249: Beehives Full of Bees
21 Nov 2017Tech we’re thankful for, the context of white cars, Marco’s ancient new laptop, and the Tesla Roadster.
Episode Description:
- Follow up:
- iPhone X multitasking gesture
- Requesting refunds on AppleCare (via John Himm)
- Fake fingerprint stickers
- iCloud restores during iPhone X setup
- HomePod gets delayed
- Regarding conspiracy theories (
#caseywasright) #askatp- Tech Thanksgiving
- Casey's iPhone X Problems
- Marco's best laptop ever
- Post-show Neutral: Tesla Roadster
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Chapters
- Teaser
- Follow-up: Multitasking gesture
- Follow-up: AppleCare refunds
- Follow-up: Touch ID gloves
- Follow-up: iCloud restores
- HomePod delayed
- Follow-up: Chili Cookoff
- Sponsor: Simple Contacts (code ATP)
- #askatp: Qi and battery health
- #askatp: AirPower Apple TV remote
- #askatp: Apple frameworks vs. apps
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Tech Thanksgiving
- Casey’s iPhone X woes
- Sponsor: Betterment
- The best laptop ever made 🖼️
- Ending theme
- Neutral: Tesla Roadster 🖼️
Teaser
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m fired up tonight in the sense that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love hate my phone and we’re gonna have to talk about this later There are some parts. I really really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really love in some parts that are driving me freaking crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think we should talk about that later. That’s what the that’s what we in the business like to call it teaser teaser.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If this stays in the show, I guarantee someone will write in and say, so that’s actually not a teaser.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s actually a sting preview. It’s a blast reference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a miracle that anyone puts any content on the Internet by choice ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, if we ever want to get to that, I do want to talk about the feedback to my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I have feedback I would like to file, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Unfortunately Syracuse covered it pretty well on Upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John Today. No, I didn’t talk about it. I purposely didn’t try not to talk about your article.
⏹️ ▶️ John We have still plenty of things to talk about on your article with you, specifically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. Yeah, and I have plenty of complaints to levy, so I would like my chance.
Follow-up: Multitasking gesture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start with some follow-up about the multitasking gesture on the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey X. It was funny because as a podcast listener, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have listened to every Apple-related tech podcast that I listen to, get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the feedback about the one true way to do the multitasking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gesture, the one true way that is flawless and will never, ever fail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It just so happens that there are about 75 one-true ways to do the multitasking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gesture on the iPhone X. And I had thought by the time we had covered it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps the Internet will have gotten this out of their system. Oh no, my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends, the Internet is not done. So one of you has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey comically put in the show notes, and I’m guessing this is John, the tyranny, the tyranny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tyranny, tyranny, the angst of the pause. tyranny, the tyranny, the tyranny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the pause. Tell us about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, yeah, this was the implied context of all of my comments on the multitasking gesture.
⏹️ ▶️ John Last year we’re talking about how I had difficulty doing it from the home screen, but how it was as far as I could tell the same gesture is
⏹️ ▶️ John elsewhere and why I had difficulty doing it on the home screen. And at one point I rattled off a bunch of gestures
⏹️ ▶️ John that I had tried things that people had suggested and things that work elsewhere. The implied
⏹️ ▶️ John but not stated part of that conversation was that all the things I was describing
⏹️ ▶️ John I was doing instead of the one where you you drag up and then pause
⏹️ ▶️ John for a little bit and then you know like like basically what I think of as the sort of standard
⏹️ ▶️ John one I think it’s the one they demoed in the keynote where you know pull up from the bottom but don’t take your finger
⏹️ ▶️ John off the screen and then wait a little bit and then the multitasking thing comes and the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John that was my implied context is because I hate pauses. I hate,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, tap and hold. I hate anything where I have to do something for a set amount of time and there’s no way I can speed it
⏹️ ▶️ John up. That’s why I was interested in the, you know, J-turn, 45-degree angle, swipe,
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of other little things. So everybody who wrote in to tell us,
⏹️ ▶️ John why are you doing all these strange gestures? Just pull up from the bottom and then wait a second and it’ll come up.
⏹️ ▶️ John I definitely knew that.
⏹️ ▶️ John want to wait. The second category of people are saying you actually don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to wait. If you pull up a precise amount from the bottom and immediately remove your finger from the screen it will
⏹️ ▶️ John bring up the multitasking gesture. And I guess that gets rid of the wait
⏹️ ▶️ John but I find it more difficult to exactly get that distance right than
⏹️ ▶️ John I do to do one of the J-turn or 45 degree ankle legs or whatever. So anyway if that case wasn’t clear and you didn’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can pull up from the bottom, pause for a moment with your finger on the screen, and the multitasking thing will come up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is probably easier to pull off than any of the gestures that I was describing in which you don’t have to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you do have to wait, and I don’t like waiting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had no idea. like you grew up in the New York area.
Follow-up: AppleCare refunds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got a little bit of feedback about the refund
⏹️ ▶️ Casey request for AppleCare+. I could have sworn I had put this in the show notes, but I was wrong for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past episode. So it will be in the show notes for this episode. And John Himm was the first person I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to write in with a link to a KBASE article, hello Stephen Hackett, wherein
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s entitled, How to Request a Refund for an AppleCare Plan. Blah, blah, blah. There are a few important things to keep in mind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you cancel and return an AppleCare coverage plan. If you cancel your plan within 30 days of your purchase date, you’ll get a full refund
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minus the value of any service already performed. If you cancel your AppleCare plan more than 30 days after your purchase, you’ll get a refund
⏹️ ▶️ Casey based on the percentage of unexpired AppleCare coverage minus the value of any service already provided.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so it’s a thing, which I didn’t know. And we even heard a couple people say that they told geniuses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or perhaps not geniuses and perhaps it was salespeople, one way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or another, told Apple retail employees that this was a thing and they didn’t even know it was a thing as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it turns out. So yeah, it’s a thing. And we’ll put a link in the show notes.
Follow-up: Touch ID gloves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, who is it that put this weird Kickstarter that I’d never heard about before in the show notes?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was me. It’s always me. Um
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Last week about uh
⏹️ ▶️ John Advantages of face id over touch id especially if you’re have things wrong with the tips of your fingers or they’re dirty
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re scratched up stuff like that. And also, uh If you’re wearing gloves and I mentioned that
⏹️ ▶️ John they had gloves that will let you use your touch screen but those gloves don’t let you activate Touch ID. Well, someone
⏹️ ▶️ John sent me this link to a Kickstarter for gloves that let you touch your screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, with gloves on, like they work with a touchscreen. But also, they provide
⏹️ ▶️ John not your fingerprints through the gloves, like I was suggesting last show, like there are no gloves that magically surface
⏹️ ▶️ John your fingerprints, but instead give you a bunch of stickers with ostensibly unique
⏹️ ▶️ John fingerprints on every single sticker that work with Touch ID. So what you do is you put on these gloves
⏹️ ▶️ John or put on these little stickers on your gloves right and each one is unique like every single person who gets one I guess a
⏹️ ▶️ John unique fingerprint thing train it on your gloved fingerprint thingy
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you can unlock your phone and use it with that glove. Of course what that means is that if someone’s unlock
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone they just need to steal your glove instead of cutting off your finger or lifting your prints off a glass of water or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John Mission Impossible type thing they’re gonna do. But anyway it’s a Kickstarter all the normal caveats by Kickstarter,
⏹️ ▶️ John but, uh, you know, this, someone’s always got a, uh, an interesting idea. And here’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Unique fingerprint stickers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had no idea this was a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s a kickstarter so is it a thing? Touche.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Touche, sir. Well played. Ay yi yi.
Follow-up: iCloud restores
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so apparently we have some things to talk about with regard to iCloud restores
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during iPhone X setup.
⏹️ ▶️ John I spoke too soon. Last week we all spoke. Well, maybe you didn’t, but I did about like, oh, iCloud restore during
⏹️ ▶️ John setup. It’s much faster now. Everything works great. That was all true up until the point
⏹️ ▶️ John where my wife’s phone wanted to update to whatever. I think it’s like the
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS update that gets rid of the weird funny character thing. You try to have capital I, whatever, whatever update
⏹️ ▶️ John that was. And she normally updates her phone and eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to do the update. And it said something to the effect of, oh yeah, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John this OS update will run as soon as your iCloud restore finishes. And it said that for about two weeks
⏹️ ▶️ John now. And that’s bad. Oh, lovely. And one of her questions to me was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John can I just cancel this iCloud restore? And it’s like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. It’s another one of those iCloud things where, reboot your phone?
⏹️ ▶️ John As far as I’m aware, the iCloud Restore finished the day we set up
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone. Like all the apps are there. What remains to be done? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like I have some view into the system that tells me what the iCloud Restore process is doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I find this mildly upsetting and I don’t as yet have a solution. I assume what I’m just gonna do is Google
⏹️ ▶️ John the error message because that’s the level of debugging we’re at in the iOS world these days, especially as it relates to iCloud things.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can find how many other people have this problem. But in the end, yeah, it’s like reboot the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John step zero and see if that magically changes something.
HomePod delayed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got some bad news from Apple and I’m quoting now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We can’t wait for people to experience HomePod, Apple’s breakthrough wireless speaker for the home, but we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need a little more time before it’s ready for our customers. We’ll start shipping in the US, UK, and Australia
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in early 2018. This was not given directly to ATP, but it was given to a couple of news sites
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or bloggers or what have you. The HomePod is indeed delayed. So I guess next week or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perhaps later this week, will hear the same for the iMac Pro? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weren’t both promised this year? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but the iMac Pro is gonna make it. Is it?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Sure, why not?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because like five people will buy them and it doesn’t really matter and it will probably make it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, technically the 2013 Mac Pro was available in December 2013,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if you actually wanted to try to order one, you weren’t gonna get it until February 2014. Yeah. So the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro might follow a similar path. I don’t really know if anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in particular is holding up the iMac Pro. I’m sure they have their reasons, but I’m sure they have nothing to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with whatever’s holding back the HomePod. The HomePod seems like it’s just very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it seemed like it was in such an early state when they announced it last June that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s slipping a few months now is not that big of a surprise. And it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new, you know, all new hardware, more importantly, probably all new software relying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their fairly shaky service backend for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri. So lots of possible things could have gone wrong here or could have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco missed deadlines here to make that get delayed by a few months. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not at all a surprise. And I hope, from what we’ve seen from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HomePod so far, which is admittedly very, very little, it sure doesn’t seem like it’s that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive with the other products in that market. So maybe they’re making it a little bit better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s kind of my hope here is like, maybe this will be a little bit more competitive against the Echo line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of products especially, and then also against things like Sonos and Google, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it will be done is more like what I think this is getting at. They showed the hardware, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John had so little of the software done that all they would let people do with it is play music. But this is
⏹️ ▶️ John ostensibly something you can talk to. And they were demonstrating none of that, which makes me think that the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John was at that time much farther along than the software. And software is much harder to predict
⏹️ ▶️ John when it will be done, and I feel like it’s not done, and that’s why it’s delayed. And as I said
⏹️ ▶️ John on Upgrade today with Jason, when they announced that the HomePod would be
⏹️ ▶️ John released, and the iMac Pro for that matter, in December, they announced that it’s in September when they
⏹️ ▶️ John had the iPhone event, is that when all
⏹️ ▶️ John happened? No, they announced it in June. Or June, whatever it was. Anyway, when they announced, they announced December then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah, in June, during the WBDC keynote, is the only time we’ve ever heard about the HomePod. And then they
⏹️ ▶️ John Was that WBDC, really?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, wow, anyway. Right. As soon as they announced December, they pre-announced
⏹️ ▶️ John that they would not make the holiday season, right? So now, when they’re delaying it until
⏹️ ▶️ John early 2018, it’s not as if suddenly they’re missing the holiday season. They already pre-announced they were missing the
⏹️ ▶️ John holiday season. This is not a new change. All they have done is crossed it over the year boundary.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s probably because, you know, I think we can make it by the end of the year.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s our stretch goal team. And they didn’t make it, so it gets pushed out, right? But the nice PR side effect
⏹️ ▶️ John is, if they had announced HomePod and said this isn’t coming until 2018, there would be all these groans because
⏹️ ▶️ John you crossed the year boundary. But if you say December 31st, they’re like, oh, but you know, it’ll be here in 2017.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s a better PR story. And then as December approaches and it becomes clear that you’re not gonna do that and people
⏹️ ▶️ John just want to go home and get their vacations, then they can announce that it got delayed. So I think they were shooting
⏹️ ▶️ John for the end of the year and they just didn’t make it and that’s fine. Don’t release a product that’s not done.
⏹️ ▶️ John At no point was this going to be a holiday purchase and it’s still not a holiday purchase, so it’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So one possibly worrying thing about this is that nobody seems that sad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this. Is that a concern?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, what are they gonna be sad about? I want that amazing demo that they, oh, they didn’t show a demo. they showed up playing music and it sounded
⏹️ ▶️ John good. Like we don’t even know what to expect other than it will play your music and some people
⏹️ ▶️ John said it plays music nicely and sounds good, right? There’s no wow factor to
⏹️ ▶️ John this, especially with the Sonos announcements, right? If you want a speaker that sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John good that you can talk to, Sonos sells you that. And this is just like, oh, it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John good and you can talk to it and you can talk to it and make it play Apple music, whereas Sonos will play Apple music but
⏹️ ▶️ John not when you talk to it right now. Like, yeah, this is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to enter a market that it’s currently not in, but if they have something
⏹️ ▶️ John special to show this market, here’s Apple’s entry and this is the special Apple magic.
⏹️ ▶️ John They haven’t shown that yet. So what is there to really get excited about?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. All I know is I feel less and less confident in Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as time goes on. And there was actually a really, really tremendous crossover between Welcome to Macintosh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and 20,000 Hertz, both of which are phenomenal podcasts that you should be listening to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think it was Mark Bramhill of Welcome to Macintosh had said, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was of the opinion that as Siri sounds more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and more lifelike and less robotic, we as human beings,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think I certainly fall into this, are less and less and less tolerant of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it being anything but perfect, because the voice is getting eerily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close to maybe not perfect, but really good. And so you expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the best out of this. And man, I don’t know if it’s me or what, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just feel like Siri has been garbage the last few months.
Follow-up: Chili Cookoff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you know, it isn’t frustrating kids me being vindicated in a whole boy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I vindicated We have some follow-up about the great dust-up of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey November 2017 the chili cook-off the chili cook-off if you recall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had put an Ask ATP question into the show notes that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John had tried to move out of the episode and then obnoxiously I’d pretty much forced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of us to drag it back in and And we quickly discovered that John had built himself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a beautiful mind style conspiracy theory as to what the actual intention of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question’s author was. During the recording of that episode, I tweeted at the author,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whose name is Jonathan Bolling. I said to him, was this an honest question or were you making an in-joke about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John Merlin, etc.? To which he replied at the time, honest question, but I was betting something pretty funny might happen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the answers. I believe we brought all this up during the show. And John said, see? He
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought something funny would happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John He’s setting us up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Margo cut that part out of the episode. Oh, did he?
