers, but they were all pretty crappy. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when Apple stopped making them, people were kind of like, all right, well, your printers were expensive anyway, and they were barely
⏹️ ▶️ John yours, and you should get out of it. But the thing you were talking about, like now that Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John out of it, you can look at the better alternatives. How’s that turned out for printers? Not too well. If you look at printers right now,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re all pretty crappy, they’re all pretty ugly. And if there was an Apple one, the same
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid rich people who’d be tempted buy overpriced crappy Apple routers because they look nice and are reliable
⏹️ ▶️ John would also be tempted to buy stupid overpriced crappy Apple printers in the more of the laser writer vein than
⏹️ ▶️ John the style writer vein, right? That problem, like the ecosystem problem, has been what a lot of people are reacting
⏹️ ▶️ John to. We have a couple of random quotes from listeners here. Maxim says, all these products working
⏹️ ▶️ John together seamlessly created value. Apple is killing its own ecosystem. This is Alex says,
⏹️ ▶️ John there goes the only official way of having a wireless time machine backup, which is not strictly true because Apple had recently has recently
⏹️ ▶️ John published the Apple’s time machine over SMB spec and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. And as we all know
⏹️ ▶️ John from using Synology, it is possible to have a third party product that reliably backs up over time machine. But
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people want to just have the ease of saying, I don’t want to shop around to figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out what things are going to work or whatever. If I just buy all Apple stuff, everything will work together and be nice looking and pleasant
⏹️ ▶️ John if I just give them a lot of money. And as they remove pieces of that and say, well, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ John that adapter you got to buy from Belkin and printer you got to buy from somebody else and they still all suck and wireless adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John You got a Wi-Fi thing. You’re probably going to get it from your ISP, so you’re not going to buy one anyway. But if you do buy one,
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, go to Wirecutter and find out what the good one is and yeah, it’ll be ugly and it might be weird and it won’t work with all
⏹️ ▶️ John our stuff, but you’ll be fine. And it is a contracting of the ecosystem
⏹️ ▶️ John to the most essential elements, which is good in that it focuses Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John but as Dan Moore at Six Colors said, this is quoting him, it’s not as if the iPad or most of the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac line has seen an update recently either. So what exactly is the company working on? Like, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna, like, the idea of focus is, stop doing that all extraneous stuff so you can concentrate all your awesome effort
⏹️ ▶️ John on the things that you care about. And it could be with just a time lag. They are doing that, we just don’t see the fruits of
⏹️ ▶️ John that focus yet. So I hope there are fruits of this focus that come out of it, but in the meantime, we just get the pain of
⏹️ ▶️ John this focus, which is, now I got shop in the nasty
⏹️ ▶️ John shiny black plastic world of non-apple peripherals for yet more things that I
⏹️ ▶️ John used to be able to just throw money at Apple to give me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, the struggle is real. All right, is there any way we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can avoid talking about the Nintendo Switch.
The Reverse Halo Effect
⏹️ ▶️ John We could because we’re an hour and a half into this, but I don’t know if we can squeeze it in. No one wants to talk about Brent Simmons reverse
⏹️ ▶️ John halo effect? Because I think there’s more to say about this Wi-Fi thing and the decontent.
⏹️ ▶️ John Margo, do you think you can summarize the reverse halo effect?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, the halo effect is when you make the whole ecosystem, as people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get into parts of it, it’s kind of easier to get into the rest of it. Like back in the day when you buy an iPod,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then maybe, you know, maybe your next computer you might buy a Mac because you were so impressed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the iPod, you’re like, well, maybe Apple’s computers are pretty good too, and same thing with the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, Brent Simmons wrote this post called The Reverse Halo Effect, basically saying as Apple gets out of various
⏹️ ▶️ Marco businesses like monitors and Wi-Fi routers and everything, people who are in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple ecosystem, who used to just throw money at Apple to just solve problems because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things were pretty good for the most part when you did that, once you start looking outside of Apple for some of these key
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, maybe you’ll start looking outside of Apple more for more needs and realize, wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a minute, if I can stop paying $300 for Apple’s fancy routers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I can start getting a really nice router for like 70 bucks, maybe I could also get really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice cables from Monoprice and hey, what about that PC monitor that costs basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing? And then eventually you’re buying Android phones and PCs. Wait, are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you saying there are books that cost less than $300? Only
⏹️ ▶️ John ones, not a big one like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cut down model, literally. Yeah, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s something to this, to Brent’s reverse halo effect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how strong it will be. I’m more concerned about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I can summarize, again, this is kind of like a big feeling like last time where I’m going to try to put this into words.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve had to try to figure out context and meaning for a lot of Apple decisions recently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that one of the interpretations of them is Apple might be getting a little too nickel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and dimey or a little too, maybe not greedy, but just like making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decisions that are better for money than for their products and for their customers. There have been so many decisions recently where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is one of the explanations. And the other explanation is, well, we can try to figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out why things like the headphone Jack got removed from the seven and stuff like that. In the last few years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like the rate at which we have to make that interpretation, because Apple doesn’t really provide it or provides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a weak explanation, it seems like we keep having to make those excuses more and more with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each new product change or product end or product neglect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are making a lot of excuses for Apple recently. We are having to interpret lots of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charitably. In the same vein of like where there’s smoke, there’s fire,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are having to explain away decisions Apple’s making as just being by bean counter management
