267: I Slowly Ate the Crystals
31 Mar 2018Apple’s role in education, the new 9.7” iPad, best-value Apple products, walkie talkies in 2018, and impossible feats of packing.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco's road trip
- Follow-up:
- Breath of the Wild and the Wii U
- Space Gray accessories are available to everyone
- ATP Live at WWDC
- Walkie talkies for tandem road trips
- Apple's education event
- The new 9.7" iPad
#askatp- Best bang-for-your-buck Apple products (via Chris Ovrebo)
- Musical ATP hosts (via Anson Jablinski)
- Backpacks for 15" MBP (via "The Italian Stallion" (not John))
- Packing cubes
- Post-show: Impossible feats of packing by "Underscore" David Smith
Sponsored by:
- Away: Travel smarter with the suitcase that charges your phone. Get $20 off any suitcase with code ATP.
- AfterShokz: Headphones powered by bone-conduction technology. Get $30 off the Trekz Air with code ATP30.
- JAMF Now: Set up and protect your Apple devices at work, from anywhere. First 3 devices are free.
Chapters
- Pre-show: Marco’s road trip
- Follow-up: Breath of the Wild
- Space Gray input devices
- Sponsor: Jamf Now
- WWDC live show
- Follow-up: Walkie talkies
- Apple in education
- Sponsor: Aftershokz (code ATP30)
- New 9.7” iPad
- Sponsor: Away (code ATP)
- #askatp: Best Apple value
- #askatp: Marching band
- #askatp: Backpacks³
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Underscore’s fleece
Pre-show: Marco’s road trip
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how was the trip? Did we talk about this publicly? I don’t know that we did. Are we talking about this publicly? Whether or not it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing that made the show is the walkie talkie bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where John was making fun of me for buying walkie talkies for a road trip.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I do want to hear about that, but not this minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But how was the other parts of the trip? Just out of curiosity?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I wait, I ate way too many combos.
⏹️ ▶️ John Enjoy all your good roadside coffee. Or did you bring a gigantic thermos some good coffee with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. I bought… I bought… Five gallon chug. Oh, you’re going to make so much fun of me. Have I mentioned this before? I have a…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, God. I have a monthly subscription to a fancy hipster instant coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing from San Francisco. Why? I get eight little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tubes of instant coffee powder a month delivered in a little canvas bag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they cost like a $1.50 each and it’s a subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s instant coffee. You dump it into water and it makes good coffee. It’s basically a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of instant coffee and it turns out instant coffee got popular for very good reasons. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty damn convenient when you’re traveling. You know, like on the plane I got a cup of hot water please and I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hot water cup and I dumped my coffee into it and stirred it up and had my like insufferable hipster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coffee right there on the plane. It was wonderful. You would. I’m so sorry. For anybody who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cares, it’s Sudden Coffee. That’s the name of it because it’s not instant. It’s sudden. Ha
⏹️ ▶️ John ha sounds like it sounds like it surprises you. You go to drink a cup of water and all of a sudden it’s brown and bitter.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey What the hell sun coffee,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey holy shit, it’s coffee. Whoa how did that get there? How
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the hell this come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from anyway it’s it’s not cheap, but it’s pretty good. If anybody needs this this kind of thing, it’s pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s pretty much that your motto. It’s not cheap, but it’s good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is why like I like anybody listening is probably like of course I have that it’s this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey surprising surprising this is surprising
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I thought you’re gonna say you
⏹️ ▶️ John had like the underscore kit where you have this entire bunch of paraphernalia that you’d take
⏹️ ▶️ John out in the car including a little table lap desk to set it all up on and plug in a
⏹️ ▶️ John kettle into the 12-volt socket in the car and just you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I used to do that kind of like fancy you know I brought my air press on a couple of trips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was just such a pain I have I got a travel grinder and everything like and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just I found it not worth the hassle, and so instead I for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while I just drink tea on trips. I bring my own fancy tea bags, but I don’t like tea that much and you know coffee’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better, and so I I found this and I decided, oh you know, even though it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a subscription, which I don’t like I’m like well I’ll try it. I’ll see how it is and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s been good enough that I kept it up like I use it. I don’t I don’t always use it regularly, like sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I’ll accumulate a couple extras that I haven’t used in the last month but it’s fantastic
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes I’ll just tear up one of those tubes and dump it in his mouth he doesn’t care I actually did that once I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trip and I was I didn’t want to stop to get like a cup of hot water because like there was no good place
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearby to do that so I just kind of slowly ate the crystals
⏹️ ▶️ John little strong that’s really sad someone someone comic of that. How come people never draw comics for our show? Someone
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco needs to draw a comic of sad Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John eating the instant coffee, hipster instant coffee out of the tube. Maybe a little tear, a tear going down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Driving on the Long Island Expressway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That was another reason for a tear. Yeah. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey stuck in traffic.
Follow-up: Breath of the Wild
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s start with some follow-up. John, tell me about Breath of the Wild on the Wii U.
⏹️ ▶️ John Last week, what were we talking about? Oh, we were talking about bitness of consoles, was one of the AskATP questions, and I was talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about how power still makes a difference in the modern era, and talking about a game like Breath of the Wild, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John a large open-world Zelda game, and how you couldn’t play it on a less powerful console, and I said the
⏹️ ▶️ John Wii U, and I should have just said the Wii, because obviously, in the grand tradition, I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess two data points makes the tradition, of Zelda games that are initially developed for one console
⏹️ ▶️ John but take so long to get done that the second console comes out and then
⏹️ ▶️ John they launch it on both consoles simultaneously. That was the case with Breath of the Wild. It was actually developed for the
⏹️ ▶️ John Wii U and only later launched on the Switch. And that happened
⏹️ ▶️ John with Twilight Princess for the GameCube and the Wii. Although Twilight Princess I highly recommend
⏹️ ▶️ John playing it on the GameCube, not on the Wii because the motion controls are not very good. So
⏹️ ▶️ John a surprisingly small number of people sent in that correction, but to the people who did,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And to everyone else, John is disappointed in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you. Yeah, seriously. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty big, pretty big gaffe in the grand scheme of things. If it was, maybe if it was about like Apple stuff, would have got more people.
Space Gray input devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Half of the internet wrote in to tell us that the Space Gray keyboard, mouse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Magic Trackpad are all available separately now, if that’s your cup of tea. I am currently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fondling, touching a Space Gray keyboard, and I have a Space Gray Magic Mouse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next to me, and I have a Space Gray Magic Trackpad that I use from time to time. These were all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey secondhand from friend of the show, underscore David Smith, who did not charge me a premium. However, Apple will charge you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a $20 price premium because Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, why is it that the dark ones, I mean technically they can do this with any color. Let’s just make fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John of them and then charge more because they’re more rare. Sure, you can do it all the time, but in general Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John seem to do that with things that come in colors. Like you can get your phones, your iPads in various colors, gold,
⏹️ ▶️ John rose gold, space gray, sometimes they come in black, but there’s no price difference between the
⏹️ ▶️ John colors. And yet somehow in the Mac world, every time something gets a darker color, it’s an extra 20 bucks or
⏹️ ▶️ John something. And I don’t know, for some reason it bothers me that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John get iOS devices in different colors for the same price, but in the Mac side that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the case. So anyway, I just hope if you’re out there listening to this, you didn’t buy a space gray
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac Pro keyboard for $1,500
⏹️ ▶️ John eBay because that would have been a bad move.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of feel like I feel like my iMac Pro is less special now that these are available for to anybody. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, listeners to this show would have been well warned
⏹️ ▶️ John soon as this the iMac pros came out, we were surprised that they, you know, wasn’t our prediction that
⏹️ ▶️ John they wouldn’t sell for a lot on eBay because people would realize Apple’s just going to introduce them and then your things will be worthless.
⏹️ ▶️ John But alas, that’s not the way people think. And so some people did buy them and sell
⏹️ ▶️ John them apparently for very high prices on eBay. And I hope all those people are sad now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow, snarky John tonight. Is everything okay? And the people who sold them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t sad. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John guess well they should be because they took advantage of somebody that they feel bad about that right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only if Apple should not feel bad they’re charging $20 more for no reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John is better than like a $1,350 premium.
Sponsor: Jamf Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Jamf Now. Jamf Now helps you set up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manage, and protect your Apple devices on demand. You can start a free trial today at jamf.com.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s J-A-M-F dot com slash A-T-P. It’s pretty easy to keep track of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own Mac, iPad, and iPhone. You know, if you have your own, it’s personal, that’s fine, it’s easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But what about if you have an organization? What about other Apple devices in an organization with employees?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As a business grows, it gets harder to manage everyone’s iPad, iPhone and Mac. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is especially true if you are a distributed geographically where you have employees in different locations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With Jamf Now, you can check real time inventory, you can configure Wi Fi and email settings,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deploy applications, protect sensitive company data and even lock or remote wipe a device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from anywhere. Jamf Now manages and protects your device so you can focus on your business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead and it’s super easy to use. You don’t need to be an IT expert or have any kind of complicated setup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or any experience whatsoever managing this kind of stuff. Jamf Now is so easy to use, anybody can do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can start securing your business today with Jamf Now by setting up your first three devices for
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WWDC live show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So go create your free account today at jamf.com slash ATP. That’s jamf.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash ATP. Thank you so much to Jamf now for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would at this point plug our live show that is going to be happening at WWDC on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monday night, but it is sold out. So if you happen to have a ticket and know you won’t need it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please get in contact with altconf and let them know that or tell a friend or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do something. But we have no control over attendance. We have no sway over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wait lists or anything like that. So thank you to everyone who has purchased a ticket. We hope to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see you there and it should be really exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could win one from a friend in a game of chance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m assuming this is a reference I’m not aware of.