⏹️ ▶️ John yes. Wait, did I? Yeah, that’s why I put it back in this one, because it was like in the after, after, after,
⏹️ ▶️ John this response did come in. And so it was an honest question, but I was betting something pretty funny might happen. And my reading of that question was,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I was betting something pretty funny might happen. And Casey’s reading is different. But anyway, go ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we got an email from Jonathan. I will not read all of it, but I will read some of it. Episode 248,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chili Cook-Off, turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined. I was just hoping that you would include
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my question, so I had no idea that it would cause a mini Syracuse rant, TM, that would backfire and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make the question stay in the show. Thank you, Casey, for defending my good intentions. I’ve been a big fan of hypercritical,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey build and analyze, and ATP, long-time listener, first-time quote, close to the medal, or quote. John’s suspicions were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unfounded. I do enjoy Reconcilable Differences, which, by the way, is a tremendous program, which you should listen to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I didn’t have anything from Rektifs in mind when I asked the question. I’d be curious to know which episode or episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he thought I was referencing. Casey, I look forward to hearing you point out to John that he was wrong in the next episode’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey follow-up, copyright John Syracuse of 2011. I should note that’s in the email. I also look forward to his continued
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good-humored suspicions with a winky emoji. John, would you like to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey defend yourself at this time?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, uh, there’s not really much to defend here because, well, first of all, I want
⏹️ ▶️ John to say that my hope after last week’s episode was that you two, based
⏹️ ▶️ John on the feedback from everyone else, would come to a better understanding of
⏹️ ▶️ John objection was. Because if you recall… I’m more confused than ever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco help you out. But anyway, I’m saying what my hope
⏹️ ▶️ John was. If you recall, the idea was there was this question in there, I moved it down, I said I don’t like this
⏹️ ▶️ John question, Casey asked me, and then he asked me on the show, why don’t you like this question? And I
⏹️ ▶️ John explained why I don’t like this question. And Casey said that my reasons were dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? So here, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ John John, please tell me why don’t you like this question? I feel like I tried my best to explain why
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like the question. There’s no being right or wrong about why I don’t like the question. But obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John you two have not come to a deeper understanding of why I didn’t like the question. And I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John why this example didn’t occur to me, but I think I have a better example to hopefully bring you to that understanding.
⏹️ ▶️ John If someone had written into the show, Ask ATP, say, should I buy a white car?
⏹️ ▶️ John If Casey said, I don’t like that question, I would understand why he doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like that question. That’s it. Okay. Right. Okay. I would understand.
⏹️ ▶️ John and had never heard the show before except like friends said that we talk about cars sometime
⏹️ ▶️ John and was legitimately thinking about buying a white car and you know, oh, they talk about cars all the time and maybe in
⏹️ ▶️ John the after show, they’ll talk about white cars maybe I’ll just ask them, should I buy a white car? Cause you know, they’re hard to keep clean and so on and so forth, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Still, still, if you said, I don’t like that question I would say, I understand why you don’t like that question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? And if that person ordered it and said I don’t know what this thing you’re talking about the white cars, I just figured I heard you guys talk about cars
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes I’m thinking of getting one and white is hard to keep clean and stuff I figured you’d have an opinion even if they were 100% honest
⏹️ ▶️ John I would still understand why you don’t like that question and I wouldn’t say it was a conspiracy theory now imagine further still Then
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco and I said Casey. I don’t know what you’re talking about. This person’s just asking about white cars I have
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no idea of this larger context that you’re trying to refer to white cars Because you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John because this was like seven years in the future and we didn’t remember this white car gag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I tricked I assure you I will never be allowed to forget the white car gag, but I’m with you in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey principle I’m with you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John in principle.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the situation I find myself in because believe me, the close to the metal thing was as real as the
⏹️ ▶️ John white car as evidenced by all the people who wrote in to say that person is 100% trolling and John is right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they don’t know what’s in this person’s heart any more than I do, right? But that it is legitimately a thing as
⏹️ ▶️ John much a thing as white cars were, and yet you two have no recollection of it. And this person claims
⏹️ ▶️ John to have no recollection of it, despite listening all the way back to hypercritical, which is where this is from, not Reconcilable Differences.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, all this is to say, I hope you now understand where I was coming from, and I
⏹️ ▶️ John hope you can use the white car example as instructive to say, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you wouldn’t mind that question, maybe you would, but all I’m saying is if you said you didn’t like it, I would understand why,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think Marco would too, because we both have the shared context. Without the shared context,
⏹️ ▶️ John would you seem like a conspiracy theory person? What is this about white cars? What are you We’ve been talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey imagine how frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you to have to explain to me and Marco What the deal with the white car thing is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I? Do think okay. I am laughing, but I do think I understand your point better I think the difference for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me and we can move on but the difference for me Is that I it the white car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing is for better or worse like the defining gag about me It’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that and who the hell’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you’re so lucky. Don’t we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, two, but I’m with you again. I’m with you. What’s the second one water on the computer? No. Well, okay three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I said who the hell’s Casey in the computer? Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the computer I see
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d forgotten about that when you’d have to re-explain that context and I would say you’re crazy. Everyone knows who you are fine But my point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there are a handful of things
⏹️ ▶️ John that I feel like all of us, upon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hearing them, would say, yes, of course, who the hell is Casey? I remember and this one to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my eyes anyway was way more esoteric in in way
⏹️ ▶️ John older I mean, it’s older like hyper it was we traced it back. It was like episode 50 of hypercritical
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s like six years ago. So, you know, I guess you can feel forgiven for completely forgetting about it I was just very surprised
⏹️ ▶️ John that neither one of you could even vaguely remember that it was a thing and we’re just starting from Whole cloth as if I was just making this up.
⏹️ ▶️ John I assure you I am NOT
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no I never really thought you were making it up It just seemed it seemed kind of bananas to me that you were so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unequivocally convinced that this was that this was trolling
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought you would remember I thought I mean, obviously it’s not as recent as a white car But I thought one or
⏹️ ▶️ John both of you would certainly remember it and either way by the way I will point out like at the end of this thing. I also look forward to
⏹️ ▶️ John John’s, you know continued good humorous suspicions I mean, obviously if someone was trolling the trolley
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to do is not to tell you they’re trolling
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m just saying there
⏹️ ▶️ John people on the internet like it’s it’s really easy to type words into a text box But I’m I’m sure this person is being honest
⏹️ ▶️ John and like you two has just completely forgotten about this from the hypercritical days because that was a long time ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although to be honest, so when did we record neutral that that started in January of 13? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, that’s about right. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost five years ago and hypercritical was six or seven years ago. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, the white car thing is far closer to hypercritical than it is to us today. You know what I mean? Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is weird, right? Because I feel like that was yesterday in so many ways. Anyway, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was I was, I was very punchy when we recorded, but I was never like genuinely upset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at you. I just thought you were being utterly preposterous. Preposterous.
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t. That’s what I’m getting at. But just because you don’t have the context doesn’t mean there isn’t a context. And it’s and it’s completely
⏹️ ▶️ John irrelevant whether he was being honest or not. That’s what I was trying to get at with the white car thing, because legit, someone could listen to the show. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a real question that people ask. Should I get a white car? I’ve had that question asked to me before I even came in the show. But it would be a
⏹️ ▶️ John hell of a coincidence if they asked that on AskATP, wouldn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why would anybody ask if they want to get a white car or not?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, exactly. Why would they ask? I mean, but why would they ask at ATP? Maybe it’s just a legit, honest question,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would understand if Casey gave it a little bit of side eye and maybe said, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John picking questions, maybe I’m not going to pick that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it seems to me that white cars just happen to Casey. He never has to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey consider them. That’s true. See? Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ve owned like 17 white cars. Have you ever had to ask anybody if you should get a white car or not?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never asked anyone if I should, but
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t seem like he had a choice, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of them, one of them was a choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just fall from from the sky into your driveway, and then their engines break.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you just dub in like the first 15 minutes of the first neutral where we discuss this one of them was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely unequivocally my choice. I specifically requested white for one every other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one happened to me. I’m sticking with
⏹️ ▶️ John and for the record, I’m pretty sure Marcos on the only one. He obviously originated the white
⏹️ ▶️ John car thing. And And I think he’s the only one who really cares. My first car was a white car too. And I think all I said on Neutral was
⏹️ ▶️ John that if you have a really nicely shaped car, then you can get it in a white, but if your car is ugly, don’t get it in white because it highlights
⏹️ ▶️ John how badly shaped it is. But beyond that, I have no objections to white cars.
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#askatp: Qi and battery health
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of Ask ATP, let’s just mosey right on in. Shane Buzlow writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you think using Qi chargers everywhere and topping off the iPhone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey batteries all the time will impact battery health? I have no idea, but I’ve had the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I think this is probably similar to lots of different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery health questions and theories and best practices that we’ve heard over the years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with computers. There is probably some truth to the fact that charging lithium batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time does actually shorten their lifespan if they’re not kept within their ideal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long-term charging health range, which is usually not fully charged. Usually it’s closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to middle of the battery charge. If you want a lithium battery to last as long as possible, keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the charge level somewhere near the middle or something in some kind of range near the middle and that tends to keep them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lasting longer. The reason I added this, what I thought was kind of worth talking about is like I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like with your phone that you’re using every day, that you are charging every night, then you are using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it throughout the day, you know you’re putting like a good part of a full cycle on the battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every day, sometimes more if you use it heavily. I feel like your battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not going to be very useful for more than about two years, maybe three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years if you’re more gentle on it. But no matter what you do, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really hard on a battery. To be used, to be basically cycled, full cycle meaning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like full charge to nearly empty, to be going through a full cycle almost every day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re gonna wear out that battery pretty much no matter what you do. And so the alternative, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topping it off on these little chargers all over your house and car and workplace all the time, I don’t think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that much worse. You know, it might actually be better even. Like, what’s worse for a lithium-ion battery?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Keeping it at a full charge for a day or going through a full cycle? I don’t know. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably not gonna be that different. Either way, you’re using it heavily. You know, like, if you have a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you use it on battery for its full range every day, that’s gonna do the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing to the laptop. If you keep it plugged in all the time, that’s gonna be better for it, But, you know, again, like maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that much better because of the full charge being a bad thing. So, I think the answer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here is, keeping them uncharged all the time will probably impact battery health,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the alternative would probably impact it more. And in the grand scheme of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone battery, no matter what you do, is gonna have a not that useful amount of charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after two or three years, no matter what you do.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are other factors here as well that make it, and I don’t know what the answer is, it just muddies the water
⏹️ ▶️ John even more of whether this is better, worse, or the same. But to start, like I
⏹️ ▶️ John bet people are not going to buy such a tremendous number of Qi chargers that they are now charging
⏹️ ▶️ John their phone appreciably more than they used to, if only because Qi chargers charge your phone so much
⏹️ ▶️ John more slowly. And one of the things that shortens battery life is really fast charging. So if you have a big iPad charger
⏹️ ▶️ John at your desk that you plug your thing into to get as much use as possible when you’re at your desk, versus putting it on a Qi
⏹️ ▶️ John charger that charges much more slowly the slower one is going to be kinder on your battery and if you
⏹️ ▶️ John but it won’t charge as much obviously in the same amount of time but if you have a bunch of charges around the house what you’re instead doing
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of charging very quickly in one location you’re charging more slowly in multiple locations which again I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John better for the battery so there’s you know you’d really need to come up with an exact
⏹️ ▶️ John regime of where you’re going to be and what you’re going to charge to compare exactly this pattern
⏹️ ▶️ John of use to exactly this pattern of use. But in general, I would say, don’t worry about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t don’t worry about the battery life being affected because there are just so many variables. And depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on how they’re each weighted in this giant equation, you can get better worse at the same battery life. But like Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John said, either way, if you try, if you use your phone the same amount
⏹️ ▶️ John every day, that’s in the end, you’re using your phone that amount, it’s got two or three years of that
⏹️ ▶️ John many cycles, even if you don’t cycle the way two or three years of just that much putting energy into the battery and
⏹️ ▶️ John taking energy out, even if you always do it in the fat part of the curve where it’s all good, your battery is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot worse than it was when you bought it and you’re probably going to want a new phone and that’s just the way things are.
