240: Undefined Wait Period
21 Sep 2017A grab bag of updates and additional topics from the latest Apple releases.
Episode Description:
- Stephen Hackett's St. Jude's Fundraiser
- Follow up:
- iPhone X screen size
- John Siracusa, Dongletown, USA
- Window management
- Apple Watch LTE pricing: Data is substitutive, not additive (via Oliver Thomas)
- More on Apple TV 4K
- Whether it has a fan or supports 24 Hz output
- 32 vs. 64 GB
- Craig Federighi's Face ID apology tour
- Running Mac betas
- More on Apple Retail
- Genius Bar appointments
- Seinfeld on car reservations
#askatp- Mac Pro & Nvidia
- Twitter app preferences
- Training FaceID
- Last week's keynote, continued
- Watch capacities and LTE streaming behavior
- iPhone cables & dongles & predictions
- Fast-charging equipment
- AirPower vs. Nightstand Mode
- iPhone X production delays?
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show:
- TwIM
- Acura TLX and dual screens
- CarPlay, and touch screens
- Acura NSX
Sponsored by:
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- AfterShokz: Headphones powered by bone-conduction technology.
Chapters
- Intro: Missed connections
- Donate to St. Jude Hospital
- Follow-up: iPhone X screen size
- The Docks of Dongletown
- Follow-up: Window management
- Follow-up: Apple TV remote
- Apple TV 4K: Fans and 24 FPS
- Apple TV 32 vs. 64 GB
- Desktop laptops
- Sponsor: AfterShokz
- Apple Watch LTE pricing
- Federighi interviews
- APFS in High Sierra beta
- Sponsor: Fracture
- Genius Bar and retail feedback
- #askatp: NVIDIA in Mac Pro?
- #askatp: Twitterrific Mac beta
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Face ID training studies
- LTE Watch has more storage
- Lightning and USB-C
- AirPower and Nightstand Mode
- Google-HTC purchase
- iPhone X availability
- Follow-up: Apple TV 24 FPS
- Ending theme
- Follow-up: TwIM
- Neutral: Acura DS 🖼️
- Neutral: Acura NSX 🖼️
- Neutral: DeLorean 🖼️
Intro: Missed connections
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, and what did you say? Nobody looks at a man’s shoes. I did not place that reference until somebody linked it
⏹️ ▶️ John What a surprise what a surprise you neither one of you got my Monty Python one last week Finally one person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I don’t know that I’ve seen Monty Python I think I’ve seen Holy Grail and that’s the only Monty Python
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I’ve ever seen that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what I did It was from Holy Grail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I knew I recognized the reference about the shoes I just couldn’t place it until I saw the link does that give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me like partial credit?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, because Shawshank is not an obscure movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, it’s one of my favorites, too!
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not an obscure line from the movie, either. It is a very popular movie right in your wheelhouse for your age group,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it is a pivotal, important line from the movie. It is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no excuses.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you don’t. Sorry, Dad. I try to tailor my things to you, and they just go by. The Monty Python, I didn’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ John you to get, because that’s before your time. But I expected more people on the Internet to get it, but only one person on Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please love me anyway. I’ll try to do better. Okay, I’ll do it.
Donate to St. Jude Hospital
⏹️ ▶️ Casey September is, among other things, the most popular month amongst
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple people, but it is also a very, very, very important month. In September,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. And our dear friend, Stephen Hackett, his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eldest son, Josiah, has been affected by childhood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cancer since he was six months old. And two of Stephen’s children are, including Josiah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are running or walking or doing some sort of marathon to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hospital. And if you’re not from the United States, St. Jude’s is a children’s research hospital.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They take no money from their patients. They run entirely from donations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and grants and things like that. And so this month, as every September, Stephen Hackett is trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to raise money for St. Jude’s. And I can’t think of a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better, more universally agreeable target of your hard-earned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money listener than Children’s Research Hospital, and I mean that genuinely. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so Stephen originally had asked, or had not asked, but had hoped to raise $9,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As we record on Wednesday the 20th, he is at $17,000. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will consider it a personal failing of the ATP listeners. We need a good name like Tim’s, like Hello
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Internet has. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John not a good name. It’s a fantastic name. It is not because it’s gender specific, which is awful. And
⏹️ ▶️ John brush over it on the reshow and it drives me nuts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, we can call our listeners upgradians. That probably isn’t taken. So anyway, we need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to call the that didn’t work at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, we’ll just we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just edit that out. Don’t worry. And whenever I say that, I know that means it’s not getting edited out. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The fundraiser is at $17,048 as I sit here now. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we are not—well, I shouldn’t say we—if the Hacketts haven’t raised $20,000 by the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey end of September, I will consider it a personal failing of all of you that listen to ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I am asking, nay, begging all of you, perhaps the accidentals,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will. That’s terrible also, but it’s the best I got.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John The accidents. The accidents. That’s really terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m asking—we’ve got to stop this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John We’ll workshop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But anyway, we’ll put it in the parking lot. I’m asking all of you to please, even if it’s just a dollar—and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean that—even if it’s just a dollar, whatever, a dollar is more than no dollars, please donate to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Hackett’s fundraiser for St. Jude’s. It would mean a lot to Stephen and it would mean a lot to all three of us. So if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any extra money with which you can scrape a donation together—and I mean that genuinely, I’m not trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be a jerk—please consider throwing a little bit of your hard earned money their way because gosh knows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they deserve it. So just a quick serious note on that. Anything else you two?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would go even further and say if we don’t hit $20,000, John will give you all a thumbs down.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tweet every single one of you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco individually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All of the accidents he will tweet.
⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t want to just use the stick. We should use the carrot. If we break 20k, we should come up with
⏹️ ▶️ John a good name for ATP listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I like that. That’s putting a lot of pressure on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes it cross over 20k sent us a screenshot and you might have input on what the name is. Ooh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. A screenshot, because those
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t be fake. Not at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I love it when people screenshot things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Look, take a screenshot, then you’ll have proof. What young people grew up in a world with computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can at least verify whether it has crossed $20,000 yet or not. We can verify that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be at least, everyone trying to fake it would have to do it at around the same time at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This would be a good problem to have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, please, if you have any extra cash, please send it to St. Jude.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I know all of us would appreciate it. So thank you for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And look at it this way. Like, you know, Apple just released a whole bunch of new crap, none of which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco costs less than about 40 bucks. Like of everything they’ve released, like, is there anything that costs under $40?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A single, any accessory or anything? Probably not, right? Even like if you want to get like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now your phone can fast charge, but you need to spend like $70 between a brick and a cable to make it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast charge. And we’re willing to do that kind of crap all the time, like we geeks, fans,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listeners of this show. So to drop like 50 or 100 bucks to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco St. Jude for literally helping children with cancer, like it’s, as Casey said, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty hard to find a more agreeable cause and a more beneficial cause than this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the fact that the families who have to go through that literally do not pay a dime for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco health care for like hundreds of thousands of dollars or more worth of health care that their children
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need. The last thing you want to worry about is, how are we going to pay for this? That’s a hard enough thing for people to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through. So to have that burden of the finances lifted from the parents who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to go through that is so remarkable that this is worth supporting. It’s worth helping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make that possible when we can. So those of us who can, please help.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And to go back to the stick rather than the carrot, the chat room is saying ATPons is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the leading contender right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco now. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And that’s what we’re going to use if we don’t get to 20K.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no. That would be an example of a bad name.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know. That’s my point. Bad, yes. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bad. If we don’t cross 20K, we’ll use ATPons. No, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like the stick. I like the carrot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, my word. All right. Anyway, moving on. All right. So since we haven’t had follow-up for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Guess what, everyone? We’ve got a little bit of follow-up.
Follow-up: iPhone X screen size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, let’s start with Marco. You apparently would like to slightly correct yourself about how you were slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong about the iPhone X screen size.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so last episode I was talking about the different screen sizes and I pointed out that the iPhone X screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has the same resolution, the same point width as the iPhone 6, 7, 8,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the non-plus version, which I was disappointed that we’re not getting at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more width in screen real estate. But it turns out that while that was correct,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is the same number of points in the user interface, it actually is physically larger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would still like to have the same density and just more space, but this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better than that at least, because maybe this might allow you to set the dynamic text size one notch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down. So you can kind of find ways to fit more on screen. It will also of course help
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with photos and video to look better, because this is a true 3X screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we actually are getting nicer resolution, photos will look better and everything. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t a total loss on the width gain. There is some width gain, just no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gain in points as measured by the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we should hoist up an item from lower and follow up. The guys who do PaintCode, because the URL is paintcodeapp.com,
⏹️ ▶️ John have a really cool diagram showing the resolution and points, so the logical resolution,
⏹️ ▶️ John the pixels, the physical resolution, and the physical size for all the phones that Apple, all the different
⏹️ ▶️ John size phones that Apple has made. It’s a great diagram, and if you want to have visualization of all this info
⏹️ ▶️ John all on one page that you can look at. I will put that link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll also say PaintCode is an amazing app. I used it to make my blog post
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the month and it’s wonderful. I absolutely love it. And I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco searched for this page pretty much probably once every two weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the last two years. I always have to refer like, wait, how wide is the plus again?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or I have some question and this is right at the top of my search results and it’s always purple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’ve already clicked on it. And it’s just yeah, this page is very helpful. So thank you, PaintCode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, PaintCode is an awesome app.
The Docks of Dongletown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it was last episode. I think it was the episode prior, but in the last couple of episodes, we’ve talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about John’s new MacBook Pro that he has at work and how he is now a resident of Dongletown.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I thought you covered, John, why you don’t plug your mouse or keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the back of the monitor, but let’s talk about that. And could you also cover that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and their mother recommended, all the ATP-ons recommend—I can’t even do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John with a straight face. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. So bad. that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you use some Thunderbolt dock, of which there were like five
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 10 different options. So can you kind of do a little refresher and build on that for us?
⏹️ ▶️ John So long ago, no one remembers that show, except for me, I guess. Why not plug the mouse and keyboard into the
⏹️ ▶️ John back of the monitor? I’ll tell you why, because I forgot there were USB ports back there. I mean, whoever
⏹️ ▶️ John looks at a man’s shoes. I don’t look at the back of my monitor, I totally forgot they were there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John many listeners wrote in and said, hey, you should plug into the back of your monitor, and they were right, and I did, and it is better. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey one port free. There you go.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now when I do manual KVM, I just have to swap the disconnect two things from
⏹️ ▶️ John their two different adapters and plug the two cables into the back. Anyway, I’m slowly phasing out my
⏹️ ▶️ John Big Mac Pro at work. I just wiped a bunch of the disks today. So it’s not long for this
⏹️ ▶️ John world. And I’ll be down to just the one computer, and I won’t have to swap it. But yeah, moving things to the back
⏹️ ▶️ John of the monitor. A, it actually works, which I
⏹️ ▶️ John doubted when people suggested that. And I said, oh, yeah, I should use that. know what if that would be really convenient but what
⏹️ ▶️ John if they don’t work but they do it’s fine and B I think I’m probably just gonna keep them there although
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve had some problems with my mouse cord like my new keyboard tray doesn’t support my mouse cord
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same way the old one did and it kind of adds that some extra friction and I’m starting to think about like I’ve got to find a
⏹️ ▶️ John Bluetooth mouse that I can that I can deal with because being corded it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John you know it’s not the way of the future as they say second question why not use insert my favorite Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ John dock here. The main reason is that they’re all really expensive and I already have all these
⏹️ ▶️ John and adapters that I spent a lot of my you know discretionary desk budget at work
⏹️ ▶️ John on and they gave me you know they gave me some smaller dongles stuff like that and you know the cheapest Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ John thing starts at around 100 and something and they go up to like 300 bucks but all that said
⏹️ ▶️ John I have actually ordered the cheapest Thunderbolt dock I could find with the main display port
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m going to see how that works out. If it actually does work better, I’ll try to see if I can get that expense too. But if I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like it, or if it’s flaky, I’ll just return it. So that’s an update on my donkletown. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would also say too, like the various docs that people recommended, the two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that got by far the most recommendations were the OWC one and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Elgato one, both of which are $300 and not very small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and externally powered by their own power supply and everything. So like, it isn’t that surprising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that maybe those can be more reliable than the little like, you know, $30 to $60 dongles that we get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they also aren’t particularly portable. And it’s also kind of a hard sell to tell people, oh, this this new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop that was more expensive than the one it replaced can be great if you spend $300 more on this semi desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brick looking thing to to make it into as useful as it used to be. Like that’s that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if I get work to pay for it, though, I got the the OTC one, they make like a big expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John one and a smaller one I got the smaller cheaper one for 150 bucks in space gray with
⏹️ ▶️ John the one with mini display port on it. I’ll put a link in the show notes. They don’t do a good job of linking to items from
⏹️ ▶️ John their email invoices so I’ll just link to the page. But anyway you’ll see all of them there. I got some recommendations. Some people
⏹️ ▶️ John said they had tried a bunch of docs and the ODOSU ones were very reliable so and I’ve had success with their things
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’m going to try it.