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or just being for nickel and diming a little too often recently. And that has me worried,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a lot of cracks showing in the foundation. Like maybe there’s a bigger picture thing here that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re all afraid to not only say, but to even consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until maybe it’s too late.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, the weird thing about the nickel and diming thing is like, it’s such an obvious explanation for things like
⏹️ ▶️ John removing the little wings. And you know, the other obvious explanations are our research shows that nobody uses those wings and they often
⏹️ ▶️ John break off and it’s simpler to not have them and simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and yada yada yada. But
⏹️ ▶️ John what the other aspect of this that is weird to me, that makes me
⏹️ ▶️ John pull away from the nickel and diming angle, although that totally is there. I know there I know for a fact that there
⏹️ ▶️ John are factions inside Apple related to hardware and product design, they will always argue for saving
⏹️ ▶️ John money if possible, because they’re going to make a lot of these widgets as well there has to be right. But if you look at Apple spending
⏹️ ▶️ John on R&D in recent years, it is gone up hugely. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ John when I look at these things, I think they’re willing to spend vast amounts of money
⏹️ ▶️ John to realize the design vision of their products in terms of like, even just the new MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John pros. But yeah, they’re just unibody aluminum, just like everything else. Surely they’ve already mastered that process. And there’s nothing new about this one. Nope,
⏹️ ▶️ John nope, I’m sure these machines have, you know, they probably have new processes and new
⏹️ ▶️ John machines. And even if it’s just like the part binning to exactly match up the little inside Apple logo, which they’ve done on the phones
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything like just doing that at scale and larger things like every product they make, they seem to be willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to put such huge amounts of money into like, I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care if we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to invent new machine or buy a company that sells this thing or do just
⏹️ ▶️ John huge, huge amounts initial investment in to make this perfectly designed product.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yet on the other side of it, we’re like, if you’re willing to ramp up your R&D spending, it really has gone up. If you look at like
⏹️ ▶️ John a Simcoe charts, recently, it’s it is it is not just like a 5% increase over the past few years.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is just like a 45 degree angle slope like it is. They’re spending so much more money. And a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of that’s like, oh, that’s all project Titan in the car or whatever. I’m not sure what they’re spending on maybe some of it is that
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think they really are investing a lot of money even in things like
⏹️ ▶️ John just the Mac like the little old Mac and what it takes to manufacture the Mac to you know
⏹️ ▶️ John to satisfy the vision and then they’re also removing the little wings and the little rubbery thing from the
⏹️ ▶️ John adapter it makes me think that those removals
⏹️ ▶️ John are more explained by someone’s wrong-headed in my opinion idea of you know simplicity
⏹️ ▶️ John We need to just reduce stuff. Everything needs to be simpler. You shouldn’t have little lights
⏹️ ▶️ John on the adapter that is orange when it’s charging and green when it’s done because that’s just one more thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and you should find out that information another way. I don’t want to have a little light up buttons on the bottom to tell you battery charge because
⏹️ ▶️ John that would take up room in the case and it’s just, you know, like, it’s the computer equivalent of omit needless
⏹️ ▶️ John words. Like, do you really need those little wings? No, get rid of them. Do you really need that little clip? People find
⏹️ ▶️ John it annoying. They don’t know what it’s for. No, get rid of it. simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. And that looks just like
⏹️ ▶️ John that little rubber widget thing cost point 001 cents digit, right? It looks the same from the
⏹️ ▶️ John outside. And, and like I said, I know there are factions inside Apple that do want
⏹️ ▶️ John to argue for cheaping out on things just because it saves a little bit of extra money. And it’s so hard from the
⏹️ ▶️ John outside to say, what is actually happening? On the one hand, we know for a fact that Apple spending way
⏹️ ▶️ John more on R&D than they used to. On the other hand, we know for a fact that they’re canceling product lines
⏹️ ▶️ John and removing features and you know things that we know cost money every
⏹️ ▶️ John extra thing that you you know including that stupid power cable with the with the plug cost more money
⏹️ ▶️ John than not including it fact right did they you know removing the little wings and not removing it
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say that that costs more money to have them because it’s another part that they have to deal with right the little rubber
⏹️ ▶️ John widget II thing is there really no little rubbery thing on it Marco like they got rid of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just It’s just like a regular like iOS lightning cable. There’s just a plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on both ends and a wire in the middle. Oh, that’s right, it just plugs in this,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. Like that little rubbery thing, it costs more money than to not have it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so you can ascribe all of these things to money and yet it makes much more sense for me that it
⏹️ ▶️ John is a wrong-headed attempt at simplicity or a slut, you know, our opinion, like they’ve gone too
⏹️ ▶️ John far or they haven’t gone far enough. If you want that simplicity, then let me charge wirelessly. That’s the ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ John simplicity. If you’re going to give me a wire, give me a place to wrap it in a little rubbery thing or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s the problem and not so much as the bean counters are winning, but
⏹️ ▶️ John apples the black hole, we have no idea what’s really going on. So we just have to speculate and it’s easy to get angry. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just decide one day, you know what? It’s the bean counters. I hate them. They’re decontent thing. I’ve got goosenecks in my trunk,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And the other day is you might be like, no, actually they’re spending tons of money. They’re just spending it on frivolous
⏹️ ▶️ John crap that I don’t care that much about when I really wish they would just give me a cable with my power adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, and the Wi Fi things. Again, it’s a decision that happens in the context of all the other
⏹️ ▶️ John things we’re upset about. And you know, if you neglect your product for three years, people
⏹️ ▶️ John shed fewer tears when you cancel it. Because it’s gonna happen with the Mac Pro two, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John If their their wireless routers were the top of their game, and everybody loved them, and they canceled it, we’d be much sadder than
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, you know, I haven’t liked their there are those routers either like the worst thing about is
⏹️ ▶️ John like some people like I have an airport and I’ve been using it for 10 years and they go Oh, well, I guess that really isn’t a good business
⏹️ ▶️ John to be in if I buy one of your things and then use it for 10 years, right? So totally makes sense for them to get out
⏹️ ▶️ John of this business. But what Dan Morin said still sticks with me is like, if this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a two phase operation in turning the giant, you know, ship that is Apple, step one, get
⏹️ ▶️ John out of businesses you don’t need to be in. And step two, redirect all that energy and money to the products
⏹️ ▶️ John you care about. We’re now experiencing the get out of the business that you don’t want to be in part.