#askatp: AirPower Apple TV remote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, JT would like to know, what are your thoughts and feelings on Apple TV remote redesigned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for AirPower and to fix other issues?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, a lot of people have been writing in about, what about this for AirPower? What about that for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPower? I don’t get it. Like I think I said this last episode, but I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be very surprised if anything else gets AirPower support, except maybe the pencil
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anytime soon. I don’t think this is going to be like the catch-all, you know, cover all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your desks and all of your, you know, uh, kitchen counters and air power sort of thing. I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is only going to be for iOS devices and you know, the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, and, and I guess watchOS is strictly speaking a different OS, but you know what I mean? Like, I don’t think it’s going to be keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and mouse and Apple TV remote and any of those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John things. And Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey book. In Mac book. Yeah, exactly. And especially like the Apple TV remote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve charged that thing probably four times or feels like I’ve charged it four times in the year I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I mean, that may not be accurate, but my point is just, it almost never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needs a charge. Same with my keyboards and my mice, mouses, mices. They
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost never need a charge. So what are you really solving if it’s at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worst a momentary inconvenience once a quarter or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that? But I don’t know. What do you think, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pretty much the same. I mean, I have not—you know, we use our Apple TV almost every day, at least we did before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we got stuck in Stardew Valley. I think I’ve charged it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe three times. It’s not a high drain device. So the need to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charging especially convenient is not that high. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that tends to be a different place in your house or your office or you might not have one in your office and you tend not to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco travel with it. So if the benefit of an air power mat is like the thing that you stick on your nightstand table that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you put all your stuff on at night, well, you’re probably not going to have your Apple TV remote in your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bedroom if your Apple TV is not there. Similarly, if the appeal of this thing ends up being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s really convenient while traveling, you’re probably not going to travel with your Apple TV remote either. And if you do, you probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t need to charge it on the trip. So it’s a nice theory, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think it matters that much. The Apple TV remote has so many other problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they refuse to address. So if they’re not even going to bother making it usable while it’s charged,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they’re going to care that much that it’s slightly inconvenient to charge it when you do
⏹️ ▶️ John I frequently forget that the Apple TV remote has a battery. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because it’s so small
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not like there’s a battery door. And I’m not sure if I have ever charged
⏹️ ▶️ John my Apple. I think I replaced my Apple TV before I charged the battery on it. It lasts…
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t use it as much as Marco, obviously. lasts a really really long time although I have two quick Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV remote stories. The last time I lost it I’m always losing the Apple TV remote because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s skinny and it goes down couch cushion and stuff like that. You know my kids use it and so it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like who knows but like they carry it into the kitchen they you know they it’s in the bathroom who knows where they’re taking this remote
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just everywhere right and there’s no as far as I’m aware please tell me if I’m wrong there’s no like find your remote function where
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make it make a beeping sound I would love that that they that’s a feature they should add but anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John I lost my remote and I thought like this is it I’ve well and truly lost
⏹️ ▶️ John it I know I was thinking like boy I’m glad they reduced the price of $60 down from 80 because I’m gonna have to buy another remote
⏹️ ▶️ John and even though you got the remote on your iOS device where you can use that instead of the thing as far as I’m aware you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t can you wake your thing from sleep with that I don’t know I didn’t try it but I was like well
⏹️ ▶️ John like do I think I can’t use my Apple TV until I get a replacement remote because I don’t think you can wake the little
⏹️ ▶️ John black cube from sleep without the real remote.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John If you try to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey airplay to it, I believe it’ll wake itself
⏹️ ▶️ John up. Oh yeah, that’s a good, that’s a good, yeah. I was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like… I would guess the remote app would let you do it, but I can’t, I haven’t tried it, so I don’t know one way or the other, but I can tell you I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey airplay to it from time to time and that will wake it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, anyway, I was halfway through that thought when I looked up at my little black thing and the little
⏹️ ▶️ John white light was on. So like, you know, I don’t have to wake it up. It’s already awake.” And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John like, but how can it already be awake? I’ve been looking for this remote for 15 minutes and I know it goes to sleep, like no one
⏹️ ▶️ John has been in this room for a while. And based on that information, I realized I must be sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John on the remote somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what’s waking the thing up. And sure enough, I took yet another run at the couch cushions and the little
⏹️ ▶️ John things that are between them. It’s just like a sleeper sofa or whatever. And eventually I found the remote somewhere underneath my
⏹️ ▶️ John butt where I was squishing it and turning it on. story is about someone had realized there
⏹️ ▶️ John was a bunch of iTunes purchases going through where they’d purchased like every episode of Seinfeld and a bunch of TV series
⏹️ ▶️ John and they were you know was like a husband and wife and they were asking each other did you buy these did you buy these things turns out it was
⏹️ ▶️ John the cat the cat would lay on top of the remote and buy things for them on the turned off television
⏹️ ▶️ John through their Apple TV remote so I don’t know if that makes us a better motor a good remote it’s bad
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s lost easily it’s probably bad because a cat can buy
⏹️ ▶️ John things but maybe not like cats That’s a very devious.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. All right. Bye.
#askatp: Apple frameworks vs. apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Kent Acungor writes, how can Apple do such amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complicated things with software like face detection and AR, yet still get so many simple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things consistently wrong, like one plus one or one plus two plus three on the iOS calculator and UI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bugs related to device orientation, such as the attached, we’ll put a link in the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s a picture of what appears to be the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or iPad, I think phone in portrait mode, yet the volume indicator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is shown in landscape. Whoops. With regard to rotation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can say that rotation is a pain in the butt. Any iOS developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will tell you that. So that I give them a buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. Although it does seem that there are a lot more rotation bugs in iOS 11 than there were before.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a lot more everything bugs in iOS 11.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s a fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point. It’s been a while. But yeah, you’re right. I don’t have a good answer for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess to some degree it’s easy to get amazed by the new and shiny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s hard to build software reliably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and predictably. That’s why agile software development became
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a thing, was it was an attempt to be better about building, be better about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey predicting when software would be complete, right? And the whole shtick of it was that you wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be able to predict the future based on your performance in the past, rather than, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I should be able to get that done in two weeks. You can look at your past history and say, no, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’ll take you a month and a half. And, you know, all of the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around enterprise-level software development, which I know Marco doesn’t understand, but John and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do. It’s hard. It’s hard work. It’s hard to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the balance between how many unit tests you should write and how many you shouldn’t and what your continuous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey integration story is. All of this stuff is hard, and to most people, it’s not very sexy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so what is sexy? Face detection. What is sexy? Augmented reality. What’s not sexy?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jenkins. So it’s understandable, if not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excusable, that this would be the case. But I don’t know, John, as my fellow boring old man when it comes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to writing software, how do you describe this?
⏹️ ▶️ John John Greenewald I’m not sure we need to bring software methodologies and software in general into it, even if they weren’t talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about software, even if this was talking about like, you know, just to do car analogies, because that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing we go to, like, how can they get this amazing, you know, engine, new engine technology
⏹️ ▶️ John working, but their climate controls suck. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just human nature and priorities. And with anything where you, especially in a business like Apple’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re, not that it’s a hit-driven business, but that you’re only as
⏹️ ▶️ John good as your last success, things like the calculator, the iOS calculator bug,
⏹️ ▶️ John where some animations in the calculator caused it to be less responsive, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John How many people are scrutinizing how good the calculator is from release to release? not a headlining feature. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are not a lot of resources put towards the calculator when it was first made. There was probably more than there are now,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there is an inclination in companies that have to make money to say we’ll put time and
⏹️ ▶️ John resources and people into this thing because it’s the thing that we need. And then when we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John done with it, we’ll be like, great, we did that. What’s the next thing? Move on to the next thing, right? And take people off
⏹️ ▶️ John of that and say those people are working on it and you have to leave somebody there. But there’s some poor maintenance engineer responsible for the
⏹️ ▶️ John calculator and seven other like neglected iOS applications. And,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, people are human and you don’t notice that maybe the animations you’re adding are making the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John less responsive because like, you know, do you have a test where something
⏹️ ▶️ John some automated thing presses the buttons really fast and makes it you know, it’s just it’s just less important. It’s lower
⏹️ ▶️ John priority, there are fewer people on it. And that’s just the nature of the nature of humans, the nature
⏹️ ▶️ John of work and the nature of of a business. So many, many things are explicable by the
⏹️ ▶️ John boring answer that, you know, that we
⏹️ ▶️ John did that, and we can’t afford to leave our very best engineers maintain
⏹️ ▶️ John the calculator for the rest of their careers, because they’re not going to like that, and they’re going to leave the company.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it wouldn’t be efficient uses of our resources. So we get our other best people working on the next hard problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything else gets less priority. And because humans are humans sometimes those things mess up
⏹️ ▶️ John everything after that that’s like the easy thing to explain everything after that like why is iOS 11 have more bugs does it seem
⏹️ ▶️ John like it actually has more bugs is your perception different than their metrics are they measuring the wrong thing all the way
⏹️ ▶️ John down to software is hard and software methodologies and all that stuff so from the outside it
⏹️ ▶️ John might seem inexplicable but as Casey I think was trying to express
⏹️ ▶️ John software in any large enterprise including making a a car or any sort of thing is much more complicated than you
⏹️ ▶️ John think it is as a consumer of that thing. And complicated systems are hard
⏹️ ▶️ John to predict and hard to manage. And you know, that’s it. There’s no,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s not it’s not that Apple is being mean or it’s still people who don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing. Nobody knows what they’re doing. There are there are no adults. There is no silver bullet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has for a very long time shown that they are not very good at multitasking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that whatever is the current hotness gets all the attention and whatever isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets either complete neglect or at best like drive-by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates where they like you know like like disk utility on Mac OS is like a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco example of it where like you know the entire Mac is pretty neglected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of the time and when things do get updated on the Mac they tend to get updated in these drive-by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fashions where like someone seems to be assigned like hey wait rewrite this whole thing that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app that nobody was really needed to be rewritten rewrite it all and then they’re given enough time to rush together
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an almost complete version and then it ships and then it seems like no one’s allowed to fix any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bugs in it ever again or they’re not on the project anymore or they don’t have time or they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assigned to other things and have moved on. And so things get updated or created
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from scratch on these low in these low priority areas. And then whatever is released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like 1.0 which was probably rushed to meet a very tight deadline,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those bugs basically stick around for a very long time or forever. Anything that is not the current hotness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that tends to be the case in Apple. As John said there are lots of good reasons for that involving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money and priorities. I think Apple standards should be higher.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Apple standards are higher than average in most other ways. I think their standards for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how to deal with their not as quite high priority products should be also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similarly high, but they’re not and that’s not a new thing. Even, you know, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that isn’t even Tim Cook thing. Like even under Steve, that was always the case. More like whatever was was not the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hotness got pretty badly neglected. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s also a secondary divide here where Apple’s frameworks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have almost always been really really good. Like in the entire era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of modern Apple, I don’t know what it was like before you know before I was 10, but like in the entire era of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern Apple, the frameworks have always been amazing. You know things like you know the AR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kit, you know things like core image, core audio, foundation, like all that stuff. They make amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frameworks and that stuff has been solid pretty much, you know, the vast majority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time and very advanced. The applications that Apple ships with the OS and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the built on top of that on top of the frameworks have had a much spottier past and a much spottier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco record. The applications definitely seem like a lower priority for them. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also seems like an area where in recent years applications have struggled way more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the foundation stuff. So it might just be Apple is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has not figured out how to manage this well. It’s certainly it’s certainly that that’s what the results seem to indicate.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s like that for everybody. Like there is no you can’t just say, oh, let’s keep all the best people working on the
⏹️ ▶️ John things that they originally create because they don’t want to. And now it’s a retention issue. Like they don’t want to work forever
⏹️ ▶️ John on this one thing they help create. They want to move on to the next thing because they’re smart, ambitious people. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t let them, you know, then you’ll have a retention problem. And if you
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you, you know, it’s a hyper competitive world where everyone is scrutinizing what Apple does
⏹️ ▶️ John so closely that if they actually did leave significant sort of standing armies
⏹️ ▶️ John attached to everything they ever made to make sure that the thing that everything they make is continuously improved and
⏹️ ▶️ John maintained, um, that’s an inefficient use of resources. Like, why are you spending all this
⏹️ ▶️ John money? Why are your margins going down? Oh, we, we needed to leave a team of seven on the calculator forever
⏹️ ▶️ John every piece of software we ever make it’s like what isn’t the calculator done what needs to be updated on it’s like well
⏹️ ▶️ John if we just leave one person on it then there’s a chance that that one person can make a silly mistake
⏹️ ▶️ John and make us look bad and so everything has to be higher quality so we’ll leave you know we’ll leave this team of seven on
⏹️ ▶️ John calculator and they and no matter what team of seven you live in calculate they won’t want to do it and like
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of these things you feel like they’re a training program for uh less experienced people
⏹️ ▶️ John like before you get to be in the big show and you know work on a super important new feature in UI kit
⏹️ ▶️ John or work on a major new feature in the OS maybe you have to maintain disk utility for a few years and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John how you learn right like there’s no there’s no easy solution people are not
⏹️ ▶️ John interchangeable cogs programming is a complicated endeavor and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t actually have unlimited money and does actually have people scrutinizing every
⏹️ ▶️ John descent that it spends and telling them that they should have margins that are higher than
⏹️ ▶️ John they do, so you know, I don’t know, there’s, you know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a spectrum. It’s not as if saying, oh, Apple, everything Apple’s doing, they’re doing as well as they can. They can and should adjust
⏹️ ▶️ John things, right? They can and should pay more attention to things that, you know, they shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John let as much slip as they do, and they should be, not be pennywise, pound foolish,
⏹️ ▶️ John where, oh, we saved a couple of bucks here by moving some people around. What is, what are potential downsides
⏹️ ▶️ John for the image of the company? All the way up to what are the potential downsides if we
⏹️ ▶️ John invest a lot in a feature and spend a lot of time and energy on it and it doesn’t turn out that well?