Follow-up: Window management
⏹️ ▶️ Casey window management comes back again. We did get a lot of positive feedback from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people who had never heard episode. What is it 96, the end of 96, whatever episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was, we linked in our most recent episode. But we got a lot of complimentary feedback on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, which I appreciate because as I think Marco agreed, that is my favorite episode of ATP bar none.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, we had lots of people writing in well, john, why don’t you stay moom tiling window managers, etc,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey etc, etc, etc, etc. So why not, john,
⏹️ ▶️ John This has been discussed before but I guess it’s a perennial topic I don’t use them because they don’t work the way I
⏹️ ▶️ John want them to work. I’ve tried all of them And I thank people for sending suggestions because maybe they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John always send one that I that I haven’t heard of but they just don’t work The way I wanted them to work tiling forget it. I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ John tile at all and stay in moom I’ve tried and they just don’t Don’t you know get
⏹️ ▶️ John into my workflow a lot of them Sort of are based on the notion that you have a fixed set of windows or that you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to memorize a set of windows That’s not the way I want it to work. I want it to just you know I want to be able to arrange my
⏹️ ▶️ John windows However, I want them whenever I want them and have them be in the places where they are
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to them to be snapshot it and restored I don’t want them to snap
⏹️ ▶️ John to each other or the edges and be in thirds and halves and You know I
⏹️ ▶️ John as I’ve said if I ever made a Mac app It would be it would be a window management app that would work the way
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted it to work but those type of system hacks are not really wise investments
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of if you’re gonna make a Mac app you wouldn’t probably wouldn’t be able to sell in the App Store and
⏹️ ▶️ John the Windows Server changes all the time and yada yada yada so anyway I don’t use those I do it the old-fashioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I don’t know anything about Mac programming really but couldn’t you do that with like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sending Apple event codes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and Apple don’t say Apple events
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because like if you could then that might make it hard in the future to to distribute this app widely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publicly, but you could probably make some little scripts yourself that just kind of monitor for things and keep things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you want them to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s not about keeping them. My window manager that I want would have to be real time, like kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John when you drag things around in any application that has smart guides, like OmniGraffle or Keynote
⏹️ ▶️ John or any of those things where they have all sorts of guides and snaps and
⏹️ ▶️ John adjustable borders and grid things, but like none of those things, though. not like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the UI would look like that. In other words, it has to be real time drawing on your screen in response to things that you’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So forget about Apple events, forget about any snapshot your windows, which all those things are have problems because
⏹️ ▶️ John windows are not identifiable. Like they’re identifiable for humans, like that’s my
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever window, right? But inside the application, there’s no sort of identifier
⏹️ ▶️ John of that window that matches up with your identifier, there’s probably a bunch of unique IDs. And of course, process IDs, and there’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John window title, and there’s maybe the document that it’s opened up as a document window, but that combination of things
⏹️ ▶️ John does not map directly to your conception of that window, right? And it’s not so much about keeping the windows
⏹️ ▶️ John where they are, but I’m not going to resize my screen or anything like that. And that’s what these things are trying to solve. Oh, we’ll just snapshot
⏹️ ▶️ John your screen. So when you unplug and replug everything will go back. What if I open 20 new windows and close 10 other ones, or
⏹️ ▶️ John close the window and open that same window again, my conception of it is that it’s the same, but the application conception
⏹️ ▶️ John of it is this an entirely new window, but I consider it the same window, but I go go back to my computer and it restores
⏹️ ▶️ John the previous state, doesn’t know about all the new windows that open, has no idea where those are supposed to go, which is the problem with my
⏹️ ▶️ John screen changing size, and that one window that I think is the same window doesn’t go back to where it was because as far as the program is concerned it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a new window. So I’m setting all that aside, I’m just saying window management in general, one
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, never changes, I want an application that helps me with window arranging,
⏹️ ▶️ John helps me be more anal-retentive about lining things up so I don’t have to do it manually a pixel at a time, which someday
⏹️ ▶️ John will be really hard for me to do, like I guess it’s kind of hard a retina already but if we go like
⏹️ ▶️ John another doubling of screen resolution I’m not going to be able to line things up by the pixel anymore my eyes won’t be good enough and
⏹️ ▶️ John my shaky old hands won’t be good enough and then how will I live with one with my windows one pixel higher than the way I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just remember John better to be anal retentive than anal expulsive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah, you gotta do both. can’t can’t keep it in
Follow-up: Apple TV remote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking about poopy things, let’s talk Apple TV remote.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I stand by that it’s really not that bad. And some people have written
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and said, I’m right. And other people have said I’m wrong. But Ed Morris writes, to John’s point regarding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who was able to use the Apple TV remote, my five-year-old daughter. She whips that thing around like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nothing. Arbonne writes, hard to use. My four-year-old and 68-year-old dad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both use the Apple TV remote without issue. Additionally, Anonymous writes, I work at an Apple retail
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store. The complete list of complaints about the Apple TV remote. And that was the end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that section of either their tweet or email. They followed up and said, and I’ve had several people scream at me about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of a free U2 album. So, a lot of people apparently don’t have a problem with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV remote. We also got infinite feedback. I measured about how, why don’t you use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey such and such Amazon link? And I’m assuming it was like a case for the remote or in some cases like a tail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, one of those like rubber condom things?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have never tried these because I don’t mind the Apple TV remote. Some days I like it, some days
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have ambivalence toward it, but I presume and thought that one or both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you guys have tried like a remote condom or a tail or whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t because I just find like as much as the Siri remote annoys me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of of having some kind of big rubber gummy thing around it, that just seems even worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those things are just ugly and just feel weird. The whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason you buy Apple stuff is because it’s nice. I want this remote to be nice, to fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in with the other nice things that are in my couch and living room area. I don’t want some weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rubber thing around it. The real solution is fix the damn remote. The real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solution is make the remote work nice rather than just having it look nice. Apple used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to do both.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the reason I put all these quotes in here is because I think they’re a good example of
⏹️ ▶️ John how, I was gonna say how people can get used to anything, but it’s not get used
⏹️ ▶️ John to, it’s more like, I’m trying to think of a good analogy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe if you had, in the DOS era, everyone’s using DOS
⏹️ ▶️ John and its precursor operating systems on Apple II and all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ John of other Tandy, Commodore PET, whatever, Commodore 64. They’re all command lines, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And everybody’s using them. And most people would
⏹️ ▶️ John agree that there’s some baseline level of difficulty of using computers. But even in that environment,
⏹️ ▶️ John plenty of people would say the Commodore 64 is not hard to use. My eight-year-old daughter has no problem. My five-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ John is on the Commodore 64 all the time and they love it. So how hard could it be to use? my 68
⏹️ ▶️ John year old dad uses a Commodore 64 and he’s fine right and
⏹️ ▶️ John if say there was a graphical operating system that comes along and some people are still using DOS
⏹️ ▶️ John you might say well okay so DOS can be learned and used by people old and young but
⏹️ ▶️ John computers could be easier to use look at this and the opinion you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John there as well you may think that’s better but only sort of froofy connoisseurs
⏹️ ▶️ John care about these so-called user usability and user friendliness that’s better. I know WordStar
⏹️ ▶️ John and DOS backwards and forwards and I teach a class of seventh graders
⏹️ ▶️ John to use it and they are experts in it and so you may think this whole thing with like little pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of folders and stuff is better but it must be better in some subtle way that that
⏹️ ▶️ John only essentially hipsters although they didn’t have that word back then or didn’t mean the same thing only hipsters can appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ John right but in the grand scheme of things time has shown that a graphical user
⏹️ ▶️ John interface is in general better than having everybody use the command line and it took a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time for that to happen but at any given point when the command line was still the paradigm
⏹️ ▶️ John and GUIs existed it wasn’t clear they would say I have no problem with the command
⏹️ ▶️ John line well Apple’s remote and indeed all remotes this was brought up by people all remotes are are pretty terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John with a few exceptions. And you might say, well, they’re bad, but people use them all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, whatever, there’s a remote that comes with your cable box, and yeah, it’s a little bit weird and complicated, but you know, my
⏹️ ▶️ John five-year-old picks that remote right up and knows right what to do, blah, blah, blah. How bad could the remote really be?
⏹️ ▶️ John There exists good remotes, but people would say, oh, maybe that’s better, but only better in
⏹️ ▶️ John weird, subtle ways that like remote hipsters and real connoisseurs or usability snobs
⏹️ ▶️ John might care about, right? I think we’re in the same situation where most remotes are terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John people get by with them because they can get the job done. And by the way, one point that a lot of people brought up that we should be fair to the Apple remote,
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing the Apple remote does have going for it is that it doesn’t have a lot of buttons, which is one of the big complaints about most remotes
⏹️ ▶️ John that you see, right? All that said, that we can exist in a world where all that is true,
⏹️ ▶️ John and also the Apple remote is awful for all the reasons that we have stated, right? Just like
⏹️ ▶️ John the other other remotes are awful for different reasons. have way too many buttons and maybe the buttons are hard to press
⏹️ ▶️ John or they die after a certain period of time but even though the Apple TV remote
⏹️ ▶️ John has a small number of buttons it is worse than your average cable box remote in important reasons like
⏹️ ▶️ John how easy is it to find how easy is it to pick up without inadvertently doing something how easy is it
⏹️ ▶️ John to find which way is up how safe do you feel when picking it up or do you have to pick it up like a game of operation because if you touch anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John on the touchpad something is going to happen and do people have accidental inputs and have trouble doing the gestures
⏹️ ▶️ John yes they do I see it all the time does it mean that they can’t use it and it’s like one of those as seen on TV
⏹️ ▶️ John commercials where the person gets you know eggshells in their hair and their house catches on fire when they’re trying to make an egg oh eggs are
⏹️ ▶️ John so messy like no it just means that it’s not a good remote and how do we know it’s not a good remote because
⏹️ ▶️ John better remotes exist the TiVo remote is absolutely 100% a better remote easy to
⏹️ ▶️ John pick up easy to grip you can use it in the dark once you learn how it feels you can use the select button in the five
⏹️ ▶️ John way in the play pause a bunch of buttons that are different shapes that are all under your fingers that are prioritized to
⏹️ ▶️ John the important ones are close to you and the unimportant ones are far away. It’s an amazing remote, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like we don’t know how to make a good remote. And it’s also telling that almost no remote is as tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John and skinny as all the Apple TV remotes because they get caught in the couch cushions because they’re hard to pick up and almost none of them have an always
⏹️ ▶️ John on completely active capacitive touch swipey thing on them, because then it’s very difficult to pick up
⏹️ ▶️ John and almost none of them are symmetrical front and back in ways that you can’t tell without either looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at it or putting a rubber band around it or something. So yes, your five year old daughter can use it. And yes, your six year
⏹️ ▶️ John old dad can use it. But it is a bad remote. We should we should want better. We know
⏹️ ▶️ John better can exist. The difference may seem subtle to you, but it’s not subtle in the long term. We will look back on
⏹️ ▶️ John this remote and say this was this is this is the hockey puck mouse of the remotes. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll say that when Apple finally makes one that’s better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw these quotes appear in the show notes. And because I’m the eternal optimist, I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, so I think I added the last one, but I thought, oh, maybe they’re realizing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the two of them, that things aren’t so bad. I should have known, however, that this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just a bait and switch waiting for me and that, oh no, this is just more fodder.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like that. DOS is not so bad either, right? I mean, people used it for years. It’s fine. You
⏹️ ▶️ John get the job done, right? You could even get kind of good with it. But it is worse than a GUI for most
⏹️ ▶️ John people. And again, the things that make a good remote are not mysterious. The reason
⏹️ ▶️ John we are so angry is because there are obvious problems with it. The fact that it’s so small. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I think it’s actually better for five-year-olds because their hands are so tiny. Regular people’s hands. It’s like trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to change a channel on a stick of Wrigley Spearmint gum. No, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John how big my hands are. Just make it so that… Oh my word. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m still angry about
⏹️ ▶️ John the remote. You can feel free to suffer through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I had no idea.
Apple TV 4K: Fans and 24 FPS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So glorious Do you have good news for us John with regard to fans in the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John I asked last week for some very pointed questions about the Apple TV and I got some responses that I consider
⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully reliable authoritative the Apple K Apple TV 4k does not have a fan So that question
⏹️ ▶️ John answer does have holes in the bottom where the bigger holes than the other one did But it does not have a fan so thumbs up in that
⏹️ ▶️ John and about the 24 frames per second cadence still a little bit of mystery The only direct feedback
⏹️ ▶️ John I got was someone telling me that it can do 4k 24 frames per second But not
⏹️ ▶️ John 1080p 24 frames per second, but then on parentheses on my TV. What does that mean? Does that mean the box can’t do it or your
⏹️ ▶️ John TV can’t do it? I don’t know It will not automatically switch Apple doesn’t seem to believe TVs will change video modes fast enough
⏹️ ▶️ John or reliably enough to make it worth it So my parsing of this is that perhaps I don’t have this box yet. My order
⏹️ ▶️ John has not arrived yet, but perhaps You can set the thing to output
⏹️ ▶️ John 24 frames per second to your 4k television in which case I guess the menus and the whole interface would be 24 because it never
⏹️ ▶️ John changes modes which is not ideal because what if you want to watch a television show that’s 30 frames
⏹️ ▶️ John per second or 29.97 or whatever the hell it is like bottom line
⏹️ ▶️ John is I want it to switch modes I want it to switch modes the same way that the other boxes that connect to television can
⏹️ ▶️ John and do do to match the cadence of whatever content it is showing if you can
⏹️ ▶️ John find a number that’s a multiple 24 and 30 those numbers exist I swear they do math tells me so
⏹️ ▶️ John then you can get away with it but just by having a higher refresh rate and then you know duplicating
⏹️ ▶️ John frames an equal number of times anyway we’ll all find out when we get our televisions Marco can
⏹️ ▶️ John find that on his fancy TV I’ll find out on my old TV and we’ll see but there is a glimmer of hope
Apple TV 32 vs. 64 GB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then Lane Watson writes in to say, I online chatted with an Apple rep about any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey streaming or cash benefit favoring the 64 gig Apple TV, and they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were advised that the capacity difference is for downloading only.
⏹️ ▶️ John I refuse to believe. Say it isn’t so. I mean, I the only reason I’m holding on a shred of hope like Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John about the follow up being optimistic is that it’s an Apple rep and very often like
⏹️ ▶️ John is it like a salesperson? Is it somebody at an Apple store? How would they know? How would they know how big
⏹️ ▶️ John the caches for downloaded movies, the flexible storage management,
⏹️ ▶️ John the variant of iOS that it’s using? Who knows what it’s doing? Like we already know there’s a whole way in iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John and in MacOS, I think, where you can tag data as purgeable. But so essentially use all the space
⏹️ ▶️ John you want, but the operating system will consider it purgeable. So if it needs that space, it will chuck it. They have that technology.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why would they not use it? You think you saw me that the 64 and the what is the smaller one the 32?
⏹️ ▶️ John Reserve exactly the same fixed amount of space for downloaded movies. It’s plausible I suppose it is but I
⏹️ ▶️ John want to believe that they instead say hey guess what when we cash download movies We’re gonna use that great API that
⏹️ ▶️ John we introduced two years ago Let’s me mark data as purgeable and we’ll just use up as much space as we want
⏹️ ▶️ John And knowing full well that if anything else in the system means that space it will dump it Please let that be the case
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I ordered 64 mostly because I wanted to give them enough money to make a new remote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even though they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean I also ordered 64 Because it’s only $20 difference on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an almost $200 purchase so I figured like This might never matter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but usually I keep Apple TVs for a pretty long time. They aren’t updated that frequently So even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you buy everyone you’re still keeping it for you know a few years at least so I figure just in case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it matters for anything I choose to do, either now or down the road, I’ll take the extra $20 risk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I don’t know why they even have this difference and why this premium price thing needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have two different models separated by 20 bucks, but for some reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does. And I guess it worked on me and John because we gave him the extra 20 bucks. I would say if you are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too unwilling to do that, give 20 bucks to St. Jude.