⏹️ ▶️ John When do we get the part where all those all that effort and money and time and people
⏹️ ▶️ John results in the products that Apple supposedly does care about getting much more attention because now it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like we’re in the worst of all worlds like the ancillary products are getting neglected or canceled and the
⏹️ ▶️ John the main products are not getting substantially more attention.
⏹️ ▶️ John It seems like when they used to the Mac still seems a little bit neglected and the iPhone on an iOS devices, they’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John the same amount they always did yearly updates, everything’s good there, right? I don’t see them getting fantastically more attention.
⏹️ ▶️ John So where is this personnel money and resources going to, you know, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll find out over the next few years if they come out with like a hoverboard or amazing AR thing or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But on the other thing, specifically on the Wi Fi thing, like maybe they all those people got put on to the
⏹️ ▶️ John apples answer to the Google Home or Amazon Echo, that would be nice. I hope they do do that if the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s gonna make that product. And it’s not just like part of the Apple TV team, that
⏹️ ▶️ John would be good to take this team who are making the Wi Fi routers and redirect them to that because I think that is a better product for Apple than just
⏹️ ▶️ John a simple Wi Fi router. But of course, Apple won’t tell us. So we just have to wonder.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, it was funny for me to watch the reactions to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this report of Apple ditching the airport routers, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know which one of us and I may be guilty of this as well, which which one of us has said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, Apple should focus. But I’ve heard that a lot. And then a lot of people seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be very upset about Oh, Apple shouldn’t be killing this product. And it’s like, Wow,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can we pick one? Can we as can we as a group pick
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, but focus means you get more of something else in exchange for the thing you’re removing. They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the removing, but not doing okay, now like, you know, again, it could be separated by time, we have to wait
⏹️ ▶️ John for those resources to be, you know, so on and so forth. But that’s what people when they mean focus, what they really mean is
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that I keep waiting for that I’m not getting, give me that thing. And if you need to sacrifice other things to do it fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what they’re getting is just seeing the sacrifice part like but no, no, you don’t understand my important demand was,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, update the Mac Mini or, you know, give me an even bigger iPad with,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, stylus or like whatever, whatever thing is that you’re waiting for. That’s what you want. And what you’re saying with
⏹️ ▶️ John the focus is stop doing insert thing that I don’t care about and start doing the thing I care about
⏹️ ▶️ John and instead they’re doing stop doing the thing that I don’t care about and then do nothing else different.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re right and again you just have to be patient.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah I agree with you and I’m not saying that anyone is wrong to have kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of both opinions because they both do make sense. My gut feeling is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that Apple is just pulling out of the things that they just don’t really care about very much, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like you said. And, and we will see some sort of marked improvement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in other areas in the future. But in terms of the, the routers specifically,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not personally shedding a tear about this. I was using an airport express, an old one, in fact, one of the, one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like pancake looking ones, I was using one of those until a Eros sent us some Eros.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I mean, they didn’t sponsor this episode, but I really liked my Eros. They work really well and and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and I’ve stuck with them despite Expecting to just plug them in for a week or two and then and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey disconnect them So and they’re not the only option either. I mean Marco’s talked in the past about ubiquity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s there’s plenty of other options, too I Don’t think it’s unreasonable for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get out of this business I don’t think it’s core to what they really want what they really want to be and what they really want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do but I also simultaneously do understand Brent’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point that, hey, if they just killed half the ecosystem and the ecosystem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is now only defined as computers and, well, desktop computers, portable computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and hyper-portable computers, that’s not much of an ecosystem anymore. So it’s a very double-edged sword. I’m not sure what the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right balance is, but so far I’m going on faith that the balance is okay. What do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m mostly with you. I mean, you know, So yeah, the whole idea of demanding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco focus and everything, there’s a huge disconnect here between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much these things cost to focus on or to invest in versus not invest in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there was a massive staff still working on the router division, which hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco released a router in three years at least. And the last one was even a fairly a minor update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, like I’m pretty sure that was not that was not like a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drain on the company compared to something like the car. You know, this is a very different level of investment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and focus. So to say like, oh, well, you guys complain when they break the Mac, but then you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want them to keep making routers and monitors like yeah that the routers and monitors division is really a lot smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the Mac division. It’s you know they’re spending money on lots of other things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know and as as they as Jason and Mike talked about an upgrade this week. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still making iPods, multiple models of iPods. Someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still buying them, but do you think the iPod business is really that much healthier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than monitors and AirPort Extremes combined? It probably is healthier, but by how much?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They still do that. They’re still happy to sell those. I honestly don’t know why, and as I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before, if they could get rid of the iPod business, they could get rid of a lot of iTunes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which would help iTunes be less terrible. So there’s even reasons why they should get rid of that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re still doing that because it’s still making money, I guess. So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their decisions on what to continue to support and what to prioritize and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what products should ship and what products never see the light of day, it’s hard for us to judge because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re not in there. We don’t know everything they’re doing. We don’t know the decisions they make and why they make them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the data they have, and what they base their decisions on. We don’t know any of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re trying to kill the iPod, aren’t you? You talked about the…
