214: Christmas Phone
23 Mar 2017Red iPhones, nameless iPads, incredible waffles, and disruption to our workflows.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Wii U display lag from Steven Impson
- Zelda heads-up-display woes
- Intel X99 high-end desktop options
- Reasons for delaying the Mac Pro
- Americans are cheap jerks
- Marco needs a new pair of shoelaces
- Apple executive diversity shareholder vote
- Apple buys Workflow
- New Apple products
- Red iPhone 7
- New iPhone SE storage sizes
- New 9.7" iPad
- New Watch bands
- Clips iOS App
- What was missing
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: APFS news
Sponsored by:
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Use promo code CLEAN for 20% off by March 31.
- HelloFresh: Delicious ingredients you'll love to eat. Simple recipes you'll live to cook. Use code ATP for $35 off your first shipment.
- Squarespace: Build it beautiful. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
Chapters
- Intro
- Follow-up: Wii U latency
- Follow-up: Zelda HUD
- Follow-up: Intel X99
- Mac Pro grief acceptance
- Follow-up: School funding
- Follow-up: Twitterrific
- Siri multi-language support
- Future follow-up: Series 0
- Sponsor: Fracture
- Marco’s Waffling 🖼️
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Apple diversity proposal
- Apple bought Workflow
- Sponsor: HelloFresh (code ATP)
- New iPad
- Red iPhone 7
- Clips app
- Angry fans
- Ending theme
- Breaking APFS news
Intro
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you can switch to maybe maybe you have sufficient girth to do a one-legged thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John like instead of putting a laptop on Both legs can it can it sit can it sit on one leg? You can have one laptop on each
⏹️ ▶️ John leg you would do a wielding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cool I think we’re all set so I have notes on everything that happened, but I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check the notes in the doc
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yes your own personal notes. Well
⏹️ ▶️ John what I have have. Notes? Shared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes? Follow up. You? Of course you do.
⏹️ ▶️ John We can breeze through it. These are all quick
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey items. Oh god, here we go. As long as we don’t get bogged down,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Marco, into a long
⏹️ ▶️ John tangent about your deep 20 minute feelings on each one of these items, we can get through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shots fired. It’s gonna be like that? I would like you to listen to recent episodes and see what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco percentage of follow up items I emit a single word about.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but it just takes one. It only takes
⏹️ ▶️ John that gets you going and that becomes half the show. Anyway, we can get through these quickly
⏹️ ▶️ John because Marco’s not interested in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them. Oh my god. Every time you say that all that means is everyone’s looking at the chapter mark to see where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first topic begins.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t look at the chapter markers. Just listen to the show. Just experience the show. Be in the
Follow-up: Wii U latency
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Be in the moment. All right, so Steven Imsen writes, in case nobody mentioned, turns out the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wii U game pad had less display lag than most TVs. And we’ll put a couple links in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you’re the only one of us with a Wii U, I believe, so you want to tell us about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this? I think John’s the only one with a Wii U.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. That was last week where I was saying that I like to use the game pad for Mario
⏹️ ▶️ John Kart because it felt like there was actually less lag than a TV, which seems crazy because it is wirelessly sending video
⏹️ ▶️ John to the thing. So I actually I had read this article back when I came out. I just forgot about it because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m old. Apparently it’s measured to be about 33 milliseconds of lag for
⏹️ ▶️ John the video on the Wii U gamepad, which sounds like a lot until you realize that TVs, especially TVs
⏹️ ▶️ John that are either not in game mode or can’t get into a decent game mode where they turn off
⏹️ ▶️ John all the image processing, the input lag for TVs, especially if you’re going through a receiver and then through a TV
⏹️ ▶️ John can be up to like 100 milliseconds. So I wasn’t imagining it. It is very
⏹️ ▶️ John likely that my complete TV setup, as configured at the time I was doing this, is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John slower than using the Wii U GamePad itself. So good job, Nintendo, on minimizing that lag. Bad job,
⏹️ ▶️ John whole rest of the AV industry, on having horrendous input lag for television
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setups. What’s the mechanism that the video is being broadcast to the GamePad? Is that like a private Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think it’s like an H.264 stream over wireless thing. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John proprietary. I don’t think it is just like literal Wi-Fi, but I don’t know actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it well It could be like a isn’t airdrop like a peer-to-peer thing That’s kind of stood up just in the moment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then destroyed after you transfer the file or files or something like that Maybe it’s maybe it’s one of those sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of scenarios who knows Fair enough. All right.
Follow-up: Zelda HUD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the interest of speedy follow-up for the first time ever, tell us what happened with your Zelda HUD.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m playing Zelda as everybody knows And Zelda does have a HUD. So does every
⏹️ ▶️ John past Zelda game. They always have something on the screen That’s showing like a little mini-map or like
⏹️ ▶️ John Skyward Sword had this giant honking picture of the Wiimote Which you could turn off and I did turn off
⏹️ ▶️ John Little status indicators. Breath of the Wild has the traditional line of hearts in the upper left-hand
⏹️ ▶️ John corner in the lower right It’s got a little circular map thing and some other little icons underneath the hearts It has
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of other items that appear as you progress through the game. Don’t want to spoil anything for people
⏹️ ▶️ John Problem with those items is that they are white much of the time 100% completely opaque
⏹️ ▶️ John white and my TV hates that and so after playing Breath of the Wild for I don’t know 20 or 30 hours I
⏹️ ▶️ John noticed I’m getting image retention in the upper left corner for the white items Luckily Breath of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Wild has a HUD option which I saw when I first started playing the game because of course Being a nerd I always go into all
⏹️ ▶️ John the options first before starting anything and if they call it They call it the pro
⏹️ ▶️ John HUD which turns off basically everything except for your hearts And I said well, I don’t want to turn
⏹️ ▶️ John everything off. It’s a pretty minimal HUD to begin with It’s very minimal very pushed off to the side So it’s nice But and I like
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing the thing some of them are useful like you’re just seeing the compass direction and stuff like that So I left it on that turned out to have been
⏹️ ▶️ John mistakes now I’m using the pro HUD which only shows hearts the hearts are 100% Brit red and opaque
⏹️ ▶️ John So they are causing some heart-shaped image retention in the upper left But they do vary a little bit as
⏹️ ▶️ John you take damage at the very least and 100% red is much better than 100% white So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not kicking Zelda off my TV yet and moving it to the gaming Monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything. I think I’m just going to accept the amount of image retention because I know from our destiny experiment that
⏹️ ▶️ John yes You will get image retention, but it is not permanent if you merely wait a year it will go away
⏹️ ▶️ John away. And someone was suggesting that I get OLED, OLED also has image retention,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess what? You know, if you had brought a TV with a proper technology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that doesn’t have image retention, this would have been a lot easier. But no, you had to have you had to have the blackest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John darkest thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even LCDs have image retention. Mine has it. Mine has it worse. Yeah. And vibrant
⏹️ ▶️ John colors like seriously, on my gaming monitor. It is such an incredible difference in what the game looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like compared to what it looks like on TV and Breath of the Wild is the type of game that I want to experience and there’s not a lot of HUD
⏹️ ▶️ John in Breath of the Wild. It is actually pretty darn minimal so I want to see the full rich experience and to get the 5.1
⏹️ ▶️ John surround sound which they don’t take that much advantage of but the speakers are better. Anyway, I’m not kicking it off yet. We’ll check back
Follow-up: Intel X99
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Carsten Weiss, maybe Weiss, writes in to talk about high-end desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey processors, which I really don’t care that much about, so one of you can take this.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is in reference to me asking last show if Intel makes any processors that are
⏹️ ▶️ John not Xeons that have more than four cores that in theory could be used in an iMac. And Marco said no,
⏹️ ▶️ John and a lot of people tweeted that actually they make these bunch of processors with indecipherable
⏹️ ▶️ John alphanumeric names that have 10 cores and 8 cores and 6 cores, and Other people chimed in on Twitter to
⏹️ ▶️ John say actually those are basically just Xeons Rebranded and renamed but without ECC RAM and different chipsets
⏹️ ▶️ John that require them Either way, it seems like however you want to slice it There
⏹️ ▶️ John are other options That are not the same as the processors in the Mac Pro that Apple could put
⏹️ ▶️ John in the iMac if we wanted to so maybe if They make an iMac Pro Instead of having a Xeon in there
⏹️ ▶️ John They could have one of these in between easy on things which would be kind of cruddy because
⏹️ ▶️ John I really want ECC RAM So if I’m you know if I’m gonna pay for an iMac pro, but anyway, I’ll buy whatever they
⏹️ ▶️ John put out because what the hell choice Do I have?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean this sorry. I’m gonna talk to John during follow-up Yeah, this is the x99 series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people keep telling us about and I honestly don’t know much about it I had it in the back of my mind just had forgotten about it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it seems like if if you’re gonna go to the trouble of having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very expensive processor that puts out a lot of heat and needs a big socket and everything else like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why not just use Xeons at that point? I bet the engineering constraints
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and cost constraints and everything else around using these is probably not that different from just using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xeons in the first place, which is probably why Apple doesn’t just put one of these in an iMac.
Mac Pro grief acceptance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason Breckenridge writes in to say more about the Mac Pro. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Pro delay is likely due to wait for AMD to produce something that they can leverage to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Intel’s Xeon prices down.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems bold to me. But anyway, he continues, margins are everything in Tim Cook’s Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not sure how you can know that, but I’ll continue, especially for low volume products. Maybe, I don’t know. What do you guys
⏹️ ▶️ John I put this in here for not to address it directly, but just for the
⏹️ ▶️ John for the larger issue because It’s interesting to me that the three of us on this show
⏹️ ▶️ John seem to all Come to a sort of I’m gonna say unspoken agreement
⏹️ ▶️ John But chances are we spoke about it because we talk about the Mac Pro a lot Agreement that there is no new Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro coming and yet But when I see people like when listeners write in
⏹️ ▶️ John or tweet or whatever, there is still a contention out there that is on a different page than
⏹️ ▶️ John we are that they believe that there is a delay like the Mac that there is a Mac Pro delay
⏹️ ▶️ John that a new Mac Pro is coming and maybe I’m wrong, but do we all basically do the three of us like obviously we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re just guessing right but do we all kind of agree there is no new Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John coming in In the terms that we understand it to be basically like a thing that you buy from
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple that is their fastest computer that doesn’t have a screen attached to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the one. You’re the one hold out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think Marco agrees, right? Yeah, pretty much.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been on the page for a while. They’re just like, there is no new Mac Pro coming. And all I’m thinking of is, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the way that we understand it. I’m I’m 100% pinning my hopes on an iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John at this point. the Mac Pro, like so many people write in to talk about what do we think the next Mac Pro is going to be and what might
⏹️ ▶️ John be delaying the next Mac Pro and I feel like writing back saying I’ve lost my faith,
⏹️ ▶️ John like what new Mac Pro, what are you even talking about? There is no new Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro, there never will be a new Mac Pro except for something different in
⏹️ ▶️ John terms of, again, when I say it I’m talking about a box that you buy that doesn’t have a monitor built into
⏹️ ▶️ John it from Apple that is their fastest computer. I think that’s gone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean like, alright, I’ve been using this iMac since 2014 because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just fit my overall desires better. Like I really wanted Retina. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco desperately wanted desktop Retina and I thought for years that it was further away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, and then when they released the 5K iMac, it blew my mind and it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so good. And it still is so good. You know, I decided then, like, okay, I will trade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some processing power and I will trade the freedom of this external cylinder or tower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and having it separate from my monitor, I’ll trade that for this awesome screen experience. And at the time, there really was no great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to get 5K externally. Now, well, maybe you can argue that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the LG still sucks so badly that maybe there still isn’t a great way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John 5K externally. That is what broke me, if you recall. That
⏹️ ▶️ John was the end. I was like, I now accept that You’re telling me in no uncertain terms,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, so, the problem is like, I hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from various tipsters and rumors and birdies and everything else, I hear a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing like every month. Every month I hear, oh the Mac Pro’s really dead this time. Or, oh no, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dead yet, it’s coming, you know, they’re starting up a new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thing. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John but every time I hear that, like I think, does what I’m hearing fit into the idea of an iMac Pro? and every time I go,
⏹️ ▶️ John that totally could be an iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All I want is for them to address high-end needs and for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the current iMac series as we know it to not be the highest they ever go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it is very limited in limiting itself to the primarily four-core desktop line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not having desktop class high-powered GPU support and desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco class high-powered CPU support and workstation class, I should say, CPU support.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, there’s a huge ceiling above the current iMac series.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it isn’t just about getting a higher clock speed on single core, it’s about like, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want, if you need multi-core performance, which lots of things use these days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t a matter of just wait until next year’s iMac and the four core line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be good enough that a Mac Pro won’t be necessary. It’s literally like the iMac grows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 5 or 10% performance a year and a Mac Pro with more cores could have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it could have like six times the performance. Like that’s the difference we’re talking about here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not, it isn’t something that we can just wait a couple years and the need goes away because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple years down the road the multi-core high power workstation chips have gotten better too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So having a gap, like there’s a big gap between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the iMac can do and what a computer that has a much higher
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power and heat budget and money budget can do. And that used to be the Mac Pro and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now it’s kind of gone and that huge gap is just being unserved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the people who need that huge gap are going to Windows and Hackintoshes and other crap. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what I hope Apple addresses. it has a screen built into it or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would prefer if it didn’t just for additional flexibility, but I don’t really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not going to be massively disappointed if they give me a new high-end 16 core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xeon workstation that happens to have a 5K screen in front of it, which is by the way the best screen I’ve ever seen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m actually like now that I know there’s no third-party monitor, that’s what makes the iMac Pro so much more palatable
⏹️ ▶️ John to me because I will still have an Apple monitor and that’s what I want. And so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John just pinning my hopes on the insides of that iMac Pro being all that they can be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, you have had your talking privileges revoked for the remainder of follow-up. I was trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I said those two cursed goddamn words, Mac Pro, and then everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey took a turn, as it always does. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our defense, I’m pretty sure you started it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I didn’t put this in the show notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was dutifully reading John’s show notes, and here’s where we ended up.
