220: Executive Box Lunch
04 May 2017Surface Laptop, Echo Look, WikiTribune, and basic humanity.
Episode Description:
- Follow up: Moscone food research by Daniel Jalkut
- More on the potential rear Touch ID
- Samsung Galaxy S8
- Assistive Touch
- Turning off Haptics:
Settings→Sounds & Haptics→System Haptics
- WikiTribune
- Basic humanity
- Amazon Echo Look
- Microsoft Surface Laptop
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Casey really loves his new copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- Mario Kart over LAN
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- Follow-up: WWDC box lunches
- iPhone 8 Home “button”
- Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
- WikiTribune
- Basic humanity
- Sponsor: Indochino (code ATP)
- Amazon Echo Look
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Surface Laptop
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Switch
Follow-up: WWDC box lunches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would any executive who had other options ever choose to eat a box lunch
⏹️ ▶️ John well It’s like anything that’s executive It’s always the name is always two levels of status up from the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John otherwise it wouldn’t be a marketing name You know so executives would never have an executive box lunch 17
⏹️ ▶️ John year olds. Don’t read 17 magazine and on and on Aspirational
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think executives have any form of lunch that comes in a box. They should call it executive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there is literally, there is nothing they could put in that box that would make that name seem reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just filled with
⏹️ ▶️ John caviar. Sack Lunch, the famous movie from Seinfeld.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To begin with follow up today, a friend of the show, Daniel Jalkit, has spent what seemed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a surprising amount of time doing research on Moscone lunches. And I’m glad that Daniel did it so we don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to. He has looked up some information about the Moscone Box Lunches. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put a link in the show notes. There’s a few highlights that I wanted to call everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attention to. The quote, Executive Box Lunch quote is $39.25 in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the year 2017, according to Daniel. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love so much that this is called the Executive Box Lunch. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Executive Box Lunch. I am not kidding.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in all fairness, Craig Federighi was allegedly eating one of these things backstage before talk show live,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he is an executive. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess that’s aptly named. But I tell you one thing when all of us are eating it in the big dining
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hall, I sure don’t feel like an executive.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it seems like. Well, well, it’s not. Keep going, Casey, because it’s not thirty nine dollars does not include all all
⏹️ ▶️ John the pricing and options included in this special Porsche lunch. If you want the floor mats
⏹️ ▶️ John and all four wheels and also a transmission, it costs more.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Douglass Goldstein, CFP®, is the director of Profile Investment Services and the host of the Goldstein on Gelt radio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show. He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S. and Israel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey His company, Goldstein on Gelt, is based in the U.S. and Israel. He is also the co-founder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and chief financial officer of Profile Investment Services. and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bottled water. Okay, so let’s talk about soft drinks and bottled water. Soft drinks and water are not included. A 22%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey service fee as well as sales tax, which is almost 10%, are also added to the price. So that $39.25
⏹️ ▶️ Casey box lunch comes out to around $52 and you haven’t had anything to drink
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. And this is Daniel writing, want to really lose your lunch? Each
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bottled water is $5.25, coming to $7 after service and taxes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this is again still Daniel and Marco’s long lost strawberry sea monster as Adwala, which is probably classified
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as assorted juices, would set Apple back an additional $8 a bottle. Add it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all up and it’s not hard to imagine that meals and snacks are coming to $100 a day or $500 a week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey per person. Nearly a third of the $1600 dollar WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey admission fee likely pays for food. Are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you kidding me with this garbage? Moving on, I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the people who do it in San Jose, how their box lunches compare,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the good news is the quote gourmet box lunch from the caterers in San Jose comes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in at only $22. Mineral waters, soft drinks, juices, and bottled water are a mere $4.50 each.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a considerable savings once they move to San Jose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on lunches alone. How can you spend one spend $500 a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week on those launches? Like I was sitting here mostly defending them the last couple episodes. They’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that bad. You know, they’re passable. They work not at $500 for the week. Are you friggin kidding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me with this insanity? No, no, no hard pass. No.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if they drop the price of the tickets by $500 like maybe back to the people and we
⏹️ ▶️ John all had to leave the building and find someplace else to eat and then come back. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John actually not sure that that would be better for the conference. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, just give me that 500 bucks. I could spend that in San Francisco, but then you got to go find someplace to eat. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure the eateries that you can get to and back to the
⏹️ ▶️ John conference center in time to get the after lunch sessions can support that many people or are any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, no, they’re better, but they probably can’t support the people. You’re probably right about that but they are definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know I like it depends like you can go to the whatever the little mall thingy that’s over there
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean the mall food court is better than the body is
⏹️ ▶️ John better but you gotta wait in these long lines and then you get your thing and you gotta find somebody to eat it and you gotta get back
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s like the closest possible choice I’m I’m wondering I would actually mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John be willing to pay for the convenience of not having to leave the the conference
⏹️ ▶️ John center while eating lunches that I don’t really like because that convenience is
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean and obviously the ideal choice would be to be able to get food from someplace else but as Daniel points out that
⏹️ ▶️ John is in their rules you can’t get food from any place else in case it wasn’t clear yeah there is no choice Apple can’t say oh we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just gonna we’re gonna bring in uh you know someone else to cater nope not not even an option
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s just insanity to me like how they can get fleeced that badly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not Apple’s fault it’s just the way of the world but oh my goodness, it is just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey barbaric that that’s the answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the way of the world in Apple, Apple world is like if Apple, if this bothered Apple all that much,
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw a tweet as I was catching up on my far behind on Twitter, someone saying that, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John with its cash, Apple could buy all of the, the major league baseball NFL and NHL
⏹️ ▶️ John teams and still still have $100 billion left over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so crazy. Now, and then somebody, well, actually that person and was like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually that doesn’t account for taxes, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point stands. It’s preposterous.
iPhone 8 Home “button”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about next iPhone rumors. We had talked in the past that there may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a Touch ID button on the back of the phone, which some people think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the end of times. A lot of people like myself think, whatever. But a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of people actually pointed out, well, what does this mean for the home button then? Because a home button
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the back does not seem good. So how does that work?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t know is the answer, but I would guess that there is some sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of home button, even a faux home button on the chin of the front of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s what they’ve probably started down the path of with the immobile or non-movable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever the word I’m looking for is, home button on the iPhone 7, and maybe the whole thing becomes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a home button, I’m not really sure. But it’s certainly an interesting point I hadn’t considered that, you know, today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Touch ID and home button are, you know, kind of co-located, but in the future, maybe they won’t be. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think they will be separate because it is more awkward to
⏹️ ▶️ John press a button on the back of the phone, even a fake, like, non-button. I mean, they can have it there in addition,
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose, because, again, it doesn’t move. It’s not as if they have to make room for some kind of mechanism, and it’s already going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be this little cutout area. But I think they will continue to have a home button
⏹️ ▶️ John on the front of the phone. Now, whether that home button is virtual, kind of like the touch bar, where it’s just the bottom section of the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John or something like that, Lots of been lots of rumors in the past. I haven’t heard any recently about how
⏹️ ▶️ John the touch bar technology of having this little separate accessory screen controlled
⏹️ ▶️ John by the OS and you know, accessible, perhaps accessible to applications through an API, kind of like all,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the Android soft buttons and stuff like that might be a thing that would appear on a phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But even if that it doesn’t exist at all, uh, the idea of there being
⏹️ ▶️ John a, that you can squeeze the bottom part of your phone to go home, right? you can want to consider that
⏹️ ▶️ John a button and especially if it’s completely embedded in the screen and there is no it’s just a flat Featureless piece of glass
⏹️ ▶️ John with no little cutout or circle or whatever We’re still gonna call that the home button and I’m thinking that they’re not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to get rid of that No matter where the touch ID sensor goes So it’s basically a divorce of home button and touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John where the home button can stay on the front But because of the because of the way it’s done in the edge to screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything The touch ID sensor goes on the back and we just squeeze the bottom of our phones And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I would mostly be okay with that too like you’re gonna have to see have to try it for a while to see
⏹️ ▶️ John if I missed a little indented circle a lot of listeners wrote in to express love for the
⏹️ ▶️ John little indented circle as a way to feel like which end of your phone is up or Like exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John where you have to squeeze But if you can squeeze anywhere along the bottom edge of the phone I guess then your only problem is if you have
⏹️ ▶️ John your thing upside down, but I suppose you have the lightning port to check Whether that’s the case
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway It’s pretty weird that all of these rumors about the next phone
⏹️ ▶️ John Surround like actual important physical changes
⏹️ ▶️ John To the exterior of the phone because all the past phones including like this You know
⏹️ ▶️ John six and seven generations where it’s kind of the same on the outside have been about like What does it look like
⏹️ ▶️ John and what are the materials but the the design of? It’s a you
⏹️ ▶️ John know a rectangle with a circle button on the bottom that you press in to go home And then I guess the addition
⏹️ ▶️ John of touch ID have been so constant This is the first phone that’s like that the story on this phone
⏹️ ▶️ John is it may be differently shaped differently proportioned and functionality on it May be moving around
⏹️ ▶️ John in ways that has never moved around before so that’s that’s kind of exciting And
⏹️ ▶️ John you know kind of also risky and that like they have a model that works here with this rectangle
⏹️ ▶️ John with the home button on the bottom and they’ve iterated and iterated and refined and iterated and but basically the basic
⏹️ ▶️ John functions and stuff have been the same aside from you know in case you mentioned in the last show that the power button moved to
⏹️ ▶️ John the side which is somewhat explicable by the increasing size of the phone and difficulty people would have reaching
⏹️ ▶️ John up to the top but other than that the phone design of the phone has been pretty calm oh yeah the headphone the headphone jack
⏹️ ▶️ John moving from top to bottom but the the physical design of the phone has been pretty constant and I’m kind of excited to see them
⏹️ ▶️ John you know say all bets are off, we’re moving things around and we’re gonna try something new.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I actually had a chance to play with the Galaxy S8 a couple days ago in a Best Buy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With the exception of it feeling way too tall for its width and it being hard to reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things as a result, I actually really enjoyed like the how you know the general like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look of the edge to edge on the sides screen and everything. And the way they did the home button, I just kind of instinctively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like force-touched the lower area where the home button would be on an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it turns out that’s exactly what they want you to do and it just clicked and it recognized any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco firm press in that area as a home button click and so the very first thing I tried worked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and was correct and then as I was playing with it over a few minutes I did that I did that here and there a few more times and every time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just worked exactly as expected and even when there was something on screen there you know something from the foreground
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app that it is in that spot that you know if it misinterprets it as a touch it would have activated that thing but every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time it interpreted it correctly and it was great. It was totally fine. So, you know, if Apple’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go in a direction like that where part of the screen just becomes the home button, I think they totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can. We’ve seen with the iPhone 7, forced touch button, that’s a possibility, that’s totally fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now we see with the S8 that it actually really does work the only major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question I would have for it is how do they show this to people? Like how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it handled in the UI? does the usable area of the screen for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps actually extend that far like it does on the S8? Or is there that little like, you know, reserve or like you were saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, like maybe like a touch bar like, you know, API area down there where like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, apps would only actually take up like the middle 80% of the height and, you know, maybe not the very top and bottom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that, you know, but anyway, you know, having the just bottom area of the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except a firm touch as a home button, that works just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna ask if there are any accessibility implications for that, but I would suppose with that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget what you call it, but we talked about it a lot like several months ago, where you have the little onscreen button that lets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you do the home button and like, and all sorts of other gestures. What’s the name of that thing? You know what I’m thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Assistive touch, I think? Yeah, assistive touch, something like that. Thank you. I was about to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ask, you know, is this an accessibility issue? But I would suppose assistive touch would fix any of those problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure, but it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change. Well, the issue would be that you could no longer feel the button. Like, because, you know, now you can feel that ring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, so, like Jon was saying, you can more easily tell which direction the phone is oriented. Without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a physical depression on the front surface where the home button goes, it’s harder to tell which way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is up by feel alone. So that would be an issue for sure. And I don’t know how they would solve that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe you would just start getting used to feeling for like the camera bump or other features on the outside. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it is a dedicated area, they could do haptics to make it do
⏹️ ▶️ John the tiniest little jiggle when your finger is over the reserved bottom section of the phone. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of things they can do.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Playing Switch games with its little… There’s been a couple articles recently about the
⏹️ ▶️ John haptic engine in the Nintendo Switch, which looks like the same tech that Apple’s been using in its phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget what they’re called, linear something or other, whatever. But it’s better than the old vibrators and more precise, and they’re using it
⏹️ ▶️ John in games. uh, to make it feel like things on screen have some kind of physical presence
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s Surprisingly easy to fool us. I mean just we just talked about the home button last
⏹️ ▶️ John time like it doesn’t feel like a button But it feels like a thing that we rapidly get used to and come to accept
⏹️ ▶️ John as the physical reality of the phone Right, and I think I think the best thing would be like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you could turn off I mean, I suppose you can’t isn’t there some way to turn off vibration entirely? Can you turn off the haptic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would assume so but I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah But anyway if it did turn off our devices would feel broken in a different way It was like this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John how my glass rectangle is supposed to move or feel so adding something like oh
⏹️ ▶️ John When when your your finger physically touches the correct bottom part of the phone It gives the
⏹️ ▶️ John the tiniest little jiggle and that would be a physical way for you to feel with your hands
⏹️ ▶️ John Which side is the top or bottom of my phone? It wouldn’t activate anything yet because you haven’t actually pressed But
⏹️ ▶️ John basically, when you’re feeling for that little circle, you want to know which side is up.