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s not like they’re making a lot of money
⏹️ ▶️ John with Wi-Fi routers. Now you’re like, I don’t understand why they’re still… Well, I guess that means everybody, as you’re listening
⏹️ ▶️ John to this, wait about a week, and then Apple will announce that it’s no longer making the iPod. Thanks a lot, Margot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, they’re going to go through one more holiday season with the iPod.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They’re not going to kill it. You hear it is. They’re not going to kill it the week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after Black Friday.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Honestly, I think one of the things, although a lot of people when they saw the airport
⏹️ ▶️ John thing canceled, they said like, well, I guess the iPod Touch is not long for this world. Like, honestly, one of the things that I think is keeping the iPod
⏹️ ▶️ John around is the fact that it’s called iPod and that name has such resonance with Apple. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s the same
⏹️ ▶️ John reason they keep calling these computers iMacs now that they’re, you know, have barely anything in common with the original
⏹️ ▶️ John candy color thing. But as I think about the ecosystem argument and the reverse halo effect
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like I feel like in this case it’s also slightly tied up
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Mac being de-emphasized, you know, from the perspective of
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac enthusiasts because the iOS side of things, they have an ecosystem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple makes iOS devices, it updates them regularly, they make battery cases, they make front cases, they
⏹️ ▶️ John make back cases for them, they make, you know, styluses, they make keyboards, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John ecosystem, if you were to buy an iOS device, Apple will sell you almost everything that
⏹️ ▶️ John you can use, they’ll sell you a watch that you can use with your iOS device. They will sell
⏹️ ▶️ John you all sorts of things. They’re in businesses in the iOS side that we didn’t think they would ever
⏹️ ▶️ John get into. There is an iOS device ecosystem. And yes, Apple ones are usually not not the best
⏹️ ▶️ John ones and are more expensive. But if you just want to go all Apple, you know, as the joke and many
⏹️ ▶️ John people made, they’re also in the dongle ecosystem. If you just want to go all Apple for the most part you can just go lay down a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John hundred bucks and get a lot of white dongles except for the ones that Belkin makes but anyway iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John seems to be treated now like the Mac used to like they’re making the equivalent of printers for
⏹️ ▶️ John for the iOS devices there they will make every accessory that you could reasonably hope to have with
⏹️ ▶️ John an iOS they bought a headphone company so you could plug your headphones into your iOS device and have pants like
⏹️ ▶️ John that ecosystem is healthy it’s just because we’re over here on the Mac side. And for whatever reason, we
⏹️ ▶️ John adopt the Wi-Fi things as part of the Mac ecosystem because they existed before, you know, any of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Iowa stuff existed, right? Uh, and certainly the monitors are a Mac thing and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. It feels like the Mac side is having its ecosystem decontented
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. And but the Iowa side, I mean, it’s holding steady. It’s not like they’re expanding. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like we see the Apple hub device based on Iowa’s quite yet. Um, but that’s why I feel like this, this
⏹️ ▶️ John decision almost feels like another stab at the Mac ecosystem and not so much as the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ecosystem. It really it’s really telling when we talk about the Apple ecosystem, the reverse halo effect or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Apple ecosystem is not the Mac ecosystem. It hasn’t been for a long time for certain people, people of a certain age,
⏹️ ▶️ John as they say in France, uh, the Apple ecosystem is synonymous with the Mac ecosystem,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though the numbers have not supported that for, you know, years and years and years. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s that’s one reason that I think a lot of the same people who are upset about neglecting
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac and not making monitors are also upset about the Wi-Fi things. In fact, a lot of people said to me, I wasn’t really that
⏹️ ▶️ John upset about monitors, but this this airport thing has really hit me hard. You know, I think people are losing sleep over the
⏹️ ▶️ John airport things as well, even though this is a three year old crappy product. Yeah, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’re just gonna have to take our lumps in this one and hope that all this redirected
⏹️ ▶️ John effort doesn’t get funneled into like new colors of battery cases for iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John devices, because that’s not the ecosystem we want to see this effort redirected in her. At least I don’t anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And something too, it’s like I, I don’t really have strong thoughts on the routers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being discontinued and I don’t really have strong thoughts on the weird new product photography book they launched.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just I do as I said earlier, like I do worry about the the overall picture here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does this indicate a trend going the wrong way. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are seeing—again, we’re seeing so many things that just seem like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have to really interpret them charitably in order to avoid the conclusion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that things are going in a direction that might not be good for us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or that might not be good for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, don’t worry. If you think about it, the soon-to-be prior
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Airport Express was kind of a cylindrical, towery-looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, right? And that looks almost like a trashcan Mac Pro, so therefore you’re clear to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new Mac Pros any second now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Warby Parker, Pingdom, and Automatic. And we will We’ll see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do any research,
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at
⏹️ ▶️ John atp.fm, And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental, check podcast so long
Post-show: The Grand Tour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you guys both watch Grand Tour?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I posted a, I don’t know if I’d call it a review, but I guess it was a review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the first episode on my website. It is possible that by the time this episode is released
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the second episode will be out. But in summary, there were things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t like, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, but by and large, I thought it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was freaking great and I loved it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I also I was very pleased with it. I Did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think some parts like some of the in-studio bits. I thought dragged on a little long Mm-hmm,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I I do kind of like are we are we gonna do a spoiler honk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something? Are we are we spoiling this?