Follow-up: School funding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, we’ll move on to talk about how Americans are cheap. So Jake writes in to say, I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to tell you all what I’ve seen with a family member that has been in education for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost 30 years. And this person’s family member works for a 12,000 student
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school district in America. In this district, there are several schools that need repairs or renovation to keep students
⏹️ ▶️ Casey safe. Over the last two years, the district has presented a referendum, which goes to a public vote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the public, which gets voted down, a secondary referendum for a lesser amount of money,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is also voted down. And now there’s a third referendum on the table. The current referendum has a lot of opposition at this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, and according to Jake, they don’t play nice. So Jake summarizes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people are really not fond of taxes being raised to support education. I’ve seen this every day for the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decade or two of my life. Even when kids’ safety is on the line, there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is still opposition. It’s really sad. And this is an exact retelling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my childhood in—now, how do I say this? Because however I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pronounced it, apparently everyone was very, very
⏹️ ▶️ John me. You’re just putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable. That’s all that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happening there. What flight attendant movie was that? I never actually saw it, but that preview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the commercials just made me laugh. It is
⏹️ ▶️ John very popular. I heard it back in middle school, so I don’t know what the original origin is.
⏹️ ▶️ John affluent is what you’re trying to say.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Thank you. Oh, you said affluent?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, apparently inverted. There were a lot of people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s probably an
⏹️ ▶️ John alternate pronunciation because everything is
⏹️ ▶️ John Always have that defense you can look it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure I’m sure that’s true. But whatever so affluent. Is that correct? Yep. Anyway, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t matter whatever we I lived in an area that had a lot of rich people in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So there we go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So so the point is this was the exact same behavior that I saw at my school
⏹️ ▶️ Casey district Which we went over last episode We had several other people write in to say very, very similar things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that were equally depressing. And this was just a really great summary of how Americans are cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I hate all of us. So, I just thought I’d share that little anecdote.
Follow-up: Twitterrific
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of things that we won’t talk long about at all, I’m quite sure Twitter Twitterific
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Mac, the Kickstarter made it and the stretch goal of $100,000 to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basic things like direct messaging support also made it, which is super exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So congratulations, John Syracuse. This moment is yours. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a great victory lap for the project and for all of the listeners to this show who I’m sure heard
⏹️ ▶️ John my plea And pledge support and it amazes me like I was just the goal I set for
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody says ignore the fact that the goal is 75 grand the stretch goal is 100 grand and we need
⏹️ ▶️ John to get that Because that’s where like direct messages come in and as much as I love to whatever I really don’t want to use a Mac Twitter Client
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t support direct messages. So we did it 108 thousand is the total we passed 100k
⏹️ ▶️ John as Marco was pointing out now I have to pay the money that I pledged towards it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John I know on Twitter told me that not only did they pledge because they heard my
⏹️ ▶️ John encouragement to do so but they also up their pledges when they saw that it wasn’t close to its goal
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever so thank you to everybody who did that I’m sure this will turn out great
⏹️ ▶️ John the one the one bad thing for me is that of course I can’t or I may not be able to run
⏹️ ▶️ John this project if it’s Sierra only, until and unless I get a new Mac that runs Sierra.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco until much later. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing. This really is going to be the most expensive Twitter client ever for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, I want to get a new Mac anyway, but. It’s going to be a few hundred bucks for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter, and a few thousand bucks for a new
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac. I’m also lobbying them through certain channels to perhaps try to support back the
⏹️ ▶️ John LCAP, but I don’t know if that will happen. But either way, I want a new Mac that runs Sierra, and I want to be able to run this thing, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not done yet. So fingers crossed everybody, but thanks to everybody who helped. This is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Congratulations, John Syracuse. Uh, I’m very, very, very excited for you. I know this was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, this was a big deal for you. You could just use TweetBot, but that’s cool.
Siri multi-language support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Siri has multi-language support. Several people wrote in with regard to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our ladies in the cylinder conversation last episode to remind us that, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is, we needed a reminder, that, that, what is the, the, the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Amazon, I’m stumbling so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say her name, yes, the Echo’s Lady, I didn’t want to say the A-L-E-X-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Echoes lady does not have a lot of multi-language support, whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple lady does have considerable, by comparison, multi-language support.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s a big deal for anyone who doesn’t speak English. And obviously we tend to be more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myopic than we intend when it comes to these sorts of things. But for people outside of the United States,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Britain, etc. Australia too, before we get but people emailing us about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey People outside those areas, you know, the only choice they really have is Siri, and that’s kind of a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bummer. So anyway, it’s worth considering, and we didn’t really give any thought to that last episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is wasn’t somebody wrote in before we get onto the well actually
⏹️ ▶️ John for this. Someone wrote in there in a foreign country, and they said
⏹️ ▶️ John that they had to speak to whatever thing they were speaking to in their native language,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they had to pronounce things the way an English speaker would try to say
⏹️ ▶️ John the words in their language in order to be understood, which I thought was interesting. Even though it purports
⏹️ ▶️ John to understand your language if you speak sort of colloquially and just casually
⏹️ ▶️ John as you would, it doesn’t work as well if you think like, how would an American trying to speak my language say
⏹️ ▶️ John this and say it that way? Then the cylinder picks up, which I thought was funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it kind of works the same way here. You have to kind of think like how would somebody in California say this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the way I say it, it never works right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You just got to add in a groovy and you know and whatever the other lingo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is. Can you get
⏹️ ▶️ John me a Jaguar with an automatic transmission? Wow. That’ll work perfectly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t forget the passive aggression. No, I mean so I think what bugs me about a lot of the times I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see this pointed out is when it’s used as a defense for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas in which Siri is not doing so well or is stupider than it should be. So, to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these should be carefully considered as separate factors. Yes, Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better at international and multi-language support. Amazon sucks internationally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have terrible coverage outside the US for all of their services, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Echo’s voice service is no exception to that. But what Amazon’s even better at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is in the one language that they support well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it simply works more reliably. And I know that there are areas in which Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better, and that’s fine. There are areas in which Amazon is better. But these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are separate discussions, and I don’t think it’s a valid excuse for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple or for Apple fans and commentators to use. Whenever anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco points out that Siri does something less well than it should, or that Amazon does something really well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is not a valid excuse to say, well, Siri supports you know, 75 different languages.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like, well, okay, it does. The sky is also blue. These are separate facts. These are separate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discussions, right? Like, so that’s, I see this a lot in a way that bothers me, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is an attribute that should be commended. You know, it is great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This here supports all the different languages. And if you speak one of those languages, that’s a huge factor for you in the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that other factors of these products might influence other people’s decisions. I would just be careful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how we throw that around because so often it’s used in this kind of invalid defense.
Future follow-up: Series 0
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I have a very quick question about the Apple Watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is kind of a call to listeners to tweet at me and me alone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And then I’d like to go to Marco Waffling. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am going to regret this, but I’m curious. And then Marco has a tale of waffling, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot less delicious than it sounds. You have a brief tale of waffling, right, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, very brief. Well, I do. I wasn’t aware you guys knew about it. Somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John put it in the show notes. We know everything. We’re watching. Always watching. Cool. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. Well, anyway, I wanted to want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ask the audience and you can tweet at me and me alone. You don’t need to bother Marco and John. Do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if you’re doing this, by the way?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. If you have a Siri, what are we calling this a Series Zero and original
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch? Do you find that the battery is starting to get a little long in the tooth and starting to wear out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little more quickly than you used to? than it used to because I took delivery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my Apple watch in early May. And the last couple of days, it has been nice enough out that I can go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for my afternoon or really evening walk with Declan and I’ll do a walking exercise on my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple watch. And as soon as I’ve started doing that in the last few days at unreasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey early hours, my Apple watch is going from, Oh, I’m fine. Everything I’m asleep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and power reserve mode is on. And I basically don’t have a watch at all anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this only started when I started doing these exercises, well, for loose definitions of exercise, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exercises in the evening and tracking these 15 to 30 minute walks. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey curious, those who listen, if you, only if you have a Series Zero original
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Watch do you also find that you’re having battery woes? Let at Casey List know, I’m curious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hear. That’s all for now.
⏹️ ▶️ John restore your phone. I have a Series Zero watch and my battery is awesome as it sits there on its charging
⏹️ ▶️ John thing on top of my dresser.
Sponsor: Fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who prints beautiful photos in vivid color directly onto sheets of glass that you can hang
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up around your house, give as gifts or whatever else, and they are awesome. Go to fractureme.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to learn more. Fracture wants you to actually take your photos out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your camera roll, out of your social feeds, and actually put them on your wall so you can really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see them and really enjoy them beyond just the one day that you took and shared them. So what you do with Fracture,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you go to their site, fractureme.com, Use promo code CLEAN, C-L-E-A-N, CLEAN.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can save 20% by the end of March if you hurry up. Because they want you to clean out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your camera roll and refresh your walls in your house with actual photo prints that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enjoy of your photos. It’s really nice to see your photos. Like, you know, we have these great cameras in our pockets, we’re taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more photos than ever, but then we see them that day and then they’re just gone. Fracture wants you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to enjoy your photos. Use promo code CLEAN by the end of March to get 20% off any fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco print. And I highly recommend these fracture prints. They look great. I have them all over my office, all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over our house. They look awesome. These are edge-to-edge printing on glass. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hangs up nicely on the wall. They ship it nicely. I’ve never had one arrive broken, although of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco course they guarantee it if it does. They have a 60-day happiness guarantee, so you’re sure to love your order.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every fracture is handmade and checked for quality by real people in Gainesville, Florida, and it uses US-sourced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco materials and a carbon-neutral factory. You can feel good about it. Go to FractureMe.com. You will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be amazed how nice these photos look when you get them, how nice these beautiful panes of glass look.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They make wonderful gifts as well. If you have a gift for a relative or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the holidays coming up, like Mother’s Day and stuff, it is totally worth it. Try Fracture. You will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see for yourself and you’ll be a convert. Trust me. They can’t pay me to say that. They can’t pay me to say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much I love them, and I’ll tell you what, I love them. Check it out today. Check out www.fractureme.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when they ask you where you heard about them, make sure to enter Accidental Tech Podcast or ATP, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have there. It’s wonderful. Check it out. Once again, don’t forget to tell them where you heard about
Marco’s Waffling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fractureme.com. Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So tell me about your waffling.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say this is by my count your third Mac laptop order since
⏹️ ▶️ John the new Mac laptops were released.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again? Oh my god, Marco. Here’s here’s what happened. Oh, here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we go. Yeah, you had to do it. Why did you have to do it? Here’s here’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened. All right I’ll try to be brief because we have all this other stuff to talk about. I recently came back from a trip.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco On the way home, I was supposed to have downloaded a TV show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Tiff and I to watch on the plane. And last minute at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the departure airport, I realized I had not done it over the hotel Wi-Fi overnight like I had planned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I had to very quickly download episodes of a TV show. And of course, nothing was available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any legal fashion, so I was going to ship them to myself on a truck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there are numerous ways to do this on airport Wi-Fi,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of which are very good. And the only way I found for this show that I was supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have downloaded, but didn’t download, download. The only way that I could find it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a certain kind of truck that, let’s say it forms a torrential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco downpour of data pieces into a TV show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew, like, you know, if I could just use a group of newspaper delivery trucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be better. But the torrential downpour of trucks was the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I could get to work in a reliable fashion from the airport Wi-Fi that I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on and the plane was taking off in like a half hour and I just had to get something quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I installed a type of torrential downpour truck that I had trusted in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the past even though I knew that you know that they I heard they kind of got shady
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with bundling smaller satellite trucks with it install
⏹️ ▶️ John Yahoo search toolbar in your browser
⏹️ ▶️ Marco install Java it did set my homepage to Yahoo and all of my browsers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the stuff. And on my home Mac, I have an older version of this truck that has no…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I downloaded it years ago. It has no problems. But on the new version that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could get off the website quickly, it did a bunch of weird stuff that I don’t trust. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so because of this, I now consider my 15-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromised, and I need to format it and reinstall, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my own sanity. Do you guys remember what made Mike Hurley quit his job?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God. It was him having to buy a new pair of shoelaces. And how does that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey justify you getting a new damn computer?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was just going to say to remind everybody this story about him forgetting to download a TV show and trying to do it in
⏹️ ▶️ John the airport is going to lead to him buying a new computer, just so everyone’s on the same page here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright, so basically the gist of it, if I can summarize my curly story about how he what made him finally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quit his job and become a professional podcaster is that he he was going to his his office