Follow-up: Walkie talkies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, all right. So Marco you went on a really long road trip recently and you had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mentioned briefly in the last episode that you had Bought some walkie-talkies to take with you because it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was going to be a multi-car caravan The last I tried to use walkie-talkies, which was just a handful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of years ago They were promised to work for like 34 zillion miles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and worked for about 34 feet. So Tell me about your fans. I’m sure you bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the most heinously expensive walkie-talkies you could find tell me how well or not well they worked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they were only, I think it was something like 60 or $70 for a pair. And then I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the accessories, like the charging base and everything. So I wouldn’t say that was that expensive. It’s some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of Cobra. If you look at Amazon, like the Cobra model, that is the highest of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its group. That’s the one I got. It’s like something like that for a pair. And it’s the one, it has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very useful feature. This is one of the reasons I went to this model, that it has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco repeat that back button. So it keeps a buffer over the last few things that were said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so if you miss what somebody said, you can just hit that and it plays it again, which is really useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, John made fun of me relentlessly for buying walkie-talkies for the purpose of communicating between two vehicles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a road trip because we have cell phones. And that was a really good argument. Cell phones do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound way better. Unfortunately, it takes a little bit of time to create a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cell phone connection. you have to pick up the phone, unlock it, if it’s not unlocked, tap something, find them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connect. A walkie-talkie, you literally just push a button and you immediately can say something to them. I told you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you should’ve had your phones connected the whole time. Yes, but we were listening to music and podcasts and stuff the whole time, with our phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you mute it, and when you wanna talk, you hit the mute. It’s not like you’re browsing Twitter on it, bounce it on the dashboard, hit the mute button. Mute,
⏹️ ▶️ John mute, mute, unmute, mute,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco unmute. No, but. Yeah, I can’t even say it. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone was being used for the media, so that’s no good. Well, what were you,
⏹️ ▶️ John what media, oh, the podcasts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, podcast, music, or navigation directions. We were also using Waze to navigate. You can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that at once on your phone. Nope, you can’t play media while you’re taking a phone call.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so, and also, where these really came in handy besides the incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast ability to just push a button and say something quick like, hey, watch out, don’t merge left yet, or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, or you don’t wanna stop at this exit. Really quick stuff. But also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not the entirety of our trip had cell phone coverage because we were going to a very rural
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place at the end of the trip the entire last like 45 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had no coverage during which we were on the walkie-talkies a lot to coordinate things like where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were going to park this giant truck and how like what direction and had to face how we were going to get it that way what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were going to do once we got there how we were going to like do the very first steps to unload it and all the logistics involved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they proved to be invaluable everybody involved in this trip was very, very happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we had these walkie talkies. Uh, they were wonderful in ways that a phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either would have been worse or would have not worked at all. So John was totally wrong. And to answer Casey’s question, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um, the, uh, the range, I did a little bit of research obviously when buying these and uh, it appears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of them seem to quote a range of somewhere between like 10 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 50 miles. And it’s not, it doesn’t take that much digging to realize that that’s actually like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re like two people on top of mountaintops with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between you, that’s like the most ideal scenario of like nothing obstructing it. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, no interference from anything. If you, if you do, you know, if you use it like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like a more realistic location, like in a town or on a highway, the mileage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically gets cut to a 10th. So it gets decimated, right? That’s what that means. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets a, you know, So your 37 mile one is actually more like three miles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even that is like, if you’re in a really dense area, in like a city with lots of buildings and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might be more like one mile, or maybe even a half mile, worst case scenario for these bigger ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s a limit on how powerful they can transmit, which I think on most of the bands is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two watts. So that’s kind of what limits how powerful they can be. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so it was fun. It was totally worth it. And they’re really modern, useful things, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the playback feature. They both can charge via USB or take AA batteries,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you can put rechargeable batteries in them and charge them through the USB ports. It’s great. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John was wrong at the end.
⏹️ ▶️ John So just for the young people listening, I wanna assure you that it actually is possible to take tandem car trips without either
⏹️ ▶️ John cell phones or walkie-talkies. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it sucks. It does suck. I would agree with both of
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fun. You got to come up with systems for signaling. and then get frustrated while the people don’t follow the systems for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a John statement if I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John heard one in my ward. It
⏹️ ▶️ John is fun though. It’s like being a spy.
⏹️ ▶️ John put my right hand out the window, that means pull over. Put my left hand out the
⏹️ ▶️ John window, that means merge.
Apple in education
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we should get to the actual topics for this evening and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something happened on Tuesday and something something education. Moving on, let’s finally get to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the topic we all want to get to, which is Apple’s heyday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Let’s talk about this. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John one in between you skip, but now we’re going to talk about Tuesday. We’re not going to go through the event blow by blow because there wasn’t that much to go through.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought it was so funny because like last week, we as professional podcasters completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco failed to mention our WBDC live show, and also that there was about to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Apple event that we all knew about, and we’re like, oh, everyone else is doing predictions, and at least mentioning this is gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We completely failed to even mention it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think we failed to, because I knew about it, I just didn’t think there was anything worth saying on the last show. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about it beforehand, and like, well, we’ll see what they announce, but until the, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t have high expectations of what they were gonna announce, and so I didn’t really feel like it was worth discussing
⏹️ ▶️ John until they announced something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I didn’t have high expectations either, and they even failed to meet those. I thought it would be really funny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if we just never mentioned it at all because there was so little really to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But unfortunately, John wants to talk about it, so we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about it. Just pretend like we never actually mentioned it and it’s funnier that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco wasn’t a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John product nonsense, but I think there are things to talk about, though. So my first question is, did you two actually watch the event?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not live, but I because it was actually during the road trip that I was taking, but I downloaded the video and watched it that
⏹️ ▶️ John night. Casey’s poo-pooing this event, he didn’t even watch it. How do you know? They could have had seven slides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to admit I also fast-forwarded through some parts of it because it… you know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t like about it overall? It kind of made me feel… I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know, it was a little bit off-putting. It basically seemed like they were holding an event to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost like yell at the world like, no look we care about education
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but without actually backing it up with what I consider to be enough. And that could take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of different forms and you could disagree or agree with that but I felt like the the premise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of an education event that you know like that’s that you know they call the press out and everything and by the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I if I if I was like an independent journalist who flew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there on my own dime to cover this, I’d be pretty annoyed, honestly. But anyway, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m friends with some of these people, and they haven’t told me this behind the scenes. I’m just saying, like, if I were one of these people, like, you know, that’s I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would I would be annoyed that I had spent the time and money to do this. But the impression I got from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this event was that it was a lot of cheerleading. It was it was almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a pep rally for Apple and for teachers. How accurate, given it was in a school.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. But but without enough substance I thought to back that up. It was really more like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at how great we already are at the things that we are already doing. Not so much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s some new software, new changes, new hardware, whatever it is. There was actually very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little of that, at least very little of relevance or of significance. And there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a lot more like, here’s how great we are, here’s someone else to come out and tell you how great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve been and how great we’re going to keep being. And it was a weird balance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just felt almost like my attention was taken advantage of.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re waiting for them to get to the product announcements?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, and look, I wasn’t expecting an iPhone or anything. I knew that it was a focused education
⏹️ ▶️ Marco event. That’s one thing, but if you look at what people would reasonably expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of a publicized press event regarding Apple and education,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would have expected a lot more than what we actually got.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people were tweeting, I forget when it was, like the 20 or 30 minute mark. They were like, we’re 20 minutes in and they still haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John said anything about any products yet. There was a long lead in and there was a long lead out
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. So I don’t remember the last education event, but another thing people
⏹️ ▶️ John were tweeting about was exactly how long ago the last education event was. Apparently they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even have these things every two or three years. are long gaps between between the events
⏹️ ▶️ John having a dedicated education event. Apple does stuff education related all the time, but having a dedicated event for it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a lot of time. I think the last time we talked about it, these stats were similar,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I to frame this to like, why? Why is Apple having an education event? Why are they
⏹️ ▶️ John spending an hour on stage telling you about all the things that Apple does related to education
⏹️ ▶️ John and trying to make them seem to Mark was point as you know, as as good as possible seem
⏹️ ▶️ John desirable seem like the that Apple is doing great things in education. This is a quote from Bloomberg
⏹️ ▶️ John Bloomberg article link in the show notes. Chromebooks accounted for 60% of laptops, tablet and other mobile
⏹️ ▶️ John computers shipping to US K through 12 schools in the third quarter of 2017. Apple’s iPads accounted
⏹️ ▶️ John for 12% of those school devices, which is less than half its market share from 2014. So from 2014 to 2017, their market share
⏹️ ▶️ John has been cut in half, more than cut in half. So not only is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John not, uh, you know, leading in market share in this, in this education category
⏹️ ▶️ John that they were addressing here, which is basically a United States K through 12 schools. Uh, not only is, you know, Chromebooks,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, eating their lunch there, but it’s not as if that’s just the status quo. It’s like, yeah, well, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the, the, you know, Apple’s never had big market share, but they, you know, they have the important part. In
⏹️ ▶️ John three years, their small market share has been cut in half. So if I were Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I cared anything about education, I would have to be taking a hard look at this and saying, should
⏹️ ▶️ John we get out of the education market? Or should we do something? Because unlike
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of other markets where we have small market share, but it’s steady, and we, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, reap most of the profits, right, like the phone market, for example, does not dominate the phone market market share wise,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I, you know, Apple is probably not crying over that because they make so much money on it
⏹️ ▶️ John and they are seen to have, you know, if not the best phone, then one of the best
⏹️ ▶️ John phones, right? And I don’t think you see a lot of articles anymore saying Apple needs
⏹️ ▶️ John to up its phone market share or they’re going to be doomed or, you know, Android is eating the apples lunch in the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John market just because the money talks, right? You look at where all the money goes. It goes to Apple. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple’s phone market share had been cut in half in the last three years, I think there’d be a lot of articles about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like the context for this event
⏹️ ▶️ John is Apple trying to figure out how to even just stay in the game in education. Forget about here’s how great
⏹️ ▶️ John we are, but just can, you know, is this a market where we can, where we can make a
⏹️ ▶️ John difference, where we can be a player, where we can be important? And
⏹️ ▶️ John that got me thinking about how the education market is different from the phone market or the personal
⏹️ ▶️ John computer market or the TV connected puck market or the home cylinder that you yell at market or whatever, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the, the, the fancy computer watch market. Lots of like, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the modern era, Apple has been all about making tons of money selling
⏹️ ▶️ John relatively high margin, expensive products to a minority of a market. The phone market is
⏹️ ▶️ John the best example of that. example of that because they make so much money and their market share
⏹️ ▶️ John is so small compared to the aggregate of all their competitors which is always just lumped together
⏹️ ▶️ John as like Apple and non Apple basically Android and iOS but they make they just make so much money it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John well this is a winning strategy we don’t really care we’re not gonna worry that oh
⏹️ ▶️ John we need to you know we need to make a netbook remember the netbooks little cheap laptops to compete with the PC space
⏹️ ▶️ John we need to make a super cheap iPhone to compete with Android. That’s not how Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John plays the game. They want to sell to the best part of the market. Best meaning
⏹️ ▶️ John the part that is the most lucrative. The part that allows Apple to make the fanciest products because
⏹️ ▶️ John the people will pay the highest price and the highest margins and all that Apple’s products look nice and everything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I was thinking about whether that strategy is viable
⏹️ ▶️ John in education because as far as I can tell Apple continues to essentially pursue
⏹️ ▶️ John that in these past decade or so in education saying we’re not going to have the majority
⏹️ ▶️ John of the education market but we’ll have the quote-unquote best part of the education
⏹️ ▶️ John market the richest schools will buy Apple stuff like I’m trying to try to figure out what what they’re thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John that if you can afford us we give you the best school experience or
⏹️ ▶️ John it will seem the fanciest if you buy Apple stuff and for some reason when it comes
⏹️ ▶️ John to education And that rubs me the wrong way more so than smartphones. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John because education I think of more as a thing that has to be for everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas smartphones, there are options. And if you don’t have an iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John you are not disadvantaged in life versus if you have an Android phone, right? But if you don’t have an education,
⏹️ ▶️ John or don’t have a good education, or your education is not as rich as someone else’s, that feels,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, inequitable to me. And so I’m watching this presentation and I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out is Apple changing course here? Are they saying we’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out how to let more
⏹️ ▶️ John students get access to our products or are we still concentrating on
⏹️ ▶️ John providing the best products for the few students who are lucky enough to go to a school
⏹️ ▶️ John that can afford them? And the presentation, as I read it, as
⏹️ ▶️ John someone who is not, you know, I’m not involved in the education system, but I do have kids in school, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed to me that they were not changing their strategy, that everything they presented was beautifully polished,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, sort of very sort of high end, nice to look at, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John applications, hardware and software that a few schools are lucky enough to have.