⏹️ ▶️ John boiling it. It’s just just grand tour. Come on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s it’s going to be spoiled So if you haven’t seen it at this point, at the very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least, if you haven’t seen the first five or so minutes, at least watch that much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then come back to the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So anyway, a big spoiler honk. The whole bit in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the middle with like the celebrities, I kind of that did go on very long, but and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was really cheesy. But I do kind of think like, I mean, I’ll be honest, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never been as big of a Top Gear fan as you, Casey. and every single time they would sit down and do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the celebrity interview, I would skip that entire section. I would just fast forward over it until I got to the end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then go back to the fun segment where they’re back in the cars doing stuff. I never cared about the celebrity interviews at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if their cheesy little thing that they did here, which kind of indicated that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might be killing off this segment, I consider that a feature. That’s great. I’m looking forward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that. I do also, before we get into anything else about the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve seen a number of people over the last few days ask me about my slash our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support of a show that features Jeremy Clarkson, who has done things that are, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controversial and in many ways offensive. And how can we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that point of view where we enjoy and support the show he’s on while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being anti-Donald Trump, for instance, because he has made comments in the past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I believe were slightly racist. I honestly am not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco familiar with whatever the controversies around him have been, besides the more recent thing where he beat up somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about a steak or something. But I will say my opinion of the general answer to this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not want Jeremy Clarkson being the president of my country.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But it’s totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasonable to, in my opinion, to enjoy his television show. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is my answer to that is that I have very different standards for the president of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my country and a television host and those used to be separate jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, I completely agree. And moreover, I think whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we hear this sort of angst, nine times out of ten, it’s coming from someone who lives in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UK. And from what I can gather, Clarkson
⏹️ ▶️ Casey invades the UK popular media in a way that he does not in the United
⏹️ ▶️ Casey States. And the only exposure that the three of us, I’m speaking for you, but the only exposure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the three of us really have to Clarkson is either Top Gear in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past or Grand Tour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we don’t see any of this stuff that makes the media in the UK, that makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone just viscerally hate him. We don’t get to see any of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And because of that, I don’t think he bothers us in a way he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very deeply bothers a lot of the UK. But coming back to the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was really good. I couldn’t agree more. I thought the parts in the studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were pretty rough. I thought that the celebrity thing, I agree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with you that the start of Reasonably Priced Car was never my favorite segment and oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was really hard to watch. in a similar vein because it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was somebody from the UK that I didn’t have the faintest idea who it was. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would not shed tears if starting reasonably priced car went away. I mean, obviously would have a different name.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyhow, I thought the the shtick about the Air Force
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was not very funny at all in the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the celebrity thing was not very funny at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the time this episode is out, I doubt that the latest analog will be out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I will put a link in the show notes that will be broken until that episode is released.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, Mike and I spoke about this on analog at the end of that episode, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike thought both of those were hilarious. And what he had said to me, which was the same theory I had was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe it’s just some like British humor thing that he’s wired for in that we’re not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I did not find those segments funny at
⏹️ ▶️ John he just has a bad sense of humor. That wasn’t funny. Like there’s no, there’s no planet.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no country. There’s no anywhere where that like, I mean, it’s not, it wasn’t like the most painful thing in the world, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t land. Like it was ill-advised. It was not a good concept. It was not executed well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just, it was, it was all sorts of wrong. It should not have, no, just
⏹️ ▶️ John no. I mean, like, I mean, to give you another example, the shooting of celebrities also
⏹️ ▶️ John probably ill-advised, but at least their execution was slightly better. like they tried to redeem with execution
⏹️ ▶️ John whereas the air force stuff like bad idea also bad execution also you’re a bad person and should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John also both segments were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like about 50 percent longer than they should have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s part of the badness it’s like it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just you know it’s like the snl sketch where it’s not working it’s like well we got to play this thing out right and
⏹️ ▶️ John they could have fixed it in editing but like we all know when we’re watching it no nope it’s not just
⏹️ ▶️ John like by the time clarks comes out with the little trickle of blood in his face like this is the guy who just punched someone in the
⏹️ ▶️ John face and got fired from his job and this is this is where you’re going to go with this joke that he’s in a fistfight with the audience.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, yeah, no, no good. I by contrast, however, I thought the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey opening three or four minutes were perfect, just fricking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect from the first frame until they jumped out of the cars at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the at the what was a burning van. I thought that entire segment was just perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was Clarkson leaving the BBC headquarters, I believe it was anyway, when it was rainy and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dreary because, well, London. And then he goes to Heathrow, gets on a plane to LAX. He
⏹️ ▶️ Casey comes out of Los Angeles and there’s a little bit of a piano riff going and it’s kind of sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then he finds himself this bespoke Mustang and he pulls out and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then you realize it’s—I forget the name of the song, but it’s about sunshiny days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what’s the name of the song?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t remember which song we played.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, something about it’s a bright, sunshiny day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly. It doesn’t matter. I figured John would know. But the point being, you can hear the lyrics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about yes, I can see clearly now the rain is gone, and then Clarkson goes driving into the desert by himself in this blue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mustang, and then suddenly he looks to his left and he looks to his right and you just see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe he was acting. Who knows? Because clearly he knew this was going to happen, but he just genuinely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems so happy. And he looks over at May and he looks over at Hammond
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all three of them look so happy in their red, white and blue Mustangs, which I’m going to take as an American reference, even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am well aware that the Union Jack has the same colors. And they drive into this desert where these Mustangs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can run free just like the horses do. And they drive up to Burning Van
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the first words that are really said are them making fun of each other for getting fired from everything. I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought the whole opening was perfect. And perhaps more importantly, john,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you finally had your moment. You finally had those three cars together. What did you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I have I have some complaints about
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we do that, I just want to give a slightly different take on the opening. Like, okay, I know what they were going for
⏹️ ▶️ John in the opening. And they were, they were not patting themselves on
⏹️ ▶️ John the back too much, but by the same token, there was a little bit of
⏹️ ▶️ John a tone as if they were wronged or Jeremy
⏹️ ▶️ John was wronged somehow. And that he
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey can see that I was wronged
⏹️ ▶️ John and must and is forced to set out on his own and find a new happiness.