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job where he had to dress up and he broke the shoelace on his shoe and he he was thinking about quitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while and that finally pushed him over the edge because he’s like you know I I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a new pair of shoelaces for these shoes because it was kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reinforcing and reinvesting in the world he was not happy with and trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to leave. So he decided to just stop at that point. I’m sorry if I butchered that. And Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do you remember offhand what episode of Analog people should listen to?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CASEY DOUGLAS No, I don’t, but I’ll have it in the show notes. I don’t remember which episode it is, but we go into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey detail about this. And it is one of the better episodes of Analog, if I do say so myself, so it’s worth listening to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so When faced with the need to reformat my 15-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch bar MacBook Pro at the end of this trip Probably the third or fourth trip. I’ve taken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it on I Was already not loving this computer on this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trip in so many things about it that I that I when I bought it I was like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t love this, but I’ll get used to it Maybe and some of those things I’ve gotten used to decently enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of those things. I haven’t I I just have no motivation to fix this computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though it’s just software, I just have to reinstall the OS, which I have to do, even if I get a new one, I will then start on a fresh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, and then I’ll have to put everything back on that one. I don’t want to, this is my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shoelace, and I don’t want to fix this laptop because I just don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m finally admitting to myself, you know what, the 15-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro, it’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad computer, it’s just really designed with different priorities and different needs than what my needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and priorities actually are and I thought I would get past it I thought I get used to it and I thought certain things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would would stick better than they have like for me honestly the touch bar doesn’t work for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe down the road it will but right now it doesn’t and there it causes a lot of problems like accidentally brushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco against it and and other issues bugs things like that so anyway so I thought you know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t do this anymore I’m going to switch to a computer that I actually like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my original plan was I’m going to wait for the next update to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook One and give that a solid try again. Because when I first got the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one and really hated it, part of the reason I hated it was the keyboard, but well now they all have that keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I was like, well, I’m forcibly getting used to that keyboard. So it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right, well that is kind of now an equal between them, almost. I mean, the one on the MacBook One currently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has less feedback. It is still the same low travel, but it has less feedback than the ones that are on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new 2016 MacBook Pros. I’m used to that one now on the MacBook Pros. I still don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but I’m used to it. So I can tolerate that, and I was assuming that the next update to the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One would get that keyboard. Also, the original MacBook One, I mean, all the MacBook Ones are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow, but in the 2016 update, was it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they dramatically increased the speed of the SSD, which dramatically increases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the performance of lots of things in the system. And so the gist of what owners have reported basically is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the second version of the MacBook One, which is the one that’s been on for about a year now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is significantly faster than the first version was. Oh, also, thanks Tipster, the GPU is also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot faster, which also helps. So I thought, you know, let me just wait for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then I’ll make a decision. Well, I’m about to go on a trip in like a couple of weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Ireland, to the OOL Conference, And like our other friends, I will pimp the OOL conference,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not because they’ve asked me to, not because I feel obligated to, but because if you are anywhere near Ireland or can get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Ireland in a couple of weeks, you should go to the OOL conference. It’s amazing. So go to the OOL conference,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody. U-L-L dot I-E is OOL. Anyway, I’m going to Ireland. This is the perfect kind of trip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I want to have a laptop with me, but I don’t really get a lot of work done on trips anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try. I always try. And I just, I don’t. You know, it’s very rare that I actually get a lot of work done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Since the 15-inch was not for me, I was thinking, you know, this would be a great time to have a new,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller laptop to try, to use, to enjoy. And since the 15-inch is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working for me for lots of reasons, and one of the main reasons is the touch bar that really is not working for me, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my choices were basically the MacBook One or the MacBook Escape. Or an old MacBook Pro. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I can get the old 13 or the… And I already have my old 15, so I took out the old 15, figured I’d boot that up for a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit, use that for a couple days, see how that goes. And it’s fine, but I’m ruined
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now for the weight difference on the new one. Even though going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the old to the new 15 is only a half pound savings, I went from like 4.5 to 4.0, that’s enough to ruin me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So now I pick up the old one and it feels really old. Then the event,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the announcements rather, the other day, yesterday? The other day came out. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought, Apple is sure to update the MacBook One, so let me wait for this announcement,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then I will probably just order a MacBook One, which with the new, hopefully with the new keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and with the new, you know, maybe faster Thunderbolt, maybe Thunderbolt instead of just USB-C or whatever else. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, I was gonna do the same thing for the record. I had every intention of buying myself a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adorable slash MacBook One slash officially called MacBook. The 12-inch MacBook.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, I was planning to buy one yesterday. I was locked and loaded, ready to go. And then, not so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much. So what did you do? See, I know how to not spend money, but if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything you know how to do, not spending money is not on that list. You do not know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how to not spend money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All I can do is rationalize spending a little bit less money than I was going to spend anyway. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the day came and went, they had their big browser press releases, which you look at too, don’t worry, everyone will get to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they didn’t release basically anything I wanted, But, you know, they didn’t release the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One. So I decided, you know what, let me go to the Apple store. Now that everything’s in stock,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll spend some real time with the MacBook Escape and the MacBook One side by side.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to just see, like, should I just wait for an Escape? Or should I just buy an Escape now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or should I wait for the MacBook One update that might happen in a couple of weeks?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or it might happen in six months? Or it might never happen? We have no idea, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is modern Apple, who knows when things will come out? There’s no relation anymore to like Intel schedules.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it could come out any time or never. So anyway, so I went to the store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side by side, MacBook Escape to MacBook One. The weight difference between them is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noticeable. It’s two pounds versus three pounds. So it’s a noticeable weight difference. It’s a noticeable size difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the MacBook Escape is the same approximate size and weight as the 13 inch MacBook Air has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always been. It feels great, it’s small, and critically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is basically a Retina MacBook Air in its internals, and so it has amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery life, the best battery life in the whole lineup. And one of my problems with the 15-inch is that the battery life is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that great. It’s not horrible, but it’s not great, and it varies tremendously with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’re doing because it has that high-powered GPU and the nice big four-core CPU and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. So 15-inch varies a lot, and it isn’t even great to begin with. The MacBook Escape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has, and by the way, I should clarify my stupid name for that, that’s the 13-inch MacBook Pro 2016
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with two Thunderbolt ports, also known as the non-touch bar 13-inch MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All these wonders, see, my name is better than Apple’s, right, okay, so anyway, the MacBook Escape. It is not as small and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light as I would love it to be, but it’s pretty small and light. The MacBook One, now again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the now year-old version so maybe this will change in the new one, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the keyboard difference side by side is not a big difference, but it is noticeable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the MacBook One keyboard is worse by a noticeable amount.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The ergonomic difference is more noticeable than I would have guessed. The MacBook One feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great when you’re holding it, when you pick it up, when you’re carrying it around, feels great. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t care for how you have to open the lid, basically with two hands, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so thin and so small that you can’t really wedge your thumb
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under the little lip area and push down on what’s below it like you can with the bigger ones. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to, that’s the Apple’s whole big thing. You can do it with one hand and the base stays down. Yeah, that, mm.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does, it really does. I try it all the time on the Apple Store and I’m amazed at how often, how it works. I actually try, you’re right
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s hard to get your finger under it, but if you let go of the notion that you actually need to hold the base down
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can manage to get your little finger under the little lip, I swear to you that the base will stay on the table.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I didn’t realize that, okay. Anyway, so it didn’t feel as good. It felt like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little bit flimsy to do that. It’s not a huge deal, but when you compare them side by side, it’s an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obvious difference. Also, when I had the MacBook Escape for a day and a half,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, sorry, the MacBook One, for a day and a half when it first came out, one problem I had with it was that actually on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my lap, it was too narrow, and it would sit too low on my legs as a result.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It wouldn’t quite span across my leg gap quite well enough, and I actually found
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it not that pleasant to use on my lap. It would be great on like an airplane tray table
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’d be totally suitable on a desk and anything else, but on my lap I actually found it was actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not quite wide enough to really be comfortable there. And the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference to me is that the MacBook One’s trackpad is truly awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is horrendous how different, like when you feel them side by side, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the same settings, on the same like force touch firmness level or whatever, the difference in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco click feel and the responsiveness between the MacBook One and the MacBook Escape is massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the trackpad. It’s a huge difference. I basically decided then that, you know, I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think I want a MacBook One again, even if it gets updated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I played with the Escape a little bit longer, played with the One a little bit longer, firmed up my decision,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went home and ordered a maxed out MacBook Escape. except for the, I didn’t get the terabyte, I got the 512.
⏹️ ▶️ John Still time for you to cancel that order,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again. I already canceled the same order once six months
⏹️ ▶️ John ago. I know, that’s what I’m saying. Is it even gonna make it this time? Is it gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? I’ll see how it goes and ask me again, you know, in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple of weeks. What are you doing with your old one? Once I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m going to keep the Escape, I’ll sell the 15, unless Casey wants it, I can sell it to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you were like the proverbial little lady only drove to church on Sunday. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John want a lightly used laptop for a reasonable price, just wait for Marco to get bored of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness. I don’t even know what to do with you. Though I’m most disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you didn’t get a MacBook One because I would have bought that off of you in two weeks or two weeks of the day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you decide that you don’t want this one. But as it turns out, that’s not what you bought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, now you can have the complete opposite. You can have a 15 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I don’t want a 15 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco The touch bar does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interest me, but I don’t want that. I’m I’m not saying that it’s bad, I’m not saying, I just, today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my needs today, I don’t want it because what I really want is a new 15-inch with touch bar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for work, but I’m not gonna get another computer for work for like two or three years. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, the reason I got the 15 to begin with was that I had originally ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this exact same MacBook Escape configuration that I just reordered. On day one, I ordered that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and because it was day one, there was like a two-week delay or something because they were all backed up. And in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the meantime, I convinced myself, you know, whatever, I think it’s like $2,200, like $2,200 for effectively a souped up MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of a lot. And I didn’t feel good about the value of that. And the 15
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch, for bang for the buck, the 15 inch is a way better buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than any of the other laptops. And so I kind of rationalized myself into a 15 inch. And I also thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Touch Bar would be a bigger deal, and I should have some experience with it. And it turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in an effort to get the best value for my money, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer that was actually not the right computer for me. So there’s a lesson there somewhere, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the Touch Bar ended up not really sticking for me. So there we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, 45 minutes into our recording, we can finally be done with follow-up. Told you, John, it was gonna be a quick one. That
⏹️ ▶️ John was a topic, come on. Somebody spent a while on a particular topic, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna say who. Casey. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Squarespace.
Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Make your next move, get your unique domain, and create a beautiful website at squarespace.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and enter offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off. Squarespace sites
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look beautifully designed, regardless of your skill level. You don’t have to be a developer. They have intuitive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy-to-use tools. You can drag and drop things. You have these wonderful color and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco text pickers and everything. You can drag these content blocks around. And Squarespace sites
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do so much. It’s so easy to do. The simple requirements, like, you know, I want the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content to be over here, but then I want the sidebar here that maybe has a calendar there for events and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little blog newsfeed in that area. You can do all that. And it’s wonderfully designed, it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great, it’s responsive, so it works well on all mobile devices and everything else, with no work from you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, at all. Like, they have all this built in, you don’t have to do it. But then, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even do complex things, like entire storefronts. You can have stores and you can sell products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They take credit cards. Like, you can have all that with Squarespace at no additional charge. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much functionality is built into Squarespace. Whether you’re making a simple content site, like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blog or a site for a real world business, like a restaurant or something, and you need just like a page
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put your phone number on, or you’re making an entire elaborate storefront or a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a video series or a big site for a big business, you can do it all with Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Check it out today at squarespace.com. If you sign up for a year, you get a free domain along with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you decide to sign up for Squarespace, make sure to use the offer code ATP to get 10% off your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first purchase. You’d be amazed what you can do at Squarespace. Give it an hour, this is what I always say. Give it an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hour, try your next site there for one hour, and tell me if it doesn’t work for you. I really wanna know, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time I’ve had somebody do this or I’ve done it myself, you do it in an hour, you realize, oh, that’s pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, I’m pretty much done. and then you can move on, it’s wonderful.