⏹️ ▶️ John You need that information, you need that to be provided physically. That little circle is about as subtle as the little jiggle
⏹️ ▶️ John could be. And once you find which side is up, if the whole bottom of the phone functions as one giant button, it’s even easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to hit than that little circle. So that problem is solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So real-time follow-up to turn off, System Haptics, which has a subtitle of Play Haptics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for System Controls and Interactions. That’s in settings sounds and haptics and then there’s options
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for vibrate on ring vibrate on silent Sound and vibration patterns
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all the way at the bottom is system haptics, which is a switch Yes, no, does that turn off the home button?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just switch them all and find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no the home button still does a haptic click Yeah, I presume because it would be really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really eerie if it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it would feel broken I mean to us if we’re you’re used to it It’s like it’s whatever you get used to but it would feel like it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t it’s not the same physical device anymore That’s the thing about haptics, like, oh, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John faking a physical. This is, I guess, not to my pet peeves that my, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, things being done in hardware on video cards, which is like now an increasingly dated peeve from the eighties,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, mechanical keyboards. That phrase drives me nuts because, you know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John please show me the non mechanical keyboards. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can do that. Do you remember when they used to have the ones that they would like shine? It looked like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a laser keyboard, but it wasn’t actually lasers, I’m sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John And how did you use those keyboards, Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You put your fingers on a
⏹️ ▶️ John Ah, you take your finger and you move it. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no, no, no, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey missing the point. You’re just shining light on a surface, say, like on a desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, John’s saying your finger’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John know what thing you’re talking about, but you can’t activate it with your mind. You have to physically move your hands
⏹️ ▶️ John and press them into certain areas. You don’t have to press, but you have to place your fingers into the zone
⏹️ ▶️ John where the keys are. That is a physical action. But the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself is not moving, John. Wait, so like when a conductor waves the stick around in front of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a band, is that considered a mechanical device?
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. I would say, I don’t know. It’s difficult to say when you consider mechanical because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like that light is just being emitted naturally from the desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We need an episode of mechanical or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is definitely a pretty broad definition of mechanical that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John using here, Joe. Right. But
⏹️ ▶️ John when people talk about, really, in the context I’m saying, when people talk about mechanical keyboards, they’re saying as compared to the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m sitting in front of, which is the Apple aluminum extended, which is 100% mechanical.
⏹️ ▶️ John The keys move, making contact with a thing that causes a signal. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a quote unquote mechanical keyboard. It’s a very strange interpretation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I nitpick your definition of 100% mechanical? Yeah, well part of it is a mechanical. And I’m pretty sure there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a USB controller in there. And I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, I mean the keyboard part of it. I mean, it’s the same thing with mechanical keyboards when you’re just activating a switch, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still electronic. It’s not like it’s steam powered. It’s not like a typewriter where you’re hitting a lever that’s causing a big thing to whack into
⏹️ ▶️ John a piece of paper that makes your key.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason Snell, can you fix this for us so we don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John do it? I know
⏹️ ▶️ John what people mean when they say mechanical keyboards. It’s just a silly phrase. Like it is a term that has taken
⏹️ ▶️ John on this alternate meaning that doesn’t really make sense if you think about it, But it is accepted as a term of art, so we all just say it and
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Help me, Jason Snell, you’re my only hope.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what I was getting at before I derailed
⏹️ ▶️ John haptics are a replacement for things like the physical home button.
⏹️ ▶️ John When they’re not, you know, they work by doing a physical thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Something in your phone is moving, causing you to feel that motion. just an entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John different motion than the surface that you pressed moving downwards relative to the surface
⏹️ ▶️ John surrounding it. But something is moving and you are feeling it as a physical sensation.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it is an alternate physical action to replace other physical actions. It is not
⏹️ ▶️ John the removal of physical buttons with non-physical buttons. Because I would say the iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ John button is still a physical button when haptics are turned on because you press as
⏹️ ▶️ John a physical action and you tell that your press has been registered as successful because you feel a response.
⏹️ ▶️ John The response is not your finger getting lower inside the thing but it is a physical sensation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so this distinction between physical and non-physical controls as haptics get better like
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean maybe it’ll be like mechanical keyboards it’s just that that’s the way we’ll describe it and you know we won’t bother thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about whether it makes sense or not, but it is a clever way to make
⏹️ ▶️ John a device more reliable while still doing the thing that works best with
⏹️ ▶️ John humans. We have, you know, hands and fingers that are sensitive and, you know, that are sensitive to motion.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a good way to tell how things are happening without looking at them. So you can put feel
⏹️ ▶️ John in your pocket just like a physical, you know, physical buttons as opposed to those non-physical buttons. I can feel where the volume
⏹️ ▶️ John controls are. I can feel where the power button is. I can feel where the home button is. I can feel that it has been activated, I can physically
⏹️ ▶️ John press it, all that stuff plays to the strengths of our hands and fingers, which is how we use our iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so anything Apple does related to that is wise to
⏹️ ▶️ John leverage those abilities. In the same way the Touch Bar tries to do that, but because it has no haptics,
⏹️ ▶️ John you are left with kind of a surface that you have to look at more than you would otherwise,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can press on it, but it’s more like a touch screen in that it doesn’t do anything when you press
⏹️ ▶️ John any of those things, which is another reason a lot of people have difficulties with the touch bar is that it is replacing buttons with something that
⏹️ ▶️ John is less button like. Um, whereas I feel like the iPhone seven home button replaced the button with something
⏹️ ▶️ John that is, it’s like an alternate take on a button, but it is, you know, it’s, it’s like, it’s like they replaced
⏹️ ▶️ John the function keys on the Mac book with the screen from the iPhone. The screen is not the
⏹️ ▶️ John same kind of a button because they don’t know where the buttons are going to be. But on the touch bar, it seems like you could know they were kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, anyway, Um, this is just my, uh, mild musings on haptics, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they are long term. I think there’s, there’s legs to this whole haptic thing. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, as Apple has been so excited and proud to show it’s a little, uh, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John how much better the vibration is in each phone and this haptic engine that they, they, uh, brand
⏹️ ▶️ John with this tactic stuff. Um, I think they’re actually onto something there.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’re gonna see more and more of that from Apple and other companies because it works with humans. They could
⏹️ ▶️ John be Apple’s slogans if they’re not doing the computer with the rest of us anymore. It works with humans, Tim.
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WikiTribune
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Casper for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about WikiTribune, of which I know basically nothing and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am failing at my job as chief summarizer and chief. So Marco, I feel like I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you tweeting about this when it first broke. Do you want to kind of fill us in as to what WikiTribune is about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I barely know. I just signed up because I wanted to support this cause.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So John, can you give a better summary than I can?
⏹️ ▶️ John This has been in the notes for like three weeks, people. But I think one place we can start is Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey with his lack of
⏹️ ▶️ John knowledge. Why did you decide to sign up for this? What did you do by signing up? Did you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John give money or pledge to give money? Like what was the sign up thing that you did?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s some kind of like pre-commitment type system like Kickstarter, but I don’t think they’re gonna charge me until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they hit their minimum or unless they hit their minimum, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But it is a money thing. Like you’re supporting
⏹️ ▶️ John this effort with money, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I sign up to make a monthly donation or whatever it is to…
⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, so what led you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do that? Well, basically there’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things about journalism these days that I think are really dysfunctional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or broken. And this seems like it could fix some of them. Not all of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I don’t think it’s probably possible to fix all of them, but this could fix some of them in a fairly big way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if it works, that’ll be great. If not, you know, I lost a little money on the way and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll stop losing it when I cancel it. That’s it. You know, it seems like a good cause. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of the Wikipedia donation prompts that I’ve ignored over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the years and closed for the years without giving, I feel like maybe I owe something to Jimmy Wales
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as causes. So here, here I’m going to finally make that good, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John So to go back and give a vague summary of what the heck this thing is, it is from the Wikipedia guy.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve seen his face atop of Wikipedia asking for money. Now you can see his face on a different website asking you for money
⏹️ ▶️ John for a different thing. So it has the pedigree of, you know, Wikipedia, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John a tremendously successful community platform for doing whatever its people do on Wikipedia.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is about trying to make the news better. Like Marco said, he’s got some of the same complaints about news
⏹️ ▶️ John and the incentive structures and how it doesn’t lead to good information being disseminated and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of anti-patterns and with how it’s funded and what gets
⏹️ ▶️ John published and how it’s published versus what people want to read and what
⏹️ ▶️ John sells ads and so on and so forth. So this is a sort of Wikipedia style approach to news
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s very open and transparent so everyone who’s reading can see what’s going on. There’s no ads so
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to worry about the entire thing being made to drive ad views, which is a problem in the web
⏹️ ▶️ John in general, not just on news and everything like that. And like Wikipedia, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is community oriented, where it’s not just like these people produce the content
⏹️ ▶️ John and the rest of the world reads it. Everybody participates in theory, making the things
⏹️ ▶️ John better. Although there are professional journalists involved as well. So it’s not just like, hey, make up whatever you want and publish whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John you want, because that’s just called the web. That’s not that’s not anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And trying to, you know, be transparent to the people who are giving money. Like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, how are they going to fund all this? Through people like Marco, the same way Wikipedia is funded. How does Wikipedia
⏹️ ▶️ John exist? Jimmy Wales’ head asks you for money every once in a while. And there are, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming they’re investors or stuff like that. And they have this kind of Venn diagram at the top
⏹️ ▶️ John where it shows three circles. And the three circles are community, facts,
⏹️ ▶️ John and journalists. And wiki, wiki tribune is the confusing
⏹️ ▶️ John diamond shaped intersection of those circles. When I see the intersection between three circles,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t get a diamond shape, but it’s a logo. There’s some creative license there. It’s fine. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. And so I think Marco’s explanation of why he gave money is, is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John why a lot of people gave money. It’s like, uh, or, you know, cause it is like a kickstarters like, you know, you, you pledge
⏹️ ▶️ John money and if everything goes well, you will get charged for your money or whatever. and it probably will because it’s very popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it seems like a small amount. And just like a Kickstarter, you’re like, I don’t know if the other ship is damn
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco cool. So yeah, spoiler alert.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like, it’s not a big deal. Like, if they never
⏹️ ▶️ John go anywhere or if I fund it for a few months and it’s not that good, whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there is an appetite for an attempt find a solution to the fix all of
⏹️ ▶️ John you know journalism finds itself in at this moment in transition between the old
⏹️ ▶️ John world of newspapers and the way that they were funded and the barriers to entry in this new world where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s much easier for more people to publish uh but it’s much harder to find ways to
⏹️ ▶️ John fund content that isn’t sort of lowest common denominator uh you know because
⏹️ ▶️ John people go what people want to read and what what it would be most beneficial
⏹️ ▶️ John to society, if people were to read, are two very different things. And that, that is a,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the, the incentives are not aligned. If the only way you can get money is by attracting people to
⏹️ ▶️ John read things, you will inevitably end up giving people what they want, which is not always
⏹️ ▶️ John what they need, which is a paternalistic view that people hate, like, oh, the people in the ivory tower are going to determine what I need to see. Why can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John people just pick what they need to see? There’s a balance. Like, I mean, even, even in the bad old
⏹️ ▶️ John days of my childhood, when there was no internet there were things called tabloids that provided you
⏹️ ▶️ John same stuff that you can find on the internet now it’s not like that stuff is like oh that didn’t exist before the internet of course it did like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know Batboy found the National Enquirer like you know aliens are everywhere right
⏹️ ▶️ John that stuff has always and will always exist and I’m not even sure if it’s any more prevalent
⏹️ ▶️ John than it is today the difference today is that the sort of slow-motion decline
⏹️ ▶️ John of the ivory tower we know what’s best for you we’re going to apply a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John reasoning and rules that you don’t know about or agree
⏹️ ▶️ John with to try to provide what we think is, you know, the news that’s fit to print.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that has been in slow decline, mostly rightfully so, because it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of a concentration of power that is not, you know, that is artificial, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John technological barriers to distribution information, causing it to exist. I would also say
⏹️ ▶️ John that in this new world where it’s easier to distribute information, a lot of people like Marco and me, and I would imagine Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John are less satisfied with how things are going. Not that we want to go back to the old ways because
⏹️ ▶️ John that was bad in a different set of ways, but that there are pathologies in the new
⏹️ ▶️ John structure of news that we wish we could get rid of. It’s like, you know, we all want
⏹️ ▶️ John to read really good, high quality, you know, journalism, to
⏹️ ▶️ John the you know the system of journalism is like is it something that most of us can agree upon kind of like the scientific method
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just the question of it is uh you know how is it executed by fallible humans and
⏹️ ▶️ John how do we provide the resources for it to be executed um
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s what this thing is trying to uh provide now my my personal
⏹️ ▶️ John grudge against disagreement with uh indifference to wikipedia as an institution
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on how you want to uh phrase it gave it caused me to have a little
⏹️ ▶️ John snarky chuckle when i saw this this venn diagram here it’s like community journalists and facts
⏹️ ▶️ John right underneath jimmy wales i was like oh oh now you care about facts jimmy wales
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey i thought it was just all about verifiability
⏹️ ▶️ John wait a second and maybe they don’t mean facts maybe they actually mean verifiability but that’s the thing about journalism journalism
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, like they are pursuing the truth of what happened. It’s not enough for a
⏹️ ▶️ John journalist to say, you know, is what you know, one thing is for reporters to say, let me just tell you what somebody said,
⏹️ ▶️ John but journalists tried to uncover the truth if they can find out what really happened by talking to more
⏹️ ▶️ John people and gathering evidence. That’s part of journalism too. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John journalist is not going to call it a day when they have quotes from three prominent people about what happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John The journalist would like to know, yeah, but what really happened, right? I know these quotes are verifiable. I know you
⏹️ ▶️ John said this at this time and this other paper published this thing, but what really happened? What are the facts?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is an important part of journalism. That is not an important part of Wikipedia because Wikipedia doesn’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John what the hell the facts are because that’s not what it is. It’s tertiary source. I don’t want to go off on all my rants about Wikipedia
⏹️ ▶️ John again. So it’s kind of exciting to see this taking a different slant on things. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as I scroll down through their plan and see like journalists and community and community cooperating,
⏹️ ▶️ John all I can think about is like this is like a battle arena for edit wars. It’s like edit wars distilled.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if you think there are edit wars on the Wikipedia page for you know, insert favorite controversial political
⏹️ ▶️ John figure, can you imagine what the edit wars will be like on literally any actual current
⏹️ ▶️ John event news story in the current political climate? Like there’s almost nothing you can put in there, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John articles being, you know, fact checked and verified by journalists and community community members working
⏹️ ▶️ John side by side is equals. I just picture a giant arena with
⏹️ ▶️ John people with boards with nails sticking out of them. I’m not sure how it can work.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you say, well, look at Wikipedia. It works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. That’s the biggest example. Wikipedia has the same issue. Any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of political topic also has a Wikipedia page. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve built systems and policies and norms up around controlling that problem there too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you know, I think if you, I think if anybody has shown that they have the ability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to manage that part of this, it’s the people who made Wikipedia and who built that whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco community up. So that I think, I’m actually not concerned about the whole edit war problem. I also
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, don’t you think Wikipedia is a counter example? Because like… No. The fact that so many pages on Wikipedia
⏹️ ▶️ John are incredibly locked down because of the edit wars almost to the point where they become
⏹️ ▶️ John frozen in time which is kind of okay for historical things but for pages that are
⏹️ ▶️ John ongoing they become the sole domain of a very small number of people who have
⏹️ ▶️ John even the ability to edit page and everybody else is completely locked out and yet still they
⏹️ ▶️ John have edit wars and arguments about what goes on. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t do journalism in that environment. I feel like the controversial pages on Wikipedia are
⏹️ ▶️ John A. not the best source of information on their topics, and B, do a terrible job
⏹️ ▶️ John of staying up to date, and C, do not allow the input from the community because they have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John walled off. They have to be cemented, set in stone, guarded night and day, incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John protected. They become ossified. I think the best pages on Wikipedia are the pages that few people
⏹️ ▶️ John care about, which, you know, the classic example of being like lists of Pokemon and stuff, right? Because a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco lot of people care.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one, well, maybe there are editors in Pokemon, sorry if I’m picking, but like, but pages that are on more obscure
⏹️ ▶️ John topics because the only people who edit and contribute to them are the people who really are interested in the topic. No
⏹️ ▶️ John one cares enough to vandalize it or edit them and no one is there telling them what they can and can’t add and especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if they don’t have any kind of political or factional angle. Again, Pokemon may not be a great example.