⏹️ ▶️ John And he was not wronged. He was in the wrong and did not seem particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John remorseful about it. Like the tone was, we had a bad thing happen to us,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we’re going to pick ourselves up by our bootstrap and come back, which is a good story, but
⏹️ ▶️ John not what actually happened. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And I think- John, don’t ruin this for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. I don’t want to go too far. I’m not going to belabor. But anyway, and I think they’re in a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John position because what they want to be doing is still doing Top Gear. Right? That’s what they
⏹️ ▶️ John would like to be doing, but they’re not. They’ve got to do this other thing. And so, and they acknowledge that. like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know they do all the jokes about like if they have segments and they have you know like all the things from Top Gear that they
⏹️ ▶️ John can have without using the names maybe with a slight twist they don’t like try
⏹️ ▶️ John to play it off as like we just happen to be doing these things that are a lot like Top Gear like they have to acknowledge
⏹️ ▶️ John it but but it’s difficult to difficult to find what is this new show
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s not just like Top Gear but not Top Gear but slightly worse probably in a couple ways but maybe better
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you too so I it’s a difficult tightrope there now as for the
⏹️ ▶️ John segments that I actually care about on the show which is them doing car stuff they did get the three cars
⏹️ ▶️ John there and I was ready to tear my hair out watching the three of them try to get those cars
⏹️ ▶️ John off the line to do a drag race
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I know it was a bit
⏹️ ▶️ John right but like I don’t want to see you hamfisted people pretending
⏹️ ▶️ John to be hamfisted or really be I I think they probably really were hamfisted a lot of the cases but
⏹️ ▶️ John some of them obviously, you know, they’re doing it on purpose. I want to know how you know how the cars
⏹️ ▶️ John go and they do they have their driver and it did with them around the track and they eventually kind of redeemed it but like
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this car everything about this car test segment
⏹️ ▶️ John was not up to the best of Top Gear. Either the best of single host reviews because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve enjoyed a lot of single host reviews when that you know one one person just tries out the car and talks about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or the best multi-host things, the camera shots, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it didn’t look like Top Gear exactly. It looked good, it wasn’t bad, but Top Gear had set such a high bar
⏹️ ▶️ John for these beautifully shot, moody, rainy, misty things with an overarching
⏹️ ▶️ John theme. I feel like a good Top Gear car thing is like my OS X reviews where you try to weave a
⏹️ ▶️ John story throughout a thing that doesn’t inherently have a story, even if just the story is the story of your opinion of this car
⏹️ ▶️ John right it it’s a high bar I don’t think they like they met it with this and I was
⏹️ ▶️ John annoyed by their shenanigans when really they should have been getting on
⏹️ ▶️ John with the car parts of it and also not that I’m annoyed by but I have slight
⏹️ ▶️ John disagreement with their like their leveling decisions oh we put them all in the same
⏹️ ▶️ John tires but we didn’t level a bunch of other things I don’t know the upshot of this
⏹️ ▶️ John to spoil the end of this 3 hypercar thing the upshot is it’s a non result because this is
⏹️ ▶️ John within the margin of error right because they were all within like fractions of a second of each other
⏹️ ▶️ John and you just feel like even though it’s the same driver in every car
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that driver is better at dealing with four-wheel drive cars maybe the course had more tight turns
⏹️ ▶️ John and so it favored the Porsche maybe like you know I thought a little Porsche came in last I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it seemed muddled to me I’m glad So much of the car was so much of the show was car reviews, but it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit muddled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can understand that I’m sad you’re ruining the opening for me because I really did think it was freaking
⏹️ ▶️ John not ruining It’s like just you know if I had to pick a nit at it and like it takes away from like being able
⏹️ ▶️ John to share In there in their triumph right and also like the idea of them driving across the desert with a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of yokels But their cars all on the dust. I was like you’re just ruining your cars with all the dust
⏹️ ▶️ John Like someone had a vector in there, it’s like don’t drive the vector across the desert You’re just that’s that’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ John and he said that belongs in a museum doesn’t belong covered with dust
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s why your phone has a case the Ferrari Excuse me The Porsche came in first then the Ferrari and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the McLaren if memory serves
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway That was always the fear with the other vendors is like four-wheel drive is a big advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John in anything that has lots of tight turns Because you can you know get on the power sooner after them And so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s almost as if you could you could put a particular car and lead by picking the course, right? I mean because
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the Ferrari had the best power to weight ratio So if you pick the course where power to rate ratio is the thing that decides it
⏹️ ▶️ John then that would be it But you know, but they were so close It was like less than half a second between
⏹️ ▶️ John all of them, right and and you know You don’t know how many laps they ran and so they always make it seem like hey you run one lap that’s not how
⏹️ ▶️ John you do it you try to go for your fastest lap and You know You learn the ins and outs in the car