⏹️ ▶️ John but that the pricing was the same as it’s ever been
⏹️ ▶️ John and That nothing they announced is going to help them compete with The things that are currently
⏹️ ▶️ John eating their lunch in the market not just on price But from what I understand from people in education
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of the features They for the stuff that Google’s offers are better than the feature that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John offers That’s why part of the announcements are yeah, we have a product a new iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John But we also have a bunch of new software that’s playing catch-up to our competitors to say oh here’s an easier way to manage a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of iPads, here’s an easier way for a teacher to manage a bunch of students doing things. But even that, even the
⏹️ ▶️ John catch-up software, I saw a lot of complaints saying okay but you still haven’t caught up entirely to the
⏹️ ▶️ John functionality offered by Google in terms of integrating into other school system things and providing a broader set
⏹️ ▶️ John of functionality. Which may not be pretty and fancy and have like the Apple Pencil support
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know high-end video production capability so kids can make cool videos about gravity
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff, but practically speaking, when it comes to, you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the basics of functioning in a school and having a lot of students and a lot of devices and
⏹️ ▶️ John managing it all, that still, Apple’s offerings aren’t even the best, and they’re certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John not the cheapest. So I’m kind of confused slash concerned
⏹️ ▶️ John about Apple’s approach to education, because it It seems to me that if they really want to make a difference
⏹️ ▶️ John in this market, they need to pursue a different strategy because I don’t, I don’t think it’s appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John to pursue a strategy like they do in the consumer market in education. But you know, I don’t know, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wrong about that. I would love to hear from people in education who have worked with Apple and Google stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John about what, how they perceive these, uh, competitors that did people watch
⏹️ ▶️ John the education event in, uh, you know, people who are actually teachers or school administrators and think
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple had done something that’s going to change the game or did it just seem like more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought Joseph Plinsky had a few good tweets about this and I’ll probably forget to put them in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show notes, but Joe used to be a, I think he was an English teacher
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’m not mistaken. Apologies if I have that wrong, but now he’s an app developer and designer and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash rock star. case, you know, his take about it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, look, Apple doesn’t really play the, you know, cheap game, just like you’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you know, it’s not Apple’s card that they play. So are we really surprised that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the way this event turned out? And, you know, he and I went back and forth a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in early in a happy way, or at least I thought it was happy. Maybe he was annoyed at me. But, you know, we went back and forth a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the thing that, you know, I’ve not worked in education, but Aaron was a teacher, a high school
⏹️ ▶️ Casey teacher for a long time. And in fact, I think I’ve mentioned this a few times on the show, a few years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, actually many years ago now, there was a national news about like a stampede that happened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because iBooks were being sold for 50 bucks a pop at the Richmond International Raceway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they were old, like high school iBooks that were being retired. And so they were selling them obscenely cheaply.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And people like got trampled trying to buy these cheap iBooks. Well, that happened because of the county in which we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey live. It was our county that was selling all those. And so, Aaron, when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she was teaching, the kids all got issued Dells when she was teaching. Dude. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a, you’re getting a Dell. It was just a couple of years before that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were getting these iBooks, etc. So, having spoken to Aaron about this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, again, I’m still a little bit removed from the actual decision-making, as was she, but it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty clear to me that even in a relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey affluent area like we’re in, I mean we’re no like, you know, Greenwich
⏹️ ▶️ Casey County, Connecticut or anything like that, but we’re not, you know, broke around these parts. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even here, it’s all about cost. It’s just 100% about cost. And so yeah, I think you’re right, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that maybe the Apple’s play is, hey, if you happen to live in a really rich area, or if you go to like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very well to do private school or or something like that, then yeah, we have all sorts of sweet answers for you. We have a sweet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solution for you. But I don’t know of any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like quote unquote regular school system that is going to look at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything more than initial purchase price, maybe, maybe total cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ownership, maybe, but generally speaking, it’s going to be purchase price. And the other thing I’ve gleaned from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bradley Chambers and Frasier Spears and a few others is that apparently the management stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Google has is way better than what Apple has. It’s not even in the ballpark. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be fair, you can supplement what Apple does with like jam for other, other third-party tools, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just, it seems to be a lot more work and a lot more money to use the Apple suite. Is that worth it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe they certainly painted from what I’ve gleaned from not having watched the event, they certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey painted a pretty compelling pictures to all the things you can do with iPads in the classroom and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I just don’t see how that’s a realistic play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for almost any general school system in the world. And if you’re gonna spend $330 per kid on an iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta imagine an aggregate that adds up to a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not insignificant amount of money, and the first place I would put that is teacher salaries, because at least in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey America, salaries are just hilariously, just devastatingly small,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s absurd how little teachers get paid here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the other point that is less and less mentioned, I feel like, in the modern Apple era,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is general skepticism about whether the addition of
⏹️ ▶️ John technology actually improves education. To your point, Casey, about maybe you actually paid teachers more,
⏹️ ▶️ John that would improve education more than buying all the kids a laptop. Like, there is a technology angle that Apple can speak
⏹️ ▶️ John to, which is they have a very important profitable platform that if things keep going well, will
⏹️ ▶️ John be a viable place for children to make their living.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so teaching coding skills and just more broadly teaching coding skills, which is the thing that Apple is familiar with because they have a developer,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they have developers, they have developer relations, they have developer tools, they are well equipped to make
⏹️ ▶️ John an education focused version of teaching people how computer skills, which I think is a viable thing to learn in school,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And Apple has expertise there. So welcome Apple to the education there. You’re teaching about something you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But beyond that, I feel like when I was a kid, there was much more skepticism about whether
⏹️ ▶️ John having kids make a multimedia presentation about gravity like in that they have this cute video of kids,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, doing this project and making slow mo videos on all their iOS devices and cutting it together and making
⏹️ ▶️ John animations and doing all that looks fun, seems expensive and especially like these,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, incredibly high production values that these for the the things they do in these little promotional videos.