Apple diversity proposal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace.com, offer code ATP to get 10% off. Squarespace, make your next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to cover something before we go too big into the last 48
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours worth of announcements. There was a little bit of talk, but not a lot, about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple shareholder diversity proposal. And this always struck me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a little weird, And how Apple’s handling it is a little weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if you recall for the last couple of shareholder meetings, maybe even several now, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been some sort of, and I don’t know the appropriate terminology, but there’s been a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they had to vote on that shareholders had petitioned Apple for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where the general premise of this particular thing they’re voting on is to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey adopt an accelerated recruitment policy to increase the diversity of senior management and its board of directors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s actually coming off a Verge article, put in the show notes. And this has been voted down yet again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have mixed feelings about this, which I probably shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because on the one side, I feel like, well, they have an executive team that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but Marco thinks is working okay. It seems a little silly to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just throw one or more of them out for the sake of diversity, but, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the other side of the coin, diversity is a good thing. I think that having a more diverse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey executive team might help get rid of some of these issues that we’ve seen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know which one specifically, but just a different thing. I was going to say outside the box thinking, but it’s not even outside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the box thinking. Just different thinking could be helpful, which to Marco’s credit is, I think a lot of the point that you were trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make last week, I’m disappointed by this. Like, I’m not entirely surprised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is the way the vote came. And I know that Apple was pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty hard for shareholders to say no to this. But, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I am disappointed. I’m not surprised, but I’m disappointed. And I kind of wish that Apple would say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something more directly about their lack of diversity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really across the company, but particularly amongst executives. And yes, I’m aware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they’ve been making this big push for diversity or so they say. But I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not really hitting the upper echelons of Apple and that’s, that’s not a good thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I guess maybe my conflicting feelings are, are just about, I think it would be good to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what this, what this shareholder, uh, whatever is trying to do. This just seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a peculiar way to go about doing it. But I guess this is the only way a shareholder can force
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s hand. I don’t know. I know that’s very muddy and gray, but do you guys have any thoughts on this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they’re not this thing doesn’t ask them to throw out executives like that’s not the choice They’re making here Oh adopt
⏹️ ▶️ John this proposal and you have to can one of your top executives. No, they totally don’t I think we talked about this
⏹️ ▶️ John the maybe one of the earlier times that it came up and I think the situation is still the same and it boils
⏹️ ▶️ John down to Companies don’t like being told what to do right so the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that this is a shareholder proposal and that it’s coming from the outside and that the shareholders are trying to say Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John you should do this specific thing I think just institutionally all corporations
⏹️ ▶️ John are like you’re you’re not the boss of me you can’t like an Apple’s answer is always this
⏹️ ▶️ John weird sort of vaguely hostile mumbo-jumbo to
⏹️ ▶️ John say like we already have we already have our own initiatives about diversity that are actually broader than this very
⏹️ ▶️ John narrow proposal therefore we reject it but every time I look at this thing go I have to think Like it’s this, this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John even actually about a diverse diversity. It is totally about the idea that
⏹️ ▶️ John big companies and especially Apple, their default position on every single shareholder
⏹️ ▶️ John of the proposal is no, no, no, no. We have a board of directors. We are the bosses
⏹️ ▶️ John of ourselves. Even though you technically own the company or some large portion of the company through your shares or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are not enough of you. There is not enough of a coalition to make it worth our while to listen to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John You cannot tell us what to do. And it doesn’t matter what it’s about, whether it’s about, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John renewable energy or executive compensation or diversity.
⏹️ ▶️ John Over the years, looking at these type of proposals and seeing all the stories about,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, just Apple, Apple always advises to reject all of them. And it’s kind of a
⏹️ ▶️ John shame that this one is specifically about diversity. I’m not sure if the proposal, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would be better or worse at advancing the cause of diversity within
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple than what Apple is already doing. It’s difficult to tell because again, these tend to be very focused and kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of, not vindictive, but like, like come on Apple, you gotta, whatever you’re doing,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s taking too long and it is being ineffective. So here is a more aggressive thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that may or may not have as much regard for the success of the company overall, but just the same,
⏹️ ▶️ John look Apple, you gotta get off your butt. So it could be the most important function of these is to let
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple know and know in certain terms that they’re not doing a good enough job, right? And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why enough shareholders got together to make this proposal to vote on it. Apple still going to recommend against that and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John still going to think their plan is good. But hopefully the message is getting through that whatever it is that you’re doing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not doing it fast enough or well enough. But I continue to think that Apple reject every single one of these proposals.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or Apple, Apple will encourage the rest of the shareholders to reject them other because these go up for a vote for all the shell holes and
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has a recommendation. We think shareholders should vote this down. And in the end, they tend to because
⏹️ ▶️ John the shareholders of Apple, they are, you know, at a certain point it’s a small number of very rich
⏹️ ▶️ John shareholders who are inclined to do what the corporation says versus a much larger number of not quite
⏹️ ▶️ John as rich shareholders who are backing this type of proposal. So it is kind of a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John and uncomfortable situation. But I think Apple, Apple should be getting the
⏹️ ▶️ John message and Apple needs to change what it’s doing, even if it continues to reject all it continues to
⏹️ ▶️ John encourage its shareholders to vote these down and their shareholders continue to do so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just a tough situation and I wish that there was a easy turd and key answer, but But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just wanted to call attention to that.
Apple bought Workflow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So breaking news Just before we recorded in a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rare stroke of good luck for ATP It seems that Apple clearly the executives listen to this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey program because we’re getting a new Mac Pro wait, never mind I guess they don’t listen. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They seem to all the Apple executives seemed always want to do Apple News on Thursdays Which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the day after we record but in a rare stroke of good luck on this evening Like an hour or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two before we started recording It was announced, and I first saw it on TechCrunch by a friend of the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Matt Panzerino, that Apple has bought the app and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company that makes it called Workflow, which if you listen to any of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the shows of some of our friends, you’ll know that people like Mike Hurley and Federico Vaticci,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for example, are huge into Workflow. I’ve used it a bunch. I really like it. I’m nowhere near their level,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I do like it and use it. And this is a true, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whether or not workflow has a place in your life, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a phenomenally impressive app. And basically it’s sort of kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Automator is on OS 10 or excuse me, Mac OS. That’s not a truly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair analogy, but it’s sort of that kind of thing where you can, you have a series of different actions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can string together also vaguely similar to if this than that. And you can string these actions together
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to create workflows and to do these just unbelievably complex things. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple has bought Workflow and I guess the three founders
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the company are going to be working for Apple. And that’s really, really exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I’m also hearing breaking news that I haven’t yet confirmed that apparently they’ve already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made the app free. Good. already removing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chrome support and Street View Actions because Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, actually there might be something else to that. So a couple of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks ago, or recently, like a week ago or something like that, I got an email from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Workflow. I don’t want to go into too many of the details because I don’t know if they wanted this to be public or not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’ll try to be tasteful here. But But basically, workflow has supported overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco URL scheme for quite some time. And I got an email basically with from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking me to sign a legal document that basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says it’s okay for them to call my app via its URL schemes, something on the lines of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if you want us to continue supporting this in the future, please sign
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this document. And my best guess at the time, which turned out to be true, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody is about to invest a lot of money in them or acquire them and is doing due diligence.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And somebody’s lawyer told the somebody with all the money buying them or investing in them, you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should really shore this up in some kind of legal fashion to make sure that none of the apps that workflow calls via
⏹️ ▶️ Marco URL schemes would later threaten them in any legal way for using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an undocumented API or using an API without permission or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My best guess, with the immediate removal of the Google-related features,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not that Apple is being a jerk to Google, but that Google probably just didn’t respond and didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consider signing this document. It was basically a very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple, but still legal, contract-like document. I’m not a lawyer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but it looked like a very simple contract. So you would imagine emailing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google to say, hey, sign this contract, please, so we can keep calling you from our iOS app. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think that’s going to be a high priority for Google’s legal department to review.
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re usually so responsive to people who email them on those issues. It’s so out of character for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. So basically, I’m guessing that…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, this is not some kind of like Apple immediately being a jerk to Google because they’re Google. It’s probably Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t feel like it was worth responding to that or hasn’t gotten to it yet, or legal decided It wasn’t worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the legal implications of it. And so, after the acquisition, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably just says, all right, well, this is your deadline. That anybody, just for legal protection reasons for themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody who hasn’t signed this document saying you can call their secret APIs or URL schemes or whatever, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t do it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s an interesting take.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so the bigger issue on workflow, though, is like, after I saw this acquisition,
⏹️ ▶️ John what I immediately felt was I felt bad for Viteechi and
⏹️ ▶️ John Mike and all the other workflow enthusiasts because when Apple buys
⏹️ ▶️ John a company that does something like this, it can go a couple different ways. It can be what they call an acquihire,
⏹️ ▶️ John where the whole point is they’re just buying it to get these employees who have proven that they’re really, really good iOS developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so we, Apple, we would love really good iOS developers. Let’s buy the company. And now we’ve got those developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the product just gets sunsetted, becomes free, it hangs out for a while, sunset,
⏹️ ▶️ John sunset, yeah. And then it just goes away. Other possibilities like what they did with test flight,
⏹️ ▶️ John where they buy it, and it continues to exist. But now as an Apple internal thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the deal, even in that scenario, Apple’s priorities are different than the priorities of an independent workflow
⏹️ ▶️ John company, even for strategy tax things like even though we this Chrome thing is probably not that right. But
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has different priorities, different things are important to Apple as the platform owner than they are as someone writing an application
⏹️ ▶️ John on the platform. So even in the best case, workflow
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to change in ways that are better for Apple and probably not better for existing
⏹️ ▶️ John workflow customers. It could change in ways that are better for both because they had now workflow has
⏹️ ▶️ John access to private API’s and knows about the roadmap or whatever workflow itself could be integrated into the next major version
⏹️ ▶️ John of iOS as a core feature of the OS to stop being an independent application or become a
⏹️ ▶️ John bundled application, like there are good scenarios, but either way, it is a disruption to the
⏹️ ▶️ John workflow of all the people who use this application as part of their daily work, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just have to rejigger all your scripts and change things around. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I there there may be it may be a really bad situation for people who love workflow. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as someone who’s has workflow and uses a little bit but don’t have my work is not
⏹️ ▶️ John intimately tied into it. I think I’m hoping that it is a
⏹️ ▶️ John yet another sign that Apple is trying to do things to make
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS a more powerful platform for people with more demanding needs. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to believe that it was purely these guys are good iOS developers get them and have them do something I want to believe
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because they recognize that the people who are using
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS devices in the most sophisticated way love workflow. And that’s something,
⏹️ ▶️ John those capabilities should be part of the operating system to make iOS on the iPad or even
⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone for that matter, a more capable system. So I think overall it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John encouraging. But for anybody who really, really love workflow, I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John very near future is either slightly painful or very grim. But the longer term future for
⏹️ ▶️ John the platform, I think is better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, the way workflow has a lot of different features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days, but kind of the core of it and the first part of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before it had all these new API-related features, was it was just calling URL schemes for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and using X callback URL and everything else. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X callback URL, I don’t say this to brag. I say this as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco historical context. Greg Pierce and I actually invented that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Greg Pierce is the developer of drafts and also a couple other apps, and one of them is terminology,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is like a fancy dictionary app, basically. And back in 2010,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he contacted me asking, like, is there a way that we can make Instapaper basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shell out to terminology for its dictionary lookups? And we basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went back and forth over a couple days via email and worked out this URL scheme called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X callback and that and you could just it had these parameters and it was basically the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I knew of on iOS where there was a defined protocol that you could launch you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could shout to another app by URL scheme and give that app a way to call you back when it’s done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time I think both of us look at this as a tremendous hack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and and you know an And it became big anyway. And Greg
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went and really took the ball and ran with it and made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole site and directory about Xcallback URL, formally documented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this little fairly simple URL scheme spec that we had come up with, and then made this big directory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all the different apps that used it and documented all the URL schemes. And that’s really what made the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Xcallback URL take off, was that big site that he ran and publicizing it and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. But even back then, this was 2010, remember, even back then, I think both Greg and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I looked at it as, this is really a temporary need. That surely in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the future, iOS is going to add some better ways of inter-app communication
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and scripting and things like that. Other ways to solve this problem that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco calling URL schemes in the background and launching apps and then kicking you between different apps and having them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all come to the program for a second and kick you back like that is kind of a terrible hack and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now you know almost seven years later iOS has added extensions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which helped tremendously but only in certain ways like only in the in the extension points and only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the very strict ways those are defined and in the very limited areas that they exist in so extensions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help a little but what they need is something bigger and on the Mac they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire Apple script interface, not to mention everything from the Unix system below
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, all the different scripting and IPC mechanisms that are all over the Mac OS. The Mac has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this very well covered, but iOS still really doesn’t. So there is very much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a need. If Apple wants to keep pushing iOS into productivity, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is especially important for the iPad business I’d say, and it sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t hurt the iPhone business either, but if Apple wants to push people into more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco productivity use on iOS, they need automation systems like this. They need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mechanisms in the OS itself for apps to communicate with each other,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco automate each other, and for users to help define, write, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edit, and chain together those automations. And again, on the Mac, they have all this already.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve had it for years, decades even. If I was a user of Workflow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not feel great about the future of that app right now, because in any acquisition,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the future of the app that… And this is, I think, clearly mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an acquihire. I know in the official story to the press, I think they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said it wasn’t, but I think it pretty clearly is. Everyone always says it isn’t. Everyone always says their product’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep going indefinitely, and it’s going to be wonderfully, a great plan for the future. And then it gets sunset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would not depend on this app being there in, say, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year or two. But I do think that there’s a good chance that the reason they bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this app and the reason they hired this talented team who’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at iOS automation probably has something to do with an effort to improve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS automation at the system level. And again, I think pretty much everything John said I agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with, that I would not expect this app to continue to exist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in two years, say. I would bet that, it’s too late probably for iOS 11,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I would bet by iOS 12 or 13, there is something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is some kind of system or new technology in the OS that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better in some way at automation than URL schemes and things like that, which would make,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, 70% of workflow unnecessary. And Apple would consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that good enough, and then they would kill the app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know. My first reaction is, oh, this app is going away
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immediately. And then as I thought more about it, I thought, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the most obvious answer to me is what you said, Marco, which is it’ll get sucked into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS maybe in 12, if not 11, but or whatever Ron now. God,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m losing track. But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sucked into some version of iOS, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then it’ll go away, and that’ll be that. But then I got thinking about it more, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the reason I felt like it would get sucked into iOS is because it feels like this is wrong for Apple to make an app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is so feature-rich and offers so much functionality that isn’t part of the OS itself. And that very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well still could be. But then I got to to thinking about like iMovie or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey GarageBand or, you know, some of these other apps like that. And it occurred
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me that, you know, those are pretty full-featured apps. And yeah, it’s less of a system-level thing. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the problem domain, I think, is a little more bounded. But they’re really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big, complex, kind of intense apps that are Apple-branded,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but are downloaded optionally from the App Store. And so this may not be any different.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m disappointed, but like you said, Marco, maybe it’s for good reason that some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the third-party stuff is already getting neutered. But nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty optimistic about this, probably in part because I don’t rely on it to get my job done. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty optimistic about this because it’s kind of a win-win, right? Either a lot of this functionality gets built into iOS and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes iOS more powerful, or if it’s kept in some vague
⏹️ ▶️ Casey form like it is today, well it’s a great darn app. And so that’s a win too. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very tentatively optimistic about this. Well, and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other thing that people, that workflow users, I think should find somewhat comforting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that most of the app, you know, it’s not doing things that only these developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only this app could do. It’s doing things that are possible for anyone else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to step in and recreate with a new app. I don’t say this to insult the app or to say that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was easy to make, but that it is a combination of things that each one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is fairly easy. And so, which like most apps, honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the point is like if workflow disappears, if it shuts down or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is made to suck in a way that people find intolerable, there will be a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Someone else will make a new one. It might take a few months, but someone else will make a new one. Because there’s clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a market demand for it. And these are high-end, technical,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and very devoted users. If workflow disappears, there’s going to immediately be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a not massive, but very passionate and very desperate market who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would probably pay like 10, 15, 20 bucks for an iOS app to replace it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I wouldn’t worry too much about that unless Apple actually starts prohibiting apps that are like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, which would be possible. That is certainly a risk. I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely, but it’s certainly a risk. But anyway, basically, workflow people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there might be some disruption. And I don’t mean that in the tech guy sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean that in the literal meaning of the word, there might be some disruption to your workflows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sorry. But God, this That’s a terrible phrase in this market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think in the long run, you’ll be okay. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we brought up TestFlight already, which is I think one of the most,
⏹️ ▶️ John the best example of an application that was bought and didn’t even change the icon. Did they?