⏹️ ▶️ John How do we fix that? Insert your favorite feature there, whether it be the touch bar or the new keyboard reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John or any other thing where they really did dedicate a lot of resources and it doesn’t turn
⏹️ ▶️ John out as well as they wanted. Software is hard. Life is hard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think there’s also a middle ground here. The impression I have gotten from reports from people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within over the last many years, this seems to always be a consistent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco story that we hear from people at Apple, is that it’s not like there were seven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people on the calculator team and they reduced it down or they couldn’t have those people forever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or that it was done. None of those things were true. What was probably true is the calculator had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero people working on it for a very long time. Then, when a new system design or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style or marketing-heavy feature was being added to iOS or new hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody who was already very busy was tasked with updating this app along with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably, as you mentioned, probably like seven other apps to the new animation style or the new design style
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or take advantage of the new feature of the phone or just the new size of these phones or whatever else. That was someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job. They had enough time to do a two-thirds complete job because they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to rush to meet the deadline for when this OS and phone shipped. And then after it shipped,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the staff was returned back to zero people. So we have heard that story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many times from people inside. So it isn’t that things are just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done and that the market’s demanding that they or that all of a sudden they’re undone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And following marketing features, they have to keep things updated and they keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly very very small staffs available to do things that aren’t high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco priority apps or features or platforms like the calculator app or like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac. And then as soon as that thing is done,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the budget of time allocation that’s available to fix bugs in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it literally drops to zero. Not some, zero.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is a management problem. That needs to be adjusted. They’re perverse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incentives, too. And yeah, and we’ve heard that, too. We’ve heard a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reports also from people that one of the issues that causes this kind of thing, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leads to this kind of thing, is the incentive structure in the company seemingly favors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rewriting large projects or being on high profile platforms and doesn’t favor doing more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boring things that still need to be done. And that’s also a management problem. Like that’s like they need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find ways to adjust their internal structures and policies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and workflows and incentives to make high quality platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and apps happen more often than they do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the incentive that I was thinking of was if you’re on if you’re tasked
⏹️ ▶️ John with doing something with calculator or if you’re one person who’s responsible for seven applications and the max
⏹️ ▶️ John utility folder or something, you’re not particularly incentivized
⏹️ ▶️ John to slowly make the thing better by adding a feature here and a feature there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because like, you know, take the terminal, for example, terminal, it only always amazes me when the terminal gets any features,
⏹️ ▶️ John because the downsides are big. you mess up the terminal, it’s a thing that a lot of people use, and they’re going to yell at you.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if terminal is working fine, like why add any minor features to it? Because all you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John is adding a new more bug surface. Like, Oh, I added a silly feature
⏹️ ▶️ John to terminal and now I have 17 bug reports on it and I don’t have any time to work on it because I’m off doing other things now
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m the one person who’s responsible for terminal and seven other applications. I’m not motivated to add features
⏹️ ▶️ John to terminal and justify them and say, well, I had to spend engineering time on them. Because every feature
⏹️ ▶️ John I add is a new thing that people can file bugs against. And if you know, if we just leave it the way it is, we’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John our existing bug backlog that we’re probably just ignoring forever if we haven’t fixed it by now. And there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John new to do. And what you were getting as the you know, being on the glory projects like no one ever,
⏹️ ▶️ John no no one says, wow, this guy’s great. He’s slowly improved the terminal over the course of eight years and has
⏹️ ▶️ John had very few bugs and every new feature that he added versus this person worked on worked on the first version of watch kit,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? One of those probably helps your career inside Apple more than the other. But from the outside
⏹️ ▶️ John perspective, especially if you never buy a watch, I would love a slowly improving terminal that had like the
⏹️ ▶️ John motivated indie developers working on it who who like terminal was their entire livelihood and they had that kind of motivation.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that doesn’t exist inside Apple. No one inside Apple is going to work on terminal the same
⏹️ ▶️ John way like that the I term authors are going to work on their thing as if their entirely livelihood depends on
⏹️ ▶️ John constantly improving and maintaining the terminal application, which you know is a shame, but
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s that’s not really I don’t know. Everyone always says I want to make it like a
⏹️ ▶️ John startup inside a big company, but I’ve never seen that done successfully.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I mean, the thing of it is, is that my limited understanding of what the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey culture is like within Apple is that they still fancy themselves the plucky upstart
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they’re They’re not. They’re just not. And how do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you maintain—and both of you guys have said this—how do you maintain any sort of talent at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the company when part of being good at what you do is being good at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the boring stuff? And it’s just, it’s hard.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So last year, I’m pretty sure single handedly Marco came up with a with a genuinely brilliant idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do a little bit of a Thanksgiving special and ask and have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each of us describe what tech stuff we’re thankful for this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I really, really loved how that turned out, and so did a lot of listeners. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, Marco, you’re good enough to remember to talk about it again this year. So, Marco, what tech
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff are you thankful for this year?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to keep the list pretty short this year. We’re running low on time. But we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John only got four items, but there’s a tie for number three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done, sir. Yeah, I actually do it for items. So one of them is my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonderful beloved 2015 MacBook Pro. We will get to that in more detail later. Oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I you know look. I just love it. I wrote a whole blog post, but how much I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s great and it’s it is exactly what tech should be, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just works. It delights me and I don’t really have to think about it if I don’t want to. It just works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also in the world of Apple hardware I am incredibly happy with the 10.5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch iPad Pro and the smart keyboard that I bought with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know I don’t use my iPad for very complicated things but I do use it frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every day I use it. It’s always in the kitchen or on the table or on the couch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and every day I use it to not only play podcasts in the kitchen and dining area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then I will often then use it as my couch browsing device and things like that and it’s just very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pleasant to use. I’m not an iPad power user by any means I still bring a laptop when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working but when I’m doing anything that’s not really work especially around the house the iPad is wonderful and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 10.5 inch was such a great update in so many ways the The screen size is great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and especially once you see it next to a 9.7, again, you realize quite how much of an improvement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was. It seemed like a pretty small improvement at the time, but it’s really nice. So it’s a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. I always have it propped up in the smart keyboard, so text entry is nice and fast on it if I need that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s just, it’s great. I’m very, very happy with my iPad Pro 10.5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Third, I will add the general category of power and charging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gear by Anker. This is, you know, it’s not that new of an opinion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like Anker gear. The world of dealing with our tech these days, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS devices with lightning ports and everything else, things become a lot more convenient and easier and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more pleasant when you can get plentiful charging and powering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gear for not that much money and that’s pretty high quality. And Anker is not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only brand that does this, but I think they are the brand that does the most of it, and the most consistently. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very happy with Anchor Gear, both the multi-USB port wall chargers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their standalone batteries are also great, and of course, their heavy-duty braided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cables, lightning cables are great, and they cost so little, relatively speaking, that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can have a bunch of them, and you can put them all over your house, you can carry extras around in bags, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can set up different charging stations in different rooms in different places, like your office and your house and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your car, It’s just really, really nice to have all that stuff become inexpensive and good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It really makes our digital lives with all these charging things a lot easier. And finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco special honorable mention to everything I have ever bought from the company Sound Devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is very specialized. If you are not a sound or video pro, you probably have never heard of this company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you probably shouldn’t ever hear about this company. But if you work with sound or video gear, well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t used their video stuff, if work with sound gear at all. The devices by Sound Devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not cheap at all, but this is truly pro gear. I use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a USB pre 2 for recording here, for our live show, and for my increasing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live and multi-port needs. I recently splurged and bought one of their 6 series mixers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their stuff is just so damn good and it It just works. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is true pro gear and it’s total overkill for most podcasters. But it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exact definition of like if you have a problem and you are willing to just throw some money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at it to make that problem completely go away, sound devices. Trust
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. Anyway, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we can go in either surname or age order. Either way, that makes me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next. And so I will run through my list. I will try to do this as quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as possible. Uh, in no particular order, uh, AirPods, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking love my AirPods. And I was just thinking a couple hours ago about how,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as far as I can tell, I haven’t noticed any particular degradation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in battery quality, despite the fact that these things have been in my ears for a probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey concerning amount of time, particularly during the work week. And I think that’s partially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because anytime I take them out of my ears, they’re immediately charging So although I said no particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order I lied because that is definitely number one the remainder However is not in any particular order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car play believe it or not in this surprises even me It’s got a lot of problems. It is not perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by any stretch, but it is very very nice and I like that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can take pretty much any iOS device plug it into Aaron’s car and and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immediately I have the entire device’s experience in her center
⏹️ ▶️ Casey console. So that’s really convenient because my phone isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey paired to her car via Bluetooth, but I can try to find an address
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to somewhere in Apple Maps, and get the directions ready to go, plug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my phone, and suddenly she’s got my navigation on her car, which is super cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe in laptops that were built in this century, so I love my MacBook Adorable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again, it’s got problems, but I love it. And the problems it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has— It’s slower than my ancient laptop by quite a margin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s one of the problems, coincidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I mean, it is not perfect. And as I think I’ve said many times in the past,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if this was my only computer, I’m not sure I would have such fond feelings for it. But in the same way you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey such fond feelings for your 10-inch iPad Pro, I have tremendously fond feelings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for this MacBook Adorable because it is, to me anyway, the ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey travel computer. And that can mean the couch or it can mean a cross-country trip. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just love this thing. Also on the list,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the process of filming the Alfa Romeo video, which I have a first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey draft complete and I’m now refining it. Anyway, in the process of filming that I borrowed a GoPro from work,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I think I’ve mentioned in the past, uh, it turns out GoPros are really cool. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re in a situation where you want to have a pretty decent camera that if for some reason it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey broke, you wouldn’t be financially ruined and you want to do something with that camera, like mount it to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the outside of a car or put it somewhere there that’s, there’s not a lot of room. The GoPros
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are really, really cool. very much a niche use case, but man are they a great,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like your sound devices, right? You know, it’s a very niche thing, but holy cow does it work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out well for those little niches. And finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love my LTE Apple Watch. I had already started taking fitness a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seriously before my LTE Apple Watch, but it is much more pleasurable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go for a run without having to carry anything on my person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and still know that I can call for help, if God forbid something really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad happened. And so I am super thankful for my Apple Watch, even though it is about 50%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more expensive on a monthly basis than it should be. Yeah, maybe even 100. That’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, that’s my list.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t actually make a list, but I can go off the top of my head.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You didn’t prepare for the show?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, Casey stole my first one with AirPods. My main problem with all these
⏹️ ▶️ John things is I can never remember what happened this year. Like it’s this you know, what things you’re thankful for this year was where
⏹️ ▶️ John parts this year? I don’t even know. But since Casey listed them, I’m going to say they were. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they they were since Thanksgiving. All right. So just you just see what I’m saying. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I received mine, I think, late, late, late December. And so I’m counting it as a Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, certainly for most people, they were
⏹️ ▶️ John this year. Yeah, so they have definitely just changed. I think I was thinking about this the other day just
⏹️ ▶️ John how much they’ve changed my life because I’m constantly listening to podcasts inside and
⏹️ ▶️ John outside of the house. And maybe it’s not as big a deal. I know the air
⏹️ ▶️ John pods. Everybody likes them. Like if you ask someone who has them, oh, they’re great or whatever. But for me, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a little bit of extra attraction to them because I don’t know how to describe this, but I’m the kind of person.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m one of those people who’s like disturbed by disorder. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I described it to Merlin once where like there was some pictures on the internet that show like a bunch of pencils all lined up but one
⏹️ ▶️ John pencil is poking out right or like just things that are a bunch of physical objects that look
⏹️ ▶️ John like they you know they could be nicely arranged but there’s just something wrong with them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Aaron’s kryptonite.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah and whatever that is people say OCD but that is an incorrect use of that term it’s not what
⏹️ ▶️ John it is at all that’s a whole different thing but But if you’re just generally like disturbed by disorder
⏹️ ▶️ John and headphone cords for me are were always a big source of disorder. They’re tangled
⏹️ ▶️ John in your pockets. You have all these techniques for coiling them. They get caught on things. I think as I tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the other tweets that I think back on every time this happens to me, nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John makes me more instantly enraged than having my headphones yanked out of my ears that
⏹️ ▶️ John just makes me want to immediately kill right and
⏹️ ▶️ John is you’re going through a door and your headphone cord gets caught on something and the earbud is yanked out of your ears.
⏹️ ▶️ John The worst right? And it’s not a big deal like whatever, oh, the cords bother you. Oh, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John crippling. You know, it really is ruining your day that you have cords. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was always
⏹️ ▶️ John there. And I’m the type of person who is bothered by this kind of disorder who is bothered by having to deal with it and
⏹️ ▶️ John having to have all these techniques for dealing with it and having to be aware of it and being careful with it and threading the cords through my clothes and
⏹️ ▶️ John doing all of this stuff. AirPods get rid of all of that. There is
⏹️ ▶️ John no more cord. And despite being annoyed by not being able to change the volume and all
⏹️ ▶️ John the other things and having to deal with the charging and all the other stuff, boy, they have really just
⏹️ ▶️ John ambiently increased my quality of life by a tiny amount, but that tiny amount is spread through like the whole day. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I really love them. Gonna give a slot to the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV, the new Apple TV, now that the beta OS does the frame matching
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. mostly because I hadn’t realized how much I had written off the Apple TV as sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John a video file, audio file, like whatever, like a sort of a device in which I can indulge
⏹️ ▶️ John my love of beautiful movies and stuff is like, yeah, that’s the thing that we use it to watch TV
⏹️ ▶️ John shows and the kids play with it. But that’s outside the realm of my sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John TV nerd experience. But suddenly, it’s right back in now. Now it’s back in the mix, because now it can actually
⏹️ ▶️ John show things at the the correct frame rate and has HDR support and it’s 4K and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John back on the board. And so I’m excited by that because I never really disliked the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV and I dreaded having to go to a geekier device like, oh, build your own Raspberry Pi
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco your own thing or
⏹️ ▶️ John use the Nvidia shield and don’t worry, you know, like I didn’t want to deal
⏹️ ▶️ John with all that. And so I was just, you know, stuck with my plastic Blu-ray discs and my TV and everything. But now
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m more optimistic about the future of the Apple TV in my life, not just as a thing that my kids used to
⏹️ ▶️ John watch stuff sometimes. What was my third one? Oh yeah, my camera
⏹️ ▶️ John which I don’t think was this year either, but going through my pictures, I’ve been printing
⏹️ ▶️ John books from the Apple photo book thing, and so I’ve been going through a lot of old pictures and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s so clear where the dividing line is between my old cameras and my new one which
⏹️ ▶️ John is the Sony a6300. Not that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the world’s best camera, but it was a a significant leap in image quality and sensor size over
⏹️ ▶️ John my old super zoom cameras. And I notice it when I’m going through the pictures and I’m much happier with the pictures I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John taking with my new camera than I was my old one. So I got some good ones with the old one too, but I see the
⏹️ ▶️ John difference. And now of course I wish I could go back in time and you know, take, take pictures of my
⏹️ ▶️ John son who was born 13 years ago with a camera from 2017. That’s not the way the world works.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, but I really, I really do enjoy my camera and and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s making me think that maybe I’ll wait for Arco’s review of
⏹️ ▶️ John the bigger Sony, that maybe I should start cranking up the size of the camera I’m willing to carry,
⏹️ ▶️ John just to see if I can go all the way up to a larger sensor size
⏹️ ▶️ John and make it worthwhile. But anyway, I really enjoy my camera. And let’s see, the final thing I guess I have to give
⏹️ ▶️ John a shout out to the Mac Pro. How can I be thankful for a thing I don’t actually have? I’m thankful that this year, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty sure, this year is the year that Apple said, you know what, we should make a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. And I agree, Apple, you should, and I’m waiting patiently. Nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t had enough to drink to handle a Mac Pro conversation. So let’s.