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought the big one of the previous one too And it’s totally because I want to give money towards this product, because I want them to make this
⏹️ ▶️ John better, because I bought a lot of movies on iTunes, and I don’t want to go through the hassle of having to un-DRM them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Wow. Wait, I have a couple of questions or thoughts. First of all, they’ve now updated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple TV twice in as many years, haven’t they?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco James Wynn I believe the first one came out two years ago, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV 4. So it’s on a roughly two to three year cycle historically. Steve McLaughlin
Desktop laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But either way, when do you keep anything Apple makes for more than like an hour ever, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I was looking at laptops on eBay this week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pull the trigger on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John any of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John looking at them like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot to mention some more Donald. It’s not the fault of the computer, but speaking of my new MacBook Pro, I think it is the fault of some
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible third party software that work insists on installing on it that I have hopefully disabled. But I would
⏹️ ▶️ John disconnect it from my monitor and then I would open the lid and it would just sit there with a black screen staring
⏹️ ▶️ John at me and it would be working fine. And I could tell because you could command tab and you’d see the touch bar changed.
⏹️ ▶️ John I recognize, oh, that’s the touch bar from Safari. Oh, that’s touch bar. You know what I mean? Like I could tell that the computer was working.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a clamshell thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the screen was 100% black. Yep. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey clamshell thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s like no way to bring it back. The only way I found to bring it back is if I logged out, it would show me the login
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. Right. So then the screen would come back on. I have no idea why that’s the case. But anyway, I think it’s because of some stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John display link driver for some kind of USB driven hub. And I disabled that and I haven’t had the problem
⏹️ ▶️ John since, so fingers crossed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, I’m with, I’m,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my experience is that that does happen probably once a week if you’re not diligent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about like, either opening the lid before you unclam shell or sleeping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the computer before, no, actually I’ve had it happen when I sleep the
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll try the open the lid thing if it starts happening. I need to know all the secret incantations to make a laptop work like a real computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s so bad. No, I mean, this is like, my experiment this summer mostly failed. I was going to bring home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the LG monitor and replace this iMac with my clamshell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro setup until the Mac Pro comes out next year. One of the reasons why I’m not doing this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is because it turns out using a laptop as a desktop can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work, but a real desktop does a way better job of it on a number of fronts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can afford to have a desktop and a laptop as separate computers, you generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will not regret that decision if you do a lot of work with it as a desktop. And I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I work almost only with it as a desktop. And in fact, what I probably should have done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kept Mike’s MacBook Escape and just gotten my and either brought this iMac to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beach or literally spent the difference of money on a new iMac just for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the summer usage. That would have been a better use of the money than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying myself another 15-inch and then forcing it to be a desktop for most of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its life. Next time I buy a laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I intend for it to be only a laptop. If you have the luxury, dear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listeners, of using your laptops only as laptops, you have a much better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience than if you try to make a laptop behave and be used as a desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ John While you said that, a lot of people ask why I don’t have a desktop. Work won’t let me. I have to get a laptop. That’s why I’m doing this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would rather have a desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if I agree with you, Marco, about laptops being terrible as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey desktops. I think the problem is macOS and MacBook Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or really any Macs, they’re not well-suited for clamshell.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you do like the LCD by itself or the LCD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting next to an external monitor, that generally speaking works pretty darn well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The problem that you have, which I share and I hate just like you do, is that clamshell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mode is just good enough to keep us using it, but pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fricking terrible all told. And that’s where everything falls apart. So I wouldn’t say that laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are on the whole completely unusable as desktops. It’s just the way you and I prefer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and John actually, prefer to use them, is not that great and is fraught
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder if you can bring an iMac on the ferry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t see why not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John heavy though.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can bring it to Panera Bread. Is it just Panera now? Did they drop the bread?
Sponsor: AfterShokz
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco open to hear the outside world. This also brings some major benefits. If you feel uncomfortable
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Apple Watch LTE pricing
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about Apple Watch with LTE. Another thing that, in this case, I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fired up about and you guys were less so. So Charles Arthur has written
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a blog post that’s relatively long, but there’s a really good poll quote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have here. And he was saying, in the same way I was, that the $10 a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey month that Americans are being charged is outrageous. And he said, why is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it outrageous? Because watch cellular data use is not additive. It’s substantive, substitutive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever that word is I’m looking for. If you’re pulling in data on your cellular watch, you must have left your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey behind. Ergo, you’re doing nothing with the phone, so it’s consuming next to no data. The data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consumption is shifted to your watch. And I know that this is probably not 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely and utterly true, but I think his point is fair in that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in general, you’re going to be using data on your phone or your watch in general
⏹️ ▶️ John But data usage doesn’t matter. There’s no additional data. They don’t care where you use your data. If
⏹️ ▶️ John the carrier has an actual argument, it’s network capacity because your phone is still
⏹️ ▶️ John on the network. still hogging whatever, you know, spectrum and identification
⏹️ ▶️ John space that could be used by another phone that’s in use. It’s not off the network when you’re away from home,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is still on the network. So that would be there. But you know, like I said, the real answer has nothing to do with how much does it cost the carrier
⏹️ ▶️ John to have an additional device, it’s what will the market bear. And that gets us back to the root problem, which is that the market for
⏹️ ▶️ John telecom in the US is not as competitive as it should be. There are a very small number of very large companies
⏹️ ▶️ John that probably collude and do terrible things that we don’t like, and there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s why we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John angry and this is just like that. It’s this is US carriers
⏹️ ▶️ John flexing their muscle there You know, they’re taking advantage of the situation they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in and our complaint is really we don’t like the situation They’re in and that’s why other countries have these obscenely
⏹️ ▶️ John inexpensive rates because either they have better systems of government or companies
⏹️ ▶️ John that are actually competing with each other or the government mandates that the companies have to be interchangeable in a certain way, all
⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of things that make their environment for telecom better than the environment in the US. And that’s really what we’re angry
⏹️ ▶️ John about at the root. Not so much Oh, this isn’t worth $10. And let me tell you, because it doesn’t cost them $10 to do
⏹️ ▶️ John this. That’s not how business works. It doesn’t really how much doesn’t matter how much it costs them to do something just matters
⏹️ ▶️ John what the market will bear. And so the market is messed up in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think it’s both. I also don’t think it’s worth this kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but you can’t have that kind of thinking like I mean, it doesn’t it doesn’t cost Marco any more money when someone buys a new copy
⏹️ ▶️ John of overcast. Does that mean it’s not worth it? It’s what the market will bear, right? He doesn’t have to carve the
⏹️ ▶️ John bits out of a little stone tablet every time someone subscribes to Overcast, Premium,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever. Yeah, I know what you’re saying. And I should also add that I saw a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of feedback about what other countries are being charged and if there was anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who said, oh yeah, it’s the same as America, then I genuinely don’t remember it because pretty much everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, like Australians were saying it’s about five bucks a month in either Australian or American dollars,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget which. Canadians said it’s about $5 a month or five loonies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever it is they use up there. That sounds right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco They’re sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re so very sorry. And also, you know, confirmation bias alert coming up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not see anyone say to me, no, you’re crazy. And it’s exactly how much,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, $10 a month is exactly right. And you should stop whining. Now, I probably should stop whining,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I was stunned because just about everything I say on this show, somebody will come out of the woodwork to disagree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with. And I did not see not one of those. And I concede, unequivocally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is confirmation bias at its finest, but hand on heart, I do not remember seeing anyone say that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it doesn’t mean that those people don’t exist. And please, for the love of all that is good and holy, that does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, listener, that agrees with Marco that this is your moment to shine. I know that you’re out there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I know there are people that disagree with me. I was just surprised how few people wrote in because that number
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seemed to be zero.
Federighi interviews
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, moving on, Craig Federighi went on a press tour to talk about the face
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ID recognition flub up and up swipe overlap and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all sorts of different things. Does one of you want to tell us about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John I put this in here. I’m linked to the talk show where Craig went on with John Gruber,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they had a conversation, too short conversation, because I guess they’re busy and had a lot of things to do, only 30 minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ John but worth listening to. and Andreas Gober didn’t say
⏹️ ▶️ John that this interview on the talk show confirmed the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that I put forward last show about how the iPhone 10 could
⏹️ ▶️ John let you swipe up before it has recognized your face just let you do it and if
⏹️ ▶️ John in the process of you know it’s doing the animation to show you the screen where you have to type in your passcode to unlock
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone if during that process at any point it recognizes your face, just go straight through it rather
⏹️ ▶️ John than saying, hold the phone up to your face, wait for it to recognize your face, then swipe up.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Craig confirmed that it does in fact overlap them. And it you know, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John smart thing to do. And Apple has smart folks. And so that’s what they’re doing. And so we’ll put a link in the show notes to
⏹️ ▶️ John the entirety of that episode and also the the timestamp at I think 16 minutes and 45
⏹️ ▶️ John seconds where you can hear that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit. I’m actually kind of happy that I mean, I I know it probably really sucked for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple that the demo failed on stage, but I’m actually kind of happy that the result
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that has been, we’ve gotten some really great interviews out of Craig over the last few days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you know, yeah, I mean, it’s unfortunate that it happened, but it’s kind of nice for fans of the company following
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this stuff to have all this additional exposure and information and good questions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being asked and getting more details about how Face ID works. Because the iPhone X is still a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. Like it’s still, you can’t even order it for over a month from now, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably going to be at least, I would say probably January,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before a lot of people even have them. So this is still a while out, so to get any more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco information earlier is kinda nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t think you would’ve gone on this, done all this press if the demo hadn’t failed for
⏹️ ▶️ John explicable reasons?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I don’t. I agree. Craig is going around doing all these interviews all of a sudden talking about Face ID and how awesome it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it fell on stage. And this is a form of damage control. That seems to make sense. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of it is also reacting to people’s concerns about how secure and private it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t think that would have been enough to get an Apple executive to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give interviews like this. I think it’s because it failed and there was some bad press about that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it didn’t just get noticed by nerds like us. Everyone noticed and there were news articles about
⏹️ ▶️ John it was the worst kind of mistake because like it is explicable, but there’s nuance in the explanation
⏹️ ▶️ John and nobody wants nuance. All they want is Apple demo fails.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s no way this would have happened had the demo not gone the way it did. But again, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this is this is good for us. And ultimately, it’s fine for Apple because long term, no one’s gonna remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. But it’s good for us to get all this all these wonderful interviews. And Craig’s a pretty awesome person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, and there’s always tons of info in anything that he says publicly. He
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously is very familiar with technical details, with implementation details, with reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they do things, and he’s able to explain those so well that he gives really good interviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about technical topics. And so it’s always really nice to hear more from Greg.
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone had a funny tweet when people were leaking supposed inside news from the tense
⏹️ ▶️ John rehearsals after the leak, right? When all the Apple people were rehearsing their thing, that
⏹️ ▶️ John all this information leaked out there and they’re all angry about it and everyone was yelling at everybody and someone tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ John that the worst thing about this Apple leak is learning that Craig Federighi yells at people
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes. Don’t want to believe it not Craig
⏹️ ▶️ John hair daddy would never yell at me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll tell you one thing, hearing that he was like yelling and getting mad that drove home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me like wow they must be really mad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Assuming it’s even true I I mean, that’s this is just random hearsay from like I’m sure people who are inside the room
⏹️ ▶️ John with during rehearsals are texting Secrets out of it. Who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I that’s the one thing when we heard those rumors I’m the one thing I’m thinking of like how many people could possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been in that room,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Are they are there on their phone in the audience going? This is wild guys.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah It’s not like there’s like somebody in like, you know How many are there like ten people in the room like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re not gonna be like, you know low-ranked people who are gonna be leaking stuff like they’re not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like any random person in the room when they’re rehearsing their super secret keynote days before the event
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone’s human and I’m sure people were mad and it was a difficult time and that did that demo yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John it was rough because
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t hold regular people to this or even like the regular press but for the tech nerds we’ll get into this actually the
⏹️ ▶️ John next very next item let’s just transition to it immediately because I will I will make the point in both contexts it wants to save time.