⏹️ ▶️ John TestFlight continues to be called TestFlight. Yeah. As a separate application
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple uses it for the purpose that TestFlight was created. So it’s like it survived the acquisition.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And then of course your applications totally go away or become free and disappear. Uh, Serenity
⏹️ ▶️ John call will just point out on Twitter that Siri, Siri was an independent company by the people, you know, like same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they had an application on the store and it went free when it got bought back in 2010, but eventually it got rolled into the OS.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s another possibility for this is that, you know, we, we hope that this, what this means is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, that Apple wants to make automation better on iOS. Like it’s, that seems clear, like why, you know, in some fashion,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether you’re just gonna have these people do a new thing or you’re going to incorporate that, but you could have workflow appearing as
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple application with a different icon, perhaps a bundled with the OS, perhaps free downloadable,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, as an Apple branded thing until the
⏹️ ▶️ John big new, we have big improvements automation come in iOS 12 or something. So it
⏹️ ▶️ John could be that the application. Like becomes part of the OS in terms of,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, it’s still called workflow. It’s still more or less works the same, maybe it gets a new coat of paint. And while
⏹️ ▶️ John that sits there doing its thing, those people who made that application are working on
⏹️ ▶️ John the next big thing in terms of automating workflows, maybe incorporate, maybe, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John working in conjunction with whatever possible multitasking improvements that may be coming into
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS that we’ll see this summer or whatever. So there are a lot of possibilities and I see all of them point towards,
⏹️ ▶️ John to me anyway, automation becoming better on the Mac. But it’s really, especially with the
⏹️ ▶️ John portability, like, will my workflows port over to the new Apple one will the my workflows carry over to the
⏹️ ▶️ John new world of automation that’s going to happen in iOS 12 who knows but I think I think things are going in the right direction
⏹️ ▶️ John even though it might be a little painful short term. Did you mean iOS there you said the Mac? Yeah, yeah, I know I got Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John on the brain. Yep, you know, just replace what I said with the words you know that I meant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Your sponsor this week by HelloFresh.
Sponsor: HelloFresh (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to HelloFresh.com and for $35 off your first week of deliveries use code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP when you subscribe. Whether you’re a busy couple or a large family or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco someone who just simply wants to start cooking more, HelloFresh makes it easier, tastier, and healthier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than ever to enjoy the experience of cooking new recipes and eating together at home.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco From creating the recipes and planning the meals, to grocery shopping and even delivering all the pre-measured ingredients
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you, HelloFresh delivers right to your door so you can skip the trip to the shop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They currently offer customers a classic box, veggie box, or family box with three, four, or five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different meals per week and either two or four people’s worth of food. There’s lots of options for whatever you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and new recipes are created every week by their full-time registered dietitians
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on staff who review each recipe to ensure it’s nutritionally balanced. All this food gets delivered to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your doorstep in a special insulated box for free and they source the freshest ingredients
⏹️ ▶️ Marco measured to the exact quantities you need so there’s no food waste. These meals take only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about 30 minutes for everyone from novices to seasoned home cooks and they give you step-by-step instruction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cards so you know exactly what to do. There’s pictures, it’s very clear, there’s no confusion. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tried HelloFresh and I absolutely love how nice it is to cook at home and to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have these things delivered to you ready to go, these meals ready to cook in these nice little pre-proportioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ingredient packages and everything. It’s just really nice to cook this way. It kind of forces you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to step out of your comfort zone a little bit and learn new recipes and that’s great too. And you don’t have to figure out what to eat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single night of every single week. You can just have them choose for you, which is kind of nice when you’re busy. So check it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out today. Go to HelloFresh.com and for $35 off your first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, enter code ATP you subscribe. and
New iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HelloFresh.com. And for 35 bucks off your first week, enter code ATP. Thanks a lot to HelloFresh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so there was yesterday and we’ve made several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey references to this already in this episode. Yesterday, there was an announcement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or series of announcements of new Apple products. And so I’m going to try to run through just a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey high level each of them. And then we’ll step in and do a deeper dive through each of them after that. So there’s now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a red iPhone 7. It is product red, which means some subset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this money is donated towards AIDS research, et cetera, et cetera. Except in China.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Except in China, which we’ll get to in a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well, I think they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually got clarification on that. I think Cook gave some statement to somebody somewhere saying that actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, a portion of the proceeds are also being donated from China sales. I think it just isn’t branded as such.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, interesting. That makes me feel a little better. There’s a new there. There’s a couple of new iPhone SE
⏹️ ▶️ Casey storage sizes. As far as anyone can tell, the internals are otherwise identical, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the SE no longer has a 16 gig option, which means that there are no more 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gig iOS devices. John Syracuse, how happy are you right now?
⏹️ ▶️ John I should have looked up the timelines for this. Like how long do we have to wait from the first introduction of 16 gig
⏹️ ▶️ John to it disappearing? It’s taken long enough, but I’m glad it’s happened. Although and Apple always
⏹️ ▶️ John manages to frustrate me with the sizes because they changed it now what is the SC comes in 32 and 128.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s like 64 seems like the perfect size but nope nope you got to pick 32
⏹️ ▶️ John which at this point it doesn’t feel as small as 16 obviously like 32 is great right it’s huge you know
⏹️ ▶️ John kudos to getting rid of the 16 gigabyte finally but for me personally like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be like oh 64 if I was recommending it for somebody I would say well 32 will be fine right and 128
⏹️ ▶️ John is probably too much Uh, 64 would be great, but now they just skip that size. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s, that’s part of this, right? You’re like, they want you to step up. They want you to pay the premium that you pay for the larger size,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m glad that 32 is no longer ridiculously painfully way too small. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goodness. All right. There’s a new 9.7 inch iPad. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s old is new. Again, we’ve gone from iPad to iPad. Two or something like that. I forget the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey timeline, but it’s ridiculous. iPad with retina display to iPad Air and blah blah blah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco but anyway… You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forgot iPad fourth generation and iPad Air 2. So this, the like seventh iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is called the iPad fifth generation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, remember the new iPad? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that was the
⏹️ ▶️ John original name for the iPad 3. Yep, they’re just called the new iPad. Yeah. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John this new iPad is a basic spec bump and price drop, which would be
⏹️ ▶️ John boring I think if it wasn’t seemingly so rare these days, because you either get
⏹️ ▶️ John a spec bump with a price increase, or something just lingers on. But this is like
⏹️ ▶️ John the old style. It’s like, we make it faster because new stuff is available. And it’s like the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John of the road product, so we can actually make it a little bit cheaper because there’s just not much in there, and it’s not getting
⏹️ ▶️ John the top of the top of the line system on a chip, it’s getting a better one. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John this 9.7 inch iPad has become more attractive to people
⏹️ ▶️ John who would otherwise buy, you know, who are shopping for a full-size iPad but
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need an iPad Pro, especially the education because they’ve brought it down below the magic $300 mark. So it’s $299 for education
⏹️ ▶️ John thicker than the one that it replaces. Presumably it’s got a little bit more battery. The system on a chip
⏹️ ▶️ John is faster, but not as fast as it could be. So it looks like a good middle-of-the-road big iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so when this was first announced, I was kind of puzzled, I’m like, you know, that’s kind of weak.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for some reason I had misparsed the price in my head as $429, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s actually $329. And that’s actually a bigger deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the price point than I originally thought. And, you know, as we get more detail on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, it seems like, you know, it’s kind of arguable whether it’s like a spec-bumped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air 2 or whether it’s more of a cut-down 9.7 Pro. It’s kind of in the middle,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, with some new ways to cut the price down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It only has the two speakers, like the older iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does not have the laminated screen. When the Pros came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, they came with this really nice, beautiful laminated screen where there’s a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or basically zero screen gap between the glass and the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPhone did this a couple versions back too, and the iPad finally did it, I think with the 9.7 Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if not the Air 2. And anyway, so this one has the old style screen where there’s like that gap there, it’s kind of a visible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gap between the glass and the screen. So there’s things like that where it’s cut down, and it lacks all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Pro, you know, the quote iPad Pro feature, so it does not have pencil support, it doesn’t have a smart connector.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for a lot of iPad buyers, that’s pretty great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For $329, it’s an amazing value compared to the rest of the lineup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whether you think it’s an amazing value compared to other tablets like from Amazon or other Android
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weirdos, that’s up to you. It probably isn’t, but oh well, I don’t think Apple cares. But compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to other iPads, it’s a fantastic value for the money. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as you don’t need any of those pro features. But I think if you’re willing to drop $160 on a keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you probably aren’t that price sensitive about the purchase price of the initial iPad. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously being targeted strongly at educational buyers, but I think it’ll also just be a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good entry-level iPad. I think that’s going to be, you know, they’re probably going to sell a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things. Just like, and the fact that it has fairly modern internals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really nice. From a user perspective, from a developer perspective, it’s really, really nice. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, to me, the, oh, and also I wanted to point out, Stephen Hackett wrote a wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco article on 512 pixels, citing the interesting marketing copy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differences between the way Apple brands this new cheaper iPad versus the way they brand the 9.7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, and this new cheap one is all about fun. It’s like, you know, casual fun and games,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Pro’s like, this is your new supercomputer. It’s like totally different marketing guidelines,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think that makes sense for how they’re targeting it. The only major question I have about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is it kind of leaves the iPad mini in a weird spot because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they also discontinued the old mini so now there’s only one iPad mini available. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more expensive than this. It’s the $400 mini 4 128GB.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so this to me kind of looks like this is their gradual way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of maybe killing the mini? I don’t know. But sure, like this new 9.7 is now, I think, better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that mini in most ways. And this is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their new entry-level iPad. So I don’t think the mini has a lot of places
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go anymore, but I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve never been a big fan of the mini, and if it’s not going to be cheaper than this, then I don’t know why anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John would be into it unless they really love that size.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in all fairness, they do still sell the iPod Touch.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say, by the way, there is actually one 16 gigabyte model at the iPod Touch, which everyone forgets exists, is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco still available in 16 gigs. Even Apple forgets
⏹️ ▶️ John it exists. It almost doesn’t count. But hey, you know what? You can get the iPod Touch and you can get it in 16, 32, 64 and 128.