⏹️ ▶️ John They end up being filled with all sorts of interesting and useful information, whereas the stories in any topic that has any controversial,
⏹️ ▶️ John any part of it that’s controversial, you’re better off just scrolling to the bottom looking at all the references and reading all those than actually reading the Wikipedia
⏹️ ▶️ John page. So I mean, I get what you’re saying about they have systems in place, but I think the systems negate the
⏹️ ▶️ John advantages they’re trying to do, which is fine for Wikipedia, because every page on Wikipedia is not a super duper controversial page. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John very few of them are. So the vast majority of Wikipedia is awesome when you just want to get a quick
⏹️ ▶️ John plot synopsis of a particular episode of Dr. Hugh in a particular season that’s on Wikipedia,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’ll find it quickly and the web page won’t be gross or filled with ads. And it’s a reliable source for that,
⏹️ ▶️ John because no one cares enough about to screw with it or as reliable as any source could be. But when you go do
⏹️ ▶️ John any page having to do with any controversial topic, I feel like, like, when’s the last time you read a Wikipedia page on
⏹️ ▶️ John a controversial topic? Like, I don’t even bother going to them anymore. Like, I would, again, rather just scroll right down
⏹️ ▶️ John to the references and read the, you know, primary and secondary sources than this tertiary summary because it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John speak to me as a great source of information.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, keep in mind that, you know, these days every fact is a controversial topic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey those basic things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would think wouldn’t be. And also that, you know, WikiTribune
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, I think, largely probably not gonna have this problem because it’s probably not gonna be that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big of a deal. If it does become a big deal, if it does actually start attracting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco large amounts of traffic, then I think it will rise to the levels of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, these kinds of challenges that Wikipedia has, because Wikipedia’s been, you know, such a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco traffic getter for so long. So it’s ranked so well everywhere. But Wiki Tribune
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is starting from zero. It’s starting from no audience, basically. So it might be a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before there’s even enough people to matter. And honestly, I disagree with you. I think Wikipedia is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as good as something like this could be about dealing with controversial things like that. It’s a hard problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John But it depends on the controversy. The main controversy having to do with Wikipedia controversial pages is the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that the people who hold the keys to power to the controversial pages themselves tend to be homogenous
⏹️ ▶️ John and have various biases, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that the system itself has no way to deal with that. Like that it concentrates power, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m thinking of Wiki Tribune as perhaps an unintentional backdoor
⏹️ ▶️ John way to get people to just straight up pay for news, which many people, the front doorway has been like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John sign up for the New York Times Digital. can we can we make money from people paying us to read our
⏹️ ▶️ John web pages? Everyone’s been trying to do that it’s really difficult the whole paywall thing right? Wiki Tribune is like
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re open and free to everybody man fast-forward five years if they get super popular and they lock everything down
⏹️ ▶️ John and eventually it’s like wait a second this is just a newspaper where professional journals do things and people pay them
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not a giant community published thing it is like a bunch of articles that nobody can edit
⏹️ ▶️ John because every single story about the the president is super duper controversial, and every one of them is super
⏹️ ▶️ John locked down. The only people who get edited are the professional journalists who get money from the contributors, and the five people
⏹️ ▶️ John who all happen to be the same type of person with the same type of background who has the time and inclination
⏹️ ▶️ John to spend all day on Wiki Tribune. And now it is just a weirdly organized newspaper that people pay for, which
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t be the end of the world. Because again, that’s things that people have been looking for. Hey, can we get people to pay money to support news
⏹️ ▶️ John like as opposed to wanting everything for free and wanting every article to be
⏹️ ▶️ John you know a clickbaity tabloidy celebrity news kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess if they do that then they’re kind of a success but I have a hard time envisioning a
⏹️ ▶️ John future where that where they are wildly successful
⏹️ ▶️ John and yet still still even open to the degree that Wikipedia is open because unlike Wikipedia
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty much everything a news organization will report will attract
⏹️ ▶️ John factions. Like you said Marco, they could report on the weather and people will
⏹️ ▶️ John leave nasty comments about you know climate denial and stuff. You know like I can’t think of a top there’s not even a human
⏹️ ▶️ John interest story. You were trying to put something about dogs and people won’t like it. Like nothing is safe in this climate so
⏹️ ▶️ John they have their work cut out for them. But all this said, I don’t feel like I’m slamming Wikipedia be on the potential what it could be
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t donate any money but I wish them well because I
⏹️ ▶️ John also like Marco want somebody to address this problem and no one has a tried
⏹️ ▶️ John this approach no one with of this caliber has a tried this approach so we’re not gonna find out if it works unless
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody does it and so I’m like you’re right you know go for it like I certainly the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John facts with a little arrow is a big circle in the middle makes me happy by all
⏹️ ▶️ John means go for that. The other aspect of this is say they succeed in producing what
⏹️ ▶️ John they say they’re going to produce and their system produces good content. Do people read
⏹️ ▶️ John it? I guess. Like is that is that something people want to do?
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to go to WikiTribune because they have they got their facts straight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, everyone wants a nonpartisan news source, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. Everyone wants to hear their own their own biases reflected to them
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and reinforce that’s what people want. Like, that’s what I’m saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like how did they get people to come and read this? Like it was easier when you only had a few choices
⏹️ ▶️ John and all those choices had, you know, had systems in place that
⏹️ ▶️ John constrained what could be talked about, which perpetuated, you know, tons of systems
⏹️ ▶️ John of power in terms of whose stories got to get told with what angle on them. So it was terrible in many, many
⏹️ ▶️ John ways. But the good aspects of it were in the areas where the system
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t completely aligned against hearing about things that, you know, that we weren’t supposed to hear about.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was an expectation that, for example, the news department and advertising were separated from each other
⏹️ ▶️ John in some way. Like that was part of the principles that they worked based on. And that only works
⏹️ ▶️ John if the news department isn’t, isn’t responsible for bringing in more money year after year after year. And that ship has
⏹️ ▶️ John long sailed. So now it’s like, got to make more money, got to get more viewers. How do we do that? them what they want to hear
⏹️ ▶️ John and the cycle just goes around the round. That’s what this is trying to resolve. So say it resolves it and they make real quality news, but no one ever
⏹️ ▶️ John comes and reads it, are they still a success?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe. I don’t know. I think I really think this could be very popular because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think somebody like the, the two of you guys and myself, somebody like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us who wants to be informed, but wants a very level headed take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as to what’s going on. I think this is a potentially, well, maybe not perfect, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really great answer to that need. I agree with you that I shouldn’t have said everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wants this because a lot of people probably don’t want this. But I also think there’s a lot of people that do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want this, that do want a level-headed take on things. That’s why, for example, in my RSS reader
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I rarely look at anymore, my source of news is the BBC because I have the BBC’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey US coverage, and I feel like that is the least politically motivated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey news source that I can find. I don’t need to hear of better ones. I don’t really care if the BBC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t perfect. That’s I’m not trying to start a fight here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they’re just they’re just reinforcing your biases. That’s why you like them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If it could be very well could be.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I that’s the situation. I think we find ourselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait, wait, what if your biases are true? And facts?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco see, the idea here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John problem with it with polarized marketplace is that you know things don’t exist
⏹️ ▶️ John in isolation. Say there was a news source that did a really good job of executing journalism,
⏹️ ▶️ John classic journalism, the rules of journalism which you know like the traditional rules of journalism in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of what you’re supposed to do as a reporter and what your job is and isn’t, all
⏹️ ▶️ John separate from you know editorial and opinion which is a whole separate thing but just like the plain straight up journalism,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, reporting thing. Uh, there’s still an editorial function deciding
⏹️ ▶️ John what should and shouldn’t you cover how many stories in topic a, how many stories in topic B, how many, how many stories,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, uh, about this aspect of whatever, like it’s impossible to ever pull yourself entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John aware from that. And it’s also impossible to think about what your publication is doing in
⏹️ ▶️ John isolation. You exist as a publication in an ecosystem with tons of other publications.
⏹️ ▶️ John and a lot of the ecosystem is defined by how many people read
⏹️ ▶️ John or watch or whatever consume these different publications. And in that environment,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why you see a lot of people on our side of the world, liberals or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John being drawn to liberal-leaning publications, because they see it
⏹️ ▶️ John as the only possible way to counterbalance the things leaning in the other
⏹️ ▶️ John direction. Because we know those things that lean in in the other direction exist. We know, we all
⏹️ ▶️ John think they’re terrible. And we know tons and tons of people use them as their exclusive source of news.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so by providing it a neutral thing, it’s like, well, that’s all well and good if we just
⏹️ ▶️ John want to know what’s happening. But if we want to balance the scales, and we have to have a
⏹️ ▶️ John left leaning publication, and eventually like, I want to read the left leaning thing, because all I hear all day
⏹️ ▶️ John from, you know, people who I disagree with is them citing their super duper right leaning things
⏹️ ▶️ John and so don’t we and that’s how you end up with polarization super duper left leaning super duper right leaning and so
⏹️ ▶️ John I I don’t feel like I want that I I tried to find something that I think is in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John but like Casey with the BBC I’m sure what I think is in the middle is not actually in the middle and really what I’m seeking
⏹️ ▶️ John is some you know some it’s not in the
⏹️ ▶️ John execution of the journalism but in the choice of what they’re reporting about right or in the
⏹️ ▶️ John choice of like you know what their editorials are about and how they apportion their coverage,
⏹️ ▶️ John because that in itself is a political stance, right? So when I read the Washington Post,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like here’s good reporting here. They’re still executing journalism according to the old ways, but what the Washington
⏹️ ▶️ John Post decides to cover is decidedly left leaning in terms of the number of stories and topic a, b, c and d
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Um, and I’m okay with that, but I would still, you know, and I would
⏹️ ▶️ John still say the Washington Post and even the New York Times are examples of good executions
⏹️ ▶️ John of classic journalism but I would also agree that both of them are quote-unquote left leaning
⏹️ ▶️ John as compared to the choices of things and headlines that the right leaning publications choose to cover
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re they’re a counterbalance right so if there was something was really
⏹️ ▶️ John straight up the middle I’m not sure that would be doing much of a service because
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if the polar is polarized ends continue to be what they are unless everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John at the ends and kind of agrees like the Wikipedia, Wikitribune is like
⏹️ ▶️ John the tiebreaker, right? And as Marco pointed out before, and we’ll keep going back to, that
⏹️ ▶️ John is impossible in a world where we can’t agree on the facts. There is no, it’s like, well, we have,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have, you know, this left-leaning editorial selection, and we have this right-leaning editorial selection, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John all agree that the facts are what are on Wikitribune, right? And be like, no, no, the right will say, we don’t agree on facts
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. And so, what function is Wikitribune even serving there?
⏹️ ▶️ John starts getting cited by other newspapers, which would be funny, but we’ll see.