APFS in High Sierra beta
⏹️ ▶️ John The next item here is that APFS support for Fusion Drives is
⏹️ ▶️ John not in the release version of High Sierra. It was in the betas and Apple talked about it and it would totally be a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can have. But then when they got ready to do the release version said, you know, here it is from right from
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s page, which we will link. If you installed the beta version of Mac OS High Sierra, the Fusion Drive in your Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John may have been converted to Apple file system. Basically if you check that checkbox, you know that you were that they present during the betas.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because this configuration is not supported in the initial release of Mac OS High Sierra, remember
⏹️ ▶️ John that you follow the steps below to revert back to the previous disk format. And this is a long, arduous series of
⏹️ ▶️ John steps to convert back. This and also the on-stage
⏹️ ▶️ John demo of an unreleased product, for tech nerds specifically, not for the regular press, not for
⏹️ ▶️ John casual people, but for tech nerds specifically, this is what
⏹️ ▶️ John unreleased hardware and beta software means. It means that it
⏹️ ▶️ John might not work right and things might change before the release. And if you enter into a
⏹️ ▶️ John beta or watch a demo of something that is unreleased with the expectation that
⏹️ ▶️ John everything absolutely must work perfectly and will not change before release, you are misunderstanding what a beta is.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just so happens that most of the time Apple is good with its betas and more or less there’s a steady progression
⏹️ ▶️ John from early betas to late betas that converges on a finished product that we
⏹️ ▶️ John expect. This is exactly what happens during betas the feature is there they do all the betas
⏹️ ▶️ John on it They want to release it eventually sometimes things get cut APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John Will convert your SSD unconditionally blah blah blah they make that policy decision They say the one that’s working on fusion drives
⏹️ ▶️ John has a few more problems We’re gonna hold that back It will not be in the initial release and if you’re using a beta
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of a sudden you’re really mad You’re like, oh it converted my drive, but now the release version won’t work with it blah blah. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John a beta This is what betas are all about I think people are spoiled by betas that basically never have any
⏹️ ▶️ John harmful effects and they can smoothly sail right from them to the release version that shouldn’t be expected to be the
⏹️ ▶️ John norm nor should it be expected that an unreleased piece of hardware and unfinished software
⏹️ ▶️ John should demo perfectly on stage never mind the fact that the hardware and software both worked
⏹️ ▶️ John as Expected it was a procedural error having to do with a demo basically people who are cleaning the fingerprints off
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing accidentally lock them by activating face ID too many times times,
⏹️ ▶️ John which would make sense even if Face ID required a swipe up. Anyway, I just want to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John tech people should remind themselves, not done, beta, unreleased, those
⏹️ ▶️ John are all things that we should expect that there will be bugs and there will be changes before release. So
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody who is super mad about that and is also a tech nerd needs to like check themselves a little
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Before they wreck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. I mean, also just like, you know, everyone always asks, every time there’s a beta season,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We get tons of questions, people saying, is it okay to install the beta on my phone or whatever else?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for an iPhone, my answer is always like, if you’re able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a restore at any time and tolerate that amount of downtime, because that might happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with pretty much any beta, then sure, you can give it a try if you want. If you don’t need your phone to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that reliable, fine. And I usually put the betas on my main phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually around beta two or three. I have never installed a Mac OS beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my real computer ever. I don’t intend to. To me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the needs that your computer has should be far more conservative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than what you’re willing to do on an easily restored iOS device. Your computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is like, for me at least, I know this is maybe an antiquated view these days, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer for me is like my primary store of everything. It is my master
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. If everything else fails, my computer still has to work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The computer has the master copy of all the data. It is the thing that I can back up the most, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can rely on the most, the thing I need to use the most for work purposes and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for hobby stuff. I need my computer to be reliable all the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at any cost. The idea of installing beta software of my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco main computer OS in a way that formatting a drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or losing all data would be inconvenient or a problem or slow me down at all, that just sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a terrible idea to me. The only time I’ve ever installed a beta has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a laptop when I have not needed to use it anytime soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even then, I almost never even do that. I think the last time I did it was when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did Safari reading list and I wanted to see what that was like because I was still running Instapaper and I was worried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it would be too good and nobody could tell me how it was so I installed the beta. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco otherwise, most people have no good reason, unless you’re a Mac developer working on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cutting edge stuff, most people have no good reason to install Mac OS betas at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you’re going to do it, do it on basically a disposable installation. it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a disposable partition, on a disposable disk, on a computer that you don’t really need right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Never ever do it on anything that matters, because it’s hard enough for them to get MacOS releases stable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they are released to the public, let
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the beta. Forget it. Steve McLaughlin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’ve never put a MacOS beta on anything I’ve ever owned, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t imagine a reason I would other than what you’ve described, Marco. It just seems really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a poor choice to me, unless you’re a MacOS developer, like you said. And similarly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I generally speaking, I avoid putting betas on my phones. You and I both made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the critical rookie mistake of, was it the one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco with notification center? That,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh man, you and I I think ran right back to our hotel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rooms right after the keynote or something like that. I mean, it doesn’t matter exactly when it was, but it was- We did it over lunch. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what it was. It was something like that, that the both of us were like foaming at the mouth, we were so excited to do this. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it took both of us, but ours, to deeply, deeply regret our actions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And ever since then, I know that you, just like you said, you put on betas relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quickly, but I don’t think for the last two or three versions of iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I’ve put a beta on my phone. I think I might have, with iOS 11,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I’ve been running the GM since it was released a few days back, but I don’t think I’ve put an honest to goodness beta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my phone in a long time. And I agree, Marco, that once you get through the first two or three, usually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s pretty okay. But in my experience, since I don’t absolutely need to for work and I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get my hands on test devices and things like that, and we’re rarely on the bleeding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey edge for these sorts of things anyway, I don’t recommend it, generally speaking, because you never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what’s going to happen. And my phone and my computer, I agree with you, Marco, 150%,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that those I do not want to mess with. has been on iOS 11 for a while because for me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPad is kind of expendable and if it doesn’t work yeah oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well yeah that’s that’s a reasonable way to do it but like and like for most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just I can’t think of a compelling reason like the real like I don’t install Mac OS betas because honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just don’t care like I don’t Mac OS improves so slowly these days that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t even tell you what’s in High Sierra besides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the files I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know like I know there’s a couple of things but most of it’s like here’s something for business Safari Safari, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Safari team is really pulling the weight of the entire OS when it comes to like notable features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that can be bullet points in a slide somewhere like you know if you if you exclude Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes, it’s a pretty it’s a pretty thin release as far as user facing features go and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of course every release of Mac OS 10 these days break something also so it’s like I have to wait like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do I am I am I willing to tolerate whatever part of networking or USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or graphics or the PDF subsystem or whatever they broke, audio, like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they broke in this version of macOS, am I willing to tolerate that to get whatever the new stuff is? And usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so little new stuff that I can be very conservative and patient
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the version of macOS I choose to run.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should check software update because you can get that new Safari right now and the iMac you’re sitting in front of. I installed it today at work.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh yeah? Same.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no more auto-playing videos. Go into the settings.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, in that case, what do
⏹️ ▶️ John we need? honestly, what do I need my Sierra for? You got the most important feature, the file system. That’s the one that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is advertising the most, right? Or wait, no, is it just this program? Hmm. On
⏹️ ▶️ John betas, I’ve also had iOS 11 on my iPad for real time and also because I was 11 was so iPad focused
⏹️ ▶️ John and had all the fancy iPad features that I really wanted to see. But but yeah, I don’t care about my iPad stability that
⏹️ ▶️ John much. And so I I suffered through some weird bugs. I didn’t upgrade my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that meant I was kind of startled when I finally did upgrade to iOS 11 on my phone by a few things.
⏹️ ▶️ John I already complained about one on Twitter about the, uh, that I missed the dots. I didn’t think I would miss the dots, but guess what? I missed the dots.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, and for the, uh, signal, uh, strength thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, a little circles.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of miss them. Um, but really the, the one thing that surprised me the most is that even with reduced
⏹️ ▶️ John motion enabled, which you know I love to have enabled, um, when I unlock my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John seven with touch ID, a big curtain and raises from the bottom,
⏹️ ▶️ John almost as if I had flicked upward like on an iPhone 10, right? But I didn’t flick upward, I just used touch ID.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even when reduced motion is on, that big curtain goes upward. And it’s not a big deal, doesn’t bother me that much, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of miss whatever the old animation was, probably a crossfade. It probably takes the same amount of time,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s an animation that I’m not accustomed to seeing. And I guess I’ll get used to it, but it’s one of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have known about months and months ago if I had been installing the betas. And I could have complained about it earlier.
⏹️ ▶️ John you know how important that is to me to get complaints out early. So that Apple could potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John fix them. But this is not a big deal. It’s not like my lack of lasers, which could not stand,
⏹️ ▶️ John as we know. Yeah, but you got that eventually. I know. It took
⏹️ ▶️ John a whole week. We had to wait
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey till the next show. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco still bitter that I lost that bet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And at such speed, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, exactly. It really rubbed my face in it. To that end, something I’ve noticed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I think this is legitimate and I’m not just bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I have a picture of Aaron and Declan as my lock screen, backdrop, whatever it’s called,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wallpaper, I guess. And if I tap the sleep wake button, the thing that’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there on the iPhone X, I feel like it kind of fades in in a way that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different than iOS 10. And I don’t know how to describe it. And I tried to take a screenshot of
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Yeah, it does fade in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m not totally bananas. Well, at least not for that reason. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah There’s a bunch like I was 11 adds even more people who don’t have a reduced reduced motion
⏹️ ▶️ John on Are even those people are a little bit startled by the the more sort of expressive animations
⏹️ ▶️ John about Applications flying back into their icons and all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ John cross fades and things. I think it looks nicer in general, but if you you know It
⏹️ ▶️ John has pushed some people over the edge like they could tolerate the amount of animations and iOS 10 and I was 11 just pushed a few
⏹️ ▶️ John more people over the edge to go hunting for that reduced motion thing.
Sponsor: Fracture
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Genius Bar and retail feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came from. Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So an anonymous Apple retail employee writes, on the back end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of something, there were some significant changes to the way that the Genius Bar appointments
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. Two years ago, you more or less had to already have made an appointment online to be seen. Today’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Genius Bar holds back the majority of personnel in order to improve the experience for those walking into the store to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ultimately be seen within five to thirty minutes. Because of this, there is much less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey availability for those who are enrolling from home. Please feel free to encourage the world to walk into a store and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be helped rather shortly. The ultimate goal here is to do away with the days of quote needing an appointment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to see someone at the Genius Bar. I have such mixed feelings about this because on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one side, when I have an oops because I just dropped my phone, I want to be seen pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immediately. But on the other side, I’m the kind of person who likes scheduling things and who likes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey signing up in advance. And I don’t want to be punished just because I had the forethought to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey register myself on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, who wants to wait 30 minutes? You need the, it needs to be like a real-time operating system with
⏹️ ▶️ John deadlines, right? I can’t go to the store for an undefined
⏹️ ▶️ John wait period. Like I’m going to go get my thing and it’s like, how long will you be waiting? I
⏹️ ▶️ John know. because you could end up having to just abort the entire thing because an hour has passed and you haven’t been seen.
⏹️ ▶️ John An appointment, as the Seinfeld episode so eloquently emphasized,
⏹️ ▶️ John you make a reservation and the important part of the reservation is that they hold the reservation
⏹️ ▶️ John so that when you get there they say, yes, we recognize that we had arranged previously to
⏹️ ▶️ John meet here at three and if you arrive at three they are ready to receive you at three. That’s how reservations work
⏹️ ▶️ John and I understand there’s a balance. You don’t want to just have reservations because then everybody walks in like, sorry, you have to make a reservation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the nearest reservation is it’s like going to a restaurant that you can’t ever get a table at unless you have a reservation two months out or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it is difficult. And all this gets back to the discussion last week, which was one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the important functions of Apple retail is to have a place where people can go
⏹️ ▶️ John to have someone help them with their thingy in person. It’s one of the most important functions of the Apple Store. Otherwise, why not just sell
⏹️ ▶️ John everything online, it’s you can go there and say my things not working, it’s broken, I don’t understand it, it, please help me with
⏹️ ▶️ John something, right? And they will help you and they’re great at it. They’re do a good job, and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s high demand for that service, because that is a good service.
⏹️ ▶️ John High demand, not enough supply, long waits, and they try to balance it. Well, how many reservations should
⏹️ ▶️ John we take? If we take too few reservations, that means if you try to make a reservation, it’ll have to be two weeks
⏹️ ▶️ John out. But if we take too many reservations, the walk ins can’t get served. I don’t know what the solution to it is I’m just expressing
⏹️ ▶️ John our frustration as users of the Apple store with the system as it exists today.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s untenable and it’s not economical for them to not make us wait. It is more economical
⏹️ ▶️ John to make us all wait for a small amount of time because honestly, what are we, what’s the alternative,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Uh, but that’s, you know, it’s just us as customers of the Apple store expressing our dissatisfaction.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause I think most of us, for the most part, buy things online rather than feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like we have to go to the Apple store to get, especially if we wanted ASAP. We’re there with the whole force quitting the app store
⏹️ ▶️ John app, you know, all these schemes. We’re not going to the mall at 5 a.m. and sitting in
⏹️ ▶️ John a big line. It is preferable for us to order them online. We do go there
⏹️ ▶️ John to check out products like, oh, I want to see the new iPhone 10. Mine hasn’t arrived yet, but I hear they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in the stores. That’s another important function of the stores. Show off the merchandise. a lot of people who and I,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially particularly people who don’t, who aren’t like tech nerds and I’ve already read everything about it, but just like regular people
⏹️ ▶️ John wandering through the mall, they can say, Oh, there’s the apple stores, go check out stuff. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I think it’s, it’s even those functions, it’s not serving that well because the stores are often very crowded,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the, the, the service function is the one that I feel like has had the most
⏹️ ▶️ John challenges over the years. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it’s interesting to hear their strategies for improving it, but I don’t think there are any easy answers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and also the whole thing where, like, oh, just show up and see how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long you have to wait, that really doesn’t work for people if, for instance, the nearest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple store is three hours away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, yeah, great point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of people for whom the nearest Apple store is not just—you can’t just pop over there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any time you want and just say, oh, it’s going to be two hours, I’ll come back. It’s not that easy. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s issues like that. just like I mean my experience and this maybe this is just you know my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco local stores my experience has been the opposite that I used to just never make appointments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just walk in because it used to be you know relatively common I’d get seen within 20
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minutes I just it would be fine and then in the last year or two that’s been pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much impossible and I walk in they’ll eat they will either refuse to even book
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me as a walk-in you know wait around around reservation just say sorry you we are so full that you can’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do this or they do a thing where they’re like oh we’ll you know sign up for this thing and then we’ll text
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you when it’s about to be your appointment time, but the current estimated time is like you know two hours away or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something and say okay well so like what am I gonna do like drive home and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know it’s gonna take me twenty five thirty minutes to get back here so it’s like is that am I gonna miss my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco window like that just that doesn’t work for people for a lot people. It works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you live next to an Apple store and can just pop over there whenever you want and don’t have a job and don’t have anything else to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would work, but for most people, something a little more predictable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what you need there. I will say, though, overall, we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more feedback than I expected about the retail segment that we talked about last week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We were talking about Angela Aronson’s retail update and things like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we must have a number of retail nerds in our audience because we got that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of everything we said last week about everything about the events and all the new products that were announced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our complaints about the retail segment were by far the most controversial things we said according to the feedback. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many people saying like well this wasn’t really for you this was explaining to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X whether it was explaining to the world of retail, how Apple is saving the dying American retail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sector, or whether it’s explaining to the retail employees how to boost their morale and what they’re doing means a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot and everything. All sorts of feedback from people who either claim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be or were obviously very close to the retail world, saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why that segment not only needed to be there and needed to be that long and detailed, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what Angela Ahrens was really trying to say and why that was so important and everything. So I guess it resonated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with somebody, with people who were in the retail business. I can just say as an Apple customer and fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and commentator, it didn’t resonate with me at all. But apparently, it worked for a lot of people.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. A lot of the explanations were things like, you know, you don’t understand how important Apple is. They’re keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John these malls alive, right? That’s great. That’s fine. But why does anyone need to be told that Apple stores are keeping malls
⏹️ ▶️ John alive? That’s not a message that needs to get out, and I don’t think that was in there. They just wanted to tell you more things about their store.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I still am not sure who they were trying to convince of what, because I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re trying to convince people that, you know, they’re not trying to tell the rest of the retail industry
⏹️ ▶️ John how they should do things. Cause why would they help their competitors and they’re not trying to take credit for saving malls because what the hell does
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple care about malls? Uh, I, I, I still think it is a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of sort of deep thinking about what a store can be when I wish
⏹️ ▶️ John they would think more about what their store already is and how it can do what
⏹️ ▶️ John it is doing better. And that’s why I put this feedback in here because this is an Apple retail employee saying the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re asking for them to do, they are doing that, but they’re also thinking big about how a
⏹️ ▶️ John store can be a town hall, whatever, you know, I don’t know. Anyway, I thought it was a little overly
⏹️ ▶️ John long in a presentation that had some very important products get to came
⏹️ ▶️ John after two other segments, right? Maybe if it had been in the front, we would be complaining about whatever the third one
⏹️ ▶️ John was, right? Because it was a lot of a lot of lead in before they got to the three big announcements. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things, it’s you know, it’s not I cards. It was fine. I cards. No one remembers
⏹️ ▶️ John that. No one on this podcast anyway, but listeners remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doubtful, but that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, they totally do. All right. Please do not email and tweet us to say that you remember iCards.