⏹️ ▶️ John But does that actually improve education? Like there’s enrichment and there is getting kids
⏹️ ▶️ John engaged with technology and there’s having the advantage to do something a little bit different every once in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think the vision presented by Apple of that, like all kids are doing creative
⏹️ ▶️ John multimedia digital things all the time is not representative of like
⏹️ ▶️ John the broader effort to educate. Like those are the most fun parts
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can make learning fun with the addition of technology but you can make learning fun with the addition
⏹️ ▶️ John of you know just sitting in a circle and and talking to each other and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John or just going on a field trip or like there is it just seems to me that that
⏹️ ▶️ John apple seems uninterested in what will actually make
⏹️ ▶️ John education better and more interested in how
⏹️ ▶️ John can we make education better with our products?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m not entirely sure their products make education better
⏹️ ▶️ John in a way that is worth the money spent on. I’m not one of those people who’s like, oh, schools shouldn’t have computers
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything like that. It just seems to me that learning is not
⏹️ ▶️ John linked to the technology involved, right? That you can learn
⏹️ ▶️ John all the same things in exciting, engaging ways, uh, without
⏹️ ▶️ John having computers involved at all. Unless of course you’re learning about computers, which again, that’s the angle that apple has expertise on and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re, they’re wise to, to lean on it, like learning to code and then there’s with playgrounds and all that stuff. But if you’re not learning
⏹️ ▶️ John about computers, computers may help you. Typewriters may help you. Slates may
⏹️ ▶️ John help you. Pencils and lined paper may help you. But in the end, the learning part, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John much more, there are so many other much bigger factors starting with just like
⏹️ ▶️ John temperature control and safety all the way up to class size and teachers that are not you
⏹️ ▶️ John know stressed out and are not underpaid and overworked and you know just
⏹️ ▶️ John curriculum that suits the students, different learning strategies, special help
⏹️ ▶️ John for the kids who need like there’s so many more things that are more important to me than whether my kids have the
⏹️ ▶️ John latest iPad or Android devices or whatever you know so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John and and I’m not saying that Apple it’s Apple’s job to solve education it’s problem is just that I didn’t even see
⏹️ ▶️ John a faint in that direction or a nod or an understanding to the fact that the
⏹️ ▶️ John most important thing in the classroom has nothing to do with the technologists there because they’re there to sell you the
⏹️ ▶️ John technology and that that’s what I found that and and my work concerned about the fact that their strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t seem to be changing made me think that Apple is on the wrong track with
⏹️ ▶️ John its education strategy and that if they continue to pursue it, they’re not going to turn
⏹️ ▶️ John around their market share slide. And also, like, again, having two kids
⏹️ ▶️ John in school, it didn’t make me think, boy, I wish my kids had access to
⏹️ ▶️ John iPads and Apple laptops. It just didn’t, you know, like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have any desire for that at all for my kids. I want my kids to, you know, learn and enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ John school and learn the, you know, the things that are supposed to the social skills,
⏹️ ▶️ John like to have a good school experience, I have no desires whatsoever about the technology they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John using. I don’t care if they use any technology unless they’re interested in technology or unless they’re taking a course in technology. And even then,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care if they teach the kids Pascal, teach them C++, teach them Scheme, like I don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John if they’re learning Swift or iOS programming or anything like that. So I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’m overly grumpy about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, I think you bring up a lot of really good points because I think maybe one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasons this event kind of rubbed me the wrong way is similar to what you were just saying about how it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple more just wants to yell at us about why they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have to change much of anything, why their existing stuff can just be shoved right in there and be a perfect fit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think that over time, the compellingness or the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit of what they’re trying to put into this category versus what these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customers actually need and want is diverging. It’s not getting closer over time, it’s getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse over time. Like the way I see it from both reading and listening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to school workers who are also writers in tech or podcasters,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also from friends and family I know who work in education, some of them teachers, some of them administrators,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like what schools ultimately want is inexpensive, durable laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and enterprise-style management tools and services to back them to make it easier to manage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple seems to me like they’re losing this on three pretty major fronts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Price is obviously a big one like you know they they are losing on price not by as much as some people think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you like look at you know you know iPads as being the solution. If you look at laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as being the solution that they lose big. They also seem to be losing with, you know, just kind of this is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the wrong product, I think. Like, and we have this argument a lot in, you know, our regular, you know, tech beat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, is the iPad a good enough computer for various people for various things? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, I think, while you could make the some really nice marketing videos about how cool it would be if kids
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used iPads and to, you know, rediscover things like, you know, music and robots and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not what most kids need most of the time in most classes. What they mostly need these laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can and so what what Apple is trying to sell the schools on is no look yes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our laptops are way too expensive for what you’re looking for so instead although they still sell a lot of anyway but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead you should be looking at the iPad that’s why we don’t need to make a lap of any cheaper because the future is the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can just bolt on all of these clunky expensive accessories that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raise the price even further because you’re not going to use that iPad at $329
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or $229. You’re going to have to add a case of some kind to protect it because it’s way too fragile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just give to kids naked. You can’t even give to adults naked. So you’ve got to get some kind of case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably going to want some kind of keyboard for a lot of things it needs or for standardized test requirements and things like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s why they have this Logitech case. It has this special keyboard and everything. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to add on all these accessories. Now they want you to buy a pencil or the Logitech Crayon, which is interesting. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want you to add on even more stuff to it to make it into what you want. All that drives up the price and the complexity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the clunkiness of the solution. So it’s very possible and I think likely that they’re actually selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco schools the wrong product. What schools actually want is inexpensive durable laptops. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the third problem which I don’t see them probably ever fixing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you know if you talk to an administrator who or a teacher who runs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Google G Suite stuff or to an IT manager who runs the fleets of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The G Suite management tools are really good. Like that, it is an entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like enterprise management platform and all these web services with Google Docs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and all this stuff that’s really good. And Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think is ever going to do well in that kind of environment. That’s not in their DNA to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enterprise fleet management things very, very well or to make cloud document platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well. They try, but not very hard and it’s never very competitive and when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you compare like I wanted to I laughed so hard they made a quick little remark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about how when the iPad how it supports multiple users only in a school environment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the presenter said you can change users in under a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Imagine if it took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a minute to switch users on a PC or a Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ John It wasn’t even change users, it was you could log out and be ready for someone else to log in. They were
⏹️ ▶️ John touting the logout time. I think the login time could potentially be worse, because what it does under the cover is
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like they’re using the multi-user features of the underlying operating system, it’s just like a single user iPad that they
⏹️ ▶️ John swap in and out by shuffling stuff around. It’s not like multiple accounts on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re tearing down the entire user space, tearing down all of Springboard, swapping in various like directories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and files and then bring the whole thing back up. It’s basically it’s even more complex than a reboot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they’re doing it’s because these because these devices are not made for this at all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that like you know if you want that kind of thing you need you know networked PCs and Macs like iPads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so not made for multi-user and they’re not willing to change iOS and major ways to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix that they’re only willing to do like this kind of like minor lip service stuff. If you look at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco education, their history, they were always kind of like the fancy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive ones that you’d have a few of in the schools. I think very, I was in school long before any kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of one-to-one program, so maybe that’s different now. But Apple did well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it was Macs only, when they weren’t trying to split their consumer computing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ideal into these two very different platforms of Mac and iPad. So when there’s just one platform for them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to focus on, and in a world where that platform could basically be an island. It was like, here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a really nice desktop that you can use to edit videos and do desktop publishing on. They were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good at that. But today, you have large fleets of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these always networked, strongly web services based application platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and enterprise management tools. And Apple just doesn’t do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearly as well or nearly as competitively as Google and Microsoft and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other PC vendors that have tools for schools and stuff. I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that really ever changing. Apple is not that good at web services, they’re not that good at enterprise management tools.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re, in all the other areas of their business, they’re actually pulling away from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I also even question, back in the olden days, there was always that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, like no one gets fired for buying IBM. If you’re an IT
⏹️ ▶️ Marco administrator at a school and you are tasked with making this kind of decision
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like do you invest heavily in the Apple platform or in G Suite,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would you trust, knowing today’s Apple, knowing how they do services,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they maintain applications over time, would you trust building
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your school out on like class kid and the classroom or schoolwork, whatever it’s called, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that stuff, would you trust that to actually be not only bug-free when it ships not today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it ships sometime in the future, would you trust that to be stable enough? And more importantly, would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you trust that to be maintained and supported over a reasonable amount of time?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s a huge risk for an IT administrator to take. I think that’s way too high of a risk. Knowing the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple does things these days and knowing how seemingly stable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and already well-developed and well-established the competing platforms are in these regards,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see this being a really good decision for an IT administrator pretty much anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John That gets me back to my earlier point. Like this is enterprise software for schools. Like an enterprise
⏹️ ▶️ John software, in my old definition, was like software where the person you have to sell it to is not the person who has to use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s two angles in that. The one we already talked about, which is like management of large devices
⏹️ ▶️ John in a world where you can actually conceive of one to one program is where every student gets one device like that was not
⏹️ ▶️ John even a twinkle in anyone’s eye when I was in school. It was like you had a computer lab with like six computers in it for the whole school. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re all apple twos, by the way, not max. But it that enterprise management thing like
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the people who watch this event I could see on Twitter were from that camp like saying, Okay, Apple, I have a problem. My
⏹️ ▶️ John problem is I have lots of students, I have lots of devices, and dealing with them is difficult. You got to keep track of
⏹️ ▶️ John them all. You got to keep them all up to date. You got to manage them all. Tell me how you’re going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John my job as an enterprise school administrator easy. That is enterprise software in both the good
⏹️ ▶️ John and bad senses. And I tend to look at the bad sense because the bad sense is say Apple or Google
⏹️ ▶️ John or anybody makes these school administrators lives easier and gives them an easy
⏹️ ▶️ John way to manage large fleets of devices. I as a parent or as an as a general citizen
⏹️ ▶️ John interested in the education of the country thinks okay but does every student having
⏹️ ▶️ John devices make their education better like I don’t care how easy it is for you school administrator
⏹️ ▶️ John to manage the devices like I understand that’s what that’s how they sell it to you I understand that’s why you’re choosing because you want
⏹️ ▶️ John something that can do all the things you want to hook into your back-end system that keeps track of all your students you want to be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John you know but I’m not that interested in how easy it is for you to do your job the whole point of the school
⏹️ ▶️ John is education is it better for the kids for everyone to have these devices
⏹️ ▶️ John devices? Does the device that the kids get, is there a difference to them or is there no difference?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like do the kids care if they have a Chromebook or the Apple stuff? Does it make a difference to their education?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like at all? Do they, you know, so that’s my question. And the second thing is that I worry about
⏹️ ▶️ John is like the other constituency that is not
⏹️ ▶️ John the students that Apple appeals to just in general, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in education is regardless of how hard it is to manage
⏹️ ▶️ John the devices right I feel like there is still and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know maybe this is actually increased in the recent decades some cachet for a school
⏹️ ▶️ John to say all our kids have iPads or have Macbook Air as we’re going back a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John in time or you know have Apple devices that if if someone
⏹️ ▶️ John was touring the schools to think of buying a house in the neighborhood and this is the neighborhood school your kid would go to
⏹️ ▶️ John or if it’s a private school or whatever, and you have Apple hardware everywhere, that makes the school seem
⏹️ ▶️ John better because Apple, thanks to its marketing and the general high quality of its products in the consumer realm
⏹️ ▶️ John is seen as a premium brand and as like as it’s fancy, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John so the parents go, all the kids here have iPads again. Do the parents actually