⏹️ ▶️ John No gaps, no 256 model, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So for this for this iPad, this I think is what one of the things that we
⏹️ ▶️ John would we on the show at least would probably love it if Apple did with a laptop or desktop line,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is take a middle of the road model and make it
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper and thicker like trade like bring the price down, you know, make something
⏹️ ▶️ John that is, you know, make it more powerful, bring the price down by sacrificing
⏹️ ▶️ John the like the nice to have the laminated screen, the couple of millimeters of thickness,
⏹️ ▶️ John the little bit of extra weight in exchange for like in this class like do you need
⏹️ ▶️ John the fanciest most laminated screen do you need true tone wouldn’t you just rather have a machine that
⏹️ ▶️ John is like a hundred bucks cheaper but also pretty darn fast and sacrifice like a millimeter
⏹️ ▶️ John of thickness yes like that’s what a middle-of-the-road model should be it makes the expensive one look like what
⏹️ ▶️ John am I getting for money you’re getting fancier crap right it is actually faster it’s nicer it’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s got the laminated screen on it it’s got the smart connector or whatever you see what you’re paying for there but
⏹️ ▶️ John it It is a thing that gets bumped and doesn’t just you know, it’s not like the iPad 2 that stays the same and it’s just like super crappy and you feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re getting a terrible model. And the fact that they made this thicker, like I think that’s great. That’s exactly what we’re looking
⏹️ ▶️ John for. Please make those trade-offs in the middle models to make a machine that has better, it
⏹️ ▶️ John gives people better value for the money. And so I’m encouraged by this and I think someone pointed out that the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John line is now much simplified over its previous thing. Now we have two iPad Pros, one of which is a little
⏹️ ▶️ John creaky, we’ll talk about later. two iPad Pros, the big one and the small one, and then you have two other iPads which are
⏹️ ▶️ John not Pros, the big one and the small one. And it’s weird that the Mini is called, like, the iPad Mini 4,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I agree that it’s a weird product and with a weird price, and maybe it will go away, or maybe it itself will get
⏹️ ▶️ John bumped in the same way, and that it will, there will be a faster Mini 4 that is cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John and that sacrifices, I don’t know what you can sacrifice, what’s left to sacrifice on the Mini? I don’t know. But,
⏹️ ▶️ John overall, I think this was a good announcement, and especially for education, I think they need to drive it down farther
⏹️ ▶️ John for that purposes like kind of like the iPad 2 was in the end of its life when it was just so incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John behind the times that they could probably sell it to education for much less money. anyway, thumbs up!
Red iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So continuing with the summary, and then we’ll come back and talk about each one individually, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John there are… No, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John on board with that plan.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I love you too.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I did like the fact that we cruised through the red iPhone and the SE with appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John speed. We don’t need to circle back to them. It’s red. It looks cool. It’s nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I guess since we’re talking about this now, sorry, Casey. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You deserve this for all your follow-up complaints. Yeah, the red iPhone. It’s nice that it’s product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco red. This is, you know, as you mentioned about the charitable donation part of this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is nice that they finally, for the very first time, brought that to their most profitable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product, the iPhone. Like, I guess maybe back in the iPod days it might have been. But anyway, it’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while. You know, you’ve been able to get red stuff from Apple. You know, the red iPod Touch has been there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while, which by the way looks a lot like the new red iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The you know that you had like the product red watch bands, stuff like that. It’s really nice to be able to finally get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPhone. I hope you know for when basically before the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before we saw the 7 and there were some rumors of new colors. I believe I made some comment back then about how like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love for them to replace all of the like old metal colors like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco silver, space gray, gold, rose gold. I would like, you know, those all I think look stale to me now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All four of those I would say look fairly overdone and dated these days on most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the products, especially the iPhone. So to have new colors is very, very welcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was, you know, this, and I think this phone looks great. I do think it looks a little bit like the old iPod Touch and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little to an uncomfortable degree. And I agree with Mike’s complaint that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it should definitely have a red circle around the touch ID button because all the other phones have metal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco color matching circles. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should also have a black front. I do not like white fronted phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like white fronts to the things, but a lot of people do. So like, if they’re not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John make it in two colors, like, hey, here’s a red back and a black front and a red, black and a white front, like they have to pick one of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s just a personal taste thing. Honestly, I think the white front looks really good. I would never wanna own it for
⏹️ ▶️ John the reasons I’ve talked about before by putting some reflective white surface next to the screen just makes your screen look dingier because
⏹️ ▶️ John it can never compare to the sun shining off a white thing. Like I think it’s a, I don’t want it, but it’s totally personal
⏹️ ▶️ John preference. I think it looks, I think it looks really good. It looks like a Christmas phone. It looks like a piece of candy. I’ve always,
⏹️ ▶️ John people say it in like a bad way, like, oh, this looks like the iPod Touches. The iPod Touches look cool. I, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, because this is entirely a fashion thing and a taste thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have no complaints about the white front, despite the fact that I would never, ever, ever buy one because you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they make phones that some people are gonna like how it looks. That’s why they make them in different colors. There’s a whole plenty of different colors. You don’t like this
⏹️ ▶️ John color, pick a different color. And I love the fact that now there is a color that is not silver,
⏹️ ▶️ John black, or some tint thereof. Like it is a bold color for a phone. And the last time we saw that was like the 5C,
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess, which I thought were also really fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I would say Jet Black was a bold color of that scale. Like it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expected. You can get it in any bold color as long as it’s black. Right, yeah. No, like it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like something that I would have predicted or expected how good it ended up being. but I would say Jet Black
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is one of those game changer colors that really did feel new and awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That being said, I do wish this was Jet Red. I wish it had the finish of the Jet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Black, like the tacky, because it would increase grip and everything, and I think it might look a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit more modern, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John again, I do think-
⏹️ ▶️ John It would look more like the 5C, which was also very glossy and colored.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but more saturated and newer and thinner and everything else. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that would help it not look like an old iPod Touch, But I do think this is overall a very nice looking phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The timing is interesting of it being mid-cycle. This is about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they launched the SE last year, right? This is, you know, the cynical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take on this is this is a nice way for them to boost sales in a very slow, traditionally quarter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s a nice way for them to boost sales on their most profitable product line.
⏹️ ▶️ John wish they did this more often. Like, who would complain if they treated the phone back like watch bands? Like, just throughout the
⏹️ ▶️ John year, every couple months came out with different colors of phones because it I mean it’s you know
⏹️ ▶️ John it gives them the freedom to have lots of different ideas and honestly it does get people more excited because phones are very much faster
⏹️ ▶️ John than accessories and if you can come out with different colors in different parts of the year people like
⏹️ ▶️ John it does renew your interest in getting the phones especially if you see the phones and you’re like I don’t know if I need a new phone
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure I like all these new colors especially if they’re the same as last year where it’s like gold rose gold and maybe you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like the jet black or whatever if you knew you could wait three months and they would be like, you know, a teal
⏹️ ▶️ John one or a purple one or a yellow one. I mean, I still see 5Cs that are white and I’m like, that’s a cool looking phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Um, it, you know, if it’s fashion and the watches certainly are and
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone is at this point too, by all means do this as many times as you want Apple. I think it’s, I think it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Also, by the way, I think a jet white phone, like with the same finish, but in white, that would look amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you allowed to say that? And I’m sitting here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John quietly. Come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re thinking it’s a jet white phone with a black front on it though, I guess, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t know if that’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen. Well, I think that would look better. I agree with you. I think the red with the white front, I think that does look better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though I agree also that I wouldn’t want the white front, but I think a black back, or I mean a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white back, I think would only look good with a black front.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Anyway. Yeah, it’s a Stormtrooper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Michael Armin, and I want a white phone. Oh my God, you’re killing me.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s because it’s in a pleasing shape, so it does look good in white. Ooh. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my God. What do I do to deserve this? I just tried to keep you two in line.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not to deserve, that’s just a foundational theory of white cars, have we not gone over this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we have, we have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I think we started
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with this. I think we did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope, I would just love to see more color in Apple’s line in general.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I hope they keep this up. This is great, I don’t really, I’m not gonna go trade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my still perfectly fine working iPhone 7 that’s halfway through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its cycle for this. But if I were buying new today, I’d seriously consider it. Although,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, I still want the grip of the jet black finish. So I would probably still decide against it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give me jet red and jet white and we’ll talk. But anyway, I hope this fall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when presumably new iPhones come out again, although it’s hard to say with Apple when things will come out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But presumably this fall, I hope they continue, even with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new products, to offer cool new colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would agree with that. I really like the look of this. I really do wish it was a black front. There’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be said for white perhaps being a better match, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back of this does look awesome. And they’ve also released a couple of new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey colors for iPhone cases, and I believe it was Sapphire, on screen anyway, it looked really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice. I haven’t seen it in person. And they’ve also released a bunch of new watch bands, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey largely match the case colors. They’ve also started selling Nike Plus bands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey separately, which if you want something that is, for the most part, visually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely loud, power to you, I guess, and now you can buy the band.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As a sport band, having all those holes in it is really nice for ventilation, because the regular sport band is pretty sweaty,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it just has that solid surface that does not breathe at all. So the Nike bands actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are nicer for sport use, for any kind of, you know, if you’re gonna be hot and sweaty,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re way nicer because they have those holes. My wife
⏹️ ▶️ John picked that when she bought her watch. She bought the Nike Plus one, and I think in part because of the, she didn’t get like the
⏹️ ▶️ John neon one, but the holes, and she likes it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like, you know, it does look like some kind of crazy alien creature, but it is highly functional.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, one more thing before we get off the phone, the red phone, one angle I think might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be interesting to consider, or I guess we’ll see, is like, So there’s two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cynical takes on this. One, I mentioned, to boost sales in a slow quarter. The second is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will they release a product red phone with the charitable donation portion of its profits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during the peak season and the holidays? Like, will they release it on day one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, for the next phone? Because that could cost them more money in donations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the kind of thing that I hope they would say, you know what, it’s worth it. And knowing Tim Cook, I think they probably would.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Tim Cook, he cares a lot about charitable causes and things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are good for the world and for people’s health and everything else. So I can see him saying, you know what, screw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, we’ll take the hit. But it’s so much money at that scale during the peak quarter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it might be a tricky balance.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it did, back in the day, they did introduce several iPods at the time when the iPod was still
⏹️ ▶️ John a very important product, that when a new line came out, it would come with the product red one. was no delay
⏹️ ▶️ John like what you’re talking about here are the new iPod nanos and you can get these five colors plus product red that happened routinely I
⏹️ ▶️ John know because my wife bought a lot of the red ones because they were cool and they were red so I totally think they’ll do it
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s just a question of like manufacturing ramps and how many different colors they can handle
⏹️ ▶️ John and being able to deal with multiple skews and the color variant like we always have problems with that like
⏹️ ▶️ John I never know how well they try to predict what the color mix will be they’re always off by a little bit and at the scales they
⏹️ ▶️ John do it it makes people frustrated they gotta like look for a jet black one or remember when people couldn’t find the gold phones
⏹️ ▶️ John for the very first gold one it’s difficult so I feel like if they don’t do it it will mostly be for inventory
Clips app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Clips for iOS, a forthcoming app that will,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how are they pitching this? It will basically let you make little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey videos and I think it’s apple.com slash clips. We’ll have a link in the show notes. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Eh, I think it’s. But it’s not like Snapchat.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I know. This, to many people who have heard from Apple about this topic,
⏹️ ▶️ John this appears to be, surprisingly, to, you know, we were all looking at the announcements is very surprisingly,
⏹️ ▶️ John perhaps the most important announcement from Apple’s perspective of all the things we just listed, even though it
⏹️ ▶️ John is software and not hardware. And even though it seems like, great, you made an app that we can make videos
⏹️ ▶️ John with, unlike Snapchat, and Instagram and all these other applications that people
⏹️ ▶️ John use to take videos of themselves and put words over those videos and stick stickers on their faces and do all the other stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ John they do. This is not a ping version 2.0. This is not an Apple social
⏹️ ▶️ John network. This is not a way for you to share videos for people. This is a video production tool. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is a way for you to make impressive looking videos that you then shove onto all
⏹️ ▶️ John those social networks run by companies that are not Apple. And it’s leveraging Apple strengths. We
⏹️ ▶️ John know how to make nice looking video transition effects. We know how to take video and incorporate
⏹️ ▶️ John other elements into the video. We know how to let you somehow edit video with your fingers on this tiny little phone screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John We can help you in the same way that iMovie helped you make family movies that looked 100 times
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the family movies that were cut together and edited on someone’s mini DV camcorder,
⏹️ ▶️ John like literally on the camcorder. Like when you use your Mac to do it, you got these amazing transitions and effects and
⏹️ ▶️ John things that were previously only available on professional software. And you’re like, you made that yourself? Even if you just use one of the stinking templates
⏹️ ▶️ John or keynote, made you let people make tasteful presentations that didn’t look like they were made in PowerPoint because they weren’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John just by providing good tools and templates. That’s what this seems to be a very well done
⏹️ ▶️ John application for video production, whose output is targeting all those
⏹️ ▶️ John services that people use to share video of themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it looks really good. Like I, this is this is trying to tie together,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like three or four different worlds, none of which I really understand or participated in very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s hard for me to have a smart take on how it will do, but how it looks on this page, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks good and I’m going to play with it. You do
⏹️ ▶️ John participate in it because I watch videos of you on these services often taken by your wife.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you do you do Periscope a lot. That is one of these services. I know it’s not like a pre-produced thing where you put stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John on, but it is like, hey, I want to take some spur of the moment video that immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John get shared with people onto a social network type of thing. And it is it’s perhaps the the the least invasive
⏹️ ▶️ John where They’re not putting little stickers over your head or writing words on the screen. But, you know, for Instagram, I
⏹️ ▶️ John follow people who post daily Instagram stories or whatever they’re called, where it’s just a series of small clips
⏹️ ▶️ John with some text occasionally over it or some audio. And I got to tell you, of all
⏹️ ▶️ John those things I look at, they look pretty rough. And if someone could use and,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a question of like, do people care enough about the quality to go into an external app and like, you know, hit the share button and share
⏹️ ▶️ John to Instagram versus doing it from within the Instagram app? But this this should be Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John strength in the same way that I movie was, you know, demonstrated Apple strength. And back in the day, I photo
⏹️ ▶️ John used to last now they make good software for dealing with media,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re able to do it even on the phone to leverage all the hardware they have there that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it like a, you know, a little magical video production studio to to make clever. And what are the things they were saying?