#askatp: NVIDIA in Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, time for some Ask ATP. That actually went quicker than I expected. I’m proud of us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? An hour? That was quicker than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expected? Given that we didn’t have any follow-up last time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I am pretty pleased. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jamie Billet writes in to say, oh man, I should have taken this out of the show notes. I didn’t look closely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. Jamie Billet, my new enemy, writes in to say, if the new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Pro doesn’t have NVIDIA, will it be a failed product? No. Moving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Deering. No, he got a great
⏹️ ▶️ John scan stance when he was crying. Why did he? The other answer right though, I like the fact that you got the answer right.
⏹️ ▶️ John The answer is no, it won’t be a failed product.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What does that
⏹️ ▶️ John even mean? So, this is how I interpret the question. I talked a lot about how Nvidia
⏹️ ▶️ John is kind of at the top of the heap in GPUs currently, and the Mac Pro is supposed to be the fastest and bestest thing
⏹️ ▶️ John in the world, so it shouldn’t have Nvidia, and they’re saying if it doesn’t have that, if it has a lesser GPU, a GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not as good, that is not as popular, it doesn’t have as much software optimized for it, will be a failed product? And
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer is no. The Mac Pro should be the best, fastest thing Apple can make.
⏹️ ▶️ John If for some strategic or stupid reason they wanna go with AMD instead of Nvidia, AMD
⏹️ ▶️ John makes some good graphics cards. If the Mac Pro is expandable, reliable,
⏹️ ▶️ John and frequently updated, it matters not as much that it has the fastest
⏹️ ▶️ John and best video card on the market, as long as the next year there’s a new version a better
⏹️ ▶️ John video card and so on and so forth, it would be a better product probably if it shipped with Nvidia today,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t think it will be a failed product. The way it will fail is kind of like the trash can failed. If it
⏹️ ▶️ John is never updated, if it has reliability problems that are never addressed, if it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John address the needs of the customers that aren’t fulfilled by, you know, of the iMac Pro and stuff, that’s what will make it a failed product, not
⏹️ ▶️ John the lack of Nvidia.
#askatp: Twitterrific Mac beta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then Chris Adamson asks, Hey, how is John liking the beta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Twitterific for the Mac, aka Phoenix? And he also asks, Do the other two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use native Twitter clients or the web? And Chris, I am deeply offended that you would think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I would use either the native Twitter client or the web because they’re both dumpster fires.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Both Marco and I use Tweetbot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Asterisk. They say use native Twitter clients, not the native Twitter client. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that. My apologies then.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reading is fundamental. My apologies. Yes, it is. My apologies. Hooked on phonics did not work for me. No, my apologies, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, I use Tweetbot. And apparently, Marco, you don’t entirely use Tweetbot?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I still use Tweetbot on the Mac. Earlier in the summertime, I deleted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tweetbot from my phone. I’ve tried various schemes and tricks over the years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to reduce my Twitter usage because I have frequently been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using Twitter too much, which has made me waste a lot of time and be less happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried for a long time deleting it from the desktop and only using it on phones and tablets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and laptops and stuff, so it was not on my main computer. And this made things like work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difficult, because my work sometimes involves posting things to Twitter, like when I’m doing podcast live broadcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when I’m just asking questions about Apple APIs and stuff. And so it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was actually fairly difficult for me to not have it available to me on the desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It turns out, by deleting it from my phone, I do still have it available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I also have the official Twitter app installed. The official
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter app I bury in a folder. I have to only get to it from search. And I find that it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very tempting to just keep going to it over and over again because the official
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter app is so horrible that it actually discourages you from using it very much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or for very long periods.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that quote in their app store description, Marco Armin, this app is so horrible it will discourage
⏹️ ▶️ John you from using Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin. It honestly is. Like Twitter’s app is such a confusing, horrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mess of God knows what. And the way it messes up your timeline and puts the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important stuff you might have missed up top, it actually is so hard to use for more than about 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seconds that it it totally kills my desire to continue to see it over and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over again and so by not having it be visible on any of my home screens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also by having it be so awful I still have Twitter if I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like post a photo I just took while I’m out or something like that and if I really need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to check something or look something up because honestly sometimes you need to look stuff up on Twitter and the website is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really awful for that so like I do occasionally have to check it for things but that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having the official Twitter app is enough to allow that you know those kind of basic occasional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs but it’s so bad I don’t want to use it constantly and not having Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my phone means that in the millions of other times throughout the day when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasting a few seconds by reading my phone and notably these significant times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right before I go to to sleep and the first thing I do when I wake up if I’m not taking care of a kid or a dog immediately, if I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lying in bed for a few minutes, I’ll read stuff on my phone like many of us do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not having Twitter be a part of either of those times and not having it be part of most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those little interactions throughout the day where I’m just checking stuff to idly browse things or idly waste time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been a dramatic improvement in my happiness level, generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how I feel about life and what’s going on in the country and crazy people who follow me and,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, are occasionally, you know, rude and stuff like that. Like it has given me an amount of distance from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that I find incredibly satisfying and healthy, um, in a way that my previous experiments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of trying to like delete it from my Mac and stuff didn’t achieve. It’s so pervasive on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like every time I picked up the phone, I would, I would be checking Twitter as like one of the very first things I did. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I check email, which is usually nothing because I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco systematically destroyed the reason for most people to ever email me or the mechanism for them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do so over the last ten years. And so email is pretty quiet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RSS is there. I check that all the time in the Unread app, which is wonderful. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I check Instagram, which is happy because it’s people posting pictures of fun things and happy things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not have Twitter be part of those apps that you just check habitually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been really nice and I highly recommend it. And to the people at Twitter who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make the official app, just never get better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my word. Yeah, I really should try that at some point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One thing I would love to have, I mean, one of the things that kept drawing me to Twitter was that over the last few weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been having a number of interactions with people over direct messages. I’d have to keep checking it to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make sure I was up to date on those conversations or to respond to them. I was unable to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find a Twitter client that only does direct messages.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seemed like one of them did exist. It doesn’t exist anymore. All the links were broken. It’s not in the App Store anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If anybody knows of a good Twitter client that is DM only, I’d love to know about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s an interesting idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re going to answer my part of the question here before I move on, by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ John ahead. How do I like Phoenix? It’s great. You should get it. It’s totally what I always dreamed the
⏹️ ▶️ John modernized version of Twitter would be. I love seeing the updates that are slowly adding, not slowly, but pretty quickly
⏹️ ▶️ John adding all the new features that were missing. At first, you couldn’t do direct messages. Then you couldn’t get info on the
⏹️ ▶️ John people. Then you couldn’t show threads. And it’s just like they’re all one after the other. I love it. Everyone should check it out. It’s great.
Sponsor: Betterment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Betterment. Rethink what your money can do. Visit Betterment.com
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Face ID training studies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, rethink what your money can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There was some chatter about the Face ID training, which came through in part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the interview with a friend of the show, Matt Panzarino at TechCrunch. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just quoting Matt, he said, especially given that the data needed to include a high fidelity depth map
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of facial data, so says Federighi, Apple went out and got consent from subjects to provide scans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that were, quote, quite exhaustive, quote. Those scans were taken from many angles and contain a lot of detail that was then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to train the Face ID system. As mentioned above, Apple went to great lengths to gather its own data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on facial shapes and angles. And when it did so, it made sure to gather them across a broad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basis of geographic locations, ages, and ethnic backgrounds. Federighi says that Apple has tested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extensively, and it should not matter what your cultural background is, Face ID should work with your face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that was Matt Panzarino summarizing an interview with Craig Federighi.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As I was reading this, it occurred to me, this sounds familiar.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Where did I read this? And then I remembered. An anonymous listener wrote us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the 2nd of June 2017. That listener wrote, I was lucky enough to participate in a study
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ran by the scientific consulting firm Exponent in a major US city. The study was run in multiple US cities
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and also multiple sites sites abroad. At my site, each day, about 70 or 80 participants, six days a week for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about two months at least. So 3,000 to 4,000 people or thereabouts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were asked or they were recruited and that was both individuals and family groups. With family groups,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they had to sign up two or more people related by blood. And this listener writes, this strongly suggests
⏹️ ▶️ Casey authentication. Obviously, you want to be able to differentiate between relatives who can look very similar.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they describe in quite a bit of detail what the test was, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it involves filling out a survey, talking about your skin tone and things like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The consent form talks about how you’re going to have an infrared laser shined at you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey During the session, you’re asked to use device for a series of tasks, which according to the listener was an iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plus with a heavy case-like attachment, blah, blah, blah. And then they talk about the different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tasks, which I kind of want to read, but I’m trying to summarize this at least slightly. Also they have you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey test for looking at the phone, looking away from the phone, using different kinds of lighting, different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kinds of headwear with hats and scarves and sunglasses and masks, etc., and different background objects and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and so forth. And each participant was given 10 variations, not the same 10, and there were many other tests
⏹️ ▶️ Casey involved. So I just thought this was fascinating. This is certainly within the realm of time where I think we thought Face ID was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible, This was, again, three months ago, three and change. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is clearly to me describing what the Face ID test,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not test, but the Face ID data acquisition process was all about. I just thought that was fascinating.
⏹️ ▶️ John Each person got a hundred bucks too. Not cheap to run this. If you think of how many thousands of people, and they had to pay the
⏹️ ▶️ John staff, and then the building to have them all in, and then give each participant a hundred bucks,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s got a lot of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So anyway, I just thought that was fascinating. There are more details which John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t allowing me to tell you about, but they are there.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you can summarize them, find the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey interesting ones. Find the interesting tidbits.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the tasks they did, a task was a game where dots appear randomly on the screen. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asked to identify the emoji animals that pop up in the dots as they flash by. And they thought it was an eye tracking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey calibration. Test two, this had many variations, but the basic structure was the same. You’re seated at an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arc-shaped white table with a white wall, more like a fabric surface, in front of you. The wall and table
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are both divided 2x3 or 3x3 grids by black lines with numbers in each partition. In each variation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re asked to hold the phone up toward one partition of the grid as if taking a selfie, and then turn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your head toward another partition, so sometimes you’re facing the phone, sometimes you’re not. You turn your eye to look at the phone or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keep them straight, then press the record button on the phone, and then do an action with your face. Shake your head in a different way, cover your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey face, etc. And then the recording is done automatically. Who knows if this was really Apple, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly to my eyes, it seemed to be. And that explains how they trained this, because obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple is a very diverse company. Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Apple is more diverse than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of the companies that I see, and there are more employees of various backgrounds there than a lot of companies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me try to phrase it that way. And so they could certainly, and I’m sure they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did train on internal people, but it seems like they also did a lot of work by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seeking out other people, which is great. That’s what I would hope. And this is the only report I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heard about this, and this was sent directly to ATP. I’m not saying that other reports don’t exist, but it’s the first I’ve heard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this email a lot over the last couple of weeks as this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Face ID thing was ramping up and then it was finally unveiled. And it’s pretty cool. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I assume this was real. Like, I assume this was a true report that was not just like some made-up tip or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If so, it makes a lot of sense. It’s totally plausible. And it’s pretty cool that Apple went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to such lengths to try to get a lot of people’s data for training and everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As Craig has very happily pointed out over the last couple of interviews he’s done, all of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not being based on collecting data from the field
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from iPhone Xs. It’s not reporting your face data back to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it to improve its algorithms and train its machine learning. doing separate studies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people are explicitly opting into and being paid for to get its data and to train
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its its models and so that’s it’s just all like it’s it’s pretty cool it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John quite cool and it does learn from your face but that information never leaves the phone which is kind of a bummer if you
⏹️ ▶️ John get a new phone or get your front thing replaced because you crack the screen or something basically like with touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna mean that you have to retrain it on your face and it’s gonna start over with learning so hopefully the learning curve isn’t too bad
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s that’s the whole MO with this stuff is that it’s in the secure enclave it never leaves it and so if you break
⏹️ ▶️ John the front of your phone and they have to replace the thing that connects to the secure enclave guess what you got to re-register your
⏹️ ▶️ John face and start the learning over but that’s how it learns with your face as you age as you slowly grow a beard
⏹️ ▶️ John you know hopefully as you put on scarves in the winter you know you’ll have the scarf
⏹️ ▶️ John not obscuring your whole face and it’ll figure out the sometime the scarf is there I don’t know how you know how good it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be in terms of can you just put on a ski mask one day and have it still recognize you but it
⏹️ ▶️ John does learn and improve as just like Touch ID, by the way, both these things do learn and improve just
⏹️ ▶️ John from you. And it’s just between you, the phone and the secure enclave. That’s it.
LTE Watch has more storage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, we should probably dive back into the iPhone announcement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the keynote from last week. We have a little bit of information
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the Apple Watch. Our Apple Watches are due to arrive potentially as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listeners are hearing this. The cellular watch has 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gigs of storage and the non-cellular watch has 8 gigs. At first glance, that seems kind of weird,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Because the cellular watch can stream things, but the non-cellular watch can’t. So you would think you would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want more storage on the non-cellular watch. But everyone seems to agree, and I guess it makes sense, that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to want to cache the things that you’ve streamed. And so maybe having more space does make sense on the cellular
⏹️ ▶️ John watch. Just waiting for someone on the watch team to write in and tell us, no, the extra space isn’t used for caching.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’ll be from an online chat support agent. No, I mean, that actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it makes some sense. First of all, the cellular model is $70 more, so they have a little bit more leeway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the margins. But also, a cellular watch is more likely to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be used as a standalone music playback device than a non-cellular watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because somebody who’s going to go seek out and buy the cellular one probably intends to use it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a workout device wirelessly with music playing. The chances of that being used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that purpose are way higher than other watch models. And if you’re going to go take a run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the watch, one way you could do that, technically, with music, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to literally stream the audio off the internet. Another way you could do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the cellular should only be used very, very sparingly, and the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can be smart and just cache things from Apple Music that you like or that you’ve selected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be available on your runs. And Apple Music, based on recommendations and algorithms and everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it knows before you go out running what you should probably be listening to. So it probably buffers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that stuff like overnight or something when it’s plugged in and when it’s charging it probably tries to fill as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space as it can you know with with downloaded music that it can then play for you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without touching the cell network at all because then it saves data it saves a ton of battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it works with intermittent connectivity areas like what if you what if you’re running under you know be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like between buildings in New York City and you know the cell connection would keep dropping or whatever else. It has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cellular, yes, but that doesn’t mean Apple is going to use it aggressively because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from all the reviews that have come out today, it looks like it has a tremendous cost to battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life. And that even if this alleged Wi-Fi bug that they’re saying is causing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the connectivity problems that some of the reviewers had, even if that is fixed shortly, because it probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be, it does seem like the LTE connection of the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not very aggressive about staying connected. Like it seems like it only connects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it really needs to. And so if they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough space on the watch to buffer a whole bunch of music before you go for a run,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why would you stream it? Like why wouldn’t you just play your buffer and then if you run out of buffer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then maybe stream some stuff. But why burn the battery when you don’t have to?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that makes sense to me. Actually, real-time follow-up on the watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason Snell has communicated with me via the magic of Slack and told me that what you just said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, is absolutely correct, that the watch does use some of those fancy-pants
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Music playlists and caches those overnight in addition to some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the music that it knows you like, and it tries to suck those in, at least on the cellular models, suck those in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overnight while it’s charging when you’re not on.