⏹️ ▶️ John think if they sat down and think about well, our iPads are going to make my child’s school experience
⏹️ ▶️ John better than having one more teacher and making the class sizes smaller. iPads are gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John make my kids educational experience better than if they had Chromebooks
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not even thinking about it. You’re thinking all the kids in this school. Every school has an iBook That’s why people
⏹️ ▶️ John are making that stampede for the $50 iBooks because Apple You know makes fancy nice devices that most people
⏹️ ▶️ John usually can’t afford and if you can suddenly get them for 50 bucks It’s like there’s a rush on that
⏹️ ▶️ John because there is a perceived value, a perceived coolness, cachet, marketing
⏹️ ▶️ John value, whatever, like status for Apple devices. So if you can get them cheap, all of a sudden people
⏹️ ▶️ John want to get them because they want a piece of that. And that bothers me in education too because I don’t want to pick schools based
⏹️ ▶️ John on how fancy the hardware is. It’s like picking schools based on like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John mahogany railings on the stairs. I mean there is something to be said for schools that look fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John and feel nice and everything, but as far as education goes, like, do the kids care that the railings
⏹️ ▶️ John are mahogany, like, beyond a min—beyond a minimum level of school upkeep and temperature control
⏹️ ▶️ John and safety and, you know, not, you know, pumping carbon monoxide into the building because the furnace is old, like, obviously they
⏹️ ▶️ John can get bad, but once you get into sort of the competent realm, I’m much less interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in that stuff than I am about all the other much more important aspects of the school.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I—even if Apple was massively—you know, take Google. Google seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to be very successful at appealing to people who are enterprise administrators. But I continue to wonder,
⏹️ ▶️ John in a school where the enterprise administrators kind of like in a workplace where the enterprise administrators, their job is
⏹️ ▶️ John awesome, and they love their vendor. Do their end users love the product? Do the teachers love the product? Do
⏹️ ▶️ John the students love the product? Does it actually make their education better? I don’t know. I have a real crisis of faith about
⏹️ ▶️ John technology and education, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it feels to me, I think not actually watched this particular event,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but based on all of the the recaps that I’ve read, it feels to me like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was, I forget which one of you said it, I think it was Marco, this was a pep rally for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple, but it was Apple trying to say, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should consider us despite us. In other words, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so many things that we don’t do the way you want us to do it, but you know what? There’s some other stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s really cool. And I guess there’s a couple of ways to look at that, right? Like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could look at that as Apple is obnoxious and full of themselves. And, Oh, of course we’ll switch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to fancy and look at us in our fancy iPads and our AR and blah, blah, blah. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really take it that way at all. I took it as, Hey, look, we aspire. We
⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuinely aspire to make a, a engaging,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting, enlightening, and diverse in terms of experienced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey educational-like, not event, but we want education to be interesting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically, and here’s a way that we are, or several ways that we are enabling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in making education interesting and making the education part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively frictionless. Now, the penalty is that the poor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school administrator is gonna pay for that tenfold, But for the teacher and the student, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you believe what Apple’s, if you buy what Apple’s selling, literally and figuratively, then it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasonably frictionless, right? So you should consider this because we are like the aspirational
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of education that all of us really want, aren’t we? You should really look at us, despite the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fact that we’re way too expensive and way too difficult to work with. And that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I took the event, again, not having seen it, I took it as, look, we’re here, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, knock, knock, knock, we’re here and we do cool stuff. And if you really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to get your kids engaged, maybe try us because no kid today wants a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anymore. I mean, maybe that’s what they need. I mean, I know you said that earlier, Marco, although I challenge, I’m not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure why. I mean, my gut says, yeah, they, of course they need laptops. But then I asked myself, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And other than a keyboard, I don’t have a good answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m not here to have that argument at this particular moment. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But everyone says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPads are like everyone’s going to be doing tablets in the future and because because my kid loves tablets and doesn’t know what a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop is. And it’s like, hey, wait till your kid is a little bit older. And then like, you know, how many kids get to the end of high school without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without having or wanting a laptop?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. And I agree with you. But all I’m saying is there’s the obnoxious Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hubris way of looking at this, which is we are so much better than everyone else because look at how cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we are. And then there’s the more humble. Hey, man, we’re cool, too,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, check us out. We’re worth at least considering. And that’s how I took the event. But in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey end of the day, it all comes—well, not all, but generally speaking—and this is what Sleplinski
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I were kind of going back and forth about—in general, it all comes down to money and it’s just too damn
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, we haven’t really talked about the actual product announcement that happened during
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this event. So, we should…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the product, which I mean, to be fair, I don’t think anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should have really expected more than this. I think we were all, myself included, aspirationally hoping for more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than just a new iPad, but realistically, this is what the tea leaves were showing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, tell us about this new iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it is updated guts for the actually, you know, interesting one that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco released last year year without an event at all. So last spring, about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year ago, they released the inexpensive 9.7 inch iPad for $329
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built with old parts, basically, to make it cheaper. And it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way the iPhone SE is built with old parts on the iPhone end to make that cheaper. It’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPad SE. They basically remade the iPad Air 1 with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern guts. So it doesn’t have some of the niceties. And then so this the news now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that they have now updated that model. And by the way, I think that model is almost single
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handedly responsible for the turnaround in iPad sales. I think the numbers show from the analysts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff that iPad sales went up starting with this model because it turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you drop the price of the entry level model to a lineup, a lot more people want to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it so they can learn a lot from the laptop line. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John whoever’s point it was before kids do love iPads like very young kids. Oh, yeah. So there there was
⏹️ ▶️ John always an appetite to desire for iPads, but you’re not going to buy a $600 iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John for a toddler. So you but a $300 one starts to get into the realm of possibility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So anyway, so this they introduced this this, you know, lower price point for the entry level iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last year, and it sold very well and then now they’ve updated it with newer components.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is now roughly the guts of an iPhone 7 in most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important ways. Just in like an iPad size case with an iPad size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen. It is not the nicest screen. It’s basically like an iPad Air 1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of screen. So it doesn’t have the close lamination of the screen to the glass. There’s like a small visible gap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although, I mean, it’s not that big.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, on that topic, I would love to know if someone knows if that increases repairability, because that’s all I could think of.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, why don’t they use the laminated screen? Maybe it’s because if students drop it, they can replace the top class without replacing
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen, or maybe I’m wrong about that. So someone at the Genius Bar, let us know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s an interesting thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, I figured it was just for cost, you know, and for segmentation, because, see, I think one of the issues I have with this, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, if you go down the specs, there’s not a lot of differences between this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the 10.5 inch iPad Pro. There are some and they might be big for you, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s actually not hugely different. And it’s half the price of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro. So there are some differences, and again, they may
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter to you. As our friend Federico Faticci pointed out, the new cheap iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not have the promotion, 120 hertz refresh rate, does not have the P3 wide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco color, true tone, a smart connector for the keyboard, and then the camera is not as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. does not have image stabilization, does not shoot 4K video, and it only has first-generation Touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID. It does now support the Apple Pencil, which is interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how much that’s going to matter in practice, because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least not for schools, I can’t imagine…
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple were pushing that so hard, by the way, like the pencil support. Every one of the slides, the whole visual
⏹️ ▶️ John theme of the show was things drawn with the Apple Pencil. Every slide, every, like, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John very consistent, beautiful drawings, as always, with Apple, beautiful presentation. They were leaning heavily on the pencil. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the pencil, of course, is 100 extra dollars. That’s, you know, that’s why people talk about the iPad. So you have the iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you got 50 to $100 for a case $100 for the pencil and the crayon was half the price,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it doesn’t do tilt. It just doesn’t do pressure, just as tilt and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch. The Logitech crayon is interesting. It’s like if they if they would sell that separately, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it would work with regular It doesn’t though it so it only works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this one. It doesn’t work with the iPad pros and It is only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold through the education channel So like you can’t just go on apple.com and order one Which is unfortunate because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a it’s like logitech’s It’s logitech’s device that is really an apple pencil
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inside it You does the same benefits they have a pencil except for does not have pressure sensitivity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I know a lot of people who would buy that and it’s like a little bit more ergonomic It has a button like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s actually kind of better in some ways. I mean, you know, it doesn’t look as nice and everything But honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would probably have bought one of those if it worked on the iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John But people can’t use a VR without the pressure sensitivity though. Like I continue to think that the Apple pencil I mean the Apple pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John is great and all but I think it’s just too expensive like maybe for the pro models It’s like who cares but it
⏹️ ▶️ John just I really wish there was a pencil for less than a hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars Yeah, and and it’s and it really does have a few pretty annoying design flaws
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t like it like Mike made the case on connected this past week that we all made fun of it How like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can charge it by sticking it up the butt of the iPad and it looks really funny But he made the case that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s you know actually a good thing in practice, and that’s fine I think the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pencil has lots of design problems it you know it has the issue of it’s you know There’s nothing to grip on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a little bit too big and a little bit too heavy It the battery life is not good enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and because there is no power switch which it just the battery is constantly draining itself. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re like carrying it in a bag and it’s in motion or using the iPad without using the pencil and of course there’s nowhere to put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it on the iPad or around the iPad. There’s lots of problems that the pencil has the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Logitech crayon solves some of those and it’s kind of a shame that you have to rely on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like, you know, Apple doesn’t like stoop down to the level of making something ergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a button on it, even though that would actually make it a better product in some ways. But anyway, going back to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad, this iPad’s a really good deal. Like, you’re getting a lot for this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if anything, I think it really highlights how incredibly expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPad Pro is for what you’re getting there. Like, to get a decently equipped one of these, which we’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to in a little while, you know, you’re looking at 400 bucks, you know, once you throw in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessories, maybe more. With the iPad Pro, you’re looking at about 800, and it’s really, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re getting for double the price, you’re getting a nicer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and slightly larger screen, the smart connector which gives you the opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to spend another $200 on the keyboard, and a little bit better camera which a lot of people don’t use or don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about on the iPad. So it’s like the difference that you’re getting is and it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s a twice the price difference to go from this to the iPad Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And again this is only gonna be for a few months because presumably in June they’re probably going to update the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro to make it even better. But I do think this kind of illustrates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite how expensive the iPad Pro is compared to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how expensive it needs to be. Because this shows what they can do with the iPad 329. This
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad feels a little bit chintzy to me though. I understand it’s got to be a cut down model.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes sense to have it on the product line. I think they should have a cheap iPad, setting aside to get educated, setting aside education, just
⏹️ ▶️ John just for regular people, right? But some of the cheaping out like I I’ve complained
⏹️ ▶️ John about this before. I really wish Apple would make less expensive products
⏹️ ▶️ John that were not merely old parts or old, like
⏹️ ▶️ John a purpose built product to hit a much lower price point. Like in
⏹️ ▶️ John this case, the one that really burns me is touch touch ID, second, not doesn’t have second gen touch ID because
⏹️ ▶️ John that just feels like you’re being it’s like, come on, like, I understand, I understand. I don’t need p3 color gamut.