⏹️ ▶️ John They were clever. Does it just face recognition to know who’s in the video? Matches it up with your contact photos to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, It looks like in this video these three people if you want to share it with them here are their faces it does dictation
⏹️ ▶️ John for the text so you don’t have to type it in and Supposedly like when you dictate the text if you dictate the test the
⏹️ ▶️ John text with a certain cadence It will appear on the screen with that cadence so you can
⏹️ ▶️ John you know basically by speaking in a certain manner make Text appear in a way
⏹️ ▶️ John that Emphasizes the point of your video as opposed to trying to time that with like a bunch of curves You know and like a video
⏹️ ▶️ John like lots and lots of clever touches to let regular people do things that are much more interesting. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it will probably create a middle tier class of produced videos in the same way
⏹️ ▶️ John that they were like professional people producing vines, presumably using like, I don’t know if I even let you
⏹️ ▶️ John do this, but something, you know, for other, other types of services where it’s clear that there is a group of people using
⏹️ ▶️ John tools way more sophisticated than are available on the social services native app to nevertheless share
⏹️ ▶️ John that video on that app. So like they would make a video like in final cut basically with a bunch of cool effects and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John and trim it down and share it on a social network in the same way that I take pictures with my fancy camera and put them in Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ John and some people get cranky because like that’s only supposed to be pictures you take with your phone like that’s not how I’m using Instagram.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have an imagine there are people who are sharing things through social services that are made with very complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John tools, but not everyone can do that. So this is like an in between thing. You have, you could use the built in
⏹️ ▶️ John tools for the sharing services and make an okay video you go one step back, which is just a separate application that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John also on your phone and still pretty darn easy to use but you’ll get a nicer result and then the final one is you know
⏹️ ▶️ John use Final Cut Pro to spend a week making this amazing video that you hope will go viral and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a video on the apple.com slash clips and the section is called Say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It, See It and there’s a little video of a gentleman who is saying how to tie a bow tie and you see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the words pop on screen just like you were describing John. It looks very clever. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Snapchat account. I only ever use it to send or receive pictures with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron and Declan. So oftentimes when he wakes up from nap, she’ll go in there and like, take a goofy picture with one of the goofy filters.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I got to say, it is actually quite delightful. I don’t have the faintest idea how to use the actual features
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Snapchat that you’re supposed to be using because I’m old. Um, I do like Instagram stories.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t find myself doing it very often because my day is usually pretty boring, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think they’re super cool and I like that the features they’ve added. And so this to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Marco, I know you were being snarky, but I think you’re right to some degree to a small degree. I do think this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Snapchat for old people, but I’m really amped about this. I think this is going to be super neat to play with. And it may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that I play with it twice and never use it again, but I really think this is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey firing on all cylinders in theory. Anyway, we’ll see when it, when it’s released, but it’s embracing all the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff they’re good at, just like you guys said, and ignoring the stuff they’re not. So rather than making another ping, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just using this to create content and then pushing it to the places where you want that content
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be, which is awesome. And a lot of really nice little touches on here, like the, oh, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have Aaron in this video. Do you want to send it to her? Like this all sounds really, really cool. And I’m really looking forward
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to playing with it. I’m not entirely sure why it was announced today. Like I’m not sure what that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really buys them. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess. But like… See, that’s the thing, though. all these announcements via this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco barrage of press releases. But after these announcements were over and throughout the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day yesterday when they’re getting all this press, you still can’t pre-order the red iPhone, you still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t pre-order the new cheap iPad, you can’t download the Eclipse app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or even, they didn’t even do like the App Store notify me thing like they did for Mario Run.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, there’s nothing we can do about this. Like, we’re interested now give us a way to turn that into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something for you later apple but no instead we just have to try to remember about these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and then when they are available in you know a week or three uh then go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get them then uh but like why why couldn’t they do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what like why did they have to announce this yesterday when none of when none of this stuff was even ready to pre-order exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re trying they could be trying to space it out you know like they have other announcements they don’t want to push it up
⏹️ ▶️ John against them Like, I don’t really because I think the Apple line on this is that,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, they’re not the type of products that there’s going to be a mad rush
⏹️ ▶️ John for people to get. Like it doesn’t really matter when they tell you about clips being a thing because it’s going to be like a slow
⏹️ ▶️ John burn, even though it’s not even available. It requires I was 10.3 actually. So no one’s gotten it until
⏹️ ▶️ John I was 10.3 comes out and 10.3 is not coming out until next month sometime probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not this. the iPhone, you could argue like there could be a potential rush for that. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why they all came together. I don’t know why they’re all not available. But I don’t think it matters that much because for all
⏹️ ▶️ John these type of products, it’s not the type of thing where you have to strike while the iron is hot and build up a frenzy of
⏹️ ▶️ John activity. It’s just going to be cool new stuff that Apple’s coming out with just so you know, here it is, it’ll be here,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be here before you know it, but it’s not a big deal. Like I don’t think anybody is, it has
⏹️ ▶️ John money burning a hole in their pocket for that new iPad, even though it is better than the old one. It just lets you know, if you were thinking to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy one, maybe wait a little bit and for the application, it’ll be coming out soon, but it requires
⏹️ ▶️ John the new OS. And you know, I, I, I, you can question why didn’t they wait
⏹️ ▶️ John until like one of the items is available and like it was announced because that one’s all that one’s available and the other
⏹️ ▶️ John ones aren’t because you can’t really make, try to make them all simultaneous, but I don’t particularly mind that
⏹️ ▶️ John they, they talk about it ahead of time, especially since like there is something to be said for having all the sites
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about it. You can’t get this net, but here’s our exclusive look like, you know, here’s the red iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can’t get your hands on and here’s the Clips app, I don’t know if anybody has the Clips app, that won’t be out until 10.3,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is another way to build hype, so who knows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think anyone even has it. I mean, the reviewers, we at least know reviewers seem to have red iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t think, I haven’t heard anybody mention that they have the Clips,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anyway, it doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although the Clips app, by the way, getting back to that, speaking of playing to their strengths, the more negative
⏹️ ▶️ John take on playing to your strengths is it is a further emphasis of your weakness. because like it
⏹️ ▶️ John if you had to pick who do you want to be the company that is really good at making it like a high quality,
⏹️ ▶️ John clever, nice interface, powerful application that takes advantage of your phone’s hardware to make cool videos,
⏹️ ▶️ John or the company that owns a social network, where all those videos will be posted, whether it be Instagram or Snapchat or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple would trade in a second to be the company that controls
⏹️ ▶️ John the social networks where because that’s there’s more value in being the place where people post all their stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John than there is in making the application that lets people post their stuff. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John like when I gave the hierarchy before most I was like most people are going to use the app. A second tier
⏹️ ▶️ John is much fewer people who care more about quality will use this thing. And then a third tier is even fewer people use
⏹️ ▶️ John professional tools. So they’re not even getting the fat part of that market, right? I think if they could choose, they would
⏹️ ▶️ John say, boy, we really wish we were Instagram, or boy, we really wish we were Snapchat or whatever. But they
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t and they can’t be and they’re bad at that stuff. So at the very released. This is always talked about, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John people who say, Oh, Apple’s good at software, and they make good interfaces and dimensions. Like, are they what application have they made
⏹️ ▶️ John recently that shows that Apple actually knows how to make good applications, workflows, an example and a phenomenal application, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we get to the point where I feel like the ADA winners, I think workflow on an ADA, the ADA
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco winners are like,
⏹️ ▶️ John all all those applications are better than what’s Apple is doing. Whereas this feels like a return to form or Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, the ADA is our for account for people making software that we feel like exemplifies the
⏹️ ▶️ John ideals and the API’s that we’re promoting or whatever, that we at Apple are interested in.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we at Apple also want to make applications to that level. And for a long time, it
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed like Apple was no longer able to make really great applications consistently.
⏹️ ▶️ John And clips looks like a modern version of really great application. And rather than being a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John application or like a pro application, it’s like, this is this is an application to do a simple thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s almost like one of the demos that use the WVC. Say you want to make an application that does video that lets people make
⏹️ ▶️ John videos for social services. What kind of features could you add to it? If you took advantage of all our APIs and could you make
⏹️ ▶️ John a really clever interface and use all our new systems for
⏹️ ▶️ John laying out the UI and use everything you learned from it? Like, it looks like a really
⏹️ ▶️ John good third-party application, which at this point is a high compliment for something that Apple puts out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m looking forward to trying this. And who knows, like I said, if I’ll ever use it, but I’m really excited
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. Yeah, and the application itself, like I’m less concerned about like, you know, whatever. Maybe no one will ever use it. But I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John excited to see Apple making really good iOS applications again. iOS applications that
⏹️ ▶️ John even third-party developers say, that’s a good iOS app. In the same way we all say that about, you know, workflow or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what’s encouraging to me about it. There’s not the specifics of like, Oh, you see me in an app to share video or whatever.