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know Just spend a day just on one car to get your fastest lap who knows what they really do under the cover So it’s all kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John artificial But I would rather have seen more about them describing how the cars are different from each other Which they did do
⏹️ ▶️ John when they change cars and everything But they had that bit with it where I had to use my you know rudimentary
⏹️ ▶️ John French to understand what that test driver was actually Saying versus the stupid subtitle gag like I want to hear what he
⏹️ ▶️ John actually thinks of the cars I don’t care about your we get it you’re rooting for your cars But I still want to actually know
⏹️ ▶️ John what this person thinks of the cars that also went on a little bit long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anyway, I would still take the Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also say I didn’t care for the American the steak driver segment. I thought that was a
⏹️ ▶️ John a British person’s view of an ugly American. It’s like yeah, we are we do have there are American stereotypes,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you’re not really like you’re not really nailing it with the with the whole communist thing such
⏹️ ▶️ John a like if the Cold War is over Americans are not
⏹️ ▶️ John with the hating the communists anymore. There are so many other newer American stereotypes that you could have latched on
⏹️ ▶️ John to but in general I don’t know if that’s your best bet going like
⏹️ ▶️ John this American has the prejudices of Americans that ugly Americans had in the
⏹️ ▶️ John 80s does he obviously he probably doesn’t and I don’t need to see that and the faceless thing was a much better
⏹️ ▶️ John version of that character
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah but overall though I mean I really did enjoy the show I like Tiffany I both watch it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we got a lot of laughs from us I really did enjoy it quite a bit I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would say and and he tip even commented and I agreed like the first two minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the show were better than the new official top gear like the entire episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is it’s already certainly before anybody even said a word it was already better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than official new top gear
⏹️ ▶️ John well as busy like these three people like that’s the whole reason you’re watching this show at all right it’s not the format of the cars is the three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as it turns out if you You get three people together with just unbelievable chemistry,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amazing things can happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the chemistry and history to write like they’ve been because you’ve seen all the other shows with them. So you’re coming in knowing
⏹️ ▶️ John what they think of things and you know, like, I think this was a shaky first episode, but I feel like they will eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John hit their groove. And even playing all top gear, like, terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John for so much of the season. the end there they were kind of getting it but it’s so clear that the chemistry doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John exist among like you could feel the hate on the screen that’s not a good look so. 05.31 Chris Yeah well it also let’s not forget the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple of seasons of Top Gear I’m not talking about the ones in like the 50s I’m saying like 2001 2002 you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when the Clarkson era started the first couple of seasons of Top Gear were awful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just terrible and the newest season of Top Gear with LeBlanc
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Chris Evans they started really, really bad, but just like you said, John, by the end, it really wasn’t that bad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all. And it’s not unreasonable for the first few episodes, if not season of Grand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tour to be a little bit wonky. The American, I didn’t, I wasn’t bothered by it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you, Marco. I didn’t think it was very funny. I just thought it was a thing. And also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real-time follow-up Porsche 918 154.2 LaFerrari 154.4 P1 155.5 so uh about a second and a half between all three
⏹️ ▶️ John the p1 was way behind there but they’re right that if you had the grippier tires in the p1 maybe it would have come in first
⏹️ ▶️ John like it was it was so so close um the other thing i’m thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the clock ticking on these guys i mean in some respects like i like chris harris
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of talking
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey about any of
⏹️ ▶️ John these guys right I love Chris Harris he should yep you know he should be able to talk you’re right but these three guys you
⏹️ ▶️ John know known through many years of watching Top Gear whatever the problem they have they have increasingly
⏹️ ▶️ John faced them the problem that will eventually do them in is that very old
⏹️ ▶️ John cranky probably racist definitely sexist dinosaurs
⏹️ ▶️ John who are ridiculously wealthy are increasingly difficult to relate to all All right,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the problem. They’re not getting any younger. They’re not getting any more progressive. Their
⏹️ ▶️ John concerns are not your concerns. They all have millions of dollars worth of cars. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we like, you know, it’s fun to see them be able to talk about multi-million dollar cars the same way
⏹️ ▶️ John you would talk about like things that everyone can afford. But they will slowly
⏹️ ▶️ John become more and more distant from the audience. And I mean, I think it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, rebooting, that’s why rebooting Top Gear with Chris Harris is better, because like don’t bring in another old guy, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s part of what we love about these guys. They’re old curmudgeons and we laugh at them as much as we
⏹️ ▶️ John laugh with them and their attitudes are weird, but every time they talk to each other about things and get
⏹️ ▶️ John real for a second, you realize just what a whole different world they exist in.