Basic humanity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mean at this point there are people actually arguing whether to let people die
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our country who were sick once Because they don’t have enough money, and they should therefore die
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is that is literally what we are arguing about
⏹️ ▶️ John I would like to better in the 80s when they had like sophisticated Sophisticated ideological arguments, but they have
⏹️ ▶️ John abandoned those now. It’s just like why should you get to live? It’s like good point there evil person.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why should I get to live? What right do I have to life or liberty
⏹️ ▶️ John or any kind of, you know, looking for happiness? That sounds crazy to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, I mean, it was your fault that you got, you know, sick when you were a teenager
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something. So therefore, you know, the penalty for that should obviously be death,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Why don’t you try living right, Marco? You ever think of that? Yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look, we all did it, right? Why can’t you? Oh, my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God. Yeah, you know, the Jimmy Kimmel’s son. Did you guys watch that? That monologue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco from a few days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago? I heard enough about it that I couldn’t watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it, I, so I saw it fly by. I’ve been doing a couch to 5k lately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and during one of the walking parts I was like, you know, cruising through Twitter as I was power walking, probably looking like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a moron, but be that as it may, whatever day it was, this popped in the morning onto
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my, you know, my world and I watched it, or listened to it I should say, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch any of it, but I listened to it as I was like going between walking and running and walking and running and basically I was on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey verge of bawling the entire time. But if you’re one of those monsters that thinks that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pre-existing condition is something that, you know, just, that’s enough to disqualify you. That’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You should read, you should listen to this story about Jimmy Kimmel’s son, who was born with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a terrible heart defect. And were it not for some of the protections,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we shouldn’t be getting this political, but here we are, without some of these protections. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I mean, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s important. You know, like, as we’ve talked about, like, certain times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco politics or other world events do bleed into relevance to all people. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is one of those times. Like, this is a topic that is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco among many things, so politicized more than I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it probably should be. And I think a lot of that is intentionally artificial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to hide the things that the politicians really want to get accomplished, which mostly have to do with money for themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and their class of people and their associates and lobbyists and everything else. So there’s lots of that stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on in the background here. And we’re arguing about whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who have not been as lucky as some of us should go bankrupt and die
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of that. And that is unconscionable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unconscionable. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so this Jimmy Kimmel thing, it’s a little under 15 minutes. It’s worth every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second in my personal opinion. And like I said, I was on the verge of bawling the entire time I listened to it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the short, short version is his son had a terrible heart defect. He is now fine. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if some of the changes to American health care that have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then his son would never be able to have health insurance for the rest of his life because he was born born with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a problem with his heart. So yeah, I guess his son should have been living in the womb
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better and made better choices in utero and then he wouldn’t have this problem, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how this works? Yeah, maybe he listened to too much heavy metal music. Who knows? I mean, and the thing like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this isn’t, it’s not like this is a theoretical. It’s not like, you know, we think people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will go bankrupt and die because of this. No, we know because that’s how it was before the ACA.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A lot of people went bankrupt and died. This is not a small thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is not an unknown. It’s very much known. We were there. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco horrible. We tried to fix it as best as we could, and it wasn’t perfect,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the right fix is not to go back to that. We’ve seen it already. We’ve tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I don’t know why this is even possibly a point of contention. Well, I do know why, really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s not a good reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and one of the things that was fascinating about having this tweet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’d sent in January about the Affordable Care Act,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we’ll link all this in the show notes, but one of the fascinating things about having a tweet that gets retweeted 16,000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times is that everyone and their mother comes and tells you about why you’re right, why you’re wrong. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the tweet that I had tweeted read, opposition I’ve heard to the Affordable Care Act. Number one, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey costs me money. Number two, it’s not perfect. for the Affordable Care Act.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number one, I would have died without the coverage guaranteed, which is what we’re talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And man, so many people came out of the woodwork and were like, no, you don’t get it. It’s about this. It’s about that. One person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had said, I forget how he phrased it, but it was something along the lines of, I shouldn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to pay for people who eat McDonald’s all the time to deal with their diabetes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. I live a healthy life. I shouldn’t have to pay for all these unhealthy people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, aren’t you a winner? But anyway, after just hundreds of stories
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the Affordable Care Act, why it’s great and why it’s terrible, the only good or in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey estimation, anyway, the only good answer I heard about why the Affordable Care Act was bad was that some people said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I make enough that I’m priced out of all the subsidy tiers and I’m way oversimplifying here,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I make enough money that I’m priced out of of all the like super cheap tiers, but I don’t really make enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to afford like the, um, the whatever the opposite scenario was. I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it, what it is, but basically they were in this like negative, this really terrible middle of the road.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, oh, here’s an example. This is somebody that tweeted, I pay more than I can afford for insurance with a deductible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too high to matter. That’s, that’s pretty crummy and that should get fixed. But everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else was like just people who basically are looking for their fellow man to die because they didn’t want to pay for them to live.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s just, I don’t understand how this is a question. How is this a question right now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the thing, is like, like there’s, you know, that, that sentiment of like, why should I pay for the people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are unhealthy? Like that is such a toxic way to think because like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, well let’s follow that through. If that’s what you think, that you don’t, that you shouldn’t have to pay for people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are, you know, who do things that you don’t like or whatever, and that makes them unhealthy even though a lot of times they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help what has made them unhealthy but anyway suppose you don’t want to pay for it okay what should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the penalty be for someone who does this thing you don’t like who can’t afford it is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco punishable by death is is that an appropriate you know penalty like literally like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like is that is that your actual position like if that’s what you
⏹️ ▶️ John think don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to because they would say yes of course they’re getting what they deserve that’s exactly what they say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean if these people actually think that way that I think they should own that. I think they should come right out and say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, I think all these people who can’t afford their health care should die. If that’s what they think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let’s bring that discussion. Let’s see how that discussion goes in the open. We have people
⏹️ ▶️ John in Congress owning that at this point. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco true. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a position people are shrinking from. I know. And the thing is, you can apply that kind of thinking—why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should I have to pay for that?—to everything that government provides. That’s kind of the whole nature of government.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It provides a bunch of services with people’s tax money, most of which…any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given person probably doesn’t directly use a lot of these services, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they also benefit from lots of other ones, and it’s a different pool for each person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the role of government. Why should I pay for a giant military that starts wars I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want? Well, that’s just part of the government. It’s part of our system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We vote for things, and this is what happens and sometimes our votes even are counted properly and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is so toxic and I wish I knew what it was that made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people so hateful of everybody else, really. Like, maybe it’s just because everyone else listens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to way less fish than I do, but I just cannot possibly understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it is that makes someone think to themselves, oh, those people don’t deserve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to live. I don’t get that at all, and that makes me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really sad that that is such a prevalent attitude.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I was saying, I harken back to the days of the 80s when it was commonly
⏹️ ▶️ John accepted that the goal was to make people healthier, and the only argument was about how best
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. The free market can do it, no, the government can do it, no, the government is inefficient and bloated, and we
⏹️ ▶️ John will have a better system if we allow competition, and blah blah blah, like that was the level of the argument that was going on, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And these days that is not the level
⏹️ ▶️ John argument. The accepted premises of trying to get everybody as healthy as possible, like
⏹️ ▶️ John people barely on the right give, you know, barely make feints in that direction. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not even interested in saying, you don’t understand, this way people will actually
⏹️ ▶️ John be healthier. Fewer people will die. like everyone will you know, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll say that at the broad level, but they will not make they will not actually show how the numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John add up. They will not show their math they will not say look, here’s what we say even if it’s just BS predictions BS sort of trickle
⏹️ ▶️ John down your predictions. We all this to happen in this competition happens here and there. What’s going to happen?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, let me show you my BS model with BS predictions that are going to do that. They’re like, we don’t need to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. We just wave our hands and, you know, pit
⏹️ ▶️ John one person against the other
⏹️ ▶️ John get, do what it takes to get this passed. Uh, and then, you know, then
⏹️ ▶️ John we end up with what we end up with. I miss, I miss the, uh, the pretend intellectual debates is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I don’t get it. It just makes me so sad. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just, it just, I don’t understand how any intelligent human being with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three brain cells to rub together can think that the Affordable Care Act is bad. I just don’t get it. Like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it is bad. I mean, it’s but but it’s, you know, it’s like, what, should we move to something worse?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say no, I’m gonna say no, we shouldn’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. It’s the whole like, you know, perfect enemy of the good thing. Like, you know, healthcare is is a hard problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really expensive to provide healthcare for people that has to be paid for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somehow, whether you’re you know, whether it’s people paying themselves or whether it’s government single-payer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of things or some kind of weird thing in between like what we have now. It’s a hard problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a really hard problem. But the ACA took this really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard problem that was really in a bad state before and made it less bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, the cost went up. We’re all paying more now for worse coverage. But that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happening anyway. Anybody who was actually paying for their coverage before the ACA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saw that trend already. In fact, with the ACA, I’m still now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paying less than what I paid the year before the ACA went into effect. And the coverage isn’t as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good, but I’m actually still netting less per year in expenditure for it. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m way less worried about hitting some crazy limit or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lifetime limit or preceding conditions all of a sudden excluding everyone from everything. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a better system, and it still sucks. And that’s why people are so mad, because it is still really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive and coverage still does really suck and we all have high deductibles now and we all have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having to go through crappy mail-order pharmacies for our prescriptions. But that was happening before. Whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Republicans get through, whatever they do to this, I guarantee you, your coverage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is still going to be really expensive and you’re still going to have to deal with BS from mail-order pharmacies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and having to fill all these different referrals and everything. That’s all going to still be there and your costs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to go up the year after that and the year after that, and every year after that, your costs are going to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going up and up and up. This, whatever they pass is not going to solve that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It can’t. All they’re trying to do is go back to the way it was before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ACA, which sucked. And yeah, the ACA sucked, but that sucked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more before. And that’s what they want to go back to. It is really hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to talk about this, because literally thousands of additional people will die every year because of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this is not a small thing. This isn’t just like, oh, I’ll have an extra 200 bucks a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like, no, thousands of people will die. And like, you know, you look at things that change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our country, policies, laws, liberties that change in our country
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a result of, say, September 11th. Lots of things change because of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then if you look at like how many people are dying unnecessarily because of not having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco proper health care, it is such a massive problem and so many people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go bankrupt or die or both unnecessarily, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unconscionable to me that we still continue to try to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back to the way it was because it was worse. And again, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know why people are so mad at the ACA because they see those bills coming in every month for the healthcare
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they, oh yeah, my premium keeps going up, my coverage keep getting worse. Yeah, but that was happening before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This made it a little bit less crappy for everybody. And now we’re going to go back to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, it’s awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a cut off your nose to spite your face situation and after tomorrow you won’t be able to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your nose put back on. And then it’ll be a pre-existing condition if you try to switch coverage. So you’re just screwed the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whole way down. But don’t worry guys, at least the figurehead of the new system won’t be a black guy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s all good now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco poor woman, heaven forbid.
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Amazon Echo Look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Indochino for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna say I’m enthusiastic about it, but I think what
⏹️ ▶️ John it is doing is a natural thing to do and I think we’re going to see more of it, not less.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like in the same way that I was, strangely, or at least not uniquely,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was, I think I had more enthusiasm for the Amazon Echo when they first showed that little ad with the cylinder,
⏹️ ▶️ John more optimism let’s say, that this could potentially be a cool useful thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John than most people who saw it, because they were like, this looks dumb, it’s never gonna work and I had the same kind of this looks dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not going to work as well as they show a working reaction to but I was also kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John this class of device seems like it could be a thing and now I see this which is like essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John a little camera so I imagine combining with an echo with a camera it’s a camera that you can talk
⏹️ ▶️ John to that has some awareness of who and where you are and it has some specific functionality having
⏹️ ▶️ John to do with fashion and Amazon trying to sell you clothes and yada yada like I don’t think the details matter that much
⏹️ ▶️ John except that this is like because it’s Amazon and because they have the pedigree of the echo that this product
⏹️ ▶️ John and because they’re gonna push it like crazy on their website that this product has as good a chance as any to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the first product to get any kind of traction in this category and the category is simply
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer that you can talk to that also can see you right
⏹️ ▶️ John the Amazon echo and the dot and and and Google home and those things are like a computer that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John talk to a computer that you can talk to that can also see you natural evolution the number
⏹️ ▶️ John of things that you can do with that ability with all of our even just current
⏹️ ▶️ John technology for like facial recognition and identifying things and scenes and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know connect Xbox style understanding gestures and your
⏹️ ▶️ John position in the position of your body and stuff like that. That is a
⏹️ ▶️ John rich vein of interaction with computing devices that we should
⏹️ ▶️ John begin to tap. And if it has to be a weird fashion camera that spies on you and uploads pictures of you to Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell you more clothes. I mean, the cylinder had ended up being an Amazon thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John let you buy paper towels by talking to it like things come in weird packages, right? Like, man, I suppose
⏹️ ▶️ John it beats the old way, which is everything had to be attached to porn in some way to get an interaction. All
⏹️ ▶️ John of this potentially could be as well. But I put it like I am enthusiastic about the future
⏹️ ▶️ John of devices that are computers that can hear and see you. And so I think there needs
⏹️ ▶️ John to be more of these things and they need to get better and they will be cool
⏹️ ▶️ John and make our lives better, provided we can avoid all the pitfalls that which is basically all people are talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about. This is the echo, all the privacy and security and just general
⏹️ ▶️ John creepiness implications. But I think the foundation is sound, so I wish them some success, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope they learn from it and branch out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just now watching the video quickly, and with no audio, I’m just looking at the video as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re talking. And I think I would have noticed, but certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was called out in one of the podcasts I listened to this week, that there isn’t a man in this video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until the last 10 seconds, which is actually pretty cool that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pitching this directly at women. And I think it stands to reason that your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey average woman would be more enthusiastic about this than your average man. Obviously, that’s not a universal truth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think that’s kind of cool. And I personally am not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in love, partially because I haven’t really lived it. I’m not in love with the idea of an echo in general, let alone an echo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with eyes. But again, just because I’m not really gaga for it doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not a good idea and not a good device. It’s just, it’s not something that I feel like I need right now. Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, first of all, there was a great discussion about this, especially by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lisa Schmeiser, who knows a lot about retail, on the first episode of the new Relay podcast called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Download. This is kind of, this is like Jason Snell’s kind of new hosted show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost like an expanded clockwise, but more broad and even more produced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like even more wide audience. I’m guessing over time this might become the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show on Relay and one of the biggest tech shows, period. So I would suggest getting on the ground floor and going to subscribe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Download Now at Relay.fm. Anyway, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay me or even ask me to say that, but I think you should because it’s really good. Anyway, great discussion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on episode one by Alicia Schmeisser, especially about this from the retail point of view, from a lot of good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowledge that we don’t personally have, but I greatly enjoyed. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m with you. Obviously, this is being marketed heavily towards women, and it’s hard for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fully understand it as both a man and also a man who doesn’t care at all about his own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco personal fashion. And so it’s- Except on your wrist. Except on my wrist. I care very much about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, but I don’t need a camera to tell me which watch to wear every day. I just put on the one that I feel like wearing and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enjoy it. But, you know, that’s, if there was one that took a wrist shot for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every day and compare, you know, like, and gave me like a wrist book
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of shots of how I looked over time. Maybe that might do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something interesting. I don’t know. Bottom line, this isn’t for me. And so I don’t want to try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, I don’t want to make large proclamations about it either way, because it’s fundamentally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a product I don’t understand. And this was made very clear to me by the reactions on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter when this was announced. It was extraordinarily polarized.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tech dudes like us largely made fun of it and said, why would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody want to buy this? Oh my God, Amazon is nuts. And a lot of people who were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not tech dudes, who I would venture to guess that most of us, myself included,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably wear a basic t-shirt every day that we don’t have to wear something for work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T-shirt and jeans maybe, that’s kind of the uniform of tech. A hoodie, if it’s cool or if you live in San Francisco,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of the uniform of tech geeks. So all of us looked at this and said, this is crazy. Why would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we let Amazon put a camera in our bedroom to do this thing we don’t care about? But people who were really into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clothing and fashion really enjoyed this. The reaction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from most of them, and this wasn’t all women I should say, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very carefully trying to dance around the women angle here because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to be sexist, but it is very clear that this is how this is being targeted, and I did see very different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reactions from most women compared to most men in my timeline, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t want to say anything more than that because I don’t know what I’m talking about. It is not at all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me, but I think this will probably succeed. When the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco original Echo Cylinder first came out, we all made fun of it. Because, first of all, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way it was presented, the video it was presented in was awful. I mean, it was comically bad. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was pretty soon after the Fire Phone, and so we were pretty sure, like, yeah, Amazon really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is nuts with their hardware. They don’t know what they’re doing. It did, indeed, sound crazy that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to put a microphone in your house that listens all the time and it’s owned by Amazon? Really? But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then it only takes like one friend to get it and for you to be at their house for a little while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know with them using it to kind of see like, oh actually that’s pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it is the kind of thing where like it it does sound kind of ridiculous up front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it might succeed anyway and I think all you need to know to know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it will succeed or not is like are there is there any group of people right now, right up front, who are saying, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my god, yes, give me that right now. And the answer, from what I can see, is yes. My
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wife wants one, I know a bunch of other people on Twitter who said they wanted one. Like, again, it isn’t for everyone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it is probably, definitely for some people. And so even though it seems creepy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, to me as a nerd, it’s gonna be a thing. And I think, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not discount Amazon in this. I would not assume they’re crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will occasionally make funny tweets about it, but I do think they’re probably going to sell this. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably gonna become part of a bigger thing. And it’s probably gonna have its own little weird oddities,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like every Amazon product always does. But I think it’ll work long-term.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you need to have any weird speculation and say like, oh, this will be for some people, because like it is so right down
⏹️ ▶️ John the middle of things that we know people already like to do in massive numbers. People like to take pictures of
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves. The word selfie is known to far and wide for a very good reason. If you look
⏹️ ▶️ John at how people use social media and how many times they’re taking pictures of themselves or
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re wearing very often on a regular basis, right? This is merely
⏹️ ▶️ John an automation of that in the same way that the Amazon echo is an automation of all the things you have
⏹️ ▶️ John other ways to do. Like this is not speculative that people might want to take pictures of themselves or their
⏹️ ▶️ John outfits, right? This is just, you know, so there’s so clearly a market. The only
⏹️ ▶️ John question is, does this product automate it in a way that actually makes it easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to do a thing that we know people want to do? We know they want to do it. They do it like crazy now manually the
⏹️ ▶️ John hard way. Having something, that’s, you know, this is, again, as the first
⏹️ ▶️ John application of a computer that can also see you, right? Having something that can do that with the smarts that we have
⏹️ ▶️ John developed for cameras to find where the heck you are and, you know, take good pictures of
⏹️ ▶️ John you. It is easier for a computer to do that than for you to try to do it yourself with a mirror or holding out your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone or doing other sorts of stuff like that, especially if it becomes in the same way that the Echo does.