Casey’s iPhone X woes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s just move on and let’s talk about how I did not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring up the iPhone X and in fact none of us brought up the iPhone X as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of our things that we’re thankful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for. To be fair, John doesn’t really have one. I’ve had it for like two weeks. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good so far. I really enjoy it. It’s just a little early for me to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say for sure that it’s like a clear positive win on all fronts. But I think it’s heading in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction for me. but apparently not for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m having some troubles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I feel like it is clear that Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done something that they have no—and I think I said this originally when we reviewed the iPhone X, iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey X—they’ve done something that they have no business doing and brought technology that really should not exist in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2017 and ripped it from the future and put it in 2017. So in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of ways, I am delighted and mesmerized by this device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And certainly every time I look at any other device, as I think I described last episode, any time I look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at any other device that has the big chin and forehead, I look at it and it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feels friggin’ ancient. Like I’m poking fun at your laptop, but really and truly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these old devices look just ancient by comparison in a way that your laptop actually doesn’t, although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll deny that in about ten minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll allow it. And so, in so many ways, this thing is wonderful. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my goodness, when Face ID works right, boy, does it feel amazing. It feels like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back in the day when I didn’t put a passcode in my 3GS, because why would you? There’s no need for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, in so many ways, these phones are so great. But I am getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more and more and more infuriated about the fact that I feel less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and less and less able to use my phone at night or potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the morning. And let me tell you why. So I think I described last episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have a very peculiar eye problem. It’s called keratoconus, which means that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wear hard contact lenses. And it means that if I wear eyeglasses, which I do have a pair of eyeglasses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they get me from unable to do almost anything to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhat functioning human be. But I would never drive with my eyeglasses. It’s very difficult to work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a computer with eyeglasses. I need my contacts. And so at night when I’m in bed or in the morning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I’m in bed and I don’t have my contacts in, I have to keep the phone uncomfortably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close to my face. Well, it’s not uncomfortable to me, but it probably looks just completely weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to anyone else. I would guess that it’s two to three inches away from my nose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my nose is about 800 feet long. So that’s actually not as close as it seems, I suppose,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s close. And the point is that what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like is happening, I don’t know this is true, but what seems to be happening is that I’m close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough that face ID can’t see my eyes and it’s assuming that I’m not looking at the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so the symptom is that I will be actively using my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oftentimes having scrolled in like Twitter or something within the last 15 or 20 seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the phone just suddenly decides to lock itself and turn the screen off. And this is happening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot. It’s not dimming before the screen is turned off. I’m not in low power mode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am usually in do not disturb, but I’m not in low power mode. And oftentimes I expect it would dim.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would, you know, touch the screen to remind it. No, no, no, I’m here. Don’t, don’t go away. I’m here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But off I’ve, I had happened this morning, like two different times. I’m sitting there, I’m reading something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And next thing you know, all of a sudden the phone turns itself off. Well, I shouldn’t say turns itself off. Are you sure you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a ghost? No, I’m not sure. Is this real life?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Or is this just fantasy?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry, did you mention what’s your auto-lock timeout set to?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever the default is, but I will stall for time and I will tell you. But I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey darn sure it’s whatever the default is. And I feel like that’s like 30 seconds or something, which should be the default
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the OLED screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I’d argue it shouldn’t because it sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touche. It is absolutely unequivocally set for 30 seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s bad, but you said it doesn’t dim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first? No, that’s the thing that’s driving me bananas, because if it was dimming,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I shouldn’t say that, occasionally it will dim and then I’ll touch the screen and everything will be fine. But there have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times where I will be looking at the screen and again, in the defense of the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my device is very close to my face and all of a sudden
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’ll just turn itself off. And yes, I do have attention detection on and no, I have not tried turning it off, but I want attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey detection on. I like it in every other circumstance, but when I have my phone so close to my face,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just suddenly decides, no, you’re done now and turns itself off. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what to do to fix it. Other than, I mean, I suppose I could turn attention detection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off, but my goodness, this is frustrating and it’s grating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on me. Like it’s, it’s that thing that when you hear somebody else talk about like like John’s phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or headphone cables like okay yeah that’s annoying but whatever get over John no like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t get over this it’s killing me you know like this is my headphone cables and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know what to do about it and it’s getting to the point that it’s kind of ruining a phone that I otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really really really really love
⏹️ ▶️ John did you put the RAM from your iMac into your thing or it would just turn itself off yes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also just rebooting itself like every few hours and you weren’t telling us that because you figure that’s fine? But
⏹️ ▶️ John no, but he’s complaining about it. This is progress. He’s complaining about it. He says,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco look, I’m using my phone and it
⏹️ ▶️ John just turns off. Whereas before he’s like, you know, sometimes when I use my iMac, it turns off, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes, yes, yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it seems like, you know, step one is try turning off attention detection.
⏹️ ▶️ John right. Why haven’t you tried that yet? That’s my question. Like, so you have this problem. What’s been stopping you from saying, oh, I’m going to go to
⏹️ ▶️ John that obvious setting and flip it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because I don’t want to turn it off. And I think the moral of the story is I need to try. But I don’t want to turn it off. I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to flip that switch every morning either because I really—
⏹️ ▶️ John But why don’t you want it off permanently? Like what is stopping you from saying, why don’t you want it off?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because I like the whole, like, the phone knows when I’m looking at it and will show me the details
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my messages. Now, the next question you’re going to ask me is, did I ever bother with that before? No, I did not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My text messages could be seen by anyone who had access to my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone. I don’t think that’s mutually exclusive. I think it’s as soon as the phone is unlocked,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will show you the content of your text messages and it’s unlocked whether attention detection is enabled or not. Just it uses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Interesting point. Okay, that makes me feel a little better. That’s okay. That’s an interesting point. I didn’t think of it that way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So attempt number one, turn off attention detection and then if that doesn’t do it enough for you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raise that auto lock timeout above 30 seconds and that should significantly reduce the chances of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem affecting you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but the interesting life lesson here is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t view this as my fault. And the chat room is already saying it’s my fault. I’m sure if you’re listening,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re saying it’s my fault. But I don’t view this as my fault. I’m just trying to use my phone the way I want to use my phone. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although by any normal metric, I am in no way differently abled or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever the correct phrasing is that I’m looking for. this is, this is the first time, perhaps in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entire life, that an ailment of mine has caused
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me to have a problem with the way something’s designed. Because I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s designers, I don’t think, had ever really had to worry about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, what happens if somebody has really, really poor eyesight and is basically touching their nose to this phone, like then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do we do? And so I feel neglected. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a weird feeling for me because as a able-bodied person by any other metric, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the first time I’ve really have to deal with this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s been a really good and useful lesson that it’s easy to feel marginalized.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s probably not the word I’m looking for, but I can’t think of a better one. It’s easy to feel marginalized just by being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overlooked the littlest tiniest bit. And that’s been kind of interesting too.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a glimpse of your future. As I think we’ve said many times when we’ve talked about accessibility features,
⏹️ ▶️ John your choices are you will eventually use accessibility features or you’ll be dead.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in general, I think people will choose the accessibility features. Like, it’s not a question of, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you’ll need accessibility features. No, you will. The only way you won’t need accessibility features is if you
⏹️ ▶️ John die or if they cure aging, I suppose. But don’t hold your breath for that. Sorry, CGP Grey. Yeah. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John because we’re all going to need these features in everything that we do. If we just keep living and our bodies keep
⏹️ ▶️ John deteriorating, you may be perfectly healthy now and everything works, but eventually it won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you are suddenly a customer for all the features that you are not using in all your electronic
⏹️ ▶️ John devices and all of the appliances in your home and all the places you go and your car
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything else. And so there is, it’s not speculative and it’s not like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some chance you might need accessibility features you will need them um and i also some
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously i don’t have iphone 10 but i also do exactly what casey does i don’t have his exact vision problem but i have
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible vision and when i use my phone without my glasses in my bed it might as well be
⏹️ ▶️ John touching my nose like it’s that’s when i get really intimate with the retina screen and be like oh look i can see the sub pixels because
⏹️ ▶️ John my close-up vision is still pretty good although uh maybe not true for casey about bad
⏹️ ▶️ John news for other young people who think that yeah you know I need glasses to see far away but I can see close
⏹️ ▶️ John up real great well guess what when you get old that goes too so that you have that to look forward to um but yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think I would have the exact same problem as you and I think uh I would be in the same situation where I’d have to
⏹️ ▶️ John be considering turning off the attention thing just because I don’t want to give up like that
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know it’s not a long time but I do use my phone in my bed either before going to bed or just
⏹️ ▶️ John after waking up and I don’t want to have to toggle setting to do that and I don’t want the screen to turn
⏹️ ▶️ John off while I’m doing it so yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a thing. So I’m looking at the settings right now and in face ID and attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are two settings require attention for face ID and then separately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey attention aware features and the and the the footer under that says true depth camera will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey check for attention before dimming the display or lowering the volume of of alerts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am bummed to give away the lowering the volume of alerts thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because although it doesn’t happen but once or twice a day, that is a super nice feature that when I look at the phone, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will duck the audio, or maybe that’s not the right term for it, but it’ll lower the volume of the alarm or the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey timer or what have you. And you know, the thing that I guess really grinds my gears about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this the most is that one of the coolest like wow things for me anyway about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPhone 10 is that it is attention aware and that it is capable of making
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decisions based on whether or not you’re looking at it. Like that’s so cool. I’m seriously, it’s super cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now I feel like I’m giving up on a little bit of that. And that bumps me out because I like my new toy otherwise,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s a really nice new toy and I want all parts of my new toy to work, not just some of them.
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The best laptop ever made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s betterment.com slash ATP to start your review today. Betterment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rethink what your money can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we have time for your best laptop ever discussion?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We sure do. The best. Done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s exactly how this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco is going to go. All right, so tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, tell us, this may or, I can’t tell if you and I are going to hate each other by end of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this or if we’re just going to shrug and say, yeah, okay, that makes sense. But tell us, make your pitch. Tell us about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the supposed best laptop that’s ever been made.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually already did tell you a few weeks ago on this show. I basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, as listeners of this show know, I have lots of complaints about the current generation of MacBook Pros.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I switched back recently to a 2015 model that I got off eBay for a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good price. And I just love it. I absolutely love it. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wonderful design of it just resonates well with me. It fits my needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly well, even though it might not fit more modern needs in certain ways, it fits my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly low laptop needs incredibly well. It’s incredibly convenient to have all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice old ports on it that I don’t need dongles for. I can have only USB-A cables
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my travel bag and be able to plug my phone into either chargers or my laptop with the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable and not have to worry about two different kinds. The keyboard is wonderful. It just works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s reliable. It’s the kind that I like. The trackpad is wonderful. It’s just a great, the battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life is wonderful. And the biggest thing I was afraid about when I went back to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was that it would feel old or that I would miss some of the advances of the new stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in fact, that didn’t happen at all. It doesn’t feel old to me at all. It doesn’t look old to me at all. And I don’t miss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the advances of the new stuff at all. So it basically was all good switching back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it. And I’ve been thinking for a while about whether I wanted to write a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blog post about just how much worse I felt the new generation of MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pros is. And I decided to take a more positive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco approach and not do that at all, I do that enough here, but to instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really celebrate quite how good this laptop is. And in the entire post,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while some of the things I point out are kind of subtly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in comparisons comparisons to the current model. I never actually call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out the current model. I never actually name it. I’m just talking about the context
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how great this laptop is, and that’s really how I meant it. You know, certainly it’s going to serve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the function also of serving as a critique of the new ones. But I didn’t want this to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a negative article. I wanted this to be a positive article about just how much I love that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation of laptops. And the great thing is you can still buy them. If you agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with me, Apple still sells them brand new. If you scroll down to the bottom of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 15-inch MacBook Pro buy page, they still have this model brand new. You can get them plentifully on eBay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and other resellers if you wanna pay used instead. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just love this laptop a lot. And so I wrote this big blog post. I took some pretty pictures of it and I wrote this big blog post
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about just some of the things about it that I love so much, some of the good design decisions and some of the things that just resonate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with me and just how nice it is. and I named it best laptop ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that, and I thought when I had a hard time coming up with a title
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this and when I decided to go with that, I thought boy, am I going to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hell for this? I like you put something on the internet that says best ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’re going to hear from a lot of people who disagree with that, especially right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially when the thing you’re saying is the best ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not the current thing, and the people who bought the current thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re kind of implicitly telling them, you made a mistake, you made a bad buying decision. Although I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling them from the perspective that I too made that mistake, and I too bought the new one twice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three times if you count the escape. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I expected this to be a highly controversial article. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also thought, I must be the only person who cares this much about this generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of MacBook Pros. Because no one’s really talking about them anymore and everyone’s just kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco swallowing the new ones. And so I really didn’t, I thought that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t go that far and wide, and that if it did, the response would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really mixed and I’d get a lot of complaints and a lot of flaming and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of disagreement about what was the best ever. That was totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not what happened. It immediately went very far and wide. Even like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, top of hacker news immediately, it got, you know, all over the place. Even Mac rumors heard about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for some reason, even though it was not news at all, but whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it went far and wide very, very quickly. And the shocking thing to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that the response, even on Hacker News, which is horrible, the response