⏹️ ▶️ John like true tone, maybe smart connector. Okay, maybe that’s like a feature that schools don’t want or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Camera, sure, by all means cheap out, but the touch ID you unlock it like it just, it just
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like everything like we can’t have we can’t have any nice things. It’s like it’s if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John was selling cheaper, imagine Apple sold lots of Macs. If they were selling cheaper Macs with USB 2
⏹️ ▶️ John in them still, right? And it’d be like, come on, at a certain point USB 2 isn’t it more expensive for you than
⏹️ ▶️ John USB 3? Like just, I know it’s not quite the same thing, but… The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB C cable that comes with all the MacBook Pros is a USB 2 cable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I just feel like you have to, you have to make the product not, not feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re getting second class in everything. I feel like, and this is a thing that Steve Jobs used to do, and
⏹️ ▶️ John my impression from the outside is that basically through sheer force of will because it’s what he wanted is periodically
⏹️ ▶️ John it would update the whole line and they would expunge some lesser thing from the entire line top to bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John even the cheapest one wouldn’t have thing that Steve Jobs no longer likes he loved to refresh the whole line
⏹️ ▶️ John and say it’s all gone and in the Tim Cook era refreshing the whole line pretty much never happens
⏹️ ▶️ John like you get new things at the top but the middle and bottom is just like it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like hand-me-downs and secondhand stuff and just hanging out down there with yesterday’s technology
⏹️ ▶️ John you never get the clean sweep. They go through it says we have a whole new line of products from super low price super high price
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of them we talked about this world look like a family and are brought up to some minimum standard
⏹️ ▶️ John right so that like second gen touch ID should be everywhere by now you should not have first-gen
⏹️ ▶️ John target it should be a relic of the past but it’s like can we save an extra dollar fifty yes we can
⏹️ ▶️ John keep shipping the old one no don’t keep shipping the old one like even even
⏹️ ▶️ John the lowest-end Apple product I feel like has to be brought along with all the other
⏹️ ▶️ John tech at some minimum level. I don’t know. The product
⏹️ ▶️ John annoys me a little bit. I do agree that it’s great that it’s there. It’s much better than not having it at all, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it. Tim Cook has no minimum standard. That’s really that’s like if you look at, you know, you said like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raise everything to a minimum standard like he has no minimum. He will sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the oldest lowest end parts forever, as long as there’s still money to be made there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why… I think if Apple was truly a premium company, if they really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted that quality… And honestly, and I don’t say this often, if Steve was still there, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do not think they would be selling anything today with a spinning disc or a non-retina screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because as a product guy as Steve so much was, it’s like… And I attribute
⏹️ ▶️ John to him because he was had the last say in so many things. It’s like, you once you have the new thing, you don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone to have the old thing anymore. Like you want like obviously price is a factor and you can’t just make everyone red and
⏹️ ▶️ John overnight. But like once you see a retina screen, God, can you look at an on retina screen anymore? And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as that’s feasible price wise, you want to put that in everything. Same thing with second gen touch ID, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John first gen touch ID. Yeah, it’s our first cut it out. But once we get the second gen one, and the price comes down, like once it gets close enough, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John time to refresh the whole line and forget about first gen touch ID, you’re never going to to see that in Apple product again, everything is second
⏹️ ▶️ John gen, just because it was like you feel you feel like you want everyone to
⏹️ ▶️ John have your new thing. And yet Tim does not seem to have that instinct. He feels no kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of shame, I’m gonna say embarrassment, or it’s not it’s not shame or embarrassment. It’s too much. It’s more like
⏹️ ▶️ John just when you make a new thing, you want everyone to see your bet. You want everyone to see the best thing that you have to offer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, obviously, price comes into it. Everyone can’t get a p3 screen, everyone can’t get promotion, right? But there’s a trickle down
⏹️ ▶️ John effect and a product person would be like, boy, I can’t wait until it’s financially feasible for me to offer
⏹️ ▶️ John P3 displays on all our products. When is that going to happen? Give me a timeline five years from now or whatever. Let’s go
⏹️ ▶️ John for that, because that will be a milestone like that. We will have raised the bar on all of our products. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook is like, I don’t care if that ever happens. Keep shipping the TN display on the MacBook Air with giant pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John and terrible color reproduction as long as people buy it. That’s not I don’t like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a good time to bring up another point that we had in the notes here, which is that Apple’s still selling the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad mini 4 for $70 more than this new iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has an A8. As opposed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yet still selling it. No end in sight and also no replacement in sight for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that product even though I think people would buy it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s got an A8, no Apple Pencil support and a smaller display and it’s $70 more. This is another,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is an article from the Verge, by the way. And this is another example of Apple’s product lines not being
⏹️ ▶️ John coherent. Lay out all the iPads before me and explain to me what the progression is through your line
⏹️ ▶️ John or what the use cases are.” And then you get to the iPad mini 4, you’d be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is like for people who want something smaller but want it to be two generations behind our least expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John one and have no pencil support. I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco mean, maybe they were in
⏹️ ▶️ John an in-between period, but we used to say that in the beginning, like, oh, this line is in a transition, right? But now I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John we have enough time to say all the lines are constantly in transition. They never get to their destination.
⏹️ ▶️ John They never get to the point where there is a line that makes sense and that has good products at
⏹️ ▶️ John all price points. It’s always just this long tail of the residue of
⏹️ ▶️ John yesteryear falling off the product line or not falling off as the case may be.
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#askatp: Best Apple value
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s move on and do some Ask ATP, shall we? Let’s start with Chris Ovribo, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asks, which Apple product, when purchased from Apple, including refurbished and clearance, provides the most value
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or functionality per dollar? In other words, what’s the biggest bang for your buck. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have a good answer for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, good. Well, we will get to you. We will get to you momentarily.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My first, which is not good, is whatever the best iPhone is you can buy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because given all of the things that you can do with your phone and how amazing your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone will be, get the best one you can. it’ll be great bang for your buck. My second answer, which is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the better of the two, is AirPods. They are expensive, but they provide—assuming they fit in your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ears—they provide me endless amounts of joy. I cannot speak highly enough of the AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s go to John, who will hopefully have a very quick answer, and then, Marco, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco Marconi AirPods is a good one, but I still feel like the 160 is too much. My answer is the iPhone 8.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the most expensive iPhone is too much. like the iPhone 10, it’s not worth the price premium, but the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John eight is a fantastic phone. Like it is, it’s, you know, if the iPhone 10
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t exist, the iPhone eight would be a worthy top end phone. And because the iPhone 10 does exist,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can be less expensive. And yeah, the iPhone eight is still expensive, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a really great phone. And I feel like it gets overlooked. And it’s the iPhone is Apple’s best product,
⏹️ ▶️ John they put their best stuff into it, it has the highest success rate. So I feel like that’s the most
⏹️ ▶️ John bang for the buck, even though though it is a hell of a lot of bucks, it’s also a hell of a lot of bang.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a really good pick. I will give you that. All right, so I kind of have multiple picks. It depends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on like what category you’re looking at. I thought about, you know, stuff like air pods, but I wanted to just focus on like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers, phones and iPads. So like like, you know, so I’m not going to say like, well, you know this one lightning cable is the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bang for the buck in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the whole store.
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s cables are the best bang
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John your buck. I know. I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about that and looked. I’m like, no, I can’t. There’s nothing in these categories anyway. And I also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to enforce some minimum standards of making things usable and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS devices I decided needed to have at least 64 gigs of storage and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if and for anything I picked it was an iPad it had to include a smart cover so that’s 40
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks to the iPad prices. For the Mac I thought at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 256 gig SSD or a 1 terabyte fusion drive and if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a USB C model that I I was considering I added a one hundred dollar allowance for adapters and hubs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I truly and I don’t mean to go off on the laptops again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go really. I truly don’t believe that that the modern USB C only laptops are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful without having you know fifty to a hundred dollars worth of adapters and hubs for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in the same way that an iPad is not useful without some kind of cover case anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So in the iPhone category, which I think is my overall category probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because iPhones are just so damn useful and so damn good. I actually picked the iPhone 7 128 Jet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Black. This goes for $650 new or $590
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currently refurbished from Apple.com. You know I looked at the iPhone SE 128 that’s $450 that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only new there’s no refurbish for that so $450 for the iPhone SE or $590 for an iPhone 7 refurb.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is such a good phone I like it better than the 8 because one of the you know the great advantage of the jet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco black is you don’t really need a case because there’s so much grip on it and I think I think it looks better honestly than the 8 does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s it’s still a really solid modern internal phone that’s that’s literally the CPU they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just put in this new iPad we were just talking about so the iPhone 7 128 jet black new or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refurb I think is the best buy right now in the in the iPhone lineup and possibly the entire Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lineup I will also say in the iPad lineup that new iPad the new 9.7 iPad 128 gigs with smart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cover is 470. That’s a really good deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can also get last year’s version of it with Smart Cover refurbished for $350. That’s an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excellent deal. And you can get the cellular version of last year’s model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that 9.7 in 128 for $450 refurbished. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a cellular iPad. I really enjoy a cellular iPad because if you’re talking about like what’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what how can I make this thing the most useful to me adding cellular really helps a lot. This is one of the reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I wish they’d out to the laptops because it really makes this like a truly like portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work device. It’s just like a giant phone then and it’s really very nice to have that sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the laptop category, if you are limiting yourself to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only modern you know 2016 forward MacBooks, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13-inch MacBook Escape with 256 gig SSD is 1600 new or 1370 refurb. Both of those include that $100 allowance for dongles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hubs. If you don’t need retina, the 13
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch MacBook Air is still sold. 256 gives you 1200 new or 980 refurb. I can’t I can’t pay $900 for anything with that screen on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know and I that’s why I had this as like a huge habit if you don’t need or care about retina,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a really great
⏹️ ▶️ John buy. It’s not the retina, it’s the viewing angles and color reproduction. I just think it’s a bad screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think if you don’t care about retina, you’re probably not going to care about that either. Oh, and for desktop, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 4K iMac, I think, 8, 1 terabyte fusion, 4K iMac is 1400 new, 1270
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refurb, that’s the way to go on that. However, I think the best Mac value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, to nobody’s surprise, the 2015 15-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s 2000 new or it’s 1700 refurb for 1700 refurb you get a hell of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer you get 16 gigs of ram which none of the other ones offered these prices 256
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course quad-core processor and then you have all the ports you need you have a keyboard and trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are non-controversial and reliable you don’t need any dongles or anything that is still I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best overall value in the Mac lineup. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall iPhone 7 Jet Black and the 2015 15-inch base
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got that iPhone and I think the 8 is a better deal. Maybe it’s because I just checked my battery health and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s at 87% and I felt worse about my phone.