⏹️ ▶️ John This becomes so easy, it just becomes part of my routine. The people who meticulously
⏹️ ▶️ John catalog their outfits each day that they are proud of their outfits, that is a big effort that most people don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to go through. But it’s like Marco said, if Marco didn’t have to think about it but just went through his day and put on his watch and at some
⏹️ ▶️ John point his you know some point in 20 years in the future when you know his grandchildren are visiting
⏹️ ▶️ John and his super-duper fancy smart home he just wakes up in the morning picks out what watch he wants to wear puts
⏹️ ▶️ John it on and then at the end of the month can view beautiful in focus close-up shots of every watch he wore
⏹️ ▶️ John on every day. How do those pictures happen? Because the cameras that are all over his house invisibly
⏹️ ▶️ John can always find him and take these amazing photographs and in low light perfect focus and
⏹️ ▶️ John he doesn’t have to pose for them and he doesn’t have to do anything in the same way that the magic checkout counter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, barcode scanner, just bring the food by and you kind of twirl it and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, spin it by the little scanner and the little lasers will find it right in that same type of technology.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you had a bunch of smart cameras in your house, that eventually will be so cheap and so good
⏹️ ▶️ John that they will be able to do this without you having to stand in a certain place or do a certain thing. That is the future that you
⏹️ ▶️ John know that is coming to the questions about it are all legit questions in terms of who owns this data, is
⏹️ ▶️ John it okay for Amazon for us to upload it to Amazon and for them to keep it forever, and
⏹️ ▶️ John how is this funded if the hardware isn’t profitable itself is entirely funded about as a way to sell us
⏹️ ▶️ John you know clothes or whatever, and what are the security implications and how hackable are these, all
⏹️ ▶️ John these are gonna be there’s gonna be terrible disasters in all these areas, but there is no denying that
⏹️ ▶️ John the amount of computery things in our house will only increase with time and that it is kind of a ratcheting
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanism and that this first one aiming, you know, aiming to be a
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanization of a thing that we know people already love to do is very smart and builds
⏹️ ▶️ John on their their echo stuff. As for the things I talk about in terms of technology and privacy,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Amazon is probably terrible in them. I think their security is probably crap. I think their privacy policy is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible. I think if they’re hacked, people are going to get tons of data and people will regret getting these things if that ever happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it doesn’t, Amazon gets lucky, if it does, we will all just regret it together as people have a giant
⏹️ ▶️ John archive of photographs and audio of you over many, many years that you use Amazon devices. But
⏹️ ▶️ John even Marco, famously paranoid, is willing to take that trade because they do make his life better enough that
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s, you know, that he’s willing to take that risk. And most people are not as paranoid as Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t think twice about this if it actually delivers on what it is intending to do.
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Surface Laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, investing made better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so in the last, what was it, 24, 48 hours as we record, Microsoft has released
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a basically a Surface Book Air. They’ve taken what basically all of us wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the new MacBook Air that we have yet to receive and made a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco out of it. I love that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you assume that a new MacBook Air is something that is coming. It just isn’t here yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Fair, fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, so the thing that we all wanted, which would effectively be a new Retina
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Air with better internals and better ports and whatnot, Microsoft seems to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just released it. So I think they’re pre-ordering soon, if memory serves.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As we record, I don’t believe it’s available for purchase. But the very little bit that I’ve looked into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, it looked really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, I think it’s really interesting, first of all, that the Microsoft Surface branding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was originally for, well, first it was for the giant table. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it went away for a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. And then it came back as this consumer, convertible laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tablet thing. And then it slowly became closer to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular computers. And now they’re just like, all right, screw it, here’s just a laptop, and we’re gonna call it the Surface laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s like, they did all these crazy things, and they could just kind of slowly work their way back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what most people actually want in their computer, which is a traditional style laptop. And it does have a touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen, so bonus points for that. I do want to also point out, like we Apple people, you know, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep following the company line of like, you know, no, we shouldn’t have touch screens on computers, nobody wants that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But meanwhile, touch screens have become very prevalent on PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And most people who use them seem to kind of like them. Like people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem, you know, they might not use them all the time, or they might not use them for a lot of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but people who use them seem to enjoy them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do think that is something that should not be totally discounted as a thing. And maybe Apple’s right, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they sure do seem like a lot of people are using them. Anyway, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also think it’s interesting that when the original Surface, not the table, but the very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first weirdo, bizarre tablet, laptop thing, when that first came out, it really seemed like this really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco niche, low volume, low selling device. But over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, Microsoft has been persistent and has just kept iterating and iterating. And now, services are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually pretty common. Like, I see them out all the time. And I don’t know if I just don’t recognize most other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC hardware, so like, I don’t, maybe I don’t visually notice it or count it. And like, whenever people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Twitter do like coffee shop surveys, like Gruber likes to do sometimes, or like, I see some other people doing it, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, number of MacBooks in this coffee shop, 10. And number of services, three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of iPads too, stuff like that. Surfaces tend to be represented pretty well, just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anecdotally out in the world. There seem to be a lot of them in coffee shops and in airports and on planes and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that, and like on commuter trains, stuff like that. So I do think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it is worth, I hope Apple is noticing, and they probably are, they’re smart over there, I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re noticing that like, these experiments that Microsoft has been doing with the Surface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time seemed outlandish at first. Not only are they getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less outlandish over time, as we all realize that some of those things are good ideas, but also they’re getting pretty popular.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I think that is something that we should not be ruling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. And some things are popular that are terrible. I mean, Dave Matthews’ band, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their popularity, I think, should not be overlooked. And we should not assume that everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the service and its line of products is Microsoft being weird and wacky, because a lot of it’s sticking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that is worth pointing out. So this particular computer, it looks pretty compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a lot of people. I mean, in a lot of ways its specs are lower end than the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air. It can be, although it is much newer, the MacBook Air still has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think like three generations old now parts, something like that. And this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe the Microsoft Surface laptop is Kaby Lake, so it’s like really current. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Air had Skylake or Kabylake, it would get way better battery life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s already amazing, which means they could do some pretty cool things. But they’re not. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made the MacBook Pro instead, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, like the Escape. But this laptop looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good because when the MacBook Air first came out, it was the specialized thing. But over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty short time, it pretty quickly became the mainstream
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop to have. Now it’s the low-end laptop to have, but they still sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ton of them, because the 13-inch MacBook Air, especially, that form factor, that combination, as I talked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about before in the show, that’s a really good sweet spot for a lot of people. It’s an incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compelling overall package. There’s a reason why everyone has MacBook Airs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and almost everyone who has them loves them. It’s no coincidence that when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple introduced, well, that’s quite a mistake, when Apple introduced the new MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of made it clear that the MacBook Air was on its way very slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, and that the new MacBook Air replacement was this 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Escape that is more expensive and in some ways more limited. A lot of people were very upset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about that. It’s like, no, you took this formula that we liked so much and now you’re telling us that it’s over and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re replacing it with something that’s more expensive and more limited? So Microsoft comes along and says, all right, well, you know what? Here, this computer that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you wanted, here, we just made it. We made like a up-to-date, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of a Retina MacBook Air shaped and sized computer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in most ways, it looks a lot like the MacBook Air. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you match it spec for spec, it is about the same price as the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air, although newer, and it is a few hundred dollars cheaper than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Escape for similar specs. Again, I think they’re going to sell a lot of these. Now, they aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first PC maker to make a MacBook Air clone. PC makers have been making these for a while. Largely,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the reasons why services have taken off so well is that PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware is largely total crap. Like, it is really bad. Like, the designs are crappy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re cheap plastic builds, and just designs with very poor taste,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know? And Microsoft’s designs have largely been pretty good, like, for the Surface hardware. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve had a couple of, you know, little missteps here and there. But so is Apple. No one’s perfect. So Microsoft’s actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, doing pretty well here. And if I were buying a Windows PC for some reason,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would almost certainly be a Surface product of some kind. Or I’d build my own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it was a desktop, probably. But let’s say if I was buying a PC laptop for some reason, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would almost certainly get one of these.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you. The thing is, obviously my career
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prior to my current job was all in the Microsoft stack. And so, though I don’t have any particular love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Microsoft in a nostalgic sense, I have admired the way they’ve really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey changed themselves and really kind of adjusted the way they operate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Satya Nadella at the helm. And I think they’ve been doing a really good job and have been doing really fascinating stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For the San Franciscans, they pivoted. So anyway, the funny thing is, though, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really make Microsoft lose all of its old bits because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I’m trying to get the URL for the Surface laptop to put in the show notes, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arrive at microsoftstore.com slash store slash msusa slash enus slash pdp slash productid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dot 5102691100. Then as I load that page, the page itself has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been dimmed and I have a modal. Don’t miss out. Sign up to receive special deals, new offers and more.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, the answer is no. So you can make Microsoft a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better in general, but you can’t ever really make Microsoft forget that they’re Microsoft, can you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but what’s the actual name of the MacBook Escape?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, the MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe it’s the late 2013 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar. Fair point, fair point, fair point.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey With delete me in
⏹️ ▶️ John all caps at the end.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, but no, I, other than that, uh, I think this looks really great. Um, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree with you if I were to buy a, uh, a PC, it would either be a Lenovo or very,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very likely, uh, a surface laptop or something like this. I agree with you that everything I’ve heard from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people who have touchscreen laptops, they swear by them. I think that seems really kooky, but it’s probably one of those things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I just haven’t tried it and so I don’t get it. And certainly for iOS simulator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would be super helpful. So in that sense I do get it. But I do like that there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different colors available. I don’t recall what colors there are, but there’s certainly several shades that you can get them in, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is really kind of stupid, but I like it. And I think that’s kind of neat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look, Apple sells like, you know, the pink, gold, and dark gray 12-inch MacBook. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of color in your life, tech people. That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although here again, like the marketing copy is preposterous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you look at the bullets under Surface Laptop, luxurious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alcantara fabric covered keyboard is bullet number two. Come on. I mean, and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has their moments. Don’t get me wrong. Apple is not innocent in this department, but luxurious Alcantara
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fabric covered keyboard, really guys?