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much everywhere was nearly universally positive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and with very, very strong agreement. Not 100% agreement, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I can write the sky is blue and I will get more disagreement than what I got from saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this was the best laptop ever. And that’s really saying something. Like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has any reason to be concerned, it’s not that I wrote this article, they don’t care about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s how many people agreed with it. I have gotten, I’m still every day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still getting responses from this, but I got hundreds of responses,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hundreds of comments on other sites, tons of inbound links, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost all of them agreed. And that to me is shocking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even the people who, and I thought maybe the MacBook Air people would have a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it or maybe the 13-inch MacBook Pro people would have a problem with it and they largely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t. Even the people who liked those, both of them said, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re right. So I am just blown away by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much people agree with this and I heard from lots of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both who have the old laptops, who have the 2012 through 2015 Retina MacBook Pro, who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard from tons of them who said, I’m holding on to mine, I love it, I see no reason to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade, I hope it never dies. Tons of them who are like, I don’t know what I’m going to get when it does die, who I guess didn’t know that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still make these. Tons of people who have the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones and who regret it and who wish they would have kept the old one or have been thinking about switching back to the old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. A handful of people who did what I did and who did switch back to the old one and are very happy having done that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I can’t understate how many people supported this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point of view in their responses. Also I think worrisome for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is pretty much no one cares about the touch bar in any of these responses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The big headlining feature of this laptop, touch bar, not a lot of people care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The few people who disagreed with it, most of them decided that the best laptop ever was actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I disagree.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that wasn’t me, surprisingly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like so, you know, most of the disagreement was once it spread beyond the Apple crowd that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the PC people were like, it’s not, it’s the best laptop ever is not an Apple, you know, but they can have that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, that is, as a diehard ThinkPad fan,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are way closer to right than they are. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, so if you if you roll out the windows people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the biggest counter argument was that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was more theoretical. It was more like, well, someone needs to push the industry forward and that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple needed to go all USB-C. What about the original iMac going all USB blah blah blah and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of those arguments were honestly pretty bad. I don’t I disagree with many of those arguments.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we have time to talk about that. I don’t really care, but if we do, I will. For the most part, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco response was just so positive, and almost none of the people who disagreed even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentioned the touch bar. Well, I guess it wasn’t a surprise, honestly, but it was damning, I would say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how few people cared about the touch bar. People cared about Touch ID sometimes, even that, not as often as I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have expected. But for the most part, the touch bar didn’t get much of a mention.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new keyboard does have some fans, people who said, you know, I prefer it, and that’s That’s fine. I get that. If you prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, that’s fine. I think we can all still agree that it’s unreliable for a lot of people, and that’s a big problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for the people who like it, you can like it. That’s fine. But I think the whole package of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old one, I just love so much. And it just is a workhorse. It just works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and works and works for years. And some people did point out that that generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has had its issues. The first one I got in 2012 had image retention. That was a common thing. That’s why I made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my little grid page. It was for the 2012 right now, my pro and over the years they seem to have fixed that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that had some issues with some of those early screens if they were made by LG instead of Samsung that it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had it has this continued screen delamination problem for some people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that hasn’t ever affected me but well and the ones with discrete GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as every MacBook Pro with a discrete GPU has had in the last probably decade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or so those GPUs tend to die die at a higher rate than average, and so that causes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems for people. But not only have they all done that, but we don’t even know yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the current generation will also do that. I think it probably will. So overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the response was great, and pretty much everybody agrees with me, I guess, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey. So I think your point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is fair, and I think part of the reason why you got such good coverage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this is because you did take the high road and said, hey, rather than telling you about why everything else is garbage, let me tell you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why this is good. And if that implicitly means that other things are garbage, then so be it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The problem I have with it is that it is far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more absolute, or it reads as far more absolute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I think is really true. You know, this is the best laptop ever made, period.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not the best laptop for Marco. It’s the best laptop ever made. And this is it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Look at your opening paragraph. Apple’s made many great laptops. The 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro 2012-2015 is the epitome of usefulness,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey elegance, and practicality and power for an overall package that still hasn’t been and may never be surpassed. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not an unreasonable thesis, but I feel like to some degree this entire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey article was that’s fine for Marco. And that’s okay. I mean, it’s Marco.org. It’s not people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are like Marco.org. It’s Marco.org. So I mean, to some degree, I really need to give you a buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this. But that’s, I think, where my primary complaint lies, is that there are other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uses for Mac laptops besides what you need to do. As an example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of people, and I think you were one of them, had many,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many bee hives full of bees in their bodies about the removal of the SD card
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slot. Right? And you were particularly perturbed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the removal of the SD card slot. Obviously I have no idea how many people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do or do not use the SD card slot, but I can tell you that I had never, ever, ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used an SD card reader ever. Until 2014, when I bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our big camera. And I would argue that most people that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know anyway, don’t have big, fancy cameras that take SD cards. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me, if you were to lament the loss of the SD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey card slot, that’s fine for Marco, or really, I guess the loss is not fine for Marco, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what I mean. For you, that’s a big friggin’ problem. And I’m not trying to patronize you. For you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is a big friggin’ problem. That’s a big deal. But for me, it may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not be, as it turns out it actually is. But for the sake of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco discussion, it may not be. Do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you see what I’m driving at? So I think the thing is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have one of these computers that I use every single day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because that’s my work computer. And you know what? It’s a damn fine computer. It really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. But there’s a lot that I wish was different about it. As a perfect example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wish it had the new keyboard until it inevitably breaks. But until that moment, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wish it had the new keyboard because when I type on this thing, I go from my beloved Magic Keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this, it feels like I’ve gone from a steel roller coaster to a wooden roller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coaster. Everything is creaky and loose and just mushy and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not fair of me to just hand wave away the reliability problems of the new keyboards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I recognize that that’s not fair. But for me, I love the feel of the new keyboards. If they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could only make a reliable version of it, it would be tremendous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But they haven’t. And they haven’t. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not a great counter-argument. Until they can make that keyboard without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty horrible side effects, then you can’t say, well, I wish they had that keyboard everywhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because trust me, you don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re right. And now, in my defense, my beloved MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adorable has yet to have any keyboard problems that compressed air couldn’t fix.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I haven’t had and to be fair to you. I didn’t have compressed air in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the house I had to buy myself compressed air to fix my six-month-old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco laptop Yeah, what year is this pretty frickin preposterous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like and how often did you have to use compressed air to fix your keyboard on? The one that you could that you don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Never right, but it feels like much though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I really do And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do, I also, I want to push back a little bit on what you said about the SD card slot also, because you know, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like one of the counter arguments to this, or one of the general arguments in support of the new direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s taken, is, you know, like the whole thing about moving forward and everything, people always say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple didn’t move forward, we’d still have VGA ports, and yeah, guess what? The world does still have VGA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ports. I believe I made that exact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, you’re not the only one. But like, there seems to be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few like like brain virus themes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John among Apple defenders,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they repeat back some kind of dogma that doesn’t actually apply very well or is not a very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argument. And you know, like the iMac going all USB is a great one, which doesn’t apply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, because that was one desktop going all USB, a consumer level one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no less, in a lineup that had plenty of other options that didn’t go all USB. And also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it went all USB and it was a big problem. It It was really annoying. And then future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versions added back a lot of ports that weren’t USB. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one bad example. There were other ones, things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco VGA ports. Well, VGA ports, people still complain, well, yeah, you know what? VGA ports are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still around because they’re still on a lot of projectors and stuff, and that’s reality. That’s fine. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of bad examples. I think one of the thought viruses that is common among Apple defenders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that if something is not used very often, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by a large percentage of people, it should be removed. That the removal in and of itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is progress. And that’s not always the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, every Apple product, every desktop, every laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every phone I have ever owned has features on it that I have never used.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For instance, on my MacBook Pro, on all MacBook Pros, including the current ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never use the front-facing camera for anything, ever. I don’t take selfies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if I’m going to use FaceTime, I use it on my phone or an iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never use the front-facing camera on a Mac for anything. But it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Should they remove the front-facing camera? Because I don’t use it? No!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because its presence there doesn’t affect me in any way. It’s an inexpensive part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very inexpensive because Apple never updates them and they’re always terrible, but it’s an inexpensive part.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t add a meaningful amount of size or weight or technical complexity in a way that gets in my way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. And for the few people who do use them, it’s there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if I ever really need it, it’s there for me too. So even if I think I’ll never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it, it’s there. Similarly, I never use video output on my laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because that’s just not how I use laptops. I don’t have to connect them to projectors, really ever. And I don’t use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it at home like that. And so, I never use the HDMI port on my laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they still had those. And with the new ones, I never use video output on them either. Should they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remove it? Because not a lot of people use it? No, because it doesn’t get in the way at all. It doesn’t matter at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that I never use it. It’s not a problem in my life at all. If I ever need it, it’s there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s there without me having to buy anything. So like, if I happen to be like in a hotel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room or something and all of a sudden, oh crap, I have a quick need to show something from my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this TV that has an HDMI port. I can just take a regular HDMI cable that’s probably already behind the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV, unplug it from whatever garbage DVD player that’s already there and plug it into my laptop and have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t need to go to an Apple store and buy a dongle. I can use what I already have, and that will probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suffice. That is called versatility. So when a computer has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things on it that you might not think you need, there is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value to have them be available just in case you do need them sometime. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as they are not really getting in the way, like, it was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessary when designing 2012 MacBook Pro to get rid of all these ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like fitness or lightness reasons or anything else. They’re all pretty thin, they’re all pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light, they don’t add a lot of cost or complexity or anything else, so they let them in. Because people use them sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco On the new ones, I don’t know the details of exactly what would have fit in the slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinner case. By the way, using the old one, don’t notice thickness difference at all, don’t notice the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weight difference at all, but that’s fine. You might, that’s good for you. In the new ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would it have killed them? Could they have included an SD card slot for people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use that and need that? I think they probably could. Could they have included any other ports?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think probably yes. They didn’t as a feature because the thinking that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco removing things is itself a feature has infected Apple to the highest levels in addition to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple defenders. So now Apple views it as progress or courage, whatever word
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they want to use, and all the defenders support this, that removing things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is itself a commendable thing, and it’s quote, moving forward, which is a meaningless phrase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Moving forward only means doing what we did this year. Like it’s not, there is no such thing, like moving forward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggests there’s like a certain, like there’s one future that you’re moving towards inevitably, and that’s not true at all. Like you create that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future. Anyway, that’s, that’s a BS phrase that bothers me. But the idea that removing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things is itself that we should do as soon as we can, we should drop things as soon as we can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not true for everything and I think the more high-end and pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get with computing gear the less true that becomes because what pros need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not only for their gear including their keyboards to work incredibly reliably as reliably as possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also pros need that versatility. Pros need the idea that if you’re gonna be traveling somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with your gear or on some or on a set or in some kind of production environment, and something comes up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you didn’t foresee, and because you didn’t foresee it, you probably don’t have the right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dongle. If it’s true pro gear, it will try to accommodate as many of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situations as possible. That’s what pros actually need. And Apple has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great at doing that in the past, and now they’re really taking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, a pretty quick nosedive in that area. And I really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love so much of the old one because it has so much of this versatility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the new one took a such a stark change, such a rapid turn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the other direction. That’s why it bugs me so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, I understand everything you just said and I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an honest heart sit here and say you’re wrong. But I can say I look at it differently. You said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said just a moment ago, if it’s true pro gear, it will try to accommodate as many of these situations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these basically oh crap situations as possible. There is a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compelling argument that you just made that the best way to do that is to have as many ports as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible on that device and as many different kinds of ports as possible on that device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But another approach is what if you had one port that can do anything?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In which case, yes, you’re right Marco that I would have to carry an HDMI dongle with me. Full stop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s nothing I can do to argue that fact. And buy one for $80. And, oh, I didn’t pay $80 for mine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you’re still more right than you are wrong. I would have to buy one. But the fact of the matter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, for any situation that I, Casey, could possibly face,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any situation that I would want to be prepared for, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three different USB-C things that I would need to carry with me, none of which are particularly large.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of them is triple old USB and Ethernet. One of them is HD and I and pass-through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB-C and by the way has a old USB on it. And what was the other one? Shoot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, the USB-C to lightning adapter, which truth be told, I could just use one of the dongles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a traditional cable. So I think the problem is, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that your perception of versatility
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is requiring nothing but the device. And my, I shouldn’t say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t agree with that. I’m implying I don’t agree with you. I do agree with you. But another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perception of versatility is we have one port that can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friggin anything. It can do anything. So if you need an SD card
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reader, Marco, and actually I do, and come to think of it, maybe that would be number four, dongle number four. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco nevertheless, Yeah, they multiply.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like cats. You think you have two, and then, you know, eventually you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey six. It may be more like rabbits than cats,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco but we’re saying the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing. But you know what I mean? Like, if I need an SD card reader, then fine. I pay $10 or $12
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever it was on Monoprice to get one. But for Erin, who doesn’t need one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she doesn’t have to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. Her computer has one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. You’re ruining my point. You know what I’m saying, though? You know what I’m saying?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so, uh, what was the other one? Oh, like ethernet ports. Like no normal human needs ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ports anymore. I do because I’m a weirdo. You do because you’re a weirdo, but no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey normal human needs ethernet ports anymore. And this is where the entire internet is going to write in and say, Oh, actually you really do need ether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ports for the ethernet ports for this, that, and the other, okay, fine, whatever, but I would say most people who buy MacBook pros
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t need ethernet ports. And I think the problem that you and I have is actually the same problem. And although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we disagree on the best possible mechanism for fixing the problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I share most of your complaints and I think that by and large we’re of the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind, even if we’re arguing about the particulars. And I think the real honest to goodness problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I read this, I’m parroting somebody, maybe it was you for all I know, but somebody said to me, maybe it was John, somebody said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recently, the problem is the lack of diversity in the lineup. Jason Snow. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that who it was? Okay, thank you. There’s no, like, 17-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aircraft carrier option. And I bring that up not because I think 17 inches is the right answer, although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here again all the fanboys with 17 are going to come out of the woodwork. But there’s no way for you to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get the Mac Pro—God help me—of laptops, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s no way for you to say, money be damned, maybe even portability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be damned, maybe, I I want the most flexible,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey versatile device I can get, by both definitions. I want a couple of USB-C ports. I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of USB whatever the hell the old one is. I want SD card reader. Hell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give me a thicker computer so I can have onboard Ethernet. I’ll take it, whatever. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the problem is that there’s no option for that. And so I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would make all of us feel better if there was an option, because at At least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then we could say, you know what, I really don’t want to have to buy the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aircraft carrier laptop, but it’s worth it to me because I want all of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s what stinks. And I think that, and it might have been you that said months ago, one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problems with MacBook Pro is that Pro implies things. But the reality