#askatp: Marching band
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anson Jablinski writes, hey, what did Marco play in marching band? Or what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey musical experience does each of the hosts have, if any? So Marco, what did you play in marching band?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was in the percussion section. So I started out as a freshman on crash cymbals, right at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bottom of the totem pole there. Then sophomore year, I was on snare drum. Junior and senior
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year, I was on quads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. I have never played anything with any efficacy whatsoever, except I play a mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stereo. Huh, huh, nevermind.
⏹️ ▶️ John John. I played keyboards as a kid. We had like electric keyboards in the house. I
⏹️ ▶️ John noodled around in those. I did actually take piano lessons for some short period of time, but I could
⏹️ ▶️ John play songs that I wanted to play like from the radio and stuff on keyboards.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in college, I picked up a guitar because everybody on my floor in my dorm, my freshman dorm,
⏹️ ▶️ John had guitars, and so it was impossible not to pick up a guitar. all of those instruments I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty much terrible at. And I could never sight-read music, but I could kind of non-sight-read
⏹️ ▶️ John it briefly for certain instruments.
#askatp: Backpacks³
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, The Italian Stallion, who is apparently not John Siracusa,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asks, backpack recommendations that would fit a 15-inch MacBook Pro? I know you just said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backpack, but if you don’t have to have a backpack, I really love my Tombin Cadet,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’ll put a link in the show notes to my review of that. I have also heard, but have not tried myself, that the Tombin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Synapse is excellent, and that is a backpack, backpack, but that’s probably not useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So does one of you have a backpack recommendation that you enjoy?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have. So to me, backpacks are kind of like the way most people think of to-do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and like, you know, task managers. I’m always about 80% satisfied
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the backpack I have, and I’m frequently trying new ones as a result.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I have tried some of the some really nice ones actually. You know, some of these are wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have the Waterfield Designs Stodd laptop backpack. They make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of good stuff and that’s very good. Holds up to 15 inches just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a really nice Briggs & Riley backpack. That was something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 200 bucks and I forget exactly which model it is. One of like the Active series.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s pretty nice too. I recently got a Peak Design Everyday Backpack,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s also really nice. Ultimately, all of these are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good. None of them are perfect. I have not yet tried Tom Bin. I believe the Synapse 25
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be the one to get. I was looking at that. I would love to see it sometime. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might end up trying it anyway, but all of these have pluses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and minuses, and it depends a lot on what you’re doing. If you’re using it for everyday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco carrying it to work, that’s a very different type of needs from if you’re using it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to bring it on planes and travel with it or to also have a weekend worth of clothing and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. These are very different needs. The Waterfield one is beautiful, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stylish, trendy, looks nice. The Briggs & Reilly one, I found, has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of pluses to it, but ultimately I didn’t care for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco layout of the interior space. Like a lot of things are hard to reach, hard to access. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of seemingly wasted space with like weird padding areas and stuff that I don’t think need to be there or should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be arranged differently. The Peak Design Everyday Backpack is my current one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve got it recently. And it also is very nice with a few flaws.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It really does not hold very much. I got the smaller one of the two and I’m kind of thinking maybe the bigger one might have been the better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bet. It’s fine in that way, but it holds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plenty if you want it to be like a laptop bag going to work. I would say though, for a 15-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro, it just barely fits in the Peak design. Like, the laptop pocket is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tight. It’s squeezing my laptop such that I’m getting keyboard imprints on the screen, so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love that. I honestly would not recommend it for daily use, if only for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas the the Waterfield Stodd, I think, is better for that. But at these prices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I expect like perfection for to pay, you know, $300
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ish for a backpack. And I haven’t found that yet. So I’m all ears if anybody has something else they like. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, I think that it’s the kind of category where like what’s perfect for one person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gonna be totally wrong for another person. And it’s all gonna be personal preference. And you just got to try it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out and see for yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the closest I’ve got to a backpack that I really like is actually it’s not sold anymore, but there’s an equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ John is this L. Bean backpack. I don’t know what that model of mine is, but the closest one I have is now called the quad backpack
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s so close. I like I like backpacks first of all that are cheap. This is like 80 bucks. They
⏹️ ▶️ John have tons of little pockets everywhere on them so you can put all those dongles that we need in this dongle lifestyle
⏹️ ▶️ John that we have now. It’s got an inside pocket that It will fit any, you know, fit a 15 inch laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John and it also an iPad inside a case inside that same pocket and then it’s got tons of other interior space and all
⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of little pockets and it’s kind of, it’s not fashionable, it’s not made of nice materials, it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like durable, kind of like, kind of like camping type equipment, right? It’s not, there’s no leather anywhere on
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing, right? So if you want to look good, forget about it. The one thing that annoys me about this backpack
⏹️ ▶️ John that you should be warned about is that it has tons of weird straps everywhere for like, oh, if you’re stuffing it filled
⏹️ ▶️ John with camping You need the strap that goes around your waist and the straps the two straps on the side that hold the backpack
⏹️ ▶️ John together and I Considered cutting them off, but it’s actually kind of hard to cut them off because it’s pretty durable So but
⏹️ ▶️ John I have found a way to tuck the straps that I’m not using into some of the pockets So they’re mostly out of the
⏹️ ▶️ John way. It’s still an annoyance if it didn’t have those straps I think it would be close to perfect for me because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what I want I don’t want to be cheap durable light and have tons of pockets and zippers and not fall apart
⏹️ ▶️ John And so far this LL Bean backpack has fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bill I will say too in for the Peak Design Everyday Backpack, it really excels at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hiding all of the extra straps and stuff that it can that can be used in the pinch. Like every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strap that it has has some kind of pocket that it belongs in when it’s not being used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so it’s totally invisible and out of the way. It is very well designed for like expansion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that but yeah ultimately like I wish it was a little bigger. I mean I might have to try the bigger version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it but And I also wish that laptop compartment wasn’t so crushing, but hopefully this summer I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move to a 13-inch newer one and that should probably solve that problem for me. Do you guys do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco packing cubes when you travel?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not in the traditional sense. I do have that GoPack that I talk about all the time that is sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of-ish like a packing cube. That’s just basically got all my dongles and things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that nature in it. But what you’re talking about, I think, is packing clothes and other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things of that nature in packing cubes. And this appeals to me from an organizational
⏹️ ▶️ Casey standpoint. I feel like this is something that I would really like, but I’ve never done it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t seem like, I don’t really get why people would do this, even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it sounds like it would be something I would like. You know what I mean? So what are you asking? Because you haven’t or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because you’re trying it now? Or what brings this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up? Steven Penn So I recently started. A lot of our friends travel a lot, way more than I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I kept hearing from people like, oh, you got to try packing cubes or or just generally like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the style of traveling or packing where you have like sub bags in your bags
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know that’s all packing cubes are are just like you know rectangular solid sub bags
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you put in your bags that’s that’s basically it and so you know I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was usually of the style of using the bags pockets as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dividers and compartments but the the packing cube in sub bag lifestyle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to want to have just like large open compartments in the bags
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then you have your own like sub bag things that you put in there that are separate from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that at to be your separation organization and so I recently tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to when I got my my cool peak design everyday backpack I decided to also try the packing cube lifestyle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a couple of these trips I’ve taken recently and I gotta say I see the benefit it’s pretty cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Tiff made fun of me relentlessly, but then she wanted some as soon as she saw how they worked. Because what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice about them is that there’s a few benefits. Number one, it is actually nicer to organize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that way in a bag. And if you get the compression cubes, which have slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compressing zippers around the perimeter, it actually does help compress your clothes slightly in a controlled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that doesn’t excessively wrinkle them or anything. But a really nice thing about the packing cubes is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you arrive at a hotel, you can just take the packing cubes right out of your bag and just place
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in the drawers, if you use the drawers in a hotel. You just put them in the drawers and open them up and then you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like, oh, here’s my sock rectangle, you know, here’s my shirt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s actually really nice. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’ve been converted. I wanna do a little more traveling with them. I’ve done two trips so far with them. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m being converted to the sub bag and packing cube lifestyle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you said you have one for socks and one for shirts? Or what did you end up doing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I got a variety of sizes. If you’re looking at the Eagle Creek ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say the small and medium sizes are the ones to get. The rest of the sizes I have not yet found much of a use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for. So small, medium, and compression if possible. And they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not cheap. They end up being like 25 bucks each, something like that. But they do seem pretty well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made. I have like the the tech line that has like slightly higher tech fabric and it’s a little bit lighter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t quite worked the whole system yet, but I have like you know one of them will obviously put like all my underwear and socks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and this depends on like how much you need to bring and I’ve only again uses for two trips so far. So take all this with a grain of salt,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like all underwear and socks will go in one and then all t-shirts will go in another and then if I’m if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have extra pants, I’ll put those in one and that’s about it. They have something that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can fold like dress shirts into. I I haven’t tried that yet. It’s just, it’s kind of nice, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes it easier to pack. It makes it more organized in the bag to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, or if you have to move stuff around in the bag, if you have to rearrange stuff. It’s surprisingly nice. Like, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were pointless, but now I get it, and I’m sold.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I’ve tried a new thought technology with regard to packing, which is rolling rather than folding.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, the rolling people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, you roll the stuff into the packing cubes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like it’s probably a placebo, but I really feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can get considerably more stuff into my bag when it’s rolled, and it’s more likely to come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out less wrinkled. It is still a wrinkled disaster, but it is less so than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I fold. And so I have been converted to the rolling lifestyle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like I said, that’s a new thought technology in my world that I have embraced. But yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey packing cube is still beyond me. John, why do you scoff at rolling? You’re not a fan?