⏹️ ▶️ John pronounce that word either despite reading it in car magazines for the past several decades.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. You never have to say it out loud when it’s in car magazines and all of a sudden you’re faced with this word. You got to do it a syllable
⏹️ ▶️ John at a time. Alcantara. There we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like Bazelle. In any case, John, what do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John So the narrative for this is like Marco said, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wouldn’t make this laptop. This is the Retina MacBook Air that we have all wanted. But as Marco already pointed
⏹️ ▶️ John out, It’s not like there haven’t been a million PCs that are similar,
⏹️ ▶️ John that are like small, thin, use the MacBook Air class of processor, but are newer and have a Retina screen and so on
⏹️ ▶️ John and so forth. For this computer specifically though, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John not the Retina MacBook Air that I would want, assuming it ran macOS, and not just because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got a fuzzy top, which is kind of weird and I think will get kind of gross.
⏹️ ▶️ John This, if Apple made this computer, I would right now be complaining about the ports and the RAM. 4
⏹️ ▶️ John gigabytes RAM that you shouldn’t even offer a computer with that much it’s stupid. Don’t do that. And the ports?
⏹️ ▶️ John One big USB, one mini display port thingy, headphone,
⏹️ ▶️ John like no USB-C. That’s not a modern computer. Like I’m not saying you have to have all the ports in the
⏹️ ▶️ John world, but especially if you’re gonna be a PC, like provide me utility.
⏹️ ▶️ John The utility that Apple won’t add would be, you know, like what this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John has except for USB-C instead of plain USB, maybe throw in one regular USB. Because it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s not room. Like this is not a MacBook size, super duper skinny thing. It’s big enough that you could fit some more ports
⏹️ ▶️ John on there. And if I’m looking for anything in a PC, it’s to do the port stuff that Apple won’t do. So give
⏹️ ▶️ John me my ports, put some USB-C on there, put one regular USB, put an SD card slot. Don’t give me
⏹️ ▶️ John one big USB and one mini display port and that’s it. Like I feel like it
⏹️ ▶️ John is RAM starve and port slim. And form factor wise,
⏹️ ▶️ John If I’m gonna buy into the Surface brand, I know this is just like, this is a Surface laptop. Like they do have a touchscreen on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but just like they do on the Surface Book and everything, but those can sort of transform into tablet-y things, where all
⏹️ ▶️ John of a sudden the touchscreen is much more viable. Not saying you don’t wanna have a touchscreen, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they should leverage the advantage they have, which is they have created an OS that is touch accessible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, that’s the whole thing that they’ve done. They have one combined OS that it is usable with your finger. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not you know in theory the interface that is on the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John Has some chance of being used by your big you know 44 point in apple parlance
⏹️ ▶️ John fingertip surface, right and That’s what they’re telling people to make make an application
⏹️ ▶️ John that is usable in that way We’ll make controls and buttons and widgets and things that are usable in that
⏹️ ▶️ John way Mac os is not like that. So one of the advantages that uh, that Microsoft has
⏹️ ▶️ John when it comes to directly competing against the Mac, not iOS, but the Mac is that they have an interface
⏹️ ▶️ John that is available for touch, but touch on a plain old upright laptop screen like this, you’re right, the PCs have been doing it forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re right that people do like it because they can touch the screen. But I think Apple’s also right that it is a it
⏹️ ▶️ John is not a great experience. So I don’t say there’s a reason they shouldn’t have put touch in here, but I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John chalk it up as much of an advantage. It’s more of a, well, we can do it anyway. And we got to do it. But it makes
⏹️ ▶️ John me wish almost that this was a straight up laptop, but that the hinge went all the way around and you could just
⏹️ ▶️ John bend it back on itself, right? You know, like the convertible. So they’ve made a million different varieties of if it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna I can get on board with them not disconnecting it. But if it’s going to be a touchscreen, what if there
⏹️ ▶️ John is some application that I really want to use a touchscreen with it is extremely awkward to
⏹️ ▶️ John use a very touch centric interface when you’re when it’s in a laptop configuration. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I put that down mostly as a neutral and then so now I’m just like a left with a laptop that is kind of middle-of-the-road
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of strange not a good complement of ports and the low-end model has terrible specs so I’m not impressed with it as a
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop but I but I do agree that Microsoft has been been trying everything
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can see they try and that they are putting in the work to make an operating system that
⏹️ ▶️ John embodies their vision for how computing how a single operating system can span multiple form factors and all
⏹️ ▶️ John that other good stuff. Styling wise, the fur aside or the fuzzy fabric aside,
⏹️ ▶️ John I still think Microsoft, Surface, and PCs in general
⏹️ ▶️ John are sticking too closely to the Apple design formula.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they have their own twists, they have their own colors, you know, fabric and the weird hinge and all stuff like that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has so dominated the aesthetic for laptops basically from the the powerbook days when they defined
⏹️ ▶️ John the current shape of laptop. Keyboard goes there, pointing device goes here, screen goes there.
⏹️ ▶️ John It took a while for a PC to get on board with that, but that defined it in the same way that the iPhone defined the
⏹️ ▶️ John smartphone form factor. And when Apple came out with the modern Macbook lines with the big flat
⏹️ ▶️ John square keycaps and this little perfect rectangle that Johnny Ive loves and the big touchpad and like
⏹️ ▶️ John all the quote unquote high end PC laptops have been following along with that
⏹️ ▶️ John aesthetic as if it is the one and only true way to make laptops. And I don’t think it is. There are there
⏹️ ▶️ John are there is variety out there and a lot of varieties ugly. And you could like, oh, I’m glad Microsoft is sticking with the Apple design
⏹️ ▶️ John school because it looks good and it does. But it also doesn’t allow them to stand out very often. Speaking of coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John shop surveys, I’m in a coffee shop and I have to squint to make sure I can make out from the front.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that a MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey or is it, you know, it’s easier
⏹️ ▶️ John from the back because you can see the little Windows logo, which is, you know, better than the old Windows logo,
⏹️ ▶️ John but whatever. Anyway, Apple says that you have to have your company logo dead center in the back of your screen. So that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John they do. But from the front, it’s like you could mistake it for a MacBook Air. And I think that is
⏹️ ▶️ John leaving money on the table style wise that I believe there can be a different aesthetic that they could be pursuing
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of what they’re currently doing, which is like Apple style, but with a twist. So I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly impressed by this product. I was much more impressed by the surface studio pro. And I,
⏹️ ▶️ John but all of these products, all Microsoft hardware products, and even, you know, to some degree, the software products
⏹️ ▶️ John reveal, reveal gaps in Apple’s lineup. I’m not gonna say they’re necessarily weaknesses, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John reveal gaps. Like their operating system reveals the fact that they’re, you know, the things fall through the gaps
⏹️ ▶️ John between iOS and MacOS, whether one OS, two OS is the right strategy, either way it shows gaps. And
⏹️ ▶️ John all these variety of Surface books on Surface Studio Pro reveal gaps in Apple’s lineup and that like, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John want a really big touchscreen that runs pro apps, the biggest you can go on Apple is 12.5 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you want an OS that’s touch accessible, that’s iOS. You know, and like there’s this big gap between
⏹️ ▶️ John pro hardware that in theory is coming to the Mac soon. And touch OS and
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has separated those two from each other, whereas Microsoft has a combined OS and a combined hardware strategy. So I find
⏹️ ▶️ John that the most interesting thing about the Surface efforts. And I suppose it’s interesting that they’re extending the brain to
⏹️ ▶️ John a plain old laptop. But this plain old laptop does not. It does not seem to be a particularly compelling product
⏹️ ▶️ John beyond the fact that it is a surface branded laptop. But I applaud Microsoft for
⏹️ ▶️ John taking the surface hardware and software brand and extending it outwards. And hopefully they have
⏹️ ▶️ John some success. We haven’t even talked about Windows 10 s. I don’t know if we have time for it, but that is a whole other aspect of this. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get to that. But also, and I think this ties into that to keep in mind, like as as you criticize this laptop’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mediocrity in certain areas, it’s a low-end product. This is a value product.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the world of PCs, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John mid-range. It’s a low-end Mac. It’s a high-end PC. A low-end PC laptop is $180. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a mid-range PC laptop, but it uses those kind of mid-range parts and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a pretty small case and everything. Anyway, this is a value product, and it’s competing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco against Apple’s value products. And it is interesting to see the two very different ways that Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple are tackling this problem. Apple is largely addressing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very old, unupdated MacBook Air towards the same market. Some of the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be pushed up into a new MacBook Pro, but I think a lot of people are still… This is aimed at things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like schools, businesses, college students, people who need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either a lot of computers at the lowest possible price, like a school, or people who are buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer who need a lot of value and can’t spend a lot more. So things like people like college students and things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. And the MacBook Air is done very well for these people. But Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is basically just telling them to just keep buying really old hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Microsoft is showing them a new option. And I don’t think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really has a direct answer to this. I mean, I guess, technically, Apple’s answer is spend more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for one of our new computers or tolerate one of our old ones. But I really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the MacBook Air is kind of an embarrassment right now because it’s not like this is some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco narrow little product that they don’t sell many of. They sell tons of them. And so it makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me kind of sad for Apple that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are happy to sell so many of an ancient product that they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refused to update out of what seems like a combination of laziness and greed because they’re making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good money on it so why update it? That’s a crappy reason, but that seems to be the reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re using. And the new MacBook Pro will eventually, I assume,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will eventually get lower in price and eventually the 12-inch and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Escape line will replace the MacBook Air. But it doesn’t seem like that’s happening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. It seems like that might be still maybe three years out or something like that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this time, are they just going to keep selling this ancient MacBook Air while things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this are coming out from the PC industry and kind of embarrassing it? I don’t think I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that strategy.
⏹️ ▶️ John have like five years before they have a special meeting to talk about the MacBook Air and Apple’s campus? They invite us
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, saying, we know we haven’t updated the MacBook Air in four years and people were wondering if we
⏹️ ▶️ John were going to discontinue it, but we’ve just decided last week that we’re going to make a new MacBook Air and it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be out this year. But we are going to rethink the MacBook. We’ve heard you
⏹️ ▶️ John that you want the MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s a specific Microsoft Surface thing like PC laptops have been embarrassing the air
⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time It’s not just this one like oh They finally made it like like you said like there’s been tons of PCs that
⏹️ ▶️ John use the Mac by air class of chip But they actually stay updated of varying degrees of build quality and style So maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John the Microsoft one is notable and that they have a good reputation for hardware build quality And if you like the style like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine Um, but yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s, it’s revealing gaps in Apple’s lineup, like that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wanted the Mac, the combination of the new Mac book and the new Mac book pros to
⏹️ ▶️ John span the same range of the old combination of the airs plus the pros plus the weird Mac bookie thing in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John span. And it does kind of span the same range of gaps in different places,
⏹️ ▶️ John but because of the way they’re priced and the way their capabilities spread, it ends up being less satisfying.