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the situation is the MacBook Pro is the every person computer unless you want an adorable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I would argue is a much more niche device, or a MacBook Air, of course. But does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that make sense? Like the MacBook Pro is covering college students who are doing nothing but Google Docs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the way up through, you know, people doing Final Cut Pro on film sets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and doing 3D rendering or VR development.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, spoiler, VR people can’t use MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey right now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But maybe down the road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the external GPUs. Yes, I know. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So I think the problem is what Snell had said, I think a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little while ago now, was that there is no choice. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means that if I want to choose to have more ports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or if I want to choose to have a laptop that is actually reliable or a keyboard that’s actually reliable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m screwed because I got nothing. Then I’m buying a ThinkPad and that’s not a fun place to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be. Or a 2015, which is still a valid choice. It won’t be forever, but right now it is. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, that’s all very, very fair. And I will say also, you know, to defend, to refute something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the book, you didn’t quite argue, but that people will hear in your argument and will argue with me against it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry. USB-C can be great. The idea of having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versatile USB-C ports on a laptop is great. And you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right that USB-C ports can offer a great degree of versatility. My problem with USB-C,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of my problems with USB-C, I wrote a whole article about some other ones. But one of my problems with USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that I don’t think that, I don’t think the ecosystem is ready for that to be our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only port. I think the last year or so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has really supported that view that the ecosystem just is not there and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to maybe be a few more years before it’s there. And one of the counter arguments I’ve heard over the last few days about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Apple needed to do this because it would push the industry to finally make more USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco peripherals, just like the iMac pushed them to make USB peripherals. Two things, A,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac didn’t push them to make USB peripherals. The iMac wasn’t that popular, relative to the entire world of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PCs. The entire world of PCs was already making USB peripherals. They were going to make them anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it just so happened that the Mac benefited from some of them with the iMac. Secondly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea that Apple going all USB-C will push the industry to make USB-C peripherals,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a great theory. So far, it hasn’t happened. The original USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook, the MacBook One slash adorable slash 12-inch, came out now, what, two and a half years ago?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was the first Mac with USB-C port, and MacBook Pros went all USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now a little over a year ago and we still have a fairly immature,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly incomplete, and fairly unreliable selection of USB-C gear out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s still a really immature and inconsistent market that has a lot of big holes in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that the industry has been forced by Apple to make great stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reality is there’s a lot of mediocre crap and some of it’s good, most of it isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if Apple would have continued to ship old ports alongside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB-C, basically like if USB-C ports became the new Thunderbolt ports, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most Apple laptops would have two of them along with other ones, you know, maybe, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe even keep, maybe even have four of them on the MacBook Pro, on the big ones, you know, and,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, cause, you know, you can do that. They’re pretty small, they’re, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have very high technical needs. You know, the idea that all of them can be charging ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Thunderbolt ports means that Apple pretty much can’t make, say, a 15 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with six of them or eight of them, because they can do too much. You know, whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the old ones, you can connect a total of more devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before you have to go to dongles or hubs, because some of those ports are pretty simple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to add. They’re pretty low needs, dumb ports on the old ones. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when every single port you add has to be able to charge the computer and be a Thunderbolt port by your own design,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t have as many of them. You run into issues with maximum bandwidth on the Thunderbolt controllers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chipsets, costs, running wires, et cetera. So I think the better way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this transition would have been, have an actual transition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen, not just like jumping into the deep end with all USB-C, to have an intermediary generation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least like a high-end model, like at least the 15-inch, where there’s more room for things and more budget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for things. Have an intermediate where you basically have some of the old ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and an SD card reader and stuff like that, and then you have replaced Thunderbolt ports with USB-C ports.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would have been great. If that laptop would ever exist from Apple, that would have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high chance of being the best laptop ever, because then you’d have all the versatility of USB-C, you have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher bandwidth for the higher needs of it for things like 5K displays, that would be awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then you don’t have to, I don’t think, I think in this world, I don’t think you have to give up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the versatility of having one or two USB-A ports there also and having an SD card reader
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe an HDMI port because these are things that are either difficult, clunky, or unreliable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do with adapters and dongles so far. That would have been a very different reception to this machine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, than what we actually got.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you’ve been quiet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did already talk a lot about this on today’s episode of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Upgrade. I haven’t heard it. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John heard more in-depth commentary from you on this, but one thing I didn’t talk about specifically about this
⏹️ ▶️ John article is and I just scrolled through it again to see if I was mistaken I seem
⏹️ ▶️ John to have recalled something in the article it’s not actually there but I think it’s kind of implied and
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not really to the substance of what either two are you talking about so I apologize but like
⏹️ ▶️ John the title is the best laptop ever made and the implied thing that I thought was there but doesn’t seem to be
⏹️ ▶️ John is that part of what makes it the best is what Marco’s talked about before that, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not actually that much slower than the current ones because Intel’s progress on their
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop CPUs hasn’t been that great. And because, you know, like, like, it’s not, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like you’re using an old computer. And part of that, like, that’s what I’m wrapping
⏹️ ▶️ John up this like, Okay, well, I can see where you’re coming from this article. Because if that’s part of your definition, what
⏹️ ▶️ John that does is excludes all the other laptops, it excludes the powerbook 100
⏹️ ▶️ John and 170 excludes the wall streets excludes the tie book it excludes the 13 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air because all those are really old and really slow by modern standards or don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John retina screens or don’t have color screens or whatever the case may be right and
⏹️ ▶️ John if you narrow your definition in that way the
⏹️ ▶️ John only real contenders are the other laptops that can kind of hang with the modern ones
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s basically just this generation which Apple still sells and maybe one generation before
⏹️ ▶️ John for you can make some arguments for depending on how you’re going to do tradeoffs or whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that narrowing of the definition is
⏹️ ▶️ John lessons. The idea that this is the best laptop ever made because if I’m thinking of the best laptop ever made, I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to put that qualifier on. I’m not going to say, and by the way, it has to be like something that is that I could reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ John use today and it wouldn’t feel slow because that excludes too many great laptops. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if, and I think most people took that implicit framing right because if they didn’t everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John would be you know pulling coming out of the woodwork and saying that their old favorite laptop from like 20 years ago or something right
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the best one and arguably the ThinkPad people are actually doing that but I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don’t know if modern
⏹️ ▶️ John ThinkPads are really as great as whatever one they’re trying to cite I have no idea
⏹️ ▶️ John not even I I would probably go for like the 2011 ish 13-inch MacBook Air as a better
⏹️ ▶️ John overall laptop in this one because this 15-inch like you know you’ve heard my complaints that
⏹️ ▶️ John way for but like design wise like the keyboard is too small. The the arrow keys should be full sized,
⏹️ ▶️ John not like the current ones, but like an actual inverted T that extends downward from the keyboard like it is
⏹️ ▶️ John very wide, large and not particularly portable as far
⏹️ ▶️ John as portables go. And I just feel like the 13 inch air is a better laptop, but you’re not going to use a 13 inch air to get your job
⏹️ ▶️ John done today. It is slower and it’s worse. And it’s non retina. And it’s just you know, it’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John better laptop than this. But if you do best ever made, you know, so that so anyway, that more of a meta issue
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think you know I think most people took it in the spirit that Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John intended it but the the title doesn’t doesn’t reflect that and that the spirit Marco intended
⏹️ ▶️ John it excludes you know saves him from a lot of criticism
⏹️ ▶️ John that would be warranted if the scope was widened up because honestly
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think this laptop in the in the pantheon of Apple laptops is
⏹️ ▶️ John the best one or two or three like it’s maybe in the top five really but you know
⏹️ ▶️ John it really depends like I was never I was never in love with this model of laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John and there are a lot of things about it that are suboptimal it only really shines
⏹️ ▶️ John when you consider that hey it’s still a pretty great laptop and when you and when you you know
⏹️ ▶️ John whether again implied and not not explicitly stated when you start to compare it to the 2016
⏹️ ▶️ John and 2017 ones because I don’t think those laptops struck a good balance and I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think a lot of people really love them and I think the touch bar is kind of a dud and all the things that we talked about a million times
⏹️ ▶️ John that that sort of the opposite of reflected glory like you know as compared
⏹️ ▶️ John to the current line suddenly this 2015 looks a hell of a lot better and I feel like that sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John the opposite of the basking in the reflected glory like a bit basking in the reflected crappiness
⏹️ ▶️ John of the modern ones is what makes this laptop seem so great. So I think this is more like
⏹️ ▶️ John how Marco has found love with an older computer. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really not that much older, but is less about in the pantheon of
⏹️ ▶️ John all laptops or even just all Apple portables, how great this one particular model is, because there
⏹️ ▶️ John are many things to not recommend this model. And when I look at it all, I can see all the things I’ve always complained about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, that I just feel like this exact laptop could have been better with all the same features. But but but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not what we’re talking about here. That’s I’m sorry to get hung up on that. But that’s that’s that’s what I came away from this article. The
⏹️ ▶️ John larger point about the balance being struck what I’m you know that Marcus said before that so many
⏹️ ▶️ John people agree with it. The main thing I’m I kind of can’t get past
⏹️ ▶️ John is the idea that like so many so many of the people
⏹️ ▶️ John so often when you complain about an Apple product you’re like I don’t know what Apple should have done instead, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like this one. And that’s not really helpful and it’s kind of Apple’s job to figure out like, you know, it’s not, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not customer’s job to tell Apple exactly what to do. They just can be satisfied or not satisfied and their customer
⏹️ ▶️ John sat numbers are what they are. But in the case of the new laptops, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John people who have complaints know exactly what they specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John want that like that it would be so easy to make a laptop that would satisfy all
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who are dissatisfied with the current one. And maybe it’s 17 different laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John from 17 different people, but there’s no mystery. And again, just experience of dealing
⏹️ ▶️ John with this and going to conference rooms. If you’re in a conference room every single day and you constantly have to deal
⏹️ ▶️ John with that dongle to plug in HDMI, all those people are not, there’s no mystery. They say, put an HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ John port on it. Can you make this computer better? MagSafe
⏹️ ▶️ John on it, put an HDMI port, put an SD card on it, like, and throw that in front of all these people?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, that would probably be enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John would. And they’ll be like, you know, I don’t use the HDMI, but I care about the SD. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use the SD, but I care about the HDMI. I don’t really care about MagSafe, but I would like, it’s so easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to just say, like, it’s not a mystery what you need to do, Apple. Make it slightly different, slightly different
⏹️ ▶️ John feature set. Like Marco said, you don’t have to have all the ports, but like, everyone loves all the USB-C and Thunderbolt.
⏹️ ▶️ John and those are all great and everything. Just a few little tweaks here and there and don’t make the keyboard so damn small to make me happy
⏹️ ▶️ John and make it more reliable, right? They’re close, but everybody knows. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John an open secret, like how can you make these? It’s like, wow, I wonder how we can make these more appealing. We all know how to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John More ports, better ports, like bigger keyboard, arrow keys that are easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to find, reliable, like it’s right there and touch bar, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you need it, do you not need it, no one really loves it. I don’t even know how to go with that. And that’s what’s frustrating. Normally, if people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like something or it’s unsatisfactory in some way, they don’t know exactly how to fix it. And this,
⏹️ ▶️ John the solution just seems so obvious. And not to say that that’s what Apple should do, because we’re always asking Apple, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do the obvious thing that people know that they want. Do the thing they didn’t even know they wanted. That’s Apple’s job.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, if they can
⏹️ ▶️ John do it. Right, exactly. But I’m not saying Apple should, oh, just do what people expect.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have to do what people don’t expect. They have to try to go above and beyond. have to push
⏹️ ▶️ John the limits with touch ID and face ID and all the things they do. But when they miss,
⏹️ ▶️ John then it starts to feel like, oh, I wish they had just done the obvious thing. Right? So what’s the solution? Should
⏹️ ▶️ John they now backpedal and do the obvious thing? Or should they make try number two at
⏹️ ▶️ John the transcendent thing? And I think Mark always criticized them a lot in the past of like, Apple, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like you always have to, like every single time be transcendent because we wait too long
⏹️ ▶️ John for these big transcendent things. And so if you miss one of them, nobody wants to wait around for another five
⏹️ ▶️ John years of unsatisfying, unreliable laptops that are shaped
⏹️ ▶️ John like this. Backpedal and do the obvious thing while you regroup, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John and and as I think I said, an upgrade, they could be doing that right now. Hardware timelines
⏹️ ▶️ John being what they are, there’s only so much they can do in response to the dissatisfaction. And the final thing
⏹️ ▶️ John like we’ve been on the top of a while, but before we get off it is like Apple just reported its results
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re selling a ton of Max and I think they’re selling a ton of these laptops and we’re just we’re back to success heights
⏹️ ▶️ John problems. Yeah, people have complaints, but look at the numbers. If if the metrics you’re looking at don’t reflect
⏹️ ▶️ John the supposed dissatisfaction, then either we’re all wrong and we’re in the minority and Apple is on the right path
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything will be fine or they’re measuring things the wrong way. Um, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I, you know, I think based on vague hints from the round
⏹️ ▶️ John table that I I continue to read things into that Mac route table they had and the fact that they did try to adjust the keyboard and the
⏹️ ▶️ John Fact that the keyboards really do appear to have reliability problems that Apple will do something
⏹️ ▶️ John and make different decisions about The next major revision to the laptop line not just putting rubber
⏹️ ▶️ John gaskets in the keys because that’s all they could do in the time a lot a lot of to them but
⏹️ ▶️ John in whatever the next round of Macbook pros
⏹️ ▶️ John that come out that actually get to meaningfully incorporate
⏹️ ▶️ John the feedback that we feel like we’re all providing and that people may be providing with all their little different services
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever that I think Apple will make different choices and I think they will
⏹️ ▶️ John make adjustments that make these more satisfactory and perhaps will make Marco revisit whether this 2015
⏹️ ▶️ John computer is indeed the best laptop that Apple ever can make because like he said
⏹️ ▶️ John he really hopes that that’s not the case and I think it won’t be the case. He just needs to wait a little bit longer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thanks for sponsors this week simple contacts Squarespace and betterment and we’ll see you next week!
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at ATP.FM And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ John Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so long
Neutral: Tesla Roadster
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we have one obvious choice for the after show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is up with this Tesla Roadster?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, actually, honestly, I think the semi it might be the more interesting one. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re wrong about that. The semi is not the more.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, maybe more impactful, or maybe they’re both vaporware. But the Tesla Roadster is obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John much more exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So no snark or joke intended. Can you set up for me what this event
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was? Because I had heard that there was going to be a Tesla event, but I really honestly didn’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much about it. And I don’t follow Tesla that closely, so I don’t have a good feel for what the significance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this event was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, do you? I mean, I don’t honestly, I don’t follow them that closely. I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch their events live, because I find them a little bit insufferable. So I don’t watch them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just kind of see we know what news comes out of them afterwards. So this was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I know this was an event ostensibly to reveal the Tesla semi truck and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the roadster I think was the one more thing even though it has been kind of teased for a little while but no one really knew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything about it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah that’s my impression too I also don’t follow that closely but yeah this was a semi event but I wasn’t shocked to see the roadster because
⏹️ ▶️ John this has been like an open secret for such a long time the roadster was their first car and you know they were going to revisit
⏹️ ▶️ John that it seemed like an obvious thing they were going to do and guess what they did it and yeah so I didn’t watch it
⏹️ ▶️ John live either I just caught the news after the fact but I think it’s I think it’s interesting because if you said oh Tesla’s gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John a roadster that makes perfect sense they make a big four-door sedan and they make a smaller four-door sedan and the original
⏹️ ▶️ John car was the roadster and it’s obvious that there’s probably a market for a sporty car and so
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s their sporty car but I was surprised at exactly the
⏹️ ▶️ John form this sporty car took in
⏹️ ▶️ John many respects like so it’s called the roadster but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s not a t-top but there’s not much air above your
⏹️ ▶️ John head like just before you even think about what this car does if you look at it it looks more like a coupe
⏹️ ▶️ John with a section of the roof that comes off and I feel like the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey sort of open
⏹️ ▶️ Casey air that’s not unusual that’s like Porsche was huge into that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I know but I
⏹️ ▶️ John think of it even think I know it’s more like a target’s less even the Boxster has more open air let alone
⏹️ ▶️ John like a you know a proper convertible right so it is it feels less open
⏹️ ▶️ John than I would have expected it to be it looks just more like a coupe and so it they have to call it a roadster because you know
⏹️ ▶️ John their first thing was called the roadster and there’s like the family thing or whatever but what they’ve essentially made is like you said like
⏹️ ▶️ John a target type of thing which is fine it just doesn’t match with the name
⏹️ ▶️ John and the second thing I was surprised by was like it’s not just like oh
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s a sportier you know it’s a two-door sporty version so you don’t have to have a
⏹️ ▶️ John big family sedan it’s a kind of a fun sporty car seemed like in typical Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ John fashion they were going for the jugular and saying no no no you don’t understand we’re making
⏹️ ▶️ John a hyper car look at these numbers right 250 mile an hour plus top speed
⏹️ ▶️ John which is pretty impressive and even for hypercars, because they generally tend to go for a downforce
⏹️ ▶️ John and at the cost of top speed, unless you’re talking about the Veyron or something or the Chiron or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the new one is. Zero to 16, 1.9 seconds, which is a very typical
⏹️ ▶️ John Elon Muskie kind of number that I don’t doubt this car can hit, but you know they just wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John have a number with a one in front of it for the shock value.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it necessary? And then the price, like you know, 250 grand or whatever it is. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like, oh, it’s a sporty car. It’s like, no, here’s our competitor to,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the P1 or the LaFerrari or all, you know, the Porsche 918,
⏹️ ▶️ John only it’s, it’s got an open top on it. And the range, by the way, is 600
⏹️ ▶️ John miles. It’s like, it’s like they, I’m almost surprised it doesn’t go faster than the Veyron, put it
⏹️ ▶️ John that way. I mean, it’s almost surprising to me that they didn’t say, and by the way, the top speed is 327 miles an hour
⏹️ ▶️ John because why not like in Elon Musk fashion this must be the best car human beings
⏹️ ▶️ John have ever made it is faster goes longer you know does that everything you know like pulls 3.0
⏹️ ▶️ John G’s like it detaches your retinas goes off the line and I feel like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John oh like I don’t I don’t I’m not sure like this this car
⏹️ ▶️ John is is writing checks that Tesla probably can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because… Oh, but it gets worse though. Elon Musk on the 18th of November should clarify that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the base model performance. So it’ll be a special edition pack, a special option package that takes it to the next
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think I complained in the neutral thing of like, all right, so you wanna make a hyper car. Maybe not
⏹️ ▶️ John the way I would have gone. I would have just made a sporty car that costs 80 grand and you’d sell a lot of those and it would be great and people would like them,
⏹️ ▶️ John but fine. you want to make like a hypercar type thing, there’s more to hypercars than
⏹️ ▶️ John these particular numbers you put down. Most again, most of the reason that the hypercars that you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Top Gear or whatever, how competing to the reason they don’t go as fast as the Veyron, they consciously
⏹️ ▶️ John trade that for downforce and handling because they’re trying to go around a track quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when I see a 620 mile range, I think is this a 5500 pound hypercar?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because once you start trying to turn 5,500 pounds around a track, suddenly all
⏹️ ▶️ John the power in the world is not really helping you because you’ve got this big problem of
⏹️ ▶️ John this huge amount of momentum going into every single turn. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this car is not going to be able to compete with a Porsche 918 or a Ferrari or a P1.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to get left behind on anything except for a straight line. And then so what
⏹️ ▶️ John is the market for this car? People who only care about numbers but who never turn? Like do you just want to make an electric dragster
⏹️ ▶️ John because you can make one of those? It seems like a
⏹️ ▶️ John strangely misguided car in a way that both the Model S and the Model 3 are not. The Model
⏹️ ▶️ John X is kind of misguided because of the stupid doors. But I’m not sure,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure they’ve, even if they hit all their numbers and this car is exactly what they say it is, I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure it is a car that makes sense in the price point and
⏹️ ▶️ John market in which it competes. Like if I had 250 grand and I had to choose between this and any
⏹️ ▶️ John of the other hypercars, I would choose any of the hypercars and heartbeat, even if this is, you know, faster on the drag
⏹️ ▶️ John strip or whatever, just because it doesn’t, it doesn’t seem to deliver
⏹️ ▶️ John what is required to compete in, in that price range
⏹️ ▶️ John and that, that strategy. And you know, like I said, and furthermore, I don’t think Tesla needed to compete in this price range. It seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like an ego exercise. They should have just made a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey really fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, exactly. It’s on brand, but the Model S is so sensible. It’s got so
⏹️ ▶️ John much room. The packaging is so efficient. It’s got the seats in the back.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s got all the safety stuff, even the Model 3. So reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can make a really good, sporty electric car for 80 grand. Porsche’s going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John one? Well, there’s going to be 140, fine. But BMW’s going to make them like people
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to make sport that Tesla’s just got to go. No like this will destroy your body and liquefy
⏹️ ▶️ John your organs. Just don’t turn so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you’re unimpressed.