⏹️ ▶️ John They said that in the keynote, which is why you had that vague memory of it. That’s where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from. Well, now I learned.
Lightning and USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The iPhone, I thought a couple of interesting things, which I don’t think were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey noted in the keynote. First of all, it includes the little headphone adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the lightning to, what is it, T-L-L-D-R, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it’s called. TRRS. TRRS, yeah, TRRS. The TLDR adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, as soon as I said that, I was like, oh no, I do remember. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does include the adapter, which I would say I lost a bet with myself. I thought it would be included in the 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and never again, And I understand that not everyone upgrades every year, so it makes sense for it to still be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there. But I had expected Apple to be kind of aggressive about getting rid of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they weren’t, which is a good thing, I’d say. But it was surprising. And then additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are no USB-C cables of any sort included in the iPhone box. No sort of adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no cable, nothing like that, which I can’t decide if I think that that’s totally bananas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or makes perfect sense. And I think I’m ever so slightly leaning toward that makes perfect sense,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though it is weird that none of their brand new computers or laptops, I should say, can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plug into an iPhone without some sort of an adapter. I don’t know. Marco, what do you think about that? Is that weird or does that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it sucks that we don’t have an all USB-C world, but the fact is we don’t have an all USB-C world. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they would include the USB-C power adapter or USB cable in the box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the only one, then you would have the issue of like, you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t plug it into pretty much anything that people use to charge their phones. Yes, people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do often charge their phones by plugging them into their computers, but they charge them way more often by plugging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them into other things, power adapters, docks, USB outlets, other USB multi-port things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and none of those things really are USB-C yet, like practically speaking. So if there’s gonna be only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one cable in the box, I still think it makes sense for it to be the USB-A cable. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could also argue, as some people have, that they should just put two cables in the box. You know, put a USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a USB-A cable. And that would be interesting. I think Apple’s argument
⏹️ ▶️ Marco against that, there would be a small reason to not do it for the sake of margins
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to sell $25 cables to the people who want this function. But I think their bigger argument
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be that would be very wasteful. like almost everybody by definition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or almost everybody who got an iPhone would not use that second cable. They would almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly only use one of those. So it would be kind of wasteful to have like a cable in the box that almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone’s throwing away. That doesn’t make it great. This is still an annoying problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think the other solutions to it would probably be worse. While we’re on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the topic of the iPhone and its ports and its cables, I would also just like to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggest the idea here officially that I bet the lightning port is gone within
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five years and because now you know we’re going to have wireless charging we have it now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not as fast as everything else yet it’s going to get faster and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to get fast enough that I would bet that the newest iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that comes out in five years whatever model that is does not have a lightning port and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has no replacement for the lightning port just it’s just gone, you know, because they’re going to deem it unnecessary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would say for people out there, uh, I would, I would hesitate to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invest heavily in lightning based hardware, um, cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like cables, that’s fine. But like, for instance, there are now super fancy lightning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, um, from, you know, brands like Odyssey, like high-end audio file headphone brands.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, for many reasons, I would never suggest anybody waste money on those. Number one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they sound terrible. But numbers like two through seven, you can’t use them with anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else ever. And also, lightning ports, I would say, are not long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this world. Now that we have Bluetooth everything, and now that we have wireless charging,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would not depend on lightning being around for a long time. Five years might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even be comically conservative. I would think if there was a good chance, it’s gone in three years. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s going to take a little bit longer than you think. I mean, obviously, they have to march towards the sort of platonic ideal of just like
⏹️ ▶️ John a screen this little skinny magic thing you know right or or you know that some it becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John a little tiny nodule and everything is all in glasses in VR right so
⏹️ ▶️ John on an infinite time scale yes lightning port is going away I just don’t know what the timing is like because
⏹️ ▶️ John getting rid of ports is all well and good until it’s the last one and then it’s a little bit harder to get rid of I think usage
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve got everything covered but I just thinking like oh they get rid of the lightning port. But
⏹️ ▶️ John of course there’s a USB C port for diagnostics in the back, like in the back, like on the mouse where you stab
⏹️ ▶️ John it in there. Like sometimes there’s no substitute for making
⏹️ ▶️ John electrical contact for for extraordinary situations. And I’m wondering what their solutions that would be maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John just like two regions on the back that essentially act as contacts for doing diagnostic things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and really what I’m trying to get it is the light is the lighting for the last port that will ever be on there. Or does lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John port get replaced with some other port which eventually goes away but yeah in our lifetime there
⏹️ ▶️ John will be no wire that you plug into the phone thing because we’re almost there now where that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have to be and it’s just a question of you know waiting for the whole world to catch up with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it I would say not not just in our lifetime I would say probably within my at my 4k Apple TV’s lifetime
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean five years was my prediction for the notch going away although on that topic about the the
⏹️ ▶️ John notch and more like predictions on timelines as I said at the end of the thing five years
⏹️ ▶️ John is what I think they could get rid of it but if it becomes a powerful branding thing as
⏹️ ▶️ John we discussed like you know why would they do the notch and why does the icon of it show the notch and like how is this one differentiated whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it could last longer not forever because even the things that distinguish like you know the click wheel distinguish
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPod and that silhouette with a click we will is really important but when it was time for that to go away it did
⏹️ ▶️ John right they didn’t say but that’s how we brand the iPods like they had no problem making an iPod touch without a click wheel because they realized
⏹️ ▶️ John the future is not this little screen in a wheel the future is all screen right so
⏹️ ▶️ John they may hold on to the notch longer for branding reasons there’s no such reason to hold on to lightning
⏹️ ▶️ John cable and technically speaking they’re way closer to being able to get rid of it because all the pieces are pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much already there it’s just a question of conservatism like when when do they think they can
⏹️ ▶️ John get rid of it I think I think they push a little bit on the headphone which is why they’re still shipping an adapter
⏹️ ▶️ John lightning I don’t know your five-year thing seems reasonable to me. Your three-year thing seems a little bit aggressive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, there’s an interesting question in the chat room from Yonatron saying, do you think after lightning has gone from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone, will slash should they switch to USB-C on the iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s an interesting question. You know, I feel like it depends a lot on like, you know, what are these ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually used for and what could they be used for. On the iPad, you know, it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has had the ability to plug in a limited set of USB peripherals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since day one. Since the very first iPad, it had that camera connection kit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there was one that has a little USB port on it, and there still is. They updated it with lightning,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there was a new one last year that had power passed through finally, which is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that USB port over the years has worked for not any USB device, but things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like standard HID-compliant keyboards. That’s probably one of the biggest uses for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also network adapters would work over it so you could you could have like Ethernet wired on. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has always worked for sound devices which is very very nice during sound production. And I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a wireless equivalent to things like a microphone interface. Like I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that anybody makes Bluetooth audio input devices. At least they shouldn’t and I hope they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t. They probably do but nobody should do that. But so There are these kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge case things that like having a port at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if it requires crazy adapters or specialized hardware to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it for these kind of purposes, having a port that can be adapted to these kind of weird edge cases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does allow these devices to be used in some pretty creative ways in some pretty interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fields. And that having no port at all, relying totally on wireless, would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make some of those things harder. However, I I think those limits are more important to keep open on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than on the phone. That’s why I think the phone is probably going to get rid of lightning first and probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly soon, relatively speaking. The iPad, because of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge case uses, I think it would be more destructive to lose its only port in that way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it also doesn’t really matter what that port is. We’ve argued for years, like, why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t they add a couple USB ports to it? So far the iPad has done seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty well and totally fine Having its own proprietary port that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know could be adapted to a couple things here and there But for the most part was not a standard port And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see that that like you know Demand curve in that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changing much over time like it got this far with no standard ports And it’s gonna keep going with no standard ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I do think it would be a shame if it lost the one that it has
⏹️ ▶️ John Now it needs more ports like for the big for the for the 24-inch iPad Pro right you need that’s when you
⏹️ ▶️ John start like you don’t need the lightning port you can get rid of the lightning port but it should have five USB
⏹️ ▶️ John C ports like for the big Pro version for the one you know for the Surface Book type of is that what’s that am I
⏹️ ▶️ John getting the name right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of the iMac key I can’t keep track of the 27
⏹️ ▶️ John inch screen like I I still think that’s lurking out there in the future of the iPad as
⏹️ ▶️ John it becomes more and more capable and as they expand the line so So if and when that day comes, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John time when the iPad needs ports. Because it is essentially going to, you know, it’s taking the mantle
⏹️ ▶️ John of the PC and the laptop. Surface Studio is apparently the drafting
⏹️ ▶️ John table thing or whatever. It’s ridiculous to have a 27 inch tablet size thing that you use
⏹️ ▶️ John only at your desk because it’s huge that has one port on one edge. That’s ridiculous, right? So lightning go
⏹️ ▶️ John away, but whatever the equivalent of USB-C, a Thunderbolt or whatever should be there for all the
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons that we hook things up to our PCs today, right? They’re not all going away quite as rapidly
⏹️ ▶️ John as we feel like we could ditch them on the phone because so many things, Apple itself
⏹️ ▶️ John has come up with so many of the solutions like with the AirPods, with the wireless charging, getting
⏹️ ▶️ John rid of syncing and backing up to your Mac, they’re practically there but it’s too early
⏹️ ▶️ John for them to do it, if only because charging would take too long because the Qi charging is very slow now,
⏹️ ▶️ John supposedly going to get a little bit faster, but it’s probably not gonna catch wire for a while yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s also like we don’t have Apple’s yet. Like we only have the existing ones that are out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, once Apple ships their version of the Qi charging mat, which I hope is soon, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of sad that it isn’t until next year. But once they ship that, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before the iPad came out, USB charging was very, very slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the iPad was one the first devices, if not the first device, to use higher amperage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB charging standards. I don’t even know if it was a standard back then, or if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of hacked it on there. But they needed more power, so they made their custom power brick that delivered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more power over USB to the iPad that needed it. Maybe this is a similar kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, where all the existing things out there now are these low-power things, but Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is doing their magic with extending the standards and and pressuring the standards bodies and manufacturers and things. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe next year’s Qi charging mats are gonna be pretty fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of, can one of you explain to me what is the equipment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I need to do fast charging with the iPhones 8 and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone 10? And my understanding from looking at some of Gruber’s recent work is that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually not that fast, but what are the components I need and can we get links for these for the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes? because I’m not trying to be funny. I genuinely am not clear on what stuff I need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to make this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work. All right. So the official answer is you should not be asking us unprepared on a podcast. You should just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco search for some article that Serenity Colbell has probably written at iMore that tells
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John us all the actual information. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off the top of my head, you need basically a USB-C power brick. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not an iPad brick, although those do charge. If you have any iPhone past, I believe, I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they started with the 6 or the 6s, anything that, you know, then or newer will charge faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from an iPad power brick or any other 2.4 amp USB power device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, if you aren’t using one of those yet, please use those for everything. Your phones will charge noticeably faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you want to go even faster than that, but not too much faster than that, you can now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use, with the new iPhones, you can now use a USB-C power delivery brick. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either the bricks that came with all the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, including your little MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should do it, I believe. And then you need a USB-C to Lightning cable. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think there’s only one type of USB-C to Lightning cable, I hope, from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because there’s been… Previously, the USB-C to C cables, There were actually multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different Apple USB C to C cables with different power delivery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco abilities. And I assume that’s all legacy and has been solved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in current inventory that they have in an Apple store, but that was a problem before. But with Sita Lightning,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s only ever been one. So if you have Apple’s at least, I’m not sure I would trust
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a third-party cable for this just yet, just because, you know, not that it would like catch fire or anything, but I would just be wary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of whether it would work at the maximum rate or not. So I would say go get the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lightning to USB-C cable and plug it into your MacBook’s power brick. That’s the answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool, all right, thanks, because I was very confused.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You could also use the Anker, you know your little five-port
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, the charger things that you told us all to buy in that awesome blog post? Well, I ended up, this past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco winter, I bought the version of that that has a single USB-C output port as well that can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power up to I think 60 watts over it or something like that. That’s wonderful by the way. So you know like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re bringing a new MacBook of any kind on a trip and you want to just bring one charger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Anker thing that has one USB-C port and like four USB ports is awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and can totally power all of the new laptops. It doesn’t fully power the 15-inch if you’re like super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco draining it because it’s you know 60 I think versus 85 watts or 87 watts, whatever it is. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good enough for almost everything. But again, the gains here in speed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like as some of the reviewers are noting, the gains are not that fast. Like it isn’t that much faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than just using an iPad power brick or any other 2.4 amp source. So I would say, you know, if you already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this hardware, great, but I’m not sure it’s worth the total investment between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bricks and the cables If you’re only buying these things to do faster iPhone charging,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you might be disappointed in how much faster it isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate you clearing that up.