⏹️ ▶️ John And uh, and, and the air still is very popular. I don’t know if I mentioned this about my
⏹️ ▶️ John UK trip, but I did a, because I was actually in a Starbucks, I think for the first time
⏹️ ▶️ John in my entire life, because my wife went in there to get a
⏹️ ▶️ John drink and I came in with her, and I did a laptop count just
⏹️ ▶️ John because I was, I glanced around and I was stunned at what I saw. What I saw was like, I think it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John eight MacBook Airs, one HP laptop, and one MacBook Pro. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, MacBook Airs, like what’s going on? I talked to some people in the UK and they said, oh, schools buy
⏹️ ▶️ John them a lot. Like when you go to school, you get a laptop and they all buy MacBook Airs. So like, are these people going
⏹️ ▶️ John to, I mean, are these all old MacBook Airs they got as hand-me-downs? Are people going to Apple stores and continuing
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy MacBook Airs?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes, they are. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I mean, if you look at the ASPs of the, I was thinking of this when you say, oh, the MacBook Pro prices will come down. Like, not
⏹️ ▶️ John if those ASPs stay up because the new MacBook Pros that are all super, you know, more expensive than their old models,
⏹️ ▶️ John tremendously increased revenues and average selling price for Apple. So because, again, pent
⏹️ ▶️ John up demand, right, or whatever, but I’m not so sure that they’re going to be in a big darn hurry to lower the price. And honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m okay with Apple jacking up the price on its top end models, as long as the top end models
⏹️ ▶️ John like justify that price, not linearly, obviously, where it’s like, is this $500 better? No, of course, it’s not going to be $500 better. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if anything, you’re going to fleece people on making the super duper high end ones. If they actually
⏹️ ▶️ John introduced a MacBook Air replacement, sort of a worthy MacBook Air replacement
⏹️ ▶️ John that fills that same role, like has the same trade-offs of battery life, screen size and ports and capability
⏹️ ▶️ John as the old MacBook Air but has all updated internals and has Retina, if they ever made such a machine,
⏹️ ▶️ John lower their ASPs, but I think it would sell like hotcakes. And honestly, I feel like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I made the joke about the whole Mac Pro meeting, like, oh, we’ve decided we’re going to do this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that decision is inevitable because it seems like the range
⏹️ ▶️ John of capabilities in Apple’s limited range from the super duper skinny MacBook to the much more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John pros, that doesn’t seem to be the right distribution of price points and capabilities to satisfy the market.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas the Air has proven itself to be, and not the first Air, because the first Air was a crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John mix, but the 2011 and on Air, that was a really great sweet
⏹️ ▶️ John spot for capability, size and price. Uh, and I think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has proven with their experiment that the super duper skinny one, like it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit too far down the capability ladder. Like it’s, it’s sacrificed too much capability for other stuff. They just
⏹️ ▶️ John by all means keep it because you should have a model. It’s like the lightest possible thing you can have. It’s awesome for that. Right. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t, you know, whatever, whatever the curve looks like of demand for laptop sizes and capabilities,
⏹️ ▶️ John that one is also towards the edge. So I think Apple will eventually coming around, come around
⏹️ ▶️ John to making a machine that has the balance of the MacBook Air doesn’t have to be the same exact
⏹️ ▶️ John size and shape as the MacBook Air because things change and USB C is smaller and so on and so forth. And whether that’s because the
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook evolves or they introduce a new model in the middle or the 13 inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro as Marco has talked about so many times eventually shrinks down to the point where it basically is a MacBook Air. But that hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John happened yet. Um, and so looking over at the PC side of the window side
⏹️ ▶️ John of things and seeing all these MacBook Air equivalent, seeing how popular you know, again, coffee, coffee, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John shop surveys. A lot of the PCs that I see are MacBook Airy size form
⏹️ ▶️ John factors. I see less of the giant battleships that you still see in corporate environments and I see more of
⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, HP Lenovo MacBook Airy size machines. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, hopefully Apple will get on that in, you know, t minus two and a half years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Cause that’s the thing, like that’s what I’m saying. Like the strategy, what they seem to be doing now, which is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just never update the Air and just keep selling it until the other ones come down in price. I don’t think that necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works unless there’s other changes in mind, because like what you said, the 12-inch, assume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that comes down in price and becomes a new entry, that’s kind of not good enough to replace the MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is so much of a compromise in so many more areas. It has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way fewer ports and things. it is way slower than MacBook Air in a lot of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It gets worse battery life by a good amount. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will presumably improve over time. Maybe the second generation 12-inch MacBook, whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that comes out, maybe that one will be a better Air replacement. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco current one really isn’t. I mean, maybe the answer is that the 13-inch MacBook Escape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ends up going down in price eventually, or it has a very low-end configuration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the problem is, the base model is already a pretty low-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco model for Apple standards. Compared to the service book, it’s kind of mid-range to high-end.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So again, I’m not entirely sure that strategy makes sense, but it seems like Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing a pretty poor job addressing what is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by far their most popular model of laptop. That seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird to me. Although that being said, looking at the Surface laptop, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were buying one of these things, which of these four colors would you get? Because I saw the video, the colors looked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay in the video, but now that I’m seeing this page, all four of these colors look hideous to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They all look like cubicle walls.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s the texture that’s the problem, not the color. I think either one of the two grays,
⏹️ ▶️ John the darker gray or the lighter gray, they’re fine. but I’m not on board with the
⏹️ ▶️ John texture thing, both because I think it’ll get dirty and gross and it’ll be harder to clean, and also because the edge treatment,
⏹️ ▶️ John like when the fabric runs to the edge and joins up with the metal, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just asking for it to fray. And the last thing I want is a frayed laptop. That’s not an aesthetic I like.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I can imagine people finding it attractive,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But I’m not into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it’s hard to say. On the configurator, the colors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the image just microscopic. And it’s very hard to say. I would probably take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a look at the cobalt blue, but in all likelihood, end up with the boring platinum.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the colors of the cars are red. And you’re right that their website like that. I know you just made fun of their website
⏹️ ▶️ John for a while before. But like, if you have beautiful hardware, like they made a really cool intro video,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Gruber link to and a couple of people that shows like all you know, it looked like an Apple video showing how beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John the parts are even on the inside and how they all assemble and fly together and we’ve seen stuff from like Apple like
⏹️ ▶️ John but then if you go to their website Apple the entire page would you just be like incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John close up high-resolution beautifully shot photographs slash renders of their hardware right whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John here we’re squinting at these little blurry JPEGs we can’t even you know I was trying to look for a picture to show
⏹️ ▶️ John me all the ports Apple would have a shot that’s like the ports fill your entire screen and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John impossibly clean because they’re probably computer renders and here it’s like I can’t even get a shot where I can make out what
⏹️ ▶️ John the ports are on the side. The color
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey picker changes the color
⏹️ ▶️ John on this one inch by one inch postage stamp. Like Microsoft, you are not selling your
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware. You’ve got good looking hardware. You have to show it off. We want to see it. We want to see it up close.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alas. That’s Microsoft. I will say also, the MacBook Escape,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the late 2016 13-inch MacBook Pro without touch bar, ports,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that continues to impress me as a machine. When
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil Schilliger on stage and talked about it during the introduction, he did say something on the lines of, like, this is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the new MacBook Air, and even though it starts at $1,500 and has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fewer ports and things, I think that is largely correct. I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in whatever the next version of the MacBook Escape is, you know, presumably maybe this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fall or next spring, whenever new MacBook Pros come out, I hope they make a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes that will make that more correct, that will make this more of a MacBook Air replacement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think for me, like having used this thing now, I miss the SD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card slot. I will not accept any argument that that’s the past because it simply is not true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can argue with me all you want about legacy ports, but the SD card is not a legacy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco port. It is something else and it is still necessary for lots of people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disagree with you more. Cool. So I would say bring back the SD card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader and I would also really like one more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB port. I don’t care whether it’s C or A. Most of the computers, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this class before, you’ve been able to have them plugged in and you’ve been able to plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two devices to them and you can’t do that with this without using hubs and stuff. And every USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hub that’s out there on the road right now is a total piece of garbage. And the MacBook One has been out for, what,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two years now? Something like that. And they’re still all garbage. You know, like this is similar, it’s a similar problem of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of like hubs and things like hubs that, you know, eventually, I mean, it took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me something like three years to find a decent USB-3 hub that didn’t disconnect constantly and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cause problems. Like every USB-C hub out there is a total piece of garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the fact is, what if I don’t want to buy a USB-C hub? Or what if I don’t want to buy Apple’s $75 thing or whatever it is?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s just more additional cost for people who are buying this thing to do something fairly basic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really would love one additional USB port and an SD card reader. And if that happens to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come with them, also maybe dropping the price by a couple hundred bucks on the entry point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that it makes it more MacBook Air range, I think that would help a lot. and then make it a little bit thinner
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’ve got a random MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to be thinner.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s already thinner than the MacBook Air. Like it is, it is like physically in so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways, it’s great. Like it really is really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not thinner than the MacBook Air in all dimensions. Like it doesn’t do the taper, which again, I say it was a great idea for not doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the taper because you can get tons more battery life, but it doesn’t change the fact of how it feels in your hand
⏹️ ▶️ John and how it fits into your like backpack or whatever. Like the taper was there for a reason, for like a perception
⏹️ ▶️ John reason. and that perception is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real thing. No, I’m telling you, I disagree very strongly on the physical side. To me, physically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a MacBook Air. Like, this is, it is exactly the right size and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels exactly right in the hand.
⏹️ ▶️ John You may feel like it’s the right size, but it feels chunkier than the Air. I disagree.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can just go get an Air and just like, it just does, because it doesn’t have the thin end. That’s the perception angle that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m talking about. Like, I’m not saying the thin end is the right choice, because I think the right choice is for right now for it to be thicker. But you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like in the future, eventually, Like I said, the question is, does the fanless MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John expand its capabilities to fill in the role of the air, or does
⏹️ ▶️ John the 13-inch MacBook Pro slim down, essentially, to come
⏹️ ▶️ John to the MacBook Air and lower its price to come to the MacBook Air from above? And I agree that it’s probably more likely that eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John the 13-inch MacBook Pro, if not in price, in all other ways, will fill that same
⏹️ ▶️ John role. I disagree that right now that fit form factor wise that it feels the same because it
⏹️ ▶️ John just doesn’t we have them at work and And pick them up and it’s just not just not like that Actually, we don’t have them
⏹️ ▶️ John alert the important people who have their own machines at work out the work. Sorry
⏹️ ▶️ John So excited like to work if that do you know, this is my personal machine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do we want to we are running long, but do we want to talk about the Windows 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey s or whatever it’s called.
⏹️ ▶️ John I I mean we can I think this is a quick one so Windows 10 s is the
⏹️ ▶️ John cut down in terms of pricing version of Windows that you can get with these laptops that Wants you to get
⏹️ ▶️ John all the applications from Microsoft’s version of the App Store And you know it’s a model We’re all familiar
⏹️ ▶️ John with Microsoft has been pushing real hard on the App Store model thus far They have not been as successful as Apple but in theory
⏹️ ▶️ John brings all the same benefits of a controlled selection of software that’s approved by Microsoft that
⏹️ ▶️ John conforms to, presumably better conforms to the ideals that Microsoft wants it to conform to and that Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John gets you know the control of how the money flows and yada yada yada.
⏹️ ▶️ John The interesting thing about Microsoft 10s is that if you want to get applications from someplace
⏹️ ▶️ John other than the Microsoft App Store, or I don’t know what they call it, I keep saying App Store, you can pay them
⏹️ ▶️ John an additional 50 bucks and now you can load programs from anywhere. Which is probably making
⏹️ ▶️ John a long time PC Windows people freak out because this is like a lockdown
⏹️ ▶️ John PC that I have to pay money to put stuff on that’s terrible don’t worry guys you’ll be able to hack it all that stuff is cracked
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway it’s an interesting business model
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to have your cake and eat it too where it’s like we’re we want to give people the capability of
⏹️ ▶️ John using it as a regular PC but we actually want to discourage that so we can discourage it and by the way we can make our cheap models
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper by, you know, I presumably Microsoft is reducing whatever his license fee is by saying, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you if you use windows 10 s you have you PC manufacturer won’t have to pay us quite
⏹️ ▶️ John as much for the windows license because we hope we’re going to make some more by selling apps through our
⏹️ ▶️ John store. Um, but as Gruber pointed out, this is kind of a weird pitch for
⏹️ ▶️ John people that like you have to pay money to, are you paying money to
⏹️ ▶️ John make your thing better Or are you paying or is it just there as a deterrent to try
⏹️ ▶️ John to encourage people to use the App Store and the Microsoft App Store is pretty grim and like doesn’t have the apps that you want in it
⏹️ ▶️ John So does everybody just have to pay that fee? I don’t know like many things they do in the Microsoft the modern Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John Service world It’s like I don’t know. Let’s try this and you know, they don’t have too much to lose It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re the Microsoft App Store is setting the world ablaze So if this
⏹️ ▶️ John is what it takes to encourage more people to get into the Microsoft App Store to say If
⏹️ ▶️ John they sell a lot of these, and they can say, hey, look at all these customers, the only place they can buy stores is through the Microsoft Store. That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John you, software developer, should put your stuff in the Microsoft Store. But, you know, good luck getting
⏹️ ▶️ John the big names in there. The same reason Apple couldn’t get them in, Microsoft’s gonna have trouble in getting them into the store. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then it just ends up being as a weird free version of Windows that you can pay $50 to unlock, and presumably to remove all the weird ads
⏹️ ▶️ John that are apparently in Windows these days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this whole thing is kind of a weird segmentation thing. I mean, it is obviously like, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effort to create like a low-end Windows, but like Windows RT was, you know, kind of a more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco severe version of that, and that didn’t do so well. I don’t, I really don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft’s customers being a big fan of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it doesn’t seem like the thing that deserves a $50 charge. It seems to me to be like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the gatekeeper switch in OS, or Mac OS, where you just kind of say, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand the risks, I’m good with it, just let me side load whatever I want.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was a group’s analogy too. And it’s like, it doesn’t feel good to, it feels like a ransom. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John unlock the full capability you perceive, but that’s just from our perspective, because we’re like, oh, we just expect to be able to load
⏹️ ▶️ John any software we want on our PCs. And of course, from our perspective in the walled garden of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, it’s like we would gladly pay 50 bucks to be able to sideload arbitrary applications onto our iPhones, or at
⏹️ ▶️ John least that was, I think all the geeks would have agreed on that many years ago. These days, people make less of a fuss about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But I think it still exists for all sorts of applications that Apple doesn’t allow on the App Store that might potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John be useful, so on and so forth. But trying to bring that to the Windows world,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what kind of demand is there for that, and I’m not sure how much power Microsoft has, even
⏹️ ▶️ John within its own ecosystem, to make that happen. Apple obviously took the easy
⏹️ ▶️ John way out and said, we’re introducing a new platform, this is how it is from day one, right? So then it’s like, it is what it is, and guess what,
⏹️ ▶️ John that platform was wildly successful, so they made it happen. But trying to retroactively apply
⏹️ ▶️ John that to a platform that was previously opened, Apple and it’s on its own little private world
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac has had much difficulty doing that, with Mac App Store and sandboxing and
⏹️ ▶️ John major applications that we either never in the store Mac App Store or left the Mac App Store. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft’s gonna have an even harder time, but I think mainly the main innovation here seems to me
⏹️ ▶️ John as a way that Microsoft can allow even cheaper Windows-based
⏹️ ▶️ John computers while still hopefully not losing that much money on them, like
⏹️ ▶️ John giving Windows licenses, you know, lowering the price of Windows licenses. So for computers
⏹️ ▶️ John that are incredibly cheap, and hoping they’re going to make it up with the App Store purchase, I don’t think the math will work out for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s interesting strategy. And from users perspective, I think Windows users
⏹️ ▶️ John are just used to by now, the business model of Windows and how many different versions there are, and how much they
⏹️ ▶️ John cost and what you really have to pay and what they’re capable of doing, being a confusing mess. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, this is par for the course.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week, Casper, Betterment, and Indochino. and we will see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental They
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, Tech Podcasts
Post-show: Switch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have some thoughts about the Switch. Oh? It’s okay, it’ll be fairly quick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This week, or really last week, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the first Mario Kart that I have played since Mario Kart for the Wii. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it came out on Friday, I got my copy on Friday. On Monday, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had already arranged with a few co-workers at work who also have Switches. We were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all going to bring our consoles in and our copies of Mario Kart and play over lunch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so there were six of us gathered around a kind of a bar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will, at work, playing local multiplayer against each other and with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each other on Mario Kart 8. And it was unbelievably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fun and cool and a miracle that HR didn’t come down and yell us for the language
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we were all using as we were hollering at each other to, you know, effectively go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey die in a fire, but with much more colorful words than that. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unbelievably fun, just like Apple. Well, not like Apple, used to be anyway. It just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked and it was great. And I had just an unbelievable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amount of fun in a way that I haven’t since I did like land parties when I was was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in high school or college or null modem cable parties when I was a grade schooler.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this is a con this is the first console that I am aware of where that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of thing can happen in person really, really easily and without
⏹️ ▶️ Casey six associated TVs as well. I just thought it was extremely cool. Yes. Well, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, I’m aware that the original Game Boy had like four player games and things like that. I but you know what I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where six people show up with no cables whatsoever and just start playing a game together.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was awesome and tremendously fun. And if you happen to know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of people or even better a handful of people who all have all have switches and all have Mario Kart
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe an equivalent game, I cannot recommend it enough. It is so much fun. Have you done any of this yet? John,
⏹️ ▶️ John I look for you online America this weekend, but you weren’t around. Yeah, I’ve been I I mean, I’ve played all these
⏹️ ▶️ John tracks and done all these things already, but I played it to just see the new framerate and the higher res graphics
⏹️ ▶️ John and the new features of the game. What game was it again? Mario Kart 8.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh. What was it again?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you trying to get me to say Mario
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco over and over again so you can
⏹️ ▶️ John soundboard me? Still Mario Kart 8. Deluxe!