Angry fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I did briefly want to address the other thing that happened when all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco announcements dropped which is a bunch of people got really mad at things that weren’t announced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I was one of them. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I was hoping for a 12-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update that didn’t happen. Many people have been waiting for iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates that were supposed to happen last fall, didn’t happen. Lots of people expected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 9.7 and 12.9 inch iPad Pros to be updated because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 9.7 is due now, the 12.9, assuming it has the same cycle as the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other ones, is now past due by about half a year. And so a lot of people were mad, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there was the rumored 10.5 inch iPad. I think John Gruber’s take on this on Daring Fireball is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, which is like it probably never made sense to launch that in the spring. probably see that sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more like a you know let the iPhone debut the new design language and then release the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco afterwards kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or doing it both at once to be a big bang you know
⏹️ ▶️ John also but like yeah that all sorts of things make more sense than what was predicted which was like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna get 20 new iPhones in March or 20 new iPads in March and they’re gonna be weird sizes that aren’t consistent with each
⏹️ ▶️ John other and one of them is gonna be amazing it’s like really it’s not no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever never sounded right and and And we keep hearing rumblings too about major iPad enhancements
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in iPad productivity, multitasking, things like that. Major enhancements that were originally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supposed to be coming out about now with iOS 10.3. And that we’ve heard recently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that those have been delayed until iOS 11, presumably in the fall.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if that’s the case, it also might make sense to hold back this new 10.5-inch crazy awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro and maybe an update to the 12.9 as well if that’s going to happen to hold those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back until like whatever September or October event is the public
⏹️ ▶️ Marco launch of iOS 11. That’s usually what they do like you know they’ll they will show us all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at WWDC in the summertime like the core features and then when it when it comes time for launch day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that OS in the September or October event there will be new hardware that makes it even better usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s an iPhone event but you know as John just said it could be both. So that makes sense, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the reason why people were so mad and still are so mad is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco traditionally most Apple products have been on a predictable schedule.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPad and iPhone is about one year. Macs were about one year to maybe 18
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months for most families. We complain about the Mac Pro and people complain about the Mac Mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those have honestly always been on ridiculous schedules. not this ridiculous, but like you know that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not new for those families, but like most most of Apple’s products you could pretty much extrapolate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on their previous release schedules. Okay this one will be out in about a year, this one we updated in about a year and a half, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so even even if Apple has said nothing about future products, which is usually the case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you as like if you’re waiting for an update, like if you’re if you want to buy an iMac today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if you do any research at all, which many people do, you know people people in Only geeks fear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often think that like you know quote normal people just walk into an Apple store and just buy whatever is there and they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do any research, but that’s wrong. A lot of people do research and a lot more people than we give credit for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do the kind of research that can tell them like you know I should probably wait and not buy this yet because a new one is probably coming soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so when the product that you’re waiting for is past due
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for an expected update, every announcement that Apple makes, every event they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have, every new product release that passes by that you don’t get the thing you’re waiting for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that feels like a delay even though they never said they were going to release it. It isn’t officially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a delay because they never announced it, but it feels like you were told this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you might have even been told that by Apple experts, by the Apple press, by Apple commentators.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The rest of the year they tell you, oh you’re being impatient, just wait until WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the fall event or the spring event. It’s always like, oh, just wait until the next X. Just keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco waiting, keep waiting. That’s what you’re told when you look into this kind of stuff. And so when that event
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes and goes, and you still don’t have your update that you thought was due, that feels like something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was taken away from you. It feels like it was delayed, even though Apple never officially promised it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when there’s only a couple of products that are on these delays, like the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini, well, those are always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on these delays. That’s no surprise. But as we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentioned in the past show is it does seem like there’s more of those product lines than usual right now. 2016 was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an especially bad year. At least the laptops recovered from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was a big one, but there’s still some of these products like the 12.9 inch iPad that’s just kind of sitting around waiting for an update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as I said earlier, I think the new reality is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is no Apple product line except probably the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is on a regular schedule anymore. Every other one, they could have updated it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every year for the last five years and then, well, now it’s on a two-year cycle. Now it’s on an 18-month cycle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We can’t depend on that way of predicting long schedules anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever interval they’ve been on in the past is now totally irrelevant for possibly every product,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if not, probably not the iPhone, but probably everything else. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is some speculation there might still be an April event. There was on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big WWDC wall of text that was on the big walls downstairs, there was like, hello
⏹️ ▶️ Marco April, is it April 18th? What was the date on that? Do you guys know?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what you’re talking about, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remember. Somewhere in the teens, I think in April. That was printed on there as a possible Easter egg. So there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might still be an April event. Maybe they’re going to be at the new Steve Jobs Theater on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new Apple campus. Who knows? But if I had to bet money on it, I would guess
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they probably aren’t done announcing things for the spring yet. Because the other thing is, WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in recent years has really been a software-only event for the most part. There’s usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much to talk about during that keynote, because there’s usually so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes to iOS, watchOS, tvOS. There’s so much to cram
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there that they have in recent years been minimizing or eliminating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any kind of hardware release talk from that keynote. And they also don’t tend to do any other events in the summertime besides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that one because everyone’s on vacation in July and August and everything. So I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they have anything more to announce before September, hardware and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product-wise, not software-wise, we’re probably going to still hear about it maybe in April. We’ll see. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to bet whether or not they would be an event in April, right now I’d say probably yes, but I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bet Casey five bucks on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny you bring all this up. I was thinking about this earlier today, and we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also gotten a couple emails, and I don’t have them in front of me, but somebody wrote in saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, listing this scenario, I don’t know, maybe five years ago when like Snow Leopard was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about to come out or something like that, and you know, hey, here’s the scenario. was upset about A, B, C, D, E,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey F, and G. We all thought the world was ending. All the pundits, all the podcasters, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought the world was ending. Turns out it really wasn’t that bad. And yet I left yesterday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I didn’t go anywhere, but you know, at the end of yesterday, I felt like, man, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I was too excited about all this. Like I knew that clips looked kind of cool, but the rest of it, I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t really care. And the first constructive thought I had was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, it’s just that these weren’t for me, these announcements weren’t for me. It doesn’t make them bad. And in fact, reflecting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on them now today with you guys, they’re pretty good. Truth be told, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they weren’t for me. And most specifically, I don’t have my damn MacBook adorable refresh, but that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, but. Uh, I started thinking, you know, why is it that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel disappointed about this in a way that I don’t think I would have a few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years back and I think. A lot of it Marco was what you said was that there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a pretty reliable cadence to how apple released stuff Up until fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recently and that’s not quite so reliable anymore Which on the surface I should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be excited about because it means things are less predictable and more exciting, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not that excited about it because I’m not always excited about what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple is releasing anymore I am always excited about new iPhones because every single time I think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been an improvement But everything else that’s hit or miss right like I’ve not used a touch bar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for more than a couple of minutes to this day But I’m not overwhelmingly amped to go get myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one And so I’ve just I’ve been trying and I haven’t come to any great conclusions But I’m trying to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, why am I less excited about? Announcements of late than I have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the past and the only other thing I can come to is that I I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was always something in every single product that I could be like, holy hell, that looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awesome. And so maybe a product that I didn’t really care about. So as an example, the 12.9
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inch iPad Pro, I don’t have any desire for that in my life, but I can see cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things about it. And similarly, like the smart keyboard for both sizes, that’s cool. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was fairly recent in fairness. But I don’t know, I just feel like in years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past, everything had something really cool about it. Maybe I’m just becoming a cynical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old man, and maybe that’s the problem, but I’m just less excited about it. And I think a lot of that is the cadence,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of that is that these products just may not be for me anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And maybe I just gotta get okay with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. You know what still is possibly for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The MacBook Escape, man. It’s a really good computer. I think ask me in a few weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, I’ll ask you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll ask you in 15 days after the yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s not a really good computer, I might have a MacBook escape to sell you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, funny. So
⏹️ ▶️ John for people being angry about this, like, I mean, I think it’s what we talked about a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of the other announcements where it’s like, it’s not so much about what’s announced is just like sort of simmering
⏹️ ▶️ John desire slash resentment for things that aren’t getting updated. And so every every time something happens, and it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John include the thing you want that just makes you angrier but everyone knew this was going to be like there was no event where people
⏹️ ▶️ John were going out to sit in a room to listen to someone talk this was a press release only thing right it wasn’t it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like they they had everyone come out to a location you know so everyone knows when when it’s a press release only
⏹️ ▶️ John thing it’s lesser stuff the idea that they were to release a new 10.5 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad you know with an entirely new physical design without calling a bunch of uh
⏹️ ▶️ John press to come to a room and sit there and get a presentation. Like, that’s not the
⏹️ ▶️ John the the amount of ceremony surrounding the announcements
⏹️ ▶️ John matches the magnitude of the announcements. So this is going to be Hey, it’s just going to be a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of press releases. And some journalists will get briefed in various locations, but we’re not gathering
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody into a room. We’re not doing a live stream or you know, what’s the caliber of the stuff that’s going to be there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John being disappointed that you didn’t even get like a MacBook refresh. I mean, it’s conceivable that you could have got a MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John refresh with this caliber of announcement. But what I don’t think is that it doesn’t actually reset
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, now, now it’s almost like a delay because they’re not going to have a vent right after this. I think it’s entirely conceivable
⏹️ ▶️ John that they could have. Here’s the press release only stuff. And then here is an event where we actually invite
⏹️ ▶️ John people out in the near future that it doesn’t push any future announcements out at all, because
⏹️ ▶️ John very often they have the thing where they dump a bunch of pre announcements and press releases. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John they do it like the day before, like the real event where actual, you know, people sit in a room and get it, get a little
⏹️ ▶️ John song and dance from Apple. Right. So, um, I, I totally understand the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that like every time Apple says anything and it doesn’t include the thing that you think should be coming, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John that, that it’s painful, but the actual things that were announced here all seem
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. And I actually don’t think it pushes anything back. It doesn’t mean that there’s an imminent announcement
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything. You You can still be cranky about the fact that the iPad Pro does need an update and hasn’t got one
⏹️ ▶️ John and when is it going to come and if it doesn’t come in April does that mean I have to wait until the WWC? Like you can continue to be sad about that but
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly like I guess it’s just people getting over the idea that the iPad Pro might
⏹️ ▶️ John not be updated every time there are obvious technology upgrades to it. Like you would think oh well surely
⏹️ ▶️ John the big iPad Pro will get the True Tone screen now that the small one has it and you wait and wait and wait but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know talk to Mac Pro people about waiting. you’re cranky because you’re like, it’s one year. Come on, chop chop. And like
⏹️ ▶️ John one year. Ha ha. So young. So young. At least your product will still be released.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our three sponsors this week. HelloFresh, Squarespace, and Fracture. And we will see you
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t mean to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Accidental, check podcasting’s so
Breaking APFS news
⏹️ ▶️ John We have important after-show facts about APFS. I know you guys are dying for
⏹️ ▶️ John an exciting after-show on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh my god I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John so ready. What mailing list is on this is on one of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John One of Apple’s mailing lists people complaining about bugs being closed about APFS on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously because it’s you know It’s not out officially for the Mac Actually, it’s still beta for iOS 2
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, the bug was closed with this explanation iOS HFS normalization and Unicode
⏹️ ▶️ John names. I have iOS HFS normalized Unicode names, which as we know, like they
⏹️ ▶️ John folded it all into a particular normalization of their thing. And so that’s why you would you know, no matter how you enter the file name, it would all
⏹️ ▶️ John fold it into a particular form. So you can only have one file named cafe with an e and an accent on the end,
⏹️ ▶️ John no matter how you encoded it, because you can you can write that in 20 different ways in Unicode with combining characters and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John APFS now treats all files as a bag of bytes on iOS. And so they closed
⏹️ ▶️ John it is closing the bug report. So if you use Apple’s API, you don’t care about this because it
⏹️ ▶️ John does all that sort of normalization for you. But if you use the direct file system API, it’s like the BSD, you know, the Unix
⏹️ ▶️ John layer, it is APFS behaves like, like a plain old Unix file system,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is basically give me a buffer full of bytes. And I will write that to the part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the file system that says is supposed to hold the file name. And that’s it. So if
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to write one file name in UTF-32, and
⏹️ ▶️ John one file name in ASCII, and one file name in UTF-8 in a particular normalization,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just a file system man. You just gave me a sequence of bytes. When you ask me later what the name of this file is, I’m going to give you that sequence
⏹️ ▶️ John of bytes back. I hope you know what encoding it’s in. Good luck. Which is exactly how I believe
⏹️ ▶️ John Linus Torvalds of Linux fame really wished hfs plus behaved because he hated the fact that it did normalization
⏹️ ▶️ John he said just just take the bytes that i give you and stick them in your file system and that is apparently how
⏹️ ▶️ John apfs works and i found the bug on this as well to say look i don’t know if this is a bug or feature but
⏹️ ▶️ John hfs plus do you behave this way and your new replacement behaves that way and it seems to me that could
⏹️ ▶️ John possibly cause some incompatibilities uh down the line so is this something you intended
⏹️ ▶️ John to do or what and i don’t remember what the status of that bug is but this this bug report if it is is to be believed
⏹️ ▶️ John that this radar that was closed is like on iOS anyway this is totally what we meant it’s now just
⏹️ ▶️ John a bag of bytes user apis you’ll be fine but it certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John simplifies the file system because files no longer needs to be concerned about what the heck is in
⏹️ ▶️ John the the file names it’s just it’s just a big data buffer and everything else is handled at a higher level and
⏹️ ▶️ John arguably that is a cleaner layering but it is definitely a definite break with how it was was done before. So
⏹️ ▶️ John be careful out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. So are you excited for a PFS? Like I know we’ve talked about this in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past, but sitting here now have you been it seems like you’re keeping up with it, keeping up with it at least a little
⏹️ ▶️ John I am I’m excited for it. I’m a little bit worried about compatibility things because of this encoding
⏹️ ▶️ John issue. And I’m a little bit worried about bugs and stuff. But I bought a new file system and I’m getting one and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still I still think about it and get sad about the lack of data integrity features and stuff like that. But there
⏹️ ▶️ John there are enough new interesting features that I’m that I’m still excited for it. I just do worry about,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, maybe I’ll just like I should really upgrade my Synology to BTRFS, which it now actually supports
⏹️ ▶️ John with the new thing. But I don’t know a way to do it in place and I don’t have any place to copy all this data off to and
⏹️ ▶️ John put it back on except for the network. And so I don’t know. Anyway, I would like it if
⏹️ ▶️ John my backups at least were someplace where I knew that they were not bit rotting. Uh, I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John continue to have to sort of bury my head in the sand about the state of the data on my actual max because AP best not
⏹️ ▶️ John helping is not helping me there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Titles. Uh, what did you say that you and I suggested simultaneously? Oh, Christmas phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, that was that. Yeah, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John What was the shoelace thing? I’ve already lost the thread on the, on the, what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey was the thread? Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John what was the analogy for the shoe? I was the Mac book pro. Like once he had to reformat it, right? Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you listen to analog, John, you would know the story of me.
⏹️ ▶️ John shoelace story. I’ve heard that episode. Stop it. Heard that episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can jump in any time, John. You don’t have to go to the VAC catalog.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone knows the shoelace story. And if you didn’t hear it in analog, you’d hear Mike
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about it on 8,000 other episodes of other shows. So it’s not like you can avoid the shoelace.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But he told it the best with me, damn it. I know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I heard it first there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still like Christmas Phone, although Span Across My Leg Gap actually is starting to edge that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John out. I don’t like Leg Gap.
⏹️ ▶️ John What was that shoelace shoelaces rising? This is my shoelaces rising in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awesome he is for inspiring the title and I don’t want to deal with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But he is he is that awesome because that was an amazing story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t need but we don’t need to tell him that we don’t need to give him that moment
⏹️ ▶️ John What is he doing with the shoelaces that they’re breaking? That’s my real question I can’t remember last time I had
⏹️ ▶️ John a shoelace break like is he being very rough with them? Is he rubbing his shoe against something? They’re fraying like
⏹️ ▶️ John who who shoelaces break?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe the style in Great Britain is to have really tightly laced shoes like to really tighten them up, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just very thin. I don’t know. It’s it’s it’s a suspicious story My shoelace just broke
⏹️ ▶️ John as I pulled really hard snap. Oh, I can’t I have to quit my job now
⏹️ ▶️ John We should check it to check his lightning cables, how are they doing? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it if I if I replace this lightning cable, I’m I’ll just use this iPad Pro for another