AirPower and Nightstand Mode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. AirPower, we spoke about that a little bit just a minute ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One thing that bummed me out about AirPower, which is the pad and technology that allows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the one pad to charge multiple Apple devices, what about nightstand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mode on the watch? So if you leave the watch on a charger and you leave it such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the buttons are at the top, then when you jostle the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even the littlest bit, it will show you the time, just like a clock wood on your nightstand. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’ll let you like pause and perhaps stop alarms by pressing the physical buttons, just like a clock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your nightstand. And I use this every night and I love it. And I mean, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first world problem, but I’m going to be kind of bummed if I can’t do that on this like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey air power charging mat. And this occurred to me in part because I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the dock that Studio Neat makes. I forget exactly what it’s called. We’ll put a link in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes. but that is designed in many ways specifically for this. And they actually talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this on an episode of their podcast called Thoroughly Considered. And to be honest, I listened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to it days ago and forgot exactly what they said, but in some way they discussed it and I forget what conclusion they came to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But this kind of bums me out. I mean, Marco, you don’t believe in the Apple Watch. John, you don’t really either,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s no point. I actually, by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, I use it like every day, but I just don’t use it the same way you do. Fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. But is that, but do you use it, where do you charge it at night? Do you charge it at your desk or do you charge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it on your nightstand?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s at my desk, so it’s not on my nightstand. But when I was wearing it full-time as my main
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch, I was charging it on my desk. That predated nightstand mode. But yeah, that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just did the lowest tech solution here possible, which is I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a regular alarm clock thing on my nightstand. They still make those,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently. I just bought it last year. You were able to buy regular alarm clocks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, what most people do, I think, is, you know, either use their watch that way or just use their phone that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a valid question then, if you’re using a charging mat, like, what about using your phone as a clock?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think the answer most people will have is they’ll just pick it up if they wanna check the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey time. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t as nice, you know, as doing it your way, but, you know, it’s, it
⏹️ ▶️ John works. I’ve been thinking for years about what I would like in a nightstand
⏹️ ▶️ John clock, because I have iOS devices on my nightstand, I think most of us do my phone charges there my iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John actually charges there as well But I don’t want to use them
⏹️ ▶️ John as I have actually a dedicated like, you know old-style clock radio thing, which I don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s ancient and huge and ridiculous and you know But it still works and it has
⏹️ ▶️ John properties that Marco can relate to when I turn my head in that direction I can see the time because it
⏹️ ▶️ John glows with just the right amount of glowingness not blinding super bright but not super dim.
⏹️ ▶️ John The letters are big so with my blind nighttime eyes without my glasses on I can see
⏹️ ▶️ John them and every time I look at it it’s there. I don’t need to grope over on my nightstand knocking
⏹️ ▶️ John over you know stuff that’s over there like I don’t need to do anything I don’t need to touch anything I don’t need to jostle anything
⏹️ ▶️ John I just look at it and it tells me the time and it also it’s what I use for my alarm. Why don’t I want to use
⏹️ ▶️ John my watch or my phone or my iPad or any of the other umpteen things? Why don’t I want to use them? Because they’re not 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John guaranteed to be on my nightstand. What if I leave my phone downstairs? What if I leave my iPad downstairs? These devices
⏹️ ▶️ John are all over my house. I don’t want to have to remember. I never have to remember. Did you remember to put your,
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that’s going to wake you up in the morning on your nightstand? It’s always there. The alarm is always on. It goes on
⏹️ ▶️ John every time in the morning and when I grope in the morning to turn off the alarm. I like big, chunky
⏹️ ▶️ John physical buttons that I can find, again, in my groggy state and either snooze or turn off the alarm. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not ideal. Like the buttons are a little bit weird, but you know, I’ve had this, this clock radio for
⏹️ ▶️ John like 20 something years now or whatever. I would like I was thinking like a nice dedicated clock
⏹️ ▶️ John radio and I was like, maybe Apple should make a nice day. They’re never going to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco do that, right? They want
⏹️ ▶️ John us to use our, our phone or watch, but I just, I just want to, I guess it’s kind of like the bike thing. I just said, I just want
⏹️ ▶️ John a good one. And I’ve looked at a lot of them and there’s all sorts of fancy ones that are interesting. And sometimes they’re really
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive and sometimes they’re double the Bluetooth speakers, which is kind of neat, but whatever. But, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I also thought about if I got a fancy one I’d want to be able to like play a recording of my choosing
⏹️ ▶️ John and I would just record my old clock radios little beep beep sound right because the sound you wake up to can be
⏹️ ▶️ John very very personal like some sounds people find very jarring and frightening
⏹️ ▶️ John to wake up to and others you know comforting and some sounds just don’t wake them up at all so maybe I should just keep
⏹️ ▶️ John this one forever because it’s obviously never gonna break but it does take up a lot of space in my nightstand I mean all this
⏹️ ▶️ John is to say that all the Apple’s efforts with nightstand mode and with this charging and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John seem to me to all be suboptimal solutions for the role that the clock
⏹️ ▶️ John radio plays. Maybe great solutions for what we’re all doing with our devices now, which is charging them on your nightstand
⏹️ ▶️ John when you go to bed, but I’m still looking for a solution to waking
⏹️ ▶️ John me up in the morning reliably without me having to remember not to leave my phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco downstairs. All right, I have a solution for you. It doesn’t have an alarm.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco solution then? It doesn’t have an alarm.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the song of your choosing. However, it will always be charged because it’s powered by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco air temperature changes. It is not designed by Apple, but it is designed by Mark Newsome,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple. Oh, right, right, until you got the Mark Newsome part. I said that sounds like my wife because she’s powered by air temperature changes. It’s too hot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It only costs $26,800. The JLC Atmos clock,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is powered by atmospheric air temperature changes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would knock that off of my nightstand and it would shatter to the ground, wasting $26,000 very quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re surprisingly heavy. I do not own one of these, but I have seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in stores. They are quite remarkable to look at. And some of the lower end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models can be had for only about $10,000. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it used to be that my kids woke me up and now they’re all older. Now realistically speaking my dog wakes me up at 5.30
⏹️ ▶️ John in the morning. The problem with the dog waking me up is if I’m not the one who goes and lets her
⏹️ ▶️ John out I can fall back asleep and that’s a dangerous situation to be in. So I still do need my alarm most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am the one who takes the dog out and so then I do wake up. But I figure eventually the dog will, will
⏹️ ▶️ John this ever happen? the seventh month old dog stop whining to be let out at 530 to 630 in the morning?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Hope springs eternal. But anyway, I still
⏹️ ▶️ John think the role of the thing that wakes you up in the morning is not a solved problem as far as I’m concerned, and
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS devices, including the watch, don’t solve that for me because I don’t wear the watch when I sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or at all. One more thing on AirPower,
⏹️ ▶️ John about Apple’s naming. It’s kind of a weird name to me because air power means a thing in a military context.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t think what other contexts are there for air power? There is the I’m just making this phrase
⏹️ ▶️ John that has never been seen before combining the word air with the word power and isn’t that great? But unfortunately, it is a phrase air power
⏹️ ▶️ John is a thing. And it’s weird to see an even vaguely military term
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple product. That’s interesting. I wonder I wonder if they even thought about that they like that might not have occurred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to them because they’re so non military thinking usually.
⏹️ ▶️ John They thought of it then they just said that’s no one knows that term only you know who most people will see it
⏹️ ▶️ John and read it as they intend which is air which is like the MacBook Air and then power. I don’t think they
⏹️ ▶️ John they probably said there are military connotations but most people won’t get to think of it that way so it’s fine and they went with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just it just struck me as odd when they said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is kind of funny also that like they’re like the power does not go through the air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through? I mean technically there’s probably a few air molecules between your phone and the mat but like more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah but like really you know it’s not going through a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of air it’s not going through a wire now is it Oh, let’s not get into that.
Google-HTC purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You see Google just bought part of HTC’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Pixel division or something? Yeah, I’ve been hearing those rumors and someone
⏹️ ▶️ John tweeted about it. Tell me how this is going to end up differently than it did with Motorola. I guess HTC doesn’t have as many patents
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re not paying $12 billion for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And how well it worked out for Microsoft with Nokia also. I mean, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is… I’d be surprised if this mattered at all for
⏹️ ▶️ John ever. Google just wants someone to make phones for them. Maybe Apple will do
iPhone X availability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. All right. Apparently we have more to say about Animoji. Didn’t we already talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John this? We should wait until you are you use you can’t use it with the we can’t use it with iOS 11
⏹️ ▶️ John unless you have the 10 or does it work on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight? No, I don’t think so. Because it uses the fancy pants facial recognition stuff. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s only on the 10.
⏹️ ▶️ John We should save it until and until one of us has it, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess. Yeah. So next March.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Did you see by the way that apparently they’re they’re doubling down on the supply constraints, like MacRumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey posted something earlier about how the supply constraint is really, really bad, and they haven’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started full-on manufacturing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mad Fientist We’ve been waiting a while for our tens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steve McLaughlin I expect it to be incredibly difficult for anybody to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy these phones, at least at list price, or anywhere near list price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until after December. And I don’t know, I haven’t heard anything more than what these rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sites have published, But just knowing how Apple has done these launches of recent products in the past, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently have trouble meeting demand recently, especially when it comes to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very highly demanded iPhones. And this is probably going to be a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole other level of the disconnect between supply and demand for this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so this is just going to be a mess, I think. I would be shocked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you could walk into a store and just buy one without having reserved it or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before January, and maybe even later than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m gonna be a sad panda when this phone doesn’t come in for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man. The struggle is real, you guys. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. We can always go to the store and play with them, which will be all I’m doing because I’m not ordering one. Of course.
Follow-up: Apple TV 24 FPS
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we wrap this up from we should be done here, but we’re gone a little bit long real-time follow up on Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV someone has sent me a screenshot of the screen where you
⏹️ ▶️ John can pick the Like the screen resolutions, and so it does show a bunch of 24
⏹️ ▶️ John Hertz options shows 25 Hertz SDR 24 Hertz HDR I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean I suppose it depends on what TV you’re hooked up to and what things it supports But these look like you
⏹️ ▶️ John choosing the output format period for the whole thing So if you do pick 24 Hertz, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John picking it for the whole UI and I understand Apple’s Desire not to switch modes
⏹️ ▶️ John and that being flaky and stuff like that But this isn’t a great solution either because this I guess most people will never go into the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen But if you want to do the right thing, you will have to know the frame rate of the media You
⏹️ ▶️ John want to see switch your Apple TV? For a refresh rate to match the frame rate
⏹️ ▶️ John of the media you want to play Then go play the media and then remember that you did that so the next time you go watch
⏹️ ▶️ John You know a 30fps TV show or whatever that you keep you know that you change the 60 Hertz, or I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know I find it Confusing and I really wish the media player
⏹️ ▶️ John Could just do the thing that other things attached to your television do and tell it hey
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m about to start playing 24 frames per second content Please switch to a refresh rate that is some
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple of 24 that I have detected using the magic of HDMI So I’ll try
⏹️ ▶️ John all this out when I get my Apple TV I didn’t get my order in very quickly, so I think mine’s not going to be here for a week
⏹️ ▶️ John or two, but I’ll let you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our three sponsors this week, Betterment, Fracture, and Aftershocks. And we will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see you next time!
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Tmarco Harmon,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, tech podcasts so long.
Follow-up: TwIM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a bit of real-time follow-up as well During the show not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have I installed the version of Safari that John told me I could install And so now I guess I’m not seeing how to play video anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now I have 60% of the features of high Sierra without breaking the window manager And but also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is indeed a Twitter direct message only app called twim TW IM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I installed it and it does seem to work in the sense that I can get direct messages there I’ve tested it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during the show with Casey. Thank you Casey The only thing is it was not able to notify me of them, even though I enabled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. So I’m guessing it just has to rely on background refresh and not just like a push service.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if so, that’s kind of unfortunate in the sense that you might not get the messages for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But honestly, I don’t really care that much most of the time about that if I’m on my phone and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not browsing Twitter. So that seems all right to me. So yeah, thanks for everybody who recommended Twim.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm, that’s cool. I had a, there was an element here about ways in our notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Did you want me to expand on my use of ways and how much I love
⏹️ ▶️ John it? No, save it. That’s all, these are all topic
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco worthy topics. That’s not, it’s not, it really
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t. It totally is. Oh my God. We should go up to…
Neutral: Acura DS
⏹️ ▶️ John the after show section and ask Casey about how driving an Acura TLX was.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Or he was in an Acura
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TLX. Yeah, so… Wait, what is this one? Is this like the, the, an SUV? Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a… No, it’s an Accord, but gussied up a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it’s not even on the Accord platform anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like a deluxe TL? TLX, the TSX used to be on the European Accord platform. I don’t know what platform
⏹️ ▶️ John the TLX is on, but I think it’s not the Accord
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever. It, it’s, it’s the sedan that’s, to John’s point, To John’s point, it’s probably a little bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than an Accord, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John certainly fans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. It’s not bigger than an Accord. Oh my God, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Okay, how would you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The website describes it as a 2018 restyled performance sedan.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is. I don’t know about performance sedan,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John but whatever. It doesn’t matter. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a co-worker of mine has been test driving pretty much every car under the sun trying to figure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out what he wants to buy. And he’s in that stage where he really wants to buy something frivolous and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupid, but he just turned 40 and is trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t spend frivolous and stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money, and also he should probably be more responsible. So one of the cars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that he test drove that I sat in and went for literally like a 300-yard trip in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was an Acura TLX. And so I would describe the Acura TLX as something Accord-ish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and fancier. And the thing that’s interesting about the Acura TLX is that it has two screens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in it. There’s a screen that’s kind of far away on the dashboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has navigation on it. And then there’s a different screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the center, not the center console, but like where the radio is, that, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, and one of which has CarPlay and one of which doesn’t. And if I recall correctly, the CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one is the one, God, I’m going to get this wrong and I’m going to hate myself, but I think it was the one that was up high that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does not offer a touch screen. It has instead an iDrive like a cursor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setup or like a left, right, you know, up, down with enter sort of setup and then the other screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s down low is a touch screen and it was all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really, really weird and I don’t think I liked it, but the most startling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing of all for me was even after on a previous podcast, which was called neutral,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which none of you have ever heard of. I discussed that I thought the idea of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a touchscreen for car infotainment was terrible. And I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mostly agree with that in no small part because as you’re driving down the road, trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mash your finger into the touchscreen, you go over the smallest bump and that gets amplified
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the distance of your arm and makes it impossible to stab what you want to hit on the screen. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seeing the up, down, left, right setup in the Acura, that was much, much,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much worse. And I wanna see sometime if the BMW setup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a CarPlay allows you to use the iDrive spinner. And I wanna see if that’s any good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, Marco, have you ever tried that in Tiff’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car? Yeah, I have. And it’s, well, I mean, so the way it’s integrated into BMWs, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, so she has, I believe, what their newest or close enough version is. So it’s wireless, works over Bluetooth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is awesome. But the way BMW integrated it and I guess in a lot of this I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like is unavoidable They have their own whole system their whole their whole iDrive system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course So like they have their own navigation their own media control and everything else and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to integrate carplay And what the way it works is basically like carplay is like just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the different layers or or like app sections in iDrive in iDrive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That itself has like you know carplay is own like sub apps and stuff within it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can have like, you know view CarPlay mode and when you have a CarPlay connected phone It’s it’s kind of is always available,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but kind it’s kind of hard to navigate to and find Honestly, it’s I find it very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clunky and maybe it’s just because I don’t usually drive Tiff’s car So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t really had a lot of time to get used to it but I Honestly really don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using CarPlay in in a car that has its own system that it’s also trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mix in or that it defaults to. I find the whole thing honestly very confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say the idea of navigating it via the wheel and stuff as opposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a touch screen, that part I haven’t found to be too egregiously confusing or bad. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part seems to be fine. With a car, you have very tricky ergonomics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where ideally you want the screens that the the driver has to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be pretty high up and to be set pretty deeply into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the windshield area. Just so you don’t have to keep focusing your eyes that close to and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from, you know, close and far away, and you don’t have to look down too far. So if a screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is ideally positioned for the driver to see it frequently or safely or everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably gonna be a little hard to reach for it to be a touch screen. So I see why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do this. Like, it makes sense to have a screen that is not a touch screen, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is far away for reaching, but nice for looking. So, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have some kind of wheel or stick or something that you can control to move on screen. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally sold on not being a touch screen. I am not, however, totally sold on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CarPlay as an additional layer or mode of an already complex