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, I’m not. There’s a couple of reasons. I’m not into rolling and I’m not into the packing
⏹️ ▶️ John things. Uh, the rolling, well, it’s about the same reason, I guess. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like all of my items of clothing have a natural size that they want to be folded at. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that size is not rolled and it probably doesn’t match any of the packing things.
⏹️ ▶️ John like they I need to fold things at the size that they want to be folded they speak to me like
⏹️ ▶️ John how big should I be
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and if I try to
⏹️ ▶️ John make them fold my shirts bigger or smaller maybe it’s because I’m a limited folder maybe I have a limited repertoire of folding
⏹️ ▶️ John skills like I’m not good at folding laundry I fold things the way I fold them now let the let the garment tell me how
⏹️ ▶️ John it wants to be folded right and the other thing is with my let the garment speak to me and tell me
⏹️ ▶️ John how to folding combined with my fairly obsessive over packing I can
⏹️ ▶️ John pack any of my suitcases easily to the point where they exceed the weight limit that
⏹️ ▶️ John airlines have so I don’t need any compression thing to help me get more into the bag if anything
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to intentionally pack less efficiently so I don’t go over the weight limit and have to pull things out of my bag
⏹️ ▶️ John to get it on the plane because the weight limits are like what 50 pounds at 40 50 pounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well it’s it’s not a weight limit so much as there’s a fee if you go over it
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah well anyway I I don’t want to have that fee and I don’t want to go over the limit and sometimes it actually is a limit and they’ll make you have another check another
⏹️ ▶️ John bag or something. So I am always on the ragged edge of that limit with no packing
⏹️ ▶️ John cubes and no rolling and folding my clothes the way they naturally want to be folded. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like this is not a problem I have in my life and I’m not looking for ways to jam more stuff into my suitcase and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely not looking for ways to make me have to learn how to fold my clothes in a different way than the one and only way I know how to fold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Well it is really nice if like if you’re checking a bag then yeah you’re right the weight limit usually a bigger problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s really nice if you are kind of on the border between needing to check it and being able to fit it in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco carry-on. And I love just traveling with a carry-on, if possible. It’s so nice to just bypass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the baggage claim and just walk right, just leave, and you’re just done. You have everything you need with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. You just walk out and you’re done. Like, that’s wonderful. So where this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco helps is not in cramming, you know, 75 pounds worth of stuff into a very large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check bag but in fitting into a carry-on where otherwise you might not have fit into
⏹️ ▶️ John or if you’re underscore not even having a carry-on but just having a backpack for an entire
⏹️ ▶️ John week which is still blows my mind cuz I like I said I’m a massive over packer and he apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John needs no human sustenance of any kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is it is very satisfying to have to be to be packed very lightly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a trip and to need very little and to use everything you have. I actually tried… One of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trips I just took was this trip where I was helping my family member move. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was going to be taking space in a very full moving convoy of trucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t want to have a large bag myself. I figured that was wasteful, and I want to leave as much space as possible
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. You’ve got a whole moving truck. You’re afraid you aren’t going to have room? You have a moving
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco truck. Oh, you haven’t seen the stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it was full. And so I brought… For this trip, I brought only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my Peak Design Everyday Backpack. And I shoved everything I needed for three days,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or four days, whatever it was, into this backpack. It was glorious. Like, there was no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space left over and I had to do some pretty crazy stuff. I only had one pair of pants. But it was glorious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have everything fit in, in like one backpack, including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my computer, these two walkie-talkies, some accessories for driving. Like I brought like my cell phone suction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cup, piece of garbage. like I like I brought a whole bunch of like you know stuff that would that would be necessary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trip coffee tubes yeah I brought my my tubes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John instant coffee my two
⏹️ ▶️ John coffee excuse me so does now now does all your items of clothing smell like coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re all wedged into this bag with the coffee tubes no the tubes are sealed all right I don’t know no he
⏹️ ▶️ John said they were canvas I thought maybe they’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be no no they’re plastic tubes that come in a pretty canvas bag all right yeah so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is very satisfying I would love like to travel to wbdc I I would love to travel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with just like one of the like the smallest roller bag size you know that like put the pilots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually have I have one of those it’s glorious I love being able to fit into that the only reason I don’t for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for WBC is that we bring like a whole podcast studio so so I have all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this gear but like on trips where I don’t have that I love packing as small as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna ask kind of score maybe you can put the fit the podcasting studio in one of his inside jacket pockets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really want to just emphasize what you guys are saying about underscores packing because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we for a long time would fly out together. I would drive up to Dallas, which is reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close to his house, and we would take the same flight and try to sit next to each other and whatnot. And I would be rolling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in with my laptop bag, which is bursting at the seams, and a carry-on bag, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was bursting at the seams. And that pain in my rear end rolls in with a lightly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s not even, I shouldn’t even say stop, like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightly packed backpack. And that is all he has. That’s his computer, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his toiletries, his luggage, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is in his backpack. For a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week. For a week. It’s inhuman. I’ve asked him about this every year I ask him about this, and every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year he just kind of shrugs and smirks and basically says, yeah, I don’t need a lot. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both delightful and infuriating all at the same time. Because I’m like John, I pack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way too much. And over the years, I have gotten that beaten out of me. Like over time, I have gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better about not packing everything in the world, and I still pack way too
⏹️ ▶️ John what you just described is half of what I pack, because you were like, you have a
⏹️ ▶️ John roller bag. I have a full-size suitcase, like the biggest, the highest weight limit suitcase you
⏹️ ▶️ John can get, and then my backpack.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I adore my Away suitcase, and they happen to be sponsoring this episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the Carry-On, I mean, it’s a wonderful, wonderful suitcase. I would say that even if we weren’t compensated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say that, but it is not, you know, cavernous. It’s carry on. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, which makes sense. And I can get, you know, like, last year I got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my entire week’s worth of luggage, my toiletry kit, my go pack, and a pair of running shoes in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there. And I was very proud of myself because for me, that was a heck of an accomplishment. And Underscore,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think he was wearing, you know, sneakers for the week. so he didn’t have to have a second pair of shoes. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he had running clothes. He probably brought a damn kettle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John for his coffee, for all I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco know, in this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backpack. It’s like Santa’s freaking bag that he has. It’s incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So thanks to our sponsors this week, Alay, Aftershocks, and Jamf Now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can
⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s So that’s Casey Liss, M-a-r-c-o-a-r-m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco N-t Marco Armin, s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, ah, it’s accidental They didn’t mean to,
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, tech podcasts so long.
Post-show: Underscore’s fleece
⏹️ ▶️ John By the way, for people wondering about the inside jacket pocket thing, Underscore is the first person I saw
⏹️ ▶️ John who had a MacBook One, the little 12-inch MacBook with one USB-C port
⏹️ ▶️ John literally inside his jacket pocket.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco This is not a joke. He
⏹️ ▶️ John jacket and takes out a laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, his wife custom made a pocket. She sewed it on the inside of his jacket that would fit exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that laptop. And it was amazing. To see somebody, especially like Underscore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you mentioned, he’s so like frustratingly he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so like together and he just like and everything he does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he makes he makes it look effortless. It’s just no big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey They totally it’s so true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He has like all the grace in the world like just and so like he just like he were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like we were standing in line at the at the last Santa the last of a bc in san Francisco. We were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outside the whatever center that that was we had to walk all the way over to get to get there and he just like whips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this out like we were there. And he just like whips this out like we were like, oh, we should check that sometime or you know, and he just he’s like, oh, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check it right now. And he whips out this laptop out of his jacket like, whoa, like, how did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do that? Where did that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It was so, I think it’s-
⏹️ ▶️ John Was it walking with him, standing in line with him? It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know- Yeah, we had no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea. And it was like a fleece. It was not like a big winter coat. It was like a light fleece.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey man. I love that guy. But there’s certain times that I want to strangle in the best possible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John one of them because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, you know what it is about underscore is that he, he, he very, very well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reflects to me my own failings,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John but he’s like the nicest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey human being in the world. And so you can’t be upset at him because he’s the nicest guy ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Like did I ever say like the, my favorite compliment I ever received was I, I once,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had sent John Gruber some of my home roasted coffee. He said, I almost want to say, this is so good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s kind of how it’s like what underscore does something awesome and I’m like it’s almost like he’s such a nice guy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you don’t you can’t get mad at him but you’re just like damn it why like yeah why can I not why have I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either not thought of that or not gotten it together to do that it’s so true it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John true just comfort yourself by thinking that just try to try to picture in your head underscore
⏹️ ▶️ John like being frustrated at something and getting and getting angry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I’ve ever ever seen him even mildly like disturbed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like he’s never been particularly angry about anything in my experience having known him for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey several years now I’ve never seen him angry never seen him particularly upset sometimes he’ll kind of do the exasperated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laugh of oh well then it’s the brakes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s like the least phased person I’ve ever seen and I am I am somewhat skeptical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that he has ever raised his voice for any reason
⏹️ ▶️ John ever I believe he has and I picture that to make me feel better about myself. The best part of all is he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be listening to this at some absurd hour tomorrow morning because he typically bootlegs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all this and he is going to be so deeply embarrassed by this entire conversation, which isn’t actually something I should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be proud of, but it is making me laugh a little bit. Maybe that’s his one flaw.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the one his one flaw excessive modesty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like the BS job interview response is what’s your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey worst? What’s your biggest weakness? Sometimes I work too hard. Yeah.