⏹️ ▶️ John Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Indeed. But yeah, and to try out the new,
⏹️ ▶️ John the few new features they added with the double item boxes and the pink sparks and the dreaded auto steer thing
⏹️ ▶️ John which you must disable because it’s terrible. Well it’s terrible for me it is good for the people who it’s intended
⏹️ ▶️ John for. I would have loved to have, speaking of the auto drive thing, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not auto drive it’s preventing you from going off the edge of the of the map and I used to try to play Mario Kart with
⏹️ ▶️ John my kids probably before they were quite old enough to be able to do it and it was very frustrating for them
⏹️ ▶️ John because they you know they couldn’t stay on the course right I think they would have had more fun with
⏹️ ▶️ John this version which has auto accelerate so you don’t have to hold down a and also they can drive all over the course
⏹️ ▶️ John however they want they just can’t go off the edge it’ll just as if there are guardrails on the entire track and that
⏹️ ▶️ John would have really helped them you know be guided along but if you are an experienced maracate player
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want this feature on because if you barely get close to or touch the
⏹️ ▶️ John edge and you weren’t gonna go off the edge but you just happen to touch it it It slows you down tremendously. It’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like sandpaper. So I would encourage everyone to turn this feature off if you’re going for good lap times
⏹️ ▶️ John or trying to compete in 200 cc or whatever. You can’t turn it off from the main interface. You have to actually start the race.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then once the race has started, go to the option screen and then you can turn it off. And I’m pretty sure that setting persists
⏹️ ▶️ John between launches the game once you have turned it off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, the thing though, with this is that it’s very different than playing online against each other, Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you’re playing online against each other, you can’t, unless you have like a phone line open, you can’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yell and scream at each other like you can when you’re face to face and you can’t see,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, the people who are steering their switches, even though they’re not using tilt controls, they’re steering their switches, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey steering wheels, because they can’t help themselves. Um, you, you can’t see the just. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delightfully taste, just delicious frustration. When you nail the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person in first place with a blue shell, you You can’t see all that online.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although the online play is also very good and also generally just works, it is just magnificent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have a big group all in person. If we do a podcast or family New Year’s again this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year, I will pretty much demand everyone bring their Switches and Mario
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kart because it is extremely fun. Also, I noticed buried deep within Nintendo’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mario Kart site, and I will not put a link in the show notes because I will forget and I’m too lazy to find it. You can actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey play 12-player local Mario Kart over Ethernet only,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I didn’t even realize was the thing. So you would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco have to get- It has an Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey port? No, that’s the thing. You would have to get 12 USB to Ethernet adapters and a router and 12
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TVs because you have to be docked to do it, but you could play 12-player Mario Kart in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a LAN party scenario.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That sounds like an incredibly ridiculous amount of setup, but that sounds awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey would that be though, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That would be so much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it to go back a sec John you were saying you were looking for me over the weekend didn’t see me What are the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complaints I do have about the online setup with the switch and maybe it’s user
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ignorance So maybe it maybe I’m dead wrong about this, but I don’t see any way where you can like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Notify somebody else I would like to play this game with you You can say in Mario
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kart that you’re looking for a friend that’s online and you can start a room that’s intended Or I guess maybe the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only two people that can, that can go into that room or say me and you, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there is no mechanism that I’m aware of where you can like ping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or notify a person. So let’s say I’m playing Mario Kart. I’m actively playing Mario Kart
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and John starts up his switch and sees me online and says, Oh, I’d like to play Casey. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I am ever notified that you are asking to play with me, which is a real bummer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because then you have to like go to some other device to orchestrate the thing and then back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the switch to actually play. And I feel like that’s a real shortfall, which really bummed me out. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other than that, it’s worked really well. Now, that being said, yesterday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we also did a group game, this time with seven players. And I don’t know if it was because it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over lunch and we were standing relatively close to microwaves, which is the same story it was on on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monday, but either way, the local LAN was not working well at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the online multiplayer actually worked pretty much flawlessly. So even though we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all sitting within at most, you know, 10 feet of each other, and even when we moved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away from the microwaves, it still just didn’t work for Beans for some reason. But once we all went online, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually worked great. But so much fun to have it in person. And one of the things that appealed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me about the Switch, which I think I’ve mentioned last week or the week before, was that intro video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they showed all the Switches all in a circle and they were all playing basketball or maybe Splatoon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that against each other. I thought, man, that looks so much fun. You know what? Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my goodness, it’s so much fun. John, you really need to try that out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If one of your kids, if their friends all have Switches and they do a slumber party or something, you should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just be that creepy old dad that invites himself to play along Because it is super duper fun
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah Ergonomic issues though with using the switch handheld which I have tried a few times with so many people raving
⏹️ ▶️ John about it But that’s just for me personally It’s I I always prefer to have a doctor and use a controller and sit on the
⏹️ ▶️ John couch and look at the big TV And unlike with the Wii U where I actually thought I did it a little bit better
⏹️ ▶️ John with you playing on the gamepad Maybe because of lag or whatever like the Wii U
⏹️ ▶️ John gamepad is way better for me ergonomically than the little tiny switch just too small
⏹️ ▶️ John and too you know I do worse when I race with it in that way than I do on the TV
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’ve been playing Mario Kart mostly on the TV and if I had to do like a LAN party type thing it’s nice that we could all
⏹️ ▶️ John be in person and do the things but I I would prefer to be in a scenario where the ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John scenario where there are 12 televisions and ethernet things because that’s the way I prefer to play the game I mean I suppose you can
⏹️ ▶️ John still have fun playing it playing it not at peak level with me trying to play at the hand
⏹️ ▶️ John handheld thing and doing terribly badly but uh yeah and
⏹️ ▶️ John going back to it i was surprised that i felt like oh i haven’t played mario kart 8 in so long i’m gonna fire
⏹️ ▶️ John this game up and i’m just gonna see how awful i am but i still had it like i went directly to 200 cc
⏹️ ▶️ John which i had unlocked in the wii u version already and i just pulled up a bunch of courses and i was
⏹️ ▶️ John doing pretty well like plus or minus the insanity of uh rubber banding and item
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that you get
⏹️ ▶️ John at 200 cc with the incredible cheating computer players. I did okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John except for a couple of the tracks that were in like, I guess they were in the most recent DLC that I’d only done a little bit and realized
⏹️ ▶️ John I just don’t know those courses, but I tend not to like the SNES tracks anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It was a monster.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like they were good in SNES, but I, you know, I prefer the other tracks that are more dynamic
⏹️ ▶️ John that are, you know, ports from like GameCube and the credit ones directly. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I had fun. I don’t know if I’m going to go through and like three star everything like I did. on the Wii U one because I find that incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John frustrating at the upper levels because three-starring at 200 CC will literally drive you mad if You have if
⏹️ ▶️ John you do not have much better skills than I do because I can do it But
⏹️ ▶️ John it takes me a long time and It’s incredibly frustrating to have to three-star because that doesn’t mean just that you
⏹️ ▶️ John Come in first at the end of the thing that means you basically come in first in every race except for one Like there’s there’s very little more
⏹️ ▶️ John error. Maybe it’s all of them There’s very little margin of error and in 200 CC in a world of Mario Kart
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems to me that almost no amount of driving skill can protect you from
⏹️ ▶️ John an unfortunate series of events that leads you to after an entire Grand Prix getting blown up 10
⏹️ ▶️ John feet from the finish line and watching one person zip by you and then oh sorry you didn’t get three
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a rough world out there America I go I go I went back to Zelda to relax I played a bunch of America I’m like I need to wind down
⏹️ ▶️ John to Zelda where I’ve already beaten the game I’m just like you know doing the fun side
⏹️ ▶️ John quests and Furnishing my home and doing all sorts of exciting things and that was that was much better you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, it’s funny you bring up Zelda again because I Found that since I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotten Mario Kart 8 deluxe I am far less Less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey likely to play Zelda not because I don’t enjoy it just as much not because it’s not by pretty much any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey measure a better Game, but because with Mario Kart I can pick it up for like a three minute or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ten minute You know round and just kind of play for a few minutes put it back down Whereas for me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway with Zelda I have to be like concentrating and paying attention and thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things and and I understand that I’m a noob and maybe other people like you John that have played Zelda for forever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a day don’t have to concentrate as much but for me it’s a much more deliberate act and so I found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself playing a lot more Mario Kart than Zelda since Friday even though in many ways I enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Zelda more and in many ways I do think it is more relaxing or at least a slower pace
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that Zelda is one of the games that is the easiest to pick up and do something one of the easiest elves
⏹️ ▶️ John is perhaps ever to who have a tiny short gaming session because you’ll pick up and like
⏹️ ▶️ John there are so many things that you can choose to do within two or three minutes you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John go and do a shrine or advance the story you can just
⏹️ ▶️ John pick a point on the map and you know fast travel there or like pick a point close by and
⏹️ ▶️ John just go to it and along the way you will find enemies to defeat new things, especially if you
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t opened up the entire map yet and you’re just exploring interesting things to see just look and say I
⏹️ ▶️ John wonder what’s over there and go over there and when you get there you find out what’s over there it’s an interesting thing and you’re done like I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John when I was super duper into playing Zelda like when I was only like 10 or 20 hours
⏹️ ▶️ John in it was you know normally we just play games on weekends but I was at the point where you know after dinner
⏹️ ▶️ John on weekdays I was like let me just get in five or ten minutes of Zelda because there was always something to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John you should like maybe if you’re going into it and saying I need to advance the story I need to get closer to finishing the
⏹️ ▶️ John game that there is some sort of like oh where was I in my project my project of finishing this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey game. That’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s exactly what I run into is I lose my context and then it takes me like ten minutes just to remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where I was and so and a lot of that is just because I have a terrible memory and I and I just and I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think you’re right if I don’t worry about what I was actively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the midst of working on, it probably would be a lot more approachable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like save that for the longer sessions. And for the shorter ones, like, just gather up some food and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know, beat
⏹️ ▶️ John up some bad guys and take their stuff, or see what’s over the other side of that hill. Right? And then only
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re gonna have a longer gaming session, say, Okay, now how am I, how am I going to progress? What area of the map on a
⏹️ ▶️ John map am I going to open up and conquer next? What story thing am I going to go on? Am I going to pick
⏹️ ▶️ John a side quest from my adventure log and do that one side quest. That’s for the longer sessions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you still haven’t really played the Switch at all? Are you still with us?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I bought Mario Kart, I think yesterday, the day before, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t been able to play it yet on my Switch because I was told by Tiff that I couldn’t play with her Switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I suggested that maybe I should bring it to WVDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should, but she’ll kill you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then we could all play on our switches, but then I was also informed, what would she do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that week without her switch?
⏹️ ▶️ John I would never bring mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why? Were you afraid of scratching the screen that you’d never look at?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s not a portable device for me. I’m not gonna bring it. Do I need more? I’m not even bringing, I don’t even bring laptops anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just bring my iPad, I don’t travel light. I would, it would take a lot for me to bring the switch, because then you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to bring all the stuff to, you know, at the very least the charging cable, and I would wanna bring the pro controller, and then it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I would never play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it. I don’t have to bring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this stuff. I just bring the switch and I use the cable for my MacBook Pro to charge it if I need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, exactly. And it’s actually, I’m glad you brought all this back up because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you had said, you know, you only want to play it against the TV and you don’t like it in handheld mode, blah, blah, blah, that’s totally fair, totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasonable. For what it’s worth, when we were set up at work, a handful of people did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring their Pro controllers. But what I did, for example, is I, because I didn’t have a Pro controller until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about four hours ago, I put it in kickstand, you know, I put the kickstand up and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey popped out the joy cons. And in my case, I slid them into the little sheath. I don’t know what the term is for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the whole story thing. So it was kind of like a poor man’s pro controller.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what a couple of people did was just hold their joy cons. They just held them, you know, with their sides or whatever. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried playing like that too, to see how it was. And I think that was better than holding the whole thing up. But then I had
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem of what to do with the screen. If you have a table, then you can use a little kickstand, but if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey trying to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it on your lap, then you have some problems. It’s still not for me. And same thing with Zelda.
⏹️ ▶️ John I also tried playing Zelda in all these arrangements. Hand help with the Joy-Cons on, hand help with the Joy-Cons off, on a table,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s just like TV wins for me. I have two Pro Controllers now. I’m committed to the Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John Controller lifestyle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. And I mean, again, I’m not at all trying to argue. All I’m saying is that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a friendly and lightly competitive match at WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really think you’d be fine with just having the Joy-Cons in your hands, perhaps without the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey holstery thing and presumably we’d all be around a table or something like that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just playing in that way. Although I will say that would be a pretty fun way to pass the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while we’re waiting both outside and inside whatever the convention center is called, Moscone for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sake of discussion. That would be a pretty good way to deal with just sitting there for hours.