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entertainment system and navigation system. That, I think, is very confusing and doesn’t work for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this. So Aaron’s XC90,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has CarPlay, it is not wireless, which is a bummer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely have mixed feelings about it. And I think the reason that I was so persnickety
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about her getting a car that had CarPlay is because I want to future-proof it. Because if you look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the interface on my BMW, which was built in 2010 as a 2011 model year, know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five, what is it actually six, seven years on now, it looks pretty dated. Where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by comparison, it stands to reason maybe that CarPlay will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advance with time. And sure. Yes. Some auto manufacturers let you upgrade your firmware and your car or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sometimes you can do it yourself. Other times you can go to service and have it done, but more often than not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It it’s a whole new set of hardware to get you to the next version of, of say, iDrive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I cannot get any of the latest and greatest iDrive because I would need brand new hardware. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with CarPlay, it’s just a screen. That’s all it is. And as long as the screen hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t need to change in future versions of CarPlay, it will always be the best CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that will ever be. And this is also particularly important with maps because although generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can use the navigation in my car pretty well, and it typically knows where I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I plug in an address, there are certainly like newer neighborhoods or newer sections of town where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has no clue where I’m going because the maps are seven years old. And that’s frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I stand by car play, if nothing else, as an insurance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey policy against future – what’s the word I’m looking for? But when things just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get old and busted in the future. And that’s why I wanted it in Erin’s car so bad and that’s why I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey insisted on it. I’ll also say that I happened to take her car out tonight to do a couple of errands.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s pretty sweet to be able to just plug in my phone and have it kind of take over in the case of the Volvo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey half the screen, because I don’t need to have my phone paired with her car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t need, it doesn’t need to like fight with her phone when we’re both in the car for who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to be the more important phone. But yet when I plug it in via the cable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it becomes the only phone that matters, which is, which is cool too. The thing that sucks about all this though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and now I’m kind of jumping ahead into next week’s show is Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or from what I can tell Apple doesn’t allow any sort of navigation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system on CarPlay except Apple Maps and I actually don’t mind Apple Maps I feel kind of the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way about Apple Maps as I do about the Apple TV remote. It’s fine But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that being said, I would prefer, given the choice, to have, I don’t know, maybe Waze
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on CarPlay. That would be neat, and that’s not allowed, and it’s because Apple is obnoxious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like every other corporation is and won’t allow it, and that’s super duper frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ John Real-time follow-up, now that I look at this thing, the TLX is a replacement for the
⏹️ ▶️ John TSX and the TL. The TSX was small, originally based on the European Accord platform, and the TL
⏹️ ▶️ John was their bigger thing. look like it’s like the size of the TL so I think it actually might be the
⏹️ ▶️ John that dual screen thing, that’s a Honda thing. It’s been in Accords for many generations now. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know how many Acuras it’s been in. I don’t know why they decided to do it. My car essentially has it except
⏹️ ▶️ John that when I bought it I didn’t even have the choice to get the second screen so I’ve got the one big screen that’s not a touchscreen
⏹️ ▶️ John buried in the dash and where the second screen would be I have comically oversized physical buttons to cover
⏹️ ▶️ John the giant square where the screen was supposed to be, which is very silly. My wife’s
⏹️ ▶️ John car doesn’t have it either. That’s where the navigation would go if we had navigation in our car.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this is the new, what you’re looking at, if you’re looking at the 2018, this is the new
⏹️ ▶️ John improved Honda infotainment system, believe it or not. I have the
⏹️ ▶️ John even crappier one, but in some respects it is simpler because it doesn’t do all that fancy car player Android stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John is just a terrible classic Honda interface.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To that end, the screen up top, which shows CarPlay in the picture that we’ll put in the show notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that screen, the navigation system, I shouldn’t say it’s the screen, I’m implying it’s the hardware, it’s not the hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The navigation system though that Honda has caked into this 2018 TLX looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it’s the navigation system for my 2010, well really model year 2011 BMW. Like it is approximately a 200 by 200 pixel screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the looks of it. Now the reality is it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s better than that because CarPlay requires something better than that. But it is just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, it looks so antiquated and terrible. Oh my goodness, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks terrible. And so if I had a TLX, there is zero chance I would ever look at that navigation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I would always, always, always be looking at CarPlay. Now in TIFF’s car where the navigation looks great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and is performant and responsive and whatnot, I would probably do the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same thing it sounds like Marco and Tiff do, which is generally speaking I would just use the onboard stuff, and in a pinch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there was some particular reason to use CarPlay then sure I’ll use CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean now we just use Waze, but yeah we can’t talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that apparently until next week. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. You know what makes me mad about the TLX? It isn’t the dual screens, it isn’t the the infotainment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system, it’s that this This car is offered with a DCT.
⏹️ ▶️ John awesome. It’s not awesome because this car is not a
⏹️ ▶️ John sporty sedan. It’s trying to be, the TSX was supposed to be sporty and the TL was
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to be luxurious and they combined them to make one bland car. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is like, it’s a fairly accessibly priced car relative to other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sports cars and It has a DCT option and an all-wheel drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option and a V6, almost 300 horsepower option. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can only get the DCT on the base model 206 horsepower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not with all-wheel drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Honda is the worst. They always do this with a good transmission. Hey John, how many cylinders does your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car have? Four? Oh, why? Well, because you wanted a stick and you can’t get it with a six
⏹️ ▶️ John cylinder. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the V6
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco ruined my moment. You’re ruining my rant,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John. Also, I’m very curious. Can you explain to me, John? It says, the industry’s first eight-speed DCT
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with torque converter. What does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that mean? How is that? That can’t be.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what that means.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How can you have a DCT and a torque converter?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s like a dual transmission thing? Where it’s got like an automatic transmission in front of it? It has,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all. Here’s the one-line summary from
⏹️ ▶️ John a recent Car and Driver review of last year’s model, which I think was just a cosmetic refresh.
⏹️ ▶️ John Automotive wallpaper from the same company that sells the NSX supercar. Wow. So
⏹️ ▶️ John a glowing review, huh? Yeah. I was like, how can that same company that makes that make this thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John automotive wallpaper is not what you
Neutral: Acura NSX
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I also have an issue with the NSX, while we’re on this topic. The new one or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old one? The new one. I have seen somebody in my town,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody occasionally parks one in town, so I see it occasionally now. It just is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forgettable looking. Like the old NSX is incredibly distinctive. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I saw one of those like the same day, which is kind of amusing. I almost never see those. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the old NSX, you know it from a mile away, and it looks incredibly distinctive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it looks cool, even still today, it still looks cool, which is pretty impressive for a car of that era.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new one just looks like random expensive car. Like it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look that distinctive anymore. Like it doesn’t look bad, and it looks like a sports car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it just looks like every other sports car now. And I feel like that’s kind of a shame from the same company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the old one was just so distinctive.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was compromised by the, I mean, it had a difficult life. If you look at the development history of this NSX, at
⏹️ ▶️ John various times, many different configurations were planned to be the new NSX. And so it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a good development. And I think it shows in the finished product, which is not bad, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it is kind of a mishmash of various compromises. And going hybrid, trying to be a hybrid
⏹️ ▶️ John supercar along with the big boys, right? But having that be a controversial decision
⏹️ ▶️ John and the way they executed it, not, you know, like, it’s just, it’s so much better when you have a clear vision from the beginning and
⏹️ ▶️ John you develop based on it, rather than like changing your mind three times during the development and like scrapping
⏹️ ▶️ John one plan and going with another and then tweaking and modifying it. And the styling feel like it suffers from the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like they had to put a skin over this car they’d made. And it just, it just seems too high to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they tried to put family Honda resemblance in the front and rear treatments that don’t quite
⏹️ ▶️ John work out. I haven’t seen one in person, it’s all reserve judgment. sometimes these cars look better in person, but every time I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ John them driving around on video reviews and stuff, it looks all right,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it gets so-so reviews, but no one is wowed by it like they were by the
⏹️ ▶️ John old one, and the old one definitely, I mean, the complaint about the old one was that it looked like a Japanese Ferrari,
⏹️ ▶️ John they were going for, but Japanese Ferrari is a good look. This just looks like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, It looks it looks like a slightly modified Acura
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah like very similar to the r8 I mean I feel like if you want to buy like a really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sports car I get the old one before I get the
⏹️ ▶️ John new one They have some problems too, and also you see one of those in real life realize wow those tires are
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny Looks like it looks like a little like looks like a skateboard. It’s like 15 inch tires or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculous. Well, the car isn’t very big on the old one, but it’s like 25 feet long,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s a very long car.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re just fooled by the proportion of the tires. Everything about it is small.
⏹️ ▶️ John The beautiful thing about the NSX is that they did have a clear vision. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s a great vision that it was a competitive advantage that they had over the things that they were sort of imitating, like
⏹️ ▶️ John Ferrari and everything. Like, their inspiration for the overall shape of the car 16 cockpit where
⏹️ ▶️ John the cockpit is a bubble up above the level of all the rest of the stuff in the plane so that when you’re a pilot,
⏹️ ▶️ John you look around and you can see things on all sides of you. You’re not like looking over the big lump. You know, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John the cockpit is not sort of like the back of the spine of the plane goes long and then and then slopes downward
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s the cockpit. And when you look backward, you just see like nothing like you’re driving a like a panel truck
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. They said, No, the plane is going to be down here. And then the cockpit will be coming up at the top of
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So you have a panoramic view. And that’s what they did with the car. The car is down there in the NSX, and the
⏹️ ▶️ John canopy, the sort of the roof line, that’s where you are, and you can look around in all directions. So they had skinny
⏹️ ▶️ John pillars because of black scratch standards, right? And amazing visibility compared to
⏹️ ▶️ John any other mid-engine car like a Ferrari where you have like a tiny slit out the back because the giant engine is back there, and sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John they even put like slits in there like in the older 80s models and stuff to make it so you have terrible visibility,
⏹️ ▶️ John huge C pillars, huge blind spots, and then they got up with these giant side mirrors so you can see anything feel kind of like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re trapped more people should be copying that because that you know if you’re if you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John actually make yourself look and perform like a ferrari one of the only advantages you have as a
⏹️ ▶️ John supercar you know an affordable supercar or a supercar wannabe is you can be ergonomically
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the supercars and that’s what the nsx did it looked cool it looked interesting and had amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John ergonomics you know and the new one it’s also mid-engine and it It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John ergonomics don’t look that great. It looks like it has pretty darn big seat pillars. And the visibility out the back, while better than a Ferrari,
⏹️ ▶️ John is nowhere near what it was in the original NSX.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They can be had for as little as $40,000 for a 100,000 mile month. 100,000 mile option. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now. Since we had in our intro episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John we had to pick a car for $25,000. And I picked the NSX. Good luck
⏹️ ▶️ John finding a $25,000 NSX now that’s in reasonable condition, because they are creeping up in price. Did
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we do that? Yeah. I
⏹️ ▶️ John remember us picking something terrible. I would like a Toyota Camry, something terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, no, you get an Acura NSX.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I probably said like a used 3 Series or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, I don’t know. I remember both of us picking truly terrible choices and it took
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little convincing for me to decide that, but I agree that it was not.
Neutral: DeLorean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not good. You can get a DeLorean for about that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crack up. That is a terrible, terrible choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t say it was my choice. I’m just saying you can’t get one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A DeLorean is furniture, it’s not a car. Or it’s like a lawn ornament. Just looks good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting there, but God, I would never want to drive one. Although they’re making the new ones now that I would presume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are a little bit better. And you know, did you know about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco They’re like, somebody- Have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they actually made them yet or are they just talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? New DeLorean production update, here we go. In December 2015, blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don’t know, I’m too lazy to read this, but apparently it’s happening,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it the same, are they just making the same car again, just with new parts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not any design updates or anything, like just making the same thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again? Correct. I don’t even think they’re doing the Singer treatment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where Singer will take an old, it is Singer, right? That takes an old Porsche and guts the interior,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I shouldn’t say the interior, but like, completely reworks the mechanicals such that they’re like these ridiculous performance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars that are using, and I think this is what you’re driving at, Marco, using, you know, like, 2017 era parts, but in a 1960s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey era Porsche. I don’t think that’s what DeLorean’s doing. I think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing, at most, like a modest update or upgrade, but it’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same stuff you saw in the early 80s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the problem with the DeLorean is that- The problem? is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we all have nostalgia about Back to the Future and how cool it was back then and how cool it looked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back then and it’s such an incredibly rare car that like we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of us have never actually even seen one in real life let alone you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have ever ridden in one or driven one or anything else so the if you tell someone like oh we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bringing back the DeLorean like a lot of people who were roughly in our age group like yeah cool that sounds awesome but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ve been able to buy a DeLorean for the last 20 years for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reasonable amount of money. Like last time I looked, you could get one that was very lightly used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and had a bunch of new parts for like $25,000, in totally restored condition.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s really not that much money for a crazy second fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car. It’s not like you haven’t been able to get them all this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have and still practically nobody has actually sought one out and bought one. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it turns out, first of all, in person they don’t look that impressive. They look really 80s, extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 80s. And from the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerd’s perspective, it isn’t a particularly fun or fast or compelling car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to drive. So if they’re going to bring it back, in quotes, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in finger quotes, without really making any changes to it that are that would make it like a more interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car to to enthusiasts who’s gonna buy it
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah i don’t know back the future fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh… but they’re gonna bet that we’ve got the future fans have been able to spend twenty five thousand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John dollars to i want my first
⏹️ ▶️ John year will be more reliable and you’ll be able to get parts and a little bit easier and i’m hopefully drive
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit better and so that’s like it’s getting over that hump of i don’t want actual boring is just
⏹️ ▶️ John you know terrible car and unreliable and difficult to repair and these new ones presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John will improve in all those ways so if I get the over the hump to have the well the silly nostalgic thing I’m hoping
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean why are they doing new ones that you know this is just fill it with Honda or Toyota parts so
⏹️ ▶️ John it actually works, and then keep the outside the same.