⏹️ ▶️ John No I’m impressed technically or whatever it just seems like such a weird like I would not have predicted
⏹️ ▶️ John this if you said what do you think that’s the road is going to be like is no way in hell I would have said oh it’s going to be 250 grand have a 600 mile
⏹️ ▶️ John range go over 250 miles an hour because none of those specs I
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t even target them Like why even target them? The base model 0 to 60
⏹️ ▶️ John in 1.9 seconds like oh god I don’t maybe maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John Elon’s goal is eventually to make a car that will kill him like literally kill him like
⏹️ ▶️ John he’ll as he ages and his cars get faster it would just you know press his heart against the back of his rib
⏹️ ▶️ John cage until it explodes and then finally he will have achieved what you know Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Marco as an owner, what is this? Does this rev your engine? Ha ha ha ha. Or are you kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? Well, when I when I first like was aware that they were teasing a new roadster,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought that that might be kind of fun like as a future car. But I don’t want to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this amount of money for a car ever. Like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not anything I would get at
⏹️ ▶️ John all. Your family can fit in the I’m sure very spacious back seats because it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey does have have
⏹️ ▶️ John four seats. I’m not sure where those four seats are and all the pictures. I can’t imagine where they might be,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it might be hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting the car seat back there in the truck. Yes, I this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like so I kind of see where they’re going with this. I think what you have to realize here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you know what Tesla can do that almost no one else can do yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just obscene speed from from a stop like obscene
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero to 60 times with their electric drivetrains that like that’s how they are able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to compete with supercars right now is that stat there’s a reason why they keep pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that with the model s and there there is probably a market of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who are buying the model s just because it’s so damn fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but who don’t actually need it to be this big full-size sedan people who actually want something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more sporty and small and then hopefully nimble like this. Right now those people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are buying the Model S because that’s what they have to buy to get the speed, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there is probably a market of people who would rather have this. And I’m sure John is right that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know the the range suggests this is probably going to be a heavy car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t know what you know what that means actually how heavy. The the reason the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range has to be so high is probably because in order to dump out so much current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at once to get that insane acceleration it probably needs a ton of battery modules wired
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up in parallel to be able to dump all that current out and so they probably achieved the range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not as a goal in itself but just as the smallest amount of batteries they could put in here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get the simultaneous current out to push those motors so hard to get that acceleration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m guessing the the range and the weight of those batteries is actually more of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an annoyance in the design than a goal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but the goal is probably like, oh, under two seconds, right? So if they just said 2.5 seconds instead,
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly the car gets much lighter. 2.5 seconds is still plenty fast, and maybe the price can go down because
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the cost is in the batteries in these cars. And it’s just everything cascades from like the desire to have these
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers, these three numbers up here to be so fantastical. And yeah, so the range probably wasn’t a primary
⏹️ ▶️ John goal and maybe as a side effect, but it’s up there with one of the three numbers and top speed like
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes no sense like where are you going to be able to drive it that fast and the fact that it does
⏹️ ▶️ John have that kind of speed makes me wonder exactly how stable it is at that speed because you need a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John downforce to keep your car from becoming a kite at that speed but if you have a lot of downforce it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John very difficult to get above 250 miles an hour so i just yeah it probably has a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah and unlike
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most cars the weight’s very low you know so like it It does have some advantages there, but I think ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a pretty big portion of the market of people who would buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of car who will never, ever, ever take it on a track, who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will never take a turn at very high speed, and who don’t care how it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handles going around a competition track. a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who buy supercars because they like the way they look like in their neighborhood
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and on the highway and when they go shopping and people see them like that’s a huge part of the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these things I would say probably a very small percentage of owners ever actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take them on a track
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this falls down in that area too though because it looks less exotic than all of the hypercars that it
⏹️ ▶️ John is competing with due to its price range I mean it looks fine I don’t think it looks bad it looks good but it
⏹️ ▶️ John if If you saw that next to a LaFerrari, it’s clear which one of those looks more like, is
⏹️ ▶️ John more impressive, right? Especially people who don’t know cars like this looks fine, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s all of the hyper cars have, I feel like more aggressive and more exotic styling
⏹️ ▶️ John than this, which just looks like a fairly nice sports car. Like this, this looks to me like it should be competing
⏹️ ▶️ John with the Porsche and BMW equivalents, right? are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be less expensive, probably have slightly less performance, but will look about the same as this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they won’t look like the 918. They’ll look like, oh, you know, like a really
⏹️ ▶️ John cool futuristic electric Cayman. That’s not exactly what that looks like. But you know, it’s not, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even fulfill, I feel like, the impress a bunch of teenage boys
⏹️ ▶️ John driving down the road type of thing. Unless they know what it is. If they know what it is, obviously they’re impressed. But if they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know what it is and they saw it rolling up next to a P1 and a Ferrari, They’re all gonna stare at the P1 and the
⏹️ ▶️ John LaFerrari, and this is gonna be looking like, like in top gear whenever they take like a, an Audi with them, along
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey other cars. No
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one looks at the Audi. I don’t know, man, because Tesla is their company, whereas, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the McLaren.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying they know what it is, but for non-car people, you look at it, like all the wings and flares. This is a very
⏹️ ▶️ John smooth, it’s a fine looking car, but it doesn’t look like this,
⏹️ ▶️ John even the, let me pull up the Porsche thing, you know what I’m talking about? Even the Porsche one looks more futurey and stuff. And yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Tesla does have brand cachet, especially for people who know. But
⏹️ ▶️ John for non-car people, the cachet is, oh, that’s the electric one, not, oh, that’s the one that does 0-60 in 1.9 seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Another problem they have is that a lot of the market who buys these kind of cars wants them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be really loud. And this won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be. Well, they can pipe that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in. Just like your M5.
⏹️ ▶️ John Up to the outside. Yeah, they’ll just have really great recordings of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was this. You could use the same recordings that were in your m5. I mean it would be perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John I pasted a link to the Porsche mission e thing. I mean it very really is very similar It’s very kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John rounded you know styling cues probably you know more or less derived from Tesla Say this
⏹️ ▶️ John this car looks electric like what do you how do you style a car on the outside to make it look electric? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like all obviously all the Tesla’s look like that and when I look at the Porsche I think oh that looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John I can kind of tell that’s electric because it’s styled differently than their gas things And it’s not just because it doesn’t have big exhaust and
⏹️ ▶️ John a giant grill in the French. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gulping in air or whatever Honestly this mission II I don’t think is an attractive vehicle and I think the roadster
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would agree John you can’t talk about attractive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey vehicles because you hated the Alpha so we can just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I think the Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ John and this Porsche are Yeah, they’re similar like there are things that annoy me about
⏹️ ▶️ John both of them And this is not a production car by the way, I think this is like their concept,
⏹️ ▶️ John so who knows what the real one will look like. But I like the front end of this Porsche, it looks to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John it has the family resemblance but it also looks future-y.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That I would
⏹️ ▶️ John agree with. You know, same thing with the Roadster, it looks, it has family resemblance, it looks better than
⏹️ ▶️ John all the other Teslas, as it should. it is
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit… I don’t know I was gonna say dumpy…
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a little bit awkwardly proportioned it looks a little bit like a not an ugly ducking
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s a little stunted maybe it’s because the wheelbase is short you know like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John or the back overhang is so it just doesn’t it feels kind of like a more like a
⏹️ ▶️ John toy car I mean it looks more like the the Lotus Elise that they you know or the the tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John Lotus chassis that the original roadster was based on. It doesn’t look like
⏹️ ▶️ John the big, long, wide supercar that you would expect based on these performance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers. Well, they already have a big, long, wide car. It’s called a Tesla Model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s also really freaking fast and like supercar levels
⏹️ ▶️ John fast. It’s not low. It’s not, you know what I mean? Like…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they made this to be like a much smaller, faster version.
⏹️ ▶️ John well it’s like it’s like a really fast miata
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s what it looks like styling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turns out that that would be really fun really fast me not it would be awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah but that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t compete in the same thing it’s like when you when you see again when you see it next to a la ferrari or p1 those don’t look like really fast
⏹️ ▶️ John miatas they look like big hyper car things
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco i mean all i can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me like as someone who mostly doesn’t pay attention to hyper cars and super cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or any cars for that matter but like i i mostly am not in that world i i’m mostly unfamiliar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with with it and I like if you if you put all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cars you’ve mentioned like the Ferraris and the Porsches and the P ones and all the weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that were always on top gear. If you put those in a lineup and took their badges off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you asked me which one was which I probably wouldn’t be able to identify any of them. I have to imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s true of a lot of people, including many people who would be buyers of these
⏹️ ▶️ John things. You stop being a car person when you give your stick shift and your gasoline
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco engine. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true, but but I I have a feeling a lot of potential customers of these kinds of cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might not even recognize things like a P1 if they saw it. You are because you are not only a car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nerd, but you are also a car nerd who specifically loves supercars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think most people aren’t, including many of the people who buy them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So many people buy them just as a money or prestige symbol,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or just to have fun. And I think that for many of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, the downsides that you are citing of this and the comparisons you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making of it to other supercars just won’t apply.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just felt like the Model S never really got its due in all the
⏹️ ▶️ John car magazines and car websites because and
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s again because of track performance reasons that like it’s not even not even considered
⏹️ ▶️ John when they have these performance tests of like sports sedans it’s always like oh it’s BMW versus the Alpha and the
⏹️ ▶️ John Alpha’s on top this year whatever no one ever includes the Model S and in some respects it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John unfair because it’s like oh that’ll be in the electric test and of course it’ll be the best electric car because it’s not many much competition
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like you know the Model S versus the Chevy Volt which one Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John but when it comes to the sports sedans, there is a practical reason and it’s like, look, if we brought in this test,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would lose because it’s just too damn heavy, right? It’s never going to win. It’s a performance test that involved
⏹️ ▶️ John turning. It’s never going to win. So it’s not even fair to include it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing is it’s just such an oddball. And I think that will start to change when
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody else essentially comes out with their Tesla competitors, and suddenly it will make sense
⏹️ ▶️ John to that. The Tesla will be included all these tests and will be a more
⏹️ ▶️ John there’ll be less bias against it to say, Oh, that’s the weird electric one, and it has such weird trade offs that we don’t even know how to measure
⏹️ ▶️ John it against the other ones. It’ll just become par for the course, and that’s where Tesla will really have to prove itself.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, this car specifically based on Tesla’s, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Tesla modifier of like when they say they’re gonna make a car at how much to when you actually be able to get the car
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s conceivable that by the time delivery start happening for this car that
⏹️ ▶️ John its competition will have arrived and that it will no longer like that these these numbers are great and impressive
⏹️ ▶️ John because you can’t buy this car now I have no idea what the numbers are gonna be for the BMW Porsche and Mercedes
⏹️ ▶️ John and whatever else full electrics that are all inevitably coming
⏹️ ▶️ John and so unlike the Model S which got to enjoy this time as like the uncontested king of electric
⏹️ ▶️ John cars, this may not enjoy that time.
⏹️ ▶️ John This may arrive at the same time as everybody else and it may be much tougher
⏹️ ▶️ John to be impressive. Now, and that may also mean that all those other cars have exactly the same things that I’m complaining about.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re all big and heavy because they have to be because of the battery packs or whatever. Or it could be that those cars make different trade-offs
⏹️ ▶️ John and those only get to 60 in 3.2 seconds, but they trade that for being much lighter
⏹️ ▶️ John weight and we’ll see how that shakes out of you know what kind of things you want and don’t want or maybe they could be more aggressively
⏹️ ▶️ John styled or half the price or double the price that’s where I think it’ll be more interesting but right
⏹️ ▶️ John now this looks like this is like a category in unto itself in much the same
⏹️ ▶️ John way that I guess the Model S was in the beginning but unlike the Model S which makes sense both on paper
⏹️ ▶️ John and in reality this car does not yet make sense to me so
⏹️ ▶️ John send me one to test I’ll tell you what I think Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they wouldn’t send her to you, they’d send her to Casey because he’s our car
⏹️ ▶️ John journalist. Yep, I have dibs. Oh, he only does gasoline cars, sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, no no no no no no.
⏹️ ▶️ John Half his video is the engine note. He’s going to put a microphone next to the tailpipe of this thing and it’ll make
⏹️ ▶️ John no noise. Just a high-pitched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whine. You have not seen my video, but that