⏹️ ▶️ John A whole different world of cars, of life, of expectations, of just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like the best is when their enthusiasm for cars comes through because that’s the leveler. It’s like, I don’t care if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have millions of dollars, We all love these cars and you know, I think they do love the cars and that comes through. The worst is when
⏹️ ▶️ John they try to be relatable to the audience but don’t realize their audience are not multi millionaires
⏹️ ▶️ John with Ferraris and it doesn’t quite connect. So I mean, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually they’re just going to age out of this biz either by not being able to keep up with the
⏹️ ▶️ John schedule or just by like no longer, you know, no longer being able to connect with the important demos.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. So enjoy enjoy a grand tour while you can. I think it’s got a couple of seasons and eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not going to be tenable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think they’ve signed up for three years,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if I’m not mistaken. They can do three,
⏹️ ▶️ John no problem. They can do three in their sleep. And Jeremy probably will be sleeping through most of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I’m guessing the total number of years of Grand Tour is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under 10 for sure and possibly under six.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’d probably agree with that. I mean, I do love it, but…
⏹️ ▶️ John I also do worry, like the whole thing of the Grand Tour, they’re going to different places, right? worry
⏹️ ▶️ John that their their their worst instincts about how to
⏹️ ▶️ John be amusing in different countries will not serve them well we’ll see they define
⏹️ ▶️ John in America you know like whatever they you know I I don’t think they
⏹️ ▶️ John embarrass themselves in the American one even if a lot of stuff they did fall flat but there is a great
⏹️ ▶️ John potential for them especially if they have lots of market creative control than they used to and people aren’t telling them no
⏹️ ▶️ John to reveal what dinosaurs they are by going to other countries and trying to do things that are funny
⏹️ ▶️ John and going, huh, right, isn’t that funny, guys? And we’re like, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re, no, you’re being the worst kind of British colonials. But we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m looking forward to the next episode, which here’s one yet another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advantage of living in the one true time zone, because it airs or at least the first episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, aired at midnight in one minute in UK time. That means
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s seven in the evening for us, is extraordinarily convenient.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So we actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got to watch the grand tour on Thursday evening, even though the UK had to wait until Friday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we are the one true time zone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon video was letting me down though, because I watched an Amazon video, right? And I watched
⏹️ ▶️ John on my iPad, and I just could not get it to give me a high quality stream.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was giving me this blocky crap. And I don’t want to see beauty shots of hyper cars
⏹️ ▶️ John with giant compression artifacts on it. I want it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to look nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So that was the I don’t I don’t know what to do in the app to make that not happen. It’s not like my internet connection
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t fast enough. It’s not like I was doing it like I wasn’t watching it like the second it was out where I was competing with everybody else.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was watching it days later. And it just it was just chunky. So thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ John down Amazon video. I don’t know what your deal is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For me, I hooked up my MacBook Pro to my TV with the also convenient HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port that’s right on the computer and did it that way. And I saw no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue with it. I thought it worked great. I had heard other people, though, say that trying to airplay from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like an iPad or an iPhone to their TV did not work well. And I got to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also say that this is the first time in my life that I’ve wanted anything more than a 1080
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV because, you know, our videos that we record, we almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always record on our iPhones and for the last couple of years now have been 4K and that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you know, I was there for most of these recordings. I know what they were.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now the Grand Tour being recorded in 4K, man, I kind of want a new TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, first of all, so do I. Second of all, for whatever it’s worth, I did AirPlay it from the Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Video app on my iPad to my Apple TV and it was great. The stream was always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly high bitrate. I never noticed any any compression artifacts or anything else. It didn’t seem to drop down any lower crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit rates It was perfect. It was flawless it integrated flawlessly with like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pause and play button on the Apple TV remote It didn’t do anything weird. It didn’t like put the iPad to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sleep in the middle of it or anything like it was just great It worked perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the thing about streaming like the inconsistency of streaming is still there despite the massive bandwidth They have like these streams
⏹️ ▶️ John are so they’re just a tiny fraction of the bandwidth that even the worst You know any internet connection
⏹️ ▶️ John that counts as broadband you know cable or certainly files like this is nothing compared to that and yet
⏹️ ▶️ John You never quite know what you’re gonna get depending on factors that you have no idea about Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re recording something on Tivo off your cable you are at the mercy of however the cable company decides to compress
⏹️ ▶️ John that channel But basically if you get that channel it looks the same for you as it does
⏹️ ▶️ John for your neighbor It’ll look the same next week as it does now because it is just always the same you know, the difference between broadcast
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, point to point IP type streaming. So when streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John works is great when it doesn’t, I find it very frustrating, like, especially if the player doesn’t give you any control because YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff that you can say, do auto quality or just do 1080. And if you do 1080, and it’s not coming down
⏹️ ▶️ John in real time, you can just pause it and walk away and hopefully it will spool up and then you can watch it in 1080. Right? I would have done that with
⏹️ ▶️ John this if there was a thing that I could have changed, I couldn’t find in the app that says, please only give me the highest quality version, I will
⏹️ ▶️ John wait for it to download, just pull it down and spool it up and then I’ll start playing it. Instead, I just had
⏹️ ▶️ John to watch a blocky for reasons that are completely inexplicable and could have gone away two days later for no reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the other thing is that I totally understand it, but it bums me out that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s no download option because I am a pack rat. I’m a digital pack rat. I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a copy of this episode and Amazon doesn’t provide a way for me to do that. And in fact, even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though my streaming experience was great, I would probably choose to download
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and then watch a local file if Amazon provided the option of doing so, than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to stream it. So that’s kind of crummy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I absolutely would too. But I mean, you know, the way you’ve acquired all of your other downloaded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Top Gear files, I think you can probably attempt that same method for this. I don’t know what you’re talking about.